Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays M. M. BAKHTIN

Translated by Vern W. McGee

Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist

l!NIVERSITI' OF TEXAS PRESS, Al1STIN

Copyright© 1986 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition, 1986 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819.

library of Congrrss Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bakhtin, M. M. (Mikhail Mikhailovich), 1895-1975. Speech genres and other late essays. (University of Texas Press Slavic series

; no. 8)

Translation of: Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva. Includes bibliographies and index.

1. Philology. I. Holquist, Michael, 193511. Emerson, Caryl. Ill. Title. IV. Series. P49.BZ813

1986

410

ISBN O-Z9Z-7Z046-7 ISBN O-Z9Z-7Z560-1 (pbk.)

86-11399

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Contents

'

Note on Translation VII

I ntroduction by M ichael Holquist IX

Response to a Question from the Novy Mir E d itorial Staff I The Bildungsroman and I ts Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel) /0 The P roblem of Speech Genres 60 The Problem of the Text in Lingu istics, P h ilology, and the H uman Sciences: An Expe riment in Phi losoph ical Analysis /03 From Notes Made in 1970-71 /32 Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences 159 I ndex 173

Note on Translation

This translation has benefited a great deal from being among the last rathe r than the fi rst translations of Bakhtin's work. I have been able to take advantage of the careful consideration previous translators have given to many of the problematic terms and concepts that are so plen­ tifu l i n Bakhtin's theory. In most cases I have borrowed the terms used in previous translations in the Slavic Series , such as "heteroglossia" ( raznorechie), "speech" ( rech), and "discourse" (slovo), among others, not only for the sake of consistency throughout the series but because I believe they are good choices. The essays offered i n this volume also contain many of the i r own perplexing words and concepts, such as "outsideness" (vnenakhodi­ most) , w h ich have neve r before appeared in translation-or i n Russian for that m atter. On these I have consulted with both native Russian speakers and recognized Bakhtin scholars. I n each case the options were weighed carefully, and the one most appropriate in style and tone as wel l as the closest i n meaning was chosen. With respect to style, I believe these essays show Bakht i n at his most Bakhtinian. The rough , unfinished quality that comes th rough i n h i s previously translated work i s even more i n evidence here , because most of these essays were not actually prepared by Bakhtin for pub­ lication. They show more the process of h i s thought than the final prod uct. I have attempted to convey this quality in the translation. The transliteration system is a modification of the I nternational Pho­ netic Alphabet: those letters requiring a hachek have been changed to the variants that use the letter "h"-"zh," "ch ," "sh ," "shch" ; the IPA "c" is rendered as "ts" and the "x" as "kh." P roper names are rendered as they o rd i narily are or would be spelled in Engl ish (e. g. , Tolstoy, Dos toevsky). V . W . MeG .

Introduction

"To strive at lzig/ler matlzematical formulas for linguistic meaning while knowing not/zing correctly of tlze shirt-sleeve rudiments of language is to court disaster."

Benjamin Lee Whorf, "Li ngu istics as an Exact Science," 1941 ". . . there can be neither a first nor a last meaning; fanything that can be understood] always exists among other meanings as a link in tlze chain of meaning,

wlziclz in its totality is tlze only thing tlzat can be real. In lzistorica/ /ife this chain

continues infinitely, and therefore eaclz individual /ink in it is renewed again and again, as though it were being reborn."

M . M. Bakhti n , " From Notes Made in 1 970-7 1 "

T h e fi rs t recogni tion i n the United States o f Bakhtin's status as a major thinke r came in 1 968, when he was i ncluded among a group of inter­ nationally known theoreticians contributing to a volu me of Yale French Studies on the topic "Game, Play, Literatu re . " 1 The identification of Bakh tin p rovided i n the notes on contributors has an unmistakable diffidence about it: " M . B akhtin . . . is reaching the end of a long ca­ ree r, but only recently have the boldness of his specu lation and the b readth of his ideas bee n appreciated outside the restricted circle of his Russian friends and colleagues . " Less than a mere two decades later, Bakhtin is being hailed as "the most i m portant Soviet thinker in the human sciences and the greatest theoretician of literature in the twentieth century." z And in March 1 985, the executive d i rector of the Modern Language Association annou nced a "trend-spotting contest to PMLA readers . . I will offe r [a prize] to the fi rst reader to locate the earliest m e ntion in PMI.A of any of the following: Bakh tin, Barthes, Derrida, Freud , Levi-Strau ss, and Karl Marx."-' In the great market­ place of ideas, Bakhtin has obviously risen very high . I t i s , however, a curious fact that o f a l l the names l isted in PMLA's roste r of t rends, Bakhtin is surely sti l l the least know n , if only in the sense that much of his work is still unavailable in E ngl ish translation . Although deceased , he is s i milar to the still l iving figu res with whom .

Introduction

his name is so often conjoi ned , for i n his case as i n theirs we l ack a «.:omp lctc canon of finished works. He is a figu re very m u c h s ti l l i n the process of beco m i ng who he will be. There can be no q u estion , then, of "introd ucing" Bakhtin at this poi nt in h i s u n folding. B ut befo re de­ scribing each of these essays ind ividually, we m ay briefly pon d e r the effect they may have as they appear in E nglish for the fi rs t t i m e . I n Bakhtin's thought the place from which w e speak plays a n i m po r­ tant role in determining what we say. A l i ttle u n easy, the n , a bo u t the place from which I myself speak, I sugges t that Bakhti n has ach i eved the degree of eminence at wh ich those who i nvoke his nam e can be divided into a number of d ifferent camps or schools. T h e re a re those who have responded to him primarily as a l i te ra ry c r i tic; others have seen him as social thinker; sti l l othe rs value h i m as a p h i losoph e r of language (and , of cou rse, these s hadings tend to ble n d i nto each other i n any specific appropriation of Bakhtin). B u t i nc reasi ngly a suspicion is begin n i ng to dawn that his work may best (or at least most c o m p re­ hensively) be though t of as p h ilosophy of a nother kind , a ph i l osophy across the boards: he is being perceived as belonging to a tradi t ion of systematic philosophy of a sort that did not automatical ly equ ate "sys­ te m" with "method" as we do now. Si nce the time o f Kant, we h ave with ever i ncreasing i nsiste nce perceived syste m as a c l osed ord e r rather t h a n as an open-ended series of conn ections. Syste m for Kant meant not only the rigorous a pplication of a fu lly worked o u t a nd abso­ l utely coherent set of categories. System also impl ied that n o m ajor question should be treated in isolation : thus, any consideration o f rea­ son had to answer demands not only of logic or episte mology, bu t of ethics and aesthetics as wel l . I t is in this latter sense only that B a k h tin's thought might be labeled systematic: the sense he seeks to i n voke " when he calls-as i n these pages he so frequently does - for an open un ity. " These essays , the n , w i l l provide new confi rmat ion and
Introduction

..; xi

by two highly respected scholars : Sergey Averi ntsev (born 1937), a philosophe r and h istorian ad m i red by Bakhtin; and Se rgey Bocharov (born 1927), a l i terary critic who was particu larly close to Bakhtin d u r­ ing the last years of his life . T h e 1979 anthology w a s s i m i lar to a collection of Bakhtin's essays that had been published i n 1975 (translated into E nglish as The Dialogic Imagination);4 i n both , the pieces included came from different periods in the author's long life; and in neither were the essays organized around any si ngle, u n ified theme. The reason for such apparently ca­ sual editing was in both cases the same: the ed i tors, aware of how quickly publishing con d itions can change in the Soviet Union, were eager to get as much of Bakhtin into print as they could whi le they could. Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity, then, contained pieces writte n i n Bakht i n's fi rs t phase a n d i n h i s l ast. It included t h e fi rst essay Bakhtin ever published, "Art and Answerabi lity, " which appeared i n 1919 when he was a you n g man of twenty-four, but it also contai ned w hat is probably the last thing he wrote before his death in 1975, "Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences . " The later, less patently philo­ soph ical pieces here are mostly d evoted to questions of what l i ngu ists now call "pragmatics," includ i ng excerpts from u npublished manu­ scripts devoted to l i teratu re and essays on the d istinctiveness of the human sciences among other forms of knowledge. This translation does not contain everyth i ng that was published i n 1979 as Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity, but does include most of the l i te rary essays, and all those on p ragmatics and the h u man sciences from that volume. 5 The essays in this edition have been arranged once again accordi ng to the degree of their complexity ( no t necessarily of their importance) with the l i terary essays fi rst, followed by the essay on speech gen res (prag­ matics), conclud ing with three e ssays on the larger implications of con­ ceiving d ialogue as the root condition of human being. This vol u m e opens with a transcript of Bakh t i n's remarks to a re­ porter from Nor.ry Mir, the "l iberal" monthly jou rnal read by most So­ viet intel lectuals. We begi n with this piece because it presents some of Bakht i n's most fundamental assumptions in their most economical and uncompl icated expression. He had been asked what he thought of the state of lite rary scholars h i p in 1970, and he used the opportun i ty not only to point out some inadequacies, but to suggest a positive program of improvement. Not su rp risingly, Bakhti n's program for other crit ics is essentially the program that had organized his own work for ove r fifty years. Th us, although the title this piece was given by the editors of

Introduction

Sot'Y J/ir when it appeared in November 1 970 ( "Use Opportu n ities More B o l d lv !" ) sounds rather silly, it fairly captures the aspect of . Bakhtin's m essage that would have been of most i m mediate co nse­ . quence to other intellectuals at the time: despite some of the u mq � e difficulties literarv scholars have to confront in a soci et y l ike the Sov1et Union, there is n � excuse for not doing more serious work. This was a message h e above all had the right to convey, for, as everyone kne � , the profoundest and most unorthodox of his own works had been wnt­ ten under external conditions far worse than those t h a t existed in 1970. Bakhtin does not shy away from praising specific critics or, by e xclu­ sion, attacking others. Those he honors among the l i vi ng, such a s the great Orientalist Konrad, the medievalist Likhachev, or Yu r y Lotman, leader of the so-called Tartu School of Semiotics, are all ve ry diffe rent from each other in their specific me th odo l ogi e s. They neve rtheless all share the habit of stitching whatever text they analyze into a deeply realized cultural context. The other figures B akhtin mentions w i t h ap­ proval-the founder of the great Kharkov School of p h i lologists, Po­ tebnya; Veselovsky, the fou nder of comparative l iteratu re in Russia and a scholar with encyclopedic knowledge of Italian cu lture ; an d the Formalist Tynyanov-all i nsist on the central role the history o f cul­ ture must play i n any an alys i s of a literary text." Th e s pecific way Bakhtin chooses to discuss cultu re i n this essay dramatizes the extraordi nary cont i n uity in his l o n g life , while making clear as wel l the variety and diversity of the different s tages that con­ stitute his career. For instance, t h e emphasis on openness , on un­ finishedness (nezavershennost) that is so much a feature of h i s earliest work is still evident here in his opposition to Spengler's habit of treat­ ing cultural units as closed monads, finished systems. But unfinishedness is only one of the key concepts from Bakhtin's earl y period t h at is invoked in these rem a rk s made fifty years afte r . first appearance in his notebooks: others are outsidcd ncss (vnf­ the1r nakhodimost ) and the distinctive usc he makes of the word " body," as when he talks about "material bearers of m e ani n g " in terms of "bodies of m ean ing." The terms and their relation to each other are the same as those found in texts from th e early 1 920s , but the level at which they operate is d ifferent: in "Author and Hero in Aesthetic Act ivi t v. ," �e discusses relations between write rs and the characte rs they crea te; 10 1 970, he discusses the rel ation between o ne' s own societv and other cul tures that are foreign to it in space or time . But in th e c� se of hoth

Introduction

� xiii

relationsh ips the analytical model is the same : he stresses the need first to use one's understanding to penetrate the other person or the othe r culture as deeply as possible ; but then, having done this, he stresses i n both cases the no less u rgent need to return to the perspec­ tive p rovided by our native self or our native culture. C i rca 1 920, he writes, "a p u re projection of myself into the other, a move involving the loss of m y own u n ique place outside the other, is, on the whole, hardly possible; i n any event i t is quite fruitless . . . . Aesthetic ac­ tivity proper actually begins at the poin t when we return into ou rselves and to our own place outside the [other] person . . . . ";7 in 1 970, he says, "a certai n entry as a living being into a foreign culture , the possi­ bil i ty of seeing the world through i ts eyes, is a necessary part of the process of unders tandi n g it; but if this were the only aspect of this understand i ng, i t would m e rely be duplication and wou ld not entail anyth ing new o r e n richi ng . . . . In order to understand , it is i mmensely important for the person who u nderstands to be located outside the object of his or her c reative understanding-i n time, in space , in culture" ( " Response to a Question from the Novy Mir E d i torial Staff"). The essay on the Bildungsroman is actually a fragment from one of Bakht in's several lost books. I n this case, nonpublication cannot be blamed on insensitive censors . I ts nonappearance resulted, rather, from effects that grew out of the Second World War, one of the three great h istorical moments Bakhtin lived through ( the other two being the Bolshevik Revolution and the Stal i n ist purges). Sovetsky pisatel (Soviet Writer), the publishing house that was to bring out Bakht i n's book The Novel of Education and Its Significance in the History of Realism, was blown up i n the early months of the German i nvasion, with the loss of the manuscript on which he had worked for at least two years ( 1 936-38). Bakhtin retained only certain preparatory materials and a pros pe ctus of the book; due to the paper shortage , he had torn them up page by page d u ring the war to make wrappers for his endless chain of cigarettes . He began smoking pages from the conclusion of the m anu scri pt, so what we have i s a small portion of its opening section, primarily about Goethe. " Goethe is a major figu re i n Bakhtin's personal pantheon for reasons that are apparent in the fragment here translated . Rabelais and Dos­ toevsky had in their turn permi tted h i m to write a history of large­ scale cultu ral transformations (similar to what the Annates School of French h istorians have called t ransformations of mentalitis). Such nov­ elists enabled Bakh tin to use a l i terary gen re to focus data from a num-

Introduction

her of different areas that-without such a prism-would be hope­ lesslv· diffused . Goethe. too, se rves as a center arou nd which Bakhtin can lay open a whole age. We see in this fragment why Bakh t i n thought o f himself less a s a literary critic than as a "philosophical a n­ thropologist," for the questions he seeks to answer in his study are less those that occupy other historians of literature than questions about the nature of human consciousness under particular cultu ra l and h i s­ torical conditions. Bakhtin was throughout his life obsessed by Kant (eighteenth-centu ry Germany constitutes a kind of Golden Age in his thought); we see Bakhtin here once again posing the question w i t h which Kant always opened his course on anthropology- "What i s Man?"-where the answer depends on specific shadings of the tem­ poral and spatial categories used to organize the world at diffe rent h i s­ torical moments. This fragment also manifests a tendency in Bakhtin's work methods that characterized him early and late: the tendency to think through a central problem by coming at it i n a number of d ifferent texts, each of which has its own particular way of bringing out nuances less appare n t o r even missing in the others. Bakhtin's fi rst years a s a mature t h i n ke r are marked b y different versions (some possibly o f book length ) of h i s phenomenology of self/other relations; i n the twenties, there are d i f­ ferent books devoted to the l ingu istic and societal implications of such a phenomenology; and in the thi rties we see at least six texts devoted to the novel as a genre,9 of which the book on the Bildunf!.sroman is one. It is not surprising, then, that it shares many of the concerns, a n d even some o f the locutions, o f other works in t h e thirties. L i k e the others, it attempts to distinguish a period's most deeply held cultural values through analysis of the formal constructions by wh ich the age's greatest artist manifested time/space perception in the novel . Yet again we are given an account of chronotopes as they are present in adve n ­ ture novels, biographical novels, and the novel of ordeal. a catalog of types also found in "Discourse in the Novel" (1934-35) and in the monograph on Bakhtin's concept of the ch ronotope (19.H-38). But all of this has a different resonance in the specific context made available by Goethe, who calls up associations with new works or whole genres not treated in other essays of the 1930s.

Of course , what is chiefly remarkable about this fragment is the view of Goethe it provides. There are suggestive similarities with the visio n of Goe the we get in Emil Staiger's monumental three-volume st u d v. 111 . But thts fragment is notable for the inventiveness with which Bak h t in .

Introduction

..:j

XV

docume nts that q uality of wholeness, which he sees as the disti nctive featu re of everyth i ng Goethe d i d , as a man, a scie ntist, a poet, or a novelist-even as a town planner. 1 1 There are many reasons to deplore the loss of the total manuscript of which only this fragment remai ns, perhaps not least that it would have provided a cou n terweight to the overly exu berant appropriations recently made of carn ival as Bakhtin bodied i t forth in h i s Rabelais book dating from this same period: the concept of ed ucation, of self-formation, that was at the heart of the larger book show s us a Bakhtin honoring such apparently conventional values (even i f, as i n Goethe's case, taken to an u nconventional ex­ treme) as measure , balance , and civic rectitude. Carnival as we have it in Rabelais (or at least in Bakhtin's book on Rabelais) calls out for the dialogic context that ed ucation, En.iehung, provides in Goethe (or at least in Bakht i n's Goeth e fragment). This essay manifests, then , a s toic sense of external constraint common to all the pieces i ncluded in the present anthology. "The P roblem of Speech G e n res," the piece givi ng th is anthology its title, is extremely dense because it takes u p within relatively small compass a topic to which Bakh t i n planned to devote a large book dur­ ing the last twenty years of his l i fe (The Genres of Speech). The essay as i t is presented h e re was wri tte n in 1952-53, w h i l e Bakhtin was s t i l l teachi ng at the Mordvinian State University i n Saransk, b u t shows evi­ dence of Bakh tin's own editing that makes i t more organized and co­ hesive than some of the others here included. It will fit better, too , into the expectations of those who value Bakhtin primarily as a phi­ losopher of l a ngu age the Bakh t i n of Marxism and the Philosophy of Lan­ guage, for it takes up once again the difference between Saussurean lingu istics and language conceived as living d ialogue (or, as Bakhtin sometimes called it, meta- or translingu istics). Pe rhaps the most i m portant aspect of this essay is the light it sheds on Bakhtin's u n d e rstanding of the differe nces between lite rary and eve ryday langu age-that bugbea r of the Russian Formalists (and their heirs)-as graduated rather than as absolute. He begins by pointing to the irony that ge n res have bee n stud ied only in the areas of rhetoric and literature, whereas the enormous ocean of extraliterary gen res from which those two d i scipli nes have d rawn their forms has remained unexp lored . Yet it is from that ocean that they get their life : there are primary ge n res that legislate pe rmissible locutions in lived l i fe, and secondary genres made up out of these that constitute not only literary but all othe r text types (legal. scient ific, jou rnalistic) as wel l . In fact, ,

Introduction

what distinguishes one human undertaking from another, one science from another, is the roster of genres each has appropriated as its own . Secondary genres may be more complex, b u t they a re still p art o f the spectrum of possible genre types that includes at its other pole the most banal expressions we use every day at work, with our friends, and so forth. What ensures the connectedness of all gen res, from the most highly wrought experimental novel to the simple salutat ions w ith which we greet our families when returning home from work, is the fact that they are all constructed out of the same material: words . B u t genres are constructed with words not a s they exist i n t h e sys­ tem Bakhtin here calls mere language, but rather as they are present i n communication. The distinction between t h e two is not, as is some­ times assumed, merely a reformulation of the d ifference between langue and parole, general system and particular performance. "Com­ munication" as Bakhtin uses the term does indeed cover many of the aspects of Saussure's parole, for it is concerned with what happens when real people in all the contingency of their myriad lives actually speak to each other. But Saussure conceived the individual language user to be an absolutely free agent with the ability to choose any words to implement a particular intention. Saussure concluded, not surpris­ ingly, that language as used by heterogeneous millions of such willful subjects was unstudiable, a chaotic jungle beyond the capacity of sci­ ence to domesticate. Bakhtin, on the other hand, begins by assuming that individual speakers do not have the kind of freedom parole assumes they h ave: the basic unit for the study of actual speech practice is the "utter­ ance," which, "with all its individuality and creativity, can in no way be regarded as a completely free combination of forms of language , as is supposed , for example, by Saussure . . . who j uxtaposed the u tte r­ ance (Ia parole) as a purely individual act, to the system of language as a phenomenon that is purely social and mandatory for the individuum" ("The Problem of Speech Genres" ). The problem here is that the great Genevan linguist overlooks the fact that "in add ition to the forms of language there are also forms of combinations of these forms" (ibid . ). These forms of combinations of forms are what Bakh tin calls speech genres. And although he recognizes their enormous variety, he is able to conclude, unlike Saussure, that the i m mediate realitv of l iving s �eech can be studied, for although "each separate uttera � ce is indi­ each sphere in which language is used develops its own vtdu � l relatiVely stable types of these utterances" (ibid. ) . ·

·

·

Introduction

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XVII

This essay, then , not only outli nes what such stable types are, but suggests implicat ion s for the study of l i nguistics, literature, and other human sciences. Si nce this essay is one of Bakhtin's most pellucid, I shall not dwell o n these, but remark only that, for those concerned with the thought of B akhtin h imself, this piece holds great interest as a furth er contributi on not only to his translinguistics , but to his concep­ tion of the subject. G iven its emphasis on normative restraints that con trol even o u r most i m i m ate speec h , the essay should at the very least sound a cau tionary note for those who wish to invoke Bakhtin in the service of a bound less l i bertarianism. "Th e P roble m of the Text" is typical of most works from Bakhtin's last ye ars i n that it is not so much an essay as a series of entries from the note books i n wh ich Bakht in jotted down his thoughts. Keeping such notebook s was a habit he had developed in his youth and one he mai ntai ned throughout his career. This l ifelong d ialogue with himself acco unts fo r m any of the features t hat characterize Bakhtin's style (or, more accu rately, one of Bakhti n's styles): the allusive structure of his remarks and the repeti tiveness that so often bothers readers trained to value more economical and forensic presentation. Anyone expecting a finished , consecutively prosecu ted argument in these pieces that have been torn out of the notebooks is bound to be frustrated . But the sus­ pe nsi on of such expect ations reveals a style that has its own rewards: no t the pleas u re w e de rive from an author who compels us to believe his logic is ineluc table, but the excitement that comes from seeing a mi nd at work while it is at work . Such a sty l e d i m i n ishes the capacity of titles to name a text's sub­ . Jec t, for it is a stvle th at neve r focuses on any single topic. Most of the ti t l e s for th e s e l� te pieces h av e been assigned by Bakh tin's editors; they have done an ex<:ellent job , but it is in the natu re of Bakhtin's mo dus op erandi that in manv cases these titles could ju st as well be ap pl ied to other texts from t he same period. Thus, while this particu­ lar piec e has been called "The Problem of the Text," and whi le, in­ deed, it is a medit ation most concentrated on t h at topic, it also con­ tai ns l on g sections devoted ced to rel ate d but different topics announ in titles of other piel·es. such as s p eec h genres, th e status of the au­ thor. or the disti nl·ti\·eness of t h e human sciences.

'l'h·Is plel·c is of parrin1lar im po rtan l e because. m worrymg the prohlem of how a text relates to its context, the essa�· has a good deal to say abo ut the general topil· of d ia l ogu e the ce n t ral cat�gory in Rak htin s thou wo rk ght and yet the most misunderstood aspect of his ·

·

·

·

,

'

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lmroducrion

respon sibili ty for the wide­ 8akhtin himself must bear part of the "dialo gism . " For spread confusio n that characterizes app ropriat i ons of of what he most while d ia logue is a frequently invoke d conce pt in on the wrote there are relat i vely few p laces where he concentrates .

�

of binarie s t the subject in any det ail as he does here. The cloud sc1ence/ beg i nni ng of the piece (repeat able/nonrepeat ab l e natu ral of rela­ set a into resolved later is ) etc. , hum an sc ie nce, th in g/ mean ing ,

,

a a r specula a ) Working as always with trio)" ("The Problem of the Text". rs e subject (a self derived from the other ), he makes it clear that speak always shape an utterance not only acco rdi n g to the object of discou rse

word is t i ons that are revealed to be not binary, but te rt iary: "Th e bu t duet, a not is drama in which three char acters partic i p at e (it

(what they are talking about) and their immediate add ressee (whom they are speaki n g to), but also according to the particula r ima ge in

understood , a belief that is the a priori of all speech. Thus , each speake r authors an u ttera nce not only w ith an audience-addressee, but a superaddressee in mind: " ... in addition to (the immediate add re ssee ] the author of the uttera nce ,

which they model the belief they will be

awareness, presupposes a higher superaddressee u nderst a n di ng is pre­ sumed, either in some met aphy si cal distance or in distant h isto rical t i me... . In various ages and w ith various understand i ngs o f the world, this superaddressee and his ideally true re spon siv e unde rstand­ ing assume various ideological expressions (God , absolute truth , the court of dispassionate human conscience, the people, the cou rt of h is­ tory, science, and so forth )" (ibid . ). If there is something like a God concept in B ak htin, it is su rely t h e superadd ressee for without faith that we will be understood some ho w, sometime, by somebody, we would not speak at all. Or if we did, it would be ba bb ling. And babble, as Dostoevsky shows in h is shor t story "Bobok,"is the langua ge of the dead. Dostoevsky was very much on Bakhtin's mind d ur i n g a s u s ua l 1970 and 1971, as we can see in the frag m e nts printed here from th e notebook he kept in those years. Although seventvsix vears old an d a transi� nt moving between hospit a ls and homes f�r th � a ge d he was e� erglzed by the excitement his republi shed works had aroused a nd his head was full of new p roj ects . These included several extremelv am ?itiou� studies, among others a big book on sen t imenta lis m and � maJor arucle for Questio n s of Philosophy, the leadi n g Soviet philosophi-

with a greater or lesser

(third), whose absolutely just and responsive

,

-

-

.

lntrodul'tion

cal journal, that was to

..:; xix

be a m anifesto showing ho both the narural be reconceived in light of his d i a logism . But w

and human sciences could

in the winter of 1971, Bakhtin's deeply loved wife and his truest other, Elena Aleksandrovna, died, and he was cast into a deep depression that kept him from realizing most of his writing plans. The notebook entries included here, however, were jotted down be­ fore his wife's death, when Bakhtin was still full of energy. They re­ flect a figure of great intelligence, erudition, and life experience at the height of his powers. A common theme running throughout is the need to exceed boundaries, while still recognizing that only through awareness of the very real restraints at work in mental and social life can we do so. The tone here is hortatory as he encourages others to conceive more expansive borders between utterances ("There can be no such thing as an isolated utterance" ["From Notes Made in

1970-71" ],) at one level, and between whole modes of knowledge, at another ("The distinction between the human and natural sciences. The rejection of the idea of an insurmountable barrier between them" [ibid.].) He celebrates the infinite possibility of interpretation,•z de­ ploring at the same time the way "we have narrowed it terribly by se­ lecting and by modernizing what has been selected. We impoverish the past and do not enrich ourselves. We are suffocating in the cap­ tivity of narrow and homogeneous interpretations" (ibid..) A note of caution is in order here: Bakhtin's call to liberation is everywhere informed by a stern awareness of necessity's central place in the biological limits of our perception, the structure of language, and the laws of society. Our very status as the subjects of our own lives depends on the necessary presence of other subjects. Thus, when Bakhtin says "we are suffocating in the captivity of narrow and homo­ geneous interpretations,"he is not suggesting there is some freedom

beyond interpretation. All understanding is constrained by borders: freedom consists in knowing insofar as possible-for our ability to know is controlled by contextual factors larger than mere individual intention-what those borders are, so that they may be substituted by, translated into different borders. Speech genres provide a good ex­ ample of this relative degree of freedom: the better we know possible variants of the genres that are appropriate to a given situation, the more choice we have among them . Up to a point we may play with speech genres, but we cannot avoid being generic. There is no pure sponraneity, for breaking frames depends on the existence of frames.

Introduction

ists such as Koffka, Bakht in had seriou s differences with Gesta lt theor ained with even but the centra l conce pt in their psych ology he maint figu re witho ut �reatc r vi�or than they in his transli nguist ics: there is no monol ogue. a �round . Even dialogu e needs car­ These notebook entries are a useful correct ive , the n , to the and again back e com they for , nivalist ic image of Bakhtin now abroad such again to the power of frames. There is much in these notes o n the subject, characte ristic Bakhtini an topics as the situatedn ess of the i­ complex distinctiveness of the Dostoevs kian novel, and the myriad of ties concentrated in the activity we call authorshi p. But behind each these separate topics there is an overarching insistence on the degree to which our lives are drenched i n signs and convention s. Yet anoth er border Bakhtin asks us here to acknowledge is that between life an d ritual. Conventional wisdom holds that our everyday existence i s se m i­ otically "pu re," u ncontaminated by the theatrical marked ness that is most obvious in ceremonies; but "pure everyday l i fe is a fiction . . . Human life is always shaped and this shaping is always ritua l istic " ( "From Notes Made in 1970-71"). Thus, a major border between pri­ vate and public life is here breached, as well as that betwee n aesthetics as it is now-narrowly-understood and aesthetics as it has been understood in former ages (as in Kant's third critique). Bakht i n is argu­ ing here that art is only one (if a fundamentally important) sphere of the larger activity of aesthetics , which encompasses as we l l most oth e r aspects of life as l ived by men and women who manifest the i r h u man ­ ity by authoring utterances. just as in the logosphere that is o u r hom e there are genres at work in all our speech, not just in art speec h , so is there "everyday ritual" ( ibid . ), ritual not confined merely to politi cal or religious life. The legacy of these notes is less a series of dirto t ha n it is a catalog of questions open for fu rther explorat ion, none more pressing, perhaps, than: "It is customary to speak abou t the auth oria l masks. But in which utteranc es (speech acts ) is there ever a fore a nd not a mask . . . ?" (ibid . ). This volume conclud es with jottings from the notebook Bakh t in �ept in the m id � le seventie s, when he began work again after rel·overc- ' m g from th e �ne f of h.ts Wile s death. He had been encouraJ?;ed to re. work an unfims hed ptece abando ned in the late thirtie or earlv fortie s s that had the provis ional title "On the Philosophica Rase l � of the _ ces." Huma n Scten Begin ning with the old text, Bakh tin made anum­ ber of notat ions in 1974 that are transl ated he re This was the last ·

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project on which B akhtin worked before he died on 7 March 1975. We conclude with this piece not only because it is Bakhtin's last, but because it picks u p on many of the other concerns of this anthology with the greatest conciseness . He returns again to the obsessions of his youth-the diffe re nce between dialectic and dialogics, the world as event (sobytie), intonation, the difference between text and the aes­ thetic object, philosophy (especially German phi losophy in general and Kant in particular), and the persistence of the past. He makes clear his differences with both the Formalists (once again because in h i s v iew they underestimate content and oversimplify the nature of change) and Structuralists (because even in the best of them, he feels, there is too rigid a conception of "code" ). These notations made on the edge of the grave are, not surprisingly, greatly concerned with continuity in time, that "great time" in which all u tterances are l i n ked to all others, both those from the primordial past and those in the furthest reach of the future. There is a special poignancy, the n , in B akhtin's evocation of Marc Bloch's book The Histo­ rian's Craft. This classic apologia for remembering is invoked by Bakh­ tin because it so passionately articulates the need to conceive living wholes. u But there are other reasons as well why Bloch is an instruc­ tive i nstance . He was a fou nder of the Annates d'histoire economique et sociale, the review arou nd which formed the great school that produced Febvre, Braudel, Le Goff, and many others. B u t after the French de­ feat in the Secon d World War, B loch's jewishness precluded return to his post at the Sorbonne, and he went into virtual exile in the south of France . Like Bakhtin in his exile, B loch continued to work, using schoolboy notebooks, as Bakhtin always had . And like Bakhtin, too, B loch was arreste d . But un like Bakhtin , the French h istorian was shot for his role i n the underground resistance. Bakhtin remembers B loch for remembe ring the Fre nch med ieval peasants ( i n Les raracteres ori�inaux de fhistoire rorale fran(aise), silent for so long, who, in Bloch , found the i r voices again , much as the even ruder and older makers of carnival found the i r voice agai n in Bakhtin. Bloch is a very recent link in a chain that goes back into the darkest past; by remembering B loch, Bakh tin not only fo rges another link, bu t demonstrates the truth of his own conc l u d i ng words: "Nothing is absolutely dead . . . . " The se essa,·s themselves , it is hoped , will serve to forge fu rther . links between cultures as th e y become available to a new generation of scholars in the West.

Introduction

Notes I. "The Role of Games in Rabelais" (a fragment from Rabelais and His World, which had just appeared in Helene lswol sky's translation ) , Yale French Studies, no. �I (Septe m ber 1968), 124 - 3 2 . 2 . Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, tr. Wlad God­ J.ich (l'vlin neapolis: University of M inn esota Press, 1984; original publication in French, 198 1 ), p. ix. 3. English Showalter, "Editor's Colu m n ," PMLA, vol. 1 00, no. 2 (March 1985), 140. 4. Ed. Michael Holquist, u. Caryl E merson and M ichael Holquist (Austin and London: University of Texas P ress, 198 1 ). 5. Not included h ere are a piece made up from notes taken by the two M i rk in sisters on a lecture Bakhtin d elivered i n the early 1 920s on the Symbolist poet Vyachcslav Ivanov and Bakhti n's notes for reworking his 1929 book on Dostoevsky for its second ed ition in 1963, which were published in E n glish as an appendix to the new translation of that edition. See M i khail Bakhtin , Problems of Do sto e vsky's Poetics, ed. and tr. Caryl E m erson (Minneapolis: U n iversity of M innesota P ress, 1 984), pp. 2 83-304. 6. Potebnya was a pioneer in the study of i n n er speech to whom not only Bakhtin but Vygotsky and Shpet are beholden. The obscu rity of Potebnya and h is followers in the West is simply one more example of our provincialism . Bakhtin's praise for t h e Formalist Tynyanov may su rprise some, but i t should b e remembered that Tynyanov is the least "Formalist" o f the OPOjaZ circle, a scholar who was always concerned with the h istorical status of genres and texts. Th e other Formalists Bakhtin praises in this essay, after a period early in th eir careers of ex­ cessive insistence on the au totel ic nature of the text (a tendency, however, m u ch exaggerated by their enem ies and certain h istorians), incorporated more and more historical and cu ltu ral factors in their work. They were, even i n the early period , like the others Bakhtin here honors, original thinkers who set out new ways to conceive literary analysis. For a fuller description of th e circumstances under which R ak h ti n published this essay, see Peter Se ytfcrt , Soviet Lilfrary Strorturalism (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1983), esp. pp. 295-297. 7. "Avtor i gcroj v estetiieskoj tltjatd'nosti," r:stetika slncesnOf!.O tt'nrrht.
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10. The simi larities with Staige r's views are not surprisi ng, considering the im­ pact of Husser! and (especially) Heidegger on Staiger's work . Part of the Zu rich School that also included Ludwig Binswanger, Staiger constantly sought the tem­ poral ground of a work's author as the basis for interpretation. The summa of his methodological thinki ng, Grundbegriffe per Poetik ( Zu rich: Atlantic Verlag, 1961 ), is rem arkably close to Bakhtin in many of its assessments, a close ness that is also paralleled in the j udgment of both thinkers that Goethe's uniq ueness in large mea­ sure could be attributed to his ability to "see" space in time. But Staiger's close­ ness to Heidegger means that ulti mately space, especially the kind of concrete space that obsesses Bakhtin, has a status infe rior to that of time, marking a funda­ mental diffe rence from the chronotope, in which time and space have equally im­ portant status. II. Bakhtin was provided a wealth of specialist knowledge on Goethe's activity as a natural scientist by his close friend Ivan Kanaev, an eminent biologist with a lifelong passion for Goethe. He published two books on the subject: logann Volf­ gang Gete: Ocllerki iz zllizni poeta-naturalista ( Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Notes from the life of a poet-natu ralist) ( Leningrad: Nau ka, 1962); and Gete kak estesrooispytate/ (Goethe as a natural scientist) ( Leningrad: Nauka, 1970). I n the case of both books, Bakhtin w rote long letters to the publisher encouraging publication. These letters provide further w itness to the major role Goethe plays in Bakhtin's thought. 12. And in so doing comes as close to Derrida as he eve r does: cf. Jacques Der­ rida, "Signatu re Event Context," in Margins of Pllilosoplly, tr. Alan Bass (Chicago: Un iversity of Chicago P ress, 1982), pp. 307-30. 13. As when B loch praises the-very disparate-Michelet and Fustel de Cou­ langes, because "these two great historians were too great to overlook the fact that a civil ization, like a person, is no mechanically arranged game of solitaire; the knowledge of fragments, studied by turns, each for its own sake, will never prod uce the knowledge of the whole; it will not even produ ce that of the frag­ ments them selves" (Marc Bloch , Tlte Historian's Craft, tr. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), p. 155).

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

Response to from the

a Question

Novy Mir Editorial Staff

The editorial staff of Novy Mir has asked me how I would evaluate the current state of literary scholarship. Of cou rse, i t is d ifficult to answer this q uestion categorically or with much assurance . When evaluating our own times, ou r own contempo­ raneity, we always tend to err ( i n one d i rection or another). And this must be taken i n to account. Nonetheless, I shall attempt a response. Ou r l i terary scholarship holds great possibilities: we have many serio u s and talented l i te rary scholars , i ncluding young ones, and we have h igh scholarly trad itions that have developed both in the past (Potebnya, Veselovsky ) and in the Soviet period (Ty nyanov, Toma­ shevsky, E i khenbaum , Gukovsky, and others). 1 Of course, the exter­ nal conditions necessary for its development also exist ( research insti­ tu tes, facu lties, financing, publish ing possibili ties , and so forth ). But in spite of all th is, i t seems to me that our recent l i terary scholarship (from essentially al most all of the past decade) is, in general, neither realizing these possibilities nor satisfying our legitimate demands. Th e re is no bold s tatement of general problems , no d iscoveries of new areas or significant individual phenomena in the bou ndless world of literatu re ; there is no real , healthy stru ggle among scholarly trends. A cert ain fear of the i nvestigatory risk, a fear of hypotheses, prevails. Lite rary scholarsh i p is still essentially a young science. Its methods have not been d eveloped and tested th rough experience , as have those of the natu ral scie nces; thus, the abse nce of a struggle of trends and the fear of bold hypotheses inevi tably lead to a predominance of truis ms and stock phrases. Unfortunately, we have no shortage of them. Suc h , in my view, is the f{tfltral natu re of our contemporary lite rary scholarship. B u t no ge neral descri ption is ever completely fai r. In our day, of cou rse, fai rly good and useful books are being published (espe­ cially on the history of literatu re ), interesting and profound articles

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arc appearing, and there are, finally, large phenom � na t� whi � h my ge neral description cannot possibly extend. I have m m � nd N 1ko� ay Konrad's book, West and East, Dmitry Likhachev's Poettcs of Anczent Russian Literature, and Research on Sign Systems, in four i n stallments so far (the school of you ng researchers headed by Y u ry M . Lotm an). z These are the most h ighly gratifying phenomena of recent years. I shall perhaps touch on these works during the course of our further discussion. Since my primary purpose is to d iscuss the tasks facing literary scholarship, I shall limit myself here to two tasks that are related only to the literature of past epochs, and then in the most general terms. I shall not touch at all upon the study of modern l i te rature and l iterary criticism, although it is precisely here that we find most of the i mpor­ tant and immediate tasks. I have selected the two problems I intend to discuss because, in my opinion, they have a certa i n r i pe ness about them; productive development of them has al ready begun and it must be continued. F irst of all, literary scholarship should establ ish closer l i n ks with the history of culture. Literatu re is an inseparable part of c u l tu re a nd it cannot be understood outside the total context of the e n t ire cu lture of a given epoch . It must not be severed from the rest of culture , n or, as is frequently done , can it be correlated with socioeconomic factors, as it were, behi nd culture's back. These factors affect culture as a whol e, and only through it and in conjunction with it do they affect literatu re . For a fairly long period of time we have devoted special attent ion to questions of the specific features of literatu re . At one time this was , possibly, necessary and usefu l . One must say, howeve r, that n arrow specifica tion is alien to the best traditions of our schola rsh ip . Rec all how very broad were the cultural horizons in the researc h of Pote bn ya and �specially of Veselovsky. In our enthusiasm for specifica tion we have 1gnored questions of the interconnection and interdepe nde n ce o f _ vanous areas of culture; we have frequentl y forgotten that the bou nd a­ _ nes of these areas are not absolute , that in various e poc hs they ha ve been drawn in various ways; and we have not taken into accou nt that the mos � intense and prod uctive life of culture takes place on th e bounda nes of its individu al areas and not in places whe re these are as have become enclose d in their own specificitv. Our h istor i cal and lite r­ ary critica l researc h usually contai ns chara � terizat ions of cp<x.·h s to _ _ Which the hterary pheno mena under study refe r, but i n the ma jor ity of cases these charac teriza tions differ in no way from those th at arc

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give n i n general h i stories; they do not inc lude a diffe rentiated analysis of the areas of cul ture and their interaction with literature . And even the methodology of these analyses is poorly develope d . The so-called literary p rocess of the e poch , studied apart from an in-depth analysis of culture , amounts to a supe rficial struggle of literary schools, and in modern times (especially the nineteenth century), amounts essen­ tially to an u p roar i n the newspapers and magazines, exerting no es­ sential i nfluence on the great and real l iterature of the e poch. The powerfu l deep currents of culture (especially the lower, popular ones), wh ich actually determine the creativity of writers, remain und is­ closed, and sometimes researchers are completely unaware of them. Such an approach does not make i t possible to penetrate i nto the depths of great works, and literature i tself begins to seem a trivial i n­ stead of a serious pursuit. The task I am discussing and the p roblems related to it (the p rob­ lem of the bou ndaries of the epoch as a cu ltural e nti ty, the problem of a typology of cultures, and so forth ) loom very large when one consid­ ers the question of baroque literature i n Slavic cou ntries, and espe­ cially the discussions, continuing to this day, of the Renaissance and humanism i n countries of the East. The need for a deeper study of the i nsepa rable link between the literature and culture of the epoch is manifested especially strikingly. The ou tstanding works of recent literary scholarship that I have mentioned-Kon rad , Likhachev, Lotman and his school-with all the d iversity of their methodology are alike in that they do not sepa­ rate literature from culture; they strive to u nderstand literary phenom­ ena i n the diffe rentiated u nity of the epoch's entire culture . It should be e mphasized here that lite ratu re is too complex and multifaceted a p henomenon and literary scholarship is still too young for it to be poss i ble to speak of any one single "redeeming" method in literary scho larship. Various approaches are justified and are even q u i te neces­ sary as long as they are se rious and reveal someth ing new in the l i te r­ ary phenomenon being studied, as long as they promote a deeper u nderstanding of it. If it i s impossi ble to study literature apart from an e poch's entire cul­ tu re , it is even more fatal to encapsu late a literary phenomenon in the sing le e poch of its creation, in its own contemporanei ty, so to speak. We u sually strive to explain a writer and his work precisely through his own time and the most recent past (usually within the epoch, as we un derstand it). We are afraid to remove ourselves in time from the

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ds its roots phenomenon unde r invest igation . Yet the anwo rk exten by �en­ for imo the distant past. Great literary works are prepar ed of ptck­ tu ries, and in the epoch of their creatio n it is merely a m atter matura ­ ing the fruit that is ripe after a lengthy and comple x process of of the tion. Trying to underst and and explain a work solely in terms of the ons iti cond the of terms conditions of its epoch alone, solely in eman­ s its into e most immediate time, will never enable us to penetrat to tic depths. E nclosure within the epoch also makes it i m possib le ap­ life understand the work's future life in subsequent cent uries ; this pears as a kind of paradox. Works break through the bou nda ries of their own time, they live in centuries, that is , in great time and fre­ quently (with great works , always) their lives there a re more i ntense and fuller than are their lives within their own time. To put it so me­ what simplistically and crudely, if the significance of any work is re­ duced, for example, to its role in the struggle against serfdo m (as is

done in our secondary schools), this work will lose all of i ts significa nce when serfdom and its remnants no longer exist in life . It is freq ue ntl y the case, however, that a work gai ns in s ignificance, that is, it enters great time. But the work cannot live in future centu ries with out havi ng somehow absorbed past centuries as well. If it had belon ged entirely to today (that is, were a product only of its own time) and not a con tin ua­ tion of the past or essentially related to the past, it could not li ve in th e future. Everything that belongs only to the present d ies along with the present. It seems paradoxical that, as I have already said , great works con ­ tinue to live in the distant future . I n the process of their posth u m ous life they are enriched with new meanings , new signific a nce : it is as though these works outgrow what they were in the e poch of the ir cre­ ation. We can say that neither Shakespeare himself nor his conte m po ­ raries knew that "great Shakespeare " whom we know now. There is no possibility of squeezing our Shakespeare into the E l izabethan ep och . Belinsky in his day spoke of the fact that each epoch always discove rs something new in the great works of the past. But do we then attri b ute to Shakespeare's works something that was not there, do we mod e rn ize and distort them ? Modernization and distortion, of course , have ex isted and will continue to exist. But that is not the reason why Shake spe are has �row n. He has grown because of that which actually has bee n an d cont mues to be found in his works , but which neither he himsel f no r his conte mporaries could conscio usly perceiv e and evaluat e in the co n­ text of the cultu re of their e poch .

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Semantic phenomena can exist i n concealed form, potential ly, and be revealed only in semantic cultural con texts of subsequent epochs that a re favorable for such d i sclosure. T he semantic treasures Shake­ speare embedded in his works were created and collected through the centuries and even millennia: they lay hidden i n the language, and not only i n the literary language , but also in those strata of the popular language that before S hakespeare's time had not entered literature, i n the diverse gen res and forms of speech communication, in t h e forms of a m ighty national culture (primarily carn ival forms) that were shaped through millenn ia, in theater-spectacle gen res (mystery plays, farces, and so forth), in plots whose roots go back to prehistoric antiqu ity, and , fi nally, in forms of th i n ki ng. Shakespeare, like any artist, con­ structed his works not out of inani mate elements, not out of bricks , but ou t of forms that were already heavily laden with meaning, filled with it. We may note in passing that even bricks have a certain spatial form a n d , consequently, in the hands of the builder they express som ething. Gen res a re of special significance . Genres (of literature and speech) throughout the centuries of their life accu mulate forms of seeing and interp re t i ng particular aspects of the worl d . For the writer-craftsman the ge n re serves as a n external template, but the great artist awakens the semantic possibilities that lie withi n it. Shakespeare took advan­ tage of and included in his works immense treasu res of potential meaning that could not be fu lly revealed or recognized in his epoch. The author h i mself and his contemporaries see , recognize , and evalu­ ate prima rily that which is close to thei r own day. The author is a cap­ tive of his epoch, of his own present. Subsequent ti mes liberate h i m from t h i s captivi ty, and li terary scholarship is called upon t o assist in this li bera tion . It certai nly does not follow from what we have said that the writer's ow n epoch can somehow be ignored, that his creativity can be cast ba ck into the past or projected i nto the fu ture. One's own present re­ tain s all of its i m mense and , in many respects , decisive significance . Sch ola rly a nalysis can proceed only from it and must always refer to it in its su bseq uent development. A work of lite rature, as we said above , is revealed primarily in the differentiated unity of the culture of the epoch in which it was c reated, but it cannot be closed off in this epoch: its fu ll n ess is revealed only i n f(rl'at time. But even the culture of an epoch, howeve r temporally d i stant from us it may be, cannot be enclosed within i tself as something ready-

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made. completely fi nalized , and irrevocably departe d , deceased. Spengler's ideas about closed and fi nalized cultural world s still e �ert a great influence on historians and literary scholars. But these 1deas must be subjected to significant correctives. Spengler i magined the culture of an epoch as a closed circle. But the u nity of a particu lar cul­ ture is an open unity. Each such unity (for example, classical antiquity), with all its u nique­ ness, enters into the single (although not linear) process of the evolu­ tion of human culture. In each culture of the past lie i m mense seman­ tic possibilities that have remained undisclosed, u nrecognize d , and unutilized throughout the entire historical life of a given culture. An­ tiquity itself did not know the antiquity that we know now. There used to be a school joke: the ancient Greeks did not know the main thing about themselves, that they were ancient Greeks, and they never called themselves that. But in fact that temporal distance that trans­ formed the Greeks into ancient Greeks had an immense transforma­ tional significance: it was filled with increasing d iscoveries of new se­ mantic values in antiqu ity, values of which the G reeks were i n fact unaware, although they themselves created them . One must say that Spengler himself, in his great analysis of classical culture , was also able to discover new semantic depths in it. True, i n som e ways he supple­ mented it to give it more roundness and fi nality, but neve rtheless, he, too, participated in the great cause of liberating antiquity from the captivity of time. We must emphasize that we are speaking here about new semantic depths that lie embedded in the cultu res of past epochs an d not abo u t the expansio n of our factual, material knowledge of them - wh ich we are constantly gaining through archeological excavations , d isco ve rie s of new texts , improvement in deciphering the m , reconstru ction s . an d so forth. In those instances we acquire new material bea rers of me an­ ing, as it were , bodies of meaning. But one can not draw an absolu te distinctio n between body and meaning in the area of cu ltu re : ·' cu ltu re is not made of dead elements, for even a simple brick, as we ha ve al­ ready said , in the hands of a builder expresses something thro u gh its form. Therefore new discoverie s of material bearers of mean i n al te r g our semantic concepts, and they can also force us to restruct ure the m radically. There exists a very strong, but one-sid ed and thus u ntrustwo rth y. idea t� at � n order better to understa nd a fore i n culture . one mu s t g ente r mto It, forgetti ng one's own , and view the world th rou gh th e e y e s

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of this foreign cu lture . This idea, as I said , is one-sided . Of cou rse , a certain e ntry as a living bei ng into a foreign culture, the poss ibility of seeing the world th rough its eyes, is a necessary part of the process of understanding it; but if this were the only aspect of this understand­ i ng, it would merely be dupl ication and wou ld not entail anything new or enriching. Creative understanding does not renou nce itself, its own place i n time, its own culture; and i t forgets nothi ng. In order to understand, it is i mmensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understand i ng-in time, i n space, i n cultu re . For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and u nderstood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space and because they are others. I n the real m of culture , outsideness is a most powerful factor i n u nderstanding. I t is only i n t h e eyes of another culture that foreign cul­ tu re reveals itself fully and profou ndly (bu t not maximally fu lly, be­ cause there will be cultures that see and understand even more). A meaning only reveals its depths once it has e ncountered and come i nto contact with another, foreign meaning: they engage in a kind of dia­ logue, w hich su rmou nts the closedness and one-sided ness of these particular meanings, these cultu res. We raise new questions for a for­ eign cu lture , ones that it did not raise itsel f; we seek answe rs to our own questions i n it; and the foreign culture responds to us by revealing to us its new aspects and new semantic depths. Without one's own ques­ tions one cannot creatively u nderstand anything other o r foreign (bu t, of course, the questions must be serious and sincere). Such a d ialogic encou nter of two cultures does not result in merging or mixing. E ach re tains its own unity and open totality, but they are mutually enriched . As concerns my own evaluation of prospects for the development of our lite ra ry scholarship, I think they are quite good in view of our im­ me nse potential . We lack only scholarly, i nvestigatory boldness, and without this we cannot rise to the heights or descend to the depths.

Respo nse

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Quest ion from

Nouy Mir

Notes

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p h i lologist w o 1 . Aleksan dr Potebny a ( 1835 -91), distingu ished Russian

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on both Lev thought. Pote b n y a 's Thought and Language ( 1862) was an influence

Vygots ky and Gustav Shpet.

sough t to es­ Aleksandr Veselovsky ( 1838- 1906), Russian l i te rary h istorian who with its own history of branch t independen an as literature of history the tablish to c rea te a aims and methods. He was attractive to Bakhtin because of h is e fforts fu ll-fledged historical poetics .

roba bly Yury Tynyanov ( 1894- 1943), Ru ssia n literary theorist and nove l i s t , p wh om th i w , the most important Formalist thinker (with the e xce p t ion of Jakobson tra ns­ 4; 92 1 ( age Langu erse V of Problems as works such In he worked very closely).

and lated into E nglish as The Problem of Verse Language, ed. a n d tr. Micha el Sosa son) akob J by B rent H a rvey [Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1981]; there is a moving afte rword ic and Archaizers and Innovators ( 1 929), Tynyanov argued for a comp le x , d y na m conception of literary texts and their relation to each other in h i story.

Boris Tomashevsky ( 1890- 1957), professor at Leningrad U n ive rsi t y and clos e affiliate of the Formalists . Tomashevsky, who had trai n i n g i n statistics , is am on g

the more systematic of the Formalists, as can be seen in his Theory of Literature

(Poetics) ( 1925) and The Writer and the Book: An Outline of Textolof!.Y ( 1928). Boris E ikhenbau m ( 1886- 1959), one of the very earliest Forma l i s t s who qu i c kly became one of their most productive members and stau nchest d e fende rs . He is

the author of several influential studies on Gogol , Lermontov , Tolstoy, a nd oth er Russian classics . He supervised the edition of Tolstoy s works publ ish ed i n the early 1930s t hat included two introductory essays by Bakhtin . Grigory Gukovsky ( 1902 -50), a c l ose associate o f the Formalists w h o h a d a pro­ '

digious knowledge of the e ighteenth century, an area superficially e x p lo re d befo re Gukovsky opened it up with a series of articles whose influence is s t i ll being fe lt:

he founded the sector for the study of the eigh teenth century i n P u s h k i nsk y Do m . He was also an expert o n the nineteenth centu ry a n d wrote i m po r t a n t stu d ies of Pushkin and Gogo!.

2 . N i kolay Konrad ( 1891 - 1970), Russian philo lo gis t a nd h i sto r i a n w ho s pe c i al­ .Ized .m the languages

and lite ratures of Japan and C h i na. He was an acq u ai n tan ce of Bakhtin' in the 1920s. Konrad is one of the very few co m p a r a t i sts who h a d an encyc opedtc knowledge of both Western and Oriental cul ture . He pub l i s h e d o n techm al pr blems of establish ing obscure texts and tra n s l a te d Ch i nese poe try. Dmmy L 1 khach e v ( 1906- ), d isti n g u i s h e d scholar of R u ssian medie val l i te ra­

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ture and culture. He i s author or editor of seve ra l boo k s on th e period fro m t he nth to the seve nte � nth c e n t u � i e s hut has also publis h ed on tcxtologv. th e im age . t e hu man bemg m old Russ1an cultu re , and the role of l a ugh t e r in the m e d t e , al penod.

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Response to

a

Question from NrJt->y Jfir

Reuardt on Sif!ll Systems ( Trody po znaJ:vym sistemom) is a series of works on wpics in semiotic theory of art and culture published at Tartu Un iversity ( forme rly Dor­ pat) in E stonia. Yury Lorman ( 1 922 - ) is professor of Russian literature at Tartu University, where he has organized a number of conferences on the theory of art and culture that have made Tartu a world center of semiotic activity. His prodigiou s learning and feverish activity as a lectu rer and writer make him the most important literary scholar in the Soviet U nion today. 3. Bakhtin wrote a good deal about the indivisibility of "body" and "meaning" in the 1 920s , polemically rejecting the "materialist aesthetics" of the Formalists on the one hand and "abstract idealism" on the other: "the meaning of art is com­ pletely i nseparable from all the details of its material body. The work of art is meaningfu l in its entirety. The very construction of the body-sign [ te/o-znal] has primary importance in this instance. Technically auxiliary, and therefore replace­ able, elements are held to a minimum. The individual reality of the object, with all the u niqueness of its features, acquires artistic significance here" (P. N. Medvedev/M . M. Bakhtin, The Formal Metltod in Literary Sclto/arsltip, tr. Albert J. Weh rle [Cambridge , Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1985 ], p. 1 2 ) .

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The

Bildungsroman and Its Significance

in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel)

The need for a historical investigation into the novel gen re (one that would not be statically formal or normative). The d iverse subcatego­ ries of the genre. An attempt at a historical c lassification of these sub­ categories. Classification according to how the image of the main hero is constructed: the travel novel, the novel of ordeal, the biographical (autobiographical) novel, the Bildungsroman. No specific historical subcategory upholds any given principle in pure form; rather, each is characterized by the prevalence of one or another principle for form u­ lating the figure of the hero. Since all elements are m u tually deter­ mined, the principle for formulating the hero figure is related to the particular type of plot, to the particular conception of the world, and to a particular composition of a given novel . 1 . The travel novel. The hero is a point moving in space . He has no essential distinguishing characteristics, and he himself is not at the center of the novelist's artistic attention. His move ment in space­ wanderings and occasionally escapade-adventures (mainly of the or­ deal type)-enables the artist to develop and demonstrate the s patial and static social diversity of the world (country, city, culture, national­ ity, various social groups and the specific conditions of their lives). This type of positioning of the hero and construction of the novel is typical of classical naturalism (Petronius, Apuleius , the wanderi ngs of E ncolpius and others, the wanderings of Lucius the Ass), and of the European picaresque novel: Lazarillo de Tormes, The Life of Guzman de Alfarache, Francion, Gil Bias, and others. 1 And the same principle for formulating the hero prevails in an even more complex form in the adventure-picaresque novels of Defoe ( Captain Singleton , Moll Flanders, and others) as wel l as in the adventu re stories of Smollett ( Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphry Clinker). z F i nally, ce r­ t�i � ki nds of nineteenth-century adventure novels, continuing the tra­ d �tlon of the picaresque novel, are based on the same principle with dtfferent complications.

The /JiltlunK,smmon

.; I I

The trave l novel typically involves a purely spatial a n d s t a t i c con­ ception of the world's diversi ty. The world is a spat ial cont iguity of differences and contrasts, and life is an alternation of various contrast­ ing cond itions: success/failu re , happi ness/unhappiness, victory/defeat, and so on. Te mporal categories are extremely poorly developed. In this type of novel , time in and of itself lacks any significance or historical coloring; even "biological time" -the hero's age, his progress from youth through matu rity to old age-is either completely absent or is noted only as a matter of form. The only time developed in this type of novel is ad­ ventu re time, which consists of the most i m mediate units-moments, hours, days-snatched at random from the temporal process. Typical temporal descriptions in this kind of novel are : "at the same moment," "the next moment," "he was an hour ahead of time," "the next day," "a second earlier, later," "he was late ," "he was ahead of sched­ ule," and so forth ( when describing an encounter, a battle, a duel, a scuffle , a robbery, flight, and other adventures). "Day," "morning," and "night" as settings for adventu re action. The special significance of night in adventure time, and so on. Because of the absence of historical time, emphasis is placed only on diffe rences and contrasts. There are a lmost no i ntrinsic ties at all, and the re is no understand ing of the wholeness of such sociocultural phe no mena as nationalities, countries, cities, social groups, and oc­ cu pations . Hence these novels typically perceive alien social groups, natio ns, cou ntries, ways of life , and so forth, as "exotic," that is, they pe rceive bare d istinctions, contrasts, and strangeness. Hence the natural istic quality of this subcategory of the novel: the world d isinte­ grates into ind ividual things, phenomena, and events that are simply con tiguous or alternating. The i mage of man in the novel-wh ich is ba rely d istingu ishable-is quite static, as static as the world that sur­ rou nds hi m . This novel does not recognize human emergence and de­ velo pme nt. Even if his status changes sharply (in the picaresque novel he cha nges from beggar to rich man, from homeless wanderer to no ble man ) , he h i m self remains unchanged . 2. The novel of ordeal. The second type of novel is constructed as a ser ies of tests of the main heroes, tests of their fidelity, valor, bravery, virtu e, nobility, sancti ty, and so on. This is the most widespread su bc ate gory of the novel in European literatu re . It encompasses a co nside rable majority of all the novels prod uced . The world of this novel- the arena of the struggle and testing of the hero; events and

· 1 ·he Bildungsroman

adventures-is a touchstone for the hero. The hero is a lways pre­ sented as complete and u nchanging. All his qualities are given from the very beginning, and during the course o f the novel they are only tested and verified. The novel of ordeal also appears in the classical period, and in its two main subcategories. The first subcategory is represented by the Greek romance ( Aetlziopica, Leucippe and Clitoplzon, and others ) . 3 The second subcategory is represented by the early Christian hagiogra­ phies (especially of martyrs). The first subcategory-the Greek romance-is constructed as a test of fidelity in love and the purity of the ideal hero and heroine. Almost all its adventures are organized as threats to the heroes' i nnocence, pu­ rity, and mutual fidelity. The static, immutable nature of their charac­ ters and their abstract ideality preclude any emergence or d evelop­ ment;4 nothing that takes place, nothing they see or u ndergo, can be utilized as life experience that alters and shapes them . Unlike the travel novel, this type o f novel provides a develop ed an d complex image of man, one that has had an i m mense infl u e nce on the subsequent history of the novel. This image is essenti ally u n i tary, b ut its unity is specific; it is static and substantial . The Greek ro man ce­ rising out of the "Second Sophistic" and nourished o n rhe torical cas u­ istry-c reates basically a rhetorical, juridical concept of m an . 5 H ere one already sees the image of a human being who is profo u n dly stee pe d in those ju dicial-rhetorical categories and concepts of gui l t/in noc en ce , judgme nt/vindication , accusation, crime, virtue, m erits, an d so fo rth , which have for so long hung suspended over the novel and d ic tated th e presentation of the hero in the novel as accused or defe nde d , tra ns­ forming the novel into a kind of cou rt of law for the hero . In the Greek romance these categories are formalistic in nature, but even here th ey create a unique unity of man as the subject of judgment, defen se, or accusation, the bearer of crimes and merits . The j urid ical , j ud icia l­ rhetorical categories in the Greek romance are frequently cast ou t in to the world as well, transforming events into causes, things into evi­ den ce , and so forth . All these points are developed i n an analy sis of the specifi c materi al of the Greek roman ce. In the seco nd su bcategory of the novel of ordeal, which also arose on classical soil, there is a significan t change in the ideological co nte nt bot� of ma n's image and of the idea of testing. The e arl y Ch rist ia n . hagtograp� tes of martyrs and other saints (Dion Chrysostom , le gen ds of th e Cl tmentme cycle, and others) prepared the way for this su b·

T h e /JildunKsromon

...; I .�

category.h E lements of it are also to be found in Apuleius' Metamorpho­ ses ( The Golden Ass). This su bcategory is based on the idea of testing a

holy man through suffering and temptation. The idea of testing is no longer as external and formal here as it is in the Greek romance. The hero's inte rnal life, his habitus [ conditio n ] , becomes an essential aspect of his image . The very natu re of the test is ideologically more pro­ found and precise, especially in passages where faith is being tested th rough doubt. In general chis subcategory of the novel of ordeal typi­ cally combines adventures with psychology and a deep probing of problems. But here too the testing is conducted from the standpoint of a ready-made and dogmatically accepted ideal . There is no movement, no quality of emergence i n the ideal itself. The tested hero is also ready-made and predetermined. The tests (suffering, temptation, doubt) do not become formative experience for him, they do not change him, and in that very immutability of the hero lies the e ntire poin t. The next s ubcategory of the novel of ordeal is the medieval chival ric novel (the largest and most essential part of it), wh ich, of course, was significantly influenced by both subcategories of the classical novel. A certain d iversity of types within the chival ric novel is predicated by nuances in the ideological content of the idea of testing (a predomi­ nance of cou rtly, Ch ristian, or mystical elements in the content of this idea). A brief analysis of the main types of structure in the chival ric novel-in-verse from the thirteenth, fou rteenth, and subsequent cen­ turies (up to Amadis ( of Gaul] and Palmerin, inclusive)/ Finally, the most significant, historically influential, and unalloyed subcategory of the novel of o rdeal is the baroque novel (d' Urfe , Scu­ dery, La Cal prenede, Lohenstein, and others)." The baroque novel was able to draw from the idea of testing all the plot possibilities it held for the construction of large-scale novels. Therefo re, the baroque novel best reveals the organizational possibi lities of the idea of testing, and at the same time reveals the limited and narrow way i n which this idea actually penetrates i nto reality. The baroque novel is the purest and most consiste nt type of heroic novel, a type that reveals the particu­ lar featu res of novelistic heroizotion as distinct from epic heroization . The baroque admits of nothing average, normal, typical, or ordinary; everything here is expanded co an immense scale. j udicial-rheto rical pathos is also expressed with great consistency and vividness here. The o rganization of man's image, the selection of features, their uni­ fication, and the attribution of deeds and events ( "face") to the image

The

Bildun[{sroman

ation , gloof t he hero are determ ined by his defense (apology) , justific rification . or, converse ly, convicti on and exposu re . .

m baroque novel of ordeal had two branche s of develop ment Rad­ , Lewis ( ovel n re-heroic subsequent centu ries: ( 1 ) the adventu sen­ cliffe . Walpole , and others); (2) the pathos-fi lled psychol ogical, of ovel n the of timental novel ( Richardso n, Rousseau ). The features ere wh ally ordeal change significantly in these subcategor ies, especi one finds a unique heroizatio n of the weak, the h e roization of the

The

" little man." Despite all the differences among the aforementioned historical subcategories of the novel of ordeal, they all h ave a certain set of es­ sential common features that determine the significance of this type in the history of the European novel . i. Plot (sju.z.het]. The plot of a novel o f ordeal i s always con stru cte d on deviations from the normal course of the hero's life , excep tio nal events and situations that would not be fou nd i n the typic al , norm al, ordinary biography. Thus in the majority of cases the G reek rom ance depicts events that take place between a betrothal and the wedd in g or between the wedding and the wedding nigh t , and so forth , t h at is, events that essentially should not take place , that only sepa rate two contiguous moments of the biography from one another, th at reta rd the course of normal life, but do not change it. I n the end the love rs are always joi ned in wedlock and biographical life enters i ts nor ma l course beyond the limits of the novel. This also determ i ne s t h e s p e­ cific nature of novel time: it lacks any real biograph ical d u ration . Hence also the exceptional role of chance both in the G reek an d , par­ ticularly , in the baroque novel. The events of a baroque nove l , orga­ nized as adventures, lack any biographical or social signifi canc e or typicality: they are unexpected, unprecedented , and extraord ina ry. Hence also the role of crime and all kinds of anomal ies i n the plot of the baroque novel, its bloody and frequently perverted natu re ( th is pe­ culiarity is to this day inherent i n that line of adventu re novel tha t is related to the baroque novel through Lewis, Walpole, and Radc liffe­ the black or Gothic novel) . The novel of ordeal always begins where a deviatio n from th e nor­ mal socia� and biograp h ical course of life begins, and it ends whe re li fe resu mes Its normal course . Therefo re , the events of a novel of ord ea l . w hatever they may be , do not create a new type of life , a new human . biogr aphy that is determ ined by the changi n g conditi ons of l ife . B e-

..: I S

yond the bo u n d a ries of the nove l , h i o � ra p h y a n d soc i a l l ife re m a in ordinary and unchanged . ii. Time. (The bou nd less and infi nite natu re of adve ntu re t i m e , the stringing toge ther of adventures. ) In a nove l of ordeal we fi nd first of all a fu rther development and d e tailing of adventure time ( t i me taken out of history and biography). One finds fairy-tale time ( i nfl ue nced by the East) here as wel l , particu larly in the ch ival ric novel. This time is char­ acterized p recisely by a violation of normal tem poral categories: for example, the work of several years is done in one night o r, conversely, a year passes in one moment ( the bewitched d ream motif). The pecu liarities of the plot, which centers on deviations from the historical and biograph ical cou rse , dete rmine the overall unique ness of time i n a novel of ordeal. It lacks the means for actual measu re ment ( h istorical and biographical ), and it lacks historical localization, that is, significant attachment to a particular historical epoch, a link to particu­ lar h istorical events and con d itions. The very problem of h istorical localization d id not exist for the novel of ordeal . To be s u re , the baroqu e also creates a h istorical novel of ordeal ( for example, Scudery's Le grand Cyrus and Lohenstein's Armenius und Thusnelda), b u t these novel s a re only quasi-historical and the time in them is also quasi-historical. The e ssential achievement of the novel of ordeal i n the area of re­ worki ng tem poral categories is psychological time (especially in the ba­ roq u e novel). This time possesses a subjective palpability and d u ra­ tion ( d u ri ng the depiction of danger, agonizing suspense, i nsatiable passi on, and so o n ) . But such psychologically colored and concre tized ti me lacks essential local ization, even i n the whole of the individual's life process. iii . Depiction of the world. The novel of ordeal , as distinct from the travel n ovel , concentrates on the hero; i n the majority of cases the sur­ rou nd ing world and the secondary characters are transformed i nto a me re background for the hero, into a decoration , a setting. Nonethe­ less , the su rroundi ngs occu py an important position i n the novel (es­ peciall y in the baroque novel ) . But the external worl d , attached l i ke a backgrou n d to an i m mobile hero, lacks i n dependence and h istoricity. I n additi o n , as distinct from the travel nove l , here geographical exoti­ cis m preva i l s over social . Everyday life , which occupied an i m portant pl ace in the travel novel, is al most completely lacking here (or else it is not exotic). There is no real interaction between the hero and the

The

Biidungsroman

world : the world is not capable of changing the hero, it only tests h im; and the hero does not affect the world, he does not change its appear­ ance; while undergoing tests and vanqu ishing his e n e mies, the he ro _ leaves everything in the world in its place . H e does not alter the soctal face of the world, nor does he restructure it, and he does not clai m to. The problem of the inte raction between subject and object, man and the world, was not raised in the novel of ordeal . This explains why the nature of heroism is so unproductive and uncreative in this type of novel (even when historical heroes are depicted). The novel of ordeal, having reached its peak in the baroque p e riod, lost its purity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centurie s . B u t the type of novel that is constructed on the idea of testing a hero conti nu es to exist, complicated, of course, by all that has been created by the bio­ graphical novel and the Bildungsroman. The com positiona l force of the idea of testing, which makes it possible to organize dispa rate mate rial intrinsically and in depth around the hero, and to combin e the ke en ly adventuristic with the profoundly problematical and complexly psy­ chological, determines the significance of this idea in the subsequent history of the novel . Thus, the idea of testing-made much more complex and rich, of course , by the achievements of the b iograph ical and especially the educational novel-lies at the basis of the French realistic novels. In terms of their main type of construction , the nov els of Stendhal and Balzac are novels of ordeal (the baroque tra ditio n is especially deep-seated in Balzac). Dostoevsky's novels must also be i n­ cluded among the significant phenomena of the ni nete enth cent u ry, since, by virtue of their construction, they are also novels of ord ea l . In subsequent history the very idea o f ordeal is filled with t h e m ost diverse ideological content. This type includes ( i n later rom a ntic ism ) testing for vocation , for genius, and for membe rship in the e lec t. A n­ other subcategory includes the testing of Napoleonic parve nus i n th e French novel, testing for biological health and adaptabi lity to life (Zola), testing for artistic genius and, i n parallel , the artist's fitn ess fo � life ( Kunstlerroman), and, fi nally, testing the liberal reform er, th e Ntetzschea n, the immoral ist, the emancipat ed woman, and a nu mbe r of other subcategories in works produced by third-rate write rs d ur i n g the second half of the nineteent h centu ry. Another special su bc ate­ gory of the novel of ordeal is the Russian novel of ordeal , which te sts man for his social fitness and genera l worthi ness (the theme of the "s u­ perfluou s man" ). 3. The biographical novel. During the classica l period as well , the way

T h e RildunJ!..rroman

..:; 1 7

was be ing paved for the biograph ical novel-in classical biographies, au tobiographies, and confessions of the early Ch ristian period (ending with Augu stine). B u t these we re no more than preparation. In general the biograph ical novel has neve r actually existed in pure form. There was only the biographical (au tobiographical) principle for shaping the novel's hero and certain aspects of the novel that corresponded to this configuration. The biographical form i n the novel has the following su bcategories: the naive old (still classical) for m of success/failure and, subsequently, works and deeds; the confessional form (biography-confession); the hagiographic form; and, fi nal ly, i n the eigh teenth century the most im­ portant subcategory took shape-the fam ily-biographical novel. All these subcategories of the biographical construction typically have a numbe r of extremely i m portant features, i ncluding the most primitive type, which is constructed as an enumeration of successes and fai l u res in l i fe. i . The plot of the biographical form , as d isti nct from the travel novel and the novel of ordeal, is constructed not on deviations from the nor­ mal and typical cou rse of l i fe but precisely on the basic and typical aspects of any life cou rse; birth, childhood , school years, marriage , the fate that life brings , works and deeds, death , and so forth, that is, ex­ actly those moments that a re located before the beginning or afte r the end of a novel of ordeal . i i . Althou gh t h e hero's life course i s indeed depicted , h is i mage i n a pu rely biograp h ical novel lacks any t rue process of becoming or devel­ op ment. The hero's life and fate change, they assume structure and evolve , bu t the hero h i mself remains essentially u nchanged . Attention is conc ent rated either on deeds, feats, merits, and creative accom­ pli sh ments , o r on the structure of the hero's destiny in life , his hap­ pine ss, and so o n . In a biograph ical novel (especially autobiograph ical an d confe ssional), the only essential change i n the hero h i mself i s his cris is and rebi rth ( the biograph ical hagiographie s of the crisis type , Au gusti ne's Confessions, a n d so o n ) . The conception o f life ( idea o f life) that u nderl ies a biograph ical novel is determine d either by life's ob­ jec tive resu l ts (works, services, deeds, feats) or by the category of ha pp iness/u n happiness (with a l l of its variations). iii . The essential featu re of the biograph ical novel is the appearance of biog raph i cal time. As d istinct from adventure and fai ry-tale time, b iograph ical t i me is quite real i stic. All of its moments are included in th e tota l l i fe process, and they describe this process as limited, u n re-

The

Bildunxsromon

pcatable, and irreversible. Each event is local ized in the whole of this life process and therefore it ceases to be adventu re . The moment, the day, the ni�ht, and the immed iate contigu ity of short moments lose almost al l of thei r significance in the b iographical novel , which works with extended periods, organic parts of the whole of l i fe ( ages and so forth ). Arranged against the background of thi s basic time in the bio­ �raphical novel is, of course, the depiction of individual events and ad­ ventures on a larger plane, but the moments, hours, and days of this larger plane are not adventuristic and are subo rd inate to biographical time. They are immersed in that time, and it fi l l s them with reality. Biographical time as real time cannot but be i ncluded (participate) in the longer process of historical , but e mbryo nically h istorical, time. B iographical life is i mpossible outside a larger e poch, w h ic h goes be­ yond the lirpits of a single life, whose d u ration is represented primarily by generations. There is no place for generations i n the novel of travel or the novel of ordeal . Generations introduce a completely new and extre mely significant aspect into the depicted worl d ; they introd uce the contiguity of l ives taking place at various times ( the corre lation be­ tween generations and meetings in the adventure novel). This already provides an entry into historical duration. But the biograph ical novel itself does not yet know true h istorical time. iv. In keepi ng with the features noted above , the world also ass u m es a special character in the biographical nove l . I t is no longe r the back­ ground for the hero. The contigu ity and the l inks between he ro an d world are no longer organized as random and unexpected meet i ngs on the high road (and not as a means of testing the hero). Second ary c h ar­ acters, countri es, cities, things , and so on enter into the biogra p h ic al novel in significant ways and acquire a significant relationsh i p to th e whole life of the main hero. This makes it possible , i n d e pic t i ng the world , to surmount both the naturalistic fragmentation of the trave l novel and the exoticism and abstract idealization of the novel of or­ deal. Because of the link with h istorical time and with the e poch , it becomes possible to reflect reality in a more p rofoundly real isti c way . (Positi on, occu pation , and kinship we re masks in the travel nove l , fo r example, in its picares que variant; here they acquire a life-d eterm i n in g essence. The links with secondary characters , institut ions , countrie s , and �0 o n are n o longer superfici ally advcntu ristic b y nature . ) Th is is mamfest� d e � pecially clearly in the fam i ly-biogra ph ical nove l (of th e type of Fteld mg's Tom Jones ). v. The constru ction of the he ro's image in t h e biograph ical novel .

The Hildun!{sromtm

Heroization falls away al most completely here ( i t re mains only par­ tially and i n alte red form i n biograph ical hagiographies ). The hero here is not the moving point that he was in the travel novel, devoid of inherent characteristics. Instead of abstract, sequential heroization , as in the novel of ordeal , the h e ro is characterized by both positive and negative features ( he is not tes ted , but strives for actual resul ts). But these featu res are fixed and ready-made, they are given from the very beginning, and throughout the entire cou rse of the novel man remains himself ( u nchanged ). The events shape not the man, but his destiny (though i t may be a creative destiny). Suc h are the basic principles for shaping the hero in the novel that took for m and existed u nt i l the second half of the eighteenth centu ry, that is , until the time of the Bildungsroman. All these principles for the for mulation of the hero paved the way for the development of syn­ thetic forms of the novel in the nineteenth century, and above all for the realistic novel (Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, and Thack­ eray). I n ord e r to understand the nineteenth-century novel , one must know profoundly and evaluate all these principles for the formula­ tion of the h e ro, wh ich participate to a greater or lesser degree in the con stru ction of that type of n ovel. B u t of special importance for the realis tic novel (and to some extent for the h istorical novel) is the Bil­ dungsroman, which appeared i n Germany in the second half of the eighte enth centu ry.

Posing the Problem of the Bildung.sroman Th e main theme of our essay is the ti me-space and the i mage of man i n th e nove l . Our criterion is the assimilation of real historical time and th e assi m i lat ion of historical man that takes place in that time. This proble m is m a i n ly theoretical and literary in natu re , but no theore tical p robl em can be resolved without concrete h istorical material. More­ ove r, this problem as such is too broad , and it must be delimited some­ wh at i n both i ts theoret ical and historical aspects. Hence our more specific and s pecial theme-the image of man in the process of becoming in th e nove l . But eve n this particular t h e m e must, i n turn, b e narrowed down and d efin ed more precisely. There exists a special su bcategory of the novel called the "novel of education" (l•:rziehunf!sroman or Bildunf!sromon). Usually included (in chronological order) are the following major examples of this ge­ neric su bcategory: Xenophon's Cyropotdia (classical), Wolfram von

T h e Hildungsromon

Est·hcnbach's Parziv11/ ( M iddle Ages), Rabelais' Gargantua and Panta­ l{rurl, Grimmclshausen's Simplicissimus ( the Renaissance), Fenelon's 11/imaqur ( neoclassicism), Rousseau's Emile (si nce there is a consider­

able nove listic element in this pedagogical treat ise), Wieland's Aga­ thon, Wetzel's Tobias Knout, H ippe l's L ebensliiufe n ach aufsteigender Lini e, Goethe's \Vi/h elm Meister ( both novels), Jean Paul's Titan (and several of his other novels), Dickens' David Copp erfield, Raabe's D er Hungerpas­ tor, Gottfried Keller's D er f!,riin e Heinrich, Pontoppidan's Lucky Peter, Tolstoy's Childhood, Adolescence, and Youth, Goncharov's An Ordin ary Story and Ob/omov, Romain Rolland's Jean-Christoph e, Thomas M a n n's Buddenbrooks and Magic Mountain, and others . 9 Some scholars, guided b y purely compositional principles ( t he con­ centration of the whole plot on the process of the hero's educa tion) , significantly limit this list ( Rabelais, for example , is excluded ) . Ot he rs, conversely, requiring only the presence of the h ero's develop ment a nd emergence in the novel, considerably expand this list, inc l u d i ng su ch

works, for example, as Fielding's Tom Jon es or Thackeray's Vanity Fair. It is clear even at first glance that this list contains pheno m ena that are too diverse, from the theoretical and even from the biogra p h ic al standpoint. Some of the novels are essentially biographical or autobio­ graphical, while others are not; in some of them the organizing basis is the purely pedagogical notion of man's ed ucation, w h i l e this is not even mentioned in others; some of them are constructe d on the strictly chronological plane of the mai n hero's educational deve lop ­ ment and have almost no plot at all, while others, conve rsely, have complex adventu ristic plots. Even more significant are the d i ffe re n ces in the relationship of these novels to realism, and particu larl y to re a l historic al time. All this forces us to sort out in a differe nt way not only this l i st, bu t also the entire problem of the so -called Bildungsroman . It i s necessary, first o f all , to single o u t specifically t h e asp ect of � an's essential becoming. The vast majority of novels (and s ubcate J!;O­ nes of novels) know only the i mage of the ready-made hero . Al l move­ ment .m the novel, all events and escapades depicted in i t, sh ift the . her� m space , up and down the rungs of the social ladder: from be AAa r to r �ch man, from homeles s tramp to noblema n . The hero some tim es attams, sometim es only approach es his goal : the bride the victo ry , , �eal th , and so on. Events change his d e st iny, change his positio n i n h �e and society, but he h i mself remai ns u nchange d and ade<J u ate to h 1 mself.

�

21

I n the majority of su bcategories of the nove l , the plot, com pos ition, and ent ire i nternal structu re of the novel postu late t his unchanging na­ ture, this sol idity of the hero's image , this stat ic nature of his u n i ty. The hero is a constant in the nove l's formula and a l l other quanti ties­ the spatial environment, social position, fortu ne, in brief, all aspects of the hero's l i fe and desti ny-can therefore be variables. The actual content of this constant (the ready-made and unchanging hero ) and the actual signs of his unity, permanence, and self-identity can vary i m mensely, beginning with the identity provided by the empty name of the hero ( i n certain subcategories of the adventure nove l ) and e n d i ng with a complex character, whose i nd ividual aspects are d i sclosed only grad ually, throughout the course of the entire novel. The principle for gu iding the selection of essential featu res and com­ bini ng and u n i fying them into the whole of the hero's image can vary. Finally, various compositional methods can be used to reveal this Image. B u t given all the possible d i fferences in construction , in the i mage of the hero i tself there is neither movement nor emergence . The hero is that immobile and fi xed point around which all movement i n the novel takes place. The permanence and i m mobility of the hero are prerequisite to novelistic movement. An analysis of typical novel plots shows that they presuppose a ready-made, unchanging hero; they pre­ suppose the h e ro's static u n i ty. Movement in the fate and life of this ready-made hero constitutes the content of the plot; but the character of the man h i mself, his change and emergence do not become the plot. Such is the predomi nant type i n this category of novel. Along with this predomi nant, mass type, there is another incom­ parably rare r type of nove l that provides an image of man in the pro­ cess of beco m i ng. As opposed to a static unity, here one finds a dy­ namic u n i ty in the hero's i mage. The hero himself, h is character, becomes a variable in the formula of this type of novel. Changes in the hero himself acq u i re plot significance, and thus the entire plot of the novel is rei n te rpreted and reconstructed . Ti me is i ntroduced into man, ente rs into h i s very i mage, changing i n a fu ndame ntal way the signifi­ cance of all aspects of his destiny and life. This type of novel can be designated in the most ge neral sense as the novel of hu man emergence. A hu man be ing can, howeve r, emerge in quite diverse ways. Every­ thing depends upon the degree of assi m i lation of real historical time. In pure adve ntu re time, o f cou rse, man's emergence is impossi ble (we shall re turn to this). But i t is quite possi ble in cyclical time. Thus,

The Bildungsroman

in idyllic time one can depict man's path from child hood through youth and matu rity to old age , showing all those essential inte rnal changes in a pe rson's nature and views that take place in him as he grows older. Such a sequence of development (emergence) of man is cyclical in na­ ture, repeating itself in each life. Such a cyclical ( p u rely age-oriented) novel had not been created as a pure type, b u t elements of i t were scattered throughout the work of eigh teenth-century idyllists and the work of novelists of regionalism and Heimatskunst i n the nineteenth century. Moreover, in the humoristic branch of the Bildungsroman ( i n the narrow sense) represented b y H i ppe! a n d jean Paul ( to some de­ gree Sterne as well), the idyllic-cycl ical ingredient i s immensely sig­ nificant. That ingredient is also in evidence to a greater or lesser de­ gree i n other novels of emergence (it is very strong in Tolstoy, and this l inks him directly to the traditions of the eigh teenth centu ry ) . Another type o f cyclical emergence, which retains a connectio n ( b ut not such a close one) with man's age , traces a typically repeating path of man's emergence from youthfu l idealism and fantasies to m at u re so­ briety and practicality. This path can be complicated i n the end by varying degrees of skepticism and resignation . This kind of novel of emergence typically depicts the world and l i fe as experience, as a school, through which every person must pass and derive one and the same result: one becomes more sober, expe riencing some degree of resigna­ tion . This type is represented in its purest form in the classic al nove l of education in the second half of the eighteenth centu ry, and above al l i n Wieland and Wetzel . To a very real extent, Keller's Der griin e Hein­ rich belongs here as wel l . E lements of this type are to be fou nd i n H ip­ pel , jean Paul , and , of cou rse , Goethe. The third type of novel of emergence is the biograph ical (and au to­ biographical ) type . There is no longer any cyclical quality he re . E me r­ gence takes place in biographical time, and it passes through u nre­ peatable , individual stages. I t can be typical , but this is no longer a cyclical typicality. E mergence here is the result of the entire totalit y of changing life circumstanc es and events, activity and work . M a n's destiny is created and he himself, his character, is created along with it. The emergence of man's life-destiny fuses with the emerge nce of man himself. Fielding's Tom Jones and Dickens' David Copperfield are novels of this type. The fo � rth type of novel of emergence is the didactic-pedagogic al novel . It ts based on a specific pedagog ical ideal , u nderstood more or less broadly, and depicts the pedagog ical process of ed ucation i n the

The Bildungsromon

strict sense of the word . Included in this pure type are such works as Xenoph o n's Cyropaedia, Fenelon's Telimaque, and Rousseau's Emile. B u t there are elements o f t h i s type i n other subcategories o f the novel of em ergence as wel l , incl u d i ng works by Goethe and Rabelais . The fifth and last type of novel of emergence is the most significant one. In it man's i n d ividual emergence is inseparably l i n ked to histori­ cal emerge nce. Man's emergence is accomplished i n real h istorical tim e, with a l l of its necessity, its fu llness, its future, and its profoundly chronotopic natu re. I n the fou r preceding types, man's emergence pro­ cee ded against the i mmobile background of the world , ready-made and basically q u i te stable. If changes did take place in this world, they we re perip hera l , in no way affecting its fou ndations. Man emerged, d evel oped , and changed within one epoch. The world , existing and stabl e i n this existence, req u i red that man adapt to it, that he recog­ nize and s u b m i t to the existing laws of life . Man emerged , but the worl d itself did not. On the contrary, the world was an immobile orien­ tati on p oint for d eveloping man. Man's emergence was his private af­ fai r, as i t were , and the results of this emergence were also private and biograph ical i n natu re . And everything in the world i tself remained in i ts place . I n and of i tself the conception of the world as an experience, a schoo l , was ve ry p rod uctive i n the Bildungsroman: it presented a d i f­ ferent side of the world to man, a side that had previously been foreign to the nove l . It led to a rad ical reinterpretation of the elements of the novel's plot and opened up for the novel new and realistically produc­ tive poin ts for viewing the world . But the world , as an experience and as a sch ool , remained the same , fu ndamenta lly immobile and ready­ m ade, give n . It changed for the one studyi ng in it only during the pro­ c ess of study ( i n most cases that world turned out to be more impover­ ish ed a nd d rier than it had seemed in the begi nning). I n such novel s as Gaf]{antua and Pantagroel, Simplicissimus, and Wilhelm Meister, h owever h u man emerge nce is of a diffe rent nature. It is no longe r man's own p riva te affair. He emerges along with the world and he refle cts t h e historical eme rge nce of the world i tself. He is no lo nge r wi t h i n an e p oc h , but on the border between two epochs, at the tran siti on poi nt from one to the other. This transition is accomplished i n hi m and t h rough h i m . H e is fo rced to be co m e a new, u nprecedented type of h u man be i n g What is happe n i n g here is precisely the emer­ gen ce of a new m an . The organizing force he ld by the futu re is there­ fore e xtre m e ly great here-and this is not, of course , the private bio­ graph i .... al fu t u re . but the h istorical fu t u re . I t is as though the very ,

.

The /lildunJt,sromatl

jiJuntltllions of the world are changing, and man must change along with the m . U n d e rstandably, i n su ch a nove l of emerge nce , problems of re­ alitv and man's po t en t i al problems of freedom a n d necessity, and the pro b lem of creative initiat ive rise to their fu ll heigh t. The i mage of the emerging man begins to su rmou nt its private natu re (with i n certain l i m i ts , of cou rse) and enters into a completely n ew, sp atial sphere of historical existence . Such is the last, realistic type of novel of emergence . Aspects of this historical emergence of man can be fou n d i n almost all important realistic novels, and , consequently, they exist in all works that achieve a significant assimilation of real h istorical time. This last type of realistic novel of emergence is the special theme of our book. The material of this type of novel serves best to reveal and clarify the overall theoretical problem of our work: the novel's assimila­ tion of historical time in all of its essential aspects . But, of course , the fifth type of novel cannot be u nders too d or stu d­ ied without considering its relation to the other fou r types of novel s of emergence. This pertains particularly to the seco nd typ e , the Bil­ dungsroman in the narrow sense (originated by Wieland ) , which di­ rectly prepared the way for Goethe's novels. This novel is a m ost ty pi­ ,

cal phenomenon of the German E n lightenment. E ven in this typ e , problems of human potential , reality, a n d creative initiative were al­ ready present in rud i mentary form. On the other hand , thi s Bildungs­ roman is directly related to the early biographical novel of e mergen ce , namely, to F ielding's Tom Jones (in the very fi rs t words of his celeb rate d " Foreword ," Wiel and d i rectly associates his Af!,athon with the ty pe of novel-or, more precisely, hero-that was created by 1;1m Jones). Al so of essential importance for understanding this p ro b l e m of t he ass i m ila ­ tion of the time of human eme rgence is the i dy l l i c cy c li c al typ e of emergen ce as presented in H ippel and Jean Pau l ( l i n ked with the mo re complex elem ents of emergence influenced bv Wieland and Goe th e ) . Finally, in order to underst and the image of e � e rging man i n Goe th e . i t i s immensely important to consider the idea o f education as it took shape d u r ing the Enl ightenme nr, and partic u l a rly that speci fic su b­ category that we find on German soil as the idea of the "ed uca tio n o f the hu man race" in Lessin g and H e rd e r. 1 11 Thus, al though we shall limit our d i scussion to the fi fth ty pe o f novel of e � ergence , we shall still have to touch u pon all the oth e r ty �es of th1s novel . But we shall by no means atte pt to m ake a h is­ m toncally exhaustive presenta tion of the mate rial ( afte r al l . ou r ma in -

T h e 1/ildtm}!.Jromrm

..; z s

task is theore t ica l ) , or t o establish a l l , or e v e n the ma i n , h i s torical con­ nections and corre lations. Our work makes no claim whatsoever to be ing h istorically exhaustive i n i ts consideration of this problem . Rabelais ( a n d , t o some degre e , G r i m m e l shause n ) occupies a special place i n the deve lopment of the realistic novel of emerge nce . H i s novel is t h e greates t atte mpt at constructing an i m age of man growing i n national-historical tim e. H e re i n l ie s Rabelais' i m mense sign ificance

both for the e n t i re p roble m of the ass i m i lation of t i m e in the nove l and , partic ularly, for the problem of the image of emerging man. I n this work w e have t h u s devoted special atte ntion t o h i m , along with G oethe .

Time and Space in Goethe's Works The abi l i ty to

see

tim e, to read time, i n the spatial whole of the world

and , on the other hand , to perce ive the fi l ling of space not as an i m mo­ bi l e backgrou n d , a given that is completed once and for a l l , but as an emerging whole, a n event-this is the a b i l i ty to read i n eve rything

signs th at show tim e in its course, begin n i ng with natu re and ending with hu man customs a n d ideas (all the way to abstract concepts). Time re­ veals itself a bove a l l i n natu re : the movement of the sun and stars, the crowing of rooste rs , sensory and visual signs of the time of the year. All these are i n separably l i n ked to correspond i n g mome nts i n h u man life , existence , and activity ( l abor)- the cycles o f time that are marked by degrees of i nte n s i ty of labor. The growth of trees and l ivestock, the age of people a re visible signs of longe r periods . F u rther, there are complex visible signs of historical time in the strict sense of the word . T hese are visible vest iges of ma n's creativity, traces of his hands and his mind : cities, streets, b u i l d i ngs, a rtworks , tech nology, social organi­ zation s, and so on. The artist pe rceives i n them the most complex de­ signs of people, ge nerations, epochs, nations, and social and class groups. The work of the seeing eye joins here with the most complex thought p rocesses . But rega rd less of how profound these cogn itive processes may be , how satu rated with the broadest generalizations, they are never u lt i m ate lv broken off from the work of the eye , from . concrete sensory signs a n d the l i v i n g figu rative word . Finally, there are socioeconomic contrad ictions-those mot ive forces of development­ from eleme ntarv i m mediate visual contrasts ( t he social diversity of the homel and

on

th

� h igh road ) to thei r more profound and refi ned mani­

festations in h u m a n re lat ions and ideas. These contrad ictions must

necessarily p u s h v i s i ble t i m e i nto the fu ture . The more profoundly

The Bildungsromon

ng is the visible they arc reveale d, the more essent ial and wide- rangi complet ed ness of time in the novelist's i mages. . world lttera­ One of the high points of visuali zing h istorica l time in ture was achieved by Goethe. n of The E nlighten ment paved the way for this vision and d epictio t nmen ghte li n E the to historical time (we have been especial ly unfair ed lop e dev are in this respect) . Signs and categories of cyclical time after a here: natural, everyday, and rural-labo r idyll ic time (of cours e , tury, cen preparatory period during the Renaissan ce and sevente enth s and not without the influence of the classical trad ition) . The th eme n of "times of the year," "agricultural cycles ," and "the ages o f man" ru throughout all of the eighteenth century and can be fou n d in a large proportion of its poetic works. I t is especially i m port ant that the se concepts are not confined to the thematic plane, b u t acqu ire an es­ sentially compositional and organizational significance ( i n Thom son ,

Gessner, and other idyllists). 11 I n genera l , the whole notion of the no­ torious lack of h istoricity during the E n l ighte n ment shou ld be radi­ cally revised . First, the very h istoricity of the first third of the n i n e­ teenth century, which so condescendingly deemed the E n l igh ten m en t to be antihistorical, was prepared for by E n l ighte nment thinkers. Sec­ ond , the historical eighteenth centu ry must be measured not only from the standpoint of this later historicity (we repeat, prepa red for by it), but in comparison to preceding epochs. With this app roac h th e eighteenth centu ry emerges as an epoch of great awake n i n g of a sense of time, above all a sense of time in nature and h u man life . U ntil th e last third of the century, cyclical kinds of time prevailed, but th ey, too , despite their greatly limited nature , loosen the soi l of the i m mo bil e world of preceding epochs with the plow of time. And on this soil , loosened by cyclical time, one begins to see signs of h istori cal tim e . The contradictions of contempo rary life , having lost their absolu te , God-given, eternal nature, reveal a historical m u ltite m porali ty- re m­ nants of the past, and rudiments and tendencies of the futu re . Si m ul­ taneously the them e of the ages of man , evolving i nto the the me o f generations, begins to lose its cycl ical nature and begi ns to pre pa re fo r �he phenomeno n of historical perspective s . And this process of pre pa r­ mg for the disclosu re of h istorical time took place more rapi d ly, com ­ pletely, and profou ndly in literary creotivitv than in the abstract phi lo­ sophical and strictly historical , ideologic� ! views of E n l i ghte n me t n thinkers. In Goethe -wh o in th is respect was the direct successor and c rown -

T h e BiltlunJt,JmmtJn

ing figure of the E n l ighte n me n t-artistic visualization of hi storical time, as we h ave said , reaches one of its h igh poi nts ( i t re mains unsur­ passed i n several res pects , as we shall see ) . T h e p roble m o f time and h i s torical emergence i n Goethe's creativ­ i ty (and especially the image of e m e rging m a n ) , i n all of its immensity, will occ u py the seco n d half of this book. Here we shall touch on only a few of the featu res and pecul iarities of Goethe's sense of time, so as to clarify o u r i d eas about the chro notope and the ass i m i l ation of time i n l i teratu re . We stress, fi rst a n d fore m ost, t h e exceptional significa nce o f visibility for Goethe (this i s generally know n ) . All other external feel i ngs, inter­ nal expe riences, reflectio n , and abstract concepts are joined together around the seeing eye as a cente r, as the fi rst and last authori ty. Anyth ing essential can a n d should be visible; anythi n g invisible i s i nessential. I t i s gene rally k nown t h a t Goethe attached great significance t o t h e art of

the eye and that his u nderstanding of this art was extre mely broad and deep. I n his u n d e rstand i ng of the eye and visibility h e was as far away from crude p r i m i tive sensualism as he was from narrow aestheticism . For h i m visibility was not only the first, b u t also the last authority,

when the visible was already en riched and satu rated w i th all the com­ plexity o f thought and cognition . Goet h e was averse to words that were not backed u p by any actual visible ex perience. After visiting Ven ice, he exclaimed: "So, now, th ank God , Ven ice is no longe r a m e re word for me, an empty name, a state of m i nd w h ic h had so often alarmed me who a m a mortal enemy

of me re words" (Italian Journey, p . 58). •z Eve n the most com plex and c rucial concepts and ideas, accord i n g to G oethe, can a lways be rep re se n ted i n visible form, can be demonstrated with a schematic o r symbolic blueprint or mod e l , or w i th an adeq uate d rawing. Goethe expressed all strictly scientific ideas and constructs i n the form o f precis e d iagra m s , blueprints, and d raw i n gs . And others' constructs, which h e would then ass i m i late, he also i n vested with vi­ sual form. On the fi rst eve n i n g of his friendship w i th Sch i l ler, when explai n i n g h i s " M e tamorphosi� of Plants" to him, w i th seve ral typical strokes of the pen Goethe made a symbolic flowe r appear before the ey es of his l i ste n e r ( Annals, p . 391 ). • ·' During the i r subsequent joint re­ flections "about nature . art, and morality, " Goethe and Sch iller fe lt a vital need to turn to tables and symbolic blueprints ( "die Notwen­ digkc i t von tabellarische r und symbol ischer Behandlung" ) . They compiled a "rose of tem peraments" and a table of the usefu l and

The Hi/dunf!,sroman

s of Goeth e's harmfu l effects of diletta ntism ; and they d rew d i agram table of colors- " Farbenl ehre" ( Annals, p. 64). reveale d in E ve n the very basis of a philoso phical world view can be travelin g from Naples to Sicily, a simple and clear visual image . When encircle d by Goerhe found himself on the open sea for the first t i m e , h imse lf seen never the line of the horizon. He said , "No-on e who has cep­ con true a surrounded on all sides by nothing but the sea can have rion of rhe world and his own relation to it" ( 11, p . 220). Au­ For Goethe the word coincided with the clearest visib i l i ty. In his tobiography, he tells about a "singular expedient" to which he fre­ quently resorted . With a few strokes he would sketc h on pape r a s ub­ ject or locality that interested h i m , and he would fi l l i n the detai ls with words, which he inscribed directly on the d raw ing. These rem arkable artistic hybrids enabled him to fix precisely i n his m e m ory any loc ality

( Localitiit) he might need for a poem or a story ( Goethe's Autobiography, val . 2, p. 394). 1 4

Thus, Goethe wished and was able to perceive everythin g with h is eyes. The invisible did not exist for h i m . But at the same t i me h i s eye s did not want to (and could not) see that which was ready-made and im­ mobile. His eyes did not recognize simple spatial contiguities or the simple coexistence of things and phenomena. Behind each s tatic multiformity he saw multitemporality: for him diversity was d is­ tributed in various stages (epochs) of development, that is, i t acq u i re d a temporal significance . I n the short note "More abou t My Re lat io ns "

with Schiller," Goethe defines this peculiarity of h i s as fo l l ows : I used an evolu tionary method which d i sclosed developm e nt [ die ent­ wicke/nde entfaltende Methode], but it was by no means a m etho d tha t ordered thi ngs through j uxtapositi on; I did not know what to do with phenomen a that were situated next to one another or, rathe r, I cou ld not deal with their affiliat ion" ( Annals, p. 393). The simple spatial co ntiguity ( nebeneinander) of phenome na was pro­ foundly alien to Goethe, so he saturated and imbued it with time , re­ vealed emergence and developm ent in it, and he d i strib uted th at whi �h was contiguous in space in various temporal stages , epochs of be­ com mg. 1 5 For him contem poraneity -both in n atu re and i n hu m an life - ! s revealed as an essential multitem porality: as re m n a n t s o r rel ic s ? f va nous stages and formatio ns of the past and as rud iments of sta ges m the more or less distan t futur e. Goethe's h � roic struggle to introd uce the ideas of merge nc e an d e develop ment mto natu ral science s is genera lly know n . This is not t h e

The RiltlunKsroman

place to d i scuss h i s sci e n t ific work s i n d e pt h . Let u s s i m p l y note that i n them as we l l concrete visi b i l i ty loses i ts static qual i ty and fu ses with time . Everywhere h e re the seeing eye seeks and finds time-deve lop­

ment, emerge nce , a n d history. B e h i n d the ready- made i t pe rce ives what is emerg i n g and bei n g p repared . And he sees all this with excep­ tional c l arity . In c ro s s i n g the A l ps , he obse rves the move ment of the clou ds and the at m os ph e re arou nd the mountains, and he creates his

own theory of the e m ergence of weather. Plainsmen have good or bad weather in ready-made form, b u t in the mountains people are pre se n t

duri n g i ts emergence. Here i s a brief i l l u s trat ion of this "vision of emergence" from Italian

Journey. When we look at mountains, whether from far or near, and see their summits, now gli t t e r i n g in the sunshine, now shrouded in mists or wreathed i n storm-tossed clouds, now lashed by rain or covered with snow, we attribu te all these p h e no men a to the atmosphere , because all of i ts changes and movements are visible to the eye. To the eye , on the other hand, shapes of the mou ntains always remain i m mobile; and because t h e y seem rigid , inactive and at rest, we bel ieve them to be dead . B u t for a long t i m e I have fel t convi nced that most manifest at m osp her i c change s a re really due to thei r imperceptible and secret i n fl uen ce . ( /J, p. 1 3 )

Goe the goes o n to d eve l o p h i s hypothesis that the attractive force o f t he earth's mass , and particularly of i ts extrusive parts (mou ntain ch a i ns), i s n o t so m e t h i ng constant and u nchanging, but i s , on the con­ tra ry, u nde r the i n fl u e n c e of various factors. I t some times increases ,

som eti mes dec rease s , and it co n sta n t l y pulsates. This p u l sati on of the very m ass of th e mountai ns exe rts an esse ntial influence on cha nges in the atm os phe re . Weather, too , which is e xperi e n c ed in ready-made form by pl a i n s me n , i s c reated as a res u l t of this internal activity of the m ou ntai ns the m s e l ves . T he scie n tific of t h is h y poth e s i s i s q u i te u n impor­

gro u nd lessness

tan t to us here . What i s i m port an t a re the characteristic features of Go et h e 's way of see i n g . After all, fo r the ordinary observe r, mou ntains are th e ep i tome of stasis, the embod iment of i m mobi l ity and immu­ ta b i li ty. B ut i n fac t mounta i n s are not at all i n a n i m ate . '' They have

co ngeal ed , bu t they a re certai n l y not inacti ve . They seem so because th ey are at pe ace n d a at rest (sie rollen). And the g rav i t a tio n a l forces of th e ma s s are not a co nstant <J Uan tity that is a l w ay s eq ual .to i tsel f. t 10 ch an ge s , p u ls at e s a n d . osc i l lates . Therefore , the mou ntams , too,

_J

.\ 0 �

The Hiltlunf{Sroman

w h i1.: h this force see ms ro congeal , cha nge i n ternal ly, become active, and create weather.

As a result, the picture with which Goethe began c hanges sharply

and in prinriple. Initially there were abrupt changes in the atmosphere

( the bright sunshine, fog, thunderclouds, pou ring rai n s , and s now) against the im mobile background of the eternally unchanging moun­ tai ns. But i n the end this did not prove to be a n i m mobile and i m m u­ table background at all. It has e ntered i nto a more essential and p ro­ fou nd movement than the clear, but periphera l , movem e n t of the atmosphere. It has become active, and , moreove r, the rea l m ovement and activity have shifted to i t-to this backgrou n d . This particular feature o f Goethe's way o f seei n g , revea led i n ou r small example, is manifested everywhere i n one for m or anoth er (de­ pe nding on the material) and with varying degrees of visib i l i t y. Every­ where , whateve r se rved as and appeared to be a stable and i m mu tab le background for all movements and changes became fo r Goeth e a part of emergence , satu rated through and through with t i m e , a n d e m er­ gence took on a more essential and creative mobil i ty than e ve r. We shall see below, when analyzing Wilhelm Meister, h ow eve ryth i n g that usually serves i n the novel as a stable background , a n unchanging quantity, an i m mobile prerequisite for plot movement, becomes for Goethe an essential veh icle of movement, i ts i n itiato r, an orga niza­ tional center for plot movement through wh ich the n ove l's p lot i t self changes in a fu ndamental way. For the "great ge n i u s" Goethe , e s se n­ tial movement was revealed against that i m mobile back grou nd of th e world's buttresses (socioeconomic, pol itical , and mora l ) that the " n ar­ row philistine" Goethe h i mself freq uently procl aimed to be u nch an g­ ing and eternal . I n Wilhelm Meister this background of the world 's bu t­

tresses begins to pulsate l ike the mountain masses in the exa m ple above , and this pu lsation determ ines the more superficial m ove me nt and alte ratio n of human destinies and human outlooks . B u t th is wi l l b e discuss ed late r. Thus, we arrive at Goethe's startling ability to see time i n s pac e . One is i mpressed by the exception al freshness and clari ty of t h i s way visualizi ng time (as, incidentally, is ge nerally true of write rs of th e eigh teenth centu ry, to whom it see med that time was be ing re vea le d fo he first t i m e ) . To be sure , this is part i ally d u e to the re lat ive si m­ phclty and element ary natu re of this t i m e , and therefore to its mo re percept ible graphic quality. Goethe had a keen eve for al l vis i bl e markers and signs of time in nature . He cou l d , for xam ple , qu ick ly

0�

��

�

The

Bildun�;sroman

determine the ages of trees by sight, he knew the grow th rates of t h e i r various species, and h e cou ld see epochs and ages. H e had an excep­ tionally keen i nsight i nto all visible signs of time in h u ma n life-from everyday t i m e that is measu red by the s u n an d the ord i nary sequence of man's day, to the t i m e of the whole of h u man life-ages and e p och s of man's emergence. The sign ificance of this latter biographical time for Goethe and h i s p rofo u n d visual ization of this time are demonstrated i n h i s own autobiographical and biograph ical works, which com prise a n immense proportion of his c reative work-and t h a t constant i nterest i n autobiogra p h ical a n d biogra p hical l i te rature that he shared w i t h h i s epoch (Goethe's b iograph ical methods a re included i n o u r treatment of this subject). 1 7 As for eve ryd ay t i m e i n Goethe , we recal l with what love and tender con cern he analyzes and depicts the eve ryd ay time of the Italians in

his Italian Journey.

In a cou ntry where everyone e njoys the day but the evening even more, s u n se t is an i m portant moment. All work stops ; those who were strolling about re t u r n to their homes; the father wants to see h i s daugh ter back i n t h e house-the day h a s ended . We Cimmerians ha rd l y know the real meaning of d ay. With our perpetual fogs and cloudy skies we d o not care i f it is d ay or night, since we are so l i ttle given to take walks and enjoy ou rse lves out of doors. B u t here, when

n ight falls, the day consis t i ng of eve n i n g and morning is definitely over, twe nty -fou r h o u rs have been spent, and time begins afresh . The

be l ls ri ng, the rosary is sai d , the maid enters the room with a l ighted la mp and says : " Felicissima notte!" This period of time varies in length accord i ng to the seaso n , and people who l ive here are so ful l of vitality th at th is does not confuse the m , because the pleasures of their exis­

tence a re rel ated not to the precise hour, but to the time of day. I f one were to force a Ge rman clock hand on them, they wou l d be at a loss,

for th e i r own method of time measu rement is closely bound up with their natu re. A nd a n hour or an hour and a half before su nset, the

no bility set out in the i r carriages

.

.

.

.

( IJ,

p. 42)

Goe the goes on to de ve l op in detail the method he has chosen for t ran slat in g orga n i c Italian t i m e i n to G e rman , that i s , ord inary time, an d he a ppe n d s a sketch i n w h ich he u ses conce ntric circles to g ive a vi su al ly gra phic i m age of the relationsh i p between the two ki nds of tim e ( IJ, p . 44 ) . This orga nic Ital i a n t i me ( t h e c alc u l a tio n o f t i m e proceeds from the

artual

set ting of the sun , which, of cou rse , takes place at diffe rent

The Bildungsroman

hours during d i fferent ti mes of the year) is i nseparably interwoven with all of I talian life, and Goethe repeated ly turns his attention to the latter. All his descriptions of I talian everyday life are pe rvaded with a sense of everyday time, measured by the pleasures a n d labor of the vital human life. This feeling for time profou ndly permeates his cele­ brated description of the Roman carnival (IJ, p p . 445 -69). Against the background of these times of nature , daily existence, and life, which are still cyclical to one degree or anothe r, Goethe also sees interwoven with them signs of h istorical time-essential traces of human hands and minds that change nature, and the way human re­ ality and all man has created are reflected back on his customs and views. Goethe searches for and finds primarily the visible move­ ment of historical time, which is inseparable from the natural setting (Localitiit) and the entire total ity of obj ects created by man, which are essentially connected to this natu ral setting. And here Goethe displays exceptional keenness and concreteness of vision . Here is one example in which Goethe takes advantage of the his­ torical sharp-sightedness of his eye. While d riving along the road to Pyrmont through the town of E inbeck, Goethe i m mediately saw with his eye that about thirty years ago this town had an e xcellent B ii rger­ meister (Annals, p. 76). What, specifically, did he see? He saw a great deal of gree ne ry, man y trees, and he saw that they had not been planted at rando m. And he saw in the m a vestige of a single human will acting in a pla nned way. Fro m the age of the trees, which he determi ned approximately by sigh t, he saw the time when this will , acting in a planned way, was manife ste d . Regardless of how random the above-cited case of historical visio n may be in itself, how microscopic its scale, and how ele mentary it is, it reveals very clearly and precisely the very structu re of this visio n . L et us discuss it. Here, first of all, we have an essential and living vestige of the pas t in th � present. We emphasize essential and living because this is no in­ ammate, even if picturesque, ruin that has no essential conn ect io n with the living present su rrounding it and has no influen ce on it. Goeth e did not like "ruinlike, " antiquate d , m useu mlike exte rn al cover ings of the naked past. He called them ghosts ( Gespenster) an d drove them away. l" They bu rst into the prese nt like foreign bod ie s. They were extraneo u s and could not be compreh ended in it. To m ix the past and present mechan ically, without making any real te m poral . connec uon, was profound ly offensive to Goethe . Therefore , he di s-

The Bildunl{sroman

� .H

liked those i d l e h isto rical rem i n i sce nces of historical places that one usually hears from tou rists who have visited the m . H e hated the stories that guides tel l about h is to rical eve nts that had occu rred there at one time. A l l these were ghosts that lacked any necessary and visible con nection w i th the s u rrou nding l iving reality. One time i n Sicily, near Pale rmo, i n a luxu riant, extravagantly fe r­ tile val ley, a gu ide described i n detail to Goethe the te rrible battles and extraord i n ary feats H a n n i ba l had once performed there . "I strictly forbade h i m , " said Goethe, "this fatal summoning of ghosts that had disappeared (das fatale Hervorrufen solcher abgeschiedenen Gespenster)." Indeed, w h a t n ecessary and c reative ( h istorically prod uctive) link can there be betwee n these c u ltivated fields with their extravagant fertil i ty and the recollection of Han n i bal's horses and e lephants trampling the m down ? T he gu i de was s u rp r i sed at Goethe's indifference to these recollec­ tion s of th e classical p eriod . "A nd I cou ld not make him u nderstand my objections to that mixing-up ofpast and present. " T he guide was eve n more s u rprised when Goethe, "indifferent to classical reco l lections," began carefu lly to gather certain l ittle stones on the ban k o f the rive r. "Aga i n , I cou l d not explain to him that the quic kest way to get an idea of any mou n tainous region is to examine

the type s of rock fragme nts washed down by i ts streams, or that there was any point i n stud y i ng th e rubble to ge t the idea of these eternal cl ass ica l heigh ts of the prehistoric earth " (11, p. 222). T he e xce rpt c i te d h e re i s highly c haracteristic. I t is not i m portant to

us he re that there i s a certai n element of Rousseauism in i t (the jux­ taposit ion of natu ral t i m e and creativity: "the eternally classical peaks of the anci ent period of the earth's existence" and the fertile valley, h u m an histor y with i ts wars and devastation) . The importance lies

els ew he re. F i rst, this i s a manifestation of G oethe's characteristi c d is­ li ke for the estranl{ed past, for the past in and of itsel f, that past of whic h the rom antics were so fon d . He wanted to see necessary connec­ tions be tw een this past and the living present, to understand the neces­ sary place of this past i n the unbroken line of historical development. And th e iso l ated , estranged c h u n k of the past was for him a "ghost," pro­ fo u n d ly loa thso m e a n d even frigh ten i ng. Thus , he also contrasts to th es e "d isap peared ghosts" fragments of rocks on the ban k of a stream , bec au se fro m these fragments one can create a u n i fi ed idea of the na­ tu re of the ent i re mou ntai nous terri tory and of the earth's inevitable pas t. H e sees clea rly the emire le ngthy process that necessa rily re-

The /Jildunxsroman

now, on suited in the appeara nce of these fragme nts today, h e re and their geo­ the bank of the stream. He sees clearly what kind they a re , i nuous cont earth's the n i position their logical age . and he sees clearly of the mixing ical mechan , developm ent. This is no longer a random time. in place past and present. Everyth ing has ! ts stable and necessary vision n Goethea Second-an d this is a very importan t feature of the of historical time-the past i tself must be creative. It must have its effect in the present (even if this effect is negative or one Goethe con­ siders undesirable ). Such a creatively effective past, d e te r m i n i ng the present, produces in conjunction with the present a partic u lar d i rec­ tion for the future, and , to a certai n degree, prede te r m i nes the futu re . Thus, one achieves a fullness of time, and it is a graphic, visib le com­ pleteness. This is the past he had seen on a microscop ic scale near the town of E i nbeck. This past-planned plantings- con t i nu es to live effectively in the present (in this case in the l i teral sense , s i nce the planted trees are still living and continue to grow, they determ ine the present by creating a certain physiognomy for the town of E i nb eck and , of course, they influence its future to a certai n m ic roscop ic degree). We must also emphasize another aspect of our smal l exam pl e. Goethe's historical vision always relied on a deep, pain staki ng, and concrete perceptio n of the locality ( Localitiit). The creative past mu st be revealed as necessary and productive under the con d i t ions of a given locality, as a creative humanization of this local i ty, which tran s­ forms a portion of terrestria l space i nto a place of h i s toric al l ife for

people, i nto a corner of the h istorical world. A locality or a landscape i n which there is no place for man and hi s creative activity, which cannot be populated and b u i l t u p , wh ich ca n­ not become the arena for h uman history, was alien and unp l eas a n t for Goethe. As we know, it was typical of this epoch to bri ng wild natu re , vi rgin an � i � accessible to man, primordial landscape , i nto both literat u re an d pa mung. Goeth e was deeply opposed to this practice . And i n a la te r epoch Goethe also took a negative attitude toward s i m ilar tend en ci es that devel oped on the soil of real ism. I n 18 20 , Friedrich Gmelin sent his co ppe r e ngravi n gs to Wei m ar. 1 9 They we e intende d for an elegant edition of Ve rgi Aennd prod uc e d l 's � by Han mbal C aro. zo The artist depicted the desolate marshy loc al iti e s of th e �oman Campa gna in a real istic manner. While giving the ar tis t's talent Its due, Goethe disapp roved of h is directi on . "Wha t ca n be

The Bildun�sroman

more pathetic," he said , "than atte m pts to help the poet ( Ve rgi l ) by depicting desolate localities which eve n the most l ive ly i m agi nation

could not build up and populate aga i n" ( Annals, p. 340) . Before all else, Goethe's creative i m agination bu i l t up and popu lated any loca l ity. It was only from the viewpoint, as it were , of building up

and populat i n g that Goethe could even consider any locali ty. When sepa rated from man, from h i s needs and activities, a locality lost all apparent sense o r significance for Goethe, because all criteria for evalu ­ ation , all measu res , a n d the e n t i re living human scale of t h e locality can be u nde rstood o n ly from the standpoint of man the builder, from the stan dpoint of its t ransformation i nto a small part of historical l i fe . We sha l l s e e this artistic viewpo i n t appl ied frequently and consistently when we analyze Wilhelm Meister. Such are the structu ra l pecu l iarities of the Goethean vision as re­ ve aled i n the e l e m e ntary exa m p l e above . M ore com p l ex mater i al w i l l demonstrate this poi nt more concretely and in more d e pth. I n h i s Autobiography, Goethe makes a n admission that is very i m port ant i n this con nect io n : One feeling, which prevailed greatly with me, and cou ld never find an expression odd enough for i tself, was a sense of the past and present together in one-a p h enomenon which brought something spectral into the prese nt. It is expressed i n many of my smaller and larger works, and always has a beneficial influence in a poe m , though , when­ eve r i t began to mix i tself u p with actual life, it must have appeared to eve ry one strange, i nexplicable, perhaps gl oom y Cologne was a place where antiquity h ad such an i ncalculable effect upon me . The ruins of the cathedral ( for an unfin ished work is like one dest royed ) called up the e m o t i o n s to which I had been accus­ to me d in Strasbou rg. ( GA , val. 2 , p. 258) .

T h is rem a rkab le a d m ission adds a ce rtain corrective to what we said above abo ut G oethe's revulsion for the romantic sense of the past, for "gh os ts of t he past" that cloud the prese nt. It turns out that this fee l ­ i n g cou l d affect h i m a s wel l . T h is feel i n g of t h e past a n d present m e rging i nto one, which Goethe

d i sc u sse s i n his com m ents above , was a complex feeli ng. I t i ncluded als o a rom antic ( as we shall a rbi trarily cal l it), "ghostly" com pone nt. I n ce rt a i n early s t ages o f Goe the's creat ive work (pri marily i n the Stras­ bo u rg pe riod ), r this com ponent was stronge r and almost set the t ne f . all fee l i ng. T h i s a l so created a certain amou nt of romanucJ s m 1 0

�

?

( ioe thc's correspond i n g ( mainly smal l-scale, and exclu sively poetic) works . But alongside this conventionally romantic component in the feeling o f a me rged past and present, there also existed from the very begin­ ning a realistic component ( as we shall call it, also arbitrarily). It is pre­ cisely because the realistic component existe d from the very beginning that we do not find a purely romantic sense of time a nywhere in Goethe. In Goethe's subsequent development, the realistic compo­ nent became increasingly s trong, crowded ou t the romantic compo­ nent, and, as early as the beginning of the Wei mar period, gained an almost total victory. Here Goethe already displays a profound revul­ sion for the romantic component, which becomes especially acute dur­ ing the period of the Italian journey. The evolution of the sense of time in Goethe, which can be reduced to a consistent s urmounting of the romantic component and the total victory of the realistic, could be traced in those works that served as a transition from the early period to the late one, primarily in Faust and partially i n Egmont. In the process of developing a sense of time, Goethe overcom es the ghostly ( Gespenstermiissiges), the terrifying ( Unerfreuliches) , a nd the u n­ accountable ( Unzuberedmendes), which were strong i n his i n itial fee l i n g of a merged past and present. B ut the very sense of the me rgi ng of times remained in complete and undiminished force and fresh ness un­ til the end of his life , blossoming into an authentic fullnes s of t im e. The ghostly, terrifying, and unaccountable in i t were su rmounte d by the structural aspec ts, already disclosed by us above , w h ich are inh er­ ent i n this way of visualiz ing time: the aspect of an essential link be­ tween the past and present, the aspect of the necessity of the pas t an d the necessity of its place in a l ine of continuous deve lopm ent , th e as­ pect of the creative effectiveness of the past, and , final ly, the aspe ct of the past and present being l inked to a necessary future. The fresh wind of the future blows ever stronger thro ugh Goe th e's sense of time, purging it of all that is dark , ghostly, and u n acco u nta bl e. An ? perhaps we feel the draft of this wind most strongly i n Wilhelm Metsters Wanderjahre (and in the last scenes of part 2 of Faust). T h us, i n Goeth � , from a mu rky sense o f t h e past a n d present that frigh te ne d even hi m, there arose a realistic sense of time that was e xce ptio na l in _ world literatu re in its force and , at the same time , i ts d ist in ct cla rity . Let us look more closely at the chronoto pic visual izi ng of loc ali ty a�d landsca e in Goeth e. His seeing eye saturates landsc ape wi th � . time-creativ e, histo rically produ ctive time. As we h ave note d a bove ,

I nc nuaunl(snJmaTt

the poi nt of view of m a n t h e b u i l d e r determi nes Goethe's contempla­ -

-

tion and u n d e rs ta n d i n g of landscape . H i s c rea t i v e i ma g i nation i s also

restr icted and s u bord i n ated to the necessity of a given l oca l i ty, the i ron­ clad logic of i ts h i storical and ge o grap h ical ex i ste n ce.

Goethe strove a bove all to pene trate this geological and historical logic of the existence o f a loca l i ty, and th i s logic had to be visible, i n te r­ pretive a n d gra p h ic , from begi n n i ng to e n d . For this he had his own p ri ma r y means o f ori e n tation .

In h is Autobiography, regard i ng h i s jou rney t h rough A l sace, Goethe

says :

Already, i n my l i m i te d wanderi ngs through the worl d , I had remarked how important it is in trave l l i ng to ascertain the course of the waters, and even to ask with respect to the smallest brook, whither in rea l i ty

it runs. One thus acq u i res a general su rvey of every stream-region i n

which o n e happens t o b e , a conception of t h e heights and depths

wh ich bear relation to each other, and b y these lead ing l i nes, w h ich assist the conte m plation as wel l as the memory, extricates one's self in the surest manner from the geological and political labyrinth. ( GA , vol .

2, p p . 26- 27 )

And i n the ve ry begi n n ing of Italian Journey: The land rises stead i l y all the way to Tischenreut h , and the streams flow toward s the Eger and the E l be . After Tischenreuth, the land falls to the south and the streams ru n down toward the Danu be. I find I can quickly get a topographical idea of a region by l ookin g at even the sm a l l est stream a n d noting i n which d i rection i t flows and which d rainage bas i n i t belongs to. Even i n a region which one cannot su rvey as a whole , one can obtain in this way a mental picture of the relation between the mou ntains and valleys. (11, p. 5)

Goethe d iscu s ses th i s same m e thod of his for contemplating regions in the Annals as wel l (see, for exa m ple, p . 1 6 1 ). The l iving, dynamic marker p rovided b y flowing rive rs and stream s also gives a graph ic idea of t h e country's wate r basins, i ts topography, its natu ral boundaries and natural con nections, its land and water rou te s and transsh i p m e n t poi nts, i ts fertile and arid areas, and so on. T h i s is not a n abstract geological and geograph ical landscape. For Goethe it reveals potential for historical l i fe . This is an a rena of histori� cal events, a firmly d e l i neated boundary of that spat ial riverbed along which the curre n t of h istorical time flows. H istorically active man is placed i n this liv i ng, graphic, visual system of waterways, mountains,

The Bildunf{sroman va l l eys, bou ndaries, and routes. He b u i lds, d rains marshes, lays routes across mountains and rive rs , develops the m i ne rals, cultivates the irri­ gated valleys, and so on. One sees the essential and necessary character of man's h istorical activity. And if he wages wars, one can understand llow he will wage them ( that is, there w i l l be necessity h e re , too). I n the Annals, Goethe relates: " For whatever small amount of clarity I possess i n the area of geology and geography I a m ob liged to t he mounta i n map of E u rope compiled by Sorrio. 2 ' Thus, i t becam e im­ mediately clear to me how treacherous the area i n Spain was for a m ili­ tary lead e r (with a regular army) and h ow favorable it was for guerril­ las. On my map of Spain I d rew i n its main watershed a n d i mmediately gai ned a clear and comprehensible picture of each land route , each m i l i ta ry campaign, each u n dertaking of a regular o r irre gu l ar nature" (Annals, p . 303). Goethe cannot and will not see or conceive of any l ocal i ty, any natu­ ral landscape , as a n abstract thing, for the sake of its self-sufficient naturalness, as i t were . I t m ust be i l l u m i nated by human activity and historical events. A piece of the earth's s pace must be i ncorporated i nto the h istory of h u manity. Outside this h istory it is l i fe l e s s a n d in­ com prehensible and nothing can be done with it. B u t conversely, noth ing can be done with the historical eve n t , with the abstract h is­ torical recollection , if i t is not local ized i n terrestrial space , if one does not u n d e rstand ( does not see) the necessity of i ts occu rrence at a par­ ticular time and in a particu lar place . Goethe wants to reveal this visible concrete necessity of h u m an c re­ ativity and of the h i s torical event. Any fantasy, fabricati o n , d reamlike recollection, or abstract j u dgment must be restra i ne d , s u p p ressed , and let go. I t must give way to the work of the eye that contemplates the need for performance and creativity in a particular place and at a particular time. "I try to keep m y eyes open all the time, rem e mbe r as m uch a s I can and not judge more than I can h e l p " ( 11, p. 1 1 2 ) . And somewhat later, having noted how d ifficul t i t i s to create for oneself an ,

,

u n d e rstand ing of classical antiq u i ty from survi v i n g rui n s , h e ad d s : Th e so-called classic soil is another matter. If w e d o not approach i t fancifu lly but consider t h i s soil i n i ts rea l i t y as i t prese nts itself t o o u r senses, i t s t i l l appears a s t h e stage upon which t h e greatest events were enacted and decided . I have alway s looked at landscape with the eye of a geologist and a topographer, and supp res s ed my i magination and emotions in order to preserve my faculty for clear and unbiased observation. If one does th is fi rst, then h istory follows nat u rally an d

T h e Hildunl{-fmman

logically in all i ts asto n i s h i ng wonder. One of the things I now most want to do is to read Taci tus in Ro me. ( 11, p . 1 1 2)

Thus, i n a correctly u nd e rstood , obje c t i vely viewed space ( u nadul­ terated by fantasy and fee l ing) one d iscove rs the visible internal neces­ sity of h i s tory (that is, of a particular h istorical process or event). Goethe saw the same i n ternal necessity in the creative work of an­ cient peop l e s . I walked up to Spoleto and stood on the aqueduct, which also serves as a bridge from one h i l l to the other. The ten brickwork arches which span the val ley have been quietly standing there through all the cen­ tu ries , and the wate r s t i l l gushes i n all quarters of Spoleto. This is the third work of antiqu i ty which I h ave seen, and i t embod ies the same noble s pirit. A sense of the civic good , which is the basis of their arch i tectu re, was second nature to the ancients . Hence the amphi­ theatre , the te mple, the aqueduct. For the first ti m e I understand why I always detested arbitrary constructions, the Winterkasten on Weisse n s te i n , for example, w h ich is a pointless nothing, a monstrous piece of confectionery-and I have felt the same about a thousand other b u i ldin gs Such t h i n gs are stil l-born, for anyth ing that does not have a true raison d'itre i s lifeless and cannot be great or ever become so . ( 11, p p 1 1 1 - 1 2) .

.

H u m a n cre ativity has i ts o w n i n ternal law. I t must b e human (and civ i l ly expedient}, b u t it must also be necessary, consistent, and true , lik e natu re . Any arbi tra r i ness, fabrication , or abstract fan tasy was re­ puls ive to Goe the . Not ab stract moral tru t h (abstract justice, ideology, a n d s o o n ) , but th e necessity of any creat ive work o r h istorical deed was the important th ing fo r Goet h e . And t h i s leads to the sharpest break between h i m an d Sc h i l l er, between h i m and t h e majority o f representatives o f th e E n l igh te n m e n t w i t h their abstractly mo ral or abstractly rational c ri te ria. As we h ave already poi nted out, necessi ty became the organizing ce nte r for G oe the's se n se of time. H e wanted to bring together and un ite the p re sent, past, a n d fu ture with the ring of necess i ty. This Go eth ean nece ssity was very fa r both from the necessity of fate and fro m mech an ical natu ral necessity (in naturalistic th ought). It was v is i bl e , concrete , and m aterial , but i t was a materially creative , histori­

ca l nec ess i ty.

An au the ntic ve s t i ge is a sign of history that is human and necessary.

The HiltlunKJroman

I n it. space and ti m e are bound togethe r i nto one inse parable knot. Te r res t r i a l space and human history are i nseparab le fro m one another

istorical in Goethe's integrate d concrete vision . This is what m a kes h so hu­ space d n a ed, materializ and time in his creative wo rk so dense manly interpreted and inte nsive . This i s the major way i n which necessi ty m a n i fests itself i n artist ic zz creativity. In regard to Winckelma nn's I talian letters, Goethe says : "Aside from the objects of Nature , who in a l l her real m s is true and consistent, noth ing speaks so loudly as the i mp ression left by a goo d and i ntel ligent man, or by authentic works of art which are just as un­

erring as Nature . One feels this particularly strongly i n Rom e , w here so many caprices have been given free rei n and so m a ny absurd i t ie s perpetuated by wealth and power" ( 11, p. 13 7 ) . I t is i n Rome that Goethe expe rie nces especially k e e n ly t h i s im­ pressive condensation of h istorical time, its fusion w i th te rre str ial space . " I t is history, above a l l , that one reads q u i te d i ffe re ntly h e re from anywhe re else in the world . E ve rywh e re else one starts from the ou t­ side and works i nward ; here it seems to be the other w ay arou n d . All history is e ncamped about us and all h istory sets forth a ga i n from us. This does not apply only to Roman h i s tory, b u t to the h istory of the whole world . From here I can accompany the con q u e rors to the Weser and the Euphrates . . . . " (11, p. 142). Or another i nstance: "My exp e­ rience with natu ral history is repeat i n g itsel f h e re , for t h e enti re h is­

tory of the world i s li nked up with this city, and I reckon my sec on d life, a very rebirth, from the day when I entered Rome " ( 11, p . 1 3 6). And i n another place, when j ustifying his i nte ntion to visit Sicily , he says, "To me Sicily implies Asia and Africa , and it w i l l mean mo re th an a little to me to stand at that miracu lous ce ntre u po n w h ich so m an y

rad i i of world h istory converge" (11, p . 2 1 2). I t is as though t h e essence of h istorical time i n t h a t s m a l l se ctio n of the earth in Rome , the visible coexistence of various e poch s i n i t, a lows the pe rson who contem plates it to partici pate i n the grea t co u n ­

�

ctl of world destinies. Rome is a great c h ronotope of h u ma n h i story: Here i s an entity wh ich has suffered so many d rastic changes i n the

cou rse of two thousand years, yet is s t i l l the same soi l , the same h i l l .

�

o te n even the same col u m n o r the same wal l , a n d i n i ts people one s t J I I finds traces of thei r anci ent c h a rac te r Co n te m p l a t i ng th is, the .

obse.rver becomes , as it were , a contemporary of the great decrees of

destmy, and this makes i t d ifficu l t for h i m to fol low the

evol u t

i o n of

The Rildung1roman

� 41

the ci ty, to grasp not only how Modern Rome follows Ancient, hut also how, with in both , one epoch fol lows another. ( 11, p. 1 20) Synch ronism , the coexiste nce of times at one point in space , the space of Rome, revealed for Goethe the "fu l l ness of time," as he expe­ rienced it in his classical period (the I talian jou rney was its culmina­ tion poi nt): On me , the ultimate effect of this tour was to strengthen my sense of really st anding on classic soil and convince my senses and my spirit th at here grea tness was, is and ever will be . It lies in the nature of time and the mutual interaction of physical and moral forces that greatne ss and splendour must perish, but my ultimate feeling was less of sad ness at all that had been destroyed than of joy at so much which had be en preserved and eve n reconstructed more splendidly and im­ pressive ly than it had been before . The Church of St. Peter, for example, is a bolder and grander con­ ception than any antique temple. Even the fluctuations in taste, now a striving for simple grandeur, now a return to a love for the multiple and smal l , are signs of vitality, and in Rome the history of art and the histo ry of mank i nd confront us simultaneously. The observati on that all greatness is transitory should not make us desp ai r; on th e contrary, the realization that the past was great should sti mu late us to create something of consequence ourselves, which , eve n w hen, in its turn, it has fallen in ruins, may continue to ins pire our de scend ants to a noble activity such as our ancestors never lacked . (11, pp . 433 - 3 4 ) We h ave quoted this long passage so that it can serve as a su mmary conclu sio n to th e series of passages we have cited above . U nfortu­ na te ly, in this sum mary of his impressions of Rome , Goethe did not re pe at th e motif of necessity, which for him was the actual conn ecting �i n k of ti m es. Therefore , the final paragraph of the quotation , wh ich Int rod uce s a new motif of hi storical generations (we find a mo re pro­ fou nd i nte rpret ation of it in Wilhelm Mnst«), somewhat simp lifies an d d eg rad es- i n the sense of Herder's "ldea" -Goethe's h istor ical visi o n. z.1 Le t us su m up our p rel i m i nary analysis of G oethe's mode of vi � ual iz­ . nt g ti m e . The main featu res o f this visualiza tion are the mergm g of t�rn e ( past wit h prese nt), the fu llne ss a n d clarity of the visibi lity of the t�rne in s pace, the i n se pa rability o f the time of a n eve nt fr�� th e spe­ Ci fic p lac e of its occ u rre nce ( !.orolitiit und Gesrhirhtt), the VISib le essen­ tial con ne cti on of time ( p resent and past), the cre ative and acti ve na-

The BiJtlunKsromon

the ture of t i m e (of the past in the present and of the p res e n t itself), rent and d i ffe necessit y that penetrat es time and l inks time w i th space y that necessit the of basis the on finally, , and another, t i mes with one full­ the g crownin , future the of inclusion the time, pervades localized ness of time in Goethe's images. One m ust especially single out and e mphasize the aspects of neces­ sity andfullness of time. Goethe is intimately and fun d a m e n tally linked to a feeling for time that awakened in the eighteenth centu ry and reached its culmination on German soil in Lessing, Wincke l mann , an d Herder. In these two areas he escapes the l i m i tations of the E n­ lightenment, its abstract morality, rationality, and u topian ism. On th e other hand , an understanding of necessity as h u manly c reative , his­ to ric a l necessity ( "second nature"-the aqueduct that serves as a bridge between two mountains; see /J, p. 1 1 1 ) separate s h i m from the mechanical materialism of Holbach and others (see h i s opinio n of

"The System of Nature" in the eleventh book of Dichtung und Wahrlteit [ GA, vol . 2, pp. 1 08 -9]). These same two aspects clearly sep arate Goethe from subsequent romantic historicity as wel l . A l l w e have said reveals t h e exceedingly c h ronotop ic nat u re of Goethe's mode of visualization a nd thought i n a ll areas a n d spheres of his multifaceted activity. H e saw everything not sub specie aeternitatis (from the point of view of eternity), as h is teacher, Spinoza, d i d , but i n time a n d i n the power of time. But t h e power o f t h i s t i m e is a p roductive and creative power. Everything-from an abstract idea to a p iece of rock on the bank of a stream-bears the sta m p of t i m e , is sat u rated with time, and assumes i ts form and meaning i n t i me . There fore ,

everything is intensive in Goethe's worl d ; it contains no i n a n ima te , im­ mobile, petrified places, no immutable backgrou n d that does not p a r ticipate in action and emergence (in events), no decorati ons or set s. On the other hand, this time, in all i ts essential aspects , is locali ze d in concrete space, imprinted on it. In Goethe's world there a re no e ve nts , plots, or tempora l motifs that are not related in an essen tial way to th e particular spatial place of their occurre nce , that could occ u r an ywh e re o� nowhe re ( "eternal" plots and motifs) . Eve rything in t his worl d is a ­

ttme-space, a true chronotope.

Hence the unrepeatably concrete and visible world of h u man sp ac e and h u man his to ry to which all images of Goethe's cre ative im ag i na­ tion belong, serving as a mobile background and an i ne xhau sti bl e source �f hi � artis tic visualization and depiction. Everyth i n g is vi s ib le , everyth mg ts concrete , everything is corporeal, and everyt hing i s m a-

The 1/iltlllnJ!.smmlln

...; 4.\

terial i n this world, and at the same t i me eve ryth ing i s i n te n sive, i nter­ preted , and creatively necessary. The large epic form ( the large epic), i ncluding the nove l as we l l , shou ld provide an i n tegrated picture of the world a n d life, it should reflect the entire world and all of life. I n the novel, the entire world and all of l i fe are given in the cross section of the integrity of the epoch. The events d epicted in the novel should somehow substitutefor the total life of the epoc h . I n their capacity to represent the real-life whole lies thei r artistic essentiality. Novels d i ffe r enormously i n their degrees of this essential i ty and , consequently, in their artistic sign ificance . These novel s depend above all o n their real istic penetration into this real-life i ntegrity of the world, from which the formalized essential ity shaped i n the novelistic whole is extracted . "The entire world" and i ts h istory, l ike the reali ty that con fronted the romantic artist, had by Goethe's ti me changed profo undly and i n a fundamental way. As little as three centu ries ago, the "entire world" was a u nique symbol that could not be adequately represented by any mod e l , by any map or globe. In this symbol the "entire worl d , " visible and cognized , embodied and real , was a small and detached patch of terre strial space and an equally small and severed segment of real t i m e . Everything else vanished in the fog, became m ixed u p and i nte rwoven with other worlds-sepa­ rate, ideal, fantastic, and u topian worlds. But the otherworldly and fa ntastic not only filled in the gaps of that impoverished reality, and conjoined and rou nded out that patch of reality i nto a mythological whole; the otherworldly also disorganized and bled this present reality. The otherworld ly admixture absorbed and broke down the real com­ pactness of the world and prevented the real world and real history from gathering themse lves together and rounding themselves out into a u n ified , compact, and complete whol e . The otherworldly fu ture, sev ered from the horizontal of te rrestrial space and time, rose as an oth erworldly vertical to the real flow of time, bleed ing the real future and terrestrial space as an arena for this real future, ascribing symbolic sig n ificance to everything, and deval u i n g and d iscard i n g everyth i ng that d i d not yield to symbolic interpretation. During the Renaissance the "entire world" began to condense into a real and compact whole. The eanh became firmly rou nded out, and it occupied a particu lar position i n the real space of the u niverse. And the earth itself began to acquire a geograph ical definition (still far from complete ) and a h istorical interpretation (even less complete). In Rabelais and Cervantes we see a fundamental condensation of reality

' J 'hc Hiltlung.mJmtlll

that is no longer bled by otherworldly rounding out; but this reality rise s up against the still ve ry u nstable and nebulous background of the entire world and h u man history. The process by which the real world was rou nded out, fi l led in, and integrated fi rst reached its culmination in the eigh teenth century, pre­ cisely by Goethe's time. The earth's position in the solar syste m and i ts relation to other worlds of this system were determined; it became subject to interpretation and, in a real-life sense, h istorical . I t is not just a matter of the quantity of great d iscoveries, new jou rneys, and acquired knowledge, but rathe r of that new quality in the comprehen­ sion of the real world that resulted from all this: from bei n g a fact of abstract consciousness, theoretical constructs, and rare books, the new, real unity and i ntegrity of the world became a fact of concre te (ordi­ nary) consciousness and practical orientation, a fact of ord i nary books and everyday thoughts. These facts were l i n ked to permanent visual images and became a graphically visual u n i ty. Visual equivalents cou l d b e found for things that could n o t b e d i rectly perceived w i th vision . The im mensely growing real material contact (economic and then cul­ tu ral ) with almost all of the geographical world and tec hnical contact with complex forces of nature ( the visible effect of the appl ication of these forces) played an extremely large role in this concretization and visual clarificatio n . Such a thing as Newton's law of gravi ty, in addition to its direct significance in natu ral and philosophical sciences, made an exceptional contribution to the visual clarification of the world. I t made t h e new u nity o f t h e real world and i t s n e w natural l aw almost graphically visible and perceptible. The eighteenth centu ry, the most abstract and antihistorical cen­ tury, was in fact a time of concretization and visual clarification of the new real world and i ts history. From a world of the sage and the scholar, it became the world of the everyday working consciousness of the vanguard . The philosophical and publicistic struggle of E n l ighten ment th i nk­ ers against everything that was otherworldly and authoritarian , tha t nourished outlooks, art, daily life , the social orde r, and so o n , play ed an i mmense role in this process of purification and condensation of re­ ality. As a result of E n lightenment criticism , the world , as it were , be­ came qual i tatively poorer in the most i m med iate way; there turned ou t to be much less that was actually real in it than was previously thou ght; it was as if the absolute mass of reality, of actual existence , had bee n compres sed and reduced; the world had been made poorer and drie r. 24

T h e Bi/dunJ;.rromfln

But this abstract negative cri ticism of E n l ightenment thinke rs , by d is­ persing the residue of otherworldly cohesion and myth ical unity, helped reality to gather i tself together and condense into the visible whole of the new world. New aspects and infinite prospects were re­ vealed i n this condensing reality. And this positive productivi ty of the Enlightenment reaches one of i rs h igh poi n rs i n rhe work of Goerhe. Thi s p rocess of finally rounding our and complemenring the rea l world can b e traced i n t h e biography o f Goethe a s an artist. T h i s is not rhe place ro discuss it i n any detail . To find a good map of rhe moun­ tains of E u rope was still an event for him. There was a very large p ro­ portion of travel accounts, other geography books ( the i r proportion was great even i n Goethe's father's l ibrary), archeology books , and books o n h istory (especially the history of art) i n Goethe's working l i b rary. We repeat that this p rocess of concretization, graphic clarification , and completion was j ust coming to an end. That is the reason why all this is so fresh and prominent i n Goethe . The "historical rad i i " from Rome and Sicily were new, and this very feeling of the fu llness of world h i s tory ( H e rder) was new and fresh. I n Goethe's novels (Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre), the inregri ty of the world and life i n the c ross section of the e poch are relegated for the first t i m e to th is new, concretized , graphically clarified , and comple­ mented real world . Behind the whole of the novel stands the large , real wholeness of the world in history. Any importanr novel i n any epoch of this gen re's development was encycloped ic. Gargantua and Pantagruel was e ncycloped ic, Don Quixote was encyclopedic, and the i mportant baroque novels we re encyclopedic (it goes without saying that Amadis and Palmerin were). B u t i n Renaissance novels, late chiv­ al ric tales (Amadis), and baroque novels it was an abstract and bookish encycloped ici ty, which was not backed by any model of the world wh ole. Therefo re , even to select what was essential and rou nd it out into a nove l i stic whole was a d i ffe rent p roject befo re the middle of the eigh­ tee nth century (before Field ing, Sterne, and Goethe) from w hat it later beca me. Of cou rse , this esse ntial condensation of the whole of life, w h ich the novel (and the large epic i n genera l ) should be, is by no means a con­ cise exposition of this entire whole, a summation of all i ts parts. That is out of the question. And, of cou rse , no such sum mation can be found in Goethe's novels. There , action takes place on a l i m i ted sec-

The

Bildungsromon

t ion of terrestrial space and embraces an extremely brief segment of h istorical time. But, nonetheless, this new, complemented world al­ ways stands behind the world of the novel . E ach part of i t t ransmits to the novel its representatives and deputies, who reflect its new and real fu llness and concreteness (geographic and historical in t h e broadest sense of these words). Far from everything i s mentioned in the novel itself, but the compact wholeness of the real world is sensed i n each of its images; it is precisely i n this world that each i mage l i ves and ac­ quires its form. The real fullness of the world also determi n e s the very type of essentiality in it. The novel , to be s u re, also includes u topian and symbolic elements, but both their character and thei r functions are completely transformed . The ent i re natu re of novelistic images is determined by that new relationship through which they ente r into the new, already real wholeness of the worl d . We s h a l l touch briefly here on that n e w attitude towa rd t h e new world, using the material of Goethe's creative plans (an a nalysis of the novels comes next). In his autobiographical essays-Autobiography, Italian Journey, and Annals-Goethe discusses in detail a number of h i s artistic plans that either were not real ized at all "on paper" or were realized only frag­ mentarily. Such are "Mohamet," "The E te rnal jew," "Nausicaa ," "Tell," and "Pyrmont" (as we shall arbitrarily call it), and, finally, the children's tale "The New Paris" and a m u l t i l i ngual epistolary novel also for children. We shall d iscuss certai n of them that are most charac­ teristic of Goethe's chronotopic artistic i m aginatio n . O n e feature o f the children's fai ry tale "The New Paris " is typic al (see GA, book 2): the precise designation of that actual place wh ere the fantastic event portrayed in the tale took place , part of Frank fu rt's city wall that bears the name "bad wall . " There actual ly was a nich e with a fou ntai n there and an i nscribed stone tablet set into the wal l , and old hazelnut trees rose u p behind the wall . The fai ry tale adde d a mysterious gate to the actual markers of the place , and bro u ght the n iche with the fou ntai n, the hazelnut trees , and the tablet close r to ­ gether. Su bsequently it was as though these three objects were inte r­ m ixed , sometimes coming closer together and someti me s movin g apart from one another. This mixing of real spatial markers with fa n­ tastic ones created the unique charm of the fai ry tale . The fai ry tale plot was interwoven i nto visible reality, as if it arose d i rectly from th i s ancient "bad wall" that was su rrou nded b y certain lege nd s, with its fountain in the deep niche , the old hazelnut trees, and the ins et

The HildunJ!..r roman

� 47

stone tablet. And this feature of the fai ry tale had a special effect o n Goethe's young audience: each of t h e m made a pi lgri mage t o t h e "bad wall" and saw the actual markers-the niche, the fou n tai n , and the hazelnut trees. With this fai ry tale it was as though Goethe had cre­ ated a " local legend," o n the basis of which a small "local cult" arose (pilgrimage to the "bad wall" ). Goethe w rote this fai ry tale i n 1 75 7 - 5 8 . During these sam e years the same kind of " local cult," but on a larger scale, was created on the s h ores of Lake Geneva, where the events of Rousseau's La nouvelle Heloise took place . A similar "local cult" was created earlier by Rich­ ardson's Clarissa Harlowe, and later the "local cult" of Werther would come i nto being. We had a s i m i lar cult associated with Karamzin's Poor

Liza. 25

These u n ique "local cults" engendered by literary works are a typi­ cal featu re of the second half of the eighteenth century, and gave evi­ dence of a certain reorientation of the artistic image with respect to actual reality. I t was as though the artistic i m age felt an organic striv­ ing for attachment to a particular time and, more importantly, to a par­ ticular concrete and graphically visible position in space. Here it is not a matter of how artistically real istic the i m age may be in and of itself (wh ich , of cou rse, in no way requ i res a precise geographical deter­ mi natio n , a "nonfictitious" place of action ). In this epoch the i mage typ ically conveys a d i rect geographical reality, and it strives not so much for intern al ve risim il i tude as for an idea of it as an event that actually occ u rred , that is, in real time (and hence an attitude toward the artistic im age of man as a living person, wh ich is especially typical of senti­ men talis m , and the artistically deliberate "naive realism" of the image an d of its p erception by the public). The relationship of the a rtistic im age to the new, geograph ically and historically concrete, graphically pres ented wor l d is m a n i fest here in an elementary, but sti ll clear and grap hic, form . These "local cults" attest above all to a completely new sense ojJpare and time i n th e artistic work . The strivin g for concrete geograph ical localization is also manifested in th e m ul tili ngual c h i l d re n's nove l on which Goethe worked somewhat l ate r ( see GA . book 4). "To obtain matte r for filling up this si ngu lar for m , I s tudied the geography of the cou ntries in which my creations re si ded , and by i n ve n t i ng for those dry local ities all sorts of human in cid e n ts wh ich had some a ffi n i ty with the characters and employ­ me nts of mv heroes" ( G.t vol . 1, pp . 1 2 7 - 28). And here we see the sa me cha ra� teristic h u m a n i zation of concrete geograp h ical localitie s.

. , .

...�

. l .he Bildungsroman

In lttJiian 1ournev. Goethe discusses the origin and the nature of the pla n for the dram � "Nausicaa . " This plan took shape i n Sici ly, where the country's marine and insular landscape i m mediately evoked im­ age s of the Odyssey for Goethe. "A wealth of secondary motives was to have added interest to this simple fable, and there was to h ave been a sea-island quality about the imagery and atmosphere to give a pervad­ ing tone to the whole play" (11, p. 283 ). And somewhat l ater: "Now that my mind is stored with i mages of all these coasts and p romonto­ ries, gu lfs and bays, islands and headlands, rocky c l i ffs, fields, flower gardens, tended trees, festooned vines, mountains wreathed i n clouds, eternally serene plains, and the all-encircl ing sea with i ts ever­ changing colours and moods, for the fi rst time the Odyssey has become a l iving truth to me" ( 11, p . 305). Even more typical in this regard is the plan for WiJJiam TeJJ. I ts im­ ages arose directly from l ive contemplation of the correspondi n g h is­ torical localities of Swi tzerland . In the Annals, Goethe says: "When on the way there and back (during a jou rney through Switzerland i n 1 797) I again saw with a free and open eye Vierwaldstaetter See, Schwyz, Fluelen and Altdorf. They forced my imagination to pop u late these local ities with characters that represent this i mmense ( ungeheure) land­ scape. And what images could appear to my i magi nation more qu ickly than the image of Tell and h i s bold contem poraries?" (Annals, pp. 141 42) . Tel l hi mself appeared to Goethe as an e mbodiment of the people (eine Art von Demos) in the image of the colossal force of one who lifts weights, who all h is life carried heavy animal h ides and oth e r goods across his native mou ntains. Finally, we shall discuss the creative plan that appeared to Goethe when he was in Pyrmont. The Pyrmont locality is steeped i n h istorical time. It i s mentioned in the works of Roman writers. The Roman outpost reached this far; here passed one of those rad i i of world histo ry that Goethe contem­ plated from Rome. The ancient ram parts still re mai n ; h il l s and valleys tel l of the battles that took place here ; re m n ants of antiqu i ty can be found in the etymology of the names of various places and mountains and in the customs of the populatio n ; everywh e re there are markers of the h istorical past penetrating space . " H e re you feel as though you are enclosed in a magic circle," says Goethe . "You equate the past with the present, you contemplate general spatial i ty through the prism of the give n immed iate spatial su rroundi ngs , and, finally, you feel good , . for a moment it begi ns to seem that the most elusive thing has smce

The HildunJ!.smman

� 49

become an object of unmediated contemplation" ( Annals, p. H I ). Here , u nder these specific condi tions, a plan also emerges for a work that was to be wri tten i n the style of the late sixteenth centu ry. The entire outline of the plot, which Goethe sketched q u i te precisely, is interwoven with motifs of the locality and , as it were, its historical transformation. It depicts the people's spontaneous migration toward Pyrmont's miraculous spring. At the head of the movement is a knight, who orga n i zes it and leads the people to Pyrmont. We see the social and characterological d iversity of the masses of people. An essential aspect is the depiction of the construction of a new settlement and the parallel social diffe rentiation and separation of the aristocracy ( "nobles" ) . The main theme is the work of the creatively organ izing human w i l l on the raw material of a spontaneous mass migration . The resu l t is the appearance of a new city on the ancient historical site of Pyrmont. In conclusion the motif of the future greatness of Pyrmont is i ntroduced in the form of a prophecy of three strange newcomers-a youth , an adult, and an elder (a symbol of h istorical generations). This entire plan is nothing other than an attempt to transform h istorically creative w i l l i nto a plot, both the spontaneous mass will of the people and the o rganizing will of the leader, of which Pyrmont is a d i rect visible vestige-or, in other words, to grasp the "most elusive" cou rse of pure h istorical time and fix it through "unmediated contemplation." Such a re Goethe's u n real ized creative projects. All of them a re pro­ foundly chronotopic. Time and space merge here into an inseparable unity, both in the plot i tsel f and i n its individual images. In the major­ ity of cases, a definite and absolutely concrete locality serves as the starting point for the c reative i magination. B u t this is not an abstract landscape , i mbued with the mood of the contemplator-no, this is a piece of h u man history, historical time condensed in space . There­ fore , the plot ( the s u m of depicted events) and the characters do not emer it from outside, are not invented to fit the landscape, but a re un­ folded in it as though they were present from the very beginning. They a re like those c reative forces that formulated and h umanized this landscape, made i t a speaki ng vestige of the movement of history ( his­ torical time), and, to a ce rtai n degree, predetermined its subsequent cou rse as well, or like those creative forces a given locality needs in order to organize and conti nue the historical process embodied i n it. Such an approach to locality and to history, their inseparable unity and interpenetrabi lity, became possible only because the locality ceased to be a part of abstract natu re, a part of an i ndefinite, i nter-

The Bildungsroman

ruptcd, and only symbol ically rou nded out (supplemented ) world, and the event ceased to be a segment of the same indefinite t i me that was always equal to itself, reversible, and sy mbolically e mbod ied . The locality became an irreplaceable part of the geograph ically and h istori­ cally determi ned world, of that completely real and essentially visible world of human history, and the event became an essential and non­ transferable moment i n the time of this particular human history that occurred in this, and only in this, geographically determined h uman world. The world and h istory did not becom e poorer or smaller as a result of this process of mutual concretization and i nterpenetration . On the contrary, they were condensed , compacted , and filled with the creative possibilities of subsequent real emergence and d eve lopment. Goethe's world is a germinative seed, utterly real, visibly available, and at the same time filled with an equally real future that is growing out of it. And it is this new sense of space and time that has led to an essential change in the orientation of the artistic image : that image felt a n irre­ sistible attraction to a particular place and to a particular time in this world that had become definite and real. And this orientation is mani­ fest both in the elementary (but wel l-ou tlined) form of naive realistic "local cults" for literary heroes and in the more profound and complex form of such works as Wilhelm Meister, which lie on the bord e r between the novel and the new large epic. Let us discuss briefly a somewhat earlier stage in the eightee nth ce n­ tu ry's development of the sense of time, as represented in Rous seau . Rousseau's artistic i magination was also chronotopic. H e o pened up for literature (and particularly for the novel) a special and very i mpor­ tant chro notope- "nature" (to be sure, this d iscovery, like all real dis­ coveries, was prepared for by centu ries of preced in g deve lop me nt) . l• He had a profound sense of time in nature . The time of natu re and th e time of human life entered into the closest interaction and i nte rpe ne­ tration in his work. But the real historicity of time was still very wea k. For him the only time that was separated from the backgroun d of na tu­ ral time was idyl lic time (also still cycl ical ) and biograph ical tim e, which had already surmounted its cyclical nature , but had not yet co m­ pletely merged with real historical time. Therefore, creative hist oric al necessity was almost completely fore ign to Rou sseau . W �en contempl ating landscape , Rousseau , l i ke Goethe , po pu lat es i t Wt_ �h •mages of people; he humanizes it. However, these peop le are netther creators nor builders , but people of idyllic and ind ivid ual bi o­ logical life . Hence the qual ity of his plots is also poo r ( i n most cases

The

RiltlunJ!.smmtJn

� SI

they involve love, with its suffering and joy, and idyllic labor) and his future is u topian in t h e manner o f a " G ol den Age" ( h istorical inver­ sion) and lacking any creative ne c ess i t y. 2 7 D u r in g h i s j ou r ney to Tu rin on foot, Rousseau ad m i res the ru ral landscape and populates it w i th i m age s of his im a g i n a tion . " I i m a g­ ined," he says in his Confessions, that every house was fi l led with joyous frivolity, the meadows re­ sounded with sports and revel ry, the rivers offered refreshing baths, delicious fish wantoned i n these streams, and how del igh tful it was to ramble along the flowe ry banks! The trees were loaded with the choicest fru it while their shade afforded the most charming and volup­ tuous retreats to happy love rs ; the mountains abounded with milk and cream , peace and leisure , s i m plicity and joy, mingled with the charm of going I knew not whither, and everything I saw carried to my heart some new cause for rapture. z H

The u topian aspect of Rou sseau's artistic imagination emerges even more clearly in a letter to Malesherbes (of 26 January 1 762): I soon populated it [ i . e . , beau tiful natu re-M . B . ] with beings that pleased me . . . and transported into that sanctuary of natu re people who were worthy of inhabiting it. I formed a charming society for myself . . . my fantasy resurrected the Golden Age and, filling these beaut i fu l days with all the scenes of my life that left a sweet memory with me and also those which my heart cou ld still desire , I was moved to tears , th inking about manki nd's satisfactions, so charming and so pure, which are now very distant from people. "'

These confessions of Rousseau's are ve ry revealing even in them­ selves , but their significance becomes especially clear when they are compared to the corresponding confessions of Goethe cited above. In­ stead of man the creato r and builder, here appears the idyl l i c man of pleasu re, play, and love. Natu re, as if bypassing history with its past and present, d i rectly gives way to the "Golden A ge ,"that is, the uto­ pian past that is transferred into the u to pian futu re. P u re and blissful nature gives way to pure and bl issfu l people . Here the desired and the ideal are torn away from real time and necessity: they are not neces­ sary, they are only desired. Therefore, the time of all these games, cou ntry meals, passionate meeti ngs, and so forth also lacks real du ra­ tion and irreversibility. If within the idyllic day there is a change from morning to evening to night, all idyl lic d ays are alike and repeat one another. It is also q u ite understandable that such contemplation in no

sz

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The BiltlungsromtJn

way

impedes the penetrat ion of subjective desires, emotions, personal remembrances, and fantasy i nto the contemplated thing, that is, this contemplation does not involve the factors that restricted and sup­ pressed Goethe's contemplation as he was striving to see the necessity of occurrences, independent of his des i res and feeli ngs. Of cou rse, what we have related far from exhausts the peculiar fea­ tures of Rousseau's sense of time, even of natu ral time. H is novels and his autobiographical essays reveal other, more p rofound and essential, aspects of his sense of time. He also knew idy l l ic labor time, bio­ graphical time, and family-biographical time, and he i ntroduced new and essential elements into the understanding of the ages of man, and so forth . We shall have to deal further with all these below. The second half of the eighteenth century in E ngland and Ger many is characterized, as we know, by an i ncreased i nterest i n fol klore . One can even speak with a certain amount of justification about the discov­ ery offolklore for literature, which occurred in th is epoc h . This was pri­ marily a matter of national and local (within the boundari es of th e na­ tional) folklore . The folksong, the fol ktale , the heroic and historical legend, and the saga were above all a new and powerful means of hu­ manizing and intensifying one's native space . With folklore there burst into literature a new, powerful , and extremely productive wave of national-ltistorical time that exerted an i mmense i nfluence on the devel­ opment of the h istorical outlook i n general and on the develop men t of the historical novel in particular. Folklore is in general saturated with time; all of i ts i m ages are pro­ foundly chro n oto pic. Time in folklore , the ful lness of time in it, the folkloric future, the folkloric human yardsticks of time -all these are very important and fu ndamental problems. We c ann o t, of co u rse , dis­ cuss them here, even though folkloric time exerted an im me nse an d producti ve influence on literatu re. We are interested here in another aspect of the matter- i n the u ti­ lization of local fol klore, particu larly heroic and historical legends an d sa�as, in order to intensify the native soil and thus prepare for the hi s­ toncal novel. Local folklore interprets and satu rates s pace with tim e, and d raws it into history . � indar's util ization of local myths on classical soil is ve ry typ ical in th 1 s respect. Throug h a complex and skillfu l interweavi ng of loca l myths with general Hel lenic ones, he incorporated each corn e r of Greece, retaining all of its local weal th , into the unitv of the G re ek world . Each spring, hillock, grove , and bend in the c� a s t l i n e ha d i ts

T h e 1/i/rhmKsmmrm

own le ge n d , its own memories, its own eve n ts, a n d i ts ow n heroe s . Usi n g skill fu l associations, m et a p hor i c co r re s po n d e n c es a n d ge n e a ­ logical l i n ks , P i ndar inte rspe rsed these local myths with ge n e ra l H e l ­ lenic myths and created a u n ified and close ly woven fabric that em­ braced the e n t i re G re e k land and produced a kind of n ation al p oe t ic substitu te for an i nad e q u a te political u n i ty. "' Sir Walter Scott util izes local folklore in the same way, al though under d i ffere n t historical con d i t ions and for different purposes . Typic al for Wal ter Scott is a striving afte r precisely local folklore . He covered every i nch of h i s native Scotland on foot, e s pe c i a l l y the areas bo rd e r ing E ngland, and he knew every bend of th e Tweed, all the ru i ns of c astles, and for him all this was consecrated by le ge nd song, and ballad . For h i m each c l u m p of land was saturated with certain events from local lege nds wa s p ro fo u n dl y i ntensified with legend t i m e but, o n th e other hand , each event was s t rictl y localized , con­ den sed in spatial markers. His eye cou ld see time i n s p ac e Bu t in Walter Scott d u ri ng that early pe riod when he created Min­ strelsy of the Scottish Border and h is poe ms ( Lay of the Last M instrel," "St. Joh n's E ve ," "Lady of t h e Lake," and others), this time still had th e natu re of a dosedpast. He re i n l ies the essential difference between hi m and Goethe. This past, read by Wal ter Scott i n the ru i ns and in various details of the Scottish l a n dsca pe , was not creatively operative in the present. It was self-sufficient, and it was a closed world of a spe­ cifi c past. And the visible in the prese nt only evoked a remembrance of th is pas t. It was a s tore h ouse not of the past i tself i n its living and operati ve form , but a storehouse precisely of re m e mb ra n c es of it. T he refo re , th e fullness of time was min imal even in Wal te r Scott's best folk lori c poe ms. I n Scott's s u b s e q uent n o ve l i s tic p e ri o d , he overcomes th is l i m i ta­ tio n ( to be s u re sti l l not com p l e te ly ) The profound chronotopic na­ tu re of his a rtistic thin king and his abil ity to read time in space remain fro m the p re c e din g p e r i o d as do clements o f t h e fo l k l ori c colori n g of t i m e ( natio nal-h istorical time). And all these aspects become ex­ t re m el y p ro d u c ti ve for the historical nove l . At the same time he as­ si mi lat es nove listic su bcategories from th e p re ced ing development of th e ge n re p art icu la rly the Gothic and fa m i l y b i o g ra p h i ca l nove l , a n d , fi n a l ly, he as s im i l a te s historica l drama. H e re he a l so ove rcomes the cl ose d n a t u re of the past and a c h i e ve s the fu ll ness of t i m e necessary fo r the h i storical nove l . We h ave briefly sketched o n e of the most i m ­ po rta n t st ages o n t h e p a t h to t h e a ss imila t i o n o f real historical ti m e ,

,

,

,

.

,

"

"

"

.

,

,

,

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The Bildungsroman

i n l it e ra t u re , a stage that was represented above all by the figu re of Goethe. We believe we have also demonstrated the exceptional impor­ tance of the ve ry problem of the assimilation of time in lite ratu re , and particularly in the novel.

Notes l . Gaius Petroni us (d. A. D. 66) is probably the author of the Satyricon, the frag­ mentary manuscript in prose and verse that is gen e rally (and specifically by Bakhtin) considered to be one of the major landmarks i n the h istory of the novel. Lucius Apuleius (fl. c. A. D. I SS), author of the p rose romance Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass, the only Latin novel to su rvive i n its entirety. Encolpius is the narrator of Petronius' Satyricon. A t times h e plays a d i rect part in the action (as at his famous feast), while at other times he is q u i te removed from the plot. Lucius, the first-person narrator of Apuleius' Metamorphoses, intends to swallow the potion that will turn him into an ow l , bu t he takes i nstead a potion that trans­ forms him into an ass . In this form he travels through G reece, passing through the hands of various masters, seei ng life from a variety of social perspectives, and col­ lecting stories that are interspersed throughout his narrative . La vida de Lozarillo de Tormes ( l SS4) is a picaresque novel by an anonymous au­ thor sometimes identified with Diego H urtado de Mendoza. La vida del Picaro Guzman de Alfarache (part I , I S99; part 2, 1 604) is a picaresq ue novel by M ateo Aleman. Vraie histoire comique de Francion ( 1 623 - 33 ) is a nove l by Charles Sorel ( I S97 1 674) that is important in Bakhtin's history of the novel not only because it is pica­ resque, but because it is a protest against the "fine style" of such ideal ized ro­ mances as L'Astrie. Histoire de Gil Bias de Santillane ( 1 7 14 , 1 724, 1 73S ) is a picaresq ue nove l by Lesage ( 1 668 - I 747 ).

2. The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain SinJ;/eton ( 1 7 20) is

a

fi rst-person narrative of pi racy and buccaneer raids on the African coast writte n by Daniel Defoe { l 660 - 1 73 1 ). Moll Flanders ( I 722) , the fu ll title of w h ich is almost a vol ume in i t se lf, is per· haps Defoe's greatest picaresque and one of the earliest social novels i n E n g l i s h . Roderick Random ( I 748 ) is a picaresq ue loosely based on Gil Bins b y To bias Smollett ( 1 72 1 - 7 1 ) . Peregrine Pickle ( I 7S I ) is another picaresqu e by Smol lett. H u mphry Clinktr ( 1 77 1 ) is a travel novel i n epi s to l ar v form bv Smollett. 3. Arthiopica ( an Ethiopian 1ale) is the longest of t h e still e � tant G reek n ove l s . The pre su m e d author, H e l iodoru s ( fl . A . D . 220 - 50) is variouslv a ssoc i a t e d wi th several figures: the novel was influential even in modern t i m � s : Scal i ge r, Cal­ deron, and Cervant es all ad m i red and i m itated it. Lrucippe and Clitophon by Ac h i l l es Tat i u s (fl. second centu ry A . n. ) was m u ch ad -

The Bildun!{smmon mired by Byzantine critics for its pure Attic d iction, but its licentiou sness was con­ sidered scandalous. 4. The Russian here is ston o vlenie, a word Bakhtin uses early and late in his career. I t is closer to the German dos Wen:lm ( becoming): the process of develop­ ment that is never complete in the life cou rse of an i ndividual. It is Bakhtin's way of insisting that identity is never com plete but always in process. Where possible it has been rendered in E nglish as "becoming," but where this is too barbarous the word "emergence" has been used . 5. The so-called Second Sophistic is a movement that began in the second cen­ tury with the aim of reviving the l iterary glories of the great classical period of antiquity. 6. Joh n Chrysostom (c. 345-407) became the patriarch of Constantinople in A. D. 398. His attempts at reform alienated other members of the clergy, and he was condemned on false charges i n 403. The Climentine cycle was made u p of works of early Christian hagiographic literature from the third century. I n literary form it was similar to the ancient novel, and i t was one of the sources o f Dos Foustbuc/J in the sixteenth century. 7. Amodis de Goula ( 1 508) is a Spanish chivalric romance . The first extant ver­ sion was compiled by Garcia Ordonez or Rod riguez Montalvo, who stated that he was merely revising the original text. The origin of the story is still obscure, though it was known in both Spain and Portugal at least as early as the fou rteenth centu ry. Palmerin is the hero of several sixteenth-century Spanish romances. According to trad ition , the first work i n the series, Polmerin de Olivo ( 1 5 1 1 ) is of d isputed authorship, but was enormously popular; the last of the series, Polmerin de lnglo­ terro ( 1 547 -48) is generally regarded as the best. 8. Honore d ' U rfe ( 1 568 - 1 625) is best known as the author of L'Astrie ( 1 607 27), a vast pastoral romance i n prose that enjoyed great popularity and helped re­ vive a taste for the pastoral as a gen re . Madeleine d e Scudery ( 1 607 - 1 70 1 ) , under the name o f Sappho, wrote Ar­ tomme, ou le grand Cyrus ( 1 0 vols. , 1 649-53). Gau tier de Ia Calprenede is best known for his enormous historical romances, all of which ru n to ten or twelve large volumes. Daniel C aspar von Lohenstein ( 1 63 5 - 83) was a German d ramatist, poet, and novelist of the late baroque. His historical novel Arminius ( 1 689) is closely tied to the political realities of his day. 9. Cyropaedio is a biography of Cyrus, the Persian emperor, by the Athenian Xenop hon (c . 430 -c. 355 o.c. ), modified to suit the author's didactic purposes . It is an exa mple of the "mirror for princes" ( Fiirstmspitge/) gen re, with much atten­ tion devoted to the pri nce's education. Porzivolis a verse epic of the early thirteenth century by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Der obenteurliclte Simplirissimus ( 1 668), a picaresque by Jakob von Grimmels­ hausen ( 1 625 - 76), sometimes thought of as the fi rst biograph ical novel. 1llimoque ( 1 699), a didactic romance by Fenelon ( 1 65 1 - 1 7 1 5 ) written for his pupi l , the due de Bou rgogne. Translations of this work played an i m portant role in eighteenth-centu ry Russian literature.

The Rildungsroman (;tsdtidllt du AKalltons ( 1 766, final version 1 798) is a psychological novel by Wieland ( 1 7.H - 1 !! 1 3 ) about the development of a youth in classical G reece, gener­ ally considered to be an important foreru nner of the Bildungsroman. Tobias Knout ( 17 7 3 ) by Johann Wetzel ( 1 747 - 1 8 1 9), one of Bakhtin's favorite boo k s due to the playfulness and complexity of the authorial point of view. It was reprinted in 1971 (Stuttgart: Metzler). IL!Jmsliiuft naclt aujsteigender Linit is a novel in fou r vol umes ( 1 77 8 - 8 1 ) by von Hippe! ( 1 741 -96) that owes its combi nation of sentimental effusions and En­ lightenment rationalism to Sterne. Titan is a novel ( 1 800 - 1 803) by the humorist and aesthetician Jean Paul Richter ( 1 763 - 1 825). Dtr Hungerpastor is an 1 864 novel by the German realistic novelist Wilhelm Raabe ( 1 83 1 - 1 910). Dergriine Heinriclt is an 1 854 novel of education ( second version 1 8 7 9 - 80 ) by the Swiss poet and novel ist Gottfried Keller ( 1 8 1 9-90). Lykke-Per ( 8 volumes, 1 898- 1 904), a series of works by the Danish novelist Henrik Pontoppidan ( 1 857 - 1 943). Pontoppidan shared the Nobel P rize for litera­ ture in 1 9 1 7 . Jean-Citristoplte is a long novel series begun i n 1 889 b y Romain Rolland ( 1 866-

1 944). 1 0. Gotthold Lessing ( 1 729 - 8 1 ) , German d ramatist, aesthetician, and critic. Among his many works, those most important for Bakh t i n are Laocoon, or On tlte Limits of Pointing and Poetry ( 1 7 66 ) , because of its concern with the rep re sen tati on of time in art; How tlte Ancients Represented Deatlt ( 1 780), because it is one of the first importa nt exercises in philosoph ical anthropology; and a work of particu lar importance in Bakhtin's conception of the Bi/dungsroman, Tlte Educatio n of tlte Hu­ man Ract ( 1 770) . johann Gottfried Herder ( I 744- 1 803 ), philosopher and h istorian w hose ideas about the importance of intuition in both creative work and criticism were taken up by Goeth e, with whom he was closely associated . The basic works that have a bearing on Bakhtin's discussion here are On German Cltarocter and Art ( 1 733 ), Yet Anotlter Pltilosoplty of History for tltt Furtltering of Humanity ( I 7 74) , and I..tlltrs for tltt Furtltering of Humanity ( 1 793 - 97). 1 1 . james Thomson (I 700 - 1 748) , Scottish-born E ngl ish poet, a fo re ru nne r of romanticism in an era when neoclassicism held sway. Such well-known poe ms as "The Ca.,tle of I ndolence" ( 1 748) and, especial ly, "The Seasons" ( com pleted in 1 730) were enormously popular throughout Europe due to thei r love of natu re , fantasy, and sensuous imagery . Salomon Gessner ( I 730-88), S wiss writer, landscape painter, and en graver wh o wrote and illustrated prose idylls. _1 2. ltalienisclte Reist passages are taken from the translation by W. H . Aude n an d hzabeth M ayer, Tltt !talian Journry ( London: Collins, 1 %2 ) , with page nu mbe rs m the text referring to this edi tion ( hereafte r cited as /1 ) . 1 3. Tlte Annals are cited from t h e jubilaum ed i t ion : Gott!tts siimtlir!tt Wtrkt ( St u t t­ gart-Be rli n , 1 902 - 7) , vol. .�0. 14 . Page references to Got/Itt's Autobiof!.raplty a re from t he translation of Dir!ttun1

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The Bildunxsroman

-.!;

57

und Wahmeit b y joh n Oxenford ( Ch icago-London : Unive rsity o f Ch icago Press , 1974), with page numbe rs in the text referring to this edition ( h e reafter cited as GA ). 1 5. Compare this descri ption of Goethe's creative vision with Dostoevsky's vi­ sion i n Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed . and tr. Caryl E merson ( M i nneapolis: Un iversity of M i nnesota P ress, 1 984, p. 28): An artist such as Goethe, for example, gravitates organ ically toward an evolv­ ing sequence. He strives to perceive all existing contradictions as various stages of some u nified development; in every manifestation of the present he strives to gli mpse a trace of the past, a peak of the present-day or a tendency of the future ; and as a consequence, nothing for him is arranged along a single extensive plane. Such in any case was the basic tendency of his mode for viewing and u nderstanding the world. In con trast to Goethe, Dostoevsky attempted to perceive the very stages themselves in their simultaneity, to juxtapose and counterpose them d ramatically, and not to stretch them into an evolving sequence. For him, to get one's bear­ ings i n the world meant to conceive all its content as simu ltaneous, and to guess at their interrelationships in the cross section ofa single moment. 16. Bakhtin was an admirer of the great geochemist, V. I. Vernadsky ( 1 863 1 945), whose concept of the biosphere ( La biosphere, Paris, 1 929) is based on the idea that all matter in the cosmos is alive. (Cf. note 6 in "From Notes M ade in 1 970- 7 1 ." ) 1 7. T he prospectus for Bakhti n's book on the nove l of education contains re-

mark s abou t Goethe's au tobiographical methods in Dichtung und Wahmeit:

. . . in depicting the epoch, the literary figures of the time and, fi nally, the participants in the life of the time, Goethe combines the viewpoint of his current creative work o n h is own autobiography. Goethe's task is to present not only the world of his past (and participants in his past life) in light of his present and en riched with the perspective of time, but also his past awareness and u nderstanding of this world (of child hood , youth , and young adulthood ). This past consciousness is the same sort of object of depiction as the objective world of the past. These two con sciousnesses, separated by decades and look­ ing at one and the same world, are not crudely divided and are not separated from the object of depiction "out there": they enliven this object, introduce a unique dynamic into it, a temporal movement, and adorn the world with living, emerging humanness: childhood, you th, and maturity-withotJt any detrime nt to the objectivity of the depicted world. On the contrary, the pres­ e nce of the two aspects makes the objectivity of the depicted reality stand out in even bolder relief. This subjectivity that pervades the depicted world is not the bloodless subjectivity of a romantic such as Novalis, but a concrete, red­ blooded subjectivity, one that is growing, matu ring, and aging. ( 1-:stttika, pp . 3 97 - 398 ) l i t Goethe shares the antiquarian-archeological e nthusiasm of h is epoch. We need only remember the enormous international success of the "archeological"

58 �

The Bildungsroman

fourth­ novel Anarrltisis ( 1 788), which describes the travels of i ts hero around who 6-95), 1 7 1 ( y Berthelem century B . C . Greece, by the French archeologis t jean novel. archeological the of created the genre after 19. Wilhelm Friedrich Gmelin ( 1 745 - 1 82 1 ) , e ngraver whose best works are Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. 20. Tlte Aeneid was translated i nto Italian by the sixteenth-cen tu ry poet Han nibal Caro. 2 1 . Refers to A General Mountain and Water Map of Europe comp iled by A. Sorrio in 1816. 22. johann Joachim Winckelmann ( 1 7 1 7 - 86), German classical scholar espe­ cially interested in painting and scul pture. He conceived of ancient G reece as characterized by noble simplicity and silent greatness, an idea that i nfluenced Weimar classicism. 23. Reference here is to Herder's (cf. note 10 above, this section) Outlines of rite Pltilosoplrj of Man (Idem zur Pltilosopltie der Menscltlteit, 1 784- 9 1 ), a work that Bakhtin among many others considered a simplified version of Goethe's theory of history. 24. As Bocharov observes in his footnote to the Russian edition at this poin t , Bakhtin's prospectus for the book on the Bildungsroman placed s pecial emphasis on the outcome of Enlightenment philosophy, wh ich "impoverished" the world and created a "narrowed conception of the real" in E n lightenment realism. Bakhtin makes a distinction between Enlightenment realism and Goethe's realism: Finally, in the novel of education up to Goethe this leads not to an enrich­ ment, but to a certain impoverishment of the world and man. M uch i n the world turns out to be unreal , illusory, and it is cast out as prej u dice , fanta sy, or fabrication; the world turns out to be more impoverished than it had see me d to others in past ages or to the hero himself in his you th. Many of the hero 's illusions about himself are d ispelled , and he becomes more serio us, d rier, and more impoverished. Such un ification of the world and man is typical of the critical and abstract realism of the Age of the E nl ighten ment. ( l•:sutila . p . 398 ) Compare also the entry in the preparatory materials: "The narrowed conc e pt of actuality (daily life, reality ) of the eighteenth century, F.t t•oi/0 tout! as a typi cal tendency of though t, diminishing and impoverishing rea l i ty, leav i n g it wi th m uch less than it had before ." These lines are take n from Rakhtin's mate rials o n th e Bildungsroman in his archive . 25. Nikolay Karamzin ( I 766- 1 !!26), his to r i a n and author wh nse wnrk crea ted a vogue for sentimentalism . The jilted heroine of his tale Poor [jzn ( 1 702 ) ('o m m its su icide by drowning in a poo l outside Moscow, which soo n became a plac e of pi lgrimage. 26. The materials for the boo k mention the special role of Pe t ra rc h . his "d isc ov ­ ery of man and nature" ( i ncluding the "discovery of the lonely �trol l" ). Z7. Concerning "historical inversion," see " 1-'orms of Time a n d the Chro not ope in the Novel" in M ikhai l Bakhti n . Tltr /)ia/of(ir lmaf(ination ( Au s t i n : t ! n iversi t v of Texas Press, 1981), p. 1 47 . 28. Confmion.s, tr. E. Hc:dou in (Paris, 1 8H l ), pan t . boo k z. p. 5 Z.

The Bildungsroman

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29. From M. N. Rozanov, Zll . Zll . Russo i literaturnoe dvizlunie kontsa XVIII i naclzala XIX v. ( Moscow, 1 9 1 0), p. 50. 30. In Pindar's epicurean odes it is the hero-victor in the games-his name, his l ineage, his city-who h i mself served as the center point, the pivot from which lines of association and connection spread out in all directions.

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The P roblem of S peech Genres

/. Statement of the Problem and Definition of Speech Genres e. All the diverse areas of h u ma n activity i nvol ve the use of languag di­ Quite understandably, the nature and forms of this use are j u st as y verse as are the areas of h uman activity. This, of course , i n no wa disaffirms the national unity of l a nguage . 1 Language is realized in the form of individual concrete u tterances (oral and written) by pa rtici­ pants in the various areas of human · activity. These u tterances re flect the specific conditions and goals of each such a rea not on ly thro ugh their content ( thematic) and l inguistic style, that is, the selec tion of the lexical, phraseological , and grammatical resources of the language, but above all through their compositional structure . All thre e o f th ese aspects-thematic content, style, and compositio nal structure -a re inseparably l inked to the whole of the utterance and are equally deter­ mined by the specific nature of the particular sphere of communica­ tion . Each separate utterance is individ ual, of course, but each sphere i n which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres. The wealth and d iversi ty of speech genres are bou ndle ss be cau se the various possibilities of h uman activity a re inexha usti ble , and be­ cause each sphere of activity contains an entire repe rtoi re of sp eech genres that differenti ate and grow as the particular sphe re deve l ops and becomes more complex. Special emphasis should be p lace d on the extreme heterogeneity of speech genres (oral and writte n ). I n fac t, the category of speech genres should include short rejoind ers of da ily dialogue (and these are extre mely varied dependi ng on th e su bj ec t matter, situation, and partici pants), everyday narration, writin g ( i n a ll its various forms), the brief standard military command , the elabo ra te and detaile d order, the fairly variegated repertoire of busin ess d oc u ­ ments (for the most part standard ) , and the d iverse world of com m en ­ tary (in the broad sense of the word : social , politica l ) . And we m us t

The Problem of Speech Ge n res

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also include here the d i verse forms of scientific statements and all l i t­ erary genres ( from the proverb to the multivol ume novel). It might seem that speech gen res are so heterogeneous that they do not have and cannot have a single common level at which they can be studied. For here , on one level of inquiry, appear such heterogeneous phenom­ ena as the single-word everyday rejoinder and the multivolume nove l , the military com mand that is standardized even in its intonation and the profou ndly individual lyrical work, and so on. One might think that such functional heterogeneity makes the common features of speech gen res excessively abstrac t and empty. This probably explains why the genera l problem of speech genres has never really been raise d. Literary gen res have been studied more than anything else. Bu t from antiqu i ty to the p resent, they have been studied in terms of th eir specific l i te rary and artistic features, in terms of the differences that dist inguish one from the other (within the real m of literature), and not as speci fic types of u tterances distinct from other types, but shar­ ing with them a common verbal ( language ) nature . The general lin­ guistic problem of the u tterance and its types has hardly been consid­ ered at all. Rhetorical gen res h ave been stud ied since antiquity (and not much has been added in subsequent epochs to classical theory). At that time, more attention was a l ready being devoted to the verbal na­ ture of these genres as utterances: for example, to such aspects as the relation to the l istener and his i n fluence on the utterance, the specific verbal finalization of the u tterance (as distinct from i ts completeness of thou ght), and so forth. But here, too, the specific features of rhe­ tor ical genre s ( j udicial, pol itical ) still overshadowed their general l i n­ guistic nature. Finally, everyday speech gen res have been stud ied (mai nly rejoi nders in everyday d ialogue ), and from a general lingu istic sta n dpo i nt (in the school of Saussu re and among his later followers­ th e Structu ra l ists, the American behaviorists, and, on a completely differe nt l i n gu istic basis, the Vosslerians). 2 But this line of inquiry could not lead to a correct determination of the general l i nguistic na­ tu re of the u tte rance e i ther, s i nce it was l i m i ted to the specific featu res of eve ryday ora l speech , somet imes being directly and deliberately ori ente d towa rd pri m itive u tterances (American behaviori sts). The extre me heterogeneity of speech genres and the attendant dif­ fic ulty of dete rmi ning the general nature of the utterance should in no way be u nde resti mated . I t is especially important here to d raw atten­ tio n to the ve ry significant d i ffe re nce between primary (simpl e ) and seco n dary (co mplex) speech genres ( u nderstood not as a functional

The P roblem of Speech Ge n res

diflcrc ncc). Secondary (complex) speech gen res-novels, dramas, all kinds of scientific research, major gen res of commentary, and so forth-arise in more complex and comparatively h ighly developed and organized cultural communication (primarily w r i tten ) that is artistic, scientific, sociopolitical, and so on. During the p rocess of their forma­ tion, they absorb and digest various primary (simple) gen res that have taken form in u nmediated speech communion. These primary genres are altered and assume a special character when they ente r i nto com­ plex ones. They lose thei r i mmediate relation to actual reality and to the real utterances of others. For example, rejoinders of everyday dia­ logue or letters found in a novel retain their form and their everyday significance only on the plane of the novel's content. They enter i nto actual reality only via the novel as a whole, that is, as a lite rary-artistic event and not as everyday life. The novel as a whole i s an utterance just as rejoinders in everyday d ialogue or private letters are ( they do have a common nature), but unlike these , the novel i s a se con dary (complex) utterance. The difference between primary and secondary (ideologic al) gen res is very great and fundamental ,3 but this is p recisely why the natu re of the utterance should be revealed and defined through analysis of both types. Only then can the definition be adequate to the complex and profound natu re of the u tterance (and e ncompass its most important facets). A one-sided orientation toward primary gen res i nevitably leads to a vulgarization of the entire problem ( behaviorist linguistics is an extreme example). The very inte rrelations between primary and secondary gen res and the process of the historical formation of the latter shed light on the natu re of the utterance (and above all on the complex problem of the i nterrelations among language, ideology, and world view). A study of the natu re of the u tterance and of the d iversity of generic forms of utterances in various spheres of human activity is i mmensely important to al most all areas of linguistics and p h ilology. This is be­ cause any research whose material is concrete language-the h istory of a language , normative grammar, the compilation of any kind of dic­ tionary, the stylistics of language , and so forth-inevitably deals with concrete utterances (written and oral ) belonging to various spheres of human activi ty and communicatio n : chronicles, contracts , texts of l aws, clerical and other docume nts, various l i terary, scientific, and commentarial genres, official and personal letters , rejoinde rs i n ev e ry­ day d ialogue (in all of their diverse su bcategories), and so on. And i t is

The P roblem of S peech C i e n rc s

here that scholars find the language data th e y need . A clear idea of the natu re of the utte rance in ge neral and of the pecu liarities of the vari­ ous types of u tterances ( pri mary and secondary ), that is, of various speech gen res, is necessary, we think, for research i n any special area . To ignore the nature of the utterance or to fail to consider the pecu­ "liarities of gen eric subcategories of speech in any area of li nguistic study leads to perfunctori ness and excessive abstractness, distorts the historicity of the research , and weakens the link between language and l i fe . After a l l , language e nters life through concrete utterances (which manifest language) and l i fe enters language through concrete utterances as wel l . The utterance is an exceptionally important node of problems. We shall approach certain areas and problems of the sci­ ence of language i n this context. First of a l l , stylistics. Any style is inseparably related to the utter­ ance and to typical forms of u tterances, that is, speech genres. Any uttera nce-oral or writte n , primary or secondary, and in any sphere of com munication-is i nd ividual and therefore can reflect the individu ­ ality of the speaker (or writer); that is, it possesses individual style. But not all gen res are equally conducive to reflecting the individuality of the speaker i n the l anguage of the utterance, that is, to an individual style. The most conducive ge n res are those of artistic literatu re : here the individual style e nters d i rectly i nto the very task of the utterance, and this is one of its main goals (but even within artistic lite rature vari­ ous genres offe r diffe rent possibilities for expressing i nd ividuality i n language and various aspects of individuality). T h e least favorable cond itions for reflecting ind ividuality in language obtain i n speech gen res that req u i re a standard form, for example, many kinds of busi­ ness docu m e nts, military com mands, verbal signals in industry, and so on. Here one can reflect only the most superficial, almost biological aspects of i n d ividuality (mainly in the oral manifestation of these stan­ dard types of utterances). I n the vast majority of speech gen res (ex­ cept for litera ry-artistic ones), the individual style does not enter i nto the i ntent of the utterance, does not serve as its only goal, but is, as i t were, a n epiphenomenon of t h e utterance, one of its by-products . Various gen re s can reveal various layers and facets of t h e individual pe rsonality, and individual style can be found i n various i nterrelations with the national language. The very problem of the national and the individual i n language is basical ly the p roblem of the utterance (after all, only here , in the utterance, is the national language embodied in individual form). The ve ry determination of style in general , and indi-

The Problem of Speech

G e n res

vidual style in particular, requires deeper study o f both the nature of the utterance and the d iversity of speech gen res. The organic, inseparable link betwee n style and genre is clearly re­ vealed also in the problem of language styles, or functional styles. I n essence, language, or functional, styles are nothing other t h a n generic styles for certain spheres of human activity and comm unication. Each sphere has and applies i ts own gen res that correspond to i ts own spe­ cific conditions. There are also particular styles that correspond to these genres. A particular function (scientific, technical, commen­ tarial, business, everyday) and the particular conditions of speech communication specific for each sphere give rise to particular genres, that is, certain relatively stable thematic, composi tional, and stylistic types of utterances. Style is i nseparably l inked to particular thematic unities and-what is especially i mportant- to particular composi­ tional unities: to particular types of construction of the whole, types of its completion, and types of relations between the speaker and other participants in speech communication ( listeners or readers , part­ ners, the other's speech , and so forth). Style e nters as one element i nto the generic unity of the utterance. Of cou rse, this does not mean that language style cannot be the subj ect of i ts own i ndependent study. Such a study, that is, of language stylistics as an i ndependent d isci­ pline, is both feasible and necessary. But this study will be correct and productive only if based on a constant awareness of the generic nature of language styles, and on a preliminary study of the subcategories of speech genres. Up to this point the stylistics of language has not had such a basis. Hence its weakness. There is no generally recognized classification of language styles. Those who attem p t to create them frequently fai l to meet the fundamental logical requ i re me nt of classifi­ cation: a unified basis.4 Existing taxonomies are extremely poor and undifferentiated . For example, a recently published acade my gram­ mar of the Russian language gives the followi ng sty l istic subcategories of language: bookish speech, popular speech , abstract-scientific, scientific-technical , journalistic-comme ntarial, official-business, and famil iar everyday speech , as well as vulgar common parlance . I n addi•

'Th e same k i n d s of classifications o f language styles, i m poverished and lacki n g cla n_ ty, wit h abricated fou ndation, a re give n by A . N. Gvo7.dev i n h is boo k _ OcAerkr_ po sltlrshkt russkoxo jrnyka ( E ssays on the stylistics of the Russian langu age) ( Moscow, 195Z, pp. 1 3 - 1 5). All of these classifications arc based on an u ncri tical assimi lation of trad itional ideas about language styles.

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The P roblem

of Speech

Ge n res

tion to these lingu istic styles, there are the styl istic su bcategories of dialectical words, archaic words, and occu pational expressions. Such a classification of styles is completely random , and at its base lies a vari­ ety of principles (or bases) for division into styles . Moreover, this clas­ sification is bot h i nexhaustive and inadequately differentiated . All this is a direct result of an i nadequate u nderstanding of the generic nature of linguistic styles, and the absence of a well-thought-out classification of speech gen re s in terms of spheres of human activity (and also igno­ rance of the distinction between primary and secondary genres, which is very important for stylistics). ­ It is especially h armfu l to separate style from gen re when elaborating historical p roblems. H istorical changes in language styles are in­ separably l inked to c hanges i n speech genres. Lite rary language is a complex, dynamic system of l inguistic styles. The proportions and in­ terrelations of these styles in the system of li terary language are con­ stantly changing. L iterary language, which also i ncludes nonliterary styles , is an even more complex system, and it is organized on diffe r­ em bases. I n order to puzzle out the complex historical dynamics of these systems and move from a s imple (and, i n the majority of cases, superficial) description of styles, which are always in evidence and alternati ng with one another, to a historical explanation of these changes, one m u st develop a special history of speech genres (and not only secondary, but also pri mary ones) that reflects more directly, clearly, and flexibly all the changes taking place in social life. Utter­ ances and their types, that is, speech genres, are the d rive belts from the h istory of society to the history of language. There is not a single new phenomenon (phonetic, lexical, . or grammatical ) that can e nter the system of language without having traversed the long and compli­ cated path of generic-styl istic testing and modific ation. b In each epoc h certain speech gen res set the tone for the develop­ me nt of literary language. And these speech gen res are not only sec­ ondary ( l iterar y, com mentarial, and scientific), but also primary (cer­ tai n types of oral dialogue-of the salon, of one's own circle, and other types as well, such as famil iar, family-everyday, soc iopolitical, philo­ so p h ica l , an d so on). Any expansion ·of the literary language that re­ su lts fro m d rawin g on various extraliterary strata of the national Ian"T

h is th esis of ou rs has not h i n g in common with the Vosslerian idea of the pri­ macy of the scyl istic ove r the grammat ical . Our subseque nt exposition will make th is com ple tely cle ar.

The Problem of Speech Genres

guage i nevitably entails some degree of penetration into all genres of wriuen language (literary, scientific, commentarial , conversational, and so forth) to a greater or lesser degree, and entails new generic de­ vices for the construction of the speech whole, i ts fi nalization, the ac­ commodation of the l istener or partner, and so forth . This leads to a more or less fundamental restructuring and renewal of speech genres. When dealing with the corresponding extralite rary s trata of the na­ tional language, one i nevitably also deals with the speech genres through which these strata are manifested . In the majority of cases, these are various types of conversational-dialogical gen res. H e nce the more or less distinct dialogization of secondary gen res, the weakening of their monological composition, the new sense of the listener as a partner-interlocutor, new forms of fi nalization of the whole, and so forth . Where there is style there is gen re . The transfer of style from one genre to another not only alte rs the way a style sou nds, under con­ ditions of a genre unnatural to it, but also violates or renews the given genre. Thus, both individual and general language styles govern speech genres. A deeper and broader study of the latter is absolutely i mpera­ tive for a productive study of any stylistic problem . However, both the fundamental and the genera l methodological question of the i nterrelations between lexicon and grammar (on the one hand) and styl istics (on the other) rests on the same p roblem of the utterance and of speech gen res. Grammar (and lexicon) is essentially d i fferent from stylis tics ( som e even oppose i t to styl istics), but at the same time there is n o t a s i ngl e grammatical study that can do without stylistic obse rvation and exc u r­ sus. In a large number of cases the distinction between gram ma r a n d stylistics appears to be compl etely erased . There are phen om ena th at some scholars include in the area of grammar w h i l e othe rs inc lu de them in the area of stylistics. The syntagma is an example . O n e m ight say that gramma r and styl istics conve rge a n d d ive rge i n any concrete language phenomenon . If conside red only i n the la n­ guage system, it is a grammatical phenomenon , but if co nside red i n the whole of the individual utte rance or i n a speech gen re , it is a st yli s­ tic phenom enon. And this is because the s peaker's very select ion of a particular gram matical form is a stylistic act. But these two vie wpo i nt s of one and the same specific lingu istic phenomenon should not be i m­ perv ious to one another and should not simply replace one a noth e r mech an ically. They should be organically combined (with , howe ve r.

The Problem of Speech Ge n res

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the most clear-cut methodological distinction between the m ) on the basis of the real u n i ty of the language phenomenon . Only a profound understand ing of the natu re of the utterance and the particular fea­ tures of speech gen res can provide a correct solution to this complex methodological p roblem . It seems t o us that a study o f t h e nature o f the u uerance a n d of speech gen res i s of fundamental i m portance for overcoming those sim­ plistic notions a bou t speech life , about the so-called speech flow, about com m un ication and so forth-ideas which are still current in our language studies . Moreover, a study of the utterance as a real unit of speech communion will also make i t possible to u nderstand more cor­ rectly the nature of language units (as a system) : words and sentences. We shall now turn to this more general problem. II. The Utterance as a Unit of Speech Communion: The Difference between

This Unit and Units ofLanguage (Words and Sentences) Nineteenth-century l inguistics, beginning with Wilhelm von Hum­ boldt, while not denying the communicative function of language, tried to place i t i n the background as something secondary. 5 What it fore ground ed was the function of thought emerging independently of communication. The famous H u mboldtian formula goes like this: "Apart from the communication between one human and another, speech is a n ecessa ry cond ition for reflection even in solitude. " Others, Vo ssl erians for example, emphasize the so-called expressive fu nction . W ith al l the v arious ways ind ividual theoreticians understand this fu nctio n , it esse ntially amounts to the expression of the speaker's indi­ vi dual discou rse. Language arises from man's need to express himself, to objectify h i mself. The essence of any form of language is somehow reduce d to the spiritual creativity of the ind ividu um. Several other ve rsion s of the fu nction of language have been and are now being sug­ ges ted, bu t it is still typical to underesti mate, if not altogether ignore, th e co mm u nicative fu nction of language. Language i s regarded from th e spea ker's sta ndpoint as if there were only one speaker who does not have any necessary relation to other participants in speech communica­ tio n. If the role of the other is taken into account at all, it is the role of a lis te ner, w ho u nderstand s the s peaker only passively. The uuerance is ade qu ate to its object ( i . e . , the content of the uttered thought ) and to the pers on who is pronouncing the utterance . Language essentially need s on ly a spe aker-one speak er-and an object for his speec h . An d i f language a l s o se rves a s a means o f commu nication, this is a sec-

The Problem of Speech Genre s

ondary fu nction that has nothing to do with i ts essence. Of course, the language collective, the plurality of speakers, cannot be ignored when speaki ng of language, but when defining the essence of lan­ guage this aspect is not a necessary one that dete r m i nes the nature of language. Sometimes the language collective is regarded as a kind of collective personali ty, "the spirit of the people," and so forth, and im­ mense significance is attached to it ( by representatives of the "psy­ chology of nations" ),6 but even in this case the p l u rality of speakers, and others with respect to each given speaker, i s d enied a ny real es­ sential significance . Still current in linguistics are such fictions as the " liste ner" and "understander" ( partners of the "speaker" ), the "unified s peech flow," and so on. These fictions produce a completely distorted idea of the complex and multifaceted process of active speech commu n ica tio n . Cou rses in general l ingu istics (even serious o n e s l i ke Sauss u re's) fre­ quently present graphic-schematic depictions of the two partn ers in speech comm u nication-the speaker and the l istener (who perce ives the speech)-and provide d iagrams of the active speech processes of the speaker and the correspondin g passive processes of th e l is tene r's perception and u nderstanding of the speec h . O n e cannot say that these diagrams are false or that they do not correspond to certain as­ pects of reality. B u t when they a re put forth as the actua l whole of speech communication , they become a scientific fiction. The fact is that when the listener perceives and u nderstands the mea n ing ( th e language meaning) of speech, he simultaneously takes an active , re­ sponsive attitude toward it. He either agrees or disagrees with it (co m­ pletely or partially), augments it, applies it, prepares for its exec u tion , and so on . And the listener adopts this responsive attitud e for the en ­ tire duration of the process of l istening and unde rsta nding, from th e very beginning- sometim es literally from the spe aker's first wo rd . Any understanding of l ive speech , a live utterance , is i n he re ntl y re­ spons ive , although the degree of this activity varies extrem e ly. A ny understandin g is imbued with response and necessarily elicits it in on e form or another: the listener becomes the speaker. A pass ive un der­ standing of the meaning of perceived speech is only an abstra ct as pe ct of the actual whole of actively responsive u nderstanding , whi ch is then actualized in a subsequent response that is actually artic u lated . C?f course, an utterance is not always followed imme d iately by a n a r­ ticulated respo nse. An actively responsive understanding of wha t is heard (a comma nd, for example) can be d i rectly realized in act ion (th e

The P roblem

of Speech

G e n res

execution of an o rder or command that has been understood and a c ­ cepted for execu tion), or it can remain, for the time bein11;. a si lent responsive understanding (certain speech genres are intended exclu­ sively for this kind of responsive u nderstanding, for example, lyrical genres), but this is, so to speak, responsive understanding with a de­ layed reaction. Sooner or later what is heard and actively understood will find its response in the subsequent speech or behavior of the lis­ te ner. I n most cases, gen res of complex cultural communication are inte nded precisel y for this kind of actively responsive understanding with delayed action. E verything we have said here also pertains to writte n and read speech, with the appropriate adjustments and additio ns. Th us, all real and i ntegral u nderstanding is actively responsive, and co nstitu tes nothing other than the initial preparatory stage of a re­ sponse ( i n whatever form it may be actualized). And the speaker him­ self is oriented p recisely toward such an actively responsive under­ standing. H e does not expect passive understanding that, so to speak, only duplicates his own idea in someone else's mind. Rather, he ex­ pects response, agreement, sympathy, objection, execution, and so forth (various speech gen res presuppose various integral orientations a nd s peech plans on the part of the speakers or write rs). The desire to make one's s peech u nderstood is only an abstract aspect of the spea ker's concrete and total speech plan. Moreover, any speaker is h im self a respondent to a greater or lesser degree . He is not, after all, the first speake r, the one who disturbs the eternal silence of the uni­ verse. And he presupposes not only the existence of the language sys­ te m he is using, but also the existence of preceding utterances-his ow n and othe rs' -with which his given u tterance enters into one kind of rel ation or a nother (builds on them, polemicizes with them , or sim ply pres umes that they are already known to the listener). Any uttera nce is a link i n a very complexly organized chain of other u tte ra nces. Thus, the listener who understands passively, who is depicted as the speaker's partner in the schematic diagrams of ge neral lingu istics, does not correspond to the real participant in speech communication. What is represente d by the d iagra m is only an abstract aspect of the real total act of actively responsive understanding, the sort of under­ standi ng that evokes a response , and one that the speaker anticipates. Such scientific abstraction is qu ite justified in itself, but under one cond ition : that i t is clearly recogn ized as merely an abstraction and is

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The P roblem of Speech G e n re s

not represented as the real concrete whole of the phe nomenon. Other­ wise it becomes a fiction . This is p recisely the case i n l i n gu istics, since such abstract schemata, while perhaps not claiming to reflect real speech communication, are not accompanied by any indication of the great complexity of the actual phenomenon. As a result, the schema distorts the actual pictu re of speech communication, removing pre­ cisely its most essential aspects. The active rol e of the other in the pro­ cess of speech communication is thus red uced to a m i n i m um . This d isregard for the active rol e o f the other i n the process of speech communication, and the desire generally to bypass this pro­ cess, are manifested in the imprecise and ambiguous use of such terms as "speech" or "speech flow." These deliberately indefinite terms are usually intended to designate something that can be d ivided i nto lan­ guage u nits, which are then inte rpre ted as segments of language: pho­ netic (phoneme, syl lable, speech rhythm [takt]) and lexical ( sentence and word). "The speech flow can be b roken down . . . " ; "Our speech is divided . . . " This is the way those sections of gra m m ars d evoted to the study of such language u n i ts are usually i ntroduced i n to general courses in linguistics and grammar, and also i nto special research on phonetics and lexicology. Unfortu nately, even our recently published academy grammar uses the same indefinite and ambiguous term "ou r speech." Here is how t h e section on phonetics is i n troduced: " Our speech is basically d ivided into sentences, whic h i n turn can be broken down i nto phrases and words. The word is clearly d ivided i nto small sound u n i ts syllables . . . syllables are d ivided i nto individual speech sounds or phonemes. . . . " 7 B u t what sort o f thing is this "speech flow" a n d what i s meant by "our speech" ? What is the natu re of their d u ratio n ? Do they have a beginning and an end? If their lengt h is indefinite, w h ich of thei r seg­ ments do we use when we break them down i n to u n i ts ? These ques­ t ions have not bee n raised or defined at al l . Li ngu ists have not yet transformed the imprecise word "speech"-which can designate lan­ guage, the speech process ( i . e . , speaking), the ind ividual u tterance, an entire long indefin ite series of such utte rance s , or a particular speech genre ( "he gave a speech" )-into a defi n i te (defined) term with clear-cut semantic boundaries ( similar situations also exist i n other languages). This c a n b e explai ned b y t h e a l m o s t complete lack of research into the problem of the u tterance and speech gen res (and , consequently, of speech com munion as wel l ) . What we almost always -

The Problem of Speech G e n res

� 71

find is a confu sed play with all these meani ngs ( e xcept for the last ). Most frequently the expression "our speech" simply means any utter­ ance of any person. B u t this meaning is never consistently sustained th roughout. And if it is indefin i te and unclear just what it is that is divided and broken down into u n i ts of language, this lack of definition and confu­ sion also spread to these units the mselves. The terminological imprecision and confu sion in this methodologi­ cally central point of l inguistic thinking result from ignoring the real unit of speech comm u n ication: the u tterance . For speech can exist in reality only i n the for m of concrete u tterances of individual speaking people, speech subj ects. Speech is always cast in the form of an u tter­ ance belongi n g to a particular speaking subject, and outside this form it cannot exist. Regard less of how varied utterances may be in terms of their length , their content, and their compositional structure, they have common structu ral featu res as units of speech communication and, above all, quite clear-cu t bou ndaries. Since these boundaries are so essential and fu ndamental they must be discussed in detail. The boundaries of each concrete utterance as a unit of speech com­ mu nicatio n a re dete rm ined by a change of speaking subjects, that is, a ch ange of speakers . Any u tterance-from a short (single-word ) re­ join der i n everyday d ialogue to the large novel or scientific treatise­ has, so to speak, a n absolute beginning and an absolute end: its begin­ ni ng is p rece ded by the uttera nces of others , and its end is followed by the resp onsive utterances of others (or, although it may be silent, oth ers' active responsive understanding, or, finally, a responsive action based on this u nderstandi ng). The speaker ends his utterance in order to reli nq uish the floor to the other or to make room for the oth er's ac­ tive resp onsive understanding. The utterance is not a conventional uni t, bu t a real u n i t , clearly delim ited by the change of speakin g subc

< And it can not be su"sta i ned. For example, such an u ttera nce as "Ah ! " (a rejoinder i n dia logu e ) can not be broken down into sentences, p h ra se s , or syl lables. Conse­ que ntly , not j u st an_y u u e ra nce will do. Further, they divide u p the u tterance (spe ech ) and obtai n u n i t s of language . F re que n t l y the sentence is then defined �s t he sim ples t uttera nce and, conseq uently, i t cannot be a unit of the utterance. h ts �ac itly assu med that there i s only one s peaker. and dialogic al overtones are thus t g nore d . As com pa red to t h e bounda ries of the u tterance , all other bou ndaries (between

se ntences , p h rases , sy nt a g m ic u n i ts, and words) are re lative and arbitrary.

The P roblem of Speech Genre s

jects , which ends by rel i nquishing the floor to the other, as if with a silent dixi, pe rceived by the listeners (as a sign ) that the speaker has finished . This change of speaking subjects, w hich creates clear-cut boun da­ ries of the utterance , varies in natu re and acq u i res d i fferent forms in the heterogeneous spheres of h u ma n activity and l i fe , depen ding on the functions of language and on the conditions and situation s of com­ munication . One observes this change of speaking subjec ts most simply and clearly in actual dialogue where the u tterances of the in ter­ locutors or partners in d ialogue (which we shall call rejoin ders) alter­ nate. Because of its simplicity and clarity, d i alogue is a class ic form of speech communication. E ach rejoinder, regardless of how brief and abrupt, has a specific quality of completion that expresses a pa rticular position of the s peaker, to which one may respon d or may assu me, with respect to it, a responsive position. We shall d i scuss fu rther this specific quality of completion of the utterance , one of its m ain ma rk­ ers. But at the same time rejoinders a re all l inked to one another. And the sort of relations that exist among rejoinders of d ialogue-relations between question and a nswer, assertion and objection , as sertio n an d agreement, suggestion and acceptance , order and e xecution , and so forth-are impossible among u nits of language (words and sentences), either in the system of langu age ( i n the vertical c ross sectio n ) or wit hi n the utterance (on the horizontal plane). These speci fic relatio ns amon g rejoinders in a d ialogue are only subcategories of spec ific re lat io ns among whole u tterances i n the process of speec h com mu n icatio n. These relations a re possible only among utterances of diffe rent sp eech subjects; they presuppose other (with respect to the spea ke r) par tici­ pants i n speech commun ication. The relations among whol e u tter­ ances cannot be treated gram matically since , we repeat, such relatio ns are impossible among units of language , and not onl y i n the system of language , but within the utteran ce as well. In secondary speech gen res, especially rhetorical ones, we en co u n­ ter phenomena that appare ntly contradict this tenet. Qu ite freq ue ntl y withi n the boundaries of his own utterance the speaker (or wri ter) �aises questions, answers them h imself, raises objections to his own tdeas, responds to his own objections, and so on. But these ph e no m­ ena are noth ing other than a conventio nal playing out of s peech co m ­ munication and primary speech genres. d This kind of playi ng o ut is " The seam of bounda ries in second ary gen res.

The Problem of Speech G e n res

typical of rhetorical genres (in the broad se nse, wh ich wou ld i nclude certai n kinds of scie ntific popularization), but other secondary ge nres (artistic and scholarly) also u se various forms such as this to introduce primary speech gen res and relations among them into the construction of the utterance (and here they are altered to a greater or lesser degree, for the speaking s u bj ect does not really change). Such is the natu re of secondary genres. B u t the relations among the reproduced primary genres cannot be treated grammatically i n any of these phenomena, even though they appear withi n a single utterance . Within the utter­ ance they reta i n the i r own specific nature, which is essentially differ­ ent from the natu re of relations among words and sentences (and other language u nits, i . e . , phrases and so forth). Here, d rawing o n material from d ialogue and the rejoinders that com prise it, we must provisionally pose the problem of the sentence as a unit of language, as d istinct from the u/lerance as a unit of speech com mun icat ion . (T he que stion of the natu re of the sentence is one of the most com­ pli cated and d i fficu l t in lin gu istics. The clash of opinions regard ing this question continues in our scholarship to this day. Of course , the task we set for ourselves here does not i nclude an investigation of this p roble m i n all its complexity ; we intend to mention only one of its as pects . B ut it seems to us that this aspect is essential to the entire pro ble m. It is i m portant for us to define precisely the relationshi p be­ tween the se nte nce and the u tterance. This will give us a clearer pic­ tu re of both the u tterance and the sentence . ) B ut th is wi l l co me later. Here we shall simply note that the bounda­ rie s of the sente nce as a u n i t of language are never determine d by a ch an ge of s pea king subjects. Such a change, framing the sentence on bo th side s, tra nsforms the sentence into an entire u tterance. Such a se ntence a ssu m es new qualities and is perceived quite differently from the way it would be if it were framed by other sentences within the si ngle ut terance of one and the same speaker. The sentence is a rela­ ti ve ly co mp lete thought, d i rectly correlated with the other thou ghts of a single sp eaker withi n his utterance as a whole. The speake r pauses at th e en d of a se ntence in order then to move on to his ow n next th ou ght, co nti n u i ng, supplementi ng, and subs tant iating the p �ece d ing o ne . Th e co ntext of the sentence is the speech of one speakm g sub­ ject (spea ke r). The sentence itself is not correla ted d i rectly or person­ all y wit h the extraverbal context of reality (sit uation , setting , pre­ hi story ) or wi th th e only e utterance s of other speake rs; this takes plac

74

c;..

The Problem of Speech Ge n res

indirectly. through its entire s urrounding context, that is, through the utterance as a whole. And if the sentence is not su rrounded by a con­ text of the speech of the same speake r, that is, if it constitutes an en­ tire completed utterance (a rejoinder in dialogue), then it ( i tself) di­ rectly confronts reality ( the e xtraverbal context of the speech ) and the different utterances of others. It is not fol lowed by a pause that the speaker himself designates and inte rp rets. (Any pause that is gram­ matical, calculated , or inte rp reted is possible only withi n the speech of a single speaker, i . e . , within a single u tterance. Pauses between utter­ ances are, of cou rse , not gra mmatical but real. Such real pauses-psy­ chological , or p rompted by some external circumstance-can also i n­ terrupt a single u tterance . I n secondary artistic gen res such pauses are calcu lated by the artist, di rector, or actor. B u t these pauses differ es­ sentially from both grammatical and stylistic pauses-for example, among syntagmas-within the u tterance . ) One expects them to be fol lowed by a response or a responsive understanding on the part of another speaker. Such a sentence, having become an entire utterance, acquires a special semantic fullness of value. One can assume a re­ sponsive position with respect to it; one can agree or d isagree with it, execute it, evaluate it, and so on. But a sentence in context cannot elicit a response. It acquires this capability (or, rather, assimi lates to it) only in the entirety of the whole utterance . All these completely new qualities and pecu l iarities belong not to the sentence that has become a whole utterance, but p recisely to the utte rance itself. They reflect the nature of the utterance , not the na­ ture of the sentence. They attach themselves to the sentence, aug­ menting it u ntil it is a complete u tterance. The sentence as a language unit lacks all of these properties; it is not demarcated o n either side by a change of speaking subjects; it has neither d i rect contact with reality (with an extraverbal situation) nor a d i rect re lation to others' u tter­ ances; it does not have semantic fu llness of val ue; and it has no capac­ ity to determine directly the responsive position of the other speaker. that is, it cannot evoke a response . The sentence as a langu age unit is grammatical in nature . It has grammatical bou ndaries and grammatical completedness and unity. ( Regarded in the whole of the u tterance and from the standpoint of this whole, it acqu i re s stylistic properties. ) When the sentence figu res as a whole u tte rance, it is as though it has been placed in a frame made of quite a different material. When one forgets this in analyzing a sentence , one distorts the natu re of the sen­ tence ( and simul taneously the natu re of the utterance as well, by treat-

The Problem of Speech Genres

� 7 .S

ing it gram matically). A great many li nguists and li nguistic schools (in the area of syntax) a re held captive by this confusion, and what they study as a sente nce is i n essence a kind of hybrid of the sentence (unit of language) and the u tterance (unit of speech communication). One does not exchange sentences any more than one exchanges words (in the strict linguistic sense) or p h rases. One exchanges utterances that are constructed from language units: words, phrases, and sentences. And an u tterance can be constructed both from one sentence and from one word , so to speak, from one speech unit (mainly a rejoinder in dialogue), but this does not transform a language unit into a unit of speech communication. The lack of a wel l-developed theory of the utterance as a unit of speech comm u n ication leads to an imprecise distinction between the sentence and the u tterance, and frequently to a complete confusion of the two. Let us return to real-life d ialogue. As we have said , this is the simplest and the most classic form of speech communication. The change of speaking s u bjects (speakers) that determi nes the boundaries of the utterance is especially clear here. But i n other spheres of speech commu nication as wel l , including areas of complexly organized cul­ tural communication (scientific and artistic), the nature of the bounda­ ries of the u tterance remains the same . Compl exly struct u red and specialized works of various scientific and artist ic gen res , in spite of all the ways in which they diffe r from rejoin­ de rs in dialogue, a re by nature the same kind of units of speech com­ mu nicatio n . They, too, are clearly demarcated by a change of speaking subjects, and these bou ndaries, while retaining their external clarity, acq uire here a special internal aspect because the speaking subject­ in this case , the author of the work- manifests his own individuality in his style , h i s world view, and in all aspects of the design of his work. T his im print of ind ividuality marking the work also creates special in­ ter nal bou ndaries that disti ngu ish this work from other works con­ nected wi th it in the ove ral l p rocesses of speech c ommun ication in that parti cu lar cul tu ral sphere: from the works of predecessors on whom t he au thor relies , from other works of the same school, from the works of opposi ng schools with which the author is contending, and so on. The work , like the rejoinder in dialogue, is oriented toward the re­ sponse of the othe r ( others ) , toward his active responsive understand­ in g, whi ch can assu me various forms: ed ucational influence on the rea ders , pe rsuasio n o f the m , critical responses, influence on followers

The Problem of Speech G e n res

and successors, and so on. It can determine others' responsive posi­ tions u nder the complex conditions of speech com m u nication in a par­ ticular cultural sphere . The work is a link in the chain of speech communion. Like the rejoinder in a dialogue, it is related to other work-utterances: both those to which it responds a n d those that re­ spond to it. At the same time, l i ke the rejoinder i n a dialogue, it is separated from them by the absolute bou ndaries cre ated by a change of speaking subjects . Thus, the change of speaking su bjects, by framing the u ttera nce and creating for it a stable mass that is sharply delimited fro m other re lated u tterances, is the first constitutive feature of the u tterance as a u nit of speech communication, a featu re distinguishin g i t from units of la nguage. Let us tu rn to this second feature , which is i n separa bly lin ked to the fi rst. This second featu re is the specific finalization of the ut terance . The fi nalization of the utterance i s , if you w i l l , the i n n er si de of the c hange of speech subjects. This change can o n ly take p lace because the speaker has said (or written ) everything he wishes to say at a par­ tic u lar moment or under particular c i rcumstances. When he arin g or re ading, we clearly sense the end of the utterance , as if we hear the speake r's concluding dixi. This finalization is specific and is d eter­ mined by special crite ria. The first a n d foremost crite r io n for the fi nal­ ization of the utterance is the possibility of responding to it or, m ore pre­ cise ly and broadly, of assuming a responsive attitude towa rd it (for example, executin g an order). This criterion is met by a sho rt every­ day question , for example, "What time is it? " (one m ay respo nd to it), an everyday request t hat one may or may not fulfill , a scien ti fic st ate­ ment with which one may agree or d isagree ( partiall y or com plete ly), or a novel , which can be evaluated as a whole. Some kind of final iza­ tion is necessary to be able to react to an utterance . It is not e no ugh for the utterance to be understood in terms of lan?,Uage. An a bsolu tel y un derstood and completed sentence , if it is a sente nce a nd n ot an ut­ te rance comprised of one sentence , can not evoke a responsi ve reac­ tio n : it is co mprehensible, but it is sti l l not all. This all- the i ndic ator of the wholeness of th e utterance-is subject neither to gram mat ic al no r to abstract semanti c defi nition . This finalized whol eness of the u tterance , guaranteei ng the pos si­ b i l i ty of a re sponse (or of responsive understanding), is deter m ine d by th ree aspects (or factors) that are inseparably l i n ked in the orga n ic wh ole of the uttera nce: l . semantic exhaustive ness of the th e me; 2.

The P roblem of Speech Ge nres

the speaker's plan or s peech will ; 3. typical composi tional and ge neric forms of finalization . The first aspect-the referential and semantic exhaustiveness of the theme of the utterance-differs profoundly in various spheres of com­ m unication. This exhaustiveness can be almost complete i n certain spheres of everyday l i fe (questions that are purely factual and similarly factual responses to them , requests, orders, and so forth), in certain bu siness circles, i n the sphere of military and industrial commands and orders , that is, in those spheres where speech genres are maxi­ mally standard by natu re and where the creative aspect is almost com­ pletely lacking. Conversely, in creative spheres (especially, of course, in scientific ones), the semantic exhaustiveness of the theme may be only relative. Here one can speak only of a certain minimum of final­ i zation making it possible to occupy a responsive positio n . We do not objectively exhaust the subject, but, by becoming the theme of the ut­ terance ( i . e . , of a scie n tific work) the subject achieves a relative final­ ization under certain condition s , when the problem is posed in a par­ ticular way, on the basis of particular material, with particular aims set by the author, that is, already within the boundaries of a specific au­ thorial intent. Thus, we inevitably come to the second aspect, which is in separably linked to the first. In each utterance-from the single-word , everyday rejoinder to large, complex works of science or literature-we embrace, under­ stand, and sense the speake r's speech plan or speech will, which deter­ mines the entire utterance , its length and boundaries. We imagine to ourselves what the s peaker wishes to say. And we also use this speech plan, th is speech will (as we understand it), to measure the fi nalization of the utterance. This plan determines both the choice of the subject itself (under certain cond itions of speech communication , in neces­ sary connection with preceding utterances), as well as its boundaries and its se mantic exhaustive ness. It also determines, of course, the c hoice of <\ ge neric form i n which the utterance will be constructed (thi s is already the third aspect, to which we shall turn next). This pla n- the subjective aspect of the utterance-combines in an insepa­ rable uni ty w ith the o bjective refere ntially semantic aspect, limiting the l atter by relati n g it to a concrete ( individual) situation of speech co m mu nicatio n with all its ind ividual circumstances, its personal par­ tic i pants, and the statement-u tterances that preceded it. Therefore, the immedia te participants in communication, orienting them selves with resp ect to the situation and the preceding utterances, easily and

The Problem of Speech Genres

quickly grasp the speaker's speech pla n , his speech w i l l . And from the very beginning of his words they sense the developing whole of the utterance . Let us turn to the third and, for us, most i m portant aspect: the stable generic forms of the utterance. The s peaker's speech will is manifested primarily i n the choice of a particular speech genre. This choice is determi ned by the specific nature o f the given sphere of speech communication, semantic (thematic) consid e rations, the con­ crete situation of the speech comm u nication, the personal composi­ tion of its participants, and so o n . And when the speake r's speech plan with all its i ndividuality and subjectivity is applied and adapted to a chosen genre , i t is shaped and developed with i n a certain generic form. Such gen res exist above all in the great and multifarious sphere of everyday oral com mun ication, including the most fam iliar and the most intimate. We speak only in definite speech gen res, that is, all o u r u tterances have definite and relatively stable typical forms of construction of the whole. Our repe r toi re of oral (and written) speech gen res is ric h . We use them confidently and skillfully in practice, and i t is q u i te possible for us not even to suspect their existe nce in theory. L i ke Moliere's Monsieur Jou rdain who, when speaki n g i n prose, had no idea that was what he was doing, we speak i n diverse genres without suspecting that they exist. Even in the most free , the most unconstrained conversa­ tion, we cast our speech in defi n i te generic forms, sometimes rigid and trite ones, sometimes more flexible, plastic, and creative ones (everyday communication also has c reative gen re s at i ts d isposal). We are given t hese speech gen res i n al most the same way that we are given our native language , which we master fluently long before we begi n to study gram mar. We know our native language- its lexical composition and gram matical structu re-not from d ictionaries and grammars but from concrete u tterances that we hear and that we ourselves reproduce in l ive speech com m u nication with people around u s . We assimilate forms of langua ge only in forms of u tte rances and in conj u nction with these forms. The forms of language and the typical forms of utter­ ances, that is, speech gen res, ente r ou r experience and o u r conscious­ ness together, and in close con nection with one anoth e r. To learn to speak means to learn to construct u tterances ( because we speak i n ut­ terances and not in individual sentences, and , of cou rse , not i n i n di­ vidua l words). Speech ge n res organize our speech i n almost the sa m e

The

Probl e m of

Speech Genres

way as grammatical (syntactica l ) forms do. We Jearn to cast our speech in generic forms and , when hearing others' speech , we guess its genre from the very fi rst words; we p red ict a certain length (that is, the ap­ proxi mate length of the speech whole) and a certain compositional structure; we foresee the end ; that is, from the very beginning we have a sense of the speech whole, which is only later differentiated du ring the speech p rocess. If speech gen res did not exist and we had not mas­ tered them, if we had to originate them during the speech process and construct each u tterance at will for the fi rst time, speech communica­ tion would be almost i m possible. The generic forms i n which we cast our speech, of cou rse, diffe r esse ntially from language forms. T h e latter are stable a n d compulsory (no rmati ve) for the speaker, while generic forms are much more flex­ i ble, plast ic, and free . Speech genres are very diverse in this respect. A large n umber of gen res that are widespread in everyday l i fe are so stan­ dard that the speaker's i ndividual speech will is man i fested only in its ch oice of a particu la r genre , and, perhaps, in its expressive intonation . Such, for example, a re the various everyday genres o f greetings, fare­ wells, congratu lations , all kinds of wishes, information about health, business, and so forth . These gen res are so diverse because they differ depending on the situation, social position , and personal i nterrelations of the partici pants in the communication . These gen res have high, strictly officia l , respectful forms as wel l as familiar ones. And there are for ms with varying degrees of fam i l iarity, as wel l as intimate forms (w h ich d i ffer from familiar ones). These gen res also requ i re a certain ton e; their structure i ncludes a certain expressive i ntonation . These ge n res, parti cularly the h igh and official ones, are com pu lsory and ex­ tre mely stable. The speech will is usually limited here to a choice of a par ticu lar gen re . And only slight nuances of expressive intonation (one can take a d rier o r more respectful tone, a colder or warmer one; one can i ntrod uce the intonation of joy, and so forth ) can express the speaker's individ ual ity (his emotional speech i ntent). But even here it is ge nerally possib l e to re-accentuate genres. This is typical of speech co m m uni cation : thus, for example, the generic form of greeting can e

' These and other phenomena have interested ling u ists ( mainly language histo­ rians) in the purely stylistic level as a reflection in language of historically changed forms of etiquette , cou rtesy, and hospitality. See, for example, F. Brunot, Histoirr de Ia langue fran(aise des origines a / 900, to vols. (Paris: A. Colin, 1 905).

The P roblem of Speech Ge n res

move from the official sphere into the sphere of fam i l iar communica­ tion, that is, it can be used with parod ic-ironic re-accentuation. To a similar end , one can deliberately mix gen res from various spheres. I n addition to these standard gen res, of course, free r and more crea­ tive genres of oral speech communication have existed and still exist: genres of salon conversations about everyday, social , aesthetic, and other subjects, genres of table conversation, intimate conversations among friends, intimate conversations within the fam ily, and so on. (No list of oral speech genres yet exists , or even a principle on which such a list might be based. ) The majority of these genres are subject to free creative reformulation ( like artistic gen res, and some, perhaps, to a greater degree). But to use a genre freely and creatively is not the same as to create a gen re from the begin n i ng; gen res must be fully mastered i n order to be manipulated freely. Many people who have an excellent command of a language often fee l quite helpless i n certain spheres of commu nication p recisely be­ cause they do not have a practical command of the generic forms used in the given spheres. Frequently a person who has an excellent com­ mand of speech in some areas of cultural com m u n ication, who is able to read a scholarly paper or engage in a scholarly d iscussion, who s peaks very well on social questions, is silent or very awkward in social conversation. Here it is not a matter of a n impoverished vocabulary or of style , taken abstractly: this is entire ly a matter of the inability to command a repertoire of gen res of social conversation, the lack of a sufficient supply of those ideas about the whole of the u tterance that help to cast one's speech quickly and natu rally i n certai n compositional and stylistic forms, the inability to grasp a word p ro m ptly, to begin and end correctly (composition is very uncomplicated i n these genres). The better our command of genres, the more freely we employ them , the more fully and clearly we reveal our own ind ividuality in them (where this is possible and necessary), the more flexibly and pre­ cisely we reflect the unrepeatable situation of communication-i n a word , the more perfectly we implement our free speech plan. Thus, a speaker is given not only mandatory forms of the national language ( lexical com position and gra mmatical structu re) , but also forms of utterances that are mandatory, that is, speech gen res. The latter are just as necessary for mutual understanding as are forms of language . Speech genres are much more changeable, flexible, and plastic than language forms are, but they have a normative significance for the speaki ng individuum, and they are not created by him but are

The Problem of S peech G e n res

given to h i m . Therefore , the si ngle utte rance, with all its individuality and creativity, can i n no way be regarded as a completely free combination of forms of language, as is supposed , for example, by Saussu re (and by many other l inguists after him), who juxtaposed the utterance (Ia pa­ role), as a purely ind ividual act, to the system of language as a phe­ nomenon that is pure l y social and mandatory for the individuum. r The vast majority of l i ngu ists hold the same position, in theory if not in practice. They see in the utterance only an individual combination of purely l inguistic ( lexical and gram matical) forms and they neither un­ cover nor study any o f the other normative forms the utterance ac­ quires in practice. Ignoring speech gen res as relatively stable and normative forms of the utterance i nevitably led to the confusion we have already pointed out between the u tterance and the sentence, and it had to lead them to the position (which, to be sure, was never consistently defended ) that our speech is cast solely in stable sentence forms that are given to us; and the number of these interrelated sente nces we speak in a row and when we stop (end)-this is completely subject to the individual speech will of the speaker or to the caprice of the mythical "speech flow. " Whe n we select a particular type of sentence, we do so not for the sentence itself; but out of consideration for what we wish to express with this one give n sentence. We select the type of sentence from the standpoint of the whole utterance, which is transmitted i n advance to our speech imagi nation and which determines our choice. The idea of the form of the whole u tterance , that is, of a particular speech gen re , guides us i n t h e p rocess o f o u r speaking. The plan o f the utterance a s a whole may req u i re o n ly one sentence for its implementation, but it may also requ i re a large number of them . The chosen gen re predeter­ mines for us their type and thei r composi tional links. One reason why forms of utterances a re ignored i n l inguistics is that these forms ar� extre mely dive rse in compositional structure, particu­ larly i n size (speech length)-from the single-word rejoinder to a large 'Saussure defines the u tterance ( Ia parolt) as an "individual act. It is willfu l and inte l lectual . Within the act, we should distinguish between ( 1 ) the combi nations by which the speaker uses the language code for expressing his own thought; and (2 ) the psychological mechanism that al lows him to exteriorize those combi na­ tions" ( Count ;, Gmtral Lifll!.flistic.r ( New York: McGraw- H i l l , 1 966 ), p. 14). Thus, Saussu re ignores the fact that in addition to forms of language there are also forms of com!Ji,atiofts of these forms, that is, he ignores speech gen res.

82 �

The Problem

of Speech

G e n re s

novel. There is also a great range of sizes i n oral speech genres. Thus, speech genres appear i ncommensurable and u nacceptable as un its of speech. This is why many lingu ists (mainly those i nvestigating syntax) try to find special forms that lie somewhere between the sentence and the utterance, forms with the completeness of the u tterance and at the same time the commensurabi lity of the sentence. Such are the "phrase" ( i. e . , in Kartsevsky) and "communication" ( i n Shakhmatov and others). 8 There is no common u n derstanding of these units among researchers who use the m because no definite and clearly delimited reality corresponds to them i n the life of language . All these artificial and conventional units neglect the change of speech subjects that takes place in any real l ive speech communication, and therefore the most essential bou ndaries are erased i n all spheres of language ac­ tivity: boundaries between u tterances. Hence ( i n consequence of this) one also forfeits the main criterion for the finalization of the utterance as a true unit of speech communication: the capability of determining the active responsive position of the other participants i n the communication. We shall conclude this section with a few more remarks about the sente nce (and return to d iscuss this issue in detail i n the summary of ou r essay). The sentence as a unit of l anguage lacks the capabi l i ty of determin­ ing the d i rectly active responsive position of the speaker. Only after becoming a complete utterance does the individual sentence acquire this capability. Any sentence can act as a complete utterance , but then , as we know, it is augmented by a number of very essential non­ grammatical aspects that change it radically. And this circumstance also causes a special syntactic aberration. When the i n d ividual sen­ tence is a nalyzed separately from its context, i t is inte rpreted to the point of becoming a w hole utterance. As a result, it acqu i res that de­ gree of finalization that makes a response possible . The sentence , like the word , is a signifying unit of language . There­ fore , each individual sentence , for example , "The sun has risen," is completely comprehensible, that is, we understand its language meaning, its possible role in an utterance . But in no way can we assume a responsive position with respect to this ind ividual se ntence u n less we know that with this sentence the speake r has said everything he wishes to say, that this sentence is neither preceded nor followed by other sentences of the same speaker. B u t then this is no longe r a sen-

The Proble m of Speech Genres

renee, but a fu l l-fledged u ttera nce consisting of one sentence. It is framed and delimited by a change of speech subjects and it directly reflects an extraverbal real i ty (situ ation). It is possible to respond to such an uttera nce. But if this sentence were su rrounded by context, then i t would ac­ quire a fullness of i ts own sense only in this context, that is, only in the whole of the u tterance, and one could respond only to this entire ut­ terance whose signifying element is the given sentence. The utter­ ance , for example, can be thus: "The sun has risen. It's time to get up." The responsive u nderstanding (or articulated response) : "Yes, it really is time. " B u t i t can also be thus: "The sun has risen. But it's still very early. Let's get some more sleep." Here the sense of the utterance and the res ponsive reaction to it will be different. Such a sentence can also ente r i n to the composition of an a rtistic work as an element of landsca pe. H ere the responsive reaction-the artistic-ideological im­ pres sion and evaluat ion-ca n pertain only to the entire landscape. In the co ntext of anoth e r work this sentence can acqu ire symbolic signifi­ cance. I n all suc h cases the sentence is a signifyi ng elemen t of the who le utte ran ce , which acq u i res i ts final meanin g only in this whole. If ou r se nte nce figu res as a completed u tterance, then it acqu i res its own integral sense u nder the particular concrete circumstanc es of speech co m mu n ication. Thus, it can be a respon se to anoth er's ques­ ti on : "H as the su n risen ? " (of course, u nder the particu lar circum­ stan ces that j u s tify this question). Here this utterance is an assertion of a pa rtic ular fact, an assertion that can be true or false, with which one can agree or disagree . A sentence that is asse rtive in its form be­ comes a real asse rtion i n the context of a particular u tterance. Whe n this i n divid u a l sente nce is analyzed , it is usually perce ived as a co mp leted utte rance in some extremely simplifi ed situat ion: the sun re ally has ris en and the s peaker states: "Th e sun has risen. " Th.e speak er se es that the grass is green and annou nces: "The grass IS gree n ." Su ch sens eless "commun ications" are often direc tly regarded as cl as sic exam ples of the se nte nce . R u t in reality an y comm uni �ation h. ke th at , add resse d to someone or evoki ng so methi ng, has a pa ru c � lar . purpose, th at , i s it is a real l i n k in the cha in of speech com mum orr 10 a partic u lar sp he re of human activit v or everyday l ife. Th e se nte nce , l i ke the word , ha� a final ity of mea ning and a final ity of I!Tammoti rol fo rm hut this finality of meanin g is abst ract by nature and th is is p an � le­ recise lv wh v it is so c lea r-cut: th is i:; th e final ity of , hke uage me n t, but not of lang of unit t h e w h ole. The sen tence as a ,

The P roblem of Speech Ge n res

the word , has no author. Like the word , it belongs to nobody, and only by functioning as a whole u tterance does it become an expression of the position of someone speaking ind ividually in a concrete situation of speech communication . This leads us to a new, third feature of the utterance-the relation of the u tterance to the speaker himself (the author of the u tterance) and to the other participants i n speech communication. Any utterance is a link i n the chain of speech communion. I t is the active position of the speaker in one referentially semantic sphere or another. Therefore , each utterance is characterized primarily by a par­ ticular referentially semantic content. The choice of l inguistic means and speech gen re is determined primarily by the refe re ntially seman­ tic assignments (plan) of the speech subject (or author). This is the first aspect of the utterance that determines i ts compositional and sty­ listic featu res . The second aspect o f t h e u tterance that determines i ts composition and style is the expressive aspect, that is, the speaker's subjective emo­ tional evaluation of the referentially semantic content of his utterance. The expressive aspect has varying significance and varying degrees of force i n various spheres of speech communication, b u t it exists every­ where. There can be no such thing as an absolu tely neutral u tterance. The speaker's evaluative attitude toward the su bject of his speech ( re­ gardless of what his subject may be) also determines the choice of lexi­ cal , grammatical, and compositional means of the u tterance . The individual style of the u tte rance is dete rmined primarily by i ts expres­ sive aspect. This is generally recognized i n the area of stylistics. Cer­ tai n investigators even reduce style d i rectly to the emotionally evalua­ tive aspect of speech. Can the expressive aspect of speech be regarded as a phenomenon of language as a system? Can one speak of the expressive aspect of lan­ guage u n i ts , that is, words and sentences? The answer to these ques­ tions must be a categorical "no." Language as a system has, of course , a rich arsenal of language tools-lexical, morphologica l , and syntac­ tic-for expressing the speaker's emotionally evaluative position, but all these tools as language tools are absolutely neutral with respect to any particular real evaluation . The word "darli ng" -which is affec­ tionate in both the meaning of i ts root and i ts suffix-is in itsel f, as a language unit, just as neutral as the word "distance . " 9 It is only a lan­ guage tool for the possible expression of an emotionally evaluative atti­ tude toward rea l i ty, but it is not applied to any particular reality, and

The Problem of Speech G en res

� 85

this appl icat ion , that is, the actual evaluation , can be accomplished only by the speaker i n his concrete utterance. Words belong to nobody, and in themselves they evaluate nothing. But they can serve any speaker and be used for the most varied and directly contrad ictory evaluations on the part of the speakers . The sentence a s a u n i t o f language is also neutral a n d i n itself has no expressive aspect. It acq u i res this expressive aspect ( more precisely, joins itsel f to it) only i n a concrete utterance. The same aberration is possible here . A sente nce l i ke "He died" obviously embodies a certain expressiveness, and a sentence like "What joy! " does so to an even greater degree. But in fact we perceive sentences of this kind as entire utterances, and in a typical situation, that is, as kinds of speech genres that embody typical expression. As sentences they lack this expres­ siveness and a re neutra l . Depending on the context of the u tterance, the sentence "He died" can also reflect a positive, joyfu l , even a re­ joicing expression. A n d the sentence "What joy! " in the context of the particular u tterance can assume an i ronic or bitterly sarcastic tone. One of the means of expressing the speaker's emotionally evaluative attitude toward the subject of his speech is expressive intonation, which resounds clearly i n oral speec h . K Expressive intonation is a con­ stitutive marker of the utterance. It does not exist in the system of language as such, that is, outside the u tterance. Both the word and the sentence as language units are devoid of expressive i ntonation. If an in­ dividual word is pronounced with expressive intonation i t is no longer a word , but a completed utterance expressed by one word (there is no need to develop it into a sentence). Fai rly standard types of evaluative u tterances are ve ry widespread in speech communication, that is, evaluative speech gen res that express praise, approval , rapture, re­ proof, or abuse: "Excellent! " "Good for you! " "Charming! " "Shame ! " " Revolting! " "Blockhead ! " and so forth. Words that acquire special weight under particu lar conditions of sociopolitical life become ex­ pressive exclamatory u tterances: "Peace ! " " Freedom ! " and so forth . (These constitute a special sociopolitical speech gen re. ) In a particular situation a word can acquire a profoundly expressive meaning i n the form of an exclamatory u tterance: "Thalassa, Thalassa! " (The sea! The sea! ) ( exclaimed 1 0, 000 Greeks i n Xenophon). I n each of these cases we are dealing not with the ind ividual word as • or course, intonation is recog n i ze d b y us and exists a s s i lent read i ng of written speech .

a

stylistic factor even with

86 �

The Problem of Speech Genres

a unit of language and not with the meaning of this word but with a complete uttera nce and with a specific sense-the content of a given ut­ terance. 10 Here the meaning of the word pertains to a particular actual reality and particular real conditions of speech com m u nication. There­ fore here we do not u nderstand the meaning of a given word simply as a word of a language; rather, we assume an active responsive position with respect to it (sympathy, agreement or disagreement, stimulus to action). Thus, e xpressive i ntonation belongs to the u tterance and not to the word. But still it is very d ifficul t to abandon the notion that each word of a language itself has or can h ave an "emotional tone," "emo­ tional coloring," an "evaluative aspect," a "stylistic aura," and so forth, and , consequently, also an expressive i ntonation that i s i n herent in the word as such. After all, one m ight think that when selecting a word for an utterance we are guided by an e motional tone inherent in the indi­ vidual word: we select those that in their tone correspond to the ex­ pression of our utterance and we reject others. Poets themselves de­ scribe their work on the word in precisely this way, and this is precisely the way this process is interpreted in stylistics (see Peshkovsky's "sty­ l istic experiment" ). 1 1 But still this is not what really happens. I t is that same, already fa­ miliar aberration. When selecting words we proceed from the planned whole of ou r utterance, h and this whole that we have planned and cre­ ated is always expressive. The utterance is what radiates its expression ( rather, our expression) to the word we have selecte d , which is to say, invests the word with the expression of the whole. A n d we select the word because of its meani ng, which is not in itself expressive but which can accommodate or not accommodate our expressive goals in combination with other words, that is, in combination with the whole of our utterance. The neutral meaning of the word applied to a par­ ticular actual reality u nder particular real cond itions of speech com­ munication creates a spark of expression . And , after all, this is pre­ cisely what takes place in the process of creating an utterance. We

" When we construct our speech, we are always aware of the whole of our u tter­ ance : both in the form of a particu lar ge neric plan and in the form of an i nd i v id ual speech plan . We do not string words together smoothly and we do not proce ed from word to word ; rather, it is as though we fi l l in the w hole with the necessary words . Words are strung together only i n the first stage of the study of a foreig n language, and then only when the methodological guida nce is poo r.

The P roblem of Speech Genres

-..!;

87

repeat, only the contact between the language mean ing and the con­ crete reality that takes place in the u tterance can create the spark of expression. It exists neither in the system of language nor in the objec­ tive reality surrou nding us. Thus, emotion , evaluation, and expression are foreign to the word of language and a re born only in the process of i ts live usage in a con­ crete u tterance. The meaning of a word in itself ( u n related to actual reality) is, as we h ave al ready said, out of the range of emotion. There are words that specifically designate emotions and evaluations: "joy, " "sorrow," "wonderfu l , " "cheerfu l , " "sad ," and so forth. B u t these meani ngs are just as neutral as are all the others. They acquire their expressive coloring only i n the u tterance, and this coloring is indepen­ dent of the i r meaning taken i ndividual ly and abstractly. For example: "Any joy is now only bi tterness to me." Here the word "joy" is given an expressive i i uonation that resists its own meaning, as it were . B u t t h e above far from exhausts t h e question. T h e matter is consid­ erably more complicated. When we select words i n the process of con­ structing an u tterance, we by no means always take them from the sys­ tem of language in their neutral, dictionary form. We usually take the m fro m other utterances, and mainly from u tterances that are kind red to o urs in genre, that is, in theme, composition, or style. Conse­ que ntly, we c hoose words according to their generic specifications. A spe ech genre is not a form of language, but a typical form of u tterance ; as s uch the gen re also i ncludes a certain typical kind of express ion that inh eres in it. I n the genre the word acquires a particular typical ex­ press ion . Genres correspond to typical situations of speech commu n i­ catio n , typical themes, and, conseque ntly, also to particular con tacts be tween the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under cer­ tain typical circum stances. Hence also the possibi lity of typical ex­ pressi ons that seem to adhere to words. This typical expression (and. the typical intona tion that corresponds to it) does not have that force of compulso rine ss that language forms have. The generic normative qual i ty is freer. In our example, "Any joy is now bitterness to me," the expressive tone of the word "joy" as determined by the context is, of cou rse, not typical of this word . Speech genres in general submit fairly easily to re-accentuation , the sad can be made jocular and gay, but as a result som ething new is achieved ( for example , the gen re of com ical epita phs). Thi s typ ical (generic) expression can be regarded as the word's "sty-

The P roblem of Speech Genres

listie aura," but this aura belongs not to the word of language as such but to that gen re in which the given word usually fu nctions. It is an echo of the generic whole that resounds in the word . The word's generic expression-and i ts generic expressive intona­ tion-are i mpersonal, as speech genres themselves a re i mpersonal (for they are typical forms of individual u tterances , but not the u tterances themselves). But words can enter our speech from others' individual utterances, thereby retaining to a greater or lesser d egree the tones and echoes of individual u tterances. The words of a language belong to nobody, b u t s t i l l we hear those words only in particular individual u tterances , we read them in par­ ticular i ndividual works, and i n such cases the words already have not only a typical , b u t also (depending on the gen re ) a m o re or less clearly reflected i nd ividual expression, w h ic h is determined by the unrepeat­ able individual context of the u tterance. Neutral d ictionary meanings of the words of a language ensure their common featu res and guarantee that all speakers of a given language will understand one another, but the use of words i n l ive speech com ­ munication is always individual and contextual in nature . Therefore, one can say that any word exists for the speaker i n three aspects: as a neutral word of a language, belongi ng to nobody; as an other's word, which belongs to another person and is fi lled with echoes of the other's utterance; and, finally, as my word , for, since I am dealing with it in a particular situation, with a particular speech plan, it is already imbued with my expression. In both of the latter aspects , the word is expres­ sive , but, we repeat, this expression does not i nhere i n the word itself. I t originates at the point of contact between the word and actual re­ ality, under the conditions of that real situation articulated by the i ndi­ vidual utterance. I n this case the word appears as an expression of some evaluative position of an individual person (authority, writer, sci­ entist, father, mother, friend, teacher, and so forth) , as an abbreviation of the u tterance. In each epoch, in each social circle, i n each small world of family, friends, acquaintances , and comrades in wh ich a h u man being grows and l ives, there are always authoritative u tterances that set the tone­ artistic, scientific, and journalistic works on which one relies, to which one refers , which are cited , imitate d , and followed . In each epoc h , in all areas of life and activity, there are particu lar traditions that a re ex­ pressed and retained in verbal vestments: in written works, in utter-

T h e Problem of Speech Genres

ances, in sayi ngs, and so forth . There are always some verbally ex­ pressed leading ideas of the "masters of thought" of a given epoch, some basic tasks, slogans, and so forth . I am not even speaking about those examples from school readers with which chi ldren study their native language and which , of cou rse , are always expressive. Th is is why the u n ique speech experience of each individual is shaped and developed in continuous and constant inte raction with others' individu a l utterances. This experience can be characterized to some degree as the process of. assimilatio')-more or less creative-of others' words (and not the words Of a language). Our speech , that is, all our u tterances ( inclu d i ng creative works), is filled with others' words, varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of "ou r-own-ness," varying degrees of awa re ness and detach ment. These words of others carry with them thei r own expression, thei r own evaluative tone, which we ass i m ilate, rework, and re-acce ntuate. Thus, the expressive ness of individual words is not inherent in the words themselves as u n i ts of language, nor does it issue d i rectly from the meaning of these words: it is either typical generic expression or it is an echo of another's i nd ividual expression, which makes the word , as it were, representative of another's whole utterance from a particu lar eval uative position. The same thing must be said abou t the sentence as a u n i t of lan­ guage: it, too, is devoid of expressiveness. We discussed this at the beginning of this section. We need o n ly supplement what we have al­ ready said. The fact is that there are types of sentences that usually function as whole u tterances belonging to particular generic types. Such are i nterrogatory, exclamatory, and imperative sentences. There are a great many everyday and special gen res ( i . e . , m i litary and indus­ trial commands and orders) i n which expression, as a rule, is effected by one sentence of the appropriate type. However, one encounters thi s type of sentence quite rarely in the cohesive context of developed u tterances. And when sentences of this type do e nter i nto a devel­ oped , cohesive context, they are clearly somewhat separated from its com position and, moreover, usually strive to be either the first or the last sentence of the u tterance ; (or a relatively independent part of i t). ' The first and last sen te nces of an u tte ra nce are unique and have a certain addi­ tional quality. For they are, so to speak, se nte nces of the "front l i ne" that stand right at the boundary of the change of speech subjects.

The Problem of Speech Genres

These types of sentences become especially i nteresting i n the broad context of our p roblem , and we shal l . return to them below. But for the moment we need only note that this type of sentence knits together very stably with its generic expression, and also that it absorbs indi­ vidual expression especially easily. Such sente nces h ave contributed much to reinforcing the i llusion that the sentence is by nature expressive . One more remark. The sentence as a unit of language has a special grammatical intonation , but no expressive i ntonation at all. Special grammatical i ntonations i nclude: the i ntonation of finalization; ex­ planatory, distributive , enumerative i ntonations, and so forth . Story­ telling, interrogatory, explanatory, and i mperative intonations occupy a special position. It is as though grammatical i ntonation c rosses with generic i ntonation here ( but not with expressive i ntonation in the pre­ cise sense of this word ). The sentence acquires expressive intonation only in the whole utterance . When giving an example of a sente nce for analysis, we usually supply it with a particular typical i ntonation, thereby transforming it into a completed u tterance (if we take the sen­ tence from a particular text, of course, we intone it according to the expression of the given text). So the expressive aspect is a constitutive feature of the utterance. The system of the language has n ecessary forms ( i . e . , langu age means) for reflecting expression , but the language i tself and its semantic units-words and sentences-are by thei r very natu re devoid of ex­ pression and neutral . Therefore , they can serve equally well for any evaluations, even the most varied and contradictory ones, and for any evaluative positions as wel l . T h u s , t h e utterance , i t s style , a n d i t s composition are determ i ned by i ts referentially semantic element (the theme) and its expressive aspect, that is, the speake r's evaluative attitude toward the referen­ tially semantic element i n the utterance . Styl istics knows no th ird as­ pect. Stylistics accounts only for the following factors, which deter­ mine the style of the utterance : the language system, the theme of the speech , and the speaker h imself with his evaluative auitude toward the object. The selection of language means, accord ing to ordinary stylistic conceptions, is determi ned solely by refere ntially se mantic and expressive considerations. These also dete rmine language styles , both general and individual. T he speaker with his world view, with his evaluations and emotions, on the one hand , and the object of his speech and the language system ( language means), on the other-

The Problem of Speech Genres

..; 9 1

these alone determine the utterance, its style, and its composition . Such is the preva i l i ng idea. But i n reality the s ituation is considerably more compl icated . Any conc rete u tterance is a l i n k in the chain of speech com munication of a par ticul ar sph e re. The very boundaries of the utterance are deter­ min ed by a change of speech subjects. Utterances are not indifferent to one anothe r, and are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutu­ ally re flect one another. These mutual reflections determine their cha racte r. Each u tterance is filled with echoes and reverberations of othe r u ttera nces to which it is related by the communality of the sp here of speech com m u nication. Every u tterance must be regarded pri m arily as a response to p receding utte rances of the given sphere (we un ders tand the word "response" here in the broadest sense). Each u t­ terance refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, pre­ su ppo ses the m to be known, and somehow takes them i nto account. Afte r all , as regards a given question, i n a given matter, and so forth, th e u tte rance occupies a particular definite position in a given sphere of communication . It is i m possible to determine i ts position without cor­ relating it with other posi tions. Therefore, each utterance is fi lled with various kinds of responsive reactions to other utterances of the given sphere of speech comm u nication . These reactions take various forms: ot hers' u tterances can be introduced d i rectly into the context of the utte ra nce, or one may i ntroduce only ind ividual words or sentences, w h ich then act as rep resentatives of the whole utte rance. Both whole utte rance s and i nd ividual words can retain their alien expression, but th ey can also be re-accentuated (ironically, indignantly, reverently, and so fort h). Others' u tterances can be repeated with varying degrees of rei nte rpretatio n . They can be referred to as though the interlocutor we re already well aware of them ; they can be silently presu pposed ; or on e's respon sive reaction to them can be reflected only in the expres­ sion of one's own speech-in the selection of language means and in­ ton ations that are determined not by the topic of one's own speech but by the others' u tterances concerning the same topic. Here is an impor­ tant and typical case: very freq uently the expression of o u r u tte rance is d e termined not only-and sometimes not so much-by the refer­ entially semantic content of this utterance, but also by others' u tter­ ances on the same topic to which we are respond ing or with which we are polemicizing. They also determine our emphasis on certain ele­ ments, repetition, our selection of harsher (or, conversely, milder) ex­ pressions, a contentious (or, conve rse ly, conciliatory) tone, and so

92 �

The P roblem of Speech Genres

forth . The expression of an utterance can never be fully understood or explained if its thematic content is a l l that is taken i nto account. The expression of an u tterance always responds to a greater or lesser degree, that is, it expresses the speake r's attitu d e towa rd others' utterances and not just his attitude toward the object of his utterance.i The forms of responsive reactions that supplement the u tterance are extremely varied and have not yet undergone any special study at all . These forms are sharply diffe re ntiated, of course, depending on the differ­ ences among those spheres of human activity and everyday life in which speech communication takes place. H owever monological the utterance may be (for example, a scientific or p hilosophical treatise), however much it may concentrate o n its own object, it cannot but be, in some measu re, a response to what has already been said about the given topic, on the give n issue, even though this responsive ness may not have assumed a clear-cu t external expression. It will be manifested i n the overtones of the style, i n the finest nuances of the composition. The utterance is filled with dialogic overtones, and they must be taken i nto account in order to understand fully the style of the u tterance. After all, our thought itself-philosophical , scientific, and artistic-is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with others' thought, and this cannot but be reflected in the forms that verbally express our thought as wel l . Others' u tterances a n d others' individual words-recognized and singled out as such and inserted into the utterance-introduce an ele­ ment that is, so to speak, i rrational from the standpoint of language as system, particularly from the standpoint of syntax. The inte rrelations between i nserted other's speech and the rest of the speech (one's own) are analogous neither to any syntactical relations within a simple or complex syntactic whole nor to the referentially semantic relations among grammatically u n related individual syntactic wholes found within a si ngle utterance . These relations, however, are analogous (but, of course, not identical ) to relations among rejoinders in dia­ logue. I ntonation that isolates others' speech ( i n written speec h , desig­ nated by q uotation marks) is a special phenomenon: it is as though the change of speech subjects has been i nternalized. The boundaries cre ated by this change are weakened here and of a special sort: the spe ake r's expression penetrates through these bou nd aries and sp reads to th e other's speech , which is transmitted i n i ronic, ind igna nt, sympath e t ic , ' I ntonation is especially sensitive and always points beyond the context.

The Problem of Speech Genres

or reverential tones ( this expression is transmitted by means of expres­ sive intonation- i n written speech we guess and sense it precisely be­ cause of the context that frames the other's speech, or by means of the extraverbal situation that suggests the appropriate expression). The other's speech thus has a dual expression: its own, that is, the other's, and the expression of the utterance that encloses the speech. All this takes place primarily when the other's speech (even if it is only one word, which h e re acqu i res the force of an entire utterance ) is openly introduced and clearly demarcated ( i n quotation marks). Echoes of the change of speech subjects and their dialogical i nterrelations can be heard clearly h e re. But any utterance, when it is studied in greater depth under the concrete conditions of speech communication, re­ veals to us many half-concealed or completely concealed words of others with varying d egrees of foreignness. Therefore, the utterance ap pe a rs to be furrowed with distant and barely audible echoes of ch ange s of speech subj ects and dialogic overtones , greatly weakened utterance boundaries that are completely permeable to the author's ex­ pression. The u tterance proves to be a very complex and multiplanar phenome non if considered not i n isolation and with respect to its au­ thor (the speaker) only, but as a link in the chain of speech communi­ cation and with respect to other, related utterances (these relations are usually disclosed not on the verbal-compositional and stylistic­ plane, but only on the refe rentially semantic plane). Each individual utterance is a link in the chain of speech commu­ nion. I t has clear-cut bou ndaries that are determined by the change of speech subjects (speakers), but with i n these boundaries the utte r­ ance, l ike Leibniz's monad, •z reflects the speech process, others' utter­ ances, and, above all , precedi ng links in the chain (sometimes close and sometimes-in areas of cultu ral communication-very d istant). The topic of the speaker's speech, regardless of what this topic may be, does not become the object of speech for the fi rst time in any given uttenince; a give n speaker is not the first to speak about it. The object, as it were, has a l ready been articulated, d isputed, elucidated , and evaluated in various ways. Various viewpoints, world views, and trends cross, conve rge, and d iverge i n it. The speaker is not the bibli­ cal Adam , dealing only with virgin and still unnamed obj ects, giving them names for the fi rst time. Simplistic ideas about communication as a logical-psychological basis for the sentence recall this mythical Adam. Two ideas combine in the soul of the speaker (or, conversely, one complex idea is d ivided i nto two simple ones), and he utters a sen-

94

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The P roblem of Speech Genres

tence like the following: "The sun is s h i n i ng," "The grass is green," "I am sitting," and so forth. Such sentences , of cou rse, are quite pos­ sible, but either they are justified and i nterpreted by the context of the whole utterance that attaches them to speech comm u n ication (as a re­ joinder in a dialogue, a popular scientific article, a teacher's discussion in class, and so forth) or they are completed utterances and are some­ how justified by a speaking situation that i ncludes them in the chain of speech communication. In reality, and we repeat this, any utterance, in addition to its own theme, always responds ( i n the b road sense of the word ) in one form or anothe r to others' utterances that precede it. The speaker i s not Ada m , and therefore the subject of his speech itself i nevitably becomes the arena where h i s opinions meet those of his partners ( i n a conversation or d ispute about some everyday event) or other viewpoints, world views, trends, theories , and so forth (in the sphere of cultu ral communicatio n ) . World views , trends, vi ewpoints , and opinions always have verbal expression. A l l this is others' speech ( i n personal or impe rsonal form), and it cannot but be reflected in the utterance. The utterance is addressed not only to its own object, but also to others' speech about it. But sti l l , even the slightest allusion to another's u tterance gives the speech a d i alogical tu rn that cannot be produced by any purely referential theme with its own object. The attitude toward another's word is in principle distinct from the attitude toward a refe rential object, but the former always accompanies the latter. We repeat, an utterance is a l i n k i n the chain of speech commu­ nication , and it cannot be broken off from the preceding l i n ks that de­ termine it both from with i n and from without, giving rise within it to unmediated responsive reactions and d i alogic reverberations. But the utterance is related not only to precedi ng, but also to sub­ sequent links in the chain of speech com munion. When a speaker is creating an utterance, of course, these l in ks do not exist. But from the very beginning, the utterance is constructed while taking into account possible responsive reactions , for whose sake , in essence , it is actually created . As we know, the rol e of the others for whom the utterance is constructed is extremely great. We have already said that the role of these others , for whom my though t becomes actual though t for th e fi rst time (and thus also for my own self as wel l ) is not that of pas s ive listeners , but of active participants in speech communication . From the very beginni ng, the speaker expects a response from them, an ac­ tive responsive understand i ng. The enti re utterance i s co nstructed , as i t were , in anticipation of encountering this response .

The Problem of Speech Ge n res

An essential (constitu tive) marker of the utterance is its q u a l i t y of being d i recte d to someo n e , its addressivity. As disti nct from the sig­ nifyi ng u n i ts of a language-words and sentences-that arc imper­ sona l, belongi ng to nobody and add ressed to nobody, the utterance has both an author ( an d , consequently, expression , which we have already discuss ed) and an add ressee . This addressee can be an immediate parti cip ant-inte rlocuto r i n an eve ryday dialogue, a differentiated col­ lec tive of specia l ists in some particular area of cultural communica­ tion , a more or less d i ffe rentiated public, ethnic group, contem po­ rarie s, l i k e-m i nded people, opponents and enemies, a subord i nate, a sup erio r, som eone who is lower, higher, fam i l iar, foreign , and so forth . And it can also be an indefinite, unconcretized otller (with various kinds of monological u tterances of an emotional type). All these vari­ eties and conceptions of the addressee are determined by that area of hu man activity and everyday l i fe to which the given utterance is re­ lated . Both the com position and, particu larly, the style of the utter­ ance depend on those to whom the utterance is addressed , how the spea ker (or wri ter) senses and imagines his addressees, and the force of thei r effect on the utterance . Each speech genre i n each area of speec h com m u n ication has i ts own typical conception of the ad­ dre ssee , and thi s defines it as a gen re . T h e add ressee of the utterance can , s o to speak, coi ncide personally with the one (or ones) to whom the u tterance responds. This personal coi ncidence i s typical in everyday d ialogue or in an exchange of let­ ters. The pe rson to whom I respond is my addressee, from whom I, i n tu rn, expect a response ( o r i n a n y case an active responsive under­ standi ng). B u t i n such cases of personal coincidence one individual plays two d i ffe rent roles, and the d i fference between the roles is pre­ cisely what matters here . After all, the utterance of the person to whom I am responding ( I agree, I object, I execute, I take under ad­ visement, and so forth ) is already at hand , but his response (or respon­ sive u nderstandi ng) i s still forthcoming. When constructing my utter­ ance, I try actively to determine this response. Moreover, I try to act in accordance with the response I antici pate , so this anticipated re­ sponse, i n turn, exerts an active influence on my uttera nce ( I parry objections that I foresee, I make all kinds of provisos, and so forth). When speaking I always take i nto account the apperceptive back­ grou nd of the add ressee's perception of my speech : the extent to which he is fam iliar with the si tuation , whether he has special knowl­ edge of the give n cultural area of communication, his views and con-

The Problem of Speech Genres

vtcuons, his prej udices (from my viewpoint), his sympathies and antipathies-because all this will dete rmine his active responsive understand ing of my utterance . These considerations also determine my choice of a gen re for my utterance, my choice of compositional devices, and, finally, my choice of language veh icles, that is, the style of my utterance. For example, gen res of popular scientific l iterature are addressed to a particular group of reade rs with a particular apper­ ceptive background of responsive u nderstanding; special educational literature is addressed to another kind of reader, and special research work is addressed to an entire ly different sort. In these cases, account­ ing for the addressee (and h is apperceptive backgroun d ) and for the addressee's i nfluence on the construction of the utte rance is very simple: it all comes down to the scope of his specialized knowledge. In other cases, the matter can be much more complicate d . Account­ ing for the add ressee and anticipating his respons ive reaction are fre­ quently multifaceted p rocesses that introduce u n ique i nternal drama­ tism into the utterance ( i n certain kinds of everyday d i alogue, in letters, and �n autobiogr�Jphical and confessional gen res). These phenomena are crucial, but more external , in rhetorical gen res. The addressee's social position , rank, and importance are reflected in a special way in utterances of everyday and business speech comm u n ication. Under the cond itions of a class structure and especially an aristocratic class structure , one observes an extreme diffe re ntiation of speech genres and styles, depending on the title, class, rank, wealth, social i m por­ tance, and age of the addressee and the relative position of the speaker (or writer). Despite the wealth of diffe rentiation , both of basic forms and of nuances, these phenomena are standard and external by nature: they cannot introduce any profound i nternal d ramatism i nto the utter­ ance . They are i nteresting only as i nstances of very crude, but still very graphic expressions of the addressee's influence o n the construc­ tion and style of the utterance. k F i ne r nuances of style are determined by the nature and d egree of personal proximity of the addressee to the speaker i n various familiar • I am reminded of an apposite observation of Gogol's: "One cannot enumerate all the nuances and fi ne points of ou r communication

. . . we have slick

talkers who

will speak quite differently with a landowner w ho has ZOO so u ls than with one w ho

has 300, and aga i n he will not speak the sa m e way with one who has 300 as he w i l l with one w h o h a s 500, a n d he wil l n o t speak t h e s a m e way with one who has 500 a s he w i l l w i t h o n e who has 800 ; i n a word , y o u can g o u p t o a m il lion a n d you w i ll still find different nuan ce s" ( /kod So11/s, chapte r 3).

The P roblem of Speech Genres

� 97

speech gen res, on the one hand, and in inti mate ones, on the other. With all the i m mense d i ffe rences among familiar and intimate genres (and, consequently, styles) , they perceive their addressees in exactly the same way: more or less outside the framework of the social hier­ archy and social conventions, "without rank," as it were. This gives rise to a certai n candor of speech (which in fam i liar styles sometimes approaches cynicism). In i nti mate styles this is expressed in an appar­ ent desire for the speaker and add ressee to merge completely. In fa­ miliar speech, s ince speech constraints and conventions have fallen away, one can take a special unofficial, vol itional approach to reality. ' This is why d u ri n g the Renaissance fam i l iar genres and styles could play such a large and positive role i n destroying the official medieval picture of the world. I n other periods as well, when the task was to destroy traditional official styles and world views that had faded and become conve ntional , fam i liar styles became very significant in litera­ ture. Moreover, fam i liarization of styles opened literature up to layers of language that had previously been under speech constraint. The significance of fam il iar genres and styles in literary h istory has not yet been adequately evaluate d . Intimate genres and styles are based on a maxim u m internal proxi m ity of the speaker and addressee ( i n extreme instances, as i f they had merged). Intimate speech is i mbued with a deep confidence in the addressee, i n his sympathy, in the sensitivity and goodwill of his responsive understanding. In this atmosphere of profound trust, the speaker reveals his internal depths. This deter­ mines the special expressiveness and i nternal candor of these styles (as distinc t from the loud s treet-language candor of familiar speech). Fa­ miliar and intimate gen res and s tyles (as yet very little stud ied) reveal extremely clearly the d ependence of style on a certain sense and understanding o f the add ressee ( the add ressee of the u tterance) on the part of the speaker, and on the addressee's actively responsive under­ standing that is anticipated by the speaker. These styles reveal espe­ cially clearly the narrowness and i ncorrectness of tradi t ional stylistics, which tries to understand and define style solely from the standpoint of the semantic and thematic content of speech and the speaker's ex­ pressive attitude toward this content. Unless one accounts for the speaker's attitude toward the otlla- and his utterances (existing or an­ ticipated ), one can understand neither the genre nor the style of ' The lo ud ca ndor of the streets , calling thi ngs by their real names, is typical of this style.

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The P roblem of Speech Genres

speech. B u t even the so-called neu tral or o bjective style s of expos ition , that concentrate maxim al ly on their subject matter and, it would seem · are free of any consideration of the other still i nvolve a cert ain co ncep tion of their add ressee . Such objectively n e utral styles select language ject vehicles not only from the standpoint of their adequacy to the sub per­ ap d e um pres matter of speec h , but also from the standpoint of the en ceptive background of the addressee . B u t this back grou nd is tak from d cte into account in as generalized a way as possible, and is abst ra o the expressive aspect (the expression of the speake r h i ms elf is als e pos minimal in the obj ective style). O bjectively ne u tral styles p re sup f o y something like an identity of the addressee and the spe ake r, a un it e their viewpoints , but this identity and u ni ty are purc h ase d at th e pr ic e of almost complete forfeiture of expressi o n . I t must be noted that th f o pt ce con nature of objectively neutral styles (and , consequ ently, the on g din n e the add ressee on which they are based) is fai rly d iverse , dep the differences between the areas of speech com m u n i catio n . T his question o f the concep t o f the s peech add ressee ( how th e speaker or writer senses and imagi nes h i m ) is of i m m e n se sign ifi can ce in literary history. E ach epoc h , each l i te ra ry trend and l i te rary -art is tic style, each l i te rary gen re within an e poch or tre n d , is typifi ed by its own special concepts of the add ressee of the l i terary work, a s peci al sense and understanding of its reader, l istener, public , or peo ple . A historical study of changes i n these concepts wou l d be an i n teresti n g and i m portant task. B u t in order to develop it productiv ely, the st ate­

ment of the problem itself would h ave to be theoretically clea r. It should be noted that, in addition to those real mea n i ngs a nd ide as of one's addressee that actually determine the style of the u tte ran ces (works) , the history of lite rature also includes conventio nal or se mi­ conventional forms of address to reade rs , l isteners, posteri ty, an d so forth , just as, in addition to the actual author, there a re also con ven­ tional and semiconve ntional images of su bstitute authors, edito rs, an d various kinds of narrators . The vast majority of l i te ra ry gen re s a re se c­ ondary, complex gen res composed of various transform ed prim a ry gen res ( the rejoinder in d ialogu e , everyday stories , letters, d iari es , minutes, and so forth ) . As a rule, these secondary gen res of com ple x cul tu ral comm u n ication play out various forms of primary speech co m­ munication . H e re also is the sou rce of al l l i te rary/conventional charac­ ters of authors, narrators, and add ressees. B u t the most complex and ultra-com posite work of a secondary gen re as a whole (viewed as a

The P roblem of Speech G e n res

whole) i s a s i ngle integrated real utte rance that has a real author and real addressees whom this author perceives and imagines. Thus, addre ssivity, the qual ity of turning to someone, is a con­ stit utive feature of the u tte rance; without it the utterance does not and ca nnot exist. T he various typical forms this addressivity assumes and the vario us con cepts of the addressee are constitutive , definitive fea­ tures of vario us speec h gen res. As dist inct from utterances (and speech gen res), the signifying units of a l angu age-the word and the sentence-lack this quality of being directe d o r addresse d to someone: these units belong to nobody and are ad d ress ed to nobody. Moreover, they i n themselves are devoid of any kin d of relation to the other's utterance, the other's word. If an ind ivi dual word or sentence is d i rected at someone, addressed to so m eon e , then we have a completed utterance that consists of one word or one sentence, and addressivity is inherent not in the unit of language, but in the u tterance. A sentence that is surrounded by con­ text acq u i res the addressivity only through the entire utterance, as a co nst i tu ent part (element) of it. Lang uage as a system has an i mmense supply of purely linguistic me ans fo r exp ressing formal address: lexical, morphological ( the corre­ sp o nding cases, p ronouns, personal forms of verbs), and syntactical (va riou s stan dard phrases and modifications of sentences). But they ac­ qui re ad d ress ivity only i n the whole of a concrete utterance. And the ex press ion of this actual addressivity is never exhausted, of course, by th ese s pecial language ( grammatical ) means. They can even be com­ ple tely lacki ng, and the utterance can still reflect very clearly the in­ fluen ce of the addressee and his anticipated responsive reaction. The cho ice of a// language means is made by the speaker under varyi ng de gree s of i nfluence from the add ressee and his anticipated response. Wh en one analyzes an individual sentence apart from its context, th e traces of addressivity and the i nfluence of the anticipated re­ spo nse, dial�gical echoes from others' preceding u tterances, faint traces o f cha nges of speech subjects that have furrowed the u tterance fro m wi thin- aU these are lost, erased , because they are all foreign to the sente nce as a u n i t of language. AU these phenomena are connected with the whole of the u tterance, and when this whole escapes the field m

m We note that i nterrogatory and impe rative types of sentences, as a rule, act as com p l e te d uue rances (in the appropri ate speech ge n res ).

1 00 �

The P roblem of Speech Genres

of vision of the analyst they cease to exist for him. Herein lies one of the reasons for that narrowness of traditional stylistics we commented upon above . A stylistic analysis that e mb races a l l aspects of style is possible only as an analysis of the whole u tterance, and only in that chain of speech comm u n ion of which the u tterance is an inseparable link.

Notes

�

as­ 1 . "National unity of language" is a shorthand way of referrin g to t e It n. regto given a to common semblage of l inguistic and translinguistic practices O�o o � is, then, a good example of what Bakhtin means by an open unity. See al tty Jesperson , Mankind, Nation, and Individual ( B loom ington: Indian a Um vers Press, 1 964) . 2. Saussu re's teaching is based on a distinction between language ( Ia langu£ -.3 dt· system of interconnected signs and forms that normatively determ ine each m vidual speech act and are the special object of linguis tics- and spe ech (Ia pa­ ac ­ role)-individual i nstances of language use. Bakhtin d iscusses Sauss ure's te •.n ds tren n i ma o ings in Marxism and tile Philosophy of Language as one of the tw linguistic thought ( the trend of "abstract objectivism" ) that he use s to shape hts h own theory of the utterance. See V. N. Volos h i nov, Marxism and the Philosop y of Language, tr. Ladislav Matejka and I . R . Titunik (New York: Se m i nar Press , 1973 ), esp. pp. 58-61 . "Behaviorists" here refers to the school of psychology introd uced by th e H ar· vard physiologist ]. B . Watson in 1 9 1 3 . I t seeks to explain animal and h uma n behavior entirely in terms of observable and measurable resp onses to extern al stimuli. Watson , in his i nsistence that behavior is a physiological reactio n to environmental stimuli, denied the value of introspection and of the con cep t of consciousness. He saw mental processes as bod ily movements , even when u npe r­ ceived, so that thinking in his view is subvocal speech. There is a strong con nection as well between the behaviorist school of psychology and the school of Am er ica n descriptive l inguistics, which is what Bakhtin is referring to h ere. The so-ca lled de· scriptivist school was fou nded by the eminent anthropologist Fran z Boas ( 1 858 1 942). Its closeness to behaviorism consists in its i nsistence on careful obser vatio n unconditioned by presuppositions or categories taken from traditiona l lan guage structure. Leonard Bloomfield ( 1 887 - 1949) was the chief spokesm a n for th e school and was explicit about his commitment to a "mechanist approach" ( his ter m

�

�

for the behaviorist school of psychology ) : "Mechanists demand that the fac ts be presented without any assumption of such auxiliary fac tors ( as a version of the mind]. I have tried to meet this demand . . . . " ( La nguage ( New York: Holt, Ri n e­ hart, and Winston, 1 933 ], p . vii). Two prominent linguists sometimes associated with the descriptivists, Edward Sapir ( 1 884 - 193 9) and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf ( 1 897 - 194 1 ), differ from Bloomfield insofar as behaviorism plays a rela­ tively minor role in their work. "Vosslerians" refers to the movement named after th e German philologist Karl Vossler ( 1 872 - 1949), whose ad herents included Leo Spitzer ( 1 887 - 1 960). For

The P roblem of S peech G e n re s

...; 1 0 1

Vossle rians, the rea l i ty of language is the cont inuously creative, construc t i ve ac­ tivity that is prosecut ed th rough speech acts; the creativity of language is l i kened to artis tic creativi ty, and stylistics becomes the lead ing discipline. Styl e takes pre­ cede nce ove r grammar, and the stand point of the speaker takes precedence over that of the l isten er. In a n u mber of aspects, Bakhtin is close to the Vosslerians, but differs i n his unde rstanding of the utterance as the concrete reality of language life. Bakh t i n does not, like the Vosslerians, conceive the utterance to be an indi­ vid ual spee ch act; rather, he e m p hasizes the "in ner sociality" in speech communi­ cat ion- an aspect that is objectively re inforced i n speech gen res. The concept of s peech ge n res is centra l to Bakhtin, then, i n that it separates his translinguistics from both Saussu reans and Vosslerians in the philosophy of language.

3. "I deol ogy" should not be confused with the politically oriented E nglish word. I deology as it i s used here is essentially any system of ideas. But ideology is se mioti c in the sen se that it invo lves the concrete exchange of signs in society and histo ry. E very word/disc ou rse betrays the ideology of i ts speaker; every speaker is thus an ideologue and every utterance an ideologeme.

4. A u n i fied basis for classifying the e normous diversity of utterances is an obs ession of Bakh tin's, one that relates him d i rectly to Wilhelm von H u mboldt

0 767 - 1 835 ), the fi rst i n the modern period to argue systematically that language is the veh icle of thought. He calls language the "labor of the mind" ( Arkit d�s

Geist�s) i n h i s famous for m u lation " ( language ) i tself is not ( mere I work (t'fKOn), but an activi ty (energtia) . . . it is in fact the labor of the mind that otherwise wou ld eternally repeat i tse l f to make articu lated sound capable of the expression of thought" ( Vhr di� Versdtiedenlteit d�s menscltliclten Spracltbaues, in Wtr.te, vol . 7 (Berl i n : De G ruyter, 1 968 ), p. 46). What is i m portant here is that for Bakh tin, as for von H u m boldt, the diversity of languages is its�/f ofpltilosopltical signijicanc�. for if thought and speech a re one, does not each language embody a u n ique way of thinking? I t is here that Bakhtin also comes very close to the work of Sapir and, especially, of Whorf. See Benjamin Lee Whorf, Languag�. Tltoug/11, and Reality ed. Joh n B. Carroll (Cambridge , Mass. : MIT Press, 1956), esp. pp. 2 1 2 - 1 9 and 239 -45 . 5. See Wi l h e l m von H u m boldt, Linguistic Variability and lnttlltctual Drotlop­ ,

ment (Cora l Gables: University of Miami Press, 1 97 1 ).

6. The ph rase "psychology of nations" refers to a school organized around the nineteenth-centu ry journal Zeitscltrift for Volktrpsycltologie und Spracltwissenscltaft, whose lead ing spokesman , Kermann Steinthal , was among the first to i ntroduce psychology (es pecia l ly that of the Kantian biologist Herbart) into language (and v ice ve rsa). Steint hal was attracted to von H umbold t's idea of "innere Sprachform" an d was i mport ant in Potebnya's atte mpts to wrestle with i n ne r s peech. 7. Grammatika russkogo jazyka (Grammar of the Russian language) ( Moscow, 195 2), vol . 1 , p. 5 1 . 8 . S. D. Kartsevsky, Russian l i ngu ist of the Ge neva School who a lso partici­ pated in the Prague Linguistic Circle. He argued that the "ph rase" should be used as a diffe rent k i n d of language u n i t from that of the sente nce. Un l ike the sentence, the p h rase "does not have its own gra mmatical structure. But i t has i ts ow n pho­ netic structu re , which consists in i ts intonation. It is i ntonation that forms the phrase" (S. Karcewski, "Sur Ia phonologic de Ia phrase ," i n Travaux du Cerrlt lin-

1 02 �

The P roblem of Speech G e n res

guistique de Prague 4 ( 1 93 1 ), 1 90). "The sentence, in order to be realized, must be given the intonation of the phrase . . . . The ph rase is a function of dialogue. It is a unit of exchange among conversing parties . . . . " (S. Karcewski, "Sur Ia parataxe et Ia syntaxe en russe," in Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, no. 7 [ 1 948 ), 34). Aleksey Shakhmatov ( 1 864- 1 920), l inguist and academician whose most impor­ tant wo rks were devoted to the history of the Russian language, modern Russian, and comparative studies of the grammars of differe n t Slavic languages. "Commu­ nication" has a rather distinctive meaning for Shakhmatov: it refers to the act of thinking, this being the psychological basis of the sentence, the mediating link "between the psyche of the speaker and its manifestation in the discourse toward which it s trives" (A. Shakhmatov, Sintaksis russkogo jazyka [ Syntax of the Russian language ) ( Leningrad , 194 1 ] , pp. 1 9 - 20). 9. The Russian word Bakhti n uses here ( milenki.J) is a diminut ive of milyj, it­ self a term of endearment meaning "nice" or "sweet." 10. I n Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, the specific sense of an uttera n ce is defined as its theme (lema) : "The theme of an u tterance is essentially individual and unrepeatable, like the u tterance itself. . . . The theme of the u tterance is essentially indivisible. The significance of the utte rance, o n the cont rary, b reaks down into a number of significances that are included in i ts lingu istic eleme nts" (pp. 1 0 1 - Z) . 1 1 . Aleksandr Peshkovsky ( 1 878 - 1 933 ), Soviet l inguist specializing i n gram mar and styl istics in the schools. His "stylistic experiment" consisted in art ificially de­ vising stylistic variants of the text, a device he used for analyzing artistic spe ech . See A. M . Peshkovsky, Voprosy metodiki rodnogo jazyka, /ingvistiki ; stilistiki (Prob­ lems in the methodology of fol k language, linguistics, and stylistics ) ( M oscow­ Leningrad , 1 930), p. 133. 12. Leibniz identified monads with the metaphysical individuals or so uls, con­ ceived as u nextended, active , indivisible , naturally i ndestructible, and te l eo logi ­ cal substances ideally related in a system of preestablished harmony.

The P roblem of the Text i n Li ngu istics , Philology, and the H u man Sciences: An Experiment i n Philosophical Analysis

Our analysis must be called philosophical mai nly because of what i t is not: i t i s not a l ingu istic, philological, l i terary, or any other special kind of analysis (study). The advantages are these : our study will move in the l i m i nal spheres, that is, on the borders of a l l the aforementioned disciplines, at thei r j u nctures and points of inte rsection . The text (written and oral) is the primary given of all these d isci­ plines and of all thought in the human sciences and philosophy in gen­ eral ( i nc l u d i ng theological and philosoph ical thought at thei r sou rces). The text is the unmediated reality ( reali ty of thought and experience), the only one from which these discipl i nes and this though t can emerge. Where there is no text, the re is no object of study, and no object of thought either. The "implied" text: if the word "text" is understood in the broad sense-as any coherent complex of signs-then even the study of art ( the study of music, the theory and history of fine arts ) deals with texts (works of art). Thoughts about thoughts, experiences of experi­ ences, words about words, and texts about texts . Herein l ies the basic d istinction between our d isciplines ( h u man sciences) and the natu ral ones (about natu re), al though there are no absolute , i m penetrable bou ndaries here either. Thought about the hu man sciences origi nates as though t about others' thoughts, wills, man i festations, expressions, and signs, behind which stand manifest gods ( revelations) or people (the laws of rulers, the precepts of ancestors, anonymous sayi ngs , riddles, and so forth ). A scientifically p recise, as it were , au thentica­ tion of the texts and criticism of texts come later (in thought in the human sciences, they represent a complete about-face , the origin of skepticism). Initially, belief req uired only understanding interpretation This belief was brought to bear on profane texts ( the study of lan­ guages and so forth ). We do not intend to delve i nto the history of the human sciences, and certai n ly not i nto philology or l i ngu istics. We are -

.

1 04 (lw

The Problem of the Text

interested rather in the specific nature of though t i n the h uman sci­ ences that is directed toward other thoughts, ideas, meanings , and so forth , which are realized and made available to the researcher only in the form of a text. Regardless of the goals of the research, the only possible poi nt of departure is the text. We shall be i nte rested only in the problem of verbal texts, w hich are the initial givens of the corresponding h um a n sciences-prim arily lin­ guistics, philology, l iterary scholarship, and so forth . Every text has a subject or author (speaker or writer). Various types, subcategories, and forms of authorship a re possible. Withi n certain limits , lingu istic analysis can disregard authorship altogether. The text can be interpreted as an example ( model j udgments, syllogisms in logic, sentences i n grammar, "commutations" in l ingu istics, and so forth). 1 There are i magi ned texts (exemplary and other kinds) and constructed texts ( for pu rposes of l inguistic or stylistic experiment). Special kinds of authors appear everywhere in this area: those who think up examples and experimenters with their special authorial re­ sponsibility (there is eve n a second subject here : the person who could speak this way). The problem of the l i m i ts of the text. The text as utterance. Th e problem of the functions of the text and textual gen res. Two aspects that define the text as an u tterance: its plan (intenti on ) and the realization of th is plan. The dynamic interrelat io ns o f th ese aspects, their struggle, which determine the nature of the text. Th eir divergence can reveal a great deal. "Pelestradal" ( Leo Tolstoy) . z Freud­ ian slips of the tongue and slips of the pen ( expression of the uncon­ scious). Change of the plan in the process of its real ization . Failure to fulfill the phonetic intention. The problem of the second subj ect who is reproducing (for one p ur­ pose or another, including for research pu rposes) a text (anoth e r's) an d creating a framing text (one that comments , evaluates , obje cts, an d so forth). The special feature of thi nking in the h u m an sciences , w hic h in­ volves two p lanes and two s u bjects . Textology as th e theory and prac­ tice of the scienti fic reproduction of lite rary texts. The tex tologi cal subject (textologist) and h i s particu larities . The problem of the point of view (spatial-temporal pos ition ) of th e observer in astronomy and physics. The text as an utterance included in the s peech com m u n ica tio n

T h e P ro h l c m of l h c Tc x l

( textual c h a i n ) o f a given s p h e re . T h e text a s a u n iq u e monad t h a t i n itself reflects a l l texts (within the bounds) of a give n sphere . The i n ter­ connection of all ideas (si nce all are realized in utterances). The dialogic relationships among texts and within the text. Their special ( not l i ngu istic) nature . Dialogue and dialectics . The two poles of the text. Each text presu pposes a generally under­ stood ( that is, conventional within a given collective) syste m of signs, a language ( i f only the language of art). If there is no language be hind the text, i t is not a text, but a natural ( not signifying) phenomenon, for example, a complex of natu ral cries and moans devoid of any li nguistic (signifying) repeatability. Of course, each text ( both oral and wri tten ) includes a sign ificant number of various kinds of natural aspects devoid of signification , which extend beyond the limits of research i n the hu­ man sciences ( l i nguistic, philological, and so forth), but which are sti ll taken i nto account (deterioration of a manuscript, poor d iction, and so forth ). There are not nor can there be any pure texts. I n each text, moreover, there are a number of aspects that can be called technical ( the tec hnical side of graphics, pronu nciation, and so forth ). And so beh ind each text stands a language system. Everything in the text that is repeated and reproduced , everything repeatable and reproducible, everything that can be given outside a given text (the given) conforms to this language system. But at the same time each text (as an utterance) is individual, u n ique, and unrepeatable, and here i n lies its entire significance ( i ts plan, the pu rpose for which it was created). This is the aspect of it that pertains to honesty, truth, good­ ness, beau ty, history. With respect to this aspect, everyth i ng repeat­ able and rep roducible proves to be material , a means to an end. This notion extends somewhat beyond the bou nds of l i nguistics or philol­ ogy. The second aspect ( pole) inheres in the text itself, but is revealed only i n a particular situation and in a chain of texts (in the speech com­ mun ication of a given area). This pole is linked not with elements ( re­ peatable) i n the system of the language (signs), but with other texts (unrepeatable ) by special dialogic (and d ialectical, when detached fro m the author) relations. This second pole is i nseparably linked with the aspect of authorship and has nothing to do with natu ral, random single units; it is real ized completely by means of the sign system of the language. It is real ized by means of pure context. although natural aspects also enter i nto it. The relativity of all bou ndaries ( for example, where does one i nclude

1 06 c..-

The P roblem of the Text

the ti mbre of the voice of the reci te. r, the speaker, and so forth ? ). A change of fu nctions also effects a change of boundaries. The d istinc­ tion between phonology and phonetics . ·' The problem of the semantic (dialectical) and dialogic interrelat ions among texts within the bounds of a particu lar sphere. The special problem of h istorical i nterrelations among texts. All this in light of the second pole. The p roblem of the l im i ts of causal explanation. The most important thing is to avoid severance from the text (even if it is only potential , imagined, or inferred). The science of the spirit. 4 The spirit ( both one's own and another's) is not given as a thing ( the d i rect object of the natural sciences); it can only be present through signification, through realization in texts, both for itself and for others. The criticism of self-observation . B u t there must be a profound , rich , and refined understanding of the text. The theory of the text. The natural gesture acq u i res a signifying quality in the actor's per­ formance (as arbitra ry, as performative, as somethi n g subject to the design of a role). 5 N atu ral u niqueness (for example, a fingerprint) and the semantic (signifying) u n repeatabi lity of the text. All that is possible for a fin­ gerprint is mechanical rep roduction ( i n any number of copies) ; it is possible, of cou rse, to reproduce a text i n t he same mech anic a l way ( i . e . , reprinting), but the reproduction of the text by the subject (a return to it, a repeated readi ng, a new execution quotation) is a new, unrepeatable event in the l i fe of the text, a new l i n k i n the h i s torical cha i n of speech communicat ion. Any sign system (i. e . , any language ), regard less of how s m all th e collective that produces its conventions m ay be, can always i n pri n­ ciple be deciphered, that i s , translated into other sign system s (oth er languages). Consequently, sign system s have a common logic, a p ote n­ tial single language of languages (which, of cou rse , can never beco me a single concrete language , one of the languages). But the text (as d is­ ti nct from the language as a system of means) can neve r be comp letely translated , for there is no pote ntial single text of texts . The event of the life of the text, that is, i ts true esse nce , a lw ay s develops on the boundary between two consciousnesses, two subjects. The transcription of thinking in the human science s is always th e transcription of a special kind of d ialogue: the complex inter relat io ns between the text (the object of study and reflection) and the c rea ted . framing context (questioning, refuting, a n d s o forth ) in w hich th e

The P roblem of t h e Te x t

,.:; 1 07

scholar's COJ?;n izing and evaluating thought takes p l a c e This is t h e meet ing of two texts-of t h e ready-made a n d the reactive text being created-a n d , consequently, the meeting o f two subjects a n d two au thors . The text is not a t h i ng, and therefore the second consciousness, the consciousness of the pe rceiver, can in no way be e l i m i nated or neutralized . It is possible to proceed toward the first pole, that is, toward lan­ guage-the language of the author, the language of the gen re, the trend, the epoch; toward the national language ( l i nguistics), and, fi­ nally, towa rd a potential language of languages ( structu ralism, glos­ sematics).6 It is also possible to proceed toward the second pole-to­ ward the u n repeatable event of the text. All possible d isciplines in the human sciences that evolve from the initial given of th e text are located somewhere between these two poles. .

Both poles are u ncond itional : the potential language of languages is uncond i tional and the u n ique and u n repeatable text is u ncondi tional . Any truly c reative text is always to some extent a free revelation of the personality, not predetermi ned by empi rical necessi ty. The refore, it ( i n its free nucleus) ad mits neither of causal explanation nor of scien­ tific pred iction. But this, of course, does not excl ude the internal ne­ cessity, the i nternal logic of the free nucleus of the text (without which it c ould not be u nderstood , recogn ized , or effective). The proble m of the text i n the hu man sciences. The human sci­ en ces are sciences about man and h is specific nature, and not about a voi celess t h i n g or natu ral phenomenon . Man in his specific h u man na­ tu re always e xpresses h imself ( speaks), that is, he creates a text (if only pote ntial). Whe n man is studied outside a text and independent of it, t he scienc e is no longer one of the h uman sciences (human anatomy, ph ysiology , and so forth ). T he pro blem of the text i n textology. The philosophic al side of the p ro ble m. The atte m pt to study the text as "verbal reaction" (behaviorism ). 7 Cyber n e t ics, information theory, statistics, and the problem of the �ext. The proble m of incarnatin g the text. The boundarie s of this I nc arn ation . A h u man act is a potential text and can be u nderstood (as a human ac t and not a physical action) only in the dialogic context of its time (as a rej oinde r, as a semantic position , as a system of motives).

The Problem of the Text

"Al l that is beau tifu l and sublime"-t his is not a phraseological unity in the ordi nary sense, bu t a special kind of i ntonatio nal or ex­ pressive combination of words. This represents style, world view, a hu man type . It is redolent in contexts; it involves two voices, two sub­ jects (the person who would speak seriously in this way, a nd the per­ son who parodies him). Taken individually (outside the combin ation ), the words "beautifu l" and "sublime" lose thei r double-voicedn ess; the second voice enters only in the combination of words, wh ich becomes an utterance ( i . e . , it acquires a speech subj ect, without which th ere can be no second voice). One word can a l so become doub l e-voiced if it becomes an abbreviated u tterance ( that is, i f it acq u i res a n author). The phraseological unity is created not by the fi rst, b u t by the second votce. Language and speech, sente nce and u tterance. The spea king sub­ ject (generalized " natural" ind ividuality) and the author of the ut ter­ ance. The change of speaking subjects and the change of s pea ke rs (au­ thors of the u tterance). Langu age and speech can be iden tical, sin ce in speech the dialogic bou ndaries of the u tterances are e rased. B ut lan­ guage and s peech communication (as a d i alogic exch ange of u tter­ ances) can never be identica l . Two or more sentence s can be abso­ lutely identical (when they are superimposed on one a nother, l i ke two geometrical figures, they coincide) ; moreover, we must allow that any sentence, even a complex one , in the u n l i mited speech flow can be repeated an unlimited number of times i n com p letely identical form. But as an utterance (or part of an utterance) no one sentence, even if it has only one word , can ever be repeate d : it is always a new u tterance (even if it is a quotation). The q uestion arises as to whether science can deal with such abso­ lutely u n repeatable individ ualities as u tterances , or whethe r the y ex­ tend beyond the bounds of generalizing scientific cognition . An d th e answer is, of course , it ran. In the first place , every scien ce be gins with unrepeatable si ngle phenomena, and science continue s to be l i n ked with them throughou t. I n the second place , scie nce, and above al l ph i­ losophy, can and should study the specific form and fu n ctio n o f th is i ndivid uality. The need to be clearly aware of a constant corre ctive to the claim that abstract analysis (li ngu istics, for exam ple) has com ­ pletely exhausted the concrete utterance . The studv of ki nd s an d forms of dialogic relations among utterances and t h eir ty polo gi cal forms ( factors of utterances). The study of extrali nguist ic an d a t th e same time extrasemantic ( artistic, scientific. and so forth ) aspe cts of

The Problem

of the

Text

� 1 09

the utterance. The entire sphere that falls between li ngu ist ic and purely semantic analysis. This sphere has disappeared for science. A sentence can be repeated within the bou nds of one and the same utterance (nonarbitrary repetition, self-quotation ), but each repeti­ tion makes it a new part of the utterance, for its position and function in the entire u tterance h ave changed. The utterance as a whole is shaped as such by extralinguistic (dia­ logic) aspects, and it is also related to other u tterances. These extra­ linguistic (dialogic) aspects also pervade the utterance from within. The speaker's general ized expressions in language (personal names, personal forms of verbs, grammatical and lexical forms of expression of modality, and expressions of the speaker's attitude toward his speech) and the speech subject. The author of the utterance. From the standpoint of the extralinguistic pu rposes of the utterance, everything linguistic is only a means to an end . The problem of the author and the forms in which he is expressed i n a work. To what degree c a n o n e speak about the author's "i mage" ? We find the author (perceive , understand , sense, and feel him) in any work of art. For example, in a painting we always feel its author (artist), but we never see him in the way that we see the i mages he has depicted . We fee l him in everything as a pure depicting origin (depict­ ing su bject), but not as a depicted (visible) i mage . Even in a self­ po rt rait, of course, we do not see its depicting author, but only the arti st's de piction. Strictly speaking, the author's image is contradictio in adjecto. Th e so-called author's image is, to be sure, a special type of im age, distin ct from other images in the work, but it is an image and has its own au thor who created it. The image of the narrator i n a story is disti nct fro m the /, the image of the hero of an autobiograph ical wo rk (au tobiography, confessions, diaries, mem oirs, and so forth), the au to bi ograp hical hero, the lyrical hero, and so fort h . They are all mea­ su red and defi ned by their relationship to the author as person (as to a special su bject of d epiction ) , but they are all depicted images that have the ir auth ors, the vehicles of the purely depictive origi n. One can s peak of a pure author as d istinct from a partially depicted , designated au thor w ho e nte rs as part of the work. Th e pro ble m of the author of the most ord inary, standard , everyday Uttera nce . We can create an i mage of any speake r, we can objectively perc eive any work or any speech , bu t this objective image does not ente r i nto the i n tent or project of the speaker himself and is not cre­ ated by him as the author of the utterance.

I tO �

The P ro b l e m of the Te xt

Th is does not mean that there are no paths from the p u re author to the author as person-they exist, of course, and they exist i n the very core, the very depths of man. B u t this core can never become one of the i mages of the work itself. The i mage is in the work as a whole, and to the highest degree, but this core can neve r becom e a constituent figu ral (objective) part of the work. This is not natura creata (created nature) or natura naturata et creans ( nature e ngendered and creating), but pure natura creans et non creata ( natu re creating and not created). " To what degree are pure, obj ectless, s ingle-voiced words possible in literatu re ? Is i t possible for a word i n which the author does not hear another's voice , which i ncludes only the author and all of the author, to become material for the construction of a litera ry work? I s not some measure of nonl i te ral ness a necessary cond i tion for any style? Does the author not always stand outside the language as material for the work of art? Is not any writer (even the p u re lyricist) always a "drama­ tu rge" in the sense that he d i rects all words to others' voices , including to the image of the author (and to other authorial masks ) ? Perhaps any literal, single-voiced word is naive and unsuitable for authentic creativ­ ity. Any truly creative voice can only be the second voice in the dis­ cou rse. Only the second voice pure relationship-can be completely objectless and not cast a figu ra l , substantive shadow. The writer is a person who i s able to work i n a language while standing o u tside lan­ guage, who has the gift of i n d i rect speaking. To express oneself means to make oneself a n object for another and for oneself ( "the actualizing of consciousness" ) . This is the first step in objectification. B u t it i s also possible to reflect our attitude toward ourselves as objects (second s tage of objectification). I n this case , our own discourse becomes an object and acq u i res a second-its own­ voice . But this second voice no longer casts ( from itself) a shadow, for it expresses pure relationsh i p and all the objectifying, material izing flesh of the word is imparted to the fi rst voice . We express our relation to the person who wou ld speak in th is way . I n daily speech th is is expressed in sligh tly h u morous or i ron ic i nton a­ tion ( Leo Tolstoy's Karen i n ) , � i ntonation that expresses su rpris e , in­ com prehension , i n q u i ry, dou bt, affirmation, refutation , i nd i gnat io n , ad miration , and so forth . This is the fai rly pri m i tive an d ve ry ord i na ry phenomeno n of double-voiced ness in daily conve rsationa l sp eec h comm u n ica tion, in d ialogues and debates on scientific a n d o the r id eo­ logical subjects . This is a fai rly crude and Jess general i zing do ub le­ voice d ness that is frequently d i rectly personal : the words of one of the -

The Pro b l e m of the Te xt

� Il l

speakers i n attendance are repeated with e xa gge ra te d acce n t s . Va ri­ eties of parod ic stylization represent the same crude and less ge ner­ alizing form. The other's voice is lim ited , passive, and there i s no depth or prod uctivity (creative, enriching) to the i n te rrelations be­ tween the voices. In l i te ratu re-positive and negative characters. Literal and, one might say, physical double-voicedness is manifest in all of these forms. The situation is more complex when i t comes to the author's voice in drama , where it, to all appearances, is not in the discourse . To see and comprehend the author of a work means to see and com­ prehend anothe r, alien consciousness and its world , that is, another subject ( "Du" ) . With explanation there is only one consciousness, one subject; w i th comprehension there are two consciousnesses and two sub­ jects. There can be no d ialogic relationship with an object, and there­ fore explan ation has no dialogic aspects (except formal, rhetorical one s). Unde rstandi ng is always d ialogic to some degree. The variou s types and forms of comprehension . The comprehen­ sio n of the language of signs, that is, the comprehension (mastery) of a pa rti cular sign syste m ( for example , a particular language). The com­ pre hensi on of a work in an already known, that is, already understood , language . The a bsence, i n practice, of sharp distinctions and transi­ tio ns from one kind of comprehension to another. Can on e say that the comprehensio n of a language as a system is objectless a n d completely devoid of dialogic aspects? To what extent can one speak of the s u bject of a language as a system? Deciphering an un k nown la n guage : substituting possible undeterm ined speakers, constru ctin g possible u tterances in a given language. U nders tand i ng any work in a fami l iar language (if only our native la ngu age) always enriches our u nderstanding of the given language as a syste m as we l l . Fro m the subject of a language to the subjects of l iterary works. Va riou s tra nsitional stages. The subjects of langu age styles (of the bu­ reaucrat, the merchant, the scholar, and so forth). The author's masks (th e auth or's images ) and the author himself. The socio-st ylistic i mage of the poor clerk, of the titular counsel or ( De vus hkin , for example). w Such an image, although it is produced by met hod s of s elf- revelatio n , is produced as he (thi rd person) and not � s . thou . He is o bj ectified and paradigm atic . There are no truly dialogic re la tion s wit h him . B ri ngi ng the means of depict ion close to the subject o f depict ion as

1 12

�

The Problem of the Text

a sign of realism (self-descriptio n , voices, social styles; not depiction, but quotation of the heroes as speaking people). The objective and purely functional e l e ments of any style. The problem of understanding the utterance. In order to under­ stand, it is first of all necessary to establish the principal and clear-cut boundaries of the u tterance . The alternation of speech subjects. The ability to determine the response. The essential responsiveness of any understanding ( " Kannitverstan" ) . 1 1 When there is a d e l iberate (conscious) multiplicity of styles , there are always d ialogic relations among the styles. 1 2 One cann ot under­ stand these interrelations purely l i nguistica l ly (or even mechan ically ). A purely linguistic (and purely d iscre te) description and defin ition of various styles withi n a single work cannot revea l their sem antic (in­ cluding artistic) i nterrelations. I t is important to understand the total sense of this d ialogue of styles from the au thor's stand point ( not as an image , but as a function). And when one speaks about brin ging the means of depiction close to the depicted thing, one u nd ersta nds the depicted thing to be the object and not another subject (thou) . The depiction o f a thing a n d the depiction of a person (th e sp eaker in his essence). Realism frequently reifies man, but this is not an ap­ proach to h i m . Naturalism, with i ts tendency toward a causal explana­ tion of man's acts and thoughts ( his semantic position i n the world) re­ ifies man even more. The "inductive" approac h , which is assumed to be inherent in realism, is, in essence , a rei fying causal explanation of man. The voices ( i n the sense of reified social styles) are thu s si m ply transformed into signs of things (or symptoms of process es); it is no longe r possi ble to respon d to them, one can no longer polemi cize with them, and dialogic relations with such voices fade away. The degrees of objectification and subjectification of dep ic te d people (the dialogic natu re of the author's relations to the m) vary dra s­ tically in literature . In this respect, the image of Devus hkin d iffe rs in princ iple from other writers' objectified i mages of poor clerks . A nd he is pol emically pitted against these other images , in which the re is no truly d ialogic thou. Novels usually present completely fi nal argu m e nts summ arized from the author's standpo i nt ( if there are argume nts at all). Dostoevsky's work contai ns transcriptions of i ncom plete an d u n­ comp letable argu m ents. But any novel is generally fil led with dia log ic overto nes ( not always with its heroes, of course ). Afte r Dos toe vs ky, poly phony bursts powe rful ly into all world lite rature.

T h e Problem of the Tex t

With respect to a perso n , love , hatred , pi ty, te nderness, and emo­ tions in ge neral a re always d ialogic in some measu re . In his dialogic treatment (as regards the subjectifi cation of his he­ roes), Dostoevsky crosses a certain bou ndary and his dialogic treat­ ment acquires a new ( h igher) quality. The objectification of man's i mage is not pure su bstantiality. He can be loved , p i t ied, and so forth , but the main th ing is that he can (and shoul d ) be u nderstood. In artistic l iterature (as generally in art) the sheen of subjectification l ies even on inanimate things (correlated with man). Speech u nderstood i n an object-oriented way (and such speech nec­ ess arily requ i res u nderstanding-otherw ise it would not be speech­ but in this understand i ng the dialogic aspect is weakened ) can be inclu ded i n a chain of causal explanation. Literal speech (purely se­ mant ic, fu nctional) remains in an open-ended referential dialogue (e. g. , scienti fic researc h). A juxtapo sition with u tterance-demonstrations i n physics. The te xt as a subjective reflection of the objective world ; the text is an expression o f consciousness, something that reflects. When the text becomes the object of our cognition, we can speak about the reflection of a reflection . The u nderstanding of the text is a correct reflection of a reflection. Through another's reflection to the reflected object. No natural p h e nomenon has "meaning," only signs (including words) have meaning. Therefore, any study of signs, regard less of the direc­ ti on in w h ich i t may subsequently proceed, necessarily begins with und ers tan din g. Th e text is the primary given ( reality) and the point of departu re for any discipl i ne in the human sciences. I t is the aggregate of various ki nd s of knowledge and methods called philolo gy, linguistics, literary sc holars h i p, scientific scholarship, and so forth . Proceeding from the text, they wand e r in various d i rections, grasp various bits of nature, social life , s tates of mind, and h istory, and combi ne the m-som etimes wi th cau sal , so metimes with semantic, ties-and i ntermix statements wi th ev aluati ons. From ind ications of the real object one must proceed to a cle ar-cu t delineation of the objects of scientific research. The real objec t is soc ial (pu blic) man, who speaks and expresses hims� lf th ro ug h othe r means. Is i t possible to find any other approac h t� � tm _ and h is l i fe (wo rk, struggle, and so forth ) tha n through the stgmfymg text th at he has created or is c reati ng? Is it possibl e to observe and

1 14

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The Problem of the Text

study him as a phenomenon of natu re, as a thing? Man's physical action should be u nderstood as a dee d , but it is i mpossible to understand the deed outside its potential ( that is, re-created by us) signifying expres­ sion (motives, goals, stim u l i , degree of awareness, and so forth). It is as though we are causing man to speak (we con struct his important testimonies, explanations, con fessions, admissions, and we complete the development of possible or actual inner speech , and so forth). Everywhere the actual or possible text and its understanding. Re­ search becomes inquiry and conve rsation , that i s , d ialogue. We do not address inquiries to natu re and she does not answer u s . We put ques­ tions to ourselves and we organize observation or experiment in such a way as to obtain an answer. When studying man, we searc h for and find signs everywhere and we try to grasp their mea n i ng. We are interested primarily i n concrete forms of texts and con c rete conditions of the life of texts, their i n te rrelation s , a nd the i r i nter­ actions. Dialogical relations among u tterances that also pervade individual utterances from within fal l into the real m of metalinguistics. They dif­ fer radically from all possible linguistic relations among elements, both in the language system and i n the individ ual utterance . The metali nguistic natu re of the u tterance (speech production). The semantic ties with i n a si ngle utte rance (although potentially in­ fini te , for example , i n the system of science) a re referentially logical (in the broad sense of the word ), but the semantic ties among various utterances become dialogic (or, in any case , they acquire a d ialogic col­ oring). The ideas are distributed among various voices . The excep­ tional importance of the voice , the personality. Linguistic elements are neutral with respect to this d ivision into ut­ terances; they move freely without recognizing the boundaries of the utterance , wi thout recogn izing ( without respect i n g) the sovereignty of voices. But how are the firm boundaries of the utterance dete rm ine d ? By metali nguistic forces. E xtralite rary utterances and their bou ndaries ( rejoinders , letters. d iaries, inner speech, and so forth ) transferred into a lite rary work (for example , into a nove l ) . Here the i r total sense ch anges. The reve rbera­ tions of other voices fall on the m , and the voice of the author hi mself enters into the m . Two juxtaposed utterances belonging t o d iffe rent peo ple who kn ow nothing about one another if t h ey only sl igh tly con verge on one a n d

The P roblem of the Text

wli

1 15

the same subject (idea), inevitably enter into dialogic relations with one anothe r. They come into contact with one another on the terri lOry of a com mon theme, a com mon idea. Epigraphy. T h e problem of the gen res of ancient inscriptions. The au thor and the addressee of the inscriptions. Compu lsory patterns. Grave i nscrip tions ( "Rejoice" ). The deceased addressing the living passe rsby. Com p ulsory standardized forms for evocations, i ncanta­ tions, prayers, and so forth. Forms of eulogies and h igh praise. Forms of abu se and fou l language (ritualistic). The problem of the relation­ ship of the word to the thought and the word to the desire, to the wil l , to the de mand . Ideas about the magicality o f the word . The word as acti on . The entire about-face in the history of the word when it be­ cam e express ion and pure (actionless) information ( the communica­ tive fu nction). The sense of one's own and another's in the word . Late r, the origi n of authorial consciousness. The auth or of a lite rary work (a novel) creates a unified and whole speech work (an u tterance) . But h e creates it from heterogeneous, as it were, alien, u tterances. And even d i rect authorial speech is fil led with recognized words of others . Indirect speaking, an atti tude toward one's own language as one of the possible languages (and not the only pos­ si ble and uncondi tional language ) . Fin alized, o r "closed, " i ndivid uals in painting (including portrai­ tu re) . T hey p resent man exhaustively; he is already completely there an d can not become other. The faces of people who have already said every thing, wh o have already d ied [or] may as well have died. The art­ ist co ncentra tes his attention on the finalizing, defining, closing fea­ ture s . We see all of h i m and expect nothing more (or diffe rent). He can not be reborn, rejuvenated , or transformed-this is his finalizing (u lt imate and final) stage. T he aut hor's relation to what he depicts always enters into the im­ age. The au thor's relationship is a constitutive aspect of the image. Th is relatio nshi p is extremely complex. It must not be reduced to a strai gh tforwa rd evaluation. Such straightforward evalualions destroy the artistic i m age. They are not to be found even in good satire ( Gogo l , Shch edrin). To see something for the fi rst time, to realize so me thing for the fi rst time, already means to assume an attitude to­ ward it: it exists neither within itself nor for itself, but for another (al­ re ady two correlated consciousnesses). Understand ing is a very impor­ tant atti tude ( u nderstanding is never a tau tology or dupl ication, for it always invo lves two and a potential th ird). The condition of not be ing

1 1 6 c;..

The P roblem of the Te xt

heard and not being u nderstood (see Thomas M a n n ) . 13 "I don't know" and "that's the way it was, but what d i ffe rence d i d it make to me" are important attitudes. The destruction of d i rect evaluations that accrue to the object and the destruction of atti tudes gen e rally creates a new attitude . A special kind of emotional-evaluative att i tudes. Their diver­ sity and complexity. The author cannot be separated from the i mages and characters, since he enters i nto these i m ages as an i n dispensable part of them (im­ ages are dual and sometimes double-voiced). B u t the image of the au­ thor can be separated from the i mages of the characters. This image i tself, however, is created by the author and is therefore also dual. It is frequently as though the i mages of characters had been replaced by living people. The various semantic planes on which the speech of the charac ters and the authorial speech are located. The characters speak as part ici­ pants in the depicted l i fe , as it were, from private pos itions. Their viewpoints are l i m i ted i n one way or another ( they know less than the author does). The author i s outside the world depicted (and , in a cer­ tain sense, c reated) by h i m . He i nterprets this entire world from higher and qualitatively different positions. Finally, all characters and their speech are objects of an authorial attitude (and authorial speech). But the planes of the characters' speech and that of the authorial speech can intersect, that is, dialogic relations a re possible between the m . In Dostoevsky, where the characters are ideologists , the au thor and such heroes ( thinker-ideologists) end up on the same plane. The dialogic contexts and situations of the speeches of the characters d i ffer essentially from those of the authorial speec h . The speech of the char­ acters participates in the depicted d ialogues within the work and does not enter d i rectly into the ideological d ialogue of contemporaneity, that is, into the real speech communication i n w h ich the work as a whole participates and is comm u n icated (they partici pate in it only as elements of this whole). Yet the author occupies a posi tion pre cise ly in this real dialogue and is defined by the real situation of the day. As distinct from the real author, the image of the author that is cre ated lacks that direct participation in the real d ialogue ( he partic i pates in it only through the entire work), but he can partici pate in the plot of th e work and enter into depicted d i alogue with the characters ( the conver­ sation between the "author" and Onegi n ) . The speech of the depict­ ing ( real ) author, if it exists , is s peech of a fu ndamentally special type.

The P roblem of the Te xt

� 1 17

which cannot exist on the same plane with the speech of the charac­ ters. This is precisely what determ i nes the work's ulti mate unity and its ulti mate semantic instantiatio n, as it were, its ulti mate word . The i mages of the author and the images of the characters are deter­ mined, accord i n g to V. V. Vinogradov, by language-sty les, and their differences reduce to diffe rences i n languages and styles, that is, to pu rely l ingui stic d i fferences. Vinogradov does not reveal the non­ linguistic interrelations among them . But, after all, these images (language- styles) i n a work do not l ie next to one another as linguistic give ns ; they enter here i n to complex, dynamic semantic relations of a special type. This type of relations can be defined as dialogic rela­ tio ns. Dialogic relations have a specific nature: they can be reduced nei­ the r to the pu rely logical ( even if dialectical) nor to the purely lin­ guistic (compositional-syntactic). They are possible only between com plete u ttera nces of various speaking subjects (dialogue with on eself is secondary, and, in the majority of cases, already played through ) . We are not concerning ou rselves here with the origin of the term "d ialogu e" ( see H i rzel ). 14 Where there i s no word and no language, there can be no dialogic rel ation s; they cannot exist among objects or logical quantities (con­ ce pts, judgme nts, and so forth). Dialogic relations presuppose a lan­ gua ge , bu t they do not reside withi n the system of a language. They are i mpossible among elements of a language. The specific nature of dia logic relations requ i res special study. The narrow u nderstanding of d ialogue as one of the compositional for ms of speech (dialogic and monologic speech ). One can say that each rej oinder in and of i tself is monologic (the absolutely minimal m onologu e ) and each monologue is a rejoinder from a larger dialogue ( the speech com munication of a certain sphere). Monologue as speech th at is ad d resse d to no one and does not presuppose a response . Vari­ ou s pos sibl e degrees of monologici ty. Dia log ic re l ations are relations ( semantic) among any utterances in speech com mu n ication. Any two utteran ces, if ju xtaposed on a seman­ tic p lane ( not as thi ngs and not as li nguistic examples), end up i � a di alo gic rela tionship. But this is a special form of uni ntentional d•a­ _ log icity ( for example, the selection of various utte rances of vanous sch olars or s ages of various e ras on a single quest ion). . " H u nger, cold ! "-one u tterance of a single speakmg subject. "Hu nge r! "- "Cold ! " -two dialogi cally correlated utterances of two .

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The Problem of the Text

different subjects: here dialogic relations appear that did not exist in the former case. The same thing with two developed sente nces (think of a cogent example). When an utterance is used for pu rposes of l inguistic analysis, its di­ alogic nature is ignored, it is regarded within the system of the lan­ guage (as its actualization) and not in the larger dialogue of speech communication. The immense and as yet u nstudied dive rsity of speech genres: from the u npublished spheres of inner speech to artistic works and scien­ tific treatises. The d iversity of street gen res (see Rabelais), intimate gen res, and so forth. In various e pochs, in various genres, the e merg­ ing of language goes o n . Language a n d t h e word are almost everything i n h u m a n life. B u t o n e m u s t n o t think that t h i s all-embracing a n d multifaceted reality can be the subject of only one science, linguistics, or that it can be under­ stood through linguistic methods alone. The subject of l i n gu istics is only the material, only the means of speech commu n ication, and not speech communication itself, not u ttera nces in their essence and not the relationships among them (dialogic) , not the forms of speech com­ munication, and not speech gen res . Linguistics studies only the relationships amo n g elem ents with in the language system, not the relationships among u tterance s and not the relations of utterances to reality and to the speaker (author). With respect to real utterances and real speakers , the system of a language is purely potential . And the meaning of a word , to the extent that it is studied purely linguistically (lingu istic semasiology) is dete r­ mined only with the help of other words of the same language (or an­ other language ) and by its relations to them ; i t acq u i res a relationsh ip to a concept or an a rtistic image or to real life only i n an u tterance and through an utterance . Such is the word as the subject of linguistics (but not the real word as a concrete utterance or part of it, a part and not a means). Begin with the problem of speech production as the initial reality of speech life . From the everyday rejoinder to the m u ltivolume novel or scientific treatise . The interaction of speech works i n various spheres of the speech process. The "lite rary process," the struggle of opin ions in science , the ideological struggl e , and so forth . Two speech works , utterances, juxtaposed to one another, e nter into a special kind of se­ mantic relationships that we call d ialogic. Their s pecial nature. The elements of language within the language syste m or with i n the "text"

The P roblem of the Tex t

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(in the strictly l i nguistic sense ) cannot enter into d i alogic relations. Can languages and dialects ( territorial, social jargons), language ( func­ tional) styles ( say, fam i l iar daily speech and scientific language and so forth), enter into these relationships, that is, can they speak with one another and so forth ? Only if a nonlingu istic approach is taken toward them , that is, if they are transformed i nto a "world view" (or some lan­ guage or speech sense of the world), i nto a "viewpoint, " into "social voices, " and so forth. The artist makes such a transformation when he creates typical or characteristic u tterances of typical characters (even if they are not com pletely embodied and are not named); aesthetic l inguistics (the Vossl er schoo l , and especially, apparently, Spitzer's latest work) makes such a transformation (on a somewhat different plane). With such tran sformations the language acq u i res a unique "author," a speaking subject, a collec tive bearer of speech ( people, nation, occupation, so­ cial group, and so forth). Such a transformation always makes a depar­ ture beyond the boundaries of linguistics ( i n the strict or precise under­ standing of it). Are such transformations appropriate? Yes, they are app ropriate, but only under strictly defined conditions (for example, in lite ratu re , where frequently, especially i n the novel, one finds d ia­ logu es of "languages" and language-styles), and with a strict and clear me thod ologica l i ntent. Such transformations are not permissible when, on the one hand , one declares that the language as a l inguistic system is extraideol ogical (and also i mpersonal) or, on the other, when the socio-i deological characteristics of languages and styles are smuggled in ( to som e extent in the work of Viktor Vinogradov ). This question is ve ry com plex and interesting ( for example, to what degree can one spea k abo ut the subject of a language, or the speaking subject of a lan guage style , or about the i mage of the scholar stand ing behind a sc ien tific langu age , the image of a bu reaucrat behind bureaucratic lan­ guage, and so forth ? ). The u n iq ue natu re of dialogic relations. The problem of the inner dia logis m . The seams of the bou ndaries between utterances. The p rob le m of the double-voiced word . Understand i ng as dialogue. Here we a re app roac h i ng the frontier of the philosophy of language and of t hi nki ng i n th e h u man sciences in general, virgi n land. A new stateme nt of the p roblem of authorship ( the creati ng ind ivid ual). . The f{ivm and the r"ottd in a speech utterance. An utterance Js ne ve r ju st a refl ection or an expres sion of somet h i ng already existi ng ou tsi de it that is given and final. It al ways creates some thing that never

1 20

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The Problem of the Text

existed before , something absolutely new and u n repeatable, and, moreover, it always has some relation to value ( the true, the good , the beautiful, and so forth). But something created is always created out of something given ( language , an observed phenomenon of reality, an experienced feeling, the speaking subject h imself, something final­ ized in his world view, and so forth). What is given is completely trans­ formed in what is created. An analysis of the simplest everyday dia­ logue ( "What time is i t? " - "Seven o' clock" ). The more or less complex situation of the questio n . One must look at the clock. The answe r can be true or false , it can be significant, and so forth. In which time zone? The same question asked i n o u ter space , and so forth . Words and forms as abbreviations or rep resentatives of the utter­ ance, world view, point of v iew, and so forth , actual or possible. The possibilities and perspectives e mbedded in the word ; they are essen­ tially infinite. Dialogic bou ndaries i ntersect the entire field of living human thought. The monologism of thi n king in the h u m a n sciences. The lin­ gu ist is accustomed to perceiving everythi n g i n a si ngle closed context (in the system of a language or in the l i ngu istically u nderstood te xt that is not d ialogically corre lated to another, responding text ) , and as a l ingu ist, of course, he is correct. The d ialogic nature of ou r th i n ki ng about works, theories, utterances-i n general our thi n ki ng about people. Why is quasi-d irect speech accepted , while an u nderstan d i n g of it as a doub le-voiced word is not? 1 s It is much easier to study the given i n what is created (for e xam p le , language , ready-mad e and general elements of world view, refle cted phenom ena of reality, and so forth) than to study what is created. F re­ quently the whole of scientific analysis amounts to a discl osu re of every thing that has been give n , already at hand and re ady -ma de be fo re the work has existed ( that which is fou n d by the artist and not create d by h i m ) . It is as if eve ryth ing given is c reated anew i n what is create d, transfor med in it. A reduction to that w h ich was prev iousl y give n an d

ready-m ade. An object is ready-made, the l i nguistic mean s for its de­ piction are ready-made , the artist himself is ready-made , and h is wo rl d view is ready-m ade . And here with ready-made means, in l igh t o f a ready-m ade world view, the ready-made poet reflects a rea dy -m ade object. But i n fact the object is created i n the process of c rea tiv ity, as are the poet himself, his world view, and his means of exp ressi on . The word used in quotation marks. that is, fel t and u sed a s so m e -

T h e Problem of the Text

� 121

thing alien, and the same word (or some other word ) without q uotation marks. The i n fi n i te gradations in the degree of foreignness (or ass i m i ­ lation) of word s, t h e i r various distances from the speaker. Words are distribu ted on various planes and at various d istances from the plane of the authorial word. Not only quasi-di rect speech but various forms of hidden , semi­ hi dden , and diffused speech of another, and so forth. l h All this has re­ mained unutil ized . When one begins to hear voices i n languages, jargons, and styles, these cease to be potential means of expression and become actual , real ized expression; the voice that has mastered them has entered into them. They are called upon to play their own unique and unrepeatable role in speech (creative) comm u nication. The mutual i l l u mination of languages and styles. The relation to­ ward the thing and the relation toward the meaning embodied in the work or in some other kind of sign material. The relation to the thing (in its pure thi ngness) cannot be dialogic (i.e. , there can be no conver­ sation , argu ment, agreement, and so forth) . The relation to meaning is always d ialogic. E ven u nderstanding itself is d ialogic. The reification of meaning so as to include it i n a causal series. The narrow understanding of dialogism as argument, polemics, or parody. These are the externally most obvious, but crude, forms of dialogism. Confidence in another's word , reverential reception ( the au­ thoritative word ) , apprenticeship, the search for and mandatory nature of deep meaning, agreement, its infin ite gradations and shadings (but not i ts logical l i mitations and not purely referential reservations), the layering of mean i ng upon meaning, voice upon voice, strengthening through merging (but not identification), the combination of many voices (a corridor of voices) that augments u nderstandi ng, departu re beyond the l i m i ts of the u nderstood , and so forth . These special rela­ tions can be reduced neither to the pu rely logical nor to the purely thematic. Here one encounte rs integra/ positions, integral personalities ( the personal ity does not requ i re extensive disclosu re-i t can be ar­ ticul ate d i n a s ingle soun d , revealed in a single word ), precisely voices. Th e word (or in general any sign ) is interindividua l . Everything that is said , exp resse d , is located outside the "soul" of the speaker and does not belong only to h i m . The word cannot be assigned to a single speak er. T he author (speaker) has his own inalienable righ t to the word , bu t the listener also has his rights, and those whose voices are h eard in the word before the au thor comes upon it also have their

122 �

The P roblem of the Text

rights (after all, there are no words that belong to no one). The word is a d rama in which th ree characters participate ( i t is not a duet, but a trio). It is performed outside the author, and it cannot be introjected into the author. If we anticipate nothing from the word , if we know ahead of time everything that it can say, it departs from the d ialogue and is reified . Self-objectification ( i n the lyric, in the confession , and so forth) as self-alienation and, to a certain d egree, a su rmounting of the self. By objectifying mysel f ( i . e . , by placing myself outside) I gain the oppor­ tunity to have an authentically d i alogic relation with myself. Only an u tterance has a direct relations h i p to rea lity and to the living, speaking person (subject). I n language there a re only potential possibilities ( schemata) of these relations ( p ronominal, temporal , and modal forms, lexical means, and so forth ) . B u t an u tterance is defined not only by its relation to the object and to the speaking subject-author (and i ts relation to the language as a system of potential possibilities, givens), but-for us most important of all-by its direct relation to other u tterances with i n the l i mits of a given sphere of communication. I t does not actually exist outside this relations h i p ( o n ly as a text). Only an utterance can be faithfu l (or unfaithful), s i ncere, true (false), beau­ tifu l , just, and so forth. The u nderstand ing of a language and the understan ding of an u tter­ ance (i ncluding responsiveness and, consequently, eval uation) . What i nterests us is not the psychological aspect of the relati ons hi p to others' utte rances (and understanding), but its reflect ion in the structure of the utterance itse lf. 17 To what extent can linguistic (pure ) definitions of a la ngua ge an d its elements be used for artistic-stylistic ana l ysis? They can se rve o n ly as in itial terms for description. But the most important thing is not de­ scribed by them and does not reside within the m . For here what m at­ ters is not elements (units) of the language system that have be co m e elements of the text, but aspects of the u tterance . The u tterance as a semantic whole . T h e relationship t o others' utterances cannot b e separated from th e relationsh i p to the object (for it is argued about, agreed upon, views converge within it), nor can it be separated from the relationship to the speaker himself. This is a living tripart ite unity. B u t the t h i rd element is still not usually taken into accou nt. And even when it has been taken into account ( i n an analysis of the l iterary process, the works of jou rnalists, in polemics, in the struggle among scientific opinions) , the

The P roblem of the Te xt

<e9 I Z.l

spe cial nature of relations toward other utterances as utterances , that is, toward semantic wholes, has remained undisclosed and unstudied (these relations have been understood abstractly, thematicall y and lo gica lly, or psychologica lly, or even mechanical ly and causally). The special dialogic nature of interrelations of semantic wholes, semantic positio ns, that is, u tterances, has not been understood . The experi menter constitutes part of the experimental system (in microphysics). One might say, l i kewise, that the person who partici­ pates i n understa nd i ng constitutes part of the understood utterance, the text (more precisely, utterances and their dialogue enter the text as a n ew partic ip ant). The d ialogic meeting of two consciousnesses in the hu man scie nces. The framing of another's utterances with a dialogiz­ i ng context. For even when we give a causal explanation of another's Utterance, by that very gesture we refute it. The reification of others' utterances is a special way (a false way) of refuting them. If the utter­ ance is u n d e rstood as a mechanical reaction and d ialogue as a chain of reactions (as it is i n descriptive l i nguistics or by the behaviorists), then this u nde rsta nding i ncludes equally both true and false utterances, both works of genius and those lacki ng talent ( the d i fference will be only in the mechanically understood effects, utility, and so forth ). This point of view, wh ich is relatively valid as is the l ingu istic point of view (even with all the differences between them), does not touch upon the essence of the u tterance as a semantic whole, a semantic point of view, a semantic position , and so forth . Every utterance makes a claim to j ustice, s incerity, beau ty, and truthfulness (a model u t tera nce), and so forth . And these values of utterances are defined not by thei r relation to the language (as a purely l ingu istic system), but by variou s for ms of relation to reali ty, to the speaking subject and to oth er (alie n ) u tterances ( particularly to those that evaluate them as sin­ c ere, beautifu l , and so forth). Lin guistics deals with the text, but not with the work. What it says abo ut the work is smuggled in, and does not follow from purely lin­ gu istic analy sis. Of cou rse, li nguist ics itself is usually from the very beg in ning conglomerate by natu re, and saturated with nonlinguistic ele m ents. To simplify the matter somewhat: purely linguistic relations ( i. e . , the object of lingu istics) are relations of sign to sign and to signs at the l i m i ts of the language system or text ( i . e. , systemic or l inear re­ lati ons among signs). The re lations of utterances to real ity, to the real spea k i ng subject, and to other real utterances-relations that first m ake the utterances true or false , beautiful, and so forth-can neve r

1 24 [lw

The P ro b l e m of the Text

be the subject of l i n guistics. I ndividual signs, the language syste m , or the text (as a signifying un ity) can never be tru e , false, beautifu l, and so forth . Each large and creative verbal whole is a very complex and multi­ faceted system of relations. With a c reative attitude toward language, there are no voiceless words that belong to no one. Each word contains voices that are sometimes infinitely distant, u n named , al most imper­ sonal (voices of lexical shadings, of styles, and so forth), almost u n­ detectable , and voices resounding nearby and simultaneously. Any live , competent, and dispassionate observation from any posi­ tion, from any viewpoint, always retains its value and its meani n g. The one-sided and limited natu re of a v iewpoint ( the position of the ob­ server) can always be corrected, augmented , transformed ( tran sfe rred) with the help of l i ke observations from others' viewpoi nts. Bare view­ points (without living and new observations) are fruitless. 18 Push kin's wel l-known aphorism about lexicon and books. On the problem of dialogic relations. These rel ations are p rofoundly unique and cannot be reduced to logica l , l inguistic, psychological , me­ chanical , or any other natural relations. They constitute a special type of semantic relations, whose members can be o n ly complete utterances (either regarded as complete or potentially complete), behind which stand (and in which are expressed) real or potentially real speech sub­ jects , authors of the given utterances. Real dialogue ( daily conversa­ tion, scientific discussion, political debate , and so forth). The rela­ tions among rejoinders of such dialogues are a simpler and more externally visible kind of dialogic relations. B u t d ialogic relations, of course, do not in any way coincide with relations among rejoinders of real dialogue-they are much broader, more d iverse, and more com­ plex. Two utterances, separated from one another both i n time and in space, knowing nothing of one another, when they a re compared se­ mantically, reveal d ialogic relations if there is any kind of semantic convergence between them (if o n ly a partially shared theme, point of view, and so forth). Any su rvey of the history of any scientific question (independent, or included in a scientific work on a given question) also produces dialogic comparisons ( u tterances , opinions, viewpoints ) of the utterances of scientists who did not and could not know anyth i ng of one another. Here the shared natu re of the proble m gives rise to dialogic relations. I n artistic literatu re- "d ialogues of the dead" (in Lucian, i n the seventeenth century)-there is, i n keeping with the specific featu res of the literature , an imagi ned situation of a meeting in

The P roblem of the Te x t

the hereafter. The opposite example, wh ich is widely used i n comedy, is the situation of a d ialogue between two deaf people, where the real dialog ic contact is u nderstood but where there is no kind of sema ntic contact between the rejoinders ( nor any imaginable contact ). Zero­ degree dialogic relations. Here the viewpoint of a tltird pe rson is re­ vealed in the d ialogue (one who does not partici pate in the dialogue, bu t understands it). The understandin g of an entire utterance is always dialogic. One ca n not, on the other hand , understand dialogic relations sim­ plist ically and u n i laterally, reducing them to contrad iction , conflict, pole mics, or d isagreement. Agreement is very rich in varieties and shad­ ings . Two u tterances that are identical in all respects ( "Beautiful we ather! "- "Beautifu l weather! " ), if they are really two utterances belon ging to different voices and not one, are l i n ked by d ialogic rela­ tions of agreement. This is a definite dialogic event in the i nterrelations of th e two, and not a n echo. For after all, agreement cou ld also be lack­ ing ( "N o, not very n ice weather," and so forth ). Dial ogic relation s are thus much broader than dialogic speech in the na rrow sense of the word . And dialogic relations are always present, eve n amo n g profoundly monologic speech works. Th ere can be no dialogic relations among language un its, regardless of how we u n d e rstand them and regardless of the level of the language stru ctu re from which we take them (phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, se nte nces, and so forth). The utterance (as a speech whole) cannot be se en as a u n i t of the next, h igher level or tier of the language structure (above syntax), for it enters into the world of completely different rela­ tio ns (dialogic) that cannot be compared with linguistic relations of ot her levels . (On a certain plane, only the juxtaposition of the whole utte ran ce to the word is possible . ) The whole utterance is no longer a un it of langu age (and not a unit of the "speech flow" or the "speech ch ain" ), bu t a u n i t of speech communicat ion that has not mere formal de fin iti on , but contextual meaning ( that is, integrated meaning that re­ lates to v alue - to truth, beauty, and so forth-and requires a respon­ sive u nde rsta n d i ng, one that includes evaluation ). The responsive u n de rsta ndi ng of a speech whole is always dialogic by natu re. Th e un dersta nding of entire utterance s and dialogic relations among th e m is alw ays of a d ialogic nature ( i ncluding the understand ing of �e­ se arch ers i n the human sciences ). The person who unde rstands (m­ clu di ng the res earcher himself) becomes a participan t in the dialogue , alt ho ugh on a special level (dependin g on the area of u nderstand ing or

I Zh �

The P roblem of the Text

research ). The analogy of including the experimenter in the experi­ mental system (as a part of it) or the observer in the observed world in microphysics (quantum theory). The obse rver has no position outside the observed world, and his observation ente rs as a constituent part into the observed object. This pertains ful ly to entire utte rances and relations among them . They cannot be understood from outside. Understand i ng itself e nters as a dialogic element in the dialogic system and somehow changes its total sense. The person who understands i nevitably becomes a third party i n the dialogue (of course , not i n the litera l , arithmetical sense, for there can be, i n addition to a third , an u n l i mited n umber of partici­ pants i n the dialogue being unders tood) , but the d ialogic position of this third party is a quite special one . Any u tterance a lways has an ad­ d ressee (of various sorts, with varying degrees of proximity, concrete­ ness, awareness, and so forth) , whose responsive u nderstanding the author of the speech work seeks and surpasses . This is the second party (again not i n the arithmetical sense). B u t i n addition to this ad­ d ressee ( the second party), the au thor of the u tterance, with a greater or lesser awareness , presupposes a h igher superaddressee (third ) , whose absolutely just responsive understanding is p resu med , either in some metaphysical d istance or in d istant h istorical time (the loophole ad­ d ressee). In various ages and with various u nderstan d i ngs of the world, this superaddressee and his ideally true responsive u nderstanding as­ sume various ideological expressions (God , absolute tru t h , the cou rt of d ispassionate human conscience, the people, the court of history, sci­ ence , and so forth }. The author can never turn over his whole self and h i s speech work to the complete and final will of add ressees who are o n hand or nearby (after all, even the closest descendants can be mistake n ) , and always presupposes (with a greater or lesser degree of awareness) some h igher instancing of responsive understand ing that can d istance itsel f i n vari­ ous d i rections. E ach dialogue takes place as if against the background of the responsive u nderstanding of an invisibly prese nt third party who stands above all the participants in the d ialogue ( partners). (Cf. the understanding of the Fascist tortu re chamber or hell in Thomas Mann as absol ute lock of beinf!. heard, as the absolute absence of a third porty. ) 1 " The aforementioned third party is not any mystical or metaphysical being (al though , given a certain understand i n g of the world, he can be expressed as such)-he is a constitutive aspect of the whole utterance .

The Problem

of rhe Tc x r

� I Z7

who, under deeper analysis, can be revealed in it. Th is follows from the natu re of the word , wh ich always wants to be heard, always see ks responsive u nderstanding, and does not stop at immediate understand­ i ng but presses on further and fu rther ( i ndefi nitely). For the word (and , conseq uently, for a human being) there is nothing more terrible than a lock of response. Even a word that is known to be false is not absolutely false, and always presupposes an instance that will u nders tand and justify it, even if in the form : "anyone in my posi­ tion would have lied, too . " Karl Marx s a i d t h a t o n l y thought uttered i n t h e word becomes a real thou ght for anothe r person and only in the same way is it a thought for my self. 20 B u t this other is not only the immediate other (second add re ssee); the word moves ever forward in search of responsive unde rstan d i ng. Being heard as such is already a d ialogic relation. The word wants to be heard , understood , responded to, and again to respond to the re­ sponse , and so forth ad infinitum. I t enters into a dialogue that does not have a semantic end ( b u t for one participant or another it can be physi­ cally broke n off). This, of cou rse, in no way weakens the purely the­ matic and i n vestigatory i ntentions of the word , its concentration on its ow n object. Both aspects are two sides of one and the same coin; they are i nsep arably l inked . They can be separated only i n a word that is kn own to be false, that is, i n one that wishes to deceive ( the separation be tween the referential i ntention and the intention to be heard and u n dersto od ). T he word that fears the third party and seeks only temporary recog­ n i ti on ( respon sive u nderstanding of l i mited depth) from immed iate ad d ress ees. The criterion o f depth of u nderstanding as one of the h ighest criteria for cogn ition in the human sciences. The word , if it is not an acknowl­ edged falsehood , is bottomless. To achieve this depth (and not height and bread th). The microworld of the word . The u tterance (speech work) as an u n repeatable, historically unique ind ividual whole. This does not exclude, of cou rse, a compositional and stylistic ty­ pology of speech works. There exist speech genres (everyday, rhetorical, scientific, literary, and so forth ). Speech genres are typical models for constructing a speech whole. But these generic models are distinct i n principle from linf{Uistir models of sentences. Units of language that are studied by lingu istics can in principle be

I Z8 �

The Problem of the Text

reproduced an unlimited nu mber of times in an u n l i mited number of utterances (includ i ng models of sentences that are rep roduced). To be sure, the frequ ency of reproduction d i ffers from various u nits ( the greatest for the phoneme, the least for the phrase). They can be units of a language and perform their function only because of this repro­ ducibility. Regardless of how the relations among these rep roducible units are defined (opposition, juxtaposition, contrast, d istribution, and so forth), these relations can n ever be dialogic. This wou l d violate thei r linguistic ( l anguage) functio n . Units of speech commu nication-whole u tterances-cannot b e re­ produced (although they can be quoted) and they are rel ated to one another dialogically.

Notes I . A term i n structu ral l ingu istics introduced by Louis Hjelmslev, founder of the Copenhagen or so-called Glossematic School. H e defines com m utation as "mutation between the membe rs of a paradigm ," a member being a component

and a paradigm being a class within a semiotic system ( Prolegomma to a T!leory of Languagt, tr. Francis j. Whitfield ( M ad ison: U niversity of Wisconsin Press , 1 961 ], pp.

1 34-35).

2. I n Anna Karm;na, part

4,

chapter

4,

Anna accuses Kare n i n of being cruel

during the confrontation in which he an nou nces his decision to d ivorce her. He responds that she is not aware of what he has suffe re d . But h i s tongue becomes

twisted and he cannot pronounce the Russian word for "I have suffered" or "en­

dured" : pemtradal. After several attempts he finally lets it suffice to say pelestral (wh ich David M agarshack has translated as "shutTe red" i n the Signet Books ed ition). 3. A l i ngu istic d iscipline created by the Russian l ingu ist and membe r of the

Prague Circle N. S. Trubetskoy. See his Osnovy fonologi; ( F u n d amentals of pho­ nology) (Prague, 1939; Moscow, 1960). Based on the Saussu rean d i st inctio n be­ tween langut and paro/t, Trubetskoy also distinguishes between phonetic s-a sci­

ence of the sou nds of speech as a material phe nomenon that is stu d ied by me thod s of natural science-and phonology, the study of the sou nd of language that pe r­ forms certain se mantic-d iffe rentiat i ng fu nctions in the language system .

4.

"Science o f t h e spirit" refers t o what is known a s t h e Gtisttm;ssmscllaftm in

German ( i . e . , the h u man sciences). One of the great preocc u pations of the Neo­ Kantian move ment in German u n ive rsities in the last decades of the nineteenth

century was to overcome the growing d isparity be tween the natu ral (or exact) sci­

ences and the human sciences. The work of the whole Marburg School ( Herman n

The Proble m of the Text

� 1 29

Cohen, Pau l Natorp, E rnst Cassirer) is really a phi losophy of science. The most easily assi m i lated ideas on the relation between the human and exact sciences are found in the work of the Freiburg School that included Wilhelm Windelhand (whose 1 894 d i s t i nction between the homeothetic and id iographic forms of knowl­ edge proved seminal) and his pupil Heinrich Rickert (see his Scimct and History, ed. Arth u r Goddard , tr. George Reisman [ Princeton : Van Nostrand, 1 962 )). I n "Au thor and Hero i n Aesthetic Activi ty," Bakhtin distingu ishes between spirit (duiA), the gen e ral com p u lsion to understand or the d rive to meaning shared by all h u mans, and sou l (dus/za), the features of any particu lar person that serve to si tuate him or her in a particular place in existence not occu pied by anyone else. 5. Here , and in his very early work, we see another interest Bakhtin shared with Vygotsky: the phenomenology of acting (see "Au thor and Hero," i n Estttiia slovesnogo I'VotrAtstva, pp. 63 - 75). Com pare Bakhtin's notes with L. S. Vygotsky, "K voprosu o psikholog i i tvorchestva aktera" (Concerning the question of psychol­ ogy in the c reative work of actors), in P. M. Jakobson, PsiiAologija sttsnidttskiklt dtustv aittra (The psychology of actors' feelings on stage) (Moscow: Gosizdat,

1 936). 6. See note 1 in this section , above. Glossematics was Hjelmslev's attempt to

create a general l i nguistic theory that would be maximally abstracted from the ma­ ter ial of concrete languages: " . . . l inguistic theory must be of use for describing and predictin g not only any possible text composed in a certain language, but, on the basis of the i n formation that i t gives abo u t language in general, any possible text composed in any language whatsoever" (see Proltgomma to a Theory of lAn­ guage, p. 1 7). 7. See note 3 in "The Problem of Speech Genres. " On "verbal reactions" and

behaviorism, see a lso Bakhtin's remarks in V. N. Voloshi nov, Freudianism, tr. I. R. Titu n i k (New York: Academic Press, 1976), p. 2 1 , where the relation of verbal re­ actio n to i n ne r s peech in Vygmsky is d iscussed. 8. See note 2 in " From Notes Made i n 1 970- 7 1 . " 9 . Refe rence h e re is t o Anna Karmina, part 1 , chapter 30. " 'Yes, a s you see, an affectionate husband , as affectionate as in the first year of marriage, burning wi th i mpatie nce to see you , ' he said i n h is thin voice and that tone which he almost always used with her, a tone of mockery of someone w ho woul d actually speak th at way. "

1 0. Makar Dev ushkin is the hero of Dostoevsky's short novel Poor Folk ( 1 845). 1 I. An exa mple from Vasily Zhu kovsky's "Two Stories and One More" ( 183 1 ) , th e t hird of w h ich i s a poetic rendering o f a s tory by Johann Hebel about a German cra ftsm an who fi nds h imself in Amsterdam without knowing any Dutch; to all his

que stions he receives the same answer: "Kanni tverstan" ( I don't u nderstand you ). The crafts man assu mes after a while that this is a proper name, giving rise i n his co n scio usness to the fan tastic figu re of Kan n i tverstan. Vygotsky also uses the ex­ a mp le of Kannitverstan in an article Bakhtin quotes in his Freud book: "Con­ scio usn ess as a P roble m in the Psychology of Behavior," in Psii!tologija i Marisizm, ed . K. Korn i lov (Moscow-Leni ngrad : GIZ, 1 925), pp. 1 79-80.

1 2 . Bakhtin i nvest i gated the d ialogue of styles in works that deliberately in­ clude many styles, using as his exam ple Pushkin's Eugmt Ontgin (see "Discou rse in the Novel," in Tilt Dialogic Imagination). In "From Notes Made in 1 970- 7 1 ,"

1 30 �

The Problem of the Text

Bakhrin points to m ajor d ifferences i n his approach to Eugene Onegin from that taken by Yury Lotman in his studies of the same work. 13. See note 19, below. 14. Rudolph H irzel ( 1 846- 1 9 1 7 ) , a German philologist who w rote Der Dialog: Rin literarltistoriscller Versucll, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1 895 ) . Also of i mportance for under­ standing the distinctiveness of Bakhtin's dialogism among other approaches are Gustav Tarde, L'Opinion el la Joule ( Paris, 1 90 1 ); L. V. Shcherba, "On Dialogic Speech," Russkija nell (Petrograd , 1923), vol . 1 , pp. 96- 1 94; and Jan Mukarovsky, "Two Studies of Dialogue," in The Word and Verbal Art, tr. John B u rbank and Peter Steiner (New H aven: Yale Un iversity P ress, 1 977), pp. 81 - 1 1 5 . 1 5 . Between the two traditional grammatical categories of direct speech (ptjamaja recll) and indirect speech (kosvennaja recll), Bakhtin posits an interm ediate term , quasi-direct speech ( nesobstvenno-ptjamaja nell). This category is given deta iled treatment in chapter 4 of Volosh i nov, Man:ism and the Philosophy of Language, tr. Lad islav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (New York: Academic Press , 1 973), pp. 141 59. Quasi-direct speech involves d iscourse that is formally authorial, bu t that be ­ longs in i ts "emotional structure" to a represented character, whose inne r speech is transmitted and regulated by the author.

16. The various forms of com m u n icating others' speech i n the structures of the Russian language-anticipatory, absentminded, concealed , reified , and substi­ tuted d i rect speech, and, finally, q uasi-d i rect speech ( to wh ich a separate , large chapter is devoted)-are described i n Man:ism and the Philosophy of Language. 1 7 . From the outset of h is career, Bakhtin was deeply conce rned about the dan­ gers of psychologism. The most powerful and subtle of his attacks on psycholo­ gism is found in those sections of "Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity" where he criticizes the so-called E xpressionist School of aesthetics, in particular the work of Johann Volkelt ( 1 848- 1 930) and Theodor Lipps ( 1 1:15 1 - 1 9 1 4 ) ( see Estetika slovesnogo tvorcllestva, pp. 58 - 8 1 ). 1 8 . From Pushkin's article "On Man's Duties, an E ssay for S ilvio Pellico" ( 1 836) : . . . reason is inexhaustible in the consideration of concepts , as language is inexhaustible in the joining of words. All words are in the lexico n; but the books that are constantly appearing are not a repetition of the lexicon . . . . Taken sepa­ rately, an idea can never offer anything new, but ideas can be varied to infin ity" ( The Critical Prose of Alexander Pu.rllkin, u. Carl P roffer ( B loomington: I nd i a na U n i ­ versity Press, 1 969 j, p. 205 ). 19. I n Mann's Dr. Faustus, the devil describes hell as "every com pass ion . e ve ry grace, every spari ng, e ve ry trace of consideration for the i ncred ulous , impl ori ng obj ection 'that you verily cannot do so to a soul' : it is d on e it happens. and ind eed without being called to any reckon ing in word s ; in the sou ndless cel lar . far down beneath God's hearing, and happens for all eternity" ( /)r. Faustus, tr. H . T. Lowe­ Porte r ( London: Pengu i n Books, 1 9681. p . Z38 ) . Th e Gestapo and SS to rtu re chambers we re very much on Mann's mind as he was writing his nove l . for at jus t that time the most dreadfu l extermi nation camps were bei ng l i be rated a nd for t he fi rst t i m e the fu ll e x te n t of t h e N azi horrors was m ade a pp a re n t to all . !\I a n n wrote a special article at t h i s t i me ( fi rs t published as "The Ge rman Gu ilt ," late r as "T he Cam ps" ) for the newspape r disuihuted to the Germans in zon es occ u pied by "

,

The Problem of the Text

..t; 1 3 1

American troops (see Tlze Story of a NOfJel: Tlze Genesis of 'Doltor Faustus, ' tr. Rich ard and Clara Winston ( Ne w York: K nopf, 1 96 1 ], p. 1 1 5).

ZO. See Karl Marx and Fried rich E ngels, Tile German Ideology ( M oscow: Prog­ ress Publishers , 1 964 , p. 42 ) : "The production of notions, ideas and conscious­ ness is from the beg i n n i ng d i rect l y interwoven with the material activity and mate­ rial intercou rse of human beings, the language of real life. The production of men's ideas, t h i n k i n g their spiritual intercourse, here appears as the d i rect efflux of their material cond i t i o n . " ,

·· - -- -- � �

-----

From Notes Made in

-----

1970- 7 1

Irony has penetrated a l l languages of modern times (especially French); it has penetrated i nto all words and forms (especially syntactic; for ex­ ample, i rony has destroyed the cu mbersome " high-flow n" periodicity of speech). I rony is everywhere-from the minimal and impercep­ tible, to the loud , wh ich borders on laughter. Modern m a n does not proclaim; he speaks. That is, he speaks with reservations. P ro­ clamatory gen res h ave been retained mainly as parod ic and semi­ parodic building blocks for the novel. Pushkin's language is precisely this kind , permeated with i ro ny ( to varying degrees), the equivocal language of modern times. The speaking subjects of high , proclamatory gen res-of priests, prophets, preachers, judges, leaders, patriarchal fathers , and so forth­ have departed this life . They have all been replaced by the writer, sim ply the writer, who has fallen heir to their styles. He e i ther stylizes them ( i . e . , assumes the guise of a p rophet, a preacher, and so forth) or parodies them ( to one degree or another). He must develop h is own style, the style of the writer. For the singe r at ancient feasts, the rhap­ sode, and the tragedian ( Dionysian priest), even for the cou rt poet of more recent times, the problem did not yet exist. For them the set­ tings were predetermined: various kinds of festivals, cult rituals, and feasts. E ven prenovelistic discourse had a particular setting-festivals of the carnival type . But the writer is deprived of style and setti n g. Literature has been completely secularized . The nove l , deprived of style and setting, is essentially not a gen re ; it must i m itate ( rehearse) some extraartistic gen re : the everyday story, letters , diaries, and so forth . A particular nuance of sobriety, simpl icity, democratism , and indi­ vidual freedom inheres i n all modern languages. One can say, with cer­ tain reservations, that all of them (especially French) have arisen from the popular and profane gen res. All of them h ave bee n determined to a certain degree by a lengthy and complex process of expunging the

From Notes Made i n

I IJ70 - 7 1

...; I .B

other's sacred word , and expunging the sacred and amhoritarian word in general, with i ts indisputabi li ty, u nconditional ity, and unequivocal­ icy. Because of its sacrosanct, impenetrable boundaries, th is word is inert, and i t has l i m i ted possibilities of contacts and combinations. This is the word that retards and freezes though t. The word that de­ mands reverent repeti tion and not fu rther development, corrections, and additions. The word removed from d ialogue: it can only be cited amid rejoinders; it cannot itself become a rejoinder among equally privileged rejoi nders. This word had spread everywhere, limiting, di­ recting, and retard ing both thought and live experience of life. It was during the p rocess of struggling with this word and expelling it (with the help of parodic antibodies) that new languages were also formed. The bo undary l i nes of the other's word . Vestiges in the syntactical struc tu re . The natu re of the sacred (authoritarian) word ; the pecul iarities of its behavi or i n th e context of speech communication and also in the con­ text of folklore (ora l ) and literary gen res (its inertness, its withdrawal from d ialogue , its extremely limited ability to combine in general and especially with profa ne-not sacred-words, and so forth ). These pe­ culiarities, of course , do nothing to define it l i ngu istically. They are meta lingui stic. The a rea of metalinguis tics also includes various kinds and degrees of otherness of the other's word and various forms of rela­ tio ns to it (s tylizatio n , parody, polemics, and so forth) as well as vari­ ou s met hods of expunging it from speech life. But all these phe­ no me na and processes, particu larly the centuries-long process of ex pu nging the other's sacred word , are also reflected (precipitated ) in th e l in gu istic aspect of the language, particularly in the syntactic and tex ico- sema ntic structure of modern languages. Stylistics must be ori­ ented toward a metalinguis tic study of large events (events that take ma ny cen turies to accomplish ) in the speech life of the people. The ty pes of words that e mbody changes in various cultures and ages ( i . e . , na m es, sobriq uets, and so forth). Qu iet ude and sou n d . The percepti o n of sound (against the back­ grou nd of quietude ) . Quietude and silence (the absence of the word ). Th e pau se and the beginni ng of the word . The disturb� nce of qui­ . et ud e by sou nd is mechan ical and physiological (as a condano n of per­ ce pti on); the distu rbance of silence by the word is person alistic � nd in tell igib le: it is an entirely different world . In quie � ud � nothang m akes a soun d (or somethin g does not make a sound ); an s a lence "? ­ _ body speaks (or somebody does not speak) . Silence is passabl e only a n

U4 �

From Notes Made i n 1 970- 7 1

the human world (and only for a person). Of cou rse, both quietude and silence are a lways relat ive . The conditions for perceiving a sou nd, the conditions for u nder­ stand i ng/recogn izing a sign , the cond i t ions for inte l l igent u nderstand­ ing of the word . Silence-i ntelligible sound (a word )-and the pause constitute a special logosphere , a u nified and continuous structu re , a n open (un­ finalized) totali ty. Understanding-recogni tion of repeated elements of speech ( i . e . , language) and intelligent u nderstand ing of the u n repeatable u tter­ ance. Each element of speech is perceived on two planes: on the plane of the repeatability of the language and o n the plane of the u n repeat­ abil i ty of the u tterance. Through the u tterance, langu age joi ns the historical u n repeatability and u n finalized totality of the logosphere. The word as a means (language) and the word as i ntell i gibil ity. The intelligizing word belongs to the domain of goals. The word as the final ( highest) goal . T h e chronotopicity o f artistic thinking (especially ancient think­ ing). A point of view is chronotopic, that is, it i ncludes both the spatial and temporal aspects . Directly related to this is the valorized (hierar­ chical) v iewpoint ( relationship to h igh and low). The c hronotope of the depicted event, the chro notope of the narrator and the ch ronotope of the author ( the ultimate authorial i nstance). Ideal and real space i n t h e fine arts. Easel pai nting is located outside structured ( h iera rchi­ cally structu red ) space; it is suspended i n air. The inadmissibili ty of mono-tony (of serious monotony) . The cul­ ture of multi-tony. The sphere of serious tone. I rony as a form of si­ lence. I rony (and laughter) as means for transcending a s ituation , ris­ i ng above it. Only dogmatic and authoritarian cultu res are one-sidedly serious. Violence does not know laughte r. Analysis of a serious face (fear or threat). Analysis of a laughing face . The place of pathos. The pathetic element transformed i nto the maud l i n . The sen se of anony­ mous th reat in the tone of an an nou nce r who is transmitting i m portant com m u nications. Seriousness burdens u s with hopeless situations. but laughter lifts us above them and del ivers us fro m the m . Laughter does not encumber man , it libe rates h i m .

From Notes M a d e in 1 9711 - 7 1

The soci a l, choral natu re of lau�hte r, its striving t o pervade a l l peoples and the e n t i re worl d . The doors of lau�htcr a rc op en

to one

and a l l . I n d ignation , anger, and dissatisfact ion are always u n i l atera l : they excl u d e t h e one toward whom they are d i rected, a n d s o fo rth ; they evoke reciproca l anger. They d ivi de, while laughter only u n i tes; it cannot d ivide. Laughter can be combi ned with profoundly inti mate emotional ity (Sterne, jean Pau l , and others). Laugh ter and festiv­ i ty. The c u l t u re of the weekday. Laughter and the kingdom of ends ( means are always serious). E veryth ing that is tru ly great must i ncl ude an e lement of laughter. Otherwise it becomes th reateni ng, terri ble, or pompous; in a n y case , it is l i mi ted . Laughter l i fts the barrier and clears the path . The j oyfu l , ope n , festive laugh . The closed , purely negative, satiri­ cal laugh. This i s not a laugh ing laugh. The Gogolian laugh is joyfu l . Laughter a n d free d o m . Laugh ter and equality. Laughter makes thi ngs close and fam i l iar. It is i m poss ible to i m plant laughter or festivities. A festival is always primordial or anarchic. Serious tones also sound d i ffe rent i n a m u l t i tonal c u l tu re : reso­ nances of laugh i ng tones fal l on the m , they lose thei r exclusivity and u n iq ueness, they are s u pplemented by the element of laugh ter. The study of cu l t u re (or some area of it) at the leve l of system and at the h i gher level of o rganic u n i ty : ope n , becom i ng, u n resolved and u n ­ predetermined, capable of death a n d renewal , transcending itself, that is, e xceed ing its own bou ndaries . An u nderstanding of the m u ltistyled nature of Eugene Onegin (see Lotman) as a recoding ( romanticism i nto real i s m and so fo rth ) leads to a fa l l i n g away of that most i mportant dia­

logic aspect and to the transformation of a dialogue of s tyles i nto a s i m p le coexiste nce of various versions of one and the same style. 1 Be­ h i nd styles l i es the i n tegral viewpoi nt of the integral individual pe rson­ ali ty. A code pres upposes content to be somehow ready-m ade and pre­ s u pposes the realization of a c hoice among various given codes. The u tterance ( s peech prod uct) as a whole ente rs i nto an entirely new sphere of speech com m u n ication (as a unit of this new sphere), which does not ad m i t of descri ption or defi n i t ion i n the te rms and me thods of l i nguistics or-more broad ly-semiotics. This sphere is �ove rned by a special law, and i ts study req u i res a special methodology and , it should be said ou tright, a s pecial scie nce (scientific d iscipline). The u ttera nce as a whole does not ad m i t of defi n i t ion i n te rms of l i n-

U6 �

From Notes Made in 1 970 - 7 1

gu istics ( o r sem iotics ). T h e term " text" i s not a t a l l adequate to the essence of the entire utterance . There can be no such thing as an isolated u tterance . It always pre­ supposes utterances that p recede and follow it. No one u tterance can be either the first or the last. E ach is only a l i n k i n the chain, and none can be stud ied outside this chain. Among u tterances there exist rela­ tions that cannot be defined in either mechanistic or l inguistic catego­ ries. They have no ana logues. Abstraction from extratextual aspects, but not from other texts that a re related to the given one in the chain of speech com m u nication. Their i nternal social nature . The meeting of two consciousnesses in the p rocess of understanding and studying the u tterance . The per­ sonal natu re of relations among u tterances. The definition of the utter­ ance and i ts bou ndaries. The second consciousness and metalanguage . Metalangu age is not simply a code; it always has a dialogic relationshi p to the language it describes and analyzes. The positions of the experimenter and the observer in quantum theory. The existence of this active position changes the entire situation and, consequently, the res u l ts of the ex­ periment. The event that has an observer, however d istant, closed, and passive he may be, is already a different event (see Zosima's " mys­ terious visitor" ) . 2 The problem of the second consciousness in the hu­ man sciences . Questions ( questionnaires) that change the conscious­ ness of the i ndividual being questioned. The inexhaustibility of the second consciousness, that is, conscious­ ness of the person who understands and responds: here i n l ies a poten­ tial infinity of responses , languages, codes . I nfinity aga i nst infinity. Benevolent demarcation and only then coope ration. I nstead of a dis­ closure ( positive ) of the relative (partial) truth of their positions and their viewpoints, they strive-and on this they expend all their ef­ forts-for absolute refutation and destruction of their opponent, for total destruction of the other viewpoint. Not a single scientific trend ( that has not been the work of charla­ tans) has [ illegible ) totally, and not one scientific trend has remained in its initial and i m m u table form . There has not been a si ngle scien­ tific age when only one trend existed ( but there has almost always been one dominant trend). This is not a question of mere eclecticism : the merging of all trends into one and only one would be fatal to sci-

From Notes Made in 1 970 - 7 1

...: U 7

ence ( i f scie nce we re morta l ) . The more demarcation the bet t e r, b u t benevolent demarcation. Wi thout border d isputes. Coope rat ion . The existence of border zones ( new trends and disci plines usually origi nate in them). The wi tness and the j udge . When consciousness appeared in the world (in existence) and, perhaps, when biological life appeared ( per­ haps not only animals, but trees and grass also witness and j udge), the world (existence) changed rad ically. A stone is still stony and the sun still sunny, but the event of existence as a whole (unfi nalized ) be­ comes completely different because a new and major character in this event appears for the first time on the scene of earthly existence-the witness and the j udge. And the sun , while remaining physically the same, has changed because it has begun to be cognized by the wi tness and the judge . It has stopped simply being and has started being i n itself and for itsel f ( these categories appear for the first time here) as wel l as for the other, because it has been reflected in the consciousness of the other ( the witness and the j udge) : this has caused it to change rad ically, to be enriched and transformed . (Th is has nothing to do with "other existence . " ) This cannot be understood as existe nce (nature) begin n i ng to be con­ scious of i tself i n man, beginn ing to reflect itself. If this were the case, existe nce would remain the same, it would only begi n to replicate itself (it would remain solitary, as the world was before the appearance of consciousness-before the witness and the judge). No, something ab­ solu tely new has appeared, a supra-existence has emerged . ' And there is no longer j ust a kernel of existence i n this supra-existence ; all existence exists i n it and for it. T his is analogous to the problem of man's self-awareness. Does the cogni zer coincide with the cognized ? I n other words, does man remain only with himself, that is, remain solitary? Do not all events of human existen ce here change rad ically? Such is i ndeed the case. Someth ing absolutely new appears here: the supraperson, the supra-/, that is, the wi tne ss and the judge of the whole human being, of the whole /, and conseq uently someone who is no longer the person, no longer the /, but the other. The reflection of the self i n the empi rical other through whom one must pass in order to reach 1-for-myse/f (can this /-for-myself be solitary? ). The absolute freedom of this /. But this freedom cannot change existe nce, so to speak, materially ( nor can it want to)-it can change only the sense of existence ( to recogn ize it, to justify it, and so

1 3H �

From Notes M ade in 1 970 - 7 1

forth); this i s the freedom o f the witness a n d the judge . I t i s expressed in the word. Authenticity and truth i n he re not in existence i tself, but only in an existence that is acknowledged and u ttere d . The problem of relative freedom, that is, that freedom which re­ mains in existence and changes the makeup of existe nce, but not its sense . This freedom changes material existence and can become a force that is detached from sense , a vulgar and naked material force. Creativity is always related to a change of sense and cannot become naked material force . L e t t h e witness see a n d know only an insign ificant corner o f exis­ tence, and all existence that is not cognized and not seen by him changes its quality (sense), becoming u ncognized , u nsee n existe nce, and not simply existe nce as it was before, that is, without any relatio n­ ship to the witness. Everyth ing that pertains to me enters my consciousnes s , beginn ing with my name, from the external world through the mouths of others ( my mother, and so forth ), with the i r intonation, i n their emotional and value-assigning tonality. I realize myself initially through others: from them I receive words, forms, and tonalities for the formation of my initial idea of mysel f. The elements of infantilism in self­ awareness ( "Cou ld mama really love such a . . . " ) 4 sometimes remain until the end of life (perception and the idea of one's self, one's body, face , and past in tender tones). j ust as the body is formed initially in the mother's womb ( body), a person's consciousness awakens wrapped in another's consciousness. Only late r does one begi n to be subsumed by neutral words and categories, that is, one is defined as a person irre­ spective of I and other. Th ree types of relations: 1. Relations among objects , among thi ngs , among physica l phen o m­ ena, among chemical phenomena, causal relations , mathem atical re la­ tions , logical relations, lingu istic relations, and so forth . 2 . Relations between subject and object. 3 . Relations among s u bjects-i ndivid ua l , personal rela tions : d ia logic relations among u tterances, eth ical relations , and so forth . Th is al so includes all kinds of pe rsonified semantic ties. Relation s am ong con­ sciousnesses, tru ths, mutual influences, apprenticesh i p , love , h ate, falsehood , friendship, respect, revere nce, trust, m i strust, and so fo r th . B u t if the relations are de-personified (among utteranc es an d sty le s. with the l i n guistic approach , and so forth ) , they change i n to th e firs t

Fro m Notes M ade in 1 970 - 7 1

type. O n the other hand , i t i s possible to personify many ohjcct l i kc relations and transform the m into the third type . Rc ifint ion and personificatio n . T h e determination of the subject ( o f personality ) in imersubjectivc relations: concrete ness (name), integri ty, answerability, and so forth ; inexhausti bili ty, open-ended ness, openness. Transitions and combinations among the th ree types of relations. For example, a l i te rary scholar disputes (polemicizes) with the author or the protagon ist and at the same time explains him as being com ­ pletely causally determi ned (socially, psychologically, a n d biologi­ cally). Both viewpoints are j ustified, but within certain methodologi­ cally recognized l i m i ts and without combining them. One cannot forbid a physician to work on cadavers on the grou nds that his duty is to treat not d ead but l iving people. Death-dealing analysis is q uite jus­ tified within certain limits. The better a person understands the de­ gree to wh ich he is externally determined (his substantiality), the closer h e comes to u nderstanding and exercising h is real freedom . Pechorin , for all h i s complex and contradictory nature, seems uni­ fied and naive compared to Stavrogin . 5 He had not tasted of the Tree of K nowledge . Before Dostoevsky, no heroes in Russian literature had tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil . Therefore , the novel could still contai n naive and integral poetry, lyric and poetic land­ sc ape. They (the h e roes before Dostoevsky) stil l had access to bits (corn e rs) of earthly paradise from which Dostoevsky's heroes were cast ou t once and for a l l . T h e narrow historical horizons of our literary scholarship. E nclosure within the most i m med iate historical epoch. The lack of definition ( me thodological) of the very category of the epoch. We explai n a phe­ nomenon i n terms of i ts own present and the recent past (within the li m i ts of the "epoch " ). What we foreground is the ready-made and fi­ nalized. E ven in antiq u i ty we si ngle out what is ready-made and final­ ized , and not what has origi nated and is developi ng. We do not study lite ratu re's prelite rary embryos ( i n language and ritual). The narrow ( "s pecialists' " ) understanding of specifics. Possibil ity and necessi ty. It is h a rdly possible w speak about necessity in the human sciences. H e re it is scientifically possi ble only to d i sclose possibilities a n d the re­ alization of one of them. The repeatable and u n repeatabili ty. Vernadsky on the slow historical formation of basic categories ( not only scientific but also artistic). 6 Lite ratu re, at its historical stage, came upon what was ready-made : languages were ready-made, the

1 40

t:w

From Notes M ade i n 1 970- 7 1

main modes o f seeing and thinking were ready-made. They also con­ ti nued to develop, but slowly (their development cannot be traced with i n an epoch). The l i n k between lite rary scholars h i p and h istory of cultu re (cu lture not as a s u m of phenomena, but as a totality). Herein lies Veselovsky's strength (semiotics ). 7 Literature is a n i nseparable part of the totality of cultu re and cannot be studied outside the total cul­ tu ra l context. I t cannot be severed from the rest of culture and related directly ( bypassing culture) to socioeconomic or oth e r factors. These factors influence culture as a whole and only through i t and in conjunc­ tion with it do they affect l i te ratu re. The l i te rary process is a part of the cultural process and cannot be torn away from it. Science (and cultural consciousness) of the n i neteenth century singled out only a m i niatu re world (and we have narrowed i t even more) from the boundless world of l i te ratu re. This m i niatu re world in­ cluded almost noth i ng of the E ast. The world of culture and l i te rature is essentially as bou ndless as the universe. We are speaking not about its geographical breadth (this is l i mited) , but about i ts semantic depths, which are as bottomless as the depths of m atter. The infinite d iversity of i nterpretations, images, figurative semantic combinations , materials and their i nterpretations, and so forth. We have narrowed i t terribly by selecting and by modernizing what has been selecte d . We i mpoverish the past and do not en rich ourselves. We a re suffocat i ng in the cap­ tivity of narrow and homogeneous i nterpretations. The main l ines of the deve lopment of l i te ratu re that h ave prepared one writer or a nother, one work or another, throughout the centuries (and in various nations). B u t we know only the writer, his world view, and his times. Eugene Onegin was created d u ring the cou rse of seven years. But the way was bei n g prepared for it and it was beco m i ng pos­ sible throughout hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of years. Such great realities of lite ratu re as ge n res are completely underesti mated . The problem of tone in l iteratu re ( laughter, tears , and their deriva­ tives) . The problem of typology ( the orga n ic unity of motifs and im­ ages). The problem of sentimental realism (as distinct from sentimen­ tal romanticism; Veselovsky) . " The significance of tears and sadness for one's world view. The tearfu l aspect of the worl d . Compassion . The d iscovery of this aspect in Shakespeare (complex of motifs). Spi ri­ tualists. 9 Sterne. The cult of weakness, u n protected ness, kind ness, and so forth-an i mals, children, weak women , fools and id iots, the flowe r, everyth ing smal l , and so forth . The naturalistic world view,

Fro m Notes Made

in

1 970- 7 1

..:; 1 4 1

pragmatism , utilitarian i s m , and positivism create a monotonous, gray seriousness. The impoverishment of tones in world literatu re . Nietz­ sche and the struggle against compassion. The cult of power and tri­ u mph. Com pa ssion debases man, and so forth . Tru th cannot triumph and conquer. E lements of senti mentalism in Romain Rol la n d . Tears (along with laughter) as a liminal situation (when practical action is precl uded) . Ears (and sentimentalism) are antiofficial. Conventional chee rfu l ness. B ravado. Bourgeois nuances of sentimentalism . Intellec­ tual weakness, stupidity, and self-satisfied mediocri ty ( E m m a Bovary and compassion for her, ani mals). Degeneration into mannerism. Sen­ timentalism in the lyric and in lyrical roles in the novel. E lements of sentimentalism i n melod rama. The sentimental idyl l . Gogol and sentimentalism. Turgenev. Grigorovich . 1" Sentimental treatment of everyday l i fe . The sentimental apology for family life. The sensitive romance. Compassion, pity, and emotionali ty. Hypocrisy. Sentimental executioners. Complex combi nations of the carnival and sentimental­ ism (Ste rne, jean Pau l , and others). There are certain aspects of life and man that can be i nterpreted and justified only i n terms of senti­ mentalism . The sentimental aspect cannot be universal or cosmic. It narrows the world, makes it small and isolated . The pathos of the small and the personal. The salon nature of sentimentalism . Alfonse Daud et. 11 The theme of the "poor clerk" in Russian l i teratu re . The rejection of the large spatiotemporal historical scopes. Departure into the m i croworld of simple human experiences. The journey without a jou rney (Sterne). The reaction to neoclassical heroics and to E n ­ ligh te n ment rationalism. T h e cul t of sensibility. The reaction t o large­ scale critical realism . Rousseau and Wertherism in Russian literatu re . T h e false tendency toward reducing everything t o a single con­ sciou sness, toward dissolving in it the other's consciousness (wh i le being u n derstood) . The principal advantages of outsideness (spatially, te mporally, and nationally). One cannot understand understand i ng as em otional e m pathy [ Einfiihlung] as the placement of the sel f in the othe r's position ( loss of one's own position). This is required only for perip heral aspects of u nderstandin g. One cannot understand under­ sta nding as a translation from the other's language into one's own language. To understand a given text as the author hi mself understood it. But our understanding can and should be bette r. Powerful and profound

Fro m Notes Made i n 1 970- 7 1

1 42 eN

c reativity i s largely u nconscious and polysemic. Through u nderstand­ ing it is suppleme nted by consciousness, and the multiplicity of its meani ngs is revealed . Thus, u ndersta n d i ng supplements the text: it is active and also creative by natu re. Creative u nderstanding continues creativity, and multiplies the artistic wealth of h u manity. The co­ creativity of those who u nderstand. Unders tanding and evaluatio n . Understanding is i m possible without evaluation. Understanding cannot be separated from eva l u ation: they are simultaneous and constitu te a u nified i ntegral act. The pe rson who understands approaches the work with his own already formed world view, from his own viewpoint, from h i s own positio n . These positions determine his evaluation to a certain degree , but they the mselves do not always stay the same. They are influenced by the artwork, which always i ntroduces something new. Only when the position is dogmati­ cally inert is there nothi ng new revealed in the work ( th e dogmatist gains nothing; he cannot be e n riched ) . The person who u nderstands must not reject the possibil ity of changi ng or even abandoning h is al­ ready prepared viewpoints and positions. In the act of understand i ng, a struggle occu rs that res u l ts in mutual change and e n richment. A meeting with a great h u man bei n g , 1 z as something that deter­ mines, obligates, and u n i tes-this is the highest moment of under­ standing.

Meeting and com m u nication in Karl jaspers ( Philosophie, 2 vols. [ Berl i n , 1 932 ] ). 13 Active agreement/dis agreement (if it i s not dogmatica lly pred ete r­ mined) stimulates and deepens understanding, makes the oth er's word more resilient and true to i tself, and precludes m u tual d issolu tion and confusion. The clear demarcation of two consciousnesses, their coun­ terposition and their i nterrelations. Understanding repeatable eleme nts and the u n repeatabl e wh ole. Recognizing and encou nte ring the new and unfa m i l iar. Both of th ese aspects ( recogn ition of the repeated and d iscove ry of the ne w) sho ul d me rge inseparably in the living act of understand ing. Afte r all , th e o n­ repeatabil ity of the whole is reflected in each repeatable ele men t th at partici pates in the whole ( i t is, as it were , repeatably u n re pea tab le ). The exclusive orientation toward recogn izing, search ing on ly for th e familiar ( that which has a l ready bee n ) . docs not allow the new to re vea l itself ( i . e the fu ndame n tal . u n repeatablc total i ty ). Quite freq ue ntl y. methods of explanation and inte rpretation arc red uced to th is k i n d o f d i sclosu re of the repeatable. to a recogn ition of the alread y fa m i lia r. . •

From Notes M ade i n 1 970- 7 1

and , i f the new i s grasped at all, i t i s only i n a n extremely impover­ ished and abstract form . Moreover, the individual personal ity of the creator (speaker), of course, disappears completely. Everything that is repe atable and recognizable is fu lly dissolved and assimi lated solely by the con sc iousness of the person who understands: in the other's con­ scio usne ss he can see and understand only his own consciousness. He is in no way enriched . In what belongs to others he recogni zes only his own . I understand the other's word (u tterance, speech work) to mean any word of any other person that is spoken or written in his own ( i . e . , my own native) or in any other language, that is, any word that is not mine. 14 In this sense, all words (utterances, speech , and literary works) except my own are the other's words. I l ive in a world of others' words. And my entire life is a n orientation in this world, a reaction to others' words (an infinitely dive rse reaction), beginning with my assimilation of them (in the process of initial mastery of speech) and ending with assimilation of the wealth of human culture (expressed in the word or i n other semiotic materials). The other's word sets for a person the spe­ cial task of understanding this word (such a task does not exist with respect to one's own word , or it exists in an entirely d i ffe rent sense). E ve rything that is expressed in the word collapses i nto the miniatu re world of each person's own words (words sensed as his own). This and the i m mense, boundless world of others' words constitute a primary fact of h u man consciousness and hu man l i fe that, l ike all that is pri­ mary and taken for granted , has not yet been adequately studied (con­ sciously perceived ). In any case, it has not been consciously perceived in view of its i m mense and essential significance. The immense sig­ nificance of this for the personality, for the human I ( i n i ts unre­ peatability). The complex interrelations with the other's word in all spheres of culture and activity fi l l all of man's life. But neither the word in the cross section of these i nterrelations nor the I of the speaker i n that s a m e interrelation has been studied. All of each i ndivid ual's words are d ivided into the categories of his own and others' , but the bou ndaries between them can change , and a tense dialogic struggle takes place on the boundaries. But when lan­ guage and various areas of ideological creativity are studied , this struggle becomes d i stant and abstract, for there exists a n abstract posi­ tion of a tllird party that is identified with the "objective position" as such , with the position of some "scientific cognition ." The position of

From Notes Made in 1970- 7 1 the third party i s q u i te justified when one person can assume another's position, when a pe rson is completely replaceable . B u t it is justified only in those situations, and when solving those p roblems, where the integral and u n repeatable i ndividuality of the person is not required, that is, when a person, so to speak, is specialized, reflecting only a part of his i n d ividuality that is detached from the whole, when he is acting not as I

myself,

but "as an e ngineer," "as a physicist," and so forth. In

the area of abstract scientific cognition and abstract thought, such a

replacement of one person with another, that is, abstraction from the I and

thou, is possible (but even here , probably, only up to a certain

poi nt). I n life as the object of thought (abstract thought), man i n gen­ eral exists and a th i rd party exists , but in the most vital, experienced life only /,

thou, and he exist. And only in this life are such primary word and the other's word d i sclosed (exist) . And in gen­

realities as my

eral those primary realities that have not yet been the subjects of cog­ nition (abstract, generalizing) therefore go u n noticed by it. The complex event of e ncountering and interacting with another's word has been almost completely ignored by the corresponding human sciences (and above all by literary scholarship). Sciences of the spi rit; their field of inquiry is not one but two "spirits" (the studied and the person w ho stud ies, which must not be me rged i nto one spirit). The real object of study is the i nterrelation and i nteraction of "spirits . " T h e attempt t o understand t h e i nteraction w i t h another's word by means of psychoanalysis and the "collective unconsciou s . " What psy­ chologists (mainly psychiatrists) d isclose existed at one time; it was re­ tained in the u nconscious ( i f only the collective unconscious ) and was fixed in the memories of languages, gen res, and rituals; from here it penetrates into the speech and dreams ( related , consciously recalled ) of people (who have a particular psychic constitution and are in a par­ ticular state) . The role of psychology and of the so-called psychology of culture . The fi rs t task i s t o understand the work a s the au thor himself u nder­ stood it, without exceed ing the l i mits of h i s u nderstanding. This is a very d ifficult problem and usually requ i res introducing an i m mense amount of materia l . The second task is t o take advantage o f one's own position of tem­ poral and cuhural outsideness. I nclusion i n ou r (othe r's for the auth or) context. The fi rst stage is understanding ( there are two tasks here); th e

s ec -

From Nores Made in

1 970 - 7 1

� 1 45

ond stage is scholarly study (scientific descri ption , ge neralization , his­ torical localization ). The d i sti nction between the human and natural sciences. The re­ jection of the idea of an insurmountable barrier between them. The notion that they are opposed to one another ( Di lthey, Rickert) was re­ futed by subsequent development of the human sciences. 15 The infu­ sion of mathematical and other methods-an irreversible process, but at the same time specific methods, a general trend toward specifics (for example, the axiological approach)-is and should be deve loping. A strict demarcation between understanding and scientific study. False science , based on communication that is not experienced , that is, without the initial give n of the actual object. The degree of perfec­ tion of this given (of the true experience of art). At a low level, scien­ tific analysis is inevitably superficial or even false. The other's word should be transformed into one's own/other (or other/on e's own). Distance (outsideness) and respect. I n the process of dialogic communication, the object is transformed into the subject (the other's /). T h e simultaneity o f artistic experience a n d scientific study. They cannot be separated, but they do not always pass through their various stages and degrees at the same time. With meaning I give anS111Jers to questions. Anything that does not answer a question is devoid of sense for us. I t is not only possible to understand a unique and unrepeatable indi­ viduality; there can also be individual causality. The responsive nature of contextual mean i ng. Meaning always re­ sponds to particular questions. Anything that does not respond to something seems meaningless to us; it is removed from dialogue. Con­ textual meaning and formal definition . Formal definition is removed from dialogue, but it is deliberately and conventionally abstracted from it. It contains potential meaning. The unive rsal ism of contextual meaning, i ts u niversality and omni­ temporality. Contextual meaning is potentially infinite , but it can only be actu­ alized when accompanied by another (othe r's) meaning, if only by a questi on in the inner speech of the one who understands. Each time it

l "tO t*'

From Notes Made in 1970 - 7 1

m u s t b e accompanied b y another contextua l meaning in order t o reveal new aspects of its own infinite nature ( just as the word reveals its meanings only in context). Actual contextual meaning inheres not in one (single) meaning, but only i n two meanings that meet and accom­ pany one another. There can be no "contextual meaning in and of it­ self" -it exists only for another contextual mea n ing, that is, i t exists only in conj u nction with it. There cannot be a u nified (single) con­ textual meaning. Therefore, there can be neither a fi rst nor a last meaning; it always exists among other mean ings as a link in the chain of meaning, which i n its totality is the only thing that can be real. In h istorical life, this chain continues infinite ly, and therefore each indi­ vidual link i n i t is renewed again and again, as though i t were bei ng reborn. The i mpersonal system of sciences (and knowledge i n general) and the organic whole of consciousness (or the i nd ividual personality) . The p roblem of the speaker (of the person, the speaking subject, author of the u tterance, and so forth). Li ngui stics knows only the sys­ tem of language and the text. Yet every u tterance, even a standard greeting, has a specific form of an author (and add ressee) . Notes i n p h i losophical anthropology. My i mage of myself. The natu re of one's idea of one's self, of one's I as a whole . How i t is principally distingu ished from my idea of th e other. The i mage of /, a concept or an experience , a sensation , and so forth . The nature of this image's existence . The composition of this i mage . (How it accommodates, for example, ideas about my body, about my exterior, my past, and so forth. ) What I understa nd by I

when I speak and experience: "I live," "I will die," and so forth. ( "I am," "I will not be ," "I was not" ) /-for-myself, 1-for-anotlter, and anotlterjor-me. What in me is given to me d i rectly and what is given only through another. Minimum and maximum-pri mitive self­ sensation and complex self-awareness. But the maxi mum develops that which was already e mbedded in the minimum. The historical de­ velopment of self-awareness. It is related to the development of sig­ n i fying means of expression (language above all ). The h istor y o f auto­ biography ( M isch ) . •� The hete rogeneous com position of my i mage . A person at the mi rror. Not-/ in me, that i s , existence i n m e ; someth ing larger than me i n me. To what degree is it possible to combine I and

From Notes M ade in I <J70 - 7 1

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14/

other i n one neu tral image o f a person . Feeli ngs that are possible only toward the other ( for example, love ), and feeli ngs possible only toward oneself ( i . e . , se lf-love , selflessness, and so forth ). My temporal and spatial bou ndaries are not given for me, but the other is entirely given. I e nter i nto the spatial world , but the other has always resided in it. The d i ffe re nces between space and time of I and other. They exist i n living sensation, but abstract thought erases them. Thought creates a unified , general world of man, i rrespective of I and other. I n pri mitive, natural self-sensation, I and other merge. There is neither egoism nor altruism here . The I hides i n t h e other and in others, it wants to b e only an other for others, to ente r completely i nto the world of others as an other, and to cast from itsel f the burden of being the only I (/-for-myself) i n the world . Sem iotics deals primari ly with the transmi ssion of ready-made com­ munication using a ready-made code. But in live speech, strictly speaking, communication is first created in the process of transmis­ sion, and there is, i n essence, no code. The problem of changing the code in i nner speech (Zh inkin). 17 Dialogue and dialectics . Take a d ialogue and remove the voices (the partitioning of voices), remove the intonations (emotional and individ­ ualizing ones), carve out abstract concepts and judgments from living words and responses, cram everything into one abstract conscious­ ness-and that's how you get dialectics. Context and code. A context is potentially u nfinalized ; a code must be finalized . A code is only a technical means of transmitting informa­ tion , but i t also has cogni tive, creative significance. A code is a deliber­ ately established, killed context. The search for one's own (authorial) voice . 1 8 To be embod ied , to be­ come more clearly defi ned , to become less, to become more limited, more stupid. Not to remain tangential, to burst into the circle of l i fe, to become one among other people. To cast off reservations , to cast off irony. Gogol also sought the serious word , the serious wal k of life: to convi nce (teach) and , conseq uently, to convi nce oneself. Gogol's naivete , his extreme lack of experience in the serious; therefore , it

seemed to h i m that he must su rmount laughter. Salvation and transfor­ mation of comic heroes. The right to the serious word . There can be no word apart from the speaker, from his position, from his attitude toward the listener, and from the situations that join them ( the word of the leader, the priest, and so forth ) . The word of the private person . The poet. The prose write r. The "writer." The performance of the prophet, leader, teacher, judge, procurator (accuser), advocate (coun­ sel for the defense). The citizen. The journalist. The purely objectlike nature of the scientific word . Dostoevsky's quests. The journalist. The Diary of a Writer. Ten­ dency. The word of the people. The word of the holy fool ( Le byadkin, zo Myshkin). 19 The word of the monk, the elder, the wandere r (Makar). There is a moral person w ho is wise and h oly. "And meanwhile the hermit in a dark cell" (Pushkin). 21 The m u rdered tsarevich Dmitry. The tears of the tortured child . A great deal from Pushki n . ( Not yet investigated . ) The word as something personal . Ch rist as truth. I ask him. 22 A profound u nderstanding of the personal nature of the word . Dostoevsky's Pushkin speec h . Any person's word addressed to any other perso n . The d rawing close of literary language to conve rsational language makes the problem of the authorial word more acu te. P u rely object-oriented scientific a rgumentation in literatu re can only be par­ odic to one degree or another. Genres of ancient Russian literature ( hagiographies, homilies, and so forth) . Genres of medieval l i terature i n general . The unuttered truth in Dostoevsky ( C hrist's kiss). The problem of silence. I rony as a special kind of substitute for silence . The word removed from life: the word of the idiot, the holy fool , the insane, the child, the dyin g person , and sometimes wome n . Deliriu m, d ream , i ntu ition ( inspiration) , u nconsciousness, alogical i ty ( alogism ], involuntary behavior, epilepsy, and so forth . The problem of the image of the author. The primary ( not created) and secondary author ( the i mage of the author created by the pri mary author). The primary natura non creola quae creat; the secondary au­ thor natura creata quae non creal. The image of the hero- natura creola quae non creal. 23 The primary author cannot be an image . He eludes a ny figu rative represe ntation. When we try to i magine the pri­ mary author figu ratively, we ourselves are creating his image , that is, we ou rselves become the primary author of the image . The creating image ( i . e . , the primary author) can never e nter into any i m age that he has created. The word of the pri mary author cannot be his own word . -

-

It must be consecrated by someth i n � h igher and impersonal ( by scien­ tific argu ment, experiment, objective data, inspiratio n , intuition, au­ thori ty, and so forth ) . The primary author, if he expresses a d i rect word , cannot be simply a writer. One can tell nothing from the face of a writer (the write r is transformed into a commentator, a moralist, a scholar, and so forth ). Therefore, the primary author clothes himself in silence. But th is silence can assume various forms of expression , vari­ ous forms of red uced laughter ( i rony), allegory, and so forth. The problem of the writer and his primary authorial position be­ came especially acute in the eighteenth century (because of the de­ cline of authorities and authoritarian forms, and the rejection of au­ thoritarian forms of language). The form of the simple i mpersonal story in language that is li terary, but close to conversational language . The story does not move far from the heroes and it does not move far from the average reader. The para­ phrase of a novel in a letter to the publ isher. A paraph rase of the in­ tent. This is not a mask, but an ord inary face of an ordinary person (the face of the primary author can not be ord i nary). E xistence itself speaks through the writer, th rough his mouth ( H eidegger). 2 4 I n painting, the artist someti mes depicts h imself ( u sually at the edge of the picture). The self-portrait. The artist depicts himself as an ordinary person and not as an artist, not as the creator of the picture . Quests for m y own word are in fact quests for a word that is n o t my own , a word that is more than myself; this is a striving to depart from one's own words, with which nothing essential can be said. I myself can only be a character and not the primary author. The author's quests for h i s own word are basically quests for gen re and style, quests for an authorial position. This is now the most critical problem of con­ temporary literature, which leads many to reject the gen re of the novel altogether, to replace i t with a montage of documents, a description of things, to bookishness [ lellrizm], and, to a certain degree , also to the literature of the absu rd . I n some sense all these can be defined as vari­ ous forms of silence . These quests led Dostoevsky to the creation of the polyphonic nove l . He cou ld not find the word for the monologic novel . A parallel path led Leo Tolstoy to folk stories (primitivism), to the i ntroduction of biblical quotations ( i n the fi nal parts of his nov­ els). 25 Another route wou ld be to cause the world to begin speaking and to l iste n to the word of the world itself ( H e idegger).

1 50

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From Notes Made in 1970 - 7 1

" Dostoevsky a n d sentimentalis m . analysis. "

A n exe rcise

m

typolo gical

Polyphony and rhetoric. jou r nalism and i ts genres as modern rheto­ ric. The rhetorical word and the novelistic word. Persuasiveness that is artistic and rhetorical persuasiveness . The rhetorical argu ment and dialogue about cu rrent questio ns (about the whole and in the whole) . Victory or m u tual u nde rstan din g. My word and the other's word . The primary nature of this j u xta posi­ tion. The viewpoint (position) of the third party. The limited goal s of the rhetorical word . Rhetorical speech argues from the view point of the third party: profound individual level s do not participate in it. In antiquity the boundaries betwee n rhetorical and artistic literatu re were d rawn i n a different way, and they were not clear- cut, for th ere was no deep individual personality i n the modern sense. It ( i n divid ual personality) originated on the eve of the M iddle Ages ( "to m e myself" 26 of Marcus Au relius, E p ictetus, Augustine, soliloquia, and so forth ). The boundaries between one's own and the other's word b ecom e sharper here (or perhaps they even appear for the first time) . I n rhetoric there i s t h e u nconditionally i nnocent a n d t h e unco ndi­ tionally guilty; there i s complete victory and destruc tion of the op po­ nent. In dialogue the destruction of the opponent also destroys th at very dialogic sphere where the word l ives . In classical anti q u i ty this sphere did not yet exist. This sphere is very fragile and easily de­ stroyed (the slightest violence is sufficient, references to au thority, and so forth). Razumikhin discussing lies as a way to truth . 2 7 T h e jux ta­ position of truth and C h rist in Dostoevsky. 28 What I have in mind here is impersonal objective tru th , that is, truth from the standpoint of a third party. The court of arbitration is a rhetorical court. Dostoevsky's attitude toward j u ries. I m partiality and higher partial ity. The extraor­ di nary refinement of all ethical categories of personal i ty. They l ie in the border area between the eth ical a nd the aesthetic. "Soil" in Dostoevsky as someth ing inte rmediate (medial) between impersonal and personal . Shatov as a representative of this typical fea­ ture . 29 The thirst to become embod ied . The majority of articles in Diary of a Writer l ie in this medial sphere between rhetoric and the personal sphere ( i . e . , in the sphere of Shatov , "soi l , " and so forth ). This medial sphere i n Bobok ( the seemly shopkeeper). The real in­ sufficiency of understand ing in state , legal , economic, and business spheres and also the objective sc ientific sphere ( the legacy of roman-

From Notes Made in 1 9 70- 7 1

..:; l S I

ticism ) and those spheres whose rep resentatives are libe rals ( Kave l i n a n d others). 30 The utopian belief in t h e possibility of a purely internal path for transforming l i fe into parad ise. Sobering up. The striving to curta i l ecstasy (epilepsy). "The Drunkards" (sentiments).·n Marmela­ dov and Fedor Pavlovich Karamazov. Dostoevsky and Dickens. Similarities and d i ffe rences ( "Christmas Tales" and "Bobak" and "Dream of the Ridiculous Man" ); Poor Folk, The Insulted and the Injured, "The Dru nkards"-sentimemalism. The denial of (failure to understand ) the sphere of necessi ty through which freedom must pass ( both on the h istorical and the individual­ pe rsonal plane) , that i n te rmedi ate sphere that lies between the Grand Inquisitor (with his state power, rhetoric, and authority) and Christ (with his silence and his kiss) . Raskol n ikov wanted t o become someth i ng l ike a Grand Inquisitor (to take sins and suffering upon h imself). The pec u l iarities of polyphony. The lack of finalization of the poly­ phonic dialogue (dialogue about ultimate questions). These d ialogues are conducted by unfinalized ind ividual personalities and not by psy­ chological s u bj ects. The somewhat unembod ied quality of these per­ sonali ties (disinterested surplus). Eve ry great writer participates in such a dialogue; he participates with his creativity as one of the sides in th is dialogue. B u t wri ters themselves do not create polyphonic novels. Thei r rejoi nders in the dialogue are monologic i n form ; each has one world of his own while other participants in the dialogue remain with thei r worlds outside the work. They appear with their own personal worlds and with thei r own i m mediate, personal words. But prose writers, especially novelists, have a problem with their own word . This word cannot be si mply thei r own word (from t h e 1 ) . T h e word of t h e poet, t h e prophet , t h e leader, the scientist, and then the word of the "writer. " I t must be grounded. The need to represen t somebody. The scientist has argu ments, prac­ tical work, experimentation. The poet relies on i nspiration and a spe­ cial poetic language . The prose writer does not have this poetic langu age. Only a polyp hon ist like Dostoevsky can sense in the struggle of opinions and ideologies (of various epochs) an incomplete dialogue on ultimate qu esti ons (in the framework of great time). Others deal with issues that h ave been resolved within the epoch.

From Notes Made in 1 970 - 7 1

The journalist i s above a l l a contempora ry. H e i s obliged to be one. He l ives in the sphere of questions that can be resolved in the present d ay (or in any case in the near fu ture ) . He participates in a dialogue that can be e nded and even finalized, can be tra n slated into action, and can become an empirical force. It is precisely in this sphere that "one's own word" is possible. Outside this sphere "one's own word" is not one's own (the individual personality a lways transcends i tself); "one's own word" cannot be the u l timate word . The rhetorical word is the word of the act i n g agent h imself or is ad­ d ressed to acti ng agents. The word of the journalist, when introduced i nto the polyphonic novel , submits to u nfinalized and i n fi n i te d ialogue. When e ntering the area of Dostoevsky's journalism, we observe a sharp narrowing of the horizo n ; the u niversality of h i s novels disap­ pears , even though the problems of the h e ro's personal life a re re­ placed by social and pol i tical problems. The heroes l ived and acted (and thought) before the entire world ( before heaven and earth). Ulti­ mate q uestions that originated i n thei r small personal and daily l ives broke away from their l ives and attached themselves to "the divine universal l i fe . " .1z This representation of the hero to a l l humanity, to a l l the world, is similar to classical tragedy (and to Shakespeare ) , but it is also pro­ fou ndly diffe rent from the m . T h e rhetoric al dispute is a dispute i n which it i s i m po rt ant to gai n victory over the opponent, not to approach the truth . This is the low­ est form of rhe toric. In all h igher forms one can reach solutio ns to questions that are capable of tempora l , h istorical sol utions , but not to ultimate questions (where rhetoric is i m possible ) . Metalinguistics a n d the philosophy o f the word . Ancient teachings about logos. john .u Language , speec h , speech com mu nication , uuer­ ance. The specific nature of speech com m u n icatio n . T h e speaking person. A s whom a n d how ( i . e . , i n what situation ) the speaking person appears . Va rious forms of speech authorsh i p, from the simplest eve ryday utterances to large litera ry genres. I t is customary to speak abou t the authorial mask. B u t i n w h ich u tte rances (speech acts ) is there a fare and not a mask. that is, no authors h i p ? The form of authors h i p depends on the ge n re of the utterance . The gen re i n turn is dete r m i ned by the s u bject matter, goa l . and situation of the u t te rance . .

From Notes M ade i n 1 970 - 7 1

..; 1 53

The form of authorship and the hierarchical place ( posi cion ) of che speake r ( leader, csar, j u dge , warrior, p riest, teacher, private ind ivid­ ual, father, son, husband , wife , brother, and so forth ). The corre­ spond i ng h i e rarchical posicion of the addressee of the utte rance (the subj ect, the defendant, the student, the son , and so forth ). The one who speaks and the one spoken to. All this determi nes the genre, cone, and style of the u tterance: the word of the leader, the word of the j udge , the word of the teacher, the word of the father, and so forth. This dete rm i nes the form of the authorship. One and the same actual character can assu me various authorial forms. In what forms and how is the face of the speaker revealed? Various professional forms of authorship are developing i n modern ti mes. The authorial form of the wri ter has become professional and has broken down into generic su bcategories (novelist, lyricist, writer of comedies, of odes, and so forth). Forms of authorship can be usurped or conventional. For example, the novelist can assimilate the tone of the priest, the prophet, the j udge, the teacher, the preacher, and so fort h . The complex process of development of excrah ierarchical ge­ neric forms. Authorial forms and particularly the tone of these forms, which are essentially cradi cional and reach back into antiquity. They are renewed in new situations. One cannot invent them ( j ust as one cannot invent language) . T h e i m mense diversity of speech genres a n d authorial forms i n d a i l y speech communication (entertain ing a n d i ntimate communica­ tions, various kinds of requests and demands, confessions of love, squabbling and abuse, exchanges of courtesies, and so forth ). They diffe r in terms of their hierarchical spheres: the fam i l iar sphere, the official sphere, and their su bcategories. Are there genres of pure se(f-expression (without the trad itional au­ thorial for m ) ? Do there exist genres without an add ressee? Gogol. The world withou t names, i n wh ich there are only various kinds of sobriquets and nicknames. The names of things are also so­ briquets. Not from the thing to the word , but from the word to the thing; the word gives birth to the thing. It equally justifies both de­ struction and birth . Praise and abuse . One merges i nto the other. The bou ndary between the ord i na ry and the fantastic is erased: Poprish­ chi n-the Spanish king, Akaky Akakievich-the phantom grabbing the overcoat . w The category of absurdi ty. " From the comical to the great . . . " Festivity measu res the mediocrity and the everyday nature .

1 54

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From Note s M ade in 1 970- 7 1

o f the eve ryday worl d . The hyperbolic style . Hyperbole i s always fes­ tive ( i ncluding abusive hyperbole). The turn to prose i n a n appeal to the familiar and public element. Narezhny. 35 Gogo!. Fear and laughte r. The thoroughly festive quality of The Inspector General. The festivity of Chichikov's arrivals and de­ partu res (as a guest). Balls, d i nners ( m asks are transparent). A return to the sources of speech life (praise-abuse) and m aterial life (eat­ ing, drinking, the body, and the corporeal life of the organs: blowing one's nose, yawning, d reaming, and so forth). And the troika with bells on it. The ruptu re between real l i fe and symbolic ritual. How u nnatural this rupture is. Their false juxtaposition . They say: at that time every­ one traveled i n troikas with bells, that was rea l everyday l ife . B u t the carniva listic overtone remains everyday i n life , and in l i te ratu re it can be the main tone. P u re everyday life is fiction, a product of the i ntel­ lect. Huma n life is always shaped and this shaping is always ritualistic (even if only "aesthetically" so). The artistic i mage can also rely on this ritualis m . Memory and awa reness in everyday ritual and i n the image . The reflection i n speech of relations among people, and their social hierarchy. The inte rrelations of speech u nits. The keen sense of one's own and someone else's i n speech life . The exceptional role of tone. The world of abuse and praise (and their derivatives: flattery, toady­ ing, hypocrisy, humiliation, boorishness, caustic remarks , insinua­ tions, and so forth ). The almost objectless world that reflects the inter­ relations of speakers ( their sequence accord ing to importance , their hierarchy, and so forth ). The least-studied aspect of speech life . This is not the world of tropes, but the world of personal tones and nua nces , and it consists not in the relations among th ings (phenomena, con­ cepts) , but in the world of others' pe rsonalities. The tone is deter­ mined not by the referential content of the utterance and not by the expe riences of the speaker, but by the relationship of the speaker to the ind ividual personal ity of the other speaker ( to his rank, his i m por­ tance, and so forth ). The erasure of bou ndaries between the terrible and the comical in images of fol k culture (and to a certain degree i n Gogo I ) . Betwee n the mediocre and the terrible , the ord inary and the miraculous, the small and the gran d . Fol k cultu re u n d e r t h e cond itions o f t h e n e w (Gogo) i a n ) epoc h . I n ­ tervening l i n k s . T h e court. Didactics. Gogol's quest for a justification

From Notes M ade i n 1 970- 7 1

-.9 I S S

( "goal," "pu rpose ," "truth" ) for the comical pictu re of the world. The "life path ," "service ," "vocation," and so forth. Tru th always judges w a certa i n degree . B u t the court of truth is not like the ordi nary cou rt. Pure denial cannot give birth to an image . I n the image ( even the most negative one) there is always an aspect of the posi tive (love­ adm i ration ) . B lok on satire . -16 Stanislavsky on the beauty of play-the actor's depiction of a negative i m age. Mechanical division i s u naccept­ able: ugl i ness-a negative character, beau ty-a performing actor. The u nive rsal i ty of the comic Gogolian world. I n his world there a re no "posi tive heroes. " This collection o f m y essays is unified b y o n e theme i n various stages of its development. 37 The u n i ty of the emerging (developing) idea. Hence a certain inter­ nal open-ended ness of many of my ideas. B u t I do not wish to turn shortcomings into virtues: i n these works there i s much external open­ endedness, that is, an open-endedness not of the thought itself but of its expression and exposition. Sometimes i t is d ifficult to separate one open-ended ness from another. I t cannot be assigned to a particular trend ( Structu ralism). My love for variations and for a diversity of terms for a s ingle phenomenon. The multiplicity of focuses. Bri nging distant things closer without i nd icating the inte rmediate l inks.

Notes I . Reference here is to Lorman's "Khudozhesrvennaja struktura Evgen ija Onegina" i n Trudy po russkoj ; siiJVjanskoj filo/ogi; 9 (Tanu, 1966 ) , pp. 5 - 22. Lot­ man's idea of recoding depends on his conviction that l i te ratu re is a secondary modeling system . He disti nguishes between natu ral languages, artificial languages ( "systems of conventional signs and the rules of the i r usage, such as those of al­ gebra or chemistry" ), and secondary modeling syste ms, which he defines as "semiotic syste ms constructed on the basis of a natu ral language but having a more com plex structure. Secondary modelling systems include ritual, all aggregates of social and ideological sign com munications, and art, all of which merge i n to a si ngle complex whole-culture" ( Yury Lorman, Analys;s of tlte Poetic Text, tr. D. Barton Joh n son [Ann Arbor: Ardis,

1 976 1, p. 1 9). 2. In chapter 2, part 2, of Tlte Brotlters Karamazov we are told of the visit by a

mysterious visitor to Zosima, who fou rtee n years earl ier had mu rdered a woman he loved, who had refused him. Al though no one suspects him of m u rder (there were no witnesses), the man is tormented by h is crime and eventually confesses. 3. Compare these remarks on "supra-existence" with Bakhti n's concept of the sufNraddressee in "The Problem of the Text. " 4. From a poem by V. K hodasevich , " I n Front o f the M i rror" ( 1924):

1 56

(lw

From Notes Made in 1 970 - 7 1

I , I , I . What a n uncivil ized word !

Is that one there really-I ? Cou ld Mama really love such a Yellow-gray, half-graying And omniscient person , like a snake? 5 . Pechorin is the splenetic hero of Lermontov's Hero of Our Time ( 1 84 1 ) . Stavrogin is t h e central character of Dostoevsky's novel The Possessed. 6. Vladimir Vernadsky ( 1963 - 1 945), mineralogist and crystal lograph er, founder of geochemistry and biogeochemistry, central figure in the reorganizati on of the Academy of Sciences under the Soviets. He was o ne of Russia's greatest scientists , who made contributions in several different d isciplines. He was impor­ tant for Bakhtin because of his emphasis on the wholeness and connecte dnes s of

the cosmos. His Paris lectures i n the early 1 920s on what he called the biosphere influenced Tei l hard de Chard i n . Vernadsky was among other things a geographer and h istorian of science; thus, it is not surprising that he w rote on Kant's activity as a natural scientist (Kant was made a corresponding member of the Petersb urg Academy not because he was a philosopher, but because he was autho r of the Physical Geography). Vernadsky was also interested in the ideas of the " phil osoph er of the Common Task," Nikolay Fedorov ( 1 828 - 1 903), w hose doctrine tha t al l is alive also influenced Dostoevsky. The Kantian and Fedorovian implications of Ver­ nadsky's work were not lost on Bakhtin. 7. On Veselovsky, see note I to the essay " Response to a Question from the Nouy Mir Editorial Staff." 8. In the late 1 960s, Bakhtin was at work on a book devoted to sentimentalism (in which Dostoevsky played a large role ). The work was never finished. See A. N. Veselovsky, Poezija chuvstva i serdechnoKO voobrazhenija (St. Petersbu rg, 1904). Zhukovsky is regarded mainly as a sentimentalist poet in this book, "The only real poet of our age of sensibility" (p. 46). 9. At the end of the thirteenth century, the Spiritualists were the more radical followers of Francis of Assisi who protested strongly against the secu larization of the church. Bakhtin apparently has in mind the religious poet jacopone da Todi ( 1 230- 1 306), a zealou s Spiritualist w hose poems, in his native Italian, expressed deep compassion with the sufferings of Christ and the Virgin Mary. 10. Dmitry Grigorovich ( 1 822-99), author of such tales as "The Village" and "Anton-Goremyka," which described the life of the poorer classes w ith great com­ passion. H e was associated with the journal Tire Contemporary; his style is called in Russian "senti mental naturalism ." I l . Alphonse Daudet ( 1 840 - 97), French novelist of the naturalist school . Bakh­ tin has in mind here such novel s of Parisian salon life as Le nabob ( 1 87 7 ) and l.es rois en exil ( 1879). 12. Compare the description of the "meeti ng" as one of the most important ch ronotopic motifs in literature i n "Forms of Time and Chronotope i n the Novel." in The Dialof!,ic lmaf!,ination, pp. 97 -99, 244. 13. Karl jaspers ( 1 883 - 1 969)-his basic concept is "encom passing," an essen­ tially religious concept intended to suggest the all-embracing transcendent reality within which human existence is enclosed . Jaspers is deeply aware of the lim ita-

From Notes M ad e in 1 970- 7 1

-.1; 1 5 7

tions of abstract scie nce ( i n the h u m a n as we l l as the natu ral sciences) because they cloud perce ption of the specific situatedness of h u man being. Com m u n ica­ tion is the means by which h u m a n bei ngs exercise freedom in their si tuated ness. 14. The notes on "the other's word " are associated with an article intended for Voprosy ftlosofti (Questions of Phi losophy), the major journal for philosophy in the Soviet Union. In "Notes Made i n 1 970- 7 1 , " Bakh tin gives two possible titles for the piece: "The Other's Word as the Specific Object of I n vestigation in the H u ­ m a n Sciences" a n d "The P roblem o f the Othe r's Wo rd (Other's Speech) in Cu lture and Li teratu re : From Essays on Metali ngu istics . " He also was considering an epi­ graph from Faust: "Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten nennt . . . " (What they name the spirit of the times . . . ). Bakh tin was p robably quoting from memory, for the cor­ rect q uote is: "Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst . . . " (What they call the spirit of the times . . . ). 15. Dilthey developed what he fel t were the fou ndations for a "science of the spirit" ( GtistesrJJJisstnscltaft) as distinct from the natural sciences. The method of Geisteswisstnscltaft was to be grounded i n u nderstanding, as opposed to causal ex­ planation i n the natural sciences. Understanding coincides with our interpretation of significant experience; thus, the means for becom ing aware of spirit- Dilthey's hermeneutics-coincide with attempts to u nderstand psychology. Bakhtin dis­ cusses his d i ffe re nces with Dilthey in Marxism and t!te P!tilosop!ty of wnguage ( pp. 26-28 i n E nglish ed. ). See also note 4 of "The P roblem of the Text." 16. See Georg M isch, Gescltic!ttt der Autobiograp!tie, 4 vols. ( Leipzig-Berl i n , 1 907; 2 nd ed. Bern, 1 949), vol . 1 , a n d ( Frankfu rt a. M . , 1 955), vols. 2 - 4. There is an E nglish translation: A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, tr. E . W. Dickes, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1 95 1 ). 1 7. See N. I. Zhinkin, "On Code Translations in I n ne r Speech," Voprosy jaz­ ykoznanija (Questions of Linguistics, no. 6) ( 1 964). Zhinkin studied the phys io­ logical evide nce (subvocal voicing) for i n ner speech. 1 8 . A projected work on this subject wou ld have relied heavily on Dostoevsky's activity as a jou rnalist, especially in his "Diary of a Writer," in correlation with his activity as a novelist. 19. Lebyadkin is the comic and u n scrupulous b rother of Stavrogin's wife i n T!te

Possessed.

Myshkin is the hero of Dostoevsky's novel T!te Idiot. 20. Makar is the hero's father i n A ROfll) Yout!t. 2 1 . A statement by Pimen, a monk and chronicler in Pushkin's d rama Boris

Godunov.

22. See Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed. and tr. Caryl Emerson ( M i n neapolis: University of M i nnesota Press, 1 984), pp. 124-25. 23. I n a m ajor essay by Duns Scotu s ( b. 8 1 0), De Divisione Naturae, the phi loso­ pher describes fou r modes of being: ( 1 ) "nature creating and not created," that is, God as the eve rlasting fi rst cause of all thi ngs; (2) "nature created and creating," that is, the P latonic world of ideas, residing in the intellect of God and determ in­ ing the being of thi ngs; (3) "nature created and not creating," that is, the world of individual things; and (4) "natu re not created and not creat i ng," aga i n God , but now as the final goal of all things, absorbing them back i n to h i mself at the origin of the world dialectical process. Bakh t i n metaphorically applies these terms, wh ich

1 58 �

From Notes Made i n 1970 - 7 1

were devised to describe the creative activity o f the d i v i n i ty, to the ontology of human artistic activity. On a par with these are other terms used elsewhere by Bakhtin- natura naturans (nature o riginating) and natura natura/a ( nature origi­ nated)-which go back to the lexicon of Latin translations of Averroes ( ibn­ Rashid), and which were used by the Christian scholastics, but are especially well known because of their role in Spinoza's text. From the 1 890s through the 1920s, Spinoza was a fairly influential figure in Russia, important for-among others­ Vygotsky. 24. A leading idea in Heidegger's philosophy of art is that the word originates in the depths of existence, and through the poet as "medium" it speaks to the world; the poet "listens attentively" (a concept Heidegger counterposes to the category of "contemplation," which is a more traditional way of thinking in Western philos­ ophy about what the poet does) in existence, especially in the area of its richest expression-language. See Holzwege ( Frankfu rt a. M . , 1950) and l!ntetfllJegs zur Spraclle (Pfullingen, 1959). 25. As, for i nstance, in his last novel , Resurrection ( 1 899). 26. On sol iloquy, see Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (p. 1 13, i n E ng. ed . ) and "Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel," in Tile Dialogic /magi· nation, p. 145. 27. See Crime and Punisllment, part 2, chapter 4. 28. See the famous letter from Dostoevsky to N. D . Fonvizina of February 1 854, in which he says, " . . . if someone were to prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth . " 2 9 . Shatov is a major figure in Dostoevsky's novel Tile Possessed. 30. I n a famous letter to Dostoevsky, K. D. Kavelin polemicized about the nov­ elist's speech at the unveiling of a statue of Pushkin . See Vestnik evropy (The E u ro­ pean Herald), no. 1 1 ( 1 880). 3 1 . A plan for a novel out of which Crime and Punisllment grew. 32. From Tyutchev's poem "Spring" ( 1838). 33 . John 1 : 1 - "In the beginning was the Word . . . 34. Poprishchin is the main protagonist of Gogol's story "Notes of a Mad man ," who thinks he is the king of Spain . Akaky Akakievich i s t h e m a i n protagonist of Gogol's short story "The Ove r­ "

coat," which concludes with the ru mor that Akaky's ghost is stealing coats. 35. V. T. Narezh ny ( 1 780- 1 825), sati rist, author of A Russian (;il Bias ( 1 8 1 4) . 36. From an article by the poet Aleksandr Blok, "On Art and Criticism" ( 1 920 ) : " I ndeed, if Maupassant h a d writte n a l l this with a sense of satire ( if s u c h things exist), he would have written it quite differently; he would always have been show­ ing how Georges Duroi behaved badly. But he shows only how Duroi behaved , giving the reader the opportun i ty to j udge whether it was bad ly or not. And he, the artist, is 'in love' with Georges Duroi , as Gogo) was i n love with Khlestyakov ( he ro of the play Tile /nspertor General). " 3 7 . Bakhtin is referring here t o a collection o f h i s works from various vears that he was working on just before his death. It appeared as Voprosy /iteraturi i tstrtil:i. most pieces from wh ich are i ncluded in Tile Dialol{ic lmal{ination ( the fore word Bakhtin alludes to here was never fin ished ).

Toward a Methodology for the H u man Sciences

Understandi ng. The d i smemberment of understand ing into i ndividual acts. I n actual, real concrete understanding these acts merge insepa­ rably into a u nified process, but each ind ividual act has i ts ideal se­ mantic (content-filled) i ndependence and can be singled out from the concrete empirical act. 1 . Psychophysiologically perceiving a physical sign (word , color, spatial form ) . 2. Recognizing it (as familiar or un­ fami liar). 3 . Understanding its significance in the given context ( immedi­ ate and more remote). 4. Active-d ialogic understand ing (disagreement! agreement). Inclusion i n the dialogic context. The evaluative aspect of understanding and the degree of its depth and unive rsality. Converting an image into a symbol gives it semantic depth and se­ mantic perspective . The dialogic correlation between identity and nonidentity. The image must be u nderstood for what it is and for what it designates. The content of a true symbol, through med iated seman­ tic coupling, i s correlated with the idea of worldwide wholeness, the full ness of the cosmic and human universe. The world has contextual meani ng. "The image of the world appears miraculously in the word" (Pasternak). • Each particular phenomenon is submerged i n the pri­ mordial elements of the origins of existence. As distinct from myth , this is an awareness that one does not coincide with one's own i nd ividual meani ng. The symbol has a "warmth of fused mystery" (Averintsev) . z The as­ pect of contrasting one's own to another's. The warmth of love and the cold ness of alienation. Contrast and comparison. Any i nte rpretation of a symbol i tself remai ns a symbol, but it is somewhat rationalized , that is, brough t somewhat closer to the concept. A definition of contextual meaning in all the profu ndity and complex­ ity of its essence. Inte rpretation as the discovery of a path to seeing (contemplating) and supplementing through creative thinking. Amici-

1 60

(lw

Methodology for the Human Sciences

pation of the fu rther growing context, i ts rel ation to the fi nalized whole, and its rel ation to the u nfinalized context. T h is meaning (in the unfinalized context) cannot be peacefu l and cozy (one cannot curl up comfortably and die with i n it). Formal definition a n d contextual meaning. Filled-in recollections and anticipated possibilities ( u nderstandi n g in remote contexts). In recollections we also take subsequent events (with i n the past) i nto ac­ count, that is, we perceive and u n derstand what is remembered i n the context of the u nfinalized past. I n what forms is the whole present in the consciousness ( i n Plato and i n Husser!) ? To what extent can the contextual meaning (of an i mage or symbol) be revealed and commented upon ? Only with the aid o f another (isomor­ phous) meaning (of a symbol or i mage ) . It cannot be d issolved into concepts. The role of commenta ry. There can be a relative rationaliza­ tion of the contextual meaning (ord i nary scientific a nalysis) or a deep­ e n i ng with the help of other meanings (philosophical-artistic i nter­ pretation). Deepen i n g through expansion of the remote context. The i n te rpretation of symbolic s tructures is force d i n to a n infinity of symbo l ic contextual mea n ings and therefore it cannot be scientific i n t h e way precise sciences are scientific. The interpre tation of contextual mea n i ngs cannot be scientific, but i t is profoundly cognitive. I t can d i rectly serve practice, practice that deals with things . " . . . i t will be necessary t o recognize that symbology is not an u n ­ scientific, but a differently scientific form of knowledge that h a s i ts own i nternal laws and criteria for precisio n" ( S . S. Averi n tsev). 3 A work's author is present only i n the whole of the work, not i n one separate aspect of this whole, and least of all i n content that is severed from the whole . He is located i n that i n se parable aspect of the work where content and form merge i nseparably, and we feel his presence most of all i n form. Litera ry scholarsh ip usually looks for him i n content excised from the whole. This makes it easy to identify h i m with th at author who is a person of a particu lar time, with a particu lar biography and a particular world view. Here the image of the author almost me rges with the image of a real person. The true author cannot become an i mage . for he is the creator of eve ry i mage , of everyth ing imagistic in the work. Therefore . the so­ called image of the author can only be one of the i mages of a given work ( true , a s pecial kind of image ) . The artist frequently depicts

Me thodology for the H u man Scie nces

�

161

himself i n a pictu re ( near the edge of it) and h e also draws his sel f­ portrait. B u t i n a self-portrait we do not see the author as such (he can­ not be seen); i n any case , we see him no more than in any of the author's other work. H e is revealed most of all i n the author's best pictu res . The author-creator cannot be created in that sphere in which he himself appears as the creator. This is natura naturans and not natura naturata. 4 We see the creator only i n his creation, and never out­ side it. The exact sciences constitute a monologic form of knowledge : the intellect contemplates a thing and expounds upon it. There is only one subject here-cognizing (contemplating) and speaking (expounding). In opposition to the subject there is only a voiceless thing. Any object of knowledge ( i ncluding man) can be perceived and cognized as a thing. But a subject as such cannot be perceived and studied as a thing, for as a subject i t cannot, while remaining a subject, become voiceless, and, consequently, cognition of it can only be dialogic. Dilthey and the problem of understandi ng. 5 Various ways of being active i n cognitive ac­ tivity. The activi ty of the one who acknowledges a voiceless thing and the activity of one who acknowledges another subject, that is, the dia­ logic activi ty of the acknowledger. The dialogic activity of the ac­ knowledged subject, and the degrees of this activi ty. The thing and the personality (subject) as limits of cognition . Degrees of thing-ness and personality-ness. The event-potential of dialogic cognition. Meet­ ing. Evaluation as a necessary aspect of dialogic cognition. The human sciences-sciences of the spirit-phi lological sciences (as part of and at the same time common to all of them-the word). H istoricity. Immanence. E nclosure of analysis (cognition and un­ derstanding) i n one given text. The problem of the boundaries be­ tween text and context. Each word (each sign) of the text exceeds its boundaries . Any u nderstanding is a correlation of a given text with other texts. Commentary. The d ialogic nature of this correlation . The place of philosophy. It begins where precise science ends and a d i fferent science begins. It can be defined as the metalanguage of all sciences (and of all kinds of cognition and consciousness) . Understand i ng as correlation with other texts and reinterpretation , i n a new context ( i n my own context, in a contempora ry context, and in a future one). The anticipated context of the futu re : a sense that I am taking a new step (have progressed ). Stages in the d ialogic move­ ment of understanding: the point of departu re , the given text; move-

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M e thodology for the H u man Sciences

ment backward , past contexts; m ovement forward , anticipation (and the begi n n i ng) of a future context. Dialectics was born of dialogue so as to retu rn aga i n to dialogue on a h igher level ( a dialogue of personalities). The monologism of Hegel's "Phenomenology of the Spirit . " Dilthey's monologism has n o t b e e n completely s urmounted . Thought about the world and thought i n the worl d . Thought striving to embrace the world and thought experiencing i tself i n the world (as part of it). An event in the world and participation in it. The world as an event (and not as existence in ready-made form). The text lives only by com i n g i nto contact with a nother text (with context) . Only at the point of this contact between texts does a light flas h , i l l u m i nating both the posterior and anterior, joining a given text to a d ialogue. We e mphasi ze that this contact is a d i alogic contact be­ twee n texts ( utterances) and not a mechanical contact of "opposi­ tions," which is possible only within a single text (and not between a text and context) among abstract e lements (signs within a text), and is necessary only i n the fi rst stage of understanding ( unde rstan din g for­ mal definition, but not contextual meani ng) . Behind this contact is a contact of personalities and not of things (at the extre me). If we trans­ form d ialogue into one continuous text, that is, erase the divisions be­ twee n voices (changes of speaking subjects) , which is possible at the extreme ( Hegel's monological dialectic), then the deep-seated ( in­ finite ) contextual meaning d isappears (we hit the botto m , reach a standstill). Complete maximum reification would i nevitably lead to the dis­ appeara nce of the infinitude and bottomlessness of meaning (any meaning). A thought that, l i ke a fish i n an aquariu m , knocks against the bot­ tom and the sides and cannot swim farther or deeper. Dogmatic thoughts. Though t knows only conditional points ; thought e rodes all pre vi­ ously established points. The e l ucidation of a text not by means of other texts (contexts) but with extratextual thinglike ( reified ) reality. This usually takes place in biographica l , vu lgar sociological and causal explanations ( i n the spirit of the natu ral sciences) and also i n depersonalized h istoricity ( "a his­ tory wi thou t names" ) . '' True understanding i n literatu re and l i te rary scholars h i p is always h istorical and person ified . The position and l im­ its of the so-called realia. 1'hingr fraught with the word.

M ethodology fo r the H u man Scie nces

.; 1 63

The u n i ty of monologue and the special unity of d ialogue. Pure epic and p u re lyric know no provisos. Provisionary speech ap­ pears only in the novel. The i nfluence of extratextual rea l i ty in the shaping of the writer's artistic vision and the a rtistic thought (and the vision and though t of others who create culture). Extratextual influences are especially important i n the early stages of a person's development. These i nfluences are i nvested in the word (or in other signs), and these words are the words of other people, above all, words from the mother. Then these "others' words" are pro­ cessed dialogically into "one's own/others' words" with the help of dif­ ferent "others' words" (heard previously) and then i n one's own words, so to speak ( d ropping the quotation marks) , which a re already creative in nature. The role of meeti ngs, visions, "insights," "revelations," and so forth . See, incidentally: Aleksey Remizov, "Close-cropped eyes. A book of knots and twists of memory. " 7 Here, the role of d rawings as signs for self-expression . "Kiim Samgin" (man as a system of phrases), 8 ''The Unsaid" and i ts special natu re and role are interesting from this standpoint. The early stages of verbal cogn ition. The "unconscious" can become a creative factor only on the threshold of consciousness and of the word (semiverbal/semisigni fying consciousness). They are fraught with the word and the potential word . The "unsaid" as a sllift­ ing boundary, as a " regulative idea" (in the Kantian sense) of creative consciousness. The process of gradual obl iteration of authors as bearers of others' words . Others' words become anonymous and are assimilated (in re­ worked form, of cou rse); consciousness is monologized. Primary dia­ logic relations to others' words are also obliterated-they are, as it were, taken i n , absorbed i nto assimilated others' words (passing through the stage of "one's own/others' words" ). C reative conscious­ ness, when monologized , is supplemented by anonymous authors. This process of monologization is very important. Then this mono­ logized consciousness enters as one single whole into a new d ialogue (with the new external voices of others). Monologized creative con­ sciousness frequently joins and personifies others' words, others' voices that have become anonymous, i n special symbols: "the voice of l i fe i tsel f," "the voice of natu re," "the voice of the people," "the voice of God ," and so forth . The role of the outlloritotive word in this process, 9 which usually does not lose its bearer, does not become anonymous . T h e striving t o reify extraverbal anonymous contexts (to su rrou nd

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M ethodology for the Human Sciences

oneself with nonverbal life). I only am a creative speaking personality, everything else outside me is only thinglike, material conditions, which as causes cal l forth and define my word . I do not converse with them-I react to them mechanically, as a thing reacts to external stimuli. Such speech phenomena as orders , demands, precepts, prohibitions, promises (oaths), threats, praises, reprimands, abuse, c u rses, blessings, and so forth comprise a very important part of extracontextual reality. They all are l inked with a sharply e xpressed intonation capable of pass­ ing (being transfe rred ) to any words or expressions that do not have the direct formal d efinition of an order, a threat, and so forth. Tone, released from phonetic and semantic elements of the word (and other signs) is i mportant. Those signs determine the complex to­ nality of our consciousness , which serves as an emotional-evaluative context for our understanding (complete , semantic u nderstanding) of the text we read (or hear) and also, in more complex form, for our crea­ tive writing (origi nation) of a text. The task consists in forcing the thing/ike environment, which me­ chan ically influences the personality, to begin to speak, that is, to re­ veal in it the potential word and tone, to transform it i nto a semantic context for the thinking, s peaking, and acting (as wel l as creati ng) per­ sonality. In essence any se rious and probing self-exa m i n atio n/co nfes­ sion , autobiography, pure lyric, and so forth , does th is. 10 Amon g writ­ ers , Dostoevsky, by reveal ing the actions and though ts of h is m ain heroes, achieved the greate st profu n d i ty in this transforma tio n of th e thing i nto contextual mean ing. A thi ng, as lon g as it remains a thin g, can affect only other thi n gs ; i n order to affect a person a lity it mu st re­ veal its semantic potential, become a word , that is, assim ilate to a poten ­ tial verbal-semantic context. When analyzi ng Shakesp eare's traged ies, we also observe a se que n­ tial transformation of all re a l ity that affects the heroes i nto the se ma n ­ tic context of their actions , thoughts, and expe riences : e i ther the y a re actually words ( the words of witches , of a father's ghost, and so fo rth ) or they are events and circ u mstances translated into the lang ua ge of the interpretive potential wo rd . " One must e mphasize that this i s not a d i rect and pure red uction of eve rything to a common d en o m i n ator: the thing remains a thing and the word , a word ; they re t a i n the i r essences and are only augmented by contextual mean ing. One m ust not forget that " thin g" and "personality" are limilf a n d

M e thodology tor tne

n u ma n �ucu�.:c:.

not absolute substances. Meaning ca nnot (and does not wish to) change physical, material, and other phenomena; it cannot act as a material force . And i t does not need to do this: it itself is stronger than any force, it changes the total contextual meaning of an event and reality without changing i ts actual (existential) composition one iota; every­ thing remains as it was but it acquires a completely different con­ textual meaning ( the semantic transformation of existence). Each word of a text is transformed i n a new context. The inclusion of the listener ( reader, viewer) in the system (struc­ tu re) of the work. The author ( beare r of the word) and the person who understands. The author when creati ng his work does not intend it for a l i te rary scholar and does not presuppose a specific scholarly under­ standing; he does not aim to create a collective of literary scholars. He does not invite literary scholars to his banquet table. Contemporary lite rary scholars (the majority of them Structural­ ists) usually define a listener who is immanent i n the work as an all­ understanding, ideal listener. Precisely this kind of listener is postu­ lated i n the work. This, of cou rse , is neither an empirical listener nor a p sychological idea, an i mage of the listener i n the soul of the author. I t is an abstract ideological formulation . Counterposed t o it is t h e same kind of abstract ideal author. In this understanding the ideal l istener is essentially a mirror image of the author who replicates h i m . He cannot i ntroduce anything of his own , anything new, into the ideally under­ stood work or into the ideally complete plan of the author. He is i n the same time and space as the author or, rathe r, l ike the author he is out­ side time and space (as is any abstract ideal formulation), and there­ fore he cannot be an-other or other for the author, he can not have any surplus that is determined by this otherness. There can be no inter­ action between the author and this kind of listener, no active d ramatic relations, for these are not voices but abstract concepts that are equal to themselves and to one another. 1 2 Only mechanistic or mathematical, empty tautological abstractions are possible here . There is not a bit of personification. Content as new; form as stereotyped , congealed , old ( familiar) con­ tent. Form serves as a necessary bridge to new, still unknown content. Form was a fam iliar and generally u nderstood congealed old world view. In precapitalistic epochs there was a less abrupt, smoother tran­ sition between form and content: form was content that had not yet

1 66 �

Methodology for the H u man Sciences

hardened up, was still u nfixed , was not hackneyed . Form was linked to the results of general collective creativity, to mythological systems, for example. Form was, as i t were, i mplicit context: the content of a work developed content that was already e mbedded in the form and did not create it as something new, by some individual-creative initiative. Content, consequently, p receded the work to a certain degree. The author did not i nvent the conten t of his work; he only d eveloped that which was already e mbedded i n tradition. Symbols are the most stable and at the same time the most e mo­ tional elements; they pertain to for m and not to content. The strictly semantic aspect of the work, that is, the formal meaning of its elements ( the fi rst stage of u nderstanding) is i n principle acces­ sible to any individual consciousness. B u t its evaluative-semantic as­ pect ( i ncluding symbols) is meani ngful only to individuals who are re­ lated by some common conditions of life (see the formal defi nition of the word "symbol" )u-in the final analysis, by the bonds of brother­ hood on a high leve l . Here we h ave assimilation and , at h igher stages, assi m ilation to h igher value (at the extreme, absolute value). The meaning of e motional-evaluative exclamations i n the speech life of peoples. B u t the expression of emotional-evaluative relations can be explicitly verbal while their intonation is, so to speak, implicit. The most essential and stable i ntonations form the i ntonational back­ ground of a particular social group ( nation, class , professional collec­ tive , social circle , and so forth ) . To a certain degree, one can speak by means of i ntonations alone , making the verbally expressed part of speech relative and replaceable, al most indifferent. H ow ofte n we use words whose meaning is unnecessary, or repeat the same word or phrase , just in order to have a material bearer for some necessary intonation. The extratextual intonational-evaluative context can be only par­ tially realized i n the read ing (performan ce) of a give n text, and th e largest part of it, especially in i ts more ess ential and profound stra ta, remains outsid e the given text as the d ialog izing backgrou nd for its pe rception. To some degree, the problem of the social (extrave rba l ) conditioning of t h e work red uces t o this. The text-printe d , writte n , or orally recorded-is not equal to the work as a whole (or to the "aesthetic object" ). The work also i nclude s i ts necessary extratextual context. The work , as i t were, is enve loped in the m usic of the i ntonat ional-evaluative context in which i t is unde r­ stood and evaluated ( o f course , this context changes in the variou s

M e t h odology tiJr the H u m a n

.-,l: l t: m. t: �

--...

. ., .

epochs i n which i t i s perceived , which creates a new resonance i n the work). The m u tual understanding of centu ries and millennia, of peoples, natio ns, and cultures, provides a complex unity of all humanity, all hu­ man cultu res (a complex unity of human culture), and a complex unity of hum an l i te ratu re . All this is revealed only on the level of great time. E ach image must be understood and evaluated on the level of great ti me. Analysis usually fusses about in the narrow space of small time, that is, in the space of the present day and the recent past and the i m aginable- desired or frightening-futu re. E motional-evaluative for ms for anticipating the fu ture i n language-speech (order, desire, warni ng, inc antation, and so forth) , the trivially human attitude to­ w ard the fu tu re (desire, hope, fear); there is no understanding of eval­ uative nonpredetermination, unexpectedness, as it were, "surprising­ ness, " absolute i nnovation, miracle, and so forth . The special natu re of the prophetic attitude toward the fu ture. Abstraction from the self i n ide as about t h e future ( the future without me). The time of the theatrical spectacle and i ts laws. Perception of the spect acle i n those epochs when religious-cu ltic and state-ceremonial form s were presen t and reigned supreme. Everyday etiquette in the the ater. Natu re j uxtaposed to man. The Sophists, Socrates ( "not the trees i n the forest, b u t the people in the cities i nterest me" ). 14 Two l i m i ts of though t and practice (deed ) or two types of relations (thing and personality). The deeper the personality, that is, the closer to the personal ity extreme, the less appl icable generalizing methods a re . Generalization and formalization erase the bou ndaries between genius and lack of talent. E xperiment and mathematical elaboration. One raises a question and obtains an answer-this is the personal interpretation of the pro­ cess of natural scientific cognition and of its subject ( the experi­ menter). The h istory of cognition in terms of its results and the his­ tory of cognizing people. See Marc Bloch. • ; The process of reification and the process of personal ization . But per­ sonalization is never subjectivization. The limit here is not I but I i n inte rrelationship with other personalities, that is, I a n d other, I a n d thou. Is there anything in the natu ral sciences that corresponds to "con­ text" ? Context is always personalized (infinite d ialogue i n which there

Methodology tor the H u man �c1ences

is neither a first nor a last word )-natural sciences have an object sys­ tem (subjecdess). Our thought and our practice, not techn ical but moral ( that is, our re­ sponsible deeds), are accomplished between two l i m i ts : attitudes to­ ward the thing and attitudes toward the personality. Reification and per­ sonification. Some of our acts (cogni tive and moral) strive toward the limit of reification , but never reach it; other acts strive toward the limit of personification, and never reach i t completely. Question and anSfll)er are not logical relations (categories); they cannot be placed in one consciousness ( u n ified and closed i n i tself); any re­ sponse gives rise to a new questio n . Question and answe r presuppose mutual outsideness. I f an answer does not give rise to a new question from itself, it fal ls out of the dialogue and enters system ic cognition, which is essentially i m personal . The various c h ronotopes of the questioner and the a nswerer, and various semantic worlds ( I and other). From the standpoint of a third consciousness and its "neutral" world , w h e re everyth i n g is replaceable, question and answer a re inevitably deperson ified . The differe nce between stupidity (ambivalent) and d u l l ness ( mono­ semantic). Others' assim ilated words ( "one's own/others' " ) , e ternally living, and creatively re newed in new contexts; and others' inert, dead words, "word-m u m m ies." Humboldt's main p roblem : the m u ltiplicity of languages ( the prem­ ise and the background of the p roblem-the unity of the human race). 16 This is in the sphere of languages and the i r form al stru ctu res (phonetic and gra mmatical ) . But i n the sphere of speech (with i n a sin gle or a ny language ) there arises the problem of o ne's ow n and ano the r's word . l . Reification and personificatio n . The distinction between reifica­ tion and "alienation . " Two l i m i ts of thinking; the application of the principle of augme ntation . 2 . One's own and another's word . Understand ing as the transfor­ mation of the other's i nto "one's own/another's. " The principle of ou t­ sideness. The complex i n terre lations of the understood and the un­ derstandin g subjects, of the created and understanding, and of th e creative ly rej uve nating chro notopes. The i m portance of reach ing, d i g­ gi ng down to the creat ive nucleus of the personality ( i n the crea ti ve nucleu s the personality continues to l ive, that is, it is i m mortal ) .

Methodology for the H u ma n Sciences

3. Preci sion and depth in the h u man sciences. The l i m i t of preci­ sio n in the natural sciences is identity (a a). I n the human sciences prec ision is s urmou nting the otherness of the other without transform­ ing him into purely one's own (any kind of substitution , moderniza­ tion , nonrecognition of the other, and so forth ) . Th e ancie n t s tage of person ification (naive mythological personifica­ tio n). The epoch of reification of natu re and man. The contemporary stage of pe rsonification of natu re (and man), but withou t loss of reifica­ tion . See V. V. Kozhi nov's article on nature in P rishvin. 1 7 In this stage, pe rso nific ation is not mythic, and yet it is not hostile to the myth ic, and freq uently util izes i ts language ( transformation into the language of sy mbols) . 4. Con texts of understanding. T h e problem o f remote contexts. The ete rnal renewal of meanings in all new contexts . Small time (the pres­ ent day, the recent past, and the foreseeable [ desired ] fu tu re) and great tim e-infinite and unfinalized dialogue in which no meaning dies. The living in nature (organic). Everything inorganic is d rawn into life in the process of exchange (only in abstraction can thi ngs be jux­ taposed by taking them separately from life). My attitude toward Formalis m : a different understanding of specifi­ catio n ; ignori ng content leads to "mate rial aesthetics" (criticism of this in my article of 1 92 4 ) ; 1 8 not "making" but creativity (only an "item" is obtained from mate rial); the lack of understanding of historicity and change (a mechanical perception of change). The positive significance of formalism ( new p roblems and new aspects of art); what is new al­ ways assumes one-sided and extreme forms in the early, more creative stages of its development. My attitude toward structu ralism: I am against enclosure in a text. Mechanical categories: "opposition , " "change of codes" (the many styles of Eugene Onegin in Lorman's interpretation and in my interpreta­ tion). IQ Sequential formalization and depersonalization: all relations are logical (in the broad sense of the word). But I hear voices in every­ thing and d ialogic relations among them. I also perceive the principle of augmentation dialogically. H igh evaluations of structuralism. The p roblem of "precision" and "depth . " Depth of penetration into the ob­ ject ( thinglike) and depth of penetration into the subject ( personal ). Structu ralism has only one subject-the subject of the research himself. Thi ngs a re transformed i nto concepts (a diffe rent degree of ab­ straction); the subject can never become a concept ( he h imself speaks and responds). Contextual meaning is pe rsonal istic; it always includes =

1 70 1lw

M e t h odology for t h e H u man Sciences

a question , an add ress, and the antici pation of a response , it always includes two (as a d ialogic m i n i m u m ) . This personalism is not psycho­ logical, but semantic. There is neithe r a fi rst nor a last word and there a re no l i m i ts to the dialogic context ( i t exte nds i n to the bound less past and the bou ndless future). Eve n past meanings, that is, those born i n the d ialogue of past centu ries, can never be stable (finalized , ended o nce and for all)­ they will always change ( be renewed) i n the p rocess of subsequent, future development of the d ialogue. At any moment i n the develop­ ment of the dialogue there are i mmense , boun d less masses of forgot­ ten contextual meani ngs, but at certain moments of the d ialogue's sub­ sequent development along the way they are recalled and invigorated in renewed form ( i n a new context). Nothing is absolute ly dead : every meaning will have its homecoming festival. The problem of great time.

Notes I . Taken from Pasternak's poem "August" from his 1946 - 53 period (when he was at work on Dr. Zltivago). This line appears in the last s t a n za of the poem, which is part of a quotation from the poet's "fo rmer, clairvoyant voice" :

Farewell, spread of the wings out-straightened The free stubbornness of pure fl ight, The word that gives the world its i mage , C reation : miracles and light. As translated i n Vlad imir M a rkov and Merrill Sparks, Modern Russian Poetry ( New York: Bobbs-Merri l l Co. , 1 967) p. 607 . 2 . See S. S. Averintsev, "The Symbol," in Kratkaja literaturnaja entsiklopedija ( Moscow, 1972), vol . 7 , column 827 . 3. Ibid . , column 828. 4 . See note 2.l to " From Notes Made in 1970 - 7 1 ." 5. See note 1 5 to " From Notes Made in 1 970- 7 1 . " 6. Refere nce here is to atte mpts by such figures as Alois Riegl and, above all, Edward Hanslick ( 1 825 - 1 904 ) to conceive art as perfectly im manent: the hist o ry of m usic, for instance, was a fu nction only of a logic internal to music and had very little to do with composers themselves. See Edward Hanslick, The Beautiful in Mu· sic, tr. Gustav Cohen ( I nd ianapol is: Bobhs-Merrill Co. , 1 957). Bakhtin was an acute student of philosoph ical atte mpts to found new bases for aesthetics, and his earlier works are peppered with com me ntary on the m . See " Author and H e ro in Aesthetic Activity," and The Formal Method in Literary Srholarship ( p p . 50ff. in E ng. e d . ) . 7. Reference is to Podstrizltennymi xlazami: Knixa uzloo i zakrt1t pamjat ( Par is, 1 95 1 ).

M e thodology fo r th e H u m a n Sciences 8. The epo n ymous h e ro of Maksim Gorky's novel 7/tizn Klima

( 1 927-36).

-.;,

I l l

Som/dntJ

9. C f. " D i sco u rse i n t h e Novel" i n The Diolo!dr lmopnotion, pp. J4ZtT. 1 0 . See the a nalysis of these forms i n Bakhtin's earlv work, where he concen­ . trate s on the way au thors relate to their heroes; of pa rtic ular relevance is the chap­ ter on "The Se mantic Whole of the Hero" in the forthcoming translation of "Au­ th or and H e ro" by Vad i m Liapu nov i ncluded in The A rchitertonirs of Responsibility (Aus ti n : U n i ve rs i ty of Texas Press, forthcomi ng).

I I . In the s p ri ng of 1 970, Bakhtin wrote an i n ternal review for the fu ture pub­ lish e rs of a book o n Shakespea re by his good friend L . E . P i nsky (Shekspir ( M os ­ cow, 1 9 7 1 ] ) . I n the rev i e w, a copy of which is in the Bakhtin arch ives, he said amo ng othe r thi ngs: The stage of the Shakespearean theater is the entire world ( Theotf71m mundt). This is what gives that special significance . . . to each i mage, each action, and each word in S h a ke speare's tragedies, wh ich has never aga i n retu rned to

E u ropean d rama (after Shakespeare , everyth ing in d rama became trivial) . . . . This pec u l i a r i ty of Shakespeare's . . . i s a d i rect legacy of the medieval theater a nd fo rms of public spectacles, determ i n i n g the evaluative-cosmic coloring of a bove and below . . . the main th ing is the perception (or, more precisely, the l i v i n g sense u naccompanied by any clear awareness) of all action in the theater as so me k i n d of special symbolic ritual. 1 2 . Compare s i m i l a r ideas i n Bakhti n's earl ier work ( V. N. Volosh i nov, " Dis­ cou rse in Life and Disco u rse i n Art, " tr. I. R . Tirunik, i n Freudianism: A Marxist

Critique ( New York : Aca d e m ic P ress, 1 976 ), p . 1 1 2): Noth ing is more perilous for aesthetics than to ignore the autonomous role of the l i ste n e r. A very commonly held opinion has it that the listener is to be

regarded as equal to the author, excepting the latter's techn ical performance, and that the pos i t ion of a compe tent l i stener is su pposed to be a s i m ple repro­ d uction of the author's position . In actual fact this is not so. Indeed, the op­ posi te may sooner

be said to be true: the l i s tener neve r equals the author. The

l istener has his own independent place in the event of the artistic creation ; he must occu py a specia l , and, what is more , a 1'811o -sided position in it-with respect to the author and with respect to the hero-and it is this posi tion that has dete r m i n ative effect on the style of the utte rance. 1 3 . See Averintsev, "The Symbo l , " col u m n 82 7. 1 4. I n the "Phaed ru s , " Socrates says, " i t is true I rarely ve n t u re outside my gates, and I hope that you will excu se me when you hear the reason , wh ich i s that I

am a lover of knowledge , and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and nor the trees of the cou n try" ( The Dialogues ofPlato, rr. B . Jowett, J rd ed . ( London : Oxford University Press, 1 892 ), vol . I p. 4J5).

,

1 5 . See The Historian's Croft, tr. Peter Pu tnam ( New York: Random House, 1 95 3 ) .

1 6 . See W i l helm v o n Hu mboldt, /Jnguistir Variability and lntel/ertuol Develop­ ment, tr. Geo rge C. B uck and Fri thjof A . Raven (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1 9 7 1 ), esp. pp. 1 - 2 1 .

1 72 �

M ethodology for the Human Sciences

1 7 . See Vad im Kozhi nov, "Not Competition, but Co-Creation ," literaturnaja gaze/a, 3 1 October 1 983 . 18. A translation of this essay ( "The Problem of Content, Material, and Form in Artistic Creativity" ) by Kenneth B rostrom will appear i n Tlze Arclziteclonics of

Responsibility.

19. See note 1 to "From Notes Made in 1 970- 7 1 . "

------- � �

-------

Index

Alsace , 3 7 Ann ales Schoo l , x i i i Apu le i u s : M�ramorpllos� ( Til� Golden Ass), 1 0, 1 3 , 54 n Au re l i us , Marc us, I SO Au thor: and gen re , 5; and h e ro, 1 7 1 n ; i mage of, 109- 1 1 0 , 1 1 6 - 1 1 7, 1 481 49, 1 60 - 1 6 1 ; a n d i n d i rect speech, 1 1 5; and l istene r, 1 7 1 n Autho rsh i p : forms of, 1 5 2 - 1 53 Ave ri msev, Se rgey, xi, 1 59, 1 60, 1 70 n Bal7.ac, Honore d e , 1 6, 1 9 Barthes, Rola n d , i x Behaviorism, 1 97 ; Ame rica n , 6 1 , l OO n B e l i nsky, Vissarion , 4

Bloch , Marc, 1 67; Annal� d'Aisroirr

lconomiqu� �� social�. xxi ; Til� Histo­

rian's Croft, xx i ; on h i s tory, xx i i i

Blok, Aleksandr: "On Art and C r i ti cis m , " 1 55, 1 58 n

-

B loomfield, Leonard , l OO n B ocha rov , Sergey, x i , 58 n

B raude ! , xx i B ru not, F. : Histoirr d� lo longuf fran­ (ais� de.r orif(in�s a /900, 79 n

C a lp re ne d e Gau tier de Ia , U, 55 n C-arniva l , xv Caro, Han n i ba l , 34 ,

C.c:rvantes, M iguel de: condensation of re a l i ty i n 43 -44; Don Quixor�. 45

Chronotope (chronotopic), xiv, 42,

46 50 52, 53, 1 34, 168; and m ee t i ng, 1 42 , 1 56 n Chrysostom, Dion, 1 2, 55 n -

,

­

Climentine cycle, 1 2, 55 n Cultu re: foreign , 6 - 7; open u n i ty of, 6 Oaudet, Alfonse, 1 4 1 , 1 56 n Defoe, Daniel: Captain Singleton, 1 0, 54 n ; Moll Flanders, 10, 54 n Derrida, ix, xx i i i n Dialogue (dialogic, d ialogization), xvi i - xviii, 92 - 93, 94; between cul­ tures, 7; and contextual mean i ng, 1 45, 146; and dialectics, xxi , 147; disti nctiveness of, 1 30 n ; as endless, 1 70; and interre lation of texts, 1 05 - 106; and language as system, 1 1 7 - 1 1 8; and l i nguistics, 1 1 8- 1 1 9, 1 25; as model of speech com muni­ cation, 72, 75; and open-ended ness, 1 55; and rhetoric, 1 50; in secondary ge n res, 66; of styles, 1 1 2 Didttung und Wallnttir (Goethe), 42 Dickens, Charles, 1 9; David CopjNr­ fold, 1 9, zz D i l they, Wilhelm, 1 45, 1 5 7 n , 1 6 1 , 1 6Z Discou rse : ind ividual, 67 -68; layers of, 1 2 1 ; quasi-d i rect, 1 20, 1 30 n ; and responsive listener, 68 r>oscoevsky, Fyodor, xiii, 1 39, 1 48, I SO; and contextual mea n i ng, 164; discou rse with characte rs, 1 1 6- 1 1 7; and polyphony, UZ- 1 1 3 , 1 49, 1 5 1 - I SZ -works: "Bobok, " xvii i , 1 50, 1 5 1 ; Til� Brorllm Karamazov, 1 36, 1 55 n ; Tilt /nsulrtd and rAt lnjurtd. 1 5 1 ; Poor Foil, 1 5 1 Double-voiced ness. S« U tterance

1 74

�

I ndex emergence," 29 - 30;

E i khenbaum , Boris, I, !l n E i n be ck, 32, 34 E n l i g h te n m e n t , 39, 42; condensation

of re a l it y i n , 44 -45; Germa n , h i st o r i c i ty of, 26 E p ic te t u s , ISO

24;

Eschenbach , Wolfram von : Parzival,

1 9 - 20 55 n ,

Euphrates, 40

" Farbenlehre," 28 Febvre , xxi Fe nelon , F ra n � o i s : Tilimaque, 20, 23 , 55 n F i e l d i ng, Henry, 45; and Bildungs­ roman, 24; Tom Jones, 1 9, 2 2 , 24 F l au ber t, Gustave , 1 9 ; Madame Bov­ ary, 141 Fo l k l o re 1 8 t h ce ntu ry, 5 2 Formalism, xxi; and Bakh t i n , 1 69; "materialist aesthetics" of, 9 n , 1 69; Rus s i a n , xv Francion (Sorel), 1 0 Freud , Sigm u n d , i x ,

Gargontuo and Pantogruel ( Rabelais), 20, 23,

45

r i od , 36

i n We i m ar pe­

-works : A nnals, 37, 38, 46, 48 , 49;

Autobiography ( Dichtung und Wahmeit)

,

28, 35, 3 7 , 56 n , 57 n; "The E ternal jew," 46; Foust, 36; Italian Journey (ltolienische Reise), 29, 3 1 , 3 3 , 3 7 - 40, 42 , 48, 56 n ; William Tell, 46, 48 Gogol, N i kolai , 1 1 5 , 1 4 1 , 1 5 3 , 1 54- 1 55; Deal Souls, 96 n; and s e ri ous ne ss , 147- 148 "Golden Age" : in Ro u s se a u , 5 1 G o n c h a rov , Ivan: Oblomov, 20; An Ordinary Story, 20 Great time. See Time

G r igoro v i c h , Dmi try, 1 4 1 , 1 56 n G r i m m e l s h a u sen , Jakob von , 25; Simplicissimus, 23, SS n

G u kovs ky G r i go ry, 1 , 8 n Gvozdev, A. A. , 64 and n ,

H a n n ibal , 33

Hege l , G eorg W i l h e l m Fried rich:

"The P h eno m e nol ogy of the Spi rit," 1 62 Heidegger, M a rt i n, 1 49, 1 58 n Heimatskunst, 22

Geisteswissenschoften, 1 2 8 n

Genre: conve rsational-d ialogical , 66; intimate, 1 1 8; proclamatory, paro d y

of, 1 32 ; r h e torical , 6 1 , 7 2 - 73 , 95 . See also s pe e c h gen res Gessner, Salomon, 26, 56 n G l o sse mat ic s , 1 07, 1 29 n

Gmel i n , Wilhelm Fried rich , 34, 58 n

Goe t h e , johann Wolfgang von, xi i i - xv , 22 - 2 4 ; autobiographical methods

of, 57 n; and Dos t oe v s k y 57 n ; and ,

estranged past , d islike of, 33 - 34 ;

and "fu l l ness of time," 34, 42; local i ty ( Lorolitiit) in, 28, 34 - 35 , 41 , 46 - 50; and n ece ss i ty of creative work, 39 - 40; and necessity of t i m e , 42 ; S t ra s bo u rg pe r i od , 35; and sy n ­ c h ro n i s m 4 1 ; t i m e , co n t i n u i t y of. .�6 - 40; t i me and space i n , 25 - 50; " v i s i b i l i ty" i n , 2 7 ; a n d " v i s i o n of ,

H e rder, johann Gottfried, 24, 42 , 56 n ;

Letters for the Furthering of Humanity,

56 n ; On German Character and Art, 56 n; Outlines of the Philosophy of Man, 4 1 , 58 n ; }et Another Philosophy of History for the Furthering of Hu­ manity, 56 n

H e ro (character), 1 0 , 1 3 , 1 8 ; au tobio­ graphical, 1 09; becoming of, 1 2 ,

55 n; i n bi o gra ph ica l novel , 1 7 ; de­

ve lopment o f, 19, 2 0 2 1 ; i n Greek -

romance, 1 2; ly r i c a l , 1 09; i n n ov e l o f orde a l , 1 2 ; t e s t i n g of, 1 6 Heroization , B - 14. 19 H i ppel , Theodor Gottl ieb von , 22; l.ehen.rliiuft' norh auffttigendrr Linie, 20, 24,

5() n

H i rze l , Ru d o l ph , 1 1 7. BO n

Hjclmsle\', Lou is,

1 2!l n

H u m a n sci e n c e : d ia l og i c

nature o f,

Index

1 6 1 ; and natu ral science, 1 6 1 ; text as definitive of, 1 03 - 1 04, 1 07 , 1 1 3 ; thought i n , 1 03 - 1 04 H u mbold t , Wilhelm von , 7 n ; a n d in­ dividual d iscourse, 67, 1 0 1 n; Lin­ guistic Variability and Intellectual Development, 1 0 1 n ; and m u l ti pl icity

of languages, 1 68 H usser!, E d m u n d , 1 60

Irony, 1 3 2 , 1 34, 1 48 , 1 49 Jaspers, Karl: Philosophie, 142, 1 56- 1 57 n Jean Paul. See Rich ter, Jean Paul Kanaev, Ivan: Gete kak estestvoispytatel, xxi i i n ; on Goethe, xxi i i n ; logann Volfgang Gete, xx i i i n Kant, I m m anuel, x, xiv, xx, xxi Kara mz i n , N i kolay: Poor Lizo, 47, 58 n Kans evsky, S. : and "phrase , " 82, 1 0 1 - 1 02 n Kave l i n , K. D. , 1 5 1 , 1 58 n Keller, Gottfried: Der grone Heinrich, 20, 22, 56 n Kharkov School , x i i Khodasevich , Vladislav: " I n F ro m o f the M i rror," 1 5 5 - 1 56 n Koffka, K u rt: and Gesta l t theory, xx Kon k i n , S. S. , xxi i n Konrad, N ikolay, xii, 3; Wm and East, 2, 8 n Koz h i nov, V. V. , 1 69 Laughter: Gogolian, 1 35 ; as liberaror, 1 34 - 135 La vida de Lazorillo de Tormes ( H u rtado de Mendoza), 1 0 , 54 n Le Goff, xxi Leibniz, Gottfried Wi lhelm, 93 , 1 02 n Lessing, Gotthold, 24, 42 , 5 6 n ; The Education of the Human Race, 56 n;

How the Ancients Represented Death, 56 n ; Laocoon, 56 n

Levi-Strauss, Claude, i x Likhachev, Dmitry, x i i , 3 : Poelics of

Ancient Russian Literature, 2, 8 n ; Re­ search on Sign Systems, 2 Literary scholarship, 3, 7; and history of culture, 2, 1 39- 1 40 Lohenste i n , Daniel Caspar von : Armi­ nius und Thusnelda, 1 3 , 1 5 , 55 n Lorman, Yu ry, xii, 2, 3, B n , 1 35 , 1 55 n , 1 69 Mann, Thomas , 1 1 6, 1 26, I30 n ; Bud­ denbrooks, 20; Magic Mountain, 20 Marbu rg School, 1 28 n Medvedev, P. N. : The Formal Method of Literary Scholarship, 9 n Metalanguage: a s d ialogue, 1 36 Metalingu istics, 1 33, 152 M isch , Georg, 1 46, 1 5 7 n Moliere, Jean-Bap tiste, 78 Monologizarion , 1 63 Narezh ny, V. T. , 1 54, 1 58 n "National unity o f language, " 60, l OO n Natu ralism, 1 1 2 Newton, Isaac, 44 Nietzsche, Fried rich: and compassion, 141 Novel: adven tu re, 1 0 , I I , 1 4 , 18; ba­ roque, 1 3 - 14; biographical, 10, 16; chivalric, 13, 55 n; Christian hagiog­ raphy, 1 2 - 1 3 ; of education, 19, 22; French , 1 6; gothic, 1 4; G reek ro­ mance, 12; heroic, 13; of human emergence, 1 9, 2 1 -25; i n tegrity of epoch in, 43; of ordeal, 1 0 - 1 2 , 1 4 - 16; picaresque, 1 0; sentimental, 14; travel, 1 0- 1 1 , 18

Novy Mir, xi, xii, I Odyssey, The, 48 "Outsid ed ness" (vnenakhodimost ), xii Palmerin, 45

Pastern ak, Boris: "August," 1 59, 1 70 n Pecho rin , 139 Personification: and reification , 168 - 1 69 Peshkovsky, Aleksandr, 86, 1 02 n

1 76

�

I n d ex

Petronius, Gaius, 1 0, 54 n Pindar, SZ - 53, 59 n ; folklore i n , 52 Plato, 160 Plot: in baroque novel , 1 4 - 1 5 ; in bio­ graph i ca l novel, 1 7 ; in novel of or­ deal, 14- 1 5 PMLA , i x Polyphony. See Dostoevsky, Fyodor Pontoppidan, Henrik: Lucky Peter, ZO, 56 n Potebnya, Aleksandr, xii, 1 , Z, 7 n; and "inner s pe ec h , xxii n Prishvin , M . , 1 69 Psychologism: danger of, 1 30 n Pushkin, Aleksandr, 1 24, 1 30 n , 148; and d i alogue, I Z9 n ; Eugene Onegin, 135, 140, 1 69; irony i n , 132 Pyrmont, 32; and historical time, 48 "

Raabe, Wilhelm: Der Hungtrpastor, ZO, 56 n Rabelais, Fran�;ois, xiii, xv, 23, 1 1 8; condensation of reality in 43 -44; Gargantua and Pantagruel, ZO, 23, 45; and novel of emergence, 25 Remizov, Aleksey, 1 63 Renaissance, 43 , 97 Richardson, Samuel: Clarissa Har· IOfiPt, 47 Richter, j ean Pau l , ZZ, 135, 1 4 1 ; Titan, 20, 24, 56 n Rol land , Romain, 141 ; Jean-Citristoplte, 20, 56 n Rome, 40-41 Rousseau, jean jacques, 141; chrono­ topc in, SO; Confessions, 5 1 ; Emile, 20, 23; La nollf.Jelle Hl/oise, 47 Saussure , Ferd i nand de, 6 1 , 68, l OO n : a n d Ia parole, xvi , 8 1 and n Sch il l er, Fried rich, 27, 39 Scott, Walter, 53 - 54 Scotu s , Duns, 1 57 - 1 58 n Scudery, Madeleine de: Artamme. 011 le grand Cyrus, 1 3 , 1 5 , 55 n "Second Sophistic," I Z , 55 n Semiotics: a n d code, 147

Seyffert, Peter: Soviet Literary Struc· turalism, xxii n Shakespeare, William, 4, 5, 1 5 2 , 164; Bakh tin on, 1 7 1 n ; compassion in, 140 Shakhmatov, Aleksey, 82, IOZ n Shchedrin, N. , 1 15 Smollett, Tobias: Hump/try Clinker, 10, 54 n ; Peregrine Pickle, 10, 54 n; Roderick Random, 10, 54 n Socrates, 167, 1 7 1 n Sorrio, 38, 58 n Speech comm u nication: and active role of other, 70, 7Z "Speech flow," 67, 68, 70 - 7 1 , 81 Speech genres, xvi , 78 - 79, 1 2 7 , 1 53; and addressee, 95, 99; fa m i l i ar, 95, %-97 ; heterogeneity of, 60; histori­ cal changes in, 65; individuality i n , 79- 8 1 ; intimate, 97; and language forms, 79- 8 1 ; l i m i ts of, xix; and lit­ erary language , 65 - 66; p ri m ary and secondary, 6 1 - 62 ; secondary, 72 - 73 , 75 - 76, 98- 99; sty l i st i cs of, 63 - 67; types of, 79 - 8 1 Spengle r, Oswald, xii, 6 Sp ino za , Benedict de, 42 Spitze r, Leo, 1 1 9 S t a i ger, Emil, xiv; Gnmd!Jegriffe per Poetik, xxiii n; and Heidegger, xxiii n Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 1 55 Steinthal, Kerman n , 101 n Stendhal, 16, 1 9 Sterne, Lau ren ce , z z . 4 5 , 1 35, 140, 1 41 Structuralism, 6 1 , 107, 1 65 ; and Bak h tin, 1 69 1 70; and code , x xi S t y l i st i cs, 63 -67, 90 -9 1 ; and gram­ mar, 66; trad itional, 97, tOO; and ut­ terance, 100 S u p ra e x i st enc e : and witness and judge, 1 3 7 , 1 55 n Symbol , 1 59; and contextual meaning. 160; and form, 166 -

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Tartu School of Se m io t i c s , xii

Text: and context, 1 66; dia logic natu re

of,

162

I ndex Textology, 1 07 Thackeray, William: Vanity Fair, 1 9, 20 Thomso n , James, 26, 56 n ; "The Castle of l ndolence," 56 n ; "The Seasons," 56 n Time, 25 - 50; adve nture, 1 1 , 1 5, 1 7, 1 9; biographical, 1 7 1 8 , 3 1 ; biologi­ cal, 1 1 ; cyclical, 1 9, 26; fai ry-tale, 15, 1 7 ; fu ll ness of 34, 4 1 , 42, 52, 53; great, xxi, 4, 5 , 1 67, 169, 1 70; his­ torical , 1 1 , 18, 19, 24, 26, 27, 32, 37, 40, 48, 49; idyllic, 22, 26; national­ -

historical, 25, 52, 53; i n Rousseau , 50- 5 2 ; smal l , 1 69 Todorov, Tzvetan : Mikhail Bakllrin: Tile Dialogical Principle, xxii n Tolstoy, Leo, 22; Anna Karenina, 1 04, 1 1 0, 1 28 n, 1 29 n ; Cllildlzood, Adoles­ cence, and Youth, 20; and primi tivism,

1 49 Tomashevsky, Boris, 1 , 8 n Tru betskoy, N. S. , 1 28 n Turgenev, I van , 1 4 1 Tynya n ov, Yury, xx i i , xxii n , 1 , 8 n

Understanding: dialogic nature of, 1 1 1 , 1 1 9 , 1 26, 1 6 1 ; elements of, 1 59; and outsidedness, 7 , 1 4 1 - 1 43 , 1 44, 1 45, 1 68 ; responsive, 68 - 69, 7 1 Urfe, Honore d ' : L'Astrte, 1 3 , 55 n Utterance, xvi , xix, 62 - 63 , 95, 1 02 n ; add ressivity of, 95 -99; aspects of, 60 - 6 1 ; assimi lation of, 89; au­ thori tative, 88; bou ndaries of, 7 1 73 , 82, 92, 93, 1 1 2, 1 1 4; d ialogic ove nones in, 92-94, 99; dou ble­ voicedness in, 1 08, 1 1 0- 1 1 1 ; expres­ sive aspect of, 84 -90; finalization of, 76 - 8 1 ; generic forms of, 78; in­ terrelations of, 1 22 - 1 25 , 1 36; and li nguistics, 1 23 - 1 24, 1 3 5 - 1 36; met-

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alingu istic natu re of, 1 1 4; pauses in, 7 4 ; responsiveness of, 69, 8 2 - 83, 9 1 - 96, 99- 1 00; and sentence, 73 - 75 , 8 1 - 86, 89 -90, 99; speech

plan of, 77- 78; superadd ressee of, xvi i i , 1 26; as text, 1 04 - 1 05 ; unre­ peatability of, 1 08, 1 34 Vergil: Aeneid, 34 Vernadsky, Vladimir, 57 n 1 39, 1 5 6 n Veselovsky, Aleksandr, xii, I , 2, 1 40, ,

1 56 n

Vinogradov, Viktor, 1 1 7, 1 1 9 Vossler, Karl, l OO n ; school, 6 1 , 65 n, 67, 100- 1 0 1 n , 1 1 9 Vygotsky, L. S. : and Bakhtin, 1 29 n Watson, J . B . , l OO n Wertherism, 1 4 1 Weser, 40 Wetzel, Johan n : Tobias Knout, 20, 22, 56 n Whorf, Benjamin Lee, ix: Language, Tltougltr, and Reality, 1 0 1 n Wieland, Christoph: Agatlton, 20, 24, 56 n Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 40, 42 , 58 n Word : au thoritative, 1 33, 1 63 ; inter­ relations of, 1 43 - 1 44 ; of the other, 157 n; and qu ietude, 1 33 - 134; rhe­ torical , 1 50, 1 5 2 Xenophon: CytVpaedia, 1 9 , 23 , 55 n >Ok French Studies, ix, xxii n

Zh inkin, N. I . , 146, 1 5 7 n Zhu kovsky, Vasily: "Two Stories and One More," 1 29 n Zola, Emile, 1 6