NEW COMPARISON

A Journal of Comparative and General Literary Studies

Published for the British Comparative Literature Association

Editors: Susan Bassnett (Comparative Literary Theory and Literary Translation,

University of Warwick) Theo Hermans (Dutch, University College London) Holger Klein (Modern Languages and European History, University of East

Anglia)

Editorial Board: Leon Burnett (Literature, University of Essex). Eva Fox-CAI (English and Related Literatures, University of York), Kei th Hoskin (Classics/Education, University of Warwick), George Hyde (English and American Studies. University of East Anglia), Andre Lefevere (Germanic Languages. University of Texas at Austin), Susan Melrose (Drama and Theatre Studies, Murdoch University, Australia), Philip Mosley (Comparative Literature, Pennsylvania State University). Saliha Paker (London/lstanbul), Robert Pynsent (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London), Brigitte Schultze (Slavonic Studies, University of MaindTranslation Studies Centre, University of Gottingen), Christopher Smith and Clive Scott (Modern Languages and European History, University of East Anglia), Stephen Walton (Scandinavian Studies, University College London), Peter V. Zima (Comparative Literature, University of Klagenfurt).

NEW COMPARISON is published twice yearly, in the Summer and Autumn.

Administration and Subscriptions: Dr Susan Bassnett. New Comparison, Graduate School of Comparative Literary Theory and Literary Translation, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL.

Prices and subscription rates: see last page.

Editorial address: Dr Theo Hermans, New Comparison. Department of Dutch, University College London. Gower Street, London WClE 6BT.

Books for review, etc.: to Dr Holger Klein, New Comparison. School of Modern Languages and European History, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ.

Typing and layout: Carol Haines

0 Individual authors

Printed at the University of East Anglia

NEW COMPARlSON

A J o u r n a l o f C o m p a r a t i v e a n d G e n e r a l 1 2 ~ ~ e r , ~ r \ S ~ u d ~ c

N u m b e r 6 : L i t e r a r y T h e m e s Autumn 1988

E d i t e d by Holger Klein

H O L G E R KLElN ( N o r w ~ c h ) T h e m e s and T h e m a t o l o g y

ANGELIKA CORBINEAIJ-HOFF'M4NN ( k l a ~ n z ) V e n i c e a t F i r s t Sight: P r o l e g o m e n a for a N r w V ~ e w on l l i r r n ; ~ l I<, \

A N D R E E MANSAll (Toulouse) Venice P r e s e r v e d : His tory , Myth and L i t ~ r a r y ( ' r e d [ ~ o n

HANS-GEOHG G R ~ ~ N I N G ( M a c e r a t e ! T h e " T r a i t o r t o h is People": A C o n t r i b u t i o n t o t h e P h e n o m e n o l o g y of T r e a c h e r y in L i t e r a t u r e

GYORGY E. SZONYl ( S z e g e d ) V a r i a t i o n s o n t h e h ly th of t h e M a g u s

T E R E N C E DAWSON (Singapore) V i c t i m s of t h e i r o w n C o n t e n d i n g Pass ions : I lnexptbctcd I)c,;~rh in Adolphe , Ivanhoe , a n d W u t h e r i n g H e ~ g h t s

ELISARETH RRONFEN ( M u n ~ c h ! Dia logue wi th t h e D e a d : T h e D e c e a s e d S e l o v c d as kluat.

S lEGHlLD BOGUMIL ( B o c h u m ) I m a g e s of L a n d s c a p e in C o m t e m p o r a r y F r e n c h I'octr!.: Ponge , C h a r and Dupin

WALTER RACHEM ( R o c h u m ) N a t u r e and P e r c e p t i o n : Vers ions of a I l ~ a l e c t i c . 111

E u r o p e a n C i t y P o e t r y ZlVA B E N - P O R A T ( T e l Aviv) A u t u m n P o e m s a n d L i t e r a r y Impress ionism: C o n c e p t u a l ~ s a t ~ o n , T h e m a t i z a t i o n and C l a s s i f i c a t i o n

WENDY M E R C E R (London) F r o m Idyll t o Arsenal : T h e C h a n g ~ n g I m a g e o f G e r m a n y In F r a n c e a s s e e n through t h e Work of X a v ~ e r M a r m e r 11808-1892)

J U L I A N COWLEY (London) T h e A r t of t h e Improvisers : J a z z and F i c t ~ o n in P o s t - B e b o p A m e r i c a

E. W. H E R D ( O t a g o ) Tin D r u m and S n a k e - C h a r m e r ' s F l u t e : S a l m a n H u s h d ~ e ' s D e b t t o G u n t e r G r a s s

REVIEWS

R E P O R T O N 'WORK IN P R O G R E S S '

NEWS

OBITUARY

THEMES AND THEMATOLOGY

Holger Klein (University o f East Anglia)

"If ever a word was set up to he knocked down", Levin w i t t i l y remarked

twenty years ago, "it is that forbidding expression ..." ("Thematics ...I1,

p.94). Yet we have been bombarded with so many more formidable terms

in various spheres o f cr i t ical inquiry that this particular one may surely

pass. I t is useful: scholars writ ing in French have talked o f th6matolop;ie

at least since Van Tiegham (though he and many others used i t purely as

a translation o f Stoffgeschichte), i t has i ts obvious equivalents in other

Romance languages (tematologia, tematologia, etc.) and is known also e.g.

in Dutch (without the aigu on the el. Moreover, against variously

expressed doubts and opposition1 Thematologie is gaining ground in

cerman2 - not just to dissociate new efforts from what most perceive as

the stuffiness o f traditional Stoffgeschichte and Motivgeschichte, but to

designate a much wider field. Levin prefers thematics, which also has

obvious equivalents; however, there is a tendency to call the'matique/

thematiek1Thematik the thematic elements in particular works and the

methods o f their analysis,3 which again is only one area of the field. On

balance, then, thematology is preferahle as a general term for that branch

o f learning concerned, whether theoretically or i n practice, with the study

of l i terary themes. Using i t contributes a l i t t l e towards a convergence

o f terms and the notions they express - a development which, though

perhaps not essent ia~,~ is certainly apt to help.

The problem is not, o f course, that scholars working in different

languages use different words - that has been our general lot "After

Babel" and is largely remediable by dictionaries5 - but that l i terary

scholars (not exclusively, but perhaps more than those in the other

humanities) using the same language often employ identical terms for

different phenomena and vice versa.6 The reasons for this state o f

affairs, and for the unlikelihood of i ts being wholly overcome afforr!s

opportunities for speculation on the business of crit icism as well as on i ts

materiaL7 That is not my present concern. Nor do I wish to dwell once

more8 on the fact that "theme" and "motif" (as opposed to "motive") - along with a host of related terms - have no generally agreed signifieds

for those writ ing in ~nglish,' that scholarly usage of theme and r n d

drastically varies in French,'' and that, finally, the distinction between

S t o f f and M& is nei ther uniform in German' ' nor, in the dominant

t radi t ion, very serviceable. Jos t urges t h e res t of t h e world t o adopt t h e

German dis t inct ion ( a s if ag reemen t about it existed), obviously in eve ry -

one ' s own language; however , th is would only spread confusion and the

need f o r e l abora te contortions. Weisstein, on t h e o the r hand, r emarks it

might b e helpful if t h e German word S t o f f (which has f requent ly been

t aken ove r in o the r languages)'' w e r e t o b e dropped in favour of T h e m a

(p.137) (and S t o f f t o b e r e t a ined only in t h e sense of Rohstoff /subject

mat ter /mat ikre) . Although h e immediate ly s t eps back from this suggestion , it is more real is t ic and m o r e promising than Jos t ' s and has a l r eady been

frui t ful ly t aken up. If we add t o i t ano the r t e n t a t i v e suggestion, t h i s t i m e

by Rremond, t h a t t h e d i f f e rence be tween theme and motif ( a s opposed t o

mot ive ) l3 i s not o n e of kind but of degree,14 w e may a r r ive a t a

p rac t i cab le scheme.

T h e s o o f t e n l amen ted terminological chaos and wrangling should not

mesmer ize us. Nor must th is d e b a t e b e allowed t o obscure t h e f a c t t ha t ,

par t icular ly in t h e last t w o decades , thematology (under wha teve r name)

has made g rea t progress in cons t ruc t ing f r ameworks of s tudy and opening

perspect ives which, besides account ing fo r a g r e a t dea l of exci t ing work

al ready done, encourage fu r the r promising labours. Tracing i t s own

evolution and ref lect ing on i t s a i m s and me thods a r e t w o ac t iv i t i e s

incumbent on eve ry branch of academic study. Much has been achieved

fo r thematology in both directions, but t h e process must of cour se

continue.

In principle, thematology has t w o a r e a s of p rac t i ca l work, two

approaches t o l i tera ture . One looks mainly a t single t ex t s , perceiving in

them o r endowing them with a s t r u c t u r e of meanings. This might be

cal led a hor izontal , o r dynamic, o r syn tagmat i c approach. T h e o t h e r looks

a t un i t s of con ten t known t o r ecur in var ious (o f t en qu i t e d i s t an t and

unconnected) works, and makes those un i t s i t s principal object of study;

th is might b e cal led a ver t ical , o r s t a t i c , o r pa rad igmat i c approach. As

in o the r branches of ou r discipline, me taphors a r e o f t e n needed t o descr ibe

o u r sub jec t s and what w e d o with them, though they all h a v e the i r

l imita t ions and drawbacks. Of t h e t h r e e metaphorical pairs t h e las t one

s e e m s on t h e whole t h e leas t p rob lemat i c a n d will b e employed here.

l n t r a t ex tua l and in t e r t ex tua l could b e an a t t r a c t i v e a l t e rna t ive , w e r e i t not

t h a t t h e t e r m is by now somewha t charged. Indeed, t h e links, over laps and

differences between thematology and studies o f intertextuality in the

narrower, manageable (as opposed to the universal) sense st i l l await

investigation. 15

The syntagmatic approach to themes belongs mainly to those Wellek

and Warren call "intrinsic" studies (and cherish) - magnificently exemplified

by the New Crit ics and by practitioners o f werkimmanente Interpretation. 16

Themes here have an established place which was never called in

question. They are an integral part of the functional web which fuses

elements o f content and form (Gehalt and Gestalt) into a unique whole -

including cases o f deliberate jarring and disjunction, o f course.

The paredigmatic approach to themes, the one to which many

scholars writ ing in French have unti l fair ly recently confined th6matologie

(Trousson being a conspicuous protagonist), and which flourished as - to

quote the t i t le o f one o f Frenzel's weighty contributions - Stoff-und

Motivgeschichte in German, is to be aligned with the range o f "extrinsic"

studies in Wellek and Warren's system, though they, for slightly different

reasons than croce,17 regrettably did not think much of i t . I8 Inclusive-

ness serves the cause o f l i terary crit icism better than exclusivity. Resides,

not only is the division into intrinsic and extrinsic studies itself problem-

atic, but, while pure concentration on content, ideology, message, etc.

certainly does an injustice to the l i terary work as art, many such works

are inadequately construed in isolation from their environment and

historicity. (And the very vogue for "intrinsic" studies during the mid-

century decades had i ts own historical background that bears thinking

upon.)

I t is perfectly true that many - by no means only early - paradig-

maticstudies of themes are l i t t le more than collections of examples with

summaries and at best cursory comment. Against the strictures which this

kind of thematological study has attracted one may justly argue that even

such collections can be very useful, though they demand (l ike author

concordances and other invaluable tools, on the production of which

l i terary scholars have spent untold years) cogitative complementation.

Moreover, just as with religions, cr i t ical approaches and methods should

be judged not so much by their adherents than their potential. One can

furthermore point out that in discussions of thematology great value has

often been placed on reception, and due regard demanded for the relatiorl-

ship of thematic instance and i ts immediate context19 and that there exist

numerous studies which do o f fe r incisive observations and conclusions.

Both thematic approaches are fruitful, both can enhance our under-

standing and appreciation o f l i terature as well as of i t s relationship to i t s

various contexts. Moreover: in convincing examples o f either sort, they 20 tend to complement one another : the interpretation o f the single work

gains by the consideration o f i t s thematic units in larger contexts, and the

tracing o f the fortunes o f such units within a given synchronous or dia-

chronic scope gains by the close analysis o f the units' functions in

significant texts. What does manifestly not work well and lies, I suspect,

at the root o f much anguish and trouble is the identical use o f termino-

logical systems in both approaches. A way forward offers i tsel f i f one

does not only differentiate between the two approaches, as Pollmann (esp.

pp.182-86) has perhaps most clearly done, but extends this differentiation

to terminology (something he emphatically rejects).

In a given text (or a group o f closely related texts) a theme is

whatever element - more usually an accumulation or rather constellation

o f elements2' - is important enough to characterize the whole or a portion,

making i t possible t o talk o f i t as being about this or that ( in accordance

with the role o f the theme) centrally, mainly, or only in part. In this

sense, any content element can be the theme or contribute t o i t , as may

also formal elements.22 I t is in syntagmatic interpretations that further

distinctions can be helpful. And here some o f the traditional terminology

comes to i ts best use. For, i f there is a measure o f agreement intra- and

interlingually, i t resides in thinking o f theme as a larger, mot i f as a

smaller unit o f significant and distinct content,23 with or trait, i f one

wants t o go further, being st i l l smaller.24 One may add, depending on

what is found in a text, such terms as formula, leitmotif, and symbol to

describe particular uses t o which specific, usually small units are put.

Evidently, identifying a theme - "theming" a text (Prince), "labelling"

(Rimmon-Kenan) or "naming" i t (Hamon) is t o some extent conditioned by

the context of the person who does it.25 Yet there are l imi ts t o arbit-

rariness in "seeing as"26: i t would e.g. require someone o f more than

angelic tongue to convince many that pearls are a theme in Hamlet. On

the other hand, there are personal l imitations t o theme perception,

especially i f a theme is not made explicit in a text. The same applies

t o theme recognition. Yet one can constructively identify a particular

theme (taking i t as what Leroux lp.4501 calls a "th8me possible" or

"intensionnel") in a given work without realising that i t has in itself a

history (is " rke~" or "extensionnel").

In paradigmatic studies these distinctions, useful in the other

approach, hinder rather than help perception and communication. If, as

scholars have frequently observed, a -/trait can become a M-/motif

and vice versa, and i f a StofT/theme may basically be stripped down to

one or several Motive, i f a 1- may through a given work acquire the

characteristics of a StoTf27 - if, in other words, thematic units can change

their appearance and function from text to text, as overwhelming evidence

shows they do - i t is surely appropriate not to hypostasize terms built on

al l sorts of special and variable factors such as area of provenance, first

known or best known example, constellations o f components, frequency of

use in one or another shape. Rather, one might accept, with Bremond

(p.417). that what these elements have in common is their thematic

quality, and for paradigmatic purposes call them, as Dyserinck

(Kompararatistik, p.110) suggests, comprehensively: themes. Advocating

this usage does not entail promoting "nebulous" (Chardin, p.30) imprecision,

but seeks to remove fut i le rigidity which neither meets the volatile

conditions of the material nor the endlessly variable circumstances and

forms o f i t s reception.

Furthermore, there are no convincing grounds to l imit ing (as has been

common in theoretical treatments of thematology unti l about 1970) such

thematic studies to some specific kinds, notably human situations, types,

heroes and heroines. Dyserinck, by contrast, divides themes into two large

groups (pp. l ]Of.): those of various, extra-l i terary provenance,28 and those

that already have a tradition in literature. And he rightly stresses that

both groups are worthy of treatment. He details sub-headings within both

groups, but i t is more practical here to draw for such specificity on

Prawer, who already shows an equally inclusive stance, listing f ive main

groups (pp.99f.; additions that seem apposite are indicated by parentheses) :

(1) Natural phenomena and man's reaction to them (add: man-made

environments and objects); eternal facts of human existence; perennial

human problems and patterns of behaviour (add: ideals, ideas, moods and

feelings). (2) Recurring motifs (better called small themes) in l i terature

and folklore (add: t ~ ~ o i ) . ~ ' (3) Recurrent situations; historical events

(add: conditions). (4) The representation of (professional and other) types.

(5) The representation of named personages "from mythology,30 legend,

earlier l i terature or history". Prawer has no di f f icul ty in pointing to

worthwhile studies for each group, his as well as Dyserinck's (and more

recently e.g. Chardin's) comprehensive concept o f thematology is close to

actual scholarly practice.

Applied syntagmatically to individual texts, thematology can con-

tr ibute to increasing, in the framework o f integrative analysis, the

aesthetic pleasure to be derived from them, and moreover play a v i ta l

role in establishing the scheme o f values they manifest as well as, should

they happen to propound or suggest theses, help to highlight them. Para-

digmatically applied as systematic surveys and/or developmental histories

o f themes ( in the comprehensive understanding of the term), thematology

can contribute to our insight into l i terature in general, and beyond that

into the societies and cultures in which i t was and is being produced. I f

in the course o f such work l i terary scholarship and cr i t ic ism come into

close contact with, draw on and in their turn contribute something to

other disciplines - philosophy and history o f ideas, the analysis and history

o f mentalities, folklore studies, a r t history, sociology, economic and

polit ical history, and many others - so much the better. This should not

deter us but on the contrary be an added incentive and cause for joy.

Not only no man, as Donne says, but no academic discipline is an island,

or rather, should behave as i f that were the case. Moreover, as among

others Pollmann (pp.13f.I has emphasized, the relevance o f l i terary studies

as such has come under very non-idealistic scrutiny, and this f ield belongs

to those where such relevance can most easily be shown - among other

things because the paradigmatic approach rarely gets far wi th an exclusive

concentration on Li terature wi th a capital L, but must cast i t s net more

widely," and indeed does well also look at altogether different kinds of

discourse. 32

Even apart from such considerations a strong fascination attaches to

following the history of a theme or o f a group o f themes: tracing their

increasing or diminishing use and resonance in various periods, studying

their preponderant af f in i t ies wi th certain genres as well as the special

at t ract ion to them o f certain authors, movements, geographical, national

and linguistic entities, and seeing their l i terary representation in relation

to that in other kinds o f texts and in other arts.33 The diff icult ies are

numerous. What constitutes the theme (or whatever other term is chosen,

as the likelihood o f general conformity is small), how much i t may be

varied and st i l l be identifiable - that is by no means always clear.34 The

vastness of l i terature (let alone the arts) and the l imits o f an individual's

spheres o f competence, knowledge and energy can hardly guarantee

exhaustiveness even within certain bounds;35 that aim36 is in itself not

unquestionable, but i f i t is abandoned, the problem arises o f what may be

deemed representative samples. Thirdly, there is the interface o f para-

digmatic with syntagmatic study - how far must, how far can one enter

into the fabric of particular works and take into account the function o f

a theme even i f one's aim is the theme itself, or at least a section or

stretch of i t s history? These and other dilemmas wi l l presumably continue

to beset such investigations and rise in proportion with the scale and

ambition of the enterprise. The fascination nevertheless exerts i ts sway.

Numerous scholars in many countries have, despite real obstacles and all

sorts o f adverse dicta and cautions from other colleagues, continued to

write paradigmatic contributions to thematology as well as syntagmatic

ones. The bibliographies are ful l of them.

One may properly doubt whether comparative l i terature as a disci-

pline has not only a subject differing from those of literary studies

confined to one language or one region or state, but also i ts own, di f fer-

ent methodology. With, for instance, ~ a ~ d a ~ ~ and Jost (Introduction, p.24)

I incline to the view that it does not. Thematological work is to some

extent feasible within a confined national or linguistic framework; how-

ever, the more the paradigmatic approach comes to the fore, the more

obviously such restrictions must recede.38 Thematology is, alongside the

study of genres and that of many movements, a prime domain of compara-

t ive (or general)39 literature; thematic studies are the kind of work in

which i ts ef for ts yield particularly f ru i t fu l results.

Some words about this number of New Comparison are indicated. In line

with our usual policy, the lion's share o f the available space has been

devoted to a specific topic - Literary Themes. A number o f scholars were

invited to wr i te articles on a specific theme of their own choice. It

seemed worthwhile to find out, in this manner, how thematic studies are

being conceived of and practised in various places at the present time, and

to gather the results between two covers. Clearly, a conference would

have been best and might have led to a more intensive interaction of

viewpoints and methods. However, this was not feasible. Instead, the

contr ibut ions coming in d id not only g o through t h e usual bi la teral

edi tor ia l process (without , r eade r s will b e amused t o n o t e while applauding

t h e principle, any persuasion t o unify terminology), but w e r e c i rcular ised

among t h e authors,40 t o whom I wish t o express s ince re thanks. Thus

t h e s e a r t i c l e s a r e based on a knowledge of o n e another , which in s o m e

c a s e s a t leas t g a v e r ise t o cross-references . More one could not aim a t

within t h e given constra ints . T h e s tud ies t r e a t a va r i e ty of t h e m e s - though t h e r e exis t i l luminating c o n t a c t s - and use very d i f f e ren t pro-

cedures , which i s all t o t h e good. And in e a c h case , I think, t h e method

employed shows i t s p rac t i ca l usefulness a s well a s demons t ra t ing t h e

vigour and scope of thematology in general , even though t h e l imita t ions

of s p a c e a l lowed only f o r modest samples.

1. See e.g. Frenzel , S to f f - und Motivgeschichte, p.30; Risanz, "Zwischen S to f fgesch ich te ...", pp. 148, 159; Knapp, "Robbespierre ...Iv, p. 130. Where no de ta i l s a r e given in these notes , t h e contr ibut ion is listed in t h e Se lec t Bibliography below.

2. See e.g. Reller, Thei le , p.49, Dyserinck, even Frenzel ( l a t e , in Motive ..., p.xiv), J o s t in "Grundbegriffe", Dyserinck.

3. S e e e.g. Rrunel/Pichois/Rousseau, p.117 (though t h e dis t inct ion tends t o f a d e o u t l a t e r ) and s o m e con t r ibu to r s t o Pogt ique 16 (in con t ra s t t o t h e organisers: Alleton, Rremond, Pavel , pp.395f.; fu r the rmore Pollmann, p.192, n.31. Kurman follows Levin in choosing Themat i c s ; P r a w e r (p.99) uses both (curiously enough as synonyms fo r Stoffgeschichte) a s does Weisstein, while Cors t ius o p t s fo r Thematology. Ei ther i s b e t t e r than Themat i sm, used by Bernard Weinstein introducing Falk.

4. A s J o s t believes, cf . Introduction, p.177, a l s o Czerny.

5. A ~ a r t i c u l a r l v re levant o n e being Wolfgang V. Rut tkowski and R. E. Blake, ~iteraturw~;terbuch/Glossary o f - l i t e r a r y ?erms/Glossaire d e s t e r m e s l i t t&raires , Rerne and Munich: F rancke , 1969.

6. S e e esp. Bisanz, 'S to f f , Thema , Motic", pp.317f., 321f.

7. S e e e.g. Beller, "Von d e r S to f fgesch ich te ...", p.4, Bisanz, "Zwischen S to f fgesch ich te ...", Dyserinck, Komparat is t ik , pp.l09f., Kurman, pp.471.

8. A s I did in "Autumn P o e m s ..." t h r e e y e a r s ago.

9. Even s tudious observat ions and proposals such a s those submi t t ed by Levin in "Motif". Daemmrich in "Themes and Motifs" o r by F reedman will not help, a s t h e e n t i t i e s themse lves a r e not s t a b l e ( see below, p. ).

10. J u s t o n e fu r the r example: Jeune, p.62 and B~ne l /P icho i s /Rousseau , p. 128 against Trousson, Un problhme, p. 13; c f . a l so general ly Chardin, p.27.

11. S e e f u r t h e r Dyserinck, Komparat is t ik , pp.lO8f.; a l so ( t r ea t ing English a s well a s German) Bisanz "Stoff, Thema , Motiv".

12. E.g Raldensperger/Friederich, B i b l i o ~ r a p h y , Trousson, "Plaidoyer", Weissteln (Chap te r heading), e t c .

13. The two are often linked in discussions of motif; however, motive in the sense of motivation, psychological drive, etc., is clearly something else; interest in i t has led to author-centred but highly interesting thematic studies particularly by Gaston Bachelard. Charles Mauron, Georges Poulet, Jean-Pierre Richard as well as the (frequently attacked) Jean-Paul Weber. I t is feasible and preferable to keep the two terms separate; cf. also Weisstein, p.145. Glaser (see esp. Vol.1, p.7) offers a striking recent example o f the results of oscillation between the two.

14. Bremond, p.417, n.2; he even ventures as far as saying: " ... le mot i f peut &re consider6 comme un thkme."

15. The decision for syntagmatic and paradigmatic in this specific application has i ts precedent in Liithi, "Motiv, Zug, Thema ...". For the two senses in which "intertextuality" is now being applied (and an argu- ment for the narrower sense) see Ulrich Broich and Manfred Pfister, eds., Intertextualitat (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 19851, esp. pp.11-15, 31, 179; see also my discussion o f reception studies in "Preface: Receiving Hamlet Reception", New Comparison 2 (Autumn 19861, 5-13. 1 have not found any references to intertextuality in discussions o f thematology so far.

16. And again championed with passion and severity by Bernard Weinberg in his Introduction to Falk's book.

17. See Croce's review of a book on the Sophonisba theme in Cr i t ica 2 (19041, pp.483-86, and Weisstein's discussion, p.128. Also Croce's essay "Storia di temi ...". 18. Ren6 Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace L? World, 1947, 2nd edn 1949, repr. 1956), p.260. A con- venient summary of their and others' standard ohjections is given in Comparative Literature: Matter and Method, ed. A. Owen Aldridge (Urbana: Illinois UP, 1969). Editor's Introduction to Ch.lll "Literary Themes'' pp. 106-08.

19. See Van Tieghern, p.89, Guyard, p.52, Frenzel, Motive, p.xi, Trousson, "Plaidoyer", p.107, Corstius, p.93, Prawer, p.101, etc. An opposite point of view is taken by Sauer (see below, n.31).

20. Cf. Bisanz, "Zwischen Stoffgeschichte ...It, p. 158, Beller, "Thematologie", p.77.

21. Brunel/Pichois/Rousseau, pp.121; see also e.g. Jeannine Jallat, "Lieux balzaciens", Po6tique 16 (1985), pp.473-81, here: 475.

22. See esp. Rimmon-Kenan, p.404f., generally Prawer, p.103, Kaiser, p.90, etc. A practical example o f joining thematology and poetics is Theile's article.

23. Cf. e.g. Levin. "Thematics". ~ .107, Potet, p.376 and 382, Prince, p.425; also: (substhuting Stoff .fo; theme) ~ r e & e l , Stoff- Motiv- und Symbolforschun , p.28, Stoff- und Motivgeschichte, p.12 and Motive, p.v, Greverus, p.39+, Pollmann, p.193, Beller, "Von der Stoffgeschichte ...Iv,

p.39, Kaiser, p.80; and Risanz, "Zwischen Stoffgeschichte ..." p.163 n.42, considers adopting this as the main difference, i n analogy to music.

24. But not so small as the extreme sense o f mot i f advocated by Tomachevski (esp. 268), i.e. as the residual unit o f meaning in every proposition; nor in the related sense o f theme current in linguistics, cf. Rimon-Kenan's discussion.

25. See esp. Hamon, p.431.

26. See esp. Brinker, p.440-43; also Bremond, p.421 and Prince, p.430- 32.

27. See e.g. Frenzel, Stof f - Mot iv- und Symbolfirschunq, pp.23, 73-77 and Stof f - und Motivgeschichte, p.17, Pollmann, pp.182-83, 188, Luthi, "Motiv, Zug, Thema", pp.16, 20, Baeumer, "~be rgang ...", passim, Trousson, Thbmes e t mythes, p.27, Prince, p.427.

28. As opposed e.g. to Guyard, Dyserinck excludes the study o f national auto- and hetero-images (Komparatistik, p.105), which he has so energeti- cally advanced, and gives i t a separate heading (pp.124-131). These images appear, however, as themes in l i terature and cannot simply be hived off.

29. For the enormous development of topology af ter Curtius see esp. the extended research survey by Veit.

30. This corresponds t o long-established practice and theoretical sanction. See esp. Trousson, ~ h k m e s e t mythes ... and e.g. Brunel/Pichois/Rousseau, pp.124-27, though they outline the differences. Chardin (p.29) and others in the volume L a recherche ... argue for completely separating the study o f myths from that o f themes; whereas Weisstein's exclusion o f symbols (p.129) is at least arguable (their study is certainly more profitable in the syntagmatic approach), the exclusion o f myth is neither possible nor desirable.

31. See e.g. Beller, "Von der Stoffgeschichte ...'I, p.15 and Trousson, "Plaidoyer", p.105; also e.g., already Sauer, whose remarks on pp.224 and 227 str ike one indeed as an early recipe for a "Readers' L i terary History". In his radical application, the notion provides ample ammunition for the well-known charge that Stoffgeschichte exhausts itself wi th indiscriminate levelling in the service o f a history o f taste, or - at best - cultural history. (Incidentally, both are neither negligible nor detachable from l i terary history.) By contrast, "High" l i terature above al l st i l l guides the views of Pichois/Rousseau (p. 150). Pollmann (p. 197) handles the issue in a more circumspect manner.

32. For a practical example, see Beller, "Thematologie", pp.85-92; the issue is at least br ief ly considered by Prince, p.433.

33. See Czerny, and for a concrete application e.g. Calvin S. Brown, "Theme and Variations as a Li terary Form", Yearbook o f Comparative and General L i terature 27 (1978). 35-43. In general see the informative dis- cussion by Beller in "Thematologie", pp.dlf., and Giraud's decisive stand (La fable de Daphne, Geneva: Droz, 1969, p.d8), which his study as well as those o f others ful ly bear out. Curiously enough Weisstein, whose concept of, and work in the f ield of the "Mutual Illumination of the Arts" (see his Ch.VII) has proved immensely fruitful, skirts this aspect in his treatment o f thematology.

34. Kaiser's progression from Queen Gertrude's (choric) description o f Ophelia's death to Brecht's "Vom ertrunkenen Madchen" (pp.81-89) demon- strates this as well as Bremond's graph (p.419) or Schulze's deliberations.

35. Though i t seems an obvious step to take, group research as a means o f bridging the gap between material and human capacity has not apparently been employed in work on a specific theme. Thematologists tend to be loners; here is plent i fu l scope for new projects.

36. Stressed e.g. by Sauer, p.227; the problem is pondered with the requisite awe by Brunel/Pichois/Rousseau, p. 127.

37. Gyorgy M. Vajda, "Stand, Aufgaben und methodologische Position der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft in Ungarn", in Aktuelle Probleme der Vergleichenden Literaturforschung, ed. Gerhard Ziegengeist (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 19681, pp.88-99; here p.95.

38. Cf. e.g. Beller, "Von der Stoffgeschichte ...", p.30 and Prawer, p.176. I t is no accident that thematology has been largely developed by compara- tists and regularly features in surveys o f this discipline, alongside folk tale studies, which have been comparative ah ovo.

39. E.g. Jeune places thematology under Iql i t t6rature g6ndrale - another wide field for terminological wrangling. Simply "Literature" might be best for both comparative and general (as distinct from disciplines studying literature only from one language or one country); hut the odds against replacing traditional nomenclature are high.

40. This was made easier by a grant from the Research Committee of the School of Modern Languages and European History. University of East Anglia, Norwich, which is gratefully acknowledged.

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VENICE AT FIRST SIGHT: PROLEGOMENA FOR A NEW VIEW O N THEMATICS

Angel ika Corbineau-Hoffmann (University o f Mainz)

'I... t h e abundance of a m a t t e r i s o f t e n t o a man a g r e a t e r hindrance than

help".' Th i s observat ion by a man of l e t t e r s2 may b e followed, on t h e

pa r t of any t h e m a t i c s scholar , by a deep, hea r t f e l t sigh. And if th is

scho la r has chose" Venice a s his subject , his image c a n easi ly be t rans-

fo rmed in to t h e c a r i c a t u r e of a man hidden behind his c a r d indexes,

knowing much without unders tanding anything.3 Indeed, themat ics , s ince

t h e ve ry beginnings of compara t ive l i tera ture , has had a bad reputat ion,

encoun te red many c r i t i c s and f ew apologists, and, even worse, t h e most

f amous among t h e fo rmer , but not a lways t h e most reputed among t h e

~ a t t e r . ~ Th i s is, however , not t h e p lace t o t r a c e t h e his tory of themat ics ,

which anyway would b e a sad one ... In modern t imes, during t h e last t w o decades , s o m e a t t e m p t s have

been m a d e t o r ev ive thematics , in pa r t i cu la r by Raymond ~ r o u s s o n ~ and

Manfred ~ e i l e r . ~ T h e discussion cont inues , unanimity among scholars is

not t o b e expec ted , but actual ly a vivid in t e res t in t h e c o n t e n t s of

l i t e ra tu re , neglected for a long t ime, c a n b e d e t e c t e d 7 Th i s is proved

by a special i ssue of Poe'tique, "Du thkme e n litte'rature", in 1985, by a

r ecen t ly published s tudy on topics f rom a linguistic point of view,8 and,

last bu t not leas t , by t h e publication in hand.

Tzve tan Todorov, perhaps speaking not only fo r himself , deplores his

"maigre bagage t h k ~ r i ~ u e " , ~ a l though t h e c o n t e n t s of l i t e ra tu re , t h e

"aboutness" of a text,'' is pa r t of t h e most obvious informat ion it g ives

t o t h e reader . Is t h e problem of t h e m a t i c s only a "chim&re", something

w e b e a r on o u r shoulders wi thout knowing why? I I

A t f i rs t sight, t h e m a t i c s c a n b e summed up and def ined a s t h e

r e fe ren t i a l level of l i tera ture .12 This rough definition, which needs t o b e

m a d e more specif ic , runs g r e a t risk of taking away all possible in t e res t

in s tud ies about themat i c s , s ince t h e evidence does not demand scient i f ic

exploration. T h e "aboutness" of a t e x t s e e m s t o exclude, a f t e r a n initial

look, any o t h e r gl impse a t t h e m a t t e r because of t h e apparen t simplicity

of wha t i s re la ted. If s tud ies in t h e m a t i c s a r e o f t e n isola ted in t h e larger

c o n t e x t of compara t ive l i tera ture ,13 th i s exclusion is perhaps t h e resul t

of the i r own way of t r ea t ing a t ex t , reducing i t t o i t s con ten t or , more

particularly, separating form and content. The following reflections, for

which even a modest word l ike "prolegomena" is not suitable, wi l l t ry to

place a very small aspect o f thematics, namely, the first sight of Venice,

i n i ts poetical context. They want to show that a literary text, in

choosing and treating i ts theme, is merely speaking about i ts own poetics,

and, even more, about the place this theme takes in the realm of human

experience. With some fifteen or twenty pages before us, our subject

must remain only a small section of a larger problem - l ike thematics in

general.

Travelling to I ta ly has, since the late hiliddle Ages, had a long

tradition in the countries of Northern Europe. Considered as a pilgrimage

and, later on, as the grand tour, i t of ten led t o the Venetian Republic, the

capital of which was perceived with astonishment and admiration. The

first sight of Venice, however, inevitable in reality, because the traveller

cannot help looking at the place where he arrives, only hesitatingly finds

i ts way into literature; the reason for this delay is to be sought in the

late discovery of subjectivity in travel literature.14 Indeed, the first

impression Venice makes on i ts visitors implies - besides a personal con-

sciousness - the sensibility for the course of time. The figure o f an

observer struck by the beauty of Venice appears only in the late eight-

eenth century.

Although Francis Mortof t (1658) begins his chapter on Venice by

expressing his astonishment, this reaction can scarcely be called a personal

impression:

Venice I...] which c i t t y is enough to astonish any stranger at f irst sight, to see how the water runs al l about it, being built, as i t were, in the midst o f the sea [...I.

This sentence, summing up a very general f irst vision and the (possible)

astonishment o f any stranger, leads directly t o commentaries on the boats

and "gundaloes", losing sight o f the f irst Venetian impressions.

Another example for an author who preserves his first impressions

in the text he publishes about his travels, is Jean Huguetan in his Voyage

d'ltalie curieux e t nouveau (1681):

Venise nous parut en I'abordant. Cette belle, riche Rr puissante ville, le f~dau des Tyrans, I'azyle des affliggs, & l a Reine de la mer. l6

This way of characterizing Venice by very common and traditional epithets

and metaphors destroys the reader's hope for a personal glance, and the

first sight o f the c i ty conveys less what the author sees than what he

knows: Venice is a commonplace, astonishing, but without any influence

on the traveller's personal view.

These two examples, rare and belated in Venetian travel literature,

serve to show that these accounts, for many centuries, only sum up a

certain knowledge o f the c i t y without finding any personal approach to it.

This impersonality of the f irst impression begins t o change by the middle

o f the eighteenth century: the widespread information about l ta ly in

general, and Venice in particular, calls for innovation, which is given by

travellers l ike Samuel Sharp, Pierre Jean Grosley, Arthur Young and

Hester Lynch Piozzi. A dialogue begins between the town and the visitor.

Through i t s long l i terary tradition, Venice has achieved an obvious inter-

textual density, so that one's f irst perception of the c i ty may evoke other

impressions and recollections, or manifest i t s singularity by comparison and

in contrast to what the visitors know and expect. I n 1720, Edward Wright , speaking of "surprise" l ike many travellers before him, explains this

reaction in evoking a contrast between his expectations and the real scene

before him:

To begin then wi th the distant view o f the Ci ty: 'Tis a pleasure, not without a Mixture o f Surprise, to see so great a c i t y as Venice may be trul ly call'd, as i t were, floating on the Surface o f the Sea; to see Chimneys and Towers, where you would expect nothing but Ship-Masts. 18

The changing language - "pleasure" instead o f "admiration" - announces an

essential difference in perceiving the city. Rut the personal impression

would have been nearly impossible without the previously established

contrast: in the middle o f the sea, indeed, you expect to see ships not

houses and palaces. Venice proves i t s diffkrence at the very moment when

a possible relationship wi th another real i ty comes into sight. Such a

relationship, however, is soon rejected, manifesting the strange peculiarity

o f Venice. I t is by contrast only that this c i t y manifests i t s individuality - i t needs a criterion to measure i t s own value. Young's Travels through

France and l ta ly show the same tendency to value Venice by comparison:

I...] i t was nearly dark when we entered the grand canal. My attraction was alive, a l l expectancy: there was l ight enough to show the objects around me to be among the most interesting I had ever seen, and they

s t ruck m e more than the first en t r ance of any o the r place 1 had been at . 18

It would b e m e r e speculation t o suppose that th is striking impression of

Venice depends on t h e specif ic light when approaching it in the evening

("it was nearly dark"). T h e travel accoun t s before the end of the eight-

eenth century never mention par t icular t imes of t h e day, because they had

not yet discovered any a t t r ac t ion of the atmosphere. The tendency t o

compare Venice with o the r places, t o see it in t h e larger con tex t of what

the t ravel ler had encountered before, t h e discovery of a specif ic a tmos-

phere (of t i m e o r weather) - all t hese innovations a r e t o b e seen in the

con tex t of what may be cal led Venetian relativity: a t t he t i m e I speak

o f , Venice has ceased t o h e incomparable. Si tuated in a g rea te r a r e a of

human experience, t h e c i ty , however, cont inues t o mark i t s individuality,

but only by comparison ("they s t ruck m e more"). Whereas for many

cen tu r i e s Venice had nothing t o b e compared with, t h e t ravel ler now dis-

poses of s o m e prior knowledge, like Pierre-Jean Grosley, who published his

Nouveaux me'moires in 1764:

Ouelque d tude cependant que I'on a i t f a i t e d e ces 6c r i t s 1 sc. su r ~ e n i s e j , on n'est point h I'abri d e la surpr ise qui na?t du premier coup d'oeil: coup d'oeil qui surpasse tou tes les id6es que les rela t ions e t les descriptions peuvent donner ou que I'imagination peut se former. l 9

The "coup d'oeil" of Venice, r epea ted twice, becomes a personal one,

although many writings prepared i t t o such ex ten t tha t it had t o exclude

any so r t of surprise. Venice is not only incomparable, but a lso indescrib-

able: you must have a look a t it. This rescue of Venetian real i ty against

all forms of preparat ive descriptions may b e considered - paradoxically - a s t h e ge rm of Venetian l i tera ture sui generis. T o s e e Venice means t o

feel i t s singularity and difference. Description, a s usual in the traditional

t ravel accounts , i s incompat ible with t h e impression Venice makes on i t s

visitors now. In 1801, Jacques Cambry sums up the l i terary innovations

of his t i m e in writing:

I1 e s t impossible d e ddcr i re I 'effet qu'8 son reveil produit sur le voyageur le premier coup d'oeil su r Venise: c e s canaux bord6s d e b l t i m e n t s d'un goQt si d i f fkrent des fo rmes communes d e I 'archi tecture [...I ici t o u t e analogie e s t interrompue, qui voit Venise voit la ville d'un a u t r e monde. 20

Even i f the singularity is emphasized, this text preserves the idea o f a

correlation: to speak of another world implies a difference to this world - the relationship persists. Strangeness ("&tranget6"), difference, individuality

are only perceptible wi th regard to the normal, everyday experience. This

difference leads to a strange coincidence: Hester Lynch Piozzi, on her

way to Venice, finds the two exactly as i t had been painted by Canaletto - what might seem a fiction of art is confirmed by reality. "It was wonder-

ful ly entertaining", she writes, "to f ind thus realized the pleasures that

excellent painter had given us so many reasons to expect . . .w.~' The

pleasures mentioned are those of art; in her f irst impression of Saint

Mark's Square, Piozzi notices, in particular, a constellation o f ar t i f ic ia l

beauties:

St Mark's Place, af ter a l l I had read and al l I had heard of it, exceedes expectation: such a cluster o f excellence, such a constellation of art i- f icial beauties, my mind had never ventured to excite the idea o f within herself; ... 22

Af ter having heen an admired work of human ingenuity, Venice is now

perceived as a work of art, certainly through Canaletto's influence and

inspiration. Rut whatever the context may be - a l i terary or a pictorial

one - the particular difference o f Venice becomes perceptible only within

a relationship, and by contrast to everyday experience. For many

centuries and for generations o f travellers from the Northern Countries o f

Europe, Venice had been situated within a greater sphere of interest: the

starting point of a voyage t o the Holy Land, later on part o f a journey

through Italy. Certainly, these travellers did not spare their expressions

o f admiration - exceptions confirm the rule - but they were not aware o f

the particular, aesthetic character o f this city. Only by comparison - and

the points o f comparison di f fer from one author to the other - does

Venice prove i ts singularity. When a context o f experience is evoked -

i t may be literary, pictorial or only personal - the special character o f

Venice appears.

I stop for a moment in order to summarise the results and relate

t h e n to the general, theoretical problem o f studies in thematics. If, as

has been said before, the isolation of a thematic approach t o l i terature

seems to ensue from i ts own method, which is to isolate a subject from

i t s context, a glance at Venice illustrates at the same t ime the problem

and i ts possible solution. Venice confirms i ts importance for thematic

studies just at the moment when i t ceases to be an isolated state on the

periphery of Europe, and begins to evoke a larger realm o f human experi-

ence. A t that very moment i t already had a long l i terary tradition, which

is the background for the discovery of i t s individuality. Such a theme may

he considered not only as the content of a text, but also as the result o f

the context of this text. I n a larger sphere o f realistic perception,

aesthetic approach and general human experience, the more or less

accidental content of literature becomes a theme - in the most complex

sense o f the term.23 The tilore the Venetian context grows, the more

literature transforms the first glimpse of Venice into a significant,

striking experience, enriched with personal imagination and linguistic or

l i terary connotations: the "f irst sight" tends to lose i ts only visual

qualities in order to become a metaphor for an insight - and this inner

dimension comprehends, in an intimate dialogue, both the c i ty and the

author.

In describing what he sees and not what he knows - about Venice and

i ts strange situation in the sea - Charles Dickens transforms his nocturnal

arrival in Venice into an "Italian ream".^^ Through such an impressionist

procedure (ante l i t teram) Venice loses al l i t s realistic elements, transform-

ing itself into a dreamy picture the meaning of which has to be decoded

by the reader. For Dickens, Venice is a nameless place, although every

reader recognizes it. The reason for this transformation is twofold: when

approaching the city, the boat passes a cemetery, and the following des-

cription confers upon the c i ty itself the character o f a burial place. As

sleep has been considered as the brother of death since antiquity, the

author's state o f mind becomes strangely similar to the state of the

dying city. Being only a vision and not a realistic image, Venice is

separated from al l information with which former periods had burdened it.

Dickens' "first sight", although meaning, within the framework of the

narrative, the f irst view he gains o f Venice, is essentially a primary one,

as i f the author did not know anything about the city, seeing i t for the

f irst time. In a sort o f mythical construction, this first glimpse is, at the

same time, the absolute beginning and definit ive end, holding reality in

suspense, neutralizing the common differences between past and present,

between l i fe and death, between f ict ion and reality. Even the question

of whether the traveller is asleep or awake is le f t unanswered: in his

dreams, the author wakes up or falls asleep, destroying all possible

specu la t ion about t h e s t a t u s of r ea l i t y in his text . T h e cons t i t u t ion of

sense , d i f f e ren t t o all w e a r e f ami l i a r wi th in t h e l i t e r a t u r e abou t Venice,

is e f f e c t e d beyond realism. In th i s "ghostly c i ty" wi th i t s "phantom

street^",^' visual impress ions a r e n o longer a dup l i ca t e o f t h e c i ty ' s own

s t ruc tu re , but a n agglomerat ion of d e t a i l s wi thout any obvious s ignif icance -

a w a y of suspending all k inds o f meaning o n c e and fo r all. T h e following

passage conf i rms th i s i n t e rp re t a t ion :

O t h e r boats , o f t h e s a m e sombre hue, w e r e lying moored, I thought , t o pa in t ed pillars, n e a r t h e da rk mys te r ious door s t h a t opened s t r a igh t upon t h e water . S o m e of t h e s e w e r e empty ; in some , t h e rowers lay as leep; t owards one, I s a w s o m e f igures coming down a gloomy a rchway f rom t h e in t e r io r o f a palace; gai ly dressed, a n d a t t e n d e d by torch-bearers . 26

Jus t l ike t h e t e x t in general , t h e s ignif icance of t h e s e s e n t e n c e s r ema ins

in a s o r t of darkness. F o r Dickens, t h e r e i s no reason t o desc r ibe Venice

y e t again , a f t e r all t h e t r ave l a c c o u n t s which had m a d e it a sub jec t of

c o m m o n knowledge. T h e ve ry ob jec t of t h i s t e x t is n o longer a c i t y

ca l l ed Venice, but a quest ion ra ised by a t r ad i t i on of l i t e r a tu re beginning

wi th t h e Venet ian f ic t ion by M m e d e S t a e l a n d Lord Byron, namely, t h e

s t a t u s o f reality. By cons t ruc t ing a world m a d e of words, Dickens p l aces

Venice beyond th i s world, in t h e r ea lm of d e a t h and f ic t ion, pe rcep t ib l e

only in a d ream. T h e dissubstant ia t ion could hardly b e g rea t e r . But t h i s

t r anscendance o f Venice s u m s u p f o r m e r a t t e m p t s t o c r e a t e a f ic t ic ious

c i t y , symbol of pol i t ica l d e a t h a n d l i t e r a ry resurrect ion. Dickens' c i t y

wi thout a n a m e is, never theless , impregna ted wi th a meaning which

conce rns not only t h e individual t r ave l l e r , bu t humani ty in general : beyond

o u r world of expe r i ence , w e find a n o t h e r real i ty , a r ea lm of d r e a m and

f ic t ion, a my th ica l p l ace of refuge.

S ince t h e e n d of t h e e igh teen th cen tu ry , t h e c o n t e x t of Venet ian

t r ave l has changed. Ce r t a in ly , i t w a s l i t e r a ry f o r H e s t e r Piozzi just a s

i t w a s fo r Dickens, bu t t h i s l i t e r a t u r e i t se l f w a s sub jec t t o t ransformat ion.

S ince f i c t i t i ous persons l i ke Cor inne o r Chi lde Harold had submi t t ed Venice

t o t he i r own visions, t h e c i t y had a s sumed a l a rge r spec t rum of meaning

t h a n e v e r before . I t s r e a l a spec t , including palaces , paint ings a n d churches ,

had b e c o m e a c ryp tog raphy fo r a d e e p e r sense: t h e d e a t h of beau ty on

e a r t h a n d i t s r e su r r ec t ion in t h e ar ts . T h e dest iny of Venice i s n o longer

a pol i t ica l quest ion, b u t a n a e s t h e t i c and par t icular ly a poet ical one. S o

Dickens ' phantom c i t y does no t only r e f e r t o a f i rs t g l impse of nocturnal

Venice in a dream (all this may be considered as a poetical, f ict i t ious

construction), but also to a l i terary artefact which, during the first

decades of the nineteenth century, had lost much o f i ts referential reality.

Gaining a new sense as a c i ty of death, Venice now implies the experience

of transcendence, and i ts geographical and polit ical situation, as well as

i ts exterior beauty, refer to a place somewhere beyond this world. The

c i ty has a new existence in literature, which cannot be destroyed by the

changing of t ime and the vicissitudes o f fortune. Even i f i t is a dead, a

burial place, in this quality i t survives - paradoxically. The death of

reality guarantees the survival of fiction. Dickens' "Italian Dream", an

impressionistic sketch rather than a realistic description, creates and marks

a new relationship between Venice and literature. The first sight discovers

a c i ty o f death in a metaphorical sense: reality did die, but literature,

even in representing this death, discovers a new sense in the concept of

Venice: geographically marginal in Europe, Venice now becomes the

threshold of another world - at f irst sight.

Although highly unrealistic, Dickens' impressions are not singular and

extravagant. Only a few years later, in 1852, Gautier describes his arrival

in Venice in a comparable way. Night and darkness suspend the ordinary

relationships between objects. Some lights appearing here and there

accidentally lay stress on picturesque scenes:

L'orage qui t i ra i t B sa fin, illuminait encore le ciel de quelques l u e ~ ~ r s livides qui nous trahissaient des perspectives profondes, des dentelures bizarres de palais inconnus. A chaque instant I'on passait sous des ponts dont les deux bouts rdpondaient B une coupure lumineuse dans la masse cornpacte et sombre des maisons. A quelque angle une veilleuse tremblait devant une madone. Des cris singuliers et gutturaux retentissaient au detour des canaux; un cercueil flottant, au bout duquel se penchait une ombre, f i la i t rapidement b c6td de nous; une fendtre basse raske de pr&s nous faisait entrevoir un inte'rieur e'toile' d'une lampe ou d'un reflet, comme une eau-forte de Rembrandt. 27

What was implicit in Dickens' prose, the reference to l i terature and art,

becomes explicit in Gautier's text: the l ight effects make appear "des

figures e m b ~ k m a t i ~ u e s " , ~ ~ cut o f f from their ordinary surroundings. A

world which loses i ts normal relationship receives a strange new structure,

analogous to the isolating process o f art. Gautier's f irst perception of

Venice may be compared to the different ways o f looking at a collection

o f paintings and drawings, and his arrival in Venice resembles a visit to

a gallery. But more than a transposition of well-known artistic impres-

sions into a poetical reality, Venice in Gautier's description becomes a

place of exuberant imagination and mysterious threat. In the passage

quoted above, "bizarre", "singulier", "cercueil flottant", though not the

most significant in this respect, indicate a menace inherent in Venice.

Gautier speaking of "l'hippogriffe d'un cauchemar" and of "un voyage dans

le noir, aussi itrange, aussi mysterieux que ceux qu'on fait pendant les

nuits de c a ~ c h e m a r " , ~ ~ adds a connotation of danger to Dickens' nocturnal

impressions: the dream is now a nightmare. Thus, it appears less as a

state of suspense between fiction and reality than as a realm of imagina-

tion - Venice city of the soul and of its spectres. If it has been empha-

sized before that Dickens' reference was a tradition of fictitious literature,

now this implicit context becomes explicit in Gautier's description:

Nous croyions circuler dans un roman de Maturin de Lewis ou d'Anne Radcliff illustrk par Goya, Piranbe et Rernbrandt. 30

Gautier is right in thinking of the gothic novel, because preromantic and

romantic Venetian fiction often follows this t r a d i t i ~ n . ~ ' His somewhat

excited imagination reaches historical truth. What seems to be exaggera-

ted "est de la r6alitk la plus exacte":

Une terreur froide, humide et noire comme tout ce qui nous entourait, s'ktait emparke de nous, e t nous songions involontairement B la tirade de Malipiero h la Tisbe', quand i l depeint I'effroi que lui inspire ~enise.32

Indeed, Hugo's Angelo, which Gautier refers to, is one of the most striking

examples of Venetian "darkness".33 Transformed into a literary place, a

scene of dramas and novels, Venice presents to the visitor an imaginary

stage decoration:

Cette impression qui semblera peut-btre exage're'e, est de la verite' la plus exacte, e t nous pensons qu'il serait difficile de s'en de'fendre, m6me en philistin le plus positif; nous allons mdme plus loin, c'est le vrai de Venise qui se d6gage. la nuit, des transformations modernes; Venise, cette ville, qu'on dirait planthe par un d6corateur de thkltre, et dont un auteur de drame semble avoir arrange les moeurs pour le plus grand intkrdt des intrigues et des de'n0uements.3~

Venice a theatre of dreams - reality, Gautier tells us, resembles itself:

but what reality? A tourist's first impression turns out to be the effect

of literary knowledge, and Venice, the place of action, is changed into a

stage. The difference between fact and fiction, between geographical

places and imaginary stages, is abolished, and what Gautier calls "reality"

is to be understood as an inextricable mixture of impressions and inven-

tions. Nevertheless, i t is necessary to emphasize a mere fact which, as

i t stands, has nothing to do with any real or fictitious travel to Venice.

Since the end of the Serenissima Repubblica, Venice, the victim of foreign

political interests, has gained in literature what i t lost in politics. Its

insignificance in real (economic, political) l i fe is compensated by new

literary and aesthetic values. The purely imaginary constructions of

literature make Venice the centre of a new interest, and even more,

confer a new reality on the city of fiction. This complex correlation

makes the real sense of Gautier's strange arrival at the city a pragmatic

fact which leads to an encounter with literary reality or real fiction.

I f theatre can be defined as that which is shown - and Gautier

pretends that he has before his eyes all he describes - a fairy tale, as the

term indicates, is something which must be @Id. The marginal situation

of Venice in Europe, which links up with a general tendency of poetical

evasion in the nineteenth century,35 encounters during these 1850s another

paradigm, more literary and even more fantastic. In a forgotten German

text, Pecht's Ein Winter in Venedig, Venice appears as a fairy tale made

of stone:

So ware ich endlich in diesem Stein gewordenen Mlrchen, dieser zauber- haften Stadt angelangt, die mit keiner anderen verglichen werden kann und von keiner anderen an Reiz ubertroffen. Strenge deine Phantasie an, wie du willst, zum Wunderbarsten und Abenteuerlichsten, Venedig wird es iiberbieten. 36

The author's allusion to a fairy tale means more particularly the collection

of A Thousand and One Nights, where Sheherazade tells her stories in

order to remove the menace of death. The analogy to the fate of Venice

and to the function of Venetian literature is quite obvious. In Pecht's

text, Venice is transformed into a scenery of oriental fantasy - a stage

which, for the duration of the fictitious representation, stops the course

of time. This realm of connotations, underlining not only the peculiar

quality of the city, but also i ts mythical power to escape from political

death, refers to the concept of imagination. Definitively, the referential

level of Pecht's text is less the real appearance of Venice than the

author's and the reader's consciousness, or, in Husserl's terms, his "experi-

ence": 37

D a s Z a u b e r h a f t e d i e ses Anbl icks [sc. d e s Markuspla tzes] ist n icht zu schi ldern, Du glaubst in e i n Feenre i ch v e r s e t z t z u sein, e ine jener Erzahlungen a u s Tausend und e i n e r Nach t mi t i h re r iippigen or ienta l ischen Phan ta s i e p lotz l ich vor d i r verwirkl icht zu sehen, d e r Bau, d e r d i r en tgegenf l immer t , ist e i n e r jener f abe lha f t en P a l a s t e a u s Smaragd und D e m a n t mi t goldenem Dache, a u s denen v e r z a u b e r t e F r l u l e i n s von kiihnen R i t t e r n w i e gebrauchl ich e n t f u h r t werden. 38

What a t t h e beginning of t h i s passage s e e m s t o b e only a personal

impress ion ("you think"), changes i n t o t h e r ea l i t y of t h e p l ace itself: not

only does t h e a u t h o r b e c o m e t h e v i c t im of h is illusions, bu t t h e t e x t

n a r r a t e s a fa i ry ta le , t r ans fo rming t h e Venet ia l pa l aces i n to a phan ta s t i c

s c e n e r y - imaginat ion t r ansmi t s i t s f e a t u r e s t o reality. All t h e s e examples

show t h a t l i t e r a t u r e has b e c o m e t h e predominant paradigm of human

e x p e r i e n c e in Venice. T h e p l ace i s now impregna ted wi th f ic t ion - even

in a non-f ic t i t ious g e n r e l ike t h e t r ave l account . Ins tead of multiplying

t h e e x a m p l e s o f Venet ian "first-sight-thematics", which would eas i ly b e

possible, i t i s m o r e impor t an t t o d raw s o m e theo re t i ca l conclus ions from

t h e in t e rp re t a t ions above. In his s tudy T e x t und T h e m a , Andreas Lo t sche r

proves by e x p e r i m e n t t h a t t h e t h e m e o f a t e x t c a n b e recognized by any

r eade r , e v e n wi thout a spec i a l educa t ion in l inguis t ics o r in l i t e r a ry

criticism.3g T h e d i f f e ren t t heo r i e s LGtscher summar i se s - t h e m e a s t h e

r e f e r e n c e o f a t ex t , i t s focus of interest4' - t h e r e f o r e s e e m t o b e of

l i t t l e p rac t i ca l impor t ance fo r t h e unders tanding of a t ex t . Rut t h e

d i f f i cu l t i e s begin when Lijtscher, a lways f rom a linguistic point of view,

t r i e s t o point o u t t h e t h e m a t i c s t r u c t u r e s of texts : t h e m a t i c s not only

r e f l e c t o u r eve ryday expe r i ence , bu t a l so c o n s t i t u t e t h e s t r u c t u r e of dis-

course. Given t h e ex i s t ence of many moda l i t i e s of d iscourse , e v e n beyond

t h e "classical" g e n r e s l i ke narra t ion, descr ipt ion a n d a rgumen ta t ion , t h e

funct ion of t h e m a t i c s mus t b e desc r ibed wi th r ega rd t o t h e d i f f e ren t kinds

o f discourse. T h e p rob lems and compl i ca t ions a t heo ry of t h e m a t i c s

e n c o u n t e r s a r e e a s y t o imagine: if a t h e m e i s considered a s a funct ion

in t h e g r e a t e r ne twork o f a t ex t , a valuable t heo ry of t h e m a t i c s has t o

env i sage t h e l aws of discourse. A t f i r s t sight, a t heo ry of t h e m a t i c s d o e s

not s e e m t o r a i se insuperable di f f icul t ies . A s a t h e m e r e f e r s t o t h e

e x p e r i e n c e of real i ty , i t i s su f f i c i en t t o ident i fy th is r ea l i t y in o rde r t o

unde r s t and t h e text . But t h i s unders tanding comprehends only p a r t of t h e

meaning of a t e x t , t h e l a rge r a n d m o r e impor t an t p a r t r ema ins t o b e

de t e rmined . Reduced t o i t s c o n t e n t , t h e t e x t loses wha t c o n s t i t u t e s i t s

interest: to be, rather than a mirror of reality, an interpretation of it.

A theme becomes functional at the very moment when i t makes possible

a new understanding of reality. As far as I know, this significance of

thematics has, until now, escaped from all attempts of theorizing the

contents of texts.

In literature, which forms only a small section in the production of

texts, the function of a theme seems to be more important than the

theme itself. Indeed, studies in thematics generally show the diffusion of

a theme and illustrate its widespread familiarity. But what could create

the incessant interest in a theme, so well known both to author and

reader, i f not i ts different functions in a text and its way to interpret

reality? Since a theory of thematics from a linguistic point of view

raises many difficulties, there is no reason to believe that it would be

easier to theorize thematics in literature - on the contrary. To describe

and to explain the different functions of a theme, to seize all the conno-

tative meanings a text adds to it, presupposes a theory of discourse and

a theory of literary communication as well - to say nothing of the socio-

logical and psychological aspects of what is naively called the "content"

of literature. The task becomes gigantic. I t has been deplored that

thematics sti l l lack an appropriate theoryi4' some general considerations

concerning the status of contents in literature are probably more necessary

than ever, otherwise thematics will remain a neglected child in the realm

of literary criticism. However, I wonder i f such a theory, once developed,

can resolve all the problems of thematics (or even the most urgent of

them): either i t wil l be too general for a special case, or too specific to

include the variety of themes in literature. I t is tempting, but not very

fruitful, to expect support from linguistics.42 Literary studies in thema-

tics are often too concentrated on their special subject to reflect the

general bearings of their methods.

The example of "Venice at first sight" was not chosen in order to

create or to substitute a theory of thematics. Literature about Venice,

although covering a long period of literary history in Europe, is too small

a subject to inspire such a pretention. But the first impression of Venice

can illustrate that whenever data of concrete reality or of human experi-

ence are taken up by literature - and this process might be considered as

the germ of thematics - they are placed in a new context and become

part of a work of art. Their reference is no longer their importance in

real i ty , but t he i r funct ion in t h e text . T h e t h r e e examples of n ineteenth-

cen tu ry t ravel accounts , analysed above, ob ta in thei r r ight t o b e noted

(given t h e long t radi t ion of Venet ian descr ipt ion) only through t h e f a c t

t h a t t hey change t h e s ignif icance of t h e place. Not power and wea l th a s

before , b u t in Ccncordance wi th human expe r i ence and a r t i s t i c impressions

now makes Venice a t h e m e in l i t e r a tu re . Marginal and e x c e n t r i c qual i t ies

con f i rm t h e symbol ic funct ion of Venice in l i t e r a tu re : impregna ted wi th

a r t i s t i c exper ience, e v e n t r ans fo rmed in to a work of a r t , Venice becomes

a sign fo r t h e s t r a n g e fascinat ion, bu t a lso fo r t h e impo tency of ar t . Ju s t

l ike t h e a r t i s t himself, t h i s r e fuge o f beau ty i s marginal and isola ted -

poet ical ly charming, but politically ins ignif icant - o n e being t h e r eve r se

of t h e other .

If t h e c a s e of Venice is pa rad igma t i c (which r ema ins t o b e proved)

l i t e r a tu re , t ransforming r ea l i t y i n to a "theme", invests r ea l d a t a with a

new significance. T o desc r ibe th i s process would h e o n e of t h e most

c ruc i a l t a sks o f a new themat ics . T h e ve ry h e a r t of my a rgumen t could

inv i t e o t h e r t h e m a t i c s scholars t o wonder if a l i t e r a ry t h e m e is not , in

many cases , a n in t e rp re t a t ion of r ea l i t y and not th is r ea l i t y i t se l f ,

inscr ibed m o r e o r less roughly in a l i t e r a ry text . Croce ' s doub t s about t h e

a r t i s t i c value of t h e c o n t e n t of l i t e r a tu re , h is scruples concerning thema-

t i c s in general , a r e not only a wicked par t i -pr is agains t posi t iv is t ic

procedures deriving, a s i t s e e m s t o him, f rom a d e e p insensibili ty fo r

a r t i s t i c problems:43 they a im a t a c ruc i a l insuff ic iency of t h e m a t i c s not

y e t e l iminated. T h e c o n t e n t s of l i t e r a tu re might appea r a s a poor imi ta-

t ion of real i ty ; a s long a s l i t e r a ry c r i t i c i sm is unable t o revise t h e

s t a t u s of c o n t e n t in a work of a r t , t h e possibili t ies t o r e fo rm t h e m a t i c s

a r e s can t . I t w a s t h e purpose of m y r e f l ec t ions t o show in wha t d i rect ion

t h e neces sa ry revival of t h e m a t i c s could h e e f f ec t ed . A t f i r s t s ight ,

indeed, t h e t r ave l a c c o u n t s s e e m t o sum u p visual impressions, bu t soon

i t becomes obvious t h a t t h e gl impse o f Venice m e a n s m o r e than a mere ly

ex te r io r real i ty - i t a l ludes t o larger c o n t e x t s of knowledge and imagina-

tion, t ransforming t h e c i t y i n to a symbol of human expe r i ence and a r t i s t i c

creat ion. T h e s o r t o f Venice r ep resen ted in modern l i t e r a t u r e coincides

wi th t h e role of t h e a r t i s t in modern socie ty . Although acquir ing imagin-

a r y f ea tu re s , Venice r ema ins a marginal and somewha t e c c e n t r i c place.

T h e r ea l i t y of t h e c i ty , sub jec t o f so many t r ave l accoun t s s ince t h e l a t e

Middle Ages, is r ep l aced by a r t i s t i c values, a p rocedure which p repa res t h e

new significance of a c i ty as a work of art. This transformation makes

the theme refer, first of all, to the text itself, showing i ts genuine poetic

processes. Venice becomes a l i terary theme only on condition that it

changes into a work of art: then i t represents, isolated as i t is in

political and geographic respects, the social conditions of the arts. In this

sense, Venice oddly enough becomes part o f the problem of thematics as

i t was summarised at the beginning of these preliminary notes on an

important issue: the content o f literature, which is so evident - at first

sight. 44

I. G. Gailhard, The Present State o f the Princes and Republics o f I ta ly (...), 2nd edition, (London 16711, p.120 (e.0. 16691.

2. As personal dates cannot be determined, I consider him only as the author of this book.

3. This problem of thematics is a very old one; cf. E. Sauer, "Verwendung stoffgeschichtlicher Methoden i n der Literaturforschung". Euphorion 29 (1928), 222-229.

4. Croce's objections against thematics: "11 tema di Sofonisba" 119041. In Saggi filosocici I: Problemi di estetica e contributi alla storia dell' estetica italiana (Bari 19101, pp.77-84, have been a sort o f ostracism; in their famous Theory o f Literature Renk Wellek and Austin Warren argue in Croce's sense: "'Stoffneschichte' is the least l i terary of histories." - (London 19491, p.272.

5. Cf. for example: Un problkrne de l i t t6rature compar6e: les etudes de thkmes. Essai de mdthodologie, Paris 1965; Thhmes et mythes - questions de nkthode, Bruxelles 198 1.

6. "Von der Stoffgeschichte zur Thematologie. Ein Beitrag zur komparatistischen Methodologie". Arcadia 5 (19701, 1-38.

7. I t was the authority of formalism in all i ts colours which, for a long time, made studies in thematics nearly impossible. (Cf. V. Alleton, C. Bremond et al., "Vers une th6matique1' In: Poe'tique 16, 1985, p.395).

8. A. Lotscher, Text und Thema: Studien zur thematischen Konstituenz von Texten, Tubingen 1987.

9. Introduction B la l i t tkrature fantastique (Paris 19701, p.106.

10. Cf. N. Goodman, "About", Mind 70 (19611, 1-24.

I I. Ch. Baudelaire, "Chacun sa chim8re" (=Le spleen de Paris, VI), In Oeuvres compl&tes, Bd. C. Pichois (Paris 19751, Vol.1, pp.282f.

12. Cf. A. Lotscher, op. cit., pp.7-14.

13. A. Owen points out that "[tjhe subject o f themes is one o f the most controversial in comparative l i terature" and continues by summing up the most common objections against thematics: Comparative Literature: Matter and Method (Urbana: Illinois UP, 19691, pp.106-108.

14. Cf. G. B. Parks, "The Turn to the Romantic in the Travel Literature of the Eighteenth Century", Modern Language Quarterly 25 (19641, 22-33.

15. His Book: Being His Travels through France and Italy 1658-1659, eo. by M. Le t t s (London 19251, p. 181.

16. Lyon 1681, p.199.

17. Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy, etc. In the Years 1720, 1721, and 1722. 2 vols (London 17301, 1 , p.45.

18. Travels through France and Italy, during the years 1787, 1788, and 1789, (London 19061, p.252.

19. Nouveaux Mkmoires, ou observations sur I'ltalie e t sur les Italiens, par deux gentilhommes Su6dois ..., 3 vols. (London 17641, 11, p. l f.

20. Voyage pittoresque en Suisse e t en Italie, ..., 2 vols, Paris, an IX de la ~ d p u b l i q u e ; 11, pp. 178f.

21. Observations and Reflections made in the Course of a journey through France, ltaly and Germany, 2 vols (London 17891, 1, p.150.

22. Ibid. p.151.

23. For C. Abastado, t o whom we owe some of the most striking reflections on thematics, a theme is an element of poetics: " ... la notion de 'thkme' e s t commandge par une penske d e s tructure e t n'a d e sens qu'8 partir d e l ' i d 6 d e syst&me." S e e "La trarne e t le licier: des thkmes au discours thkmatique", Revue des Langues Vivantes 43 (1977), 487.

24. Hard Times and Pictures from ltaly (London n.d.1, pp.210-214. Information about the genesis of this work is given by D. H. Paroissien, "Dickens's Pictures from I t a l ~ Stages of the Work's Development and Dickens's Method of Composition", English Miscellany 22 (19711, 243-262.

25. Op. cit. p.210.

26. Ibid. p.211.

27. Voyage en Italie, In: Oeuvres compl6tes. (Paris, 1877-1894, repr. Geneva 19781, vol.1, p.68.

28. Ibid., p.69.

29. Ibid., p.67.

30. Ibid., p.69.

31. E.g. A. Radcliff, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); F. Schiller, Der ~ e i s t e r s e h e r (1788); H. Zschokke, Aballino der grosse Bandit (1794); M. Savory, Barozzi, o r the Venetian Sorceress (1815); Ch. Nodier, Jean Sbogar (1818).

32. Op. cit., p.69.

33. "( ... ) il y a une chose grande e t terrible, e t pleine d e tbn&bres, il y a Venise." Edition Nationale (Paris 18871, vol.XVII1, p.314.

34. Op. cit., pp.69f.

35. Cf. H. J. Lope. "Der Reiz des Fremden". Exotismus der Ferne und Exotismus der Nahe in den europaischen Literaturen, in: Europaische Romantik 111: Restauration und Revolution (Wiesbaden 1985), pp.619-648.

36. Leipzig 1859, p.3.

37. Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik; esp. § 8.

38. Op. cit., pp.5f.

39. Op. cit., pp.60-71.

40. Cf. pp.7-35.

41. T. Todorov, op. cit.: "La thgorie y est [sc. in thematics] comme interdite de sdjour", p.104.

42. Indeed, Rimmon-Kenan's results are disappointing; cf. "Qu'est-ce- qu'un thkme?" In: Poe'tique XVI (1985), pp.397-405.

43. ''I l ibri che si tengono strettamente in quest' ordine d i ricerche prendono di necessit'a la forma del catalog0 o della bibliografia [...I. Manca (e non pub non mancare) lo studio del momento creativo, che e quello che davvero importa alla storia letteraria e artistica." "La letteratura comparata," in Saggi Filosofici I: Problemi di estetica e contributi alla storia dell'estetica italiana (Bari 1901), p.73.

44. The concept o f perception in Bachem's contribution, Bogumil's poetics of landscape and Dawson's distinction between theme and motive can help to localize my approach to Venice in a larger and more general context. I should like to thank l lolger Klein for his subtle stylistic revision of my text.

VENICE PRESERVED: HImORY, MYTH AND LITERARY CREATION

And& Mansau (University of T o u l w s e )

Contemplat ing t h e t h e m e of t h e Preservat ion of Venice against t he

Spanish Plot, a r e w e faced with history o r with myth? We c a n say right

away t h a t t h e Conspiracy is not itself myth but opens t h e way fo r myth -

t h a t of Venice, o r r a the r t h e var ious myths forming t h e complex which

c r i t i c s have dubbed t h e "Myth of Venice". Following on from an original

based on t h e use of historical sources, imita t ion through t h e cen tu r i e s

general ly took t h e form of works which confine themselves t o psychologi-

c a l i n t e rp re t a t ions mainly of P ie r re and Jaff ier . Then, in t h e twent ie th

century, l i t e ra tu re s e e m s t o have rediscovered t h e myth, o f t e n in t h e

process abandoning t h e original s to ry in o rde r t o lay s t r e s s on d i f f e ren t

aspects. T h e following notes will ponder mainly two things: firstly, t h e

Myth of Venice and how it i s linked t o t h e l i t e ra ry t h e m e of t h e

Conspiracy; and secondly, ways in which "Venice Preserved" has, a f t e r i t s

c a r e e r on t h e s t a g e in t h e wake of Otway's success , in t h e modern period

been turned into much wider ref lect ions on t h e f a t e of individuals and

communities.

Is Venice a mythical c i ty? Already t h e f i rs t l i terary t e x t w e have, Saint-

Real ' s L a Conjurat ion d e s Espagnols c o n t r e la ~ 6 ~ u h l i q u e d e Venise e n

JlJ (1674) was guided by de f in i t e political objectives: t o use t h e

historical account for passing judgement on t h e s t a t e of t h e seven teen th -

cen tu ry c i ty , on t h e policies of the Doge, t h e powers of t h e S e n a t e and

t h e Council of Ten; and t o exploit in pa r t i cu la r t h e Spaniards ' a t t e m p t

a t subduing Venice ( t h e bastion of Italian independence) fo r an a t t a c k on

t h e might of Spain and i t s ac t iv i t i e s in t h e peninsula.

A t t h e s a m e t ime, t h e polemical rendering of what was real ly a n a c t

of dis informat ion, a successful turning of public opinion against t h e

Spaniards on t h e p a r t of t h e Venet ians and the i r chief adviser, t h e

Servi t ian Paolo Sarpi, bases itself on several myths: liberty, dea th , and

t h e cul t of t h e sea. T h e l a t t e r i s foregrounded in t h e substant ive , not

merely descr ipt ive evocat ion of t h e ceremonious nupt ia ls of t h e Doge and

t h e Sea. L a t e r l i t e ra ry t e x t s d o not a lways show comprehension of t h e

mythical s ense of these nuptials, reconstruct ing t h e fes t ival wi thout under-

scor ing i t s s ac red meaning. It s e rved t o pe rpe tua te and renew t h e pagan

cu l t of t h e s e a with a political in tent ion comparab le t o t h e abduct ion of

S t Mark's re l ics (or what was supposed t o b e his relics) f rom Alexandr ia

in 829 and t h e superimposing of t h e cu l t of t h e Evangelist on t h a t of t h e

c i ty ' s f i rs t patron, t h e Greek Sa in t Theodore.

Studies of l i terary t e x t s connec ted wi th th is t h e m a t i c complex should

ideally not r e s t sa t is f ied wi th juxtaposing t h e m and the i r historical

sources, o r with demonstra t ing t h e var ia t ions from o n e version t o another.

Such s tudies must a l so show how ce r t a in t e x t s a r e linked t o t h e g r e a t

historical myths about t h e founding by t h e gods of t h e g r e a t ancient

cities. Indeed, a f t e r R o m e and Byzantlum, Venice continued, ou t s ide

his tor ic t ime, a s i t were, t h e c iv i c and religious r i t e s of t h e med i t e r r anean

cross-roads. Thus a n analysis of t h e l i t e r a ry history of t h e Conspiracy c a n

lead t o perceiving, through t h e d i f f e ren t readings and adapta t ions , t h e

t ransformat ion of t h e c i ty ' s image; and i t becomes possible t o show how

t h e his tory of l i t e r a tu re and t h e a r t s r e f l e c t s t h e political potency of t h e

Venet ian myth a s i t was formulated by Michelangelo Muraro: "... once t h e

policy o f expansion and t h e d ream of power had been abandoned, t h e r e

began t o t a k e shape t h e myth of Venice, which cont inued in to t h e e ight-

een th cen tu ry and t o s o m e e x t e n t sti l l ex i s t s today."'

Fernand Braudel, following in t h e foo t s t eps of Lucien ~ e b v r e , * s e e m s

t o help fu r the r t o en t r ench th is mythical image: "Next t o Venice, decep-

t ively immobile, l ies t h e massive industrial cong lomera t e of Mestre. A t

o n e and t h e s a m e t i m e w e a r e immersed in t h e a rcha ic sphe re of insular

worlds and a m a z e d a t t h e e x t r e m e youthfulness o f ve ry old c i t i e s t ha t a r e

open to al l t h e winds of cu l tu re and of profit , and have fo r cen tu r i e s been

watching and devouring t h e sea."3 Y e t Braudel avoids ta lking of myth in

re la t ion both t o Venice and t h e whole Medi terranean by s t ress ing t h e

"infinite sum o f r epea ted s t rokes o f chance, fa i lures and successes which

toge the r amoun t t o history", and ta lking of t h e "tenuous and constant ly

t h rea t ened s p a c e o f t h e c i tyn. l Thus t h e cr i t ic ' s problem i s t o g ra sp how,

f rom t h e seven teen th cen tu ry down t o t h e present , wr i t e r s h a v e m a d e use

of t hese his tor ical modif icat ions o f t h e c i t y whi le present ing o n e spec i f i c

moment: 1618. Beyond t h e l i t e r a ry forms, beyond even t h e myth linked

t o t h e realm of t h e sacred, Venice chal lenges cr i t ic ism t o t a k e in to

accoun t t h e c i ty ' s changing image a l so in t h e r ea lms o f economics and

politics.

Every epoch modif ies not only t h e l i t e ra ry form given t o t h e event ,

but a lso i t s meaning. Thus t h e f i rs t ref lect ion on the l iber ty of Venice,

t h e Squi t t in io del la IibertA vene ta I1618?1, a t r a c t inspired by t h e Marquis

of Bedamar, b e c a m e in the hands of Sarpi and o the r Venet ian propagan-

d i s t s a very d i f f e ren t s to ry indeed, which then led t o the f i rs t l i terary

r ec rea t ion of t h e even t by t h e Savoyard Saint-Rkal, wr i t t en under Louis

XIV and a imed against t h e Spanish inf luence in Italy. Though h e made use

of such his tor ical document s a s were avai lable in France, Saint-Re'al did

not know t h a t it was Paolo Sarpi who told t h e Venet ians what best t o

publish against Spain. During t h e Romant i c period the Austrians, involun-

tar i ly helped by Napoleon, who seized t h e Republ ic and burned the

Bucentaur ( t h e ceremonial ship of s t a t e used for t h e nupt ia ls wi th t h e sea )

in May 1797, managed t o put a n end t o t h e succession of 120 Doges who

had ruled Venice. And i t was in this e r a of t h e c i ty 's history tha t t he

l i t e ra ry t ravel lers - Byron, Musset, George Sand, Stendhal and Delavigne -

used t o s t o p in f ront of t h e black splash e f fac ing t h e por t ra i t of Marin

Fal ier (1274-1355); h is s to ry c a m e t o b e seen a s a parallel t o the

Conspiracy, and t h e d r a m a c r e a t e d around him shows t h e s t a t e s of mind

of a d e f e a t e d he ro who was t o b e e rased f rom t h e his tor ical memory of

Venice.

T h e good for tunes of Venice P rese rved among audiences , r eade r s and

t r ans la to r s hrought about not only imita t ions but an extension of l i terary

t r ea tmen t . T h e forms varied: f rom historical t a l e t o t h e novel of the

absurd, f rom Res to ra t ion d r a m a t o roman t i c d r a m a and a sea rch fo r a new

form of t h e a t r e a l together . L a t e r r ec rea t ions also l e f t behind the tradi-

tion of concen t ra t ing on an his tor ical f igure of t h e Caesa r o r Napoleon

type, turning t o o t h e r f igures r e l a t ed t o Venetian his tory such a s Quevedo

and Fal ier , t h e he ro ic mercena r i e s Renaud, J a f f i e r and P i e r r e in parallel

t o t h e Spanish grandees Osuna, Toledo and Bedamar, and t h e f emale

cha rac te r s : t h e patr ic ian woman, t h e courtesan. T h e r e a lso occur red a

widening of t h e t h e m a t i c complex from t h e specif ic Conspiracy t o con-

spiracy in general , f rom t h e one c i t y t o t h e bir th and decl ine of powerful

c e n t r e s of civilisations. Fur the r g ra f t ings of var iables on t h e original

even t presented s tudies of power, l iberty, death; t h e weight of solitude,

human f e a r in t h e f a c e of c r ime , violence, death , and t h e sense of

sacr i f ice; t h e sacking of c i t i e s and the dest ruct ion of s t a t e s ; t h e com-

patibility of e n d s and means, t h e boundaries be tween t h e r ea l and t h e

imaginary. History is indeed being rejoined by myth. Within the vast

body of literature devoted to Venice, the complex we may call "Venice

Preserved" eventually leaves behind factual history and thematic evolution

in order to pose the question of the individual's role in the fate o f

communities and power structures. I have chosen the two earliest and

three modern versions for a closer look, though in each case i t is only

possible to bring to the fore some salient features.

"Venice Preserved" is often vaguely regarded as a thematic complex of

English origin, but Otway's play was - a common phenomenon in Restora-

tion England - built on a French source, already mentioned above. In

Saint-Real's Conjuration, quickly translated into English (1675, repr. 1679),

the emphasis lies on the city's polit ical system and on "Death in Venice" -

the latter element, init iated by Quevedo, was later to he significantly

developed by Maurice Barrgs, Thomas Mann and Gabriele dlAnnunzio.

La Conjuration presents two categories o f heroes: f irstly the heads

of the conspiracy: Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy of Milan, Pedro Giron, Duke

of Osuna, Viceroy of Naples, and Alfonso de la Cueva, Marques of

Medamar, the Spanish Ambassador to Venice; secondly three soldiers as

a group concretely organising the coup; Jaffier, Renault, and Jacques;

the Creek courtesan merely places her house at the disposal of the con-

spirators. The text - half essay on the plot, half historical novel on the

soldier figures - has at i t s centre Jaff ier's change o f heart after Renault's

address (pp.279-82) and his resolve, watching the nuptials regatta on

Ascension Day (pp.288-89), to reveal the plot to the Council of Ten.

Saint-~e'al 's work demonstrates a Machiavellian view of the world's fickle-

ness: "Fortune is a woman". Venice is preserved, the aristocratic figures

come o f f unscathed, the poor, second-rank conspirators are killed, and

things continue much as before:

Jaff ier fut pris combattant h leur teste, comme un hornme qui ne cherche qu'8 vendre cherement sa vie, R ktant conduit ?i Venise peu de jours apres, il y fut noy6 le lendemain de son arrivge. La mort de ce Malheureux ayant acheve de retahlir la tranquillit6 dans cette grande Ville, le premier soin du Senat fut de demander un autre Amhassadeur

Madrid. (p.320)

La Conjuration contains much material cut out lor a dramatist:

Renault's speech, Jaf fier's hesitation and inner struggle, his appearance

before the Council of Ten, Bedamar's entrance at the session of

t h e S e n a t e - t h e s e and o t h e r por t ions h a v e considerable s cen ic potent ia l ,

on much of which O t w a y could s e i z e when h e t r ans fo rmed t h e his tor ical

novel i n to d r a m a fo r t h e Res to ra t ion s tage.

O t w a y sh i f t s t o a new emphasis by adding t h e love s t o r y of Relvidera

and Ja f f i e r . H e a l so changes t h e original s ense of t h e s t ruggle , turning

i t i n to a f ight agains t t h e pat r ic ians ' power and for a l iber ty impossible

t o achieve, underlining t h e heroism of P i e r r e and J a f f i e r con f ron ted with

t h e Sena te ' s tyranny. Fu r the rmore , h e c r e a t e s addi t ional c h a r a c t e r s with

subsidiary plotlines, in t roducing Antonio and developing t h e anonymous

cour t e san in to Aquilina, and P i e r r e want ing t o help his f r iend J a f f e i r

agains t Sena to r Priuli , Belvidera's c rue l fa ther . O n t h e o t h e r hand,

Redamar and t h e Doge a r e r ende red a s s econda ry c h a r a c t e r s only, and

To ledo a s well a s Osuna a r e l e f t out. Also, in O tway t h e e v e n t s a r e

cha rged wi th a new import der ived f rom his own his tor ical c o n t e x t - in

t h e e y e s of h is London audience, 'Machiavellian' I ta ly and t h e conspiracy

(now shorn of i t s Spanish associa t ions) s tood fo r t h e Popish plot agains t

t h e English King.

A f t e r O tway , La Fosse g a v e a n adap ta t ion combining e l e m e n t s f rom

O t w a y and s a i n t - ~ k a l in Manlius Capi tol inus (16971, whi le Lord Ryron in

Marino Fa l i e ro (1821) t ransposed t h e s t a t e plot and t h e love plot t o t h e

medieval Doge. However , i t w a s O t w a y who, rivalling Shakespeare ,

b e c a m e t h e g r e a t magne t of t h e English t h e a t r e in Paris; par t icular ly

Har r i e t Smithson a s Relvidera (1827) became , not only for H e c t o r Rerlioz

bu t fo r a l l romant ical ly minded people who s a w he r pe r fo rmance , t h e

embod imen t of t h e 'I talian woman in love'.

In t h e win te r of 1904, Hofmannsthal w a s in Venice; h is f i rs t purpose

was t o w r i t e a n adap ta t ion o f Otway 's play. Eventual ly h e dep ic t ed an

in i t ia tory journey and a mee t ing of love and death . P o e t r y and music

r ep resen t Venet ian a r t , and t h e c i ty ' s h is tory is foregrounded: Aquilina

'sees' i t s fall and t h e burning down of t h e Bucentaur , and Zan te ' s d e f e n c e

agains t t h e Turkish e n e m y of Venice i s being evoked.

Venice had a l r eady e a r l i e r on been impor t an t fo r Hofmannsthal ' s

work. D e r T o d des Tiz ian, a sho r t poe t i c d r a m a (1892) pic tur ing fo r th a

'baroque ' Venice provides in i t s Vth A c t t h e ma te r i a l f rom which t h e

d r a m a t i s t now fo rms his r e f l ec t ions on t h e d e a t h of a s t a t e - a d ream,

bu t o n e full o f violence, people being murde red in t h e Venet ian morning

mis t which a f f e c t s l ike a labyrinth, a c laust rophobic pala t ia l space. In

1896 Hofmannsthal read Ben Jonson's Volpone; and even his Jedermann

(19021, the meditation on fate, salvation, and money, is not without links

to our theme.

In Das gerettete Venedig the c i ty is dying, even i f heroic and

mysterious; as Lord Chandos and the last Contarini (cf. also the late

short story "Der Brief des letzten Contarin", 1929). Captain Pierre wi l l die :

"And he is dead, and I have my hands free and may throw myself over-

board and swim in the dark towards a new shore." (p.269). The dream

o f Aquilina, the courtesan (Act II), represents both a personal, fantastic

view and a historical vision:

... Im Traum. Und hier herein zu gehn mit einem Leuchter in der Hand. Auch hier war alles, wie es ist. Nur dort am Pfeiler hing ein Bild von Pierre, ein schones: es schien im Rahmen sich zu regen. I...] [...I Und wie ich starrte, immer lag ein Schatten auf dem Gesicht, und naher hob ich zitternd den Leuchter. Da auf einmal hor ich, ich hore ... (p. 152)s

The conspiracy changes into a dream and a painting of the Venetian night.

The political plot is secondary, the f irst place belongs to Pierre and

Jaff ier looking at Venetian society. Thus Hofmannsthal places at the

centre o f interest the power of art and the agony of a great historic

city.

Les Espagnols Venise by Georges Limbour (text) and Rene' Leibowitz

(music), f irst performed in 1970 at Grenoble, afterwards at the Piccola

Scala at Milan, offers variations to the material by introducing Quevedo

and Death as a mythical personage. In his dedication to Zette and Michel

Leiris, Limbour states that he was inspired by Quevedo's biographers

Ramon Gomez and Rene Bouvier, who imagine the presence of Quevedo

(secretary to Osuna), in Venice in 1618. Although this is not attested, we

do know that dummies o f Redamar, Osuna and Quevedo were burned in the

city. Limbour concentrates on Quevedo, the courtesan, a r ich Turk, a

petty cit izen of Venice called Beppo, finally Death in the shape of a

beggar. Scene 5 derives from Ouevedo's Visita de 10s chistes. Death

speaks with Dinero (Money) and Mundo (the World) at Ouevedo's bedside.

... entro una que parecia mujer, muy galana y llena de coronas, cetros, I...] chapines, tiaras, caperuzas, mitras, rnonteras, brocados, pellejos,

seda, oro, garrotes, diamantes, I...] perlas, y quijarros. Un ojo abierto y otro cerrado y vestia y desnuda de todos 10s colores. Por un lado era moza y por otro era vieja ...6

As the scene develops, we may switch to Limbour in the climactic

passage:

LA MORT Tu es mon poete favori Pokte des songes macabres. Le chantre de non empire Et de mes ravages. J'aime les poetes pessimistes, Ceux qui font gloire ma foule, lnterrogent les squelettes. Sur leur cercueil Agitant des dreapeaux de suaires En langage prCcieux, Tu as brod6 la vanit6 de toutes les choses.

QUEVEDO 0 ma bonne inspiratrice, Pour une nuit, reine de Veni'se, Parcours-la dans une gondole. Les canaux vont exhaler Des odeurs qui t e plafront.

The work closes with a chorus singing "The Triumph of Love in

Venice". In El Lince de Italia Ouevedo has characterised Venice as "the

disturber of the world and I...) the quicksilver among princes; it is a

republic which one can neither believe in nor forget1'.'l Overall, the opera

is clearly guided by Gomez's graphic fantasies about Quevedo's mode of

life in the city:

Head of a group of beggars, Ouevedo wandered about the tavernas of Venice, trying to escape alive from this hell-hole, in which the Ducal myrmidons were in their turn looking for him as for an enemy of the s ta te [...I He remembered the poor of Spain [...I and by a kind of grafting made himself into a povero napoletano, talking away in Italian like a vagabond.

Fanciful and fantastic in a historical as well as a literary sense, & Espannols transforms the theme into a carnival. The meeting of Quevedo,

Death and Venice is presented as a splendid farce in the face of horror.

In 1942, while Mussolini and Hitler were still in power, Simone Weil

adapted Saint-R6al and Otway in her Venise sauv6e. She herself wrote

about this work: "... le besoin d'arniti8 en Europe est mis en lumikre I...] k~ I'entretien Renaud-Jaffier dans le deuxikme acte. Pierre e'voque leur

destinke personelle, leur passe miserable [...I Renaud a 6t6 exile' en

France, Pierre et Jaffier de Provence." Also fascinating are the follow-

ing entries in her Cahiers: "Bedmar comme Richelieu, Pierre d1apr8s Le

Colleone': and: "Renaud=Trotsky pauvre, estimait plus la vertu que les

richesses, mais plus la gloire que la vertu" I...] Horrible amertume, non de

mourir, mais de perdre tout espoir de puissance, de fortune et de gloire".

The historical context holds other interesting facets - we know, for

instance, that Weil had met Trotsky in France, yet two elements o f myth

require particular emphasis here. Firstly, Weil portrays Jaffier while alone

in the ci ty with echoes from Sophocles's Antigone: "Le soleil me fait

peur: la mort met mon h e B nu". More importantly still, Jaffier, as

informer, is no longer a Judas, a traitor betraying his friends, but is

shown alone l ike Christ in the garden of Gethsemane:

Dieu, mon $me a besoin de la chair pour cacher sa honte, la chair qui mange et dort, sans avenir et sans pass& Je tremblerai d'horreur en passant dans 11Qternit6; Trop faible pour la mort, mais comment demeurer vivant?''

As Patricia L i t t le has observed, Jaffier here has lost his human features;

Venice, c i ty o f Monteverdi and Colleone, has to he preserved just as

humanity has to be preserved by Christ's sacrifice. Social, historical and

religious meaning coalesce: Weil remembers art and politics, but she

overlays the conspiracy against Venice with a stratum of myth. Jaffier

does not achieve this status all at once. A t first he intends to kil l :

La vil le et le peuple et la mer vont m'appartenir. La ci te paisible est dans ma main sans le savoir; Mais dans peu de temps elle apprendra qu'elle est a moi: Car voici qu'il vient, le dur moment ob tout d'un coup Ma main va se fermer et I'Bcraser. I...] Ce qu'a tu6 le fer, nu1 soleil ne le voit plus. Quelques heures encore, et la c i t e sera morte. Des pierreq un dbsert, des corps inertes e'pars. Ceux-la qui survivront, ce seront tous des cadavres. Etonn6s et muets, i ls ne sauront qu'oheir. Ayant tous vu souiller ou tuer des 6tres chers, Chacun se h"aera de se soumettre b ce qu'il hait.

In the very universality and intensity o f this anticipatory vision of the

horror we already sense something strange preparing itself within his soul.

In the end, he does not carry out his dire intentions, but betrays to save,

sacrificing himself instead o f others.

A f t e r Jaff ier ' s death, Violet ta looks ou t on t h e ci ty , but does not s e e

t h e Ascension Day's r e g a t t a and enter ta inments , nor t h e Venice built of

s tone amidst t h e wa te r hy t h e tough industry of men and holstered by

t h e abduction of Saint Mark's re l ics f rom Egypt; what she sees is the

primal creat ion: Violetta a t this moment is innocence looking a t t h e first

day of humanity:

Jour qui viens si beau, sourire suspendu Soudain s u r m a ville e t ses mille canaux,

Combien aux hurnains qui r e ~ o i v e n t t a paix Voir l e jour e s t doux!

This is t o d a t e t h e most comple te t ransformation of Saint-Re'al's text .

Taking a broad view of the t h r e e modern plays we have briefly introduced,

and trying t o cha rac te r i se t h e direct ions which the influx of myth has

taken on t h e twent ie th-century s t a g e when adherence t o history concerned

with "Venice Preserved" was abandoned, one might say tha t Hofmannsthal,

medi ta t ing on a r t and t h e dea th of a c i ty , presents a decadent vision;

Limbour and Leibowitz, adapting t h e Dea th figure from Quevedo, o f fe r a

carnivalesque fantasy; Weil, transforming Ja f f i e r on the model of Antigone

and Chris t , gives a version of t h e myth of humanity's preservation.

Chronology

1674 saint- gal, La conjuration des Espagnols ... 1675 Transl. of Saint-Rdal: A Conspiracy of t h e Spaniards ... 1682 Otway, Venice Preserved

1697 Antoine d e La Fosse d'Aubigny, Manlius capitolinus, 1697

1699 Gregorio Leti, Vita di Don Pedro Giron ... 1746 Luc d e Clapiers, Marquis d e Vauvenargues, Dialogue des morts

Pierre-Antoine d e Laplace: Otway Adaptat ion

Antoine Vincent Arnault, Blanche e t Montcassin ou les Venetiens

George Gordon, Lord Byron, Marino Fal iero

Casirmir Delavigne, Marino Fal iero

Giuseppe Revere, Venezia e gli Spagnuoli ... Hofmannsthal, Das g e r e t t e t e Venedig

Weil, Venise sauv6e

Louis Guilloux, Parpagnacco ou la Conjuration

Limbourg/Leibowitz, Les Espagnols Venise

1. Michelangelo Muraro, Les Trbsors de Venise (Skira, 1963), p.27.

2. Cf. Lucien Febvre, Annales 12 (1929), quoted by F. Braudel (11.31, p.10.

3. Fernand Rraudel, La ~e'di terranke: I'Espace et I'Histoire, (Paris: Flammarion, 1977, repr. (1985), "La mer" pp.401.

4. Braudel (n.3), pp.194f.

5. Hofmannsthal: "In a dream. And to go in here/with a candlestick in my hand./Also here everything was as i t is now. Only there/On the pillar hung a portrait of Pierre, a beautiful one/it seemed to stir within i ts frame/[ ...I And as I was gazing fixedly, there was always a shadow/on his face, and I tremblingly/lifted the candlestick closer. Then suddenly I heard/l hear ..!I (my translation).

6. Quevedo, Ohras completas "There entered one who seemed a woman, very elegantly d r e s s e d u n d a n t l y decked with crowns, ceptres, [...I high-heeled shoes, tiaras, hoods, mitres, caps, brocade, hides, silk, gold, garottes, diamants, [...I pearls, and pebbles. One eye she had open and the other closed, and she was clad with, and bereft o f a l l colours. On one side she was young and on the other she was old."

7. Quevedo, Obras completas, "chisme del mundo y I...] azogue de 10s principes; es una republics que n i se had de creer n i se ha de olvidar."

Bibliography

1. quoted Texts Francisco de C)uevedo, Mundo caduco y des varios de la edad i n 10s anos de 1613 hasta 1620; Suenos; E l Lince de Italia; in Obras completas, ed. Luis A. Marin, Madrid: Aguilar, 1943.

CBsar Vichard, Abbe de saint-~e/al , Conjuration des Espagnols contre la R6publique de Venise, 1674; ed. A. Mansau, Geneva: Droz, 1977. English trans. A Conspiracy o f the Spaniards against the State o f Venice. London, 1675, 2nd edn, 1679.

Thomas Otway, Venice Preserved, or A Plot Discovered, 1682; in The Works, ed. J. C. Ghosh, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon, 1932; cf. also Venice Preserved, ed. M. Kelsall, London: Arnold. 1969.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Das gerettete Venedig, 1904; in Dramen, 11, ed. Herbert Steiner, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1954.

Simone Weil, Venise sauvGe, 1942; repr. Paris: Gallimard, 1955, repr. 1968.

Georges Limbourg and Rend Leibowitz, Les Espagnols B Venise, O& bouffe, Opus 60, (1st Performance: 9 Jan. 1970, Grenohle; unpubl.).

2. Historical Texts and Studies Brown, Horatio F. Studies in Venetian History, 2 Vols, London: Murray, 1907.

Cessia, Roberto, Storia della Repubblica di Venezia, 2 Vols, Milan, 1944-45.

Colleccion de documentos ineditos para la historia de Espaiia, Madrid, 1861 . Vols XLVI-XLVII. (On the Conspiracy and Pedro Giron, Duke o f Osuna.)

Daru, P i e r r e A. N. R.. C o m t e de , His toi re d e la ~ 6 p u h l i q u e d e Venise. 8 Vols, Paris: Didot, 1826. (Vols. V, VII, Vllf.)

Fulin, Rinaldo. Studi nell 'archivio degli lnquisitori di Sta to . Venice: Visentini, 1868.

La Lumia, Isidoro. "Ot tavio d 'Aragone e il d u c a dtOsuna, 1605-1623", Archivio s to r i co Italiano, N.S. XVIII, 1855.

Luzio, Alessandro. La congiura spagnuola c o n t r o Venezia nel 1618, second0 i documen t i dell 'Archivio Gonzaga. Venice: Soc ie t a d i s to r i a vene ta , 1948.

Luzio, Alessandro. Miscel lanea di s to r i a veneziana. Venice: R. Diputazione di s to r i a pa t r i a , Se r i e 111, Vol. XIII, 1918.

Ranke, Leopold von. L'Espagne sous Char les-Ouint , Philippe I1 e t Philippe IlJ transl. and augm. J. H. Haiber. Par is , 1873.

Raul ich, Italo. "La congiura spagnuola c o n t r o Venezia", Nuovo Archivio veneto , VI (1893), 586.

Schipa, Michelangelo. "La p re t e sa fe l lac ia del d u c a d'Osuna, 1619-162OW, Archivio s t o r i c o p e r la privincia napoletanea, XV-XXV, XXXV-XXXVII.

Zambler , Amelia. "Contr ibuto a l l a s t o r i a del la congiura spagnuola con t ro Venezia", Nuovo Archivio v e n e t 4 XI, 1896.

3. Gene ra l S tud ie s Bourges, Elkmire. R e v u e d e s c h e f s d'oeuvre, Vol.VI1. Paris, 1880-84.

Bouvier, Renk. Quevedo, h o m m e du diable, h o n m e d e Dieu. Par is , 1928.

Rraudel, Fernand. La Medi terranke: I 'kspace e t I'histoire (Paris: F l a m m a i o n , 1985).

Char lanne, Louis. L'lnfluence f r a n ~ a i s e e n Ang le t e r r e a u XVIl&me sihcle. Paris: Soc i6 tk f r a n ~ a i s e d impr imeurs e t d e Lihrairies, 1906.

Dulong, Gustave. L'Abbe d e Saint -Rdal : E t u d e su r les r appor t s d e I 'histoire e t du roman a u XVIIkme si8cle. Paris: Champion, 1921.

G o m e z d e la Serna, Ramon. Quevedo, in R iog ra f i a s completas . Madrid: Aguilar, 1959.

Johnson, Alfred. Lafosse , O tway , Saint -Rdal : Origines e t t r ans fo rma t ions d'un t h e m e tragique. Paris: Hache t t e , 1901.

Kl ieneberger , H. 9. "Otway's Venice P rese rved and Hofmannsthal ' s Das g e r e t t e t Venedig", &lL.J 6 2 (19671, 292-97.

Mansau, Andr6e. Sa in t -R ia l e t I 'humanisme cosmopolite. Paris: Champion, 1976.

Mansau, AndrBe, "1618: Conjuracidn d e 10s Espanoles c o n t r a Venecia o d e Venecia c o n t r o los Espagnoles?", A c t a s del Congresso Internat ional dos Hispanistas, Sulzoni, Rome: 1982.

Muraro, Michelangelo. Les ~ r g s o r s d e Venise.. Geneva: Skira, 1963.

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T H E 'TRAITOR T O HIS PEOPLE": A CONTRIBUTION T O T H E PHENOMENOLOGY O F TREACHERY IN LITERATURE

Hans-Georg Griining (University of Macera ta )

Treache ry and l i t e ra tu re - t r eache ry in l i t e ra tu re - t r eache tyon t h e pa r t

of le t t r is ts : s o m e a s p e c t s of th is t h e m a t i c complex have been examined, I

but t h e t h e m e has not ye t been approached in i t s ent i re ty . Pal.lensperger/

~ r i e d e r i c h ' general ly list t hemat i c complexes in two sub-species. T h e

first, "individual motifs" (German Stoffe) includes figures like Judas, Medea

and Rrutus. T h e second, "col lect ive mot i f s " (German Motive) dea l s with

t r eache ry itself. This a r t i c l e a t t e m p t s t o out l ine a phenomenology of

t r eache ry by breaking it down into i t s components in o rde r t o focus on

s o m e a rche types of t r eache ry and t o i l l u s t r a t e them through examples in

modern European l i tera ture . T h e intent ion is not t o present a history of

t r eache ry in l i tera ture , but t o enuc lea te t h e concept , using dif ferent

approaches: linguistic-philological, psychoanalytic, social, political, and

juridical analysis.

A useful f i rs t s t e p in outlining a concep t is t o def ine i t by e tymo-

logical and seman t i c analysis. This approach, though dea r t o philosophers,

c a n b e decept ive, a s var ious languages may present t h e s a m e concep t

under fo rms der ived from d i f f e ren t root-words evoking divergent connota-

tions.

F o r t h e s e m a n t i c complex t r eache ry the re a r e t w o main root-words.

T h e first, present in t h e Romance languages and via French also in English,

der ives f rom Lat in t r a d e r e which (changing conjugation) was t ransformed

into Vulgar Lat in t radire , with t h e original meanings of del iver and

t r ansmi t stil l preserved in t h e noun t radi t ion (Tradition, etc.)

and i t s derivatives. T h e adven t of Chris t iani ty added a pejorat ive mean ing ,

a s t h e t e r m was used in t h e New Tes tamen t t o descr ibe t h e 'delivery' of

Chris t by Judas, supplanting in Vulgar Lat in and the Romance languages

t h e classical Lat in t e r m fo r betray: prodere, and i t s noun proditio, excep t

in juridical terminology.

The basic meaning "deliver a person o r a thing, o r t r ansmi t a s e c r e t

t o a third party'' has in German and Dutch been absorbed by t h e t e r m

which der ives from t h e second root. This is of German ic origin, based on

r a t = advice, counsel (verb: raten) with t h e pref ix E-, which originally - confe r red on the word ve r ra t en (nouns: Verrat , Ver ra t e r ) t h e meanings

"mislead s.0. by false advice" or "have in mind s.o.'s ruin", and later

"undertake s.th. for the purpose o f ruining s.o." and "ruin s.0. by revealing

a secret". 3

A t present the verbs hetrav (from Old French trair), trahir, tradire

and verraten have a very similar spread of meanings. The OED distin-

guishes seven groups: I. "to give up to, or place in the power of an

enemy, by treachery or disloyalty." 2. "to be or prove false to (a trust

or person who trusts one); to be disloyal to; to disappoint the hopes or

expectations of". 3. "to cheat, disappoint." 4. "to lead astray or into

error, as a false guide; to mislead, seduce, deceive (the trustful)."

5. "to disclose or reveal with hreach o f faith (a secret or that which

should be kept secret)". 6. "to reveal or disclose against one's wi l l or

intention the existence, identity, real character o f (a person or thing

desired to be kept secret)". 7. "to reveal, disclose or show incidentally;

to exhibit, show signs of, to show (a thing which there is no attempt to

keep secret)". O f these semantic groups (which e.g. the French Robert

presents analogously, arriving at eight groups and over twenty-five

synonyms), not all, but in particular 1, 2, 5 and 6 are relevant. The

corresponding nouns have nearly exclusively pejorative meaning: e, trahison, tradimento, wi th English offering three variants, from the general

betrayal to the more intensive treachery to the specifically political

treason. -- An analysis of grammatical and syntactic constructions offers guid-

ance to the components of the act of treachery. The most comprehensive

construction is: "s.h. betrays s.b. (or s.th.) for a determinate reason and

with a determinate aim to the advantage of s.h. (or s.th.1 in a given

moment and place with (or without) the help o f s.h. and by determinate

means". This, adapted along the lines o f communication models, leads to

a comprehensive scheme o f components:

I. who betrays: the person (or group) who commits the treacherous

act; the 'traitor', his position (insiderloutsider) in relation to the

country, race, religion, ideology, etc., to which he belongs.

2. who or what is betrayed: the object, v ict im of the treacherous act;

one or more people (the feoffor, sovereign, master, friend, wife,

husband), a collective or abstract concept (homeland, fatherland,

country, family, race, culture, religion, ideology).

3. why. t h e motive and aim of t h e t reacherous ac t : personal reasons

(such a s offended honour, love, hate , cowardice, revenge, ambition);

economic reasons; ideological reasons.

4. t o whose advantage: t h e beneficiary of t h e t reacherous ac t : ( a ) t h e

t r a i to r himself o r herself (own profit); (b) o t h e r s (country, s t a t e ,

institution, group; individual; religions, ideas, ideologies).

5. when: t h e historical moment and s i tuat ion in which t h e t reacherous

a c t t akes place: war, civil war, cold war , guerilla warfare , occupa-

tion, revolution, confl ic t situation, peacetime.

6. where: t h e scene of t h e t r eacherous act : an occupied country,

divided country; a country with a mixed population (different e thn ic

groups); a f r e e society, repressed society; a social o r religious o r

ideological grouping; t h e home.

7. with whose help: t h e col laborators , correspondents, advisers,

"seducers".

8. by what means: t h e t r eachery is ca r r i ed ou t principally by two types

of means: (a) passive means - abandoning (German Aufgabe) o r

deser t ion (e.g. of one's spouse), leaving t h e family o r social, political,

ideological group t o which o n e belongs; and (b) active means - surrendering a town, country, e t c . t o t h e enemy (German ijbergabe),

betraying a sec re t t o t h e enemy, changing t o t h e enemy's s ide t o

fight against one's own group (in t h e political sense: treason

(German Landesverrat); an a t t e m p t on t h e l i fe of t h e head of s t a t e ,

an a t t a c k on t h e const i tut ional system (high treason, Hochverrat);

collaboration with t h e enemy, e t c . While t h e first type, t h e a c t of

abandoning, nearly a lways reveals t h e intent ion t o betray, t h e second

type may b e an a c t of open t reachery, a s in t h e c a s e of a renegade,

o r - and this is usually regarded a s most perfidious - an a c t of

sec re t t r eachery (espionage, etc.) cha rac te r i sed by dissimulation, a

mask. 4

Besides t h e interact ion among these components of t r eacherous a c t s

o the r points require emphasising and exploration. Firstly, t h e s t ruc tu re of

t r eachery is usually t r iadic , t h e t r a i t o r being positioned between t h e

betrayed par ty and t h e beneficiary of t h e a c t (though in t h e c a s e o f

deser t ion the re may b e no apparent beneficiary); when, however, t h e sole

beneficiary is t h e t r a i to r himself, t h e s t ruc tu re is dyadic. Secondly, who

def ines somebody a s a t r a i to r and t h e a c t a s t reacherous? llsually t h e

designations represent the point o f view o f the 'injured party'. Rut also

the beneficiary considers the act as treacherous, does not trust the

traitor, suspecting that a person who betrays once wi l l betray again. And

even the 'traitor' himself is normally aware that his action wi l l be con-

sidered treacherous by others, i f not by himself. 5

In the triadic situation the main distinction is between open and

secret treachery. 1. The traitor, either spontaneously or forced by

political, economic or ideological reasons abandons the system to which he

had belonged in favour o f another system into which he wants t o become

integrated, but which often refuses to accept him; on the other hand, he

may leave his own system without any desire to be integrated into another.

2. The traitor appears to remain in his own system hut secretly contacts

another - the f irst phase o f the treacherous act; when, in a second

phase, his treachery is discovered, he wi l l be punished by physical or

psychological elimination, or by expulsion. The beneficiary system either

honours i ts obligations by paying the agreed reward (which may consist,

or partly consist, in acceptance o f the traitor); or i t may not observe the

pact and sometimes even deliver up the t ra i tor (case o f the 'traitor

betrayed'). Thus the trai tor - and this is one o f the nuclei o f the

prohlematic complex o f treachery - finds himself in a no-man's land

position between the two systems.

There is no possibility o f belonging simultaneously to two systems

(communities, groups) o f the same species, and even the attempt to act

as mediator may he counted as a treacherous act; there is no choice:

'either wi th me or against me'. Systems - communities, groups and even

individuals - erect real or conceptual boundaries, perhaps less to defend

themselves against invasion from outside than for interior cohesion. This

kind o f behaviour is typical o f "closed crowds" (canetti).' In their view

the mere act o f leaving, abandoning one's own system (group, etc.) con-

stitutes treachery because i t not only numerically weakens i t but may

cause damage to the economy or the image o f the victim; the abandoned

spouse, the abandoned state. One o f the clearest manifestations of this

protection mechanism is the Berlin Wall, with the order to shoot as the

ult imate attempt to stop Republikflucht, considered as an act o f treason,

a cr ime against the state, a "breaking through the frontier by force"

(gewaltsamer Grenzdurchhruch) and a "treacherous breach o f faith"

(Landesverraterischer Treuebruch). 7

A t th i s point t h e s e m a n t i c field needs t o b e widened t o include rides in i t s d i f f e ren t f o r m s and der ivat ions: conf idence, t rus t , fa i th , loyalty,

Ver t rauen, foi, loyaut6, fede, fiducia, lea l ta , e t c . and t h e nega t ive

va r i an t s l ike b reach o f fa i th , Treuebruch, disloyalty, s leal th , until w e r each

t h e e x t r e m e s of rebel l ion and r e v o ~ u t i o n . ~ T h e German roo t o f break, brechen (a c a l q u e o f La t in infrangere) i nd ica t e s t h e juridical and socia l

d imension of t h e fides complex and expla ins why t reason is considered t h e

vilest of cr imes. T h e t r e a c h e r o u s a c t m e a n s a v iolent breaking of a con-

t r a c t o r o f a socia l pac t ; indeed, t h e G e r m a n t e r m for adul tery ,

Ehebruch, or ig inal ly had t h e meaning of b reach of con t r ac t . Every person

o r g roup is l inked by reciprocal bonds o f f a i t h t o h i s o r he r communi ty ,

political, social, religious sys t em; t h e feudal sys t em is a sup reme

example . O n a m o r e personal, p r iva t e level, t hese mutua l bonds exis t

be tween people in f r iendship and marr iage. T h e socia l p a c t is even

s t ronge r if i t coincides w i th so-cal led 'blood t ies ' , which c a n a lso h e a r t i -

ficially es tabl ished by t h e r i tual a c t of blood-brotherhood. T h e m o r e

c losed t h e g roup o r sys t em, t h e m o r e exclus ive and sec re t , t h e ha rde r i t

is t o l e a v e i t , a n d in e x t r e m e c a s e s t h e a t t e m p t a t dese r t i on i s punished

by d e a t h ( t h e Mafia and o t h e r c l andes t ine organisations).

C lea r ly t h e momen t , t h e political and socia l s i tuat ion and t h e s c e n e

of t h e t r eache rous a c t a r e impor t an t f a c t o r s influencing t h e in t ens i ty of

react ion. T h e person o r co l l ec t ive who f ee l t h r e a t e n e d by a r ea l o r

imagined dange r f rom ou t s ide o r inside fo r t i fy t h e f ront iers . Th i s c a u s e s

a n in tensi f ica t ion of t he i r hyster ical behaviour, in t h e e x t r e m e leading t o

paranoia: potent ia l t r a i t o r s a r e suspec ted eve rywhere ( ' r e d s under t h e

beds') , conspir ing agains t t h e powers t h a t be, agains t t h e s t a t u s quo. 9

Among t h e mass of potent ia l t r a i t o r s t h e r e a r e ca t egor i e s considered m o r e

likely than others , mainly people o r groups of dubious iden t i t y who find

themse lves on t h e per iphery, fo r i n s t ance pacif is ts , cosmopol i tans , homo-

sexuals, hybrids o f e v e r y species. Usually t h e c a t e g o r y ' t ra i tor ' i s not

applied t o individuals o r g roups looked a t d i f f e ren t ly anyway - fore igners ,

a l so in many coun t r i e s Gipsies and ~ e w s , " a s never having been a n

in tegral pa r t of t h e sys t em and thus no t l inked by a fides relationship.

The re fo re o n e of t h e pr incipal c r i t e r i a of t h e t r eache rous a c t i s missing,

though such people could, f rom t h e ideological viewpoint o f a "closed

crowd", fall i n to t h e a l l ied c a t e g o r y o f ' in ternal enemies' . Even Nazi

ideology, e x t r e m e l y a l e r t t o t h e t r a i t o r problem, did not consider J e w s a s

traitors, but as antagonists. Witness the manifest Wider den undeutschen

Geist, issued by the Qrman students' association on 8 Apr i l 1933:

4. Unser gefahrlichster Widersacher ist der Jude und der, der ihm horig ist.

5. Der Jude kann nur iiidisch denken. Schreibt er deutsch. dann liigt er. Der Deutsche, dkr deutsch chreibt, aber undeutsch deikt, ist z n Verrater ! I...]

7. Wir wollen den Juden als Fremdling achten, ...I1

A traitor is here defined as a German who thinks, writes or behaves l ike

a Jew and who has contact wi th Jews. The traitor blurs the demarcation

line between the two groups or systems, which thereby risk losing their

identity; thus to deny the differences between groups is seen as

betrayal. 12

This (frightening) example leads to the consideration of another

aspect of the traitor complex: whether a treacherous act counts as a

legally punishable crime or only as morally or socially reprehensible. This

clearly depends on the ideological basis o f a society or state at a given

time. While in Nazi Germany marriage, cohabitation or mere contact o f

a member of the Aryan race with a person of the 'lower' Jewish race,

or the defence and protection o f Jews, was made a crime called Rassen-

schande viz. Rasseverrat (racial shame, treason of the race), elsewhere and

in other periods the dominant code was different. As we know only too

well, even today racial discrimination exists in some countries, though i t

does not often involve the juridical plane (let alone paralleling the cruel

excesses o f the Third Reich), but operates on the social plane, and in any

' t ra i tor ' is socially demoted or indeed excluded from his own society.

The historical moment as a determinant factor in the treacherous act

has been emphasized not only by Talleyrand in his famous dictum "la

trahison - c'est une question du temps", but by nearly all authors dealing

with the issue. For example Enzensberger asserts that "nearly every

inhabitant of this continent has, in the eyes o f the state power, been at

some moment in his l i fe a traitor".13 This applies in particular to

countries which experience a war, revolution, or other kind of major up-

heaval, for during and after such crises the ideological basis o f a state

often changes, causing a confl ict in individuals and groups (even majority

groups) between their former position and the newly imposed one. They

are forced into ideological treason, because i f they remain loyal to the

f o r m e r sys t em they a r e disloyal t o t h e new one, whereas if t hey a r e loyal

t o t h e new. they be t r ay t h e fo rmer sys t em (and thei r fo rmer convictions);

and, a s w e h a v e seen , e v e n a n i n t e r m e d i a t e position c a n mean t r ea son - t o both sys tems.

T h e t r a i t o r , then, by his own volition o r by fo rce majeure , i s p laced

in a con f l i c t s i tuat ion. H e has t o d e c i d e be tween opposing values

belonging t o t h e s a m e o r t o d i f f e ren t moral ca tegor ies , and in s o doing

becomes gui l ty of t r e a c h e r y t o o n e s ide o r t h e other . In consider ing t h e

t r eache rous a c t , t h e a t t e n t i o n i s focused on him; h e i s a c t o r and/or

v ic t im, t h e o n e who holds t h e balance, t h e th i rd party. Every t r a i t o r may

not b e a t r a g i c figure, but near ly e v e r y t r ag i c f igure is someone who, by

his choosing be tween values, i s cons t r a ined t o c o m m i t an a c t of t reachery.

If o n e t r ies , based on t h e s e c a t e g o r i e s and principles, t o evo lve a

c lass i f ica t ion of t r e a c h e r y in l i t e r a tu re , t h e main considerat ions a r e t h e

sphe re o r sphe res in which t h e t r eache rous a c t occurs , and i t s motivation.

We c a n distinguish t w o spheres : t h e p r iva t e and t h e public. T h e

t r e a c h e r y m a y involve o n e of them, in most cases , however, i t involves

both. Fu r the rmore , i t m a y h a v e b a s e o r noble, sub jec t ive o r ob jec t ive

motives. A s t h e t r i ad i c or, m o r e rare ly , dyad ic s t r u c t u r e of t r eache ry i s

usually t ied t o a h is tor ical o r mythological bas is and i s t h e r e f o r e most ly

cons t an t , var ia t ions developed by individual a u t h o r s mainly conce rn motiva-

tion.

Judas , t h e bes t known t r a i t o r f igure , whose n a m e has b e c o m e synony-

mous wi th t r a i t o r , may s e r v e a s a f i rs t example . T h e be t r ayed pa r ty i s

Jesus , h is mas t e r , t o whom Judas a s a d isc iple i s bound in a personal

re la t ionship of loyalty; bu t J e sus i s a l so a religious and pol i t ica l leader ,

and Judas is a follower of t h i s n e w c reed , s o h i s re la t ionship wi th Je sus

passes f rom t h e p r iva t e t o t h e publ ic sphere. T h e benef ic iary of t h e

t r eache rous a c t , t h e religious, legal and pol i t ica l au tho r i t i e s o f t h e Jewish

community , t o whom Judas a s a m e m b e r o f t h i s communi ty i s obliged t o

b e loyal, a l so belong t o t h e public sphere . Avar ice , t h e mot ive t radi t ion-

a l ly assigned t o Judas ' s t reason, and o n e of t h e mos t vile, i s shown by t h e

symbol ic a c t o f t h e "selling f o r t h i r ty p i eces of silver"; bu t a l r eady fo r

Luke (22.3) and John (13.2,27) t h i s m o t i v e i s not suff ic ient t o expla in such

infamous t r eache ry , s o they a t t r i b u t e Judas's a c t t o t h e work of t h e devil.

A s t h e devil 's tool, Judas i s no t s e e n pr imari ly a s an ac to r , but a s a

v ic t im in t h e s t rugg le b e t w e e n t h e powers o f good and evil. T h e sphe re

of treachery here embraces not only the private and the public but

becomes cosmic. In his Messias Klopstock gives a polit ical motive for

Judas's betrayal: by his act Judas attempted to force Jesus to show his

power. In this light Judas might be regarded as a patriot who felt that

Jesus had failed to come up to expectations, as he had done nothing to

liberate the Jews from Rome or to create the promised kingdom on earth.

Instead, he insisted on the efficacy of the kingdom of heaven. For this

reason Pontious Pilate could eventually charge Jesus with High Treason.

Beyond the public nature o f polit ical motivation for Judas's act, the inter-

pretation of i t as not spontaneous but predetermined (necessary for the

completion of the divine project o f salvation) makes us consider Judas as

himself victim and instrument o f God and not as a tragic person. As he 14 had no possibility to decide, there is no conflict.

Another famous case o f treason is Brutus. Caesar, the victim o f the

treacherous act, is a friend, but is also the head o f state, the "tyrant".

Brutus is hound to him by personal, private bonds of friendship and by

public bonds o f loyalty and subordination. The beneficiary of the treacher-

ous act is the (abstract) republican polit ical ideal. The motive for

Brutus's treason is noble - it has certainly been presented as such in

periods characterised by a marked i n tyrannos attitude (when Caesar him-

self was seen as a traitor to the republican ideals because o f his hunger

for power), whereas in less idealistic than realistic periods more weight

was given to Caesar's value as a statesman. Here again we notice the

oscillation between the private and the public spheres. The Hagen-

Siegfried theme belongs to the same type of treachery: Siegfried is

betrayed by his friend Hagen, who commits the treacherous act out of

loyalty to his feoffor, the beneficiary of the treason. The noble motiva-

tion raises the act to the public level; some interpretations, however (for

instance Hebbel's), introduce the vile motive o f envy or rivalry, thus

lowering the act to a simple, personal level. As F. W. Maitland observes,

"treason is a crime which has a vague circumference and more than one

centre";15 hence the near-impossibility of a precise definition. While the

Judas-Rrutus type has as i ts most important nucleus the juridical dimension

of crimen laesae maiestatis and therefore a fairly clear collocation o f

crime, it is more di f f icul t to classify other types o f traitors in cases

where the relationship between the betrayed person (or group, or ideology)

and the traitor has no juridical component.

O n e such c a s e is t r e a c h e r y fo r love and t h e d a m a g e i t does t o

parents , family, homeland, coun t ry , e t h n i c group, etc.16 T h e Rible

(Genesis 2.24) s a y s t h a t a man (and in a w ide r s ense a woman) has t o

l eave f a t h e r and mother , uni t ing himself (hersel f ) w i th his (he r ) spouse.

This neces sa ry a c t o f ' t reachery ' m a y c r e a t e con f l i c t s be tween man and

wi fe and the i r own families. Pre-exis t ing conf l i c t s be tween t h e famil ies

c o m p l i c a t e t h e case , and then re la t ionships be tween m e m b e r s of t h e s e

groups ( s e e R o m e o a n d Ju l i e t ) may b e judged a s t r eache rous a s re la t ion-

ships w i th t h e e n e m y in war t ime . An a rche typa l f igure for t h i s is Medea,

who be t r ayed he r " f a the r and fa ther land" o u t of love for Jason, but who

f rom t h e beginning i s hersel f t h rea t ened wi th bet rayal . F o r Jason s h e i s

only t h e in s t rumen t by which h e c a n ob ta in t h e Golden Fleece . And,

par t icular ly in Gri l lparzer ' s version, t h e r eac t ion of t h e be t r ayed , her

f a t h e r A ie t e s , exempl i f i e s t h e t r a i t o r problemat ic :

Du has t mich hetrogen, ve r r a t en . Bleib ! Nicht rnehr h e t r e t e n sol ls t du mein Haus. Ausgestossen sollst du se in w i e d a s T ie r in d e r Wildnis, Sollst in d e r F r e m d e s t e rben , ver lassen, allein. Folg ihm, d e m Ruhlen, nach in s e ine He ima t , Te i l e se in Be t t , se in Irrsal, s e ine Schmach, Leb im f r emden Land, e i n e F remde , Verspot te t , v e r a c h t e t , verhijhnt, ver lacht ; E r se lbs t , f u r den du hingibst V a t e r und Vaterland, Wird dich ve rach ten , wird dich ve r spo t t en , ... l 7

A i e t e s r e j e c t s Medea 's a t t e m p t a t conci l ia t ion be tween himself and Jason;

h e i s ca t egor i ca l , only a c l ea r - cu t c h o i c e is possible, e i t h e r w i th him o r

agains t him ("qui non e s t mecum c o n t r a m e est"). H e expe l s Medea a s

a t r a i t o r and prophesies t h a t s h e will b e be t r ayed in he r turn, t h a t s h e

will l ive a s a n e t e r n a l s t r a n g e r in a fore ign coun t ry , t hus th rea t en ing h e r

wi th t h e loss of roo t s and iden t i t y - t h e usual s i t ua t ion of t h e t r a i t o r , who

by his o r h e r a c t c e a s e s t o belong t o a g roup and b e c o m e s a hybrid.

In t h e las t hundred y e a r s ideologies h a v e evolved ve ry f a s t , especia l ly

t hose of communism, nat ional ism, a n d racism. Correspondingly, in t h e

typology and terminology of t r ea son n e w spec ie s h a v e joined t h e s t anda rd

ones. Communism coined t h e t e r m ob jec t ive t r ea son fo r any fo rm of

political devia t ion f rom t h e dominan t system.18 Nat ional Socia l ism,

bes ides adap t ing inhe r i t ed t e r m s l i ke Volksverra t ( r e s t r i c t i ng i t t o t h e

r ac i a l issues) and H e i m a t v e r r a t ( r e s t r i c t i ng i t t o a r e a s w i th e thn ic , i.e.

Ge rman minorities), c r e a t e d neologisms l ike Rasseve r ra t ( a l r eady dis-

cussed)19 and even Kulturverrat. In the wider semantic field of treason

one notes a swarm of such expressions for the treacherous act and the

traitor: f i f th column, collaboration, Dolchstoss, bochisme, emboch6

(germanophile), colkborateur, quisling, ddfaitiste, pacifiste, cosmopolite,

vaterlandslose Gesellen, Nestbeschmutzer; for women having 'treacherous'

love-relationships with the occupying enemy: ~ussenliebchen,~' Amihure,

or with the 'racial enemy': Judenhure. 2 1

The terms and their applications have multiplied, but the nucleus of

treason is the same - and Medea st i l l has progeny. One of her daughters

is called Olga, the heroine of Die Walsche, a novel by the contemporary

South Tyrolian author Joseph Zoderer. Already while discussing the com-

ponents of treason we noticed the importance o f the geographical and

temporal factors which form, in the words of Boveri, the "landscape of

treason". The South Tyrol (similar to regions l ike Alsace and even, in

some respects, Northern Ireland) has proved ferti le ground from this point

of view, and an extremely interesting object of study in the present con-

text: i t is a frontier area with a pluriethnic, plurilingual population, a

land of continual political and social tensions.

The present situation in the South Tyrol was principally brought about

by the decision of Italy's Fascist regime to favour the immigration of

Italian workers and civ i l servants into the region (which Austria had been

forced to cede to Italy after the First World War). This led to an

alteration of the social, political and economic balance; in i ts wake, place

names were changed, and the use of German was forbidden in schools and

in public life. However, after the Second World War and especially after

the Statute of 1972, which granted administrative and cultural autonomy

including plurilingualism, the German ethnic group re-acquired more

importance and power. In fact, the Statute reduced the Italian group,

which had become the majority, into a minority inside the autonomous

province of BozenIBolzano. The experiences during the Fascist era had

hardened the position of the German ethnic group, driving i t into defending

the social, cultural and linguistic character of i ts Heimat (homeland) with

nearly hysterical, paranoiac frontline symptoms. The erection of all kinds

of barriers and restrictions has been described by parts of the Italian group

as a policy of apartheid, while for a large proportion of the German group

every attempt at stepping across the boundaries from the inside, even the

mere use of the other language, constitutes a betrayal of the Heimat or

the Voikstum (the ethnic group, the German essence), because i t entails

jeopardising the ethnic identity. 22

Such is t h e background, the 'landscape' of Zoderer's novel. The

dialect term Walsche (standard German: Welsche) with which German

South Tyrolians designate t h e Italians, the 'interior enemy', is applied t o

Olga, a village schoolmaster's daughter, because a t school she was the

only pupil t o do the Italian homework and was therefore deemed guilty of

an a c t of collaboration with the enemy. Later on she leaves the village

with her mother t o live in a big town and en te rs into a relationship with

Silvano, an Italian from t h e South. We see her trying t o integrate herself

into the Italian ethnic group, struggling not only with linguistic hut also

psychological difficulties. Her position between the two languages and

cultures c rea tes a feeling of insecurity and alienation in Olga (p.15). She

feels a stranger in her new milieu (not through any fault of the Italians,

however, who accept her willingly), and her new, hybrid mentality precludes

a 'homecoming', which is impossible anyway, because her original group

has expelled her a s a traitor, now regarded a s a W- a foreigner, an

enemy; and her private a c t acquires a public dimension - not so much a s

' t reason of t h e race' ( that factor is not emphasised) than a s damage t o

the group because her desertion diminishes i t s numbers.

"Die Heimat ist in Gefahr" ( the homeland is in danger) functions a s

a leitmotif, a s d o some verses of the song "Und kommt der Feind ins Land

hinein - Uns 1st das Land, hal tet ihm die Treue", which near the beginning

(pp.22-23) and the end of t h e novel (pp.118-19) symbolize and comment on

Olga's 'treason', her ac t of disloyalty in a situation of peril, when an

intermediate, conciliatory a t t i tude is not considered possible. Zoderer

cr i t icizes this way of thinking, which reflects t h e logic of the majority in

t h e German ethnic group (and the South Tyrolian mass media) by creat ing

the courageous and humane figure of Olga, who almost transforms the

pejorative expression Walsche into a badge of honour.

Olga's 'treason' has, however, been deemed less serious than that of

her creator Zoderer, who has been reviled by parts of the South Tyrolian

public and i t s mass media. He is being presented as the real t rai tor of

the ethnic group, because by realistically and critically depicting (though

perhaps with some poetic exaggeration) t h e small community of a South

Tyrolian village h e offended his own compatriots and moreover appeared

t o them t o have befouled his own nest; secondly, because h e did not

describe as shameful the relationship o f the 'German' g i r l wi th the

'Italian' enemy; finally, because he tried to mediate between the two

groups.

Zoderer is of course not the only intellectual to have been accused

of treason in our times, especially during and immediately after the two

World Wars. In the various countries there occurred several types of

treason by intellectuals. That which may be called The Treason o f the

clerksz3 shall, for the present, complete our survey,24 with Romain

Rolland and the brothers Mann serving as examples. With his Rildungs-

roman entitled Jean Chr is to~he Rolland had, in a period dominated by hate

between the French and the German nations, tr ied to stimulate mutual

understanding by underlining the complementary character of the two

cultures. In peacetime this attempt at mediation had been acceptable, but

after the outbreak of the First World War the view that enemies are in

reality brothers, that the true fatherland is humanity, and the appeal to

ignore frontiers became obnoxious. During the War the very concept of

pacifism was seen as defeatism, as treason of the collective in France -

and as suspect even on the other side (see Thomas Mann). I t was not

possible t o stay Au-dessus de la m&l;e, the position Rolland took in his

collection of essays published in 1915. Once more the att i tude of "qui non

est mecum contra me est" prevailed.

In his novel Cl6rambault (1917) Rolland, building on his own experi-

ences, treats the theme o f the intellectual seen as a traitor by the public

in his own country. It is the story o f a writer who tries to stop the war

machine and is ki l led by a nationalist fanatic. Faced with a conflict

between his personal conviction o f human solidarity and the abstract

concept of questioning o f which is inadmis~ible, '~ the 'clerk' has

to choose: either he betrays humanity - "et vous la trahissez, si vous

vous trahissez" (p.3) - or he commits the 'crime de he -pa t r i e1 (p.173).

Like Rolland himself, his hero prefers to be a traitor to the patrie in the

narrow sense given to i t by nationalistic ideology, because he is committed

to a different concept:

... les frkres sont shpar6s des frkres, et parquds avec des Btrangers. Chaque Etat englobe des races diffdrentes, qui ne sont nullement faites pour penser et agir ensemble; chacune des familles ou des belles familles qu'on appelle des patries, enveloppe des esprits qui, en fait, appartiennent h des familles diffhrentes, actuelles, passGes, ou a venir. Ne pouvant les absorber, elle les opprime; ils nldchappent a la

des t ruc t ion q u e p a r d e s sub te r fuges I. . . ] Leur r ep roche r d '&tre insoumis 5 l a pa t r i e , c ' e s t r ep roche r aux Irlandais, aux Polonais, d'e'chapper k~ I 'englout issement p a r I 'Angleterre ou p a r la Prusse. Ici e t 18, ces hommes r e s t e n t f idkles k la v ra i e Pa t r i e . (p.139)

This a u t h e n t i c f a the r l and i s t h e "R6publique disperske d e s libres i m e s du

monde entier". Rolland percept ively descr ibes t h e political and his tor ical

processes which c r e a t e t h e p remises fo r t reason, t h e conf l i c t s which may

cons t r a in t h e individual o r whole groups t o b e c o m e t ra i tors .

In his a r t i c l e "Les idoles" (1914) Rol land a t t a c k e d Thomas Mann for

being a suppor t e r of t h e w a r (be t r ay ing t h e principles of humanity). O n

his side, Mann, par t icular ly in Be t r ach tungen e i n e s Unpolitischen (1918),

p re sen ted t h e w a r a s a con f l i c t be tween Kul tur (symbolized hy Germany)

and Zivilisation (symbolized by France) . And h e impugned Rolland's good

fa i th , coupl ing him wi th his own b ro the r Heinrich, t h e Zivi l i sa t ionsl i tera t

pa r excel lence,26 while Heinr ich Mann d i r ec t ly a s well a s indirect ly

accused his b ro the r T h o m a s of having, fo r vile mo t ives (personal g lory a s

a nat ional l i t e r a ry figure), b e c o m e a s l a v e of t h e backward r eg ime

dominat ing ~ e r r n a n y . ~ ~ This ideological Rruderkr ieg (Betrachtungen, p.186)

con f i rms t h a t t h e c lose r t h e re la t ionship b e t w e e n be t r aye r and betrayed,

t h e m o r e deeply t r ea son is f e l t a n d reprehended by t h e l a t t e r , whi le a

fore igner o r e v e n a n enemy, including a n in ternal enemy , i s not normal ly

considered a t ra i tor .

Thus t h e b ro the r s Mann a c c u s e o n e a n o t h e r of treason. Thomas

r e j e c t s t h e charge, f lung a t him by Heinrich, of having renounced his own

inte l lec tual , moral, independent consc i ence in exchange fo r r ewards f rom

t h e ruling c l a s ses (p.13); and coun te r - a t t ack ing , h e c o m e s c lose r t o t h e

t radi t ional s e m a n t i c and concep tua l field of t reason, e v e n though - m a s t e r

of polemical language t h a t h e i s - h e a d d s seve ra l new nuances. H e

a r g u e s t h a t t r ea son aga ins t t h e f a the r l and a s c o m m i t t e d by Heinrich

(unnational, p.50) a l r eady man i fe s t s i t se l f in h is u se of t h e language. 28

Moreover, perceiving a r i f t be tween t h e pacif is t , republ ican rhetores-

bourgeois and sons of t h e Revolut ion (p.24) and t h e honest gen t l eman-

enemy, t h e off ic ia l t radi t ional F rance , Thomas a rgues tha t , a s Heinrich

ident i f ies wi th t h e socia l is t F rench opposition, h is t r ea son i s t h e m o r e

heinous fo r a t t e m p t i n g t o change t h e political o r d e r of a coun t ry f rom

without.

Overall, Thomas Mann's concept in the Betrachtungen is that every

act o f abandoning (even for humanitarian reasons) one's hereditary family,

national, ideological status, especially in times o f conflict, and accepting

the status of an 'enemy', or making the attempt to mediate between one's

own group and the enemy, constitutes treason. And, f irmly convinced that

there can be no justification for treason o f the fatherland (the nation) and

i ts institutions, he closes his argument by quoting Wieland's words about

having every real German patriot, friend o f the people and [true] cosmo-

politan on his side:

... dass ich hierin jeden achten deutschen Patrioten, Volksfreund und Weltburger auf meiner Seite habe und behalten werde. (p.580)

Later on, when the National Socialist flood began to shake all security and

values, Thomas Mann "betrayed", or rather revised his position o f the

Betrachtungen. - We are le f t to ask: is treason really a question of the

times?

1. E.g. Elisabeth Frenzel, Motive der Weltliteratur (4th edn, Stuttgart; Kroner, 19761, s.v. "Verrater", "Der herkunftsbedingte Liebeskonflikt", die heimliche Liebesbeziehung"; and Frenzel, Stoffe der Weltliteratur (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1970), S.V. "Caesar", "Judas Ischariot", "Medea", etc. Margaret Poveri, Der Verrat i m zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 19761, offers a panorama of polit ical and cultural treason with special reference to intellectual treason (Hamsun. Pound, etc.). Hans Magnus Enzensberger has attempted a more sociological approach in "Zur Theorie des Verrats" (1964, in Polit ik und Verbrechen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1978), pp.361-97. Jean-Paul Sartre treats the treason complex from a philosophical standpoint in "Qu'est-ce qu'un collaborateur?" in Situations I11 (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), pp.43-61 and in "Des rats et des hommes", - originally the introduction to Andre Gorz's autobiographical novel Le Traitre (Paris: Seuil, 1958), repr. in Situations IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 6 x pp.38-81. For aspects o f the subject (esp. high treason) treated from a juridical point o f view see Mario Sbriccoli, Crimen Laesae Maiestatis (Milan: Giuffr'e, 1974), see esp. Ch.111 "L'ossessione del tradimento", pp.149-72. A psychoanalytic study of treason was presented by Enrico Pozzi in a paper (not yet publ.) at a conference on "The Lie" held in May 1987 at Gargonza, Italy.

2. Fernand Baldensperger and Werner P. Friederich, Bibl io~raphy of Comparative Literature (1950), repr. New York, 1960.

3. Cf. Duden, Herkunftswijrterbuch (Mannheim, 19631, S.V. "Verraten"; also Boveri (n. I), p. 15.

4. The spy; but often the t ra i tor in such cases is the v ict im of professional 'seducers' working for the more or less of f ic ia l intelligence agencies, cf. Enzensberger (n.l), pp.380-82. Governments accept the traitor i f he is a spy as a necessity, but are afraid of open treason in the form of abandoning, mainly because i t cannot be devalued as perfidy.

5. See e.g. lngeborg Bachmann, Das dreiss igste Jahr , in W*, Vol.11, ed. Chris t ine Koschel and lnge von Weidenbaum (Munich: Piper, 19781, p. 119.

6. Elias Cane t t i , Masse und Macht (19601, transl. a s Crowds and Power by Carol S tewar t (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 198 1 ), p. 17.

7. See DDR Handbuch, publ. by Bundesministerium fiir innerdeutsche Angelegenheiten (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1975), S.V. "Republik- flucht".

8. Cf. Enzensberger (n.11, p.374: "high t reason is nothing but the juri- dical n a m e for revolution" (here a s l a t e r on, unassigned translations a r e my own).

9. Enzensberger (n. I), pp.37 1-73.

10. Boveri (n.11, p.9: "The J e w who under Hit ler had t o b e ex te rmina ted I...] they a r e all 'potent ia l ' t r a i to r s of a value made absolute".

11. Quoted from Die Biicherverbrennung: Zum 10. Mai 1933, ed. G. Sauder (Munich: Hanser, 1983), p.93 - "4. Our most dangerous adversary is t h e Jew, and t h e o n e who is enslaved by him.15. ~ h & J e w c a n think only in a Jewish way. If h e wr i t e s German, h e is lying. The German who wri tes German but thinks in an un-German way is a t ra i tor! [...I 7. We will respect the J e w a s a foreigner, ...". 12. Cf. Enzensberger (11.11, pp.367-68.

13. Enzensberger (n. I), p.363.

14. See Frenzel, Stoffe (n.1). S.V. "Judas Ischariot"; in Mario Brelich's novel L'Opera del t r ad imento (19751, Poe 's Dupin is cal led in t o solve t h e ' J u d a s Case ' ; i t emerges tha t Judas is not guilty, but sacr i f iced t o higher in te res t s without a chance of salvation; and Jesus begs him for forgiveness.

15. F. W. Maitland and F. Pollock, T h e History of English Law before t h e T i m e of Edward I (Cambridge, 1895), p.503; cf . a lso Sbricolli (n.l.1, p.171.

16. S e e Frenzel, Motive (n.l), pp468-85, discussing this type of t reachery within t h e complex of "love-confllct conditioned by origins".

17. Franz Grillparzer, Die Argonauten, A c t 111; quoted from W-, ed. F. Schreyvogel (Salzburg: Bergland, n.d.), Vol.11, p.240.

18. Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, Humanisme e t t e r reur (Paris: Gallimard, 19471, p.36, where P ie r re Unik c i t e s t h e formula of Saint-Just.

19. When, by contrast , Lecon te d e Lisle speaks of " t r a i t r e a s a race" in "Le Massacre d e Mona'' (Pokmes barbares), 1.417, he means " t ra i tor t o his people".

20. See e.g. Loni's f a t e in Heinrich Boll, Gruppenbild mit D a m e (1971).

21. Cf. Bertol t Brecht , "Die Ballade von d e r Judenhure Marie Sanders" in Kalendergeschichten (Berlin: Weiss, 1949); he re and elsewhere (e.g. "Die zwei Sohne" and "Lied vom Fraternis ieren" in Mut te r Courage) Brecht inci tes people t o commi t t reason in t h e name of humanity, guided by a real is t ic and mater ia l is t ic view of t h e t reason problem.

22. See J. Kramer, Deutsch und Italienisch in S id t i ro l (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981), p.116; in his novel Das Gliick beim Handewaschen

(Frankfurt, 19841, Zoderer has the hero's father say that the homeland o f the South Tyrolian is the German language (p.111). Mario Wandruzka. "Plurilingismo europeo" in L 'Un i t i d'Europa: A t t i del XV Converno Inter- nazionale dei Studi Italo-Tedeschi (Merano, 19781, p.215, quotes an analogous utterance from a leader of the Breton autonomy movement, also equating homeland and language. Another variant o f cultural-linguistic treason surfaces in J. E. Schlegel's preface to his translation o f a comedy by Destouches where he notes that translators tend nearly to be looked at as traitors to their fatherland and enemies o f Germany's glory, cf. Meister der deutschen Kr i t i k 1: 1730-1830, ed. G. P. Hering (Munich: dtu, 1961). p.45.

23. Julien Benda, La trahison des clercs (Paris, 1927). Benda's interest- ing theses concerning the relationship o f intellectuals and politics are not without internal contradictions.

24. The whole complex of collaboration and i ts reflections in l i terature st i l l demands closer analysis, especially in a comparative perspective.

25. Rolland, Clkrambault: Histoire d'une conscience libre pendant la guerre (Paris: Michel, [1920]), p. 155.

26. Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, repr. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1956; cf. pp. 154- 179 against Rolland, pp. 179-213 against Heinrich.

27. Heinrich Mann, Geist und Tat (19311, repr. Munich: dtv, 1963; cf. esp. the essays "Zola" and "Ceist und Tat". For a discussion o f the culture/civilisation debate see Andre Banuls, "Die Rruder-Problematik in Thomas Manns Fiorenza und im Essay iiber den Kiinstler and Literaten" in

hantastisch zwecklos? Essays iiber Literatur (WLirzburg: Konigshausen (L ieumann, 19861, pp. 146-42.

28. Betrachtungen (n.261, p.51; - "He not only thinks in French syntax and grammar, he thinks in French terms, French antitheses, French conflicts, French affairs and scandals. The war, in which we are engaged, seems to him, wholly in line wi th entente thinking, a struggle between 'Power and Spirit'."

VARIATIONS ON THE MYTH OF THE MAGUS'

Gydrgy E. Sziinyi (Univers i ty of Szeged)

I

T h e Magus (or, a s s o m e might ca l l him, t h e Magician) i s en t e r ing his

laboratory . His r e t o r t s a r e full of boiling-bubbling liquids; h i s mind is on

t h e boil too, nursing d reams , noble o r m a d ambi t ions of omniscience, omni-

potence, e t e r n a l life, t h e abi l i ty t o c r e a t e gold o r syn the t i c l i f e - t h e

f amous homunculus. A s t h e G r e a t Work c o m e s t o a hal t , s o m e super-

nal help i s needed. T h e Magus now tu rns t o God, praying fo r m o r e

s t r eng th , or, resor t ing t o il l icit ass is tance, ca l l s on Satan. O f t e n h e i s

con f ron ted wi th o t h e r men, f r iends o r adversar ies , d i l e t t a n t e an t iqua r i ans

o r g reedy princes, who look t o him wi th expec ta t ion o r awe , who t ry t o

s t o p him o r u rge him t o fu r the r e f f o r t s - bu t ce r t a in ly canno t follow him

on his dange rous p a t h towards t h e unknown, t h e forbidden ... Almost

invariably t h e end i s failure. T h e Magus is punished for h is a r rogan t se l f -

conce i t , o r t h e Opus Magnum is d is turbed by in t ruding bo res - t h e r e t o r t

blows up o r t h e adep t c a n n o t endure t h e p re sence of t h e Devil - until

finally t h e a d e p t is paradigmat ical ly killed among t h e f l ames of h is

laboratory .

Th i s n a r r a t i v e p a t t e r n has roo t s a s old a s l i t e r a tu re ; t h e a rche typa l

magician-s tory gained cosmic s ignif icance in t h e Renaissance, and has been

popular e v e r since. Is t h i s a p a t t e r n t aken f rom life, o r mere ly f rom t h e

pressure of l i t e r a ry convent ions , t h e demands of t h e reading public? Does

i t follow t h e logic o f s c i en t i f i c invest igat ion, mixing expe r imen ta t ion wi th

t h e supe rna tu ra l ? Is t h i s all a l legory and parable , o r does i t h a v e a m o r e

d i r e c t re levance? O n e might f ee l su rp r i s e t h a t t h i s l i t e r a ry f r amework has

e v e n passed in to twen t i e th -cen tu ry f ic t ion, v i r tual ly unshaken by t h e

deve lopmen t o f na tu ra l s c i ences and t h e disqual i f ica t ion of mag ic a s a

s c i en t i f i c discipline. O r should w e r a t h e r see th i s l i t e r a ry phenomenon a s

a reac t ion agains t t h e se l f -assuredness of t h e na tu ra l sc iences? Is t h e r e

any way of reconci l ing t h e ra t ional-sc ient i f ic way of thinking and t h e

magical -occul t world view?

This quest ion and many m o r e m a y bo the r t h e r eade r who f inds him-

self in t h e w e b of modern f ic t ion focusing on t h e t h e m e of t h e magus,

such a s Thomas Mann's Doc to r Faustus , Margue r i t e Yourcenar ' s T h e Abyss,

Rober tson Davies's What ' s Bred in t h e Bone, o r Antal Szerb 's T h e Pen-

dragon Legend. Looking at these 'novels o f esoterica' we can clearly see

the fascination o f modern writers wi th the culture and world picture o f

the Renaissance, even i f they place their f ict ion in a contemporary

setting. Due to the fascination wi th the sixteenth century these magus

figures paradigmatically seem to be variations on the character o f the

historical-legendary Faust, perhaps the most famous black magician, o r his

contemporary, the white magus-scientist Paracelsus. I t is the reincarnation

of the Paracelsian type o f magus in modern l i terature that concerns my

essay. A complementary aspect wi l l be the study of the intellectual

undercurrents which are responsible for the recurrence o f this archetype,

thus hoping to get nearer to understand the nature o f esoteric discourse.

11

Trying to map the place o f magic in the complex o f human culture, E. M.

Butler said that she did not want to define i t in any restrictive way such

as "'pseudo-science', or 'pretend art', o r 'debased religionu'.* By treating

magic as a self-contained discipline she did choose a good approach and

at the same t ime pinpointed the areas in relation to which magic should

be treated in i ts fu l l complexity. One may usefully follow her typology

and move from science to religion, f inally to reach the domain of litera-

ture.

Since the scientific revolution science has traditionally been ignoring

magic as something outdated and nonsensical. Even i f art, including

modern fiction, reconsidering the problem, has tried to express some

doubts about the validity o f this verdict, the existence o f the duality o f

the two modes o f thinking - scientific and esoteric-magical - has never

been questioned since the seventeenth century. I t was especially the

contrary movements of Romanticism and Positivism around the middle of

the last century that emphasized a fatal antagonism. The scientists

interpreted the esoteric att i tude as a kind o f primitive phase in the

development of mankind, which, in the course o f intellectual progress,

necessarily had to give way to logical thinking and the experimental

sciences. The adepts of the spiritual sciences, on the other hand, excluded

discursive logic and historical thinking from their field. Let us compare,

for example, two opposed early nineteenth-century statements:

The improvements that have been effected in natural philosophy have by degrees convinced the enlightened part of mankind that the material

universe is eve rywhere subject t o laws, fixed in their weight, measure, and durat ion, capab le of t h e most e x a c t calculat ion, and which in no c a s e admi t of var ia t ion and exception. Reside this, mind, a s well a s m a t t e r , i s subject t o fixed laws; and thus eve ry phenomenon and occur rence around us is rendered a top ic fo r t h e speculat ion of sagaci ty and foresight. Such i s t h e c r e e d which sc i ence has universally prescribed t o t h e judicious and ref lect ing among us.

It was o the rwise in t h e infancy and less m a t u r e s t a t e of human knowledge. T h e chain of causes and consequences was y e t unrecognized; and e v e n t s perpetual ly occurred, fo r which no sagaci ty tha t was then in being was able t o assign a n original. Hence men fe l t themselves habitually disposed t o r e f e r many of t h e appea rances with which they were conversant t o t h e agency of invisible intelligence^.^

At about t h e s a m e t i m e a s William Godwin's proclamat ion of sc ient ism,

Mary Atwood was a l ready working on her e so te r i c philosophy, which was

finally anonymously published in 1850. Due t o a religious revelat ion and

a moral panic, s h e l a t e r considered he r book t o o dangerous fo r t h e general

public and took g r e a t pains t o suppress t h e edition. T h e t e x t has for-

tunately survived and provides u s with valuable insight in to t h s t :node of

thinking which s e e m s t o have changed so remarkably l i t t l e f rom Hermes

Trismegis tus through Paracelsus , J akob Boehme, and Swedenborg t o herself,

Rudolf Ste iner , Madame Rlavatsky, and indeed t o many of ou r own con-

temporar ies . Speaking about a lchemy, Atwood as se r t s i t s real i ty a s

follows:

Rut many things have in l ike manner been considered impossible which increasing knowledge has proved t r u e ...

This may sound near ly sc i en t i f i c but t h e second pa r t of t h e sen tence

touches upon t h e t h e m e which i s corilmon in all e so te r i c thinking:

... and o t h e r s which still t o common sense appear f ic t i t ious were believed in fo rmer t imes, when fa i th was more enl ightened and t h e sphe re of vision open t o surpassing e f fec t s . Daily observat ion even now warns us against s e t t ing l imi t s t o na tu re I...]

T h e philosophy of modern t imes, more especial ly t h a t of t h e present day, consis ts in expe r imen t and such scient i f ic r e sea rches a s may tend t o amel io ra t e o u r social condition, o r b e o the rwise useful in contr ibut ing t o t h e e a s e and indulgences of life; whereas in t h e original accep ta t ion , philosophy had q u i t e ano the r sense: i t signified t h e Love of w i s d o m 4

Relying on this principle, s h e did not see much use in employing a system-

a t i c his tor ical approach when s tudying and explaining t h e H e r m e t i c philos-

ophy. Her s tandpoint i s remarkable , and, considering t h e con tex t of

positivism, hardly reprehensible:

Nothing, perhaps, is less worthy or more calculated to distract the mind from points o f real importance than this very question of temporal origin, which, when we have taken all pains to satisfy and remember, leaves us no wiser in reality than we were before. (p.3)

The more the positivist enthusiasts of the scientific and industrial

revolutions asserted the notion of linear progress and heralded man's

victory over nature, the more the adepts and mystics became imbued with

the search for forgotten, hermetic knowledge. In l i terature we find the

followers of both camps. The writers o f Naturalism considered themselves

the custodians of the legacy of the Enlightenment, so they sided with the

scientists; on the other hand the symbolist poets rejected the primacy of

pure reason and looked for more mystical ways of knowledge. W. 0. Yeats

is just one example of many. The symbolist theories o f language,

expression, o11d poetic inspiration are very much in line with philosophical

mysticism, amplified by the general mood and taste of the f in de sikcle.

A growing cult of the obscure, the exciting, the i l l icit, and the unknown

as well as the rejection of academism by the decadents and the exponents

o f Ar t Nouveau likewise contributed equally to this interest.

The most notorious l i terary reflection of the occult revival was

Huysmans' LB-bas ( IR~I) ,~ in which a tale o f nineteenth-century Satanists

is interwoven with a l i fe of the medieval Satanist Gilles de Rais. The

main characters o f the novel - Durtal, the biographer of de Rais, Des

Hermies, a psychiatrist well versed in homeopathy and occult lore, the

learned astrologer Gkvingey, and the pious bell-ringer - are all hermit-like

figures who separate themselves from the stream of modern l i fe and take

pleasure i n the cult o f the Middle Ages. Durtal's inclination for things

mystical and i l l i c i t is kindled by a strange woman, Mme Chantelouve, who

by day is an unsatisfied bourgeoise but at night becomes a succubus and

a participant in the Black Mass celebrated by the diabolic Canon Docre.

When finally Durtal gains access to the Satanic Mass himself, he finds i t

disappointing and disgusting, very l i t t le mystical, but al l the more charac-

terized by erotomaniacs. This experience leads him toward a new

evaluation of faith which prefigures Huysmans' famous reconciliation wit:]

Catholicism: "Faith is the breakwater o f the soul, affording the only

haven in which dismasted man can glide along in peace" (p.279).

Especially significant for our present concern is the them? o f the

controversial relationship of the occult and the rationalistic sciences, as

manifes ted by Durtal 's and D e s Hermies ' mis t rust of the i r period's positiv-

i s t i c scientism.

What c a n h e believed and what c a n be proved? T h e mater ia l is ts have t aken t h e t rouble t o revise t h e accoun t s of t h e sorcery t r ia ls of old. They have found in t h e possession-cases t h e symptoms of major hyster ia I...] t h e r e remains this unanswerable question: is a woman posjessed because s h e i s hyster ical , o r i s s h e hyster ical hecause s h e i s possessed? Only t h e Church c a n answer. Science cannot . (3.141)

But if s c i ence is weak and unable t o see through appea rance t o t h e very

e s sence of things, t h e H e r m e t i c lore i s imperfect , too. This is what

Gevingey has t o say on spiritism, t h e sensat ion of t h e fin d e si8cle:

... proceeding a t random without sc ience, i t has ag i t a t ed good and bad spir i ts together . In Spir i t i sm you will find a jumble of everything. It i s t h e hash of mystery, if I may b e pe rmi t t ed t h e expression (p.132).

This vacillation be tween a t t r a c t i o n and mist rust t owards both sc i ence

and t h e occul t i s a very cha rac te r i s t i c f e a t u r e of th is 'neo-esoterism' in

l i tera ture: t h e a t t i t u d e has c r e a t e d c h a r a c t e r s such a s t h e madman

haunted by alchemical-esoter ic d reams of t h e Middle Ages and t h e Renais-

sance, who descends t o t h e most dubious pract ices; and t h e scept ical

historian who i s sympa the t i c towards Hermet ic ism hut does not bel ieve

tha t t h e c o n t a c t s wi th t h e supernatural s t i l l have much validity. H e i s

t hen usually confronted with shocking phenomena t h a t cannot b s explained

on t h e basis of discurs ive logic o r expe r imen ta l science. By t h e end of

these novels t h e s u p e r n a t ~ l r a l a lways man i fes t s itself in one way o r

another , hut t h e r e is a lways s o m e m o d e of irony employed by t h e novel-

ists, c r ea t ing uncer ta inty a s t o whe the r t h e inevi table magical a c t s

descr ibed a r e t o be t aken realistically, o r a s t h e product of m e r e men ta l

processes, o r indeed a s a l i terary device , a form of a l legory o r parable.

Somerse t Maugham's ea r ly novel T h e Magician ( 1 9 0 8 ) ~ i s a go>d

example of th is pa t t e rn . It was inevitably inspired by L i -bas a s well a s

by t h e c h a r a c t e r and notor ie ty of Ale i s t e r Crowley, known t o t h e English

press a s " the Wickedest Man in t h e World". T h e main c h a r a c t e r s of t h e

book a r e Ar thur Burdon, a pract ical -minded surgeon, absolutely scep t i ca l

about t h e occult. Margaret Dauncey, his f iancee, is a n innocent, beaut i ful

girl. The re i s Susie Boyd, Margaret ' s room-mate , less a t t r a c t i v e but

sensi t ive and intelligent. D r PorhoEt i s a real s tock cha rac te r , a doc to r

who t akes s o m e historical i n t e res t in t lermet ic ism, who has lived in t h e

East and seen many a strange thing, even published a book on Paracelsus.

And there is the magician, Oliver Haddo, an English magnate, totally

imbued with magical practices, a strange mixture of charlatan and adept.

His goal is to produce a homunculus, and his purposes are vile. Maugham's

novel is well-constructed and elegantly written, but rather shallow, lacking

any original insight into the problems o f mysticism and esoteric knowledge.

I t is st i l l interesting as a document o f a continuing l i terary topos and a

vogue so strongly infi l trati. ig the early modernist movements.

Arthur's scepticism is strongly emphasized at the beginning of the

story, i n order to contrast with his later encounters wi th the supernatural;

i t is also necessary t o create tension between him and Haddo, as this

confl ict brings about the catastrophe o f the book: out of revenge, Oliver

bewitches Margaret, ieduces, then marries her, only to ruin Arthur's l i fe

and use the unfortunate woman for his experiments. D r Porhoet is the

mouthpiece of those obligatory vacillating opinions which wil l not deny the

reality of occult forces, but at the same time cannot take them entirely

seriously. He always approaches the subject from the superior standpoint

of the historian who is outside the range o f phenomena, who always knows

the end of the story (cf. p.56). The most powerful character is undoubt-

edly Oliver Haddo. He makes no concession to modern science, and his

ambitions recall that other great sinner, Goethe's Faust, his seduced

vict im likewise called Margaret. But Haddo's statements about the thirst

for power that consumes the magician remind one even more of the crude

and inf in i te passions of Marlowe's characters, Doctor Faustus and Tambur-

laine:

And what else is that men seek in l i fe but power? I f they want money, i t is but for the power that attends it, and i t is powsr again that they strive for in all the knowledge they acquire. Fools and sots aim at happiness, but men aim only at power. The magus, the sorcerer, the alchemist, are seized with fascination of the unknown: and they desire a greatness that is inaccessible to mankind. (p.76)

The case o f Oliver Haddo introduces a new element to the typology

o f the Magus. While Huysmans drew a parallel between the modern black

magicians and a medieval Satanist, Haddo is 3n the one hand contrasted

with Faustus who represents the black magician, on the other with

Paracelsus, who apparently never got under evil domination and whose aims

were always pious. D r Porhoet vaguely makes this distinction, although

t h e general dr i f t of his opinion ra the r converges with tha t of t h e moraliz-

ing Chorus in b4arlowe1s Doctor Faustus:

It was a s t r ange d ream tha t these wizards cherished. I...) Above all, they sought t o become g r e a t e r than t h e common run of men and t o wield t h e power of t h e gods. They hesi ta ted a t n o t i i i n ~ t o gain their ends But Nature with diff icul ty allows he r sec re t s t o b e wrested from her. In vain they lit their furnaces, and in vain they studied their crabbed books, cal led up t h e dead, and conjured ghastly spirits. Their reward was disappointment and wretchedness, poverty, t h e scorn of men, tor ture , imprisonment, and shameful death. And yet , perhaps a f t e r all, t he re may b e some par t ic le of t ruth hidden away in these dark placer. (p.151)

All t h e e l ements surveyed so f a r a r e uniquely b l e ~ ~ d e d and presented

in an enter ta ining a s well a s a philosophic way in a Hungarian novel

which, despi te i t s translation in to English, has been undeservedly neglected

in t h e European l i terary scene. The wri ter , Antal Szerb, was an excel lent

l i terary historian, while his novels t r e a t e d t h e important intellactual

issues of his age, t h e period between t h e two World Wars. 7 T h e hero of Szerb's T h e Pendragon Legend (1934), JQnos BQtky, i s

a Hungarian scholar who, enjoying s o m e inheritance, se t t l e s down in London,

nea r t h e British Museum, and immerses himself in t h e most exci t ing (and

least apparent ly pract ical) subjects. Dr Bdtky is like Des Hermies and Dr

Porhoet, but h e is more lively. He has amusing and not a t all innocent

adventures with women and also likes t o g o t o evening parties. This is

how h e m e e t s t h e Earl of Gwynedd, who becomes t h e real hero of t h e

story. Their f i rs t meet ing is worth quoting a t length, s ince i t introduces

t h e main topics of t h e book a s well a s shows Szerb 's wry wit:

"At present I'm doing research on t h e English myst ics of t h e seven- t een th century."

"Are you, indeed?" t h e Earl exclaimed. "Then Lady Malmsbury-Croft has again miraculously blundered upon t h e truth. s h e always does. If she s e a t s two men side by s ide thinking tha t they were together a t Eton, you must be su re tha t one of them is German and t h e o the r a Japanese but both of them have special ized in Liberian stamps.''

"So a r e you interested in t h e s a m e subject?" "That is too s t rong an expression in this island of ours. You study

something - we only have hobbies. [...I Because, with us, mysticism somehow belongs t o family history. But tell me, Doctor [...I mysticism is r a the r a vague concept. A r e you interested in it a s a religious phenomenon?"

"Oh, no. I have hardly any feeling for that. I t a k e an interest in [...I t h e myster ious fantasies and operat ions by which in former t imes people wanted t o mas te r nature. T h e s e c r e t s of alchemists, of the

homunculus; the universal panacea, the effect o f minerals and amulets I...] Fludd's philosophy of nature by which he proved the existence o f God by means o f a barometer."

"Fludd?" the Earl looked up suddenly. "Fludd shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as all those fools. Fludd wrote a lot o f nonsense because he wanted to explain things that couldn't be explained at that time. But essentially, I mean about the very essence o f things, he knew much more than today's scientists, who are no longer able even to laugh at his theories. 1 don't know what your opinion is, but I feel that we know a great deal about the minute details o f nature today, whereas then people knew more about the whole. About the great interrelations which can't be weighed on scales and can't be cut neatly into slices l ike ham" (pp.9-11).

There are at least half a dozen layers in the novel, blended with

elegant craftsmanship: the Earl is working on some mysterious biological

experiments which are distinct reflections on the ambitions o f the

Paracelsians, to create an art i f ic ia l man, homunculus. I n the meantime

he is entangled with a crime story: his ex-fiancde and her associates t ry

to k i l l him in connection wi th an inheritance case. Bhtky is dropped in

the whirl of events which develop from everyday mystery to mystical

terror: i t turns out that the old Pendragon castle on the neighbouring hi l l

hides the tomb of Christian Rosencreutz, the legendary founder o f the

Rosicrucians. This Brother Rosencreutz - in the novel Asaph Pendragon,

a fifteenth-century Earl o f Gwynedd - according to the inscription on his

tomb, "POST ANNOS CXX PATERO", is expected to rise from his grave

in 120 years. The legend, well known from the early seventeenth-century

Rosicrucian manifestos, is retold by Szerb and transposed to Pendragon.

The founder o f the Brotherhood was Asaph, and, according to one o f the

subplots, in the eighteenth century another Earl, Bonaventure Pendragon,

made great efforts in the company of Lenglet de Fresnoy and the Count

St Germain to contact him and get from him the Secret of the Adepts.

The Rosicrucian Asaph Pendragon is finally awakened in the early

twentieth century and saves the l i fe o f the present Earl from the

murderers. But he also wants to accomplish the Great Work which has

come to a halt. As he feels abandoned by the heavens, according to the

obligatory pattern, he decides to turn to evil forces. He performs diabolic

magic and sacrifices to Satan the wicked ex-fiancde o f the Earl. In a

trance, B6tky witnesses the whole action, which concludes in a devastating

appearance of the Devil. A l l this drives the Rosicrucian ghost to final

desperation, and he kil ls himself. The last words o f the Earl feed back

t o t h e opening conversation between him and t h e Hungarian philosopher:

"They had been waiting for a ce r t a in moment," h e said. T h e t ime c a m e I...] just now when the re have been no Rosicrucians for a long t i m e and when their sec re t knowledge has been forgot ten by a world smiling a t them. T h e moment coincided with my ordeal. T h e midnight rider, t h e deathless dispenser of justice, has again saved t h e lives of his descendants. But t h e Grea t Work did not proceed. Only black magic, and t h e conjuring up of t h e Devil could help. And for tha t a sacr i f ice was needed. I...] I lef t t h e woman t o her fa te , which finally c a m e t o her. But t h e Grea t Work did not succeed I...] If everything happened a s you told me, t h e Devil had appeared t o him I...] But we don't know all that. We only know tha t h e died in despair. Come, Doctor Bbtky" (p.229).

What makes this novel really enjoyable is t h a t t h e reader will never dis-

cover whether t h e author is serious o r whether h e is just making a

literary-intellectual joke, a parody of t h e genre. Like t h e Chimische

Hochzeit of Johann Valentin Andreae, T h e Pendragon Legend leaves i t s

audience in t h e thrill , awe, and exc i t ement of uncertainty.

While t h e novels reviewed up t o this point emphasized t h e incompati-

bility of science and magic - usually a t t h e expense of t h e former, we

should also mention, however, tha t the re have been e f fo r t s t o bring

together t h e two, and not only in t h e sphere of literature. Around t h e

turn of t h e 20th century, t h e esoter ic philosopher and founder of anthro-

posophy, Rudolf Steiner , proposed his system of epistemology tha t assumes

a happy coexis tence of t h e two. He considered himself a s e e r and

claimed t o have gained immense knowledge by intuition and revelation, but

a t t h e s a m e t ime asser ted tha t t h e natural sciences represent a necessary

phase in t h e development of mankind and suggested tha t occul t knowledge

c a n b e gained by rational pract ices and scient i f ic excercises, too.8 How-

ever , it looks a s if h e did not succeed in bringing together magic and

science, his works ra the r point out t h e deepening gap between t h e two

modes of thinking. With this h e makes us ponder t h e meaning of t h e

d ramat ic dualism of t h e experimental-discursive and t h e intuitive-revelative

types of knowledge:

With our concepts we have moved out t o t h e surface, where we c a m e into con tac t with nature. We have achieved clarity, but along the way we have lost man. (p.11)

Although this dualism has been known from mankind's ear l ies t self-

consciousness, until t h e seventeenth cen tu ry science did not s ide irrevo-

cably wi th either option. For the people o f the Renaissance i t was st i l l

not a decision to deal wi th 'magic or science.' Since all science was

magic, and vice versa, it was rather the intention o f the magician-scientist

that constituted the real watershed, by distinguishing white and black

operations. Modern fiction seems to take this distinction as o f secondary

importance, and i t is rather the universalism and bold endeavouring spirit

o f those Renaissance enthusiasts that is st i l l so attractive for modern

writers. This is why authors l ike Yourcenar situate their plots in the

sixteenth century, and why the contemporary heroes resemble the famous

Magi: in Oliver Haddo we see Paracelsus reflected, while the Earl o f

Pendragon recalls Robert Fludd.

Let us return now to the question of white and black magic, because

this distinction is partly responsible for the extraordinary ef for t by which

two modern disciplines - cultural history and the history of science - have

taken the trouble to t ry to reintegrate magic into the realm of science.

The nineteenth-century historians did not bother with this distinction, as

we can observe in Godwin's already quoted work. He mostly speaks about

witchcraft, only to muddle hopelessly the Arabian Nights with Thomas

Aquinas, Luther with Faustus, and Agrippa with Urban Grandier and the

New England witches. Rut was he not right after all? Didhe not find the

same medley o f ideas in the works o f every occult tradition? In the first

decades o f the century, some historians o f premodern civilization, who

became disillusioned wi th Burckhardt's self-assured judgements about the

enlightened nature o f the Renaissance, suggested a definite 'no'.

People l ike Huizinga, Max Dvorak, and Aby Warburg pointed out the

great importance o f magic and mystical-esoterical systems in an age which

previously had been chosen as the ideal opposite o f the 'Superstitious, Dark

Ages'. Not much later Lynn Thorndike devoted eight volumes to demon-

strate how di f f icul t i t is to distinguish clearly between magic and the

experimental sciences t i l l the eighteenth century. These pioneers started

a long evolution o f cultural history: a neglected canon of texts - the

Hermetic writings - has been recovered, and a generation of great

Renaissance scholars such as A. J. ~estugisre, P. 0. Kristeller, E. Garin,

F. Secret, D. P. Walker and others have established the framework within

which to study the intriguing crosscurrents of Renaissance philosophical

thought.

I n this atmosphere, in the nineteen-sixties, Frances A. Yates boldly

proposed a thesis with the following paradigm: ( I ) the Hermetic texts o f

t h e 2nd and 3rd cen tu r i e s A.D. (which most modern cul tural h is tor ians had

neglected) o f fe red such a n ontology and a c rea t ion myth which fo r t h e

philosophers of t h e Renaissance could appea r a s an accep tab le a l t e rna t ive

t o the re levance of t h e Mosaic Adam. This Hermet i c man of the

"Pimander" has a lot in common with Adam of the Genesis. (2) T h e

Florent ine Neoplatonists, primarily Ficino and Pico del la Mirandola - inspired by the magical passages of t h e Hermet i ca - s e t u p a new

philosophy, in which t h e "dignity of man" was strongly connected t o a

program of turning man into a powerful, c r e a t i v e magus. Ya tes asser ted

t h a t t hese thinkers "emerge not primarily a s 'humanists', not even

primarily a s philosophers, but a s magin.' (3) T h e magical exul ta t ion of t h e

f i rs t Renaissance Magi soon g a v e way t o social concerns a s they s t a r t e d

dreaming about t h e general reformat ion of t h e world, a g rea t instauration

of sc iences , and var ious forms of cha r i t ab le work for mankind. It is easy

t o recognize t h e program of t h e Rosicrucians in this description, who,

because of t h e s t i f fening a tmosphere of t h e new or thodoxies (both Cathol ic

and Pro tes t an t ) a t t h e beginning of t h e seven teen th century, had t o remain

in seclusion. But their a i m s and ideals a f f ec ted t h e methods of new

investigations of t h e scient i f ic revolution a s well a s t h e format ion of t h e

ea r ly scient i f ic societ ies and academies. (4) This is how w e can see t h e

change from magic t o sc i ence a s a more o r less linear development: "If

t h e Renaissance magus was t h e immedia te ances to r of t h e seventeenth-

cen tu ry scient is t , then i t i s t r u e t h a t 'Neo-platonism' a s in terpreted by

Ficino and P ico was [...I t h e body of thought which, intervening between

t h e Middle Ages and t h e 17th cen tu ry , prepared t h e way fo r t h e emer -

gence of science". 10

This concept a lso f i l tered through into contemporary fiction. Looking

a t t h e magus-novels of t h e past f ew decades w e can easily discover t h e

kind of apologet ic cultural-anthropological approach t o magic which has

been s o cha rac te r i s t i c of t h e r ecen t ly prevailing history of ideas. Let us

i l lus t ra te th is wi th t w o novels, a his tor ical o n e se t in t h e t i m e of

Paracelsus, and ano the r o n e in which t h e contemporary se t t ing evokes t h e

spirit of Paracelsus himself. Marguer i te Yourcenar ' s T h e Abyss (1968) I I

o f fe r s in the s to ry of Zeno a complex analysis of human existence. T h e

hero (an amalgam of Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Michael Se rve t and

others) represents the Renaissance thinker who pursues "magia naturalis,"

a subject def ined by t h e seventeenth-century ant iquar ian Elias Ashmole a s

follows:

It enables Man t o understand t h e Language of the Creatures , a s t h e chirping of birds, lowing of beasts, e t c . T o convey a spirit in to an image, which by observing t h e influence of heavenly bodies, shall become a t r u e oracle ; and yet th is is not any wayes Necromanticall , o r Devilish; but easy, wonderous easy, Natural1 and ~ 0 n e s t . l ~

The history of Zeno does not c e n t r e around a major t h e m e such as the

hunt for gold or t h e passion for omnipotence. T h e hero represents t h e

genuine searching spirit who i s thrown into the crosscurrents of sc ient i f ic

ideas and supers t i t ions and t r i e s t o find his way in t h e inte l lectual laby-

rinth of his age. And this would not be s o hopelessly difficult if h e were

not also caught in t h e dire network of political forces, religious convic-

tions, and social prejudices. This is how t h e young ambit ious scient is t

becomes a disillusioned, burnt-out exis tent ia l philosopher, determined t o end

on t h e s t a k e of t h e Inquisition. A s t h e au thor herself explains:

On a purely intellectual level, t h e Zeno of th is novel, stil l marked by scholasticism, though react ing against it , s t ands halfway between t h e subversive dynamism of the a lchemists and t h e mechanis t ic philosophy which i s t o prevail in the immedia te future , between he rmet i c beliefs which postula te a God immanent in all things and an a theism barely avowed, between t h e somewhat visionary imagination of t h e s tudent of cabal is ts and t h e mater ia l is t ic empir ic ism of t h e physician. (Author 's note, p.355)

T h e role of Renaissance magic a s presented in Yourcenar's novel corres-

ponds t o t h e verdict of cul tural historians. Paracelsus ' magical medicine,

for example, is seen a s a precursor of modern science, a kind of groping

towards t h e progressively b e t t e r lit a r e a s of logical thinking and experi-

mental investigation, a lbei t stil l d immed by fa lse concep t s which them-

selves can b e useful ca t a lys t s of sc ient i f ic progress. Zeno himself pro-

poses such an opinion:

"Do not a t t r ibu te more worth than I d o t o those mechanical feats ," Zeno said disdainfully. "In themselves they a r e nei ther good nor bad. They a r e like ce r t a in discoveries of t h e a lchemist who lusts only for gold, findings which d i s t r ac t him from pure science, but which somet imes se rve t o advance o r t o enr ich our thinking. Non cogi ta t qui non experitur". (p.334)

Another contemporary novel, Davies's T h e Rebel Angels (1981) 13

approaches t h e Paracels ian philosophy from a more mystically or iented

viewpoint, and his plot, s e t in a modern university, turns " the groves of

academe' ' in to t h e s i t e of a supernatural comba t between Sa tan ic

diabolism and pious white magic. The demonic forces a re evoked by

desires and high ambition, a s is paradigmatic in all magus-stories. We

also have the obligatory pattern of the sceptic scientist who in the course

of events will have to reevaluate his concepts radically; the mild believer ;

the diabolic Satanist; and here also the white magician, this t ime a

biologist-genius who tr ies on Paracelsian principles to turn science back

from "slicing the ham'' to the questions of the big, mysterious wholeness.

The object of desire is a gifted, beautiful student, Maria Theotoky,

who is enchanted by Renaissance mysticism and who also enchants every-

body. There a r e two men, however, who feel even stronger passions than

the gusto for an a t t rac t ive female: an unpublished Rabelais manuscript,

representing a temptation which arouses the beast and warrior in the

otherwise harmless men of letters. Urquhart McVarish, the Renaissance

historian (also a perverted narcissist) and Clement Hollier, the distinguished

medieval scholar, a paleo-psychologist (Maria's idol) struggle for this rare

document. The fight becomes more and more fierce until McVarish

resorts t o theft, while the sober, sceptical medievalist turns t o Maria's

Hungarian-Gypsy mother, asking her t o use magic to destroy the illicit

possessor of the Rabelais letters.

This is no place to analyse the complexities of Davies's many-layered

ironies, nor his magic command of language that so evokes the thrills of

the mysterious in the reader - all the faculties which make this novel one

of the outstanding achievements of contemporary fiction. We must con-

cen t ra te on i t s carefully developed contrast between the dark torments of

passion overtaking the protagonists who finally abuse science, and the

representatives of a superior, purified striving for real wisdom. Maria is

inclined to develop in the direction of a spiritual science, while Professor

Ozias Froats is the champion of experimental verification; a s he says,

"Doubt, doubt, and still more doubt, until you're deadly sure. That's the

only way" (p.248) - but their disparate convictions seem to meet in the

synchretic philosophy of Paracelsus. Froats smiles a t the definition of the

scientist-magus suggested by Paracelsus (p.248). but his work, his scientific

achievement confirms Maria's romantic description: "Surely, Ozias Froats

works under the protection of the Thrice-Divine Hermes. Anyway I hope

so ..." (p.213).

The 'Yates thesis' was very influential for a time, but when i ts

tenets were put to the trial of detailed testing, it was rejected by most

historians of science in the course of a series o f learned debates in the

nineteen-seventies. I t was acknowledged to have been important in calling

attention to a series of neglected phenomena, but i ts underlying assumption

that magic and science are reconcilable has failed to gain credit, just as

Rudolf Steiner's propositions from an occult standpoint have remained

isolated and rejected from both sides. Paolo Rossi, who himself wrote a

study of Francis Bacon, calling him a man "from magic to science,"

formulated the essential theoretical crit icism against Yates's views - "As

years go by I am more and more convinced that to explain the genesis -

which is not only complicated but often confused - of some modern ideas

is quite different from believing that one can of fer a complete explana-

t ion of these ideas by describing their genesis".14 Others, concerned with

the details, successively questioned many of her concrete arguments,

too. 15

Who is the magician, then? Seen from the outside, he is the

representative o f an alternative way of thinking and cultivates a mode o f

perception and interpretation which works wi th analogies rather than

arguments based on observations o f causes and effects. For this reason

he seems to be of no value in the context o f scientific investigations:

"The Neoplatonists, l ike al l occultists, were never interested in matter for

i t s own sake or in general terms. Nature had value t o them either as a

symbolic system, as in hierarchies o f descent from the godhead or in

degrees o f purity ...".I6 . With these words Brian Vickers seems to finish

with the illusions o f synthesis raised by Frances Yates's interpretation of

Renaissance science. And to the question raised by Yates and her

followers, namely what to do with the double intellectual profi le of the

early scientists, with the curious blend of superstition and scientific

reasoning in their works, Vickers offers the traditional answer of the

historians of science: let us reconcile ourselves to the fact that those

thinkers, just as many of their descendants nowadays, were able to l ive

in divided and distinguished worlds. Parallel with the slowly developing

penchantfor observation, experimentation, and discursive logic, man has

retained the fossils of an alternative way of thinking which should not

become the subject o f the history of science, rather o f cultural anthro-

pology. I n Vickers' interpretation the alchemist's mind is more akin with

the primitive tr ibal magician than the simplest philosopher. Magic

becomes a variant of a religious system in this approach, and has to be

t r ea ted in t e rms of t h e s tudy of beliefs.17 Thus w e have seen t h e e f fo r t s

on both sides of magic and science t o c o m e t o a modern reconciliation,

but these e f fo r t s have proved unfounded just a s s imilar a t t e m p t s ear l ier

in t h e past. Discursive logic and intui t ive perception seem t o be again

incompatible; but t h e o the r two areas , religion and ar t , still may provide

some ground for conjecture.

The complicated love-hate relationship of magic and religion, not mention-

ing their s t ructural and functional parallels, cannot be t r ea ted here. One

quotation might well i l lustrate though t h e awareness about this aspect.

The authori ty t o b e quoted, Arthur Versluis, is a contemporary theoret ic ian

of t h e occult, and one c a n easily s e e tha t he ascr ibes importance t o t h e

esoter ic modes of thinking in a radically different way from t h e historians

of science o r t h e s tuden t s of social anthropology, o r even a modern

theologian. In his Philosophy of Magic (1986)18 Versluis considers religion

and magic two descendants of the primordial revelation:

A distinct historical pa t t e rn of division (di-vision) c a n be t r aced in t h e West, a splitting in to two camps a s it were; on t h e one hand, o n e has t h e orthodox religious form which tended t o ignore t h e necessity of individual spiritual t ransmutat ion, and on t h e other , t h e sol i tary magus o r alchemist, who o f t en tended t o ignore t h e necessity of traditional religious form. As a result, both diverged in to mater ia l is t ic o r egois t ic paths. (p.3) '9

The association of magic with l i t e ra tu re likewise implies a love-hate

relationship. T h e idea goes back t o t h e teachings of Plato, who supposed

t h e working of a mystical madness, t h e furor poeticus, in t h e inspired

poets which makes them percept ive for t h e higher reality, which is not

accessible t o ordinary people who possess only t h e ability of ra t ional think-

ing, discursive logic. This intuitive-revelatory knowledge became a power-

ful tool for t h e theoret ic ians of t h e Renaissance a s they spoke about t h e

poet a s c r e a t o r who can make something out of nothing, a s if in a super-

natural act .

Picots Orat ion on t h e Dignity of Man reasser ted t h e old gnost ic

thesis tha t t h e human intel lect was t h e ref lect ion of t h e divine mens, and

though now corrupted, through different operat ions i t c a n e leva te itself

again t o this highest level. Ar t and magic appeared a s two expressions

of t h e s a m e procedure by both sharing t h e quality of divine creat ivi ty .

It is very cha rac t e r i s t i c t ha t thei r con tempora r i e s a l ready cal led famous

a r t i s t s such a s Leonardo o r Michelangelo 'divine' , and t h a t relying on t h e

magical-neoplatonic philosophy of Finico o r Pico, a r t i s t s could c la im for

a s t a t u s equal t o t ha t of t h e magus. Among others , Si r Philip Sidney

s t ra ightforwardly c la imed tha t poe t s a r e like gods and tha t t h e qual i ty of 2 1 thei r c r ea t ion surpasses t h e perfect ion of ~ a t u r e : " E. H. Gombrich,

while explaining t h e na tu re of Renaissance symbolic images, has proved

tha t Botticelli 's P r imave ra i s not simply a painting with c lass ical mot ives

but a g r e a t magical allegory, a not t o o d i s t an t r e l a t ive of Ficino's talis-

manic magic. We find t h e s a m e inspiration of Neoplatonism and magic

in much of s ix teenth-century European l i tera ture , in Michelangelo's

myst ical sonnets, in Ronsard's na tu re hymns, in s o m e mot i f s of Spenser ' s

The Fae r i e Queene. T h e analogy with magic o f f e red new a rgumen t s in t h e

age-old d e b a t e about t h e ontology of a r t : whether i t was a conscious a c t

of imi ta t ion of a l ready exis t ing na tu re o r r a t h e r an exul ted, inspired s t a t e

of "divine madness". We c a n recognize in this d ichotomy t h e Aris tote l ian

and P la ton ic principles of a r t i s t i c creat ion.

By t h e second half of t h e cen tu ry t h e author i ty of Ar i s to t l e was

shaken: P i e r r e d e la ~ a m e ' e quest ioned his logic, and a number of Italian

humanis ts s t a r t e d a t t ack ing his aes thet ics . They c la imed t h e pr imacy of

inspiration, re turning t o t h e Neoplatonic concepts. F rancesco Patr iz i ' s

poet ics i s very cha rac t e r i s t i c for t h e period. H e hailed t h e unl imited

fantasy of t h e a r t i s t and considered il mirabile, t h e wonderful, a s t h e r ea l

e s sence of a good work of a r t . Real i ty was of l i t t le accoun t t o him, and

th is c a n b e understood if we think of t h e general in te l lec tual c l i m a t e of

t h e age: i t w a s t h e end of t h e Renaissance, t h e beginning of a g r e a t

in te l lec tual crisis, one of t h e many 'fin d e s ikcles ' , a world of "sad

people" a s Lucien Fkbvre cal led them. Similarly t o Giordano Bruno, who

proposed a re turn t o t h e sac red and ancient Egyption religion in o rde r t o

find t h e path of t r u e knowledge, Pa t r i z i also turned back and looked for

t h e lost wisdom in t h e works of Zoroaster , t h e H e r m e t i c philosophers, and

t h e magi. F o r him "poesia" becomes t h e a c t of making t h e marvelous, and

t h e poet who c r e a t e s t h i s would sha re t h e qual i t ies of God, Nature , and

an a r t i f i ce r - t o put i t simply, h e should become a magus himself. 22

Up t o t h e t i m e of t h e Renaissance t h e idea of mag ic was s t rongly

in ter l inked with religion a s well a s with art.23 With t h e proclamat ion of

a dualism be tween t h e mechanis t ic universe and t h e stil l surviving

animist ic world pic ture , th is original syncret ism became more and more

suppressed. T h e Romant i c poe t s had visions of a n animist ic cosmos, but

they did not consider themselves messengers of an outer , higher real i ty ;

r a the r they believed tha t it was themselves, their ego, which comprised

this higher reality. This egot is t ical approach is condemned by today 's

theor is ts of magic, although w e should a lso not ice tha t th is a t t i t u d e was

by no means t h e invention of t h e Romanticism. T h e crysta l l izat ion of th is

archetype, t h e Faust ian magus, d a t e s back t o t h e Renaissance, and we

even have examples of i t f rom t h e classical period, such as t h e Biblical

f igure o f Simon Magus. 24

It is t r u e tha t t h e l i t e ra tu re o f Romant ic ism proclaimed a new type

of magic, and tha t th is programme developed well in to the modern era .

There s e e m s t o b e a n enormous s t e p f rom Wordsworth's an ima ted Na tu re

t o Nerval 's a lchemy, Rimbaud's verbal magic, W. B. Yeats 's e so te r i ca and

Wallace Stevens 's Hermiticism. Their vision of the cosmos and man's

p l ace within it , however, show a s t rong cont inui ty of tradition, too. We

find the s a m e phenomena in modern painting, f rom the r a the r external ,

mot ivic fascinat ion of t h e A r t Nouveau t o the most abs t r ac t , conceptual

expe r imen t s of Kandinsky and ~ o n d r i a n . ~ ' This individualised magic,

through which t h e magician 'exal ts himself ' ins tead of exal t ing all things,

i s not approved by modern traditionalists. A wri ter like Versluis charac-

ter ises t h e magical ambit ions of a r t i s t s a s follows:

The Romant i c poets, then, s t and a s i t w e r e midway between two worlds: behind them is t h e unified t radi t ional realm, represented by the H e r m e t i c teachings, while ahead of them i s the modern e ra , t h e under- lying 'aim' of which c a n a lso b e personified in t h e form of t h e magus - albei t in th is case , r a the r than uniting the realms, e a c h seeks t o b e a sole c rea to r , sole manipulator, t o usurp t h e place of t h e Divine r a the r than t o fulfil i t , and s o in the end must m e e t wi th inevi table dissolution (note 18, p.5).

A mingling of magic and a r t t roubles not only t h e modern occul t is t ,

bu t a lso t h e modern philosopher and critic. J acques Maritain in con-

f ront ing this question, expressed most cau t ious views about t h e poet who

t r i e s t o become a magician:

... t h e thought of t h e poet ( a t leas t his subconscious thought) resembles somewhat t h e men ta l ac t iv i ty of t h e pr imit ive man, and t h e ways of magic in the large sense of th is word.

I t is easy t o slip f rom mag ic in t h e large sense t o magic in t h e s t r i c t sense, and from t h e intent ional o r spiritual union t o t h e mater ia l

or substantial one. I think that poetry escapes the temptation of magic only i f i t renounces any wi l l to power, even and first o f a l l in relation to the evoking of inspiration, and i f there is no fissure in the poet's fidelity to the essential disinterestedness o f poetic creation26

Should we end our look at modern magic and art with the same

negative conclusion as in the case of magic and science? Would that

mean that there is no perspective for synthesis in the fatal dualism of

human modes of thinking? We should make an important caveat at this

point. Our emphasis on the dualism intentioned should not induce a

nostalgic idealised image of the past. In fact, there were a great number

o f Renaissance philosophers who ridiculed belief in astrology, alchemy, and

the other mystical sciences, and they, too, continued a tradition which had

been present in European thinking since early Antiquity.

The writers of the 16th century were even more cautious. Few of

them questioned the reality of the supernatural, but we find practically

no work presenting a real magus fully achieving his goal. Perhaps

because - as Georg Luk6cs formulated - poets are always partisans who

point out the phenomena which nurse tension, conflict, or crisis in an age,

the l i terary treatment of the false magician such as Doctor Faustus is

more characteristic even for the Renaissance than the posture o f Prospero.

And even this archetype o f the white magus is treated ambiguously by

Shakespeare. Although seemingly Prospero is victorious by means o f his

high magic, and carries out all what he planned, when he realizes the

"baseless fabric" of his vision, and "of the great globe itself", he resignedly

gives up his magic, breaks his staff, and drowns his books (see 4.1.151ff

and 5.1.50-7).

While the l i terary crit icism of the past few decades was enchanted

by the idea o f a 'harmonious Renaissance,' and crit ics traced the l i terary

distillations o f a great, magical-universalist world picture following in the

footsteps o f Hardin Craig, E. M. W. Tillyard, and C. S. Lewis, most recent

l i terary historians seem to be contented with the idea o f the poet as

partisan. Deconstructionism has developed the cult of the evasive, and the

New Historicists and feminists devote themselves to the recovery of the

latent scars o f casualties and the remains o f cataclysms, even in the most

harmonious-looking works such as Shakespeare's As You Like ~ t . * ~ From

this approach, the magician and his magic take on a new character: the

features of his day-dreaming, his a l ternat ive politics, and his special

system of representation a r e emphasized and t reated a s an element in the

interplay between power and culture. T h e Magus, no longer the custodian

of an e te rna l wisdom, becomes a key figure a s somebody who ref lects on - and tr ies t o manipulate in a different way - t h e tensions and clashes of

social and intellectual power games.

It seems obvious tha t magic and in a broader sense, the occult, has

been, and is going t o be, a n al ternat ive way of looking a t the world. And

a s a coherent system (no mat te r if fa lse o r true), it i s ready t o fertilize

the arts. In fact , it is t h e a r t s which still have the potential of inter-

preting between the more and more distinctly separating epistemological

systems. The archetype of the magus is still a vital and ac t ive inspiration

for modern works, consequently it can justly become the subject of

themat ic studies. The fur ther investigation of this theme is likely to call

on virtually every discipline, and will promote ever new comparisons.

1. I wrote this essay while, enjoying a Fulbright grant, I worked in the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, in August 1987. Thanks a r e due t o the helpful s taff of both libraries and t o Professors Frank Baron and Jocelyn Godwin, who kindly read the manuscript.

2. Butler, The Myth of the Magus [I9481 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980), p.2.

3. Godwin, Lives of t h e Necromancers: or an account of the most eminent persons in successive ages, who have claimed for themselves, or t o whom has been imputed by others, the exercise of magical power (London: Mason, 18341, pp. 1-2.

4. Atwood, Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy: A Suggestive Inquiry into t h e Hermetic Mystery [I8501 (New York: Julian Press, 1960, facs. repr. AMS, 1984), pp.v-vii.

5. George-Charles1 ["Joris-Karl"] Huysmans, L'a-bas l18911, trans]. a s Down There 119281, repr. New York: Dover, 1972.

6. Maugham, The Magician, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.

7. Szerb, The Pendragon Legend [1934]. English edn Budapest: Corvina, 1963.

8. S e e t h e summary in Saul Bellow's Introduction t o Steiner, The Boundaries of Natural Science: Eight Lectures given in Dornach, Switzer- land, 1920, Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophical Press, 1983.

9. Yates, "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science", in Charles S. Singleton, ed., Art , Science, and History in t h e Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1967), p.257.

10. Ibid., p.258; for a full explication of her concepts s e e Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: RKP; Chicago: Chicago UP,

1964, and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, London: RKP, 1972.

11. Yourcenar, L'Oeuvre au noir [19681, transl. as The Abyss, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1976.

12. Ashmole, Introduction to Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London: J. Grismonde for Nath. Brooke, 1652, facs. repr. London and New York, 19671, fol.Blv.

13. Davies. The Rebel Angels, New York: Viking. 1981.

14. Rossi, "Hermeticism. Rationality. and the Scientific Revolution", in M. L. ~ igh in i -~one l l i and William ~ i ' s h e a , eds, Reason, Experiment. .and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution (New York: Science History Publications, 19751, p.257.

15. Cf. esp. Robert S. Westman, "Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered1', in Lynn White, ed., Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution, Los Angeles: W. A. Clark Memorial Library , UCLA, 1977; and Vickers's Introduction to Brian Vickers, ed., Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984). pp. 1-57.

16. Vickers (note IS), p.6. He further elaborates his thesis in "Analogy versus Identity: the Rejection of Occult Symbolism, 1580-16801', op. cit., pp.95- 165.

17. Cf. also Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in 16th- and 17th-Century England, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. 1972. reDr. Pennuin University Pa~erbacks. 1973. This mono- graph makes exte.nslve use o f the methods and achi&ements of cultural anthropology (Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, etc.); cf. furthermore Marcel Mauss, "Esquisse d'une thkorie gbnknerale de la magle" in Sociologie e t anthropologie, 2 vols. Paris, 1960; G. Kippenberg und Brigitte Luchesi, eds, Magie: Die sozialwissenschaftliche Kontroverse iiber das Verstehen fremden Denkens, Frankfurt, 1978; Leander Petzold, ed., Magie und Religion: Beitrage zu einer Theorie der Magie, Darmstadt: WB, 1978.

18. Versluis, The Philosophy of Magic, Boston and London: Arkana, 1986.

19. On the spiritual significance of alchemy see e.g. S. L. McGregor Mathers, Astral Projection, Ritual Magic and Alchemy, London: Spearman, 1971; S. Klossowsky de Rola, Alchemy: The Secret Art, New York: Avon, 1973; Frank A. Wilson, Alchemy as a Way of Life, London: Daniel, 1976; Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy, 2nd edn, Chicago: Chicago UP, 1978.

20. See Sidney, An ed. C. Churton Collins (Oxford: Clarendon, 1907, repr. 196 I), p.9.

21. See Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Studies in Renaissance Iconology, 1948-1972. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1985; esp. "lcones Symbolicae ...". 22. Cf. Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1961), Vol.11, pp.772-5. Although not referring to the figure of the magus (implicit in Patrizi's work), he demonstrates the mechanism of Patrizi's logic. For Patrizi cf. also Tibor Klaniczay, A manierizmus, Budapest: Gondolat, 1975, transl. into German as Renaissance und Manierismus: Zum Verhaltnis von Gelsellschaftsstruktur, Poetlk und Stil, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1977.

23. See Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP. 1964. reDr. 1986). Ch.1V: "Allenorical causation: Magic and Ritual ~ o r h s " , ip.18i-220. Fletcher's o p i n i i runs counter to traditional definitions of allegory, which describe i t as didactic and definitely non-mystical; his evidence justifies his thesis, however.

24. For the Faustus myth (so vast as to be better skirted here) see, besides the various & bibliographies, P. M. Palmer and R. P. More, The Sources of the Faust Tradition, New York, 1936, and esp. E. M. Butler, The Fortunes of Faust [1952], Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.

25. See Maurice Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890- 1985 [exhibition essays], Los Angeles: County Museum of Art, 1986. - 26. Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York: Pantheon, 19531, p.232. Maritain does not favour magic entering into the realm of poetry; he does not rule out the encounter of the two either, though considering i t as a danger greatly amplified by the prevalence of rational- ism in the modern world, cf. also p.233.

27. Cf. e.g. Alvin Kernan, The Playwright as Magician: Shakespeare's Image of the Poet in the English Public Theater, New Haven: Yale UP, 1979: Adrian L. Montrose. "The Pur~ose of Plavinn: Reflections on a ~hakes~earean ~ n t h r o ~ o l o ~ ~ ' ~ , Helios 7 (1980), 51-74- (with special reference to The Tempest); and generally the rapidly growing New Historicist criticism.

VICTIMS OF THEIR OWN CONTENDING PASSIONS: UNEXPECTED DEATH I N ADOLPHE, NANHOE,

AND WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Terence Dawson (University of Singapore)

Crit ics have long argued about the precise definition of a l i terary theme.

If, as many would contend, a theme describes the main subject o f a given

work, then the unexpected death of one o f the main characters might not

at f irst appear to be a theme; perhaps the word mot i f would be more

appropriate.' But i f "lovers' meetings and partings at dawn" may be seen

as a theme, then so too can the manner in which a character dies2 This

essay examines the deaths o f three characters in very different works of

the romantic period. Each ends with a death: Adolphe (18161, by

Benjamin Constant, ends with the death of 611dnore; Sir Walter Scott's

lvanhoe (1819) ends with the death of Bois-Guilbert; and Wuthering

Heights (1847), by Emily Bronte. ends with the death of Mr Heathcliff.

I n each case, the death is crucial to the novel's resolution, is unexpected,

and is the consequence o f a violent inner conflict. My premises are

unusual to the extent that crit icism often assumes that the characters o f

a narrative may be seen as individuals, each existing in his or her own

right. In contrast, I want to argue that klldnore, Bois-Guilbert, and Mr

Heathcliff represent an aspect of the personality of one o f the other

characters in the novels in which they respectively feature. I call the

latter figure the axial character, by which I mean to imply that a l l the

other characters in the novel are directly related to this character's con-

cerns. The axial character is not necessarily either the hero or heroine

of the novel in question. By examining these works from such an angle,

I hope to demonstrate that the deaths with which they end are so inter-

linked with their main subject that they deserve to be considered as a

theme in the fullest sense, and not just as a motif.

Novels invariably trace an evolution in the axial character. In

novels wi th only two or three main actors, the hero and the axial

character are usually identical. But where there are several protagonists,

the hero is not always the character most changed by the events. In such

cases, I shall argue, the hero's experiences can be shown to correspond to

a dilemma facing the axial character. This implies that the novel reveals

t w o fundamental ly d i f f e ren t 'levels' of f ic t ional representa t ion; in o the r

words, t h a t t h e re la t ion be tween d i f f e ren t p a r t s of a na r r a t ive i s essen-

tially p ~ y c h o l o ~ i c a l . ~ T h e axia l c h a r a c t e r m a y thus b e def ined a s t h e

c h a r a c t e r whose decisions and ac t ions shape t h e narra t ive , and t h e main

plot of a novel, a s a symbol ic representa t ion of t h e d i l emma facing t h e

axia l c h a r a c t e r in t h e opening chapters .

In Adolphe, t h e axia l c h a r a c t e r is - a t leas t in o n e sense - t h e hero/

na r r a to r of t h e events . But t h e axia l c h a r a c t e r s in lvanhoe and Wuther ing

Heights a r e f igures whose funct ion in t he i r r e spec t ive novels has not been

suff ic ient ly apprecia ted. My intent ion i s t o reveal t h e connect ion be tween

t h e na r r a t ive s t r u c t u r e s of t hese novels and t h e psychological d i l emma

facing thei r axia l cha rac t e r .

"La Mort dans I ' lme"

In t h e ve ry f i rs t c h a p t e r of Adolphe, t h e hero-narra tor t e l l s us t h a t "I'id6e

d e la m o r t [...I m'avait f r appe trBs jeune".4 When 6116nore t e l l s him s h e

would p re fe r not t o s e e him again, h e pleads wi th he r not t o abandon him,

for h e imagines sepa ra t ion f rom h e r a s d e a t h (pp.136, 158). She, too,

r evea l s t h a t s h e is a f r a id t h a t he will sooner o r l a t e r abandon her , and

imagines th i s a s leading t o he r own d e a t h "<<De manikre ou d ' au t r e , m e

dit-elle enf in , vous pa r t i r ez b i en t6 t I...] J e ne s a i s quel pressent iment m e

di t , Adolphe, q u e je mourra i dans vos bras>>" (p.142). Adolphe's decision

t o accompany he r t o Poland s o tha t h e c a n l eave he r wi th he r family

coincides wi th h e r fa ther ' s d e a t h (p.167) and, a l though h e likens thei r

relationship a t t h i s juncture t o t h e wi the red leaves on an uprooted t r e e

(p.168), h e con t inues t o delay "l ' instant fa ta l" of ac tua l ly abandoning her

(pp.192, 194). Finally, h e de t e rmines t o d o so; s h e s imul taneously fa l ls

s ick and dies, whereupon h e loses i n t e re s t in l i fe and a lso w a s t e s away.

Although t h e 'anecdote' is ostensibly published only a f e w yea r s a f t e r t h e

even t s i t records, both Adolphe and klle'nore a r e dead. Dea th i s perhaps

t h e dominant t h e m e of ~ d o l p h e . ' My a im is t o show how ~116nore ' s

dea th corresponds t o t h e 'death' of an a spec t of Adolphe's unconscious,

and tha t t h e novel 's s t r u c t u r e i s de t e rmined by t h e na tu re of t h e d i l emma

facing him.

It is not because Adolphe is a first-person na r r a t ive tha t Adolphe

may b e def ined a s t h e axia l cha rac t e r , bu t because t h e e v e n t s correspond

t o his decisions. 6116nore i s neve r a n agen t ; s h e neve r i n i t i a t e s a

situation. Even her decision t o re turn t o Poland - a turning point in t h e

act ion - is subject t o Adolphe agreeing t o accompany he r ("elle n'irait e n

Pologne que si je I'accompagnais", p.164). T h e even t s a r e a t all t imes

determined by his decisions. His urgent solicitations win Ellinore; his

vacillation causes their equivalent unhappiness ("douleur"), and his decision

t o break with her brings about t h e dhnouement. That t h e even t s a r e

shaped by his decisions confirms tha t h e is t h e novel's axial character .

A t t h e outset of t h e cen t ra l 'anecdote' Adolphe has never been in

love before; h e has never known love a s "ce transport des sens, c e t t e

ivresse involontaire, c e t oubli d e tous les intCrbts, d e tous les devoirs"

(p.163). 6116nore is defined by he r s t a t e m e n t "L'amour e'tait t ou te m a

vie" (p.198). She yields completely t o her love for him, abandoning every-

thing she has in order t o b e with him. She thus personifies J& definition

of love. She wakens him t o love. Her sole desire i s tha t h e should

cont inue t o love her. He would like to, but cannot. He ceases t o love

her - in t h e sense h e defines love - even before h e has won he r "toute

entikre" (p.137). Adolphe is a love-story whose cen t ra l cha rac te r is unable

t o love t h e woman t o whom he a t t aches himself.

Given tha t Adolphe's relationship with ~116nore is seen throughout

from his point of view, t h e novel c a n b e said t o show an ambivalent

challenge facing him. He must e i the r cement his relationship with her in

order t o overcome social opposition t o their union (p.150) o r h e must f r ee

himself from her in order t o begin his c a r e e r (p.172). The tragedy ensues

because h e is unable t o do either. In real life, such a di lemma would not

imply t h e necessary dea th of both partners. Tha t i t should d o so in this

novel suggests tha t their relationship is conditioned by psychological

factors.

Adolphe's initial infatuation with ~ l l e n o r e s t e m s from t h e sight of

his friend's happiness in love. H e wants t o experience a s imilar happiness

himself (p.117). For him, however, "bonheur" resul ts not from loving

someone else, but f rom being loved ("je veux e t r e aim6" p.119). He te l ls

her: "J'ai pris I'habitude d e vous voir; vous avez laiss6 n a h r e e t s e

former c e t t e douce habitude: qu'ai-je f a i t pour perdre c e t t e unique

consolation I...] je dois vous voir s'll faut q u e j e vive" (p. 131). The "douce

habitude" which h e seeks t o preserve has nothing in common with his own

definition of love. Adolphe knows tha t h e must leave E116nore if he is t o

s t a r t a ca ree r ("entrer dans une carrikre. I...] commencer une vie active",

p.1621, and y e t n o necessary reason i s g iven why h e should not s t a r t a

c a r e e r wi th 6l l6nore a s h is mistress. T h e r eade r i s expl ic i t ly told t h a t s h e

won widespread r e spec t for t h e support s h e g a v e t h e c o m t e d e P*** when

h e fell on hard t imes (p.119). We c a n a s sume tha t s h e would have helped

Adolphe in a s imilar way. T h a t h e f e e l s s h e i s incompat ible wi th his

s t a r t i ng a c a r e e r t e l l s us nothing about ~ l l d n o r e ; but i t does te l l us a

g r e a t dea l about t h e way h e 'sees' her. His need ("besoinn) t o see a

woman fo r whom h e i s unable t o mainta in love, his passivity, and his

equat ion of leaving he r and s t a r t i ng his professional life, all reveal t h e

na tu re o f h is image o f her: Adolphe unwit t ingly invests ~ l l d n o r e with

t h e a t t r i b u t e s of a mother . This does no t necessarily imply tha t h e has

a f ixat ion wi th h i s own mother , nor does i t signal regression in Freud's

s ense of th is word. I t mere ly indicates t h a t h e su f f e r s f rom what P i e r r e

J a n e t (1859-1947), t h e F rench psychologist, ca l led "un sen t imen t

d'incomp16tude" and tha t t h e resul t ing "besoin" which h e f ee l s is compensa-

t ed in h i s imaginat ion by a mother-figure. 6

Angered by his f a the r ' s 'measures' t o h a v e ~ l l e ' n o r e expel led from

Pa r i s (p.1571, Adolphe abandons h i s country . This is t h e turning point

which l eads d i r ec t ly t o t h e tragedy. A f t e r s e t t l i ng br ief ly in Bohemia, h e

follows he r t o Poland - her coun t ry - where h e l ives on he r e s t a t e . H e

i s n o longer ab l e t o begin a ca ree r : "Si j e voulais reassais i r mon courage,

m e d i r e q u e I'kpoque d e I'activite' n 'k ta i t pas e n c o r e passke, I'image

d ' ~ l l 6 n o r e s 'dlevait devan t moi c o m m e un f a n t h e , e t m e repoussait dans

le nkant"; h e f ee l s l ike "un a t h l e t e c h a r g i d e f e r s au fond d'un cachot"

(pp.173-4). Be tween him and h i s own vocat ion s t ands k116nore a s a

devouring Mother. A s such, s h e r ep resen t s t h e dea th of h is own virility.

In o t h e r words, by following ~ l l k n o r e back t o Poland, Adolphe brings about

t h e tragedy. It i s crucia l t o note , however, t h a t k l l6nore does not want

t o b e c a s t a s a mother. S h e fo rces Adolphe t o a c c e p t he r 'sacrifice' of

abandoning t h e secu r i ty s h e enjoys wi th t h e c o m t e d e P***, and t o accep t

responsibility for her willingness t o d o s o (p.146-7, 151). When h e hesi-

t a t e s , s h e insists t h a t h e i s responsible fo r he r increas ing b i t t e rnes s

(p.165). In t h e l e t t e r which s h e wri tes , but which s h e l a t e r begs him

never t o open, s h e indicates t h a t i t is up t o him "who does not love her",

t o l eave h e r (p.205). ~ l l d n o r e is not t ry ing t o e v a d e he r own responsibility.

S h e a c c e p t s t h e anx ie ty which his vaci l la t ion causes her; s h e even a c c e p t s

t h a t t he i r relationship will end wi th he r death . S h e assumes c o m p l e t e

responsibility for her feelings. She wants Adolphe t o d o t h e same, for

only by doing so could h e respond t o her a s a partner.

It has long been recognized tha t ~ l l d n o r e is an ambivalent character ,

but t h e distinction between ~ l l d n o r e a s she is and ~ l l d n o r e a s Adolphe sees her has not always been insisted on. She seeks recognition and accep tance - by Adolphe a s a lover, a s his mistress, whereas he seeks a relationship

wlth someone on whom h e c a n lean (p.136). If one c a n describe ~ 1 1 6 n o r e in t h e l a t t e r capaci ty as a mother-figure, then one requires a t e rm t o

describe ~116nore "as s h e isn.

The most striking fea tu re about t h e two main charac te r s is the

unusual number of a t t r ibu tes they share. Adolphe describes himself a s

wanting only t o enjoy his "natural and impulsive feelings" ("impressions

primitives e t fougueuses" p. 110); a s constantly day-dreaming (p. 1 12); a s

o f t e n morose and taci turn (p.113); and yet , perhaps consequently, a s

inclined t o le t his tongue run away with itself (p.114). ~ l l 6 n o r e has

identical qualities:

souvent e l le i t a i t rgveuse e t taci turne; quelquefois e l le parlait a v e c impdtuositi . I...] e l l e ne restai t jamais parfai tement calme. Mais, par ce la m&me, il y avai t dans sa manikre quelque chose d e fougueux e t d'inattendu qui la rendait plus piquante ... (p.121).

Adolphe's t e r ro r of forming new t ies (p. 11 I ) ant ic ipates 6116nore's reiuc-

t ance t o become involved with him (p.134) and, from t h e moment they

become lovers, t h e di lemma facing them is identical. For Adolphe, staying

with 6116nore implies a social and professional dea th (pp.140, 144, 154,

160-1, 162, 173-4, etc.); leaving her would mean personal and emotional

dea th - indeed, when she dies, h e qui te literally cannot live without her.

In s imilar fashion, 6116norets liaison with Adolphe implies he r own social

death; being abandoned by him would, and does, entai l her physical death.

The events, however, a r e seen throughout from his point of view, and

Adolphe idealizes her: " J e la considdrais c o m m e une c rea tu re c6leste.

Mon amour tenai t du cuite" (p.137). Tha t i ~ ~ d n o r e ' s a t t r ibu tes correspond

so closely t o key aspec t s of Adolphe's character , and tha t t h e relation-

ship is described from hls point of view, suggests tha t she represents an

aspect o f his personality. In he r capaci ty a s a potential par tner , she

corresponds t o t h e anima a s defined by Jung: t h e figure of a woman, in

a man's d reams and waking fantasies, which represents his unconscious

image of women. 7

It is with ~ l l6nore in her capacity as anima that Adolphe falls in

love when he meets her for the first time. And yet, although she

continues to personify his definition of love, his infatuation with her

quickly evaporates. I t is ~lle'nore as a potential partner whom he cannot

love. And the reason would seem to be because he has a tendency to

'project' maternal attributes onto her. He cannot accept her as she is.

Thus, ~116nore as anima is 'dead' before they consummate their affair.

Her premonition that she will die in his arms is a reflection of the

'death' she has already undergone in his unconscious. Adolphe can only

relate to a woman whom he invests with maternal attributes.

I f Adolphe's inability to reciprocate kl~dnore's love and his inability

to establish himself in a profession are related, and are directly responsible

for the deaths of the two main characters, then the opposite must also

be true. Had he been able to love ~l ldnore, he would also have been able

to begin a career - in which case, they both would have lived. Thus

Adolphe's inability to maintain his love for Ellenore is crucial, for the

narrative traces an ambivalent challenge facing him. On the one hand,

i f he is to end his emotional isolation, he must cement his relationship

with ~ l l6nore as anina; on the other, i f he is to start a career - which

he sees as the beginning of "une vie active" (p.172) - then he must leave

her (i.e. as mother-figure). This paradox can only be resolved by distin-

guishing between the 'two' ~lle'nores: ~lle'nore as she is, and ~ l l ~ n o r e as

he sees her. I t is Adolphe's inability to relate to ~ l ldnore as anima which

leads to both her death and his.

Death thus serves as a link between the novel's structure and the

dilemma facing the axial character. The novel ends when ~ l ldnore learns

that Adolphe intends to return to France without her. She dies of grief.

The editor's 'frame' implies that Adolphe dies because he cannot live

without her, but the narrative tells us that he dies simply because he

cannot respond to ~116nore as a potential partner. Adolphe has an intima-

tion of love ("Charme de I'amour ...'I, p.1391, but even as he does so, he

cannot believe in his own commitment ("Malheur a qui, dans les bras de

la maftresse qu'il vient d'obtenir, conserve une funeste prescience, et

pr6voit qu'il pourra s'en ddtacher ! ", pp. 137, 153). ~l ldnore's death

corresponds to the death of his anima (= soul, h), and the anima

represents a man's psychic life.8 Adolphe's inability to respond to

k ~ ~ k n o r e signals that a vital aspect of his inner world cannot operate

because o f his need for the nurturing figure o f a Mother. The central

'anecdote' is a dramatisation of the dilemma facing Adolphe in the novel's

first two chapters.

I 1 Death o f the Shadow

lvanhoe is a startlingly different kind of f iction from Adolphe, and yet no

less characteristic o f the romantic imagination. I t is usually considered

from the t i t le hero's polnt o f view, but there are a great many reasons

for questioning whether he is the central character. In none o f the three

great scenes is his function immediately clear. When the novel opens, he

is on his way to a tournament at Ashy-de-la-Zouche, and yet he has

neither horse nor armour, and no explanation is given of why he wishes

to be there. He neither instigates, nor is he an actor in, the siege o f

Torquilstone. Although he plays an important part in the outcome of the

tr ia l by combat at Templestowe, he does not bring i t about: Rois-Guilbert , the Knight Templar whose violent passions are perhaps the most striking

feature o f the novel, dies unscathed by his lance.g Although the plot

revolves around their rivalry, no reason is given why lvanhoe so dislikes

the Templar, nor is there any indication o f what he achieves by the

latter's death. O f what lvanhoe feels, and what motivates him, the reader

learns almost nothing. I f novels invariably trace a transformative

experience, one notes that the title-hero is unchanged by the events o f

Scott's novel.

There is perhaps no better clue to the subject o f a novel than a

comparison of i ts opening with i ts ending. A t the outset, lvanhoe has been

disinherited in order to keep him away from Rowena (p.196); at the end,

he regains his father's favour and marries her. And yet, i f one asks what

is effected in the closing pages, it is not that lvanhoe has won the bride

for whom he has struggled; nor that he has finally defeated the Templar.

I t is that the various offending elements in Norman rule have been

defeated, and that the Saxons hostile to the Norman yoke have accepted

the existent order. The two races have become one: the English (p.515).

Moreover, the character who is most 'changed' by the events is not

Ivanhoe, but his father, Cedric o f Rotherwood. A t the outset, Cedric is

violently opposed to any links with the Normans. A t the end, he accepts

the existing reality. My aim is to reveal that the axial character is

Cedric, and to demonstrate that the rivalry between Ivanhoe and Rois-

Guilbert represents a confl ict between two aspects of Cedric's unconscious

personality. The Knight Templar's death, I argue, represents the death of

Cedric's alter-ego; i t paves the way for him to renounce his unrealistic

ambitions o f restoring a Saxon monarchy.

The most obvious r ivalry in the novel is between lvanhoe and Rois-

Guilbert, who is determined to avenge the defeat he suffered at the

tournament at Saint John of Acre (pp.54-5). lvanhoe has assimilated the

best o f Norman practices, and thus represents the desired union - i.e. the

emergence o f an English, as opposed to either Saxon or Norman, nation.

Bois-Guilbert represents, not the Normans, but the Templars. The ef fect-

ive opposition, then, is not between Saxons and Normans, but between a

notion of Englishness and the Knights Templar. The hurrahs at each of

the three great scenes confirm this. The batt le cries on the second day

of the tournament at Ashby are "Desdichado" and "For the Temple"

(p.137). A t Torquilstone, the battle cries on the outside are "St George

for merry England" and, on the inside, for the three leaders, amongst

whom is the Templar (p.312). The final major scene of the novel opposes

"the royal standard of England" and "the Temple banner" (p.508). As the

Templars retreat, the shout is raised: "Long L i f e to Richard with the

Lion's Heart, and down with the usurping Ten~plars!" (p.511). With their

preceptory disbanded, the way is paved for the hostile distinction between

Saxon and Norman to disappear completely.

I f the greatest change effected by the no;el concerns Cedric, and

Bois-Guilbert personifies hosti l i ty to the union of the two races in one

nation, i t is worth looking closely at their relation. The nature o f this

is suggested by the startl ing number of attributes that they have in

common. Both men are irascible. Prior Aymer, speaking to the Templar,

describes Cedric as "proud, fierce, jealous, and irritable'' (p.26). Only a

few pages later, on being informed that the two Normans are at his gate

requesting hospitality, Cedric muses:

"Bois-Guilbert! That name has been spread wide for both good and evil. They say he is valiant as the bravest of his order; but stained with their usual vices - pride, arrogance, cruelty and voluptuousness - a hard- hearted man, who knows neither fear of earth nor awe o f heaven." (p.38 )

The parallel is suggestive. One notes, moreover, that Bois-Guilbert's

qualities are an extreme version o f Cedric's. The Saxon's valour is a kind

of recklessness, as in his assault on Torquilstone without the protection of

armour (p.333); the Templar's valour s tems from an overbearing confi-

dense in his own military skill (pp.261, 336). Cedric's t reatment of Gurth

and Fangs is the result of a hasty temper rather than a native tendency

to cruelty; although not naturally "hard, selfish, and relentless". Bois-

Guilbert admits t o having become so since being spurned by Adelaide d e

Montemare (p.253). Cedric's voluptuousness extends only t o a well-laden

table; whereas Bois-Guilbert, in spite of having taken vows of chastity.

has a sensual love of women. Cedric's hard-heartedness towards his son

is unnatural; Bois-Guilbert's hard-heartedness towards Rebecca is both

callous and brutal.

But the most significant parallel is that both men dream of unreal

future states. Cedric believes in the possibility of a restored Saxon

dynasty. Bois-Guilbert dreams of establishing an order of Templars with

"wider views" than those of i ts founders (p.255). Cedric's dominating

ambition is t o see his ward, Rowena, married to Athelstane, thus joining

the two strongest claimants to a Saxon monarchy: "The restoration of the

independence of his race was the idol of his heart, t o which he had

willingly sacrificed domestic happiness and the interests of his son" (p.195).

It is for this reason that he impugns Norman rule. His ambitions take no

account of Rowena's feelings:

It was in vain that he at tempted t o dazzle her with the prospect of a visionary throne. Rowena, who possessed strong sense, neither considered his plan practicable nor a s desirable, so fa r a s she was concerned, could it have been achieved. (p.197)

Bois-Guilbert joined the Templars a f te r being disappointed in love, and

immediately became a leader of those who impugned the authority invested

in i t s high officers (p.395). He tr ies to dazzle Rebecca with a similar

prospect, which she also derides:

"Thou shalt be a queen, Rebecca: on Mount Carmel shall we pitch the throne which my valour will gain for you, and I will exchange my long-desired batoon for a sceptre !'

"A dream," said Rebecca - "an empty vision of the night, which were it a waking reality, a f fec t s me not." (p.442)

The linguistic parallel between these two passages suggests that t h e manic

intensity of Cedric's ambitions for Rowena corresponds t o Bois-Guilbert's

daemonic love for Rebecca. Cedric's inner conflict finds i t s counterpart

in t h e Templar .

Such paral le ls a r e t o o c lose t o b e fortuitous. Given tha t t h e novel

spans a change of a t t i t u d e by t h e Saxon leader , they suggest t ha t Bois-

Gui lber t r ep re sen t s an e x t r e m e a spec t of Cedr ic ' s personality. O n e no te s

t ha t Cedr i c is unaware t h a t h e has s o many qual i t ies in common with t h e

Templar . T h e re la t ion be tween them thus corresponds t o t h e re la t ion

which Jung distinguished be tween t h e e g o and t h e dream-f igure which h e

cal led t h e shadow and which personifies " the 'negat ive ' s ide of t h e person-

a l i ty , t h e sum of all t hose unpleasant qual i t ies w e like t o hide".1° T h e

shadow i s not necessar i ly evil , just a s t h e Templa r is not evil. It personi-

f ies a spec t s of a n individual's personal i ty which h e o r s h e does not see ,

and does not wan t t o see , in him- o r herself.

T h e plot is s e t in mot ion when lvanhoe and Bois-Guilbert m e e t a t

Rotherwood. lvanhoe recognizes his fa ther , but Cedr i c does not recognize

his son, who i s disguised a s a palmer. If Ivanhoe personifies t h e union

of Saxon and Norman qual i t ies , and i t is th is which i s brought about a t

t h e end of t h e novel, t hen Cedr ic ' s inability t o recognize him symbol izes

t h e Saxon leader ' s inability t o a c c e p t t h e union of t h e t w o races. lvanhoe

thus r ep resen t s an a s p e c t of h is f a the r ' s 'unconscious' personality. One

no te s t h a t i t is Cedr ic ' s pride, irascibili ty, and ambi t ions (= aspec t s of his

shadow personality) which a r e responsible for h is repressing both his

na tu ra l a f f ec t ion fo r his son, and his des i r e for a uni ted kingdom.

Although both Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert a r e mil i tary men, a t Rotherwood

both a r e wear ing t h e d re s s of a religious order . Such ambivalence

suggests t h a t t he i r r ival ry belongs t o a n essent ia l ly symbol ic level of

representa t ion. This is co r robora t ed by thei r encoun te r a t a tournament ,

a symbol ic conf l ic t pa r excel lence. Vis-a-vis Cedr ic , t he i r r ival ry symbol-

izes a conf l ic t be tween 'light' and 'dark' a spec t s of h is unconscious

personality.

T h e ending of t h e novel s ca rce ly requires any comment . Ivanhoe

a r r ives just in t i m e t o de fend R e b e c c a from being burned a s a witch.

A f t e r a hard ride, and stil l suffer ing f rom his wound, h e i s in n o f i t s t a t e

t o joust. H e i s ne i the r responsible fo r t h e dea th of Bois-Guilbert, nor

does h e ach ieve anything by it. T h e Templa r dies, "a v ic t im t o t h e

violence of h is own contending passions" (p.5061, which signals t h e end of

Cedr ic ' s ambitions.

Thus, although lvanhoe may be t h e hero, Cedr i c i s t h e novel's axial

character . T h e even t s d o not t r a c e a son's difficult relationship with his

fa ther ; t hey o f f e r a symbolic representat ion of a fa ther ' s d i f f icul ty in

submit t ing t o something which his 'son' symbolizes. There i s no reason

why t h e motif o f dispossession must r e fe r to t h e disinherited party; it c a n

also be seen from t h e o the r point of view. Cedr i c has disinherited his

son. Ivanhoe personifies a repressed qual i ty ('Englishness') which Cedric

must acknowledge if h e , i s t o f r e e himself f rom a n a t t achment t o a

redundant o rde r - i.e. a Saxon nation. Bois-Guilbert personifies all those

tendencies in Cedric's personality which h e must 'overcome' if h e i s t o

d o this. It is nei ther Ivanhoe nor Providence which kills t h e Templar.

Bois-Guilbert's dea th is a symbolic ant ic ipat ion of Cedric's accep tance of

t h e exis tent real i ty of t h e world in which h e lives - a real i ty which,

because i t i s synthetic, i s a lso more dynamic than e i the r a Saxon o r a

Norman nation.

This in terpreta t ion not only provides a link between t h e major change

spanned by t h e na r ra t ive e v e n t s and t h e novel's conflict, but it a lso

suggests t h a t lvanhoe i s a much more important novel than is usually

thought. A charac te r i s t i c of Go th ic and Romant i c fiction i s fo r t h e he ro

o r heroine t o b e drawn towards a n unreal world of archetypal characters .

In Ivanhoe, t h e opposi te occurs. Cedr i c is not t empted t o t r y t o marry

Rowena himself; consequently, Ivanhoe (= his b e t t e r nature) i s not

t empted t o want Rebecca fo r himself. Rut Cedric's ambit ions fo r Rowena

a r e nonetheless manic, and the re i s a dark s ide - a n unacknowledged

egocentr ic i ty - t o even a n a l t ruis t ic ambition. Bois-Guilbert's daemonic

love fo r Rebecca - surely t h e most vivid e l emen t in t h e novel - symbol-

i zes t h e unreal na tu re of Cedric's 'romantic' plans for a res tored Saxon

dynasty. Ivanhoe's re ject ion of Rebecca thus r e f l ec t s t h e b e t t e r s ide of

t h e axial cha rac te r ' s personality: Cedric ' s refusal t o be drawn into t h e

world of archetypal fantasies, no m a t t e r how powerful and appealing these

might be. Thus, if t h e tendency t o b e drawn towards t h e symbolic (i.e.

t h e archetypal) may b e descr ibed a s cha rac te r i s t i c of t h e romant ic imagination, lvanhoe may be cal led a n 'anti-romantic' novel.'' Although

lvanhoe i s o n e of t h e mos t s tyl ized of roman t i c heroes, h e functions a s

a promoter of realism. Paradoxical though i t might seem, Ivanhoe i s a

romance whlch refuses to bel ieve in romance.

111 Death o f the Father

The deaths o f Cathy and Mr Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights are at once

the most impressive and the most extraordinary in romantic fiction. The

novel opens wi th a date, 1801, when Mr Heathcliff is the undisputed

master o f both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, while Hareton

and the second-generation Catherine are at each other's throats. The

antepenultimate chapter also begins with a date: 1802. The reader learns

that Mr Heathcliff 's unexpected death a few months after the init ial

events coincides with Catherine making her peace with Hareton and

acknowledging him as her "cousin."12 I shall argue that the simultaneity

o f these two otherwise separate events is a key to the two deaths which

l ie at the heart o f this novel.

Given that Wuthering Heights ends with Catherine's engagement to

Hareton, i t is worth looking closely at the way in which she is introduced.

In November 1801, she is living amongst three hostile men in a house

which appears t o be hateful to her. Cr i t ics have frequently commented

on Lockwood's ineptitude in the opening scenes; they all too rarely

consider the cause for this. Although Catherine is described as the

"missis," she simply stares at him "in a cool, regardless manner, exceeding-

ly embarrassing and disagreeable" (p.8). She refuses to play the part of

a hostess. She rejects any connection with her surroundings. She refuses

to enter into a normal social interaction. She is gratuitously offensive to

both Lockwood and Hareton, and she snaps at her father-in-law.

The most striking feature o f chapters I 1 and 111 is that the attributes

of each o f the three male residents o f Wuthering Heights correspond to

an aspect o f Catherine's personality. The house itself is defined as a

"perfect misanthropist's Heaven'' (p.1); Catherine has become a perfect

misanthropist. I ts three male residents are grim and taciturn; so is

Catherine. Joseph, aptly described as "vinegar-faced" (p.7), is a model of

"peevish displeasure" (p.2); so too is Catherine. Although a gentleman,

Mr Heathcliff is a savage bully who wi l l snap at Catherine and even

strike her; Zillah says o f Catherine, just before the events wi th which the

novel begins: "She'll snap at the master himself, and as good as dares him

to thrash her; and the more hurt she gets, the more venemous she grows"

(p.298). Hareton is characterized by his "free, almost haughty'' bearing;

Catherine is ''as chil l as an icicle, and as high as a princess" (p.296). The

three male residents thus 'mirror' primary aspects of Catherine's character.

M r Heathcliff's and Hareton's misanthropy (pp.1, 6, 9) reflect her lack of

interest in Lockwood (p.8). Hareton's absence o f any refinement reflects

her scorn of social conventions such as hospitality and domesticity (pp.9,

28-29). Joseph's pharisaism reflects her self-righteous contempt for al l

around her (p.297).

Lockwood is captivated by "the pretty girl-widow" whom he sees at

Wuthering Heights, and seeks to find out more about her from Nelly.

Although hlrs Dean chooses to begin her story from the very beginning,

all of i t - including the earliest events - is an explanation of how

Catherine came to be in the horrendous circumstances in which Lockwood

discovers her. The novel begins wi th a description of a household whose

three male inmates reflect aspects o f her personality, and ends with her

engagement. And the second half explains how she came t o be imprisoned

at Wuthering Heights.

Catherine grows up in total isolation at Thrushcross Grange. Apart

from the Grange servants, her father is the only man whom she knows

and, apart from Nelly Dean, her nurse, he is her only teacher and com-

panion. When she is thirteen - i.e. at puberty - he leaves her for the

f irst time. She is immediately drawn towards Wuthering Heights, where

she meets Hareton. She is happy to have him show her "the mysteries of

the Fairy cave" (p.1971, but as soon as she learns that he is her cousin,

she behaves l ike a spoiled brat (pp.194-5, 222). She rudely rebuffs him;

she cannot bear the thought that she is related to someone so unlike her

father. "'Papa is gone to fetch my cousin from London - my cousin is a

gentleman's son,"' she tells him, and returns home i n a sulk (p.195).

Linton is "an ailing, peevish creature" (p.182) who looks remarkably l ike

Edgar: he "might have been taken for [Edgar's] younger brother, so strong

was the resemblance" (p.200). He also possesses the qualities of intellec-

tual capability which Catherine associates wi th her father. She is drawn

to him because he is her "real cousin'' (p.199). In other words, she

rejects Hareton, her maternal cousin, in favour o f Lindon, her paternal

cousin.

Catherine can only value what she can associate wi th her father.

Edgar is always uppermost in her mind (p.273). The more he dominates

her thoughts, the more she seeks a relationship in which she can "with

some slight coaxing" dominate Linton - i.e. someone l ike her father

(p.242). Edgar's responsibility for Catherine's preference is implied by his

words t o Nelly: "hard though i t b e t o crush he r buoyant spirit , I must

persevere in making her sad while I live" (p.257). He does not mean to;

h e i s simply unconscious of t h e damage h e has done he r by bringing her

up in comple te isolation. In themat i c and psychological terms, Cather ine 's

imprisonment s t e m s from her ove r -a t t achment t o her fa ther .

Cather ine 's history t r a c e s t h e consequences of her "fantas t ic prefer-

ence" for Linton r a the r than Hareton (cf. p.100). Her s e c r e t relationship

with him d raws h e r increasingly f requent ly towards Wuthering Heights until

s h e i s bruta l ly imprisoned by Mr Heathcl i f f , in order t o fo rce her t o mar ry

Linton, his son. Mr Heathcl i f f te l ls her: "I shall b e your f a the r to-

morrow - all t h e f a the r you'll have in a f ew daysn (p.271). Immediately

a f t e r Edgar Linton's funeral, " that devil Heathcliff" comes t o col lect he r

f rom Thrushcross Grange: "'I'm c o m e t o f e t c h you home'", h e te l ls her,

"'and I hope you'll b e a dut i ful daughter '" (pp.286, 287). He i s - a s Nelly

Dean phrases i t - "her new father'' (p.291, cf . p.271). Ca the r ine finds

herself a lone in a n alien masculine house, feel ing "like death" (p.294). She

has lost c o n t a c t with he r own home, and can no longer manifes t ordinary

f emale qual i t ies (p.299). This i s h e r s i tuat ion in 1801. And tha t t h e t h r e e

ma le res idents of Wuthering Heights r e f l ec t a spec t s of her own personality

suggests tha t t h e re la t ion be tween he r and i t s ''surly indigenae" is essen-

tially psychological. T h e Mr Heathcl i f f encountered in t h e opening

chap te r s is a n archetypal tyrannical fa ther . I t i s no coincidence tha t

Hareton also acknowledges him a s his f a the r - his "devil Daddy" (p.109,

cf. p.321).

T h e novel's extraordinary symmet r i e s thus per ta in t o t h e second-

generat ion Catherine. She i s f aced by a "choice" between t w o cousins:

Linton, who looks l ike he r fa ther , and Hareton, who "is a t t a c h e d [ to Mr

Heathcl i f f ] by t i e s s t ronger than reason could break" (p.321). Her cho ice

implies a choice be tween two fathers : Mr Linton, a benign fa ther , and

Mr Heathcl i f f , who is also a father-figure. A t t h e ou t se t of t h e novel,

Cather ine 's 'benign' f a the r i s dead, and both s h e and t h e l eg i t ima te owner

of Wuthering Heights a r e dominated by a devilish father-figure.

Thus, somewhat surprisingly, o n e notes t h a t Cather ine 's history does

not require t h e e v e n t s of t h e f i rs t -generat ion t o explain it. T h e second

half of t h e novel o f fe r s a qu i t e suff ic ient explanat ion of Cather ine 's

s i tuat ion in 1801. Such a reading implies t h a t t h e first-generation e v e n t s

should b e seen in re la t ion t o those in t h e second-generation, and not - a s

their chronology suggests - vice versa. The first part of Nelly's story

culminates in Cathy's death, barely two hours after giving bir th to

Catherine. Given that Catherine is "a puny, seven months' child" (p.164).

the novel's central scenes (those between Mr Heathcliff's return to the

vicinity of Gimmerton in September 1783, and Cathy's death on the night

of 19th-20th March, 1784) correspond to Catherine's gestation. They

provide a 'prehistory' of Catherine's condition: they symbolize Catherine's

dilemma throughout the winter o f 1801 - her inabil i ty to see her way out

o f her predicament. One remembers that Catherine is at Wuthering

Heights while Nelly tells Lockwood her story. Cathy's yearning to return

to Wuthering Heights in "1784" which leads inevitably to her death,

symbolizes Catherine's irrational resignation to remaining there in "1801-

1802.11~~

This suggestion is corroborated by the simultaneity o f the events

which bring the novel to a close. Nelly's story finishes with Zillah's

account o f Catherine's gratuitously offensive behaviour towards Hareton

("I can't endure you! I'll go upstairs again, i f you come near me" p.296).

Lockwood thereupon decides to return south. While visiting Wuthering

Heights for the purpose o f taking his leave, he overhears Catherine

tormenting Hareton unti l the lat ter can bear i t no longer and slaps her

(p.302). As her cousin leaves the room, Mr Heathcliff enters and

comments on Hareton's resemblance to Cathy (3.303). In September 1802,

while holidaying in the north, Lockwood learns that Catherine's reconcilia-

t ion wi th Hareton coincided with Mr Heathcliff seeing Catherine's

resemblance t o Cathy (pp.320-322). Thus, as soon as Catherine stops

whining about her father and begins to adopt an independence similar to

that which motivated her mother, Mr Heathcliff loses his grip on reality

and wastes away. His death frees her not only to repossess her home, but

also to marry Hareton.

I t is generally assumed that the events in the 'first generation'

determine those i n the 'second generation.' Rut the structure given us

by Emily Bronte - as opposed to that reconstructed by crit ics according

to i ts chronology - suggests that Catherine is the novel's axial character;

that the 'main plot' concerns her unconscious attempt to free herself of

a tyrannical father. She frees herself from the degradation she suffers

at Mr Heathcliff's hands only when, recognizing that she is "stalled" (i.e.

has no other course open to her), she acknowledges Hareton as her cousin.

Mr Heathcliff thereupon loses his hold on her, and dies. In o the r words,

a s soon a s Cather ine recovers something of her mother 's archetypal

vitality, she f rees herself f rom a psychological imprisonment by a tyran-

nical father.

The coincidence of t h e beginning of Mr Heathcliff 's s t r ange behaviour

and Catherine's change of a t t i tude towards Hareton implies tha t these

even t s a r e related. It suggests tha t t h e t w o men a r e personifications of

different a spec t s of Cather ine 's unconscious personality. Hareton corres-

ponds t o Jung's definition of t h e animus, t h e image of a man in a

woman's dreams and waking fantasies which personifies her notions about

men and masculine 'spirit.'14 One remembers tha t Wuthering Heights is

identified with Hareton throughout t h e novel: his name is carved above

i t s door. The inmates of Wuthering Heights ref lect different a spec t s of

Cather ine 's animus. Paradoxically, she is 'imprisoned' the re only so long

a s she re jec t s any relationship with Hareton, whose ignorance symbolizes

he r ignorance of t h e world of men. S h e seeks t o educa te him, because

educat ion is t h e highest value she has inherited from her father. She does

not understand tha t Hareton's worth & his rough good nature. It i s not

for h e r t o seek t o change him according t o notions derived from her

fa ther , but t o respond t o him a s h e is. For only by doing so could she

respect tha t pa r t of her own uncultivated na tu re which is no less feminine

for not being associated with conventional notions of femininity. Only by

accept ing Hareton a s h e is could she accep t herself a s she is.

Instead, s h e seeks t o dominate him, just a s Cathy, her mother,

thought tha t Heathcliff would obey her in everything. When she accep t s

Hareton a s her cousin, i t i s because she has c o m e t o accept him a s an

extension of her own personality. One notes tha t this is how Ca thy

thought of Heathcliff ("I 9 Heathcliff"). There a r e good reasons, then,

for supposing tha t t h e engagement with which t h e novel ends is "con-

trary'' - t h e last words given t o them in t h e novel (p.307) - for i t r epea t s

t h e t r ag ic pa t t e rn evident in t h e first-generation events. Thus Ca the r ine

has not resolved t h e di lemma facing he r in t h e opening chapters. She has

merely obtained a respi te f rom t h e "degrading oppression" she suffers a t

Mr Heathcliff 's hands. T h e novel's ending is considerably more ambivalent

than tha t of Ivanhoe. T h e engagement contains t h e seeds of fu tu re dis-

cord, with a suggestion tha t t h e ou tcome will b e similar t o tha t in t h e

first-generation - i.e. t h e dea th of t h e heroine.

My main intention has been to illustrate that the deaths of ~lle'nore,

Bois-Guilbert, and Mr Heathcliff require consideration of their psychologi-

cal implications. The analyses imply that each of the three novels we

have discussed begins with a challenge facing its axial character (to relate

to 6lle'nore; to overcome Bois-Guilbert; to acknowledge Hareton) and

continues with a symbolic dramatisation of the resulting dilemma. In each

case, the death with which the novel ends represents the death of an

aspect of the axial character's personality. The 'contending passions'

from which Cll&ore, Bois-Guilbert, and Mr Heathcliff die are directly

related to a change of attitude by Adolphe, Cedric, and Catherine respect-

ively. For this reason, from such a psychological perspective, death has

many possible meanings. It may signal the axial character's failure to

integrate a psychic element, as in Adolphe, or the successful overcoming

of a negative tendency in the axial character's personality, as in lvanhoe

or Wuthering Heights. The latter achievement can be either lasting, as

in Ivanhoe, or only tentative, as in Wuthering Heights, whose ending hints

at a possible future tragedy. From these readings, it is evident that the

unexpected deaths which bring about their different resolutions are an

integral part of each novel's main concern, and in this sense, may be

regarded as a major theme of each work.

1. For a discussion of this problem, see Holger Klein, "Autumn Poems: Reflections on Theme as 'Tertium Comparationis"', in Proceedings of the Xlth lCLA Congress, Paris 1985 (forthcoming).

2. Arthur Hatto, Eos: An Enquiry into the Theme of Lovers' Meetings and Partings at Dawn in Poetry, The Hague: Mouton, 1965.

3. Thus although the axial character may be defined as the character from whose point of view the narrative events are seen, my definition does not fit with the point of view theories of either Genette, Ra!, or Lanser. Nonetheless, Susan Lanser's recognition that the sex of a narrator is an im~ortant asvect for consideration anticbates the distinction I make: see The ' ~ a r r a t i v e ' Act: Point of View in prose Fiction (Princeton: Prince- ton UP, 1981), p.47. See also her criticism of Genette, p.37.

4. Adolphe, ed. Paul Delbouille (Paris: soci6t6 "Les Belles Lettres," 1977), p.112. Subsequent references are to this edition.

5. See John Middleton Murry, The Conquest of Death, London: Peter Neville, 1951.

6. For a discussion of this notion, see C. G. Jung, The Collected Works, ed. Sir Herbert Read (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953-761, vo1.3, pars. 171-2.

7. See Jung, op. cit., vo1.9, pt.ii, pars.20-29.

8. Jung, op. cit., vo1.9, pt.i, par.66.

9. Ivanhoe, ed. A. N. Wilson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982). p.506. Subsequent references are to this edition.

10. Jung, OD. cit., vo1.7, par.103, note 5.

11. See Joseph E. Duncan, "The Anti-Romantic in Ivanhoe," Nineteenth- Century Fiction 9 (1955): 293-300.

12. Wuthering Heights, ed. Ian Jack (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981). p.313. Subsequent references are to this edition.

13. See my article, "An Oppression Past Explaining: The Structures of Wuthering Heights," in Orbis Litterarum, forthcoming.

14. See Jung, OD. cit., vo1.13, pars.57-63.

DIALOGUE WlTH THE DEAD: THE DECEASED BELOVED AS MUSE

Elisabeth Bronfen (University of Munich)

v Woman is not a poet: She is either

Muse or she is nothing (Robert Graves)

Death is the actual inspiring Genius or the Muse o f Philosophy (Schopenhauer)

I. A Fatal Exaggeration

In Berlin, on the night o f December 29, 1834, Charlotte Stieglitz (aged

twenty-two) sent her husband Heinrich to a concert in order to be alone

while committ ing an incredible act. A f te r having washed, dressed in a

clean white nightgown and placed a white cap on her head, she went to

bed and there stabbed herself clirectly in the heart with a dagger she had

bought as a bride.' In her farewell note, Charlotte suggested that her

suicide be understood as an act of self-sacrifice meant to inf l ic t such pain

and sense o f loss on her manic-depressive husband that he would break

free from his psychic lethargy. I n this way she hoped to liberate his

petrif ied poetic powers. His wife's violent death would enable him to

regain what he had lost - his self and his poetic genius.

Although Charlotte's death failed to inspire a new phase o f poetic

creativity in her husband, i t did make her into a public Muse. Triggering

a 'vicarious' pain, her suicide provoked a plethora of interpretations from

her contemporaries. Some saw her sacrifice as an act of 'true feminine

genius,' bridging the gap between flesh and spirit, others as an attempt

to renew not only her husband's stif led energies but in fact the suppressed

or thwarted efiergies o f an entire generation of Germans suffering under

the constraints o f Biedermeier society. On the other hand, opponents of

the writings of the Jungdeutsche, who idealized her death, saw her suicide

as an emblem o f the dangers of free morals. Far more striking than the

ideological intentions inherent in the texts wr i t ten about her, however, is

the fact that Charlotte, who had never had any public role during her l i fe-

time, came by her suicide to leave such an impressive mark in the public

realm. One has the impression that in i ts Biedermeier garments, her dead

body became the site for the interpretive inscriptions o f her survivors - inscriptions that say more about those interpreting than the object being

interpreted.

Susanne Ledanff suggests that what makes Charlotte's story so com-

pelling is that she took the bombastic metaphors of self-obliterating love,

heroism, self-sacrifice, and liberation of the soul from the body seriously,

rather than treating them as quotations from previous cultural texts; that

is, she made the fatal mistake of applying literary conventions to her own

personal history. Yet even more disquieting, and for a critic also more

fascinating, is the strange mixture of seduction by a false pathos of

romantic and pietistic delusions and the calculation of effect inherent in

her act, the doubling of deluded victim and consciously responsible

actress. For she exposes the conventions of feminine self-sacrifice at

exactly the same moment that she fatally enacts them. Far from being

innocent or naive, her suicide is pregnant with literary citations; in fact

it is a clichk - suggestive of both Werther's and Caroline von Guenderode's 2 suicides after failed romances, of the iconography of sacrificial brides and

martyrs dressed in white, for whom death is a mystic marriage and an

erotic unity with God, as well as that of women dying in childbirth. At

the same time her act perverts the image of the selflessly devoted house-

wife by introducing violence into the idyllic bedroom, by adding self-

assertion to self-submission. Her act of self-sacrifice is so disquieting

because it is both an imitation of c~tltural clichks, hovering between irony

and kitsch, and a self-conscious effort to make herself into an object of

discourse.

Due to the exaggerated manner in which she performed her suicide,

however, this act also lays bare several implications of the traditional

notion of creative power as an external gift bestowed upon a chosen artist

by his Muse. For one, her act suggests that death transforms the body

of a woman into the source of poetic inspiration precisely because it

creates and gives corporality to a loss or absence. Since her gift to the

poet is the removal of her body, what occurs is the exchange of one loss

for another, the implication being that her presence has displaced his

poetic genius. This equation reveals the central dichotomy of the Muse-

artist relation: the poet must choose between a corporally present woman

and the Muse, a choice of the former precluding the ~ a t t e r . ~ That is to

say, what must occur is the transformation of a direct erotic investment

of the beloved woman into a mitigated one (of the same woman who is

now absent, or of another woman who never was present). The distance

thus created by loss, the shift from presence to absence, opens up the

space for poetic creation. I n this respect the relation between Muse and

artist is, of course, only an augmentation o f the prerequisite of symboliza-

t ion in general. As Jacques Derrida explains "What opens meaning and

language is writ ing as the disappearance o f natural presence".4 Yet

although any form of absence would suffice, the death o f the beloved is

i ts perfect embodiment, i t seems, because i t secures the distance and the

loss for ever. In an uncanny manner Stieglitz seems to collapse Graves's

definition of woman's relation to art: by making her self 'nothing' she

makes herself into the ult imate incorporation o f the Muse.

A t the same time Charlotte's suicide, and the rhetoric surrounding

it, point to the interconnection between artistic renewal as a form o f

giving bir th and death. She and Heinrich both call her act a Caesarean

which saves the child while destroying the mother. Through her death she

hopes to mother the genius o f her husband while at the same time endow-

ing him with the faculty of giving birth. For his poetry, wr i t ten "in

memory of" the deceased, by invoking and making present her who is

absent, w i l l be a rhetorical animation o f the dead beloved.' The dis-

turbing twist Charlotte's suicide gives to the relationship between artist

and Muse is the suggestion that poetic renewal - that is, the bir th of the

poet - necessarily entails someone else's death. Extreme as her form o f

self-textualization might be, i t is nevertheless only an exaggeration o f the

changed conception o f the Muse that informs the nineteenth-century

imagination. In order to discuss the inversion that occurs here i t is

necessary, however, to recall the original function ascribed to the Muse.

While i t is not clear whether in classical Greek culture the Muse had

an objective divine reality or was merely a projection, a familiar and

convenient metaphor for the creative process, her invocation points to a

conception of the poet's g i f t as being dependent on an appeal to a higher

power other than itself. Divine inspiration was the designation given to

that element in poetry which exceeded craftsmanship, and the exchange

between poet and Muse implied a moment o f loss of Self and possession

by an Other. The Muse was thought to speak through the poet, making

him the medium of her speech. She was mother to the poet in the sense

that she l i terally inspired by singing her material to him - that is, she

animated his poetic ability by breathing her song into him. As Plato in

the famous passage in Phaedrus explains, the Muse was the source o f

divine possession or madness, stimulating the lyr ic poet's untrodden soul

t o r ap t pass ionate expression: "glorifying t h e count less might deeds of

ancient t imes for t h e ins t ruct ion of posterity".6 On t h e o the r hand, for

a poet not t o acknowledge t h e holy breath of t h e Muses a s quintessential

t o poet ic c rea t ion and t o depend on his skill a lone was t o result in poe t i c

fa i lure and public oblivion. T h e self-sufficient poet and his work would,

in Plato's words be "brought t o nought by t h e poetry of madness I...] thei r

p lace I...] nowhere t o b e found". For a mythic version of t h e Muse's

in tolerance fo r rivalry one could c i t e t h e s to ry of Thamyris, a s found in

Homer. Because h e boasted that h e could surpass them in a compet i t ion,

t h e Muses maimed him, taking away his "voice of wonder'' and thus making

him a "singer without memory". 7

Ecstat ical ly devoted t o t h e Muse, t h e poet 's u t t e rances were a lso

meant t o glorify her, t hus suggesting t h e occur rence of a two-way

exchange. For t h e Muse's g i f t t o t h e poet allows him t o give birth t o a

t e x t celebrat ing her. Tha t is, s h e inspires o r an ima tes his poet ic power

s o tha t h e may, by v i r tue of his invocation, in turn r ean ima te t h e Muse.

A s a f igure of inspiration, s h e is d i r ec t ly addressed, and thus se rves a

threefold function in this poet ic dialogue. She is simultaneously maieut ic

producer, object of reference, and privileged addressee of t h e poet 's speech.

In addition s h e is a lways incomplete ly accessible, a lways beyond reach.

For t h e rhetor ic of invocation, a lways one of apostrophe, requires her

absence while a t t h e s a m e t i m e making t h e lack of presence, t he d i s t ance

of t h e addressee, i t s privileged t h e m e and causing her, a s t h e object

reanimated by t h e poet 's speech, t o t a k e on t h e s t a t u s of presence-in-

absence (life-in-death), a kind of double presence.8 What is important t o

s t ress , however, i s t h a t t h e Muses w e r e t h e daughters of Zeus and

Mnemosyne - goddess of memory. Thus t h e apostrophe not only served t o

render t h e bodily absent addressee present, but also through her t o make

present an absent past knowledge o r a l t e r io r truth. T h e Muses not only

ini t ia ted t h e poet in to pass ionate expression, a s Hesiod's archetypal re la t ion

of his poe t i c expe r i ence a t t h e foot of Mount Helicon suggests, but a lso

se rved a s t h e source of knowledge outs ide t h e poet 's realm of experience. 9

P o e t s invoked t h e Muses t o m a k e present what they were not present t o

see, needed them t o remember , including tha t which was never par t of

the i r own personal history. Pu t ano the r way, by addressing t h e absent

Muse, t h e poet a t t e m p t e d t o ove rcome his absence a t previous historical

events , his lack of comple te knowledge.

In the course o f the centuries, the v i ta l i ty attr ibuted to the Muse

paled, as Steele Commager puts it, into an abstraction, so that one could

characterize her "biography as the history of a fading metaphor".10 What

in Classical Greece was a conviction became in Augustan Rome a conceit.

By assigning to the Muses a merely decorative status or seeing them re-

incarnated in specific human beings, as Propertius does when he declares

his mistress Cynthia's folly to serve as source and subject o f his poetry,

the poet, as Commager argues "no longer feels himself the creature o f

some higher power, but assumes that his own creative potency is suf-

ficient"." That is to say, in the same rhetorical move that gives a

concrete body to the Muse, secularizes her so to speak, she is denied that

divine power which would be other and more encompassing than the poet's.

As such she becomes a figure for the poet's peculiarly own poetic powers,

mothering genius that is innate rather than inspired; a metaphor for the

poet as "possessing a special abil i ty rather than as possessed by it", with

the apostrophe addressing "his own peculiar I n the late Middle

Ages Dante takes up again the tradition of invocation, and he too trans-

fers the role o f the Muse to a real woman, Beatrice, who, by virtue o f

his idealization and her early death, is corporally never accessible. The

change from the Muse as metaphor for a divine inspirational source to

that of metaphor for the poet's singular g i f t is also visible in Petrarchan

love poetry. As Silverman points out, the fixed distance between lover

and Muse, which functions as a precondition for poetic production, has the

effect o f transforming the lady into a divine signifier, "pointing beyond

herself to Godn, l 3 thus asking the reader to concentrate not on the woman

but on that toward which she leads. The Muse is thus not only reduced

to a rhetorical figure, but to the allegorical pretext for a signifier other

than herself.

2. Reanimating a fading metaphor

What is remarkable about the Romantic inversion o f the poet-Muse relation

is the fact that the status of Muse is transferred again onto a corporally

existent beloved, only now she is dying or already dead. The thematic

interplay between poetic creation and loss, distance, o r absence of the

beloved is thus given a new twist: the rhetorical invocation refers quite

l i terally to a female body, as though not only the poet's gift, but also the

fading metaphor were to be reanimated. Yet i n the course of this re-

conception several important changes occur. It is no longer the poet,

daring to disown the Muse, who is punished for his audacity, but instead

the woman chosen to be Muse. What she gives is not her song but rather

her body and her life. And though it is her death which inspires the

poet and takes possession of him, whether it provokes the experience of

ecstasy or the production of narratives, the concept of possession has also

taken on a duplicitous character. For while the original act of taking

possession and giving birth to the poet is mimicked, the Romantic inversion

is in fact an example of the poet's taking ultimate control over the

departed woman.

The questions with which I want to confront several nineteenth-

century texts involving the inspirational power of a dead beloved are thus

aimed both at the function and at the reference or signifier of this

image. Roland Barthes suggests that to stage absence in language is to

remove the death of the other I...] to manipulate absence is to prolong the

moment I...] where the other will move from absence to death. l4 But

when the object of this invocation is already dead, whose death is being

deferred? Is the invocation of the dead beloved an attempt to preserve

her artificially against death, or an attempt to eternalize the poet's skill?

Whose triumph is it, when the poet reanimates and resurrects a dead

beloved, and what desire is enacted when the artist defies the irrevoca-

bility of death? Above all, what is ultimately being signified by this

dialogue? While on the one hand the addressee of this invocation is a

beloved woman quite literally dead, she simultaneously serves a figurative

function, namely as metonymy for death.

Once again the focus slips between her and where she leads. We

thus have another duplicitous situation, for although she is being reanima-

ted, she is likewise being effaced again when used as an emblem for

something else, to which she is (in the end) incidental. Again one could

say that this is involved in every form of translation, a process which, as

J. Gerald Kennedy explains, "entails duplication and effacement, a re-

tracing which both mirrors the original and abolishes it in the sense that

every translation sacrifices the letter of the original text to reconstitute

its spirit in another language."15 In the invocation of the dead beloved,

however, the original seems to be effaced more than once, literally by

virtue of her death, and rhetorically not only because she is replaced by

a text, but also because she serves an allegorical function amid this

replacement. For i f the reference to the figure is the concrete death o f

a woman, i t seems that more than just a rhetorical or textual convention

is involved.

Novalis's f irst mention of Sophie von Kiihn's death is a stark entry

in his diary on March 19, 1797 - "This morning half past nine she died - 15 years and 2 days His reactions to her death, the satisfaction

he obtains from his mourning are, however, minutely recorded in his

journal over a period of three months, from Apri l 18 through July 6. As

though to stage textually the intermediary position which a dialogue with

the departed Sophie implies, everything appears twofold. He counts by two

dates - the calendar day and the days since Sophie's death, thus emphasi-

zing that her death is both an end and a beginning. His ambivalent

emotional reaction, a cross between sadness, psychic petrif ication and

happiness, revivification, is duplicated by a style which is both pragmati-

cally sober and enthusiastically idealizing. One has the impression he is

trying in an impartial and distanced voice to keep minutes of the changes

in his emotional state as he records his acts o f remembrance, while at the

same t ime attempting to transmit the ecstatic revelation Sophie's death

provokes. Conjuring up her image in his mind or visiting her grave

becomes a means by which to keep her alive as addressee o f their dialogue,

making her present in absence. This dialogue, however, is two-way, for

his invocation animates him as well - he is "von ihrem Andenken belebt." l7

I t is meant to serve the purpose o f being "ganz bei ihr," in the sense o f

sharing the place in which she is now, i.e. to make her grave his own.

Because above all the dead Sophie, semanticized as his soul, his inner or

better life, his angel, serves as a kind o f Doppelganger, signifier not only

for a departed beloved but also for the part o f the self lost at birth, from '

which he feels alienated during his conscious, earthly existence. A t the

same time, she also metonymically stands for death, so that his ef for t to

reanimate her i n order to be with her is the rhetorically displaced

expression of his desire for the original state o f identity and unity before

the dynamic difference and opacity inherent to life; that is to say, his

desire to be reunited wi th her also articulates his longing for reunion with

a 'lost' self, for the anorganic peace o f death.

The name he gives t o Sophie i n a short text written in 1796 - Klarisse - indicates that she never was a l iving body alterior to himself

but rather always a mirror for self-reflection, clear, transparent and cold,

in short an image of deathlike quality. Her death thus only finalizes what

she was all along: a figure (not a living woman) serving his narcissistic

self-projections, whose signified belongs t o the paradigm of death. Because

he makes t h e dead Sophie t h e central axis of his life from which h e can

draw power, meaning a s well a s a new chronology ("she is t h e highest - t h e only being I...] everything must be brought in relation t o her idea")18

she inspires both an intensive self-absorption ("incessant thinking about

myself and what I feel and don) and the idea of suicide a s liberation.

This duplicitous desire recalls the image of the self-engrossed (and self-

possessed) Narcissus wilfully pining away as he tr ies t o become identical

with his image projected on the water's surface.

Her loss translates into his gain because it opens a wound that is the

prerequisite for any s t a t e of desiring - "A lover must feel the gap

eternally, t h e wound must always be kept open. Let God preserve for

ever I...] the wistful memory - this brave nostalgia - the male decision and

t h e firm belief. Without my Sophie I am nothing - with her

As a perennial 'loss' she becomes the secure measure on which his inter-

pretation of the world and his self-definition can be based, a void he can

fill with explanations and poetic texts. At t h e same t ime her death

endows his existence with a new meaning because i t allows him qkite

explicitly t o concentrate on where a reunion with her would lead. The

wound her death inflicts is not to be filled, a s Charlot te Stieglitz's

mimicry had intended it to be, with narratives a s an ac t of self-assertion

in and for the world, but rather a security that h e will imitate her act.

His self-assertion is not defiance against, but rather an embracing of

death's triumph. To Schlegel he writes. "Nevertheless, I experience a

secret joy a t being close t o her grave. It draws me ever closer I...] i t

is very clear t o m e what celestial coincidence her death is - a key t o

everything, a wonderfully adequate m o v a n 2 ' That is t o say, by dying

Sophie performs an exemplary ac t he can then emulate. As Muse she is

not only meant t o show him the way to his poetic voice but also t o lead

him in his flight from the world. Her death not only opens t h e wound

that secures desire, but also marks the promise that his longing will be

quenched.

His descriptions of his sojourns a t her grave suggest that he wishes

to be possessed by her, made into her object, sucked out in order even-

tually t o become identical with her (whereby, slnce she is his double, this

is in fact a displaced form o f self-absorption). In "Hymen an die Nacht,"

her duplicitous nature is explicit ly understood as that of a bloodsucking

revenant. He reanimates her so that she may deanimate him, a form of

reversed birthgiving: "tender beloved I...] you made me into a human - draw on my body with ghostly ardor so that I aerial may mingle with you

more intensely and our wedding night last forever." 22 In all o f his invoca-

tions the beloved merges with the image o f the mother, suggesting that

a reunion would be the repetition of the symbiotic union with the

maternal body, and death a second birth, so that the invoked Sophie

recalls the semantic tr iad Graves assigns to the Muse: mother, seductress,

and death. Although his dialogue with the dead Sophie is part o f the cult

o f the distant and unattainable woman, i ts charm for him lies in the fact

that it allows him t o imagine a cancellation of the distance between him

and the state for which the departed beloved stands: self-obliteration,

eternal continuity, resolution of tension, movement, difference, and desire.

Turning to Edgar Allan Poe's treatment of the dead beloved as Muse,

we find an interesting shift in focus. As Marie Bonaparte suggests, his

wife, Virginia Clemm, "served as the unwitt ing Muse who first called Poe's

genius as a writer o f imaginative prose to life." 23 The pale young woman

dying of tuberculosis repeatedly functioned as model for his half-dead,

prematurely buried, or (through metempsychosis) resurrected heroines

Madeline, Morella, Bernice, and Ligeia. A t the same time, Virginia's ill-

ness, which forbade any direct consummation of erotic desire, inspired

those texts in which the fascination for a woman is dependent precisely

on her unattainability - that is, her being physically absent while present

when remembered or artistically recreated. In contrast to Novalis, who

reanimates a dead beloved precisely because he wants to be made the

object o f death's desire, Poe's various speakers hold an intermediary

position, balanced between an embrace o f death and a successful denial

or repression of it. The continued bond with a departed lover marks death

not as the sought-for goal but rather allows the speaker to acknowledge

both the mysterious way in which death penetrates the world o f the living,

while using his poetic inscriptions to f i l l the gap created by loss. L ike

her predecessors, Virginia, whether as model or as implicit addressee,

serves as a signifier for the poet's own psychic states, wi th the focus

again on where she leads. The important difference is, however, that her

invocation now has as reference the ambivalent states of psychic petri-

f ica t ion caused by a n obsessional clinging t o t h e dead and t h e hopeful

de f i ance of o r t r iumph o v e r dea th by v i r tue of poet ic inscription.

A comparison of t h e poems "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee" will help

i l l u s t r a t e t hese t w o variations. In t h e f i r s t poem,24 t h e speake r descr ibes

his involuntary r e tu rn t o t h e vaul t of h is beloved Ulalume. While h e has

repressed all memory of he r death , signaled by his not recognizing t h e

pa th h e i s moving along, s h e i s preserved in t h e form of an incorporation

in h i s unconscious, poet ical ly rendered a s a n a m e "on t h e door o f t h i s

legended tomb." In what c a n b e unders tood a s a s e m a n t i c reversal of

Novalis's v is i t s t o Sophie's grave, t h e speake r dep ic t s himself a s unwitting-

ly possessed by t h e dead, h is r e tu rn a s a n unconscious obsession.

Ulalume's vampir is t ic hold, fur thermore, s t a n d s in d i r e c t r ival ry t o Psyche,

represent ing t h e soul's s ea rch for a new e r o t i c a t t achmen t , s o tha t he r

warning "let u s fly" r ema ins unheeded. What P o e descr ibes is t hus a

psychic impasse, f o r whi le t h e dead beloved d raws t h e speake r t o he r t omb ,

binding him so tha t h e i s not f r e e t o find an a l t e rna t ive ob jec t of des i r e

among t h e living, s h e does not lead him t o death. While P o e l eaves

unexplained t h e kind of e r o t i c s a t i s f ac t ion such an a r r e s t of libidinal

dr ives enta i l , h e makes expl ic i t t h a t t h e speake r i s in a dupl ic i tous

position, ne i the r d i r ec t ed toward t h e living nor willing t o g ive up l i f e -

t h a t is, exper iencing dea th by proxy, in t h e sense t h a t h is incorporat ion

of t h e dead beloved tu rns his emot iona l s t a t e i n to a 'death-in-life.'

"Annabel Lee", 25 implicitly addressed t o Virginia, c a n b e r ead a s t h e

jubilant coun te rpa r t t o t h e obsessive-compulsive form of memory.

Although t h e speake r invokes his lost br ide in o rde r t o ideal ize t he i r love,

t h i s recol lect ion u l t ima te ly se rves t o i l l u s t r a t e his imaginat ive gnd poet ic

powers, by v i r tue of which h e p l aces himself beyond t h e na tu ra l law of

death . T h e r a r i t y of t he i r love - "more than love" - consis ts for o n e thing

in i t s exclusivity: "she lived with n o o t h e r thought t han t o love and b e

loved by me." T h e measu re of i t s value lies in t h e f a c t t h a t i t both

a t t r a c t e d t h e covet ing envy of t h e Se raphs and surpassed t h e resul t of

t he i r usurping desire. F o r while Annabel 's "high kinsmen" bea r h e r away

and "shut he r u p in a sepulchre" ( a me taphor used t o i nd ica t e he r af f in i ty

t o angels) h is imaginat ive powers g u a r a n t e e t h a t nothing "can e v e r d i s seve r "

t he i r souls. F o r his response t o t h e physical loss of h is beloved i s t o

endow his surroundings imaginat ively wi th h e r ubiquitous p re sence and

r e su r rec t h e r in h is poe t i c u t t e r ance . While h e i s drawn t o t h e t o m b of

his beloved ("all t h e night-tide") t h i s a t t r a c t i o n t o t h e s i t e of dea th

u l t ima te ly leads t o i t s poe t i c rendition, a 'sepulchre' surpassing he r t o m b

because i t not only p re se rves but makes he r ' re-presented, ' present-in-

absence.

While on a l i tera l level t h e invocatory reanimat ion of Annabel s e rves

t o prove t h e inseparability of thei r souls, t h e displaced signified of th is

f igure is t h e power of his poe t i c t r iumph o v e r death. In con t r a s t t o

Novalis, t h e focus In these depic t ions of t h e presence-in-absence o f a dead

beloved shif ts t o t h e quest ion of what i t means t o mainta in a 'fixed

dis tance ' , regardless of whether t h i s leads t o compulsive repet i t ion o r t o

compensat ion and subst i tu t ion of loss through poe t i c resurrection. Or, t o

put it ano the r way, t h e emphasis sh i f t s t o an expression of t h e unfulfil la-

bili ty o f desire.

3. inver t ing t h e inversion t o expose t h e t radi t ion

What has been t ac i t l y implied in t hese examples i s admi t t ed and expl ic i t ly

t hema t i zed with astonishing candidness by Henry J a m e s - namely tha t t h e

poet not only gains his a r t i s t i c powers a t t h e loss of a beloved but t ha t

h e p re fe r s h is r ean ima ted version of he r t o t h e real woman. Like Novalis,

J a m e s recorded his r eac t ions t o t h e dea th of a woman - h i s New York

cousin Minny Temple , who died of tuberculosis while h e was visiting

England. In several le t ters , J a m e s expla ins wherein t h e cha rm and sa t is -

fac t ion of privileging a supplement lies. 26 T h e most s t r ik ing f e a t u r e o f

his response is i t s ambivalence. H e confesses t o "feeling a singular

mix tu re of p leasure and pain", a sks both h i s mo the r and h i s b ro the r for

de t a i l s about h e r last hours, finding "something so appeal ing in t h e pathos

o f he r final weakness and decline" while expressing g ra t i t ude 'that h e did

not himself see he r su f f e r and mater ia l ly change. While h e repeatedly

a s s e r t s t h a t "it i s t oo soon t o talk o f Minny's dea th o r p re t end t o feel

itn, h e expresses a c e r t a i n sa t i s f ac t ion a t having wr i t t en more than twe lve

pages about h e r t o his brother. Th i s p re fe rence for t h e 'soft idea' over

t h e 'hard fact ' in r e spec t t o Minny' s dea th s ignals t h e more global

t endency t o p re fe r a f ixed dis tance, t o privilege t h e mi t iga t ed and

vicar ious ove r t h e immediate . I t s e e m s t h a t t h i s d i s t ance a l lows t h e

depa r t ed beloved to b e c o m e a n ob jec t en t i r e ly a t h is i n t e rp re t a t ive

disposal and thus t h e c e n t r a l s t a k e in h i s self-definition as a n ar t i s t .

F o r Minny's dea th i s not only t h e key t o t h e past, inspiring a host

of memories , but a lso t h e means by which h e c a n t a k e possession of th is

pas t and s t r u c t u r e i t a s a meaningful whole. H e r e i t e r a t e s t h a t h e r dea th

is a de f in i t e 'gain' - " the happiest, f ac t , [sic] a lmos t in he r whole career."

While t h e r e may b e a c e r t a i n validity in t h i s appraisal when o n e considers

he r illness, i t s e e m s t h a t t h e gain i s m o r e his t han hers. F o r a s a dead

body s h e becomes an "unfaltering luminary in t h e mind,'' a n image. A s

a living body s h e was a "divinely res t less spi r i t - essent ia l ly one of t h e

'erreconcilable'" - "flickering" in t h e sense tha t , l ike any living being, s h e

w a s ambivalent and f ickle enough t o e lude any a t t e m p t a t fixing he r

meaning. As a dead body, however, s h e is t r ans l a t ed f rom "This changing

realm of f a c t t o t h e s t eady realm of thought." A s a n image preserved

in his mind s h e becomes a f igure o f whose s t a b l e meaning h e canno t only

b e sure, but which h e c a n a l so seman t i ca l ly des igna te a t h is will. She c a n

thus s t and for "sereni ty and purity" a s a "sort of measu re and s t anda rd of

br ightness and repose" o r s h e c a n t a k e on t h e function of represent ing

a s p e c t s of h is life. H e thus sees the i r re la t ion a s an exchange o f

ene rg ie s - s h e "sinking ou t of br ightness and youth in to decl ine and death,' '

while h e "crawls f rom weakness and inact ion and suffer ing in to s t r eng th

and hea l th and hope."

By reducing her purpose in his l i f e t o " the bright in tensi ty of her

example", t h e emphasis ye t again i s on where s h e leads. Her inspiration

has a double goal, fo r s h e not only r ean ima tes him by serving a s t h e

guiding example toward a n e m b r a c e of l i fe whi le herself yielding th is

in tensi ty , t hus s tanding a s a n emblem of his youth and t h e end of a n

episode in his development . A s a dead beloved s h e also- becomes a

privileged ob jec t fo r memory - a "pregnant r e f e rence in fu tu re years.''

Embalmed in his mind, l ike Snow White "locked away, incorruptibly, within

t h e c rys t a l wal ls of t h e past" and wai t ing t o b e reanimated, s h e becomes

above all t h e measu re fo r h is skills a t recol lect ing and creat ing. While

h e r l i f e was a "question", disquieting because h e could not o f f e r " the

e l e m e n t s of a n answer", he r absence, i t seems, could b e m e t wi th such

sa t i s f ac t ion because i t both f ixes he r i n to a s t ab l e f igure - "incorruptible"-

and opens t h e s p a c e fo r a p le thora of poe t i c i n t e rp re t a t ions within which

h e could design, shape, and r e c r e a t e he r (and the i r relationship) in inf in i te

variations.

In his work, James repeatedly used the 'memory' of Minny as model

for his heroines, notably Isabel Archer and Mi l ly Theale (as well as in his

autobiography, Notes o f a Son and Brother). Yet he also wrote narratives

which, doubling his own biography, can be read as a cr i t ical reflection on

his relation to a dead Muse and the aesthetics inherent in this relation,

above all from the point o f view o f mourning and erotic desire. In "The

A l ta r o f the ~ e a d " , ~ ~ the protagonist Stransom creates a shrine o f

remembrance for his "religion of the Dead", as a means by which to stay

"in regular communion with these alternative associates", o f whom Mary

Antrim, who died after their wedding-day was fixed, is the central voice.

He understands this dialogue as a "connection more charming" than any

possible in l i fe (AD, p.871, and designates the ef for t o f keeping the dead

alive by force o f his memory to be the central purpose o f his life. What

might on one level be seen as an attempt to possess the past, animating

a departed lover in order to appropriate the shared experience she metony-

mically stands for, turns into Stransom's possession of the dead. As the

central measure used t o evaluate and interpret his world (AD, p.911, his

dead also eclipse other emotional bonds. Because this form o f "communion"

allows the absent woman to prove more powerful than her corporally

present rival (signaled by the fact that the lat ter remains "nameless"), i t

becomes for Stransom a way to shield himself from any diyect erotic

investment, thus becoming emotionally deathlike. That is to say, the

exchange places both i n an intermediary position: her presence-in-absence

is reciprocated by his absence-in-presence, i.e. his inability to invest the

living, immediate world wi th any form of desire. Ult imately she inspires

the wish to share her position, to become the last candle on the altar, and

thus f i l l the existent gap with his own body.

There is, however, another component t o this exchange: while the

nameless woman is rejected as a direct object o f desire, i t is for her

benefit that he wishes to translate himself into the one last candle to

f i l l and complete the altar, asking "Isn't that what you wanted?" (AD,

p.118). Their dispute had centered around the fact that she used his altar

to worship the memory o f the one friend he had rejected among his

dead - Acton Hague. The knowledge he gains in the church when Mary's

"far-off face" smiles at him from the "glory of heaven" is an insight not

only into the rapture that his communion with Mary affords him, but also

that this is marred by the fact that he refuses bliss to the other woman.

Death suggests itself a s t h e resolution of his ambivalent position between

t h e t w o women and of his jealousy fo r t h e "unnamed" woman's communion

with Ac ton because i t allows him t o appropria te Acton's position and cas t

himself a s t h e absent addressee of her worship. In what seems t o b e both

paradoxical and repetitious, his concept ion of his own dea th entai ls both

a unity with Mary and t h e opening of a new gap in respect t o t h e "un-

named" woman, thus leading not, a s in t h e c a s e of Novalis, t o the

cancel la t ion of all d i f ferences , d is tances , and barriers, but r a the r t o t h e

preservat ion of t h e intermediary position, which i s informed by a tension

be tween the living and dead. It t r ans l a t e s in to a glorification of loss and

dis tance, not i t s e f f acemen t . His loss is also seen a s his gain, because

the d i s t ance of dea th i s understood as t h e way t o have a communion with

t h e nameless woman tha t would not be possible in life. While Stransom

recal ls Char lo t t e Stieglitz 's ac t , h e inver ts t h e Romant i c version by

imagining fo r himself t h e position of t h e Muse, who will inflict loss on a

survivor a s a way t o procure his reanimation. What is striking is both the

reversal of gender roles, making the man Muse t o t h e woman, and t h e

f a c t t ha t th is concept ion t akes a d absurdum t h e t radi t ional privileging of

a 'fixed dis tance ' over ' immediacy, ' t h e 'reanimation' over 'd i rect

presence.' In s o doing, t h e t e x t brings into play an e l emen t of ironic

dis tance between protagonist and implied reader, who, c a s t in to the role

of outs ide observer, i s led t o question and thus destabi l ize t h e pr imacy of

mit igat ion and approximation. T h e na r ra t ive s t ance of J a m e s i s thus in

itself duplicitous, in that , without condemning o r offer ing a n a l ternat ive ,

i t simply leaves t h e question of gain and loss open.

In "Maud-Evelyn", 28 t h e reanimat ion of a depa r t ed lover helps the

mourner t o appropria te o r r a the r c r e a t e a past post f a c t o and thus se rves

a s a measure not only fo r his desi re fo r vicarious, mit igated exper iences

but a lso his imaginat ive skills. Marmaduke decides t o join the Dedricks

in their religion of mourning, consec ra t ed t o the i r daughter Maud-Evelyn,

who died when she was fifteen. A s t h e na r ra t ive progresses i t becomes

c l e a r t h a t by dedicat ing himself t o her memory, h e can successfully keep

his f iancee Lavinia a t bay. T h e Dedricks' ritual, however, consis ts not

only in cherishing preserved re l ics but a lso in t h e cons tan t imaginat ive

enlargement of t h e past, t h e growth of a legend, wherein real e v e n t s a r e

supplemented by "f igments and fictions, ingenious imaginary mementoes and

tokens {ME, p.344). In t h e course of the i r mourning, they invent whole

exper iences for her, which grow t o include a n engagemen t and mar r i age

t o Marmaduke, leaving him u l t ima te ly a s h e r widower.

Graves suggests t h a t when a Muse tu rns i n to a domes t i c woman s h e

f a d e s in he r abi l i ty t o inspire, and engenders t h e poet 's demise. Th i s

leads o n e t o specu la t e whe the r t h e Roman t i c fascinat ion with t h e dea th

o f a young br ide i s not connec ted with a des i re t o prevent t h e Muse from

turning domes t i c and thus ceas ing t o function a s inspirational source. 29

What g ives t h i s ins tance i t s par t icular poignancy is, however, t h e f a c t t ha t

t h e r ean ima ted woman Marrnaduke privileges ove r Lavinia i s a c o m p l e t e

s t r ange r t o him and t h e pas t not shared but invented. T h e sa t i s f ac t ion

th is vicarious loss o f f e r s s e e m s t o lie in t h e f a c t t ha t t h e g a p c r e a t e d by

dea th c a n b e inscribed wi th f a r less cons t r a in t t han if t h e r e fe rence of

t h e memory corresponded wi th s o m e factual ly ver i f iable pas t experiences.

Not only does t h e dead Maud-Evelyn lend hersel f t o emblema t i za t ion in

a way t h e living Lavinia neve r would, but t h e remembering Marmaduke has

to t a l f reedom in r e spec t t o t h e c o n t e n t and s e n a n t i z a t i o n of h is reanima-

tion.

And y e t again t h e emphas i s i s on where t h e dead beloved leads, fo r

what Marmaduke s t r e s ses i s t h e heu r i s t i c qual i ty of h is cu l t of mourning:

" the m o r e we l ive in t h e pas t t h e m o r e th ings w e find i t it" (ME, p.355).

His a c t o f memory l e t s him g row in to "a person wi th a position and a

history", a g rowth whose c h a r m l ies in t h e f a c t th& i t is invented, t h e

resul t of a change wi thout t h e process o f changing. Tha t i s t o say, not

only does h i s reanimat ion of Maud-Evelyn en ta i l a n invention of he r

expe r i ence but, s ince s h e i s invoked a lways in he r re la t ion t o him, i t a lso

l e t s him invent himself, endow himself w i th a pas t h e never lived. A s in

t h e previous s tory , t h e na r r a t ive f raming s tabi l izes t h e privileging of t h e

supplement , t h e vicar ious o v e r t h e immed ia t e and di rect , without offer ing

a new hierarchy, l e t t i ng a judgment of t h e c a s e slip be tween "self-

decept ion" (ME, p.348) and "really beaut i ful" (ME, p.352).

Ye t t h i s 'case' i s t h e most e x t r e m e version o f t h e e f f a c e m e n t of t h e

signified woman in t h e Muse-poet re la t ions discussed in th is paper, and

could b e r ead a s an example of how t h e theme , by turning upon itself,

exposes i t s own limitation. While in t h e previous examples t h e absence

of t h e dead woman al lows h e r t o s e r v e as a f igure f o r signifying something

else, in t h e sense t h a t t h e l i t e r a l s ignif ier r e f e r r ing t o a woman's dea th

is d isplaced in f avour o f ano the r t h a t r e f e r s t o t h e speaker ' s emot iona l and

poetical s t a t e , in th is s to ry her absence is doubled. Maud-Evelyn i s

present-in-absence in a n en t i r e ly rhetor ical manner, a feminine n a m e only,

severed complete ly f rom any l i tera l body and leading t o a chain of

supplementary signifiers which e m a n a t e f rom and re f l ec t solely the speake r .

Tha t is t o say, her invocation s t ages t h e absence not only of he r body but

of her signified a s well, t h e glorification of a n empty, closed-circuit sign

with no r e fe rence excep t t o i t s own s t a t u s a s signifier. A s such i t s

funct ion i s t o a r t i cu la t e t h e omnipotence of t h e speaker , who, denying t h e

real i ty of any immedia te world, d isappears e v e r more into his museum and

t emple (ME, p.3581, which houses a f ic t ional past, until h e eventual ly

was te s away "with an excel lent manner" (ME, p.359). This 'case' shows

t h e power of imagination and t h e desi re for dis tance t aken t o such an

e x t r e m e t h a t i t collapses t h e Muse-poet re la t ion in to a tautology, reducing

t h e tension of a dialogue o n c e again t o a rhetor ical convention, t o a

fictional figment.

What th is compara t ive reading of several n ineteenth-century t e x t s

involving the poe t i c reanimat ion of a dead beloved reveals, then, is t ha t

one of t h e cen t ra l motors of western l i terary production is t h e fo rce of

effacement . T h e absence of a natural body a s prerequis i te fo r i t s

symbolic representat ion, t h e privileging of t h e mit igated and vicarious ove r

t h e direct and immediate , and t h e p re fe rence fo r the presentat ion of a

rhetor ical figure ove r t h e presence of a natural body a r e pers is tent enough

in our cul tural discourses not t o b e l imited t o a discussion of t h e Muse-

poet relation. My reading could thus lead one t o reconsider t h e ~ p r e -

suppositions underlying more general tendencies in nineteenth-century

poetics. A t t h e s a m e t ime, because these chosen t ex t s concerned with t h e

Muse-poet re la t ion both question and re inforce t h e gradual occul ta t ion of

t h e signified woman, they expose ( somet imes unwittingly) Woman's

privileged function a s f igure for desi res and meanings ex te r io r t o herself.

T h e e f fec t iv i ty of these t e x t s lies in the i r ex t r emi ty , for they depict

ins tances where poet ic c rea t ion necessarily en ta i l s a woman's death, where

t h e movement f rom l i tera l body t o f igure i s u l t imately taken q u i t e l i ter-

ally. A s such they point out t h e e x t e n t t o which i t now seems urgent t o

question the way nineteenth-century society - and not only this period - h a s regarded Woman, in respect both t o ou r cul ture 's g a z e and i t s e s t e e m

of her. 30

I. See Susanne Ledanff, Charlotte St~egl i tz: Geschichte eines Denkmals, (Frankfurt/M: Ullstein, 1986) for a detailed discussion and documentation of this incident.

2. Ledanff points out that the confusion was shared by her contempor- aries as well. Gutzkow calls her Caroline Stieglitz.

3. See Susanne Kappeler, Writing and Reading in Henry James (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980) chapter 7, "A l i terary Taboo", pp.75-82.

4. See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravory Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976). p.159 and Barbara Johnson, "Translator's Introduction'' to Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (Chicago: Chicago UP, 198 1 ), pp.vii-xxxiii.

5. For a discussion o f reanimation and i ts rhetorical function see Barbara Johnson, "Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion", in A World o f Difference (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987), pp.184-199.

6. Plato, The collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton UP), p.492.

7. Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richard Lattimore (Chicago: Chicago UP. 195 I), pp.91-92 (lines 594-600).

8. See Sarah Kofman, Melancolie de I'art (Paris: ~a l i le ' , 1985).

9. Steele Commager, The Odes o f Horace: A Cri t ical Study (Blooming- ton: Indiana UP, 1967), p.9.

10. Ibid., p.3.

I I. Ibid., p.8.

12. Ibid., pp.20 and 23.

13. Kaja Silverman, The Subject o f Semiotics (Oxford: Oxford UP, 19831, p.279.

14. Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux (Paris: Seuil, 1977). p.22: "la mise en scene langagi'ere [de I'absence] kloigne la mort de I'autre I...] manipuler I'absence, c'est allonger ce moment I...] o i ~ I'autre pourrait basculer skchement de I'absence dans la mort". Barthes is referring to Ch.11 o f "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", in which Freud describes a child's game with a spool and the articulation of the two words "fort" (away) and "da" (here) that significantly accompany this game: see "Jenseits des Lustprinzips" (1920), in Studienausgabe, Band 3 (Frankfurt : Fisher, 1975), pp.222-227. What has not sufficiently been appreciated, to my knowledge, by cr i t ics discussing this text is the way in which i t is in part informed by the death o f Freud's favourite daughter Sophie, who died of influenza1 pneumonia January 25, 1920 at the age o f twenty-six. The ~ rob lems involved would reouire further discussion: see also lacoues - . Derrida, "Coming into One's Own" in Psychoanalysis and the Question o f the Text, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978).

15. J. Gerald Kennedy, Poe, Death, and the L i f e o f Writ ing (New Haven: Yale LIP, 19871, p.61.

16. Novalis, Werke, Tagebucher und Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. Richard Samuel (Munchen: Hanser, 19781, vol. 1, p.456.

17. Novalis, p.462.

18. Novalis, p.465. "Sie ist das Hochste - das Einzige I...] Alles in Reziehung auf ihre ldee zu bringen."

19. Novalis, p.468: "Unaufhorliches Denken an mich selbst und das, was ich e r fahre und thue."

20. Novalis, p.471: "Der Liebende muss die Liicke ewig fiihlen, die Wunde s t e t s offen erhalten. Got t e rha l t e mir immer I...] d ie wehmiithige Erinnerung - diese muthige Sehnsucht - den mannlichen Entschluss und den felsenfesten Glauben. Ohne meine Sophie bin ich g a r nichts - Mit Ihr Alles."

21. Novalis, p.633. "Dennoch habe ich eine geheime Freude, s o nah ihrem Grabe zu seyn. Es zieht mich immer naher I...] e s list] mir ganz klar I...] welcher himmlischer Zufall Ihr Tod gewesen ist - ein Schliissel zu allem, e in wunderbar schicklicher Schritt."

22. Novalis, p.151: "za r t e Gel iebte I...] du hast I...] mich zum Menschen gemach t - zehre mit Geis terglut meinen Leib, dass ich luftig mit dir inniger mich mische und dann ewig die Brautnacht wahrt."

23. Marie Bonaparte, The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho- Analytic Interpretat ion (London: Imago, 1949), p.260.

24. Edgar Allan Poe, Poe t ry and Ta les (New York: Library of America, 19841, pp.89-91.

25. Edgar Allan Poe, Poe t ry and Tales, pp.102-103.

26. S e e Henry James , Let ters , ed. Leon Edel, vol. 1, 1843-1875 (London: Macmillan, 1974) especially t h e l e t t e r s t o hlrs Henry J a m e s Sr., William James, and Grace Norton, pp.218-229.

27. Henry James, "Altar o f t h e Dead" in Se lec ted Tales (London: Dent, 1982). Further references a r e marked in t h e t ex t with "AD" and t h e page number.

28. Henry James, "Maud-Evelyn," 14 Stor ies by Henry J a m e s (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1947). Further r e fe rences a r e marked in t h e t e x t with "ME" and t h e page number.

29. Robert Graves, T h e White Goddess (London: Faber Rr Faber, 1948, 3rd edn. 19591, p.449.

30. A slightly expanded version of this a r t i c l e will b e included in Sex and Death ed. Regina Barreca (London: Macmillan, 1989).

IMAGES OF LANDSCAPE IN CONTEMPORARY FRENCH POETRY: PONGE, CHAR AND DUPIN

Sieghild Bogumil (University of Bochum)

Introduction

Even a f t e r a cen tu ry of poet ic war waged agains t landscape, i t is sti l l

forcefully present in modern poetry. Disintegration in Raudelaire, who

remarked tha t "tout I'univers visible n'est qu'un magasin dlimages",' was

followed by Mallarmh's indif ference - "La Na tu re a lieu, on n'y a joutera

pas t t2 - also fe l t by Ri lke towards t h e end of his life.3 T h e "auberge

ver te" closed be fo re Rimbaud's eyes, even though h e re ta ined "un pied prgs

d e [son] ~ o e u r " , ~ and Kafka 's "Description of a Struggle" indicates t h e

terminal point of th is development : having rehearsed a s t e r eo typed praise

of t he landscape's beauty , t h e "fat man" c loses his e y e s and conjures i t

t o vanish so tha t he might breathe , t h e landscape dissolves and t h e beau ty

is revealed a s t hea t r i ca l machinery.5 Against th is background i t is in ter-

es t ing t o ask why landscape reappears so intensively today. An answer

may b e gained by observing t h e wri t ings of t h ree of t h e bes t known

con tempora ry French poets: Francis Ponge, R e n e Char , and Jacques n u p i n .

Despi te considerable d i f f e rences among them, o n e may discern , in t h e

techniques they sha re (such a s t h e des t ruct ion of r ep resen ta t ive language

and mime t i c poetry, t h e f r agmen ta t ion of t h e word, and t h e const i tu t ion

of meaning on t h e level of t h e signifiers) a t t e m p t s t o recover t h e image

of landscape.

'Image' is he re taken t o mean a s ense figuration which is cons t ruc t ed

by t h e poet ic discourse. It exists, a s Bachelard puts i t , outs ide o f , and

pr ior to, all thought, making sense by means of i t s intrinsic dynamic while

never theless preserving i t s communica t ive "transsubjectivity".6 Thus i t

funct ions a s an or iginat ive and in i t ia t ing even t - th rough which t h e poet ic

subject es tabl ishes a link be tween itself and t h e world. T h e specia l image

of t h e landscape is, of course , control led by this inaugural discourse.

T h e notion of ' landscape' has t radi t ional ly been def ined a s a pa r t of

na tu re which is external ly l imi ted by t h e horizon and in ternal ly organised

a s a f igurat ive uni ty of natura l e lements . I t s cohe rence i s cons t i t u t ed by

t h e e y e movement of a n observer looking a t i t for enjoyment , whi le t h e

dis tance be tween t h e person and t h e landscape de t e rmines i t s d is t inct ive

features . 7

In this aesthet ic sense, landscape no longer exists in the work of the

three poets selected; above all, the coherence seems to be missing.

While analysing their poetic procedures one has to ask oneself in what

sense it is nevertheless possible t o speak of landscape.

Ponge: Landscape a s "The impossible which persists"

In Ponge's work, the image of landscape is rooted in a critique of the

traditional aesthetic landscape, up to the point of negating landscape alto-

gether. A t first sight, his "Petite suite vivaraise" ( 1 9 3 7 1 ~ which scrupu-

lously describes the Vivarais, seems to be an exception. On close reading,

however, one can recognise that there is no observer placed in the land-

scape who enjoys i t and could unify Its separate elements. The descrip-

tion merely results in an automatic enumeration which makes no sense

because i t forms no landscape. Yet the beauty of the separate elements

persists in being a source of enjoyment. The same happens when a

sensitive man is, on the contrary overwhelmed by a beautiful sight, such

a s a single flower, which even can hurt him (L, p.14), o r a beautiful land-

scape. It evokes so great a "number of images" (LM, p.405) in his mind

that he is lost among them. Describing the sky above La Mounine, "beau

pleurer" (LM, p.405). Ponge is unable to control his feelings (LM, p.405)

and cannot complete his text. He is lost in an incoherent abundance of

beauty. Yet he still feels joy, so that Ponge comes to ask himself why

man derives pleasure from this dlspersion of nature which lacks aesthetic

unity. His answer is, in the case of landscape, that man preserves a

mental image of the whole. He does not even need t o look a t it, for he

knows what a landscape is. A glance suffices (AC, pp.230, 235).

Thus landscape becomes the prime space in which man can satisfy

his "dhsir d'6vasionm (PR, p.198). His feelings do not correspond any more

to the concrete object; the name of beauty, which gives sense to the

landscape, has no referent and becomes interchangeable: "Beau est un mot

qui en remplace un autre" (LM, p.404). This remark may be considered

a s the starting point of Ponge's critical approach to the aesthet ic land-

scape. It focuses on the problem of, beauty, intimately linked to a

critique of feelings, which leads to a new conception of the 'beautiful'.

The new approach becomes necessary, for losing the coherence of the

world of natural objects, o r landscape, the man of feeling, who persists,

has lost his natural living spaces outside and inside himself.

T h e u l t ima te cause of th is deadly lack of sense i s t ime. Man n o

longer has t i m e t o look. T h e landscapes of which Ponge speaks appeared

t o him in passing - t h e s e a a t Biot, t h e countrys ide a t Craponne (LM,

p.3981, and La Mounine. Time, too, passes and does i t s des t ruc t ive work - in a twinkle. A s opposed t o Paudela i re , who welcomed t i m e and made i t

a cr i ter ion of beauty, Ponge sees it a s o n e of beauty 's defects . T o halt

des t ruct ion, h e s e t s agains t t h e va r i e ty and movement t h e naming and the

contemplat ion of landscape, agains t i t s evocat ion t h e 'expression' of

landscape.

Thus Ponge's image of landscape i s in keeping with his general poe t i c

discourse. It leads t o t h e abolishment of landscape because t h e basis of

Ponge's writing conf l i c t s with landscape's requirements. Landscape is

multiple, but for Ponge t h e poem's way "ne mene hors d e s choses" (PP,

p.411, t h e poem's world is a f ac to ry not organised by a "gbom8tr ie dans

I'espace" (P, p.131). Landscape c l amours for descr ipt ion, Ponge's wri t ing

i s 'expression'; in a word, his poetry goes agains t "la beau t6 ou Itint6r&t

d e la Nature" (M, p.199) - and landscape disappears in a poet ic d iscourse

in which i t s cons t i t u t ive e l emen t s express n o more than t h e c r i t i ca l

s t r a t egy of t h e text.' "Les Berges d e la Loire" (RE, p.257f.l shows th i s

very forcibly. T h e landscape is n o longer a natura l scenery but a c r i t i ca l

notion in which c r i t i que and landscape become interchangeable .

T h e c o n c r e t e landscape i s hardly visible in Ponge's poetry , t h e writing

has re legated i t t o t h e poem's horizon - t o i t s c o n c r e t e margin, b e i t t h e

opening, a s in "La Mounine", b e i t t h e end, a s in "Carnet du bois d e pins".

And i t i s th is d i s t ance which, in e f f e c t , con fe r s s ense on it. The following

poem may se rve t o demons t r a t e th is negat ive poe t i c of landscape:

Le Paysage L'Horizon, surlignk d ' accen t s vaporeux, s emble kcr i t e n p e t i t s ca rac tk re s , d 'une e n c r e plus ou moins pdle se lon les jeux d e lumi8re.

D e ce qui e s t enco re plus proche je ne jouis plus q u e c o m m e d'un tableau,

D e ce qui e s t e n c o r e plus p roche q u e c o m m e d e sculptures , ou d 'archi tecture ;

Puis d e la rkal i te m d m e d e s choses jusqu'8 mes genoux, c o m m e d'aliments, a v e c une sensa- tion d e vkr i table indigestion,

Jusqu ' i ce qu'enfin, dans mon co rps tout s 'engouffre e t s 'envole par la t&te , c o m m e pa r une chemin6e qui d6bouche e n plein ciel. (P, p.54)

Beyond t h e re ject ion of t h e c lass ical landscape t h e poem implies a c r i t i que

of t h e var ious a e s t h e t i c real isa t ions of landscape with which man has

progressively abolished t h e d i s t ance sepa ra t ing him from nature , finally

making his s t a t e s of soul t h e landscape's vegeta t ion, which provokes a

feel ing of s ickness in Ponge. If o n e r eads t h e poem backwards, however,

t h e landscape r econs t i t u t e s i t se l f , and t h e pleasure r e tu rns a s t h e d i s t ance

increases. On t h e horizon, i t becomes legible - a t t h e limit of illegibility.

Recogni t ion of t h e landscape - a s of Ponge's 'objects' - i s gained a t t h e

threshold of d isappearance (cf. LM, p.401). D i s t ance has a f f e c t e d t h e

landscape by wi thdrawing i t f rom t h e organising look of man: d is tance,

conceived in c lass ical a e s t h e t i c s a s a n organised expanse within landscape,

has become external ised and es tabl ishes t h e d e g r e e of s epa ra t ion be tween

man and landscape. This cr i t ica l , de s t ruc t ive d i s t ance of landscape, wi th

regard t o itself and wi th regard t o man, i s t h e precondition for Ponge

when h e wan t s t o a c c e p t landscape a s a subject in h is poetry. 'Describ-

ing' i t ha s become moving i t in to a d is tance. I t i s t h e r emoteness of i t s

loss. Ponge does not oppose himself t o t h e evolut ion of t ime, bu t a c c e p t s

i t and reveals in i t a new sense.

If t h e image of landscape i s not a c e n t r a l conce rn in Ponge's poetry ,

i t is never theless an impor t an t t heme , fo r man himself is a t stake. T h e

poem "La Mounine" is one of t h e f ew t e x t s in which Ponge a t t e m p t s t o

"bien ddcrire" (LM, p.404) a s t r e t c h of Provencal landscape a s i t appeared

t o him, not by a rapid g l ance but in a profound "vision". T h e a t t e m p t

assumes t h e dimensions of a ve r i t ab l e f ight (cf. LM, p.392) t o make tha t

speak which seemed for e v e r t o s lumber in silence. A t t h e momen t in

which t h e landscape has become what e v e r y pa r t of t h e f lora is in itself,

i.e. wholly "une volont6 d'expression" (PP, p.921, i t pronounces i t s

"formule", which se rves man by making "un pas i I'esprit" (LM, p.404).

I t s "formule" o r r ea l n a m e i s beau ty being about t o vanish. It is i t s "loi

e s thk t ique e t morale"; in o t h e r words, in o rde r t o know t h e real land-

s c a p e i t i s necessary t o follow i t t o i t s quasi-extinction. This is t h e way

"La Mounine" develops.

T h e f i rs t passages of "La Mounine" present t h e landscape's isolation

a s an e v e n t in t h e very in ter ior of fugi t ive s p a c e and time. Viewed a t

a d i s t ance from t h e bus passing by, t h e landscape moves t o a stil l more

r e m o t e place; a t t h e end of t h e journey, i t appea r s fixed in t h e memory.

T h e spa t i a l isolation is increased by put t ing t h e landscape o u t of t ime:

De ce paysage il faut que je fasse conserve, que je le mette dans I'eau de chaux (c'est-&-dire que je I'isole, non de I'air ici, mais du temps). (LM, p.387)

Preserving the breeze or the breath of the landscape he makes i t a frag-

ment of nature in the midst o f nature. This fragment becomes manage-

able because i t is simple (LM, p.400) and contingent. It has become one

o f the objects characteristic o f Ponge's poetry - with one important

difference. A t the extreme point o f the distance, at that moment when

landscape has been voided of al l meaning, the distance is turned into a

constructive signifier which itself becomes a new image: the azure. Yet

even this is too present, because o f i t s insistence, being reinforced by the

memory of Mallarmk, who is metonymically evoked in the larger context

by the reference to the "encre":

II s'agit d'une congestion. (Tant d'azur s'est amass6e.) I...] 11 s'agit de I'explosion en vase clos d'un mil l iard de p6tales de violettes bleues. (LM, p.401)

Ponge puts even the azure at the distance of the cr i t ical discourse in

order to regain awareness and breath, and thus finally become able to

describe it. In this "pas nouveau" (LM, p.dlO) he manages to speak o f the

distance at a distance and t o render i ts absence present. In i ts intensity

the azure turns dark and, in the light of dawn (cf. LM, p.3971, brings forth

"la nuit intersidkrale, que, les beaux jours, I'on voit par transparence, et

qui rend si foncb I'azur des cieux m6ridionaux." (LM, pp.4lOff.) The

"formule" is found some paragraphs later: 'I... la clairihre donnant sur la

nuit intersiddrale" (LM, p.412). Night appears in day, the inf in i te i n the

finite, eternal t ime and endless space arise (LM, p.413) - in the concrete

space and time o f the poem. And faced with this sky, man finds himself

before the "gravity" (LM, p.413) o f the eternal, which is the real place.

Yet what kind of place is i t concretely, or, in other words, what does this

concept o f gravity imply?

The poem remains unfinished and ends with an "etc.". The poetico-

logical continuation may be found in "De la nature morte et de Chardin".

In this poetic crit icism of Chardin's paintings it emerges that the true

name o f the habitable space o f man is his destiny, called death. A t the

same time it is the name of beauty. The beautiful landscape acquires a

tragic aspect; i t becomes a landscape o f destiny, and the enjoyment o f

i t i s t ransformed in to a kind of Rimbaldian 'hygiene':

Voili donc no t re 'santd'. Voi l i no t re beaut6. Quand tout se rhordonne, sans endimanchement , dans un

ec la i r age d e destin. (AC, pp.234f.l

Dea th i s t h e "moral law" which cons t i tu t e s t h e landscape. I t renders t h e

new "paysage mdtaphysique" a "nature morte" (AC, p.235). T h e opposite

i s a lso true: t he "nature morte" i s living na tu re surrounded by death. In

t h e d i s t ance between himself and landscape removed t o a "nature morte" 10

man, "qui, l e t emps d e s a vie, c h e r c h e le lieu d e son repos, enfin: d e s a

mortn (AC, p.2351, finds assurance o f his place. It i s t h e equat ion of l i fe

and death, l ife continually threatened with death. As "nature morte",

landscape i s thus t h e c o n c r e t e image of "I'impossible qui dure" and which

i s human l i fe (M, p.198).

Char: T h e Landscape o f Creat ion, o r "Dismissing the Windn

If in Ponge's poetry landscape acquires i t s sense by dying away, t h e e n t i r e

Provencal landscape in all i t s aspects1 ' "quasi s ans choix", (NT, p.289) 12

including the people living in it , fil ls t h e poetry of Char. Also t h e way

in which landscape i s present d i f f e r s from t h a t of Ponge. In Char , t h e r e

is no d i s t ance between man and landscape; i t i s both brimful wi th man's

history and impregnated with t h e poet ' s desire. Indeed, t h e poet himself

becomes landscape. He has "la langue rocheuse" (DNG, p.1151, his hands

a r e "rivikres soudainement grossies" (FM, p.129), t h e wind i s his breathing

(FM, p.137). Even his writing i s inseparable f rom t h e landscape, it is "le

liseron du sang puisk i mdme l e rocher" (ChB, p.541).

Thus t h e landscape i s predicated a s t h e exclusive and continuously

present space of poetry. Even prior t o ar t iculat ion, poetry is landscape,

landscape is t h e precondition of speech. What Char s a y s of poetry, there-

fore, applies equally t o landscape. A s t a t e m e n t made in a n interview i s

par t icular ly re levant here, all t h e more as it implies a cr i t ique of Ponge's stand. Char , employing a Pongian t e rm, s a y s t h a t "la po6sie n'est pas une

legon" (CA, p.822); one may add t h a t for Char , landscape i s not reduced

t o a "formule". I t i s not only t h e result of speech, but a lso i t s foundation.

It i s "sur la pointe e t dans le sillage d e la fl8che" (RBS, p.712). Talking

of landscape in a referent ia l way would fall shor t with regard t o Char.

T h e landscape turns ou t t o b e "communication e t [...I l ibre disposition des

choses entre elles & travers nous" (Fb4, p.160), revealing i ts fundamental

and organising laws.

This movement o f the word between the outside and the inner world

o f the subject becomes concrete in the image o f a path through the land-

scape, the poetic organisation of the natural elements being at the same

time the path; this means that the concrete image fulf i ls at the same

time the cr i t ical function of poetological self-reflexiveness. Landscape is

not only a pleasurable spectacle offered to an observer, but also a place

of work demanding one's entire attention. This path under construction

is the only way, and i t has a twofold character: on the one hand, i t is

rough - "Parole, orage, glace et sang finiront par former un givre commun "

(FM, p.189); on the other hand, i t exceeds al l boundaries, assuming varied

forms of passage - wind, sky, nudity, tr ickl ing light. "La liberte' n&t

I...] n'importe oh" (NT, p.490). The shock of the encounter o f these two

opposite paths, achieved by the movement of the words, leads to their

inextricable intertwining, which finally is the real path:

A I'embouchure d'un fleuve oh nu1 ne se jette plus parce qu'il fait du soleil d'excrkments sous les eaux panachkes, le po&te seul illumine; assainissement des antagonismes, Bdification des prodiges, ddclin collectif. (MP, p.71)

I t is impossible to delineate one particular path. The indissoluble

unity of i t s two forms creates a new image o f remote boundaries, that o f

the estuary. I n their crossing the two delimited forms o f impossible paths

become displaced from the centre to the threshold, which itself opens up

as a passage. In it, the poet stands at the most remote point o f the

material world:

Au seuil de la pesanteur, le poete comme Ifaraign6e construit sa route dans le ciel (FM, p.165).

Unlike Ponge, Char enters into the distance of the withdrawing landscape,

withdrawing himself to i ts extreme remoteness, where the distance reacts

on the bounded forms o f landscape. There i t opens a new passage which

leads to - and at the same time is - the poet's desire. The threshold or

passage is i ts new sense figuration. Appearing as a landscape beyond

landscape in the landscape itself, i t is the image o f pure, that is, o f never

fulf i l led desire:

Le poeme e s t I 'amour rkal ise du des i r e demeurk d6si r (FM, p.162).

The path , multiplying, displacing, dispersing i t se l f , t u rns o u t t o b e an

"odyssee d e s a cendre" (FM, p.134). T h e wandering in and of t h e ashes, t h e

disseminat ion of t h e dissemination, t h e pure instability, is t h e s t a b l e ground

of t h e poet ' s moving forward. T h e r e f l ec t ion of t h e landscape i s i t s

r e f r ac t ion in to a mu l t i t ude of pa ths which toge the r become t h e only way

of t h e poem, because they help t h e poet t o f r e e himself. I t s instability

i s i t s s t ab l e ground:

En poesie, on n 'habi te q u e le lieu q u e I'on q u i t t e (RBS, p.733).

C h a r ca l l s "percept ion princibre" (CA, p.824) t h e awareness of th is

r e f r ac t ion of t h e pa ths which r ende r s visible a th i rd one, neve r a t t a inab le

but a imed a t in e v e r y poem. It i s t h e momen t where man recognises t h e

"c rea t ive method" (Ponge) of poetry , y e t not , a s Ponge pu t s i t , in t h e

wri t ing process, but i n n a t u r e i t se l f , which, however, is poe t ry in i t s

natura l form. Char , a s opposed t o Ponge, i s not a t t r a c t e d by landscape

for i t s beau ty but for t h e c r e a t i v e na tu re in it , which Ponge again assigns

exclus ively t o poetry. F o r Char , c r e a t i v e na tu re and t h e poem in progress

a r e inseparable:

Na tu re non s ta t ique, peu apprkciee pour s a beau t6 convenue ou se s productions, mais associke au couran t du pobme o b e l l e in tervient a v e c f r equence c o m m e mat ikre , fond lumineu:, f o r c e c rka t r i ce , suppor t d e demarches inspirkes ou pessimistes, grace . D e nouveau, e l l e agit . (RBS, p.731)

T h e passage, descr ibing Rimbaud's concep t of nature , appl ies equal ly t o

Char ' s own poetry; whi le i t s t r e s se s t h e even t c h a r a c t e r of t h e poe t i c

word, showing i t a s t h e product ivi ty of na tu re i t se l f , i t con fe r s a deepe r

meaning on t h e natural landscape by inextr icably linking i t t o poetry. It

appea r s a s t h e e x t r e m e landscape of c r ea t ion a t t h e borders of exis tence,

of t h e survival and t h e ex t inc t ion of man, of his words, and his world.

It is a landscape on t h e horizon, where t h e hor izon dissolves in to a land-

scape. Like Rimbaud's h inter land, Cha r ' s Provensal landscape (cf. RBS,

p.732) i s all movement , becoming c l e a r and again wi thdrawing a t t h e s a m e

t ime, bathed in t h e c r e a t i v e light of t h e purifying movemen t beyond, o r

t h e absence. T h a t which be fo re was heaviness and ashes (cf. FM, p.134)

becomes f reshness and flame.

The poem "Congk a u Vent" may s e r v e a s a n example a t t h i s point.

Congk au Vent

A f lancs d e c o t e a u du village bivouaquent des champs fournis d e mimosas. A I'kpoque d e la cuei l le t te , il a r r ive que, loin d e leur endroit , on fasse la r encon t r e ex t r&me- ment odoran te d'une fil le dont les b ra s se sont occupes durant la journke aux f ragi les branches. Parei l le A une lampe dont 11aur601e d e d a r t 6 se ra i t d e parfum, e l l e s 'en va, l e dos tourn6 ou soleil couchant .

I1 s e ra i t sacr i lege d e lui adresser la parole. L'espadrille foulant I'herbe, ckdez-lui l e pas du chemin,

Peut-&tre aurez-vous la c h a n c e d e dis t inguer su r s e s lhvres la c h i m e r e d e 18humidit6 d e la Nuit? (FM, p.130)

Right from t h e beginning, t h e poem is t ranspor ted t o t h e border, "i flancs

d e coteau", where t h e poet ic even t t akes place. It is in i t ia ted by t h e

harsh juxtaposition of t h e charming image of a flowery field and t h e rough

neologism followed by t h e no less s t rong "fournis". This roughness

balances t h e whole poem's tenderness , s e t t i ng in motion t h e t w o impossible

paths, s o t h a t t h e border is displaced t o t h e horizon where finally t h e

poem is ac tua l i zed in t h e ephemera l even t of t h e young girl appearing-

disappearing in a complex g a m e of r e f r ac t ing t races .

T h e hinterland of t h e landscape is t h e f igure of t h e c r e a t i v e subject

a s pure des i r e which appears , approaches , withdraws, g rows larger, l ighter,

darker ; i t breaks in to t h e landscape and t r ans fo rms i t in to a c r e a t i v e

"matiere-6motion1' (MP, p.621, which is t h e poem, t h e basis of which is,

however, nothing more than a narrow line, t h e t r a c e of t h e gi r l ' s

"espadrilles". Again one th inks of Char ' s c o m m e n t about h is poet ics of

t h e path, especially where h e emphasises t h a t t h e path is no more than

a "modique en ta i l l e d e la t e r r e I...] t r a c k e gbne ra l emen t par l e pas repCtk

des blcherons", t ha t is a "raccourci, une entr6toi le" (CA, p.824). Wrapped

in h e r au reo le of perfume, t h e girl appea r s a s such a t r a c e of t h e "entre-

toile", vanishing to t h e fa int t r a c e of t h e "humidit6 d e la Nuit". In t h e

girl , t h e horizon projects i tself a s c o n c r e t e f igure of t ha t absence which

i s t h e movemen t of t h e poem going beyond. Liberation of sense , o r

l iberty, and night form a pai r (cf. NT, p.490) leading to a stil l more

e lus ive dis tance, where i t becomes unrecognisable, t ha t is leading t o t h e

"humidity". This dissolution, however, remains on t h e periphery of t h e

poem, t h e l a s t lap of landscape o r pa th leads t o t h e l imi ts of t h e poetry

a l together .

What was initially said about d i s t ance c a n now b e formulated more

precisely. A s has been shown, man and landscape a r e one. Nevertheless,

d i s t ance i s not lacking. It has been shif ted t o t h e landscape's interior, yet

not t o re-establish the re a nice o rde r of t h e landscape's e lements , but t o

establish itself a s a sense figuration within and through t h e pe r fec t dis-

o rde r of these elements. S i tua ted right in t h e inter ior of his natural

world, man remains uprooted, for his na tu re i s t h e des t ruc t ive and cons-

t ruc t ive d i s t ance itself, which i s nothing o the r but his desire. His longing

na tu re is t h e reason why h e i s a lways e lsewhere , being never theless within

his world. T h e without is t h e within; t h a t which one imagines t o be t h e

imaginary i s a l ready t h e real (FD, p.610). Man pursues a vertiginous r a c e

against t i m e t o m a k e s u r e of a lost reality. Hence t h e impor tance of

immediacy in Char 's poet ic work; it is his way t o make su re of the place

which h e leaves behind, which i s - already t h e real.

Dupin: a ma te r i a l landscape

A poem by Dupin r eads like a n explicit commenta ry of t h e spat io- temporal

foundations of landscape in Char:

Tu ne m16chapperas pas, d i t le livre. Tu m'ouvres e t m e ren- fermes, e t t u t e c ro i s dehors, ma i s t u es incapable d e so r t i r c a r il n'y a pas d e dedans. Tu es d 'autant moins libre d e t '6chapper que l e pikge e s t ouvert. Est I 'ouverture m8me. C e piege, ou c e t au t r e , ou l e suivant. Ou c e t t e absence d e pikge, qui fonct ionne plus insidieusement encore , i ton chevet , pour t 'empecher d e fuir. (E, p.70)

Here w e find t h e s a m e framing of t h e a l ready-there and t h e e lsewhere ,

of t h e e lsewhere in the present place, e v e n t h e s a m e gliding of t e r r a in a s

in Char: "le seuil d e l a lisibilit6 [of t h e landscape] se d6placet1 (D, p.30).

So g r e a t a r e t h e s imilar i t ies t h a t they seem t o point t o a n identical image

of landscape in Char and Dupin. Also in Dupin i t is organised around a

path while being tha t path which unfolds be tween t h e s a m e e l emen ta ry

oppositions "de l a base e t du sommet" (Char) and uses t h e s a m e contra-

diction of the subject exiled in his own terr i tor ies ; a lso in Dupin t h e path

exceeds i t s own boundaries in o rde r t o a r r ive in t h e night and t h e pure

movement of air. Ye t t h e r e a r e striking d i f f e rences - especial ly t h e

amorphous c h a r a c t e r of t h e landscape, t h e ar idi ty and petr i f icat ion of t h e

e lements , t h e endless dr i f t ing of words of which t h e t e x t quoted above

speaks among others; t h e imagery drawing t h e a t t en t ion t o t h e process

of writing, the presence o f the body, and the violence o f destruction.

Despite similarities wi th Char's image o f the Provence one is, in

fact, dealing with quite a different landscape in Dupin. Beyond the new

topics, the landscape here becomes in i ts totality a new sense figuration,

as i t is the result of an inextricable mingling of a l l elements: the world

o f objects, the words, and the body. Obscure and impenetrable, they

control the approach to the landscape. Thus Dupin's poetry moves in the

midst of "Night" - "Tant que ma parole est ohcure, il [the poem and i t s

subject] respire" (D, p.48); he delves into the night, looking for light. In

Char the night is the end o f a l l words; in Dupin i t is the point of

departure:

"... Le rocher, o'u f in i t la route et o'u commence le voyage, devint ce dieu abrupt et fendu auquel se mesure le souffle." (C, p.76)

Under the rule o f distance, o f the unknown, and the void, landscape

no longer has "rien des apparences actuelles" (Rimbaud). It caves in, and

"On ne peut kdif ier que sure des ruines". In this remark Dupin summar-

ises his historical and poetic starting point, which he expresses in terms

o f landscape in a poem chosen from among his many poetological reflec-

tions:

Rompre et ressaisir, et ainsi renouer. Dans la fordt nous sommes plus prks du bicheron que du promeneur solitaire. Pas de contemplation innocente. Plus de hautes futaies traversees de rayons et de chants d'oiseaux, mais des stkres de bois en puissance. Tout nous est donne', mais pour Bte force, pour dtre entame, en quelque faqon pour dtre dhtruit, - et nous dbtruire. (E, p.76)

How violently opposed to Char's is this destructive gesture; i t has the

vigour and endlessness o f Rimbaud. No "modique entaille de la terre, h peine aperque" serving Char as "hamac", but near-complete destruction of

the landscape involving the subject. Everything caves in, is removed, and

the poet instals himself in a complete drifting, such as i t is inscribed in

another poem bearing the programmatic t i t le "Le soleil substitub":

Une pierre roule, puis une autre, parmi les tstes, dans I'Bboulement du rempart. Ce n'est pas par la distorsion d'une pratique ancienne que le glissement, la dhrive, la migration se poursuivent et s'amplifient I...] Dans le l ivre et hors du livre. Oir le soleil s'obstine a demeurer la mhtaphore enjouie du soleil, le spectre ablouissant de sa substitution . 11 s'avance au-devant du texte comlne sa pierre d'achoppement, de rupture, et la brkche oh se rafraTchit le rayon d'une t h e absente. (D, p.33)

Everything slides, t r a c e s t h e t r a c e of o the r t races . T h e me taphor a s t h e

s p e c t r e of i t s substituGon is t h e metaphor of a metaphor which in i t s turn

is metaphor. An oblique mode of writing t ranscends t h e e l emen ta ry

opposition of t h e e a r t h and t h e sky by including i t in t h e "book" which a t

t h e s a m e t i m e i s t o b e filled up with t h e blood of the body.

T h e landscape is, of course, a f f e c t e d by this. I t s r e fe ren t i a l coher-

e n c e is destroyed. From t h e Ardkche, Dupin's nat ive region which

furnishes him with t h e basic image-material, nothing more remains than

fragments. However, t h e apparent chaos is, s o t o speak, organised and

opens on t o a complex sys t em of poet ic space. T h e f r agment s a r e placed

on d i f f e ren t levels, where they insert themselves into dif ferent forms of

landscape, for space i s no longer uniform. It is r e f r ac ted ac ross t h e t e x t

which, in calling itself t race , multiplies t h e dis tances , which a r e a s many

perspect ivisat ions of t h e horizon. T h e e l emen t s of living nature, like t h e

grass, t h e flowers, t h e sun, t h e air, t h e d e w bring into relief a second

na tu re produced by t h e poet ic ac t iv i ty which is projected into t h e pr imary

one, and on t h e textual su r face t h e most appa ren t image of a rough and

host i le landscape a l ready a r t i cu la t e s itself a s ano the r t race . There i s a

complex g a m e of Mallarmkan "ref le ts rdciproques" of landscapes governed

by t h e horizon o r distance.

The poem projects these s imultaneous ref lect ions into a sense figura-

tion progressing of a landscape in progress f rom hardness, opaci ty , and a

lack of a i r t o a weightless, well-aired, and illuminated landscape. This

t ransformat ion is produced by a poe t i c operat ion in which t h e subject risks

his identity.

"Ce tison la distance", one of Dupin's ear l ies t poet ics of landscape,

i s a cen t ra l example of th is sys t emat i c operation. It is t o o long t o b e

quoted here; however, t h e t w o first verses and t h e last one may give an

idea of what has been developed:

Et l e paysage s 'ordonne au tour d'un mot lance i l a legere e t qui reviendra cha rge d'ombre. Au rebours d e s laves, no t re e n c r e s tahre , s'irise, prend conscience, devient t ranslucide e t brirlante, i mesure qu'elle gravi t la p e n t e du volcan. I...]

I1 n'y a qu'une f e m m e qui m e suive, e t elle ne m e sui t pas. Pendant que ses habi ts b r i l en t , immense e s t la roske. (G, p.87)

T h e s t a r t ing point of t h e image of t h e landscape i s i t s obscure notion

("mot [...I chargk d'ombre") denouncing the opacity of a language which

is i ts own double trace. The twofold remoteness o f the poetic word is

indicated by the conjunction "Et", which connotes a prior reality of the

poem, and by the shadow which partial ly obscures it. This dark sense

figuration consumes itself as the poem progresses and becomes an illumina-

ted trace o f an inaugural landscape.

The reciprocal reflections of the two forms of landscape are well

illustrated, too, by Dupin's comments on paintings by Max Ernst, another

'poet': "En allant vers cet te nature rude, aux vastes 6tendues desolees

et b r i l i es de soleil, le poete a peut-Stre retrouvk la terre nue des

premiers Lges telle que I'imagination se la reprksente, le paysage original,

celui qui convenait a un art qui tenait de ressaisir l e monde dans I'dclat

de sa conscience." (Ead, p.51) The landscape in which the poetic

process inverts itself is i tself the image o f creation. As opposed to the

landscape o f creation in Char, the elements are strictly selected in Dupin,

none but those of a negative character being admitted: bleak stretches,

an inhuman heat, and, above all, stones, rocks, and frozen water -

elements of stark materiality. That which for Char is living nature is

dead nature for Dupin, a nature morte, but in the original sense, not in

that which Ponge gave the term. I t is the function of poetry to animate

i t by giving i t air, which is to say the breach o f the poet's voice. Con-

sidering the hard and impenetrable material i ty of objects, poetry needs

more than ever to seek support from art in order to assume i t s role of

creating the world. Art, by being artifice, ends in being nature.

The opaque word contains the landscape. No longer the laws of

external geography organise it, but the very material i ty of the objects

expressed in the material i ty of the words. Only now, the objects find

that independence which Ponge sought for them, because the poet with-

draws his 'mental factory' in order to allow the things to speak from

within. Once more Dupin's own procedure is illustrated by his comments

on works of art, as when he remarks that Mir6 respects the personality

of the objects, approaching them with an attentive love for their material,

and that the objects respond by making a present of their inner l i f e (Ead,

p.142). In the opaque word, landscape is congealed; the word is the

image o f the dead landscape, word and object being the same. To re-

place the word i n the poetic discourse means to stir i t up and make a

landscape flash forth across the text, just l ike the meteor evoked in a

poem from t h e cyc le De singes e t d e mouches. It shoots down and burs ts

in to a

Constel la t ion j e t6e hors e t d i s t r a i t emen t

encrde.

T h e end of representat ion i s definitive, t h e word i s i t s own mirror

which, in pronouncing t h e dispersed objects, does not reproduce them but

produces a new real i ty o r sense figuration. A dark mirror which does not

know i t s own image but discovers i t by project ing i t on t h e page, where

it appears a s an 'approximate abyss' , a s in t h e following verses:

Tu dois t16vader, Mais dans l e nomhre e t la r e s e m b l a n c e , Blanche 6c r i tu re tendue Au-dessus d'un ab7me approximatif. (G, p.10)

Within t h e poet ic discourse t h e word l iberates itself through t h e writing,

where it r e f l ec t s itself in a number which i t does not know, t h a t is, in

a plurality organised in the image of landscape, which only approximates

t h e inner nature of the word, i s only i t s resemhlance, because t h e writing

is but i t s multiple t race.

T h e e l emen t s of living o r dead na tu re become components of a new

sense figuration which is t h e landscape transcending i t s boundaries, where

t h e poet ic subject , t h e world of t h e objects , and language form a new

coherent reality. A s in Char, all t hese e l emen t s , considered in their

connect ion t o t h e poet ic discourse, a r e ul t imately revealed in their qual i ty

of living na tu re while a t t h e s a m e t i m e showing t h e naturalness of t h e

poet ic word as even t and speech. Everything, however, i s rooted in the

mater ia l i ty of t h e wor(l)d.

T h e revaluation of t h e ma te r i a l a s t h e source of t h e c r e a t i v e poet ic

movement lends, a t t h e very c e n t r e of t h e spontaneous flashing for th of

t h e word, a par t icular pa t i ence t o t h e subject. Char 's ver t iginous r a c e

across fields and t imes i s a t a n end in Dupin, t h e slow pace of a regular,

ca l cu la t ed work, progressing and a t t h e s a m e t i m e s tanding still , imposes

itself. It is a p a c e of r epea ted spontaneity. T h e path ends a t each

repeated s t e p and obliges t h e poet t o g o on. Once t h e word i s pronounced,

all has been said and nothing has happened, because everything had al ready

been said long before, because everything i s mirror and t race; nothing 5

yet a change has occurred within these very similarities.

The poem "Le coeur par dkfaut" from the cycle L'Epervier expresses

this in terms of landscape and by constructing the figure of a new land-

scape:

Entre ce roc bond6 d'6toiles et son sosie le gouffre, L'6difice du souffle est une seconde prison.

A la place du coer Tu ne heurteras, mon amour, que le luisant d'un soc Et la nuit grandissante ... (G, p.54)

The "roc bond6 d'6toilesn and the "gouffre" are but one, because the

opacity of the rock - signalling by its impenetrable material a clear

landscape constellation - mirrors itself in the abyss; that, in its turn,

takes light from the stars and opens itself to a sti l l darker night, for the

intrinsic nature of light is, as we have seen already, night. Nothing has

changed except that the night has deepened. We have progressed into the

object, into its opacity, and that signifies a step towards lucidity. Rut

everything has to be done again because the path begins where the path

ends, in the night - because, as Dupin expresses it, "NaTtre" is "N'Btre que

silex". But beinR silex is saying it, and that is already the "Scintillement

du tranchant de la lettre" and the "Eclat de I'gtre"; to be is to be born,

but to be born "A la surface humide des labours" (Ads, p.85). To be born

in the poem is to be in the work of poetic practice, or to work in order

to be born. In terms of landscape one could say: to be or to be born

is to find oneself as nature in action or landscape about to be constructed , i t is to be en route.

Conclusion

A brief comparison of the images of landscape in the work of the three

poets will permit approaching an answer to the question asked at the

beginning. I t is no longer possible innocently to speak of landscape; it

has become a task to be performed. These poets integrate i t into their

work and assign i t a privileged place. Landscape becomes the concrete

workshop of poetry. Its image no longer reflects a preconceived organisa-

tion of nature, but shows the nature of the organisation of the poetic

world. As this world presents itself under the sign of an initiating word,

the landscape is the very image of a new world or new reality. Hence

i ts function is to establish the link between man and nature, and to pro-

nounce the nature o f man. Landscape functions as man's natural language,

as the voice o f what' he considers to be his nature. But the ways of

reaching the new reality, and with i t the images o f landscape, di f fer in

the three poets; the apparent constants cease to be invariables when con-

sidered i n the functioning of the poetic discourse by which the landscape

is constituted. I n these different images, the historical situation o f each

poet becomes obvious.

This applies already to the notion of the simple and common object

which is constitutive for the landscape. I n al l three poets, this notion

underscores the material i ty and u t i l i t y o f the poetic material, but in each

case with a specific nuance and in a different role. Ponge sustains the

simplicity o f the landscape by strengthening i t s vanishing character, which

he holds - in this respect following Mallarme' - in the "formule", and that

is the "nature morte". In Char, as in Rimbaud, the landscape has the

simplicity o f a natural operation; but unlike that o f his predecessor, i t

turns into the configurated nature o f the poet's emotional vibration.

Dupin, finally, while also placing himself in the line established by

Rimbaud, concentrates on the material i ty of the landscape in order to

break i t open and reveal a new world within i t which includes the poet's

body and the language.

Another constant feature o f the three poets is the fact that they

remove the landscape. Absence is i ts organising principle. Yet distance

varies i n the different images, becomes itself an operative figure which

multiplies itself, wi th consequences that af fect the entire image of the

landscape. In Ponge, distance shows i tsel f one-dimensional and static. I t

surrounds the landscape and al l i t s elements, but i t does not operate in

the interior o f the image, which thus retains traces o f the classical

concept o f landscape. I t is the landscape signified in i ts entirety which

becomes a signifying element in the production of the text, where a

distance o f i t s own is created.

In Char, the distance is operative within the interior o f the landscape.

The lat ter unfolds as the image o f the horizon, where man has relegated

both himself and the landscape. Thus distance retains contact wi th

material reality while going beyond it. One might say that Ponge puts at

stake the reality of expression, whereas Char risks the reality o f the

objects themselves.

Landscape in Dupin presents itself a s an image which incorporates

these two figures, while substantially differing from both. Not only does

Dupin enlarge t h e image of t h e landscape by integrating into it t h e real i ty

of the subject 's body, but changes i t entirely through t h e multiplication

of horizons whose foundation is, on the one hand, t h e irreducible plurality

of man, of words, and objects, and on the o the r hand t h e hard and

impenetrable mater ia l i ty of these const i tuent e lements themselves. By

t reat ing each par t of that multidimensional unity a s a discrete body with

i t s own landscape and diverse levels of horizon, Dupin ends, in his figure

of t h e landscape, with a new image of reality. An image which loses

itself in i t s own traces , leaves behind t ime and mater ia l while installing

itself in the materiality, and standing still a t t h e dead point of time. 18

1. Charles Baudelaire, "Le gouvernement de I'imagination", in Oeuvres complbtes, ed. Claude Pichois (Paris, 19761, 11, p.627.

2. Stephane Mallarme, "Le musique e t les lettres", in Oeuvres complktes , ed. Henri Mondor e t G. Jean-Aubry (Paris, 19561, p.647.

3. See Rainer Maria Rilke, l e t t e r da ted 13 Jan. 1923, addressed t o Lou Andreas-Salom6, in Briefe in zwei Banden, ed. Rilke-Archiv Weimar in Verbindung mit Ruth Sieber-Rilke und Karl Altheim (Wiesbaden, 19501, pp.4791.

4. Arthur Rimbaud, "Ma bohkme (Fantaisie)", in Oeuvres completes, ed. Antoine Adam (Paris, 19721, p.35.

5. Franz Kafka, "Beschreihung eines Kampfes", in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Max Rrod (Frankfurt, 1976), V, pp.24ff.

6. Gaston Bachelard, La poktique de I'espace (Paris, 19671, Introduction. His method, however, which leaves aside "le probleme d e la composition d'un poeme", can obviously not b e adopted here.

7. For previous a t t e m p t s a t conceptualising and analysing the function o f landscape s e e esp. Joachim Rit ter , "Landschaft: Zur Funktion des Aesthetischen in de r modernen Gesellschaft", in Subjektivitat. Sechs A u f s l t z e (Frankfurt, 1974), pp.141-90; Michel Collot "L'horizon du paysage", in Lire le paysage, Lire les paysages: Ac tes du colloque 24-25 novembre 1983, CIEREC, Universite d e S t Etienne (19841, pp.121-29.

8. Editions f a t a mornana. The followinn abbreviations will be used: P P - L e parti pris dgs c h o s e s P r - P r o ~ m e s ; RE - La rage d e I'expression; LM - La Mounine '(all in Vol.1, Paris, 1965); L - Lyres: M - Mhthodes; P - Pieces (all from Le grand recueil, Paris, 1961); A C - L'Atelier contemporain (Paris, 19771.

9. See for a nearly similar view J.-M. Gleize and R. Veck, Objet: Francis Ponge, 'Actes ou Textes' (Lille, 19841, pp.56f.

10. Cf. Prat iques d e 1'8criture (Paris, 19841, pp.l8f., where Ponge also cal ls t h e landscape a nature morte.

11. Cf. Georges Mounin, "Vers I 'arbre-frkre aux jours compt6sV, Cahiers du Sud 342 (Sept. 19571, 307.

12. For Char, the following abbreviations wi l l be used: MP - M& premier; DNG - Dehors F M - Fureur et mystere; PA - La parole en archipel; ACh - Aromates chasseurs; NT - La nuit talismanique qui bri l lait dans son cercle; ChB - FO - Fenstres dormantes e t portes sur le toit; RBS - Recherche de la base e t du sommet' CA - Sous ma casquette amarante: Entretiens avec France Huser, all in) the Pleiade edn Oeuvres compl&tes, ed. Jean Roudaut, Paris, 1983.

13. Cf. "... la raison ne soupsonne pas que ce qu'elle nomme, la 18g&re, absence, occup6 le fourneau dans I'unite'." (FM, p.140).

14. The following abbreviations wi l l be used for Dupin: G - Gravir (Paris, 1963); E - LIErnbrasure (Paris, 1969); D - Dehors (Paris, 1975); Ead - L'Espace autrement di t (Paris, 1992); Ads - Une apparence de soupirail (Paris, 1982).

15. Rimbaud, "Jeunesse", in Oeuvres compl&tes (note 4 above), p.148.

16. Dupin, "Comment dire?", Empkdocle 2 (19491, p.93.

17. For the metapoetical character of Dupin's art crit icism see also Georges Raillart, Jacques Dupin (Paris, 1974) and Dominique Viart, LIEcriture seconde: La pratique po6tique de Jacques Dupin, Paris, 1982.

18. 1 should l ike to thank Holger Klein, whose abridgment and translation of my French typescript provided the basis of the present version.

NATURE AND PERCEPTION: VERSIONS OF A DIALECTIC I N EUROPEAN CITY POETRY

Walter Bachern (University of Bochum)

The development of European city poetry can roughly be divided into three

phases, starting around 1800 in England, 1850 in France, and 1900 in

Germany. The different socio-economic and cultural conditions did, of

course, leave their mark on the poems; one could even argue that i t was

in city poetry in particular that those 'external' influences found a

germane locus for deployment. In the absence of urban sociology or

psychology, city poems played a crucial role in raising and shaping con-

sciousness of a kind of reality that many poets deemed below their poetic

stature and standard. Satirical disgust was poured on the new subject-

matter, or pastoral idylls conjured up to foil or recuperate the ugly and

threatening side of the emergent metropolis.

However, often the same writer adopted a different stand on the

city, depending on whether he wrote in prose or poetry. Samuel Johnson

is a case in point. In his "London" poem of 1738, an imitation of

Juvenal's third Satire, he draws an analogy between London's physical and

moral decay; in his essays in the Rambler and the Adventurer, however,

his melancholic vein and keen social observation jointly proffer some

penetrating insights into the urban psyche. A blind spot that Pope's

august idea of man could not fathom.

I t was not until the Romantics entered the literary scene, and the

city, that the situation began to change. Their epistemological interest

in the status of the self, in (modes of) perception, and in the world of

"naturel'l programmed a head-on collision with the city and with what i t

represents. At the same time, it can be demonstrated that their concrete

experience of the city helped them significantly in crystallizing their more

general beliefs and ideas.

In what follows i t will be shown to what extent an increased aware-

ness of aspects of external and internal nature were instrumental in the

poet's way of seeing the city and in formulating his views on the nature

of perception. In the experience of the city, i t is claimed, the two

strands converge in the sense of a 'dialectic'. This also means that many

city poems came into being because of such a dialectical tension, so that

the production of city poems and the problematic they project can be seen

a s having a common source.' Poems from t h r e e histprical junctures have

been se l ec ted in order ' t o i l lus t ra te d i f f e ren t versions of th is d i a l ec t i c that

informed t h e formal, semant ic , and t h e m a t i c s t ruc tu re of many c i ty poems

for abou t a hundred years.

Blake's poem on "London" f rom Songs of Experience (1794) was

wr i t t en by a s taunch c i t y dwel ler who l e f t London only o n c e t o enjoy l i fe

in t h e coun t ry fo r t h r e e years. There t h e con t ra s t between country and

c i t y is acu te ly fe l t , although his percept ion of Felpham is a s much built

upon his imagination a s on ac tua l experience.3 Similarly, t h e c i t i e s he

was then beginning t o 'build' (The Four Zoas; Jerusalem) a r e imaginat ive

cons t ruc t s r a the r than concre te ly real ized urban environments. Focusing

on his ea r ly poem cal led "London", however, w e a r e immediate ly s t ruck

by i t s s tark , re lent less realism and simplicity. Unredeemed by "celestial

voices", i t never theless projects a s t rangely disembodied, phantasmal kind

of city. Voices seem seve red from human agen t s and cons t i tu t e an aural

s p a c e whose semio t i c t h e wandering speaker is about t o decipher. For

what looks disconnected, h e re-connects, but in s o doing h e applies t h e

s a m e method and language which t h e dominant discourse, a s projected in

t h e poem, is predicated upon, namely t h e principle of ident i ty and same-

n e s 4 No different ia l play is allowed t o unfold, which would allow us t o

see a d i f f e rence be tween na tu re and cul ture , river and s t r ee t . T h e

r epea ted a t t r i b u t e "charter 'd" fo rces a false, ar t i f ic ia l and commercial ized

kind of real i ty on us, a f a c t made much more explicit in a line d ra f t ed

in a notebook: "The chea t ing waves of cha r t e r ' d stream^".^ In t h e final

version, comment has thus been turned into a f a c t of perception, a dai ly

reality. Free-flowing movement and act ion, denoted by words like

"wander", "flow" o r "meet", i s contained and t a in t ed by rhyme (flow-woe;

s t r e e t l m e e t ) a s well a s seman t i c and syn tac t i c repetition.

T h e s a m e formal p a t t e r n s tha t in Songs of Innocence radiated an

au ra of lightness and purity (of dic t ion and s t ance ) he re - in the con tex t

of c i ty and 'experience' - s e r v e t o foreground t h e speaker ' s en t r enched

mode of percept ion and his sense of enclosure. Blake re inforces this

e f f e c t by subt ly fusing subject and object , a s t h e syn tac t i c var ia t ion of

"markn suggests; i t i s used a s a ve rb and a noun (object). O r by means

of g rammat ica l ambiguity, which allows us t o read "mind-forg'd manacles"

in t h e sense of manacles f e t t e r ing t h e mind o r f e t t e r s forged by t h e mind.

In such a reading t h e mind would b e seen a s both agent and pat ient , a s

instrumental in producing i ts own (inherent) constraints and as suffering

external constraints. The discrete pun in "forg'd" that suggests both

physical manufacture and the (fraudulent) mental construction of discourse

discreetly subverts the principle of identity that structures the poem. The

represented speaker, however, is absorbed, i f not constituted by what he

sees and hears. For the semiotic of the city is real pJ fabricated as

much as nature is presented as being concrete and constructed (i.e.

"charter'd").

Blake's indebtedness to Biblical sources (e.g. Revelation 13:16-17;

Ezekiel 9:4; Lamentations 4:13-14) only supports our point: what we see

as being real is already figured, no matter what source or selection of

codes is operative in the act of perception. However, Blake leaves no

ambiguity as to whether the selected codes suggest a violation of human

nature and human rights or not. Naturally, discourse elements such as the

political and commercial term "charter'd" can be perceived differently,

depending on one's political leanings. There is, for instance, Tom Paine's

reversal of the term's Whig definition, which suggests that i t "is a perver-

sion of terms to say, that a charter gives rights. I t operates by a

contrary effect, that of taking rights away.lt6

The crit ical reception of the poem provides plenty of evidence for

the assumptions made concerning concepts like human nature or freedom.

What needs stressing here is that perception is an effect of discourse and

that the kind of discourse operative at a particular point in time also

depends on how i t defines i ts relationship with nature. The poem supplies

a model for deconstructing any reading of it. Whereas Blake's speakers

in Songs of lnnocence and Songs of Experience seem unaware of their

perceptual limitations and their contexts, the reader is called upon to

detect discourse elements that inform the surface and the deep structure

of the text. Otherwise a play of identity and difference cannot come into

being. How we see Blake's city (poem), then, ultimately depends on what

we understand by nature or natural. lnnocence may, in fact, be in dire

need of experience, as some of the 'songs of innocence' suggest, because

it, too, limits our construction of the real. Conversely, experience may

profitably feed on innocence, because otherwise its constructions may sound

false and i ts forms look grotesque or paradoxical (e.g. "Marriage hearse").

I t is this kind of a dialectic which the last lines of the poem seem to

adumbrate: 'infancy' of l i fe and of (marital) relationship is doomed, i f

i t is predicated on an opposition, r a the r than a d i f f e rence between

innocence and exper ience - a s t w o d i sc re t e 'states' of being o r modes of

perception. 7

Not unlike Blake, fo r whom percept ion has t o be redeemed by a

vision tha t t ranscends t h e purely p h y s i c a ~ , ~ Wordsworth "Looks/ln s teadi- 9 ness" (Prelude, VII, 710f.) a t a par t icular object t o re lease i t s hidden

meaning, which is o the r than purely self-generated. He has t o 'ground'

his percept ions t o give his figurings s o m e weight. He is also highly con-

scious of t h e basic ambiguity of images in tha t t hey a r e twinned t o

physical and mental realities. This insight explains his known dread of

solipsism and his suspicion of decep t ive appearances. What b e t t e r tes t ing

ground, then, could t h e r e be fo r studying such appearances than the

addict ive g l i t t e r of t h e metropolis! His account of t h e "growth of a

poet 's mind" the re fo re includes t h e whole of Book VII. Rut his exper ience

of London has several layers; h e imaged it o n c e while craving for the

"power ... in all things", a s ''that vast Metropolis,/The Fountain of my

Country 's destiny/And of t h e dest iny of Ea r th itself" (VIII, 755f., 746-8).

T h e qualification just made i s important , s ince mentioning t h e con tex t of

percept ion is crucial t o an understanding of VJordsworthls poetry, a s h e

urges us t o encounter London "wholly f r e e f rom dangerous passions" (VII,

71f.).

His r e t rospec t ive description of London, of course, is not exclusively

covered by Book VII; r e fe rences a lso c rop up in o the r parts. Early

childhood images of t h e capi ta l natural ly undergo a ser ies of permutat ions ,

a s d o o the r key exper iences recounted in t h e poem, such a s t h e pond o r

t h e gibbet episodes. T h e r e i s of course a tendency in everyone t o wan t

t o a r r e s t moments and ob jec t s in space and t ime , especially when one

considers oneself, a s Wordsworth once did, "lord and master", thinking tha t

t h e "outward sensel ls but t h e obedient se rvan t of her will." (XI, 271-73)

Wordsworth r e fe r s here t o those "spots o f time" whose na tu re it is t o

resist narcissistic possession, s ince they a r e with us and of us, but not

because of us. They inject in to momenta ry exper i ence a sense of ident i ty

and dif ference, and a s such form a vi ta l e l emen t in a potent ia l ly endless - process of self-definition.

Wordsworth's expe r i ence of London and i t s bewildering sign system,

i t s constant ly moving crowds and f luctuat ing images, has t o be seen in

this context . For, desp i t e i t s apparent di f ferent ia t ion of s u r f a c e pheno-

mena, Wordsworth can find in it l i t t l e tha t i s of growth-inducing quality.

Unlike Baudelaire, who discovered in his beloved and hated Pa r i s a huge

terra in and potent ia l for self-definition, Wordsworth fe l t pressured t o l eave

t h e c i ty in o rde r t o salvage a few images and episodes in the quiet of a

natural re t reat . Only there , away from t h e "hell1For e y e s and ears!" (VII.

6591.3, c a n h e find a natural ground for rehearsing and processing his

previously made perceptions. They a r e then replayed a s a kind of "second-

s igh t procession, such a s glides1Over still mountains, o r appears in dreams"

(VII, 602f.l. Even d reams - for which the re i s o therwise l i t t l e room in

Wordsworth - seem preferable t o t h e 'mirror' world (VII, 250) of the city.

T h e shadowy C a v e of Yordas, therefore , looks pe r fec t a s an anti-setting

t o London, where t h e now internalized images of London a r e conjured up

again in quiet and resonant darkness, a s if t o give London in re t rospect

some spectra l dignity1' while allowing the mind t o pene t ra t e and imagin-

a t ively t ransform t h e images perceived. Only then can t h e "unmanageable

sight" (VII, 732) of London gain contour again, even if a t t h e pr ice of

producing a still-life: "The scene before him lies in pe r fec t view,/Exposed

and lifeless, a s a wr i t t en book." (VIII, 726f.) Rut a s s o o f t e n in Words-

worth, t h e scene will soon b e reanimated, London gains meaning through

t h e work of memory and t h e imagination. I ts images appear intermingled

with "forests and lakes,/Ships, rivers, towers, t h e Warrior c l ad in Mail,

I...] A Spec tac le t o which t h e r e i s no end.'' (V111, 737-41) First

impressions have t o be re-appraised, s i f ted through, abandoned, maybe

picked u p la ter ; deferr ing u l t ima te signification is ge rmane t o Words-

worth's poetics.

His sonnet "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sep tember 3, 1802"

projects just one par t icular picture; in o the r s h e t r i e s t o adopt t h e

perceptual f r a m e o f o the r people. T h e poem "Written A f t e r t h e Death of

Charles Lamb", for instance, also suggests t h e inspiring influence of the

c i t y on Lamb's c r e a t i v e work; and "The Fa rmer of Tilsbury Vale", who turned his back on t h e country, s e e m s re juvenated by t h e c i ty 's v i ta l i ty - a f t e r his bankruptcy a t home ("He s e e m s t e n bir thdays younger, i s green

and i s stout;/ Twice a s f a s t a s be fo re does his blood run about"), and

Smithfield with i t s "breath of t h e cows" reconnects his hea r t wi th the

dis tant Tilsbury vale." Humorous in tone, t h e poem never theless allows

for a l t e rna t ive London experiences.

Wordsworth seems to shy away from straight Popean satire, though

some of the London passages in the Prelude are reminiscent o f i t ; he

therefore often intersects them with bits o f Romance, or Miltonic lines,

i f only to keep urban pressures at bay or carve out some meaning in a

retrospect. The city's systemic absence o f meaning and order is emblem-

atized for him in the phantasmal spectacle o f Bartholomew Fair, which he

later contrasts and balances with the moderate rustic fair on Mount

Helvellyn that opens Book VIII. Several messages emerge from this rather

long description: first, i t s spectacle is so overwhelming that i t lays "The

whole creative powers" o f the poet to rest (VII, 655); second, the poet's

imaginative numbness is reflected in a virtual absence o f any controlling

metaphor or redeeming lyricism, as found in other parts of the same Book;

third, fairs and festivals reflect the people's imaginative need, i f only

expressed i n superstition or a belief in "the marvellous craf t /Of modern

Merlins" (V11, 6861.); and fourth, differences seem levelled down "to one

identity", whilst those that do exist "have no law, no meaning, and no end".

(VII, 704f.) Bartholomew Fair becomes the c i ty for Wordsworth - at that

point in time, but there are other moments and images that di f fer from

the previous ones and thus faci l i tate human 'experience'. 12

Wordsworth's catalogue o f sights simply reflects the contingency of

sense impressions. Nothing is repeated, everything is new, and thus no

memory-trace can be perceived or inscribed in the place. By contrast, the

country-fair is seasonal, famil iar characters re-emerge from the past, and

the whole atmosphere is governed by a spirit o f play, and o f interplay with

surrounding nature. Differences can be organically located and signified;

human nature can therefore be perceived i n f inite terms, which makes the

city's non-ending stream of l i fe look l ike blasphemy, since severed from

''early converse with the works o f God'' (VII, 719).

As a man-made artifact, the c i ty presents itself as a "work that's

finish'd to our hand" (VII, 6531, leaving nothing or l i t t l e to do for the

imagination. I ts profusion o f signs represents an over-signified reality -

wi th i ts "string of dazzling Wares,/Shop af ter shop, wi th Symbols, blazon'd

Names,/And all the Tradesman's honours overhead" (V11, 173-5). Significa-

t ion is prestructured, and the self is reduced to a parrot-like reception and

imitat ion of (sense) data. Reduced to the role o f a passive spectator

rather than (partial) creator, the c i ty dweller, as the hack artist, may feel

an urge to assume the role of a god-like signifier, positioned on "some

lofty Pinnacle" in order to produce the definitive version of reality, taking

in a "whole horizon on all sides" such as in "microscopic vision, Rome

itself" (VII, 273). preferably including the surrounding landscape ("every

tree1Through all the landscape", in short, "All that the Traveller sees when

he is there." (VII, 277-2001 Wordsworth here parodies the search for

semiotic plenitude and an all-inclusive vision of the worid,13 suggesting

that it simply reflects an absence of meaning, alienation from nature, and

a compensatory demonstration of power as i f to exorcise the specular

demons that seemed to have possessed the city mind. This exorcism will

inform structure and Imagery of some expressionist poems.

While at Cambridge, Wordsworth was already able to study a micro-

scopic picture of urban life. Unlike the penetrating mode of perception

demonstrated in the boat episode of Book IV, where objects are captured

in an experiential sequence that follows the organic relatedness (of similar

items as here), the Cambridge gaze goes through the motions of glancing

at an arbitrary arrangement of contiguous items. No room is left to

"fancy moren (IV, 253) The "rare" item must compensate for contextual

meaning; its underlying desire for singularity and novelty Wordsworth was

to observe later on in London.

Also the social aspect of contiguity was present in Cambridge, not

only in the 'poetic diction' that had become social practice there, but also

in the socially divisive power of the clothing system . Such divisiveness he also meets in London, whose street theatre he

rejects in favour of the stage, especially the performance of Jack the

Giant-killer, who connects him with boyhood reading, whereas the London

Street cuts him off from his past while pressuring him into a stunned

presence. Unlike the "Invisible" Giant, he is not safe "from the eye/Of

living mortaln. (VII, 305f.) In a related scene Wordsworth describes the

encounter with a Blind Beggar, a scene which has the makings of a "spot

of time". The man is standing propped against a wall, with an explanatory

"label" on his chest (VII, 614f.). Standing apart from the crowds, his

blindness seems to reflect their own sightless anonymity.

Although London could not offer Wordsworth a prime place or self-

definition, he nevertheless kept his steady eye quite open and gazed in

horror at his arch-enemy, the senselessly specular. Blindness is its ulti-

mate negation, and the natural or supernatural its companion forms - "As

if admonish'd from another worldn. (VII, 623) The Blind ~eggar 's epi-

phanic appearance amidst the city crowds therefore embodies "the utmost

that we know". (V11, '619)

The story of nineteenth-century Paris is reflected and fractured in the

story of Baudelaire's l i fe and work. Individual poems can be and have

been related to personal and social events, structures, and imagesJ4 Thus

an image of a poetic identity emerges that is built upon a series of

ruptures - familial, social, political. The traumatic break with his family

meant that he had to start a new life, seek new (personal and class)

alliances, and face an urban reality that posed a permanent threat of

engulfment. His initial poetic response, therefore, was to put on

'pastoral' lenses and ennoble the Parisian scene.

In order to put this programme into practice, he avails himself of

"Le Soleil", both as symbol and a physical energy, and aims to dissolve

"les soucis vers le cieI1', l5 turn the lame into maypole dancers, and

generally reanimate the human heart. I t is, in fact a social programme,

whose urgency is reflected in tone and diction; both sound as forced as

the whole vision looks unnatural. The sun's appearance is willed "Quand,

ainsi qu'un pohte, il descend dans les villes" (FM, p.266). The sun's

presence seems both unnatural and necessary in a city, since light is shed

freely on everything, poor or rich; like the poet himself, i t cares in an

uncaring environment. His perception thus is informed and transformed

by the sun's energy and "equality", and the caring voices its effect on

urban man: "le soleil cruel frappe a traits redoublb/sur la ville et les

champs, sur les toits et les b16s" (FM, p.265). However, poet and sun are

joined in a central ambiguity, which reveals as much as i t hides: slums

are not stubble fields. The reader is lured into perceiving the social as

natural, an effect partly achieved by the sing-song of the rhythm. Never-

theless, i t is the naturalizing cliche that works most effectively in a

context of social ugliness, since i t reflects perception as impaired and

impoverished. The poverty of the clich6 always refers to potential but not

actualized plenitude in meaning. Raudelaire creates an image of gener-

osity that spills into the l i fe of brains and bees (FM, p.266). The urban

mind feeds on such visions, since i ts endemic meanness reflects the

absence of nature's riches. Pastoral promise is thus basically introduced

as a structure of desire, as an energy rather than a full-fledged picture.

Baudelaire's bucolic discourse is always self-conscious, a s the opening

lines of "Paysage" suggest: "Je veux, pour composer chastement mes

bglogues,/Coucher auprks du ciel, comme les astrologues" (FM, p.265).

Like "Les Aveugles" who keep their eyes fixed on the far skies they

cannot see, he seeks inspiration from a visualized transcendence that is

not to obscure or transfigure his perception of urban squalor. Unlike the

entrenched mode of perception that Blake projects in "London", Baudelaire

continually refers t h e eye t o the "other" (and i t s manifold manifestations)

while remaining grounded in the physical and social presence of the city.

Like \Vordsworth's beggar, his blind men serve a s figures against the

ground of urban hubbubb and i t s specular analogues.

In a sense, even those blind beggars or blind 'seers' look like idylls

because of their difference rather than opposition to the urban scene, of

which they a re firmly a part. In their "spectacle' Baudelaire images what

has been done to them, whose names were once the order of the day:

"Vous qui fCtes la g rsce ou qui fiites la gloire,/Nul ne vous reconnatt! " (FM, p.274). As virtually disembodied eyes and voices, they accost like

ghosts the passer-by, t h e flaneur who affords himself t ime to reflect on

them, and write their history in verse.

Unlike so much urban poetry that interpolates idyll to redeem the

city, Baudelaire's eye concentrates on i t s child-like innocence: "tout c e

que I'ldylle a d e plus enfantin" (FM, p.256; my italics). l6 For he senses

in the child's mode of perception a "cruel" fairness ("le soleil cruel", FM,

p.265), which clarifies the mind in order to pierce the veil of hard and

shiny appearances without loss of sensibility. In short, Baudelaire's vision

of Paris is that of a child and an adult a t the same time, analytical and

naive. The two perceptions of the world (of the city) intersect, a s in

some of Blake's poems. Memory traces and 'cobblestones' have to

collide in order to get his "fantasque escrime" - literally - off the ground.

That childhood memory was crucial for him is evidenced, for instance, in

his version of d e Quincey's idea of the 'Palimpsest of Memory'. 17

Baudelaire's pastoral transformation of Paris has method: "Et quand

viendra I'hiver aux neiges monotones,/Je fermerai partout portieres e t

volets/Pour batir dans Is nuit mes fCeriques palais." (FM, p.265) Sobbing

fountains and singing birds a r e drummed up to shut out s t ree t riots that

may taint his vision of natural beauty, and of 'social' beauty. For the

Parisian workshop (we would now call it a factory), which h e "sees" (FM,

p.265) from his garret as being turned into a place ,of spontaneous self-

expression ("l'atelier qui chante e t qui bavarde") receive a retroactive dis-

claimer: the joint presence of social unrest and social peace forces i ts

paradoxical nature on the reader, makes him think about the social con-

structlon of nature and the ac t of naturalizing the ci ty as a prominent

locus of politics and history. To improve the natural (emotional) and

social cl imate of Paris, the poet avails himself of paradox, a s in the final

lines, of the conceit of "tirer un soleil d e mon coeur" (FM, p.265). Thus

the sun, whose human analogue is the heart, is invoked for the sole

purpose of combating social and individual indifference, since both fields

and the heart a r e m a t o grow a. Child-llke insistence and modern

self-consciousness a r e joined to energize perception, and open it again t o

see the 'other', all that has been suppressed o r oversignified - which

ultimately amounts to the same thing.

The speaker's ostentatious disinterestedness in 'things political', as

projected in "Paysage", is simply childish rather than anti-political; i t s

abrupt gesture of shutting out the voice of the people looks immature.

Yet it is also indicative of a highly matured consciousness that playfully

handles familiar discourse. Thus social and natural c l i c h b are employed

t o secure interest or connivance in the reader. Poets a r e 'naturally'

placed in their garrets, and nature is evoked through common-place

imagery ("neiges monotones", "fiieriques palais", "jets d'eau pleurant",

'oiseaux chantant", etc.). Baudelaire's seemingly simple urban pastoral

draws attention to its own constructedness a s much as t o the heterogene-

ous materials he works with. Framed by a "wintry" mood, his picture o f ,

Paris is composed of the playthings of childhood and the stumbling-blocks

of an adult.

"Rbve Parisien" could be regarded as a companion piece, although

placed towards the end of the Tableaux Parisiens. A t first it seems to

have little in common with the other one, since nature, and any "v6gCtal

irr6guliern (FM, p.284) have been banned from the dream. "Colonnades"

stand in for trees, "glass" becomes synonymous with water, and "objective"

light (i.e. light produced and contained by the object) eschews natural

light. In short, nature has been replaced by a glittering artifact, composed

of metal, marble, stone, and glass. Its building materials seem t o have

been selected solely for their mirror function, namely t o reflect the

image of i t s architect who, like the "huge naiads", can marvel a t himself.

Here " the eyes alone" i s in imperial command. I t i s a concep t of a r t t ha t

l a t e r will f a sc ina t e Jean-Paul S a r t r e in L a Nausie , fo r not dissimilar

reasons. Fo r th is "terrible" kind of const ruct ion s e e m s t o afford t h e

only e scape f rom t h e urban mess, i t s cont ingencies , i t s vulgar "nature";

clinical s ter i l i ty usurps t h e domain of organic g rowth and filth. So, i s t h e

t i t l e o f t h e poem a misnomer? And i s t he re only a slim link be tween t h e

t w o poems, as Leakey s t a t e s ? l9

T h e opening of t h e poem conf ron t s t h e r eade r with t h e perceptual

shock t o which t h e speake r awakens, and whose origin is unclear. Pa ra -

doxically, t h e " terr ib le terrain' ' does not haunt bu t ravish t h e speaker , i t s

s educ t ive image spilling in to his waking consciousness - of t h e d ream and t h e c i ty , a s if t o e l ic i t a comparison be tween t h e 'miraculous' ("Sleep is

full of miracles!") and t h e profane. But what a mi rac l e w e a r e allowed

t o wi tness! It i s a world empt i ed of life, in which " the s i l ence of t h e

Void" reigns, f rom which i r regular meanderings, hidden corners , rough

edges, growth and his tory h a v e been removed, and where to t a l inspection

and survei l lance g o unpunished. How much c loser c a n w e g e t t o Baron

Haussmann's - admi t t ed ly well-meaning - geomet r i ca l ideal of re lent less

'regularisation' and se l f - representa t ional 'boulevards' ? 20 T h e c i t y i s

mean t t o have i t s own discourse, manifes ted in a n au to t e l i c sys tem, just

l ike Baudelaire 's ' terribly' intriguing "Parisian Dream". Haussmann's slum-

c lear ing p rog ramme s e e m s t o have been inscribed in it; ironically, i t is

his "l'horreur d e mon taudis" h e r e tu rns to, and wi th i t r e tu rns "La pointe

des soucis maudits", and of re lent less c lock time. (FM, p.286) T h e t w o

f a c e s o f Paris, blended in to t h e compos i t e p ic ture of a d ream, r e f r ac t

each other , something t h e speake r i s anxious t o prevent by sepa ra t ing them

o u t a t t h e level of s u r f a c e discourse. T h e s e m a n t i c building blocks of t h e

poem, however, be t r ay the i r urban blueprint. I t is a c i t y mind t h a t builds

i t s "fgeriques palais" ("Paysagen, FM, p.2651, and t h e f lowers of i t s land-

s capes a r e of me ta l and glass. T h e harmony of a pas tora l idyll has not

been dis turbed here , a s in t h e o t h e r poems, but negated, and turned in to

a n anti-pastoral. Childhood play s e e m s t o h a v e ma tu red in to an adul t

still-life, but i t s horr i f ic beau ty r e f e r s us back t o i t s na tu ra l sou rces of

inspiration.

Since Baudelaire 's 'Parisian' d ream i s not only of Pa r i s but a l so in

Paris, a n e s c a p e in to na tu re amoun t s t o a n e s c a p e in to t h e past, whose

r ea l i t y has t o b e ca rved o u t of t h e present , a s is suggested in "Le Soleil"

(Fh4, p.265f.l. Such 'eerie' collisions with the past tend to turn the

present, and presence of Paris into a spectral scene, whose images cling

to its dwellers. Instead of being only an intermediary stage between a

specular and an imaginative encounter with the real, as it was for Words-

worth, the spectral is for Baudelaire one of the mainsprings of his poetry.

It forms part of present-day perceptions rather than being neatly separated

out like a bad dream. It is inscribed and comes alive on the cobblestones

of Paris, as in the guise of a "Squelette Laboureurn (FM, p.276f.1, the

"Danse Macabre" (FM, p.279ff.) or the spectral procession (not as a willed

Wordsworthian "second-time procession") of "Les Sept Vieillardsn (FM,

p.270ff.l or "Les Petites Vieilles" (FM, pp.272-275).

In the latter poem, old women appear as remains and reminders (of

an "other" Paris) that can be picked up and inherited by the "flaneur".

They are walking paradoxes, like those "Aveugles" who look like

"mannequins" (FM, p.275). They are ghosts that do not fit into the world

of the imaginary, since there history has become anathema. Dwarfed in

size to match the coffin of a child, and their life story emptied into a

hiatus between birth and death "nouveau berceau", they nevertheless

possess one identifying and functioning organ: their eyes "per~ants comme

une vrille". However, it is not the eyes of the imaginary gaze that

freezes the "other"; instead it contains it in the sense of child-like

wonder. Their eyes are "les yeux divins de la petite fille", still able to

marvel "A tout c e qui reluit" (FM, p.272). a faculty and passion they share

with the speaker in "Rgve Parisien" (FM, p.284ff.l.

The ambiguous nature of perception is thrown into relief in the way

the speaker can both share their wonder and analyze their appearance.

For behind the physical presence of a "swarming" Paris, the speaker dis-

covers a problem of geometry ("mbditant sur la g60m6trie8', FM p.2731,

since the women's bodies show up "membres discords" (FM, p.2731, that

he finds disturbing, like that "v6g6tal irr6guliern in the other poem:

"Combien de fois il faut que I'ouvrier varie/La forme de la boqte oh I'on

met tous ces corps"? In the poet's "dreamn of Paris, of course, the

formal structuring of matter is an easier task; any natural resistance such

as an ocean represents can be 'tamed' and contained by the poet's will

and imagination (FM, p.285). Unlike concrete 'materials' such as the

human body, mental pictures are more on a par with aesthetic perception,

but even here nature's irregularities can cause life-long problems for the

urban artist, as Baudelaire confesses in the prose poem "Le Confitgor de

IfArtisten: "Nature, enchantresse sans piti6, rivale toujours victorieuse,

laisse-moi !" 2 1

To hold nature in check, Raudelaire interpolates in many of his

poems cultural referents as models of perception, mainly from the Fine

Arts. Rut the picturesque effect of his painterly or sculptural images are

often framed by signifiers of nature, usually of basic human expression

(grief, joy, pain, etc.). Moreover, since the speaker's discourse in the

Tableaux parisiens is often dynamized by speech acts of hope, wish,

exclamation, command, questioning, etc., he demonstrates human involve-

ment rather than aesthetic detachment, as often claimed. He wants

others to share primarily his experiential rather than his cultural knowledge.

Raudelaire does not have to prove in his poetry that he is an outstanding

art critic. But he certainly would not mind i f readers attracted by

learned allusions would also learn to reflect upon the natural roots of such

poetry and such a voice.

Thus "Les Petites Vieilles" foregrounds cultural stereotypes such as

"Madonne transperc6en (FM, p.273) or "De Frascati d6funt Vestale

enamour6e" that refer the reader to the voice of nature, and speech acts

denote dialogic involvement: "Monstres brisds, bossus/Ou tordus, aimons-

les !" (Fh4, p.272, my italics). The social responsibility is stressed, as in - the lines: "Avez-vous observ6 que maints cercueils de vieilles/Sont presque

aussi petits que celui d'un enfant?" (FM, p.273, my italics). The "soul" is

here clearly invoked as the organ of perception, as the "heart" is in many

other poems. Unlike his poetry up to the mid-1850s, where the propo-

sitional dimension of his poems overruled pragmatic concerns and

strategies, his explicitly urban poems situate a pained and more isolated

speaker. He anxiously seeks contact, since mutually shared knowledge and

experience seem no longer guaranteed, i f it ever was. The early rhetoric

of persuasion now has to fight on a different ground, and speech acts have

to be switched accordingly. The addressee, too, is less stereotyped, more

typical of real men and women of the street. One poem is addressed "A

une Mendiante pousse", another to a woman passing by ("A une Passante").

In Baudelaire's Parisian Pictures frames of perception and images of

nature (and its metonyms such as the human body, dreams, or desire)

intersect in ways unseen so far in the history of urban poetry. Related

motifs and oppositions such as chiIdhood/adulthood, life/death, present/past

o r cu l tu re lna tu re a r e closely woven into t h e poem's texture . T h e resulting

pic tures a r e the re fo re no longer decipherable on t h e level of neat opposi-

tions; only d i f f e rences e m e r g e from these pictures, because t h e desi re

tha t produced them i s inextricably wedded t o i t s source of frustration.

"VoIupt6" o r "sensationn, then, a r e mediators between inner and ou te r

nature , but t h e images they th r ive on a r e essent ia l ly urban, and thus tend

t o nega te what they stimulate." It is this, I think, what Baudelaire

mean t when h e cal led "les images, m a grande, m a pr imit ive passion".

Baudelaire's passion fo r images remains unparalleled in c i t y poetry; ye t

t h e pain and confusion they c a n cause will be fu r the r investigated,

especially by t h e German Expressionists, who work with s imilar s e t s of

motifs, but work them into much more radical fo rms of involvement, and

even engulfment.

German c i t y poetry emerged in t h e 1880s in t h e con tex t of l a t e industrial-

izat ion and a s t rong pastoral tradition, and developed through dis t inct

s tyl is t ic s t a g e s from Naturalism, neo-Romanticism and Symbolism until i t

reached i t s c l imax in Expressionism (especially between 1910 and 1920).

Arno Holz played a crucial role in this development both in t e r m s of

s ty l e and subject-mat ter ; h e and s o m e of t h e o t h e r naturalists, especially

Jul ius Hart , Bruno Wille, and Karl Henckell, in t roduced us t o a c i t y tha t

works, and where work spills over in to leisure, and alcohol acce le ra t e s

deter iorat ion.

Industrial iconography recur s in modera te variation; sooty factory

chimneys overshadow Berlin's "Mietskasernen" (such a s those on t h e

Ackers t rasse) , narrow s t r e e t s and t r ee l e s s cour tya rds add t o a general

a tmosphere of claustrophobia. Here t h e natural is t poet shows his commi t -

men t in redirect ing t h e victims' percept ion away from their confinement

towards t h e large expanses of f reedom such a s Bruno Wille's seraphic

skies in " ~ o l k e n s t a d t " . ~ ~ Pa le housewives and sweat ing workers a r e urged

t o look upward and marvel a t t h e poet 's Alpine idyll while angel ic children

look down on t h e urban squalor in horror. However, t h e pastoral counter-

image t o t h e c i t y fa i ls t o ene rg ize perception, which remains caught

be tween t w o s t a t i ca l ly opposed pictures. What seem t o b e dialogic speech

a c t s (i.e. requests, commands) s e r v e t o re inforce t h e speaker's paternal is t ic

s t a n c e and self-engrossed r ap tu re a t his own vision of escape. It i s a

rhetor ic and dic t ion Wille shares with the o t h e r Naturalists. In Holz's

"Grosstadtmorgen", fo r instance, t h e poem also divides in to two contras t -

ing worlds, but they converge in a momentar i ly divided consciousness: "Da,

plotzlich, wie? ich wusst es selber nicht,/fuhr mir durchs Hirn

phantastisch ein Gesicht,/in Traum ..." (R, p.44). T h e remembered idyll

?i la Eichendorff, who half a cen tu ry ea r l i e r employed t h e s a m e technique

t o keep t h e real i ty of Berlin a t bay, c a n now unfold, ye t is c lear ly

intended t o le t i t s Utopian flow spill in to t h e final s e t of clipped and

chilly propositions: "Die Friedrichstrasse. Krumm an seiner Krucke/ein

Be t t l e r ...". (R, p.45) T h e speaker ' s self-presentation in t h e first few

lines ("da schr i t t ich miide durch d ie FriedrichstadtJbespritzt von ihrem

Schmutz bis in die Seelev', R, p.44) t e l l s u s what Paudelai re shows; his

"soul" may well b e soiled by t h e c i ty , but the poem shows no t r a c e of it.

T h e homely, self-absorbed mood and dic t ion give him away: "An was ich

dachte , weiss d e r Kuckuck nur./Vielleicht a n meinen Affenpintscher Fips"

(R, p.44).

'Biedermeier' a t i t s best, and no real urban collision t o disrupt it.

Violent exchanges, if t hey d o occur, a r e quickly contained by the powers

tha t be, a s t h e fight between a coach dr iver and a policeman in Henckell 's

"Von de r Strasse" shows. But he re t h e speaker becomes ironic, l e t s t h e

law-abiding ci t izens admi re t h e brave policeman (R, p.50) and then goes

on t o question t h e seemingly trivial incident by making us look a t a

violent potent ia l amongst t h e urbanites: "Doch aus winzigen Schnee-

ballchenlwachst laut los d i e Lawine, d i e verheer t lund jah verschlingt ...Iq

(R, p.50). On t h e whole, however, t hese poems d o not ye t project a

reservoir of violence; t h e des t ruc t ive s ide of human na tu re is not yet

allowed t o express itself freely. If a t all, i t is embedded in an energized

diction, rapidly switching points of view (supported by quickly sequenced

de ic t i c signals) and a general ly more aggressive imagery.

Although natural is t poems a r e still a f a r c r y away from t h e

expressionist epi tomes, t h e kinet ic quality of s o m e passages comes c lose

t o t h e expressionist mode. An interes t ing example in this r e spec t is one

of Jul ius Hart ' s poems, which opens with t h e line "Vom Westen kam ich,

schwerer Heideduft/umfloss mich noch ...Iq (R, p.59) suggesting a rural

mode o f percept ion t h a t i s allowed, for one s t anza a t least, t o feed on

t h e pic turesque countryside through which the self is travelling in a t ra in

o n i t s way t o Berlin. In t h e third s tanza, however, t h e pastoral cha rm i s

brusquely brushed aside ("Vorbei die Spiele!", R, p.60) t o let a voice of

experience and i t s re'spective mode of perception take over; this is why

and when the countryside 'changes', it becomes more aggressive as the

train races through the September mists a s if penetrating some resistent

veil o r wall. While following the rapid sequence of images picked up by

the perceiving eye, the same images seem t o reflect the traveller's

entranced frame of mind, his fascination for the engine's ubiquitous power;

he inhabits i t s field of energy ("vom dumpfen Schall/stohnt, drohnt und

saust's im engen Eisenwagen").

Nevertheless, we can still feel a distance between the observer and

his object, although much less so than in impressionistic poems where

images simply dance on the nerves of the beholder without engaging him

in any deeper sense. It is a distance that is given up (within a few lines)

in Stadler's "Fahrt uber die Kolner Rheinbriicke bei Nacht", where outer

and inner images stimulate each other towards an e ro t ic climax, followed

by an ebbing out of intensity ("Stille. Nacht. Besinnung. ~ i n k e h r " ) ' ~ and

renewed ecstacy. In Hart 's poem the descriptive mode is still dominant,

also a t arrival in Berlin, whose sight a t first is leaden, then volcanic (R,

p.60). Here perception absorbs clearly visionary elements, although in the

next line we a r e thrown back to the tangible reality of the train in

preparation for a more physically detailed city. Such oscillation between

perception and vision, outer and inner motion informs the structure of the

rest of the poem. The 'surge' of the crowd seems to control, indeed, to

become individual desire, i.e. internal - like a dream; outer and inner

lines of energy can no longer be clearly distinguished. By contrast, the

form of the poem - i t s al ternate rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter,

which even holds t h e self's repeated questioning in check ("Wohin?

wohin?") - frames the contingency of i t s content. What seems a contra-

diction, however, may find a possible solution in a new concept of form,

which Stadler's programmatic poem "Form ist Wollust" explicates:

Form ist klare Harte ohn' Erbarmen, doch mich treibt es zu den Dumpfen, zu den Armen, Und grenzenlosem Michverschenken Will mich Leben mit Erfiillung tranken. 25

Form marks t h e boundary that enables transgression to take place,

and as such It becomes an enabling devlce for the poet t o remain within

poetic convention deploy a structure of transgression. Similarly,

individual des i r e i s ' formed' only by being objectified. In Har t ' s poem,

t h e use of deixis and ve rb phrase ("zwischen ... t r e ib ich dahin") re inforce

th i s conjecture , because they foreground des i r e a s an object (like "deathn)

which o n e c a n move towards and away from. A similar d is tance, inciden-

tally, i s mainta ined in Liliencron's "In e ine r grossen Stadtn , although

sepa ra t ing ou t l i fe and t i m e from a more privileged vantage-point. (R,

p.92) In Har t , t h e self, by implication, renounces any responsibility for

such (potent ia l ) engulfment , s ince a new agent , namely t h e c i ty , i s about

t o t a k e c a r e of individual l i fe and t h e future. And t h e pointed coupling

of folksie "Lebenslust" and "drunken" in toxicat ion se rves t o clinch t h e pac t

be tween a pas t coun t ryman and a present city-dweller.

T h e p a t t e r n and sequence of initiation t o t h e c i t y is a lways t h e

same: Innocent fascinat ion wi th t h e c i t y a s a spec t ac l e i s followed by an

increased in toxicat ion wi th it , and ending up in (dreaded) self-engulfment

("jahlings hinabgerissen"). A s in Har t ' s poem, i t o f t e n r ep resen t s a journey

f rom innocence t o expe r i ence (and sexual self-awareness), and t h e propel-

ling fo rce invariably is t h e specular , of whose subvers ive qual i ty Baudelaire

was t h e f i rs t t o become fully conscious and find a concep t for: "voluptk"

o r "sensationn, which signify t h e f r e e flow of energy be tween inner and

o u t e r nature.

T h e German na tu ra l i s t s in tui ted a bas ic link between t h e way w e

pe rce ive t h e world and (human) nature , but i t was Expressionists who

t r ans l a t ed th is intuition in to the i r p r a c t i c e of writing. However, before

they e n t e r e d t h e scene, neo-Romant ic and Symbolist poe t s fil led t h e gap,

in m o r e than o n e sense. F o r t hey f e l t somewhat f r ightened, a s s o m e of

t h e na tu ra l i s t s did, by t h e c r a c k s tha t surfaced in t h e prevailing (poet ic)

discourse, and w e r e de t e rmined t o s i lence t h e c i ty ' s 'body' and i t s

d e m a n d s z 6 S t r ange ly enough, ea r ly Expressionists l ike S tad le r a t t e m p t e d

t o c o m b a t a s imilar anxie ty , a s in his "Dammerung in d e r Stadt": "Der

Abend spr icht mi t l indem/Schmeichelwort d i e Cassen l in Sch lummer ..."." Irrespect ive of d i f f e ren t s t a g e s and c i ty images which Heym's work

embodies, w e no t i ce a m o r e aggress ive qual i ty in his images and a more

methodical handling of t hem than in ea r l i e r poems. T h e moon, for

example , in Bruno Wille's "Strasse" plays t h e role of a n observer of c i t y

life; i t s ref ra in- l ike s i lent c o m m e n t s a t t h e end of e a c h s t a n z a a r e a s

harmless a s t h e urban happenings t h e moon's f a c e i s t o r e f l ec t (R, pp.50f.).

By con t r a s t , in Heym's nDle D l m o n e n d e r StBdten t h e moon is s t r a t eg i -

cally obscured by one of t h e demons (R, p.112) so tha t their nightly

t e r ro r c a n run i t s deadly course, unimpeded by an observant witness.

Otherwise t h e moon is presented a s an agen t o r pat ient of aggression (e.g.

"schwarz zerrissen/Von Mondenstrahl", R, p.114), o r light appears in red,

which i s with black his favouri te colour. T h e spheres of dea th and desire

a r e thus given their visual correlates , a s t h e monstrous birth in "Die

Damonen d e r Stadt" dramatizes:

Ihr Schoss klaff t rot und lang Und blutend reisst e r von d e r Frucht entzwei. I...] Erdbebsn donnert durch d e r S t a d t e Schoss Um ihren Huf, den Feuer iiberloht. (R, p.112)

T h e demons' aggression i s directed a t t h e city's womb and c a n thus be

interpreted a s a de te rmina te negation (Hegel) r a the r than a s an anarchic

a c t of destruction. Their cat- l ike scream, which is hurled in to t h e dark

skies, is joined by a pregnant woman's sc ream tha t shakes t h e room and

rends t h e aural fabr ic of t h e c i t y (R, p.112). Animal-like, t h e woman's

sc ream thus echoes man's primeval scream, a s if t o shortcircui t his

evolutionary history in which t h e building of c i t i e s (and cul ture) and t h e

subjection of nature have formed a vi ta l dialectic.

If we, fur thermore, t a k e t h e allegorical figurations tha t dominate t h e

ci ty , for example in Heym's "Der Got t d e r Stadt", a s emanat ions of i t s

governing spirit , t h e a c t of i t s destruct ion a f fo rds us a glimpse into i t s

uncannily ambiguous nature. A s a source and product of culturally

invested energy, t h e pride of progress and civilization, t h e 'City' begins

t o turn upon i t s own frui ts by swallowing them up like "monstrous"

children. C i ty symbols such a s towering churches and factory chimneys

anxiously ga the r round ancient Baal's throne, a symbol of modern man's

'second nature ' , sacrificing themselves like the i r ancestors in a Corybant

ritual dance (R, p.113).

What Heym's poems seem t o project, in short, is a 'dialectic of

enlightenment' , a s diagnosed and described by Horkheimer and Adorno some

thir ty yea r s later. 2R They point t o a mythical s ide of modern reason,

which recurs in fo rms of uncontrollable na tu re because of their sys temat ic

subjection. 29 Heym's two poems c a n the re fo re b e seen a s a 'determinate'

negation3' of such a system in o rde r t o make us 'see' what t h e c i t y tends

t o hide and suppress. Th i s is perhaps why Heym places his "god of the

A W M N POEMS AND LITERARY IMPRESSIONISM CONCEPTUALIZATION. THEMATIZATION AND CLASSIFICATION

Zlva Ren-Pomt (Tel Aviv University)

This paper studies a number of autumn poems, all of which can be - or

have been - described as impressionist. The aim of this thematic study

is to throw some light on the relationship between literary thematizations

and representations. The basic notions are:

- The assignment of a theme to a poem in the process of i ts inter- pretation is actually an identification and a modiflcation of a cultural concept; 1

- This dual process is based on the poem's use of a representational system whose components correspond - a t least in part - to the common- est attributes of the cultural concept (1.e. the 'mental picture', 'model', 'subschema', o r 'representational system' - according to various cognitive schools);

. - Periods, schools and individual authors differ in their claimed and achieved degree of distance between a presented theme and i ts concep- tualized representations;

- Impressionism, the French school of painting of the 1860-1870s, includes, as one of i ts major tenets, the most radical form of the demand to dissociate a theme from its conceptualized representational systems.

- The technical solutions of the impressionist painters can be - and have been - translated Into a poetics. Poems (and other texts) written in accordance with this particular poetics a re often labelled nimpressionist."

- The usage of impressionist poetics does not entail the break between theme and concept (referred to above). 'Impressionism' (as a theory or ideology) 1s not the same as 'impress~onism.'

- When such a break occurs, the reader experiences difficulties in thematizations either a conflict between a declared theme (e.g. in a title) and i ts representation, o r an inability t o integrate the components of the representation into one thematic whole.

- Under certain circumstances poetic thematizations yleld novel conceptualizations of reality.

- A comparative study of 'impressionist' and 'Impressionist' poems on an established theme, whose reality base (and therefore conceptual attributes) is well known, could provlde us with insights t o the relations between theme, concept and representation.

The paper begins, then, with a short discussion of the relationship

between the impressionist school of painting and l i terary 'Impressionism'

h e . acknowledged schools or ideological affinities) or 'impressionism' (i.e.

poetics), and with a presentation o f the concepts and representational

systems o f the chosen theme - autumn. This general introductory section

ends with a hypothesized 'true' lmpressionist poem.

An analysis of two poems by Detlev von Liliencron shows that school

aff i l iation does not entail an adherence to the basic Impressionist impulses

(the generators of the particular painting technique and i t s l i terary equiva-

lents). The two poems are shown to he conventional conceptualizations

of autumn wri t ten in the impressionist style. An analysis o f an autumn

poem by the nineteenth-century poet John Clare shows how lmpressionism

(i.e. the ideal of an exact rendition of the world as perceived in a parti-

cular moment and presented free o f pre-categorization) is a poetic possi-

bi l i ty, and how the execution o f a 'true' lmpressionist poem creates a

problem of thematization.

While in painting French Impressionism of the nineteenth century

fulf i ls al l the requirements for categorization as a s c h o o ~ , ~ l i terary

lmpressionism poses a much harder problem of classification. There are

scholars who claim that l i terary lmpressionism is altogether a myth;

others believe that i t is a rather loose aggregation o f styl ist ic features.

Most historians o f l i terature agree, however, that there is a German

lmpressionist school in poetry, and that Symbolism in France and Imagism

in England and the United States are i ts parallels. That is to say that

these three national schools occupy in their respective l i terary systems the

same position which Impressionism holds in the plastic arts system. I t is

true that Symbolism, for example, i n i ts reaction to l i terary realism and

naturalism parallels the revolt of lmpressionist painting against Academic

Realism and even pictorial Naturalism. Like pictorial Impressionism l i ter-

ary Symbolism is characterized by the impulse to arrest and present the

moment in which sense impressions become an experience (or create one),

using the associative and arbitrary (vs. the logical) concatenation of those

impressions, the overlapping of bounds, the hlurring o f forms and the

integration o f different sense impressions (i.e. synesthesia), and focusing

on the ef fect which an object creates rather than on the concept which

i t represents. Furthermore, the Symbolist poets actually socialized closely

with the Impressionist painters: they exchanged ideas, showed their works

t o each other, and commented on t h e works - a s well a s on the theoreti-

ca l issues - in pr ivate and in public. In this sense the Symbolist poets a r e

part o f the Impressionist school. Nevertheless i t is evident tha t t h e very

concept of a Symbol - t h e meaning implied by the image which has been

c rea ted with these techniques - is alien t o the most basic tenet of

Impressionism. A symbol involves conceptualization as well a s t h e

communication of an idea, whereas lmpressionism aims a t de-conceptualiza-

tion in order t o present t h e world as i t is revealed in a particular moment

and under particular conditions. 3

Such a crucial difference between the acknowledged corresponding

schools cal ls into question t h e validity of their identification a s variet ies

of a l i terary Impressionism. But the problem does not end there. Even

if w e give up t h e notion of a school and limit the concept of literary

impressionism t o a bundle of features - the basic problem of lmpressionism

a s well a s t h e difficulty of switching media s t ays with us.

As mentioned before, t h e primary impulse of Impressionism, out of

which grow almost all i t s distinctive features - or, rather, those qualities

commonly connected with Impressionism - is t h e wish to s e e t h e world as

i t is and t o present it a s a complex of sense impressions without using

pre-existing categories. The difficulty of realizing such an ideal is two-

fold: the problem of seeing without conceptualizations, and t h e problem

of representing t h e world through highly subjective lenses without distorting

it. 4 Oskar Walzel formulated the first problem when he pointed out the

questionable nature of t h e assumption that seeing without ready-made

pat terns (Vorstellungen) is possible. What is problematic already with

regard t o our visual experiences seems t o be al together impossible when

t h e ar t is t ic medium is poetry. Any representation of the world in words

could not possibly evade t h e use of concepts. 5

The idea of a representation leads us to the second inherent

difficulty. If t h e work of a r t is a presentation of an impression (i.e. a

processed piece of information) what does i t represent - the perceived

object o r the perceiving mind? The confusion between the two polarized

views finds expression in t h e words of Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer), whom

t h e Imagists labelled "an impressionist",6 or in Zola's laudatory review of

Manet, whom h e praises in the s a m e breath for presenting his personality

and for "seizing nature broadly in his hand and planting upright before us

that which he sees there.lf7

However, possible or impossible, subjective or ohjective, pictorial

Impressionism is a historical fact; and art in general and l i terature in

particular - i f we are to believe Sklovski and other Russian Formalists -

aim at, and often achieve a defamiliarization of the familiar world, which

is similar to a reconstruction o f our ready-made patterns. Armed with

this knowledge we can ask another question. How can a verbal art (in

this case poetry) present - or create the illusion o f presenting - a world

which has not been precategorized? Or, to put i t differently, what

happens when a text presents uncategorized or only partial ly categorized

impressions? As I said before, one o f the best ways to answer this

question is to study one theme in a number o f texts belonging to different

cultures, periods and schools. And this is the point where autumn poems

enter the picture.

Autumn is a theme which cuts across temporal and spatial bound-

ar ies8 A study o f over two hundred autumn poems and songs, whose

results I have made known in various places,9 shows that as a rule poetry

contains conceptualized presentations of autumn. Like any other concept,

that o f autumn is determined by the function assigned to i t in a particular

context. The components of any particular autumnal representation are

determined by the established meaning o f that particular concept. For

instance, autumn conceptualized as a symbol o f decay or old age wi l l be

represented by falling leaves, bare branches, howling winds and darkening

skies. Such a representation may contain an image o f a harvested field

or ripe fruit, but i t w i l l never contain references to ful l granaries, cider

making or blooming squills (a mediterranian autumn flower). The fact that

these flowers, activit ies and objects exist in reality (and are characteristic

as well as specific to the season) is irrelevant.

I f autumn had only one signifying function we could have expected

one basic model of autumnal representation. Since autumn fulf i ls several

such functions we find a number o f such models. Each one has a reper-

tory o f representational elements, which may change culturally or

periodically (elements may be added or deleted) but whose principle of

selection is rather fixed. Effoliation, for example, may be represented by

the yellowing ash-tree in one place and by the redness o f the maple in

another; migrating cranes and ducks may be replaced by the "giant red-

widow" i n Zulu autumn songs; but each presentation has i ts basic

repertories with their fixed semantic functions on, all levels: realemes

(i.e. objects from realia), vocabulary and organizing patterns. As I have

described in detail elsewhere it is possible t o reduce t h e multifarious

actualizations into three basic models (i.e. three systems of representation

related t o three concepts of autumn):

- Autumn a s a symbol of fer t i l i ty and plenitude;

- Autumn a s a symbol of decay and death;

- Autumn a s a symbol of a particular mood: nostalgic resignation

to the human predicament.

The majority of t h e t ex t s which can be thematically grouped as

autumn poems does indeed fit into this classification. In most cases one

model is actualized and t h e autumnal presentation represents one of the

th ree concepts. However, superimposition, aggregation o r parodic t reat-

ment of models a r e possible, a s a r e attitudinal inversions (e.g. sad autumn

makes m e happy). But a t t h e core of the varied poet ic representations

of autumn there always seems t o 5e one of the th ree permanent cultural

models. T h e model functions, apparently, a s a mental pattern, necessary

for the reception and interpretat ion of t h e presentation. 10

Theoretically, a ' true' Impressionist autumn poem would be one whose

presentation of autumn is not an actualization of any of the three models.

T o be Impressionist, t h e presentation should be based on a recording of

particular autumnal impressions, specific t o their t ime and place; the

cultural function of the resulting presentation should not be predetermined,

the representational system should not be identical with the given reper-

tory of any model; and the poetics of t h e presentation should accord with

impressionist poetics (part of which has been mentioned above; a fuller

description follows in the course of the analysis of concre te examples).

The first tes t c a s e is, naturally, a poem from the corpus of 'official'

Impressionist poetry. In t h e selected works of Detlev von Liliencron I I

there a r e two relevant examples: a short lyric ent i t led "Herbst" (Autumn)

and a three s tanza unit from a poem which describes a particular land-

scape in the different seasons, "Haidebilder" (Moorland Pictures).

Herbst.

Astern bliihen schon im Garten, Schwacher t r i f f t der Sonnenpfeil. Rlumen, die den Tod erwarten Durch des Frostes Henkzrbeil.

Brauner dunkelt langst die Haide, Blatter zittern durch die Luft. IJnd es liegen Wald und Weide Unbewegt im blauen Duft.

Pfirsich an der Gartenmauer, Kranich auf der Winterflucht. Herbstes Freuden, Herbstes Trauer, Welke Rosen, reife Frucht.

Haidebilder.

In Herbstestagen bricht mit starkem Fliigel Der Reiher durch den Ne belduft. Wie st i l l es ist! kaum hor ich um den Hiigel Noch einen Laut in weiter Luft.

Auf eines Birkenstammchens schwanker Krone Ruht sich ein Wanderfalke aus. Doch schlaft er nicht, von seinem leichten Throne Augt er durchdrungend scharf hinaus.

Der alte Pauer mi t verhaltnem Schritte Schleicht neben seinem Wagen Torf. Und holpernd, stolpernd schleppt mi t lahmem Tr i t te Der alte Schimmel ihn ins Dorf.

I t is not di f f icul t t o see what would be considered impressionist

about these poems; primarily because the typical characteristics of

l i terary Impressionism in general - and the German school in particular -

have frequently been abstracted by cr i t ics from these and similar poems,

and have been formulated by their authors.

Both poems present an aggregation of impressions whose order o f

presentation seems to be unmotivated. I t is, indeed, possible to recon-

struct a coherent movement o f the eye from the sky t o the ground in the

autumnal moorland picture: in the f irst stanza the heron is flying, in the

second the falcon rests on a tree, and in the third the farmer treads the

ground with heavy steps. Rut there is no causative or other logical

justification for this spatial arrangement of the images. The watching eye

could have moved in the opposite direction or back and forth as i t does

in "Autumn". I n that poem the first description is that o f asters blooming

in the garden, the second, of the surrounding forest. and meadow, and the

third presents fruit-trees in the garden. Sky and earth are intermingled

in all three descriptions: the flowers are related to the sun, the grassy

meadow to the trembling air, and the peach trees to the escaping crane.

Horizontal and vertical movement alike are completely arbitrary.

There is an intensive appeal to the senses: many references to

colours, sounds and smells as well as their blending in synesthesic con-

figurations. The most striking examples are the "Nebelduft" (the smell of

fog) and the "blauen Duft" (the blue smell). Typical are the direct

references to colour with the emphasis on change: "Brauner dunkelt langst

die Haide" (long since the moor has darkened its brown). Equally typical

are the indirect evocations of colours through references to colourful

objects, be they specific flowers, trees or animals. In the "Moor Pictures, " for example, grey and white become the dominant colours without ever

being mentioned. They are first evoked with the heron and the fog, then

they accompany the peregrine-falcon on the birch, and finally they

characterize the old horse ("Schimmel").

The pictorial qualities of the presentation result not only from the

appeal to the eye but also from the additive principle of composition and

the suppression of narrative potentials. Even elements which can be

presented as connected are simply placed alongside each other. Thus the

blooming asters are separated from the impending death-by-frost by the

description of the weakened sun rays. All potential links are repressed.

The result - and from the reader's viewpoint the cause - of this repression

is the suppression of the actions and of the verbs which express them.

Complete elimination of verbs appears with the frequent use of nominal

phrases (as in the last stanza of "Autumn", where there is no verb).

Weakening of their potential for action is achieved in a number of ways:

use of the passive voice, choice of verbs which express inaction, modifica-

tion by the use of adjectives which arrest the action, or simple negation,

and a consistent use of the present tense. In both texts no other tense

is used. 12

The presence of a perceiving consciousness finds expression either in

the dramatization of the speaker or in interpretative generalizations. In

"Moor Pictures" both forms can be found. In the first stanza an "I" is

introduced in order to illustrate the prevailing silence. The appeal to the

sense of hearing combines direct references to silence ("Wie still es ist 1")

with an indirect ac tual izat ion of t h e sound which s t rong wing s t rokes

produce - "Noch e inem Laut" ( ano the r sound) fo rces t h e r eade r t o ac tua l i ze

t h e sound which is implied in t h e descr ipt ion of t h e heron. Very c lear ly ,

however, t h e funct ion of t h e d rama t i zed speake r i s t o enhance t h e

impression of a n immed ia t e exper ience, wi thout conveying any informat ion

concerning t h e speake r himself. An in t e rp re t a t ive comment , such a s t h e

suggestion of t h e royal n a t u r e of t h e fa lcon ("seinem le ichten Throne" [ h i s

light throne]) i s m o r e revealing of t h e workings of t h e perceiving mind.

But, l ike i t s coun te rpa r t s in "Autumn" ("Blumen, d i e den Tod erwarten";

"Winterflucht" [ f lowers which a r e awai t ing death; w in te r flight]) i t does

not te l l us much about t h e individual speaker. Even t h e concluding

general iza t ions ("Herbstes Freuden, Herbstes Trauer" [Autumn's joys,

Autumn's pains]), while moving us f rom t h e natural t o t h e human realm,

a r e cul tura l c l ichks r a t h e r than indications of a n individual emot ional o r

in te l lec tual situation. In th is way t h e precar ious balance be tween a n

ob jec t ive descr ipt ion and subject ive percept ion i s maintained.

T h e major i ty of t h e cha rac t e r i s t i c f ea tu re s of t h e t w o poems can,

indeed, b e co r re l a t ed with t h e a i m s and p recep t s of pictorial Impress ionism.

Each poem c a t c h e s t h e momen t when sense impressions become a n

experience. In e a c h t h e a r r e s t ed momen t has a dynamic qual i ty in sp i t e

of t h e suppression of all action. T h e impressions a r e processed by an

individual who, however, does not use i t t o convey his ideas, bel iefs o r

emotions. Only o n e quest ion r ema ins open: Is each poem a presenta t ion

of a non-categorized (o r p repa t t e rned ) real i ty? A comparison of t h e

abs t r ac t ed cha rac t e r i s t i c s o f t h e t w o poems with t h e model ic f ea tu re s of

o n e of t h e t h r e e bas ic autumnal representa t ions will help us r each a n

answer.

In my ar t ic le , "Represented Rea l i t y and L i t e r a ry models"13 I l isted

t e n model ic cha rac t e r i s t i c s of t h e presenta t ion of t h e concep t of ' autumn

a s a mood' (because of th is emot ional conceptual izat ion I labeled th i s

model 'pa thet ic ' o r 'sentimental ') . Six ou t of t e n model ic f e a t u r e s a r e

ac tua l i zed in t h e t w o t e x t s with varying deg rees of qualifications. T h r e e

a r e complete ly absent. T o m a k e t h e concord o r discord c l e a r e r I shall

quo te my original descr ipt ion o f e a c h cha rac t e r i s t i c and then qualify i t

when necessary.

1. The geographical location is the border between wild and cultivated nature, while from t h e point of view of t ime the poem takes place mostly in the evening, the border between day and night (op. cit.,p.44).

The temporal aspect is only implied in the twilight atmosphere of the

two poems (created by the combined e f fec t of the "Schwacher Sonnenpfeil"

[weak sunshaft] and "dunkelt" [grows dark] in "Autumn", and the implica-

tion of the old farmer and t h e tired horse being on their way home in

"Moor Pictures"; but implied actualizations a r e a s effect ive a s explicit

references to a particular feature. The geographical aspect is more

explicit. Wood and moor join the garden in "Autumn" and t h e farmer

relates agriculture to wild nature in "Moor Pictures."

2. The repertory of representational elements consists of the European reality-base phenomena in a catholic variety (effoliation and ripe fruit, foggy skies and pure light, etc.). Their usage is regulated by their compatibility with the speaker's nostalgic o r resigned mood (Ibid.).

One should note t h e absence of 'falling leaves' from "Moor Pictures";

and yet, effoliation might be implied in the "Birkenstlmmchens" [ the

birch's 'small' trunk], and i t s absence is compensated by the old age and

weariness of farmer and horse. After ail, old age is the conventional

analogue of autumn (in our categorized representational systems).

3. The core of the presentation is pictorial. Individual events a re rendered s ta t ic by various devices (mostly parallel structures implying simultaneity).

4. Representational elements of particular analogous human situations become part of the autumnal representational system (Ibid.).

For reasons which will be explained shortly the actualization of this

modelic feature is minimal. In "Moor Pictures" the analogous potential of

fatigue and old age is toned down by the juxtaposition of the old farmer

with the kinetic energy of the resting falcon or the powerful flight of the

heron. It would have been enhanced if the same picture had been

paralleled with withering flowers, falling leaves or a picture of the setting

sun. Even farther removed from i t s most typical actualization is the

suggestion of human loneliness in the first s tanza of "Moor Picturesn. The

speaker's declaration concerning the complete silence around him indicates

solitude. But this is a fa r c ry from a statement of farewell o r a

declaration of longing for missing fr iends In "Autumn" the human analogy

finds expression only in the figurative language - in 'frost' as a hangman

and in the waiting o f flowers for their death.

5. The visual and auditory qualifiers are selected in accordance with the overall sentimental effect. Colours are soft with a marked prefer- ence for pastels and minimal concretizations. Paleness and dusk play a central role. Sounds are muted. Natural sounds are personified. Human sounds are emotionalized. Music plays a central role (Ibid., No.7) .

This cluster o f modelic features is hardly realized. Rut that which

is actualized is in line with the specified principles. The dominant sound

is silence; the dominant colours are implied white and grey; colour

concepts are mentioned in deconcretizing contexts (a blue smell; a

darkening brown = a process rather than the quality o f an object).

Objects which evoke colours (such as asters, roses, peaches) are mentioned

without adjectives o f colour. Since no individual actualization o f a

general model manifests al l i t s features, partial or even zero actualizations

do not interfere wi th the identification of a model.

6. The speaker's presence is manifested emotionally, whether i t is a narrator's voice or a dramatized persona. But there is no individual characterization beyond the autumnal mood (Ibid. p.44-5, No.9).

In both poems the emotional colouring o f the scene - the projection

o f the perceiving subject as someone who feels or thinks - is minimal.

Typical actualizations o f this model contain much more explicit and

conspicuous emotional expressions. This impressionist restraint becomes

evident when one compares the emotional closure o f autumn ("Herbstes

Freuden, Herbstes Trauer/Welke Rosen, rei fe Frucht" [Autumn's joys,

Autumn's pains/wilted roses, ripe fruit]), with that o f Goethe's "Herbst-

gefihl":

Und euch betauen, ach! Aus diesen Augen Der ewig belebenden Liebe Vollschwellende Tranen.

[and you are bedewed, alas, by great welling tears of ever-vivifying love

from my eyes.] 14

Four modelic features are either non-existent or drastically suppressed

in Liliencron. Actually, it could be argued that the annihilation of one

entails al l the other changes. The crucial missing feature is the 'pathetic

fallacy', and with it disappear t h e personification of .autumn, t h e abundant

use of emotional qualifiers, and t h e thematizat ion of t h e poem a s an

anthropocentr ic presentat ion of autumn (i.e. a poem ahout t h e sadness of

parting/dying/aging in autumn).

Two things need t o be said about these missing modelic features.

T h e logic behind their elimination is an expression of t h e lmpressionist

object-orientation. And i t i s t h e s a m e logic which explains all t h e

modifications and par t ia l actual izat ions of those modelic f ea tu res which

a r e actualized. On t h e o the r hand, t h e non-actualized fea tu res leave some

traces: he re a personification of a natural object ('death-awaiting

flowers') which c a n be read a s a metonomy for t h e season of dying; the re

a generalization in t e r m s of human emotions (Autumn's joys and pains), and

an overall a tmosphere of swee t sadness, of weakness and resignation, which

is realized even without t h e explicit r e fe rence t o such emotions. In par t

those ' t races ' may be 'external ' additions t o t h e t e x t - part of an inter-

pretat ion process which is shaped by t h e reader 's famil iar i ty with both t h e

concept and t h e l i terary model. Rut such an interpretat ion is qui te

inevitable when t h e t ex t uses t h e conventional representational system.

A poet may le t t h e speaker express t h e established cul tural function of

this par t icular reper tory in i t s specif ic combinations, o r refrain, like

Liliencron, from s o doing. But t h e reader always associates t h e well-

known representational ob jec t s with t h e par t icular conceptualization which

makes them a representat ional system.

Ultimately t h e acknowledged lmpressionist poem might have intro-

duced a new l i terary model of autumnal representation, whose charac te r -

is t ic f ea tu res justify t h e label 'impressionist'; but it has not l iberated t h e

natural object f rom i t s existing conceptualization. Liliencron's specific,

impersonal and accura te renditions of sight and sound impressions do not

yield uncategorized presentat ions similar t o t h e purple wa te r and pink

fields o r t h e 'dissolved reality' of t h e most consis tent lmpressionist

painting. 15

T h e opening question, concerning t h e possibility of such a dissociation

of concept and representat ion in poetry remains open.

It is in t h e poetry of an ea r l i e r nineteenth-century poet, the "farmer-poet

f rom Northampton" John Cla re (1793-1864), t h a t I found t h e c lea res t

example of what I called a "true" Impressionist poem.16 Although his

poetry is generally characterized by "accurate observation" of forms and

colours and "naturalistic knowledge",17 there is only one text whose

autumnal presentation breaks away completely from the three basic models

o f representation.

Autumn

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are al l still, On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill, The spring from the fountain now boils l ike a pot; Through stones past the counting i t bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is l ike overbaked bread, The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead. The fallow fields gl i t ter l ike water indeed, And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops l ike hot iron gl i t ter bright in the sun, And rivers we're eyeing burn to gold as they run; Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air; Whoever looks rounc! sees Eternity there.

I f we compose a hierarchical list o f the characteristic features o f

the theoretical 'true' lmpressionist poem, basing i t on the primary

lmpressionist impulse (defined above) and on the application of character-

istics from lmpressionist painting to poetry, we can see most of them

actualized i n Clare's poem. 18

I. Observation o f nature as i t is with disregard for the conceptual

categories related t o it.

This, as I said, is the primary and most problematic tenet of

Impressionism. Clare's presentation is composed of natural objects which

do not belong to any of the three established repertories. The downy

seeds of the thistle, the bubbling of the spring water, the spider's webs

on the weeds, the glittering o f fields, rivers, hills and air in the sunlight - none o f these has even a small part o f the potential for symbolizing

autumn o f "leaves trembling in the air" or "ripe fruit" coupled with "wilted

roses".

Because the building blocks o f the presentation are not components

o f an established repertory of an autumnal representation, they do not

have a given cultural function in this context; they have no given

emotional qualities, and their ef fect on the receiver is not pre-determined.

T h e a f fec t ive and seman t i c openness of a 'system-free' object (as f a r

a s autumn i s concerned) c a n b e demons t ra t ed with a lmost any object

referred t o by Clare. Thistledown, fo r example, c a n b e re la ted t o old

age, because of i t s wh i t e head. In this way i t forms a pa t t e rn with t h e

dried-up ben t s and t h e parched land. But t h e images of dryness and dea th

a r e counterbalanced in a number of ways: by t h e wa te r imagery, t h e

positive connotat ions of baked (even overbaked) bread, and t h e light flight

of t h e thistledown, associated with t h e g reen grass (traditionally youthful

and hopeful) and d i r ec ted upwards.

A s a consequence of th is openness (i.e. lack of established themat i za -

tion) t h e presentat ion cannot s tand for something e l se - b e i t a mood, a n

a tmosphere , a fixed phenomenon o r a typical human situation. It repre-

s e n t s only tha t which i t presents. It i s stil l t r u e t h a t I have used many

conventional conceptual izat ions in m y interpreta t ion, just a s I conceptual-

ized t h e image by giving it a di rect ion and a focus - in terpreta t ion is

impossible without both! But t h e ca tegor i e s which I have used a r e not

re la ted t o common conceptual izat ions of autumn.

Even t h e concluding general izat ion ("whoever looks round sees Eterni ty there") does not change t h e un-symbolic na tu re of t h e presenta-

tion. T h e lack of a conventional (here synonymous with 'modelic') correla-

tion be tween "Eternity" and t h e representat ional ob jec t s - e a c h one

separate ly and a s a sys t em - makes t h e s t a t e m e n t a summing up of a n

impression, without turning t h e presentat ion in to a symbol. T h e f a c t t ha t

r eade r s may still find this e thical conclusion unmotivated and injurious t o

t h e poem is irrelevant, o r symptomatic . Such a react ion to t h e c losure

might reveal t h e inevi table uneasiness a r eade r feels when faced with

modelic inconsistency (not t o ment ion changing tastes). A s imilar uneasi-

ness, fe l t by a Victorian confronted with such a revolutionary presentation,

might have or iginated it.

11. Captur ing t h e moment in which sensory d a t a become a n impression.

This feature , con t ra ry t o t h e f i rs t , manifes ts t h e subject ive impulse

of Impressionism - t h e expression of t h e perceiving consciousness. It is

actual ized in t h e poem not only in t h e concluding remark discussed above,

but also in t h e f igurat ive language. I t i s t h e mind which finds resem-

blances and likens t h e bubbling of spring w a t e r t o a boiling pot, parched

land t o overbaked bread and sun infused hill-tops t o hot iron. In all t hese

instances the transition from visual data to conceptualization is evident.

The eye sees the cracked dark brown material; the mind identifies i t as

parched ground and finds an object possessing matching features. The

preference for similes (over metaphors) contributes to the realization o f

that particular moment o f 'translation.' A metaphor would suggest a new

entity created by the speaker. The simile reveals an impressed observer.

Symptomatically, even though al l these similes relate natural

phenomena to human civi l ized life, they do not even approach the 'pathetic

fallacy' - a central feature o f the sentimental model. There are no

personifications. 'Dead bents' is not similar to "flowers awaiting death"

in i ts metaphoric and symbolic potential. And rivers which ''burn to gold"

are metaphoric only out o f context. But within a frame o f reference

which focuses on the ef fect o f sunlight on the ground, the water and the

air i t is an accurate observation of objective reality. These golden fields

and rivers are as l i teral as a purple ocean and pink grass.

Cultural consciousness may be very active in the interpretation of

this poem. I t can identify the semantic f ield from which all similes and

metaphors are drawn - burning. I t may even relate i t to the role o f f ire

in human history and to the ancient philosophy which sees fire as one of

the four elements endowed with purifying power. Thus the reader might

add a philosophical motivation for the metaphor o f "rivers ... burn to

gold." But such motivations and associations are very clearly external to

the text. In the poem the supremacy o f the things themselves over the

emotions or thoughts which they evoke is maintained consistently; and i t

is enhanced by the emphasis on the situation o f observation ("we're eyeing";

"whoever looks round sees").

More important still, there is one crucial thing that the cultural

consciousness cannot do: i t cannot relate the presentation to any o f the

established autumnal presentations, even i f the thematic classification is

dictated by the poem's title.

111. The arrested moment is a dynamic entity.

The rebellion against conventional models of presentation (i.e. those

o f Academic Realism and Naturalism) led the Impressionist painters to

develop a technique in which there is no room for contour lines. Com-

bined with the interest in science and research in optics, colour theory and

photography, i t led to the elimination o f the use o f pure colours i n well-

def ined planes. In t he i r s t e a d c a m e t h e obse rvab le . brush layings and t h e

mul t ip l ic i ty of i n t e rac t ing colour spots. This technique enables Impression-

ist painting t o under l ine t h e constant ly changing na tu re of things seen.

T h e l i t e r a ry equivalent of t h i s blurring of boundaries and fo rms is t h e

pa r t i cu l a r lmpressionist vocabulary and t h e mode of organization.

In t e r m s of unmot iva t ed organizat ion Clare ' s poem resembles

Liliencron's "Autumn." T h e var ious ob jec t s which compr i se C la re ' s

autumnal landscape p i c tu re a r e not p re sen ted according t o any spat ia l

principle whatsoever. I t i s impossible t o expla in i t by a movemen t f rom

t h e nea r t o t h e f a r (Gossamers and weeds c o m e a f t e r a general v iew of

t h e turf and t h e fa l low fields), nor does i t move in t h e opposi te d i rect ion

( t h e th is t ledown appea r s be fo re t h e gene ra l view); horizontal o r ve r t i ca l

e y e movemen t s a r e a l so ruled out: sho r t and smal l ob jec t s appea r among

high and big ones and v i ce versa. A hill is presented in t h e f i rs t s t anza ,

and o t h e r hill-tops in t h e third. T h e burning light, which paints t h e whole

p i c tu re in gold, moves f rom t h e spr ing t o t h e ground, t o t h e hills, t o t h e

wa te r , t o t h e ground and up t o t h e a i r again.

T h e poem does h a v e a s t rong c losure , y e t t h e unmotivated na tu re of

t h e ca t a logue of plants, a i r movemen t s and light e f f e c t s l eaves t h e

impression of a n a rb i t r a ry cu t t i ng off. Th i s a rb i t r a ry framing, coupled

wi th t h e incessant movemen t (flow of a i r , flying o f thistledown and

tw i t t e r ing of gossamers), t h e t r ans fo rma t ion - e v e n t ransf igurat ion - of

ob jec t s ( f ie lds i n to w a t e r and a i r t o liquid) which cu lmina te s in t h e tdcing

o v e r of t h e world by light, makes t h e poem a t r u l y Impressionist picture.

Clare ' s poem, which does no t belong t o an acknowledged group of

lmpressionist poems, exhibi ts t h e na tu re of ' t rue ' poe t i c Impressionism.

This has been proved both in posi t ive t e r m s - a descr ipt ion of i t s cha rac -

t e r i s t i c f e a t u r e s and the i r af f in i ty w i th lmpressionist painting, a n d in

nega t ive t e r m s - t h e absence of t h e cul tura l ly es tabl ished autumnal

representa t ional systems.

T h e twofold def ini t ion corresponds t o a bas ic division of lmpressionist

fea tures . These c a n b e divided in to t w o groups:

1) cha rac t e r i s t i c s der ived f rom t h e a i m s of Impressionism, which h a v e

t o d o wi th conceptual izat ions and representa t ions;

2) cha rac t e r i s t i c s which r e l a t e t o t h e means developed in lmpressionist

painting to achieve those goals. Features belonging to the second group

can be dissociated from the aims which originated them. That is why the

adjective 'impressionist' can be ascribed to different works, including those

which remain conventional with regard t o the relationship between world,

concept and representation. A 'true' lmpressionist work, as we have

seen, is one which sustains an obligation to the ideal of non-conceptualized

presentation, and gives up existing representational systems. This absence

has i ts price - though i t is nothing l ike a rejection from the Salon or the

contempt of the viewers. Separated from i ts t i t le the poem would not be

recognized as a presentation of autunn.19 Thematization, the assigning

of a theme to a verbal construct such as a poem, is - from the speaker's

point of view - inseparable from conceptualization and representation.

The presence o f the basic systems of autumnal representation - be

i t whole or partial, explicit or implicit, straightforward or parodic,

immediate or mediated - is not simply the result o f inertia, dominance o f

canonized models or lack o f interest and a failure to observe nature as

i t is. Their presence is a prerequisite for the successful function of the

presentation in an act o f communication. Readers who share a certain

cultural consciousness require elements from the established repertory in

order to relate to the text. Only a reader who identifies the particular

autumnal conceptualization can relate to i t as an autumn poem, respond

emotionally and evaluate innovations or changes. A complete de-categor-

ization yields at f irst different thematizations, based on the use o f

elements which are categorized as representative of other concepts. But

thematization can be forced on the reader - given a t i t le rather than

construed from the text. I n that case the reader is led to modify his

concept. I f the in i t ia l ly unconnected repertory of representational objects

and modes o f organization is repeatedly used and thematized - a new con-

cept o f autumn might develop. A 'true' lmpressionist poem, such as

Clare's, may then become another autumn poem just as Impressionist

paintings today seem realistic and conventional.

The conclusions of this comparative study of lmpressionist autumn

poems are not l imi ted t o this particular theme nor to that particular

school. The relationships which have been demonstrated above between

a concept, a representational system, a particular poetic presentation and

the active thematizations performed by a reader apply in al l l i terary

presentations and their interpretations. The exact rendering of an

impression is possible even if our perception and cognition are model-

dependent. Poetry can reshape our c ~ n c e ~ t u a l i z a t i o ~ s of the world around

us in various ways: slight changes in an established repertory can modify

the inventory of signs which evoke the same response; a dissociation of

representational elements from their established cultural functions can

affect the emotional or social content of the represented concept; and,

most radically, the imposition of a concept - through the announcement

of a theme - on a presentation based on representational systems not

associated with it can result in a completely new conceptualization.

I. On the subject of theme, concept and thematization consult ~ o e t i q u e 16 (1985). In particular: Claude Bremond, "Concept e t thhme", Gerald Prince, "Thbmatiser", Menachem Brinker, "Thkme e t interpretation", and Georges Leroux, "Du topos au th8me1'. In this present issue the most closely related article is Angelika Corbineau-Hoffmann's "Venice At First Sight". In particular, her conclusion is very pertinent to mine and to the research programme for thematics which is implied in my conclusions.

2. See, for example, the definition in the OED: "The body of persons that are or have been taught by a particular master I...] who are united by a general similarity of principles and methods."

3. The strongest proof is probably the way in which lllonet described his technique or work process, emphasizing the need to forget the object being painted and to focus on the colourful spots and lines before the eye (Lila Cabot-Perry, "An interview with C. Monet", American Magazine of Art 19, No.5, March 1927). From another angle this (sometimes latent) - tendency to dissociate presentation from concept, which points towards abstract art, can be illustrated by criticisms of impressionism produced by the painters who have outgrown their lmpressionist stage: Gauguin who condemns the fact that the Impressionists "heed only the eye and neglect the mysterious centers of thought'' (Intimate Journals, tr. Van Wyck Brooks, New York, 1936, p.134). or Ckzanne, who is convinced that "the analytical methods of the impressionists had led to a certain dissolution of reality" (Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art, New York: Meridian Books, 1955, p. 18).

4. Oskar Walzel, Deutsche Dichtung von Gottsched bis zur Gegenwart, Vol.12,lI (Wildpark-Potsdam: Athenaion, 1927-19301, pp.218-9. Quoted in Shimon Sandbank, Two Pools In The Wood (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 19761, pp.49-50.

5. While some people will deny the possibility altogether, others will accept it in part. Ezra Pound, for example, claims that "the conception of poetry is a process more intense than the reception of an impressiorist and conseauentlv "lmoressionism belongs to oaint. it is of the eve." The two quota'tions-are 'taken from sta;ey K: ~ d f f m a n Jr., lmanism: A A Chapter for the History of Modern Poetry (New York: Octagon Books, 19721, p.140. His source is Pound, Ezra, "The Book of the Month," The Poetry Review I, No.3 (March, 19121, pp.133-4.

6. Coffman (op. cit.) quotes from Hueffer's essay "On Impressionism" (Poetry and Drama 11, No.2, June, 1914, p.175): "The Impressionist gives you himself, how he reacts to a fact; not the fact itself; or, rather, not

so much the fact itself. [...I lmpressionism is a frank expression of a personality." But then he quotes another passage, from "Techniques," (The Southern Review I, No.i, July 1935, p.31): "You must render: never report" "an impression of a moment."

7. Quoted by Lionello Venturi in History o f Ar t Criticism (New York: Dutton, 1964). p.259.

8. For references consult Holger Klein, "Autumn Poems: Potential and Limitations of Theme as tertium comparationis." Paper presented to the 11th Congres of I.A.C.L. (Paris, 1985).

9. The major publication in English is Ziva Ren-Porat, "Represented Reality and Literary Models", Poetics Today 7, No.1 (1986). pp.29-58.

10. In her article "Images of Landscape in contemporary poetry" Sieghild Bogumil deals with similar problems. It is possible to relate my notion o f the cultural model (concept and representational system) to Bachelardls concept o f the "image" as Bogumil uses it. The two articles seem to me complementary in other ways as well. My analysis of (autumnal) landscape descriptions which are quite conventional provides a foil for the innovative descriptions - or lack thereof - of the contemporary poems which she describes. Her analysis o f the modern practice o f laying bare devices as a mode of coping with petrif ied models supplies an aspect which I could not deal with in this paper (I discuss i t in my "Represented Reality ...", see above, n.9).

11. Detlev von Liliencron Ausgewahlte Gedichte (Berlin und Leipzig: Schuster & Loeffler, 1909), pp.8, 77.

12. On the style o f German Impressionism consult: Walzel (op. cit.), and Louise Thon, D) Munich: Hueber, 1928.

13. See n.9.

14. Leonard Forster, ed., The Penguin Book o f German Verse (Harmonds- worth: Penguin, 1957), p.207.

15. I t should be noted that this is strictly a descriptive comment, carrying no evaluation. Some of the best-known poems in the history o f poetry exhibit the same characteristics. For example, Hofmannsthal's "Vorfriihling" and George's "komm in den totgesagten park."

16. John Clare, Selected Poems, ed. J. W. Tibble and Anna Tibble (London: Dent, 19731, pp.304-5.

17. The phrases i n quotation marks are from the back cover o f Clare's Selected Poems - an indication of a common view.

18. Although my list has been worked out from studies of Impressionist painting, it owes a great deal to various studies of l i terary impressionism. In particular i t may have been influenced by the work o f Sandbank (see above, n.4).

19. 1 did t ry the poem in Hebrew translation on Israeli students. Not one out o f twenty interpreted i t as an autumn poem (obviously the students did not have the title). The same students had no problem in identifying the theme of another o f Clare's autumn poems: "I love the f i t fu l gust that shakes ...'I.

FROM IDYLL T O ARSENAL: . T H E CHANGING IMAGE O F GERMANY IN F R A N C E A S SEEN

THROUGH T H E WORK O F XAVIER MARMIER (1808-1892)

Wendy M e r c e r (Univers i ty Co l l ege London)

I. 'IL'ALLEMAGNE, LA R ~ V E U S E , LA P O ~ I Q U E , LA M~LANCOLIQUE ALLEMAGNE"

Xavier Marmier (1808-1892), c r i t i c , t ransla tor , t ravel ler , journalist and

novelist, w a s a well-known and influential f igure in nineteenth-century

France. Acc red i t ed wi th s o m e ninety volumes and numerous ar t ic les ,

f l uen t in a t leas t e igh t languages, and in l a t e r yea r s a n outspoken

m e m b e r of t h e French Academy, h e w a s a n ea r ly compara t i s t who owed

his reputa t ion initially t o his innovatory work on Germany, i t s l i t e r a tu re

and cul ture . Desp i t e being largely fo rgo t t en today, his fo rmer widespread

recognition and inf luence m a k e him both a sou rce and a r e f l ec t ion of

French a t t i t udes towards Germany from t h e ea r ly 1830s until t h e Franco-

Prussian war. 1

Until t h e publication in 1813 of M m e d e Stael ' s D e I 'Allemagne t h e

French w e r e largely ignorant and disdainful of thei r German neighbours.

However, th is work and t h e few avai lable t ransla t ions of German l i t e r a t u r e ,

most notably of Goethe 's D ie Leiden d e s jungen Werthers , began t o

s t imu la t e a des i re for fu r the r informat ion about t h e coun t ry and i t s l i ter -

a ture . In response many journals began t o include a r t i c l e s on German

themes, and in 1826 t h e Revue germanique was founded wi th t h e exclus ive

a im of bringing a g r e a t e r understanding of German l i fe and cu l tu re t o t h e

~ r e n c h . ~ A s few journalists w e r e equipped t o wr i t e on these subjects , in

1831 t h e Revue germanique sen t t h e young Xavier Marmier t o l ive in

Germany, learn t h e language and send back regular articles. 3

Although h e had no prior knowledge of t h e language, Marmie r ful-

fi l led th i s task beyond all expecta t ions . A f t e r about nine months h e began

t o supply a r t i c l e s regular ly t o several reviews, and his work soon c a m e t o

domina te t h e of which h e b e c a m e general ed i to r in

1835. His contr ibut ions include a s e r i e s of ' e t u d e s biographiques', which

h e in i t ia ted in January 1833 wi th a n a r t i c l e on E. T. A. Hoffmann, and

in which a d i f f e ren t man of l e t t e r s w a s p re sen ted eve ry month until 1835.

H e a lso sen t numerous t ransla t ions and a r t i c l e s both on his t r ave l s and on

German l i fe and le t ters . H e w r o t e a pe rcep t ive s tudy of Kleist in 1833,

when the lat ter was virtually unknown in France and l i t t le appreciated in

Germany. His other writings include a study o f Goethe, offering the first

commentary on Faust, Part 11 to appear in France; the first translation

o f Hermann und Dorothea for th i r ty years, which effectively launched the

work in France; translations of Goethe's dramas, o f Schiller's plays and

poems, of Hoffmann's tales; translations and studies of works by Tieck,

whom he knew personally, and of such contemporaries as Uhland, Schwab

and Chamisso. 4

This article deals wi th the changing view of Germany that emerges

from his publications. In the first part we see the idyll ic picture given

by the early articles, summarised by Marmier as "I'Allemagne, la rfveuse,

la poGtique, la mklancolique ~ l l e m a ~ n e " ; ~ in the second, we witness a

growing awareness o f the tensions that were ult imately to lead to the

Franco-Prussian war.

From his earliest visits to Germany Marmier was impressed by the

widespread nature o f intellectual act iv i ty in the country. In 1835 he

comments in the Revue ~ermanique that, "J'ai vu des ouvriers qui

menaient une rude vie, et qui connaissaient par coeur les plus belles

tragkdies de ~ o e t h e . " ~ The same phenomenon is recorded in the Voyage

pittoresque en Allemagne, where a direct comparison is made with the

intellectual act iv i ty in France:

Je me souviens qu'un soir, en rentrant dans ma demeure, je trouvais le Hausknecht, un portier de troisieme ordre, tenant sur ses genoux un gros l ivre qu'il lisait avec une profonde attention. C'dtaient les oeuvres de Schiller. A Paris, nos portiers ne lisent que les plus mauvais romans.

He attributes this difference partly to the high standard of public educa-

t ion in the German-speaking countries. I n 1834, for example, he remarks

that in Austria, "le plus pauvre apprenti, le plus obscur berger, sait tout

au moins l i re et kcrire; si I'instruction de peuple ne s'k16ve guhres plus

haut, c'est qu'il ne l e veut pas."8 I n the same year articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes entit led Y e s universitks allemandes. Goettingue " and

Se ipz ig et la l ibrairie allemande: both stressing the important o f learning

in This emphasis is even more striking in Marmier's Voyage,

much of which is devoted to the educational institutions in the areas

visited. Throughout he emphasizes the high standards in every part o f

Germany, writ ing about Swabia for example:

C'es t I'un d e s pays d e I 'Allemagne o h I ' instruction d ldmen ta i r e e t I ' instruction c lass ique o n t Btd po r tkes 31 l eu r plus haut point d e ddveloppement. P a s une ville qui n'ait son gymnase e t une ou deux d e ces exce l l en t e s 6coles pra t iques qu'on appel le d e s Realschule; pas un vi l lage qui n'ait d e s ins t i tu t ions pr imaires d ignement r e t r i b u C s e t pa r f a i t emen t organisdes. Ici, c o m m e dans l e s d t a t s du nord d e I'Allemagne, e t c o m m e e n Danemark, il s e r a i t d i f f ic i le d e t rouve r dans une paroisse quelques jeunes hommes e t quelques jeunes fil les qui n'eussent pas a u moins appr is 'a lire, B gcr i re , H compter . (Voyage, I, p.34)

In t h e cour se of Voyage pi t toresque h e a l so surveys t h e history and scope

of t h e German universities, giving a chronological list of t h e d a t e s when

t h e y w e r e founded. This survey underlines t h e deep-rooted t radi t ions of

scholarship in t h e country , offer ing de t a i l ed discussions o f t h e univers i t ies

of Tiibingen, Prague, Leipzig, Rreslau, Berlin, Konigsberg, Got t ingen, J e n a

and wiirzburg.10 A fu r the r r emark in t h e Souvenirs d'un voyageur about

a t t e n d a n c e a t t h e univers i t ies a lso r e in fo rces t h e ea r l i e r c o m m e n t s about

t h e widespread na tu re o f educat ion and in te l lec tual ac t iv i ty :

Erlangen, Tubingue, Heidelberg, Bonn, Goe t t i ngue sont q u e d e s p e t i t e s villes oh I'on n e c o m p t e q u e quelques mil l iers d ' lmes . Mais il y a I i d e s universiths f rdquentees a s s i d b e n t pa r d e s l6gions d16tudiants, d e s bibliothbques conside'rables, d e s mus6es e t d e ma7tres d'un grand renom.11

Marmier a l so c o m m e n t s on t h e except ional r a t e of a c t i v e l i terary

production in Germany. H e r e f e r s t o t h e coun t ry a s a n " immense

Schr i f ts te l lere in , and c o m m e n t s t ha t "L'Allemagne e s t d e tous l e s pays d e

I'Europe celui oh I'on c o m p t e propor t ionel lement l e plus grand nombre

d'dcrivains."l2 Again, t h e universal na tu re of t h e phenomenon is noted:

"J'ai vu parfois d e s rgunions o'u I'on ne buvait q u e d e bien mauvais vin,

mai o'u I'on n'arrivait p a s s a n s appor t e r son sonnet ou s a cantate."13 T h e

only s ignif icant except ion t o th is rule, i t would seem, a r e t h e c i t i zens of

Hamburg, who appea r t o h a v e l i t t l e l i t e r a ry inclination:

Quand on a vecu quelques jours parmi l e s Hambourgeois, on sen t qu'il n e f a u t leur par ler ni d ' a r t ni d e po6sie. Leur l ivre d e l p & i e , c ' e s t l e r eg i s t r e d e r e c e t t e s e t d e depense ouve r t s u r l e pupitre.

This i n t e re s t in l i t e r a tu re and t h e a r t s amongst all ranks of soc i e ty

occasionally gives rise, fo r a foreigner, t o a n apparent contradic t ion in his

percept ion of t h a t socie ty:

Les m6mes Allemands que vous voyez si absorb& dans 11appr6ciation d'un beefsteak et dont I'avide app6tit vous choque peut-6tre comme une grosse sensualite', vous pouvez les voir un instant aprhs s'extasier devant un beau point de vue, &outer avec un profond recueillement une po6sie de Schiller ou d'uhland, et entonner en choeur avec une harmonie parfaite un ancien choral ou une mklodie de Schubart [sic?]. (Voyage, 11, p. 1)

Generally, however, an appreciation of literature is presented as an

integral part o f the domestic tranquillity which he notes in Germany. In

one of his earliest articles, "Des soirges d'Allemagnen, he records a

memory o f settling down with the family to read: "Quelquefois nous nous

mettions tous en rond autour de la table et nous lisions. Nous lisions les

Paraboles de Krummacher, Hermann et Dorothee I...] ou les pohies

lyriques d'LJhland."15 Marmier recaptures his impressions in a poem

entitled ~ o i r 6 e allemande, which appeared ten years later:

Oh ! oui, c'est bien cela. C'est la chambre tranquille, Pleine de poCsie, humble toit, doux asyle, Oh l'on aime B s'asseoir sur le canape' bleu Pour causer et chanter le soir au coin de feu.

Another reminiscence, this t ime much later, in 1860, also links the domes-

t ic scene with poetic and l i terary images; in the Voyage pittoresque, he

returns to Saxony and rememhers:

Que des fois, au milieu de ces paisibles intrhieurs, j'ai song6 aux idylles de Voss et de Goethe! Que des fois j'ai cru reconnaTtre la vivante image de la bonne Louise ou la belle Dorothee. (Voyage, 11, p.51)

The picture o f domestic tranquility suggested by such phrases as

"chambre tranquille", "doux asyle" and "paisibles int6rieurs1', is an impor-

tant feature o f Marmier's presentation o f things German. In his second

article published in the Nouvelle Revue germanique in 1832, he speaks of

"les vertus domestiques, la simplicitk et la candeur dans les relations, la

paix et I'union dans 11int6rieur des famillies".17 The fact that the

Germans choose to spend their free t ime reunited in the family obviously

impresses Marmler: "Le soir, quand i ls ont f in i leur teches de la journde,

ils aiment 'a s'asseoir 'a la table de famille" (Voyage, 11, p.144). In the

Souvenirs d'un voyageur he also reminds the reader that the average

German "a I'amour du travail et I'amour de la famille" (Souvenirs, p.90).

Further, he connects this love of the home with the open, hospitable

nature of the people, who do not hesi ta te t o share their home with a

stranger. He says that:

C e t t e hospitalitd est une des qualites d e I'Allemagne. Dans c e pays, I t i t ranger es t r e p avec une bonne grace. I...] Un mot au crayon, sur une c a r t e d e visite, suff i t pour l e recommander i une lointaine distance. (M. )

The origins of this a t t achment t o home, and thus of t h e Germans'

hospitality, seem t o Marmier to lie in religious observance. The people

of Saxony, w e a r e told, remain t rue t o their

ver tus primitives, aux sent iments religieux, aux habitudes cordiales e t hospitalibres I...] J e m e rappelle des excursions que j'ai souvent fai tes autour d e Leipzig. Que d e fois je suis en t r6 dans les maisons des paysans! J 'y entrais pour demander un verre d'eau ou une tasse d e lait, e t j'y restais, s6duit par l e tableau qui s 'offrait & mes regards. (Voyage, 11, p.50)

Marmier at t r ibutes this particular e f f e c t of religious observance t o the

fac t that the Germans, unlike t h e French, t r ea t religion as a pleasure

ra the r than a s a duty, hence i t is more influential. He explains this in

part by the different philosophy behind Protestant and Catholic ways of

celebrating religious occasions. The Catholics, h e feels, tend towards "le

jeine, la tristesse, e t la maceration d e la chair", whereas h e summarises

t h e Protestant e thic in Luther's declaration: "Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib

und Gesang,/Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben tang," and concludes that:

Ainsi les protestans s e font toujours un jour d e joie d'un jour d e solenni t i religieuse, e t c e t t e coutijme ne r t e - t - e l l e pas avec el le quelque chose d e profond e t d e bien moral?

As examples of these different philosophies h e considers t h e way the two

nations spend Sunday, suggesting that the domest ic bliss he admires in the

Germans derives from religious observances; in France Sunday is a "jour

d e repos presque toujours ma1 passe; ici dans I'ennui, 121 dans la d6bauche.

Le sent iment religieux ne brille pas", whereas in Germany it is a "jour d e

fgte, un saint jour [...I l e jour des reunions e t des fgtes d e famille, des

dfners d'apparat e t d6s r6jouissances d ~ m e s t i ~ u e s . " ' ~ Religion, then, leads

to domest ic happiness for the Germans:

its ont le bonheur l e plus vrai e t le plus durable, celui qui naft d e la simplicite' des habitudes, d e la paix d'une honnste conscience e t d e

I'expression d'une franche et ouverte nature. (Voyage, 11, p.116)

I t should perhaps be stressed, however, that the Catholic Marmier, despite

his open-minded emphasis on the positive facets o f the Protestant religion,

does not always attr ibute this happiness and virtue to it. Elsewhere he

ascribes the same virtues to Catholicism, as, for example, in the Voyage

pittoresque (I, p.1481, where he explains the exceptionally low rates o f

crime and illegitimacy of the people o f the Tyrol by their devout Cathol-

icism. As we shall see, he was not impressed by all aspects of Protest-

antism and does not hesitate to crit icise "la fanatisme des partisans de

Luther" (Voyage, I, p.91).

In a poem first published in 1834, entit led simply Panthgisme,

Marmier presents a different type o f religious thought that was to reach

France from Germany. For Marmier the concept of pantheism is pro-

foundly German in character, and has i ts roots in the ancient mythological

traditions of the country:

L'Allemagne, la rgveuse Allemagne a [...I peuple' les eaux, les bois, les cimes des montagnes, les entrailles du sol, d'une le'gion d'8tres surnaturels, et je me complaisais dans ce naif pantheisme. (Voyage, I, p.2)

In another context he describes mythology as "ce culte myste'rieux de la

nature", "cette espbce de pantheisme secret dont le moyen tge a toujours

admis le principe sans jamais le fo rmu~er" . *~ But i ts l i terary significance

extends far beyond the source o f pantheism. Marmier argues that folklore

is a form o f l i terature neglected in France, "car son langage est rude, et

rude aussi est son allure. Elle ne sait point porter sur ses e'paules

1'8charpe des coins, ni se draper dans l e manteau i franges d'or, ni faire

reh i re sur son front .le diadkme itincelant"; nevertheless folklore merits

a consideration equal t o that afforded to classical literature, because "son

front respire la candeur, et son regard indique la force. Sa voix a des

vibrations &ranges, et son sourire laisse dans 1'7me une indkfinissable

rn61anco1ie."~'

Marmier tries t o rect i fy this deficit by introducing German mythology

to France. I n 1836 and 1837 he published two articles in the Revue de

Paris entit led "Traditions d ' ~ l l e m a ~ n e " ; ~ ~ in 1841 he published Souvenirs

de voyages e t traditions populaires, which reproduces these articles; they

appear again, slightly modified, i n Voyage pittoresque en Allemagne (1859)

under t h e t i t l e "Les Lkgendes d e ~ ' ~ l l e m a ~ n d . ~ ~ H e a lso g a v e a s e r i e s

of l ec tu re s on fore ign l i t e r a tu re a t t h e university of Rennes. These proved

s o overwhelmingly popular t h a t h e acquired t h e s t a t u s of a cu l t figure.

Although only t h e inaugural l ec tu re w a s published, t hese seem t o have

cove red German folklore in s o m e detail . Having s t a t e d t h e c a s e for con-

sidering "la l i t t 6 ra tu re populaire" a longside c lass ical l i tera ture , h e c i t e s t h e

German example: "Peu d e pays poss6dent une col lect ion d e Ikgendes, d e

romances, d e bal lades aussi nombreuse e t va r ibe q u e I'Allemagnen, and

concludes wi th a promise t o cove r t h e subject in g r e a t e r dep th in sub-

sequent lectures.

Marmie r s t a t e s t h e sou rces of his ma te r i a l openly. We learn f rom

t h e p re face t o t h e Souvenirs d e voyage e t t radi t ions populaires t ha t h e

p re fe r s t o t a k e informat ion from local people whereve r possible, "et quand

les r i c i t s du peuple m e manquaient j'avais r ecour s aux livres." H e

applauds t h e recogni t ion afforded by German men of l e t t e r s t o t he i r folk-

lore and thei r e f f o r t s t o record and s tudy what h e considers t o b e the i r

national her i tage:

En Al lemagne, 1'6tude d e s pobsies populaires a b t 6 en t r ep r i se d e bonne heu re e t poursuivie a v e c ardeur. Ici, les hommes qui se l ivra ient B c e t t e e t u d e Btaient soutenus non seu lemen t p a r I'amour d e la sc ience, mais pa r un sen t imen t d e nationalitb. (Discours, p.315)

H e r e g r e t s only t h e lack of any s tudy under taken by t h e Austr ians t o

record t h e legends connec ted wi th t h e Danube, and w e the re fo re infer t ha t

h e has personally ga the red all t h e informat ion presented on this subject :

"11 f au t q u e l e voyageur l e s che rche l e long d e son chemin" (Voyage, I,

p.312). T h e deta i led bibliographies, s t i l l unusual in a n a r t i c l e in th is

period, ment ion Rrentano, Biisching, Ger le , Mailath, Massmann, Schreiber ,

Ge ib and Grimm. This las t r e f e rence i s significant, for i t may b e t h a t

Marmier ' s c o n t a c t wi th t h e b ro the r s Gr imm i s par t ly responsible for

s t imulat ing his i n t e re s t in German folklore. 24

Although h e uses t h e s a m e ma te r i a l in d i f f e ren t publications, Marmier

p re sen t s German folklore comprehensively and persuasively. H e begins wi th

t h e p remise tha t , e v e n in t h e nineteenth cen tu ry , Germany is supremely

t h e land of mythology:

Ici, t o u t e s les plaines o n t leur g in i e s , t ou te s l e s montagnes leurs g r o t t e s myst6rieuses, t ous l e s l ac s l eu r s pala is d e cr is ta l ; ici, t ou t e s l e s fe'es n e son t pas mortes , e t t ous l e s sylphes n'ont pas dkpouillb leurs a i les

d'or; ici, quand la nuit silencieuse s'abaisse sur la terre, les flots de I'Elbe et du Rhin ont encore des soupirs d'amour, les arbres frissonnent au souffle des esprits, et les chgteaux racontent du haut de la colline leurs histoires de guerre. (Voyage, I, p.57)

He distinguishes clearly between the concepts of myth and legend, using

the term "lggende historique" to denote 'legend' and "lkgende merveilleuse"

to convey 'myth':

A mesure que le peuple etait &mu par un Bvenement, ou surpris par un ph6nom&ne, il composait une I6gende, il inventait un mythe I...] Ses Iggendes historiques reposent sur une base certaine, sur des faits ave'r6s, mais elles ont 6t6 tellement embellies par la caprice des conteurs qu'on ne peut y saisir parfois qu'un trait de moeurs et un nom. Ses Ikgendes merveilleuses proviennent de ce culte mystCrieux de la nature, de cette esphce de pantheisme secret dont le moyen Bge a toujours admis le principe sans jamais le formuler. (Voyage, I, p.58)

The mythological figures are presented according to the element or natural

phenomenon with which they are normally associated, and there are

sections on the stars and the planets, on metals, plants, birds, mountains,

earth and water. He describes briefly the spirits that are found most

frequently: "Les Elfes, les Nains, les Koboldes, les Nixes, composent le

cycle habitue1 des Ikgendes" (Voyage pittoresque, I, p.691, and attempts to

explain their symbolism, as for example, "Dans la symbolique du Nord, les

geants representent la force brutale, la matiere, et les nains, la faculte'

d'esprit, I'intelligence" (Voyage, I, p.61). There are legends connected with

the devil, and a humorous generalisation about the Satanic legends:

Quand on lit toutes ces histoires des d6ceptions du diable, repandues travers les plus beaux monuments de I'Europe, depuis la merveilleuse cath6drale de Cologne jusqu'; celle de Lund, en SuBde, on est vraiment tent6 de plaindre l e malheureux artisan de tant d'oeuvres si diff ici les dont il a tire si peu de bCn&fice, et il me semble tout nature1 de croire que de I& vient la denomination de pauvre diable appliquQ B I'homme qui se trompe dans ses sp6culations et Bchoue dans ses tentatives. (Voyage, I, p.313)

There are linked with religious legends and legends associated with par-

ticular places: Kiffhauser and Frederick Barbarossa, the story o f

Rolandeck, the Loreley, and the Rhineland tales; legends o f the Tyrol,

including Maximilian and the Zips, the Wunderberg, Charlemagne, the

legends of Silesia, including Beer and the Wends and their folksongs. The

legends o f Mecklenburg are described in some detail, and include the sagas

of Doberan, Ludwigslust and Henri d e Lion. He also ment ions Tris tan and

Isolde, Arthur, Parzival, Kynast, Kunegunde, and o the r f igures t aken from

t h e l i t e ra tu re of the Middle Ages.

Finally, Marmier also s t resses t h e ubiquitous presence of music in

Germany, linking it, again, wi th t h e national 'melancholy'. In t h e Voyage

p i t t o r e s a u e h e recalls, "Une d e s rilles d e madame T [...I i I 'a t t i tude

mklancolique d e la f e m m e du Nord, nous chan ta i t d'une voix harmonieuse

les plus suaves chan t s d e I'Allemagne" (m 11, p.86). But melancholy

has i t s counterbalance; Marmier no tes tha t , in general, t h e Germans seem

t o exper i ence both "une vague mklancolie, ce po i t ique penchant des r aces

du Nord, e t parfois une impetueuse animat ion qui, dans l e s villes

ktranghres, leur donne I'air d'kcoliers e n vacances" (Voyage, 11, p.27).

Music expresses both these e x t r e m e s and an infinite range of moods

be tween them: "musique a l lemande joyeuse, grave, B l e v b , infinie,

in6puisablen (Souvenirs d'un voyageur, p.91). H e also emphasises t h e vast

r epe r to i r e of t h e many ta lented composers f rom Germany:

... valses d e Schubert , mklodies d e Mozart , pastorales d e Beethoven, dernihre pens6e d e Weher, chan t s dramat iques d e Meyerbeer, hymnes religieuses d e Haydn. (w)

Like l i tera ture , music is not t h e preserve of a n e l i te , but is present in all

social s i tuat ions and ranks, par t icular ly s ince "les Allemands ont I'oreille

e t la voix justes" (Ibid.). H e c o m m e n t s on t h e "musique d e s postillons

assis su r leur s iege d'Eilwagen ou d 'Extrapostn (@&I, on t h e "troupe

d'ktudians, c o m m e vous l e s a s i bien de'peintes Mme d e Stael , qui s'en

vont l e soir, e n chantant , t r ave r s l e s rues",25 t h e "musique d e la f l i t e

e t du piano dans l e salon d e famillen, and t h e "musique d e s o rches t r e s b

t ou tes l e s tables d'h8ten (Souvenirs, p.91).

Marmier's p ic ture of a domest icated, musical and poet ic Germany

s t eeped in mythology and melancholy is in teres t ing not only in itself, but

a lso in the light of subsequent l i terary t r ends in France. Although i t is

difficult t o t r a c e t h e specif ic inf luence of his work in this a rea , his

emphasis on t h e domes t i c idyll, in German l i fe and more specifically in

a work such a s Herman und Dorothea, may have a bearing on t h e French

rust ic novel. Lecon te d Lisle's P&mes barbares o r Hugo's L e Rhin may

perhaps answer t h e cal l fo r a new in te res t in folklore and mythology. T h e

Parnassians may also have been influenced by t h e religious discussions,

particularly on the subject o f Pantheism. As such developments suggest,

the most striking aspect o f Marmier's picture o f Germany in the early

years o f his work there is i ts positive emphasis: i t is d i f f icul t t o find

adverse comment in his earliest works on Germany; but despite his

enthusiasm, he was astute enough to discern more negative elements as

t ime went by, in particular the expansionist power of Prussia, which he

came to see as a growing international threat.

11. "A CHANGE CAME O'ER THE SPIRIT OF M Y DREAM"

Thus Marmier expressed his realisation that not all aspects o f nineteenth-

century Germany were so idyll ic as his early visits could have led him t o

believe (Voyage, I, p.3). The first really outspoken remarks occur in 1839,

some seven years af ter he began his work there, in a review o f Quinet's

Allemagne et ~ t a l i e . ~ ~ It is important to notice that Marmier was by no

means the first to awaken to the Prussian threat: Quinet had forecast i t

as early as 1831 in L'Allemagne e t la Rkvolution, foreshadowing Marmier's

change o f heart by some eight years. In this review, Marmier speaks for

the f irst t ime o f "les haines traditionelles cach6es sous le manteau du

stoicisme", and the "miseres politiques voil6es par le voile d'or de la

po6sien (p.52). He recognises that 1813 has not been forgotten, and that

there is st i l l a strong feeling towards unification, and the need to present

a united front in Germany. Even from this early date in his career, he

expresses some misgivings about the ways i n which i t could be achieved:

II est bien kvident, comme le di t M. Quinet, que ce mouvement de nationalit6 allemande, si 6nergique dans son principe, si large et si restreint par les froides deliberations de la dihte germanique, n'a pu 6tre Ctouf f i dans son germe, ni paralysk dans son d6veloppement. II est 6vident que cette id6e d'6mancipation politique, de liberte' nationale, qui enthousiasma I'Allemagne en 1813, subsiste encore I...] Mais quand et comment cet te condition sera-t-elle accomplie? (p.52).

The following year, 1840, saw the beginning o f a dkbscle between

Marmier and the German press which accelerated his growing disillusion

with the country. It began wi th an article published in the Revue des

Deux Mondes, entit led "Revue ~ i t t d ra i re de I'Allemagne", in which he

claimed that the golden era i n German l i terature was passed: "Le temps

n'est plus ob les grands hommes de Weimar ktonnaient le monde par la

majestk de leurs oeuvres I...] Les genies kminens sont morts, et les

hommes secondaires qui leur ont s u r v k u s'arrgtent dans la lice."27

This article prompted an angry response from the German press, and

Marmier responded first with an article In which he attributes this reaction

largely to the tense situation between the two countries concerning the

Rhine provinces, but also complains bitterly about the unreliable and

extreme reactions of the Germans:

Elle [I'Allemagne] passe en un instant du raisonnement h I'apostrophe, de I'admiration & I'outrage. Hler, elle louait encore I'esprit, le caractire du pays qui I'avoisine; demain, elle le condamne sans piti6. Hier, elle rendait justice 'a vos travaux, elle vous proclamait un de ses disciples, elle vous adressait, avec des paroles flatteuses, des dipl6mes honoriflques, demain, elle efface d'un trait de plume tout le passe' et vous appelle un ignorant.28

1841, however, saw Marmier with far clearer and more significant

polltlcal targets for his discontent with Germany. No longer is

"1'Allemagne" in general attacked, but more precisely, "la ~ r u s s e " . ~ ~ In

this article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Marmier reviews anti-French

pamphlets, which he claims to have been far more numerous in recent

weeks than any other type of llterary output. This subject gives him the

opportunity to raise the question of the Prussian danger, since "Les

krivains prussiens se distinguent entre tous par leur ton tranchant et

leurs paroles hauta ine~" .~~ He writes of their ominously aggressive

patriotism:

11 faut les voir, quand ils se dunissent dans quelque solennit6 militaire ou scientifique, avec quelle ardeur ils entonnent leur chant national, avec quel accent emphatique chacun d'eux s'6crie: Ich bin Prussen [sic] (je suls Pr~ssie*~ On dirait que tous les autres titres ne sont rien a cat6 de celui-18.

The rest of the article contains strong warnings about .the strengths

and intentions of Prussia. He Insists on the danger of her geographical

position in relation to other countries:

hendue comme un long cordon militaire du nord au sud, de la Pologne h la France, resserrBe entre deux lignes de royaumes et de prlncipalite's, il faut nbessairement qu'elle s'Blargisse sous pine d'etre BcrasCe, et certes elle a bien montre qu'elle comprenait sa situation.32

The possible threat to France becomes even clearer as he underlines

the Insidious way in which Prussia has annexed the neighbouring states:

"Elle se les assimlle peu 'a peu par des tentative3 dont elle seule peut-8tre

comprend d'abord toute la portke, aujourd'hui par son systeme mongtaire,

demain par son r6seau d e douanes". 33

The phrase "dont el le seule peut-dtre comprend d'abord toute la

port6en shows Marmier's obvious conviction of ulterior motives in the

political machinations which he does not wish to pass unnoticed. The

total implication of his s tatement is of course the great potential danger

for the French. If other s ta tes were to join forces with Prussia in a war,

they would form a mighty alliance:

Nous parlons encore du d6faut d'unit6 d e I'Allemagne. C e dkfaut est hien plus apparent que r6el. Vienne une guerre, IIAllemagne cesse d'6tre un compos6 d e petites principalites dont chacune a son histoire, ses intkrgts, sa vie a part; I...] e t qui sait quels fruits porterait alors c e t t e longue e t patiente infiltration des iddes prussiennes repandues d e c6tk e t d'autre I...]. 34

After this, it is difficult to find precise references to the political

situation until 1859 in his Voyage pittoresque en Allemagne, (I, pp.1-4).

In the intervening period, there a r e only vague hints of his feelings that

there is something wrong. In the introduction to his translation of

Hoffmann's tales, in 1843, he speaks of the " tableaux un peu trop

poktiques e t trop enthousiastes d e Madame d e Staiil "(p.l), and in the intro-

duction to Un BtB au bord d e la Baltique e t de la mer du Nord (18561, he

speaks wistfully of the Germany he first knew:

Ceux qui parcouraient I'Allemagne, il y a une vingtaine d'anndes, avec une studieuse pen&e, e t qui y retournent aujourd'hui, y retrouveront difflcilement les kmotions qu'ils ont dG 6prouver I'a e n leur premier voyage I...]. (Un 6 t i au bord d e la Baltique, etc. p.1)

Although he at tr ibutes this lack of enthusiasm t o t h e new industrial-

isation of Europe, Germany in particular, which reminds him of America.

the reader familiar with his other comments on Germany will wonder

whether the dream is not also broken by political developments in the

country. A partial answer comes just three years later in the Voyage

p i t t o r e s ~ u e e n Al lema~ne . In the first volume, h e describes in detail a

modern-day journey around Berlin, "cet te capitale d'un peuple essentielle-

ment guerriern (I, p.175). The military presence is very evident, and the

sight of the soldiers prompts him t o remark:

J e m e rappelais, e n les observant, I'impression d e terreur qu'a laiss6e dans ma ville natale d e Pontarlier l e passage des regiments Kaiserliche,

qu'on appel le les K..., Dieu nous ga rde pour tant d e les voir jamais f ranchir nos f ront i6res c o m m e e n 1814, ma i s qu'ils viennent e n amis. (ibld.)

Chronologically, i t Is a l so in teres t ing tha t a t th is juncture a comment

about Marmie r by Hol te i appea r s in 1864, in t h e form of a n o t e on a

l e t t e r t o Tieck. Marmie r s a y s in t h e l e t t e r (which is undated) t h a t his

f r iends in Pa r i s find him "bien germanisi". Holtei, who was ve ry c lose t o

Marmier , i s prompted t o wonder whe the r in present c i rcumstances ,

Marmle r would stil l find th is a compliment : " J e t z t lebt e r in P a r i s [ ...I Ob

man ihn do r t immer noch "bien ge rman i s i " finden, o b e r s ich noch da ran

e r f r euen mag?"35 Holtei i s obvlously a w a r e t h a t Marmier has reservat ions

about t h e coun t ry now. Hol te i may h a v e been par t icular ly sensi t ive o n t h e

point, s ince they spen t t he i r t i m e t o g e t h e r in Prussia.

T h e s t ronges t warning of all agains t t h e Pruss ian t h r e a t c o m e s in

1867, in Souvenirs d'un voyageur. O n c e again, h e r eco rds a visit t o

Berlin, and th is t i m e his impressions a r e s imilar t o those noted in Voyage

p l t t o re sque , but now re l a t ed m o r e forceful ly and a t g r e a t e r length. It

begins, q u i t e simply, w i th how everything in Germany has changed for t h e

worse s ince his f i rs t v is i t s there :

J e su i s assez r e t rog rade pour r e g r e t t e r l a p o b i e d e ses anciennes institutions, d e ses cen ta ines d e principautbs, d e ses souverainete's 6piscopales I...] mais pas une d e ces cap i t a l e s qui se dkveloppent dans d e s propor t ions d&mesur6es, e t a t t i r e n t e t absorbent la richesse, l e pouvoir, I'action d e s provinces. (Souvenirs, p.8 1)

H e real ises t h a t h e i s seeing t h e real isa t ion of his prophecy in 1841 of

Pruss ia annexing and swallowing up all t h e r e s t of Germany. H e reminds

his r e a d e r o n c e m o r e in forceful t e r m s of Prussia 's expansionist and

mil i tar is t ic tendencies, placing these in t he i r historical con tex t , and

showing t h e logical o u t c o m e of such developments :

C 'es t pa r la gue r re q u e l a P rus se s 'est g radue l l emen t cons t i t uee e t aggrandie. C'est pa r l a gue r re qu 'e l le a Bt6 dc ra s6e aprhs l a ba t a i l l e dt1&na. C'est p a r la gue r re qu'elle s 'est 61evbe a v e c une nouvelle audace e t u n e ambi t ion qui n e peut plus se contenir . (Souvenirs, p.104)

T h e emphasis on t h e "ambition qui n e peu t plus se contenir" i s of cou r se

highly significant, and i s a t h e m e which is developed in t h e r e s t o f t h e

book, a l though i t i s a l r eady obvious t o what h e alludes. H e indicates

c l ea r ly t h a t Pruss ia has t h e mil i tary m e a n s t o fulfil t h i s ambition. In t h e

Voyage pi t toresque h e had a l ready ment ioned t h e "arsenal qui s 'e leve e n

f a c e du mus6e" (I, p.1751, th is t i m e h e descr ibes t h e s c e n e in more deta i l :

[ . . .I c e t arsenal e n f a c e d u mus ie , ces canons align& p res d e I ' a cadkmie , c e s o f f i c i e r s qu'on r encon t r e a chaque pas e n grand uniforme, fa isant si f i e r emen t r6sonner su r l e pave leur s ab re e t leurs Bperons, ces pa rades perpe'tuelles e t ces troupes a pied e t h cheval I...] qui, pour f a i r e leurs exercices , envahissent jusqu'aux a l l6es du parc; on sen t qu'il y a la un espr i t mar t i a l plus puissant q u e I'esprit scientifique. L e plan m d m e d e la ville, e t les principales oeuvres d 'ar t qui l a dkcorent , po r t en t c o m m e une e m p r e i n t e d e r&ve belliqueux. (m pp.104-5)

In addition t o this arsenal , h e underlines t h e o n e necessary f a c t o r not

ment ioned before: a leader. From ea r ly on in t h e t ex t , i t is c l e a r t ha t

Marmie r sees Bismarck a s a n undesi rable innovation in Germany, c lass ing

him along wi th o t h e r changes which make him reg re t t h e past: "En ce

temps-18, il n'y ava i t e n c o r e e n Al lemagne ni t 6 1 6 ~ r a ~ h i ~ u e s Blectroniques,

ni chemins d e f e r I...]. Elle ignorait aussi q u e Bismark lui Btait nC"

(Souvenirs, p.8 1 ).

It becomes c l e a r t ha t Bismarck is v iewed a s a danger : whereas

fo rmer Prussian l eade r s had occupied themselves with learning, Bismarck

is i n t e re s t ed only in political gain:

L e de rn i e r roi d e Prusse, Frkder ic Gui l laume IV, vivait dans I ' intimit6 dtAlexandre d e Humboldt, d e Varnhagen, d e Schelling, e t des principaux professeurs d e Berlin I...] e t I...] n 'aspirait pas, c o m m e son successeur , M. d e Rismark f a i r e une nouvelle r6volution. (Souvenirs, p.84)

Although t h e d i r ec t dange r t o F r a n c e f rom his revolut ionary ideas is not

expressed d i r ec t ly here , t h e position is c lar i f ied l a t e r in t h e work, when

Marmie r r e l a t e s a discussion be tween himself and a German friend, Carl.

(Souvenirs, pp.121-163). T h e discussion cove r s t h e history of Pruss ia and

ends wi th spec i f i c augur s of war wi th France. T h e c h a r a c t e r of Ca r l is

careful ly chosen t o i nc rease t h e impac t o f t h e warning. H e i s p re sen ted

a s a f r iend of Marmier , a n a v e r a g e man, ce r t a in ly not a fanat ic ; h e i s

even a Cathol ic , a minor i ty in Prussia, and the re fo re m o r e likely t o view

t h e French c a u s e m o r e sympa the t i ca l ly t han t h e m o r e dogmat i c P ro t e s t an t

e l emen t (" ... les infle'xibles prdtent ions du protes tant isme", p.125). Yet

desp i t e being presented a s a thoroughly modera t e cha rac t e r , h e u t t e r s s o m e

ex t r eme ly ant i -French r emarks e v e n t o a Frenchman h e considers his

friend. T h e impl icat ion i s c lear : t ha t F r a n c e has much t o f e a r f rom a

people whose mos t m o d e r a t e m e m b e r s speak o f "notre devoir L.4 d e c h l t i e r

I 'ambition d e l a France" (p.161). Marmie r e n d s wi th his own warning: "I1

y a d e s Pruss iens convaincus que l e royaume providential du vieux F r i t z

e s t des t ink sqaccroTtre d e t e l l e s o r t e qu'un jour Pa r i s s e r a son point

c e n t r a l e t s a capitale." (p.163).

Thus in t h e y e a r s leading up t o t h e Franco-Prussian war, Marmie r had

not hes i t a t ed t o m a k e public his misgivings and f ea r s of t h e dange r f rom

Prussia. His warnings, however, w e r e des t ined general ly t o fall on dea f

ears , and Marmie r was pr ivate ly horr i f ied of t h e government ' s in tent ion

t o g o t o war w i th Prussia. In his Journal l on 12th June 1870, h e no te s

t h a t "I 'empereur v a f a i r e l a gue r re & l a Prusse. En vain quelques hommes

sensks, e n vain l e plus s ens6 d e tous, M. Thiers, essayent- i l s d l a r r&te r l e

gouvernement dans c e t t e formidable d6termination." (Journal 11, p.160).

Marmie r w a s a c lo se f r iend of Thiers, dining regular ly a t his house, and

could well h a v e encouraged him t o oppose plans fo r war. 36

When t h e w a r b roke out , Marmie r s t ayed in P a r i s throughout t h e

s iege, and recorded all h is impressions in his diary. I t would b e i r re levant

t o examine his c o m m e n t s a t t h i s juncture, bu t t h e y a r e e x t r e m e l y informa-

t i ve about t h e s i ege conditions. I t i s s ignif icant t h a t a f t e r th is da t e , h e

would appea r t o h a v e m a d e no fu r the r v is i t s t o Germany: ce r t a in ly no

such r e fe rences a r e t o b e found in e i t h e r published o r manuscr ipt mater ia l .

Y e t h e did not t o t a l ly s eve r h is l inks wi th t h e country . A f ew col lect ions

of sho r t s to r i e s published in his old a g e con ta in German tales: a col lec-

t ion en t i t l ed Nouvelles du Nord (Paris, Hache t t e ) which appeared in 1882

includes a (poor and the re fo re a typical ) t ransla t ion of S to rm ' s Immensee;

k l a ville e t 'a l a campagne (Paris, Hache t t e , 1885) con ta ins o n e folk-tale

of German origin, en t i t l ed "L'heureuse journ6e du loup ; and Au Sud e t

au Nord (Paris, Hache t t e ) published in 1890, just t w o yea r s be fo re

Marmier ' s dea th , compr i se s a l a rge se l ec t ion of shor t personal, historical,

and mythological anecdotes , most ly o f German origin. A t approximately

t h e s a m e t ime , Marmie r m a d e his last e n t r y in his d iary (now held a t t h e

Acaddmie d e Besanson): a fill1 t r i b u t e t o his long-deceased and much

r e g r e t t e d parents , wr i t t en predominant ly in German. Thus his a t t a c h m e n t

t o t h e coun t ry w a s deep-rooted enough t o wi ths tand e v e n t h e war , t o a

c e r t a i n ex ten t . Nei ther was h e fo rgo t t en by t h e Germans. In 1889, t h e

Univers i ty of Leipzig addressed a t r i b u t e t o t h e "Bminent acadkmicien qui,

a u mois d e f6vr ier 1839, f u t r e p d o c t e u r e n philosophie A c e t t e

~ n i v e r s i t k " . 37

1. An account of Marmier's work on Germany is given in my Ph.D. thesis: Xavier Marmier (1808-1892): a study in Franco-German literary relations (London, 1986). The modern-day neglect of his work is largely due to the influence of inaccurate comments by L. Reynaud in Francais e t Allemands. Histoire de leurs relations intellectuelles et sentimentales (Paris: Fayard, 1930) and L'lnfluence allemande en France au XVllle et au XIXe siecle (Paris: Hachette, 19221, and is analysed in my latest article: "Xavier Marmier (1808-1892): setting the record straight" (forth- coming).

2. The name of this publication was frequently changed. In 1826 it was known as the Bibliothbgue but it changed its name in 1827 to the Revue germanique. Between 1829 and 1834 it was called the Nouvelle Revue germanique, and in 1835 it reverted to its former title of Revue germanique until 1837, after which it was taken over and given the new title of Revue du Nord. Other journals featuring articles on German subject matter included Le Globe (founded in 1824) the Revue de Paris (founded in 1829). and the influential Revue des Deux Mondes, (also founded in 1829). In subsequent references, the abbreviation & will be used for Revue germanique, for Nouvelle Revue germanique, r~ for Revue de Paris, and RDM for Revue des Deux Mondes. Marmier contri- buted to all these on a regular basis.

3. This information and date are found in a letter to Paul Lacroix dated 14th January 1832, conserved in the Bibiiothbque de I'Arsenal, Fonds Paul Lacroix. Additional information is found in Marmier's Journal, ed. Kaye, 2 vols (Geneve: Droz. 1968), 1. p.312.

4. X, Marmier, Etudes biographiques. "Henri de Kleist", a, XIV, 1833, No.54, pp.99-119; Etudes sur Goethe (Paris: Levrault, 1835); Hermann et Dorothde par Goethe, traduit par X. Marmier, (Paris: Heideloff); Th6ltre de Goethe traduction nouvelle, revue, corrigge, et augmentge d e e prkface par M. X. Marmier, (Paris: Charpentier, 1839); Th6itre de Schiller, traduction nouvelle, pr6ced6e d'une notice sur sa vie et ses ouvrages, par X. hlarmier, (Paris: Charpentier. 1841); Pogsies de Schiller, traduction nouvelle par M. X. Marmier. ~rkcedke d'une introduction Dar le traducteur. (Paris: Charoentier . , . 1844); Contes fantastiques dl~offmann traduction . nbuvelle de ' M. x.. h?armier.- traducteur, (Paris: Charpentier, - . 1843). Translations and studies of his contemooraries are too numerous to detail here, but a full bibliography is asseinbled in my Ph.D. thesis Xavier Marmier (1808-1892): a study in Franco-German literary relations.

5. X. Marmier, Un 6th au bord de la Baltique et de la mer du Nord (Paris: Hachette, 18561, p.1. (This work is referred to henceforth as & bt6 au bord de la Baltique, etc.)

6. X Marmier, [Introduction], &, 3e skrie, I, No.1 (18351, pp.3-21 (p.11). 7. X. Marmier, VoyaRe 2 vols (Paris: Morizot, 1859-60), 11, p.85. This work will be referred to henceforth as Voyage.

8. X. Marmier. "Journal de voyage. Viennew, NRg, 2e sgrie, I, No.4, ( 1834). pp.359-377 (p.364).

9. X. Marmier, " Les ~niversiths allemandes - Goettingud', E M , 3e skrie, 1, 1834, pp.434-448. "Leipzig et la librairie allemandg, m M , 3e dr ie , 1 (1834). pp.93-105.

10. VoyaRe, op. cit. Details of Tibingen and Prague universities are to be found in Vol.1, pp.43 and 497 respectively, and details of Leipzig, Breslau, Jena and WUrzberg are found in Vol.11, pp.90, 152, 195, 384 and 454 respectively.

11. X. Marmier, Souvenirs d'un voyageur (Paris: Didier, 18671, p.82. Henceforth: Souvenirs.

12. VoyaRe, op. cit., I, p.95.

13. X. Marmier, [Introduction], Q, 3e s6rie, I, No.1 (18351, pp.3-21 (P. 10). 14. X. Marmier, "Souvenirs de voyages. Berlin, le Mecklembourg, Ludwigslust, Hambourgn. RP (1837), pp.60-69 (p.65).

15. X, Marmier, 'Qes soir6es d'Allemagne': NRg. XV, Nos.57 and 58 (joint issue), pp. 161-173 (p. 163).

16. X. Marmier, Podsies d'un voyageur (Paris: Felix Locquin, 18441, p.55.

17. X. Marmier, 'Moeurs de I'Allemagne. Premier article: le Dimanche", NRI, XII, No.47 (18321, pp.266-277 (p.266).

18. Moeurs de I'Ailemagne. Premier article: ie Dirnanchg, art. cit., p.271.

19. Woeurs de I'Allemagne. Premier article: le Dimanchd', art. cit., pp.268-9.

20. X. Marmier, Souvenirs de voyanes e t traditions populaires (Paris: Masgana, 18411, p.204.

21. X. Marmier, "Discours prononce I'ouverture du cours de litterature Btrangkre la Facult6 des lettres d e Rennes: Nouvelle Revue de Bretagne, 1 (1839). pp.305-321 (p.309). (This lecture is referred to subsequently as 'Discours'.)

22. X. Marmler, Traditions d'Allemagnd', RP, XXXVI (1836). pp.246-264, and XXXVIII, 1837, pp. 177-191.

23. Voyage, op. cit., I, pp.57-87.

24. An interesting inscription in Marmier's copy of Deutsche Mytholoxie states that "Achet6 le 6 juillet 1886 sur le quai des Augustins, heureux de retrouver une des oeuvres de ces deux savants si justement renommes qui en 1834 a Gattingen furent si bons pour moi. " 25. X. Marmier, [Introduction], Q, 3e skrie, I, No.1 (18351, pp.3-21 (P. 13).

26. X. Marmier, Cr i t ique litt6raire. Allemagne e t italie, de M. Edgar Quinetl: RP, 3e skrie, IV (18391, pp.49-55.

27. X. Marmier, "Revue ~i t tdra i re de ~ '~ l lemagne" , m M , XXI (18401, pp.712-725 (p.715).

28. X. Marmier, "Revue littgraire de I'Allemagne: a M , XXV (1841). pp.705-729 (p.705).

29. X. Marmier, "Revue litt6raire de I'Ailemagne: m M , XXVI (1841). pp.627-655.

30. Revue iitt6raire de I'Allemagne'l, a r t cit., RDM, XXVI, p.630.

31. "Revue littiraire de I'Allemagne", art. cit., E M , XXVI, p.631.

32. "Revue littdraire de I'Allemagnef', art. cit., RDM, XXVI, p.630.

33. "Revue littdraire de I'Ailemagne", art. cit., RDM, XXVI, p.630.

34. "Revue littdraire de I'Allemagne", art. cit., RDM, XXVI, pp.630-1.

35. A. Wagner, Briefe an Ludwig Tieck, ausgewahlt und herausgegeben von Karl von Holtei (Breslau: Trewendt, 18641, IV. p.331.

36. Marmier's reputation has suffered unjustly from claims by critics such as L. Reynaud, in Francais e t Allemands. Histoire de leurs relations intellectuelles e t sentimentales (Parls: Fayard, 1930, p.278) that Marmier not only failed to warn France about the danger from Germany, but also endangered the security of the country by his 'lmb6cillite' d'esprit". More recently, A. ~onchoux~concludes his &ay "Un romantique franiais ami de 1'Allemagne: Xavier Marmier " (Connaissance de I'Etranger: MBlanges offerts 'a la m6molre de Jean-Marie CarrB, Paris: Didier, 1964, p.96) with the question: " Quel rapport entre ce t te image e t I'Allemagne pan- germaniste, conque'rante e t brutale qui allait, si peu de temps aprks, decevoir les Fransais? Marmier fut-il dupe? Complice?" The second part of this article puts these accusations in a new light.

37. This information is found in a newspaper cutting which it has unfortunately not been possible to trace, pasted into the largely unpub- lished manuscript of Night Side of Society 6, held at the Acade'mie de Besanson:

Le doyen de I'Unlversit6 de Leipzig vient d'adresser M. Xavier Marmier un trks curieux diplSme, inprim6 en souvenir du cinquantenaire de I'6minent acad6micien qul, au mois de f6vrier 1839, fut re$u docteur en philosophie ?i cet te UniversitB.

Les philosophes de Leipzig souhaitent au vdnCrable membre de I'Institut, d6ji ag6 de plus de quatre-vingt ans [sic], une longue e t heureuse vieillesse, e t ils le remercient d'avoir fair conna'ltre 21 la France, par ses traductions, les oeuvres littkraires e t podtiques du pays

THE ART OF THE IMPROVISERS: JAZZ AND FICTION IN POST-BEBOP AMERICA

Jullan Cowley (King's College London)

"A saxophonist who continues to 'play like' Charlie Parker cannot under-

stand that Charlie Parker wasn't certain that what had happened had to

sound like that." LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka), in 1964, emphati-

cally denied that a series of practised and polished musical mannerisms

emulating the technical virtuosity of a great jazz musician constitutes

extension of that player's creative spirit. "Hunting", Jones pointed out,

"is not those heads on the wall"' art does not proceed merely from the

mastery of formulas, no matter how stimulating, challenging, or revelatory

the models from which they were drawn may have been. Parker's genius,

Jones argues, resided in his restless inquiry, tireless investigation of the

forms an improvisation might take. The music, familiarly termed bebop,

of which he was a leading exponent, emerged in the 1940s as "at a certain

level of consideration, a reaction by young musicians against the sterility

and formality of Swing as it moved to become a formal part of the main-

stream American culture".' It was an exploratory mode of jazz, whose

cutting edge was forged and honed by remarkable soloists, who released

again, in celebration if also in anger or anguish, energies that had been

neutralized when channelled into the well-made, easily assimilated,

arranger-dominated musical patterning of Swing, music characterized by

"rhythmic regularity and melodic predictability". 3

But by the late-1950s, as Jones recognized and A. R. Spellman

corroborates, "The discovery had gone out of bebop - it had become as

formalistic as any movement does once it has solved its original problem".

Spellman's analysis also concludes that "it was that indefiniteness of not

knowing how the music was going to sound before it is played that

enhanced its emotional expression" and, identifying Ornette Coleman as

pioneer of music that revitalized the 1960s, he remarks that "the new

musician has been primarily involved in the cultivation of the Marvelous.

And he judges his work more by the frequency with which the Marvelous

occurs than by comdositional value^".^ A comparable orientation is

evident in the writer Donald Barthelme's claim that he would "rather have

a wreck than a ship that sails. Things attach themselves to wrecks.

Strange fish find your wreck[ ...I to be a good feeding ground; after a

while you've got a situation with possibilities".5 Rarthelrne's first

collection of stories, Come Back, Dr Caligari, appeared in 1964. In the predominantly sterile atmosphere of cultural conservatism in

America in the 1950s, allegiance to bebop was a declaration of cultural

radicalism. While many such declarations were undoubtedly faddist, there

were writers of enduring significance who readily acknowledged affinity.

The correspondence of poets Robert Creeley and Charles Olson is peppered

with admiring references to Parker; Jack Kerouac's fiction made clear

his devotion. Ronald Sukenick has cited Olson's essay "Projective Verse",

so concerned with possibilities of the breath, and Kerouac's "Essentials of

Spontaneous Prose: expressing his desire to write as a jazz musician

blows, as key documents releasing energies for creative work since the

fifties. Numerous writers who, like Sukenick, began to publish their fiction

in the mid- or late-sixties, have spoken of personal indebtedness to the

paradigm of bebop. In 1963, in the magazine Kulchur, which first pub-

lished several of LeRoi Jones's essays on jazz, Gilbert Sorrentino, for

example, published "Remembrances of Bop in New York, 1945-1950?

Ishmael Reed takes Parker as a model for his Neo HOODOO aesthetic;

Raymond Federman, once a jazz musician himself, has a section entitled

'Remembering Charlie Parkern in his novel Take It Or Leave It (1976);

Steve Katz has said: "Jazz was my childhood. Whenever I could I snuck

out to Birdland, sat on the wooden chairs In the No Minimum gallery,

getting closer and closer with every set to Bud Powell, Charlie Parker,

Zoot Sims, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Lennie Tristano. Lee

Konitz, Thelonius Monk, all my heroes - John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy". 6

During the fifties, jazz submitted once again to the demands of tidy

orchestration, carefully crafted arrangements executed with dutiful pre-

cision. Some fine music was produced - the Modern Jazz Quartet, the

Gerry Mulligan group, Miles Davis's collaborations with Gil Evans - but In

the hands of the copyists the 'cool' was merely tepid. At the end of the

decade, Ornette Coleman arrived in New York and proceeded to transgress

recognized limits for individual and collective improvisation, courting

surprise, constantly testing, reassessing, revlsing "a musical syntax which,

though necessarily derived from Charlie Parker, was a copy of no one". 7

Sukenick recalls hearing Coleman for the first time, at a bar called the

Five Spot, frequented by self-consciously American painters, film-makers,

and writers, drawn to jazz as a distinctly American art form. He was

struck by t h e intensity of the musicians, and t h e audacity of their music,

and compares his response t o tha t of those Parisians who were stunned by

t h e premi6re of Stravinsky's R i te of Spring. 8

John Litweiler, in The Freedom Principle, analyses ear ly recordings

of Coleman solos and remarks tha t "as t h e faint, lingering shadow of

chorus s t ructures disappears, classic narrat ive form [...I becomes irrelevant.

That's because music with a beginning, middle, and end imposes the

s t ruc tu re of fiction on t h e passage of life, says Coleman implicitly".

Similarly, wri ters such as Sukenick, Federman, Sorrentino, Reed, and Katz

made t h e decision t o disgard Aristotelian narrat ive form, taking a

critically reflexive s tance toward t h e mechanics of narration, so their

writing becomes a thrust toward reality existing beyond t h e s t ructures of

fiction upon which w e habitually rely t o organize experience. Their work

is predicated upon acceptance of contingency and uncertainty, recognition

of which is, according t o Litweiler, embodied in Coleman's playing:

The organization of these Coleman solos makes clear tha t uncertainty is t h e content of life, and even things tha t w e t ake for cer taint ies (such a s his cell motives) a r e e v e r altering shape and character . By turns h e fears or embraces this ambiguity; but h e constantly faces it , and by his example, h e condemns those who seek resolution or finallty as timid. 9

One cannot neglect t h e racially specific socio-economic factors tha t

have contributed t o the ethos of radical jazz throughout i t s history. Com-

poser Robert Ashley has s t a ted tha t h e learnt music from listening t o

jazz, but h e appreciated tha t i t s pract i t ioners spoke, in e f fec t , a different

language t o his own: "In other words, t h e s tor ies tha t were told by jazz

music were s tor ies tha t I didn't grow up with; they weren't my stories".

Nonetheless, he applied himself to understanding "how those s tor ies could

be applied t o s tor ies tha t I understood - my stories. I was trying to

figure out how t o make procedures tha t would invoke spontaneity". 10

There appears t o be a suggestion here tha t the improvisatory skills of jazz

musicians ref lect the need for flexibility and immediacy of response in

s t rategies for survival necessarily adopted by black Americans, given the

large part played by 'accident and t h e unknown in their lives, personally

and communally. Ishmael Reed's novels cer tainly endorse this correspon-

dence. The s tor ies told by jazz a r e not determinist ic s t ructures , but

models for dealing with constant change. Saxophonist Archie Shepp

s t r e s sed t h a t t h e avan t garde, t o which h e belonged in t h e sixties, w a s not

a narrowly def ined movemen t , but a s t a t e of mind. Sukenick, Federman,

and Ka tz m a k e i t c l e a r t h a t wi th the i r wri t ing they seek nothing less t han

a new epistemology.

O r n e t t e Co leman has expressed profound admirat ion fo r Richard

Buckminster Fuller, and has ded ica t ed music t o him. I t may appea r

cur ious t h a t a jazz iconoclas t should r eve re t h e theoret ic ian of comprehen-

s ive an t i c ipa to ry design sc ience, bu t Fuller 's vision of global order ing of

services and ut i l i t ies s e rved t h e end of real iz ing a technoanarchis t ic

socie ty , promoting maximum f reedom of ac t ion for individuals. In his

essay, " T h e Music o f t h e New Lifd', Ful ler con tends tha t "in t h e world of

music and in t h e world of a r t , human beings h a v e a t t a ined much spontane-

ous and r ea l i s t i c coordinat ion" , l l his point being t h a t t h e l ibera tory

potent ia l of avai lable technology may b e real ized only a f t e r t h e co l l ec t ive

adopt ion of new modes of unders tanding and behaviour, t o which c e r t a i n

ar t i s ts , and especia l ly musicians, a r e most c losely a t tuned. Co leman may

be seen a s exempli fying "spontaneous and real is t ic coordination".

In Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Ishmael Reed a lso considers t h e

prospect of "an anarchotechnological paradise". His s a t i r i ca l t e m p e r would

not a l low him (even in Cal i fornia in 1969) t o engage in unqualitied

opt imism, but t h e Ful ler vision se rved a s a touchstone t o coun te r t h e

"stupid historians", who support ves ted in t e re s t s through legi t imat ion only

o f dras t ica l ly r e s t r i c t i ve p rog rammes for co l l ec t ive composi t ion of fu tu re

societies. Reed, se l f -procla imed sabo teu r of historical orthodoxy, who

con t inues t o decons t ruc t t h e mythologies and icons of WASP America ,

a s sumes t h e jazz a t t i t u d e t h a t anything c a n happen; a novel "can be

anything i t w a n t s t o be, a vaudevi l le show, t h e six o'clock news, t h e

mumblings of wild m e n saddled by demons".12 Char l i e Pa rke r would have

supported th is s en t imen t ; Robe r t Reisner r eco rds him saying: "They t e a c h

you the re ' s a boundary line t o music. Rut, man, there ' s n o boundary line

t o art".13 In p rac t i ce , h e refused t o b e conf ined t o evolving his ma te r i a l s

f rom jazz t radi t ion alone, and w a s highly responsive t o developments in

European c lass ical music, t o t h e e x t e n t of consul t ing Edgar Varsse , whose

explorat ions in sound h e found exciting.

This openness and ec l ec t i c i sm is considerably m o r e pronounced in t h e

work of a l a t e r gene ra t ion of music ians - those of t h e A r t Ensemble of

Chicago, o r o t h e r Associa t ion for Advancemen t of C r e a t i v e Musicians'

virtuosi, such a s Muhal Richard Abrams, Leroy Jenkins, o r Anthony Braxton.

Jacques At ta l i has claimed tha t "free jazz, a meeting of black popular

music a n d the more abstract theoretical explorations of European music, eliminated the distinction between popular music and learned music". 14

In l i terature a comparable elimination has occurred, with thriller, science

fiction, o r Western modes being employed by wri ters of t h e calibre of

Burroughs and Mailer. S teve Katz freely acknowledges t h e influence of

both Kafka and t h e Marx Brothers; Kurt Vonnegut expresses grat i tude t o

Joyce, but discloses tha t his deepest cultural deb t s a r e to American

comedians, who "are o f ten a s brilliant and magical a s our best jazz

musicians". 15

Humour is character is t ic of r ecen t American fiction which offers

al ternat ives to tha t construction of real i ty found in works of conventional

'realism'. It may be playful even when handling grim materials, a s in

Slaughterhouse-5 (1969), Vonnegut's t r ea tment of the fire-bombing of

Dresden, o r in Federman's writings around the extermination of his family

in a Nazi death-camp. The absurd and the gratuitous a r e employed to

c r e a t e comic effects , but they have simultaneously a profoundly serious

function in works that const i tute a cr i t ique of the role of language in

mass-consumer society, in t h e service of t h e war being waged in the Far

East, in historical registration of such atroci t ies a s t h e Holocaust and

dropping of the atom-bomb. A parallel may be drawn t o Dada activity,

which responded t o t h e official rhetoric of World War I by dismantling

received cultural codes, engaging in f ree play with existing signs, creat ing

new ones without anter ior meaning, revealing t h e ideological basis of

'common sense'.

The interest shown by contemporary wri ters in t h e Dada approach t o

language and i t s relation to the world provides another point of con tac t

with jazz. Litweiler comments upon t h e Dada atmosphere of a perfor-

mance by Roscoe Mitchell's 1967 quartet. T h e t rumpeter with tha t fore-

runner of t h e Art Ensemble of Chicago, Lester Rowie, played in a carnival , a s well a s playing bebop, before joining t h e group; his t a s t e for playful

combination of t h e seemingly incongruous is manifested in a piece on his

1983 album, The One and Only (ECM 12471, tellingly and qui te appropriate-

ly ent i t led "Miles Davis Mee ts Donald Duckn. An AEC performance will

shif t from t h e austerely avant ga rde t o pure circus, in a manner tha t

recalls t h e freedom claimed for t h e novel in Yellow Back Radio Broke-

Down, a book whose he ro i s branded "crazy dada nigger" by a social

real is t c r i t i c (p.35). LeRoi Jones, au thor of t h e poem "Black Dada

Nihilismusn, has wr i t t en a s to ry of t h e bebop e r a , cal led "The S c r e a m e r b ,

in which Big J a y McNeeley i s designated "the first Dada coon of t h e age",

and i s compared, a s h e lies on his back screaming through his saxophone,

wi th Duchamp's notorious 'L.H.O.O.Q.', " the Mona Lisa with t h e

mustache".l6 Ronald Sukenick, in Down and In, ment ions a pa r ty given

by Ted Joans, a t t ended by Charl ie Parker ; "it was dedicated t o Surreal-

ism, Dada, and t h e Mau Mau" (p.50). T h e poet and t h e musician shared

a fascinat ion with Dali 's work. Joans's col lect ion of poems, Afrodisia

(19701, contains some of his visual collages, which emphasize a Surreal is t

a l l iance of erot ic ism and revolution, inseparable f rom jazz in his work.

T h e new jazz musician's quest for the marvellous finds sanct ion in

Andrd Breton's dic tum t h a t nothing but t h e marvellous i s beautiful, but the

Freudian basis of Surreal ism does not find favour among pract i t ioners of

t h e new fiction. Their work i s r emarkab le for t h e lack of re l iance on any

system. Li twei ler r emarks t h a t for Alber t Ayler music began "with sound

itself, and from t h e r e you can c r e a t e what relationships you wish without

t h e baggage of theory".17 Similarly, a wr i t e r like Ka tz avoids manifestoes,

s t a r t s wi th words themselves. Soprano saxophonist S t e v e Lacy recal ls t h a t

"when O r n e t t e hi t t h e scene, t h a t was t h e end of t h e theories. He

destroyed t h e theories. I r emember a t t h a t t i m e h e said, very careful ly ,

'Well, you just h a v e a ce r t a in amount of s p a c e and you put what you want

in it1. And t h a t was a revelation".18 In T h e Exaggerat ions of P e t e r

P r ince (sic) (19681, K a t z r e f l ec t s upon t h e p rac t i ce of writing a s "just

trying these e m p t y spaces with luminous motion, and things".lg T h e tech-

nique of col lage favoured by Dada a r t i s t s and Surrealists, who adopted it

f rom Cubism, i s c l ea r ly appropria te t o this project of accumulat ion.

Col lage f r ees t h e wr i t e r f rom received hierarchies and p a t t e r n s of cause

and e f fec t . Nar ra t ive proceeding from this basis c a n accommoda te dis-

continuities, and move with bold improvisatory logic.

Char l ie Pa rke r may again be c i t e d a s exemplary, for, a s jazz wr i t e r

Max Harrison has noted, disjunction was "a positive feature" of s o m e of

his solos. H e specif ies 'Klactoveedsedstene ' ( t h e t i t l e of which resembles

not o n l y Slim Gaillard's verbal playfulness, but a lso t h e Dada invention of

nonsense words) a s demonstra t ing t h e a l tois t ' s "ability t o impart shape and

coherence t o improvisations m a d e u p of shor t , apparent ly unrela ted

snippets".20 The process of improvising is not just expediency in the

absence of a definitive archaeological o r teleological programme; i t is a

s t rategy for release tha t is revelatory. Sukenick has wri t ten that:

Improvisation releases you from old forms, s t a le thoughts, it releases things that a r e released only with difficulty on a psychological basis. It allows in surprising things tha t a r e creeping around on the edges of consciousness. It prevents you from writin cliched formulas. It's a release finally, a release of the imagination.ffi

Among contemporary writers, he regards a s t h e most accomplished impro-

viser S teve Katz, who speaks of his ear ly exposure t o jazz as crucial

because i t was "the first a r t in which I began t o perceive what form was,

and tha t thrilling tension between t h e freedom of blowing and the

imperatives of order. And I began t o real ize tha t a r t has a formal

influence on t h e emotions, and is permit ted through form t o enrich t h e

intellect. It's instantaneous a t t h e moment tha t the form is perceived".

Katz recognized how shape and coherence could be granted t o apparently

unrelated snippets through t h e virtuosity of a musician such a s Parker, and

that t h e emergence of form in a solo is not t h e consequence of mechani-

cal imposition, but is an emotionally and intellectually charged process.

LeRoi Jones claimed tha t jazz & American reality, and Katz clearly

concurs with this in t h e sense tha t i t provides a model for his writing to

regis ter t h e energies and rhythms of American life. His refusal t o make

consonant the various and divergent voices of his fiction is indicative of

commitment t o a verisimilitude beyond t h e merely descriptive. J a z z was

instructive here too; t h e way it is "voiced by different individuals within

one framework surely freed m e t o wri te my individual works in a manner

I'd cal l multidirectional". 22

During t h e ear ly 1960s, multiple voicing in jazz assumed unprece-

dented freedom with Orne t te Coleman's double quartet performance of

Free Jazz , t h e John Coltrane Orchestra's Ascension, and t h e Arkestra

playing Sun Ra's The Heliocentric Worlds. Conservative cr i t ics were quick

to dismiss such ventures a s 'anti-jazz', just a s those hostile t o the

procedures of innovative fiction spoke of t h e 'anti-novel', and gloomily

prophesied t h e imminent demise of t h e novel proper. Such a response

shows a failure t o perceive tha t the avant-garde had invariably assimilated

t h e a r t of t h e past, and far from being a negation of i t was an a t t empt

t o discover t h e contemporary relevance of i t s lessons and achievements.

While Albert Ayler began with the sounds his saxophone could produce,

rather than any musical theory, he was deeply conscious of the contexts

in which such sounds had previously occurred, and of the associations they

might evoke. Valerie Wilmer has pointed out that while "his Down Beat

obituary claimed that his playing 'bore l i t t le resemblance to any other

jazz, past or present"', in fact "his music encompassed every thread woven

into the fabric of so-called jazz. He took as his source material the

spirituals, funeral dirges, bugle calls and marches of the past, and, though

he seldom did so, he could really play the blues". 23

In like manner, writers who have been bracketed as deviants from

the Great Tradition may claim, with Shklovsky, that Sterne's Tristram

Shandy is the archetypal novel, and may argue, as Sukenick does, that i t

is truer to our apprehension of reality than is Robinson Crusoe. Raymond

Federman has nominated that great fabulator, Franqois Rabelais, the first

major jazz fictioneer. The claim is not, then, that prose improvisation is

something new, but that contemporary cultural conditions heighten the

appropriateness of i ts procedures. Federman has published crit ical work

on Samuel Reckett's fiction, and finds that also comparable, in its

unpredictability and the kind of coherence i t achieves largely by virtue of

that unpredictability, to jazz performance. His own novels are striking

attempts to preclude identification of hunting with those heads on the

wall; to prevent the crystallization of fixed meaning, and to enhance the

process of continuous production of meanings, he adopts strategies of

cancellation and contradiction. In the unpaginated novel Take I t Or Leave

I t (1976) he refers to his own writing as "a long uninterrupted tenor - saxophone solo". Elsewhere he has remarked:

The language of my novels just goes on and on, improvising as i t goes along, hitting wrong notes all the time - but, after all, jazz also builds itself on a system of wrong chords that the player stumbles upon and then builds from. 24

The point here, as in Jones's remark about Parker, is that the writer is

not certain that what has happened had to be written like that.

In Double Or Nothing (19711, Federman works with 'paginal syntax',

the materials on each page being arranged in a unique pattern, without

referene to any a priori scheme. This constitutes a destructuring through

dissemination of received syntactical unity. The familiar trajectory of

reading - left to right, top to bottom - is superseded by an invitation to

engage with t h e possibilities of a multidirectional visual field. A more

famil iar method of introducing mult idi rect ional i ty into narrat ive , exempli-

fied by "The Elevator" in Rober t Coover's Pricksongs and Descan t s (19691,

involves indication o r even real izat ion of a l t e rna t ive pa ths a s to ry might

take. Li terary an teceden t s for th is s t r a t egy include not only Flann

O'Brien's At-Swim-Two-Birds, but a lso Denis Diderot 's J acques l e Fatal is te .

There i s a venerable tradition, then, fo r works of this kind. They

tend t o rely extensively on parody, playing var ia t ions upon well-known

t h e m e s and forms. Donald Barthelme's Snow White (1967) exploi ts t he

immense popularity of Disney's version of t h a t s to ry t o comic e f f e c t , and

with t h e intensely serious a im of recuperat ing t h e value of t h e particular,

amid t h e banal i t ies of faci le c lass i f icat ion and prefabr icated aspirations.

Katz 's T h e Exaggerat ions of P e t e r Pr ince evokes a n obvious precursor - Smolle t t ' s a l l i t e ra t ive t i t l e s for his var ia t ions on a picaresque t h e m e -

only t o viola te in p rac t i ce all t h e convent ions and, indeed, t h e presiding

logic of t h a t form. Ishmael Reed subversively re-writes const i tu t ive

myths of t h e American s t a t u s quo in works such a s Mumbo Jumbo (1972)

and Fl ight t o Canada (1976). Gi lber t Sorrentino, in Aberrat ion of Star l ight

(1980), supplements a natural is t ic dialogue with meaningless footnotes t h a t

a c t like noise disrupting a melody in o r d e r t o highlight t h e a r t i f i ce of

composition. Parody demons t ra t e s t h a t things d o not have t o be t h e way

they a re ; a s i t ident i f ies limits, i t a lso t ransgresses them - defining con-

tou r s a r e blurred, e v e n obl i tera ted by excess, while internally, conventional

cont inui t ies a r e f ractured. J a z z has a lways had a t endency t o parody.

Since bebop, t h e tendency has been increasingly marked; one h a s only t o

listen t o John Col t rane 's "My Favouri te Things: o r Ayler's version of

"Summertime1' t o hea r how standards , famil iar popular tunes c a n be

subjected t o radical reassessment. T h e a r t i s t thus refuses t h e cons t r a in t s

imposed by "a conce rn f o r maintaining tonalism, t h e pr imacy of melody,

a dis t rust of new languages, codes, o r instruments, a refusal of t h e

abnormal" - charac te r i s t i c s c i t e d by At t a l i a s common t o tota l i tar ian

regimes, such a s t h a t of Nazi Germany, which was not only hostile t o

avan t ga rde music, but banned jazz. 25

Reading a work such a s T h e Exaggerat ions of P e t e r P r ince requires

nei ther recol lect ion nor ant ic ipat ion of t h e kind needed t o make sense of

conventionally s t ruc tu red narrative. T h e eponymous he ro of t h a t book is,

in f ac t , just a name, which does not r e f e r consis tent ly t o a s t ab le ident i ty ,

but l ike other terms within the novel shifts and changes, partaking o f the

vibrancy o f the improvisatory moment. Katz as narrator remarks: "1

never know where to catch up with him. His past erases itself like a

disappearing wake" (p.162). Sukenick, in Out (1973) and 98.6 (1975), and

Rudolph Wurlitzer, in Flats (1970). adopt the tactic o f altering the names

by which characters are identified, being interested above all not in

registration of the known, but exploration o f the unknown.

Katz asks: "How can I ever finish this book when it's always

beginning?" (p.162). LeRoi Jones, considering the artistry o f Don Cherry,

that remarkable trumpeter who contributed so much to the groups of both

Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, remarks that i t rests upon the under-

standing that "the completion o f one statement simply reintroduces the

possibility of more".26 In 1958, Coleman envisaged a time when music

would be sti l l more free: "Then the pattern for a tune, for instance, wi l l

be forgotten and the tune itself wi l l be the pattern, and won't have to be

forced into conventional patterns".27 This might be taken as prophetic of

the aims o f contemporary innovative fiction in America, and o f the

epistemology i t proposes. Ishmael Reed co-edited an anthology o f writ ing

entitled Yardbird Lives: (1978). I t took i ts name from the slogan 'Bird

Lives', that appeared on walls throughout New York following Charlie

Parker's death. In Down and In, Sukenick mentions this aff irmative

graff i t i as encapsulating the spirit o f Parker's music, i ts legacy for writers

as for musicians, "the flight of the imagination toward freedom and

incandescent l i fe" (p.86).

1. LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amir i Baraka)," Hunting Is Not Those Heads On The Wall': i n The Poetics o f the New American Poetry, eds. Donald Allen Rr Warren Tallman (New York: Grove Press, 1973), pp.378-382 (p.380).

2. LeRoi Jones, Black Music (London: MacGibbon R Kee, 19691, p.16.

3. m. p.79.

4. A. B. Spellman, Four Lives in the Bebop Rusiness (London: MacCibbon & Kee, 19671, p.83.

5. Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists eds. Tom LeClair Rr Larry McCaffery (Urbana: Illinois IJP, 19831, p.34.

7. Spellman, p.79.

8. See Ronald Sukenick, Down and In: L i f e in the Underground (New York: Beech Tree Books/William Morrow, 1987), pp.58 and 142. Further references are to this edition.

9. John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle: J a z z Af te r 1958 (Poole, Dorset: Blandford Press, 19851, p.39.

10. John Rockwell, AIl American Music: Composition in the La te Twentieth Century (London: Kahn & Averill, 1985), p.100.

11. R. Buckminster Fuller, Utopia o r Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 19721, p.95.

12. Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (London: Allison L?

Busby, 19711, pp.24 and 36. Further references a r e t o this edition.

13. Robert Reisner, Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker (London: Quartet Rooks, 19741, p.27.

14. Jacques Attal i , Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1985; original title: Rruits, 19771, p. 140.

15. Kurt Vonnegut, "Preface", in Between Time and Timbuktu, o r Prometheus-5: A Space Fantasy (St Albans: PantherIGranada, 19751, p.xvii.

16. LeRoi Jones, Tales (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 19691, pp.76 and 77.

17. Litweiler, p. 170.

18. Quoted in Derek Bailey, Improvisation: i t s nature and pract ice in & (Ashbourne: Moorland Publishing, 19801, p.73.

19. S teve Katz, The Exaggerations of P e t e r Prince (New York: Holt, Rinehart Rr Winston, 19681, p.165. Further references a r e t o this edition.

20. Max Harrison, "Charlie Parker'; in Jazz, eds. Nat Hentoff Pr Albert McCarthy (London: Quartet , 19771, pp.275-286 (p.278).

21. AnythinR p.291.

22. fi. p.223.

23. Valerie Wilmer, As Serious As Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz (London: q u a r t e t , 19771, p.94.

24. Anything Can Happen, p.131.

25. Attali, p.7.

26. Jones, Black Music, p.170.

27. Quoted in Litweiler, p.34.

TIN DRUM AND SNAKE-CHARMER'S FLUTE: SALMAN RUSHDIE'S DEBT TO GUNTER GRASS

E. W. Herd (University of Otago, New Zealand)

Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, first published by Jonathan

Cape in 1981, was awarded the 1981 Booker Prize, and re-published as a

Picador paperback in 1982. Reviews - in T.L.S. and in the Sunday Times - were quick to point out aff init ies between this novel and Giinter Grass's

The Tin Drum,' but perhaps because Midnight's Children was also com-

pared to Tristram Shandy, Finnegan's Wake and Heart o f Darkness, the

comparison with The Tin Drum was not usually pursued any further.

Ulrich Enzensberger's review o f the German translation in Der Spiegel, for

example, was entit led "E in Rlechtrommler aus Bombay", but made no

detailed comparison.

The similarities between the two novels are immediately and super-

f icial ly noticeable, and further reflection reveals correspondences even in

details. Both novels are r ich in their use o f colour; the pervasive white

and red o f Oskar's drum and the Polish f lag parallelled by the saffron and

green of the Indian colours (MC, pp.114, 181, 377, 423). Saleem's grand-

father Aadam had eyes o f "a clear blue, the astonishing blue o f the

mountain sky, which has a habit o f dripping into the pupils of Kashmiri

men'' (p.13) and Saleem inherits these "ice-blue eyes" (p.161), and discovers

them in his presumptive son: "I observed their colour, which was blue,

Ice-blue, the blue o f recurrence, the fateful blue o f Kashmiri sky ..." (p.425). Sky-blue is the colour o f Saleem's cr ib in a sky-blue room

(pp.141, 282), the clocktower near Methwold's Estate is pale blue (pp.146,

172), as though the observer's world takes on the colour o f his eyes.

Already i n this detail, then, Saleem Sinai is Oskar's brother, for Oskar is

"a blue-eyed type" (TJ, pp.11, 212, 359, 421), as was Jan Bronski (pp.37,

72, 133, 2231, and this blue is transferred to the bags in which sugar is

packed (p.42), to the wool o f knitted children's harness (p.691, to an

enamel cook-pot (p.931, to the canopy over Agnes Mat zerath's bed (p. 152),

and to that over the cradle of Oskar's son (p.296). Even Leo Schugger has

watery blue eyes (p.161), and in the Church o f the Sacred Heart in

Danzig Oskar discovers the dreamy blue Bronski eyes in the figure of

Jesus, "those Bronski eyes, those eyes which misunderstood me l ike a

father, which had been painted into Jesus's face" (p.1341, and the smaller

Jesus figure, propped u p on t h e Virgin Mary's r ight thigh, l ikewise had

"cobalt b lue Bronski eyes" (p.136). T h e blue e y e s d o not only connec t

Saleem with Oskar, but through t h e blue-eyed Je sus es tabl ish a fu r the r

correspondence be tween t h e t w o novels, for blue i s not only t h e colour of

t h e Kashmiri sky, but in India t h e colour of Krishna. A snake c h a r m e r

wi th bright-blue skin is "Krishna c o m e t o chas t i s e his people", and " the

sky-hued Je sus of t h e missionaries" (MA, p.136 and c f . 103), and Resham

Bibi a l so tu rns "bright blue, Krishna-blue, b lue a s Jesus, t h e blue of

Kashmiri sky, which some t imes leaks in to eyes" (p.44). T h e Jesus-blue of

t h e Indian novel could just a s well h a v e leaked in to i t f rom T h e Tin Drum . Oskar a s J e sus becomes pa r t of t h e Holy Family (TJ, p.1421, and

Matze ra th ' s second wife "wasn't just ca l l ed Maria; s h e was one" (p.255).

When Oskar and Ulla a r e working a s a r t i s t ' s models in Diisseldorf, s h e

becomes t h e Madonna, whi le h e s i t s for J e sus (p.464). It would seem a t

f i rs t sight t h a t a Holy Family would h a v e n o pa r t t o play in Saleem's

India, bu t Saleem's mo the r h i res a Chris t ian ayah, Mary Perei ra , and "like

e v e r y Mary s h e had h e r Joseph. Joseph D'Costa, a n order ly a t a Pedde r

Road Clinic" (MC, p.1041, and Mary loves t h e child "like he r own uncon-

ce ived and inconceivable son" (p.205). This Chris t ian Holy Family is

para l le l led by a Hindu one, s ince Saleem's son is in r ea l i t y t h e son of

Shiva and Parvat i - the-Witch, " fa ted t o m e e t by t h e divine des t iny o f thei r

names" (p.389).

Oskar's imi t a t ion of Chr i s t r ema ins a powerful fo rce t o t h e end of

his story. On his t h i r t i e th bi r thday h e f inds i t urgent ly necessary t o

consider t h e fu tu re di rect ion of his l ife, and s ince Chris t was about t h i r ty

when h e wen t fo r th t o g a t h e r disciples, s o Oska r t o o must consider t h e

possibility: "Jus t because I happen t o b e th i r ty , I g o ou t and play t h e

Messiah they see in me" (m, p.577). Oska r knows t h e impor t ance of t h e

th i r t i e th birthday, and t h e thirty-year-old he ro r ecu r s throughout European

~ i t e r a t u r e . ~ I t is not however so s ignif icant in Hindu o r Mohammedan

traditions, y e t Sa l eem Sinai t oo i s t h i r ty when h e wr i t e s h is history,

complet ing i t on his th i r ty-f i rs t b i r thday (MA, p.462).

T h e impor t ance of t h e ' im i t a t io Chris t i ' t h e m e in t h e Tin Drum i s

fu r the r parallelled in Midnight 's Chi ldren by r e f e r e n c e t o de i t i e s f rom t h e

Hindu pantheon. T h e narra tor , Sa l eem Sinae, is born wi th a "rampant

cucumber of [a] nose" (MA, p.124, cf. p.154). This ou t s i ze monstrous nose

of t h e Mohammedan child c o n n e c t s him t o t h e Hindu e lephant-headed god,

Ganesh (p.155). Much later Saleem's son - although "he was the child of

a father who was not his father" - putative parentage playing as important

a role in this novel as in The Tin Drum - "was the true great-grandson

of his great-grandfather, but elephantiasis attacked him in the ears instead

of the nose - because he was also the true son of Shiva-and-Parvati; he

was elephant-headed Ganesh; ..." (p.420). Now Ganesh is the patron of

literature, partaking as he does of the two most intelligent beings, man

and the elephant; it is therefore propitious that the narrator should have

an elephantine nose and his son elephantine ears. But Ganesh is also the

child of Parvati, wife of Shiva, and In the novel Saleem's son is the child

of Parvati-the-Witch and Shiva, the true son of Saleem's parents. Both

Parvati and Shiva are connected in Hindu mythology with destructive

forces. In the novel Shiva is able to destroy men by crushing them

between his knees and is the destroyer of Saleem. The goddess Parvati

is, however, also Kali, the black goddess, and in the fusion of the black

goddess and the name of Saleem's first wife, Parvati-the-Witch, we are

inevitably reminded of Grass's 'schwarze K6chin' who appears in the

English translation as the Rlack Witch (m, p.579). Rushdie's Black Angel

Parvati-Kali is also the Widow, lndira Gandhi, and at this stage of the

novel (towards the end) Rushdie further emphasises the many-faceted

aspects of Kali by likening Indira Gandhi to Devi (p.438) and by introducing

a figure called Durga (p.445), whose name is also that of another of the

many terrifying forms assumed by the wife of Shiva.

To return to the narrator, Saleem Sinai, who hears "the soft footfalls

of the Black Angel of Death" (p.447): he has now revealed himself as

Oskar Matzerath's kin:

... a t the Shadipur bus depot[ ...I was an angled mirror above the entrance to the bus garage; I, wandering aimlessly in the forecourt of the depot, found my attention caught by its winking reflections of the sun[ ...I Looking upwards into the mirror, I saw myself transformed into a big- headed, top-heavy dwarf. (MA, pp.446-7)

Oskar Matzerath of course chooses to be a dwarf. He "felt obliged to

provide a plausible ground for my failure to grow" (m, p.57) and arranges

a plausible injury by throwing himself down the cellar steps: "from the

ninth step, I flung myself down, carrying a shelf laden with bottles of

raspberry syrup along with me, and landed head first on the cement floor

of our cellar'' (p.58). Saleem Sinai, at the end of his narrative, "raises

questions which a r e not fully answered, such as: Why did Saleem need an

accident t o acquire his powers?" (MA, p.460). The accident was "a

cleansing accident" (p.356), it induced amnesia: "everything ended, every-

thing began again, when a spittoon hit m e on the back of the head" and

"Saleem, [...I had gone; I...] for the moment, anyway, there is was only t h e

buddha L.1 who remembers neither fathers nor mothers; for whom mid-

night holds no importance; I...] who lives both in-the-world and not-in-the-

worldn (p.356). "In-the-world and not-in-the-worldn is of course also the

situation of Oskar in his bed in the mental hospital o r of Oskar the adult

in the body of a child. Saleem now, "with his nose like a cucumber and

his head which rejected memories families histories, which contained

nothing except smells" (p.351), who "can track man o r beast through

s t ree t s o r down rivers" (p.356). i s employed a s a man-dog tracker in the

fighting in East Pakistan in 1971; h e i s assigned t o a CUTlA unit (Canine

Unit for Tracking and Intelligence Activities) of the Pakistani army. The

acronym nCUTIA" is also Hindi for a bitch, one of Saleem's linguistic

jokes, which also remlnd one of Grass.

Saleem's accident i s not arranged like Oskar's; Oskar takes a

decision, makes a choice; Saleem is an air-raid victim (MC, p.343). This

difference between their 'accidents' is typical of their roles in the respec-

t ive novels. Oskar i s act ive throughout; he i s the drummer, the glass-

shat terer , the leader of the Duster gang; his act ions lead t o the deaths

of Jan Bronski and of Matzerath; h e decides t o be Tom Thumb and

announces himself a s Jesus. Saleem Sinai, on the other hand, suffers

things done t o him: he i s a changeling just a f t e r his birth; he i s a

"clownish figure [...I somehow conspired againstn (MC, p.2541, the "sort of

person t o whom things have been done; [...I perennial victim" (p.237). In

spi te of this, Saleem's very passivity enables Rushdie t o use him a s the

agent of the main structural device h e has borrowed from Grass: the

reflection of public events through and against a private story.

Rushdie's maln structural device is indeed the linking of the narra-

tor's s tory with contemporary lndian history. The narrator, Saleem Sinai,

was born a t the very moment of Indian Independence, and witnesses,

participates in, occasionally causes political events of the next 30 years,

from t h e massacres which accompanied Par t it ion, through the language

r iots in Bombay, t h e Ayub Khan coup in Pakistan, t h e Indo-Chinese war,

the Indo-Pakistan war, t o lndira Gandhi's proclamation of the S t a t e of

Emergency. The technique o f inter-weaving private and public spheres is

reminiscent o f The Tin Drum in general, but also in detail. Oskar

Matzerath concludes his narrative as follows:

What more shall I say: born under light bulbs, deliberately stopped growing at age o f three, given drum, sang glass to pieces, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, observed ants, decided to grow, buried drum, emigrated to the West, lost the East, learned stonecutter's trade, worked as model, started drumming again, visited concrete, made money, kept finger, gave finger away, fled laughing, rode up escalator, arrested, convicted, sent to mental hospital, soon to be acquitted, celebrating this day my thir t ieth birthday and st i l l afraid o f the Black Witch. (m, p.578)

Here the public sphere is present mainly by allusion; the novel has

previously established the connection between Oskar's drumming and a

Nazi parade, between the ants and the Russian occupation o f Danzig,

between concrete and the fortif ications of German-occupied France,

between making money and the Black Market. In Midnight's Children the

connection between public and private is made more explicit, almost

programmatic:

I was born in the c i ty of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The t ime matters, too. Well then: at night.1 ... 1 On the stroke o f midnight, as a matter o f fact. [...I at the precise instant o f India's arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. There were gasps. And, outside the window, fire-works and crowds[ ... 1 For the next three decades, there was to be no escape. Soothsayers had prophesied me, newspapers celebrated my arrival, polit ics rat i f ied my authenticity. I was lef t entirely without a say in the matter. I, Saleem Sinai, later variously called Snotnose, Stainface, Raldy, Sniffer, Buddha and even Piece-of-the- Moon, had become heavily embroiled in Fate - at the best o f times a dangerous sort o f involvement. And I couldn't even wipe my own nose at the time.

Now, however, t ime (having no further use for me) is running out. I wi l l be thirty-one years old. (MC, p.9)

If, as David Roberts has said, "it is not so easy to see any connexion

between [Oskar's] private fantasies and the great world of politics and war

i n which he is inescapably caught up, the more so as German and European

history is treated as the mere backdrop for Oskar's personal recollec-

t i ons~ ' ,~ Rushdie is at pains both to keep historical events in the fore-

ground, and to insist on the close involvement o f private and public

destinies. The historical and polit ical aspect o f Midnight's Children is

emphasised continually by references t o specif ic dates , people, even t s and

places, and these references a r e assiduously intertwined with t h e narrator 's

personal story, even when no direct parallel o r connection can be estab-

lished (e.g. MA, pp.292-3). But Saleem is not only frequently direct ly

involved o r act ively participating in public affairs. The Midnight's

Children's Conference - t h e te lepathic communication between t h e 581

children born a t midnight on Independence Day - is Saleem's work, and it

i s Saleem who t r i e s t o exploit their g i f t s by urging them t o adopt a

programme o f act ion, ''our own Five Year Plan" (MA, p.255). And when

t h e children a r e subjected during lndira Gandhi's Emergency t o vasectomy,

hysterectomy, t e s t ec tomy and (Saleem's neologism) "sperectomy: the

draining-out of hope'' (p.4371, the re is still hope tha t a new generat ion of

their descendants will be a n ac t ive fo rce in t h e affairs of India. This

interweaving of pr ivate and public is not only demonstrated by t h e

incidents of t h e narrative, it i s offered a s a programme for t h e s t ruc tu re

of t h e novel:

I was linked t o history both literally and metaphorically, both act ively and passively, in what our (admirably modern) scient is ts might t e rm 'modes of connection' composed of dualistically-combined configurations of t h e two pairs of opposed adverbs given above. This is why hyphens a r e necessary: actively-literally, passively-metaphorically, actively- metaphorically and passively-literally, I was inextricably entwined with my world. (p.238)

The na r ra to r goes on t o explain t h e t e r m s t o his bewildered l is tener and

ends with:

And finally the re is t h e 'mode' of t h e 'active-metaphorical ' , which groups together those occasions on which things done by o r t o m e were mirrored in t h e macrocosm of public affairs, and my private exis tence was shown t o b e symbolically a t one with history (p.238).

T h e bewildered listener t o Saleem's narrat ive is his second wife (or

very nearly), Padma: she is introduced a t t h e beginning of t h e second

chap te r of t h e book, and whether listening t o o r reading t h e narrat ive over

Saleem's shoulder, she interrupts and questions; Padma "with her down-to-

ear thery, and he r paradoxical superstition, he r contradictory love of t h e

fabulous," is always a t t h e narrator 's elbow, "bullying m e back into t h e

world of linear narrative, t h e universe of what-happened-next" (MA, p.381,

"getting i r r i ta ted whenever my narrat ion becomes self-conscious" (p.65).

"This is what keeps me going: I hold on to Padma, Padma is what

matters I...] Padma my own pure lotus I...] who, embarrassed, commands:

'Enough. Start. Start now"' (p.294). Padma is not only a more fully

drawn character than Oskar's warden, Bruno. She is an integral part of

the novel's structure, and as such has not been borrowed from Giinter

Grass, but is Rushdie's own successful addition to the form of The Tin

Drum.

Saleem and Oskar are brothers not only because o f their blue eyes,

their deformities, their unusual gifts, their claims to leadership, and their

roles as private reflections of public events. Also as narrators they have

much in common. Both adopt the stance of the unreliable narrator, who

rejects omniscience and openly admits his weaknesses. Oskar repeatedly

qualifies his statements with a proviso that his memory may not be

entirely reliable (TD, pp.27, 98, 164) and makes a point of casting doubt

upon the accuracy of his narration: "I have just read the last paragraph.

I am not too well satisfied, but Oskar's pen ought to be, for writ ing

tersely and succinctly, i t has managed, as terse, succinct accounts so often

do, to exaggerate and mislead, i f not to lie" (p.240). The distinction

drawn here between the "I" and "Oskar's pen" reveals the two levels on

which the narrative proceeds. The narrator is constantly playing with the

idea o f the traditional acceptance o f authorial report: "Don't ask me,

please, how I know'' (p.287). Examples of narrative uncertainty are so

numerous as to show that they constitute a deliberate styl ist ic device.

(Cf. also pp.246, 282, 301, 315, 323, 460, 513.)

Rushdie's narrator adopts a similar pose; he too reviews what he has

wri t ten and directs the reader's attention to his unreliability as a narrator:

"Re-reading my work, I have discovered an error in chronology[ ... 1 Does one

error invalidate the whole fabric? Am I so far gone, in my desperate

need for meaning, that I'm prepared t o distort everything - to re-write the

whole history of my times purely in order to place myself in a central

role? Today, in my confusion, I can't judge" (MC, p.166). Rushdie is

indeed on record as admitt ing that this is a narrative principle in his

novel: "I made my narrator, Saleem, suspect in his narration: his mis-

takes are the mistakes of a fallible memory compounded by quirks of

character and of circumstance, and his vision is fragmentary".4 Padma,

the narrator's interlocutor, clearly stands for the reader when the narrator

says to her: "Padma, i f you're a l i t t l e uncertain of my reliability, well,

a little uncertainty is no bad thing. Cocksure men do terrible deeds"

(MC, p.212). It is Padma who keeps the narrator on the rails, but being

kept on the rails does not vouchsafe freedom from error (cf. p.270). Keith

Wilson speaks of the "participatory but implicit contract that Rushdie has

with his reader, a contract premised on his reader's knowledge of the

conventions and deceptions of the narrative act." Rushdie may have

learned not only from Grass, but possibly from Max Frisch and Christa

Wolf when he discounts the primacy of 'real' events: "What actually

happened is less important than what the author can persuade his audience

to believe" (pp.270-I). Oskar's admissions of defective memory are also

part of Saleem's techniques (MA, pp.386, 406-7, 4131, but Midnight's

Children is much more consistently than The Tin Drum "a novei centrally

concerned with the imperfections of any narrative act I...] a novel that

deliberately invites a questioning of the credentials of the nove~ist ."~

Grass may have given the original impetus, but Rushdie develops the

technique into a narrative programme.

Both narrators constantly intrude into the narrative, by comments

placed In parenthesis or by addressing the reader directly (E, pp.300, 355,

461, 466, 502. 514. 519, 531; MA, pp.12-13. 179, 293. 335). Both there-

fore involve the reader directly in the process of narration, and both

comment on the possibilities open to the narrator with the connivance of

the reader. Grass, for instance, has Oskar reflect on how to begin his

story: "You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by

striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern C.1 Or you

can declare a t the very start that it's impossible to write a novel nowa-

days, but then, behind your own back so to speak, give birth to a whopper , a novei to end all novels" (m, p.13). Saieem asks the reader's permission

''to tell the story the right way" (s, p.335) and makes the reader's

participation in the narrative a principle of narration: "I have not, I

think, been good a t describing emotions - believing any audience to be

capable of joining in; of imagining for themselves what I have been

unable to re-imagine, so that my story becomes yours as well I...]" (p.293).

As a consequence o f , this postulated collaboration between narrator and

reader, both Oskar and Saleem make frequent use of the rhetorical

question (or question addressed to the reader?) to move the story forward

(e.g. Z , p.119; MC, pp.144-5).

This device is the most pervasive one common to the two novels.

It implies in both cases a rejection o f the straightforward story line o f the

narrator who claims to be in fu l l control. This rejection is further

illustrated in the way the two narrators resort to recapitulation at

frequent intervals and t o hints of what is st i l l to come, thus constantly

pointing backwards and forwards: Oskar promises to speak o f something

in a moment (TJ, p.951, introduces a theme and defers it, saying "that is

another subject" (p.1141, promises to speak o f something later on (p.229)

or warns the reader that "we haven't seen the last of Corporal Lankes,

the master of 'concrete' art;" (pp.336-7). Saleem admits: "I'm talking as

i f I never saw him again; which isn't true. But that, o f course, must get

into the queue l ike everything else [...I (MA, p.299) and promises his inter-

locutor the excitement o f events yet to come: "I'm not finished yet!

There is to be electrocution and a rain-forest; a pyramid o f heads on a

field impregnated by leaky marrowbones; narrow escapes are coming, and

a minaret that screamed! Padna, there is st i l l plenty worth telling ..." (p.346).

Both Grass and Rushdie are rumbustious, breathless story-tellers.

Take the passage from The Tin Drum in which Oskar recalls his dream

of the terrifying merry-go-round (TJ, pp.404-5) and compare i t with

Saleem's account o f his feverish dream (F&, pp.207-8). The breathless

haste o f the narration is achieved by a fugal concatenation of simple

clauses with repetit ion of phrases, and accumulation of verbs. I t is a

technique which prevades both novels. Both novelists have a predilection

for place-names, street-names, names o f buildings: Rombay is evoked with

the same loving attention to convincing local colour as Danzig. Oskar

drums "from Labesweg to Max-Halbe-Platz, thence to Neuschottland,

Marienstrasse, Kleinhammer Park, the Aktien Brewery, Aktien Pond, FrBbel

Green, Pestalozzi School, the Neue Markt, and back again to Labesweg"

( a , p.59). Saleem's parents drive "past Band Box Laundry and Reader's

Paradise; past Fatboy jewels and Chinalker toys, past One Yard of

Chocolate and Reach Candy gates, driving towards D r Narlikar's Nursing

Home ..." (MA, p.114). Saleem could be speaking for Oskar too when he

says that there is "no escape from recurrence" (p.285). Both narrators

play wi th traditional narrative devices, such as "once upon a time"; Oskar

most remarkably in the chapter "Faith, Hope, Love" with the eighteen

variations on the "once there was" theme i n eight pages. Saleem borrows

this technique for t h e chap te r en t i t l ed "At t h e Pioneer Caf@': "Once upon

a t i m e the re was a mother , who ..." (p.213), and "Once upon a t i m e the re

was a n underground husband, who ..." (p.216).

Another s tyl is t ic device used by both novelists is t h e insistence on

t h e s imultanei ty of public and pr ivate events, using t h e conjunction 'while'

t o suggest an interrelationship (e.g. E, p.362; @, pp.379-80, 461). But

the re i s still another important s t ructural device in Rushdie's novel which

is not t o b e found t o t h e s a m e ex ten t in T h e Tin Drum. T h e T.L.S. reviewer described Midnight's Children a s a "cinema-obsessed narrative",

and cer ta inly t h e narrator frequently admi t s t o t h e use of film-techniques:

"Reality is a question of perspect ive [ ..J Suppose yourself in a large

cinema, s i t t ing a t f i rs t in t h e back row, and gradually moving up, row by

row, until your nose is a lmost pressed against t h e screen. Gradually the

s tars ' f aces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny detai ls assume grotesque

proportions ..." (s, pp.165-6). "I permit myself t o insert a Bombay-

talkie-style close-up ...'I (p.346). India produces more films than any o the r

country in t h e world, except Japan. lndian cinemas a r e packed full from

mid-morning t o l a t e a t night: t h e appe t i t e for films seems insatiable and

t h e appe t i t e is for t h e Bombay-talkie, by Western European s tandards a

naive, e lementary use of t h e c inema t o produce unsophisticated and

garishly coloured s tor ies of love and violence. Thus, when t h e narrator

has t o recount a ser ies of d ramat ic incidents, he comments ironically:

"Melodrama piling upon melodrama; l i fe acquiring t h e colouring of a

Bombay-talkien (p.148). The cinema, being such an all-pervading par t of

t h e lndian cul tural scene, must reach into t h e novel itself. Saleem's uncle

Hanif

had not only succeeded in becoming t h e youngest man e v e r t o be given a film t o d i rec t in t h e history of t h e lndian cinema; h e had also wooed and married o n e of t h e brightest s t a r s of tha t celluloid heaven, t h e divine Pia [...I she s t a r red in his f i rs t feature , which was par t ly financed by Homi Ca t rack and par t ly by D. W. R a m a Studios (Pvt.) Ltd - i t was called The Lovers of Kashmir (p.142).

Saleem's film-actress aunt, t h e divine Pia, incidentally, although s o much

of t h e world of t h e Bombay talkie, nevertheless has something in common

with t h e world of T h e Tin Drum. Jus t a s Oskar's grandmother "had on

not just one skirt, but four, o n e over t h e o the r [...]distinguished by a

lavish expanse of mater ia ln which "puffed and billowed when t h e wind

came'' (E. p.14). so Saleem's aunt Pia "was a divine swirl o f petticoats

and dupatta" (MA, p.248); just as Koljaiczek hides from the police under

the grandmother's skirts, so does Saleem hide from a nightmare, "nestled

against my extraordinary aunt's petticoats" (MC, p.248).

"Hanif Aziz, the only realistic writer working in the Bombay fi lm

industry, was writ ing the story of a pickle factory" (p.244). which presages

Saleem's last refuge and introduces the theme o f narrating as pickling and

vice-versa, hut "in the indirect kisses of the Lovers o f Kashmir he fore-

told my mother and her Nadir-Quasim's meetings at the Pioneer CafC"

(p.244). Whereas Oskar observes the physical rumblings of the love-play

between his mother and Jan Bronski (TJ, pp. 65, 153), Saleem watches his

mother and her lover play out their love-scene "through the dirty, square,

glassy cinema-screen o f the Pioneer Cafk's window" (MC, p.216), but their

love-play "is, af ter all, an Indian movie, in which physical contact is

forbidden" and "so i t was that l i fe imitated bad art" (p.217; cf. p.241).

But even the f i lm theme has i ts antecedents in The Tin Drum.

Describing Koljaiczek's encounter wi th Duckerhoff on the 'Radaune', Oskar

says: "We know the scene from the movies'' (m, p.28). and l ike Saleem,

Oskar was himself an avid picture-goer (p.146, also p.50). Jan Rronski had

"a collection o f movie stars out o f cigarette packages'' (p.51). and the

dramatized account o f the breakfast on the pill-box o f the Atlantic wall,

wi th the discreet reference to movie-houses and newsreels, could well he

a film-script (pp.326-36). Pathos is offered "as in the movies" (p.418; cf.

also pp.478, 569, 571). For both narrators film-techniques are an inferior

form o f shaping and forming events, and are used to parody banality in

art. Form and shape are for both narrators explicit concerns. "Everything

has shape, i f you look for it", Saleem Sinai proclaims, "There is no

escape from form" (M-C, p.226). He appears to believe that this is an

Indian characteristic (p.300). Even towards the end, when he fears dis-

integration, he cannot abandon form: "Form - once again, recurrence and

shape! - no escape from it" (p.440). The longing for form is something

imposed from without; he has "always been in the grip of a form-crazy

destiny" (p.444), and i n his sustained analogy between the pickling process

and the art o f the story-teller, he comes to the same conclusion: "The

art is to change the flavour i n degree, but not in kind; and above all ( in

my thir ty jars and a jar) to give i t shape and form - that is to say,

meaning'' (p.461). Oskar's analogy is not wi th pickling, but wi th drumming,

and when his drumming a t t r a c t s admirers, "they led Oskar to discipline his

ar t , to strive for greater formal purityn (TD, p.100). He has a passion for

order (p.203) and rejects "uninspired interpretations" which "can be read

into any text you please" (TJ, p.396). He sees significant form in the

tapering shapes of coffins, finds happiness in shaping stone, and in the

form of his let ter Os, which always had "a fine regularity and endlessness"

about them, "though they tended t o he too large," a comment perhaps on

his own narrative design (p.436). Here again Rushdie is more explicitly

programmatic than his mentor, but the parallel suggests that Grass may

have provided the initial impetus. The "willingness to confront, shape and

communicate the inevitable compromises of illusory fictional realismvw6 is

integral t o The Tin Drum, and is carried over into Midnight's Children.

Rushdie has certainly borrowed from other sources, as well a s The Tin Drum, most obviously from A Thousand and One Nights. The connec-

tion with Germany is established through Dr Aziz's bag, which he brought

back from Heidelberg, where he actually had a friend named Oskar.

Saleem seems t o have inherited some of his grandfather's German con-

nections; he can speak of Valkyries and'GrtlndIsseg, and there a r e several

moments in his narrative when h e seems close t o other authors than

Grass. His unique gift of smell is reminiscent of Biill's Clown; his search

for totality in art , parodied in the account of Lifafa Das, and of the

painter Nadir Khan, "whose paintings had grown larger and larger a s he

tried t o get the whole of life into his art" (MA, p.481, suggest an acquain-

tance with the work of Hermann Broch; Ahmed Sinai, who had the

"peculiarity of always being in a good mood until a f te r he had shaved - af te r which, each morning, his manner became stern, gruff, business-like

and distant" (p.68) recalls the daily changes of mood of Brecht's Herr

Puntila; and his insistence that memory has i t s own special kind of truth

is a motif to be found both in Max Frisch's Wilderness of Mirrors and in

Christa Wolf's Quest for Christa T.

Grass, however, is the mainspring of German influence on Midnight's

Children. In spi te of Padma, the narrator's interlocutor, and in spite of

t h e Bombay-talkie background, the similarities between the two novels in

s tructure and style, in overall intention and in significant detail, constantly

arrest the reader's attention. The immense culture-gap between Danzig

and Rombay is bridged by a brilliant adaptation by Rushdle of the

techniques employed by Grass. Rushdie could not have borrowed so much

and so successfully from Crass unless he had had some aff in i ty wi th him.

He shares with Crass a zest for story-telling, and for tel l ing ta l l stories;

a warm sense o f humanity, sympathy for the under-dog, the victim, the

l i t t le man; and a contemptuous hatred o f the oppressors. Because o f this

af f in i ty he can borrow from Crass a novel-structure, motifs and stylistic

devices, and successfully adapt them to a totally different culture.

And hecause o f this he can use his narrator's life-story as a mirror

o f his country's history in his lifetime. David Roberts says of Oskar:

"His l i fe is the symbol of the journey o f a nation into callective schizo-

phrenia, guilt and denied guilt, the story o f the fatal pact wi th the devil

and the triumph of the powers of the uncons~ious."~ Saleem as one o f

Midnight's Children, who is born at the exact moment o f Indian indepen-

dence and whose l i fe is of f ic ia l ly proclaimed hy Jawaharlal Nehru himself

as a mirror of Indian history (cf. MC, p.122). is finally castrated on lndira

Gandhi's orders. The new lndia which is born with Saleem is mutilated

by Indira Gandhi's emergency decrees of 1976, and what Saleem's Canesh

nose finally smells is "the sharp aroma of despotism" (p.424). L ike the

Rlack Witch of The T in Drum, i t is finally the Widow who presides over

catastrophe. "the Widow, who was not only Prime Minister o f lndia but

also aspired to be Devi, the Mother-Goddess in her most terrible aspect,

possessor of the shakti of the gods, a multi-limbed divinity with a centre-

parting and schizophrenic hair ..." (p.438). Just as Oskar-Germany suc-

cumbs in the confl ict between Tom Thumb and the Imitation of Christ, so

is Saleem-India destroyed by the Rlack Goddess who is Parvati, Devi,

Durga and the Widow, Indira Gandhi.

And this is probably the weakness o f Rushdie's novel when compared

with The Tin Drum. The menace o f the 'schwarze Kochin' is all-pervading

and al l the greater because she is not clearly identified. She represents

the unnamed, undefined powers o f evil, and as a figure o f truly mythol-

ogical proportions ( in spite o f or perhaps because o f her origins in a

children's rhyme), her menace is al l the more powerful. Rushdie similarly

invokes the mythological power o f Kali, the Black Goddess, who is also

Parvati (and by extension the character in the novel Parvati-the-Witch) and

is Durga and Devi, but makes specific the identif ication of the goddess

with the Widow, Indira Gandhi. The concentration o f the evil in a

country's history on to the specific events o f the 1976 emergency, reduces

the scale o f the menace to the incidental. The Black Witch o f The T in

Drum s t ands for a t h r e a t of evil which t r anscends t h e incidenta l evil of

National Socialism; Rushdie's Black Goddess, when ident i f ied wi th t h e

Widow, loses t h e mythological dimension which t h e na r r a t ive has t r i ed t o

build up. And yet , in s p i t e of th is weakness, Midnight's Chi ldren r ema ins

a magnif icent tour-de-force in adapt ing t h e techniques of a novel f rom o n e

cu l tu re t o po r t r ay a view of public and p r iva t e history from a n en t i r e ly

d i f f e ren t cu l tu re , and i t i s o n e of t h e f ines t novels y e t t o appea r by an

Indian novelist wri t ing about India.

1. T h e edi t ions used h e r e a r e t h e P icador edi t ion of Midnight 's Chi ldren (1982; in references: MC) and t h e Penguin t ransla t ion of T h e Tin Drum (1969; in references: TJ), a t ransla t ion by Ralph Manheim f i r s t published in 1961, t w o y e a r s a f t e r t h e publication of D ie Blechtrommel .

2. Cf. R. S t Leon, "Rel igious Motives i n Kafka's D e r Prozess", AUMLA 19 (1963), p.25.

3. D. Rober ts , T o m Thumb and t h e Imita t ion of Christ!', AULLA XIV Proceedings and P a p e r s (Dunedin, 19721, p. 160.

4. Quoted by Ke i th Wilson, 'Midnight 's Chi ldren and Reade r Responsi- bility", Cr i t i ca l Quar ter ly , 26, No.3 (1984), p.26.

5. Wilson, Ioc. cit., p.30.

6. Wilson, loc. cit., p.36.

7. Rober ts , loc. cit., p.172.

REVIEWS

Horst S. and Ingrid Daemmrich. Themes and Motifs in Western Literature :

A Handbook. Tubingen: Francke, 1987. pp.xii, 255. ISBN 3-7720-1776-2.

Handbooks on l i terary terms or materials necessarily overlap, but never so

thoroughly that a useful new one, as cleverly conceived as this is, wil l

fai l t o make i t s mark. The Daemmrichs stake out a distinct cultural

terr i tory by favouring the l i terary periods from Romanticism to the

present and emphasising the Anglo-American, French and German traditions.

They are interested in creative transformation in i ts historical particularity.

The user should pass at once from their terse preface to the discursive

entries on 'figure', 'motif ' and 'theme' for their view on how recurrent

elements and patterns are articulated. Not just the lack o f pictorial

reproductions separates their more str ict ly l i terary ef for t from such works

as J. C. Cooper's global I l lustrated Encyclopedia o f Traditional Symbols or

George Ferguson's specialised Signs and Symbols in Christian Art. The

Daemmrichs make virtually no mention of iconological matters aside from

a br ief glimpse at the 'emblem'. Even a select iconological term such as

'hieroglyph' does not appear despite the Romantic fascination for it.

Although the relevant vocabulary occurs in the course o f other discussion,

they of fer no separate entries on terms such as 'myth', 'archetype' and

'symbol' wi th which their subject area - relevant, they think, to "other

disciplines concerned with human behaviour" (p.xi) - is of ten associated in

contemporary theory.

Hence they clearly are not vying to displace J. E. Cirlot's extensively

iconological, as well as l i terary, A Dictionary o f Symbols (translated from

Spanish into English by Jack Sage) which opens with some 50 pages on

these topics influenced by Jung, Eliade, and other myth-analysts. The

Daemmrichs resemble Cirlot, though, in avoiding prolix technical arguments

about the l i terary encoding of cultural systems and i n employing common-

sensical distinctions between paradigmatic and syntagmatic features. With

a text almost double as long, Cirlot naturally covers more items, whether

things, images, concepts, systems, basic plots, or mythological figures. But

while managing to include also some mildly exotic terms l ike 'yang-yin',

'zodiac', 'unicorn', 'sefirot', etc., Cir lot in contrast is missing some obvious

latter-day ones l ike 'ennui' and 'picaro' and carries l i t t l e information on

the 'double' and 'incest'. The Daemmrichs share the post-Romantic

German fascination for doubles, rogues, inimical brothers, and incest that

has attained voluminous proportions - and richness of reference - in

Elisabeth Frenzel's well-established Motive der Weltliteratur. They supple-

ment Frenzel with treatment of such important motivic systems as

'alchemy', 'city', 'garden' and 'labyrinth', and their predilection for the

kind of complex thematology these headings embrace reveals their ulti-

mately greater proximity to Cirlot. The modern slant in their handbook

strikes the eye right at the start of the alphabet in substantial entries on

the 'absurd', 'abyss', 'androgyne', 'alienation', 'apocalypse', 'automaton',

etc.

Frenzel's other well-known handbook Stoffe der Weltliteratur bears

the same subtitle as her Motive der Weltliteratur: "Ein Lexikon

dichtungsgeschichtlicher Langsschnitte". The Daemmrichs, too, want to

further our appreciation of the relevance of such longitudinal, that is,

diachronic, dimensions in the literary repertory, but they stress less the

comprehensiveness of a register of materials than the possible insights we

may gain into "often unsuspected relationships between literary works",

"themes and motifs" as powerful shaping forces in texts, their imprint as

"structural patterns" (pp.x-xi). Items that Frenzel lists separately as

literary Stoffe - real historical persons treated in literature, characters

from story and legend, Biblical and mythological lore, famous stories as

basic plots - appear scattered across the volume Themes and Motifs (e.g.

Abelard and ~dloise, the Grail, David, etc.).

Arguing that 'a chain or complex of motifs yields a Stof?, Frenzel

asserts the 'German concept Stoff ' (roughly: 'story material') is encom-

passed 'far less precisely' in French and Anglo-American research by the

word 'theme' (Foreword to 4th printing, 1970). However, as the t i t le of

their earlier German version, Wiederholte Spiegelungen: Themen und

Motive in der Literatur (19781, shows, the Daemmrichs do not employ the

combination 'theme and motif' under any linguistic constraint. Whereas

in her foreword Frenzel assigns both 'more abstract, as i t were unembodied

(entstofflichten)' themes like 'friendship' and even 'smaller story or plot

(stofflichen)' units like the 'double' to her separate motif collection, the

American authors deliberately assemble under one roof the smallest

symbolic elements (e.g. 'hand', 'mirror'), qualities, states and motivating

principles ('power', 'disease', 'fear', 'honour'), human types ('artist', 'clown' ,

'dandy', 'hero'), fundamental plot-lines ('journey', 'revenge'), and embodied

roles, historical c a s e s and mythological f igures ('Don Juan', 'Mary Stuart ' .

'Prometheus'). Their point is t o encourage m o r e rapid cross-reference

ver t ical ly among compositional levels of l i terary t e x t s and t o p romote o r

suggest fundamental approaches in interpreta t ion. In this r ega rd t h e

Daemmrichs both cont inue t h e s t ructural is t he r i t age s ince Russian formal-

ism and t e m p e r it with a keen r e spec t for " the historical position of a

writer" (p.x). They d o not t ake any expressed position vis-'a-vis m o r e

r ecen t narra tological theor ies regarding s to ry contents.

It goes without saying tha t ce r t a in dif f icul t ies spring from t h e very

na tu re of their enterpr ise . In o rde r t o maintain a compac tness appropria te

t o a dictionary, i t i s necessary t o use examples drawn mainly from well-

known works, t hus allowing considerable foreshortening, but in p rac t i ce

this means constr ic t ing t h e fuller European range t o accommoda te t h e

favouri te academic readings of English-speaking, Franco- and Germanophi le

America. And then e v e n t h e most exper t foreshortening will somet imes

produce unintended distortions; of course, t h e proffered weal th of

examples i s not mean t t o furnish pat definitions but t o spur more ca re fu l

exegesis. T h e internal ev idence indicates tha t t h e authors a r e qu i t e

capab le of g rea t ly expanding t h e 'horizontal ' (quant i ta t ive) reper tory of

per t inent i t e m s and may perhaps h a v e sacr i f iced sui table e n t r i e s under

s p a c e res t ra ints . Obviously the i r pr imary decision h a s been for qual i ta t ive-

ly deepe r explorat ion of a m o r e t ight ly del imited corpus. They o f t e n

recommend fu r the r r ep resen ta t ive l i t e ra tu re for a n e n t r y and always

append a cr i t ical bibliography, c i t i ng e f f o r t s principally of t h e past f ive

decades , s o t h a t s tuden t s c a n quickly expand upon par t icular topics and

find their way t o t h e cu r ren t s t a t e of knowledge. Compara t i s t s devoted

t o l i t e ra tu re from t h e l a t e e ighteenth cen tu ry t o t h e present a r e bound

t o be most pleased, because - a s ment ioned above - in determining t h e

select ion of entr ies , t h e Daemmrichs privilege topics of broad r e l evance

a f t e r 1750 (e.g. ' t he noble savage', 'decadence', etc.).

Stanford University Gerald Gillespie

Gisber t Kranz: Meis terwerke in Bilduedichten: Rezevt ion von Kunst in

d e r Poesie. Frankfur t a m Main: P e t e r Lang, 1986. pp.421. ISBN

3-8024-9091-4. Das Bildgedicht: Theorle, Lexlkon, Blbliographi, vo1.3. Kiiln:

Biihlau Verlag, 1987. pp.34 1. ISBN 3-4 120-2087-7. Das Architekturgedicht.

Koln: Bohlau Verlag, 1988. pp. 176. ISBN 3-41 20-6387-8.

It is no exaggeration to say that Gisbert Kranz single-handedly 'discovered'

and mapped out the territory of the Bildgedicht ('Gedichte auf Werke der

bildenden Kunst'), and proceeded t o an exhaustive cataloguing of i t s flora

and fauna. He was quick to grasp the interdisciplinary and pedagogical

potentialities of his subject when he embarked on his anthology of

European examples of the genre, Gedichte auf Bilder: Anthologie und

Galerie (1975): "Nicht nur fur die Kunstwissenschaft und die Literatur-

wissenschaft wiire eine repriisentative Sammlung von Rildgedichten

aufschlussreich; auch Soziologie, Linguistik, Psychologie, Komparistik und

Xsthetik konnten dieses Material verschiedenen Untersuchungen zugrunde-

legen". This anthology remains one of the too few genuinely comparative

anthologies. But it represented only a small fraction of the six thousand

examples of the Bildgedicht that Kranz's preliminary researches had

unearthed, and he published others with a more specific focus: Deutsche

Bildwerke im deutschen Gedicht (1975), and, on exclusively Christian

material. Rildmeditation der Dichter (1976). These anthologies had already

been preceded by a collection of interpretations - 27 Gedichte interpretiert

(1972) - and a thoroughgoing exploration of the history and theoretical

background of the genre - Das Bildgedicht in Europa: Zur Theorie und

Geschichte einer literarischen Gattung (1973). It was in this lat ter work

that Kranz outlined his taxonomy of the Bildgedicht, which has served

him, with appropriate modifications, in all his subsequent publications. His

classifications a r e a model of their kind, sensitive t o every generical and

expressive nuance.

Meisterwerke in Bildgedichten resumes the interpretational thread in

Kranz's venture, surveying 657 poems in 19 languages on 13 artworks

ranging from the Nike of Samothrace t o Van Gogh's Cornfield with Crows,

works chosen precisely because they a r e so productive for 'Rezeptions-

geschichte', because they have preoccupied so many generations, so many

different cultures. What is s trange is that the majority of these

examples did not provoke a literary response immediately, but lay dormant

for years, a s if gathering their power of rayonnement before i t s release,

embedding themselves in consciousness; Leonardo's Mona Lisa, for example,

had t o wait 350 years for i t s first poet, and Direr 's Melancolia (1514) was

celebrated in a poem for the first t ime only in 1834. Kranz is careful

t o adapt his critical method t o the peculiar demands of each artwork, to

those modes whereby it has exerted i t s appeal. Unfortunately the critical

intentions a r e often frustrated by anthological obligations, and arguments

a r e frequently no more than glimpsed. Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall

of Icarus, for example, "fordert auf Partei zu ergreifen, und die Autoren

der Gedichte auf dieses Gemalde tun das auch; ihre Texte vor allem

unter diesem Gesichtspunkt zu diskutieren, drangt sich geradezu auf" (p.8);

but the sheer weight of the material and t h e necessarily touristic treat-

ment produce embryonic observations such a s "Arendt ergreift Partei gegen

lkarus ftlr den Bauer" (p.363) o r "Rosemary Dobson steht nicht auf der

Seite des Hirten [...I, was aber nicht bedeutet, dass s ie zu lkarus hiilt"

(p.364). Similarly, the chapter on Watteau's L'Embarquement pour Cyth6re

examines first those poems whose reading of the picture seems to coincide

with the overt pictorial evidence, and then those which explore the unseen . suggesting that the la t te r understand their Watteau better than the

former. But this suggestion is made only in the final sentence, and the

remainder of the chapter is an enumerative sequence of poems, with the

author providing little more than captions. But it would be churlish to

insist. This book is full of illuminations, leads one along untrodden poetic

paths, and organizes i t s large corpuses with admirable critical dexterity.

The chapters on the Venus d e Milo, Laokoon and the Mona Lisa a r e

particularly rewarding fea t s of ordered investigation.

The third volume of Das Bildgedicht: Theorie. Lexikon, Bibliographie

is a 'Nachtragsband' for t h e first two, which appeared in 1981. Kranz

must bear t h e cross shared by all researchers enterprising comprehensive-

ness: the delighted discovery of omissions by reviewers. The process of

supplementation is without end. And what chaff is t o be winnowed out

from what grain? Kranz also adds texts which, had they come t o his

notice or been published in time, would have formed part of his commen-

taries in Meisterwerke in Bildgedichten. New departures in this volume

a r e provided by t h e "Register der Bildwerke" (pp.127-62) and t h e "Register

der Bildgedicht-Autoren nach Sprachen und Zeitfolge" (pp.325-35). Listings

like these make every one of Kranz's volumes an indispensable work-aid.

The latest addition to Kranz's seemingly inexhaustible undertaking is

a survey of Das Architekturgedicht, with an anthological appendix of 16

tex ts accompanled by photographs of the si tes celebrated. As in Kranz's

previous works, this s tudy contains cross-referring checkl is ts (selective), of

t h e buildings t o be found in poems and of t h e poets who have discovered

a source of u t t e rance in buildings, f rom Apollonios Rhodios t o Apollinaire,

f rom Angilbert von Centula t o Michael Ziillner; a bibliography of

secondary l i t e ra tu re is a lso included. T h e book opens with some reflec-

tions on t h e na tu re of a rch i t ec tu re in re la t ion t o t h e o the r ar ts : a

building is non-mimetic, o r only metamimetic , non-thematic and profoundly

functional. These assertions may seem t o many too categorical: one

might cal l t o mind Baudelaire's "Grand bois, vous m'effrayez c o m m e d e s

cath6dralesn ("Obsession"), o r wonder about t h e role of decorat ion in

buildings, o r ask whether anything which can be genericized c a n avoid

being thematized. Kranz occasionally falls vict im t o his own taxonomic

drive, which is displayed t o much more persuasive e f f e c t in his subsequent

typologies of t r ea tment ('Transposition', 'Suppletion', 'Memoria', 'Symbolik'

and 'Metaphorik' - t h e last-named a t t r ac t ing disproportionate a t tent ion) ,

intention ('Deskriptiv', 'Panegyrisch', 'Pejorativ', 'Politisch', 'Scherzhaft ') ,

s t ruc tu re ('Rhetorisch', 'Episch', 'Zyklisch') and Real i ta tsbezuq ('Kumulativ',

'Fiktiv', 'Ideal', 'Generell', 'Ruinenpoesie'). But despi te and beneath these

a p t and necessary discriminations, t h e architecture-poem reveals a broad

unanimity of purpose: t o resurrect t h e organic in t h e mineral and t r a c e

t h e animated and animating flow of t ime through t h e motionless monument:

"Es le is te t poetische Verwandlung d e s Stat ischen ins Dynamische, des reglos

Steinernen ins Wachst3mliche, des Raumlichen ins Zeitliche, kurz

imaginat ive Beseelung des Unbeseelten" (p.82). Kranz's work, too, is a

magnificent monument, energized by t h e tirelessness of i t s builder.

University of East Anglia, Norwich Clive Sco t t

Schenk, Christiane. Venedig im Spiegel de r Decadence - Li te ra tu r des Fin

d e Sikcle. (European University Studies Se r i e s XVIII: Comparat ive Liter-

a t u r e Vo1.45.) Frankfurt on Main, Berne, New York: P e t e r Lang, 1987.

pp.562. ISBN 3-8204-9720-X.

Schenk has read a lot of books and has paraphrased many of them in this

work, which observes fin-de-siicle depict ions of Venice in French, German,

English and, t o a degree, Italian literature. T h e subject is worthwhile, a t

least for a lengthy article. She quotes a large number of c r i t i c s very

extensively, and seems t o have few views of her own. What w e end up

with is a tedious, ineptly written, less than scholarly, sometimes coffee-

morningesque catalogue with l i t t l e analysis or speculation.

Furthermore, her paraphrases help neither our memory nor our under-

standing o f the works she considers. In many cases, however, she does

widen the usual scope by including works which flow only just in the mein-

stream of Decadent literature, l ike Barrss's La Mort de Venise, and some

which are certainly not widely known, l ike 'Ginko' and 'Biloba's' & volupheux voyage ou les PBlerines de Venise or lsolde Kurz's " ~ e k r o ~ o l i s * .

The only mainstream Venice work missing is probably Arthur Symons's

piece on Venice in Cities (1903). I t is, no doubt, facetious of me to

observe that Schenk does not mention any o f the dozen or so important

Czech Decadent novels or poems which deal wi th Venice.

The reader becomes more and inore tetchy about Schenk's frequent

comments o f the following sort: "The work o f the French poet Henri de

Regnier is hardly known ir! Germany today" (p.208). No one cares whether

i t is or not, and certainly all students of the period wi l l know Regnier.

The following advice is worse: "The works of RarrBs's followers are

di f f icul t or impossible to obtain in Germany" (p.170). She is often

repetetive; for instance, we learn on both pp.482 and 485 that The Savoy

had only a one-year run in 1896. She shows a lack o f general knowledge

about the l i terature o f the period. For example, she tells us that Adrien

Mithoucard makes frequent use o f synaesthesia and that that reminds her

o f Barrks (p.1931, appearing unaware that synaesthesia and oxymoron were

very much part o f the Decadent code. Three pages later she leads us to

doubt whether she has any sense o f l i terature whatever, when she writes:

"Epigones, i t appears, are of ten second-rank also in their style." The

Bibliography lacks three most important books on Decadence, Barbara

Charlesworth, Dark Passages (Madison and Milwaukee, 19651, Jean Pierrot.

Merveilleux e t fantastique (1974, English Translation The Decadent

Imagination, Chicago and London, 1981) and R. K. R. Thornton, The Decadent Dilemma (London, 1983).

Nevertheless, Schenk comes close to understanding the function o f

Venice i n Decadent literature. She writes that artists before the

Decadents and af ter them had paid their tr ibute to this c i t y which was

"between land and water, between being and appearance, between history

and reality" (p.41, "a wonderland made o f real i ty and imagination" (p.1 l I),

and as a dream c i ty (pp.218-19, 274-75). However, in those descriptions

she is essentially only repeat ing what t h e wri ters themselves say. Deca-

dent writers ' main concern was intermediate s ta tes . (The Bulgarian c r i t i c

Sonia Kanikova uses t h e t e rm 'interstatuality'.) Decadent l i t e ra tu re

describes intermediate s t a t e s , grows ou t of writers ' perception of them-

selves a s existing in intermediate s t a t e s and, indeed, o f t en uses inter-

mediate forms (e.g. t h e prose poem or highly lyricised prose in l i terary

criticism). Schenk has failed t o comprehend tha t Venice itself provided

a pe r fec t intermediate s t a t e for the Decadent imagination. T h e beauty

of decay, t h e orgasm of dying, t h e non-real real i ty of dreaming, semi-

s tagnant w a t e r all combine t o c r e a t e an a p t background to, o r picture of,

t h e senses, t h e sensitive aes the t i c mind a t work. This c i t y comprised an

archi tectural embodiment of the panerethism t h e Decadents cul t ivated in

the i r s tudies and cafds. Venice forms pa r t of the Decadents' conception

of their age, an age of decay, but an a g e which they fel t was bringing the

new glorious whi te barbarians who would destroy cu l tu re and rejuvenate

t h e world.

Schenk's book would probably have benefi ted from more intensive

supervision by t h e t eachers she thanks in her Foreword. Yet for all I have

said, i t might well be useful t o some s tudents of things Decadent a s a

work of reference.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London

R. B. Pynsent

P e t e r Edgerly Firchow, The Death of t h e German Cousin: Variations on

a Li terary Stereotype, 1890-1920. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP; London and

Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1987. pp.242. ISBN 0-8387-5095 -8

Firchow's appendix, T h e Na tu re and Uses of Imagology", succinctly out-

lines t h e theoret ical basis of this s tudy "of English l i terary representat ion

of Germansdur ing the decades immediately preceding and following the

turn of the century" (p.184). Tha t representation, i t is claimed, is

necessarily a "study of English self-representation", s ince "even t h e most

serious kinds of l i terature function t o re inforce s tereotypes of our own

group identity, usually by con t ras t with o the r group identities" (p.185).

T h e "Introduction" briefly examines theories of r a c e current in academic

and popular c i r c l e s during t h e period, showing how a British sense of

racial superiority initially accepted Germany a s a 'cousin'. Tha t special

relationship gradually deteriorated under the pressures of economic and

mil i tary expansion during the Second Reich, so that eventually the 'Huns'

came to be viewed as an inferior and barbaric race. Firchow indicates

that such quasi-racialist theories, now usually associated with National

Socialism, were current in Britain for much of this century.

The beginning of the hostile stereotyping of Germans Firchow locates

in the unification of Germany. The first chapter, "The Death of the

German Cousin", contains nothing essentially new, but i t usefully ties

together previous research on ' l i terary' attitudes to Germany into a

coherent whole, which covers the complete range of l i terary production

(including newspapers and boys' comics) and of attitudes, from pre-war

invasion hysteria to neutralism. A l l of this culminated in the ki l l ing o f f

o f the old cousinhood-myth in Cecil Chesterton and others.

More interesting are the following chapters, which examine in some

depth well-known authors' attitudes to, and portrayal of, Germany and the

German. The second chapter, "Joseph Conrad's Diabolic and Angelic

Germans", necessarily includes some reference to Polish views on

Germans, which helps to account for a certain virulence of presentation,

and concentrates on Wilhelm Schomberg ("Falk" and Victory), Captain

Hermann ("Falk") and Stein (Lord Jim). The first two, argues Firchow, are

"two-pfennig villains" and grotesque, whilst the German Captain and Stein

in Lord Jim are partly actors in Conrad's re-working of Goethe's w, with J im as an unintellectual Faust, "determined to strive eternally against

everything that stands in the way of what he conceives to be his destiny"

(p.57). Traces o f Goethe's Torquato Tasso further suggest that Jim is also

an unpoetical Tasso. The conclusion to this chapter breaks o f f with a

forgivable but tantalizing mention of Kurtz (Heart o f Darkness), who

intensifies Conrad's stereotype o f the bad German - Firchow continues the

argument only briefly and in general terms in his "Conclusion" (pp.185-6).

Chapter Three, "E. M. Forster's Rainbow Bridge", first establishes Forster's

liberal attitudes to, and knowledge of, German culture, before suggesting

that the deeper mythological substratum of Howard's End is Wagnerian in

i ts use o f Germanic mythology. The author carefully guards against too

'pat' a transposition of such German elements into the plot o f that novel,

however, whilst also offering some illuminating views of i t .

The sexual implications of the national stereotype are taken up in

the fourth chapter, "The Loves o f English Women and German Men",

which, except for Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford), is devoted to women wr i te rs ,

including Katharine Mansfield and Dorothy M. Richardson. Interesting here

is the pervasiveness of the idea that German men are unable to make

suitable husbands for English women, however sympathetic these women

may be to Germans initially. Apparently, British culture tended t o be

viewed a s feminine, German a s masculine. Chapter Five, "The Mental

Slum", is largely devoted t o a very thorough examination of Kipling's Mary

Postgate, which arrives a t an even-handed conclusion about Kipling's

ignorance a s t o how people's prejudices a r e often confounded by t h e

reality of suffering. "Wellington House and the Strange Death of a

Liberal Professor" (ch.6) concentrates, a f te r a brief summary of John

Buchan's and Thomas Hardy's propaganda efforts, on the work and post-war

at t i tudes of Gilbert Murray, the 'liberal professor' whose later disillusion-

ment arose from awareness of his own complicity in the spiritual and

intellectual corruption of propaganda. Firchow is a l i t t le unfair to

Murray, viewing Murray's resigned irony about war a s "equanimity" (p.125).

One of the most interesting parts of this book is t h e seventh c h a p t e r ,

"'Into Cleanness Leaping': Brooke. Eliot, Shaw and Lawrence". Here,

Firchow links these four writers by their view of death of the old self a s

a necessary s tep towards re-birth of a 'Life Force', war a s t h e only means

by which decadence can be overcome. It is a daring but often convincing

comparison between four wri ters usually considered so disparate.

In concluding that t h e notion of the German cousin was altogether

dead by 1915, Firchow claims that t h e stereotype of the efficiently bar-

baric Hun is unlikely to be eradicated from British minds until a t least the

end of this century. Firchow's thesis on Anglo-German relations between

1890-1920 is that t h e induced image of German cruelty and militarism,

along with many literary productions about a Prussian invasion of this

country, predisposed t h e British to mass hysteria and hallucinations about

atroci t ies once the war began, and made resistance t o the war-effort all

but impossible. Whllst this may sound like a s tatement of the obvious,

Firchow's merit lies in demonstrating convincingly both the general

development and the finer distinctions of the British mentality 1890-1920.

Wittily erudite, and with a frequently wry elegance, Firchow dispels many

cherished British myths about Germans and about British superiority.

University of Hull E. A. McCobb

Concepts ed. by Peter

Boerner. Raden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1986. pp.262. ISBN

3-7890- 1304-8.

This volume consists of a collection of twelve papers read at a conference

of American and European academics at Indiana University in 1985, the

aim being an exploration of the meaning and the dimensions of the com-

plex notion of national identity. In order to ascertain whether an inter-

disciplinary dialogue on this topic might be profitable, the scholars invited

to participate included researchers in language, literature, history and

political science, although scholars from the disciplines of sociology and

psychology were surprisingly absent. In an attempt to avoid what Roerner

terms "the limitations and partisanship that so easily cling to discussions

of a particular nation" (p.16). the participants follow a path of comparative

investigation, dealing with certain nations of Western Europe (Germany,

France and Austria), Eastern Europe (Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria)

and the nation-states of Africa.

The first two papers provide a general background to the topic.

Raymond Grew (pp.31-43) suggests that national identity is a concept

consciously constructed from specific moments in history (for example, the

French Revolution), and used to enhance the image of the nation-state

through the creation of symbols and myths. ~ i h e l y Szegedy-MaszBk (pp.

45-61) distingulshes the term 'national character', as a Romantic or

inherited notion, from the wider term 'national identity1, and suggests

that to view national character as an organic entity is a dangerous con-

cept, since i t can lead to mistrust among nations.

The division of study shows a marked concentration on Germany,

three of the remaining ten papers discussing German national identity from

the pre-Romantic era to modern times. Lacking political unity, since

historically they have not lived within fixed borders, the Germans created

a Kulturnation (national culture), rather than a national identity. The

papers conclude that, since no uniform image of Germany exists to create

a national identity, German national identity lies not in a concrete realisa-

tion of identity, but in a desire for it.

The broad theme of national identity suggested what may be termed

'counter-topics'. These are expressed in papers on counter-identity,

regional identity, and internationalism. Counter-identity (that is, how

members of nation-states view their homologues across the border) must

be studied in order to achieve balanced investigation and t o avoid stereo-

type, while a growing emphasis on regional identity (for example, in

Scotland and Brittany) is seen as indicative of the extent t o which

national identities a re loslng their significance. In dealing with France,

Konrad Bieber (pp.79-87) delineates points of view which go beyond the

limitations of nationalism towards positive internationalism, o r what is

termed 'supra-nationality'. However, with regard t o Austria, William

Johnston (pp.177-86) suggests that supra-nationality can be a negative

concept, becoming an expression of statelessness, thereby classifying

Austria as a "natlon without qualitiesn (p.177). Arguably the most inter-

esting points raised in this volume detail the national tendencies of s ta tes

run along the lines of Internationally oriented ideologies, such as Socialism

and Communism, which have long viewed national leanings as suspect. In

a paper on East European nations in the 1980% Robin Remington (pp.105-

22) suggests that in the Balkan s ta tes international Communism is

expressed in conjunction with a resurgence of national identity, leading to

an at t i tude the author describes as "socialist in form, national in contentn

(p. 122).

The conclusion of the conference Is that there exists no definition

of the term 'national identity' which could satisfy all the demands placed

upon it. To at tempt such a definition the conference should perhaps have

limited itself to a study of a specific area or period, thereby retaining the

comparative approach and facilitating an approach a t a definition.

Furthermore, within i ts chosen framework there a re obvious omissions, such

as Amerlca and Great Britain. The voiume ends with the first bibliography

on national identity t o encompass more than one or two countries, and

provide an excellent review of the llterature available on this wide topic.

University of Dundee Kay Chadwick

Gerhart Hoffmelster, Deutsche und europaische Barockliteratur. Stuttgart:

Metzler, 1987 (Sammlung Metzler. Bd.234). pp.208. ISBN 3-476-10234-3.

This is a welcome addition to the admirable Metzler series, which already

contains a number of useful works on German baroque literature, including

one by Gerhart Hoffmeister on petrarchistic lyric poetry (M 119). That

is a wlde-ranging comparative survey, and so is this, a s indeed i ts t i t le

indicates. I t is badly needed, for baroque studies are flourishing in various

fields amid a welter o f confused terminology. Baroque means something

different in Germany and in France, is not used in England (though i t is

in America) and not well thought o f in Holland. And so on. Hoffmeister

therefore begins with a history of the term and i ts applications, and closes

with the sensible though not exactly new conclusion that i t is a "Hilfs-

begriff der Forschung zur Bezeichnung der Epoche", in other words a con-

venient piece o f shorthand. I n this way the danger of hypostatisation is

neatly sidestepped. In this whole discussion one looks in vain for a

mention o f James Mark or Odette de Mourgues.

Hoffmeister then has a series o f useful and illuminating sections on

the different national brands of baroque in Italy, Spain (but not Portugal),

France, England, Holland, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and finally Germany.

This is followed by a set of parallel treatments of cultural exchanges

("Barocke Wechselbeziehungen") between Germany and each of these areas,

which open up many fresh perspectives. Then he goes on to deal wi th

factors in European baroque l i terature as a whole, starting with the

question of whether there is any such thing (he discerns "ein gewisse

Einheitlichkeit der Phanomene" p. 1 13). These factors are well chosen:

social bases (absolutism etc.); Lat in tradition; rhetoric and emblem;

Jesuit poetry; Marinism (but surprisingly not petrarchism, on which

Hoffmeister is an authority, or stoicism); and finally genres and themes.

He gives a good account o f what is there but does not deal with what is

not, e.g. the absence o f biography, autobiography, diary and let ter in

Germany in contrast to England and France is not touched upon. , The

final chapter on the reception and exploitation of baroque in later

German l i terature is particularly welcome, as i t brings together much

hitherto unrelated work, especially on the Romantics (on whom Hoffmeister

is also an authority, as is plain from his Metzler volume M 170), though

i t is odd that he does not refer to the echo of Bidermann's Cenodoxus in

Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl; he brings the tradit ion down to our own day

with Giinter Grass's Das Tref fen in Telgte (not van Telgte). A l l in all an

invaluable and well-informed survey, which sums up what is already known,

draws interesting parallels and points out some white spots on the map.

Seizidmistes and dix-septiemistes o f a l l colours wi l l constantly need to

refer to it.

REPORT ON 'WORK IN PROGRESS'

"LITERARY TRANSLATION IN KOREA DURING THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD (1895-1940)"

Since the 1970s theorists have focused on the role that translated litera-

ture may play in a l i terary system depending on the degree o f famil iarity

o f the texts to be translated and the state o f development o f the target

system (see Lambert, D'Hulst and van Rragt 1985: 149-163). Starting with

the supposition that during the early twentieth century in Korea western

literature was translated with an innovative aim, an attempt wi l l be made

to discover variations on the functioning of translation in a literary

system. The results o f this research can he integrated into broader

studies on the translation of western literature in Asian countries.

Statistical data are examined concerning the selection of texts and

techniques. Documents o f the period are studied for information about the

stated aims o f translators, cr i t ical opinions, the policies of publishers and

the reactions o f readers. Based on this statistical and documentary

evidence the supposition concerning the innovatory role o f translation in

establishing a new literary system, or in f i l l ing a l i terary vacuum, wil l be

modified. (For the Polysystem approach to the study of translated l i ter-

ature see Even-Zohar 1978: 117-127.) The dates 1895-1940 mark the

first appearance o f western literature in Korea, during the enlightenment

period when the 'new literature' movement was developing, to the outbreak

o f World War I 1 when l iterary activity in Korea ceased or went under-

ground.

The first section surveys the selection o f texts to be translated and

considers the motives for selecting them. The statistics are analysed

concerning the selection or rejection o f texts by country, language, author,

genre. Documentary evidence concerning motives for choosing texts to be

translated is gathered through l iterary journals, articles by the translators,

prefaces to volumes o f translations and other primary sources o f the

period. The texts from the early period (1895-1909) were mostly re-trans-

lations from Japanese and many were adaptations, condensations or plot

summaries rather than ful l translations. Foreign l i terary works were

chosen for their effectiveness in encouraging patriotism, and the socially

committed 'new literature' owed a debt to these early translations.

Magazines aiming t o e d u c a t e patriotic, l iberal youths a c t e d a s an impetus

t o translation of l i terary works which w e r e thought t o have an edifying

e f fec t . During t h e following decade t h e importa t ion of western l i t e ra tu re

began in earnest , and journals specializing in l i terary t ransla t ion s t a r t e d t o

appear. In the 1920s t h e r e was a marked increase in t h e number of trans-

lations. T h e dual a i m s s t a t e d in an edi tor ia l of the review Foreign

L i t e ra tu re typify t h e period: t o cons t ruc t national l i t e ra tu re and t o

widen t h e boundaries of world l i t e ra tu re through translation.

Sect ion T w o will consider t h e e x t e n t t o which translation s t r a t eg ies

r e f l ec t t h e sea rch fo r a new model of r ea l i ty through wes te rn l i tera ture .

During t h e ea r ly twen t i e th cen tu ry Korean wr i t e r l t r ans l a to r s a t t e m p t e d t o

t ransmit western l i terary t r ends such a s Romant ic ism and Naturalism which

had become popular in Japan. An example of t h e select ion process a t t h e

level of technique is t h e adaptat ion of wes te rn s t anza ic and me t r i ca l

pa t t e rns t o replace t h e t radi t ions of Chinese formalism, which were fe l t

t o b e inadequate t o express modern emotions.

T h e next sect ion, on the publication and distribution of t ransla ted

l i tera ture , will examine in more de ta i l t h e journals specializing in trans-

lation, and t h e s e p a r a t e volumes of t ransla ted l i tera ture , concen t ra t ing on

t h e manner in which these publications a imed t o int roduce foreign liter-

a ture . A survey of t h e c o n t e n t s will reveal t h e range of choice of

t ransla ted l i tera ture . For t h e most par t t h e t ransla t ion journals which

appeared in the 1920s w e r e unable t o cont inue publication beyond a few

issues fo r financial o r political reasons. During t h e 1930s, although the re

were no new reviews devo ted exclusively t o t ransla t ing l i terary works,

t ransla t ions appeared with increasing f requency in a va r i e ty of journals.

T h e number of s e p a r a t e volumes of t ransla ted l i t e ra tu re was ex t remely

small until 1940. T h e overall c i r cums tances of publication, t h e f ac to r s

limiting publication and distribution, t h e composition of t h e readership, t h e

con ten t s of the journals, and policy s t a t e m e n t s by ed i to r s and publishers

will b e included.

T h e following sec t ion will consider t h e recept ion of t ransla ted liter-

a t u r e a s r e f l ec t ed in r eade r response, d e b a t e be tween t r ans la to r s and

cr i t ic ism of t h e s t a t e of l i terary translation. In addition t o a rgument s

ove r method and technique, t h e r e was much cr i t ic ism of t h e cons t r a in t s

due t o lack of training and financial resources. T h e debates , cr i t ic ism and

response of r eade r s a r e t o b e found most ly in l i terary reviews o r journals

of translated literature.

The final phase involves a consideration of the changes which took

place as modern Korean literature rapidly evolved from the late 1890s to

approximately 1940. Correlations will be made between translated western

texts, chosen for their innovative role, and the new approaches to

literature. The final chapters will contain case studies for the reception

and assimilation of certain foreign authors or genres through translation.

Professor Theresa M. Hyun Department of French Kyung Hee University

I Hoeki-dong, Dongdaemoon-gu Seoul 130-701, Korea

LAMBERT, ~os6, Lieven D'HULST and Katrin van BRAGT, "Translated Literature in France, 1800-1850", in Theo Hermans (ed.), The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation (London: Croom Helm, 19851, pp. 149- 163.

LEFEVERE, Andrk, "Translation: The Focus of the Growth of Literary Knowledge", in James S. Holmes et al. (eds.), Literature and Translation (Leuven: Acco, 19781, pp.7-28.

TOURY, Gideon, In Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980.

EVEN-ZOHAR, Itamar, "The Position of Translated Literature Within the Literary Polysystem", in J. S. Holmes et al. (eds.), Literature and Trans- lation (Leuven: Acco, 1978), pp. 1 17- 127.

NEWS

RESEARCH DIRECTORY O F THE INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE LITERATURE ASSOCIATION

This useful booklet was assembled for t h e ICLA's Research Development Commi t t ee by Mario Valdks and his col leagues a t Toronto. It l ists a d d r e s s , professional affiliations, fields of specialization and principal publications. (A second edition is being planned - consolation for those who missed the deadline for sending information this t ime round.)

Copies may be obtained (on sending two international postage coupons) from: David Jordan, C e n t r e for Comparat ive Li terature , 14045 Robarts Library, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontar io M5S IA I, Canada.

DICTIONNAIRE INTERNATIONAL DES TERMES LITTERAIRES

The SFLGC has taken s t eps t o revive this project, now directed by Jean- Marie Grassin (Limoges). Fascicules t o E will he printed now, while for t h e l a t e r ones preparation for printing and revision will occur simultane- ous] y.

An international c o m m i t t e e is being formed t o organise cr i t ical reading of existing contributions, t h e finding of (near-)equivalent t e r m s in 15 languages for t h e l emmata (which will b e French), and the assignment of new en t r i e s tha t remain t o be written.

Anyone interested in t h e Dictionnaire, e i the r wanting information o r volunteering cooperation, is requested t o g e t in touch with: Professeur Jean-Marie Grassin, Universit6 d e Limoges (Let t res) , 36 rue Camil le Gu6rin, F-87036 France Cedex (Telephone: 01033/55/012619).

JOURNAL O F RUSSIAN STUDIES

O n e of our members, Margaret Tejerizo, is now Reviews Editor of this publication. She c a n be con tac ted a t t h e following address: hl. H. Tejerizo, Dept. of Slavonic Languages, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G I 2 84Q.

A NEW JOURNAL: KRIEG UND LITERATUR/WAR AND LITERATURE

A very successful international Remarque Symposium (13-15 October , 1988) a t Osnabrilck will provide t h e mater ia l for t h e first number of this new publication, which accep t s contributions in English and German (and will add a synopsis o f each a r t i c l e in t h e o the r language). T h e journal will b e edi ted and published by a t eam assemhled by Tilman Westphalen, and will b e linked t o fu r the r scholarly even t s organised by t h e Remarque Society.

Anyone interested in this a r e a should contact : Professor Dr Tilman Westphalen, Erich - Maria - Remarque Dokumentationsstelle, Fachbereich Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, Universitat Osnabriick, Postfach D-4500 Osnabriick, West Germany.

FUTURE ICLA EVENTS

The ICLA general mee t ing a t Munich, during which Earl Miner (Pr inceton) was e l e c t e d Pres ident , de t e rmined tha t t h e Xlllth CONGRESS will b e held in l a t e August 1991 a t Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo.

T h e general t h e m e is: "THE FORCE O F VISION", divided in to I: Dramas of Desire, 11: Visions of Beauty , Ill: Visions of History, IV: Powers of Narra t ion, V: Re-Vision of L i t e r a ry Theory, VI: Orienta l ism and Occidenta l ism, VII: Inter-Asian Compara t ive Li tera ture .

T h e Meet ing a t Munich hea rd a n invi ta t ion from t h e Pres ident of t h e University of Edmonton (Alber ta) fo r t h e 1994 Congress, and accep ted it in principle.

T h e r e was a lso an invi ta t ion f rom New Delhi University for e i t h e r 1994 o r 1997, and t h e mee t ing tended t o favour going t o India in 1997.

T h e lCLA Li t e ra ry Theory C o m m i t t e e (which, incidentally, o n e of our members , Elinor Shaffer , helped t o found) announces a COLLOOUIUM on t h e subject "ARE THERE LAWS IN LITERARY HISTORY?". The colloquium is t o b e held on 16 March 1989 a t Lisbon University, in conjunct ion with t h e Congress of t h e Por tuguese Compara t ive L i t e r a t u r e Association.

Fo r fu r the r de t a i l s p lease wr i t e to: Professor Elrud Ibsch, Vrije Universiteit Ams te rdam, Facu l t e i t d e r L e t t e r e n , Postbus 7161, NL-1007 MC Amste rdam, T h e Netherlands.

FUTURE BCLA EVENTS

BCLA Vth TRIENNIAL CONGRESS, STAMFORD HALL, LEICESTER, 3-6 JULY, 1989. "LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS O F T H E SELF" Fur the r de t a i l s and t h e second (and las t ) ca l l for papers wen t ou t with New Comparison No.5 (Summer 1988). By ea r ly Oc tobe r , around 180 pape r s had been ag reed (ca. 100 from British academics , t h e r e s t from overseas). T h e deadl ine fo r o f f e r s is 30 November , t h e provisional pro- g r a m m e will g o ou t ea r ly in t h e new year .

It is of cou r se possible t o a t t e n d wi thout giving a paper. Members a r e requested t o wr i t e t o t h e S e c r e t a r y by ea r ly January if they wish t o pa r t i c ipa t e in this way. It will help overal l planning.

During t h e Congress t h e topic of t h e next triennial even t (1992) will b e discussed and, it is hoped, decided upon. T h e r e will a l so b e e l ec t ions of t h e Association's o f f i ce r s and execu t ive c o m m i t t e e members .

T h e WORKSHOP CONFERENCES "THE PICARESOUE" (19901, and "META- MORPHOSES" (19911, will both b e held in ea r ly July (not December , t h e fo rmer t i m e for BCLA conferences) . De ta i l s will b e announced in New Comparison 7 (Summer 1989).

Inquiries a r e a l r eady welcome. P l ease wr i t e t o t h e Sec re t a ry , Dr H. M. Klein, EUR, Univers i ty of Eas t Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ.

T H E SECOND BITE: A CONFERENCE ON TRANSLATIONS O F TRANSLA- TIONS AND O N RE-TRANSLATIONS. Univers i ty of Eas t Anglia, Norwich, Sa tu rday 6 May 1989. This one-day even t , organised by Chris topher Smith and Holger Klein,

follows similar conferences (Enemy Images, Hamlet Reception, Poetics of Protest) held a t UEA. It deals with the intriguing questions raised by works like North's Plutarch through Amyot and Kilmartin's revision of Moncrieff. 7-8 short papers (around 20 minutes) will be delivered and discussed. Costs are kept t o a minimum.

Papers and general participation are invited. Please write to: Dr Christopher Smith, EUR, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ.

The Centre for Low Countries Studies. UCL, announces "THE LOW COUNTRIES AND THE WORLD: AN INTERNATIONAL AND INTER- DISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE", 12-15 April, 1989, a t University College London. Plenary Speakers include: Christopher Brown (The National Gallery, London) and Simon Scharma (Harvard University).

For information and registration please write to: The Centre for Low Countries Studies. University College London, Gower Street, London WClE 6BT.

The translation Studies Centre a t Gottingen University announces an INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: "'HISTORY' AND 'SYSTEM' IN THE STUDY OF LITERARY TRANSLATION", 10-13 April. 1989. There will be about 15 papers, followed by intensive discussions.

For details please write to: Der Sprecher des Sonderforschugsbereichs 309, "Die literarische Ueber- setzung", Georg-August-Universitat, Humboldtallee 17, D-3400 Gottingen, West Germany.

In Richard N. Coe the study of French, Comparative and General Litera- ture has lost a leading exponent, and many a colleague a good friend. He co-founded Comparison and gave support t o i t s successor, serving on i ts Editorial Board. We shall hold him in grateful memory.

The Literary Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Comparative Literature Association sorrowfully announce the death of lstv6n Stiter, a former Director of the lnstitute and fourth President of the International Comparative Literature Association. His loss will be keenly felt by the profession in his home country and world- wide.

NEW COMPARISON

Manuscripts should be clearly typed and double-spaced, w i th notes and

bibliography on separate pages. Articles of up to 10,000 words wi l l be

considered. They should be wr i t ten in Engl~sh, and quotations in foreign

languages should preferahly he translated, wit11 thc. original text being

given in a footnote.

Contributions restr icted to individual works, writers or l i t c ra tu r rs a r r

welcome provided they are o f suff icient interest t t ) the non-specialist and

raise issues of more than purely local s~gnif icence.

Submissions should be sent in two copicxs to the e d ~ t o r i a l address.

Decisions concerning publication wi l l be made w ~ t h i n approx ina t r l y six

weeks.

Editorial address: I)r Theo tlermans, N e w Comparison, Department o f Dutch, Un ivers~ ty College London, Gower Street, LONDON W C l E 6RT.

Books for review, announcements, notices and author's statements

should be sent to the reviews editor:

Dr Holger Klein, New Comparison, School of Modern Languages and European History, Universrty of East Anglia, NORWlCH NR4 7TJ.

PRICES A N D SURSCRIPTIONS

Uni ted Europe/Overseas Overseas Kingdom (Surface) ( A i r )

single issue & 4.50 & 6.00 £ 8.00

one year (2 issues) f, 8.00 £ 10.90 £15.00

Please note that a l l correspondence regarding administ rat~on and suh-

scriptions should be sent to the journal's administrative address:

Dr Susan Bassnett, New Comparison, Graduate School of Comparative L i te ra ry Theory and L i te ra ry Translation, University of Warwick, COVENTRY CV4 7AL.

NEW COMPARISON I (Summer 1986): "Literary Translation and Literary Systemn: M. Tymoczko (Massachusetts), Translation in Twelfth-Century France; T. Hermans (London), Li terary Translation: the Birth of a Concept; L. Korpel (Utrecht) , Translation Discourse in the Netherlands 1750-1800; E. M. Gruber (Edmonton), Translation and Spanish Romanticism ; S Paker (London/Istanbul), Translation in 19th-Century Ot toman Literature; A. Lefevere (Austin), Heine in Translation; E. Blodgett (Edmonton), Translation in Canadian Literature; R. van den Broeck (Amsterdam), Generic Shif ts in Translation; G. ~ i l m e n (Budapest), Borderline Cases of Translation.

NEW COMPARISON 2 (Autumn 1986): "Hamlet a t Home and Abroad": -t Anglia), Receiving Hamlet Reception; E. Maslen (London), Scenes Unseen in Hamlet ' E. Joyce (Trent), Hamlet from Prince t o Punk; G. Hall (~arwick),;h Hamlets; R. Lethbridge (Cambridge), Bourget, Maupassant and Hamlet; H. Golomb (Tel-Aviv), Hamlet in Checkov's Plays; S. Paker (LondonIIstanbul), Hamlet in Turkey; M. Pfis ter (Passau), German Political Interpretat ions of Hamlet; T. Dawson (East Anglia), Hamlet and English Romantic Poetry; I. Clarke (Loughborough), Shakespeareana Victoriana; C. Smith (East Anglia), Italian Players and Hamlet; J. Hilton (East Anglia). Dissecting Hamlet.

NEW COMPARISON 3 (Summer 1987): "Comedy": M. Slawinski (Lancaster), A Renaissance commedia and i t s models; A. Calder (London), Renaiss,ance Theories of Comedy; J. Coombes (Essex), Absolutist Drama in England, France and Japan; A. Stillmark (London), Kleist and ,Gogol; S. Walton (London), Ludvig Holberg and lvar Aassen; K. F. Hilliard (Durham), Molikre and Hofmannsthal; W. D. Howarth (Bristol), Anouilh and Ayckbourn; M. Tymoczko (Massachusetts). Translating Humour in Irish Hero Tales; B. Garvin (London), Comic Features of Belli; A. Easthope (Manchester), Aristophanes and Wilde; T. Dawson (East Anglia), The Dandy in Dorian Gray; D. Delabast i ta (Leuven), Translating Puns; K. S. Whitton (Bradford), Humour in t h e German Lied.

NEW COMPARISON 4 (Autumn 1987): "Scandinavia": J. Jesch (Notting- ham), Women Poe t s in t h e Viking Age; L. Burman (CambridgeIUppsala), The Swedish Sonnet; M. Wells (Cambridge), The Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken; S. J . Walton (London), Illusion in Ibsen's Main Characters ; E. Page (Cambridge), Magdalene Thoresen; L. HelmIJ. Roed (OdenseILondon), Thomasine Gyllembourg; M. Robertson (Loughborough), Strindberg: Life, Plots and Letters; E. Vannebo (Oslo), Biblical Motives in Olav Duun; T. Selboe (Oslo), Women's Poetry in Norway; A. Maset (Budapest). Conception and Praxis of the Writer in Contemporary Norwegian Prose; L. Forster (Cambridge), Ernst Robert Curtius Commemorated.

NEW COMPARISON 5, with Special Sect ion "Literature and Philosophy": M. J. Robertson (Augsburg), Conference Report , Durham 1987; D. Reynolds (Lancaster), Kant on t h e Sublime and MallarmC's "Un coup d e D6s"; R. H. Roberts (Durham), Reception of Hegel's "Lord and Bondsman"; H. M. Robinson (Liverpool), Nietzsche, Lawrence and Romanticism; P. V. Zima (Klagenfurt), Towards a Sociology of Fictional Texts; D. Sco t t (Dublin), Academicism and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry; S. E. Grace (Vancouver), Neige noir, Caligari, and t h e Postmodern Film Frame- Up; P. Mosley (Glasgow), The Reassociation of Li terature and Medicine; G. M. Hyde (Norwich), Hamlet the Pole; A. Menhennet (Newcastle), Tensions in Reuter's and Moliire's Comedy; R. Chapple (Florida). Turgenev, Anderson, Hemingway, The Torrents of Spring; G. Kums (Antwerp), The Waste Land and Under t h e Volcano.