Tretji mednarodni komparativistični kolokvij

3^rd International Comparative Literature Colloquium

Teoretsko-literarni hibridi:

O dialogu literature in teorije

Hybridizing Theory and Literature:

On the Dialogue between Theory and Literature

Slovensko društvo za primerjalno književnost
Slovenian Comparative Literature Association

20. Mednarodni literarni festival Vilenica 
20^th Vilenica International Literary Festival

Lipica, Poročna dvorana / Lipica, Wedding Hall

8.-9. september 2005

Vodji kolokvija / Directors of the Colloquium
Marko Juvan, Jelka Kernev Štrajn

Udeleženci / Participants
Luca Bevilacqua (profesor francoske književnosti / Professor of French Literature, Universita degli studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Rim / Rome)

Erika Greber (profesorica obče in primerjalne književnosti / Professor of General and Comparative Literature, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München)

Milan Jesih (pesnik, dramatik in prevajalec / Poet, playwright and translator, Ljubljana)

Alenka Jovanovski (komparativistka, mlada raziskovalka / Comparatist, Junior research fellow, Univerza v Ljubljani)

Marko Juvan (višji znan. sodelavec; izr. prof. literarne teorije in slovenske književnosti / Senior Research Associate; Associate Prof. of Literary Theory and Slovene Literature, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU; Univerza v Ljubljani)

Jelka Kernev Štrajn (samostojna kritičarka, prevajalka / Free-lance critic and translator, Ljubljana)

Lado Kralj (prof. primerjalne književnosti in literarne teorije / Prof. of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Univerza v Ljubljani)

Vanesa Matajc (asistentka za primerjalno književnost in literarno teorijo / PhD, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Univerza v Ljubljani)

Boris A. Novak (pesnik, prevajalec; izr. prof. primerjalne književnosti in literarne teorije / Poet, translator; Associate Prof. of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Univerza v Ljubljani)

Vid Snoj (docent za primerjalno književnost in literarno teorijo / Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Univerza v Ljubljani)

Stephanos Stephanides (pesnik; izr. prof. angleške književnosti / Poet; Associate Prof. of English Literature, University of Cyprus, Nikozija / Nicosia)

Marko Uršič (prof. logike in filozofije narave / Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Nature, Univerza v Ljubljani)

Ivan Verč (prof. ruske književnosti / Prof. of Russian Literature, Universita degli studi di Trieste, Trst)

Program / Programme  

Četrtek, 8. septembra / Thursday, September 8^th  

15.00 – 16.25 Prvo zasedanje / First session

POZDRAVNI NAGOVOR / ADDRESS

MARKO JUVAN (Ljubljana): Dialogi »mišljenja« in »pesništva« ter teoretsko-literarni hibridi: Poskus uvoda / Dialogues between »Thinking« and »Poetry« and Theoretic-Literary Hybrids: An Attempt at Introduction

STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES (Nikozija / Nicosia): Thinking through the Gap: Poetical Philosophers and Philosophical Poets / Misliti skozi razpor: Pesniški filozofi in filozofi pesniki

MARKO URŠIČ (Ljubljana): O pomenu literarnega diskurza v filozofiji / On the Meaning of Literary Discourse in Philosophy

DISKUSIJA / DISCUSSION

16.25 – 16.35 Odmor / Break

16.35 – 18.10 Drugo zasedanje / Second session

VID SNOJ (Ljubljana): Schleglov Pogovor o poeziji in Platonov Simpozij / Schlegel's Dialogue on Poetry and Plato's Symposium

ALENKA JOVANOVSKI (Ljubljana): Polnost samozavedanja in vprašanje njegovega prenosa v poezijo in družbo pri Novalisu / The Wholeness of Self-Consciousness in the Thought and Poetry of Novalis

JELKA KERNEV ŠTRAJN (Ljubljana): Žanr kot odsotnost žanra / Genre as the Absence of Genre

MILAN JESIH (Ljubljana): Tudi o prvi osebi ednine / Also about the First Person Singular

DISKUSIJA / DISCUSSION

Petek, 9. septembra / Friday, September 9^th

09.30 – 10.45 Tretje zasedanje / Third session

ERIKA GREBER (München / Munich): Love Letters between Theory and Literature: Viktor Shklovsky's Epistolary Novel Zoo or Letters Not about Love / Ljubezenska pisma med teorijo in literaturo: Pisemski roman Zoo ali pisma ne o ljubezni Viktorja Šklovskega

LADO KRALJ (Ljubljana): Literarna kritika v pisateljevem dnevniku: dokument ali fikcija? / Literary Criticism Contained in the Diary of a Writer: Document or Fiction?

LUCA BEVILACQUA (Rim / Rome): Henri Michaux versus Literature:Violence and Weakness of Literary Creation in Michaux's Poetic Imagination / Henri Michaux proti literaturi: silovitost in šibkost literarnega ustvarjanja v Michauxovi pesniški imaginaciji

DISKUSIJA / DISCUSSION

10.45 – 11.00 Odmor / Break

11.00 – 12.30 Četrto zasedanje / Fourth session

VANESA MATAJC (Ljubljana): Interakcija literature in teorije od romantike do moderne: funkcija interakcije v vzpostavljanju modernosti / Interaction between Literature and Theory from Romanticism to the Fin de Siecle: The Function of Interaction in Establishing Modernity

IVAN VERČ (Trst / Trieste): O etiki in o njenem prevajanju v jezik književnosti / On Ethics and Its Translation into the Language of Literature

BORIS A. NOVAK (Ljubljana): Drevo in ovijalka: prilika o razmerju med poezijo in teorijo / The Tree and the Vine: A Fable about the Relation between Poetry and Theory

DISKUSIJA / DISCUSSION

SKLEPNE BESEDE / CONCLUDING REMARKS

Marko Juvan, Jelka Kernev Štrajn

Koncept kolokvija Teoretsko-literarni hibridi: O dialogu literature in teorije 

Poezija in mišljenje
Sta prav
Največji nasprotji smrti,
Ker sta njeni najzvestejši priči.  

(Robert Juarroz, Vertikalna poezija X, 1987, prev. Taja Kramberger)

Že nekaj časa je mogoče opazovati protislovno stanje besedne umetnosti: njena produkcija še vedno strmo narašča, toda literarno pisanje se spreminja v tržno blago, umetniška imaginacija izgublja soj presežnosti, konec koncev upada še njena relevantnost na intelektualnem področju. Zdi se, da položaj literature po več kot dvesto letih njene relativne avtonomije spet postaja vprašljiv in da lepa beseda doživlja svojevrstno družbeno marginalizacijo. To stanje – ni prvo, ki ga označujemo kot krizo – izziva temeljite revizije pogledov o »bistvu« literature in njeni vpetosti med ostale diskurzivne prakse. Glede tega so nemara po svojih političnih in socialnih implikacijah najbolj daljnosežni prav kulturni študiji.

Varuhi kanona, kakršna sta George Steiner ali Harold Bloom, so se postavili v bran svetosti literature pred profanostjo njenih kritikov. Toda varuhi kanona so se oprli na zavajajoče strategije. Ena od teh je izpostavljanje domnevne opozicije med teorijo in literaturo, češ da naj bi bilo to nasprotje ali celo sovraštvo zgodovinsko dejstvo današnje kulture. Obsodili so razmere, v katerih akademski svet daje prednost teoriji pred literarno govorico; teorija naj bi zato postajala čedalje bolj samozadostna, izgubljala naj bi svoje referencialne podlage v literarnih tekstih (podobno so nekdaj privrženci doktrine mimesis obsojali umetnost, češ da se je odtrgala od resničnosti).

Toda teorija in literatura od vsega začetka potujeta na isti ladji. Teoretska in zgodovinska refleksija literature se je namreč v 18. in 19. stoletju oblikovala vzporedno z avtonomiziranjem literature kot besedne umetnosti in družbenega polja, ta proces je podpirala in spodbujala. Metajezik teorije je že na začetkih romantike stopil v dialog z govorico pesništva – nastale so hibridne oblike pisanja, v katerih se je govorica metafor, simbolov, alegorij, imaginacije in naracije prepletala z diskurzom filozofske spekulacije, estetske argumentacije in produkcije konceptov (npr. F. Schleglovi fragmenti v časopisu Athenäum).

Od tedaj poznamo poleg fragmenta veliko modalitet sobivanja književnosti in mišljenja o njej. Mnogi pisatelji so bili hkrati tudi teoretiki, pisci kritiških in filozofskih esejev, umetniških programov in manifestov. Teorija širi svoje polje izrekljivega s črpanjem iz virov poetičnega – od F. Nietzscheja prek G. Batailla do R. Barthesa, J. Kristeve in J. Derridaja. Po drugi strani so se tudi literarne zvrsti (od lirske poezije do romana) v interdiskurzivnem dialogu vsaka prek svojih specifičnih kodov odzivale na ideje, teoretske koncepte, in v njih iskale navdiha. Od tod alegorije, miselna lirika, maksime in aforizmi, uzgodbena filozofija, esejizirani roman in fiktivizirani eseji, pisma in dnevniki, od tod pesmi v prozi, literarna kombinatorika, konceptualizem, programi in manifesti. Poleg tega je literatura opazovala sama sebe in se tako spreminjala v svojo lastno teorijo, ki je razvila sebi lastne tehnike in retoriko. Od tod avtoreferencialna, avtotematska literatura, metafikcija in metapoezija.

Cilji in tematika

Naš kolokvij, posvečen tovrstnim hibridom teorije in literature, bo skušal odražati transgresivno naravo izbrane tematike tudi v obliki razpravljanja: v dialogu, ki se ga udeležujejo tako literarni znanstveniki kakor tudi pisatelji, bo premišljeval o hibridnih formah, v katerih se srečujeta in stapljata literarni in teoretski diskurz. Ponujajo se naslednji problemi:

1. zgodovina in žanri teoretsko-literarnih hibridov od romantike do danes;

2. prevajanje teoretsko-filozofskih koncepcij v jezike literature;

3. pesniški filozofi in filozofski pesniki;

4. jeziki literature kot vir za konotativno oblikovanje idej, artikuliranje novih epistemoloških področij;

5. vloga konceptualnosti v ustvarjanju in recepciji literature;

6. samorefleksija in avtoreferencialnost v literaturi.

Marko Juvan, Jelka Kernev Štrajn

The Concept of the Colloquium “Hybridizing Theory and Literature: On the Dialogue between Theory and Literature"

Poetry and thinking
Are surely
The greatest opposites to Death:
They witness it most faithfully.  

(Robert Juarroz, Vertical Poetry X, 1987)

We have been witnessing a paradoxical state of verbal art for some time now. Some tend to perceive and describe it as crisis. Despite constant growth in literary production, its social and intellectual relevance seems to have decreased dramatically in the past decades. Literature has evidently lost its aesthetic autonomy, that is, its privileged seclusion away from the social. After having enjoyed its systemic autonomy for about two centuries, verbal art nowadays finds itself marginalized, the transcendental aura of artistic imagination has gone, and literary works are becoming easy prey for commodification.

It is, then, no surprise that the very “essence” of literature has become a matter of vigorous theoretical revisions and critical scrutiny: quite essential questions are being raised also about the literature’s interlacement with other discursive practices. Currently, it is cultural studies that is rather prone to this sort of radical considerations about the arts. This critique implies far-reaching social and political changes in the art’s cultural context.

Custodians of the canon – such as G. Steiner and H. Bloom, for instance – feel compelled to defend the sacredness of literature against the profanity of its CS-critics. However, they seem to rely on misleading strategies. One of them is, to foreground the apparent dichotomy between theory and literature. They consider inter-animosity between art and theory plainly a historical fact of the present culture. They keep blaming the academics who, presumably, give theory preference over literary artworks. Theory is accused of getting self-sufficient and losing touch with referential grounds in texts of literature (this reproach is a belated echo of criticizing literature for its anti-mimetic idiosyncrasies).

We are convinced, however, that theory and literature have been evolving on the same historic trajectory ever since the very emergence of their disciplinary existence. To reflect literature theoretically or historically was an activity that, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, paralleled, encouraged, and backed the establishment of the literary field’s aesthetic autonomy. The meta-language of theory opened a dialogue with the poetic discourse as early as the birth of romanticism. The exchange of ideas, images, concepts, and forms soon produced many textual hybrids. In them, the language of metaphors, symbols, allegories, imagination, and narration intertwined with the discourse of philosophic and religious speculation, aesthetic argument, and coining of new concepts (e.g., F. Schlegel’s fragments in Athenäum).

From then onward, manifold modalities of imaginative literature’s co-existence with forms of theoretical reasoning evolved. There were several fiction writers and poets who played the roles of theoreticians, critics, philosophers, writers of artistic programmes and manifestoes. Theory, in turn, has expanded its field of the “sayable” by drawing on sources of the poetic (e.g., Nietzsche, Bataille, Barthes, Kristeva, and Derrida). Literary genres, on the other hand, were inspired by and responded to theoretical concepts in their own way, through their proper codes. See, for example, allegory, intellectual lyric poetry, maxim, aphorism, narrated philosophy, essayist novel and fictional essays, letters, or diaries; prose poems, conceptualism, programs, manifestos, combinatorics. Moreover, literature has become self-conscious and mutated into its own theory, which developed specific techniques and rhetorical devices. See, for example, self-referential literature, meta-fiction, and meta-poetry.

Thematics and Scope

Our colloquium, devoted to hybridization of theory and literature, will try to reflect the transgressive nature of its topic in the very form of discussion: both literary scholars and poets/fiction writers will participate in a dialogue about hybrid forms, in which literary and theoretical discourses meet and melt. The following topics will be discussed:

1. The history and genres of theoretical-literary hybrids from the romanticism to the present,

2. Translating theoretical and philosophical concepts to the languages of literature,

3. Poetical philosophers and philosophical poets,

4. Languages of literature as sources for connotative shaping of ideas, of articulating new epistemological fields in theory,

5. The role of conceptuality in literary production and reception,

6. Self-reflection and self-referentiality in literature.

Marko Juvan

Dialogi »mišljenja« in »pesništva« ter teoretsko-literarni hibridi: Poskus uvoda

Za razpravljanje o temi »teoretsko-literarni hibridi« tukaj in zdaj obstajajo dobri razlogi, npr. postmoderna disperzija tekstualnosti, premiki mej med diskurzivnimi področji in znanstvenimi disciplinami. V literarnih tekstih pogosto naletimo na teoretski diskurz, teoretska dela pa se izražajo z literarnimi sredstvi. Je v takšnih primerih še mogoče govoriti o estetskem doživetju drugosti? In kako postaviti kriterije veljavnosti teorij, če so križane s poetično govorico? Druga motivacija za izbor teme je kronotopska: na literarnem festivalu Vilenica se jezik literature nujno križa z metajeziki kritike in teorije. Prav v razmerju do hibridov literati in teoretiki lahko razpravljamo v enakopravnih, čeprav različnih metajezikih.

Interakcija med literarnim in teoretičnim svoji aktualnosti navkljub ni nič novega. »Literatura« in »teorija« sta specifični, zgodovinsko določeni kulturni enoti. Nancy in Lacoue-Labarthe nakazujeta, da je bila vez teorije in literature spletena v jenski romantiki, še okrepila pa se je v modernizmu (npr. futurizem – ruski formalizem, imagizem – New Criticism, novi roman – strukturalizem). Podlaga te interakcije je bila ideologija estetskega: literati so namerno ustvarjali tekste lepote, presežnosti, teoretiki pa so racionalno razlagali, kako literati to počno. Ne glede na to pa literatura in teorija izhajata iz dveh širših zahodnih tradicij, potekajočih iz antike – iz »pesništva« in »mišljenja«. Pesništvo temelji v človekovi eksistenčno-izkustveni navzočnosti, katere medij je telo; izraža se v registru imaginarnega, prek individualno perspektivirane reprezentacije, logika pisanja je (avto)poetska, njegova vsebina pa ni vezana na discipline. Mišljenje je, nasprotno, refleksivna oddaljitev od osebnega izkustva in govori s položaja opazovalca; um svojo spoznavno usmeritev izraža z abstrahiranjem »konkretnega« v splošne modele in s sledenjem ponovljivi metodi, zato je struktura teksta zasnovana na kategorijah in logikah, vezanih na posamezne discipline.

Interakcije med mišljenjem in pesništvom od antike do danes je mogoče zajeti v naslednjo provizorično tipologijo:

1.      Mišljenje po pesništvu: opisna poetika, kritika, filozofija umetnosti, literarna veda;

2.      Mišljenje pred pesništvom: normativna poetika, program, manifest, literarni načrt;

3.      Mišljenje v ozadju pesništva: konceptualizem (koncept kot »suplement« ali »okvir« tekstualnega pomena; umetniški izdelek brez predpostavljenega koncepta bi se zdel nesmiseln);

4.      Mišljenje v pesništvu: tropi, alegorija, simbol (simbolno ponazarjanje misli); eksemplifikacija (obče, posredovano prek individualne zgodbe), metaliterarnost (pesništvo misli samo sebe), refleksivni vložki (v govoru literarnih likov ali pripovedovalca, v citatih), hibridnost 1 (mišljenje na podlagi pesništva: metafikcija, esejistični roman, filozofska lirika ipd.);

5.      Pesniško v mišljenju: vpis doživljajočega subjekta, eksistencialno perspektiviranje vednosti, poetična logika, fiktiviziranje izjav, transgresija disciplin, hibridnost 2 (pesniško na podlagi mišljenja: esej, fragment, feministična postteorija ipd.).

Po vzoru lingvističnega in bahtinovskega pojma hibrida so v opisani mreži interakcij hibridi mišljenja in pesništva opredeljeni kot teksti, ki opazno mešajo elemente/strukture, pripadajoče raznorodnim diskurzom literarnega ustvarjanja in refleksije. Tovrstni križanci so lahko nastali šele po izstopu iz mita in oblikovanju ločenih, so-delujočih umetnosti (gr. téhne), kar ponazarjajo grške muze. Med zvrsti hibridov pesništva in mišljenja v širšem smislu sodijo: gnomika, maksime, fragmenti (Heraklit, F. Schlegel, F. Nietzsche, W. Benjamin, E. Cioran; M. Dekleva, I. Svetina); filozofski dialogi (Platon, D. Diderot, F. Schlegel); menipejska satira (Lukijan, J. Swift, E. Ionesco, S. Beckett; R. Šeligo, E. Filipčič); pesniška poetika (Horacij, N. Boileau, P. Verlaine; B. A. Novak, M. Dekleva); »mešana« alegorija, ki izražene pojme zgodbeno ponazarja (Prudencij, G. de Lorris in J. de Meung, Dante, J. Bunyan, Voltaire, J.-P. Sartre; F. Prešeren, E. Kocbek, D. Smole); miselna poezija in pripovedna proza (W. Blake, Novalis, F. Hölderlin, G. M. Hopkins, R. M. Rilke, T. S. Eliot, E. Pound; S. Jenko, N. Grafenauer, I. Svetina, M. Dekleva, I. Osojnik; E. Flisar, M. Uršič); esej (M. de Montaigne, C. Baudelaire; J. Vidmar, E. Kocbek, T. Kermauner, D. Jančar, M. Rožanc, I. Geister); enciklopedični in esejistični roman (G. Flaubert, T. Mann, R. Musil, H. Broch, U. Eco; E. Flisar, I. Škamperle); novi roman (P. Sollers, C. Simon, R. Šeligo); metaliteratura: metapoezija (Horacij, F. Schlegel, W. Szymborska, E. Petrosjan; F. Prešeren, N. Grafenauer, B. A. Novak, M. Jesih), metadrama (L. Pirandello; D. Jovanović) in metafikcija (L. Sterne, J. L. Borges, J. Barth; B. Gradišnik, A. Blatnik).

»Teoretsko-literarne hibride« je – strogo zgodovinsko – generirala šele matrica moderne. Koncepcija umetniške »literature« je namreč proizvod 18. in 19. stoletja, še novejša pa je »teorija« umetnosti (je simptom moderne racionalnosti in scientizma, saj je »teorija« predvsem pojem eksaktnih znanosti). Literarna teorija se je izoblikovala v ruskem formalizmu in se institucionalizirala šele sredi 20. stoletja. Proti koncu stoletja se je preoblikovala v transdisciplinarno, samorefleksivno in kritično občo teorijo teksta, jezika, subjekta, kulture, zgodovine in družbe – na kratko »Teorijo« (prim. J. Culler, J.-M. Rabaté).

»Vzorčni« križanci literature in (literarne) teorije so denimo Roland Barthes o Rolandu Barthesu (avtorefleksivni slovar Barthesovih idej in pogledov), Meduzin smeh H. Cixous (obravnava, zagovor in obenem inscenacija politično izzivalne polimorfije »ženskega pisanja«), Calvinov roman Če neke zimske noči popotnik (v metafikcijsko pripoved cepljena teorija branja in pripovednih žanrov), Quignardovo Skrivno življenje (v skoraj razblinjeno pripovedno strukturo ljubezenskega romana naseljeni fragmenti teorije erotičnega diskurza), na Slovenskem pa Mesec dni z Ivanom Cankarjem, Martinom Kačurjem in Tarasom Kermaunerjem (esejistični splet izpovedi, avtobiografije, strukturalnih interpretacij Cankarja in kritičnih teoremov o nacionalni ideji), Štukature N. Grafenauerja (metapoetični soneti, ki zajemajo iz slovarja strukturalne poetike, fenomenologije in heideggrovske misli o umetnosti), v novejšem času pa posebej poezija M. Dekleve in T. Kramberger, ki jo navdihuje globalni dialog z umetnostnimi in teoretskimi težnjami postmoderne. Tovrstni teoretsko-literarni hibridi so se lahko naslonili na bogato dediščino dialogiziranja (tudi hibridnega) med mišljenjem in pesništvom, še posebej na romantični fragment, esej in metaliteraturo.

Poststrukturalistično matrico teoretsko-literarnih hibridov so razvili še premiki, ki so se v literaturi in teoriji dogajali že v obzorju postmoderne. To so:

1.      Šibitev ideologije estetske avtonomije (simptomi: politizacija pisanja, nobilitacija popa, interaktivnost v e-medijih, politična korektnost);

2.      Koncept odprtega teksta, ki v nasprotju s tradicionalno predstavo o dovršeni umetnini poudarja nezaključenost procesa proizvajanja pomenov, transgresivno gibanje pisanja čez meje tekstov, zvrsti, diskurzov, disciplin;

3.      Dehierarhiziranje razmerja med jezikom in metajezikom: teorija sestopi s položaja metajezika in se izravna z jezikom literature (intertekstualnost, vsrkavanje poetične logike).

Prav v ideji, da metajezik ni mogoč, se kaže resignacija nad »veliko pripovedjo« moderne racionalnosti. Nadomestil jo je uvid, da je sleherno znanje vezano na perspektivo delujočega posameznika, posameznice, na družbeno-historično konkretnost. Teoretsko-literarni hibridi na teoretski podlagi (R. Barthes, J. Kristeva, J. Derrida, H. Cixous, J. Hillis Miller, S. Greenblatt) so ena od možnih poti za takšno samorefleksijo izjavne pozicije teoretika in za »življenjsko« (tudi etično in politično) kontekstualizacijo spoznavne vrednosti njegovih izjav.

V Barthesovih Fragmentih ljubezenskega diskurza – naslov signalizira tradicijo fragmenta – se križata teoretska in literarna govorica. Teoretično je tipiziranje ljubezenske psihologije, obnašanja, govorjenja. Barthesov hibrid ljubezen prikazuje deloma prek strukturalistično-semiotičnega koda: razgrinja slovar značilnih »figur« ljubezenskega »diskurza«. Teoretski subjekt teksta govori s pozicije opazovalca, reduciranega na čisto racionalnost, svoje izjave utemeljuje v disciplinah psihoanalize, semiotike, naratologije itn. S teorijo pa se v Fragmentih vseskozi prepleta literarna govorica, ki prek avtobiografske prvoosebnosti ali tretjeosebne naracije v izrekanje občih modelov vpisuje avtorjevo osebno perspektivo, čustveno-telesno izkušnjo. Subjekt postane ambivalenten. Barthes mestoma dopušča, da mu poetska logika strukturira argumentacijo. Doživljajoči jaz literarne govorice se sublimira v lik teoretika, oba položaja pa sta opazovana še z gledišča, ki oscilira v njunem precepu. Na Barthesovo poststrukturalistično teorijo teksta je svojo postmodernistično metafikcijo oprl J. Barth. Njegova kratka zgodba Naslov je primer hibrida na prevladujoči literarni podlagi. Barthova metafikcija je dedič bogate tradicije metaliterature, njena teoretska plast pa se dogaja na način samoopazovanja, samorefleksije procesa pisanja, tudi s pomočjo teoretskih terminov. Barthesov hibrid na teoretski podlagi je »v zadnji instanci« spoznavno usmerjen; Barthov hibrid pa stoji pretežno na literarni podlagi, zato teoretsko samoopazovanje služi dobri zgodbi, torej oblikovalnemu interesu, ki se usmerja v imaginarno, v možni svet fikcije.

Iz teh dveh primerov bi se dalo sklepati, da se teoretsko-literarni hibridi bistveno razlikujejo, če so jih napisali pisatelji ali teoretiki. Ali teoretiki kljub literariziranju ne morejo zatajiti svoje racionalnosti, spoznavnega interesa? In ali pisatelji – četudi še tako teoretizirajo – ne morejo izstopiti iz tisočletnih diskurzov »pesništva«?

Marko Juvan

Dialogues between “Thinking” and “Poetry” and Theoretical-Literary Hybrids: An Attempt at Introduction

We have good reasons for initiating a discussion on “theoretical-literary hybrids” at this very moment: it is the phenomena such as the postmodern dispersion of textuality, or the shifting of borders between discursive areas and scientific disciplines that call for our immediate attention. Literary texts often introduce a theoretical discourse, and theoretical works are sometimes expressed by literary means. Is it in this context still possible to talk about the aesthetic experience of the Other? And how are we to establish the criteria for the validity of theories, when they are interwoven with poetic language? Yet another motif for choosing this subject matter in this particular place is chronotopic: the Vilenica International Literary Festival sees the language of literature as intertwined with the metalanguages of criticism and theory. And it is the relationship to hybrids that allows both writers and theoreticians to enter a dialogue with different metalanguages standing on equal footing.

Despite its present relevance, the interaction between the literary and theoretical is nothing new. However, “literature” and “theory” are specific and historically determined cultural entities. Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe suggest that the link between theory and literature was established in the Jena Romanticism and was further elaborated in Modernism (for example Futurism – Russian Formalism, Imagism – New Criticism, New Novel – Structuralism). The basis of this interaction was the ideology of the aesthetical: writers purposely wrote texts of beauty, transcendence, with theoreticians rationally explaining their methods of work. Regardless of all this, however, literature and theory stem from two wider Western traditions based on Antiquity – from “poetry” and “thinking”. Poetry is grounded in human existential-experiential presence, and its medium is the body; it is articulated in the register of the imaginary through the individually determined perspective of representation, the logic of writing is (auto)poetic, and its content transcends all disciplines. Thinking, on the contrary, is a reflexive distancing from personal experience and speaks from the position of the observer; reason expresses its cognitive orientation through the abstraction of the “concrete” in general models, and through following the repetitive method; this is why the structure of the text is based on categories and logic, related to specific disciplines.

From the Antiquity onwards, the interaction between thinking and poetry has evinced the following rough typology:

1.      Thinking after poetry: descriptive poetics, critique, philosophy of art, literary criticism;

2.      Thinking before poetry: normative poetics, program, manifesto, literary sketch;

3.      Thinking as the background of poetry: conceptualism (concept as the “supplement” or “framework” of textual meaning; an art work lacking in the presupposed concept would seem meaningless);

4.      Thinking in poetry: tropes, allegory, symbol (symbolic illustrations of thoughts); exemplification (the general mediated through individual stories), metaliterature (poetry thinking itself), reflexive elements (in the speeches of literary characters or narrators, in quotations), hybridity 1 (thinking through poetry as its basis: metafiction, essayist novel, philosophical lyrics and the like);

5.      Poetical in thinking: the inscription of the subject and his experience, the existential perspective of knowledge, poetical logic, fictionalizing of statements, transgression of disciplines, hybridity 2 (poetry with thinking as its basis: essay, fragment, Feminist Posttheory etc.).

According to the linguistic and Bakhtinian concept of the hybrid, the hybrids of thinking and poetry are specified as texts which mix together elements/ structures belonging to heterogeneous discourses of literary creation and reflection. Such hybrids could only have come about after the mythical age, when various separate and co-operative arts were formed (Greek tekhne), as exemplified by Greek muses. There are various types of hybrids of poetry and thinking in the broader sense: gnomic texts, maxims, fragments (Heraclites, F. Schlegel, F. Nietzsche, W. Benjamin, E. Cioran; M. Dekleva, I. Svetina); philosophical dialogues (Plato, D. Diderot, F. Schlegel); Menippean satire (Lucian, J. Swift, E. Ionesco, S. Beckett; R. Šeligo, E. Filipčič); poetical poetics (Horace, N. Boileau, P. Verlaine; B. A. Novak, M. Dekleva); »mixed« allegory, illustrating concepts through stories (Prudentius, G. de Lorris and J. de Meung, Dante, J. Bunyan, Voltaire, J.-P. Sartre; F. Prešeren, E. Kocbek, D. Smole); reflexive poetry and narrative prose (W. Blake, Novalis, F. Hölderlin, G. M. Hopkins, R. M. Rilke, T. S. Eliot, E. Pound; S. Jenko, N. Grafenauer, I. Svetina, M. Dekleva, I. Osojnik; E. Flisar, M. Uršič); essay (M. de Montaigne, C. Baudelaire; J. Vidmar, E. Kocbek, T. Kermauner, D. Jančar, M. Rožanc, I. Geister); encyclopedic and essayistic novel (G. Flaubert, T. Mann, R. Musil, H. Broch, U. Eco; E. Flisar, I. Škamperle); the new novel (P. Sollers, C. Simon, R. Šeligo); metaliterature: metapoetry (Horace, F. Schlegel, W. Szymborska, E. Petrosjan; F. Prešeren, N. Grafenauer, B. A. Novak, M. Jesih), metadrama (L. Pirandello; D. Jovanović) and metafiction (L. Sterne, J. L. Borges, J. Barth; B. Gradišnik, A. Blatnik).

Speaking strictly historically, “literary-theoretical hybrids” were first generated by the matrix of the modernity. The notion of artistic “literature” is after all the product of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, with the “theory” of art as its more recent descendant (as the symptom of modern rationalism and scientism, since “theory” is primarily the concept of strict sciences); literary theory was formed in Russian Formalism and became institutionalized as late as in the middle of the 20^th century. Towards the end of the century, it transformed into an interdisciplinary, self-reflexive and critical general theory of texts, language, subject, culture, history and society – in short, into a “Theory” (cf. J. Culler, J.-M. Rabaté).

The “prominent” hybrids of literature and (literary) theory are therefore, for instance, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (a self-reflexive vocabulary of Barthes’ ideas and views), The Laugh of the Medusa by H. Cixous (discussion, defense and performance of politically challenging polymorphous “women writing”), Calvino’s novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (theory of reading and narrative genres transformed into metafictional narrative), Quignard’s The Secret Life (fragments of erotic discourse theory transposed into a fairly dispersed narrative structure), and in Slovenia Kermauner’s A Month with Ivan Cankar, Martin Kačur and Taras Kermauner (an essayistic interplay of confession, autobiography, structural interpretations of Ivan Cankar and the critical theories of the national idea), Stuccoes by Niko Grafenauer (metapoetic sonnets drawing from the vocabulary of structural poetics, phenomenology and Heideggerian reflections on art), and more recently especially the poetry of Milan Dekleva and Taja Kramberger, the latter being inspired by the global intercourse among arts and theoretical aspirations of the postmodern age. Such theoretical-literary hybrids assimilate and transform a rich heritage of dialogues (and hybrids) between thinking and poetry, especially romanticist fragment, essay and metaliterature.

The poststructuralist matrix of theoretical-literary hybrids was further developed by the shifts in literature and theory already on the horizon of postmodernity. These were:

1.      The weakening of the ideology of aesthetic autonomy (its symptoms being: politically oriented writing, the ennobling of pop culture, interactivity in electronic media, political correctness);

2.      the concept of the open text, which, in contrast to the traditional notion of a finalized artwork, stresses the incompletion of the process of meaning creation, the writing’s transgressing the borders of text, genres, discourses, and disciplines;

3.      The rejection of the hierarchical order of language and metalanguage: theory loses the throne of metalanguage, equaling the language of literature (intertextuality, internalization of poetic logic).

The idea of the impossibility of a metalanguage reveals the resignation in the face of the “Grand Narrative” of modern rationality. It has been substituted by an insight that all knowledge is bound up with the perspective of an individual agency and social-historical actuality. Theoretical-literary hybrids on theoretical grounds (R. Barthes, J. Kristeva, J. Derrida, H. Cixous, J. Hillis Miller, S. Greenblatt) are important as an option of such self-reflection of the theorist’s uttering position, and of “life” (and also ethical and political) contextualization of the cognitive value of his/her utterances.

R. Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments – the title attests to the tradition of the fragment – is a crossbreed of theoretical and literary language. The typifying of lover’s psychology, behavior and speech is theoretical in nature. Barthes’ hybrid reveals love partly through the structuralist-semiotic code: it exposes the vocabulary of specific “figures” of the lover’s “discourse”. The theoretical subject of the text speaks from the position of the observer, reduced to pure rationality, grounding its statements in psychoanalysis, semiotics, narratology etc. However, throughout the Fragments, theory is intertwined with literary language, which inscribes the author’s personal perspective and emotional-bodily experience in general models through auto-biographical first-person and third-person narratives. The subject becomes ambivalent. Every now and then, Barthes allows his poetic logic to arrive at arguments. The experiencing self of literary language acquires the sublime figure of a theoretician; and both these positions are then viewed from the perspective which oscillates in their midst. It was J. Barth who grounded his postmodern metafiction on Barthes’ poststructuralist theory of texts. His short story Title is an example of a hybrid on predominantly literary grounds. His metafiction is an heir of a rich tradition of metaliterature. Its theoretical aspect is a mode of self-observation, a self-reflection of the process of writing even with the help of theoretical terms. R. Barthes’ theoretical hybrid is “ultimately” epistemologically oriented, whereas J. Barth’s hybrid is primarily literary, which is why theoretical self-observations serve the purpose of writing a good story, that is the formational interest reaching into the imaginary, possible world of fiction.

Finally, we could say that these two examples show that theoretical-literary hybrids written by writers and theoreticians are essentially heterogeneous. Is it actually true that theoreticians, despite their literary aspirations, cannot do away with their rationality and cognitive interests? And is it also perhaps true that writers – no matter how theoretical they are – cannot forsake the age-old discourses of “poetry”?

Luca Bevilacqua

Henri Michaux proti literaturi:
Silovitost in šibkost literarnega ustvarjanja v Michauxovi pesniški imaginaciji 

Les Reves et la jambe – Essai philosophique et littéraire je bilo eno prvih Michauxovih del, objavljeno leta 1923. Njegov privlačni podnaslov razkriva določeno omahovanje med dvema področjema (filozofijo in literaturo), kar vodi v hibridno obliko pisanja. Če pogledamo njegovo vsebino, opazimo, da ta »essai« obravnava teme, značilne za freudovsko psihoanalizo. Toda te teme niso mišljene z znanstvenega vidika, pač pa ironično in paradoksno. V vsakem primeru moramo upoštevati, da gre za eno prvih pesnikovih stvaritev in da se v njej manifestira predvsem zanimanje za človekovo notranje življenje, za sanje in za vsakovrstne izmišljije (svobodne in brez pomena, kot se utegnejo zdeti). Vse te prvine, ki jih je razvil šele v poznejših delih, so nenavadne in zabavne na povsem izviren način, ki je poetičen in absolutno moderen, zelo drugačen od siceršnje predstave o poeziji.

A bilo bi zgrešeno misliti, da bi to mladostno delo lahko bilo odraz Michauxovega še vedno negotovega poklica. Ta prvi poskus namreč dokazuje, da se je že na začetku svoje poti postavil na nejasno območje, ki se odločno izmika sleherni področni ali žanrski opredelitvi. Takšna naravnanost je pozneje postala neke vrste vodilni motiv v Michauxovem slogu. Vendar ne izvira zgolj iz pomanjkanja pripadnosti, ampak tudi iz vrojenega nezaupanja do pisanja. Dobro znano je, da ni hotel nič slišati o svojih družinskih koreninah, o Belgiji, deželi, kjer je bil rojen, in pozneje tudi ne o tem, da je »pesnik«.

V Quelques renseignements sur cinquante-neuf années d'existence  Michaux govori o tem, da se je njegovo nezaupanje do pisanja izoblikovalo že zelo zgodaj. Pri petnajstih je doživel svojo prvo razburljivo in šokantno izkušnjo: »Premiere composition française. Un choc pour lui. Tu ce qu'il trouve en son immagination! Un choc meme pour le professeurqui le pousse vers la littérature. Mais il se débarasse de la téntation d'écrire, qui pourrait le détourner de l'essentiel. Quel essentiel? Le secret qu'il a depuis sa premiere enfance soupçonné d'exister quelque part et dont visiblement ceux de son entourage ne sont pas au courant.« 

Nekaj let pozneje je odkril Lautréamonta (1922) in je spet začel staviti na pisanje. Tokrat je to storil zavestneje, obnašal se je kot »redkobesednež«, ki ne mara »nujnosti pisanja«, kajti »Ça empeche de rever. Ça le fait sortir.« Dve leti pozneje, leta 1924: »Il écrit, mais toujours partagé«.

Sprašujemo se, od kod to nezaupljivo, skorajda sovražno obnašanje do pisanja. Mladi Michaux se je obotavljal nastopiti literarno pot. V njej ni videl samo neke vrste ovire za svoja širša stremljenja: potovanja, raziskovanja sveta, spoznavanja ljudi, daljnih kultur in globin človekove duše. Bistveno je, da je kazal odpor in nestrpnost do literature tout court. Zaradi tega je bil v še skrajnejšem položaju kot njegovi avantgardni sodobniki (futuristi, nadrealisti), saj ni zavračal le predhodne literarne tradicije, marveč samo idejo literature.

Michaux je proti literaturi, ker čuti nagonski odpor do tako imenovane »republike pisane besede«, predvsem pa zato, ker čuti, da so retorična pravila naivna in nepristna. Retorika ljudi omalovažuje in ponižuje, namesto da bi jim pomagala izboljšati medsebojno sporazumevanje in zmožnost samospoznavanja.

Drugače povedano, Michaux ne nasprotuje le predhodnemu kanonu, ampak vsakršnemu kanonu, saj v njem vidi model, primeren za poenostavljanje resničnosti in stremljenje, da bi z mistificiranjem te resničnosti zavzel mesto moči. Literatura je pogostokrat hinavščina in puhlost. Ta očitek je namenjen klasičnim pisateljem (La Bruyeru in Boileauju) in latinskim pisateljem (Ciceru). Preprosto povedano, Michaux pojasnjuje, da je skušal izgnati »ce qui s'est en lui et malgré lui attaché de culture grecque ou romaine«. Ideja literature kot »doktrina« (Mallarmé) je videti kot »un sale petit system a briser, une doctrine de Français et d'Aryens, et l'homme est plus que cela«.

Leta 1979 je Gaëtan Picon opazil, da je Michaux pisatelj, ki ga ni enostavno uvrstiti, kajti »il refuse de s'inscrire dans une tradition littéraire«. Tu pa trdimo, da Michaux pravzaprav zavrača osnovno idejo, v skladu s katero se je literatura rodila iz »imagination volontaire«, iz avtorjevega zavestnega načrtovanja. On namreč vidi pisanje in pesnjenje kot eksorcistični praksi, kjer so nasilje jezika ali podob, raba črnega humorja, absurda in nonsensa različni načini, ki avtorju omogočajo, da ozdravi svoje šibkosti in razpore in se tako osvobodi osebnih izmišljij in obsesij.

Glede na vse to, je Michauxov predlog anti-literatura, ki slavi zmagoslavje nad pravili in literarnimi žanri slehernega obdobja, v katerem sporazumevanje z bralcem ni le stalen cilj, ampak tudi naključna posledica. To je razlog, da takšno pisanje proizvede hibriden tekst, nihajoč med prozo in poezijo, nasiljem in igro, tesnobo in grotesko – tekst, ki ustreza ostri kritiki predstave o literaturi. Ta radikalni pogled je mogoče razumeti tudi kot teoretski predlog, toda izražen bolj prek konkretnih primerov kot pa prek urejene razlage.

Luca Bevilacqua

Henri Michaux versus Literature:
Violence and Weakness of Literary Creation in Michaux’s Poetic Imagination

Les Reves et la jambe - Essai philosophique et littéraire was one of the first works of Michaux, published in 1923. Its engaging subtitle reveals a sort of uncertain relationship between two different fields (philosophy and literature), that leads to a hybrid form of writing. If we take into consideration its content, we notice that this “essai” deals with subjects typical of Freudian psycho-analysis. However, these subjects are not considered from a scientific point of view, but with irony and paradox; and in any event we must consider that this is one of the first works of the poet, with facets that will further develop later on in his production: his interest towards man's interior life, dreams and any kind of fancies (free and meaningless as they may seem), an original mix of queer and amusing elements, that are “poetic”, in an absolutely modern manner, far from the usual idea of poetry.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to believe that this juvenile work might reflect Michaux’s still uncertain vocation. This start, instead, shows that since the beginning of his career he chose to put himself in an ambiguous zone, resolutely escaping any field or genre definition. This behaviour will become a kind of leitmotiv in Michaux’s style and originates not only from a lack of belonging, but also from an innate distrust of writing: it is well known that he refused his family origins, the country where he was born (Belgium), and, later, his being considered a "poet".

In Quelques renseignements sur cinquante-neuf années d'existence, Michaux tells us that his suspicion towards writing took form very early in his life. When he was fifteen he had his first experience, both exciting and stressing: «Premiere composition française. Un choc pour lui. Tout ce qu'il trouve en son immagination! Un choc meme pour le professeur qui le pousse vers la littérature. Mais il se débarrasse de la tentation d'écrire, qui pourrait le détourner de l'essentiel. Quel essentiel? Le secret qu'il a depuis sa premiere enfance soupçonné d'exister quelque part et dont visiblement ceux de son entourage ne sont pas au courant».

A few years later he discovered Lautréamont (1922) and went back to venture on writing. He did it more consciously, behaving like a «réticent» who does not like «dévoir écrire», because: «Ça empeche de rever. Ça le fait sortir». Two years later, in 1924: «Il écrit, mais toujours partagé».

We ask ourselves why he had such a leery, almost sullen, behaviour, towards writing. Young Michaux hesitated to start a literary career. He sees in it not only a sort of limit for his wider ambitions: travelling, exploring the world and getting to know people, far-away cultures and the depths of human souls. The central point is that he shows dislike and intolerance towards Literature tout court. For this reason he stands in an even more radical position than the avant-garde of his times (Futurism, Surrealism), as he refuses not only the previous literary tradition, but the very idea of Literature.

Michaux is against Literature because he feels an instinctive dislike for the so-called "republic of letters", but most of all, because he feels that the rules of Rhetoric are both naive and fake. Rhetoric, instead of enhancing the possibilities of communication and introspection, lessens and stultifies them. In other words, Michaux opposes not only the previous canon, but also any kind of canon, as he sees in it a model tending to simplify reality and to become a place for power, by mystifying it. Literature is often made of hypocrisy and common-place. This blame includes classic writers, both French (La Bruyere, Boileau) and Latin (Cicerone). In very plain words, Michaux specifies that he tried to expel «ce qui s’est en lui et malgré lui attaché de culture grecque ou romaine». The idea of a literature as a doctrine (Mallarmé) is seen as «un sale petit systeme a briser, une doctrine de Français et d’Aryens, et l’homme est plus que cela».

In 1979 Gaëtan Picon observed that Michaux is a writer who cannot easily be classified as «il refuse de s’inscrire dans une tradition littéraire». We go further to say that as a matter of fact, Michaux refuses the basic idea according to which literature was born out of an «imagination volontaire», an author's conscious planning. On the contrary, he sees writing and poetry as exorcisms, in which the violence of the language or of some images, the use of humour noir, of the absurd, of nonsense, are different ways that allow the author to heal his shortcomings  and gaps, thus freeing himself from personal fancies and obsessions.

            Therefore, Michaux's proposal is for an anti-literature, that hails full freedom from the rules and literary genres of every period, in which communication with the reader is not only a fixed aim but a casual issue. For this reason, such writing ends up as a hybrid text, oscillating between prose and poetry, violence and play, anguish and the grotesque, and corresponds to harsh critique of the very idea of Literature. This radical view can also be considered as a theoretical proposal, expressed however through examples rather than in an organized exposition.

Erika Greber

Ljubezenska pisma med teorijo in literaturo:
Pisemski roman Zoo ali pisma ne o ljubezni Viktorja Šklovskega

Ruski formalizem se je vtisnil v spomin predvsem s tem, da je v analizo literature vpeljal sistematične kategorije in vzpostavil literarno teorijo v strogem pomenu besede. To je razlog, da se formalistom pripisuje, da so razširili razpoko med obema diskurzoma oziroma da so jo pravzaprav sami vpeljali (prek razdelitve disciplin). Formalistična teorija je v bistvu res poudarjala koncepcijo estetske avtonomije teksta in bila od svojega začetka programsko brezbrižna za družbene in praktične vloge umetnosti. Pozneje, od sredine dvajsetih let je vzpon stalinizma in doktrine socialističnega realizma kmalu povzročil izumrtje avantgardnih idej v umetnosti in kritištvu. Zato se je znotraj ruskega formalizma tedaj dogodil nezgrešljiv »obrat k družbi«. Vendar pa obstaja drugačna, zgodnejša in – kar je še pomembnejše – prostovoljna in notranja težnja odmika od čiste forme in toge teorije; do izraza pride v pisemskem romanu Zoo Viktorja Šklovskega, napisanem in objavljenem v Berlinu v letih 1922-23.

Zoo ali Pisma ne o ljubezni (Zoo ili Pis'ma ne o ljubvi) je eden izmed najzanimivejših in bistroumnih pisemskih romanov vseh časov prav zato, ker mu uspe zgraditi prehod med teorijo in literaturo, pa tudi med fikcijo in življenjem, poleg tega pa razviti še medkulturni dialog o Rusiji in Evropi. Besedilo je izjemno zaradi povezovanja globokih emocij z izostreno refleksijo. Ganljive evokacije bolečine izgnanstva in neuslišane ljubezni namreč spremlja duhovita metaliterarna igra. Zoo preoblikuje tradicionalni pisemski roman v metafikcijskem slogu in ga poživlja z brisanjem mej med dokumentarno in poetično epistolarnostjo. Čisto dobesedno se to kaže v genezi besedila: roman naj bi fiktivna pisma mešal z resničnimi pismi, ki sta si jih (dejansko ali verjetno) izmenjavala, resda bolj v eni smeri, gospa in mladi kritik, ki ji je dvoril. To sta bila romaneskni »jaz« in njegova ljubljena Alja alias Viktor Šklovski in Elsa Triolet (tako kot on je bila ruska emigrantka, pozneje pa francoska pisateljica). Šklovski je napisal to knjižico v Berlinu, potem ko je pobegnil iz Sovjetske zveze. Roman je dokument njegovega vmesnega bivanja v vicah izgnanstva, a tudi nekakšna etnografija »ruskega Berlina«. Toda preprosto speljevanje tega dela na avtobiografsko stran bi podcenilo njegov teoretski naboj. Roman je nasičen s teorijo, saj ne le tematizira formalistične ideje (to sicer občasno počne, kar je za besedilo, katerega glavni junak je teoretik, pričakovano), temveč je konstruiran po takšnih načelih in jih tudi dosledno izvaja.

Zoo Šklovskega je gotovo dokaz za tezo tega kolokvija, da se teorija in literatura razvijata vzdolž vzporednih zgodovinskih tirnic vse od tedaj, ko sta se vzpostavili kot samostojni disciplini. Roman se vrača k Sternovemu Tristramu Shandyju in nemški romantiki, obenem pa napoveduje postmoderne ideje igrivega stapljanja kritištva in fikcije (»kritifikcijo«, z izrazom Raymonda Federmana). V žanrskem razvoju pisemskega romana nosi Zoo pečat modernosti. (Kot ugotavlja pomembna knjiga o žanru, »Zoo povzroča viden premik v žanru; po letu 1923 ta žanr nikdar več ni bil takšen kot prej«.)

Uveljavljeni pogled, češ da je roman Šklovskega »poskus praktične uveljavitve načel, ki jim je avtor pripadal kot teoretik«, pa utrjuje delitev med diskurzoma in potrjuje dvomljivo hierarhično nadrejenost teorije literaturi. Primernejši uvid dobimo, če se sklicujemo na ključni koncept tega kolokvija – na idejo hibridnosti, se pravi, enakopravne ali celo nerazločljive interakcije med obema poloma. Objektna in meta-raven se stapljata v eno samo literarno celoto. Med najbolj vznemirljivimi vidiki romana Zoo je nova raba »uredniških« paratekstov, ki so nekdaj vzpostavljali tradicionalno, stabilno delitev med urednikom (kritikom) in korespondenco (pisci pisem), zdaj pa hierarhije dekonstruirajo. »Jaz« deluje kot urednik in dopisovalec, kot kritik, pisatelj in ljubimec. Šklovski skuša zapeljati ne samo svojo damo, temveč tudi druge bralce, celo državne in partijske voditelje, ki so ga prisilili zapustiti Rusijo in ki naj bi mu dovolili – potem ko so »prejeli« zadnje pismo romana – vrnitev domov (pisma so torej namenjena znotraj- in zunajbesedilnim bralcem). Glede na pojem »dialoga« med teorijo in literaturo je zelo pomenljivo, da je Šklovski za svoje kritifikcijsko podjetje izbral dialoški žanr pisemskega romana.

Erika Greber

Love Letters between Theory and Literature:
Viktor Shklovsky's Epistolary Novel Zoo or Letters Not about Love

Russian Formalism is usually remembered for introducing the first systematic categories into the analysis of literature and for setting up a theory of literature in the strict sense of the word. This is why the Formalists are generally perceived as having extended the gap between the two discourses, or even as having produced it in the first place (in terms of disciplinary division). Essentially, Formalist theory emphasized the notion of the aesthetic autonomy of the text and was from the start programmatically disinterested in the arts' social and practical functions. As to the later development of Russian Formalism from the mid-twenties, its unmistakable ‘social turn’ was largely due to the rising Stalinism and the doctrine of Socialist Realism that soon led to the extinction of all avant-garde ideas in the arts and in criticism. Yet there was another, earlier, and, more importantly, a voluntary and intrinsic tendency away from pure form and away from rigid theory – something that is epitomized in Viktor Shklovsky's epistolary novel Zoo, written and published in Berlin 1922-1923.

Zoo or Letters Not about Love (Zoo ili Pis'ma ne o ljubvi) is one of the most remarkable and ingenious epistolary novels ever written, for the very reason that it manages a cross-over between theory and literature as well as between fiction and life, including a cross-cultural dialogue about Russia and Europe. The text is rare in its combination of deep emotion and sharp reflection: a moving evocation of the pain of exile and unrequited love and, at the same time, a witty metaliterary play. Zoo reshapes the traditional epistolary novel in metafictional style and revitalizes it by blurring the borders between documentary and poetic epistolarity. This can be taken quite literally in view of the textual genesis: the novel is said to mix fictional letters with real ones, letters that were or might have been exchanged (in a rather one-sided correspondence) between the young critic and the lady he courted, between the novelistic ‘I’ and his beloved Alya, alias Viktor Shklovsky and Elsa Triolet (a Russian emigrant like himself and a future French writer). Shklovsky composed the little book in Berlin after fleeing from the Soviet Union, and it is a document of his own intermediary existence in the limbo of exile as well as a kind of ethnography of ‘Russian Berlin’. But to take the work simply from the autobiographical side would mean to underestimate its theoretical drive. It is saturated with theory, not just in the sense that it thematizes Formalist ideas (which it does occasionally, as could be expected in a text whose protagonist is a theorist), but in the sense that it is constructed on such principles, or more precisely: that it performs them.

Shklovsky's Zoo is certainly a piece of evidence for the thesis that “theory and literature evolve on the same historic trajectory ever since the very emergence of their disciplinary existence” (cf. colloquium outline). It harks back to Sterne's Tristram Shandy and German Romanticism and it anticipates postmodern ideas of a playful merging of criticism and fiction (“critifiction”, with Raymond Federman's term). Within the generic development of the epistolary novel, Zoo is the hallmark of modernity. (As is stated in a major book on the genre, “Zoo effects a perceptible displacement on the genre; after 1923, it will never again be quite the same.”)

The established view of Shklovsky's novel as an “attempt to put into practice the principles to which he adhered as a critic” repeats the division between the discourses and reconfirms the dubitable hierarchy of theory over literature. A more adequate view is gained by reference to the key concept of the colloquium: the idea of hybridity, that is, an equal or even indistinguishable interaction between both poles. Object level and meta level are dissolved into one literary whole. One of the most intriguing aspects of Zoo is its new use of the ‘editing’ paratexts that traditionally established the stable division between editor (critic) and correspondence (letter writers) and that are now being used for deconstructing hierarchies. The ‘I’ acts as editor and correspondent, as critic and writer and lover. Shklovsky tries to seduce not only his lady but other readers, including the state and party leaders who forced him out of Russia and who, after ‘receiving’ the novel's last letter, allowed him to return home (thus, the letters are aimed towards intra- and extratextual readers). With regard to the notion of a ‘dialogue’ between theory and literature, it is highly significant that Shklovsky chose the dialogic genre of the epistolary novel for his critifictional enterprise.

Milan Jesih

Tudi o prvi osebi ednine

        Ko se začne gradnja besed, sem nekdo, ki igra dinamično dvojno (ali razdvojeno?) vlogo nekoga, ki piše pesem. Sem vloga pesnitelja in hkrati sem vloga njegovega delovnega nadzornika. O tem dvojnem nejazu vam torej govorim v prvi osebi.

        Pri pesmih imam ponavadi najprej začetek: to je prvi verz ali manj, ki se pojavi najrajši, ko čisto sproščen ne mislim ne na pesnjenje ne na nič, na sprehodu, na vožnji, se pravi, bolj ko ne naključno; ko da sem nekaj ritmiziranih besed snel iz etra.

        Nadaljevanje je hoja po poteh, ki se nenehoma cepijo: koliko besed je treba vsakikrat zavreči, ko izberem eno. To izbiranje besed, ki so gradniki pesmi, je pravzaprav pesnjenje.

        Seveda z nizanjem besed ne mislim poljubnega nizanja. Tukaj slutim nekaj mistike: nekako mislim (verujem?), da nekateri začetki kratko malo zahtevajo nadaljevanje, da se s koncem zaokrožijo, da so niti v nekakšni kaotični klobki, ki hočejo priti na luč dneva in biti.

        Družbeno idejno, če ni oznaka premočna, torej preden spregovorim o stvareh »okusa«, si pravzaprav dovoljujem vse, razen pozivanja k zlu, recimo veličanja vojne, ubijanja, zatiranja.

        Obsežnejši sklop ideologij pa me, hočem nočem, vodi na področju ožje vzeto pesniškega; s tem mislim nekaj tematskih in več formalnih omejitev.

        Svoj pesniteljski namen bi mogoče najrajši izrekel z nekakšno metaforo: jaz vam to plešem neki ornament. Ornamentist lahko uporablja šablono, zakaj ne; sam rajši mislim, da rišem obrise prostoročno, predvsem pa se hočem znotraj svojih ornamentnih plaht igrati z barvami.

        Tematsko. – Rado se začne s precej prazno, vsakdanjo ugotovitvijo, ki se nevarno velikokrat dotika vremena ali ure dneva ali letnega časa. Začetek nekako ustvari svojo sfero, ki jo redko dramatično prebijem. Rad imam majhne zasuke in nespotikajoče zavihe. Motivi so stari in v stoletjih preskušeni. Resno pa ne bi mogel evocirati recimo domoljubnih tem; parodično že, a to je »druga pesem«.

        Formalno. Že skoraj dve desetletji sem bolj suženj kot vernik urejene verzne forme, konkretno jambov. Ta čas sem se lahko izuril v številnih retoričnih in verznih prijemih: od ravnoteženja verza po drznejšem enžabmaju, ki ga lahko, recimo, izpeljem ali s frazo ali s poudarkom na neiktičnem mestu ali drugače, kar bi vam lahko, če bi pripravil primere, prikazal s peturnim predavanjem. Rad bi tudi, pred seboj, veljal za dobrega rimača; ne morem si zamisliti, da bi rimal tvoj in moj; samo izjemoma rimam iste besedne vrste; prekleto pazim, da ni kakšnih praznih mašil.

        Leksikalno. Kakor pri tematskem in formalnem tudi pri leksikalnem ni kakšne posebno napete pozornosti, ta bi, nasprotno, delo zavirala: delo se zdi, da teče nekako samo od sebe. Če sem, relata refero, znan po uspešnem skakanju iz nizkega v visok jezik, od precioznih tujk v pocesten žargon, to ni hoteno izdelano, marveč hoteno sprejeto. To je zato, ker imam tako nehierarhizirano anarhijo v glavi. Tu se najde tudi kakšen čisto navaden predsodek: kakšnih treh ducatov besed ne rabim.

Kako ta poetika deluje? Mislim, da tako, kot pač deluje človek pri večini tako imenovanih ustvarjalnih dejavnosti: desno zgoraj sprosti domišljijo, ki mu, bolj ali manj hlastna, meče pred noge na izbiro vsakršne zamisli in nesmisle, včasih škart, včasih prefabrikate, včasih elegantne, že izpeljane rešitve: in človek si je tam v službi kot cenzor, kot filtrator, kot selektor. Selekcija: izbira. Zmeraj se mi zdi po svoje strašno: koliko besed zavržem, ko izberem eno.

Sploh vam bi lažje pripovedoval o tem, česa ne, kot o tem, kaj ja; razumljivo, saj je teritorij nesprejemljivega neprimerno obsežnejši, vselej je to kaos vsega nasproti izbranemu singularnemu.

Pri tem delu se vselej znova bojujem s prvo osebo. Ponavljam: nikoli nisem jaz pisal pesmi; pisal sem pesem, ki jo nekje nekdo piše. Upesnjeni prvi osebi, tako imenovanemu lirskemu subjektu, svojo zasebnost sicer posojam v neomejeno rabo, vendar vselej brez občutka, da govorim o sebi. Ornamentistove barve prinašajo s seboj, kot rečeno, marsikaj osebnega, vendar je to samo material; moja skušnja je tako samo priložena v fundus; če berem ali slišim kakšno zgodbo, se tudi tisto naloži v isto globoko klet. Kot ko spravim tja noter kakšno novo besedo. In ne vidim razloga, da bi si fundus razpoložljivih sredstev vnaprej omejeval.

Vendar je tu meja med sredstvi in zasebnim. Nikakor ne bi maral, da bi bile pesmi kot nekakšen moj ljubi dnevnik.

Milan Jesih

Also About the First Person Singular

When the process of world construction begins, I assume the dynamic dual (or is it split?) role of someone writing a poem. I am both the versifier and his supervisor. I am thus telling you about this double non-ego in the first person.

Poems usually start with one verse or less that arises when I am completely relaxed – thinking neither of poetry nor of anything else; walking, driving – as if accidentally, as if I had snatched this rhythmic string of words out of the ether.

To continue means walking down the eternally divergent paths: so many words must be abandoned in order to choose one. Selecting words from which poems are built is, after all, writing poetry.

Naturally, combining words does not imply arbitrary combinations. Here, I feel a trace of the mystical: somehow I think (or do I believe?) that some beginnings naturally demand continuation, so that they round off with the end, as if they were strings in some chaotic knot that want to come into the light and existence.

Before I address the topic of “taste” I should mention that in terms of social ideologies – if the term is not too rough – within my work, I set myself virtually no boundaries, excluding appeals to evil, such as glorifying violence, killing and repression.

I am nonetheless, willingly or not, committed to a wider network of ideologies in the area of the strictly poetical which I perceive in terms of some thematic and numerous formal limitations.

It would perhaps suit me best to proclaim my poetic intention with a metaphor: I dance you an ornament. An ornamentalist can use a stencil, why not? I prefer to think that I draw the contours free hand, and above all I wish to play with colours within my ornamental canvas.

In terms of themes, it tends to start with a rather empty, regular statement that is frequently dangerously close to weather or the time of day or the season. The beginning creates its own sphere which I rarely break dramatically. I like small turns and stable shifts. The motifs are tried and tested through centuries. I could not, though, sincerely praise patriotic themes, except in a vein of parody which is quite a different story.

        As regards the form, I have been, for over two decades, a slave more than a devotee of a regular verse form, namely iambs. In this period I have been able to train myself in numerous rhetorical and verse approaches: from balancing the verse on a more daring enjambment, which I can, for instance, perform with a phrase or with an accent on the non-ictic position. There are various other ways and they could be illustrated, if I prepared examples, with a five hour long lecture. I would also like to be regarded, by myself, a good rhymester: I cannot imagine rhyming my and thy; only exceptionally do I rhyme words of the same part of speech; I take bloody good care not to use empty filler words.

Lexical aspect. As with the thematic and the formal dimension, the lexical does not demand any special attention. Quite the opposite, such consideration would block the work which seems to be operating by itself. Being, relata refero, known for my successful jumps from low into high language, from the precious foreign words into street slang is not a matter of a deliberate plan but deliberate acceptance. It is a consequence of the non-hierarchical anarchy inside my head where there is also enough space for some very common prejudices; I refuse to use about three dozen words.

How does such poetics work? I think it doesn't differ considerably from the majority of the so-called creative activities: in the upper right corner it releases the imagination which, more or less hastily, keeps throwing at one's feet all kinds of ideas and nonsense, at times rejects, at times prefabricated expressions, at times elegant, already achieved solutions: and one is employed there as a censor, as a filter, as a selector. Selection: choice. It always seems somewhat horrendous: how many words I reject each time I choose one.

Overall, I would find it easier to tell you about what I don't than about what I do; the territories of the unacceptable are considerably larger and it is always the chaos of everything versus the chosen singular.

This work is a constant struggle with the first person singular. I repeat: it was never me who wrote poems; I was writing a poem that somebody somewhere was writing. Although I lend my privacy into unlimited use to the first person of the poem, the so called lyrical subject, I never feel that I speak about myself. As already stated, the ornamentalist's colours bring with them a fair amount of the personal, but this is only the material: my experience is thus merely enclosed into the basement; upon having read or heard a story, it is likewise stored there. The same applies to yet unheard words. And I cannot see any reason why I should limit the stock of the available material in advance.

But there is a limit between the material and the private. In no circumstances would I wish my poems to become my dear diary.

Alenka Jovanovski  

Polnost samozavedanja in vprašanje njegovega prenosa v poezijo in družbo pri Novalisu

V prispevku se bom osredinila na povezavo med Novalisovimi Himnami nôči in tistim aspektom fichtejevskih študij, ki se posvečajo problemom samozavedanja, celovitosti subjektivitete in dostopa do celovite biti. Novalisov premislek o samozavedanju je vzporeden mišljenju biti; dostop k celoviti biti je namreč mogoč le z udejanjenjem celovitega samozavedanja. Hkrati pa oznaka »dostop do celovite biti« meri tudi na udejanjenje tistega, kar so romantiki simbolično imenovali »bog« ali »narava« ali »kozmos« in ga pojmovali kot celovit organizem. Cilj samozavedanja, kakor ga misli Novalis, je potemtakem udejanjenje holističnega principa na različnih ravneh – od individuuma do organske države, do organskega kozmosa –, ki se vzajemno prekrivajo in prehajajo druga v drugo.

Temelj biti/samozavedanja in s tem individuuma, kot ga ob Novalisovi spodbudi misli Frank, ni nič trdnega, pač pa je dinamični proces, ki zajema dve nasprotujoči si gibanji zavesti, »občutje« [Gefühl] in »refleksijo« [Reflexion]. Tukaj ju bom raje imenovala z manj simboličnima izrazoma, »pred-refleksivna« in »refleksivna zavest«, ki ju je Sartre uporabil v spisu Conscience de soi et connaissance de soi (1948), čeprav v nasprotju z Novalisom in s Frankom ni govoril o krožnem dinamizmu samozavedanja, temveč zgolj o komplementiranju obeh tipov zavesti.

Novalisova opredelitev samozavedanja je radikalnejša: polno samozavedanje sestavlja (krožno) gibanje obeh tipov zavesti, torej za polno izkustvo biti nobeno izmed dveh nasprotnih si gibanj ne sme biti podvrženo redukciji. (Do podobne ugotovitve pride tudi Frank v svoji kritiki egoloških in ne-egoloških teorij samozavedanja.) Samozavedanje je potemtakem mogoče definirati kot dvosmerni, dinamični krožni proces, kjer v idealnem primeru so-delujeta oba tipa zavesti. Po eni strani pred-refleksivna zavest vdira v refleksivno in vanjo prinaša to, kar je še neznano/novo in kar rahlja strukture refleksivne zavesti ter njena spoznanja; po drugi strani pa se v trenutku vdora pred-refleksivne zavesti ne manifestira le del njenih vsebin, ampak je refleksivni zavesti negativno, prek »občutja« dana tudi celovita bit. Hkrati skuša refleksivna zavest zagrabiti celovito bit, vendar je njeno prizadevanje neuspešno, dokler se ne sproži akt korekcije, kjer se za vsako spoznanje izkaže, da je to zgolj navidezno spoznanje in zgolj fragment celote biti, ki pa refleksivni zavesti ni dana drugače kot refleksija/odsev. Ker je samozavedanje postavljeno v časnost, se nikoli ne udejanji kot popolno krožno gibanje, ampak je vselej zreducirano bodisi na »refleksijo« bodisi na »občutje«. Idealna oblika samozavedanja je Dioniz, ki kot blazni bog-pesnik razkraja izdelke individuacijskega principa, hkrati pa kot bog-filozof, ki je Tračane učil poljedelskih tehnik/veščin, vsemu brezobličnemu daje neko obliko.

Poezija in filozofija vsaka na svoj način udejanjata polno samozavedanje/bit; prva skozi estetsko izkustvo, v katerem pretok med obema tipoma zavesti omogoča »ordo inversus« oziroma predstavitev neizrekljive biti; druga pa skozi refleksijo, ki šele s samokorekcijo doseže analitično vzpostavitev biti. Dinamični pretok med enim in drugim tipom zavesti je pomembnejši od tega, kar je v pretoku naplavljeno na površino (del spoznanja, pesniško delo). Pomembnejši od spoznanja je, skratka, negativni uvid v to, kar spoznanju ni dano. Pomembnejše od samega pesniškega iz-delka, je izkustvo, ki ga ta izdelek omogoča. Temeljna razlika med izdelkom poezije in filozofije pa je vendarle v tem, da izdelek poezije s svojo fragmentarno obliko izkustveno opozarja na drugi, manjkajoči pol, ki je na ta način dan per negationem (podobno kot pri regresu domišljije v kantovskem izkustvu matematičnega sublimnega), medtem ko je prava vrednost refleksivnega spoznanja dana le v analitični korekciji refleksije.

O samozavedanju kot dvosmernem dinamičnem procesu, ki nima nikakršnega trdnega temelja in ga ni mogoče speljati na en sam princip, ampak ga je mogoče misliti zgolj kot hkratnost obojega, Novalis  pravi: »Vsakršno iskanje enega samega načela bi bilo kot poskus, da bi krogu dali kvadratno obliko. Neprenehno gibanje. Kamen filozofov« (FS, št. 566). Toda če je to večno vrtenje v polju filozofije dano analitično, na način asimptotičnega približevanja polnosti, ga umetniško delo omogoča na sintetični način – skozi estetsko izkustvo, ki v epifaničnem hipu omogoča dostop do celovite biti.

Novalisove Himne nôči so strukturirane s simboli »noči«, »smrti« in »Dioniza-Kristusa-pesnika« – torej s sredstvi, ki poudarjeno aktivirajo vdor pred-refleksivne zavesti v refleksivno zavest. Toda če poezija s takšnim pridodanjem manjkajočega v polju estetskega izkustva uspe udejanjiti celovito bit, pa je prenos tega estetskega udejanjenja biti na zgodnjeromantični projekt države organizma, v katerem naj bi bilo izkustvo celovite biti dano vsem ljudem enako, nujno neuspešen. Estetska država-organizem se namreč udejanja bodisi kot utopija francoskih socialistov (Lerouxa, Saint-Simona) ali kot totalitarni režim. Tu se na pred-refleksivno zavest zreducirani Dioniz transformira v razdiralnega Dioniza (ideologijo), ki ga država-mehanizem podjarmi za (psevdo-)legitimiranje nasilja, s katerim državni stroj udejanja svoje cilje. Bi se sanje zgodnjih romantikov o državi-organizmu lahko udejanjile le, če bi ta država vključevala celovitega Dioniza, se pravi tako filozofijo kot poezijo? Odgovor na to vprašanje  presega horizont Himen nôči. In vendar – hipotetično udejanjanje popolnega Dioniza bi se najpoprej moralo dogajati na ravni individuuma.

Alenka Jovanovski

The Wholeness of Self-Consciousness in the Thought and Poetry of Novalis

The paper focuses on the relation between Novalis’ Hymns to the Night and that aspect of Fichte studies dealing with the problems of self-consciousness, the wholeness of the self, and the access to the total Being. Novalis’ consideration of self-consciousness corresponds to the articulation of Being, since Being can only be accessed by the effectuation of a complete self-consciousness. The phrase “access to Being” also implies the effectuation of what the Romantics symbolically termed “God” or “Nature” or “Cosmos,” all of them conceived of as organic totalities. Thus, according to Novalis, the self-consciousness aims at realizing the holistic principle emerging on different levels (partly coinciding and containing each other), from the individual to the state and the cosmos.

The fundament of Being/self-consciousness – and thus also of the individual, according to Frank’s understanding incited by Novalis – is not fixed but rather exists as a dynamic process comprising two opposite movements of consciousness: feeling [Gefühl] and reflection [Reflexion]. I shall refer to them less symbolically, by the expressions “pre-reflexive” and “reflexive” consciousness, as used by Sartre in his essay Conscience de soi et connaissance de soi (1948) – however, we should take into account that Sartre, in contradistinction to Novalis and Frank, does not speak of self-consciousness’ circular dynamism but merely states that the two types of consciousness are complementary.

Novalis’ account of self-consciousness is more radical: complete self-consciousness is constituted by a (circular) movement of the two types of consciousness; this means that, if experience is to be complete, neither of the two opposite movements may be subjected to reduction. (Frank comes to a similar conclusion in his critique of egologic and non-egologic theories of consciousness.) Hence, self-consciousness may be defined as a dynamic, two-way circular process in which, ideally, both types of consciousness are co-active. The pre-reflexive consciousness intrudes into the reflexive one, bringing into it the not yet known, the new, and shaking the latter’s structures and understanding. On the other hand, in the moment of pre-reflexive consciousness’ intrusion, not only part of its content is revealed but – through the “feeling” (i.e. negatively) – the total Being is given to reflexive consciousness. Simultaneously, the reflexive consciousness is ineffectively trying to seize Being until it is subjected to correction. In the act of correction, all the knowledge grasped so far by reflexive consciousness turns out to be illusory and merely a fragment from the totality of Being; the latter is given to reflexive consciousness only indirectly – as a reflection. However, since self-consciousness is bound by temporality [Zeitlichkeit], it is never realized as a full circular movement; instead, it is always reduced to either “reflection” or “feeling”. The ideal figure of self-consciousness could be Dionysus, who, in the role of a mad God-poet, demolishes the products made by the individuation principle, while giving form to the formless in the role of the God-philosopher who once trained the Thracians in farming.

Poetry and philosophy, each in their own way, bring forth the complete self-consciousness/Being: the former through the aesthetic experience in which the circulation among the two types of consciousness is enabled by “ordo inverus” or the presentation of the ineffable Being; and the latter through reflection, which, however, reaches the analytical establishment of Being only by self-correction. The dynamic flow from one to the other type of consciousness is more important than what it brings to the surface (i.e. a piece of knowledge, a work of poetry). In short, understanding as such is less important than the negative insight into what escapes it; the poetical product as such is less important than the experience it affords. However, the products of poetry and philosophy differ essentially: the work of art, being fragmentary in form, experientially points to the other, missing pole, given only per negationem (similarly as in the imaginative regress in Kantian experience of the mathematical sublime), whereas the true value of reflexive understanding consists solely in the analytical correction of the reflection.

Regarding the problem of self-consciousness as a two-way dynamic process without a fixed basis and irreducible to any of the two principles (since it can only be conceived of as their simultaneity), Novalis says: “All searching for a single principle would be like the attempt to square the circle. Perpetual motion. Philosophers' stone” (FS, no. 566). But while in the realm of philosophy this continual rotation is given analytically, as an asymptote approaching totality, the work of art affords it synthetically – through the aesthetic experience, which, in the moment of epiphany, opens the way to the total Being.

Novalis’ Hymns to the Night are structured by the symbols of “Night”, “Death” and “Dionysus–Christ–Poet” – that is to say, by means that pointedly activate the intrusion of pre-reflexive consciousness into the reflexive one. By supplying what was missing, poetry is able to accomplish Being within the domain of the aesthetic experience; however, it was necessarily futile to transfer the aesthetic accomplishment of Being to the early-Romantic project envisioning the state as organism where experience of total Being should be equally given to all people: the aesthetic state-organism manifested itself either as the utopia of the French socialists (Leroux, Saint-Simon) or as totalitarianism. Here Dionysus, having been reduced to pre-reflexive consciousness, transforms itself into a destructive Dionysus (ideology) whom the state-machine subjugates in order to (pseudo) legitimize the violence necessary to achieve its purposes. Could it be that the young Romantics’ dream of a state-organism might come true only if the would-be state incorporated the whole Dionysus, i.e. both philosophy and poetry? The answer to this question is beyond the horizon of the Hymns to the Night, but nevertheless, hypothetical effectuation of the completed Dionysus should first of all take place at the level of the individual.

Jelka Kernev Štrajn

Žanr kot odsotnost žanra

Zahodna literatura in refleksija o njej sta bili od nekdaj, to je vsaj od Platona in Aristotela dalje, usodno povezani in sta še, morda danes bolj kot kdajkoli. V dolgi zgodovini te povezanosti sta se sčasoma oblikovali dve vrsti diskurzov (množina je potrebna zato, ker znotraj teh dveh vrst obstaja neskončna diskurzivna razplastenost), na eni strani teoretski diskurz, na drugi strani literarni. Bila so obdobja, ko sta šla diskurza razločno vsaksebi, in obdobja, ko sta se prepletala do nerazpoznavnosti. Posledica tega procesa je bil vselej nastanek kakšnega izrazito hibridnega žanra (na primer eseja). Toda hibridizacija se ni nikjer uveljavila tako zelo kot ravno v fragmentarni formi modernistične, predvsem pa postmodernistične pisave. Tej se, kljub številnim transformacijam in metamorfozam, še vedno pozna, da jo z romantičnim fragmentom veže več kot je videti na prvi pogled. Zato se zdi, da si ta zasluži posebno pozornost, saj je, gledano z današnje postmoderne perspektive, povzročil revolucijo v pojmovanju razmerja med filozofijo in literaturo, med teoretskim in pesniškim govorom; revolucijo, o kateri še zdaleč ni bila izrečena zadnja beseda.

Definicij romantičnega fragmenta – nanje naletimo že v samih Schleglovih fragmentih – so številne, a nobena ni povsem zadovoljiva. To je po svoje razumljivo, saj gre za  fenomen, ki ga v temelju določa neki manko. Tematizacija tega manka je tisti stožer, okoli katerega se sučejo tako romantična kot moderna in postmoderna fragmentarna pisava. Zato je mogoče reči, da je fragment pojav, ki se oblikuje okoli označevalne praznine, kar je razlog, da funkcionira kot refleksija o nemožnosti artikulacije polnosti pomena. Ta prostor okoli praznine, ki ga zavzema fragment, je hkrati tudi mesto križanja in prepletanja treh velikih diskurzivnih območij – literarnega, teoretskega in vsakdanje-konverzacijskega. Literarna razsežnost fragmenta se udejanja prek njegove specifične zmožnosti pomenske »strukturacije tišine v diskurz« (Fineman), teoretska razsežnost fragmenta se manifestira v njegovi bližnji sorodnosti z alegoričnim načinom izražanja (v Fletcherjevem in Finemanovem smislu), zametke njegove konverzacijske razsežnosti pa kaže iskati v konceptu Witza (v Schleglovem smislu) kot fenomena, ki se lahko porodi samo v dialogu.

Fragment je izrazito mejen, hibriden in transgresiven žanr, o čemer govori tudi etimologija njegovega imena. Temeljna razlika med romantičnim in modernističnim fragmentom je, poenostavljeno rečeno, v tem, da se samorazumevanje romantičnega fragmenta dogaja na ozadju razmerja med fragmentom in totaliteto, pa čeprav je ta odsotna; za modernistični fragment pa je značilno, da se poraja izven totalitete in neodvisno od nje, s čimer ukinja razmerje med seboj in totaliteto.

Z zgodovinskega vidika je romantični fragment plod različnih tradicij, predvsem heraklitske moralne tradicije – skupaj z aforizmi in sentencami sedemnajstega in osemnajstega stoletja – in biblične tradicije; s teoretskega vidika pa je, vsaj za naš razmislek, najzanimivejši problem navideznega protislovja med sporočilom fragmenta 206 iz Athenäuma, po katerem naj bi bil fragment »kot majhna umetnina povsem razločen od obdajajočega ga sveta, in zaokrožen sam v sebi, tako kot jež,« in sporočilom slovitega fragmenta 116, ki govori o romantični poeziji kot o »progresivni univerzalni poeziji« (progressive Universalpoesie), nikoli dopolnjeni, zmeraj v nastajanju in zato zmeraj fragmentarni.

Romantična refleksija se je nenehno vrtela okoli neizpolnljive naloge, ustvariti popolno, univerzalno umetniško delo. Ta hipotetična forma, katere žanr je ostal neznanka, naj bi bila v posameznih umetniških delih prisotna na način odsotnosti. Fragment naj bi utelešal to odsotnost.

Fragment, bodisi romantični bodisi moderni, je torej paradoksen pojav, je literarni žanr in hkrati to tudi ni. Morda je ravno zato najprikladnejši za opazovanje več kot dvestoletnega vzajemnega prežemanja literarne in teoretske misli. Učinke tega procesa je mogoče opazovati v številnih besednih mojstrovinah (Blanchot, Benjamin, Barthes, ameriška metafikcija, francoski novi roman, Kristeva, Cixous, Quignard), v teoretsko-literarnih hibridnih formah moderne in postmoderne dobe.

Povedno in pomembno pri tem je, da se ta proces ne odvija samo na ravni refleksivnih uvidov, ampak še pogosteje, vsaj v zadnjih desetletjih, tudi na ravni diskurzivnih artikulacij. Že bežen pogled nanje pokaže, da je teorija – v tem našem postnietzschejanskem stoletju, znotraj nenehnega interaktivnega učinkovanja dveh velikih diskurzivnih območji, literarnega in teoretičnega – odločilno vplivala na literaturo. Najočitnejši razlog za to je bržkone izjemen razcvet teorije v dvajsetem stoletju, globlji razlog pa je – tako se vsaj zdi – literarno dogajanje devetnajstega stoletja, ki v marsikaterem pogledu pomeni pomemben preobrat. Njegov izvor kaže iskati, kje drugje kot v romantičnem fragmentu.

Jelka Kernev Štrajn

Genre as the absence of genre

Western literature and reflection on it have been inextricably connected at least since Plato and Aristotle. This is still the case today, perhaps more than ever. Over the course of the long history of this intersection, two types of discourses have been gradually formed (the plural is necessary because an infinite number of discursive layers exist within these two types): theoretical discourse on the one hand, and literary discourse on the other. There have been periods when the two discourses developed separately, each going into its own way, and periods when they have intertwined to the point of unrecognisability. The consequence of this process has always been the appearance of some clearly hybrid genre (e.g. the essay). But nowhere has hybridization asserted itself so strongly as in the fragmentary form of modernist and, above all, postmodernist writing. Despite numerous transformations, it is still evident that this is tied to the romantic fragment by more than may be apparent at first glance. It would therefore seem that the latter deserves special attention: viewed from today’s postmodern perspective, it caused revolution in the conception of the relationship between philosophy and literature, between theoretical and poetic language, a revolution about which much remains to be said.

There are many definitions of the romantic fragment – we even find them in Schlegel’s own fragments – but none of them is completely satisfactory. This is understandable, since the phenomenon is one that is determined by a loss. The thematisation of this loss is the pivotal point around which both romantic and modern or postmodern fragmentary writing revolve. It is therefore possible to say that the fragment is a phenomenon that is formed around a signifying void, and as such functions as a reflection on the impossibility of articulating the fulfilled meaning. This space around the void, i.e. the space occupied by the fragment, is simultaneously the space where three large discursive areas – literary, theoretical and everyday-conversational – intersect and intertwine. The literary dimension of the fragment it is embodied by its specific capacity  of “structuring silence into discourse”. The theoretical dimension of fragment is realized by its close kinship with the allegorical mode of expression (in the sense of Fletcher and Fineman), while the seeds of its ordinary language dimension must be sought in the concept of Witz (in Schlegel’s sense) as a phenomenon that can only come into being in dialogue.

The fragment is emphatically borderline, hybrid and transgressive genre, as it is suggested by its very denomination. The fundamental difference between the romantic and the modernist fragment is, to put it simply, that the self-understanding of the romantic fragment takes place on the background of the relationship between the fragment and the totality, even though this last is absent, while the modernist fragment is characterized by the fact that it originates outside the totality and independently of it, and thus abolishes the relationship between itself and the totality.

Viewed historically, the romantic fragment is the product of various traditions, principally the Heraclitic moral tradition – comprising the aphorisms and sententiae of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – and the biblical tradition. Theoretically, the most interesting problem, at list for our purposes, is the contradiction – which is however only an ostensible one – between the message of fragment 206 of the Athenäum, according to which a fragment, “like a miniature work of art has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog,” and the message of the famous fragment 116, in which Schlegel speaks of romantic poetry as “progressive universal poetry” (progressive Universalpoesie), which is never completed, always in the process of becoming and therefore necessarily fragmentary.

The romantic thinking revolved incessantly around an uncompletable task, i.e. to create a perfect, universal work of art, a hypothetical form, the genre of which remained an enigma. In concrete works of art this genre would be present in the mode of absence. The fragment should figure as the embodiment of this absence.

The fragment, be it romantic or modern, is therefore a paradoxical from: it is a literary genre and at the same time it isn’t. Perhaps this is what makes the fragment so suitable for observing the two-hundred-year process of intersection and coexistence of poetical and theoretical discourse. It is this process that resulted in some distinguished literary texts (Blanchot, Barthes, Benjamin, American metafiction, French nouveau roman, Kristeva, Cixous, Quignard), which may be considered the theoretical-literary hybrids of modern and postmodern age.

It is important to note that for some time now this process has been taking place not only at the level of reflective insights, but, frequently, at the level of discursive articulations too. Even a fleeting glance at this points to the idea that theory – in a hundred years or so of our post-Nietzschean age, and within the constant intertwining and permeation of the two great discursive areas, the literary and the theoretical – influenced literature enormously. The most obvious reason for this is probably the extraordinary outbreak of theory in the 20^th century; however a more profound reason needs to be sought – or so it seems – in the literary events of the 19^th century. From many perspectives this era marked an important turning point, the origin of which may be discovered nowhere else than in the romantic fragment.

Lado Kralj

Literarna kritika v pisateljevem dnevniku: dokument ali fikcija?

Prispevek bo na novo pregledal tri pisateljske dnevnike: Grumov dnevnik 1932-1940, Kosovelov dnevnik 1924-1926 in Bartolov dnevnik 1930-1933. Vsi trije se v dnevnikih izrecno obračajo h književnosti, predvsem k domači, pa tudi k tuji, predvsem k sočasni, pa tudi h klasični. Z drugo besedo: te tri velike pisateljske figure iz časa med vojnama se v dnevnikih ukvarjajo z literarno kritiko, z ocenjevanjem sočasne literature in z nasprotovanjem kanonu – kot se sicer v svojem javnem pisanju sploh ne.

S temi njihovimi dnevniškimi vrednotenji se zgodi nekaj, kar diaristična teorija lahko napove vnaprej: izjave v dnevnikih (ali v pismih) nikoli niso povsem stvarne, pa naj se zapisovalec še tako trudi. Sam akt pisanja dnevnika ali pisma povzroča »nezadržne fikcijske posledice«, kot pravi C. Guillén, in zapisovalca žene v »iznajdljivost in spreminjanje dejstev.« In prav to se dogaja s Kosovelovimi, Grumovimi in Bartolovimi kritiškimi ocenami in z njihovimi ekskurzi v literarno zgodovino: fikcionalizirajo se, Kosovelovi v manjši, Bartolovi pa v neverjetno močni meri. Skratka: literarna kritika ali literarno zgodovinopisje, pa naj bo mišljena še tako objektivno in iskreno, se v dnevniškem zapisu začne »iznajdljivo spreminjati«, kot je iznajdljiva vsaka fikcijska zgodba. Dnevnik sledi svoji potrebi po zgodbi, po fabuliranju, ki je močnejša od želje po objektivnosti.

Lado Kralj

Literary Criticism Contained in the Diary of a Writer: Document or Fiction?

The contribution examines, using a new perspective, the diaries of three Slovene writers of the twenties and thirties, i.e. of Slavko Grum, Srečko Kosovel and Vladimir Bartol. Their diaries were written in 1932-1940, 1924-1926 and 1930-1933 respectively. All the three writers meditate in their diaries upon literature, above all Slovene literature, but foreign one as well; predominantly upon contemporary literature, but classical one as well. In other words: what those three great artistic personalities from before the World War II are doing in their diaries, is writing literary criticism, reviewing the contemporary books, sometimes opposing the existing literary canon. And this is something they would never do in their public writings. They only confide their literary criticism to the diary, the solitary and intimate genre, where there really nobody knows whether and when, if at all, this material is going to be published.

And then their criticism, since appearing in the genre of a diary, experiences a process that narratology has already predicted: the announcements appearing in the diaries (or in the letters) are never completely factual, irrespective of how hard the person who is writing them actually tries. The action of writing a diary or a letter causes “irrepressible fictional consequences”, as Claudio Giullen puts it, and forces the writing person into “invention and changing the facts”. And this is exactly what happens to Kosovel’s, Grum’s and Bartol’s critical reviews or to their excursions into the literary history: they get fictionalized, with Kosovel in a lesser and with Bartol in an incredibly high degree. Which is to say: literary criticism and literary history, although they intend to be objective and true, will in the surroundings of a diary begin to change inventively, as any fictional story is inventive. The diary follows its need for the story, for the fable, which is stronger than its wish to be objective.

Vanesa Matajc 

Interakcije literature in teorije od romantike do moderne: Funkcija interakcije v vzpostavljanju modernosti

Ideja modernosti še vedno vsaj v relativirani varianti določa tudi sodobno obdobje konca modernosti ali začetka postmoderne. Njeno izhodišče je Descartesovo dojemanje subjekta ter progresizem: prehod iz »estetike stalnosti« v »estetiko prehodnosti in imanence« (M. Calinescu). Raba pojma »estetika« za poimenovanje moderne filozofske/literarne tekstualizacije človekovega samodoživljaja ni naključna, saj romantična filozofija (absolutnega) subjekta in historizma ti dve temeljni podkategoriji ideje modernosti utemeljuje skozi estetski doživljaj (Kantovo iracionalno »sodbo okusa« oziroma Fichtejev »prvi stavek« samodefiniranja jaza in obenem vedoslovja), kar vodi v ukinitev možnosti objektivne transcendence, začetek razkroja metafizičnih sistemov in razmah subjektivizma. Na ravni tekstualizacije človekovega samodoživljaja to torej pomeni poetizacijo filozofskega diskurza in teoretizacijo poetičnega diskurza, tako da filozofija in literatura že od jenske romantične šole naprej vstopata v »programsko« interakcijo, ta pa vodi v čedalje večji sinkretizem dveh, (v luči Foucaultevih raziskav) še v razsvetljenstvu različnih (razlikovanih) diskurznih sistemov.

Romantično dialektiko subjekta in objektivne stvarnosti v paradoksalni permanentni prehodnosti kontinuirano »imanentno transcendira« »prvi stavek« (»A = A«; jaz = jaz), ki namesto v metafizični sistem enovalentnih čistih pojmov vodi v subjektivistični, semantično polivalentni (sugestivni), tj. poetični diskurz trenutka, v katerem je forma absolutno identificirana z vsebino. Romantična umetnostna teorija in praksa to svojo interakcijskost, ki vodi v sinkretizem, zato izraža skozi strukturo, ki ji je pripisana ta identičnost forme in vsebine, to je »umetniški ali nakazovalni« (Asmuth, Berg-Ehlers), imanentno interpretabilni (V. Elberg), enciklopedično-formativni (U. Eco), skratka, romantični simbol, kakor ga definirajo sami romantiki in za njimi morda najtemeljiteje U. Eco in H.-G. Gadamer.

Fichtejev filozofski temelj absolutnega subjekta se torej razcepi v umetnostnoteoretski esejistični (polliterarni) diskurz v strukturi fragmenta (F. Schlegel) ter v – na teoretskih temeljih strukturiran – poetični (literarni) diskurz strukturno »nedovršenega« romantičnega romana in kratke zgodbe s sugestivno (v Todorovem smislu »fantastičnega«) semantično odprtostjo (romantične) pravljice, na katero se Freud v obdobju moderne poleg teze o retoričnih strukturacijah nezavednega s postopki premestitve in zgostitve odzove zlasti s tezo o »das Unheimliche«, značilnem za (moderno) obdobje metafizične negotovosti. Njegovo estetsko preseganje je razvidno iz razmerja med Ottovo tezo o »numinoznem« in moderno liriko (S. Mihelj). To interakcijo teorije in literature vzpostavi v popolno sinkretičnost pripovedništvo E.T.A. Hoffmanna (romana Die Lebensansichten des Katers Murr, Die Elixiere des Teufels; pravljica Der Sandmann), v katerem je osnovni princip strukturacije paradoks v simbolični funkciji: Hoffmannova epika paradoksalno, vase zaprto »neskončno totaliteto« fichtejevskega subjekta simbolično strukturira v krožni formi arabeske (po F. Schleglu »umetniško urejene zmede«), pri čemer spoznavni zaplet (metafizični dualizem čutnega in duhovnega, svobodnega in determiniranega, izražen z motivom dvojnika) ostaja »presegljiv« le še z estetsko, simbolno-sugestivno, vsebinsko groteskno strukturacijo »simetrije protislovij« (F. Schlegel), po principu (paradoksalne) estetike grdega. Spoznavni zaplet vzbuja vtis, da ni več rešljiv/izrazljiv oziroma tekstuabilen v hierarhičnem metafizičnem sistemu oz. v filozofskem diskurzu, marveč torej le še v sugestivni poetični diskurzni polivalenci.

Popolno interakcijo filozofskega/teoretskega in poetičnega diskurza dosežeta C. Baudelaire in F. Nietzsche z literarizirano filozofijo oziroma s sinkretičnostjo esejističnega in literarnega diskurza, kot misleca/literata mutirane romantične dediščine paradoksalnega absolutnega subjekta v obdobju moderne, ko se ideja modernosti dovrši v svoj uzaveščeni relativizem subjekta in historičnega progresizma. Baudelaire estetsko občutje grdega (estetiko grdega) racionalizira s semantično eksplicitnejšo alegorično strukturo, ki z večjo mero groteske še radikalizira izraz metafizičnega dualizma, in jo imenuje s poetično-diskurzno sintagmo »homo duplex« (variacija motiva dvojnika), Nietzsche pa s paradoksalnima (bivalentnima) pojmoma »čezčloveka« in »volje do moči« (v smislu Nietzschejevega fragmenta 481 iz Volje do moči, ki ukinja možnost filozofskega sistema/diskurza v korist poetičnega diskurza; in v smislu Heideggrovega Evropskega nihilizma). Oba misleca/literata pa relativirata historični progresizem s poetičnim (metaforičnim) diskurzom občutja »dekadence« (organske in naravne metafore) ter strukturirata svoj diskurz v fragmente »postaj« (trenutkov, doživljajev časa). V filozofskem eseju z lirskimi vložnimi pesmimi (Also sprach Zarathusthra) oziroma v lirski zbirki (Fleurs du mal) paradoksalno spajata linearni in ciklični koncept časa (temu ustreza tudi Baudelairova alegorična struktura v De Manovem smislu), s čimer skozi – torej – poetični diskurz sugerirata relativacijo ideje modernosti ter njeni subkategoriji (novoveškega) subjekta in progresizma.

Razpad dveh interakcijskih diskurznih sistemov v njuno nujno sinkretičnost se teoretsko dovršuje v Lacanovi tezi o simboličnem (diskurzivnem) vzpostavljanju subjekta in v Foucaultevi tezi o diskurznem konstruiranju realnosti, »neskončno ponavljanje« te dovršitve pa – še vedno – izvršuje interakcija postmoderne teorije »novega historizma« (S. Greenblatt) in postmodernistične historiografske literature (teoretika/literata U. Eca).

Vanesa Matajc

Interaction between Literature and Theory from Romanticism to the Fin de Siecle: The Function of Interaction in Establishing Modernity

The idea of modernity, in a relativised variant at least, still continues as an influence in the contemporary period, which witnessed the end of Modernism and the beginning of Post-modernism. Its starting-points are Descartes’ perception of the subject and progressism: the shift from an “aesthetics of permanence” to an “aesthetics of transitoriness and immanence” (M. Calinescu). The use of the concept of “aesthetics” for naming the modern philosophical/literary textualisation of human self-experience is not a random one: the Romantic philosophy of the (absolute) subject and historicism establish these two basic subcategories of the idea of modernity through the aesthetic experience (Kant’s irrational “judgment of taste”, Fichte’s “first sentence” of the self-determination of the Ego and the definition of the doctrine of knowledge), thus abolishing the possibility of objective transcendence, triggering the disintegration of metaphysical systems and leading to the spread of subjectivism. At the level of the textualisation of human self-experience, this means that philosophical discourse becomes subject to poetisation and poetic discourse to theorisation, resulting in a "programmatic" interaction between philosophy and literature from the Jena Romantic school onward. This interaction in turn leads to the increasing syncretism of two discourse systems that were, judging by Foucault's research, still distinct in the Enlightenment period.

The Romantic dialectic between the subject and objective reality in its paradoxical permanent transitoriness is continuously "immanently transcended" by the "first sentence" ("A = A"; I = I), which leads, not to a metaphysical system of monovalent pure concepts, but to a subjectivist, semantically polyvalent (suggestive), i.e. poetic discourse of the moment, in which form is completely identified with content. This interactive, syncretism-inducing nature of Romantic art theory and practice is accordingly expressed through a structure to which this identity of form and content is ascribed. This is the "artistic or suggestive" (Asmuth, Berg-Ehlers), immanently interpretable (V. Elberg), encyclopaedically formative (U. Eco) symbol – in short, the Romantic symbol as defined by the Romantics themselves, and later perhaps most fully by U. Eco and H.-G. Gadamer.

Fichte’s philosophical foundation of the absolute subject is thus split into two types of discourse: the essayist (semi literary) discourse of art theory, which takes the form of fragments (F. Schlegel), and the poetic (literary) discourse of the structurally “incomplete” Romantic novel and short story. This latter type, whose structure is grounded in theory, displays the suggestive (in Todorov’s sense of the “fantastic”) semantic open-endedness of the (Romantic) tale. This open-endedness finds a fin-de-siecle response in Freud, not only in his thesis of the rhetorical structurations of the unconscious through displacement and condensation, but above all in the thesis of "das Unheimliche". This quality, characteristic of the modern era of metaphysical uncertainty, reveals its aesthetic transcendence in the relationship between Otto’s thesis of the “numinous” and modern lyric poetry (S. Mihelj).

The interaction between theory and literature is brought to complete syncretism in fiction by E.T.A. Hoffmann (the novels Die Lebensansichten des Katers Murr, Die Elixiere des Teufels; the tale Der Sandmann). Its main structural principle is a paradox in its symbolic function: in Hoffmann’s epic narration, the paradoxical, self-contained “infinite totality” of the Fichtean subject is symbolically structured in the circular form of the arabesque (what F. Schlegel calls an "artfully ordered confusion"). The cognitive plot – the metaphysical duality of the corporeal and the spiritual, the free and the determined, expressed through the motif of the double – remains "transcendable" only through an aesthetic, symbolically suggestive and thematically grotesque structuration of a “symmetry of contradictions” (F. Schlegel), based on the principle of the paradoxical aesthetics of the ugly. The cognitive plot appears to be no longer capable of resolution/expression, of textual presentation, in a hierarchical metaphysical system (the philosophical discourse), but only in a discourse of suggestive poetic polyvalence.

The full interaction between philosophical/theoretical and poetic discourse is attained by C. Baudelaire and F. Nietzsche, through "literarised" philosophy and the fusion of the essay and literature proper. These two authors belong to the mutated legacy of the paradoxical absolute subject bequeathed by Romanticism to the fin de siecle, a time when the idea of modernity crystallised into its conscious relativism of the subject and historical progressism. Baudelaire rationalises the aesthetics of the ugly with the semantically more explicit structure of allegory, which, containing more of the grotesque, further sharpens the expression of metaphysical duality. This structure is labelled with the poetic-discursive syntagm "homo duplex", as a variation on the motif of the double. Nietzsche, on the other hand, performs the same task with the paradoxical, bivalent concepts of the “overran” and the “will to power” (in the sense of his Fragment 481 from The Will to Power, which abolishes the possibility of a philosophical system/discourse in favour of the poetic discourse, as well as in the sense of Heidegger’s European nihilism). Both authors relativise historical progressism with poetic or metaphorical discourse proper to the mood of “decadence” (an organic and natural metaphor), structuring their discourse as fragments of “stops” – moments, experiences of time. The philosophical essay, interspersed with lyric poems (Also sprach Zarathusthra), and the collection of lyric poetry (Fleurs du mal) achieve a paradoxical fusion of the linear and cyclic concepts of time (also reinforced by Baudelaire's allegorical structure in De Man's sense of the term). The poetic discourse of the two authors thus suggests a relativisation of the idea of modernity and hints at its subcategories, the modern-period subject and progressism.

The inevitable merging of the two interactive discourse systems finds its theoretical completion in Lacan’s thesis of the symbolic (discursive) establishment of the subject, as well as in Foucault's thesis of a discursive construction of reality. And the "infinite repetition" of this completion continues even today, in the form of interaction between the post-modern theory of "New Historicism" (S. Greenblatt) and Post-modernist historiographic literature (theorist and writer U. Eco).

Boris A. Novak

Drevo in ovijalka: prilika o razmerju med poezijo in teorijo

Avtor si je kot izhodišče izbral razsvetljensko priliko, ki poezijo prispodablja z drevesom, teorijo pa z ovijalko, ki raste ob drevesu. Z drugimi besedami: poezija je organska moč, ki raste iz lastne zemlje (temelja) v nebo, teorija pa je spremljevalna, stranska dejavnost, ki nima lastnega temelja, zato življenjske sokove srka iz močnega, ustvarjalnega debla poezije. Teorija je torej parazit na telesu poezije.

To vrednostno stališče je značilno za tradicionalno književnost in ga še zmeraj na nekritičen način povzemajo tisti pesniki, ki se ne odlikujejo z močjo refleksije. Zatekanje v mit o iracionalnosti ustvarjalnega dejanja je dandanašnji kontraproduktivno. Pesniška umetnost zahteva poleg čustvenih in nezavednih plasti tudi intenzivno angažiranje vseh drugih ravni zavesti; kakor je poudarjal Paul Valéry, je moč (avto)kritike za pesnika bistvena. Avtor se torej ne strinja povsem s sporočilom prilike o drevesu in ovijalki – oziroma točneje: z iracionalistično interpretacijo te prilike, še manj pa z aroganco teorije, ki si nenehno prizadeva, da bi izrinila poezijo na rob vrta. Literarna teorija, kakor jo prakticirajo akademski krogi v zadnjih desetletjih, se obnaša še huje kakor razsvetljenska ovijalka: poskuša povsem prekriti in zadušiti drevo poezije, posnema drevo in se obnaša, kakor da ima lastne korenine. Avtor tudi na podlagi lastnih izkušenj iz univerzitetne pedagoške prakse ugotavlja naraščajočo fascinacijo študentov z literarno teorijo, kar samo po sebi niti ne bi bilo slabo, če tega procesa ne bi spremljalo tudi zaskrbljujoče upadanje veselja do branja primarnih literarnih besedil.

Na podlagi premisleka poetik tistih pesnikov, ki so na zgodovinsko relevanten način reflektirali položaj poezije v svetu (Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry, Rilke, Eliot) bo avtor poskušal ugotoviti razloge za marginalizacijo poezije v današnjem času. Obenem bo na podlagi temeljnih predpostavk zahodne filozofije (Platon, Aristotel, Hegel) izpostavil nenehno skušnjavo teorije, da detronizira poezijo in zasede njen prestol, kar ji je v 20. stoletju tudi uspelo; današnja prevalenca teorije nad poezijo ni fenomen, ki bi pripadal zgolj moderni in post-moderni dobi, kakor si laskajo akademski literarni teoretiki, ampak je ponovna in radikalna realizacija izhodiščne dispozicije zahodne metafizične filozofije, kjer je poezija v skrajni konsekvenci vselej podrejena filozofiji kot najvišji resnici sveta. Častne izjeme med filozofi in teoretiki (Heidegger, Lotman, Derrida, Steiner, Bloom, Pirjevec) razumejo specifiko pesniškega jezika, ki je jezik teorije ne more zamenjati.

Poezija je zdaj potisnjena na rob družbenega dogajanja, vendar ni izgubila svojega dostojanstva, ker ji ta obstranski položaj omogoča izraziti svojo resnico. Je teorija zdaj bolj srečna? Ni, vendar je teorija že a priori nesrečna zavest. Morda bo bolj srečna takrat, ko bo razumela, da mora omejiti ambicije po razumevanju in obvladovanju celotnega sveta.

Razmerje med poezijo in teorijo nikoli ni zgolj abstraktno, temveč se od nekdaj dogaja v družbenem kontekstu. Pri tem je bistvenega pomena vsakokratni izobraževalni sistem s spreminjajočimi se vrednostnimi kategorijami in smotri. Občutek o zamenjavi vlog med poezijo in teorijo, ki ga sugerira vabilo na naš simpozij, je morda optična prevara: teorija je vselej zasedala prostor družbene moči, poezija pa prostor nemoči. Nekdanja vera v družbeni pomen poezije je bila v veliki meri posledica novoveške tradicije humanistične vzgoje, ki je temeljila na citiranih primerih iz zgodovine pesništva. Ta izobraževalna in vzgojna tradicija je doživela dokončen zlom pred nekaj desetletji. »Kriza poezije«, ki jo omenja vabilo na simpozij, torej ni kriza same poezije, temveč je kriza izobraževalnega mehanizma, ki je potisnil poezijo na rob ter vzpostavil teorijo kot skrajni namen izobraževanja. Ta protipesniška, protiumetniška, amuzična tendenca pa že doživlja žalosten in banalen polom, saj ne omogoča razvijanja intelekta, kar je njen razglašeni cilj: izobraževalni sistem tone v barbarstvo, njegov edini namen je služnost potrošniškemu načinu življenja. Adijo, pesem, adijo, pamet!

Avtor je dvoživka: je pesnik, ki si služi kruh kot profesor literarne zgodovine in teorije. Kot pesnik verjame, da je pesništvo drevo, ki ga je treba ustrezno negovati, da bi dihalo, raslo in obrodilo. Kot teoretik bi rad verjel, da teorija ni zgolj ovijalka, vendar ne more povsem zaupati pogoltnosti njenega temeljnega parazitskega impulza, zato mora to svojo ovijalko nenehno brzdati in obrezovati, da ne bi zadušila drevesa. Drevesu v sebi torej zaupa neprimerno bolj kakor ovijalki. Največjo nevarnost vidi v tem, da bi zamešal različne zakonitosti življenja drevesa in ovijalke. Drevo je drevo in ovijalka je ovijalka. Drevo ni ovijalka in ovijalka ni drevo.

Drevo in ovijalka lahko sobivata, vendar na način razločenosti. In prav tu je kleč: drevo lahko raste brez ovijalke, ovijalka ne brez drevesa, nenehno se ga oklepa. Too close for comfort. Tisti literarni teoretiki, ki nekritično razglašajo, da je njihova teorija zamenjala poezijo, naj opustijo pridevnik »literarni« v imenu svojega poklica: naj bodo teoretiki kar tako, naj pišejo teorijo an sich! Žal je prostor za teorijo an sich že poltretje tisočletje zaseden: zasedla ga je disciplina, ki se imenuje filozofija. To je neprijetna meja, ob katero trči hibris samozadostne akademske literarne teorije: da v skrajni konsekvenci ni samostojna veda. Da je zgolj ovijalka na drevesu poezije. Če literarna teorija zaduši drevo poezije, pa se nujno spremeni v parazita na drevesu filozofije. Nerodno.

Kakor koli že obračamo to razmerje, v razsvetljenski priliki o drevesu poezije in ovijalki teorije ostaja zrno soli. K osnovnemu sporočilu te prilike pa je dandanašnji mogoče dodati naslednjo misel: ovijalka daje mero drevesu, kaže njegovo širino in višino.

Boris A. Novak

The Tree and the Vine: A Fable about the Relation between Poetry and Theory

         I have chosen as a starting point a fable from the Enlightenment period that personifies poetry as a tree and theory as a vine growing around the tree. In other words, poetry is supposed to be an organic force growing from the earth (i.e. out of its own foundation) to the sky, while theory is a secondary, marginal activity with no foundation of its own; therefore, it sucks the essential life force from the strong, creative stem of poetry. In brief, theory is a parasite on the body of poetry.

This hierarchical view about the relation between poetry and theory was characteristic in traditional literature, and we can still hear it uncritically repeated by some poets who don't exactly excel at self-reflection. The poetic art, besides its emotional and unconscious levels, also demands the intense engagement of all other mental levels; as Paul Valéry pointed out, the power of (self)criticism is the very condition for poetic creation. I don't thoroughly agree with the message of the Enlightenment fable about the tree and the vine – or, more precisely, with its irrational interpretation, but I even agree less with the arrogance of theory in its constant striving to relegate poetry to the edges of the garden. Literary theory, as practiced in academic circles in the last decades, has been treating poetry even worse than the Enlightenment vine: it attempts to envelop and suffocate the tree of poetry, and yet it imitates the tree and behaves as if it had roots of its own. On the basis of my own experience as a University professor I must, unfortunately, admit that there is an increasing fascination on the part of students with literary theory, which would not be so bad if it was not accompanied with the shocking lack of joy for the reading of primary literary texts.

The basic disposition of Western philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Hegel) lured literary theory into the perpetual temptation to dethrone poetry and to commandeer its very position, which finally happened in the 20^th century. Today's prevalence of theory over poetry is not only a phenomenon characteristic of the modern and post-modern eras, as academic literary critics like to flatter themselves; it is a renewed and radical implementation of the starting point of Western metaphysical philosophy, where poetry is always subservient to philosophy as the highest and ultimate truth of the world. The honourable exceptions among philosophers and literary critics (Heidegger, Lotman, Derrida, Steiner, Bloom, Pirjevec) understand that the specific nature of poetic language cannot be replaced by theoretical language.

Poetry is now marginalised; it plays a minor social role but has not lost its dignity, because its very position at the margins enables it to express its own truth and the truth of the world. Is theory now "happier" than before? No, but theory is a priori an unhappy consciousness. Perhaps it will find a sort of happiness when it realises that it must limit its ambitions to control and subjugate the whole world.

The relation between poetry and theory was never abstract, but always took its place in a certain historical and social context. The crucial role in this process was played by the respective educational systems with their changing values and aims. The feeling that poetry and theory have exchanged their roles, as suggested by the invitation to our symposium, is maybe just a perceptual error: theory always had its place in the mechanism of social power, while poetry was always considered as a weakness. The traditional faith in the social meaning of poetry was to a large extent a consequence of the humanistic education of the 18^th century on, which was based on quotations from the history of poetry. This educational tradition was finally broken a few decades ago. "The crisis of poetry" referred to in the invitation to this symposium is not a crisis of poetry but a crisis of the educational system that marginalised poetry and established theory as the ultimate aim of the educational process. This antipoetic, antiartistic, amusical tendency has already experienced a sad and banal catastrophe, because it does not enable the intellectual development that is its proclaimed aim: the educational system is drowning in barbarism, whose only purpose is to serve the society of consumption. Goodbye, beauty, goodbye, brains!

        I am an amphibian: a poet making a living as a professor of literary history and theory. As a poet I believe that poetry is a tree that needs appropriate care in order to breathe, grow and bear fruit.

As a professor I would like to believe that theory is not just a vine, but – frankly – I cannot completely trust its greedy nature and parasitic impulse; therefore, I am constantly forced to limit its appetite in order to save the tree. I trust the tree in me much more than I trust the vine. I see the greatest danger in mistaking one for another, in mistaking the different identities and biological laws of tree and vine.

The tree and the vine can co-exist by respecting their mutual differences. And here is the problem: the tree can live without the vine, while the vine cannot live without the tree: the vine has to embrace the tree all the time. Too close for comfort. Academics who claim that theory has replaced poetry should abolish the adjective "literary" in the name of their profession: let them be theoreticians and critics as such, let them write theory an sich! Unfortunately, the place for theory an sich has been occupied by philosophy for two thousand five hundred years. That is the unpleasant border of the hybris of self-sufficient academic literary criticism: that in the final analysis it is not an independent discipline. That it is merely a vine on the tree of poetry. If literary criticism suffocates the tree of poetry, it becomes the parasite on the tree of philosophy. Embarrassing.  

However we turn this relation, there is still a grain of salt in the Enlightenment fable about the tree of poetry and the vine of theory. To the basic message of this old fable we should today add that the vine gives a measure to the tree, showing its breadth and height.

Vid Snoj

Schleglov Pogovor o poeziji in Platonov Simpozij

Razprava jemlje za izhodišče domnevo, da je eden izmed začetnikov dialoga med literaturo in teorijo, ki smo mu priče od romantike naprej, utemeljitelj nemške zgodnje romantike Friedrich Schlegel. Ta je izhajal iz izročenega pojma teorije, ki se prekriva s pojmom novoveške znanosti. V tej pojmovni akcepciji je teorija celota sovisnih, v sistem zvezanih trditev, ki vzpostavljajo neko predmetno področje in v njem predstavljajo predmet. Teorija literature tako na predmetnem področju jezika kot svoj predmet vzpostavlja in obdeluje literaturo ter skupaj z drugimi »področnimi« teorijami tvori novoveško znanost kot »teorijo dejanskega« (M. Heidegger). Vendar se je Schlegel že na začetku svoje teoretično-literarne kariere nekoliko odmaknil od tako razumljene teorije. Ob pomoči historizma 18. stoletja, ki se je ovedel naše lastne situiranosti in hkrati postajanja predmeta v času, je teorijo pesništva zasnoval historično: pesništvo je opasal z zgodovinskim obzorjem, v katerem se poslej prikazuje v svojih menjavah, njegovo teorijo pa ironično poimenoval »historični sistem«. Schleglova zasnova teorije je tako kljub historističnemu odmiku ostala daleč od pomena, ki ga je theoría imela pri Platonu, se pravi od čistega, nediskurzivnega, nerazdelovalnega zrenja resnično bivajočega, tega, kar se ne kaže telesnemu očesu, ampak le očesu uma. Vendar je Schlegel s tem, ko je v svojem prvem pomembnem spisu O študiju grške poezije (1797) pri modernem pesništvu za razloček od grškega prepoznal interes za neskončno oziroma nekazljivo, tudi sam ohranil platonistični interes za tisto, kar se ne kaže v zgodovinskem obzorju.

Po drugi strani je za premislek o pesništvu namesto privajene oblike razprave že v časopisu Athenäum (med letoma 1798 in 1800) vpeljal literaturomorfno zvrst fragmenta. Spis Pogovor o poeziji (1800) pa je napisal v obliki dialoga, ki s celotno inscenacijo, namreč z govori na izbrano témo in potem s pogovorom o njih znotraj izbrane družbe, spominja na Platonov Simpozij (ok. 380 pr. Kr.). V obeh dialogih bode v oči značilna literarna strukturacija filozofske misli: namesto monološke postavitve in razvijanja teze intonacija in orkestracija različnih glasov, namesto razvidne prisotnosti avtorja v tekstu njegova brezimnost oziroma skritost za različnimi liki in njihovimi sodbami. Vendar je Platonov Simpozij pogovor o Lepem, Schleglov Pogovor pa simpozij o pesništvu. V tem je med njima tudi pomembna duhovnozgodovinska razlika. Platonski eros v slovitem Diotiminem ubesedenju, ki ga v svojem govoru povzema Sokrat, pušča za sabo lépo, s katerim je vsako bivajoče udeleženo v nadčutnem, le z očesom uma uzrtnem ejdosu oziroma, navsezadnje, v Lepem, in se dviguje v molčeče zrenje Lepega. Zato pesništvo, ki pripada območju esteze, tj. estetskega, čutnega posredovanja, pri Platonu ni privilegirani prostor razodevanja lepega. Drugače za Schlegla. Ludoviko, govorec »govora o mitologiji« v Pogovoru o poeziji, namreč razpravlja o nalogi pesništva zdaj in pravi, da mora za prikaz nekazljivega, za katero gre modernemu pesništvu na splošno, izoblikovati novo mitologijo. Ta pa ne bo prišla od narave kakor grška, ampak bo nastala iz duha, »iz ustvarjalne moči subjektivnosti« (M. Frank), bo stvaritev domišljije ob izklopu razuma in bo, sestavljena iz zgodb in podob doslejšnjih mitologij, vélika prispodoba za predzavestno, neskončno oziroma Absolutno. Pesniška »alegorija«, izrekanje oziroma upodabljanje neskončnega v končnem, se tako prav s tem, da Absolutnemu daje podobo, pokaže za daljnosežnejšo od filozofskega pojma, pesništvo pa dobi pri Schleglu prednost pred filozofijo in položaj najodličnejšega posrednika Absolutnega. Kajti »alegorični« pesniški prikaz je paradoksna re-prezentacija: ni navaden prikaz sveta pojavov, ampak tistega, kar je »prisotno« drugače, onstran racionalno razberljive in pojmovno ubesedljive prisotnosti, ter kot nekazljivo sicer sploh ne bi bilo prisotno v območju čutnega in bi nam ljudem ostalo povsem tuje. 

Vid Snoj

Schlegel’s “Dialogue on Poetry” and Plato’s “Symposium”

The text takes as a point of departure the supposition that one of the initiators of the dialogue between literature and theory that we have witnessed from Romanticism onwards is Friedrich Schlegel, one of the founders of early German Romanticism. Schlegel proceeded from a handed-down concept of theory that overlaps with the concept of modern science. In this conceptual acceptation, theory is a whole of assertions coherently tied together into a system that  establish a specific object field and represent the object within this field. Therefore, in the object field of language, the theory of literature establishes literature as its object, constituting , together with other “regional” theories, “the theory of the real” (M. Heidegger). Yet from the very beginning of his theoretic-literary career, Schlegel distanced himself somewhat from this understanding of theory. With the help of 18^th-century historicism, which instilled an awareness of our own situatedness in time as well as of the becoming of an object in time, Schlegel conceived the theory of poetry historically: he girdled poetry with a historical horizon in which, from then on, it would show itself in its changes, and ironically named its theory “the historical system.” In this way Schlegel’s conception of theory, in spite of its historicist departure from the accepted concept, remained far from the meaning that theoría had with Plato – a pure, non-discursive, non-treating seeing of that which really exists and appears not to the bodily eye, but exclusively to the eye of reason. Nevertheless, in his first important essay, On the Study of Greek Poetry (1797), Schlegel recognized in modern poetry, in contrast to its Greek counterpart, an interest in the infinite, or the unshowable, allowing himself to retain a platonic interest in that which does not appear on the historical horizon.

On the other hand, for the purpose of reflection on poetry, Schlegel had already introduced in the literary periodical Athenäum (between 1798 and 1800) a literature-like genre of the fragment instead of the usual form of the treatise. His essay, Dialogue on Poetry (1800), however, is written in the form of a dialogue whose entire staging, that is, speeches on certain themes followed by discussions about them among a selected group of persons, is reminiscent of Plato’s Symposium (approx. 380 B.C.). What catches the eye in both dialogues is the characteristic literary structuralization of philosophical thought: not only intonation and orchestration of different voices instead of the monological proposition of a thesis and its development, but also the author’s anonymity or concealment behind different figures and their judgments instead of his evident presence in the text. Yet Plato’s Symposium is a talk on the Beautiful, while Schlegel’s Dialogue is a symposium on poetry. This is also where a significant difference lies between the two dialogues from the point of view of Geistesgeschichte. In Diotima’s famous words, epitomized in Socrates’ speech, eros leaves beauty behind it, a beauty through which every living being participates in the supersensible eidos or, ultimately, in the Beautiful, and ascends into a silent vision of the Beautiful itself, which can only be seen with the eye of reason. For this reason poetry, belonging to the sphere of aesthesis, i.e., of aesthetic, sensible mediation is not a privileged space of revelation of the Beautiful in Plato. For Schlegel, however, its position is different. Namely, Ludoviko, the speaker of “the speech on mythology” in his Dialogue on Poetry, discusses the task of poetry in the present, saying that it has to form a new mythology in order to present the unshowable, which modern poetry generally strives to present. In his words this mythology will not come from nature as Greek mythology did, but will spring up from the spirit, “from the creative power of subjectivity” (M. Frank). It will be, with reason suspended, created by the imagination and will become, itself made up of stories and images of so far existing mythologies, a big simile of the unshowable, the infinite or the Absolute. The poetical “allegory,” the uttering or shaping of images of the infinite in the finite, thus turns out to be more far-reaching than the philosophical concept precisely because it gives the Absolute an image, while in Schlegel poetry takes the advantage over philosophy and the position of superior mediator of the Absolute. For an “allegorical” poetical presentation is a paradoxical re-presentation: it is not an ordinary presentation of the world of phenomena, but of that which is “present” differently, beyond rationally decipherable and conceptually expressible presence, and which, like the unshowable, would otherwise not be present in the sphere of the sensible at all, remaining completely alien to us humans.

Stephanos Stephanides

Misliti skozi razpor: Pesniški filozofi in filozofi pesniki

Naključje je hotelo, da sem prav tedaj, ko sem prejel vabilo za to okroglo mizo, prejel tudi sporočilo od prijateljice, indijske pisateljice Praiyje Sarukkai-Chabria, ki je ravno prebrala eno mojih razprav, čeprav je doslej brala samo mojo poezijo. Takole pravi: »… kako velik in vznemirljiv razpor! Če ne bi vedela, bi mislila, da gre za dve različni osebi. Res je, da obliki zahtevata razliko, toda pri tebi je ta razlika izrazito nasprotje v načinu pisanja. Zakaj tolikšen razkorak? Ali ga lahko kako razložiš?« V nadaljevanju sporočila nakazuje, kako je mogoče premostiti ta navidezni razpor. Jaz pa bi se rad odzval na njeno vprašanje, sklicujoč se na citat iz vabila na to okroglo mizo.

  Pesništvo in mišljenje
sta gotovo
dve največji nasprotji smrti
sta njeni najzvestejši priči.

(Roberto Juarroz)  

Ta nam skuša dopovedati, da se, bodisi kot filozofi bodisi kot pesniki, prepoznavamo na ozadju smrtnosti. Govorne skupnosti, ki se porajajo iz te smrtne usode, se spreminjajo glede na naše razmerje do vzpostavljenih ustanov in kultur. Susan Sontag je v svojem slovitem eseju Proti interpretaciji izjavila, da interpretacija v svojih najmodernejših oblikah pomeni filistrsko odvračanje od tega, da bi pustili umetniško delo pri miru. Želi si, da se umetnost ne bi podrejala interpretaciji, ki, po njenem, dela umetnost obvladljivo in prilagodljivo: »Resnična umetnost nas je zmožna spraviti ob živce.« Interpretacija pa, tako meni, zanika brezdanje možnosti, da bi se naše razumevanje umetnosti odprlo, da bi presegli dosegljive stvari in se povzpeli do vrtoglavih višin. Potenciale v stvareh bi morali doseči s svojimi sposobnostmi, bodisi, da se s preteklostjo pomirimo, bodisi da z njo prelomimo, pri tem pa ostanemo nedolžni in svobodni. Interpretator, kot ga pojmuje Susan Sontag, govori na podlagi že vzpostavljenega diskurza, filozof Alphonso Lingis pa zatrjuje, da filozof lahko ohranja svoje dostojanstvo v skupnosti skeptikov, s tem da razkriva nedoslednosti in neskladnosti v vzpostavljenem kanonu. Toda v akademskih skupnostih smo naravnani tako, da se izogibamo tveganjem, za katere se nam zdi, da nam manjka srčnosti, da bi jih lahko izživeli. Občutja se merijo in odzivi se kodificirajo, glede na obljube in grožnje. Vendar obstajajo tudi ljudje, potisnjeni na rob in izključeni iz filozofskih trditev, ki veljajo za zanesljive in resnične; ljudje, ki se jim odreka dostop do resnice in ki telesno občutijo utrujenost brezdomstva. Ko si Lingis prizadeva prepoznati ta problem, njegova lastna govorica – medtem ko išče besede, katerih moč je v petju in ne v govorjenju – omahuje med aksiološkim in apofatičnim. Včasih piše v mirni sokrivdi z izgredništvom pesnika, ki išče zdravo čutnost in ambientalno snovnost, očarljivo s svojimi čutnimi substancami. Sporazuma in nesporazuma ni mogoče rešiti samo z abstrakcijo, saj ta vodi v izravnavajočo in nerazločujočo zaznavo. Jezik kot stopnjujoča moč zaklinjanja je zmožen prepustiti kakšen šum in podreti enkratnost reda. Toda tedaj niti pesnik ne more obraniti jezika pred stopnjujočo močjo in mora uporabiti reprezentacijsko obliko. To čudovito evocira Derek Walcott v svoji pesmi Poletni solsticij XVII:

Postojim, da slišim zmagoslavni vrišč škržatov
ki uglašujejo življenje [ki dajejo najvišji ton življenju], toda živeti ta visoki ton njihove radosti je neznosno [toda neznosno je živeti njihovo vrhunsko veselje]. Ugasni
tisti zvok. Enkrat potopljeno v tišino,
se oko navadi obrisov pohištva, duh pa teme.

Protislovja se porajajo tako iz ontologije jezika, s procesom vključevanja ali izključevanja, kot tudi z vzajemnim delovanjem jezika in institucionalizirane  vladajoče kulture. To pa ne prizadeva le akademskega kritištva, marveč tudi poezijo, ker literarna in umetniška produkcija čutita omejenost njegovih hierarhij in ustanov. Morda oba potrebujeta izgredniškega pesnika znotraj sebe (bodisi da gre za literate bodisi za filozofe), ki bo prelomil hegemonsko singularnost, ki bo zaznal, kje zrahljati stopnjujočo moč jezika, ki bo oživil ječanje in rožljanje opustošenih teles in opustošene narave in bo razločil mnogotere obrise in možnosti pokrajine in življenja.

Ko sem študiral v Britaniji in bil priseljenec sredi tujega jezika in na tujem ozemlju, me je begala premočrtna periodizacija literature, ki sem jo študiral. Vodila me je od Beowulfa do T. S. Eliota, a me ob tem pustila, da sem se spraševal, kam spadam. Zmeraj sem hotel hoditi ob strani in prečno, zgoraj in spodaj. Desetletja, ki so sledila, so pripeljala do transformacije z novim poudarkom na takšnih vprašanjih, kot sta postkolonialnost in medkulturnost. Za to, da sem dobil prostor znotraj akademskega sveta, so zaslužni prav izgredni teoretiki in pisatelji, ki so izpeljali ta obrat. Toda porajajo se nove hegemonije in ortodoksije, ko pridemo do novega kanona in do novega svetovnega reda, ki nosi s seboj nove sile singularnosti in homogenizacije ter čedalje globalnejše izkustvo znanstvene in tehnološke racionalnosti. Problem ni zgolj napetost med filozofom kritikom in izgrednikom pesnikom, ampak je znotraj slehernega od nas, ko se spoprijemamo z mejami našega sporazumevanja. To sporazumevanje se dogaja, kot nakazuje Juarroz v gornjih verzih, znotraj področja umiranja, ki zarisuje in omejuje obseg možnosti. Susan Sontag nas svari pred omejevanjem resnične umetnosti, ko ugotavlja, da se življenje hrani s svojo neizprosno čutnostjo. Če smo se naučili sebe obvarovati pred naravo, se moramo zdaj naučiti obvarovati naravo pred seboj, ko uporabljamo svoje moči, da bi se postopoma razpustili v njeni tujosti in v tujosti drugih, ki je dejansko naša lastna tujost. Za sklep se vračam k zgoraj navedeni Walcottovi pesmi, ki se konča takole: »četudi nihče ne bo umrl v svoji lastni deželi / bo hvaležna trava pognala iz njegovega srca.«

Stephanos Stephanides

Thinking through the Gap: Poetical Philosophers and Philosophical Poets

By sheer or meaningful coincidence, when I received the invitation for the roundtable, I received a message from my friend Indian writer Priya Sarukkai-Chabria who had just read one of essays and who hitherto had only read my poetry. She comments ‘how immense and thought-provoking the gap! Should I have not known otherwise, I'd say these are from two different people. True, the forms demand difference, but you are radically oppositional in the way you choose to write in these forms. Why such divergence? Could you expand on it?” In a subsequent message, she gave hints of how this apparent gap is bridged, but I would like to take up her challenge of her question with reference to a quote in the call for papers for this roundtable from Roberto Juarroz:

Poetry and thinking
Are surely
The greatest opposites to Death:
They witness it most faithfully. 

This suggests that whether as philosophers or as poets we know ourselves in our mortality. The discursive communities that arise from this mortal condition vary according to our relationships to established institutions and cultures. Susan Sontag in her renowned essay ‘Against Interpretation’ stated that in most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone, and she would want to liberate art from the taming of interpretation, which in her view makes art manageable and conformable: ‘Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.’ Interpretation she implies denies the abyss of possibility that in art opens our understanding to go beyond the things within reach, and to make our stance vertiginous. The potentials of things have to be reached out by our powers to heal or break with the past and remain innocent and free. If the interpreter, as Sontag would have it, speaks from an established discourse, philosopher Alphonso Lingis claims that the philosopher can maintain his dignity in a community of sceptics revealing inconsistencies and incoherencies in the established canon.  Nonetheless in academic institutions we position our mind to avoid adventures that we sense we will not have the ardour to live through. One measures feelings and codifies responses to the promises and the threats. But then there are those whose are excluded and marginalized from the philosophical statements that are acknowledged as reliable and true, and who are denied access to the truth and who feel the fatigue of homelessness in their bodies. In identifying the problem, Lingis own language hovers between the axiological and the apophantic seeking words whose forces chant and do not discourse. At times he writes in quiet complicity with the delinquency of the poet seeking healthy sensuality and ambient materiality that enrapture with their sensuous substances. Communication and contention cannot be resolved by abstraction alone as this leads to a levelling and undiscerning perception. Language as an intensifying force of incantation has the possibility to allow some noise to enter and break the singularity of order. But then even the poet cannot sustain a language of intensifying force and has to use representational form. Derek Walcott wonderfully evokes this in his poem Midsummer XVII:

I pause to hear a racketing triumph of cicadas
setting life’s pitch, but to live at their pitch
of joy is unendurable. Turn off
that sound. After the plunge of silence
the eye gets used to the shapes of furniture, and the mind
to darkness.  

        The contradictions arise both from the ontology of language with its processes of in/exclusion and its interaction with the institutionalization of the cultural establishment. This affects not only academic criticism, but also poetry because literary and artistic production feels the constraints of its hierarchies and institutions. Both perhaps need the delinquent poet within them (whether as literati or as philosophers) who will break hegemonic singularity, who will discern where to release the intensifying force of language that will enliven the groan and rumble of wasted bodies and wasted nature, discern the multiple contours and possibilities of landscape and being.

When I was a student in Britain, as a migrant out of language and out of place, I was troubled by the linear periodization of my literary studies, which led me from Beowulf to T. S. Eliot and left me asking myself where I belong. I was always wanting to move sideward and across, above and below. The subsequent decades led to transformation with a new emphasis on such issues as the postcolonial and the transcultural. If I have found a space in academia, it is because of the delinquent theorists and writers who brought about this turn.  Nonetheless, new hegemonies and orthodoxies arise as we move to a new canon and a new world order that brings with it new forces of singularity and homogenization in an increasingly global experience, and of scientific and technological rationality. The problem is not only a tension between the philosopher critic and the delinquent poet, but within each as we grapple with the boundaries of our mediation. As Juarroz suggests above, this mediation is within the domain of dying that circumscribes and limits the range of possibilities. Sontag warns us against the taming of real art in her realization that life is nurtured in its relentless sensuality. If we have learned to protect ourselves against nature, we now have to learn to protect nature from ourselves using our powers to dissolve into her strangeness, and the strangeness of others which in effect is also our own. As a conclusion, I will return to the above quoted Walcott poem, which ends: “though no man dies in his own country/the grateful grass will thick from his heart.”

Marko Uršič

O pomenu literarnega diskurza v filozofiji

Zloglasni Platonov izgon pesnikov iz idealnega polisa, izgon vélikega Homerja in slavnih grških tragikov, češ da so zgolj »posnemovalci podob«, ki se »ne dotikajo resnice« (Država 600e), ima seveda pomembno mesto v Politeji in nezanemarljivo tudi v celotnem Platonovem opusu, zato se je vsekakor treba kritično soočiti s to, milo rečeno, čudaško mislijo utemeljitelja idealizma – vendar bi bilo napačno in usodno za odnos med filozofijo in pesništvom sklepati, da je upravičena kritika Platonovega pojmovanja pesništva eo ipso tudi zavrnitev samega filozofskega idealizma. Obsodba pesništva namreč kljub svoji teži ne zadeva samega bistva platonizma, kajti bistvo platonizma je, najkrajše rečeno, premagovanje minljivosti, hrepenenje po večnosti, ki je skupno tako filozofom kot pesnikom.

Ne kaže prezreti, da je že sam Platon občutil nelagodje ob svoji kritiki pesnikov, ki nas sicer »očarajo«, in je zato zapisal: »Da pa nas pesništvo ne bi obtožilo zaradi nekakšne trdote in surovosti, mu povejmo, da med filozofijo in pesništvom obstaja že neki starodavni spor« (Država 607b). O tem »sporu« (diaphora, tudi: raz-lika, raz-por) se je Hans Georg Gadamer v razpravi Platon in pesniki vprašal: »Ali je to, da filozof Platon ne more biti pravičen do pesnikov in pesniške umetnosti … izraz prastarega razdora [spora] med pesniki in filozofi?« (slov. prev. str. 15) – Odgovor je dvoumen: po eni strani diaforičnost filozofije in pesništva, na katero se sklicuje Platon, res sega nazaj k predsokratikom (Heraklitu, Ksenofanu idr.), ki so zavračali Homerjeve »bajke« o prepirljivih in razuzdanih bogovih, o mračnem Hadu ipd. (ker so jih jemali »preveč zares«, vse drugače kot mi dandanes), in prav na to »razumsko« kritiko mitsko-poetskega mišljenja se Platon navezuje v II. in III. knjigi Države, češ da takšne predstave jemljejo čuvarjem države pogum in jim »kvarijo duše«; po drugi strani pa Platon v X. knjigi vpelje svojo lastno kritiko pesništva, ki temelji na predpostavki, da pesnik posnema čutne stvari in dogodke, ki so že sami posnetki/podobe (eidola) večnih in edino resničnih idej, ter se tako bolj oddalji od resnice kot kak rokodelec, npr. mizar, saj le-ta pri izdelavi mize neposredno posnema sámo idejo mize. S Platonovega stališča je torej največja pesnikova zmota v oddaljitvi od prave resnice/resničnosti, od »sveta idej«.

Kot je znano, je Platonovo zavračanje pesništva per analogiam povezano z mimetičnim slikarstvom: slikarske podobe naj bi bile zgolj nekakšne »sence« realnosti, ki stvari ne predstavljajo v njihovi resničnosti, ampak le tako, kot se nam »kažejo«. Strinjam se z Gadamerjem, ko pravi, da »bi bilo zgrešeno, če bi hoteli na neki način omiliti izzivalno paradoksnost te [Platonove] kritike« (ibid.), in tudi z njegovo presojo, da gre tu za »zaslepljenost« platonske paideie, za nevarno iluzijo, da ima vzgoja duš »neomejeno ustvarjalno moč« (ibid., 24); strinjam se tudi z Gadamerjevo diagnozo te zaslepljenosti, namreč da Platon izhaja iz zgrešene predpostavke, da je bistvo pesništva in nasploh umetnosti posnemanje čutnega sveta. Dodal pa bi, da je ta Platonov lapsus odkril in popravil že antični (novo)platonizem, saj Plotin v znamenitem »Fidiasovem odlomku« pravi naslednje: »Toda če kdo prezira umetnosti, ker ustvarjajo svoja dela s posnemanjem narave, mu moramo najprej reči, da so tudi naravne reči posnetki [idej]; nadalje pa, da se mora zavedati, da umetnosti ne posnemajo preprosto tega, kar vidimo: umetnosti se poglabljajo k oblikovnim počelom (logoi, ‘semenom’), iz katerih izvira narava (physis); in tudi same po sebi ustvarijo marsikaj: ker vsebujejo lepoto, ustvarijo tisto, kar stvarem manjka. Fidias svojega Zevsa ni ustvaril iz nobenega vzorca, ki bi ga zaznal s čutili; doumel je, kakšen bi Zevs zgledal, če bi nam hotel biti viden.« (Plotin, O umski lepoti, En. V. 8. 1) – To pa je seveda neka povsem »druga pesem«, obenem pa še vedno platonska!

Naš »postmoderni« čas, ki ga je močno (premočno!) zaznamovala »dekonstrukcija« metafizike, od Nietzscheja in Heideggerja do Derridaja in Lacana, je – splošno rečeno – precej nenaklonjen filozofsko-literarnim »hibridom« platonskega tipa, med drugim tudi zaradi žal prepogostega nerazumevanja pomena in vloge Platonovih v filozofski diskurz vpetih literarnih pasaž (»mitov«, prispodob, analogij), kakor tudi zaradi spregledanja bistvenega namena platonskega dialoga. Gadamerjeva ugotovitev, ki je za sodobno hermenevtiko platonizma precej značilna, češ da »platonski ‘miti’ niso niti mit niti pesništvo« (op. cit., 41), ampak da se filozof v njih in preko njih »sklicuje nazaj« na logos, torej da so neke vrste (raz)umsko usmerjene alegorije, je napačna in nehote zavajajoča, saj Platonov mythos, na primer znamenita prispodoba o votlini, nikakor ni neka zgolj didaktična ponazoritev (raz)umskih, dialektičnih idej, temveč je filozofsko konstitutiven za sámo presežno mišljenje platonizma – kajti za njegovo v izvornem pomenu meta-fizično resnico je bistven ravno preplet logosa in mythosa. Podobno in še bolj to velja za Platonove dialoge: sokratska »ljubezen do modrosti« je zapisana pretežno v »dramski« obliki predvsem zato, ker dialogi že na formalni ravni omogočajo »večglasje« resnic(e), pa tudi subtilno »distanciranje« samega avtorja od mnenj in misli, ki jih izražajo njegove »literarne« osebe (o tem obširno piše Gorazd Kocijančič v spremnih besedilih k prevodu celotnega Platona).

Ob koncu naj omenim (več o tem morda v diskusiji), da se tudi sam v svojem filozofsko-literarnem pisanju, predvsem v nastajajočih Štirih časih, tako v vsebinskem kot oblikovnem pogledu rad navdihujem pri »božanskem Platonu« ter pri antičnem in renesančnem novoplatonizmu. Verjamem namreč v možnost in prihodnost »hibrida«, ki bi ga lahko imenoval literarizirana filozofija, in prepričan sem, da se tak dvoplastni (ali večplastni) diskurz lahko brez večjih težav izogne nevarnosti, da bi se ujel v past »tezne« oz. ideološke fikcije, kajti pri tem »projektu«, ki je predvsem filozofski in ima seveda v zgodovini filozofije že bogato tradicijo (od predsokratikov in Platona prek renesanse do novoveških filozofskih »literatov«), je glavno to, da »literarni« slog omogoča filozofskemu logosu, da postane in ostane »večglasen«, »tekoč«, v pristnem pomenu dialektičen, tudi s pomočjo mythosa in dialoga odprt k vsepresežni resnici. Saj prav te odprtosti v presežnost filozofiji vselej manjka, čeprav po njej tudi vselej hrepeni, in zato naj se glede izrazne svobode le zgleduje po pesništvu!

Literatura

Platon: Zbrana dela, prev. Gorazd Kocijančič, Mohorjeva družba, Celje, 2004.

Plotin: Enneads I–VI, grško-angleška izdaja, prev. A. H. Armstrong, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966–1995.

Gadamer, Hans Georg: Platon in pesniki, prev. Vitko Kogoj, Hyperion, Koper, 2001.

Uršič, Marko: Štirje časi. Filozofski pogovori in samogovori (Pomlad, 2002; Poletje I., 2004), Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana.

Marko Uršič

On the Meaning of Literary Discourse in Philosophy

The ill-famed Plato’s expulsion of poets from the ideal polis, the expulsion of great Homer and some adored writers of tragedies, founded by the argument that they are just “imitators of images” who “do not lay hold on truth” (Republic X, 600e), has of course an important role in Politeia and it cannot be overlooked also in the whole of Plato’s opus, so this thought of the founder of philosophical idealism, rather weird from the present-day point of view, has to be critically considered and, probably, dismissed – however, it would be a wrong and fatal consequence for the relations between philosophy and poetry, if the overall rejection of Plato’s philosophical idealism were inferred from the legitimate dismissal of his “poetics”. The condemnation of poetry in spite of its gravity does not concern the very essence of Platonism – namely, the essence of Platonism is, most briefly said, the overcoming of transitoriness, longing for eternity, which is common to both, poets and philosophers.

It has to be remarked that Plato himself felt some uneasiness in his critique of poetry, “since we ourselves are very conscious of her spell” (ibid. 607c), and that’s why he tries somehow to apologize: “And let us further say to her, lest she condemn us for harshness and rusticity, that there is from of old a quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (607b). Concerning this “quarrel” (diaphora, also: difference, distinctness), Hans Georg Gadamer in his treatise Plato and Poets puts the question: “Is the fact that the philosopher Plato cannot be fair to poets and their art … the consequence of the ancient quarrel between philosophers and poets?” – The answer is ambiguous: on the one hand, the “diaphora” between philosophy and poetry indeed goes back to Pre-Socratic sages (Heraclitus, Xenophanes et al.), who rejected Homer’s “fairy tales” about quarrelsome and debauchery gods, about the gloomy Hades etc. (because they understood them “too seriously”, very differently from ourselves), and Plato just carries on this “rational” critique of mythical and poetical thought, especially in books II and III of Republic, considering that such fantasies deprive guardians of their courage and “spoil their souls”; on the other hand, Plato in book X introduces his own specific critique of poetry, based on the supposition that it “imitates” empirical things and events, which are on their turn also “imitations” or “images” (eidola) of the eternal and most real Forms (Ideas), so that a poet is farer from the supreme Reality as a carpenter, who, while making a table, directly “imitates” its ideal Form, “seen” in his mind. From Plato’s point of view the principal poet’s mistake is his remoteness from the real Truth, from the transcendent “World of Forms”.

Plato’s rejection of poetry is argued per analogiam with more obviously “mimetic” art of painting: painted images are supposed to be like some “shadows” of empirical reality, and they do not represent things “as they are”, but only “as they seem to us”. I agree with Gadamer, when he says that “it would be wrong, if we tried somehow to diminish the provocative paradoxical character of this [Plato’s] critique” (ibid.), and I endorse also his judgement that this is an obvious case of “blindness” of Platonic paideia, a dangerous illusion that spiritual education may have an “unlimited creative power” (ibid.); I agree as well with Gadamer’s diagnosis of this “blindness”, namely with his statement that here it is simply a case of a wrong supposition: that the essence of poetry and art in general is the imitation of the world of senses. However, I have to add that this Plato’s mistake has been discovered and corrected already in the late Greek and Roman Neo-Platonism. Let us quote one of the famous passages from Enneads, where Plotinus clearly corrects his master’s lapse: “But if anyone despises the arts because they produce their works by imitating nature, we must tell him, first, that natural things are imitations too. Then he must know that the arts do not simply imitate what they see, but they run back up to the forming principles [logoi, ‘seeds’] from which nature derives; then also that they do a great deal by themselves, and, since they posses beauty, they make up what is defective in things. For Pheidias too did not make his Zeus from any model perceived by the senses, but understood what Zeus would look like if he wanted to make himself visible.” (Enn. V. 8. 1) – Now, this is quite a “different story”, however still perfectly Platonic!

Our “postmodern” philosophies and literatures have been very much (too much!) determined with the “deconstruction” of metaphysics, spanning from Nietzsche and Heidegger to Derrida and Lacan, so that our cultural climate is, generally speaking, quite unfavorable to any philosophical-literary essays of Platonic type. Among other reasons for this prejudice is also the usual misunderstanding of the meaning and role of Plato’s literary passages (“myths”, metaphors, analogies etc.) within his philosophical discourse, as well as ignoring the essential stylistic importance of dialogues. Gadamer’s statement, quite characteristic for the modern hermeneutics of Platonism, that “Platonic ‘myths’ are neither myths nor poetry” (op. cit.), since the philosopher refers in them and through them “back to logos”, i. e., that they are just some kind of rationally directed allegories – this statement is wrong and misleading. Platonic myth, for example the famous Metaphor of the Cave, is not just an illustration of some underlying theoretical concepts, philosophical ideas, but is itself, as mythos, essentially constitutive for the Platonic thought, since its metaphysical transcendent truth is based on the synthesis of logos and mythos. And Platonic dialogues have a similar, very essential role: Socratic “love of wisdom” is written down for us in the “dramatic” form, because dialogues formally enable the “polyphony” of truth, as well as some subtle “distance” of the author towards thoughts and opinions, held by his dramatis personae (this feature of Platonic discourse has been extensively presented by Gorazd Kocijančič in the introductory notes to his Slovenian translation of Plato’s works).

In the end, I would like to mention my personal experience in writing philosophical-literary discourses. My still growing comprehensive tetralogy Four Seasons (two of them, Spring and Summer, have appeared already, in Slovenian) is from the formal and conceptual points of view much inspired by the Classical and the Renaissance Platonism. I believe in the further development of a “hybrid” which may be called literary philosophy, and I am sure that such a twofold (or manifold) discourse can without much trouble avoid lapsing into some “ideological” fiction. For the literary philosophy, which has a rich tradition (from Pre-Socratics and Plato over the Renaissance to several modern belles-lettres within philosophy), it is essential that logos, in close connection with mythos and expressed as dialogos or in some other “literary” style, develops itself as “polyphonic”, “fluent” and dialectical discourse (in the pristine sense of the word), i. e., that it never forgets to be opened to the transcendent truth “beyond”. And that’s why philosophy should be, for its own sake, as far as possible open-minded towards poetry, literature and all other arts.

References

Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Including the Letters, eds. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, 1985

Plotinus: Enneads I–VI, in Greek, with an English translation by A. H. Armstrong, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966–1995.

Gadamer, Hans Georg: Plato and Poets (in Slovenian translation, 2001).

Uršič, Marko: Four Seasons, philosophical dialogues and monologues (in Slovenian, 2002 and 2004) – some fragments from Spring and Summer are available in English on my personal webpage: http://www2.arnes.si/~mursic3/

Ivan Verč

O etiki in njenem prevajanju v jezik književnosti  

V 20. stoletju je vprašanje o etiki literarnega dela izginilo s področja literarne vede. Prehod k znanstvenemu in fenomenološkemu pristopu h književnosti je sicer uspešno premostil idealistično (metafizično) pojmovanje njene estetske in spoznavne funkcije in se metodološko preusmeril v literarno teorijo, hermenevtiko in ob koncu stoletja v kulturologijo, vprašanje o možnosti morebitne dediščine »heglovske« etične funkcije pa je ostalo večidel zunaj literarne vede. Razlogov za odsotnost etičnega vprašanja v opazovanju književnosti je več: 1) za »znanost« je literarna beseda predmet opisa, ki ne predvideva vrednotenja; 2) določanje etičnosti literarne besede sloni na sporočilni funkciji in ne upošteva vseh jezikovnih ravni, na katerih se beseda manifestira; 3) nesomernost komunikacijskega procesa preusmerja morebitno etičnost sporočila na raven recepcije in ne zadeva procesa proizvajanja pomenov (na tej ravni se »etika« izjave in sporočila nediferencirano prekrivata); 4) v mejah dominantnega kulturnega modela je etika sporočilnosti literarne besede odvisna od moralne norme sprejemnika; 5) ker »Adama grešnika ni več, je samo svet, v katerem je Adam grešil« (Deleuze), se vedno prehodni kulturni model ne more spremeniti v podlago za obvezujočo normo in zato etike kot univerzalne kategorije ni mogoče osnovati; 6) ker etike ni mogoče osnovati, se z njo ni mogoče ukvarjati; 7) analitična »meta-etika«, ki se sprašuje o dejanskih »prevodih« temeljnih etičnih trditev, ni prodrla v literarno vedo (tudi zato, ker se načeloma ne ukvarja z umetniško besedo).

K vsemu temu je potrebno dodati, da o etiki ni mogoče govoriti brez konkretnega »etičnega dejanja«, razmišljanje o etiki književnosti pa se v svojem bistvu ni posebno premaknilo od razmišljanja o blagodejnem vplivu, ki naj bi ga umetnost imela na »dejanje« sprejemnika (kar še vedno spominja na Aristotelov katarzični model moralne sprostitve gledalca tragedije ali poslušalca glasbe). Za poskus odgovora na vprašanje, kaj je etično dejanje v književnosti in kako se manifestira oz. za poskus ponovne vzpostavitve etične kategorije v razmišljanju o umetniškem delu, je potreben povratek k subjektu besednega ustvarjanja kot predmetu opazovanja in k »dejanju«, ki ga določa. Dejanje subjekta je dvojne narave: po eni strani ga določa »neindiferentnost« bivanja v odnosu do njega samega in do sveta, ki ga obdaja, in torej potreba (želja, hotenje) po aktivni prisotnosti v njem (Bahtinov »ne-alibi« v bivanju), po drugi strani pa specifika, s katero se dejanje »neindiferentnosti« manifestira. Specifične manifestacije »neindiferentnosti« bivanja je sicer mogoče zaslediti na različnih ravneh aktivne človekove prisotnosti v svetu, za razliko od drugih pa se v subjektu besednega ustvarjalnega procesa manifestacija »neindiferentnega« bivanja pojavlja kot »akt zapisane ubeseditve« oz. kot dejanje, ki svet »prevaja« v besedo in ga z besedo fiksira. Kljub težnji po določanju njegove sistemskosti in torej implicitne zaprtosti, se nam ob vsakem »prevodu« jezik ponuja kot prostor neskončnih možnosti: »indiferentno« bivanje živi v nekonfliktni danosti jezika, »neindiferentno« pa v njegovih vedno konfliktnih možnostih. Jezik nas določa v bivanju, izbira med danostjo in možnostjo jezika pa je ločnica, ki po eni strani teži k ohranjanju obstoječih pomenskih koordinat stvarnosti, po drugi pa k njihovemu preseganju in, posledično, k »naraščanju« stvarnosti same (Gadamer). Etično dejanje »sposobnega človeka« (Ricoeur) je odločitev med možnostmi, ki nam jih jezik ponuja na poti k vedno prehodni resnici o našem bivanju.

Spopad z mejami diskurzivnosti jezika ni ne »dobro« ne »slabo« dejanje, je samo možnost, ki nam jo jezik ponuja za etično dejanje izbire. Privilegiran prostor praktike, kjer se možnost izbire maksimalno udejanja, je književnost. V literarno besedilo se to dejanje ne vpisuje kot sentenca (ni izjava in ni sporočilo), na vseh različnih ravneh jezika (od zvoka do pomena, od morfema in leksema do sintagme, od sintagme do povedi, od povedi do zgodbe, od zgodbe do njene kompozicije) se pojavlja (ko se pač pojavlja, saj gre vendar za izbiro) kot generator ubeseditvenega procesa, ki določa nadaljnje porajanje teksta in sproža (pre)oblikovanje morebitnega smisla. Fiksirana ubeseditev (tekst) je relikt izrabljenih in neizrabljenih možnosti. Na teh reliktih je literarna veda gradila razlago in razumevanje književnosti in jo po eni strani široko določala kot pravilo, kanon, postopek, evolucijo, vpliv ali strukturo, po drugi strani pa nam je ponudila v dediščino izredno bogato gradivo o specifičnih jezikovnih in »poetoloških« elementih ustvarjalnega besednega snovanja. To gradivo se danes izrisuje kot nova še »neizrabljena« možnost: v njem namreč leži jezik, s katerim etika pripoveduje o sebi na specifičnem področju, ki mu pravimo književnost.

»Odtujitev«, »tuja beseda« ali »gledišče« se nam danes morda res kažejo kot nezadostna literarno-teoretska določila za opis sveta, ki se pojavlja v besedi. Stara so skoraj sto let, empirični material (literarno besedilo), na podlagi katerega so ta določila nastala, pa kar nekaj stoletij. Umestno se nam torej zdi vprašanje, ali ni morda »izrabljena« možnost, ki jo jezik ponuja ob vsaki ubeseditvi, veliko prej kot ostale kategorije mišljenja udejanjila postulat, ki je v razmišljanje o etiki in nasploh o medsebojnih odnosih prodrl šele proti koncu 20. stoletja. Sodobno etično načelo o tem, da »nihče ne more zamenjati drugega v vedenju, ki zadeva njega samega« (Tugendhat, 1984), se v književnosti ni pojavilo kot apodiktična trditev, udejanjilo se je kot izbira med različnimi možnostmi ubeseditve. Skratka, kot etično dejanje.

Ivan Verč

On Ethics and Its Translation into the Language of Literature

The issue of the ethics of the literary work disappeared from literary studies in the 20^th century. The transition to a scientific and phenomenological approach successfully bridged the idealistic (metaphysical) notion of literary aesthetic and cognitive function and shifted the methodological focus onto literary theory, hermeneutics and, towards the end of the century, cultural studies, while largely abandoning the possible heritage of a “Hegelian” ethical function. There are several reasons for the absence of ethical questions in the observation of literature: 1) “scientifically”, the literary word is the object of description that does not incorporate evaluation; 2) the determination of the ethical dimension of literary word is based on the communicative function and does not consider all the linguistic levels in which the word is manifested 3) the asymmetry of the communication process redirects the possible ethical dimension of the message onto the level of reception and does not concern the process of meaning generation (on this level the “ethics” of the utterance and the message are non-differentially covered): 4) within the dominant cultural model the ethics of the message of the literary word is conditioned by the moral norms of the reader; 5) since “Adam is no longer a sinner, there is only the world where Adam sinned” (Deleuze), the permanently transitory cultural model cannot become the basis for a binding norm and therefore it is not possible to found ethics as a universal category; 6) as it is not possible to found ethics it is impossible to consider it; 7) analytical meta-ethics, which reflects on the actual “translations” of basic ethical statements has not penetrated literary studies (this is also due to the fact that it does not address the artistic word). 

Moreover, it is impossible to address ethics without a specific “ethical act”. However, reflection on the ethics of literature is still largely rooted in the beneficial influence which art is considered to have on the “act” of the receiver (which still evokes the Aristotelian cathartic model in which the audiences of tragic drama or listeners to music are morally released). In order to define the ethical act and its manifestations in literature, or to make an attempt to establish the ethical category in the reflection on the artistic work, we need to return to the subject of linguistic creation as the object of observation and to the “act” that determines such a subject. The action of the subject has a dual character: on the one hand it is determined by the “non-indifference” of being in relationship towards him and the world that surrounds him and thus the need (the wish, the desire) for an active presence within it (Bakhtinian “non-alibi” in being) and on the other hand, by the specifics, through which the non-indifferent act is manifested. Specific manifestations of non-indifferent being can in fact be traced on different levels of active human presence in the world, but unlike the other, in the subject of linguistic creation the manifestation of “non-indifferent” being appears as the “act of written verbalization” or as the act that “translates” the world into the word and thus fixes it. Despite the tendency to determine its systematic character and resultant implicit closeness, language presents itself as a space of infinite possibilities: “indifferent” being lives in the non-conflictive, given dimensions of the language and the “non-indifferent” in its permanently contradictory possibilities. Language determines our being and the choice between the giveness of language and its possibilities is the divide which on the one hand tends to preserve the existing coordinates of reality and on the other to transcend them and, consequently, to the “increasing of reality” itself (Gadamer). The ethical act of the “capable person” (Ricoeur) is the choice between the possibilities that language offers us on the path to the eternally transient truth about our being.

The confrontation with the limits of discursivity is neither “good” nor “bad”, but only a possibility that language offers us for ethical choice. Literature presents a privileged space of practice within which the possibility of choice is realized to its fullest. This act does not inscribe itself into the literary text as a sentence (it is neither an utterance nor a message).  It appears (when it does appear, since it concerns choice) on all levels of language (from sound to meaning, from morpheme and lexeme to syntagma, from syntagma to clause, from clause to story, from a story to its composition) as a generator of the verbalization process which dictates the subsequent generation of the text and triggers the (trans)formation of the possible meaning. Fixed verbalization (text) is a relict of exploited and unexploited possibilities. Upon these relicts literary theory has constructed the explanation and the understanding of literature. Such theory has on the one hand determined it quite widely as rule, canon, procedure, evolution, influence or structure. On the other hand, it has offered the heritage of the extremely rich material of specific linguistic and “poetological” elements of creative linguistic articulation. This material today presents a new, as yet “unexploited” possibility: within it lies the language, with which ethics tells us about itself in/inside a specific field, which we call literature.

Today, we may in fact perceive formalistic “defamiliarization”, Bakhtinian “other’s word” or “point of view” as inadequate theoretical definitions for the description of the world put in the word. These definitions are almost a hundred years old, and the empirical material (literary texts) from which they arose date back several centuries. Therefore it is relevant to ask whether this “exploited” possibility which the language offers with each linguistic verbalization has managed to realize much earlier than other categories of thought the postulate which penetrated reflections on ethics and interpersonal relations only in the late 20^th century. The contemporary ethical principle which states that “nobody can replace the other in the conduct concerning himself” (Tugendhat, 1984), did not arise in literature as an apodictic sentence, it was realized as a choice among various possibilities of linguistic articulation. That is, as an ethical act.

Uredila / Edited by
Marko Juvan, Jelka Kernev Štrajn

Organizacija / Organisation
Slovensko društvo za primerjalno književnost /
Slovenian Comparative Literature Association

Soorganizacija / Co-organisation
Inštitut za slovensko literaturo in literarne vede ZRC SAZU /
The Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Sciences, SRC SASA
Društvo slovenskih pisateljev / Slovene Writers' Association

Finančna podpora / Financial support
Ministrstvo za kulturo RS
Ministrstvo za visoko šolstvo, znanost in tehnologijo RS

Prevodi v angleščino / English translations
Nada Grošelj, Janko M. Lozar, Nuša Rozman, Suzana Stančič, Barbara Zorman

Prevodi v slovenščino / Slovene translations
Marko Juvan, Jelka Kernev Štrajn