Beyond the Structuralist Myth of Ecriture 9783110810950, 9789027931665

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DE PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University Series Minor, 15

BEYOND THE STRUCTURALIST MYTH OF ÉCRITURE

by ROLAND A. CHAMPAGNE Assistant Professor of French University of Missouri, St. Louis

1977

MOUTON THE HAGUE . PARIS

©Copyright 1977 Mouton & Co B. V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

ISBN 90 279 3166 6

Printed in the Netherlands

To Gert for her patience and understanding during this whole task. To my family, the sons and daughters of Rene and Rita Champagne, for their support and encouragement.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Hugh M. Davidson for his inspiring discussions which provoked and nurtured my research into the problem of écriture, to Assistant Professor Sanford S. Ames for his encouragement and insights, especially for the essay on Nombres, and to Associate Professor Charles G. S. Williams for his editorial assistance and his recommendations for this collection. Thanks to the editors of Delta Epsilon Sigma Bulletin, Sub-stance and Helicon for their permission to reprint the appropriate essays.

CONTENTS

I. II.

Dedication

V

Acknowledgment

VII

III.

Contents

IX

IV.

Forward

XI

V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X.

The poetry o f écriture

— Un déclenchement1

The audience - La Chanson

77

du texte3

95

The Metamorphoses of Proteus 4

Ill

The words — Le Roman The writer -

de Roland2

1

Works consulted o n Écriture

133

Index

139

1. The first chapter of this essay was substantially published as "Un Déclenchement" in the Autumn 1973 issue of Sub-Stance (University of Wisconsin). 2. This essay was published in the October 1972 issue of Delta Epsilon Sigma Bulletin (Dubuque, Iowa). 3. This essay was published in the Autumn 1972 issue of Sub-Stance. 4. This essay was published in the Winter 1975 issue of Helicon (The Ohio State University).

FORWARD

At first glance, this monograph may appear to be a loosely organized collection of four essays joined together under the pretentious task of portraying the spirit of French literary criticism in the aftermath of structuralism. However, my task is not to synthesize or reduce the complexity and multiplicity of critical opinions, but rather to present these perspectives in a coherent and digestible fashion. We are embarking upon an odyssey into the literary arena wherein French structuralists, influenced by Roland Barthes in the early 1950's as well as the Tel Quel and Change Circles in the early 1960's, have developed a "myth of écriture" in reaction to Sartre's portrayal of the role of écriture in Qu'est-ce que la littérature. However, the debates between the adherents of Change and Tel Quel have produced a counter-culture with Jacques Derrida as its philosopher-prophet which goes beyond the structuralist need for Lévi-Strauss's bricolage that posits an ensemble for certain consistent systems within given literary traditions. This effort to go beyond structuralist parcels of truth seems to be united in spirit by a search for a sémiologie, or the linguistic elements or seeds which can relate one text to another in a reciprocal interchange. First of all, what is "the structuralist myth of écriture"? Around the nucleus of the prophetic pronouncements of Roland Barthes' Le Degré zéro de l'écriture in 1953 and the spirit of Lévi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson's criticai insight into Baudelaire's Les Chats, an antiExistential and anti-phenomenological reaction is formed among French literary critics. There seems to be a unity of spirit which focuses upon the systematic ensembles, both horizontal and vertical, of literary works. The term écriture becomes very fashionable since the prophet of the times, Barthes, evoked this term with his heraldic treatise in 1953.

XII But yet within this spiritual group, Barthes himself provides the "seeds" for the transgression of the myth of écriture. His portrayal of the need to continually escape the determinism of an audience would provide fuel for Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie in 1966, which in turn heralds the age of sémiologie in the 1970's. The very group of structuralists gathered in the 1967 conference at Johns Hopkins, which was sponsored by the Ford Foundation and whose papers are generally collated in Macksey and Donato's The Structuralist Controversy (1970), contained the nucleus for post-structuralist concerns. The need for the dialogue, which seems never to have taken place in fact, was itself a symptom of the outworn and confused status of "structuralism". Yet Jacques Lacan, Tzvetan Todorov, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida hinted at some theories which transcend "the myth of écriture" as mere structure or systematic parcels of truth. Even René Girard's introductory lecture on "Tiresias and the Critic" would become challenged in its Freudian structures by Deleuze and Guattari's brilliant work I'Anti-Oedipe (1972). Nevertheless, we are embarking upon an age wherein one myth {écriture) is not simply replaced by another (sémiologie). But there is a basic change in ideology and esthetics implied by a cultural revolution since about 1967 in France. This change is partly suggested by the application of the linguistic concept of sémiologie in the critical vocabulary of the avant-garde. The four works about which this collection centers are pivotal in understanding the arrival and development of the search for a sémiologie. Yet we are not so much concerned with the works themselves as we are concerned with the trends and spirit which they represent. The very term sémiologie should be given a working definition which we have adopted from Michel Foucault in Les Mots et les Choses: " . . . appelons sémiologie l'ensemble des connaissances et des techniques qui permettent de distinguer où sont les signes, de définir ce qui les institue comme signes, de connaître leurs liens et les lois de leur enchaînement". 1 Hence, there seems to be a revival of interest in the complex of the Saussurian sign, in contrast to the logocentric concerns of écriture for structuralist critics in the tradition of Western civilization. Since 1968 occasioned a revolutionary era in French culture which is continued even in the Leftist gains witnessed by the March 1973 election, Philippe Sollers' text of that same year has been selected as

XIII

our first point of discussion of the contemporary setting of sémiologie. Nombres demonstrates themes, implied by the renewed interest in sémiologie, which provide it with poetic unity. Although Nombres is sub-titled a novel, it is, nevertheless, an enigmatic text which defies definition and yet illustrates many of the literary phenomena which have evolved from this critical common denominator I have identified as sémiologie. The thematic unity of Nombres not only unlocks some of the complexity of Sollers' challenging text but also helps us to better understand this critical term. From one of my respected professors, Dr. Hugh M. Davidson, I have assimilated the components of traditional literary transactions their audience, words, and writer. The latter three essays of this collection attempt to portray the development of sémiologie in light of the three factors which constitute the literary transaction. First of all, the essay La Chanson de Roland portrays "the structuralist myth of écriture" for the whole literary audience just as Roland Barthes conceived it in 1953 with his Le Degré zéro de l'écriture. The task of écriture to escape the determinism of a literary audience is perpetuated in the new critical search for a sémiologie which can account for the creative dimensions of writing free from the repressions of a consumer-audience. Secondly, we move on to a discussion of the words which provide the constituents for the linguistic sign. The third essay is a critical appraisal of Julia Kristeva's Le Texte du roman (Mouton, 1970) and how linguistic criticism may affect our re-reading of classical texts. Julia Kristeva's application of a critical sémiologie to a medieval text bears witness to the transformation of the words of the text which sémiologie may necessitate. Finally, my fourth essay discusses the dilemna of the writer (scripteur) caught up in the creation of texts in a semiological context. Therein we review Roland Barthes' portrayal of some of the roles the actively writing écrivant may assume, especially in the writings of the strange triumvirate of Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Seuil, 1971). This transaction of the audience, words, and writer of a sémiologie produces a multi-metamorphoric poetic which now opens the French literary arena onto new avenues of adventure. But we are only being introduced to some possibilities of this concern. Our future artists have yet to explore and probe the permutations which may ensue in light of our initial understanding of the working of a sémiologie.

XIV Both our heritage of past "literature" as well as the production of future texts are now affected. Critics, artists, and their audience must again re-consider their roles in regard to, and then re-view their existing relationships within, the literary transaction to realize the stereotypes produced by the illusions of "structure". This provocation then leads to a critical search for new directions in the wake of the faded structuralist understanding of écriture. Hence, the concern about a sémiologie deserves our immediate attention. Yet this sémiologie is in need of a methodology of its own, independent of linguistics. While the static category of "structure" precludes considering temporal inconsistencies in a text, perhaps the method of the "séries" developed by Gilles Deleuze in his study of Alice in Wonderland (cf. Logique du Sens, 1969) can provide an alternative in some cases. And the Change Collectif, with its creative impetus given by Jean Paris, Jean Pierre Faye, Jacques Roubaud, and Philippe Boyer among others, may very well provide another alternative. Since its initial founding on 8 January 1968, the Change Collectif has been seeking an ideology to underscore its opposition to the Tel Quel Group. Despite personal confrontations between members of the two groups, there are some interesting similarities in their critical directions. In July 1973, the Change Collectif had a unique opportunity at Cerisy-la-Salle to create its own ideology and solidify its intellectual position as Seghers/Laffont had agreed to begin publishing Change regularly as a quarterly review. Yet the nuanced references to, and the refutations of, Tel Quel's own Artaud/Bataille Colloquium there in 1972 seemed to impede the development of Change's own affirmative ideology. Nevertheless, the "generative criticism" (cf. Change #17) of Jean Paris was well articulated to underscore the theme of the colloquium: "Le Changement de Forme, révolution, langage". Although the Change Collectif would probably deny the rapprochements, this "generative criticism" seems to echo Kristeva's inspiration by Chomsky's linguistics and Sollers' postulate of the three levels of a text at Cluny in 1968 (cf. La Nouvelle Critique #1). Perhaps this "generative criticism" will give sémiologie the methodology it needs. While the Tel Quel Group may be ideologically espousing a French Formalism2 which considers " . . . the work of writing as a translinguistic productive process . . , " 3 and the Change Collectif insists upon "une écriture qui n'est évidemment plus ex-

XV pression ni représentation, mais à son tour change, pratique qui 'change les règles', pour reprendre ce que dit Chomsky de la créativité linguistique", 4 the apparently disparate directions of the two groups can be viewed by the common denominator of a sémiologie seeking a critical perspective of its own. But only future generations will be able to gauge whether the "séries" or a "generative criticism" can provide enough universal application to give sémiologie a consistent and viable methodology. Meanwhile, the Tel Quel Group and the Change Collectif continue to explore the means of transgressing the limitations of a structuralist myth of écriture.

NOTES 1. Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p. 44. 2. Michael Riffaterre, Essais de stylistique structurale (Paris: Flammarion, 1971), pp. 261-285. 3. Mary Ann Caws, "Tel Quel: Text and Revolution", Diacritics, III, No. 1 (Spring 1973), 2. 4. Michel Pierssens, "L'entreprise de Change" Sub-Stance, No. 4 (Fall 1972), p. 109.

THE POETRY O F ÉCRITURE

-

UN

DÉCLENCHEMENT

The implications of écriture in Philippe Sollers' text Nombres (Seuil, 1968)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.

Preface

II.

Chapter I - The Mirror Drama

III.

IV.

V.

5

A.

Le pluriel IN MEDIAS RES

11

B.

Illusions of structure

15

C.

The structuration of redoublement

20

D.

Audience or product?

23

E.

Dé-structuration

25

Chapter II - The Pulsating Life of le pluriel A.

Discourse rather than narrative

28

B.

Catharsis of space

35

C.

Le stade du miroir

43

D.

Organic unity

48

Chapter III - The Re-Incarnation of the Word A.

La dissémination

52

B.

To re-create and recreate

58

C.

Transubstantiation

63

D.

On the Shoulders of Giants

65

E.

The prophetic Word

68

Enclosures

73

PREFACE

Since Roland Barthes' revolutionary manifesto for écriture in Le Degré zéro de l'écriture (1953), the realm, nature, and scope of this word écriture have intrigued literary circles. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith have literally translated écriture into "writing" in their translation of Le Degré zéro {Writing Degree Zero, Hill and Wang, 1967). However, as the issues of the Times Literary Supplement since Autumn of 1971 seem to indicate, the implications of écriture are far more extensive than the word "writing" would indicate. In a recent issue of French Review, Léon S. Roudiez has pointed out some of the "possibilités . . . révolutionnaires"1 of an écriture which, by its anti-Aristotelian posture, destroys the traditional Western literary focus upon mimesis and verisimilitude. He seems somewhat intimidated by the challenges of "une science du fonctionnement du texte . . . à élaborer, une méthode et un vocabulaire . . . à définir." 2 And rightfully so: Barthes' controversial study, Sur Racine (1963), has caused us to re-consider Classicism in view of this enigmatic écriture; Maurice Blanchot's insight into Blaise Pascal and l'homme du monde in Entretien Infini (Gallimard, 1969) challenges our traditional appreciation of le pari; and Julia Kristeva harks back to Antoine de la Sale's Le Petit Jehan de Saintré (1456) for a reinterpretation of the narrative as a fragment or an evolving entity in her Le Texte du Roman (Mouton, 1970). Thus, the ramifications of écriture necessitate that we be aware of the contributions of its methodology. Barthes presented this écriture as a revolutionary under-current to the static and dogmatic traditions of a "bourgeois literature" which has threatened humanity with its complacency since about 1850. The breakdown of the Kantian mental categories begins to be realized at this point, and écriture is born. Today it is our responsibility to be responsive, either positively or negatively, to the semiological implications of an écriture which has now succeeded upon the explorations of the last three decades of Anglo-

6 American literary criticism, whose openness Professor Hugh M. Davidson has heralded as our heritage in his exposé of Barthes' critical method in Critique et Vérité (1967): "This exploration has made possible for us a new awareness of the types and limits of literary criticism, some discernment of the patterns involved in the frequent changes of alliance and fortune that seem to be its lot and some understanding of the philosophical bases that underlie persistent differences of approach." 3 It now remains for us to consider whether a sémiologie does contribute anything to the heritage of écriture. This essay will then attempt, through progressive illumination of Sollers' text, to articulate this case. Philippe Sollers does not have the only key which will unlock the complexity of écriture. However, his "novel" Nombres is a creative demonstration of some of the semiological elements of écriture, particularly as they are developed by many of Sollers' colleagues in the Tel Quel and Change circles. Therefore, I understand Nombres as a déclenchement or opening up of écriture from its hermetic containment in the works of certain "privileged" critics and writers. Although our awareness of écriture will increase as the implications of Nombres are discussed, a working "definition" of écriture as "any graphic system of re-presentation" must be assumed as a common point of departure in this discussion. The terms "graphic system" and "representation" are understood in the most general sense, initially. We must not assume that "re-presentation" implies the Saussurian cohesion of the signifié and the signifiant. "Re-presentation" does not refer to something other, but it does mean the continuous manifestation or demonstration of the "graphic system" itself. The very title Nombres denotes "plural quantities" and points to the existence of le pluriel as a common denominator of the work. The absence of any "narrative" or "narrator" is conspicuous within Nombres as it is apparently incoherent and incongruous in its presentation. However, roman must now be appreciated, according to Sollers, in a complex, multi-dimensional setting which defies the traditional notions of genre, character, and narrator: "Nous appellerons le roman le discours incessant, inconscient, mythique des individus." 4 Hence, there is a pluralism of voices and of texts within Nombres which, to use Barthes' term in S/Z and Blanchot's term in Entretien Infini, will be referred to as le pluriel. Once again, a growing aware-

7 ness of the nature and scope of le pluriel will be presented. However, as a common point of departure, le pluriel should be understood as a pluralism of voices and texts which "compose" Nombres. The relationship of le pluriel of Nombres to the nature, scope, and realm of écriture will be explored here in a three-dimensional approach. While it would be over-simplified to reduce the polyvalent implications of Nombres to the three themes of theater, life, and text, this presentation limits itself to three intersecting planes for the sake of organization and coherent discussion. As Julia Kristeva points out, the implications of the text are no longer limited by a dualistic universe harking back to German Idealism: "au lieu de se constituer sur le signe en renvoyant au réfèrent ou au signifié, le texte joue sur la fonction numérique du signifiant, et ses ensembles différenciés sont de l'ordre du nombre. Ce signifiant, le signifiant textuel, est un nombrant." 5 Hence, Nombres, as its title well indicates, is a celebration of this multiplicity. In doing so, Nombres joins the company of Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Artaud, and Blanchot in breaking with what Michel Foucault calls in Les Mots et les choses (1966) the épistémè or the Aristotelian notion of the order and coherence of the system of the universe. This basic notion of the structure or order of the universe has been a basic assumption of the "structuralist" approach to language. However, Nombres reconsiders this postulate of a "uni-verse" or a SINGLE system which unites man and that which is other by a linguistic continuity between signifié and signifiant. It seems appropriate that Nombres should be prefaced by a quote from Lucretius' work On The Nature of the Universe. The few words given in Nombres should be seen in light of the whole passage by Lucretius: Granted, then, that empty space extends without limit in every direction and that seeds innumerable in number are rushing on countless courses through an unfathomable universe under the impulse of perpetual motion, it is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created and that all those particles of matter outside are accomplishing nothing. 6 [I have underlined that part which is prefaced to Nombres. ] The Lucretian notions of infinite time and space, perpetual motion,

8 and the existence of other "universes" then become integrated into le pluriel's portrayal of Nombres. The Weltanschauung then implied by le pluriel is one of eternal metamorphosis and permutation whereby any definition or identity has an innate potential for self-destruction as it changes form with additional intersecting planes of understanding. If one considers Nombres as an example of the dynamic and protean "realm" of écriture, the scope of écriture becomes awesome as it opens onto virgin lands. But how are le pluriel of Nombres, the Lucretian cosmology, and the complicated movements of écriture related? It is not at all obvious that the relationships are synonymous with unity of purpose between Nombres and all other examples of écriture. However, the poetic themes of le pluriel of Nombres may certainly indicate some of the common concerns as well as the possibilities for subsequent creative examples of écriture. Although Nombres elicited the provocative criticism of Claude Mauriac as "un livre sur rien écrit par personne," 7 the enchanting three-dimensional universe of theater, life, and text depicted by le plurieVs movement through Nombres does not confine écriture to a realm of negative achievement. What is offered, in the wake of a dé-structuration which forebodes the downfall of the trite "structuralist" sensibility, is the organic unity of all that is around us in a perpetual incarnation. Let us then go forth and participate in the vivid transformation of écriture by le pluriel of Nombres. After this odyssey through the intricate maneuvers of the theater's illusions of structure, the organic unity of le pluriels life, and the recreative activity of a text, we then can all bear witness to Nombres' evangelical poetic: the word is being made flesh and dwells among us.

NOTES 1. Léon S. Roudiez, "Les Tendances actuelles de l'écriture: présentation et bibliographie", The French Review XLV, No. 2 (December 1971), 321. 2. Ibid., p. 330. 3. Hugh M. Davidson, "The Critical Position of Roland Barthes", Contemporary Literature, IX, No. 3 (Summer 1968), 374. 4. Philippe Sollers, Logiques (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 232. 5. Julia Kristeva, Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969), p. 294.

9 6. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, translated from Latin by R. E. Latham (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1951), p. 91. 7. Claude Mauriac, L'Alittérature Contemporaine (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1969), p. 337.

CHAPTER I: THE MIRROR-DRAMA A. Le Pluriel IN MEDIAS RES

Philippe Sollers once commented that he could write "le livre par excellence inclassable ne correspondant à aucune forme précise, qui soit à la fois un roman, un poème, et une critique." 1 Then his Nombres appeared in 1968 among the heralded Logiques and Théorie d'Ensemble. Nombres is an elusive work which transcends the traditional categories of "character", "narrative", "plot", and even "novel". However, Nombres seems to imply a contemporary esthetic for écriture which is very much akin to the posture of écriture recently developed in Roland Barthes' S/Z. Nombres presupposes le pluriel of the text as part of the structuration of the world, as it seems to dramatize Sollers' own views on the realm of écriture: "Il nous faut donc réaliser la possibilité du texte comme théâtre en même temps que celle du théâtre et de la vie comme texte si nous voulons occuper notre situation dans l'écriture". 2 Nombres then evokes the interplay of theater, life, and text to present a celebration of the universal process of the differentiation of matter. Yet while presenting these themes of theater, life, and text in an environment of continual process and permutation, Nombres poses the problem of the identity of écriture with ramifications on the freedom or possibility of localizing any identity whatsoever. As the text of an external mind initially intercepts the plural text of Nombres, one is found to be in the midst of a description of the predicament of écriture: " . . . le papier brûlait, et il était question de toutes les choses dessinées et peintes projetées la de façon régulièrement déformée, tandis qu'une phrase parlait; 'voici la face extérieure'."^ The threat to consume or deform the written text as well as the written text's awareness of its own plight are dependent on the predicates which link these strings of words. The imparfait tense of the verbs is crucial to an understanding of whether the process being described is a present re-creation of past events or a deferred

12 notion of present activity in an environment of the continual procession of time. The predication becomes an ontological commentary on the ability to re-create both past and present events in the articulated word, or text. This is part of the jeu into which we are propelled from our first interruption into the text of Nombres which portrays Ricardou's insight: "faire jouer l'imaginaire tout en saisissant son mouvement, tel est le privilège dont l'écriture semble jouir." 4 However, as part of "le nouveau texte sans fin ni commencement" (3.99, p. 121), Nombres does not restrict this "movement" to the confinement of its written text. The texts of our minds mesh with the process of the written text for a specified interval within an infinite continuum of texts. This interval is determined by the numerical organization of le pluriel in Nombres. From the integer " 1 " which precedes the "beginning" of the written text, one might conclude that its structure would necessitate a beginning or origin for the written text. But this is merely an illusion which demonstrates Barthes' revelation in S/Z that "la dénotation n'est pas le premier des sens, mais elle feint de l'être; sous cette illusion, elle n'est finalement que la dernière des connotations." 5 The simple identity of the four integers in the equation — 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 1 0 — is equally suspect because it organizes and equates identity in a closed linear fashion. Le pluriel of the text cannot be relegated so simply into a mere juxtaposition of individual voices. The Lucretian aphorism ("Seminaque innumero numéro summaque profunda", p. 9 ) 6 prefaced to Nombres reminds us that "countless" (i.e. not able to be localized or identified) numbers are to be "sowed" in this text. The illusion of unity which is recalled by Larousse's definition of "nombre" as a "unité, réunion de plusieurs unités, ou fractions d'unité" must be distinguished from the plurality of the word "nombres" which points to the infinity of interrelated texts. However, Nombres "sows" these countless numbers and thus celebrates the dispersion of this infinity of texts. Indeed, we are attracted by the intrigue of Nombres which, according to Derrida's insight, is deceptively simple: "tout d'abord c'est la pensée la plus facile en apparence, l'innombrable comme 'foule' nombreuse n'est en rien étranger à l'essence du nombre." 7 The written text itself is aware of its plurality and lack of single identity: "j'étais une unité parmi d'autres mais une unité impossible à chiffrer" (2.10, p. 25). While the lack of identity is paralleled out-

13 side the written text: "devenant comme vous: ne sachant pas qui je suis" (3.11, p. 25), the plurality of the written text is caught up in continual permutation and dispersion to which "nous obéissons sans y penser" (2, p. 13). This dispersion is beyond any conscious control or organization:"'l'être du corps est une énergétique inlassable qui n'a pas d'autre but que d'empêcher la mémoire de se constituer afin de faire toujours du neuf " (1.73, p. 92). However, the plurality of the written text does attempt to constitute itself through an interplay of verbal tenses. As previously suggested, the imparfait tense, which is used predominantly by the first three "voices" in the recurring cycle of four structural presentations within the plural written text, implies that there may be a present time from which the imparfait reconstructs a history or "story" of past events. Then the fourth "voice" is predicated mostly by presenttense verbs in a parenthetical context. These parentheses, which continually enclose the presentations of this fourth "voice", differentiate this fourth "voice" or the present tense from the other three "voices" which are united in their common predication by the imparfait tense. On the one hand, the imparfait elaborates its syntactical functions of describing past events or of indicating past mental states. If the imparfait is used to describe past events in Nombres, it would seem to indicate that there is a linear relationship of past and present time in that past events, which actually occurred, are organized and structured by a here-and-now awareness of these events. This would be memory attempting to construct a linear relationship within time, known as history. However, we are warned that such a re-constitution may be misconstruing reality: "ainsi chaque élément garde-t-il son autonomie, et c'est vous qui les mélangez" (4.32, p. 47). If this imparfait is understood in light of its alternate syntactical function of describing a past mental state, then this structuring of past events may be viewed as an illusion of the text to constitute itself by attempting to construct an artificial continuity of past and present time. Thus, "tout était encore soumis au passé, au temps retardé et nié . . . et nous étions obligés de passer par là" (2.42, p. 58). The pronoun "nous" recurs continually within the presentations of the first three structural "voices" to indicate their solidarity in attempting to posit this historical continuity. On the other hand, the present tense in French may syntactically

14 predicate an action now occurring, a general action always taking place, or a past action being presented in vivid narration. The present constitution of memory, being dependent upon past events, would suggest the illusion of the vivid narration of past action. Consistency or continuity within the procession of time seems to be an obsession of the present "voice" as well as the imparfait voice: "Le problème étant le suivant: comment transformer point par point un espace en un autre espace, l'imparfait en présent . . . " (4.48, p. 64). However, this concern would seem to be merely illusory if the present tense is understood as a representation of a general action always taking place or an action now taking place. The English progressive mood would best translate these present tenses since this form connotes the sense of the continual process and permutation of time. The first diagram of the three-sided geometrical figure (q.v. Figure 1, Enclosure 1) may offer an insight into the interplay of the present and imparfait tenses. If we identify the imparfait with the first three "voices" (indicated by the arabic integers 1, 2, and 3 in the diagram) and the present with the fourth "voice" (indicated by the parenthetical arabic integer 4 in the diagram), the comparative status of the two tenses might be understood better in the illusory analogy of the diagram to a stage. If time could be organized, this diagram would demonstrate the continuity of past and present time as understood by linear history. Then the second diagram (q.v. Figure 2, Enclosure 1) would elaborate this artificial ordering even further since the encompassed diagram would indicate the closure of linear history and the reversal of the parentheses to the integers representing the imparfait would further demonstrate the reciprocal commentary of past and present time. However, these diagrams are only structural illusions which must be recognized by the external text (which has been traditionally identified as the "reader") as illusory since, as Robert Champigny indicates, "un lecteur de roman ne s'efforce pas de tenir un rôle social de croyant." 8 Although the diagrams appear to neatly differentiate between the imparfait, whose representative arrows or vectors point rearward as the imparfait seems to establish historic continuity, and the present, whose representative arrow or vector points outward perhaps toward an external text traditionally known as the "reader", there is a series of mirrors before this diagram which continually reflects all these neatly directed arrows back into the diagram

15 to invert and confuse the illusion of order or continuity. Perhaps it is this external text traditionally known as the reader which partly becomes a sounding board in not being able to "mesh" completely with the written text to provide a coherent, linear structure of history: "En effet, ce qu'on prend ainsi trop facilement pour l'ouverture d'une scène n'en est pas moins un panneau déformant, un invisible et impalpable voile opaque qui joue vers les trois autres côtés la fonction d'un miroir ou d'un réflecteur et vers l'extérieur (c'est-à-dire vers le spectateur possible mais par conséquent toujours repoussé, multiple) le rôle d'un révélateur négatif où les inscriptions produites simultanément sur les autres plans apparaissent là inversées, redressées, fixes" (4.8, p. 22).

B. Illusions of structure The illusions of structure and order indicated by the three-sided diagram are further suggested by the numerical organization of Nombres into what may be called, after Derrida's poignant phrase, "le théâtre arithmétique". 9 This "théâtre arithmétique" is an illusion of closure created by the structural classification of Nombres into recurring cycles of four consecutive subdivisions labeled with the arabic integers "1" through "4". These four main headings resemble dramatic acts while they apparently indicate a nominal consistency from cycle to cycle as an act labels and groups together certain scenes in an artistically contrived organization. However, the nominal consistency of the four arabic integers in Nombres develops in a cyclical rather than in the linear order of classical drama. Within each recurring cycle, the heading of each of the integers provides visual continuity as the numbers one to four are prefaced to different decimal values with each subdivision of a cycle. The numerical classification suggests the Aristotelian logic of Thomistic philosophers with its closed system of argumentation. However, Roger Laporte points out that, in écriture, "la logique classique n'est qu'un cas particulier et . . . il faut parler de logiques, de même la vie requiert au pluriel." 10 One must be careful not to create individual identities or "narrators" from these integers recurring within the written text. The written text speaks of itself in le pluriel Likewise, the cyclical structure of Nombres is anti-structure

16 structure because the consistently recurring integers in each cycle make each cycle concentric and the whole series of cycles in Nombres open-ended insofar as numbers are merely part of an infinite continuum never being limited in their smallest or largest dimensions. Just as the analogy of the diagram to a stage is an illusion of identity and linear history, so the numerical structure of Nombres is an illusion of linear organization and closure which has traditionally defined the written text within boundaries of genres. The very structure of Nombres reveals these traditional definitions of genres to be illusory and deceptive of the innate tendency of écriture to resist definition. The "poetic" occurrence of image patterns within Nombres not only supports the concentric nature of the structural cycles but also contributes to the tenuousness of the traditional identities of "narrative" and "novel". The image patterns associated with the "theater" further point to the amorphous character of Nombres, defying any simple identification as either novel, poetry, or theater. However, a "theater" motif seems to be created which underscores the interpretation of the three-sided diagram as a stage and illustrates the jeu of illusory identity which recurs throughout Nombres. The images of rôle, scène, pièce, and acte are especially significant in creating this theater motif. On the one hand, the illusion of a stage classically specified in time and place is substantiated by the recurrence of the images scène, pièce, acte, and théâtre. As the complexity of the movement of le pluriel develops within Nombres, it asserts "la nécessité du théâtre devenu soudain plus étroit, plus clair" (3.51, p. 68). This "necessity" may be based upon the need for epistemological certainty which, according to Manuel de Dieguez, is then translated into artistic expression: "l'homme ne peut appréhender le monde en profondeur que par le rire tragique ou par le drame." 11 However, the very attainability of epistemological certainty is questioned within Nombres. It is the written text which can demonstrate le rire tragique at its audience or intervening mental texts because this drama unveiling within the written text is "writing" and channelizing the texts of its audience's minds: "Germes, semences en nombre innombrable et dont la somme touche la profondeur où le mot 'vous' et la pensée 'vous' se fraye un passage à travers le hasard jusqu'à vous"

17 (4.80, p. 101). This drama of the text forcibly draws external texts into its action but then reflects them back in illusions wherein individual identities can no longer be distinguished. If we recall the mirrors associated with the diagrams of the stage, the continuous reflection of the mirrors from one to another underscores this theme of the illusion of identity. The drama of Nombres reflects the external texts in its mirrors and then continually projects these illusions from mirror to mirror so that a single "identity" of an external text or "entity" is no longer decipherable. However, this is not a closed hall of mirrors since there is "une absence de côté ou de mur défini par les trois autres mais permettant de les observer de leur point de vue" (4.8, p. 21). The very word théâtre recurs twice more (4.24, p. 37 and 4.88, p. 109) in less significant contexts. However, the illusion of a stage bounded by time and space is continued by the image patterns of scène, pièce, and acte. The written text is concerned with its apparently specific location within the "context" of Nombres and speaks of "abandonnant la scène" (1.73, p. 91) and "être revenu dans cette pièce" (2, p. 14) "comme si la pièce, la foule, le ciel compris maintenant au présent" (2.6, p. 20). Since it has "returned" to a specific location, the written text implies that it has previously existed apart from its specific "location" within Nombres. This image of pièce recurs twice in the written text's awareness of its "setting" (3.15, p. 30 and 3.87, p. 108). The theatrical aura of the "context" of le pluriel within Nombres is consciously referred to as an "Acte unique" (2.14, p. 29) wherein "je voyais la salle, les auditeurs" (2.14, p. 28). However, these image patterns which seem to restrict le pluriel to a specific time and place are ironically inverted by the jeu which is being played on identity. We must realize that Nombres is, in Claude Mauriac's words, "un théâtre 'sans scène, ni salle, où les mots deviennent les acteurs et les spectateurs d'une nouvelle communauté de jeu'." 1 2 Nor is this dialectic of the written text limited by time since, as Sollers once said in Drame, "cela ne se passe pas dans le temps mais sur la page où l'on dispose des temps." 13 On the other hand, the image pattern of rôle underscores the irony of the theater motif. The concept of rôle as an assumed identity is integral to the theme of the illusory creation of identities specified in time and place. The rôle theme underscores the tenuous

18 character of "identity" by the association of rôle with jeu. Thus le pluriel speaks of "le rôle que j'avais à jouer" (2.10, p. 25) and of "jouant à notre place le rôle que nous sommes tenus de jouer" (4.24, p. 38). The written text seems to be "playing" a dramatic part which is not permanent nor profound. The assumption of a dramatic "identity" is universal for even the mirror which reflects the three-sided stage is playing "le rôle d'un révélateur négatif' (4.8, p. 22). The superficiality of these assumed "identities" becomes more apparent when one considers "la redistribution générale des rôles" (1.68, p. 87) whereby roles are continuously interchanged and passed on. These images are a profound commentary on the recurring, yet inarticulate, attempts to localize and define within Nombres. The apparent "identities" which are posited as epistemologically certain are merely illusions because the continuous fluctuation of matter cannot corroborate any ontological basis for the postulate (since, in the Sartrean sense, there is no "essence" but only "existence"). Roles or assumed identities may be posited, but they are then swept away by the anonymous flow of time. However, the drama of Nombres may have been played before: "si vraiment tout est déjà joué dans leur chute" (2, p. 14). While this assumption allows the cycles of Nombres to be part of a continuum without a specific beginning, it also implies that the realm of noetic (i.e. the freedom of all living and thinking texts who include écriture and human thinkers) freedom is extremely limited. Although the rôle theme appears to be associated with volition ("le rôle à qui voulait le remplir", 1.73, p. 91), there may be a mechanistic process which universally ("tout est déjà joué dans leur chute") obliterates the role once it is willingly assumed ("le système me voulait en somme dans le rôle", 2.82, p. 102). The role represents a lure to posit an "identity" within the drama of permutation. Once an "identity" is postulated, then we are caught up in the drama of process. It is then that our minds as external texts meet with the written text of Nombres to observe that our freedom is menaced: "cercle se renfermant sans bruit derrière mes épaules" (2.82, p. 102). Having been drawn toward the initial "decision" to perform in the drama by positing any type of specific "identity", one makes Kierkegaard's leap of faith into the darkness and becomes the victim of the continuous fluctuation of matter which like the current

19 of raging rapids, wears away any apparently static entity. Even our "self-identity" is subject to this predicament: "l'atome 'je' semble monter, descendre ou remonter parmi vous comme un fil vertical, une marque non singulière, un noeud, le double matériel et provisoire d'un saut" (4.84, p. 105). This tendency to "articulate" what we are is "un seul meurtre [qui] était constamment en cours" (1.5, p. 18) because "articulation" is an impossible goal. Since "vous êtes imperceptiblement séparés, éloignés des mots que vous prononcez" (4.32, p. 47), the words which we use to posit "identity" assume an existence all their own as they are disseminated in a universe of texts. Then écriture becomes a created being with its own existence and awareness (q.v. Serge Doubrovsky's insight that "l'auteur meurt dès l'instant que sa création se renferme sur elle-même et le quitte; la parution du livre c'est la disparition de l'auteur" 1 4 ) which serve to lure us into the procession of time. Ecriture becomes an illusion of fixation for its producer because, as soon as it is created, it opens up allusions and paths to other texts and can never be limited to a single "definition". However, Nombres does offer some resolution to paradoxes such as the history of present-past and the drama of illusion-identity in a quote which has Hegelian-Marxist overtones: " 'La seule voie réelle par laquelle un mode de production et l'organisation sociale qui lui correspond marchent à leur dissolution et à leur métamorphose est le développement historique de leurs antagonismes immanents' " (2.82, p. 103). Through the very confrontation of opposites, which are played against one another in Nombres, there emerges an affirmation of development, both creatively and socially, which subsumes the destruction and transformation of the contrasting elements in the dialectic. The implications on freedom are devastating since all forms of creative and social expression are dissipated in the open-ended and nebulous production of progress to which we are innately bound as the only way ("la seule voie réelle"). In this environment of perpetual metamorphosis, Roger Laporte reminds us that "l'écriture ne peut jamais devenir substance, c'est-àdire permanence." 15 Ecriture cannot be localized to an illusory sense of present since écriture is itself caught up in becoming more and more disseminated to the other texts of the universe. It is somewhere along an infinite continuum which, by its very nature, has no

20 beginning nor end. Perhaps one can now realize why le pluriel may have used the imparfait to predicate its written text in Nombres. Aware that it is caught up in a timeless and spaceless world of process, the text may have used the imparfait to convey its feeling of a deferred notion of present time continually slipping away. The glissement images (e.g. 3.99, p. 121) within Nombres suggest this slippery passage through time in a continual dispersion which cannot ever be constituted. In "franchissant l'histoire de ce qui désormais nous porte en nous consumant" (3.99, p. 122), l'écriture also destroys the traditional alliance of signifié and signifiant in creating what Derrida has identified in his essay on the significance of an active differentiation of signifié and signifiant as "l'alliance de la parole et de l'être dans le mot unique, dans le nom enfin propre." 16 The world of linear correspondences and epistemological certainties is obliterated by écriture as it is writing the texts of our minds to create a new structuration (i.e. an active re-cycling of elementary verbal structures) of the universe of texts.

C. The structuration of redoublement Robbe-Grillet once commented on the self-contained universe of écriture in the "novel": "it is the novel itself which thinks itself, questions and judges itself; not through the means of the characters developing superfluous commentaries but through an incessant reflection, at the level of the narrative itself, of each element upon itself: gesture, object, situation." 17 Although such technical terms as "novel", "character", and "narrative" may be archaic in reference to Nombres, the technique of redoublement as a means whereby the text can judge and reflect upon itself in a self-contained way is especially pertinent to the reciprocal visual reflections and verbal echoes which relate the first three "voices" to the fourth "voice" of le pluriel. The very antithesis of the "highest depths" in the Lucretian aphorism introducing Nombres suggests the dialectic set up by the interplay of such contrasting poles of antinomy as present and past time. The "final" numerical equation in Nombres - (1 + 2 + 3 + 4) 2 = 100 [4.100, p. 1 2 4 ] - illustrates the dramatic technique of redoublement whereby the written text of Nombres continually

21

reflects upon itself to produce écriture, which is greater than the mere sum of its parts. The quadratic equation at the "end" of the written text points both forward to an open-ended re-cycling of the written text as well as rearward to a reflection and an echo of the drama we just witnessed unfolding. This opening of the written text into the whole historical realm of past, present, and future is inherent in the redoublement technique which Professor Astier has portrayed in light of a phenomenology that heralds a new "realism" in écriture: si la technique du redoublement traduit, en outre, le goût manifeste des nouveaux romanciers pour la complexité et l'équivoque, c'est parce que, pour eux, comme pour les phénoménologues, tout a un sens et qu'il faut 'comprendre de toutes les façons à la fois', et parce que 'l'équivoque est essentielle à l'existence humaine', que 'tout ce que nous vivons ou pensons a toujours plusieurs sens'. 18 [Internal quotations are taken from M. MerleauPonty's Phénoménologique de la Perception.] This mirror and sounding-board dramatic method has even more profound repercussions if the technique is understood as an analogy to life itself wherein "tout se répète et revient . . . vous êtes entraînés dans cette chaîne de terre et d'air" (4.12, p. 27). The recurring imagery of war especially relates the activity of Nombres to a universe caught up in a vacillating motion between the antipodes of paradox. Reminiscent of Béa B.'s predicament in Le Clézio's La Guerre, the written text of Nombres opens its dramatic plight to external texts: "restant dans la guerre, et pensant à ceux pour qui la guerre a lieu chaque jour" (1.13, p. 28). In effect, the drama of Nombres is indirectly alluded to by Jean-Michel Rey's depiction of a "théâtre sans auteur qui pratique une 'Darstellung' active et dont les productions sont la mis en scène élaborée de métaphore: ce que Althusser a produit de l'intérieur même du texte de Marx." 19 The redoublement technique opens onto a consideration of the increasingly prevalent use of unidentified quotations within the written text. Since redoublement illustrates Françoise Collin's restatement of the Blanchotian phenomenon that "l'expérience littéraire, dans un incessant renouvellement, est celle de l'une seule fois et du 'sans cesse'," 20 then écriture, as an attempt to articulate something in a

22 specific time and place, may be caught up in another paradox. This seems to be a presupposition of the increasing reliance of the written text on quoted texts, which apparently are external but may very well be former utterances of the text itself! However, this continually increasing use of quoted texts illustrates the weltanschaüung of a universe of continually unfolding and interrelated texts which may portray Julia Kristeva's appreciation for écriture as "une permutation .de textes, une inter-textualité: dans l'espeace d'un texte, plusieurs énoncés pris à d'autres textes se croisent et se neutralisent." 21 But, Nombres reverses this process to demonstrate that écriture opens into other texts and alludes to the other texts of the universe rather than to neutralize them in an individually identifiable text. While le pluriel enigmatically selects unverified passages, Herman Meyer is especially lucid in explaining the "art" of the direct quotation: Im allgemeinen, dürfte gelten, dass der Reiz des Zitats in einer eigenartigen Spannung zwischen Assimilation und Dissimilation besteht: Es verbindet sich eng mit seiner neuen Umgebung, aber zugleich hebt es sich von ihr ab und lässt so eine andere Welt in die eigene Welt des Romans hineinleuchten. 22 This art of employing quotations artistically as a form of redoublement is thus an integral part of the dramatic activity in Nombres. Therefore, the structuring process of uniting many various quotations into the written text of Nombres brings an "andere Welt" or the universe of texts external to Nombres to bear upon the open-ended drama of the written text of écriture. The very opening up of le pluriel onto other texts is an active process of writing the universe. In effect, Nombres is implementing the dé-structuration of écriture. By writing a transformational grammar of the universe, écriture generates an infinite number of tangents seeking to relate the whole universe by reversing the centripetal concern toward itself into centrifugal energy which seeks outwardly to continually expand a web of interrelated texts. Thus, écriture assumes a social role which is super-ambitious in comparison with the outward goals of Sartre's littérature engagée. Écriture must now relate, not only the mental texts of all mankind, but the texts of the whole universe. Le pluriel is united only in its differentiation

23 to allude to and engage in these texts. By its very nature, the task is an infinite (i.e. unlimited in its openness) and impossible attempt to articulate all activity which is universally and continuously in motion. The need for illusory identity can be re-stated as a need for articulation. Derrida has recorded this insight which is conveyed by the drama of Nombres: L'articulation, se substituant à la passion, restaure l'ordre du besoin . . . Si la culture s'entame ainsi dans son point d'origine, aucun ordre linéaire ne se laisse reconnaître qu'il soit logique ou chronologique. 23 Hence, there seems to be no linear limitation to the dé-structuration of écriture so that it may engage in a web-like connection to all external texts.

D. Audience or product? Where then does the traditional "reader" or the audience of the drama of Nombres enter into this dé-structuration? There is no longer any need for the traditional "reader". He is one of the members of the audience who sees its own reflection in the multi-faceted mirrordrama: "c'était maintenant comme si nous commencions à sortir sur une scène prismatique . . . " (3.67, p. 84). The "identity" of the "reader", like all other "identities" which are posited by le pluriel, becomes absorbed by the multiplicity of texts external to Nombres. The very irony of positing any audience or reader to Nombres is that these "identities" are continually reflected outward as part of the centrifugal web of intertextuality which emanates from Nombres. Le pluriel tells us that "vous êtes situés au croisement des forces lâchées" (4.76, p. 95) and the "germes, semences en nombre innombrable et dont la somme touche la profondeur où le mot 'vous' et la pensée 'vous' se fraye un passage à travers le hasard jusqu'à vous" (4.80, p. 101). We, who are external to the written text, are actually being "written" as external texts which le pluriel is striving to engage. Thus, as in Sollers' prior work Drame, Nombres evokes écriture as a medium of creating "un rapport homologique", 24 rather than ontological,

24 through a dé-structuration of the traditional components of écriture and a reverberation of these parts into an enormous web of interrelated texts which seek to infinitely encompass the whole universe. At first, Derrida's "le spectateur-lecteur" 25 may expect to assume his traditionally disinterested role as an observer when he notes that Nombres is subtitled "Roman". But that is one of the illusions which are soon destroyed by the dé-structuration of "cette production organique" (1.37, p. 53). The microcosm within Nombres inverts the traditional centripetal motion which draws the "reader" into a text so that it produces a centrifugal energy which has no origin and which continually re-structures the universe: "tout se recomposant ainsi depuis le début situé désormais dans un plan oblique, l'intérieur suspendu et perdu de vue, séparé de vous par un renouvellement que d'autres penseront pour vous à votre place . . . " (4.96, p. 118). The subject-object relation is being reversed as we are thought as well as written by le pluriel of Nombres. But this complex dé-structuration may very well be a touchstone for revealing some meaning in the multiplicity of matter: " 'Après une longue accumulation, les choses se révèlent soudainement dans leur inter-relation' " (4.96, p. 119). This dé-structuration, however, leads us to a very uneasy spaceless and timeless celebration of differentiation. There is naught but openness about us as "derrière, il n'y a rien, et plus loin que devant, il n'y a rien, et derrière et devant sont unis dans la même absence" (4.28, p. 42). Nor do we have any sense of temporal location as we are caught in a temporal interval: "nous sommes donc ici au milieu, à mi-chemin entre ce que est parti et ce qui va venir" (4.24, p. 37). This ethereal universe would give one an agoraphobia were it not for the web-like relationship among the texts of the universe. Although the irony of the continuous repetition of "une dernière fois" (4.100, pp. 123-124) underscores the endless infinity of opening onto other texts, nevertheless our innate need to postulate new illusory identities may find material support in the new texts which are yet to be engaged in the universe.

25 E.

Dé-structuration

Yet the parentheses, especially in the quadratic equation (4.100, p. 124), offer a qualifying commentary on this openness. In mathematics, parentheses serve to unite everything within their confines before any other operation can be performed. Although the parentheses may have been useful to structurally differentiate the reciprocal commentaries of present and past time, Jean Ricardou would view parentheses in an ambivalent role of differentiation and unification in Nombres: "Puisque la parenthèse établit une rupture et subit un englobement, le présent de la lecture (par 'vous', la séquence suppose le lecteur) se trouve défini comme entièrement équivoque: il rompt l'imparfait de la narration tout en restant dans son circuit." 26 However, since the title of Nombres does seem to refer to the numerical order which is illustrated by the quadratic equation with its qualifying unity within the parentheses, it would seem that there may be a subtle suggestion of atomism in the unity of the apparently disparate voices (represented by the arabic integers in the equation) within Nombres. Throughout the ruminations of le pluriel, the parentheses were used to set off the context of the fourth "voice" and to show its reciprocity with the first three voices (cf. parentheses in Figures I and II, Enclosure 1). As a literary technique, these parentheses could enclose either extraneous data or necessary elaborations. In underscoring the interplay of the antitheses of past and present time, identity and metamorphosis, memory and progress, the parentheses may very well be equivocal. In the mathematical sense, however, these parentheses take on even a third connotation which has been brilliantly developed in Noam Chomsky's strings of generative grammar — a sense of holism. Nombres is indeed, according to Jacques Derrida, a celebration of dissemination in that le pluriel "sows" (q.v. Lucretian aphorism) the seeds for other texts. Yet, in our concern for differentiation, Derrida reminds us that we must not lose sight of the "seeds": "On pourrait ieconstituer le réseau qui fait passer les Nombres par les références à toutes les théories atomistes qui furent aussi les théories du sperme." 27 The mathematical sense of holism, suggested by the nuance of enclosing all four integers within parentheses before multiplying the whole text by itself again, implies that the basic kernels of life are indivisible. One of the

26 "voices" o f le pluriel had even portrayed itself as part o f an organic whole: "j'étais done dans cette production organique" ( 1 . 3 7 , p. 53). It would seem that this sense o f wholeness is merely another illusion if the theme o f differentiation is t o be taken seriously. Or is this another paradox in the "logiques" and multiplicity o f the universe? The mirror-drama would have us posit the possibility o f the "Word being made flesh and dwelling among us." Yet it is life itself which necessitates that this can never be a logocentric universe. The Word is henceforth, as a result o f the dramatic and reflective demonstration of le pluriel in Nombres, being unlocked from the traditional logocentric nature o f Western civilization and disseminated to the O t h e r . 2 8

NOTES 1. Philippe Sollers, "Où va le r o m a n ? " Le Figaro Littéraire, 22 September 1962, p. 3. 2. Philippe Sollers, Logiques (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 115. 3. Philippe Sollers, Nombres (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 11. [Henceforth, I will cite from this text with numerical subdivisions and pages in parentheses following the selection.] 4. Jean Ricardou, Problèmes du Nouveau Roman (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), p. 58. 5. Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970), p. 16. 6. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, translated from Latin by R. E. Latham (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1951), p. 91: "Seeds innumerable in number through an unfathomable universe," Bk. 2, lines 1053-1055. 7. Jacques Derrida, "La dissémination II," Critique, XXV, No. 262 (March 1969), 245. 8. Robert Champigny, Le Genre Romanesque (Monte-Carlo [Monaco]: Éditions Regain, 1963), p. 124. 9. Derrida, p. 216. 10. Roger Laporte, "Bio-Graphie", Critique, XXVIII, No. 281 (October 1970), 817. 11. Manuel de Dieguez, l'Ecrivain et son Langage (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 333. 12. Claude Mauriac, l'Alittérature Contemporaine (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1969), p. 334. 13. Philippe Sollers, Drame (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1965), p. 98. 14. Serge Doubrovsky, "Critique et Existence", in LLS Chemins Actuels de la Critique, ed. Georges Poulet (Paris: Pion, 1967), p. 263. 15. Laporte, p. 817. 16. Jacques Derrida, "La Différance", in Théorie d'Ensemble (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1968), p. 66. 17. Henri Peyre, French Novelists of Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 369.

27 18. Pierre A. G. Astier, La Crise du Roman Français et le Nouveau Réalisme (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Debresse, 1968), p. 303. 19. Jean-Michel Rey, "La Scène du texte", Critique, XXVI, No. 271 (December 1969), 1072. 20. Françoise Collin, Maurice Blanchot et la question de l'écriture (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 30. 21. Julia Kristeva, "Problèmes de la structuration du texte", in Théorie d'Ensemble (Paris: Le Seuil, 1968), p. 300. 22. Herman Meyer, Das Zitat in der Erzählkunst - Zur Geschichte und Poetik des Europaischen Romans (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1961), p. 6. I translate: "Generally it might be held that the charm of the quotation comes from a unique tension between assimilation and dissimilation: it joins closely with its new environment, but concomitantly detaches itself from it, thus permitting another world to radiate into the self-contained world of the novel." 23. Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967), p. 377. 24. Roland Barthes, "Drame, Poème, Roman", Critique, XXI, No. 218 (July 1965), 603. 25. Jacques Derrida, "La Dissémination, I", Critique, XXV, No. 261 (February 1969), 116. 26. Jean Ricardou, Pour une théorie du nouveau roman (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971), p. 260. 27. Derrida, "La Dissémination, I", p. 113. 28. This essay was substantially published in the Autumn 1973 issue of SubStance (University of Wisconsin).

CHAPTER II: THE PULSATING LIFE OF LE PLURIEL A. Discourse rather than narrative

The testimony of the "mots vivants" (1, p. 11) in Nombres embodies Philippe Sollers' remark in Logiques that "l'expérience littéraire touche dans sa vie chacun de nous." 1 The boundless energy of le pluriel in seeking to continually disseminate life is found in the very discourse which conveys its animation. Despite a dé-structuration which destroys all the conventions of identity, history, and clôture, le pluriel still has difficulty in achieving Sollers' goal of "une biographie véritable . . . bio-graphie, écriture vivante et multiple." 2 The openness which awesomely stands before le pluriel seems to cause a momentary stutter in apprehending the universe: "je touchais mon . . . incapacité à me manifester dans l'espace ouvert" (2, p. 13). However, the uncomfortable fear (indicated by the negative self-evaluations of "non-existence" and "incapacity") of being totally free-floating in an enigmatic Blanchotian espace (q.v. Maurice Blanchot's Espace littéraire for his provoking discussions of the implications of espace for écriture) is soon overcome by the pulsating life of le pluriel. As Derrida tells us, 3 le pluriel is a living and breathing incarnation of the infinitive déclencher. In its discourse, it strives to open, talk, allow to work, and unlock our own lives so that the polyvalent understanding of déclencher may be a working reality. Not only does the discourse of Nombres "unlock" our lives from the conventional situation of linear history, but it then allows our lives to follow their natural biological urge for dissemination. Thus, the dé-structuration of history, as well as its remifications on specific identities in time and on complete systems of clôture, paves the way for continually creating new life. In this way, écriture, as manifested herein by le pluriel, offers hope for those assaulted by today's densely populated and contrived universe of mass media. Le pluriel of Nombres seeks to destroy by nuclear fission the world of Le Clézio's La Guerre. However, annihilation is the fear of inexistence and incapacity that it expressed above. Vitality will be

29 maintained. Indeed, it is celebrated in the very differentiation which the living gospel of Nombres brings home to us for "l'insémination 'première' est dissémination." 4 Le pluriefs consciousness of its own identity especially articulates the life that is Nombres. This is not a historical narrative of points that successively develop before us. But rather it is an exuberant and overflowing display of écriture which is not only permeated with a life of its own but also gives life by relating its own life to all the entities of the universe. We are not witnessing a static life which is confined to the covers of Nombres. Le pluriel is paradoxically both Being and Becoming at once. As the Word re-creates us all, we become aware that this new life cannot be articulated or re-constructed. Reason is unable to cope with le pluriel as it constructs its web of écriture throughout the universe: "ce qui vient vers vous, à travers le déferlement des visages, des langues, ne peut être réduit ou traduit" (4.72, p. 90). Despite its resistance to simple boundaries, le pluriel may be definable in terms of its relationship to espace, which paradoxically separates and includes all entities. Perhaps le pluriel is seeking a rapprochement of "cet espace vide et plein à la fois." 5 Yet espace, in the Blanchotian context implied in Nombres, seems to be irreconcilably paradoxical and may only be useful in indicating the Siren which is magnetically attracting le pluriel (q.v. Chapter 1 of Blanchot's Le Livre à venir entitled "Le Chant des Sirènes"). In order to arrive at espace, there must first be a catharsis through a destruction of the classical understanding of time and place. These linear and definitive concepts localize and restrict le pluriel whose energy is boundless. Although the traditional understanding of time and place may be outmoded in speaking about the relationship of espace and le pluriel, we can perhaps approach these ties by speaking about perpetual permutation which appears to be affirmed in the continually living movement of le pluriel for "vous êtes pris ou prises dans ces permutations déréglées" (4.12, p. 27). In celebrating eternal metamorphosis, le pluriel demonstrates human life through its verbal thinking out of the catharses of time and place. L'espace or the openness toward which le pluriel is directed must be attained by breaking the veil of the traditional concepts of time and place. Only then, can le pluriel approach "le degré zéro du sens . . . qui est la marque théâtrale de l'implicite, c'est la pensivité . . ." 6

30 Since "il était devenu impossible de la [la rumeur du monde] faire taire" (2.10, p. 24), perhaps by a sort of self-abnegation, similar to the death of literature to which Blanchot aspires, le pluriel can direct its energy to atrain new areas as yet unexplored and unexpressed by trite forms of articulation. As was previously developed, the interplay of the présent and imparfait denotes le pluriel'% concern for time. The linear conception of history is thus rejected as a very real threat to the expansion of le pluriel. Since linear history restricts le pluriel to a development along a linear continuum, it is tasked with "franchissant l'histoire de ce qui désormais nous porte en nous consumant" (3.99, p. 122) in order to arrive " 'au temps zéro [où] toutes les galaxies se touchent et la densité est infinie' " (3.99, p. 122). Le pluriel is very much aware of the perpetual motion of time: "le temps passait donc et roulait audessus de moi" (1.13, p. 27). It would seem to be very simple to just ignore the passage of time and its linear accountability if it is exterior to oneself. However, le pluriel finds itself caught up in the interplay of the présent and the imparfait and introspectively observes its own plight: "je crois qu'en vérité le temps parlait par ma bouche, qu'il s'était noué dans mes os" (3.31, p. 46). If it is to break away from the linear relationship of past-present-future, le pluriel must undergo a cathartic process since it is involved in this temporal continuum. Despite the many affirmations of continual motion in Nombres, le pluriel seems to want to break away from the linear process of time by opting for a perpetual present which would contain the reciprocal reflections of both the imparfait and the présent: "les dents saisissant doucement ce qu'on appelle présent" (4.44, p. 60). But is this merely the groping of the unborn foetus, rejected by its mother's body, as it slips away in miscarriage ? The destruction of life is inevitable as it is victimized by the linear progression of time since there can be no stability in the procession of life through time. Hence, we are witnessing a development of the heritage of Mallarmé which Sollers once underscored thus: " 'La question Mallarmé' désigne aujourd'hui un passé et un avenir ou plutôt ce point du temps où la distinction passé-avenir se dissipe, où le passé semble accessible de toutes parts et l'avenir paraît refluer vers nous." 7 This vagueness of past and future time creates an aura about the perpetual present. Le pluriel is not presenting a static present-moment but a vertical

31 rather than a horizontal understanding of time as a superposition of past, present, and future. It is this very superposition of these three elements of time which spurs perpetual motion: "l'écoulement et le flux qui maintenant m'entraînaient venaient en effet d'un échange des temps comme superposés" (1.5, p. 17). The horizontal, linear progression of time is broken for "il n'y avait plus ni avant ni après" (1.5, p. 17). However, the problem of determinism is also called into play in this catharsis through time. The odyssey metaphor in Nombres is used at one point to indicate a repulsion, besides the magnetic force toward l'espace, which spurs le pluriel onward through this récit: "Nous avions commencé ce voyage sans l'avoir voulu, poussés par une force qui avait brûlé l'étendue anonyme" (3.27, p. 41). This centrifugal force has destroyed "l'étendue anonyme", which could very well be the espace which le pluriel has already encountered and which constitues the "fullness" pole of the paradoxical espace, and thus leaves no alternative for le pluriel except in expansion outward toward the ever-elusive "empty" pole of espace. Nevertheless, although the odyssey motif is a trite one, it may lend another consideration to the temporal and deterministic plight of le pluriel for, according to Tzvetan Todorov, "la métaphore de l'itinéraire étant particulièrement usitée dans toute description de la lecture, disons que l'un des chemins possibles nous mène au delà du texte; l'autre nous laisse en deçà . . . " 8 There is a beyond to which le pluriel is opening itself. Not only is le pluriel expanding itself by writing and living the universe, but it is also decreasing the magnitude of the espace which is gaping before it. It is inevitable that le pluriel be directed toward this outward multiplicity since the inward paths have been metaphorically burned up through stereotypy. This internal determinism is especially conveyed in Nombres through the motifs of the cycle, the circle, the mechanism, and the chain. Le pluriel is not able to stabilize the perpetual motion of which it is part: "quelque chose s'était mis en marche que je ne pourrais plus arrêter" (2.10, p. 24). But the determinism seems to be internal to the Word itself: "je me souvenais que nous étions pris les uns et les autres dans l'alphabet désormais pour nous dépassé" (2.22, p. 35). But to what extent is the life of écriture determined by the Word? This is the problem which is approached by the four motifs men-

32 tioned above. The best answer may well be no answer at all. Yet these motifs at least delineate what the enigma is. As the cyclical structure of the four "voices" of Nombres is continually perpetuated until even the quadratic equation suggests that the whole récit is to be compounded again, internal references to the cycle suggest that it may perhaps be a replacement for the linear representation of time and place in history. The redoublement technique previously discussed would also be particularly effective in implying a phenomenon previously pointed out by Sollers that "les phénomènes sont ramenés à leurs chiffres et aux cycles cjui éclairent leur réciprocité." 9 Le pluriel didactically presents the importance of the cycle as a basic construct of life: "il importe de tout ramener ici de façon cyclique" (4.68, p. 86). This cyclical fashion of repetition is assumed by the circular images which constitute motifs within each cycle which are not so encompassing. The structural cycles of Nombres also point to the cyclical motif by the very doubling process suggested by the final equation. Thus Nombres seems to intimate a circular (as well as a cyclical) structure which Professor Astier found to be particular characteristic of Butor's La Modification and Duras' Le Ravissement de Loi V. Stein: "La structure circulaire d'un roman se reconnaît le plus manifestement au fait que le réçit tend à se refermer sur lui-même son point d'arrivée nous ramenant à son point de départ." 10 Yet both the cycle and the circle are simultaneous with the differentiation of le pluriel. This paradox of the circle-cycle is well-articulated in the metaphor of le pluriel to successive wheels which continually decrease the openness of espace: "Et l'image était celle de roues successives toujours plus étendues" (1.25, p. 39). The circle image suggested by these wheels recurs throughout Nombres. Le pluriel senses the warning of the metaphorical circle of its history which seems to be nearby: "Cependant j'arrivais du côté de ma propre histoire. Cela m'était signalé par la tentative de me situer à la périphérie d'un cercle qui serait passé par 'nous tous' " (2.6, p. 19). The significance of the circle is that it represents the threat of closure and containment to le pluriel. "Un barrage cerclé" (1.45, p. 61), very similar to man's need for identity and articulation, threatens to deny the openness and differentiation which are the very nature of le pluriel. The "cercles gris" (4.52, p. 69 and 2.90,

33 p. 112) are metaphors for the impossibility of ever overwhelming espace. Although "révolution et retour" offer some hope for le pluriel in that they are not static but "roulent comme des cercles gris" (4.52, p. 69), le pluriel is well aware that its differentiation is limited in its scope: "je savais qu'ils étaient déjà tous fermés, que tout était déjà joué dans leur chute, cercles gris dont le sifflement à peine entendu contiendrait le temps" (2.90, p. 112). There is some sort of pre-determined halo which provides the aura for le pluriel no matter how much it attempts to differentiate itself: "comme si chacun était désormais entouré d'une armure fluide, d'une auréole noire semblable et contraire à celle des figures du temps sacré oublié" (4.16, p. 31). Le pluriel seems to portray this containment very pessimistically at times — "comment se perdre enfin au point où il n'y a plus ni commencement ni cercle enfermant ce qui s'est passé: le travail et l'exploitation condamnant à répéter sans fin nos gestes sans gestes dans la réserve infinie gaspillée et civilisée? " (4.36, p. 53). Jacques Derrida has demonstrated in De la Grammatologie that the circular motif has certainly destroyed linear reasoning: "Si la culture s'entame ainsi dans son point d'origine, aucun ordre linéaire ne se laisse reconnaître, qu'il soit logique ou chronologique."' 1 That is not much consolation for le pluriel which is contained once again by another boundary. Yet life within this circumscribed universe of le pluriel continues to be manifested in its multiplicity and in its perpetual permutations: Et à l'intérieur de ce cercle, chacun croyant vivre ce qu'il appelle sa 'vie', flottant un moment avec les autres dans le même bruit, habillé à la mode du temps, croyant ce que le temps tient pour acquis et irréfutable, placé parmi les machines et les outils du temps, larve agissante, obstinée, jouissante, persuadée d'accomplir pour elle-même ses mouvements, et non seulement ses mouvements mais encore ses rêves, ses signes intérieurs, réduits . . . Millions de coeurs en train de battre, millions de pensées en train de se déguiser et, ici, entrée de l'espace, des masses (2.22, p. 36). This is very much reminiscent of the Christian explanation of "free will" in terms of Divine Providence. One cannot help but feel that the circle will break from the intense density of the masses and espace. The very constraints represented by the circle are the human "needs" for identity, localization, and articulation which were pre-

34 viously discussed. Yet these seem to be artificial constraints upon the exploration of the espace which is beyond the circle and which le pluriel will inseminate and relate beyond the covers of Nombres. Nevertheless, the paradox is not resolved within Nombres: écriture is very much tied to both openness and containment, probably, as was suggested earlier, by its very nature. However, le pluriel re-creates the universe in a manner similar to Blanchot's view of le récif. Le récit serait comme un cercle neutralisant la vie, ce qui ne veut pas dire, sans rapport avec elle, mais se rapportant à elle pas un rapport neutre. Dans ce cercle, le sens de ce qui est et de ce qui est dit est bien encore donné, mais à partir d'un retrait, d'une distance où sont par avance neutralisés tout sens et tout manque de sens. 12 However, Blanchot's remarks must be qualified to indicate that le pluriel of Nombres is in no sense holistic or independent of life outside the covers of Nombres. It is the whole life of the universe which is being circumscribed by the "cercle gris". Yet there is hope in breaking away from this circle which seems to be a one-dimensional constraint. Le pluriel observes that the density of the masses with this circular plan has precipitated an odyssey upward toward the openness of espace: "Nous montions ainsi, par milliers, vers l'ouverture blanche qui se découpait et reculait à mesure au-dessus de nous, suivant l'un après l'autre une ligne sinueuse, en relief, dont la contrainte nous collait contre le paroi" (2.6, p. 19). There may be hope of avoiding or escaping these defined boundaries. The external constraint portrayed by the circle motif is supplemented by the references to an internally mechanistic universe. "Le mécanisme" or "le programme" (4.12, p. 26) does not only restrain perpetual movement but also seems to prevent any form of re-creation within the motion of the universe: "C'est évidemment ici ce que le mécanisme essaie de dire, ce que la machine veut manifester dans son changement, sans qu'il y ait à déchiffrer le récit, l'interprétation qu'il annule dans sa manière d'être à chaque instant et tout à la fois . . . " (4.16, p. 31). This is not a determinism which can be easily portrayed because it is an internal characteristic of this metamorphic "universe": "Fonctionnement difficile à saisir dans ses glissements, ses coupures, ses rapprochements, son absence de centre et de

35 but, son tissu ramifié des lois" (4.16, p. 31). Le pluriel must nevertheless attempt to reconstruct "la machine dérobée, brisée, emportée" (1.97, p. 120). This implicates a sort of self-mutilation since the determining mechanism is partly internal. The fission of this "universe", which as been "assembled" by our own concepts of linear space and time, is only one dimension of the differentiation which le pluriel must implement. There is also an external determinism, represented by the clôture of the circle motif, which must be opened up. Le pluriel is very restless in this pre-determined role now that it has learned of the espace which lies beyond and has yet to be explored: "Nous tous qui tournons ainsi dans la cage avec ce changement appris" (3.11, p. 26). The chain motif further clarifies the determinism of le pluriel by illustrating this predicament necessarily involves every text to which Nombres is linked. All words are tied together in this deterministic "enchaînement" (3.7, p. 20)'. And since we are being written and given life by le pluriel, each one of us is also bound up in this circumscribed "universe": "vous êtes entraînés dans cette chaîne de terre et d'air . . . " (4.12, p. 27). But if there can be a fission and a breaking of the external fetters, all components of le pluriel are assured of going out into the openness beyond any form of determinism: "Mais rien ne sortait vraiment de ce dessin sans commune mesure avec ce qui avait lieu en réalité plus loin que me. yeux" (3.7, p. 20). Thus, the chain motif lends meaning to "universe" as applied to the holistic unity of the diverse texts of le pluriel.

B. Catharsis of space The destruction of this determinism necessitates the elimination of the fetters which deny complete freedom of motion to le pluriel: that is, the classical notions of time and place. As was previously developed, the linear procession of time is purged by the interplay of présent and imparfait in Nombres. This linear understanding of time can even be understood in the classical conception of space, as Roland Barthes observed in Robbe-Grillet's microcosm: "time is never a corruption or even a catastrophe, but merely a change of place, a hideout for data." 1 3 Thus, the problem of the localization of a par-

36 ticular space would then seem to implicate both time and place. The catharsis of space which must be experienced by le pluriel is achieved through the development of the réseau motif in Nombres. The réseau is actually a consideration of space in its horizontal and vertical dimensions. While the horizontal dimension of space may be related to the linear implications of history, the vertical "trajet" offers a new realism for space by allowing continuous motion in an infinite espace or openness. "Pensant . . . au grand réseau qui s'édifie peu à peu" (1.13, p. 28), le pluriel finds that the conventional notions of the horizontal flow of linear history are insufficient for what the TLS considers as the central activity of Nombres: "the direct contemplation of multiform reality." 14 Hence, le pluriel must adopt what Gérard Genette has predicated for écriture as "le langage poétique . . . comme un stylistique de genre . . . de langage"15 because the rational, prosaic approach is too internally determined and not flexible enough for le pluriefs awareness. Since "il n'y avait plus que cette série de chiffres comptant et enregistrant et annulant le tout du dehors" (3.7, p. 21), le pluriel adopts a poetic representation of the mathematical matrix to vividly represent its awareness of the horizontal and vertical réseau which is life itself. This matrix, like the circle, becomes another image of the pseudo-identity of the containment of life. Both the boundaries of the matrix and the circle are inevitably destroyed. However, they do serve as temporary illusions within which le pluriel can portray its awareness of the complexity of life-forms and attempt, in the words of Susan Sontag, to "disavow the means of classical psychology — introspection - and proceed instead by immersion." 16 This "réseau où vous vous éveillez . . . " (4.56, p. 73) implicates all life and hence portrays what Maurice Piron considers as the activity of écriture, in traditional yet evocative terms which point to the vitality of le pluriel: "la communication immédiate entre l'écrit et le lecteur." 17 It is the écoulement of the horizontal dimensions of the matrix which is most obvious to us. The motif of écoulement, as expressed by the image patterns of flowing water, implies a linear perpetuation of matter with "ce flot ininterrompu" (1.65, p. 82). Although le pluriel continually seeks differentiation, it is very much aware that "la matière s'écoulant de l'un à l'autre et du vide au plein" (4.52, p. 69) is restricting its deployment to such an extent that it finds itself in

37 tension between "le morcellement et l'écoulement" (1.65, p. 82). The unanimism implied by perpetual linear motion seems to be a constraint upon the centrifugal energy of le pluriel. However, this is only an illusory constraint since this unanimism additionally conveys an anonymity within which le pluriel can be "se déployant comme une eau" (1.69, p. 86). The fluidity and expansion which characterize water certainly make it compatible with le pluriefs need for a differentiation. There seems to be no longer any concern about anonymity for le pluriel in its metaphorical association with the "sea" ("se jeter dans ce qui autrefois avait été appelé 'mer' en criant" (2.6, p. 19) because the static identities of conventional time and space are completely absorbed. The écoulement motif might even extend to the internal determinism of language since integers are swept up by perpetual motion, perhaps suggesting the poetic flow of words which does not predicate a rational and coherent set of identities: "si je disais 'l'océan', je le voyais traverser le temps, et il y avait au-dessous les rapports noués et dénoués, le chiffre constamment modifié du temps" (1.25, p. 39). Indeed, the very notion of a single entity formerly conceived as "test" is metaphorically absorbed by le pluriel in this écoulement: "voyant clairement le texte se détailler sous nos yeux et en même temps disparaître à chaque instant dans le blanc, l'océan chaud . . . " (2.26, p. 40). However, although water imagery does convey le pluriels awareness of perpetual motion, there still remains an awesome threat of anonymity as the "canal . . . nous reliait l'un à l'autre" (2.54, p. 71) as well as a relegation to the linear procession of life since the "courant [est] coupé verticalement en deux comme un sol" (2.54, p. 71). The horizontal écoulement must be complemented by the vertical trajet in order that the openness of espace might offer an affirmation before the threat of anonymity. Complementing the stylistic "ondolation constante", 18 le pluriel utilizes a poetic series of image patterns which identify a vertical motif of a "trajet double, montée d'une force sans garantie" (4.40, p. 56). There even seems to be a preference for this vertical movement: "c'est verticalement qu'il faut le voir lutter et se transformer, montant dans toutes les directions de son propre infini . . . " (4.40, p. 57). Whereas the écoulement motif may have implied a possibility of containment by land masses, the vertical trajet is unbounded by time or place and offers hope for breaking

38 the illusory clôtures of the circle and the matrix. The infinite nature of the vertical trajet is in pursuit of the unbounded réseau. The motion of le pluriel is here unbounded by the forms of space: "c'est maintenant cette verticalité sans liens, tirée dans toutes les directions, glissante . . . (4.92, p. 114). In its perpetual motion of "montant vers l'espace brûlé et crevé . . . se livrant à la multitude simple" (4.92, p. 115), le pluriel denies any identity whatsoever excepting its essential vertical motion: "Verticalité où tout est nié" (4.92, p. 114). This vertical motion becomes especially vivid in le pluriel's presentation of a "ladder of nature" which begins with "un livre fermé" (3.39, p. 56). This closed book might be some self-contained treatise which has since been discarded. However, it is significantly associated with insects, "le paysage ruiné et flottant, la dévoration des corps blancs dans le blanc" (3.39, p. 56). Anonymity, perhaps even the linear constructs of history suggested by the écoulement image of "flottant", is near one of the lowest rungs of the ladder which le pluriel seems to be viewing from some height since it refers to these images of anonymity as "vers le bas". The "ladder of nature" appears as the challenge of life itself to le pluriel since it must climb by the various increasingly sensitive stages of natural life: je devais monter peu à peu à la manière d'une plante, d'une pierre vivante, monter par l'échelle invisible de signes animaux, être arrêté à chaque degré, connaître à nouveau ce qu'on appelait autrefois 'naufrage', tomber parfois dans le cloaque et l'oubli (3.39, p. 55). Just as gravity tends to draw objects downward, so le pluriel may have occasion to fall during its ascent because it has not completely escape its tendencies toward anonymity. Any semblance of "identity" would draw it both ways since it may very well have been already postulated definitively within the realm of anonymity or perhaps it is a revolutionary awareness directed upward toward l'espace: "l'atome 'je' semble monter, descendre ou remonter parmi vous comme un fil vertical, une marque non singulière, un noeud, le double matériel et provisoire d'un saut" (4.84, p. 105). And despite the observation that "le trajet paraissait interminable" (2.6, p. 19), le pluriel seeks this vertical escape as a last resort to avoid internal and external mechanistic

39 determinism: "nous montions ainsi, par milliers, vers l'ouverture blanche qui se découpait et reculait à mesure au-dessus de nous, suivant l'un après l'autre une ligne sinueuse, en relief, dont la contrainte nous collait contre la paroi" (2.6, p. 19). The espace may be eternally unattainable. But that is perhaps its very attraction: its ambiguity. This vertical dimension of le réseau is also portrayed by le pluriel as a spiral ascent. The cylinder image recurs several times and suggests that the openness on its upper end may offer an escape from the circumscribed world of the horizontal plane. The walls of the cylinder imply the constraints of linear space, as was previously suggested by the illusory images of the circle and the matrix, while the base is firmly positioned in definitive matter which conveys the concept of static identity: "j'étais alors presque au sommet d'un cylindre dont je ne contrôlais pas l'extension, sa base s'enracinant dans les métaux les plus lourds" (2.6, p. 19). The openness at the top of the cylinder depicts the very espace which le pluriel is seeking to attain. Yet the espace is ever elusive while le pluriel is concerned with breaking away from the restrictions of the conventional concepts of space. Hence, we see that écriture is well represented as "la figure cylindrique des phrases en retard" (2.6, p. 20). Le pluriel is not free enough yet to attain the summit of the cylinder. It is still groping somewhere along its walls. The spiral-ascent theme is depicted even more vividly by the image pattern of the tourbillon. Le pluriel is swept upward by this dizzy motion which is not localized to any specific time or place but which is relegated to an emptiness: "c'était le vide du tourbillon dont j'étais le lieu qui m'entraînait aux confins" (3.31, p. 47). This emptiness is the mid-world between anonymity and espace through which le pluriel must strive. The circular motion mentioned earlier now has depth to it for this motion is spiral in opting for the otherness of espace as opposed to the determinism of the single-plane of linear history: "c'était également un ailleurs détourné, vide, un tourbillon semblable à celui des feuilles roulant sous la pluie" (3.35, p. 52). However, it seems that le pluriel is now determined by its own need to escape linear history. It is now being carried along by the vertiginous motion toward espace. The will not to be determined has been transformed into a determinism itself. Yet le pluriel would like to be

40 master of its own activity "comme si le tourbillon qui nous porte était maîtrisé, ordonné, rendu plat et distribué" (1.73, p. 92). This paradox of the freedom of volition has led le pluriel to the very edge of a Baudelairien gouffre: "je me trouvai ainsi au bord de la nuit" (1.5, p. 17). The night here is metaphorical for the ambiguous state created by the destruction of conventional time and place. Le pluriel is on the edge of an emptiness which seems to be in the "center" of the tourbillon. The circular motion of the spiral causes it to both tend toward the center or the emptiness (centripetal force) and to tend toward the outside of the spiral (centrifugal energy). There seems to be a tension of forces which keeps le pluriel on the edge of the spiral ascending toward l'espace. Metaphorically, the conscious desire to avoid the self-annihilation of total emptiness may be understood by this centrifugal energy while the centripetal force may represent the determinism set in motion by the need to escape linear history. This tension has been an enduring one which has kept le pluriel in an ambiguous state: "vous êtes depuis si longtemps sur le bord et au croisement, votre vie ramassée dans cette proximité montant et se déplaçant" 94.36, p. 52). The cyclical motion of the tourbillon has caused such disorientation that le pluriel observes a general dizziness from which perhaps even other texts are born: "ce vertige où vous êtes nés" (4.28, p. 42). The insemination of life is still affirmed despite the possible confusion of the cyclical and spiral activity of le pluriel. Gérard Genette poignantly described this phenomenon of "le vertige de l'écriture" thus: les mots pensent pour nous . . . par conséquent il se produit dans l'acte même d'écrire un rapport que j'appelle volontiers vertigineux entre ce que nous trouvons penser par le fait même que nous écrivons et dont une grande partie nous est dictée par des lois immanentes du langage. 19 Hence, le pluriel seems to be referring to its own creative activity by referring to the vertigo caused by its spiral motion. It is indeed displaced from linear determinism: "soulevés au-dessus des fleuves, du vertige froid de l'eau et des vitres" (3.11, p. 26). Le pluriel has left the determining whirlpool of the linear plane to now be caught in a euphoric determinism without time and place with which to orient itself.

41 The motif of sleep especially conveys the euphoria of le pluriePs vertical vertigo. The image of the sleeper and his dream-world is recounted in narrative fashion — "Il y avait donc maintenant: le dormeur dans son propre corps et vivant avec d'autres ceci ou cela/la fonction qui le racontait en expliquant parfois faussement ses choix/ la scène qui, pendant ce temps, continuait dans le vide, la scène où la ville était remplacée par la même ville, les acteurs par les mêmes acteurs . . . " (2.34, p. 50). Yet this dreamer might be le pluriel speaking about its own dreamlike activity of spacelessness. John Weightman, in considering Robbe-Grillet's magical blend of dreams and reality, reminds us that "it is only in dreams that we can both watch a person and be that person." 20 Thus, le pluriel could be recounting its own experience as a euphoric activity between the areas of reality and dream. It refers to itself as awakening (3.11, p. 25, 1.13, p. 27) and opening its eyes (2.34, p. 50 and 1.13, p. 27) while speaking about its vitality. This sleep is not a static reality but rather a continuous activity whereby le pluriel can both be itself and observe itself: "on pouvait dire que le sommeil percevait directement son dehors . . . " (1.61, p. 78). As was previously developed, the imparfait serves well here to underscore that this activity is continuous and not completed. The euphoria of this dream-world creates a fluid aura for the continual metamorphosis of le pluriel unhampered by the confinement of time and place: "j'étais en train de passer d'un rêve à un autre rêve, comme si le courant d'air qui venait de se lever du fond de la représentation me transformait en un muscle du système d'articulation qui passait par moi" (3.15, p. 29). The very internal determinism of language seems to be breaking down as the euphoric dream-world dominates the reality of le pluriel. The spaceless aura created by the dream even extends to le plurieFs conscious affirmations of reality. The euphoria of the sleeping activity becomes a visible predication of le pluriel's tendencies toward differentiation and continuous activity: "je ne pouvais éprouver que sa surface ivre, son 'rien, jamais rien' dissipé, actif' (1.21, p. 35). The image pattern of ivresse continually recurs to convey the fluidity of le pluriel's vitality. This fluidity relates distinct sense-impressions into a common experience. Hence, sounds and colors ("je revois les sons pénétrer le ciel violet jusqu'au fond des yeux", 3, p. 15) lose their differentiation to create a surrealistic aura of "une ondolation

42 constante, quelque chose d'ivre" (3, p. 15). Even the objects of le pluriel seem to experience a total form of inter-communication: "En retrait, on aurait pu croire que tout s'écoutait, se touchait: les surfaces, l'ombre, le vent, mon propre corps devenu visage, le temps — " (3, p. 15). Perhaps the classical problem of epistemological certainty is referred to here since le pluriel seems to "unite" both its own activity and that which is beyond it in a euphoric experience which implies continuity between he who knows and what is known. This "ondolation constante, quelque chose d'ivre" (3.55, p. 72) seems all-pervasive in perhaps positing the very activity of a "universe": Le même travail était en somme partout à l'oeuvre, brassant et noyant les groupes dans leur progression, changeant les rapports de forces et de production, faisant apparaître les transformations, les permutations, et c'est ainsi que s'étendait la lutte avec ses sauts d'inversion, de génération (3.55, p. 72). This euphorie activity of a neuter area between dream and reality is that very arena of activity which Michel Foucault referred to in speaking to Sollers about writing: "Toutes vos oeuvres c'est cet intermédiaire, c'est cet espace vide et plein à la fois." 21 The paradox of the full and empty euphoric-space is metaphorically conceived as the open-ended spiral which is "constituted" by le pluriel's vital upward motion. Although the spiral motion attempts to be all-encompassing, this motion had led le pluriel through the cathartic experience of the destruction of the classical localizations of time and place: "nous formions ainsi un 8 silencieux, souple, dont la lente giration m'amenait dans un bâtiment ruiné" (3.15, p. 29). The "bâtiment ruiné" is inevitable in order that le pluriel escape an external determinism and achieve its total self-realization: "le liquide caché dans la retombée et l'inégalité de la destruction décidée, le texte restant et vibrant au-dessus de sa peau, recouvrant la totalité de sa peau" (1.85, pp. 106-107). The "bâtiment ruiné" even develops into the theme of ébranlement wherein both destruction and motion are reconciled in the verb "ébranler". We are in the midst of the "ébranlement du jeu" which portrays the very movement of our discussion thus far: "nous sommes donc ici au

43 milieu, à mi-chemin entre ce qui est parti et ce qui va venir, sur le côté où il est possible d'apercevoir l'ébranlement du jeu, la décomposition du théâtre où nous allons et venons encore" (4.24, p. 37). Here le pluriel accounts for the destruction of place ("la décomposition du théâtre") as well as time (the eternally present — "michemin entre ce qui est parti et ce qui va venir") in the supremacy of the ébranlement. The theme of ébranlement extends even into traditional orthography which is being reconsidered by le pluriel in light of the Chinese ideograms as well as the mathematical number. On the one hand, the ideograms, "l'écriture carrée", are able to capture the fluidity of continuous motion without involving the sequence of time as the Western progressive verbs often do. In an affirmation of the vitality of the Eastern culture, le pluriel discovers there "la force, invisible des mutations complètes et sans reste, l'écriture carrée qui ébranle le sol le plus assuré, l'inscription commune à la boue et au sang, la pensée cachée qui a su penser" (3.23, p. 37). The recurrence of the ideograms within le pluriel of Nombres might be a means of underscoring the destruction-motion of le pluriel against any definition whatsoever ("qui ébranle le sol le plus assuré") and ultimately a denial of the possibility of this very discussion. On the other hand, the attraction of the mathematical number, which conveys part of an infinite arithmetic whole, might also be partially understood in its association with the ébranlement theme. Prior to presenting the formulaic "identity" of numbers as "les degrés de la vibration" (4.72, p. 91), le pluriel would have us reconsider classical time — "Laissez-vous employer, ramasser, branler dans le temps" (4.72, p. 91) — as well as an archaic language based upon reason — "vous laisser vider et tuer, de vous laisser questionner plus loin que votre raison" (4.72, p. 91). The implication is that numbers, like ideograms, might better express the perpetual motion inherent in life than traditional orthography which is limited by the localizations of time and place.

C. Le stade du miroir The mirror motif is especially effective in evoking the inefficacy of linear space. Le plurieVs self-awareness becomes metaphorically portrayed

44 in a motif which is similar to Lacan's "stade du miroir" 22 because self-reflection becomes an immersion in the "theater" of the experiences which le pluriel undergoes in its perpetual motion. Again the paradox or contradiction inherent in the Hegelian dialectic appears within le pluriel. Nevertheless, the mirror metaphor conveys an imperfect reflection of le pluriel. Sometimes it is a murky mirror ("le miroir sombre", 1, p. 12). Other times, it is ineffective as a visual reflector ("un miroir noir" 1.25, p. 39). Yet, as was previously discussed, the three-sided diagram opening up to a mirror assures us that the visual and verbal "identities", infinitely reflected back and forth there, can offer no affirmation of spatial localization in the mirror. The continuous movement of reflections within Nombres' own "stade du miroir" might portray what Jean Ricardou observed within one of Sollers' earlier works, Le Parc. "Sa continuité . . . assure le déplacement instantané dans l'espace et le temps dont les catégories sont à la fois reconnues et abolies." 23 However, "cette traversée du miroir" (1.49, p. 65) also destroys whatever "identity" one might visually expect to see in a mirror so that le pluriel might proceed "dans toutes les directions de son propre infini sans images" (4.40, p. 57). The somber or darkened mirrors mentioned earlier are then metaphors of the increasing inefficacy of both duplication and of the creation of a static identity. However, the mirror does offer a positive insight into le plurieFs activity. The mirror's capacity for inverting writing invokes an additional perspective, perhaps even a previously unrecognized appreciation for life: "La voie, ou peut-être, au contraire, l'entrée d'un nouveau parcours, le même mais en sens inverse, le même mais en miroir, ou plutôt changeant en miroir celui qui venait d'avoir lieu, et où nous tournions encore lentement au-delà de ce qui avait été appelé autrefois reflet ou miroir . . . " (2.6, p. 20). But le pluriel is beyond the linear, reflective world of any "identities", be they partial, inverted, or infinitely re-reflected. The mirror belongs to the realm of linear verisimilitude. Le pluriel, however, is engaged in an activity wherein, as in another previous Sollers' work Drame: "Histoire [est] suspendue où rien ne semblerait jamais arriver et qui pourtant serait le comble d'une activité interne." 24 And although we must acknowledge with Jacques Derrida in his review of Nombres that it's "difficile de savoir si un tel miroir est l'espace classique ou l'espace

45 général", 2 5 we are intuitively aware of the fate of the mirror in this "vie non refermée, non cicatrisée, toujours susceptible de se briser" (2.94, p. 117). Once again the illusions of identity must be destroyed: "obligé, donc, de déchirer de nouveau le voile et de nouveau d'attaquer le plan des sommeils, déchirant une nouvelle fois l'écran, brisant le miroir, l'erreur . . . " (2.70, p. 88). But le pluriel seems to be destroying the very creator of illusions in the mirror in order to move toward the complete openness which Georges Poulet observed a decade ago: De plus, entre ce désir et ce lieu il y a un autre espace, un espace négatif, un vide, une distance. L'Azur est donc ce qui se présente au delà de son absence, ce qui s'affirme au-delà de ce qui le dénie, ce qui existe au-delà de ce qui n'existe pas. Il est une présence mais à distance. Tel un objet entr'aperçu au travers d'une vitre, tel un reflet dans un miroir. C'est dans son absence que transparaît sa présence; c'est dans le vide que se mire sa plénitude. 2 6 It is with the destruction of the mirror that le pluriel becomes synonymous with language because then it is language which becomes the only proper activity of the movement toward openness. In a commentary on "l'anthropologie hétérogène" of Georges Bataille, Sollers himself identifies language as the new activity of écriture now that verisimilitude is no longer possible: "L'opération hétérologique — si elle est langage - c'est en tant que, sur son trajet de dissociation et de chute, elle trouve, dans l'écriture, un crochet." 2 7 The solidarity and continuity of le pluriel might be overlooked when one considers the ethereal and destructive nature of its living movement. However, le pluriel is bound up in contradictions which cannot be reconciled rationally. Although "il est difficile d'accepter cet intervalle, ce blanc intact . . . quand le texte s'interrompt" (4, p. 16), there is an affirmation in the solidarity of le pluriel before the overwhelming espace: "nous sommes ensemble" (4, p. 16). And despite the recurring inferences to self-destruction as a necessary corollary to the differentiation of le pluriel (e.g. "sans corps, sans défense, brisés", 4.12, p. 27), there is a Marxist unity which pervades the movement of le pluriel as if to illustrate, as Sollers stated in his conversation with Jacques Henric, that "l'écriture est la continuation de la politique par d'autres moyens." 2 8 Indeed, the very "working"

46 or movement of le pluriel is what unites its plural manifestations. The gestes motif especially underscores the solidarity of le pluriel in its vital activity. The geste image might refer to an action, a deed, a performance, or even a manual gesture. The polyvalent nature of the geste points to the consistent recurrence of Marxist "unity" within the differentiation of le pluriel. The living presence of le pluriel moving toward complete openness represents a very different geste than that of a " 'représentation linéaire et frontale d'un homme levant les bras pour se protéger ou faire un geste de respect' " (3, p. 15). This geste of man has been one of exclusion: either a sign of self-defense or of mutual co-habitation. But le pluriel now affirms a new geste or activity which must include all men and all life in its creation of a "spider-web" politic. The artificial accomplishments of the "exclusive" human geste, as portrayed by the linear representations of history, are seriously questioned: "comment se perdre enfin . . . le travail et l'exploitation condamnant à répéter sans fin nos gestes sans gestes dans la réserve infinie gaspillée et civilisée ? " (4.36, p. 53). Le pluriel then postulates a revolutionary identity of geste and parole so that meaning will not be imposed on action arbitrarily. Hence, meaning and activity would become synonymous and concomitant in a sense which echoes Merleau-Ponty's own views of twenty-five years ago: "Le sens du geste n'est pas contenu dans le geste comme phénomène physique ou physiologique. Le sens du mot n'est pas contenu dans le mot comme son." 29 As le pluriel continues in its differentiation, it becomes aware of the innate "meaning" of the geste which cannot be deciphered by an external "being" any longer: "plus j'étais près de l'écart . . . plus les distinctions rentraient dans un geste séparé, double, un milieu où les chiffres n'ont plus rien à voir" (3.59, p. 76). The continuous movement of the geste or the activity of le pluriel causes the loss of distinction between the "categories" of existence and meaning which linear history had carefully segregated. But the incessant vertical movement of le pluriel toward differentiation has broken the boundaries of these classical categories which had harkened back to the philosophy of Kant. Unbounded by time or place, le pluriel points to an affirmation of the unity of performance, activity, and "meaning" in the portrayal of its own vacillating movement as "les gestes au moment où ils sortaient pour rentrer, où ils ressortaient pour rentrer à nouveau dans ce qui ne peut ni sortir ni

47 rentrer . . . " (1.61, p. 78). In effect, le pluriel becomes a model for the body politic in its affirmation of perpetual movement of "revolution" which seeks to encompass all political life and to destroy all static identity in its celebration of the "working" rather than the "landed" man. Thus the geste embodies both affirmation and movement in the literal and symbolic differentiation of le pluriel. As le pluriel weaves its "spider-web" of interrelated texts, one is mystified by the elements of both Eastern and Western cultures which are simply juxtaposed to effect a sense of the universality of this experience. The very use of unidentified quotations compels one to relate le pluriels adventure to other texts, as Herr Meyer aptly points out in his study of the effects of the quotation upon narrating art: "Ihre Hauptfunktion ist die extreme Auflockerung der Erzàhleinheit: der Leser wird immer wieder gezwungen, den Inhalt der Erzâhlung auf weit Entlegenes zu beziehen." 30 This tendency to look outside the covers of Nombres is part of the very activity of le pluriel to write the "universe". Cultural differences should be no barrier since le pluriel can certainly appreciate the complex immersion ("la scène" rather than the Western cultural emphasis on "l'image", 3.23, p. 37) and movement ("la force invisible des mutations complètes et sans reste", 3.23, p. 37) of the ideogram as opposed to the Western orthography which seems to innately present "les signes sans racines et accumulant les signes sans prise sur l'axe profond du dehors" (3.23, p. 37). Le pluriel must be eclectic in its movement toward l'espace since this activity is common to all life, and not relegated to a national "identity" of écriture or even to a Western "construction" of a linear, historical sense of "literature". This basic premise of le pluriel certainly has political overtones suggested by the quotations which expand Marxist doctrine beyond the static goals of political and economic revolution for, as Julia Kristeva has pointed out in her theory of intertextualité, "c'est que la pensée de Marx nous oblige à réfléchir sur une typologie des cultures irréductibles l'une à l'autre." 31 The challenge of writing the "universe" is a common one to all living beings no matter what cultural "baggage" has been "assigned" to them by history. Hence, we must all share one another's resources. This might very well be the spirit with which le pluriel includes more quoted phrases in its movement through Nombres.

48 D. Organic unity Despite the diversity of le pluriel's manifestations, the continuity of its "life-style" seems to affirm itself above the apparently tangential differentiation. Le pluriel insists that its self-destruction has not annihilated its inarticulatable "unity": "devenant comme vous: ne sachant pas qui je suis. Mais gardant ce qui me permet de dire 'je' " (3.11, p. 25). The movement of le pluriel is sometimes seen as "l'ensemble vu de plus en plus haut mais aussi de près" (3.55, p. 72). There is an organic unity of le pluriel which seems to engulf individual "entities" in its massive scope "puisque vous n'êtes jamais qu'un des éléments de ce plan" (4.80, p. 101). Although le pluriel had made so much noise about escaping the external determinism of linear history, it seems that, "flottant un moment avec les autres dans le même bruit" (2.22, p. 36), le pluriel is internally determined in its very movement toward openness: "j'étais donc dans cette production organique, jeu et membre du jeu" (1.37, p. 53). Despite its various manifestations, le pluriel remains a single plurality to indicate that there is an internal unity in its dispersion. This "single plurality" represents an attempt to incarnate the "universe" as the living Word wherein language becomes a mimisis of itself. The life of language becomes the only reality as le pluriel disseminates its life: "il n'y avait plus que cette série de chiffres comptant et enregistrant et annulant le tout du dehors" (3.7, p. 21). This activity of le pluriel is reminiscent of Blanchot's circle of écriture 3 2 which attempts to encompass all that is outside the circle. Yet paradoxically, le pluriel must also concomitantly be able, according to Sollers' own insight some five years ago, to "nous situer en dehors de ces distinctions et des limites qu'elles font jouer à notre insu de façon permanente". 33 In situating itself outside its own activity, le pluriel can reflect on the nature of its movement. It may even reproach itself for not recognizing its own linguistic automation: "Vous ne reconnaissez plus le monde de votre langue, vous marchez désormais au-delà de ses signes lents et discrets" (4.76, p. 95). This "au-delà", however, might be predicated upon the differentiation toward pure espace. In incarnating what Jacques Derrida necessitates as a condition for "la grammatologie" in "la sollicitation du logocentrisme", 34 le pluriel is taking us on an odyssey which goes beyond

49 a rational study of language itself: "de vous laisser questionner plus loin que votre raison" (4.72, p. 91). The very life of the Word portrays the pulse of the "universe" which is now a linguistic entity. This is not a tautological statement of the re-creation of the "universe" as the Word. However, we are experiencing the "universe" becoming (rather than "being") the Word. Le plurief s own vitality conveys "comment il s'agit maintenant d'une révolution opérant non plus avec des substances ou des unités, mais avec des continents et des textes entiers" (4.76, p. 95). The Word must be infinitely differentiated so that the "universe" is about to become, in Barthes' view of the Sollers' esthetic, "une cosmogonie de la parole". 35 This living "cosmogony" is "un plan oblique" (4.96, p. 118) wherein the artificial identities of the circle or the spiral become insufficient in delineating its vitality: "il ne s'agit plus d'un cercle ou d'une spirale, mais de cette expansion où il n'y a rien de perdu ou d'interrompu" (4.96, p. 118). Even vertical motion is only an approximate description of the movement of le pluriel: "verticalité sans liens, tirée dans toutes les directions, glissante" (4.92, p. 114). Perhaps glissante might be a more appropriate predication of the living motion of le pluriel before the espace. Glissante would convey the slippery, amorphous nature of le pluriel despite its predilection for vertical motion ("vous m'en finissez pas de monter, de descendre, de monter et descendre encore, ici, en vous, devant vous", 4.80, p. 100) which could be viewed as a reaction to the determinism of the horizontal movement of linear history. Just prior to the quadratic equation which "finally" opens Nombres toward differentiation, le pluriel asserts its objection to any containment of the "universe": "refusant de se refermer dans son cube et sa profondeur" (4.100, p. 124). Perhaps, as Roland Barthes pointed out in his review of Sollers' Drame, there is an implied metaphor of le livre to a much greater literary text: "Ceci n'est pas loin d'un ancien mythe: celui du monde comme Livre, de l'écriture tracée à même la terre". 36 Let us explore this cosmology of Le Livre upon which the life of le pluriel seems to open.

50 NOTES 1. Philippe Sollers, Logiques (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 238. 2. Ibid., p. 31. 3. Jacques Derrida, "La dissémination, I", Critique, XXV, No. 262 (February 1969), 99. 4. Ibid., p. 113. 5. Michel Foucault, ed., "Débat sur le Roman", Tel Quel, No. 17 (Spring 1964), p. 13. 6. Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), p. 222. 7. Philippe Sollers, "Littérature et Totalité", Tel Quel, No. 26 (Summer 1966), p. 82. 8. Tzvetan Todorov, La Poétique de la Prose (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971), p. 253. 9. Sollers, "Littérature et Totalité", p. 113. 10. Pierre A. G. Astier, La Crise du Roman Français et le Nouveau Réalisme (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Debresse, 1968), p. 258. 11. Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967), p. 377. 12. Maurice Blanchot, l'Entretien Infini (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1969), p. 557. Quoted by permission of the publisher. 13. Roland Barthes, "Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet", translated by Richard Howard, in Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet (New York: Grove Press, Incorporated, 1965), p. 22. 14. "Writing Intransitively", The (London) Times Literary Supplement, No. 3484 (5 December 1968), p. 1355. 15. Gérard Genette, Figures II (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969), p. 127. 16. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1969), p. 114. 17. Maurice Piron, "Critique Littéraire Degré Zéro", Etudes Littéraires, III, No. 2 (August 1970), 211. 18. Jacques Derrida, "La dissémination, II", Critique, XV, No. 262 (March 1969), 223. 19. Gérard Genette, "Raisons de la Critique Pure", in Les Chemins Actuels de la Critique, ed. Georges Poulet (Paris: Pion, 1967), pp. 249-250. 20. John G. Weightman, "Alain Robbe-Grillet", Encounter, XVIII, No. 102 (March 1962), 38-39. 21. Foucault, p. 13. 22. Jacques Lacan, "Propos sur la causalité psychique", Évolution psychiatrique, No. 1 (1947), pp. 123-165. 23. Jean Ricardou, Problèmes du Nouveau Roman (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), p. 66. 24. Philippe Sollers, Drame (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1965), p. 73. 25. Derrida, "La dissémination, I", p. 124. 26. Georges Poulet, Études sur le temps humain, II: La Distance intérieure (Paris: Pion, 1952), p. 301. 27. Philippe Sollers, "Le Coupable", Tel Quel, No. 45 (Spring 1971), p. 100. 28. Philippe Sollers, "Écriture et révolution", in Théorie d'Ensemble (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 78. 29. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1945), pp. 225-226.

51 30. Herman Meyer, Das Zitat in der Erzählkunst - Zur Geschichte und Poetik des Europäischen Romans (Stuttgart [Germany]: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1961), p. 21: ["Theirfthe quotations']main function is to radically break up the narrative unity: the reader is continuously forced to relate the content of the narrative to things which are distanced from it".] 31. Julia Kristeva, "Problèmes de la Structuration du texte", in Théorie d'Ensemble (Paris: Éditions du SeuU, 1968), p. 317. 32. Maurice Blanchot, "L'étrange et l'étrangeté", Nouvelle Revue française, No. 70 (1 October 1958), p. 674. 33. Philippe Sollers, "Le Roman et l'expérience des limites", Tel Quel, No. 25 (Spring 1966), p. 24. 34. Derrida, De la grammatologie, p. 109. 35. Roland Barthes, "Drame, Poème, Roman", Critique, XI, No. 218 (July 1965), 602. 36. Ibid., p. 599.

CHAPTER III: THE RE-INCARNATION OF THE WORD A. La dissémination

As Sollers once commented in a portrayal of the totality of literary experience,1 le pluriel of Nombres causes us to re-examine the possibilities of theater and life as metaphors of literary texts. The multidimensional life of le pluriel, as elaborated thus far, becomes an integral part of all living beings and hence saves écriture from the ornamental status which its increasingly esoteric audience seems to have been foreshadowing for the '70's. The theatrical roles and pseudoidentities of daily life effect a complicated allegory for the very activity of écriture. As life seeks to perpetuate itself in a continuing series of rebirths, so écriture disseminates its own life through various myths of regeneration which continually point to other texts in an infinite series of verbal permutations. The "re-naissance myth" is one of the central themes in this allegory of life and écriture because, as Maurice Nadeau relates this phenomenon, ces renaissances prennent corps dans une 'fable' dont nous avons besoin parce qu'elle s'addresse à l'ensemble du complexe humain, sur tous les plans, de la réalité quotidienne au mythe. Elle durera aussi longtemps que les hommes, afin de s'expliquer leur présence au monde, auront recours aux métaphores. 2 Living beings and living texts exist concomitantly and continually refer back and forth to each other in creating this allegory of a selfperpetuating life of polyvalent activities. This is not merely a twodimensional activity of a text and a human being, but it is the continually unfolding receptivity and interchangeability of all life and all texts. This network of life and texts is the activity of both écriture and all living beings. The dissemination motif which Jacques Derrida developed in his study of Nombres3 is especially pertinent to this network since the procreation of both living beings and liter-

53 ary texts is tied together in the related themes of vital creativity. The theme of blood recurs throughout Nombres to convey the ambivalence of the "re-naissance myth". On the one hand, blood is that life-sustaining fluid which also nourishes seminal beings to prepare them for an activity which we call life. On the other hand, blood is also a sign of a violent interruption in life or of feminine infecundity in the menstrual cycle of human life. For le pluriel, blood is a representation of its own ambivalence toward life. After "avoir connu le repos et l'ignorance du sang qui coulait en moi, de la lymphe et du sang dont je suis l'enfant impatient" (2.38, p. 55), le pluriel is cognizant of its own uncomfortable existence. The blood, here, is an image of the life flowing within le pluriel by virtue of its very activity as écriture. However, this "récit rouge" (4.40, p. 57) connotes more than an exuberant activity which is striving for differentiation. The very inter-activity of life, theater, and texts causes such a concentration of reflections that, as was previously developed, the "mirror" must be broken. Hence, there must be a violent and destructive activity which is "transformant l'entrecroisement des veines, le sang" (3.95, p. 118) by turning the living activity outward. Thus, the internal sign of life must be externally shed to allow a release of energy and an expansion of life: "Le sommet de l'effet déclenché lorsque après avoir repéré les trois surfaces animées, vous vous retournez vers la quatrième est donc d'une violence multipliée" (4.20, p. 34). Activity is now directed toward openness. The blood which is spilt in destroying infecund life-forms is a lifeless fluid which must be shed so that the density of lifeless matter might be replaced by vital activity. Indeed, blood might also be a sign of the extinction of life: "les yeux s'éteignant dans le sang dont finalement tout se paye" (4.52, p. 69). Yet we should not forget the ambivalent implications of blood as both a life-sustaining fluid and a sign of destruction and infertility since the image-patterns of blood refer us to the theme of destruction. While Marguerite Duras has given us a penetrating study of the necessity of destruction in her "novels", le pluriel of Nombres has incorporated the cyclical theme of construction-destruction into the basic framework of the activity of écriture. As we have seen, pseudoidentities are consecutively created and destroyed in a snowballing cyclical pattern throughout Nombres. Le pluriel can make no decision

54 about its being "pris dans la nécessité de la destruction" (3.67, p. 85). Perhaps the life-death cycle of living beings could offer an appropriate commentary on the mechanism of destruction in écriture. Le pluriel itself refers to "un seul meurtre [qui] était constamment en cours" (1.5, p. 18) and "le meurtre des mots sans passé" (3.51, p. 67). The deliberate murder or extinction of life is part of the vital cycle whereby new forms of life appear. Jacques Derrida's paradoxical statement that „l'insémination 'première' est dissémination" 4 portrays the very contradictions embodied in the destruction-construction cycles. In order to create new life, there must be a differentiation of current life-forms. However, the destructive force may be violently implemented from an extrinsic source. The recurrent metaphor of the knife conveys this violent surgery upon a constructed "identity". In effect, le pluriel uses a knife-simile to convey what I have earlier coined as the "déstructuration" of pseudo-identities: "de sorte que je touchais maintenant le lieu du décollement, comme si un couteau procédait à mon découpage, séparait sans les blesser ni les effleurer la peau, les tissus, l'os . . . " (1.69, p. 86). Le pluriel's own "identity" as a single body or entity is dismembered by the metaphoric surgery of the knife. There is no wounding here, however, because as Derrida points out in his aforementioned study of Nombres, "la plume, quand vous l'aurez suivie jusqu'au bout, sera devenue couteau." 5 It is the pen which must destroy words that have too many prior associations and hence that have worn out their livelihood. These words are no longer productive. Hence, le pluriel must destroy them just as it destroyed the classical concepts of time and place. This metaphor of the knife and the pen opens onto the vast horizon of the freedom of écriture, heralded by Roland Barthes in Le Degré zéro de l'écriture, wherein we are challenged to "créer une écriture blanche, libérée de toute servitude à un ordre marqué du l a n g a g e . A n d some twenty years after these words, le pluriel of Nombres is still striving to approach that undetermined freedom. But even the very concept of espace, as represented by the image of air in Nombres, must be destroyed if it determines the movement of écriture since even "l'air s'était renversé sur la lame d'un couteau rouge" (2.34, p. 50). Nothing is too sacred to escape the surgical knife of le pluriel. Yet one wonders if le pluriel necessitates the vacillating motion

55 from destruction to construction and vice versa or if the destruction might be sought for its own proximity to the nihilism of an imperfect system of language. At times the movement of le pluriel is associated with a sadistic delight in the very throes of destruction: "Acte unique et qui n'a d'égal que les massacres de prêtres enfin permis ou encore la promenade de cette tête écorchée au bout d'une pique à travers les cris" (2.14, p. 29). Thus, the sacred and the intellectual are also subject to being destroyed within a "culture" which must continually permutate concomitant with the dispersement of le pluriel. Yet this destruction theme seems to subject even the "renaissance myth" to a tenuous existence: "le refus de toute naissance, le calcul qui vous fait tomber les yeux bien ouverts dans d'autres rapports" (4.48, p. 65). Is le pluriel concerned with the thread of sterility or is it suggesting that the very life of new texts may be aborted by this phenomenon of destruction? Both possibilities might be implied since destruction seems to be threatening the new generation ("Forcé de remonter jusqu'à l'embryon et de l'annuler," 2.70, p. 88) and the progressive vitality of le pluriel: 'La mère mange son enfant'/ . . . Recul de plus en plus insistant, ferme, n'attendant plus rien de son avenir, allant simplement de la force à la force, et tout se durcissait par rapport à lui, tout commençait à couler et à disparaître à partir de lui . . . (1.61, p. 78). But le pluriel does not vanish or become annihilated despite its mutilated condition' " . . . toujours déportés, décalés, rejetés, troués, ponctués, brisés, enchaînés, toujours à nouveau rattrapés et courbés dans l'usure, mais aussi relancés, dénoués, dissous dans le fond à l'entrée du fond . . ." (1.81, p. 101). Perhaps even le pluriel itself may be victimized by the very differentiation which it has been heralding. However, the theme of regeneration suggested by recurring sexual imagery seems to underscore the vacillating movement of destructionconstruction rather than the negative theme of a nihilistic destruction. Le pluriel incorporates a reference at one point which may also substantiate the "pendulum-theory" of action-reaction: " 'La tendance constante des diverses sphères de la production à s'équilibrer, n'est qu'une réaction contre la destruction continuelle de cet équilibre"

56 (4.64, p. 82). However, the sexual images used by le pluriel merely denote dissemination by their association of language and the male sperm: "germes, semences en nombre innombrable et dont la somme touche la profondeur où le mot 'vous' et la pensée 'vous' se fraye un passage à travers le hasard jusqu'à vous" (4.80, p. 101). Although le pluriel speaks of "sa voix de sexe et d'échange, devenant la force motrice des traductions et des divisions" (1.81, p. 102), the actual reception and fruition of the seeds of language would seem to be relegated to the texts which are being written or alluded to by le pluriel. We are the receivers of its disseminating language. And hence, the vacillating motion of le pluriel from destruction to construction is dependent on the receptivity of other texts to this disseminating activity. Thus, the sexual imagery of Nombres is an integral component of the whole activity of le pluriel. As Derrida has well indicated, "on pourrait reconstituer le réseau qui fait passer les Nombres par les références à toutes les théories atomistes qui furent aussi des théories du sperme." 7 The "atomic theories" are implied by le pluriel's own description of sexual union in an atomic physicist's terminology — "parcourant de nouveau la suite: fission -*• fusion -*• fission —, elle et moi fonctionnant de nouveau dans la cohérence . . . se redoublant, se composant, se neutralisant . . . " (3.63, pp. 80-81). Despite the fusion of sexual climax which seems to be thç fulfillment of sexual desire ("la vieille pente de reproduction", 2.70, p. 88) and the infinite motion of le pluriel ("son sexe commençant à la brûler, à la mouiller, à la faire trembler, et moi de plus en plus ramassé à travers le calcul conduisant encore plus loin que le nombre dressé", 1.85, p. 106), the pendulum must also swing back toward fission or destruction of the apparent unity (q.v. 2.66, p. 83). Besides the affirmation of new life beyond the activity of le pluriel, the sexual imagery of Nombres underscores the oscillating activity of le pluriel between destruction and construction. The activity between the poles of destruction and construction offers continual affirmations of the rebirth of "free movement". This theme of "free movement" is conveyed specifically by the air motif which connotes the freedom and openness of that unfettered realm of espace. Le pluriel itself announces that air heralds a new life heretofore unknown: "Air/C'était bien quelque chose d'entière-

57 ment inconnu et nouveau qui venait de se prononcer" (1, p. 12). And, as Associate Professor Charles G. S. Williams has suggested to me, the muscle motif then underscores the free play of le pluriel in this esthetic space or air. "aussi bien l'utérus, ses muscles, sa dilatation que le coeur qui bat, l'air qui s'en va, l'espace calme et plein dans le fait d'écouter de loin" (4.68, p. 86). And as the image of air becomes associated more and more with empty space (pp. 12 and 13), we are reminded of Mallarmé's own torments in "Azur" as le pluriel considers its own existence: "juste avant le blanc" (1, p. 12). Georges Poulet's thoughts on l'espace might offer an insight once more: "L'Azur est donc ce qui se présente au-delà de son absence, ce qui s'affirme au-delà de ce qui le dénie, ce qui existe audelà de ce qui n'existe pas." 8 L'air, then, seems to represent the uncertainty of a new life which has not been already lived. Le pluriel is concerned with its own "newness" ("je savais qu'un nouveau récit s'était déclenché", 1, p. 12) and with its ability to go beyond what has already been said ("Combien de fois cela s'était-il passé? " 1, p. 12). Taunted by the uncertainty and the challenge-of-innovation represented by the air theme, le pluriel spurns all specific "identities" and has no goal, save that of absolute freedom. Taken to its ultimate activity, le pluriel is continually beyond our grasp, effecting a language which is continually reborn in a life seeking to escape all qualifications of the human mind. Given this situation of le pluriel, Nombres might very well incarnate Claude Mauriac's apparently nihilistic portrayal of a text about nothing written by nobody. 9 Le plurieVs "re-naissance myth" relates the Sisyphus legend by analogy from the human condition to the plight of all vital activity, including that of écriture. Ecriture cannot predicate identities. Yet écriture IS the predicate, the intransitive verb "to be", which must continually attempt to be transitive and yet can only present the elements of linear, logical syllogisms without relating them. It is air which is between these elements, before and behind the very movement of le pluriel: "//Air// Cela se posait s'enfuyait, transparence retenue on ne sait comment" (2.90, p. 112). Air presents that enigmatic openness which precludes any coherent linear activity by le pluriel and which paradoxically offers an affirmation in the possibility of freedom of movement (as in its association with the muscle motif, e.g. 4.48, p. 64) for le pluriel's continual rebirth.

58 B. To re-create and recreate In his review of Théorie d'Ensemble, Jean-Michel Rey comments on the metamorphoses necessitated by the new role of écriture: "Le texte est l'espace intermédiaire (qui relève d'une théâtralité multidimensionelle et différenciée) dans lequel théorie et pratique scripturales s'échangent et se transforment l'une l'autre." 10 This "multi-dimensional and differentiated theatricality", called into play by le pluriel, was previously discussed as an illusory image. However, the "re-naissance myth", which continually accounts for the rebirth of new "identities", is itself part of the Game of "theory and practice" which le pluriel is demonstrating. The interchangeability of texts exemplifies the continually permutating structure of ecn'fwre-in-practice while the reciprocal commentaries of the texts provide introspective theoretical analyses of the protean nature of écriture. Le pluriel is actually recreating while re-creating all these various literary devices which then reveal themselves as illusory values. As we constantly search for "la règle de ce jeu nouveau" (1.49, p. 66), we too are duped by the elusive movement of le pluriel. Perhaps, by realizing our roles as victims of le pluriePs Game, we too will become aware of the necessity to portray language, in Sollers' view, as "le texte . . . [comme] l'oblique d'un jeu numérique et différential." 11 The linear logic of language has determined what we say and how we say it. Hence, le pluriel uses the Game of words to portray an affirmation of a new écriture wherein language is not the mere linear representation of logical predications. The very coherence implied by logic in its syllogisms and predications does not seem to agree with le pluriel's movement toward differentiation. Instead of the inductive methods whereby universal principles are derived through the language of facts, le pluriel seems at times to be expounding the deductive methods of the seventeenth-century Cartesians whereby language proceeds from innate ideas which are intuitively projected as the beginning of a rational discussion. However, le pluriel does not "rationally" develop the identities it creates but portrays them in a poetic association of juxtaposed images wherein the Game of the destruction of linguistic logic is supreme. Is le pluriel's Game of recreating while re-creating merely an affirmation of multiplicity as opposed to unity? The affirmation is much more subtle than that of sheer multiplicity. One must bear in mind

59 that there is a certain collectivity in le pluriel's movement. The spider-web relating the "universe" can be conceived as a spider-web with no beginning and no end. The inter-lacing of the web can barely be seen as its network attempts to reduce the awesome openness of espace. So, the activity of le pluriel's linguistic game might never be seen in its "wholeness". Indeed, " 'la nature de l'illusion est représentée par le nombre un' " (4.88, p. 110). Nevertheless, " 'après une longue accumulation, les choses se révèlent soudainement dans leur inter-relation'" (4.96, p. 119). There may be many disparate elements in the Game. But there is still an amorphous collectivity in that the permutations do constitute the Game. Rey's commentary on Théorie d'Ensemble raises the question of whether there might be some mixture of the theoretical and practical in Nombres. Or might the movement of le pluriel be reduced to the realms of ontology or phenomenology? On the one hand, the Game which seems to be played by le pluriel might be an affirmation of an ontological awareness which the classical Greeks had considered through Homer's portrayal of man as a "play thing of the gods". Although le pluriel'% game might reflect an attitude toward life, we would be distorting Nombres if we were to portray le pluriel'% game as a systematic symbolic philosophy. Maurice Blanchot's dim view of such an interpretation might be pertinent here: "puisque le lecteur se sent en droit d'écarter la lettre pour trouver l'esprit, d'où viennent les ravages de la lecture symbolique, la pire façon de lire un texte littéraire." 12 On the other hand, the actual practical immersion in the activity of le pluriel seems to be a literary experience of an empirical awareness. The art of Robbe-Grillet might offer some enlightening parallels. Le pluriel'% reference to "ces couches stratifiées et accumulées, cellules où étaient marqués les formules filtrées du passé" (2.78, p. 98) describes the very effect of its dialectical form upon someone else who becomes immersed in it. The effect is similar to that which Sollers sees as being produced by Robbe-Grillet's esthetic "indiquant plusieurs sens mais non une direction." 13 Yet perhaps Roland Barthes' term of the "coenesthesia of substance", in reference to "the undifferentiated mass of organic sensation" 14 in Robbe-Grillet's art, might articulate the Game of le pluriel more precisely by accounting for the many views which emanate from le pluriel at various points along its movement. The "coenesthesia of substance",

60 as it seems to operate in le pluriel's Game, portrays multi-dimensional reality as the very life of écriture and hence underscores the Game as an activity of ecn'rwe-in-practice rather than écriture-in-theory. What then is écriture as le pluriel of Nombres puts it into practice? Aside from the typography of words in a poetic rather than a linear, narrating fashion, Nombres has been set in motion with numerals, Chinese ideograms, mathematical formulas, phonetic symbols, and even vectors. Perhaps all these figures share the same role that is ascribed to numbers in this selection used by le pluriel: " 'Le nombre est une traduction de l'espace'/'La conception d'un ordre exprimé par des classifications numériques entraîne la représentation d'un dispositif spatial' " (2.70, p. 87). This exploration of the nature of espace seems to be the task of the "elements" of le pluriel. The alphabet of Western culture seems to be insufficient in considering spatial relationships since "entre deux lettres, la noirceur du fond apparaît" (1.21, p. 35). Le pluriel is concerned with the inability of this alphabet to "translate" or "articulate" the world: "je me souvenais que nous étions pris les uns et les autres dans l'alphabet désormais pour nous dépassé . . . J'avais maintenant à saisir et orienter des événements non représentables . . . " (2.22, p. 35). Hence, le pluriel poetically unites various integers and images from Eastern cultures, the scientific, philosophical, and mathematical realms to embody Jakobson's linguistic principle of "the poetic function [which] projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination". 15 Indeed the poetics of Nombres is extremely eclectic. However, the function of its individual elements seems to be to contrast with each other in order to explore the nature of language itself. Le pluriel speaks of the role of numerals, which may be extended to the other images used in Nombres, in creating "le nouveau texte sans fin ni commencement" (3.99, p. 121). This infinite continuum permits one to explore the deficiencies and strengths of our language as it is compared with non-linear forms of communication: 'Les nombres servent à figurer les formes circonstancielles du total'/'ils ont pour rôle essentiel non pas de permettre des additions, mais de lier entre eux divers modes de divisions valables pour tel ou tel groupement'/- principe de contrôle, de masquage,

61 procès différé, détourné, avec réversion et rétroaction, glissements — 'au lieu de servir à mesurer, les nombres servent à opposer et à assimiler'. (3.99, p. 121). While the geometric repetition of the cycle of four presentations within le pluriel underscores the flowing movement of language continually increasing its magnitude, both in vocabulary and in theme, the poetic style of infusing various enigmatic images to break up the linear, logical constructs of a "narrative" tends to break up the flow of language and expand in all directions through any association, whether rationally developed or not: "Il y a une rotation qui ne peut être à la fois celle de l'ensemble et la vôtre, une façon de se frayer un chemin à travers les noms connus et appris, de retarder le flot, de renverser et de diviser ce qui est là, s'étale, s'annule et s'oublie . . . " (4.56, p. 73). At times, the vectors themselves point in various directions (1.45, p. 61) to emphasize the implications of a developed typographic statement, thus suggesting that the linear language of Western culture does not always mean what it says. When language attempts to articulate something, reality always escapes it. As Derrida himself remarked about the art of employing non-linguistic integers to convey this truism, "l'innombrable comme 'foule' nombreuse n'est en rien étranger à l'essence du nombre". 1 6 Similarly, the unnameable is the very task of linguistic expression. Thus, as opposed to Sarraute's view that "pour l'écrivain, l'oeuvre doit se suffire à elle-même, il n'a rien à y ajouter", 17 le pluriel of Nombres suggests an affirmation of écriture as a being which is more than the sum of its parts. Ecriture must go beyond itself in relating all systems of communication in order to reduce that inexpressible realm to a minimum. In the example of le pluriePs movement through Nombres, we observe that écriture can no longer be self-sufficient. Écriture, then, is the attempt to not only project many systems of communication in a Jakobsonian "axis of combination" but also to open up language into these tangential pursuits of other media of expression. Indeed, the "work" itself disappears as écriture infinitely pursues various manifestations of language. And, as le pluriel of Nombres manifests, "par conséquent, rien ne peut arrêter la dévoration à l'oeuvre dans les cellules et l'air" (4.44, p. 60). The singularity of a "work" is

62 impossible since a "work" cannot constitute itself. Writing does not become an object of art or a practical attempt at communication among men. But writing is an exploration or communication among men. This is the importance of the Game which is played in Nombres. Since "'les choses, en effet, ne se mesurent pas'" (3.99, p. 121), the task of le pluriel is to contrast language in various environments and to portray its "value" for articulation. Le pluriel does not think that "reading" words is enigmatic: "Naturellement, je pouvais lire la signification des mots, leur enchaînement, leur intention déclarée et sourde. Mais rien ne sortait vraiment de ce dessin sans commune mesure avec ce qui avait lieu en réalité plus loin que mes yeux" (3.7, p. 20). It is the movement of the language itself which has had to be researched and played with in Nombres. Yet the irony which displaces the Game beyond all criticism is that language is speaking about itself. How reliable can the opinions of le pluriel be? The whole Game of Nombres might be a tongue-incheek "exploration" of linguistic certainty, which can at best only be an approximation. Self-destruction may be the only task of le pluriel in Nombres. Hence, the critic can be shrugged aside with a whimsical air if one accepts that le pluriel is resigned to total destruction "avec le désir bien net de vous détruire et de vivre au coeur de ce trait" (4.8, p. 23). However, this destruction of external beings might very well be part of the destruction-construction motif previously developed. Le pluriel creates a myth for écriture whereby the very life of external beings creates energy for the continual movement of écriture. Outside beings are only destroyed as separate identities while their "life" becomes absorbed in the study of language, contributing to the very activity which is now proper to écriture. Continual progressive movement, unhindered by the constituting identities of classical time and place, is the very essence of the living body of le pluriel, and by extension, of écriture: "l'être du corps est une énergétique inlassable qui n'a pas d'autre but que d'empêcher la mémoire de se constituer afin de faire toujours du neuf " (1.73, p. 92). The analogy to a living body portrays the infinitely renewable life cycle which suggests the infinite task of écriture. This infinite task is a logocentricity which involves "le recommencement global" (2.46, p. 62) and "quelque chose de constamment ranimé et inapaisé" (1.37, p. 54). The

63 "universe" must be re-created by écriture since, as Sollers once said in an essay on the nature of poetry, écriture "est ce qui met le monde en forme de comme." 18 The "universe" is being transformed into écriture and hence becomes an integral part of écriture % exploration of linguistic media.

C.

Transubstantiation

Le pluriel is especially aware of this effort to translate the movement of the "universe" into a written production. The word "production" rather than "product" is used here in order to convey the portrayal of the amorphous continuity of life which seems to resist a static linguistic embodiment. Hence, the exploration being conducted by le pluriel of Nombres might be better expressed as a sort of déstructuration , whereby le pluriel takes life from the universe and injects it into a verbal structure. This dé-structuration seems to be based on Julia Kristeva's notion of sémiologie: "La sémiologie dont nous nous réclamons considérant le texte comme une production etj comme une transformation, cherchera à formaliser la structuration plutôt que la structure." 19 However, le pluriel implements this sémiologie rather than talks about it. The dé-structuration is an actual projection of the seeds of life (semi) from the "universe" into the linguistic word (logos) while demonstrating the active task which Derrida ascribes to écriture: "travail itinérant de la trace, produisant et non parcourant sa route de la trace qui trace, de la trace qui se fraye elle-même son chemin." 20 Hence, since le pluriel has life and procreates, it is not hesitant about affirming its ability to produce or transform the living "universe": "Je pouvais cependant transformer ce qui se passait" (1.77, p. 97). This living Word implies an affirmation of the Marxist superiority of materialism over idealism. As le pluriel thinks for itself and perpetuates its own existence, it becomes a specific entity with no need for recourse to amorphous thoughts or nebulous ideals. Le pluriel embodies "la nouvelle idole de fer" (1.25, p. 39) as a tangible example of sémiologie in praxis as opposed to an academic discussion of the linguistic principles implied in sémiologie. From the very "seeds" of trans-linguistic signs, le pluriel constructs and builds a

64 non-linear microcosm in Nombres whose pattern of development cannot be traced in a linear or rational fashion to a macrocosm — "ce qui peut se lire de bas en haut comme le rien se transformant en rien: trace -*• schéma -*• marque -»• dessin" (2.74, p. 94). Articulating a dialectical materialism of the text, le pluriel progresses through the morass of theoretical and rational statements about the nature of écriture by the power of the paradox to an affirmation of the Wordin-the-act-of-becoming. As le pluriel considers various trans-linguistic systems from the physiological DNA particles to the Oriental ideograms, the praxis of a sémiologie utilizing trans-linguistic signs becomes more and more intriguing. Oriental ideograms are especially attractive because of the creative potential (cf. Enclosures 2, 3, and 4) which they offer to a Western culture stereotyped by logocentric concerns. This practical linguistic exploration is conducted by le pluriel in a microcosm of pronouns. As Jean Ricardou has recently noted, Nombres, as well as Le Parc, is especially characterized by "la parfaite absence du moindre nom propre". 21 All the personal pronouns come into the Game of le pluriel as each pronoun seems to take on the same significance of the number in light of the previously mentioned lexical definition of nombre as "unité, réunion de plusieurs unités, ou fractions d'unité". The plural çronouns portray the awareness of le pluriels diversified existence while the singular pronouns convey the illusory needs for temporary identity. In effect, these many permutations of pronouns to convey the movement of le pluriel might even reflect what Paul Kurz, in studying the consistencies of "new novelists", describes as "das Bewusstsein einer transsubjectiven Wirklichkeit, eine neue Hinwendung zum Objectiven". 22 The infinite mirror-like reflections of this colloquium of various pronouns not only destroy the individual identities of proper nouns but also create a "super-subjective reality" which is beyond the consciousness of a single person but which is proper to the very work of le pluriel. Michel Butor's study of the "architectures" and the "superpositions des pronoms" is especially pertinent here. Butor's portrayal of the complex horizontal and vertical relationships implemented by the pronouns could be a commentary on the very structure effected by the pronouns in Nombres, "verticalement, c'est-à-dire ses relations avec son auteur, son lecteur, le monde au milieu duquel elle [la

65 matière romanesque] nous apparaît, et horizontalement, c'est-à-dire les relations des personnages qui la constituent, l'intériorité même de ceux-ci." 23 Hence, the analogy of le pluriel to a web returns. The use of pronouns provides a series of "inter-personal" relationships both within Nombres and within the "universe" which is beyond its covers. The outside is intrigued by the ambiguous use of any of the pronouns because le pluriel is speaking to or about "texts" which are both internal and external to it. The debates among the "persons" of le pluriel is necessarily an entangling web of relationships. And we are very much part of the activity of life unfolding before us.

D. On the Shoulders of Giants It would be naive to consider Nombres as revolutionary to the history of Ideas. Indeed, le pluriel does refer to "ces représentations anciennes" (2.50, p. 66) and to its continuity with the tradition of Thought: "le lieu que je quittais n'était pas celui de l'histoire passée: répétition lourde, achevée, monde des vieux outils, des vieux gestes, des luttes limitées, des couples tassés dans la peur, des satisfactions achevées, tassées, bloquées jusqu'au coeur" (1.73, p. 91). It would be myopie to view Nombres as anything but a work standing on the shoulders of giants. The pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraklitus, had postulated the theory of Becoming as the only reality. The 17th-century esthetic of communication-as-communion is one of the basic tenets of le plwrieVs movement. And Derrida brilliantly exposes Rousseau's awareness for a sémiologie in the 18th century: La langue, la passion, la société ne sont ni du nord ni du sud. Elles sont le mouvement de supplémentarité par lequel les pôles se substituent tour à tour l'un à l'autre: par lequel l'accent s'entame dans l'articulation, se diffère en s'espaçant. La différence locale n'est que la différence entre le désir et le plaisir. Elle ne concerne donc pas seulement la diversité des langues, elle n'est pas seulement un critère de la classification linguistique, elle est l'origine des langues. Rousseau ne le déclare pas mais nous avons vu qu'il le décrit. 24 Even some myths propagated by the faith of Christian philosophy are

66 implied in le pluriel's adyssey. The Incarnation (or the Word-madeFlesh) and the continual re-living of this phenomenon in the Mass (where Transubstantiation occurs with each celebration) are both predecessors to the transmutation of the "universe" by le pluriel. Perhaps the inexhaustible fervor of le pluriels celebration of the literary Word (in all its many linguistic realizations) might even be compared to a zealous religious devotion to the reality of the literary Word. Nevertheless, the themes of continuity in time and place are expecially reminiscent of Einstein's contribution to the history of Ideas. Although le pluriel does often seem to be "récitant sans y penser le texte ancien" (4.24, p. 37), the literary equivalent of Einstein's formulaic presentation of the metamorphous inter-relationships of energy and mass is portrayed by le pluriels very theme of le stade du miroir where all the possible "identities" are fused so that no single "entity" is recognizable any longer. The destruction-construction motif also has connotations of the fission-fusion action which maintains the equilibrium of Einstein's relativity equation. And the "centrifugal energy" which is generated by le pluriels outward movement toward differentiation suggests Einstein's mass and energy coefficients. The very energy displaced by mass might be compared to the impetus which le pluriel takes on once it has "unlocked" the static concepts of linear history and enclosed location. Similar to Einstein's discovery of the constancy of the speed of light whereby mass and energy could be depicted in a continuous flow, le pluriels déclenchement (which Derrida has interpreted to simultaneously mean an opening, a talk, an ability to work, AND an unlocking) 25 may open up the realm of écriture to all linguistic systems or "texts" in the universe: " 'Toutes ces portes ont une seule serrure et il n'y a qu'une seule petite ouverture pour introduire la clé, et elle n'est signalée que par la trace de la clé . . . Elle [la dernière porte] contient, ouvre et ferme les six directions de l'espace' " (3.15, p. 30). Hence, the spaceless "universe" (i.e. one not contained by linear time or place), which was heralded by the physicist Einstein, becomes the subject proper to le pluriel, and by analogy to l'écriture itself: "L'écoulement et le flux qui maintenant m'entraînaient venaient en effect d'un échange des temps comme superposés" (1.5, p. 17). The very phenomenon of the self-awareness of a literary text also has historical precedence, at least theoretically. Mallarmé, the literary

67 Surrealists, Blanchot, and Robbe-Grillet have all contributed to the appearance of le pluriel. While Mallarmé postulated, at the peak of the 19th century Symbolist movement, that literature might not be capable of effecting any rapport or communication whatsoever — whether it be between men or epistemologically, the Surrealists dared to transcend the linear definitions of time and place to portray the unthinkable. Maurice Blanchot then portrays the necessity for "une parole vraiment plurielle" 26 in order that écriture might mimic man's only possible recourse for knowledge in discontinuity. Roland Barthes has also been concerned with le pluriel from his first book in 1953. 27 Yet, in the development of the thought of Barthes, the full implications of le pluriel appear only in S/Z wherein le pluriel is portrayed as accounting for its own existence, independent of any "critic" or "readers" 's appraisal: "il n'y a pas d'objet du récit: le récit ne traite que de lui-même: le récit se raconte". 28 And Robbe-Grillet's weaving of the "literal vision" of words in such works as La Jalousie and La Maison de Rendez-vous has added another dimension to the life of a literary text. This short résumé does not pretend to exhaust the literary esthetics to which le pluriel of Nombres has striking similarities. Instead, it is hoped that one might view Nombres, not as an anomaly in itself or as a new literary enterprise, but rather as a representation of an écriture which has developed throught the works of other literary and "historical" giants. Although le pluriel insists that "il était impossible de retourner" (1.5, p. 17), we should still recognize that le pluriel is standing on the shoulders of giants. The importance of Nombres is then derived from the manner in which these philosophical and literary theories are "re-formulated". What appears before us is an ecological recycling of these theories in order to preclude a pollution of trite thought in our contemporary sensibility. Le pluriel is especially aware of its task to open up the traditional classifications of linear historical events to an awareness of some greater text: "puisqu'il s'agit finalement de déduire les probabilités d'événements compliqués en partant de celles d'événements simples et du classement d'événements compliqués" (4.68, p. 85). As opposed to Mrs. Lawall's portrayal of the clôture of the language of a literary work for the "critics of consciousness",29 le pluriel of Nombres evokes an écriture which expands its scope from a literary sense of writing to any system of graphic communication. Thus

68 écriture adopts its prophetic role in exploring the linguistic possibilities of an ever-expanding epistemological "universe". On the one hand, le pluriel indicates the impossibility of écriture's articulating and thus "knowing" the "universe" at once: "j'écris véritablement ce qui passe, et bien sûr il est impossible d'être là en totalité, cela se fait de biais, sans arrêt" (4, p. 16). On the other hand, le pluriel, by analogy to écriture, affirms the necessity of attempting to encompass this living "universe" through linguistic exploration: "cependant, il importe de tout comprendre dans ces calculs, de tout ramener ici de façon cyclique — 'union dénombrable d'événements incompatibles' " (4. 68, p. 86). Thus, le pluriel portrays the challenge of écriture.

E. The prophetic Word But Nombres also implies a new consideration of the nature of écriture. The very eclectic style of le pluriel suggests that the "form" of écriture takes on supra-literary "communication" media. While Nombres might be "located" horizontally in a diachronic approach to the history of ideas, it is also a product of a vertical sensitivity to the plight of écriture. Barthes' concepts of parole and style in Le Degré zéro de l'écriture are especially helpful in appreciating the horizontal and vertical dimensions which intersect in the production of a text of écriture. The vertical dimension, sometimes referred to as the synchronic approach to écriture, is especially explored by le pluriel. As Barthes portrayed it, "le style . . . n'a qu'une dimension verticale, il plonge dans le souvenir clos de la personne, il compose son opacité à partir d'une certaine expérience de la matière".30 The problem is then the translation of this epistemological awareness into a "linguistic" reality. This is the meeting of parole and style which le pluriel demonstrates in Nombres. The infinite diversity of the linguistic media utilized and alluded to by le pluriel offers a new realm for écriture. What is especially intriguing is le pluriel s affinity with the Oriental ideogram. The ideogram opens a new cultural arena for Occidental écriture. Geographical culture now breaks down as evidenced by the lack of specific references to the quotations used by le pluriel in Nombres so that the

69 infinite exploration of écriture might not be hindered by the limitations of spatial definition. The location of time or space is obliterated by the ideogram wherein FenoQosa (q.v. Enclosure 4) realized in 1935 that "like nature, the Chinese words are alive and plastic, because thing and action are not formally separated."31 There is no need for linear reading on a horizontal or vertical axis. The ideogram is a single unit, capturing the oriental notions of fluidity in a hermetic and complex typography unfamiliar to Western culture. For example, the ideogram nagai, meaning "long", is formed by markings which hardly imply length to the Western mind (q.v. Enclosure 2). Yet another ideogram might even be a pictogram whose very formation portrays the concept (q.v. Figure 1, Enclosure 3). The very organization of fluid ideographic space offers a whole new concept for écriture. Fosco Maraini portrays the complex awareness of an ideographic sensibility, such as is reflected in the ideograms "Ju", "Ai", and "Hime" (q.v. Figures 2, 3, and 4 of Enclosure 3): A growing complexity leads us to asymmetric dynamic ideograms - ones that whirl, jump, swim, sprout, and seem to carry our whole body along in a sudden desire to dance. How far away seems the static territory of straight lines, vertical or horizontal, of squares and their relatives. It is like discovering a new dimension to reality and experience.32 Apart from the visual beauty and suggestiveness (q.v. Enclosure 4) of ideographic space, there may still be some truth to Ezra Pound's observation that "the whole Occident is still in crass ignorance of the Chinese art of verbal sonority". 33 The Oriental consciousness for the sound of their language must also be considered in appreciating the full implications of the ideogram. Certainly the political innovation of Sino-Western diplomacy coupled with studies of the Oriental cultures such as Roland Barthes' l'Empire des Signes makes the ideogram an attractive concern for those of us intrigued by the search for a sémiologie. In the cross-cultural, multi-media presentation by le pluriel of Nombres, a dynamic portrayal of a sémiologie takes place. The very movement of le pluriel evokes an écriture which can never be static or self-constituted as structuralist critics have often portrayed literature.

70 This semiological portrayal of écriture recalls Blanchot's portrayal of Claudel's view of "present" time: "le présent pour lui n'est pas un point, il est le constant épanouissement circulaire de l'être en perpétuelle vibration". 34 So it is with the absence of spatial limitations of time AND place upon écriture. The very dramatic life of le pluriel in Nombres demands continuous metamorphoses in order to listen to the heartbeat of life from afar: "aussi bien l'utérus, les muscles, sa dilatation que le coeur qui bat, l'air qui s'en va, l'espace calme et -plein dans le fait d'écouter de loin" (4.68, p. 86). The very irony of "une dernière fois", which occurs some four times within five lines in the "final" remark of le pluriel in Nombres can now be understood in light of an intertextualité in motion. Le pluriel portrays the reciprocity necessitated by the appearance of a "text" and recalled by Sollers in an essay a few years ago thus: "Le livre (L'écriture qui se fait aussitôt lecture) est cette crise centrale du dédoublement: le monde est comme lui, il est comme le monde". 35 Then the very activity of a literary sémiologie, as demonstrated by le pluriel of Nombres is to continuously transform itself across the multi-dimensional "texts" of the universe as the intermediary to this dédoublement. Thus, we return to the Lucretian cosmology, as the morphemes and phonemes of various linguistic systems become the "seeds innumerable in number . . . rushing on countless courses through an unfathomable universe under the impulse of perpetual motion". Perhaps the morphemes and phonemes of a sémiologie will impregnate a virgin "text" and hence corroborate the Lucretian suspicion cited earlier that "it is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created and that all those particles of matter outside are accomplishing nothing". A sémiologie has become not only an inter-cultural one. Its taunting alternatives to actively write or be passively written are not restricted to a Frenchspeaking people. All political and social barriers fall asunder as the openness of undiscovered "texts" intrigues and challenges us to open other avenues of exploration and bring each of our personal cultural heritages to bear upon "those particles of matter outside". Such is the poetic which Nombres portrays as the activity of a literary sémiologie.

71 NOTES 1. Philippe Sollers, Logiques (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 115. 2. Maurice Nadeau, Le roman français depuis la guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), p. 186. 3. Q.v. Jacques Derrida, "La dissémination, I et II", Critique, XXV, Nos. 261 and 262 (March and February 1969). 4. Derrida, "La dissémination, I", p. 113. 5. Ibid., p. 111. 6. Roland Barthes, Le Degré zéro de l'écriture (Paris: Éditions Gonthier, 1964), pp. 66-67. 7. Derrida, "La dissémination, I", p. 113. 8. Georges Poulet, Études sur le temps humain, II: La Distance intérieure (Paris: Pion, 1952), p. 301. 9. Claude Mauriac, l'Alittérature Contemporaine (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1969), p. 337. 10. Jean-Michel Rey, "La Scène du texte", Critique, XXV, No. 271 (December 1969), 1066. 11. Philippe Sollers, "Survol/Rapports (Blocs)/Conflit", Tel Quel, No. 36 (Winter 1969), p. 8. 12. Maurice Blanchot, l'Entretien Infini (Paris: Nouvelle Revue française, 1969), p. 387. 13. Philippe Sollers, L'intermédiaire (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1963), p. 151. 14. Roland Barthes, "Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet", translation Richard Howard, in Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet (New York: Grove Press, Incorporated, 1965), p. 15. 15. Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics", in Essays on the Language of Literature, ed. Seymour Chatman and Samuel R. Levin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), p. 303. 16. Derrida, "La dissémination, II", p. 245. 17. Nathalie Sarraute, "La Littérature Aujourd'hui - II", Tel Quel, No. 9 (Spring 1962), p. 51. 18. Philippe Sollers, "Critique de la Poésie", Critique, XXII, No. 226 (March 1966), 219. 19. Julia Kristeva, "Problèmes de la structuration du texte", in Théorie d'ensemble, ed. Philippe Sollers et al. (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 300. 20. Jacques Derrida, Écriture et la différence (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), p. 317. 21. Jean Ricardou, Pour une théorie du nouveau roman (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971), p. 245. 22. Paul K. Kurz, Uber Moderne Literatur - Standorte und Deutungen, I, (Frankfurt [Germany]: Josef Knecht, 1967), p. 28: ["the awareness of a super-subjective reality, a new recourse to objectivity".! 23. Michel Butor, Répertoire II (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1964), p. 72. 24. Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, and Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1967), p. 378. Quoted by permission of the publishers. 25. Derrida, "La dissémination, I", p. 99. 26. Blanchot, p. 116. 27. Barthes, Le Degré zéro, p. 54: "ce que la modernité donne à lire dans la pluralité de ses écritures, c'est l'impasse de .sa propre Histoire."

72 28. Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), p. 219. 29. Sarah N. Lawall, Critics of Consciousness - The Existential Structures of Literature (Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 17: "For the critics of consciousncss, the language of a literary work is complete: it means only what it says in terms of its own system and does not hint at anything beyond the system latent in the work". 30. Barthes, Le Degré zéro, p. 15. 31. Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry (New York: Arrow Editions, 1936), p. 21. 32. Fosco Maraini, Japan — Patterns of Continuity (Tokyo: Kodansha International Limited, 1971), p. 129. 33. Ezra Pound, Commentary on Fenollosa's The Chinese Written Character, p. 37. 34. Maurice Blanchot, Le Livre à venir (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), p. 89. 35. Sollers, "Critique de la Poésie", p. 219.

ENCLOSURE (1)

Figure I {Nombres, p. 22) 2

'si/ I 4

Figure II (,Nombres, p. 63)

\ \ I (3) f

/ \

/ \

From Japan-Patterns of Continuity by Fosco Maraini, copyright © 1971 by Kodansha International Ltd., Tokyo.

75 ENCLOSURE (3)

Figure 1: Kasa, mng. "umbrella" A pictogram

Figure 2: Ju, mng. "Confucianism" The complexity of Japanese calligraphy.

Fosco Maraini captures the significance of the characters in Figures 3 and 4 which "suggest flow and movement not by formal and literal statement, nor by meaning, but through delicate balances in asymmetry, through the harmonious interplay of slants and gently curving lines that taper into nothing. Both characters have more than one center out of which lines gush and dot and explode and fly. There are legs posed as if in a dance, and scarves that threaten to whirl off in the ideographic wind". From Japan-Patterns of Continuity, copyright © 1971 by Kodansha International Ltd., Tokyo.

76 ENCLOSURE (4) The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry by Ernest Fenollosa, ed. Ezra Pound (New York, Arrow Editions, 1936), pp. 40-41. [Fenoilosa left the notes unfinished; I am proceeding in ignorance and by conjecture. Tht primitive pictures were "squared" at a certain time. E.P.]

h

m

MOON

RAYS

sun disc with (be HICKIfl t tWH»

v., , feathers * h l + flying Bright, tidi note on p. 4a. Upper right, abbreviated picture of wings; lower, b i r d * to fly. Roth F. and Morrison note that it is •bark tailed bird h r

LIKE woman

I**

PLUM tree •+•

crooked female breast

mouth

PURE

SNOW

sun + azure sky Sky possibly con» taining tent idea. Author has dodged a "pure" containing sun +• broom

rain -r broom cloud roof or d o i h over falling drops Sweeping motion of snow; broomlike appearance of snow

PK m

FLOWERS

RESEMBLE

man •+• spoon under plants abbreviation, probably actual representation of blossoms. Flowers at height of man's head. Two forms of character in F.'s two copies

man +• try » does what it can toward

S

vU

BRIGHT sun

+ fire

knife mouth

CAN

ADMIRE

GOLD

DISC

mouth hook Ilupposeit might eves be fish-pole or sheltered

( i t m IN» ICÙA)

Present form resembles king and gem; but archaic might be balance ana melting-pots

to erect gold + sun kg» (running)

fire

heart + girl + descending through two

Ju GARDEN to blend + p u e , ia midst o i court

HIGH ABOVE

STARS sun bright Bright here gaini; t o o r i g i n : fire over moving legs of a man

TURN carriage

+ carriage tenth of cubit (?) Bent knuckle or b e n t o b j e c t revolving round pivot

# JEWEL

WEEDS

FRAGRANT

king aod dot

plants cover knife I.e. g r o w i n g things that must be destroyed

Specifically given in Morrison .ts fragrance from a distance. M.arul F. seem to duTer as to signincAiice of s u n u n d c * rowing tree c a u s e of f r a grance)

Plain man + dot — dog

G

THE AUDIENCE - LA CHANSON DE

A study of Roland Barthes' Le Degré zéro de l'écriture

ROLAND

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.

Historical Immanence

81

II.

Creative Eclecticism

82

III. The Crisis of Ecriture

85

IV. Style and Langue

89

V.

Toward a criticologie1

VI. Footnotes

91 92

81 Emerging from the widely popularized rhetorical debates with Raymond Picard as the exponent of French criticologie 1 for the seventies, Roland Barthes has continued to develop his critical theories to produce perhaps his most provoking work yet in S/Z. But the aura surrounding Barthes as the representative of anti-"university criticism" has perhaps caused some students to "paraphrase him, use his terminology, and cease to read carefully the text they are trying to explain." 2 Even many professional critics use the term — "le degré zéro de l'écriture" - as a cliché for the single goal of contemporary écriture. For example, by reducing the work Le Degré zéro de l'écriture to "a dazzling piece of argumentation", 3 Laurent Lesage seems to succomb to the very rhetoric which he readily and impatiently ascribes to Barthes. Perhaps it would be helpful to return to Barthes' first work to understand some of his basic distinctions which are presupposed in his current critical direction.

I. Historical Immanence First of all, we should realize that the critical thought of Barthes has certainly evolved from his initial Marxist theories, through the anthropological structuralism of Lévi-Strauss, the linguistic theories of Saussure and Jakobson, the neo-Freudian psychology of Lacan, to Chomsky's transformational linguistics and Kristeva's intertextualité. To reduce M. Barthes' critical thought today to his critical position in 1953 would be oversimplified. Yet there are many important notions in Le Degré zéro de l'écriture which would make it not only a decisive contribution to the development of critical thought but also a pertinent commentary in the literature of our age. Let us situate the literary and critical moment of the appearance of Le Degré zéro. Although the work was first published as a whole in 1953, substantial portions appeared in the magazine Combat in 1947 and in 1950. The literary scene in France was still recovering from the effects of World War II. Robbe-Grillet and Claude Simon had not yet published any novels. In this respect, Pierre Daix would later say in retrospect: "Le grand mérite de Roland Barthes est, sans nul doute, de l'avoir décélé au moment de la public du premier roman de Robbe-Grillet, Les Gommes, en 1953, c'est-à-dire, pour fixer

82 les idées, avant même que naisse la formation 'nouveau roman'." 4 Daix may be a bit extravagant in his situation of Barthes' critical influence. Yet certainly Barthes' critical talents were to become first acclaimed in his theory of the optical vision of Robbe-Grillet in "Littérature objective: Alain Robbe-Grillet".5 Robbe-Grillet would even go on to develop Barthes' notion of the literally organic unity of a work and to artistically postulate anew a mannerist dissociation of sensibility: "Le regard est essentiellement chez Robbe-Grillet une conduite purificatrice, la rupture d'une solidarité, fut-elle douleureuse, entre l'homme et les objets". 6 But I am drifting away from the historical situation of Le Degré zéro. Let us return to the critical moment of 1947-1950. M. Barthes' first article in Combat appears a short time after J. P. Sartre's Qu' est-ce que la littérature? which opted, among many things, for a social and political role for the writer of prose and coined the term of "littérature engagée". Susan Sontag suggests that M. Sartre's thesis is Barthes' specific adversary in Le Degré zéro J Even the format of Barthes' presentation suggests a comparison to M. Sartre's work in that Le Degré zéro also progresses from a definition of écriture through a situational development of the historical moment of écriture to a prognosis of the écriture of the future. 8 However, Barthes seems to expand upon M. Sartre's theory rather than simply to oppose it as Ms. Sontag suggests. Although this comparison may be interesting in situating Le Degré zéro historically, Barthes does develop his own thought in refining M. Sartre's littérature engagée and in consonance with the latter's earlier theory of l'écriture blanche suggested in his review of Camus' l'Etranger.

II. Creative Eclecticism Before discussing the creativity of Barthes' thesis, it would be helpful to understand the importance of the influence of Blanchot, Saussure, and Marx in this early stage of Barthian thought. Maurice Blanchot's philosophy of a domain for écriture which spurns history and demands life for itself was especially developed in "La Littérature et le droit à la mort". Strongly influenced by Heidegger, Blanchot situates the literary work thus: "Mais, à réaliser le vide, on crée une

83 oeuvre, et l'oeuvre, née de la fidélité à la mort, n'est finalement plus capable de mourir et, à celui qui a voulu se préparer une mort sans histoire, elle n'apporte que la dérision de l'immortalité". 9 Both Blanchot and Sartre were predecessors to Barthes' notion of "le degré zéro". Barthes may have coined the phrase, yet the idea rightfully belongs to others. As we shall see, Barthes' contributions are the distinctions he makes to arrive at the same conclusions as his predecessors. Lastly, we must acknowledge the influences of Marx and Saussure here. Politically affiliated with the Marxist party in France during his early years, Barthes utilized many Marxist terms in a literary context. Perhaps the popularity of Marxism in France led him to opt for the literary "revolution" he espouses in Le Degré zéro. However, the political and historical overtones of many of his Marxist expressions seem to make them stereotyped clichés today. For example, Barthes neatly classifies 17th, 18th and early 19th-century (until about 1850) French literature as a product of a "bourgeois" temperament. Hence, "to use the adjective to cover so much is to run the risk of emptying it of all its meaning". 10 Perhaps Barthes was seeking a practical rapprochement between politics and écriture through the implementation of Marxist terminology in Le Degré zéro. However, what is ironically achieved is a style which is burdened by the very prior associations in language which leads him to postulate his theory: Although Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de Linguistique Générale was first published in 1916, his linguistic influence is keenly present in Barthes' operational view of dualism, in linguistics and in critical theory. While Barthes' propagation of Saussure's principles is much more evident in the 1965 publication of Éléments de Sémiologie, the basic distinctions of signe as well as parole and langage can be directly attributed to Saussure. Suffice it to say that Saussure's thought is an integral part of Le Degré zéro. I should explain here that this presentation of the influences on Barthian thought is necessary for an understanding of his contribution to the development of criticism with the introduction of this new sense of écriture. Although M. Barthes may not agree to my awareness of his debt to traditional thought, I entitled this study "La Chanson de Roland" because, just as the epic is indebted to the historicity of its genre while aspiring to a presentation of magnitude, so Barthes'

84 Le Degré zéro de l'écriture is a product of its historical moment while aspiring to revolutionize literary thought. Let us proceed to consider its aspirations. After loosely tracing the fate of literature from its critical moment in the 1850's, through its "death" at the hand of Mallarmé, to its successor — "les écritures neutres", 11 M. Barthes notes in his preface that Le Degré zéro de l'écriture "ne s'agit que d'une Introduction à ce que pourrait être une Histoire de l'Écriture" (p. 12). Lest I become involved in the problem of the intentional fallacy, it should be noted that Barthes has yet to write this history of Écriture which this essay was to introduce. Hence, I will consider Le Degré zéro as complete in itself although a further elaboration of his views on the history of literature prior to 1850 possibly would have expanded on his apparently oversimplified dismissal of French Pre-classicism as "une problématique de la langue" (p. 49). Perhaps because he merely sees the linguistic or syntactical plight of French literature, Barthes chooses to ignore a comprehensive development of French literary history. It seems inverted though to introduce a study of "l'Histoire de l'Écriture" with the contemporary setting. While Barthes espouses an esthetic which seems to escape the implications of the historical moment, 12 he imposes his "anti-historical" approach on his supposed literary predecessors who in fact were products of their historical moments. Yet Barthes' "anti-historical" concept stems from the Marxist portrayal of "history" as social progression and does not pretend to reconstruct the diachronic setting for écriture. Perhaps "les textes de l'écriture automatique pourraient être justiciables de la 'nouvelle critique' " 1 3 of Barthes. However, we must recognize that Barthes is not seeking a critique totale which evaluates a literary work as a product of its historical time, place, and author as well as a timeless contribution to the History of Ideas. He rather seems to prefer an esthetic which is aware of itself and which is directed from without to within, i.e. its concern is an introverted one as opposed to the extroverted, communication-as-communion esthetic of the 17th century. Structurally, Barthes divides his essay into two parts. The first is concerned with defining écriture and identifying the plight of the écrivain. The second part is concerned with the development of the new situation of the écrivain in an anti-historical environment with Marxist overtones. On the one hand, the first part progresses from a

85 discussion of the nature of écriture through a presentation of political writing and the genre of the novel to an argument of the possibility of poetry. The social plight of the writer recurs throughout these presentations as Barthes develops his adaptation of M. Sartre's littérature engagée. On the other hand, the second part of the essay begins with Barthes' own identification of l'écriture bourgeoise to move through a discussion of the individuality of style to several arguments for the neutral ground of a "littérature nouvelle" (p. 76) which becomes for him "l'utopie du langage" (p. 76).

III. The Crisis of Écriture Beginning with Saussure's bifurcation of language into langue and parole, Barthes seeks to identify écriture as a product of the dialectical meeting between the individual style of the writer and the linguistic capabilities of a speech community {langue). Suggesting the neat dualism of Hegel, he goes on to metaphorically represent the horizontal nature of langue by virtue of its identity with society and the vertical aspect of style by virtue of its association between thought and the written word. While langue is the embodiment of all the social connotations and prior experiences which seem to predestine the form of the writer's product, style contains all the uniqueness and individuality of the writer himself. Indeed, "Roland Barthes lui-même est le premier à souligner dans Le Degré zéro de l'écriture ce qu'il y a d'humeur personnelle, biologique, dans le 'style'". 1 4 Écriture then is the result of the interaction of langue and style. Literature, as Barthes understands it, is the great body or collection of all these meetings between langue and style. Nevertheless, this three-dimensional view of creative form seems to be one of the important contributions of this work. Indeed, "instead of the common sense dualism of language (social property) and style (individual decision), Barthes proposes the triad of language, style, and 'writing' ", 1 5 The crisis for the writer then is that he is caught up in the dialectic of form which basically reiterates the timeless problem of human freedom. Society, as the keeper of all the implications of langue, threatens the originality of the creative genius: "l'écriture,

86 libre à ses débuts, est finalement le lien qui enchaîne l'écrivain à une Histoire elle-même enchaînée: la société le marque des signes bien clairs de l'art enfin de l'entraîner plus sûrement dans sa propre aliénation" (p. 38). This problem increases as society acquires additional meanings for various moments in the passage of time. M. Barthes traces the awareness of this literary enigma to about 1850 when Flaubert became the predecessor for our modern age by realizing that "La Littérature entière . . . est devenue une problématique du langage" (p. 10). From 1850 on, the writer is no longer the witness for the social awareness at a point in time. He is now concerned with the personal identity of his écriture and becomes "une conscience malheureuse" (p. 10). Of course, Barthes is very selective in tracing the representatives of this modern era. Mallarmé, as the "meurtrier de langage" (p. 66) [thanks to Blanchot! ], fittingly contributes to this developing notion of creative identity and the awareness that the writer is not merely a mirror of the accepted social thought of his day. Naturally, Gide, Valéry, Montherlant, and Breton represent this new form which, "dans sa lourdeur, dans son drape exceptionnel, est une valeur transcendante à l'Histoire" (p. 65). However, as Susan Sontag remarks, "no amount of moral exhortation or conceptual unraveling is going to alter drastically this tense, paradoxical state of affairs". 16 A literary work is very much immanent to the historical moment. If it is a great work, then it will transcend a particular point in time in which it appears. But it appears to be unfair to someone such as Breton to relegate the form of his work to historical transcendence. In the total perspective of an author, Barthes' view of historical transcendence may perhaps help us to understand Breton. But this disassociation of sensibility, which seems to create artificial binary distinctions, continues in Barthes' criticism even today. In S/Z, his preference for connotation to denotation as well as his identification of "dénotation . . . au texte classique . . . propose à représenter l'innocence collective du langage" 17 once again would be more valuable if seen in the context of a critique totale uniting both denotation and connotation. Not only has écriture become a tangible confrontation between the writer and his society, but it has also initiated an awareness on the part of the writer. It is this articulated awareness which seems to be the most important contribution of this book both for its own

87 time and our contemporary outlook. Writing then causes the writer to become introverted onsofar as he must consider the very nature of creative inspiration: "l'écriture . . . renvoie l'écrivain, par une sorte de transfert tragique, aux sources instrumentales de sa création" (p. 18). In effect, the writer must create what Barthes will later call the middle voice (in a lecture "Écrire: verbe intransitif?" delivered at Johns Hopkins University in October 1966): "in the middle voice, the agent or subject affects himself; transitivity is not excluded; the subject poses himself as contemporary with the writing, 'being effected and affected by it' ". 1 8 Therefore, Barthes modifies the strictly social role given to the écrivain by M. Sartre and paves the way for the creativity of a tradition beginning with Alain Robbe-Grillet and Claude Simon and continuing today with novelists like Marguerite Duras and Philippe Sollers. Barthes represents a strange case in literary history where the critic precedes creativity in a literary movement. Indeed, "la nouvelle esthétique romanesque (est) annoncée et énoncée en premier lieu par Roland Barthes". 19 Such a view of creative introspection has even sparked response in other directions by such as Blanchot in his Le Livre à Venir: La littérature commence avec l'écriture. L'écriture est l'ensemble des rites, le cérémonial évident ou discret par lequel, indépendamment de ce qu'on veut exprimer et de la manière dont on l'exprime, s'annonce cet événement, que ce qui a été écrit appartient à la littérature, que celui qui le lit, lit de la littérature. 2 " However, Barthes would not postulate such a necessary identity between the individuality of écriture and the predications assumed by the notion of literature. Georges Poulet's critique de conscience, as representative of the Geneva school of literary criticism, seems to have developed the full implications of Barthes' idea of the internalization of écriture thus: "for the critics of consciousness the language of a literary work is complete: it means only what it says in terms of its own system and does not hint at anything beyond the system latent in the work". 21 Let us return to the confrontation between personal style and the social langue. Barthes identifies, as we have previously seen, the modern awareness of writing, from Flaubert to our time, as "une problé-

88 matique du langage" (p. 10). This "langage" is a more comprehensive idea that the Saussure conception of "langue". "Langage", as Barthes conceives it, represents the whole linguistic, phonological, morphological, semantic, and syntactical complex which includes both the "langue" and the "parole" of Saussure. Barthes is opting for a revolutionary awareness of the medium which the literary artist must use. Although the studies of Jakobson, Chomsky's transformational approach to generative grammar, and Barthes' own studies in Eléments de Sémiologie (1964), Le Système de la Mode (1967), l'Empire des Signes (1970), and S/Z (1970) seem to have exhausted the study of deep and surface structure, Barthes' emphasis on a conscious concern for language [henceforth, I will use this word in the complete sense of Barthes' understanding of "langage"] is still appropriate to the poets, dramatists, and novelists of our present age: L'écrivain, au sens moderne, est un manieur du langage. Son outil et son moyen, c'est cette capitalisation d'expériences sociales, intégrée à sa propre expérience, à sa vie, qu'est le langage.22 Since language itself is bound up in the mores of a particular society, the writer is challenged with finding a genre where he can best implement "un renversement dans la connaissance de la Nature" (p. 46). Since, for Barthes, the novel is merely an expression of a society which imposes its views upon the genre, "le Roman est mort" (p. 37). The successfulness of le nouveau roman today in propagating many ideas similar to those of Barthes through the anti-novel novel ironically disproves this death of the novel in 1953. Nevertheless, in Barthes' Marxist sensibility,23 "le déchirement des langages, inséparable du déchirement des classes" (p. 76) necessitates the elimination of the novel, long understood as a product of the rising middle classes of society. This coherence of critical and political realms seems to be one of the most artificial constructs of Barthes' first work. His later adaptation of Lucien Goldmann's critique de signification would specifically portray the impact and challenge of écriture on the audience-critic: "La critique consiste alors à déchiffrer la signification, à en découvrir les termes, et principalement le terme caché, le signifié". 24 However, the political implications of Le Degré zéro are too contrived and idealistic: "en somme l'anticipation d'un état absolument homogène

89 de la société" (p. 75). Perhaps Barthes' later adoption of structuralism is a testimony to the tenuousness of the extension of Le Degré zéro to and from Marxist politics.

IV. Style and Langue Nevertheless, the writer is challenged with finding the "renversement dans la connaissance de la Nature". Barthes poses the existence of a third area between the polar opposites of the binary world of Saussure's structural linguistics. This area is the literary vacuum of "la nouvelle écriture neutre" (p. 67) wherein "toutes proportions gardées, l'écriture au degré zéro est au fond une écriture indicative, ou si l'on veut amodale" (p. 67). This "état neutre et inerte de la forme" (p. 67) has never been explicitly developed in Barthes' subsequent critical studies. It seems to be an ideal to which all writers should aspire. Yet, if carried to its logical extremes, "le degré zéro de l'écriture" precludes any sort of "communication" between author and audience. Écriture becomes an experience to be shared by both author and audience. For the author as well as each critical member of the audience, écriture becomes unique and individual while it is shared by many. This may very well account for the esoteric nature of the challenging novels being offered today by Nathalie Sarraute and J. M. G. Le Clézio. Barthes seems to be turning from a sociological toward a psychological concern: "le simple recours à une parole discontinue ouvre la voie de toutes les surnatures" (p. 45). The notion of "une parole discontinue" is an important one for understanding a common theme and stylistic device in our contemporary French poetry, drama, and novels. This "parole discontinue" can be defined as the phenomenological value of language for which literary artists like Robbe-Grillet in La Maison de Rendez-Vous seem to be setting the stage. Barthes himself identifies this one-for-one relationship of signifié and signifiant as an ideal state thus: "À la limite, les mots n'ont plus de valeur référentielle, mais seulement une valeur marchande: ils servent à communiquer, comme dans la plus plate des transactions, non à suggérer".25 Claude Mauriac would have us believe that "du degré zéro de l'écriture, nous sommes arrivés au point de congélation de la critique:

90 celui qui fige une réalité préalablement déformée et l'immobilise dans sa caricature". 26 However, although Barthes admits that "chaque homme est prisonnier de son langage" (p. 70), he also heralds what he terms "un nouvel humanisme" (p. 72) whereby "literary language is intransitive; it covers or parallels the real world, but has no direct connection with it". 2 7 , Barthes offers hope for the crisis of écriture in his chapter entitled "Y a-t-il une écriture poétique" where he identifies the realm of poetry as the ideal area wherein the writer may create new words which are "neutralisés, absentés par le recours sévère à une tradition qui absorbe leur fraîcheur" (p. 42). Barthes himself offers writers a good example by his own style whereby he may well merit Michel Butor's extravagant praise: "Barthes est certainement le plus fécond forgeur de mots de la littérature française actuelle". 28 As opposed to the pessimistic review that Le Degré zéro implies that "writing is now a blind alley because society itself is a blind alley", 29 I propose that Barthes' work offers a literary direction which identifies a creative criticism of the future. Rather than championing Sartre's prose writing which seems to be caught up in the plight of écriture, Barthes offers the example of Rimbaud's poetry which provides hope for a creative écriture of the future. Poetry assumes an identity all its own thus: La poésie moderne, en effet, puisqu'il faut l'opposer à la poésie classique et à toute prose, détruit la nature spontanément fonctionelle du langage et n'en laisse subsister que les laisses lexicales. Elle ne garde des rapports que leur mouvement, leur musique, non leur vérité. Le Mot éclate au-dessus d'une ligne de rapports évidés, la grammaire est dépourvue de sa finalité, elle devient prosodie, elle n'est plus qu'une inflexion qui dure pour présenter le Mot. Les rapports ne sont à proprement parler supprimés, Us sont simplement des places gardées, ils sont une parodie de rapports et ce néant est nécessaire car il faut que la densité du Mot s'élève hors d'un enchantement vide, comme un bruit et un signe sans fond, comme 'une fureur et un mystère' (p. 43). The writer's adaptation of this destructive power of poetry then leads to the production of écriture which transcends the historical moment, thus giving écriture literally a life of its own. This idea of literary life pervades Sarraute's Les Fruits d'Or and Entre la Vie et la Mort and

91

seems to be a basic pre-supposition to Sollers' work since Le Parc (1961). Serge Doubrovsky identifies the phenomenon concisely: "l'auteur meurt dès l'instant que sa création se renferme sur ellemême et le quitte. La parution du livre, c'est la disparition de l'auteur". 3 0 While one of Barthes' Rumanian disciples would later remark that "l'objet de la poétique n'est pas les oeuvres mais le discours littéraire", 31 one recognizes that this new poetic of écriture may offer a fertile ground for literary work especially in "la pluralité de ces écritures" (p. 54). The classical philosophical problem of the One and the Many rears its head as Barthes identifies individual forms of écriture which may respond in the poetic fashion previously depicted. It is for the individual writer as well as for the individual critical audience to implement a "réconciliation du verbe de l'écrivain et du verbe des hommes" (p. 72).

V. Toward a criticologie Yet Barthes offers new directions for the audience-critic too. Through his continuous invention of neologisms, he has shown that "bien plus qu'un idéologue ou un philosophe, Barthes est avant tout un poète". 32 The critic too must be creative because he also is caught up in the enigma of écriture. Unless he is resigned to mirroring the clichés and trite phrases of society, the reader-critic must also take up the challenge of the écrivain who assumes the active identity of the écrivant. The situation of the reader-critic is a provoking one: "Roland Barthes s'est assurément acquis quelque droit à notre considération en reconnaissant que la critique littéraire n'atteint jamais à l'objectivité où elle tend néanmoins". 33 The very unattainability of "le degré zéro" is unsettling for the reader-critic as well as for the writer. Hence, Barthes has inspired the neologism "criticologie" which means the criticism of criticism. This is not a tautological statement but rather, a challenge for every reader-critic to come to an awareness of "the need to harmonize the language of the work and the language of the critic". 34 Perhaps there is some truth in Picard's argument that "M. Barthes a inventé un impressionisme idéologique qui est d'essence dogmatique". 35 Although Barthes would later admit that "il faut l'étendre à

92 toute oeuvre, c'est-à-dire accepter l'aventure d'une critique totale", 3 6 he seems to be "dogmatic" in Le Degré zéro insofar as his transcendental approach to écriture seems to be espoused to the exclusion of a consideration o f the immanence of écriture to the historical moment of the individual writer and his society. Through Barthes' contributions to une criticologie, "il est l'un de ceux qui nous paraissent avoir progressé le plus loin sur le chemin qui mène à la critique totale qui, à nos yeux, représenterait l'idéal, au stade présent de son évolution de la réflexion critique". 3 7 Yet, just as one may mistake Roland as the hero of La Chanson de Roland because he is evermore present than Charlemagne, so one must be careful to understand Roland Barthes' critical and literary theories in light o f their contributions to la critique totale rather than holistic approaches in themselves. 3 8

NOTES 1. This term was first coined in tlie excellent bibliography compiled by Dominique Noguez in Georges Poulet's edition of Les Chemins Actuels de la Critique (Paris: Pion, 1967), p. 511. 2. Wallace Fowlie, The French Literary Critic, 1549-1967 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968), p. 133. 3. Laurent Lesage, The French New Criticism (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1967), p. 36. 4. Pierre Daix, Nouvelle Critique et Art Moderne (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1968), p. 17. 5. Roland Barthes, "Littérature objective: Alain Robbe-Grillet", Critique, No. 86-87 (July-August 1954), pp. 581-591. 6. Roland Barthes, "Il n'y a pas d'école Robbe-Grillet", in Essais Critiques (Paris: éditions du Seuil, 1964), p. 102. 7. Susan Sontag, Preface to Writing Degree Zero, translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), pp. x-xi. 8. This structural similarity was first suggested to me by Assistant Professor Charles G. S. Williams in a personal interview on November 2, 1971. 9. Maurice Blanchot, "La Littérature et le droit à la mort", in La Part du Feu (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), p. 342. 10. "Deep Waters", rev. of Writing Degree Zero, translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, Times Literary Supplement, October 12, 1967, p. 960. 11. Roland Barthes, Le Degré zéro de l'écriture suivi d'Éléments de Sémiologie (Paris: Editions Gonthier, 1969), p. 12. [Henceforth, I will indicate page numbers parethetically after any quotes taken from this edition.] 12. History is a loaded word, having polyvalent significance. As I understand

93 it here, history is the product in question. However, Barthes' notion of history is a dual one. One must distinguish between the social history which he describes as bringing the cultural overtones of all preceding generations into a language, thus impeding univocal statement, and the Marxist history of continuous permutation which Barthes seeks to inculcate in literary criticism and whereby "many neuter writings" may allow the creative writer to escape some of the determinism of equivocal statement. 13. Raymond Picard, Nouvelle Critique ou Nouvelle Imposture? (Utrecht: Chez Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1965), p. 139. 14. Serge Doubrovsky, Pourquoi la Nouvelle Critique - Critique et Objectivité (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966), p. 9. 15. Sontag, p. xii. 16. Ibid., p. xvii. 17. Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970), p. 16. 18. Hugh M. Davidson, "The Critical Position of Roland Barthes, Contemporary Literature, IX, No. 3 (Summer 1968), p. 370. 19. Pierre A. G. Astier, La Crise du Roman Français et le Nouveau Réalisme (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Debresse, 1968), p. 90. 20. Maurice Blanchot, Le Livre à Venir (Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française, 1959), pp. 250-251. 21. Sarah N. Lawall, Critics of Consciousness - The Existential Structures of Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 17. 22. Daix, p. 72. 23. By this word "sensibility", I understand the whole sensitivity of a writer (intellectually, emotionally, instinctively, and through the five senses) which contributes to the creation of his esthetic microcosm. The German word Weltanschauung seems to articulate more specifically what I mean by this word. 24. Roland Barthes, Sur Racine (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1963), p. 157. 25. Roland Barthes, Critique et Vérité (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966), p. 21. 26. Claude Mauriac, l'Alittérature Contemporaine (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1969), p. 223. 27. Davidson, p. 370. 28. Michel Butor, "La Fascinatrice", Les Cahiers de Chemin, No. 4 (15 October 1968), p. 36. 29. "Deep Waters", p. 960. 30. Serge Doubrovsky, "Critique et Existence", in Les Chemins Actuels de la Critique, ed. Georges Poulet (Paris: Pion, 1967), p. 263. 31. Tzvetan Todorov, Littérature et Signification (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1967), p. 263. 32. Butor, p. 26. 33. André Allemand, Nouvelle Critique, Nouvelle Perspective (Paris: Éditions de la Baconnière, 1967), p. 13. 34. Davidson, p. 372. 35. Picard, p. 76. 36. Barthes, Sur Racine, p. 159.

94 37. Robert Emmet Jones, Panorama de la Nouvelle Critique en France - de Gaston Bachelard à Jean-Paul Weber (Paris: Société d'Édition d'Enseignement Supérieur, 1968), p. 249. 38. This piece is substantially the same one as was published in the October 1972 issue of Delta Epsilon Sigma Bulletin.

THE WORDS - LE ROMAN DU TEXTE 1

A response to Julia Kristeva's reading of Antoine de LaSale's Petit Jehan de Saintré in her Le Texte du roman

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.

Historical moment A. Precedence of opposition B. End of Hundred Years' War C. Anti-romance romance

99 99 100 100

II. L'Histoyre de Jehan de Saintré A. Courtly form B. Episodic sequence

102 103 104

III. La A. B. C. D.

105 105 106 106 107

Plaisante cronique de la Jeune Dame Le pluriel and the fragments The Dedalan thread The Development of the récit The irony of the jeune Dame

IV. Footnotes

108

99 The recent appearance of Julia Kristeva's Le texte du roman (Mouton, 1970) demands reflections on the situation of Antoine de LaSale's Petit Jehan de Saintré (1456). In the fashion of the literary disciples of Roland Barthes, she has portrayed the plight of Petit Jehan in a linguistic complex: " . . . il n'y a qu'un seul sujet possible - les rapports des signes linguistiques . . . l'intérêt du dénouement est en ce qu'il implique une conception du langage camouflée par un jugement moral sur un héros". 2 This linguistic reading of the medieval esthetic, a worthy companion to the Albert Béguin-Yves Bonnefoy edition of La quête du graal (Ed. du Seuil, 1965), warrants a serious examination of the "text" of Petit Jehan. If Antoine de LaSale produced the first French "novel" and displayed that "faire vraisemblable serait . . . remanier le flux de la parole pour le ramener à une motivation exigée par le genre: le texte romanesque écrit", 3 the problem of language in Petit Jehan would seem to be absorbed by the complex of factors which produced the work. And yet Julia Kristeva's orientation toward the mathematical precision of Chomsky and Hjelmslev develops the vision of Antoine de LaSale by portraying the closed structural language of the work as the impetus for a "nondisjunctive", internal determinism of the novel genre.

I. Historical Moment. A. Precedence of Opposition. As Eugène Vinaver has remarked concerning such a medieval study, one must be aware that "any exploration of form is a search for meaning". 4 Hence, Petit Jehan should be seen in its historical moment in order to situate both the form and the meaning of "text" as it appears in the first French novel. Appearing in 1456, Petit Jehan was published in the wake of the Hundred Years' War which had brought military stability and an inspired political and social awareness to France. In literature, the chivalric and courtly traditions had been parodied by the anonymous Quinze Joies de Manage and Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. William Shepard's syntactical study 5 theorizes that Petit Jehan probably antedated XV Joies and Cent Nouvelles. Yet the problem of dating these latter works is still a controversial one. It would be better to merely consider these works as

100 contemporaneous with Petit Jehan and as indicative of the French literary milieu's disenchantment with the validity of the courtly and chivalric ideals in the mid-XVth century. B. End of the Hundred Years' War. Nevertheless Jehan de Saintré was an actual historical figure who lived in the midst of the Hundred Years' War with its ensuing questioning of the chivalric and courtly ideals. As France, steeped in its antiquated chivalric codes of war, faced the crossbows and the practical minds of the English, the medieval chronicler Froissart portrays Jehan de Saintré as "le milleur et le plus vaillant chevalier de France" 6 prior to such humiliating setbacks as the slaughter of the prisoners of war at Azincourt (1415). This Saintré is reported to have died about 1368. And although Antoine de LaSale may have "not do [ne] justice to his [Saintré's] adult career, notably in making no mention of his service in the English wars" 7 according to Charles Knudson, de LaSale seems to have Froissart's Jehan de Saintré in mind as he identifies the subject of his story at the outset: "à son trespassement de ce monde il fut tenu des chevaliers le plus vaillant, ainsi que d'une partie de ses faiz cy après l'istoire fera mención".® However, the chivalric and courtly traditions were well recognized as sham ideals at the time that Antoine de LaSale presents his Petit Jehan in 1456. C. Anti-romance romance. Since de LaSale assembled a prose work with developing characters and narratives, it would be helpful to recall Julia Kristeva's definition of le texte with which de LaSale was engaged to produce a prose work meant to be read rather than sung or staged: " . . . un appareil translinguistique qui redistribue l'ordre de la langue, en mettant en relation une parole communicative visant l'information directe, avec différents types d'énoncés antérieurs ou synchroniques". 9 As Kristeva maintains, de LaSale's text is "une permutation de textes" wherein are found elements from the chanson de geste and the roman courtois (romance) which are re-organized into the new genre of the roman. However, since de LaSale's generation was aware of the outmoded chivalric and courtly traditions, why would the author "re-present" medieval texts which recall the chivalry of Chrétien de

101 Troyes and the courtly love triangle? There is a two-fold movement, "un appareil translinguistique", within the récit which may explain de LaSale's codes in fashioning his "text". On the one hand, the form of Petit Jehan recalls that of the romance with its episodic fashion, the covert contract of a lady and her knight, and the inevitable love triangle. On the other hand, a closer scrutiny of the narrative reveals that, as Janet Ferrier has developed, Petit Jehan "represents an attempt to break with the established traditions of the romance and the chronicle". 10 In this two-fold movement, Petit Jehan is understood as an anti-romance romance. While using the form of the romance, it also portrays the shortcomings of this genre by interweaving irony and subtleties of character in la Dame des Belles Cousines and in Petit Jehan himself. But Petit Jehan is not merely a transition from the determined romance genre into another closed mentality. Through its introduction of developed characters, narrative, and prose style along with its nostalgic form, Petit Jehan opens a panorama for the French medieval mentality and prepares it for the 16th-century Renaissance when new linguistic possibilities would further enrich the infinite possibilities of écriture. To see Petit Jehan as an example of "le roman comme texte clos" through "l'analyse suprasegmentale"11 seems to be the imposition of a 20th • century view of the stereotypy of language and genre upon the medieval mentality. Antoine de LaSale's vision, however, was OPENING onto a realm of far greater possibilities. The original title of Petit Jehan may offer a hint as to the dual movement of the récit. l'Histoyre et plaisante cronique du Petit Jehan de Saintré et de la Jeune Dame des Belles Cousines12 seems to be a typical, wordy medieval title. On the one hand, "l'histoyre" is juxtaposed with "plaisante cronique". While "l'histoyre" might serve to organize the "surface structure" of the chivalric exploits of Petit Jehan, "plaisante cronique" might indicate that there is a "deep structure" at work here which might be "plaisante" or entertaining for an audience tired of the misplaced courtly ideals. Julia Kristeva notes the duality of the LINGUISTIC structure which may very well be a further development of de LaSale's two-fold theme. On the other hand, Petit Jehan de Saintré is juxtaposed with la jeune Dame des Belles Cousines. While Petit Jehan is the principal character in the "surface structure" of a chivalric "histoyre", the jeune Dame

102 directs irony at this whole complex of courtly and chivalric standards in the "deep structure" of "plaisante cronique".

II. l'Histoyre de Jehan Saintré Indeed, "la matière n'est pas neuve" 13 as "l'histoyre" reveals Petit Jehan as a loyal, naive page in the royal court of France. Petit Jehan excels in this environment as he serves "plus que nul des autre" (p. 2). Yet there is a hint that his "service" will soon be explited by "especialement les dames en tous les plaisirs et services que elles lui commandoient à son pouvoir" (p. 2). There is an erotic overtone to this passage which seems misdirected at a 13-year-old page. Yet Petit Jehan soon finds himself subservient to the service, not only of the jeune Dame, but also of la reine Bonne, Marie de l'lsle, and the servants Catherine, Isabelle, and Jeanette. The scene near the tennis court where the jeune Dame humiliates Petit Jehan for his awkward bow is a premonition of Petit Jehan's subservience to such court codes. Petit Jehan will be molded into a famous man by la jeune Dame's desires: "elle vouloit en ce monde faire d'aucun josne chevalier ou escuier un homme renommé" (p. 6). He is even given the traditional medieval teachings on the Seven Deadly Sins and the medieval ethic: " 'la vertu consiste es choses moyennes' " (p. 45). After being so indoctrinated as to the courtly virtue of the knight to his Lady and to his society, Petit Jehan, who had heretofore elected the unlikely candidates of his mother, his sister Jacqueline, and the 10-year-old Madelyn de Courcy to be his Lady, slips into the jeune Dame's hands as he accepts her teachings: " 'Ma Dame, de tout ce que je vous remercie, et le feray bien se Dieu plait' " (p. 48). And the covert contract of a Lady and her knight, which had been thematically devalued before the medieval reader by La Châtelaine de Vergi, is once again portrayed as Petit Jehan is addressed by the jeune Dame: " 'ne aussi veul je que Dame point vous en riez, afin que mes femmes ne se apparcoivent de nos volontiez, mais devant elles faites ainsi l'esbaij comme faisiez par avant . . .' " (p. 48). Hence, the key to the jeune Dame's room (and later the golden bracelet) becomes a sign of this contract and is the first of a whole network of mutual signs (e.g. her using a toothpick and his rubbing his eyes when Saintré returns from

103 his joust in Aragon) privately arranging for their rendezvous. Petit Jehan would soon become "worthy" of the jeune Dame's remark that "vous estes tel que je veul" (p. 85). The irony of the title of the ballade "Le Maîstre", which the jeune Dame had sung to Petit Jehan early in his instruction, can now be appreciated: Petit Jehan is never the master of his own life until he renounces the jeune Dame by returning her blue girdle at the end of the récit. A. Courtly form. Saintré soon performs his chivalric service in fulfillment of the courtly contract. But he only goes on missions at his Lady's beckoning. The jeune Dame's insistence that he publish letters of challenge necessitates the naive Saintré's "initiative". Despite many nostalgic references to a chivalric age by de LaSale, Petit Jehan does not inspire the excitement of martial heroes like Roland in the chansons de geste or noble heroes like Chretien de Troy es' Lancelot in individual combat. The King of Aragon must decide Saintré as the victor against Sir Enquerant in a joust which hardly decides individual valor but implies a commentary on the inefficacy of personal combat to prove individual merit in the chivalric code. Earlier, the jeune Dame had taunted Petit Jehan with analogies to Lancelot, Gawain, and Tristan in their first meetings. But the comparisons seem increasingly ludicrous as Saintré goes out on a Crusade against the Saracens in Prussia to the promise that the king and queen will lie together when he returns! Yet it is Saintré's heroism to embark on a military expedition without the jeune Dame's permission that sparks her wrath and causes her to look toward Damp Abbé. She is indignant that Saintré should dare to seek adventure without her advice: "Avez vous levee emprinse et departie ca et la, sans mon sceu et congié? " (p. 233). Thus, the martial spirit of the chivalric code has fostered an independence within Saintré which liberates him, however temporarily, from the courtly code of behavior. It is significant that the récit itself is not structured as didactic allegory which characterized many romances after the Roman de la Rose. Although the jeune Dame displayed a didactic tone in her instructions on virtue and the Seven Deadly Sins to Petit Jehan, she was assuming the role of the virtuous medieval ethic in order to under-

104 score the argument of the romance form in Petit Jehan. However, the récit of Petit Jehan is not directed toward a didactic or allegorical vision. As Tzvetan Todorov commented on the Béguin-Bonnefoy edition of La quête du graal, "le récit apparaît comme le thème fondamental . . . " 1 4 The narrative, through its two-fold movement, can capture the ambivalence of Petit Jehan as anti-romance romance. B. Episodic Sequence The episodic sequences which structurally tie the whole "surface structure" together is especially reminiscent of many chivalric tales by Chrétien de Troyes. Antoine de LaSale himself identifies his style as "en façon d'une lettre" (p. 309) to Jehan d'Anjou, duke of Calabre and Lorraine. The epistolary fashion of combining various episodes and adventures in the maturing of Petit Jehan thus links the episodic nature of the romance with the developed narrative of the novel genre. Although Laclos would perfect the epistolary novel with Les liaisons dangereuses in the eighteenth century, Antoine de LaSale's adventure into this form of unity opens the stereotyped esthetics of the XlVth and early XVth centuries onto a new realm of possibilities. The predicament of all écriture, that is the written creative language, prior to de LaSale was very similar to the medieval poetic described by Paul Zumthor: "la création des genres à formes fixes, à la fin du XlIIe siècle et au cours du XlVe siècle, tue le souci d'originalité formelle . . . on varie le contenu, tout en accusant la forme. La poésie devient de plus en plus dessein, moins dessin". 15 Yet the episodic sequence is not sufficiently organized about the epistolary form to provide a structural unity. We are still left with the episodic structure of romance. One wonders if this epistolary suggestion might imply, according to Julia Kristeva, "une polémique cachée avec un texte univoque" since "la parole romanesque se structure à distance et dans l'ironie par rapport à un autre texte déjà existant avec lequel elle forme une opposition non-disjonctive". 16 Indeed, Petit Jehan is an obvious example of the intertextualité (cf. Julia Kristeva's essay "problèmes de la Structuration du Texte" in Théorie d'Ensemble) of écriture. However, for the sake of coherent discussion, one must make distinctions in these texts. Hence, the task before us, as sketched by Leon Roudiez, is this: "Il s'agit de savoir comment, en

105 naissant, le roman va marquer sa différence d'avec les genres préexistants". 1 7

III. La plaisante cronique de la jeune

Dame

A. Le pluriel and the fragments. Hence, the "deep structure" of Petit Jehan must be explored to discover what is the "plaisante cronique" beneath the chivalric "Histoyre". Françoise van Rossum-Guyon's theory of the novel as a mimetic and a productive art might shed some light on the movement of Petit Jehan: "comme 'aventure d'une écriture', le roman est également producteur. Producteur de formes, producteur de thèmes, et par là même producteur d'une 'vérité' qui détruisant le 'mensonge' de la fiction, nous en délivre"-1® It is this productive role of the novel which Petit Jehan assumes in its "deep structure". Petit Jehan is working within the known literary style of the romance to convey a more subtle thought of the fictitious and illusory nature of this mimetic. As Jean Rychner has suggested about the contemporaneous codes of chivalry in the Burgundian court, "la littérature . . . [est] un miroir qui réfléchirait le visage que nous désireriez avoir". 1 9 And the chivalric and courtly conventions portrayed in Petit Jehan are also much more than simple mimeses. The very use of plural speakers within the récit breaks up this mimetic by viewing the episodes from various perspectives. These voices tend to give dramatic effect to the action by having fragments of the récit narrated by different voices of le pluriel (i.e., all these narrators taken as a group). Yet this form of narration, according to Julia Kristeva, "se situe mi-chemin entre une structure dialogique". 20 Hence, we are breaking away from the single narrator of the romance with its intervening dialogues. It would be prophetic to view de LaSale as the precoscious predecessor to the dialectical awareness of the XVIIIth century epistolary novels if one could disregard "la grosse question du remaniement de Saintré". 2 1 Can we attribute all of these narrators to de LaSale's work? Can the acteur and the auteur be synonymous? Perhaps these are unanswerable questions. Yet they must be considered in attempting to portray the vision or visions within Petit Jehan.

106 B. The Dedalan Thread. Despite the plurality of narrators, the Dedalan thread which unites these episodes throughout the récit is the maturing vision of Jehan de Saintré. Sustaining the development of Saintré's character is a marked improvement upon the nebulous ties which Paul Zumthor understands as "unifying" the maze of Chrétien de Troyes' episodes: "on a souvent remarqué que les phrases successives du récit semblent moins procéder les unes des autres qu'être produites par une force qui les soustend, les embrasse et les détermine au point que tout hasard est exclu". 22 Julia Kristeva would then see the characters Jehan de Saintré and the jeune Dame as "non-disjunctive" characters who are pre-determined and fixed within the traditions of the romance and the chanson de geste. Since the literary characters are ascribed as "non-disjunctive", there can then be no "deep structure" except a linguistic one. But I disagree with such an allocation of Saintré and the jeune Dame to stereotypy. These are complex characters who do develop within the récit. Saintré, albeit naive until he begins to think for himself and elects to go on a campaign without his Lady's bidding, finally does free himself from the courtly tradition by renouncing the Dame, granting her forgiveness, and liberating himself from the contract he made with her. But this forgiveness does not come about until Saintré is duped by Damp Abbé and the jeune Dame. C. The Development of the Récit. The jeune Dame, however, is the central character of the "deep structure" of Petit Jehan. The development of her character is the incarnation of what Léon Roudiez calls de LaSale's "valorisation dévalorisante" 23 of woman within the courtly tradition. As a widow, her ready association with Dido, the Bible, and Latin scholars is quickly suspect as de LaSale gives us a digression from St. Jerome about Palmo who, after having survived 20 wives, married another who outlived 22 husbands and survived her also. The jeune Dame's pious assumption of a Latin ethic in not remarrying as well as her profound knowledge of medieval theologians would be equally suspect by the XVth century Frenchman who could no longer acknowledge Jean de Meung's misogynie portrayal of the passive sexual role

107 of women after having witnessed the valor of Jeanne d'Arc and the feminism of Christine de Pisan in the Querelle du Roman de la Rose. The jeune Dame uses the courtly code to gain the upper hand in her relationship with the naive Saintré. As she manipulates the courtly and chivalric texts which compose the form of the récit itself, the jeune Dame controls Saintré's life. However, the récit begins to reveal itself as a "pseudo-chivalric romance" 24 in the language with which the jeune Dame addresses Saintré. For example, she continually refers to their relationship as one involving "plaizirs" and the dutiful satisfaction of her desires. As a page, Saintré is told that " 'je vous veul envoier en la ville moy faire un plaisir, et vous serez bien mon a m y ' " (p. 11). At one point, the jeune Dame invites Saintré the Chamberlain to her room: " 'Et la parlerons et deviserons ensemble a noz plaisirs' " (p. 64). Their relationship soon progresses to the enjoyment of "leurs parfaites joyes" (p. 141). Then the jeune Dame begins to sulk as Saintré asserts his initiative and independence. Not only does she create the courtly love triangle with Damp Abbé, but she entertains Abbé even after his defeat in individual combat with Saintré. Since Saintré has now asserted his individuality by going on the campaign and then returning to humiliate Damp Abbé, the jeune Dame again has control, this time over a humiliated and severely wounded Abbé, as they "par l'espace de deux mois s'estoient donné du bon temps ensemble, et en fut dure la departie" (p. 299). The courtly code had been a mask behind which the jeune Dame could coyly (" 'Vous savez que nous femmes avons les cuers tendres et piteux aux choses qui sont par nous amees' " — p. 96) and piously manipulate men while hiding her "sensuelle, hypocrite [et] orgeuilleuse" 25 nature. D. The Irony of the jeune Dame. It is finally Saintré himself who could offer a new ambivalence for a XVth century audience. By renouncing his parasitic relationship with the jeune Dame, Saintré also renounces the romantic and chivalric texts which he had assumed in form. As an anti-romance hero, he rises above a condemnation of the jeune Dame who has been, as Julia Kristeva portrays her, "la figure non-disjonctive par excellence sur laquelle est axé le roman". 26 Since they both have broken the contract of the courtly and chivalric traditions, Saintré returns the

108 blue girdle and asserts that "je ne veul plus estre ce très malgracieux" (p. 307). It had been through the courtly code that Saintré learned to assert his individuality. So it is with the whole work. Moving within the tradition of the romance, Petit Jehan bears witness to the openness of the novel genre by asserting its freedom from the texts which have preceded it. Petit Jehan is not an example of the nondisjunctive "text du roman qui demeure un texte clos". 27 Rather, it is "a texte" or "un apparaeil translinguistique" which asserts its creativity above the determinism of the codes or other texts which "compose" its verbal vision. Julia Kristeva's "transformational reading" is particularly pertinent to this vision: L'autre lecture, transformationnelle, consisterait à lire le texte romanesque comme le trajet d'une série d'opérations transformationnelles, ce qui suppose que: a) chaque segment est lu à partir de la totalité du texte et contient la fonction générale du texte; b) on accède à un niveau antérieur à la forme achevée sous laquelle le texte se présente en définitive, c'est-à-dire au niveau de sa génération comme une infinité de possibilités s t r u c t u r a l e s . Indeed, the transformational approach does aid one's critical method by considering the possibility of the dual structures of écriture at the level of signe as well as symbole. Yet, one must critically approach a linguistic reading of a literary text since the objective categories of linguistics might very well re-orient the subjective visions of literature. So it is with Julia Kristeva's critique of Petit Jehan. Le roman du texte, produced by Antoine de LaSale in 1456, has been ingeniously inverted as Le Texte du roman in 1970. Perhaps this may be inevitable, as Tzvetan Todorov remarks: "écrire sur un texte, c'est produire un autre texte . . . On ne peut plus rester fidèle à un texte dès l'instant où l'on écrit". 29

NOTES 1. This essay has been published in the Fall 1972 issue of Sub-Stance (University of Wisconsin). 2. Julia Kristeva, Le texte du roman (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1970), p. 119. 3. Ibid., p. 106.

109 4. Eugène Vinaver, Form and Meaning in Medieval Romance (Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1966), p. 24. 5. William Pierce Shepard, "The Syntax of Antoine de LaSale", PMLA, XX, No. 3 (1905), 500. 6. Jean Froissart, Oeuvres de Froissart, V, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1967), pp. 452-453. 7. Charles A. Knudson, "The Two Saintrés", in Romance Studies in Memory of Edward Billings Ham, ed. Urban T. Holmes (Valencia Hayward-California, 1967), pp. 79-80. 8. Antoine de LaSale, Jehan de Saintré, ed. Jean Misrahi and Charles A. Knudson (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1965), p. 2. [Henceforth, I will cite passages from this text parenthetically after the excerpt.] 9. Kristeva, p. 12. 10. Janet M. Ferrier, Forerunners of the French Novel (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954), p. 78. 11. Kristeva, p. 14. 12. Antoine de LaSale, l'Histoyre et plaisante chronique du Petit Jehan de Saintré et de la Jeune Dame des Belles Cousines, ed. J. Marie Guichard (Paris: Librairie de Charles Gosselin, 1843). 13. Robert Bossuat, Le Moyen Age (Paris: del Duca, 1967), p. 227. 14. Tzvetan Todorov, "La quête du récit", Critique, XXV, No. 262 (March 1969), 214. 15. Paul Zumthor, Langue et Techniques Poétiques à l'époque romane (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1963), p. 12. 16. Kristeva, p. 118-119. 17. Leon S. Roudiez, rev. of Le Texte du roman, The Romanic Review, LXIII, No. 1 (February 1972), 76. 18. Françoise van Rossum-Guyon, Critique du Roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), p. 289. 19. Jean Rychner, La Littérature et les Moeurs Chevaleresques à la Cour de Bourgogne (Newchatel: Secrétariat de l'Université, 1950), p. 25. 20. Kristeva, p. 93. 21. Fernand Desonay, Antoine de LaSale - Aventureux et Pédagogue (Paris: Société d'Édition Les Belles Lettres, 1940), p. 148. 22. Paul Zumthor, "Le Roman Courtois: Essai de Définition", Études Littéraires, IV, No. 1 (April 1971), 88. 23. Roudiez, p. 61. 24. Shepard, p. 435. 25. Desonay, p. 145. 26. Kristeva, p. 62. 27. Roudiez, p. 78. 28. Kristeva, p. 18. 29. Todorov, p. 195.

THE WRITER - THE METAMORPHOSES OF PROTEUS

A study of the writer's plight to modify écriture from outside the traditional history of literature as Roland Barthes portrays it in his essays on Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Seuil, 1971)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.

Preface

115

II. Loyola - Logothete of the mind A. Multiple Text of the Mystical Logothesis B. Visual articulation

117 118 119

III. Fourier — Logothete of the heart A. The Pleasure Principle B. Inventor of a Game of Differences

120 120 122

IV. Sade - Logothete of the body A. Odyssey through the Sadian community B. Erotic Grammar C. A Theater of Shock

123 123 124 127

V. Footnotes

130

115 PREFACE

Since Le Degré zéro de l'écriture's initial publication some twenty years ago, French literature has been marked by continued attempts to produce l'écriture blanche in the fullest sense of absolute creativity. Now in Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Roland Barthes has given us concrete examples of how the écrivant might produce this phenomenon of "le degré zéro de l'écriture". Although some critics, such as Georges Poulet, have attempted to articulate this phrase: "le degré zéro de l'écriture c'est la réduction au néant de la subjectivité"1 and thus support their own theses ("Toute critique est initialement et fondamentalement une critique de la conscience" 2 ), it would be an oversimplification to portray the total elimination of the writer's consciousness as Barthes' primary goal in "le degré zéro de l'écriture". In fact, despite the prior publication of three of the four essays in Sade, Fourier, Loyola, the assembling of this apparently discordant triumvirate into one harmonious work suggests a metaphor to Pascal's awareness of the three orders of man. The threefold consciousness of the mind, heart, and body of man is dramatically illustrated by this united presentation of Loyola, Fourier, and Sade on the same stage. Each of these writers or écrivants [this term more appropriately articulates their common bond as actively creative écrivains.] implements his own linguistic system (hence, Barthes calls them logothètes) centering around one of the three orders of Pascal. But each of these three orders is predicated of the écrivant who becomes like the mythological figure Proteus as he assumes various identities according to the task before him. The écrivant is very much a dramatic actor in assuming a role which will be instrumental in the theatrical performance of écriture so aptly demonstrated in Philippe Sollers' Nombres. Each of these logothètes is not traditionally accepted by the historians of French literature as instrumental to literary movements. As pariahs of the literary community, they have individually set in motion the shock-value of their own texts by presenting examples of what écriture is not. Thus, they transform the role of écrivain to a logothète with his own system of écriture called a "text". It is then for the reader-critic to "déplacer (mais non à supprimer; peut-être même à accentuer) la responsabilité sociale du texte". 3 Now we must

116 not be intimidated to the point of frustration, as is Jean-Louis Bory, who insists that Barthes' very initials "R. B. empêche notre pensée de prendre du ventre". 4 However, perhaps we should be challenged by Barthes' re-reading of these writers to question literary criticism as does Richard Poirier and "ask what in the teaching of literature one can do with the phenomenon of performance". 5 What are the limits of these units we call "texts" and how do they contribute, if they do, to the ultimate creativity of "le degré zéro de l'écriture"? Roland Barthes does not pose this question within Sade, Fourier, Loyola. But the answer is certainly implied by his readings. However, in what sense are we to understand "text"? It is certainly a basic critical term in Barthian literary circles. Earlier Roland Barthes himself identified the critical project implied by the mystical, political, and erotic rhetorics of Loyola, Fourier, and Sade in terms of this "text": "faire tomber la Rhétorique au rang d'un objet pleinement et simplement historique, revendiquer sous le nom de texte, d'écriture, une nouvelle pratique de langage, et ne jamais se séparer de la science révolutionnaire, ce sont là un seul et même travail". 6 There seems to be a principle of reduction involved which seeks out the "text" of écriture from tangential matter within rhetoric. However, we can appreciate the full complexity of this term in Philippe Sollers' definition of "text" as "non seulement l'objet saisissable par l'impression de ce qu'on appelle un livre (un roman), mais la tonalité concrète à la fois comme produit déchiffrable et comme travail d'élaboration transformateur". 7 Thus, the "text" is at once "un objet de plaisir" (p. 12) to the reader-critic "comme produit déchiffrable" and also a metrical and syntactical composition "comme travail d'élaboration transformateur". This twofold product is the ultimate creativity of the writer. He must re-organize (in the sense of a grammarian and syntactician) Language and then re-formulate his own system of signs. Roland Barthes portrays this work as the need to "théâtraliser" (p. 10), that is, to demonstrate the infinite options open to the writer. Thus, the writer or logothète seems to be playing Saussure's linguistic Game of Chess8 wherein the players must strategically organize and relate their pieces to achieve the ultimate ambivalence — the checkmate which perhaps underscores the attente themes of Samuel Beckett (e.g. En attendant Godot) and Maurice Blanchot (e.g. L'attente et l'oubli) and reveals the elusive goal of "le

117

degré zéro de l'écriture". As logothètes and transformers of Language, the triumvirate of Loyola, Fourier, and Sade exemplify the antithetical themes of construction-destruction. Often, we have come to see Loyola portrayed as renouncing bodily pleasures, Fourier as destroying the bourgeois monetary system, and Sade as corruptor of Christian morals. However, Barthes presents these three in light of the constructive system of signs which, like a phoenix, rises from the ashes of their negative impetus. Georges Bataille's study of Sade establishes "c'est que l'essence de ses ouvrages est de détruire" 9 in the sense that "le modifier, c'est-à-dire le détruire". 10 So it is with Barthes' triumvirate: they have individually transformed the traditions before them to construct their own systems of expression. They are inventors who must first distinguish themselves from their society: "écrire, c'est d'abord mettre le sujet (y compris son imaginaire d'écriture) en citation, rompre toute complicité, toute empoissement entre celui qui trace et celui qui invente . . ." (p. 136).

Part I: Loyola - Logothete of the mind As the visual artist of a linguistic medium between God and man, Ignatius of Loyola's Exercises portray a mystical language whose system is ruled by the human intellect. Using the analogy of a linguistic tree, Roland Barthes develops the plural nature of Loyola's text as "l'arborescence" and "l'organigramme" (p. 63). Through these neologisms, Barthes is able to capture the organic unity as well as the multiplicity of the Exercises. The four internal voices of Ignatius, the director, the meditator, and God provide the dramatic setting for Barthes' structural interpretation of the literal, semantic, allegorical, and anagogical levels of meaning. Within the four weeks of the Exercises, the four voices seem to provide the ideal subject for structuralist criticism. But we are to go beyond the structure for "l'invention d'une langue, tel est done l'objet des Exercices" (p. 54). The dramatic Game of Loyola's plural voices adds a complex not to the mere entretien of two characters — God and man. Loyola's insight into the dramatic complexity of the human condition seems to be developed and projected further by Lacan:

118 The omnipresence of the human discourse will perhaps one day be embraced under the open sky of the omnicommunication of its text. That is not to say that discourse will be any more in harmony with it than now. But that is the field which our experience polarizes in a relation which is only apparently two-way for any positing of its structure in merely dual terms is as inadequate to it in theory as it is ruinous for its technique. 11 The drama of Loyola's voices captures the reality of this "omnicommunication" of the text. Yet this progressive drama through the four weeks of the Ignatian meditations does not produce a dialectic. In effect, a sequential conflict erupts as the meditator approaches the moment of mystical union: L'élection n'est pas un moment dialectique, c'est le contact abrupte d'une liberté et d'une volonté; avant, ce sont les conditions d'une bonne élection; après, ce sont les conséquences; au milieu, la liberté, c'est-à-dire, substantiellement rien (p. 53). The Ignatian language has captured this polar movement across a tension-less middle space. A. The Multiple Text of the Mystical Logothesis The logothesis of mystical union is sought through the Ignation "negative imagination". By establishing "ce qui est impossible de ne pas imaginer" (p. 57), Loyola can prepare the meditator for possible affirmations in mystical unity. The Ignatian propensity for negation thus establishes an intellectual void whereby the meditator is prepared for mystical articulation, a mythical creation of human-divine "communication". But, first, "les Exercices sont cette séparation même, à laquelle rien ne préexiste" (p. 58). Yet the plural voices and the negative imagination do construct the Ignatian language. Construction is achieved through destruction: Tous ces protocols préparatoires, en chassant du champ de la retraite les langues mondaines, oiseuses, physiques, naturelles, en un mot des langues autres, ont pour but d'accomplier l'homogénéité de la langue à construire, en un mot, sa pertinence (p. 57).

119 Through the ceremonial destruction of non-mystical linguistic systems, Loyola underscores the fragmentary and discontinuous nature of Language while at the same time associating images within Language to a higher transcendent Being. Barthes points out that this is Loyola's chief contribution to écriture: "Ignace a lié l'image à un ordre de discontinu, il a articulé l'imitation, et il a fait ainsi de l'image une unité linguistique, l'élément d'un code" (p. 61). The code provides the ultimate homogeneous strain through the multiple voices, structures, levels of meaning, and settings of the Exercises. Just as the five codes in Sarrasine were interwoven to create a structural and thematic inter-stitching of Balzac's short story (cf. S/Z, Seuil, 1970), so the poetic associations of visual imagery in the Ignatian meditations create a code whereby "l'oeil devient l'organe majeur de la perception" (p. 70) of mystical communion. B. Visual Articulation. However, Loyola's articulation of the mystical vision is complete in itself. While Gaston Bachelard has said that "c'est dans une réintégration de l'humain dans la vie ardente que nous voyons la première démarche de ce non-lautréamontisme", 12 perhaps the integration of the meditator in this life would underscore a non-Ignatian language (in its ultimate goal) which enchances the art of writing. Since the meditator cannot obtain the written response of God, there is a certain ambivalence at the very heart of the Ignatian meditation: "la question et la réponse entrent dans un équilibre tautologique: le signe divin se découvre tout entier ramassé dans son audition" (p. 80). In itself, the Ignatian meditation is complete and has no need of the Other. In effect, Loyola offers an example to other logothètes or écrivants which is ironically contrary to his design of mystical unity with God and in accord with Poulet's insight into "le degré zéro de l'écriture" mentioned earlier: "rendu à la signification, le vide divin ne peut plus menacer, altérer ou décentrer la plénitude attachée à toute langue fermée" (p. 80). Hence, supremacy of the human intellectual text is ascertained through Loyola's Exercises.

120 Part II: Fourier — Logothète of the Heart As transformers and organizers of the associational logic of Language, Fourier, Sade, and Loyola can be understood as poets. Tzvetan Todorov especially underscored the relativity of such a poet's thesis: Le discours du poéticien ne jouira jamais que d'une autonomie relative, puisqui'il apparaît et s'inscrit dans un univers discursif déjà existant, fort complexe, et où sa place ne se définit que par relative, puisqu'il apparaît et s'inscrit dans un univers discursif And indeed the political relativity of Fourier's writings should be underscored to properly focus the context of Fourier's discourse. He is able to see the political plight of men among each other. Hence, the Pascalian order of charity is located in the human heart, rather than in an ambiguous euphoria according to Barthes. The "ideals" of Harmony continually imply a comparison or contrast with the contemporaneous political order. A. The Pleasure Principle. For Barthes, Fourier becomes the supreme Inventor as a writer. In inventing his political "Champ du Besoin" and his domestic "Champ du Désir", Fourier apparently constructs his body politic.from the pleasure principle. Although the idea of pleasure principle would be experimentally confirmed as a psychic phenomenon by Freud, the 19th-century socialist seems to have understood the pleasure principle primarily as a physiological drive in the sense of present-day behaviorists. Nevertheless, this pleasure principle is then extended into the family and society to explain human relationships. Indeed, this distinguishes Fourier from Pascal who relegated charity to the sentimental attractions of the human heart. Yet Fourier transforms this order of the heart from Pascal's sentimental attractions to a physiological plane within man to explain the human political and social makeup. But Fourier's originality stems from the manner in which he recreates his political arean called Harmony. The protean nature of Fourier's discourse is at the heart of this "originality": "L'invention fouriériste est un fait d'écriture, un déploiement du signifiant" (p. 93).

121 This "déploiement du signifiant" is manifested through four planes of increasing "organizational" awareness: the "paragrammatisme", the hieroglyphic, neologisms, and syntax. Since "le livre [de Fourier] n'est fait que de sauts, troué" (p. 95), the reader-critic must assume "le mode de lecture du moyen âge, fondé sur le discontinu légal de l'oeuvre" (p. 95). We are immediately reminded of Julia Kristeva's study of Petit Jehan de Saintré {Le Texte du roman, Mouton, 1970) wherein such a reading was necessitated by the multiple texts which preceded and made up de LaSale's vision. Nevertheless, Fourier's penchant for the "paragrammatisme" (p. 98), a technique whereby words are taken out of their normal context and become associated with unfamiliar qualifiers and predicates, initiates the reader-critic into the fragmentary continuity of Fourier's discourse. The hieroglyphic then develops this discontinuity further as the poetic image (hieroglyphic) embodies an actual metaphor which imposes semantic continuity on two disparate works. For example, in Harmony, the girafe becomes synonymous with Truth because the girafe is just as useless to zoology as Truth is to civilization. In effect, Harmony re-organizes a different Text by bringing opposites or contraries together into the same plane of existence. Within Harmony, neologisms become an integral part of this Text which continually seeks differentation. We are reminded of Jacques Derrida's essay on "Différance" in Théorie d'Ensemble (Seuil, 1968), as well as Francis Ponge's assertion: "les analogies c'est intéressant mais moins que les différences. Il faut, à travers les analogies, saisir la qualité différentielle". 14 Nevertheless, despite the aggressive nature of the fourieran neologism ("c'est vraiment un nouvel objet, monstrueux, transgresseur, qui vient à l'humanité", p. 123), it is the syntactical order of the sentence which demonstrates Fourier's supreme iconoclasm and constructive order. The very relationships of words one to another within a logical predication becomes transformed as the "paragrammatismes", the hieroglyphics, and the neologisms have at once destroyed the traditional logical juxtaposition of words on a "horizontal", syntactical plane and the "vertical" learning process of association between what Saussure would later coin as signifié and signifiant.

122 B. Inventor of a Game of Differences. However, this destruction of syntactical order is also accompanied by the construction of a Game of Differences. There is no pure annihilation or creation of nothing here. But a cyclical order of destruction-construction is implied by this Game of Differences wherein differentiation becomes the supreme rule and polarizes texts one from another. Analogous to the political order wherein "l'unité sociétaire est un combinat, un jeu structural de différences" (p. 107), the paradox becomes the supreme manifestation of the freedom of the body politic and écriture itself: "la liberté n'est jamais le contraire de l'ordre, c'est l'ordre paragrammatisé: l'écriture doit mobiliser en même temps une image et son contraire" (p. 115). As Barthes himself points out, the rhetorical form of "l'adunation lui sert à célébrer les prodiges d'Harmonie, la conquête de la Nature par des voies contre-naturelles" (p. 122). Hence, we are able to portray reality from the view of that which is Other. Yet out of this Game of Differences, the "party fouriériste" emerges as an affirmation within Harmony. Attempting to effect a closed system of values, the "party fouriériste" demonstrates the closed nature of time and place by scheduling the three-dimensional Harmonious day wherein worldly ceremony, erotic exercises, and social activities make up the total pre-occupations of its citizens. In effect, this continuous activity erases time, place, and even meaning. In Harmony, we are witnessing the "fuite éperdue du signifié à travers le décalage de l'esthétique du sexe" (p. 120) so that Fourier has now set in independent motion both the signifié and signifiant to the playful order of the Game of Differences. Maurice Blanchot has captured this theme recently: "Tout ce que nous disons ne tend qu'à voiler l'unique affirmation: que tout doit s'effacer et que nous ne pouvons rester fidèles qu'en veillant sur ce mouvement qui s'efface, auquel quelque chose en nous qui rejette tout souvenir appartient déjà". 1 5 And that part of us which dispels recollection is also indispensable for the constructive energy of the writer. As the writer organizes his personal system (text) of écriture, he is also erasing all other systems. Thus, Fourier becomes an example of the Writer as Inventor of the Text — et once destroying and constructing écriture.

123 Part III: Sade - Logothète of the Body. Roland Barthes has devoted two of four essays to Sade. Despite the trinity referred to by the title, Sade's name is emphatically first. Barthes begins his book with a previously published essay on Sade and finishes with a newly conceived reading of Sade. The movement from "Arbre du crime" to "Sade II" is not merely a cyclical theme, but rather a spiral odyssey which accounts for Barthes' increased awareness of Sade's contributions to écriture. Yet one wonders why the pre-occupation with a writer long considered as an immoral pariah of the history of French literature. Marcelin Pleynet offers an answer to the revived challenge of reading Sade: "l'oeuvre de Sade est dans l'ordre de notre culture une de ces contradictions 'monumentales' qui sont à lire et à rendre productives par tous ceux qui entendent comprendre quel possible avenir cette culture leur réserve, à quel change d'activité la dialectique de ces contradictions oblige". 16 However, a contradiction implies a certain standard by which it is judged to differ. So it is with Sade. His erotic language seems to destroy all concepts of Christian morality. As with Loyola and Fourier, Sade goes beyond destruction to the plane of transgression. Since "la transgression suppose l'ordre existant, le maintient apparent des normes, au bénéfice d'une accumulation d'énergie qui rend la transgression nécessaire",17 Sade has transformed the reality of the body or the physical presence into the vital energy of the creative (again, "creative" assumes the sense of construction rather than a magical birth out of nothing) Word. In naming the erotic activity of his characters, Sade has effected a metamorphosis of reality into discourse. Indeed, "la grandeur de Sade . . . c'est d'avoir inventé un discours immense, fondé sur ses propres répétitions (et non sur celles des autres), monnayé en détails, surprises, voyages, menus, portraits, configurations, noms propres, etc", (p. 130). A. Odyssey through the Sadian Community. Sade presents an example of the writer as "pornographe" (p. 136). In his portrayal of "une ethnographie du village sadien" (p. 24), Barthes points out that a whole new linguistic community must be constructed by Sade. But first Sade must be an iconoclast and break with the traditions of Christian morality because "la pornographie ne

124 pourra jamais récupérer un monde qui n'existe qu'à proportion de son écriture, et la société ne pourra jamais reconnaître une écriture qui est liée structuralement au crime" (p. 35). Hence, Sade must construct the geography of a new community wherein, as Lacan has said in opposition to Klossowski's theory of Sade as mon prochain'. "Sade lui, se refuse à être mon prochain, voilà ce qui est à rappeler, non pour le lui refuser en retour, mais pour y reconnaître le sens de ce refus". 1 8 As a resuit, Sade differentiates his eroticism from that viewed by the Christian community. He formalized his own erotic language with a tonality that is not only subversive to the Christian culture but also constructive of a new verbal energy. Seeking to go beyond the pleasure principle which animated Fourier's linguistic system, Sade seeks that vital energy which implements eternal permutations and reciprocity. Sade's work is not a description of an immoral society such as Laclos' roués in Les Liaisons dangereuses. The impossibility of practicing Sade's erotic combinations as well as the exhausting continuity of such combinations makes his adventures hypothetical inventions of language. It is in the linguistic arena that Sade offers a commentary pertinent to écriture today: "Le principe de délicatesse postulé par Sade peut seul constituer . . . une langue absolument nouvelle, la mutation inouie, appelée à subvertir (non pas inverser, mais plutôt fragmenter, pluraliser, pulvériser le sens même de la jouissance" (p. 174). In effect, Sade implies that the text becomes an object of pleasure in the sense that René Char tells us that poetry is an expression of uninhibited Desire. The erotic activities of Sade's work become, thus, metaphors for the écrivants "creativity". B. Erotic Grammar. There is a certain interchangeable nature between the Word and the Eros in Sade's work. In this sense, Sade offers the supreme example of the writer as pornographer. Sade's writings become a "pornogramme . . . en sorte que . . . l'écriture soit ce qui règle l'échange de Logos et d'Eros et qu'il soit possible de parler de l'érotique en grammairien et du langage en pornographe" (p. 162). However, Sade was not the first to combine these two. As Roland Barthes admits, Ernst Curtius had underscored this same phenomenon in Le Roman de la Rose:

125 Die Göttin Natura ist zur Handlangerin geiler Promiskuität geworden, ihre Regelung des Leibeslebens ins Obszöne travestiert. Die unbefangen spielende Erotik des lateinischen Humanismus, das stürmische Anrennen schweifender Jugend gegen die christliche Moral ist auf die Stufe einer sexuellen Aufklärung hinabgesunken, die aus gelehrtem Flitter und spiessbürgerlicher Lüsternheit eine gepfefferte Hausmannskost braut. 1 9 However, Sade has developed the rapport into a whole system. Barthes refers to Sade's erotic language as comparable to a linguistic tree in its complexity and organic cohesion. Sade's erotic grammar of naming his subjects and their practices is even based on a series of rules which are uncovered by Barthes. Despite some critics who would identify Sade as totally iconoclastic: "il poursuit donc une critique impitoyable de toutes les contraintes sociales qui tendent à réduire en que ce soit l'activité de l'incoercible élément humain", 2 0 nevertheless Sade does affirm the form and rules of his erotic grammar. As he attributes names to crimes — the actions, subjects, and objects, he also implements a syntactical relationship of predication and qualification within this sadian culture. Through his rules of exhaustivity (whereby each activity is continued until all energy is expended) and reciprocity (whereby all possible erotic combinations and permutations are attempted), Sade not only demonstrates his "nouvelle grammaire" (p. 148) through the linguistic expression of this activity in discourse but also implements "la syntaxe, affinée par des siècles de culture, [qui] devient un art élégant . . . [et qui] rassemble le crime avec exactitude et prestesse" (p. 160). This elegant art of naming, which has coined a new grammar and a new syntax, is part of the rhetoric of Sade's imagination. Indeed, "la pratique libidineuse est chez Sade un véritable texte" (p. 137). The erotic characters who are joined and separated in infinite combinations are comparable to the rhetorical figures which are continually joined and separated in Sade's written text. But the relationship is more than a metaphoric one. The very characters within his orgies are transformed into the living manifestations of the sadian Word. Barthes speaks of "une érotographie sadienne" (p. 133) wherein "la phrase (littéraire, écrite) est elle aussi un corps qu'il faut catalyser, en remplissant tous ses premiers (sujet-verbe-complément) d'expansions, d'incises, de subordonnées, de déterminants . . ." (p. 133). Not only

126 do the subjects and the objects transfer roles both within the narrative and grammatically, but the sequential flow of the narrative and the syntax break down into fragments so that "le continu n'est alors qu'une suite d'apiècements, un tissu baroque des haillons" (p. 144). The proximity of theme and technique in the avant-garde theater of the last two decades is especially foreseen in Sade's work. That "le marquis de Sade s'est toujours beaucoup préoccupé des questions théâtrales" 21 is especially evident in his dramatic portrayal of the metamorphoses of characters, languages, codes, and scenes. Inside what Philippe Sollers has called "un théâtre global fondé sur l'écriture de l'inavouable", 22 Sade proposes that the ideals of Beauty and Ugliness be reversed: "Il n'y a pas à cela le plus petit doute; d'ailleurs, la beauté est la chose simple, la laideur est la chose extraordinaire, et toutes les imaginations ardentes préfèrent sans doute toujours la chose extraordinaire en lubricité à la chose simple". 2 3 But Sade's ceremonious transformation of the evil of immorality into an amoral good seems to associate him very closely with the theater of Genet. His characters or players must pass through the crucible of Sade's erotic activity in order to surpass Evil itself. Pierre Klossowski describes this phenomenon well: Pour dépasser la notion du mal, conditionnée par le degré de réalité accordé à autrui nous l'avons vu porter l'exaltation du moi à son comble; mais le comble de cette exaltation devait être dans l'apathie où le moi s'abolit en même temps que l'autre, où la jouissance se dissocie de la destruction, où enfin la destruction s'identifie à la pureté du désir. De la sorte, la conscience sadiste reproduit dans sa réflexion le mouvement perpétuel de la Nature qui crée mais se suscite des obstacles par ses créations mêmes et ne retrouve un moment sa liberté qu'en détruisant ses propres oeuvres.24 This destruction-construction cycle is especially put in motion by the écrivant's art to "théâtraliser", that is, too "illimiter le langage" (p. 10) by putting the eternal cycle in motion. Even as the characters themselves engage in the cathartic cycle, they too share Sade's role, according to Blanchot, as "l'homme souverain [qui] est inaccessible au mal". 2 5

127 C. A Theater of Shock. However, these theatrical metamorphoses also extend to other planes. Linguistically, Sade must enact the very words Artaud would later pronounce: "Briser le langage pour toucher la vie, c'est faire ou refaire le théâtre". 26 The Marquis does this by inundating the readercritic with "une moire de langages" (p. 139). The polychromatic voices of the libertines are continually played against the monotonous voices of the victims on the orgiastic stage. The loosely connected narrative of multiple erotic scenes and voices is open-ended and cohesive insofar as it must "poser l'infini du langage érotique" (p. 168). But the plural and polyvalent voices of each individual erotic scene is contrary to a Frenchman's culture according to Barthes because "par hérédité et contrainte classique, le Français s'ennuie du pluriel, il croit n'aimer que l'homogène . . ." (p. 139). Sade then will shock a whole culture with his stage. The multiplicity of voices is transferred to codes within the erotic scenes. In effect, "le réel et le livre sont coupés" (p. 141) both from one another and internally. And the reader-critic adds his consciousness and his forgetfulness to the récit. Barthes describes this phenomenon thus: La multiplicité des codes fonde le pluriel du texte, mais finalement ce qui l'accomplit, c'est la désinvolture avec laquelle le lecteur 'oublie' certaines pages, cet oubli étant en quelque sorte préparé et légalisé à l'avance par l'auteur lui-même, qui s'est dépensé à produire un texte troué, en sorte que celui qui 'saute' les dissertations sadiennes reste dans la vérité du texte sadien (p. 139). And finally the orgiastic scenes themselves are continually transformed. At first, we think that a scene, i.e. a group of characters within a common composition and sequence of erotic activities, will remain in a single place since there is always this semi-circular arrangement with the players of the orgy before the reader-critic-spectator who is always observing from a detached space. Yet the re-reflecting of mirrors one upon another begins to distort this concept of localization to such an extent that the reader-critic-spectator begins to echo the words of Pierre Duvernois: "Où commence le texte, où finit la scène? Impossible de le dire chez Sade. Dialectique de l'un et de l'autre". 27

128 These mirrors, which are such an integral part of Genet's prismatic stage, would especially be recommended by Artaud: "Ce jeu perpétuel de miroir qui va d'une couleur à un geste et d'un cri à un mouvement, nous conduit sans cesse sur des chemins abrupts et durs pour l'esprit, nous plonge dans cet état d'incertitude et d'angoisse ineffable qui est le propre de la poésie". 2 8 Barthes elaborates this use of mirrors even further to portray on the one hand, the double mirror wherein nothing can ever be reflected except emptiness and, on the other hand, the complex multiplicity of mirrors around a subject by which all perspective is abolished. Thus, Sade develops the dramatic changing of character through linguistic, codified, and scenic roles reminiscent of the theater for, as Duvernois has noted: "ce qui s'ajoute ici, c'est le théâtre. Sans lui, pas de discours sadien". 29 The comparison to Genet's stage might even be extended to a third similarity — the ritual. The dramatic stage of Sade's orgies is often very punctual and ceremonious in the manner of a Black Mass to Satan. Within the drama of the orgies there is always a master of ceremonies (cf. the priest of a Satanic sacrifice) who directs and ensures the proper form of the eroticisms while narrating the ritual for the reader-critic-spectator. Such rituals imply that even Sade's erotic language must be systematized and closed within a certain parameter of constructive and vital energy. Roland Barthes has noted that, of all the erotic activities Sade has put in motion, the strip-tease is the least employed. There is no unveiling of secrets in Sade's adventures. Jean Ricardou once described the art of the strip-tease as a progressive revelation from "l'obscurité . . . complète" to the final "éclairé par le j o u r " . 3 0 Perhaps Ricardou's essay might offer an insight into why the strip-tease offers no dramatic charm for Sade. While Barthes explains it thus: "il n'a aucun secret du corps à quérir, mais seulement une pratique à accomplir" (p. 161), Sade himself once said in a letter (26 January 1782): "Homme! Tu veux analyser les lois de la nature et ton coeur . . . ton coeur où elle se grave est lui-même un énigme dont tu ne peux donner de solution". 3 1 There certainly are secrets to be explored by Sade. However, the progressive illumination, referred to by Ricardou's strip-tease, is rejected by Sade because he would admit that truth has already been wholly revealed. Hence, the artist is one who demonstrates its permutations, exigencies, and limitations

129 upon the stage of his "text". Rather than progressive illumination, Sade seems to prefer a re-organization or re-construction of truth to portray enigmas from different perspectives, thus precluding the dogmatic "revelation" of a single dimension of reality. The speed and proliferation themes of Ionesco also have some analogies to Sade's cinematic techniques of drama. Just as "le cinéma consiste, non à figurer, mais à faire fonctionner un système" (p. 158), so Sade's orgiastic scenes appear to be "tableaux vivants" wherein the filming techniques of episodic composition, sustained movement, pictorial brilliance, and the spotlighting of dramatic moments are used to give an aura of unity to the multiplicity and complexity of events. The narration of Sade's dramatic orgies is quite similar to the unreeling of a film since both employ what André Bazin calls the cinematic projection "in an imaginary space which demands participation and identification" 32 from the reader-critic-spectator. The cinematic scenes of Sade's orgies demand a response, whether positive or negative, much in the same manner as Cocteau's films or Artaud's theater of shock. If "le degré zéro de l'écriture" could be attained by Loyola, Fourier, or Sade, it would seems to be a very elusive stage in the development of their systems. Perhaps this "stage" is only a period of transition from meditation to mysticism for Loyola, from democracy to socialism in Fourier, and from morality to amorality for Sade. On a linguistic plane, which is the primary thread which unites these three in Barthes' collection, "le degré zéro" might well be that area in the cyclical Game of Differences between the movements of destruction and construction. Since it would be impossible to locate the beginning or terminal points of either destruction or construction, "le degré zéro de l'écriture" still remains an amorphous, suspended state in the cycle of artistic creativity which resists localisation. Where has this triumvirate of Loyola, Fourier, and Sade taken us? Sade's example demonstrates that "seul le texte (crime contre la cause) est finalement la résolution non-symétrique échappant à la dualité comme à la contradiction". 33 Indeed, the texts of Sade, Fourier, and Loyola have all demonstrated that a literary sémiologie can be developed on separate planes of existence because "il ne reste plus qu'un scénographe: celui qui se disperse à travers les portants qu'il plante et échelonne à l'infini" (p. 11). Thus, the écrivant, like

130 the movie-maker, must adopt various roles — be they logothète, inventor, pornographer, or whatever - in order t o present his reorganized artistic perspectives. However, the écrivant is primarily a logothète since he MUST work with language. And "la tâche primor- , diale du logothète, du fondateur de langage, est de découper le texte sans fin" (p. 100). So the écrivant continually finds himself in the middle o f a house o f mirrors wherein he attempts t o regulate and subordinate the perspectives for "la ménagère aussi révèle l'envers de la vérité et, dans ce cas, l'envers est aussi le coeur de la vérité". 3 4 In his odyssey from destroyer to constructor across the plain o f "le degré zéro de l'écriture", the active writer, the écrivant, continually assumes new roles t o manifest the multiple realizations o f the texts o f a literary sémiologie. Thus, the écrivant must be as protean as Hesse's Steppenwolf before the looking glass. 3 5

NOTES 1. Georges Poulet, La Conscience Critique (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1971), p. 269. 2. Ibid., p. 314. 3. Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971), p. 15 [Henceforth, I will indicate references to this text immediately after the selection J. 4. Jean-Louis Bory, "Roland Barthes a inventé une nouvelle manière de lire des livres", Paris Match (January 22, 1972), p. 62. 5. Richard Poirier, The Performing Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 111. 6. Roland Barthes, "L'ancienne rhétorique - aide-mémoire", Communications, No. 16 (1970), p. 223. 7. Philippe Sollers, "Niveaux Sémantiques d'un texte moderne", La Nouvelle Critique, No. 1 (April 16-17, 1968), p. 89. 8. Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de Linguistique Générale, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (Paris: Librairie Payot and Cie., 1916), p. 44. 9. Georges Bataille, La Littérature et le Mal (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 126. 10. Ibid., p. 134. 11. Jacques Lacan, "The Empty Word and the Full Word", trans, and © Anthony Wilden in The Language of the Self - The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), p. 27. 12. Gaston Bachelard, Lautréamont (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1965), p. 154. 13. Tzvetan Todorov, "Poétique", in Qu'est-ce que le structuralisme? Ed. Oswald Ducrot et al. (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), p. 165.

131 14. Francis Ponge, Le Grand Recueil, II (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), pp. 41-42. 15. Maurice Blanchot, l'Amitié (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 326. 16. Marcelin Pleynet, "Sade Lisible", Tel Quel, No. 34 (Summer 1968), p. 82. 17. Pierre Klossowski, "Sade ou le philosophe scélérat", Tel Quel, No. 23 (Winter 1967), p. 7. 18. Jacques Lacan, "Kant avec Sade", Critique, XIX, No. 191 (April 1963), 312. 19. Ernst Robert Curtius, Europaische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern and Miinich: Francke Verlag, 1948), p. 135. Willard R. Trask translates this passage thus: "The goddes Natura has become the servant of rank promiscuity, her management of the life of love is travestied into obscenity. The unaffected and playful eroticism of Latin Humanism, the stormy attacks of youthful vagantes against Christian morality, have sunk to the level of a sexual liberalism which concocts a spicy stew out of erudite tinsel and philistine pruriency" (p. 126). From Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series XXXVI. © 1953 by Bollingen Foundation. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.. 20. Maurice Heine, Le Marquis de Sade (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p. 68. 21. Guillaume Apollinaire, Introduction to l'Oeuvre du Marquis de Sade (Paris: Bibliothèque des Curieux, 1909), p. 33. 22. Philippe So 11ers, "Sade dans le texte", Tel Quel, No. 28 (Winter 1967), p. 44. 23. Marquis de Sade, Les 120 Journées de Sodome (Paris: Club des Bibliophiles, 1904), pp. 54-55. 24. Pierre Klossowski, Sade mon prochain (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), p. 136. 25. Maurice Blanchot, Lautréamont et Sade (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1963), p. 28. 26. Antonin Artaud, Le Théâtre et son Double, in Oeuvres Complètes, IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 18. 27. Pierre Duvernois, "L'emportement de l'écriture", Critique, XXVIII, No. 302 (July 1972), 605. 28. Artaud, p. 76. 29. Duvernois, p. 607. 30. Jean Ricardou, "Description d'un strip-tease", Tel Quel, No. 5 (Spring 1961), pp. 71-78. 31. Marquis de Sade, Correspondance inédite (Paris: Paul Bourdin, 1929), pp. 182-183. 32. André Bazin, "Marginal Notes on Eroticism in the Cinema", in What is Cinema?, II, trans, and ed. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 174. 33. Sollers, p. 49. 34. Bataille, p. 141. 35. This article was first published in the Winter 1975 issue of Helicon.

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INDEX

agoraphobia, 24 Alice in Wonderland, xiv Allemand, A., 91 Althusser, L„ 21 Ames, S., iv Anglo-American criticism, 5-6 L'Anti-Oedipe, xii Anti-romance romance 104, 107 Aristotelian order, 7, 15 Artaud, A., xiv, 7 Astier, P., 21 "atomic theories," 56 L'A ttente et L'oubli, 116 audience, viii, 23-24 Bachelard, G„ 119 Balzac, H. de., 119 Barthes, R., xi, xii, xiii, 5, 6, 11, 23, 35, 49, 54, 59, 67, 68, 69, 81-92, 115-130 Bataille, G., xiv, 45, 117 Baudelaire, C., xi, 40 Bazin, A., 129 Beckett, S., 116 Béguin, A., 99, 101 Blanchot, M., 5, 7, 21, 28, 29, 34, 48, 58, 67, 70, 82, 83, 116, 122, 126 Bonnefoy, Y., 99, 104 Bory, J. L., 116 Bossuat, R„ 102 Boyer, P., xiv Breton, A., 86 bricolage, v Butor, M., 32, 64-65,90

Camus, A., 82 Caws, M.A., xiv Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 99 Cerisy-la-Salle colloquia, xiv Champigny, R., 14 La Châtelaine de Vergi, 102 "Les Chats," xi Change Collectif, xi, xiv, xv, 6 chanson de geste, 100 Char, R., 124 Chomsky, N„ xiv, xv, 25, 81, 88, 99 circle motif, 32-35, 48 Claudel, P., 70 clôture, 28, 35, 38 Cocteau, J„ 129 Collin, F., 21 Cours de Linguistique Générale, 83 criticologie, 81, 91, 92 Critique et Vérité, 6 Curtius, E., 124 Daix, P., 81, 82 Davidson, H., iv, xiii, 6, 87, 90 déstructuration, 8, 22, 23, 24, 2526, 28 déclenchement, 6, 28, 66 De la Grammatologie, xii, 33, 48 Le Degré zéro de l'écriture, xiii, 5, 54, 81-92 Deleuze, G., xii, xiii Derrida, J„ xi, xii, 12, 15, 20, 23, 24, 25, 2 8 , 3 3 , 4 4 , 4 8 , 5 2 , 5 4 , 5 6 , 6 1 , 63,65, 121 Desonay, F., 105, 107 Dieguez, M., de, 16

140 Donato, E., xii Doubrovsky, S„ 19, 91 Drame, 1 7 , 2 3 , 4 4 , 4 9 Duras, M., 32, 53, 87 Duvernois, P., 126, 128 ébranlement, 42-43 écoulement, 37-39 écriture, xi-xv, 5, 6, 11, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24 -allegory of, 52 - d e f i n i t i o n of, 6 - m y t h , xiii -semiological implications of, 6 écrivain, 91 écrivant, 91, 115, 119, 124, 130 Einstein, A., 66, 96 Eléments de Sémiologie, 83, 88 L 'Empire des Signes, 69, 88 En attendant Godot, 116 Entre la Vie et la Mort, 90 Entretien Infini, 5, 6 épistémè, 1 espace, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 3 5 4 3 , 45 L'Espace Littéraire, 28 L'Etranger, 82 Exercises, 117-119 Faye, J.P., xiv Fenollosa, E., 69, 76 Ferrier, J., 101 Flaubert, G., 86, 87 Foucault, M., xii, xiv, 7, 42 Fourier, C„ 120-122 Fowlie, W„ 81 Froissart, J., 99 Les Fruits d'Or, 90 Game theory, 58-60, 62, 64, 116, 122 - a s jeu, 12 Genet, J., 126, 128 Genette, G., 36, 40 Geneva school, 87 gestes motif, 46-47

Gide, A., 86 Girard, R., xii glissement images, 49 Goldmann, L., 88 Les Gommes, 81 Guattari, F., xii La Guerre, 21, 28 Hegelian, 19, 85 Heidegger, M., 82 Heine, M., 125 Henric, J., 45 Heraklitus, 65 Hesse, 130 Hjelmslev, L. 99 Hölderlin, F., 7 Homer, 59 ideogram, 43, 69, 63-76 imparfait, 12, 13, 14, 20, 30, 35, 41 inter-textualité, 22, 70, 81, 104 Jakobson, R„ xi, 60, 61, 81, 88, 132 La Jalousie, 67 Jones, R., 92 Kant, E., 5, 7 , 4 6 Kierkegaard, S., 18 Klossowski, P., 123, 125, 126 Knudson, C., 99 Kristeva, J., xiii, xiv, 7, 22, 47, 63, 81, 99-108, 121 Kurz, P., 64 La Sale, A., de, 5, 99-108 Lacan, J., xii, 4 4 , 8 1 , 118, 124 Laclos, P., 104, 124 langage, 83 langue, 85, 87-88 Laporte, R., 15, 19 La wall, S., 67, 87 Le Clézio, J. 2 1 , 2 8 , 89 Lesage, L. 81 Lévi-Strauss, C., 81 Les Liaisons dangereusses, 104, 124

141 life of literature, 7, 8, 11, 28-49, 120 littérature engagée, 22, 82, 85 Le Livre à Venir, 29, 87 Logique du Sens, xiv Logiques, 11, 28 logocentrism, 26, 48 logothètes, 115, 117, 119, 130 Loyola, I., de, 117-119 Lucretius, 7, 8, 12, 20, 25, 70 Macksey, R., xii La Maison de Rendez-vous, 89 Mallarmé, S., 7, 30, 57, 66, 67, 84, 86 Maraini, F., 69, 74, 75 Marx, K., 47, 82 Marxist, 19, 45, 46, 47, 63, 81, 83, 84, 88 Mauriac, C., 8, 17, 56, 89-90 Merleau-Ponty, M., 2, 46 Meung, J., de, 105 Meyer, H., 22, 47 middle voice, 87 mirror-drama, 11-26 mirrors, 14-15, 2 1 , 4 3 ^ 5 , 189 La Modification, 32 Montherlant, H., de, 86 Les Mots et les Choses, xii, 7 myth - o f écriture, xi-xv -re-naissance, 57-58 -structuralist, xiii, 6, 8 Nadeau, M., 52 Noguez, D., 92 Nombres, xiii, 5-76 nouveau roman, 88 odyssey motif, 30 On the Nature of the Universe, 1 Le Parc, 44, 91 Pascal, B., 5, 115, 120 parentheses, 25 Paris, J., xiv

Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, 5, 99-108 Peyre, H., 20 Picard, R„ 81, 84, 91 Pierssens, M., xv Piron, M., 36 Pisan, C., de, 106 Pleynet, M., 122 le pluriel, 6-76 Poirier, R„ 116 Ponge, F., 121 Poulet, G., 45, 56,'87 Pound, E., 69, 76 present tense, 13-14, 30, 35 Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, xi, 82 La Quête du graal, 99, 104 Quinze Joies de Mariage, 99 Le Ravissement de Loi V. Stein, 32 redoublement, 20-23, 32 réseau motif, 36, 38, 39 Rey, J.M., 21,58, 59 Ricardou, J., 25, 44, 64, 128 Riffaterre, M., xiv Robbe-Grillet, A., 20, 35, 41, 59, 66, 82, 87, 89 roman, 6, 20, 24, 100 Roman de la Rose, 103, 107, 124 Roubaud, J., xiv Roudiez, L., 5, 104 Rousseau, J.J., 65 Rychner, J., 105 Sade, Fourier, Loyola, xiii, 115-130 Sade, M., de, 123-129 Sarrasine, 119 Sarraute, N., 61, 90 Sartre, J.-P., xi, 18, 22, 82, 83, 85 Saussure, Ferdinand, de, 6, 81, 82, 83, 88, 116, 121 sémiologie, 130 -age of, xii-xv -functions of, 63, 70 - m y t h of, xii Shepard, W., 99

142 signe, 7, 83 -signifié, 6, 7, 20, 89, 121, 176121, 176-177 -signifiant, 6, 7, 20, 89, 121 Simon, C., 81,87 Sisyphus legend, 57 sleep motif, 41-49 Sollers, P., xii, 6, 11, 17, 28, 30, 32, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 52, 58, 63, 87, 91, 116, 124, 126 Sontag, S., 82, 86 structuralism, xi-xv, 8 The Structuralist Controversy, xii structuration, 11, 20-23 style, 85 Sur Racine, 5 Le Système de la Mode, 88 S/Z, 6, 11, 1 2 , 6 7 , 8 1 , 119 Tel Quel Group, xi, xiv, xv, 6 text, 7, 8, 11,70, 100

Le Texte du Roman, xiii, 5, 99-108 theater motif, 7, 8, 11, 16-19, 21 Théorie d'Ensemble, 11, 59 Todorov, T., xii, 31, 91, 104, 108, 120 transformational reading, 81, 88, 108 Troyes, C., de, 100, 101, 104 university criticism, 81 Valéry, P., 86 van Rossum-Guyon, F., 105 Vinaver, E„ 99 Weightman, J., 41 Weltanschauung, 8, 22, 93 Williams, C., iv, 57, 92 words, xiii, 95-109 writer, xiii, 111-131 Zumthor, P. 104, 106