Poulet - Phenomenology of Reading

Phenomenology of Reading Author(s): Georges Poulet Source: New Literary History, Vol. 1, No.
1, New and Old History (Oct., 1969), pp. 53-68 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468372 . Accessed: 28/05/2013 23:16
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Phenomenologyof Reading Georges Poulet
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of which,on a table thereis an open book. This seems to me the situationof everybook, until someone comes and begins to read it. Books are objects. On a table, on bookshelves,in storewindows,theywait for someone to come and deliver themfrom theirmateriality, fromtheirimmobility. When I see themon display, I look at themas I would at animals forsale, kept in little cages,and so obviously hoping for a buyer. For - there is no doubting it animals do know that their fate depends on a human intervention, thanksto which theywill be deliveredfromthe shame of being treated as objects. Isn't the same true of books? Made of paper and ink, they lie where theyare put, until the momentsome one shows an interest in them. They wait. Are they aware that an act of man might sudtheir existence?They appear to be lit up with that denly transform Read me, theyseem to say. I findit hard to resisttheirappeal. hope. No, books are not just objects among others. have it with otherobjects. This feelingtheygive me - I sometimes I have it, forexample, with vases and statues.It would neveroccur to me to walk around a sewingmachineor to look at the under side of a with the face theypresentto me. But statues plate. I am quite satisfied make me want to circle around them,vases make me want to turn them in my hands. I wonder why. Isn't it because theygive me the illusion that thereis something in themwhich,froma different angle, I mightbe able to see? Neithervase nor statueseemsfullyrevealed by the unbroken perimeterof its surfaces.In addition to its surfacesit must have an interior.What this interior might be, that is what me and makes me circlearound them,as thoughlooking for intrigues the entranceto a secretchamber.But thereis no such entrance (save for the mouth of the vase, which is not a true entrancesince it gives only access to a little space to put flowers in). So the vase and the statue are closed. They oblige me to remain outside.We can have no true rapport- whence my sense of uneasiness.
of an empty in themiddle there is thedescription room,
THE
beginning of Mallarm6's unfinishedstory,Igitur,
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So much forstatuesand vases. I hope books are not like them.Buy a vase, take it home, put it on your table or yourmantel,and, aftera while, it will allow itselfto be made a part of your household. But it will be no less a vase, forthat.On the otherhand, take a book, and you will findit offering, opening itself.It is thisopennessof the book which I findso moving.A book is not shut in by its contours,is not It asks nothingbetterthan to exist outside walled-up as in a fortress. or to let exist in it. In short,the extraordinary factin the itself, you case of a book is the fallingaway of the barriersbetweenyou and it. You are inside it; it is inside you; thereis no longereitheroutside or inside. Such is the initial phenomenon produced wheneverI take up a book, and begin to read it. At the precisemomentthat I see, surging out of the object I hold open beforeme, a quantityof significations which my mind grasps,I realize that what I hold in my hands is no longer just an object, or even simplya living thing.I am aware of a rational being, of a consciousness;the consciousnessof another, no fromthe one I automaticallyassume in everyhuman being different I encounter, is open to me, except that in this case the consciousness welcomes me, lets me look deep inside itself,and even allows me, with unheard-of licence,to thinkwhat it thinksand feel what it feels. is the disappearance of the Unheard-of,I say. Unheard-of,first, "object." Where is the book I held in my hands? It is still there,and at the same time it is there no longer, it is nowhere. That object wholly object, that thingmade of paper, as thereare thingsmade of metal or porcelaine,that object is no more,or at least it is as if it no longer existed,as long as I read the book. For the book is no longera material reality.It has become a series of words,of images,of ideas which in their turn begin to exist. And where is this new existence? in externalspace. There is Surelynot in the paper object. Nor, surely, self. only one place leftfor this new existence:my innermost How has this come about? By what means,throughwhose intercession? How can I have opened my own mind so completelyto what is usually shut out of it? I do not know.I know only that,while reading, I perceive in my mind a number of significations which have made themselvesat home there. Doubtless they are still objects: images, ideas, words,objects of my thought.And yet,fromthispoint of view, thereis an enormousdifference. For the book, like the vase, or like the statue,was an object among others, residingin the externalworld: the world which objects ordinarily inhabitexclusively in theirown society or each on its own, in no need of being thoughtby my thought; whereasin this interiorworld where,like fishin an aquarium, words, these mental entities,in order images and ideas disport themselves,
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to exist,need the shelterwhich I provide; theyare dependenton my consciousness. This dependence is at once a disadvantageand an advantage.As I have just observed,it is the privilegeof exteriorobjects to dispense with any interference fromthe mind. All theyask is to be let alone. But the same is surelynot trueof interior They manage by themselves. theyare condemnedto change theirverynature, objects. By definition condemned to lose their materiality.They become images, ideas, words,that is to say purelymental entities.In sum, in order to exist as mental objects,theymust relinquish theirexistenceas real objects. On the one hand, this is cause for regret.As soon as I replace my direct perceptionof realityby the words of a book, I deliver myself, bound hand and foot to the omnipotenceof fiction.I say farewellto with what is, in order to feignbelief in what is not. I surroundmyself I the There is no become of fictitious escaping language. beings; prey this take-over. Language surroundsme with its unreality. On the other hand, the transmutation throughlanguage of reality into a fictionalequivalent, has undeniable advantages.The universe of fictionis infinitely more elastic than the world of objective reality. It lends itselfto any use; it yieldswith littleresistanceto the imporI findthis the tunitiesof the mind. Moreover- and of all its benefits most appealing - this interioruniverseconstituted by language does not seem radicallyopposed to the me who thinksit. Doubtless what I glimpse through the words are mental formsnot divested of an appearance of objectivity.But they do not seem to be of a nature other than my mind which thinksthem. They are objects, but subhas become part of my jectified objects. In short,since everything of to intervention thanks the mind, language, the oppositionbetween attenuated.And thus the subject and its objects has been considerably the greatestadvantage of literatureis that I am persuaded by it that I am freedfrommy usual sense of incompatibility between my consciousness and its objects. This is the remarkabletransformation wroughtin me throughthe act of reading. Not only does it cause the physicalobjects around me to disappear, including the very book I am reading, but it replaces those external objects with a congeries of mental objects in close rapport with my own consciousness.And yet the very intimacyin which I now live with my objects is going to presentme with new problems.The most curious of these is the following:I am someone who happens to have as objects of his own thought,thoughtswhich are part of a book I am reading, and which are therefore the cogitationsof another.They are the thoughts of another,and yetit is I who am their subject. The situation is even more astonishingthan the one noted above. I am thinkingthe thoughtsof another. Of course,
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it as the therewould be no cause for astonishment if I were thinking thoughtof another.But I thinkit as my veryown. Ordinarilythere is the I which thinks,which recognizes itself (when it takes its but which whichmayhave come fromelsewhere bearings) in thoughts it takes upon itselfas its own in the momentit thinksthem. This is how we musttake Diderot's declaration"Mes penseessont mes catins" ("My thoughtsare my whores"). That is, theysleep with everybody without ceasing to belong to their author. Now, in the presentcase Because of the strange invasion of my things are quite different. person by the thoughtsof another,I am a self who is granted the experience of thinkingthoughtsforeign to him. I am the subject of thoughtsother than my own. My consciousness behaves as though it were the consciousness of another. This meritsreflection. In a certain sense I must recognizethat no idea reallybelongs to me. Ideas belong to no one. They pass fromone mind to another as coins pass from hand to hand. Consequently, nothingcould be more misleadingthan the attemptto definea consciousness or entertains. But whateverthese by the ideas whichit utters ideas may be, howeverstrong the tie whichbinds themto theirsource, howevertransitory may be theirsojourn in myown mind,so long as I entertainthemI assertmyself as subject of theseideas; I am the subfor whom ideas serve for the time being as the the jective principle this Furthermore, predications. subjectiveprinciplecan in no wise be conceived as a predication,as somethingwhich is discussed,referred to. It is I who think,who contemplate, who am engaged in speaking. In short,it is never a HE but an I. Now what happens when I read a book? Am I then the subject of a seriesof predications which are not mypredications? That is impossiin terms.I feel sure that as soon as ble, perhaps even a contradiction I think something, that somethingbecomes in some indefinableway own. Whatever I think is a part of my mental world. And yet my here I am thinkinga thoughtwhich manifestly belongs to another mental world,which is being thoughtin me just as thoughI did not exist. Alreadythe notion is inconceivableand seemseven more so if I reflect that,since everythoughtmust have a subject to thinkit, this thoughtwhich is alien to me and yet in me, must also have in me a subject which is alien to me. It all happens, then,as thoughreading were the act by which a thoughtmanaged to bestow itselfwithinme with a subject not myself. WheneverI read, I mentallypronouncean I, and yet the I which I pronounce is not myself. This is true even when the hero of a novel is presentedin the third person,and even when thereis no hero and nothingbut reflections or propositions:for as soon as something is presentedas thought, therehas to be a thinking subject with whom, at least for the time being, I identify, for-
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getting myself, alienated from myself. "JE est un autre." said Rimbaud. Another I, who has replaced my own, and who will continue to do so as long as I read. Reading is just that: a way of giving way not only to a host of alien words,images,ideas, but also to the veryalien principle which uttersthem and sheltersthem. The phenomenonis indeed hard to explain, even to conceive,and seem even yet,once admitted,it explains to me what mightotherwise more inexplicable. For how could I explain, withoutsuch take-over with which of my innermost facility subjectivebeing, the astonishing I not only understandbut even feel what I read. When I read as I withoutany desire to preserve ought, i.e. withoutmental reservation, remy independence of judgment, and with the total commitment and intuitive becomes of reader, any my any comprehension quired assumedby me. In otherwords, feelingproposed to me is immediately in question here is not a movementfrom the kind of comprehension the unknown to the known, from the strangeto the familiar,from outside to inside. It mightratherbe called a phenomenonby which into the light mental objects rise up fromthe depthsof consciousness of recognition.On the other hand - and without contradictionreading implies somethingresemblingthe apperception I have of what I thinkas being the action by which I grasp straightway myself, in a this is case, not, I). Whateversort of thoughtby subject (who, alienation I may endure, reading does not interpretmy activityas subject. Reading, then,is the act in which the subjectiveprinciplewhich I call I, is modified in such a way thatI no longerhave the right, strictly consider it as my I. I am on loan to another,and this to speaking, and acts within me. The phenomenon other thinks,feels, suffers, and even naivestformin the sortof spell most in its obvious appears of about certain by cheap kinds of reading,such as thrillers, brought which I say "It gripped me." Now it is importantto note that this by another takes place not only on the level of possessionof myself is with regard to images, sensations,ideas that objective thought, whichreadingaffords me, but also on the level of myverysubjectivity. When I am absorbedin reading,a second selftakes over,a selfwhich do I thinksand feels for me. Withdrawn in some recess of myself, then silentlywitness this dispossession?Do I derive from it some a kind of anguish?However that may be, comfort or, on the contrary, someone else holds the center of the stage, and the question which is this: imposes itself,which I am absolutelyobliged to ask myself, this mind forefront? What is the the "Who is usurperwho occupies and who, when I say who all alone by himselffillsmy consciousness I, is indeed that I?" There is an immediateanswerto this question,perhaps too easy an
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answer.This I who thinksin me when I read a book, is the I of the one who writesthe book. When I read Baudelaire or Racine, it is really Baudelaire or Racine who thinks,feels,allows himselfto be read withinme. Thus a book is not only a book, it is the means by which an author actuallypreserves his ideas, his feelings, his modes of and It fromdeath. dreaming living. is his means of savinghis identity Such an interpretation of reading is not false.It seems to justify what is commonly called the biographical explication of literarytexts. Indeed everyword of literatureis impregnated with the mind of the one who wrote it. As he makes us read it, he awakens in us the work, analogue of what he thoughtor felt.To understanda literary then,is to let the individual who wrote it reveal himselfto us in us. It is not the biography which explicatesthe work,but ratherthe work which sometimes enables us to understandthe biography. But biographical interpretation is in part false and misleading.It is true that thereis an analogy betweenthe worksof an author and the experiencesof his life. The worksmay be seen as an incomplete translationof the life. And further, thereis an even more significant analogy among all the works of a single author. Each of the works, however,while I am reading it, lives in me its own life. The subject who is revealed to me throughmy reading of it is not the author, either in the disorderedtotalityof his outer experiences,or in the betterorganizedand concentrated which is the one aggregate, totality, of his writings. Yet the subject which presidesover the workcan exist forunderstandonly in the work.To be sure,nothingis unimportant the and a mass of work, textual,and ing biographical, bibliographical, general critical informationis indispensable to me. And yet this knowledgedoes not coincidewith the internalknowledgeof the work. Whatevermay be the sum of the information I acquire on Baudelaire or Racine, in whatever of I degree intimacy maylive with theirgenius, I am aware that this contribution(apport) does not suffice to illuminate forme in its own innermeaning,in its formalperfection, and in the subjective principle which animates it, the particular work of Baudelaire or Racine the reading of which now absorbs me. At this moment what mattersto me is to live, fromthe inside, in a certain identitywith the work and the work alone. It could hardlybe otherwise. Nothing external to the work could possiblyshare the extraordinaryclaim which the work now exertson me. It is therewithin to its author,nor to his other me, not to send me back, outside itself, but on the contrary to keep my attentionrivettedon itself. writings, It is the work which tracesin me the veryboundaries within which this consciousness will defineitself.It is the workwhich forceson me a seriesof mentalobjectsand createsin me a network of words, beyond which, for the time being, there will be no room for other mental
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objects or for other words. And it is the work, finally,which, not thus with defining takeshold satisfied the contentof myconsciousness, of it, appropriatesit, and makes of it that I which,fromone end of my reading to the other,presidesover the unfoldingof the work,of the single work which I am reading. And so the work formsthe temporary mental substancewhich fills and it is moreoverthat consciousness, the I-subject, my consciousness; the continued consciousnessof what is, revealing itself within the interiorof the work.Such is the characteristic conditionof everywork which I summon back into existenceby placing my consciousnessat its disposal. I give it not only existence,but awarenessof existence. And so I ought not to hesitateto recognizethat so long as it is animated by this vital inbreathing inspiredby the act of reading,a work of literaturebecomes (at the expense of the reader whose own life it suspends) a sortof human being, that it is a mind consciousof itself and constituting itselfin me as the subject of its own objects. II The work lives its own life within me; in a certain sense, it thinks and it even gives itselfa meaningwithinme. itself, This strange displacementof myselfby the work deserves to be examined even more closely. If the work thinks itself in me, does this mean that, during a complete loss of consciousnesson my part, another thinkingentity in order to think invades me, takingadvantage of my unconsciousness itselfwithoutmy being able to thinkit? Obviously not. The annexation of my consciousness by another (the otherwhich is the work) in no way implies that I am the victimof any deprivationof consciousness. Everythinghappens, on the contrary,as though, from the momentI become a preyto what I read, I begin to share the use of with thisbeing whom I have triedto defineand who my consciousness is the conscioussubject ensconcedat the heart of the work.He and I, we starthaving a common consciousness. Doubtless, withinthis comof each the of us are not of equal munity feeling, parts played by in The inherent the consciousness work is active and importance. is it it the foreground; clearly related to its own occupies potent; alworld, to objects which are its objects. In opposition, I myself, of whatever be I it conscious a much conscious of, may though play more humble role, contentto recordpassivelyall that is going in me. A lag takes place, a sort of schizoid distinctionbetween what I feel and what the other feels; a confusedawarenessof delay, so that the and then to informme what it has to thinkby itself, work seemsfirst
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while reading,of simply thought.Thus I oftenhave the impression, witnessingan action which at the same time concernsand yet does not concernme. This provokesa certainfeelingof surprise withinme. I am a consciousnessastonishedby an existencewhich is not mine, but which I experienceas though it were mine. This astonished consciousnessis in fact the consciousnessof the critic: the consciousness of a being who is allowed to apprehend as its own what is happening in the consciousnessof another being. Aware of a certaingap, disclosinga feelingof identity, but of identity within difference, criticalconsciousness does not necessarily implythe total disappearance of the critic'smind in the mind to be criticized. From the partial and hesitantapproximationof Jacques Riviere to the exalted, digressive and triumphant approximationof Charles Du Bos, criticismcan pass througha whole series of nuances which we would be well advised to study.That is what I now propose to do. and non-identificaBy discoveringthe various formsof identification tion to be foundin recentcriticalwritingin Frenchliterature, I shall be able perhaps to give a betteraccount of the variationsof which thisrelationship- betweencriticizing subject and criticizedobject is capable. Let me take a firstexample. In the case of the first criticI shall fusion this of two consciousnesses is It is an of, speak barelysuggested. uncertain movementof the mind toward an object which remains hidden. Whereas in the perfectidentification of two consciousnesses, each sees itselfreflected in the other,in this instancethe criticalconsciousnesscan, at best, attemptbut to draw closer to a realitywhich must remain forever veiled. In this attemptit uses the only mediators available to it in this quest, that is the senses.And since sight,the most intellectual of the five senses,seems in this particular case to come up against a basic opacity,the criticalmind must approach its goal blindly, throughthe tactile exploration of surfaces,througha gropingexplorationof the materialworld which separatesthe critical mind fromits object. Thus, despite the immenseeffort on the part of the sympathetic lower to itself a to level where it can, intelligence howeverlamely,make some progress in its quest towardthe consciousness of the other,thisenterprise is destinedto failure.One sensesthat the unfortunate criticis condemnedneverto fulfill adequatelyhis role as reader. He stumbles, he puzzles,he questionsawkwardly a language which he is condemnedneverto read with ease; or rather, in trying to read the language,he uses a keywhich enables him to translate but a fractionof the text. This critic is Jacques Rivibre. And yet it is fromthis failure that a much later criticwill derive a more successful methodof approachinga text.With thislater critic,
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as with Riviere, the whole project begins with an attemptat identificationon the most basic level. But this most primitivelevel is the one in which there flows,frommind to mind, a currentwhich has with the work means here, for the only to be followed.To identify critic, to undergo the same experiences,beginning with the most On the level of indistinct of sensations, emotions, elementary. thought, images,and obsessionsof preconsciouslife,it is possible for the critic a first to repeat, within himself,that life of which the work affords version, inexhaustiblyrevealing and suggestive.And yet such an imitationcould not take place, in a domain so hard to define, without the aid of a powerfulauxiliary.This auxiliary is language. There is which is not prepared,realized, and incarno critical identification nated through the agency of language. The deepest sentient life, hidden in the recesses of another's thoughts,could never be truly save forthe mediationof wordswhich allow a whole series transposed, of equivalences to arise. To describethisphenomenonas it takesplace in the criticism I am speakingof now, I can no longerbe contentwith the usual distinctionsbetween the signifier (signifiant) and the signified (signifid) for what would it mean here to say that the language of the critic signifiesthe language of the literarywork? There is not just equation, similitude.Words have attained a veritable power of recreation;theyare a sortof materialentity, solid and thanks to which a certain life of the senses is three-dimensional, the veryconditions of verbal connotations in a network reborn,finding for In other its the words, necessary language of criticism replication. the apperhere dedicatesitselfto the businessof mimicking physically world the author. of the Strangelyenough, language of this ceptual sort of mimetic criticismbecomes even more tangible, more tactile than the author'sown; the poetryof the criticbecomesmore "poetic" than the poet's. This verbal mimesis, is in no consciously exaggerated, nor at all And it tend toward the does yetit can way servile, pastiche. reach its object only insofar as that object is deeply enmeshed in, almost confounded with, physical matter.This form of criticismis thus able to provide an admirable equivalent of the vital substratum which underlies all thought,and yet it seems incapable of attaining and expressing thought itself. This criticismis both helped and hindered by the language which it employs; helped, insofar as this language allows it to express the sensuous life in its original state, where it is still almost impossibleto distinguish betweensubject and and this yet hindered, too, because language, too congealed object; and opaque, does not lend itselfto analysis,and because the subjecmired in its which it evokes and describesis as though forever tivity of criticism in thiscase is somehowincomobjects.And so the activity relative to plete, in spite of its remarkablesuccesses.Identification
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it is objects is accomplishedalmost too well; relative to subjectivity barely sketched. of Jean-Pierre Richard. This, then,is the criticism In its extremeform, in the abolition of any subject whatsoever, this criticismseems to extractfrom a literarywork a certain condensed matter,a material essence. But what, then,would be a criticism which would be the reverse, which would abolish the object and extractfromthe textstheirmost subjective elements? I must leap to the opposite extreme. To conceive such a criticism, I imaginea criticallanguage whichwould attempt to strip deliberately the literary it of In a concrete. such would criticism language anything be the artfulaim of everyline, of everysentence, of every of metaphor, to reduce to the near the of abstraction word, every nothingness If literature, by literature. images of the real world reflected by definiof the real into the unreality of verbal tion,is alreadya transportation then act in this will a the critical case constitute conception, transposition of this transposition, thus raising to the second power the "derealization" of being throughlanguage. In this way, the mind puts the maximum distance between its thoughtand what is. Thanks to this withdrawal,and to the consequent dematerializationof every in object thus pushed to the vanishingpoint, the universerepresented this criticismseems not so much the equivalent of the perceivable as ratherits image crystallized world, or of its literary representation, a of intellectualization. Here criticism is no through process rigorous it is the reduction of all the forms to same mimesis; longer literary In short,what survivesthis attemptedannilevel of insignificance. hilation of literature by the criticalact? Nothing perhaps save a consciousness ceaselesslyconfronting the hollowness of mental objects, which yield without resistance,and an absolutely transparentlanguage, which,by coating all objects with the same clear glaze, makes them ("like leaves seen far beneath the ice") appear to be infinitely far away. Thus, the language of this criticismplays a role exactly It Richard's criticism. opposite to the functionit has in Jean-Pierre does indeed bring about the unificationof criticalthoughtwith the mental world revealed by the literary work; but it bringsit about at the expense of the work.Everything is finally annexed by the dominion of a consciousness detached fromany object, a hyper-critical conall in somewhere void. the sciousness,functioning alone, Is there any need to say that this hyper-criticism is the critical of Blanchot? thought Maurice I have found it useful to compare the criticism of Richard to the criticism of Blanchot. I learn fromthis confrontation that the critic's as he him closer to the chooses,bring linguisticapparatus can, just
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If work under consideration, or can remove him fromit indefinitely. he so wishes,he can approximateveryclosely the work in question, thanksto a verbal mimesiswhich transposes into the critic'slanguage the sensuous themesof the work. Or else he can make language a no which,suffering agent,an absolute translucence, pure crystallizing opacity to exist betweensubject and object, promotesthe exerciseof the cognitivepower on the part of the subject,while at the same time which emphasize its accentuatingin the object those characteristics distancefromthe subject.In the first infinite of the two cases,criticism but at the risk of losing its miniachieves a remarkablecomplicity, mum lucidity; in the second case, it results in the most complete a achieved only confirms dissociation; the maximum luciditythereby a of union. instead separation seems to oscillate between two possibilities:a union Thus criticism and a comprehension withoutunion. I may without comprehension, I am so with what reading that I lose consciousidentify completely but also of that other consciousnesswhich ness not only of myself, blinds me by blockingmy proslives within the work. Its proximity on the other But I hand, may, separate myselfso completely pect. that the thoughtthus removed to a fromwhat I am contemplating distance assumes the aspect of a being with whom I may neverestabIn eithercase, the act of reading has lish any relationshipwhatsoever. another's thought inhabits me or delivered me from egocentricity: in that alien world,and case I lose myself haunts me, but in the first in the other we keep our distance and refuse to identify.Extreme closeness and extreme detachmenthave then the same regrettable effect of makingme fall shortof the total criticalact: that is to say, the exploration of that mysterious which, through interrelationship the mediationof readingand of language,is establishedto our mutual between the work read and myself. satisfaction and extremeseparation each have grave Thus extreme proximity And disadvantages. yet they have their privilegesas well. Sensuous is thought privilegedto move at once to the heart of the work and to share its own life; clear thoughtis privilegedto conferon its objects Two sorts of insight are here the highest degree of intelligibility. exclusive: there is penetrationby the distinguishableand mutually consciousness.Now rather senses and penetration by the reflective would therenot these two formsof criticalactivity, than contrasting which them be some way, I wonder,not of practicing simultaneously, a them least of combining would be impossible,but at through kind and alternation? of reciprocation For Is not this perhaps the methodused todayby Jean Starobinski? to find in his work a number of instance,it would not be difficult texts which relate him to Maurice Blanchot. Like Blanchot he dis-
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plays exceptionallucidityand an acute awarenessof distance.And yet he does not quite abandon himselfto Blanchot's habitual pessimism. On the contrary, he seems inclined to optimism,even at times to a intellectin thisrespectis analogous pleasant utopianism.Starobinski's of all to that of Rousseau, yearningfor an immediate transparence beings to each other which would enable them to understandeach otherin an ecstatichappiness.From thispoint of view,is not the ideal of criticism by the fete citadine (streetcelebrapreciselyrepresented tion) or fetechampftre(rusticfeast)? There is a milieu or a moment in the feast in which everyonecommunicates with everyoneelse, in which hearts are open like books. On a more modest scale, doesn't the same phenomenonoccur in reading?Does not one being open its innermost self?Is not the otherbeing enchantedby this opening?In the criticismof Starobinskiwe often find that crystalline tempo of music, that pure delight in understanding,that perfectsympathy between an intelligence which enters and that intelligence which welcomesit. In such momentsof harmony, thereis no longerany exclusion,no inside or outside. Contraryto Blanchot's belief,perfecttranslucence does not resultin separation.On the contrary, with Starobinski, all is the of and of shared, perfectagreement, pleasure :inderstanding joy understood. such it intellectual however Moreover, being pleasure, is not a of mind. For the relahere the be, may exclusively pleasure tionship establishedon this level between author and criticis not a relationship between pure minds. It is rather between incarnate of their physical existence constitute beings, and the particularities not obstacles to understanding, but rathera complex of supplemena veritable which must be decipheredand which tarysigns, language enhancesmutual comprehension. Thus forStarobinski, as much physician as critic,thereis a readingof bodies which is likenedto the reading of minds.It is not of the same nature,nor does it bring the intelligence to bear on the same area of human knowledge.But for the critic who practicesit, this criticismprovides the opportunity for a between different of which have, reciprocating exchange types learning degrees of transparency. perhaps, different Starobinski's criticism,then, displays great flexibility. Rising at times to the heightsof metaphysics, it does not disdain the farthest reaches of the subsconscious. It is sometimes intimate, sometimes and non-identidetached; it assumes all the degreesof identification fication.But its final movementseems to consist in a sort of withwith its earlier accord. After an initial drawal, contradistinction with the intimacy object under study,this criticismhas finallyto detach itself, to move on, but this time in solitude.Let us not see this withdrawalas a failureof sympathy but ratheras a way of avoiding
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the encumbrancesof too prolonged a life in common. Above all we discern an acute need to establish bearings,to adopt the judicious to assess the fruitsof proximity by examiningthem at a perspective, distance. Thus, Starobinski'scriticism always ends with a view from afar,or ratherfromabove, for while moving away it has also moved toward a dominating (surplombante) position. Does imperceptibly thismean that Starobinski's criticism like Blanchot'sis doomed to end in a philosophyof separation?This, in a way,must be conceded,and treatswith special care the themes it is no coincidencethatStarobinski of melancholyand nostalgia. His criticismalways concludes with a is exchangedby two beingswho have But thisfarewell double farewell. and the one left behind continues to be begun by living together; illuminatedby that criticalintellectwhich moves on. The sole fault with which I mightreproach such criticismis the what it illuminates. excessiveease with which it penetrates which inhabit in works dint of only the thoughts seeing literary By not criticism somehowpasses throughtheirforms, them,Starobinski's its Under the it but without on is them, true, way. pausing neglecting works lose their opacity,their solidity,their objective action literary in certain dimension;like thosepalace walls whichbecome transparent must seize ideal of criticism And is true that act tales. if the fairy " and a an between certain that object relationship (and reproduce) succeed how could the act of criticism mind which is the work itself, one of the (polar) termsof this relationship? when it suppresses must search continue,then, for a criticismin which this relaMy of Marcel Raymond it perhapsbe the criticism subsists. Could tionship and Jean Rousset?Raymond'scriticism alwaysrecognizesthe presence of a double reality,both mental and formal.It strivesto comprehend form.On an inner experienceand a perfected almost simultaneously the one hand, no one allows himselfto be absorbed with such cominto the thoughtof another. But the other's plete self-forgetfulness at its highest,but at its most obscure, at its is not thought grasped cloudiest point, at the point at which it is reduced to being a mere self-awareness it, and scarcelyperceivedby the being which entertains which yet to the eyes of the criticseems the sole means of access by of the alien mind. which he can penetratewithin the precincts another But Raymond's criticism aspect which is precisely presents the critic'sthoughtwith reverse of this confused identification of the the thought criticized.It is then the reflective contemplationof a formalrealitywhich is the work itself.The work stands before the critical intelligenceas a perfected object, which is in fact an enigma, an externalthing existingin itselfand with which thereis no possinor of inner knowledge. bility of identification a subject,sometimes an object. Thus Raymond perceivessometimes
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an almost The subject is pure mind; it is a sheerindefinable presence, inchoate entity, into which,by veryvirtue of its absence of form,it becomes possible for the critic'smind to penetrate.The work,on the existsonly within a definite but this definition limits form, contrary, encloses it within its own contours,at the same time constraining it, the mind which studiesit to remainon the outside. So that,if on the one hand the criticalthoughtof Raymond tends to lose itselfwithin an undefinedsubjectivity, on the other it tends to come to a stop before an impenetrableobjectivity. to that of another, Admirablygiftedto submithis own subjectivity and thus to immerseitselfin the obscurestdepths of everymental entity,the mind of Raymond is less well equipped to penetratethe obstacle presentedby the objectivesurfaceof the works.He then finds himself markingtime,or movingin circlesaround thework,as around the vase or the statuementionedbefore.Does Raymond thenestablish an insurmountablepartitionbetween the two realities - subjective, objective - unifiedthough theymay be in the work?No, indeed, at least not in his best essays,since in them,by carefulintuitiveapprehensionof the textand participation by the criticin the powersactive in the poet's use of language,thereappears some kind of link between the objectiveaspectsof the workand the undefinedsubjectivity which sustainsit. A link not to be confusedwith a pure relation of identity. The perceptionof the formalaspects of the work becomes somehow an analogical language by means of which it becomespossible forthe critic to go, within the work,beyond the formalaspects it presents. Neverthelessthis association is never presented by Raymond as a dialectical process.The usual state describedby his method of criticism is one of plenitude, and even of a double plenitude. A certain fulnessof experiencedetectedin the poet and re-livedin the mind of the critic,is connectedby the latterwith a certainperfection of form; but why this is so, and how it does become so, is never clearly explained. Now is it then possible to go one step further? This is what is a former student of Rousset, attempted by Jean Raymondand perhaps his closest friend.He also dedicates himselfto the task of discerning the structure of a work as well as the depth of an experience.Only what essentially mattersto him is to establish a connectionbetween the objectiverealityof the workand the organizing powerwhichgives it shape. A work is not explained forhim, as forthe structuralists, by the exclusive interdependence of the objective elementswhich comcombination,interpreted pose it. He does not see in it a fortuitous a posteriorias if it were an a priori organization.There is not in his eyes any systemof the work without a principle of systematization which operates in correlation with that work and which is even
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included in it. In short,thereis no spider-web withouta centerwhich is the spider. On the other hand, it is not a question of going from the work to the psychology of the author, but of going back, within the sphere of the work, from the objective elements systematically arranged,to a certain power of organization,inherentin the work as if the lattershowed itselfto be an intentionalconsciousness itself, and solving its problems. So that it determiningits arrangements would scarcelybe an abuse of termsto say that it speaks,by means of its structuralelements,an authentic language, thanks to which it disclosesitselfand means nothingbut itself.Such then is the critical of Jean Rousset. It sets itselfto use the objective elements enterprise of the work in order to attain,beyond them,a realitynot formal,nor objective, writtendown however in formsand expressingitself by mustnot limititself of forms means of them.Thus the understanding their of to the merely recording objectiveaspects.As Focillon demonthereis a "life of forms" stratedfromthe point of view of art history, in the historic not developmentwhich they display only perceptible fromepoch to epoch, but within each single work,in the movement tend thereinsometimes to stabilizeand become static, by which forms and sometimes to change into one another.Thus the two contradictory forceswhich are always at work in any literary writing,the will to us to and the perceiveby their interstability protean impulse, help on what forms are how much Coleridgecalled a shapdependent play them. and transcends them which determines them, ing power replaces successin the The teachingof Raymond findsthen its most satisfying criticalmethodof Jean Rousset,a methodwhichleads the seekerfrom of formto what is beyond form. the continuouslychangingfrontiers then to conclude this inquiryhere,since it has achieved It is fitting its goal, namely to describe,relyingon a series of more or less adequate examples, a critical method having as guiding principle the relation between subject and object. Yet there remains one last difbetween subject ficulty.In order to establish the interrelationship and object, which is the principle of all creative work and of the are opened, one of it, two ways,at least theoretically, understanding other the from the subject to the from the to objects subject, leading the objects. Thus we have seen Raymond and Rousset, throughperof a literary work,striveto attain ception of the objective structures the subjectiveprinciplewhich upholds it. But, in so doing, theyseem to recognize the precedence of the subject over its objects. What Raymond and Rousset are searchingfor in the objective and formal aspects of the work,is somethingwhich is previous to the work and on which the work depends for its veryexistence.So that the method which leads fromthe object to the subject does not differ radicallyat bottomfromthe one which leads fromsubject to object, since it does
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really consistin going fromsubject to subject throughthe object. Yet an important thereis the riskof overlooking point. The aim of criticism is not achieved merelyby the understanding of the part played with objects. When reading a literby the subject in its interrelation ary work, there is a momentwhen it seems to me that the subject presentin this work disengagesitselffromall that surroundsit, and stands alone. Had I not once the intuitionof this,when visitingthe Scuola de San Rocco in Venice, one of the highestsummitsof art, where there are assembled so many paintings of the same painter, Tintoretto? When looking at all these masterpiecesbrought there theirunityof inspiration, I had togetherand revealingso manifestly suddenly the impression of having reached the common essence presentin all the worksof a greatmaster,an essencewhich I was not able to perceive,exceptwhen emptying my mind of all the particular created the I artist. became aware of a subjectivepower at images by work in all these pictures,and yet neverso clearlyunderstoodby my mind as when I had forgotten all theirparticularfigurations. One may ask oneself:What is this subject leftstandingin isolation afterall examinationof a literary work?Is it the individual genius of the artist,visibly present in his work, yet having an invisible life independent of the work? Or is it, as Valdry thinks,an anonymous and abstractconsciousness presiding,in its aloofness,over the operations of all more concreteconsciousness? Whatever it may be, I am constrainedto acknowledge that all subjective activitypresent in a work is not entirely literary explained by its relationshipwith forms and objects within the work. There is in the work a mental activity profoundly engaged in objective forms;and thereis, at anotherlevel, all a subject which reveals itselfto itself (and to me) forsaking forms, in its transcendence over all which is reflected in it. At this point, no can no can structure object any longerexpressit, any longerdefineit; it is exposed in its ineffability and in its fundamentalindeterminacy. Such is perhaps the reason why the critic,in his elucidationof works, is haunted by this transcendence of mind. It seemsthenthat criticism, in order to accompany the mind in this effort of detachmentfrom needs to annihilate,or at least momentarily to forget, itself, the objective elementsof the work,and to elevate itselfto the apprehensionof a subjectivity withoutobjectivity.
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Poulet - Phenomenology of Reading

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Phenomenology of Reading Author(s): Georges Poulet Source: New Literary History, Vol. 1, No.

Phenomenologyof Reading Georges Poulet

of an empty in themiddle there is thedescription room,

beginning of Mallarm6's unfinishedstory,Igitur,

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

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