POETICS OF THE ELEMENTS IN THE HUMAN CONDITION:

2. THE AIRY ELEMENTS IN POETIC IMAGINATION

 ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA

THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

VOLUME XXIII

Editar-in-Chiej

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning

Belmont, Massachusetts

A SEQUEL TO VOLUME XIX

POETICS OF THE ELEMENTS IN THE HUMAN CONDITION:

THE SEA

Fram Elemental Stirrings ta Symbalic Inspiratian, Language,

and Life-Significance in Literary Interpretatian and Theary
POETICS OF THE ELEMENTS
IN THE HUMAN CONDITION:
Part 2
THE AIRY ELEMENTS
IN POETIC IMAGINATION

Breath, Breeze, Wind, Tempest, Thunder,

Snow, Flame, Fire, Volcano ...

Edited by
ANNA·TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Phenomenology Institute

Published under the auspices of

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Leaming
A-T. Tymieniecka, President

SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA. B.V.

 Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(Revised for voI. 2)

Poetics of the elements in the hwnan condition.

(Analecta I\Jsserliana ; v. 19, 2 J )-

"Published under the auspices of tne World
Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research
and w.aming."
Includes bibliographical r-eferences and indexes.
Contents: (1) lbe sea, from elemental stirrings to
synbolic inspiration, language, and Hfe-significance
in literary inter'Pretation and theory -- 2. 1be airy
elcments in poetic imagination.
1. Sea in Hterature. 2. Four elements (PhilO5Ophy)
in Hterature. 3. Fire in literaturc. 4. Air in
literaturc. 1. 1'ymieniecka, Anna-Teresa. II. Series.
II. World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological
Research and Lcaming. III. Ser'ies.
B3279.H94A129 voI. 19 142'.7 85-18278
(PN56.S4] (809'.9336)

Ali rights reserved.

ISBN 978-94-011-7662-0 ISBN 978-94-009-2841-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-009-2841-1
e1988 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1988
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE THEME / The Plurivocal Poiesis of the Airy Element ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Xlll

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

MARLIES KRONEGGER / "Poetics at the Creative Crucibles"

Offering New Guidelines for Literary Interpretation 3

PARTI
PLURIVOCAL POIESIS OF THE AIRY ELEMENTS

SIDNEY FESHBACH / Empedocles: The Phenomenology of

the Four Elements in Literature 9
HANS H. RUDNICK / Fire in Goethe's Work: Neptunism and
Volcanism 65
MARLIES KRONEGGER / The Tempestuous Conflict of the
Elements in Baroque Poetry and Painting 73
SHERL YN ABDOO / Fire Transfigured in T. S. Eliot's Four
Quartets 89
TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ / Fire and Snow: The Dichoto-
mies and Dichomachies of Polish Baroque Poetry 101

PART II
THE MET AMORPHIC POIESIS OF AIR

L. M. FINDLA Y / Temporality Puts on Airs: Process, Purpose,

and Poetry in Shakespeare's Histories 123
SERGE MEITINGER / Filles de l'air 139
HANS H. RUDNICK / Concretizations of the Aeolian Meta-
phor 145
v
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART III
THE AESTHETIC FORCES OF THE AIRY ELEMENTS

CECILE CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA / Le theme de l'air

dans la poesie de Paul-Marie Lapointe 159
J. Y. DUPRAZ / "L'Etre contre le vent": Aspects du vent dans
la poesie de Paul Valery 165
LOIS OPPENHEIM / "Le Ciel est mort": Mallarme and a
Metaphysics of (Im)Possibility 177

PARTIV
THE ELEMENT AL FIRE AND
THE POETIC TRANSFIGURATION OF REALITY

CHRISTOPH EYKMAN / Man against Fire: Alfred Dbblin's

Utopian Novel Mountains, Oceans and Giants 191
L. M. FINDLA Y / "This Hard Gemlike Flame": Walter Pater
and the Aesthetic Accommodation of Fire 203
JOHN DOLIS /Thoreau's Walden:ThePro-vocationofFire 215
BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES / Flannery O'Connor: The
Flames of Heaven and Hell 237

PART V
FIRE, THE POETRY OF ELEMENTAL PASSION

MARLIES KRONEGGER / From Fire to Fireworks in Baroque

Poetry 259
MEENA ALEXANDER / "Falling Fire": The Negativity of
Knowledge in the Poetry of William Blake 281
VICTOR CARRABINO / The Poetics of Fire in Jean Giono's
Le Chant du Monde 289

PART VI
THE ELEMENTAL EXPANSE

PETER MORGAN /Ruskin's Queen oJtheAir 301

JA Y LAMPERT / Breathless Messages: Phenomenology in
Deep Space 309
 TABLE OF CONTENTS Vll

BEVERLY SCHLACK RANDLES / A Poetics of Space:

William Bronk's Unhousing of the Universe 323
VICTOR CARRABINO / Jean Giono's Le Chant du monde:
The Harmony of the Elements 343

PARTVII
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERATURE
ANO RELATEO TOPICS

CHRISTOPH EYKMAN / The Significance of Literature

According to Contemporary Writers 357
MARK PIETRALUNGA / The "Literature in Life" Philosophy
vs. Reality: The Role of the River in Beppe Fenoglio's Il
partigiano Johnny 369
LAURA WESTRA / "The Origin of the Work of Art": Truth in
Existence and the Scholastic Tradition 379
LOIS OPPENHEIM / The Ontology of Language in a Post-
Structuralist Feminist Perspective: Explosive Oiscourse in
Monique Wittig 393
E. F. K A ELI N / Etre-dans-un-monde-litteraire 407

INDEX OF NAMES 435

ORGANISERS OF THE TORONTO CONFERENCE: PROFESSORS CECILE
CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA, ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA AND
GASTON LAURION
 THE THEME

THE PLURIVOCAL POIESIS

OF THE AIRY ELEMENT

This book marks a major advance in the effort to recover the authentic
significance of the literary work and to revive literature as much for the
benefit of the human being as for the living culture. This life-signifi-
cance of literature has been strangled by the ever tighter grip that
intellectualistic approaches to its interpretation of various persuasions
have had on the critical imagination, the latter having ultimately been
lost from sight. Our preceding volume on literature (Analecta Husserliana,
VoI. XIX) saw the accomplishment of the fundamental groundwork for
the retrieval of this life-significance. In my "Theme" introducing that
Volume, I emphasized that this is an irreplaceable gain, because man's
creative endeavor in literature as well as in the fine arts provides us in
pristine fashion with the significant guideposts we need for discovering
the specifically human way of dealing with life, for enlightening its
elementary anonymity and lifting it to human-self-interpretation-in-
existence. With the intellectual distortion of this unique avenue for the
human imagination's entry into the meaningfulness of existence by
artificial methods of criticism, by unwarranted destructurizing and by
manipulations that reshape the forms which these pristine ciphers of life
take, the pulsing fabric of human life to be found in them is dwarfed,
falsified, and is ultimately evaporated away.
Man faces himself in these schools of criticism as if he were an
unfeeling robot, with the discernment of the calculation of his every
move being the achievement of the criticism; no discernment of these
calculating manipulations may, however, capture the meaning of the
sum total of human contention; that for which we really struggle goes
undiscemed.
How, then, can we dispel the c10ud with which the manipulative
methods of structuralism, semanticism, linguistics, and hermeneutics
befog and Iead astray the understanding of literature? What approach is
capable of directly reaching the point of juncture between the vibrant
life of the literary work as it pulsates with the lyrical feeling, emotion,
and yearning which lift the human spirit out of the numb processes of

ix
x THE THEME

nature and the individual existence of the human person which they
imbue with meaning?
In the program which we have unfolded in our preceding volumes
and which is devoted to the dialogue between literature and philosophy,
we have proposed "to recapture the life-significance of literature by
retracing step by step the creative itinerary along which the message of
art has been taking shape prompted by the interplay of the forces of life
with the virtualities of the Human Condition." We have located these
virtualities at work in the "creative forge" of the Human Condition.
In the preceding companion volume (Volume XIX) we delved
deliberately into this locus where human genius reveals itself in the
interplay of life-forces. 1 proposed the concept of the "elements" to
specify a mid-air reality distinct from the brute forces of nature and
signifying the "primogenital" factors of human phantasmic imagination,
which elements mediate between the external challenges of cosmic
forces and the forces of Imaginatio Creatrix; they belong to the
"twilight of human consciousness" and constitute there the prompting
factors for creative human imagination.
We have thus opened a new access to the meaningfulness of the
literary work by focusing upon its creation in this subliminal sphere in
which the metamorphosis of the neutral order of Nature into life - into
the felt resounding voice of human existence - takes place in the
human creative act. The "elements" which offer us points of orientation
in this uncharted realm appear strikingly present in literary inspiration.
And further, we find that the large imaginary complexes which underlie
the depth-life of a literary work, determining its profound, pervading
significance, bring us back to some or other "element al" force with
which the powers of imagination wrestle. AlI the means which are in the
hands of the artist, poet, writer are mobilized and arrayed for this
wrestling; they are put at the service of the ciphering of the human
significance of life's moments in a way that the propensities of the
elements and the creative imagination responding to them command.
The interplay of brute forces and the imaginative powers of man as
mediated by the subliminal elements was brought out fully in the
preceding companion book which was devoted to investigations of the
element of the sea. Yet already in our focusing upon a factor of human
subsistence on earth so powerfully delimited in itself as the sea appears
to be there arose the question of this element's extension into other
elemental stimuli in Nature such as rivers, streams, fountains, floods,
 THE THEME Xl

etc. It was precisely at the next halting place in our itinerary, the
comparably powerful and basic element of fire, that some profound
aesthetico-metaphysical questions surfaced.
Exploring the subliminal workings of life in which the neutral, mute,
and anonymous life-promoting forces of Nature encounter the magical
swing of Imaginatio Creatrix, we are, first, struck by the overwhelming
elemental "complexes" which appear as the protagonists of this en-
counter. Indeed, in order to animate the powers of imagination that in
one sweep awaken the dormant germs of vocal moments so that they
may utter their virtual sound and enter into the grand symphony of
significant human life, imagination must be moved, ignited, challenged.
Sea, earth, fire, light, tempest, earthquake appear in a striking way to be
the main challengers in the life-struggle that engages aU the imaginative
forces of the human being. Simultaneously, Imaginatio Creatrix acts as
the basic factor of the Human Condition as it aims to unfold in the
midst of the universal and anonymous life-struggle for individual
existence as such, a uniquely human, personal shape and meaning of
life. It appears that sea, earth or any of the elements which show
themselves in our life experience to be overwhelming autochthonous
factors in one's subsistence upon earth take, in the interplay between
them and our imagination, monstrous forms that pervade our sub-
liminal sensibility. They inspire spectra of emotions ranging from
paralyzing dread to the elation of freedom, from withering despair to
vivifying, expanding hope.
We see in the present work that fire, for instance, plays a dominant
role; how it inspires our powers of imagination and how it moves the
entire spectrum of significant propensities which shape human feelings
and longings. The range of what it inspires extends from the abysmal
''flames of hell" to soaring longings to "fly toward heaven," from its
ability to annihilate life to its redeeming power to give it ultimate
fulfillment through "purification." And yet, even though these roles of
fire appear inconsistent, these widely separated manifestations of the
element seem to take it beyond its identifying character into the whole
realm of the airy element to which it has a "family resemblance."
Indeed, our investigation of the elements of fire and of the air
produced in us a sense of wonder. What we had assumed to be separate
elements proved in the process of investigation into their innumerable
particular virtualities to differentiate into an unaccountable number of
discrete intermediary moments. This led us to conceive of a vast "airy
XlI THE THEME

element" that through infinite "family resemblances" comprises them

all. Yet the nature of this family unity will remain a metaphysical puzzle
to be cautiously treated as we advance in our progress.
It is the investigation of the "airy element" which the present book
pursues. It encompasses several striking elemental moments. They have
differentiated themselves spontaneously.
We invite the reader to join us on our stratospheric voyage.
Aud yet even at this point, having stiH a long itinerary before us, we
cannot refrain from asking: Are aH elemental forces just differentiations
of one omnipresent medium belonging to the condition of life? Or, is it
the work of Imaginatio Creatrix that brings disparate elemental forces
into a unifying horizon?
The viewing of the human universe as being vibrantly expanding and
yet discretely harmonious, on the one hand, and of the discrete unity of
human existence - or of the aesthetic mind - on the other, has often
been voiced in literary criticism and theory from Goethe to Baudelaire
and beyond.
Dur queries, however, formulate a new approach to the questions
and offer a new apparatus with which to treat them.

ANNA- TERESA TYMIENIECKA

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present volume originated in two successive research conferences

of The International Society for Phenomenology and Literature, that is,
its Xth and XIth conventions, held respectively on the premises of
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and
Learning, Cambridge/Belmont, Mass., and at the University of Toronto.
First of aH, we want to express our warmest thanks to aur Canadian
collaborators who formed there the local arrangements committee.
Professor Cecile Cloutier Wojciechoska of the University of Toronto,
director of the Committee, and Professors Richard A. Berg of Lakehead
University, and Gaston Laurion of Concordia University, John Magnus
Michelsen and Gustave Beckers deserve aur appreciation for their
organizing efforts. The departments of French and English of the
University of Toronto represented respectively by Professors Frederick
Case and Thomas Adamoski received our conference with friendly
hospitality.
We also owe gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for a grant which eased the financial cost
of the conference.
As this volume goes to print, I want to thank sincerely our Assistant
Editor, Mr. Robert Wise, for his painstaking and dedicated editing of
the manuscripts.

A-T.T.

xiii
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
 MARLIES KRONEGGER

"POETICS AT THE CREATIVE CRUCIBLES"

OFFERING NEW GUIDELINES FOR LITERARY
INTERPRETATION

Address to the XIth Annual Conference of The International Society

ofPhenomenology and Literature, Toronto, April, 1986

I consider it agreat stroke of personal good fortune to have stumbled

(and quite by chance) upon the writings of the philosopher and
poet-critic Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka years ago. The extraordinary
freshness and vitality of her ideas have captivated the participants of
this conference as much as those of preceding ones. Thanks to the
philosophical direction that she gives as the president of The World
Phenomenology Institute and consequently the program director of the
research of its four affiliated societies, The International Society of
Phenomenology and Literature undertook to explore in various per-
spectives the crucial interplay between the vital forces that prompt the
natural life progress of man and the Imaginatio Creatrix. Brought into
this interplay by the philosopher-poet who seeks to evade the fleetingess
of the natural being by uncovering what lasts, the creative imagination
of man brings in the redeeming human significance of life. In the
process of unraveling this interplay as it manifests itself in literature we
reach the Human Condition itself.
Tyrnieniecka's metaphysics of the Human Condition has nothing
in common with the current understanding of this term or with the
existentialist approach; instead of focusing upon some threads of
human destiny it concentrates upon the "virtualities" of life which allow
for the surging up in its midst of the specifically human meaningfulness
of events, experiences, development, etc. The "metaphysics of life"
extends between a unique experience and a vision. 1
The experience of life, the "tremor of life" in its aesthetic intensity
synthesizes the entire experiential spread through which the life of
the human person proceeds. AlI types of sensing, feeling, emotions,
longings, reflections, appreciations, and so on come together in
extraordinary vivid synergies in one's experience of "being alive", of
"being there". As for the metaphysical vision of life, it brings alI things
3
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, VoI XXIII, 3-5.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
4 MARLIES KRONEGGER

of the cosmos and of the human universe together as part of a vast

universal expanse that we may envisage in the act of human creation.
This vision revives the organic relationships between the imaginary and
the real, between neutral physical spaces and times and the sacredness
of man's intimacy with his dwellings on earth - his garden, Eden, oasis
- within the unifying drive toward life. Birth, growth, decline unfolding
in struggles with vital adversities - storms, tempests, earthquakes,
cataclysms - punctuate the expanse of life, and the poetic significance
with which the human creative act endows their progress establishes
specifically human existence.
The task of this conference is the same as that of the two preceding
ones which were also devoted to the "poetics of the elements". This task
is twofold. First, we seek to investigate literary creation, the literary
work, the text, performance, reading, etc. insofar as it allows us to see
how in dealing poetically with the elemental forces of life the author
submits them to the workings of the creative imagination and thus
projects the specifically human significance. Our investigation focuses,
then, upon the ramified workings of the poetic imagination itself.
Second, by following the subterranean networks of the processes which
with their germinal tendencies and virtual capacities meet in the
creative act, we seek to continue to exfoliate the Human Condition,
expanding our metaphysical vision.
Vision, Tymieniecka holds, is not as Descartes would have us believe
a view of a static world, or a static view of the world, an image of it as it
appears to the mind of a detached spectator. On the contrary, vision in
its full understanding is essentially a "poetic vision", that is, a most
intimate penetration into the "nature of things" as we participate in their
constructive becoming; the poetic vision surges from the point at which
man and Nature mingle in man's act of creation. The metaphysical
vision which we seek to distill from the works of poets, writers, and
philosophers touches precisely upon this crucial point at which man on
being confronted with vital forces that put at risk his existence caUs up
the entire imaginative endowment of his humanity in order to deal with
the imminent periJ.2 As a matter of fact, in Tymieniecka's Poetics, one
earthquake that is followed up by the multiple reverberations that
gather in the workings of poetic imagination, as revealed by a writer,
does more to demonstrate the inner workings of the human being in his
entire organic, psychic, mental, and spiritual functioning than does the
entire history of the philosophy of mind.
 NEW GUIDELINES 5

Indeed, her "Poetica Nova at the Creative Crucibles" makes thinking

and sensing live, move, advance, pulsate and glimmer with alI the
radiant forces of creative intuition; it takes us away from the sclerosed
artifices of the literary analysis of spectral forms, and structures, and
artificial devices and brings us back into the real world of literary life -
which was always there waiting.
In fact, what else but the poetically inspired swing of human genius
may wring harmony from the paradoxes, incongruities, distortions of
perspectives, violence, insanity, and eroticism of the ceaseless desiring
and thirst which express the vital dimensions of the Dionysian nature of
man, on the one hand, and from the voices of the seas, skies, winds, and
the restless depths that spew up volcanoes, on the other - which seen
in their own significance would mean man's being placed in danger of
destruction, dissolution, shipwreck by implacable, disinterested forces?
How otherwise can one strike the balance between the naked vital
impulse on the one hand, and our yearning for Fate or Providence, on
theother?
Thus, to be human means to be a poet. The poet recognizes himself
as a Protean creature: he must transform himself while transforming the
world, and therefore he is forced to play. This brings me to a profound
conviction of mine: Where there is emotion, there is art, where there is
art, there is life, where there is life, there is hope, where is hope, there is
redemption. The earth breathes forth its life. Men are manifestations of
theearth.
Thanks to Tymieniecka we are brought to recognize that the
vocation of literature is the exaltation of the elemental significance of
life, the exalting of the germinal moments to such a proportion that they
transcend men's life, struggle for survival, for existence, whether
positive or negative, in the exaltation of the human spirit.

Michigan State University

NOTES

1 A-T. Tymieniecka, "The First Principles of the Metaphysics of Life: Charting the
Human Condition", Analecta Husserliana, VoI. XXI, 1986, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Dordrecht.
2 Ibid.
 PART ONE

PLURIVOCAL POIESIS OF THE AIRY

ELEMENTS
 SIDNEY FESHBACH

EMPEDOCLES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE

FOUR ELEMENTS IN LITERA TURE

I: PREFACE

This essay argues against the view that in the Fragments of Empedocles
of Acragas are two radically different poems, one related to nature and
the other to religious notions. Whether the fragments are taken as
pieces from two poems or, as I take them, just as fragments, I argue that
the function of the Four Elements of fire, air, water, and earth, in his
case, is to give him control over those storms of experience, the
lightnings, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes that throw over aH prior
attitudes and categories and open the imaginative self to new poetry.
The Four Elements function to establish and confirm a "natural attitude"
(Husserl's phrase) in Empedocles' science and moderation of expres-
sion in his poetry. My interpretation, it should be understood, does not
necessarily falI within the important on-going systematic programme of
A-T. Tymieniecka's "The Aesthetics of Nature in the Human Condi-
tion," published in Analecta Husserliania, VoI. XIX.
An introduction to the phenomenology of the Four Elements in
literature may approach L'le task, as Edmund Husserl does in ''The
Origins of Geometry," with the entire field already in mind, knowing
what the field is and where it is going, yet bracketing off its history as
such; or with a cultural survey, as George Poulet does with The
Metamorphosis of the Cirele, with each development analyzed because
the theme studied changed over time; or it may focus on a single text
seeking to remove it from history and yet be aware of an environing
history, as does this essay. Section II of this essay - "The Theme of the
Four Elements" - notes briefly the tradition of the use of the Four
Elements in European literature; Section III - "Textual Uncertainties
and Methodological Perspective" - frees the text, the Fragments of
Empedocles, as much as is practical from several of those academic
presuppositions that seem to direct the reading and understanding of
the text into premature conclusions regarding its history, its ordering,
its purposes, and its place in history and indicates the method used
here, one that focuses on the text's categories and structures in such
9
A -T Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecla Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 9-63.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
10 SIDNEY FESHBACH

manner as to bridge between the text and phenomenological method;

Section IV: "First Description: the Poetic Object, the Poem" attends to
the poem itself, how its several layers function, how it presents its
everyday world, how it schematizes its objects represented, how it
emphasizes its reconstitution of experience within literary and scientific
models and meanings; Section V: "Second Description: Roots, Cycles,
Wholes, Totalities, and Epiphanies" describes what appears to be an
expression of the experience of wholes and the corresponding inten-
tional wholes of the fragments; and Section VI: "Epiphanies of the
Natural Attitude in Empedocles and Literature" indicates that the work
of Empedocles is based on a "natural attitude," as described by
Edmund Husserl, and that the "natural attitude" in science corresponds
in an interesting way with "naturalism" in literature.

II: THE THEME OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS

Philosophers of nature - from Thales to Albert Einstein - have

sought a single explanatory principle (arche) for matter and for temporal
and spatial, immediate and distant, material events. Traditional surveys
of European philosophy and histories of scientific ideas place at the
origins of Greek philosophy the choice of a singIe natural element,
Thales favoring the principle of water, Anaximines, air, and Heraclitus,
fire. Traditional historians have arranged these concepts in a kind of
rational sequence. W. K. C. Guthrie presents a typical version of this
sequence in his large history of Greek philosophy: "Heraclitus [...J
exalted the priority of fire; Thales and Anaximenes had promoted water
and air respectively to be sole arche generating the rest [of the
elementsJ; for Anaximander they came out of the apeiron, and for the
Pythagoreans they were the final product of the One. AlI these rival
claims [of single generating or explanatory principlesJ had been made
obsoIete by the insistence of Parmenides that no unity can ever
generate a plurality. Only by a plurality of equai and ultimate archai or
elements can the phenomena be saved. Hence, 'alI these are equal and
coeval, but each is master in a different province and each has its own
character' (fr. 17.27f.). They are like Anaximander's opposites given an
explicitly substantial character and with no apeiron behind them."
(Guthrie 142) Et cetera. The appearance of an overly neat logical or
rational sequence suggests stronger continuous lines of communication
among the natural philosophers than is warranted by the history of
 EMPEDOCLES 11

commerce, travel, and oral report in the centuries from Thales to

Socrates. For example, the central figure of this introductory essay,
Empedocles, is contemporary with Periclean Athens, with the Athenian
theater of Aeschylus to Euripides, and with Protagoras and Socrates,
but does not mention their works or ideas, no less quote a phrase or a
passage of their works. His gaze seems tumed to a limited selection of
traditions and older figures with an idea of constructing a synthesis, a
smalI summa. We are forced to wonder if perhaps the rationalizing of
the sequence of the leading ideas of the natural philosophers is based
not on the variety of their attentions, but on the historians' concems,
and, especialIy, on Aristotle's arrangement of the views of the pre-
Socratics in regard to his own interests and in accord with his methods
for evolving higher-Ievel abstractions. Harold Cherniss' Aristotle's
Criticism of Pre-Socratic Philosophy (1935), writes Eric Havelock,
explored "with precision how Aristotle's own physical conceptions had
infected his account of pre-Socratic first principles." (Havelock 6) G. S.
Kirk's Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments (1954) "placed the term logos
(one with linguistic implications) firmly at the center of the philo-
sopher's system, displacing the elemental fire assigned to him by
Aristotle as a first principle." (Havelock 7) For a half century now,
cultural historians have studied the influence of the ancient interpreters,
historians, commentators, and philosophers on the texts and have
analyzed the complex and subtle changes that might have occurred in
the shift from an oral to a literate cuI ture: the result is a sense of the
texts as less-than-certain documents and the ancient histories as con-
structions after-the-fact.
Along with these incursions into the traditional ordering of the
ancient pursuits of a single explanatory principle, the search for the
originating texts or authors that may have initiated such inquiries has
led inevitably and properly into non-philosophical works, especially
those of myth and literature. The pursuit of the origins of physical
science must cross a boundary into the area of non-philosophical,
non-scientific works, where philosophical and scientific meanings, if
present at alI, are inseparable from myth and literature. (F. M. Comford
in From Religion to Philosophy, a work of his young years, through to
the posthumous Principium Sapientiae, did much pioneering work in
this area, and, pursuing different goals, so has Havelock.) For example,
clearly, the Homeric stories are in relation to the sea - along its shores
or upon the sea itself - and the Homeric primary element is "water"
 12 SIDNEY FESHBACH

aud, equally clearly, the everyday of the Hesiodic world is in relation to

working the soil, aud the Hesiodic primary element is "earth." 1 am not
concemed here with single elements, but rather with four, the classical
Four Elements of earth, water, air, and fire as a unit.I The history of
the Four Elements in science has been traced mauy times and verges on
formulaic history. For example: "Although this doctrine of the four
elements [as enunciated by Empedocles] was dethroned immediately by
Anaxagoras and the atomists, in a modified form it was restored as the
basis of physical theory by Aristotle, whose tremendous authority
supported it through and beyond the Middle Ages. In spite of the
challenge of chemists like Boyle, it would commonly have been said
even in the eighteenth century that the elements of bodies were earth,
water, air, and fire." (Guthrie 143) Any phenomenology of the Four
Elements in literature must hold nearby for reference the scientific
perspective aud the history of science, but, even so, the proper study of
the phenomenology of the Four Elements must begin with the language
of myths aud literature.
When Ovid refers to the Four Elements in his Metamorphoses
(Metamorphoseon), he gathers together themes implicitly-presented in
a Greek literature eight-hundred years earlier and explicitly-stated
five-hundred years earlier, and he sends them into the future for nearly
two millenia. In the first thirty lines of his poem Ovid presents the
change from chaos (chaos) to harmony (concordi) , expressing many of
the key notions needed for a phenomenology of the natural elements in
literature, e.g., the ideas of a narrative, of a narrative by a "mind," of
identity aud change, of transformation, of the Four Elements in and of
the cosmogony, of the Four Elements and levels in nature, as weU as,
importantly, the Four Elements and human experience.
"My mind is bent to teU of bodies chauged into new forms. Ye gods,
for you yourselves have wrought the changes, breathe on these my
undertakings, aud bring down my song in unbroken strains from the
world's very beginning even unto the present time.
Before the sea was, and the lands, and the sky that hangs over aU, the
face of Nature showed alike in her whole round, which state have men
caUed chaos: a rough, unordered mass of things, nothing at aU save
lifeless bulk aud warring seed of ill-matched elements [rerum] heaped
in one. No sun as yet shone forth upon the world, nor did the waxing
moon renew her slender homs; not yet did the earth haug poised by her
own weight in the circumambient air, nor had the ocean stretched her

/
 EMPEDOCLES 13

arms along the far reaches of the lands. And, though there was both
land and sea and air, no one could tread that land, or swim that sea;
and the air was dark. No form of things remained the same; aU objects
were at odds, for within one body cold things strove with hot, and moist
with dry, soft things with hard, things having weight with weightless
things.
God - or kindlier Nature - composed this strife; for he rent
asunder land from sky, and sea from land, and separated the ethereal
heavens from the dense atmosphere. When thus he had released these
elements and freed them from the blind heap of things, he set them
each in its own place and bound them fast in harmony. The fiery
weightless element that forms heaven's vault leaped up and made place
for itself upon the topmost height. Next carne the air in lightness and in
place. The earth was heavier than these, and, drawing with it the
gros ser elements, sank to the bottom by its own weight. The streaming
water took the last place of alI, and held the solid land confined in its
embrace." (Ovid. Met. 1.1-31, emphasis mine.)
Ovid transmits a major literary, philosophical, and scientific tradition,
which appears in poetry, seulpture, and art over the next two thousand
years. A new sense of the natural elements began to develop with the
scientists of the European Renaissanee and with the artists, such as is
found in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. After his opening
monologue, Faustus begins with a ritual analogous to the invocation of
the Roman Catholic ritual, caUing the Holy Spirit to the altar. This
/ntroibo ad altare dei is \ Faustus' invoking the demonie spirit. "Sint
mihi Dei Acherontis propitii! Valeat numen triplex Jehovae. /gnei, aerii,
aquatani spiritus, salvete! Orientis princeps, Beelzebub, inferni ardentis
monarcha, et Demogorgon, propitiamus vos, ut appareat et surgat
Mephistophilis. Quid tu moraris? Per Jehovam Gehennam, et conse-
cratam aquam quam nunc spargo, signumque crucis quod nunc facio, et
per vota nostra, ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephistophilis." ["May
the gods of Acheron be propitious to me. Let the triple name of Jehova
be gone lor, hailed]. Hail spirits of fire, air, and water! Prince of
the East, Beelzebub, monareh of burning hell and, Demogorgon, we
petition you that Mephistophilis may appear and rise. Why do you
linger? By Jehova, Gehenna, and the holy water which 1 now sprinkle
and the sign of the cross which 1 now make, and by our vows, let
Mephistophilis himself now rise to serve us." (Marlowe 1.3.16-22,
emphasis in the translation mine.) From the interior of the fourth
14 SIDNEY FESHBACH

element, earth, arises Mephistophilis. The Four Elements are important

because alI actions are confined within their concentric spheres below
the moon, to which Satan's power is limited. The Four Elements and
other synoptic units, such as the medieval cosmography, are used in the
play to indicate a summing up of alI prior knowledge and experience
and a transition away or a transformation of their meanings and
relevance. In science, the natural elements are thoroughly reconceived
by chemists such as Boyle, Dalton, Prout, Thomson, Berzelius, and,
most famously, by Mendeleyev (Principles of Chemistry, 1869, 1871) in
the nineteenth-century in a new synthesis as a new chemistry. The
brilliant description of the chemical fire in Stephen Crane's story, "The
Monster," must be understood within the new chemistry. The characters
of the story are a white doctor, his wife, his son, and his black male
servant, plus people of the small town of Whilom. One day, while the
doctor is away, his house catches fire, his wife runs out, and his servant
rushes into the house to rescue his son. The fire spreads and the
only escape for the servant carrying the boy is through the doctor's
laboratory with shelves of jars of chemicals. Crane describes this scene
as if viewing a gorgeous deadly tropical garden: "AlI manner of odors
assailed him during this flight. They seemed ta be alive with envy,
hatred, and malice. At the entrance to the laboratory he confronted a
strange spectacle. The room was like a garden in the region where
might be burning flowers. Flames of violet, crimson, green, blue,
orange, and purple were blooming everywhere. There was one blaze
that was precisely the hue of a delicate coral. In another place was
a mass that lay merely in phosphorescent inaction like a pile of
emeralds. [...1 An orange-colored flame leaped like a panther at the
lavender trousers. There was an explosion at one side, and suddenly
before him there reared a delicate, trembling sapphire shape like a fairy
lady." (Crane 464-465) The range of colors is based on Crane's
interest in Impressionism in painting and literature and his knowledge,
if not probable school-laboratory experience, of the varying properties
of different chemicals ignited. Since Mendeleyev's Periodic Table of
Chemical Elements and, even more, since the development of twen-
tieth-century physics and chemistry based on quantum mechanics and
quantum electrodynamics, programmatic references in litera ture to the
Four Elements, as in Hermann Broch's epic Death of Virgil where each
section is headed with an Element ("Water - The Arrival, Fire - The
Descent, Earth - The Expectation, Air - The Homecoming"), are
 EMPEDOCLES 15

used to convey a humanistic concern for experiential truths continuous

with classical culture. Where Marlowe used the synoptic Four Elements
to indicate the end of one kind of orthodox knowledge and the turn
toward a new and demonie, primarily earthy, knowledge, Broch used it
to recapture the continuities between the present and the distant past
and to serve as a basis for an attempt at transcendence through
extensive epical and intensive lyrical meditation, combining, as it were,
Kant and Novalis.
At some time, the Four Elements had been transferred from nature
and physical science to culture, and transformed from the prime
explanatory principle of nature into an organizing principle of culture.
Where the Four Elements had been an important meeting place of
nature, science, and literature, they had become limited to human
experience, literature, and culture in general. Limited to the arts, they
convey a double sense of the continuities with classical tradition and
their discontinuity from modern physical science. That litera ture not
attached to modern science and, because itself modern, severed by
disbelief from classical science can imply that human experience when
seen in relation to the Four Elements is backward-looking, nostalgie,
and limited, expressing a willed traditionalism, as in T. S. Eliot's Faur
Quartets. H. Marshall McLuhan points out that "Each of the four parts
of this poem is assigned to celebrate one of the four elements: Burnt
Norton (air), East Coker (earth), Dry Salvages (water), Little Gidding
(fire)." (Lambridis x) The Four Elements also became a part of the
armament of cultural politics by figuring prominent1y in the re-assertion
of the value of primal human experience, as in William Golding's novels
of: water - The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin, fire - Darkness
Visible, air - Free Fali, and earth - The Inheritors.
Obviously, a phenomenology of the Four Elements in literature has
plenty of examples to draw from. An introduction could begin with
Homer, for there are hints of special selecting, or privileging, of the Four
Elements; hints can be found in Homer's Iliad, for example, "in the
division of the uni verse [...] whereby the heavens fell to the lot of Zeus,
the sea to Poseidon, and the misty darkness to Hades, while the earth
was held by them all in common" (Guthrie 141) and in the images
represented by Hephaistos when designing the construction of the
"Shield of Achilles." "Therein he wrought the earth, therein the heavens,
the sea, and the unwearied sun, and the moon at the full, and therein all
the constellations wherewith heaven is crowned - the Pleiades, and the
16 SIDNEY FESHBACH

Gades, and the mighty Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of
Ocean." The Four Elements are the earth, of course, then the heavens,
or air, the sun and the moon, or fire, and roundabout it alI the Ocean.
Because Plato and Aristotle exerted such an enduring and a vastly
complicating influence in philosophy, science, and literature, for this
introduction to a phenomenology of the Four Elements in literature, 1
found it useful to consider a prime example before them. The bound-
aries are Homer and Plato. Within these boundaries, according to
Aristotle (whose texts and attributions of priority, we have already
mentioned, are in accord with his approach and method of abstracting),
the first to present the Four Elements together and in concert with
more elaborate materialistic theories of existence was Empedocles.
"Empedocles, then, in contrast to his predecessors, was the first to
introduce this cause [of the world] in a divided form, not positing one
source of movement, but different and contrary sources. Again, he was
the first to speak of four material elements [...]." (Aristotle Metaph.
985a29-31) The term used by Empedocles is not archai (elements),
but rizomata (roots). While Empedocles may have meant at times
archai, that term carries other values, such as first, while rizomata
carries an organic semantic and probably a more vitalistic notion, just
as his dynamic terms philia and neikos often translated as Love and
Hate are used to convey the neutral ideas of attraction and repui sion,
yet not cleansed entirely of their emotional potential. Even though
tradition has made archai and rizomata interchangeable in this situation,
the organicist metaphor is looked at a Httle more closely later. The
choice of Empedocles is especially appropriate because not only did he
speak of them as a unit, he made them a central concept influencing his
physics and, at times, organizing his images. Furthermore, even in the
153 fragments, Empedocles' poem appears to have been, as 1 said, a
brief summa of what he knew of related traditions and earlier phil-
osophies. It is already quite clear that when writers, e.g., Marlowe,
Broch, and now Empedocles, use the Four Elements as a unit, they
have an intentional tendency toward synoptic vision. This is discussed
briefly in a moment and more extensively later, in Sections V and VI.
But just as Homer was already grouping them together and Heraclitus
mentioned them and Pythagoras, much older than Empedocles, talked
of them, and Xenophanes "seems to have been the first to put forward a
theory of the four elements," it is also likely that the Four Elements had
already been discussed as a unit by many others, includ ing, probably,
 EMPEDOCLES 17

the Hippocratean school of medicine, from which Empedocles and

Pausanias, who reputedly were physicians, may have learned of their
central importance. That Empedocles may actually have been a physi-
cian corresponds to a consistent materiallevel in the fragments, like the
materialism of the physician in Plato's Symposium. (Lambridis 42, 31)
Despite the fact that the Four Elements appeared before Empedocles
and were after him pressed indelibly into European science and
literature by Plato's Timaeus and by Aristotle passim, an introduction
to a phenomenology of the Four Elements in literature can best be
served by beginning with his fragments.
Empedocles is unlike those Greek physicists who supposedly chose
one primary element: Empedocleschose alI four, "For alI these things
- beaming Sun [elektor] and Earth [chthon] and Heaven [ouranos] and
Sea [thalassa] - are connected in harmony [Aphroditei] with their own
parts [...]." (Fr. 22) The intention and consequences of choosing four
has determinants that are probably sign,ificant1y different from that of
choosing one. Not only did Empedocles refer to them alI as a unit, but
he worked steadily at exploring and elaborating their implications: "...
Touching on summit after summit, not to folIow a single path of dis-
course to the end." (fr. 24) He is unlike Aristot1e in that while he, too,
may have been striving for completion of a system, he remained at the
earlier stages of searching and, importantly, of openness; he is not
working from within a closed, or nearly closed, system. Guthrie writes
that Empedocles "was impressed with the difficulties of composition
with such a complex theme on his hands, and self-consciously explains
his chosen method. This involved an elaborate interweaving of argu-
ments by going back on his tracks, putting things in a different way,
repeating lines and half-lines in new contexts. So we have fr. 24, of
which the most probable translation is something like: 'fitting the heads
of my tale into one another, not to traverse a sole and single path.' [...]
using a metaphor from irrigation, he announces: 'But now 1 shall return
again to the path of song which 1 set forth before, channelling off
discourse from discourse, thus. [...I''' (Guthrie 136)
It comes to this, (1) that the first point in a history of the idea of the
Four Elements in Greek literature and philosophies of nature is
uncertain, (2) that the fragments of poetry attributed to Empedocles do
have an indisputable assertion of the importance of the Four as a unit,
and (3) that an introduction to the phenomenology of the Four
Elements in literature can begin with these fragments.
18 SIDNEY FESHBACH

III: TEXTUAL UNCERTAINTIES AND METHODOLOGICAL

PERSPECTIVE

Unfortunately, the collection of fragments that compose the Fragments

of Empedocles carry intrinsic problems that must be considered before
discussing the texts themselves. The fragments were collected from
many disparate sources and then divided into two poems, Peri physis
(On Nature) and Katharmoi (Purifications). Havelock condemns texts
that make worse the problems of historical textual accuracy and that
force approaches into endless philological, concerns: "selected quota-
tions from the originals were intermingled with the interpretative
language that had been applied to them in antiquity after they were
dead, and very often long after. 1 observed what 1 thought to be a
collision between the two, in vocabulary and idiom. Ancient interpreta-
tions, no less than their modern equivalents, seemed to require that a
metalanguage be imposed on the originals." (Havelock 6) Friedrich
Solmsen makes a further point about the uncertainty of the classical
texts: "[...] it can hardly be denied that in the fifty years since its
publication [Ettore Bignone's important study of Empedocles] we have
learned many new lessons regarding the relative value of testimonies
and fragments, the trustworthiness of Aristotle's reports on his pre-
cursors, and other questions of vital bearing on the reconstruction of a
Presocratic system." (Solmsen 221-222) As with the texts of the
philosophies of these centuries, there is no fragment that can be
attributed with definitive certainty to Empedocles: every one of them is
found in supposed quotations or paraphrased in later writings. Perhaps
alI those attributed to him are his. Perhaps.
Getting right the chronology of Empedocles' life and circumstances
might help to clarify the fragments, but as with most of the ancient
writers his dates of flourishing and birth and death are uncertain, and
are calculated in relation to other writers whose dates are also con-
jectural: "lf Anaxagoras was born c. 500 B.e. and Gorgias c. 485, then
Empedocles may have lived c. 495-35." (KRS281, emphasis mine.)
Despite such chronological uncertainty the possibility of his living sixty
years has encouraged some historians and interpreters to consider the
naturalistic On Nature and the spiritual Purifications as works of two
different periods ten or fifteen years apart: Hermann Diels, according
to Guthrie, held the "theory of two distinct periods ... claiming it was
impossible to be both [this "natural" and this "spiritual"] at once."
 EMPEDOCLES 19

(Guthrie 123n1) Some fiU in the gap with speculations about encounters
with' for example, Pythagoras, who surely was dead by this time, or the
remnants of the Pythagorean school: "Empedocles, if he was in fact
connected with the Pythagorean school, must have known men of the
second or even the third generation of Pythagoreans." (Lambridis 36)
But the primary chronological evidence regarding Empedocles is far
too skimpy to support even circumstantial arguments of such influence.
The geographicallocations of philosophers' activities are often better
known. Empedocles is said to be from Acragas, â city on the southern
coast of Sicily. The history and location of Acragas, suggest Labridis
and Freeman, may be helpful to understanding the biography, even the
texts, of Empedocles "That he loved his city dearly is attested by the
opening lines of [Fragment 112], in which, addressing his friends, he
says, 'Oh, my friends, who inhabit the great city on the banks of fair
Akragas, on the high part of the city, mindful of good works, harboring
the strangers whom you honor, inexperienced in evil deeds, Hail!'"
(Labridis, 8; Freeman 173-74). The location has a political history
that may correspond with some anecdotes associated with him.
(Lambridis 8; Guthrie 130-31) However, this cultural geography,
composed of mixtures of history and of legends piled on legends, offers
for acceptance a structure without any substance: it cannot stand
securely.
Guthrie and Freeman point out, too, that Acragas was the center of
a cult of Demeter and Persephone. (Guthrie 130; Freeman 179) This
interesting association is worth a momentary pause. Empedocles'
Fragment 111, which is discussed in more detail in a moment, mentions
the power to reverse illness, aging, and death. Empedocles' comments
of reversing illness, old age, death, etc., are associated usually, as the
anthropologist Georges Dumezil says in The Plight of the Sorcerer, with
sorcery, wizardry, and magic. In short, this fragment carries echoes of a
particular, yet vast, tradition. Dumezil's study concerns itself with the
kayve - a priestly-kingly-magician, perhaps shamanistic, type - found
in ancient Indian and Indo-lranian literature. And, interestingly, in a
single instance, with reference to Demeter: "[...] the only society,
Indo-European at least in part, where the same title appears, lis] the
Lydians. [...] kave [... appears] once 'kave of Demeter' [...]." (Dume-
zil 87) Is it not likely that ideas of disappearance and death and return
and rebirth appearing in the fragments of Empedocles may be related
less to to the so-called Pythagorean influence than to similar myths and
20 SIDNEY FESHBACH

notions of this cult? Fragment 153 is Baubo, by which Empedocles

seems to mean "belly" and is a term "concerned with Demeter in
Orphic mythology." (Leonard Fr. 153 note) Guthrie offers much
material about the local forms of shamanism. (Guthrie 132-33) But,
finally, this, too, is still legend supported by more legend: so far using
chronology, geography, comparative religion, and more, there is only
legend alI the way down.
When we turn from the biography of Empedocles to the modern
editions, we tind uncertainty remains but disguised by scholarship
solving problems. According to William Leonard, "the fragments were
imperfectly collected late in the Renaissance [...] by the great German
Xyland, who translated them into Latin. Stephanus published his
Empedoclis Fragmenta at Paris in 1573. But not till the nineteenth
century did they get the attention they deserve, in the editions of Sturz
(1805), Karsten (1838), Stein (1852), and Mullach (1860), which show,
however, confusing diversitites in the readings as well as in the general
arrangement." (Leonard 3; O'Brien has a full bibliography of 1805-
1965) While the edition of Diels of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
(1906) has become standard, Solmsen suggests there are virtues to the
earlier one of Simon Karsten (Solmsen 253). Karsten's Philosophorum
Graecorum of 1830, his introduction and anthology, gave Matthew
Arnold the biographical "facts" for his "Empedocles at Etna."
The fragments were collected and divided into two works, Peri
physis (On Nature) and Katharmoi (Purifications). Solmsen states
clearly that the two poems should not be confused ("1 have made no
methodical commitment except to keep the Katharmoi out of the
discussion of On Nature." (Solmsen 222); 1 agree with O'Brien who
sees no reason not to find overlaps in the terms and ideas. Where
should Fr. 111 be placed? The translation of Fragment 111, by
Kathleen Freeman, is: "You shall learn ali the drugs that exist as a
defence against illness and old age; for you alone will 1 accomplish alI
this. You shall check the force of the unwearying winds which rush
upon the earth with their blasts and lay waste the cultivated fields. And
again, if you wish, you shall conduct the breezes back again. You shall
create a seasonable dryness after the dark rain for mankind, and again
you shall create after summer drought the streams that nourish the trees
and [which wilI flow in the sky]. And you shall bring out of Hades a
dead man restored to strength." Diels placed this as the last fragment of
the poem On Nature. But is it not obvious that its emphasis on the
 EMPEDOCLES 21

magic al is more appropriate to Purifications? The location in On

Nature appears to have been settled by Diels on the rule that fragments
addressed to Pausanias are placed in On Nature, and those to the
peop1e of Acragas in Purifications. Indeed, in the very brief headnote
to Freeman's translation, these two are noted especially. "He wrote
two poems in hexameter verses: On Nature, addressed to his pupil
Pausanias, and Katharmoi (Purifications), addressed to his fellow-
citizens of Acragas." But, why did Diels select the object of address as
earlier and later rather than, for example, the absence or presence of
the idea of magic? (Of course, stiH other divid ing criteria may be
"discovered" and applied.) One scholar cinches this by noting that only
'''24 of the 153 fragments can be apportioned between the two works
with something approaching certainty.'" (Guthrie 128, 128n1) Guthrie
writes, "Above aH it must never be forgotten that very few of the
quotations are explicitly assigned by our sources to one poem or the
other." (Guthrie 127) To carry this question one more step, note that
according to Guthrie, one scholar, Bidez, places Purifications in youth
and On Nature later, while Diels reverses this order. (Guthrie 124)
This, too, is a sign that the distribution to a "naturalistic," "materialistic"
On Nature and a "metaphysical," "idealistic" Purifications is arbitrary
and should not be taken dogmaticaHy. Solmsen says precisely that
"There are too many unknown factors." (Solmsen 222) Ultimately, 1 go
further than Solmsen, Guthrie, and others by questioning the authority
for any division and distribution of the fragments, which are from
different places and historical circumstances - and even with signifi-
cant qualities in common, the singleness of their authorship, of their
purposes, and of their arguments must be questioned. The scholars,
writes Guthrie, "have to some extent reconstructed the poems for
themselves." The point is obvious: if Empedocles is shadowy legend,
then the name used, "Empedocles," is and has been a rubric for these
fragments. Empedocles is an invention of these fragments that are
themselves problematic. In this line, my favorite fragment is Diels 109a.
Allegedly about mirrors, reflections, and objects, it has no Greek words
and is in effect "empty."
AH this uncertainty could bury any interpretative essay under textual
problems, methodological apparatus, and solutions. Havelock's sug-
gestion mentioned earlier, that "a metalanguage be imposed" is the
opposite of giving the philological history of each fragment and worrying
each controversial detail with extensive footnoting. (That kind of book
22 SIDNEY FESHBACH

is D. O'Brien's Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle: A Reconstruction from the

Fragments and Secondary Sources, which seeks to distill from most of
the fragments and from historical reports like Aristotle's its necessary
Empedoclean message: 1 am not convinced this is possible, no less that
O'Brien's argument is successful. In any case, for an important review
of the scholarship that in fact does seek to sort out variants, etc., see
O'Brien.) To work toward the metalanguage required by Havelock, 1
have chosen to as sume a perspective called by Northrop Frye the
"middle distance." A "middle-distance" viewpoint hopes to locate
structural and functional reIations that are minimally affected by
microscopic details. It is comparable to the fourth layer of Roman
Ingarden's theory of the four layers to a literary work of art. This is the
schematized aspects of the objects represented. At this "distance,"
textual variants are bracketed, referred to only to locate a valence, a tilt
in potential meanings. Instead, the "middle distance" looks at structural
and functional relations and from these it constructs one kind of
metalanguage. For example, what exactly did Empedocles mean univo-
cally by the term "Sphairos"? "(The Sphere [Sphairos] under the
dominion of Love): Therein are articulated neither the swift limbs of
the sun, nor the shaggy might of Earth, nor the sea: so firmly is it (the
Whole) fixed in a close-set secrecy, a rounded Sphere enjoying a
circular solitude." "There is no strife nor unseemly war in his [Sphairos']
limbs." "But he (God) is equal in all directions to himself and altogether
eternal, a rounded Sphere [Sphairos] enjoying a circular solitude." (Frs.
27, 27a, 28) Perhaps he did not use the term univocally. More
important than a long inconclusive philological note is that he uses the
word "Sphairos" as a structural and functional term to indicate an
all-encompassing and all-pervasive presence. It its structural relation to
other terms in the fragments is that of a unit indicating wholes or
totalities, then how do the other terms correlate functionally with it and
each other? A minimal answer must be that the other terms indicate
parts, subsets, synecdochistic relations, etc. (The Sphairos itself is
discussed later in more detail.) With regard to a phenomenological
analysis, this "middle-distance" metalanguage, with debts to Husserl,
Ingarden, and Frye, permits phenomenological descriptions, allows an
examination of the intentional structures that seem to control the inquiry,
and compounds phenomenological and literary-critical approaches.
To illustrate this approach Fragment 111 can serve well, for it
contains several problems leading ta the uncertainty brought up before
 EMPEDOCLES 23

and it is sufficiently long and coherent to allow structural analysis. Let

me repeat the translation of Fragment 111 by Freeman: "You shall
learn alI the drugs that exist as a defence against illness and old age; for
you alone will 1 accomplish all this. You shall check the force of the
unwearying winds which rush upon the earth with their blasts and lay
waste the cultivated fields. And again, if you wish, you shall conduct the
breezes back again. You shall create a seasonable dryness after the dark
rain for mankind, and again you shall create after summer drought the
streams that nourish the trees and [which will flow in the sky]. And you
shall bring out of Hades a dead man restored to strength."
This fragment shows the categories of the Four Elements that
Empedocles applied: "unwearying winds," or Air, "dark rain," or Water,
"summer drought," or Fire, and "the earth" and "the fields," or Earth. It
may also have the qualities of hot, cold, wet, and dry: "summer
drought," "winds," "rain," and "dryness." "Warm and cold seem to have
been important conditions in Empedocles' system, the former favoring
growth, the latter inducing decay, old age, sleep, death, in the last
instance perhaps serving as the occasion for the separation of the
elements by Hate." (Leonard, Fr. 62n. See also Fr. 65 and Guthrie 142)
Hence, it is consistent to place this fragment in On Nature. However,
the ideas of drugs that forestall old age and of powers to bring the dead
back from Hades are unique to On Nature and suggest it should be in
Purifications, which deals with the conditions and powers beyond an
ordinarily understood nature. Structurally, the Four Elements appear
together as unit, with each element presenting a polarity in which
destruction is countermanded with construction: e.g., the unwearying
winds which lay waste the cultivated fields are checked and, implicitly,
farming and harvesting are renewed. Similarly, illness and old age are
countered with drugs and, however accomplished, the dead are made to
live again. Structural and functional analyses show that the fragment is
about reversing destruction, turning devastating weather, illness, dying,
and death into construction, nurturing weather, health, and life. Thus,
based on structural analysis of the references and functional analysis of
the purposes, a hypothesis may be offered for dealing with these
remarks about human illness and resurrection: even though the rever-
sals to be brought about are done magically, the overall purpose is to
emphasize the usefulness of knowledge and the powers imparted by
knowledge. Human Iife and human activities can go wrong, but the
impact is countermanded by the power of knowledge and of these
24 SIDNEY FESHBACH

teachings. One last point about the fragment's reversals: do its address
and promise - "you shall learn" - indicate reversing the limited
strength, even the "helplessness," of the auditor (Pausanias?) into
extraordinary power? And does this imply the speaker was once also
limited in power and has become strong? or does his promise, so
far-fetched, express his own present state of feeling helpless? This last
speculation would link this fragment with those that speak of his
alienation, which, again, are found in Purifications, not On Nature.
Let us consider a different translation, that by Leonard, who wanted
to re-create poetic qualities, not just the denotative philosophical
equivalents of the fragments. His translation, written in poetic diction,
with "thee" and "thou," typical of the 19th century, seems to stress the
violence and breakdown of the coherence of nature and, as weU, the
responses of nature in accord with the desires and magic of humans:
And thou shalt master every drug that e'er
Was made defense 'gainst sickness and old age-
For thee alone aU this 1 will fulfil-
And thou shalt calm the might of tireless winds,
That burst on earth and ruin seedlands; aye,
And if thou wilt, shalt thou arouse the blasts,
And watch them take their vengeance, wild and shrill,
For that before thou cowedst them. Thou shalt change
Black rain to drought, at seasons good for men,
And the long drought of summer shalt thou change
To torrents, nourishing the mountain trees,
As down they stream from ether. And thou shalt
From Hades beckon the might of perished men.
"Learn" is "master," "check the force" is "calm the might," "lay waste" is
"take their vengeance, wild and shrill." Leonard's language inflates the
extremes of nature into violence, and near-biblical motivations. How-
ever, if we survey the bulk of the fragments we find they have very little
reference to natural violence of nature or humans, contrasting, for
example, with Hesiod's poems, which, fearful of the sea, warn his
brother against shipping out except if he cannot make a minimal living
from the earth. Leonard's translation caUs attention to the absence of
such references by Empedocles, a paucity that cannot be attributed to
Sicily, which had its share of extremes in nature, but rather, in my
reading, to three possibilities: the social status of Empedocles put him
 EMPEDOCLES 25

above the need to farm, or his sta tus put him above the need to use
such terms and, more importantly here, the level of abstract thinking
typical of the fragments is expressed in language somewhat removed
from the detailing of everyday struggles. That is, if there are power and
"violence" in the fragments of Empedocles, they are not in direct
expres sion or response to powerful natural events, as are· mentioned in
Fr. 111, but they are expressed implicitly for social conflict and the
experience of mental events themselves, the experience of transforming
in thought the meaning of the world. To state this slightly differently:
Empedocles' poetry does not appear to be responding to the vast forces
of nature, but to his own working at understanding natural events and
at understanding them through certain organizing ideas and principles,
especially, through the idea of the Four Elements. A phenomenological
description of the use of the Four Elements in the fragments shows
them in combination with the expression of powerful ideas regarding
everyday and large-scale perturbations and reconciliations. The texts
manifest a mind examining, categorizing, undergoing, introjecting large-
scale activities; Empedocles can do this because, using the Four
Elements as a unit, he has contracted the multiple and the large into the
smaller package of unified categories. A corresponding division in tone
in the fragments occurs: the tone associated with the Four Elements is
calmer while in those fragments confronting the ideas of life and death
it is more intensely expressive, sometimes angry, bitter, perhaps,
hopeful. Phenomenologically, the Four Elements intend a calmer
natural world, a world accessible to understanding.
The commentary to Fragment 111 in The Presocratic Philosophers
by G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield repeats the ambiguity, or
ambivalence, regarding natural philosophy juxtaposed with magic but
ends by underscoring the philosophical intent of the poem: "Man's
natural powers may be narrow, but Empedocles promises to make him
capable of feats which can only be described as magical, even though
the actual discussion in the poem of the four elements and the composi-
tion and functioning of the human body is properly philosophical."
(KRS 286) The opposition between philosophy and magic appears
correct, and it suggests that the promise of this fragment to reverse
destruction with construction continues something rhetorical, such as a
topos implying that (philosophical) understanding is powerful. That
Empedocles might have rhetorical awareness or skills may be the basis
of Aristotle's suggesting he began a tradition of rhetoric, followed next
26 SIDNEY FESHBACH

by Gorgias. The mixture of physician, shaman, and naturalist in one

person was at this time a common enough status for various individuals,
according to Guthrie and Dumezil, for that idea to be formulized and
transmitted as a topos and useful to Empedocles when seeking ta
persuade listeners. (Guthrie 132-34) However, the rhetorical gesture
is not empty: it reflects and repeats an experience recurring throughout
the fragments, that Empedocles felt his own power in thinking through
his ideas of nature, the body, cognition, and large-scale pattems, i.e.,
aeons, of time.
Finally, what did Empedocles mean by bringing someone back from
the dead? Did he believe at this time in the idea of the rebirth of the
soul, which he discusses in other fragments supposedly written later?
Empedocles is probably speaking here about the physical body, not
some sort of soul. Here, he is not entertaining ideas of the soul, rebirth,
or metempsychosis, which are evident in other fragments; he appears
concemed only with material-physical properties and asserting his
power - as a teacher, rhetorician, and physician. If so, then this
fragment belongs in On Nature, after alI. Perhaps. Perhaps he is
thinking of the saul and the possibilities of revitalization as well as
rebirth. Perhaps. He, at no particular point in time that 1 can discem,
wrote about ideas of the "soul," which, importantly, has a structural and
functional significance comparable to the roots ar elements. This inclu-
sion has so shocked some commentators that they believe Empedocles
was converted to, say, Pythagoreanism. More simply, it did bring about
an increase in complexity, but, 1 would argue, without an absolute
conflict with the values and meanings he had already established.
Empedocles called the soul not psyche, but daimon, which is a semi-
divine entity in a sequence of divine, daimon, hero. This norminalIy
divine source is comparable to his using divine names for the elements
in Fr. 6, "Hear, first, the four roots of thing: bright Zeus, and life-
bearing Hera, and Aidoneus, and Nestis who causes a mortal spring of
moisture to flow with her tears." Whatever is meant by the "soul," it
appears structurally and functionally "root"-like; although it is never
so-called, it appears to be a fifth "root" (rizoma) or an "element." If
Empedocles had divided the element air into aer and aither, then the
daimon would have a position analogous to the fifth essence, the
"quintessence," the aither, when considered as a transcendent element,
not merely clear air above the misty aer. That is to say, Empedocles
kept strictly to the materialism of the Four Elements, but in two
 EMPEDOCLES 27

important instances, he has need for quintessential terms, the daimon

and the Sphairos. He does not hesitate to use them. These terms of the
quintessential appear to be innovations in his intentional constituting of
the world.
We have come a long way from the textual skepticism directed
toward freeing the text from presuppositions regarding Empedocles and
from methodological worries and solutions by our combining structural
and functional analyses to achieve a "middle-distance" metalanguage,
through to the beginnings of phenomenological inquiry. My suggestion
is that the history of the fragments and the history of the editorial
categorizing by various editors lead to doubting any ordering and, more
importantly, that the fragments understood phenomenologically lead to
the proposal that all of them should be placed under a single rubric, the
Fragments. My view, to be argued later, is that Empedocles probably
began with the Four Roots (rizomata, later called elements), and
explored them extensively. Structural and functional analyses, a "mid-
dle-distant" analysis, have led from understanding Fragment 111
through the possible dissolution of the separation into On Nature and
Purifications to the hypothesis that the daimon is a fifth "root." At the
same time, what emerges is a general description of Empedocles, the
areas where he appears calm and where emotional, and, in particular,
most importantly for this study, when his intentional interests, pre-
occupations, and determinations stand forth clearly and when there
bursts forth an innovation in his thinking.

IV: FIRST DESCRIPTION: THE POETIC OBJECT, THE POEM

Despite the uncertainty of the fragments, we can describe an eidetic

structure of the poem intended by Empedocles who, as mentioned
before, is himself created out of the fragments. Addressed to Pausanias
and the people of Acragas, the fragments are clearly directed toward
instruction and they have the qualities associated with the genre of
didactic poetry. Empedocles' clearest immediate predecessor in this
genre may be Parmenides, who, according to some critics, is the les ser
poetic poet. (Guthrie 135) To arrive at Empedocles' poem, it is helpful
to turn this analysis to concepts drawn from the literary criticism and
theories of Aristotle's Poetics, especially, his three categories of ethos
(character), mythos (plot), and dianoia (thought), Roman Ingarden's
Literary Work of Art, especially his proposal of four strata, or layers, to
28 SIDNEY FESHBACH

a literary work of art (that of the "music," that of "meaning" based on

the syntactical orders, that of the text's representing objects outside the
text, and that of the schematized aspects of the objects represented),
aud Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, especially his description of
centrifugal and centripetal directions of texts, his re-definition of
Aristotle's dianoia as the meauings found in the structures of the text,
and his secularization of the concept of anagogy. The theories of all
three are deeply related.
In the study of didactic poetry the first problem may be that of the
ethos (character) of the author: can the author who is present in this
poem as the speaker of the poem be trusted aud is the speaker a
character in the poem expressing the author's ideas and emotions, or a
mask separable from the author? It he is a forerunner of rhetoric, as
suggested by Aristotle, we need not believe he is necessarily suspect, as
would be implied by Plato. He appears trustworthy, trying to speak
truly about the nature of nature. He proposes a period when monsters
were produced in evolution. "On it (Earth) many foreheads without
necks sprang forth, and arms wandered unattached, bereft of shoulders,
aud eyes strayed about alone needing brows." (Fr. 57) This zoo may
have been based, as some scholars suggest, on the human-auimal forms
of Egyptian or Babyloniau art taken as serious images of prehistoric
animals, but Leonard writes correctly that "The Greek imagination was
long familiar with centaurs, satyrs, chimaeras, cyclops, hermaphrodites,
and other 'mixed shapes of being.'" (Fr. 57 note) I think, too, they are
the result of a logical and playful, a rather surrealistic, haudling of the
concrete implications of his ideas. As a character in his own poem, he
appears in some fragments calm about the physics he is describing and,
at other times, he is quite disturbed, sometimes disappointed aud bitter,
especially about the historical period in which he lives. Altogether, the
fragments picture a consistent1y serious, sometimes playful, sometimes
bitter, and trustworthy speaker.
We can have no confidence in discovering a linear plot (mythos)
authentic to the poem as written by Empedocles because there are only
fragments and these are arranged differently by different editors. The
same doubts would also be appropriate for discovering au original
linear logic in his argument. Editorial groupings aud simplifying surveys
try to follow a logic of dividing the fragments into On Nature aud
Purifications, a division shown to be less than definitive, and stringing
them out, linearly, going from the simpler to the complex, which is
 EMPEDOCLES 29

reasonable but this "reasonable system" is also imposed and does not
necessarily reveal Empedocles' poem or his view. What carne first in his
argument - the simpler or the complex, the container or the contained,
an ornately mythic narning or a plain demythicized traditionallabelling,
etc.? Maybe it aH carne first! The fragmentariness precludes our making
any significant decisions about order.
To derive from the fragments any character and plot we need to
work at the thought (dianoia). It is obvious that the quality of truth or
accuracy in a didactic poem is important: the thought (dianoia) in a
didactic poem may be the development of the truth along lines of logic
that are not necessarily linear, but may, appropriately, follow paths of
roots (rizomata). Diels' arrangement misdirects our attention to a linear
logic. The idea of the organic, seemingly haphazard, spreading of roots
in the soil may be appropriate for describing the spread of the Four
Roots throughout existence. "Roots" means radical and elemental,
surely, but it also may be the image of rhizomatic thinking that may
underlie Empedoc1es' self-description of moving back and forth to
construct his poem. Empedocles describes his method of "not to follow
a single path of discourse to the end." (Fr. 24) This rhizomatic thinking
differs from that described by Deleuze and Guattari, who see in
rhizomatic thinking inorganic, machine-like, presentation: "the ideal of a
book, to display everything on a level of such externality, on a single
page: lived events, historical determinations, concepts thought, individ-
uals, groups and social formations (...) non-signifying and non-subjec-
tive." (Quoted by Burger 33) Empedocles means to build a coherence,
not merely "to display" ad lib. alI on one level. Empedoc1es had a
rhizomatic method leading to but not necessarily succeeding at an
organicaHy, integrated, unified text, of which we have only fragments,
and not the rhizomatic thinking of Deleuze and Guattari, which would
dissolve entirely any means of grasping both the historical and philo-
sophical subjects of the fragments. We have already stated, though, that
our Empedocles is not the historical, but the philosophical subject
derived from the fragments. If the fragments are analyzed with regard
to the plausible structural relations of their thoughts, we may get
something of the plot and argument of the whole and something more
of the character and phenomenological subject. Yet he is unlike
Aristotle in that while he, too, may have been striving for completion of
a system, he is in the earlier open stages of searching. He is not working
from within a c1osed, or nearly closed, system. "But 1 will go back to the
30 SIDNEY FESHBACH

path of song which I formerly laid down, drawing one argument from
another [...]." (Fr. 35) This could fit the description of the fragments as
we have them. Returning to a path, doubling back or criss-crossing, or
sending out new roots, Empedocles gives an opportunity to discover
modifications in his intentional structures. Before describing the structure
of the thought, we must consider the larger features of the language
itself. In this I have deliberately chosen to use critical terms, discussed
by Frye, that I believe retum us directly to the major ideas of Empedocles.
By a common understanding of truth or accuracy of statements, one
very simple, yet appropriate to a didactic poem, the truth or accuracy
of the fragments might be located in how their references move
outward from the verses to represented objects in the concretized
world. In order for the words to tell this kind of truth about the world,
they must have a referential power and be able to direct the readers'
attention outward, centrifugally, from the many verbal centers of the
poem to the world. This centrifugal referential power depends on the
accuracy of indication, which would include, of course, the adequacy of
the syntax, which is Ingarden's second stratum, the meaning based on
the syntax, but this is not being considered here. Perhaps the easiest test
of such accuracy is in everyday empirical details: do the fragments
present details that are testable or concretizable observations by the
readers of the everyday world of Empedocles. This is Ingarden's third
stratum, the references to the represented objects, the concrete world.
We find the fragments give very few details of the daily non-philo-
sophical experiences of the poet. Indeed, there appears very little
attempt at presenting such experiential or expressive details, metaphors,
or similes, as are found in the poems Empedocles may have known,
e.g., those of Homer and Hesiod. The fragments mention such details as
farming, chariot, bronze, wine, hedgehogs, mules, birds, lan tem, heating
and water systems, paints, dyes, pottery-making, baking, cheese-making,
a wheel, alloying of metals, details that indicate a broad period of
Mediterranean civilization, not much narrowed by his additional refer-
ences to ritual, sacrifice, and feasting. (Guthrie 134, 137) Except for
addressing Pausanias and the people of Acragas and mentioning the
yellow, or fair, Acragas river, there are few references to his actuallife,
to the house in which he lived, to his family, to his friends and students,
to his daily activities and occupations, etc. Altogether, the references to
farming, arts and crafts, and other activities are so generalized as not to
indicate that the area is Sicily or the Greek mainland or elsewhere
 EMPEDOCLES 31

along the Mediterranean, no less that it is the southern, not the

northern, shore of Sicily, or even an island. The panegyric given by
Lucretius, mixing geography and mythology, provides some more
information, and it does concretize a little the generalized picture.
Writing about several theories of cosmic origins, he comes to the
elemental theory: "Add, moreover, those who take the first-beginnings
of things in couples, joining air to fire and earth to water, and those
who think that alI can grow forth out of four things, from fire, earth, air,
and water. Foremost among whom is Empedocles of Acragas: who was
born within the triangular coasts of that island, around which the Ionian
deep, flowing with its vast windings, sprinkles the salt brine from its
green waves, and the swift-moving sea in its narrow strait divides with
its waves the shores of the Aeolian land from the boundaries of the isle.
Here is wasteful Charybdis, and here Etna's rumblings threaten that the
angry flames are gathering again, that once more its violence may beleh
fires bursting forth from its throat, and once more shoot to the sky the
lightnings of its flame: which mighty region, while it seems wonderful in
many ways to the nations of mankind and is famed as a place to see, fat
with good things, fortified with mighty store of men, yet it seems to
have contained in it nothing more illustrious than this man, nor more
sacred and wonderful and dear. Moreover, the poems of his divine
mind utter a loud voice and declare illustrious discoveries, so that he
seems hardly to be born of mortal stock." (Lucretius 713-733)
Though it would be possible to paint the scene in generalized images, to
re-concretize the objects represented, it would be too difficult to be
precise within a narrowly defined time or place. This test of being able
to go from the words to actualities in the world shows Empedocles
made relatively little of this centrifugal power of words. Indeed,
following such referential directives in the fragments disperses the
energy of the poem, centrifugalIy separating the words from each other,
and not having them re-cohere in the coherence of the objects of world;
therefore, they do not aid in constructing a unified image of the
everyday world. An aspect of the truth of the fragments may be in this
combination of references to everyday details and the difficulty in
constructing an image. Then, if there is a truth in this stratum of the
poem, it is that of the formal mimesis of separation, dispersal, isolation,
fragmentation! In Empedoclean terms, the centrifugal referential form of
the poem with regard to everyday details indicates the truth of Strife,
but, unlike Hesiod, whose extraordinarily powerful Works and Days is
32 SIDNEY FESHBACH

filled with details of a daily struggle amid the natural elements, these
references to the everyday do not indicate or demonstrate the idea of
Strife. He uses everyday details in similes, to help some aspect of his
instruction, not for the mental re-construction of a world. On this
stratum, his drawing into his views the person of Pausanias aud the
townspeople of Acragas suggests his sense of communication and
community, or, at some everyday level of social experience, what might
be called a scene of Amity or Love. "Friends, who dwell in the great
town on the city's heights, looking down yellow Acragas, you who are
occupied with good deeds, who are harbours (of refuge) treating
foreigners with respect, and who are unacquainted with wickedness:
greeting!" (Fr. 112) Several of the fragments do indicate a belief in
social coherence. Aud those with some bitterness imply social conflict:
"The joyless land where are Murder and Wrath aud the tribes of other
Dooms, and Wasting Diseases aud Corruptions and the Works of
Dissolution wauder over the Meadow of Disaster in the darkness." (Fr.
121) The latter fragments are used as evidence for the biographical
view of his political ostracism because of his inappropriate democratic
views and his intellectual alienation, supposedly because of the rise of
the Sophists. The extent of the fragmentation, in the form, the absence
of a clear concrete world, aud in the sometime mood of alienation may
mean that underlying alI the fragments is a primai intuition, discussed
Iater, of the fragmentation of everyday experience. Empedocles' clear
preference for the causes aud effects of Love may be a correction, for a
prior primal intention of pervasive Strife may direct the intentionality of
thepoem.
Empedocles' consciously chosen truth is, as with Fr. 111, to work at
a reverse movement, one counter to the referential. The movement
counter to that of the referential is an inward-turning, reflexive cen-
tripetai quality to be achieved by having the words point to each other
and by building on those meauings fostered by mutual determination.
But the reflexivity of the poem is not at the Ievel of the words indicating
everyday detaiIs, for then the details would yield some more obvious
coherence. Empedocles believed he was writing such a poem. "But 1
will go back to the path of song which 1 formerly Iaid down, drawing
one argument from another [...J." (Fr. 35) He worked to integrate the
terms of his poem. Reflexivity occurs in the discussions of the presence
of the Four Elements aud the activities of nature, the dynamics of Strife
and Love, to separate or to join. By repeating messages, Empedocles
 EMPEDOCLES 33

meant to construct a philosophical and didactic poem in which he

would maintain a plane of abstractions about nature, life, and aeonic
time as elements, dynamic principles, changes, mixtures, stability, etc.
The everyday details lie within and around edges of this plane, used to
illustrate or to clarify the central ideas. Ultimately, it is this plane that
constitutes Empedocles' poetic world. It the dispersal of poetic energy
in references to the everyday world suggests a poetic of Strife, then
these activities of thinking and writing and revising in order to construct
a poem coherent within itself and in relation to the plane of truthful
abstractions, are the poetics of Love. An analogy may be seen in two
warks of a poet already mentioned, T. S. Eliot: McLuhan writes that "it
is Empedocles whose vision pervades The Waste Land and Faur
Quartets." The "reader of Faur Quartets will tind a fulfilment of
Empedocles' cosmology ever more satisfying. Each of the four parts of
this poem is assigned to celebrate one of the four elements." (McLuhan
viii, x) The unity of the Faur Quartets, correlated through the Four
Elements as a unit, is a poetics of Love, whereas the fragments of The
Waste Land, with centrifugal footnoting added at the request of the
publisher, is a poetics of Strife. The one component 1 find occurring
more frequently than any other and may possibly be a unifying prin-
cip le of the poem is reference to the Four Elements. They may be
referred to directly, as in "Come now, 1 will first teU you of (the sun)
the beginning, (the Elements) from which alI the things we now look
upon carne forth into view: Earth, and the sea with many waves, and
damp Air, and the Titan Aether which clasps the circle aU round" (Fr.
38), or they may be used to organize a description, as in Fr. 111
(quoted earlier), where the Four Elements are not under discussion but
are used to indicate an natural events. The rizamata (roots) ar archai
(elements) are complete entities and component parts: they exist
without appearing to engage in self-motivated activities but, rather, are
driven by, ar reveal, farces - i.e., the forces of separating or integrating
known as Strife and Amity, Hatred and Love. Most of the time, he does
not use them with a meaning of emotions or sentiments, and they are
not so used in this essay. Furthermore, Empedocles does not seem
attached to one name. Love has several: Philia, Philates, Aphrodite,
and Cypris. (It should be noted that these opposing terms of Love and
Hate resemble the "neutral" scientific concepts Repulsion ar Attraction,
Rarefaction and Condensation, used by other philosophers of nature,
especially the "atomists.") (KRS 389n) O'Brien presents a three-page
34 SIDNEY FESHBACH

summary of his conclusions regarding the processes of the cosmic cycle,

the first sentences of which are enough to give a sense of the direction
of Empedocles' thought: "Empedocles' world is made of four elements,
earth, air, fire, and water. These are ruled by two forces, Love and
Strife. Love is the cause of happiness and unity. Strife is the cause of
separation and misery. These two forces rule in turn. Strife makes the
elements many, and so long as the elements are many they are moving.
Love makes the elements into a single whole, the Sphere. In the Sphere
the elements are at rest. The period of unity and rest under Love lasts
for as long as the period of plurality and movement under Strife."
(O'Brien 1) Whether O'Brien's long, detailed, and fine analysis in his
Empedocles' Cosmic Cycles has resolved the many difficulties in the
fragments or not, it along with the rougher analyses of traditional
histories of Greek philosophy indicates the strong possibility that the
fragments contain a systematic proposal and description, Le., they make
use of repeated and ultimately cross-referenced terms, definitions,
logical operations, and overall coherence. (1 discuss later the phenome-
nology of Empedocles' propensity to systematic, or, perhaps more
accurately, pre-systematic inquiry, but, for now, while the analogies,
perhaps influences, of Pythagorean ideas have been noted (and dis-
puted), it is more important for this study that Empedocles, as in the
proto-geometry of the Pythagoreans, uses a minimum number - six
implied by Empedocles, eight by Aristotle's count, or at least ten by
mine - of correlated concepts to construct a theory of the universe.)
Thus, he builds a system of the Four Elements, activated by the
polarized and polarizing forces of Hate and Love (also known as Strife
and Amity, Conflict and Friendship, etc.), which are present in the
smaller events and as well enduring over long-term temporal periods,
aeons, of motion and processes. Although he appears to be writing
about processes, about, for example, on-going mixing, he intends
consistently the products, mixtures in their particular moment, like
framed images in a movie-strip. This intentional tendency lends clarity
to the statements but, ultimately, it becomes excessively limiting,
resulting in inventions of solutions to problems, such as porosity of the
sensoria, that are not solutions at alI. In my reading of the fragments the
system was not given in one whole, but evolved without any discernible
logic, except, if we follow his description of himself, by accretion. Unlike
the other natural philosophers, e.g., Thales and water, Empedocles
gives parity to the Four Elements and, unlike the Pythagoreans, he is
 EMPEDOCLES 35

not preoccupied with elaborating a cosmic mathematics, an ethics and

extensive cult rituals, notions of the sacred and the profane, and
hierarchies of alI of them. In a way, Empedocles is a "pluralist"
admitting alI that is necessary, but with clear preferences - i.e., health,
Love, and Sphairos, not illness, Hate, and disorder. Yet so much
emphasis is given to Love and Sphairos together they take on the value
of utopian wish fulfilIment. These preferences add the impression of
pathos and anguish and anger to some fragments and are seen incor-
rectly, by some commentators, as expressions of a "conversion" to
metaphysical, idealist, "religious," or Pythagorean mysticism.
As I said before, 1 have chosen critical terms that coincide with the
thought of Empedocles. The critical terms, derived from Frye's Anatomy
of Criticism, of "centrifugal reference," and Empedocles' dynamic term
"Strife" are analogous to each other as are "centripetal reflexion" and
"Love." Thus, at one level, those fragments that indicate unities are
manifestations of the mental act of Love and those that indicate
alienation are manifestations of the mental act of Strife. Empedocles,
we saw, added some reflection on his method of composition. "Touching
on summit after summit, not to folIow a single path of discourse to the
end." (Fr. 24) "For what is right can well be uttered even twice." (Fr.25)
"Thus alI (creatures) have intelligence, by the will of Fortune." (Fr. 103)
He was joining together thoughts of the Four Elements, how they come
apart, centrifugally, in "Strife" or come together, centripetally, in
"Love," i.e., he was creating his own mixtures and aggregates. His
reflection indicates he regarded the work of unifying in thinking and
writing as itself an act of Love. Thus, he intends three operations of
Love, that at the linguistic referential level of writing about the Four
Elements as a unit, that at the poetic level of making a coherent poem,
and that at the mental level in his remarks reflecting on his work. These
parallels of the activities of Love appear also in regard to Strife, in
Empedocles' providing very few details of his everyday world, in his
mild skepticism with regard to sensations, and in his indicating intel-
lectual alienation: "The intelligence of Man grows toward the material
that is present." (Fr. 106) "For limited are the means of grasping (Le.,
the organs of sense-perception) which are scattered throughout their
limbs, and many are the miseries that press in and blunt the thoughts.
And having looked at (only) a small part of existence during their lives,
doomed to perish swiftly like smoke they are carried aloft and wafted
away, believing only that upon which as individuals they chance to hit
36 SIDNEY FESHBACH

as they wander in alI directions; but every man preens himself on

having found the Whole: so little are these things to be seen by men or
to be heard, or to be comprehended by the mind! But you, since you
have come here into retirement, shall learn - not more than mortal
intellect can attain." (Fr. 2; Guthrie 228-43) This analysis and descrip-
tion of the fragments show that his intentional motives are directed
toward constituting a world in his poem in which integration and
separation must occur at all levels and in which acts of unification at
whatever level - in existence, in conscious analysis, in reflection - are
better than acts of separation. We say, therefore, one of the chief
intentional activities of Empedocles (probably his first passionate
intensity, one directed to the primal intuition of unifying or separating)
is directed to unifying, to consolidating, to imagining new unities based
on absolute points of origin (archai), and to relying on the consistency
and constancy of the absolute Four Elements. Thus, he achieves the
meanings of the world he constituted. That he admits both integration
and separation indicates his awareness of the conclusions of prior
philosophers and his intentional drive toward system and synopsis.
That he has preferences and tends toward a utopian construction
indicates a vulnerability and compensatory intentions, and possibly an
intentional force within his own unstated worldview struggling to
emerge to modify the constitution of his world. Indeed, these two
intentional motives - the dynamic principles of Love and Hate and his
preferences and values - form another unit, more complex than
either/or, which is both/and, in existing together paratactically, with
each ready to be responsible for constituting the world. The dramas of
Empedocles' poem are in the playing out of tensions or conflicts, the
inventing of new solutions, the balancing and battling of the vastnesses
and limits, the reconciliations .... Holding both in mind may be seen as
the second passionate intensity. While he reflects on the process of
weaving back and forth in his work, nowhere does he carry this into
reflecting on his methods, as we find in Plato and Aristot1e. In short,
Empedocles has stopped the process of reflection at a certain point of
self-consciousness; describing his fragments phenomenologically, we
have gone beyond that point, to describing the eidetic structures
intended in the fragments of his poem. His stopping at the level where
he does - with analysis of the world in terms of the Four Elements
and logical elaborations from that - has important consequences for
his work and for our phenomenological understanding of it. This is
discussed in the next section.
 EMPEDOCLES 37

A brief summary, en route. Overall, the fragments, understood

phenomenologically, are the deliberate expression of mental events of
reflection, giving evidence of activities at some remove from immediate
sensations or sense-based perceptions, under a high intensity of
thought, drawing upon traditions recalling the use of the Four Elements
by, e.g., Homer, and their use in the conceptualizations of other natural
philosophies by, e.g., Heraclitus, as weB as the traditions of the social
role and prestige of shamanistic-philosophers, e.g., Pythagoras. Here is
the first passionate intensity of Empedocles, that of his intentional
re-construction using the Four Elements, etc.: he is working hard and
playing seriously at unifications, particularly at acts of Love. It may be
said that Empedocles' mind is primarily set to those intentional acts of
combining, unifying, etc., that he associates with the activity of Love.
Furthermore, there is a recurring, perhaps steady, pressure from below,
urging the desi re to overcome Strife and invent new concepts.
Empedocles' poem appears to be in fragments not only as the result
of its being made up of shard-like quotations that were found dispersed
and truncated, but also as the result of his thinking in epigrammatic and
aphoristic forms, the distillation of a unifying and abstracting process in
the acts of the mind engaged strenuously and sometimes playfuUy in
consolidating and imagining. Havelock, seeking to understand the
transition from oral to literate poetry and from mythic language and
syntax to abstract, conceptual terms with its own intentional syntax,
has argued "the case for supposing that at least the first four pre-
Socratics whose actuallanguage survives composed as oralists either in
verse or in aphorisms, in a style which embraced the language of
Homer and Hesiod as a matter of course, and that they even accepted
the cosmic mythologies of Homer and Hesiod as traditional models
which had to be revised." He has also argued the pre-Socratics were
engaged in "the invention of a conceptual language in which aU future
systems of philosophical thought could be expressed; this same lan-
guage, however, being extracted from Homer and Hesiod and given a
new non-oralist syntax [...]; these pioneers, like their successors,
composed for oral publication, in oral idiom, and probably in verse.
[...] The terms sought were primarily physical - body, space, motion,
change, quality, quantity, and similar concepts - basic and rather
simple (as they appear to us)." (Havelock 2-3) If Havelock is correct,
then a full study of the phenomenology of the use of the Four Elements
by Empedocles would need to take into account pressure upon the
intentional structures to adjust to the shift from language of Homer to
38 SIDNEY FESHBACH

his own present conditions, from oral to early-literate, from aphorism

to longer discourse, which we find in the documents and stories of the
Sophists and the rhetoricians.
The poem presents not only this working of the Four Elements in
themselves and as building-blocks that in aggregate and under the
influence of the dynamic forces of Love and Strife compose everything
in the empirically-given world, but also, in a shift from focusing on the
Four Elements to the dynamic forces of Love and Strife, it considers
long-term temporal, historical, or aeonic, periods. Empedocles' philo-
sophical position is that he lives in the age of Strife. "1 wept and wailed
when 1 saw the unfamiliar land." (FI. 118) "From what large honor and
what height of bliss/ Am 1 here fallen to move with mortal kind!"
(Leonard FI. 119) "Alas, oh wretched race of mortals, direly blessed!
Such are the conflicts and groanings from which you have been born!"
(Fr. 114) This view that he is living in an age of Strife is typical of poets
world-oveI. Whether it is out of the attitude of the Vedantic tradition
that this is the Kali Yuga, the "age of darkness" (Eliade 114), or of
Hesiod in his cycle of ages from Golden to lron, that he lives in the
wOrst of times, poets have rarely indicated they live in the best of
times, in the age of Gold. We see this restated in Matthew Arnold's
"Empedocles at Etna" and epitomized in his Empedoclean poem,
"Dover Beach:" Arnold gives his own nineteenth-century egocentric
melancholic cast to Empedocles' thinking: His Empedocles says, "Mind
is the spelI which governs earth and heaven./ Man has a mind with
which to plan his safety;l Know that, and help thyself!" (11. 26-29)
People around Arnold thought his "Empedocles" a mask of himself; he
denied this - unpersuasively. (Tinker 289) However, Arnold is not
completely anachronistic in his emphasis on subjectivity, for his is a
logical extrapolation of Empedocles' correlation of cognition and the
processes of the world. The cognitive rule is that like perceives like.
The earth in us cognizes (or recognizes) the earth outside of us.
Arnold's Callicles makes a statement reflecting this rule that has far-
reaching importance for this essay and that I discuss again later: "'Tis
not the times, 'tis not the sophists vex him;l There is some root of
suffering in himself,/ Some secret and unfollow'd vein of woe,/ Which
makes the time look black and sad to him." (11. 150-54) It is an age
of Strife, turbulence, and the self that he is was thrown down into this
world. And if the age of Strife is perceived, there must be something-
like in the perceiver to perceive it.
 EMPEDOCLES 39

Earlier we discussed that the fragmentariness of the fragments is felt

in the paucity and dispersion of the references to everyday life. It is feIt
again when Empedocles says he lives in an age of Strife - i.e., his
intentional mental acts of Love in synthesizing unities are carried out in
the midst of a larger historical or aeonic period of Strife, which he
cannot change. This historical fragmentation has resulted, as it were, in
the historical process that led to fragmentation of his poem. Further,
the will to Love is recalled in his playing with the idea that he can
reverse Strife, not directly and physically, but, perhaps, he can by
means of the power of his imagination constitute its meaning. We saw
that the second passion was holding Love and Strife together, para-
tactically. The third passion in Empedocles' mind occurs when he
must hold two conflicting ideas together, as occurred before, but this
time the relationship is hypertactic: he is engaged in the work of unifica-
tion in a time that is within and subordinate to an era of Strife. He
must work doubly hard and it is here we tind a change in mood, an
increase in anger and bitterness. The smaller and larger acts of Love
and smaller, but especialIy, large-scale acts of Strife must be held
together, not the coexistence within a single frame of Venus and Mars,
but of Cupid and one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! "The
joyless land where Murder and Wrath and the tribes of other Dooms,
and Wasting Diseases and Corruptions and the Works of Dissolutions
wander over the Meadow of Disaster in the darkness." (Fr. 121)
Clearly, when Empedocles considers larger and larger unities, he has an
increasingly difficult time deriving comfort from the mental act of
unification or in the idea itself of mental unity. The legends say there
were difficulties in the life of Empedocles, that he fell into disfavor and
was forced into exile (which is the start of Arnold's "Empedocles at
Etna"): the fragments show that as Empedocles sought to unify the
ideas and forms for larger and larger entities, such as long historical
periods, he was forced to struggle harder and harder, perhaps with less
and less success. The result in the fragments is that Empedocles gives
vent to a eri de eoeur, to the sorrow in and of his "soul" at being born
in this time of Strife.
We have been describing the intentional structure and the conse-
quences of that intentional structure outward from the Faur Elements
to larger concepts, such as the aeonic periods. That is, the description
began with the eidetic structure of the Four Elements and expanded
from there. However, there was a time before these acts of the mind: in
40 SIDNEY FESHBACH

speculating about this prior state, we may catch sight of an inten-

tionality deeper within Empedocles' thinking. In this prior state may
exist two possibilities (here presented as mutualIy exclusive, although
there is no reason to believe that in actuality, they were not mixed in
unusual or unpredictable proportions and values): (1) He began with an
unquestioned primal intuition into the unities of experience and the
world. He had no need to overcome the intention of unity, but only the
urge to elaborate and develop this primal intuition and to include its
opposite within an eidetic structuring. (2) He began with an unques-
tioned primal intuition of the fragmentation of experience and the
world. He had a need to overcome this separation and to produce its
opposite, but only to construct the poem expressing this eidetic world.
The fragments as a whole manifest both possibilities and indicate a
drive to achieve understanding, to construct and constitute meanings,
and to present a cosmos that is the projection of a double intentionality,
one that saves the evidence of his intuitions and another that constructs
an order beyond these intuitions that were given to him. That is, his
descriptions, such as that of long-term evolutionary processes, must be
coordinated concretely and faithfulIy with his other terms, those of the
Four Elements and Love and Strife. Elaborating the intuition of unity or
overcoming that of fragmentation, Empedocles drives deliberately and
intentionalIy toward reconstituting the older terms, the syntax, and the
categories of Homer, Hesiod, and the philosophers of nature in a
system with clear components and ratios of possibilities. He intends a
world in which matter including humans, is represented as available to
analysis and to synthesis. This intention appears in the fragments as a
pre-systematic cosmology. "1 shalI telI of a double (process): at one time
it increased so as to be a single One out of Many; at another time again
it grew apart so as to be Many out of One. There is a double creation
of mortals and a double decline: the union of alI things causes the birth
and destruction of the one (race of mortals), the other is rarer as the
elements grow apart, and then flies asunder. And these (elements)
never cease their continuous exchange, sometimes uniting under the
influence of Love, so that alI become One, at other times again each
moving apart from the hostile force of Hate." (Fr. 17) "For alI these
things - beaming Sun and Earth and Heaven and Sea - are connected
in harmony with their own parts." (Fr. 22) Et cetera.
In response to the problem of living "syntheticalIy" (Love) in an
"analytic" period (Hate) we see something of desire itself in Fragment
 EMPEDOCLES 41

111. There it is proposed, even promised, that the act of understanding

carries the power to reverse the unwearying wind, the dessicating sun,
the lost streams, the damaged fields, illness, and death. The desire of
Empedocles for power and/or Love peeks out of this fragment. It is
more obvious in: "Upon him comes Desire also, reminding him through
sight." (Fr. 64) The power of desire and the desire of power are
extended: cannot understanding reverse the historical direction of the
times, turn the age of Strife into the age of Love? Can it remain true to
itself? E.g., Arnold's "Ah, love, let us be truei To one another!" in a
world of strife, "Where ignorant armies clash by night." (Arnold 162)
"And at the last they become seers, and bards, and physicians, and
princes among earth-dwelling men, from which they blossom forth as
gods highest in honour." (Fr. 146) That a synthesizing by understanding,
ar Love, might reverse the impact of Strife and, at the same time, that it
cannot do sa introduces a pathos into the fragments. His appea! brings
a return ta visibility, as it were, of the fragmentariness of the fragments:
the acts of Love, including the poem, are subverted by the strife of the
age of Strife. This has consequences in Empedocles' developing a
"root" (rizoma) beyond those of the Four Roots or Elements. Which
carne first, the intention of the abstraction that is in the Four Elements
as a unit, ar the intention of needing ta become abstract in order ta
escape the predicament of suffering the experiences of the age of Strife?
Matthew Arnold saw that given the logic of like-to-like for the author-
speaker to experience the suffering of the age of Strife there must be a
"root of suffering." Empedocles' poem does not have such a "root."
Arnold's suggestion, though, is an insight, probably mediated by
Lucretius, into Empedocles' idea of the daimon, translated as "saul,"
but it is not psyche or any of the tripartite soul of Pythagoras.
There is no mention of a daimon in these fragments describing the
Faur Elements and their products of the "saul" as a mixture of the Four
Elements, an epiphenomenon, a form of the body, or whatever. It is
possible he decided ta speak of the saul, as legend and some com-
mentators suggest, after encountering some Pythagorean remnant. 1
think not, because Pythagoreans divided the mind in three. 1 think that
Empedocles was brought to the notion of the daimon in at least two
other ways, historical and logica! - in competition with Pythagorean
legend in which Pythagoras is a daimon and by the logic of his terms
and their relations in which there was a need for a term that indicated a
stable element for the mind, personality, and powers of understanding.
42 SIDNEY FESHBACH

Furthermore, logically, this seems best placed between the divine and
the human, or like the elements, to be nominally derived from the
semi-divine. Built into his notion of the daimon is its opposite evolution
- temporal, yet transtemporal, powerful, yet in pain! Let us note the
structural relation and function of the daimon. Empedocles does not
present the origins of the gods, e.g., as some combination of the Four
Elements. Nor does he give the origin of the daimon as semi-divine,
perhaps because he thought that the daimon is composed of elements
or is itself, like the elemental gods or nominally the "divine" elements,
an element itself. But we notice that it endures an existence that is
comparable structurally to a root-element. "For by now I have been
born as boy, girl, plant, bird, and dumb sea-fish." (Fr. 117) "(A female
divinity) clothing (the soul) in the unfamiliar tunic of flesh." (Fr. 126) In
this, we may see a rejection of the term of the Pythagorean psyche and
its meanings - perhaps because it was directed to total escape. Hence,
his fragments may be a response to and rejection of the directions
indicated by Pythagorean notions.
The larger unity - the sense that he lived in an age of Strife -
appears accompanied by both invention of and alienation of the
daimon. The daimon exists and it is displaced from the present time. In
these two ways, then, there are more divisions, new pairs of opposition
created in the world. This leads to a further speculation. The human
body is in the world. It is not self-enclosed, like each of the Four
Elements, but is a composite of all Four, made of the same elements as
the world, the human-earth perceives the world-earth. But how does
like contact like? In the body itself there must be some kind of
mediating system, some kind of channels. Empedocles invented porosity.
His view of the pores of cognition is a simplistic mechanical idea. The
idea of porosity is an indicator of his systematic attitude and his
openness to adding a new concept. But it also indicates a problem for
speculation - the vulnerability of the self to the impact of the world.
The invention of the daimon is a corollary of the idea of vulnerability
and the mechanistic notion of cognitive porosity. The daimon is a
response to vulnerability. It is like the primal material roots of fire, air,
water, and earth. Like them, it is a permanent entity - born and born
again. In short, the daimon is structurally so much like a material root
that it should be translated as "ideal root," or "soul-root." Because
Empedocles intends a totally natural world, the daimon, like porosity,
 EMPEDOCLES 43

is not a solution. Because it is the destiny of the daimon to be reborn and,

unfortunately, to be reborn in the ages of Strife, must it also be a "root
of suffering"? Thus, Arnold's suggestion is correct for an age of Strife.
However, when it is reborn in an age of Love, must it also be a "root of
pleasure"? At best, Arnold's invention for Empedocles is only a partial
translation of daimon. Empedocles' motives for conceiving the daimon
and its functions in the poem are several. (1) LogicaUy, the material
elements, the Four, may account for the evolution of the material body,
but they do not account for something additional in humans. (2) As a
consistent materialist, Empedocles does not want a transcendent soul,
such as is associated with the Pythagoreans. He may have taken the
idea of a soul that is repeatedly reborn from the Pythagoreans, but he
uses it in his poem as if it is as material as the Four Elements. (3)
In combining material and quasi-transcendent qualities, the daimon
reveals the additional motive of desiring to transcend the suffering of
the age of Strife in which he lives now. We see this repeated in the
poem in the idea of the Sphairos - which seems to be concept for the
cycle of Love and Strife (Hate). At one level, the Sphairos may be
translated (weakly) as "circle" or "cycle," indicating repetition in a circle
of certain large-scale events. At another level, the Sphairos is a period
of time in which it seems Love dominates totally. "(The Sphere under
the dominion of Love): Therein are articulated neither the swift limbs
of the sun, nor the shaggy might of Earth, nor the sea: so firmly is it (the
Whole) fixed in a close-set secrecy, a rounded Sphere enjoying a
circular solitude." (pr. 27) "There is no strife nor unseemly war in his
limbs." (pr. 27a) It is this period of time that Lucretius invokes at the
beginning of De Rerum Natura, combining Empedocles' Sphairos of
Love and Epicurus' pleasure. Lucretius invokes the goddess, Love:
"Mother of Aeneas and his race, darling of men and gods, nurturing
Venus, who beneath the smooth-moving heavenly signs fiU with yourself
the sea fuU-Iaden with ships, the earth that bears the crops, since
through every kind of living thing is conceived and rising up looks on
the light of the sun: from you, O goddess, from you the winds flee away,
the clouds of heaven from you and your coming; for you the wonder-
working earth puts forth sweet flowers, for you the wide stretches of
ocean laugh, and heaven grown peaceful glows with outpoured light."
(Lucretius 1.1-13) That period of time is comparable to the daimon's
escaping a time of Strife and suffering and being reborn in a time of
44 SIDNEY FESHBACH

Love. Empedocles' poem presents a clear materialism and expresses

intentions that are consistent both in deliberate statements and in
intentional ordering of those statements.
In his extended meditation on matter, its components and their
permutations, on the evolution of the human body and, eventually, on a
materially-based daimon, Empedocles has saturated his mind with the
intentional categories for matter-activity and the processes of matter.
"(The heart) nourished in the seas of blood which courses in two
opposite directions: this is the place where is found for the most part
what men call Thought; for the blood round the heart is Thought in
mankind." (Fr. 105) He is completely conscious of matter, i.e., he
intends the Four Elements; he intends their activities under the influence
of two more categories, Love and Hate, etc. Furthermore, by his
deliberate intention, he has projected forward from his mind organizing
categories that are themselves based on the intentional categories
regarding the Four Elements, including constituting his own subjectivity
on the principle of like-to-like as matter, the Four Elements, etc. The
constitution of his "subjectivity" is a deeper introjection of concern with
matter and processes of matter. Let us risk confusion by suggesting, in
literary terms, that the invention of the concept of the Sphairos carne
about as the objective-correlative to the experience in his consciousness
of several kinds of unity. Two other literary terms are useful to apply;
they are drawn from religious contexts but have here on1y secular
epistemological meanings. The idea of the Sphairos is seen in the mind
and apprehended by the mind as a totality. Using language antici-
pating the description of the angelic intellect by Christian theologians,
Empedocles describes the perceiver and the epiphanic perception:
"There was living among them a man of surpassing knowledge, who had
acquired the extremest wealth of the intellect, one expert in every kind
of skilled activity. For whenever he reached out with his whole intellect,
he easily discerned each one of existing things, in ten and even twenty
lifetimes of mankind." (Fr. 129, emphasis mine) Furthermore, that the
Sphairos is valued as a purely positive entity makes this an angelic
epiphany. The relatively short term of the complete stability of the
Sphairos suggests a cosmos imbued by the all-pervasive idea of the
Sphairos, itself perhaps comparable to the Logos. Later, 1 point out that
when the epiphany of the Sphairos is subordinated to a larger unity,
that of the cosmic or aeonic cycle, for surely it is so subordinated when
it breaks apart for a new age of Strife, the positive values of the concept
 EMPEDOCLES 45

and the epiphany of the cosmic cycle disintegrate to reverse and

become re-constituted as a demonic epiphany.
Whatever the process, Empedocles does not abandon the nature he
carne to understand, but instead he invents a new cycle, that for the
daimon, who can be both outside the immediate material existence, not
"reborn" in matter, and inside the long-term material existence not
"non-existent." Empedocles constitutes the daimon in relation to daily
experience, long-term historical time, and transhistorical aeons. The
meaning of the daimon is compounded of confidence and vulnerability,
stability and change, desire and avoidance. 1 do not wish to interpret
Empedocles in a manner so as to diminish his powerful statements
against life in such fragments as Fr. 123 with its capitalized opposites,
Growth, Decay, Rest, Waking, Movement, Immobility, Majesty, Defile-
ment, Silence, and Voice and Fr. 124 with its "wretched race of
mortals, living with conflicts and groanings from birth. These express
clearly his unhappiness at being born in such a time; but I do not
believe it follows necessarily from this that he has become a dualist or a
mystic, writing out two radically different philosophical ideologies. The
"possibility for man to find his place in a 'period of darkness,' the close
of a cycle, is of especial interest to us. It occurs, in fact, in other
cultures and at other historical moments. To bear the burden of being
contemporary with a disastrous period of becoming conscious of the
position it occupies in the descending trajectory of the cosmic cycle is
an attitude that was especially to demonstrate its effectiveness in the
twilight of Greco-Oriental civilization." (Eliade 118) He does not talk
about the gods - but about theories and opinions of the gods! "If for
the sake of any immortal Muse, it has pleased thee that my poetic
endeavours should be of concern to thee, now once again, in answer to
my prayer, stand beside me, Calliopeia, as I expound a good theory
concerning the blessed gods!" (Fr. 131, emphasis mine.) "Happy is he
who has acquired the riches of divine thoughts, but wretched the man
in whose mind dwells an obscure opinion about the gods!" (Fr. 132,
emphasis mine.) He is a materialist, who sees the mind, like the body,
as a product of the activities of Love that itself engages in the acts of
Love. He is aware of the powers of the mind - for ill (to forget) or
good (to know). (See Fr. 2, quoted earlier.) Comparison with the
psychological statements by Heraclitus or the Pythagorean range of
inquiry shows Empedocles' relative simplicity, and his main concern
is to constitute existence by means of a natural materialism and natural
46 SIDNEY FESHBACH

explanations for the soul. "The intelligence of Man grows towards the
material that is present." (Fr. 106) Empedocles' theory of the cosmic
cycles is very similar to the historical cycles of Giambattista Vico, who
saw the gentile world working through revolutions of a four-phase cycle
(of gods, heroes, humans, and ricorso). 1 would suggest Vico's com-
bined Hesiod's and Empedocles' cycles, but Vico himself as a Christian
stood outside the cycles of gentile history.
Empedocles' unhappiness with embodiment, incamation, and rein-
camation may have come about because of an intuition of vulnerability,
the invention of an escape as a daimon while being trapped in cycles:
i.e., the meanings he gave to life, nature, and the self feIt the deadly
weight of its own intended mechanistic view. His own intentions have
tumed on him: "Death the A venger." (Fr. 10) Ii his constitution of the
meaning of the universe produced and was produced by an angelic
epiphany, is he now intending a "demonic epiphany"? Can a pure cyclic
naturalism also be understood as burdensome, transforming intention-
ality of control and power into despair? "The only possibility of
escaping from time," writes Mircea Eliade from the perspective of
comparative religion, "of breaking the iron circle of existences, is to
abolish the human condition and win Nirvana. Besides, aU these
'incalculables' and aU these numberless aeons also have a soteriological
function; simply contemplating the panorama of them terrifies man and
forces him to realize that he must begin this same transitory existence
and endure the same endless sufferings over again, millions upon
millions of times; this results in intensifying his will to escape, that is, in
impelling him to transcend his condition of 'living being,' once and for
aU." (Eliade 116-117) Thus, a mind filled intentionally only with
understanding matter and material events and severely limited material
or natural explanations experienced an angelic epiphany at first. Then
demonic. The constitution of the Sphairos itself rebounded against his
mind, which, like the Sphairos, flew into distant times and the present
condition became anathema and distant. There were altematives - but
it is one of the consequences of his stopping where he did that left
Empedocles in a smaller room than he expected.
Our analysis has forced forward from an obscure background of the
fragments a pervasive intentional structuring that is somewhere between
oppositional and dialectic moves. Love and Strife clearly have an
oppositional relationship; they or their effects can mix but there is no
transcending third form, or dialectical synthesis. The situation of the
 EMPEDOCLES 47

daimon is similar: in this existence it is called "Empedocles," which is

born in an age of Strife; and in the age of Strife, he is working hard
at Amity, Union, Consolidation at a (new) intellectual level; then
Empedocles expresses again new level the rhythm or pulse of Strife, of
alienation, of separation. If Empedocles did actually write two poems,
On Nature and Purijications, he could have intended a dialectical
process within each and each in relation to the other. On Nature
balances differentiation of elements with unification of Four, etc. As for
Purijication, to "purify" is at once the act of differentiating and the
desire to unify at a higher or in another mode! Thus, On Nature, with
its systematizing, putting analysis in the service of synthesis, and
Purijications, with its insistence on the alienation of the daimon in the
body and in the age of Strife, both express Love and Hate. However,
once again Empedocles does not reflect on his epistemological pro-
cesses or on the intended structures of his poem. His activity does
produce new concepts and entities and consolidations, but he remains
pre-systematic, pre-dialectical, pre-reflexive. He thinks dialecticalIy, but
he hardly thinks about thinking dialectically.
To conclude this section on the intentional structures in the poetry
of Empedocles, we should note that it is part of the poetic drama and
impact of these fragments that his work at unifying is left disunited in
fragments and that we the commentators are now trying to re-con-
cretize what he de-concretized in constituting the eidetic object that is
his poetry and to unify what we believe may have had some unity
originally. Empedocles could not believe his poem an enduring victory
over Strife, because he states that Love and Strife wiII always exchange
the role of dominance. Ultimately, the keys to the plot, character, and
thought are about unity, separation, and reconciliation, in each fragment
and in the cosmic cycle of the Sphairos.
To get closer to the phenomenology of the Four Elements in the
Fragments of Empedocles, we need to ask another question: do the
Four Elements taken as a unit function to keep the language of the
fragments so abstract? Born into an age of Strife, he - or his daimon
- would prefer other! The elaboration from the Four Elements sug-
gests overall continuity, not divisions into radicalIy different existences.
He is a naturalist - with alI the parts of nature connatural in origin and
continuity. "Fools! - for they have no long-sighted thoughts, since they
imagine that what previously did not exist comes into being, or that a
thing dies and is utterly destroyed." (Fr. 11) "For what in no wise exists,
48 SIDNEY FESHBACH

it is impossible for anything to come into being; and for Being to perish
completely is incapable of fulfilment and unthinkable; for it will always
be there, wherever anyone may place it on any occasion." (Fr. 12) Its
transcendence is never the leaving of the always immanent nature: the
daimon may be semi-divine in name, but the Elements are divine! In
his view of the long-term predicament, transcendence is an escape from
a particular body in a particular age, such as that of Strife, and it is at
the same time a return to the overall matter and long-term material
processes, with an intense yet unstated hope of return in the age of
Love. "And at last they become seers, and bards, and physicians, and
princes among earth-dwelling men, from which they blossom forth as
gods in highest honour." (Fr. 146) The rituals to be done and the acts
and food to be avoided will help in this return to the processes of
harmonizing overall matter.

V: SECOND DESCRIPTION: CYCLES AND EPIPHANIES

AlI readers of Empedocles agree that he proposes some kinds of

repetitions, or cycles, even though the word kyklos does not appear
(Solmsen, 235). The linear sequence in his theory of evolutionary
aggregates has the appearance of a cycle when repeatedly new genera-
tions of species form and disintegrate. The more definite and yet
problematic cycles are the cosmic or aeonic cycles: Sphairos breaks
into Strife and this is followed by Love and Strife two more times until
there is again Sphairos. Empedocles, to my knowledge, does not order
the sequence by placing Sphairos first, as if an Orphic cosmic egg is
breaking into a universe. It is just one period, apparently inhabitable by
the daimon, in continuing cycles. Empedocles is not passive in the
cycle, nor engaged in an enormous struggle of the "will to escape"
found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and mysticisms. He does advise fol-
lowing ritual acts, dietary rules, not killing animals - and, importantly,
he does refer to the acts of Love (an unsentimental unifying principle
and power) to bring about the perfect moment of the Sphairos. Eliade
- in Eternal Return - reviews many kinds, from a simple returning of
events, i.e., the model of the lunar cycle, to enormously complex
systems, for example, in Hinduism. He writes about Empedocles that he
"conceives of the alternate supremacy of the two opposing principles
philia and neikos as explaining the eternal creations and destructions
of the cosmos (a cycle in which four phases are distinguishable,
 EMPEDOCLES 49

somewhat after the fashion of the four 'incalculables' of Buddhist doc-

trine)." (Eliade 120) Lambridis is correct to mention that Empedocles'
cycle resembles the Buddhist cycle, but he does not give much sub-
stance to his suggestion of a histarical connection between the two.
When Empedocles' cycles are placed in relation to other such
theories of processes of time, one motive becomes clearer. Fragmenta-
tion in Strife has not precluded the birth in that period of a mind that
works with ar toward unities and unification. Thus, the phases of the
aeonic system can include activities counter to the overall nature of the
period. Empedocles, in the details of his "system" and in his long-term
cycles, demonstrates a bent, an intention, to construct an alI-inclusive
statement, e.g., a literary narrative and a scientific system in which alI
the parts have a relational coherence, such as a structural, functional,
ultimately symbolic place. This unifying intention is found even in
fragments, as if each fragment evinced an intentionality that is alI-
pervasive. Frank Kermode's Sense of an Ending (Kermode 67, 138)
and Arthur Danto's: Analytic History (Danto 8, 11, 23) argue persua-
sively that narratives of literature and historiography sustain implicitly
ar explicitly an intentionalIy complete time. This "complete time" is
used to order the parts, the momentary ar enduring events, within an
intentional unit. Ernst Cassirer's higher-Ievel abstraction in Substance
and Function is particularly relevant to these views of literature and
histariography even though it describes mathematics. "In truth, it wilI be
seen that a series of contents in its conceptual ordering may be
arranged according to the most divergent points of view; but only
provided that the guiding point of view itself is maintained unaltered in
its qualitative peculiarity. Thus side by side with series of similars in
whose individual members a common element unifarmly recurs, we
may place series in which between each member and the succeeding
member there prevails a certain degree of difference. Thus we can
conceive members of series ardered according to equality ar inequality,
number and magnitude, spatial and temporal relations, or causal
dependence." (Cassirer 16) "The connection of the members is in every
case produced by some general law of arrangement through which a
thorough-going rule of succes sion is established." (Cassirer 17) The
general surveys and detailed commentaries miss this intention of alI-
inclusi ve statements because they seek to present only "the system" of
his physics and cosmography, to explain "the system" going from sim-
pIer to complex, etc., substituting their systems and disguising what may
50 SIDNEY FESHBACH

have been Empedocles'. Simply: phenomenological description is more

attentive to the entire work and its intentiona! structures. Early or late
in his career, the time cannot, of course, be determined, Empedocles
intended an all-inclusive approach, using, a "circle" in which the parts,
the Four Elements, under the causal power of Love and Hate, form
different large-order wholes. There are mixtures throughout, with
quantitative dominance giving qualitative differences to periods of the
aeonic cycle. There comes a phase when Love has so convened and
coordinated all the smaller wholes that a larger coherence is formed,
the all-pervasive and all-encompassing Sphairos. The Sphairos has
Love in all its parts, the smaller wholes, as an idea, an all-pervasive
influence, presence, or normative measure, throughout, as it were, all its
limbs. "There is no strife nor unseemly war in his limbs." (FI. 27a) "For
there do not start two branches from his back; (he has) no feet, no swift
knees, no organs of reproduction; but he was a Sphere, and in all
directions equal to himself" (Fr. 29) "For one by one did quake the
limbs of God (theoio)." (FI. 31) The Sphairos is an imagined unit
associated with the Golden Age and, as I have suggested, the Logos. It
serves as an alternative, "utopian," norm. It does not remain, and there
is a movement toward separation again. In this cycle, or circle, there
develops a correlation of the parts, the smaller whole units, with each
other and with the complete unit, the largest whole unit, the Sphairos.
Interestingly, whether integrated or disintegrated, the parts are coor-
dinated, anyhow, because they remain made of the Four Elements and
because they are in ratios influenced by Love and Hate. The system
works on the bad days as well as the good!
Empedocles' intentiona! inclusivity remains regardless of interpreta-
tions of the cycles (such as Solmsen's single cyclic genesis or O'Brien's
argument that there are two aeonic moments of the Sphairos). Inclu-
sivity is the intentional essence of the Four Elements as unit; Empedo-
cles joined the Four to be all-inclusive. Empedocles constructed a
theory that really moves away from over-emphasis on any kind of
single-explanation. For example, in spite of his mentioning Being, Being
is not used as the explanation and the goal of all thinking. Inclusivity is
seen in the discussion of the elements. Parmenides argues by his logic
that "What is real cannot come to be or perish, and it is everywhere,
since to admit emptiness is to concede the reality of what is not. But
from this Parmenides had deduced two further conclusions - that
reality was a unity and that it was immovable - which Empedocles did
 EMPEDOCLES 51

not find so compelling. By denying them, the more fundamental

principles might be observed, without taking away aU reality from the
physical, perceptible world." (Guthrie 141; see Fr. 8) Empedocles'
rejection of the dominance of one element, or the logic al problems of
Being, avoids taking of principles or logical operations that compel
impractical subordination and exclusion. "[...] Parmenides' outright
condemnation on the senses is countered by the claim that aU alike are
aids to knowledge and none is to be preferred." (Guthrie 139; see Fr. 3)
The four elements are not an absolute unity (Guthrie, p. 140) but a
unity made of a plurality of primary entities. For the same reasons, the
concept of the daimon is correctly understood as material and natural,
and it is not posited in a dualism in which the ideal and transcendent
are escape-hatches from nature. And certainly such a seemingly ideal
and transcendent daimon does not dominate as the single creative
power that enters the world. "He accepts the statements that nothing
can come out of nothing and that what exists cannot perish; the sum
of being is constant." (Guthrie, 139) It is possible to examine the
categories of Empedocles' and show that just as the rizomata and the
daimon are there to be inclusive, so is there a consistent linguistic and
intentional inclusivity in the Sphairos. He seeks to indicate everything
and to render it as an elaboration of his primal intuitions and intentions.
The fragments manifest Empedocles' intentional unfragmenting
mind; rather, at most points, he consistent1y considered and sought to
construct larger units, sequences, and relationships. He sought to
"totalize." The work of the psychologist Erik Erikson can be helpful
here with a Httle of the psychology involved in and leading toward
phenomenological understanding of the world and the person. (1 want
to state with emphasis that 1 am not using Erikson's categories to make
a point about the psychological condition of Empedocles: I would have
no way of knowing about that condition. But I am searching for the
eidetic structures that are found in the fuU range of phenomenological
activities and possibilities in the fragments; these could assist funda-
mentally in a psychology of Empedocles, if we knew who he was.) In
his essay, "Wholeness and Totality - A Psychiatric Contribution,"
Erikson makes a useful distinction between "wholeness" and "totality."
Of these terms, Erikson writes, "Both mean entireness; yet let me
underscore their differences. Wholeness seems to connote an assembly
of parts, even quite diversified parts, that enter into fruitful association
and organization. This concept is most strikingly expressed in such
52 SIDNEY FESHBACH

terms as wholeheartedness, wholemindedness, wholesomeness, and the

like. As a Gestalt, then, wholeness emphasizes a sound, organic,
progressive mutuality between diversified functions and parts within an
entirety, the boundaries of which are open and fluent. Totality, on the
contrary, evokes a Gestalt in which an absolute boundary is emphasized:
given a certain arbitrary delineation, nothing that belongs inside must
be left outside, nothing that must be outside can be tolerated inside. A
totality is as absolutely inclusive as it is utterly exclusive: whether or not
the category-to-be-made-absolute is a logical one, and whether or not
the parts really have so to speak, a yearning for one another." (Erikson
161) The Sphairos, for example, is a concept that indicates clearly
Empedocles' attempt to synthesize all of the parts of his approach into a
complete unit that is all-encompassing and it is all-pervasive; the
Sphairos begins as something analogous to Erikson's concept of
"wholeness." In my reading, the fragments show a mind that includes
where it can, it builds a synthesis. but it is not in a panic to include
everything, nor in a panic to exclude anything, i.e., it is simply not
compulsive. (J'Ie may see this echoed in the legends about Empedocles
as a democratic politician and leader.) The daimon appears an improv-
isation called for by new inquiries into nature and the self. Of the
senses, "He is not a believer in the infallibility of the senses. They are
feeble instruments, but so is the mind (nous), and man can scarcely
hope for certainty." (Guthrie, 138) Yet he is not denying the senses their
place. And he exercises a certain amount of playfulness, as in his
approach to the Four Elements which is without a governing teleo-
logical principle that would corre1ate the end-product with the earlier
stages: his so-called evolutionary descriptions are based in part on
playing with possible permutations. He is casual about adding large
ideas of chance and necessity. (Guthrie 159-80) His gods are divine
and about which we have "good theories" and "mistaken opinions." In
short, his intentiona) structures do not include a strict and rigid
intentional closure.
With an intentional whole that is understood through his open yet
severe reduction of the world to the Four Elements and two correlated
dynamic principles, Attraction and Repulsion, etc., Empedocles' con-
sciousness now encompasses the whole of the natural world. His
consciousness is filled with the intentional synthesizing of a new view of
the universe and the mind itself, and in addition to the activity of
synthesis, it has a tentatively completed complete theory. The Being of
 EMPEDOCLES 53

the world thought of by Empedocles is constituted by his intentional

wholism held at a level of secondary constructions based on the Four
Elements, etc. Appropriate, perhaps, to the aphoristic style of the
fragments, there are multiple occasions and kinds of epiphanies, in
which wholes are intended and presented. These wholes are pre-sys-
tematic, with contradictions and vagueness, with openness to new
intentional categories, yet they are mind-filling, complete and completely
visible to his consciousness. We can see moments when Empedocles
can hold in mind two conflicting intentions and we can see when he
tries to escape from the conflict. Thus, in sum, Empedocles works as a
didactic poet, structuring his poem with an intentional open continuity,
within which linear evolutionary cycles can take place, repeating earlier
species and inventing new ones, within which cosmic cycles alIow for
the movement of the daimones, to be rebom in harmony or conflict
with different ages or aeons. Altogether, as a didactic poet, Empedocles
dramatizes the exchanges between scientific analysis and synthesis and
literary struggles of character and plot with these thoughts.

VI: EPIPHANIES OF THE NATURAL ATTITUDE IN EMPEDOCLES

AND LITERATURE

By conceiving of his mind as a like perceiving, receiving, conceiving a

like, Empedocles united his mind with an that his mind could encom-
pass, in this case the Four Rizomata, the dynamics of philia and neike,
the daimon, and the Sphairos - and alI that transpires large and small,
one and many, in and between the aeonic moments of the Sphairos. In
conceiving the Four Elements as four singular entities (Strife) and alI
Four as a unity (Love) and holding both ideas in mind at once he saves
the idea of the multiplicity of existence, the idea of an ordering into
larger unities, and mixtures and ratios. These ideas, then, are in a
double-process where both - Love and Strife - are "continuously
immanent in the flowing stream of consciousness" (Kockelmans 21) In
this activity of "an alI-embracing cogito" (Kockelmans 22), he unites his
mind with the "others," aH this is his idea of what is not his own mind.
Indeed, he eonstitutes his mind, by the principle of like-to-like, into
what his mind eontemplates. "The intelligence of Man grows towards
the material that is present." (Fr. 106) His mind is made of the Faur
Elements and his thinking, in its own processing, performs a double-
aetion: forming distinctions ar separations (Hate) and forming aggre-
54 SIDNEY FESHBACH

gates or integrations (Love). His mind distinguishes and combines the

Four Elements. The components of the world are not understood in
terms of experiences but are understood in terms of the dynamics of an
endless process of separating and joining. "Fools! - for they have no
long-sighted thoughts, since they imagine that what previously did not
exist comes into being, or that a thing dies and is utterly destroyed."
(Fr. 11) "From what in no wise exists, it is impossible for anything to
come into being; and for Being to perish completely is incapable of
fulfilment and unthinkable; for it will always be there, wherever anyone
may place it on any occasion." (Fr. 12) But his awareness is of mixtures,
aggregates, and general ratios, instead of mathematized ratios, as in
Pythagoreanism. The fragments that present bones, flesh, and blood
are ratios that read like parodies of Pythagorean mathematization based
on musical ratios. "But the Earth obligingly in its broad vessels received
two parts out of the eight of shining Nestis, four of Hephaestus. And
these became the white bones fitted together by the cementing of
Harmony, divinely originated." (Fr. 96) "The Earth, having been finally
moored in the harbours of Love, joined with these in about equal
proportions: with Hephaestus, with moisture, and with all-shining
Aether, either a little more (of Earth) or a little less to their more. And
from these carne blood and the forms of other flesh." (Fr. 98) The
fragments of Empedocles do not have similar ratios for the large-scale
historical periods in which occur constant shifting from when Separating
is in the ascendency to when Joining is. It is quite clear that when
Empedocles thinks about history and society, his attitude changes: he
seems to react more personally, intending a relationship in which his
own status suffers changes and loss of control. If his theory of nature
leads to a theory of cognition, his theory of history, which appears
continuous with his theory of nature, leads to a theory of psychology of
personality and society. It is as if the concepts, Love and Hate, where
applied to nature are considered seriously, neutrally, and playfully, but
when applied to society they are heated into emotions of friendship,
loyalty, anger, and bitterness. Beneath both is the intention of the ratios
of Love and Strife. Empedocles constitutes his idea of nature with
the naturalism of the Four Elements as a unit: it is an example of
the "natural attitude" (Husserl's phrase), but without mathematics.
Empedocles is functioning within a theory of naturalism in which
everything is connatural in origin and in operation. His ideas of the
daimon and rebirth do not divert or escape this, but are elaborations of
the initial and continuing naturalism.
 EMPEDOCLES 55

The intentional structure of Empedocles' approach and attitudes is

bound in with consistency, wholism, and certainty, which are strengths,
but his intentional blindness or refusal to have a theory for transforma-
tions of matter, as found in Heraclitus and Aristotle, has restricted the
flexibility and usefulness of his theories. The intentional structure of his
theories forces him into conceptualizations that minimize processes and
transformations and compels solutions to problems and conceptualiza-
tions that approximate mechanizing the human body, as in the case of
his theory of the porosity of the sensoria and the "klepsydras" for the
rushing blood stream. (See the long Fr. 100) Confirmation arrives in
the historical similarities of Empedocles' fragments and some ideas in
the European 19th century. First of alI, the line of modern editions of
his fragments begins in 1805. After the edition in 1573, Empedocles
was re-discovered in the 19th century, beginning with the new edition
of 1805 (Sturtz's) and the more important ones of Karsten (1830,
1838), in time, so to speak, for the mechanization and industrialization
of nature (in practice and theory) and of culture (in philosophy and
literature). Empedocles fit well into a line from Bacon through Locke,
who themselves received the editions of Lucretius, himself influenced
by Empedocles. The world Empedocles proposed lent itself to a
cuIture, including chemi cal and mechanical engineering and literature.
Then he appeared directly in works by Holderlin and Matthew Arnold.
He reappeared most famously in comparisons of his ideas of evolution
and Darwin's. This similarity is important because both Empedocles
and Darwin are looking for the mechanisms of matter, time, and life.
There is so much more. Empedocles' "naturalism" corresponds to
"literary naturalism," especially in the 19th century of Europe, a period
when Empedocles had his maximum direct impact in Europe, first,
notably, in the poetry of Holderlin and Matthew Arnold, who found in
him a figure seeking to understand his suffering in an increasingly
mechanized world-view and experience. In the midst of this mechaniza-
tion, the legendary death of Empedocles, his transcendence or escape
from his age of Strife, interested Holderlin, who wrote a play, "The
Death of Empedocles," and Arnold, a play-like poem, "Empedocles at
Etna." The key sources for Arnold's play-poem seem divided inexactly
between Empedocles and Lucretius. Holderlin's and Arnold's "plays"
were, in effect, the latter-day gestures of Romanticism. They wrote at
the threshold of what is called literary naturalism. In literary naturalism
there is a heightening of the fictions of determinism in which the causal
laws of molecular matter and nature are found in the lives of people
56 SIDNEY FESHBACH

and society. Action, implying choice and freedom, is reduced to

behavior, with models of behavior based on models of Newtonian
causallaws. Not surprisingly, as we saw, Empedocles was a physician,
so the theorists of literary naturalism saw themselves as working in a
manner analogous to that of a physician, in particular, Dr Claude
Bemard, who advocated the impersonallaboratory approach to medical
practice. His work was taken as a norm by Emile Zola, the prime
theoretician and practioner of literary naturalism, who wrote, "Natu-
ralism is the retum to nature; it is that operation which the scientists
made the day they decided to start with the study of bodies and
phenomena, to base their work on experiment, and to proceed by
means of analysis. Naturalism, in letters, is equally a retum to nature
and to man; it is direct observation, exact anatomy, the acceptance and
depiction of what is. The writer and the scientist have same task."
(Becker 200-201) The naturalistic novel "is impersonal: I mean that
the novelist is only a stenographer who forbids himself to judge or to
draw conclusions. He confines himself to the 'strict role of a scientist
who exposes facts, goes clear to the end of an analysis without risking
synthesis." (Becker 208) This literature stressed the causal powers of
nature, sensation, and social experiences, with analogies to the physical
sciences. In short, they brought to literature one expression of a
"natural attitude," as the philosophers and scientists brought a variant
of the "natural attitude" in the twentieth century. Juxtaposition of the
intentional structure underlying Empedocles' naturalism and the theo-
ries and practices of literary naturalism reveals a continuity of intention
across centuries. Thus, just when literature and science looking to
mechanization and determinism approached each other, they were
really separating from each other, tending toward a culture of "two
cultures," art or science. Assimilation of the novel and the new chem-
istry required different, more radical adjustments. Stephen Crane's,
quoted earlier, is far less radical than Robert Musil's philosophical use
in The Man Without Qualities or, more significantly for this study,
Thomas Pynchon's technological use in V. and Gravity's Rainbow. At
this point it is clear that the unitary Four Elements of Empedocles
served in another way. Nineteenth-century chemistry was rejecting the
Four Elements, which still had an importance for the novelists of
experience. They saved the phenomena of experience in and of nature
and, at the same time, without necessarily subordinating human experi-
ences to the determinants of nature, they ordered those experiences
 EMPEDOCLES 57

within the larger unit of the Four Elements. As was mentioned in

Section 1: "The Theme of the Four Elements," that the Four Elements
were no longer a part of science meant that the authors were seeking
special values from the ordering by means of the Four Elements that
contained or expressed many contradictions. The deliberate use of the
Four Elements became part of a general cultural politics. Just as the
Four Elements as a unit drew Empedocles back toward the world, so
they served to recapture a natural world slipping away as industrial and
urban intention began to dominate. He lacked the reflection that might
have led to something other than naturalism. Even the ideas of the
daimon and of rebirth were only a more complicated naturalism, not a
reflective transcendence in which he sought to understand what he was
doing. Available to him were the Homeric terms for the soul, as
collected and discussed in Bruno Snell's Discovery of the Mind as welI
as, in alI likelihood, the Pythagorean triple division of the soul. Had he
used them, he might have enlarged the concept of the daimon and
himself probably affected his own intentional structures to include a
gre ater degree of self-reflection. Several times, Empedocles approached
a greater degree of reflexion, but stopped. Hence, throughout the
fragments is the domination by nature. Empedocles had within his
grasp certain principles of matter, the Four Elements and the dialectic
of Love and Hate as well as ideas of laws of causality, necessity, and
chance: reflection reveals that alI this can be discovered only through the
symbolicity of the intentional act. But unlike Heraclitus, the Sophists,
Plato, Aristotle, and others he did not reflect much on the processes of
the mind by which he constituted the world. Instead, he constituted the
mind with the principles of nature, natural means and dynamics. While
the ideas and intentions of Love and Hate are repeated in alI the
fragments, Empedocles did not consider or exploit much the "semantic,"
"emotional," or "sentimental," and, therefore, he missed the intentional
potentialities of these terms, the ways in which they expressed desire,
interest, and intention. The natural attitude renders the "soul," the
daimon, natural, too. But at the same time it is an attempt to preserve
something of the self from being assimilated to the natural attitude. Lest
it appear 1 am chastising Empedocles for something he was not nor
desired to be, 1 would point out that the seeds of freedom in intentional
symbolicity are found in the playfulness of the "evolution" fragments
and the conceiving of the Sphairos associated with the golden age. The
Sphairos is interestingly ambivalent. It is a mental construct for an
58 SIDNEY FESHBACH

aeonic moment and a cyclic universe: this construction is brilliant, yet

to build beyond this meant greater reflection. Instead of reflexivity, the
daimon is the flying carpet for traveling to his period of aeonic time.
In these fragments, the intentional structures of Empedocles were
expanded, perhaps intentional innovations occurred. Before Empedo-
cles, Heraclitus and Pythagoras and, contemporary with him, sup-
posedly knocking at his door, the Sophists had entered this area of
freedom of invention and reflection. The suggestion is that the inten-
tional structure of Empedocles was based upon a particularly powerful
and particularly limited natural attitude: it was powerful in constituting
large amounts of the world and being open to new concepts; it was
limited in being pulled back toward the simplicity and limitations of the
Four Elements as a unit. In the case of Empedocles, the intentional
motivation drove the concepts of the Four Elements and related
dynamics and periodization into constituting and apprehending more
and more of the idea of the world: the Sphairos indicates he experi-
enced an epiphany, but the intentional epiphany was weighted by his
"natural attitude," turning the epiphany from its potential reflexivity
and non-mechanical examples. The fragments indicate Empedocles
contained alI he wanted to contain within his intentional structure. The
whole mind is conscious of its whole universe, is filled totally, and is
itself complete in this moment. This experience is called, in the literary
terms developed by Frye, anagogy, which before Frye's literary use had
a theological definition, the development of the soul toward the divine.
Empedocles claimed something of this for himself: "There was living
among them a man of surpassing knowledge, who had acquired the
extremest wealth of the intellect, one expert in every kind of skilled
activity. For whenever he reached out with his whole intellect, he easily
discerned each one of existing things, in ten and even twenty lifetimes
of mankind." (Fr. 129) In short, Empedocles approached and turned
away from his own epiphanies and anagogic development, returning to
a less-than-satisfactory nature and naturalism.
It may be the case of Empedocles that the Four Elements which
appear to hold the mind to the world can also confine the mind to a
level of understanding that is the beginnings of a "natural attitude" and
that becomes another way of losing the world. Sphairos becomes the
anagogical correlative of the mind. Consciousness is so filled in an
anagogy of the natural world that it itself becomes susceptible to
generating a new idea: for example, the body-mind which Empedocles
 EMPEDOCLES 59

had presented as a mixture of the Four Elements combined during the

dominance of Love is now seen as containing a daimon. Here again, the
Four Elements - indivisible elements in unity - put the anagogical
interest back into the intentional world. Empedocles' intentional order-
ing of the world is such that everything appeared to have clear defini-
tion and profile. He needed a theory of process - of transformation as
in Aristode and Ovid, and as in alchemy. "It should be noted, however,
in case anyone should be tempted to see Empedocles as an ancestor of
the alchemists, that if Aristot1e had not overthrown his doctrine that the
elements are indestructible and immutable, the basic theory of alchemy
would have been impossible." (Guthrie, pp. 148-149, n. 1.) "The
change introduced by Aristotle was to suppose the elements capable of
mutual transformation. The theory of Plato's Timaeus also demanded
this, but on a mathematical basis which in Aristotle's eyes was fanciful.
Moreover for neither of these two were the 'elements' stricdy elemental.
Plato said that far from being letters, they were even more complex
than syllables. They were only the most elementary form of perceptible
substance. Behind them stood for Plato, with his Pythagorean ardour,
the world of numbers and geometry, and for Aristotle 'prime matter' as
a logically necessary postulate of change, though imperceptible and
incapable of an existence unqualified by form." (Guthrie 143) Yet
Plato's fanciful mathematicization is so important to modern science
and is probably direcdy related to the "crisis" described by Husserl.
And Aristode's retention of the Four Elements as the basis for so many
of his arguments, which "held back the physical sciences," has taken on
greater value for literature and may one day prove to be significant in
turning, or returning, people to their senses and common sense.
Phenomenological inquiry into the use of the Four Elements in
literature shows many authors, many minds, making themselves known
in their intentional attachments and analyses of the matter of the world.
Phenomenological inquiry shows that in the use of the Four Elements
in literature there is an intentional integration of the self and matter,
seen in the connaturalness and consubstantiality of mind and body,
containing a powerful impulse toward transcendence.
Holderlin and Arnold saw that the legends of Empedocles contain a
drama. Today, not the legends about the man, but the fragments
themselves contain an even more interesting drama. First, there is
Empedocles' pleasure and playfulness in saving the world and in
constituting it with cyclic orders. Unfortunately, the cyclic orders
60 SIDNEY FESHBACH

generate a pathos of living in the age of Strife. The self that struggles to
separate from its era laughs secretly, however, in its confidence that, as
a daimon, it will inevitably transcend the age of Strife, for it is as
permanent as the Four Elements and will be reborn in a better time.
This is a comic perspective. That this boast verges on self-deception
re-inserts the comedy within more pathos. The drama is in the
daimon's Love and Hate and the Four Elements and the tug, release,
and recapture of the daimon by the Four Elements. In James Joyce's
seemingly least naturalistic book, Finnegans Wake, he personifies and
identifies the element earth as the character HCE and water as ALP.
The family of characters, HCE, ALP, Shem, Shaun, and Isobel, appears
in many guises changing and transforming, but recurring with identifi-
able qualities: the family may be compared with the Four Elements as a
unit but always, in Joyce, with the possibilities of transformation and
alchemy broadly understood. The characters are constantly being
recycJed, pulled by a dynamic that is mainly Love and Hate, but is
rather more complex than that. CycJe after cycJe of the elemental family
is also cycJes of world history. For these large-scale historic processes
and period, he makes use of a theory of cycJic history, Vico's, that as I
pointed out before is similar to EmpedocJes' theory of cycJic nature. In
all his books, there was always the possibility of an epiphany that was a
transcendence, but a transcendence that remains within immanent time
and space, not an escape. In Joyce's books, the Four Elements keep
their narratives grounded in experience, and as with EmpedocJes, the
Four Elements as a unit appear to encompass the soul, keeping it from
other developments. Young Stephen Oedalus, a student in the Class of
Elements in school, asks is there a wall around the universe and the
answer is yes, there is nothing more, no gates out, only mirrors
reflecting back the created world. For Hermann Broch's Death of
Virgil, the Four Elements are felt as a wall that may open into a door.
Here the Four Elements are cultural modes of experience and of the
imagination through which and within which Virgil, whose conscious-
ness encompasses the cJassical world, lives and dies. Broch seeks
through meditation to drive through this wall, or to melt it in its endless
sentences and dissolving words, to construct a transcendence. The
ending of Death of Virgil is a deconstruction of the seven days of
Genesis: the meditation moves backwards through these days, to the
initial fiat that is at once the death of Virgil. The cultural implication is
that the cJassical world - with its cJassical Four Elements - has died
 EMPEDOCLES 61

and a new era is about to begin. But that new era is nowhere presented,
unless it is the meditation process itself that is the expression of the new
era. Ultimately, the disappearance of the Four Elements in the devolu-
tion or deconstruction of Genesis indicates the disappearance of alI
those intentional structures that constituted the world of Virgil and with
them the world so constituted by the Four Elements of Empedocles.
A conclusion to an introduction to a phenomenology of the Four
Elements in literature can be only tentative. The phenomenological
inquiry into the fragments of Empedocles suggests that, finalIy, the
Four Elements as a unit exert an intentional pressure that is sufficiently
powerful to embrace the imagination in its fecundity and to inhibit the
imagination's intention to constitute an escape, a transcendence, from
matter and the world of the Four Elements. The Four Elements-as-a-
unit is so constituted by weight, solidity, density, opacity, and deter-
minism as to keep the literary text in the world, indeed, bound to the
world in endless love and hate.

City College, CUNY

NOTE

1 In this essay, except when following the use in quotations, I capitalize the unit as the
Four Elements so as to distinguish these separately or as a unit and fragments as
Fragments to mean the complete set of 153 fragments, which are numbered following
Diels in Freeman's translation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aristotle. Complete Works, Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Bollingen
Series LXXI/2: Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984.
Arnold, Matthew. Poetry and Criticism, ed. H. Dwight Culler. Riverside Editions:
Houghton Mifflin Co., Cambridge, 1961.
Becker, George J., ed. Documents of Modern Literary Realism. Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 1963.
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette. "Mendeleev's Periodic System of Chemical Elements."
British Journal of the History of Science. 19 (1986), 3-17.
Burger, Christa. "The Reality of 'Machines,' N otes on the Rhizome-Thinking of Deleuze
and Guattari:" Telos, No. 64 (Summer 1985), 33-44.
Cassirer, Ernst. Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, trans.
William Curtis Swabey and Marie Collin Swabey. Dover Publications, New York,
1923.
62 SIDNEY FESHBACH

Crane, Stephen. The Portable Stephen Crane, ed. Joseph Katz. Viking Press, New York,
1969.
Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask. Bollingen
Series XLVI: Pantheon Books, New York, 1954.
Empedodes. "The Fragments," in Ancilla ta the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete
Translation of the Fragments in Diels, "Fragmente der Vorsokratiker," trans.
Kathleen Freeman. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1962.
Empedodes. The Fragments, trans. William E. Leonard. Open Court Publishing Co.,
LaSalle, 1973 (1908).
Erikson, Erik. "Wholeness and Totality - A Psychiatric Contribution," in Totalitarian-
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Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1957.
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from Parmenides to Democritus. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965.
Havelock, Eric A. The Muse Learns ta Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from
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Husserl, Edmund. Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, tr. John P. Leavey, Jr. Nicolas
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Ingarden, Roman. The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, tr. R. A. Crowley and K.
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KRS: Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers.
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Kockelmans, Joseph J. "World-Constitution. Reflections on Husserl's Transcendental
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Philosophy, University of Alabama Press, University, 1976.
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura, trans. W. H. D. Rouse and rev. M. F. Smith. Loeb
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Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus, ed. Irving Ribner. The Odyssey Press, New
York, 1966.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. The Development of Greek Biography: Four Lectures. Harvard
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O'Brien. D. Empedoeles' Cosmic Cycle: A Reconstruction from the Fragments and
Secondary Sources. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969.
Poulet, Georges. Metamorphosis of the Cirele, tr. C. Dawson and E. Coleman. Johns
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1966.
Rohde, Erwin. Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks,
trans. W. B. Hillis, intro. W. K. C. Guthrie. Harper Torchbooks: Harper and Row
Publishers, New York, 1966.
Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought,
trans. T. G. Rosenrneyer. Harper Torchbooks: Harper and Row Publishers, New
York, 1960.
 EMPEDOCLES 63

Solmsen, F. "Love and Strife in Empedocles' Cosmology," eds. R. E. Allen and David J.
Furley. Studies in Presoeratie Philosophy, VoI. II: Eleaties and Pluralists. Humanities
Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1975, pp. 221-264.
Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed. The Philosophy of Emst Cassirer. Tudo Publishing Co., New
York,1958.
Tinker, C. B. and H. F. Lowry. The Poetry of Matthew Amold. Oxford University Press,
London, 1940.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa. Analeeta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenologieal
Researeh, VoI. 1. D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, 1971.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa. Phenomenology and Scienee in Contemporary European
Thought, foreword, 1. M. Bochenski. Noonday Press: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy,
New York, 1962.
 HANS H. RUDNICK

FIRE IN GOETHE'S WORK: NEPTUNISM

AND VOLCANISM

Writing about fire in the context of this conference cannot provide the
all-consuming and radical coverage of the subject that fire itself as a
natural force would provide. Fire, because of its radical power which
"transforms" and "consumes" the grown structures of nature and,
likewise, the forms of human creation, has been a formidable natural
force which has fascinated and frightened the human being from time
immemorial. Fire has ranked foremost among the forces of nature so
that the earliest human beings are known to have worshiped this power
out of reverence for its enigma and regenerative force. Although fire's
force, when uncontrolled by man, is radically destructive, as seen from
the buming of the famous library of Alexandria to Hiroshima, Three
Mile Island, and Chernobyl, it is mankind which knows that fire is the
force upon which its domination of nature depends. Long before
humankind knew how to utilize fire to the extent to which we now
know how to use and control it, early cultures sensed the importance of
fire, particularly as it appeared daily in the sky as the sun providing
light, warmth, and energy for everything that was alive on this planet.
Homer referred to the sun as a chariot of fire which would move daily
across the sky; the ancient Persians worshiped fire and its divine power
by turning their faces toward the rising sun. The old Persian khwarenah
myth and some Nordic myths are particularly interesting because of
their unexpected linkage of fire and water in one god. These myths
make the fire god live in water. This apparent contradiction is removed
when we remember that fire on the surface of the earth must have
matter that has been grown by plants in order to burn, plants whose
growth depends on water; and fire itself, for the ancient Persian and
other traditions, resulted from wood under friction. In these myths,
then, fire and water are shown to be interdependent which suggests a
natural balance between two otherwise very opposite elements.
The German poet Goethe (1749-1832), who was one of the key
figures of the German Storm and Stress period and who through the
years grew into the greatest German literary figure, was fascinated by
ancient Persian culture and Eastern cultures in general when he entered
65
A - T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 65-71.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
66 HANS H. RUDNICK

the sixth decade of his life. In his West-Eastern Divan, primarily

inspired by the Persian poet Hafiz (1317-1390?), he drew new
creative powers from the ancient Persians' fire-worship cults because he
felt the inspiration which resulted from the encounter between the
Eastern and Western cultures and literatures. Of particular interest ta
Goethe was the Persian tradition of relating passion ta Spirit and, of
course, the highly sophisticated awareness of intellectuai apercus which
alIowed relating the most distant subjects in one surprising way ar
another (as I may be performing here with much less skill). Goethe
believed in a regular and clearly causal sequence of development an
earth. This applied not only ta the realm of nature but also to the moral
development of mankind. For him, life an earth had harmoniously
grown without imbalance ar sudden developments which would leave
the rationalizing scientist at a loss.
The Persian fire worshipers turned ta the sun, as Goethe explained,
because the sun was for them the most conspicuously magnificent
appearance which carne from the place where they suspected the throne
of God ta be. The daily appearance of the sun would cause the poor to
step from their huts and the soldiers ta step from their tents so that
daily reverence could be given ta this power. The newborn child
received fire baptism on the day after its birth at the time when the first
rays of sun touched its body. Life remained in daily contact with fire for
the ancient Persians. For them, Goethe observed in the Book of Parses,
the sun meant fire that was spending warmth, light, and energy; there
was nothing more pure than the serenity of the rising sun. And as Hafiz
had continuously stressed, its power was stored in alI elements and
plants. The most favored ta plant of the sun was the grape vine, the
child of the sun.
For Goethe, the East remained the archetypal homeland of the
human race. It is the location of the rising sun and of the beginning
of the day. Furthermore, I may add, aur Western churches have been
buiIt in such a way that the main altar is always in the east in accord-
ance with the fact of the coming of light and subsequent human
allegorization.
And yet, Goethe also found much distress with the force of fire, not
only as a combustive force devastating matter but also as a destructive
force affecting cultural philosophy. The destructive force of fire for
matter, for example, is expressed in the Achilleis (1808), where Ilion
falls into ashes under the fire-reddened sky together with the scaffold
 NEPTUNISM AND VOLCANISM 67

erected for the enormous monument which Achilles was building for
his fallen friend Patrocles and himself. But fire posed more of a
challenge to Goethe and his outlook on the world. Its mere destructive
force was obvious, but it proved also to be a stumbling block for
Goethe as far as his peace of mind was concerned. Goethe was not only
a poet but also a person who kept current on the theories of modern
science. His works dealing with the sciences and their methodologies
are ample proof of his expertise and sharp insights. But in one matter
which he called "geognostics'" he encountered major personal resistance
to acknowledging what we consider today a general scientific fact. In
the Achilleis, a few lines after the description of the burning Troy,
Goethe refers to Poseidon, the one who makes rocks and islands
tremble, plucking huge rocks from the high mountains and throwing
them into the buming city and its surroundings. Up to this point, we
might not be surprised about Poseidon's power to cause earthquakes,
but upon closer scrutiny, there is particular significance to this action.
Goethe was an adherent of N eptunism and an opponent of Volcanism
or Plutonism. At the turn of the century (= 1800), there was a vigorous
discussion about the origin of the earth. Neptunists like Abraham
Gottlob Werner claimed that the earth had formed its rocks through
crystallization in the archetypal sea that once covered all the earth.
Mountains and valleys were formed by currents and whirlpools, not by
the heat of the earth itself. Volcanoes were explained by Werner as
being of a much younger date. Localized fires inside the earth were
believed to be the cause of volcanoes.
On the other side of the issue were the Volcanists or Plutonists who
based their theory of the geological origins of the present shape of the
earth's mountains on the speculations and theories of the Scottish
geological school (Rudwick, 1985). Among the foremost German
proponents of volcanism were Alexander von Humboldt and Leopold
von Buch. The Volcanists claimed that mountains were the result of
tremendous pressures inside the moi ten core of the earth which had
pushed fiery lava to the surface and had formed the existing elevations
on earth. The radical forming force of water on the surface of the earth,
as claimed by the Neptunists, was denied by the Plutonists or Volcanists
who attributed the power that formed the face of the earth primarily to
fire.
Goethe could not bring himself to accept V olcanism because it
contradicted his conviction that the earth and all life-forms on it had
68 HANS H. RUDNICK

developed in a steady and holistic manner without radical revolutionary

contrasts, contradictions, or upheavals. He frequently comments on the
Neptunist-Volcanist controversy in many of his work. He remains a
Neptunist by saying e.g., "1 condemn that awful theory of rubbish
(Polterkammer-theorie)" although he had himself discovered very con-
crete evidence that pointed toward the volcanic origin of mountains.
This evidence existed particularly in the basalt pillar which had broken
through to the surface of the earth not far from the city of Eger which
Goethe visited regularly after 1806 in order to take the baths at
Karlsbad and Marienbad. The Kammerberg near Eger became the
battling ground for Neptunists and Volcanists at that time. In 1809
Goethe had to admit after careful study that the Kammerberg was of
volcanic origin. But he refused to generalize his findings relating to
basalt to aU the mountainous formations on earth. Granite remained
the prevailing material which composed the mountains on earth and
Goethe was not willing to apply his observations about basalt to granite.
Numerous experiments performed by Goethe, including the melting of
stones and volcanic materials in potters' ovens, did not convince
Goethe that he should accept the PlutonistlVolcanist theory. In 1823,
as a matter of fact, he revoked his correct opinion about the bas alt
pillar near Eger and, thereby, clung to Werner's theory which explains
volcanoes as younger formations which result from localized fires inside
the earth. Further evidence of Geothe's belief that volcanoes were
localized formations is found in the following verses relating to the New
World:
America, you are much better off than the old continent.
You do not have any delapidated castles and no basalt. ...
Goethe was right about the castles but not about the basalt. The
Palisades on the Hudson and enormous masses of basalt in the western
United States are evidence that there were gigantic volcanic eruptions
in early geological times in the Americas. Writing on "Dogmatism and
Skepticism," Goethe states that "each revision of theories concerning
objects of nature must be based on higher philosophical insights." In his
view, the formation of the earth could not be the result of singular
uncontroUed events which his fantasy was not able to imagine. Goethe
thought that "mankind deceived itself when it only paid attention to the
major episodes of violence on earth and deducted therefrom that
Nature would use violent means to create great works." Goethe asked
 NEPTUNISM AND VOLCANISM 69

"what else is an this erupting and lifting of mountains but a mechanical

process that does not give reason and the imagination any chance?"
Goethe predicted that Volcanism would be overcome. But toward the
end of Goethe's life, it was Sir Charlies Lyell who in 1830-33 proved
that the old theory of catastrophic transformation of the earth through
volcanic activity and other violence had to be revised in favor of a
more gradual development of the earth's geology on the basis of natural
laws (Lyell, 1830-1833). Goethe's hunch, to a degree, tumed out to be
correct. However, the primary force which had formed and changed the
face of the earth had to remain fire; wind and water had only played a
secondary role. Overall, fire remains the primary force in our universe;
it makes the water evaporate and causes the wind to move the air. The
controversy between the Neptunists and Plutonists falsified this basic
insight. Goethe sensed some of this but remained reluctant despite his
better knowledge. He thought that mankind's existence depended on
the desire to know itself and Nature to which humankind was integrally
related. For Goethe, knowledge meant control, informed and respon-
sible control, independence and power, although the human being
would always be hampered in reaching the highest level of control. But
what remains for the human being is the constant striving to reach
perfection in this earthly pursuit. Goethe personifies the earth in Faust 1
in the figure of the Earth Spirit who, by the way, will refuse Faust's
arrogant demand for help in his quest for the ultimate.
Spirit of the Earth, you gave me, gave me alI 1 asked for.
Not in vain did you turn your face toward me from amid the fire.
You gave me splendored Nature for my kingdom
And strength to feeI her, relish her. (3217-3221)
In a way similar to Moses (Exodus 3), the spirit appears in the fire, the
ultimately invincible material force under whose control we live. Nature
uses fire or the force of it to destroy our human achievements; we use
fire to destroy each other in war and other violent disagreements.
Whether it is the tremendous force of a volcano or the unimaginable
force of a devastating earthquake like the Lisbon quake of Nov. 1,
1755 which killed 60,000 people, we are subject to the destructive
force of fire. We can imagine what profound terror spread at that time
over the world which had, in Goethe's word, "settled into a state of
calm and peace." (Dichtung und Wahrheit, 30) What was most disap-
pointing to Goethe's belief was that, "God had not shown himself in any
70 HANS H. RUDNICK

way a fatherly figure; he had revealed himself as the irate God of the
Old Testament." (31-32)
Punishment was not a comfortable notion to persons living in the
nineteenth century. Their pursuit of individualism and freedom from
any restraint for the benefit of humankind was directed toward con-
trolling the forces of nature and making use of them for the betterment
of the human condition. Mythology has given us Prometheus, the
archetypal rebel, who stole the fire from the gods so that humans could
partake of its benefits and use it creatively. Prometheus, as we alI know,
was punished for his trespasses. Re was chained to the Caucasus, and
Zeus' eagle carne daily to devour chunks of Prometheus' liver. Mankind
has learned ta use fire effectively (most of the time). The remaining
challenge for man is that that fire has to be controlled whether at a
picnic in the forest ar in an atomic reactor.
For Goethe and his contemporaries on the continent as weU as in
England, Prometheus was undeservedly condemned to suffering. The
time had passed in the nineteenth century that would "keep Milton's
Satan always in a disadvantageous position." (Dichtung und Wahrheit,
233) The creative powers of the artistic genius are personified in
Prometheus who, as Goethe says in a poem written in 1783, "allowed
the pure heavenly fire to flow on fresh earthen clay." (Ilmenau) It is the
possession of fire that encourages disobedience and the forward thrust
into creativity. In Goethe's Prometheus Fragment, the archetypal rebel
says to Mercury, the messenger of the Gods, "1 refuse; teU them." And
it is Prometheus who is in agreement with Werther because both are
demanding "das Recht der Seele," the prominence of emotion. Prome-
theus can plunge himself fully into the vita activa which is identical with
artistic creativity in this context, but Werther does not have that choice.
Ris fate is suicide. Goethe sides in the person of Minerva with
Prometheus when he says, "1 do honor my father, but I love you,
Prometheus." (Werther) It is the artistic power, represented in the
fire-stealing Prometheus, which gives the rebel his fulfillment. Alone
and separate from his relations, the Gods, "Prometheus works in his
workshop," like the modern artist "filling the world with his creations."
(Dichtung und Wahrheit)
For Goethe and his time, the following selection from the poem
entitled "Prometheus" represents in the best way how fire has liberated
mankind for creativity by instilling an irrepressibly independent attitude
 NEPTUNISM AND VOLCANISM 71

which strives to seek fulfillment in the self of the artistic human

individual.
Rere I sit, molding
Ruman beings in my own image -
Who, like myself, will
Suffer, weep, enjoy, and have delights,
And take no heed of thee.
Asldo!
We know more about the globe today, particularly since Wegener's
continental drift theory has been proven correct. Plate tectonics testify
to the burning furnace in the center of the earth. But does this scientific
insight prove Goethe wrong? It is doubtful that it does, since his grand
vision of a concerted concept of creation on harmonistic grounds
remains inact. Fire has remained the grand principle on a larger scale
than the nineteenth century could foresee on scientific grounds. Goethe's
global union of Nature and man - who is only a minute part of
Nature - preserves the original relation between Nature and man in
the fiery genesis of this world. Ris respect for the ecological unity of
matter and life which are maintained and changed by the life-giving fire
of the sun has withstood the test of time. Ris vision of a harmonic
uni verse functioning according to one grand principle cannot be
wronged by the narrow and limited insights of science.

Southern Illinois University

REFERENCES

Goethe, J. W. V., Goethes Sămtliche Werke 40 vols. Eduard v.d. Hellen et al. eds.,
(Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, No year), esp. voI. 40, pt. 2.
Lange, Victor (ed.), Goethe (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hali, 1968), esp. pp.
145-160.
Lyell, Charles, Principles of Geology. 3 vols. (London, 1830-1833).
Magnus, Rudolf. Goethe as a Scientist (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949), esp. pp.
200-248.
Rudwick, Martin S. J. The Great Devonian Controversy (Chicago and London: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1985).
 MARLIES KRONEGGER

THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT OF THE ELEMENTS

IN BAROQUE POETRY AND PAINTING

The Baroque poet's voice owes its power to the fact that it arises from
an introspective solitude that conjures up the universe so as to impose
on it a human accent. What survives for us is a voice soaring towards
the gods accompanied by the tireless orchestra of death. Without the
word wind most Baroque poems would not exist for the word contains
the notion of movement. What are the winds, but moving currents of
air? When the winds faU silent, they cease to be. Baroque music,
likewise, cannot exist without motion, for it is hard to conceive of an
entire symphony composed of a single note or chord that never
changes. The winds create the dramatic movement of the Baroque
poem-symphony by carrying the reader from one geographical area to
marvelous visions, from past to future, from despair to hope, from exile
to a long-awaited return to the Fatherland.
Some of the themes in both Baroque poetry and painting are the
eternity of the winds, the earth, the sea, contrasted with the brevity of
man's existence, as Drelincourt summarizes their common attempt:
Vents qui dans un cours inconstant,
Naissez, et mourez, chaque instant,
Mes jours ne sont qu'un vent qui passe.
Mon corps fait naufrage en la mort,
Mais Dieu, du souffle de sa grâce,
Pousse mon âme dans le Port.!
Baroque artists often blend cosmology and mythological allusions.
While the classical theory of the cosmos, that is to say mundus
(universe), based on the tetrad of the four elements emphasizes the
unity and orderliness of the world, Baroque poets and painters are
wresting the secrets of fury and tumult, of suffering and inner discord in
a world of religious and spiritual crises. Their quest for an interdepend-
ence between the celestial and terrestrial regions questions the view of
Pythagoras who devised the word cosmos to express the beauty and
orderliness of the created world. Baroque artists often recreate the four
73
A - T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 73-88.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
74 MARLIES KRONEGGER

classieal deities whieh are associated with the four elements from whieh
all things originate. Jupiter, holding a thunderbolt and attended by a
salamander is identified with fire; Juno, holding a regal scepter as queen
of heaven and attended by a peacock is identified with air; Ceres,
holding a cornucopia and attended by a cow, is identified with earth,
and Neptune holding a triton and riding a dolphin, is identified with
water.
Poussin's The Four Seasons (1660-64) contain not only allusions to
the related quarters of the globe, involving the passage of time, namely
the four times of the day, from sunrise to nightfall, but also the four
stages of human life, from childhood to old age.
With Baroque artists and poets the macrocosm of the four elements
is further adumbrated by multitudinous mierocosms that reproduce in
minia ture its exhaustive fullness. As a consequence, an elaborate
network of correspondences exists between the various levels of crea-
tion. There are also the four bodily humors and the four cardinal winds:
the Eastwind, Subsolanus; the Southwind, Auster; the Northwind,
Boreas; and the Westwind, Zephyr.
What are the winds of Baroque painters and poets? They are a
changing free element in each work, taking on a new aspect with every
creation, though constant in their presence, and most often culminating
in storms, shipwrecks, and nocturnal visions. Nothing endures on this
earth, they tell us: winds are, if you wish, the sound that is necessary for
musie, composed of infinite tones and half-tones, sometimes pianissimo
or dolce; more often forte, the winds are the psychologieal color of
rhythms and words, composed of infinite nuances of emotions; the
winds are the emotional colors of painters, indicating and revealing to
us an entire scene in a single flash, as though it carne from a terrifie bolt
of lightning; the winds are flashes of illumination on the human
condition. Man seems to be threatened by the structure of the universe
whose spatial and moral coordinates coincide. Winds reflect the reality
of the moment, and suggest the ephemerality of human existence. The
ephemeral, however, also evokes the etemity in which man is swallowed
up. Baroque poets and painters bear witness to the twofold vocation of
man, his fall and elevation, passing from corruption to salvation. The
four elements are the matrix of their relations to both themselves and a
primordial Being. Instead of enabling us to find stability on this earth,
winds and storms become a means of meditation on the question: what
is man's destiny and place, ifnot in the celestial world beyond?
With Baroque artists and poets, the macrocosm of the four elements
 THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 75

is adumbrated by multitudinous microcosms. There exists an elaborate

network of correspondences between the various levels of creation.
Bernini's "Fountain of the Four Rivers" at Piazza Navona in Rome
(1648-51) exemplifies the common Baroque tetrad: the four rivers
of the Earth, the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, and the La Plata
symbolize the four corners of the world, tended by their deities. The
fountain is crowned by a huge obelisk, pointing into the sky. Bemini's
fountain symbolizes Baroque tension, and a return to unity. While man
is threatened by the beast world pushing up from below, he is also
illuminated by the dove on top of the obelisk, the traditional symbol of
divine light and eternity: man, then, is illuminated by the radiance of the
Universal Church, the radiance of God above.
Poets and artists feeI free to redirect the course of the elemental
determinants. The artist delights in going back to the first chaos of the
world, in returning to a primal flux which denies the separate identity of
things. For Labadie the earth is:
Elle est tout ala fois soleil, lumiere, feu,
Terre et ciel, air et mer, estre d'home, estre d'ange,
Sans matiere pourtant, sans forme, et sans melange,
Et d'un air eminent qu'on n'a jamais conceu. 2
The tetrad pattern of the four elements-water, fire, air, and earth
informs the poets' and artists' views of the cosmos as a whole,
imprinting the elements' struggle with one another upon every level of
creation. Elemental stirrings are for Baroque poets embedded in the
most violent aspects of the elemental forces of the universe: storms,
hurricanes, blizzards, typhoons, lightning, and the raging sea. Through
observation and experience, they are immediately aware of the turbu-
lence of the natural elements, the chaos and disorder in religious and
politic al affairs, the repeated cycles of destructive forces in the history
of the world.
With Baroque poets and painters, man is tied to elemental nature
and governed by the laws of its unfolding. Natural phenomena are often
described anthropomorphically. Human experiences have cosmic meta-
phors with the result that each world caUs the other, integrating man
into his surroundings.
It is significant that Baroque painters and poets chose to express a
conception of human life through landscapes: with them the landscape
of introspective soliloquy and mood is born. The artist or poet himself
enters the landscape, psychologically speaking, making it respond to his
76 MARLIES KRONEGGER

own inner sentiments. When landscape is introduced into poetry, it

makes the point that nature is God's creation and thus the manifesta-
tion of the creator in the world. The purpose of landscape painting in
poetry was to evoke a moment of contemplation: the consciousness of
the outside world served to heighten awareness of the world within.
There was a particular joy contemplating natural landscapes: the earth,
the sky, water, and vegetation. The world of phenomena, aesthetically
regarded, falls into two parts: the finite world with firm out1ines, and
the sphere of the unbounded, the infinite skies. Vision is bound to
space, according to the position of the onlooker, and also to time, as far
as the appearance of things changes with the position of the sun and the
clouding of the sky. While the four seasons hold to their beneficent
cYcle, recurring in predictable sequence, the poet feels at one with his
rhythmical recreation of experience even in times of heinous crimes
when the world seems to collapse. For Jean de la Jesse, stormy winds
animate the rhythm of his poem-symphony: his precise vocabulary
creates the concreteness of his language and supports his vision of the
world, one sustained by rhythm, movement, and duration, fused freely
and directed only by the poet's emotions often those an unsuccessful
amorous adventure. Here, language is a chaos of elements to order and
reform and transform. Language shares the power of the cosmos, for
like nature, language is organic.

Oue tous les elements soient bandes contre moi,

Oue les cieux, l'air et l'onde et la flamme et la terre
M'assaillent pele-mele, et que l'âpre tonnerre
M'accable et me ravisse acelle que j'aimais!
Oue le crainte, l'horreur, et la rage et l'emoi
Comme un Oreste foI m'epouvante et m'atterre,
Oue tout ce que l'Enfer de monstrueux enserre
Redouble ici mon deuil, ma plaie et mon effroi.
Oue pour moi le soleil se cache et s'obscurcisse,
Oue les jours me soient nuits, que ma foi me trahisse,
Bref qu'Amour soit sans cesse contre moi fâche,
Puisque j'ai bien ose plein d'ardeur et de blâme
Tenter votre courroux! Encore crois-je, Madame,
Oue la peine est trop douce au prix de mon peche ... 3
 THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 77

Sponde, in Fleurs, Bulle, witnesses the rhythm of the seasons, the

tides of the oceans, violent thunderstorms, life and death in this both
closed and infinite universe; yet these have no effect on the cyclic
rhythm and harmony of the poet's creative moment, mighty as they are
their manifestation: "Vivez, hommes, vivez, mais si faut-il mourir" is his
message of encouragement:
Mais si faut-il mourir, et la vie orgueilleuse,
Qui brave de la mort, sentira ses fureurs,
Les Soleils haleront ces journalieres fleurs,
Et le temps crevera ceste ampoulle venteuse,
Ce beau flambeau, qui lance une flamme fumeuse,
Sur le verd de la cire esteindra ses ardeurs,
L'huyle de ce tableau ternira ses couleurs
Et ces flots se rompront li la rive escumeuse.
J'ay veu ces clairs esclairs pas ser devant mes yeux,
Et le tonnerre encor qui gronde dans les cieux,
Ou d'une, ou d'autre part, esclattera l'orage.
J'ay veu fondre la neige, et ses torrents tarir,
Ces lyons rugissants je les ay veus sans rage,
Vivez, hommes, vivez, mais si faut-il mourir. 4
These creative efforts stern from the confusion and uncertainty that
follow when we are confronted by the unknown and unknowable
happenings of the uni verse. Baroque poetry and painting have common
ways of mapping the unfolding of man's existence, disclosing human
Being, in their understanding of the larger existential condition, raising
the same question: What is man? What is life? What is man's place in
this universe?
The poet tries coming to terms with the conditions of mortality,
likening the direction of our lives to the hazards of drifting winds:
Where are we going? Where does our flight take us? Fiefmelin states:
CETTE VIE EST DE PLUME
Si l'homme icy vivant semble au traict empenne
Qui, tire, voIe en l'air comme au champ de l'orage,
Cette vie est de plume, et de vent son passage,
Son passage est le monde ou tout voIe estant ne.
78 MARLIES KRONEGGER

Comment donc tiendra roide a ce vent forcene,

Qui tout roule au tombeau, la plume si volage?
Non, non, suyvons ce vent qui nous porte au voyage,
Et nostre esprit ne soit de l'orage estonne.
Pour le corps, non pour l'âme, est la traverse faite;
L'âme veille a l'abry du choc de la tempeste,
Et, al'erte al'effroy, laisse dormir le corps.5
Life is conjured up only to vanish like foam, a bloom, a lightning bolt,
smoke into the air. Our life is short and transitory in Giovan Leone
Sempronio's words (1603-46):
a shaft, which flees the bow and pierces chest;
a mist, which springs from earth and vanishes;
a foam, which rises from the sea and falls;
a bloom, which April brings to life and wilts;
a lightning bolt, which bums and cuts the air;
the smoke, which rises in the sky and fades. 6
Winds can blow out our lives just as easily as they can blow out a
candle, alI depends on fortune according to Chassignet, La Mesnardiere,
Sigogne, Fiefmelin: what is life other than a soap bubble? Most often,
however, the forces of wind and water are clashing so fiercely that they
almost seem to merge, crushing a boat between them. AII depends on
"fortune" as to who is going to survive or be drowned, as we shall see
later on. The flight of Icarus is seen as embodying the temptation of
immortality or an overreaching toward divine power, trying to conquer
the air. Ovid's description of the falI of Icarus (VIII, 175-239) offers a
panoramic view of sea, island, mountains, and people by capturing the
feathers which carried him away in the wind toward the blazing sun. AII
that remains is an echo of Daedalus' caII, "Icarus, Icarus, where are
you?"
Pieter Bruegel's Fall of Jcarus (ca. 1567) also offers a panoramic
view of the sea with scattered islands, mountains, and land. He con-
trasts Icarus' defiance of the Gods, in attempting to exceed his human
limitations with the earthbound works of a peasant, tilling his soil and a
shepherd tending his flocks. While Icarus' flight disturbed the balance
of nature, the work of both the ploughman and the shepherd is in tune
with nature. An effect of infinite extension of the skies is provided by
successive planes of distance, telescoped into a continuous, two-dimen-
sional surface.
 THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 79

Theophile de Viau's "Monsieur L sur la mort de son pere" also

blends cosmology and mythological alIusion, evoking Phaeton, a son of
Phoebus who tried to drive the chariot of the sun. He soon betrayed his
incapacity, and the horses departed from their usual course, threatening
the earth with a conflagration:

Le Dieu de l'eau, tout furieux,

Hausse pour regarder leurs yeux
Et leur poil qui flotte sur l'onde,
Du premier qu'il voit approcher
Pense voir ce jeune cocher
Qui fit jadis bnîler le monde. 7
As in the real world, there are no limits to space or time: poems by
Desportes, J. Blanchon, Amadis Jamyn, Marc de Papillon, and Claude
Trellon render Icarus' and Phaeton's flight with flowing, swirling move-
ment that sweeps through their poemes-tableaux like a windstorm: Jean
Godard ilIustrates in the folIowing lines not only the rising, building
emotion, the climax and a recapitulation of the falI of Icarus and
Phaeton, but also the poet's experience of his own death. Here the poet
knew how to impose both musical devices (rhythm) and the mimicry of
natural forces to give order, strength, and meaning to the particular
emotion of "engulfment, loss," using the repetitive device of theme and
variation:

Unjeune Icare engiouti dans la mer

Un chaud soleil sentit ason dommage
Moi j'en sens deux aqui je fais hommage,
Dans l'air d'amour voulant trop haut ramer.
FoI est celui qui veut trop haut aimer:
En haute mer plus cruel est l'orage.
On doit partout moderer son courage,
Aux hauts desirs la porte il faut fermer.
D'aspirer haut, quand tres bien on y pense,
La seule mort on a pour recompense,
Temoin Icare et temoin Phaeton.
o moi perdu! Mais mon malheur je prise.
Un grand courage, une grande entreprise,
Une mort brave, est honneur, ce dit-on. 8
80 MARLIES KRONEGGER

The poet's image of the storm is metamorphosis: not being, but

becoming, not essence, but existence. Baroque poets and painters
surpass their predecessors (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, the Greek and Roman
tragedians) in thunder, lightning, waves, rain, darkness, and disaster. In
Scarron's "Leandre et Hero" (1656), dedicated to Fouquet, the lover
Hero, swimming in winter across the Hellespont in a thunderstorm is
doomed to die questing for his beloved Leander who drops dead at the
sight of his body. In this scene everything flows together: heaven and
earth, fantasy and reality, motion and emotion. Here nature and man
meet and unite in a concert of stormy seas and lightnings in the skies.
Baroque painters and poets have given the skies an all prevading
rhythmic life contrasting shipwrecked men overwhelmed by nature's
fury with others saved when a blue sky has given way to gusty storm
clouds. Giorgione's The Tempest (1510) synthesizes basic concerns of
later Baroque mentality: the rise and falI of civilizations (with ruins and
modern edifices), the universal rhythm of life and death (a woman, her
child, and arnan looking at them, who seems to be a young traveler
through his life's journey); there are the changing weather conditions,
an approaching storm, a potential threat to men; a flowing stream,
traditionally associated with time's passage and the course of life; a
bridge in the middle distance, underlining the landscape lit up by
lightning and contrasting to it the low, obstructed viewpoint of humans
who ought to meditate on both past and future. The frame is one of
trees. Trees grow in the air, but their roots dig in the dark: the two sides
imply not only contrast, but also the compression of time and space.
Did Giorgione not convert the latent processes of nature into action?
The universe of Giorgione and the Baroque poets is engendered not
only by the destructiveness and violence of storms, hurricanes, but also
by the creative movement of water. Splendor is implied in the cyclical
resurgence and rebirth which inevitably follows devastation and de-
struction. For them, the cycle of destruction and creation is eterna!.
Baroque poets put their most passionate concern and anguish, their
deepest insights, into themes of disaster. They take the violence of
mother earth into themselves and master it. Such, D'Aubigne wrests
the secrets of fury and tumult, of suffering and inner discord from
the universe. The tempestuous clouds and waters are like his own spirit,
like the disturbed society that surrounds him with religious wars,
violence, and division, making the moral universe of man expand and
falI into a moral abyss, into the void:
 THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 81

... Voici la mort du ciel en l'effort douloureux

Qui lui noircit la bouche et fait saigner les yeux.
Le ciel gemit d'ahan, tous ses nerfs se retirent,
Ses poulmons pres a pres sans relasche respirent.
Le soleil vest de noir le bel or de ses feux,
Le bel oeil de ce monde est prive de ses yeux;
L'âme de tant de fleurs n'est plus espanouie,
Il n'y a plus de vie au prineiple de vie;
Et, comme un corps humain est tout mort terrace
Des que du moindre coup au coeur il est blesse,
Ainsi faut que le monde et meure et se confonde
. Des la moindre blessure au soleil, coeur du monde.
La lune perd l'argent de son teint elair et blanc,
La lune toume en haut son visage de sang;
Toute estoile se meurt; les prophetes fideles
Du destin vont souffrir eelipses etemelles.
Tout se cache de peur; le feu s'enfuit dans l'air,
L'air en eau, l'eau en terre; au funebre mesler
Tout beau perd sa couleur. Et voiei tout de mesmes
A la pasleur d'enhaut tant de visages blesmes
Prennent l'impression de ces feux obscurcis,
Tels qu'on void aux foumeaux paroistre les transis ... ! 9

The poetic creation is an effort to fix the relationship and establish

an analogy between the cosmos and man's journey in time. Baroque
poets synthesize poetry and cosmos to create reality. In Du Plessis-
Momay's "Barque qui va flottant," life is likened to a stormy sea; we
embark and travel on into Eternity while the sky arches above, and the
winds reveal their permeating force over man, bringing either destruc-
tion or eternal salvation.
Barque qui vas flottant sur les escueils du monde,
Qui vois l'air tout espris, et les vents conjures,
Le gouffre entrebaille, les flots demesures,
Sans ancre, sans abry, sans amarre et sans sonde;
Barque, ne perds poinct coeur! Qui doubte que ceste onde
Ne soit subjecte aux vents? Aux flots mal assures,
Un esquif my brise? Mais les cieulx azures
Sont ils pas sur les vents et sur la mer profonde?
82 MARLIESKRONEGGER

Au ciel? Non! qu'a la mer commande ton pilote;

Par lui vente le vent, par lui ce monde floue,
Vente et floue pour toi, pour te conduire au port.
Ton port, c'est l'Eternel, et tu t'en veux soubstraire.
Veux tu calme ou bon vent? tu demandes ta mort;lO
Every instant attests the infinite difference between the actual and
the eternal. The image of the vessel caught at the brink of an abyss is an
emblem in reverse into which infernal time issues. There is nothing
more sudden than the falI of time. The time that appears to the
awakened ecstatic poet and painter is a time turned upside down, a
time out of joint due to Fortuna di mare - fortune which can be for
or against us. The stars fall from the skies as Clovis Hesteau de
Nuysement states: "Que les vents enrages fassent precipiter, Les etoiles
du del dans la mer une a une." 11 The chaotic world of the traveler at
sea heightens with the rising winds the sensation of falling into the
abyss: fears, agonies, nightmares, rages, despair, and the sensation of
falling into the void express the grievious consciousness of the human
condition. At this point the depth of existence ceases to be an individual
depth since the fury of the elements creates not only a chaotic world
without fixed relationships, but a world essentially transitory, an
enormous scene from the Apocalypse: Clouds pile up in the sky, putting
us in a state of heightened emotion in which we can accept everything
with the poet-painter, Sponde, for example. Dark clouds indicate the
poet's inner chaos, yet he feels attracted to this infernal abyss of
unrescued darkness:

Les vents grondaient en l'air, les plus sombres nuages

Nous derobaient le jour pele-mele entasses,
Les abîmes d'enfer etaient au ciel pousses,
La mer s'enflait de monts, et le monde d'oragesP
All nature seems to threaten man. The unfortunate lover of Jean de la
Jesse feels threatened by alI elements who seem to engulf him. Winds
sweeping across the sea are the vital force that animates both nature
and the artist, inviting the viewer to identify with the anguished poet
and hear the thunder sweeping across the waves, the howl of the wind
in the storm-tossed branches.
Often, Baroque poets depict the end of the world with images of
shipwrecks (i.e., Saint-Amant, Theophile de Viau), in nocturnal scenes,
 THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 83

formulating their experience of the Last Judgment and the End of the
World in painterly descriptions: not only are the winds and the clouds
the chief-organs of sentiment and emotion, but the poet identifies with
the fearful forces of nature, announcing catastrophes. Thus, Du Bartas,
observes the hostile moods of nature, identifying himself with these
fearful forces, immersing himself in the natural cataclysm:
Unjour de comble-en-fond les rochers crousleront,
Les monts plus sourcilleux de peur se dissoudront,
Le Ciel se crevera, les plus basses campagnes,
Boursoufflees, croistront en superbes montagnes;
Les fleuves tariront, et si dans quelque estang
Reste encor quelque flot, ce ne sera que sang;
La mer deviendra flamme, et les seches balenes,
Horribles, mugleront sur les cuites arenes;
En son midy plus clair le jour s'espaissira,
Le ciel d'un fer rouille sa face voilera.
Sur les astres plus clairs courra le bleu Neptune,
Phoebus s'emparera du noir char de la lune;
Les estoile cherront. Le desordre, la nuit,
La frayeur, le trespas, la tempeste, le bruit,
Entreront en quartier; et l'ire vengeresse
Du Juge criminel, qui ja desja nous presse,
Ne fera de ce Tout qu'un bucher flamboyant,
Comme il n'en fit jadis qu'un marez ondoyantP
In storms and shipwrecks, both poets and artists found a means of
stirring emotions, provoking reflection and thought, and meditation
on nature's wild forces which constant1y threaten the work of man.
Shipwrecks and apocalyptic scenes are equally dramatic in paintings by
Rubens, EIsheimer, and Ruisdael, who were well acquainted with the
poetic creations of Ovid, Du Bartas, La Ceppede and others. They all
are preoccupied with cosmic forces, the violent aspects of the elements,
the eclipse of space, time, and the possibility of recreating not only the
universe, but also recreating themselves in the harmonious coordination
of transitory impressions and permanent expression. Listening to the
supreme rhythm of Being, Baroque poets and painters show that
upheavals serve to erase that which is disharmonious in time and space,
and that a spiritual essence flows throughout the uni verse. High
spiritual adventure takes them by means of analogical and symbolic
84 MARLIES KRONEGGER

images, by means of the far-reaching light of the mediating image and

its play of correspondences, by waves of spiritual energy from apoca-
lyptic scenes to salvation. Rubens' Shipwreck (1620) is a synopsis of
the poets' physical tension in surviving the powerful forces of a storm,
so uncultivated and elemental, and it narrates the struggle of nature in
its unceasing struggle for balance among its opposing elements. From
the noctumal, tempestuous sea on the left, the eye moves to the infinite
interpenetration of the natural radiance of the rainbow on the right,
which symbolizes the end of the tempestuous conflict of the elements.
In the left foreground, a ship crashes against the rocks; in the right
foreground some of the survivors are seen making a fire. The middle of
the painting, a rocky peninsula with a lighthouse demarcates the
midpoint of a dramatic change of events.
Like Elsheimer's Flight into Egypt and Ruisdael's The Jewish Ceme-
tery, both pictures present noctumal scenes in which nature alone
reveals the promise of renewal and salvation through the rainbow and
through the trees that rise to replace those that have died. The effect of
infinitity is provided by the firmanent with its panoply of stars.
Baroque poets such as La Ceppede or Du Bartas maintain along
with the painters that the serious tensions of the human condition
can be overcome. La Ceppede in "Le Vieux Arc Bigarre," from his
Theoremes, shows the cyclical character of the solar imagery with its
inherent opposites. Here, the shipwreck implies also the end of the
storm or deluge, due to the generative power of the sun. The Christian
poet evokes the cycle of Incamation, Lamentation, Crucifixion, and
Resurrection, recreating the tension between sun, light, and night,
obscurity. After an eclipse of the sun alI natural phenomena are felt to
be demonstrations of the Resurrection; pious Deucalion is recalled:
Du vray Deucalion le bois industrieux
Qui soustint la fureur du general naufrage,
Dans une mer de sang a cette heure sumage,
Pour sauver les humains des bouillons stygieux.
Le vieux arc bigarre (signe presagieux
De la fin du deluge, et mis en temoignage
Qu'on ne souffriroit plus des ondes le ravage)
Est maintenant courbe sur ce bois precieux.
 THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 85

Puisque ce Nuau peint des couleurs de l'opale

Calmoit les flots, ce corps rouge, livide et pasle
Pourra bien de son Pere appaiser le courroux.
Par ce gage sacre de ta chere alliance
Je t'adjure, o grand Dieu, qu'ore et tousjours pour nous
Ton courrouxjusticier cede ata patience. 14

Du Bartas', "Le Deluge" from La premiere semaine and "L'Arche"

from La Deuxieme Semaine contain the promise of Salvation with the
unexpected intrusion of the infinite and eternal into the catastrophic
world of human experience. His fascination with the infinite is expressed
in terms of air and heavenly music, illustrating a return to an overriding
harmony of the whole.
The wind is often compared to colors used by a painter. Colors and
sound create atmospheric space filled with the ''filles de l'air," that is to
say Echo, which Du Bois Hus evokes in La Nuict des nuicts.
Les ailes d'un zephir serviront de pinceau ...
resonnante fille de l'air,
Nymphe qui te plais a voler
Dans le creux de cette collin,
Echo, prete l'oreille aux concerts ravissants ...
Magicienne divinite
qui loges dans l'obscurite
***
Par leur douce harmonie, le ris donne
le bal aux Nymphes des vallons
J'entends d'harmonieux soupirs
Sortir sur l'aile des zephirs ...
les etoiles de l'art allument tous les airs. 15

Wind, color, sounds recreate harmony, the musica mundana, a vast

symphony whose rhythmical movements govern the elements, the
procession of the seasons. The winds complete the creation for it was
they who blew away local discord. Light and color effects fill the
depiction of a sunset, when Mesnardiere in "Le Soleil couchant" creates
atmospheric space through which the air flows. Nothing is fixed and
86 MARLIES KRONEGGER

everything is about to change. The sea with its perpetual movement of

the waves reflects the changing light and the air cools off as alI solid
reality disappears to give way to "perles liquides" and a depressing
fatigue, "un morne assoupissement":
La pourpre, qui luit sous ses pas
En l'air s'ecarte en miIle pointes ...
Que les flots cretes d'un zephir
Sont bien peints dans ces pommelures ...
Dans l'air illaisse les couleurs
Qui font les jasmins et les roses ...
Demain l'Aurore a son reveil
N'y verra que perles liquides,
Et tous leurs yeux seront humides
Pour avoir perdu le soleil.
Deja l'air par ce changement
Reste pesant, plutot que tranquille.
Et l'humeur froide qu'il distiIle
Cause un mome assoupissement. 16
With La Mesnardiere the human figure is reduced to insignificance,
completely dominated by natural scenery attuned to the cyclical rhythm
of day and night.
The poet Durand clothes himself in a transcendental reality, and
addressing himself to the "fille de l'air" imposes imaginative and visual
unity on his composition, allowing the solidity of landscape to disappear
so that the changing colors of the air or atmosphere can reflect the
evanescent effects of dawn and twilight.
Les sables de la mer, les orages, les nues,
Les feux que font en l'air les tonnantes chaleurs,
Les flammes des esclairs plustost mortes que veues,
Les peintures du Ciel a nos yeux incogneues
A ce divin tableau serviront de couleurs. 17
It is for the poet to bear witness to the currents of spiritual energy in
the world, and to suggest a vision of the human condition based on the
interdependence of alI elements, one which offers new spiritual possi-
bilities in a world in which they are attuned to one another, as we leam
from Theophile, who addresses himself to le Marquis de Boquignant:
 THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 87

Les zephirs se donnent aux flots,

Les flots se donnent li la lune,
Les navires aux matelots,
Les matelots li la fortune.
Tout ce que l'univers conc;oit
Nous apporte ce qu'il recQit,
Pour rendre nostre vie aisee;
L'abeille ne prend point du ciel
Les doux presens de la rosee
Oue pour nous en donner le miel.
Les rochers, qui sont le tableau
Des sterilitez de nature,
Afin de nous donner de l'eau
Fendent-ils pas leur masse dure?
Et les champs les plus impuissans
Nous donnent l'yvoire et l'encens;
Les desers les plus inutiles
Donnent de grands tiltres aux Roys,
Et les arbres les moins fertiles
Nous donnent de l'ombre et du bois. 18
In conclusion, we ask ourselves, what are the winds of the Baroque
painters and poets? They are a changing free element in each work,
taking on a new aspect with every work, though constant in their
presence, and most often culminating in storms, shipwrecks, and
nocturnal visions. Nothing endures on this earth, they teU us: winds are,
if you wish, the sound that is necessary to music, composed of infinite
tones and half-tones. The winds are the psychological color of rhythms
and words, composed of infinite nuances of emotion; the winds are the
emotional colors of painters, indicating and revealing to us an entire
scene in a single flash, as though it carne from a terrific bolt of lightning;
the winds are flashes of illumination on the human condition. Man
seems to be threatened by the structure of the universe whose spatial
and moral coordinates coincide. Winds reflect the moment, the ephem-
eraI human existence. The ephemeraI, however, aiso suggests the
eternal in which man is swaUowed up. Baroque poets and painters bear
witness to the twofold vocation of man, his fall and elevation, and his
passing from corruption to salvation. The four elements are the matrix
of their relations to both themselves and a primordial Being. Instead of
88 MARLIES KRONEGGER

looking for stability on this earth, these poets and artists find in wind
and storm a means of meditation on the question: where is man's
destiny and place, if not in the celestial world beyond?

Michigan State University

NOTES

1 Jean Rousset, Anthologie de la poesie baroque fram;aise, I (Paris: Armand Colin,

1968),p.159.
2 Rousset, op. cit., VoI. II, p. 264.
3 GiseIe Mathieu-Castellani, Eros baroque, Anthologie thematique de la poesie amour-
euse (Paris: Union generale d'editions), 10/18.
4 Rousset, op. cit., VoI. 1., p. 117.

5 Ibid., VoI. 1, p. 172.

6 Harold B. Segel, The Baroque Poem (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), p. 220.
7 Mathieu-Castellani, op.cit., p. 291.
B Rousset, op. cit., VoI. II, p. 17.
9 lbid., p. 17.
10 Ibid., VoI. 1, p.197.

11 Ibid., VoI. II, p. 184.

12 Mathieu-Castellani,op. cit., p. 182.

13 Rousset, op. cit., VoI. II, p. 16.
14 Ibid., VoI. II, p. 184.
15 Alan M. Boase, The Poetry of France, II, 1600-1800 (London- Methuen, 1973),
pp.105-114.
16 lbid., VoI. II, pp. 149-152.

17 Rousset, op. cit., VoI. 1, p. 75.

18 Theophile de Viau, Oeuvres pohiques, ed. Louis-Raymond Lefevre (Paris: Garnier,

1926), p. 22.
 SHERL YN ABDOO

FIRE TRANSFIGURED IN T. S. ELIOT'S

FOUR QUARTETS

the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
"Little Gidding," r, 52-53 1

It has been fairly well established that one of the organizing principles
Eliot used when he wrote Faur Quartets was to equate each of the
poem's parts with one of nature's four elements:

'Burnt Norton' is a poem about air, on which whispers are borne, intangible itself, but
the medium of communication; 'East Coker' is a poem about earth, the dust of which
we are made and into which we shall return; ... 'The Dry Salvages' is a poem about
water ... [whileJ 'Little Gidding' is a poem about fire, the purest of the elements, by
which some have thought the world would end, fire which consumes and purifies. 2

What happens in the Quartets is, however, a bit more complicated. B.

Rajan, 1 think, correctly assessed the situation when he said that

'Burnt Norton' is concerned with constructing concepts, 'East Coker' and The Dry
Salvages' with the application of those concepts to a steadily widening area of experi-
ence, and 'Little Gidding' with the transfiguration of the facts within that area. 3 (my
emphasis)

The unity of the four separate poems into one poem is, moreover,
crucial to our understanding of its individual parts. 4 Perhaps it would
not be too inaccurate to declare that individually the poem's four
movements or quartets are ineffective compared to the experience of
the greater poem. And Eliot's method is perhaps not so strange or
remote if we consider it against his own experience reading Dante's
Divine Camedy as he described the experience in his essay, "Dante"
(1929). Eliot tells us that "the Purgataria begin[sI to yield its beauty"
only when we have read straight through to the end of the Paradiso, and re-read the
Inferno. 5

89
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 89-100.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
90 SHERL YN ABDOO

His understanding of the Interno is, likewise, revealing:

1 insist that the full meaning of the In/ema can only be extracted after appreciation of
the two later parts. 6

It would seem to follow, then, given Eliot's purpose in writing "Little

Gidding", namely, that:

The intention, of course, was ... to present to the mind of the reader a parallel, by
means of contrast between the In/ema and the Purgataria which Dante visited and a
hallucinated scene after an air-raid/

that "Little Gidding" - the fourth poem in the quartet - would unite
the separate poems into a single unity and resolve the major issues of
what Four Quartets is about.
In general, Four Quartets is about time and history; in particular, the
Quartets are about Eliot's position in time and his relation to the
kindred - whether they be blood-kin or spiritual kin - who peopled
the space before him. Eliot's preoccupation was to an ''utter and
relentless fidelity to the event" of the poetic past - to a "single
intelligence speak[ing] across those years."8 Eliot, moreover, seemed
only to be able to think of himself as a poet whose own significance
was heavy with the presence and tradition of alI who carne before him.
This notion is self-evident in Eliot's definition in "Tradition and the
Individual Talent" (1919) of what he called the "historical sense." The
"historical sense" was a

sense of the timeless as weB as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal
together ... it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his
place in time, of his own contemporaneityY

In short, a poet's "significance ... is the appreciation of his relation to

the dead poets and artists." 10
In Four Quartets Eliot once again attempted to articulate his private
feelings on the subject of Love - love not only secular and erotic, but
religious and devotional, as well. The very fact of the poem's reflexivity
(Le., the poem is about its own production), however, is what enabled
Eliot to meditate on the use of language as he tried to use it writing
"Little Gidding":
The language has to be very direct: the line, and the single word, must be completely
disciplined to the purpose of the whole. 11
 FIRE TRANSFIGURED 91

In a review of "Burnt Norton," "East Coker," and "The Dry Salvages"

(Poetry London, 1942), George Orwell responded impatiently to Eliot's
self-involved rumination on the facts of his own aging and, at the same
time, managed to situate Eliot fairly accurately in his own time and
place:
One cannot go on 'despairing of life' into a ripe old age .... sooner or later one is
obliged to adopt a positive attitude towards life and society. It would be putting it too
crudely to say that every poet in our time must either die young, enter the Catholic
Church or join the Communist Party, but in fact the escape from the consciousness of
futility is along those general lines .... after a certain age one must either stop writing
or dedicate oneseIf to some purpose not wholly aesthetic. Such a dedication necessarily
means a break with the past. 12

While it is true that Eliot "escaped ... into the church," I think the
Quartets did, in fact, serve Eliot's private need to publicly testify to his
religious faith, even though, curiously enough, I agree with Orwell's
harsh judgment that Eliot was a "man who does not really 'feeI' his
faith, but merely assents to it for complex reasons." 13 Paradoxically
though, at the time he began Four Quartets Eliot was well aware that
his poetic career was coming to an end:
I thought pure unapplied poetry was in the past for me. 14

As Eliot recounts, however, it seems the poem was meant to be written:

There were lines and fragments that were discarded in the course of the production of
Murder in the Cathedral that stayed in my mind, and gradually I saw a poem shaping
itself round them: in the end it carne out as 'Bumt Norton:
Even 'Bumt Norton' might have remained by itself if it hadn't been for the war. ...
the conditions of our lives changed ... 'East Coker' was the result - and it was only in
writing 'East Coker' that I began to see the Quartets as a set of four. 15

It was only after he was able to proclaim his faith through the use
of language that Eliot was freed from the terrible uncertainty of not
knowing he had completed his poetic mission. With Four Quartets
Eliot's position among poets was certain.

II

Gaston Bachelard persuades us in his book, The Psychoanalysis of Fire,

that there is, in fact, a poetics of fire. Prefacing Bachelard's work,
92 SHERL YN ABDOO

Northrop Frye defined fire as a natural farce, imaginatively inseparable

from human experience - inseparable because

it is already linked by analogy and identity with a dozen other aspects of experience. Its
heat is anaIogous to the internal heat we feeI as warm-blooded animals; its sparks are
analogous to seeds, the units of life; its f1ickering movement is analogous to vitality; its
flames are phaIlic symbols, providing further anaIogy to the sexual act . . . its trans-
forming power is anaIogous to purgation. 16

In the Quartets, fire is the metonymic symbol-system which gives the

poem its meaning. The poem begins immediately with images flickering
across the page as an emotion might evoke
a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction. (BN, III, 10-12)
But Eliot's moments of revelation are fragmentary, as if he could only
see or imagine a world composed of parts - glimpses of places, parts
of people, moments in events, and hints of feelings - all spliced
together to compose the film clip of a dream or nightmare. Not only is
Eliot projecting memories from times past, but he is pairing contrary
states of being which are repetitively oxymoronic and allegorical. In
addition to the past/present oppositions, there are at least five other
pairs of contraries working simultaneously in the poem: (1) life and
death; (2) heat and cold; (3) motion and stillness (or stasis); (4) light
and darkness; and (5) passion and purgation. Each pair of oppositions
is symbolically represented by the element of fire. It might be useful to
mention here that the word "fire" is, in fact, used eighteen times in Faur
Quartets (twelve of the eighteen are in "Little Gidding"); the word
"light" is used twenty-two times; the word "ro se", nineteen times; "love",
eight times; "sun", ten times; "blood" and "heat" five times each; and
"word" or "Logos", a total of twelve times.
There is, too, an unmistakably circular shape to the movement of
wards in the Quartets. By itself, circularity signifies wholeness and
perfection. Beginning and ending with fire, therefore, neatly closes the
poetic circle and unites its parts within. At the same time, the mere fact
that each Quartet is associated in Eliot's mind with a place particular in
his past, connects him to it.
"Burnt Norton" is the site of a seventeenth-century farmhouse which
was set on fire by its owner, Sir William Keyte, who immolated himself
 FIRE TRANSFIGURED 93

as he destroyed his own home. The site seems to have remained in

Eliot's poetic imagination in its burned-out state, even though he visited
the rebuilt estate several times in the 1930's. But, "Burnt Norton"
also possesses a rose garden: "Down the passage which we did not
take" (BN, 1, 12), where laughing, innocent voices of children echo
tantalizingly behind the adult memories of pas sion dried with time, like
the "dust on a bowl of rose leaves." (BN, 1,17) The poignant memories
Eliot associated with "Burnt Norton" became reduced in "Little
Gidding" to

Ash on an old man's sleeve

Is alI the ash the burnt roses leave. (LG, II, 1-2)

While the experience of Eliot's personal past led him to describe it as a

world of perpetual solitude, ...

Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of alI property
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy (BN, III, 26, 28-31),

the debauched past of Sir William Keyte led him to experience,

first-hand, the torments ofhell
In hell, the torment issues from the very nature of the damned themselves, expresses
their essence; they writhe in the torment of their own perpetually perverted nature. 17

Sir William not on1y had "abandoned his wife and younger children" in
order to "set up house" at Burnt Norton with "his wife's maid," but he
even threw over his mistress some years later in favor of a "dairy
maid." 18
Eliot's method of conflating his own experiences with Sir William's
follows his familiar description of how
an ancient passion in a new emotion, in a new situation, ... comprehends, enlarges, and
gives a meaning to it. 19

In "East Coker" Eliot meditates on the place of his earliest known

origins. East Coker was the "village in southeast Somersetshire from
which the Eliot family emigrated to America." 20 While Eliot refers
indirect1y to erotic love in "Burnt Norton," in "East Coker" the
94 SHERL YN ABDOO

experience is explicitly rendered. We hear how Eliot's ancestors danced

"around the bonfire"
in the electric heat . . .
On a Summer midnight (EC, 1,28, 19, 26)
and "Leap[t] through the flames" of the bonfire, enacting an ancient
fertility rite. (EC, 1, 35) The fire which signifies consummation of erotic
love is also the fire which transforms
old timber to new fires
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth (EC, 1, 5-6)
and fertilizes the soil, "Nourishing the corn." (EC, 1, 40) The fires of
human pas sion and fertility are provoked by the earth's response to
cyclical change, to "living in the living season" (EC, 1, 42) - in
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death. (EC, 1, 44-47)
But the seasons clash and "Late roses" are "filled with early snow" (EC,
II, 7) while
Comets weep ...
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which bums before the ice-cap reigns. (EC, II, 13, 15-17)
Eliot extends the seasonal metaphor of cyclical change to reflect upon
his own autumnal season - where the fires of youthful passion have
spent themselves and the
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age (EC, II, 24-25)
takes over. But Eliot cannot altogether escape the "echoed ecstasy" of
the rose garden "pointing to the agony / Of death and birth." (EC, III,
34-36) The cyclical metaphor of "death and birth" is reversed ta
"birth and death" signifying Christ, "the wounded surgeon," - the
"dying nurse" who
 FIRE TRANSFIGURED 95

plies the steel

That questions the distempered part ...
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. (EC, IV, 1-2,5)
Christ's purpose is to "remind of our, and Adam's curse;" but in order
to be saved, or healed, as the medical metaphor indicates, the "sickness
must grow worse." (EC, N, 10) Eliot the protagonist
must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars. (EC, IV, 18-20)
Christ's "bleeding hands" become the sacramental meal:
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our on1y food. (EC, IV, 3, 21-22)
In "East Coker" the search for god and the search for knowledge are
the same:
The on1y wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility; humility is endless. (EC, II, 47-48)
Through humility and the courage to suffer, purgation can be achieved:

In purgatory the torment of flame is deliberately and consciously accepted by the

penitent ... the souls in purgatory suffer because they 'wish to suffer.' 21

In the Four Quartets "the faith and the love and the hope are alI in the
waiting." (EC, III, 29)
"The Dry Salvages" represent the place Eliot knew intimately. The
Dry Salvages are "a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N. E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts." 22 Eliot spent his childhood sum-
mers at Cape Ann and learned to sai! the treacherous waters around
the rocky coast. In the poem Eliot's happy memories of Cape Ann are
coupled with Eliot's other childhood memory of water: the Mississippi
River as it flowed through St. Louis, Missouri, the city of Eliot's birth.
In Eliot's imagination, the "strong brown god" which is the Mississippi,
is predictably "sullen, untamed and intractable." (DS, 1-2) His earliest
memory of the river was its "rhythm ... in the nursery bedroom." For
Eliot, the Mississippi continued to be present "within us" while the sea
was an element that flowed "an about us." (DS, 1, 11, 15)
96 SHERL YN ABDOO

In "The Dry Salvages" the seasons mingle. The "rank ailanthus of the
April dooryard" is juxtaposed with the "smell of grapes on the autumn
table," while the "winter gaslight" illuminates the "evening." (DS, 1,
12-14) Though the sacramental wine is hinted at, "The bitter apple
and the bite in the apple" testify to Eliot's preoccupation with man's
FalI. But the repetitive intonation of "the calamitous annunciation," the
"last annunciation," and the "sound of the sea bell's / Perpetual angelus"
strikes the ear as a death-knell even as its announcement - which is
salvation - tries to retrieve the situation. (DS, II, 6, 18; IV, 14-15)
But the mystery of Incarnation is only "half understood." (DS, V, 32) It
is "Something that is probably quite ineffable." (DS, II, 52) It is
an occupation for the saint -
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender. (DS, V, 190-22)
In other words, there is no tangible proof that can provide assurance of
salvation. There are only "hints and guesses" and a
music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at aH. (DS, V, 29, 27-28)
As the most philosophical, least metaphorical of the Quartets, "The
Dry Salvages" is also the darkest. In the inescapable rhythm of the
language, the liquid elements not only carry the life force, but surround
us and carry us on the waters of life "In a drifting boat with a slow
leakage," untiI we drown. (DS, II, 16) Not only does the sea swaHow
men alive and regurgitate the remains:
the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear offoreign dead men (DS, 1,22-24)
but, unlike woman, the sea in its feminine essence does not reject her
lovers; her lovers, instead, end their voyage
in the sea's lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them. (DS, IV, 12-13)
Like the Quartets before it, "Little Gidding" has its locus. It is
the site of "an Anglican religious community established in 1625 by
Nicholas Ferrer, and three times visited by King Charles."23 Whereas in
 FIRE TRANSFIGURED 97

the prior Quartets Eliot was primarily concemed with evoking a past
moment, in "Little Gidding" "History is now and England." (LG, V, 24)
With the realities of the war intruding upon his imagination, the voice
of God speaks from the mouth of an enemy fighter plane invoking
Armageddon:

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and terror. (LG, IV, 1-4)
Eliot can no longer escape self-confrontation; using memory he has
meditated repeatedly on the facts of his own mortality, trying "To
summon the spectre of a rose" (LG, III, 36); he has attempted to define
the nature of his religious faith; but in "Little Gidding," the major issue
seems to be the use of language and the question of his poetic purpose.
In "Bumt Norton" Eliot briefly reached after

Words, after speech ...

Into the silence (BN, V, 3-4)
only to find an unsatisfactory solution, wherein

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. (BN, V, 13-17)
In "East Coker" Eliot took another approach. Instead of trying to
define what language does, Eliot attempted to interpret his own motives
and actions:

So here I am in the middle way, having had twenty years-

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of'l'entre deux guerres'-
Trying to leam to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer dis posed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate. (EC, V, 1-8)
98 SHERL YN ABDOO

In "Little Gidding," finally, Eliot seems to come full circle and arrive at
an acceptable way of defining the enterprise he is engaged in:
every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. (LG, V, 3-12)
Eliot, thus, seems to have arrived at a partial solution to his problem.
Having confronted the spectre of himself and his dead mas ters in what
he called a hallucinatory state after an air-raid, Eliot absolved himself
from having gone his own way with language, of having invested his
own way with words:
'1 am not eager to rehearse
My thought and theory which you have forgotten'
the apparition tells him
'These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good.' (LG, II, 58-63)
With the golden rule his absolution, Eliot felt free to conclude his
poem, uniting the fires of passion, pain, fertility, and purgation to the
rose of memory, love, and art. Fire is here finally incarnated as Logos
(place), Word, language which becomes poem:
And the fire and the rose are one. (LG, V, 46)

NOTES

1 AlI quotations from T. S. Eliot's Faur Quartets are taken from The Complete Paems
and Plays 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1971) and are hereinafter referred
ta in parentheses by line number immediately following each citation. 1 have, in each
case, referred ta the standard abbreviations for each of the poem's separate parts: 'BN'
 FIRE TRANSFIGURED 99

for 'Bumt Norton,' 'EC' for 'East Coker,' 'DS' for The Dry Salvages,' and 'LG' for
'Little Gidding.'
2 He1en Gardner, 'The Music of Four Quartets,' Four Quartets: A Casebook, ed.,
Bemard Bergonzi (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 126.
In her book, The Composition of Four Quartets, Helen Gardner quotes from a letter
written in June, 1941, by John Hayward to Frank Morley in which Hayward mentions a
slightly different, and I think correct, sequence for ordering the elements. Referring to
Eliot, Hayward writes: "He wants if possible to complete the cycle with a fourth poem
- Earth, Air, Water, 'Fire' - and has got as far as making a rough, preliminary draft."
(p. 21)
3 B. Rajan, "The Unity of the Quartets," in T. S. Eliot: A Study of Ris Writings by
Several Hands (London: Dennis Dobson, 1947), p. 80.
4 Ibid., p. 78.
5 T. S. Eliot, "Dante," in Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, ed. with an introd. by Frank
Kermode (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1975), p. 218.
6 lbid., p. 217.

7 T. S. Eliot, "Dante and 'Little Gidding'," Four Quartets: A Casebook, op. cit., p. 24.
According to Grover Smith (T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and
Meaning [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974]) "in World War II Eliot belonged to
the fire-spotting service in London." (p. 291)
8 B. Rajan, op. cit., p. 95.
9 T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," in Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, op.
cit., p. 39.
10 Ibid., p. 38.

II T. S. Eliot, "Dante and 'Little Gidding'," op. cit., p. 25.

12 George Orwell, "T. S. Eliot," in Four Quartets: A Casebook, op. cit., p. 85.
13 Ibid., p. 86.

14 T. S. Eliot, "The Genesis of Four Quartets," Four Quartets: A Casebook, op. cit., p.
23.
15 Ibid., p. 23.
16 Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, Preface by Northrop Frye, trans.,
Alan C. M. Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. vi.
I? T. S. Eliot, "Dante," op. cit., p. 220.
I~ Helen Gardner, The Composition of Four Quartets, op. cit., p. 36.
19 T. S. Eliot, "Dante," op. cit., p. 225.

20 Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning, p.
255.
21 T. S. Eliot, "Dante," op. cit., p. 220.
22 T. S. Eliot, "The Dry Salvages," The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950, op. cit.,
p.130.
23 Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning, op.
cit., p. 255.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Preface by Northrop Frye. Trans. Alan
C. M. Ross. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
100 SHERL YN ABDOO

Bergonzi, Bernard, Ed. Four Quartets: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Blamires, Harry. Word Unheard: A Guide Through Eliot's Four Quartets. London:
Metheun,1969.
Burch-Brown, Frank. Transjiguration: Poetic Metaphor and the Languages of Religious
Belief. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983.
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace
and Worid, 1971.
Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Ed. with an Introd. by Frank Kermode. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1975.
Gardner, Helen. The Composition of Four Quartets. New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1978.
Herakleitos and Diogenes. Trans. by Guy Davenport. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press,
1976.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. Introd. by T. S. Eliot. New York: Dutton, 1958.
Rajan, B., Ed. T. S. Eliot: A Study of Ris Writings by Several Hands. London: Dennis
Dobson, Ltd., 1947.
Skeat, Walter W. A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1980.
Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning. 2nd Ed.
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974.
 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

FIRE AND SNOW: THE DICHOTOMIES AND

DICHOMACHIES OF POLISH BAROQUE POETRY

Le feu et la ehaleur fournissent des moyens d'expliea-

tion dans les domaines les plus varies paree qu'ils
sont pour nous l'oeeasion de souvenirs imperissables,
d'experienees personnelles simples et deeisives. Le
feu est ainsi un phenomene privilegie qui peut tout
expliquer. Si tout ce qui change lentement s'explique
par la vie, tout ce qui ehange vite s'explique par le
feu. Le feu est l'ultra-vivant. Le feu est intime et il est
universel. Il vit dans notre eoeur. Il vit dans le eiel. Il
monte des profondeurs de la substanee et s'offre
eomme un amour. Il redeseend dans la matiere et
se eache, latent, eontenu eomme la haine et la
vengeanee. Parmi tous les phenomenes, il est vrai-
ment le seul qui puisse recevoir aussi nettement les
deux valorisations eontraires: le bien et le mal. Il
brille au Paradis. Il brule it I'Enfer. Il est doueeur et
torture. Il est euisine et apoealypse. Il est plaisir pour
l'enfant assis sagement pres du foyer; il punit eepend-
ant de toute desobeissanee quand on veut jouer de
trop pres avee ses flammes. Il est bien-etre et il est
respect. C'est un dieu tutelaire et terrible, bon et
mauvais. Il peut se contredire: il est done un des
prineipes d'explication universelle.
Gaston Baehelard, La psychanalyse du [eu

Despite the existence of indissoluble link:s between the phenomena of

fire, light, and sun, I have determined in my undertaking to describe the
topos of fire in Polish Baroque poetry to limit myself to the manifesta-
tion of fire alone (whose Latin counterpart is ignis), eliminating from
my description both light and sun. In these considerations, the only
companions of fire wiH be those appearances which are closely link:ed
to it physically: smoke, sparks, ash, and heat. Simplifying somewhat, I
would say that the general common understanding of the word "fire",
with aH of its designations except for light and sun, will set the limits of
my description. The reason behind this decision is not fear of the
cosmic dimensions of a more widely understood meaning of the word
101
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 101-119.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
102 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

"fire," which in accordance with the ancient cosmogonies takes in

equally both light and sun; rather, the reason involves certain essential
differences in the functioning of the symbols and metaphors of fire,
light, and the sun in the religions and mythologies of the peoples of the
entire world. Jean Chevalier in conjunction with Alain Gheerbrant has
gathered impressive data concerning the fundamental symbols of
humanity, among these the symbols of light, sun, and fire. In mytholo-
gies and religions, light is as it were without a source, without a cause, a
Kantian light for itself, reproducing the attribute of the Platonic
demiurge in "Timaeus." It is closely joined with cosmogony, with the
evolution of existence. It is opposed to darkness, itself symbolizing
good whereas the darkness symbolizes evil. This is how light is seen
with some slight variations in the ancient beliefs of China; in the holy
book of the Moslems - the Koran; in the oldest relic of Indo-Aryan
literature, the Rig-Veda; or in the Buddhist Anguttara-nikâya. The
highest god of the old Iranian religion Mazdaism, Ormazd (Ahura
Mazdă), is identified with light, and light with good, so that he is himself
the good. This powerful god is in opposition to the darkness and evil
which Ahriman personifies. This dualism lies at the basis of alI forms of
Manichaeism. The Apostle John identifies light with the Word-Logos,
and the Logos is God. l
The sun in these mythologies and religions has many characteristics
in common with light. It is most often a manifestation of the divinity
(epiphanie ouranienne). But in some creeds it is lower than light, very
often being not a god, as is light, but the son of god, as, for example, in
Australian beliefs. The sun is above alI the rhythm of life, a symbol of
immortality, resurrection, and the eternal return of light and thus of
divinity. It is the center of the heavens, the heart of the world, the eye
of the world. According to Indian religions and philosophies, within it
dwelIs Purusa, the cosmic intelligence that compels the creative (thus
divine) forces of the world to action. It is likewise the seat of one of
the persons of the Trimurti - the Hindu Trinity - the creator and
guardian of the world, Brahma. The unchanging part of the inner man,
not subject to annihilation, Atman, is a form of the sun. According to
Hesychius of Jerusalem: "Jesus appears to us as the sun which radiates
justice." 2
In the intricate tangle of the symbolic meanings of fire which often
converge with the symbols of light and the sun, it is possible to catch
one fundamental and very distinct characteristic of this phenomenon: it
 FIRE AND SNOW 103

is a dualistic structure which, in its own dichotomy, is ethically

disturbing. Fire, as distinct from light and sun, lives in its own con-
tradiction; it has no opposite outside of itself, but only within; it attacks
itself as if always forgetting whom, in truth, it is. Light had its enemy in
darkness. So did the sun. Agni (the Sanskrit for "fire"), the Hindu god
of fire, second in power only to Indra, is formed from three opposing
elements: sun (life giving), lightning (always destructive), and hearth
(neuter). It has two faces, is a deity both benign and extremely
malicious. It has three or seven tongues. Light and the sun are single-
faced, and single-tongued. Light and the sun are cosmocentric, fire -
homocentric. In fire, according to ancient Chinese philosophy, two
e1ements are joined: the heavenly and the earthly, the yin and yang. Fire
is of the spirit and of senses; it is the symbol both of love and hatred. It
both fertilizes the earth and reduces it to ash. It can be a gent1e saint, a
beam of heaven, and a terrifying element of hell. Ali these mythical and
symbolical properties of fire expressly separate it from light and sun.
In undertaking a description of the phenomenon of fire in poetry, I
ought to clarify why 1 chose Polish Baroque poetry for this purpose -
for the simple reason that it is a perfect equivalent to the structure of
the myth of fire. Dichotomy and dichomachy is its striking charac-
teristic, one which mirrors the situation in which Europe found itself
after the Council of Trent, after the breakdown of the Reformation. A
sensitive individual of this continent stood confronted with the heritage
of St. Bartholomew's Day, the stake of Giordano Bruno, and the
condemnation of Galileo. Descartes, shaken by the fate of the author of
the "Dialogue," withholds publication a treatise of his own, deciding
to print only certain of its parts: La dioptrique, Les meteores, La
geometrie, with the famous introduction to Discours de la mhhode
(1637). The children of the Renaissance had to face a morrow painfully
divided, discovering in themselves the same prevailing contradictions as
in the element of fire. A brilliant expert on the Polish Baroque, Czeslaw
Hernas, sees, with profound penetration, the former unity of Jan
Kochanowski's epoch beginning to break in half:
"Then comes the crisis of Renaissance aspirations for reconciliation
of earthly and eternal values, of the horizontal and vertical pulse of life.
This crisis led to collision, to the sundering of unity, and to the
formation of opposing currents: those of metaphysical poetry and of the
poetry of earthly delights ....
As to the controversy conceming earthly and eternal bliss, the
104 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

Church took a strong position, both overseeing the changes in culture

and exercising control over them. The debate concerning the world's
and man's transitoriness gripped alI of the arts." 4
Besides the problem of dualism in Polish Baroque, which is so
strongly reminiscent of at least the dualistic structure of the myth of
fire, yet a third element played an important part in my choice: namely,
the problem of metaphysics, as it was understood by Andronicus of
Rhodes, publisher of the works of Aristotle, who gave to those works of
the great philosopher which were not contained precisely with in the
disciplines of the sciences, the title: Ta meta ta physica - that which
follows after physics. Metaphysics is undoubtedly part of a common
denominator which joins, for the Baroque poets and for the phenome-
nologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, descriptions of the
exterior and interior world. Baroque poetics more than other poetics is
to a markedly larger degree characterized by that which is characteristic
of phenomenological description, namely:
(a) a reaching for the essence of things;
(b) by non-empiric al means;
(c) rather intuitive;
(d) the bracketing of existence;
(e) by express intentional acts.
The metaphysical character of Baroque poetry is brought out in
relief by the titles of scholarly works on this period, as well as
anthologies: e.g., Joan Bennet Four Metaphysical Poets (Cambridge,
1934); H. J. C. Grierson, ed., Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems (Oxford,
1921); J. B. Leishman The Metaphysical Poets (New York, 1936);
Theodore Spencer and Mark Van Doren Studies in Metaphysical
Poetry: Two Essays and a Bibliography. Only lately does the term
"Baroque" seem to have taken hold in reference to the creativity of the
period, to which development the following titles witness: J. M. Cohen
The Baroque Lyric (London, 1963); Lowry Nelson, Jr., Baroque Lyric
Poetry (New Haven and London, 1966); Frank J. Warnke, Version of
Baroque (New Haven and London, 1972). The metaphysical elements
in phenomenology were noticed very early. Already in the year 1858
William Hamilton speaks of these in his Lectures on Metaphysics.
Criticism immediately linked with Husserl the name of Boleslaw
Lesmian,5 the most renowned Polish poet of the highly metaphysical
period of Symbolism. Thus without doubt the metaphysical bond that
 FIRE AND SNOW 105

exists between the Baroque and phenomenology aided me in the

selection of my topic.
The dualistic function of fire blended perfectly with the poetics of
the chief theoreticians of the European Baroque, such as: Giambattiste
Marino (1569-1625), Luis de G6ngora y Argote (1561-1627), lohn
Lyly, author of a program novel in two parts Euphues or the Analomy
of Wit (1578) and Euphues and Ris England (1580), and in Poland
Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1554-1606). These poetics are full of
formal virtuosity, of astonishing as sociations , of conceptualism, of
allusiveness, of digressions (digression was one of the chief stylistic
features used by the author of L 'Adone), and last of alI of shocking
play - it can be said - with the word as with fire, a calculated surprise
by means of words. Fire in alI mythologies and religions is also
surprising. Marino makes of astonishment the chief canon of his poetics
which, (next to the poetics of Carrillo y Sotomayor the author of El
libro de la erudicion poetica (1611) who defends the "dark obscurities"
of his poetry) is the most profound influence on European Baroque,
finding its way into the creative work of the most talented of Polish
poets of the Baroque, lan Andrzej Morsztyn. The chameleon-like
attributes of fire became the perfect tool in the structure of surprise,
attributes which Marino promoted with such insistence:
Astonishment's the poet's aim and aid:
Who cannot startle best had stick to trade.
The use of antitheses and paradoxes was one of the contemporary
traits of Marinism, Euphuism, Gongorism and further of the "acutism"
(pointillism) and "argutism" (witticism) of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski,
author of the basic, despite its brevity, treatise entitled De acuto el
arguto liber unicus sive Seneca el Martialis. The specialIy favored
stylistic figure of these movements was antithesis, the most Manichean
of alI stylistic structures. Fire was simply the perfect tool for expressing
the fundamental dichomachies and dichotomies of the Baroque: on one
si de with its divine, creative power, its own sacred burning bush of
Moses, its Promethean reference, its vision of vestal virgins, its obvious
hierophany; on the other with its aggressive diabolical, destroying
power. It expressed the dichotomies and dichomachies quite dramti-
calIy by opposing to itself cold and snow which symbolized the breath
of death, or even worse than death - indifference. The duality of the
nature of fire is quite simply ideally suited for the production in poetic
106 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

pictures of the encounter of the fleshly with the spiritual (the chief
dichomachy of the Baroque), of the conscious with the unconscious, of
the expressible with the inexpressible, of the social with the individual,
and finally of the creative with the destructive. The duality of fire
created also a perfect "semantic space" for showing the two postures
that are at war with each other in man, the posture of homo militans
and homo ludens, which comprise in their struggle the chief collision of
the Baroque.
In the Polish Baroque the fire of earthly, sensual, fleshly love is most
violendy at odds with the fire of spiritual, divine love. It will be in truth
a battle of metaphors, but one experienced profoundly by earth and
heaven. This c1ash is the signum temporum of the Baroque. "Fire of
flesh" enters into the Polish Baroque from the Polish Renaissance
which constituted one of the most sensual periods in Polish literature.
A bold lewd fleshliness resting on Epicureanism, hedonism, Lucretian-
ism, permeates the works of Andrzej Krzycki, the first Polish bishop
to write almost pornographic erotics, and these in Latin (Tadeusz
Chrzanowski calls him "a greedy and immoral bishop").6 These tensions
prevade equally the poetry and prose of MikaIaj Rej and Jan
Kochanowski. The author of Songs enchanted the arbiter of taste in the
Polish Baroque, Sarbiewski, who second after Klemens Janicki held the
golden laurel from the hands of the then reigning pope, Urban VIII.
Sarbiewski, "poeta laureatus," opens wide the gates of the Polish
Baroque before the author of the poems On Love, To Magdalene, To
Hanna, Midsummer Night's Song on Sob6tka, Of Pranks, Trifles, and so
ono In the poem To Magdalene, the fire of "worldly bliss," the fire of
sensual love attains simply a paralyzing intensity. It is not the fire of the
septic altar of the Vestals, rather of the god Kama. It attains, within its
desire for possessing the coveted person, the power of the demon of
love in the book of the Vedas, and will become, by transformation in
Hinduism, a prototype of the already mild Mediterranean Amor, and
neither a Greek nor a Roman Siva has ignited this flame as a means of
arousing love for a European Kala. In Kochanowski, Amor has really
the oudines more of the demon of love from the Vedas than of a god of
love in Anacreon. Gazing on the object of love-possession, the poet
loses control over himself, as emotion paralyzes his voice: "1 have no
speech; a secret fire moves within me." 7 The epithet "secret" does not
here mean "unknown," rather it is metonymy for that which does not
wish ever to be expressed. The nature of this flame is made express by
 FIRE AND SNOW 107

sensual context: it hums in the poet's ears, it darkens his eyes: "a
two-fold night sets on the eyes." In the poem Love, Kochanowski, as
the new Prometheus, is punished for stealing the fire of love by being
chained to "a crag of the snowy Caucasus." But instead of a liver, it is
his heart which grows ever anew, and gnawing at it is not a vulture but
a "she-eagle" - the beloved woman. This Caucasus, covered with snow,
is here expressly a symbol of the unattainable but haughty and cold
body of the desired woman. He is "nailed" to her by the sentence of his
own feelings, but this "nailing to" does not unite him with his object,
rather it separates him through the snow of her indifference. Warm
emotional bonds change themselves into icy chains. 8 There appears in
this picture as it were a trace of medieval misogyny which will extend
sometimes into the Polish Baroque. Kochanowski, almost like a genuine
poet of the Baroque, seeks escape in a different fire: the fire of love for
God who - Himself being the fire of love for man - gives wings to the
poet, removes him from the snowy Caucasus, and rewards him with
new peaks, no longer carnal but spiritual, from which the poet sees, as
will the future Romantic Kordian (Stowacki), the entire surrounding
world taking its place in the eye of Providence:
Who has given me wings, who clothed me with feathers,
Who placed me so high, that from a mountain
I see the world of aH, and, as if it were normal, 1
Myselfin touch with Heaven?
Is he the fire unquenched
Of the golden sun.... 9
After this as it were "ascension through fire," there appears in
Kochanowski a calmed yet magical fire. Its sources are hidden in a very
intense, omnipresent proto-Slavonic cult of this element. It is a charac-
teristic of Slavic traditions that many of the leading gods are gods of the
sun and fire, such as the powerful proto-Slavonic Swarozyc and the
chief god of the proto-Polans and proto-Vistulans Dadib6g. 1O Both of
these were gods of sacrificial and domestic fire. The tutelage of
dom estic fire attributed to them by the pagans was enormously
important in the climate formed in the post-glacial age, when physical
fire was a question of life and death. By this attribution are the gods
distinguished from those described in the excellent work of James
George Frazer, The Golden Bough. In proto-Polish regions, there
where Slavic mythology was born, human life was possible only and
108 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

exclusively thanks to fire. Traces of this life from 180,000 years ago or
so from a time when glaciers were receding toward Scandinavia, are
found in the Dark Cave (Jaskinia Ciemna), in the Ojc6w Valley
(Dolina Ojcowska), as well as in the window Cave (Jaskinia Okiennik)
in Piaseczno. They have also been discovered in Krakow, in the suburb
of Zwierzyniec. 11 The exceptional intensity of the cult of fire among the
Slavs and thus the proto-Poles, joins it, quite closely at that, with the
cult of fire among the Celts. On the hill Sobotka, which from the time
of the Lusitian culture was the chief center of pagan practice, there has
been found a stone cultic circle, with stone sculptures, ceramics, and
tools, which according to some archeologists, are the work of Celts or a
Slavic people under their influence. These objects bear on their surface
signs of the cross, the swastika, and the sun-shield, indicating the solar
character of this cult and thus of fire. A pearl of Polish Renaissance
poetry "Midsummer Night's Song of Sobotka (PieSfl Swir;tojanska o
Sobotce) by Jan Kochanowski, shows traces of the ancient beliefs in the
divinity of fire, in fire's prophetic power. This hierophany appears only
once in the author of Songs and there with restraint, already having
been taken into the parenthesis of culture.
As befitted a genuine Renaissance poet, John of Czarnolas looked
on fire as an element purely practic al, as protection from the cold. In
the quite epicurean Song XlV, he sings: "let there be wood on the fire,
and wine on the table" 12 so as to be able to look at the snow-capped
peaks of the mountains without the feeling of menace, the peaks from
which - thanks to the influence of Epicurus and ataraxy - the Pro-
metheus-poet bound by the chains of pas sion disappears now to sit
comfortably before his fireplace with the former cruel "she-eagle"
which formerly fed on his living heart, now drinking the wine and
caring for that "which hand had taken hold of." But then when the poet
in Muse imagines to himself his own "Grenzsituationen" (Karl Jaspers),
the eschatological moment of death, he feels suddenly like taking the
form of the speedy fire that penetrates the clouds,13 in a liberated flight
toward God who is here more a category of fame than of immortality.
The chameleon-like nature of fire will return as if to the starting point,
the protofire of primordial cosmogonies, but - as if it were dictated by
Giambattista Vico, the author of La scienza nuova - with just a turn of
the spiral higher, it returns this time to the divine.
The Baroque pendulum of antitheses, of extremes, of the struggle of
opposites, being a mirror that reflects the struggle of two elements in
 FIRE AND SNOW 109

man - the carnal and the spiritual - will burst forth in almost model
form in the writings of Daniel N aborowski (1573-1640), the precursor
of Polish Baroque poetry, an artist linked with the dissident court of the
Radziwitls in Birie. In the formulation of this existential and ontological
pendulum, fire and its opposite, ice, will again be helpful to him ... as
much as to Petrarch (1303-1374), a poet fascinated first by secular
life, then again by the contemplative, coming first under the rule of
flesh, then of the spirit, first praising Lucretius, and then again seized by
an almost abject mysticism. Naborowski, the excellent translator of the
author of Il Canzoniere (1352), translated Petrarch's Sonnet 85 which
begins with the words: "Pace non trovo, e non o da far guerra." This
work showed with exceptional acuity the relentless struggle of opposites
as embodied this time in feelings of love, a struggle partially expressed
in the opposition: fire-ice. U p until the time of the celebrated,
oxymoronic work of Franciszek Karpinski, God is being born, with its
phrase: "Fire congeals - the blaze darkens," no one had shown more
profoundly the "unity of opposites" in the emotions of man than did
Naborowski, even if it was by means of borrowing, he himself being
perhaps a diligent reader of Pierre Abelard's Sic el Non:
There is no peace for me, I don't prepare an army,
For I see terror and cheer, fire and ice in you.
And drag myself on the earth, and fly up to the sky,
Scooping in the whole world, and encompassing nothing.
I admire what neither holds nor releases me,
I am neither bound to it, nor am I released,
I am as if free, and yet these chains weigh heavily -
I am neither alive, nor do I feel freed from grief.
Having no eyes I see, having no tongue I caB.
I want myself to perish, and yet I ask for help.
I hate myself, yet I love others.
I am nourished with pain, mixing tears with laughter.
I bear the same taste, moreover, for life as for death.
In such a life I live for you, my lady.
These pendulums of opposing emotional states, of existential and essen-
tiaI feelings, which recall the functions of fire as assigned to it by
mythology and religion, are the very foundation for the rhythms of
Polish Baroque poetry. Naborowski expresses this very model of the
110 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

alternation of human existence by the title of the poem Performance:

Ca/ando poggiando, first up, then down." 15 For this "ontological swing"
Naborowski chooses to translate Sonnet 83 of Petrarch so to cry out
amidst the ravaging opposites in him: "1 burn up in winter, and shiver in
summer." 16 Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, for the very same reason, decides
to render into Polish part of L 'Adone of Giambattista Marino, the
Vanneggiar d'une innamorata ("A Beloved's Reverie"):
Fire races around with the cold in secrecy,
And 1 burn with frost and pour forth
This miracle of love, a new kind of spelI,
A burning frost, and icy fire. 1?
Seeking out these ravaging opposites, Sarbiewski discovers Pindar, his
Aetna, which will become in the soil of the Polish Baroque a near
symbol of woman:
Nivosa Aetna, per totum annum nivis acutae nutrix,
Cuius ex penetrabilus
Eructantur inaccessi ignis purissimi fontes
Fluviique ignis interdiu effundunt verticem fumi ardentem 18
(Snowy Aetna, provider for the whole year of delicate snow,
From whose interior
Gushes forth the clearest springs of inaccessible fire,
As streams of fire throw out aH day a burning column of smoke)
The model of Aetna settles for good into the imagination of the Polish
Baroque poets who describe woman. No other epoch proposes such a
violently contrary picture of the nature of woman. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn
complains that the carressed hand of the admired has stolen his heart,
then at once concealed itself first in heat, then in snow, in "the perfumed
Roman glove." 19 The Socinian Zbigniew Morsztyn, gazing on the face
of his lady-Iove, sees on it both snow and fire. 20 This fire has the
peculiarity of displacing itself from the object of adoration to the one
adoring; it abandons, in the act of admiring, the body of the woman and
settles in the man, sowing conflagration in him. The same thing takes
place with snow. Many of the heroines of Baroque poems behave as
Deianeira, sending down on their victims flames and snow equally. "As
fire 1 burn and as snow 1 melt,"21 calIs out Zbigniew Morsztyn, as
if on him and not on Hercules had been placed the shirt dipped in
 FIRE AND SNOW 111

the blood of the centaur Nessos. The Baroque Deianeira can saturate
with fire not ooly a shirt, but every object. Hyppolitus in Szymon
Zimorowicz's Roksolanki confides that the orange which he received
from Rozyna in a dance has suddeoly metamorphosized "into fire." 22
This very sensual, erotic symbol increases even further its own power
of expression by giving voice to black magic, as Rozyna becomes a
sorceress. Eating fire from her hand menaces with eternal damnation,
inasmuch as it rubs up against purgatory and even hell.
It must be remembered that Polish Baroque poets matured in the
epoch of the intensive influence of the Confession fidei Catholicae
Christianae ... of Cardinal Stanis1aw Hozjusz (39 editions!), of the
Lives of Saints by Piotr Skarga (16 editions to the end of the XVIIth
century), and the Gerusalemme Liberata of Torquatto Tasso (1544-
1595). Poland slowly ceased to be a "Paradisus hereticorum." Readers
were won over by the adaptation from the pen of Hieronim Maripetrus
of St. Francis' life entitled: "Seraphiceae in divi Francisci vitam Christiano
carmine editae and translated by Hyppolite Liricius, a guardian of the
Franciscian cloister in Nowy Sacz, in a work entitled Models of Virtue
or the Miraculous Life of the Angelic and Blessed St. Francis (1599,
and many reissues). In this climate, earthly love becomes a feeling
sentenced almost a priori to purgatory, to being cast into the fire which
purges it of "earthly bliss." When Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski in his
Lectures on Poetics becomes entranced by one of the Anacreonic
verses, whose theme is struggle with Cupid, he writes: "The idea is
nonetheless beautiful how the poet conjures Cupid from the wax and
then threatens that he, who had been changed into wax, will burn." 23
Sarbiewski knows perfectly well both the Greek text of the original and
the faithful Latin translation made by Elias Andreas, which goes: "ipse
flamma statim liquesces" - "And Cupid melts in the flames." Yet the
translator burns Cupid, does not melt him as in the original and in the
faithful Latin translation. The climate of the Counter-Reformation
augments fire when confronted with earthly love. A small change and
yet how meaningful.
We are not permitted to forget that each and every trifling with this
element, it being a symbol or allegory of sensual love, of carnal
possession, must in the period of the Counter-Reformation have its
own purgatorial or infernal connotation. The poems of Zimorowicz
appear between Giordano Bruno's stake and the imprisonment of
Galileo (1564-1642). Ooly in one case, from the pen of Henryk
112 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

Chelchowski, author of Sylvan Murmuring (Gwar le§ny) do we have a

different situation. Inspite of the myth, his Meleager burned by his
vindictive mother Althea, feels the sanctifying, cleansing activity of this
fire. "Holy is this fire;" he caUs out, "it burns but does not consume."24
Nonetheless it burns out that which is of earthly love, and aims to
cleanse the sensual element from him. This caUs to mind that very much
later fire of Novalis (1772-1801), a representative of "magic al ideal-
ism," a fire also observed by Bachelard: "My love is transformed into a
flame, and this flame consumes little by little aU that is earthly in me." 25
("Mon amour s'est transforme en flamme, et cette flame consume peu li
peu tout ce qui est terrestre en moi.") This "burning up of the earthly"
is a basic function of fire in Polish Baroque poetry, although that, which
in love has an earthly nature, offers obstinate resistance, and time after
time, the sensual beauty of life, given over to "divine judgments,"
escapes whole, surviving the cleansing flames much like the legendary
salamander. This fabulous animal was disturbing to the Polish Baroque,
and especiaUy to its grandchild Benedict Chmielowski who in New
Athens left a description of its nature, wondering expressly whether it
possesses magical characteristics. "Grevius Author," he writes as if with
slight disappointment, "learned from his own experiences that if put in
fire, it would burn as any other combustibilia." 26
The heart above aU, traditionaUy, is the object of the attacks of
varying forms of fire, it being in alI mythologies and religions an
exceptional organ. In Old-Indian beliefs it is the seat of Brahma; in
Islam, the throne of God - for the ancient Egyptians it becomes the
center of life, will, and intelligence, being an individual personal god of
man. For the Taoist Liu-tsou, it is the sovereign of breath and so of life.
Angelus Silesius caUs it "the sanctuary of God." 27 The fire enveloping
the heart of man is at the Same time the fire that embraces the universe
and its Creator. If it threatens the center of the individual - it threatens
equaUy the center of existence in general. As with aU great symbols
which fascinate man and enchant in the beginning, and then suffer
terribly from overuse, this symbol too diminishes in cognitive value in
Polish Baroque poetry, despite the great words written about it. Poets
sense danger in the decline of the power of this trope. When the
talented Elzbieta Druzbacka wants to put Narcissus to death - she
does not consume him with the fire of the heart, but poisons him with
his own tears. "From his own tears he takes the liquor," she writes, "and
drinks his death." 28 But she never frees her own imagination from fire
 FIRE AND SNOW 113

as the symbol of love, equally earthly and spiritual. What is more, she
considers, as do other poets too, that there is no escape fram this
element. It is man's lot, indispensible for closing the cycle of his
existence - for aur transformation into ashes: "From dust thou camest,
and unto dust thou shalt return." Before this happens however, fire
fulfilIs a purifying function. It is, as I have already remarked, the most
frequently met role of fire, not only in Polish Baraque poetry, but in alI
the mythologies and religions of the world. In the Golden Bough,
Frazer describes an enormous number of rituals which purify by means
of fire. Reaching for the noblest form of fiery purification distant from
purgatory, some poets of the Polish Baraque want ta be kindled by
Gad Himself, stating at the same time that God is a form of the noblest
fire. "Inflame us with Your fire!" 29 asks Samuel Przypkowski of the
Creator. lan Andrzej Morsztyn, the poet who most prafoundly and
most dramticalIy showed the dichotomies and dichomachies of the
Polish Baraque, burns equalIy for Gad and woman, as if trying ta leave
after himself two types of ash for posterity to choose fram: earthly and
heavenly.30 Later the Count of Chateau-villain, he is fulIy aware of the
alI-consuming function in the imagination of Counter-Reformation
poets of the fire of earthly love, but he does not succeed in extin-
guishing it in himself, and what is more - he shields it, feeds it an
himself, caresses and loves it:
By God! How do I live, having now no heart?
Lifeless, stiU I feel the fire in me?
If by this fire I myself decay
Why do I caress it, am I sa in love with it? 31
This is the most desperate attempt at saving earthly la ve an the altar
of the already Puritan Gad at a time when Udalryk Radziwill (1712-
c. 1770) turns away, with a simple incomprehensible fanaticism, from
earthly love, sending it and its children to helI: "That offspring of Venus
which fills helI"32 - he cries out with hatred in an elegy bearing the
characteristic title "Heaven does not well consent to earth". Except in
the case of Radziwill, infernal fire was not sa lavishly squandered by
Polish Baraque poets, as if they had apprehensions that they might "caH
the wolf out fram the forest." They accepted purgatory and even did
their aH sa ta spend time in it, but as for agreeing ta residence in hell,
ta the hellish fire, ta "une saison en enfer," for that it would be
necessary to wait until the epoch of symbolism. The PoIish Baroque
114 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

could permit itself only a Christianization of hellish fire, calling forth

hosts of angels to put to rout the ancient hen administered by Pluto and
Juno. This victory over an obsolete hen is shown by Aleksander
Obodzinski in the work entitled "Important Legacy from the Consistory
of the Most Holy Trinity . ..."33 It is a curious thing that this author of
The Ancient Pandora of Polish Monarchs did not take notice of Uriel
- the angel of fire. But he is not alone in this. The entire Baroque
period overlooked him, though it was quite "preoccupied" with fire. In
the age ofthe Counter-Reformation, Uriel seemed too Judaic.
From their summits of pure spiritual fire, the poets of the Baroque
opposed a Seraphic fire to the fire of hen. It is extremely similar to the
ordinary fire of the oven, in the fireplace, to the shepherd's fire in the
field. This fire is kindled by angels occupied with the same work as
men. Its "humanization" is bewitchingly simple, Renaissance-like, almost
deistic. The Renaissance once again aids the Baroque poets in saving
themselves from the degeneration of Marinism, Gongorism, and
Euphueism. There is a very beautiful poem of Kasper Twardowski
entitled "Jesus' Cradle", with a section "Shepherds," which leads heaven
to earth and humanizes heavenly fire:

They [shepherds] come in the stable: and here tiny

Angels are planing
The dry plank of golden willow
For Jesus as a crib.
Some gather dry wood,
Others fan the fire.
Each helps from his heart.
One is drying the wet diapers. 34
It is not strange that in such a climate, in a poem by an anonymous
author entitled "The Most Delicate Straw", the Child Jesus, wrapped in
heavenly fire and placed on the straw, does not set it aflame in this
stable of humanity:

A strange change took place on earth,

That a Nazarean was thrown on the straw.
Oh straw, straw, what happened to you?
That simply, straw, you became a flower?
But it is more amazing that the Lord being fire
Curled up in the straw, and did not ignite the straw. 3S
 FIRE AND SNOW 115

It is in this way, most often in anonymous poetry (and so certainly folk,

plebeian, "burger," as Karol Badecki has termed it), and in Socinian
poetry, that secularization takes place, the humanization of heavenly
fire. For the anonymous author of the work The Ravens in Rome
Greeted Caesar, fire serves above an for the cooking of chickens on a
Spit. 36 Jan Gawiriski mocks the gad of fire, Vulcan, inciting Mars against
him in order to make fun of him and "cuckold his wife."37 Jerzy
Szlichtyng does the same thing, showing that the former menacing
Vulcan today merely smokes tobacco. 38 Fire in the hands of Turkish
jugglers 39 is an that interests Samuel Twardowski of Skrzypno. Hiacynt
Przetocki counsels an old man that he should "eat fire with a spoon" if
he wants to warm Up.40 This "earthiness" of Polish Baroque poetry
meets up, with some resistance, with the historical and mythological
figures who rule fire or perish by it. The trai tor Krzysztof Opaleriski
feels a particular aversion to Sardanapalus.41 The height of devaluation,
of the desacralization of fire, will be the anonymous A Skinflint's
Tombstone, in which fire serves now only for heating one's backside:
A skinflint here lies, naked he was bom,
Naked he carne from the inn, naked buried,
So naked will he rise at judgment and without clothes
Will he be in hen where flames warm his backside.42
In the Polish Baroque, the ties of fire to the destruction of war are
unavoidable. The time of Zebrzydowski's rebellion, of the Muscovite
wars, the time of the events in Henryk Sienkiewicz's Trilogy, of the
Confederacy of the Bar, revealed a second, stormy nature of fire, which
Sarbiewski saw expressly when, to the remark of Marcus Tulius Cicero
concerning the elements: "aer et ignis, et aqua, et terra prima sunt", he
adds his symptomatic remarks: "But this fire, where it enters, it storms
and tums alI to ash." 43 It is precisely these rebellions, and civil and
border wars, that given the dichotomous structure of fire, fed (and this
by means of blood) that fire which contained within itself hatred for the
mortal caldron of events which touched the Republic already ebbing
into its decline. Wojciech Stanislaw Chrascinski, in Lamentation of a
Disconsolate Fatherland in unusually passionate images, depicts the
ravaging fire of war. 44 Here appears a mindless, accidental fire, an
indifferent tool in meaningless acts. Stanislaw Makowiecki presents an
unheroic version of the death of the hero of Sienkiewicz's Trilogy,
WC1Iodyjowski, in his Accounts of Kamieniec Taken by Turks, 1672. In
this poem, the "little knight" dies from a smoldering fuse senselessly
116 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

placed beneath the gunpowder stores of the fortress. He is not here a

Polish kamikaze, as in Sienkiewicz, but a victim of blind Bellona and
her blind servants. The former magical functions of purification by
conflagration take on questionable value at a certain moment in this
epoch of treason and loyalty, of cowardice and heroism.
When a part of the rebellious royal army, because of missed
paydates, joined up in 1614 with the confederacy, it entered onto the
road of lawlessness. It plundered the monarchical and ecclesiastical
holdings, neighboring villages and towns, coercing the king into meeting
its demands. On securing their overdue pay, the rebellious soldiers
bumed, inside a church and before the altar, the act of the confedera-
tion. This fire consecrates banditry more than it condemns it; it
destroys paper but immortalizes the words inscribed on it, words which
brought the king to his knees. They "ascend" to heaven with the smoke.
The indignant Hieronim Morsztyn, when asked why the rebels bumed
this document, answers: "Because they were afraid, lest lightning strike
their leader." 45 Fire in this unfortunate epoch for Poland adopts the
even more menacing function of pseudo-purification, when the Calvinist
prince Janusz Radziwift starts a war against crosses, destroying them
by, among other means, burning. 46 How very far is this fire from that in
which the Child-Jesus was wrapped, in Kasper Twardowski's poem
about the straw! These two fires in a dramatic way point out the
dichotomy and dichomachy within spiritual fire. Fire is here testing its
own limits of good and evil, as if these were not yet adequately defined
by all the mythologies and religions of the world. The directions of
these attempts must have enormously alarmed the men of those times,
as when a, once again anonymous, poet of the Confederacy of the Bar,
in his song The Confederate Veni Creator, cried:
O Third Person ofthe Trinity,
Deign to enkindle Y our fire
And out of pity on the rabble
Enlighten their stupid minds!47
Professor Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka in her work Poetica Nava, a basic
work for critics and researchers of the history of literature, calls literary
works "the elucidation of human destiny" 48 The topos of fire in Polish
Baroque poetry, which 1 have tried to introduce to you, is a small spark
in this process of "elucidation." The enormous number of appearances
of fire in this litera ture is astonishing, which strengthens my conviction
 FIRE AND SNOW 117

that in principle there are as many fires as there are human beings who
have existed and exist on the earth. And perhaps even more - if we
add its anticipated forms even now before their actual physical appear-
ance, giving them shape by pure, cognitive necessity, in the mind of
man. Aud perhaps in this pure, cognitive form, fire appears as both
unique and genuine.

Chicago
Translated from the Polish by Frank Kujawinski

NOTES

1 Chevalier, Jean, in collaboration with Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionnaire des symboles,

mythes, reves, coutumes, [ormes, jigures, couleurs, nombres, under the conceptual and
technical direction of Bernard Gandet (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1969), pp. 470-4 7l.
2 Ibid., pp. 710-71l.
3 Ibid., pp. 350-352.
4 Hernas, Czes1aw, Barok (Warsaw: PaIistwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976), pp.
21-22.
5 Boye, Edward, Dialogi akademickie - w niepojetej zielonosci, Szkice literackie
(Warsaw: PaIistwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1959), p. 497.
6 Chrzanowski, Tadeusz, Historia literatury niepodleglej Polski (965-/795) (Warsaw:
PaIistwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1971), p. 73.
7 Kochanowski, lan, Do Magdaleny, in: Dziefa polskie (Warsaw: PaIistwowy Instytut

Wydawniczy, 1952), VoI. 1, p. 179.

8 Kochanowski, lan, Mitosc, op. cit., p. 169.
9 Kochanowski, lan, PiesnX, op. cit., p. 227.
10 See: Gieysztor, Aleksander, Mitologia Slowian (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Artystyczne

i Filmowe, 1982).
II Bogucka, Maria, Dawna Polska. Narodziny, rozkwit, upadek (Warsaw: Wiedza
Powszechna, 1974), p. 8.
12 Kochanowski, Jan, PieSn XlV, op. cit., p. 234.
13 Kochanowski, lan, Muza, op. cit., p. 88.

14 Naborowski, Daniel, Sonet 85; Poeci polskiego baroku (Warsaw: PaIistowowy

Instytut Wydawniczy, 1965), Vol. 1, pp. 200-20l.
15 Naborowki, Daniel, Impreza: calando poggiando, to na dat, to do g6ry, op. cit., p.
188.
16 Naborowski, Daniel, Sonet 83; op. cit., p. 199.

17 Morsztyn, lan Andrzej, Vanneggiar d'una innamorata IA translation of Song XII

from L:Adone by Marinol; Poecipolskiego baroku, op. cit., VoI. 1, p. 712.

18 Sarbiewski, Maciej Kazimierz, Wyktady poetyki. Praecepta poetica (Wroclaw-Cracow:

Zaldad Narodowy im. OssoliIiskich, 1958), pp. 210-211.

19 Morsztyn, lan Andrzej, Rekawica; Poeei polskiego baroku, op. cit., VoI. 1, p. 710.
118 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

20 Morsztyn, Zbigniew, Jednej zacnej damie; Poeci polskiego baroku, Op. cit., VoI. 1, p.
788.
21 Ibid.
22 Zimorowicz, Szymon, Szasty: Hipolit, Roksolanki; Poeci polskiego baroku, Op. cit.,
VoI. 1, p. 600.
23 Sarbiewski, Maciej Kazimierz, Op. cit., p. 71.
24 Chefchowski, Henryk, Gwar piaty, Gwar lesny; Poeci polskiego baroku, Op. cit., VoI.
1, p. 371.
25 Bachelard, Gaston, La psychanalyse du feu (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), p. 174.
26 Chmielowski, Benedykt, Nowe Ateny albo Akademia wszelkiey scyencyi pefna, na
raine tytufy iak na C/asses podzielona, Madrym dia memoryalu, Idiotom dia Nauki,
politykom dia Praktyki, Melancholikom dia rozrywki erygowana (Cracow: Wydawnic-
two Karkowskie, 1968, 2nd edit.), p. 256.
27 Chevalier, Jean, op. cit., pp. 216-218, passim.
28 Dru:i:backa, El:i:bieta, Na pysznego Narcyza uciekajacego od milosci nimfy Echo
nazwanej. Zhiar rymaw; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., VoI. 2, p. 524.
29 Przypkowski, Samuel, Elegia, Poeci polskiego baroku, VoI. 1, op. cit., p. 432.
30 Morsztyn, Jand Andrzej, W kwarantanie, op. cit., p. 747.
31 Morsztyn, Jan Anrzej, Cuda milosci. Sonet, ibid., p. 741.
32 Radziwitl, Udalryk Krzysztof, Elegia. Niedobrze sie zgadza niebo z ziemia; Poeci
polskiego baroku, VoI. 2, op. cit., p. 582.
330bodziriski, Aleksander, Powaina legacja w Konsystorze Trajce Przenaswietszej, na
uzdrowienie wszystkiego swiata urodzona, a przez najwyiszego hetmana hierarchii
niebieskich, Anima Gabriela, w domku Przenaswietszej Panny Maryjej, przed wcieleniem
Syna Baiego odprawiana; Poeci polskiego baraku, op. cit., VoI. 1, pp. 320-322.
34 Twardowski, Kasper, Kolebka Jezusowa; Poeci polskiego baroku, VoI. 1, op. cit., p.
416.
35 Anonymous, Siano najdelikatniejsze; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., VoI. 2, pp.
667-668.
36 Anonymous, Krucy w Rzymie witali cesarza, ibid., pp. 611-612.
37 Gawiriski, Jan, Bukolika alba Sielanki nowe polskie, ibid., p. 137.
38 Szlichtyng, Jerzy, Zart piekny a tabace; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., VoI. 1, p.
225.
39 Twardowski, Samuel ze Skrzypny, przewaina legacja Jasnie Oswieconego Ksieiecia
Krzysztofa Zbaraskiego, Koniuszego Koronnego. . . . od Najasniejszego Zygmunta III
... do . .. Cesarza Tureckiego Mustafy w roku 1621; Poeci polskiego baroku, ibid., VoI.
l,p.478.
40 Przetocki, Hiacynt, Jarzyny. Do starego, ibid., p. 398.
41 Opalinski, Krzysztof, Satyra 1. Na ;:;te cwiczenia i rozpasana edukacja mlodzi, ibid.,
p.610.
42 Anonymous, Nagrobek kostyrze; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., VoI. 2, p. 596.
43 Sarbiewski, Maciej Kazimierz, op. cit., p. 441.
44 Chrasciriski, Wojciech Stanislaw, Lament strapionej ojczyzny, Poeci polskiego
baroku, op. cit., VoI. 2, pp. 438-439 passim.
45 Morsztyn, Hieronim Jarosz, Aliud epitaphium konfederacji spalonej; Poeci polskiego
baroku, op. cit., VoI. 1, p. 278.
 FIRE AND SNOW 119

46 Anonymous, Kalwitiska wojna z Chrystusem, co figure Meki Pa/lskiej jedna spalili,

druga wyrzueili; Poeei polskiego baroku, op. eit., ibid., VoI. 2, p. 590.
47 Anonymous, Veni Creator Konfederackie, ibid., pp. 806-807 passim.
48 Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, Poetica Nava, in: "The Philosophical Reflection of Man
in Literature," Analecta Husserliana, Val. XII, Dordrecht - Boston - Lancaster; D.
Reidel Publishing Company, 1982, p. 21.
 PART TWO

THE METAMORPHIC POIESIS OF AIR

 L. M. FINDLA Y

TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS: PROCESS, PURPOSE,

AND POETRY IN SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES

Shakespeare's drive towards knowledge, and the dramatic realization of

knowledge, led him constantly to invoke, monitor, and test to the limits
of human comprehension the relationship between figure and ground,
between "man" and "elements." His problematizing of the natural
attitude towards the elemental is perhaps most apparent in the great
tragedies - especially in King Lear, where the radical instability of
"nature" and its cognates is continuously in evidence - but the
interrogation of the elements is at least as marked and important in the
history plays, where prose and poetry mediate between process and
purpose, successiveness and succession, between the apparently arbi-
trary successiveness of events and the resolution of the question of
succession to the throne of England into the more or less consoling
configurations of dynasty and national destiny.
The interplay of perception and desire marks the discourse of the
major players in Shakespeare's scenes, but that discourse comes to us in
the theater as speech, as air expeIIed for the benefit of a living,
breathing audience whose silence, no less than the utterance of the
actors, takes the air in order to give something in return. Shakespeare
seems - in part, at least - to be moved to his investigation of the
utility and metamorphic vitality of air by his awareness of the impor-
tance of this element to the performative speech acts which create and
sustain the dramatic situation. With particular reference to the plays of
the second tetralogy - Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two, and
Henry V - I intend to show how ubiquitous and shrewd is the
dramatist's concern with air as something essential to human existence,
signifying life, constituting speech, and accommodating transcendental
desire. The analysis of Shakespeare's text from this vantage wiII then
lead me to reconsider (once again!) the relation between speech and
writing, breath and glyph, in the human "scene."
But first a little Derridean revelling to help set our immediate scene.
Time, in alI its daunting complexity and residual mysteriousness, is an
explicit and constant theme in Shakespeare. Indeed, the Shakespearean
canon is sometimes explained or classified in terms of a development
123
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 123-138.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
124 L. M. FINDLA Y

from comic timelessness and creative chronicle through the cruelly

abbreviated temporality of the great tragedies to the consoling con-
tinuities and expansiveness of the late romances. 1 Such schemata have
their uses no doubt, but they offer powerful temptations to make of
Shakespeare's works a stable, coherent, and altogether too consoling
story. 1 am thinking especially of the kind of commentary that gives us
the composite figure of Shakespeare/Prospero bidding a ritual, refle-
xive, serene farewell to his art at the end of The Tempest, after
revealing the capacities and limitations of the dramatic imagination,2 as
in the conjuring up of Iris, Ceres, and Juno in her car, to bless the
union of Ferdinand and Miranda. 3 The consequences of that particular
conjuring offer a female version, Juno-Iris, of the master-messenger
relationship evidenced by Prospero and Ariel, though the goddesses are
two of a kind in a way that makes Iris' obedience less problematic than
Ariel's. Juno and Ceres' benediction is expressed in song, before the
appearance of river-nymphs and reapers who harmonize the elements
of water and earth in dance, "In country footing." However, this
spectacle is interrupted by Prospero in an asi de:

Pras. [Aside.] 1 had forgot that foul conspiracy

Of the beast Caliban and his confederates
Against my life. The minute of their plot
Is almost come. [Ta the Spirits.] Well done, avoid; no more.
Ferdinand and Miranda register their surprise and concern at the
apparently unwarranted termination of the Hymeneal spectacle, and
then Prospero provides an explanation of sorts in some of the most
celebrated lines in the English language:

Pros. You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort,

As if you were dismayed; be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors
Are melted inta air, inta thin air,
And like the baseless fabric af this vision,
The cloud-capp'd taw'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, alI which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(IV.i.146-1S8)
 TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS 125

The specter of the brevity and uItimate erasure of human life and
human constructs haunts these lines most effectively, but Prospero's
words do not acquire a kind ofaxiomatic or gnomic sta tus unopposed.
lndeed, the questions of closure and presence are not definitively
settled in these lines, but rather made aptly problematic. There is no
solution to the problem of dissolution, except a rhetorical one which,
despite appearances of wisdom and finality, cannot suppress the impli-
cations of language-as-temporality. Prospero declares that "Our revels
now are ended," whereas we know, and Ferdinand and Miranda
suspect, that the revels were not ended so much as interrupted. And a
similarly problematic sense of an ending is evident in Prospero's
prophecy that continuity - architectural, genealogical, the earthly
setting of the theatrum mundi itself - has its limits. A carefully crafted
analogical structure - "And like.... And like" - grounds ontology in
illusion, before offering us the familiar topos of death as sleep, the
supplement that will "round" off each individual life. We move from
pun - "the great globe itself' - and paradox - "baseless fabric ...
insubstantial pageant ... stuff [oq dreams" - to a conclusion that is far
less straightforward than it seems. What are we to make of this "sleep"
in a drama that rings so many changes on the theme of hypnos? Is
death the most inescapable and enduring form of hypnosis, or what? Is
death a terminus or interlude? Is there presence or absence and of what
orwhom?
The radical indeterminacy of such questions is prefigured and to a
degree prescribed by the treatment of the elements earlier in the
passage. Prospero specifies three processes, melting, dissolving, and
fading to sustain the analogy between the disappearance from sight
of actors and the dissolution of the earth. Just as the spirits obey
Prospero's command to "Avoid," so all creatures will fulfill his prophecy
and disappear: but "into air, into thin air"? We know this "air" to be
cloudless, not a rack in sight, but what else do we know about this
version of the void. It is in part a question of visibility: and Ariel of
course has been invisible to all but Prospero (and the audience) since
early in the play, which is tantamount to saying that the creature who
can "drink the air before [himl and return / Or ere your pulse twice
beat" (V.i. 102-3), can modify the sensible evidence of his existence
by vanishing into as well as through the native element his name de-
notes. 4 Ariel is both visible and invisible; the air is both empty and pop-
ulated, thin and thick; death is both finality and phase; Prospero both is
and is not Prospero in the epilogue to The Tempest; and the elements
that constitute the various versions of the undecidable tease and temper
126 L. M. FINDLA Y

hermeneutic desi re in an endless series of metamorphic occasions. The

wisdom passed from the elder to the younger generation is in this
instance not imrnediately recognizable as grounds for cheerfulness. Sage
resignation in the face of human mortality seems, on closer scrutiny, to
be less than sage and far from dispassionate; recourse to language to
settle pressing questions is once again a residually unsettling experience
which offers refinement at best but never finality. The airy element
which Prospero invokes with an air of wisdom and command, is as
problematic as its acoustic neighbor "our," a mobile clue to the condi-
tions of intersubjectivity. In the scene of hymeneal instruction in The
Tempest "our" is a usage grounded in power, and to that degree
coercive and euphemistic - "[My] revels now are ended" - or it is
an appeal to a democratically shared experience which allows for a
democratic plurality of interpretations of that experience, and, specifi-
calIy, for readings less lugubrious than Prospero's own.
The idea of transformation from visible solid to invisible vapor
suggests the mysteriousness of processes which Montaigne, in the
course of his reflections on Heraclitus' account of elemental exchange,
calls "compensation et vicissitude."5 Montaigne's conjunction and helps
him toward a kind of fideistic transcendence at the end of his "Apol-
ogy," at least according to Ricardo Quinones.6 Marx and Engels, in The
Communist Manifesta, identify "the bourgeois epoch" as one in which
"Ali that is solid melts into air," but they are no more strangers to
transcendental desire than is Montaigne. Shakespeare's plays have their
own way of dealing with the elements - not to enforce clear distinc-
tions and privilege metaphysical or materialistic preferences, but to
gesture, in different but compeliing ways, towards aur partial under-
standing of the nature of our being-in-the-world: partial, that is, both in
the sense of prejudiced and in the sense of incomplete.
A second example from the late romances, this time from Cymbeline,
may help to bring home more clearly the point of my preceding
commentary.

Sooth. [Reads.] "When as a lion's whelp shalI, to himselfunknown,

without seeking find, and be embrac'd by a piece of tender air; and
when from a stately cedar shali be lopp'd branches, which, being dead
many years, shali after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and
freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be
fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty."
Thou, Leonatus, art the lion's whelp;
 TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS 127

The fit and apt construction of thy name,

Being Leo-natus, doth import so much.
[To Cymbeline.] The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter,
Which we ca11 mollis aer, and mollis aer
We term it mulier; [to Posthumus] which mulier 1 divine
Is this most constant wife, who, even now,
Answering the letter of the oracle,
Unknown to you, unsought, were clipt about
With this most tender air.
(V.v.435-52)
The enigma explained here by the soothsayer was given to Posthumus
Leonatus after a dream in which his dead parents and brothers
appeared before him to argue the unfairness of his situation, to accuse
Jupiter of injustice, and to threaten the god with the transformation of
invocation into seditious provocation: "Or we poor ghosts will cry. / To
th' shining synod of the rest / Against thy deity" (V.iv. 88-90). Jupiter
reminds them of the cost of such impudence, before asserting the
romantic principle of dilatio 7 - "Whom best 1 love, 1 cross; to make
my gift / The more delay'd, delighted" - reassuring the ghosts that a11
will be we11, and providing written re-assurance for Leonatus. When
this dreamer awakes, he fails to understand the meaning of the riddle.
Instead, he registers only the physical details of the tablet:
A book? O rare one,
Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers! Let thy effects
So fo11ow, to be most unlike our courtiers,
As good as possible.
(V.iv.133-37)
Leonatus aligns himself with the predictive power of this writing beJore
he reads, before being forced by its enigmatic nature to deJer under-
standing and affirm only his resistance to a hermeneutics of suspicion:
'Tis stilJ a dream, or else such stuff as madmen
Tongue and brain not; either both or nothing,
Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such
As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,
The action of my life is like it, which
1'11 keep, ifbut for sympathy.
(V.iv. 145-50)
128 L. M. FINDLA Y

Intuition grounds the pattern of individual existence in enigmatic

textuality, which will be re-constituted as oral explication only by that
accomplished hermeneut, the Soothsayer, in an act of onomantia, which
reminds us forcefuily of what's in a name. In the absence of an external
authority who will mediate between himself and this prophetic text,
Leonatus must accept the perplexingly endless play of signification and
the undecidable.
But what kind of stability and elosure does the Soothsayer elicit from
this text, a text that explicitly connects human agents with nature and
the airy element? The part of the prophecy most directly affecting
Leonatus is accomplished before it is explained, interpretation being in
this case a making explicit of what is already in place. The act of
identifying Leonatus and Imogen is elarification of a kind, admittedly.
However, it also reveals the strategies of domination favored by a
cuIture where woman is secondary, a supplement whose subordination
is authored and authorized by ruthless etymology and patriarchal
onomastics. Interpretation is the entrenchment of patriarchy: but inter-
pretation as "fit and apt construction" is undercut not on1y by the
reductive pretensions to the Leonine, but also by the dubious gloss on
mulier. The phrase, "a piece of tender air," combines presumptuous
reification with an element which seems to erase identity even as it
confers it. The etymology was as dubious in Shakespeare's day as in
ours, 8 and is a particularly suggestive instance of the elements undoing
those who would too selectively deploy their descriptive powers. To
constitute the female gender as mollis aer may seem a "noble" tribute
to feminine sensitivity: compare Ficino's commentary on Plato's Phae-
drus 245 A-C. "animum futuri poetum sic affectum esse, ut sit quasi
tener atque mollis, pretera ut sit intactus" (the soul of the poet must be
so affected as to become almost tender and soft and untouched toO).9
But etymology, the desire to rule the roots, is very much the expression
of the will-to-power, both culturally and legally, as we find in Henry V
(I.ii. 38ff.) when there is discussion of the Salic law, "mulieres ne
succedant," which legitimizes a rup ture between political and biological
continuity.
In what follows, I will be trying to show how Shakespeare's history
plays use air to manifest ambition and aporia in the affairs of the
nation. And given that the making of history is, in the Shakespearian
context, an overwhelmingly male endeavor, it is on1y proper to note in
advance the way in which his treatment of this element in the late
 TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS 129

romances discloses comparable ambitions and aporias in the wider

conception of gender that includes the supplement of womankind. The
predominantly manly discourse of the histories offers a grim analogue
to the scholastic distinction between female materia and male forma,
and to Macchiavelli's advice to those who would make temporality
conform to their own purposes: "Fortune is a woman, and the man who
wants to hold her down must beat and bully her." 10
Shakespeare's history plays, a kind of drama he was largely respon-
sible for bringing into being, are consistently concerned with the search
for meaning and coherence. This search, in effect a series of articula-
tions, more or less connected, pursues the wraith of continuity through
the successiveness of what Falstaff calls "damnable iteration" (Henry IV,
Part One, I.ii. 90). The tensions between sacred and secular traditions
in Renaissance historiography, between an Augustinian providence and
personal objectives of ruthless opportunists, were not convincingly
resolved by historians: II and Shakespeare continues to have his doubts
- and this is to his credit - right to the end of the second tetralogy
and beyond. In Henry VII, 2 and 3 and Richard II he moved from
relatively undifferentiated heroic utterance to a competition of distinc-
tive discourses, which are refined and deployed in the second tetralogy
in ways that attempt to compensate over time for the act of regicide in a
way designed to support the "Tudor Myth" that the undoing of the
kingdom was finally put to rest with the marriage of Henry VII to
Elizabeth of York. Temporality attempts to put on airs of purposive-
ness and divine design, and utilizes the memorable breath of poetic
utterance in furtherance of that objective. However, process undercuts
this endeavor, even at its most poetically convincing moments, as can
be seen by monitoring the connections between ulterance and the
element of air.
The excerpts I have chosen to discuss are few among many that
disclose the necessity and limitations of such a rhetoric of temporality. I
might have devoted alI the time available to Richard II, in order to
explore in detail the secession from Realpolitik to a poetics of narcis-
sism. However, I have preferred on this occasion to consider examples
from the Henriad which give some sense of the range of effects
whereby Shakespeare's characters define their own desires in the
course of their engagement with the air.
Consider, for example, the following exchange between Hotspur and
Vernon on the subject of the true nature of Prince Hal:
130 L. M. FINDLA Y

Hot. Where is his son,

The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,
And his comrades, that daff d the world aside
And bid it pass?
Ver. AlI furnish'd, all in arms;
All plum'd like estridges, that with the wind
Bated like eagles having lately bath'd,
Glittering in golden coats like images,
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
1 saw young Harry with his beaver on,
His cushes on his thighs, gallant1y arm'd,
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
(1 Henry IV, IV.i. 94-110)

Hotspur employs the dismissive rhetoric of a rival bent on believing the

worst rumors about the opposition. Vernon's response is virtually a
point by point rebuttal of the charge of irresponsible flightiness in Hal.
Drawing on the heraldic signature of the Prince of Wales, three
feathers, Vernon reconstitutes base boon companionship as collective
military resolve, and skittishness as the speed and nimbleness of
"feathered Mercury" who defies, not the gravitas appropriate to his
position, but the gravity that confines les ser beings to the earth.
Hotspur is introduced to a supernaturally accomplished equestrian in
this scene of transformation; and his own name and identity are
obscured proleptically by the details of this "fiery" apotheosis. The
command of the air shared by Hermes/Mercury and Pegasus may be
coveted by Hotspur, or by the Dauphin in his protracted but increas-
ingly unconvincing encomium to his horse (Henry V, III.vii. 11 ff.), but
Hal is the one who as Prince and King proves best able to avail himself
of air's many opportunities and to meet its many challenges to stability
and continuity.
However, before considering Hal's relation to the air, let us remind
ourselves of some of its negative features. Here is Falstaff musing,
parole d'honneur:
 TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS 131

Fal. What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air. A
trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a' Wednesday. Doth he feei it? No. Doth he
hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will 't not live with the living?
No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it, honor is a mere
scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.
(1 Henry IV, V.i. 144-41)

Falstaff shows his mastery of self-persuasion and self-justification after

Hal, his erstwhile acolyte in the ways of hedonism, discovers him
feigning death on the battlefield. Ever the stranger to embarrassment,
Falstaff resorts to the familiar reduction of language to air in order to
empty human utterance of its ethical and social import. Himself the
antithesis of trimness and a wily fugitive from aH reckonings, Falstaff
fails to convince us of the inconsequential nature of honor as he
reduces it by way of "trim reckoning" to air. The self-serving pseudo-
scholasticism of the passage connects air to vitality, speech, and human
values, before appealing to the authority of "Detraction" as supremely
cynical divinity. Shakespeare has already taken pains to show us that
there is no such thing as "a mere scutcheon," and that Falstaff's sense of
an ending, like Prospero's later, is at best problematic. His "catechism"
has been a course of elementary instruction conducted entirely with
himself, and his answers to his own questions seem designed to satisfy
nobody but himself. His depleted sense of "catechism," like his reduc-
tive analysis of "honor," attests to the fact that the air bears a freight of
meanings that may never be wholly harmonized but cannot be wholly
erased either.
To be sure, Falstaff's sense of the fragility of honor and reputation is
not entirely misguided. Indeed, the Henriad foregrounds this very
instability as part of its questioning of the conditions favorable to good
government and national prosperity. The life of language in and as air is
dramatized most vividly at the beginning of Henry IV Part Two.

Enter RUMOR, paintedJull oftongues

Rum. Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
1, from the orient to the drooping west
(Making the wind my post-horse), still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth.
Upon my tongues continuaI slanders ride,
The which in every language 1 pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
132 L. M. FINDLA Y

I speak of peace, while covert enmity

Under the smile of safety wounds the world;
And who but Rumor, who but only 1,
Make fearful musters and prepar'd defense,
Whiles the big year, swoll'n with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumor is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wav'ring multitude,
Can play upon it. But what need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize
Among my household? Why is Rumor here?
I run before King Harry's victory,
Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury
Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,
Quenching the flame of bold rebellion
Even with the rebels' blood. But what mean I
To speak so true at first? ...
(2 Henry IV, Induction)

Here is a challenge no less important than the military challenges issued

and responded to in the histories. Rumor not only commands the air
and directs oral transmis sion, but does so to such an extent that it is
worthy of a body, a substance and figure no less plausible for its
allegorical trappings. Rumor never lacks an audience, and knows it. It
Hal has Pegasus for a mount, then Rumor rides the wind; and where
Hal is eloquent in English but halting in French, Rumor is fluently
slanderous "in every language." Rumor displays considerable arrogance
here, employing the accents of Renaissance over-reaching that would
spell disaster for a human agent, yet this supremely confident address
to the audience is an unquestionably "trim reckoning" of the role of
linguistic indeterminacy in the lives of men. This allegorical figure can
afford to be self-congratulatory and openly contemptuous of the
Hydra-headed populace who never get the message right. We are
implicated willy-nilly in the inexactnesses of human communication;
there is no escape from this for homo loquens. Hal's "household," in
contrast to Rumor's House of Being, will be unified only if its members
 TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS 133

choose the ways of harmony and conciliation. Indeterminacy is always

already there, while trust and loyalty have to be earned. Undisputed
sovereignty entitles Rumor to be tantalizing: "But what mean 1/ To
speak so true at first?" Hal's establishment of full title to the throne of
England requires an extraordinary amount of clarity and tact.
Henry V opens with an address that is as reflexive as Rumor's
speech but now concerned with the collaboration of the audience in the
recognition and completion of the synecdoche that is drama.

Enter PROLOGUE
... But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dar'd
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
(Henry V, Prol. 8-18)

The Prologue appeals to a community, "gentles all," who will form a

hermeneutic alliance in order to redeem communicative incompleteness
and illusion in the self-aware yet serviceable synecdoche that is the
play, whether as script or in performance. One act of celebrated daring
deserves another for its effective representation. Audacity is common
to the English at Agincourt and to the playwright who would com-
memorate them. The physical limitations of the Elizabethan theatre are
plainly insurmountable; yet, equally plainly, Shakespeare's audience did
and continues to "Piece out [its) imperfections with their thoughts"
because of the surpassingly evocative power of his language and the
consequent deployment of their "imaginative forces." Drama, like
national triumph, must always be achieved against the odds, but with
the compliance of the elements at its disposal. In figuring out and
figuring forth the problems of dramatic representation, Shakespeare
points also to the conventions that make possible the economic al
indication of number. Mathematical calculation no less than imaginative
134 L. M. FINDLA Y

reproduction relies on convention for the transformation of few to

many, small to large. The power of numerical nothing to indicate both
nothingness and multiplication is comparable to the power of mere
nonentities (dramatic personae) to convey the sense of great events
according to a dramatic reckoning. Of course, mere numbers do not
impress as much as their imaginative realization. The English were not
dismayed by mere numbers at Agincourt; the French were intimidated
by a force whose armed presence "did affright the air," a claim that
once again connects this element with the most potent forms of
mastery. Figures of speech and written numbers both have their uses,
but in the drama utterance takes to the air in ways that tend to make
drama more sensitive to that element than writing, particularly mathe-
matical notation, usually is.
The full measure of Hal's achievement as King Henry the Fifth
is summarized earlY in the play in ways that will be illustrated at
Agincourt and other venues later:

Canto Hear him but reason in divinity,

And alI-admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire the King were made a prelate;
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say it hath been alI in alI his study;
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful batde rend'rd you in music;
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is stiH,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric;
Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain,
His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow,
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted him in any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.
(Henry V, Li. 38-59)
 TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS 135

The most powerful divine in the land assesses his sovereign in a richly
cadenced encomium designed to bring home to his immediate auditor,
the Bishop of Ely, the almost miraculous transformation of a reprobate
prince into a paragon among monarchs, and to prepare us for a Hal
who now lives up to the most optimistic indications of his earlier
con duct. Canterbury focuses on the King's command of various forms
of exacting, specialized discourse: theological, constitutional, military,
diplomatic. The competition of discourses for hegemony has given way
to their harmonious accommodation in a single speaking subject whose
comprehension of their complexities is beyond dispute. He has earned
the right to speak for aH, to represent their special interests while never
losing sight of the national interest. The response to his eloquence may
be "mute wonder" or articulate approbation, but in both instances the
King has been linguistically and politically empowered by virtue of his
blend of poetry, principle, and pragmatism. The preced ing actions of
the Henriad converge in the description of the element that has hitherto
nourished treachery, rumor, contention, and solipsism: "The air, a
charter'd libertine, is still." 12 The two components of Hal's legend,
libertinage, and responsibility, come together in a locution which attests
to the fact that, for a time at least, process has become purposive
through a poetry that is instrumental eloquence more than impractical
prettification (as with Richard), pathological hyperbole (as with
Hotspur), or the uneasy alternation between guiIt and accusation (as
with Henry IV). Paternal interdiction and filial "addiction" to "courses
vain" have given way to ecclesiastical benediction and the basis for
responsible prediction. The Orphic capacity to control the element of
air is the ultimate tribute at the heart of Canterbury's speech, and it is
true not only to the historical record about to be represented dramati-
cally but also to the rarity of such developments in the history of
England or any other nation.
Temporality puts on airs of permanence here, yet those airs are as
subject to volatility as the element in which they gain expression. On
the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, the air is still indeed, while "creeping
murmur and the poring dark / Fills the wide vessel of the universe."
(IV.i. 2-3) But the stillness is, of course, not permanent but an eerie
lull before a storm of human manufacture. The clamor of battle gives
way in due course to a kind of peace between England and France.
However, the fragility of that peace, foreshadowed in King Henry's
attribution of inflated rhetoric to "your air of France" (III. vi. 15), is
discreetly but unmistakably insinuated into the exchanges between the
136 L. M. FINDLAY

English King and his betrothed, "Fair Katharine" of France. Katharine's

broken English and Henry's broken French attest to much more than
"merely" linguistic differences; and in the context of the Henriad one
can detect that dark undertow which carries along Katharine's impish
words ta a suitor whose "capital demand" she is: "O bon Dieu! les
langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies." (V.ii. 116) Not even
the most accomplished words can permanently stiH the air or com-
pletely heal political differences.
The discourse of the lovers betrays the same desire for security and
harmony as is enunciated a little later by the King's unele, the Duke of
Exeter, in describing an outstanding artiele as yet unsigned by the King
of France:

Where your Majesty demands that the King of France, having any occasion to write for
matter of grant, shall name your Highness in this form, and with this addition in French,
Natre tres cher fUs Henri, Roi d'Angleterre et Heritier de France; and thus in Latin,
Praeclarrisimus filius naster Henricus, Rex Angliae et Heres Franciae.
(V.ii. 336-42)

In the working out of peace treaties a man's word may be his bond, but
that word is not usually deemed ta be of itself sufficiently binding. The
details must be set down in writing, and in the proper kind of writing at
that. The French King's undertaking after Agincourt may be defined
first in his own native language, but it has then to be translated into the
lingua franca of Latin to avoid (as far as possible) the tromperie of
which Katharine complained. These are imposed conditions which hit
at the heart of France's identity, linking his powers of signature,
paternity, and patrimony to his most noble (Praeclarrisimus) son, not
the Dauphin but Henry of England. And yet the supplement of desire
in the formulaic signature entails displacement of the "rightful" heir to
the French throne, and thus creates the basis for further conflict.
Neither the lovers' conversation and exchange of marriage vows nor the
agreement an the text of the peace treaty will prevent the few years
remaining to King Henry from being marred by the conflict that marks
the whole course of the Henriad. France's double signature, like the
marriage of Henry and Katharine, is intelligible ta aH but not acceptable
to aH. It is a purposeful act formalized in courtly and legallanguage, but
it does not usher in the peace and prosperity that Henry desires.
Henry V concludes with a further encoding of desire in speech -
 TEMPORALITY PUTS ON AIRS 137

"may our oaths well kept and prosp'rous be!" (V.ii.374) - and with a
choric recognition of the deficiencies of dramatic writing:
Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursued the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
This final play in the tetralogy begins with the figure of Rumor and
ends with the image of the author. In neither instance is language saved
for posterity in an unproblematic way. Whether as performative speech
acts or as words on the page, Shakespeare's plays fail to tell us what the
meaning of life "is," but insist instead on our encountering the meanings
generated by various acts of signification. The what is re-constituted in
large measure as the how, a modality which is agonistic, aleatory,
aporetic, yet constantIy promising to confirm Îtself as stability of a kind
- indeed the stability of aur kind - through the intersubjective
activities of individuals and nations. As speech or scripts, poetry, by
virtue of its immanent teleology and commemorative power, may make
a general and lasting impression, and so be privileged by a culture as a
canonic al text, but it can never efface or wholly determine the material
history of the linguistic sign, nor can it suppress its own exasperating
but exemplary status as a model for the desires and deficiencies of
human temporality.
Our speech and writing are as much a part of our vital signs as
inhalation and exhalation or the systole-diastole of the heart itself,
though speech and writing are not entirely subject either to emotional
hegemony or the sovereignty of reason. These latter categories -
emotion and reason - have themselves a rich but problematic history
both ancient and recent; and in today's world the competition of
discourses and the shedding of blood proceeds apace. That, alas, is the
truth of it, as we live and breathe! So, if we are only too often, as
Shakespeare's Cressid says, "As false as air, as water, wind or sandy
earth," let us also try to be as durable and true.

University of Saskatchewan

NOTES

1 See, e.g., the conclusion to David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time
138 L. M. FINDLA Y

(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1982), and the central argument of
Frederick Turner, Shakespeare and the Nature of Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971).
2 For this tradition of interpretation see, e.g., Philip Edwards, "The Late Comedies,"
Shakespeare: Selec! Bibliographical Guides ed. Stanley Wells (London: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1973), p. 120 ff.
J The Tempest, The Riverside Shakespeare ed. G. B. Evans el al. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1974). AII further quotations from Shakespeare follow this edition and are
identified parenthetically in the text of this essay.
4 The semantic possibilities available to Shakespeare are well documented in OED via
John Florio's A World of Wordes, or Most Copious and Exact Dictionarie in Italian and
English (1598): "Aere (aire, aira) the aire. Also an aspect, countenance, cheere, a look
or appearance in the face of man or woman. AIso, a tune or aire of a song or ditty."
5 "Apology for Raymond Sebond," as quoted by Ricardo Quinones in The Renaissance
Discovery of Time, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature no. 31 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 209.
6 Ibid., p. 210.

7 Cf. Patrida Parker, Inescapable Romance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1979), opening pages.
8 In his edition of Cymbeline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960, p. 220),
J. e. Maxwell inclines to the view that the derivation of mulier from mollis "is still
probable." However, this etymology is rated dubious in the new Oxford Latin Dic-
tionary ed. P. W. Glare, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976). For conventions and
problems see Frank L. Borchardt, "Etymology in Tradition and in the Northern
Renaissance," Journal ofthe History of Ideas 29 (1968), pp. 415-29.
9 Michael J. B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1981), pp. 82-3.
IU Niccolo Macchiavelli, The Prince trans. and ed. Robert M. Adams (New York:
Norton, 1977), p. 72.
II For a fine account of a very complicated situation, see Arthur B. Ferguson, C!io
Unbound: Perception of the Social and Cultural PasI in Renaissance England (Durham,
N.e.: Duke University Press, 1979).
12 Cf. an essay I read after writing my own, Jonathan Goldberg, "Shakespearean
Inscriptions: The Voicing of Power," Shakespeare and the Question of Theory ed.
Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 119 ff.
 SERGE MEITINGER

FILLES DE L'AIR

(Une lecture de La Petite Sirene de H. C. Andersen)

Eu hommage aLuce Irigaray

et pour remedier a"l'oubli de l'air".

Le conte dans sa forme traditionnelle - immemoriale - nous offre une

habile et efficace metaphore de la condition humaine: l'affrontement du
heros a l'ailleurs, a un autre monde jouxtant le monde proprement
humain sans s'y meIer vraiment, ne vise qu'a permettre, a travers une
serie d'epreuves ritualisees, un rapatriement, un emacinement, un
enfermement dans le cerele du meme ou du propre. En temoigne la
formule, ritueUe eUe aussi, qui elot ce geme de recit: "Ils furent tres
heureux et eurent beaucoup d'enfants". On pourrait toutefois imaginer
un type de conteur que l'on dirait peut-etre alors savant ou poete, et qui
lui, envisagerait la condition humaine par ses entours et en la con-
tournant pour la desapproprier et, paradoxalement, lui restituer un site,
une matrice insue et vitale, pour faire sortir du cerele du meme et du
propre, affronter l'humain au tout-autre et produire ainsi sa verite.
Hans Christian Andersen nuus semble offrir un tel exemple, tout
particulierement dans l'un de ses contes les plus celebres: La Petite
Sirene.! Il nous fait sortir du cerele de l'initiation imitatrice qui se veut
une le«;on pour le petit gar«;on ou la petite fille destines a y apprendre
leur role: audacieux et actif celui-la (mais sans s'ecarter de la loi
ancestrale), obeissante et materneHe ceHe-ci, vouee au mariage et a la
perpetuation du elan. Dans La Petite Sirene, le conteur ou plutot le
poete nous propose d'autres images de la masculinite comme de la
feminite et une fa«;on differente d'etre-au-monde pour l'homme en
general, - une autre hierarchie aussi des elements, car il rend sa place
a l'element toujours deja oublie, a l'air qui va devenir, ou redevenir,
chez lui le "site terial" de l'etre, a la tois signe et lieu de l'avancee dans
le risque vers le tout-autre.
Pourtant a premiere vue les ce reles ou spheres specifiques sont bien
definis: le monde sous-marin des sirenes s'oppose elairement au monde
terrestre et au monde aerien, les seuls a pouvoir taire accueil a l'etre
139
A - T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, VoI XXIII, 139-144.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
140 SERGE MEITINGER

humain. Et les etres vivants, quelle que soit leur espece, ont tendance a
bomer leur desir a une portion reduite mais confortable de leurs
territoires respectifs; la curiosite s'use vite qui animait les petites sirenes
tenues d'abord en haleine par la necessite d'avoir atteint l'âge de quinze
ans pour avoir droit de faire surface:

La premiere fois qu'une des soeurs sortait de l'eau, elle etait toujours enchantee de
toutes les nouvelles choses qu'elle apercevait; mais, une fois grandie, lorsqu'elle pouvait
monter it loisir, le charme disparaissait, et elle disait au bout d'un mois qu'en bas tout
etait bien plus gentil, et que rien ne valait son chez-soi.

Le desir du chez-soi traduit ainsi l'infirmite du meme ou du propre, son

fondamental manque d'essor. Le monde sous-marin est un monde sans
air, sans souffle, sans parfums, et cette absence d'air explique peut-etre
l'absence d'âme et d'envol, l'esprit etant etymologiquement spiritus,
"souffle". Le seul element aerien de ce monde englouti semble etre la
voix meme des sirenes, mais cet attribut mixte est malefique, il entraîne
la noyade des humains fascines par cette impossibilite "logique": une
voix liquide (prise au sens propre: c'est-a-dire comme un liquide vocal).
Le monde des sirenes est de plus un monde presque exclusivement
feminin: le vieux roi y reste invisible, seules agissent la grand-mere et
les six soeurs sans oublier la sorciere de la mer. Tout y baigne dans une
sensualite vive mais sans resonance car sans recul, close sur elle-meme,
incapable de changement vrai et vouee ainsi au ressassement. Les
choses et les etres y ont de violentes couleurs et des formes pures mais
dures a la fois, presque agressives; la erudite des sensations y naît d'un
evident manque de distance entre les choses, d'une absence d'''aura'' car
tout "colle" et se frotte a tout en un contact incessant comme dans le
liquide amniotique d'une matrice.
Le monde terrestre, domine par le prince adolescent et place ainsi
sous le signe d'une virilite naissante, n'est pas moins ferme, limite qu'il
est, lui, au cercle des apparences, a un spectacle perpetuel dont le
spectateur ideal est le prince lui-meme. Mais ce demier en est comme
deforme, amoindri; il croit ce qu'i! voit, nulle place en lui pour
l'imagination de l'invisible, de l'imprevisible. Sa nalvete n'a d'egale que
son insensibilite aux elements qui l'entourent: il se laisse entraÎner dans
une constante agitation sans projet exact et sans se rendre compte que
parfois ce sont les vents et les flots en tempete parfois les autres
humains qui le conduisent. Le monde du prince, monde terrestre, est
celui de l'homme pris dans des flux qu'il ne cherche ni a maîtriser ni a
 FILLES DE L'AIR 141

depasser, prenant ses desirs pour des realites puis les realites pour ses
desirs: une sorte de candeur, de presbytie, de nervosite (plus que
d'activite) plutat masculines, laissant toujours aux choses leur distance,
l'aggravant meme pour mieux voir et plus vite, se contentant d'un coup
d'oeillointain et global, capable de detacher l'objet de la perception de
son cadre perceptif.
Les deux mondes ainsi depeints pourraient rester immobiles dans
leur difference, elos chacun sur le cerele appauvri mais habitable de son
identite, - chacun chez soi. Qu'est-ce qui anime donc soudain la
hierarchie des mondes et des elements au point de la traverser et de la
transcender? L 'Amour: il n'y a pas d'autre mot, celui de la petite sirene
pour les humains en general et pour le jeune prince en particulier, son
amour pour l'âme immortelle deniee aux peuples de la mer. Amour de
l'Autre, celui du monde aquatique, amniotique pour l'homme et son
monde, pour le souffle qui est air et âme; mais cette conquete du
souffle et de l'âme ne saurait aller sans souffrance ni sacrifice: la petite
sirene supportera la torture perpetuelle que seront pour elle les deux
belles jambes qui remplaceront sa queue de poisson; elle lais sera aussi
sa voix a la sorciere de la mer qui lui coupera la langue. Elle sera donc
dans le monde du prince reduite a son seul paraître et ne pourra jamais
communier par la voix avec l'homme qu'elle aime ni avec le souffle
qu'elle desire. Le prince apprecie sa grâce mais sans rien dechiffrer de
ce que disent ses yeux de muette; il passe a cote de son amour et de son
sacrifice en toute bonne foi: se fiant, selon son habitude ou sa nature,
aux seules apparences, il croit reconnaÎtre dans la fiancee qu'on lui
donne la jeune fille qui l'aurait sauve des flots lors du naufrage de son
navire; ainsi pour lui tout est simple et univoque et il oublie la petite
sirene qui, malgre sa forme humaine durement conquise et tenue, n'a
jamais pu s'imposer a lui autrement que comme une belle image muette
donc insignifiante. La petite sirene qui n'a pas reussi a se faire epouser
par le prince doit donc mourir et devenir ecume sitat le mariage du
prince consomme: sur le bord meme de cette fin absolue (croit-elle) elle
pousse le sacrifice de soi jusqu'a preferer la vie du prince a la sienne en
se refusant a le tuer et a faire couler son sang sur ses pieds afin de
recouvrer sa forme de sir~me; l'ayant deja sative du naufrage, elle lui
donne ainsi la vie pour la seconde fois, l'amoureuse et maternelle petite
sirene!
Et ici, coup de theâtre pour le lecteur: le conteur nous revele
poetiquement, par l'effet de surprise qu'il menage, la force et la qualite
142 SERGE MEITINGER

meme de l'oubli qui affecte et engloutit, dans notre pensee, cet element
supreme et vital pour nous humains: l'air. Alors que, selon la logique
propre au recit jusqu'ici deroule, le corps vainement humanise de la
petite sirene devrait se dissoudre en ecume, elle devient autre encore,
elle devient fille de l'air. Les "filles de l'air" se revelent alors a elle, - et
a nous qui ne soupc;:onnions pas meme leur existence -, comme des
esprits aeriens voues a l'accomplissement incessant de bonnes actions
destinees a proteger les humains; au bout de trois siecles de bienfaisance
elles "gagnent une âme immortelle". Elles pourront ainsi acceder,
comme les hommes apres leur mort, a "l'autre surface" precedemment
evoquee - en une premonition que le narrateur a voulue incomplete -
par la grand-mere de la petite sirene:
... cette âme monte a travers la subtilite de l'air jusqu'aux etoiles qui brillent, et, de
meme que nous nous elevons du fond des eaux pour voir le pays des hommes, ainsi eux
s'elevent ade delicieux endroits immenses, inaccessibles aux peuples de la mer.

Le savoir de la vieille reine des fonds marins - dementi toutefois en

ses derniers mots par la surprenante metamorphose de la petite sirene
- depassait deja singulierement celui des hommes en general, insoucieux
du vaste ether subtil qui forme leur ciel et leur assure le souffle - donc
la vie - avant de permettre sans doute une elevation et une emergence
inou'ies a leur petite âme "pneumatique". Toutefois le passage de la
petite sirene en leur monde n'aura pas ete tout a fait sans consequence
sur l'esprit du prince et de son epouse: ils ont pressenti quelque chose:
... (La petite sirene) vit le prince et sa belle epouse regarder fixement avec melancolie
l'ecume bouillonnante, comme s'ils savaient qu'elle s'etait precipitee dans les flots.

Et c'est un tel pressentiment, une telle melancolie ou nostalgie que

veut eveiller en nous le conteur par sa fable. Il nous rappelle ainsi l'air
ou nous vivons et nous dit quelque chose de l'etre comme de la vraie
patrie de l'homme:
L'air n'est-il pas le tout de notre habiter en tant que mortels? Y a-t-il un demeurer plus
vaste, plus spacieux, et meme plus generalement paisible que celui de l'air? L'homme
peut-il vivre ailleurs que dans l'air? Ni dans la terre ni dans le feu ni dans l'eau, il n'y a
un habiter possible pour lui. Aucun autre element ne peut lui tenir lieu de lieu. Aucun
autre element ne porte avec lui, ou ne se laisse traverser par, lumiere et ombre, voix
ou silence. Aucun autre element n'est a ce point l'ouvert meme - sans necessite
d'ouverture ou de reouverture pour qui n'aurait pas oublie sa nature. Aucun autre
element n'est aussi leger, libre, et sur le mode "fondamental" d'un "il y a" permanent
disponible.
(Luce Irigaray: L 'oubli de l'air, p. 15)2
 FILLES DE L'AIR 143

Mais l'homme a toujours deja oublie sa propre nature et ceHe de

l'air, il s'est enferme volontairement dans le cerele du meme ou du
propre - humain ethnique, humain viril. Il a oublie, en privilegiant le
voir, le jeu des apparences et du calcul, les entours de son etre, la force
de l'invisible et de l'imponderable qui aussi le constitue. L'homme - le
mâle plus precisement sans doute, plus aveugle par la faculte de voir et
de compter - neglige le fait que notre condition est nourrie par ce
qui l'entoure comme en une double matrice: l'une fut aquatique et
amniotique et reste un objet de reve ou de fantasme, l'autre est aerienne
et nous enveloppe de son souffle invisible mais vital. Pris sans ses
entours l'homme est vulnerable et incomplet; le cerele ou il s'enferme
est un appauvrissement, une mutilation (parfois insolemment revendi-
quee): l'eau et l'air seraient ainsi des elements feminins, matriciels,
necessaires a la constitution et a l'entretien de l'etre humain vivant,
ouvrant l'espace meme du "respir" et du verbe.
D'ailleurs l'air est capable de s'affirmer lui-meme comme le lieu
insituable de l'etre, car il porte seul la voix qui fait eternellement entrer
l'invisible en presence; c'est pourquoi sans doute le poete n'a jamais
vraiment oublie "l'air sacre, âme du monde" (Holderlin), principe
nourricier de l'etre. Le chant poetique est souffle et âme; l'air qu'il
emeut (et emet) promet (et promeut) l'etre comme un supplement infini
au meme ou au propre, a tout ce qui est. Le chant est risque, sortie du
monde elos de la tribu comme de la totalite des etants presents, "attrait
d'une aventureuse croissance" (Luce Irigaray: Ibid. p. 152). Quetant
"les traces du lien ferial avec le tout-autre" (p. 156), le poe te renonce a
tout interet propre, a sa personnalite meme pour s'avancer "sans projet,
en aveugle", "sans abri", "consentant eperdument", "livrant a l'autre le
rythme meme de sa respiration" (p. 154-155):

Mais le souffle de qui chante en metant son inspiration a l'haleine divine demeure hors
d'atteinte. Insituable. Sans visage. Qui le perc;:oit, se met en chemin. Obeit a l'attrait. Ne
va al'encontre de rien - seulement l'en-plus atout ce qui est.
(Ibidem: p. 157)

Ce mode de devoilement de la verite qui est avancee dans le risque

de l'air semble expatrier infiniment du propre, mais se fie encore d'une
fa~on ambigue au langage articule et ici le genie de la langue franr,;aise
semble se plaire a "mimer et rejouer" dans l'ouverture d'une affolante
polysemie l'enigme meme de la vocation poetique. En effet l'expression
"jouer la fille de l'air" signifie familierement "s'evader, s'enfuir, s'esqui-
ver"; or le poete de verbe authentique n'a point de cesse qu'il n'ait
144 SERGE MEITINGER

echappe au cerele reducteur du meme ou du propre, au cerele de

l'etant en sa totalite et la verite qu'il "produit" ainsi est fille de l'air a
n'en pas douter puisqu'elle se "mele a l'haleine divine"; mais dans le
sans-fond de cette exprience qui donc joue l'autre au sens propre?

Universite de Madagascar
Ecole Normale Superieure de
Tananarive

NOTES

1 Andersen est cite dans l'edition des Contes traduits par D. Soldi, E. Gregoire et L.
Moland (Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1970).
2 Luce Irigaray: L 'oubli de l'air chez Martin Heidegger (Paris, Editions de Minuit,

1982).
 HANS H. RUDNICK

CONCRETIZA TIONS OF THE AEOLIAN MET APHOR

When we speak about fire and earth, the Promethian myth may provide
explanations of how the Greek tradition tried to understand the
elements of the uni verse, particularly fire. According to that tradition -
and let us understand "tradition" not just in the sense of a "cultural
habit" which we mindlessly folIow, but rather, more literally, as some-
thing that has been handed down through generations as something
valuable with which we identify and by which we are defined as
individuals belonging to a certain cultural setting - according to the
Greek tradition then, Prometheus, the Titan-son, rebelliously gave fire
to the humans very much against the will of Zeus (who, of course, made
Prometheus duly suffer for his transgression). We also remember
Prometheus had, according to the Greeks, created human beings from
clay, very much as Goethe made Prometheus say in the poem of that
title forme Menschen nach meinem Ei/de (molding human beings after
my own image) [J. W. Goethe: "Prometheus," last stanza].
But molding human beings did not mean that these creations were
filled with life of their own. They had to be "inflated" which means in
the original root-sense that they were given breath, the power that
heaves the chest and then lets it relax, creating the dichotomies of
inhaling and exhaling which draw air into the lungs and then expel it.
Breath is one of the signs of life not only for living creatures but also
for alI of nature where the air that is in motion is called wind. Very
similar to the four elements, we have four winds which are given names
according to the compass and the type of weather they bring to the
hemispheres.
Early in literary tradition, wind entered as a metaphor into the major
works. It is God who answers Job out of the whirlwind when Job seeks
explanation why he was chosen to endure so much suffering. The wind,
invisible as a primary force, but visible indirectly through the effect it
has on objects, expresses the numinous power most dramatically. The
infinite distance between the Almighty and the human being, to whom
complete knowledge remains closed, finds expression in the amorphous
wind which shakes objects and creatures alike, the objects physically,
145
A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 145-155.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
146 HANS H. RUDNICK

the humans physically and spiritually. The sheer endless who-, hast
thou-, wilt thou-, and canst thou questions which Job is asked by the
voice out of the whirlwind alI point to Job's helplessness vis d vis this
enormous invisible power. He has neither the knowledge nor the
understanding to demand a proper explanation from the voice that
speaks out of the whirlwind. The enigmatic power of this wind sym-
bolizes directly what Job is ultimately told: "Shall he that contendeth
with the Almighty instruct him?" Job cannot be so presumptuous as to
answer this question since it would further reveal his hybris. He can
only submit and "repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42 :6)
Turning to the world of the Homeric epic which relates to us the
cultural values of the Minoan civilization, or Bronze Age, featuring the
Greeks under Agamemnon of Mycenae besieging Troy, and Odysseus
of Ithaca trying to return home from that expedition, the wind in many
guises and roles plays an enormous part.
Helen, cause of the Trojan war, addresses the fateful powers of the
wind which could have helped avoid the slaughter outside and later
insi de Ilion when she says to Hector, the most revered of Trojan
heroes:
Brother
By marriage to me, who am a nasty bitch evil-intriguing,
How I wish that on that day when my mother first bore me
The foul whirlwind of the storm had caught me away and swept me
To the mountain, or into the wash of the sea deep-thundering ...
(Iliad, bk. 6,11. 343-347, Lattimore transl.)
Wind again and again functions as the moving force in the Homeric
epos. While Helen appealed to fate that windstorms should have done
their part in preventing the cause of alI the Trojan suffering, at the
eve of the battle between Achilles and Hector, wind becomes the
motivating force which sets the action in motion. In Book 9 of the
Iliad, Achilles is still at odds with Agamemnon; the strongest of the
Greek warriors is not participating in the battle. The Greek side feels
discouraged, particularly, as Homer states metaphorically,

two winds rÎse to shake the sea where the fish swarm, Boreas and Zephyros, north wind
and west, that blow from Thraceward, suddenly descending, and the darkened water is
gathered to crests, and far across the salt water scatters the seaweed; so the heart in the
breast of each Achaian was troubled.
(Iliad, 9, 4-8)
 THE AEOLIAN MET APHOR 147

The northwest winds serve Homer here to describe the Greeks' mood
outside Troy. The wind is the most effective metaphor for Homer to
show how discouraged the Achaians are. If Achilles would not resume
an active role in the fighting, the Greeks would have to retreat and sail
back to their homes. Faced with this decision and possible dishonor,
the Greeks hold council and take action. They decide to send a
delegation to Achilles to convince him that his participation is vital to
their cause.
With respect to expediency, wind also plays a major role as an
accompanying metaphor, particularly when Hermes, the messenger, has
to perform urgent services. In Book 24 Homer describes Argeiphontes
winging his way to Troy with the help of a wind pushing him along.
After Zeus' order the messenger:
Immediately ... bound upon his feet the fair sandals,
Golden and immortal, that carried him over the water
As over the dry land of the main abreast of the wind's blast.
(340-342)
The power of the wind, of course, plays a most central role in
Homer's epics. This is no surprise if you consider that the Mediterranean
Sea, exact1y as its name says, offered the only viable transportation
medium between the lands surrounding it. Walking on foot from
Greece to Egypt or Troy would have been as foolish as trying to walk
from Mycenae to Crete. Although the ships of the time had oars which,
in a way, served as a weak equivalent to a motor that would weaken the
longer it was used during the day, wind, a natural force, was relied
upon to cover great distances in the most expedient and efficient
manner known. Troy's strategic location at the mouth of the Bosporus
which was difficult to navigate and to sail into from the south because
of prevailing northerly currents and winds, allowed the control of traffic
into the strait. In the Odyssey the Greeks will fight for ten years to bring
Troy down. But before the Achaeans can sail from Aulis, Artemis
delays their departure by withholding the necessary wind. The blind seer
Teiresias is consulted and reveals that Agamemnon will have to sacrifice
Iphigenia, his own daughter, to appease the goddess and, as Aeschylus
has Clytemnestra say in the Oresteia, "to charm away the savage
[northerly] winds of Thrace." (Agamemnon, 1.1444, Robert Fagles
transl.) In the words of the Latin language the ventus adversus must
first be changed into a ventus secundus before the Greek fleet can sail.
148 HANS H. RUDNICK

Like Abraham, Agamemnon obeys the demand, but things also do not
come to the actual offering because the goddess wisks Iphigenia to the
Crimea where she will serve as a priestess in a temple devoted to the
cult of Artemis.
Even more than the Iliad, the Odyssey, featuring a hero who wants
to return from Troy to Ithaca, his home, can be seen as a sheer
unending battle of the hero against the wind. In the process Odysseus is
willy-nilly transformed into an adventurer who travels and survives by
his wits, and changes into a quest-hero who in Dante's Interna is shown
engulfed in one flame with Diomedes "as if it fought the wind" (Canto
26, 1. 82, John Ciardi, transl.); he had once not been able to "drive out
of [his] mind/ the Iust to experience the far-flung world" (91-92) and
had even sailed by "turning [the] stern toward morning, [the] bow
toward the night" (115) beyond the Pillars of Hercules. After five days
on this westward voyage a squall hits when they see Purgatory. At the
fourth assault of the storm "the bow went down/ till the sea closed over
us and the light was gone." (130-131) This is how Dante imagines the
end of the wind-battered Odysseus.
The vicissitudes of the wind which do not allow Odysseus to control
his own fate, are the dominating force that controls and moves the
events of Homer's epic forward. The hero is merely reacting and trying
"to hang on" to his life; as hard as he fights to control his life, destiny,
and destination, he is completely at the mercy of the wind which acts as
the executor of the will of the Greek cosmos of gods.
The humans consistently prove themselves to be weak, too curious,
and, consequently subject to punishment. This is particularly evident
when Odysseus and his men reach the moving island of Aiolia, the
home of the king of the winds, "dear to the gods who never die."
(Odyssey, 10, 3) Aiolos Hippotades, the wind-king, receives Odysseus
well and upon Odysseus' departure gives him

A bull's hide sewn from neck to taiI

Into a mighty bag, bottling storm winds;
For Zeus had long ago made Aiolos
Warden of winds, to rouse or calm at will.
He wedged this bag under my afterdeck,
Lashing the neck with shining silver wire
So not a breath got through; only the west wind
He lofted for me in a quartering breeze
To take my squadron spanking home. (21-28)
 THE AEOLIAN MET APHOR 149

But after nine days and nights of sailing, Odysseus falls asleep, his
destination in sight. Now, Homer comments through Odysseus: "Temp-
tation had its way with my companions,/ And they untied the bag"
(50-51), hoping to find gold and silver inside. "Then every wind/
roared into hurricane ... , the rough gale blew the ships . . . back to
Aiolia," (51-59) to an unfriendly reception. The force of wind serves
in Homer as an extension of fate, destiny, and punishment.
Travelling on water invites this metaphor, since the origin and cause
of the wind remains enigmatic whereas its effects are obvious and
frequently devastating. Explanations of the effects can only be mytho-
logical as far as antiquity is concerned. Under these circumstances the
enigma remains intact while modern explanations tend to disregard or
deflate the enigmatic in favor of explanations based on (scientificalIy)
proven facts. The Cyclops-Thetis-Poseidon relation which establishes
the family-chain of command from son-mother-father to punish Odys-
seus for blinding the one-eyed monster no longer exists. Even in the
famous Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the
wind no longer plays the roIe of destiny. By the fifth century B.e., life
in the city-state had already moved the arts toward a moral stage on
which human actions and reactions were performed under the burden
of personal responsibility and not something incomprehensibIe which
strikes out of nowhere represented by something "other."
In the Metamorphoses Ovid speaks of "The Flood" that covered the
earth like a deluge. It is the wind that brings the waters:

So, in the cave of Aeolus, he prisoned

The north-wind, and the west-wind, and such others
As ever banish cloud, and he turned loose
The South-wind, and the South-wind carne out streaming
With dripping wings, and pitch-black darkness veiling
His terribIe countenance. His beard is heavy
With rain-cloud, and his heavy locks a torrent,
Mists are his chaplet, and wings and garments
Run with the rain. His broad hands squeeze together
Low-hanging clouds, and crash and rumble folIow
Before the cloudburst, and the rainbow, Iris,
Draws water from the teeming earth, and feeds it
Into the clouds again. The crops are ruined,
The farmers' prayers alI wasted, alI the labor
Of a long year, comes to nothing. (Rolfe Humphries, transl.)
150 HANS H. RUDNICK

In this rather detailed and personified description of the wind which

brings too much water, a change, a metamorphosis, is seen from a
normal and balanced situation toward a chaotic, destructive one which
forces the living creatures into humility.
At the end of the lnferno of Dante's Divine Comedy we find one of
the most unusual descriptions of wind. As Dante and his guide Virgil
near the bottom of Dis, Dante felt a wind begin to blow:
Whereat 1 said: "master, what stirs this wind?
Is not alI heat extinguished here?" (Canto 33, 103-105)
Dante asks this question because he knows that alI winds resulted from
exhalations of heat, and Cocytus, the bottom of the inferno, is sup-
posedly wholIy devoid of heat. The next canto provides the answer
when Dante finds Satan
at the core of a frozen shell. Like a whirling miII ... stirring up such a wild and bitter
wind, 1 covered for shelter. (3-4, 7-8)

Satan stands with his feet frozen in ice, continuously flapping his three
pairs of bat-like wings in the futile attempt to raise himself from the ice.
As Dante observes, Satan
... beat them so
That three winds blew from him in one great storm:
It is these winds that freeze alI Cocytus. (50-52)
This wind is certainly an exclusive invention of the imagination but well
within the potential of Dante's poetic intentions. Satan's frantic flapping
is as restless as the restlessness of all the other sinners in the lnferno.
His batlike wings fan the ice at the very bottom of Dante's hell.
However, wind must not be only a negative, destructive power. One
of the most interesting depictions of the advantageous qualities of the
wind is found, for instance, in the 1487 painting of Piero de Cosimo,
which depicts Vulcan and Aeolus. As Erwin Panofsky points out
(Studies in /conology, 44ff.), this picture caused some interpretative
problems because of the apparent, but not clearly explicable, relation-
ship between Vulcan and Aeolus. The meaning of the pic ture, however,
reveals itself, if the observer recognizes that Aeolus is pumping two
inconspicuous leather bags which serve as bellows to supply Vulcan,
the blacksmith, with more oxygen for a hotter fire. Piero de Cosimo
apparently has depicted the moment of the discovery of the advantage
 THE AEOLIAN METAPHOR ISI

of the wind's oxygen for blacksmithing. He tells the story of a discovery

which had revolutionized man's transformation of iron ore into steel
through the application of additional air in the manufacturing process.
A historical leap to the English Romantic poets of the first half of
the 19th century will reveal that the airy element plays again a central
role in the works of these poets. H. M. Abrams has spoken of "the
correspondent breeze" (English Romantic Poets, p. 37) as a typical
romantic metaphor. The internalization of elemental phenomena, which
was already referred to above in the context of the Greek dramatists of
the Sth century B.e., can also be pointed out in Shakespeare's art. King
Lear comes particularly to mind for there storm-wind symbolizes
Lear's mental state. The poetry of the Romantics is also highly "venti-
lated" not so much as a property of Nature or fate, but rather as a
vehicle for drastic changes in the poet's mind. As Abrams points out,
"rising wind, usually linked with the outer transition from winter to
spring, is correlated with a complex subjective process: the return to a
sense of community after isolation." (p. 37)
The specific linking of wind to the seasonal transition between winter
and spring might be puzzling at first. But if we try to understand the
Romantic poet's psyche, we will notice that the mysterious and humanly
uncontrollable miracle of the sprouting of new life in Spring fascinated
the Romantics' imagination to the extent that Spring winds were
generally associated with this new life in Nature which included for the
Romantics, of course, also man himself. The poet, therefore, becomes
an instrument of Nature. The poet is subject to the "April showers" of
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as well as to "the cruelest month" of April
of Eliot's The Waste Land. He or she is subject to the changes of
Nature, which is, naturally, in England most closely associated with the
wind since its coasts are rarely farther away than 30 to SO miles from
anywhere in the country.
Apollo's lyre, frequently held by Homer in depictions of the bard,
had served as instrument and symbol for the poet's creativity. The
Romantics adopted the wind harp, or Aeolian harp, as their instrument
and symbol which represented their concept of artistic creativity. The
Aeolian harp made its melody as everchanging as the wind because this
sound of Nature depended on the motion of the air. Wordsworth's
dictum that a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" has to enter
into every poetic process, has its natural analogue in the wind harp
which expresses Nature's overpowering force in the most direct way.
152 HANS H. RUDNICK

The Romantic poet tries to match this spontaneity not with reason - as
did the eighteenth century - but with unspoiled emotion. The wind
with its ever-changing characteristics supplies the metaphor of openness
and flexibility which Romantic poets sought for their creativity. The
wind metaphor allows the poet to cover the range between a breeze
and a storm, between peace or rage in Nature. As in Beethoven's
Pastoral Symphony, the artist perceives and orchestrates passions and
life without and within through the calm, the storm, and the lull as a
barometer for the ever-changing natural and human events. For some
of the Romantics like W ordsworth and Coleridge, wind, the breath of
heaven, was as inspiring as the help of the Muse which Homer used to
invoke. In the Intimations Ode Wordsworth tells us: "The winds come
to me from the fields of sleep."; and in The Prelude he obtains
"visionary power" from "the motions of the viewless winds" which are
"embodied in the mystery of words." The mysterious workings of
language, particularly poetic language in this context, which are physio-
logically a result of forcing air in a certain way from the lungs via the
wind pipe past the vocal cords through the mouth, are only the
mechanical aspect of speech, whereas the creative aspect with which the
Romantics intend to fill the meaning of words builds not only on
the physiological but also relies heavily on the inspirational powers
attributed to the winds.
SheIIey's Ode to the West Wind which addresses the West wind with
"breath of Autumn's being" may be mentioned only in passing here
since the West wind is as extraneous to the early literary tradition as
Dante's having Odysseus travel beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Further-
more, the nature of the ode as genre favors the West wind as autumnal
since the traditional association of the coming light is with the East,
whereas the waning of light is associated with the West.
Romantic poetry ranges between the luII and the storm, it Iacks the
even temper of the eighteenth century. Dejection, recovery, and regen-
eration are integral aspects of Romantic poetry. One could say that it
breathes with the wind, there is inhaling and exhaling, there is life and
death, just as there is systole and diastole in the rhythm of life.
Romantic poetry is myth, religion, meditation, life as such, altogether. It
is a struggle for an idealistic poetic revolution in language and sensi-
tivity. We are still under its influence in the arts since we are trying to
keep some elements of sensitivity and humility alive beneath the ever-
increasing encroachment of the gospels of efficiency, materialism, and
 THE AEOLIAN MET APHOR 153

half-truths. Thomas Mann's chapter entitled "Snow" in The Magic

Mountain describes Hans Castorp's struggle with himself in the setting
of a snowstorm. It is the question of living or dying that he faces in alI
its severity under these lonely circumstances in the raging mountain
snowstorm. It is the ultimate question that Hans Castorp has to answer
for himself: either to fight for life or wander in a circle and perish.
Thomas Mann's hero will choose the former. While Mann showed us a
post-Romantic hero who has to make his own choice, wind-beaten and
freezing, in extreme loneliness, Abrams telIs how the Romantics carne
ta seek the powers of N ature:

The wind, as an invisible power known only by its effects, had an even greater part to
play than water, light, and clouds in the Romantic revolt against the world-view of the
Enlightenment. In addition, the moving air lent itself preeminently to the aim of tying
man back into the environment from which ... he had been divorced by post-Cartesian
dualism and mechanism.

The elements of the Romantic rebellion against the perfection of

routine rationality and the post-Romantic self-searching hero find
further expression in the celebration of the arts in Rilke's poetry. In his
poem An die Musik (To Music) Rilke speaks of music's having become
a stranger, which, "rising above us, forces its way out," in a "holy
departure." We have become estranged from the innermost which has
turned into a

most practiced distance, as the other

side of the air:
pure,
boundless,
no longer habitable.
(Mitchell, p. 147)

Rilke deplores the 10ss of sensitivity that has occurred. He caUs music
"breath of statues" and "language where aU language ends," but the
closer we come to the end of the poem, the more estranged from music
we seem to be. It is the "other side of the air," the unreachable which
we can no 10nger inhale, although once it was an essential part of us.
But as Rilke says in the third sonnet of the first sonnet cycle to
Orpheus Ein Gott vermags (A God can do it). "But, teU me, how can a
man foUow him through the lyre's strings?" For Rilke Gesang ist Dasein
154 HANS H. RUDNICK

(singing is existing) and he advises the young man "to forget that
passionate music. It will end." Instead, Rilke concludes,
[tlrue singing is a different breath, about
nothing. A gust inside the God. A wind. (231 )
While music addresses the emotional, singing refers to the existential,
and wind to the essential and numinous in the examples from Rilke's
poetry.
In the First Duino Elegy we read:
there is night when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at our faces ... don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feeI the expanded air with more passionate flying.
The poet regrets the insensitivity and the lack of understanding that
has befallen his subject. "Yes-," he says, in a way very similar to the
Romantics, "the springtimes need you." And very much in a phenome-
nological manner he encourages his subject to watch and to perceive
again:
Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of a distant past, or as you walked
under the window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. (151 )
And further toward the end of the same elegy Rilke sublimates the
wind as the voice of the essence that speaks to us humans metaphori-
cally through the artistic medium. He says:
But listen to the voice of the wind
and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence. (153)
Whether it is the brutality of the windstorm, the icy wind at the bottom
of Dis, the music of the wind harp, loneliness in a snowstorm, or
the poetic voice of the wind, poets since Homer have continuously
recognized the inspiring metaphorical powers of the airy element.

Southern Illinois University

 THE AEOLIAN METAPHOR 155

REFERENCES

Abrams, H. M. (ed.). English Romantic Poets (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1960).
Mitchel1, Stephen (ed. and transl.). The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (New
York: Vintage Books, 1984).
Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Jconology (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
 PART THREE

THE AESTHETIC FORCES OF THE

AIRY ELEMENTS
 CECILE CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA

LE THEME DE L' AIR DANS LA POBSIE DE

PAUL-MARIE LAPOINTE

L'air est souffle, TCVeVţla, parole et toute poesie est inspiree, respiree.
Pourtant, Paul-Marie Lapointe, ressort, dans toute la poesie quebecoise,
comme le poete du grand air, la ou le chant se fait champ a perte
d'espace et de temps. Souvenons-nous que les Quebecois constituent le
seul peuple a la fois latin et nordique du monde et que c'est cette
dimension que Lapointe assume bellement dans son oeuvre.
Il a senti notre nature de tout son corps et de tous ses mots. Ses
poemes eclatent de vent et de froid. C'est un poete qui appartient au
rythme profond des saisons. Il ecrit comme un arbre tombe ses feuilles,
au bon moment, alors que la parole est mure. Il est, de toute sa
disponibili te, sensible a notre ici, de connivence avec notre vie. Il sait
lire le voI des outardes. Il y a chez lui une religion des feuilles. Il
correspond a nos plantes. Il repond a nos fleurs. Il se fait l'oracle des
"harpes de sapin". C'est un druide et sa poesie a des cotes bellement
pai"ens. Nous sommes au Moyen âge et des annees de signes qui n'ont
jamais ete lus se levent. Toujours, le poete demeure "une main qui
pense a des murs de fleurs."
Son poeme ne serait pas le meme s'il ne faisait pas confiance a l'aere.
Ses mots n'auraient pas la meme nuance s'il n'avait pas flâne sur le
mont Royal un jour de tempete. C'est la qu'il a senti le besoin de
l'eIementaire; c'est de la qu'il est retoume a l'essentiel. S'il avoue avoir
lu Bluard, Whitman et Neruda, on ne peut parIer de veritables
influences litteraires. Il s'agit plutot d'affinites, d'amitie pour de beaux
poemes. Il est bien davantage influence par lui-meme, son enfance, ses
origines, sa foret, son vent du nord et son village. Rien ne ressemble
plus a ses poemes que son pays. Il est penetre de ce climat, de cette
force du vent. Son souffle est celui de sa terre et sa phrase le pas de
notre nordet. Ses poemes nous apprennent qu'il a su lire le spleen de
Nelligan ou la solitude de Saint-Denys Gameau et ils nous disent le cri
glace d'une epinette par une nuit d'hiver. Ils portent le nord en eux et
ont du vent dans la parole. Ils ne seraient pas les memes sant l'âpre
grandeur de Tadoussac. C'est la que la sarcelle "tend un cri de soleil."
Mais tout cela s'acheve, s'elabore dans la civilisation du monde
159
A -T. Tymienieeka (ed.), Analeeta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 159-164.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
160 CECILE CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA

moderne. A vant de lire Paul-Marie Lapointe, il faut avoir longuement

ecoute Miles Davis. En effet, plusieurs poemes sont du jazz a l'etat
presque pur. Nous y retrouvons cette meme discontinuite dans le
continu, cette meme attention a un theme donne, cette meme lenteur
des repetitions, cette meme sagesse aerienne des notes finales. Nous
nous immergeons dans une sorte de "white spiritual". Pourtant, le
langage ne suffit plus pour s'accrocher au monde et l'incantation du
verbe ne conjure plus la souffrance.
Paul-Marie Lapointe demeure un Sagueneen et cela signifie un culte,
une liturgie du paysage. La parole vient du bout de l'horizon, la ou
s'elaborent les durs vents. Un gars ne a Montreal n'aurait pas autant de
longs et lents espaces en lui. Il aligne les mots comme s'ils etaient des
arbres tourmentes par le vent. Sa contemplation du monde lui a ete
enseignee par de rassurantes montagnes et sous chaque mot, il y a des
arpents de paysages. Pourtant, nous y insistons, la lecture de Paul-
Marie Lapointe suppose aussi une lente contemplation des gratte-ciel
de Montreal, ces cathedrales d'aujourd'hui, elles aussi tourmentees par
le vent. Le poete, pour eclore, a peut-etre besoin de l'air chaud de la
ville. Paul-Marie Lapointe a ecrit des poemes qui sont des embouteil-
lages, des cris de neon. Il a saisi l'importance des pas d'une grande ville
et la tres inflexible course de son destin. Et pourtant c'est d'ailleurs que
vient "se grand corps qui alimente la ville en oiseaux"
la parole s'evade entre les membres passe le vent entre Ies pierres, les larmes et les cris

Mais presque toujours l'appel de la vie triomphe. Elle veut que nous
sentions tout le possible. Elle cherche a exprimer une liberation totale
de toutes les sensations. Elle crie a tous vents les mots qu'on ne
murmurait autrefois que sur l'oreiller. L'amour est une fete et le ventre
une celebration. Les femmes s'ouvrent comme des fleurs et les filles
sont des fruits. Des baisers sculptent les corps dans "le cerceau du
plaisir" alors que la poesie consent a la joie. La femme est tout pres de
la metamorphose, toute prete a s'envoler. Elle appartient a un ordre
secret que le poete veut litanique. Mais la femme, c'est d'abord
l'odalisque aerienne. Elle se veut une sorte de symbole, "un reve
quebecois" de Victor Levy Beaulieu. Elle est la de toute sa chaleur et
son parfum, emplissant l'atmosphere. Elle collabore a l'amour joyeuse-
ment et sans secret. On reparle de son blason comme on le faisait il y a
trop longtemps, a la Renaissance.
Si Dieu existe, c'est pour la creer respirante. Car elle est avant tout
 PAUL-MARIE LAPOINTE 161

souffle alors que la quantite et le qualite se confondent dans la

multipli cite des unites et la frenesie du vocabulaire. D'ailleurs les plantes
respirent aussi dans cette oeuvre. Elles sont enumeration, juxtaposition,
pluralite et c'est de la repetition et du voisinage que naît la forc~t toute
remplie d'air parfume.
Les animaux sont aussi des vivants, des respirants. Ils existent
comme des noms, des substantifs, dans le nature. Castors, poules,
lombrics, lionnes, abeilles, babouins, cailles, chevreuils, hirondelles,
saumons, rats, griffons, langoustes, oursins, limaces, mouettes, hippo-
campes, pieuvres, ils sont li le fois alchimie et incantation. Ils habitent le
poeme comme un depassement du symbole, comme un achevement
ultime de l'allegorie, comme un jour de genese. Ils ne finissent de se
pluraliser et de s'enumerer que pour abandonner leurs squelettes
debout.
Mais ce monde, le poete le celebre comme ce qui rassure l'homme.
Et le "reel absolu", c'est encore le cosmos, celui qui construit et qui
detruit, celui dont les images de tempetes menacent la fragilite de
l'homme car l'inanime a aussi des problemes et des protections.
Mais voyons un peu plus precisement la fa~on dont Paul-Marie
Lapointe nous parle de l'air. Cet air, c'est d'abord le souffle qui se fait
verbe. C'est le "souffle de l'interieur, "le souffle persistant de la nuee"
alors que signifient "les regards sapides des souffles". Ce souffle est
agite. Il est dynamique aussi. C'est le vent qui passe "entre les larmes",
"dans une saison de vapeur et de vent", Ul ou "les scies grugeuses"
agissent dans les "crateres filles prives d'air".
Et ce vent porte l'oiseau, la principale imagerie de l'air, alors que
"l'oiseau reve" "nidification coeur" et qu'un grand corps alimente les
villes en oiseau, "au vent des astres". L'oiseau se dit li l'autre. II est
porteur de l'amour. "Je laisse en toi voler des oiseaux blancs", "ces
oiseaux aux plus souples ecailles", "en deux ailes de papier" "qui
allument ailes et fanaux pendant qu'une pierre respire comme un
oiseau" pour qu'il "batte dans les coeurs" et que "dans le nid du delire
s'envolent des oiseaux multiples". "Oiseau-terre, je t'aime qui n'attache
li ton aile que l'arbre et le repos". Puis, Paul-Marie Lapointe nous
raconte "le dormir des ailes" et les "aeriens ossements" alors que nos
morts ne s'envolent pas". L'air li aussi li faire avec la lumiere. "Je suis
sincere parce que les olives sont la lumiere ou l'emerveillement devant"
I'arbre de seve en lumiere "alors qu' "il se pare de lumiere "dans
I'accouplement des poutres de la lumiere".
162 CECILE CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA

L'air, c'est aussi la chaleur. "chaleur, nous te prions," chante

Lapointe, "dans la transparence ou se meuvent les chaleurs". L'air, c'est
enfin le parfum et la fumee, forme de son mal nous confie Paul-Marie
Lapointe.
C'est donc a trauers ce chant que Paul-Marie Lapointe nous pousse
vers une liberation totale dont le vent est le symbole. Car malgre la
souffrance, celle-ci se fait dans la joie. C'est la liberte de la naissance
que le poe te cherche. On ne regrette rien mais l'horizon s'elargit
soudain. Et l'on danse de joie parce qu'on peut maintenant voir toutes
les realites et prendre tous les mots dans sa main, dans son atmosphere.
Il n'y a plus d'empechement mais une immense offrande. Le monde est
un plateau de fruits et le poeme est un grand verger. La fete est presque
absolue surtout celle des mots.
Car Paul-Marie Lapointe fut, apres Saint-Denys Garneau, avec
Claude Gauvreau, le grand conquistador de notre poesie. Automatiste
d'instinct, sans doctrine et sans etiquette, il a pousse l'aventure du verbe
jusque dans son au-dela le plus recule. Avec lui, en lui, par lui, tout se
dit. Le bon sens traditionnel ne controle rien et l'on arrive au sur bon
sens. Ses mots ne s'abritent plus dans les coffres du langage. Ils
s'affranchissent des regles de leur societe. Ils s'inventent des amities
nouvelles. Le poete n'a plus d'autorite sur le langage. Et un ordre
nouveau se cree, le hasard etant le plan dans sa finesse ultime. De fait,
le poete travaille ici comme le plan.
En effet, pour Paul-Marie Lapointe, la poesie doit etre essentielle-
ment revolte, tempete. Elle doit incarner cette revolte fondamentale de
l'homme qui existe, au-dela des revolutions sociales ou litteraires. Elle
doit signifier le changement de l'esprit et du corps. Elle doit etre
metamorphose de la parole, de l'expression. La poesie do it se vouloir
purification. Le poete doit savoir saisir les choses ou elles en sont,
retablir la confiance en elles, inventer des connivences avec elles. On a
redit que le poete assume le monde. D'ailleurs, comme il l'a dit
bellement, pour lui, la poesie est "pour les âmes" qui ont beaucoup a
voir avec l'air. Elle do it faire vivre le monde dans toute son envergure
et croire avant tout en l'homme.
Elle n'exclut pas la violence. Elle est souvent habitee de cruelles
creatures de l'air comme les vautours pleins de griffes. On s'y devore
allegrement et l'une des fa<;ons frequentes de recontrer l'autre consiste
a l'avaler. "Je devore une ville". D'ailleurs, la mort est vue non comme
ce qui termine, mais comme dure et agressive. C'est la par excellence
que "le temps tombe".
 PAUL-MARIE LAPOINTE 163

Elle agit a travers le vent, le froid et la colere et les paroles de

Paul-Marie Lapointe disent non. Car le caractere souvent incantatoire
de sa poesie vise a la conjuration par le souffle. Certaines repetitions
frappent comme des rafales de mitraillettes. Certaines associations sont
des batailles contre le familier et l'insignification. mais, avant tout, c'est
contre la condition humaine que le poete et l'homme hurlent "corps de
plantes dans l'orage surgi".
Mais, penetrant tout cela reste l'instinct de dire. Le poete caresse la
parole comme une femme. Il la blottit dans sa main comme un oiseau
fragile, aerien. Celui-ci est sang et seve et ilIe charge de pesants signes.
Ce sont d'ailleurs les mots qui engendrent le poeme et le poete est le
temoin de leurs tropismes. Il assiste heureux a leurs etreintes. Cela nous
donne une poesie tres habitee et tres dense. Les mots sont pleins,
comme des oeufs. Ils s'unissent dans une discontinuite apparente qui est
simplement l'aspect plus moderne d'une tres profonde continui te.
Jamais peut-etre dans notre pensee, les paroles ne s'etaient autant
donne le main, jamais le nom n'avait eu un tel besoin du verbe.
Car s'il est faux de vouloir colIer a Paul-Marie Lapointe l'etiquette
de poete surrealiste, on peut le considerer comme le poete d'une
surrealite pour ainsi dire toute naturelle, comme l'air qu'on respire. Il a
su, surtout dans ses premiers recueils, vivre, sentir et exprimer le
surreeI. Le langage lui a ete donne pour qu'il depasse la surrealite. Bien
sur, je pense surtout ace magnifique "vierge incendie" ou il pratique un
automatisme psychique extremement interes sant. L'association est chez
lui affolante et pleine de generosite, toute realite etant analoque a toutes
les autres. Rien n'est trop farfelu pour etre dit. Les mots s'appellent et
le poete leur laisse la bride sur le cou. Et pourtant ces poemes donnent
l'impression d'avoir ete longuement travailles, mais la correction est
ailleurs, loin du jaillissement, de la source. Jamais la litterature quebe-
coise n'avait libere autant d'associations. Les realites et les mots
s'aiment et vivent ensemble. De tout son inconscient et de tout son
conscient, le poete s'exprime. an recueille de la pensee a l'etat pur avec
tous les risques que cela comporte, et cela inquiete fort ceux qui
s'etaient habitues a ecrire raisonnablement, La poesie de Paul-Marie
Lapointe, c'est du reve a peine reveille. Ce poete a profondement
compris que le vingtieme siecle serait celui ou la litterature ne
negligerait plus rien et choisirait tout. Une phrase comme: "Un vieux
duc roule a bicyclette sur un sucrier de porcelaine ridicule", aurait fait
plai sir a Michaux et aBreton.
Les mots s'accumulent comme des gerbes sans suite, comme si le
164 CECILE CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA

vent les unissait entre eux. Et le poete reprend sa tâche, celle qui
"froisse les choses assises". Ici encore, l'unite se fait au-dela de la forme
dans une sorte de purete de "l'oeuvre ouverte", selon la belle expression
d'Umberto Eco. L'anneau s'allonge. Et la frontiere entre la prose et la
poesie s'abolit deja. Mais, a travers la nature et la ville, au bout du
respirer et du soupirer, en instance de lumi ere, de parfum et de chaleur,
au coin des recherches surrealistes les plus poussees, le theme de l'air
envahit toute la poesie de Paul-Marie Lapointe et l'unifie, tout en la
ren dant unique.

Cecile C/outier- Wojciechowska

Universite de Toronto
 J. Y. DUPRAZ

"L'~TRE CONTRE LE VENT": ASPECTS DU VENT

DANS LA POESIE DE PAUL VALERY

"L'etre contre le vent", telle se presente la jeune Parque lorsqu'elle se

souleve finalement vers le soleil, a la fin d'un poeme base sur les
variations, cycles et retours d'une conscience. Mais n'est-ce pas la le
paradigme du poeme valeryen? Un etre seul face au monde et qui se dit
seul, entrela~ant au coeur de sa voix les differents moments du moi et
du monde, un etre qui parle pour se constater et qui s'edifie par ce fait
meme, edification qui enonce un mystere, celui de l'etre revenant sur
soi en-de~a de son personnage, ou se dissolvant au-dela de soi jusqu'a
vouloir ne plus etre "la voix de personne/Tant que des ondes et des
bois".

Qui pleure la, sinon le vent simple, a cette heure

Seule, avec diamants extremes? ..... .

Le cri de la Parque qui s'eveille naÎt du choc avec l'element, choc

issu, comme le poeme, d'une necessite minime qui se presente comme
hasard, forme sortant de l'informe et du chaos et suspendue dans la
fragilite de cette genese.
Le choc de l'element comme source et genese est un des aspects
constituants de la poesie et de la pensee valeryennes. Dans "L'introduc-
tion aux figures va/eryennes 1 J. Jallet indique le role qu'a joue dans la
pensee du jeune Valery le vent qui, creant sur le sabIe tout un ensemble
de formes geometriques, pose la question du passage de l'informe a la
forme; mais surtout ce critique indique comment cette reflexion fonda-
mentale instaure une esthetique qui s'enracine, a la fois dans le corps et
l'univers mathematique, dans l'etre vibrant et dans la conscience du
caractere periodique de cette vibration. "Ce qui s'indique ici, dit-elle,
c'est l'utopie d'une naissance commune, le desir d'effacer la coupure
originelle de l'esprit et des choses."
Il s'agit bien d'une forme de poesie puisque naissance et connais-
sance ne sont pas separees, mais aussi de la forme d'une pensee pour
qui l'abstraction est un geste vecu.

165
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 165-176.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
166 J. Y. DUPRAZ

LE VENT ET L'ARBRE: LE POSSIBLE ET LES CONDITIONS

Dans un des poemes ou il est le plus question du vent, Au Platane,2 le

vent est une composante dont le role s'avere complexe. Nous trouvons
enonce, des la troisieme strophe, un conflit:
De ton front voyageur les vents ne veulent pas.
La terre tendre et sombre,
O platane, jamais ne lais sera d'un pas
S'emerveiller ton ombre!
Le premier vers de cette strophe merite l'attention car il articule une
grande partie de la problematique du poeme. En effet, ces vents sont
apparemment "dedaigneux" mais d'ou provient l'image du "front
voyageur" sinon de ce vent meme? Ce vent impassible est celui qui
impartit un desir de mouvement impossible. Ce desir se heurte a "la
force du site", comme le dit la premiere strophe, c'est-a-dire a ce qui est
la condition meme de l'arbre, son enracinement. Encore cet enracine-
ment n'est-il pas simple puisque les racines apparaissent comme une
"hydre venerable" qui fouit avidement en direction d'une profondeur
ou, comme l'indique la sixieme strophe, les morts saisissent les "pieds
echeveles" des arbres.
Cette puissance de mort est cependant une condition de progres:
Ce front n'aura d'acces qu'aux degres lumineux
Ou la seve l'exalte; ... (str. 4)
et, au cours du mouvement obstine de la minutieuse croissance vegetale
vers le haut les arbres "sentent les fuir les fleurs,lEt leurs spermes ailes
le cours leger descendre." Un dynamisme dont la mort est une des
conditions, est croissance vers le haut et generation d'oeuvre.
Nous assistons au jeu du possible et des conditions, car, ce qui revele
les conditions, ce qui donne lieu aux images de ces conditions est la
sollicitation du possible qu'est le vent. Et ces conditions qui se reveIent
en revelent d'autres:
Pres sens autour de toi d'autres vivants liees ... (str. 5)
et ces autres vivants: "Ils vivent separes, ils pleurent confondus ..." (str.
8). Le vent est ici comme il l'est aussi pour les amants heureux des
Fragments du Narcisse 3 le lieu d'une communion.
 PAUL VALERY 167

Dans la suite du poeme l'arbre, sous la poussee du vent accede a la

voix:
Ose gemir! ... Il faut 6 souple chair du bois,
Te tordre, te detordre,
Te plaindre sans te rompre, et rendre aux vents la voix
Qu'ils cherchent en desordre! (str. 13)
La voix est la base de la poesie, "l'onde porteuse" comme le dit
Valery a plusieurs reprises. Or, cette voix, meme si elle est gemissement,
n'est pas le eri qui jaillit immediatement; cette voix est conjonction d'un
dispositif et d'un univers de lois. Dans cette 13eme strophe comme
dans la quinzieme, il s'agit de rendre aux vents leur voix ou de "rendre
un langage" au ciel. Il ne s'agit pas d'une parole, mais de la voix et du
langage vus comme trame et sollicitation-a-dire, mise en place avant la
parole qui communique.
Pourtant le message viendra a la derniere strophe:
-Non, dit l'arbre. Il dit: Non! par l'etincellement
De sa tete superbe,
Que la tempete traite universellement
Comme elle fait un herbe! (str. 18)
Ce message, ce Non! est bien ambigu, il est assez semblable a la
position de l'auteur du poeme qui dit s'etre detache constamment "du
vrai et du faux et du "vrai" et du "faux". D'ailleurs les admonestations
du poete a l'arbre devan<;;aient ce probleme: ... "Parais l'impatient
martyr" lui disait-il ala 14eme strophe, "O se gemir" a la 13eme; il s'agit
la d'une activite de parade sans que la parade ou le phenomene
implique un fond des choses ou une verite cachee. Ainsi ce Non! n'est
pas un faux "non" puisqu'il est bien un geste de negation, mais ce n'est
pas un pur "non" puisque ce geste de negation se fait sous l'action de la
tempete qui le traite "universellement", comme elle traite tout l'univers.
Ainsi dans Au Platane on peut voir l'image de la pensee, mais a travers
ceHe problematique du vent on peut y voir aussi une image de la
condition humaine et de la condition du poete.
Revenant sur l'image du mouvement impossible, on peut rappeler un
passage de Note et Digression qu'il faudrait citer en entier. Valery y
parle de certains moments dont il compare l'effet a celui de la musique:
"Nous portons en nous des formes de la sensibili te qui ne peuvent pas
168 J. Y. DUPRAZ

reussir mais qui peuvent naître" et, parIant de ces moments il ajoute:
"On ne peut pas dire qu'ils sont reels; on ne peut pas dire qu'ils ne le
sont pas. Qui ne les a pas traverses ne connaît pas la veritable fragilite
du monde, qui ne se rapporte pas a l'alternative de l'etre et du non-etre;
ce serait trop simple! L'etonnement ce n'est pas que les choses soient;
c'est qu'elles soient telles et non telles autres. La figure de ce monde fait
partie d'une famille de figures dont nous possedons sans le savoir tous
les elements du groups infini" ... 4
Cette decouverte de la fragilite du monde et du moi est bien celle
que nous faisons devant le platane qui sous la sollicitation du vent est
pret a on ne sait quel depart. Ce vent est la revelation d'un pur
exterieur qui se revele en revelant a l'arbre les conditions memes de SOD
existence, conditions qu'il ne peut pas transgresser et qui le poussent a
se hausser vers ce "front voyageur" qui est le lieu ou se manifeste le
desir d'une telle transgression.
Mais le vent retrouve aussi une voix qui lui est rendue par l'arbre. Ce
mouvement de retour est celui de l'accession a un ordre qui se revele
au moment ou il se met en place. Le vent reintegre son identite qui est
d'etre "voix dans les arbres", d'etre element qui se revele dans l'obstacle
et qui illustre le fait que toute parole est reponse qui se joue a la surface
de deux ensembles: que ce soit le son et le sens, l'image et la realite,
l'ineffable et le dicible, le desir et le besoin, le hasard et la necessite; ce
meme effet de composition qui fait que le "Non!" de l'arbre ne peut pas
etre absolu, "absolu" au sens etymologique: delie.
De cette presence du vent, on peut pas ser a ce que revele la
presence au vent. Le point de vue change car il ne s'agit plus alors
d'une contemplation mais de la reaction directe a l'element.

PRESENCE A UNE SURFACE ET A UNE PROFONDEUR

Il Y a au debut des Fragments du Narcisse un paradoxe: la vent est a la

fois present et absent. Le vent, d'une certaine fa<;on, represente pour
Narcisse un danger mortel; s'il trouble la surface de l'eau, cette image
sera perdue; pour que Narcisse puisse se voir le vent doit etre absent.
Et cela semble bien etre le cas puisqu'apres avoir invoque les nymphes
en les implorant de rester immobiles, Narcisse dit:

Des cimes l'air deja cesse le pur pillage (1, v. 34)

 PAUL VALERY 169

Cependant 9 vers plus loin on trouve:

La nuit vient sur ma chair lui souffler que je l'aime.
Sa voix fraîche a mes voeux tremble de consentir
A peine dans la brise, elle semble mentir
Tant le fremissement de son temple tacite
Conspire au spacieux silence d'un tel site. (1. v. 43-48)
Ce "je" detache de sa chair, ce "je" qui n'a pas de voix et qui parle,
utilise la voix d'un vent qui a cesse pour qu'une profondeur de
lui-meme vienne avouer, avec l'apparence du mensonge, l'amour qu'elle
porte a sa surface de chair. Le vent est une voix qui se deplace le long
d'une ligne paradoxale et imaginaire qui contribue a l'atmosphere
angoissante du poeme car cette voix tierce, ou mediane, des sine en
creux un espace impersonnel et impensable qui pese en surplomb sur le
personnage. CeHe angoisse est beaucoup plus subtile que celle que peut
provoquer la crainte de la mort de la legende. Elle provient peut-etre
de la presence de cet univers de figures dont notre monde n'est que le
cas particulier, un univers sans reference connue mais qui, dans notre
monde redistribue les lignes de partage.
C'est la meme atmosphere que celle qui se presente a l'entree de la
Jeune Parque:

"Qui pleure la, sinon le vent simple a cette heure

Seule avec diaments extremes? ..."
Cet adjectif "simple" qui s'applique au vent est a comprendre en
relation avec les "diamants extremes" qui daignent faire lui re "je ne sais
quoi de pur et de spirituel"; le "pur", comme le dit Valery dans
Paraboles 5 est "le fmit d'une Pensee de vie Exactement changee en
lui/Sans reste." Le simple est un donne immediat, c'est le terme que,
dans Paraboles encore, Valery applique a la presence comparable au
"calme d'une eau calme". Cette presence simple du vent en revele une
qui ne l'est pas: la Parque hesite entre une surface touchee par une
presence et une profondeur qui a la meme voix que cette presence. Et
cette indecision delimite un axe qui ne cessera de se deplacer dans le
poeme: surface et profondeur ne cessant de se contester le droit a la
parole.
"Dieux!" dira-t-elle bientât" Dans ma lourde plaie une secrete soeur
Brule qui se prefere a l'extreme attentive." (v. 48-49)
170 J. Y. DUPRAZ

Car la Parque pourrait tout aussi bien reprendre a son compte les
paroles de Narcisse gemissant dans le vent:
Antres que me rendez mon âme plus profonde
Vous renflez de votre ombre une voix qui se meurt ... (v. 100-10 1)
... et un peu plus loin
Le roc rit; l'arbre pleure; et par sa voi x charmante
Je ne puis que je me lamente
D'appartenir sans force ad'eternels attraits. (1 v. 106-110)
Narcisse ou la Parque sont "sans force" devant cette alliance d'une
surface et d'une profondeur: que cette surface soit la beau te de Narcisse
ou "les plis" et "les calices" de la Parque. Le vent est ce qui le plus
immediatement fait percevoir, physiquement meme, cette conjonction
et cette disjonction. "Ce qu'il y a de plus profond chez l'homme c'est la
peau", cette peau sur laquelle vient jouer le vent qui provoque la prise
de conscience d'un exterieur et la resonance d'un interieur mais aussi
une certaine presence au temps.

PRESENCE ET PRESENT

"L'etre, nous dit Valery dans une note de ses Cahiers, projette autour
de soi une enceinte formee - dont la dâture n'est que la reciproque de
l'extension de ses sens, figuree ici par une surface au lieu de cette
portee.
C'est la topologie de la perception - et topologie ici embrasse le
temps."6
Dans cette topologie, le vent marque la surface et le present, comme
nous l'avons vu des le debut de la Jeune Parque, sans que la conscience
ne soit jamais capable d'etre parfaitement immobilisee dans ce pur
present. Ainsi, dans le parcours de la Parque qui se meut entre le
present, la reminiscence ou le futur, les raccords au pres~nt sont
marques par la presence du vent et la presence au vent. Ainsi, a la fin
du passage sur le serpent du debut trouvons-nous:
... Je sors, pâle et prodigieuse,
Toute humide de pleurs que je n'ai point verses,
D'une absence aux contours de mortelle berces
Par soi seule ... (v. 91-93)
Ces pleurs, on peut le penser sont ceux du debut et nous revenons donc
 PAUL VALERY 171

au present apres la plongee interieure du souvenir et de l'absence. Mais

assez vite se produit un nouveau depart, vers l' "Harmonieuse Moi"
celui-la et l'articulation se marque encore par la presence du vent.
D'une fa~on interessante, la Parque et le vent echangent leur surface; la
Parque s'etait dite "herissee", le vent deviendra "velu":

Front limpide et par ondes ravis,

Si loin que le vent vague et velu les acheve
Longs brins legers qu'au large un voi mele et souleve
Dites ... (v. 104-108)
Un peu plus loin se propose une image de la limite et de la de marca-
tion. D'un câte, nous avons la Parque qui dit:

Et moi, vive, debout,

Dure, et de mon neant secretement armee (v. 148-49)
mais par raport a cette armure de la posession de soi se presente un
symetrique:

Oh! Combien peut grandir dans ma nuit curieuse

De mon coeur separe le part mysterieuse (v. 151-52)
La ligne de partage pas se a la surface du corps:
Et la narine jointe au vent de l'oranger
le ne rends plus au jour qu'un regard etranger. (v. 150-51)
Nous avons la un effet de fixite de la surface: la narine n'est pas active,
ce vent est une simple presence de l'arâme de l'oranger et ce regard
voit sans voir. Cet etat de neutralisation cessera bientât.
le pense, abandonnant a la brise les heures ... (v. 162)
Cet abandon est le contraire de ce qui se produira dans le Cimetiere
Marin lorsque le personnage qui boit "la naissance du vent" retourne a
"l'ere successive". (str. 22)
Car cette presence au vent fait aussi ressortir le contraste entre
deux temporalites. Une temporalite de la pure sUrface: la course de
l'Harmonieuse Moi dont toute la "blonde argile" nageait vers des "sens
lumineux" et l'autre, la temporalite de la profondeur et de la division ou
un temps desoriente fait place a des intensites et a des distances jusqu'a
l'arret complet d"'Achille immobile a grands pas".
172 J. Y. DUPRAZ

Ce complexe spatio-temporel se marque dans le passage de la J.P.

sur la honte et le souvenir qui utilisera la metaphore du vent:
Souvenir, o bucher, dont le vent d'or m'affronte
Souffle au masque la pourpre impregnant le retus
D'etre en moi-meme en flammes une autre que je tus ... (v. 190-94)
Et nous aurons enfin l'etre contre le vent" de l'envoi final ou la
Parque se detachant de ses preoccupations anterieures va effectuer une
precaire synthese:
Sur toute ma peau mord, dit-elle l'âpre eveil et elle ajoute:
Alors malgre moi-meme, ilIe faut, â Soleil,
Que j'adore mon coeur ou tu te viens connaître,
Doux et puissant retour du delice de naître, .
Feu vers qui se souleve une vierge de sang
Sous les especes d'or d'un sein reconnaissant! (v. 507-512)
Cette harmonie se marque dans le coeur et a la surface irriguee de
sang. Mais il faut aussi remarquer le "malgre moi-meme". C'est-a-dire
que le probleme qui est au centre du poeme, ce qui lui donne sa tension
a l'extreme, n'est toujours pas resolu. Le poeme, comme la Parque,
restent vivants de leur inachevement meme, de cette instabilite per-
manente.

PRESENCE LIEE ET SON CONTRAIRE: LA PRESENCE "RELIEE"

(MORT, JOUISSANCE, ESPRIT "RELIE", PRESENCE "POREUSE")

Ce qui aurait pu resoudre le probleme se trouve a l'horizon de certains

moments et de certains etats avec lesquels on peut encore explorer ce
qu'implique la presence du vent.
Ce qui aurait pu trancher detinitivement la question, bien sur, est la
mort; lorsque la Parque l'appelle, elle lui dit:
0, Mort, respire enfin cette esc1ave de roi
Appelle-moi, delie! ... (v. 219-220)
Cette derniere expres sion est importante car un des termes qui est
affecte au vent, aussi bien que le terme de "simple", est le terme de
"lien" qui se trouvait deja dans Au Platane; la parque, evoquant le
printemps et ses arbres dans le vent, decrira l'espace comme "accable
de liens"; de meme qu'elle nous avait dit:
 PAUL VALERY 173

Je scintille liee ace ciel inconnu (v. 16)

de meme on peut trouver dans le poeme La Ceinture 7
Cette ceinture vagabonde
Fait dans le souffle aerien
Fremir le supreme lien
De mon silence avec le monde.
Ce qui peut briser ce lien qui est a la fois reunion et ligne de
demarcation, moteur de la parole poetique, est aussi la pure jouissance,
cette jouissance qui, ala fin du Cimetiere Marin, est attribuee ala mer:

Hydre absolue, ivre de ta chair bleue

Qui te remords l'etincelante queue
Dans un tumulte au silence pareil. (23 str.)
0

Cette mer qui est deliee - absolue -, a la fois chair et manteau,

profondeur et surface "trouee de mille et mille ido les du soleil", et qui
rassemble egalement la forme et l'informe, le silence et le tumulte.
La mort et la jouissance sont des images de l'union, des points de
fuite et de resolution; dans un des Cahiers Valery dit: "La mort est
l'union de l'âme et du corps dont la conscience, l'eveil et la souffrance
sont desunion." 8
On peut voir cette alliance de la mort et de la jouissance s'inscrire
dans les arbres du printemps de la Jeune Parque; les arbres sous l'effet
du vent se transforment en animaux exalte mais on nous parle de:

La flottante foret de qui les rudes troncs

Portent pieusement aleur fantasques fronts
Aux dechirants departs des archipels superbes
Un fleuve tendre, o mort, et cache sous les herbes? (v. 239-44)
Dans le domaine de l'esprit, Valery, apropos de Descartes parlait de
ce que serait un "esprit entierement relie" qui serait aussi "infiniment
libre"; il ajoute dans un de ses Cahiers lorsqu'il revient sur ce passage:
"Ce qui conduirait a concevoir cet "esprit" comme une energie qui
tend a l'instant, qui tend a remplacer le temps par je ne sais quelle
lumiere ou presence telle que - rien n'y echappant, rien ne peut suivre
apreS".9
Nous verrons encore ce jeu du lie et du delie dans le passage de la
Jeune Parque ou, face au vent, celle-ci semble se preparer au suicide:
174 J. Y. DUPRAZ

... Et le vent semble au travers d'un linceul

Ourdir de bruits marins une confuse trame
Melange de la lame en ruine, et de rame ...
Tant de hoquets longtemps, et de râles heurtes,
Brises, repris au large ... et tous les sorts jetes
Eperdument divers roulant l'oubi vorace. (v. 316-322)
Nous avons des images de l'apres (linceul, ruine) et des images de
l'avant (hoquets, râles), mais il est impossible de dire ou de penser le
moment de l'union: l'instant morteI. Cet instant impensable se marque
dans le texte par un blanc que la Parque saute pour se jeter dans
"l'apres": "Helas! de mes pieds nus qui trouvera la trace ..." et apres un
autre blanc, elle reviendra au temps de "l'avant": "Terre trouble et
melee a l'algue, porte-moi!". Ce que nous avons dans ce vent-Ia est
l'image meme d'un lien qui s'est detache et qui se propose en un
mouvement de retour (tous ces bruits sont "repris au large").
A la fin du Cimetiere Marin, le penseur dira:

Le vent se leve! ... Il faut tenter de vi vre

L'air immense ouvre et referme mon livre
Envolez-vous pages tout eblouies ... (str. 24)
On voit qu'il essaie de se placer au lieu meme du lien puisqu'il se donne
l'illusion de s'associer au vent, une place impossible entre l'interieur et
l'exterieur, la conscience et la fusion avec les eIements.
De cette illusion nous pourrons rapprocher la presence "poreuse",
autant celle de la Jeune Parque que celle du Cimetiere. L"'Harmonieuse
Moi" dit:
Poreuse a l'eternel qui me semblait m'enclore
Je m'offrais dans mon fruit de velours qu'il devore. (v. 113-14)
Dans le Cimetiere s'adressant a sa "grande âme" le protagoniste s'ecrie:

Chanterez-vous quand serez vaporeuse?

La sainte impatience meurt aussi. (str. 17)
On peut voir qu'il est oppose a la Parque puisqu'il vient de refuser
l'immoralite; mais tous deux partagent la meme illusion: celle de
pouvoir passer tout entier du cote d'une limite. La Parque a les yeux
fermes mais l'edat du soleill'emplit d'une "nuit de tresor", de "tenebres
d'or", elle croit pouvoir se fondre - peut-etre en jouişsance? - dans
 PAUL VALERY 175

une irrealite pulpeuse. Le personnage du Cimetiere croit pouvoir se

distancer parfaitement de la "grande âme", ceHe pour qui "l'onde et
1'0r" sont des "mensonges" destines aux "yeux de chair" ceHe qui refuse,
dans sa "sainte impatience" de pâtir dans sa presence au monde. Il croit
pouvoir se tenir face au pur reel qui lui fera dire aux morts qu'ils sont
bien morts, qu'ils sont des crânes vides. Mais tous deux ne pourront se
maintenir dans cette position; l'axe de la presence/absence changera
encore tout autant que celui de la profondeur et de la surface. Ils seront
rappeles li la presence que donne le vent, la presence liee, ceHe qui
delimite a chaque instant un dedans-dehors.
Dans leur surgissement ces images nous dessinent tout un univers de
l'etre possible, de ses desirs et de ses aspirations. Ce qui est illusion
pour une certaine marche du sens du poeme demeure une reali te pour
l'univers imaginaire du poeme qui conserve en creux tous ces moments
qui se composent dans une sorte de present de l'etre poetique. Celui-ci
se constitue petit apetit une topologie et nous apparaît do te de ses
dimensions de ses aspects et de ses modes. Il se dote aussi avec le vent
d'une certaine fa<;on d'apprehender le temps li l'aide du vent puisque
celui-ci est, a la fois un lien et un decalage, lui qui eveille et qui reveille.
On peut replacer au coeur du desir d'oeuvre le vent qui, dans ce cas,
nous permettra de sauter par-des sus la periode mythique du "grand
silence". Bien avant les poemes de la maturite nous trouvons en 1897
une note:
"Hier soir, en chemise, avant d'entrer au lit, je suis reste devant tous mes livres
cherchant celui qu'il me fallait. Celui qui m'aurait plu, et je le faisais - du moins j'en
avais le golit."

Une fleche renvoie li la page suivante et indique avec la mention

"exactement":
"La mer, pour moi, impression des narines et des poumons, espace, dressement des
vagues, boisson aerienne- Grandeur, Odeur immense et herissee, arbre odorant et gros,
aere, air herisse ..." 10
A l'origine du desir d'oeuvre il y avait le vent et une respiration.

University of Western Ontario

NOTES

I Editions Jean Touzot, Paris, 1982, pp. 41 et sqq.

176 J. Y. DUPRAZ

2 Charmes Oeuvres de Paul Valery, Volume 1 "Bibliotheque de la Pleiade" (Paris:

Gallimard 1958),pp.113-116.
3 "Cette place dans l'ombre etait tranquille et n6tre!"
"L'autre aimait ce cypres, se dit le coeur de l'autre"
"Et d'ici nous golÎtions le souffle de la mer" idem, p. 127.
4 ldem, pp.1221-2.
5 ldem, pp. 197-202.
6 Cahiers de Valery (edition du C.N.R.S. 1957-61) XVII, 792.

7 Oeuvres 1, p. 121.

8 Cahier V, 348.
9 Cahier X, 608. Le texte dont il etait question dans Fragment d'un Descartes est le

suivant: "Tout profite a la conscience organisee. Tout le detache, tout la ramene; elle ne
se refuse rien. Plus elle absorbe ou subit de relations, plus elle se combien a elle-meme,
et plus elle se degage et se delie. Un esprit entierement refie serait bien, vers cette
limite, un esprit infiniment fibre, puisque la liberte n'est en somme que l'usage du
possible, et que l'essence de l'esprit est de coincider avec son tout." Oeuvres 1, pp.
790-91.
!O Cahierlpp.214-15.
 LOIS OPPENHEIM

"LE CIEL EST MORT": MALLARME AND

A METAPHYSICS OF (IM)POSSIBILITY

Toute âme est une melodie,

qu'il s'agit de renouer;
et pour cela, sont la
fhîte ou la viole de chacun.

It is not my intention, in the words which follow, to explicate, extricate,

Of otherwise exterminate that obscurity which both torments the reader
of Mallarme and allows him to delight in the pleasures of the poet's
highly self-conscious, if not intellectually narcissistic, literary output.
That Mallarme's cryptic verse resists the sort of clarification that
practitioners of any of the formalist critical methods have sought to
impose on it is proof not merely of the insufficiencies of a positivist
reduction of poetic sensibility, but of the presence within it of the
primary requisites of all poetic expres sion - those dimensions of
intentionality, temporality, and constitutionality 1 - that that sensibility
renders operative by its creative function. My purpose, rather, is to
explore, however briefly, the metaphysical problem continually posed
by Mallarme - that of the ontological limitations of the self, and the
aesthetic limitations implicated therein - and this within the framework
of the interrelation of these dimensions which deny the poem the
self-sufficiency of objective phenomena and determine its status of a
verbal irruption of sound and meaning onto a horizon of truth and
possibility.
The unfortunate misappropriation of Mallarme's well-known theory
of symbolic suggestion or allusion has, for many years, allowed the
critic al analysis of his work to be reduced to a sort of child's play with
translation: This word is alI too often thought to translate that thought
into a linguistic reality. Ciel, along with ennui, reve, and impuissance, is
a case in point. It is generallY held that "suggestion," as understood by
Mallarme, is the appropriation of fixed meaning, as an attribute of the
objective, whether material or immaterial, to the non-nominative -
177
A - T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 177-188.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
178 LOIS OPPENHEIM

hence metaphoric or imagistic - use of language. It is in this context

that le ciel (heaven ar sky) is said ta translate into a poetic image the
poet's obsession with an absolute, ar inaccessible Ideal, and the inacces-
sibility of this Ideal is said ta be the source of the poet's at times
overwhelming despair. His coveting of the absolute, his impotence in
attaining it, are the commonplaces of Mallarmeen criticism: How often
we read of the poet of "L'Azur" being, in the words of critic Alan
Boase, "haunted by the celestial blue of the Ideal,"2 ar of the "suppres-
sion of the real," 3 as Charles Mauron describes it, in "what never could
be attained: the blue, the Ideal, the Glory of setting suns, the ice
constellations."4 Clase examination of those poems in which le ciel and,
what might be called its "kinsword," l'azur, figure most prominently,
however, reveals that that connotative meaning of le ciel ta which
Mallarmeen criticism has traditionally subscribed - and it most often
extends ta an aesthetic absolute ar idealization of pure art - carries
within it a fundamental paradox suggestive of the need for a less
reductive, and what appears to be an infinitely more valid reading of
Mallarme.
Ta be sure, le ciel does evoke, if not signify, the immaterial
presencing of that Idea, akin ta Plato's, ta which the whole notion of
absolutism in Mallarme refers, the absence, in other words, which is the
primary feature of the non-objectifiable expres sion of the abject, the
"effect" as opposed to the "thing" that Mallarme sought ta paint. And,
as such, Mallarme's aerial images of heaven and sky, like their material
ar corporal (though evanescent) counterparts (the faun of "L'Apres-
Midi d'un Faune," the frozen swan of "Le vierge, le vivace et le bel
aujourd'hui," the weeping, dreaming seraphim of "L'Apparition") are
indeed privileged visions of a transcendental reality. Symbols also of
that unheard, though nevertheless remembered, music which, as the
source for Mallarme of every creative impulse, is inaudible by any
sensorial organ of the body, these celestial images are both archetypes
of Platonic wisdom and heavenly models of internal song. As Mallarme
wrote both in prose,
le dis: une fleur! et, hors de l'oubli ou ma voix relegue aucun contour, en tant que
quelque chose d'autre que les calices sus, musicalement se leve, idee meme et suave,
l'absente de tous bouquets.
[1 say: a flower! and, out of the forgetfulness where my voice banishes any contour,
inasmuch as it is something other than known calyxes, musically arises, an idea itself
and fragrant, the one absent from ali bouquets.] 5
 MALLARME 179

and in verse,
... 1'Azur triomphe, et je l'entends qui chante
Dans les cloches. Mon âme, il se fait voix pour plus
Nous faire peur avec sa victoire mechante,
Et du metal vivant sort en bleus angelus!
[... The Azure triumphs, and 1 hear it singing in the
bells. My soul, it has become a voice to frighten us
the more with its spiteful victory, and comes forth
from the living metal in blue angeluses.] 6
Considering, however, the unifying context of the visee intentionelle
of the poet, the temporalizing process of the individual poems and the
worldification or world constitution (mondaneisation or mondification)
achieved by Mallarme's extraordinarily creative imagination, it must be
said as well that le ciel - and the multitude of connotations to which
this word, in Mallarme's process of poetic alchemy, gives rise - is, first
and foremost, an affirmation of the potential of words to generate,
beyond the actualization or particularization of meaning, the possibility
for signification, that which constitutes perhaps the most unique aspect
of Mallarme's poetic credo.
To that extent that critics of Mallarme persist in fixing the meaning
of key words in his work, persist in determining or particularizing
signification by the reductive unification of word with meaning, they
ignore not only the fundamental philosophy of art of this poet, but the
very concept of the absolute in general, and that of the absolute of
poetic or artistic creation in particular, that which, in the case of the
word ciel is, as every student of Mallarme knows, the prescribed
meaning in question. (And herein lies that paradox inherent within the
connotative meaning of le ciel referred to earlier.) This is to say that the
particularization of le ciel as an absolute is both inimical to the
signification of the absolute itself as that which, in and of itself, is
unqualifiable and inimical to the notion of that particular absolute of
pure art which Mallarme knew only too well defies articulation: To this,
"Un Coup de Des jamais n'abolira le hasard" pays vital testimony.
If a refusal to submit 10 this kind of reading of Mallarme is based on
the conviction that words such as le ciel and l'azur, when used
imagistically or metaphorically, are inherently untranslatable into any
structure of meaning, any conceptualization existing outside of the
180 LOIS OPPENHEIM

poem itself, outside of the reading of the poem which re-constitutes the
poetic uni verse - and it appears incontestable that such conceptualiza-
tion must reside outside of those qualities which render the work
aesthetic, since by definition conception is limited, precise, and contrary
to the dispersion of meaning that occurs from within the textuality of a
text - if a refusal to accept such readings is founded on the ingruence
of aesthetic experience and cognitive thinking, it is because such
readings negate in its entirety the element of potentiality for meaning to
which Mallarme was deeply committed. To that extent that the impos-
sible always implies the absence of the possible, then that which is
particularized, or conceptualized in fixed meaning is virtually an
impossibility insofar as actualization is the destruction of potential.
In the words of philosopher Guy Debrock, "... pour autant que
l'impossible est toujours l'absence du possible, ce qui est actualise est
eminemment impossible, et cela dans le sens precis que l'actualise est le
lieu ou le possible vient mourir." [... inasmuch as the impossible is
always the absence of the possible, what is actualized is eminent1y
impossible, and this is the precise sense in which the actualized is the
place where the possible comes to die.] 7 It is in this perspective that the
conceptualization of Mallarme's aerial imagery as the absolute, the
idealization of aesthetic purity, of "la poesie pure," may be understood
as the very denial or negation of its most fundamental aesthetic
property for, as Debrock further explains, "C'est ... dans l'impossibilite
l'actualization du possible que reside le secret de l'experience esthe-
tique." [It is ... in the impossibility of the actualization of the possible
that the secret of aesthetic experience residesV As the ultimate denial
of the linguistic or verbal generation of the possible as the possible is
among the most dominant themes in Mallarme, an analysis of the
relation of le ciel to the sterility or impuissance which constitutes this
denial in so much of Mallarme's work should shed light on the source
of this notion of potential for meaning and allow for an appreciation of
its illumination by the aerial imagery which is, in turn, illuminated by it.

II

In 1862, Mallarme composed "Renouveau," a sonnet in which l'im-

puissance, the sterility which was to reappear so often not only in his
other poems of "les annees baudelariennes," but throughout his writing,
is described as something which "s'etire en un long bâi11ement"
 MALLARME 181

[stretches itself in a long yawn].9 Similarly, in "L'Azur," Mallarme

implores "Cher Ennui" [dear tedium] to "boucher d'une main jamais
las se/ Les grands trous bleus que font mechamment les oiseaux" [to
stop up with untiring hands the great blue holes wickedly made by the
birds].l0 In many of his poems, not the least splendid among them
"Les Fenetres," "Brise Marine," and "Le vierge, le vivace et le bel
aujourd'hui," all three powerful linguistic transmutations of impotence,
the poet languishes either in comparable expressions of the Void or in
reveries of flight, the liberation from ennui and impuissance through
transcendent displacements in space - both leitmotifs which reflect
something more than the empty mind of the uninspired. To continue to
view as mere symbolic re-presentations of a barren mind these meta-
phoric and imagistic plays with the "Muse moderne de l'Impuissance"
who forbids "depuis longtemps le tresor familier des rhythmes" is not
only to falsify the textual matter, the verbal presencing of a not entirely
emblematic substance, but to ignore both the poet's philosophy of
poetry as potentiality and the ontological experience of impuissance,
the reliving through recurrent images the crisis and resolution of the
poet's impotence before the supremacy of chance or the throw of the
dice.
Indeed, for those familiar with the poem "L'Azur," that Mallarme
declares le ciel dead in the sixth stanza may be proof enough that that
open-ended heaven, that beyond to which the poet aspires, is as much
the potential for meaning, the possibility for signification - which is
precisely what his impotence negates in the image of the dead sky - as
it is the concretization or actualization of meaning in the written word,
the distillation in "la poesie pure" of the Ideal, the absolute, the
Flaubertian-perfect projection of the Idea in the poetic utterance. That
meaning for Mallarme is not intrinsic to the word, not one with the
image, but rather a continuous possibility, allows the poem to function
as a mode of transcendence, a means of passing from ['Ici-bas to
l'au-dela, from, as Joseph Chiari points out in his excellent study,
Symbolisme from Poe to Mallarme, "nothingness to being - the
nothingness of the white page to the poem." Il And in this context, the
real significance of Mallarme's often quoted claim, "On ne fait pas de la
poesie avec des idees, mais avec des mots." [Poetry is not made of
ideas, but of words.] becomes cIear.
Our interest in Mallarme's aerial imagery as the at once symbolic
expres sion and ontological experiencing or unfolding of potentiality is
182 LOIS OPPENHEIM

twofold: On the one hand, the verbal imaging of the notion of potential
versus actual meaning is self-reflective, or auto-allegorical, and in this
regard we learn from it of Mallarm6's use of language. On the other, it
teaches us something of the essence or nature of the possible itself.
Leaving commentary on the latter to another, more appropriate time,
1 take as a point of departure for a consideration of the former
Mallarm6's sonnet "Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui":
Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
Va-t-il nous dechirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublie que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!
Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se delivre
Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ou vivre
Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligee a l'oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol ou le plumage est pris.
Fantome qu'a ce lieu son pur eclat assigne,
Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mepris
Que vet parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

[The virginal, living, and beautiful day, will it tear for us with a blow of its drunken wing
this hard, forgotten lake haunted beneath the frost by the transparent glacier of flights
that have not flown!
A swan of long ago remembers that it is he, magnificent but freeing himse1f without
hope, for not having sung the country to live in, when the tedium of sterile winter
shone.
His whole neck will shake off this white agony inflicted by space on the bird that de-
nies it, but not the horror of the earth where his feathers are caught.
A phantom condemned to this place by his pure brilliance, he stays motionless in
the cold dream of scorn worn in his useless exile by the Swan.] I 2

The fate of the Swan has been attributed by many to that of the poet,
the artist in general, or Mallarme in particular. His defeat has often
been likened to that of the poet impotent to relinquish the reality of this
wor1d for that transcendental reality, that Ideal or absolute to which the
"vols qui n'ont pas fui" would lead. Others ascribe to the images of
sterility the impotence of the poet to relinquish not this wor1d, but the
 MALLARME 183

other, and see in this sonnet the psychological danger of self-

abandonment and irreversible regres sion. In a recent paper devoted to
the study of this poem in accordance with the phenomenological
method of critic Jacques Garelli, however, Serge Meitinger offers a
third interpretation. Meitinger contends that the Swan is at once the
sign, emblematic of itself, of the verbal referent that it is (for it is, in
essence, nothing more or less than a word) and a Dasein revealed in its
attempt to assume the "spaciosite" or "spatial illusion" of its etre-au-
monde in its entirety:
Toutefois ... , nous pourrions y lire l'epopee du Signe tentant de se jeter dans le
monde rcel malgrc une malcdiction antcrieure portant sur sa nature linguistique et bien
que le "rcel" soit ressenti comme hostile et glace; le Signe se trouve contraint, par
impuissance ontique, il la victoire paradoxale de son "pur celat" ontologique qui lui
interdit de jamais se prendre pour un ctant comme les autres ...
[Nevertheless ... , we can read here the epic of the Sign attempting to throw itself
into the real world despite a previous curse aimed at its linguistic nature and the
experience of the "real" as hostile and frozen; the Sign finds itself restricted, by ontic
impotence, to the paradoxical victory of its ontologic al "pure splendor" which forbids it
to ever take itself for an entity like the others ....J 13

In this perspective, the Swan's impotence no longer appears as the

mere reflection of the aesthetically barren mind of its creator, but as (1)
the projected failure of any referent (hence "un cygne" in the second
quatrain as opposed to "le Cygne" in the last) incapable, by the very
nature of its being as a purely linguistic phenomenon, of being taken for
"a real thing" and (2) the disclosure of that nihilation, that process of
neantisation by which the word, as a sign, comes to mean in the
"victory of its ontological 'pure splendor'" - and this in the constitution
of a new world situated at the junction of temporality and ontological
projection. (A similar case, 1 might add, could be made for the constel-
lation of "Un Coup de Des.")
That the Swan moves from "Un cygne" to "le Cygne" (with a capital
C) indicates that the cygne/sign has become cygne/swan, but the
motionless phantom swan of "pure brillance," the failed or impotent
Dasein returned to its self-reflective or referential, and thus "unreal",
domain. That the sonnet moves from "le bel aujourd'hui" in the first
quatrain, to "Un cygne d'autrefois" in the second and to "Tout son col
secouera" (with its use of the future ten se) in the first tercet, moreover,
indicates that the temporal metamorphosis that is the dramatic adven-
ture of the Swan is also the emergence - in Time - of a network of
184 LOIS OPPENHEIM

meanings which spring from within the sign, meanings which continu-
ously negate to create - thereby remaining potential and not actual,
fluid and not fixed - and transcend both the referent's failed objective
status, its attempt to exist as an en-soi, and its inherent visee inten-
tionelle.
This interpretation may be substantiated by a letter written by
Mallarme to his friend Henri Cazalis dated the 14th of May, 1867, in
which the poet describes the beginning of the crisis of sterility that
plagued him at that time. Here Mallarme writes of what we may caB an
egoless perception of "pure Conception," the ability of thought to think
itself, the negation, in other words, of the self as being-in-the-world, that
which is the negation of alI creative potential:

le viens de passer une annee effrayante: ma Pensee s'est pensee, et est arrivee a une
Conception pure. Tout ce que, par contracoup, mon etre a souffert, pendant cette
longue agonie, est inenarrable, mais, heureusement, je suis parfaitement mort, et la
region la plus impure ou mon Esprit puisse s'aventurer est l'Eternite ....

[1 have just passed a terrifying year: my thought has thought itself and reached a pure
Conception. Everything that my being has suffered, in consequence, du ring this long
agony is impossible ta recount, but, fortunately, 1 am quite dead, and Eternity is the
most impure region where my Spirit may venture ....114

It is in this context that the function of the Swan's impuissance in the

sonnet is revealed not simply as a reflection of some vague phenomenon
which we call the poet's sterility, but as the projection of an acute prise
de conscience, a profoundly emotional awareness of the ontologic al
separation of the self from the self, that ex-static displacement of the
ego which is characteristic of the visee imagina le of the poet, as it is of
alI human experience.
It is precisely in those terms used by Mallarme to describe the
source of his crisis that Garelli has written of the supposed "madness"
of Antonin Artaud 15 who, in his literary attempt to "sortir du corps" in
order to "investir l'espace" - Garelli's terminology which serves the
substitution of an ontological for a representational arder of interpreta-
tion - is considered by the critic as being HOt possessed of a madness,
but di:-,possessed of an individuality, ontologicaBy deprived of an
authenticity or specificity in his relation to the wor1d at those moments
when he turned to violence. Rather than occurringin moments of
madness, Artaud's violence is viewed by Garelli as occurring precisely
in those moments when "le 'moi' ne peut se penser et en cela se
 MALLARME 185

ressaisir sur ses 'bords'" [the "ego" can no longer think itself, and in so
doing, regain it self over its edges].16
Just as for Garelli, Artaud's so-called "madness" is but the inability
of the ego to think itself and thereby regain its coherence or autonomy
over the chaos of a world of objective en-soi's, Mallarme views the
source of his crisis, his impotence, as the egoless perception of "pure
Conception," the act in which his Pensee s'est pensee. And it is in light
of this pure cognition that the impotence of the Swan in "Le vierge, le
vivace et le bel aujourd'hui" appears auto-allegorical, self-reflective in
the sense of a mise en abyme, and thus to be one and the same with
that impotence of the Sign unable, by an effort to reduce itself to an
etant or entity like any other, to disassociate itself from the ontological
foundation of its expression.
Is this understanding of impotence as the referent's aborted negation
of ontology not substantiated by the poet's statement, cited above, "je
suis parfaitement mort."? Is it not further supported by the image,
referred to earlier, of le Ciel mort (the dead sky) which ironically
reveals in the "impure region" of Eternity, the sterility, and hence
immobility ("Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mepris ... "), of the Swan
as a "Fantome," as a dead reflection of the living, an allegory or fiction
of itself as a Sign, that which is both the negation of potentiality and the
relegation to the past of those possibles which, never fully realized, are
fixed in the idealization of "pure Conception"?
Like the Swan, like the Sign, the poet is a tortured victim of sterility,
but this impuissanee is not only the generation of nothing that is
aesthetic non-productivity. It is equally that generation of nothing
which, paradoxically, is the very condition of aesthetic production: It is
that Hegelian neantisation which negates the object (swan) in its limited
individuality, preserves the object in its essential being (Swan/phantom),
and elevates the object to a higher reality (that of its "pur eclat" or pure
ontological brillance). It is that process by which the word, impotent in
its effort to be "real," regains, as a fietion, its innermost truth: "Au
contraire d'une fonction de numeraire facile et representatif, comme le
traite d'abord la foule," wrote Mallarme, "le dire, avant tout, reve et
chant, retrouve chez le Poete, par necessite constitutive d'un art
consacre aux fictions, sa virtualite" [Contrary to an easy and representa-
tive numerical type function, as the crowd first treats it, saying, above
alI else, dream and song, finds in the Poet, by necessity constitutive of
an art consecrated to fictions, its virtuality.]17 Thus the impotence of
186 LOIS OPPENHEIM

this sonnet is, in short, also part and parcel of the poetic Aufhebung,
the negative means by which la fleur becomes "l'absente de tous
bouquets."
Condemned to fiction, the art born of this reversal continues to be
nothing for, in the unreality of its existence as a system of referents, as a
negation of the nothingness integral to creation, it risks at any moment
- and this is the real source of the poet's despair - abolition by the
finite duration of the poem: exposure as a (temporally dependent)
fiction. It is in this perspective that le del is revealed not as the
symbolic realization of an Ideal, but as the image or vision of a place, a
space in which is suspended the positive value of a poem which
eternally remains - despite the integration of that nothingness which it
transcends - subject to its own dissolution, to its own phantasmic
rendering. This is a space whose presence, like that of the Cygne/Sign,
is self-reflective inasmuch as it discloses the spatial unfolding of the
poetic process. It is also the space in which the temporal duration that
is the positive or constitutional value of the poem is enacted - in the
drama of "l'espace infligee al'oiseau qui le nie" - and thus it is a space
In which the poem retains its potential to mean and the poet his
potential to be.
Lack of time prevents in-depth consideration of the function of le
del in other of Mallarm6's poems. It might be mentioned in passing,
however, that throughout his work, aerial images repeatedly refuse
reduction to a conceptualized infinite, synonomous in many a critical
analysis of Mallarm6's work with the notion of absolute. While alI of
Mallarm6's poems are syntactically and paradigmatically operative only
in their entirety, the images in "Soupir" (Sigh) of the soul rising "vers de
ciel errant de ton oeil angelique" [towards the wandering sky of your
angelic eye] 18 - in which the celestial movement is incorporated into
the finite space of a bodily organ - and in "Don du Poeme" (Gift of the
Poem) of "la solitude bleue et sterile" [the blue, sterile solitude] and
"l'air du vierge azur" [the air of the blue, virginal sky]19 - strongly
suggestive of that neantisation of which we spoke with regard to the
phantom swan in "Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui" - all evoke
the symbiosis of the individual with nature, the union of the exterior
world with the personal, that defies comprehension of le del as a
symbol of something apprehensible from outside the poem. Conceived
from within, on the order of a Bergsonian "intellectual sympathy"20 that
which, as an intuitive seizing of an ontological experience of language,
is contrary to any analytical posture of the reader, the aerial imagery is
 MALLARME 187

apprehended - in alI its ephemerality, evanescence and mobility - as

being at one with, and thereby inseparable, in the manner of a symbol,
from, its disseminated and multiple meanings.
It has been the purpose of this paper to explore various dimensions
of the relation between the image of le ciel and the theme of impuis-
sance in the effort to demonstrate the insufficiency of any interpretation
of Mallarme which regards le ciel (and related images) solely as the
symbolic actualization or imagistic conceptualization of the Ideal.
Characteristic of such monocular interpretation is an analytic frame of
reference that yields only relative knowledge of MallarmC's poetry as
opposed to the more perfect knowledge attainable, as proved by
Bergson and others, through the direct experiencing or intuition of the
reality in question. To that extent that MallarmC's poetry is profoundly
auto-allegorical, and his imagery that of the mise en abyme, any good
reading of Mallarme will imply a primary intuitive grasp of poetic
function, which the infinite process of self-reflection displays, and only
a secondary inquiry into the substitution of sign and symbol for that
reality which must forever remain, by the very nature of symbolic
representation, imperfectly expressed.
In conclusion, therefore, two significant results of an ontological
reading of Mallarme, in which key words such as ciel, reve, impuis-
sance, ennui and others are investigated on the order of their potential
for meaning as opposed to that of the actualization of meaning, may be
cited. First, with respect to MallarmC's aesthetic valorization of imper-
sonality, his conscious or stated effort to abstract from the poem an
evidence of authorial presence, anonymity is revealed in an ontological
hermeneutic as the unfolding of language on the horizon of its most
primary or fundamental re/ation to Being. Second, the temporal
unfolding of the poem is revealed simultaneously as the retentive,
attentive, and protentive orientations of the visee intentionelle of the
poet 21 which, in incorporating experience of the world as known while
constituting - in possibility - the establishment of a new world, unites
with the visee intentionelle of the reader to realize, in the poetic
Aufhebung, the elevation of language to art. Aud it is on this order of
critical inquiry alone that art in general, and MallarmC's in particular,
may be shown to be the silent expression of that Idea in which is
encompassed both music and the word. 22

Bard College
188 LOIS OPPENHEIM

NOTES

I I am indebted for this understanding of poetic function to the phenomenological

analyses of Jacques Garelli as demonstrated, above ali, in Le Recel et la Dispersion

(Paris: Gallimard, 1978) and Le Temps des Signes (Paris: Klincksieck, 1983).
2 Alan Boase, The Poetry of France, voI. III (London: Methuen, 1967), p. xliv.
J Charles Mauron, Introduction ta the Psychoanalysis of Mallarme, transl. Archibald
Henderson, JL & Will L. McLendon (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1963), p. 84.
4 Ibid., p. 97.

5 Mallarme, ed. & transl. Anthony Hartley (Baltimore: Penguin, 1965), p. xxviii. Prose
translation quotations from Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui, © Anthony
Hartley, 1965, pp. 85- -86. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
6 Ibid., p. 28.

7 Guy Debrock, "Au Commencement Etait l'lmage," p. 11. Paper presented at Cerisy-
la-Salle, France, June, 1985. (Translated by us.)
R Ibid.,p.l0.
9 Mallarme, op. cit., p. 21.

10 Ibid., p. 27.

II Joseph Chiari, Symbolisme from Poe ta Mallarme (New York: Gordian Press,

1970).
12 Mallarme, op. cit., pp. 85-86.
13 Serge Meitinger, "Temps, Monde et Dramaturgie Dans I'Espace-Temps d'un Poeme:
Le vierge, le vivace . .. de Mallarme," p. Il. Paper presented at Cerisy-la-Salle, France,
June, 1985. Forthcoming publication in the proceedings of the colloquium: The Origin
ofthe Work of Art.
14 Mallarme, op. cit., pp. xvi-xvii.
15 Jacques Garelli, Artaud el la Question du Lieu (Paris: Jose Corti, 1982).
16 Ibid., p. 20. Transl. by Lois Oppenheim in "Ontology and Madness," Sub-Stance,

VoI. XII, No. 2, 1983, p. 24.

17 Stephane Mallarme, Oeuvres Comptetes (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 368.
IR Mallarme, op. cit., p. 30.
19 Ibid., p. 33.

20 Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, transl. T. E. Hulme (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merill, 1949), p. 23.
21 As set forth by Jacques Garelli in the works cited above.
22 For a particularly insightful discussion of the relation, for Mallarme, between poetry
and music, see Joseph Chiari, op. cit., pp. 127-135.
 PART FOUR

THE ELEMENTAL FIRE AND THE POETIC

TRANSFIGURATION OF REALITY
 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

MAN AGAINST FIRE: ALFRED DOBLIN'S UTOPIAN

NOVEL MOUNTAINS, OCEANS AND GIANTS

Alfred Di::iblin (1878-1957), physician for nervous diseases in Berlin

from 1911 to 1933, novelist, and philosopher, is virtually unknown
today by the Anglo-American reading public. His novel Alexanderplatz
Berlin (1929) which appeared in English for the first time in 1931 and
was subsequently republished in New York in 1960, established his
reputation in Germany. The only other work of Dăblin's ever to be
translated into English is his novel Men without Mercy (1937). Being of
Jewish descent, he had to flee Germany in 1933. After several years of
exile in Switzerland and France, he finally sought refuge in the United
States (California) after the German invasion of France in 1940. In
1946, he returned to Germany but was unable to regain a position in
the literary world of post-war Germany. It seemed that the German
public had forgotten him. Dăblin, one of the greatest German writers of
fiction in the first half of this century, was indeed almost completely
ignored by critics and scholars after the end of the Second World War.
A new edition of his selected works (albeit not a critical edition) began
to appear in 1960, and the first comprehensive scholarly books on his
literary oeuvre were published in the mid-sixties, some twenty years
after his return to Germany.
The works which Di::iblin wrote between 1908 and 1925 are some-
times associated by critics with the literary movement of German
Expressionism, and there are, in fact, some thematic and stylistic
features which he shares with other expressionists. One of those works
is his utopian noveI Berge Meere und Giganten (Mountains Oceans and
Giants), published in 1924, in which the element of fire functions both
as an integral part of the plot and as a symbol of man's problematic
relations with nature. The theme: man versus nature also implies the
theme: man and technology. Although always fascinated by big powerful
machines to the point of near-ecstasy, Dăblin could not avoid the
question: where will technology lead mankind? Furthermore: where will
the struggle for power take the nations which had just experienced the
terrors of the First World War? Dăblin's noveI gives a captivating

191
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 191-20l.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
192 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

imaginary account of the future tracing human history well into the
twenty-seventh century. The manifold actions comprising the complex
plot of the novel take place all over the planet earth, and entire cities,
even nations, large masses of human beings, are its protagonists.
Mountains Oceans and Giants is indeed an epic of global scope. Onlya
few characters, mostly politic al leaders, are given some individual
sta ture, a more detailed personality profile, which makes them stand
out among the anonymous crowds.
The second chapter of the novel tells about riots in the early 24th
century pressing for the abolition of alI advanced technoIogy. Many
humans are convinced that machines will bring about the downfall of
mankind. Yet not all humans stand behind this anti-technologicai
rebellion. Some, quite to the contrary, show a quasi-religious adoration
of the same machines their opponents condemn. A number of fanatic
machine-Iovers even go as far as plunging themselves - as a token of
their supreme infatuation with technoIogy - into the wheels of giant
machines which instantly crush and devour them. It is at this point and
in the spirit of this apotheosis of technological progress that a woman, a
self-appointed political prophetess, gains a measure of prominence in
the Western countries. She carries a banner which shows "not on1y
stars, the sun, the moon ... but a fire flowing out of the planets which
had been cut open like fruit and which were spewing flames." 1 The
same woman incites her fellow humans with these words: "Not the sun,
the earth or the stars. We! We! We! We humans! Break open the stars.
Break open the sun! We can do it!"2 The ruthless and aimless exploita-
tion of nature by technological means which the later chapters of the
novel describe, is already foreshadowed in those provocative words. It
remains unclear at this point why human beings are supposed to engage
in such coIossal destruction in order to capture the planetary fire and
what fire means to them.
Towards the middle of the twenty-fifth century scepticism vis-a-vis
the development of technology once again results in an anti-technology
movement, this time a new philosophy, the so-called "water- and storm
theory," a call for radical collectivism and at the same time an utterly
pessimistic theory of history: "They pointed out the fluctuation, the
well-known aimiess up and down of world history. The cause of this
back-and-forth, this rise and falI of great empires, of blossoming
capitals lies in the good intentions of individuals as well as nations to
achieve something on their own. The masses however are split up into
 MAN AGAINST FIRE 193

diverse strata and parties right down to the individual person. Certain
things come into the possession of one group, others become the
property of another. There is lack of communication, fighting - and
this is the origin of the final collapse. Scaling down the masses to one
level has to be the most urgent priority ... The individual animal is
impossible. The only thing that was left was the vegetative crowd. And
this meant: the end of history; but also: security for the human race." 3
Since man, regardless of his technological advances, will always fight
wars, the only way to end history, a meaningless succes sion of acts of
agression and destruction, seems to be a reduction of man's rational
and instinctual activities to the level of plant life.
In the twenty-seventh century, finally, life has reached a level of
technical perfection which produces a general mood of apathy and
boredom.4 In order to break out of the paralyzing spell of an uneventful
existence, the leaders of the Western nations provoke a war against the
peoples of Asia. This total war, fought for no apparent political reason,
culminates in the spectacle of two huge (artificially ignited) walls of fire
which move towards each other, one from West to East, the other in
the opposite direction: "Hurled up amidst thunderclaps, the earth was
smoking, shooting bloody flames up into the skies. It devoured itself,
foaming with rage, dissolving into whirling and puffing fumes. Sheaves
of columnlike flames sprang out of the ground which had been laid
bare. Behind the smoking debris showering down upon the land, they
shot up green and steep, as tall as giants. Flame next to flame like the
teeth of a harrow." 5 Fire here represents nature manipulated and
abused for the purpose of destruction. Yet the forces set free turn
against man. Nature may lend itself to man's particular objectives.
Nevertheless, it remains the supreme unassailable power to which man
will always be subjected regardless of his scientific and technological
triumphs.
The attentive reader will not fail to notice that - in spite of the
atrocities and the destruction caused by the war - Dăblin's description
conveys a certain aesthetic fascination with the phenomenon of those
walls of fire. Even as an annihilating force fire remains an awe-inspiring
phenomenon. Their destructive potential notwithstanding, Dăblin cele-
brates the interaction of the elements. The following hymnlike presenta-
tion of the sun as a source of fire and light is written in the same
panegyrical spirit and will be quoted in full because it reveals the blend
of awe and enthusiasm S0 typical of the author's attitude toward nature:
194 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

The home of the unruly fire, the hellish incinerator of everything that creeps, flies, or
hops: the sun tracing its path across the icy ether, far, far away. The white wallowing sea
of flames. Through the cloud banks carne the glimmering light radiating warmth. The
roaring white flaming chaos stood still in the distance like a burning city, a fire that
never burnt itself out. The earth was circling the chaos. The boiling sun ejected an
immense volume of radiating gas that penetrated space to far-away stars only to be
sucked up again by its source. A jingling spooky apparition, the sun stood in the dark
which shrank from it while besieging it with ali its might. Metals were burning inside it,
metallic clouds dropped back down upon it, zinc, iron, nickel, cobalt which were
contained in the rocks of the solidified earth. Barium, sodium. Their dross fell back
upon the sun. Cones of fire whirled up, carved out of the flaming ocean, glowing
hydrogen pushed out into the vibrating ether. It flew up seventy thousand miles. There
was no splash when those protuberances carne down again crashing into the sun's body,
melting, lighting up. Like a wheat field under the rain, standing still while receiving the
impact of the water, the flames gave way, then straightened up again. Those primeval
forces produced no thunder. No landslide, no hurricane can make a sound like the
living sun tracing its path. The raging sea of flames, forever bubbling and simmering,
exploding, giving forth sheaves of fire - any planet approaching it would turn to ashes
or evaporate - its sounds swallowed up any other distant or near noise. This hissing,
chirping of cicadas, amplified a million times. This chirping sound produced by the
metals. Intermittently the never-ending smacking and drum-roII extending ali across the
glowing masses of matter and lurking behind alI the roaring. The bright, purple-red
strontium, magnesium, crushed underneath the weighty mountain ranges of the earth,
they ali turned into fiery vapors. Thus blossomed and flamed the elements helium,
manganese, calcium, so bright and white that they made any other color fade away. No
eyes can behold their radiant splendor. The fiery gases of the flaming ocean chirping in
a hundred different voices. A primeval world hurling its torches into the ether. 6

This grandiose dramatic visualization of solar activities presents the

element of fire as a power beyond the reach of man. Doblin's rhap-
sodical account successfully blends imagination and scientific knowl-
edge. Even though nature seems to be utterly unapproachable, man
does attempt to harness the elements. According to Doblin's futuristic
story, scientists find a method to crack open the volcanoes of Iceland
and to extract their glowing lava (in a manner reminiscent of the images
on the woman's banner mentioned above). They then devise a way to
preserve and store this volcanic energy by gathering it into huge veiis of
tourmaline which convert fire into electricity. Those veils "which were
supposed to absorb the radiant fire of the volcanoes," 7 are transported
by ships to Greenland where they are placed on the glaciers in order to
melt their ice.
AlI this can only be achieved at the cost of hundreds and thousands
of human lives. First of aH, a number of natives living close to the
 MAN AGAINST FIRE 195

volcanoes destined for destruction are ruthlessly exterminated and,

later on, the tasks of destroying the volcanoes and using their fire to
melt the Greenland glaciers mean the sacrifice of many more lives. The
moral doubts raised by the endeavor are furthermore compounded
when one realizes that there is no practical or humanitarian purpose
behind the Icelandic and Greenland adventures. 8 The large-scale
melting project yields no economic or other benefit for anyone. Man
simply wishes to demonstrate and enjoy his technological might by
creating the illusion of forcing nature into submission. In this context,
the narrator compares man to the mythical Hercules and the volcanoes
to a many-headed dragon: "The Hercules who was approaching, did not
come in order to asphyxiate the dragon. He had no intentions of
tackling it tirelessly. Neither did he wish to cut off head after head, set
his foot on it, rip open its body and scatter its bowels alI across the
land. Rather, he wanted to provoke the monster so that it would open
mouth after mouth and lift up neck after neck. It was supposed to show
its fury to him. He wanted it to demonstrate its strength. He dragged it
behind himself on a leash." 9
While the technicians and scientists attempt to subjugate and
humiliate nature, the fire, captured in the tourmaline veils, begins to
affect them in a way which has the opposite effect: the elements
re-impose their authority over man. The members of the expedition
who travel with those veils find themselves infected by an inexplicable
voluptuous desire, a force that compels them to love and embrace
fellow human beings and objects alike. Mysteriously, the ships carrying
the veils attract all kinds of marine plant life and fish. Even the wood of
which the vessels are built begins to sproilt shoots, and the metal parts
of the ships show chemical reactions. The element of fire captured in
those veils reveals itself as the primary life force, as the love- and
growth-inducing creative quintessence from which alI organic and
inorganic life springs.1t thus takes on a spiritual or psychical quality.
Dăblin's concept of nature during the time of the writing of this
novel was one that emphasized the mysterious quality in natural
phenomena: "1 experienced nature as a mystery. Physics on the other
hand was something superficial to me, something in need of interpreta-
tion." 10 That also means that nature is animated, that is has a spiritual
dimension. "There are in nature only entities which have a soul," writes
Dăblin. "N ature in terms of chemistry and physics is always such that it
has a psychic dimension." 11 It is especially the element of fire in which
196 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

the creative "soul" of nature manifests itself: "... the great anonymous
power, a grandiose purpose - for power is spiritual according to the
signs by which it communicates with us - a primeval significance
expressing itself in light, darkness, ice, fire, stars, presents itself in alI
its aspects as a world that reaches out into space in a meaningful
fashion." 12 The erotic spelI cast by the fire, the innermost generative
force in nature, makes the members of the expedition hasten their
arrival at the shores of Iceland: "At the same time a longing was
aroused in them: Let's go there! Longing for the fire! The fire of
Iceland! The terrible beloved land! ... The fire rising higher and higher.
To the island they wanted to go. Their desire was beyond measure:
What is life. aur fire. aur fire." 13 The voIcanic fire is equated with the
creative essence of nature: life.
But a different emotion, a new awareness of being nature's victim
rather than its conqueror, gradualIy attaches itself to the spelI of love,
especialIy after this mission of gigantic proportions appears to have
been successfully accomplished. This new feeling finds its first expres-
sion in the word "frightful" (schreck/ich) which is now frequent1y
associated with the tourmaline veils or the fire of the voIcanoes of
Iceland: "The great fire was burning alI over Greenland. They shuddered
at it; the sacred fire which they had lifted out of the voIcanic island. It
was the fire of the volcanoes which had been able to delight them until
they had become almost totally transformed. The mountains with their
flames had rumbled. Frightful was the blaze which they breathed alI
over Green1and - but this delight. This delight. They found themselves
entang1ed in dreams and desires." 14 The new feeling signals an aware-
ness of guilt called forth by the destructive forces un1eashed du ring the
mission.
The melting of the Greenland glaciers has unexpected consequences.
The fire absorbed in the tourmaline veils is more than just a heat-
producing element. Since it is also the power that makes everything live,
it brings back to life various kinds of pre-ice age animals and monsters
which threaten the civilized world. Not only are long-extinct prehistoric
living beings resurrected in their original shape, but the life-giving fire
creates never before seen monstrosities by joining together random
pieces of skeletons of antediluvian animals: "Those were not the living
creatures earth had birthed at an earlier time. Around the uncovered
limbs, skulls, bones, teeth, pieces of tails, disks, around fern leaves,
pistils, parts of roots, the waters gathered the chemicals. Often
 MAN AGAINST FIRE 197

creatures grew out of them which resembled those of ancient times.

Often strange animals spun around and around, sucked the earth,
danced. There were skulls whose jawbones had turned into legs. The
mouth had developed into intestines, the eye-sockets had become
mouths. Living earth gathered around a spine, then solidified. It was as
if a network of veins branched out from the remnants of bones into alI
directions, as though they were nuclei of crystals about to crystallize in
an over-saturated solution." 15
Although man is able to interfere with the processes of nature by
means of science and technology, he remains himself part of nature
which - as a power and a "mind" in its own right - proves to be vastly
superior to alI his endeavors. Man has helped to create the monsters.
But he seems to be unable to cope with the menace they represent for
mankind. N ot only do those giant reptiles and dinosaurs aUack the
Western nations, their blood contains an excessive measure of a
growth-inducing ingredient. Any part of a human body touched by that
blood will deveJop huge and rampant excrescences and be thereby
transformed into grotesque deformations.
Yet, undaunted by alI this horror, man believes he can once more
outwit nature by manipulating its own inner mechanism. Using the
blood of the monsters as well as pieces of the tourmaline veiIs,
scientists succeed in creating huge towering giants by blending rocks,
water, and trees with animals and human beings. Thus the creative
force of fire aids man in fashioning the ultimate warrior who will defend
the humans against the Greenland monsters: "One had heaped up rocks
and tree trunks and made them fuse. As they began to grow under the
impact of the radiant fire and before the growing and burning stopped,
one poured upon them layers of bodies of animaIs, plants, herbs like
one pours coal upon a glowing fire in a stove. Soon they had realized
that the radiation of the veiIs acted as a tremendous, hardly controllable
stimulus to the living substance. The growth-inducing power which is
normally limited in individual specimens of rocks, plants, or animals
and which makes the bodies of animals mature, then age and die, was
endlessly and massively emanating Jike a cataract from the crystal cells
of the tourmaline veils .... The terribly destructive impact of this force
became apparent in the experiments: it destroyed every self-contained
physiological system, made parts grow excessively while annihilating the
organism." 16
Shaken by the sight of those semi-human "towers," one of the leaders
198 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

of the Western world, Ten Keir, once again considers the idea of
reducing mankind to an unconscious state, eliminating the conscious
ego and thereby rescinding and abolishing history in favor of a tranquil,
never-changing vegetative life. Under the impact of disaster wrought by
technological progress, man, in a gesture of utter despair, declares his
readiness to give up his position in the hierarchy of creatures. New
human beings have to be bred who "would continue their external way
of life without change for centuries, even millenia. . .. The burden of
individual existence, the terrible reality of the individual soul must be
lifted from their shoulders." 17
Not aH the leaders, however, take such a pessimistic view with regard
to the fate of the human race. Kylin, the leader of the expedition to
Iceland, proposes a more self-confident and optimistic stance. Even
though he feels deeply guilty about the Greenland adventure and its
consequences, he insists that man must remain an active, conscious, and
independent partner of nature. Irresponsible experimentation with and
ruthless exploitation of natural forces is just as wrong as passive
capitulation vis-a-vis nature's superior power. Therefore, he expresses
his own cautiously optimistic message in a twofold symbolism in which
fire represents the mysterious essence of nature. First: man must face
the fire, not shrink before its might: "The great fire. Don't be afraid.
Don't avoid it. Don't avoid the volcanoes and Greenland either.
Otherwise they become prison guards waiting you in order to chain
you. Don't be afraid. You must face the fire until you feel no more
fear." 18 This means that technology should not be abandoned but
guided by higher humanitarian objectives. Up to this point, mankind
had suffered from a conspicuous absence of such objectives. Behind aH
the magnificent plans to achieve technological goals, there had stood
nothing but a naked will to power. Second: the new spirit of remem-
brance of past failures coupled with the willingness to continue man's
"dialogue" with nature is symbolized by a sign showing a mountain with
a flame flaring up above its top. The former members of the Iceland
expedition burn this sign into their lower arms.
The towering giants become an even greater menace to mankind
than the monsters resurrected on the de-iced soil of Greenland. They
destroy an entire city causing fires which burn houses and people. The
fires in turn char the giants but are unable to kill them since they wear
pieces of the tourmaline veils. Fire as the creative life force acts as a
shield against fire as a destructive element. Once the giants choose to
 MAN AGAINST FIRE 199

take off and destroy the protective veil, they instantly dis integrate
among a burst of green flames. 19
The giants, absurd conglomerates forged out of heterogeneous
materials by fire, nature's creative essence, symbolize a critical juncture
in man's history, in the struggle between technology and nature. In
them, the human dimension is forced to regress to a primitive pre-
conscious stage of evolution. 20 Nevertheless, there is still too much
animal instinct and human consciousness in them to see them as models
of the vegetative, a-historic creatures into which some desperate
humans want to transform mankind. Since they are the result of man's
misguided interference with natural processes, nature finally eliminates
them. ParadoxicaHy, this is accomplished with the help of a human
being. the young woman Venaska. Venaska, however, is more than a
human being. She has super-human (but not: supernatural) powers
which elevate her to a mythical stature. Everything she touches
responds with love as she in turn personifies the loving, peaceful,
harmonious side of nature. It is the love of this fairy-like woman -
once more associated with fire - that releases the remaining giants
from their unnatural existence by reducing them to hiUs, forests, or
lakes and ridding them of their animal and human components. What
human misuse of nature's love-inspiring pyro-electric forces created is
now re-transformed into its original natural state by the very same
power of love embodied in Venaska. Venaska literally sacrifices her
"glowing" heart which infuses the bodies of the giants bringing about
their reduction to vegetative and inorganic substances: "Through the
darkness lit up by lightning a bleeding, dripping thing approached.
Venaska's heart with pulsating veins, glowing, slowly and quietly
arrived. Then it sank into the giant's mountainous body. For seconds, it
transmitted a stream of warmth through him." 21
Venaska symbolizes the mystical reconciliation between man and
nature - or should we rather say: between the disunited factions
within nature, since man and his scientific/technological endeavors
remain, after aH, a part of the aU-encompassing realm of nature. In the
end, the novel presents a mankind which has learned a new humble
appreciation, what is more: a new religious veneration of natural forces,
particularly of fire, the principal life-giving element: "There was a new
feeling of empathy with such phenomena as thunderstorms, rain, the
soil, the movements of the sun and the planets. One drew nearer to
tender plants, to animals. The fire of the Icelandic expedition was
200 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

displayed at various locations as a memento of the catastrophe. But

already people were happily praying and holding their breath in front
of the flickering light, in front of the great powers which had rescued
them all and which now breathed new life into them. At all times one
was surrounded by mysterious forces; the popularity of animism
rose."22
Dăblin's novel may be read as an early example of science fiction.
However, it achieves more than the entertainment of the reader by
means of conjuring up a utopian world of imaginary events far beyond
the scope of our present state of knowledge and technological skill. It
contains a phiIosophy of history as well as a philosophy of nature and a
message about human hubris. Human history as the story of man's
struggle with nature gains powerful expres sion in the symbol of fire.
The meaning of this symbolism is threefold. Fire appears as a force of
destruction in wartime. At the same time, it is also a potential source of
warmth and energy. The expeditions to Iceland and Greenland faiI to
link this potential to a humane purpose, since the mission never rises
above the mere desire to make nature subservient to man. Finally, fire
symbolizes the creative and productive life force of nature which may
be misused but is ultimately beyond man's control.B Therefore, man
must adopt a different attitude towards nature, one that - while not
relinquishing the advances of science and technology - will acknowl-
edge the mystery of nature and recognize it as an anonymous power
which includes man in its realm, yet always remains superior to him. It
is the paradox of human destiny that man seems to be able to alter the
course of nature while never being in the position of emancipating
himself from nature's tutelage. Dăblin calls for a new synthesis of
activism 24 and humble devotion. It man can acquire the spirit of a
renewed "pact" with nature, based on an awareness of the potential of
his own rational faculties as well as on humility, the roads of history will
remain open.

Boston College

NOTES

I Alfred Doblin, Berge Meere und Giganten (Olten/Freiburg i.Br.: Walter), p. S8f. AII
translations from Doblin's work in this paper are mine.
2 lbid., p. 59.
 MAN AGAINST FIRE 201

3 Ibid., p. 65.
4 Technical perfection is achieved in this case at the cost of morally questionable
experiments, especially in the case of the manufacturing of synthetic food involving the
maiming and killing of human beings in the manner later practiced by National
Socialism.
5 Dăblin: Berge Meere und Giganten, op. cit., p. 90.
6 Ibid., p. 298.
7 Ibid., p. 332.
8 Compare: Ardon Denlinger, Alfred Dăblins 'Berge Meere und Giganten; (Amster-
dam: Griiner, 1977), p. 13.
Y Dăblin: Berge Meere und Giganten, op. cit., p. 325.

10 Alfred Dăblin, Aufsătze zur Literatur (Olten/Freiburg i. Br.: Walter, 1963), p. 348.

11 Alfred Dăblin, Das Ich liber der Natur (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1927), p. 243.
lung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1972), p. 236.
13 Dăblin: Berge Meere und Giganten, op. cit., p. 372 f.
14 Ibid., p. 380.
15 Ibid., p. 396.
16 Jbid., p. 417.
17 Jbid., p. 437.
18 Jbid., p. 449.
IY Jbid., p. 495.

2U Compare: Volker Klotz, "Alfred Dăblins 'Berge Meere und Giganten,'" in: Dăblin:
Berge Meere und Giganten, loc. cit., p. 521.
21 Dăblin: Berge Meere und Giganten, op. cit., p. 502.
22 Jbid., p. 506.
23 Compare: Denlinger, op. cit., p. 4.
24 Dăblin states that his original conception of the novel he intended to emphasize
human activism against the mere "events" (Geschehen) in nature over which man has
no control. During the process of writing, however, this conception changed, giving
more weight to nature as the all-encompassing supreme power.
 L. M. FINDLA Y

"THIS HARD, GEMLIKE FLAME": WALTER PATER

AND THE AESTHETIC ACCOMMODA TION OF FIRE

Fire can be probative, as St. Paul warns in I Corinthians, 3.13: "And the
fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." Fire can be punitive,
purgative, and beatific, as in the triune aesthetic of Dante's Commedia,
an elemental configuration accounted for brilliantly by Jacques le Goff
in his study, The Birth of Purgatory. And the time of fire is as important
to its agency as its place is. Fire can be antecedent, actual, imminent,
deferred but inevitable, or an elusive ignis fatuus, or alI of these by
turns, dictating the stern declensions of the flesh and spirit, moving
inside and outside, marking the metamorphoses of pas sion through
physical activity back to desire, as in Yeats's early poem, "The Song of
Wandering Aengus":

1 went out to the hazeI wood

Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread.
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out
1 dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
1 went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
Aud faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilIy lands,
1 will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
203
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXlIl, 203-213.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
204 L. M. FINDLAY

And walk among long dappled grass

And pluck tiU time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun. (The Wind Among the Reeds 1899)

Rather than pursue the poetic discipline and resonance of this poem, its
versions of consumption and consummation, 1 will rely on it to fire the
reader's imagination in preparation for what ensues.
Yeats was writing at the end of a century of notable tributes to the
power of fire and of persistent linking of fire's qualities and capacities
to those of imagination, as in Shelley's memorable image of the "fading
coal" in his Defence of Poetry, and Schelling's earlier creation of a
distinctive idiom and philosophical agenda in The System of Transcen-
dental Idealism:
Art is paramount to the philosopher, precisely because it opens to him, as it were, the
holy of holies, where burns in eternal and original unity, as if in a single flame, that
which in nature and history is rent asunder, and in life and action, no less than in
thought, must forever fly apart.'

As the nineteenth century proceeds, we encounter more and more often

the notion that aesthetic experience offers privileged access, indeed
perhaps the only or the most reliable access, to the immutable; and in
the course of this aestheticizing of the sanctum sanctorum in the
interests of one or another religion of beauty, Schelling's gleichsam, the
residual anxiety encoded in his analogies, gives way to a more con-
fidently metaphorical articulation of the identity of art and fire. This
process of secularization is enthralling but extremely complicated, and
has been recounted very differently by different commentators, even
when they share an interest in, for example, the contribution of
chemistry to aesthetic and philosophical understanding. For Gaston
Bachelard, thus, over the past two centuries, "science has almost
completely neglected the truly primordial problem that the phenomena
of fire pose for the untutored mind. In the course of time the chapters
on fire in chemistry textbooks have become shorter and shorter. There
are, indeed, a good many modern books on chemistry in which it is
impossible to find any mention of flame or fire. Fire is no longer a
reality for science."2 For Michel Serres, in contrast, in his essay on "The
Origin of Language: Biology, Information Theory, and Thermody-
namics," the two laws of thermodynamics are everywhere in the
 "THIS HARD GEMLlKE FLAME" 205

discourse of the past two centuries, promoting scrutiny of and reflection

on the conservation of energy, insisting on our confrontation with the
tendency towards death, loc ating the apprehension and interpretation
of structures in that flow of irreversible time where utterance does
battle with entropy.3
In this paper I intend to concentrate on one of the most intriguing
contributors to the poetics of fire, Walter Horatio Pater, first an
undergraduate and then a philosophy don at Oxford during the second
half of the nineteenth century.4 I hope to be able to enhance our
understanding of his best known works and to account more plau-
sibly than heretofore for Pater's influence on his contemporaries and
successors as the result of his being an accomplished exponent of
phenomenological aesthetics. To be sure, Pater is stiH known to many
as a pathologically private bachelor who cultivated style in his life and
in his works at the expense of vitality and substance. However, there is
much more to Pater than the suave interrogation of safe aesthetic
subjects, the euphonious musing of a reclusive soul among the master-
pieces. In fact, there is an openness and challenge in his work, a
determined bracketing of traditional definition and prejudicial genera-
lity in the interests of the renaissance of wonder via a radical, inventive,
and eventful encounter with phenomena whose being-in-the-world, like
his and like our own, need not be apprehended in the garb of custom,
swathed and draped in qualities attributed to masterworks with as much
authority and permanence as particular cultures can muster.
Pater is never deferential to any individual's apen;u, nor to collective
determinations of aesthetic value, unless they ac cord with his own
actual experience of the work in question. His foregrounding of the
elements of earth, air, fire, and water in both creative and critical
discourse - to make use for a moment of a distinction he was at pains
to collapse, or at least to make provocatively problematic - puts
interpretation permanent1y and properly at risk, opening the doors of
the house of beauty to the always pertinent though occasionally unruly
incursions of the world. This aesthetic accommodation of the elements
permits Pater to celebrate the work of art's distinctiveness, the charm
and menace of its otherness, and this accommodation is the principal
sourte of his persuasiveness and influence, as also of his dismay at
wilfully reductive misrepresentation of his discourse. There is a place
for the past in Pater's discourse, certainly - though ironically appro-
priated for the most part through a series of shrewd subversions of
206 L. M. FINDLAY

traditional authority and received opinion - but the emphasis is

primarily on the current engagement of the critic with aesthetic object,
and this in conformity not with some smug atomism or naive empiricism
but with what we have come to know as the intentionality of mental
acts. Like Husserl, Pater is a "perpetual beginner" whose commence-
ments benefit tradition as weB as innovation, enriching our appreciation
of Leonardo as well as discovering Botticelli for modern art historians.
Pater avoids what Paul de Man caUs "ontological bad faith," 5 not
through a rhetoric of repression or allegiance to the aporetic, aleatory
text, but rather through the creation of a discourse which strives
constantIy to be, in the most challenging senses of the term, elementa/.
Before providing a fuller context for my opening remarks and
impending analysis, something more ought to be said about Pater's
sense of context, the bearing this has on his philosophical relativism in
general and his theory and practice of interpretation in particular. It is
not without significance that Pater's first book, Studies in the History of
the Renaissance (1873), has as its focus a historical period whose
chronological limits were far from clear and fixed, its cultural legacy
often misascribed, misunderstood, wrongly valued. The historical con-
text for Pater's collection of essays on early French romance, Pico
delIa Mirandola, Botticelli, du BelIay, and so forth, was itself unstable,
especialIy when the term "Renaissance" was stretched to include in the
volume's final essay a study of the eighteenth-century art historian, J.
J. Winckelmann. The cautiously provisional tone of Studies in the
History of the Renaissance was firmed up somewhat in the second
edition of the work four years later as The Renaissance: Studies in Art
and Poetry (1877), by which time, thanks mainly to his own and
Burckhardt's efforts,6 informed and circumspect discussion of the
Renaissance period was already far more in evidence than ever before.
This more secure sense of historical context was attested to at the same
time as Pater suppressed the most virulently relativistic portion of the
work, its by now notorious "Conclusion." A less troubled contextu-
alism, feeling itself to be more securely grounded, authorizes re-consti-
tution of a series of exploratory essays as something significantly closer
to Geistesgeschichte. The "Conclusion" was restored with modifications
in the third edition of the work in 1888, with the foIlowing note:

This brief "Conclusion" was omitted in the second edition of this book, as 1 conceived it
might possibly mis-lead some of the young men into whose hands it might faU. On the
 "THIS HARD GEMLlKE FLAME" 207

whole, 1 have thought it best to reprint it here, with some slight changes which bring it
closer to my original meaning. 1 have dealt more fully in Marius the Epicurean with the
thoughts suggested by it.1

Reviewers of the first edition of the Renaissance had taken Pater to

task for what they took to be the hedonistic relativism of his "Conclu-
sion." Pater does not charge them with misreading his work, but instead
admits very cautiously to the "possibility" of its "misleading some of
those young men": not those who actively seek it out on a more or less
informed basis, but those "into whose hands it might faH" more or less
accidentally. He admits that the "Conclusion" did not turn out exactly
as he intended, but he goes on to imply that such a precise outcome is
always an impossibility anyway: revision has brought the text only
"closer" to his "original meaning," and not into tull identity with it. Even
(or perhaps especially) after the lapse of more than fifteen years his
writing stiH does not express his intended meaning completely, but two
things have changed in the interim that promise a more understanding
response than was previously the case. First, Marius the Epicurean has
turnished in its two highly reflective volumes a sustained fictional gloss
on the Renaissance. 8 And second, there seems to be Httle danger that
"some young men" of the new generation might possibly continue to
read Pater awry.
Changes in the conception and use of context are evident also in
Pater's quotations, which are for him, on the formal level, emulative of
the cultured self-display of Matthew Arnold's criticism and, more
generally, of the deliberately allusive fabric of nineteenth-century dis-
course. Pater continuously invites us to consider how linguistic context
creates meaning by varying the intertextual relations - sometimes
deferential, sometimes ironic - between his work and its most explicitly
admitted sources. On occasion his quotations may strike us as appro-
priate confirmations of details of biography or attribution from primary
sources, compliance with the documentary imperative by a scrupulous
historian. In such instances Pater subordinates his text to its source,
endeavouring to minimize the distortion caused by lifting a phrase or
passage from an earlier text. However, the idea of historical narrative as
a sheaf of unequivocal primary sources linked by a discreet, self-
effacing narrator is inadequate both to Pater's sense of the current
possibilities in this area and to his understanding of transparency as a
highly desirable quality of language and temperament, as expressed in
208 L. M. FINDLAY

his early essay, "Diaphaneite," read to friends in Oxford in July of 1864

but not published until after his death (in Miscellaneous Studies, 1907).
The other order of quotation in Pater, that which is unexpected, ironic,
imaginatively challenging, suggests poetic play rather than sober tran-
scription, helping to convey his sense of generic as well as historical in-
stability, the discomfitting notion that his discourse defines itself
relationally, differentially, rather than essentially, and does so by virtue
of its location somewhere between the discipline of Rankean history
and the impressionism of its Carlylean counterpart: between, in other
words, the goals of verification and vivification.
Moreover, in the particular sub-class of historical discourse known
as art history, stiH very much in its infancy as a professional intellectual
endeavor at this time, the lines of demarcation were particularly clear:
for every self-subordinating temperament of a Kugler, Patmore, or Rio,
there was the sovereign sensibility of a Gautier, Baudelaire, or Ruskin. 9
Pater has to go back beyond this polarization of historical discourse to
Winckelmann to ground his style and interpretative strategies in a way
that effectively accommodates observation and celebration, in a replay
of the Renaissance wherein the recounting of Winckelmann's discovery
of his vocation is simultaneously the defining of Pater's own:
Soon afterwards we find Winckelmann in the library at Nothenitz. Thence he made
many visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden. He became acquainted with
many artists, above ali with Oeser, Goethe's future friend and master, who, uniting a
high culture with the practical knowledge of art, was fitted to minister to Winckelmann's
cuiture. And now a new channel of communication with the Greek life was opened for
him. Hitherto he had handled the words only of Greek poetry, stirred indeed and
roused by them, yet divining beyond the words some unexpressed pulsation of sensuous
life. Suddenly he is in contact with that life, stil! fervent in the relics of plastic art. Filled
as our cui ture is with the classical spirit, we can hardly imagine how deeply the human
mind was moved, when, at the Renaissance, in the midst of a frozen world, the buried
fire of ancient art rose up from under the soi!. Winckelmann here reproduces for us the
earlier sentiment of the Renaissance. On a sudden the imagination feels itself free. How
facile and direct, it seems to say, is this Jife of the senses and the understanding, when
once we have apprehended it! Here, surely, is that more liberal mode of life we have
been seeking for so long, so near to us ali the while. How mistaken and roundabout
have been our efforts to reach it by mystic passion, and monastic reverie; how they
have deflowered the flesh; how Jittle have they really emancipated usI Hermione melts
from her stony posture, and the lost proportions of life right themselves. Here, then, in
vivid realization, we see the native tendency of Winckelmann to escape from abstract
theory to intuition, to the experience of sight and touch. Lessing, in the Laocoon, has
theorised finely on the relation of poetry to sculpture; and philosophy may give us
theoretical reasons why not poetry but sculpture should be the most sincere and exact
 "THlS HARD GEMLIKE FLAME" 209

expression of the Greek ideal. By a happy, unperplexed dexterity, Winckelmann solves

the question in the concrete. It is what Goethe caUs his Gewahrwerden der griechischen
Kunst, hisjinding of Greek art. (p. 153, first emphasis mine)

Among the most noteworthy features of this passage for the purposes
of this paper is the insistence on an appreciation of the visual arts as
well as poetry. This somewhat un-English emphasis encouraged Pater
to explore a wider range of connections between the elemental and the
aesthetic, placing a greater strain on his capacity to record precisely his
impressions of different works in different media, but also nourishing in
him a greater awareness of the processes and possibilities of corre-
spondence and configuration. Winckelmann's quasi-religious commun-
ion and epiphany is presented as at once a dramatic simplification of
his sensory operations and an exhilarating augmentation of his powers
of expression: it is sufficiently unusual to require from Pater language
that fuses the ideas of potency, simplicity, and rarity, and he meets this
challenge in the metaphor of geothermal transformation of the solid
earth into liquid fire, a transmutation immediately repeated in the
aesthetic domain by means of the allusion to The Winter's Tale, where
the apparent1y solid statue of Hermione comes alive before our very
eyes, melting into warmth and movement through the agency of human
love after the emotional ice-age ushered in by Leontes' jealousy, the
apparent abandoning of his infant daughter, and her mother's apparent
death. Pater does not dispute the usefulness of theoretical reflection or
the distinctiveness and varying fortunes of the sister arts; he is, how-
ever, convinced that access to alI of that, and more, can be gained
through a devout1y direct apprehension of the concrete. In a further
tribute to the special quality of sculpture, Pater joins the inspired
handling of mallet and chisel and the skillful handling by the observer
of his own reactions in the deceptively unpretentious image of "happy,
unperplexed dexterity." The implications of manipulation and touch
continue to affirm the importance of the concrete as the primary
orientation of intentionality.
Let me turn now to the notorious "Conclusion" to the Renaissance, a
short passage of prose that is glossed and re-written in Marius the
Epicurean but also in the essays collected in Appreciations (1889),
Plato and Platonism (1893), Greek Studies (1895), and Miscellaneous
Studies (1907),10 In the "Conclusion" we find a distillation in five
paragraphs of beliefs that have proved very influential in the last
210 L. M. FINDLA Y

hundred years. However, Pater's language deconstructs itself in order to

expose the hazards as well as the attractions of closure and summation.
The "Conclusion" is so entitled in part to balance the "Preface" to this
collection of eight essays. (The ninth essay, "The School of Giorgione,"
was not included until the third edition of 1888.) A collection whose
very form simultaneously invokes and calls in question its own unity,
challenges us to intuit a wholeness and integrity in the Renaissance but
will not permit such an intuition to forin the basis for some transcen-
dental or transhistorical move. 1mmediately after the heading, "Conclu-
sion," there is a quotation from Heraclitus, as recorded in Plato's
Cratylus 402a: :rcavra XW(}et xat ovoev ţlevat: "AlI things give way;
nothing remaineth." 11 By means of an apt quotation, linguistically and
typographically differentiated from its context but conceptually at one
with it, Pater probiematizes while he practices conclusion. Pater's
concluding epigraph is a fragment whose provenance is called in
question in a Socratic dialogue which explores the relation between
naming and reality before Ieaving us with Hermogenes inclining to the
Heraclitean view while Socrates stiH awaits enlightenment, firm only in
his resolve neither to "put himself and his soul under the control of
names," nor to "trust in names and their makers to the point of
affirming that he knows anything." (440C) Socrates introduces the
Heraclitean dictum thus: "1 seem to have a vision of Heraclitus saying
some words of wisdom as old as the reign of Cronus and Rhea, which
Homer said too." (402a, Loeb translation) Anamnesia brings to mind,
though not without difficulty, resonant words of mysterious origin
which endure in order to affirm that nothing endures unchanged, in-
cluding themselves. They disclose the illusion of closure and conclusion.
Pater's language, too, defines itself as succumbing to but failing to
satisfy hermeneutic desire. The making and unmaking of the sense of
things and of things as sense, the work required as a result of being-in-
the-world, are memorably expressed:
To regard ali things and principles of things as inconstant modes ar fashions has more
and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is
without - aur physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the
moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What
is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to
which science gives their names? But those elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate
fibres, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote
from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them - the passage of the blood, the
waste and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain
 "THIS HARD GEMLlKE FLAME" 211

under every ray of light and sound - processes which science reduces to simpler and
more elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of
these forces extends beyond us: it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of
us those elements are broadcast, driven in many currents; and birth and gesture and
death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand
resultant combinations. That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of
ours, under which we group them - a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass
out beyond it.
This at least of flame-like aur fife has, thal it is but the concurrence, renewed from
moment to moment, of forces parting sooner Of later on their ways.
Or, if we begin with the inward world of thought and feeling, the whirlpool is still
more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There it is no longer the gradual
darkening of the eye, the gradual fad ing of colour from the wall - movements of the
shoreside, where the water flows down indeed, though in apparent rest - but the race
of the mid-stream, a drift of momentary acts of sight and passion and thought. ... And
if we continue to dwell in thought on this world, not of objects in the solidity with
which language invests them, but of impressions, unstable, flickering, inconsistent,
which burn and are extinguished with our consciousness of them, it contracts still
further: the whole scope of observation is dwarfed into the narrow chamber of the
individual mind .... Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some
tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or
intellectual excitement is irresistably real and attractive to us, - for that moment only.
Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself is the end. A counted number of pulses
only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them ali that is to
be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to
point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite
in their purest energy?
Ta burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in
lile . ... Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us,
and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is,
on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.... What we have to do is to
be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never
acquiescing in a facile Ofthodoxy of Comte, Of of Hegel, or of our own. (pp. 194-97,
myemphasis)

It is now time far my own "conclusion," offered under the sign of

erasure and within the trope of irony where tropology and entropy
converge. In a volume that gives us fire in many different guises as a
persistent, ubiquitous metamorphic principle, perhaps the most telling
formulation oecurs in the passage quoted at length - a passage written
and published first in 1868 in another context,12 and now pressed into
the service of the desire for closure. Pater accommodates without
eapitulating entirely to fire in his aesthetic aceommodation of this
essential element. When he rescues definition from the caveats and
prohibitions of his own "Preface," he enlists the farm and force of
212 L. M. FINDLA Y

axiom on behalf of an internalization of burning: ''To burn always with

this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." The
notion so dear to bourgeois Victorian England, "success in life," what
Ruskin aptly termed the "Goddess of getting on," is re-constituted as
successiveness, an inescapable, elemental temporality fully and poeti-
cally acknowledged by the infinitive form, "To burn," but checked to a
degree by the hypostatic tendencies of "always" and "to maintain," only
to re-assert itself in a move from internality to externality with the term
"ecstasy" which claims stasis for dynamis in a nicely calculated irony.
The emphasis on the thisness of experience, what Hopkins was soon to
call haecceitas, concentrates all of life in the particular moment, while
the paradox of "hard ... flame" is muted but not fully dissipated by the
intervening epithet, "gemlike," a coinage which scorns the customary
hyphenation as an affront to aesthetic fus ion. Pater's recurrent refer-
ences to crystals and crystallography 13 are themselves crystallized in an
image which spurns antiquarian connoisseurship in the tradition of
Tassie's Gems of Antiquity for the lived experience of beauty as itself
beautiful though in no way easily or permanently attainable. Pater's
paean to process exploits the commemorative properties of language as
well as its inscription of temporality in and as consciousness. The
metamorphic properties of fire mediate between fixity and movement.
Pater, in allowing this element its full life inside and outside himself, is
rewarded with an aper(;u of enduring resonance, a legitimate accom-
modation of mnemosyne and metabole.
For Pater, as for all who would write about the elements, to deny fire
its full identity would have been to impoverish his own imagination and
disfigure his own language. By celebrating it as he does, he enjoys the
consolations as well as paying the price of elemental process. His
"Conclusion" is ironically but honestly situated via Heraclitus, and is
continuously informed by Heraclitean images of elemental process,
convening and dispersing. Pater's divination by fire, his pyromanteia,
re-discovers divinity as elemental discovery and the experience of
poetic divination.

University of Saskatchewan

NOTES

I F. W. J. v. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, transl. Peter Heath and intro.

Michael Vater (Charlottesville: U. of Virginia Press, 1978), p. 241.

 "THIS HARD GEMLlKE FLAME" 213

2 G. Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, transl. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1964), p. 2ff. .
J Reprinted in Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, ed. Josue V. Harari and David

F. Bell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1982), p. 71 ff.

4 For a sensitive account of his life, see Michael Levey, The Case of Walter Pater
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1978).
5 In "The Rhetoric of Temporality," Interpretation: Theory and Practice, ed. Charles S.
Singleton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1969), p. 194.
(, Burckhardt's main contribution was Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien: Ein
Versuch (Basel: Schweizhausen, 1860); ef. Iacob Burckhardt and the Renaissance 1()()
Years After, ed. Robert Kingdom (Lawrence, Kansas: Lawrence Museum of Art, 1960).
7 The Renaissance, Modern Library, ed., intro. Arthur Symons (New York: Boni and
Liverwright, 1919), p. 194. Unless otherwise indicated, ali subsequent references will
be to this edition and will be given parenthetically in the text.
8 This work, first published by MacMillan in 1885, is a fascinating exercise in philo-
sophical self-definition, with striking re-workings of passages from The Renaissance.
Cf., e.g., on fire and flame 1,109, 129, 131, 146,201; on flux and ecstasy 11,47,57.
9 For a useful general survey of art-historical practice of the period, see Lionello

Venturi, History of Art Criticism, transl. Charles Marriott (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1936), esp. chs. 7 and 8.
10 See, e.g., Plata and Platonism: A Series of Lectures (London: MacMillan, 1934), pp.

9, 13,20,96, 140; Greek Studies: A Series of Essays (London: MacMillan, 1904), pp.
13,23.
II Pater translated Heraclitus thus in Plato and Platonism in 1893. Cf. The Renais-
sance: Studies in Art and Poetry, the 1893 text ed. with textual and e"planatory notes
by Donald L. Hill (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1980), pp. 451-52.
12 At the end of Pater's review of 'Poems by William Morris' in the Westminster
Review for October, 1868.
13 For invaluable background see Billie Andrew Inman, Walter Pater's Reading: A

Bibliography of His Library Borrowings and Literary References, 1858-1873 (New

York: Garland, 1981), esp. p. 182ff.
 JOHN DOLIS

THOREAU'S WALDEN: THE PRO- VOCA TION OF FIRE

We begin with a propOSItlon - somewhere between tautology and

contradiction as Wittgenstein explains 1 - although the contour of this
essay immediately seeks to move beyond it, inhabiting the boundary of
the limiting cases themselves. The proposition is itself circular: "world"
is but another name for "discourse."2 We wish to understand how it is
(possible) that a word creates a world (and world creates word as well),
how the text ceaselessly recommences this reversible figure-ground
relation. We attempt a way into the circle itself. It is a question of
entrance: how do I begin the text called Walden? - or better, how does
Walden inaugurate me? As with any embarkation, it sets out from a
region which is always already also a place of departure, a threshold: a
border between inside and out, a liminal space which secures me, which
entrances me and ex(c)it(e)s me at once - a passage where something
"takes place," where something situates itself so that it might happen or
"come to pass," a passage wherefrom I gaze both before and behind the
glance which is itself self-regarding. 3 With Thoreau, we want extrava-
gance to make a place for this extra-ordinary "shape" of nomination: "1
fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may
not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experi-
ence, so as to be adequate to the truth of which 1 have been convinced.
Extra vagance! It depends on how you are yarded .... 1 desire to speak
somewhere without bounds ... for 1 am convinced that I cannot
exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression."4
On the margin of discourse we linger, facing both forward and back,
and listen to what is able to appear, re-calling the ironic invitation
Kierkegaard repeats in forward recollection: "Loquere ut videam te" 5
- speak that 1 might see you.
But something matters first: an image hovers both before and beyond
me, the direct image of matter itself, a matter which reverberates, a
resonance or sonority which sings being-on-the-(self-Same)-threshold:
the image locates me at the origin of a speaking being. 6 As I take up
this book called Walden, as 1 embrace it to the extent that it under-
standingly dis-places me as an-Other in which I am able to recuperate
215
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXlll, 215-235.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
216 JOHN DOLIS

again what is my own, the image which first speaks soundly is that
which makes a threshold possible in the first place; it speaks of building
it self: "When 1 wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I
lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I
had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond." (3) Here thinking takes
a direction from Heidegger: "We obtain to dwelling ... only by means
of building.... Still, not every building is a dwelling."7 Nevertheless,
genuine building always and everywhere seeks dwelling; it needs
dwelling; it wants it, desires it; without dwelling (that is, outside of
dwelling) building is an absence. Dwelling makes building tull and gives
to it a presence, though never a completion. And so it is that building
makes a way for itself, both in and oul. This we call its threshold. And
yet, the threshold of building is not the building of a threshold.
Although building holds its threshold before it, it does so as something
which comes later. By this it is simply understood that building is
pre-liminary to the threshold - that from the beginning of building, the
threshold itself is not constructed first.
Authentic building begins with borrowing. From the outset, the
borrowed enterprise recognizes the Other in the establishment of it self.
Thus Thoreau begins his work of construction, the construction of his
work - his oeuvre - that is, the house of both his being and his text:
"Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to
the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my
house.... It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the
most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an
interest in your enterprise." (40-41) Thoreau's enterprise of construc-
tion, however, not only designates a borrowed undertaking, but one of
deconstruction and reconstruction also: "1 had already bought the
shanty of James Collins ... for boards .... I took down this dwelling
the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond side
by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach
and warp back again in the sun." (42-44) In this sense, building
re-enacts an originary event: in so far as it borrows and dismantIes, it
indicates the locus of a transfer. Yet, the topology of this locus suggests
nothing of a spatial location. It is originally a place of indebtedness; and
if we are to recover its primordial dimensions, we must initially
recognize that presence which is lacking to it(self).
First of all, who does not immediately understand that building is a
seasonal affair? "At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 217

consider every spot as the possible site of a house, , , , Wherever I sat,

there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly.
What is a house but a sedes, a seat?" (81) This kind of inhabiting,
however, is, from the outset, out of season, outside alI season, for it
un-self-consciously abides within the perpetual summer of the Other.
There comes a time of dis-placement: "Man was not made so large
limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world, and wall
in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but
though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, ... the
rainy season and the winter ... would perhaps have nipped his race in
the bud if he had not made haste to cIothe himself with the shelter of a
house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before
other cIothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first
of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections." (27-28) In
other words, there comes a time for wintering, a moment which
disrupts the idyllic conjunction - that harmonious stanza or room
where man stands within what is other to him (nature) - in order to
stand out (ek-sist): "We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the
human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for
shelter." (28) Erupting from the text of nature, consciousness seeks a
site for itself - a context for its own textuality which is no longer a
simple impression, but one which reads into experience an imprimatur.
This event brings with it the question of authority - that is, the author-
ization of one's self: "The only house I had been the owner of before, if
I except a boat, was atent, which I used occasionally when making
excursions in the summer .... With this more substantial shelter about
me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame,
so slightly ciad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on
the builder." (85) The movement from summer to winter, then, reflects
a transference from nature to world, and carries with it a co-responding
need to secure a place of one's own.
Winter spells the advent of sheltering: "Every child begins the world
again, to some extent, and loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold.
It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not
remember the interest with which when young he looked at shelving
rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that
portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us." (28)
And yet the cave is child's play. It does not provoke us to ourselves, but
rather recaJls us to what already is. It does not provide what Thoreau
218 JOHN DOLIS

caUs a "point d'appui"; it fails to purchase us: "Let us seUle ourselves,

and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of
opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance ...
till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can caII
reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point
d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might
found a waII or a state, or set a lamp-post safely." (97-98) When
winter caUs, sheltering thus builds on a site of its own, a site which is
originary insofar as it establishes one's self. For those who hear the
silent caB to wintering, displacement has already occurred. Building
changes place; it grounds sheltering upon a foundation which is itself a
place of transfer. This seasonal event heralds the advent of a departure,
one which caUs those, who hearken to its soundless silence, to build
soundly for themselves amid a silence which is not itself unsound.
We have yet to speak, however, of the sheltered site toward which
winter beckons, and is itself the locus of a transfer - the location which
author(I)zes one to build for oneSelf. Building builds well when it
settles upon a site, when it gathers to itself a location cleared for
dwelling. Here dweIIing is not merely the concentration of a boundary,
for what is gathered together in the abode where dwelling takes place
"makes place" - it makes room for the horizon as we1l, for what is
outside. Thoreau acknowledges this dialectic of inside and out, and it is
pointedly "brought home" to him from the beginning:

When 1 first took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as
well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the fourth of July,
1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain,
without plastering or chimney, which made it cool at night.
... It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. 1 did not need to go out
doors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had los! none of its freshness. It was
not so much within doors as behind a door where 1 sat, even in the rainiest weather.
The Harivansa says, "An abode withou! birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such
was not my abode, for 1 found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having
imprisoned one, but having caged myself near to them. (84-85)

This neatly echoes an earlier passage where Thoreau introduces the

dialectic of hearth and field:
From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen
woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At
las!' we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more
senses than we think. From the hearth to the field is agreat distance. It would be well
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 219

perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction
between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a
roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish
their innocence in dovecots. (28)

How fitting that it is the birds who sing so eloquently the interval of this
dialectic, for it is they who build so brilliantly that most intimate of all
abodes: the nest.
Here we might pause to consider how dwelling appropriates the nest,
how every house deserving of the title "home" habilitates this germinal
form, although a thorough phenomenological description of the topology
of Thoreau's imagination, of the place which the "nest," the "shell," and
the "corner" occupy in the establishment of his poetic consciousness,
is beyond the scope of this essay. Nonetheless, how succinctly his
inosculation of images anticipates a slender, almost fragile, poem by
Jean Caubere: "The warm, calm nest/ In which a bird sings .. .! RecalIs
the songs, the charms,l The pure threshold/ Of my old home."8 Will
the geometrician telI us that we are incorrect if we discern, amid this
concentration of intimacy, the round sound of being itself: 9 how being
sings when it is well-come, how this "interval" of the nest - this
gathering of remoteness, this pastiche of things and empty space -
stays alI distance, and sings the consonance of being-welI? The nest
recalls us to the depth of being at its source, how all being begins with
well-being, as Bachelard remarks. And so the nest recreates, in minia-
ture, the way in which the house re-sonates the plenary chord of
existence, how it would retrieve the being that belongs to d(well)ing.
Dwelling makes a passage, then, for that which stands out(side) in. In
dwelling, there being (Da-sein) is made welI (indwelIing); it is secured
from both sides at the edge of a border, facing both in and out.
Dwelling cares for itself to the extent that it confers upon inhabited
space the value of what it itself is not. Dwelling nears being; it
rehabilitates being and makes it welI. Within the habitation of dwelling,
well-being becomes a ha bit. When being is so at home, it fastens a
refuge that harbors alI; it in-corporates a community. This grounds the
reciprocal to and fro movement between solitude and neighboring, and
characterizes the overall dialectical quality of Walden - its natural as
well as structural incorporation of both solitude and visitors, bean-field
and village: "1 had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two
for friendship, three for society. When visitors carne in larger and
unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them alI." (140)
220 JOHN DOLIS

Thoreau's house therefore becomes the occasion for what Heidegger

caUs "nearing." The intimate space of inhabiting which secures a
threshold between self and other, between within and without, inscribes
a place for preserving, a place of appropriation. Here the proximity of
proscription has been banished: at the indweUing threshold of building,
all things settle in repose; they are given over to themselves, allowed to
be. Where aU things count, nothing is ever brought to account for itself.
Distance too is given over to itself, as Heidegger suggests: "Nearness
brings near - draws nigh to one another - the far and, indeed, as the
far. Nearness preserves farness." 10 The nearness of dwelling binds
together each and alI into its own freedom. Dwelling thus gives us over
to genuine community, a settlement: it sediments the unsettling terror of
the techno-logos, a technology which - like the train that penetrates
Thoreau's landscape - solicits the eradication of aU distance, placing
everything outside (its own nature) despite the fact that, with the
conquest of alI distances, nearness remains absentY In the nearness of
dwelling, aU distance be-Iongs to itself. Can we therefore doubt the
resonant interval of Thoreau's dwelling, the nearness in which it binds
each to the other in the freedom of its own:

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting

to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big
words.... our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval.
... In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear, - we could not speak
low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that
they break each other's undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then
we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other's breath;
but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart .... If we
would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or
above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent. but commonly so far apart bodily
that we cannot possibly hear each other's voice in any case. Referred
to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing.
(140-41) 12

His habitation thus enfolds the other; it leaves a crease for the other so
that Thoreau might be next to him.
Yet, on the hither side of intersubjectivity, dwelling does more than
neighbor the other; it neighbors also the self: "For the most part we
allow only out1ying and transient circumstances to make our occasions.
They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is
that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 221

continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we

have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose
work we are" (134) - that is, dwelling makes us nearest of aH to our
self; it makes us next to ourself. This, above alI, characterizes the
function of solitude whose operation retrieves the dialectic al interval of
dwelling at its source. It "Solitude is not measured by the miles of space
that intervene between arnan and his feHows" (135), and if "This
whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space" (133), then:
"What sort of space is that which separates arnan from his felIo"'/s and
makes him solitary? 1 have found that no exertion of the legs can bring
two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell
near to? Not to many men surely ... but to the perennial source of our
life." (133) On the threshold of dwelling, nearness inscribes even nature
as our own; it in-corporates the text(ure) of what is radicalIy Other into
the very structure of our Self. So begins the chapter on solitude: "This is
a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes
delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in
Nature, a part of herself." (129) The text of our body thus inter-
penetrates the body of the text of nature: "1 have never felt lonesome,
or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once ... when, for
an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to
a serene and healthy life .... But I was at the same time conscious of a
slight insanity in my mood .... In the midst of a gent1e rain ... I was
sudden1y sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature ... in
every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable
friendliness alI at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the
fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant." (131-32) It
is curious that Thoreau describes his initial uneasiness as a slight
insanity of mood, for is not insanity precisely that occupation of a space
which has receded toward the purely subjective, a space without the
Other, exclusive of the Other - a place, in fact, outside Otherness
itself?
The indwelling threshold of Thoreau's abode, on the other hand,
returns him to the Other so that he might stand against the Other as
does a figure on a ground. Here "standing" is both a standing "with"-in
and with-"out;" one stands outside the Other as a particular in-stance
of it. By means of its reversible significance, this "gestalt" dimension of
being (that is, being-between as being with, as being both with-in and
with-out) inscribes the interval of a difference wherein each genuinely
222 JOHN DOLIS

belongs to the Other only insofar as each one makes the Other possible
in the first place - in other words, at the source: in Other W ords. One
belongs to an-Other at the very origin of alterity, at the threshold of an
event which is itself the advent of what Emmanuel Levinas has called
the "interval of discourse." 13 How ironic it is that Thoreau should thus
refer to this out-standing event, to that contour of ek-sistence which
returns being to its well-spring, to the very fountainhead of well-being,
as one which sits. And yet it does, for the house that truly shelters being
stands out as but an instance of repose.
Here, the sympathetic - indeed, symphonic - chord of nature nears
us to what is lacking as a kindred presence. Amid an absence, and yet
next to the resounding interval of the Other, something comes to pass:
"Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and
befriended me. 1 was so distinctly made aware of the presence of
something kindred to me ... and also that the nearest of blood to me
and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that 1 thought no place
could ever be strange to me again." (132) It is plainly the shrinkage of
this interval by which we characterize the insane. Indeed, if thinking is
to speak weB for itSelf, it must recognize insanity as that structure of
behavior which is closed off to the very possibility of a form of being
which is "beside" one's self, as Merleau-Ponty has observed, for it is
precisely this loss or withdrawal of space which leaves no room, no
margin, for the patient: "Besides the physical and geometrical distance
which stands between myself and alI things, a 'lived' distance binds me
to things which count and exist for me, and links them to each other.
This distance measures the 'scope' of my life at every moment. ...
between myself and the events there is a certain amount of play
(Spielraum), which ensures that my freedom is preserved while the
events do not cease to concern me." 14 Similarly, Thoreau recognizes
this doubleness of displacement at the heart of existence:

With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the
mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences .... We are not wholly
involved in Nature.... 1 may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, 1
may nof be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. 1 only
know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and
am sensible of a certain doubleness by which 1 can stand as remote from myself as from
another. However intense my experience, 1 am conscious of the presence and criticism
of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no
experience, but taking note of it; and that is no more 1 than it is you. When the play, it
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 223

may be the tragedy, of life i.s over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a
work of the imagination only, so far as he was concemed. This doubleness may easily
make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. (134-35)

Whenever one stands out and into the graft of displacement, there
dwelling "takes place;" it makes room for itself and reverberates the
interval wherein abides the alterity of the Other. 15
When being is so recovered at its source, in its commencement
address, if you will, it is not accomplished in the sense that we speak for
being, but rather that being, here(there), bespeaks us. But we have yet
to discover how being reads and writes Thoreau, how being initially
manifests itself in this text called Walden. As a construction which
houses both the being of a text and the text of being, Walden soundly
dwells as a monument to an origin-al call. We wish now to disclose the
nature of that call toward which Walden hearkens and responds. We
incline toward the immemorial traces of this monument, that which
elicits Thoreau to build toward the threshold. What stands before this
work of construction as an invitation to dwell? What betokens it and
calls it forth? What provokes it? We hearken to the threshold itself
which has been waiting for building, and yet always already stands
before building as its pro-vocation. An all too hasty reply might well
misdirect our path, and so we ask again: whence comes the invocation
to build? If winter spells the advent of sheltering, toward what are we
called upon to build a shelter for?
In his introductory chapter on "Economy," Thoreau has already
prepared us when he defines those things which may proper!y be called
necessary to life - food, c1othing, shelter, and fuel:
Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the
accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury,
arose the present necessity to sit by it. ... It appears, therefore, from the above list, that
the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for
while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us, - and Fuel
serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition
from without, - Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated
and absorbed. (12-13)

Economy therefore recognizes only one necessity - the grand necessity

"to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly
take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our
beds, which are our night-c1othes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds
224 JOHN DOLIS

to prepare this shelter within a shelter." (13) Dwelling thus shelters for
warmth; when winter caUs us to the icy silence of its breath, it is to clear
a space for kindling. Those who hearken are thereby called upon to
build for dwelling. Dwelling shelters and nears; it draws us nigh the self
we are beside. Here drawing is not understood as the instrument of
representation, but that very aspiration which sustains a passage
between inside and out. Nearing, as drawing nigh, gives space for
breathing; it engenders an equi-vocal response to winter's buming
breath, and supplements a breathing space for both, a place of respira-
tion where each might take a breath - that is, breath easy in repose.
Nearing thus draws us nigh to winter itself, and does so in the intimacy
of friendship.16 In the place of respiration, vitality transpires: each
partakes of the other; each reserves a space for the other-inside out;
each preserves the other - insi de out. And this is what is now
understood by the sheltered place toward which wintering aspires, and
is itself the locus of both an inhalation and an exhalation, both an
inspiration and an expiration. The sheltered precinct toward which
dwelling draws nigh is the drawing "room" itself, that interval which
neighbors both insi de and out, the very space for drawing which
preserves the draught. Thus Thoreau observes: "The chimney is to
some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground and
rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is bumed
it stiH stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are
apparent." (241-42)
Is it not now clear that the sheltered place of dwelling, toward which
winter beckons, is itself the place of fire: "1 lingered most about the
fireplace, as the most vital part of the house." (241) Dwelling com-
mences only when it has thus fastened this sanctuary for fire: "1 now
first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for
warmth as well as shelter.... and it did me good to see the soot form
on the back of the chimney which I had built, and 1 poked the fire with
more right and more satisfaction than usuaI." (242) Here, in a simple,
single room, Thoreau's house trans-forms to home, a dwelling reduced
to fundamental simplicity: "1 went to the woods because 1 wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.... to drive life into
a comer, and reduce it to its lowest terms." (90-91) As with fire,
reduction is the genuine gauge of existence - both the principele)al and
its interest. The true lesson in economy teaches us that life is dear. And
so when winter sets in at Walden, Thoreau burrows even deeper into
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 225

his "comer," which is now the weB-being of the nest transformed to

shell: "1 withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a
bright fire both within my house and within my breast." (249) When
compared to the solitary lamp placed squarely in the window, how
much more vibrant is the glowing fire that welcomes us home to the
round embrace of its companionship: "1 sometimes left a good fire
when 1 went to take a walk in a winter aftemoon; and when 1 retumed,
three or four hours afterward, it would be stiH alive and glowing. My
house was not empty though 1 was gone. It was as if 1 had left a cheerful
housekeeper behind." (253) In the same spirit, Thoreau remarks: "1
weathered some merry snow storms, and spent some cheerful winter
evenings by my fire-side." (256) Beside the fire, even the snowstorm is
made merry for, as Henri Bosco has described it, "When the shelter is
sure, the storm is good"; how eloquently the fire gathers us to the
intimacy of that house which has the good fortune to be blanketed by
winter snow, that house which has been warmed - indeed, flushed -
by the blanket of winter itself, as Baudelaire (Les paradis artiJiciels) so
weB understood, that house which has so well-comed us to the home-
coming of our well-being. 17 How aptly, therefore, speaks the poem
which concludes this pivotal chapter entitled "House-Warming":
WelI, we are safe and strong, for now we sit
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows fiit,
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire
Warms feet and hands - nor does to more aspire;
By whose compact utilitarian heap
The present may sit down and go to sleep,
Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked,
And with us by the unequallight of the old wood fire talked. (255)
Only in the light of this blaze are we now able to begin again to
understand that expres sion wherein Thoreau reveals his most intimate
relationship at Walden (the place) and in Walden (the text): "It was 1
and Fire that lived there." (253)
To suggest, in this way, that "House-Warming" is pivotal to Walden
is not to imply that it is "central," but rather the opposite; for it is
specifically this chapter which de-centers the text, which induces an
imbalance. It is commonly accepted that "The Ponds" is itself the
central chapter of the book. One cannot disagree, here, to the extent
that it occupies a mid-point, halfway between beginning and end. And
226 JOHN DOLIS

after alI, where is the water amid alI this talk of fire? Isn't this supposed
to be a book about Walden Pond? It seems not, for the pond has been
displaced. We no more begin to inhabit this text, than Thoreau does the
site called Walden, until the fire-place has been christened. That is to
say, the book does not begin to inaugurate us until the chapter on
"House-Warming." Here is the threshold toward which we are at last
invited, and by which we enter its intimate sphere of companionship
and solicitude. To those who hearken, no longer do we hear, nor have
we ever heard throughout, a voice crying in the wilderness, arnan
speaking to strangers, but the authentic discourse of one who cares. At
this pivot, or turning point, the text turns into a fire-side chat. Here the
threshold introduces us to an unexpected lesson, for what promised to
be a baptism of water has, from the outset, been always one of fire.
"House-Warming" is therefore pivotal insofar as it functions as the very
hinge of the text, its folding place. At this junc ture, the logic of the
geometrician, who chooses to represent the text as a single narrative
plane, is called upon to perform an ambidextrous exercise, for he is
forced to balance a text which already "tilts" backward to re-collect
itself forward once more. We would do well to envision the text as a
circle. More properly, however, the path of discourse in Walden
assumes the contour of a spiral, a burrowing into existence itself. It is
circular inasmuch as it is seasonal; and yet it moves forward by means
of dialectic.
From "Higher Laws" and "Brute Neighbors," "House-Warming"
returns us to Walden Pond, but to the pond in winter. It recalls us to
the "middle" image of the pond, though one displaced in its doubleness:
the fire of ice. In winter, Walden too burns. Here, one might lie next to
(be-side) its transparency: "The first ice is especially interesting and
perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best oppor-
tunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for
you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect
on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure." (246)
Winter turns Walden on its si de - turns it inside out. Winter reduces
the pond to its other-side, its foundation or bottom. In "House-
Warming," Walden, as both place and text, is reduced to its singIe,
most concentrated point. In the two previous chapters, Thoreau has
discussed "Higher Laws" (man) and "Brute Neighbors" (animaIs); this
chapter continues the reduction, beginning with pIants: grapes, cranber-
ries, barberries, chestnuts - trees. Furthermore: "When I carne to build
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 227

my chimney 1 studied masonry." (240) With stones, we have traversed

from animate to inanimate matter. Over and against the division of
labor, within the concentrated image of the house reduced to a single
room, we have thus far arrived at the "rock bottom" of dwelling, the
chimney. But we have stiH to discern the elemental ground itself, for the
chimney sets itself upon the fire-place proper - its hearth. And what is
the hearth but the place of fire itself? - the original element. It we are
thus asked to deduce its "atomic structure," the composition of Walden
is irreducibly that of fire. And so the book orbits its way around this
decentered region called "House-Warming," just as the fiery orb itself
not only structures the cycle of life but concludes the text as a whole.
From this point on, the text folds back upon itself to do its work aU
over once again, only this time "Higher Laws" becomes "Former
Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors," "Brute Neighbors" becomes "Winter
Animals," and "The Ponds" becomes "The Pond in Winter." In this way,
fire dialecticaUy incorporates aH to its domain: animate and inanimate,
fire and ice, summer and winter. And herein resides the significance
Bachelard ascribes to fire, when he defines it as a privileged phenome-
non: "If aU that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that
changes quickly is explained by fire. Fire is the ultra-living element. It is
intimate and it is universal. It lives in our heart. It lives in the sky.... It
is cookery and it is apocalypse .... It is well-being and it is respect. .. .
It can contradict itself; thus it is one of the principles of universal
explanation." 18
Beside the fire, Thoreau is allocated to himself, apportioned so
that he might stand-be-side-him-self as one inhabitant to an-Other.
Here fire provokes the arche-logos, an archeology of the vestiges of
habitation:

For human society 1 was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods.
Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands
resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants .... East of my bean-field, across
the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham .... Cato's half-obliterated
cellar hole still remains .... Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town,
Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house .... At length, in the war of 1812, her
dwelIing was set on fire by English soldiers .... 1 have seen bricks amid the oak copse
there. Down the road ... lived Brister Freeman, "a handy Negro," slave of Squire
Cummings once, - there where grow stil! the apple-trees which Brister planted and
tended; large old trees now .... Farther down the hill ... are marks of some homestead
of the Stratten family .... Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed's location .... Breed's
hut was standing only a dozen years ago .... It was set on fire by mischievous boys ...
228 JOHN DOLIS

a heap of bricks and ashes .... Farther in the woods ... Wyman the potter squatted ....
The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an lrishman, Hugh Quoil. ... Before
his house was pulled down ... 1 visited it. ... In the rear there marks the site of these
dwellings .... With such reminiscences 1 repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.
(256-64)

Amid this topography of remnants erupts a catalogue of epic propor-

tions, a veritable reverie of re-collection. Beside the fire, Thoreau's
reminiscences not only repeople the woods but regather them to the
focal significance of his dwelling: "1 am not aware that any man has
ever buiIt on the spot which 1 occupy." (264) Beside the fire, he is given
over to memorial traces of a past structured in reverie. And yet, there is
a presence other than the personal which engenders the originary
recitation of the site upon which he has settled and come to dwell, the
site which he has authored for himself.
Be-side the fire: the fire also has its "side" (to tell), one whose
location bespeaks a circum-Iocution beyond the Self. Here fire is both
the occasion for the dia-logos and, at the same time, the very Other to
whom the dialogue is addressed. As that Other who induces Thoreau to
re-collect the memorial traces of the being of his text (that is, Walden
as place and text, as welI as his very Iife), fire too has its story to tell,
one whose history, in fact, recounts the narrative of Western meta-
physics, and imbricates the immemorial traces of the text of Being itself.
Fire reverberates the echoes of being as it is spoken by the biblical
story of Christianity, where tongues of flame announce the doubleness
of God, of his displacement in the Son; fire reverberates the echoes of
being as it it spoken in Plato's cave, where dimly flickers the doubleness
of the Idea, of its displacement in the shadows; fire reverberates the
echoes of being as it is spoken by Heraclitus, where lighting reveals the
doubleness of the "Not-Setting-Ever,"19 of its displacement in disclosure
and concealment. Fire even reverberates beyond the outline of Western
metaphysics itself, to echo being as it is spoken in the Buddhist Fire
Sermon. Thoreau has heard alI of this, hearkening to the congenial
tongue of the flame, and he has taken to himself these traces which
murmur the text of Being. But we have yet to specify the manner and
the meaning of this event, how it is that this dialogue transpires between
Thoreau and Fire.
Dialogue takes up its space "between" one an-Other; it implies a
place of co-respondence, and assumes that the one who responds has
not only already heard but also understood. How is it that Thoreau
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 229

under-stands the solicitous articulation of the fire, when so many hear

nothing but hissing? The question put another way is this: how does
one gain respect for the fire? Bachelard gives us a clue: "fire is more a
social reality than a natural reality. ... respect for fire is a respect that
has been taught; it is not a natural respect. The reflex which makes us
pull back our finger from the flame . . . does not play any conscious
role in our knowledge about fire .... In reality the social prohibitions
are the [irst."20 From this it folIows that the bum merely confirms the
social prohibition itself. If fire is, then, the object of a general prohibi-
tion, as Bachelard observes, "the problem of obtaining a personal
knowledge of fire is the problem of clever disobedience. The chUd
wishes to do what his father does, but far away from his father's
presence, and so like a little Prometheus he steals some matches" -
under the term "Prometheus Complex," Bachelard thus gathers together
"alI those tendencies which impel us to know as much as our fathers,
more than our fathers, as much as our teachers, more than our teachers.
Now it is by handling the object, by perfecting our objective knowledge,
that we can best hope to prove decisively that we have attained the
intellectuai level that we have so admired in our parents and in our
teachers. . .. The Prometheus complex is the Oedipus complex of the
life of the intelIect."21 Is not then the problem of "clever disobedience"
the problem of Civil Disobedience superimposed upon the cultural,
historical life-world? We have spoken earlier of the threshold as a locus
of transfer, the transfer of authority. Is it not evident that by handIing
fire, by learning it, by listening to its prophecy, Thoreau becomes his
own man. The authority of society, of culture, of tradition, of the past,
of the historio-logos, must be revised, rewritten for every individual
existence.
To stand out is to stand against on the threshold, facing both in and
out, forward and back. This is both the place of the text and the text of
the place to which we are invited: "There too, as every where, 1
sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana
says, 'The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his court-yard as
long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the
arrival of a guest.' 1 often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long
enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man
approaching from the town." (270) It is the invitation the book holds
forth as a with-holding, a holding together for each and every reader.
We must accomplish the task for our Self. Each must author-ize the
230 JOHN DOLIS

logos upon a site of his own building. Authority lays claim only to that
which we have authored. And who, that has ever built a fire, has not
observed this reclamation. Each fire is its own, and from the outset
establishes the way it will accomplish itself, the way it will aspire toward
expiration. So too, authoring the Self is consonant, individual, integral:
each locus of inauguration is one of departure also; every entrance is
itself a pro-visional region of retrospect: a pre-text. In order to winter
the crisis of the Self, "human life but dies down to its root." (311) Each
direction is an entrustment, a bequeathing of the self. 22 The flame so
extends itself toward non-being. 23 It is the disquisition of the fire that
our visions must ceaselessly be revised, that the authority of the logos
must be rewritten toward a mythology of the authorized Self. We are
re-sponsible for the edifice which we inhabit.
In this regard, Thoreau's dwelling erects a veri table temple to
Vulcan, he who built the dwellings of the gods themselves, whose
heaveoIy fires bequeath the fires of earth, who is originally referred to
lightning - the very same lighting of which Heraclitus speaks. At the
same time, Thoreau is the keeper of the fire and consecrated, therefore,
to Vesta as well. And though he warns against confusing fire and
warmth, it is a caution which extends merely to those who ooIy
understand the logos logically: "The animal heat is the result of a slow
combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or
for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out.
Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much
for analogy." (13) So much for analogy - indeed! For the ana-logos is
simply incapable of addressing the discourse at hand, the vocation
which Thoreau has set for himself from the out set, constructing an
expression beyond bounds (extra-vagant), one that surpasses the logical
limits of the proposition in its evocation of a world. For this, there
emerges a pro-Iogos, one that has already revised the logos at its
source. Thoreau's dwelling repeats, in forward re-collection, the andro-
gynous mytho-logos at its center, at the heart of the very being of the
text (of Being). It stands consecrated to both Vulcan and Vesta,
dedicated to the divinity of the home - that is, to the divinity of
dwelling, to the habitation as a habit of that existence which has
forsaken the nomadic mode in order to settle itSelf. At the heart of
dwelling abides the aspirated logos, its signification as a breath or
breathing "mark" (Ev d(}Xii 1]V 6 A6yo~), the "the" of its originary
authority. Here, at the heart of dwelling, The Word aspires to incarna-
tion. In the place of fire, the logos matters. We need only project it
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 231

toward the end of an-Other word to appreciate the sign-ificance of its

originary displacement as incarnation, its primordial ethos as pathos
(the patho-Iogical difference itself between logos and mythos, head and
heart, which enables one to stand beside the Self in a sane way). For at
the heart of dwelling abides the breathing space itself: the hearth. The
sacred heart is the heart(h) that burns.
In this way, no new home is duly consecrated until the hearth glows,
until the heart of the Self has been lit by the ancestral hearth of Being,
until it aspires to the place of respiration, the place of extravagance
where speaking is without bounds, at once both its inspiration and
expiration, its inspiration as the very expiration of itself. And after aU, is
this not how we "measure" the grandeur of the fire, its volatility, the
truth of its expression? For what are the fire's embers but what will be
its remains: the ashes which speak so eloquent1y of its power. Here the
well-made fire conspires with us to teach the lesson of the hearth, the
sacrament of true economy, the outward sign of an inward salvation. 24
We measure the fire's purity and strength in inverse proportion to the
interval of its life, that which stretches between inspiration and expira-
tion, between the inception and its only exception, between logos and
teleo-logos. This brevity of the interval, which is in no way a shortness
of distance, announces how near the fire stands to itself, how the fire
too may stand next to itself as a standing be-side. In this way, the
well-made fire banishes alI shadows, rubs out the anxious discrepancy
of Plato's cave, erases the doubleness of displacement at the heart(h) of
existence, and returns (redeems) it to the self-Same-threshold, to the
"well" of being: "Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit/ Beside a
hearth where no dim shadows fIit,! Where nothing cheers nor saddens,
but a firei Warms feet and hands - nor does to more aspire." (255)
Like the fire, true economy refers to spending oneSelf, not saving it.
As Stanley Cavell has observed of Walden, "One earns one's life in
spending it; on1y so does one save it. This is the riddle, Of you may say
the paradox, the book proposes."25 It is, in other words, that foundation
or settlement, as Thoreau expresses it, below freshet and frost and, yes,
even fire - what he caUs the point d'appui. It is the meaning toward
which the fire itself perspires, its very being. Here the foundation of a
true expression is grounded in the event itself: it is to be measured in
calories. Within the textuality of being, the fire is only to the extent that
it rages, that it is able to burn itself out, to erase itself. "Who that has
heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly
any more forever? In view of the future or possible, we should live
232 JOHN DOLIS

quite laxly and undefined in front, our out1ines dim and misty on that
side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun.
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inade-
quacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instant1y translated; its
literal monument alone remains." (324-25) And is this not Thoreau's
elemental lesson in economy transformed - indeed, translated - once
again: "the cost of a thing is the amount of what 1 will call life which is
required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." (31 )
This is the genuine work of construction, a strenuous undertaking,
both arduous and long: life-Iong. And after all, the vision is easy; it is
the labor of re-vision that requires our perspiration: "The words which
express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and
fragrant like frankincense to superior natures." (325) Walden revises
the mytho-logos of creation; it rewrites the logos insofar as and only to
the extent that it writes the Self. Its project is both economical and
origin-al: "to be in on the beginning." 26 This is the life and the
resurrection, the phoenix translated toward the cosmo-logos of "intimate
immensity," 27 a cosmography of the Self: "Direct your eye sight inward,
and you'll find/ A thousand regions in your mind/ Yet undiscovered.
Travel them, and bel Expert in home-cosmography." (320) We must
not be deceived by the gossip of Westward movement which concludes
the book, for the movement of the discourse itself is toward the East,
not only as an Easterning of Western thinking, but as the very Eastering
of the Self. The self that would revise itSelf knows that the sun, too, sets
in the East, that this is where it settles or sets itself as that which is
already risen. For those who would be in on the beginning, the
threshold of creation is where-ever we can get into the circle: "The
other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our
voyaging is only great-circle sailing." (320) He who would write the
logos of himSelf, rewrites the mytho-logos: its descent into time.
Re-creation bestows time, the interval between logos and teleo-logos.
The mytho-logos therefore temporalizes author-ity, makes author-ship
responsible for its self as a project that lies before it, that provokes it to
itSelf. Each must forge his own text, a temporality that stretches out
between two points which are themselves settled upon the circum-
ference of a dif-ference, a difference which itself commences both the
mythos of Prometheus as well as Vulcan: each must steal the fire
himself; each must forge the dawn anew. The mytho-logos (incarnation)
is thus the point of departure into the world, a world that enters back
upon the logos (creation) at the place of dis-placement, a locus which
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 233

protends the text of the Self forward as a re-vision (redemption) of the

traces of retention. Is this not the meaning (insignificance) of Thoreau's
"final" words, and are they not the reclamation of Vulcan himself, he
who forged the very chariot of the sun: "mere lapse of time can never
make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only
that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The
sun is but a moming star." (333)
This is the labor of existence which each is caHed upon to claim for
himself: to forge the setting sun on the horizon, to fire it up and send it
toward an-Other day. Re-creation is therefore understood here as the
labor which accomplishes the Self. It is the play of inscription as both
the being of a text and the text of Being also. Properly understood,
then, re-creation is but the recreation of the Self, a self that dwells
securely in that flicker of repose be-side the fire. Let us listen once
again to the poem that speaks Being(-)on(-)the(-)threshold of this
monumental work of wor(l)d literature, this monument to fire whose
ashes still remain:
Never, bright flame, may be denied to me
Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy.
What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright?
What but my fortunes sunk so low in night?
Why art thou banished from our hearth and haU,
Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all?
Was thy existence then too fanciful
For our life's common light, who are so duH?
Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold
With our congenial souls? secrets too bold?
Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows fIit,
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire
Warms feet and hands - nor does to more aspire;
By whose compact utilitarian heap
The present may sit down and go to sleep,
Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked,
And with us by the unequallight of the old wood
fire talked. (254-55)

Pennsylvania State University, Scranton Campus

234 JOHN DOLIS

NOTES

1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F.

McGuiness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 68-69.
2 Stanley Cavell, in The Senses of" Walden" (New York: Viking Press, 1972) has put it
this way: "A word has meaning against the context of a sentence. A sentence has
meaning against the context of a language. A language has meaning against the context
of a form of life. A form of life has meaning against the context of a world. A world has
meaning against the context of a word." (p. 110)
.1 Cf. Mary Ann Caws, The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to
Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 15-19; and also Edward
W. Said, Beginnings: lntention and Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1975), pp. 29-78.
4 Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ed. J. Lyndon Shanley (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1971), p. 324. Subsequent references to Walden will be exclusiveIy to this
edition, hereafter parenthetically cited in the text by page number only.
5 Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of lrony, trans. Lee M. Capel (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1971), p. 52.
6 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press,
1969), p. xix; ef. also, p. xii: "the poetic image has an entity and a dynamism of its own;
it is referable to a direct ontology. ... Very often, then, it is in the opposite of causality,
that is, in reverberation ... that 1 think we find the real measure of ihe being of a poetic
image. In this reverberation, the poetic image will have a sonority of being. The poet
speaks on the threshold of being."
7 Martin Heidegger, 'Building Dwelling Thinking,' in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans.
Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 145.
8 Quoted in Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, op. cit., p. 100.
9 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, op. cit., p. 239: "what calm there is in the word

round. How peacefully it makes one's mouth, lips and the being of breath become
round .... Das Dasein ist rund. Being is round."
10 Manin Heidegger, 'The Thing,' in Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 177-78.
11 lbid., p. 166.

12 And again: "Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural bound-

aries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. 1 have found it a singular
luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side." (141)
1.1 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and lnfinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
1969).
14 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith; rev.

trans. Forrest Williams (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 286.
15 Cf. A. F. Lingis, 'On the Essence of Technique,' in Heidegger and the Quest for
Truth, ed. Manfred S. Frings (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), p. 136: "We should
not say that the discourse, properly speaking, manifests the alterity of the Other: there
is discourse only when there is a difference, a distance, between the Other of whom 1
speak, who is manifest, who is present, and the Other to whom 1 speak and who is, as it
were, alterity pure, and as the trace of an irremediable absence. This distance, which is
never suppressed, which each utterance reaffirms and traverses, is the originating
 THOREAU'S WALDEN 235

distance, the interval of discourse as such. The alterity of the Other is primordial, since
no manifestation - no illumination nor thematization - reveals him. As soon as any
illumination of thematization is said, the distance between the Other of whom it is said
and the Other to whom it is said recurs. But without this distance the dis-course could
never commence."
16 For a sensitive and truly insightful phenomenology of the relation between winter

and friendship, see Michael Gelven, Winter, Friendship, and Guilt: The Sources of
Self-lnquiry (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
17 Both Bosco and Baudelaire are quoted in Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, pp.
38-39. Elsewhere, Bachelard quotes Anne Balif (De Van Gogh et Seurat aux dessins
d'enfants): "Asking a child to draw his house is asking him to reveal the deepest dream
shelter he has found for his happiness. If he is happy, he will succeed in drawing a snug,
protected house which is well built on deeply-rooted foundations. ... it is warm
indoors, and there is a fire burning, such a big fire, in fact, that it can be seen coming
out of the chimney." (p. 72)
18 Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1964), p.7.
19 ro ţii! ovv6vJlore: Martin Heidegger, 'Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16),' in
Early Greek Thinking (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 118. In Heraclitus, the
event of lighting is the World-Fire: "The fundamentally interrogative character of the
fragment indicates that Heraclitus is contemplating the revealing-concealing lighting, the
world fire, in its scarcely perceptible relation to those who are en-lightened in accord
with their essence, and who therefore hearken to and belong to the lighting in an
exceptional way." (p. 120)
20 Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, op. cit., p. 10.
21 Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, op. cit., pp. 11 and 12, respectively.
22 Cavell, The Senses of "Walden," op. cit., p. 108.
23 Roger Asselineau, Poesies incomplhes (Paris: Debresse, 1959), p. 38.

24 In this respect, Thoreau dtes Bartram's description of the Mucclasse Indians: "When
a town celebrates the busk, having previously provided themselves with new clothes,
new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn
out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and
the whole town, of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provi-
sions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire .... On the
fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the
public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and
pure flame." (68)
On this, Thoreau comments: "1 have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as
the dictionary defines it, 'outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,'
than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven
to do thus, though they have no biblical record of the revelation." (69)
Is this not the ritual accorded to Vesta, and continued through the ages? And if the
sacred fire should go out, we have always the sun with which to rekindle it.
25 Cavell, The Senses of"Walden," op. cit., p. 44.
26 lbid., p. 110.
27 Itake the phrase from Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, op. cit., p. 183.
 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

FLANNERY O'CONNOR: THE FLAMES OF

HEA VEN AND HELL

In her lifetime of forty years, Flannery O'Connor produced two

collections of stories, two short novels, and a volume of essays. Before
she was killed by the fatal disease which also claimed her father's life,
her prolonged physical vulnerability - the literal death sentence under
which she wrote - molded one of the most unique psyches in twentieth
century American literature. Thirteen of her forty years were spent with
the unremitting consciousness of imminent death; nine of those thirteen
years were spent on crutches while she endured relapses and remis-
sions, hospitalization, and surgery. It is probable that this harsh
ontology gave her both the desi re and the ability to abandon the trivial
irrelevancies with which healthy, mundane beings clutter their lives in
order to avoid, as she could not, the profoundest questions of human
existence.
Flannery O'Connor had little time for the shallow baggage of
ordinary life. In her art she lived among ultimate truths and explored
ultimate problems in a manner reminiscent of the merciless honesty of
Greek tragedy. Thomas Merton likened her to no less than Sophocles,
declaring: "What more can be said of a writer? I write her name with
honor, for alI the truth and alI the craft with which she shows man's falI
and his dishonor." 1
In her relentless probing of the human condition, Flannery O'Connor
was always a philosopher, often a theologian, frequently a surgeon
cutting through to the bone - never a cheerleader. The impact of her
small body of work is, in the Aristotelean sense of word, terrible. It has
great dramatic force; it is extreme, intense, severe, often stunningly
funny. She had at her command a savage, Swiftian humor, and used
irony as a theological paradox in which notions of evil and good, who is
saved and who is damned, were reversed. Her works' excessiveness can
neither be explained nor contained by reductionist critical labels like
"Southern Gothic" or "grotesque." For her, the grotesque is a logical
inevitability of her vision of a malformed world. Her hyperbolic
exaggerations of perceived perversity became a quintessential rhetorical
tool, and the concentrated emphasis on violence served both a realistic
and an eschatological purpose.
237
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 237-256.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
238 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

The startlingly dramatic imagery is sometimes reminiscent of the

Metaphysical poets, especially John Donne's excesses in roughly the
same (religious) causes. O'Connor habitually clothes the philosophical
and the religious in grotesque forms in order to shock the reluctant
spirit into seeing. "For the hard of hearing you shout," she asserted in
an essay on fiction, "and for the almost-blind you draw large and
startling figures." 2
Her work borders everywhere on parable; her stories are a species of
morality play, brilliant and Dantesque in their scale of implication. The
vast philosophical and theological context in which she places her
action almost necessitates her merciless conclusion that in the glare of
eternity, human endeavor is partial at best, and evil at worst. From her
theological perspective, aU human action is relevant to some spiritual
truth, whether or not that action is specifically recognized as religious
or caUed Christian. The naturalistic planes of her vivid stories are
manifest, but on the level above that reality is a symbolic dramatization
of the soul's spiritual journey, as in Dante. She is interested in the
disintegration of the myth of redemption, and the spiritual devastation
which results from that loss. Early in her writing career, she declared
that her audience was not like-minded believers who would concur with
her convictions, but "the people who think God is dead." 3 The gro-
tesqueries then, are regional illustrations of the larger collapse of belief
in our time, of modern man as displaced person (to use one of her own
story titles) in an Absurd universe, an existential, ahistorical vacuum of
guilt and isolation.
While she is less overtly aUusive than say Virginia Woolf or Thomas
Hardy or Faulkner, her works reveal the richness of her reading
background - especially in philosophy and theology. Among the books
in her personallibrary, heavily underlined, were the works of Augustine,
Aquinas, St. Theresa; books on Old Testament history and Christian
symbolism; Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Maritain's Art and
Scholasticism; volumes by Buber, Heidegger, and Teilhard de Chardin,4
whose Phenomenon of Man she annotated heavily and from which she
took the line that became the title of her second collection of stories,
Everything That Rises Must Converge.
One of her many literary letters contains the blunt1y folksy assertion:
"For my money, Dante is about as great as you can get."5 Her novels
and stories clearly reflect deep familiarity with such favorite sources as
Dante and the Bible. Again and again, O'Connor renders the proto-
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 239

typical Christian experience of the Dantesque journey through sin to

salvation. The stories sometimes short-circuit the entire process (recog-
nition, confession, repentance, and absolution) to dramatize significant
aspects of it, while the two novels use the complete journey-as-process
pattern.
Distinct from her specifically Catholic convictions, and as her meta-
phor for the Christian vision, she used the Protestant Fundamentalism
of the rural South. The characters range from ordinary believers to
evangelist preachers to would-be prophets. In her first published
collection, A Good Man ls Hard to Find, the epigraph is chosen from
St Cyril of Jerusalem:
The dragon is by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour
you. We go to the father of souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.

Cyril's dragon by the roadside, like Dante's leathern-winged Satan,

frozen solid into the center of Hell, must be fully confronted in all its
substantiality before salvation can be achieved. To dramatize the diffi-
culty of the road to salvation, O'Connor repeatedly enlists Dantesque
and Biblical analogies, and like both of her sources, she uses fire
imagery to suggest a wide range of symbolic states: sin, evil, purgation,
purification, revelation, transcendence. I propose to examine some
major examples.
In the story "The Artificial Nigger," she makes one of those objec-
tionably racist plaster lawn statues of a black man the objective
correlative of an act ion of mercy and reconcilation. Alluding directly to
both the Bible and Dante in its opening paragraphs, the story moves
from betrayal to forgiveness. Mr. Head and his grandson Nelson vis it
the alien territory of a big city; it is the boy's first encounter with
sophisticated, urban reality. Like Dante and Virgil, Mr. Head and
Nelson move through the city's geography. O'Connor's "endless ridicu-
lous cirdes," the "sewer entrance" which Mr. Head fears he could "drop
down into," Head's cry "rm lost and can't find my way" alI summon
up the emotionallandscape of the Inferno. 6
Before their day in this Hellish city is over, Mr. Head will commit
the sins of cruelty and betrayal, denying to police that he knows Nelson
when the latter accidently knocks a woman to the sidewalk and a crowd
assembles. Head's "This is not my boy. 1 never seen him before." (209)
takes on the character of Peter's denial of Christ.1 As the object of his
grandfather's denial, Nelson burns with shame (213); so too does Mr.
240 BEVERLY SCHLACK RANDLES

Head, once he recognizes his wrong. As he begins to feeI agony over

his treacherous lie, "the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame
and consumed it." (213)
In her use of fire metaphors to symbolize both sin and its purgation,
O'Connor corroborates literary precedents in the Bible and Dante, but
also in the writings of the medieval alchemists, according to whose
theories any of the four basic elements of the material world (Le., the
prima materia) were capable of reverse transformations. Fire could
legitimately represent sinful degradation and purification, hell-fire and
revelatory light. 8 The torch, for exampIe, because Judas carne "with
Ianterns and torches and weapons" (John 18:3), symboIizes the BetrayaI;
yet Christ as the Light of the World is sometimes portrayed by the
torch in Nativity scenes. In Christian art, paintings may render flames
as the torments of Hell or picture them on the heads of the Apostles at
Pentecost, where they signify the redeeming presence of the Holy
Ghost. Christian symbolism of fire ranges from the desires of the flesh
and such vices as Iust and anger - "For wickedness burneth as the
fire," Isaiah 9: 18 - to martyrdom and religious fervor. 9
As a metaphor of God's holiness, fire may destroy to accomplish its
divine mission. As the flames of Hell, fire is the Biblical punishing
agent: "Upon the wicked He shall rain snares fire and brimstone"
(Psalms 11: 6). Yet it is aiso the phenomenon which represents divine
action: "1 am come to send fire on the earth." (Luke 12: 49); the Lord
"maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire." (psalms 104: 4);
the Lord answers David from heaven "by fire." (1 Chronicles 21 :26)
The Old Testament, particuIarly Deuteronomy, is filled with references
to the Lord's speaking "out of the midst of the fire" (4: 12).10 As fire
symboIizes God's Word, it may also signify an artful glibness of tongue
put to sinful purpose. Dante punishes the evii counselors, for example,
by placing them inside great flames which simuitaneously represent
their own gui1ty consciences, and verbal deceit. 11
Fire is the imago Christi, a persistent element of the description of
theophany throughout the Bible. In Exodus, the Lord appears before
the children of Israel "by night in a pillar of fire." (13: 21) 12 The
ever-burning fire on the altar in Leviticus 6: 13 shows the continuai
presence of God, and the Old Testament repeatedly represents the
divine presence as flames: "For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire."
(Deuteronomy 4:24) The New Testament Revelation says the son of
man has eyes like "a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if
they burned in a furnace." (1: 14-15; 2: 18; 19: 12) 13
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 241

In Dante's Commedia there is a most interesting "progressive"

metamorphosis of fire imagery which punishes, refines, and irradiates. It
begins as the torment of sinners in the Interno. The flaming red towers
of Dis, the capital city of Hell (VIII) are followed by the plain of
burning sand and eternal rain of fire which scorches the seventh cirele
sinners - sodomites, blasphemers and usurers. (XIV) Here fire images
the wrath of God, as in countless Old Testament examples. 14 In the
Interno Virgil tells a sinner: "you are made to suffer as much fire inside
as falls upon you." (XIV) In the Purgatorio, sins such as incontinence
are purged away in fire (XXI), which now is "the refining flame."
(XXVI) The fires of sexual passion and emotional violence are trans-
formed into the spiritual ardour of charity, a higher order of love. 1S An
angel of God sends Virgil and Dante through fire to the last ascent,
which leads to the earthly Paradise on the summit of Mt. Purgatory.
(XXVII) In the Paradiso, yet another transformation makes fire an
agent of transcendence as it becomes an analog of light,16 irradiating
heaven and the blessed souls. Dante observes that Heaven "blaze(s)
with the sun's flame" (Paradiso, 1). Discoursing on human redemption,
Beatrice refers to celestial love as blazing (VII), 17 and the souls of the
blessed contemplatives are flames (XXII) in their fiery milieu of light. 18
At its extreme limits, fire is pure and "dematerialized; it loses its reality;
it becomes pure spirit." 19
O'Connor herself considered fire "a symbol of purification . . . the
kind of purification we bring on ourselves - as in Purgatory." 20 She
makes use of that notion of purgatorial purification in her tale of a
widow and her twelve-year-old daughter, "A Cirele in the Fire." The
widow is one of O'Connor's favorite targets - an ostensibly God-
fearing, good Christian, who actually is piously shallow, self-righteous
and intensely convinced of her own benevolence and generosity. In
particular, she exhibits a proud, selfish possessiveness toward her farm
land. Her name is Mrs. Cope, but the unstable conviction of possession
and the precarious control that are her manner of coping with life are
progressively destroyed as the story develops.
Mrs. Cope's one obsessive fear is of fire in the woods. Subtle
forebodings of that force she most dreads are woven into the descrip-
tive setting. The sun does not so much shine as burn; it is "flame-
colored"; it seems "to be trying to set everything in sight on fire."
(223)21 Mrs. Cope's fear of fire mirrors her pride, her need to control
reality, the land, and finally the wills of the three ominous young boys
(Powell, Garfield, and W. T. Harper) whose arrival at her farm teaches
242 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

Mrs. Cope some bitter lessons in metaphysical humility. The boys begin
with simple disrespect and defiance: when she orders them not to drop
cigarette butts in her woods, Powell sneers, "She don't own them
woods, ... Gawd own them woods and her too." (225) They progress
to malicious acts of vandalism and hostile refusals to leave the land,
despite Mrs. Cope's commands, and finally - with the inevitability of
Greek tragedy - they set fire to her woods.
The final paragraph of the story links Mrs. Cope's dread of fire ta
her fear of the unmanageability of reality, and forges yet another link to
that Biblical symbolism which represents God as the fire that consumes
and purifies. The Old Testament embodies the Lord's wrath as fire: "his
fury is poured out like fire" (Nahum 1 :6); by fire does "the Lord plead
with alI flesh." (Isaiah 66: 16) In eye-for-eye Biblical justice, the fire of
the Lord's anger consumes the sinner: "their own way have I recom-
pensed upon their heads." (Ezekiel 22: 31) In Jeremiah in a foretelling
of the destroction of Jersulem, the Lord declares: "But I will punish you
according ta the froit of your doings, ... and 1 will kindle a fire in the
forest thereof, and it shaU devour aU things round about it." (21: 14)
Observing the effects of the forest fire upon Mrs. Cope, her young
daughter observes a maternal face visited by a genuine misery, bereft of
evasions and imposed will and shallow optimism. She observes a
paradoxical epiphany in progress, for this altogether new misery
"looked old and it looked as if it might have belonged to anybody, a
Negro ar a European or to Powell himself." (232) For most of her
self-absorbed life, having failed ta rise above her lack of generosity and
her misplaced faith in control and possession, Mrs. Cope, in extremis, is
made ta understand her lack of control over existence, her sham
possession of the things of this world, her participation in the sufferings
of blacks, Europeans, PoweU, in short, mankind. The fire, in itself
destructive and reprehensible, brings enlightenment - just as agricul-
tural fires if general, liven as they destroy, purify the field, and enrich
the soil. Did not Virgil note in the Georgics, "the latent vice [which] is
cured by fire." 22 Fires of agricultural purgation are fires of fusion and
homogeneity; 23 thus Mrs. Cope is initiated into the community of
suffering.
Matthew says "the Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they
shall gather out of his kingdom aU things that offend, and them which
do iniquity; and shaU cast them into a furnace offire." (13:41-42) The
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 243

three boys, O'Connor's sardonic version of the Lord's angels, have

done His work. Unlikely agents of God that they are, they illustrate
O'Connor's theological premise that Satanic action is permitted for the
furtherance of God's glory. It is as customary in O'Connor's universe as
in the Biblical one that God blazes forth as and in an event of violence:
The Letter to the Hebrews warning against the rejecting of God's grace
reminds the reluctant "our God is a consuming fire." (12:29) As Mrs.
Cope has her unwelcome epiphany, her daughter contemplates the
burning woods and hears the three heavenly arsonists shrieking with
joy, "as if the prophets were dancing in the fiery fumace, in the circle
the angel had cleared for them." (232)
O'Connor's reference to the story in Daniel 3 may be suggesting that
Mrs. Cope functions as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar, imperiously
demanding from alI around her proper worship of her kingdom. Like
Nebuchadnezzar, she "flourishes" (Daniel 4:4) in her little fiefdom until
the advent of three rebels who will neither obey her decrees nor
worship her preferred images.
The three boys, dancing and shouting, have escaped harm in the
woods they have set afire; like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they
are delivered out of "the burning fiery furnace." (3: 17) Ii a circle has
been cleared for them so that they may "come forth of the midst of the
fire" (3: 26), they have also succeeded in altering radicalIy the King's
behavior. (3: 28) Flannery O'Connor's analog has been forcibly shown,
burned clean of her illusions, in an altogether unsought and unwilling
acceptance of grace - a recurrent theme in O'Connor's fictional world.
In this world complacement metaphysical structures are always in
mortal danger. O'Connor's sense of justice is as ruthless as Dante's or
the Old Testament's; she presents revelation and salvation as a Violent
stripping away of falsities. It is, after alI, a convention of religious
narratives, including Greek tragedy, that man must learn the lesson of
humility harshly, must eschew arrogant over-estimation of his intel-
ligence and his righteousness.
This theme finds expres sion in "The Enduring ChiU," wherein the
unwanted revelation is a revelation of absences, of the lack of intel-
lectual and artistic superiority asserted by the young hero. Both the title
and the final paragraph exploit the ironic revers al of fire into ice.
Young Asbury is frozen solid in his unrealistic epistemologies. As his
mother puts it:
244 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

When people think they are smart - even when they are smart - there is nothing
anybody else can say to make them see things straight, and with Asbury, the trouble
was that in addition to being smart, he had an artistic temperament 24

Asbury has written what O'Connor calls "two lifeless novels," a

"half-dozen stationary plays," "prosy poems," and "sketchy stories."
(94) He construes his lack of creative fire as somehow to be his
mother's fault. A failed artist, he returns home, to die shortly, he thinks,
of a fatal disease. He has brought with him his own version of a Kafkan
letter to his father: an accusatory epistle filled with self-pity, judge-
mental arrogance, and quotations from Yeats. It is to be read after his
death by his mother, so that she will be made to see "what she had done
to him." (94) This forced revelation, he believes, will "leave her with an
enduring chill." (94)
Out of his Byzantine structures of self-delusion and cruel ego
assertions, Asbury's fate unravels. He waits, in bed, for Art (as he
construes it) the great god whom he has failed, to send him easeful
Death by way of compensation; he plans to orchestrate his death with
tragic drama, as in Italian opera. A simple country doctor named Block
will discover he has a chronic but very curable fever; meanwhile,
Asbury awaits his melodramatic doom, staring at some water stains on
the ceiling above his bed, which seem to him to have the shape of "a
fierce bird with spread wings" (95), carrying an "icicle in its beak."
(103)
In search of "some last, significant, culminating experience" (106),
Asbury finds instead a harsh reality which demolishes his philosophical
posturing. The blacks he sought to idealize in his talentless plays from
the actuality of two black workers, Randall and Morgan, with whom he
had tried to establish rapport, neither want nor return his friendly
gestures. When they visit what Asbury thinks is his death-bed at his
request, his liberal expectations are mocked by their stereotypic, Unele
Tom grinning, shuffling, and flattering.
He seeks an opera tic religious experience with a Roman Catholic
priest (chosen purposefully to annoy his Protestant, anti-Catholic
mother) requiring a "very well-educated" Jesuit, a trifle "worldly," even
"cynical," and "a man of culture." (100) Reality sends him Father Finn,
a hearty, red-faced pragmatist, "blind in one eye and deaf in one ear."
(104) In a mordantly funny scene (which either Joyce or Beckett would
relish) Asbury plays the sophisticated atheist-artist to poor Father Finn,
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 245

attempting to discuss esoteric subjects like "the myth of the dying god"
and asserting "the artist prays by creating." (104)
Father Fion (he of the parodic Joycean name) has limited, pragmatic
answers: pray regularly and learn the catechism. To Asbury's '''What do
you think of Joyce, Father?", the country priest can respond only
"Joyce? Joyce who? ... 1 haven't met him." (104) Moved at last by
Asbury's provocative thrusts and condescensions, Finn invokes the
Holy Ghost and roars: "The Holy Ghost will not come until you see
yourself as you are - a lazy ignorant conceited youth!" (105)
His prophetic warning materializes in the story's closing lines, when
Asbury's frail defenses are no longer adequate to prevent the coming of
the revelation. The fire of the Holy Ghost, which should represent
integration of body, spirit, and soul, manifests itself to Asbury with
appropriate modifications. Not for him the baptism with fire as in
Matthew (3: 11) and Luke (3: 16), nor the Pentecostal appearance of
the Holy Spirit as "cloven tongues" of fire (Acts 2: 3). Asbury is no
John, who "saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove." (John
1 :32) For the cool, unbelieving yet prententiously wise modern soul,
not doves and fire, but "the begioning of a chill" (110), a chiU that
descends not upon his mother, as he had so cruelly intended, but upon
his own head via the stains on the ceiling. 25
O'Connor's master, Dante, also chose ice as the fitting medium for
those souls in the last depths of Hell, where chiUy winds and ice reverse
the promise of God's warmth and light; where fire, as the flow of energy
and love, is absent. 26 The Dantesque power of the "The Enduring Chill"
resides precisely in its replacement of fire symbolism with imagery that
emphasizes absence and rigidity.
The same painful spiritual movement toward a new moment of
raised consciousness which visited Asbury and Mrs. Cope is present in
the story plainly titled "Revelation." The protagonist is once again a
self-deceiving, God-fearing, good Christian woman, forced into a
humbling theological insight. In a doctor's waiting room a complacent
matron named Mrs. Turpin sits surveying her fellow patients, judg-
mentally separating them out into freaks, lunatics, "white-trashy, ...
worse than niggers," 27 or "not white-trashy, just common." (170) To her
class-conscious chagrin, the woman she deems white-trash derides pigs
(which she and her husband keep on their farm) as "Nasty stinking
things, a-gruntin' and a-rootin' alI over the place." (172)
246 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

Mrs. Turpin retorts that her hogs are kept in a concrete-floored pig
parIor and are probably "cleaner than some children I've seen" (172),
a maliciously pointed reference to the woman's own scruffy child.
An observer of this petty, nasty game is a fat, ugly, neurotic
Wellesley student with acne, tellingly named Mary Grace, who is
reading a book entitled Human Development. Her growing contempt
for Mrs. Turpin reaches a climax of distaste when the Iatter intones a
smug hymn of self-congratulation, cloaked in pseudo-Christian piety,
and ending "Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!"
(177)
Mary Grace hurIs Human Development at Mrs. Turpin, striking her
above her Ieft eye. In the book of Revelation, the false-prophet beast
marks everyone "in their right hand, or in their foreheads" (13: 16), and
there follows a warning from God's angel that those who have been
so marked "shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God." (14: 10)
Specifically, they "shall be tormented with fire and brimstone." (14:10)
Mary Grace marks Mrs. Turpin and shouts a most appropriate damna-
tion: "Go back to hell where you carne from, you old wart hog." (179)
At home after this humiliating experience, as she hoses down the
hogs, Mrs. Turpin assays a Job-like defiance: "Why me?" (184) In a fit
of daring rebellion, she demands of God "Who do you think you are?"
(185)28
The God whom she challenged (according to Revelation) is a force
of mercy and forgiveness, but also of anger and punishment. His eyes
are flames of fire which pierce and burn through to the secret heart of
things. Mrs. Turpin now experiences her whole environment as "burned
... with a transparent intensity"; she sees the hogs suffused by "a red
gIow." (185) In the apocalyptic tradition of the Book with which the
story shares its title, a visionary experience is given her: she sees a
bridge extending to heaven through "a field of living fire." (186) On the
bridge is a "vast horde of souIs," including the niggers, lunatics, white
trash, freaks, and common folk with whom the likes of "decent"
Christians like herself seem shockingly obliged to share salvation.
Indeed, her kind of respectable Christian is bringing up "the end of the
proces sion," and she sees "by their shocked and altered faces that even
their virtues were burned away." (186)
In the ultimate purification by fire al! are saved; God is bereft of the
social class distinctions Mrs. Turpin has delighted in, and salvation is
achieved not in Mrs. Turpin's rational, complacent way, but mysteriously
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 247

and by grace. The final sentence of the story, in which Mrs. Turpin
hears "the voices of the souls cIimbing upward into the starry field and
shouting hallelujah" (186), suggests utopia after the apocalypse. Beyond
the searing epiphany is deliverance. The final verse of Revelation
speaks of grace; the final word of each of the three parts of Dante's
Commedia is stars; the body of Christian scripture cIoses with the word
amen (Revelation 22: 21). Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation" ends with
the disclosure of "starry fields" and the world hallelujah. Mrs. Turpin
has learned what Dante learned from St. Bernard in the Paradiso: the
places of the blessed souls are assigned not by merit but by grace,
through a divine logic beyond mortal comprehension. 29 Dante grasps
divine splendor through grace, not reason, and what he sees - his "one
volume cIasped of love, ... all properties/Compounded, yet one
individual light/The whole." (Paradiso, XXXIII) - bears striking
resemblance to the synchronistic epiphany O'Connor grants Mrs.
Turpin.
"Parker's Back," equally concerned with the themes of revealed truth
and prophecy, was published posthumously. O'Connor had read
Aquinas on prophecy and was struck by his contention "that prophetic
vision is dependent on the imagination of the prophet, not his moral
life." 30
"Parker's Back," written during the last painful months of her fight
against death, centers around O. E. Parker, whose initials conceal the
names of the minor prophet Obadiah, who "feared the Lord greatly" (1
Kings 18: 3) and of Elihue, who appears in the book of Job, justifying
God's ways and extolling His greatness, after Job's three false com-
forters have finished speakingY
The story explores the mystery of chosen-ness and the working out
of the destiny of God's design upon the soul He has selected through
yet another one of O'Connor's unlikelies. Parker experiences divine
providence through two major sources, a tattooed man at a country fair
whom Parker feels strangely compelled to emulate, and his wife, Sarah
Ruth, daughter of a Fundamentalist preacher. AII certainty, where
Parker is vague and unsure, Sarah adheres to a literal interpretation of
Scripture, denies the Incarnation and the corporeality of God, is quick
to labeI things "idolatrous," and is "forever sniffing up sin." 32 Ultimately
as closed to God's grace as he is open to it, she considers herself called,
whereas Parker is chosen.
Parker is haphazard and subject to vague inner promptings, one of
248 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

which is to have yet another tattoo applied to the confused multitude

already on his body. The subject of the tattoo remains an unanswered
question until it finds an answer in an accident: Parker's tractor crashes
into a tree, which is ignited by the fuel from the overturned vehicle.
"The hot breath of the burning tree" (196) which Parker experiences
signals to him the divine presence, analogous to God's call to Moses,
wherein "the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out
of the midst of a bush." (Exodus 3: 2) The purgatorial fire consumes
not just Parker's shoes, but his past identity, sending him into town as a
species of barefoot penitent, ready now, for readiness is aU, to fulfiU the
divine design.
The divine design, quite literal in Parker's case, is to have tattooed
on his back "the haloed head of a flat stern Byzantine Christ with
all-demanding eyes." (198) He believes that Sarah Ruth wiU applaud a
religious tattoo and find the tattooed Christ irresistible, but it is only he
who finds it the picture of a growing obsession. Having incarnated the
Redeemer on his own body, he becomes subject to recurring visions "of
the tree of fire." (201) When he looks at his back in double mirrors, he
is frightened by the "stiH, straight, all-demanding" (201) eyes which are
demanding "to be obeyed." (202) Sarah Ruth, the rigid obedient, saved
Christian, does not even recognize what is represented by the tattoo:
"It ain't anybody I know," (204) she declares with more truth than she
realizes. She denounces the image as "idolatry" and angrily begins to
thrash Parker with a broom. The ritual lashing Parker endures at her
hands is the perfection of his own suffering and exaltation; "large welts"
form on his tattoo in an ironic re-enactment of the ordeal of Christ.
Parker flees the thrashing in defeat; outdoors, he leans against a tree
"crying like a baby." (205) In the last sentence of the story, Parker is
linked to his Biblical namesake, the Elihue who declared: "by reason of
the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to cry: they cry
out by reason ofthe arm ofthe mighty." (Job 35 :9)
The Violent Bear It A way, a 3 part noveI on which O'Connor
worked for 7 years, from 1959 until her death, explores the prophetic
mode as a revelatory manner of seeing once again, as did "Parker's
Back," and expresses her theological perspective on violence. The
novel's epigraph is from the New Testament: "The kingdom of heaven
suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away." (Matthew 11: 12) It
echoes Dante's discovery in Paradise that even love and hope "with
violence assaillthe kingdom of the heavens, and overcome/the will of
the Most High." (Paradiso, XX)
 THE FLAMES OF HEAVEN AND HELL 249

The novel grants to violence the metaphysical status of a reality

finally and forcibly demonstrated. Not through self-indulgent ecstasies
of belief or comfortable works and pieties, but through violence,
O'Connor says, are important personal epiphanies attained. The
achievement of truth is a mortal combat, encompassing both emotional
and physical violence done to and by an individual. It takes both active
and passive experiences of violence to convince the novel's young hero,
Francis Marion Tarwater, that his notion of dominating destiny is as
much a hubristic myth as was Oedipus'. Like Oedipus, he learns that his
conviction that he could oppose and conquer his (predicted religious)
fate was pure illusion. The fall of those who imagine themselves in
control of reality, or in possession of unarguable truth, is a theme
O'Connor shares with Greek tragedy; in her novel, the conflict between
acceptance and rebellion is resolved only when Tarwater recognizes
that being done unto is as large and inescapable an ontological
necessity as is do ing to.
Tarwater's great-unele Mason considered himself a prophet and
raised Tarwater in the same expectation, with stern teachings about
how the experienced evils of the world "burn the prophet elean." 33
Mason had "learned with fire." (306) After his vision of "a finger of
fire" coming out of the sun, he preached global holocaust by that
means, much as the Bible predicts that fire will set the world ablaze at
the Last Judgment. 34
Mrs. Cope feared fire in her woods; old Mason fears cremation
by Rayber, his disbelieving, schoolteacher-nephew, and he expects
Tarwater to carry out his proper Christian burial when he dies. But
Tarwater is eager to express the selfhood of rebellion and fearful that
Mason's obsession will indeed materialize in him; he deliberately
betrays Mason's command. When his great-unele dies, he gets too
drunk to complete the digging of the grave and burns down the entire
house, thinking that it contains Mason's body. The violence of this
effort by fire to avert his predicted fate sets the gears of his destiny in
motion. The irony (unknown to Tarwater and the reader until the
novel's end) is that a black worker named Buford buried Mason before
Tarwater burned down the house; hence Tarwater's belief that he had
defied heavenly commands and cheated his destiny was false from the
very start.
Tarwater's philosophical presumptions, like Asbury's, must be
burned away, and O'Connor's plot structure permits Tarwater's shallow,
I-did-it-my-way egotism to be seared by reality's harsh lessons in
250 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

tribulation and suffering. Most importantly, Tarwater must learn the

spiritual necessity of accepting God's will. In a compelling fire meta-
phor at the center of the novel, the child-preacher of a missionary
family delivers a sermon devoted to the violence of the coming of
God's kingdom. Like O. E. Parker, the child-prophet has "seen the
Lord in a tree of fire." (384) Drawing upon numerous Biblical repre-
sentations of fire as the divine instrument of enlightenment and salva-
tion, she warns the congregation that "the W ord of God is a burning
Word to burn you elean." (384) In Jeremiah, the Lord promises to
"make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall
devour them" (5:14), and then reiterates "Is not my word like as a fire?"
(23:29) O'Connor's child-prophet coneludes her sermon with the
startling command "Be saved in the Lord's fire or perish in your own!"
(385)
Mason had predicted that the Lord was "preparing a prophet with
fire in his hand and eye and the prophet is moving toward the city."
(339) Tarwater sets out for the city, whose glowing lights strike him as
a "fire" (333), expressly to confront Rayber and his idiot child and defy
Mason's predictions, first, that he would baptize the child and second
that he would be what Mason told Rayber - "the prophet I raise up" to
"burn your eyes elean." (348)
Like his symbolic kinsman Asbury, Rayber is anesthetized modern
man, an icy revers al of fire as pas sion, "burnt by a metallic coldness."
(354) An atheist-schoolteacher-psychologist whose gods are reason,
science, and statistics, Rayber has dismissed Mason's religious passions
with labels of "fixation" and "insecurity." (314) He imprisons meaning
in definitions, ignoring or denying that which falls outside rational
explanation. Thus, when Tarwater arrives and brags "1 set him on fire
where he was and the house with him," Rayber sneers "Did the Lord
arrive for him in a chariot of fire?" (355) And when Tarwater, with
burning eyes, informs Rayber that he has reduced Mason "to ashes,"
Rayber pronounces it "perfect irony." (356)
Like Hazel Motes, the God-denying hero of O'Connor's first novel,
Rayber and Tarwater doth protest too much. The violence of Tarwater's
denials only indicates the extraordinary depth of the pull toward God
which he must so passionately resist. Rayber has gone so far in his
attempts to disconnect himself from the surges of agonized love he feels
for his idiot son as to try to drown what he calls this "mistake of
nature." (374) The retarded son, Bishop, is fatally caught between
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 251

Tarwater and Rayber, between impulses of religion and rationalism,

between drowning and baptism.
In the desparate ferocity of his resistance, Tarwater decides to drown
Bishop, as proof that he has defied Mason's baptismal command. Such
an extreme, immoral act, he believes, will release him from following
what he calls the "mad shadow of Jesus." (435) Moreover, since Rayber
himself once attempted to drown the pathetic Bishop but lacked the
nerve, the drowning would demonstrate Tarwater's superiority to the
godly Mason and the godless, impotent humanism of Rayber.
The drowning, once accomplished, is not a solution, merely another
reflection of Tarwater's divided soul, for even as he does the murderous
act, he finds himself baptizing the idiot child. Fleeing the terrible deed,
Tarwater teUs the truck driver who picks him up on the highway as he
hitchhikes home: "1 had to prove I wasn't no prophet and I've proved it.
. .. by drowning him. Even if I did baptize him that was only an
accident. ... It's not going to be any destruction or any fire." (428) He
feels "tried in the fire on his refusal, with all the old man's fancies burnt
out ofhim." (434)
Tarwater imagines that his monstrous repudiation has set him free.
He supposes he has disproved the religious paradoxes by which Mason
lived: that freedom is found in faith and liberation is in the calling.
The second ride on the .highway home is offered to Tarwater by a
young man in a lavender shirt driving a lavender car. The man gives
Tarwater "an unpleasant sensation" (438), the car has "a sweet stale
odor" (439) and the stranger plies him with cigarettes and liquor as he
dispenses "a long personallook." (438) The cigarette lighter has an evi!
flame, and the gift whiskey burns Tarwater's throat, but Tarwater is
blind to the sinister situation; he is too busy asserting control and
mastery ("1 take care of myself. Nobody tells me what to do.") and
en-acting another childishly hostile repudiation of Mason, who had
always warned him about riding with strangers, drinking, and smoking.
When foolish, drunk Tarwater regains consciousness, he is naked
and tied to a tree with a lavender handkerchief: the victim of homo-
sexual rape. This ultimate personal violence finally disabuses Tarwater
of his belief in power over the world's manifest evils; his eyes are
"scorched." (441) Having experienced active (the drowning of Bishop)
and passive (homosexual rape) forms of violence, Tarwater calls upon
fire - his initial mode of defiance, the means by which he tried to
purge his spiritual identity and his link to Mason, who had spoken to
252 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

him of fire as divinely significant. After his traumatic experience of evil,

Tarwater reverses his initially perverse use of fire and attempts to make
it an instrument of purgation.
He sets the scene of his criminal violation on fire, using the power of
flames to purify the contamination, watching as it eats "greedily at the
evil ground." (441) As he leaves the "roaring blaze" (442) behind him,
his "scorched" (442) eyes now look upon an inner vision; his gaze is
"like a bird that flies through fire." (443) Reaching the site of Mason's
destroyed house, Tarwater sees the clearing as "burned free of all that
had ever oppressed him." (444) He lights another purifying fire - to
destroy that denying, alter-ego, voice-in-his-head which has counselled
him insidiously and falsely from the start. To this end Tarwater builds

a rising wall of fire between him and the grinding presence. He glared through the
flames and his spirits rose as he saw his adversary would soon be consumed in a
roaring blaze. (444)

With the inner deviI exorcised, Tarwater learns from Buford that
Mason had been properly buried with a cross at the head of his grave.
It is Tarwater's final humiliation at the hands of prophetic destiny. The
cremation-that-never-was concretizes the defeat of his illusion that he
could avoid his special destiny. Watching Tarwater absorb this painful
truth, Buford senses his spiritual upheaval "as a burning in the atmos-
phere." (446) His mission is revealed to a burned-clean Tarwater:

aware at last of the object of his hunger, aware that it was the same as the old man's ...
that it rose in a line of men whose lives were chosen to sustain it, who would wander in
the world, strangers from that violent country where the silence is never broken except
to shout the truth. (446-7)

O'Connor sees the prophetic mission as recollective rather than

innovative, and prophets as out-casts whose function is to remind
people of harsh truths they would rather ignore; they are unwilling
vehicles, often reluctant to accept their destiny and mission. 35 Tarwater's
final revelation in a fire vision emphasizes his acceptance of the role
and his entrance into a community:

a red-gold tree of fire ascended as if it would consume the darkness in one tremendous
burst of flame ... He knew that this was the fire that had encircled Daniel, that had
raised Elijah from the earth, that had spoken to Moses and would in the instant speak
to him. (447) J6
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 253

His purification-by-fire ends Tarwater's rebellion and solidifies his

prophetic role and participation in the Lord's burning mercy. Smearing
some dirt from Mason's grave on his forehead, Tarwater marks himself
as a prophet who has accepted his evangelical mission. He leaves the
burning woods behind him and sets out toward the city, with "singed
eyes, ... envision[ing] the fate that awaited him." (447)
There is no textual evidence that Tarwater's extraordinary odyssey is
to be read psychologically (as a journey of obsessive compulsion
toward madness) or that Tarwater will succeed in the city. Only the
odyssey itself has been given; like Dante's, it has moved toward a
theological pinnacle of grace, the acceptance of divine love, after much
struggle and resistance. O'Connor has said, "All my stories are about
the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support
it." 37 Her fictional prophets are the ultimate expression of salvation by
grace as the divine fire descends upon them. 38
The New Testament promises that "every man's work shall be made
manifest: ... it shall be revealed by fire" (1 Corinithians 3: 13). The
Bible's numerous associations of fire with speech,39 especially in the
sense of fire's Pentecostal power, are as relevant to Flannery O'Connor
herself as to her fictive creations. The "cloven tongues like as of fire"
which descend upon the apostles and fill them with the Holy Spirit so
that they "began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance" (Acts 2 :4) are a metaphor of the communicative powers of
the creative literary imagination. Such powers were granted to the
apostles and to St. John in the book of Revelation, wherein fire issues
forth from the mouth of the two prophetic witnesses. (11 :5)
"What thou seest, write in a book," (1: 11) God commands John in
the first chapter of Revelation. "Write the things which thou hast seen,
and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter." It is
Biblical formula for the literary artist as a trinity of visionary-realist-
prophet.
Such fires burned in Mary Flannery O'Connor. She flames up stiH in
each reading-recreation of her extraordinary works.

Empire State College

Saratoga Springs, New York
254 BEVERLY SCHLACK RANDLES

NOTES

1 Thomas Merton, 'Flannery O'Connor-A Prose Elegy,' in The Literary Essays of

Thomas Mertan, ed. Brother Patrick Hart (New York: New Directions, 1981), p. 159.
2 Flannery O'Connor, 'The Fiction Writer and His Country,' in Mystery and Manners,
ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1961), p. 34.
3 The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: F.
S. Giroux, 1979), p. 92.
4 Preston M. Browning, Jr., Flannery O'Connor (Carbondale: Southem Illinois Press,
1974), p. 6.
5 Letters, op. cit., p. 116.
6 Flannery O'Connor, 'The Artificial Nigger,' in Three by Flannery O'Connor (New
York: Signet Book, 1964), p. 211. Hereinafter, pagination will be given in the text in
parentheses.
7 See Mark 14:30: when Christ was accused and taken prisoner, the council sought
witnesses against Him. Peter, as Christ had foretold, thrice declared he did not know
Him.
8 In The Psychoanalysis of Fire, Gaston Bachelard, trans. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1964) addresses the "phenomenal contradiction" (p. 106) of fire's
pure/impure connotations, noting that fire can be both "sign of sin and evi!" and
"symbol of purity." (p. 102) Simi!arly, Jung notes that heavenly energy is rearranged in
the lower world of matter, giving us both "heU-fire, the true energic principle of evi!"
and the spiritual uses of fire (e.g., God bums with divine love). This concept of fire
illustrates the principle of the coincidence of opposites, which Jung caUs the coin-
cidentia oppositorum. (The Collected Works, trans. R.F.C. Huli (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1953), VoI. XIII, pp. 209-210.)
9 Flames appear as attributes of such saints as St. Anthony Abbot, St. Agnes, St.
Dorothea, and St. Joan of Arc.
10 See also Deuteronomy 4:33 and 36; 5:4, 22-24.
11 The swaying, vibrating flames "quiver and hum" and the tips of the flames move "as
if it were the tongue that spoke." As even the Devii can quote Scripture, the damned
can speak with prophetic, if flawed, voices. (See Inferno, Cantos XXVI and XXVII.
Quotations above are from the translation by John Ciardi (New York: MentorClassic,
1954). Cantos will hereinafter be cited in parentheses within the text.
12 Cf. Exodus 24:17 and 40:38, Deuteronomy 1:33, Nehemiah 9:19 and Numbers
14: 14.
13 Fire imagery persists in Biblical reports of eschatological theophanies as well: the
"sea of glass mingled with fire" in Revelation (15: 2); the "wonders" and "signs" in Acts
(2: 19) include "blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke"; the vision in Zechariah of
Jerusalem protected by the Lord is of "a wall of fire round about" (2: 5); the Lord
creates on Mount Zion "the shining of a flaming fire" (Isaiah 4: 5); Daniel's dream of
the four beasts involves a throne "like the fiery flame" and wheels "as buming fire"
(Daniel 7: 9).
14 E.g., "His anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord bumt among them." (Numbers
11 : 1); the Lord "shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shaU devour them"
(Psalms 21: 9). In Isaiah, the Lord shows his anger "with the flame of a devouring fire"
 THE FLAMES OF HEA VEN AND HELL 255

(30:27), or renders "his rebuke wiţh flames of fire." (66:15) In Jeremiah, the Lord
warns: "a fire is kindled in mine anger, which shall burn upon you." (15:14) In Ezekiel,
He refers to "the fire of my wrath." (21 : 31 and 22: 31)
15 The "transition from the inner fire to the celestial light" which Bachelard (p. 107)
finds in Novalis is of course also present in Dante's Commedia, where "the first flame
of terrestrial love" becomes "the exaltation of pure light." In Christian symbolist
depictions of the three theological virtues, Charity sometimes holds flames.
16 Cf. Bachelard: "the true idealization of fire is arrived at by following the phenome-

nological dialectic of fire and light." (p. 106)

17 Cf. also Canto XX's "flame of holy love."
18 In Canto XXIV, Dante sees a bright flame burst forth from St. Peter. In the

following Canto, James and John are "so burning bright, II could not look upon them."
19 Bachelard, op. cit., p. 104.

20 Letters, op. cit., p. 387.

21 Page 223 in Three by Flannery O'Cannor, op. cit.. Pagination to follow appears in

the text, parenthesized.

22 I.e., "Long practice has a sure improvement found, IWit kindled fires to burn the
barren ground," says Virgil in Dryden's translation.
23 See Bachelard, op. cit., p. 104.
24 Flannery O'Connor, 'The Enduring ChiU,' in Everything That Rises Must Converge,

(New York: Signet Book, 1967), pp. 90-91. Pagination in the text hereafter.
25 Discussing her story in a 1958 letter, O'Connor wrote: "The problem was to have
the Holy Ghost descend by degrees ... at the end recognized, coming down, implac-
able, with ice instead of fire. I see no reason to limit the Holy Ghost to fire. He's full of
surprises." Letters, ap. cit., p. 293.
26 See Infemo, Cantos XXXII and XXXIII.
27 In Everything That Rises Must Converge, op. cit., p. 169. Further pagination appears
in the text.
28 In a letter, O'Connor reveals: "1 like Mrs. Turpin as well as Mary Grace. You got

[sic] to be a very big woman to shout at the Lord across a hogpen. She's a country
female Jacob. And that vision is purgatorial." Letters, op. cit., p. 577.
29 See Paradiso, XXXII. Note also that in the last Canto (XXXIII) St. Bernard asks
that Dante be granted the grace to contemplate Divine Majesty.
3() Letters, ap. cit., p. 367.

31 Elihu plays a crucial role in the book of Job from Chapter 32 forward, reproving

Job (33: 1-33), justifying God (34 and 35), and extoJling His greatness (36: 1-33).
His command to Job, "Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold.
Every man may see it; many may behold it afar off." (36: 24-25) has an ironic,
literalist dimension in Parker's tattoo.
32 'Parker's Back,' in Everything That Rises Must Converge, op. cit., p. 187. Pagination
in the text henceforth.
33 The Violent Bear It Away in Three by Flannery O'Connor, op. cit., p. 306. Page
references appear, parenthesized, in the text hereafter.
34 Bachelard explains this Biblical representation as fire's dialectical attribute of "sup-
pressing an evi! [combined] with the thought of producing a good." The Psychoanalysis
of Fire, op. cit.,p.l04.
256 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

35 Sister Kathleen Feely, Flannery O'Connor: Voice Of the Peacock (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1972), p. 142. It is dear from O'Connor's numerous reviews
of books about the Old Testament prophets that she saw them as reluctant, recollective
outcasts.
36 Cf. Psalms: "God shall come, ... a fire shall devour before him" (50:3). Malachi
predicts that on "the day of his coming," He will appear "like a refiner's fire." (3: 2) It
has happened for Tarwater as for the prophet Jeremiah that God's Word was indeed "a
burning fire shut up in my bones." (20: 9)
37 Letters, op. cit., p. 275.
3~ Cf. Teilhard de Chardin on death: "It will put us into the state organically needed if
the divine fire is to descend upon us." (Le Milieu Divin, quoted in Teilhard de Chardin:
Album (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 213).
39 Fire and mouth (Le., speech or language) are frequently connected in the Old
Testament: Samuel II 22:9; Isaiah 30:27; Psalms 29:7 and 29:3; Jeremiah 23:29;
Revelation 11 :5, el passim. Compare Jung: "It is probably no accident that the two
most important discoveries that distinguish man from ali other living beings, namely
speech and the use of fire, should have a common psychic background. Both are
products of psychic energy, of libido or mana." (Works, V, op. cit., p. 165)
 PART FIVE

FIRE, THE POETRY OF ELEMENTAL

PAS SION
 MARLIES KRONEGGER

FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS IN BAROQUE POETRY

Baroque poets, inspired by both the Bible and philosophers of classical

antiquity, believed not only in an ideal order animating earthly order,
but were obsessed by fear of chaos and the fact of mutability and
cosmic anarchy. With the rise of royal power and various religious
ideals, poets in the service of the King or Church could transfigure
and harmonize the e1ements' savage confrontations of strength as so
often depicted in Greek myth and literature.! Fire, water, earth, and air
were no longer conceived as wor1d-masses in struggle with one another,
but became sensible phenomena in artistic rearrangement, redistribu-
tion, and transfiguration by perceptible transmutations. Vigarini and
Ruggieri,2 in charge of fireworks at aH celebrations and fetes in France
and England, could stage magnificent fireworks. 3 After the peace
treaties ending the Thirty Years War (1648) and the Austrian succes-
sion quarrel (1749) fireworks took place intemationally. Instead of
forming theories of the physical phenomenon of fire, poets and artists,
as we hope to illustrate in our investigation, could show that change and
metamorphoses can be derived from the nature of fire itself. Baroque
poets saw in fire an active, living force into which other things could be
converted visibly, involving ceaseless flow, but marked by an inherent
stability. The flame, though in perpetual upward motion, remains more
or less constant. The process does not end at the point where the flame
disappears, but continues throughout the world. It is in this sense that
the royal functions of Gustavus Adolphus or of Louis XIV assumed the
cosmic power to transmute the elements, and impose order on the
universe.
The poetics of fire depends on geographic, mythical, biblical loca-
tions which Baroque poets transfigured in marve10us visions. Concrete
places with savage volcanoes, isolated islands, and sacred rituals gave
them voice in an aesthetically significant way.
WeH acquainted with Greek geography and Greek myth, Baroque
poets and artists often refer to four locations: the savage island of
Lemnos, the purifying fires of Mt. Oeta near Euboea, and the destruc-
tive fires of Troy and Mt. Etna. Happenings in the mythological past
259
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 259-279.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
260 MARLIES KRONEGGER

related to Lemnos, Oeta, Troy, and Etna made poets and artists believe
that fire, water, air, and earth were powers whose mutual relationships
were considered to be confrontations of strength. These powers are not
abstractions; an element's cratos is never to be separated from the
space it occupies.
The wild and savage landscape of Lemnos with its volcanic and
tellurian fires is the setting for the crime of Lemnian women who,
according to Aeschylus 4 and Sophocles 5 extinguished their cooking
fires for nine days. They refused to cook, and without a hearth, without
a fire that cooks and heats, always located in the center of the house,
families could not gather. Their alienation set them and their families
apart from civilized Jife. In order to restore bonds with civilization, a
sacred fire is taken from Delos to Lemnos in the annual festival, the
Pyrophoreia or carrying of fire. Lemnian altars, fireless for nine days,
are rekindled in sacrificial rites in order· to renew the bonds between
men and gods.
Lemnos, also called Aithalea, the Blazing Isle, is the site of
Hephaistias, its major city. Here, not only Hephaestus, the fire god,
landed when Zeus hurled him from Olympus, but also Prometheus,
Orion, and Philoctetes. Here Prometheus brought to men the fire which
he stole from the gods.6 Here Hephaestus and Philoctetes lived in exile
(Hephaestus for nine years, Philoctetes for ten), and acquired magical
powers in coping with the element of fire: with the fire that melts
metals, the fire of the sun, and the fiery fire of hydra. As the magical
smith or worker of metals, Hephaestus wrought the wondrous armor of
Achilles. As a healer of any wound, he could restore blind Orion's
eyesight by taking him to the sun; and he was renowned for curing any
bite of the fiery snake hydra. Hephaestus for some time is the outcast
from divine and human sympathy, until finally he was like Philoctetes
redeemed in becoming the magic healer, and harmonizer in violent
confrontations. 7
Philoctetes, briefly mentioned by Homer in the second book of the
Iliad, had sailed from Greece in command of seven ships. Wounded by
the deadly water snake hydra, his wound smells, and makes him cry in
agony. Therefore, his comrades abandoned him in Lemnos. Sophocles,
in Philoctetes, adds the tragic fact that Philoctetes had unconsciously
stumbled into the precinct or shrine of God. Here the snake, symbol of
God's power, bit him in the foot and left him crippled. He thus became
burdened with the mark of God's resentment without any explanation.
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 261

Ten years later the gods intervened to rescue him as mysteriously as

they had injured him.
Recall also the twelfth book of Fenelon's Tetemachus (1699), where
Philoctetes relates his fortunes to Telemachus. Fenelon varies the earlier
part of the legend, following Vergil's vers ion in the Aeneid, when the
Greek chieftain who fought against Troy, settled in Italy where he
founded Petelia (III, 522). For almost alI the part of the story which
passes in Lemnos, Fenelon has closely followed the play of Sophocles.
In Germany, Winckelmann (1717-1769) compares Laocoon's suf-
fering to the subdued pain of the Philoctetes of Sophocles. Lessing, in
his Laocoon (1766), however, admires the Sophocles version in which
Philoctetes shrieks aloud, not ashamed to express his bodily pain.
While the volcanic fires of Lemnos denote the savagery within man,
his destructive and beast-like passions that threaten civilization (or the
gods' resentment for Hephaestus and Philoctetes), fire also has a
purifying function when used in sacred rituals or in a magic way.
The saving and purifying power of fire is mostly associated with Mt.
Oeta in the region of Malis, just opposite the promontory of Euboea.
Here, on top of Mt. Oeta, so sacred to Zeus, Heracles has constrained
his son Hyllus to aid in preparing the funeral-pile, but could not prevail
upon him to kindle it. Philoetetes, son of the king of Malis, performed
the kindling of the funeral-pile, and Heracles, in token of gratitude,
bequeathed to Philoetetes the bow and arrows which he himself had
received from Apollo.8 Heracles' death by fire takes him back to Mt.
Olympus. As the flames arose on the mountain, they were answered
from heaven by the blaze of lightning and the roU of thunder; and by
that sign his companions knew that the great warrior had been
welcomed to the home of his immortal father. While Heracles' purifying
pyre is associated with the hero's retum to his homeland and its
divinities, Ovid sees in the use of fire a political means used by Jupiter
to manipulate the people of Oeta, assuring them that only the female
portion that Heracles owes to his mother would bum, while the more
valuable one, the male portion, would be preserved for eternity.9
AlI these events denote either the savagery within man that threatens
civilization, as exemplified by the Lemnian women, or the forees
beyond man that transeend it, as exemplified by Hephaestus, Philoetetes,
and Heracles. The events at Troy in Homer's Iliad renew the tension
between civilization and savagery. Wherever fire oecurs in eonneetion
with heroes who are dashing like fire or whose armor is flashing, it
262 MARLIES KRONEGGER

emphasizes their inspired energy of heroic pas sion and death. Lurid
flames seem to start from every portion of the epic poem. The eyes of
Agamemnon in the quarrel glare like fire, perhaps foreshadowing his
hope to see the flames of burning Troy. With fire Achilles identifies
death, sacrifice, and the falI of Troy, and Priam sees him in the likeness
of a star, racing back toward Troy, consuming the Trojan plain itself. It
foretelIs the fire which will destroy Hector and the city. Thus in myth,
the diverse views of fire concealed an ambiguity which allowed the
spheres of humans and gods to become confused.

In both the dramatic and poetic Baroque versions of Greek myth, the
nature of fire, set by humans and gods, remains ambiguous. While fires
set by nature, men, and gods bring destruction, there is redemption
through sacrifice, and glorification of the ruler through the feux-
d'artifice.
In Racine's Andromaque, the images of fire, flame, and blood reflect
both the destructive and the constructive decisions of Andromaque and
Pyrrhus whose incendiary emotions consume them in their blaze. The
repetition of such images as torch, fire, sun, and flame imply both
destruction and purification.
In Rotrou's Hercule mourant,10 dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, an
adaptation of Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus, the spectator relives the
transfiguration of Hercules, when the woods of Mt. Oeta burst into
flames in a thunderstorm, and Hercules descends from heaven on a
cloud. Philoctetes witnesses Hercules' death and transfiguratîon in
which the whole of nature becomes a flaming fire.
In Routrou's and Racine's Iphigenie we see the fires burning on the
altar before which Eriphile-Iphigenie has sacrificed herself. The reader's
visual sense is irritated by such images as fire and flame, and calmed by
a vis ion of a blue expanse of water. In Racine's Iphigenie, Achille has
caught the fire that the gods have set in Agamemnon: "Achille ... veut
dans Troie embrasee alIumer le flambeau," 11 and when the pyre bursts
into flames, alI nature participates, the heavens open with the lightning's
flash; when Diana descends to the pyre in a cloud, the spectator's sense
of horror is deepened by the deafening sound of thunder, and the
blinding effect of smoke, carrying to heaven both incense and vows,
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 263

rising through the soaring flames. Only at the very end, does the fire of
love become a regenerative force. Horror prevails in Racine's Phedre,
when Hippolyte is confronted with an aquatic monster which is as
much a creature of fire as of water, half bull, half dragon. Phedre's
poisoned love resembles the monster. Her passion is described as
flamme noire; the flame that should bring light and life to Phedre, in
reality brings darkness and death. Negative in connotation, man-made
fires in Racinian tragedy are artificial and sacrilegious, destroying both
altar and hearth; they dismember both divine and human order. With
Phedre, sacrifice does not mean to render sacred. The flame that should
bring her life and light, inspired by Venus, makes her a ravager at one
with her flame. Like Andromache, Phedre has been victim of a nuit
enflammee and her flamme noire. In Racine's world picture, the dual
views of divine and natural physis, and the resulting distinction made
between several levels of reality, do not yet emphasize and clarify the
separation between nature, gods, and men which is the prior condition
for rational thought.
With Baroque poets alI elements are in constant metamorphoses.
This is clearly realized in the mythical bestiary, with such examples as
the phoenix and the vulture. The image of the burning bird appears in
the legendary phoenix. Ovid describes it as "one living thing ... which
reproduces and regenerates itself, without any outside aid." 12 It is the
mythical bird which is consumed by fire, and then rises reborn from the
ashes. It provided a particularly fascinating image for the Baroque
imagination. It is at the same time both male and female, born of itself
and with each rebirth appears more radiant: "Son corps etant enflamme,
Puis en cendres consume, Retourne en vive semence." 13 Sometimes it is
associated with the cycle of physical desire in passion and in the love
relationships. The poet wishes to be reborn, but realizes that his rebirth
would be an unhappy one:
O Phenix, pour renaître on te dit bien heureux,
moi des astre si mort je prenais novelle âme,
Qui naÎtre ne pourrai que toujours malheureux. 14
Joachim Bernier de la Brousse correlates the details of the phoenix tale
which involves the building of its own funeral pyre upon a mountain or
altar. Here the lover constructs his pyre upon "les monts de ton sein" IS
and his love will be fuel enough for the flames. His desire will be
burned and he will be reborn anew. Often, the phoenix is the image of
264 MARLIES KRONEGGER

life that has triumphed over death and is therefore associated with
Christ's resurrection. 16
Sometimes, the phoenix is contrasted with Prometheus with whom
the poet Amadin Jamyn identifies as his love devours him in the same
way as the vulture which gnaws the liver of Prometheus. Often love
consumes the poet in the same way fire would burn the mythical bird
Phoenix to ashes, yet with no rebirth in accordance with the orthodox
Christian viewpoint that physical love may be the cause of spiritual
death. The poet Amadis Jamyn feels as vulnerable as Prometheus. The
sin for which Prometheus paid so heavily did not benefit mankind and
the need for love remained unfulfilled, and the poet agonizes:
La flamme du Phenix vient du flambeau des Cieux
Et la mienne s'embrase au soleil de vos yeux
Ou je commets Iarcin comme fit Promethee,
Ainsi je suis puni d'un mal continuel,
Car Amour qui se change en un vautour cruel
Me dechire toujours d'une main indomptee. 17
With both Le Moyne's L 'Amour Divin, "Feu sans matiere et sans
fumee" 18 and Crashaw's The Flaming Heart, there is the appearance
of the Judeo-Christian deity in fire, surrounded by angels of fire
(seraphim) and light (cherubim).19 Both poets associate fire with a
spiritual and angelic world midway between the human and the divine.
While with Baroque poets Prometheus assumes the Titanic and
tragic stature which is now so familiar to the reader of Goethe and
Shelley and to the listener of Scriabin, the mythical bird Phoenix stands
for the burning crown of thorns. This burning crown of thorns is
represented in various forms. Gongora, in Soledad Primera, speaks of
goat herds who held Vulcan crowned, when they sat in a circle around
the fire and the glitter of light on the cirde of their faces became like a
crown on the fire:
Llego pues el mancebo, y saludado,
sin ambicion, sin pompa de palabras,
de los conducidores fue de cabras,
que a Vulcano tenian coronado. 20
With San Juan de la Cruz and Crashaw, the burning crown of thorns
is analogous with the saint's halo, when a human life was sacrificed for
divine love in ecstasy.
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 265

With Crashaw's The Flaming Reart upon the book and picture of the
Seraphical Saint Teresa the saint's ecstasy becomes the "triumphant
flame" of "fireworks,"21 while with San Juan de la Cruz, his yearning for
God, absent from this worId, makes him accept death, burning for
eternal Life:
Vivo sin vivir en mi,
Y de taI manera espero,
Que muero porque no muero. 22
Baroque poets, such as Crashaw, Southwell, Kuhlmann, or Du
Bartas, inspired by Heraclitus, saw fire as the elemental activator of two
principles, love uniting, and strife sundering. Their picture of primeval
chaos awaits the ordering fire of God's love. They simultaneously
understand the separation of fire from water, as a natural fact in the
visible world and as a divine birth at the beginning of time. For them,
the whole of reality is like an ever-flowing stream, and the substance of
things is in constant change. Just as in the macrocosm fire is identified
with the one wisdom, so in the microcosm the fire that animates the
poet is ecstasy, a unification of awareness and heightened consciousness
of past, present, and future. In moments of illumination, the poet
becomes himself an ever-living star.
New astronomical theories, notably those of Copernicus, bring forth
landscapes conceived on a cosmological scale, such as Saint-Amant's
Le Contemplateur and Di Pers' Terremoto.
Saint Amant, in Le Contemplateur, contrasts water and fire, with fire
triumphing over the sea by burning it as the painter Turner visualizes
this reversal of the power of elements in his paintings when fire
destroys water. The dark Baroque landscape is lit by terrific flashes of
lightning. Heaven, in the sense of sky, containing the fiery bodies of
sun, moon, and stars, is usually identified with the heaven of the
apocalyptic worId as in Di Pers:
E linguaggio del Ciel che ne riprende
il turbo, il tuono, il fulmine, il baleno;
or parIa anco la terra in note orrende,
perche l'uom, ch'esser vuol tutto terreno,
ne del cielo il parIar straniero intende,
il parIar della terra intenda almeno. 23
In this poem, Di Pers reflects on the nature of life itself. Nature's circle
266 MARLIES KRONEGGER

of birth, procreation, and death continues regardless of the individual's

fate and the rise and falI of civilization. So the destiny of man is seen as
bound to nature. The poem is a philosophical reflection on the enigma
of being and existence, of earthbound man not listening to the language
of heaven. The earthquake with thunder and lightning is sent from
heaven to men and is presented as a punishment because man wished
to be independent separating their lives from divine nature.
Baroque poets embrace alI that is primal, wild, inhospitable in a
world of nature, terrifyingly grand and supremely indifferent to the
conditions of human life and survival. The question arises, what is man
in the face of implacable forces? For Giovan Leone Sempronio, Luis de
Sandoval y Zapata, Drelincourt, Maynard, Le Moyne, man seems to
be fragile and impotent, barely clinging to his existence under constant
threat of catastrophe through fire and natural disaster, such as plague,
war, and earthquakes.
Sempronio asks himself, Quid est homo? Man is a lightning bolt,
which burns and cuts the air; the smoke, which rises in the sky and
fades; in short, he is impermanence:

E fior, che nelI'april nasce e languisce;

ebalen, che nell'aria arde e trapassa;
efumo, che nel ciel s'alza e svanisce. 24
For the Mexican poet Zapata, there is hope of breaking with that which
we have lived and turning into what we have loved.

En poco mar de luz ve obscuras ruinas,

Nave que desplegaste vivas velas;
la mâs funebre noche que recel as
se enciende entre la luz, que te avecinas.
Dichosamente entre sus lumbres arde:
porque al dejar de ser 10 que vivias,
te empezaste a volver en 10 que amabas. 25

Baroque poets went so far as to imagine catastrophes caused by

unleashed natural forces. With them the forces of nature are often out
of control and fire may easily destroy aur fragile civilizati an. Thomas
de Viau depicts such a catastrophe:
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 267

J'entends craqueter le tonnerre,

Un esprit se presente a moy,
J'oy Charon qui m'apelle a soy,
Je voy le centre de la terre.
Ce ruisseau remonte en sa source,
Un boeuf gravit sur un docher,
Le sang coule de ce rocher,
Un aspic s'accouple d'une ourse.
Sur le haut d'une vieille tour
Un serpent deschire un vautour,
Le feu brusle dedans la glace,
Le soleil est devenu noir ...26
As in a Rubens painting, there is a real macrocosm in which alI the
elements are mingled. The elements have hardly cooled down around
an ideal center. Fire or heat becomes a simple metonym for war in both
French and German poetry. For Le Moyne, not only do heroes behave
like fire, but fire itself behaves like humans:
Quel spectade de voir un flambeau qui se plaint;
Un torche qui crie; un homme qui s'eteint;
Une darte meurtriere; une flame sanglante;
Un mort qui fait du jour; un feu qui se lamente;
Et ne rougit pas tant de sa propre couleur,
Que d'un sang etranger qui nourrit sa chaleur.
La se trouvent encor ces mortiers a torture,
OiI les tourmens se font par art et par mesure. 27
Johann Klaj's Friedensgedichte are dedicated to Gustavus Adolphus
whose Swedish army, in Protestant solidarity with Denmark and
Lutheran Germany had advanced as in a holy war against Catholic
Imperial ambitions, defended by WalIenstein. The fire of war is
compared to Mt. Etna, when a local German conflict inevitably turned
into a European War. Therefore, Klaj dedicates his Friedensgedichte to
Gustavus Adolphus, and addresses the "Geburtstag des Friedens" to his
opponent, the Holy Roman Emperor, pointing to the fact that fire has
destroyed fifty percent of German territory, and that once prosperous
towns are now charred collections of roofless houses where pestilence
rages:
268 MARLIES KRONEGGER

Ein Etna hat also gehitzet und gebrant

als von der Kriegeslglut das edle Teutsche Land
nun in die dreissig Jahr ...
Die Stădte stehn in Furcht/die Dărfer in den Flammen
... Das Teutsche Kriegesfeuer
hat zehnmal mehr gebrennt/mit wildem Ungeheuer
entzundet alle Welt/unschwesterlich gehaust/
dass einem/der es sagt und der es hăret/graust ...
Ach! Mutter Teutschland rufft: Ich bin im Brand versuncken!
ist niemand der mich triig auss Schwefelblauen Funcken? 28
The prophetic vision of the inspired poet is placed under the sign of
the goddess Mnenosyne, Memory, the mother of the Muses. She gives
the poet, like the diviner, the privilege of beholding unchangeable and
permanent reality; she brings him into contact with the primeval.
Baroque poets were fascinated with rainbows, an elusive vision born of
water and light. Real, but not quite tangible, rainbows bridge the worlds
of reality and illusion. They can neither be possessed nor captured; yet
are a means of recreating cosmic order in detachment from the natural
realistic look at stars and fish. Von Spee, in Lob Gottes im Luftraum, is
fascinated by the rainbow after having been terrorized by f1ying f1ames
(thunder and lightning).
La Ceppede in "Le Vieux Arc Bigarre" combines the rainbow, the
sign of the end of the deluge with the hope of Christian salvation.
The poet can recreate the original chaos at will: ali elements are in
metamorphosis in Du Bois Hus' Nuict des Nuicts:
Les feux du ciel sans peur nagent dedans la mer,
Et les poissons sans crainte
Glissent parmy ces feux qui semblent les aimer.
Dans le fond de ce grand miroir
La nature se plaist avoir
L'onde et la f1amme si voisines,
Et les astres tombes en ces pai's nouveaux,
Salamandres marines,
Se baignent a plaisir dans le giron des eaux. 29
In a poem by Gryphius, "An Gott den Heiligen Geist", God is called
''fire of true love". 30
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 269

Similarly, Le Moyne, in L 'Amour Divin prays for the fire of the

Lord to come. He can hope for no salvation arising from his own
actions. He realizes, however that the whole body of earth is com-
bustible by the fire of God's love; he implores release from the terrible
emptiness of human life and time in the hope that one day God's love
will burn him and others. The fire of the Lord could relieve his
sufferings.
Cosmic order with Baroque poets has as its center not the earth, but
fire. This central fire is not to be identified with the sun. Round this fire
revolve nine spheres. To Le Moyne it opens a Vesuvius of love, "un
Vesuve d'amour": The center of nature, the rubies and diamonds
hidden in the Vesuvius of love, is eventually united to its circumference
in God. Hence there is a close association between the purifying of the
human soul and the transmuting of earth to diamonds and rubies of
which heavenly bodies are made. As the constellations display their
pulsating, incandescent spheres against the dark curtain of the night,
they seem to invoke a vibrant response from earth in the flamboyant
heavenward movement of
mitle f1ammes nouvelles. Tous les coeurs touchez de ces feux se releverent avec eux ...
firent par la chaleur de laquelle ils bnllerent, D'un Calvaire de mort, un Vesuve
d'amour. 31

The luminous stars are shining emblems of eternal continuity of the

universe and of human love. Often the cosmic order harmonizes in the
unity of sun, light, and fire. The Polish poet Jan Andrzej Morsztyn
addresses himself to John the Baptist who sacrificed himself to his faith
and whose fate will always illuminate mankind:
Zas kiedy zorza ustepuje sfOIlcu,
Krwawym szkarlatem rudzi si~ przy koncu,
Ty, kiedy sfonce nowe swiat szeroki
Oswieca, krwie twej wylewasz potoki. 32
At times, spiritual elevation is possible in the poet's conquering of
any antagonistic force on his climb to a coelum empyraeum, which
signifies heavenly fire, light, and the notion of God as light. For Labadie
in "Elevation generale d'Esprit a Dieux, en vue de son unite divine," the
strife of opposite values brings attunement. Wisdom is not a knowledge
of many things but the perception of the underlying unity of varying
opposites. The truth Labadie proclaimed was that the world is at once
270 MARLIES KRONEGGER

one and many, and that it is just the opposite tension of the opposites
that constitutes the unity of the one.
The poet regards the world as an ever-living fire and understands
how it is always becoming alI things, while alI things are always
returning to it:
Source de multitude! Adorable unite ...
Tout estre autre que toi se change li tout moment
Acquerant ou perdant des qualites contraires ... 33
The whole of reality is like an ever flowing stream. The need for love
here, combines with the search for eternal divine love and the desire of
the poet to himself become divine too, buming in God's fire. The idea
of the infinite interpretation of natural and divine radiance concludes
thepoem.
Fais que je ne sois plus en moi si divise,
Qu'estant un avec toi,je sois divinise. 34
By assuming a godlike viewpoint toward the world of nature and
human existence, Baroque poets appropriate to themselves a measure
of divinity, thus raising the artist to the level of philosopher, seer, or
even priest, one who has direct inspirational access to higher truths and
values, and the power to interpret them to ordinary mortals.
Now let us turn from the magic power of poets to the divine power
of the king who knows how to control and recreate alI the elements in
the orchestration of alI the arts and politics. Popes, kings, statesmen
have always wished to offer major celebrations of ritual, coronations,
peace treaties, etc. to the public. Fireworks had long before the
invention of gunpowder involved the people in the cult of the pope,
king, or statesman. We shall focus on celebrations in both Germany and
France.
The fireworks in celebration of the end of the Thirty Years War are
best depicted in Johann Klaj's Friedensgedichte. Klaj, a Lutheran pastor,
evokes the peace treaties which were signed in Niimberg after the
Peace of Westphalia in the years 1649-50. These peace treaties
granted the three hundred and fifty heterogenous states of the Empire
complete territorial sovereignty under the authority of the Emperor and
gave freedom to the reformed churches throughout the Empire by
officially recognizing Calvinism as well as Lutheranism. Klaj's "Castell
des Unfriedens" is illustrated with an engraving by Johann Miiller,
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 271

offering with factual details and thoroughness, a panoramic view of

fireworks at the "Schiessplatz of St. Johannis" in Niirnberg on June 16,
1650. We see here a fort and a castle symbolizing war and peace. The
fort is used for firing shells in spiral flight, and rockets which leave
rather straight Iines as tails. A turning time face turns over in the air.
Then, Klaj turns to a celebration of peace in a Bildgedicht, arranging
his verse in the form of a monument to peace, the fire of war is
replaced by the Iight of the sun, the moon, the stars.
Accomplishing with language what music and engraving were trying
to express in pure sound and lines, the poet creates a minia ture drama:
At a banquet, Eris, who had not been invited, rolled the golden apple
of discord at the guests. We know that this apple was the provocative
cause of the Trojan War. Concordia and Astree grasp Eris' snake-like
hair and throw the Goddess of Discord into the eternal flames of
Pluto's empire. Then, in celebration of peace, both Mars and Cupid ask
Vulcan to create fireworks to be Iit by Gustavus Adolphus.
Der schone Fried stund schon, in solchen Freudenflammen/
damit nun alle Lust und Freude kăm zusammen/
hat der Fried ein Racquet von seiner Hand gesandt/
der Zwitracht Mord/Castell zu setzen in den Brand ...
Die Flammen wehren sich und flammen Himmelan/
als wollten sie nicht seyn den Flammen unterthan. 35
Finally, the last of a four part chorale, crosses the Friedenschrift (or is
it rather an oratorio?) with David's Orpheus, not only reconciling man,
nature, and God, but on the hopeful note that actually, Gustavus
Adolphus' premature death on 6 November 1632, sixteen years before
the end of the war, was not a disaster for the Protestants, but that his
life and fate will henceforth symbolize Redemption.
With "Castell des Unfriedens," painting and music flow naturally into
one another. Klaj's ode is superior to the engraving: his mode of
conception is lyrical, visual, and plastic. His words and the engraving,
recreate rhythm and sound effects which are imitative of music. In
"Castell des Unfriedens," the confusion of the arts has arrived at a
complete synthesis of drama, engraving, music, and the art of fireworks,
combining elements of lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry with musical and
painterly effects, recreating even more beautiful fireworks with his
rhythmical and colorfullanguage.
The rhythm of his odes move from thesis, to antithesis, to synthesis:
272 MARLIES KRONEGGER

"Satz, Gegensatz, Nachklang." To Klaj, the strife of opposites, peace

and war, war and peace, is really an attunement. Peace is the perception
of the underlying unity of the warring opposites. It is the tension of
opposites which constitutes the unity of eternal life for Gustavus
Adolphus, of peace and harmony for the whole cosmos.
Klaj conceives of space as a continuous recession, toward infinity,
both horizontally and vertically. In "Castell des Unfriedens," visible
space ends in fireworks, inducing the spectator to conceive of space as
continuing into infinity. With fireworks the two directions of the
recession, horizontal and vertical, are fused into one. The total effect is
one of space without boundaries in any direction. Spatial recession is
thought of as occurring in repeated rockets.
Not only Germans enjoyed victory celebrations with feux d'artifice,
and enticing oratory, music, and poetry. With Mazarin and Louis XIV,
Versailles and Paris became the center of divine radiance - the heart
of France, Europe, and the universe.
With them, the royal function and the cosmic order were associated
with one another. It is the king who gives divine birth to cosmic order.
Every part of Versailles and of Paris had to be organized symmetrically
in relation to this center, the Sun King whose cratos of domination had
to always be explicit. Even natural order and atmospheric phenomena
(rain, winds, storms, fountains, the song of birds, waterfalls, and
fireworks) became dependent on the function of the king. French
classical poets offer many lyrical passages on the splendor of fireworks
on the Seine, at Vaux-Ie-Vicomte, and at Versailles among other places.
Artificial fireworks were claimed to be more splendant than natural
ones and proved that fire can be controlled, possessed, and used at will.
Recall that fireworks in France were dominated by the tradition and
techniques of Italians who displayed them at observances of saints' days
and religious festivals. Following the Italian examples of temples or
machines, established for fireworks, the French embellished their
buildings with allegorical figures, flowers, lamps, and pictures for
illumination from behind. From now on, not Gods, but the King could
impose order on the elements in royal rituals. Du Bois Hus, in La Nuit
des Nuicts (paris, 1641) describes fireworks for the birth of the
Dauphin which was celebrated in several cities of France - it gave the
people a chance to indulge in fireworks that surpassed the splendors of
nature and brought more happiness than starlit skies.
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 273

... Un escadron d'astres nouveaux

Faits d'artificieux flambeaux
Consomme les nuages sombres,
Tous les jours et les nuicts sont egalement clairs,
Et pour bnîler les ombres
Les estoiles de l'art allument tous les airs.
Les jours les plus delicieux
Que les matins tirent des yeux
De tant de riantes aurores
N'ont point de beaux rayons qui ne paraissent noirs,
Au prix des meteores
Que l'art fait eclater sur la face des soirs ... 36

In 1660 the triumphant entry of Louis XIV into Paris, accompanied by

his bride, Maria Theresa, was the occasion of an elaborate display in
the Italian manner, fired on the Seine opposite the Louvre. Corneille's
Dorante of Le Menteur refers to the enchanting fireworks after dinner
on a boat accompanied by four different orchestras:

Apres qu'on eut mange, mille et mille fusees,

S'elancant vers les cieux, ou droites ou croisees,
Firent un nouveau jour d'ou tant de serpenteaux
D'un deluge de flamme attaquerent les eaux,
Qu'on crut que, pour leur faire une plus rude guerre,
Tout l'element du feu tomboit du ciel en terre.
Apres ce passe-temps on dansa jusqu'au jour,
Dont le solei jaloux avanca le retour;
S'il eut pris notre avis, sa lumiere importune
N'eut pas trouble sitot ma petite fortune;
Mais n'etant pas d'humeur asuivre nos desirs,
Il separa la troupe, et finit nos plaisirs. 37
La Fontaine, in "Fete de Vaux," after a festive dinner for the illustrious
guest Louis XIV on August 17, 1661 reserves the triumph of entertain-
ment for the beginning of the presentation of Moliere's Les Fâcheux in
the grotto of the garden with both fountains and the castle in the
background of the stage: the eyes of the spectator were dazzled with the
intensity of the light. Fountains in their brilliant hues transformed
274 MARLIES KRONEGGER

themselves into torches, shells, tourbillons, pearls; their fireworks were

intended to outdo those of heaven: suns, stars, golden streamers, and
fiery serpents were chasing each other through the air. Even for La
Fontaine language fails to convey a vivid idea of the grand appearance
of la Bejart, Moliere's favorite actress, on a rock transmuted into a
shell, then a pearl, later a coral with shifting lights, and fading by
degrees from sight, lost in the distance. The effect of the rockets - their
brilliancy, force, and the remarkable height they rose to, and then their
burst into different colored lights and graceful falI dazzled the onlookers;
the glare thrown at the castle of Vaux-Ie-Vicomte was more beautiful
than the brilliancy of the noon-day sun. Recreated by both Torelli and
Le Brun:

Deux enchanteurs pleins de savoir

Firent tant par leur imposture,
Qu'on crut qu'ils avaient le pouvoir
De commander ala nature:
L'un de ces enchanteurs est le sieur Torelli,
Magicien expert, et faiseur de miracls;
Et l'autre c'est Le Brun, par qui Vaux embelli
Presente aux regardants mille rares spectacles ...
De feuillages touffus la scene etoit paree,
Et de cent flambeaux eclairee:
Le Ciel en fut jaloux. Enfin figure-toi
Que, lorsqu'on eut tire les toiles,
Tout combattit aVaux pour le plaisir du roi:
La musique, les eaux, les lustres, les etoiles.
Les decorations furent magnifiques; et cela ne se
passa pas sans machines.
On vit des rocs s'ouvrir, des termes se mouvoir,
Et sur son piedestal tourner mainte figure ...
. . . D'abord aux yeux de l'assemblee
Parut un rocher si bien fait
Qu'on le crut rocher en effet;
Mais insensiblement se changeant en coquille,
Il en sortit une nymphe gentille
Qui ressembloit ala Bejart ... 38
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 275

Recall how Fouquet invited 6000 people to Vaux-Ie-Vicomte and

entertained them with balIets and fireworks, while the young Louis XIV
was selling off his own belongings to help finance his armies. As we
know, Fouquet was put into jail, and the king from then on, dreamed of
what Versailles could become. He not only took material things from
Vaux (tapestries, paintings, orange trees) but Le N6tre, the landscape
expert; Le Vau, the architect; Le Brun, the painter; and also Vigarini
who had been responsible for the fireworks. From then on, fireworks in
the gardens of Versailles became an institution. These aquatic fireworks
in the Canal and rockets bursting into many colors, honored the king.
In 1664 Vigarini provided the climactic scene of a festival entitled "The
Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle" to which Louis XIV invited 600
guests for a three-day program of banquets, balIets, comedies by
Mom~re, music by LulIy. There was a phyrotechnical battle between
three sea monsters, an illumination of the palace of Enchantment by
fireworks, and the eruption in an upward fiare of pyrotechnics of the
entire island.
Il semblait que le ciel, la terre et l'eau fussent tous en feu, et que la destruction du
superbe palais d'Alcine, comme la liberte des chevaliers qu'elle y retenait en prison, ne
se put accomplir que par des prodiges et des miracles. La hauteur et le nombre des
fusees volantes, celles qui roulaient sur le rivage, et celles qui ressortaient de l'eau apres
s'y etre enfoncees, faisaient un spectacle si grand et si magnifique, que rien ne pouvait
mieux terminer les enchantements qu'un si beau feu d'artifice, lequel ayant enfin cesse
apres un bruit et une longueur extraordinaires, les coups de boÎtes qui l'avaient com-
mence redoublerent encore. 39

Their rockets in clusters like stars, in trees of alI shapes, spreading

out like young stars in the making let the on-Iooker forget any religious
threat of "the deluge" or "the Day of the Last Judgment." The dazzling
splendor of fireworks and illuminations marked Louis XIV's victories;
aquatic fireworks in incessant and complicated display became more
and more dazzling; fountains and jets of fire threw up their blazing
cascades into the skies; the whole vault of heaven was scattered with
vivid fires and seemed to receive unto it self innumerable stars and suns.

Je voudrais bien t'ecrire en vers

Tous les artifices divers
De ce feu le plus beau du monde,
Et son combat avecque l'onde,
Et le plai sir des assistants.
276 MARLIES KRONEGGER

Figure-toi qu'en meme temps

On vit partir miHe fusees,
Que par des routes embrasees
Se firent toutes dans les airs
Un chemin tout rempli d'eclairs,
Chassant la nuit, brisant ses voiles.
As-tu vu tomber des etoiles?
Tel est le siHon enflamme,
Ou le trait qui lors est forme,
Parmi ce spectacle si rare,
Figure-toi le tintamarre,
Le fracas, et les sifflements,
Qu'on entendait a tous moments.
De ces colonnes embrasees
Il renaissait d'autres fusees,
Ou d'autres formes de petard,
Ou quelque autre effet de cet art:
Et l'on voyait regner la guerre
Entre ces enfants du tonnerre.
L'un contre l'autre combattant,
Voltigeant et pirouettant,
Faisait un bruit epouvantable,
C'est-a-dire un bruit agreable.
Figure-toi que les Echos
N'ont pas un moment de repos,
Et que le choeur des Nereides
S'enfuit sous ses grottes humides.
De ce bruit Neptune etonne
Eut craint de se voir detrone,
Si le monarque de la France
N'eut craint de se voir detrone,
Si le monarque de la France
N'eut rassure par sa presence
Ce dieu des moites tribunaux,
Qui crut que les dieux infernaux
Venaient donner des serenades
A quelques-unes des Nalades
Enfin, la peur l'avant quitte,
Il salua Sa Majeste:
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 277

Je n'en vis rien, mais il n'importe:

Le raconter de cette sorte
Est toujours bon;et quant li toi,
Ne t'en fais pas un point de foi. 40
We are at the beginning of a new era, when all the elementary forces of
life aspire to be redeemed by human genius. The Sun King assumed
cosmic power to order the elements. Did he not modulate into his own
crown all the elements of fire: those of Christ's buming crown of thoms
as the only Christian ruler and the saint's halo, which both made him
analogous to the sun?
On the trip north in 1680, one town after the other welcomed Louis
with feux d'artifice. Figures of Apollo, the Sun, ar Hercules were central
themes, fighting the hydra monster with three heads (Luther, Calvin,
and Jansenius). On March 16, 1686 Sieur des Jardins created a bronze
statue of the king crowned with victory. The dedication of the statue on
March 16, 1686 was celebrated with a feu d'artifice at the Hotel de
Ville that represented Louis' victory over heresy, now a headless hydra.
From now on, fireworks were used in abundance in all victory celebra-
tions. All Christendom rejoiced with fireworks the defeat of the Turkish
Army in 1683, and fireworks were used more and more to involve the
people in the cult of the ruler, in order that they might more readily
submit to his exercise of power.
In sum, both fire and fireworks have always been a key element in
harmonizing Westem civilization, reaching their highest peak in the late
Baroque music drama of Handel's "Royal Firework Music", an appre-
ciation of the pathos and grandeur of a struggling people and the glory
of the monarch.

Michigan State University

NOTES

I As early as Hesiod the roya! function was seen ta be unable ta control the cosmic
order. Hesiod, Theogony. Translated by R. Lattimore (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1959), pp. 164,683-699.
2 Gaetane Ruggieri aud Giuseppe Sarti, A Description of the Machine for the Fire-
works. (A detail of the manner in which they are ta be exhibited in St. James Park,
Thursday, April 27, 1749, an account of the General Peace signed at Aix La Chapelle,
October 7,1748.) (London: 1749).
278 MARLIES KRONEGGER

3 George Plimpton, New York: Doubleday, 1984 and Alan St. H. Brock. A History of
Fireworks (London: G. G. Harrap, 1949).
4 Aeschylus, "The Libation Bearers," The Oresteia, Translated by R. Lattimore
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952), 11.6290634, p. 115.
5 Sophocles. "Philoctetes," The Complete Plays of Sophocles, (Toronto: Bentam Books,
1967).
6 Giselles Mathieu-Castellani, "Promethee," Eros Baroque (Paris: Union Generale
d'Editions, 1979), pp. 276-279.
7 Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Vols. 1 and 2 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968).
8 Heracles, in Fenelon's Te/emaque, when about to perish on Mount Oeta, wished that
the resting-place of his ashes should remain unknown. Philoctetes swore to keep this
secret, yet did not. The arrow of Heracles, tinged with the hydra's venom wounded his
feet, and this was Philoctetes' punishment from the gods for treason.
9 Ovid, Metamorphoses (New York: Penguin, 1982), p. 209.
10 Jean Rotrou, Hercule mourant (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1971), pp. 62-65.

II Racine, Iphigenia, Translated by John Cairncross, (New York: 1983), p. 125.

12 Metamorphoses, op. cit., p. 345.
13 Eros Baroque, op. cit., p. 269.
14 Ibid., p. 270.
15 Ibid., p. 273.

16 M. E. Kronegger, "The Growth of Self-Awareness in Saint-Amant's Le Contem-

plateur: A Baroque Vision," Papers on French Seventeenth Century French Literature,
VoI. VIII, Nos. 14, 2, (1981) and 'The Orchestration of Human Existence and
Devotion in Baroque Poetry,' Papers on Seventeenth Century French Literature, VoI.
XIV, No. 2, (1985).
17 Eros baroque, op. cit., p. 273.
18 Jean Rousset, Anthologie de la poesie baroque jranr;aise Voi. 11 (Paris: Armand
Colin, 1968), p. 275.
19 J. P. Hill and E. Caracciolo-Trejo, Baroque Poetry (London: Dent, 1975) pp. 231-

233.
20 Ibid., p. 18.
21 Ibid., p. 232.
22 Ibid., pp. 226-228.

23 Ibid., p. 201.
24 Harold B. Segel, The Baroque Poem (New York: Dutton, 1974), p. 220.
25 Ibid., pp. 205-206.

26 Anthologie de la poesie baroque jranr;aise, Voi. Il, op. cit., p. 72.

27 Ibid., p. 149.
28 Johann Klaj, Friedensdichtungen und kleinere poetische Schriften (Nuremberg: W.
Endters, 1650), p. 101.
29 Anthologie de la poesie baroque jranr;aise, Voi. Il, op. cit., p. 173.
30 Baroque Poetry, op. cit., p. 236.
31 Anthologie de la poesie baroque jranr;aise, Voi. Il, op. cit., p. 281.
32 The Baroque Poem, op. cit., p. 183.
33 Anthologie de la poesie baroque jranr;aise, Voi. Il, op. cit., p. 264.
34 Ibid., p. 264.
35 Friedensdichtungen und kleinere poetische Schriften, op. cit., pp. 163-164.
36 Anthologie de la poesie baroque jranr;aise, Voi. 1, op. cit., p. 171.
 FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 279

37 Pierre Comeille, "Le Menteur," Oeuvres Complhes (Paris: Seuil, 1963), Acte 1,

scene 5,11,264-296.
38 Jean de La Fontaine, "Les Merveilles de Vaux; De Vaux it Nantes, Lettre it M. de
Maucroix. Relation d'une fete donnee il Vaux," Oeuvres Diverses (Paris: Pleiade, 1958),
pp.524-525.
39 Jean Baptiste P. Moliere. "Les Plaisirs de l'île Enchantee. La Princesse d'Elide."
Oeuvres Compli!tes VoI. 1 (Paris: PleIade, 1971), p. 186.
40 Ibid., p. 526.
 MEENA ALEXANDER

"F ALLING FIRE": THE NEGA TIVITY OF

KNOWLEDGE IN THE POETRY OF WILLIAM BLAKE

Printing in the infernal method, by corrosives which

in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent
surfaces away ... '
William Blake

To mythologize consciousness is the poet's privilege. For the Romantic

poet such an act becomes primary to the task of poetry itself, for
consciousness, crucial to the creation of poetic knowledge is itself
raised to a fiction, one central to the poetic oeuvre. The status of
consciousness can however differ. It might be Wordsworth's almost
naturalistic presentation, the "sad perplexity" of thought that he
recreates, as close an approximation as possible to the quick com-
plexities of reflection that struggles for the truth. 2 Or it might be
deliberately surreal, a Symbolist "dereglement" of all the senses, with
the poet, as Rimbaud had him, cast as Other, witness of a divine
madness - "C'est faux de dire: Je pense. On devait dire: On me pense."
As witness - "Car JE est un autre" - wrote Rimbaud - consciousness
becomes a careful recorder of knowledge the ordinary world cannot
easily harbor. 3
Within the scope for English Romanticism, the poetry of William
Blake provides a clear case of a consciousness that is mythologized, its
meaning-making powers enshrined at the heart of a unique and at times
hermetic system of poetic knowledge. In this brief essay I shall try to lay
bare two strands of Blake's mythic consciousness: a fiery knowledge
essential to the fresh vision of poetry and an image of the flesh,
maternal, originary, a being rather than a knowing, its very stuff a
portion of the pre-given world.

II

The great cleansing at the world's end was for William Blake a function
of fire rather than water. He had a vision of flame licking at the world's
surface, eating away the corrupted skin of perception. "The fire, the
281
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), AnalectaHusserliana, VoIXXIII, 281-288.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
282 MEENA ALEXANDER

fire, is falling!" is the simple eleventh section of "A song of liberty"

which stands as the culmination of the visionary bricolage of poetry,
aphorism, prose, and surreal imagery that composes The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell. Before Empire and aH the evils of human exploitation
can cease, before the "lion and wolf shall cease" - the verb alludes
not to a quiescence, for that would be unimaginable given Blake's
tumultuous sense of spiritual power, but evokes rather a hitherto
unspelt world of bliss, a realm of desire luminous and fulfilled - the
fire must faH. (Blake, 43-4)
Falling fire, a Biblical and apocalyptic invocation scarcely to be
glimpsed in nature yet part and parcel of earlier descriptions of cosmic
and political unrest, enters powerfuHy into Blake's vision of the end. 4
Indeed the flames of destruction are essential to the psychic liberation
he envisaged. The citizen of London is exhorted to gaze upwards,
together with the Jew and the African:
12. Look up! look up! o citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance; O Jew leave
counting gold! Retum to thy oii and wine; O African! black African! (go. winged
thought widen his forehead.)
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the westem sea.
(Blake,43)

The "Song of Liberty" which was completed before England declared

war on revolutionary France in February 1793, presents a "son of fire,"
Orc, the young spirit of revolution who appears in more detail in
Blake's America, a Prophecy. In the "Song of Liberty" Orc is flung into
the abyss by the "gloomy old king" who presides over the restrictive old
order. Yet Orc emerges out of the watery chaos. Rising from the east
like a sun god, his fire crowns the clouds. Ris emergence signals a new
world, a paradise that lies beyond the curses of "the stony law." Yet the
revelation of paradise is not simple. It requires a death, an eros ion of
thegiven.
In Plate 14 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake writes of the
"infernal method" required for poetic knowledge: the use of symbolic
corrosives to cut away the surfaces which are given to ordinary percep-
tion. The metaphor for method is drawn from Blake's labors as an artist
and refers to the use of acids to cut away the surface of copper plate so
the image might be printed in its literal negativity. The "infernal
method" of poetry emerges as function of creative consciousness, one
that permits Blake to organize his unique visions. The method is
 "FALLING FIRE" 283

"infernal" - born of the inferno, since we are, as it were in Hell and the
condition of flame is requisite to our knowledge. In paradise the
infernal method would scarcely be required. It is a means to poetic
knowledge based on our historicity; it emerges from the constitutive
power of point of view.
Indeed the perspectival eye is crucial to the "infernal method" which
both strips apart the layers of received knowledge and grants the self a
numinous vision, the one and the other co-existent in Blake's difficult,
visionary resolution. "Every Eye Sees differently. As the Eye, Such the
Object," he writes in the "Marginalia On Reynolds." (Blake, 634) While
pointing out the primacy of perspectival knowledge, the realm of the
supersensuous is not cut off. A "world" as he so delicately put it in
"Auguries of Innocence" might be glimpsed in a "grain of sand" ar
"Heaven in a wild flower" (Blake, 481) On the same theme, the tone
turns more fiercely rhetorical as in the question: "Where is the
Existence out of Mind ar Thought." (Blake, 555) Obviously nowhere
for Blake, for mental space is the only reality, all that is, residing there,
as eidetic possibility. But this question is merely the prelude in his
Vision of the Last Judgement to the introduction of a fire that can
consume all error - bad art as well as wrong-headed notions about the
real. The fire, the harbinger of "Truth or Eternity" is an apocalyptic
manifestation, yet at the very same time exists as a mental product,
intrinsic to the perceiving consciousness. It is precisely this equation -
of the apocalyptic with what exists within and for consciousness - that
permits Blake to forge what I view as his goveming phenomenological
imperative: the co-givenness of the destruction of the world and the
creation of the work of art. Wark and world then stand in adversary
relation one to another with fire (it embodies both desire and the
genesis of the imagination) destroying the given world even as it begets
the work of art. "Error or Creation will be Burned Up" continued
Blake in A Vision of the Last Judgement "and then and not till then
Truth or Eternity will appear. It is Burnt up the Moment Men cease to
behold it." (Blake, 555)
The consumption of error in the flames of the imagination signals the
birth of the poem. The work crystallizes a truth that will be manifest to
an at the end of the world. Obviously the world which is burnt up is not
the realm of direct sensuous perception, which Blake celebrated. It was
revealed to the innocent eye that reigned in a Golden Age whose "Poets
animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses." (Blake, 37) The
284 MEENA ALEXANDER

world that is destroyed is the realm of societal oppression and its

psychic counterpart - "the mind-forg'd manacles." It is a realm where
abstraction rules and innocence is victimized. By gripping the des truc-
tion of this world at its very core, the work comes into being, the
negativity of its genesis being crucial to the validity of its symbolic
knowledge.

III

William Blake's radical humanism involves him in a unique vision of

embodiment, one that inverts the assumptions of Cartesian dualism. In
The Marriage of Heaven and HeU the voice of the Devii, after setting
forth the conventional wisdom that "Man has two real existing prin-
ciples Viz: a Body and a Soul" - with the soul, of course, allied to alI
that is spirtualIy good, the body to the evils of flesh - continues
presenting then the contrary position, overturning the previous state-
ment. "Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a
portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in
this age." (Blake, 34) Thus energy and with it desire, become the life of
the body, the true source of imaginative power. Reason, commonly
held to be the vehicle of soul, path of true knowledge, is now trans-
formed into merely the "bound or outward circumference of Energy"-
in other words its stopping place, its rim of exhaustion.
Yet the embodiment that is vital and powerful, with desire encoded
within it as the key to spiritual truth, is not sustained in a clear and
simple fashion in Blake's work. There are flaws, ruptures to his vis ion
of embodiment. A fierce battle breaks out at the very heart of his
radical vision of the bodily self. "To Tirzah," a poem added to later
versions of the Songs of Innocence and Experience has a voice haunted
by both birth and mortality; they are welded together in the notion of
"Mortal Birth." To be born, in this version of Blake's thought is to be
betrayed into death with embodiment itself as a closure of spiritual life,
a crossing out of immortality. Maternity then takes on an aspect of
terrible cruelty with the speaker struggling against Tirzah, the "Mother
of my mortal part." The reader is witness to the poet's ontologic al
outrage. Blake's ongoing struggle with "things as they are," with the
oppression he saw so clearly both in society and within the human
psyche, has been displaced onto maternity, the source of human life,
the genesis of being-in-a-body.
 "FALLING FIRE" 285

A symbolic misogyny is visible in the poet's rage at being born. The

faH into birth is also the faH into sexual distinction. "Generation" - the
act of sexual reproduction - and its accompanying cycle of birth and
death must be broken. In the design that accompanies the poem, Blake
inscribed a line from the Bible: "It is raised a spiritual body." The
quotation from 1 Corinthians 15: 44 underlines the pre-givenness of
death and the necessity for spiritual surviva1. 5 Yet the bitterness at the
fleshly "Mother," her very substance a portion of Nature, cannot be
sloughed away. In an implicit deployment of the Romantic trope that
identifies the female with Nature and its material substance, seuing her
then in opposition to the male mind and its spiritual or imaginative
powers, Blake's speaker struggles to free himself:

Thou Mother of my Mortal part

With cruelty didst mould my Heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears,
Didst bind my Nostrils Eyes and Ears.
Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay
And me to Mortal Life betray:
The Death of Jesus set me free,
Then what have I to do with thee?
(Blake, 30)
When the mother betrays who can save? The great cry in the Preludium
to Europe a Prophecy springs to mind: "Then why shouldst thou
accursed mother bring me into life?" (Blake, 59) Life here is lived out
in the closed round of the senses. Man's being is cut from the purifying
fire of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, cleft too from the "infinite"
which the cleansed doors of perception lead into, a realm where soul
and body are united in a fuH "sensual enjoyment." (Blake, 38-9) In
"To Tirzah" the revolutionary fervor that is characteristic of Blake turns
tail, consuming itself in rage at the givenness of bodily birth, a fact that
the imagination which had sought to recreate heaven and earth cannot
overcome. The mother, identified with the fleshly body absorbs the
brunt of anger. Wordsworth's "shades of the prison-house" that close
around the growing boy - his vision of the child who must Iose,
through the very linearity of mortal life, that bond with a spiritual
"palace" he inhabited before birth - receives its counterpart in Blake's
thought. But while Wordsworth's voice is characteristically elegaic, in
286 MEENA ALEXANDER

Blake there is fury. No recompense can be discovered for the ferocity

of fate. Questioning the very nature of human being, the speaker must
struggle against rus bonds, with only salvation in the next life, a
salvation through death, providing an outlet.6
Continuing with the theme ofdeath and the manner in which it is
stitched into the perception of the Maternal Female, we come upon the
"Door of Death" in Blake's cryptic poem entitled "For the Sexes: the
Gates of Paradise" The speaker sees the "Door of Death" laid wide
open and the worm that consumes alI flesh quite visibly at work. The
invocation of the Maternal Female follows swiftly on, for as in "To
Tirzah," death is inherent in the very fact of giving birth. The pain of
mortality into which the Mother has hooked and snared the speaker
can in no way be diluted. The passage from womb to tomb is short.
Both woman and Nature - the flesh that gives life and the earth that
closes over its ending - conspire both to embody and blunt the fiery
spirit. The paradox is like a knife edge and cannot be overcome:
Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb
Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb
Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
And weeping over the Web of Life
(Blake 266)
Sexual tension overwhelms even dream, consuming in grief the very
stuff of life. For Blake the fall of man is the fall into sexual division, a
fact implicit in the very nature of human embodiment. The "dark
hermaphrodite" previously invoked in the poem as "Rational Truth
Root of Evil and Good" remains in mind, but is absorbed though into
the maternal image. Hence in the keys to the poem there is the
evocation of "thy Mother's grief" and the design of the infantile curled
caterpiIIar, its helpless state akin to that of the newborn infant who is
granted life through the pain of childbirth. The flames of knowledge
cannot consume that helpless creature, nor kindle the flesh out of which
poetic knowledge must struggle forth.

IV

It would be inadequate to the complexity that Blake's work requires of

the meaning-making consciousness of his reader to set forth an either/
or question: does either the fiery consciousness or the fleshly embodi-
 "FALLING FIRE" 287

ment emerge victorious? It seems to me that the quarrel with embodi-

ment, a quarrel with the very self - out of which as Yeats reminds us
comes poetry - underpinned the powerful and fiery forms of the
imagination. The negativity Blake required of his poetic knowledge
could not subsist without embodiment against which the f1ames work,
destroying the old, remaking the new. Out of the "Falling, rushing,
ruiningl" as he so evocatively named it, the "new born fire" must
emerge. (Blake, 43) The grief of old embodiment then - of which the
Maternal Female stands as surest symbol - must underwrite the
"infernal method" so the corrosives of poetry might reveal if not in fact,
then in imaginative necessity, the f1ames of a new order.

Hunter College
City University of New York

NOTES

I The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David Erdman (New York: Doubleday,
1970), p. 38. AII subsequent page references are to this edition.
2 The phrase is from Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey," Selected Poems, ed. Mark

Van Doren (New York: Random House, 1950), p. 105.

3 A. Rimbaud, Oeuvres, ed. Suzanne Bernard (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1960), pp. 344-
5.
4 Joshua Barnes in the History of Edward III (1688) which was one of Blake's sources
writes of "a Pillar of fires" and then again of "a certain Igneous Vapour or Sulphurous
Fire, horribly breaking forth from the Earth; or ... descending from Heaven." Quoted
in David Erdman Blake: Prophet Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1977), p. 58.
5 The exact quotation from the Bible- Authorized King James Version, 1 Corinthians
15, 44 is "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body,
and there is a spiritual body." The verse was to haunt Blake. His use of it however in
the design that accompanies the poem "To Tirzah" could be construed as resurrecting
in subtle form the dualism that he - through the voice of Devii - argues against in The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If man is not divided into spirit and flesh, then he is
divided into two bodies, the one earthly, and herein Blake identified with the "Mother
of my Mortal part" and the other, spiritual and available only after the death of the
mortal body. The natural body identified with sexuality and generation must perish
before the immortal body can rise. In opposition to this point of view it could be argued
that the spiritual body evoked in the inscription of Blake's accompanying design is an
icon of the imagination which must rise out of the debris of the given, constricting
world.
6 In The Mermaid and the Minotaur, Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New
York: Harper and Row, 1977), Dorothy Dinnerstein argues that the mother, out of
288 MEENA ALEXANDER

whose flesh ali beings come, is identified by the individuating consciousness as Nature,
as part and parcel of the surrounding and even cOllstricting context, so that in this guise
she must be overcome. Consciousness thus conceives of her in terms of an irreducible
antagonism. For Dinnerstein, this antagonism spills over into the imaginative attitude
towards women in general, but can be overcome if nurturing is shared. "It is true then"
she writes "that we are born mortal and born of women .... Woman is now the focus of
our ambivalence to the flesh ...." (p. 155)
The quotations are from William Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality
[rom Recollections of Early Childhood, stanzas V and VI.
Birth in the fifth stanza of the poem is conceived of as "a sleep and a forgetting";
pre-existence in other words is the reality, with the embodied state redeemed to the
extent that memory of it is possible.
 VICTOR CARRABINO

THE POETICS OF FIRE IN JEAN GIONO'S

LE CHANT DU MONDE

Much has been written on the power of fire. Fire imagery can be traced
as far back as prehistoric times. Bachelard notes that "in our conscious
lives, we have broken off direct contact with the original etymologies.
But the prehistoric mind, and a fortiori the unconscious, does not
detach the word from the thing. It we speak of man as fulI of fire, it
wills something to the burning within him." 1 Fire, for example, apart
from its kindling, burning and metamorphic quality has been associated
by the imagination, as Northrop Frye suggests, to the internal fire: "its
sparks are analogous to seeds, the unity of life; its flickering movement
is analogous to vitality; its flames are phallic symbols, providing a
further analogy to the sexual act, as the ambiguity of the word 'consum-
mation' indicates, its transforming power is analogous to purgation." 2
In archetypal language, fire stands for strength, courage, ardor, and
virility. For Heracleitus fire was the "the agent of transmutation": "Fire,
in its combination of movement in flickering and its apparent identity
and permanence, and in its consumption of fuel and its giving off of ash
and smoke, would appear to be an adequate manifestation of the
principle or substance maintaining its identity despite transformation." 3
Fire is a symbol of transformation and regeneration. Bachelard echoes
the alchemist's concept of fire as the element in the center of alI things.
Fire, as an archetypal symbol appears in the opening lines of a Vedic
hymn, addressed to Agni, the god of Fire. Fire as the agent of des truc-
tion and regeneration is reproduced in Hindu Puranic accounts of
world creation. The Puranas, as we know, deal with the Hindu
mythography as to the creation or recreation of the universe, especially
with the awakening of Visnu as the beginner of the creative process
from the primal egg.
It is precisely this Puranic account of the divine role of fire that leads
to Our study of Jean Giono's Le Chant du monde. It is my task in this
study to analyze to what extent fire imagery as found in Le Chant du
monde is directly associated with or perhaps even influenced by the
Hindu philosophy of the Puranas and the Upanishads.
That fire plays an important role in Giono is without question. In
289
A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 289-298.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
290 VICTOR CARRABINO

fact, the five elements of nature, air, wind, water, earth, and fire
constitute the very cosmological framework on which the novel is built.
Critics such as Marcel Arland, Christian Michefelder, Maxwell
Smith, Hallam Walker have, each in his own way, failed to detect this
Hindu presence in Giono's opus. Marcel Arland claims, for example,
that "Comme l'Odyssee autour de la Mer, Le chant du monde, se
trouve donc construit autour du Fleuve '" Le chant est ... la
symphonie '" laissons Giono faire de Manosque une souveraine
Ithaque."4 Similarly, Hallam Walker echoes Arland when he states that
"a mythical strain runs vigorously through Giono's works .... Le Chant
du monde has an Odyssey-like theme narrated with poetic sensitivity
and sharp imagery ... drawn from the store of European myth." 5
Maxwell Smith agrees with alI those critics who have dealt with the
mythic and epic Western tradition, especially with Henri Peyre who
stresses the epic element of the novel.
However, upon closer scrutiny of the text, the reader is suddenly
aware that rather than relying so heavily on the Western mythology,
one may analyze the text from the Hindu philosophical point of view.
We can perhaps arrive at the very heart of Giono's imagery as
embroidered by the author and in fact understand the novel as a world
of divinities directly associated with nature as reported in Hindu
Puranic texts.
Let us look briefly at the novel. Antonio (associated with water -
the river) and Matelot (associated with the forest) set out on a long
journey to the Rebeillard country searching for "le besson" - the on1y
surviving twin son of Matelot. The voyage lasts from FalI to Spring. "Le
besson" is a red-haired young man, full of life, courage, and strength.
He is associated with fire. During their journey, obviously reminiscent
of a Greek odyssey, Antonio and Matelot meet a young woman who is
giving birth in the open field to a child. Antonio and Matelot finally
reach "le besson." Before their return to their native land (the other
si de of the river), Matelot dies. Clara finally joins Antonio and "le
besson" returns home with Gina - the daughter of a tyrant-like
Maudru.
The comparison with Greek mythology is quite obvious. "Le besson"
can be easily associated with the golden fleece, Antonio and Matelot
with Jason. Gina, on the other hand, would remind the reader of Helen
and "le besson" of Paris. However, what makes the novel different from
other works published by Giono's contemporaries, is not so much the
 THE POETICS OF FIRE 291

presence of the human characters, but in fact, the anthropomorphic

qualities which Giono gives to the elements of nature. Their voice is
constantly heard throughout the novei. The title itself, Le Chant du
monde, implies not a human voice but the voice of nature that
participates in the harmony of the universe. In fact, trees, logs, wind,
water, have a special voice that can only be felt in a synesthetic
baudelairian correspondence. The elements of nature are then the
characters of the novei which blend with humans in a common voice.
That a Hindu world dominates the aesthetic dimension of the novei,
is without any doubt. Giono himself, a conteur ne, delighted in telling
Hindu stories when imprisoned. In his often-easily dismissed text, Les
Vraies Richesses, Giono goes at length in singing the joys of nature in
contrast with the city-life:

Les formes de societe dans lesquelles nous avons vecu jusqu'a maintenant ont installe
sur la terre le malheur des corps. Qui, dans la societe moderne, peut avoir assez de
liberte pour connaître le monde? Des hommes existent qui ne savent pas ce qu'est un
arbre, une feuille, une herbe, le vent de printemps, le galop d'un cheval, le pas des
boeufs, l'illumination du cie!. Les plus libres meme dedaignent la veritable science et
passent leur vie a jouer avec des speculations metaphysiques. 6

Discouraged with city-life, progress, science, and most of aH with the

machinery of war, on September 1, 1935 Giono with other writers
retired to a solitary place in the mountains near Manosque to be in
direct contact with nature. While nature does not play the role of a
refuge in which man hides, as seen with the Romantics, Giono sees
nature as an extension of being. Nature and man are one. Organic and
inorganic nature form the total being as identified with Hinduism.
That Giono was familiar with Hindu philosophy is told by himseif in
the Preface to his Les Vraies Richesses. Upon the questions asked to
him by his friends on the joy which be found in nature, Giono replies:

Ce livre ici est la reponse. le vous repondais deja quand je racon tais les histoires
indoues des evenements arrives pendant le sommeil de Rama, le repos de l'armee
d'lndra sous les eaux du lac forestier, le barratement de la mer, la Victoire de Vichnou
sur les Asuras. (Les Vraies Richesse, p. 13).

To as sume that Giono was not influenced by these Hindu stories, is to

negate an important element of Giono's "univers romanesque." Yet, we
find that criticism of Giono's works is deficient of this Hindu influence.
In his chapter "Fire and reverie," Bacheiard emphasizes the role that
292 VICTOR CARRABINO

fire plays in the call of the funeral pyre. Destruction is to Bachelard

change and renewal. Fire is the only agent that allows such a phoenix-
like rebirth. Death and life are two integral, inseparable qualities
associated with fire. Giono himself recognizes this divine property of
fire when discussing the ''four banal, the four commun." This common
oven is understood by the peasants as a temple, a sacred place: "Il est
exactement comme un temple grec." (Les Vraies Richesses, p. 131) No
one is allowed to enter it, save the bread - life given to wheat by fire -
to be metamorphosed into food: "Le four occupe toute la place dans
les quatre murs. Les humains doivent rester sur le seuil." (p. 132) Only
those who wish to meet death, therefore, a new life, are allowed to
enter:

Les hommes, les femmes ne peuvent pas entrer, a moins de desirer mourir, et encore,
faudrait-il le desirer fort. ... Le feu est un dieu noble, il n'a pas d'accueil .... Le feu,
cette cruaute qu'on recherche a ces moments la, il vous la lance tout de suite vers la
chair, et era fait qu'on recule - instinctivement. Et pour se tuer avec du feu, on ne peut
le trouver que dans de vieilles races comme chez les lndiens de l'lnde ou chez les
Azteques, chez des gens que leur philosophie et leur cruautes religeuses ont anemies
jusqu'a I'assechement total, ne laissant plus au sommet de tete qu'un globe intelligent,
ceux-Ia - et ceux qui leur ressemblent - peuvent forcer la porte du four et entrer dans
le mystere du feu. (Les Varies Richesses, p. 133-34. My italics.)

Fire, for Giono, is then a god - the god Agni, the messenger
between man and the Supreme Being. Giono's understanding of Fire as
a God, joins hands with the Hindu veneration of Agni. Fire, as Giono
sees it, is deity, a means by which man enters into the kingdom of death
to be purified into a new life, another kingdom - the world of the
mystere.
Seen in this light, Le Chant du monde is closer to an Eastern
philosophical view than the Western one suggested by many critics. We
know ta what extent nature plays an important roIe in Hindu
philosophy. According ta Sarrepalli Radhakrishnan:
An important phenomenon of nature raised to a deity is Fire. Agni is second in
importance only to Indra, being addressed in at least 200 hymns. The idea of Agni
arose from the scorching sun, which by its heat kindled inflammable stuff. It carne from
the clouds as lightning. It has its origin in flintstone. It comes from fire sticks.
Matarisvan, like Prometheus, is supposed to have brought fire back from the sky. The
physical aspects are evident in the descriptions of Agni as possessing a tawny beard,
sharp jaws and burning teeth. Wood or ghee is his food. He shines like the sun
dispelling the darkness of night. His path is black when he invades the forest and his
 THE POETICS OF FIRE 293

voice is like the thunder of heaven. (He is dhumaketu, having smoke for his banner. ...)
Fire is thus seen to dwell not onIy on earth in the hearth of the altar but also in the sky
and the atmosphere, as the sun and the supreme god, stretching out heaven and earth.
As the concept grew more and more abstract it also became more and more sublime.
He becomes the mediator between gods and men, the helper of alU

Agni, Hindu divinity, fire, Radhakrishnan teHs us, is pervasive through-

out the vedic, puranic, and Upanishads texts. In the Kena-Upanishad,
we are once again told of the divine entity of Agni:
Once upon a time, Brahman, the Spirit Supreme, won a victory for the gods. And the
gods thought in their pride: 'We alone attained this victory, ours alone is the glory.'
Brahman saw it and appeared to them, but they knew him not. 'Who is that being that
fills us with wonderT they cried. And they spoke of Agni, the god of fire: 'O god
all-knowing, go and see who is that being that fills us with wonder.' Agni ran toward
him and Brahman asked: 'Who are you?' '1 am the god of fire,' he said, 'the god who
knows ali things.' 'What power is in youT asked Brahman. '1 can burn ali things on
earth.'8

In another account of the re-beginning of the universe, Agni once again

plays an important role in which we learn that fire is even more
important than water:
Fire, increasing, devoured agreat quantity of the cosmic water. And where the water
had disappeared, there remained a mighty void, within which carne into existence the
upper sphere of heaven. The Universal Being who had permitted the elements to
proceed from his essence, now rejoiced to behold the formation of heavenly spaceY

It is at this point superfluous, 1 believe, to cite more Hindu texts to

further pursue our thesis. Let us now take a look at the novel and in
fact see how close Giono's pantheistic world is to the Hindu world
where deities partake in the very existence of daily life. After aH, as
Deussen teHs us, "In the whole of nature no distinction is so sharply
drawn as that between the inorganic and the organic; and this distinc-
tion dominates the Indian view of nature also, is so far as they both, the
inorganic no less than the organic, are derived from the âtman.... AlI
organic bodies, and therefore aH plants, animals, men and gods, are
wondering souls, are therefore in essence the âtman itself.... Inorganic
bodies, ... i.e., the five elements, ether, wind, fires water, earth, though
they are ruled by Brahman, and remain under the protection of
individual deities, yet not wondering souls, as are alI plants, animals,
men, and gods, but are only the stage erected by Brahman on which the
souls have to play their part." 10
294 VICTOR CARRABINO

A pantheistic world is set at the very beginning of the novel, for god
as in Hindu philosophy, "creates the universe by transforming himself
into the universe. Since it is real and also infinite, there is no room for
God independently of the universe, but only within it. The terms God
and universe become synonymous, and the idea of God is only retained
in order not to break with tradition." (Deussen, p. 160)
We learn from the very beginning of the noveI that "le besson" is a
god-like figure. Matelot asks Antonio to accompany him in this quest
for his lost son: "J'ai plus de nouvelles de mon besson aux cheveux
rouges." (p. 7) Matelot, the father, "a la barbe blanche," sets forth on a
long journery to find his son. However, the reader should focus on the
richness of nature in which Giono bathes his characters. As previously
mentioned, the elements of nature are one with men: "La nuit, le fleuve
roulait a coups d'epaules a travers la fon~t. ... Il [Antonio] ecouta dans
sa main les tremblements de l'arbre. C'etait un vieux chene plus gros
qu'un homme de la montagne." 11
Nature is personified to live side by side with man: "Il sentait la vie
du fleuve." ... "Il avait regarde tout le jour ce fleuve qui rebroussait ses
ecailles dans le soleil, ces chevaux blancs qui galopaient dans la gue,
avec des larges plaques d'ecume aux sabots, le dos de l'eau verte,
la-haut, au sortir des gorges avec ceUe colere d'avoir ete serree dans le
couloir des roches, puis l'eau voit la fon!t large etendue la devant elle et
elle abaisse son dos souple et elle entre dans les arbres." (p. 9) "Je sens,
c'est ma fon~t," says Matelot. (p. 11)
Antonio, "la bouche d'or," as he is known, recognizes his close
association with nature. "C'est pas pour rien que nous t'avons appele
Bouche d'Or," dit la voix de Junie. C'est parce que tu sais parler. Non,
dit Antonio, c'est parce que je sais crier plus haut que les eaux." (p. 15)
The wind joins Matelot's cry for his son: "C'etait dans ce creux que
venait s'enrouter comme une algue la longue plainte du vent," (p. 22)
"... et puis le ronflement du fleuve." (p. 23)
"Le besson," "aux cheveux rouges," a fire imagery, is alive. Imagery
of fire abound in the noveI, galloping through the universe: "Des
chariots de feu, des barques de feu, des chevaux de lumiere, une large
etude d'etoiles tenaient tout le ciel." (p. 74)
Nature wakes up touched by the wings of Agni. Here we have a
poetic representation of the birth of the day where alI eIements of
nature contribute to the death of the night and the re-birth of the dawn.
AII elements, fostered by Agni, weIcome the arrival of the new-born:
 THE POETICS OF FIRE 295

Subitement il fit tres fraid ... Le vent sonna plus profond .... Des arbres parlerent ...
. Le vent pas sa en ronflant sourdement. ... Les chenes parlaient, puis les saules, puis
les aulnes; les peupliers sifflaient de gauche et de droite camme des queues de chevaux
... la nuit gemissait tout doucement. ... Une colline de l'est sortit de l'ombre .... Une
foret granda, puis elle emergea lentement de la nuit avec son dos pelucheux. Un
fremissement de lumiere grise coula sur la cime des arbres .... Le rocher s'eclaira.
La lumiere venait de la colline. Sortie la premiere de la nuit, noire comme une
charbonniere, elle lanc;ait une lumiere douce vers le ciel plat: la lumiere retombait sur la
terre avec un petit gemissement, elle sautait vers le rocher, il la lanc;ait de la nuit sur des
collines rondes .... Le jour coula d'un seul caup tres vite sur le fleuve jusqu'au loin des
eaux. Les mants s'allumerent. Les collines soudain embrasees ouvrirent leur danse
rande autout des champs et le saleil rouge sauta dans le ciel avec un hennissement de
cheval. Le jour, dit Matelot. (pp. 78-79).

The fire image immediately evokes in Matelot's mind his son: "Oui
sait s'il peut se faire du feu, mon besson." (p. 79) The whole community
is mobilized and terrified by Maudru, the powerful tyrant. Yet "le
besson," the hero, the solar hero, like Prometheus or Matrisvan has the
courage to defy the gods. Not only does he take away Gina and make
her his wife, but he kills the nephew. "Le besson" is then more than a
mere character. His association with courage, passion, make him a god:
"le suis parti de notre foret pour chercher le babouin, le petit, l'enfant,
du temps que je passais ma main dans ses cheveux rouges. Et voila que
je me trouve le pere d'une espece de Hon fou." (p. 118) His strength
and courage are testified to by Matelot himself: "le veux qu'il soit ce
qu'il s'est imagine d'etre et qu'il m'a fait croire." Gina says to Matelot.
"Qu'est qu'il t' a fait croire? dit Matelot. 'Qu'il etait fort!' dit-elle. 'Il
l'est,' dit Matelot. 'Qu'il etait plus fort que mon pere!' 'Il est plus fort
que ton pere'" (p. 127). "Le besson" will eventually prove to Gina that
indeed he is stronger, that he is capable of destroying Maudru by
destroying with fire his houses, his cattle, his property and finally, by
successfully returning with Gina to his homeland. "Le besson," a
god-warrior, leaves his imprint wherever he goes; once again, he is
associated with fire: "Il avait fait un feu et il y avait mis a rougir son
epaisse marque de fer. ... Et je vis que cet homme avait les cheveux
tout rouges comme la grande marque de feu." (pp. 130-31) His
god-like qualities, in addition to his hair, associated with fire imagery,
are further strengthened by his physical appearance: "Le besson etait
fort en reins et en cuisses. Il avait un petit buste terrible et nerveux et
toute la force de son sang de poivre etait la sur ses hanches accumulee
en deux enormes muscles au milieu de lui comme la force de l'arc est
296 VICTOR CARRABINO

au milieu de l'arc ... Il pouvait regarder en plein soleil." (p. 143) The
whole community is aware of his presence. His physical traits make him
a special being: "Il avait une tete d'enfant, ronde, tres petite, enflammee
de cheveux et de sourcils rouges, pour le reste, bras et jambes scelles
dans son bloc comme dans un rocher." (p. 164)
Passion, love, ardor are other qualities associated with fire and
indeed with le besson: "Depuis trois jours, lui et Gina sont comme des
poissons pleins d'oeufs. Ils se tournent autour, ils se suivent, ils se
sentent. Ils sont couches. Ils font de la lumiere rien qu'en pas sant." (p.
192) The torch, as instrument of fire, is instrumental in igniting in an
orgiastic dyonisian scene, "la mere du bie." Everyone in town is
watching this eventful destruction and re-birth. It is the commemoration
of the arrival of spring and the death of winter. Once again fire is
understood both as a positive and negative element. It destroys yet at
the same time it brings life. Pas sion, love, death are traits again blended
in the pyre reverie: "Un bouvier avait pris une torche de lavande. Il
souleva les jupes de la mere du bIe. Il se mit a lui faire l'amour par
dessous avec sa torche enflammee et soudain eUe s'mbrasa." (p. 224)
Fire imagery takes over the whole town: "Des reflets rouges trainaient
dans le ciel." (p. 225) The same night when le besson puts on fire
Maudru's belongings, hence freeing himself from Maudru's yoke and
terror, another form of life is attained. As his father Matelot dies once
again a new life begins. Matelot dies, le besson is freed in his new
acquired freedom. Death is associated with re-birth.
The rage of the besson becomes one with the rage of fire: "il n'y a
plus rien dans la ferme que de la colere de feu et de fumee." (p. 248)
With the orgiastic scene of the "mere du bie," several re-births have
taken place. But most of aU, the fire reverie leads us to the change
evident in nature, for now, spring is born from winter: "C'etait seule-
ment le printemps qui sortait de la terre ... Alors arrivait le soleil, un
soleil epais et de triple couleur, plus roux que du poil de renard, si
lourd et si chaud qu'il eteignait tout, bruits et gestes." (p. 255-56)
The association between the sun's rays and the besson "aux cheveux
rouges," is quite evident. At the end of the novel le besson returns with
Gina and Antonio with Clara. The elements have joined to produce a
true harmony. Both le besson and Antonio have reached their âtman
(self knowledge). Their return is also facilitated by the fire that le
besson has lit: "Et maintenant, viens ma petite filIe. En bas le besson a
allume du feu." (p. 272)
 THE POETICS OF FIRE 297

A world of harmony and unity is achieved not only on the psy-

chological level but also on the spirituallevel - a representation of the
Hindu cosmic cycles. As Heinrich Zimmer instructs us: "According to
the mythologies of Hinduism, each world cycle is subdivided into four
yugas or world ages .... According to the Indian conception, the ideal
of total, or totality, is associated with the number four. 'Four square'
signifies 'totality.' Anything complete and self-contained is established
firmly on its 'four legs' (catuh pada)." (Zimmer, p. 13)
The noveI ends with an atmosphere filled with love, passion,
sensuality. Antonio, too, has finally found his love, to whom he would
make love in direct contact with nature - terre: "Il pensait qu'il allait
prendre Clara dans ses bras et qu'il allait se coucher avec elle sur la
terre." (p. 278)
Finally, there is no doubt that Giono has drawn most of his images
for his Le Chant du monde from Hindu sources. His emphasis on
nature in which deities share the harmony of the One Brahman is
striking. To our question to Giono, what is god, or what is nature,
Giono would respond with the same answer that a guru once gave as to
the nature of Brahman: "neti neti," not just that, not just that. God is
everywhere in nature, and one can find him in nature, albeit in one's
own nature, for the true answer lies inside, where one can still hear the
true voice of Le Chant du monde.

Florida State University

NOTES

1 Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 8.

2 Northrop Frye in Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, ibid., p. vi.
3 Milton C. Nahm, ed., Selections from Early Greek Philosophy (New York: Appleton-
Century Crofts, Inc., 1962), p. 85.
4 Marcel Aland, "Le Chant du monde," Nouvelle Revue Fram;aise, No. 9 (September
1953), p. 504.
5 Allam Walker, "Myth in Giono's Le Chant du monde," Symposium, VoI. XV (Spring
1961),p.139.
6 lean Giono, Les Vraies Richesses (Paris: Grasset, 1937), p. 20. (Hereafter referred to

in the text as Les Vraies Richesses.)

7 S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy (New York: MacMiHan, 1951), pp. 82-83.

8 luau Mascara, ed., The Upanishads (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 52-53.
298 VICTOR CARRABINO

Y Heinrich Zimmer, Myth and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 51. (Hereafter referred to in the text as Zimmer,
Myths.)
10 Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1919),

pp. 186-87. (Hereafter referred to in the text as Deussen, the Upanishads.)

II Jean Giono, Le Chant du monde (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), p. 5. (Hereafter referred

to in the text as Le Chant du monde.)

 PART SIX

THE ELEMENTAL EXPANSE

 PETER MORGAN

RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR

"1 still dream of an element," Gaston Bachelard, The

Poetics of Space, transl. Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press,
1969 [1958]), p. xxxiv.

1. INTRODUCTION: GLIMPSES OF PHENOMENOLOGY IN

RELA TION TO RUSKIN

The use of the word "phenomenology" stems from the writings of

Hegel. According to Ricoeur, Hegel "of course, understood phenome-
nology to be a thorough inspection of alI the varieties of human
experience." 1 This ambitious undertaking it can be said at the outset is
a Ruskinian one. 2
In the twentieth century, Husserl, in his late lecture "Phenomenology
and the Crisis of Philosophy," asserts that the crisis stems from the
triumph of reason in the study of the natural world. Reason has to
extend its sway, or draw back in order to survey, the spiritual world,
where the methods used to come to grips with the natural world are
inappropriate. Husserl remains supremely confident in the power of
reason. It deals with an environment which has been demythologised,
freed from the totalized "mythical-religious" poetic view of the primi-
tive. 3 What is valuable here from the point of view of the student of
Ruskin is the acknowledgment of the need to know the spirit, and of
the priority of its relations with others and with the world. However,
the insistence on the power of reason in its quest for truth does not
take us beyond the narrowly philosophical ken. As Anna-Teresa
Tymieniecka points out, Husserl "never broke through the screen of
reason."4 It is noteworthy that Derrida contrasts the "univocity" of
Husserl with the "equivocity" of Joyce, the latter setting itself "within
the labyrinthine field of culture." 5
In this respect the teachings of the Iater Heidegger and of Merleau-
Ponty are of value. Heidegger recognizes the inadequacy of the
philosophical approach to understanding as it has been pursued since
the time of the Greeks. He seeks to look behind them, at the same time
301
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Val XXIII, 301-307.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
302 PETER MORGAN

as he looks away from the confines of rational discourse to the pure

gnomic utterances of the poet. He shows a mystical reliance on the vital
human power of the word itself. Merleau-Ponty, however, is attractive
because he really enters into the world of phenomenological experience
and insists on finding value there. He puts on one side the causal
explanations of "the scientist, the historian or the sociologist."6 He
asserts that "aU the convergent and discordant action of the historical
community is effectively given me in my living present"; "we live in the
unity of the one single life all the systems our culture is composed of." 7
Interestingly and attractively from the standpoint of one like myself
who is a student of the arts rather than of philosophy, this leads
Merleau-Ponty to turn away like Heidegger from philosophizing in the
traditional sense to go in the direction of the arts, not poetry as with
Heidegger, but painting. The painter for Merleau-Ponty is in "a zone of
the fundamental, peopled with dense, open, rent beings of which an
exhaustive treatment is out of the question." 8 This is the zone that
Ruskin is exploring. Finally, Heidegger is most attractive, because of the
radical character of the choice that he presents and makes.
What one wants is for none of the paths of these philosophers to be
reductive of the options open to the reader. Husserl sees this danger
when in the classical spirit he insists on the many-sidedness of truth. 9
The framing on which the phenomenologists insist is not helpful if it
leads to a delimitation and narrowing of the experiential range. In this
respect Ruskin is perhaps pre-phenomenological, since he goes back to
the primitive stage which Husserl had eschewed. But his return is a free
and individual one. He is a phenomenologist as one concerned with
phenomena. It the logos in the word "phenomenology" is not under-
stood in terms of any particular philosophical method, but as con-
stituting what Heidegger defines as "discourse," 10 Ruskin provides such
discourse. His discourse is open and associative. It reveals a pattern as
it proceeds in the spirit of the poet who is concerned for the word
but/and also for the world. Ruskin is exploring a path which younger
phenomenologists seem to yearn to follow. For example, Don Ihde
writes of a movement towards "poly-morphic mindedness" Il; and
David Levin says that "we need to embrace a poetizing truth." 12

2. SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT OF THE QUEEN OF THE AIR

Ruskin exclaimed, "1 want only to know what is" (xxxvii, 526, 1885).13
 RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR 303

1 am giving this paper because 1 am intrigued by the most important

notion and physical phenomenon of the air, radicalIy important to alI of
us. Like Ruskin 1 feeI "the ruling power of the air" (xix, 319), though of
course 1 am not as sensitive as he to its "sculpturing power upon the
earth and sea." (xx, 265) The title of The Queen of the Air suggests that
it is relevant to this topic. Though very influential during his life time on
alI levels of British society as a critic of culture in both the narrow and
the broad senses, and a specific influence in literature written in English
(on Pound and on Lawrence), 14 and in French literature (on Proust),
Ruskin went through a period of neglect in the first half of the twentieth
century, so strong was the reaction in that modernist period against
alI things Victorian. The tide is now turning with an outpouring of
scholarly studies. However, it is still necessary to defend such a work as
The Queen of the A ir against the charge of madness. 1S AlI 1 can hope to
do here is to outline the contents of a work which will be unfamiliar to
most readers, to comment briefly on it, indicating what 1 take to be its
sanity, however chalIenging and unusual that might be. 1 will ha ve to
leave a serious phenomenological interpretation of the text to others,
authorities in the field. However, 1 may say initialIy, though from the
standpoint of philosophical naivete, that Ruskin is certainly dealing with
experienced phenomena, eschewing the methods of the empirical
sciences which he recognized to be growing more and more powerful in
his day. The specific antagonist whom he names here is the physicist
Tyndall. Ruskin presents the particular phenomena of the air against
the total field of his own consciousness of phenomena. There is a
certain arbitrariness as he grasps at this field - hence the accusation of
madness which is brought against him (going along with the actual
madness to which he fell prey) - though what he is doing also
produces a sense that he is anticipating both surrealism and futurism,
the first in its disjunctiveness, the second in the rapidity of its movement
from notion to notion. His sense of the "field" also suggests that he is a
precursor not only of the surrealists and the futurists, but also of the
Gestalt psychologists, and most importantly of early twentieth-century
poets, that is, Eliot and Pound. There is also a pre-Bergsonian preoc-
cupation with process and will.
From his experience of the air Ruskin reaches out, as 1 have said,
to the surrounding field. This field has to be, as with the romantic
Wordsworth, an - initially at least - subjective one, since it surrounds
the person himself, it exists in the person's consciousness. This has been
304 PETER MORGAN

recognized in the constant attention readers have given to Ruskin's

autobiography Praeterita. For Ruskin personally the field extends back
to his childhood, that of an only child, the focus of the attention of two
doting parents, both devout, the father a puritanically energetic busi-
nessman. This devoutness remains entrenched in Ruskin, undercut as it
may be as he grows up and is assailed by the waves of mid-Victorian
infidelity and the challenge of the empirical science of the period.
Perhaps the second strand in the Ruskinian field which we will be
examining can be identified with his years as a student at Oxford - and
not so much with his scientific study there, under the influence of the
pre-Darwinian geologist Buckland; as with the classical education which
would bear fruit in The Queen of the Air whose subtitle is "a study
of the Greek myths of cloud and storm." Feeling his Christianity
challenged by developments in newer scientific thinking, Ruskin was
able to extend his purview in the latter part of his career to include
the classics, especially the mythology of the Greeks. Respect for
phenomena always had in him a religious fervor. This unquenchable
fervor found expression, if not altogether satisfyingly in Christianity,
then in an invocati an of the old Greek gods, here Athena as present in
the element of air. (xx, plate iv) Thus in his claim for the vitality of faith
in the presence of the gods in the world Ruskin challenges a European
tradition which extended from Schiller through Nietzsche to Max
Weber. Like Heidegger, Ruskin refers back to the elemental world of
the Greeks. No wonder that his challenge can be read by those who
inhale the atmosphere of modern nihilism as an almost hysterical and
strident one, and that it was not enough appreciated during the first half
of the twentieth century, dominated as that was by empirical science.
No wonder also that there is now generally setting in, as there needs to
be, and partly under the auspices of phenomenology, a strong reaction
which can gain succor by referring back ta the eloquent discourses of
Ruskin which seek to embrace phenomena as part of a total conscious-
ness of being.
The book, published in 1869, is called The Queen of the Air: being a
study of the Greek myths of cloud and storm. The three parts of which
it is made up comprise a lecture previously delivered; one undelivered;
and a third consisting of disparate fragments (suggestive of the tech-
nique of Pound's Gaudier-Brzeska [1916116 or of Aragon's Le Paysan
de Paris [1926]). The three parts are entitled "Athena Chalinitis,"
Athena in the air; "Athena Keramitis," Athena in the earth; "Athena
 RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR 305

Ergane," Athena in the heart. These divisions indicate lucidity itself in

the overall organization of the book. The only difficulty lies in the
Greek adjectives that Ruskin uses. These give his presentation a gnomic
aura, since even if one understood Greek the translation would be
dubious. They also add tremendously to meaning from the word go. In
a note helpfully provided by Ruskin himself "Chalinitis" is explained as,
"The restrainer. The name is given to her as having helped Bellerophon
to bridle Pegasus, the flying cloud." At once a didactic tone is intro-
duced, since Athene is not just there, but she has a corrective, dis-
ciplinary, controlling power. This first section is called "Lecture on the
Greek Myths of Storm." Ruskin is concerned not only with the air when
it is innocently benign, but also when it is dangerous and threatening.
The second heading "Keramitis" is explained as "fit for being made
into pottery." It suggests Ruskin's interest not in the fixed, but in the
dynamic and changing, which is appropriate in view of his topic, his
personal situation, and also in the light of the times in which he and we
live. This section is called "Study, supplementary to the preceding
lecture, of the supposed, and actual, relations of Athena to the vital
force in material organism." This suggests an anticipation of Bergson.
In his last section Ruskin finally moves, again with perfect appro-
priateness, from the influence of the air on the heavens and the earth to
its influence on the human heart as, he explains further, "the Directress
of Imagination and Will." The English phrasing is again at once
qualified by the Greek "Ergane," explained as "having rule over work."
"The name was first given to her by the Athenians." StiH the futuristic
swiftness of Ruskin's thought and his attempt at comprehensiveness is
revealed, as he moves from the sense of the freedom of the air, to its
dimension of (often healthful) limitation, restraint, and direction.
1 will now attempt to summarize what cannot be summarized,
because of its denseness and diffuseness, and the rapidity of its move-
ments, the contents of the work.
The first part presents heaven, pure and polluted, in its dimensions
of sound and light. Ruskin makes the traditional connection between
sound and the human art of music, but he extends this originally by
considering the relation between the light of nature and artificiallight as
presented in pictorial art. This insight is extraordinarily suggestive in
view of the technological development of artificial light and its use in
the modern media of film, television, and video. As the lecture
progresses, the feminine image of Athena yields to the powerful
306 PETER MORGAN

masculine one of Hercules with his triumph over the lion, as repre-
sented on Greek coins. Ruskin's view is extending with dazzling
rapidity, in order to approach more closely a sense of the whole. The
coin image provides a final link from the air, through the arts of music
and pictures, to the economic system of society, a connection which
Ruskin has to make, which is valid, and which Pound wiII make later.
The triumph of Hercules is signaled by a wreath of parsley, so the
vegetable domain is finally brought into play as part of the vast moving
panorama breathing with life that Ruskin presents us with.
Section Two presents the earth, firstly the plants which grow on it
thanks to the influence of the air. Ruskin provides his own elaborate
and suggestive botanical and zoological analyses, in which the earth
appears as humanly alive. Thus, starting from himself he leads to the
generaIIy human, which is seen to be universaIIy present. The objective
scientific concern yields to a subjective one, which brings along with it
emotional, aesthetic, and moral preoccupations. Thus in his presenta-
tion of the animal world Ruskin picks out two as representative, the
bird and the serpent: these are at two poles physically and Ruskin has
to say spiritually, indeed ethically, the one embodying soaring virtue
and the other grovelling vice. Having started with the innocent air and
the Greek goddess, Ruskin ends embroiled in the problems of the
Christian challenge, represented by the conflict between good and evil,
which goes on universally, in the natural as weU as in the human world.
At the same time, Ruskin presents the co-presence of animals and
plants not only as they signal profound ethical conflict, but also as they
contribute to what he caUs "our country feast," (375) such as that of the
human community which William Morris poignantly celebrates at the
end of his News from Nowhere (1890).
In the third part of this work Ruskin approaches a conclusion by
resort to a series of fragments. This procedure can be seen as a sign of
his inability to achieve obviously coherent form, but it is also a sign of
his recognition of the dauntingness of his integrative task, given the
abundance, even the apparent chaos, of the world bathed by the air.
Ruskin insists on incorporating more and more important features into
his recreation of the world: political, social, and ethical, involving the
politica! economy of art as weB as of society. This is the conclusion that
his study appropriately leads him to. The air cannot be apprehended as
an isolated phenomenon, but only as a vital, all-pervading constituent
part of a vast, hardly comprehensible system. This truth is what Ruskin
gives us a prophetic glimpse of. He refers daringly to the impingement
 RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR 307

of the air on the mythic, physical, meteorological, biological, ethical,

political, economic, artistic, and personal dimensions of life. This is
phenomenological 1 would say because Ruskin is attempting to present
an indication of the dynamic structure of the interplay of aH the
phenomena that he knew.

University College of Toronto

NOTES

1 Paul Ricoeur, Husserl, transl. Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1967 [1954]), p. 3.
2 On Ruskin's Hegelian philosophy of art see W. G. Collingwood, Art Teaching of John
Ruskin (London: Percival, 1891), p. 16.
3 Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, transl. Lauer (New

York: Harper, 1965 11935]),p. 171.

4 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, "Imaginatio Creatrix," Analecta Husserliana, VoI. III,

1974, p. 3. Compare Andre Breton's Nadja who "thrust her head out of the jail of
logic," Nadja, transl. Howard (New York: Grave Press, 1960 [1928]), p. 143.
5 Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry, transl. John P. Leavey
(Stony Braok, N.Y.: Hays, 1978 [1962]), p. 102.
6 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, transl. Colin Smith (London:

Routledge, 1962), p. vii.

7 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, transl. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1964 [1960]), pp. 112, 119.
8 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Essential Writings, ed. Fisher (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1969 11961]), p. 285.
9 Edmund Husserl, op. cit., p. 181.
10 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, transl. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson

(New York: Harper, 196211927[), p. 55.

II Don Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology (New York: Putnam, 1977), p. 75.

12 In Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context, ed. William McBride (Albany: SUNY

Press, 1983), p. 223.
13 Such references in the text which follow are to John Ruskin, Works, ed. Cook and
Wedderburn (London: Allen, 1903-12).
14 For the inf1uence of Ruskin on Lawrence, specifically The Queen of the Air, see
George P. Landow in D. H. Lawrence and Tradition, ed. Meyers (London: Athlone
Press, 1985), p. 137.
15 This charge is made by Richard Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 183. On the contrary it could be claimed that Ruskin like
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in the view of David Levin, shows "a human existence
fearless enough to risk madness ... in order to enter the labyrinth of meaningfulness in
which our human experience is situated." In Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context,
op. cit., p. 227.
16 This is discussed by Marjorie Perloff, The Dance of lntellect (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985), ch. 2.
 JAY LAMPERT

BRE A THLESS MESSAGES: PHENOMENOLOGY IN

DEEPSPACE

(A Reading of Joseph McElroy's Plus and a Report on

Anaximander's Meteorology)

The metaphor "air" takes varied, even contradictory forms: The

emotions of air range from the breezy to the stifling. The romanticism
of air alternates a harmony with the elements and a struggle against
them. The language of air provides both the breath that articulates
messages and the wind in which words are lost. The cosmology of air
allows air's rarified spirituality to be condensed into heavy water and
dissipated in chaotic fire. The consumerism of air offers both freshening
and conditioning. Most important, the phenomenology of air represents
air an the one hand as the epistemic vacuum which places the observer
face to face with the objects of sight, and an the other hand as the
existential plenum in which encounters take place, an which horizons
are mapped out and distances freely penetrated.
But how can a phenomenologist seriously be concerned with
elements in nature? Did not we set out ta confine ta ancient history the
poetic dogmatism of the natural standpoint, ta take up the new task of
pinning down the transcendental structures of consciousness? How
then can there be a ground of elemental vocabulary? In short, why do
we need this air, of metaphor, of literature, to do what we do, we
phenomenologists? I am going ta suggest that it is because of the
distances exemplified in certain states of airlessness that consciousness
and phenomenology can originate. And this original crisis of uncon-
trolled division, will be metaphor itself.
There are two directions in which we will turn to find states of
airlessness. Eventually we will return with Anaximander ta a time
before air even existed. But we will look first to science fiction for a
description of consciousness in a land without air: deep space.
I will discuss Joseph McElroy's novel Plus in three stages: first, by
briefly introducing the plot, such as it is, and by mentioning the roles of
absent air in the text; second, by distinguishing seven stages in what
might be called the genetic phenomenology of the protagonist's emer-
309
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 309-322.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
310 JAY LAMPERT

gence into consciousness, such as that is; and third, by discussing in

general the problematic of meaning, intentionality, and de-centred
subjectivity set in motion by the protagonist's distance from the earth's
atmosphere and his inability to return to his origins. It is this relation
between breathable air and human origins that will lead us back to
reports of Anaximander's cosmology of the indefinite, the ăJCfl{!OV, his
cosmogony of atmospheric rings, and his meteorology of what he calls
the "breathing-holes." My motive for drawing together a work of
post-modernist science fiction with a work of pre-Socratic cosmology,
is in part just to find out what problem the concept of air was originally
supposed to solve, and is in part simply to report on the surprising
range of common imagery and common accounts of human genesis
found in the two texts. But in the end, 1 will return to the relation
between phenomenology and the metaphor of air, and to the origin of
phenomenology itself in crises of distance.
McElroy's protagonist, IMP Plus, or in full, "Interplanetary Moni-
toring Platform Plus," awakens to find a succession of mysterious
sentences: "There was more all around"; "Something had been taken
away"; "It gave off oxygen." IMP Plus finds himself in orbit, bodiless,
receiving and transmitting messages in an inaccessible code, forming
memories which may be fantasies. A cancerous growth is filling his
satellite, slivers of his brain are spilling out from its casing, his orbit is
decaying, his contact with the ground is taking on a sinister turn. As we
read, a history emerges: A researcher with terminal throat cancer, about
to become a virtual human vegetable, is persuaded to let himself be
turned into an actual experimental vegetable, stripped of the excess
baggage of organs, hooked up to a solar-powered (photosynthesizing)
satellite, and given the double task of relaying true messages to
Ground-control and false messages to alien monitors. In the forgetful-
ness following his con vers ion, IMP Plus becomes a victim-participant in
a world where the only substances are messages and where all messages
are camouflaged. But in the midst of decay, IMP Plus' voice fails to
carry; messages sent and received may all be proliferations of his own
solitary speech. IMP Plus cannot know. He has lost contact with the
distances which ought to have constituted his own identity, the identity
of others, and the identity of the intentional objects of his messages, his
memories, and his musings.
Air plays four roles in the text: (1) IMP Plus lives off the air's
reversed double, namely the C02 needed for photosynthesis; oxygen is
 BREATHLESS MESSAGES 311

IMP Plus's excretum. (2) IMP Plus is subject to a recurring memory

which revives a moist kiss at the seashore back on earth. (3) The "O"
for oxygen recalIs the cycle: the orbit, the One, the zero-body of
weightlessness in space, the cancerous smoke-rings, the loop of manipu-
lation. (4) A desire emerges for a return to earth's atmosphere. This
last, the desire for a return, a return to air, to meaning, feeling and
knowing, to selfhood and otherness, is the by-product of decay it self.
IMP Plus, we might add, ends his book by burning up at the first
friction with the atmosphere.
The problem of airlessness is the need for a supplement to satisfy the
"plus" sign. For IMP Plus to finish waking up, to draw his first breath,
he will need to make himself a body, he will need to give voice to his
desires and make intelligible the voices he hears, and he will need to
establish a passageway through which to connect himself with the world
he has lost. To constitute what we might call the synthetic unity of the
intersubjective life-world, IMP Plus will need to turn the vagueness of
the "more" around him into a determinate distance that wilI count as
the consciousness of something. But the distances he needs will also be
his downfall.
IMP Plus goes through roughly seven stages before he burns up,
stages in which he exceeds, splits, anticipates, takes hold, reverses, and
finaUy "goes out the window."
1. Exceeding. IMP Plus' first experience is that the "beginning was
not now but long before." The painful "more that was alI around" is a
"more" of uncontrollable memories, of excess oxygen given off by
vegetable growth, of unrecognizable voices. The voi ce says "REQUEST
PRESENT IMP PLUS ORBIT," but aU that is present to IMP Plus are
his own sproutings and slivers and folds. So when IMP Plus finds
himself answering "GROUND 1 READ YOU," not one of those words
have sense: the "you" has no designant, the "read" is mere repetition,
the "ground" is no foundation, and the "1" seems to have already been
and been taken away.
2. Splitting. In this excess, IMP Plus observes that he himself has
"split." His cells split, his vision splits, his experiences split up. Existing
in-between his own split-experiences, IMP Plus "falls into a hole." And
because he cannot get outside his own sightings, he finds himself
"breathing in but not out." This first break in the cYcle of inhalation and
respiration is IMP Plus' first self-recognition and his first desire, and it
introduces four recurring themes. First, the internalization of messages
312 JAY LAMPERT

breathed in seems responsible for the growth of IMP Plus' new body,
for the transformation of vegetable mat1er into brain. This need for a
body in turn reproduces the memory of a sea-side kiss, another sense of
"breath drawn in." This double reference of signs is the second
recurring theme. Such puns split language into double uses, and they
split IMP Plus into present and past, but neither splitting is determinate
enough for IMP Plus to to be able to teU whether his words mean one
thing or two. This non-equivalence with himself is the third recurring
theme. IMP Plus made the attempt to be "not in two places at once ...
But he was not equal to it." Unable to connect himself with what had
been "home," his own brain has "no centre." This disordered reference
leading back to the home planet is the fourth recurring theme. It is not
that there are no maps at aU, but that "The map of how to get back had
changed." IMP Plus' inhalation does bring a kind of clearing to the
nocturnal geography of deep space, but what is revealed is not so much
a topology as a labyrinth of coiling tunnels and subterranean passage-
ways. IMP Plus can only gasp for whatever spurts of air are pumped
through these tubes of memory, that is to say through the various
mouths and pores of his odd body, that is to say through the holes in
the vacuum of outer space.
3. Anticipating. Desiring a past he cannot quite remember, IMP Plus
found his "sight waiting for itself before it got there." "IMP Plus saw
himself," and indeed pre-viewed his own crash into the earth's atmos-
phere. But this self-reference, which ought to be a self-recognition, fails
just because there are no objects with enough resistance to stop the
drifting. Yet something does happen: the Sun's "airless winds" penetrate
the "punched holes" of IMP Plus' "eyelid skin." His solar panels have
twisted around and punched a hole into the satellite; his body has
invaded itself.
4. Taking hold. The hole in the satellite is IMP Plus' new mouth,
his first limb, the orifice for filling himself. It is also the organ for
playing the speaking game with Ground-control, and for lying about his
new growth. In this dissimulation, IMP Plus for the first time "makes a
move," and this move is a thought: IMP Plus "thinks his own growth" -
he thinks himself into growing. Unfortunately, IMP Plus chokes on his
new mouth. His vegetation is growing too fast, producing a glut of
oxygen, and suffocating on its own by-products. The plenum turns out
to be no better than the vacuum. Messages are overloaded, and the
mouth that might have "funneled" in the outside world, is immediately
 BREATHLESS MESSAGES 313

plugged. And worse stiH, IMP Plus' first action is a paranoiac retreat.
He stumbles across the "control box" through which Ground is
watching him; and maybe he had even been spied upon at the beach.
IMP Plus has only one escape from being watched: to do "many things,"
and to "do them quick or else." So his self-thinking thought, his first
phenomenological description, is just more dispersal. His one turn away
from the pre-set orbit is a downturn.
5. Reversing. IMP Plus fears losing the "kiss of breath" which his
new mouth "almost" took. In fact, he was "poisoned" by the air he
never had. Ground is "bringing him in." The "reverse launch" leaves
him with one dying wish: to see through the "coilings, uncoilings,
recoilings, ... of his origins and what was in back of it."
6. Despairing. Imp Plus' desi re to return to his origins is also a
desire to have those origins recognize his growth. But Ground has gone
mad, it seems, for the messages are increasingly at cross purposes - the
words "SO" and "WHAT" keep appearing. At some point before the
beginning, communication and recognition had already been ruled out
by the setting of a code that excluded the possibility of growth. IMP
Plus becomes aware "of not having existed, of being a gap." Having
failed to tell his story, IMP Plus loses his train of thought, and the brain
that was his work and his body, "is no more." And yet, for IMP Plus'
"growth to be over," for his "last breath to be taken away," his suicide
must be his own.
7. Going out the window. For IMP Plus, "getting back to Earth was
the journey. Or [at least, tol Earth's crust of atmosphere." So this is
what air is: The target of a return, the object of a desire which can only
be satisfied before life began or after it ends. As IMP Plus' last words
leave his mouth, namely the hole in the side of his satellite, IMP Plus,
the vegetable inside, literally "goes out the window," he hits the
atmosphere and burns up on contact.
In various ways, the issues of dispersed identity and masked origins,
of the alternating excess and deficiency of intelligible order, of solitary
writing and narrative overload, are typical in aH five of McElroy's
novels.! McElroy's characters never quite come into possession of
consciousness, because they get stuck in the very receptacles and
tunnels which they constructed in order to meet the object of their
consciousness; while there is plenty of material in the holes they dig, it
is aH counterfeit tender and misleading clues, and the tubes are aU blind
aHeys. IMP Plus has trouble with the intentionality relation, and I am
314 JAY LAMPERT

going to examine this trouble by asking about three things: first, about
the absence of obstacle that IMP Plus suffers from, and about the crises
and interruptions that are introduced in order to get consciousness
roUing; second, about the failure of IMP Plus' various mouths to send
and receive interpretable information; and third, about the failure of
IMP Plus' memories and of his references backward to the ground or
origin of his growth.
1 will begin by recalling a few basic principles of Husserlian inten-
tionality. According to Husserl, an intentional object is identified when
an experiencing subject carries out a synthesis of a range of possible
experiences, and recognizes that aU of those experiences reveal a single
object from a plurality of perspectives. The direct intentional contact
with objects is carried out by passing through chains of lawfuUy ordered
experiential contents. The same synthesis is what generates the temporal
stream of consciousness, and in turn makes self-consciousness possible.
The same synthesis makes memory possible, and ultimately makes
phenomenology possible as a reference backward to the transcendental
ground of consciousness. And finaUy, it is the same synthesis that
ideaUy aUows experience to close the gaps between itself and its objects,
and to bring more and more of the material within its horizons into the
sphere of its coherent interpretations.
The first question asks about IMP Plus' absence of obstacle and
the subsequent introduction of crisis-points. We would expect from
Husserlian intentionality that a synthetic combination of experiences
that was completely open-ended would faiI to establish direct contact
with any determinate object. Without determinate limits to cognitive
movement, the stream of consciousness alI blends together. Now IMP
Plus is in a certain sense described as first having existed in a sleeping
state, orbiting at an unchanging distance from the world's surfaces, and
hence as wandering like the moon, an alien to the earth, blind and deaf
to any and aU messages. Indeed, even the lack of punctuation in the
messages prevent IMP Plus from cognizing objects and from having an
ego: The message "GROUND 1 READ YOU," for example, fails to
split the phrase "GROUND: 1" which would articulate IMP Plus' need
to ground his ego, from the phrase "READ: YOU," which would
articulate his need to share an interpretation with other subjects.
And yet, IMP Plus' consciousness, such as it is, does nof begin with
the drift of blind sleep - it can begin only once the first crisis of
differentiation is introduced, only once IMP Plus starts to say "No" to
 BREATHLESS MESSAGES 315

the messages received, only once an abyss is opened up between his

present and his remembered existence, only once the equilibrium of
orbit starts to decay, only once the regular exchange of oxygen and
carbon dioxide is interrupted by the proliferation of excess growth, only
once IMP Plus' body begins to be a body by feeling the pain of conflict
and the inadequacy of desire. In short, consciousness begins only when
the distance fram consciousness is felt as a crisis.
So IMP Plus must be in two places at once in order for there to be a
map to connect his location with the locations of the things he is in the
position of cognizing; he must split his thought in order to speak the
names of things not himself which can speak back. IMP Plus must
create a ring of airless distance between himself and earth, precisely for
there to be an atmosphere that would let him see, breathe, and read
the earth. But the gaps and the distances backfire, which leads to the
second question regarding IMP Plus' genetic phenomenology, namely
into the failure of his enunciation of, and reception of, messages over
distances.
For Husserl, as soon as an experiencing subject understands the
world to be real, he recognizes that the world can be seen from
perspectives other than his own, and thereby also recognizes the
co-existence of other subjects. IMP Plus' failure to communicate is
thus a failure to map perspectives. At one point, IMP Plus muUers
"Arrow this, arrow that." The message-conveying arrows have no
shortage of trajectories, but like Zeno's arrows, it is never dear that
they will reach a target. At first, IMP Plus' arrows travel through a
void, but even when he exhales an atmosphere in which messages can
be conveyed, he stiH cannot teU whether the arrows are reaching their
intentional targets, or are getting stuck in the mirages in the atmosphere
itself. If Zeno's paradoxes are paradoxes of intentionality, we can see
how the arrows are forever halted in the medium of their movement,
and why no matter how far they travel, they are only halfway home.
IMP Plus mistakes the medium for the message, and in general the
representation of things for the things themselves.
This explains why IMP Plus has so many non-functional mouths, and
whyan his kissing and sucking is so ineffectual. No maUer how much is
pumped into IMP Plus' air-holes, he cannot receive it. It also explains
his paranoia. IMP Plus cannot move around behind the curtain of
thoughts that camouflages the world, and even when he does move
behind the curtain and finds there as Hegel predicted nothing but
316 JAY LAMPERT

himself, he discovers what aH paranoiacs discover, namely that the

prose of the world has been written for his eyes only, that he and his
community are essentiaHy excluded from one another.
IMP Plus knows he must go back to the things themselves, and this
going-back brings us to our third phenomenological concern. According
to Husserl, there are at least two senses in which aH consciousness
refers backwards. First, the fact that the stream of consciousness is
always directed towards future experiences means that experience is
always satisfying the anticipatory demands of its presupposed history.
Disparate interpretations of the world are able to converge just because
the final convergence of aH interpretations of the world is pre-viewed
by each and every interpretation of anything. The end of the world is
prepared for by the beginning which is always referred back to. Of
course, the end is never reached, the interpretations of the world are
never finished, just as IMP Plus cannot reach the air of his origins
without burning up; but the point of consciousness is not to be
presented with the totality of the world "at a single blow," as Husserl
would say, but is to be always in the process of referring back to its
possibility. The second sense of referring-back thus involves a return to
the conditions of the possibility of aH experience. Phenomenological
reduction finds the absolute ego in some sense steering consciousness
in advance. It is this center of gravity, both cognitive and bodily, that
IMP Plus lacks. Up to a certain point, he can play by the rules for
producing syntheses without the closure of an end-point, as long as he
refers back to his original Ground. But like aU post-modernist heroes,
his attempt to retrace his living history slips into an endless regress of
repetitions. IMP Plus makes the phenomenological effort aH right, but
he never stops slipping into holes en route to the indefinite origin that is
necessary for his successful emergence into the air of consciousness.
How do we look through these air-holes for an origin for IMP Plus?
The clearest text that describes these "holes in motion," reads:

IMP Plus radiated waves of doubt that carne along the axis of distance ... But every
turn along which he inclined to find support for what he'd thought, gapped into sudden
holes; he might chase over an inner eye1id skin of limit of what he knew was there, only
to get fresh absence; Of he leaned steeply into each subordinate void of hole to find it
then gone in such a speed of light he saw instead he thought a network lattice quite
withou! speed. Or beyond speed, so the lattice ben! always away from limit. Bent back
constantly to what he might have thought to be himself, had not this deep substance
been already him everywhere in ali ilS grids and jolts. (Pp. 105-6)
 BREATHLESS MESSAGES 317

There is an origin here for us, something hidden in the earliest

memories that philosophers can refer back to, to the time when
philosophy drew its first breath, when those air-holes first became an
issue. Anaximander's text reads: "There are breathing-holes (exTCv017),
certain pipe-like passages, at which the heavenly bodies show them-
selves."; or again, "The sun is like a chariot wheel, with its felloe hollow,
and full of fire, and showing the fire at a certain point through an
orifice as through the nozzle of a bellows."
Now it is true that these words call us back a long way into the
problem of air and distance. Long before we needed spaceships to let
us desire airlessness, long before Nietzsche noticed how had today's air
smelIs and his utilitarian counterparts in England blamed the vitiated
air in poorhouses for everything from prostitution to undue hilarity, to
falling asleep in church, to losing the image of God; long before Herder
proclaimed the gap between the inanimate consonants of rational man's
script and the spiritual breath of the vowel-dominated speech of
women, children, savages, animals, Hebrews, and the sick and lonely;
long before Boyle's essay "About Attempts to examine ... Cartesian
Aether with a pair of belIows" could consider whether the hypothesis of
aeriform liquid solves the problem of gravity which threatened alI of
physics by seeming to presuppose the anathema to nature and reason
alike, namely action at a distance; long before Isidore of Seville traced
the contradiction of the winds, which are at once the secretaries of God
who bring His message to the believers and also the emissaries of Satan
who whisper tempting thoughts under their breath; long before Galen,
who in order to explain how we can suffocate though our lungs are
filled with air, took up Aristotle's argument that the usefulness of air
consists not in being a substance that nourishes, but in having a cooling
property that prevents the body from burning up; long before the Stoics
made official the identification of the divine breath and the human
psyche and the rarified aether, and hence located in air the "tension"
(tonos) of the world whose power, as when in earthquakes the flatulent
earth expels a burst of air, "stirs the soul" and shows us our deaths in
advance; long before Aristotle's early commentators took him to count
aether as the quinta essentia, the fifth element, and the only element by
which the "inborn breath" in each man (aVţlCPVTOV TCVEVţla) is con-
nected to the regular motions of the aetherial heavens; long even before
Socrates was put to death for teaching of the things "under the earth
and up in the air", ţlfTa at'e, in short for being a meteorologist; long
318 JAY LAMPERT

before alI these things we find Anaximander's accounts of air and

separation.
Strictly speaking, of course, what we do not find is Anaximander's
account. The only extant fragment, extant at least in the sense that we
believe that in this case Simplicius copies verbatum from Theophrastus'
paraphrase of Anaximander, reads: "according to necessity; for they
give justice to one another for their injustice according to the ordering
of time." The things that pay penalties are "alI the heavens and the
worlds in them", which "come to be from" "some other ă:n:fL(]OV" , that
is, from the "indefinite" or the "unbounded." Aside from this fragment,
which Simplicius complains is "spoken in rather poetic words,"2 we
have only the reports of Aristotle, Simplicius, Aetius, HypolIytus, each
with a hidden agenda. 1 want to construct an account of Anaximander's
cosmology, and especially his meteorology, but 1 can only conduct this
weather report by looking backward through corrupted messages.
1 am going to present an outline of Anaximander's cosmology under
five terms (d:n:OX(]Wl~, O{V'f], :n:(]1]aT'fJ(], ă(]X'f}, ă:n:El(]OV), and then 1 wilI
reconstruct the many parallels with IMP Plus.
The xoaţlO~ comes into being when the ă:n:fL(]OV undergoes a
"separating-off" (d:n:OX(]Wlt:;),3 an original division, or crisis. At the
centre of what is left is a vortex (0lV'fJ) out of which the separate
elements spin out in wheels or rings, as layers of bark (tpÂOIOt:;) on a
tree, with dense water and earth in the middle, fire on the outside, and
air in between, surrounding the earth and preventing fire from mixing
with it. It is a little unclear where the â:n:El(]OV itself has gone, but it
seems either to be "between" (ţtETaţV) air and fire or "between" air and
water, or perhaps in the "middle" (ţtfaov) Of else "surrounding"
(:n:E(]tfXOV). In any case, the earth, cylindrical in shape, is suspended
motionless in mid-air (ţtETfw(]o~), "indifferent" (OţtOlOi'fJ~) to any
motions around it, and hence equidistant to portions of the orbital rings
of air and fire on alI sides of it. Anaximander is sometimes also said to
have been the first to "write a map of the earth," although Herodotus
says he has to laugh about the way such early maps made every region
equivalent in size to every other.
Now the outer ring of fire, of which the heavenly bodies are
portions, exhibit a "turning-back" (r:(]o:n:'f]) towards the centre which it
has left behind, and by turning back from every direction, it brings into
being "boundless orderings" (ă:n:fL(]Ol xoaţtOl ),4 each with a vortex at its
centre. It is these turnings-back that forces some of the fire through the
 BREATHLESS MESSAGES 319

layer of air, punching holes in its outer layer, creating the appearances
of starry points of light, and forcing rarified fiery air down through the
inner layer of dense, watery, stagnant air. It is the turnings-back that
create the effect of winds (nvEv,ua7:a) forced out through the innumer-
able "mouths" (ofaaro,uwv) 5 of innumerable "bellows" (ne1]arrJe ).6
When the "apertures" or "orifices" are "plugged," eclipses take place;
but when they are opened, the winds pour through as through a "pipe"
or "tube" (avÂwOeL~, as for example the tube of a nostril) 7 or as
through "holes" or "pores" in the skin (n6eOL), and these winds
breathed into the body of the xoa,uo~ are responsible for all meteor-
ological phenomena. Most important, the winds are responsible for
drying up the moist earth and leaving patches of dry land. For it is only
once the winds have this effect, that life can be breathed into men. For
men, it turns out, must have originated inside fish, first because at first
there was no land for them to live on, but also because man is a
creature who nurses at his mother's breast for an absurdly long time, so
long in fact that the first generation of men could never have survived
unless their nursing stage was accomplished inside a protected space.
So when land is dried up, fish wriggle up on shore, and the first
generation of men bursts fully grown out of the fish's skin (literally the
fish's "bark" (cpÂofo~), so that in a sense man bursts out of the center
ring of the x6a,uo~). This "origin" (ăexrJ) of the life of the first animals
(newra ~<i>a) is thus dependent on what comes out of the air-holes.
But if man comes to life by sucking in the air pumped 8 through the
breathing-holes, it is in a certain sense the ground of his own origins
that he is sucking in, and this leads to a problem of the origin and the
center for Anaximander. The problem emerges in three ways. First,
men receive life-giving air only in brief spurts, and are subject to
frequent blockages in the air-holes, in man's cosmological mouths,
pores, nostrils, orifices, and sucking apparatuses. Second, the original
ănEleOV seems to be in no place. It is said to be in the middle of things,
but it is not in the center of the xoa,uo~. Indeed strict1y speaking there
is nothing in the center; there are only things spinning out from a
center, or turning back to a center. Third, it is not clear that the
ănELeOV has a time, or at least a time we can think back to. Certainly
the ănEleOV itself does not have an origin (ăexrJ), though it "steers"
(Xv{3Eevâv) the beginnings and ends of other things. And certainly the
ănEleOV seems indirectly responsible for the necessity that unjust
imbalances be rectified according to the ordering of time. But that time
320 JAY LAMPERT

is itself indefinitely deferred. The ăn€t(!ov exceeds the map of the

world. And if we conjecture finally that man never breathes in the
fullness of air, the air by which he retums to his origins, then we would
understand why men will never be able to speak quite meaningfully
about the ăn€t(!ov, and why Anaximander speaks in "rather poetical
words."
What has happened? We began with IMP Plus' problem with airless-
ness as a problem of the separation from origins. So we traced back the
problem of air to its origins, and we now find that the original problem
of air refers us back to even more indefinite origins, indeed to the
original indefinite. It is difficult to know how much we should be
surprised that IMP Plus and Anaximander's man follow such similar
trajectories. But let us briefly trace them oul.
First, IMP Plus' history begins with the crisis of the launch at which
he is separated from his original world; Anaximander's history begins
with the dnox(!Wls at which earth, water, air, and fire are separated
from one another. Second, IMP Plus does not wake up as long as
his orbital equidistances and biological equilibria are unbroken;
Anaximander's XOOţlOs does not come to life as long as the rings
moving around the vortex are unmixed and as long as there are no
imbalances among the equidistant XOOţlOl. Third, IMP Plus' narrative
begins when just enough of a message enters his capsule through holes,
in order for him to notice that most of his contact with Ground is
interrupted; Anaximander's picture begins to look like the planet earth
when just enough fiery wind is pumped through the air-holes, in order
for the elements to mix, and for it to become cIear that most of the
heavens are eclipsed. Fourth, IMP Plus' rise to consciousness begins
with the memory of a kiss at the seashore; Anaximander's man comes
to life when he rises from the sea and tums from sucking liquid to
sucking air. Fifth, IMP Plus' brain, body, and mouth burst out of
vegetable growth; Anaximander's man comes into his body (owţla) by
bursting out of bark. Sixth, IMP Plus' messages proliferate, he loses
control of his map, and his narrative is fragmented and untrustworthy;
Anaximander wrote maps but people laugh at them, and he has lost
control of his account, due to the fragmentation and untrustworthiness
of his doxographers. Seventh, IMP Plus' consciousness depends on a
retum to Ground which is impossible; Anaximander's world-order
depends on a retum to justice which is indefinitely deferred. McElroy's
 BREATHLESS MESSAGES 321

science fiction deconstructs phenomenology; Anaximander's cosmology

is written "in rather poetic terms." Both are texts of the indefinite.
But SO WHAT? Is there anything here that contributes to phe-
nomenological research, or even that specifies the relation between
phenomenology and metaphor? Have we merely stumbled acrass two
accounts of the separation from origins? Or does the search backward
within these poetries itself define the rale of poetry within phenomeno-
logical research?
If phenomenology's task is to recover the presuppositions of con-
sciousness, which have the character of having been set up long in
advance, then phenomenology can only begin with the recognition of
the crisis, the crisis of the non-equivalence of subject and graunds, the
crisis of the distance between subject and object, in general the crisis of
an excess of difference over original identities. It is then phenomeno-
logy itself that must invent the crises whose overcoming counts as rigor.
And it is only because there are maps that threaten to blow the world
apart that consciousness, in the effort of holding distant points together,
achieves a tenuous synthetic unity. But in that case, if air is the byword
of distance, their air is not an element at aH, but a by-product, an alloy,
a chemical spill. To be sure, consciousness needs the air which it itself
exhales, but always in negative ways: as the atmosphere back home, and
as the gap and deferral of distances. And if the metaphor of air is a
metaphor for metaphor (and after aH which metaphor is not?), then
there is a conclusion to draw: The poetic making of metaphor is the
decay of consciousness which phenomenology itself creates as the crisis
from which it springs.

University of Toronto

NOTES

1 Plus is McElroy's fifth novel. Toward the end of his fourth, Lookout Cartridge
(1974), his protagonist "Iaunches" himself into a dream of "more" (p. 492). He has
described his forthcoming sixth novel, Women and Men, as his "re-entry." (Thomas
Leclair, 'Interview with Joseph McElroy,' Chicago Review 30: 4 (Spring 1979), p. 95.)
2 Anaximander was for a time thought to be the first prose writer.
J Aiso dJlo(!(!ayei01]!; xai dJlOXAEWiJEt01]!;, "broken off and closed off". Cf. JlVEVţl'
dJlo(!lj~at {Jtov, "to snap the breath of life." (Aeschylus)
4 The technical use of x6oţlo!; to mean the "universe" in general or in totality may be a
322 JAYLAMPERT

later development; see Charles H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek
Cosmology. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 219ff. John Burnet in
Early Greek Philosophy. (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1957 - fourth edition), origi-
nally published in 1930) and others translate a1CfleOl X60ţtOl as "innumerable worlds"
(p. 59), and engage in controversies as to whether these worlds are innumerable in co-
existing spaces ar in successive times, and as to whether there are innumerable entire
universes Of just innumerable heavenly bodies functioning as if they were separate
universes. 1 am leaving these questions open by translating the phrase as above,
retaining the non-technical sense of x6oţtoC;. It is worth noting that Heraclitus says that
"The waking share one common x6oţtoC;, but the sleeping turn aside each into his own."
(Fr. 89), which suggests that a x6oţtoC; could be something like a "world-view."
5 Diminutive of ar6ţta, which can be used for mouths of people and caves. But oT6ţta
can also mean the mouth that speaks, as in (j{aoT6ţta for a current phrase "on
everyone's tongue" (Aeschylus), or can be used in the sense of being of the "verge" of.
Ii ali of these senses were to pertain to Anaximander, we could say that these mouths
give the breath of speech, commit violence against the centre, and are on the verge of a
return, that is to say, that the violence of speech returns .... But that would be to move
too fast.
6 It seems that the use of 1CefJ0TrJe to mean the nozzle of a bellows is independent of

its use to mean the meteorological phenomenon of "fiery watersprouts" at sea, perhaps
hurricanes, of which Heraclitus speaks. For Heraclitus, a 1CefJOTrJe is a re suIt of the
"upward and downward paths" of water (as condensation and rain), whereby sea and
sun are exchanged for one another through the medium of air.
7 The controversy over whether respiration takes place exclusively through the nostrils
or also through the pores in the skin, continued until Galen's day.
8 Galen criticizes Plato's account of respiration in the Timaeus on the grounds that it
overemphasizes pumping at the expense of sucking.

REFERENCES

McElroy, Joseph. Plus (New York: Alfred J. Knopf, 1977).

Mirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 'Anaximander of Miletus,' pp. 100-142. Translations are
myown.
 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

A POETICS OF SPACE: WILLIAM BRONK'S

UNHOUSING OF THE UNIVERSE

The exceptional American poet William Bronk's life work spans more
than three decades and consists of something over four hundred poems,
published in nine slender volumes, the first not appearing until he was
37 years 01d. 1 His colIected and new poems were published to bicoastal
praise in 1981 under the title Life Supports. 2 It won for him the
American Book Award for poetry in 1982. He has been the subject of
near-ecstatic praise - when he has been reviewed at alI. The Southwest
Review likened him to one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived:
"If Aristotle wrote meditative verse, it would sound like William Bronk,
only not as good." 3 Yet this poet who can provoke such praise, and
justly claim to be among America's finest, is virtually unknown, even to
those who count themselves serious readers of poetry.
Bronk is not altogether an innocent victim of his state of obscurity.
He has deliberately courted his own anonymity, like one of his literary
heroes, Thoreau, about whom he has written an insightful essay
contrasting the demands of society and solitude. Even after he won
the American Book Award, Bronk refused to grant interviews and
reiterated an earlier comment of his that the serious poet disappears in
the work - a conviction that goes against the narcis sis tic grain of much
confessional, contemporary poetry. The clean, unadorned style, honed
into austerity, is his reaching for a purer meaning in which self-inves-
tigation is replaced by an abstract focus. The process of simplification
from which Bronk's "simple" declarative style is derived is a quasi-
scientific one which constructs the complex from the less complex,
always implying the complicated reality beneath the surface presentation.
Bronk practices what his poetry, which heaps scorn upon the
deliberate building of a public life form, preaches:

Let me not have a life to look at, the way we look

at a life we build to look at, ... a snowman life;
hurry to pack it solid, buttons on
and a proper hat, finished before dark,
before the rain to wash it away.
323
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, VoI XXIII, 323-341.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
324 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

He has voiced his desire in another poem

To be nowhere, nothing, without character,

costume, semblance, name; to be conduit
as if, then, something should sluice through me. (p. 147)

Most assuredly not constructing a literary life, nor housing himself in

a recognizable package called The Poet, William Bronk has rejected
compromise and costume: his life, like his work, flies in the face of
many current notions about the nature of the poet and of poetic
themes. Like another American poet who was vice president of an
insurance company and kept his poetry writing a thing apart, Bronk ran
his father's lumber and coal business and wrote his lean and demanding
poems one small collection at a time.
"The drabbest role is role," he has ventured in "The Receptors,"
which presents the persona as a redundant and clumsy responsibility,
"a multiple lie/that has to be told all over again, and again,lcompulsive
serial, to prop itself." (p. 108) Eschewing the writer-as-academic or
celebrity roles which many of his peers have embraced, Bronk fills the
spaces of his life and houses his own being in colder, wider climes of
skeptical, Socratic questing after the larger mysteries of existence. The
hallmark of his verse is his questioning and doubting stance, his
rigorously abstract and uncompromisingly intellectual interests. He has
shaped his life into a carefully maintained, self-sustaining space that
approaches anonymity. As such, it is ontologically out of step with a
gossip-hungry, celebrity-hunting society, where even professors, philo-
sophers, and poets all too often wish not to refute but to fulfill Warhol's
prophecy that everyone will get to be famous for fifteen minutes.
William Bronk is an eerie reinforcement of his poetic obsessions; he
has left more spaces in his life than most: never had children, never
married, heroically does not own an automobile, yet has lived in the
same town and the same daffodil yellow Victorian house for more than
65 years. His poems deconstruct the concepts of location and place
into mere illusions; his life speaks of a stable abode out of which he
ventured into his sparsely populated poetic universe. 5
His earliest collection, My Father Photographed with Friends, con-
tains a short rhymed poem which, as much as any later, better or longer
one he wrote over the next thirty years, reveals his metaphysics. It is
entitled "The Spies."
 A POETICS OF SPACE 325

Withhold conclusions on my last report:

1'11 try to send again in two days more.
I begin to suspect something of a different sort
from what I spoke with you about before.
But this is such an elusive country here,
I wonder that we hope to get it dear. (p. 14)
His counsel was to remain the same: draw no final condusions about
this territory so elusive that it evades aH efforts at definition. Bronk's
reports come from the metaphysical trenches in the front lines where
he makes his poetic stand. They require constant updating and re-
saying: "Life has always required Ito be stated again." (p. 35)
His poetry is ruthless in its deforming of the immediacies of per-
ception, in its liberation from obvious images that fix and paralyze, in
its insistence on the strangeness of the world. 6 There are no eternal
verities, absolute truths or definitive conclusions. Bronk's universe
ranges from expectably mysterious to abruptly ominous. Like Beckett's,
it is not particularly user-friendly. The reversals and paradoxes which
abound in his work both define and attempt to defeat the chilling
spaces of a recalcitrant universe. Seemingly palpable structures delineate
his spatial anxieties but thwart resolution by proving to be, ultimately,
insubstantial.
In several of Bronk's earliest poems the winter wind is metaphor for
his intellectual quest. But however "incessant" his search of "empty
corners of old barns" (p. 14) may be, the mind-as-wind turns, finds
nothing, and moves ono The reality of a hawthorne tree is in another
poem mocked by the immensity of the open space which surrounds it:

this is the tree with the thorn for whatever

is there
- only the air
usually. (p. 15)
The universe here is, as it is to remain in three more decades of Bronk's
perceiving consciousness, less presence than absence, a vast reach of
space within which consciousness gropes for comprehension and
articulation. Yet the "moving on" is a characteristic response to the
stimulus of the void, analagous to Beckett's we can't go on, but we will
go ono Bronk's blunt rhetoric often approximates Beckett, as when he
observes despairingly "The rulesl change. It is uncertain what they are.
326 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

We go on." (p. 131), or notes that life is "totally empty," but "it can go
on in spitel of anything. And it does." (p. 190)
As resolutely as Bronk pursues metaphysics, unlike the equally
philosophic poet Wallace Stevens, for him the physics in metaphysics is
a powerful presence; he is as much a scientist poet as philosopher-poet.
The titles he gives his poems demonstrate as much. 7 His experienced
world is a spatial one: "a world half gonel to dissolution, fluid and
almost formlessl in the rain of small occurrences." (p. 28) Like a
physicist or mathematician's world, Bronk's has been stripped of
material trappings and solid objects. It seems to be happening in the
mind; the realness of chairs or stones dissolves and one cannot refute
Bishop Berkeley by kicking all the stones of common sense. True, we
feeI the earth beneath our feet, but pressed further, reality intermingles
fatally with the insubstantial as we note the space which surrounds solid
objects. His mathematical mind is aware of "the curvei of space itself."
(p. 48) 8 Intimations of Einstein's theory of relativity hover in his
poems, from early works
Each happening happens in an already moving world
The scene could be a train, with another train
on either side and all three running
at changing speeds. We ask "What happened here?" (p. 29).
to one of his most recent poems, which takes as its subject micro-
photography, where "the invisible I is there to be seen as much as if it
were there." (p. 215) Scanning this intricate, invisible world is to realize,
by analogy, that "we existi as tiniest wholes in the almost infinitely I
divisible what there is." (p. 215) In "The Annihilation of Matter,"
Bronk observes a landscape changed by the passage of day to night: "it
had seemedl the objects mattered: the light was to see them by," but the
objects, once examined, "yielded nothing, nothing real.I They were for
seeing the light in various ways." Once the objects stand revealed as
houses in which light takes shape, the poem ends: "Objects are nothing.
There is only the light, the light!" (p. 42) His poems valorize the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle and demonstrate the radical ind eter-
minacy in all observation. His poetry alludes without apology to Boole
and algebra, Newton, Euclid, and Riemann, alI the theoreticians
possessed of intellectual pas sion for form and structure. He explores
their projections of discrete ness and shape, their faith in measurement,
"premise and axiom," and finds their ideas defeated by this world of no
 A POETICS OF SPACE 327

discernable shape. There was oilly the order they brought to it; they
measured themselves, not the world. A poem ostensibly about a bird
bath flanked by blue spruces reiterates Bronk's contention that "ideas
are always wrong."9 Intellectual history is a tale of "truths" (once
considered fixed and certain) undone. These successive errors leave us
floating unhoused in a spacetime continuum of idea-error-correction-
abandonment-new idea-etc. Concepts like "Euclidean spaces" and
"linear time" Bronk portrays as "discarded animals we thought we could
Iose /by losing them," yet they return "nudging our legs with their
noses." (p. 79) Understandably, we need the comfort, order and
definition that explanatory structures of the world give us, but the cost
is high: "Here they are, like real! creatures, making their claims, not
letting us go." (p. 79)
The strong reflective dimension of Bronk's poetry is a function of his
understanding that he did not understand before, an in-process correc-
tion of errors and illusions. Ideas are rectified, enlarged and completed,
transcending the limited insights on which they once were based. In his
dialectica! corrections and extensions, Bronk completes his thoughts
with the elegance of a mathematican; his sense of closure is extraor-
dinary powerful after he ranges through voids of doubt and desi re to
arrive at conclusions. Great intellectual courage resides in Bronk's
stubborn revisions of realist principles. He shares with his readers the
creative process of objectification and helps us understand the sets of
relations which exist among poet, scientist and philosopher. He gives us
a vi vid record of the anxiety and desire of intellection, of its quest for
an object, of its search for opportunities to exchange solipsisms for
syntheses.
Poem after poem suggests that for Bronk reality is a flawed but
necessary theorum, a mathematical postulate, something not observed
but invented by human consciousness. The world's attributes of time
and space are a let-us-suppose maneuver. Even human Being is a
mathematical condition in which the point is to perceive those relations
which hold between qualities in an abstract, analytical way:
1 and you: incredible: discrete
coordinates who conspire to meet on the grid
which was nowhere and is not. ... (p. 149)
In a poem specifically titled "Grids," Bronk suggests that "form/ and
reason" (p. 226) are the grids we must superimpose upon the shapeless-
328 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

ness of self and world. Man's desparate desire for structure and shape
leads him to trust in logic, formalized disciplines, and scientific pro-
cedures "as though they were roads" (p. 228); he tries "to explorel and
map" his surroundings:

But the roads fade out; we don't come back

with the grids and reference points, the altitudes.
We go over the edge ofthe world and disappear. (p. 228) 10

"The Emptiness of Human Being" unfolds the excuses and evasions

of our existence, to end thus:

The determined self makes be by partialness,

sets out his space, says here is truth,
is his, says less is aH, defends, fades. (p. 181)

And where is the HERE of the determined man's truth-in space? It's alI
another illusion bom of our desi re for location, "As if some day, onel
attitude of infinite attitudesl at last, might make a place of here." (p. 95)
Or again: "We are neither ... here nor therel but we want to be, we
make up ways to be." (p. 104) Bronk's mathematical sense of the
complexity of place and location leads once again to the evaporation of
their seeming certainty into sheer abstraction. The early poem "The
Destination" begins, "This is not the place we meant to come;" we find
"mistaken ways" are not self-verifying "on any map consulted." Nothing
is recognizable in the "alien" places we traverse; things have at best an
"equivocal presence" and we "Iose the way." (p. 15) The poem
"Nowhere" ends with the lament: "No place for us. No place to go." (p.
150)
Despite the existence of maps, which falsely promise the security and
order of a plan, "disaster" can overtake man's efforts, as in the first line
of "The Remains of a Farm." Our "patient enterprise" (p. 19) of
building houses against the vast space we traverse, as if we were forlom
electrons within an inscrutible atom, falls to disrepair. "Chaos lasts,"
Bronk warns in "The Absence of Proof," "orders aH go by./The chaos,
not the orders, is where we live." (p. 144) For Bronk, the house is reaHy
intent, desire, and will; the accomplishment itself is evanescent. In the
early poem "Home Address," he speaks of the big house they lived in
and "tried to fill ... as best we could." (p. 16) But none of the
inhabitants of this worldl house can comprehend
 A POETICS OF SPACE 329

the way the pieces went together

or why the rooms were planned
the way they were. (p. 16)

Nor will extensive metaphorical remodeling of this worId which we call

home avail: "we despaired," the poet says, "of ever living therel in
comfort." (p. 16) In this house which Bronk describes as disordered
and incongruous, empty rooms are left "to disrepair" and the sense of
unreality never leaves. "We hardly ever really feeI at homel as though
we might be happier somewhere else" (p. 55), Bronk muses in one
poem, and he restates this elsewhere: "For we never lived there. No
one. We played we did. IPlayed house. The games of time and place."
(p. 99) He doubts that one finds something so solid and definable as
exact location in "this air-moved, light-moved, restless place" (p. 33) we
call the worId. "Call it so," he allows, but always be aware of the mere
linguistic convention that states our locations of person, home, city,
country, civilization, or worId. Space and time concepts do not suffi-
ciently shape our perception of reality; in the face of what Bronk calls
the "chaotic recalcitrance" and "endlessness" of space, we "respect the
finite shapel of bounded places as much as to say they are true." (p. 48)
Perhaps only in dreams, as he suggests in "The Dream of a W orId of
Objects," can we know the room to be real with place, palpably there,
with "sharpeness of surface, edges on everything." (p. 79) When we
wake, we are once again in a world "object-poor" and "edgeless," which
"dissolves" and "slips away" (p. 79) from sensual or intellectual grasp.
Like the dream, even myth "is a place where there isn't one." (p. 166)
Bronk's suspicions of insubstantiality are not quieted by belief in the
body itself: the space within which we inhabit bodies, houses, cities,
civilizations and the worId is the omnipresent reality. Dasein for Bronk
is a being-in-space. What we choose to concretize, comfortingly, as our
bodies, or houses, or the world, is all that air "we are lost in." (p. 112)
Our complex sensual experiences, "that consciousness which we divide,
compare,! compose, make things and persons of, make forms,! make 1
and you" (p. 35), can never be adequately captured in words. The
image of man, Bronk asserts in a powerful sarcastic poem, "eludes the
flesh as though the fleshl were a bad camera." (p. 38) Considering the
extent to which our search for self-understanding mingles hope of
success with fear of what might be revealed, Bronk despairs: "One
would as soon confront God as man." (p. 38) In the desperation of his
330 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

unwanted but unavoidable insight, Bronk is aH unadorned ruthlessness:

we li ve in a world whose "instructions" we never understand" (p. 80):
What we know is only whatever the genes intend,
nothing else and not even that: we don't know. (p. 80)
Common sense and the shape of things do exist, but as he observes in
"The Duplicities of Sense," there is also "shapelessness, randomed with
atoms whose dance we please to be." (p. 87) His ontologic al eri de
eoeur resonates powerfully in this early poem:
... W orld, world, I am scared
and waver in awe before the wilderness
of raw consciousness, because it is aH
dark and formlessness: and it is real
this pas sion that we feel for forms. But the forms
are never real. Are not really there. Are nol. (p. 35)
In the more dispassionate "The Questions," Bronk reviews wryly the
fact that there are "alI sorts of positions to take" on the the nature of
reality, and concludes "One works as well as another, but none of them
works." (p. 81)
In "On Life and Death" Bronk's central image equates a newly
purchased house with man's position in the universe and (by inference)
his occupation of his own body. We stand in these enclosures, desiring
"that we should fit the room" (p. 111), but reality confounds us. Do the
doors lead in or out? How are the rooms shaped? What do the
windows look upon? We reach an epistemologie al deadend regarding
either the body/house or the world/house: "What we know is our
failure to compose." (p. 130) "What was it I was, or thought I would
be?" Bronk asks in "The Belief in the Self Abandoned." In "The
Revelation" the shapes of house and body are explicitly linked: "My life
has no shape; I live in an old house. IThe deed says it's mine now." (p.
168) When the hope that "some shape would happen to impose itself"
(p. 169) did not occur, Bronk says "1 don't carei ... and yet am
surprised." (p. 169) Charlie Charleton, the dead protagonist of another
poem, leaves behind him only the shape of rus farm, "the group the
buildings make .... IOnly its shape ... INothing ever besides." (p. 128)
Bronk finds change, destruction of form, and the triumph of emptiness
when contemplating the self-as-house: "1 am the stripped house, paint-
peeled,/ dewindowed. The airs blow through." (p. 44)11 Even the
 A POETICS OF SPACE 331

seminal life experiences of love and death are pervaded by the

dialectics of space and structure. One poem addresses a former love
thus:
Remember once. There was a time we meant
to make something like tepees, 1 out of you,
you from me, and live there, make it home
as though to make a house were what we meant. (p. 120)
Death is the final house to which man comes after the smaHer rooms
and illusory places that cluttered his existence. Since emptiness abides
behind alI our structures, death too astonishes us with "its spacious-
ness." (p. 111)
Bronkean reality unhouses us even as we struggle to construct our
various shelters. Those words of self, house, city, and society we build
against the vast void of cosmic space falI to ruin as "the clutter of time,
/the duH debris." (p. 37). Even the makers of those magnificent ruins
which once were mighty civilizations were doomed to futility, after the
force of their will to enclose formless reality was spent. "At Tikal," an
early poem occasioned by Bronk's visit to the Mayan ruins, addresses
man's urgent need to house his existence: "They wanted the shape of
things. /They imagined a world." (p. 39) Seeking order and control,
they enclosed space and themselves in elaborate cities, "stone by stone,"
believing in this effort as much as Shelley's Ozymandias. But as
Shelley's King dissolved into the boundless and bare, his vain boast
speaking only the lone and level sands stretching far away, so Bronk
records the same fate as he surveys the ruins: "trees/ climb the
stupendous steps and rubble them. lIn the jungle, the temples are little
mountains again." (p. 39) There is always the stalemated ambivalence of
man's impulse "to wall whether in/ or out, to build a kind of cage for
the sake / of feeling the bars around us." (p. 39) In a poem written
years later, Bronk describes the cozy aspects of a house, then counters
with the failure of that structure to quiet our metaphysical and ontologi-
cal anxieties: "We build these houses, these temporalities,l gone in a
little ... gone." (p. 130) 12 Bronk's exacting language - "And oh, it is
always a world and not the world" (p. 39) - emphasizes the painful
difference between a partial and particular world and the ultimately
true world whose complete unarguability, if it existed and could be
grasped, might silence and satisfy our dis-ease.
In a poem about a hogan, the Navaho earth-covered dwelling, Bronk
332 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

once again explores the shaping and limiting value that our inhabited
structures have for us. "What we want is a here with meaning," Bronk
asserts, so that the strength of this specific placement will counteract
what we fear out there, that vast uni verse which Bronk describes as "a
vague void moving with weightless balls/ or the distant view of a glitter
of gritty dust." (p. 43) To house a universe is to have it, possess it
materially and conceptually; yet this drive is for Bronk as wrong-
headed as it is powerful. Enclosure is devious and misleading; our
"ingenious inventions" (p. 43) deceive us for only so long. The empty
vastness we try to deny remains, "unfilled,l unknown, unlimited." The
cosmos mocks our puny evasions and our impotent Iust for locations.
"Where is here," Bronk demands, "when nowhere in a place of no
discernable shape?" (p. 43) 13
We limit and fill spaces, make world after self-contained world, in
our vain struggle to catch Reality in the net. Cities in Bronk's verbs
block and fil! yet a mere beam of light can rebuke our ambitions:
Once in a city blocked and filled, 1 saw
the light lie in the deep chasm of a street,
palpable and blue, as though it has drifted in
from say, the sea, a purity of space. (p.44)
In the remarkable poem "Truth as a Far Country; As a Piteous Ogre,"
the city is a species of philosophical prison rather like Plato's cave; its
streets "pinched between two walls/ of thick exclusion" (p. 44) hope to
keep amorphous truth at bay. If the truth were a country, says Bronk, it
would be as large and remote as the universe, and we a mere colony
whose distance from it leaves us frighteningly self-determining and
(frighteningly) "wholly free." (p. 45)
"The Beautiful Wall," a poem about Machu Picchu, analyzes the
stone materials of construction as "a sensed and sensible world turned
stony-hard/ and durable, medusaed to hold and be true." (p. 49) Such
architectural sights suggest that the world is "workable, and yielding
and full to the hand" (p. 49), but the ancient Inca ruins refute perma-
nence. "The pieces together" are fated to become "elsewhere apart" (p.
49) and produce the rubbish of successive centuries. At the center of
the busyness of building, of this "fuss at the edges" (p. 52) is "only the
sound/ of silence, that mocking sound" (p. 52), as Bronk reiterates in
"There Is Ignorant Silence in the Center of Things." One can stand in
the midst of de-structured cities and streets which are no longer
 A POETICS OF SPACE 333

recognizable cities and streets and feeI "the central, strong suck of it."
(p. 52) 14 Because of the absence at the heart of man's built-but-to-be-
annihilated shapes, "Nothing builds; or if it builds, it falls./ It doesn't
reach to here." (p. 76) Bronk has explained his focus on the theme of
ruined civilizations as an argument for a larger vision:
... What 1 want in using them
is to say how they cancel each other out, how
useIess they are. And we are something beyond
those terms, beyond description of all kinds. (p. 151)
The body/house, the world/house, the wobbly house of facts in
which we attempt to live ordinary lives are alI snares and delusions. The
holding shape we so desparateIy desire dissolves into boundless space,
even though "We cling like animal young to the flanks of the world Ito
show our beIonging." (p. 76) Years later, in a more mature poem,
Bronk addresses the idea of homeIand and place much the same way:
But our homes are contrivances, coverings
for emptiness. Our locallandscapes
acknowledge our unarrival, are brochures of desire
and postcards from there .... (p. 218)
Bronk's unsparing skepticism is not nihilism, however. Meaning
resides not in the building of the structures, but in the desire behind the
formal patterns:
Who had to spend such easing care on stone
found grace inherent more as idea than in
the world. (p. 49)
"My House New-Painted" once again finds Bronk mocking houses as
"measured entities." (p. 47) Man has turned from an earlier time when
"spirit was real, was what there was, was alI" (p. 47) to enclosing his
world: yet he is not content amid "houses, sums, land angles, vectors
and smoothable curves"; he needs another way "to state the world." (p.
47) 15 Perhaps, as another poem suggests, we should become more like
a child: free of the intellectuai hubris of building. Children know "things
are to break lor to have their pretensions broken." (p. 54)
Fossils and bones are vehicles of learning from "gone cities" which
teach Bronk where to seek "the real unchanged" (p. 152), teach him not
to equate the reality of the world with its materiality. The implication is
334 BEVERLY SCHLACK RANDLES

that man might find small but honest comfort in unadorned substan-
tiality if he would resist making any larger claims for it. When Bronk
returns to his newly painted house in the poem of that name, he admits
to pleasure in his home "firmed by its shiny paint" and willingly takes it
as "the metaphorl of a material world." Unlike many other poems on
this theme, it ends in quiet affirmation: "There is a world. This house
can say there is." (p. 47) In Life Supports, Bronk's recent collection of
34 poems, his image for inner knowledge is that of a kind of experi-
enced, but inexpressible, coming home:
but we know we are at home there
and go as often as we can, open the door,
walk around the rooms, sit down and look,
wish we could teU, could take our friends there. (p. 210)
Like a scientist or philosopher, William Bronk champions "several
possible worlds" (p. 43) of which the solid, common-sense version
is only one ( possibly inferior) manifestation. In "Metonymy as an
Approach to a Real World," Bronk advises acceptance of the irreduci-
bie multiplicity of truths. We need "the tolerance of travelers" (p. 43) as
we pass through our lives and the universe. The irreducible metaphysi-
cal multiplicity may be al! there is, actual and true, because there is no
real actuality outside of these versions. Bronk reminds us "all the clocks
telliocai time" (p. 44). We must stop rigging "stabilityl of person, place
and time." 16
Contemplating the universe as man's largest house, Bronk observes
how the stars remind him that man lives "not only under theml but in
them." (p. 53) He presents space, for all its vastness, as pushing against
man, crowding him into designating a limited, therefore, false, world.
We must make "what we can" (p. 175) of the world, while resisting the
temptation to turn a modest can into a metaphysical con game, into the
lie of "1 have a thing." (p. 175) Confronted by the dialectic in "The
Outer Becoming lnner," Bronk concludes: "No, we are in the stars.
Notl for us ever any familiar and definite world." (p. 53). "The
Extensions of Space" is a poem in which Bronk compares walking out
of his house with walking into "the world, the sky" (p. 57), and sensing
even the primal explosion, the Big Bang which moved the universe into
being: "The world goes whoosing. Focus is in and out." (p. 57) And the
things upon which we have traditionally relied to give us a sense of
security Bronk names in an almost punning way: "our artifacts, /our
 A POETICS OF SPACE 335

facts." (p. 58) He reports their disappearance under rigorous analysis:

"no ground exists for facts" (p. 58) he asserts in a pun upon ground as
actual dirt and ground as rational argument:
finally, we come to where there is nothing there
ta underprop our worlds ...
worlds holding in suspension worlds,
and nothing under them. (p.58)
The sky, the stars, and human consciousness commingle in "The
Various Sizes of the World." The poet's mind considers the cosmic
void, where space keeps apart the stars, then condenses perception to
more manageable dimensions, turning outer space into the familiar sky
over earth. Photographs of distant galaxies remind man of how he is
scattered amid vast reaches of space, "in the endless depths the world
acquires" (p. 60), yet the mind can roam universes and galaxies at will.
It "responds to the pulI of its own gravities." (p. 60)
"The Thinker Left Looking Out the Window" is another poem in
which Bronk concretizes that free-ranging consciousness which can
think itself into the small atom ar vast universe, then draw back to
substantive surroundings, registering the desk, floor and walls of the
room in which this boundless thought took place. Like several others,
this poem is about the experience of parallax; the apparent displace-
ment of an object seen from two different perspectives (even of a
thought considered from two differing perspectives) never ceases to
engage Bronk's attention. In the short poem "Utterances," about the
nature of distance, he contrasts the unfathomable distance to galaxies in
outer space with the demanding question, "How far from me to you?"
(p.161)
Bronk's search for truth is itself spatial; he has described it as a
venturing out "past cold satellites" (p. 226) and as a coming home to
the "gent1er spaces" (p. 226) of earthly shelter. He has remained
obsessed, in his poetry, with the indeterminacy of reality. In "How
Indeterminacy Determines Us," for example, he presents the unstable,
shifting world of mathematicians and physicists:
we are two unknowns in a single equation, we
and our world, functions one of the other (p. 66)
In "The Creation of the World" he maintains that "alI we really see" is
"discontinuousness .... /this, then that." (p. 75) The various sciences,
336 BEVERLY SCHLACK RANDLES

especially theoretical physics, have been an overload for our minds, the
shock of "the whole evidence / of our senses belied" (p. 61) too great
for total recovery. In the face of such scientific truths as light years and
the stupendous distances with which astronomers deal, we can only
conclude "It is absurd to describe the world in sensible terms." (p. 61)
Still, there is a crucial proviso, a necessary "even so" (p. 61) from the
poet: "How good that even so, aspects of the world /that are real, or
seem to be real, should rise like reefs." (p. 61). The mind has been
asked to grapple with numbing remoteness: "No, here's an incongruous
world, too large, too far," Bronk protests. (p. 60) Man has had enough
of wondering "what point can fix the decimal of space" (p. 60) that
links earth to the last, most distant star. It is as dislocating and
disorienting as the constantly unsuccessful quest for a world of solid
shapes.
Bronk's merciless skepticism does not extend to the will to shape.
The needy desire to mold one's thoughts and experiences in intellectual
or physical ways is the constant in Bronk's poetic equation, the fixed
point which everything changing and interchanging is relative to. In one
poem he demands "How should we ever go on, except for desire?" (p.
91)
When Bronk counts the cost of buying understanding with theoretical
belief as too high, he does so on behalf of expansiveness: "too much in
what it shuts away/ of all our awareness," he complains. (p. 97) He
propagandizes for an unarmed approach to reality, for brave percep-
tions without the protection of grids. "1 could rest context," he says in
"What Form the World Has," "with the unseen farm of the world/ and
never see it, believing the form were there." (p. 223) "Let me acknowl-
edge shapelessness," he says in a recent poem, as in an earlier one he
asserted "There is no limited truth." (p. 10 1)
The emphasis in Bronk's denial is on the adjective limited, not the
noun truth. In a four line poem about the expulsion of Adam and Eve
from the Garden, Bronk claims they were "amazed/ how far the
unexpected world goes:/ the opening oul." (p. 193) For Bronk, nega-
tivities are not close-ended, but open out into an enlightened space,
into vistas where some genuine consolations (what Bronk calls "the
nevertheless, the yet" (p. 32» are possible. He grants the courageous
mind freedom and liberation and some hard-won affirmations that are
severe, infrequent, and stringently honest. These are possible for the
rare few who maintain intellectual integrity and bear honest witness
 A POETICS OF SPACE 337

despite unsettling discoveries: "Some persons can bridge all across the
farthest space I that we can conceive, and are solid there." (p. 58)
"Having seen over," he says in the autobiographical poem "Note from
the Edge," "1 carne away from the edge." (p. 84) 17
What, then, lies beyond the inadequacy of our attempts to shape
through our role-playing, rooms, houses, maps, cities, countries, civili-
zations, the world, the cosmos itself? Is there any solace for the
inevitable insubstantiality waiting at the end of each quest? In particu-
lar, what can the space-engulfed poet do in this "real" world which
science has dematerialized and which is no world at all? The noun
Bronk chooses to define his role speaks volumes: "If 1 am anything at
all, 1 ami the instrument of the world's pas sion." (p. 78) The instru-
ment, he continues, feels; 18 he likens it to "some column of air,!
blown-on, trembling, sounding with that sound." (p. 147) Thus the
crucial link to music (both instrumental and vocal) is forged. Music as
theme touches alI of Bronk's other concerns and binds them together in
an encompassing metaphor. Music, the art realized in the emptiness of
air, is an altogether fitting companion for this singular poet. It is directly
analogous to his interest in things mathematical; its comforts of struc-
tured statement bring joy to the creative consciousness chilled by
confronting existence as a void. In "The Nature of Musical Form"
Bronk notes, "It is hard to believe of the world that there should bel
music in it: these certainties againstl the all-uncertain, this ordered
fairness beneathl the tonelessness." (p. 69) In his early, three-part poem
"Some Musicians Play Chamber Music for Us," words proper to music
(voices, phrase) are mixed with words which smell of logic and
mathematics. The poet-auditor, in the process of responding to the
music, begins: "Well, that's a proposition well composed." (p. 25) The
statement is transposed, five stanzas hence, to "That's a composition
well, so well, proposed." The intermingling of proposition and composi-
tion, of well composed with well proposed, signals a realm in which this
poet finds similar satisfactions in math and music, satisfactions which
other structures promise but fail to deliver. "Virgin and Child with
Music and Numbers" reiterates the linkage and compares song with
sum. It praises, as do most of Bronk's music poems, the space-shaping
power of sound:

we are held somewhere in the void of whole despair,

enraptured, and only there does the world endure. (p. 53)
338 BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES

Because "one needs to makel a worId for survival" (p. 58), as Bronk
puts it in "For an EarIy Italian Musician," he celebrates music as his
amulet against dispersement and nothingness:
Good music, lift the fragments for a little while,
hold one against the other, say no more
than, being here and now, untold, we build
a design of fragments to entrap the worId. (p. 26)
Definitive knowing is not possible; facts "turn upon themselvesl or
vanish in the middle of the air," never doing for us what we wished -
which was to build a safe bridge "from known to known, and hold the
wholel burden of the worId without a loss, withoutl this fragmentation."
(p. 26) Music shines Jorth (in the radical, phenomenological sense) and
alIows us to participate in a world healed by the poet's celebration of
thesound:
So by such sacrament is the worId made real,
a true presence caught, never reduced
to final elements, nor totalled up,
and yet composed, oh wholIy and well composed. (pp.26-27)
"Music That Sees Beyond the W orId" is the title of an earIy poem in
which Bronk calIs music "a worId beyond our worId which holds our
worId," for music "has seen in certain lines Ithat are and are again." (p.
33) In the "terrible worId" of another poem "where holIow catastrophe
hangs," the glorious sounds of Bach fiU the air and sing what the poet
calIs "the nevertheless of joy." (p. 31) In "Her Singing," music houses
and soothes us, giving shape to the temporality in which it occurs and
making less frightening the unbounded universe of modern physics:
Her last notes turned again to meet the first,
enclosing space ... the flowing turmoil
space in which we move, ... Her singing
took the flight and held it stiH. (p.32)
"The Aria" marries Bronk's sense of music as desired structure to his
concern for the status of palpable structures like houses and cities.
Entering a room evokes the poet's memories; he finds "alI around lus, a
great ingathering of lovely things /from such long distances of time
land space, we marvel to see again." (p. 65) The evocative rooms of our
lives seem to sing to us, but upon second look, we realize "the room is
 A POETICS OF SPACE 339

empty" and "it is we, ourselves, who sing." (p. 65) If, as Bronk asserts in
"The Nature of the Universe," "we are nowhere, there is no other place,
land nothing to turn to." (p. 68), the ecstacy of knowing music may
prevail over the horror of what is known. Even Bronk at his most dour
acknowledges "no space without stars: this magnificence is true." (p. 68)
This space which contains stars and music also contains that
quintessential symbol of transcendence, the emblem of ascension and
liberation, a symbolic being with which this poet like so many others
can identify, and in the identification surmount the heaviness of matter,
achieving joyous liberation of the spirit. 19 The bird - whose element is
the void, that sky in which it must always maintain the movements of
desire and will (for to stop is to die) - inspires what is perhaps the
single finest stanza of Bronk's brilliant poetic career. It draws from him
rich paradoxes of ascent and descent, growth and loss, pain and
liberation. It consumes its own negativities,20 and stuns the reader with
its meditative complexity and lyric power. A phoenix not unlike
affirmation rises from the abstract ashes of Bronk's doubting. He finds
at last a paradoxical sustaining power in the void:
We share the movement that young birds learn
when clumsy with size, they grow to the empty air
and faH, and find the empty air sustains.
So we are lofted in our downward course by the wide
void of loss through which we faH to loss
and Iose again, until we too are lost
in a heavier element, the earth or sea.
We grow in stature: grief is real and loss
is for life, as long as life. Long flight,
soar freely, spiral and glide in the empty air. (p. 30)21

Empire State College

Saratoga Springs, NY

NOTES

1 Bronk is also the author of three books of essays: The New World, A Partial
Glossary, and The Brother in Elysium: ldeas of Friendship and Society in the United
States (1980), essays on Thoreau, Whitman and Melville. The three, first published in
limited editions by the Elizabeth Press, were collected into the volume entitled Vectors
and Smoothable Curves in 1983.
340 BEVERLY SCHLACK RANDLES

2 The Los Angeles Times' Clayton Eshleman called Life Supports "a major literary
event" and Michael Hellerin (The New York Times) called it an "understated monument."
Ross Feld in The Nation called Bronk "at this moment, our most significant poet."
3 Quoted on the book jacket of Life Supports, the comment continues: "He is brilliant
... he's the metaphysical Eliot asked for."
4 From the poem entitled "On Credo ut Intelligam," in Life Supports: New and Col-

lected Poems (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981), p. 97 . Hereafter, page sources
from the collection will be included, parenthesized, in the text.
5 In a November 28, 1983 interview in The Saratogian (a local newspaper publ. near
Bronk's home town), Bronk commented upon his long residence in an unexceptional
small town like Hudson Falls, New York: "This is the only house 1 remember. My
father bought it when 1 was two years old .... You have to live someplace. 1 don't see
any reason to be someplace else."
6 Cf. Gaston Bachelard on the "phenomenologist of the imagination constantly

confronted with the strangeness of the world" - La poetique de l' espace, trans Maria
Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 134. In his other work, L' Air et les songes,
Bachelard defines imagination as a faculty for "deforming" perception's immediacies,
thus liberating us from primary and obvious images and offering us the possibility of
change and chance.
7 For example, "The Annihilation of Matter," "The Extensions of Space," "The Various
Sizes of the World," "Boolean Algebra: x 2 = x," "How Indeterminacy Determines Us,"
"The Nature of the Universe," "Primate Behavior," "Euclidean Spaces: Linear Time,"
"On Divers Geometries," "Of the Natural World," "Hypotheses," "The Natural
Sciences," "Grids," et passim.
x Cf. Bachelard in The Poetics of Space: "every universe is enclosed in curves" (p. 157)
and a modern text in physics: "the model of the universe ... is a self-gravitating
collection of mass-energy embedded in curved spacetime" (William L. Burke, Space-
time, Geometry, Cosmology (California: University Science Books, 1980), p. xiii.
9 E.g. "But Boole was wrong; his formulas were wrong,l as Euclid was, as Newton,
anyone." (p. 63) In Modern Physics: An Introduction to Ils Mathematical Language,
William A. Blanpied contrasts the Newtonian concepts of space and time as absolute
"backdrops for physical events" and "completely independent of them" with Einstein's
argument that space and time are "intimately associated" with observable objects and
"cannot be separated." (New York: Hoit, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 36.
In Burke notes "a good analogy" for the model physicists make of the universe is "the
construction of a map of a city" (Spacetime, Geometry, Cosmology, p. xiii).
II In a much later poem, Bronk's body/house metaphor is: "1 am the corridor, thin skin
the walls." (p. 215).
12 It should noted that Bachelard's Poetics of Space devotes itself to the positive and
protective values of space that is securely inhabited. Bachelard declares at the very start
of his work that "hostile space is hardly mentioned in these pages" (p. xxxii); the images
he examines are images of felicitous space" (p. xxxi). Much of Bronk's poetry "unhouses"
Bachelard's felicities for a Lear-like confrontation which "abjures ali roofs, and
choosesl To wage against the enmity O' the air" (King Lear, II, IV, 208). He also has
Pascal's sense of "Le silence eternal de ces espaces infinis m' affrait." Bronk is most in
accord with Bachelard in distrust of (Bachelard's) "concepts solidifies." Bronk shares
the latter's affection for the mobile and the fluid, rather than the stable and the fixed.
 A POETICS OF SPACE 341

13 Compare the scientific assertion: "Space-time possesses some structure as far as

directions are concerned, but it is structureless as far as position is concerned." (G. Y.

Rainch, Mathematics of Relativity (London: Chapman and Hill, 1950), pp. 99-100) In
his Le nouvel esprit scientijique, published in 1934, Bachelard had accurately gauged
the implications of physics and math, tracking the movement from materialistic realism
to a mathematical concept of reality in which located substantiality becomes a simplistic
illusion.
14 The Bronkian horror at the heart of things he has described as "the dark at the
center of being" where he finds "emptiness there: impenetrable." (p. 227) It is analogous
to the black holes of space: a dense core which "rejects the light" of desire, comfort,
and happiness, staying "black impermeable."
15 Bronk's 1983 Collected Essays, which bears the sub-title Vectors and Smoothable
Curves, uses as its epigraph the central 16 lines from "My House New-Painted."
16 From "The Pretext," in which Bronk ridicules the rational "artificers" who "pretend"

(p. 171) to fixed truths and sta bie realities.

17 In the wryly mocking short poem "Go Ahead; Goodbye; Good Luck; And Watch
Out," Bronk addresses seekers of the balm of Gilead: "you tel! me if it's there, and how
it works." (p. 75) He sees his as the quite-different job of dealing with "the old lack, the
void," of carrying "this luggage of ours of hungriness/ like an empty bag. (p. 75)
Admittedly, that task is "no kind of balm." The poem ends with the ambiguous,
disdainful!y hopeful "You look, though. Let me know." (p. 75)
18 In another rare autobiographical poem, Bronk uses the phrase "a feeling instrument"

(p. 167) to describe himself. The receptivity of this role is a crucial value for Bronk; he
advised elsewhere "Listen. Look. Not do. It is there." (p. 149)
19 Cf. Bachelard's discussion of the "poete ascensionnel" in L 'Air et les songes.

2U Bachelard's "vertical poet" achieves Nietzschean exaltation: a triad of cold, silence

and height, balanced by contemplation of the abyss. Rhythms of ascent and descent, a
dialogue of height and depth, are created as space is surmounted. (See L 'Air, p. 217).
21 "The Acts of the Apostles," final stanza. Cf. Bronk's prose essay, "Copan: For
Shirley Clarke," which discusses whether "there is a medium in which we may be said
to have our being" (p. 38), and wonders: "Can we be said to be in the real world as, for
example, in this world we say a bird is in the air ... ?" (pp. 38-39, my italics). Bronk
concludes that man seeks in vain for the "implicitly affirming ... discreteness of their
entities" (p. 39) that birds-in-air or fish-in-water achieve. Thus, his philosophical prose
corroborates the power of his poetic utterance.
 VICTOR CARRABINO

JEAN GIONO'S LE CHANT DU MONDE:

THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS

It was Giono's ambition to write a novel in which man is one with

nature. Every elemental force would have a particular value and a
particular voice stronger than that of the human characters. These
voices join in an harmonious song in Le Chant du Monde.
In an interview with Christian Michelfelder in 1937 Giono declared:

Bom in a poor family, the son of a shoemaker, then a clerk in a small bank, I bought
one day the ancient classics in the cheap Gamier Collection. The Greeks were revealed
to my dazzled mind .... I have revived, Of rather made actual, the heroes of Homer and
of Sophocles whom I found unchanged in my native provin ce .... From that day on, I
have found my path: to renew the great Greek tragedies, to revive Pan and the
terrestrial mysteries of marvelous paganism, to abstract the soul and substance from
everything ali ve, the clouds, the plain, the wind, the starry sky .... And more precisely I
wish to speak to you of the eternal verities of the earth and bring you close to joys of
such quality that those you already know will fade away as the greatest stars when the
sun springs up above the mountains. 1

Dissatisfied with a mechanized world, where man is "chosifit\"

disillusioned by the destructive forces of war, saddened by treeless
cities such as Paris, Giono's voice is prophetic in that he foresees our
modern world's contamination by evil forces. Yet, Giono never lost
hope for humanity. In fact, throughout his works, runs a thread of
optimism nurtured by his pagan vision of the world, for if atheism
refuses, paganism liberates.
Giono found the freedom and the harmony to which he aspired in
the liberating forces of nature the appreciation of which can be traced
back to pre-Socratic philosophical thinking, namely the Pythagorian
cosmogony:

The first principle of ali things is the One. From the One carne an Indefinite Two, as
matter for the One, which is cause. From the One and the Indefinite Two carne
numbers; and from numbers, points; from points, lines; from solid figures, sensible
bodies. The elements of these are four: fire, water, earth, air. 2

Giono rediscovered the harmony of the universe in his Manosque, in

Provence, where man is in touch with nature. This harmony has the
343
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, VolXXIII, 343-354.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
344 VICTOR CARRABINO

imprints of baudelairian "correspondences." As Marcel Arland claims:

"A la fiu te se substitue la lyre, et c'est la lyre de Pan, ceHe que devant
les dieux inquiets le Satyre fait sonner. Le prelude s'acheve; voici
l'enorme symphonie - toutes les voix, hommes, betes et plantes,
orages, sources et fieuves; tous les accents: de la douceur a l'angoisse,
de la plainte au joyeux delire; tous les elements, toute l'âme du
monde."3
In fact, men are only an extension of nature. Mountains, forests,
rivers, wind, earth, fire, and water are the true characters of Le Chant
du Monde. They dialogue, they sing, they whisper. What has become of
men? They witness the magnificent consonance of "correspondences."
They echo the voices of nature. They form an overwhelming whole
(tout), an harmony which reminds us of the Indian Upanishads.
An epic poem, Le Chant du Monde draws elements from the store
of European myth. It is a world in which man and nature are one. In
fact, a mythical strain runs throughout the work. Le Chant du Monde
takes us back not to the primitive world of man but to a pristine state
where instincts prevail. The characters are set in motion in a physical
and spiritual odyssey. However, vicissitudes are imposed by the very
condition of the seasons which make man impotent before the massive
force of change. Every character is then caught in the cosmic fiow of
life.
The novei opens with a magnificent autumn scene in the night.
Antonio, a fisherman - "the man of the river" - sets on a long journey
along the river banks to hign mountain. He is accompained by an older
man, Matelot - a former sailor who has become "the man of the
forest." They leave in search of Matelot's twin son, the red-haired twin,
"le besson," as he is known, always associated with the sun or the fire
element. This red-haired twin has mysteriously disappeared into the
upper reaches of the country, into the land of the much-feared tyrant
by the name of Maudru.
On their way they meet a robust man-like woman "la mere de la
route" who feeds them and gives them direction. They meet another
woman, Clara who is blind. She is giving birth to a child on the earth in
the most natural way.
Antonio and Matelot finally arrive at the house of a wise, hunch-
backed healer, Toussaint who, frustrated in some early love, has
devoted his life to healing the sick and the lunatics who come to him in
long car avans from the countryside. Toussaint - this saint1y man -
 THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 345

"Toussaint" has given refuge to the red-haired youth who had dared to
fall in love with Maudru's niece, Gina, and had eloped with her. "Le
besson" has in fact dared to steal the sacred fire and has defied the god,
Maudru. He had promised her freedom and joy. But freedom is slow in
coming and the girl's hot temper is endemic to her "bullish" personality,
the symbol of the family's name.
The couple is forced to pass the winter in Toussaint's house untiI the
snow meIts and uncovers a raft which the twin has buiIt and concealed
in a lonely creek. Meanwhile Matelot is killed. The twin, angry at his
father's death, sets fire to Maudru's stable and frees the bulls which,
maddened by the smell of fire, race wildly across the fields. In a pagan,
orgiastic scene where the "mere du bIe" made of straw burns, announc-
ing the arrival of spring, Antonio and "le besson" launch their raft and
float down the swollen river. They are finally free.
However, as we have previously mentioned, the true characters of
the novel are not the humans, but the very elements of nature which
Antonio, Matelot, "le besson," Clara, or Gina symbolize. They are the
voices of the different elements. Their life and welfare is determined by
nature.
The novel opens with a signigicant scene of perfect harmony, the
juxtaposition of the female and the male element. "La nuit. Le fleuve
coulait a coups d'epaules a travers la foret."4 Set in an epic framework
the novel suggests Giono's ability to create new myths, as Germaine
Bree or Hallam Walker claim. They focus on the myth of the adolescent
sun-god who disappears with the winter and resurrects with the coming
of spring.
We must realize, however, that what we call nature, Giono prefers to
call Earth. It is this telluric quality which gives the novel the very poetic
sexuality normally associated with the female. In fact, Antonio and
Matelot's quest centers on the search for "le besson" who has fallen in
love with Gina, the cause of the twin's mysterious disappearance.
Antonio, a Virgil-like poet, "la bouche d'or," as he is known, knows
the secrets of the river - the flux of life. Matelot, like Dante, sets out
on his long journey only to find in his odyssey his own death. Antonio
is directly associated with the river. In fact the whole novel is structured
araund the river. It is the river that divides the two countries. The river
is what brings Antonio and "le besson" back to their home, hence the
river of life, the eternal flux which echoes Giono's optimism in his
"vision romanesque" of the world.
346 VICTOR CARRABINO

Antonio becomes then the interpreter of the river; the poet that
translates the uncanny world of nature. The river and Antonio become
one. The river, though at first seen to be a hostile force, becomes the
image of the Absolute. The river is animated and anthropomorphized.
The river lives and palpitates with life, becomes angry, flirts with the
wind, plays with Antonio who is the only one who understands it:

Tous les matins Antonio se rnettait nu. D'ordinaire sa journee commen\(ait par une
lente traversee du gros bras noir du fleuve. Il se laissait porter par les courants; il
sentait, avec son ventre, si l'eau portait, serree il bloc, ou si elle avait tendance il petiller.
... Nu, Antonio etait un homme grand et muscle en longueur. ... La caresse, la science
et la colere de l'eau etaient dans cette carrure d'homme.... Il avait un ventre de beau
nageur plat et souple. (pp. 18-19)

Antonio blends with the river. Antonio and the river are one. His sense
of direction is felt only through his intimate contact with the water: "Il
sentit que l'eau glissait sous son ventre dans la donne direction .... Le
froid va venir. Les truites dorment, le couraut est toujours au beau
milieu." (p. 24)
Giono has introduced Antonio, the interpreter of the river. Immedi-
ately follows the description of the river, just as detailed and important:
Le fleuve qui sortait des gorges naissait dans un eboulis de la rnontagne. C'etait une
haute vallee noire d'arbres noirs, d'herbe noire et de mousses pleines de pluie. Elle etait
creusee en forme de main, les cinq doigts apportant toute l'eau de cinq ravinements
profonds dans une large paume d'argile et de roches d'ou le fleuve s'elan\(ait corne un
cheval en pataugeant avec ses gros pieds pleins d'ecume. Plus bas, l'eau sautait dans de
sombres escaliers de sapins vers l'appel d'une autre branche d'eau. Elle sortait d'un val
qu'on appelait: la joie de Marie.... le fleuve entrait dans le pays Rebeillard. (p. 26)

This is the river that leads to the Pays Rebeillard, the impenenetrable
domain of Maudru. Only Antonio is capable of entering it: "Le fleuve
traversait tout le Pays Rebeillard, etendu sur la terre avec ses affluents,
ses ruisseaux et ses ramilles d'eau comme un grand arbre qui portait les
monts au bout de ses rameaux. . .. Antonio entra dans les gorges du
fleuve un peu apres avoir vu Matelot sur l'autre bord." (p. 29) In fact,
Matelot refers to Antonio as a fish: "Tu es souple comme un poisson."
(p.97)
The awakening of spring is first aunounced by the movement of the
river which gives life and continuity to Giono's work:
On ne voyait pas le fleuve. Il etait sous la brume. Puis il commen\(a il remuer ses grosses
cuisses sous la glace et on entendit craquer et bouger et un bruit comrne le ronflement
 THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 347

de grosses ecailles contre les graviers des rives. On n'en pouvait pas douter: malgre
l'hiver le fleuve s'echauffait dans de grands gestes et, quand la brume monta boucher
tout le ciel, qu'a la place du gel etincelant s'etendit cette bleme lumiere grise, louche et
preque tiede, on apen;ut que toute la glace du fleuve descendait lentement vers le sud .
. . . Le temps lentement les [arbres] approche du reveil. (pp. 172-73)

The river breathes with life. It is the hope for Antonio, Matelot, and
Gina's attaining freedom. It is the river that controls them:
Maintenant, le fleuve soubresautait. De temps en temps on le voyait faire un geste. Il
fallait le regarder un moment: il etait toujours immobile sous le froid, puis on entendait
comme la course d'un souffle qui descendait de la montagne.... Tout le long des rives,
a l'endroit ou le fleuve avait pu se frotter contre les arbres durs, il y avait deja une belle
allongee d'eau noire, toute libre.... Ce jour-la le fleuve se gonfla d'une joie sauvage .
. . . Du fond du pays bas monta la plainte des collines. On entendait que le fleuve les
servait pour les ecraser. De la falaise de l'arche les oiseaux arriverent. (pp. 205-206)

"Le printemps, dit Antonio en descendant l'escalier. Le printemps?" (p.

209) Now the river is no longer somnolent, but quick like a horse: "le
fleuve galopait, a pleines sabots." (p. 212) The river is rushing -
affirming once again its continuity and force like life itself. "Le fleuve,
tout de suite apres le pont, creusait des reines boueux." (pp. 212-13)
The river joins the voice of the wind in affirming the rebirth of nature:
"Le grondement du fleuve souffla en plein avec des embruns et du vent
tiede." (p. 217) This awakening into new life, the burst of energy, is felt
by Antonio: "Antonio sentit en lui tout son fleuve clair, son fleuve d'ete
qui ben;:ait sur ses eaux maigres de large palets de lumiere." (p. 220)
Only through the river can the lovers reach their new home: "Ce qui les
interessait tous surtout c'etait le fleuve." (p. 258) In fact the river takes
over the whole environment: "Le debordement du fleuve les entourait
de tous les cotes." (p. 265) Their immersion in the water is a baptism in
water which will consecrate the characters by giving them life and hope.
The river provides then, as it did for Heraclitus, a unity dependent
upon the regularity of the flux. The river provides an image of the
balance and continuity in the world.
Juxtaposed to the imagery of fluidity and rebirth, generally associated
with the omnipresence of the river, another element of significant value
is fire. In fact the relationship between water and fire is very close. Fire,
however, which is normally associated with an element of renaissance,
is here also passion, love, and vengeance. Fire is the most free and the
most violent element. It is "le besson" who symbolically translates the
inherent qualities of the poetics of fire. A red-haired youth, "le besson
348 VICTOR CARRABINO

aux cheveux rouges" (p. 7), stands in archetypal language for strength,
courage, ardor, virility. Sexuality is even attributed to fire. According to
Northorp Frye, "fire's sparks are analogous to vitality, its flames are
phallic symbols, providing a further analogy to the sexual act, as the
ambiguity of the word 'consummation' indicates." 5
Fire is also the archetypal symbol which appears in the opening lines
of a Vedic hymn, addressed to Agni, the God of Fire. Fire is also found
in Hindu Puranic accounts of the world's creation.
For Heraclitus fire is the basic element, the universal Logos con-
trolling alI things. The idea of unity and harmony is precisely expressed
by the idea of Logos which gives meaning to the coherent complexities
of life. Logos was conceived by Heraclitus as an actual constituent of
things, and in many respects it is co-extensive with the primary cosmic
constituent, fire. Fire is then for Heraclitus the archetypal form of
matter. The cosmos consists according to Heraclitus of the masses of
earth understood as secondary fire (as in volcanoes) and sea, sur-
rounded by the bright integument of fire. This fire was regarded by
Heraclitus as the motive point of the cosmological process.
In Le chant du monde the red-haired twin motivates Antonio and
Matelot's quest. Whether or not we see "le besson" as Heracles, as
Hallam Walker sees him, it is undeniable that this elemental force as an
integral part of Giono's poetics. In addition, whether we lean more
heavily toward seeing the influence of Hindu philosophy or that of
Western philosophical thinking, or even Western mythology, we cannot
deny the importance that Giono gave to fire - closely linked with the
other elements.
While "le besson" is presented at first in a dormant state, he is
waiting to strike at the right moment. It is fire that controls the flow of
the river. The heat of the sun allows the snows to melt, the river to
thaw, the fish to jump and finally the destruction of evil - Maudru. If
fire destroys, it also, brings rebirth. Matelot dies. He is killed during the
pyric orgiastic night - the welcoming of spring. "Le besson" burns the
stables of Maudru. The old dies (Matelot) and the new is reborn ("le
besson") - spring itself. The sun is responsible for giving birth to the
day. In a very poetic description of the dawn, when all the elements of
nature partake to bring about that birth, Giono excels in giving fire its
prominence as the source of energy and movement. The tongues of fire
gently touch the mountain tops, waking nature up to a new rebirth:
 THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 349

Subitement il fit tres froid .... Le vent sonna plus profond .... Des arbres parlerent. ...
Le vent passa en ronflant sourdement. ... Les chenes parlaient, puis les saules, puis les
aulnes; les peupliers sifflaient de gauche et de droite comrne des queues de chevaux ....
La nuit gemissait tout doucement .... Une colline de I'est sortit de I'ombre.... Une
foret gronda, puis elle emergea lentement de la nuit avec son dos pelucheux. Un
fremissement de lumiere coula sur la cime des arbres. . .. Le rocher s'eclaira. La
lumiere venait de la colline. Sortie la premiere de la nuit, noi re comrne line charbon-
niere, elle lan\;ait une lumiere douce vers le del plat: la lumiere retonbait sur la terre
avec un petit gemissement, elle sautait vers le rocher, il la lan\;ait de la nuit sur des
collines rondes .... Le jour coula d'un seul coup tres vite sur le fleuve jusqu'au loin des
eaux. Les monts s'allumerent. Les collines soudain embrasees ouvrirent leur danse
ronde autour des champs et le soleil rouge sauta dans le ciel avec un henissement de
cheval. 'Le jour,' dit Matelot. (pp. 78-79)

"Le besson" defies Maudru. It is the solar hero, also associated with the
lion, who eventually brings about peace and freedom: "Je suis parti de
notre foret pour chercher le babouin, le pe tit, l'enfant, du temps que je
passais ma main dans ses cheveux rouges. Et voila que je me trouve le
pere d'une espece de lion." (p. 118) This solar god is protected by
another god-like figure, Toussaint. "Le besson" will prove his courage
and strength to Gina who challenges him to prove himself against her
father: "Je veux qu'il soit ce qu'il s'est imagine d'etre et qu'il m'a fait
croire.... Q'uil etait plus fort que mon pere." (p. 127)
It is "le besson" who at the end is the catalyst that allows the
destruction of the malefic forces of Maudru and the triumph of love. In
fact Gina first saw le besson in his god-like qualities associated with
fire. As he kindled the trees with fire, he had kindled in Gina's heart
passion and love:
Il avait fait un feu et il y avait mis fi rougir son epaisse marque de fer. Je le regardais
d'entre les saules. Il saisit la marque avec sa grande main nue et ill'enfon\;a, blanche de
feu, dans le tronc tout vivant. Au milieu de la fumee je le voyais pousser de toutes ses
forces. Ia seve criait. Il se releva. 'L'arbre etait marque de son nom. Et je vis que cet
homme avait les cheveux tout rouges comme la grande marque de feu?' (pp. 130-31)

Once fire has unleashed its tongues, the whole town undergoes
change. It is the torch which ignites "la mere du bIe," a phallic symbol,
which adds to pleasures of this pagan imagery announcing the coming
of spring: "Un bouvier avait pris une torche de lavande. Il se mit a lui
faire l'amour par dessous avec sa torche enflammee et soudain elle
s'embrasa." (p. 224) From this moment on, fire imagery embraces the
whole town: "Des reflets rouges trainaient dans le ciel." (p. 225)
350 VICTOR CARRABINO

Pas sion, violence, and anger, take over and fire asserts its meta-
morphic force: "Il n'y a plus rien dans la ferme que la colere du feu." (p.
248) This anger is the image of "le besson" who will finally overthrow
Maudru - the symbol of evi} - thus showing himself to be the true
hero.
Another element closely associated with fire and to which it gives its
"elan" is the wind. In fact the voice of the wind is the message that
comes from the uncanny bowels of the earth and gives them expression
and meaning. Without the wind, Fire will not be revived. The wind,
however, in Giono's poetic reverie, is associated with the forest whose
master is Matelot. Not oblivious to the importance of the wind when he
was a sailor, Matelot is the interpreter of the forest, the one who speaks
its tongue. It is the wind which is the voi ce of the night, the unknown,
the abyss, and the Absolute.
Once again, in Heraclitian cosmology, air is an integral part of Fire.
Viewing fire as the essential material uniting all things, Heraclitus wrote
that the world order is an ever-living fire. He extended the manifesta-
tion of fire to include not only fuel, flame, and smoke but also the ether
in the upper atmosphere. Part of the air, or pure fire, "turns to" ocean,
presumably as rain, and part of this ocean turns into earth.
That air is associated with Fire in Giono's poetics, is justified by the
powerful presence of the night, and the thunder through the forest.
Most of the novel in fact takes place during the night. The night is an
image of evasion, of hiding. The night invites man to a poetic trip, to
the call of the unknown, the realm of death. Matelot dies during the
night. It is the night which gives birth to the day. The wind is the voice
of the night:
Subitement il fit tres froid. Antonio sentit que sa levre gelait. Le vent somna plus
profond; sa voix s'abaissait puis montait. Des arbres parlerent; au-dessus des arbres le
vent passa en rinflant sourdement. Il y avait des moments de grand silence, puis les
ehenes parlaient, puis les saulnes, puis les aulnes. Les peupliers sifflaient de gauehe et
de droite comme des queues de chevaux, puis tout d'un coup ils se taisaient tous. Alors,
la nuit gemissait tout doucement du fond du silenee .... Au sud, une foret gronda, puis
elle emergea lentement de la nu it avee son dos pelueheux. (p. 78)

The wind becomes the voice of Matelot "L'homme de la foret" who

caUs his own son:
Antonio entendit le bruit de la foret. Ils avaient depasse le quartier du silenee et d'iei on
entendait la nuit vivante de la foret. <;a venait et c;:a touehait l'oreille eomme un doigt
froid. C'etait un long souffle sourd, un bruit de gorge, un bruit profond, un long ehant
 THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 351

monotone dans une bouche ouverte. ~a tenait la largeur de toutes les collines couvertes
d'arbres. C'etait dans le ciel et sur la terre comme la pluie, \;a venait de tous les cotes a
la fois et lentement \;a se balan\;ait comme une lourde vague en ronflant dans le
corridor des vallons. Pres de son oreille il (Matelot) entendit un petit sifflement. ...
'C'est ma foret' ... , dit Matelot. (p. 11)

The forest signs its melodious verse through the wind: "On entendait
chanter les pins la-bas devant et une autre odeur venait aussi, avivee et
pointue." (p. 12) "Le chant grave de la foret ondulait lentement et
frappait la-haut dans le nord, contre les montagnes creuses." (p. 12) It
is in fact the wind that announces the night: "La nuit arriva dans un
grand coup de vent: Au premier vent eIle avait saute. EIle etait deja loin,
la-bas devant, avec son halei ne froide." (p. 60)
It is also the wind that announces springtime and wakes the river up
from its dormant state: "Le ciel entier bruissant dans les fremissements
d'un vent un peu lourd faisait chanter au balancement de la pluie les
sombres vallons de la montagne et l'aigre lyre des bois nus. Ce jour-Ia
le fleuve se gonfla d'une joie sauvage." (p. 206)
The elements are interrelated to the point that their mutual presence
takes on the aspect of a game. The wind plays with the river: "Le vent
trop lourdement charge flotta un moment, grappant l'eau du marais
avec son odeur d'arbres." (p. 236) It is once again the wind that gives
energy and strength to fire. During the night when Antonio and "le
besson" set fire to Maudru's land, the voice of the wind dominates the
whole night: "Dehors le bruit s'enflait et retombait comme le langage
d'un grand vent. C'etait, au plus haut, le ronflement des flammes, le
craquement des murs, des poutres, des partes. L'echo des hangars, le
mugissement des taureaux, et la sourde cavalcade des betes dans les
pres contre." (p. 246)
Giono has been able to solidify aU the elements of nature and has
given them a voice. He has animated them. However, if Giono's poetics
are based on a dynamism of materialization, the privileged substance is
the earth, another elemental farce which in Giono's poetics speIls
nourishment, peace, fertility, offspring, love, and stability. As Jacques
Pugnet states in his Jean Giono: "Peut-on ici parler de nature? A ce
mot affaibli par l'usage et qu'il evite, Giono prefere celui dont se
servent les paysans: la terre. La terre est cette chair vivante qui porte
toutes les creatures. Le monde ou cosmos, l'ensemble des elements, des
creatures, et leurs multiples relations, la vie qui les unit. Ceci est le
domaine du poete, le personnage paysan ne connâit bien que la terre."6
352 VICTOR CARRABINO

AH other elements seem to gather around the majestic presence of la

terre in order to sing its praise, Le Chant du Monde. The first direct
encounter with the earth takes place when Antonio on the way in his
quest, meets a woman, Clara, giving birth to a baby. Clara, though
blind, is able to see better than anyone else, has a better control of the
earth, for she sees not with her eyes but through a baudelairian
synesthetic sense. She hears the odors of the earth.
The stability of the earth is also portrayed by Giono in the masculine
appearance of "La mere de la route": "C'etait une femme forte et brune,
avec de la moustache et de gros sourcils." (p. 39) Mother earth, the
womb that harbors aH sorts of life is poeticaHy depicted by Giono in a
natural state through Clara.
C'etait une femme etendue sur le dos. Ses jupes etaient toutes relevees sur son ventre et
elle petrissait ce tas d'etoffes et son ventre avec ses mains, puis elle ouvrait ses bras en
croix et elle criait. Elle banda ses reins en arriere. Elle poussait de toutes ses forces en
silence, sans respirer, puis elle reprenait haleine en criant et elle retombait sur la
mousse. Sa tete battait dans l'herbe de droite et de gauche.. , . Antonio essaya de
rabattre les jupes. Il sentit que la-dessous le ventre de la femme etait vivant d'une vie
houleuse comme la mere ... 'Elle va faire le petit.' (p. 37)

Clara is the earth. Clara stands for strength, life, matrix naturae, and
the plenty that is normally associated with the pagan goddess of
fertility: "Il y avait une enorme vie dans ces seins. Il n'en avait jamais vu
d'aussi beau." (p. 42) Antonio's encounter with Clara stirs in him
sensuality and rekindles in him the flame of pas sion and love. However
discreet in his description, Giono never falters in erotic imagery. It is
rather the gentleness of the woman, the sensuality of the body being
touched by Antonio's virile hands that becomes, in the eyes of Antonio,
by poetic transposition, another earth. Clara's body is described in
terms of the beauty of nature and its sinuous curves:
Antonio faisait la coupe avec la paume de sa main. Il y versait de l'eau-de-vie chaude et
frottait des flancs de la femme. Il avait peur de ses longues mains toutes rougueuses.
Cette peau qu'il frottait etait fine comme du sabie. Il touchait le dessous des seins.
C'etait soyeux. Il frotta doucement le globe en remontant vers le dessous des bras.
Toutes les vallees, tous les plis, toutes les douces collines de ce corps, il les sentait dans
sa main, elles entraient dans lui, elles se marquaient dans sa chair a lui a mesure qu'il
les touchait avec leurs profondeurs et leurs gonflements et "a faisait un tout petit peu
mal, puis "a eclatait dans lui comme une "erbe trop grosse qui ecarte son lien et qui
s'etale. (pp. 42-43)

That Clara represents the goddess Earth is evident in Antonio's

 THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 353

perception of her body as vaUeys and hiUs. This woman "aux yeux des
feullies de menthe" (p. 49) is blind, yet she is able to lead Antonio, the
poet, "la bouche d'or," to penetrate the uncanny mysteries of the Earth.
She is his goddess, his inspiration. She is the guide that shows him the
richness and the opulence of nature:
(Gina) se serrait contre Clara. L'aveugle lui tauchait les mains, lui tâtait les pignets saus
les manches. 'C'est le printemps, disait Clara, I(a va etre le caeur du printemps.' A quoi
le sais-tu? Et Gina regardait les yeux morts toujaurs pareils a des fueilles de menthe .
. . . Et de san daigt, elle mantrait le bruit des eaux, le bruit des eaux grasses dans le
fleuve, le bruit des eaux c1aires ruisse1ant des rochers et des montagnes, la-bas sur les
rives. Elle mantrait des epaisseurs de pluie dont le battement d'ailes etait plus sambre,
des ecroulements de terre - et elle mantrait les ecroulements de terre avant que Gina
ait entendu le bruit. ... L'adeur, dit Clara. L'adeur de terre est venu. (p. 261)

Clara is in fact closer to the Earth than any other female character: "Je
marchais dedans a quatre pattes quand j'etais petite." (pp. 261-62)
Clara is mother earth with its cycles. Her life corresponds to the flux of
life:

Tautes les chases du mande arrivent a des endroits de man carps - elle taucha ses
cuisses, ses seins, san cau, ses jaues, san front, ses cheveux - c'est attache a moi par
des petites ficcelles tremblantes. le suis printemps, moi maintenant, je suis envieuse
camme taut I(a autaur, je suis pleine de grosses envies camme le mande maintenant. (p.
262)

Antonio's attraction to Clara is more than a physical one. Through-

out his joumey, which lasts three seasons, his mind quite often wonders
to Clara who was left behind and who is awaiting for his return.
Antonio's journey is then twofold - his search for the twin and his
return to Clara. She is waiting for him. The cosmic union finally takes
place between the man and the woman, between the river and the earth.
Antonio at the end of the noveI once again thinks of Clara: "Il pensait
qu'il allait prendre Clara dans ses bras et qu'il allait se coucher avec elle
sur la terre." (p. 277) That the last word of the noveI is "earth" is very
significant in Giono's poetic world.
Here is the cosmic union of the female with the male, the river,
Antonio, which will fertilize the womb of Clara - the earth. This
nurtures the characters with new "nourritures terrestres."
In conclusion, Giono in Le Chant du Monde has successfully made
the elemental forces of nature the true characters of the noveI. The
human counterparts are the muscles and the song of these forces.
354 VICTOR CARRABINO

Water, fire, wind, and earth farm the very architecture of the noveI.
Each element has been given its distinct voice, manifested this time not
through nature itself, as in the pathetic fallacy, but through men as the
interpreters and translatars of a baudelairian world:
La nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe atravers des forets de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs echos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une tenebreuse et profonde unite
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la darte
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent.
(Baudelaire, "Correspondances", p. 11.)

The Florida State University

NOTES

I Christian Michelfelder, Jean Giono et les religions de la terre (Paris: Gallimard,

1938), p. 52.
2 As quoted in Francis MacDonald, Plato and Parmenides (New York: The Bobbs-
Merril Company, 1965), p. 3.
J Marcel Arland, "Le Chant du Monde," Nouvelle Revue Franr,;aise (Sept. 1953),
p.498.
4 Jean Giono, Le Chant du Monde (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), p. 5. (AII quotes from this
work will be included in the text.)
4 Northrop Frye in Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1964), p. vi.
6 Jacques Pugnet, Jean Giono (Paris: Classiques du XXe siecle, 1955), p. 49.
 PART SEVEN

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERA TURE

AND RELATED TOPICS
 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERATURE ACCORDING

TO CONTEMPORARY WRITERS*

No-one seems to be better qualified to make a statement as to the

significance of literature for life than those who create literary texts.
The answer to the question: what is the function of literature in our
contemporary life-world must therefore be sought in the letters, diaries,
essays, forewords, and interviews of contemporary writers the bulk of
whose works falls into the decades after 1945.
It appears that society in our time shows a surprising eagerness to
gain information about its writers and their works, not just for the
benefit of literary scholars in need of quotable statements but to satisfy
the curiosity of a wider public that stiU regards literature as a source of
wisdom and the writer as a descendant of the priest or prophet, even
though most writers would nowadays reject such role-models as
obsolete. It certainly is an astonishing fact that a recent bibliographical
work lists some 3500 published interviews with 20th century authors
writing in English for the period of 1900 to 1980. 1 The question: what
is literature and what is an author have not lost their urgency in our
time. In spite of aU the triviality and matter-of-factness, one often finds
in such interviews a hidden presence of a mysterious, possibly even
numinous aura that attaches itself to the writer and his work.
Our observations in this paper are based on theoretical statements
found in interviews and other sources which cover the viewpoints of
contemporary writers from Western Europe as weU as the English-
speaking world. We shall focus on the following aspects of the literary
phenomenon as seen by the writers: the so-called "concrete" (experi-
mental) literature and its French variant, the Tel Quel group which will
be confronted and contrasted with more traditional definitions of the
significance of literature such as the panegyrical or the utopian aspects
of literary texts, the expression of feeling, the presentation of experi-
ence, and finally, the quest for truth.
Among the poetological positions taken by Western authors since
1945, the most radical and experimental was that of "concrete" litera-
ture whose first proponent was the Swiss poet Eugen Gomringer.
Gomringer rejects the time-honored belief that literature is created by a
357
A - T. Tymienieeka (ed.), Ana/eeta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 357 - 368.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
358 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

subject, that the writer as an individual is its primary source and that
therefore literature either expresses the feelings and thoughts of the
writer's self or that it describes an outside "reality." Since expres sion
and interpretative description are no longer valid notions in Gomringer's
theory, the inner, immanent linguistic structures of words and sentences
are now substituted for them and thus constitute the new essence of the
poetic process. 2 Gomringer strives towards an almost total detachment
of language from the speaking subject as well as from the real world,
yet he is also quick to admit that words and phrases cannot be
completely stripped of their semantic meaning and connotations so that
his poems claim to be more than a play with empty sounds. They stiU
allow the reader to fiU them with semantic content even though they no
longer recognize the function of language as a communicative or
informative medium.
While Gomringer views his poetic word-constructions as reflections
of our rational technological society (which he uncritically accepts), the
poet Franz Mon who follows to some extent in Gomringer's footsteps,
rejects the idea of a structural emulation of a reality shaped by science
and technology. The poem, while no longer saying something "about"
reality, nevertheless mirrors in its own structure the heterogeneous,
contradictory aspects of the real world. Besides that it exposes the
ideological deformation of language and tries to destroy its instrumen-
tality in order to arrive at new constellations of words which no longer
serve to evoke the world we are used to perceiving and thinking but a
new artificial universe. "Words heretofore were the houses of things,"
says Mon, "now they have become a new kind of things in their own
right." 3
What motivates such a radical departure from traditional poetolog-
ical notions? In 1980, Franz Mon stated that his dislike of (traditional)
"content" in poetic texts derived from the perverted propagandistic use
of language and the distortion of reality by the National Socialists in
Germany.4
There are other reasons which underlie the break with traditional
methods and attitudes in the theories of some avant-garde writers. The
West German writer Helmut Heissenbiittel claims that the subject or
the ego is no longer a fixed and unified correlate of experienced
reality.5 It has disintegrated into a multiplicity of transient and frag-
mented forms. Since the ego is no longer sure of itself, the claim of
language to define and express reality also seems no longer legitimate.
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERA TURE 359

The writer exposes the false pretense of the word and, like Mon and
Gomringer, retreats into the "non-intentional" construction of contexts
and word-combinations which no longer say something about some-
thing but produce their own predominantly language-immanent world.
The statements of the French writer Pierre Gamier are a case in
point. For him, language constitutes the only "matiere" of the poem in
which the "fonctions representatives" are no longer dominant.6 Poetry
discards its expressive function: "... le poete se degage ... du monde
de l'expression."7 What remains is the esthetics of pure language, "la
beaute des elements linguistiques." 8 Gamier explains his position by
pointing out that the universe defies description (particularly in the
realm of the natural sciences) and that modem man is so inundated
with information, which a "surabondance de messages,"9 that literature
has to abandon its communicative and informative function,
Since the early sixties several French authors who were members
of the group Tel Quel or who were temporarily associated with it
developed poetological positions which in many ways resemble those of
Gomringer, Heissenbiittel, and Gamier although they are based on very
different, namely Marxist, anti-bourgeois, anti-idealistic premises. These
authors reject the concept of the subject as creator (and thus the
concept of the "work" as intellectual "property"). They also strive
towards the elimination of the notions of expression and mimetic
representation as weB as that of a central idea as a conception which
predetermines and helps shape a literary text. "L'ecriture", writes
Jean-Louis Baudry, "ne represente pas la creation d'un individu
isole." 10 The undisputed fact that every author's work is shaped by the
work of his contemporaries is now radicalized by Baudry into a theory
that postulates a quasi-collective writing process that continuously
progresses, feeding, as it were, on itself, the "ecriture generale." Text or
"ecriture" "ne sont pas reductibles a telle ou telle emanation subjective
. .. leur fonction est de faire apparaître la materialite des enjeux
symboliques d'une phase historique donnee ... selon un mode
specifique, relativement autonome, indirect." 11
While the traditional notions of expression and representation imply
a pre-given extra-textual meaning which a text embodies, a writer and
theoretician like Jean Ricardou declares the concept of an "entite
ideelle antecedente" 12 to be invalid. There is no "sujet preetabli" 13
Writing is not "la pretention de communiquer un savoir prealable, mais
ce projet d'explorer le langage comme un espace particulier." 14 It any
360 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

idea or meaning emerges in the act of writing, it is the unanticipated

result of a writing process that - as in the writings of Gomringer and
his folIowers - denies the word a role as a medium or instrument and
constructs out of the autonomous realm of language a new fictitious
artificial world. "Et ce monde fictif, obtenu par l'experience de l'ecriture,
oppose sa structure propre a celIe de notre monde - et ainsi le met en
question."15 (Jean Ricardou). One wonders whether this is just a
roundabout way of saying something about our real world after alI or
whether a literature that tends to deflate the notions of authorship,
of subjective expression, and representation in favor of a language-
immanent anonymous and colIective "texture" called "ecriture" can ever
rise above the level of a sterile and artful if not artificial play with
words and semantic values. One also has to wonder whether this
literature has indeed abandoned any contact with the life of its period.
It is important to realize that the anti-traditional trends in assessing
the role of literature in life described above make up but a small sector
of the entire spectrum of current viewpoints. Most contemporary
writers adhere to traditional positions which are much more deeply
rooted in cultural history than the ones we have just presented.
Some writers claim that literature ought to be affirmative vis-a-vis
life, that it ought to praise existing reality. Such "panegyrical" writing
often takes on a religious overtone. "One of the means by which we
hope to exercise a magical controlor a religious acceptance of our lives
is art," 16 writes the American, R.Y. Cassill. According to the British
author George Barker, "the function of the poem as poem is to
glorify"17, and the American Maxine Kumin writes: "1 regard the act of
writing in part as an act of worship." 18 This is echoed by her compatriot
Paul Petrie for whom writing a poem is "an act of praise." 19
From this point of view it is only one step toward a theory of
literature which is no longer satisfied with glorifying the here and now
but sees the principal task of writing in opening up vistas of a better
life, of a utopia. To the German writer Dieter Wellershoff literature is
"a realm of superior truths and of essential, perfect forms, a measure, a
challenge, and a utopia."20 To write a poem, says Jean-Claude Renard,
means "constituer un univers qui n'existe que dans le poeme, mais
demeure toujours possible au-dela du pOeme."21 Henry Miller defines
art (including literature) as "a means to life, to the life more abun-
dant,"22 and the poet Howard Nemerov talks about the "prophetic"
mission of poetry to point towards "the ultimate realization of alI
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERA TURE 361

possibility."23 Through writing and reading literature, man needs to

play (in the special sense given the word by Friedrich Schiller) and he
plays, according to the Swiss novelist Adolf Muschg, "weil er nicht
ganz Mensch ist, und weil er daran verzweifelt ist, es hinreichend zu
werden." 24 Once utopia becomes reality, literature and life are identical.
"J'aspire il un temps," writes Pierre Emmanuel, "ou l'art ne serait plus
separe de la vie." 25
As far as the subject as creator is concerned, many contemporary
poets insist - quite unlike the "concrete" or Tel Quel writers - that
writing means the expression of feeling. "The poet will aim to convey
states of feeling," writes Louis Simpson. 26 An entry in David Ignatow's
notebooks reads: "... in poetry 1 found my need of emotional expres-
sion gratified."27 Many other writers share this view.
An even greater number of authors hold that "experience" in which
the subject and objective reality come together, is the prime source of
alI writing. Literature is "Verarbeiten von Erfahrung" 28 as the East
German author Christa Wolf puts it. To write is to artistically transform
and thereby come to grips with lived experience. Poetry is thus defined
by Paul Roche as "an incantation of exact experience that seizes the
mind and the heart." 29; and by Hayden Carruth as "the turning of
human experience into human meaning, the making of selves . . . ." 30
Many more statements like these could be quoted.
The writer who wants to transmit in his texts the significance of
experience recognizes the epistemological function of literature. The
writing of a literary text is one major form of the human quest for the
truth. There are many different facets of this quest which once again, in
a traditional sense, presupposes a seeking subject and something real,
the truth about which the writer is supposed to reveal. Such truth may
be understood for example as having a guiding and exemplary function,
Offering model situations or actions which help the reader to cope with
the problems of his own life. Although many contemporary authors
ridicule such a pedagogical stance as obsolete, it stiH can be found in
various guises within the panorama of theoretical statements. "Kunst
hilft beim Erfahren ... durch Erfahrungsmodelle und Gegenmodelle,"31
observes Hilde Domin; and the German poet Giinter Eich defines
poems as trigonometric points which chart the course in an unknown
region. 32
Knowledge of truth means the challenge to change a reality which
does not yet measure up to it. This applies of course to socialist authors
362 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

whose work intends to reveal the discrepancy between social reality

and the socialist ideal. But there are also authors who are not com-
mitted to such an ideology and who point out the interrelation of truth,
life, and change. It is the function of the novel, writes Michel Butor, that
"la realite dans son ensemble peut prendre conscience d'elle-meme
pour se critiquer et se transformer." 33 According to the dramatist
Arthur Miller, the drama achieves "the ultimate possibility of raising the
truth-consciousness of mankind to a level of such intensity as to
transform those who observe it." 34
Truth or knowledge can focus on the self. Indeed, for many contem-
porary writers the writing process is a road towards self-knowledge,35
self-exploration (Adrienne Rich),36 "a conquest of inner space" (May
Swenson),37 "erweiterte Selbsterfahrung" (Dieter Wellershoff).38 "1
search my own identity through poetry," 39 says Richard Eberhart, and
his American compatriot Robert Creeley offers a variation of the same
thought: "We arrive in poems at the condition of life most viable and
most primal in our lives."4o "Modern poetry", writes the Mexican
Octavio Paz, "is an experimental process whereby the knowing subject
is the object of knowledge." The goal to be achieved is "to know a little
more about ourselves and discover within us unlmown realities ...."41
These statements about experience, truth, and change aU seem to
imply that truth is something out "there," be it in the outer world or
even within us; it is always something that has an existence independent
of the writing process, that needs to be found and only thereafter
expressed or embodied in the literary text. Yet many writers in our time
cIaim that truth is the product of the writing. It seems that the writer
has no preconceived notion of a truth which he discovered beforehand,
but that the writing process as such generates a truth-related text. One
might argue that this is nothing but a delusion, since the writing will
necessarily draw upon the life-experience stored in the writer's mind so
that the writing is still "a posteriori" to finding of truth. Nevertheless,
some writers postulate that they do not know what it is they want to
say before they sit down to write and that any truth contained in their
texts is "made up," not discovered. This is what the American poet
James Dickey means when he says, that the poet "is not trying to teU
the truth but to make it . , . ,"42 The dramatist Eugene lonesco echoes
this statement when he insists that "le langage de la litterature dram-
atique ... n'est pas illustratif d'un autre langage qui lui serait superieur
et dont il serait la vulgarisation , , , elle est un instrument de connais-
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LlTERATURE 363

sance autonome ...."43 Ionesco shares this rejection of an illustrative

function of literature with regard to the search for truth with Nathalie
Sarraute who categorically declares: "Le monde que fonde l'acte
cn!ateur ne sert et n'illustre rien."44
For those authors who place greater emphasis on a "world" to be
explored rather than on the subject as a maker of truth, literature is a
means to expand our knowledge, "die Wahrnehmung des Lebens zu
erneuern und zu erweitern," as Wellershoff puts it,45 or "die Grenzen
unseres Wissens liber uns selbst hinauszuschieben" (Christa WOlf).46
The creative process is "an exploration of uncharted realms"47 accord-
ing to Ionesco or as he once put it in the French language: "un
elargissement des frontieres du reel connu." 48
At this point the question arises: Is not litera ture competing here
with the natural sciences and are not the sciences much better equipped
to explore "uncharted realms"? There are indeed writers who believe
that the mission of literature has been taken over by sociology,
psychology, and other scientific fields. "If all the relations between
things could be sufficiently apprehended in the light of natural laws
which are discoverable by science then the poet's vocation will one day
be superfluous," 49 maintains C. Day Lewis. William H. Gass claims he
sees no reason "to regard literature as a superior source of truth, or
even as a reliable source of truth. Going to it is dangerous precisely
because it provides a sense of verification (a feeling) without the fact of
verification (the validating process)."50 The difference between the
scientific and the literary method is explained by the German Siegfried
Lenz in the following manner: "In the sciences: objective knowledge
(unbedingtes Erkennen), from which one can draw conclusions accord-
ing to laws; in literature however: subjective knowledge, preliminary
knowledge, knowledge without warranty, knowIedge that can always be
revoked."51
Yet there are voices among contemporary writers which state that
literature has an epistemological function in its own right, that its
achievement is equal if not superior to that of the sciences. Whereas
it seems that the rational power of the sciences is superior to the
exploratory efforts of literature, literature can see and describe things
beyond the reach of the mathematical and generalizing sciences. The
same Siegfried Lenz whom we quoted above demands that poetic
imagination must reject the claim of science to be able to provide a
comprehensive interpretation of life ("unser Leben total auszulegen").52
364 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

The East German Franz Fiihmann points out that myth as a non-
theoretical type of experience explains phenomena which defy scientific
explanation. "Literature," says Fiihmann, "affects man in his entirety
and that is what constitutes its difference from the sciences and their
calculating method ... From the sciences I expect specific results."53
The orientation of literature is broad and general, yet at the same
time concrete, not theoretical. It explores dimensions of life to which
science has no access. "In many ways," writes Lewis Turco, "poetry can
go deeper into man than any of the sciences."54 the French poet Yves
Bonnefoy masterfulIy sums up the difference between the scientific and
the literary approach: "Les pouvoirs de la langue, c'est qu'elle peut
rebâtir une economie de l'etre-au-monde, une intelIigence de ce qu'il
est, par opposition au regard desincarne de la science; c'est qu'il y a
dans ses mots fondamentaux une incitation a se souvenir qu'il peut y
avoir de l'etre, c'est-a-dire du sens, des lieux, de la presence et non de
l'absence, la ou notre parler scientifique n'accepte de percevoir que de
l'objet." 55
In spite of the differences, there exists the possibility of limited
cross-fertilization between literature and science. This is what Michel
Butor means when he writes: "Nous sommes a la recherche ... d'un art
qui soit science en meme temps, ....56 This idea is echoed by William
Burroughs who states: "1 think the whole line between art and science
will break down and that scientists ... will become more creative and
writers more scientific." 57 The late Heinrich BolI once wrote, "dass die
Phantasie in die Wissenschaft hinein muss und umgekehrt vielIeicht
manche wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis in die Phantasie." 58
Whereas science does not claim to unveil the essence of life,
literature does indeed. It regards itself - according ta the statements of
contemporary writers - as a kind of "Wesensschau": "L'ecriture ... a
tendence a schematiser de plus en plus peut-etre pour aboutir a
l'essentiel." (Le Clezio)59; "Poetry is a search for essence, remains an
essential ..." (James Broughton)60; "... by the existence which he [the
poet] portrays he desires to reveal essences." (May Swenson)61; "1 want
to pare away anything that is merely ornamental - to get at an
essence." (Philip Booth).62
Whenever the writer compares himself to the scientist or talks about
revealing the essence of things, there arises an apparent paradox. On
the one hand the writer does not theorize, abstract or test the validity of
universallaws, he deals with concrete persons, actions, or situations. On
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERA TURE 365

the other, he does aim at "man in his entirety," he "schematizes" in

order to reach the essential. But his truth is not tangible in scientific
terms, it cannot be measured or quantified, and besides that, it is always
historical.
The search for truth as essence is, however, limited by the way in
which our world appears to the writer. It is often a fragmented, chaotic
world, impenetrable by human reason, lacking any sense of a pre-
established order. William Golding once observed: "The point is that
the writer lives now in a world which has ceased to be explicit because
it has ceased to be explicable."63 We live, according to Octavio Paz, "in
a universe that breaks up and separates from itself, a whole that has
ceased to be thinkable except as absence or a colIection of heteroge-
neous fragments, ...."64 The dramatist Arrabal remarks: "... toute loi,
tout ordre, toute mathematique, toute forme ignore la confusion que la
matiere produit a l'infini."6s If this is the nature of life, the writer has
two options. He may mimic in his text the absence of structure, order,
and logic he finds in his world. This is, for example the position of
lonesco who prescribes for himself the folIowing rules of writing: "Pas
d'intrigue ... pas d'architecture, pas des enigmas a resoudre mais de
l'inconnu insoluble, pas de caracteres, des personnages sans identite ...
simplement une suite sans suite, un enchaînement fortuit, sans relation
de cause a effet ... d'aventures inexplicables, ... un enchevetrement
... de mouvements de passions sans unite, plongeant dans la contradic-
tion ...."66
The other option he may take is that of defiantly projecting order
into a world perceived as chaotic and absurd. In this position it is
subjective and creative reason which adopts a dominant role over the
mere givenness of the outer world. "Art orders the horrible, brutal
chaos",67 writes John Rechy, and the English writer B. S. Johnson
concurs: "Life is chaos, writing is a way of ordering the chaos."68 The
American poet Stanley Kunitz defines writing as a "struggle to achieve
an imaginary order out of the real disorder of life."69 His compatriot
Michael Benedikt once said in an interview: "1 guess rm trying to freeze
chaos, by seeing it as orderly; and then reflecting that." 70 Evidently, alI
literature which embraces political, social, or moral causes belongs to
the type that wishes to turn chaos or disorder into order.
The search for truth of the self or the world, be it a confident one or
a sceptical one, one that is sure of its grasp of essences or one that finds
life inscrutable and wishes to leave the epistemological effort to the
366 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

sciences, this search has been a vital part of the Iife significance of
literature for a long time and has thus formed a poetological tradition
which is - as was shown above -largely unhroken today.

Boston College

NOTES

* This paper is a translated and condensed version of a chapter of the author's book
Schreiben als Erfahrung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1985), pp. 32-68. Permission to print this
version was granted by Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn (West Germany).
1 Stan A. Vrana, Interviews and Conversations with 20th Century Authors Writing in
English: An Index (Metuchen, N. J. and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1982).
2 Eugen Gomringer, Worte Sind Schatten: Die Konstellationen 1951-1968 (Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 1969), p. 291.
3 Franz Mon, Texte uber Texte (Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand, 1970), p. 135.
4 Jorg Drews (Ed.), Vom "Kahlschlag" zu "movens": Uber das langsame Auftauchen
experimenteller Schreibweisen in der westdeutschen Literatur der fUnfr.iger Jahre
(Munich: text und kritik, 1980), p. 48.
5 Helmut Heissenbiittel, Uber Literatur: Aufsătze (Munich: Deutscher Taschen-
buchverlag, 2nd ed. 1972 [1970]), pp. 210 f.
6 Pierre Garnier, Spatialisme et poesie concrete (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), p. 15.
7 Ibid., p.150.
R lbid., p. 121.
q Ibid., p. 93.

10 Jean-Louis Baudry, 'Existence, fiction, ideologie,' Tel Quel 31 (Automne 1967), p.

22.
11 Jean-Louis Baudry 'Theses Generales,' Tel Quel 44 (1971), p. 96.
12 Jean Ricardou, Nouveaux problemes du roman (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1978), p.
16.
13 Jean Ricardou, Problemes du nouveau roman (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967), p. 18.
14 Tbid., p. 18.

15 Yves Buin (Ed.), Que peut la litterature? (Nanteuil, Meaux: L'lnedit 10/18, 1965), p.

57.
16 R. V. Cassil, In an Tron Time: Statements and Reiterations (Purdue University

Studies, 1969), p. 97.

17 George Barker, Essays (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1970), p. 109.
18 Maxine Kumin, To Make a Prairie: Essays on Poets, Poetry, and Country Living
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979), p. 57.
19 James Vinson (Ed.), Contemporary Poets (2nd edition) (London: St. James Press;

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975), p. 1182.

20 Dieter Wellershoff, "Die Auflosung des Kunstbegriffs II," Merkur 29/8 (1975), p.

743.
21 Jean-Claude Renard, Notes sur la Poesie (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), p. 50.
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERA TURE 367

22 Henry Miller on Writing (New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 22.

23 National Poetry Festival. Held in the Library of Congress, Oct. 22-24, 1962.
(Washington D.C.: Proceedings Library of Congress, 1964), p. 157.
24 Adolf Muschg, Literatur als Therapie? Ein Exkurs iiber das Heilsame und das
Unheilbare (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981), p. 15I.
25 Pierre Emmanuel, Choses dites (Brussels: Desclee de Brouwer, 1970), p. 235.
26 William Heyen (Ed.), American Poets in 1976 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976),
p.335.
27 Ralph J. Mills, Jr. (Ed.), The Notebooks of David 19natow (Chicago: The Swallow

Press, 1973), p. 90.

28 Joachim Walther, Meinetwegen Schmetterlinge: Gesprăche mit Schriftstellern (Berlin

[East]: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1973), p. 117.

29 Vinson, Contemporary Poets (2nd edition), op. cit., p. 129I.
30 "Symposium: The Writer's Situation," New American Review 9 (1970), p. 68.
31 Hilde Domin, Wozu Lyrik heute: Dichtung und Leser in der gesteuerten Gesellschaft
(Munieh: Piper, 1968), p. 62.
32 Auskiinfte: Werkstattgesprăche mit DDR-Autoren (Weimar/Berlin [East]: Aufbau-
Verlag, 1976), p. 23.
33 Michel Butor, Repertoire Il: Etudes et conjerences 1959-1963 (Paris: Editions du
Minuit, 1964), p. 26.
34 Robert A. Martin (Ed.), The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller (New York: Penguin,
1978), p. 84.
35 Earle Birney, The Creative Writer (Canadian Broadeasting Corporation, 1966), p.
70.
36 Stan1ey Plumly, "Talking with Adrienne Rich," The Ohio Review XIII/I (Fali,

1971), p. 30.
37 Howard Nemerov (Ed.), Poets on Poetry (New York/London: Basic Books, 1966),
p.152.
38 Literaturmagazin 11: Schreiben oder Literatur (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1979), p. 238.

39 Richard Eberhart, Of Poetry and Poets (Urbana/Chieago/London: University of

Illinois Press, 1979), p. 3.
40 Robert Creeley, A Quick Graph: Collected Notes and Essays, ed. Donald Allen (San
Franciseo: Four Seasons Foundation, 1970), p. 68.
41 Oetavio Paz, Alternating Current, transl. Helen R. Lane (New York: The Viking

Press, 1973 [1967]), pp. 74 f.

42 James Dickey, Sorties (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1971), p. 156.
43 Eugene Ioneseo, Antidotes (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p. 275.
44 Nathalie Sarraute, "La litterature, aujourd'hui - II," Tel Quel 9 (Printemps 1962), p.
50.
45 Joachim Fuhrmann/Dieter Wellershoff, "Selbsterfahrung und Solidarităt: Ein
Gesprăch," Akzente 22/3 (ApriI1975), p. 234.
46 Christa Wolf, Lesen und Schreiben: Aufsătze und Betrachtungen (Berlin [East]/
Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1972), p. 211.
47 Frederick Towarnieki, "An Interview with Eugene Ioneseo," The Evergreen Review
14/85 (Deeember 1970), p. 49.
48 Eugene Ioneseo, Notes et contre-notes (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), p. 85.
368 CHRISTOPH EYKMAN

49 C. Day Lewis, The Poet's Task (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 6.

50 Joe David Bellamy, The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers
(Urbana/Chicago/London: University of Illinois Press, 1974), p. 33.
51 Alfred Mensak (Ed.), Siegfried Lenz: (jber Phantasie: Gesprăche mit Heinrich Boli,
Giinter Grass, Walter Kempowski, Pavel Kohout (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Cam pe,
1982), p. 180.
52 Ibid., p. 183.
53 Franz Fiihmann, Essays, Gesprăche, Aufstitze 1964-1981 (Rostock: VEB Hinstorff,
1983), pp. 51, 124.
54 Heyen, American Poets in 1976, op. cit., p. 418.
55 Yves Bonnefoy, Entretiens sur la poesie (Neuchâtel: A la Baconniere, 1981), pp.
21 f.
56 Andre Helbo, "Dialogue avec Michel Butor," in: Helbo, Michel Butor: Vers une
litterature du signe (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1975), p. 13.
57 Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews. Third Series (New York: The Viking

Press, 1967),p. 158.

58 Mensak. Siegfried Lenz, op. cit., p. 177.
59 Pierre L'Hoste, Conversations avec J. M. G. Le Clezio (Paris: Mercure de France,
1971), p. 20.
60 Vinson, Contemporary Poets (2nd edition), op. cit., p. 184.
61 Granville Hicks (Ed.), The Living Novel: A Symposium (New York: Macmillan,
1957),p.210.
62 Richard Jackson, Acts of Mind: Conversations with Contemporary Poets (University
of Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1983), p. 85.
63 Evening Herald, (11 Feb. 1963).
64 Octavio Paz, The Bow and the Lyre: the Poem. The Poetic Revelation. Poetry and
History, transl. Ruth L. C. Simms (Austin/London: University of Texas Press, 1973), p.
240.
65 Alain Schifres, Entretiens avec Arrabal (Paris: Belfond, 1969), p. 41.
66 Ionesco, Notes et contre-notes, op. cit., pp. 136 f.
67 Donald M. Allen/Robert Creeley (Eds.), New American Story (New York: Grove
Press, 1965), p. 273.
68 Jackson, Acts of Mind, op. cit., p. 161.
69 Selden Rodman, Tongues of Fallen Angels (New York: New Directions, 1972), p.

103.
70 Joe David Bellamy, American Poetry Observed: Poets on their Work (Urbana/
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), p. 34.
 MARK PIETRALUNGA

THE "LITERA TURE IN LIFE" PHILOSOPHY VS.

REALITY: THE ROLE OF THE RIVER IN BEPPE
FENOGLIO'S IL PARTIGIANO JOHNNY

The Italian contemporary writer Beppe Fenoglio's Il partigiano Johnny

has captured the attention of several critics who have found it to be an
innovative and complex narrative. Set at the time of Italy's Resistance,
the novel was published posthumously in 1968, five years after the
author's premature death. In 1978 there appeared a critical edition of
Fenoglio's works, including the two drafts of Il partigiano Johnny (Pll
and Pl2).l
In her article entitled "Virtualita del testo e ricerca delIa lingua da
una stesura alI'altra del partigiano Johnny,"2 Maria Antonietta Grignani
encourages the reader to verify how the two drafts demonstrate the
difficulties of an autodidact in search of a language and the risks of a
compiler of memories in pursuit of a narrative standard capable of
exorcising a tendency towards autobiography. (p. 275) Grignani states
that the two drafts represent a sort of "private experiment" pertaining,
most notably, to the first years of Fenoglio's literary activity.
While Grignani raises the question of Fenoglio's search for a new
mode of expression, Elisabetta Soletti's archetypal study of Fenoglio's Il
partigiano Johnny elucidates the insidious and evil nature inherent in
the image of the ever-present river. 3 Both critics only touch on the
aesthetic manifestation of an internalized image of the river that
corresponds to the tortuous and winding symbolism of the river that
equates on the unconscious level with the winding and sinuosity of
man's quest, namely Fenoglio's quest for writing as well as a utopian
land where peace and tranquillity reign. The river serves then as a key
figure of the novel at various levels. It is therefore my intention in this
study to examine Fenoglio's Il partigiano Johnny as a literary text that
is closely tied to the river, once it has been poetically internalized by
the author, and whose continuous flow he follows in his endless search.
Another point in question, often stressed by critics, is the politic al
atmosphere that pervades the noveI. This political cadre serves as a
pretext in that Fenoglio stresses the importance of one's wish for escape
to better lands, from a situation which the protagonist finds at times
369
A - T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 369-377.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
370 MARK PIETRALUNGA

unbearable ("enough, enough, 1 don't want to be shot at any longer ...

enough" (PJl, p. 792). It is the river, however, which gives the author
the optimism and affirmation that life flows and, in spite of the river's
apparent dormant state, it nevertheless harbors an inner strength and
affirms a permanence to life itself: "They shot at the ice on the river,
because at 30 degrees the river had frozen over and the ferry was no
longer running. They then took to shooting at the ice. 'Please, Johnny,
give another look outside.' Peace and dusk, and the ice fading away,
flowing desgracedly and drearily. N evertheless there was Peace" (P11,
p.882).
Among Il partigiano Johnny's main themes, we note the protagonist's
yearning for solitude and his "literature in life" philosophy in dramatic
conflict with a caII for collectiveness and the non-fictional presence of
war and action: "There had always wavered over Johnny a vague,
gratuitious, but pleased and pleasing reputation of being impractical, of
his head in the clouds, of literature as life" (P11, p. 391).4 The decision
to come to terms with reality triggers the internal conflict that the
protagonist must grapple with throughout the narrative. Even in those
moments of intense soul searching, Johnny's inclination to view the
world in light ofhis literary pursuits remains most evident:

The matter goaded Johnny, to the point that he saw himself as a man not made of flesh
and blood, but instead of plywood and pages of a book (Pll, p. 431) .

. . . Johnny put aside the Marlowe text and elbowed down to write the letter, pathetic in
its brevity and businesslike ... He set out towards the high hills, the ancestral land that
would have helped him as best it could in its stillness, in the whirl of the dark wind,
feeling how large man is when he is in his normal human dimension. At the moment in
which he left, he felt invested - nor death itself would have been divestiture - in the
nave of the authentic people of Italy, to oppose in every way Fascism, to judge and
execute, to decide militarily and civilly (Pll, pp. 436-37).5

The close inspection of the self and the sincere sense of moral duty
evident in these passages are characteristic of the texts of that English
Puritan tradition Fenoglio so admired and whose works he translated. 6
lan Watt's observations of the influences of Protestantism in Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe shed light on this point: "Two aspects of this new
Protestantism emphasis - the tendency to increase consciousness of
the self as a spiritual entity, and the tendency to a kind of democratiza-
tion of the moral and social outlook - are particularly important." Watt
also speaks of a "continuaI scrutiny of his inner man" as part of the
 THE RO LE OF THE RIVER 371

ritual of every good Puritan." 7 W olfgang Iser makes a similar point in

his essay on the Pilgrim's Progress, a text Fenoglio in part translated: "It
is in the ultimate uncertainty of salvation that leads to closer and closer
inspection of the self, for it is on1y through his own transformation that
the believer can detect the signs he is looking for."8 Further on Iser
adds: "The decision to seek salvation involves cutting alI ties with the
familiar world, and this in turn means isolation." 9 If we turn our
attention to Fenoglio's Il pa rtigiano Johnny, we can interpret "salvation"
as the liberation of Italy from Fascism and the "familiar world" as that
environment or those pursuits that offer an escape for Johnny from war
and action. It is in those moments of extreme solitude that Johnny
yearns to return to his "familiar world."
The opinion of the political atmosphere as a literary pretext enabIes
us to view Johnny's call to action against Fascism as the author's need
to break away from an equally rhetorical literary tradition. He must
isolate himself from his familiar language just as he had done from his
familiar world. The decis ion to search for a new expression leads to
the violation and contamination of an earlier ideal. The painstaking
employment of English words and neologisms in his narrative iUustrates
on1y in part the difficulty and seriousness of this quest.
If we turn to the figure of the river we can better understand how
Johnny's personal environment and the quest for a new style intertwine.
The roIe of the river is the most conspicuous example of how certain
aspects of Fenoglio's narrative topography are inspired or given added
substance by the writer's readings and translations of English texts.
Fenoglio was attracted to texts that treat motifs familiar to his own land.
When he reintroduced similar elements into his writings, they would
consequently acquire descriptive intensity due to the different perspec-
tives that had been gathered and assimiliated. In the case of the figure
of the river, the most evident parallel is to be made between the
"partigiano Johnny" texts 10 and Kenneth Grahame's children's classic
The Wind in the WillowsY Each author highlights the inherent affinity
that exists between the story's characters and this topographical
phenomenon while, at the same time, instiUing the river with anthro-
pomorphic qualities that enhance its protagonist role in each narrative.
Although Fenoglio's use of this feature is more complex and manifold
at both descriptive and structural levels, we can stiU verify through the
examples below, reasons that helped influence the Italian writer's
choice of Grahame and might have potentially served as motivating
372 MARK PIETRALUNGA

forces behind his own thematic narrative import. The foIlowing are
selected passages from Grahame's opening chapter entitled "The River
Bank":
As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite,
just above the water's edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fel! to considering what a
nice snug dwelling place it would make for an animal with a few wants and fond of a
bijou riverside residence, above flood-Ievel and remove from noise and dust. (pp.
9-10).

'So-this-is-a-River!'
'The River,' - corrected the Rat.
'And you real!y live by the river? What a jol!y life!' 'By it and with it and an it and in
it.' said the Rat. 'It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and
drink, and (naturally) washing. It's my world, and 1 don't want any other. What it hasn't
gat is not worth having, and what is doesn't know is not worth knowing. Lord! the times
we've had together! Whether in winter ar summer, spring ar autumn, it's always got fun
and its excitement. (pp. 14-15).

Far from the fairytale world of The Wind in the Willows we perceive
similar references to the river in Fenoglio's "Partigiano Johnny" texts.
What draws the different worlds together is an interpretation of the
river as an archetype and thus as a structure of the collective uncon-
sciousY Like the figure of the Rat in the Grahame tale, Johnny
personalizes the river and makes it a part of a dream-like state that
remains distant from the turmoil that reigns outside it. Whereas this
remains possible in a literature of diversions such as in the case of
Grahame, this is only one side of the coin in the work depicting
Johnny's existential struggle:

Johnny accelerated forward - 'excuse me, capt'n but 1 must ha ve a personal sight of
this my personal river: (UrPl, p. 37)
· .. towards that always fascinating objective of the river and its banks, with a con-
tingent sense of truce in the inflexible setting of the war (1'11, p. 651).
· .. from there march directly across faur large hills ta the unfargotten river. Now he
hoped even just ta see the river, ta have a view, even a fleeting night-time one, of that
distant, dream-like land of peace (1'11, p. 760).
· .. The river and the other side seemed ta encourage and justify the relaxation. The
bank had such a sec\uded and gently untamed aspect to make one think that it could
not and must not appear an any map, and barely known, at most, ta some animal
waterbearer ar searcher for river debris, far away from both fascists and partisans (1'11,
p.945).
 THE ROLE OF THE RIVER 373

The personal view of the river stands in marked contrast to reality and
Johnny's rale in the historic pracess. The river assumes a mythical
fairytale-like quality whose fixed nature is juxtaposed to the ephemer-
ality of the ever-changing events. The nostalgic retum to the blissful
and static state is an attempt to remedy the inner turmoil that over-
whelms Johnny as he is compelled to move forward with the course of
the events. The image of the river debris in the last quote underlines the
narrative's dialectic. As Johnny seeks to recuperate the debris (i.e.,
memories) of that "personal river" which stands outside of time and
space ("it could not and must not appear on any map"), the actual
nature of the river reminds Johnny that an initiatory ordeal must stiU be
experienced.
If we consider briefly the rale of. the river in terms of Il partigiano
Johnny's main motif - that is the always present conflict and ultimate
break from a private world congenial to Johnny's solitary "dream boy"
nature and the active participation in the bitter reality of war - we can
appreciate the strain of nostalgia present in the above passages. This is
especially true when they are compared to the idyllic view of the river
in The Wind in the Willows, which Fenoglio unquestionably used as a
model. Keeping in mind the dream/reality dichotomy extrapolated from
the major motif, we can now expect to see emerge the other face of the
river which, as imagined, is antipodal to the eden-like qualities sug-
gested above. The following quote iUustrates the harsh, actual state of
Johnny's "personal river" expressed in near nihilistic terms:

The river, a black marble serpent, emitting horrible reflections each time it received its
meager part of that infernal-skylight, was, in Johnny's eyes, 'outlething Lethes' (Pll, p.
618).

Elisabetta Soletti refers to these same lines to underline the insidious

and evil nature inherent in the river image. In explicating its symbolic
image she writes: "The fluvial symbol transmits something turbid,
amorphous, substantially impure. Of the fundamental archetype asso-
ciated to water fram the Bible on, in which the origin of death and at
the same time of regeneration are inseparable, the first meaning is more
readily accommodated and its hostile indifference and extraneous
nature are accentuated thraugh the mineral attributes of the associa-
tion." 13 She interprets the several mineral connotations Fenoglio uses to
depict the river as further manifestations of its inimical characteristics:
374 MARK PIETRALUNGA

"Early autumn appeared in agony ... a grimness in the leaden casting

of the drowning river that would leave you breathless (Pll, p. 397).
The river has acquired in this stage of Johnny's journey the distinctive
features of evil and death. Its dormant state and its association to a
cold, dark serpent sustain Soletti's opinion. Furthermore, the phrase
"outlething lethes" underlines the aspect of "forgetfulness," which, as
Mircea Eliade has pointed out, is a necessary part of the realm of
death. 14 Once again the images evoked are reducible to an initiatory
scenario; we find the initiatory ordeals of an encounter with the
serpent-like river and a type of "descensus ad inferos" by the protago-
nist Johnny. His own nostalgic past has become part of a dimension in
the beyond which he still yearnS to return to but is now aware of the
present impossibility: "Though in seeming at first the translucid pro-
cession of the waters, Johnny felt a keen nostalgia of the land beyond
and mainly of the gradient much and much more inland. But the dice
was cast, and this time, for Johnny at least, it means that a river was not
to be crossed" (UrPJ, VoI. 1, 1, p. 323).
The river suggests a source from which it originates. The water starts
somewhere before it reaches the immediacy of one's perception.
Therefore the source is one's past and paradise lost. The nostalgia of it
translates poetically man's longing for the sources; yet, we know that we
cannot go back, for we must flow ahead with the murky waters of the
river - its continuity. The revelatory experience of seeing the river in its
violent dimension is thus an important step in the protagonist's journey
forward. The drowning mineral waters then suggest also a regenerative
and purging state that only an encounter with death can create. This
image of the river parallels on an unconscious level the search for a
narrative standard. For the writer to acquire his own style he must
break out of a static mode represented by an imitation of his ideal texts,
or sources, and purify his expression through further tests and experi-
ences. In this light, the fluvial image provides the natural symbol for this
purifying process. 1S
As we continue our discussion of the river, we might reflect upon the
significance of the "peace" motif that is closely associated to Johnny's
personalized and idealized view of the water image. We have noted
how the protagonist's desired river is seen as a far-off, dreamed-of land
of peace. The following scene highlights this union:

'Yes, for the river,' Ettore repeated firrnly, alrnost ferociously. And there carne to
 THE RO LE OF THE RIVER 375

everyone's mind its peaceful banks, in its peaceful pre-winter nakedness, and its
peaceful waters, in their peaceful pre-winter severity, and the peaceful light, cool air
suspended above them. And peaceful sounded the Angelus from the isolated parish
churches above the high peaceful bank, and there very well had to be, beyond and far
from the bank and the road a peaceful farm, with peaceful and slightly slow-witted
people, who make a Christian gesture to climb up in a peaceful sanctuary and sudarium
of hay, with a small tunnel in order to breathe. But Johnny's thoughts were drawn to the
wall, appearing as it from a bad dream, a wall with a few breaches and watched by
tireless and sneering men, who curtained them from the river (PIl, p. 744).

The reference to the "peaceful banks" intimates the cradle with mother
earth holding the water. The river is no longer snake-like emitting
horrible reflections. It is now perceived as a mystical element whose
womb-like sanctuary is particularly attractive to Johnny. This view of the
river triggers the image of a world of escape, a type of paradisal retreat
far from the world's adversities, which is continuously sought for, is at
times seemingly within reach, but is ultimately lost in the reality of war.
However, as long as Johnny feels the urge to escape to a blissful land
which, at the same time, remains only an illusion, he cannot declare his
Joumey over.
Iser discusses similar moments in the Pilgrim 's Progress in which
Christian retreats, as Johnny yeams to do, from the dangers and
hardships of this world. The episodes such as Palace Beautiful, the
River of the Water of Life, and the Country of Beuleh represent points
along the joumey at which Pilgrim feels a fairytale harmony with his
surroundings. Iser emphasizes the sense of paradis al security of these
episodes and interprets them as a foretaste for the pilgrim of the bliss
and vague inspiration during the conflicts of his adventure. These basic
features drawn from the romances of chivalry undergo, as Iser indi-
cates, a definite transformation in Bunyan as they are set in a different
frame (we recaB that a similar transformation has occurred in Fenoglio's
treatment of characteristics taken from Kenneth Grahame's children's
tale). In Iser's words, "romantic wrappings are filled with Christian
contents." 16 Within the context of the dream vision, Bunyan reconciles
more readily the fundamental conflict between man and reality. Conse-
quently, the ideal and idyllic world reflect the actual blissful state of the
protagonist. Instead, the real setting of events in Il partigiano Johnny
does not allow Johnny the luxury of such illusory pauses, thus his
"literature in life" philosophy remains in marked contrast to the caB to
action that prevails in the narrative. No matter how intent he is on
376 MARK PIETRALUNGA

conjuring dream-like escapes such as that of his very personal river,

drawn from his literary and childhood diversions, war and action are
quick to summon him back to reality.
This personal river is poetically and artistically transformed into
elemental forces of life, an ever-flowing element which correlatively
translates the inner flow of the author's personal search for peace and
tranquillity. His utopian vision of the river reaches then mythopoeic
dimensions where his inherent search reaches dimensions of his quest;
however, as in any quest, or spiritual odyssey, he cannot be spared the
vicisitudes and obstacles.
The necessity to defeat Fascism and participate in the Resistance
serves, as we have mentioned alI along, as a poetic pretext that bathes
the author in a personal and intrinsic war. He associates his quest for
freedom and peace with the poetic presence of the ever-flowing,
mysterious, yet permanent and real river. That the river can never be
fully explained or attained suggests the Heraclitean notion that man
cannot step twice in the same river. Yet man's consciousness makes this
water image the object of his perception and in this process the river
attains an ephemerality and, at the same time, a permanence like life
itself. Fenoglio's decision to select the events of a war as a backdrop for
his narrative makes more tangible the psychological conflicts exhibited
by Johnny's personal crisis.

The F/orida State University

NOTES

1 Beppe Fenoglio, Opere, 3 vols. in 5 tomes (Turin: Einaudi, 1978).

2 Grignani's artide is found in Strumenti Critici, 36-37 (October 1978), pp. 275-
331.
J Elisabetta Soletti, "Metafore e simboli nel Partigiano Johnny," Sigma, n. 31, 1971, p.
76.
4 The following is another example from Il partigiano Johnny in which reference is
made to Johnny's impractical, dream-boy view of life: "the absurd veterinarian, the man
who had set him on the road to dream-boyness" (VoI. 1, 2, p. 393).
5 Fenoglio's italics.
6 It should also be mentioned that Fenoglio translated in its entirety Charles Firth's

biography of Oliver Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell and the Rufe of the Puritans in
England. This translation remains unpublished.
7 lan Watt, The Rise of the Navei (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p.
74.
 THE ROLE OF THE RIVER 377

8 Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press),
p.7.
9 lser, p. 24.
10 We can include among the 'Partigiano Johnny' texts, Fenoglio's embryonic novel

UrPJ written in a peculiar English.

II Kenneth Grahame, Il vento nei salici, tr. B. Fenoglio (Turin: Einaudi, 1982). 1 shall
quote from the 1980 Magnet edition of The Wind in the Willows.
12 Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 198.
13 Soletti, p. 76.
14 Eliade, p. 121.

15 In his treatment of water and dreams, Gaston Bachelard writes: "L'eau s'offre donc
comme un symbole naturel pour la purete, elle donne des sens precis it une psychologie
prolixe de la purification." L 'eau et les reves (Paris: Iose Corti, 1942), p. 181.
16 Iser, pp. 25-6.
 LAURA WESTRA

"THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK OF ART": TRUTH

IN EXISTENCE AND THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION

I-A MEDITA TION ON "LEMONS, PEARS, AND GRAPES"

BY VAN GOGH

Gaze steadfastly at things which, though far away are

yet present to the mind. For you cannot cut off being
from being: it does not scatter itself into a universe,
then unify.
(Parmenides, Frag. 4, Wheelwright transl.)

Sometimes around 1887, Van Gogh painted a riotously colored

picture of fruit. It almost vibrates with life and light. It is all in tones of
yellow and gold with minor touches of white and green. It almost
captures the light of the sun within it, a golden light which is missing
from the muted tones of the Dutch landscape, in which paIe greys,
toned down greens, mauves, and watered browns appear to blend with
the blue-grey of the North Sea and the canals. The fruit is painted with
what appears to be almost a love of its color and light, and the picture
is less reflection of delectable fruit one might want to consume, than a
triumph of summer life and light in itself.
Yet, for all that, it could still be no more than yet another "still life
with fruit," like countless other artists have painted in various guises, at
various times, and with many different visions guiding them. The Van
Gogh Museum in Amsterdam affixes a small note to the picture's title,
date, and place of execution; it is - apparently - a "unique experi-
ment," in that the painting "runs off" onto the frame, so to speak. Its
light and colors, though beginning with the actual fruit it depicts,
continue beyond the limits imposed by the canvas itself, and extend to
the frame as well.
It is as if the burst of life, light, and color could not be contained and
controlled, the artist's vis ion would not be limited, his joy and delight in
the rich, pure, almost sensuous colors, could not exhaust itself within
the shape of the fruit, but needed to run riot, almost with a life of its

379
A - T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, VoI XXIII, 379-391.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
380 LAURA WESTRA

own, beyond it, springing outward and onward away from the original
limits imposed by Van Gogh's chosen canvas.
I saw this painting on a rainy afternoon in Amsterdam, one among
almost too many famous and beautiful works in Van Gogh's specially lit
and organized museum. As I was passing from one to the other, I was
reminded of Heidegger's thinking, as the impact of technology (albeit
mainly in an enlightened and benevolent form, not bent on despoiling)
was so much - unavoidably - in evidence. Again and again, I saw an
artist's vision, a sudden glimpse of beings, not in their freedom, but in
their "thrownness." In another painting for instance, "shoes", shown as a
tool, telling a story of care, toil and poverty, in their tired, well-worn,
well-used lines; or perhaps a chapel, with its congregation meeting and
exchanging news, information, gossip even, outside its well-designed,
solid exterior, and so ono In every case, landscape, as seen by one man,
but as used a lived-in-and-with by many, serving one purpose or
another, parts always of that fabric of life in his country and abroad,
Van Gogh lived and portrayed so well.
On one hand, the pictures were reflections of various uses of objects,
buildings, water, land, and even people, performing or serving many
functions in turn. On the other hand, our "ordering" and organizing was
very much in evidence, in the carefully controlled lighting, the stark,
undecorated walls, the unencumbered space that surrounded them,
unbroken, except for a few unobtrusive plants, widely spaced. Each
picture a deliberate focusing, separating being from being, looking at a
specific aspect and highlighting it while at the same time limiting it, by
the technical choices (colors, sizes, shapes, composition, placement).
And then - here was this "unique experiment," something meant to be
arranged like the rest, but at the same time, altogether different: in this
painting instead, the "beings" I saw were triumphant in their freedom.
It was as if the artist was somehow no longer in control, no longer
capable of "ordering," choosing, or limiting. Suddenly the objects, the
colors, the light, all those beings, and perhaps in a sense Being itself,
seemed to move with a life and a will of its own, to spread over what
man had designed and arranged to contain it. No longer a case of man
holding down, molding and controlling: Being as visible and expressed
in beautiful, fresh, golden fruit, was now "taking over," affirming its
own existence, untrammeled and unrestrained by man's petty ordering,
even by that of a great artist.
 THE WORK OF ART 381

Even the viewer was no longer a perceiver, a consumer, accepting

benevolent technological aids, limits, and "frames" from the experts.
The feeling was one of having to accept an affirmation or declaration,
whereby beings were forcing one to let them be, insisting in a sense on
their own truth, thus their own freedom. N o longer content with
accepting "this it how you (the viewer) see me (the being)"; on the
contrary now insisting: "this is the whole me, 1 must be free, 1 will not
be held back." Just a fancy? Or a revelation or intuition of Being?
Perhaps neither; in Heideggerian terms - and by now it must have
become clear what the impetus behind this "meditation" is, and who is,
in effect, its guiding light - there is no straight dividing line, with
absolute truth and correctness on one side, and total falsity and error
on the other. Man's "errancy" 1 is the only possible way. Da-sein
("human existence") is the "window of Being," but this window does not
have hard and fast sides, nor does it possess either closed shutters, or
absolutely transparent glass. It is always a case of both, in varying
degrees and proportions. It is never a set, finished, formal result: it is
always a living, moving, unfinished path.
Yet very often we feei as though this path is something upon which
man decides single-handedly, plots, designs, and then proceeds to
travel. It takes a painting such as "Lemons, Pears and Grapes" to
remind one that "enframing" is of Being itself. Suddenly 1 was no longer
a "spectator," consuming aesthetic satisfaction, or beauty, or "art and
culture," but a somewhat shaken philosopher, forced to think, much in
the same manner the medieval monk was forced to think, by the sight
of the skull on the worktable at his side. "Memento mori" told its own
story, of man's lack of independent substantiality, of importance. It
curbed his arrogance, his feeling of self importance. By the same token,
beauty and color, bursting forth beyond its pre-ordained limits and
frame, may serve much the same purpose.
In a positive, joyous way, we are reminded that we are in a reality
that exceeds us and resists our ordering ways. And that, it seems to me,
is reallY the core meaning of Aquinas' thinking as well as of Heidegger's,
even though it is to be understood and expressed in widely different
ways. If we forget Being, Heidegger's thought cannot be fullY grasped. If
we forget the role of the actuality of being (ipsum esse), Aquinas'
thinking on epistemology and metaphysics as well as ethics, will not be
wholly comprehensible, and this is not so because Aquinas proceeds.
382 LAURA WESTRA

from lhal first principle, not unlike those thinkers who as sume and
proceed from the non-existence of such first principle and first cause,
and this grounding belief thus becomes their first principle instead.

II
Yet the Gods have not revealed ali things to men
from the beginning; but by seeking me find out better
in time.
(Xenophanes, Frag. 18DK, Kirk & Raven transl.)

The next question that arises is - if there is any truth in the

conclusions which may be drawn from the previous "meditation," why
does Heidegger denounce the whole Aristotelian/Scholastie tradition as
an obscuring turn of thought, incapable of yielding real, existential
truth? This problem will be the topie of my discussion in this part of
the paper.
As 1 turn from an "insight" to philosophical analysis, I will use
Heidegger's own study "On the Origin of the Work of Art" as a guide. I
find it particularly appropriate, not only because of the example he uses
(another painting by Van Gogh), but especially because he clearly
indieates, in his own way, how truth and existence converge in the work
of art, which thus shows itself as one of the most appropriate vehicles
to manifest truth as it is. A "meditation," such as the one I have related,
in and of itself, is not meant to speak of philosophical details. It may -
at best - convey a mood, a feeling, perhaps bring out some common
"resonances" between the two thinkers, some "echoes" which reverber-
ate from the thought of one to that of the other.
In the last paragraph of Part One I make reference to a "reality that
exceeds us and resists our ordering ways." Now the meaning of that
reality in the sense of its source and causal ground is not to be found in
Heidegger as it is in Aquinas. Heidegger's source Of origin is more
Aristotelian perhaps than it is Thomistie. In the "Origin of the Work of
Art", he says:
Origin here means that from which and by which something is what it is and as it is.
What something is, as it is we caII its csscncc. 2

It is therefore intrinsic, as even that "from which" in the passage reverts

back to the essence. It leads back to the essential "thinghood," not
wholly independent of the "structure of a simple propositional state-
ment," 3 yet not totally wound up with it. The Latin input into Greek
 THE WORK OF ART 383

thought through the notion of "ratio," tends to "make an assault upon

it,"4 only appears to fit it," while it uproots and misinterprets instead.
Ratio's insight into the thing, as matter-and form - or as Heidegger
views its Thomistic sense, as "ens creatum," 5 is different in kind from
an understanding of it based upon faith.
At any rate, we are stiU seeking elucidation about the sense of the
work of art and its being what it is, through a quest for is "thinghood."
After speaking of the obscuring qualities of the matter/form dichotomy,
Heidegger tentatively locates "thinghood" in persistence and consistency,
in "that which abides." Thomas would probably refer to that as a thing's
unity in the actuality of its existence, an "act" in which we, ourselves,
participate. Thus ultimate, basic "thinghood" manifests its "self-con-
tained, irreducible spontaneity,"7 and it is more than the "usefulness" of
anything viewed as equipment, that is, Van Gogh's "shoes" as shoes to
be worn, or "Pears, Lemons, and Grapes" as fruit only. Heidegger says
of this essential thinghood "We caII it reliability"8: when we reach it in
thought we can truly say "this painting spoke."9 It spoke to us, however,
in a way we were prepared and opened up for, in a way we could
understand as true. Speaking of Van Gogh's "Shoes," Heidegger says:
"Van Gogh's painting is the disclosure of what the equipment, the pair
of peasant shoes is in truth." 10 The art work as such "opens up ... the
Being of beings," it reveals the "truth of Being as shining forth in the
truth of beings: it lets beings be.
We have now reached the main point: the meaning of truth for
Heidegger, and the connection between "truth" and "letting beings be,"
namely, "freedom." What is freedom? Heidegger answers this question
on his essay "On the essence of Truth": "Freedom, understood is letting
beings be is the fulfiUment and consummation of the essence of truth in
the sense of disclosure of beings." 12 How can one understand freedom
as "letting beings be"? Freedom, as we normaIIy think of it, is related
primarily to us, to the subject, wanting to be free from impediments and
free to pursue its own choices. Heidegger immediately moves the
emphasis to the other: 1 am free when 1 let other beings be. And letting
be is not an attitude of laissez faire, in the sense of lack of concern or
interest. It we say "let me be," we mean "Leave me alone." or "Don't
concern yourself with me." Heidegger instead wants to understand
freedom as letting being be in the sense of manifesting care (Sorge), 13
interest, concern, in order to understand what they truly are and to
allow them to be just that.
384 LAURA WESTRA

1 do not let a man be what he truly is if 1 treat him as a pole as in

Wollaston's welI-known example,14 nor do I treat a fish as what it is if I
put it on the grass, in the sun. The necessary prerequisite of "letting
beings be" is to consider seriously what they are and care enough about
their being to alIow it to be. What has alI of that to do with freedom?
How can an exhortation to care and concern enhance my freedom, and
even more important within the present context, how can it disclose
truth? Such understanding and caring are connected with and represent
"the fulfilIment and consummation of the essence of truth." If we
understand a fish as a fish and a man as a man, we know truthfulIy what
they are and know the truth of their being. In this "freeing" type of
understanding truth comes forth only when beings are approached and
viewed in their situatedness. We normally approach non-human, and
even human entities as "ready-to-hand" 15 or as tools there for our use,
gaining value exclusively through their usefulness to us. Viewing our-
selves instead as situated alongside these entities, disclosing their being
as their place within Being and specifying our own at the same time,
will do away with aspects of our usual attitude that inhibit a turnaround
in our consciousness and thought, and when our actions reflect our
understanding they embody the essence of truth: we allow beings the
freedom to be themselves through our understanding of what it is for
them to be whether they are parts of the sky, or simply other mortals
such as ourselves. 16 Moreover, we allow ourselves the freedom to be
what we truly are only when we understand our own being and place
within this manifold.
In the "Origin of the Work of Art," Heidegger asks: "What is truth?
Truth means the nature of the true." 17
That which is can only be, as being if it stands within and stand out within what is
lighted in this clearing. 18

The "lighting" or "lighting centre itself encircles aU that, as does the

nothing ...": it is the "open space" which allows Being and beings to be
and stand as they are. That is where truth is and "happens," and one of
the ways for truth to happen is through the work of art. "Truth happens
in Van Gogh's painting," 19 Heidegger states. Its work is to reveal beings
as unconcealed (therefore free), which means they are not seen or
shown as separate, isolated from Being, which in turn provides only the
backdrop or far horizon. On the contrary, beings-as-unconcealed reveal
at the same time the world, the earth, gods and mortals (as discussed
 THE WORK OF ART 385

above): the whole is therefore seen as delicately balanced, poised, and

interconnected: truth happening in the beauty of the work of art.
"Beauty is one way in which truth occurs as unconcealedness."2o
The artist's creative endeavour, his craft, is a "bringing forth." The
art work "Shoes" perhaps, is a presence which does not single out one
individual aspect of a thing, or a specific presence on1y, but rather one
which reveals Being within it. It does not do so propositionally through
formulae or arguments: it is an in-depth understanding which encom-
passes the "fourfold,"21 frees beings, and thus permits "truth" to
"establish itself in the work." 22
Now truth clearly offers at the same time, and without conflict both a
position and a negative aspect for Heidegger. The former, as "pre-
sencing," the latter, as "unconcealedness." The "presence of what is
present" 23 may be sought in the "id quod est" of Aquinas. In fact, the
"essence" Heidegger has been seeking is not an essential "what" (or
"quid"): it is what "occurs essentially (wesen), rather than "essence" (das
Wesen). What is the difference, we may well ask, between the two
expressions? Whereas the latter is static and formal, the former is
existential, a process, an occurring (rather than a finished "occur-
rence").24 Does this suggest any basic, grounding link to the thinking of
St. Thomas? What is truth for Aquinas?
He too starts with a seemingly "essential" definition, as he teUs us
that St. Augustine, for instance, has said that "the truth is that which
iS."2S Yet Aquinas' understanding of the expres sion is not platonic or
formal; on the contrary, he states, one ought to say - prima facie -
that existence and truth may be identified. But to affirm the existence of
something is not the same as to affirm its truth. Truth resides primarily
in the relation between the thing and the intellect. And if the most
appropriate aspect of truth is relational, then truth, in its core meaning,
involves two entities standing in a certain specific relation to one
another. So that, totaUy aside from the importance and the meaning of
the relation itself, what is firmly established in this approach is that one
of the relata, inescapably, is the act of existence of the thing it self. It
seems to me that this aspect of St. Thomas' thought cannot be overem-
phasized, as it tends to suggest very vividly the pivotal import of
existence in its actuality which one will find again and again in his
metaphysical thinking. Moreover, if we examine his noetics, we will also
see that existence is as integral to the first step of cognition as it is to its
final goal.
386 LAURA WESTRA

Now truth can be said to be in three ways: first, in that which is, first
in a sense, because the thing's real, actual existence precedes the
relation in which truth resides; secondly, it it precisely this relation, that
is, the adequatio of the thing and the intellect, which represents the
formal mode of truth through which we judge of the existence of things.
Finally, truth is defined as that which declares and manifests that which
is. This final aspect of truth, it seems to me is rather incidental as it
refers to the expression of what the second mode judges; it makes
manifest what was there, implicitly, in the judgement of the relation
between thing and intellect. 26 Perhaps it may not be out of place to
compare the re/ation (though not the relata in themselves) to that
between Being and Heidegger's notion of Da-sein. As the expression
implies, Da-Sein is "being present," but not being there through being a
subject, attempting to separate itself from Being, and thus scrutinize it
at a distance, as an object. Rather it is a case of being-present-with-
Being as part of it, in an intrinsic rather than extrinsic relation.
The question that arises now is, how far is the thinking of Aquinas,
as briefly sketched out in the last few pages, from that of Heidegger?
We might want to consider the question with particular care, as a recent
attempt to view the two philosophers side-by-side, that of Caputo, finds
precisely in Heidegger's "alethiology" the clearest example of that
unbridgeable gulf that separates them as he discusses "... how far
removed the alethiological conception of Being is from St. Thomas'
realistic, objectivistic conceptions." 29 Caputo further finds it "difficult to
imagine" 30 that a philosophy of aA1j1}Eta might be found in the texts of
Aquinas; his metaphysics - he says - are characterized as a "philoso-
phy of realitas and not dA1j1}Ela. 31 r, for my part, find it hard to imagine
how one can drive a wedge between aA1j1}Eta and either reality or
actuality, in the thomistic sense. Heidegger does say:
The decisive turn in the destiny of Being as EVEQyna, lies in the transition to
'actualitas.' 32
He sees the transltIon to "actualitas" followed by a progression to
Wirklichkeit (reality) and finally Objektivitiit (objectivity). In these
moves, Heidegger feels, one can follow man's quest to "overwhelm the
entire earth and its atmosphere, to arrogate to himself in forms of
energy the concealed powers of nature ...." 33 Y et at the same time:
This same defiant man is entirely at a loss simply ta say what is to say what this is -
that a thing iS:14
 THE WORK OF ART 387

But St. Thomas' understanding of the actus essendi is not the prelude to
an "objective," "reifying" separation, between a defiant, dominant,
"ordering" man and the universe. On the contrary, by showing clearly
the actual existence in man and things and their equal relation (that is, a
relation where both relata carry in a sense equal weight), in truth and
knowing, his thinking seeks to re-establish that intimate link which
creates and sustains aH that is, while never permitting it ta be viewed
as entirely self-sufficient, apart from the ground ar source of such
existence.
The move in Aquinas is not towards self-sufficiency, separation from
the rest of creation and the creator, but rather towards an under-
standing of the intimate bond which foHows upon a true grasp of the
actuality of being, as it exists in itself and in aH that is, including
ourselves. It seems to me therefore that - whether Heidegger was
familiar enough with aH the texts ta recognize it ar not - the medieval
period is not alI of a piece, and Aquinas does carry on and preserve the
understanding of evfQYEta which Heidegger recognizes in the thinking
of Anaximander, though he enriches it somewhat. 35
A possible way of shedding light an the problem might be to turn to
Being and Time and Heidegger's own discussion of the relation
between "the traditional conception of truth and its foundation" (with
its specific references ta Thomas Aquinas), and his own understanding
of the notion. He traces Aquinas' thought, appropriately enough, back
to Aristotle, but he translates "rwv 7lQaQţlarwv OţlOlWţlara" as "the
soul's experiences; its "representations," - he adds - "are likenings of
things." 36 Since this interpretation is given as the Aristotelian back-
ground for Aquinas' "adequatio intellectus et rei" doctrine, its impor-
tance cannot be overemphasized. For Aristotle (as for Aquinas after
him) forms, essences ideas, or any other "representations" are simply
not that which we know (quod). They are instead that through which
we know (quo) things.
Therefore these are not the things we know, rather they represent
the way we can grasp things so that the identity of the knower and thing
known can take place through a process which will not require the
matter of the entity ta become part of us in the instant of cognition.
Because of this, the "convenientio," the term Aquinas uses to describe
the relation that truth is, is precisely the "coming together" of
Heidegger's translation. But this "coming together" is an existential
process: it does not set up the "ideal content" Heidegger decries over
388 LAURA WESTRA

and against the real. In fact, the judgement to which Heidegger justly
points as the locus of the truth relation in Aquinas, is indeed only an
existential coming together whereby both relata, as previously noted,
are equally "in act" (therefore not "ideal entities), in order for the truth
relation to come to be. For Aquinas only actual existents can be known.
In essence then, for Aquinas the judgement is existential and it does
not entail "the ontologically unclarified separation of the Real and the
Ideal" that Heidegger decriesP Heidegger describes his understanding
of the relation between "intellectus" and "res" as follows:

In judgement one must distinguish between the judging as Real psychical process and
that which is judged, as the ideal content. 38

As stated, this sentence manifests clearly the basic misunderstanding

that colors Heidegger's interpretation of both Aristotle and Aquinas. If
one of the two levels (Le., "ideal" and "real"), or two ways of Being is
not be classed under the heading of non-real, non-existential, then the
two levels are not in fact "broken asunder," and one cannot therefore
say that they can "never be pieced together," and the problem
Heidegger envisions no longer exists. When Heidegger offers the
example of "the picture hanging on the wall," 39 and the differentiation
between the phenomenologically incorrect "slipping in" of a representa-
tion between he who judges and the picture judged on one hand, and
the direct confrontation between judger and thing judged he advocates,
he does not appear to be aware of the fact that the position he suggests
as the right one is precisely that of both Aristotle and Aquinas, once
their language and thought are understood.
Thus Aquinas' doctrine of truth indeed "lets the entity be seen as it is
in itself' with no intermediaries to interfere with the phenomenological
immediacy of the judging. The only difference (and it is indeed a
serious one) is that Aquinas insists on grounding causally the entity
judged, as his interest in truth-seeking does not end with our relation to
the thing, without seeking or expecting further explanations beyond it.
Heidegger, unlike Aquinas does not require reasons why a thing is a
"true thing"; the question makes little sense within his thought, and the
double relation which grounds Aquinas' doctrine of truth is not even
considered in his discussion of Aquinas' thought in this respect.
In the section, "Understanding and Interpretation," Heidegger states:
When entities within-the-world are discovered along with the Being of Dasein - that is
 THE WORK OF ART 389

- when they have carne ta be understood - we say they have meaning (sinn). But that
which is understood taken strictly is not the meaning but the entity, ar, alternately,
Being.

Aquinas could have said the same thing, to some extent: what we know
is not the quo but the quod, the entity in its act of existence. For
Aquinas then, it is the existential manifestation of being which is
grounding and primordial, and without it no further intellectual grasp of
truth could possibly ensue. The original grounding relation however is
also manifested at the same time, in the same moment, as the existential
manifestation of the thing necessarily attests to the grounding force of
the act that makes it that which it is.
In each individual being, in each reaching (similar to Heidegger's
understanding of our "resolute being that does not close up in itself,"40
and lets being be) - the attempt to reach freedom and truth is nof for
St. Thomas just one act of knowing, or the revealing as true of one
individual being. Rather the "earth, gods, the sky, and mortals," or
perhaps God, being, and man in their reciprocal, intrinsically linked
albeit proportionately participated relation, are aH manifest and present.
In such a moment, truth and freedom are actuaHy and truly present. As
Schmitz has it, speaking of metaphysics:

Its last word is not that a certain thing was ar will be, ar even that it merely is, but that
ali being, including what was and what is yet ta be just manifest a presence. This
converis past, future and present into being qua being.41

That is how "Truth establishes itself in the work," since "Truth

essentially occurs only as the strife between lighting and concealing in
the opposition of world and earth."42 A parallel "shining forth" takes
place in St. Thomas' existential notion of truth, albeit not in an identical
manner, because of the further causal component threading through the
various inter-connected relations he outlines. And it is not by losing
philosophical depth in a diffuse "mystical" feeling, but in deepened
probing understanding of the art work that the "becoming and hap-
pening of truth" can be preserved. Art in general can be linked to the
poetic "saying": "... the saying of the world and earth the saying of the
world and earth the saying of the arena of their conflict and thus of the
place of aU nearness and remoteness of the gods." 43
I believe that is what I saw, thought, and tried to express to the best
of my ability in Amsterdam, in line with Heidegger's own thought. And
390 LAURA WESTRA

it seems to me that we should not allow any characterization of

"scholasticism," or "the middle ages" to prevent us from discovering the
existential rhythm of Aquinas' understanding of us, being, being itself,
and truth. For Heidegger, ek-sistent Da-sein is the window of the truth,
thus the freedom of Being. It is our comportment, our way of being-in-
the-world that manifests that Care necessarily present, just as the thing
we are judging is. Thus Aquinas' understanding of truth and our quest
for it preserves gives value and clarifies every aspect of the process,
from the reason for the original quest, through its necessary steps
leading to a goal which answers not only the question "what is truth"
but also the implicit but cardinally important "why." If our interest is in
existence, and our drive is toward existence, then surely Aquinas shows
us how we can know existence - as truth. Therefore we can say that an
examination of truth as existence in Aquinas tends to lead one to
understand truth-in-existence and to see that for him as for us, it is not
"ideal content" or intermediate "representations" between us and things
that are required for us to achieve truth. That is a simple misunder-
standing of both Aristotle and Aquinas on this subject. For both, truth
arises only when we grasp what is manifested to us: existence in truth.
Heidegger would not have found this conclusion a totally alien one.

Department of History and Philosophy,

Clemson University

NOTES

1 Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," in Rasie Writings, pp. 135-137.
2 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Poetry, Language and
Thought, A. Hofstadter, trans!. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 17.
3 Ibid., p. 24.
4 Ibid., p. 25.

5 Ibid., p. 29.
6 Ibid., p. 30.
7 Ibid., p. 32.
8 Ibid., p. 34.
9 Ibid., p. 35.
10 Ibid., p. 36.

Il For a thorough examination of this point, see Thomas Fay S. J.'s insightful work
Heidegger: the Critique of Logic (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977).
12 Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," op. cit., p. 29.
13 Martin Heidegger, Reing and Time, J. McQuarrie and E. Robinson, trans!. (New
York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 235 and passim, (no. 192).
 THE WORK OF ART 391

14 Joel Feinberg, "Wollaston and His Critics," in Rights, Justice and the Bounds of
Liberty. Feinberg is no kinder to WOllaston than Hume was and is equally lacking in
understanding of a doctrine which seems to me deeper and better than most critics will
admit.
15 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, J. McQuarrie and E. Robinson, transl. (New
York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 101 and passim.
16 Martin Heidegger, "Building, Dwelling, Thinking," in Basic Writings, p. 327 and
passim.
17 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," op. cit., p. 5I.

18 Ibid., p. 53.
19 Ibid., p. 56.
20 Ibid., p. 59.
21 Martin Heidegger, "Building, Dwelling, Thinking," op. cit., p. 327.

22 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," op. cit., pp. 57-58.
2.1 Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," op. cit., p. 138.
24 Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking; D. Farrell, Kress, and F. A. Capuzzi,
transl. (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 113.
25 Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate 1.1.1., Leonine Edition, VoI. X.
26 Ibid.

27 John Caputo, The Mystical Elements of Heidegger's Thought, p. 189.

28 Ibid., p. 198.
29 Ibid., p. 199.
30 Martin Heidegger, "The Anaximander Fragment," in Early Greek Thinking, op. cit.,
p.57.
11 Martin Heidegger, "Building, Dwelling, Thinking," op. cit., p. 327.
12 1 am not alone in the belief that at least up to a point, St. Thomas and Heidegger are
not as distant from one another as Heidegger would us believe. This implies no
disrespect: great philosophers are not necessarily great commentators. Among others,
B. Mondin in St. Thomas Aquinas' Philosophy in the Commentary on the Sentences
(lbe Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975) addresses himself ta this question in the closing
paragraphs of his chapter on the 'Metaphysics of Being,' pp. 56-57.
11 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, op. cit., p. 257, (no. 214).
34 Ibid., p. 259, (no. 216).
15 Ibid., p. 260.
16 Ibid., pp. 192-193, (no. 151).
J7 Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," op. cit., p. 133.
18 Kenneth Schmitz, "A Moment of Truth," Review of Metaphysics, Val. XXXIII, no. 4
(June 1980), pp. 686-687.
19 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," op. cit., p. 62.
40 Ibid., p. 74.
 LOIS OPPENHEIM

THE ONTOLOGY OF LANGUAGE IN A

POST-STRUCTURALIST FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE:
EXPLOSIVE DISCOURSE IN MONIQUE WITTIG

In the essay which follows, our aim is to investigate a notion of the

relation of spoken and written discourse to the elements in general.
Though informed by an explanation of the poetics of fire, its purpose is
to demonstrate the significance - for related contexts of inquiry - of
the work we have been doing here on ali the elements. Thus we begin
with a quote from Paul de Man which provides a good indication of our
intentions:

The idea of totality suggests closed forms that strive for ordered and consistent systems
and have an almost irresistible tendency to transform themselves into objective struc-
tures. Yet, the temporal factor, so persistently forgotten, should remind us that the form
is never anything but a process on the way to its completion. 1

"In 1857 an English lady published a book on how to travel in

Norway as an 'unprotected female.' She is brief on the subject of men:
'the only use of a gentleman in travelling is to look after the luggage,
and we take care to have no luggage.''' 2 So begins the introduction by
Janet Todd to her book Men by Women, a collection of essays
investigating maleness and the characterization of men by women
writers. As Todd is quick to point out, the great majority of women
writers are not so indifferent to men as the author cited above though
often, we might add, the study of men is but a preliminary effort by
women to comprehend themselves. In the consideration of men by
women, moreover, it is most frequently a particular male type that is
explored as opposed to men as a gender. The same cannot be said of
studies of women: the male habit of judging womankind, describing
female weaknesses and measuring women's abilities, has long pervaded
male characterization of women, and womankind has thus historically
maintained an association in literature with the least rigorous, in many
ways trivial, and consistent1y isolating acrtivities imposed on women's
function by the patriarchal values of our society.
In Les Guerilleres, whose title denoting female warriors is both
untranslatable into English and indicative of an effort to break with that
393
A- T. Tymienieeka (ed.), Analeeta Husserliana, VoI XXIII, 393-405.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
394 LOIS OPPENHEIM

association, Monique Wittig deals with the process of the emancipation

of women from the patriarchal definitions that have come between
them and their self-understanding. Not written on the level of an
expository investigation of women's experience of auy secondary cul-
tural reality, but rather on that of a quasi-narrative, quasi-poetic
evocation of a primary relationship to language as the fundamental
organizing structure of the social order, Wittig's text aims to uncover
the assimilation of sound and meaning in a genderless practice of
language. The mood of Wittig's narrative is familiar to readers of
feminist literature. Its metaphorical and ontological articulation of the
female struggle against the consequences of a male-dominated socializa-
tion, however, (manifested most concretely in an explosive imagery
nourished not only by the thematic content of the text, but by a
powerful and more primary association of women's destiny with
cosmology, a striking identification of ideology with the teleology of
nature) is not. Our interest in exploring this imaginative meditation on
the displacement of a patriarchal system by the mutinous rejection of its
values by women is twofold: On the one hand, the question presents
it self as to whether the explosive discourse in Wittig's work - the
revolutionary discourse which strives to destroy convention and
authenticate a lauguage expressive of a universal or genderless experi-
ence of life, a discourse clearly derivative of the cosmological elements
which feed imaginative, and thereby, aesthetic production - whether
this discourse, when viewed in the context of a phenomenological or,
more specifically, a Bachelardian orientation toward the natural world,
when viewed in the context, in other words, of an oneiric intuition
of the cosmos which at times appears to inject into language an
androgynous function and at times a resonance of sexual determinism,
is entirely compatible with the polemics of the author's feminist
perspective, and, on the other hand, to what degree the ontology of
language is compromised by the dispersion of its linguistic praxis
beyond the feminist framework.
In Wittig's text, language bears both a metaphoric relation, that is to
say a sublimated relation, and a direct, non-representational relation to
nature and the physical order. The first is apprehensible through what
Bachelard terms "the process of interiorization," whereby the imagistic
association of language with the elements of nature assumes psycho-
logical values. With regard to fire, for example, the sublimation of
the "materialistic intuition" 3 is revealed in a dialectic of purity and
 THE ONTOLOGY OF LANGUAGE 395

impurity 4 that Bachelard attributes to this element. Bachelard's under-

standing of fire symbolism in terms of sin and evil, and passion and
sexuality, on the one hand, and in terms of purification through the
destruction of material impurities,S on the other hand, is not without
significance for the study of Wittig's text.
The direct, non-representational relation of language to nature,
however, is not to be grasped within the context of a "dialectical
sublimation,"6 but rather within the context of a more direct transfor-
mation of the simultaneously destructive and constructive forces of
nature into Wittig's revolutionary or revisionary discourse. Both the
contact of metaphor with the natural world and that of Wittig's non-
sublimated discourse are perhaps best exemplified in the privileged
leitmotif of the circle - with its biological symbolism, its structural
unification, and thereby obliteration, of points of origin and destination,
its geometric crystallization of both opening and closure - which
serves at once as the central metaphor of the text and the primary
non-verbal or gestural symbol. We read, for example, of the circle of
dancers, of female warriors, whose rhythmic movements, culminating in
bacchanalian revelries, exhilarate the women in revolt. We read of the
conspiratorial sign of the circle formed by the joining of thumb and
forefinger to indicate, by the upward or downward direction of the
hand, favorable or unfavorable news of the progress of the women's
revolutionary efforts. And we read of the circular wanderings of the
guerilleres through a closed system - linguistic and cosmic - of female
subordination:

Quels que soient les itineraires, quels que soient les points de depart qu'elles choisissent,
elles aboutissent a la meme place. Les parcours sont paralleles, equidistant, de plus en
plus etroits a mesure qu'ils s'approchent du centre de la figure. Si elles suivent le trace
de l'interieur vers l'exterieur, elles doivent parcourir le plus grand des cercles avant de
trouver le passage a franchir qui les ramene au centre. Le systeme est clos. Aucun
rayon partant du centre ne permet de l'elargir ou de le faire eclater. Il est en meme
termps illimite, la juxtaposition des cercles qui vont s'elargissant figure toutes les
revolutions possibles. C'est virtuellement la sphere infinie dont le centre est partout, la
circonference nulle part. 7
[Whatever the itineraries may be, whatever the points of departure that they choose,
they arrive at the same place. The paths are parallel, equidistant, narrower and
narrower proportionate to their nearing of the center of the figure. If they follow the
track from the inside to the outside, they must follow the largest of circles before
finding the passage leading them to the center. The system is closed. No radius
emanating from the center allows it to be enlarged or to burst. At the same time, it is
396 LOIS OPPENHEIM

unlimited, the juxtaposition of the circles which grow larger and larger illustrates ali the
possible revolutions. It is virtually the infinite sphere whose center is everywhere, whose
circumference is nowhere.J

Perhaps most significantly we read:

Elles disent, le langage que tu parles est fait de signes qui il proprement parler
designent ce qu'ils se sont appropries. Ce sur quoi ils n'ont pas mis la main, ce sur quoi
ils n'ont pas fondu comme des rapaces aux yeux multiples, cela n'apparaÎt pas dans le
langage que tu parles. Cela se manifeste juste dans l'intervalle que les maÎtres n'ont pas
pu combler avec leurs mots de proprietaires et de possesseurs, cela peut se chercher
dans le lacune, dans tout ce qui n'est pas la continuite de leurs discours, dans le zero, le
O, le cercle parfait que tu inventes pour les emprisonner et pour les vaincre. 8
[They say, the language that you speak is made of signs which designate what they have
appropriated for themselves. What they have not laid their hands on, what they have
not pounced upon like multiple eyed birds of prey, does not appear in the language you
speak. This shows itself precisely in the gap the masters have not been able to fill with
their words as proprietors and owners, you can find it in the lacuna, in ali that is not the
continuation of their discourse, in the zero, in the O, the perfect circle that you invent
to imprison and defeat them.]

The metaphoric or symbolic implications of the circle are evident:

Enslaved, encompassed, encircled by convention, by social structures,
women are enclosed in a tradition of patriarchal control of the social
and cultural orders. And they in turn will act to encircle their victim,
their enemy in this revolutionary eftort which defines the framework of
the feminist endeavor. The implications of its ontological function are
less clear. In Bachelardian terminology, we can consider "l'etre de
l'image"9 [the being of the image] at the point where it eftaces the world
and appears unrelated to any connotative past. '''Tout etre semble en
soi rond'," 10 [AlI being appears in itself round], Bachelard quotes from
Jaspers. And from Van Gogh, "La vie est probablement ronde,"11 [Life
is probably round]. "Si l'on se soumet a la force hypnotique de telles
expressions, voila qu'on se tient tout entier dans la rondeur de l'etre,
qu'on vit dans la rondeur de la vie ..." 12 [If one submits to the hypnotic
force of such expressions, one then maintains oneself entirely within the
roundness of life.], proposes Bachelard. In this sense, the graphic
reproduction of the circle on the page at various points in the text and
the narrative reproduction of the circle within the thematic context of
the author's feminist eftort correspond not only to the arrestment of the
proprietary function of speech ar sexually oppressive discourse, and to
the rejection of those post-Freudian cultural associations of the sign
 THE ONTOLOGY OF LANGUAGE 397

with the supposition of female physiological inferiority, but to the

experience of circularity, to the "being of the image," to the anonymity,
universality, and hence impartiality of a language conceived prior to its
suffocation by a deterministic and transformational network of com-
pulsory meanings.
In an essay entitled "The Locus of the Action," Wittig describes this
notion of a primary language and the effects of a patriarchal socializa-
tion as follows:
The use of speech, such as it is practised everyday, is an operation which suffocates
language and thus the ego whose deadly stake is the hiding, the dissimulating, as
carefully as possible, of the nature of language. What is caught unaware here and
suffocates are the words before the words, before the "fathers," before the "mothers,"
before the "you's," beiore "the arising of the dead," before "structuralisma," before
"capitalisma." What is smothered by ali kinds of talk, whether it be that of the street or
of the philosopher's study, is primary language (of which the dictionary give us an
approximate idea): the one in which meaning has not yet occurred, the one which is for
ali, which belongs to ali, and which everyone in turn can take, use, bend toward a
meaning. For this is the social pact which binds us, the exclusive contract (none other is
possible), a social contract which exists just as Rousseau imagined it, one where the
"right of the strongest" is a contradiction in terms, one where there are neither men nor
women, neither races nor oppression, nothing but what can be named progressively,
word by word, language. 13

In this perspective, the leitmotif of the circle in Les Guerilleres may

be understood as that embryonic source, that nucleus of a natural
order, wherein the universality of experience (and the equality of
genders which it presupposes) is apprehensible prior to the corrosive
effects of language on an authentic reciprocity of human communica-
tion: no longer the metaphorical unveiling of either opposition (of, in
other words, enclosure, confinement, enslavement, and so on) or of
solidarity (of the unification of women in a common effort toward a
redefinition of self and function in society), the reproduction of the
circIe on the page or within the narration would relate as what Paul de
Man calls a "material analogism" 14 to the harmonious order of the
cosmic ~ystem. Such a phenomenological interpretation, moreover,
would support our contention that the retum to the "embryonic
elements" of a naturallanguage as described by Wittig in Les Guerilleres
corresponds, on every level of its expression, to the universal value of
cosmic [unction. Wittig writes, for example, that the warriors
... n'utilisent pas pour parler de leurs sexes des hyperboles des metaphores, elles ne
procedent pas par accumulations ou par gradations. Elles ne recitent pas les longues
398 LOIS OPPENHEIM

litanies, dont le moteur est une imprecation sans fin. Elles ne s'efforcent pas de
multiplier les lacunes de fa.;:on que dans leur ensemble elles signifient un lapsus
volontaire. Eiles disent que toutes ces formes designent un langage suranne. Elles disent
qu'il faut tout recommencer. Elles disent qu'un grand vent balaie la terre. Elles disent
que le soleil va se lever. 1l

[... do not use hyperbole or metaphor to speak of their sexes, they do not proceed by
accumulations or gradations. They do not recite long speeches, whose motivation is an
endless imprecation. They do not strive to multiply the gaps so as to signify in their
ensemble a voluntary lapse. They say that aII these forms correspond to an antiquated
language. They say that everything is to be done aII over again. They say that a powerful
wind is sweeping over the earth. They say that the sun is going to rise.]

This windsweep of the earth, this sunrise upon a new linguistic horizon
serves to identify not only the feminist confrontation with the politics of
language, the rebellion against the operation of a patriarchal value
system on language, but a mode of linguistic reference to the world, a
non-representational while nonetheless referential mode which recent
critical inquiry has begun to re-think. Wittig's circle is thus not only the
objective structure emblematic of the marital contract, as of woman
herself valued, in the words of N elly Furman, as, on the one hand, "a
person in her own right, and on the other ... simply as a relational sign
between men," 16 the depersonalized "object of desire and object of
exchange," 17 but the key to a structuralizing process of signification, to
the zero degree of absolute meaning, to the juncture of language and
life. As such, the O, the circle, the metaphor of literary and cosmic
paternity, represents the lacunae, the interregna, the faults in written or
spoken discourse - which clandestinely maintain language in direct
association with the perceptual world - as well as the empirically
constituted, or consensually derived, closed system of meaning:
LACUNESLACUNESLACUNES
CONTRE TEXTES
CONTRE SENS
CE QUI EST A ECRlRE VIOLENCE
HORS TEXTE
DANS UNE AUTRE ECRITURE
PRESSANT MENA<;ANT
MARGES ESPACES INTERVALLES
SANS RELACHE
GESTE RENVERSEMENT 18
 THE ONTOLOGY OF LANGUAGE 399

(LACUNAE LACUNAE LACUNAE

COUNTER TEXTS
COUNTER MEANINGS
WHAT IS TO BE WRITTEN VIOLENCE
OUT OF TEXT
IN ANOTHER WRITING
PRESSING THREATENING
MARGINS SPACES INTERV ALS
WITHOUT CEASING
MOTION OVERTHROW)
It is precisely the lacunae, in other words, the openings or gaps in the
linguistic system, which attestboth to the continuity, and hence the
temporality, of the signifying process and to the referential relation of
language, through the In-der- Welt-sein of a speaking subject, to the
world. And it is these interregna, in addition to other "actions linked to
the use of speech," other "accidents of discourse (pauses, excess, lack,
tone, intonation)" and "effects relating to it (tropisms, gestures)," as
described by Wittig 19 which provoke her, in the essay cited above, to
refer to the novelistic material with which the writer Nathalie Sarraute
works, for example, as specifically, "interlocutionary" as opposed to
"locutionary" or designative of mere words themselves apart from their
constitutive framework of subjective usage. For Wittig, language -
maintained within the social, political, ontological, and thereby per-
ceptual context of its utterance - exists materially: "It is a sound, it is
written, it is not only a symbol." And thus, "There are words which kill.
Words which kill are words of oppression. And they don't kill sym-
bolically. They kill in reality. They kill directly."2o
Within the perimeters of an ontologic al reading of Wittig's text - in
which the very question of being is inscribed within the plenitude of the
linguistic act - the question arises as to the degree of compatibility of
this universal experience of language, this linguistic ontology described
by Wittig as the experiencing of a basic language, with the affirmation,
on the one hand, of a psychological valorization - and implicit gender
categorization - of elemental imagery, such as that put forth by
Bachelard, and, on the other hand, the affirmation by many feminist
critics of a uniquely female expression. Bachelard has written:
To assert that fire is an element is, in our opinion, to set up sexual resonances; it is
400 LOIS OPPENHEIM

thinking of the substance in its propagation, in its generation; it is rediscovering the

alchemistic inspiration which spoke of a water or an earth elemented by fire, of a
substance that was embryonized by sulphur. 21

We might add, however, that Bachelard remains ambiguous on the

question of ascribing a gender context to the elements which animate
our imaginative reveries. He goes on to say, for example, that "... as
long as one does not give a precise indication of this element, or a
detailed description of the various phases of this elementation, one has
the dual advantage of the touch of mystery and the force of the
primitive image."22
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, on the other hand, co-authors of
The Madwoman in the Attie, in focusing their attention on the strategic
attempts by several 19th century women writers to free themselves of
authorial authority, vigorously and unambiguously undertake the con-
struction of a feminist poetics which would display a uniquely female
perception. Not only was the woman writer historically prevented from
confronting her authorial self as a woman, the authors maintain, but she
was traditionally "dis-eased and infected by the sentences of patriarchy"
though "unable to deny the urgency of that 'poet-fire' she felt within
herself...."23 For Gilbert and Gubar, the female voice distinguished
itself both through the renunciation of traditions that alienated women
from writing, through the struggle implicit in women's writing against a
male view of life experience, and through the delineation of another
view, a female view of such experience.
It appears to us that any attempt to interpret Wittig's explosive or
revolutionary discourse - the thematie exploration of the female
appropriation of male standards of behavior (aggression, rebelliousness,
and so on), the imagistie articulation in cosmic metaphors of the female
struggle to overcome patriarchal authority, the symbolie association of
female definition with a prevailing male consciousness - either in terms
of the "claustrophobic rage and hunger for freedom" 24 produced by
confinement within a patriarchal society or in terms of the "sexual
resonances" described by Bachelard would prove dangerously reductive
and distortive of the most profound intent of the author. Nelly Furman,
in her essay "The Politics of Language: Beyond the Gender Principle?"
has pointed out, moreover, that Gilbert and Gubar's effort to describe
"both the experience that generates metaphor and the metaphor that
creates experience," 25 implies "a causal relationship between experience
 THE ONTOLOGY OF LANGUAGE 401

and metaphor which simultaneously suggests that life and language are
conceived as separate (or separable) entities."26 In view of this irony,
this interconnection of life and language within their very separability,
which uncovers a striking inconsistency in the argument by post-
structuralist feminist critics for the purely arbitrary foundation of
linguistic meaning, we would not subscribe to such an analysis of
Wittig's work. Considered entirely within the context of a revolutionary
effort, within the framework of a struggle against the effects of a
patriarchal socialization, Wittig's text would be reduced to a level of
understanding that the author herself rejects by subscribing to the
notion of a perhaps unrealizable, yet nevertheless conceivable basic or
universal language, one whichdefies by its very notion of authentic
reciprocity, beyond categorization by sex, in human communication, the
conception of any distinct (male or) female voice.
We might remember, in this regard, that Virginia Woolf, in her
argument for androgyny in art, maintained that the pervasion of gender
consciousness was tantamount to artistic failure. Woolf insisted that the
presence of feminist anger, resentment, or bitterness in literature '''o ..
introduces a distortion and is frequently the cause of weakness.''' 27
"The vision becomes too masculine or it becomes too feminine," she
wrote, "it loses its perfect integrity and, with that, its most essential
quality as a work of art.'"28 For Woolf, the "killing" of the "angel in the
house" by no means implied the diffusion in art of an exaggerated
consciousness of female identity. Quite the contrary. And Wittig's
revisionary discourse, with its explosive imagery transparent upon a
cosmic reality, precisely transcends the self-interestness of the feminist
polemic to maintain that artistic integrity so profoundly visible within
the ontology of language and the enigmatic correspondence between art
and being.
The resolution of this apparent incompatibility of a feminist reading,
such as the one outlined by Gilbert and Gubar, with an ontological
reading of Wittig's text might, however, be found in one of two places:
we might, for one, look to Jacques Derrida's notion of sexual plurality
in which the feminist endeavor is conceived not in terms of malel
female polarity, but in terms of a multiplicity of sexual voices. In an
interview with Christie V. McDonald, Derrida muses on such a sexuality:

What if we were to reach, what if we were to approach here (for one does not arrive at
this as one would at a determined location) the area of a relationship to the other where
402 LOIS OPPENHEIM

the code of sexual rnarks would no longer be discrirninating? The relationship would
not be a-sexual, far from it, but would be sexual otherwise: beyond the binary difference
that governs the decorurn of ali codes, beyond the opposition feminine/masculine,
beyond bisexuality as well, beyond homosexuality and heterosexuality which corne to
the same thing. 29

Now this vision of a sexual plurality tending beyond the striving for
totality - and hence closure - intrinsic to any consistent system of
oppositions, in this case categorization by gender, "would, of course,
explode the fabric of our society which we now conceive within the
terms of the restricted economy of exchange provided by heterosexual
marriage ..." 30 Nevertheless, to the degree that it can be imagined as a
substitution for sexual polarity, it does contribute to closing the gap
between Wittig's concept of language as the expression of a primary,
universal life experience and Gilbert and Gubar's concept of a female
style or content in writing by women. Derrida, moreover, draws near
to a resolution of the conflict between the notion of a perceptual
referentiality of discourse - characteristic of ontological investigation
- and that of the arbitrary determination of meaning characteristic of
structural analysis:

If in a rather conventional way I caII by the narne of discourse, living conscious

representation of a text within the experience of the person who writes or reads it, and
if the text constant1y goes beyond this representation by the entire systern of its
resources and its own laws, then the question of genealogy exceeds by far the possi-
bilities that are at present given for its elaboration. 31

In a statement reminiscent of that by Wittig cited above on the lacunae,

counter texts, counter meanings, margins, spaces, intervals, and so on,
Derrida proclaims that
We know that the rnetaphor that would describe thc genealogy of a text correct1y is still
forbidden. In its syntax and its lexicon, in its spacing, by its punctuation, its lacunae, its
rnargins, the historical appurtenance of a text is never a straight line. It is neither
causality by contagion, nor the simple accumulation of layers. Nor even the pure
juxtaposition of borrowed pieces. And if a text always gives itse1f a certa in representa-
tion of its own roots, these roots live only by that representation, by never touching the
soil, so to speak. Which undoubtedly destroys their radical essence, but not the
necessity of their racinating function. 32

In the destruction of their "radical essence," Derrida's disseminated

roots of textuality falI short of a Heideggerian disclosure of existential
mode in language. (And in this sense Derrida does not really offer us a
 THE ONTOLOGY OF LANGUAGE 403

re-reading of Heidegger, as so many critics would have it.) Neverthe-

less, by preserving "the necessity of their racinating Junction," Derrida
circumscribes the an too often unacknowledged, but nevertheless real,
referential etiology of the text in the subjective Weltanschauung. He is
not, of course, content to leave textuality on this level of function,
however, for present in the etiology of the text is also the "trace" of
another origin, an anterior, already sublimated presence which makes
of the text the product of intertextual regeneration, transformation, and
differentiation.
In the Derridean perspective, therefore, Wittig's explosive discourse
- informed by an elemental or cosmological intuition - would not be
entirely linked either with a feminist tradition of struggle for emancipa-
tion or with an ontological unveiling of a unique ego-world relation.
Rather, it would posit the aggressive content and the aggressive style
within the aggressivity ofwriting itselJ.
In a second effort toward the resolution of the incompatibility of the
feminist with the ontological readings of Wittig's text, we might look to
Heiddegger's notion of the interpretive process itself and here Wittig's
privileged metaphor of the cirele would bear a precise relation. For
Heiddeger, implicit in interpretation is a totality or circularity which
unites in literary '"form''' the dialectic interplay between what Paul de
Man has ca1led the "prefigurative structure of the foreknowledge and
the intent at totality of the interpretive process." 33 While lack of space
prevents us from examining the relation more elosely, suffice it to say
that this notion of circularity in Heiddegger's hermeneutics is elearly
analogous to Wittig's metaphorical use of the cirele in Les Guirilleres
insofar as the idea of totality to which it gives rise, while tending toward
elosure, that of an unattainable union of critica1 understanding with
authorial foreknowledge, is maintained in the open-ended state impli-
cated by the linear temporality of the interpretive process. Just as the
hermeneutic cirele, by virtue of this temporality, never attains to a true
totality, the multiplicity of signifying orders inherent within Wittig's use
of a circular structure (the feminist associations with the marital ring,
the zero degree of semantic absolutism or invariableness, the cosmic
sphere) maintains the feminist ideology in an open relation to the
ontological analysis.
We have attempted in this essay to touch, however briefly, on the
presence of an implicit ontology in a major work by a feminist author.
And we have demonstrated that such an ontology - understood as a
404 LOIS OPPENHEIM

fixed system of rapports maintained by the self with others and with the
world - is revealed within a rebellious and explosive discourse rich in
cosmic and elemental images. Our interest has been in exploring the
question of whether this fixed system exists in a compatible relation
with certain affirmations of feminist thinking on the socio-cultural
determination of language. It we have failed to reach any real conclu-
sion as to the extent of this compatibility, perhaps it is due to the fact
that the authorial 1 is proving, through the investigations of both
de constructive and feminist ideologies, increasingly less capable of
protecting itself against that which would undo its autonomy by
diffusing its self-presence.

Bard College

NOTES

I Paul de Man, 'Tarm and Intent in the American New Criticism" in Blindness and
Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (Minneapolis: Univ. of
Minnesota Press, 1971), p. 31.
2 Janet Todd, "Introduction" to Men by Women, Women and Literature, VoI. 2, (NY:
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1981), p. 1.
.1 Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, transl. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1964), p. 101.
4 Ibid., p. 102.
5 lbid., p. 103.

6 lbid., p. 102.

7 Monique Wittig, Les GUI!rilleres (Paris: Minuit, 1969), p. 97. (The translation of ali
quotations from Wittig is ours.)
s Ibid., pp. 162-4.
9 Gaston Bachelard, La Poetique de I'Espace (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

1958), p. 208.
10 Ibid., p. 208.

II Ibid., p. 208.
12 Ibid., p. 209.
1.1 Monique Wittig, "The Locus of ihe Action" in Three Decades of the French New
Navei, ed. & transl. Lois Oppenheim, forthcoming publication by the University of
Illinois Press, n.d., n.p.
14 Paul de Man, op. cit., p. 33.

15 Wittig, Les GUI!rilleres, pp. 93-4.

16 Nelly Furman, "The Politics of Language: Beyond the Gender PrincipIe?," a paper

presented at Bard College, March, 1985, pp. 2-3.

17 Ibid., p. 2.

IS Wittig, Les Guerilleres, p. 205.

 THE ONTOLOGY OF LANGUAGE 405

19 Wittig, "The Locus of the Action," op. cit.

20 Ibid.
21 Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, op. cit., pp. 50-51.
22 Ibid., p. 51.
23 Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale
Univ. Pr., 1979), p. 71.
24 Ibid., inside front jacket cover.

25 Ibid., p. XIII, cited in Furman, "The Politics of Language ... ," op. cit., p. 6.
26 Furman, op. cit., p. 6.
27 Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing, ed. Michele Barrett (NY: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1979), p. 20.
2X Ibid., p. 20.

29 IntervÎew with Jacques Derrida, cited in Furman, op. cit., pp. 24-5.
30 Furman, op. cit., p. 25.
JI Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, transl. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Balti-
more: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974), p. 101.
J2 Ibid., p. 101.
33 Paul de Man, op. cit., p. 31.
 E. F. KAELIN

:f:TRE-DANS-UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE*

Pour le moment je vais laisser de câte le theme principal de ce discours,

afin d'y arriver de fa~on detournee. Je vais commencer par poser une
question qui de nos jours pourrait risquer de paraître a certains de vous
absurde, et abien d'autres, reactionnaire.
Peut-il y avoir en critique litteraire un "structuralisme phenomenolo-
gique"?
La question est certainement absurde pour tous ceux qui s'inspiraient
autrefois d'une linguistique structuraliste ou d'une epistemologie pheno-
menologique pour elaborer une strategie critique, puisque les deux
termes proposes pour la nouvelle discipline semblent essentiellement
contradictoires. Le structuralisme en effet est cense livrer des significa-
tions objectives elaborees dans le champ des signes d'une langue
vivante dont chaque element - le signe meme - se compose d'un
signifiant et d'un signifie en relations fixees par un mode d'emploi. Au
fond de cette "structure" de base il n'y a rien que des differences dont
les agencements dans notre parler produisent l'expression du "sens"
communique dans chacune de nos tentatives pour decrire COMMENT
C'EST 1 - d'etre au monde et d'y voir clair.
Pour aussi subjectif que ce sentiment puisse etre, son expression
dans la langue courante est un fait objectif, expliquable en termes de la
signification structuree dans l'acte meme de parler. La phenomenologie,
par contre, est l'etude par excellence des actes de la conscience; et
pour cela, essentiellement subjective, qu'il sagisse des actes purement
imaginaires d'un romancier ou des perceptions plus severement con-
trolees d'un savant dans son laboratoire. Cette contradiction, est-elle
reelle, ou simplement apparente? Que signifient ces mots, 'subjectif' et
'objectif,' quand ils sont appliques a une methode critique? Au fond,
quelle est la relation a comprendre entre la base theorique de nos
strategies critiques et nos enonces critiques eux-memes?
C'est a cette tâche que je vais me consacrer ce matin.
Et c'est en me consacrant a cette tâche que j'eviterai en meme temps,
je crois, l'accusation de vouloir remettre l'horloge en arriere. Je n'ignore
pas les soi-disants "avances" faites en critique litteraire par le poststruc-
407
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Voi XXIII, 407-433.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
408 E. F. KAELIN

turalisme. En effet, celui-ci a essaye de remplacer les aperc;us de la

linguistique Saussureenne par une philosophie du langage elaboree a
partir d'une grammatologie 2 comme science des ecrits ou se laissent lire
les traces d'une quelconque signification. Pour y arriver on a ajoute aux
differentiations perceptuelles entre un systeme de signes-vocalises un
autre systeme de differentiations - temporelles celles-ci - pour capter
le temps qui s'ecoule ineluctablement entre l'acte d'ecrire et celui de lire
un texte. En lisant, un lecteur remplace un systeme de signes ecrits par
un autre systeme de signifiants, mais qui ne sont pas pour la plus part
prononces. Le lecteur ne troque pas un systeme de signifiants contre un
systeme de signifies; mais un systeme de signifiants - celui de l'auteur
- contre un autre systeme de signifiants - le sien propre.
Je reviendrai a ce modele de critique "postmoderne" dans ce qui
suit; pour le moment il suffit de faire remarquer que la critique
poststructuraliste revele le meme phenomene que les deux theories
precedentes: chacune d'elles prescrit une certaine strategie critique qui
serait fondee sur l'evidence de la theorie meme. Si la theorie est fausse,
ou malformee, ou si elle n'a pas de rapport avec les faits a interpreter
dans nos critiques, evidemment elle ne peut ni s'imposer comme guide
a nos efforts critiques, ni fournir une methodologie pour une methode
qui serait utile a cette fin. Quand nous nous interessons aux relations
entre une theorie (soit de connaissance, du langage, d'objets esthetiques,
etc,) et la pratique d'un critique, nous nous trouvons dans le champ de
la metacritique - ou je vous invite a me sui vre dans la tentative de
comprendre ce que pourrait bien etre un structuralisme phenomenolo-
gique.

II

Reduite a sa plus simple expression, la metacritique, c'est la critique de

la critique. Tandis que cette derniere s'adresse au langage cr~ateur des
ecrivains, la premiere s'opere sur le langage des gardiens de la beaute
d'expression, tout en s'inspirant d'une theorie suivant laquelle ce qui
est beau se distingue d'un cote du medio cre et de l'autre du laid.
Imaginez donc l'etalage d'une serie d'emplois du langage qui s'entassent
les uns sur les autres. 3 Au fond, comme support pour tous les autres
nous trouvons les oeuvres d'art - romans, pieces, poemes - tailles
dans la masse de la langue courante. Par la coutume de l'usage c'est la
l'ecueil a franchir, car l'art, dit-on, est difficile. Ensuite viennent nos
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 409

cntIques du premier ordre qui assument la tâche de decrire, meme

parfois d'evaluer, les produits des artisans de la parole. Pour cela,
naturellement, il suffit d'y voir clairement et de mettre ses aperc;us dans
un langage qui, lui aussi, est clair pour permettre aux tiers de com-
prendre ce que l'on a vu.
Le probleme commence, pour ceux-Hl, quand on leur demande de
soutenir leurs enonces avec une evidence calculee pour convaincre le
plus borne des lecteurs. Ul, deux possibilites se presentent: l'une d'elles
est de se repeter, esperant par cette tactique de faire prevaloir
l'evidence empirique de la situation - puisque, en effet, ce qui est beau
nous est presente dans l'apparence meme de la chose perc;ue. Mais il y
a toujours des personnes qui ne croient pas a l'evidence de leurs sens,
et qui demandent une preuve plus forte pour supporter leurs jugements
qu'un ee rit est elegant ou quelconque. C'est a ces moments-Ia que l'on
fait appel a une theorie, qu'elle soit du beau en general ou du language
en particulier.
La theorie permet au critique de deceler les proprietes d'une
certaine classe d'objets qui peuvent etre juges du point de vue
esthetique, et, par cette voie indirecte, de guider l'attention des tiers aux
conditions de l'experience qui ont suscite le premier jugement.
De la vient la necessite d'un troisieme echelon de notre echelle.
J'entends ici la necessite d'une theorie qui soit a la fois coherente et
ayant un rapport necessaire avec les faits qui feront l'object de nos
jugements esthetiques. Il ne suffit pas, par exemple, d'avoir formule une
linguistique generale, a la Saussure, ou une grammatologie, a la
Derrida; 4 cette sorte de theorie peut tres bien eclairer certains aspects
de nos emplois d'une langue sans pour cela faire ressortir ce qui
constitue l'objet de nos jugements esthetiques. Dans le fond, ce n'est
pas tout ecrit - ni toute expression verbale, ni tout enchaînment de
signifiants et signifies, ni tout enjambement de lignes dans un texte ou
sur ses marges - qui est edifie pour notre jouissance esthetique. La
theorie en question doit etre formellement esthetique parce que, en fin
de compte, elle se rapporte aux objets-types qui sont susceptibles de
tomber sous un jugement esthetique.
La metacritique se trouve entre le pas de la critique et celui de la
theorie, qui a sa juste place sur le quatrieme echelon de notre echelle.
Comme la critique, la metacritique pourrait decrire ce qui a ete observe
au niveau de la critique elle-meme, ou pourrait tenter une evaluation
d'une epreuve critique. Et encore une fois l'evidence pour les descrip-
410 E. F. KAELIN

tions ou les jugements metacritiques peut etre d'un ordre empirique,

par en dessous, pour ainsi dire, ou d'un ordre intellectualiste - par en
dessus - selon l'endroit d'ou l'on tire ses raisons. Selon le premier
ordre d'evidence, le metacritique peut dire que le critique a tort ou
raison; selon le deuxieme, qu'il fait ou n'arrive pas afaire de sens.
Mais il y a un autre ordre d'activite metacritique, qui correspond a
prescrire ce qu'il faut faire comme critique, une fois que l'on possede
une theorie esthetique valable. Rien d'arcane est propose ici: n'importe
quelle theorie se compose d'un systeme d'evenements ou d'elements qui
dicte une fa<ţon de regarder un terrain inconnu. Pour cette raison, le
metacritique peut decrire une marche a suivre pour permettre a celui
qui veut s'excercer comme critique de produire unjugement esthetique.
En haut de notre echelle, d'ailleurs, se trouve le stage de metatheorie,
qui a pour but de prescrire ce qui pourrait servir de theorie au
quatrieme echelon. En general la metatheorie se restreint a decrire les
parametres par rapport auxquels une theorie est possible comme
explication d'evenements naturels ou culturels. Ici sont comprises toutes
les regles d'evidence et toute les regles de la logique et du langage
qui determinent la formation et la transformation des enonces qui
entreraient dans la theorie a formuler. Pour le moment ces regles
peuvent se limiter a trois: de l'ordre empirique, intellectualiste, et
finalement pragmatique.
Selon la premiere, toutes nos reterences aux pretendus faits d'une
theorie doivent etre vraies; selon la seconde, tous nos concepts doivent
etre sans ambigu'ite, et nos enonces, memes, formules sans contradic-
tion; et selon la troisieme, nous sommes invites a adopter n'importe
qu'elle procedure qui nous permette d'achever notre fin - c'est-a-dire
d'elaborer une theorie qui s'accorde avec les phenomenes a etre
expliques - en cette instance, les phenomenes esthetiques.
En voila, pour l'echelle des emplois du langage qui pourrait servir
comme modele d'investigations esthetiques. Le premier pas de l'echelle
est compose de toutes ces oeuvres d'art qui ont ete ou seront elaborees
avec des vocables signifiants. Mais c'est uniquement dans le cas ou les
oeuvres d'art sont litteraires en ce sens que toutes les etapes d'une
investigation esthetique sont linguistiques.
Pour resumer, il existe cinq stages d'investigation esthetique, selon
les cinq possibilites d'employer une langue a la poursuite de fins
esthetiques. Le premier est celui de la creation meme; le second, de la
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 411

cntlque (qui peut etre descriptive ou normative); le troisieme, de la

metacritique (descriptive, normative, ou prescriptive); le quatrieme, de
la theorie (qui est descriptive); et le cinquieme, de la metatheorie
(descriptive ou prescriptive).
Dans ce qui suit, je propose de continuer ce discours de metacritique
en passant en revue un bon nombre d'ecoles de critique pour en arriver
a la fin a vous prescrire une methode fond ee sur un mariage fructueux
de la phenomenologie et du structuralisme. Entre-temps, nous nous
retrouverons pourvu de l'evidence necessaire pour parer a nos propres
critiques.

III

Il faut remonter aux annees '30, precisement entre les deux guerres
mondiales, pour localiser l'epoque dans la critique americaine ou ses
practiciens se vantaient d'une methode dite historique. Les phenomenes
socio-culturels, tels que les produits litteraires, apparaissent comme
tous les autres, selon des condition qui favorisent leur production.
L'appel fait aux phenomenes conditionnes de la cuiture ne cache pas un
certain dogmatisme positiviste, ni ne dissimule pas l'optimisme de nos
historiens, qui cherchaient a tout savoir, a tout expliquer, en remarquant
ce qui etait parei! et ce qui etait different dans les epoques qui se sont
suivies dans le fleuve de l'histoire. Et comme les liens entre les cultures
de la France et de l'Amerique ont toujours ete assez etroits, ces memes
critiques historiques americains ont pu s'inspirer de la philosophie de
l'art promulguee par Hippolyte Taine 5 de la meme fa~on que celui-ci
s'est inspire de la philosophie positive. C'etait presque aussi simple que
le counseil donne par les cyniques aux detectives - de chercher la
femme; pour expliquer une oeuvre d'art il suffisait de trouver la race, le
milieu, et l'epoque qui auraient pu produire telle oeuvre.
Certes, les ecrivains et les poetes boudaient leur perte de genie, qui
n'etait ne que pour etre enseveli dans le dix-huitieme siecle; 6 mais dans
le monde positiviste les conditions qui favorisent la creation sont plus
importantes que l'acte lui-meme. Le poete, lui, ne sert que de passoire
pour les conditions creatrices de l'histoire. C'est eUe - ou lui - qui est
racee, qui se trouve dans un certain milieu et a une epoque propice;
mais, helas, c'est un fait qui ne peut etre prouve que si un lecteur a lu
son poeme. Les americains, pour leur part, avaient tendance a negliger
412 E. F. KAELIN

cette derniere consideration, et leur critique s'effondrait dans les details

qui entouraient l'essentiel - l'oeuvre elle meme - sans l'exposer pour
ce qu'elle est - une creation litteraire.
Quand les citoyens-soldats retrouverent leurs campus apres la
deuxieme guerre mondiale, ils ont refuse la distraction de se perd re
dans l'immense panorama du passe qui ne cessait d'etre substitue dans
leurs classes pour la lecture des oeuvres litteraires. Certains d'entre eux
ont pousse leur dedain de leurs maÎtres jusqu'a dire que la critique
historique est une contradictio in adjecto: ce qui tient de l'histoire n'a
rien de critique; et la critique, s'occupant des jugement de valeurs, n'a
rien d'historique, qui est determine par les faits. Ainsi, si les poetes
boudaient la perte de leur genie, les GI redevenus etudiants de la
litterature ont demande le droit de poursuivre leurs gouts. Cela aussi
etait un concept brouille par le positivisme du dix-neuvieme siecle [par
hasard, je figurais dans cette promotion.]
Heureusement, les choses n'en sont pas restees la. Parmi les revenus
de la guerre se trouvaient assez de jeunes turcs qui etaient aussi
professeurs. Ils avaient lu le livre de Joel Elias Spingarn, qui, lui, avait
lu l'esthetique de Benedetto Croce avant d'ecrire son article intitule The
New Criticism 7, dedie au genial italien. Une nouvelle critique, pourrait-
elle se fonder sur une esthetique foncierement idealiste?
On n'y voyait pas d'inconvenient; et Spingarn conseillait a ses
lecteurs de simplifier le systeme au plus extreme degre: pour juger une
oeuvre litteraire, il fallait lire son texte une fois pour determiner
l'intention de son auteur, et une seconde fois, si c'etait necessaire, pour
tracer le dessin de son intention. C'est une procedure qui a ete repudiee
a la longue, meme par les nouveux critiques, puisqu'une intention qui
n'est pas exprimee avec succes dans le contexte verbal n'existe que dans
la tete d'un auteur, et celle qui l'est, n'est autre que le poeme lui-meme. 8
Et en effet, c'etait la le probleme.
Pour Croce, l'oeuvre d'art etait l'intuition d'une forme, une expres-
sion de toutes ces impressions, de tous ces sentiments vagues par
lesquels un poete peut etre assujeti et qu'il arrive a maÎtriser par l'acte
de l'expression meme. 9 De telles expressions, de telles intuitions, sont
des actes de l'esprit qui donnent naissance a du nouveau dans la vie
d'une culture; elles sont autres qu'une representation, une imitation, ou
une sensation. Il n'est pas faux de dire que l'expression poetique ne
peut etre trouvee que dans les mots employes par les poetes pour
donner forme a leurs decouvertes. Et si ces mots sont d'abord penses
 UN -MONDE- LITTERAIRE 413

dans l'acte createur du poete, un lecteur doit consulter un texte pour

retrouver les mots tels qu'ils ont ete penses ou mis ensemble pour creer
le poeme. Les mots d'un texte incarnent l'oeuvre poetique et servent
d'intermediaire entre le poete et ses critiques. Pourquoi donc Spingarn
avait-il tort?
Une seule replique est necessaire; une deuxieme, superflue, risque de
bafouer et le poete et l'estheticien. En supposant que les mots aient
reussi a "traduire" la pensee du poete, il n'est pas necessaire de
chercher une intention subjective qui soit la source de leur emploi.
Demander a quelqu'un de chercher l'intention subjective d'un auteur
dans ce cas remonterait a demander quels etaient les mots du texte. Et
dans la deuxieme eventualite, si l'auteur n'a pas reussi a trouver des
mots pour son intention, il n'existe pas de moyen de determiner ce
qu'elle a bien pu etre. Dans ce cas, l'estheticien est bafoue; mais le
poete aussi, puisque son poeme, juge par reference a une intention
manquee, ne pourrait etre juge que manque lui aussi.
Toutefois, Spingarn n'avait pas completement tort. Sa faute etait de
distinguer entre les mots et l'intention qui aurait pu les produire. lO Les
plus consistents des nouveaux critiques americains refusaient de faire
une telle distinction, et se limitaient a fouiller les mots pour les images
qu'ils evoquaient. Il restait profondement vrai selon ces formalistes
qu'un poeme etait l'intuition d'une forme, mais ni le poete ni son
critique n'aurait pu realiser cette intuition ou s'emparer de cette forme
sans la trouver dans les mots meme du poeme. Ainsi, la seule fa~on de
rencontrer la realite de l'oeuvre litteraire, c'est de la lire. Au diable, les
significations extra-textuelles; les mots des textes signifient tout.
Cette critique etait bien nouvelle, elle renversait les structures memes
de l'enseignement dans la litterature americaine. Meme les critiques qui
aujourd'hui estiment avoir depasse ce stage de la critique tendent a
admettre que les nouveaux critiques leur ont enseigne l'art de lire. Et
cela, ce n'est pas peu. Amon avis, sans avoir passe par la nouvelle
critique les critiques americains n'auraient jamais pu assimiler les
aper~us du structuralisme fran~ais. L'explication de cette opinion est a
suivre.
Tot ou tard, il falIait qu'on y pense - a ce que ces mots avec lesquels
des oeuvres litteraires sont faites ne sont ni ceux qui s'y trouvent traces
sur la page d'un livre ni ceux qui pourraient sortir de la bouche d'un
lecteur qui s'oublie. Et les graphemes et les phonemes sont d'un ordre
de phenomenes-typiques dont nous possedons l'image eidetique; le
414 E. F. KAELIN

texte que nous lisons n'est qu'un pretexte pour contempler ces images.
Quand un de nos meilleurs nouveaux critiques nous expliquait qu'un
poeme est un systeme de normes, comme le faisait Rene Wellek dans le
livre qu'il a publie avec Austin Warren, I I et qui a l'epoque servit
comme summa de la critique nouvelle americaine, ses lecteurs ont
refuse de comprendre. Normes? De quoi?
Et pourquoi?
Ce qui manquait, c'etait la notion d'un habitat pour les mots, voir la
langue dans laquelle ils se distinguent comme determines les un par les
autres. En effet il a fallu attendre jusqu'a ce que les structuralistes
fran<;ais deterrent Saussure pour nous faire comprendre qu'un mot
n'etait en soi rien de positif, mais en realite une difference dans toute
une gamme de discriminations possibles. En utilisant de tels signes pour
signifier quelque chose, nous employons l'exemple d'une norme dont
l'existence reste ideale en depit de tous nos efforts pour changer la
langue tout court en paroles parlantes. Et toutes les paroles parlees de
la langue exprimees dans le passe se trouvaient elles-memes situees a la
meme distance du mot considere comme signe.
Avec le structuralisme l'etude de la langue est devenue une semiolo-
gie; et si l'on demande pourquoi une telle etude devrait s'appeler un
"structuralisme," la reponse ne peut tarder: parce que les normes - ces
images eidetiques que sont les mots - sont en fait structures d'une
langue; et nos paroles, parlantes ou parlees, ne seront jamais exacte-
ment conformes a l'exigence de ces normes.
Puisqu'ils travaillaient avec la linguistique idealiste de Croce et
non avec la linguistique realiste de Saussure, les nouveaux critiques
americains ont ete a la longue reduits au silence. Leurs formes, jugees
vides de contenu par leurs adversaires, manquaient d'appui dans le
monde reeI. Non seulement devrions nous lais ser s'informer nos
consciences par un contenu de sens determine, en faisant attention aux
combinaisons et permutations des elements significatifs d'un poeme,
mais aussi il aurait fallu developper une methode critique pour
demontrer l'existence de ces images "eidetiques" qui nous servent de
premiers signes, si nous voulons arriver a formuler une poetique
contemporaine. Ainsi, pour sortir du cuI de sac dans lequel la nouvelle
critique nous avait place, il etait tentant de sui vre les structuralistes
jusqu'au point ou leur reussite demanderait l'appui de la methode
phenomenologique.
Nous les suivons donc.
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 415

Les structuralistes puisaient un sens pour leurs signes en tranchant

une coupe longitudinale a travers ces deux vagues floues superposees
l'une par dessus l'autre dans le courant d'une langue vivante. C'etait la
la synchronie de la langue, ses moments de repos. Elle aurait pu etre
connue et comme une oeuvre particum~re ou collective d'un meme
auteur et comme une parole d'une personne qui parle - le mot
"speaker" ne nous est pas permis ici, puisqu'il denote un objet dis-
crimine dans un autre systeme d'oppositions. Ce qu'il faut tenir pour
acquis est le fait que les deux couches de cette vague flottante sont
comblees, non de choses, mais de differences entre des "compteurs"
minimes ou jetons qui acquierent un "sens" en entrant en relation avec
d'autres dispositifs de la meme sorte.
Tous ceux qui ont suivi le Cours de linguistique generale peuvent
reproduire l'image tracee par Saussure: audessus de la couche des idees
ou des pensees, qui ne pourraient etre minimes que par rapport a un
systeme d'oppositions, flottait l'autre, la couche des sons, dont les
oppositions sont d'un ordre perceptif. Dans ce systeme, pas de
signifiant sans un signifie qui y correspond.
Les choses se sont compliquees quand on a considere deux de ces
fameuses coupes longitudinales. Entre chaque coupe possible, ou court
la langue dite courante, il doit s'ecouler un temps; et les resultats de
l'operation, aussi chirurgicalement ftît-elle faite, peuvent se differer d'un
moment a I'autre. C'est ici le second point de vue que I'on peut prendre
sur la langue: sa diachronie. Qu'est-ce qui explique ces differences entre
les relations proportionnelles des signes, entre un systeme d'opposi-
tions qui, lui, reste le meme tandis que le systeme correspondant a subi
un changement? Car, c'est ce qui arrive chaque fois qu'un meme mot
prend un autre sens pour avoir ete mis dans un autre contexte.
C'est donc que le contexte a change avec le temps, et celui qui parle
se trouve dans tous les contextes parlants et parles. Et pour cette raison
il est tentant de referer les differences dans les sens des homonymes au
style du sujet qui parle. En un mot, c'est toujours I'emploi d'un signe
qui en constitue son sens; et les divers emplois des signes, fussent ils
d'une meme langue, sont determines par une action projetee dans la vie
d'unhomme.
Ainsi pour la base linguistique de la critique structuraliste. Dans les
mains de Roland Barthes ceHe theorie fonde tout une gamme d'opposi-
tions metacritiques qui etaient censees jeter de la lumiere au moins sur
ses propres essais critiquesY
416 E. F. KAELIN

CommenCţons avec la distinction entre le vieux et le nouveau dans la

critique.
Autrefois, on considerait un livre comme quelque chose d'ecrit une
fois pour toute. Si ce n'etait pas l'auteur, c'etait son editeur qui se
chargeait de ce pensum. Le lecteur communiquait avec l'ecrivain en
echangeant les signifiants du "texte" contre leurs signifies. Nous recon-
naissons la la linguistique de Saussure - qui, de ce point de vue, ne
differe pas d'un brin de ceHe de Croce: le livre a ete produit par
l'intuition d'un auteur et reconstitute dans l'esprit de chacun de ses
lecteurs.
Barthes a reconnu que dans le temps il y avait des livres faits ainsi;
nous les appelons "des oeuvres." Nous les lisions pour le plaisir de
decouvrir l'episode final qui resoud une tension narrative. Bien que
l' oeuvre fUt toujours consideree comme un objet imaginaire, designant,
comme disait Sartre, un monde en marge du monde reel, c'etait sa
mondaneite meme, la fermeture de son systeme de signes qui posait un
probleme a la linguistique diachronique. Le style, c'est de l'homme, sans
doute; mais qu'est-ce qu'un homme? Etre auteur, etre lecteur, c'est
exercer une fonction vis-a-vis d'un systeme de signes. Et si l'oeuvre
meme a eclate en un systeme de signes sous la perspective structuraliste,
qu'arrive-t-il a ces deux autres "entites" liees dans le processus com-
municatif litteraire? Selon certains des structuralistes tardifs, le je ou le
moi de ces deux etres subit le meme sort: la personne aussi eclate et
n'est connaissable que par rapport aux determinations differentielles.
Pour les uns, ecrivain et lecteur sont des "economies de desir," tel que
Freud les avait decrites. C'etait en effet le gage de Barthes.
Recapitulons.
Comme critique, Barthes avait bien remarque que certaines oeuvres
manquaient de "lisibilite." Ni la fable, ni le caractere jouait un râIe
principal dans la construction ou dans l'appreciation de telles oeuvres.
En effets, elles ne donnaient pas un plaisir de contemplation aux
lecteurs, parce que leurs styles n'etaient pas lisible du tout. De tels
textes etait par contre "scriptibles." Et c'est cela la marque du nouveau,
du postmoderne en litterature par opposition au moderne. Quelle est la
difference?
D'abord, nous nous referons au moderne comme a des oeuvres,
pour signaler l'unicite de leurs systemes satures de signification. De
tenes oeuvres sont produites par des auteurs pour des lecteurs. Le
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 417

"texte" de ces oeuvres est quelque chose de fait, dont on a une copie
devant soi en lisant. Ce mot "texte" donc a besoin d'etre repense -
chose assez facile a faire.
Enlevez la fermeture d'une oeuvre sur soi, et vous decouvrez un
texte dans lequel sont tracees des configurations de significations qui ne
se ferment pas sur elles-memes. De tels textes, les postmodernes, ne
sont pas lisibles dans le sens explique au-dessus; ils sont scriptibles,
comme tracant un champ ouvert de significations ou peuvent jouer
l'esprit et de l'auteur et du lecteur. Mais il ne faut pas en rester la,
puisque un esprit n'est rien de clos, lui non plus. Un moi, c'est deja un
texte qui se developpe dans le temps; et c'est pour cette raison que le
modele
je - oeuvre - je
a ete remplace par un autre
texte exprimant - texte - texte exprimant.
Le premier de ces textes-exprimants ouvre le champ pour le jeu de
signifiants qui n'est jamais dos dans un signifie specifique; le deuxieme
ne fait qu'entrer dans le jeu.
C'est de cette fa<;on que "le texte" dont une copie se trouve sur les
pages d'un livre est transforme en "inter-texte," cree a la limite des deux
textes s'exprimant dans le jeu linguistique. Et c'est le frottement entre
les deux textes-exprimants qui produit la jouissance d'un acte de decrire
et de lire. Que les voyeurs entre nous s'en rendent compte. La textualite
d'un texte, c'est la condition de se trouver d'une certaine fa<;on entre
deux economies de desir.
Puisqu'il n'est plus possible de nos jours d'epater le bourgeois, il faut
en condure que ces mots de "jouissance" et de "plaisir" ont ete choisis
pour leur valeur informative, c'est-a-dire comme des metaphores qui
par leur resemblance a quelque chose de bien connu ont pu etre
rapportees a autre chose qui resterait inconnu si l'on ignorait le point
de comparaison. Cela, c'est le jeu du frottement - ce qui n'est pas sans
ironie, aussi sciemment que les mots aient ete choisis; car, et "jouissance"
et "plaisir" designent ce qui avant la venue de la phenomenologie etait
appele des etats de conscience, mais qui depuis sont reconnus comme
de simples consciences, qui,elles-aussi, pourraient etre determinees par
une simple coupe longitudinale a travers du "maintenant epais" d'une
418 E. F. KAELIN

temporalite humaine. Heureux qui comme Ulysse apres un beau voyage

a trouve cette coupe plaisante; c'est le signe que ce moment-la avait un
sens pour lui.
Le meme fait nous aurait saute aux yeux, si en pensant a la
linguistique de Saussure nous nous etions demande ce qui pouvait bien
tenir ensemble ces deux couches d'oppositions differentiellement
determinees. Dans le schema elles restent la, posees l'une sur l'autre,
comme deux epaisseurs d'une meme vague dans le courant d'une
langue vivante. En realite, entre ces deux epaiseurs se trouve une
membrane a demi permeable qui les tient en place; et c'est cela "l'acte
de la conscience" qui par ses habitudes cherche toujours un signifiant
pour chaque signifie a l'interieur d'un systeme significatif. Il n'etait donc
pas necessaire de prendre deux coupes longitudinales pour trouver la
conscience; elle se trouvait deja dans la premiere comme habitude,
association, ou, comme disait Charles Peirce, le semiologue americain,13
comme "interpretant." D'apres sa theorie du signe, la faute des struc-
turalistes etait de postuler une structure trop simple a la base d'un acte
de communication; cette structure n'est pas dyadique, mais triadique; et
elle unit dans sa structuration, signifiant, signifie, et interpretant.
Ce n'est pas dire que nous avons retrouve le vieux scheme de la
communication: je - texte - je. Les trois termes de cette serie sont en
fait eclate en d'autres termes qui signifient "autre chose" qu'une essence
fixee une fois pour toute dans une definition donnee. Je suis en train de
suggerer simplement que la langue et la conscience sont toutes deux des
phCnomenes de structures; et je prends le mot "phCnomene" ici dans le
meme sens que les phenomenologues l' ont toujours employe pour
d6signer l'objet de leur etude, c'est-a-dire comme se rMerant a
l'apparence du monde, a une conscience, quand on ne tient pas compte
du fait que c'est du monde qu'elle est l'apparence. Meme si nous faisons
abstraction du monde comme complement de l'intentionnalite de la
conscience, c'est-a-dire si nous pratiquons la reduction phCnomenolo-
gique,14 il reste l'apparence du monde qui est "lisible" dans un moment
de reflexion comme une structure unifiant la noese et le noeme d'une
meme intention. C'est une observation qui aura sa consequence par la
suite; je remarque le phCnomene uniquement pour souligner le paral-
lelisme dans les structures supposees a la base d'une langue et d'une
conscience telle que cette derniere est traitee dans la phCnomenologie.
Nous pouvons constater, en pas sant, que la premiere conclusion a
tirer de ce parallelisme est le fait, pas toujours reconnu, qu'entre la
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 419

nouvelle critique americaine, le structuralisme fran~ais, et la phenomen-

ologie de la conscience, il n'y a pas de difference en ce que le monde
reel serait exclu de leurs systemes significatifs. En effet, la nouvelle
critique vantait des oeuvres litteraires qui constituaient elle-memes leur
contexte de signification; les structuralistes bannissaient egalement toute
reference en dehors de la textualite d'un texte; et les phenomenologues,
eux, reduisaient la signification du monde meme a des structures de
conscience. Oue peut-on de plus? C'est que personne de nos jours ne
s'interesse a la verite d'une expres sion litteraire; il suffit par contre
qu'elle soit bien faite, qu'elle nous fasse jouir par sa scriptibilite, qu'elle
s'offre a nous dans la nudite de son apparence. Mais nous reparlerons
de cela par la suite.
De tous les phenomenologues, c'est Roman Ingarden qui a fait le
plus grand pas pour modifier le systeme de Husserl en vue d'une
theorie esthetiqueY Son premier livre a decrit en termes eidetiques la
structure de l'objet intentionnel qu'est l'oeuvre d'art litteraire. Il y a
discerne quatre couches (Schichten) de significations qui descendent
d'une surface perceptible de sons organises a une premiere profondeur
d'unites semantiques, qui indiquent un sens a "comprendre"; et en
passant a travers une troisieme couche "d'objectivites representees," les
"choses" qui remplissent le sens des unites semantiques, jusqu'a la plus
profonde couche des "aspects schematises," ou images, par lesquels un
lecteur remplit les trous d'indetermination dans le recit narratif.
Chacune de ces couches a ses qualites esthetiques qui parcourent
l'oeuvre complete comme l'harmonie d'une composition polyphonique
emerge de la concurrence de multiples voix sonores. Et si on se
demande comment toutes ces couches peuvent etre l'objet d'une seule
experience, c'est encore par l'intermediaire d'une metaphore: une
harmonie qui se sent en meme temps qu'elle s'entend. Il suffit d'avoir
per~u l'orchestration des moments d'une fugue pour en avoir le
sentiment. C'est pour cette raison qu'Ingarden a consacre un second
livre a expliquer les differentes fa~ons de connaÎtre l'oeuvre litteraire:
premierement, dans une analyse pre-esthetique, ou un lecteur con-
cretise les couches variees de l'oeuvre essentielle; deuxiemement, dans
une perception esthetique, ou le lecteur contemple l'harmonie de la
polyphonie ainsi etablie; et, finalement, dans un recit post-esthetique,
ou l'oeuvre ainsi interpretee entre dans l'histoire, comme faisant partie
d'une cuI ture vivante.
Il est a noter dans mon recit de l'esthetique litteraire d'Ingarden que
420 E. F. KAELIN

chaque "couche" de l'objet intentionnel motive l'apparence de ceHe qui

suit. Ainsi les sons motivent l'apparition des unites semantiques; ceHes-
ci, les objectivites representees; et celles-ci, les aspects schematises.
A l'interieur d'un noeme de la conscience ainsi structure se trouve au
moins un triple agencement de significations: un signifiant (les sons)
appelle un signifie (les unites semantiques); ce signifie devient a son
tour signifiant, et fait appel aux objectivites representees comme
nouveau signifie. Mais dans tout monde purement represente se
trouvent des trous, des points d'indetermination, qui appellent des
aspects schematises comme l'ultime signifie du contexte significatif
qu'est l'oeuvre litteraire. Et si l'on ajoute le fait que l'ordre ses
objectivites representees peut servir aussi comme base de signification
figurative, il existe d'autres fils possibles pour compliquer la texture de
l'oeuvre; mais ces fils-Ia auraient la meme structure significative. Dante,
nous le rappelons,16 comptait quatre couches de significations dans une
exegese sans meme compter ceHe des sons!
Nous apportons une seule remarque a cette theorie esthetique
d'Ingarden. Sa metaphore pour decrire notre fa~on de connaÎtre
l'oeuvre litteraire dans sa concretisation ne risque pas d'epater le
bourgeois, et possede meme une valeur ajoutee en ce qu'elle suggere
qu'un frisson quelconque senti dans l'experience de l'oeuvre doit etre
controle par les structures des signes elaborees dans un texte, dans le
vieux sens de ce mot. Et, toutefois, cette meme metaphore tend a
decevoir, en ce qu'elle separe en couches distinctes une force ou une
tension de conscience qui n'existerait pas, si ces couches etaient
vraiment distinctes.
J'en deduis qu'a la phenomenologie de Roman Ingarden il faut
ajouter le structuralisme au moins de Saussure, pourvu que celui-ci ait
retrouve le troisieme determinant de son element-ele de la signification:
c'est-a-dire, le lien essentiel entre signifiant et signifie dans l'interpretant,
qui en fait quelque chose de vibrant et ainsi de vital; en un mot, une
oeuvre d'art.

IV

Mais d'aucuns veulent depasser le structuralisme et la phenomenologie

dans leur recherche d'une methodologie critique. En tete de file se
trouve Jacques Derrida, qui a eclaire la voie vers la postmodernite avec
sa linguistique poststructuraliste.
Pour se pas ser de la phenomenologie, Derrida s'attaque a la con-
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 421

seienee Husserlienne, gui tombe miraeuleusement sous le fiI de son

epee a double tranchant: c'est-a-dire la metaphysigue de la presenceP
La conscience, ce grand projecteur gui balaye les alentours avec la
lumiere de ses significations internes, n'est pas elle-meme et ne peut pas
etre presente en chair et en os a soi-meme. Elle ne peut done etre
decrite comme les autres objets de la nature gui, eux, son presents dans
les structures de la pereeption, et gui font l'objet de l'analyse pheno-
menologigue. Husserl avait beau deerire la conscience comme le residu
de la reduction transcendentale, le paIe subjectif de toute experience
vecue (Erlebnis), le centre moteur de chague disposition humaine, etc.,
de telles fonctions gui decrivent la subjectivite d'un sujet ne possedent
jamais la meme sorte d'evidence dans leur globalite gue les objets des
perceptions. Et avec la conscience globale, c'est le sujet gui parle gui
tombe hors combat.
Mais rien n'est trop certain dans la pensee de Derrida. Le revers de
son epee touche tout objet dans son objectivite. La metaphysigue de la
presence s'opere dans ce sens guand le professeur de I'histoire de la
philosophie nous signale gue la presence d'un objet a un sujet ne peut
plus garantir l'existence de cet objet. Dans le temps, l'epaisseur des
choses etait leur substantialite, leur presence a une conscience gui, elle,
etait presente a elle-meme. Sans le support de la subjectivite, 1'0bjectivite
s'est effondree, en depit de ce gue pouvaient faire les meilleurs des
phenomenologues, dans ce cas, Husserllui-meme et Heidegger.
Pour Husserl, une chose se presentait a une eonscience, mais
comportait une infinite d'aspects gui ne pourraient jamais etre 1'0bjet
d'une seule intuition. Pour remplir le sens de "chose," donc, il fallait
faire appel non a ces aspects gui se presentent a la conscience, mais a
toute une gamme infinie d'autres aspects gui ne s'y presentent pas. En
un mot, l'epaisseur de la chose se constitue par ce gui est absent: en
principe, par l'absence des aspects non-per~us de ehague objet. Pour
combler ces absences nos sujets pensants ont trouve le moyen d'appli-
guer des concepts gui designent une determination essentielle - une
essence, pour employer le mot - gui dans son ideali te porte a une fin
le nombre de considerations gue 1'0n peut rapporter ala chose.1 8
Nous disons, par exemple, ceci est un cube, guand nous percevons
les trois cotes de la figure solide gui cache ses autres trois eotes; c'est
gue nous avons pratigue une clature dans la perception des aspects
d'une chose en y appliguant le concept gui se refere non a la chose
per~ue, mais a notre maniere de la concevoir. Nous disons gue nous
avons per~u un cube parce gue les trois faces presentes motivent la
422 E. F. KAELIN

pensee des trois absentes; et les six faces, d'une surface egale, sont
l'essence meme de la cubicite. Or, la cubicite, pour Husserl, est un sens
sedimente dans la conscience par nos experiences geometriques pas-
sees. Et c'est pour cette raison que l'etude des origines de la geometrie
nous mene dans le domaine de la linguistique. Comment un sens peut-il
etre sedimente dans une conscience sinon par l'effet de nos calculs avec
des signes?
Heidegger, lui, reconnaissait les tares de la metaphysique de la
presence, et dans sa "destruction" de l'histoire de l'ontologie essayait de
les esquiver. 19 Nous nous rappelons sa strategie,: c'etait de chercher une
signification vecue pour chaque sens categoriquement applique au
monde exterieur dans les descriptions scientifiques. La liste n'en est pas
trop longue: la notion de l'espace se fonde sur la spatialite humaine;
celle du temps, sur sa temporalite; celle de sens, sur la signification;
celle de l'histoire, sur l'historicite. Ainsi, le projet de Heidegger n'etait
pas essentiellement different du projet Husserlien. Les "descriptions"
Husserliennes, bien sur, ont ete remplacees par les "interpretations" de
Heidegger, mais le but des deux procedes etait de monter a la source de
la signification de nos concepts.
Tant pis, si dans Heidegger la temporalite humaine - qui remplace
la notion d'une conscience - s'exprime dans un moment epais du
present pour etre deIivree dans un moment a venir que l'on appelle
justement l'avenir parce qu'elle est toujours enceinte du moment passe
qui le precede. Il y avait deux fa(ţons d'eprouver un tel moment epais
du present: soit en rendant presente la chose que nous attendons et
dont nous nous souvenons - c'est cela la maniere inauthentique, parce
que tout le monde le fait; soit en anticipant une chose que nous nous
transmettons d'un passe resolument et deliberement choisi dans un clair
moment de vision. Bien que cette demiere fa(ţon d'agir soit authentique,
etant la notre, elle aussi incame un moment privilegie de la perception,
et, par ce fait meme, "la metaphysique de la presence."
Les attaques de Derrida sur le structuralisme se trouvaient deja
esquissees dans la metacritique de Barthes. Sans leur fondation dans
une conscience, les signes flottent de ce cote; mais sans une cloture
naturelle dans le monde meme de la nature qui remplirait leur sens, ils
flottent de ce cote-la aussi. Ainsi est mort le livre; vive l'ecriture.
Saussure, paraît-il, avait tort de chercher la source d'une langue dans
les perceptions des formes sonores, qui seraient remplacees a la longue
par des formes ecrites. Si les formes sonores - ce systeme d'opposi-
tions defini uniquement par la differenciation entre ses elements -
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 423

constituent des signes primitifs, les formes ocrites n'etaient que les
signes qui suppleaient aux formes sonores; et le premier sens des signes
ecrits etait non un signifie, mais cet autre systeme de signifiants. Meme
si l'on reste dans le systeme des signes ecrits nous percevons le
phenomene courant: en lisant, le lecteur remplace le systeme lu par un
autre avec lequel il en fait l'interpretation. C'est encore le frottement de
deux textes-exprimants, et jouissants du contact.
Mais il y a quand meme ici quelque chose de neuf. Si nous
cherchons la source d'une signification nouvelle nous ne trouvons
jamais autre chose qu'une metaphore; mais le metaphoricite de cette
metaphore a change de caractere. Elle ne peut plus etre le double
emploi d'un meme vocable provoque par un point de comparison
remarque entre deux signifies differents; les signifies fixes sont pure-
ment et simplement bannis de la nouvelle linguistique. Le mecanisme
de ce changement est assez simple. Aux oppositions differentielles de
Saussure l'on ajoute le differement indetini du sens objectif qui com-
pleterait l'intepretation d'un texte ecrit. Aux differences du structura-
lisme qui en soi ne sont rien, il faut ajouter le jeu continueI qui differe
un sens objectif pour toujours, et nous arrivons a la "differance" de
Derrida qui unit les deux "sens" du mot "differer" en un seul. Et
puisqu'il n'y a pas d'essences qui fixent les sens d'un signe pour
toujours, et en linguistique le temps est de l'essence, tout ce que l'on
trouverait dans un systeme de signifiants est un trait - ou la trace
laissee dans un ecrit que nous deconstruisons en faisant sa critique. 20
Pour nous rappeler du fait que tous les concepts que nous pouvons
employer sont approximatifs, de l'a-peu-pres, voir inexacts, il nous est
certainement permis d'employer le vocable - pardon, le signe, pourvu
que nous l'ecrivions sous-ratures, comme j'aurais du le faire ci-dessus
en parlant des deux "sens" du mot "differer." Ecrire quelque chose
sous-ratures est une precaution a prendre quand nous voulons signaler
que le mot que nous employons n'est pas exactement a point, mais
quelque chose d'a-peu-pres. A un moment donne, Heidegger pretendait
que c'etait la seule fa'ton correcte d'ecrire Sein. 21
Quel est l'objet esthetique dans cette nouvelle linguistique? Le livre
est mort, le texte aussi; et puisqu'il n'y a pas de conscience non plus,
rien ne sert d'objet de contemplation. Ecrivons une fois pour toute les
mots meme "sujet" et "objet" sous-ratures; il en resterait toujours le jeu
des "esprits" - ce mot aussi ecrit sous-ratures - qui s'expriment dans
un systeme de signes. Et si avec le poststructuralisme nous nous
retrouvons dans un guet-apens deja construit par le structuralisme de
424 E. F. KAELIN

Barthes, c'est que le poststructuralisme est toujours un structuralisme

quand le nom est ecrit sous-ratures.
Il y a des moments ou le "logocentrisme" trouve par le professeur
Derrida dans la philosophie, dans l'esthetique, et dans la litterature
modemes paraît plut6t chez lui comme une veritable logophobie.
Qu'une explication ait ete centree sur des logoi a une epoque ou l'on ne
connaissait rien de mieux pour faire des explications, cela se comprend;
mais il y a deja longtemps que ce n'est plus le cas. Dans mon propre
recit, j'ai fait appel aux lois des positivistes, avec les parametres de race,
milieu, et d'epoque pour resilier la question de signification dans un
contexte esthetique. Mais c'etait la demiere des explications logocen-
triques consideree. Les concepts qui formaient les parametres du sens
etaient de plus puises dans un contexte qui existe en dehors de celui qui
se presentait comme ayant besoin d'explication. Que peut-on dire des
autres ecoles? Repassons-Ies en revue.
Quant a Croce, et aux nouveaux critiques americains, ils cherchaient
le sens d'une expres sion dans les intuitions qui n'etaient pas autre chose
que les formes de l'oeuvre litteraire. Leurs critiques leur reprochaient
leur formalisme sans tenir compte du fait que "l'intuition lyrique" de
la forme d'une expression ne constituait que le premier stade d'une
linguistique generale - c'est le mot de Croce meme - qui etait
complete dans une theorie du "concept" a son deuxieme stade. En
matiere esthetique, donc, il n'y avait pas ici de logocentrisme; c'etait
plut6t le formalisme de l'intuition qui etait le probleme, ainsi que la
maniere par laquelle les concepts en tant que signifies pouvaient faire
partie d'une intuition. La philosophie de l'esprit de Croce qui servait de
base pour la nouvelle critique considerait qu'un esprit est exprime, et
ainsi constitue, dans ses actes: quand on comprend ses actes, on
comprend l'esprit en meme temps. Mais il restait la question de
"contenu" dans les formes de l'intuition.
Ceci motivait le structuralisme, car il a resolu le probleme du
contenu d'une intuition en l'integrant a une structure du signe, qui etait
extirpee d'une langue vivante soit dans sa synchronie, dans un acte de
la parole parlante, soit dans les differences pen;ues entre plusieurs de
ces actes preleves en des moments distincts dans la diachronie d'une
langue. Le probleme ici n'est pas le logocentrisme des lois linguistiques
qui s'expriment dans les langues vivantes - une oeuvre litteraire est un
exemple de ces lois - c'est plut6t la notion meme d'une oeuvre qui
n'est accessible qu'a travers un texte. Qu'est-ce qu'une oeuvre litteraire?
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 425

Pour les structuralistes, ce n'etait rien: un texte qui disparaissait entre

deux autres, reduit a la condition de se trouver entre deux autres
"textes" qui s'expriment dans un systeme de signifiants sans meme
penser a un sens qui en comblerait leur expression.
Par contre, Ingarden a propose une solution phenomenologique.
Etant purement intentionnelle, l'oeuvre litteraire est une structure de la
conscience: un noeme qui est determine par quatre couches de signifi-
cations internes a la conscience. En les comptant, les phenomenologues
trouvent tout un enchainement de signes: ceux des sons, ceux des unites
semantiques, ceux des objectivites representees, et finalement ceux des
aspects schematises.
Arrive enfin Derrida avec son epee a double tranchant. La pheno-
menologie ontologique de Ingarden, avec ses images eidetiques et sa
methodologie meme de description eidetique, a donne une nouvelle vie
au logocentrisme, car qui dit eidos dit logos. Peu importe que cet eidos
soit ou bien un aspect par lequel une chose apparait, ou une idee qu'il
est devenue plus tard dans la philosophie; pour les connaître, un sujet
doit se les representer. La metaphysique de la presence semble inevit-
able: les aspects des choses et toutes les idees que nous pouvons en
avoir ne peuvent entrer dans nos oeuvres litteraires qu'en tant que
signifies dans un systeme de signifiants. Et deja Roland Barthes nous a
dit que les signifies d'un texte scriptible sont indefiniment differes.
Ou se trouvent donc les fautes? Car, il y en a plusieurs.
D'abord, il n'a jamais ete vrai qu'un recit ou un narratif soit
necessairement dos par rapport a un monde qui existe en dehors du
systeme signifiant; cette faute de supposition tient a l'usage scientifique
d'une langue et constitue un des mythes du poststructuralisme. De la
vient ce que j'appelle la crainte de la clâture - "crainte," parce que si
nos experiences d'une oeuvre litteraire sont elles-memes clâses et
peuvent etre vecues commes telles, il est faux de dire que chaque
tentative de "comprendre" l'oeuvre - ou d'en avoir l'intuition - doit
etre differee a un futur indefiniment lointain. En effet, toute tragedie
qui a jamais ete sentie comme telle reflete un certain style de clâture,
un certain rhythme dans l'experience d'une valeur negative transevaluee.
Mettons de cote pour le moment la question de notre subjectivite -
surtout comme des economies de desirs, et ecrivons "l'oeuvre litteraire"
sous ratures jusqu'a ce que nous puissions rayer les ratures. Ceci ne
veut pas dire que nous allons trouver une essence - ou logos -,
seulement quelque "chose" (ecrit sous ratures) qui precede des essences
426 E. F. KAELIN

dans l'ordre de la connaissance. Pour cette explication, je me rapporte a

la philosophie de Heidegger.
Souvenons-nous de son Der Urspring des Kunstwerkes,22 l'essai dans
lequel il a rejete toute explication naturaliste pour l'existence des
oeuvres d'art. Ainsi il repoussait l'idee que l'oeuvre est une construction
de matiere et de forme, un Gestalt d'elements psychologiques, une idee
de son createur, un objet qui donne plaisir acelui qui le pen;oit. Toutes
ces explications sont ecartees parce qu'elles derivent d'un autre contexte
que celui qui est propre a une experience esthetique. En de telles
matieres, le vecu doit prendre le pas sur le conc;u, les phenomenes sur
les theories. Qu'est-ce qui se presente dans ces phenomenes?
Regardons de plus pres.
Que l'oeuvre soit une peinture, un poeme, ou un temple, elle se
presente comme une relation; elle est sentie comme une ten sion entre
deux aspects. Heidegger n'avait pas de mots pour ces aspects; il a pris
le cas du temple comme typique, et l'a generalise. Bâti de pierres, le
temple surgit de la terre pour creer un monde pour le culte; en tant
qu'integres a l'oeuvre d'art ni l'un, ni l'autre n'a precedence sur l'autre,
car l'oeuvre, elle, n'est que cette relation structurelle entre la terre (la
nature) et un monde (la culture); supprimez l'une ou l'autre et vous
detruisez l'oeuvre d'art; changez l'une ou l'autre, et vous la changez.
Etant une relation entre un systeme d'oppositions et un autre, l'oeuvre
d'art que nous appelons un temple ne serait rien en soi, ni une chose
illuminee par une conscience, ni un objet que nous nous rendons
present dans un acte de perception.
Mais "terre" et "monde" sont des metaphores, non des idees fixes ou
des essences. Nous pouvons les interpreter comme signifiant et signifie
sans perte ou accroissement de sens, car le sens de la structure que
trace leur relation ne change pas d'un contexte a l'autre. Ni d'ailleurs
dans le cas des couleurs et des formes de la peinture de Van Gogh et
du monde du paysan represente dans cette "terre"; ni dans le cas du
poeme ou le flot des mots laisse paraître le flot de l'eau dans une
fontaine romaine: la meme sorte de tension entre differentes terres,
differents mondes.
Dans un systeme de signes ou il n'y a que des oppositions differen-
tielles, il n'y a pas de chose qui vehicule un sens, l'esthetique est
toujours un structuralisme. Mais il reste a demontrer comment ce
structuralisme peut etre triadique et l'objet d'une analyse Phenomenolo-
gique en meme temps.
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 427

Je reviens donc au theme indique dans le titre de ce discours. Il

n'etait certes pas necessaire de faire ce long detour pour faire com-
prendre que le structuralisme se trouvait deja triadique et phenomenol-
ogique dans l'epistemologie de Martin Heidegger. Ce qui n'aurait pas
paru si clair sans avoir fait ce detour, c'est la raison pour laquelle il
fallait puiser notre explication dans l'epistemologie ontologique de
Heidegger, plutot que dans son esthetique meme. Mais en passant de la
nouvelle critique americaine qui etait fondee sur une esthetique, qui
elle-meme faisait partie d'une philosophie de l'esprit, jusqu'au struc-
turalisme, qui etait fonde sur une linguistique generale, a laquelle il
fallait ajouter une psychologie de l'esprit pour l'ancrer dans l'homme,
nous avons compris qu'une methodologie critique a tendance a flotter
quand elle n'est pas attachee a une theorie. Entre la nouvelle critique et
le structuralisme, toutefois, nous avons perdu notre attache a l'esthe-
tique, et il nous faut la retrouver.
C'est pour cela que nous sommes passes a l'esthetique d'Ingarden.
L'oeuvre litteraire s'y trouve une "chose" construite, qui peut etre belle
ou lai de, mais elle est construite avec les significations de la conscience
meme. Que cette "chose" constitue un champ ou un signifiant et un
signifie s'enchaînent en plusieurs couches de significations, chacune
d'entre elles determinant une qualite esthetique, jusqu'a ce que le tout
soit lui-meme per~u comme une harmonie polyphonique, cela ne
comportait pas de surprise - si l'on faÎt exception de la metaphore
finale qui sonnait si mal a nos oreilles.
En effet, notre recit des theories recentes de la critique litteraire ne
faisait que buter contre des metaphores, l'une apres l'autre: d'une
intuition de l'esprit qui etait une chose bien ou mal faite (qui lais se "la
chose" metaphorique), jusqu'au texte qui n'etait qu'un intertexte entre
deux autres, qui, apres reflexion, ne peuvent etre que des "economies
de desirs." Et ce n'etait que le commencement: de la, jusqu'a une
"harmonie polyphonique," qui n'est en realite "entendue" qu'a moitie,
pour arriver a la fin a un systeme d'ecritures sous ratures, ou rien n'est
reellement raturee. C'est cela qui nous a prepare pour une "terre" et un
"monde" qui ne sont ni terre ni monde, mais qui, dans la relation qui les
separe en meme temps qu'elle les unit, montre ce qui est en oeuvre
dans toute oeuvre d'art. Helas!
Qui s'en etonnerait? Chaque fa~on de manier une langue vivante
428 E. F. KAELIN

peut manifester la metaphoricite: dans la creation des oeuvres d'art,

dans la critique, et dans la metacritique; surtout dans une theorie, et
souvent meme dans la metatheorie. Pourquoi cette propension? Il ne
faut qu'un moment de reflexion pour trouver la reponse.
Chaque fois qu'on bute contre une metaphore on est en train
d'assister a la naissance d'une nouvelle signification. Les ecrivains les
trouvent dans leurs propres recits sans s'etonner, et certains lecteurs
avises peuvent les trouver au meme endroit et de la meme fa~on,
c'est-a-dire sans s'etonner, jusqu'a ce qu'il en paraisse une qui choque
par sa faussete, son enormite, ou meme son ineptie. La bonne meta-
phore, c'est celle qui cree et qui maintient une tension. Cette "tension",
a-t-elle une explication? Certes, si elle n'existait pas pour notre con-
science, elle ne pourrait exister d'aucune fa~on.
D'abord, le phenomene: quand une metaphore fait naÎtre un nouveau
sens il y a ressemblance entre deux contextes de signification dont l'un
est connu, voir bien familier, et dont l'autre est il expliquer; et quand un
ecrivain emploie un meme mot pour faire l'explication - ou com-
muniquer le sens du second contexte -, nous disons qu'il a transpose
au second contexte la signification qui convient au premier. Nous ne
sommes pas choques tant qu'il existe entre les deux contextes une
ressemblance de structure. C'est la difference entre les deux contextes
per~us comme pareils d'un certain point de vue qui constitute la
"tension" metaphorique. Percevoir cette tension, c'est vivre dans un
monde d'ambiguite, dans un monde litteraire.
C'est ici que l'ontologie de Heidegger refait son apparition. Les
themes de cette ontologie sont trop bien connus pour que je les repete
ici. Remarquons simplement que le sens du mot "signification" n'est pas
tout d'abord quelque chose de con~u. L'explication ontologique, qui est,
certes, une conception, a du etre developpee dans une methodologie, et
c'est le genie du grand livre de Heidegger de developper cette
methodologie - ceHe de l'interpretation d'un contexte de signification
- non seulement comme sujet ou contenu du livre mais aussi dans
son style. 23 Choisissons donc les themes avec lequels nous pouvons
"bricoler" une theorie de la critique.
D'accord avec les Freudiens, Heidegger ne trouve ni une substance,
ni meme un acteur pour performer un acte humain. Un etre humain est
connu par sa fa~on d'etre-dans-Ie-monde, toujours situe quelque part a
cheval sur deux mondes, le naturel et le culturel, celui des choses et
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 429

celui des significations, qui ont permis a Levi-Strauss de concevoir son

anthropologie structuraliste. 24
En tant qu'homme, l'etre humain existe en projetant un monde ou
serait organise un complexe de moyens et de fins qui lui permettraient
de realiser cette possibilite qui lui est propre. Un tel monde n'est pas
une totalite, dans le meme sens que le monde naturel, qui est en realite
une sommation mathematique; on connait ce monde parce que l'on s'y
sent chez soi, et a ce sentiment Heidegger applique le terme Befindlich-
keit. L'etre humain se trouve dans son monde au commencement et a la
fin: au commencement en faisant la projection; et a la fin, en etant ce
pour quoi la projection a ete faite. Demander comment on se trouve
dans de tels mondes, c'est demander comment on s'y sent. C'est une
fa-;on d'etre-Hl: c'est-a-dire d'etre etendu entre ici et la ou s'ouvre le
"monde" de l'individu.
Mais ce qui est senti peut etre compris. L'entendement procede par
interpretation, selon une structure que l'on possede avant meme de
sentir la necessite de donner une explication a un evenement curieux.
Pour cette raison elle s'appelle une prestructure, et elle est composee
de trois moments. Pour qu'il y puisse y avoir une explication, il faut
d'abord qu'un contexte de significations soit prealablement etabli. Dans
le fond, c'est le monde humain vecu par des sujets humains. Dans
ce contexte quelque chose est isole par une intention particuliere
(Vorsicht), comme etant lie aux autres eIements du contexte; et, finale-
ment, cette chose ainsi isolee est "comprise" comme remplissant la
fonction qu'elle possede dans le contexte prealablement senti. Si nous
pouvons arriver a comprendre ce qu'elle est, c'est simplement parce
qu'elle est comprise dans un contexte compris.
Ainsi, pour la pre-structure de l'entendement (Verstehen). Elle se lie
avec le discours par l'intermediaire de la fonction de "l'entant que" ou
le "tel", c'est-a-dire l'aspect sous lequel une "chose" selectionee pour
etre interpretee dans le contexte a ete consideree. A partir des relations
entre la chose et son aspect choisi sont construits des enonces; et a
partir des enonces, des phrases, qui sont sollicitees deja par le sens
anticipe par le Vorsicht. Et c'est parce que nous en possedons deja ce
sens que nous reussisons atrouver les mots.
Si je ne me trompe pas sur ces relations, la metaphoricite est une
exigence qui s'excerce sur chaque interpretation a donner a un nouveau
contexte de significations. Pour arriver a comprendre le nouveau, nous
430 E. F. KAELIN

projetons l'ancien, celui que nous possedons deja, parce que nous
avons habite le monde ou il a ete genere. Pour cette meme raison toute
explication est circulaire, et de cette circularite vient la cloture de
l'explication. Quelque chose de pareil se montre dans nos oeuvres
litteraires.
Je terminerai sur cette note, car c'est elle que j'avais en tete depuis le
commencement, et qui me permettra de tranquiliser nos esprits post-
structuralistes, accables par "la crainte" d'une cloture.
Que faisons-nous en lisant? Nous confrontons un texte qui nous
permet de projeter un monde litteraire. Ce n'est pas un monde
d'objectivites representees, selon le mot d'Ingarden, mais plutot celui
cree par la relation entre un tel monde et les mots employes pour les
representer. En lisant, nous habitons ce monde comme un contexte de
significations, de la meme falţon que nous faisons l'experience de nos
propres mondes existentiels: en s'y trouvant, et en sentant la tension
s'etablir entre les deux poles de notre existence, ici et la, entre ce que
nous etions et ce que nous serons pour avoir fait l'interpretation de ce
nouveau contexte.
Puisque chaque interpretation marque un retour a soi, c'est notre
experience qui subit la cloture d'une nouvelle signification acquise; c'est
que nous ne pouvons l'ignorer puisque nous le sommes - un etre-dans-
le-monde. Ainsi, dans nos lectures nous vivons la ten sion entre ce que
nous avons ete et ce que nous pouvons devenir pourvu que nous
resolvions de transformer un texte physique en une interpretation
actuelle. Au fond, signifiant et signifie, aussi differe que celui-ci puisse
etre, ne peuvent former une structure que dans une interpretation d'un
lecteur. De la vient la triadicite du signe; et c'est un phenomene tant
que nous sentons la tension du mouvement d'ici a la: du monde reel
ou nous etions jusqu'au monde litteraire que nous projetons par
l'intermediaire du texte. Comprendre ce processus, c'est connaÎtre la
metaphoricite d'un texte.
Car, dans le fond, qu'est-ce qu'une metaphore? Une dehiscence dans
l'esprit, dans la texture d'une oeuvre litteraire, ou dans sa lecture ou sa
signification est differe dans un supplement critique? Elle se trouve
dans tous les trois a la fois, car elle nomme l'innomable,25 qui a ete
d'abord senti comme une difference de deux contextes unis par une
structure commune -, ou, ce qui est la meme chose, une ressemblance
dans les structures de deux mondes differents.
Merleau-Ponty n'avait pas tort de decrire la chose perlţue comme
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 431

une figure qui se separe d'un fond, et il n'a pas neglige non plus le fait
que ces deux structures se tiennent ensemble, meme si elles y sont
renversees, dans la structure globale du per<;u, par la tension qui les
unit dans l'acte de perception meme. Figure et fond ne font qu'un
dans une perception; et c'est par leur tension visuelle que nous les
interpretons.
Une metaphore possede cette meme sorte de structure globale. C'est
elle qui nous permet de comprendre le sens d'un texte, car c'est elle qui
nous permet de sui vre le lien entre la pre-structure de notre entende-
ment et les enoncees mis en mots dans le monde litteraire. Ce lien -
etendu dans un moment de nos vies conscientes - nous revele deux
choses a la fois: la structure de notre temporalite ontologique qui nous
a permis d'avoir connaissance de cet Erlebnis, en meme temps que la
pres sion du moment qui eclate en ses trois ekstases (dimensions)
constitutives.
Lire, c'est vivre cette dehiscence, et quand nous butons contre la
metaphoricite d'un texte, nous sommes projetes vers un nouveau
monde qui nous donne une nouvelle base pour confronter d'autres
textes avec nos regards curieux.
Apres chaque expansion de notre engagement dans le monde de la
culture - apres chaque nouvelle clairiere - nous revenons a nous-
memes enrichis par l'experience. Et c'est la ou s'opere la clâture de nos
oeuvres litteraires - dans l'experience que nous avons d'elles. Quand
elle est a son mieux, la critique decrit les structure des sens engages
dans le trajet de notre passe et notre avenir qui soutiennent un present
lourd des deux.
Ce n'est qu'une ontologie fondamentale, celle qui fonderait toute
autre ontologie, qui peut expliquer cette dehiscence entre les deux
mondes de la nature et de la culture, en decrivant les structures de
notre temporalite, qui la rendent possible. Mais il nous faut un ecrivain
pour nous les faire sentir; et il peut le faire parce qu'il produit le
contexte qui sollicite notre interpretation, et que nous confrontons avec
le contexte de notre culture passee. Trouver un sens dans ce passage,
c'est avoir une experience de l'oeuvre de l'auteur -, ou, si vous
preferez, etre engage dans un monde litteraire.
Et, enfin, c'est la ou je voulais en finir.

Florida State University

432 E. F. KAELIN

NOTES

* Discours donne dans un symposium de la Societe Internationale de Phenomenologie

et de Litterature, intitule "Litterature et Phenomenologie," au Centre Culturel Interna-
tional de Cerisy-Ia-Salle, le 10 juin 1985, sous la presidence de M. Kronegger.
1 Voir Samuel Beckett, Le roman de ce titre (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1961).
2 Voir lacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1967) .
.1 Voir E. F. Kaelin and D. W. Ecker, "The Limits of Aesthetic Inquiry: A Guide to
Educational Research," dans L. G. Thomas, ed., Philosophical Redirection of Educa-
tional Research (Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education, 1972), pp.
258-86.
4 Voir Derrida, op. cit.; et pour Saussure, Cours de linguistique generale, ed. par Bally,
Sechehay, et Riedlinger (Paris: Payot, 1949).
5 Voir sa Philosophie de l'art (Paris: Hachette, 1906).
6 Pour le concept de genie le mieux connu du/18ieme siecle, voir Immanuel Kant,

Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Erster Theil, secs. 46-50. Samtliche Werke in Sechs Baenden
(Leipzig: Inselverlag, 1924), VoI. 6.
7 Voir son "The New Criticism (1911)" dans Creative Criticism (New York: Hoit,
1917), pp. 3-44.
8 Pour une exposition lucide de I'erreur cornrnise en prenant l'intention d'un artiste
comme eri tere de la signification d'une oeuvre d'art, voir Monroe C. Beardsley et
William K. Wimsatt, "The Intentionial FalJacy," Sewannee Review, 54 (1946, pp. 468-
88).
9 Voir Benedetto Croce, Estetica come scienza dell'expressione e linguistica general,
VoI. 1, La Philosophia come scienza delIa spirito; 7ieme impression (Bari: Laterza,
1941), ch. 1; ce meme point se trouve dans "La version anglaise" de Croce offerte par
R. G. ColJingwood, The Principle of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938).
10 D'aucuns ont maintenu que ce point differencie la theorie de Croce de celJe de

ColJingwood; voir lohn Hospers, "The Croce-ColJingwood Theory of Art," Philosophy,

31 (Oct., 1956),3-20.
II Voir "The Analysis of the Literary Work of Art," dans Theory of Literature (New
York: Harcourt-Brace, 1942), pp. 139-58.
12 Voir surtout son S/Z (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970) et "De l'oeuvre au texte," dans

Image Musique Texte, version anglaise Image, Music, Text, tr. par Stephen Heath (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 155-64.
13 Pour une interpretation de l'esthetique de Peirce, voir mes "Reflections on Peirce's

Aesthetics," The Monist, 65:2 (ApriI1982), 142-55.

14 Selon la technique d'Edmund Husserl; voir ses Ideen zu einer reinen Phaenomenolo-

gie und phaenomenologische Philosophie, Husserliana, Band III (Haag: Nijhoff, 1950),
secs.31-32.
15 L'oeuvre d'Ingarden est connue par I'auteur dans sa version anglaise; voir The
Literary Work of Art, trad. par G. G. Grabowicz (Evanston, III.: Northwestern Uni-
versity Press, 1973) et Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, trad. par Crowley et
Olson (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1973).
16 Voir son Convivio, secondo trattato, Opere Minori (Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1960),

ch.1.
17 Voir J. Derrida, La Voix et le phenomene (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

1967).
 UN-MONDE-LITTERAIRE 433

18 Edmund Husserl, Ideen, pp. 12-17.

19 Voir Sein und Zeit, 8ieme impression (Tubingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 1957), passim.
20 Derrida, De la grammatologie, passim.
21 Dans Zur Seinsfrage (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1955), pp. 30 et sq.
22 Dans Holzwege (Frankfurt-am-main: Klostermann, 1950), pp. 7-68.
23 C'est un phenomene peu exploite jusqu'ici dans l'interpretation de la methode
Heideggerienne.
24 Voir Claude Levi-Strauss, L 'Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Pion, 1958).
25 Voir le roman de Samuel Beckett de ce nom (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1953).
 INDEX OF NAMES

-A- Barnes, J. 287

Barthes, R. 415,416,422,425
Abednego 243 Baudelaire, C. 208,225, 354
Abelard 109 Baudry, J-L. 359
Abraham 148 Beardsley, M. 432
Abrams, H. M. 151,153 Becker, G. 56
Adam 95,217 Beckett, S. 244,325,433
Aeschylus 11,149,322 Beethoven, L. v. 152
Aetius 318 Bejart, A. 274
St. Agnes 254 Benedikt, M. 365
Anaxagoras 12, 18 Bennet, J. 164
Anaxamenes 10 Bergson, H. 186,187,305
Anaximander 10, 309, 310, 317-321, Berkeley, G. 326
387 Bernard, C. 56
Anderson, H. C. 139-144 Bernier de la Brosse, J. 263
Andreas, E. 111 Bernini, G. 75
Andronicus of Rhodes 104 Berzilius, J. J. 14
St. Anthony, Abbot 254 Bignone, E. 18
St. Thomas Aquinas 238, 381, 382, Blake, W. 281-288
385-391 Blanchon, J. 79
Aragon, L. 304 Blanpied, W. 340
Aristotle 11, 12, 16-18, 25, 27-29, Boase, A. 178
34,36,55,57,59,104,237,317,318, Boli, H. 364
323,382,387,388,390 Bonnefoy, Y. 364
Arland, M. 290, 344 Boole, G. 326,340
Arnold, M. 20,38,41,55,59,207 Booth, P. 364
Arrabel 365 Bosco, H. 225
Artaud, A. 184,185 Botticelli, S. 206
St. Augustine 129,238,385 Boyle, R. 12,14,317
Bree,G. 345
-B- Breton, A. 163
Broch, H. 14,16,60
Bach, J. S. 338 Bronk, W. 323-341
Bachelard, G. 91,101,112,204,219, Broughton, J. 364
229, 289, 301, 340, 341, 377, 388, Bruegel, P. 78
395,399,400 Bruno, G. 102,111
Badecki, K. 114 Buber, M. 238
Ballif, A. 235 Buch, L. v. 67
Barker, G. 360 Buckland, W. 304

435
436 INDEX OF NAMES

Buddha 48,49,228 -D-

Bunyan, J. 375
Burckhardt, J. 206 Dalton,J. 14
Burger, C. 29 Daniel 254
Burke, W. 340 Dante 148, 150, 152, 238-241, 245,
Burnet, J. 322 247,248,345,420,421
Burroughs, W. 364 Danto,A. 49
Butor, M. 362, 364 Darwin, C. 55
David 240,271
-C- da Vinei, L. 206
Davis, M. 160
Calvin, J. 277 D'Aubigne, T. 80
Caputo, J. 386 Debrock, G. 180
Carlyle, T. 208 Defoe, D. 370
Carrillo y Sotornayor 107 de la Jesse, J. 76,82
Carruth, H. 361 Deleuze, G. 29
Cassill, R. V. 360 delia Mirandola, P. 206
Cassirer, E. 49 de Man, P. 206, 393
Caubere, J. 219 Derrida, J. 123, 301, 401-413, 409,
Cavell, S. 231 420,422-425
Cazulis, H. 184 Descartes, R. 103,173,284,317
Charles I 96 Desjardins, M. 277
de Chassignet, F. 78 Desportes, P. 79
Chaucer, G. 151 Deussen, P. 293,294
Chelchowski 111-112 de Viau, T. 79, 82, 86, 266
Cherniss, H. 11 Dickey, J. 362
Chevalier, J. 102 Diehls, H. 18,20,21,29
Chiari, J. 181 Dinnerstein, D. 287
Chmielowski, B. 112 DiPers 265
Chroseinski, W. S. 115 Doblin,A. 191-201
Chrzanowski, T. 106 Domin, H. 361
Cicero 115 Donne, J. 238
Cohen, J. M. 104 St. Dorothea 254
Coleridge, S. 152 Drelincourt, L. 73,266
Collingwood, R. G. 432 Druzbacka,E. 112
Collins, J. 216 Du Bartas 83, 85, 265
Cornte, A. 211 du Bellay, G. 206
Copernicus 265 Du Bois Rus 85,268, 272
CorneilJe, P. 273 Durnezil, G. 19,26
Cornford, F. M. 11 Du Plessis-Mornay, P. 81
deCosirno,P. 150 Durand 86
Crane, S. 14,56
Crashaw, R. 264,265 -E-
Creeley, R. 362
Croce,B.412,414,416,424,432 Eberhart, E. 362
Crornwell, o. 376 Eco, U. 164
St. Cyril of Jerusalern 239 Eich, G. 361
 INDEX OF NAMES 437

Einstein, A. 10, 326, 340 Gass, W. 343

Eliade, M. 38,46,49,374 Gautier, T. 208
Elihue 248,255 Gauvreau, C. 162
Eliot, T. S. 15,33,89-100,151,303 Gawinski, J. 115
Elizabeth of York 129 Gheerbrant, A. 102
Elsheimer, A. 83,84 Gilbert, S. 400,401
Eluard, P. 159 Giono, J. 289-298,343-354
Emmanuel, P. 361 Giorgione 80,210
Empedocles 10, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, Godard, G. 79
59-63 Goethe,J.W.v.65-71,185,264
Engels, F. 126 Golding, W. 15
Epicurus 106,108 Gomringer, E. 357-360
Erikson, E. 51,52 de Gongora, L. 105,114,264
Eshelman, C. 340 Gorgias 18,26
Euclid 327,340 Grahame, K. 371-373,375
Euripedes 11, 149 Grierson, H. J. C. 104
Eve 217 Grignani, M. A. 369
Gryphius, A. 267
-F- Guattari, F. 29
Gubar, S. 400, 402
Faulkner, W. 238 Gustavus Adolphus 259,267,271,272
Feinberg, J. 390 Guthrie, W. K. C. 10, 12, 17-21, 23,
Feld, R. 340 26,27,30,36,51,52,59
Fenelon, F. 261
Ferrer, N. 96 -H-
Fenoglio, B. 369-377
Ficino, M. 128 Hafiz 66
Fiefmelin 77,78 Hamilton, W. 104
Firth, C. 376 Hăndel, G. F. 277
Flaubert, G. 181 Hardy, T. 238
Fouquet, N. 80,275 Havelock, E. 11,18,21,37
St. Francis 111 Hayward, J. 99
Frazer, J. 107, 113 Hegel, G. W. F. 211,315
Freeman, B. 227 Heidegger, M. 220, 301, 302, 304,
Freeman, K. 19,20,23 307, 380-391, 402, 403, 421-42~
Freud, S. 416,428 426-429
Frye, N. 22,28,29,58,92,348 Heissenberg, W. 326
Fuhmann, F. 364 Heissenbiittel, H. 358,359
Furman, N. 398,400 Hellerin, M. 340
Henry VII 129
-G- Heraclitus 10, 11, 37, 45, 55, 57, 58,
126, 210, 212, 213, 228, 230, 265,
Galen 317,322 289,322,347,348,350
Galileo 103, 111 Herder, J. G. 317
Gardner, H. 99 Hernas, C. 103
Garelli,J. 183-185,188 Hesiod 24,30,31,37,38,40,46,277
Garnier, P. 359 Hestau de Nuysmant, C. 82
438 INDEX OF NAMES

Hesychius 102 --K--

Hippocrates 17
Holderlin, J. C. F. 55,59, 143 Kafka, F. 244
Homer 11,15,16,30,37,40,57,80, Kant, 1. 15, 102
146--149,152,260,261,343,376 Karpinski, F. 109
Hopkins, G. M. 212 Karsten, S. 20,55
Hozjusz, S. 1 11 Kermode, F. 49
Humboldt, A. v. 67 Keyte, W. 92,93
Hume, D. 390 Kierkegaard, S. 215
Husserl, E. 9, 10, 22, 54, 104, 206, Kirk, G. S. 11,25
301,314,315,316,419--422 Klaj, J. 267,270--272
Hypollytus 318 Kockelmans, J. 53
Kochanowski,J. 103,106--108
--1-- Krzycki, A. 106
Kugler, F. 208
Ignatow, D. 361 Kuhlmann, Q. 265
Ihde, D. 302 Kunitz, S. 365
Ingarden, R. 22, 27, 419, 420, 425, Kumin, M. 360
430
Ingraham, C. 227 --L--
Ingraham, D. 227
Ionesco, E. 362, 363 Labadie, J. de 75,269
Irigaray, L. 142,143 La Ceppede 83, 84, 268
Iser, W. 371,375 La Fontmne, J. de 273,274
St. Isidore of Seville 317 Lambridis, H. 19
La Mesnardiere, H. 85,86
--J-- La Pointe, P-M. 159,164
Lawrence, D. H. 303
Jacob 255 Le Brun, C. 274
JalIet, J. 165 le Goff, J. 203
Jarnyn, A. 79,264 Leishmann, J. B. 104
Janicki, K. 106 Le Moyne, F. 264,266,267,269
Jansen, C. 277 Le Notre, A. 275
Jaspers, K. 108,395 Lenz, G. S. 363
Jesus Christ 44, 46, 94, 95, 102, 114, Leonard, W. 20,23,24, 38
11~ 239, 24~ 248, 25~ 26~ 27~ Lesmian, B. 104
306 Lessing, G. E. 208
St. Joan of Arc 254 Le Vau, L. 275
Job 145,246,255 Levin, D. 302, 307
St. John 102,245,253 Levinas, E. 222
St. John of the Cross 264 Levi-Strauss. C. 429
John of Czarnolas 108 Levy Beaulieu, V. 160
Johnson, B. S. 365 Lewis, C. D. 363
Joyce, J. 60,244,245,301 Liricius, H. 111
Judas 240 Louis XIV 272,273,275--277
Jung, C. 238, 254 Lucretius 31,41,43,55,106,109
 INDEX OF NAMES 439

Lully, G. B. 275 Muschg, A. 361

Luther, M. 277 Musil, R. 56
Lyell, C. 69
Lyly, J. 105 -N-

-M- Nabarowski, D. 109,110

Nelligan 159
Macchiavelli, N. 129 Nelson, L. 104
McDonald, C. 401 Nemerov, H. 360
McElroy, J. 309-322 Neruda, P. 159
Machowiecki, S. 115 Newton,I. 56, 326, 340
McLuhan, H. M. 15,33 Nietzsche, F. 304, 317, 341
Mallarme, S. 177-188 Novalis 15,112,255
Mann, T. 153
Maria Theresa 273 -0-
Marino, G. 105,110, 114
Maripetrus, H. 111 Obodzinski, A. 114
Maritain, J. 238 O'Brien, D. 20,22, 33, 34, 50
Marlowe, C. 13,15,16 O'Connor, F. 237-256
Marx, K. 126,359 Oeser, A. 208
Mauron, C. 178 Opalenski, K. 115
Maynard, F. 266 Ovid 12, 13,59,78,80,83,149,261,
Mazarin, J. 272 263
Meitinger, S. 183 Orwell, G. 91
Melville, H. 339
Mendeleev, D. 1. 14 -P-
Merleau-Ponty, M. 224,301,302,307,
430 Panofsky, E. 150
Merton, F. 237 de Pappillon, M. 79
Meshach 243 Parmenides 10,27,50,51,379
Michaux 163 Pascal, R. 340
Michefelder, C. 290, 343 Pater, W. 203-213
Miller, A. 362 Patmore, C. 208
Miller, H. 360 St. Paul 203
Milton, J. 70 Pausanius 21,24,27,30,32
Moliere, J. B. 273-275,277 Paz, O. 362,365
Mon, F. 358, 359 Peirce, C. 418
Mondin, B. 391 Pericles 11
Montaigne, M. de 126 St. Peter 239,254
Morley, F. 99 Petrarch 109,110
Morris, W. 306 Peyre, H. 290
Morsztyn, H. 116 Pin dar 110
Morsztyn, J. A. 105,110,113,269 Plato 16, 17, 28, 36, 57, 59, 102, 128,
Morsztyn, Z. 110 178,210,228,231,322,332
Moses 69,105,248 Poe, E. A. 181
Miiller, J. 270 Poulet,G. 9
440 INDEX OF NAMES

Pound,E. 303,304 -S-

Poussin, N. 74
Protagoras 11 Saint Amant, A. de 82,265
Proust, M. 303 Saint-DenisGarneau 159,162
Przetocki, H. 115 de Sandoval y Zapata, L. 266
Przypkowski, S. 113 Sarbiewski, M. K. 105, 106, 110, 111,
Pugnet, J. 351 115
Pynchon, T. 56 Sartre, J-P. 416
Pythagoras 10,16, 19,26,34,35,37, Saurratte, N. 363, 399
41-43,45,54,57-59,73,343 Saussure, F. de 408, 409, 414, 416,
418,420,423
-Q- Scarron, R 80
Schelling, F. W. v. 204
Quinones, R. 126 Schiller, F. 361
Quoil, H. 228 Schiller, J. C. F. v. 304
Schmitz, K. 389
-R- Schofield, M. 25
Scriabin, A. 264
Racine, J. 262 Sempronio, G. L. 78,266
Radhakrishnan, S. 292,293 Seneca 262
Radziwill, J. 116 Serres, M. 204
Radziwill, U. 113 Shadrach 243
Rainch, G. Y. 341 Shakespeare, W. 123-138,151
Rajan,B. 89 Shelley,P.B.152,204,264,331
Ranke, L. v. 208 Sienkiewicz, H. 115, 116
Raven, J. E. 25 Sigogne 78
Rechy, J. 365 Silesius, A. 112
Rej, M. 106 Simplicius 318
Renard, J-c. 360 Simpson, L. 361
Ricardou, J. 359,360 Skarga, P. 111
Rich, A. 362 Slowacki, J. 107
Richelieu, A. 262 Smith, G. 99
Ricouer, P. 301 Smith, M. 290
Riemann, G. 326 Snell, B. 57
Rilke,RM. 153,154 Socrates 11,210,317,324
Rimbaud, A. 281 Soletti,E.369,373,374
Rio 208 Solmson,F.18,20,21,50
Roche, P. 361 Sophocles 149,237,261,343
Rotrou, J. 278 Southwell, R 265
Rubens,P.P.83,84,267 Spencer, T. 104
Rudwick, M. 67 Spingarn, J. E. 412,413
Ruggieri, G. 259 Sponde 77,82
Ruskin,J.208,212,301-307 Stephanus 20
Ruisdael, J. 83, 84 Stevens, W. 326
 INDEX OF NAMES 441

Swensen, M. 364 -W-

Swift, J. 237
Szlichtyng, J. 115 Walker, H. 290,345, 348
Wallenstein, A. v. 267
-T- Warhol, A. 324
Wamke,F. 104
Tadoussac 159 Warren, A. 414
Taine, H. 411 Watt,I. 370
Tassie, J. 212 Weber, M. 304
Tasso, T. 111 Wegener, A. 71
Teilhard de Chardin, P. 238 Wellershof, D. 360,362
Thales 10 Wemer, A. G. 67,68
Theophrastus 318 Whitman, W. 159,339
St. Theresa 238 Wimsatt, W. 432
Thomson, J. J. 14 Winckelmann, J. J. 206,208, 209
Thoreau, H. D. 215-235,339 Wittig, M. 393-405
Todd,J. 393 Wolf, C. 361,363
Torelli 274 Wollaston, W. 384, 390
Trellon, C. 79 Wolodyjowski 115
Turco, L. 364 Woolf, V. 238,401
Twardowski, K. 114,116 Wordsworth, W. 152,285,303
Twardowski, S. 115
Tymieniecka, A-T. 3-5,9,116,301 -X-
Tyndall, J. 303
Xenophanes 16,382
-U- Xyland, G. 20

Urban VIII 106 -y-

-V- Yeats, W. B. 203,204,244,287

Valery, P. 165-176 -Z-

Van Doren, M. 104
Van Gough, V. 379-391,396,426 Zbetzydowski 115
Vico, G. 46,60,108 Zeno 315
Vigarini 259,275 Zilpha 227
Virgil 60, 61, 80, 242, 255, 261, Zimmer, H. 297
348 Zimorowicz, S. 1 1-1
von Spee, F. 268 Zola,E. 56

9in2
 Analecta Husserliana
The Yearbook of Phenomenologica1 Research
Editor-in-Chief
Anna-Tere sa Tymieniecka
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenologieal Researeh arul Learning
Belmont, Massachusetts, U.SA.

1. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Volume 1 of Analeeta Husserliana. 1971, x,

207 pp. ISBN 90-277-0171-7
n. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Later Husserl arul the Idea of Phenomenol-
ogy. 1972, vii, 374 pp. ISBN 90-277-0223-3
m. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenologieal Realism of the Possible
Worlds. The 'A Priori', Activity and Passivity of Consciousness,
Phenomenology and Nature. 1974, viii, 386 pp. ISBN 90-277-0426-0
IV. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialised Studies
Establishing the Field of Research. 1976, x, 438 pp. ISBN 90-277-0628-X
V. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Crisis of Culture. Steps to Reopen the
Phenomenological Investigation of Man. 1976, viii, 383 pp.
ISBN 90-277-0632-8
VI. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Self arul the Other. The Irreducible Element in
Man, Part 1. 1977, xii, 186 pp. ISBN 90-277-0759-6
vn. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Human Being in Aetion. The Irreducible
Element in Man, Part n. 1978, xviii, 261 pp. ISBN 90-277-0884-3
vru. Nitta, Y. and Hirotaka Tatematsu (eds.), Japanese Phenomenology.
Phenomenology as the Trans-Cultural Philosophical Approach. 1979, xii,
291 pp. ISBN 90-277-0924-6
IX. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Tele%gies in Husserlian Phenomenology.
The Irreducible Element in Man, Part m. 1979, xvi, 495 pp.
ISBN 90-277-0981-5
X. Wojtyla, K., The Aeting Person. 1979, xxiv, 367 pp. ISBN 90-277-0969-6
XI. Bello, A. A. (ed.), The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology.
1981, xx, 347 pp. ISBN 90-277-1071-6
XII. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phi/osophieal Refleetion ofMan in Literature.
Selected Papers from Several Conferences held by the International Society
for Phenomenology and Literature in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Includes
the essay by A-T. Tymieniecka, Poetica Nova. 1982, xii, 485 pp.
ISBN 90-277-1312-X
xm. Kaelin, E. F., The Unhappy Consciousness. The Poetic Plight of Samuel
Beckett. 1981, xxvi, 325 pp. ISBN 90-277-1313-8
XIV. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenology of Man arul of the Human
Condition. (Part 1:) Individualisation of Nature and the Human Being. 1983,
xxvi, 473 pp. ISBN 90-277-1447-9
XV. Tymieniecka, A-T. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), Foundations of Morality,
Human Rights, and the Human Sciences. 1983, xviii, 579 pp.
ISBN 90-277-1453-3
 XVI. Tymieniecka. A-T. (ecI.), Soul arul Body in Husserlian Phenomenology.
Man and Nature. 1983, x, 372 pp. ISBN 90-277-1518-1
XVII. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ecI.), Phenomenology of Life in a Dialogue Between
Chinese arul Occidi!nlal Philosophy. 1984, xvi, 362 pp.
ISBN 90-277-1620-X
XVIII. Tymieniecka. A-T. (ecI.). The Existential Coordinlltu of the Humma
ConditiOft: Poetic - Epic - Tragic. The Literary Geme. 1984, xviii, 572 pp.
ISBN 90-277-1702-8
XIX. Tymieniecka. A-T. (ecI.), Poetics of the El1!IIU!1Ils in the Humma Condition.
(part 1:) The Sea. From Elemental Stinings 10 Symbolic Inspiration,
Language, and Life-significance in Literuy InteIpretation and Theory.
1985, xvi, 507 pp. ISBN 90-277-1906-3
XX. Tymieniecka. A-T. (ed.), The Moral Seme in the Cornlllu",," Significance of
Life. Investigations in Phenomenological Praxeology: Psychiabic
Therapeutics, Medical Ethics and Social Praxis Within the Life- and
Communal World. 1986, xii, 426 pp. ISBN 90-277-2085-1
XXI. Tymieniecka. A-T. (ecI.), The Phenomenology of Man arul of the Humma
Corulition. Part II: The Meeting Point Between Occidental and Oriental
Philosophies. 1986, xii, 401 pp. ISBN 90-277-2185-8
XXII. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ecI.), Morality within the Life- arul Social World.
Interdisciplinary Phenomenology of the Authentic Life in the 'Moral
Sense'. 1987, xvi, 586 pp. ISBN 90-277-2411-3
XXIII. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ecI.). Poetics ofthe Ell!llU!1lls in the Humma Condition.
Part 2: The Airy Elements in Poetic Imagination. Breath, Breeze, Wind,
Tempest, Th1Dlder, Snow, Flame, Fire, Volcano ... 1988, xiv, 434 pp.
ISBN 90-277-2569-1
XXIV. Tymieniecka. A-T., Logos arul Life. Book 1: Creative Experience and the
Critique of Reason. 1988, xxx, 460 pp. ISBN 9O-277-2539-X
XXV. Tymieniecka. A-T., Logos arul Life. Book II: The Three Movements of the
Soul. 1988, xxxv, 219 pp. ISBN 9O-277-2556-X
XXVI. Kaelin, E. F. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), American Phenomenology.
Origins and Developments. Fortbcoming. ISBN 90-277-2690-6
XXVII. Tymieniecka. A-T. (ecI.). Man within his Life-World. Contributions 10
Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe. Forthcoming.
ISBN 90-277-2767-8

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