The Lyric Subject 9783631833636, 9783631872079, 9783631872086, 3631833636

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The Lyric Subject

LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY General Editor: Wojciech H. Kalaga

VOLUME 59

Varja Balžalorsky Antić

The Lyric Subject A Reconceptualization

Translated by: Erica and Lukas Debeljak

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress

The book was published with support from the Slovenian Research Agency and University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts.

Henri Michaux's poem “La Ralentie” from Lointain intérieur © Editions Gallimard 1938, 1963, is published by courtesy of Editions Gallimard. This book was originally published in Slovenian under the title "Lirski subjekt: rekonceptualizacija", © Inštitut za slovensko literaturo in literarne vede, Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU, 2019

ISSN 1434-0313 ISBN 978-3-631-83363-6 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-87207-9 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-87208-6 (EPUB) DOI 10.3726/b19374

© Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2022 All rights reserved.

Peter Lang – Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Preface The Lyric Subject1 interrogates the concept of the subject in the poem, against the broader background of literary-​theoretical issues related to the lyric subject. Specifically, what kind of subject is the subject in the poem? What relation does it have to other forms of subjectivation that human beings experience in their life practices? What is its singularity? These are not questions that have explicit answers, but we attempt to implicitly approach and illuminate a range of possible answers. For this reason, we conceive of the book as a sort of theoretical-​speculative introduction to the expanded practical-​analytical research of the subject in the poem and in certain aspects as an emerging theory of the lyric. Precisely because of its point of departure, it is possible to read the study in two ways: first, as a development of the reconceptualization of the basic concept of the theory of the lyric and the lyric subject, and, second, as a survey of the most important references in the theory of literature, and, more broadly, theories that would be beneficial to the reconstruction of the latter. Some chapters are formulated as a precise reading of individual theories and a summary of their main critical points. We decided on an approach that would lead to a deeper exploration of elements of these theories. We were unable to avoid schematic summaries in some of the later sections of the book, in part because of the necessity for a broader treatment of the theoretical corpus, and also keeping in mind the needs of the reader. A consequence of this structure is the partial dispersal of the thematic material over the course of the book and the development of the discussion. The book is a shortened, corrected, and translated version of the Slovenian original which was published in 2019 by ZRC publishing at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.The research itself was realized in two parts: between 2007 and 2009 as a doctoral dissertation for the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, and as a supplementary study between 2017 and 2019 in an effort to systematize our conclusions about subject configuration as a reconceptualization of the lyric subject, incorporating transnarratological elements. Fifteen years ago, I began the study of the concept of the lyric subject that led to this book. At that time, it was clear that the discrepancy between the 1 The author acknowledges the book was financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency within the project J6-​8259 with sources from the state budget.

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established practice of theory and the practice of poetry had been growing, especially when looking at the history of poetry and the most contemporary poetic practices. Concepts of the lyric subject developed within the great modern systems of literary theory during the second half of the twentieth century, began, after 1995, to be viewed with scepticism in literary criticism, although not in the reception of the general reading public (this being above all the consequence of how we learn to approach poetry in school). In the last two decades, especially in theories of poetry in German and French-​speaking academia, there have been significant attempts to redefine the concept of the lyric subject that have also been incorporated into this study, but, which do not, it seems, extend into broader research practices. Doubts that have appeared in connection to this concept and even the term lyric subject, usually refer to both parts of the term: lyric and subject. The emphasis on the hybridity of genres in the most recent literary-​historical and literary-​theoretical research and (now somewhat discarded) ideas of anti-​essentialism demand new reflections on the very concept of the lyric. The second component of the term –​subject –​has attracted even more critical reproaches. The postmodern condition is no longer an era in which the fixed subject prevails, and this is clearly reflected in contemporary poetry. For this reason, literary critics tend to prefer to avoid the term subject altogether and instead use the term lyric speaker. This perspective, which deals only with terminology and not with the concept itself, is still connected to established versions of the great (philosophical) story of the genealogy of the subject and relies on the active (foundation) or the passive (subordinate) etymological derivation of the term subject. However, as seen in contemporary philosophy and other humanist and social science disciplines, the subject, after the announcement of its death, rose like a phoenix in new feathers. Is one of the justifications for its resurrection new reflections about the subject in the poem or indeed the question: what is the subject in the poem? Namely, traditional literary theory postulates that the literary subject cannot be equated with the philosophical or psychological concept of the subject. This statement holds if we understand the concept as a specific textual function. But what is the relation between the subject in language and the subject in poetry? The problem of the lyric subject no doubt also emerges from the interpretation of the concept based on “fixed” notions of the subject as unchangeable consciousness, substance, and identity. Other problems periodically appear in the research when theory confronts practice and literary theory confront theories of discourse and the subject, and it is apparent that it has become necessary to distinguish the two conceptual levels. For this reason, we have separated the lyric subject in its strict literary-​morphological sense from the poetic subject as

Preface

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a discursive-​anthropological and artistic concept. The inevitable implication of such a conceptualization of the poetic subject is also the reconceptualization of the lyric subject within a wider diapositive, which we have termed the subject configuration of the poem. This study is divided into four parts. Part I presents research in the conceptual field of discourse (Chapter 1), provides a short summary of the state of modern and contemporary treatment of the subject in the humanities and social sciences (Chapter 2), and interrogates the question of genre theory from the standpoint of the lyric and the lyric subject (Chapter 3). Part II outlines the historical arc of the understanding of the subject in the lyric in the light of two tendencies –​the identificatory and transformative theses (Chapter 5), provides a detailed summary of key referential modern theories of the lyric subject and a concise panorama of contemporary perspectives (Chapter 6), presents two modern conceptions of the subject in the poem: the phenomenological and the psychoanalytical (Chapter 7). In Part III, we draw on selected references to derive literary-​theoretical, linguistic, sociological-​anthropological, and philosophical arguments that cast a new light on the concept of the lyric subject. In Part IV, we conclude with two case studies: an analysis of subject configuration in troubadour poetry and a close reading of Henri Michaux’s long poem “La Ralentie” [The Slowed Down]. We also provide a basic outline of the potential elements of subject configuration with examples from world poetry.

Acknowledgments I would first like to sincerely thank my dear and respected mentor Professor Boris A. Novak, who during the first years of my research believed in my project even when it seemed that the project was too ambitiously defined. He, not only as a great scholar, theorist, and translator of poetry, but above all as a poet, supported my intuition to try and develop this aspect of theory. Gratitude is also due to other fellow scholars at the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory of the University of Ljubljana where I spent the academic years of 2007/​2008 and 2008/​2009 as a junior researcher, dedicating myself to this project. I also extend my thanks to Jean-​Michel Maulpoix who generously hosted me in 2007 and 2008 in the research group Observatoire des écritures contemporaines at the Paris X Nanterre University and continued to support me in my research. I thank Héloise Gandon and Gimba Diallo, and Mojka Žbona and Matjaž Počivalšek for their hospitality in Paris. I also extend warm thanks to the unknown man who, during an inspiring conversation which took place in May 2007 on a bench in the Jardin des Tuileries before he went off to participate in a demonstration, introduced me to the name of Henri Meschonnic, a French thinker who became a crucial part of my theoretical engagement with poetry. I do not believe this encounter was a coincidence. Henri Meschonnic passed away during the days when I was feverishly writing the chapter about his poetics. For Meschonnic, the subject of the poem is always unknown! Thanks also to the following professors and colleagues for suggesting sources for my research: the late Evald Koren for the almost inaccessible older German sources, Miha Pintarič for certain French sources, Alenka Jovanovski for directing me to the nonegological theories of the individual, Alenka Koron for several works on narratology, and Seta Knop who considered my bibliographical needs when ordering books for the department. I am also indebted to the lively and critical attention of the editor of the Slovenian version, Jernej Habjan, who helped to finalize the Slovenian manuscript. I thank the Slovenian Research Agency for the financing my research activities for a year and a half and for their support of the translation of the English version of the book, the Charles Nodier Institute in Slovenia for providing a French government stipend, the Slovenian Ministry of Culture for providing a research residency in Vienna, the ZRC Publishing, and Editions Gallimard for

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releasing certain copyrights. I am particularly grateful for the permission to publish Henri Michaux’s poem “La Ralentie” in its entirety. Thanks also to my dear friend and poet Nathan Hoks for providing an inspired translation of “La Ralentie” into English. Tomo Virk also enthusiastically supported me during the final phase of my research work, making it possible to complete the writing of the monography and supervise the English translation within the context of the project “Slovenian Literature and Social Change: The Nation State, Democratization, and Transitional Divergences” at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. The latter would have not been possible without the translators Erica Johnson Debeljak and Lukas Debeljak. I thank both of them for the teamwork and their immense patience during the difficult years of the Covid pandemic. I would also like to thank Wojciech Kalaga, the editor of the series “Literary and Cultural Theory”, for his attentive reading of the final version of the manuscript and his useful commentary, and Ute Winkelkötter, editor at Peter Lang, who shepherded the book to print in a safe and timely manner. A few months before the English version was completed, I gathered the courage to write to the esteemed Jonathan Culler and ask him if he would be willing to read the English manuscript. His kind response gave me the impetus I needed to meet the challenge of bringing the project to completion. During the past several years, I had the precious opportunity to present my new perspectives on the subject of the poem to students first at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana and then in Maribor. Their responses, both the positive and the negative, and the independent work that came out of those seminars and exercises, were invaluable because they provided a litmus test that revealed where there was the danger that demon theory would bite its own tail. And of course: infinite thanks to my beloved Ivan, Isidora, and Sara –​for being with me! I dedicate the book to the memory of my late grandmothers: Maka and Mara.

Contents Part I Chapter 1 The Question of Discourse: Toward a Literary Discourse ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  19 Enunciation, the Semantic and the Semiotic Mode ��������������������  23

Chapter 2 The Question of the Subject in Philosophy and Social Sciences �����������������������������������������������������������������������������  29 The Subject in Philosophy ���������������������������������������������������������������  30 The Subject in the Social Sciences �������������������������������������������������  32

Chapter 3 The Question of the Lyric �������������������������������������������������������  35 Changes in Modern Genre Theory ������������������������������������������������  35 Genre as the Reality of Discourse ��������������������������������������������������  36 The Lyric ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  37 The Lyric Subject and Modern Genre Theory ������������������������������  43

Part II Chapter 4 A Note on Terminology ����������������������������������������������������������  47 Chapter 5 Historical Fragments: Two Tendencies ����������������������������  51 Charles Batteux: Les Beaux-​Arts réduits à un même principe �����  51 Hegel on the Lyric ����������������������������������������������������������������������������  53 The Renaissance and Furor Divinus �����������������������������������������������  55

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The Romantic Paradigm ������������������������������������������������������������������  56 Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music ������������  59 The Emergence of the Concept of Lyrisches Ich ���������������������������  60

Chapter 6 The Lyric Subject in Modern Literary Theory ��������������  63 The Lyric Subject in The Logic of Literature by K. Hamburger (A Revised Reading) ������������������������������������������  63 The Lyric and the Lyric Subject ����������������������������������������������������  65 Karlheinz Stierle: The Identity of Discourse and the Transgressivity of the Lyric and Its Subject ��������������������������  71 Anthony Easthope’s Poetry as Discourse ���������������������������������������  73 Proceedings on the Lyric Subject in the Francophone World ����  75 Transgeneric Narratological Approaches in the English and German-​Speaking Worlds ������������������������������������������������������  77 The Lyric Subject in Slovenian Literary Studies: Janko Kos �������  79

Chapter 7 Modern Views on the Subject of the Poem ��������������������  83 The Phenomenology of the Affective: The Poetic Subject as an Affective-​Pathic Subject ����������������������������������������������������  84 Emil Staiger �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  84 Antonio Rodriguez: A Synthesis of Phenomenologies of the Affective ���������������������������������������������������������������������������  85 Sensing, Flesh, Stimmung ��������������������������������������������������������������  86 Julia Kristeva’s Semanalysis: The Process of Signifying the Process of the Subject �������������������������������������������������������������  88 From the Sign to the Text as an Activity of Signifying ��������������  88 The Subject-​in-​Process: The Fragmentation of the Unitary Subject ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  89 Semiotic Chora, Semiotic, Thetic, and Symbolic ��������������������������  90 The Genotext and the Phenotext ��������������������������������������������������  92 A Final Note on Kristeva’s Semanalysis ���������������������������������������  93

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Part III Chapter 8 The Process of the Text and Subjectifying: An Initial Sketch �����������������������������������������������������������������������������  97 Chapter 9 Ricœur’s Dialectic of Ipse and Idem in the Lyric Persona ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  103 Chapter 10 A Rereading of Bakhtin’s Theses About Poetry �������  111 Chapter 11 Ducrot’s Polyphonic Theory of Enunciation ������������  121 Chapter 12 Benveniste: Subjectifying in Language �����������������������  127 Benveniste’s Notes About Baudelaire as the Beginnings of His Theory of Poetic Language ��������������������������������������������������  130

Chapter 13 Henri Meschonnic’s Poetics of Discourse ������������������  135 References of the Poetics of Discourse �������������������������������������  137 Critique of the Linguistic Sign: Signifiance, Multiple Signifier, Recitative, Continuous, Historicity ������������������  139 The Reconceptualization of Rhythm ����������������������������������������  141 The Subject in the Poetics of Discourse ������������������������������������  143 The Transsubject as a Space of Individual and Collective Dialogic Subjectivation ������������������������������������������������������  146 Conclusion �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  148

Chapter 14 The Nonegological Theories of the Individual ��������  151 The Individual ������������������������������������������������������������������������������  152 Immediate Consciousness ����������������������������������������������������������  154

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Parallels between Benveniste’s Linguistics of Discourse and Meschonnic’s Poetics of Discourse and Nonegological Theories �����������������������������������������������������  158 Schleiermacher’s Style and Prereflexive Consciousness ���������  163 The Prereflexive and Reflexive in (Poetic) Discourse �������������  165

Part IV Chapter 15 The Poetic Subject and Subject Configuration of the Poem ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  173 Chapter 16 Case Study 1: The Poetic Subject in Troubadour Poetry ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  177 Reference Works about the Subject in Troubadour Poetry ���  177 Elements of Subjectivation in Medieval Philosophy ���������������  180 The Lyric Persona and Intertextuality ���������������������������������������  182 The Level of Enunciation and the Enounced; Metapoem, Performative ������������������������������������������������������������������������  187 The Orchestration of Focalizations and Voices �����������������������  191 Meaning-​Making in Enunciation: Form–​Meaning–​ Body–​Subject ����������������������������������������������������������������������  201 The Intertwinement of Poems and Music: The Melodic Subject, the Collective Subject ������������������������������������������  205 Conclusion �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  206

Chapter 17 Case Study 2: Analysis of the Poetic Subject in Henri Michaux’s Poem “The Slowed Down” �������������  209 The Matrix of Michaux’s Female Poetics ����������������������������������  209 Between the Fullness and Emptiness of the Ego ���������������������  210

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Flow, Fusion, Division: The Subject of the Enounced and Focalizations ������������������������������������������������������������������������  213 Enunciation ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  217 Coherence: Isotopies �������������������������������������������������������������������  220 Recitative in “The Slowed Down” ����������������������������������������������  221 Rhythm and Semantic Prosody �������������������������������������������������  221 Accentual Rhythm ����������������������������������������������������������������������  223 Semantic Prosody �����������������������������������������������������������������������  225 Conclusion ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  231

Chapter 18 Recapitulation and Systematization of Subject Configuration �������������������������������������������������������������������������  233 Level of Text Organization: The Textual Subject, Recitative ��  236 The Dimension of Enunciation as the Mediative Dimension of the Storyworld: The Subject of Enunciation �������������������������������������������������������������������������  240 The Level of the Storyworld and the Enounced: The Lyric Persona, Focal Points of Subjectivity ��������������������������������  243 Perspective and Focalization ������������������������������������������������������  244 Additional Parameters in the Establishment and Analysis of Subject Configuration ����������������������������������������������������  247 Dimensions of Discursive Situations ��������������������������������������  247 Personal Pronouns ��������������������������������������������������������������������  248 Temporality ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  250 Temporal and Spatial Deictics �������������������������������������������������  251

Appendix I Henri Michaux: “La Ralentie” �����������������������������������������  253 Henri Michaux: “The Slowed Down” ����������������������������������������  259

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Appendix II Basic Schema of the Subject Configuration ������������  267 Subject Configuration in the Poem �����������������������������������������  270 Perspectives and Focalizations ������������������������������������������������  274

Bibliography ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  277 Index of Subjects ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  291 Index of Names �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  301

Part I

Chapter 1 The Question of Discourse: Toward a Literary Discourse For some time, an emerging theory of literary discourse has appeared to many scholars in the field as not only an emergency exit from the general crises of global literary studies but as a renaissance of the discipline. In the last four decades, the field of literary criticism has become aware of the antimonies produced by the various turns that convulsed the social sciences and the humanities during the twentieth century. On the one hand, the great modern systems of literary theory still largely depended on essentialist approaches to literature. On the other hand, the emerging postmodern methodological pluralism tended toward interdisciplinary inquiry within cultural studies where literary theory and literary history were absorbed by transdisciplinary Theory (Culler 2000a: 3–​15; Rabaté 2002: 1–​20, 46–​92; Juvan 2011: 33–​34).2 The backdrop of the developments within postmodern relativism was and still is the retreat from logocentric metaphysical essentialism. In the field of literary criticism, this shift implied an interrogation of the alleged autonomy of art and literature. Doubt was cast on essentialist characterizations of literature, and the distinction between literary and non-​literary practices was theoretically undermined in, at the very least, the most radical poststructuralist gestures. In light of all of this, literary studies were compelled to freeze the picture and begin a sort of self-​imposed rehabilitation. At the same time, those in the discipline became aware of the fact that the transformation of its foundations could only happen by simultaneously directing their gaze back onto its primary object, which was ultimately still literature itself. When the French Nouvelle critique of the 1960s began to topple the primacy of positivist literary history with its dethronement of the author as a Modern-​ era institution of individualistic capitalist ideology, one of the results was the establishment of the total autonomy of the literary text and the stitching of this text into a closed, hermetic structure within a network of signs. The precedent for this move came from the structuralist’s (flat and often mistaken) deciphering of Saussure’s conception of language as an abstract system of signs. Accordingly, the subsequent poststructuralist loosening of the (literary) text into an infinite

2 In this paragraph, we rely primarly on Marko Juvan’s conclusions, cf. Juvan 2011: 19–​45. For the most recent contribution into the question, see Tihanov 2019.

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intertext occurred largely in the domains of language–​system–​code, and subjectless, anonymous, and autonomous iterability. Theories of literary discourse sought to distance themselves from both of the mentioned principles with attempted conceptualizations of literature as discourse on the basis of theories that emphasize intersubjectivity and irreducible dialog within radically contingent historicity. The Slovenian theoretician Marko Juvan identifies a solution to the abovementioned antimony in the reflected inclusion of both tendencies (those of transdisciplinary Theory as well as those of theory) into the construction of a theory of literary discourse that would illuminate both its differentia specifica and its relationship to other social discourses and practices (Juvan 2011: 19–​45). For Juvan, the specificity of literature, literariness, is to be meaningfully sought only on the level of discourse, and the communicative and interactive function of literature, which is grounded in intersubjectivity and identified as one of the central principles of literariness (Juvan 2011: 106). In search of the specifics of the interactive function of literary discourse, Juvan draws on Johansen’s typology of the five social discourses (theoretical, technical, practical, historical, and mimetic),3 wherein the mimetic dispositive of literature, that is, its capacity to represent both other existent discourses and its own, reveals itself as literature’s historical, anthropological, and sociological non-​substitutability. In what follows, we will be almost exclusively interested in the internal specificity of the lyric as a form of discourse. Thus, in order to clarify the orientation of our discussion, it is important to note here that we distance ourselves from the broader sociological conceptions of discourse, instead drawing on (philosophical-​) linguistic theorizations that also have sociological-​anthropological implications. Inevitably, the central moments of all four methodological paradigms –​the author, the work, the reader, the context –​must be drawn into a discursive horizon because of their common denominator, attributed to them by the object of research itself –​in this case, the lyric subject. What is at issue is not an appeal to theories of discourse in an attempt to unify the four moments under a single umbrella: that is, to adopt the position of the pragmatics of discourse and conceive of literary discourse as a repeated concretization of the communication model.4 Such a gesture would easily lead to a recourse to old frameworks that 3 J. D. Johansen. Literary Discourse: A Semiotic-​Pragmatic Approach to Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 4 We recall here the basic model: sender–​message–​context–​channel–​code–​receiver. The criticized concept of message from the communication model Jakobson developed in

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contain concepts of single meaning, pure intention, and pure effect under the guise of an analysis of the pragmatics of speech acts, insofar as the problem of speech-​act theories is precisely their supposition of the unproblematic transmissibility of intention, that is, the encoding of intention into any utterance (as well as its repeatability, the basic demand of communication as such).5 While speech-​ act theories do treat the utterance as a pragmatic-​semantic unit of discourse, the speech act in this register nonetheless remains at the level of type-​code, as Linguistics and Poetics was subsequently replaced by the concept of the signal in Eco’s broadened model, as a pure sequence of signs or graphemes with the double function of transmitting content and serving as a prompt to communicate. In this respect, the signal corresponds to Schmidt’s concept of the text and represents a set of rules that guide communication (cf. Luján Atienza 2005: 73, 86). For a critique of the communication model from the perspective of the linguistics of enunciation, see, for example, Kerbrat-​Orrechioni 1999. The author largely draws attention to the schematic quality of the model that cannot account for certain features of verbal communication; for example, the problems of the (non-​)homogeneity of code, the unity of the channel, and especially, what is significant for our purposes, the simplification with which the instances of sender and receiver are characterized. However, our principled distancing from the communication model, which is a crucial issue for our discussion, emerges for more profound reasons. Theories of information and communication developed on the basis of the paradigm of reflection and “the speculative structure” of language influenced by Gadamer, in which the alienation of consciousness from its very self in the process of communication –​which involves two units of communication mirroring each other –​always means a step toward the consciousness’s unproblematic return to itself (cf. Frank 1998: 5). Thus, these “hard” models largely fail to problematize both the subjectivity that is inscribed into verbal communication (which subjectivity, how, when, where) and the dialogical space that this subjectivity enters. For Bakhtin, in contrast, the pure communication model allows for the transformation of “voice” into “thing”: the message is thereby reified: “The entire about-​face in the history of the word when it became expression and pure (action less) information (the communicative function)” (Bakhtin 1986: 115). From the perspective of Benveniste’s theory of enunciation, it is possible to problematize the communication model in a similar fashion as Kerbat-​Orechionni who explicitly refers to Benveniste in the title of her book: to wit, Benveniste’s concept of the subject of enunciation is not equivalent to the concept of the sender–​speaker. 5 In this context, the following claims by Searle are characteristic: “The author said what he meant”; “Understanding the utterance consists in recognizing the illocutionary intentions of the author and these intentions may be more or less perfectly realized by the words uttered.” Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida. Cited in Frank 1997: 32–​33. For Searle and Austin and the counterpart Searle/​Derrida, cf. also Habjan 2020: 49–​69.

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the idealization of a speech situation and the system of pragmatic conventions fails to understand the utterance as a concrete event in living language, thus remaining attached to the concept of language as a system of linguistic signs. Thus, the text would be analyzed as a neutral message whose primary identity and primary intention are always already given, the inscription of the creating subject and this inscription’s point of articulation in subsequent events of the text/​utterance would remain uninterrogated, the reader’s involvement understood merely in the dimension of aisthesis, while literature itself would be reduced to the classical communication model, and its communicative dimension to the function of transmitting messages.6 Within the broad horizon of diverse theoretizations of discourse, our main references will be Émile Benveniste, who conceives of discourse in the sense of enunciation, Mikhail Bakhtin and his circle that developed similar or almost identical concepts to Benveniste before or contemporaneously with him, and Henri Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse. Among other things, all three thinkers share the conviction about the primacy of language [langage].7 within the humanities and social sciences. All three thinkers attribute a central role to literary and, more broadly, artistic discourse within the general theory of language. Benveniste is one of the key figures of the golden age of French twentieth century thought, and his work represents a watershed in modern linguistics. Even so, his texts today are rarely read and, when they are, only partially (cf. Michon 2010: 24). Moreover, they are reinterpreted, particularly in the field of literary pragmatics, in ways that distance themselves from his points of departure and obscure the anthropological dimensions of his theories of language and discourse. Benveniste’s linguistics is often mistakenly characterized as structuralist, in complete contradiction to the manner in which his theory deployed concepts precisely as critiques of structuralism. If anything, the works of Benveniste’s early

6 Here, we must not forget that Austin and Searle banished literature from their accounts of speech acts as the “parasitical” use of language (cf. Habjan 2020: 7–​31). Despite the fact that subsequent linguistic pragmatics developed in specific ways, the speech-​act theory remains both its foundation and one of the key references in pragmatics of literary discourse. 7 There is no English equivalent for the distinction in French between le langage and la langue. La langue designates a system of signs, while le langage is a broader concept meaning the capacity of expression. In English translation, we have no other solution than using the word “language” for both langue and langage. Where the opposition of langue to language is significant to the argument, we indicate this by adding the French terms in parenthesis and/​or using the French word instead of the English.

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period might be compared to structural linguistics, which does not mean, however, that his theory can be classified as a poststructuralist theory, despite the fact that key figures in poststructuralism drew on it. If Benveniste’s production does temporally coincide with the peak of structuralism, Meschonnic published his first works precisely during the transition to poststructuralism. Were we to attempt to provisionally locate Benveniste and Meschonnic’s opuses on the map of the major schools of the humanities and social sciences in the second half of the twentieth century, we would encounter a number of conundrums. In terms of content, the two theoreticians belong neither to structuralism nor poststructuralism, although they did work in close relation and contemporaneously with them. Benveniste and Meschonnic developed a critical and theoretical platform that deviates from the structuralist paradigm with which poststructuralism relates more in terms of continuity than rupture. In short, we may conclude that both Benveniste and Meschonnic’s theories represent alternatives to and critiques of this paradigm, specifically in their conceptions of language, discourse, and the subject. These concepts gain traction both in the framework of linguistics and literary theory, despite the fact that both transgress boundaries between humanist disciplines and advocate transdisciplinarity, particularly Meschonnic and his “theory of the whole.”

Enunciation, the Semantic and the Semiotic Mode Benveniste conceives of discourse largely in terms of enunciation. Enunciation is the central pillar of his theory, and notions of subjectifying in language, intersubjectivity, historicity, the semantic mode (without the semiotic mode), and others, are crucially connected to it. Benveniste conceives of enunciation [énonciation] as the act of producing the enounced,8 thereby distinguishing the concept both from the enounced [énoncé] and Saussure’s parole. Benveniste emphasizes the difference between parole, which corresponds to the dimension of the enounced, and discourse, which (in this sense) corresponds to enunciation, in the specific conditions of enunciation, that is, in the ceaselessly renewed act of production [énonciation, réénonciation], which is, significantly, not coincidental with the bare text of the enounced, parole (Benveniste 1974: 80). Among the tenets of a theory of literary and specifically poetic discourse, and one that this argument promotes, is the conception of the poem as enunciation, a

8 We will be alternatively using terms the enounced and utterance for the same concept, both being distict from the enunciation which is the act of producing the enounced.

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conception that, among other things, calls for thinking of the poem as an act and activity, that is, as a particular performance that is not limited to the enounced but spreads across the artistic text as a whole. Such a performance is self-​referential, in Benveniste’s words: “referring to a reality that it itself constitutes by the fact that it is actually uttered in conditions that make it an act” (Benveniste 1971: 236). It is unique and unrepeatable, virtual and endless (carrying the possibility of endless new enunciations). However, in contrast to the performative speech-​acts, it is not necessarily also conscious and intentional. Its activity is crucially connected to the subjectifying dimension (of the poem, of literature, of art). The decisive insight that enabled the transition from a paradigm of language [la langue] to one of discourse is the discovery of the double-​layered structure of all texts. Similar to Bakhtin (Bakthtin 1986: 105), Benveniste understands that each text is structured by two levels; the text is both language and more than language as conceived of as a system of signs (Benveniste 1974: 63). At the end of the eighteenth century, Friedrich Schleiermacher had already expounded similar views. In this respect, he could be characterized, along with his contemporary Wilhelm von Humboldt, as an important precursor to theories of discourse. Similar to Bakhtin and Benveniste, Humboldt understood language not as a product, that is, a form of labor [ergon], but rather as a form of activity [energeia], which is of crucially importance to the concept of discourse. In contrast, Schleiermacher believes that language emerges from speech acts. According to him, the speech act is characterized by a double-​layered structure: the constant opposition between “use of reason … with the character of identity” and is encoded into language qua code, and “cognition . . . with the character of particularity, i.e. of non-​transferability” (cited in Frank 1998: 11). On the basis of a similar insight into this double-​layered structure, Benveniste derives the concept of two systems of signifying, the semiotic and the non-​semiotic, which he calls the semantic. Semiotic systems are grounded in the production of meaning through signs (the system of language, the conventions of good manners, for example, Indian mudras), whereas non-​semiotic systems are those “in which meaning is imparted by the author to the composition” (for example, artistic systems) (Benveniste 1985: 239). Among all these systems of signifying it is only language that carries within itself the ability to double signify (1974: 65), that is, that consists of the double-​layered structure described by Schleiermacher and Bakhtin. Other systems of signifying are either merely semiotic (i.e. the conventions of good manners) or merely semantic (painting, music). This unique capacity for double signifying has an additional important consequence: language is the unique system that serves as the generator for the

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modeling of all other semiotic systems that compose society, and attributes to them the quality of a system of signs. At the same time, this means that language is the interpretant of all other systems, linguistic and non-​linguistic (Benveniste 1974: 60); indeed, no system of signifying can be interpreted without the use of language. It is here that language emerges as the system that encompasses all other systems of signifying, including society itself (1974: 62). The semiotic mode in language is that which Bakhtin identifies in his famous conclusion on the two poles of the text as the repeatable and the reproducible, and which is repeated and reproduced in text (1986: 105). Conversely, the semantic is that which is singular, unrepeatable, and eventmential. The semantic mode in language is the manner of signifying which can only be brought about by enunciation. Enunciation is the subject’s production of text; each unrepeatable event in the living sequence of any given text. It is only at this level, the level of enunciation, that (Bakhtin’s) dialogical relations can occur, and we can speak of (Benveniste’s) intersubjective subjectifying in language as well as societalization –​these events being simultaneous. The semantic mode, however, has nothing in common with the linguistic sign that features in inquiries into the semiotic (that is, the repeatable), which is why an inquiry into the semantic order must devise a completely new conceptual apparatus (Benveniste 1974: 60). In the face of the inadequacy of the linguistic sign, writes Benveniste, it is necessary to open up a new dimension of signifying within intralinguistic analysis, named the semantic; on the translinguistic level, it is necessary to develop a “metasemantics” grounded in the semantics of enunciation (Benveniste 1974: 66). The integration of this view has several crucial implications for literary studies, particularly as regards the question of poetry, and also opens up the possibility of different approaches to the treatment of the poem and literature as such. For Benveniste, the semiotic mode is the domain of inquiry into the theory of the sign, and thus into all orientations within approaches to literature that depend on the theory of the sign: from formalism, structuralism, and semiotics to literary hermeneutics, phenomenology, and reception aesthetics, as well as literary pragmatics that depend on communication theory. The latter remain in the domain of language and the primacy of meaning and information. From this point of departure –​the conceptualization of the double-​layered structure and the conceptualization of enunciation (in Benveniste) and utterance (in Bakhtin) –​two paths emerge that seem potentially fruitful for a reconceptualization of the lyric subject. On the one hand, we have Benveniste’s theorization of enunciation and subjectifying in language, and his problematization of the linguistic sign particularly in relation to poetic language (which were further

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developed by Meschonnic), and, on the other hand, Bakhtin’s metalinguistics and his conceptualization of dialogism. Our discussion will focus on the central insights of the theory of discourse in individual fields, a division that will also allow us to develop a sequence of philosophical-​linguistic, anthropological-​sociological, and literary-​theoretical arguments for the reconceptualization of the lyric subject. In this introduction, Bakhtin has received relatively little attention which in no way suggests a lack of importance. Bakhtin has immense significance if only because his ideas serve as one of the central references in contemporary literary studies. In what follows, the degree to which Bakhtin’s open-​ended concepts can be considered alongside the interpretation of lyric texts –​and, specifically, how it might be possible to read lyric texts in one Bakhtinian fashion (as opposed to another Bakhtinian fashion) –​will be revealed. In our discussion, we will draw attention to and illuminate the various relations and connections between two traditions; the hermeneutical tradition, the founder of which is Schleiermacher, and the discursive tradition, which connects Bakhtin and Benveniste. Indeed, some of Schleiermacher’s conclusions could be understood as the beginnings of a theory of discourse and therefore not mere artefacts of the twentieth century. Of course, in Schleiermacher’s case, it is impossible to speak of conclusive theorization. For the purposes of our discussion, these connections are particularly important because they suggest the possibility of constructing a bridge between poetry, conceived of as discourse, and certain conceptions of the subject in the history of philosophy. Schleiermacher is known primarily as the founder of modern hermeneutics. His contemporary adherents assert that his philosophical work, despite its underappreciated position in the dominant histories of philosophy, is inscribed into several crucial questions of modern philosophy, an assertion that would call for the reevaluation of his body of thought.9 In the following chapters, we will return to Schleiermacher’s concept of the subject or self-​consciousness in light of modern interpretations and derivations, particularly those of Manfred Frank. Schleiermacher’s contribution to the modern development of the philosophy of language, closely linked to his understanding of the subject, is also significant. That being the case, Schleiermacher is not the only philosopher of his time who drew attention to the central role of language in philosophy, although,

9 In our discussion, we draw primarily on the work of Manfred Frank, in which Schleiermacher seems to be present throughout, and Andrew Bowie’s work Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche 1990 (2003).

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according to Andrew Bowie, he was alone in considering the implications of the so-​called “linguistic turn.”10 The central line of reasoning behind such reversals in the philosophy of language is precisely the rejection of the idea that philosophy could develop definitive ways of explaining meaning and truth by showing how words link up to preexisting things. What is at issue here is the retreat from the conviction that words may transmit a givenness and that unmediated access to preexistent truth is possible. In this respect, philosophical concerns were redirected toward the (Kantian and post-​Kantian) traditions that understand thought and language as constitutive of our understanding of the reality of the world. Schleiermacher’s contribution consisted in his assertion, derived from his understanding of the self-​consciousness, that the conditions of knowledge are dependent on language. In this respect, language is conceived of as constitutive, performative, and world-​forming, rather than merely descriptive and representational (cf. Bowie 2003: 184–​187). In all likelihood, Schleiermacher was also the first to employ the syntagm speech act. He understands language as a form of activity, a key conception for the development of the concept of discourse. Language consists of “speech acts” (Bowie 2003: 187) and the speech act is an individual act that, for Schleiermacher, consists of both oral and textual speech, and which he understands as a life event. Bakhtin grounds his theories of text as utterance and his metalinguistics on this understanding. Benveniste, for his part, also constructs his theory of enunciation and discourse on these conclusions. For Schleiermacher, both the conceptual composition of language as a totality and the becoming of language itself (insofar as language consists of speech acts that transcend each “conceptual” norm individually) are reflected in each utterance. According to Schleiermacher: “nihil est in lingua quod non prius fuerti in oratione” (Benveniste 1971: 111): there is nothing in language that is not antecedent in speech. In this respect, language itself as a system must be analyzed “in the differential between grammatical and rhetorical function” (Frank 1998: 14), as each singular meaning that is created in a context redescribes the unique quality of already codified linguistic values. According to Schleiermacher, it follows that the composition of language must be understood as an unstable, becoming, historically open, and thus contingent entity. Such reversals in the view of language –​the postulation of language’s world-​forming performativity that emerges from the relation between thought and language and thus the negation of a merely representational function of

10 W. von Humboldt, J. G. von Herder, and J. G. Hamann also engaged in a similar philosophical work at the same time.

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language, and the postulation of the specific structure of language as a speech act –​emphasize the “free productivity” of language producers as individual singularities in their capacity to structure and semanticize the world; both the world’s objects and themselves as subjects. As we shall see, the poetic use of language, which for Schleiermacher is connected to the so-​called immediate self-​consciousness, does not represent a break from the norm, a transgression or deviation. Rather, it is the radical embodiment of the potential power of the individual’s inscription into discourse, his/​her creation of discourse, and his/​her own self-​creation along with discourse.

Chapter 2 The Question of the Subject in Philosophy and Social Sciences In recent decades, the humanities and social sciences have seen a resurgence of interest in the history and genesis of the concept of the subject, or more precisely in concepts that are typically related to the subject: person, individual, agent, consciousness, self-​consciousness, selfhood. In this short outline on the state of the question of the subject in contemporary social sciences and philosophy, we will mainly draw on Pascal Michon’s work Fragments d’inconnu [Fragments of a Stranger, 2010], in which the author attempts to supply the foundations of a theory of the subject in the form of a new historical anthropology. In penetrating and condensed fashion, Michon reveals the various perspectives and problems with which contemporary efforts to theorize the history of the subject are confronted. For the purposes of our discussion, these concerns include the following aspects of the concept of the subject: the conditions of its appearance, articulation, and configuration in an artistic (literary) discourse. For our inquiry into the subject in the poem, Michon’s attempt is important because it connects a theory of the subject with theories of language and theories of art. As Michon claims, the contemporary field of knowledge has been dominated for several decades by the primacy of the social and the primacy of language. Following the inception of the social sciences in France shortly after World War II, the concept of the social was made absolute, and it became the primary concept and fundamental interpretant. This primacy did not disappear even at the end of the 1970s with the exhaustion of Marxist and structuralist paradigms. Although the holistic approaches that had previously predominated did cede their central role to individualistic epistemologies and methodologies, the concept of the social itself was not called into question. Philosophical schools that emerged during the 1960s began to respond to the hegemony to which the social sciences aspired, and undertook a critique of the concept of the human being as generated by the social sciences. In the struggle against the historicism and positivism of the social sciences, philosophy engaged all the more robustly in the concept of language, which became the primary interpretant of reality. Developments in philosophy in the 1970s and 1980s did not fundamentally alter this approach: phenomenological, structuralist, and Marxist approaches were replaced by Nietzschean, hermeneutical, and pragmatic-​analytical ones, but, according to Michon, none of these really abandoned the paradigm of language. The image of language [langage] as a universal human activity as defined in the

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previous ­chapter –​initially proposed by Humboldt and Schleiermacher, and later developed by Saussure, Benveniste, and Bakhtin –​became marginalized. The perspective of language as an instrument, semiotic structure, or institution that engaged in class struggle was replaced by the negation of language in the name of other forces: namely, what we see here is a perspective of language as an ontological foundation or as a means of intersubjective communication. As with the concept of the social that preceded it, the concept of language was never subject to thorough critique. Adherents to the theories described above accuse each other of a procedure of legitimation that is grounded in their primary interpretant, be it the social or language, and in this sense reciprocally sustain each other. The consequence is a quiet agreement on the division of the field of knowledge. According to Michon, and from the perspective of the dualism outlined here, any subjectivation whatsoever –​be it epistemological, aesthetic, poetic, political, or ethical –​is always in the grip of the insurmountable conditions of producing meaning initiated by the social and language. Seen through this prism, subjectivation can serve either the self-​legitimation of the individual or his/​ her subjectification. According to Michon, the consequence of these effects is the deceleration of the development of a genuine historical anthropology of the subject.

The Subject in Philosophy Philosophy was the first field to take an interest in the subject and also the first to develop a history of the genealogy of the subject. The dominant philosophical narratives that emerged remain reference points today. Heidegger’s is perhaps the most famous among these narratives and provides the philosophical deciphering of metaphysics as the metaphysics of the subject from Descartes to Nietzsche. Insofar as modern metaphysics are in fact the metaphysics of subjectivity, both the construction and deconstruction of the subject occur within them. The second dominant narrative was developed in the nineteenth century by Hegel who was perhaps the first thinker to define modernity as a period fundamentally characterized by the freedom of subjectivity. In Hegel, this anthropological-​historical motif relates to the theme of the fragmentation of the mind. The Reformation, Enlightenment, and French Revolution transformed religious life, state and society, sciences, morality, and art into distinct embodiments of the principles of subjectivity. These moments of mind, closely related to each other in traditional mythic conceptions and remaining thus in philosophic conceptions, become only formally related in modern thought. With his rejection of metaphysics and his three critiques, Kant was the first philosopher to express the essence

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of the fragmented and subjective mind, the successor of the secular development of the West. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Weber adopted this interpretation while rejecting the idealism of Hegel’s philosophy of spirit in favor of sociological reasoning. According to Weber, the subjectivation of Western man is no longer the product of a gradual development of Spirit and its embodiment in consciousness, but rather the consequences of human individualization. This phenomenon can be explained by a number of sociological and historical causes: the development of empirical natural science, the emergence of state power, and the autonomization of aesthetic practices. Thus, the so-​called disenchantment of the world is accompanied by the differentiation of three spheres of value: science, morality, and art. The focal point of this discussion shifted slightly in the twentieth century: the question of the subject’s history was replaced by the question of the subject’s historicity. According to Michon, historical investigations undertook by philosophers in the Weberian and Simmelian mold (for example, Benjamin and Krauser) and those that drew on Dilthey (Groethuysen) were superseded by phenomenologists and existential philosophers and their reflections on the question of temporality. The focus was no longer reflections on concrete alterations, but rather reflections on the conditions of alterity itself. At the same time, the schema developed by Hegel and Weber continued to influence many philosophical attempts to characterize the history or the concept of the subject. Michon loosely divides these approaches, despite their differences, into three major trends. The first attempts, by returning to Hegel (and Aristotle), to mount a struggle against the division of spheres of value in the name of language and tradition that are said to define the human being (Gadamer, MacIntyre, Taylor, Walzer). The second draws on Kant and provides a critique that attempts to reconstruct the fundamental division of the spheres by undertaking analyses of the transcendentals of the political (Rawls) and communication (Apel), or of the quasi-​transcendentals produced between deliberation and action (Arendt, Habermas). The third, oriented towards Nietzsche, attempts to acknowledge the irreparable division of these spheres and emphasize difference and the inevitably antagonistic aspects of communication and action (Deleuze, Lyotard, Foucault). Thus, the ontological conditions of the modern subject refer either to the language and tradition into which subjects are thrown at birth and which will guide them throughout their life, or to the collective action and intersubjective communication in which subjects might find the resources for self-​reconstruction and emancipation from the given, or the insurmountably polemical and differential aspect of action and language. In all three cases, the subject is characterized anew in response to the imperatives of the

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critique of the subjective mind and the fragmentation of its structure. In the first case, the subject is conceived of as tied to and entering the circular hermeneutical play of interpretation and tradition. In the second case, the subject is established through individual and collective critical efforts at communicating and acting. In the third case, the subject is fundamentally mobile, the fragile site on which forces are executed, the sum of the traces left behind by discursive moves and gestures within language games. Despite their differences, all of the described approaches nonetheless share a rupture with traditional, substantive, and unitary conceptions of the subject.

The Subject in the Social Sciences The social sciences equate the concepts of the subject and subjectivation with the individual and individualization (Michon 2010: 27–​ 29). Subjectivation is thus identified with the emergence of the individualistic person. Thus, as Michon suggests, the history of the subject initially appears as the individual’s gradual exit from an originary whole, whereas subjectivation is understood as the product of the individual’s emancipation from the group (for example, the advent of political freedoms in ancient Greece). In other respects, the gradual subjectivation that is grounded on an ever-​freer life additionally implies a process of economic alienation, within which the individualization of some (i.e. owners) depends on the de-​individualization of others (i.e. the dominated classes). Moreover, theoreticians developed, alongside these two processes, the aspect of subjectivation as inner contemplation. Human beings can discover a new space of their own spirit as they individually distance themselves from likeminded peers (e.g. the deepening of the individual self in St. Augustine11). Other thinkers draw attention to the opposite perspective, arguing that subjectivation is not the process wherein consciousness is broadened and deepened but rather the mastery of the body. The expansion of Christian imperatives, ethical and social disciplinary rules, and the enslavement of the body by labor in capitalism represent major steps in the process by which subjectivation always also means desubjectivation. The latter can be overcome, according to still others, by the work of therapy (healing), this thesis relating to the postulate of subjectivation as the universal development of self-​consciousness. Despite their differences, these four representations of the history of the subject share the following elements (Michon 2010: 29–​33): a linear-​causal orientation

11 Cf. the section on troubadours in this work.

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of a given history; the narrativization of the subject as a narrative about the disintegration of an undifferentiated initial whole through fragmentation (the emergence of language, the division of society into two groups, etc.); a distinction between the psychological and social individual; a division of the world into the Western world and the other world; the representation of the subject’s history either as a process of a long and gradual emancipation and deepening of the individual or as the process of the subject’s enslavement and alienation; the identification of the vehicle of developments in the higher strata of society, and the “top-​down” nature of these transformations from West to East. Thus, the majority of these grand narratives are characterized by a remarkable coherence of logical, epistemological, ethical, and political strategies (Michon 2010: 32). By drawing on one another or antagonizing each other, they merely divide the terrain of operation. These strategies thereby produce a history of the subject that fundamentally depends on the quiet distinction between a sociological and physiological optic, both of which explicitly glorify social elitism and Western-​ centrism. Michon concludes that in the case of contemporary conceptions of the subject, as well as of language (and this is not a coincidence as the subject and language are enmeshed), it is impossible to rely on any of them and reject the others, as if one was more “objective” or “real” than the alternatives. There are no concrete developments of the inquiry into the subject because the subject is always in front of us, in its becoming, always assuming new realizations. Thus, Michon concludes that both the subject and language are strangers that we can only grasp in fragments.

Chapter 3 The Question of the Lyric Changes in Modern Genre Theory One of the critical points of this research, which in the context of anti-​essentialism has a somewhat sensitive nature, is the question of genre.12 Because of the changes that occurred in the field of literary criticism and the humanities in general, the foundations of our research, particularly from the standpoint of the problematics of genre, remain far from obvious. Genre has the potential of dislodging the foundations of our investigation and at the same time preventing relevant conclusions. If the question of the lyric subject in universalist systems of literary theory is crucial for the definition of the internal essence of the lyric as a unit in the ahistorical triad of literary forms (the lyric, the dramatic, the epic),13 then our epistemological starting point, from the aspect of the deconstruction of such a conception of literary types, is undermined. Before we attempt to answer the question of whether it is even relevant, given the backdrop of anti-​essentialism as the epistemological principle of (post-​)modernity (Juvan 2011: 143), to attempt to theoretically reflect on the lyric subject as a transhistorical, albeit changeable and shifting concept, we must identify certain facts that inform our encounter with the universalist genre approach as well as with the (post-​)modern, more or less non-​essentialist, trends in genre theory. The paradigm of essentialism offers us the possibility of determining the essence of individual phenomena (in the problematics of genre, these are individual texts) and the identifying characteristics of their structure and content defined by their affiliation with one timeless, abstract category (literary form, genre, subgenre). In contrast, anti-​essentialism advocates relationality and criticizes “essentiality,” calling attention to the contingency of individual phenomena and

12 According to Childs and Fowler, the terms kind, type, form, and genre can be alternatively used (Childs and Fowler 2005: 97). We will be using the terms literary type and form to designate categories in the tripartite distinction between the lyric, the epic, and the drama, and the terms kind, genre and subgenre to designate subcategories of three major literary types. 13 For example in the literary theory of Slovenian scholar Janko Kos: “The concept of the lyric subject is necessary for the definition of the lyric. Only with the lyric subject are we able to determine the difference between the lyric text and narrative prose” (Kos 1993: 52).

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The Question of the Lyric

their sociological, historical, cultural, cognitive, ideological, and therefore entire contextual determinism (cf. Juvan 2011: 143). In terms of methodology, it is precisely in this particular divergence that the necessity, as well as the potential, of reflecting on the lyric subject is revealed. And yet (beyond the methodological and epistemological reversals, which in any case are beneficial for new insights and conceptualizations in the intuitions of both authors and readers) it is the living reality of the text, singularly constructed each time anew with each encounter with the reader and interpreter, that illuminates the complexity of the problem and offers new interpretations. Methodological changes force us to return to the text itself.

Genre as the Reality of Discourse In his project of reconstructing literary studies (2011), the Slovenian literary theorist Marko Juvan presents a condensed problematics of genre theory and unravels certain essential characteristics of contemporary thought on the theory of literary forms, kinds, and genres. Drawing on Alastair Fowler’s book Kinds of Literature (1982), Juvan introduces three important premises: 1) non-​unity and the diversity of literature, which becomes 2) a kind of metagenre that in individual chronotypes emerges as varied, changeable genre systems and hierarchies, and 3) the conceptualization of prototypes with the help of Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblance,” meaning that individual genres capture texts that “are not connected by an essential element shared by all of them” (Juvan 2011: 145). According to Wittgenstein, items that we perhaps think are connected by one single collective quality, are actually united by a series of resemblances, none of which are necessarily shared by all the others. As an example, Wittgenstein introduces the concept of the game, which has now become paradigmatic. Contemporary genre theory suggests this this is the way that we could understand genre and subgenre categories (Schaeffer 1989b; Müller-​Zettelmann and Rubik 2005: 9; Wolf 2005: 24; Juvan 2011: 14–​159). Juvan takes a position that distances his ideas from the universalist perspective and suggests that: “literary kinds and genres are no longer conceived of as internal forms embodied in every particular token of the same class, but rather as outcomes of intertextual and metatextual procedures encapsulated in writing and reading” (Juvan 2011: 152). Only in genres (e.g. tragedy, elegy, novel, romance etc.) do we see the true reality of discourse because genres direct literary communication. Genres function both in practice and theory while literary forms (the lyric, epic, and drama) are often more a subject of theory rather than practice. The way literary

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types are conceived of in the Anglo-​Saxon tradition –​as poetry, prose, and drama –​where they operate in both the awareness and actions of actors in the literary system, is a notable exception (Juvan 2006: 152). In the effort to understand genres as discursive entities, an emphasis on the constitutive roles of intertextuality and metatextuality from which genres are constituted, offers a suitable way forward. According to Juvan, the concept of intertextuality is most effective in genre theory, in which the principle of family resemblance is connected to the concept of the prototype taken from cognitivism, for example in Fishelov (1993) and Fowler (1982). According to Fishelov, prototypical texts are those in which the (otherwise flexible) multitude of rules is displayed so clearly that we can turn to them when studying new examples of the literary form, kind, genre or subgenre. This represents an important shift: namely, that we classify new objects in categories on the basis of items that seem to be the “purest” examples, rather than organizing new material in already completed conceptual networks. Genre categories have both a core and flexible (sometimes controversial) boundaries, but the samples placed in these categories do not necessarily have the same essence or properties. Prototypes are not necessarily understood as binding (intertextual) models, but more as generic references. Likewise, they do not need to be connected to only one text, but rather comprise a core of typical members of genre (Fishelov 1993: 61–​63). In the literary system, genres are also institutions, the literary system being an arrangement of discursive (authoritative and authorial) forces, or metacommunicational instances that influence both the general awareness of genre and the concrete identification of individual texts within a genre or subgenre, which in many cases directs the interpretation of the texts themselves. Juvan understands genre and subgenre categories as “cognitive and practical devices” helpful in comparing and connecting individual texts among themselves (Juvan 2011: 160). He sees the importance of the concept of intertextuality in the fact that it loosens the “monological” logic according to which the text necessarily belongs to only one genre, subgenre, or kind. It is through the prism of intertextuality that the variety of subgenres and genres in an individual text is revealed. This shift in perspective was succinctly expressed by Derrida in his essay “The Law of the Genre”: “The text does not belong to a genre. Every text participates in one or more genres” (Derrida 1980, cited in Juvan 2011: 159).

The Lyric The lyric occupies a special place in genre criticism. Theoretical reflections in this field have been scarce in recent decades in Slovenia for the following two

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reasons: first, because of general resistance to “the demon of theory” and second, because of the referential definitions promoted in Janko Kos’s literary theory, namely his critical, and above all phenomenological, modernization of traditional concepts taken from German literary academic tradition. Elsewhere in the world, there have been many theoretical efforts that have not followed radical (and principled) anti-​essentialist trends, but rather continued to search for a definition of the lyric. These efforts frequently led to the renewed realization of how difficult it is to define the lyric in comparison to narrative prose and drama. As early as 1902, Benedetto Croce noted the futility of traditional concepts of literary forms and genres, and also the problematic nature of the lyric (Kos 1993: 45). In 1970, René Wellek concluded that the theory of the lyric is “an insoluble psychological cul-​de-​sac” (Wellek 1970: 252, cited in Jackson 2005: 100). In Wellek’s opinion, all efforts to define the general nature of the lyric should be abandoned as they only lead to banal generalizations. It struck him as more logical to dedicate research about the lyric to the variety of poetry and its history, and in this way approach genres only in the concrete historical contexts that provided the conditions for specific genre conventions. Paul Hernadi, who calls the lyric a “no man’s land,” comes to a similar conclusion: namely, that theorists have not succeeded in providing a widely applicable concept of the lyric’s generic structure (Hernadi 1985: 79). A similar idea was also present in Paul De Man’s provocative thought that “the lyric is not a genre, but one name among several to designate the defensive motion of the understanding, the possibility of future hermeneutics” (De Man 1985: 254). The paradox is that this phantom called the lyric appears in the title of his essay, and that De Man engaged so broadly with this subject. Regardless of how the lyric as a prototype has historically evaded definition, we agree with Stanley Fish and Werner Wolf that, despite “troubles with the lyric,” it is nevertheless necessary to ask the age-​old question: how “To Recognize a Poem when We See One” (Fish 1994: 322; Wolf 2005: 5) and how to interpret it with our receptive abilities of recognition. These questions are historically and contextually conditioned and variable as is the memory of genre itself.14 Some have placed the blame for failed efforts to define the lyric on the entire post-​Renaissance period, claiming that post-​Renaissance theory did not know

14 In this regard, Juvan evokes Bahktin: “Literary genres also function as more or less durable memory schemata that, cognitively organizing the writing and reception of texts, influence the modal, semantic, and axiological structuring of world views across several generations” (Juvan 2011: 282).

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what approach to take: first, because it failed to describe the elements that would distinguish the lyric from the drama and the epic, and, second, because there was so much variety in the texts that were included in the category. Beyond any terminological and conceptual disagreements, certainly a primary reason can be found in the great diversity of texts that have historically been assigned to the overarching concept of the lyric. As Kos suggests, the reason also resides in the fact that no lyric form was representative enough to provide a basis for extracting the “core” of the prototype in the same way that it had been accomplished by the epic and later the novel in the context of the epic form (Kos 1996: 5). We will not provide a detailed historical outline of the theory of the lyric here.15 But we must at least mention the surprising lack of agreement among theorists about whether Plato and Aristotle, even if they did not use the same words for the various poetic forms that are now considered lyric, at least implicitly conceived of these phenomena as a single unified category, or put another way, whether the reflections of these two philosophers had a decisive influence on the later establishment of unified categories of literary forms.16 The expression melikè poièsis, combining various types of melè, appeared only in the work of the Alexandrian philologists. During this period, the term lurikos also appeared, replacing earlier expressions (Guerrero 2000: 36–​37; Wolf 2005: 22). After vanishing during the Middle Ages, the concept of melikè poièsis appeared once again in the Renaissance. However, the musical dimension receded after the thirteenth century, and the singing of poetry was replaced by spoken or read poetry. Thus, one of the fundamental characteristics of the lyric in antiquity and the early Middle Ages disappeared, and, what’s more, a new confusion arose as the category also came to include narrative and dramatic versified texts. The term poésie 15 For more about this see: Combe (1989), Kos (1993), Guerrero (2000), Maulpoix (2000), Rodriguez (2003), Wolf (2005), Culler (2015). 16 Guerrero (2000: 28) concludes that Plato’s distinction regarding methods of enunciation, which provided the basis for the triad of literary forms, has predominated in modern literary studies. Kos, in his outline of the history of the lyric, accepts this view albeit with certain reservations. Irene Behrens, Die Lehre von der Enteilung der Dichtkunst (1940), Claudio Guillén, Literature as System (1971), Gérard Genette Introduction à l’architexte (1979), Jonathan Culler, Theory of the Lyric (2015), and others reject it. Referring to Aristotle, Culler (2015: 51) notes that in “the Poetics itself lyric poetry figures only under the heading of melopoeia, as a minor component of tragedy (the sung parts of tragedy), and not as a genre in its own right.” Kos also notes Aristotle’s conclusion that there exists no overarching concept for the unsung poetic text. Thus, there is little reason to expect that Aristotle had provided a concept that would subsume both the sung and unsung text (Kos 1993: 13).

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lyrique, representing an attempt to delineate related concepts, appeared with the French classicist poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth century.17 Gradually, this term paved the way toward the triad of literary forms (epic, drama, and lyric). Charles de Batteux vigorously promoted this tripartite definition,18 a position that was eventually strengthened by the philosophical systemization in the works of the Schlegel brothers, Schelling, Goethe, Jean-​Paul, Hegel, and Vischer. The Romantic period, on one hand, offered the ahistorical model of three “natural forms of poetry,” to use Goethe’s syntagm, philosophically undergirded with dialectical thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and the modern dualism of the objective and the subjective. The lyric, regardless of its variation, was always defined as an expression of subjectivity. On the other hand, the paradigm of the lyric generated during the Romantic period still exists today. This paradigm includes authenticity, lyricism, and experientiality, and thus the direct representativeness or non-​fictionality of poetry. This paradigm was also supported by philosophical thought although it was later separated from its philosophical underpinnings, becoming popularized and much simplified. The Romantic aesthetics and its notion of “the literary absolute” decisively influenced the gradual development of the concept of the pure work-​of-​art. While this concept of pure art was formulated by Wagner in the sense of Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work-​of-​art, pure art in theories about poetry was conceived of according to principles of exclusion and negativity (Friedrich 1974: 7–​9, 101–​102; Combe 1992: 22). In this sense,

17 In the nineteenth century, the French and English expressions poésie and poetry were introduced as terms for lyric poetry, therefore as an equivalent of the German expression Lyrik and similar expressions in other languages modeled on the German tradition. Contemporary researchers recommend that the lyric, poetry, and the plural term poems should be accepted as synonyms (Wolf 2005: 23), although both French and English literary theory increasingly use the expressions le lyrique and the lyric respectively. In Slovenian literary theory, the concepts were distinct as, according to Kos, poezija related to external form and all texts in verse, whereas lirika related to internal form. If in the English language, the concept of the lyric is well established, the difference between le lyrisme and le lyrique is not entirely clear among French-​speaking theorists and critics, particular in recent decades when the nouveau lyrisme movement emerged (Jean-​Michel Maulpoix is the leading representative of the new lyricism movement; Du lyrisme, 2000, La voix d’Orphée, 1989, Le poète perplexe, 2002). Regardless of the inconsistent use, we can say that lyrisme is a historically located concept, having been established within the Romantic and post-​Romantic traditions, while le lyrique matches the concept of the lyric. 18 Les Beaux-​Arts réduits à un même principe (The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle, 1746). Batteux’s typology also includes other subgenres, among them didactic poetry.

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Baudelaire and, above all, Mallarmé’s theoretical explorations were crucial. On the theoretical (albeit less so on the practical) level, the essentialization of the lyric on the basis of the concept of pure poetry19 was part of the revolution of poetic language in the second half of the nineteenth century. This, along with the repudiation of certain narrative procedures (the narrowing of the lexical, semantic, and syntactic repertoire; the rejection of certain speech acts that reduced communicative directness; narration, description, explication, argumentation (Combe 37–​45)), occurred during the historical rise of modernity. In accordance with symbolist and modernist aesthetics, there was no longer room in the lyric for these kinds of speech acts. A hierarchy of values was established between the parole brute of everyday communication and the parole essentielle of poetry. Poetic language strived “to purify the words of the tribe” and to actualize, in the most extreme form, the nonmimetic, dereferentialized, absolute, self-​ reflexive space of poetry, which was then equated with the lyric. This paradigm is well illustrated in Friedrich’s coinages regarding the magic powers inherent in language and the absolute dictatorial imagination. The poetics of negativity purified poetic language and liberated the poetic space from the ideology of the language of everyday life. With Valéry and Abbé Bremond, and also in the theoretical writings and manifestos of Breton, Reverdy, Sartre, Croce, and others that appeared during the first half of the twentieth century, essentialization, which had banished narrative and other forms of parole brute from poetry, and the development of the notion of “pure poetry” on the metaliterary level was completed. Essentialization structured many of the aspects of the modern horizon of expectations. It had an influence on many currents in the modern lyric, and established the foundation for formalist and structuralist definitions of the lyric, poetic language, poetic function, poeticity, etc. All of these perspectives focused on the transgressive nature of poetic discourse and language, on the deviation from the ordinary use of language, and the autotelecism and self-​referentiality of poetry. This kind of metaliterary imaginarium corresponded with only one extensive work of poetic 19 Friedrich points out that the concept of pure poetry was occasionally used by both Saint-​Beuve and Baudelaire (Friedrich 1974: 102). The concept was finally established with Mallarmé’s systemization of Baudelaire’s comments on Poe (Combe 1989: 25). According to Friedrich, the concept of pure poetry is merged with the characteristics of the modern lyric: “rejection of contents derived from everyday experience, of didactic themes, and of other themes aimed at any purpose whatsoever –​practical truths, run-​ of-​the mill feelings, intoxication of the heart. By relinquishing such elements, poetry will be free to allow the sway of language magic.” (Friedrich 1974: 103).

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production in the twentieth century. In the mental schema of general readers, it was connected to the Romantic topos that was in turn related to the subjectivity and lyricism of poetry as an expression of internal feeling. Beyond universalist genre classifications with academic ambitions to define the inner essence of literary forms, both the simplified and generalized receptive schema formed the conventional, stereotypical representation of poetry as ahistorical, unsituated in the social-​historical sense, self-​sufficient, and monolithically structured: in short, the metaphor of “the ivory tower of poetry” illustrating the notion of the transitive quality of prose and the non-​transitive quality of poetry. At the beginning of this chapter, we mentioned the discomfort theorists and critics had with the elusiveness of the lyric. This may have been a response to the fact that, at least before the turn to anti-​essentialism, theory itself was confined to an ivory tower and often did not address the diversity of actual texts, and this at least partially applies to the discourse about poetry today. And yet it is not true that the only way down from the ivory tower inevitably leads to the radical anti-​essentialist “anarchy” of genre. If the knowledge of modern epistemology causes us to abandon ideas about a universal system of literary forms as unchangeable categories with specific essential qualities, it should be understood as a way toward an awareness of the historical changeability of genre identities, not the absolute incapacity to place specific individual texts into malleable genre classifications. Modern genre theory suggests that classification takes place on the basis of something more than merely normative, ahistorical, and text-​centric guidelines. As an illustration, let us look at two historically remote cases: the troubadour poem and the modern lyric. By general acceptance, both belong to the category of poetry or the lyric if we accept the terms as synonymous. In the corpus of troubadour poetry, this would represent a flexible or changeable genre, because of the intermedial plurality of the troubadour poem, which, along with its undoubtedly lyric elements, also contained elements suggestive of narrative, fragments of dramatic situations, performance, and music. And yet the lyric component has been established as dominant through the intertextual and metatextual reception of troubadour poetry in history. Likewise, in many modernist poetic works (such as those of Robert Frost, Henri Michaux, Cesare Pavese, and Constantine Cafavy –​and indeed the practice is not unknown in contemporary poetry that has emerged all over the world), we often find such radical narrativization or dramatization that what might be viewed as “pure lyric structure” disintegrates. In extreme cases, it vanishes to the extent that some texts, using the evaluative approaches for genre definitions that rely on global structures and internal form, could no longer be recognized as poetry. These texts are nevertheless inscribed in

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the metaliterary consciousness as poetry and share certain family resemblances (albeit perhaps not all features) with the lyric prototype. There is a great likelihood that we will feel a sufficient level of certainty to define their internal structures in accordance with the fundamental essence of poetry, and to derive standard interpretations on the basis of this essence, while closing our eyes to the many contradictions in them and overlooking the emerging nature of literature. The principle of family resemblances, of prototypes within historically variable cores of “pure” examples and shifting boundaries, should be taken into account, as it provides important epistemological-​methodological guidelines. The described loosening of genres also contains certain research potential. Namely, it is possible to understand the opening of boundaries between genre categories on the level of theory (in practice they never truly existed) as a green light for the use of theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze lyric texts that until now were viewed as “non-​poetic” texts, and, of course, vice versa. Immediately the possibility of a considerable enrichment of the field emerges. What’s more, the limitations of individual theoretical and interpretive practices are also revealed along with the need for fresh reflection and renewal. The lyric, for example, received scant attention during the development of the modern differentiated critical apparatus and other research methods that came out of shifts in methodology that took place mostly in the last third of the twentieth century (Rodriguez 2003: 5–​12; Müller-​Zettelmann and Rubik 2005: 7–​9). As late as 2005, the editors of the collection Theory into Poetry concluded that, in the context of contemporary literary criticism, the analysis of lyric texts is often anachronistic and lags behind narratology, which relies on internationally accepted and applied theoretical frameworks. However, this state of near marginality in relation to mainstream literary studies can also be seen as an advantage, conferring a certain kind of freedom, independence from current trends and the need to adapt to the demands of the “academic marketplace.”

The Lyric Subject and Modern Genre Theory We now respond to the question asked at the very beginning: if, despite the change of perspective and the shaken foundations in the field of genre theory, we should not be discouraged from reflecting on the lyric subject (and, more broadly, on poetic subjectivity) as we might be tempted to given the rigorous rejection of the concept of genre. To the contrary, this should encourage us as it calls for new illuminations of the question, particularly in the context of more recent research into literary genre. Indeed, what has been described above makes it almost unnecessary to emphasize that any effort to totalize the concept of the

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lyric would be foolish. As we consider the concept of the lyric subject, we will focus on specific texts that are understood as poems in the receptive schema of readers, but will not categorically refer to the differentia specifica of the lyric subject in comparison to agents of mediacy in prose fiction, e.g. the narrator or narrative voice. In thinking about the lyric subject, therefore, we will no longer depart from the assumption that it is the concept of the lyric subject that separates the lyric from the other two major literary forms, the epic and the drama. Now that we have schematically demonstrated various changes in genre theory that have tended toward the opening of the boundaries between genres, we suggest that our reflection continue to flow in the direction of expanding the concept of the lyric subject, particularly in comparison with the way it has been conceptualized in previous literary and theoretical contexts. The methodological reasons for this expansion emerge not only from changes in the field of genre theory, but in particular from those outlined in the above introduction in which the subject was presented as one of the central categories in the conceptual field of discourse. The concept of the lyric subject must also be expanded perhaps above all because we must begin to question the articulation and configuration of the subject in discourse, and specifically in the lyric as discourse. In the context of modern genre theory, potential objections from the anti-​essentialist camp could be countered by our intention to attempt, following in Wittgenstein’s footsteps, to think of the core, and also the limits of the category, which we will call the subject configuration of the poem. Our research, while continuing to respect the concept of prototypes and family resemblances, will retreat from the essentialist horizon, while at the same time addressing the problem in a way that does not rely on the extreme relativism of anti-​essentialism.

Part II

Chapter 4 A Note on Terminology A fleeting glance at the modern corpus of literature on the lyric subject gives the impression that this field of research has received relatively scant attention, at least in comparison with narratological studies addressing concepts of the author, narrator, hero, voice, focalization, etc. Conceptions of the subject in poetry have been based on certain axioms derived either from (simplified) reinterpretations of Romantic paradigm or from extreme anti-​humanist paradigms that in turn were derived from (simplified) structuralist interpretations of symbolism and its avatars. However, the last few decades have witnessed the lively reemergence of an interest in this problematic from a range of different points of departure. This reawakening has been described in contemporary philosophy and other humanities and social-​science disciplines within the broader phenomenon of “the return to the subject”; therefore, in the context of the reappearance of the subject following the diagnosis of its disappearance, erasure, and death, all of which were connected to the crisis of universal abstract humanism. Even “anti-​ humanist” philosophies, following the death of this structure, came around to at least posing the question: What comes after the subject?20 If the question of the category of the subject in general is always an ongoing work-​in-​progress (Klepec 2004: 13), we assume that the lyric subject is not an exception. Modern literary theory has generally equated the lyric subject with the speaker, the central characteristic of which is that his/​her speech is not mediated through any other speech instance. This unified, single-​layered place, the origo of the text, is at the heart of traditional beliefs about the monologism of the lyric.21 The concept of the lyric subject understood in this way can be connected without great difficulty to both of the paradigms mentioned above, Romantic and anti-​humanist, and in many attempted theories is even constitutive of the definition of the lyric in the tripartite differentiation of the epic, the drama and the lyric.

2 0 See the collection Who Comes after the Subject? Ed. E. Cadava. New York: Routledge, 1991. 21 The monologism of the lyric is dealt with, for example, by Julius Petersen (Wissenschaft von der Dichtung, 1939), Mikhail Bakhtin (“Discourse in the Novel, Discourse in Poetry”, 1934–​1935), and Dieter Lamping (Das lyrische Gedicht: Definitionen zu Theorie und Geschichte der Gatung, 1989).

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Researchers agree that the lyric subject as an established term is problematic above all because the philosophical and psychological implications of the term lead to the psychologization of identification with the empirical author (Kos 1993: 53; Hamon 1996: 19; Rodriguez 2003: 42; Atienza 2005: 24; Wolf 2005: 26). Some therefore recommend the use of other terms and/​or concepts; for example, lyric speaker, lyric voice, lyric persona, implied author, etc. In this context, the traditional term lyric self or lyric “I” is also still used, which of course corresponds with only one segment of the lyric text. These terms, and not only the terms but the concepts themselves, are problematic because they do not capture a sufficient level of the complexity of poetic texts. What’s more, these terms should not be understood as conceptual equivalents. In this research, we will not entirely reject the term lyric subject as it is the most established term in the field. In the presentation of theories that make use of this terminology, we will consistently use it in the sense that is attributed to it in each specific theory. In the cases we offer, we will remain on the level of the enounced and the storyworld. On the level of the enounced and enunciation, we may accept the terms lyric speaker and lyric voice, while on the level of the storyworld, the most used and established term is lyric persona, and in first person speech, lyric “I”. In these distinctions, it is above all necessary to show how the speaker and his/​her enunciative positions are defined. In Chapter 7, where a number of modern theories of the subject in the poem (Staiger, Kristeva, Rodriguez) are presented, and, in the third theoretical part and the fourth practical-​analytical part of the research, we will attempt to introduce a reconceptualization that will allow the strictly literary-​morphological term of the lyric subject to make space for the poetic subject.22 The latter term will characterize the discursive-​anthropological and artistic conception of the subject instance in the poem understood as an artistic discourse, and will thus go beyond the traditional literary-​morphological frame of the lyric subject. We thus pose the problem of the lyric subject as both a difficulty and a question. What kind of subject or subjects are involved? The outcome of the encounter of these conceptual levels of the lyric subject and the subject of the poem will, we hope, offer certain reasonable assumptions for the understanding of the lyric subject beyond the boundaries that have been drawn by theoretical systems thus far, and the expansion of the lyric subject into something we might call the subject configuration of the poem.

22 Literary morphology is, according to Kos, the subdiscipline of literary theory investigating the “configuration of the literary text, and the layers and elements of which texts are composed” (Kos 1993: 18).

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Before we shed light on the problematics that demonstrate why a new reflection on the concept is needed, we will first consider certain representative conceptions of the lyric subject in the past century (Chapter 6), while also mentioning more recent contributions or reconceptualizations beginning with a quick overview of understandings of the lyric subject in history. Reflections about the lyric subject that seem most relevant from our standpoint will be included in Parts III and IV, where we will independently discuss the problem and further explicate our assumptions with the analysis of specific texts.

Chapter 5 Historical Fragments: Two Tendencies It is possible in the context of the history23 of the lyric and the lyric subject, to distinguish two key tendencies present in abstract theoretical conceptions, metapoetical or autopoetical texts by authors, and autoreflexive poetic texts which continue to be present even in the most contemporary assumptions on the lyric. These tendencies touch on questions of referentiality, fictionality, and the transformative and performative power of poetic discourse. They largely focus on the problem of the relation between the empirical author and the lyric subject, that is the lyric persona, especially when the latter is clearly authorial. More broadly, these tendencies extend to both the question of the lyric as a subjective and affective form of literature and to mimesis as the fundamental characteristic of literary discourse. On the explicit level, the historical arc of the problem is primarily outlined in the opposition between the two dominant theses of the lyric persona, which we will call authorial-​identificatory and transformative-​fictional.

Charles Batteux: Les Beaux-​Arts réduits à un même principe We encounter the theme of the entirely fictional lyric subject (in the sense of a fictional figure) in attempts at the systemization of literature in Batteux’s work Les Beaux-​Arts réduits à un même principe (The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle, 1746). In the opinion of some researchers, such as Irene Behrens, this paved the way toward the establishment of the triadic system of literary types or forms. In relation to this development, Gérard Genette in his The Architext: An Introduction supports the thesis that the lyric is located in the system of types of literature only because of the classicist need for unification. Batteux places “lyric poetry” side by side with the epic and the drama thus yoking it to the mimetic principle. For Batteux, the lyric is clearly less suitable than the other genres to the general artistic principle of imitation, but nevertheless it is a mimetic/​fictional form because the mimetic principle is not understood only as the imitation of actions, but also as the imitation of emotions. Batteux makes the following statement in his ninth chapter entitled On Lyric Poetry: 23 This overview does not aspire to be a systematic description of all historical conceptions of the lyric and the lyric subject. For more detailed histories, see Kos (1993: 7–​52), Burdorf (1995: 1–​21), Guerrero (2000), Culler (2015: 49–​90).

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Historical Fragments: Two Tendencies Lyric poetry can be regarded as a species apart without doing violence to the principle to which the others are reduced. But there is no need to divide it from the others. It naturally and even necessarily engages in imitation. There is one difference that characterizes and distinguishes it. This is its particular subject matter. The main subject matter of other poetic genres is actions. Lyrical poetry is completely devoted to feelings. These are its essential subject matter (Batteux 2015: 120).

It is interesting that Batteux cites the monologues of Corneille’s characters Ximena and Polyeucte as examples of lyric poetry. For him, they are lyric simply because they express emotions. Odes, he says, are even more lyric because, as a whole, they express passion while dramatic plays express it only in individual sections. Even when the lyric poet speaks in his own name, he recalls the actor who brings to life a non-​existent role that he creates precisely with the incorporation of emotions: If the feelings are not true and real —​that is to say, if the poet is not really in the situation that produces the feelings he wants to represent —​he must arouse feelings in himself that resemble actual ones and then pretend that they are responses to actual objects. When he has reached the right degree of fervour, he communicates it. He is inspired (Batteux 2015: 123).

According to Batteux, therefore, lyric imitation presumes an imaginariness, a fictionality, the as if that modern theories of fictionality and fictional worlds address (Iser, Pavel, etc.), and not only the reproduction of authentically felt states. In this sense, Batteux’s theory implies what is sometimes called the poetic paradox: “that the elevation of feeling to fiction is the condition of its mimetic use” (Ricœur 2004: 290). Batteux does not deny the referentiality of lyric mimesis but also does not equate it with authenticity. At the same time, he does not entirely exclude the possibility that the creating subject actually feels the portrayed emotions. However, even in the case of authentically experienced states, the fictional transforms the authentic, and the authentic transforms the fictional; truth and fiction in lyric mimesis collide with one another and create a certain tension: “If it contains something real, this is mixed with something fictional in order to make a composite whole. The fictional embellishes the truth and the truth lends credibility to the fictional” (Batteux 2015: 123). Batteux implicitly resolves the question of the identity of the lyric subject on the pre-​discursive level, as his derivation of fiction penetrates reality with the pre-​discursive simulation of emotions in the poet, with the incorporation of emotions, that come before “inspired” writing. The lyric persona is, on one hand, understood as a fictional figure, as Batteux’s thesis presumes a two-​level difference in the identity of the creative and literary subject. Given the tension

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between fiction and reality, Batteux’s thesis also implies a transformative dispositive even when the lyric persona is autobiographical, because even authenticity, when present, is subject to fictionalizing forces. Batteux’s theory poses another interesting question. From the Romantic aesthetics onward, the lyric was theorized as an expression of subjectivity. Modern literary theory understood this designation as a central difficulty which it attempted to resolve with the modernization of traditional perspectives. As we shall see in the following discussion, a number of phenomenological concepts accomplished this with the transfer of the theory of the affective and pathic to the theory of poetry, which, as the affective and pathic form assume the convergence of the subjective and objective fields, enabled the transcendence of the limitations of subjectivity as the central category of poetry (cf. Collot 1989, 1996, and 1997; Rodriguez 2003). Similarly, Kos defines the lyric –​on the basis of completely different theories taken from the psychology of language –​as a form where affective-​emotional elements predominate (Kos 1996: 93, 1993: 55). With the conceptualization of the lyric as the mimesis of emotions, Batteux’s theory does not define subjectivity, but rather affectivity, as the fundamental category of the lyric. As Antonio Rodriguez notes, the collision of past and future Romantic paradigms was announced by the polemic between Batteux and his German translator J. A. Schlegel. The subject of the debate was the authenticity and sincerity of lyric imitation. The father of the Schlegel brothers claimed, in the spirit of the emerging Romantic paradigm, that lyric poets could only be authentic in their creation, and that the lyric could not be understood as mimesis in the same way as mimesis is understood in fiction (Rodriguez 2003: 21).

Hegel on the Lyric With the creation of the Romantic genre triad based on the dialectical principle, the understanding of lyric poetry as a subjective form of poetry was finally established. The final synthesis of Romantic conceptions was given by Hegel in Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (1835–​1838). According to Hegel, it is the individual subject that represents the content of a lyric work of art, while the lyric poem is a singular way in which, through this content, the mind comes to consciousness of itself (Hegel 1975: 1122). Lyric poetry creates a closed, self-​reflexive subjective world, external circumstances being only an excuse for the expression of the mind. The proper source of lyric poetry is inner subjective life and, sometimes, the lyric poem can be merely a “tra-​la-​la singing” (Hegel 1975: 1122), since the role of “external” musicality is to emphasize the inner musicality of

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the soul (Hegel 1975: 1119) and to satisfy it through the music of words (Hegel 1975: 1153). Although a lyric poem is according to Hegel a representation of subjectivity –​ he speaks about the expression of subjectivity in the sense of it permeating the whole text –​there is no explicit discussion of the connection between the person of the lyric persona and the author. We can, of course, presuppose this connection in Hegel. However, in his reflection on the lyric, we notice certain elements that do not speak in favor of the authorial-​identificatory thesis. According to Hegel, the creating subject of epic poetry disappears in the presented objective world he/​she depicts. The subject of lyric poetry can avoid this alienation of him/​ herself by absorbing into him/​herself the entire world of objects and stamping them with his/​her inner consciousness (Hegel 1975: 1111).The self-​alienation of the subject, which has been the topos of lyric poetry since antiquity, is at first completely rejected by Hegel. In lyric poetry, the spirit descends into itself out of the objectivity of the subject matter, looks into its own consciousness and, instead of the external reality of the matter, displays this consciousness in the spirit’s subjective disposition (Hegel 1975: 1111). But immediately after this, self-​alienation is implied, namely the self-​alienation presupposed by mimesis itself –​as poiesis. Poetic expression must not remain merely “the casual expression of an individual’s own immediate feelings and ideas” but has to become the “language of the poetic inner life,” which does belong to the poet as an individual but acquires a clear universal validity (Hegel 1975: 1111). Hegel sees this validity in the authenticity of feelings and correctness of observations. But the confessional nature of poetry is here not meant as direct, but rather indirect: poetic discourse communicates poetic inner life, lyric poetry presents –​“invents or finds the adequate and lively expression.” (Hegel 1975: 1112). It objectifies and purifies. Poetry does deliver the heart from this slavery to passion by making it see itself, but it does not stop at merely extricating this felt passion from its immediate unity with the heart but makes of it an object purified from all accidental moods, an object in which the inner life, liberated and with its self-​consciousness satisfied, reverts freely at the same time into itself and is at home with itself (Hegel 1975: 1112).

Here, it is the lyric mimesis that is thematized as the agent; what is at stake is its active nature bestowed by the poiesis itself (cf. Ricœur 2004: 44–​48). Hegel, therefore, implicitly dismisses the identity between inner life and its representation; inner life can only be identical with itself, but such inner life is dumb and without representations (Hegel 1975: 1112). Lyric poetry as an act creates and changes, transforms (Hegel 1975: 1127). Here, transformation is connected to

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feeling; for, as Hegel says, the heart that before poiesis is merely felt, now also apprehends this feeling. What is implied, then, is also the cathartic role of lyric poetry. In this passage of Aesthetics, we discern all the elements that are present in subsequent theories of the lyric subject and lyric poetry, and form two paradigms that we could term confessional–​authentic and autonomous–​autotelic: subjectivity, affectivity, confession. These elements all seem to be reflected by Hegel by considering the transformative nature of poiesis: self-​reflexivity, emphasis on the sensorial and graphic configurational level. When discussing types of lyric proper, in particular dithyrambic poetry, Hegel also says that a subject “in his ecstasy, is directly absorbed into the Absolute” (Hegel 1975: 1139). Such elevation, adds Hegel, does not mean that a subject delves into concrete content, but that “on the contrary this ecstasy intensifies rather into a purely vague enthusiasm which struggles to bring to feeling and contemplation what cannot be consciously expressed in words” (Hegel 1975: 1140). Here, Hegel interprets poetic enthusiasm not only as the subject’s ecstasy, as the (transcendental) tendency to immerse himself in infinity (Hegel 1975: 1139) and the Absolute, but also as the (immanent) tendency to make the unsayable appear. Hegel relates the element of enthusiasm and the unsayable to rhythm. It seems that, in this, he calls attention to the double role of rhythm –​its mediating and expressive function –​saying that rhythm serves the subjective imagination in the enthusiasm of representation. This element can be related to Schleiermacher’s theory of style and Novalis’s theory of poetic representation, Darstellung, which we shall address shortly.

The Renaissance and Furor Divinus Hegel thus weaves the unsayable, which has been the topos of poetic modernity since Romanticism, into the historical thread of theories of (divine) poetic inspiration, from Democritus, Plato, Horace, Quintilian, and Cicero, to Renaissance reinterpretations, among which the most famous and influential was Ficino’s theory of furor divinus. Here, the transformative dispositive of poetry is interpreted as transcendent and depersonifying. Renaissance theories introduced the first examination of the writer’s individuality, which was linked to the Neoplatonist doctrine of poetic enthusiasm and divine inspiration until the late Renaissance when the idea of the individualized and idealized figure of the Author, based on the ideal of Dante and Petrarch and their lives, was introduced. As Jean Lecointe (1993: 236–​270) argues in his extensive monograph on the emergence of literary personality in the Renaissance, the medieval literary subject was foremost the product of the text, while in the early

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Renaissance, Boccaccio in his Genealogie deorum gentilium libri XV (1360–​1374) established a new model of literary personality which does not predominantly emerge from the elements of the literary text, but from actual biographical data about the author. This significant shift influenced the entire development of metaliterary as well as intertextual perception. From the Renaissance on, the person of the author is not only literary, but becomes existential. Dante and Petrarch are not only Dante and Petrarch from The New Life and Il Canzoniere, but inspired geniuses with idealized, unique, extratextual existence. With furor poeticus, the individualized person of the poet rises above the others. On the basis of the supranatural origin of poetic inspiration in a poetic act, the persona then coalesces with the higher order of the impersonal or suprapersonal, to be, at least in an ideal theoretical model, absorbed in the Neoplatonist One in mystical ecstasy. The individualization of the poetic genius, which establishes the difference between the image of the poet and other people, results, or should in theory result, in another difference that ultimately leads to depersonification. If the self does not disintegrate, then at least the I=​I identity principle does. The dialectic between the individualization (resulting in the formation of the authorial lyric persona, while giving rise to the intertextual topos of the figure of the inspired Poet) and transformation in the ecstasy of the poetic act (resulting from the assumed divine source of inspiration) is often dialogically reflected in the vivacious polyphony of Renaissance poetry (in Ronsard, for example, where in the elocutionary position, the identity of the authorial subject often slips). Most often, the lyric persona is divided into the authorial persona and its metamorphosis into mythological subjects. This divides the diegetic frame on several levels, while also shedding light on the split between the subject of the enounced and the subject of enunciation (cf. Dauvois 2000: 46–​58 and 90–​93).

The Romantic Paradigm Despite the evolution of the paradigm of affective expressive and confessional forms, Romanticism is part of the same dialectic that emerged in the Renaissance. The Romantics placed the generic image of the Poet beside the figure of a man who replaces his “professional lyre” with intimacy. Alfred de Lamartine in the Préface to Méditations poétiques (Preface from 1848 to the Poetic Meditations 1820) attributes this radical transformation to himself: “I was the first to escort poetry down from Parnassus and devote myself to what we call the Muses, in place of the seven-​string lyre of convention, the fibres of the human heart, touched and stirred by the endless trembling of the soul and nature” (Lamartine 1922: 357). Two decades earlier, Victor Hugo in the Préface de 1822 à Odes et

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ballades (Preface from 1822 to Odes and Ballads) connects the intimate with the infinite and with the hidden dimensions of all things: The domain of poetry is unlimited. There exists an ideal world below the real one, and it is brightly revealed to the eyes of those whom deep discussion leads to see in things more than merely things. The beautiful poetic creations of all kinds, be they in verse or in prose, that have graced our century, have disclosed a truth that was before only intuited: namely, that poetry does not take the shape of ideas, but resides in ideas themselves. Poetry is everything that is intimate in everything (Hugo 1950b: 15).

Indeed, Romantic aesthetics and poetics created the model of the lyric and its subject as an authentic, experiential, sincere confession of individual interiority, which, through aesthetic illusion, is responsible for the identification of the lyric subject with the empirical author, a convention which remains deeply rooted today in the wider receptive consciousness. We might even risk positing the thesis (which we will not fully explore here) that this representation emerged from simplification and trivialization (see Aseguinolaza 1998: 13) both in theory and in practice. The enunciative polyphony in the works of the main representatives of the Romantic lyric, the frequent problematization of the identity of the lyric persona in first-​person poems, its frequently protean nature, and personal mythopoesis suggest that the so-​called Romantic paradigm cannot be simply generalized into a transparent model of the lyric subject, in which there would be nothing more than the hypertrophical and monological exaltation of the unified, fixed subject capable of the non-​problematic figuration of the self (cf. Vadé 1996a: 11–​37). When we ascribe to Romantic aesthetics the simplified identification of the lyric subject and the author influenced by the idea of poetry as a subjective genre, we overlook the Romantic (theoretical and poetic) conceptualizations of subjectivity and their foundation in the absolute infinite freedom of the creative act. On the one hand, the Romantic subject is still defined as final and unified, but on the other hand, it is endless, expanding into infinity, into ever new objects that it subjectvizes (cf. Hölderlin 1988: 62–​83). The lyric persona of Romantic poetry, for example with Victor Hugo, is often a direct example of this kind of conceptualization of the subject (see Vadé 1996a). This is powerfully expressed in Hugo’s collection Les Contemplations, which contains tangible references to the poet’s own life. On one level, this is an explicitly autobiographical collection: the dates and places of the emergence of the poems appear at the end of each poem and several of the titles feature the names of actual people in the author’s life. However, the figure of the authorial self that appears in the poems is so nuanced and sometimes even distorted that, despite the fact that this is a

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clear case of an authorial lyric persona, what is actually presented in the poems is the poet’s alter ego –​the Poet with a capital P that silences Victor Hugo, the person, with countless other voices. In Hugo’s other collections, the authorial first-​person subject of the enounced often disappears and gives rise to voices of other creatures, not only anthropomorphous, but also animals, plants, and inanimate objects. Hugo, perhaps the most among all of the Romantic poets, is aware of the openness of the Self to the Other and expresses this in the most radical terms. Hugo’s subject of the poem is far from the fixed and unified self, but rather is polyphonous. However, with Hugo, the diffraction of the unified lyric persona does not mean a crisis of the subject. Among other things, it is necessary to read this multiplication as an outgrowth of Hugo’s democratic convictions, namely as the desire to embody the democratic subject in his poetry (Dessons 2005). Hugo’s establishment of a self that can encompass all others and flows into them and is erased within them, is in a way the logical consequence of the French Revolution: to give voice to everyone, even the most marginalized, the weakest, the most lacking. In this sense, poetry contributes to the foundation of civic responsibility and the constitution of the intersubjective community that should be inherent in the Republic. Intersubjectivity or transsubjectivity emerge on the foundation of the artistic event of the poem itself. In the preface to the Les Contemplations, Hugo writes: “When I speak about me, I speak to you about you. How can you not feel this? Ah, fool who thinks that I am not you. Let us repeat, this book contains as much of the reader’s individuality as it does that of the author. Homo sum” (Hugo 150a: 153–​154). In order to postulate the identity of the author and the lyric persona, it would be necessary to postulate the identity of the individual. This was problematized in some of the early Romantic conceptualizations of the subject, for example in Novalis and Hölderlin’s reflections on the subject (Hölderlin 1993; Novalis 2003: 1997). Novalis locates in the individual a fractured entity (Novalis 2003: 25) that cannot be whole, but rather appears as a process of oscillation between identity and non-​identity, between the Self and the non-​Self (Novalis 2003: 164). “The I signifies that negatively known absolute –​what is left over after all abstraction –​what can only be known through action and what only realizes itself through eternal lack. …[] The I becomes effective and determinate in itself only in its opposite.” (Novalis 2003: 168) This oscillation, that in poetry is eventmential, realizes the absolute self as a synthesis of two modes of realization –​reflection and feeling. Novalis connects it to the process of romanticizing which he actualizes in his so-​called transcendental poetry. For Novalis, romanticization is “qualitative potentization” in which “the lower self becomes identified with a better self ” (NS 2, 545, no. 105, cited in Wood 2007: xvi). In this

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sense, we can place this conclusion in the same context as previously mentioned theories of inspiration from other historical formations. If the Romantic subject is depicted in the authorial lyric persona, this subject is “qualititatively elevated” through poetic transformation. This is crucial not only for the rearticulated concept of the thesis of authorial identification with the lyric persona, but also for subject configuration in the lyric discourse in general.

Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music If Romanticism vacillated between the identificatory and transformative postulates, the transformative thesis and the theory of divine poetic inspiration on the Dionysian basis clearly captivated Nietzsche in his discussion of poetry in The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872). Nietzsche outlines several significant assumptions: first, poetry cannot be a subjective form of art; subjectivity as understood by contemporary aesthetics is a deception, as every art in order to become art requires redemption from the I, that is, complete objectification (Nietzsche 1999: 29). And second: poetry is essentially tied to the spirit of music, and the poetic creative process arises from the musical which is in essence Dionysian. Thus the lyric poet in the creative act becomes “entirely at one with the primordial unity, with its pain and contradiction, and he produces a copy of this primordial unity as music,” (Nietzsche 1999: 30) in a Dionysian process. This “self-​abandonment” (1999: 30) is the reason that the images of the lyric genius “are nothing but the poet himself,” while he continues to act as a “the moving centre of that world” (Nietzsche 1999: 31). In the lyric poem there is no epic protection “against merging and becoming one with his figures” (1999: 31); the world created by the lyric genius is thus, according to Nietzsche, the objectification of himself. Following Nietzsche’s logic, objectification in the transformative Dionysian process is of an already objectified creative subject. Therefore, the I depicted in this way is not the same as the identity of the empirical I, but is “rather the only I-​ness which truly exists at all, eternal and resting in the ground of things” (1999: 31). These conclusions must not be understood only through the prism of the transformation and alienation of the subject in the poetic and mystical experience –​as the poetic act is interpreted by Nietzsche –​but also in the context of the specific structuring of the lyric discourse. The presenting subject is objectified by being dispersed within the lyric diegesis, while remaining “the moving centre of that world.” Within this figural framework, which presents “world of images and symbols” with a “quite different colouring causality, and tempo from that of the sculptor and epic poet” (Nietzsche 1999: 30–​31), the lyric genius can also

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present his image of “non-​genius,” his “subject” as Nietzsche puts it. It is here that we encounter the following meaningful note: “Although it may now appear as if the lyric genius and the non-​genius connected with him were one being, and as if the former were using that little word I to speak of himself, we will not now be led astray by this semblance as those who have defined the lyric poet as the subjective poet have been led astray” (31). With Nietzsche, the transformative dispositive of poetry, which is conveyed in the Rimbaldian phrase “I is someone else,” is thematized in two ways: as a dispositive of depersonalization, and self-​alienation and, (although implicit) a dispositive of a dialogization. The former results in the dispersal of the subject, which Nietzsche refers to as lyric genius, in discourse. One of the positions of articulation is also the lyric I, which can be authorial. In this respect it is important that the “lyric genius” acts as an integrating instance, “[the] moving centre” of the entire configuration. Therefore, it can be understood in terms of Foucault’s author function as one of the subject functions (Foucault 1975: 23), and also in terms of Bakhtin’s pure author (Bakhtin 1986: 109). The integrating instance is: 1) an instance of speech; 2) dispersed in elements of the storyworld; and 3) particularly significant because of its foundation in the spirit of music is emphasized. In this sense, we may assume it seeps into other places of the text, into layers that are examined within the framework of literary form in traditional literary theories.

The Emergence of the Concept of Lyrisches Ich At the beginning of the early twentieth century, the problematic of the lyric subject was developed most dynamically in German literature and theory. Specifically, it was the encounter of the poetry of the French founders of poetic modernity and their direct descendants with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s post-​Romantic philosophy, and, most importantly, the German symbolist circle around the figure of Stefan George (cf. Combe 1996: 44), that triggered the continued development of the concept of the lyric subject and the emergence of the term lyrisches Ich. As Combe observes (1996: 45), before the term lyrisches Ich was systematized into theoretical-​critical thought, it represented an aesthetic ideal in which we find related ideas from several currents of thought: the depersonalized Dionysian subjectivity from The Birth of Tragedy; the intentional depersonalization of Baudelaire’s poetry and the binary of the vaporization and centralization of the self; Mallarmé’s demand for the elocutionary disappearance of the poet; Nerval’s I am the other; Rimbaud’s I is someone else and the search for objective

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poetry; Lautréamont’s concept of the end of personal poetry, Verlaine’s concept of objective work without an author; and, finally Parnassian objectivity and impersonality. This aesthetic ideal is clearly a response to the Romantic notion of transparent confessional lyricism. In 1910, Margarete Susman, herself a member of George’s circle, sharply criticized the identificatory approach in the understanding of the lyric I in the work Das Wesen der modernen Deutschen Lyrik [The Essence of Modern German Poetry]. Susman concluded that poetry from Klopstock onward had been understood “as a personal and thus subjective creation,” where the “speaking I” merges with “the personal identity of the poet.” Susman notes that the history of poetry until the end of the eighteenth century shows a very different picture, often establishing an impersonal, general I, and often also a collective I. The retreat from the individualistic paradigm occurred particularly in the development of modern poetry. Drawing on Nietzsche, George, Rilke, and Hofmannsthal’s writings, Susman puts forward the thesis of the lyrisches Ich, which is the “object of the work of art” (Susman 1910: 20), “a form the poet creates on the basis of his own I” (16). It is “an expression, a form of I” (Susman 1910: 18) that must be strictly distinct from the identity of the author, the empirical author in the sense of “an empirically given I,” because poetry as Dichtung transforms reality (cf. Spinner 1975: 2; Combe 1996: 47; Schönert 2007a: 85). In 1916, the concept of the lyric was taken up Oskar Walzel in the article “Schkiksale des lyrischen Ich” where he developed and deepened the idea of dissolution of the I [Entichtung] and its depersonalization [Entpersönnlichung]. Walzel concludes regarding the example of Goethe’s poems that “in the pure lyric, the I is not a subjective and personal I” but “a mask.” In the pure lyric, poetic reality becomes autonomous and it is not possible to understand it as a unique experience (cf. Spinner 1975: 2; Kos 1993: 45). As Kos suggests, here we see again the need for the modernization of the theory of the lyric. In the opinion of Jörg Schönert (2007a: 86), the continued discussion of the lyric I in the first decades of the twentieth century never went farther than the theoretical clarity achieved by Susman and Walzel when they articulated their theories of the lyric subject.

Chapter 6 The Lyric Subject in Modern Literary Theory The Lyric Subject in The Logic of Literature by K. Hamburger (A Revised Reading) In her book Die Logik der Dichtung (The Logic of Literature, 1957), Käte Hamburger developed a theory of literature in an internally cohesive system. Until recently, this theory had been much criticized and virtually abandoned. The second edition of the book, which included a polemic with Hamburger’s critics (mostly, René Wellek and Roman Ingarden), was published in 1968 with an English translation appearing in 1973. Hamburger’s work takes its point of departure in the relation of the phenomenological-​hermeneutical German tradition to a logical-​linguistic analysis grounded in a (specific) theory of the statement and the statement-​system of language. Hamburger’s work needs to be revisited in part because the overall reception of her work and the critiques it received tended to focus on only a few of her positions. The Logic of Literature deals with the relation between literature and the general system of language, which is crucial for the establishment of Hambuger’s particular theory of literary genres. What is at issue in Hamburger’s work, despite her focus on the problem of mimesis, is not literature in relation to reality, which is implicitly or explicitly the case for most theories of literature, but rather literature in relation to statements of reality. Hamburger first introduces the linguistic-​logical foundations of the theory of the statement-​system of language, which explicates the structure of a particularly conceived statement. Hamburger distinguishes the statement from judgment in the logic and sentence in grammar (1973: 25) and introduces the concept of the statement-​subject. She conceives of this subject neither as the logical subject, hypokeimenon nor as the grammatical subject, but as the statement-​subject, which is not to be equated with the subject of the statement. It is not clear, however, where she locates the difference between the cognitive subject and the statement-​subject; she merely proposes the distinction without thoroughly interrogating it. It is important to note Hamburger’s belief that this subject belongs not to logic or psychology or the theory of knowledge, but rather to the theory of language. This contention clearly distances her theory from psychologistic conceptions of the literary subject, and yet, despite the promising beginnings of her attempt to modernize theories of the literary subject, she does not entirely succeed. As we shall see, on numerous occasions

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Hamburger either explicitly or implicitly resorts to the traditional machinery of psychologistic thought, particularly in her attempts to define the lyric subject. Not surprisingly, her contemporary critics tended to focus precisely on this shortcoming, Wellek providing the most important example of such criticism (Wellek 170: 226–​236). With the postulation of the statement-​subject, however, Hamburger also underscores the principal differences between the statement-​subject, as she conceives of it, and the subject as it appears in theories of information and communication. Hamburger’s theory of statements seeks to establish itself as the theory of a concealed structure of language (Hamburger 1973: 30), whereas communication and information theory addresses the given situations of speech. For this reason, the sender in information theory must not be equated with Hamburger’s statement-​subject. The former is generally juxtaposed with the receiver, whereas the latter is juxtaposed with the object. Indeed, in Hamburger’s statement-​system of language, statements are primarily structured by the subject-​object relation. This structure is clearly formulated as follows: “the statement is the statement of a subject about an object” (1973: 31). The structural element of the statement is merely the subject. In other words, the statement is identical to the subject, and the object is implied by the statement. Hamburg proceeds by asserting that the statement-​subject corresponds to the cogito, a claim that she had previously rejected in order to establish the distinctiveness of her theory of language. The weakness of this theory lies precisely in its failure to interrogate the relation between the subject within language and the subject outside of it, whether it is conceived of as a psychological, philosophical, sociological, physical, or other entity. Moreover, Hamburger never interrogates the appearance of the subject within discourse, which is a condition for the constitution of the statement-​subject. The main reason for this absence of reflection lies in the fact that she conceives of her statement-​system of language as the epistemic construction of reality itself. For Hamburger, in contrast to the majority of modern theories of language, the proposition that “the mode of being of language is a different one, subject to different laws from that of reality” simply doesn’t meaningfully hold (1973: 75). Moreover, it seems as if she identifies the possibility of overcoming this illogical distinction between language and reality precisely in her claim about the statement, which is, in her view of language, the act of stating reality. This view allows us, she claims, to transcend an account of language as a “sensibly perceivable” substance, the signifying functions of which theorists had previously analyzed only in their relation to reality. In what way, then, does the statement state reality? Hamburger accomplishes this reversal with the thesis that the statement is authentically a statement about reality because

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the statement-​subject is real. Within the statement system of language, she distinguishes three kinds of statements and related statement-​subjects. She identifies historical statements (i.e. the statement-​subject within a letter, a journal, etc.), theoretical statements (i.e. the subject of scientific thought), and pragmatic statements (the subject of everyday life statements). In her elaboration, she adds to these categories lyric statements and the lyric subject. According to Hamburger, systems of literature and the constitution of literary genres must be analyzed in relation to the statement-​system of language conceived in this manner. Through this analysis, Hamburger identifies three major literary genres: the mimetic-​fictional genre in which she includes narrative fiction and drama; the lyric genre; and the specific mixed-​transitional genres. A great distance divides the mimetic-​fictional and lyric genre, a distinction that she announces at the outset of her work. Aristotle’s exclusion of the lyric, namely his decision not to analyze the lyric in his account of mimesis, serves as the primary reference for Hamburger’s assertion of the irreconcilable differences between the two genres. Hamburger understands Aristotle’s conception of mimesis not as imitation, but as representation, and comes to equate it entirely with fiction, which, according to her, is the genre that is never inscribed into the statement-​system of language. The constituent specifics of fiction –​in which she includes narrative prose, drama, and film –​make use of the fictive speaker, the so-​called I-​Origines as opposed to the I-​Origo, the primary component of the statement-​subject. This step leads Hamburger to the conclusion that there can be no common foundation of literature as a unitary system.

The Lyric and the Lyric Subject In contrast to fictional genres, the poem-​producing language of the lyric belongs to the statement-​system of language. This basic postulate requires us to undertake a lengthy introduction into Hamburger’s thought and her theorization of the statement. In subsequent chapters, we will return to the question of the subject in linguistics (and particularly the linguistics of discourse in the work of Benveniste and Oswald Ducrot), and Hamburger’s theories will prove to be interesting in light of these discussions as well. Indeed, Hamburger’s postulate of the statement-​subject as a specific entity approximates the concept of the subject in certain theories of discourse. However, she does not conceive of the statement in the sense of discourse, but rather in a logical-​structural manner, that is, in the sense of language as a system. This is apparent in the footnote in which Hamburger responds to Wellek’s criticism by emphasizing that the German expression she uses, Aussage, does not translate to utterance in English, but to

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statement. The concept of Wirklichkeitsaussage is not a real utterance but a reality statement, and the statement-​subject is not the speaker, as Wellek understands it, but rather a “structural element of the statement-​system of language” (1973: 363). However, the postulate of such a subject is a somewhat tautological procedure in Hamburger’s case, and it is not clear in what way (and with regards to what exactly) Hamburger understands the reality to which such a subject refers. This question becomes even more urgent as Hamburger problematizes the reality of objects, but not the reality of the subject in whatever shape it takes. Despite her emphasis on the subject as a linguistic-​structural element, she ultimately only connects this subject to a non-​linguistic subject, the cogito. The axiomatically assumed difference in the reception of the lyric and fictional literature is bolstered by Hamburger’s thesis that the language that structures the lyric poem has the function of a statement, and not the function of shaping fiction. Thus, the lyric is to be experienced as the statement of a statement-​subject, and, according to Hamburger, the lyrisches Ich is a statement-​subject. In this context, it becomes necessary to interrogate the lyric subject with regards to the three generic types of statement-​subjects, and indeed through the subject-​object relation. Despite the various degrees to which the objective pole is visible –​in the sense of the connection of statements within an objective context (of reality) –​this theory concludes that the lyric statement is constituted by a transposition of the focus of the statement from the objective to the subjective pole. The lyric statement differs from the everyday communicative statement in that the lyric statement does not relate to real objects as an end but only as a conduit. Thus, the lyric statement does not (and indeed does not even attempt to) acquire a function within a set of objects or a segment of reality. According to Hamburger, the lyric subject is a problematic concept precisely because the lyric statement has no function within the context of reality (1973: 269). Thus, Hamburger disparages as biographism the view that the lyric subject is identical to the empirical author, and indeed rejects both that view and the views of those that claim the opposite. From the start, Hamburger situates her thought in a liminal space that defies both possibilities, both identity and difference. It almost seems that she rejects the problem as irrelevant, a position that is similar to phenomenological theories (e.g. Roman Ingarden’s) that simultaneously advocate the exclusively intratextual nature of the lyric subject and retain the concept of an authorial lyric subject. Hamburger insists that the lyric statement is a reality statement and that its subject is a statement-​subject. Moreover, this subject is always a real subject. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, the reality of the subject-​statement is characterized in an incomplete and unconvincing manner. On the one hand, it is treated as an instance that is exclusively

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inherent to language as a logical-​structural element, and on the other hand, it is connected to a subject that is situated outside of discourse, primarily to the cogito or the cognitive subject. Hamburger identifies the difference between the two, while positing a greater degree of fixity in the former than the latter. She fails to consider possible differences introduced by the very intervention of language, that is, by discourse itself. A similar ambiguity appears in Hamburger’s analysis of the lyric subject. Here, she relies on the claim that the statement-​subject is logically always identical to that which produces a statement. From the perspective of the lyric, however, this does not mean that a poem depicts the real experience of the poem-​producing subject (1973: 276). While the experience itself may be fictional, the lyric subject can never be fictional, because the lyric statement belongs to the statement-​system of language, the implications of this classification having been described above. For Hamburger, “that which produces a statement” is clearly the poem-​producing subject. Thus, the lyric self is a statement-​subject, is logically identical to the poet. In light of this claim about the “logical identity” of the statement-​subject, was partially correct in interpreting this subject as the empirical speaker (Wellek 1970: 227). Wellek’s critique of the concept of experience as a regression into psychologism, however, seems less justified. This is because Hamburger conceives experience not in the pyschologistic sense as described by Dilthey, but in a Husserlian sense, where the concept encompasses all the processes of consciousness. The specificity of the lyric with regards to ordinary statements that are intentionally oriented towards an object is that “in the lyric statement, the lyric I, substitutes for intentionality the incorporating of the object into itself.” This means that “the lyrical statement-​subject does not render the object of experience, but the experience of the object, as the content of its statement” (1973: 276). The correlation of subject-​object is never terminated, the result being that the lyric in Hamburger’s logic remains in the statement system of language. Even when Hamburger concludes her thoughts on the lyric, she does not resolve the many ambiguities of her theory of the lyric subject, and more broadly, her theory of the statement-​subject. The transposition of the problem of the relation between lyric subject and author from the empirical to the logical dimension does not ultimately establish a credible and operative model. However, despite the problematic nature of her views, especially those that deal with the question of fictionality, some of Hamburger’s assumptions are remarkably original. On one level, her theory is more suited to the contemporary era of pragmatics than to the time in which it emerged, dominated as it was by strict textcentrism and formalism. This is demonstrated, on the one hand, by the earlier and harsher

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critiques made by Ingarden and Wellek, and, on the other hand, by the resurgence of interest in Hamburger’s work in recent decades. Indeed, Combe (1996), Jenny (1996), Luján Atienza (2005), and Culler (2015) all affirmatively respond to or cite Hamburger’s theory. The common dominator of much discussion about Hamburger’s theory is a faulty understanding of her analysis of the statement-​subject. Hamburger’s statement-​subject is equated with the subject of utterance, whereas the author herself explicitly notes in her response to Wellek that her Aussagesubfekt should be rendered in English as statement-​subject, and not the subject of the statement. In other words, Hamburger’s subject is situated in the domain of logic, not communication. Indeed, in her theory, the communicative perspective to which literary pragmatics refers is not even acknowledged. Hamburger emphasizes that what is at issue is only that the subject makes a statement about something, rather than that the subject makes a statement to other subjects. Recent discussions instead attribute the subject of utterance to Hamburger and, sometimes equate it with the speaker in communicative models, that is, with an empirical speaker. Here, most theorists do not address the unresolved points of Hamburger’s theories, such as the problematic nature of her definition of not only the lyric subject, but the statement-​subject. If early critiques focused on the question of the empirical subject and the lyric subject, more recent discussions affirm this pragmatic element. By appealing to Hamburger, some theorists argue for a definition of the lyric as a non-​fictional genre. Luján Atienza (2005) and to a degree also Culler (2015) adopted this position. They understand the lyric subject to be real and non-​fictional, but the statements it makes to be fictional (Jenny 1996; Culler 2015). According to Culler: Käte Hamburger distinguishes lyric utterance from fictional discourse. To claim that lyric is not, at bottom, a form of fiction seems a significant advance and in particular helps to identify the disadvantages of the most prominent current theory of lyric, which treats the poem as the speech act of a fictional persona: the fictional imitation of a real-​ world speech act. Possibilities for an alternative model that treats lyric as fundamentally nonmimetic, nonfictional, a distinctive linguistic event, can be drawn from classical conceptions of lyric as encomiastic or epideictic discourse—​discourse of praise of blame, articulating values, not a species of fiction (Culler 2015: 7).

The interpretation articulated above denies fictionality’s role as one of the primary elements in the use of literary discourse as an umbrella concept (see e.g. Culler 1997: 30). However, at least in Culler’s case, this does not imply a conception of poetry (and language as such) as mere reproduction/​representation of reality, a concept that fails to address the performative and transformative

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power of the lyric. In any case and as we shall argue in our discussion of theories of discourse, the exclusion of the postulate of fictionality must not neglect the evenmential power of the poetic text and its subject. It follows that reflection on the specifics of poetic enunciation and referencing must once again be put on the agenda in the ongoing investigations of the lyric. The most problematic and unsalvageable points of Hamburger’s work were revealed in the above analysis. From our perspective, the most problematic point is how she distinguishes fiction from the statement system of language within the system of literature. This distinction is implicitly put under question within the system of literature, which can be seen by Hamburger’s need to introduce the third literary category of mixed-​transitional forms.24 As noted above, the concept of the statement-​subject is also characterized in an incomplete manner. Throughout, it is obvious that Hamburger understands the lyric in an essentialist spirit as a completely undifferentiated genre, bounded to the exclusively one-​ dimensional, centered, and monological model of the first-​person subject, that is, the lyric I. Of course, the first-​person speaker has appeared in the novel from its earliest inception. This is why Hamburger calls the novelistic first-​person narrator the “structural alien” of epic fiction (1973: 311). Hamburger generates the difference between the two first-​person modes with the thesis that the lyric self must constitute itself precisely as lyric. This constitution takes place partially through context and partially through the transposition of the focus of statements onto the subjective pole. And yet it cannot be denied that Hamburger’s theory contains many positive elements. Here we note the shift of emphasis from the question of lyric representation to the question of lyric enunciation, a shift that indicates the modern quality of Hamburger’s theory. Although at certain points Hamburger thematizes the intersubjective dimension of lyric discourse, she largely focuses on the logical subject-​object relation. Hamburger distances herself to a significant degree from the notion that the reader participates in the construction of both the text and the lyric subject by claiming that lyric reception does not extend beyond the field of experience demarcated by the lyric subject’s statements. In this, she does not yet approach the notion of enunciation in its intersubjectivity and radical historicity

24 This category becomes a kind of depository of forms that cannot be classified into other categories defined by established criteria. Hamburger places in this depository the ballad, the picture poem [Bildsgedicht], the role poem [Rollengedicht] –​that is the dramatic monologue –​the first-​person narratives (including the memoir), and the epistolary novel.

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as characterized, for example, in the work of Benveniste and Bakhtin. However, with her concept of the immediacy of the lyric in contrast to the mediacy of the epic, she acknowledges the immediate intersubjectivity of lyric discourse. It should be noted that Hamburger’s concept of immediacy involves two claims. First, she holds that actualization always contains the immediate encounter between you and I. “For we always stand in direct confrontation with it, just as we do vis-​a-​vis the utterance of a real ‘Other’ of a Thou who speaks to my I” (1973: 271). Here, again, we observe that Hamburger only discusses the classical lyric configuration of the first-​person speaker and the addressee. This is why, according to Hamburger, we experience real lyric statements precisely in this way. Second, immediacy in Hamburger’s theory relates to the sensory, bodily dimension of lyric enunciation. Hamburger claims: “There is no mediation of any kind. For there is only the word and nothing more” (1973: 271). In epic fiction, the “word” has the function of forming the fictive world, meaning it has a mediating function. It is the site of mere material (1973: 271). Here, we are presented with the topos of the modern tradition of formalist theories of the lyric developed into a postulate about the poetic function that exhibits both the autotelism and the self-​reflexivity of the lyric. Although we reject the assumption that the poem does not configure narratives and is not mimesis, Hamburger’s distinction between the mediacy of fiction and the immediacy of the lyric implies a crucial dimension of enunciation that is of prime importance to the lyric. This dimension is revealed when we shift our view away from formalism and the binary linguistic sign and orient ourselves towards the domain of discourse. What is at issue here is the physical, bodily dimension of poetic enunciation, its physicality. In making this shift, however, we do not deny the physical dimension and the attendant performative capacity in other literary genres, a position that should be evident in our initial distancing from strict essentialist approaches. To summarize: in accordance with the majority of modern, albeit not contemporary, theories of the lyric subject, Hamburger places the lyric subject at the site of the speaker-​persona. Hamburger also implicitly combines the tradition of understanding the lyric as a subjective genre with the modern formalist view of the lyric as a linguistic phenomenon. At the same time, we identify in Hamburger’s theory an acknowledgment of the physical dimension of enunciation, which could lead to the “decentralization” of the lyric subject from the monopolistic site of the lyric persona to non-​lexical points of articulation and the bodily-​sensory field of lyric discourse. This instance is most clearly suggested in the following statement:

Karlheinz Stierle: The Identity of Discourse

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Thus only in the fictional, but not in the lyrical genre is the word material in the proper sense. It is material just as is colour in painting, and stone in sculpture. But language in the lyric poem is just as little material as it is in non-​lyric statement. It serves no purpose other than the statement itself; it is identical with it, immediate, direct. What we encounter in the lyric poem is the immediate lyric I.” (1973: 272).

Karlheinz Stierle: The Identity of Discourse and the Transgressivity of the Lyric and Its Subject Among earlier analyzes of the lyric subject, Karlheinz Stierle’s article “Identité du discours et transgression lyrique” ([The Identity of Discourse and the Lyric Transgression], 1977)25 most persuasively addresses the question of the lyric as discourse. Stierle borrows from Foucault’s concepts of discourse, the order of discourse, and discursive formation, and also draws on the German linguist Helmut Schnelle’s distinction between text and discourse. The crucial difference between text and discourse consists of the character of identity discourse obtains as a process of speech act in its relation to the speaking subject [sujet parlant]. Schnelle conceives of the text as a linguistic fact that may possess coherence but does not have an identity. A textual identity can only be constituted on the level of discourse while the text functions merely as the dead presence of code. This distinction is fundamental not only for an understanding of textual identity, but also for an understanding of subjectivity within text–​discourse. Already with Stierle, certain elements of the discourse theory come to light: namely, that the literary text, when defined as a merely linguistic phenomenon, does not yet imply the presence of a subject. Discourse as an act can only be executed in relation to a preexistent discursive scheme that transforms the framework of any particular and concrete discursive event. Through this relation, discourse occupies its specific role within institutions of symbolic acts that produce and are conditioned by culture. Literary discourse features a fictional identity that is derived from the foundational identity of pragmatic discourse. This fictional identity of discourse corresponds to the fictional identity of the subject of enunciation, and is not an extra-​discursive

25 The article was expanded by the author with a lengthy analysis of Hölderlin’s ode “Heidelberg” and the poet’s essay “On the Operations of the Poetic Spirit,” published in 1997 with the title “Sprache und identität des Gedichts. Das Beispiel Hölderlins.” In: Karlheinz Stierle. Asthetische Rationalität. München: Fink, 1997. 235–​282. We refer to the Spanish translation of the expanded version published in Aseguinolaza (ed) 1999: 203–​268.

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instance, but rather is constituted in discourse. Just as fictional discourse stands in analogous relation to pragmatic discourse, so too the instance of the subject of enunciation –​which corresponds to neither the actual identity of the author nor to the authorial discursive function –​stands in analogous relation to the intradiscursive instance. For Stierle, poetry is not an independent genre but rather consists of the transgression of other discursive-​literary schemas. Thus, poetry always presupposes a problematic identity. According to Stierle, the only instance that can truly secure the identity of a lyric discursive event is the lyric self: the point of conjunction from which all elements of lyric discourse derive their fragile identities. Because the identity of discourse is only established through the “subject of enunciation,” identity always appears in fragmented form. Throughout his discussion, Stierle continually implies that what is at issue is not a centered point but rather a diffusion or plurality of entities. Stierle distinguishes between the concepts of the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced, but does not entirely clarify these concepts, and thus sometimes equates the lyric I with the subject of enunciation, and, at other times, with the subject of the enounced. At first glance, such usage may seem inconsistent and ambiguous. The lyric subject is a priori a problematic subject, and must be defined as the subject of a sentimental identity. Here, Stierle, seeking grounds for his thesis of sentimental identity, enters the tenuous domain of thematology. However, in his expanded text from 1997, Stierle implicitly addresses the problematics of immediate reflexive consciousness in the highest of artistic and philosophical registers through an analysis of Hölderlin (who himself addressed and embodied this issue), and offers a more robust and compelling reasoning for his thesis of the sentimental identity. Despite certain problematic and ambiguous features, Stierle’s essay is relevant for the purposes of the present discussion for the following two reasons: first, because it is one of the first reflections in modern literary theory that argues for expanding the concept of the lyric subject, and, second, because of the implicit connections it draws between the attempt to conceptualize the lyric as discourse and Hölderlin’s conception of subjectivity, which is crucially connected to poetry and belongs in the category of nonegological theories of the subject. In his analysis of Hölderlin, Stierle implicitly relates the philosophical problem of the subject to the identity of the subject of enunciation (the lyric subject). Stierle cites the essay “On the Operations of the Poetic Spirit” in which Hölderlin offers a philosophical account of the question of the subject and of poetry as the space that allows the most authentic embodiment of the dynamics of subjectivity (cf. Hölderlin 1988: 62–​72). Stierle summarizes the issue in concise fashion,

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presenting it mostly through the dialectic between identity and freedom that Hölderlin developed, but he foregoes a more detailed analysis of Hölderlin’s philosophical insight into the problematic status of the (rationalist, idealist) subject. Stierle also begins a reflection that is worth developing despite certain terminological issues: “Lyric subject, as the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced, as the ‘positing’ subject and the ‘self-​positing’ subject, is a constellation, a configuration of subjects, wherein a problematic identity can be materialized as a condition of a problematic discourse” (1997: 436). In the following sections, we will pursue the ambiguity of Stierle’s discussion. On the one hand, we will address the question of the constellation of subject/​subjects within lyric discourses, and, on the other, we will lay the linguistic, philosophical, literary-​ theoretical, and also sociological-​anthropological groundwork for the development of our thesis of subject configuration.

Anthony Easthope’s Poetry as Discourse Anthony Easthope’s Poetry as Discourse (1983) is certainly one of the most important contributions to theories of the lyric subject in the English-​speaking world during the 1970s and 1980s. Like Stierle did earlier, Easthope argues for a methodological shift in the study of poetry as discourse. His argument rests on the claim that there is no discourse without subjectivity and vice versa. The subject is here conceived of not as “the point of origin, but as the effect of a poetic discourse” (1983: 31). Easthope draws on Saussure, Lacan, Benveniste, Marx, Engels, Althusser, and Foucault, in order to emphasize the significance of poetry as an ideological practice and a discursive order. Each discourse is determined ideologically, materially, and subjectively. Easthope also distinguishes between the subject of the enounced and the subject of enunciation, although he does this less by drawing on Benveniste’s foundational work and more by appealing to Lacan’s understanding of the subject’s division into the unconscious and conscious as well as his discourse on the imaginary and symbolic (1983: 45). The subject of the enounced involves a dimension in which the word is understood as meaning, the signifier and the signified are aligned, the syntagmatic chain is linear and coherent, the discourse is transparent and the subject centered, the ego becoming illusorily present to itself. The subject of enunciation comes into play at the opposite point: the signified slips beneath the signifier, the syntagmatic chain is fractured, discourse is non-​transparent, and subjectivity is decentered, with the result that the fixed position of the ego becomes merely a temporal point in the process of the Other. In other words, as speaking subjects, we ceaselessly oscillate between the symbolic and the imaginary, both of which

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represent crucial elements in the constitution of human subjectivity. Enunciation and the enounced stand in the same relation as signifier and signified. This relation also applies between the subject of the enounced and the subject of enunciation, whereas the subject as such is divided across these dimensions as it enters a system of signifiers. For Easthope, this binary structure holds numerous implications: each discourse may attempt to obscure its internal differences and situate the reader as the transcendental ego. An example of such a discourse can be found in the English bourgeois poetic tradition, which could be described as a regime of representation in which the subject of the enounced is promoted, especially as it creates the effect of an individual voice (1983: 46). The reader is always situated within enunciation, assuming the function of the subject of enunciation, and thus continuously producing the poem through the reading. At the same time, this generative act can be obscured, the responsibility for it attributed to the Poet instead. Despite the fact that such poetic discourse clearly situates the reader in the absolute position of the transcendental ego, there can be no guarantee that this effect will be continuously obtained, as each fixed position slips along the enunciation of the present moment. Despite Easthope’s reliance on Benveniste, his concept of discourse remains thoroughly within the view of language as code, and discourse is thus conceived of in a Foucauldian manner. The author characterizes the entire history of English poetry as a form of discursive order, and it is only within this characterization that he diachronically investigates relations between the subject of the enounced and the subject of enunciation (from medieval poetry to Eliot and Pound). Easthope’s approach, particularly its emphasis on the ceaselessly doubled position of the subject within discourse, presents an important step in the contemporary history of the concept of the lyric subject. This is the case despite Easthope’s binary view of language qua code as it pertains to his understanding of the enounced and enunciation. In what follows, we will also rely on this distinction, but will, in contrast to Easthope, draw on Benveniste’s foundational theoretical work, leaving Lacanian characterizations aside, largely due to differing conceptions of discourse and language.26

26 Goran Korunović’s dissertation entitled Status lirskog subjekta u jugoslovenskim književnostima (1970–​1980) [The Status of the Lyric Subject in Yugoslav Literatures 1970–​1980] (University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology, 2017) is one of the original recent contributions that, among other things, draws on the Lacanian model of the unconscious in addressing the subject of poetic discourse.

Proceedings on the Lyric Subject

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Proceedings on the Lyric Subject in the Francophone World In the mid-​1990s, a vibrant exploration of the problem of the lyric subject began in France and French-​speaking Canada. Scholars largely employed the concept of the lyric subject to address modern and contemporary poetry, and also broad poetological questions such as so-​called lyricism, a polemical issue between representatives of various critical-​theoretical and poetic groups.27 If, in the words of Dominique Rabaté, the editor of the monograph Les figures du sujet lyrique ([Figures of the Lyric Subject], 1996) (Rabaté 1996: 6), it appeared that the lyric subject had been, only a decade before, the “poor relative” of the narrator in terms of both the amount and depth of scholarly treatment, the 1990s witnessed a quantitative leveling of this relation. Despite exceptions such as Antonio Rodriguez’s Le pacte lyrique. Configuration discursive et interaction affective ([The Lyric Pact. Discursive Configuration and Affective Interaction], 2003), a systemization of this conceptual field failed to develop. Theorists either did not believe such a systemization was possible or rejected it on other grounds, perhaps because of a scepticism toward tedious systematic scientism (a scepticism typically arising from the tendency to poeticise the discourse regarding poetry) or on the relatively non-​theoretical orientations of these discussions. Henri Meschonnic, who studied poetic subjectivity in his own peculiar way from the 1970s onwards and whose work we will address in more detail in Part III, sharply rejected both scientism and the poeticization of theoretical discourse in his poetics. Rather, he viewed theory as an activity closely related to poetic practice itself.28 The resurgence of interest in the lyric subject was largely the result of two proceedings presented at a symposium which took place in Bordeaux in 1995.29 27 We are referring to the polemic between advocates and representatives of new lyricism, a new form of intimism critically presented by J. M. Maulpoix (and including the poets, J. Réda, J. M. Maulpoix, G. Gofette, J. Sacré, A. Duault), and literalism, a kind of formalism that in many respects resembles American language poetry (a movement which included poets such as E. Hoquard, D. Roche, J. M. Gleize). 28 It is often the case that the researchers and professors who engage in this question are themselves poets: e.g. J. M. Maulpoix, M. Collot, J. M. Gleize, B. Conort, H. Meschonnic, G. Dessons. 29 The proceedings in question are: Figures du sujet lyrique (1996), Le sujet lyrique en question (1996), Sens et présence du sujet poétique (La poésie de la France et du monde francophone depuis 1980) (2006), Lyrisme et énonciation lyrique (2006), Aux frontières de l’intime. Le sujet lyrique dans la poésie québéquoise actuelle (2007). The monographs are: J. M. Maulpoix, Le poète perplexe (2002), Du lyrisme (2002); J.-​M. Gleize, Poésie et figuration (1983), À noir (1992); M. Collot, Matière –​émotion (1997), La poésie moderne et la structure de l’horizon (1989), Sujet, monde et langage dans la poésie moderne.

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In what follows, we will provide an outline of the key insights of these proceedings, focusing mostly on Figures du sujet lyrique [Figures of the Lyric Subject], the most theoretical piece of writing and the one that the other articles (mostly dealing with the question of the lyric subject in individual poetic opuses) in general failed to further develop. Despite the lack of coherence, a number of assumptions and suggestions proposed during discussions of the proceedings inspire further reflection and will be included in the following chapters along with others approaches that might help us critically synthesize various aspects of the lyric subject. The discussions are positioned between the conceptual fields of the lyric subject as conceived of in literary morphology and poetic subjectivity, and (occasionally) as the empirical subject or author. The oscillation between these various fields at times occurs within, rather than just among, individual contributions. Phillipe Hamon clearly exposes the problem, when he claims the syntagm lyric subject is itself problematic, further suggesting that a number of conceptual shifts would be necessary in this area of research: for example, the assimilation of the concept of the lyric subject and the concept of the text with subjective effects (Hamon 1995: 19). According to Hamon, it is impossible within an analysis of texts with subjective effects to “to isolate and privilege only the actantial notion of the subject in the study of the lyric, as the complexity of text and structural reason incite us to think globally about the question…” (Hamon 1996: 20). Hamon poses the following question: does the lyric subject mean the grammatical subject, the actant subject, the subject of the enounced, or the subject of enunciation? The answers in the proceedings’ contributions are remarkably diverse. In Le sujet lyrique en question, Meschonnic discusses the need to hypothetically postulate a specific subject that he calls the subject of the poem or the subject of art (1996: 15). In his poetics, Meschnonnic identifies this subject in what he calls recitative. For Meschonnic, the subject of the poem, the subject of art, is primarily “an ethical subject, due to its causing a chain reaction of subjectivation and individualization of various forms of life and forms of language –​a transformation of writing, a transformation of reading, of the gaze, of understanding. This subject is ethical and the

De Baudelaire à Ponge (2018); L. Jenny, La parole singulière (1990); J. E. Jackson, La question du moi: un aspect de la modernité poétique européenne (2000); A. Rodriguez, Le pacte lyrique. Configuration discursive et interaction affective (2003).

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parabola of the ethical: this subject is a subject only insofar as there exist other subjects in relation to it” (1996: 17).

The common denominator of papers in these proceedings is the conception of the lyric subject or poetic subjectivity (to the extent these concepts are employed interchangeably) as an entity produced within discourse, rather than a preexisting entity. The lyric subject is involved in and with the poem. This position implicitly interrogates conceptions of the subject as a unitary identity and substance. Poetic subjectivity is thematized more as movement, becoming, process (D. Combe, L. Jenny, J.-​M. Mauploix) and less as substance or fixed identity. This perspectival change can be partially explained by the fact that the majority of the proceeding’s contributions analyze modern poetry in which the strategy of establishing an illusorily unitary and centered model of subject configuration is less frequent. Thus, the lyric subject expands, both implicitly and explicitly, from the lyric persona’s point of articulation into other textual and discursive spheres. And yet the contributing scholars do not characterize these innovative dimensions of configurations and points of articulation in a precise and systemic manner. In most of the contributions, the question of the lyric subject is addressed against the backdrop of questions regarding strategies of enunciation and the figuration of the subject in the sense of a lyric persona. With the exception of Meschonnic’s piece mentioned above, contributions in which the lyric subject is interrogated in terms of the interactive, intersubjective process of the text’s repeated resurgence into a discursive event with the act of reading, are rare; indeed they are almost completely absent. The range of approaches to this question (which also highlights the role of the question of the lyric subject as a focal point of French studies of poetry up until 2005) calls for repeated reflections on the problem, particularly because both the question posed and the answers offered differ from one another, and because they are only rarely presented and argued in a theoretically coherent and in-​depth manner.

Transgeneric Narratological Approaches in the English and German-​Speaking Worlds A counterbalance to inquiries into the question of the lyric subject in the French-​ speaking world (inquiries that are typically averse to systematization) can be found in a number of narratological approaches. These have mostly been carried out by German-​speaking theorists, and particularly German-​speaking experts

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in English literature.30 Scholars usually justify the shift toward narratology with the following two arguments: first, the conceptually immanent argument that holds that narrative is the most complex and universal method of human discursive representation, decipherment, structuring, and meaningfully rendering of experience and the world (Hühn 2005: 147). Insofar as it is present in all of the traditionally conceived literary types and genres, narrative is the principle by which all constitutive elements of the epic, dramatic, and lyric type are illuminated and also distinguished from each other on the basis of the diversity of the ways in which narrative is embodied in each particular type. The second argument can be identified in the exhaustion of academic studies of poetry. Scholars who advocate an emphasis on narrative tend to draw on the development of newer (and the revision of older) theoretical and practical methods and on the transgenerically and transmedially oriented postclassical narratology, and to contribute to further developments in these schools of thought. Poetic texts throughout history have demonstrated the benefits of applying certain narratological concepts to the question of the lyric subject. The pronounced shift toward narrative in modern and contemporary poetry only corroborates this position. For our purposes, narratology offers a number of methodological advantages if only because it foundationally relies on the story-​ discourse distinction in narrative, a theoretical claim derived from Benveniste. That being the case, even the early Bakhtin (in his essay “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity” written between 1920 and 1924) referred in a similar vein to the stratification of poetic discourse. In our attempt to sketch the different strata of subject configuration within the lyric, we will also draw on the narratological approach of interpreting

30 It should be noted that the use of narratological methods by French-​speaking theorists is not completely absent (cf. L. Jenny 1996 and A. Rodriguez 2003). The following is a non-​exhaustive list of works based on transnarratological approaches to the lyric: W. G. Weststijn, “Plot Structure in Lyric Poetry. An Analysis of Three Exile Poems by Alexandr Puškin” (1989), E. Semino, “Schema Theory and the Analysis of the Text Worlds in Poetry” (1995), P. Hühn, “Watching the Speaker Speak: Self-​Observation an Self-​Intransparency in Lyric Poetry” (1998), P. Hühn and J. Schönert, “Zur narratologischen Analyse von Lyrik” (2002), P. Hühn, “Plotting the Lyric” (2005), E. Müller-​Zettelmann “Lyrik und Narratologie” (2002), B. McHale, “Narrative in Poetry” (2005), B. McHale, “Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry” (2009), J. Schönert et al., Lyrik und Narratologie: Text-​Analysen zu deutschsprachigen Gedichten vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (2007), G. Rohwer-​Happe, Unreliable Narration im dramatischen Monolog des Viktorianismus. Konzepte und Funktionen (2011).

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poetry. This involves more than just a mechanical transposition of narratological concepts onto the domain of poetry. Our use of narratological theory is motivated by three factors: the historical trajectory of poetry and the shift toward narrativity in contemporary poetry, the emergence of transgeneric narratological investigations of poetry, and, last but not least, the attempt to think of the subject of the poem and its configuration through specific philosophical and linguistic frameworks, both individually and in conjunction with each other. The narratological story-​discourse distinction in narrative texts and the conception of the plurality of agents of mediacy and instances of experientiality is thus revealed as a literary-​theoretical complement to insights about discourse and the subject within broader philosophical, linguistic, and anthropological reflections. Certain narratological concepts allow us to subvert the apparent monolith of the traditional, monological model of the poem, also in cases where what is at issue is precisely the creation of an illusory monolithic structure: namely, the illusory immediacy, spontaneity, and authenticity of poetic enunciation (cf. Wolf 1998). We can find an example of such an attempt in the Romantic mode of poetry, in which, to use the language of narratology, instances of the narrative voice, the protagonist, the focalization, and the focalizer coincide. As we have seen in our survey of modern theories, the concept of the lyric subject is grounded primarily in this illusorily monological model.

The Lyric Subject in Slovenian Literary Studies: Janko Kos The concept of the lyric subject has been an important part of Slovenian literary criticism since the 1970s. The Slovenian literary theorist Janko Kos treated the concept in the most theoretical detail in his self-​contained system of literary theory, which was presented in various editions of his Literarna teorija ([Literary theory] 1983, 1996, 2001), in a monograph on the lyric (Lirika, ([The Lyric], 1993), and in the article “Problem časa v slovenski liriki” [The Problem of Time in Slovenian Poetry], 1999). For Kos, the concept of the lyric subject is fundamental for the establishment of the lyric as a literary type. According to Kos, it is only through the lyric subject that the lyric can be distinguished from the epic and drama, and specifically from the concepts of the narrator and dramatic subject. Kos understands the lyric subject as an exclusively intratextual phenomenon that rests on “the validity of the radical phenomenological position” (1993: 51). The lyric subject is “the poet’s fiction and thus in principle different from the poet” (1993: 51). His view of the lyric belongs to the more general project of modernizing Romantic views of the lyric as a subjective literary type. Kos accomplishes

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this by insisting on the domination of the subjective pole in the lyric, without relying on the concepts of interiority and subjectivity. In this respect, his theoretical contribution does not significantly differ from Hamburger’s theses. They are simply situated in different frameworks. Kos’s theory consists of an analysis of the basic semantic constituents of the literary text, connecting in various segments and thus forming various configurations through which the genre of texts can be determined. Kos’s framework, however, rests on the view of language as a code system, as he conceives of textual artworks as equivalent to linguistic signs, and conceives of their structure on the basis of elementary linguistic constituents adopted from the semantic psychology of language. Indeed, the latter serves as the crucial pillar of Kos’s literary morphology. According to Kos, the lyric text as linguistic phenomenon consists primarily of ideational-​rational and emotional-​ affective elements. This is also relevant for Kos’s emphasis on the subjective pole in his characterization of the lyric. Kos distances himself from psychologism by postulating the exclusively linguistic nature of basic semantic constituents. For Kos, the predominance of emotional and abstract elements is the necessary condition according to which lyric reality cannot be separated from the subject of speech. Kos identifies the specificity of the lyric and its subject in the relation between the subject that speaks a given text and the object about which the text speaks. What is at issue here is a specific relation to the fictional world, one that is distinct in the case of the lyric from both the epic or dramatic subject-​object relation. For Kos, the epic narrator, including the first-​person narrator, always narrates a reality that is different from his own existence. It is “an object reality, which must exist as an independent object from the past and is thus separate from the narrator’s contemporaneity” (1993: 53). When this condition is not met, the epic form transforms into the lyric. In the lyric, “the reality that is produced by the speech of the lyric subject is not juxtaposed as an independent object with the speaker, but instead recursively returns to the speaker and refracts the speaker, as if the actual object of speech was the subject itself ” (1993: 53). The lyric and its subject, defined by Kos as the speaker, does not depict an independent diegesis. Rather, the storyworld is always refracted and returned to the speaking subjects: “Their speech does not refer to something that would exist outside of them as an actual reality, except that these real objects are their own emotional experiences, states, thoughts, or more generally: physical objects, their own ‘selves.’ When they describe external and real objects and events, these necessarily become allegories for experience of ‘self ’ ” (1996: 94).

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Elsewhere, Kos defines the lyric subject as the “the speaking subject of the lyric text” (1993: 53). At the same time, he more generally characterizes the literary subject as “that from which the speech of a given text emerges, whether this refers to a human being or other forms, whether this is impersonal or non-​ personal” (1996: 95). For Kos, the following are the specific attributes that can be used to describe the lyric subject: the person of the lyric subject, the chronotope of the subject’s speech, the directionality of the speech, the source of the speech, and the manner and perspective of the speech. In this respect, we may precisely draw the constellation of subject formation in the lyric through a sequence of questions: who is speaking, where and when, to whom, from where, why, etc. A systematic attempt to account for the dimensions of configuration in the lyric and its subject would require an acknowledgment and engagement with these aspects as well as their revision through a confrontation with aspects adopted from narratology and theories of discourse. In his theory, Kos concisely presents his views on the lyric subject, providing the groundwork for a more detailed exploration of the issue. However, if we transfer the principles of family resemblance and prototype from genre theory to the question of the lyric subject (which is also crucial for Kos’s essentialist conception of literary genres), we conclude that such an understanding applies only to the central model and prototypical configuration of the conception of the lyric subject through history. It illuminates some important aspects, but certainly not all of the dimensions and possibilities of lyric configuration. In Kos’s theory various aspects (narrative, agential, enunciative, perspectival) and dimensions of enunciation (or storyworld voice and focalization to use the narratological terms) that are at play in the subject configuration of the lyric are finally brought together in a single treatment. We will argue in subsequent chapters that the concept of the lyric subject, as conceived of through the articulation of subjectivity in discourse, must be further expanded, and that this expansion can be accomplished only through the differentiation of its distinct strata. In Part III, we will defend this thesis by drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives.

Chapter 7 Modern Views on the Subject of the Poem In the previous section, we addressed views that approached the problem of the lyric subject in the context of literary-​morphological questions and from a formalistic perspective. At the same time, some of these discussions transcended their disciplinary limitations, and approached the problem in a broader manner. In this chapter, we will present some modern and contemporary theories that conceive of poetry as both the blueprint and the expression of a specific subjectivity or, at the least, as a specific instance of subjectivity. Such accounts do not conceive of the literary text as mere representation –​the instantiation of a predetermined and antecedently given subject and world –​nor do they conceive of language [langage] as a predetermined and prior given system of signs and schemas. Instead, they conceive of it as a space in which the world, the subject, and discourse are created and interwoven together through mimetic and always transformative gesture.31 We will examine two different orientations, the phenomenological and the psychoanalytical, which, despite their fundamental differences, have several common features. In Part III, we will attempt to bring together theories that define the poetic subject as a specific subject (Meschonnic) with theories of the subject within the history of philosophy that do not depend on the concepts of ego, reflection, substance, and a determined, fixed identity, but instead emphasize non-​fixity, processuality, non-​substantiality, and the dialogical quality of the subject (Frank). Despite their different points of departure, the phenomenological and the psychoanalytical conceptions that will be examined here can (to some degree and given certain critical revisions) be related through this perspective, primarily because they share an important common denominator: the prereflexive aspect of the subject denoted by these theories albeit with different expressions (the pathic subject, the pulsic or nonelogical subject, and the prereflexive, immediate consciousness).

31 We recall that numerous modern theories of the subject claim (following Benveniste) that subject is constituted only in language or with language. Other theories assert that language envelopes or even precedes the subject.

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The Phenomenology of the Affective: The Poetic Subject as an Affective-​Pathic Subject Emil Staiger In his 1946 work Grundbegriffe der Poetik (Basic Concepts of Poetics), Emil Staiger developed categories of poetic styles as general and fundamental poetic-​ anthropological categories, which depend on the specificity of our relation to the world and to language, and could normatively replace the concepts of literary genres. Staiger approaches this undertaking by introducing Heidegger’s concept of Stimmung, articulated by the philosopher in Being and Time (1927), to the literary-​theoretical discipline. According to Heidegger, Stimmung represents a set of modes or Befindlichkeit that mediate the relation between human beings and the world as existential fundamentals. These modes belong to the primary (affective) sphere of our relation to the world: Befindlichkeit or mood. In this context, mood could be defined as a dimension of prereflexive consciousness, to use a phrase that Frank borrows from Sartre (Frank 1993: 37–​411). Mood connects the internal and the external, for example, the body and the mind, through a specific mode (anxiety, fear, joy, etc.) “[…] when Stimmung affects us, it is we who are ‘outside’ in a very special sense; we do not stand opposite to objects, but rather we are in them, and they are in us. The ‘Stimmung’ s opens up existence to us more directly than any perception or any comprehension.” (Staiger 1991: 81). The lyric style, which for Staiger appears primarily in the lyric, relies on the so-​ called pathic dimension of Stimmung: “Conditionality [Zuständlichkeit] is the mode of existence of man and nature in lyric poetry.” (1991: 81). For Staiger, the lyric is neither an objective nor subjective genre, because the internal and external, the subject and object are indistinguishable in the lyric (1991: 80). The lyric I (and here we encounter the lyric persona as it is equated with the figure of the poet) is not “a ‘moi’32 that consciously maintains its identity, but a ‘je’ that does not maintain itself, but dissolves in every moment of existence” (1991: 81). Staiger notes that Vischer in his Aesthetics (1846–​1857) already speculates on the union of subject and object in the lyric, but Vischer ultimately defers to the characteristically Romantic thesis of the dominance of the subjective within the lyric claiming that the world enters and saturates the subject. We note here that this interpretation in fact predates Vischer, appearing in Early German Romanticism with Novalis and Hölderlin, but did not remain a significant element in Romantic literary theory. 32 The French phrases Moi and je appear in the original edition.

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Staiger’s interpretation of the subject of the lyric is similar to the phenomenological approaches which place an emphasis on the subjective pole typical of other theorists who have reinterpreted Romantic theories (Hamburger, and Kos in the Slovenian landscape). These modernizations focus on the concept of text and conceive of the subjective pole in linguistic and structural terms. Staiger’s attempt differs from these, and indeed becomes problematic, because of his identification of the lyric subject with the empirical author. Staiger speaks about the author’s intentions, although at the same time he claims that the lyric poet does not create consciously but rather receives inspiration in a prereflexive state. Both Stimmung and language are given to the poet through inspiration; the poet has no direct control over them (1991: 46). The lyric style’s pathic Stimmung directly influences the nature of lyric speech, which, because of its primary affective relation to the world of things, mostly exhibits a harmonious unity between signifier and signified. However, what Staiger is addressing is not what we will later examine as signifiance, that is, the specific semantics that deconstruct the concepts of the sign, the signifier, and the signified, thereby deconstructing the concepts of content and form. With Staiger, semantics themselves are completely dissolved into “the music of words” (1991: 46): the reader “hears the poem’s sounds and rhythms and, before arriving at a discursive understanding of it, affected by the mood of the poet. We are suggesting here the possibility of conveying a meaning without the use of concepts” (1991: 47).

Antonio Rodriguez: A Synthesis of Phenomenologies of the Affective In his reconceptualization of the lyric into the lyric pact (2003), an attempt that belongs to theories of literary pacts as substitutions for literary genres, Antonio Rodriguez takes the phenomenology of the affective as his point of departure. He conceives of the literary pact as an implicit agreement that determines the identification and conception of discursive dominants within texts. As such, the pact is a transhistorical discursive structuration. It enables the mise en forme of particular fundamental experiences and offers a framework for the logical process of configuration in which the horizons of author and reader meet (2003: 88). Rodriguez finds literary and theoretical precedent partially in Staiger and, among more contemporary scholars, in Michel Collot33 and Jacques Garelli.34 3 3 M. Collot, La Matière –​émotion, 1997; La poésie moderne et la structure de l’horizon, 1989. 34 J. Garelli, La gravitation poétique, 1966; Le Recel et la Dispersion, 1978. Garelli, who is also a poet, similarly characterizes prereflexive writing as the constitutive horizon of the creative imagination (Garelli 1996: 11). In this context, he offers interesting analyses of Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

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Analogous to Ricœur, who holds that narrative cannot be understood without a phenomenology of the act, Rodriguez puts forward the thesis that the lyric pact cannot be understood without a phenomenology of the affective. Rodriguez further develops the positions of Stagier, Collot, and Garelli, to name only his direct sources, in order to construct a synthesis and partial reinterpretation of phenomenological philosophies of the affective along the following three lines: esthesic affection (Husserl, Merleau-​Ponty, Strauss), Stimmung (Heidegger, Bollnow), and affectivity (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-​Ponty, Strauss, Bollnow). These positions are inscribed in the conceptual fields of being-​in-​the-​world, ipséity, otherness, and intersubjectivity.

Sensing, Flesh, Stimmung Rodriguez presents the notion of esthesic affection as it applies to Maurice Merleau-​Ponty’s35 concept of flesh [chair] and Erwin Straus’s concept of sensing. Within the concept of sensing, Straus makes a distinction between the gnostic moment and the pathic moment, in which the subject and world exist in a mode of co-​belonging. The pathic moment (esthesic affection) grounds human subjectivity. Straus thus speaks about the pathic subject as distinct from the psycho-​ physiological subject and the transcendental subject. The pathic dimension of subjectivity consists of the subject’s immediate relation to the world. Here, subject and object are undivided, as reflexive mediation is never operative in this dimension. For Straus, (em)pathic understanding of the world, in contrast to conceptual understanding, is prelogical, pre-​predicative, and non-​linguistic. Rodriguez reinterprets Straus’s ideas by including the linguistic moment in his theory of affective forms as the fundamental categories of the lyric pact. The affective form of the lyric pact represents a different predicative logic and operates with different predicative relations that are nonetheless not non-​ linguistic. Straus’s concept of sensing resembles Merleau-​Ponty’s concept of chair, flesh, and embodiment. For Merleau-​Ponty, the body contains two dimensions: it is both sensing (it sees and feels) and can be sensed (it is visible and feel-​able). This duality constitutes flesh. Rodriguez in turn concludes that the notion of chair consists of three instances: the sensed world, the sensing body, and self-​presence, a self-​affectivity that is always already an absence insofar as the pathic self never fully encompasses itself. Rodriguez then relates Merleau-​Ponty’s concept of chair to Heidegger’s Stimmung and Befindlichkeit, mood, notions that serve as the foundations of the affective (as described above), and with Otto Friedrich 35 Cf. primarily Phenomenology of Perception, 1945, and Sense and Non-​sense, 1967.

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Bollnow’s treatment of the concept of Stimmung in philosophical anthropology. As modes of Befindlichkeit, Stimmung develops a relation of immediacy and momentariness in its confrontation with reality, a relation that never features the division of the subject and object. Bollnow categorizes these modes as euphoric and dysphoric, in parallel with the binary difference of connection with and alienation from the world, and analyses them from the perspective of color and rhythm. Moreover, Rodriguez draws on examples of Bollnow’s classification of Stimmung from poetry, and seems to accept a compromise between traditional psychological, stylistic, and thematic classifications of poetry. Rodriguez characterizes the lyric pact by describing two poles: mise en forme (putting into form) and fundamental human experience. Thus, the fields of expression and experience are brought together into a dynamic, mimetic knot. Rodriguez’s synthesis of phenomenologies of the affective postulates the pathic as the fundamental referent of lyric discourse, and affective mise en forme as the discursive paradigm of the pathic. The pathic dimension with its dynamic of various tonalities and colors saturates reflexive experiences such as emotions, perceptions, and actions. The pathic imbues all experiences like a special filter, which is why the lyric pact as the fundamental affective form cannot be reduced to the expression of emotions and affects. This dynamic coincides with the “destabilization of the reflexivity of ego, throwing the subject into a pathic abyss” (Rodriguez 2003: 116). Rodriguez explicitly distances himself from linear logic, according to which the literary text serves as the transparent image of pathic discourse: instead, the text consists of the reciprocity of pathic experience and affective form. The pact’s specific role consists of offering a framework for the logical organization of the dialectics of these two poles. The configuration of the lyric pact is in turn organized by the pathic Stimmung. Despite the exactitude and depth of Rodriguez’s account of the affective form as the fundamental category of the lyric pact, and his application of crucial phenomenologies of the affective to the lyric, the weak point of his work can be found, at least in terms of our analysis, in the claim that the affective form of the lyric pact develops different predicative relations which are nevertheless linguistic. This thesis can be problematized on the basis of the analysis of the prereflexive mode of the subject provided by the Early German Romantics: Novalis’s theory of the sign and Darstellung, poetic representation, and their modern interpretations. Frank and Andrew Bowie, for example, conclude that the entrance into language always presupposes a reflexive mode, not only a prereflexive mode.36 From this perspective, Straus’s premise that the pathic mode is exclusively non-​reflexive, 36 In Julia Kristeva’s view, the thetic break is also the necessary condition for entering language. There will be more about this in the subsequent chapter.

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pre-​predicative, and non-​linguistic, appears reasonable. In contrast, Rodriguez’s subsequent reinterpretation, which preserves the non-​reflexive –​affective within the lyric pact, while excluding discursiveness, appears problematic and calls for further development. Novalis, in Fichte Studies, already recognized how reflection [Reflexion] and feeling [Gefühl] are always, including in speech, captured in an irreducible dynamic. Moreover, referring to Merleau-​Ponty, Rodriguez concludes that self-​affectivity always implies an absence as the pathic subject can never fully comprehend itself. He claims that the immediacy of affectivity is related to the es gibt, that is, to the presence that is simultaneously an abyss, a bottomless bottom [Abgrund]. However, Rodriguez does not further elucidate this relation. Indeed, from the perspective of Novalis’s dynamic of reflection and feeling, it appears that while the pathic self can never comprehend itself, and the feeling cannot feel itself (Novalis 2003: 13), it can nevertheless find reflection. It comprehends that which appears as if it were always present, that is, feeling (Novalis 2003: 12). Rodriguez’s view of poetic subjectivity as a merely pathic, prereflexive category could be revised at these two junctures. In language, reflection is always the precondition for the articulation of the prereflexive.

Julia Kristeva’s Semanalysis: The Process of Signifying the Process of the Subject From the Sign to the Text as an Activity of Signifying In Sémeiotikè (1969), Julia Kristeva fashioned her semanalysis on the basis of a critique of structural semantics. According to Kristeva, structural semantics conceives of signifying [signifiance] as a static and mechanistic concept, thereby failing to pursue the possibilities of conceiving of signifying as process or development. In her work, she draws on various linguistic orientations, phenomenology, Freud, and Marxism, although gradually the forefront is occupied by a particular variant of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Kristeva tracks a path toward a dynamic conception of signifiance through a Derridean critique of the concept of the sign. The concept sign in its tripartite disposition signified –​signifier –​referent irreversibly resides in the metaphysical and idealistic presupposition of the spirit/​materiality distinction. Kristeva, then, understands the text as a productivity. What is at issue is the dynamization of the text on the basis of the idea of the fluid identity of meaning, word, and sign within the text. It is only through these textual optics, that semanalysis develops a second dimension: the activity of signifying [significance]

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which is concealed behind the meaning [signification], the meaning of the sign. What, then, is signifying? What we call signifiance, then, is precisely this unlimited and unbounded generating process, this unceasing operation of the drives toward, in, and through language; toward, in, and through the exchange system and its protagonists –​the subject and his institutions. This heterogeneous process, neither anarchic, fragmented foundation, schizophrenic blockage, is a structuring and de-​structuring practice, a passage to the outer boundaries of the subject and society. Then –​and only then –​can it be jouissance and revolution (1984: 17).

Kristeva makes an effort to not separate in her theory the concepts of language [langage] the subject, and history. However, both the historicity and the literariness of the literary text are frequently referred to either as the articulation of the pulsional subject of the unconscious and social structuration and, on other occasions, as the complete decentring of the subject on the basis of concepts of écriture, subjectlessness and intertextuality, and the transcendent signified. The question of the subject in the theory of signifying becomes a central issue in Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language (1974). This occurs because the process of signifying coincides or even becomes identical to the subject’s process, its self-​production in the specific space of the text. The central question thus becomes the inscription of the subject into the text.

The Subject-​in-​Process: The Fragmentation of the Unitary Subject According to Kristeva, the essence of semiotic practice (and poetry is a type of semiotic activity) consists precisely in decentring the subject of enunciation which, in Kristeva’s interpretation, is conceived of by various and related contemporary linguistic theories. Kristeva’s variation orbits not the split between the subject of the utterance37 and the subject of enunciation in the way this dividedness is transferred from linguistics to psychoanalysis by Lacan (although Kristeva’s semiotic mode could be compared with the dimension of the subject of enunciation in Lacan). Instead, Kristeva’s conception of the subject of enunciation which she understands as the “subject of the sign and of syntax (of meaning and signification)” (1984: 35) is compared to the transcendental phenomenological subject

37 The English edition of Kristeva’s text renders French énoncé as utterance, while we prefer throughout this book to render it as the enounced in order to obtain the optimal terminological clarity, and grasp the distinction between two dimensions of discourse and its double articulation. However, utterance and the enounced can also be used as synonyms.

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(“after Benveniste”)38 and the Cartesian subject (as it appears in Chomskyan generative grammar). She suggests that contemporary linguistics woefully underemphasizes or falters in reflections on the translinguistics of the speaking subject, the speaking being [parlêtre], and the speaking body. In her theorization of the subject-​in-​process, Kristeva draws on Lacan’s theory of the subject as a fragmented unity that emerges from lack and is determined by lack, the subject as established by primal repression. Moreover, primal repression serves to set up the symbolic function (the subject being constituted only when it enters into the Symbolic), and institutes the division between the signifier and the signified. In Lacan, the latter is accomplished by the censorship of the social order: the unitary subject is a subject that emerges from this censorship. Because of the semiotic component in the signifying process the unitary subject is merely a phase, an initial moment that is superseded by the course of the process itself. The subject-​in-​process that replaces the unitary subject is a non-​logical, pulsional subject, a non-​subject that composes itself, struggles and (instinctually) presents itself in the form of energy charges and “psychic” articulation points in the mobile space of the text. Kristeva call this the semiotic chora. These spatial dynamics, which are not to be understood in the sense of a topological composition, can never be approximated in a unity.

Semiotic Chora, Semiotic, Thetic, and Symbolic Kristeva borrows the notion of chora from Plato’s Timaeus and reinterprets it. She does this by emphasizing maternity, the female dimension of the concept that takes the form of the female principle, which precedes the male principle. She theorizes the semiotic chora by situating it in the pre-​symbolic as semiotic pre-​signifying. Chora is the “place of origin” of the subject-​in-​process, which is simultaneously the space of the subject’s negation. According to Kristeva, the modalities that organize the chora can only be accounted for by a theory of the non-​reflexive subject, that is, a theory that acknowledges the unconscious. As developed by Kristeva, the theory of the subject and the poetic text as productivity contains three moments or phases that cannot be demarcated in

38 The phrase “after Benveniste” can be understood in two ways: “following Benveniste’s theory” or “in theories that are influenced by Benveniste”. Ambiguity is very much present in Benveniste, as later theories of discourse that draw on Benveniste often developed his legacy in completely independent ways. Benveniste’s subject of enunciation does not correspond to Husserl’s subject in the sense of “operating consciousness” (to use Kristeva’s term).

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a logical and temporal fashion: the semiotic, the thetic, and the symbolic. The thetic, adopted from Husserl, represents a break [coupure] that demarcates an entry into the symbolic, into language, and with this, the establishment of what we call the reflexive subject and which in Kristeva’s language is designated as the judging or epistemic subject. Semiotic, then, is pre-​thetic, pre-​subjectal, and pre-​signifying. It appears as a negativity that is inserted into the text’s symbolic mode. The symbolic mode superficially appears in the text as the coherence of logico-​semantic and syntactical arrangements, that is, on the topological-​geometrical level of the text, and, at the same time, is conceptualized in a thoroughly Lacanian manner. The poetic text as productivity is therefore, and in contrast to a number of other signifying practices, a practice in which both modes of signifying, the semantic and the semiotic, are at work.39 According to Kristeva, the subject that produces itself within such a text is one that puts the thetic under question; here, the thetic is not solely the suppression of the semiotic chora. Poetic mimesis and poetic language are transgressions of the thetic. They accomplish this transgression by serving as the thetic’s anamnesis when they introduce the stream of semiotic drives into the thetic position (1984: 60). At the same time, poetic mimesis and poetic discourse cannot extinguish the thetic; they can merely traverse it and illuminate its “truth.” The thetic, conceived of as a condition of language, is thus both the condition of enunciation and the condition of denotation (in Frege’s sense). In turn, poetic mimesis, as encompassed in the semiotic chora, is connotation; “The denoted object proliferates in a series of connoted objects produced by the transposition of the semiotic chora” (1984: 55). According to Kristeva, modern poetic language, the type of poetry that draws most of her analytic attention, does not merely convulse denotation [Bedeutung], but also convulses meaning as the site of the subject of enunciation. The power of poetic mimesis and poetic language emerges precisely because transgression of the thetic reveals the thetic’s “theological” and “doxic” truth. Poetic discourse therefore contributes to social discussion not by inscribing itself into the ideological, but by subverting the ideological. Thus, poetry as a signifying practice that works against the thetic enters the social revolution.

39 “To note that there can be no language without a thetic phase that establishes the possibility of truth, and to draw consequences from this discovery is quite a different matter from insisting that every signifying practice operate uniquely out of the thetic phase” (1984: 59).

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The Genotext and the Phenotext The semiotic and symbolic, through signifiying and the text’s activity, construct two layers of textual becoming: the genotext and the phenotext. The genotext represents all semiotic processes, that is, the instinctual economy and the energy of instinct that unfolds throughout the text in the form of phonetic, melodic, intonational, and rhythmic arrangements, semantical and syntactical sequences, and in the transgression of mimesis in relation to detonation, to structuration of the narrative, etc. The genotext is the site at which the mobile subject, not yet a “divided whole,” produces itself. The genotext articulates signifying elements that are aroused by instinctual, bodily, social, and familial codes and structures, and it also articulates the configurations and matrices of enunciation According to Kristeva, these matrices of enunciation, which throughout history give raise to various discursive genres, are the outcome of drive charges: “(a) within biological, ecological, and socio-​familial constraints (b and c), and the stabilization of their facilitation into stases whose surrounding structure accommodates and leaves its mark on symbolization” (1984: 87). Poetry, as the most radical signifying practice of literature, has the function of articulating “the individual’s instinctual layer (i.e., the economy of drives) in a socially acceptable code, while underneath doing this in a revolutionary way” (Juvan 2008: 89). In Kristeva’s variation, the genotext is a sort of subtext, the undergirding of the phenotext. The phenotext in turn corresponds to the symbolic mode of signifying and enables a partial and mobile fixation of the semiotic mass in a sufficiently changeable linguistic and communicative structure, a structure that presupposes “a subject of enunciation and an addressee.” (1984: 87). (Here, Kristeva is apparently equating the subject of enunciation and the sender.) Each case of poetic signifying practice contains both genotext and phenotext. However, it may not necessarily encompass the completeness of the text’s process in both modes, due to external and internal pressures that cause the process of signifying to regress. This does not mean that the genotext did not seethe below the phenotext during historical periods prior to the “revolution of poetic language” which occurred with the epistemological rupture at the close of the nineteenth century and is embodied primarily in Mallarmé and Lautréamont, and later by the historical avantgardes and (ultra)modernism. It was at this juncture that the semiotic chora burst to the surface and decisively ruptured the (symbolic) structuration of the phenotext. It is only “in very recent years or in revolutionary periods that signifying practice has inscribed within the phenotext the plural, heterogeneous, and contradictory process of signification

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encompassing the flow of drives, material discontinuity, political struggle, and the pulverization of language” (1984: 88).

A Final Note on Kristeva’s Semanalysis In her theory, Kristeva attempts to bring together concepts of language, the subject, and history. However, both the historicity and the literariness of the literary text is ultimately reduced, on the one hand, to the articulation of the subject of the unconscious and social structuration, and, on the other, to Kristeva’s occasional appeal for the complete decentring of the subject on the basis of concepts of writing, subjectless intertextuality, and the transcendent signified. Kristeva does not write literary theory in a narrow sense. Thus, it is not possible in her case to speak about the sort of essentialism we find in genre theory and to make the claim that her theory is solely a theory of the lyric text. Her writing decisively belongs to a paradigm that blurs the borders between literature and other signifying practices. At the same time, poetry and, more precisely, modern poetry represent the central foundation or prototype of the practice Kristeva calls text. Moreover, given her typology of the four signifying practices –​narrative, metalanguage, contemplation, and text –​it is not possible to claim that all poetic texts belong to the category of text as Kristeva defines it. Nevertheless, we included Kristeva’s theory of the subject-​in-​process and her theory of text into our chapter explicating modern views of poetic subjectivity as the representative example of the psychoanalytical orientation in literary criticism.40 Kristeva herself mentioned on several occasions that her theory does not rest on a historical corpus. In this respect, it is not a Foucauldian “archaeology” but rather a philosophical-​theoretical debate. However, the author emphasizes the visibility of the genotext’s presence in all historical periods, focusing largely on modern texts in which the presence of the genotext is particularly visible. Thus, if we limit ourselves to the literary-​linguistic field and leave aside the psychoanalytical view, the relation between genotext and phenotext could be characterized as the configuration of “matrices of enunciation” and “linguistic structures.” In certain respects, Kristeva’s theory succeeds in illuminating the problematic of subjectivity’s configuration within text-​discourse, also in relation to the concept of the lyric subject in the narrow literary-​theoretical sense. Thus, Kristeva makes a significant contribution to the expansion of the lyric subject’s conceptual field. For our purposes, Kristeva’s theses are particularly interesting insofar 40 And also in feminist studies, a fact that is less noteworthy in the works analysed here, except in the definition of the semiotic chora as being originally female.

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as they concern the suspension of the sign’s logic, the bodily energy of the poetic subject and the text, or more specifically the subject-​text. Despite the fact that we are not relying on psychoanalytical assumptions in our work, these findings must nevertheless be taken into account in further conceptualizations of subject modes within the poem and of formal derivation of sites at which subject configuration is articulated. We will also borrow Kristeva’s phrase the subject-​in-​process in our analysis as a term for the plural and processual instance that is disseminated at various levels of the poem. Once again, we note that the views on poetic subjectivity presented here, views that reside between the phenomenological and psychoanalytical paradigms, as well as those we will address later, share a common quality: namely, the thematization of the prereflexive subject mode in poetry.41 Each of these paradigms arrives at this point taking its own unique path and on the basis of its own specific assumptions. However, the relation can only be truly understood from a broad viewpoint, one that does not insist on the fundamental differences between philosophical, theoretical (and ideological) paradigms that enable each given view. And this can only be accomplished by turning to poetry itself, that is, by posing the question of its singularity –​not from the viewpoint, for example, of genre essentialism, but rather from a viewpoint beyond genre theory or other strictly literary-​theoretical questions. This in turn means addressing the singularity of the subject created with the poem, and, which the poem, traversing history, also creates.

41 Here we also draw attention to a further connection. Kristeva employs the notion of representability, Darstellbarkeit, which she adopts from Freud and describes as the “the specific articulation of the semiotic and the thetic or a sign system” (1984: 60). In turn, Novalis connects his theory of poetic representation, Darstellung, with the theory of the subject as a split entity. With Novalis, it is feeling and reflection that are the equivalents of semiotic and thetic in Kristeva.

Part III

Chapter 8 The Process of the Text and Subjectifying: An Initial Sketch One of the reasons the traditional concept of the lyric subject as it is conceived of in literary studies at times seems problematic and even inadequate is because the concept was often developed in the framework of philosophical traditions that conceptualized the subject in terms of an unitary identity and substance. This position is implicitly confirmed in recent studies of the individual opuses of modern poets, which identify and treat the poetic subject as becoming and processual. Nevertheless, this issue, once identified, has generally not been systematized in a manner sufficient to offer an operative general framework for further analysis. In Part III, we will think of the problem of the lyric subject in a more independent manner, and namely through a synthesis of conclusions generated by various schools of thought that all emphasize the concepts of dialogism, intersubjectivity, and proccesuality as applied to both the text (as discourse) and the subject. In Roland Barthes’s essay The Pleasure of the Text (1975), we encounter the image of the text not as a web, but rather as the act of interweaving. This is an image of the text as a process, in which the subject, the spider, dissolves into the web of its own creation (1975: 64). This image can be understood as both point of departure and background for our analysis. The idea of the processuality of the literary artwork has been explicitly or implicitly present in literary studies since at least Roman Ingarden’s seminal The Literary Work of Art (1931). Since then, it has appeared in countless literary, linguistic, and philosophy treatments. Ingarden asserts both the temporal extension of any concretization of a literary work, and his belief that this does not mean that the literary work in question is itself temporally extended (Ingarden 1973: 306). At the same time, he characterizes the structure of the literary work as a totality of sequences, attributing to this structure an internal dynamic that remains specific to each individual layer of the work. In The Act of Reading, Wolfgang Iser develops Ingarden’s thesis by discarding the classical subject-​object distinction as the fundamental act of perception and instead defining the reader as a wandering point that skims through its object domain (Iser 1978: 108). He also describes the basic matrix of the reader’s modality –​a wandering viewpoint within the act of configuration –​as a dialectic between protension and retention (1978: 111). A suspension of the conceptualization of “the text as movement” (an expression coined by Yuri Lotman) occurred during the phase of radical structuralism, which understood the text as a closed, immobile, and unchanging

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entity, and sought to employ its chief principles of structure, synchronicity, code, and convention to describe the universal laws of the text with regards to a given problem. Shortly afterwards, poststructuralism replaced the concept of structure with structuring (Jefferson 1986: 109–​18; Juvan 2008: 66), thus emphasizing the process of signifying or the play of the floating signifier that lacks a signified, perpetually deferring meaning. In contrast to the literary work, which was assigned the quality of a closed structure, the text was defined as open and plural, a network of signifiers that compose the text through dissemination, the crucial characteristic of the text therefore being intertextuality (Juvan 2008: 70). This shift replaced the autonomy of the closed structure with subjectless iterability and iterativity. It should be noted that these elements, despite transitioning from the deconstruction of the linguistic sign into the floating signifier, still depend on the logic of language as code. The processuality of the text can also be treated in a less radical manner than poststructuralism does, a treatment that can be found in several approaches including text linguistics, phenomenology of the act of reading, semiotics, and various other theories of discourse. At this point, we again call attention to the double-​layered structure of the text, a concept generated by certain theories of hermeneutics (Schleiermacher, followed by Frank) and given theoretical treatment in theories of discourse (Bakhtin, Benveniste). The concept of the double-​ layered structure of the text recalls Bakhtin’s conclusions (1986: 105) about the polarity of each text, with the first pole depending on the system of linguistic signs and being repeatable, and the second pole encompassing the level of the utterance/​the enounced which is perpetually unique. The utterance is an unrepeatable event and exhibits the subject’s reproduction of the text, which is the process of the text’s becoming through time. It is here that dialogical relations (the topic of metalinguistics) occurs. We have already mentioned how Benveniste theorizes the text’s double articulation by distinguishing between, on the one hand, the dimension of the sign and the semiotics (the quality of language), and, on the other hand, the dimension of the sentence and the semantics that emerge from speakers when they activate language. For Benveniste, no path leads from the sign to the sentence, from the semiotic mode to the semantic mode; there is no transition but rather a difference, emerging from the closed nature of the sign’s world (Benveniste 1974: 65). Language is the only phenomenon that carries within itself the two-​dimensionality of signifying. At the same time, the semantic mode belongs exclusively to the domain of discourse (1974: 64). The literary text as a linguistic phenomenon thus carries within itself the possibility of double signifying; signifying in the semiotic sense and signifying in the sense of enunciation. Benveniste identifies the crucial difference between parole, which corresponds to

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the level of the enounced (utterance), and discourse, which (in this sense) corresponds to enunciation, in the specific conditions of enunciation, that is, in the repeated production [énonciation, réénonciation] which distinguishes it from the text of the enounced or parole (1974: 80). These conditions also have an important connection to the conditions of subjectifying within discourse. We have seen that Stierle, referring to theories of discourse and particularly to Foucault, emphasizes that it is only possible to speak of a text’s identity on the level of discourse, that is when the text in question is actualized through a speech act. The fundamental insight of Benveniste’s theory of enunciation is its recognition of enunciation as a process within which discourse constitutes and manifests subjectivation’s singularity, albeit always on intersubjective grounds. According to Meschonnic, the subject within the poem as discourse solely exists in becoming (that is in the process of (repeated) enunciation), and therefore is a transsubject (Meschonnic 1982: 82) or, to use a paraphrase of Bakhtin’s terminology, an intersubject. The subject always contains within itself the potentially performative power of the continuous subjectivation of readers. The subject’s ethical dimension must also be identified in this capacity. This concept can be situated in proximity both to Bakhtin’s dialogical, relational structure of subjectivity (which Bakhtin identifies in the aesthetic event as well), and to Iser’s thesis that the process of the reading act contains within itself the constitution of the reading subject as such. In the following chapters, we will present a more detailed reflection on the specific subject of the poem as discourse by presenting and interrogating a number of related but distinct approaches. As mentioned, we attempt to understand the poem both as an act and as an activity, that is, to acknowledge its performative power, a dimension that cannot be sought on the level of mere textual configuration or be understood in terms of illocutionary acts in linguistics. In this respect, Jonathan Culler (1997: 72) sees the problem of the theory of the lyric precisely in the fact that the poem is both a structure, composed of words, and an event. Our addition to this discussion comes through Benveniste and Meschonnic, namely that this event is crucially linked to subjectifying. Of course, other approaches to the text also emphasize the intersubjective and interactive nature of the text’s process (for example, text linguistics, semiotic textual analysis, and the phenomenology of the act of reading). However, these approaches engage other, very different theoretical aspects. Intersubjectivity and other elements of subjectivation are often reduced by these approaches to the interactivity that occurs in the production of a textual world and (semantic) meaning. In The Act of Reading, Iser claims that descriptions of the interactions between reader and text refer in the first place to the constitutive processsing of

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the text itself. For this reason, we believe that Iser’s thesis about the constitution of the subject should be situated in the framework that he terms “communicatory structure of the literary text.” Iser himself does not situate it there but rather defines the constitution of the reading subject largely through the split that occurs in the constitution of textual meaning (1978: 152–​159).42 and not in the meaning that corresponds to the dimension of the discursive, communicatory pole. For heuristic purposes, we suggest making a distinction between two different but related types of acts in the process of the text: the configurational act, which refers to the production of textual activity on the basis of textual perspectives, and the discursive act,43 which also implies the event of subjectifying, an implication that will be expounded upon in subsequent sections. In practice, these acts overlap and mutually determine each other. The configurational act is a concept that originates with the analysis of narrative by Paul Ricœur (Ricœur 1984: 67–​ 82, 155–​161). It was first developed by L. O. Mink, who applied it to historical comprehension, whereas Ricœur extended it to the entire field of narrative intelligence. Rodriguez then borrowed the concept from Ricœur and applied it to the field of the lyric, succinctly describing it as follows: the connecting of differentiated signs into an epistemologically complete whole around a given topic. It is a specific act that is related to the phenomenology of understanding and approaches the characteristic of the operation of judging in Kant’s conception. The configurational act, through its multiplicity of heterogenous points, allows an orientation of endless word combinations into a coherent […] global whole. The reader thus constitutes a coherent form or image [Gestalt]. The configurational act triggers the epistemic event that is the text (Rodriguez 2003: 72–​73).

If the abovementioned approaches, and particularly those based on text linguistics, revolve in various ways around the configurational act –​which we understand here as the formation of textual worlds and meanings –​and conceive of the text as a communicatory event, they nonetheless continue to characterize the text from a semiotic perspective as theorized by Benveniste. In our opinion, it is essential to first understand and then overcome this framework in order to develop new approaches to the problem of the lyric subject. In a text linguistics 42 “Hence, the constitution of meaning not only implies the creation of a totality emerging from interacting textual perspectives –​as we have already seen –​but also, through formulation of this totality –​it enables us to formulate ourselves and thus discover an inner world of which we had hitherto not been conscious. At this point, the phenomenology of reading merges into the modern preoccupation with subjectivity” (1978: 158). 43 This syntagm was coined by Schaeffer (1986).

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analysis, the lyric subject is conceived of largely as a function of the text, as deixis, a signifier in the reference relationship with semantic implications in terms of reception. The subject’s linguistic markers are understood as the particular and cohesive means of the poem (Žerjal Pavlin 2008: 36–​37). In this respect, the lyric subject is conceptualized on the level that Benveniste defined as semiotic with the lyric subject being reduced to the linguistic sign. Here we will juxtapose and contrast these formalist views with a theory of the dynamic process of the text’s configuration developed by Paul Ricœur in his trilogy Time and Narrative (published between 1983 and 1985) while also addressing other aspects of subjectivation. In our short presentation of Ricœur’s theory of the self, our goal is to tackle the first instance of the dispositive that we call the poem’s subject configuration: the lyric persona or the traditional lyric subject.

Chapter 9 Ricœur’s Dialectic of Ipse and Idem in the Lyric Persona In his book Oneself as Another (Soi-​même comme un autre, 1990), Paul Ricœur relates the process of the text’s configuration with the production of a narrative identity. This identity is not only understood in terms of the identity of narrative texts, but also in terms of the identity of literary works as such, including poetic texts. At the same time, the process of the narrative identity’s becoming through the text’s process is one of the constituent phases of the subject in Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the subject or selfhood. In one phase of its becoming, the identity of the self is completed only through emplotment, which is crucially related to time. In other words, by narrativizing ourselves, we may partially grasp the complete identity of our person and the “narrative unity of a life.” This narrational experience, which Ricœur calls the emplotment of a life, or the capacity of a subject to narrate and refer to itself within discourse, constitutes narrative identity. Thus, Ricœur’s ideas also follow from the insight that the identity of selfhood is not permanent or stable. We are able to create radically different narrative identities from a range of material and events. The narrative identity thus unfolds over time through processes of combination, development, and disintegration. The identity of a given subject, constituted through narrativity and fundamentally linked to temporality, is grounded in two principles: idem and ipse. Ricœur characterizes idem and ipse in two ways: in Oneself as Another, he understands them largely as forms of identity, whereas in Time and Narrative, he understands them primarily in terms of the ways in which narrative is configured. The two conceptualizations are related. As a way of configuring the narrative, idem represents the principle of harmony and coherence, whereas ipse represents the principle of disharmony and innovation, mutation and rupture within the continuity of narrative. In relation to identity, idem (Latin: idem; German: Gleichehit, French mêmeté) (Ricœur 1992: 116) denotes a stable identity, sameness, a fixity that is not apt to change through time. In contrast, ipse (Latin ipse, German Selbstheit, French ipséité) denotes otherness, a rupture with idem, discontinuity within identity, diversity and variability, and is temporal. What is at issue, then, is two tendencies of identity that dynamically construct the integrated identity of a person. The concept of ipse, which involves both selfhood and otherness, exists in opposition to the “substantive,” “formal,” and non-​temporal identity referred to as idem. Idem is a stable, fixed identity of sameness, related to the principle of sedimentation. It is composed of fragments

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of identity, layered to the degree that a sort of fixed set of these fragments occur and create the appearance of fixity, the illusory appearance of a stable identity of selfhood. And yet this identity is perpetually invaded by otherness. All sameness exists through temporality given to otherness, ipse, which gradually becomes idem, becoming sedimented within the subject. At the same time, new elements of otherness constantly emerge in the form of contingency and innovation. Thus, each identity functions as a dialectic of sameness and otherness. Our narrative identity enables us to address identity as a whole through the development of narrative unity. With narrative unity, we weave contradictory elements into a cohesive unit of narrative that contains a temporal dimension. In addition to the anthropological dimensions of narrativizing the self, narrative identity also illuminates the principle by which the self is produced within literary discourse. As an example, Ricœur analyses Robert Musil’s novel The Man Without Qualities and perceives the dominance of the ipse principle both in the text’s configuration (that is, as the principle of discontinuity, contingency, and alterity in the text’s structuration), and in terms of the protagonist’s identity. Ricœur claims that the coherent literary character begins to disappear when the principle of ipse acquires primacy. In our discussion, we will shift this discussion of persona and identity from prose fiction to the lyric, and also make a connection to another dimension of Ricœur’s work, his theory of metaphoric discourse. We draw on Ricœur in order to focus on the site of subject configuration that we call the lyric persona and traditional theory calls the lyric subject. Here, we approach the level of diegesis or the storyworld. The concept of the lyric subject that we presented in Chapter 5 as the historical dialectic between the identificatory and transformative interpretation also explicitly involves the lyric persona and its similarity with or difference from the empirical author. The problem of the authorial lyric subject is illuminated by Ricœur’s understanding of the processuality of narrative identity, an understanding that can be applied to the configuration of poetic identity at the site of the lyric persona. Ricœur’s reflections become relevant primarily when applied to texts that clearly stage the lyric persona, and also to the problem of the authorial character. Thus, Ricœur’s conception of the identity’s dialectic of sameness and difference is also illuminating when applied to the subject in the poem. According to Ricœur, the narrative identity of the character (the protagonist, persona, or self) is produced in the configurational act through a discontinued dialectic of the idem and ipse identities. This process occurs in two complementary ways of narrating idem and ipse. In a text, particularly a narrative, the principle of idem relates the formation of the character or the protagonist’s identity to the principles by which a discourse is structured: composition, continuity,

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coherence, the logico-​temporal relations of elements that construct both the text and the protagonist’s narrative identity. However, the principle of ipse is present even in coherent and concluded texts that feature coherent and rounded characters. This is the principle of identity in becoming, always confronting anew the sedimentation of idem as a stable, fixed identity. If we exclusively address lyric discourse and its structuration, we see that the very nature of the lyric discourse’s structuration assumes a minimization of idem. Change, interruption, switching dominate and the coherence of poetic discourse depends on elements other than coherent narrative, despite the fact that complex and coherent poetic narratives have existed in the history of the lyric. The poetic plot is typically composed of the interlinking of what might be termed microdiegeses. These relations largely depend on semantic (figurative) isotopies rather than on sequentiality, the linearity of events, and the coherent causal-​logical description of the poetic storyworld.44 These microdiegeses, prototypically composed with imagery, often appear as the sites of the figuration of the lyric persona according to the principle of ipse: namely, the lyric persona figured in its momentary identities. On the level of poetic diegeses, then, the identity of the lyric persona is often formed through specific evocational and representational strategies of ipse. Innovation, the principle of the becoming of the ipse identity in ceaselessly novel otherness, difference-​within-​identity, is often supported by metaphorization within the poem’s process. For Ricœur, metaphorical enunciation represents the height of semantic innovation. To summarize: on the level of the storyworld in the poem, we find related forms of metaphorical enunciation, the structural principle of ipse as discontinuity of narrative, and aspects of the lyric persona’s ipse identity that depend on innovation, difference, otherness. In his work The Rule of Metaphor (La métaphore vive, 1975) which develops one of the most significant contemporary theories of metaphor, Ricœur holds that metaphorical discourse terminates the descriptive, referential function of poetic discourse. Metaphorical discourse accomplishes this through redescribed [redécrit] reality (the given reference). Such redescription takes place in the metaphor’s articulation of perspectives of reality that can only be expressed through evocation. In other words, metaphor articulates perspectives of reality that emerge only in the dynamic tension of the relation between the ruins of literality within metaphorical utterances and their

44 The construction of poetic plotting has recently been addressed also in cognitive narratology, often adopting theories of schema: cf. Hühn (2005). On the narrativity of poetry, cf. also McHale (2005) and Weststeijn (1989).

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new (non-​logical) semantic correspondence (2004: 270–​283). This creates a so-​ called living metaphor. As Ricœur observes, his theory of metaphor is a theory of poetic discourse as such (2004: 283). In the metaphorical discourse of poetry, referential power is linked to the eclipse of ordinary reference, the creation of heuristic fiction is the path to redescription, and reality brought to language unites manifestation and creation (2004: 283). We conclude that the principle of metaphoric redescription (of the world) may also apply to the question of the authorial lyric persona (at least in cases where a poem contains sufficient contextual claims referring to the author and his/​her life). Even the autobiographically-​profiled lyric persona implies an insoluble tension between identity and difference, between “manifestation and creation.” This tension, as Ricœur and Jakobson claim (Ricœur 2004: 265), is expressed in the ceaseless production of the “split reference.” The reference is split when it implies both identity through a minimum of descriptive reference, and difference through the inevitable transformation of the descriptive reference. In such a discourse, each reference (denotation) becomes ambiguous. Ricœur expresses this ambiguity with Jakobson’s famous citation about the claim of Majorcan storytellers: aio era y no era [it happened and it did not happen] (2004: 265). We now examine Gérard de Nerval’s sonnet “El Desdichado” from the cycle “The Chimeras” as an example of a text that features a first-​person lyric persona and conveys the dialectic between ipse and idem within the poetic incoherent coherence that is characteristic of poetry in modernity: El Desdichado Je suis le ténébreux, –​le veuf, –​l’inconsolé, Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie: Ma seule étoile est morte, –​et mon luth constellé Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie. Dans la nuit du tombeau, toi qui m’as consolé, Rends-​moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie, La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé, Et la treille où le pampre à la rose s’allie. Suis-​je Amour ou Phébus? … Lusignan ou Biron? Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la reine; J’ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la syrène … Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron: Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée Les soupirs de la sainte et les cris de la fée.

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El Desdichado I am the man of gloom –​the widower –​the unconsoled, the prince of Aquitaine, his tower in ruins: My sole star is dead –​and my constellated lute bears the Black Sun of Melancholia. In the night of the tomb, you who consoled me, give me back Posillipo and the Italian sea, the flower that so pleased my desolate heart, and the arbour where the vine and the rose are entwined. Am I Amor or Phoebus? … Lusignan or Biron? My brow still burns from the kiss of the queen; I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren swims … And I have twice victorious crossed the Acheron: Modulating on Orpheus’ lyre now the sighs of the saint, now the fairy’s cry.

(Nerval 2006: 410–​411)

“El Dedischado” represents an example of the textual constitution of an “identity” that can only be placed in quotation marks. It is an “identity” grounded only in the differential and, insofar as it is itself difference, consists of the movement between illusory moments of identity. These illusory moments of the lyric persona, that really is a persona–​nobody (one meaning of the Latin word persona being precisely nobody), also contain a negative charge from the title of the poem onward. Moreover, the entire landscape that constructs the groundless nature of these moments resounds with silence: the tower in ruins, the dead and isolated star, the black sun, the night of the tomb, the empty cave of Posillipo (Posillipo literally meaning: he who cures pain, he who consoles) where Virgil is buried, the absent flower (is this Mallarmé’s flower, “absent from all bouquets”?), the sighs and cries of the fairy (is this Echo and Melusina simultaneously?) and the saint, two metamorphoses or anchoring points of the mobile non-​identity. El Desdichado means both disowned heirs and the saddened ones, and thus relates to the motif of Melancholy. The word veuf means widower, but in French, it can also mean to be without something. Insofar as the lyric persona is the widower of the dead star (an image that is associated with Eurydice), he is mainly the veuf of himself, widowed and disowned by himself. The sequencing of microdiegeses in “El Desdichado” presents a negative constitutive process. In one respect, the poem figures the disintegration of the lyric persona’s identity through its fragmentation. From an inverse perspective, however, it (con)figures precisely the attempts of articulation and anchorage within

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intertextually constructed fictions or masks –​personae. The persona in the original sense of the word, nobody, adopts masks, which is signified by the word persona in its other theatrical meaning. Thus, we confront the question of ambiguity, of disintegration and simultaneous all-​encompassment. Nerval’s poetry is characterized as dark Romanticism. The endlessness of the Romantic subjectivity in becoming is embodied in the poem through negative procedures. However, it also seems that Nerval’s sonnet is already announcing Nietzsche’s declaration of the subject as interpretation and as (radicalized, Romantic) becoming. There are no subjects, merely interpretations, asserts Nietzsche (1968: 276): “Becoming as invention, willing, self-​denial, overcoming of oneself: no subject but an action, a positing, creative, no causes and effects.” (1968: 331). At the same, a certain “poetic consciousness” as textual instance (here, the phrase consciousness is not precise, especially if we understand consciousness in terms of the cogito) emerges on a different level of the text, floating beyond the switching microdiegeses and thereby acquiring an understanding of the disintegration and all-​encompassment of the negative. In doing so, the “poetic consciousness” illuminates its truth as chimera, or alternatively its chimera as truth. What is relevant in this unfolding of layers is a specific relation between the I that is announced with the verb am in the first line but can only be posed as a question in the first tercet (am I?), and even the I expressed through the masks: they form a groundless self that situates and creates itself through personae. The anchoring points of chimerical identity that weave the archetypal and allegorical network of the poetic subject on the level of the lyric persona are traversed by a movement that occurs exclusively through and within singing, that is, through and within poeticizing. The metapoetical elements construct the central semantic isotopy: the lute, the first troubadour Guilhelm, Virgil, the song of the mermaid, the sighs of the saint and the cries of the fairy, all coalescing in the final verse: “Modulating on Orpheus’ lyre now the sighs of the saint, now the fairy’s cry.” Two different principles become visible in the poem: on the one hand, the structural-​constitutive principle that configures the subject network in the text described above in Ricœur’s dialectic between ipse and idem, between innovation and sedimentation, and which speaks to some incoherent connectivity, even coherence, and, on the other hand, the “substantial” perspective that is embodied through it and opposes it: destitution, fragmentation, groundlessness. Nerval’s “El Desdichado” is also a good example of the intertextual constitution of the lyric persona: Orpheus, the first troubadour Guilhelm of Aquitaine, Virgil, Amor, and Apollo are accompanied by other, less obvious intertextual references. “Le ténébreux” is an allusion to one of Amadis de Gaule’s monikers “le beau ténébreux”. “El Desdichado” is the nickname of Scott’s protagonist Ivanhoe

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in the eponymous novel. Lusignan is the legendary medieval husband of the fairy Melusina, Charles de Gontaut. Biron is the friend and betrayer of Henry IV of France, and is probably also a reference to Byron. The widower and the star are the dyad I and you, which undergo several metamorphoses within the poem: Orpheus and Eurydice, Daphne and Pheobus, Lusignan and Melusina. All of these metamorphoses are founded on the opposition of darkness and light. The metaphorical figurality, which is the dominant of the poetic discourse, most often configures a poetic story in which discontinuity dominates, and with it, ipse. This discontinuous structuration of poetic enunciation is then juxtaposed with identity, or rather, identity is inserted into it. This is the ipse of the lyric identity, the non-​identity of the lyric subject that (through various moments of depiction that result in the sedimentation of idem) becomes the identity of a sameness that can never reoccur. This momentary ipse identity of the lyric persona is frequently constructed with figurative isotopies that within the poem serve the function of constituting the poetic world (the textual function of imagery) and the formation of the poem’s themes (the thematic function of imagery) (cf. Pavlič 2003: 23). Needless to say, this process cannot be generalized or universalized as it is only possible and productive to analyze it in examples of poems that feature a lyric subject that is clarified to a sufficient degree: that is, clarified as a lyric persona. It is possible to claim that in this kind of poetry, the principle of ipse predominates on the level of textual cohesion. The thesis about the becoming quality of the self of the lyric persona or subject also seems compelling in the case of narrative’s primacy over the figural and metaphoric structuration of the poem’s story (which is one of the central features of an important current of contemporary poetry) and also in the case of the dynamic relation between narrative and metaphorical structuration. Examples of this include Rimbaud’s “Alchemy of the Word” and “Portrait de A.” by Henri Michaux, which features poetic-​prose fragments transfigured into a poetic autobiography (Michaux 1999: 607–​613). According to Ricœur, it is only through the ipse identity, the otherness in identity, that we may establish a relation to the otherness of the other. Only ipseity as identity and non-​identity presupposes the additional dialectic of selfhood and otherness in addition to a dialectic engaged in sameness. Nerval’s sonnet illuminates this remarkably well. Otherness is revealed as constitutive of, and indeed penetrates, selfhood. Ipseity implies otherness to the extent that the two cannot be thought of apart from each other. Ricœur claims that it is only through its ipseity that a self or subject can enter into relation with otherness (1990: 13–​14, 167–​197). The essence of narrative identity, the vehicle through which Ricœur both metaphorically and literally approaches the problem of

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how personal identity is constituted, is thus precisely the dialectic of ipseity and sameness, a dialectic that is always the dialectic of otherness and sameness. The I-​other of the poem searches for the other-​other within this dialectic, and perhaps glimpses it, even speaks to it. In his essay “O Sobesednike”([On the Interlocutor], 1913), Osip Mandelstam claims that there is no poetry without dialog, and that poetry is perpetually oriented towards an unknown, distant addressee. If the poet doubted the existence of this addressee, he would be doubting his own existence (Mandelstam 1990: 66). In his Bremen Prize Speech (1958), Paul Celan also describes the dialogical essence of poetry, always facing the other with the image of a message in a bottle: the poem is always on its way to the other, the “open place,” the you. In our context, Ricœur’s theory of a self that is conditioned by otherness (which also relates to his theory of textual processes and which we applied to several examples) poses not only fundamental philosophical questions but also the structural question of the dialogism of the lyric and its subject, or more precisely, the plurality of its subjects.

Chapter 10 A Rereading of Bakhtin’s Theses About Poetry Bakhtin defines the monologism of poetry (already alluded to in other works such as Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963) (see 1984: 199)) in his renowned essay “Discourse in the Novel” written between 1934 and 1935 but published only in 1972 (Bakhtin 1981: 57–​77). The topos of Ptolomean unity and the fusion of language and monolithic subjectivity in poetry, which tends to contradict Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, is characteristic of this part of his opus. And yet we are not trying to shed new light on the already well-​known internal paradoxes of Bakhtin’s opus (Javornik 1999: 383; Skaza 1999: 355), but rather to emphasize the valuable concept of dialogism in the understanding of poetry. This is useful more for the development of theory, and less so for the living reality of poetic texts as poetic modernity in any case radically disassembled representations of the monologism of poetry. We need only think of the work of Victor Hugo, Jules Laforge, Robert Browning, Augusta Webster, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Fernando Pessoa, or Henri Michaux. The poets of the Middle Ages (e.g., the troubadours, François Villon, and Rutebeuf) and the already mentioned Renaissance poets (for example, Pierre de Ronsard) demonstrated a lively dynamic of both external and internal dialogism. Various forms of dialogism are also increasingly present in modern and contemporary world poetry. The thesis of monologism in poetry is not only Bakhtin’s invention; rather it is characteristic of almost all early and modern theories of poetry and is rooted in Romantic theories of poetry. It was presented by Julius Peterson in the 1936 work Die Wissenschaft von der Dichtung (Kos 1993: 46–​47), and also persists in contemporary theory, for example in Dieter Lamping’s influential 1989 book Das lyrische Gedicht. This work shows that this understanding of monologism, or rather dialogism, is mostly a general conception of external dialogism. In contrast, Bakhtin also presents the internal dialogism of discourse, with which, as Bakhtin emphasizes, the philosophy of language and linguistics had not previously engaged as it focused more on dialog as a compositional form of spoken structure and not on internal dialogism which “penetrates its entire structure” (1981: 104): The internal dialogism of the word finds expression in a series of peculiar features in semantics, syntax and stylistics that have remained up to the present time completely unstudied by linguistics and stylistics (nor, what is more, have the peculiar semantic features of ordinary dialogue been studied) (1981: 104).

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We might add that traditional stylistics and linguistics also did not address the question of dialogic relations because they do not exist within the language as a system of units (which is the object of traditional linguistics), but rather in discourse. Bakhtin suggests that dialogic relations, and also the dialogic relation of the subject of discourse to itself, should be explored in metalinguistics (Bakhtin 1984: 181). Metalinguistics corresponds to what Benveniste terms metasemantics in his essay “Semiology of Language” (Benveniste 1985: 242). Lamping takes a diametrically opposed view when he insists that poetry is monological, arguing that even in cases of (external) dialogs or lyric address in poetry, it is essentially always a dialogized monologue (Lamping 1989: 67). The nature of the poetic dispositive should always assimilate or absorb each dialogic element (both being external voices) into its monological completeness. Bakhtin did not reject the conclusions he made in the 1930s regarding poetry, but rather he made a number of minor additions. Nevertheless, the deconstruction of the thesis of the monologism of poetry is inherent in Bahktin’s general concept of dialogic relations. His later, and above all his last essays, postulate that dialogism exists even in the clearest products of monological speech (1986: 125). It is possible to find a partial rejection of the thesis of poetic monologism in Bakhtin’s central text about this topic, “Discourse in the Novel,” which concludes with the essentialism and ahistoricization of poetry. Internal dialogism is namely understood only as a characteristic of unusual literary genres, for example “where the dialogue of voices arises directly out of a social dialogue of ‘languages’, where an alien utterance begins to sound like a socially alien language” (1981: 106). According to Bakhtin, this occurs, for example, in the Gallilean novel but not in Ptolemean poetry. In “Discourse in the Novel,” Bakhtin conceptualizes dialogism as a category of heteroglossia with social-​ideological intonation while he conceptualizes monologism in the opposite manner: namely, as a unified and tamed (literary) language that mirrors a unified poetic consciousness. The following is the expression in Bakhtin’s development of the idea that language and subjectivity merge in poetry: In poetic genres, artistic consciousness –​understood as a unity of all the author’s semantic and expressive intentions –​fully realizes itself within its own language; in them alone is such consciousness fully immanent, expressing itself in it directly and without mediation, without conditions and without distance. (1981: 106)

For Bakhtin, it seems that the absence of heteroglossia is not essential. What is essential is the uniformity of language, which implies –​and this is especially

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important –​the monolithism of poetic subjectivity. Here poetic subjectivity is entirely equated with the empirical persona of the author: The poet is a poet insofar as he accepts the idea of a unitary and singular language and a unitary, monologicalally sealed-​off utterance […] The meaning must emerge from language as a single intentional whole: none of its stratification, its speech diversity, to say nothing of its language diversity, may be reflected in any fundamental way in his poetic work (1981: 109).

Bakhtin also speaks about the unification and identity of one voice with regards to the question of the polysemy and multi-​accentuation of the poetic symbol. However, as soon as there is an alien intonation or another point of view in the poetic symbol, the poem transitions into prose. Monologism on all levels (the subject, language, intention, symbolization, meaning, etc.) is therefore constitutive for poetry and appears as differentia specifica in relation to prose. Stratification, diversity, contradiction, fractures, and lapses in poetry are not absent, although, according to Bakhtin, they emerge only from the material and not from language. The poet must break through foreign speech and voices in order to arrive at the creative, though not a priori given, unity of his own language, which non-​problematically expresses his intentionality, and yet these voices become monologized in the face of the fusion of language and unified consciousness. The thesis about the monologism of the lyric is therefore tied to the monologism of poetic and empirical subjectivity, or, if you like, the poetic subject and the empirical individual which are identical in this case. This conclusion (if we exclude the equation of these two instances) corresponds to other modern theories of poetics and the lyric subject based on the subject-​object relationship, either in the transfer of utterance from the objective pole to the subjective pole (for example with Hamburger) or the fusion of the subjective and objective poles (with Kos (1993: 54–​55)), and relates, as we have seen, to the modernization of the Romantic theory of the lyric. It is nevertheless also possible to extract elements from Bakhtin’s essay “Discourse in the Novel” that at least partially undermine his central conclusion. Bakhtin reports that the idea of unified language is actually only “a utopian philosopheme” (1981: 106), which is to say that it is only an aesthetic ideology or a representation of poetic language that poetic practice always evades, provided that this representation does not become dominant and constitutive also in the creative and receptive consciousness. Bakhtin also speaks about “an ideal extreme” (this ideal extreme is undoubtedly that which contemporary genre theory calls the core of the prototypical multitude of genres) and emphasizes

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that “prosaisms” also exist in poetry, that is hybrid borderline subgenres that appear particularly during periods of change in the development of literary languages. Bakhtin would later emphasize in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics the prosification of poetry that emerged in the twentieth century (1984: 200). In the essentialization of the lyric in “Discourse of the Novel,” which serves above all as a platform for the development of his thesis about the novel, Bakhtin has in mind only earlier poetry in which the monological model (at least apparently) prevails. In the end, despite the general tendency toward the essentialization of poetry to which Bakhtin attributes ahistoricity and utopian asociality and is therefore excluded from social diversity and heteroglossia, Bakhtin does not rule out in this essay the possibility that the poetic discourse is entirely unsocial. According to him, poetry reflects long-​term social processes while novelistic discourse is sensitive to even the subtlest short-​term social changes. Heteroglossia can thus also appear in poetry but it mostly occurs through the speech of characters. However, this is an objective heteoroglossia, as it is depicted as a thing –​“the depicted gesture of one of the characters,” not the depicting discourse. Therefore, according to Bakhtin, objective heteroglossia cannot play the role of an authentically alien voice. Nonetheless, we may conclude that the monologism of poetry is implicitly questioned in “Discourse in the Novel” in a way that directs the focus in the direction of the conceptualization of dialogism on the level of discourse. When Bakhtin speaks about the literary ideology of monological poetic language, he posits that language is a living and specific space in which the artist’s awareness of the word resides, and is never unified. As such, it is merely a system of signs or “an abstract grammatical system of normative forms” (1981: 107) that does not consider specific ideological perceptions and the ongoing historical becoming of living language. Poetry is therefore not treated as a discourse but is conceptualized within the paradigm of language as a code, and thus as the individual code of the poetics of the individual poet, not as utterance, still less as enunciation in its eventmential dimension. It is treated therefore as poetic language, that necessarily remains within the saussurian theory of the sign, and not as poetic discourse. Bakhtin does not juxtapose this conceptualized monologism of poetry with the living, concrete, emerging language of the novel that traverses and actually propels dialogism. Rather, he juxtaposes it with dialogized languages in the novelistic space of heteroglossia. Here dialogism is almost exclusively constructed as a social-​ideological concept in the sense of a multitude of socialects, idiolects, dialects, language styles, jargons, etc. And it must be emphasized that this relates to languages and not language [langage], and not to discourse as an activity of language. This distinction between languages and language also implies that the

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distinction between language and discourse is essential. Here it is helpful to look to Benveniste: Let us begin by observing that linguistics has a double scope: it is the science of language and the science of languages. This distinction, which is not always made, is necessary; language, the human faculty, the universal and immutable characteristic of man, is something distinct from particular languages, always individual and variable, in which it is realized (Benveniste 1971: 17).

Human communication is that which inseparably connects language as le langage (therefore as an intersubjective action) and language as la langue (therefore as a system of signs) (cf. Dessons 2006: 73). It is precisely with the concept of enunciation or discourse that the intersubjectivity of communication becomes the fundamental element of language, while at the same time language –​which enunciation actualizes, con­figures –​comes to being only with enunciation, since, prior to enunciation, language is merely the possibility of language (Benveniste 1974: 81). Heteroglossia as conceived in Bakhtin’s essay about poetry and the novel –​ despite the title of the essay, insisting as it does on “discourse” –​remains to a great degree within the framework of the concept of language [langue], with the exception of certain instances when it is clearly revealed as an entry in the paradigm of discourse. This occurs only in certain discussions when Bakhtin deals with language as polyphony in the novel, not when he deals with poetry.45 Only later –​and partially in essays prior to “Discourse in the Novel”–​does Bakhtin more precisely conceptualize the dialogism of discourse. This happens when he turns his gaze toward utterance as the basic unit of metalinguistic research. This is best articulated in his conclusion: The two poles of the text. Each text presupposes a generally understood (that is, conventional within a given collective) system of signs, a language (if only the language of art). […] And so behind each text stands a language system. Everything in the text that is repeated and reproduced, everything repeatable and reproducible, everything that can be given outside a given text (the given) conforms to this language system. But at the same time each text (as an utterance) is individual, unique, and unrepeatable,

45 We could also say that heteroglossia defined in this way is one of the assumptions proposed by Juvan in his definition of discourse: “as order, category, or convention that mediates between the language system and the individual utterance or text (between langue and parole) and dictates customary thematics, linguistic genres and registers, and provides particular patterns for the creation and understanding of texts” (Juvan 2011: 40).

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and herein lies its entire significance (its plan, the purpose for which it was created). (Bakthtin 1986: 105)

With Bakhtin, the second pole, the pole of utterance enters into a dialogic relation with other unique texts utterances. Thus, Bakhtin focuses not only on the social-​ideological horizontal line of heteroglossia but also on the transhistorical interdiscursiveness inscribed in the text through transhistorical polyphony. Thus, the emphasis is not only on the heteroglossia of the given historical moment but on the “living reality” of the eventmential utterance in which the accumulated transhistorical polyphony is each time singularly actualized. Only now does it become clear that Bakhtin has also stripped from poetry the fundamental dimension of his philosophy: the event. In this regard, he considers only the dialogical relation between linguistic styles, various social languages, social dialects, registers etc., which should not, as we have seen, even be present in poetry. The conception of discursive dialogism in the sense of different discursive subject positions in utterance is not developed in “Discourse in the Novel” in the same way it is conceptualized later in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics.With this type of dialogic relation between language styles, Bakhtin emphasizes that it is only possible to conceive of them as dialogical when they represent “semantic positions” or what might be called “language worldviews” (1984: 184), namely when they are understood from the aspect of discourse and from the subject’s position in the discourse. However, novelistic heteroglossia is not considered from this perspective in “Discourse in the Novel.” Above all, the possibility of the internal dialogism of poetic subjectivity and dialog between various subjects on the level of the poem is excluded from this treatment. In order to refute Bakhtin’s thesis about the monologism of poetry, it is necessary to look at all levels and types of dialogism, not only those that are founded on social-​ideological heteroglossia. Here we will leave aside the more detailed classification of dialogic relations in discourse in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1984: 199) that could be useful in the practical analysis of poetic texts and be meaningfully discussed with the help of specific examples. Rather, we will briefly outline the general philosophical background of this classification. In his early philosophical-​anthropological texts (“Toward a Philosophy of the Act,” 1918, “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” 1920–​24), Bakhtin connects one of the levels of dialogism –​the dialogic, relational structure of subjectivity –​ with the philosophy of the act, and specifically on the basis of the concepts I-​for-​ myself, I-​for-​the-​other, and outsideness. Aleksander Skaza (1999: 360) concludes that this insight is based on a critique of the monolithic understanding of man. Dialogism thus presumes the conception of a decentered consciousness (Škulj

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1996: 37). Škulj notes that Bakhtin’s insight about the unsuitability of the Cartesian conception of the subject as cogito and quotes Bakhtin’s statement: “The I is the flow of utterances.” In the 1926 Bakhtin/​Voloshinov essay “Slovo v žizni, slovo v poezii” [The Discourse in Life, the Discourse in Poetry] with its strong Marxist tendencies, this meaning is narrowed to a definition of consciousness as an ideological concept and a product of social communication (Bakhtin/​Voloshinov 1981: 212), in which each act of consciousness is understood as internal speech, the flow of words, intonation, and evaluation, and consequently as a social act or an act of communication. In “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” an essay with a different intonation, Bakhtin especially speaks about how the I is never the I, the I is never given, and is always in the process of becoming (1990: 99–​137). In this essay, the becoming subject is based on the ethics of yet-​to-​be, value, and meaning (1990: 123). The principle of yet-​to-​be merges with the category of the future and becoming, because only the future can establish the legitimacy of the self and at the same time annul the pretence of the “the essential me and the whole of me” (1990: 122). Only the other can confirm the I’s present givenness (as only the I can confirm the present givenness of the other), reinforcing, completing, and fulfilling it. All of this occur because of the situation of outsideness as “spatial, temporal, and meaning-​related outsideness in relation to the other’s life as a whole, in relation to the other’s axiological posture and responsibility” (1990: 128) that the other occupies vis-​à-​vis the I. It only makes sense to discuss the incompleteness and becoming of the I and its dialogic determinism along with theories of the subject, which are likewise not part of the Cartesian concept of the subject as a permanent self-​presence, capable of complete self-​reflection (along the lines of Schleiermacher, Novalis, and Frank). Such views on the subject establish both the multilayered and temporal structure of subjectivity (in other words, the individual and his/​her self-​ awareness) and provide a good starting point for the reconceptualization of the poetic subject in connection to other theories of discourse. In the essay “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” Bakhtin also presents the concept of aesthetic dialogism as an introduction to the specific conception of the aesthetic event. Artistic creation is understood as a fundamental dialogic event that can only emerge when there is a background of the dialogically structured consciousness of two disconnected consciousnesses. It is necessary to emphasize that this type of conception of the aesthetic event is not merely a hermeneutic dimension of dialogism in each unique actualization of the text. Dialogism within the aesthetic event occurs not only on the level of the text and the subject as interpreter, but the latter (also in poetry, cf. 1990: 110) enters into

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dialog with at least two discursive instances in the text, “the author and the hero as correlative moments in the artistic whole of a work” (1990: 12) that are also in mutual dialogic relation and which Bakhtin terms the author and the hero. Bakhtin bases the difference between these two discursive instances on the “the general formula for the author’s fundamental, aesthetically productive relationship to the hero […] It is a relationship in which the author occupies an intently maintained position outside the hero with respect to every constituent feature of the hero –​a position outside the hero with respect to space, time, value, and meaning” (1990: 14). The author is “the bearer and sustainer of the intently active unity of a consummated whole” that relates to “the excess of the author’s seeing and knowing in relation to each hero” (1990: 12), and this wholeness is like a gift that is given to the hero. Thus Bakhtin derives the principles of the outsideness of the author as a discursive function in relation to the depicted world and the hero within that world. This instance, called the pure author or the primary author, is a pure depicting principle that emerges in the work as a whole, and is also present in poetry: “Does the author not always stand outside the language as material for the work of art? Is not any writer (even the pure lyricist) always a ‘dramaturge’ in the sense that he directs all words to others’ voices, including to the image of the author (and to other authorial masks)?” (1990: 110) The author understood in this way, namely as the depicting principle, that never becomes “a constituent figural (objective) part of the work” (1990: 110), actually dovetails perfectly with Foucault’s concept of the authorial function that on its own allows the simultaneous dispersal of subjects in discourse (Foucault 1977: 113–​138). At the same time, it corresponds, at least to a certain degree, with the narratological concept of the implied author as defined by Booth, especially with the recent reconceptualization of the implied author in the textual subject or the subject of composition (Hühn 2005). The ability of the subject to speak “through the mouths of others” (Bakhtin 1990: 138) is therefore the inescapable condition of each artistic act, including poetic ones. In the essay “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences” (1956–​1960), we find a similar thesis, but in this case the emphasis is shifted from depicted consciousness to the discourse, which conceals voices within itself.46 The condition of aesthetic creativity is polyphony, the monophonic discourse not being suitable for the artistic event: “Any truly

46 Skaza (1999: 380) points out the continuity of Bakhtin’s thoughts in this regard, namely his return to the philosophical starting point of the 1920s.

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creative voice can only be the second voice in the discourse” (1986: 110). As with each aesthetic event, the poetic event assumes a difference in identity, the self in it being placed under the category of the other: [t]‌hat is to say, even if the hero’s consciousness were conscious of the entire world and rendered the entire world immanent to itself, the aesthetic standpoint would still have to provide his consciousness with a background that is transgredient to it. Or, in other words, the author would have to find a point of support outside that consciousness, in order that it should become an aesthetically consummated phenomenon —​a hero (Bakhtin 1990: 17).

This dimension was not present in his “Discourse in the Novel” where Bakhtin tackles the monologism (of language and consciousness) in poetry. In his early essays, prior to “Discourse in the Novel,” Bakhtin considers poetry precisely from this perspective. In addition to the fact that “Discourse in the Novel” does not include considerations about outsideness and the nature of the aesthetic event (that in the case of literature presupposes discourse), another reason for the absence of this dimension is that poetic language is the primary focus of the essay, as opposed to poetic discourse. Each kind of discourse, including poetic discourse, implies the separation of the enounced and enunciation, which was definitively conceptualized by Benveniste. This separation is implicit in Bakhtin’s early work where it is considered in literary, and also semi-​literary and non-​literary texts (confessions, autobiography, biography, poetics, lives of saints). In both Benveniste and Bakhtin, this structural-​configurational dimension of the variety of enunciation (the “author”) and the enounced (the “hero”) is undergirded with a philosophical and anthropological dimension: in Bakhtin, with the insight into the decentered consciousness, the concept of outsideness and the aesthetic event, and in Benveniste, as we shall see, with the specific concept of enunciation and subjectifying (and societalizing) the individual in the discourse. The early Bakhtin deconstructs the monolithism of the subject in the poetic text with instances of the author and the hero. It seems that Bakhtin’s insights from the 1920s did not directly influence later theories of poetry mostly because these unfinished works were not published until 1972. This distinction between the subject of the enounced and the subject of enunciation, which is related to Bakhtin’s distinction between the author and the hero, was, as we have seen, developed by certain theorists more or less consistently and successfully only in the 1970s and 1980s mostly on the basis of Benveniste’s thesis (Stierle) or on the basis of a combination of Benveniste, Lacan, and Foucault (Easthope). The

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adoption of Bakhtin’s early insights combined with other individual theoretical references could lead us to a conceptualization of the poetic subject and subject configuration in the poem that would replace traditional notions of the lyric subject.

Chapter 11 Ducrot’s Polyphonic Theory of Enunciation In the 1980s, the linguist Oswald Ducrot offered an interesting typology of subject instances that refer to more than just literary discourse.47 Ducrot explicitly makes use of Bakhtin’s dialogism in the formation of his polyphonic theory of enunciation as part of his pragmatic semantics, although he does not consider the structural-​configurational dimension still less the philosophical-​anthropological dimension in Bakhtin. Ducrot’s purpose is to deconstruct accepted and deeply rooted ideas about the uniqueness of the speaking subject. He seeks to demonstrate the assumption that polyphony not only exists in a network of utterances (for example, in texts) as has been suggested in literary studies, and especially by Bakhtin, but is also actualized on the level of individual utterances (including ordinary speech) (Ducrot 2014: 167). In terms of the configuration of poetic discourse and the subject within it, there are several interesting points here: the postulation of polyphony as no longer being confined to the field of the novel or even literary discourse, but rather as a characteristic of ordinary speech, the focus on polyphonic organization of single utterances, and an (otherwise very structuralistic) definition of the duality of enunciation and the enounced. Ducrot, in the same spirit we find in Bakhtin and Benveniste, first methodologically separates the sentence from the utterance/​the enounced and then the utterance/​the enounced from enunciation. He attributes to enunciation three meanings: enunciation as a psychophysical action, enunciation as the product of the activity of the speaking subject, that is the utterance, and finally enunciation as the manifestation of the enounced. Here Ducrot seems to locate the radical historicity of each discourse as it has been thematized by Bakhtin and Benveniste. At first glance, Ducrot’s definition of enunciation appears quite faithful to Benveniste according to whom enunciation is the act of producing the enounced and thereby a unique, radically historical event distinguished from the bare text of the utterance/​the enounced (Benveniste 1974: 80). As we 47 The problems and potentialities of Ducrot’s theory of argumentation and polyphony are discussed by Slovenian theorists Igor Žagar, Marko Keržan, Jelica Šumič-​Riha, and Jernej Habjan in the book Diskurz: od filozofije govorice do teorije ideologije [Discourse From Philosophy of Language to Theory of Ideology] (Habjan 2012), in which the authors develop “a theory of ideologies emerging from Ducrot and Voloshin.” For Ducrot’s analysis see also Habjan (2019: 127–​147).

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shall see, we also encounter differences in Ducrot and Beneviste’s enunciation. Specifically, Ducrot connects his definition to the polyphonic conception of sense. He makes a distinction between sense [sens] and meaning [signification], meaning representing the semantic meaning of a sentence, and sense defined as the description of the enunciation: “The speaking subject, with the aid of utterance, transmits the specific characterization of the enunciation of this utterance. At first glance, this thought appears paradoxical as it assumes that each enunciation, through the utterance it carries, refers to itself ”(Ducrot 1984: 181). Only with this conceptualization of enunciation and sense, argues Ducrot, are we able to conceptualize the splitting of enunciative instances and the discursive superposition of voices. Ducrot divides the discursive configuration of subject instances from the empirical producer as follows: locutor L, locutor λ, enunciator(s). He thus develops a multiple discursive layering upon which is placed a hierarchy of “voices.” Locutor L (which more or less corresponds to Benveniste’s subject of enunciation) is a discursive being responsible for both the enounced and the enunciation and considered only from this point of view (Ducrot 1984: 200). L emerges in this context from outside the discursive situation (outside the diegesis or the storyworld to use the narratological terms), and yet it is fundamentally connected with the instance of locutor λ, which is placed within the utterance in the sense of the storyworld. If locutor L is “the locuteur as such” then locutor λ is a “worldly being,” a “complete” person who, among other things, is also the source of the utterance (1984: 200), thus remaining a purely discursive instance. Ducrot introduces the distinction between both instances and discursive levels in the case of emotional interjections; in declarative utterances, emotions appear as objects of enunciation, concerning the locutor λ, while the latter introduces emotion not only with the help of enunciation but also within the enunciation concerning locutor L and his/​her enunciative engagement. The second example is etos, “character” in rhetoric that the orator constructs on the level of enunciation by choosing the intonation, words, arguments. Etos is thus attributed to locutor L, while what the orator says about him/​herself as an object of enunciation refers to locutor λ as a worldly being (1984: 200). What is essential therefore is that locutor L belongs to the commentary of enunciation, which, according to Ducrot, provides sense, while locutor λ belongs to “the description of the world.” The next type of discursive character in the second form of polyphony is the instance of the enunciator. Here Ducrot explicitly refers to Genette’s point of view [centre de perspective]. Enunciators are instances to which an attitude or a viewpoint can be attributed without attributing words to them in the material

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sense (Ducrot 2014: 170). The locutor who produces the utterance and takes responsibility for it also produces various “voices,” enunciators, and attributes to them attitudes and points of view(s), while his/​her own attitude and point of view are manifested by adapting to one or another of the enunciators (if there are more than one). The constellation becomes increasingly layered when the enunciators on one level produce enunciators on another level whereby “the enunciator becomes dangerously similar to the locutor” (1984: 224). What is significant here is that Ducrot emphasizes that both forms of polyphony (locutor–​ enunciators, locutor L–​ locutor λ) can appear simultaneously, which, from the standpoint of our question about the configuration of subjects in poetry, is particularly important. It is interesting to note that Slovenian researchers who have included Ducrot in their research (Habjan 2012; Keržan 2012; Šumič-​Riha 2012) were all dealing with this second form of polyphony. However, Ducrot actually posits not only a triple layering (empirical producer–​ locutor–​enunciator) but even a quadruple layering. With the conceptualization of the distinction between the level of enunciation and the enounced, the discursive instance of the locutor always splits into locutor λ (the subject of the enounced) and locutor L (the subject of enunciation). The enunciator represents an additional subject instance that can shift from the level of enunciation to the level of the enounced. Therefore, it is possible to associate it with locutor L, the subject of enunciation, or locutor λ, the subject of the enounced/​the utterance, or indeed to no one at all. The abovementioned interpretation of theorists is most likely due to the fact that in their analysis they deal with ordinary speech acts where this sort of layering is less present than in literary discourse. Here the conceptualized difference between the enounced and enunciation is essential because the literary discourse, to a degree and with other purposes, uses the procedure of emplotment (creation of the storyworld) as a key manifestation of narrativity. The latter is characteristic of all literary genres and is, according to contemporary theorists of the narrative, the primary method with which humans give meaning to the world beyond narrative fiction. The theory of poetry neglected the difference between enunciation and the enounced, discours and histoire, that classical narratology took from Benveniste because it understood the lyric as direct spontaneous speech, more similar to ordinary language speech acts than to narrative prose and in which the uniqueness of the speaking subject is taken for granted. Our engagement with Bakhtin, Ducrot, and Benveniste is precisely in order to demonstratee that both ordinary discourse (according to Ducrot) and lyric discourse (according to early and late Bakhtin) irreducibly implies the split of enunciation and the enounced.

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From our perspective, Ducrot’s multiplication of subject instances is interesting and important because the multilayering of enunciative levels is postulated on the level of a single utterance and not only in texts as a sequence of utterances and is thus included in the general theory of language. From the perspective of pragmatic semantics, this illuminates a number of historical and contemporary, theoretical and autopoetic ideas about the non-​uniqueness of the subject (in language and also in poetry). With this linguistic conception of the multilayeredness of enunciative instances, we can dispense with any possible methodological hesitations to apply a number of related literary-​theoretical concepts to poetry, concepts that did not originally deal with poetry but with narrative prose. What are the shortcomings of Ducrot’s theory? Ducrot creates a typology of enunciative instances and shows only certain articulative points, which voices, from Bakhtin’s perspective, later inhabit. In this sense, Ducrot carries out a formalization of Bakhtin’s dispositive of author–​narrator–​hero (Habjan 2020: 135). As early as 1988, Jelica Šumič-​Riha concludes that Ducrot lacks a concept of the subject, and she illuminates this problem through the prism of the Lacanian theory of the subject (see Šumič-​Riha 1988a, 1988b, 2012). This problematic quality, the absence of a concept of the subject, and even more so of subjectivation, is worth investigating through the key differences between Benveniste and Ducrot’s theories of enunciation. It is true that, with Ducrot, similar to Benveniste, the discursive subject is distinct from the empirical speaker. In this sense, both distance themselves from the psychologistic foundations in definitions of the subject of discourse, but with a crucial difference. Ducrot puts the question of the subject and subjectifying to the side. As we shall see, with Benveniste the conceptualization of enunciation is essentially linked to subjectifying. Ducrot, with the absence of concepts of the subject and subjectifying, removes from enunciation the anthropological and ethical dimensions that are implicated in Benveniste’s theory of discourse. This also emerges from Ducrot’s postulate about the self-​referentiality of enunciation or meaning as a description of enunciation. The positions of the subject can only be postulated when postulating the level of enunciation, when serving as a characterization of enunciation: the enounced through these positions describes its own enunciation. From this also comes the conclusion that subject positions do not express the attitudes of the persons that can be identified to them; it is more about self-​referential circularity: “that which is said is never identical to what the speaking subject wants to say” (Šumič-​Riha 1988a: 260). An utterance cannot mirror a standpoint because there is a gap between the world and

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words. Speakers in this conception cannot take responsibility for the viewpoints expressed in their utterances. Here we discover another fundamental difference between Benveniste and Ducrot: Ducrot methodologically and ideologically remains on the level of the semiotic mode as defined by Benveniste. The semiotic mode is independent of all references. As a field of linguistics signs, it is identical only with itself. Ducrot’s meaning and sense generate a closed self-​referential system in itself –​ without external references and without a given situational context. Conversely, Benveniste’s concept of enunciation (and we can also say this of Bakhtin’s concept of the enounced) is established in the sphere of semantics; meaning-​making in enunciation is necessary in relationship to the world, it is “openness to the world,” which is “absolutely unpredictable” (Benveniste 1978: 21). Semantics presumes the inclusion of a referent. Semantics and enunciation presume (the not unproblematic) knot of the human being, the world, and language. An instant introduced by Šumič-​Riha should be emphasized: in Ducrot, the speaking subject “exists only to the extent it can be attributed to a locutor or an enunciator, and this attribution is never complete, always leaving a trace of the speaking subject in the utterance, an unfathomable remainder” (Šumič-​Riha 1988a: 262). Šumič-​Riha states that this relates to the “original discrepancy” that Ducrot does not deal with in his theory. In other words, he does not theorize the subject that exists before each identification. In this reconceptualizion of the poetic subject, we will not follow the psychoanalytical paths that Šumič-​Riha alludes to in her conclusion, namely that Ducrot “does not thematize the subject’s incompatibility with the signifier.” Instead, we will emphasize the exposure of the instant that does not attach subjectivity (merely) to identification or identity. From here we may, with the purpose of reflecting on the subject in the poem, come to the conclusion that Ducrot provides certain possible articulative and identificatory positions of the subject in language, although the theory of the subject is missing from his work. At the same time, per negationem, this also leads to other articulative points that do not occur on the semantic-​lexical level of utterance. This discursive layer, as we shall see, is broadly theorized in Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse. Bakhtin and Ducrot’s theories reveal the plurality of subject instances in all types of discourse, including ordinary and poetic discourse. In this way, they provide a logical theoretical foundation upon which we can expand. The two theories of language in their theoretical reach exceed, conceptually fulfill, and illuminate recent applications of narratological concepts to poetry (Hühn 1998, 2005; Hühn and Kieffer 2005; Hühn and Schönert 2005; Schönert 2007a, 2007b).

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By introducing the concept of point of view or the enunciator into the general theory of language, they develop Benveniste’s distinction between the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced adding another articulative point related to the subject(s) in discourse.

Chapter 12 Benveniste: Subjectifying in Language One of the central principles and indeed the most extensive and influential of the findings in Benveniste’s theory is the connection between subjectivity and language that Benveniste developed in the article “On Subjectivity in Language” (1958). Most poststructural theories about “the subject-​in-​language” refer to this work, though many contain substantial modifications to it. According to Benveniste, subjectivity is a fundamental property of language that determines even its communicative function. How does Benveniste understand subjectivity? One answer is suggested in the following quote: The ‘subjectivity’ we are discussing here is the capacity of the speaker to posit himself as ‘subject’. It is defined not by the feeling which everyone experiences of being himself (this feeling, to the extent it can be taken note of, is only a reflection) but as the psychic unity that transcends the totality of the actual experiences it assembles and that makes the permanence of the consciousness. Now we hold that ‘subjectivity’ whether it is placed in phenomenology or in psychology, as one may wish, is only the emergence in the being of a fundamental property of language. ‘Ego’ is he who says ‘ego’. That is where we see the foundation of ‘subjectivity’, which is determined by the linguistic status of ‘person’(1971: 224).

Benveniste views the capacity of subjectifying in language and with language as inherent to language. Language, and its actualization in discourse and subject are fundamentally indistinguishable: without the subject there is no language, without language there is no subject. According to Benveniste, subjectivation is primarily of a spoken nature. Regardless of how we define it (as self-​consciousness or emotional self-​consciousness), subjectivity emerges directly from the act of language, which is its first prerequisite. In this sense, Benveniste does not subscribe to the paradigm that language exists before the subject, nor to the paradigm that the subject exists before discourse , and consequently before language. What is crucial in this theory is the intermingling of the concepts of subjectivity, language, discourse, intersubjectivity, and historicity. Specifically, Benveniste postulates the intersubjective, discursive, and evenmential nature of the subject, and also the subjective, evenmential, and intersubjective nature of language. Like Bahktin, Benveniste constitutes the subject dialogically and interindividually: Consciousness of self is only possible if it is experienced by contrast. I use I only when I am speaking to someone who will be a you in my address. It is this condition of dialogue

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that is constitutive of person, for it implies that reciprocally I becomes you in the address of the one who in his turn designates himself as I. Here we see a principle whose consequences are to spread out in all directions. Language is possible only because each speaker sets himself up as a subject by referring to himself as I in his discourse. Because of this, I posits another person, the one who, being, as he is, completely exterior to ‘me’, becomes my echo to whom I say you and who says you to me. […] It is in a dialectical reality that will incorporate the two terms and define them by mutual relationship that the linguistic basis of subjectivity is discovered (1971: 224–​225).

In Benveniste’s original theory of enunciation –​and this is in contrast to many theories that followed (see Dessons 2006: 131–​150) –​the I refers to the individual discursive act in which it is enunciated and which “has only a momentary reference” (Benveniste 1971: 226). With Benveniste, we must not mistake the subject of enunciation [éconciateur, sujet de l’énonciation] with the speaking subject or the speaker [sujet parlant, locuteur]. Specifically, Benveniste concludes that I is not representative but rather indicative: the reality to which it refers is discursive –​“the reality of discourse in which I designates the speaker” (1971: 218). When I is spoken in discourse, it does not indicate either a general concept or a specific thing, not even a subject that will always remain the same, an unchangeable referent, because it can potentially apply to all subjects that are designated in mutual communication. Therefore, the I is not a linguistic sign nor is it part of Benveniste’s semiotic mode; rather it functions in the semantic mode as an enunciation. What is essential here is the following conceptual reversal: the subject is constituted anew in each instance of discourse and thus the subject of the enunciation cannot be equated with an individual speaker or person: we are all individuals –​speakers who use language, and, implicit in the concept of the subject of enunciation is also the inscription of the individual into the discourse, and, along with it, the process of subjectifying both the individual and the discourse. Let us now emphasize the difference between the enounced and enunciation from the perspective of I. According to Benveniste, parole, or the enounced, is merely the “text” of the enunciation. In the process of discourse, I appears as a double instance: “the instance of I as referent and the instance of discourse containing I as the referee” (1971: 218). In Benveniste’s theory of discourse, I is not merely the subject of the enounced, and not merely the subject of enunciation, but indeed both. Benveniste places the pronouns I and you in a different category than other personal pronouns. I and you are instances of speech, persons in discourse, that occupy the level of enunciation, while the other pronouns “belong to the syntax of the language.”and are representative, referential, and occupy the level of the enounced. Like discursive instances, I and

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you are carriers of the anthropological and ethical action of language. Moreover, we must not overlook the relation between language and the extra-​discursive in this theory. Benveniste also reflects on the references and individual situations of speech, and apprehends the radical historicity of the subject and language [langage] with the result that “signifying” in Benveniste’s semantic mode does not refer to “meaning” but rather to situation. The language that the individual subjectifies inter-​individually, each time anew defining him or herself as the subject in the discursive instance depending on the situation or the context of speech, contributes to the definition of the discursive and extra-​discursive world, both semanticizing and interpreting it. Language therefore historically shapes the world, society, and culture. Like Humboldt, Benveniste concludes that we historically deal exclusively with speaking man. Benveniste’s linguistics open new possibilities of how we speak about mankind: language is the interpretant of society and indeed of all human activities. This is the historical-​anthropological dimension of Benveniste’s theory of discourse. It is worth noting that this theory does not relate to the monological aspect of the linguistics of individual subjectivism as outlined by Voloshinov (1973: 48–​57), although, as already stated, Benveniste’s understanding of language as labor [Ergon] is certainly aligned with Humboldt’s branch of thought. Here there is no monologism, because Benveniste, as is made clear in the above discussion about interindividual subjectifying, theorizes the “double-​layered nature of the word,” namely the dialogism of discourse and of subjectifying. The evenmential nature of subjectivation in discourse is thus each time also societalization, Benveniste explicitly affirming that his concept of enunciation and subjectifying in language negates the difference between the individual and society (1971: 23). Implicitly incorporated into this concept is the insertion into discourse of social, ideological, political, and cultural elements. This in turn implies that each subjectivation carries within it both the possibility of “desubjectivation” through domination and the control of dominant forms of signifying, which have been determined by social codes, representations, ideology, etc. These are always also discursive as, according to Benveniste, without language actualized in discourse there is neither society nor the individual. It follows from Benveniste’s conclusions that language, within which both subjectivation and societalization occurs, includes all of society, and is not only one social institution among others (see also Michon 2010: 107–​121). For Benveniste –​similar to Bakhtin –​each enunciation is a unique and unrepeatable event. In this event, the individual, who calls him or herself I and addresses you, is each time constituted anew as a subject. The constitution of subjectivity in language does not mean that there is no subject prior to discourse, but rather that it is not possible to postulate the “identical identity” of

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the subject between one and another enunciation. Benveniste thus postulates the evenmential and temporal structure of the subject. His theory of enunciation implies a critique of the I and the conscious self that derives from the permanence of the repetitive use of the personal pronoun I by an individual (see also Dessons 2006: 111). Although Benveniste does not develop his concept of the subject in detail, exploring it above all on the linguistic-​anthropological level with a theory of discourse that deals with the enunciative position of I, his understanding is undoubtedly a critique of the philosophical conceptualization of the subject based on the principles of permanent identity, substance, self-​presence, and reflection. Benveniste’s subject of enunciation, which differs from the subject of the enounced, is not a reflexive entity, but a discursive entity that indeed enables the reflexivity of the subject of the enounced in discourse. In addition, the conceptual distinction between the speaker [locuteur] or the sender in information theory on which literary pragmatics are based, and the subject of enunciation in Benveniste’s theory, which we noted in Chapter 1, now acquires clearer foundations: we can say that the first concept assumes a rigid concept of the subject, while the second is processual or evenmential. It would be necessary to complement Benveniste’s linguistics of the processual subject with other philosophical models, which we will attempt to do in Chapter 14. How do we then pose the question of the lyric subject? If we understand the poem as an enunciation, the subject is constituted and configured in the poem. Given that the poem is a specific artistic mode of signifying in enunciation, we must once again ask the question about the specifics of the poetic subject, its meaning, and the way it is configured and articulated. Benveniste’s subject of language places and maintains itself as subject in an enunciative apparatus, as both the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced. In the next section, a short excursus on the origins of Benveniste’s theory of poetic language will be followed by an analysis of Meschonnic’s work, our focus shifting from the enunciative articulative points that we have explored in relation to various theoretical references (lyrica persona, subject of the enounced, subject of enunciation, enunciator/​point of view) to other focal points of subjectivity of the poem.

Benveniste’s Notes About Baudelaire as the Beginnings of His Theory of Poetic Language Subjectifying in language and the conceptualization of discourse as enunciation –​which is understood as the act of enouncing and distinguished from the enounced in the sense of Saussure’s parole, the difference between semantic and

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semiotic modes –​provide the main premises and central ideas of Benveniste’s linguistic discourse. All of these concepts pointed the way toward a theorization of literature that Benveniste, however, did not end up developing, at least not in the work he completed and published during his lifetime. As mentioned, in his article “ “The Semiology of Language” (1969), Benveniste explores the differences between systems of semiotic signifying (for example, gestures of politeness, Indian mudras, etc.) and systems of semantic signifying (“in which meaning is imparted by the author to the composition” (1985: 239)), namely systems of artistic signifying. Signifying in art is exclusively semantic: Therefore, the meaning of art may never be reduced to a convention accepted by two partners. Two terms must always be found, since they are unlimited in number and unpredictable in nature; thus they must be redevised for each work and, in short, prove unsuitable as an institution (1985: 239).

Language is the only system of signifying in which both the semiotic and semantic mode are actualized. Nevertheless, Benveniste concludes that there exists an unbridgeable gap in language between the semiotic and semantic modes. Because of this, at the end of this influential article, he calls for “the opening of a new dimension of meaning, that of discourse” (1985: 242) with which the system of linguistics based on the concept of the linguistic sign would be surpassed. At the same time, Benveniste also calls for the “translinguistic analysis of texts and other manifestations through the elaboration of a metasemantics” (1985: 242).48 Thanks to Chloé Laplantine, we have since 2011 been able to study the development of this sort of translinguistics in Beneviste’s manuscript notes, which were written mostly in 1967 and remained in the form of fragments. Benveniste had most likely been preparing an article, or perhaps even a book, on Baudelaire’s poetics (Laplantine 2011: 133). The manuscript notes indicate the significance Benveniste attributed to poetic language in both his linguistics of discourse and his theory of language in general. Most of the early interpretations of this manuscript –​for example by Laplantine, Gérard Dessons, and Jean-​Michel Adam –​acknowledge the strong correlations and continuity in the perspectives Benveniste developed in his published articles about linguistics and his conclusions about poetic language in the manuscript notes. In these 361 notes about Baudelaire, he comes to the same insight about the system of artistic signifying as he does in the article “The Semiology of Language”: namely, that literary works, like all other systems of artistic signifying, also create a unique system of units. We must not mistake these units for linguistic units or linguistic 48 Benveniste’s metasemantics corresponds to Bakhtin’s metalinguistics.

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signs because these singular units acquire value as they emerge according to the principle of singular circumstances, a unique system being created each time anew. This unique system is comprised of elements whose values are relational, as in Saussure’s system of language, with the key difference that these singular values are presented sintagmatically and paradigmatically, and are the exclusive properties of the individual poem: “This is a special language, that is no longer ordinary language, although it is comprised of the same units; this is because it creates its own system, shaped by its own categories and functions” (B 12, f° 12). Although each literary work creates its own system of signifying, it is possible to define general changes in the operations and nature of syntagma and paradigms in poetic language: In poetry, the syntagm extends beyond the grammatical limits: it embraces comparison, a very large cotext, sometimes rhyme. It could be named symphorie, sympathem. Symphrony. The paradigm is commemorative and emotional. The iconicity sets in motion associations that are not only semantic and conceptual, but also pathematic (B 12, f° 6 /​f° 58).

In Benveniste’s notes on Baudelaire, we regularly encounter variations of the central thesis that the poetic sign, which emerges from the linguistic sign, is fundamentally connected to emotion: The poetic sign is materially identical to the linguistic sign. But the decomposition of the sign into signifier and signified no longer suffices: a new dimension must be introduced, the dimension of evocation that no longer refers to ‘reality’ (which is a concept of everyday language) but to a ‘poetic vision of reality’ (B 12, f°5 /​f° 57).

Benveniste often cited William Carlos William’s well-​known statement: “I would say that poetry is speech. It’s words rhythmically organized…” According to Benveniste, poetic communication is composed of the mediation of emotion, connected with words, which carries and iconizes the emotion (B 12, f°4/​f° 56). For this reason, it is necessary, in order to evaluate poetic language, to invent a completely new terminology (B 13, f°12 /​f°72). Benveniste incrementally introduces new concepts with which it is possible to capture poetic communication: iconicity, evocation, symphoria, pathem, etc. Benveniste makes a strong distinction between describing emotion and conveying emotion: “The poet transmits the experience, he does not describe it… he conveys emotion, not the idea of emotion. The task of the poet is to transcribe the emotion, the experience, into a linguistic form that evokes through images, not through expressing ideas, and does this with selected signs and in specific syntagma” (B 12, f4°/​f° 56). In her book Émile Benveniste, l’inconscient et le poème ([Émile Benveniste: The Unconscious and the Poem], 2011), Laplantine (2011: 202) suggests that “the

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description of emotions means a referential relation to the world, and conveying an emotion means to produce it”, and concludes that Benveniste defines emotion and the icon as the key concepts in his theory of poetic language. To the contrary, Dessons (2012) concludes that a considerable part of Benveniste’s notes dealing with analytical procedures are rooted in paradigms of traditional stylistics and aesthetics, and tend to produce psychologisms, though the notes are directed primarily toward poetics. Despite these reservations, it is important to emphasize the notes in which Benveniste defines the icon and image as discursive-​ artistic concepts. Poetic discourse conveys emotion in such a way that emotion is transposed, rather than described. In other words, poetic language is not a means for expressing things in another way. It is not possible to reproduce its meaning by deciphering it, which would cause the denotation of emotion. According to Benveniste, poetic language creates its own reference (B 6, f°2/​f°2). It is self-​referential, while pathem, which Benveniste defines as the dominant reference of poetic language, is not a condition that is external to discourse, but synchronous with it, simultaneously becoming with the discourse. For Benveniste, the intention of the poem is affective (B 20, f°14/​f°208), emotive (B 6, f°2/​f°2): “ ‘meaning’ emerges from within the words, is accompanied by ‘emotion’ that is provoked when one word is joined to another in a unique connection” (B 20, f°8/​f°202). An analysis of the poetic language in Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil leads Benveniste to the conclusion that the linguistic sign is no longer an operative concept for researching poetic discourse. As mentioned above, he also articulates this thought at the end of the article “The Semiology of Language,” although, in that context, Benveniste was focusing on enunciation in general and not only on poetic enunciation. In his notes, Benvenieste begins to look for new expressions for poetic signs and suggests several different combinations. He sometimes speaks of eicasm, which is composed of the evocant and the evoked (for example, in B 12, f°5/​f° 57), and again of icons that are created by the iconizing and the iconized. The referent is defined sometimes as pathem (B 13, f°4/​f°64), sometimes as the affective (B 20, f° 14/​f°208). The following citation illustrates how Benveniste understands the process of iconicity and how it influences the establishment of syntagmatic and paradigmatic conditions in the poetic system: Iconizing strives to create a pathic impression, the iconized is the consequence of the signifier that is comprehended by the imagination. Thus NIGHT [NUIT] in the sense of the icon is different from night in the sense of the sign, although the poet also uses it as a sign (“night and day”) and it is each time different. The iconizing NIGHT [NUIT] is paradoxically linked to an iconic truth that is different from the signified truth –​it is linked to the iconizing shine [LUIT] (luisant comme ces trous où l’eau dort dans la nuit … et la rime reluit). The iconicity of NUIT is now a great expanse in which a certain clarity

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reigns (cf. IV vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté) that is different from ordinary clarity (B 12, f°3 /​f° 55).

Benveniste often emphasizes the singularity of the system of poetic signifying created by the umbrella principles of evocation and iconicity. At the same time, he also regularly emphasizes another singularity, the singularity of the living and feeling of singular subjects: “Poetic discourse desires above all else to express beings, to name them in their uniqueness, to present them and give them feeling in their uniqueness” (B19, f°5/​f°191). In its unique system, the poem transposes and configures that which Benveniste calls the never-​yet-​perceived [jamais-​encore-​ perçu] (B 22, f°30/​f°282) in such a way that the energy of meaning produced by the unique fusion of “poetic signs” in a discursive continuity where all elements are connected through the relation of evocation remains inscribed in a poem that, with each new utterance, triggers in the reader a uniquely dialogic transformative witness of “the unique emotion of the unique subject” (B 20, f°10/​f°204). Thus, Benveniste emphasizes the transformative dimension of art: “Art has no other purpose than to abolish ‘common perception’ and enable the experience of another more real reality that cannot be discovered without the artist” (B 22, f°52/​f°304). These are just a few of the layers in Benveniste’s notes on Baudelaire, which he was probably preparing as an extensive theoretical work that he never managed to finish, and which touch on the question of poetic language and reveal the linguist’s passionate engagement with poetry. A number of Benveniste’s heirs and followers knew about the existence of these notes but were not familiar with their content with the exception of a few pages that had been preserved in the collection of Benveniste’s literary legacy in the French National Library that referred to the inadequacy of the linguistic sign in the research of poetic language. Meschonnic is one of the most important theorists to advance Benveniste’s conclusions from a general theory of discourse to literary criticism. Meschonnic, however, was not familiar with Benveniste’s development of the theme addressing the shortcomings of the linguistic sign. In addition to other references, Meschonnic began to develop his own poetics of discourse on the basis of Benveniste’s work on subjectifying in language, the introduction of the semantic mode (without the semiotic mode), and his exploration of the pre-​Socratic concept of rhythm.

Chapter 13 Henri Meschonnic’s Poetics of Discourse Henri Meschonnic (1932–​2009), poet, theorist, and translator, began developing his poetics of discourse and the historical anthropology of rhythm in the 1970s when his book Pour la poétique ([For Poetics], 1970) was published. The fundamental concepts of Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse are subject, history, discourse, signifiance, critique of the sign, rhythm, prosody, continuous, recitative, orality, and translation.49 With this project, Meschonnic declared the necessity of openness, incompleteness, unfinishablity, and also utopianism that were conditioned by the nature of the project. For Meschonnic, poetry is the path to the unknown, and to knowledge that is not given knowledge because it renews methods of meaning-​making and understanding, and also the subject itself. For this reason, any poetics that investigates poetry, is necessarily a search for theory (1982: 33). Meschonnic’s central work Critique du rythme, anthropologie historique du langage ([The Critique of Rhythm: The Historical Anthropology of Language] 1982)50 is addressed to the unknown or the stranger. In this way, theory does not relinquish its necessity; Meschonnic condenses this view with the demand that theory must be combined with practice and practice with theory. Theory, in this context, does not mean the tendency toward scientism. Poetics is in principle a retreat from “the scientistic ideology” (Meschonnic 1982: 21) that dominates the academy, but nonetheless –​and this is good news –​it actually and regularly emerged in the academy. Meschonnic himself lectured at the experimental University of Vincennes, today Paris VIII –​Vincennes Saint-​Denis of which he was the cofounder. Meschonnic, with his critique of rhythm, utopically establishes a counter-​culture to the dominant culture of the linguistic sign. According to Meschonnic, poetic discourse is critical precisely because the poem itself is critical (1995: 17). In Meschonnic’s poetics, the theory of literature, the theory of language in the sense of the anthropological history of language, and the theory of the subject,

49 In this presentation, I make use as much as possible of English terms proposed by the translators and the editor of The Henri Meschonnic Reader (Pajević 2019). 50 Several sections of Meschonnic’s magnum opus appeared in Pajević’s 2019 English translation.

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flows into his vision of the creation of a common theory [théorie de l’ensemble] that includes ethics and political theory.51 Meschonnic both expands Jakobson’s concept of poetics while at the same time reversing his perspective, as he no longer places poetics under the auspices of linguistics but rather establishes it as a constructive critique of traditional linguistics and other specialized disciplines. This critique is based on the concept of the poem as a specific manifestation of language. Literary criticism (in the sense of poetics) is established as a critique of the theory of language, and the theory of language as a critique of literary criticism. In this sense, poetics is no longer a formal analysis of literature but rather an inquiry into the reciprocal implications between language, history, and literature as they can be presented, according to Meschonnic, only in literature. On the epistemological and ethical (and also political) level, poetics rejects the essentialist division between literature in general and everyday language, and especially between poetry and everyday language, to the extent that poetry became the literary genre to which literary criticism ascribes the highest level of transgression of everyday language. The poetics of discourse sharply rejects attempts at essentialist definitions of poetry (and literature in general) and shifts the focus on the methods of (literary and specifically poetic) meaning-​ making. It is not possible to think about the power and possibility of the poem without thinking about the poem in the context of other language practices, because when we do, we aestheticize, neutralize, and consequently anaesthetize it. Meschonnic provides a condensed definition of the poem that transcends and even circumvents the genealogical definition of poetry as a literary genre within the classification of literary types. For him, the poem happens when, in relation to reading, there is “a transformation of the form of life with a transformation of the form of language and a transformation of the form of language with a transformation of the form of language” (2001: 67). In this context, the poem appears as “an invention of the radical historicity of ways of speaking, feeling, and understanding the self and others” (1995: 17). As we shall see, the poem and its recitative, one of Meschonnic’s concepts, are located within literature in particular opposition to narrative [récit], on the basis of the difference between an emphasis on enunciation as a (trans)subjective act, which is more characteristic of poetry, and an emphasis on representation (fabulation, narrativization), which is more characteristic of narrative fiction.Taking a broader view, the foundation

51 The following are some of the more prominent of Meschonnic’s students and followers of his “common theory”: Gérard Dessons, Pascal Michon, Serge Martin, Marko Pajević etc.

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of the poetics of discourse is the theorization and analysis of relations of the poem –​in the sense of a unique discursive practice connected specifically with subjectivation –​with other discursive practices.

References of the Poetics of Discourse Although Benveniste and Saussure provided the central linguistic references for Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School also contributed to its beginnings as did the Russian Formalists (especially Yury Tynyanov, Osip Brik, Boris Eikhenbaum, and Boris Tomashevsky) who articulated certain elements of its practical-​analytical platform. The theory of rhythm borrows from Tynyanov’s findings about the constructive role of rhythm in signification, namely the thesis about the change in semantic values of words because of their rhythmic values, this despite the fact that Tynyanov persisted in functionalism, conceiving of language as a code that does not recognize either subject or discourse (Meschonnic 1995: 83). Meschonnic also borrows certain conclusions from the formalists that are connected with the theory of discourse as well as Saussure’s fundamental concepts of linguistics. However, Meschonnic, particularly in his work Le signe et le poème ([The Sign and the Poem], 1975), shows how structural linguistics erroneously interpreted Saussure. Meschonnic also sees the failure of structuralism in its rejection of concepts of historicity, value, and the subject (2006: 130). Although Saussure did not directly develop the concept of discourse, Meschonnic derived the radical historicity of language and the basis for poetic discourse from Saussure’s overlapping concepts of system, functioning, arbitrariness, and value. Saussure had already invented the concept of value that took the place of meaning, which was identified with the signified in the dualistic theory of the sign in which the signifier is reduced to being only the carrier of meaning. In the classical conceptualization, meaning was understood as the relationship between the mental representation and the perceived object. It is implied that language is merely a transparent mediator between the world and man, composed of words that only denote representations and objects. Language is thus reduced to nomenclature, to a dictionary (cf. Michon 2010: 173). Saussure linked the concept of value, which had replaced the previous concept of meaning, with the concept of system in which units do not have meaning, but rather values, because they are negatively defined. As they are neither autonomous nor preexist the system, they cannot create meaning, but only value.

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Meschonnic transfers the concept of a system that configures values according to the principle of differential relational connections to literary discourse and the conceptualization of literariness. Value, which is within the (Saussurian) linguistic system a social value shared by all speakers, is now carried to the level of discourse. In Benveniste’s semantic mode discussed above, value is manifested each time as a singular value. However, Meschonnic does not remain on the level of linguistics of discourse but creates a poetics of discourse, in the first parts of which he elevates value to the level of literariness or artistry: the singular (poetic) values produced by enunciation are based on internal relations on all levels of the poetic discourse. Thus emerges the (evenmential) discursive system of a literary work with a new semantic and artistic value, no longer representing stiff, hermetic, and ahistorical structures, but rather ceaseless structuration that is dynamically transformed with each unique event of enunciation. The essential contribution of this perspective on the literary text is that the text is understood as a discursive system-​subject. The central hypothesis of the poetics of discourse is namely that such an artistic system emerges with the inscription of the subject into its discourse: “If the discourse is the practice of the subject in history, the poem is understood as the maximal inscription of the subject (with its situation and history) in language, while other forms of discourse are realized as an inscription of language into history and the situation” (1985: 46). Here, of course, the system-​subject is conceived of as a discursive system in the field of discourse as developed in Benveniste’s theory. Indeed, it could be said that all of Meschonnic’s concepts are derived from Benveniste’s theory of discourse, which Meschonnic develops and refines. Once again, Meschonnic, following in the footsteps of Benveniste, connects Saussure’s concept of arbitrariness of the linguistic sign with the concept of the historicity of language and the concept of functioning [fonctionnement]. Arbitrariness as such contradicts the structuralist conception of convention because convention is based on the instrumentalist mimetic logic of relations between words and things as discussed above. In contrast to the structuralist heirs to Saussure, who transformed Saussure’s concept of the system into ahistorical structure, and radical arbitrariness into a convention with which they then could define literature as a transgression of convention and anti-​instrumental language that is above all isolated from the concept of the subject, Meschonnic, on the basis of his affinity to Benveniste’s critique of the sign, postulated that the system and value abolish the concept of the linguistic sign as a binary unit.

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Critique of the Linguistic Sign: Signifiance, Multiple Signifier, Recitative, Continuous, Historicity Meschonnic replaces the signifier-​signified pair with the concept of the signifying element [signifiant], that is the producer of so-​called generalized signifiance. The signifiant is no longer the material carrier of meaning but in Meschonnic’s theory becomes “the present participle of the verb to mean, understood as the cultural and subjective continuous [continu] of the subject in its language” (2006: 58). It is no longer the signifier and signified but a multiple, non-​unitary element that signifies on virtually all levels of discourse and establishes signifiance, signifying, understood as the organization of (subjective) effects that are ceaselessly coming into being. The signifiant does not, as in linguistics, exist in opposition to the signified, nor is it an extra-​linguistic signifier as in psychoanalysis, but linguistic, and at the same time translinguistic, because it exceeds the level of the enounced and the coded perspective of language and enters into the concept of enunciation. It is worth emphasizing here that this does not represent merely a unification of the dualistic logic of the linguistic sign but pluralization: a multiple, dispersed signifiant. As we see, Meschonnic is making a clear connection to Benveniste’s distinction between the semantic and the semiotic systems of signifying based on enunciation. In this way, signifiance, is distinct from signification, which otherwise can also mean both production of meaning and its results. From the standpoint of the poetics of discourse, however, signification is thought of only as the meaning of the enounced, a purely lexical meaning. Meschonnic’s signifying which is inseparable from the concept of discourse or enunciation, thus becomes the central element of literariness; literature and above all poetry are the modalities of the activity of signifiance. As we will show, signifying is based on a specific understanding of rhythm, the subject in the poem and the (complementary) notions of continuous and recitative. Signifiance thus indicates the specific organization of the effects of discourse, not reduced to the meaning of the enounced, but created by the activity of the words in enunciation, their performative power. Signifiance as the function of the signifiant is finally and above all the organization of subjectivity in language and with language (1982: 342). The poem is for the poetics of discourse precisely the literary discourse that represents “the weakest link of the linguistic sign” (1995: 24), specifically because it is not possible in poems, to the same degree as it is in narratives, to disguise the signifiant (or the signifier if we remain within the binary logic), and to focus on the sign as if on representation. Among all literary genres, the poem best shows that despite the fact that it is linguistically composed of signs, it is not composed

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exclusively of signs. The poem is essentially distinct from narrative fiction precisely because the narrative fiction is oriented toward representation, mimesis, toward naming things, and thus remains for the most part within the logic of the linguistic sign. The poem is the manifestation of language that most radically reveals that, as Beneveniste concluded, language is not a tool; that language does not merely serve mankind, it is constitutive of mankind. Thus, the poem turns away from the instrumentalism of all forms and genres, and necessarily treats everything in the discourse as having meaning. For Meschonnic, poetry is thus “an allegory of language itself ” (2006: 108). The poetics of discourse studies these methods of the meaning-​making process; it is interested in how the poem functions. Here, we are not referring to a hermeneutical interpretation but to the theory of the historicity of meaning-​making. For Meschonnic, historicity has at least three meanings: general historicity meaning the situatedness of discourse in context; literary, and narrower poetic, historicity being understood as the tension between the sociality and the specifics of literature. In the third sense, historicity is “the variable of writing and history” (1982: 28), that is based on the above defined concept of value, and actually introduces the possibility of transhistoricity. Value as “transformative and transformed” (1982: 29) is the element of the poem that generates transhistoricity and transsubjectivity. In this context, historicity is “the contradictory relationship between a given historical situation that defines once and for all the environment of certain actions, and the potential of those actions to step out of conditions of its origins and to continue to create an uninterrupted present in a new present” (Dessons and Meschonnic 2008: 234). For Meschonnic, the paradox of the sovereignty of the sign is that it generates a model of language from which the empirics of language perpetually escapes: with rhythm, with the body, with the voice. He understands the discontinuous, which is the consequence of the perspective of the sign on language, as a sort of ripping asunder, the dismantling of the uninterrupted flow of enunciation, that precisely, with its uninterrupted and dynamic fluidity (which poetics, as much as it is able, must conceptually and analytically take hold of), signifies on all discursive levels. The discontinuous is therefore the approach that divides enunciation or discourse into individual differential units such as the phenome, word, sentence, series, form and content, rhetorical figures, etc. Methodologically, this means its dispersal among linguistic disciplines; lexicology, semantics, syntax, phonetics, stylistics, etc. The higher level of this divisional logic brings us all the way to global differentiation of the he Enlightenment categories of knowledge, morals, and aesthetics.

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According to Meschonnic, the paradigm of the sign cannot perceive the continous of the historicity between language and subject, or the continuous of the historicity between the body, gesture, voice, rhythm, and prosody that transforms physicality into enunciation and creates the unique singularity of individual discourse (2006: 106). Meschonnic defines this continuous as body-​ in-​language, as rhythmic and prosodic semantics. For Meschonnic, the continuous is a versatile interaction between “body and language, language and body, language and literature, and literature and language” (1995: 125). Wilhelm von Humboldt was one of the first thinkers to speak of the continuous, and Meschonnic’s ideas were in many ways inspired by his.52 Against the logic of the sign and the discontinuous that this logic produces, Meschonnic puts forward the continuous, body-​in-​language, and recitative. Recitative enacts the continuous of the poem and the maximal subjectivation of language (1995: 190), and implies the functioning of enunciation through specific serial semantics: rhythmical and prosodic paradigmatics, a chain of meaning in the sense of a succession of consonant-​vocal series that creates unique relations or values in the system of a poem (1995: 17). The subjectivation of the poem should not be mistaken for the psychology of subjectivity in which, concludes Meschonnic, certain theories and (auto)poetics are still active.

The Reconceptualization of Rhythm The poetics of discourse is also the theory of rhythm. This theory not only transforms the traditional linguistic and literary perspective on rhythm, but also paves the way to a historical anthropology of rhythm. Rhythm thus becomes the principle concept of the poetics of discourse allowing Meschonnic to shift from the linguistics of enunciation to the poetics of enunciation. According to Meschonnic, the poem says the most about the functioning of rhythm in all discourses. Meschonnic devises an anthropological theory of rhythm through a critique of the metaphysics of rhythm that emerges from Beneviste’s findings on the pre-​Socratic understanding of rhythm (see Benveniste 1971: 281–​288). Benveniste, in his essay “The Notion of ‘Rhythm’ in its Linguistic Expression” (1951), concludes that the understanding of rhythm as symmetry developed with Plato. Since then, rhythm has been, on the basis of the law of numbers, 52 As we mentioned in Chapter 1, certain origins of the theory of discourse, along with the speech act and two modalities of sense, were also articulated by Humboldt’s contemporary Friedrich Schleiermacher. However, according to Meschonnic, his ideas revealed a theological understanding of the sign.

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subjected to measure and, in light of metaphors about the rhythm of waves, understood as the exchange of various entities –​such as movement and the repetition of intervals. Pre-​Socratic conceptualizations of rhythm, that Benveniste discovered in Heraclitus and Democritus, are based on a completely different understanding of rhythm as “dispositions or ‘configurations’ without fixity or natural necessity and arising from an arrangement which is always subject to change” (Benveniste 1971: 286). As a result of these findings, Meschonnic sees the necessity of another theory of rhythm, and specifically the theory of the rhythm of discourse which is neither the rhythm of language nor the rhythm of music. On the basis of pre-​Socratic understandings of rhythm, he derived an idea of the rhythm of discourse as the organization of movement that also includes periodicity, symmetry, alternation. From this, it follows that rhythm can no longer be understood as one of the subcategorical forms but rather as the configuration of the whole (1982: 70). The following is Meschonnic’s extended definition of rhythm: I define rhythm in language as the organization of the characteristics with which signifiants produce a specific semantic distinct from lexical meaning and that I call meaning-​making: it has to do with values that are the properties of an individual discourse and only of that discourse. These characteristics appear on all ‘levels’ of language: accentual, prosodic, lexical, syntactical. They together and reciprocally create the paradigmatic and syntagmatic levels, and thus neutralize the notion of levels. In contrast to the more typical reduction of meaning to the lexical level, meaning becomes the property of all discourse –​in each consonant, in each vowel –​that, like a paradigm and syntagm, produce series. In this sense, signifiants are of a both syntactic and prosodic nature. Meaning thus no longer emerges from words in the lexical sense. In a narrower sense, rhythm is accentual and differs from prosody that is vocal-​consonantal organization. In the broader sense, it also captures prosody. In the case of spoken language, it captures intonation. Thus, because it organizes the meaning and signification of discourse, rhythm is the organization itself of discourse (1982: 216–​217).

Rhythm is the fundamental anthropological element of discourse and the umbrella signifiant. Here is important to note that rhythm constitutes both the enunciation and the enounced. Rhythm is posited as the radical opposite of the sign because it demonstrates that the poem is composed not only of signs. Rhythm therefore constitutes language [langage], not as language [langue], but as discourse; not as the sign, but as meaning-​making beyond sign. Because it transcends all signs, rhythm captures language and all that is physical about it, and, all that is interphysical. The theory of the rhythm, of the language [langage] and of the subject thus transcends the theory of communication. According to

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Meschonnic, it is in this sense that the theory of rhythm has the power to shift the concept of meaning [from] the totality and unity of truth to meaning that is no longer totality, no longer unity, no longer truth. There is no unity in rhythm, and the only unity of rhythm could be discourse, as the inscription of the subject in it, or even the subject alone. Such a unity can only be fragmented, open, indefinite (1982: 73).

Meschonnic defines three categories of rhythm: linguistic rhythm which is the rhythm of individual languages –​the rhythm of words or sentences; rhetorical rhythm which changes as a result of cultural tradition, register, stylistic period, and; poetic or literary rhythm which is “the organization of writing.” The first is dealt with in the field of linguistics, the second in rhetoric, and the third in poetics. The first two categories of rhythm are always present, therefore universal; the third is present only in literary works.

The Subject in the Poetics of Discourse The above theorization of rhythm has fundamental implications when thinking about the subject of the poem, indeed to such a degree that, for Meschonnic, there could be no theory of rhythm without the theory of the subject, and no theory of the subject without the theory of rhythm. As Benveniste showed, language is the constitutive element of subjectivity, and, according to Meschonnic, rhythm is the most subjective element of language (1982: 71). The theory of language (and rhythm) thus proves to be privileged terrain for the theory of the subject. A renewed concept of rhythm also triggers a reconceptualization of the subject. In the narrow sense, this means a reconceptualization of the poetic subject that is inextricably linked to the wider theory of the subject. (Meschonnicovian) rhythm is therefore the organization of the subject as discourse, in discourse, and with discourse (1982: 217). And literature, especially the poem, becomes the specific practice of rhythm only when or because it is the specific practice of a (specific) subject. In Meschonnic’s early works, the subject is conceived of as being at the crossroads of psychoanalysis, sociology, and linguistics. However, over time, Meschonnic’s theorization on the subject of the poem, which he sometimes also called the subject of writing, becomes more and more distant from all other conceptualizations of the subject. Namely, Meschonnic sees the necessity of postulating the subject of the poem as a specific subject that is not (Saussure’s) subject of language, nor (Marx’s) subject of ideology, nor (Benveniste’s) subject of enunciation, not even the non-​subject of psychoanalysis, which

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remains the psychology of depths […] It is subject of the meaning-​making of the continuous […] This subject triggers the subjective function that is the relation of reading inscribed in writing because of which ethics are no longer outside poetics but implicit in them. With ethics there are also politics (1995: 29).

We see that this theory involves thinking about the plurality of the functions of the subject, which, among other things, relies on Foucault’s assumption that we cannot speak about an absolute subject but only about the subject of something (Foucault 1995: 818). In his last works, Meschonnic enumerates twelve subjects and adds to these a thirteenth –​the subject of the poem. Within this understanding is the individual as a historical or cultural concept that belongs to the fields of history and the philosophy of individualization –​therefore a philosophical (unitary) subject and the sociological concept of the individual –​, while the subject (in the sense of the subject of enunciation) is an ahistorical linguistic universal that exists everywhere that language exist, being therefore a linguistic, literary, and anthropological concept. As such, and as we have seen already in Benveniste’s theorization, the subject is above all the relation between I and you. For Meschonnic, this subject emerges from the radical historical dialectic of the singular and the social. In this way, Meschonnic takes and builds on Benveniste’s thesis that subjectivity in language negates the difference between the individual and society. One of the implications of this postulation of the subject of the poem is the distance that the poetic discourse maintains from psychoanalysis as the leading “modern science about the subject,” and also as one of the dominant forms of contemporary literary “hermeneutics.” In Meschonnic’s opinion, psychoanalysis can say nothing about the subject of the poem because it has different goals and strategies. This is the essential moment of distinguishing between function and origin. Poetics explores the functioning of the subject of the poem, while psychoanalysis, in the role of literary methodology, introduces the biologization and psychologization of literature, and thus explores the original disposition of the subject. Poetics actually neither accepts nor rejects the concepts of psychoanalysis but rather takes a distance from them because they are not applicable. From the standpoint of Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse, the fundamental problem of psychoanalysis resides in the fact that it has no theory of discourse or theory of rhythm on which it could rely. For this reason, it is condemned to failure. The concepts of poetics transformed those of psychoanalysis: rhythm, defined as the organization of the subject in the text, neutralizes the difference between the conscious and unconscious as the intensity and meaning of the text is replaced with generalized signifiance. In the poem, the unconscious does not manifest itself in the form of lapses, ellisions, etc., as it does in Lacanian enunciation,

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but rather exposes itself and is neutralized. This neutralization is elevated to the level of system. The poetic unconscious is therefore something different than the psychoanalytic unconscious, and rhythm in poetics is not simply understood as the unconscious of the text (cf. 1995: 92–​93). In addition to this crucial difference between poetics and psychoanalysis is the fact that Lacan’s postulate that the unconscious is structured as language is based on the theory of the sign, that is the dual articulation of language as signifier and signified. Meschonnic demonstrates to what an extent Lacan’s understanding of language emerges from Hegel and Heidegger, and how his concept of discourse and language actually correspond to the Language of Heidegger, Gadamer, and other philosophers, and not to Benveniste’s discourse and enunciation. As we have seen, rhythm, defined as the organization of the meaning-​making of the subject in discourse, abolishes the concept of the sign. The foundation, or more accurately the point of departure, for Meschonnic’s thoughts on the subject of the poem is Benveniste’s subject of enunciation as it transitions into a transformed and expanded poetics of enunciation. For this reason, it is necessary with Meschonnic’s conceptualization of the subject of the poem to consider all elements we discussed in the chapter on Benveniste. The poetic subject is created in the continuous of discourse, which configures it, but is not articulated only in the enunciative apparatus of speech and in other deictics as in Benveniste but rather in the entire discourse. What is implied by the transition from Benveniste’s linguistics of enunciation to Meschonnic’s poetics of enunciation? In poetic discourse, Benveniste’s I of enunciation, which is each time momentaneous and interchangeable, is expanded from the enunciative apparatus to the organization of the entire system of discourse. With this conceptualization (literary, and above all poetic) discourse is elevated and transformed into a configuration of subjectivity in the sense of a system of values (as presented above). According to Meschonnic, the subjectivity of the text emerges from the transformation of meanings and values in language into values in discourse, and is each time a unique event of enunciation, on all levels and in the inseparable connection of rhythm and the subject. Benveniste had postulated that the individual is subjectivized in discourse each time anew. Meschonnic, with his conceptualization of literary discourse, and above all of the poem, takes this a step farther with the hypothesis that literary work (especially the poem as the maximal subjectivation of discourse) carries inside it the power of hypersubjectivity, which in turn triggers transsubjectivity. It is possible to speak about the subject of the poem as a transsubject only when we accept the transformation of the subject of writing into the subject of repeated enunciation. For Meschonnic, each

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poetic event is a unique “invention” of the subject. The poem always invents new subjects, whenever a transformation of forms of life to forms of languages (and vice versa) occurs. As we see, the subject of the poem is irreducibly connected with the rhythm it produces, the two elements subjectivizing together. Rhythm as the continuous of discourse carries the transsubjective charge of its own values as Meschonnic defines them; as the umbrella signifiant, rhythm mobilizes the multiplicity of the logic of signifying on all levels of discourse and carries within itself (potential) impulses of subjectivation on the level of the system of the poem. With rhythm, the individual is (individually or collectively) subjectivized into the poetic subject; for this reason, the poetic subject is one of the indispensable social-​cultural and historical forms of the individual (1995: 359). It follows that the history of rhythm in individual poetic oeuvres and in particular historical formations is also the history of the individual as he/​she emerges in the poetic subject. Rhythm is also historical, cultural, and social; the change in the rhythmic paradigm (in literature, but not only in literature), the crisis of old patterns and appearances of the new in individual historical formations also implies a new relationship to the individual and society.

The Transsubject as a Space of Individual and Collective Dialogic Subjectivation In Meschonnic’s thoughts about subjectivation in language and how it is carried over to the poem, poetic subjectivity is no longer only the lyric persona, the traditional lyric subject, but the transsubject, the I-​you of enunciation expanded onto all discourse; the subject is the activity of the poem according to which “the text as a whole creates a self and in the process also transforms the reader’s self ” (Meschonnic 1995: 192). Thus, the radical historical, transhistorical, and transsubjective po-​et(h)ics of poetry occurs. The ethical and political charge of the poetic subject originates precisely from its capacity for transsubjectivity and transhistoricity (Meschonnic 1982: 86–​87): this subject, similar to Benveniste’s subject of enunciation, is singular and at the same time is available to each singular individual in all times and all spaces. In the event of transsubjectivation, rhythm once again plays the role of the main driving force. According to Meschonnic, rhythmical transsubjectivation in and beyond the poem is a transformative process that transcends mere experience in relation to the poem and each time slightly dislodges and transforms our ways of feeling, perceiving, and thinking as well as our movement in life and the world with others: Poetry does not create another world. It transforms the relationship we have with this world. In poetry, which is inseparably both a language game and a form of life, an

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invention of one with the other, we cannot separate themes and emotions from form. Taken together, it is subjectivation, the radical historicity of the entire language. It is what changes our relationship to others, to the self, and to the world. Thus, rhyme and life transform each other (2006: 127).

Meschonnic’s ethics of poetry thus implies dialogism; identity (which includes difference) occurs only in contact with otherness. Meschonnic’s concept of the hypersubjectivity of the poem in the sense of the charge of the poem that establishes transsubjectivity, combines intersubjectivity and historicity. It is precisely these concepts that provide the foundation of Bakhtin’s dialogism. Benveniste also explicitly states that his concept of enunciation and subjectifying in language negates the difference between the individual and society (1971: 23). What follows from these findings are that language, within which both subjectivation and societalization occurs, encompasses all of society, not just one of the many social institutions. Thus, evenmential subjectivation in discourse is always already socialization or societalization. From the standpoint of Benveniste’s linguistics of enunciation, it is possible to conclude that language triggers a collective subjectivation (Michon 2010: 205). We can also conclude from Benveniste’s main findings that a human being is established as a subject in and with language, and finally that people, also in and with language, are established as a collective subject: “it is ‘we’ that say ‘we’.” However, Benveniste did not bridge the gap between I and we. Meschonnic’s analysis of the conditions of artistic discourse and the constitution of the subject of art suggests that this analysis must not end with the exclusively grammatical or declinated aspect of I as such, because, as indicated above, Meschonnic expanded the interpretation of the subjectivation of I onto the entire artistic discourse. According to Meschonnic, we as individuals enter the field of multiple poetic subjects via the literary discourse. The poem as an artistic discourse (and also the literary discourse in general) creates a performative system of signifying, which, similar to Beneviste’s I enunciation, is “self-​referential and self-​constitutive” and “simultaneously creates and signifies its reference” (Meschonnic 1973: 178). Pascal Michon (2010: 215) concludes that these effects are reciprocal. The systematics of rhythm in artistic discourse, the theorization of which we presented in detail in the previous chapter, give meaning-​making a performative and pragmatic power, a power that transforms individuals and stimulates the invention of new rhythms in the body, language, and society. On the other hand, artistic discourses, in that they create their own reference and are self-​ establishing, avoid the bare reduction to the situation of their own production and reception. In some sense, they are their own unique situation and can spin into infinity. The subject of literary discourse, in our case, the poetic subject,

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is therefore both performative and collective by nature, and at the same time radically transhistorical. Of course, the literary work does emerge in a specific historical and personal situation and in a specific language, but its effects are not limited to the individuality of the author nor to the group of speakers of the language in which it is written, nor to the instant and situation of its emergence. Its artistic value, in addition to the transsubjective, is also concealed in the transsocial and transcultural. From his reading of Benveniste and Meschonnic, Michon concludes the following: Language therefore does not provide to speakers merely an enunciative apparatus with which they can both establish themselves as a collective subject and thus be included in the social; with artistic discourse, language also offers them a method of receiving and transforming the collective into a particular semantic form that is always historically specific. Language is therefore also a method with which speakers collaborate and contribute to the circular multiple occurrence –​to the subject of the poem, that is to emergent dynamics, virtual situations, and the effect of transcultural transference that ceaselessly produces and affects the environment and the social (2010: 216).

Conclusion We conclude from Meschonnic’s findings that it is not possible to speak of the unified poetic subject. All of the elements of the poetics of discourse abolish the traditional concept of the lyric subject, filling out and completing the findings of Benveniste, Bakhtin, and Ducrot regarding the plurality of subjective instances in literary, poetic, and everyday discourse. Meschonnic postulates that the subject of the poem escapes the concept of cogito, that is, the unified subject of consciousness and intellect (1982: 100), albeit not in the same manner that the subject of psychoanalysis does. What is at issue is not a disunified subject but rather a multiple subject. We thus conclude that the multiple subject in the poetic discourse is comprised of generalized articulations with a range of emphases on a range of articulative points that are located not only on the enunciative apparatus but also subordinated to radical historicity, meaning that poems are realized in a different way during each event of re-​enunciation. However, in this context –​namely, the attempt to put forth a reconceptualization of the subject on the basis of a synthesis of the discussed theories –​we will almost certainly encounter difficulties. Namely, what follows from Meschonnic’s postulates is the concept of generalized subjectivation that assumes the neutralization of discursive levels and forbids or opposes –​although heuristically –​the effort to name the articulative levels of the poetic subject. However, at least a partial methodological paradox of Meschonnic’s poetics can be found precisely

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in the fact that –​despite the conceptualization of generalized signifiance and subjectivation of discourse, which neutralizes the difference among discursive levels, its point of departure being the struggle against the logic of differentiation –​it does have to define the levels where signifiance and subjectivation are articulated. It is worth considering this ambiguity and, with it, our hesitation to make further conclusions about the subjective configuration of the poem, which, among other things, would depend on the theoretic frame of Meschonnic’s poetics. There is no point in revisiting the concept of the lyric subject with the goal of expanding it if we do not address the relations between various articulative fields of the poetic subject. Meschonnic does address this aspect in his practical-​analytical studies of individual writers –​for example, the literary opuses of Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Éluard, and others –​which are the concrete building blocks of his poetics. Meschonnic emphasizes the distinction between the individual and the poetic, literary subject, although on a different level, beyond the trivial debates about the identity of the author and the lyric subject. Rather, he draws upon autopoetic reflections on poets themselves, particularly as regards the necessity of differentiating the subject of art and the individual as was first made evident in the work of Nerval, Baudelaire, Blok, Pasternak, Eliot, Valéry, Proust, Pizarnik, and others. In the context of our exploration of poetic discourse, this does not represent merely a literary-​critical, but also a philosophical, linguistic and anthropological argument for the reconstruction of the concept of the lyric subject with which traditional literary theory typically equates the subject in the poem. In this sense, Meschonnic’s poetics has a much wider epistemological reach as it enables the establishment of a new concept of the literary subject in the general context of language, society, and history. The transformative thesis, which in modern literary criticism has been reduced and trivialized to the question or the polemic about the authorial subject in the psycholinguistic framework and beyond, has now been radicalized and expanded to postulate the poetic subject as one of the subjects in the historical anthropology of multiple subject, a process that began with Simmel, Groethuysen, Vernant, and later Foucault (cf. Michon 2010: 15–​61). Meschonnic’s crucial contribution is the attachment of art and its subject to the general theory of the subject, language, society, and history as a common theory. Meschonnic’s poetics declares the principle of incompleteness, a result of the recognition that the theory of literature is always in search of a theory that develops simultaneously with practice and is not a closed system, still less a bag of analytical tools, and is also essentially historical. The poetics of the poetic subject can thus only be a negative poetics (1995: 189; 2006: 442–​443).

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It is impossible to treat a concept that escapes the logic of identity exclusively through the notion of identity. Is it, however, possible to use wide and loose strokes to name and describe the modes of its manifestation and functioning without entirely defining the ineffability that is the result of its unique singularity and unrepeatability?

Chapter 14 The Nonegological Theories of the Individual At this point, it would be useful to discuss Meschonnic’s theories of the subject and poetic rhythm on the speculative level, also drawing on ideas that are above all of a philosophical nature and that therefore might be attributed to the opposite paradigm. Here we come to the final argument in our expansion of the concept of the lyric subject and will once again consider the conceptual level of both the poetic subject and the traditional lyric subject. We believe that it is possible to support and perhaps even additionally explicate Meschonnic’s theory with certain ideas from so-​called nonegological theories of the subject, the synthesis of which we find in the theory of Manfred Frank (Frank 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1995, 1997, 2015, 2019). The arguments for including specific conceptualizations of the individual, subject, or self-​consciousness in our attempts to reconceptualize the poetic subject are the following: the structural similarity between the construction of the text-​discourse and the construction of the individual as understood in nonegological theories; the proximity and reciprocity of theoretical reflections and of poetic practice from the Romantics onward, in particular, those of Novalis and Hölderlin; the deconstruction of the established genealogy of the subject in the history of philosophy; the hypothesis of the singularity of the individual and the dialogic oscillation between two modes of self-​consciousness that engender the prereflexive/​affective and reflexive individual. Meschonnic’s reflections on the subject of the poem contain both the radicalization and conceptualization of assumptions regarding the transformative dispositive, which, as we have shown in a Chapter 5, represent, along with the identificatory assumption, one of two historical tendencies in the understanding of the relation between the extra-​poetic subject and the poetic subject. In light of nonegological theories of the subject and theories of self-​consciousness and the individual –​for example, those advanced by Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Novalis, Hölderlin, Schelling, Sartre, Frank, and partially also by Dieter Henrich, which are also implicitly linked to theories of the subjectivation of the individual in language –​it is possible to understand this transformative dispositive as the consequence of the manifestation of two kinds of self-​consciousness, which in the synthesis of these theories, define the individual as an emerging identity that is temporally contingent and marked with radical non-​identity.

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Such a structuring of the individual –​the self-​consciousness of which is inextricably connected to language discourse –​corresponds to the structuring of the poetic discourse. This, of course, is not a coincidental correspondence, but a deep, logical and structural connection. In the context of theories of the individual, the specific character of literary art is the following: literature, and in particular poetry, represents a privileged event and the manifestation of dynamics between the immediate prereflexive self-​consciousness and the reflexive consciousness. The key implications of the discovery of the dynamics of these two types of consciousness, which we find in the early Romantics and later in Frank’s hermeneutics, can also be found in the central insights of Meschonnic’s poetics –​the theory of the subject, the theory of the poem, and more broadly, art, the theory of language –​and are irreducibly connected. In his poetics, which define the subject of the poem as one of the subjective functions of the individual, Meschonnic rejects the idea of the subject of the poem being derived from the concept of the individual. What is at issue in this optic of the poem is not merely the symbolic representation (mimesis) of the subject, but a special subject function of the individual, which, because of the specific nature of poetic discourse as art, is uniquely manifested and actualized in this specific field of human action. However, when referring to Frank and others, we don’t claim that it is necessary for the theory of literary discourse to find a corresponding theory of the subject that would exist outside the space of reflecting on art; rather, as we reflect on the subject, we must simultaneously reflect on literary discourse, and in our case poetic discourse. Indeed, Frank’s hermeneutics and his main references, above all Novalis and Schleiermacher, explore aspects of the individual on the basis of the literary text. In this context, Frank’s turn toward the “heretic” line of the history of the theory of the subject represents not only a progressive step in the field of the theory of the subject, but also in the fields of aesthetics and literary studies.

The Individual First, we will look at elements of Frank’s theory that are not directly related to the artistic mode. According to Frank, the “individualistic paradigm,” as the “heretical” and weaker line of the history of the theory of the subject, emerged at the end of the eighteenth century and, propelled by the ideas of Humboldt, Schleiermacher, and Boeck, also marked the philosophy of the early nineteenth century. Socially and historically, this line of thought corresponds with the liberation of burghers from the yoke of feudalism. Namely, the beginning of the

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eighteenth century witnessed the growing domination of an analytical spirit, which indeed triggered this very process of liberation. However, precisely due to these conditions, the traditional theory of the subject prevailed and eventually absorbed the individualistic paradigm. Specifically, the analytical spirit does not understand the individual as singular, but rather, in the context of the stronger tradition of philosophies of the subject, considers it an unsplittable element of the social whole. This stronger tradition, rooted in the classic antique period, understands the individual as “a space of fullness,” “a being entirely determined [ens omnimodo determinatum],” “the substance wholly possessed by itself and unsplittable,” which is characterized by “permanence and self-​preservation” (Frank 1997: 179). The individual conceived in this way is derived from a thesis about the category of the universal and the individual, in which the category of the individual is equated with particularity, and not singularity or uniqueness. Such an understanding of the individual as particular converges with the line of thought articulated by Schleiermacher (and by Humboldt and Boeckh), and in the twentieth century by Sartre, whose dialectical concept of individuel universel [individual universal] was not taken directly from the Romantic tradition, but, with the help of Kierkegaard, was used to criticize and correct a specific Marxist tradition. Frank bases his theory of self-​consciousness on Sartre’s concept of the individual as singular universal, and Schleiermacher’s distinction between subjectivity as a general universal structure and individuality as a singular unrepeatable entity. With Frank’s model, it becomes possible to envision the human being as follows: the subject as a universal structure, the individual as a singular entity, and the person as a particular entity (Frank 1988). Subjects, which as self-​ conscious beings share the collective universal structure of self-​familiarity, have not only a universal existence, but also the singular and unrepeatable existence of the individual and the particular existence of the person. In this sense, the individual becomes inexpressible and unique; its unrepeatable singularity is not comprehensible within any concept and defines each universal (the subject) in which it is expressed. In Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, individuality is therefore understood as unshareable (to use Frank’s term 1988: 93) and unmediatable. Rather, in the sense of the concept of unsplittability in the classical model of the atom, it is understood as radical singularity, as “that which exists without an internal double and is non-​relational, as a result of which it is similar to nothing else and eschews the criteria of unambiguous repeatability” (1988: 93). The latter, as alluded to at several points in our research, is inextricably linked to the discursive manifestation of the individual.

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In this conceptualization, the individual is no longer “the core of selfhood which can never be worn away” (1997: 180) and also no longer implies either perfect determinacy or self-​presence. Rather it is recognized as radical non-​ identity, the lasting core of which cannot be determined. Radical non-​identity, first and foremost, emerges from the fact that self-​consciousness is temporally constructed. The individual is always in the process of becoming; it is an unfixed, processual entity, pure action (actus purus), “something that exists without being,” to the extent that we understand being as an unchanging identity that exists in changing states. Self-​consciousness is here not understood as an intentional or relational (reflexive) act of consciousness (1988: 65–​66), that is objectivized and comprised in self-​presence and identity, but rather as an event of the dynamics between two modes of consciousness: immediate consciousness and reflexion. Such a concept of self-​consciousness is thus distinguished from the non-​temporally constructed self-​conscious cogito of Descartes, and also from the concept of the temporally constructed self-​understanding of Gadamer and Ricœur (cf. Frank 1997: 5). Frank points out that Gadamer and Ricœur, despite bringing temporality into the concept of self-​understanding, base their interpretation of self-​consciousness on the reflexive model of externalization-​objectification of selfhood and its subsequent internalization. Second, the individual cannot be the space of completeness, not only because of its temporal determination, but also because individual self-​feeling and the self-​familiarity of the individual existing with the self represents a sort of constitutive gap in every self-​consciousness. The non-​identity of the individual with the self does not negate the possibility of self-​feeling and self-​familiarity; the latter actually produces non-​identity. For now, we suggest that there is a dual difference; the inherent difference, which is the consequence of reflections of the non-​simultaneous self-​feeling of the individual, and the external difference of the temporality that determines self-​consciousness as an event on the time continuum.

Immediate Consciousness Frank connects his theory of the individual to insights from Early German Romanticism and Idealism. Schleiermacher’s concept of the individual overlaps with these insights in the conceptualization of the immediate consciousness. With Schleiermacher and many other thinkers, this conceptualization emerges from a critique of the reflexive model of self-​consciousness. The origins of this understanding can be found in Fichte’s insights into the problematic nature of reflexive consciousness and “I-​ness,” even though he never actually transcends

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this model (Bowie 2003: 70–​82). Fichte realizes that it is not possible to understand being, in the sense of a seamless identity, through reflection, that reflection is not the origin of being. Rather, being can only be explained with the prereflexive self-​familiarity of the subject. Fichte seemingly solves the problem with the conceptualization of intellectual intuition (see Bowie 2000: 70–​82), although many of his students and followers would ultimately reject the concept of intellectual intuition (Hölderlin and Novalis) or reinterpret it (Schelling). In the Hölderlin fragment “Urteil und Sein” (“Judgement and Being” 1794/​ 95), the formula of intellectual intuition is criticized because intellectual intuition assumes the following duality or temporal sequence: first we have intuition and then we have intellect. In this fragment, Hölderlin, similar to Novalis in Fichte-​ Studien, firmly establishes that thinking-​judgment [Urteil] implies the original split of subject and object, and calls this event original parting [Ur-​Teilung]. This division, the separation of something original, the separation of the subject and the object in the human being, represents the original split in the unity of subject and object, which Hölderlin calls being. This must not be confused with identity (in self-​consciousness/​reflection): when I say “I am I,” the subject (I) and the object (I) are separated. But without self-​consciousness-​reflection, I cannot even say I, and at the same time self-​consciousness-​reflection cannot encapsulate the pre-​split unity of the self. It is only possible to achieve this consciousness when the self confronts the self, when I separates from I, but I still recognizes I as the same, which means that this consciousness is always relational. This identity is not identity in the absolute sense. There is no unity of the subject and object, and it is therefore non-​identity. Existence therefore precedes the self-​identificatory act. The duality referred to above in the context of intellectual intuition, with which Fichte attempted to solve the problem, cannot, because of the sequence of time, be equated with the original, pre-​split unity of subject and object which Hölderlin discusses (Hölderlin 1988: 37–​38). The identity of a rationalistic and idealistic subject thus cannot be founded on empirical consciousness but is a theoretical construct of the reflexive model of the subject. The history of the subject is based precisely on the reflexive model illustrated by the metaphor of mirroring, the so-​called ocular metaphor. In Fichte-​Studien (1795/​96), Novalis, on the subject of reflection-​consciousness [Reflexion], holds that reflection is the mirror image of feeling [Gefühl] (Novalis 2003: 5). What appears in reflection is precisely that which was always there (2003: 12), namely feeling. Feeling always precedes reflection or consciousness (2003: 13). Nonegological critiques of the tradition of the reflexive concept hold that the subject in the reflexive model cannot be identical with itself. In this kind of theoretical “self-​positioning,” there is, on the one hand, a reflecting

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I-​subject and, on the other hand, a reflected I-​object. In between, there is always a gap, a delay, a lack that creates non-​identity, which is why this model cannot encompass the immediacy of the self-​presence of being-​I (self-​familiarity) in a pre-​or non-​reflexive state (cf. Frank 1988: 87; Hölderlin 1988: 37–​38; Bowie 2003: 196–​200; Novalis 2003: 3–​7). Schleiermacher calls this non-​reflexive mode the immediate consciousness; for Hölderlin, it is being; for Novalis, feeling or self-​feeling; for Sartre prereflexive consciousness or prereflexive cogito, and for Henrich self-​familiarity. Frank’s individual, derived from a synthesis of these ideas, therefore represents a space of constant, uninterrupted dialects between prereflexive-​immediate and reflexive consciousness that cannot be understood as arbitrary or contingent but rather as a structured necessity: one cannot be understood without the other. In Fichte-​Studien, Novalis describes this necessity as the original drive: “Feeling and reflection are one in the original act. Here arises an original need to set up an opposition. A feeling of reflection, a reflection of feeling. Both drives operate in one. They cannot posit anything beyond themselves” (2003: 17). In this sense, Novalis also holds that feeling cannot be expressed, that it can be observed or perceived only in reflection, namely after the spirit of the feeling has already disappeared (2003: 13). Novalis’s Fichte-​Studien is among the most valuable contributions to these explorations into self-​ consciousness. Frank also believes it is one of the most difficult texts in German philosophy (Frank 1989b: 248, cited in by Kneller xxvi). Thus, in addition to Schleiermacher’s understanding of the individual, Novalis’s opus is crucial to Frank’s synthesis of theories of the subject. Novalis, on the basis of his critique of Fichte, makes the distinction between two modes of self-​consciousness, which he calls reflection and feeling. Novalis sees the individual as a fundamentally split entity: split between the I of feeling and the I of reflection: “Thus there are two I’s here –​neither absolute –​the I of feeling is the matter –​the I of reflection is the form” (2003: 25). Thus the split individual cannot be fixed or fundamental, but is rather always in the process of oscillating between identity and non-​identity, between I and Non-​I (2003: 164). In contrast to Schleiermacher, it is not possible in Novalis’s fragments to locate a transcendent foundation of the individual (e.g. Kneller xxvii). Novalis’s response to the insight that the prereflexive consciousness is also without any fixed foundation and is always in the process of becoming, is the principle of free activity (2003: 164–​165) as the drive that propels the dialectics of both modes of consciousness. For Novalis, being “is nothing but being free –​oscillating between extremes that necessarily are to be united and necessarily are to be separated” (2003: 164). Being, being I, and oscillating, Novalis holds, are all synonyms

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(2003: 165). I as the negatively known absolute I and Non-​I is given only negatively through free action, activity, and “eternal lack” (2003: 168). Novalis’s insights have aesthetic and philosophical implications. They also have implications for everyday experience, insofar as the individual in his/​her everyday life, speech, thought, and actions –​blinded by the reflexive model of self-​consciousness –​overlooks the gap that is a part of each instant of self-​ consciousness, and also to the extent that the emergence of personal identify is constructed on elements that are produced by self-​conscious reflection. Following these insights to their logical conclusion, the power of the poem, resides (from the structural-​configurational perspective) precisely in the depiction of this gap, the depiction being based on the neutralization of both sides of this gap. The poem systematically and by its own means reveals both what is visible in this reflection and what is, in other human practices, not visible in it. Novalis holds that philosophy, insofar as it remains in the reflexive mode, does not follow a path (see 2003: 164–​165) that will allow insight into what the philosophers of German Idealism and Romanticism defined as the principle of philosophy: the absolute I. Reflection resists the distortion produced in its occurrence by carrying out a procedure that Novalis calls ordo inversus; to the extent that reflection is mirroring, it must incorporate a second mirror, thereby producing a reflection of a reflection. Poetry, from the standpoint of philosophy (though not necessarily from its own standpoint), “must jump into the breach where the air becomes too thin for philosophy to breathe” (Frank 1989b: 248). Like Schleiermacher, who associates the articulation of immediate self-​consciousness with artistic creativity, and also Hölderlin who links the idea to the question of poetic individuality in his essay “On the Operations of the Poetic Spirit” (Hölderlin 1988: 62–​82), Novalis associates the subject driven by the oscillation between these two principles with the understanding of poetry and the theory of poetic representation. Novalis attributes the power of negative representation [Darstellung] that refection cannot encompass, capture, conceptualize, or even express, to poetry in the sense of poiesis. Poetry and its power of representation and signifying can manifest both modes of consciousness in a negative way, in a way that neither ordinary nor philosophical language can. Once we enter into reflection, the spirit of feeling has already disappeared (2003: 13). As Novalis claims in the first fragment of Fichte-​Studien, we abandon what is identical in order to represent it (2003: 3). Precisely the act of representing is free action; it is the oscillation that compels the eventmential individual (2003: 152–​153). In Novalis’s conception of so-​called transcendental poetry, it is this oscillation that eventmentially and processually manifests the absolute I as a synthesis of

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both modes of consciousness. This perspective cannot be generalized nor can it be presumed that poetry will manifest the absolute I at all, or that the feeling of fullness of being will always occur in it in the same way. Of course, Novalis’s manifestation of the absolute I in transcendental poetry is fundamentally and historically linked to the process of romanticization. Novalis understands romanticizing as “qualitative potentization” in which “the lower self becomes identified with a better self ” (Novalis in Wood 2007: xvi).53 To the extent that this relates to the transformative dispositive, it can be likened to theories of inspiration from other historical formations. Novalis refers to the antithesis of romanticizing, which is perhaps valid in other historical formations of the transhistorical attributes of poetic discourse, as logarithmicization; a lowering of what is sublime, elevated, mysterious, mystical. We could claim that much of the poetry of the twentieth century is characterized by the process of logarithmicizing and not romanticizing, which is not to say that when poetry logarithmicizes it does not manifest both subject modes, feeling and reflection. Logarithmicizing may indicate that poetry does not manifest the fullness of being, which would mean that the articulation of both modes of consciousness are not equally present in the poetic event. With logarithmicization, a gap or lack is created by the dissonance between the reflexive and prereflexive modes and articulated in the poem through oscillation. The way self-​consciousness is structured in nonegological theories does not exclude its historicity and singularity, or the singularity and historicity of the configuration of both subjective modes in the poem.

Parallels between Benveniste’s Linguistics of Discourse and Meschonnic’s Poetics of Discourse and Nonegological Theories Despite being developed at different times and with different foundations, linguistics and the poetics of discourse and the theories of the Early Romantics, as synthesized by Frank, deal with the same issues –​language, the individual,

53 “The world must be romanticized. This yields again its original meaning. Romanticizing is nothing else than a qualitative potentization. In this operation the lower self becomes identified with a better self. Just as we ourselves are a potential series of this kind. This operation is still entirely unknown. By giving the common a higher meaning, the everyday, a mysterious semblance, the known, the dignity of the unknown, the finite, the appearance of the infinite, I romanticize it –​for what is higher, unknown, mystical, infinite, one uses the inverse operation –​in this manner it becomes logarithmicized –​ it receives a common expression. Romantic philosophy. Lingua romana. Reciprocal raising and lowering” (NS 2, 545, no. 105, cited in Wood 2007: xvi).

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the subject, and the poem and how they interact with each other –​and their derivations also enter the social field. Even more importantly, linguistics and the poetics of discourse and the theories of the Early Romantics address these issues in a similar manner and often lead to similar, or even identical answers. Both theoretical paradigms understand language and the subject/​individual as energeia, activity and operation, and constant becoming. Both also hold that language and the subject/​individual cannot exist without the other. The reason for the proximity between the two can also be found in the fact that they developed along parallel historical continuities: what we might call the Schleiermacher-​Novalis-​ Hölderlin line, and also including their modern interpreters above all Frank and Bowie, and the other the Humboldt-​Benveniste-​Meschonnic line. With Schleiermacher and Novalis, the individual is fundamentally eventmential, constantly created by the dialectic between prereflection and reflection, and the text itself is configured in the same way as the individual. This conception of the text is similar to Meschonnic’s for whom the literary text operates as an individuality that is not closed in on itself in the manner of Liebniz’s monad, but is open to the other as “the source of an infinite chain of new enunciations” (Meschonnic 1982: 87). Both theories suggest that the poetic subject cannot be unitary, based on the principles of cogito. For Schleiermach, Novalis, and Hölderlin, poetic language is the form of language that is closest to prereflexive consciousness, and all three of these thinkers theorized prereflexive consciousness, which Novalis called Gefühl or Selbst-​Gefühl, self-​feeling (Bowie 2003: 92; Novalis 2003: 13). We previously noted that, for Benveniste, poetic language was above all language charged with feeling and affect. He attempts to define “modes of its functioning” (B 23, f°31/​f°354) by researching the principles of the image and ways of its representation in poetic discourse. In addition, he introduces the concept of evocation that encompasses both the syntagmatic and paradigmatic perspectives of the poetic system and are fundamentally associated with the prereflexive and pathic dimensions of poetic discourse. Benveniste’s notion of what he called emotive and pathic iconicity, which also captures the figurative-​ affective dimension, resembles Novalis’s outline of a theory of representation in which the image is inextricably associated with the prereflexive dimension of self-​consciousness and affectiveness. Meschonnic, on the contrary, being critical of the dominance of image in poetry, did not develop this aspect in his theory (Meschonnic 1982: 478–​498, 1995: 422–​442). A strong parallel can be made between Schleiermacher’s conceptualization of style and Meschonnic’s conceptualization of rhythm. If there is a special emphasis on the question of the continuous between the body and poetic

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rhythm in Meschonnic’s poetics, Schleiermacher’s theory of style, which was later taken up by Frank, emphasizes the prereflexive aspect of subjectivity involved in shaping the style of the text. In addition, Meschonnic develops operative concepts and analytical methods which we believe can facilitate the demonstration and analysis (to the extent possible given the ineffability of the poem) of the articulation of modes of poetic subjectivation that we will call reflexive and prereflexive. The convergence of these perspectives may seem to be ungrounded in part because Meschonnic explicitly criticizes Frank’s concept of the subject as “universal structure of self-​conscious spontaneity common to all humans” (Meschonnic 1995: 192), implying that such a concept says nothing about the specificity of subject of a poem. Meschonnic conceives of the universal subject in Frank’s triad (subject–​individual–​person) as the subject of language [langue], and not the subject of discourse. Yet it is clear from the quote above that Meschonnic did not read Frank closely enough, because he only cites Frank’s distinction between the individual as singular, the subject as universal, and the person as particular, and makes no mention of Frank’s concepts of self-​consciousness and the specifics of the individual. However, it makes no sense to compare Frank’s concept of the subject with Meschonnic’s subject of the poem. To the contrary, Frank’s concept of the individual and its manifestation in discourse, and especially his derivation of the self-​consciousness, suggests the possibility of drawing parallels with some of Meschonnic’s conceptualizations, particularly between the poetic subject and rhythm. Meschonnic himself speaks about the subject as if about a discursive, anthropological, abstract universal, and about the individual as a concept that belongs to the history of the philosophy of the subject. He also analyses related segments of the history of the individual (Meschonnic 1995: 187–​338), and yet the “non-​ canonized” tradition of the conceptualization of the subject, to which Frank belongs, is clearly not known to him. The insights that Frank draws from this tradition transform perspectives on the established narrative of the philosophies of the subject, because Frank’s insights present alternatives to this narrative and to traditional paradigms of the subject, and because this kind of understanding also presents a historical and transhistorical theory of the individual and self-​ consciousness. Meschonnic’s understanding of the individual relies precisely on the established tradition of the philosophy of the subject which Frank criticizes. What Frank and Meschonnic do have in common is their fundamental understanding of language, namely, a conceptualization of discourse. Drawing on Schleiermacher’s ideas, Frank thinks of the text as discourse. His critique of the conceptualization of language as a subjectless code –​and also of literary

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texts –​is a regular feature of his work (i.e. Frank 1997: 23–​97). His reflections on the individual directly or indirectly also touch on questions of speech, language, and discourse. Certainly, Frank’s individual is the subject of discourse, and not of language [langue], as Meschonnic erroneously assumes. But it also seems clear that Benveniste’s theory of discourse is not known to Frank, as he places Benveniste in the paradigm of structuralism (cf. Frank 1997: 65). Meschonnic’s idea of the subject of the poem also radically differs from other theories on the subject-​in-​language in the sense of understanding how discourse and subject influence each other and are inseparable. Like Benveniste, Meschonnic rejects the thesis that language preexists the subject and that the subject is a mere effect of language [langue] in its differentiated articulation. Similar to the Russian formalists who conceived of the literary text as a system, Meschonnic, transferring their ideas to the conceptual field of enunciation, thinks of the literary text as system–​subject. This is also the central feature of Frank’s understanding of the text as enunciation. Frank, like Meschonnic, rejects the premise that language speaks itself. The idea of a structure as the sovereign impetus of its own changes and alterations presupposes that the characteristics of the subject, such as spontaneity and reflexivity, are attributed to the structure–​language; (Frank 1997: 3). Not only does structuralism attribute these characteristics to language, but so too do Heidegger, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein, and certain theorists of analytic semantics. In this sense, Frank notes, Lacan’s theory has an advantage over structuralism because it does not reject the category of the subject, but is problematic in the sense that the subject is derived from the immanent mechanism of game of references and marks; the subject is what is presented in the subjectless mechanism of signification, the constant sliding of the chain of signifiers. Thus, Frank positions himself against both structuralism and poststructuralism. Frank transforms the notion of différance (which, in Derrida, produces a subject that is nothing other than the effect of the text) into self-​consciousness that allows différance. This is the condition of meaning (cf. Bowie 1997: xxxxv). Frank relies on the Romantic absolute in his derivation of self-​consciousness, persisting in a view of self-​consciousness that never manifests in reflection and therefore is not accessible to conceptualization, and renders subjectivity entirely incomprehensible. For Frank, reaching for non-​canonized versions of the history of the subject represents a necessary and progressive step. The connection of two seemingly very different approaches, Meschonnic and Benveniste’s linguistic-​ historical-​ anthropological approach and Frank’s philosophical-​hermeneutical approach, becomes, at a first glance, problematic, because when we incorporate the nenegological theories of self-​consciousness we seemingly ignore Benveniste’s postulate about the discursive subject and its

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difference from the individual as a person. And yet the opposite is the case: namely, it is possible to find a bridge between these different approaches in Benveniste’s thesis about the eventmentiality of the subject. Indeed, nonegological theories shed additional light on Benveniste’s thesis about the subject as eventmential. Benveniste’s distinction between the individual as a person and the discursive subject is based not only on the premise of the singular subjectifying that takes place in each speech instance, but also on the global premise that discourse is not a mimetic screen of the external, nondiscursive world, but is performative, world-​ creating. The subject is established in discourse, both expressing and changing the world. Romantic philosophies of language (among them Schleiermacher’s ideas which we discussed briefly in earlier chapters and were not unusual in their time, indeed being a fairly common feature of so-​called post-​Kantian linguistic turns) are grounded in a similar interpretation of the codetermination of subjectivity and language (cf. Bowie 2003: 183–​220). In this sense, Benveniste is a direct descendant of the Romantic philosophers of language, and thus there is no danger that by relying on these conceptualizations of poetic discourse and its subject we will fall into the paradigm of the direct, identical mirroring of the subject in discourse. As we have seen, the constitution of the subject in language [langage] does not mean that the subject does not exist before enunciation, but rather that it is not possible to speak about the identity of the subject between one and another enunciation. This is an insight into the processual structure of subjectivity that Benveniste thematises mostly from the linguistic aspect. Here, we can also see a critique of the conceptualization of the subject grounded in permanent self-​presence, which is implied in the traditional understanding of self-​consciousness that does not consider its temporal structure. Frank notes that with the nonegological concept of the subject, which could also be attributed to Benveniste, it is also no longer possible to postulate any synthetic unity on the basis of which personal identity could be constituted. Drawing on elements of Early Romantic philosophy, Dieter Henrich, and Sartre, Frank (1988: 97) finds a minimum of identity in the radical non-​identity of the individual in its temporal structuring. The minimal identity, a sort of Derridean restance, represents the implicit, spontaneous familiarity of the subject with him/​herself, which is the source of reflection, while in reflection the ground is simultaneously always not-​given or is given in différance. Similar to Meschonnic, who holds that the poem has the maximum power of meaning-​making because it is the maximal manifestation of the subject in discourse, Frank views the poem as the sole starting point for questions about the instance that changes language and its rules in enunciation as an event, the

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individual. The understandings of Meschonnic’s subject of the poem and of Frank’s individual in discourse merge into the crucial realization that we are not dealing with a tangible or final concept. Frank also claims that it is not possible to distinguish the individual as one element among other elements of enunciation; rather it is only possible to approximate or sense the individual (Frank 1988: 85). The individual is not subordinate to any one concept and thus resists definition. Meschonnic’s theory of the poetic subject is inseparable from the theory of rhythm, while Frank’s theory of the individual in discourse is inseparable from the theory of the style of the text as understood by Schleiermacher (Frank 1997: 6–​8, 11–​30). Neither the subject nor the individual can be understood with the paradigm of language as code or system. It is worth mentioning here that, from the standpoint of Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse, pulling together these theoretical lines could be understood as a “heretical” effort, because the poetics of discourse has been established on (among other things) the critique of literary hermeneutics, Schleiermacher beings one of its modern founders. However, as we demonstrated in an earlier chapter, a part of his opus (which, similar to much of Humboldt’s opus, remains obscure and insufficiently researched) represents an outline of theories of discourse and also establishes an alternative branch of theories of the subject and the (poetic) text. The latter was superseded by the more dominant line of the history of the subject in philosophy (dealing with the subject) and the dominant line of traditional and then structural stylistics (dealing with the poem).

Schleiermacher’s Style and Prereflexive Consciousness Language, according to Schleiermacher, is a universal regulative idea that is historically and contingently manifested and comes into existence with the entry of the individual or singular into an assumed universal structure. In this sense, the poem is not a departure or transgression of ordinary language, but rather the highest-​level intervention of the subjective or the individual and singular into discourse and thus an innovation of nearly limitless power. This is what Meschonnic terms the maximal subjectivation of discourse. Schleiermacher’s understanding of the individual as unrepeatable, unshareable, irreducibly singular, and eventmential (Frank 1988: 12, 89–​90, 93), as well as his conceptualization of the immediate consciousness, are fundamentally connected to his hermeneutic theory of language, text, and style. The immediate consciousness of the individual as singular, and temporally, eventmentially constructed, is articulated in the element of the text that Schleiermacher terms style. Style can only be manifested on the level of the text as enunciation, and not on the

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level of the enounced or language as code. Regarding Schleiermacher’s conception of style, Frank concludes that, if the level of signs and even types of the utterances is what is “sayable,” then the style is what is “unsayable” and comprises the energeia of the subject of the text (1997: 80, 92). Frank thus holds that the potential meanings of the text resides in Schleiermacher’s style (1997: 92). Schleiermacher’s concept of style is directly connected with his distinction between the logical and the musical in language (Bowie 2003: 211). The musical is connected above all with poetic language and the immediate consciousness, which is articulated in musicality. In language, especially literary language, musicality includes intonation, intensity, color, and rhythm, to which Schleiermacher, as Bowie suggests, attributes a specific way of signifying in terms of its unique illocutionary force. Thus, Schleiermacher’s style can be understood in the sense of being a translinguistic dimension of the text beyond the language as sign system and thus acquires specific semantic value within the poetic system.54 Implied in this understanding is also the physicality of discourse, the embodiment of the language which Early Romantic theories do not explicitly thematize but nevertheless are encompassed in the concept of prereflexive, immediate consciousness or self-​feeling beyond reflection in the ideas of all the thinkers presented here. The following is Bowie’s paraphrase of Schleiermacher’s ideas on this point: The movement between signifiers or statements is what gives rise for Schleiermacher to Poesie. The effect generated by such movement is not, though, merely indeterminate, as the very specific nature of poetry makes clear. The semantic potential of a poem or piece of literary prose is connected to the level of its specific formal organisation, which is constituted by the movement between the signifiers as it is read (2000: 214).

We see that elements of enunciation and rhythm are presented here as the movement of discourse similar to the way Benveniste and Meschonnic theorized them. The essential property of literary style (which in Schleiermacher is connected to individuality and is articulated in the literary text in rhythm) is that it is not articulated in linear, consequential signification that remains on the level of Benveniste’s semiotic mode but rather through the emerging multidirectional, non-​linear relations between elements of poetic enunciation. Thus, it is not only articulated on the (traditional) semantic-​lexical level. This concept cannot be reduced to what the modern reinterpretation of style tends to criticize in the old dualistic understanding of style; namely, that style has an ornamental role

54 As Andrew Bowie concludes, a similar understanding of musicality can be found in Novalis and Schelling’s treatment of rhythm (cf. Bowie 2000: 211).

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that is entirely distinct from content.55 Schleiermacher sees a connection to the immediate self-​consciousness in what he called “empty spaces” –​potential meanings –​therefore in the flow of enunciation. Hidden in this stylistic substance, in the weaving of the text, style is the most powerful subject charge of the poem, just as Meschonnic’s rhythm, which, corresponding to Schleiermacher’s style, most powerfully drives the subjectivation of discourse. With the introduction of concepts of prereflexive and reflexive modes in the poem, we find it is rhythm or style that creates the elements of the immediate and prereflexive, and also encompasses the physical dimension of subjectivity.

The Prereflexive and Reflexive in (Poetic) Discourse In the same way that the poem is understood by Meschonnic as the maximal subjectivation of discourse and the mode of maximal innovative signifying, the poem also transcends the atrophied forms of signifying created solely by the reflexive consciousness. On the surface, the reflexive consciousness regulates the individual (or his/​her personal identity) in everyday life practices. In the poem, immediate consciousness, feeling, and self-​feeling, each time anew in its singularity and historicity, suffuse to a greater or lesser degree reflection, which in discourse is above all the attempt at representation (less so evocation). In his 55 Schleiermacher holds that it is not possible to understand style, that no clear concept of style exists (cf. Frank 1997: 19). It is also said in modern stylistics that there exists no code for the interpretation of style (e.g. Juvan 2011: 164). However, most of modern stylistics originate from the code perspective of language, which also assumes a code perspective of style. If modern perspectives view style as a changeable entity established only at the moment of reception, and indicate that the connotative power of style does not exist only in form but also is structured into content, and at the same time is an aesthetic indication of social, ideological, historical, and interdiscursive elements in the constitution of the style of the text, which, according to Juvan, represents the identity of the text (2011: 13 173), then Schleiermacher’s contribution in understanding of style resides precisely in his connection of style with the immediate subjective mode that the text mobilizes in the process of enunciation and in the constitution of textual sense and style. The “social semiotics” (Juvan 2011: 169) of style, conversely, points out different typologies of style –​“life,” social, generational, regional, authorial, etc. –​while still remaining on the level of the linguistic sign, not interpreting the actual text as enunciation. To the extent that social semiotics develop typologies of style, it remains inscribed in the field of the particular that is repeatable because it comes from the universal, but it overlooks that which is unshareable and singularly individual discussed by Schleiermacher and Sartre and after them Frank, and which is the most fundamental characteristic of the literary text as enunciation (e.g. Frank 1997: 88–​96).

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notes about poetry, Benveniste identifies a lack in the concept of the linguistic sign and devises his concepts of the poetic evocant and iconicity to replace the signifier. Meschonnic introduces the idea of the multiple signifier, which invalidates the binary concept of the sign, and which we believe can be used to conceptualize the configuration of both subject modes, the preflexive and reflexive, albeit in a way that unifies and generalizes signifying and where any differences between the two modes are nullified in the specific concept of rhythm. According to Benveniste, we are constituted anew as a subject with each entry into discourse , and we may understand this as a new movement each time into the processuality of the self-​consciousness of the individual. When I say I, I am subjectifying myself; although the deictic expression I is universal, its meaning is differentiated each time it is used, also in relation to you. And between one and another enunciation, I am no longer entirely the same. According to Novalis, in discourse, the deictic I can mean the not-​I of I, or non-​identity, because, with it, I signifies the reflexive mode that is mediated and not immediate. Inherent in this concept is a lack that is constitutive for self-​consciousness and language. The reflexive deployment of the self I =​ I is, as Hölderlin concludes in the fragment “Urteil und Sein,” intrinsically connected to language. It is the thetic break that as we saw with Julia Kristeva, and, from the standpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis, indicates the entry into the symbolic order. Reflection is constitutive of this “superstructure” of “I-​ness” that makes it possible to say I at all, that makes it possible for anyone to say or signify in language at all. For this reason, poetic discourse is not merely the manifestation of the immediate self-​consciousness, feeling, prereflection, and physicality, as for example music is. Indeed, this is the source of our critique of Rodriguez’s synthesis of the theories of the pathic and their transfer to the theory of the lyric pact: pathism as a prereflexive mode can only assume its pure form in the prediscursive state. And yet, I must, in order to the use the pronoun I at all, feel: I must have a feeling of prereflexive self-​familiarity. That is why subjectifying in language, as Benveniste understood it, cannot merely mean the reflexive mode, but, in each instance, is an entire, two-​layered impulse of self-​consciousness. Meschonnic believes that poetry is an allegory of language [langage], because it most effectively reveals that language [langage] is constitutive for the subject and everything in language has meaning. The theories presented in this research can be used to develop Meschonnic’s ideas in this context; namely, poetry is an allegory of language precisely because it manifests both modes of the subject, which are irreducibly connected in language, in other words because poetry manifests and illuminates the language and the nature of the subject’s self-​consciousness and self-​feeling that is ineffable and unsayable in non-​artistic language in the

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most apparent, present manner. When Novalis speaks of abandoning the identical in order to present it, he claims that “we represent it through its ‘not-​being’ [what it is not], through a ‘not-​identical’ [what is not identical to it] –​a sign –​…” (2003: 3). This sign is not a linguistic signifier, but what Benveniste calls the evocant or iconicity, and Meschonnic the signifiant. Meschonnic theorizes the energeia of the subject of the text and elevates it as the leading principle in the center of his methodology of the analysis of poetic discourse, while at the same time expanding the concept of rhythm and the complementary concepts of recitative and the continuous. This means a methodological break with any attempt at psychologization and subjectivism, no matter how modern (for example, in psychoanalytical methods). The subject of the poem is not an individual I, individual person, or collective, not even a linguistic expression or a linguistic-​morphological function of the text, but the subject–​system; not substance, but activity. In this sense, it is a transsubject because it is available to anyone at any time. When we compare Meschonnic’s theory with the theories from which we have derived our understanding of the dynamic relation between prereflexive and reflexive modes in poetic discourse, it is necessary to emphasize that the only epistemological and methodological perspective with which it is possible to pursue the specifics of poetic discourse is one that rejects the hypothesis that the individual merely expresses, represents, or reflects itself in literary discourse. The variability of the poetic system that is in a continual process of enunciation and creation, is the structural analogue to the variability of the individual within the dynamics of the preflexive and reflexive modes. This was particularly apparent in our discussion of Benveniste’s notes on poetic language. It is possible to understand from his notes that the pathem, which for Benveniste is the primary reference of poetic language, is not something that is outside of discourse, but emerges simultaneously with discursive composition. Rodriguez introduces the same topic in his discussion of pathic and affective forms in the lyric pact, emphasizing their interrelationality and distancing himself from the linear logic, according to which pathic experience would precede the emergence of affective forms (Rodriguez 2003: 118). We will also adopt this approach in our analysis. In order to avoid the possible objection that our ideas about the dynamics of prereflection and reflection in poetic discourse are a type of psychologization, we will summon a related analogy proposed by Deleuze and Guatarri. The two philosophers made a distinction between the concept, affect and percept in the artwork, and the conception, affection and perception in creators and co-​creators (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 24, 65, 131). Likewise, we also make a distinction between the prereflection and reflection of the empirical individual

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and the dynamics of the prereflexive and reflexive subject modes in the poem, which, with each new enunciation as a unique artistic event, provokes a unique subjectivation of the individual and in this sense are both transsubjective and intersubjective. The two subject modes are therefore discursive-​artistic concepts, and not conditions that precede language, being reproduced and represented in language in a non-​problematic and mimetic manner: rather, poetic language participates in their creation. The specificity of poetic discourse is that it systematically articulates and equates the discursive-​semantic subject modes on the level of a singular artistic system, often in such a way that the poetic system artistically emphasizes aspects that in the everyday structuration of the individual exist and remain in a condition of latency. In terms of the conceptualization of these subject modes, we slightly depart from Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse on the theoretical level (though less so on the practical-​analytical level), because a complete reliance on it would assume a methodological decision that does not make a theoretical distinction between the two subject modes in the poem. Meschonnic indeed equates all levels of discourse in his generalized concept of rhythm as a generalized multiple signifier. Meschonnic also postulates that in the poem as the maximal subjectivation of discourse, contrasts between percept, concept, and affect, conscious and unconscious, subject and object are neutralized in the organization of the poetic system, which is also an implicit consequence of Schleiermacher’s conceptualization of style. We partially make use of the thesis regarding the neutralization of these aspects which we understand above all as being related to value. On the level of theory, we will persist in retaining a differentiation of principles that we view as the foundation of poetic subjectivation. Individual poetic texts, and, broadly understood, also the dominant poetic paradigms that have been established in historical periods up until today, indicate that it is not possible to speak about the complete equation of modes (which we find in Meschonnic) or the dominance of one mode (which we find in Rodriguez and also Benveniste). We find Rodriguez’s conclusions problematic because the pathic and affective modes (what we have termed the prereflexive and reflexive modes) permeate the entire poetic-​experiential event in a way that overwhelms all other aspects. From our standpoint, the relation between the prereflexive and reflexive modes is in each instance singular. Here, we emphasize that the goal of our focus on the two modes is not merely a way to “measure” their presence and the relation between them in individual poems. By now, it is also apparent that our distinction between the two modes in many ways intersects with the semiotic and symbolic, and also the genotext and the phenotext in Kristeva. However, unlike Kristeva, who bases these concepts on

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a psychoanalytic foundation, we do not draw upon the psychoanalytic approach, because we are interested above all in the operations of the poetic system, and not in the disposition of the original subject. We also do not distinguish the two modes with one representing subtext and the other supertext, which is the case with the semiotic and symbolic in Kristeva. Indeed, in our discussion of her semanalysis, we already took note of the specific elements of this theory that strike us as fruitful to our analysis: the dissolution of the logic of the sign, the dissolution of the logic of the unified subject, and the emphasis on the physical energy of the poetic subject. It is this last aspect that is lacking in Early Romantic theories of prereflexivity, which only implicitly encompass physicality in their conceptual framework. It is precisely in the prereflexive mode that we perceive the important dimension of physicality. Here we come close to Rodriguez’s derivation based on a synthesis of the phenomenology of the affective. The most inspiring insight in this context comes from Merleau-​Ponty: namely, the philosophical concept of chair (flesh or physicality) in which the difference between subject and object dissolves. Chair thematises the pre-​ split condition and immediacy: Novalis’s self-​ feeling or self-​ familiarity (also dealt with by Hölderlin, Henrich, and Frank). Chair, as Rodriguez concludes, encompasses the sensing world, the sensing body, self-​presence, and self-​affectiveness. With the concept of chair, it is interphysicality that constructs intersubjectivity. Interphysicality has also been developed in the field of language with Merleau-​Ponty understanding it as verbal flesh, gesture, movement, act of the body. The concept of chair as the zone of the moving emergence of non-​ reflexive (pre-​and transindividual) selfhood through the interphysicality of the world is significant in terms of the aspect of language, and, from our perspective, the conceptualization of poetic discourse. Physicality, as we saw in our discussion of poetic discourse, is also present throughout Meschonnic’s theories. Indeed, Meschonnnic uses concepts and analytical instruments in his attempt to grasp the empirical relation between language and body, which tends to eschew the paradigms of the linguistic sign. The poetics of discourse explores the continuity between the body, gesture, voice, and rhythm and prosody. The latter two manifest the physical in enunciation and create the singularity of individual discourse each time anew. Finally, we would like to emphasize that the introduction of these two subject modes additionally illuminates, presents, and supports Meschonnic’s essential step from the theory of discourse to poetics of discourse: the poetic subject is articulated not only in the enunciative apparatus as in everyday speech in Benveniste, but extends from the enunciative apparatus to the organization of the entire system of discourse, to those areas, which, from our standpoint,

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belong more to the domain of the prereflexive mode, and which Meschonnic conceptualizes as recitative. During this section of our research, we attempted to illuminate the way the subject is articulated in the poem with theories that deal with the dynamic between the two subject modes. At the same time, we attempted to bring to light (on the speculative level) arguments for the reconceptualization of the lyric subject through a range of philosophical perspectives.

Part IV

Chapter 15 The Poetic Subject and Subject Configuration of the Poem We will now take a detour in perspective from the traditional lyric subject to the poetic subject as a historical-​anthropological and discursive-​artistic concept relying on a synthesis of the research sources in Part III. We arrive at this point through the transition to the conceptual field of discourse or enunciation, and consider the findings that build the following conceptual pillars: discourse-​ enunciation, the double-​layering of the text, subjectifying in language, dialogism, identity as non-​identity, preflexive and reflexive modes, structural similarities of the disposition of the text and the disposition of the individual, the poem as the maximal subjectivation of discourse, generalized signifying in enunciation, the concept of the rhythm as the configuration of subjectivity, transsubjectivity, or intersubjectivity. We understand the poetic subject to be a multiple dispositive, which in the event of the poem is configured in various layers of poetic discourse. In each new enunciation of the poem as intersubjective (or transubjective) event, this kind of dispositive creates a singularity based on the variously activated focal points of subjectivity in the text, which are not merely configured in the semantic-​lexical and enunciative layers of the text, but also capture the entire discourse including the bodily-​material dimensions. This occurs on the basis of the two subjective modes inscribed in the text: reflexive (which allows entry into the language) and prereflexive (which includes embodiment). We describe these modes drawing on findings related to the prereflexive (Schleiermacher, Novalis, Frank), pathic, and affective (Benveniste, Rodriguez) poles of subjectivity, the power of their in art (and especially in poetry), and also findings related to the bodily dimensions of artistic discourse (especially Meschonnic and Merleau-​Ponty, and in part Kristeva). The poetic subject therefore transcends the traditional literary-​morphological frame of the lyric subject. At the same time, this reconceptualization implies the differentiation of the levels of poetic discourse. Its logical consequence is the expansion of the lyric subject into the subject configuration of the poem. This shift of perspective does not mean that the lyric persona, that is the traditional lyric subject, is no longer at the center of the constellation, and loses its vital importance and role as the center of gravity. Rather it presents a path toward a more centrifugal perspective, a withdrawal from the gravitational center, because only in this way is it possible to steal in and beneath different layers

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of the text, even in cases when the lyric persona is the apparently integrative instance of all other configurative layers. At the same time, it allows us to analyze the poetic subject in cases where a centralized model of subject configuration doesn’t appear, which happens mostly, though not exclusively, in modern poetry. This introduces a transition in the study of particular historical formations of poetic subjectivity that define the relation of the poetic subject to extra-​ poetic subjectivity in a particular historical formation. Such an approach is no longer limited to the study of the lyric persona (which still represents the central meeting point with extra-​poetic subjectivity), but attention is also directed toward other, seemingly marginal, elements of the poetic discourse that, through a variety of strategies, establish the identity of the text-​discourse and its subject. It is precisely this treatment that reveals a different picture from what was offered by previous inquiries into these relations, which took place exclusively through the analysis of the traditional lyric persona. From the standpoint of the formal layering of subjective instances in the poetic discourse, it is necessary to distinguish between the empirical author and the empirical reader (which are not discursive instances) and authentic discursive instances. At the highest discursive level, we find the instance of the textual subject, a concept that corresponds to the (trans)narratological redefinition of the implied author by Peter Hühn (Hühn 2005). The textual subject is not the carrier of speech on any level of enunciation and is also not the lyric persona, and is thus less a positively defined instance. The reader must deduce this voiceless instance through his/​her perception and interpretation of refined, often hardly perceptible and conflictual relations in the configuration of different layers of discourse. For instance, the textual subject is responsible for the conflictual management of dialogic angles established by perspectives and focalizations emerging on various discursive levels. From our perspective, an important aspect of the textual subject is Meschonnic’s notion of recitative, understood by Meschonnic as body-​ in-​language [corps-​langage] and is configured in the “sensual-​material” layers of the discourse and participates in meaning-​making of the poetic discourse, especially in the serial semantics that are not located in lexical semantics. We understand the recitative as the instance in which the prereflexive and bodily charge of the poem is contained to the greatest extent. Located on the next level of the poetic discourse is the subject of enunciation, in the sense of the lyric voice that does not necessarily have the effect of a subject or person, and corresponds to the concept of narrative voice in the theory of narrative. On the level of poetic storyworld or diegesis, which can also include speech acts, and is always located under the enunciative level of the subject of enunciation, is the persona which can be the speaker (the subject of the

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enounced) or not. Also when the subject of the enounced and the subject of enunciation are seemingly identical, it is necessary to make a distinction using Benveniste’s theory. In diegesis, we find other focal points of subjectivity that do not necessarily have the effect of the person or the effect of the voice. Being dissipated in the poetic diegesis, they often become carriers of prereflexive, affective elements (personification, symbols, allegory, landscape, etc.) (See Rodriguez 2003: 149–​ 153). Focalizations and points of view, Ducrot’s enunciators, are formed on all levels of the poetic discourse as aspects of perspectivization; these are not the material sources of speech, but focal points, to which we attribute perceptive, cognitive, psychological, affective, and judgmental processes. In the following practical-​analytical section, we will present two case studies in order to examine derived elements of subject configuration. In the first case study, we will examine troubadour poetry and its subject as a historically remote corpus of texts and determine the connection between the poetic subject of the troubadours –​the manner in which it is constructed, articulated, and configured –​and certain philosophical concepts of subjectivity in the Middle Ages. In the second case study, we will analyze and interpret Henri Michaux’s longer poem “La Ralentie” (The Slowed Down) and its entire subjective configuration.

Chapter 16 Case Study 1: The Poetic Subject in Troubadour Poetry Reference Works About the Subject in Troubadour Poetry There are two possible ways to think about troubadour poetry (before, during, and after reading or listening to samples of it): as a historically remote and dead object that, because of its distance to us in terms of both time and values, remains essentially inaccessible to modern readers, or as the source of European lyric poetry, to which, because of the historical arc carried out by its successors, even modernity remains connected. The second option makes it possible to approach troubadour poetry as “a living subject”56 and specifically from two vantage points: first to try and understand its otherness, and second to also catch sight of its modernity. Only in this way does the troubadour poem remain a living discourse, an event that activates the intersubjective power of the system of the poem. The emphatic otherness of the poetic discourse of the troubadour poem soon becomes clear to the modern reader in a number of aspects: the relation of the individual to the community expressed in the life of the text on different levels (on the level of the question of the singular, the particular, and the general, or the question of individuation and subjectivation; on the level of social and literary conventions; on the level of collective participation in the actualization of art); the interplay of literary and musical discourse that decisively define each other; the meaning of performance, etc. Only if we respect these differences, attempting to explain and perhaps even understand them, will we avoid the anachronistic or ahistorical modernization that leads to a naïve and “romantic” reading of the troubadours. Only in their otherness do the poems reveal their modernity and ask new questions about our modernity (and alterity). In this sense, the troubadour lyric subject becomes a transsubject or an intersubject. Medieval studies, since their emergence in Romanticism, have tended toward an autobiographical understanding of troubadour poems, an understanding equating the first-​person persona with the author. The authentic troubadour poem was considered the space for the emergence of individuality. Testing these (presumed and trivialized) Romantic value measurements of individuality and 56 “The event of the life of the text, that is, its true essence, alway develops on the boundary between two consciousnesses, two subjects” (Bakhtin 1986: 106).

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originality in troubadour poems, the authors of which in fact were not familiar with these values, led to the relatively negative opinion regarding the artistic merit of this work. With the introduction of structuralist analysis in literary criticism (which also extended to medieval studies), there was a demand for a change in the standards and values applied to medieval literature in general in order to avoid the influence of the Romantic understanding of poetry, and with it, assumptions of its autobiographical nature (Pintarič 2001: 139). This kind of analysis would hardly encounter more understanding among Marxist critics, at least not as far as the moment of individuality was concerned, because the inclinations of Marxist critics was to understand each subjective experience exclusively as the collective tendency toward the betterment of social status.57 With the supremacy of methodological pluralism in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a notable relaxation in the rigor of (post)structuralism. In troubadour studies as well, intertextuality and structure were reconciled with the history and the subject. The question of the recipient in the framework of reception aesthetics, and gender analysis within gender studies and feminist critique attracted significant attention. In order to avoid a naïve and anachronistic modernization, we will in our reading of troubadour texts provide a critical synthesis of the most referential assumptions by experts in the field which also represent temporal and methodologically different moments in past decades (Zumthor 1970, 1972; Zink 1985; Kay 1990, in part Spence 1996, and in part Pintarič 2001).58 In the 1960s, Paul Zumthor, in his research of medieval literature, developed the most modern methodological approaches based on structuralist poetics thus far. He wrote about troubadour poetics in two of his central works: Essai de poétique médiévale ([Essay on Medieval Poetics], 1972) and the book Lange, texte, énigme ([Language, Text, Enigma], 1975), where he developed theses about the circularity of troubadour poetry and register as fundamental principles of troubadour and trouvères poetics.59 Michel Zink engaged with the nature of subjectivity in troubadour poetry in his 1985 study of literary subjectivity in the thirteenth century entitled Subjectivité littéraire autour du siecle de saint Louis ([ Literary Subjectivity in the Century of St. Louis], 1985). This penetrating and influential

5 7 For example, E. Köhler’s socio-​feudal theory about the essence of troubadour poetry. 58 For a detailed presentation of this analysis, see Balžalorsky (2007). 59 Zumthor focuses on the texts of the trouvères of Northern France who continued in the tradition of the Occitan troubadours, although in Zumthor’s opinion, a similar analysis would apply to the first troubadour texts as well.

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study tackles the problem from the developmental aspect and covers not only the question of subjectivity in poetry, but also in prose (in the medieval novel and in autobiographical prose). Sarah Kay’s 1990 monograph Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry is, as far as we know, the only work dedicated in its entirety to the problem of the subject in troubadour works. In contrast to Zink’s book, Kay’s is a synchronous study that deals exclusively with the texts of the Occitan troubadours with an emphasis on love poems or cansos. In the study, Kay focuses on the question of poetic subjectivity as a product of language and rhetorics, while giving significant space to the issue of the historical-​sociological determinedness of troubadour poetry from the standpoint of gender and social status, and to the issue of original reception and the autobiographical aspect. All three of these approaches illustrate practical-​methodological differences in the research of the troubadours. The analyses arrive at different conclusions about the characteristics of troubadour poetic subjectivity, also in relation to the extra-​poetic subjectivity of medieval historical formation. This is not only because of historical conditionality, but also because certain of the arguments deal exclusively with the lyric persona while others at least partly consider other configurational levels. Zumthor focuses only on the lyric persona, completely negating the status of individuality. In his opinion, there is no subject in the troubadour poem because the enunciative position of the lyric persona is abstract and universal. Zink’s analysis touches on another subject center outside of the place of the lyric persona, although it does this ambiguously, and the discussion remains insufficiently explicit. Kay performs an in-​depth analysis on the relation to external reality and the internal dialectic of poetic subjectivity, which generates the dynamic between poetic discourse and the historical, social, and cultural context of Occitan civilization, precisely because the gaze is not centered on the lyric persona, in which its emphasized position in the poetic discourse is most clearly enacted in standardized social and literary conventions. It can be deduced from her analysis that Kay perceives, in addition to the first-​person persona, another subjective instance that is not necessarily equated with persona and which Kay identifies with the implied author. At the same time, it can also be assumed from Kay’s analysis that the poetic subject is articulated above all in the coexistence of different dialogic positions and on different textual levels, or rather in a sort of empty space between these positions from which it controls their relationship. However, Kay does not systematize the different subject levels of the text, but only indicates the frequent discrepancies between different instances.

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Elements of Subjectivation in Medieval Philosophy Individuality, internalization, and self-​awareness emerged as important categories in medieval philosophy in the gradual definition of foundations for the creation of a more autonomous individual and ultimately for the truly autonomous subject. Two perspectives were formulated in the scholastic tradition as a response to the problem of individuality. The first was articulated by Saint Thomas Aquinas who connected individuality exclusively to the material (Socrates and Plato are the same human forms emerging from different material). The second recognized the existence of unique difference in each individual in the sense of ultima species (cf. Lecointe 1993: 16), but this second line of reasoning was not powerfully enough entrenched in the philosophical tradition and thus the possibility fell away for the individual to be understood singularly and not only particularly (cf. Frank 1998: 179–​181). Until the beginning of the Renaissance, it is nevertheless possible to observe in the development of scholastic thought a gradual tendency to emphasize difference on the basis of which the individual is no longer one of the models of a general type but is also defined by difference. The Christian concept of the immortality of the individual soul also falls into the frame of the question of individuality. Christianity is based on homocentrism, while the medieval system was theocentric. According to Aquinas, the human soul, regardless of the individualization provided by different material, receives personal eternity. The Christian God “is, in contrast to the divinities of antiquity, emphatically rooted in the individual; he selects a specific people and is manifested in an individual man. Christ knows, loves, and addresses the individual in his own name” (Lecointe 1993: 18). The development of the modern concept of personhood is to a great degree rooted in the homocentric Christian foundation. As far as internalization and the establishment of the first-​person point of view is concerned, Augustin’s thoughts represent one of the key stations in the process of subjectivation. For Augustin, a Platonist who discovered Plato’s thoughts through the writings of Plotinus, the Platonic conception of the mind and the soul as one, individual, and not multiple space [locus] was of crucial importance. According to Charles Taylor, this conception results in the moral self as a unified whole: “The soul must be one, if we are to reach our highest in the self-​collected understanding of reason, which brings about the harmony and concord of the whole person” (Taylor 2003: 120). This, of course, influenced not only the move toward internalization, as Augustin conceived of it, but the entire development of the modern conception of human interiority. In De Trinitate, Augustin establishes the difference between inner and outer man, and his insistence on

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the inner: Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi, interiore homine habitat veritas [Do not wander far, return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth]. Augustin’s inward path is the path to God. God is “not just the transcendent object or just the principle of order […], but the basic support and underlying principle of our knowing activity” (Taylor 2003: 129). Augustin makes a crucial turn, shifting the focus from the object of knowledge to the act of knowing. This has to do with the individual. And this is how the reflexive and first-​person point of view comes into being. As Taylor notes after Étienne Gilson, Augustin makes a proto-​Cartesian shift when, in Book II of the dialog “On Free Will,” he attempts to prove his interlocutor’s existence from the point of view of certainty in existence of the self; he shows the sceptic that he cannot doubt his own existence because, if he did not exist, he could not experience disappointment or doubt (Taylor 2003: 132). Thus, we stumble onto the origins of self-​certainty that are not yet as radical as the reasoning of Descartes. Taylor concludes that it was actually Augustin who was the inventor of cogito, as he first established the first-​person point of view as a foundation in the search for truth and God. According to Augustin, we find the latter in the intimacy of self-​presence. Nevertheless, we may also get lost on this path as did Augustin who was a Manichean at the beginning of his spiritual journey. The path to oneself is the path to what Augustin calls memoria, which is a precursor to innate ideas. It represents a sort of implicit understanding of the soul, which becomes explicit on the path from self-​non-​knowledge through mistaken knowledge to true self-​knowledge. At the very essence of memoria, man sees God. For Augustin, the inward path is always also the upward path. Augustin’s turn inward and he summons man to search for imago Dei within himself, thus establishing a first-​person, individual, and self-​reflexive standpoint, would have a long and powerful influence on human creativity. The vision of man, carrying imago Dei within himself, led to a state of affairs where the artist was eventually able to see in himself and his artistic creations more than merely objective elements. Through the image of the Creator that man carries within himself, his creativity begins to have true value, although this value was first recognized only in relation to the ideal for which he was striving. In a general sense, early medieval literature was objectified, abstract, and universal. Despite this, heroes in chivalric romance, for example, acquired a high level of individuation, which functioned under the aegis of achieving a collective idea and protecting the well-​being of the community. In poetry as well, some troubadours, as we shall see, had a powerful awareness of the self and a strong tendency toward individualized expression, still expressed in the frame of rhetorical and allegorical processes, and also toward elements of a sharply reflexive perspective.

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The Lyric Persona and Intertextuality In readings of the most characteristic troubadour poems that focus on the lyric persona, what most strikes the modern reader –​accustomed to the proverbial lyricism of the Romantic model of poetry or the lyricism of present-​day poetic empiricism in thrall to concrete everydayness –​is the general, if not to say the abstract, nature of the lyric persona. This creates an impression of foreignness and enigma that may prompt the reader to either embrace or reject the process of becoming better acquainted with this remote century’s discourse about love and the poem. The following, for example, is how Zumthor understands the lyric subject in troubadour poems: subjectless, universal, abstract, self-​referential, and circular. According to Zumthor, these are the principle characteristics of troubadour love poems and determine the nature of the lyric subject. If this poetry speaks about anything, it is exclusively the universal situation in which the subject, in Zumthor’s opinion, appears as a theme in a musical sense but never as a concrete specific subject (Zumthor 1972: 189–​243). From the standpoint of the conclusions we arrived at in previous chapters, it is clear, on the one hand, to what degree this type of viewpoint relies on the habitual “canonized” perception of subjectivity, understood as the product of the modern era and based on the reflexive model. The subject of troubadour poems is not the reflexive cogito, and the lyric persona also does not have a formed personal identity based on the specific empirical particularities of a person. The subject of troubadour poems says much more about the prereflexive subject mode in the poem, in particular regarding the indistinguishability of this particular poetic discourse from music. On the other hand, an interpretation like Zumthor’s suggests how erroneous it is to understand the subject of a poem as an entity that must be distinct from society and community, and how, to the contrary, we simply do not attribute these qualities to the subject (of a poem). Benveniste’s theory of subjectivity in language is devised precisely on the premise that the concept of intersubjective enunciation and subjectifying in language as an intersubjective event negates the difference between the individual and society (Benveniste 1971: 23). Not only Benveniste but also Meschonnic’s ideas provide an excellent explanation as to why the subject in troubadour discourse cannot simply be divided into sociological categories of the individual and society, although the subject of the poem is one function or form of the individual. Zumthor (1972: 231–​232) also develops the thesis of the troubadour register as a collective code, a network of already defined rules and procedures, that, even within the medieval aesthetic, represents an extreme example of the

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formalization of tradition. A register is a complex of motivic-​thematic, rhetoric, syntactic, lexical, and phonetic elements that, according to Zumthor, provides the foundation of troubadour/​trouvères poetics. Individual elements should be understood through the choice of features on all levels of register, which nonetheless functions as a whole and serves an already defined global model. Nevertheless, we have certain reservations regarding Zumthor’s thesis of the subjectless register connected to the theory of intertextuality in early examples of troubadour poetry. Namely, Zumthor exclusively analyses texts of the northern French trouvères, which represent troubadour poetics in its more formalized phases when register certainly played a much more important role than it did with the first troubadours who were auctores, that is the authors and authorities who created these registers. Intertextuality is otherwise apparent in the first troubadour texts, except with Guilhem IX de Peitieu, Duke of Aquitaine, who created the model. Guilhem’s gesture creatio ex nihilo in the renowned poem “Farai un vers de dreyt nien” (“I shall make a vers about nothing,”) is distanced from inherited hierarchies and conventions and defines the text anew, thus building a new creative space: Farai un vers de dreyt nien, non er de mi ni d’autra gen, non er d’amor ni de joven, ni de ren au, qu’enans fo trobatz en durmen sus un chevau. I shall make a verse about nothing, downright nothing, not about myself or youth or love or anyone. I wrote it on horseback dead asleep while riding in the sun.

(Blackburn 2016: 30)

The other troubadours in this creative space are described in a double light: with identification with the existing texts, and at the same time, with a distance to them, and, consequently, with differentiation. Tradition and the individual talent. The principle, with historical particularities, of course, existed even at that time. In this way, the unique dynamism of the troubadour corpus as a whole is created (cf. Spence 1996: 90–​97). The intertextuality thus strengthens the articulation of subjectivity more than inhibits it.

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Despite the generalized quality of the troubadour persona in certain poems, we encounter powerful indications of individuation and subjectivation. We find a noteworthy example of subjectivation through the principle of interiorization of the lyric persona, for example, in the poem of Bernart de Ventadorn “Tant ai mo cor ple de joya” (“So full is my heart of joy now”). The lyric persona internalizes and reshapes the external world: Tant ai mo cor ple de joya, tot me desnatura. Flor blancha, vermelh’ e groya me par la frejura, c’ab lo ven et ab la ploya me creis l’aventura, per que mos chans mont’ e poya e mos pretz melhura. Tan ai al cor d’amor, de joi e de doussor, per que·l gels me sembla flor e la neus verdura.

So full is my heart of joy now, All is changed for me. Flowering red, white, and yellow, The winter seems to be, For, with the wind and rain, so My fortune’s bright I see, My songs they rise, and grow My worth proportionately. Such love in my heart I find, Such joy and sweetness mine, Ice turns to flowers fine And snow to greenery.

(Nelli and Lavaud 1966: 69–​73)

(Kline 2009)

However, the process of internalizing the objective (Pintarič 2001: 128) ends with objectification. The metamorphosis of the subject through metaphorization (the persona transforms from a ship into a swallow) is possible in the area of a poem that can resemantisize the world, but the persona, resigned and lucid, realizes that it would be pure madness to allow the internal to dominate the external: Mas es fols qui·s desmezura/​E no.s te de guiza (the literal translation

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being: Mad is the one who goes past all measure,/​and doesn’t act as he should). This is the troubadour mezura.60 We find a similar modification of the external nature into the internal in the well-​known poem “La flor enversa” (“The Inverse Flower”) by Raimbaut d’Aurenga. Already in the first stanza where the poet changes what is conventionally the spring stanza into the winter stanza, we encounter inversion as the keystone of the poem. Ar resplan la flors enversa pels trencans rancs e pels tertres quals flors? Neus, gels e conglapis que cotz e destrenh e trenca; don vey morz quils, critz, brays, siscles en fuelhs, en rams e en giscles. mas mi ten vert e jauzen Joys er quan vei secx los dolens croys. Quar enaissi m’o enverse que bel plan mi semblon tertre, e tenc per flor lo conglapi, e·l cautz m’es vis que·l freit trenque, e·l tro mi son chant e siscle, e paro·m fulhat li giscle. Aissi·m sui ferm lassatz en joy que re non vey que·m sia croys.

(Lafont 2005: 45–​46)

Now the flowers gleam, in reverse, Among the jagged peaks and hills. What flowers? Of snow, frost, and ice, That jagged cut, and wound, and sting; And dead the calls, cries, trills and whistles, Among the twigs, and leafless bristles.

60 See Pintarič (2001: 36–​38) about the concept of mezura. In this context, Pintarič even compares the subjectivity of troubadour poems with “Romantic” subjectivity from the aspect of the subject standing out from a non-​differentiated community on the basis of the experience of love, although with the difference that after the same “miracle” of love, the troubadour subject is then returned to the community (Pintarič 2001: 130). We note that an identical process takes place in the best chivalric romances in which we find the origins of the novel, namely in the five romances of Chrétien de Troyes: love and knightly chivalry, a duality from which the awareness of the heroic self and the hero apart the community flows and at the same time returns.

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Case Study 1: The Poetic Subject in Troubadour Poetry Yet joy is green: with joyous face, I see the low shrivelled, and the base. For in such a way do I reverse All this, that fine plains look like hills, I takes for flowers the frost and ice, In the cold I’m warm as anything, And thunderclaps are songs and whistles, And full of leaf the leafless bristles. With joy, I’m firmly bound in place, Seeing nothing that is low or base.

(Kline 2009)

The image of Narcissus in “Can vei la lauzeta” (“When I see the lark stir”), the celebrated poem by Bernart de Ventadorn, might cause us to question Zumthor’s opinion that the lady, as the other, is never fully individuated from the entirely abstract and universal nature of the first-​person speaker (Zumthor 1970: 129–​140). Anc non agui de me poder Ni no fui meus de l‘or’ en sai Que · m laisset en sos olhs vezer En un miralh que mout me plai. Miralhs, pus me mirei en te, M’an mort li sospir de preon, C’aissi ·m perdei com perdet se Lo bels Narcisus en la fon.

It having been granted me, permission, having been allowed my moment to look into her eyes, since I saw reflected in those eyes my image /​that image has held the power, not myself! Since that mirage, my glass, influx of breath ravages my innards: Narcissus at the spring, I kill this human self.

(Nelli and Lavaud 1966: 75)

(Blackburn 2016: 97)

The speaker I becomes lost when he sees himself in his lady’s eyes –​the mirror, while, at the same time, it is only then that the reflexive, the representational

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enters the body of the text, when the act of “perception” is physically manifest (as in a portrait). From the perspective of Bakhtin’s understanding of the dialogical disposition of the subject, we could say that the (Bakhtinian) I-​for-​myself is dissolved in the I-​for-​the-​other (Bakhtin 1990: 53).61 Indeed, that is the only way the I can be constituted. In the poem, we witness a sort of mirror stage that is actualized because of the other and with the other: in the gaze of himself in the other which does not mean fusion but differentiation: the self becomes aware of itself (also) through reflection. The poem also conveys another important element of reflection: in reflection-​refraction, I am no longer of myself, a thetic break occurs, the subject and object in their previously undivided condition split into two; what I see in the reflection does not belong to me, is not identical to me. It is also interesting that as the physical and reflexive presence of the self of the lyric persona in this poem grows, the presence and accessibility of the lady declines. The recognition of the seen portrait of the self, the self ’s own mirror image in the other, the lady, is certainly one of the early steps of subjectivation in reflection.

The Level of Enunciation and the Enounced; Metapoem, Performative A reading of troubadour poetry that attempts to penetrate the apparently naive and transparent surface of the text reveals a quality that, with the development of European poetry from the Renaissance onward, increasingly shifts away the surface. This quality revolves around the question of the two levels of discourse, the enounced, and enunciation. Troubadour poems illuminate these levels exceptionally well with their metapoetic approach, thematizing and signalizing enunciation and thus valorizing it as superior to representation-​mimesis. In other words, troubadour poetry provides the clearest illustration of the split between enunciation and the enounced in poetic discourse despite their irreducible connection to each other. With the troubadours, an interesting strategy appears in this regard. In the storyworld, the position of the lyric persona is occupied by two figures: the figure of the poet and the figure of the lover. Let us look at a few examples: 61 Bakhtin speaks of man in antiquity: “Such was the character of man in antiquity at the time of its flowering. Everything corporeal was consecrated by the category of the other and was experienced as something immediately valuable and significant; inner axiological self-​determination was subordinated to being determined externally through the other and for the other: the I-​for-​myself was dissolved in the I-​for-​the other.”

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Jaufré Rudel: Quan lo rius de la fontana S’esclarzis, si cum far sol, E par la flors aiglentina E-​l rossinholetz el ram Volf e refranh ez aplana Son sous chantar et afina, Dreitz es qu;ieu lo mieu refranha. Amors de terra lonhdana, Per vos totz lo cors mi dol; E no’n puesc trobar mezina Si non au vostre reclam Dinz vergier o sotz cortina Ab dezirada companha.

(Nelli and Lavaud 1966: 50)

When, from the spring, the stream runs clear, so in Spring sun clears the air, eglantine appears. The nightingale in brake modulates, clarifies his song, softens it, reiterates, polishes and sweetens it: only right that I my own song soften. My distant love, for you, my whole body aches: and I can find nothing to heal it but in your call that has as bait soft love behind curtain or in orchard with the mate I long for.

Bernart de Ventadorn: Non es maravelha s’ieu chan Mielhs de nulh autre chantador, Que plus mi tra-​l cors ves amor E mielhs sui faitu a son coman. Cor e cors e saber e sen

(Blackburn 2016: 96)

The Level of Enunciation and the Enounced, Metapoem E fors’e poder hi ai mes; Si-​m tira ves Amor lo fres Que ves autra part no m’aten.

It is no wonder if I sing Better than other troubadours, For I’m more drawn to loving And better made for its command; My heart and body, knowledge and mind, And strength and power I give; The rein pulls me so hard toward love That I never look to other things.

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(Nelli and Lavaud 1966: 64)

(Paden and Paden 2007: 80)

Arnaut Daniel: En cest sonet coind’ e leri Pauc motz e capuig e doli, E seran verai e cert Quan n’aurai passat la lima; Amors marves plan’e daura Mon chantar, que de liei mòu Qui pretz manten e governa.

On this gay and slender tune I put and polish words and plane and when I’ve passed the file they’ll be precise and firm. For Love himself pares down and gilds my song which moves from her whose glances are the firm light rails that guide all excellence.

(Nelli and Lavaud 1966: 110)

(Blackburn 2016: 116)

The role of poet and the role of the lover are two faces of the same persona. However, the poetic story itself makes note of the division of the lyric persona into these roles and of the differentiation that is consequently generated on other levels of the text. Zink, for example, concludes that the poem places the figure of the “creating poet” in terms of value before the figure of the “in-​love poet.” Kay considers this dichotomy in relation to historical context and the dynamics between reference and fiction and addresses the exchange between the authorial and fictive lyric subject. When the persona takes on the image of the poet, it

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covers the field of reference, and when it takes on the image of the lover, it covers the fictional and rhetorical field. Precisely this division signalizes the existence of different configurational spheres in the text in the way they are depicted within poetic storyworld. It actually establishes two diegetic levels, as enunciation in some way acquires the status of metadiegesis. This is most apparent in the first and last stanza, which, in the canso or the love poem, by convention thematizes the poetic act. The I in the troubadour poem, like all other subjects in language, is established in two ways: as a persona in the diegesis, therefore on the level of the enounced, and as the I of enunciation; or o use Ducrot’s terminology, as locutor λ –​the “wordly being,” and locutor L; and to use Bakhtin’s, as author and hero. Only the I of enunciation enables the reflection, the representation of the I of the enounced and in the enounced. The metapoetic procedure of the troubadour poem poeticizes this becoming and establishing. The clearly thematized space of metadiegesis or the metapoem62 in which poetic enunciation is depicted in its becoming –​as a poetic act, which additionally illuminates the becoming of the subject in the space-​body of the text that the subject configures, devising itself within it as a becoming voice. In this way, the space of its acting and depicting is constructed. The troubadour farai [I will make] becomes eternally farai un vers [I will make a poem], and is the action (of the subject) of the poem; it is the pure performative. It is the performative of the poem and of the subject that is dispersed on all levels the poem; in the place of the lyric persona where, as we have seen, through occasional reflexive moments, the construction of the identity of a person begins, and even more so in other spheres of the text as an event that emerges to a lesser degree from the reflexive mode. Troubadour poetry and ideology place poetic enunciation on an equal footing as fin’ amor, that the poem enunciates and thus also actualizes. This is trobar in the double sense of searching-​finding and creating: to search, to find, to create the poem, the love, the other and the self in the process of poem. Slovenian poet and theoretician Boris A. Novak describes it as follows: “From the discovery of the impossible nature of courtly love, we may also conclude that the troubadours realize love through the poem. This is why they put forward the equation that l’art d’amor is the same as l’art de trobar” (Novak 1998: 22).

62 About the concept of metapoetry see Müller-​Zettelmann (2005: 125–​145) and Juvan (2017: 48–​106).

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The Orchestration of Focalizations and Voices In some of the most individualized opuses of the troubadours, there appears, in addition to the division of the lyric persona into the figure of the poet and the figure of the lover, a polyphony that arises from the different and often latent ethical, existential, emotional, cognitive, ideological, and aesthetic attitudes of the same subject. This reveals the subject’s fragile and protean quality, particularly in the internal tension between the demands of the community and the desire for autonomy and individualization. As Kay observes, this sort of internal dialogism is characteristic above all of the period between 1160 and 1170 and appeared in particular in the work of the troubadours connected to Raimbaut d’Aurenga, especially Giraut de Bornelh, Peire Rogier, and Gaucelm Faidit (Kay 1990: 65). A good example of internal dialogism can be found in the poem “D’un dotç bell plaser” (“Of sweet, gentle pleasure”) by Gaucelm Faidit analyzed by Kay (Kay 1990: 74–​77). D’un dotg bell plaser plasen movon miei cant ver, valen, gien, car si mos solatc plat? als fins ben credent? ni s’ieu be fats re, de midons me ve, cui ne soi grasire -​ liei desire, si c’allior mon desir no vire, car lieis am e lieis ador e causic per la meglior. Sol al sieu voler m’aten, car del sieu saber apren sen tal, don m’es donate grate pels plus conoisentc. Tant gent me

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The Orchestration of Focalizations and Voices Trop potc vers asire … Voll m’aucire? Si.m socor cill cui soi servire? morai si.n tais lausor o si.l dir no.l an a sabor? Ben dei doncs temer temen; pero, leis e’esper grasen, ren merces dels onratc ce.m fes present? e ssap, se no.m ve, tant li ai lial fe c’el cor la remire; e.n sospire de dolor e.n trauc greu martire, car del tornar ai paor que.m tegna per mentidor Pot li doncs caler s’ieu men? Hoc, gia.t vol veser vai t’en Fen tot? altres pensatc, natc de flacs pensamentc! Traire te cove. Vau dunes! Gioi mi me, si q’eu deia rire! E no.t tire, chanso! Cor tost, ses escondire a.n Sobira, mon segnor, cui Pretc pren per validor. From a single sweet pleasing beautiful delight

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Case Study 1: The Poetic Subject in Troubadour Poetry my true songs are born, precious and noble for if my consolation pleases true believers, or if I do anything well it comes to me from my lady to whom I am grateful for it I desire her so much that I do not turn my desire elsewhere for I love and worship her and I chose her as supreme. I pay heed to her wish alone for from her wisdom I learn such understanding as has resulted in my being favoured by the most discerning. So wonderfully does it sustain me, thanks to her, that now I am good at being patient for I enjoy the love on which, enjoying it, I fix my longing; and never did such wealth come to any lover. And I show it often sweet evening I begin, although beloved, to yearn. I am a fool and impatient because my mouth is not kept under tight rein; and for that reason it is

The Orchestration of Focalizations and Voices right I should be distressed when I reflect on her worth; and a fool can say too much! Am I then a fool to speak of the honour done me? Yes, if I turn the speech to folly. Since now she has empowered me, I mean, that I might have permission to tell nobly the good offices she has had for me Be quiet! Be patient and shut your teeth! Have you forgotten that a lover is damned without faith? You can compose too many songs … Am I to kill myself? Is that how she whom I serve assists me? Am I to die from not speaking her praise, or from her not liking my speech? Therefore I ought to be afraid and fearful; but to her I hope for gratefully I give thanks for the revered she has presented me with -​ and she surely knows that even when I am out of her sight my loyalty to her is such that I gaze on her in my heart and sigh with grief

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Case Study 1: The Poetic Subject in Troubadour Poetry and suffer dreadful martyrdom for I fear to return there in case she thinks me a breakfaith. Could she care, then, if I do break faith? Yes, now she sends for you -​ be off! Shatter all other thoughts born of cowardly misgivings! The time has come for you to depart. I go then! May joy lead me, and make me smile instead! Don’t delay, song, run quickly, without demur, to the Superlative one, my lord whom Merit takes as her champion. I make bold to choose lord Agout and lord Most Agreeable, for with them I achieve Merit and Worth

(Kay 1990: 72–​7)

In the poem, the voices of the persona in the roles of poet and lover alternate and dialogize. There is the split between faith and trust in the lady, between the sincere singing of love and questioning the very sense of the poetic act, between gratitude for the lady’s wisdom with which the poet can be enriched and improved, and agitation and resignation caused by insight into this emotional dependence on the lady, also on the level of his poetic art. The poem thematizes the liminal situations of love, language, poetry, and silence, and the madness to which these conditions may compel the poet. One position suggests that poetic utterance of (requited) love is an unwise action as the utterance itself can provoke or lead to madness. The second position recognizes that persisting in poetic silence can lead to suicide. The poem, as usual with the troubadours, nevertheless concludes

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with an attempt at conciliation or a renewed establishment of harmony between love, the poem, and the self with which it begins. The initial vacillation of viewpoints of the divided persona transforms into a dialog between voices-​selves. The rhythmic tension in this exchange throughout the poem grows, the tension between focalizations and the conditions of the fragmented selves of the persona being rhythmically and prosodically semanticized within the terse, short verses and weighty, demanding word-​ rhymes (infinitives in -​er, participates in -​en and -​entg, verb endings in -​ire, agentives in -​ador). We see that these kinds of points of subject articulation match Ducrot’s enunciator. The locutor who produces an utterance, also produces enunciators to which attitudes and points of view can be attributed. To use Ducrot’s terminology, in “D’un dotç bell plaser,” locutor L (on the level of enunciation) also creates the locutor λ on the level of utterance (therefore as a subject of the enounced), and, in addition, raises enunciators. In this poem, what is interesting is precisely the strategy of escalation that can be discerned on various levels in the form of enunciators. Here the enunciator even approaches the status of locutor: in the beginning, this has to do with a dialectical perspective, and then actual voices-​ selves are configured and polemicize among themselves to the point that we can speak of the diffraction of the lyric persona. These enunciators appear on the level of the enounced as voices. In this sense, we find that a fragmented persona through the poem adopts different focalizations that address the question of how to poeticise and to love. This is an internalized representation of the necessity of poeticizing ideal, non-​problematic, requited love at the expense of sincerity, and the declaration of actual conditions with which the persona cannot completely concur. In the end, he slides into poeticizing pain and anxiety: “I am a fool /​and impatient /​because my mouth /​is not kept under tight rein!” The internalization is complete: the lover-​poet who does not have confidence in love is doomed. If this split leads to ethical silence, it would mean death: “Am I to kill myself?”; “Am I to die from not speaking her praise, or from her not liking my speech?” Yet another enunciator doubts the lady (“Is that how she whom I serve assists me?”), immediately establishing the next focalization; suffering, anxiety, and fear at the thought of the rejection of the lady when she discovers his doubts and lack of trust. Focalizations are of ideological, axiological, and affective types, given that the split into several enunciators refers to different identities of the persona as regards emotional, moral, and ideological stances that enter into conflict with each other. In certain troubadour opuses, such as those of Lanfranc Cigala, Arnaut Daniel, and Uc de San Circ, rhetorical procedures are used in order to more or

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less successfully construct an individuated entity for the lyric persona –​despite the occasional lack of logic or contradictions (for example, the paradox of the departure of the self from the castle of the soul) –​that inevitably reveal discrepancies. It is possible to perceive in these works a split between the lyric persona and the subject instance of the poem that is not articulated in the enunciative apparatus, but functions as a rhetorical and compositional instance, a sort of shifting point of view that slides under the surface of the text that produces it and reveals the growing desire of troubadour subjectivity for individuation and differentiation from existing social and poetological conventions. This is especially apparent at points where we encounter a lack of logic, that is to say at points where various dialogical aspects are created in the composition of the text that are expressed neither on the level of enunciation as intermediate level that produces utterance nor on the level of the enounced of the individual persona or mere focalization through the personae. In short, it is apparent at points where it is possible to observe short circuits and slips, hardly discernible cracks. In this way, many systems and perspectives dialogize within the text. Nevertheless, on the surface of the text and in the most obvious subject position of the text –​in the lyric persona –​a tentative harmony is created in accordance with, or as a consequence of, the literary conventions of courtly culture. In other, less visible layers, for example in the dialogic relations between different discursive levels, other aspects of the troubadour discourse that are neither naïve or transparent can also be observed. The Marcabru’s poem “A la fontana del vergier” (“In an orchard down by the stream”) is typical in terms of its irony: A la fontana del vergier, On l‘erb’ es vertz josta·l gravier, A l’ombra d’un fust domesgier, En aiziment de blancas flors E de novelh chant costumier, Trobey sola, ses companhier, Selha que no vol mon solatz. So fon donzelh’ab son cors belh Filha d’un senhor de castelh! E quant ieu cugey que l’auzelh Li fesson joy e la verdors, E pel dous termini novelh, E quez entendes mon favelh, Tost li fon sos afars camjatz. Dels huelhs ploret josta la fon E del cor sospiret preon.

The Orchestration of Focalizations and Voices Ihesus, dis elha, reys del mon, Per vos mi creys ma grans dolors, Quar vostra anta mi cofon, Quar li mellor de tot est mon Vos van servir, mas a vos platz. Ab vos s’en vai lo meus amicx, Lo belhs e·l gens e·l pros e·l ricx! Sai m’en reman lo grans destricx, Lo deziriers soven e·l plors. Ay mala fos reys Lozoicx Que fay los mans e los prezicx Per que·l dols m’es en cor intratz Quant ieu l’auzi desconortar, Ves lieys vengui josta·l riu clar : Belha, fi·m ieu, per trop plorar Afolha cara e colors! E no vos cal dezesperar, Que selh qui fai lo bosc fulhar, Vos pot donar de joy assatz. Senher, dis elha, ben o crey Que Deus aya de mi mercey En l’autre segle per jassey, Quon assatz d’autres peccadors! Mas say mi tolh aquelha rey Don joys mi crec! mas pauc mi tey Que trop s’es de mi alonhatz. In an orchard down by the stream, Where at the edge the grass is green, In the shade of an apple-​tree, By a plot of flowers all white, Where spring sang its melody, I met alone without company One who wishes not my solace. She was a young girl, beautiful, Child of the lord of that castle; But when I thought the songbirds’ call Might, from its tree, make her heart light, And sweet the fresh season all, And she might hear my prayers fall, A different look did cross her face. Her tears flowed, the fount beside, And from her heart her prayer sighed.

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Case Study 1: The Poetic Subject in Troubadour Poetry ‘Jesus, King of the World,’ she cried, ‘Through you my grief is at its height, Insult to you confounds me, I Lose the best of this world wide: He goes to serve and win your grace. With you goes my handsome friend, The gentle, noble, and brave I send; Into great sorrow I must descend, Endless longing, and tears so bright. Ai! King Louis to ill did tend Who gave the order and command, That brought such grief to my heart’s space!’ When I heard her so, complaining, I went to her, by fountain’s flowing: ‘Lady,’ I said ‘with too much crying Your face will lose its colour quite; And you’ve no reason yet for sighing, For he who makes the birds to sing, Will grant you joy enough apace.’ ‘My lord,’ she said, ‘I do believe That God will have mercy on me In another world eternally, And many other sinners delight; But here he takes the thing from me That is my joy; small joy I see Now that he’s gone so far away.’

(Kline 2009)

Here we observe the split between an objective ethical outlook that judges both the point of view of the first-​person lyric persona and of the other protagonist. Both points of view captured by the protagonists are criticized with the use of irony. The following is the story of the poem: in accordance with the topos of the “spring stanza,” a young nobleman meets a lady by the fountain in the orchard, a locus amoeunus. The girl is weeping because her beloved has departed on the Crusades. The young nobleman immediately and without restraint begins to court her and to convince her that crying will ruin her complexion. The lady blames Christ for taking away her courageous lover and King Ludwig VII for the Crusades. We have religious, secular, and love discourses juxtaposed on the surface of the text. But it is also possible to perceive a third critical position that is not manifest in the utterance itself, but in the method of irony that is implicitly distanced from the two voices, from the blasphemous female voice and the voice of her naïve seducer, and is rather located in the division between the two

Meaning-Making in Enunciation: Form–Meaning–Body–Subject

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positions. If the protagonists are identified to these ideological and ethical points of views and become Ducrot’s enunciators on the level of the enounced and through the enounced, there is a third point of view that belongs to neither of the enunciators but can be attributed to the instance that is placed on a higher level of the discourse, the textual subject or the impliced author. We also find an example of the elision of monologism and one-​dimensionality in Peire Vidal’s canso “Ab l’alen tir vas me l’aire” (“By breath I draw toward me the air”) in which the figures of a woman and Provence are interwoven in a way that establishes a polyvalence of meaning and prevents unambiguous interpretation (Kay 1990: 43). An even more radical example can be found in Arnaut Daniel’s sestina “Lo ferm voler qu’el cor m’intra” (“The firm desire that in my heart enters”) that plays with hermetic polyphony emerging from pairs of unusual rhymes with erotic and social-​familial connotations: oncle and ongla (uncle and nail), verga and arma (rod and soul), cambra and intra (room and enter).

Meaning-​Making in Enunciation: Form–​Meaning–​ Body–​Subject Let us now return to the thesis of the absence of the poetic subject in the troubadours, which is particularly interesting in combination with the thesis about the autoreferential nature of troubadour poetry. Autoreferentiality does not mean naïve play with language but assumes a high level of awareness about the meaning of language and the poetic act. This is also connected to the question of subjectivity. Zink emphasizes that the troubadour poem arrives at the transfer of the “poetic event” from the “thematic” axis to the “rhetorical” and “formal” axis, and, as a result, the focus on the poetic act as such. With the implicit and explicit observation of the self, as Zink puts it, the image of the “poet” is revealed. According to Zink, the tendency toward the perfection of poetic expression does not emerge so much from the desire to please and communicate with a narrow circle of listeners, but from the desire to satisfy the “poetic” self.63 The trobar clus,

63 Zink discusses the example of the rejection of motifs of spring in the poetry of Thibaud de Champagne: Feuille ne flor ne vaut riens en chantant/​que por defaut, sanz plus, de rimoi r/​et pour fere solez vilaine gent/​qui mauvès moz font souvent aboier/​Je ne chant pas por esbanoier/​mes pour mon cuer fere un peu plus joiant. “In this poem, leaves and blossoms mean nothing. They only appear in the poem because of the incompetence of the rhyming, and to make fun of the brute who laughs with pleasure because of the worthless words. I do not sing to serve them but to bring joy to my own heart” (Zink 1985: 54–​55).

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or hermetic style, was the most radical expression of this tendency.64 However, Zink concludes that also representatives of the trobar leu, or clear style (and here he considers all of the Northern French trouvères), who don’t resort to hermeticism in the expression of a high degree of awareness of the poetic self, use rhetorical and melodic devices in order to establish the presence of a self that is not connected to an abstract I, a lyric persona. This is what creates the inner tension of troubadour poetry. A clear example of such self-​valorizing can be found in the tornada of the Arnaut Daniel’s canso “En cest sonet coinde e leri” (“On this gay and slender tune”). Arnaut boldly renounces the convention of dedicating the poem to his lady, his patron or to a friend by using a senhal.65 The canso is dedicated to its own art and its creator and his highly valued creative position. Ieu sui Arnaut qu‘amas l’aura e cas la lebre ab lo bueu e nadi contra suberna I am Arnaut who gathers the wind who hunts with an ox to chase a hare forever, and swims against the current.

(Blackburn 2016: 117)

What is significant here is the fact that troubadour poems are one of the first texts to be written in vernacular language. Sarah Spence (1996: 5) puts forward the thesis that subjectivity as it was expressed in the texts of the twelfth century, written in vernacular language, and the language of these texts itself, are structurally and conceptually similar, and that subjectivity and the language developed in a parallel fashion or interacted with each other during their development. Spence refers to Zumthor’s distinction between the Romanesque and

64 Zink discusses Ulrich Moelk’s thesis about the changing concept of amor de lonh, love at a distance, from Guilhem de Peitieu, Duke of Aquitaine, who first used the phrase through Jaufré Rudel and Peire d’Alvernhe, practitioners of trobar clus. With the first two, communication within a closed circle of dedicated listeners was the most important and, because of this, the concept of amor de lonh had a more externalized meaning. In contrast, Peire d’Alvernhe supposedly used the notion in poems that strived to internalize the concept of love, also with the assistance of hermetic expression. 65 Senhal is a code name used for a lady, a patron or a friend; ladies are often designated with masculine senhals.

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Gothic mindset: in the Romanesque conception, the subject was connected to the object and therefore ahistorical. In the Gothic conception, the unity of subject and object began to dissolve.66 We may recall that, according to Bakhtin, it is with the relativization of absolute language and the emergence of new linguistic consciousness that the process of dialogization begins (and polyphony appears).67 It was precisely with their use of the vernacular that the troubadours established a new creative space that liberated them from the conventions cultivated in medieval Latin. It was a very material and physical space indeed. Here, we would like to point out how well troubadour poetry illuminates Meschonnic’s poetics of rhythm and the subject. Troubadour poems acutely actualize the generalized semantics and signify on all levels of the text. If the value of Meschonnic’s concept of generalized signifier might in certain examples of poetry (and prose and drama) encounter theoretical concerns in the absence of any sensual–​physical articulation of this poetic discourse (and precisely in this absence, on the generalized level of meaning, it would be possible to show the opposite), this is not the case in troubadour discourse. The subject of troubadour discourse is even more the subject on the levels of the poetic system that are not articulated in the poetic utterance and storyworld. This poetry, despite the high level of narrative and dramatic emphasis, values enunciation more than representation. One of the strategies also used is the obsessive process of the metapoem. The troubadour poem demonstrates exceptionally well Meschonnic’s continuous of enunciation in non-​linear, non-​semiotic meaning-​making which establishes in the text hitherto inconceivable semantic, prosodic, and rhythmic combinations and variations. That is certainly true of the poetics of Arnaut Daniel, il miglior fabbro, as Dante described him. We find a clear example of this in Daniel’s sestina “Lo ferm voler qu’el cor m’intra,” the pinnacle of the creation of trobar ric, and in “La flor enversa” (“The Inverse Flower”) by Raimbaut d’Aurenga. In terms of the origins of European poetics, the troubadour poem actualizes recitative as embodied subject–​meaning in the most radical way possible. This is also true on the general level of troubadour poetics, not only in individual 66 Spence quotes Zumthor’s essay “Roman et gothique: deux aspects de la poésie médiévale” from 1966. 67 Bakhtin locates these processes in Hellenism, in the period of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. National languages began to supplant Latin, but, according to Bakhtin, the dialogism of medieval literature remained external to the text. This represents an ambivalence between ideologically determined and closed literary consciousness, and the non-​unified language and content that this consciousness uses.

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cases. As Boris A. Novak emphasizes in his study on the subject, the troubadours developed an inexhaustible supply of rhymes that European poetry never managed to muster again, or at least not to such an extent (Novak 1998: 41). In relation to Jacques Roubaud, Novak discusses the metarhythmical meaning of rhyme, the rhyme being the formal equivalent of love (1998: 31–​32). Troubadour poetry also illuminates the nonsensical tradition of trying to disentangle form from content. Of course, it is possible to argue that troubadour poetry consists of extreme formalism, that is (formal) register, and the actualization of tradition. However, it was necessary to invent these forms. What applies to intertextuality on the motivic level, also applies to the “formal” perspective of this poetry; the first troubadours are auctores. At the same time, as Pintarič points out (2001: 41), it is clear that no two poems with the same poetic form are identical. The ongoing process of the happening of the tradition as a universal schema is always actualized in a singular manner. And if today we cannot understand this singularity to such a degree, it is because we have been shaped by the necessity for differentiation. It does not mean that this singularity does not exist but that we have not developed a sense of it. Regardless of whether it is possible to speak about the troubadour subject as the subject of the entire troubadour corpus into which individual “autopoetics” have been inscribed, the subject of each troubadour poem is nevertheless singular. Occitan, the language of the first troubadours, despite its quantitively sparse lexicon (or perhaps precisely because of it), developed an extraordinary level of polysemy (see Pintarič 2001: 41–​42). Of course, this was initially not polysemy on the level of the dictionary, but first and above all in the poetic enunciation. The development of polysemy on the lexical level of individual words is crucially connected to the semantic power which troubadours bestow on rhymes, so-​ called key words if we use Boris A. Novak’s expression, and other semantic-​prosodic elements on the level of the vocal-​consonantal and rhythmic organization of the poem. Thus, each poem creates a specific, singular system of values that signifies in its own unique way. This generalized semantics also transforms the deeper levels of the troubadour ethical and aesthetic ideal of poetry and love that is especially apparent in the most individualized opuses of Bernart de Ventadorn, Raimbaut d’Aurenga, Arnaut Daniel, and Peire d’Alvernhe. The transformative power of troubadour language in this context also accounts for its exceptional place in the history of literature. And to the contemporary reader who is prepared to listen to sounds from beyond the wall created by its otherness, it speaks of the power of meaning-​making in (poetic) enunciation. In its own time, this poetry functioned as the transformation of life with the transformation of

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language and poetry–​literature. The troubadour poetic subject had an exceptional (anthropological, social) role in meaning for other subjective functions of the individual that existed at the time. It did not have a merely self-​referential role, but, with the placement of love as the first and entirely autonomous (intimate and civilizational) value, also subjectivized the other and thus contributed to the emancipation of women. With the subjectivation of the other, the I-​for-​ myself emerges as the I-​for-​the-​other, although this occurs through instances of instability, division, and uncertainty, a phenomenon noted by Kay in a precise analysis of interpoetic relations with domna.68 Of course, it can be said that the subject of the troubadour poem transformatively influenced the functions of the individual (outside literature) on levels that, in a more or less hidden manner, subverted the conventions of fin’amor.

The Intertwinement of Poems and Music: The Melodic Subject, the Collective Subject Up until now, we have remained on the discursive level of troubadour artistic configuration, but troubadour poetry cannot be separated from music. The singing of this poetry was always performed (accompanied is not the right expression) with instruments that attempted to approximate the human voice (Pintarič 2001: 197), a feature that is not insignificant to our analysis. Opinion about which artistic mode is preeminent differs among experts but this debate is ultimately not all that relevant. We will briefly touch on those characteristics of the troubadour poetic subject that additionally illuminate and support the thesis of the prereflexive subjective mode that is particularly embodied by generalized signifying on the poetic-​discursive level of the troubadour artistic configuration. We observe that the presence of music represents one of the main reasons for presuming the “abstract,” non-​individualized nature of the lyric subject. At the same time, it is the musical

68 Kaye notes that in texts from the second half of the twelfth century the domna acquires the status of an active subject, and that the passivity of the male subject –​transformed into an object –​often appears as the process of his moral improvement. With the shift to the place of the active subject, the danger emerges that the domna will begin to acquire exclusively female quantities and, for this reason, is often shown in a negative light and can acquire diabolical dimensions. The (male) self of troubadour poetry appears, also from the standpoint of gender, as unstable, and is strengthened by the invention of a “mixed” gender and the establishment of the male-​centred discourse (Kay 1990: 86–​102).

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dimension that allows the listener to identify with it. The prereflexive mode of the subject within troubadour art is eminently articulated in the music. From this perspective, we could also speak of the melodic subject. Here Pintarič makes the necessary observation that troubadour music was monophonic as opposed to the Gregorian chants from which it developed. Pintarič (2001: 27) concludes that musicality is a factor of individuation and that the music not only individualizes individual creations but also the individual performances of the same poem. We would add the specificity of this process of subjectivation in performance–​ enunciation, the emphasis being on what Novalis called feeling, Schleiermacher immediate self-​consciousness, and Frank prereflexive consciousness. This still stands today when listening to musical reconstructions of troubadour poems, regardless of the absence of a rhythmical dimension in the preserved scores. In this sense, today’s listeners to troubadour poetry perhaps would more easily and purely approach the work through movements of prereflection in melody. With the help of melody as an eminent prereflexive subject mode and, from it, the ongoing events in the life of the poem and the score, listeners could pursue identification with the lyric persona by individualizing it each in their own unique way. In the initial historical context, the event always took place in a community founded on the collective vision of fin’amor. The fulfillment of the universality and particularity of the lyric persona with experiential content was thus both collective and individual, and always singular. The troubadour subject is thus also a collective artistic (poetic and musical) subject. To summarize: the meaning of musical in troubadour creations is multiple. First, from the standpoint of the poem, the music is perhaps in some ways the factor that blocks the engagement of the reflexive subject mode in the ordinary subject positions in the poem, above all on the level of the enounced and the storyworld. Second, music opens an extraordinary space for emergence and articulation of the prereflexive mode of subjectivity, which was ordinarily repressed by the literary code. Third, the music both ensures the identification of the listener in the ongoing performance, and therefore the singularization of the troubadour transsubject. In the primary performative context, this final characteristic also implies the collective and synchronous dimensions of the subject in which music is an important factor.

Conclusion Looking at troubadour poetry as a historically remote poetic discourse, we attempted to schematically illuminate theses about the poetic subject as a global multiple instance based on a network of relations and articulated in various

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spheres of artistic configuration. Using the findings that we presented and developed in the theoretical section of this work, we demonstrated a number of articulative points: the lyric persona, the subject of enunciation, focalization, the textual subject (including the recitative). It was shown how in certain poems we encountered features of subjectivation on the level of the lyric persona found in contemporary medieval philosophy: in particular, internalization, self-​ awareness, and the mirroring metaphor as a proto-​image of the reflexive model of subjectivity. In contrast, we also encountered the articulating prereflexive movements of the poem on various levels of the poetic and musical discourse, which reinforces the hypothesis that is not possible to speak about the absence of the subject in troubadour poems. From the standpoint of troubadour poetry and the courtly culture of medieval Occitania from which it happily emerged, we may also put forward the thesis that it is possible to detect in the poiesis and po-​et(h)ics of troubadour artistic configuration the impulses of an emerging autonomous (extra-​poetic) individual through the experience of trobar fin’amor (find and invent love), and in any case though the experience of trobar (find and invent) the poem or pure poiesis. We could present these beginnings of the subject in the process of the poem as a sort of “inverted mimesis” (to use Raimbaut d’Aurenga’s image of the “inversed flower,” la flor inversa): in the event of the poem, the creative act (farai un vers, I shall make a poem), approaches “the founding act” of the individual. In the unique universe of the Occitan (courtly and urban) civilization of the twelfth century, based on diversity, freedom, and tolerance, and not on feudal or military values typical of northern France, the subject of the poem paves the way toward the subjectivation of other life forms and roles of the individual or at least advocates for it and actualizes it in the poem. This authentic voice was destroyed, like all of Occitan civilization, by the Cathar or the Albigensian Crusade (1209–​1229). It was continued by its heirs in the historical trajectory of European poetry.

Chapter 17 Case Study 2: Analysis of the Poetic Subject in Henri Michaux’s Poem “The Slowed Down” The Matrix of Michaux’s Female Poetics The poem “La Ralentie” (“The Slowed Down”) occupies a crucial place in Michaux’s “pure poetry,” especially in the group of poems in which female figures and/​or voices appear and, despite temporal differences between them, enter into lively dialog: “Je vous écris d’un pays lointain” [I Write to You from a Distant Country],69 “L’Espace aux ombres” [The Space in Shadows],70 “Jinji,”71 “Fille de la montagne” [Girl from the Mountain].72 “The Slowed Down” presents a new matrix or network of “female poetics,” although we find its origins in Michaux’s earlier text “Cas de folie circulaire” [The Case of Circular Madness], where he also establishes the primarily tragic lyric tonality of this group of poems.73 In “Fille de la montagne” [Girl from the Mountain 1984], which concludes the series of women’s poems in Michaux’s opus and is actually one of his last poetic texts, his tragic poetic female heroes, accompanied by dying and death, vanish. Nevertheless, of all Michaux’s subjects, these figures come the closest to liberating themselves from the fetters that are present in Michaux’s later opus as it engages in intimate dialog with Eastern mysticism. “The Slowed Down” is a painful and tragic lament, a highly emotional poem, a broken oral flow that we may attribute to a solitary, decentered, fragmented consciousness, to a psychologically and physically broken subject that speaks 6 9 From the collection Plume précédé de Lointain intérieur (1998: 590–​595). 70 From the collection Face aux verrous (2001: 515–​52). 71 From the collection Vents et poussières (2004: 189–​197). 72 (2004: 1289–​1293). 73 “The Slowed Down” emerged gradually. The first fragment came out in the cycle “Entre centre et absence” in 1936, the second part in 1937 in Cahiers G.L.M., the last part also in 1937 in Nouvelle Revue Française. The poem was published in its entirety in Cahiers G.L.M. in 1937, and then in the collection Plume précédé de Lointain intérieur in 1938 (1998: 1269). In this analysis, we use the French original and the English translation of the poem contributed by Nathan Hoks and printed in its entirety in Appendix 1. For the purpose of the analysis, we numbered the versets. In the first part of the analysis, we use the English translation. In the discussion of the recitative, we unavoidably rely on the original, providing the translation in notes.

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Case Study 2: Henri Michaux, “The Slowed Down”

through many voices, through several consciousnesses and subjects that are interwoven and fused only to be quickly torn apart again. The poem enacts this interweaving and fusion on different diegetic and enunciative levels that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. For this reason, it is an entirely legitimate for the reader to surrender to the flow of dynamic prereflexive and reflexive modes in the enunciation of the poem where it is possible to sense the simultaneity of interpretative possibilities. As shown by the following analysis, the flow of the dynamics of equal realizations of signifying is also reflected in the rhythmic-​prosodic organization of the poem. Despite its extended length, which in principle allows for the easier synthesis of the poetic elements into a clearly structured poetic plot, the structural principles of the poem are based on an associative interweaving of units, which we call microdiegesis. It is not always possible to connect these units within the unambiguous coherent logic of the whole in order to create an understandable poetic story. On the formal level, microdiogesis coincides with fragments or versets.

Between the Fullness and Emptiness of the Ego The title “La Ralentie,” literally meaning “The Slowed Down” in the feminine gender, hints at the centrality of a female subject and the supremacy of the female principle throughout the poem until the last part when the male principle occupies center stage. It is no wonder that the publication of the second part of the poem in the Nouvelle Revue Française in 1937 was accompanied by the phrase “A mad woman speaks,” which Michaux ultimately left out of the final version. In the first (two-​part) verset, which was first published as a stand-​alone text, the presence of two literary “characters” is established on the level of discourse through grammatical subjects in the impersonal form of indefinite pronouns; the (not completely translatable) French on (rendered as “one” in the English translation) and quelqu’un (rendered as “someone” in the English translation). In French, the pronoun on is often used in plural, while in everyday use, it grammatically replaces the plural nous, us, and is used to signify generality. Michaux’s particularity is that he often uses on as an equivalent for I. However, in the first versets, and perhaps throughout the entire poem, the pronoun on signifies a female character (for example, On n’est plus fatiguée; One’s no longer tired.), “The Slowed Down” (which points to the beginning apposition Slowed down, she feels the pulse of things), while someone is a male character (for example, Someone’s no longer tired; Quelqu’un n’est plus fatigué). Already here it is possible to discern a fundamental difference between the two “characters”: someone gradually becomes an identity that is more differentiated

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as a character than the persona designated with on. It seems that on is more localized, establishes something that feels, which, in its slowness, measures the pulse of things and expresses it: Slowed down, one feels the pulse of things; one snores; one’s got tons of time; all of life, calmly. One gobbles up the sounds, one gobbles them calmly; all of life. The on, which is defined by the loose indefinite female principle, is above all a lament, emptied, and at the same time filled, a condition that is indicated in many places in the text. The ungraspable subject principle begins as a liquid material flowing into objects. Fullness with-​everything or being-​everything is, for example, seen in the following lines: The beams tremble, and it’s you. The sky is black and it’s you. The glass breaks and it’s you. We lost the secret of men. (v. 6 and 7). The and it’s you (the trembling beams, the black sky, the broken glass), even as it is articulated in the grammatical female voice, which in the previous verset signified the low-​tide princess, in this verset resist[s]‌ no longer but rather assumes the presence of another addressed character. In this sense, the poem establishes itself not only as a dialog of floating male and female voices, but also as a dialog that takes place in the absence of the other. This becomes even more apparent and increasingly pointed in the second part of the poem and in the final part. From the other (male) point of view, this escalation reveals an eternal, irrevocable separation: How they part, the continents, how they part to let us die! Singing agony, our hands came apart, the tall sail suffered a slow defeat (v. 74). The fullness of the foreign voices is thematized in verset 11: … or suddenly a voice starts wailing in your heart. The metapoetical moment of the insertion of voices suggests the principle of Matryoshka dolls, of which we also hear an echo in verset 28 in which the Slowed down (the female character of the poem) is pressed into empty canes. One key passage in the poem speaks of emptiness: One’s emptiness is elsewhere. This verset illustrates the whole of Michaux’s work, which is an opus of obsessive interrogation of the subject. Not only that on is an emptied I, that it is hollow, but also that it is not here but elsewhere. Elsewhere, of course, refers on another level of meaning to the painful separation of loving beings, a motif that is possible to extract as the cornerstone of this fragile poetic plot. We find an echo of this elsewhere, one of the key words in Michaux’s poetics, in verset 7 where it appears in the formulation “as strangers”: They perform the play “as strangers.” One page says “Baa” and a sheep presents itself on a platter. Fatigue! Fatigue! Cold everywhere! This microdiegesis also functions as a metapoetic impulse that supports the foreignness of the self: all selves play a game of foreignness. The indefinite dialectic of here and there (elsewhere), presence and absence on the thematic level permeates the entire poem and has both immanent (continent, sea, land, horizon) and transcendental (life-​death, here-​ beyond) dimensions. The heightening of the dynamic of emptiness and fullness

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of the self flows into the psychic-​physical relinquishment of the ego of the female on, which in the end is only a shell without signs of activity or passivity: One no longer has the look of her eye, one no longer has the hand of her arm. One is no longer vain. One no longer envies. One is no longer envied (v. 15). What follows is a sort of reversal that is possible to read as the death of the female character, the Slowed down: One has signed her last leaf, and the butterflies are leaving (v. 17). This reversal is also marked by a larger space between the versets. We can interpret the beginning verset of the next part, which may represent the climax of the poem, in the sense that it announces the change in the prevailing focalization or perspective at the center of the poem: One no longer dreams. One is dreamt. At this point, one of the crucial moments in the poem, the redemption of the Slowed down can be glimpsed. The Slowed down is brought by the voice from beyond, la voix de l’étendue and perhaps merges with it: The voice of the expanse speaks to nails and bones. Home at last, among the pure, wounded by a sweet jab (v. 20 and 21). The voix de l’étendue comes semantically-​prosodically through [vwɑ] in opposition with savoir from the previous verset: On n’est plus pressée de savoir. –​ One’s no longer in a rush to know (In the original, the predicate is feminine, pressée).74 The voice, from which enunciation perhaps momentarily emerges, also speaks to that which perhaps remains of the body (of the Slowed down): bones and nails. Is this the redemption of the voice from beyond where it is the only thing that can establish the desubjectivized being-​with itself that is precisely always elsewhere? Is this already the death of the Slowed down that in its declaration always is, and thus finally with-​itself? This is also the only point of momentary tenderness in the poem that suggests the possibility of reconciliation. And yet this tenderness is supported by the layering of the sound d –​ douceur, tenderness, gentleness is driven toward the oxymoronic syntagma dard de la douceur, a sweet jab (v. 21). Dard can also be a dart, a javelin, or a stinger: in any case, it designates the violence of pain that permeates the entire poem where even the space of tenderness cannot evade the pain. 74 It is possible to connect this voice-​from-​beyond, which seems to allow for the liberation from the need for knowledge, with insight about another knowledge from Michaux’s poem “The Space with Shadows” in which it is written: “Knowledge, other knowledge here, not Knowledge for information. Knowledge to become the musician of reality.” Thirty years after the emergence of “The Slowed Down,” this sort of knowledge is echoed in “Yantra” where it is characterized as collaborative knowledge in an all-​encompassing vibration: “Knowledge, collaborating knowledge /​In the bottomless rising enlightenment where everything reverberates with everything /​Contemplated. United /​Beyond geometry” (Michaux 2001: 759–​760).

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However, the reconciliation mentioned above is only momentary. It announces the only possible liberation, the liberation into death, a sort of final transformation of the visible into the invisible, of existence into essence. Soon the enunciation introduces radical opposites: momentary peace exchanged with torment, destruction (v. 28, 61, 46, 70), and disintegration (v. 20, 41, 44, 47, 61, 67). The process of the disembodiment of the subject material to achieve final being-​with the self, which is perhaps beyond death, is also shown from a darker perspective. It seems that the evaporation and disintegration of the female persona is presented more tragically as the male persona begins to grow stronger, entering the text more decisively –​no longer an “inserted” voice or merely an enunciator, as defined by Ducrot, in the sense of an instance to which a standpoint can be attributed without attributing to it words in material sense –​but more radically as a character and independent speaker that will ultimately take the place of the principle persona and the subject of enunciation. Here, unfortunately, it is not possible to broadly connect the essential character of the flow and subsequent evaporation of the subject with the author’s entire opus. On the level of the poetic plot, the Slowed down cedes space to the shadow (one surrendered to the shadow (v. 10)), and on the other hand, the Slowed down is characterized as the shadow of a shadow that’s bogged down (v. 64). The woman in the poem “The Space with Shadows,” who could be related to the Slowed down, will be swallowed (by something) at the end of the poem. This is indicated in the semantic prosody, a deathly cry from the other side that is in all capital letters: IT WILL SWALLOW ME (Michaux 2001: 527). An undefined female principle, a becoming-​woman, if we use Deleuze and Guattari’s term, is often symbolized by a shadow. The woman in “The Space with Shadows” speaks in a clearly configured plot from the beyond, from the region of shadows, and addresses a man on this side of life. This situation is partially inferred in “The Slowed Down” but in a more ambivalent manner. On the metapoetical level, all these stated moments can be interpreted and understood beyond the discussed poems that all tragically focus on dying (women): as the announcement of change in the structure and nature of the (poetic) subject in Michaux’s opus, above all in terms of the lyric persona and the enunciative levels.

Flow, Fusion, Division: The Subject of the Enounced and Focalizations Already in the first fragment of the poem, it is possible to speak about the presence of two “characters” in the diegesis that are labeled in the French original as on (one in English) and someone.

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Case Study 2: Henri Michaux, “The Slowed Down”

Slowed down, one feels the pulse of things; one snores; one’s got tons of time; all of life, calmly. One gobbles up the sounds, one gobbles them calmly; all of life. One is living in its shoes. One is cleaning up. One no longer needs to squeeze. One’s got tons of time. One savours. One laughs in her fists. One no longer believes in what one knows. One no longer needs to count. One is happy drinking; one is happy not drinking. One forms a pearl. One is, one has time. One is the slowdown. One pulled out of the slipstream. One’s got the smile of a clog. One’s no longer tired. One’s no longer touched. One’s got knees at the end of her toes. One’s no longer ashamed under the cloche. One sold her mountains. One stashed away her egg, one stashed away her nerves. Someone speaks. Someone’s no longer tired. Someone no longer listens. Someone no longer needs help. Someone’s no longer tense. Someone’s no longer waiting. One cries out. The other’s in the way. Someone rolls, sleeps, sews, is that you, Lorellou?

It is not possible to determine with complete certainty who is speaking and what, if any, enunciative instance is established as superior. Many interpretations are possible. First, on, which has all the grammatical characteristics of the female gender, speaks with a female voice designated with on. When the transition to a character designated with someone takes place, a voice begins to speak that is designated as someone. Thus emerges the possibility of the sentence Someone says that we can read as a sentence accompanying the reported speech that gives voice to a character designated as on. However, the sentence is not followed by a colon but by a period as a signal for free indirect speech. A second, more likely option is that the someone, given the other lexical male characteristics, is a male persona spoken about by the female voice who in the first part of the fragment is clearly represented by the pronoun on, as the female character the Slowed down. The first indication for such a reading is the title that introduces a female character. In this case, the female voice in the part that begins with someone, adapts to the male by taking on his perspective to the degree that it seems that only someone is speaking. We follow Ducrot’s lead in naming this persona the enunciator. At the end of the fragment, an inconsistency occurs, because at this point someone is designated as a woman named Lorellou. Until the point when Someone’s no longer tense, someone clearly indicates a male speaker because of the absence of the morpheme of female gender in the adjective tense (In French, the female characterization sounds natural; in English, adjectives are not gendered so the nuance is lost.). The sentence One cries out. The other’s in the way clearly suggest that one and someone are separate characters, or divided, the doubles of one character. Therefore someone either designates a woman or it is male and female voices merged. The last sentence escapes the identificatory principle or rather opens the possibility of various readings. Does the sentence address the male voice of a woman expressed with the pronoun on

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in the character the Slowed down, or does it address another, newly introduced woman (Lorellou)? Or is the first female voice addressing herself as Lorellou? It becomes increasingly evident that what we have here is the complete fluidity of the subject/​subjects on the level of persona as well on the level of the voice, in the sense that several embedded enunciative levels are established that are sometimes hidden or fluid and therefore difficult to define. The principle of embedding is thematized on the metapoetic level in the already cited verset 64: Listen, I am the shadow of a shadow that’s bogged down. One possible interpretation of the complex polyphony is that the lament of the female voice which prevails throughout most of the poem is in reality embedded into the other voice at a higher enunciative level, which, at the end of the poem, is revealed as a male voice. In what follows, a more rapid exchange of microdiegesis can be observed, the on is, through other difficult to determine voices, adapted to other personae or characters: the low-​tide princess (v. 4), the girl of air (v. 34), a drowned woman (v. 13), the twelve-​year-​old (v. 8), the shadow (v. 64), the swan (?) (v. 49), Lorellou (v. 1 27, 40), and Juana (v. 66, 75). In the latter two examples, we are dealing with female characters that are addressed by a male voice, and thus achieve a large effect of referentiality. In all the others, we are dealing with characters that are not given their own voice and seem to be created according to Michaux’s principle of doubles as the metamorphosis of the Slowed down. The Slowed down is objectivized and various moments of her suffering and disintegration are revealed in and through these “images.” In addition to the rapid shifting of images and personae, we note the constant transition of voices. From on, that prevails in the first part of the poem (v. 1, 7, 9 10,12,13, 15, 16, 17) and, which, by all accounts, appears to be a female voice, and Lorellou who is intermittently addressed by a male character-​voice (v. 37, 40), the subject of the enounced transforms into I which at times seems to be a woman (v. 46, 48, 51, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 69, 74) and at times a man (v. 40, 41, 44, 45, 52, 54, 66, 67, 68, 75, 77). Throughout the poem and at its end, on is once again used as the voice for self-​reference (v. 22 29, 31, 33, 61, 63, 71), and this additionally hinders the clear identification of the protagonists. The complexity only grows with reported speech characterized in internal dialog by a (most likely) female voice (v. 29), the voice of a night light that listens to a (female) lament (v. 27), a grandfather’s voice (v. 48), and the voice of the masses (v. 63). It is impossible to assign these numerous versets with no clear indicators to any specific speaker, especially in the versets where the reader cannot discern an affective focalization that can be attributed to either a male or female voice. It seems that the female voice often enounces the other, the male adopting an affective focalization of “others” (for example in v. 29, 30, 34). In the second part, especially after the

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Case Study 2: Henri Michaux, “The Slowed Down”

section that could be understood as the climax of the poem (although the plot is not structured in a linear fashion), there emerges increasingly intense and rapid alternating voices and focalizations that again cannot be clearly identified. Is a male voice appearing? Is a female voice speaking? Is a female voice flowing into a male voice? The male voice actually begins to germinate more clearly –​or rather to ooze onto the surface of the work –​where the earlier mentioned calming of the female on occurs: the moment of grace, perhaps already beyond death, followed by its opposite, the immeasurable pain caused by the disappearance and dissipation (of the body) and its descent into the underworld (or drowning). The man follows the woman into the darkness, into the underworld (v. 37–​45). From this point onward, it becomes more and more difficult to determine whether the voice belongs to a male or female character or if one enunciative level has been embedded into another, or if what we have is a complete fusion of the two voices:75 Yes, no, yes. Well yes, I am complaining. Even water sighs as it falls. I’m babbling, now I’m lapping up sludge. Sometimes the evil spirit, sometimes the event… I was listening to the elevator. You remember, Lorellou, you never showed up on time (v. 51 and 52). The statements of Lorellou in this part of the work (v. 52, v. 54) migrate to a male speaker, but immediately afterwards, in a retrospective microdiegesis with the I as the subject of the enounced, describe the descent of the woman into the underworld: The birds flew after me in the underground, but I turned and said: Not here, underground. And stupor is its privilege. Thus I moved forward alone, with a royal step (v. 58, v. 59). The voice that speaks is the shadow of a shadow that is sinking (v. 65). From here onward, we are the witness of the growing pain of separation and/​or death and the increasingly abrupt alternation of the female and male voice. Only in the last three versets of the poem does polyphony, at least on the level of enunciative instances, transform into unison as the woman’s voice completely disappears. What remains, in all probability, is the male voice, which, in the text, introduces the other female character, Juana, to whom he addresses his lament (v. 75–​77) and who may be one of the avatars of the Slowed down.76 Of course it can also not be entirely excluded that 75 Lorellou, Lorellou, I’m afraid… At times darkness, at times rustlings –​man; Listen, I’m getting close to the sounds of Death –​man; The air has entirely emptied out, Lorellou –​ man; My hands, what smoke! If you only knew… No more luggage, no more lugging, no more power. No more anything, darling –​woman, man (?); Experience; misery; how crazy is the flag-​bearer! And there’s always the straits to get across. My legs, if you only knew, what smoke! –​woman, man?; But I’ll always have your face in my cart –​woman, man? 76 A reading inclined toward biographical analysis might recognize biographical elements in this network of female names and specifically Michaux’s attachment to three

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the male voice is still being embedded in the female voice, or that the leading female voice and its masks in the diegesis have been superseded by the male voice assuming the role of the subject of enunciation. Despite its unfathomable polyphony, the reading creates the need to funnel the escaping voices into a character in the diegesis mostly on the basis of the radically affective power of the poem that in turn creates a fragmented affective, and here and there value-​laden focalizations. This tendency arises from the habitual need, an acquired convention of readers, to identify a distinct unified subject. It may at times seem that individual sections of the poem momentarily establish the traditional model of the lyric subject, places where the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced as irreducibly distinct positions in the subject of speech (apparently) merge. This fusion also supports the momentarily centered affective focalization. Although there are several places where this fusion does not hold and it becomes clear we are dealing with entirely porous entities, it is not possible at any level of the poetic structuring to speak about the solidity of the subject much less about the solidity of identity.

Enunciation Until now, we have focused on the complexity of voices and focalizations on the level of the enounced and the storyworld. Now we will examine voice in the light of the enunciation itself and specifically from two standpoints. In the second part of this section, we will examine voice from the standpoint of material realizations of enunciation using Meschonnic’s concept of recitative, the levels of subject configuration that to the greatest degree express the prereflexive elements of the subject. We will begin by examining voice from the aspect of the lyric voice as an analogue to narrative voice or the narrator as these instances are conceived in theories of narrative. According to Benveniste, the subject is expressed in two ways in each discourse: on the level of the enounced where it is represented, and on the level of enunciation where it is established as the subject (of speech). In narrative theory, each narrative text has a narrator or narrative voice that is located at loves: his (future) wife Marie-​Louise Fredière (Lorellou) and the never-​to-​be wife Susana Soca might represent one spiritual spiral –​the Slowed down –​the other spiral being a represention of Susana Soca and another American, Angelica Ocampo, whom Michaux met while traveling through South America in 1937. “Lorellou” appeared in the first emerging versions of the poem that came out in fragments as “Marie-​Lou” (1998: 1243–​1246).

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Case Study 2: Henri Michaux, “The Slowed Down”

a higher level than the storyworld. Both of these hypotheses can be carried into the theory of the lyric because they enable the analysis of more complex examples of the configuration of the subject in the poem, as well as a more penetrating analysis of examples in which the traditional model appears to be employed, where instances of the subject of enunciation/​narrator, speaking voices, and focalizations are merged. The use of the present tense often supports this apparent fusion. To use narratological vocabulary, the autodiegetic subject of enunciation occurs when the subject of enunciation (the “narrator” which is established on another enunciative level, the same as the subject of enunciation in everyday speech) coincides with the speaking lyric persona. The heterodiegetic subject of enunciation occurs when he/​she speaks about other lyric personae and characters in the storyworld. Here it is, however, necessary to consider the degree of metaphorization and the symbolization of poetic discourse, and to consider whether formal heterodiegesis conceals the metaphorical procedure in the sense that the character or various characters in the poetic storyworld about whom the extradiegetic subject of enunciation speaks, can nevertheless be attributed to it. The level of enunciation is configured in terms and to the degree that the enunciation itself is endowed with the structure of a poetic world. It is certain that one of the prototypical characteristics of the lyric in history is precisely the creation of the impression that the poetic plot is built upon the enunciation itself and remains in the enunciation itself. The degree of formation of such a world at the level of enunciation depends –​as in other enunciative and diegetic levels –​on parameters such as verb tense, temporal-​spatial deictics, and directionality (for example, direct address). Given this stipulation, it is possible in the case of “The Slowed Down” to speak of three types of segments that create the whole and that are among themselves a fragmented series that give an additional impression of the indeterminacy and ineffability of the entire poetic plot and it subjects. The first type of segment are those where it seems that the emphasis is on the event of enunciation, with the use of the present tense, at times with the address of the second person, and yet with less referential elements on the basis of which a clear plot can be formed that refers to a world and the position of a voice as a person in that world. In the foreground is the “action” of enunciation. The second type of segment is a variation on the first, also using the present tense, but now more referential elements are present that place the voice more clearly in a mimetic and coherent world and the reader becomes more focused on the “story” of the enounced. The impression in these cases is of the traditional model of the lyric subject where all subject instances coalesce. This occurs particularly in the section where the personal pronoun I appears. However, these fleeting impressions of the traditional lyric subject are constantly disrupted by

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the alteration of voices and focalizations on the level of the enounced. In contrast, an almost opposite impression occurs, equally difficult to verify, where we witness (at least partially) the hidden, embedded enunciative levels or at least the frequent appearance of (Ducrot’s) enunciators that approximate the status of an individual voice. The third type of segment is in the past tense and functions as fragmentary diegetic frames –​we call them microdiegesis –​in which various characters perhaps connect with the Slowed down and could be understood as typical Michauldian doubles of the Slowed down. The rapid alternation of all three types of segments, accompanied by changes in the verb tense, fragments the temporal-​spatial aspect of the entire plot. In particular, the emphatically metaphorical form of the retrospective microdiegesis (with the doubles of the Slowed down) introduces the enunciation in the present tense, which increasingly sounds like lament or even wailing, and which, despite the dialogization and intersubjectivity expressed through frequent addresses, speaks primarily of absence, loss, and death. Similar to what was demonstrated during the analysis of voices and focalizations on the level of the enounced and the storyworld, it is also not possible on the level of enunciation to provide with any certainty a monological interpretation. We mentioned that one of the possibilities is that –​in accordance with the prevailing tendency to read poetry as a monological genre –​we locate a hidden unified voice, male or female, above the polyphony, on a higher enunciative level. Supporting presumptions of the superior female voice is the incipit “A mad woman speaks” in one of the intermediate versions of the poem. On the other hand, the presumption of a dominant male voice could be based on a biographical reading, in which the superior subject of enunciation would be linked with the empirical author, and where this voice would then produce embedded voices of various female characters (referring to actual people) on the level of the enounced. A more legitimate interpretation is that the highest enunciative instance is a multiple and fluid voice in which the volatile, fluid female principle suggested in the title appears dominant. As we shall see, a precise analysis of the recitative supports this explanation. It reveals that the vocal-​signifying paradigms of the poetic subject as recitative also correlates with the voices and focalizations. The /​k/​–​/​g/​pair, for example, seems to designate the male principle throughout the texture of the poem, and, in combination with the lexical signifying level, indicates solidity. The sound combinations of the phonemes /​r/​, /​l/​, /​t/​, /​d/​, p/​ with the vowels /​i/​and /​e/​represent variations of the main semantic-​prosodic and powerfully symbolic matrices of the poem, established through the fluid female principle.

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Case Study 2: Henri Michaux, “The Slowed Down”

Coherence: Isotopies Along with the fragmentation of the structuring of the subject levels and the poetic plot, we also find fusion, a lack of differentiation, connection: the male voice submerged into the female voice, the female into the male, the female body surfacing in the male body, the male voice in the woman’s body, all in the mode of sliding, traversing. The emerging and submerging of voices, characters, and focalizations –​which cannot be clearly identified and classified, as any effort to establish a coherent explanation of polyphony is destined to cause the loss of another, equally logical interpretation –​cohere into thematic istopies: a tragic dialectic of the interwining and separation of the self and the other, the decentring of subjects, the complete collapse of the solid egological principle, the loss of the self, and above all the loss of the other. The central thematic cores of death, love, separation, exhaustion, cruelty, lament, mourning, emptiness, and disembodiment in the poetic story are configured deliberately according to the principle of discontinuity –​ipse as Ricœur calls it. The fragile connectedness is crafted from motif-​metaphorical isotopies, motivic cores of dying, departure, leave-​taking, sea, sailing (low tide, straits, waves, lower decks, horizons, sails, masts, etc.), drowning (a reference to Ophelia?), (mythological) descents into the underworld (references to Euridice and Orpheus, perhaps to Persephone). The umbrella isotopy, which includes the above thematic and motivic categories and is expressed in all layers of the poem, also on the level of recitative, reveals the conceptual and phenomenological dialectic of solidity and fluidity. It also includes the dialectic of dispersion and fusion, which we can observe in the configuration of voices and focalizations. Despite this dominant dialectic, fluidity and dispersion are nonetheless omnipresent. This duplicity, however, appears in an almost entirely opposite manner than in Michaux’s later texts where (mystical) reconciliation and convergence of the infinite multitudes of One occur. Here, the supremacy of fluidity could be understood tragically as the emphasis is placed on passing to the other side as one of its possible forms. Thus solidity and permanence, which also implies immobility, finality, and most likely also the indestructible oppositions of death –​life, pain/​suffering –​redemption, presence –​absence, alliance –​disalliance –​return as a powerful counterbalance through the dominant focalization, and above all in the male spiral (difficult to isolate and also inseparable from the female spiral). Is it not possible to reconcile this point of view with passing over and transition and perhaps this is precisely what establishes the tragic sentiment that permeates the poem. “The Slowed Down” presents the battle in fluidity and with fluidity (fatigue is one of the dominant motifs), or it already surrenders, reconciles, while still being

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trapped in the principles of solidity and finality. It is because of this that agony, pain, fear, horror, tension, emptiness, and lament prevail. In certain moments, as we have observed, there is a hint of reconciliation and perhaps an insight into necessity and inevitability, and accommodation with passing over, but even a breakthrough to the kind of understanding (transition movement) that destroys all opposites; in the already mentioned momentary redemption toward the voice of the expanse.77

Recitative in “The Slowed Down” Rhythm and Semantic Prosody Our analysis has revealed that the unique coherence of the poetic subject, which is, as we demonstrated, configured in the sign of decentration, pluralization, but at the same time undifferentiation and fusion, is powerfully constituted on the level of the textual organization, in what Meschonnic terms recitative: it occurs in the continuous of non-​semiotic signifying, in the “physicality” of discourse. It is worth mentioning that from the standpoint of the concept of signifying as developed by Meschonnic, which dissects the principle of the duality of the linguistic sign divided into signifier and signified, the term “materiality of words” remains part of the dualistic optic. On the contrary, when we speak of signifiance, it means that we are no longer conceiving of content and form, the signifier and the signified, as divided, but that we aim for a reciprocal interdependant functioning of all the elements that construct the poem as a singular art system. The (accentual-​prosodic) rhythm is also a dominant carrier of the mobilizing charge for the intersubjectivation (or transubjectivation) of the poetic discourse that occurs during each new enunciation. Therefore, the recitative is that which

77 The first mention of the horizon in v. 13 is already part of this perspective: One scans the horizon for her key with a drowned woman around her neck, dead in the unbreathable water. But the key on the horizon has not yet been found, and at the same time here is the drowned woman. The image of the horizon as the possibility of opening finds a powerful opposition in the image of the breaking-​through of the woman –​the Slowed down on the horizon (v. 70). What is relevant is also the notion of traveling toward the sun which is prevented by the violence of others: They stuffed me into empty canes. The world was taking revenge. They stuffed me into empty canes, into syringe needles. They didn’t want me get to my appointment with the sun (v. 28). This symbolic fragment connected to the sun echoes in verset 76 in the metaphor of the woman’s head as a golden June bug: her head suddenly thrown back like a June bug in a tree that flips over on its elytra.

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words create in mutual webs of non-​linear connectivity, not merely in the semiotic sequences of independent (dictionary) words in the poem; it is a syntagmatic and paradigmatic series of networks. Even a precise analysis of these ways of signifying is approximate and doomed to the linear principle of interpretation that the poem strives to annul. The process of signifying on this level is, however, not an autotelic, self-​referential function of the poem, but constitutes specific semantics in the physicality and vocality of the discourse that functions performatively. This vocality is not meant only in the sense of reciting the poem aloud, but also captures the visual, graphic dimension of the text as discourse. It is necessary to recognize that this logic beyond-​the-​sign is difficult to efficiently and practically apply as our mindsets are currently still captive to the paradigm of the sign that stubbornly returns or resurfaces on various concealed levels. This is perhaps even more applicable in the problematics of the lyric subject as traditionally understood; strict literary theory never dealt with the dimensions of the literary/​lyric subject in the area of form, or more broadly, in the material dimension of the text, as the literary subject is exclusively established in the enunciative apparatus –​as the speaker. “The Slowed Down” is a good example of non-​semiotic signifying with which the poetic subject is (also) constituted as recitative, partially because it is founded on the lament as pure enunciation. According to Benveniste, representation in the enounced is irreducibly linked to enunciation. In the poetic system of “The Slowed Down,” this feature acquires additional value. The enunciation itself is given a particular ontological status that is indicated by the powerful metapoetical elements. The Slowed down utters or is uttered from various spaces, but this female voice speaks increasingly less from a physical body or physical place as her body evaporates and diminishes, already becoming the shadow of a shadow that’s bogged down (v. 64). Finally, the female voice even mentions some other space from which she is speaking, feeling, perceiving, a space which is undefined, and seems as if it is the space of pure enunciation in which all opposites are annulled, especially presence-​absence. The final separation of the female and male principle also occurs during enunciation itself, that simultaneously performs not only dispersion but also fusion and coalescence: How they part, the continents, how they part to let us die! (v. 74). At this point, a solidly male focalization enters and remains until the end. In this multi-​voiced lament, the poem enacts the modern (and already postmodern) condition of the subject, and equally emphatically phenomenonalizes the voice or what might be called the multi-​voice. We will divide the following analysis into an investigation of rhythm in the narrow sense of the word, the

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so-​called accentual rhythm, and semantic prosody in the sense of the vocal-​consonant organization of the text.

Accentual Rhythm The poem is organized into versets that are shaped according to rhythm and not according to metric principle as, for example, in the work of Saint-​John Perse. Here what is important is also the signifying function of typography. “The Slowed Down” underwent many changes in its various incarnations as it emerged as a poem. In particular, Michaux focused on the typographical role of white space between the versets. For the publication by G.L.M., he redesigned the spaces and separated the initially present versets and sections with even larger spaces from sections that he inserted later (Michaux 1998: 1290). The organization of these spaces is established as signifying: various lengths between individual versets that on the level of the storyworld coincide with the microdiegesis, create pauses and breaks in the process of enunciation, and the formation of rhythmic modules to use Boris A. Novak’s phrase (Novak 2005: 52). In the first verset, the rhythmical module is established in which rhythmical groups of 6-​, 3-​, 5-​, 7-​, 8-​ syllables without fixed accents alternate with 9-​syllable groups. These rhythmical groups generally correspond to verbal clauses and even to whole sentences that function as verses within the versets. With few exceptions, versets are generally lines of prose. On the level of the macrosystem of the poem a similar syllabic organization is established: a precise analysis of the rhythmical units shows that the poem is organized according to the principles of dispersed quasi-​isosyllabic segments. We call them quasi-​isosyllabic because they are approximately the same value, usually they include 5-​, 6-​, 7-​, 8-​syllables. These groups, organized according to the logic of repetition, are frequently interrupted by the intervention of rhythmic groups that have half the number of syllables than the number in the first modules (that is 2, 3, or 4 syllables). This kind of structure creates a deep rhythmical paradigm that is expressed on the level of the microsystem of versets, on the level of larger segments of the poem, and on the level of the overall macrosystem. The other dominant paradigm of the recitative of the poem in terms of accentual rhythm is clearly founded on the same impulse of repetition on the level of composition described above: the repetition of words and syntagms, including verbal clauses and sentences.78 The frequency of repetition in “The Slowed Down” is exceptional, the operation taking place 44 times. This is a form of generalization 78 For example, in versets 29, 34, 38, 54, 58, 78.

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on the level of the macrosystem, repetition being the fundamental impulse of the poetic subject. Most often, it relates to gemination, followed by anaphora and epiphora. Gemination is thus the generalized paradigm of the rhythm of the subject; it is expressed as the doubling of rhythmic modules, that mostly strive toward the juxtaposition of the isosyllabic rhythmical groups, and is occasionally interrupted by the half-​syllabic groups, in syntactic organization as well. From the aspect of the macrosystem of the poem, repetition appears as an obsessive tic that is accompanied throughout the poem by pluralization on the level of enunciation, focalization, and emplotment. As such, repetition reveals a sort of a global coherence in the identity of the poetic subject, while difference and plurality are expressed on other poetic levels. At the same time, the repetition also speaks about doubling, about Two, about the impossibility of One. In this sense, the gemination rhythmically enacts two fundamental spirals of the poem, male and female, approaching and then retreating from each other, merging and then separating. The principle of the Two is seemingly enacted as identity, like the juxtaposed doubling of words or syntagms. However, the first part of the gemination that is duplicated in the second part is never truly identical. The poetic-​rhythmic value of the second part is always different: the repetition of the same, which this is not, often escalates to the pathetic situation of a scream: Fatigue! Fatigue! (v. 7); Horreur! Horreur! (v. 25); Silence! Silence. (v. 32); Quand le malheur tire son fil, comme il découd, comme il découd! (v. 62); Mais pourquoi? Pourquoi? Vide? Vide, vide, angoisse; angoisse, comme un seul grand mât sur la mer (v. 75).79 At the same time, it is possible to understand repetition from the standpoint of the status of enunciation in “The Slowed Down” as defined in the previous sections, that is as an obsessive effort to broaden the space of enunciation, a more solid anchoring in speech itself, in lament that becomes a battle against the evaporation and disappearance that occurs in the female spiral of the poem. A strong, crisp rhythm is also created by rhythmic-​syntactic parallelism based on simple compositional constructions. We already mentioned the repetition of the pronoun on (82 repetitions), which is not specific to “The Slowed Down” but a paradigm that we see often in Michaux’s work.80 Syntactic-​rhythmical continuity 79 Fatigue! Fatigue! (v. 7); Horror! Horror without an object (v. 25); Silence! Silence (v. 32); When misfortune pulls a thread, how it all unravels, how it all unravels! (v. 62); But why? Why? Emptiness? Emptiness, emptiness, anguish; anguish like a tall mast alone at sea (v. 75). 80 Michaux’s most radical poem and closest to “The Slowed Down” in terms of construction is “Quelqu’un part, quelqu’un” ([Someone departs, someone] 1998: 550–​555), which is one of the texts that Michaux wrote between 1936 and 1938, at the same time

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is outlined on the basis of simple single-​sentence statements and beyond dialectical affirmative and negative forms; therefore, once again through duality. The negative construction ne…plus, “no longer” is, after the pronoun on, the most frequently used compositional dimension in the recitative. The fundamental arc of the enunciation is constructed on this syntactically simple and contextually astonishing dialectic. It is the main syntactical pattern of “The Slowed Down” that is endlessly repeated. Here is also the hidden truth of the Slowed down, her ubiquity, in the manner of the inclusive logic of presence–​absence: it is and is no longer: on est, on n’est plus. This is already apparent in the first verset, which is divided into two parts and must be understood as a characteristic of the recitative on the level of typography, as this dialectic joins the difference between the pronouns on and quelqu’un that configure the female and male principles. As these spirals wind through the poem, they function as mirror images of each other in the first two-​part section.

Semantic Prosody The other dominant flow of the recitative is constructed mostly of consonantal-​ vocal frequencies. Similar to rhythmic modules, these also weave the paradigms of the recitative both within the microsystem of individual versets (fragments) and wider categories such as the macrosystem of the poem. Consonantal semantics prevail in the semantic prosody. The high level of precision in the formation of consonantal matrices is particularly astonishing given the fact that “The Slowed Down” is a relatively long poem. Analysis shows that one single consonantal paradigm or the interaction of two or sometimes three consonantal paradigms always occur in an individual fragment, which becomes a microsystem. Semantic-​prosodic transitions between individual microsystems (which, on the plot level correspond to microdiegeses) are frequently established, dictated by one of the prevailing consonants of the segments. At times, sound themes are created in a vertical manner, less densely dispersed throughout the body of the text, and at times in a more horizontal manner. The signifying value in these hardly noticeable (although extremely apparent to the auditory memory) vertical arcs is revealed when coupled with the lexical semantics of the poem.

he was writing “The Slowed Down.” In this six-​page free-​verse poem, the construction quelqu’un appears as a pronoun with a verb or in the apposition.

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Two vocal-​signifying themes are established as the dominant paradigms and are in deep interaction throughout the poem: the dominant voiced /​r/​and the fricative /​s/​that sometimes confirms or surrounds its more resonant variant /​z/​. The voiced /​r/​appears in the title as the initial voice-​body, then in the incipit of the poem, and in the first verset a total of 22 times. Here it enters into interaction and combination with the nasal /​ɑ̃/​(15 repetitions) and /​ɔ̃/​(38 repetitions). The pronoun on, which is repeated 20 times in the first verset, along with Ralentie and ronfler create vocal-​signifying intonation. The following also connect on the vocal-​signifying level with on: son, ronfler, honte, mont, and Ralentie, temps, tranquillement, tranquillement, temps, buvant, courants, vendu, tendu, attend. The sound /​u/​has great signifying value among vowels juxtaposed with the nasals /​ɔ̃/​and /​ɑ̃/​on the macrosystemic level, often as a carrier of tenderness. The sound /​u/​also appears in the two female names, Lorellou and Juana, and appears frequently in the first part of the poem through verset 11: pouls, sourire, roule, coud, bout, touchée, écoute, Lorellou, foule, troupeau, courage, poutre, vous, mouton, douze, goût, partout. The sounds /​o/​and /​y/​acquire an elevated position of enunciation in the verset: Oui, obscur, obscur, oui inquiétude. Sombre semeur. Quelle offrande! (73)81 The voiced consonant /​r/​is one of the dominant sounds in the macrosystem, appearing in 21 versets of the poem: its role is to create a dispersed integration, especially the integration of the female spiral that the Slowed down creates, and this entirely in the sign of the dialectic of fusion and flow. In this network, which enters into interaction with other consonants and vowels, the voiced consonant /​ r/​includes all aspects of the multiple subject of the poem, each time with specific emphases on individual microsystems. If the sound theme of /​r/​is inclusive and almost omnipresent, /​s/​appears as a sound theme in 18 microsystems and is more exclusive. It establishes various segments of signifying. The signifying value /​s/​(in combination with /​r/​ ) indicates the aspect of transition, flow, dispersal (v. 60, 72, 73, 76, 77, 64). /​S/​ acquires value when the concept of the evaporation of the Slowed down appears as a theme (v. 41, 45, 46). In addition, /​s/​prosodically configures the (motivic-​ thematic) isotopy of death, the underworld (v. 57, 58, 60), departure, the tragic separation of the self from the other (v. 73, 74, 75, 76, 77). In verset 60, /​s/​with the plosive /​t/​and /​d/​, the voiced consonant /​r/​and the nasal /​ɑ̃/​establishes a dialectic between solidity and dispersal, flow, which is the umbrella isotopy of the poem.

81 Yes, darkness, darkness, yes, worry. Sombre sower. What an offering!

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Autrefois, quand la Terre était solide, je dansais, j’avais confiance. A présent, comment serait-​ce possible ? On détache un grain de sable et toute la plage s’effondre, tu sais bien.82

In addition to the two dominants in the interaction, the two consonants in individual versets enter into a dynamic relationship with other consonant and vowel chains. It is quite possible from these to extract the dominant paradigm of voiced consonants /​l/​, /​v/​, /​m/​, and also /​j/​, mostly in connection with /​r/​, and the paradigm of plosives /​p/​ –​ /​b/​, /​t –​ /​d/​, /​k/​ –​ /​g/​, and partially also /​f/​. Between versets 66 and 67, for example, where in all likelihood we have a dialog between the man (who speaks in v. 66) and the woman (who is probably speaking in v. 67), we find on the prosodic level a network of contrast and dialog between the groups /​r/​+​/​k/​+​/​ʒ/​ (v. 66) and /​r/​ +​/​t /​ –​ /​d/​ +​ /​l/​ +​/​s/​ (v. 67), where the common denominator is /​r/​and /​t/​, creating a dialectic of I and you: Juana, je ne puis rester, je t’assure. J’ai une jambe de bois dans la tire-​lire à cause de toi. J’ai le coeur crayeux, les doigts morts à cause de toi. Petit coeur en balustrade, il fallait me retenir plus tôt. Tu m’as perdu ma solitude. Tu m’as arraché le drap. Tu as mis en fleur mes cicatrices.83

The paradigms /​l/​and /​d/​create the signifying value of tenderness and sweetness in connection with the Slowed down, Ralentie, Lorellou, and at this point focalization and the speaker are usually male, though not always. For example: Hier, tu n’avais qu’à étendre un doigt, Juana; pour nous deux, pour nous deux, tu n’avais qu’à étendre un doigt (v. 77).84 The arc of /​d/​, that is the densest and perhaps the strongest in the verset Enfin chez soi, dans le pur, atteinte du dard de la douceur (v. 21),85 creates value on the basis of the dominant lexeme in this vocal-​signifying network –​ douceur, sweetness, tenderness –​especially together with the vowel /​ u/​, while finding its powerful opposite in the lexeme découd, unravel: Quand le malheur tire son fil, comme il découd, comme il découd! (v. 62).86 The semantics of /​ʒ/​is very strong, reinforced with /​m/​in verset 29 where we find the network je 82 Once, when the Earth was solid, I would dance, I had faith. Now how would that be possible? As you know, one removes a grain of sand and the whole beach collapses (v. 60). 83 Juana, I can’t stay, I assure you. I’ve got a wood leg in the money box because of you. I’ve got a chalky heart and dead fingers because of you. (v. 66) Little heart on handrails, I still needed to hang on. You ruined my solitude. You ripped off my sheet. You made my scars bloom (v. 67). 84 Yesterday you only had to spread out a finger, Juana; for the two of us, for the both of us, you only had spread out a finger. 85 Home at last, among the pure, wounded by a sweet jab. 86 When misfortune pulls a thread, how it all unravels, how it all unravels!

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–​jamais –​gémissement –​jeune homme in which je (I) and jeune homme (young man) and gémissement (moan) become the common denominator. The man in the verset is departing: Et je me disais: “Sortirai-​je? Sortirai-​je ? Ou bien ne sortirai-​je jamais ? Jamais?” Les gémissements sont plus forts loin de la mer, comme quand le jeune homme qu’on aime s’éloigne d’un air pincé.87

Thus the poem establishes semantic-​prosodic relations between the key lexemes. The analysis shows that these relations are based above all on the dynamic between the voiced consonants, the plosives, and the fricatives. In the first part, the paradigm is established with the beginning plosive /​p/​, which is substantiated by the negating adverb plus: plus, pouls, perdu, partout, princesse, piece, poutre, page, plateau, petite. The extremely strong consonant /​p/​appears in the second part of the verset 41 times, in dynamic relation with /​r/​: Mes mains, quelle fumée! Si tu savais … Plus de paquets, plus porter, plus pouvoir. Plus rien, petite. Plus with 45 repetitions is the principle element in the rhythmical-​syntactical paradigm of the entire poem. The voiced consonant /​j/​in combination with /​œ/​in versets 9, 13, 16, and 18 configure the vocal-​signifying matrix with the key words ailleurs, recueille, feuille, œil, travaille, papillons, feuille. Interwoven here we find the main substantive segments of the poem: on a son creux ailleurs, on recueille ses disparus, on est la sœur par l’eau et par la feuille, on n’a plus le regard de son œil, on ne travaille plus, on a signé sa dernière feuille and c’est le départ des papillons.88 The lexeme feuille is then repeated in an important place in verset 56. Also here we find the dialectic between here and there. However, the others from the perspective of the focalization of this verset, belonging to the female voice, have no insight into the real there. Thus when God is spoken of, it is only through the optic of hereness: Ils parlent de Dieu, mais c’est avec leurs feuilles.89 Papillons, the butterflies that depart, the last “leaf ” feuille, and the view that is no longer from an œil, “eye,” that belongs to anyone at all, are all connected with ailleurs, “elsewhere.” The sisterhood with the common bleak in verset 15 is woven through the water and another leaf (On ne trahit plus le sol, on ne trahit plus l’ablette, on est la soeur

87 And I said to myself: “Will I get out? Will I get out? Or will I never get out? Never?” The moans are louder far from the sea, as when the young man we love wanders off like a snob. 88 One’s emptiness is elsewhere; One gathers up her departed, come, come; One is sister by water and by leaf; One no longer has the look of her eye One no longer works; One has signed her last leaf, and the butterflies are leaving. 89 They speak of God, but with their leaves.

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par l’eau et par la feuille),90 probably as a segment that perhaps presents the motif of drowning and purification. Similarly, water is also one of the symbols of the fluidity of woman-​the Slowed down (Même l’eau soupire en tombant, v. 51, comme l’eau tombe, v. 76),91 but with various connotations. The motif of drowning that emerges in versets 14–​18 and is repeated in verset 52 (Je balbutie, je lape la vase à présent)92 where the water is, for example, unbreathable. We note once again the sound parallelism within the paradigm /​j/​: On recueille ses disparus (v. 12), and On ne travaille plus (v. 16).93 Also important, but less obvious from the standpoint of sound, are the vocal-​ visual verticals in the key versets from 17 to 22: papillons, pressée, silence, savoir, os, soi, douceur, déçues, sait, aussi (butterflies, hurried, silence, to know, bone, self, tenderness, disappointed, know, also). In the first part, the paradigm is configured with /​ k/​as the initial sound: quelqu’un, contraint, compagnon, casse, cœur, crépitez, creux, clef, cou, cure, courbure (someone, constraint, companion, break, heart, key, neck, care, curvature) usually in combination with /​r/​. In general, the /​k/​–​/​g/​pair appears throughout the texture of the poem, above all as a sign of the male principle or in a cluster with the lexical level of meaning-​making that indicate solidity, also ideological and conceptual solidity (for example in v. 30: Il est d’une grande importance qu’une femme se couche tôt pour pleurer, sans quoi elle serait trop accablée.).94 And yet the paradigm /​k/​through the principle of solidity transforms into brokenness: breaking (casse) –​and burning (crépitez–​crackling) of the solid into emptiness (creux), and bending (curve –​courbure, key –​clef, neck –​cou). All of this takes place in the sign of “fancy of circles” –​par le goût du rond, because of which the woman is left in the space of her shadow (v. 10). We also note the crucial monosyablles in the paradigm /​k/​in the first letter: cœur, cure, cou, clef (heart, care, neck, key). The central dispersed semantic-​prosodic and powerfully symbolic matrix of the poem, which, like the other configurational levels of the subject, reveals the dispersed multiplicity and at the same time the connectedness and integration of the poetic subject, is a paradigm that weaves together the combination of consonants /​r, /​l/​, /​t/​, /​d/​, p/​with the vowels /​i/​and /​e/​. The key 9 0 One doesn’t betray the earth, one doesn’t betray the bleak, one is sister by water and by leaf. 91 Even water sighs as it falls.; the way water falls. 92 I’m babbling, now I’m lapping up sludge. 93 One gathers up her departed; One no longer works. 94 It is of great importance that a woman goes to bed early to cry, otherwise she’d be too overwhelmed.

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words are vocal-​signifying echoes, webs, collisions with Ralentie, “The Slowed Down”: Ralentie, Lorellou, fille de l’air (girl of air), tire-​lire (money box, head), tire-​d’aile (literally fast as the flapping of a wing), perte de vue (as far as the eye can see), délire (delirium), élytres (elytra), perle (pearl): On fait la perle. (v. 1) Les maisons sont des obstacles. Les déménagements sont des obstacles. La fille de l’air est un obstacle. (v. 34) Juana, je ne puis rester, je t’assure. J’ai une jambe de bois dans la tire-​ lire à cause de toi. J’ai le coeur crayeux, les doigts morts à cause de toi. (v. 66) Oui, obscur, obscur, oui inquiétude. Sombre semeur. Quelle offrande! Les repères s’enfuirent à tire d’aile. Les repères s’enfuient à perte de vue, pour le délire, pour le flot. (v. 73) …sa tête soudain rejetée en arrière, comme un hanneton renversé sur les élytres, (v. 77)95

This is the principle paradigm of the poetic subject: the paradigm of the flowing, transforming female principle whose main vehicle is the Slowed down in the dynamic of slowing down-​speed (ralentie, tire-​d’aile), distancing, departing, loss, infinity (perte de vue), madness (délire), aphysicality, ethereality, sublimity (aile, élytres, perle). The unsurpassed dialectic of the principle of solidity and flow is also visible here, with the presence of tire-​lire (money box, vessel) as an aspect of sedimentation and solidity, and of elytra, the hard covers that protect the wings of the golden June bug. Tire-​lire, the money box that colloquially also means head, and elytra, the hard wing covers, come into contact also through the head, which in the poem is compared to a golden wing turned upside down. The arrangement of the appearance of these vocal-​signifying variants at the center of the semantic-​ prosodic matrix is also important; they accumulate toward the end, namely at the point when the male point of view and voice is becoming increasingly apparent and the Slowed down is less present, having almost entirely disappeared.

95 One forms a pearl; Houses are obstacles. Movers are obstacles. The girl of air is an obstacle; Juana, I can’t stay, I assure you. I’ve got a wood leg in the money box because of you. I’ve got a chalky heart and dead fingers because of you; Yes, darkness, darkness, yes worry. Sombre sower. What an offering! The landmarks took flight. The landmarks fly off as far as the eye can see, for delirium, for the flood; her head suddenly thrown back like a June bug in a tree that flips over on its elytra.

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Conclusion “The Slowed Down” is one the most beautiful lyric examples of the radical fluidity of the subject in Michaux’s opus and in literature in general. We can attribute this lament, this pathos-​filled poem, the fragmented flow of speech to only one, decentered, dispersed conscious, the psychically and physically broken subject that speaks through many voices–​characters, or many consciousnesses or subjects that are interwoven with each other, merged and then suddenly disassociated. We follow this duality, interweaving and connecting on various levels of the subject configuration. We find that despite the explosion of the personae, focalizations, and voices in the poem, the integrative coherence of the poetic subject is established. Simultaneously with the fragmentation of the structuring of the subject levels and in the poetic plot itself, we also find fusions, undifferentiation, merging: the male voice submerged in the female, the female in the male, the female body emerging into the male, the male body into the female, all in the mode of sliding, transitioning. It is particularly evident that the meaning-​making that takes place on the level of the recitative corresponds with meaning-​making on other poetic levels. The analysis showed that individual isotopies that we call vocal-​signifying paradigms, appear with regularity along with individual thematic and figurative isotopies. The dialectic between fusion and dispersal, part of the overarching dialect of solidity and fluidity, also appears in the recitative, which is one of the principle dimensions of the poetic subject, as one of the dominant paradigms. From the standpoint of accentual rhythm as the movement of the recitative, “The Slowed Down” establishes three dominant paradigms of the poetic subject; the repetition of quasi-​isosyllabic rhythmic modules that function as verses within prose; compositional repetition where gemination prevails; rhythmic-​syntactic parallelism. Precise vocal-​ signifying connections between key lexemes, are established on the level of the semantic prosody of “The Slowed Down.” Consonantal semantics based particularly on the dynamic between voiced consonants and plosives and fricatives dominate the semantic prosody in an exceptional way. The key vocal-​signifying matrices are connected through the central thematic-​motivic isotopy, its combination with the dominant isotopy of the dialectic of solidity and fluidity being extremely apparent. The sound theme /​r/​is dominant and inclusive and almost omnipresent, while the sound theme /​s/​is clearly connected to transition, flow, dispersal, evaporation, death. Throughout the entire poem, the paradigm of the pair /​k/​–​/​g/​appears in connection with the male principle or in combination with the lexical level of the meaning of solidity, also ideological and conceptual. The paradigm that weaves together combinations of /​r/​, /​l/​, /​t/​, /​d/​, p/​with the

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vowels /​i/​and /​e/​is the main dispersed semantic-​prosodic and strongly symbolic matrix of the poem, which, like all the configurational levels, demonstrates dispersed multiplicity and at the same time the connectedness and integratedness of the poetic subject. It connects the key words that are vocal-​signifying echoes of the words Ralentie: Lorellou, fille de l’air, tire-​lire, tire-​d’aile, perte de vue, délire, élytres, perle.

Chapter 18 Recapitulation and Systematization of Subject Configuration In Part 1, we situated our research in the conceptual field of (literary) discourse and defined our specific methodological approach in the understanding of poetry as enunciation (Chapter 1). To think of a poem as enunciation is, among other things, to attempt to conceptualize it as both act and action, therefore as a unique performative act that is not limited to the utterance but extends into the artistic text as a whole. Such a performative act is self-​referential because, as Benveniste defines it, because it refers to the reality that it has itself established. It is unique and unrepeatable, virtual and infinite (because it contains the possibility of infinite new enunciations), and, in contrast with performatives, it is not necessarily conscious and deliberate. Its action is exclusively connected to the power of subjectivation (of the poem, of literature, of art). In a short excursus on Friedrich Schleiermacher, we noted certain junctures between hermeneutics (the modern foundations of which were established by Schleiermacher), Bakhtin’s metalinguistics, and Benveniste’s theory of discourse. In this context, we located the foundations of the theory of discourse in Schleiermacher’s theory of the text. In addition to introducing the fundamental concept of enunciation, we also suggested the possibility of drawing on the nonegological concept of the subject and key insights from Benveniste’s theory of enunciation, and in particular his postulate about subjectifying in language. Chapter 2 schematically illuminated the contemporary problematics of the concept of the subject in philosophy and social sciences. Chapter 3 addressed these issues through the perspective of genre theory. Namely, we questioned whether contemporary (and now no longer) radical anti-​essentialism in genre theory justifies the continued examination of the problems defined in this monograph. We concluded that, along with the necessity of rethinking the concept of the lyric subject to which poetic texts have drawn attention throughout history, contemporary epistemological and methodological changes in genre theory have also encouraged a reconceptualization of the lyric subject itself. We believe that it is reasonable to borrow the principle of prototypes and family resemblances from contemporary genre studies in our reflections about the lyric subject, while at the same time shifting the parameters of the debate away from the universalistic approach. In Part II, we continued our summary of some of the modern historical positions in the conceptualization of the subject in poetry. We identified

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fragments from specific authors that indicate a different theory of subjectivity in poetry: Novalis, Hegel, Nietzsche (Chapter 5). In Chapter 6, we provided a detailed summary of the literary-​morphological concept of the lyric subject developed in the twentieth century (Hamburger, Stierle, Easthope, Kos), and more precisely explicated our justification for expanding the concept of the lyric subject without relying solely on the monological model of poetry. We also presented a survey of a number of new approaches to the theoretical treatment of the lyric subject emerging from the German-​and French-​speaking worlds, where the problem has received the most theoretical treatment in recent decades. In Part III, we took into account a range of perspectives, drawing not only on literary criticism, but also on linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology. This allowed us to establish new premises and develop a more profound theoretical perspective on the subject in the poem. Similar to a number of contemporary perspectives on this problem (especially those developed by Hühn and Rodriguez), our research also drew on narratological concepts. However, more than anything else, these concepts served as an applicative extension of the fundamental premises of our research. We attempted to substantiate the use of certain narratological instruments from a speculative perspective. From one vantage point, the contemporary narratological turn in the study of poetry, in addition to the turn toward narrativity in modern and contemporary poetic practices in general, was used to substantiate methodological insights about the loosening of genre boundaries that has occurred at times throughout literary history and is also occurring in the contemporary literary landscape. We shed light on the applicability of narratological concepts in poetry by recognizing narrativity as one of the most fundamental characteristics of the way human beings structure the world, and, according to Ricœur, of the way selfhood is constructed through the process of narrative identity. Benveniste’s theory of discourse is the second element that illuminated the narratological turn in the theory of the lyric. Benveniste’s theory of discourse postulates the double-​layered aspect of enunciation and the enounced, a structure that is also present in classical narratology where it is expressed with the terms histoire and discours. In Chapter 6, we provided a summary of phenomenological (Staiger and Rodriguez) and psychoanalytical (Kristeva) perspectives on subjectivity in the poem. While there are a number of crucial discrepancies arising from differences in the philosophical foundation of these theories, these interpretations of poetic subjectivity have in common non-​reflexivity, affectivity, non-​thetic, and pathic dimensions. In one of the subsequent chapters (Chapter 14), we discussed the nonegological concept of the individual, and the dynamics of prereflexive and reflexive self-​consciousness, and concluded that, despite their differences, there

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are several common denominators in these approaches. We accounted for the differences by focusing on the dialectics of the reflexive and non-​reflexive subjective modes in the poem. In this section of the book, we also presented and interrogated several approaches that postulate the processuality and singularity of the intersubjective or transubjective event of the text as discourse, as well as the unfixed, eventmential, and dialogic nature of subjectivity, the bridge between them being Benveniste’s hypothesis on the eventmential and interindividual construction of subjectivity in speech. We more sharply defined the plurality of subjective instances in discourse during the arc of the argument in Part III from Ricœur’s theory of the processuality of narrative identity and the dialectics between the subjective principles of idem and ipse (Chapter 9) to Bakhtin’s dialogism and Ducrot’s linguistic formalization of enunciative instances (Chapters 10 and 11); from Benveniste’s subject of enunciation and subject of the enounced (Chapter 12) to Meschonnic’s expansion of the subject of the poem from mere enunciative instances to the totality of the poetic discourse with his concepts of rhythm, continuity, and recitative (Chapter 13). Modern literary theory mostly situates the concept of the lyric subject within the concept of the speaker whose speech is not transmitted through other instances. As we demonstrated in a range of arguments, this narrow and unitary approach to the subject needs to be abandoned as it fails to account for the complexity of the formation and configuration of subjectivity within poetic discourse through history. In lieu of the traditional conception of the lyric subject as a monological and monolithic entity, and a mere instance of speech on the literary-​morphological dimension, we developed and advocated for a more complex concept of subject configuration. This thesis is supported by a shift in emphasis from the literary-​morphological dimension to the discursive-​anthropological dimension in the analyses of the poetic subject. We conceive of the poetic subject as a discursive-​anthropological and artistic concept, in terms of a plural instance, articulated within the poem –​understood here as discourse –​ not merely at sites of enunciative articulation or at sites of characters on the level of the storyworld. The poetic subject functions through two subjective modes –​ the prereflexive and the reflexive. These modes are disseminated across various layers of the poetic discourse, producing variously active focal points of subjectivity in each layer. These focal points are potential and are realized differently and singularly each time the reader’s actualization determines them. They create relational networks among themselves, thereby producing different values of the singular subjective dispositive of a given poem. As a plural instance, then, the poetic subject is not conceived of as a special unitary entity or substance, but

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instead as a plurality of relationships and values, exhibited in the network of focal points of articulation within a poetic discourse. From a formalistic (literary-​morphological) perspective, the reflexive and prereflexive subjective modes of the poetic subject, which includes the bodily dimension, produce a discursive subject configuration with which empirical subjects (initially the author and, with each new reading, the reader as extra-​ discursive instances) engage in a plural discursive relationship. In the following concluding remarks, we offer a concise presentation of some of the fundamental characteristics of the individual elements involved in such a configuration. We derived these both from practical analyses and from reformulations or summaries of already existent theoretical frameworks. This presentation serves as a springboard for further development and analysis.

Level of Text Organization: The Textual Subject, Recitative The level of text organization, the highest level of discourse, provides the configuration of the instance which we term the textual subject. The textual subject consists of various contemporary reconceptualizations of Booth’s implied author (Nünnig 1997; Schönert 1999; Hühn 2005), Bakhtin’s pure author, and Meschonnic’s concept of recitative. The textual subject is the instance to which we cannot attribute either enunciation or the effects of a person. Instead, the textual subject consists of the characteristics of the stylistic, rhetorical, figurative, and rhythmic-​prosodic configuration of the text. At the same time, the dimension of the textual subject serves as the space for the potential realization of perspectives and focalizations on the highest level of the text. These are typically not of a sensory or psychological nature, but are instead ethical, moral, and ideological. The instance of the textual subject and the dimension of poetic discourse in which it is configured present the most difficulties in analysis as the textual subject contains neither the voice nor the effect of a person. Focalization expressed on this level is similarly elusive. What is at issue here is an instance typically characterized negatively in analysis, through non-​logicality, contradiction, and the discrepancy between various dimensions of discourse and their instances (the subject of enunciation, the subject of the enounced, focalizations at the inferior poetic levels), and the discrepancy between the story and the structural-​semantic organization of the text. Thus, the instance of the textual subject also requires the largest degree of complexity and flexibility in analyses and interpretations. Peter Hühn (2005: 152–​153) demonstrates that the subject of composition –​that we call the textual subject –​represents for the reader a dimension that is situated

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at a superior level than the dimensions of the lyric persona as well as the subject of enunciation. It thus serves as a vantagepoint from which the reader may examine these ostensibly inferior dimensions. This interpretation of the instance of the textual subject allows us insight into certain features of the illusorily central instance of subject configuration, the lyric persona. This instance of the lyric persona is indeed not necessarily “aware” of these features. Rather, they appear as blind spots, consequences of the fact that the lyric subject cannot, functioning as a lyric persona, encompass perspectives of the poem that are configured in higher dimensions of the text.96 At the same time, the instance of the textual subject engages in dialogic relations with those dimensions to which it does have access. As Werner Wolf (1998) and Hühn (2005) show, it only appears that the speaker (the subject of the enounced) who functions as the protagonist (the lyric persona) is the subject reporting instances of his/​her perceptions and events. Throughout the history of poetry, the existence of these higher dimensions of poetry have mostly been obscured. What remains hidden on the level of the lyric persona (resembling the subject of the enounced in the dominant, illusorily monological prototype of subject configuration) is revealed on the level of the textual subject. We highlighted this tendency toward concealment in our analysis of the corpus of troubadour poetry. The development of a suitable distinction between the dimensions of the textual subject, the lyric voice, and the lyric persona relies on the complexity of interpretation. In general –​not merely in the study of poetry –​the textual subject and the concept from which it is derived (the implied author or the abstract or model author, the textual subject, or subject of composition) remain the most controversial, and also the most poorly developed concepts in this field (cf. Schmidt 2009). In this regard, we emphasize Meschonnic’s rhythm-​subject as a special aspect of the textual subject: specifically in what Meschonnic terms recitative. Meschonnic himself does not distinguish between recitative and the subject of enunciation, instead equating both with the transsubject or the you-​I of enunciation in the repeated event of the poem. In contrast, we situate the recitative, which involves the bodily-​sensory aspect of the text, in the dimension of the text’s organization. We juxtapose recitative with perspectives that cross-​genre

96 As Hühn and Schönert put it: “We must decide what mental features and level of self-​awareness we attribute to the narrator (in some cases also to the narrated) and the abstract author respectively. We must also be able to recognize the case in which making this distinction is impeded” (Hühn and Schönert 2005: 9).

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narratological studies attribute to the textual subject or the implied author: that is, with the organization of other stylistic, rhetorical, and figurative elements in the poem (Hühn 2005: 152). We also identify in this dimension those aspects of the concept of enunciation that involve the bodily-​sensory organization of the text, and as such (solely) heuristically distinguish it from aspects of enunciation as a dimension of mediation, a dimension that is superior to the dimension of the enounced and serves as the source of poetic speech. Thus, the poetic subject is also embodied through the bodily-​sensory formation of discourse. We adopt Meschonnic’s term recitative as the name for this layer of the text. Here, recitative as the maximal subjectivation of language (Meschonnic 1995: 190) is revealed as the activity of speech beyond the notion of meaning in lexical semantics. Recitative entails the establishment of the poem’s subject and the activity of discourse through specific serial semantic, rhythmic, and prosodic paradigms as well as through signifying chains as sequences of consonantal-​vocal series. Within the poem’s system, the latter produce singular relations and values. This subject dimension is situated not only at the site of the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced (both of which are expressed by a grammatical person), but is instead dispersed across the entire system of the poem. For the purposes of the analysis of subject configuration, this instance is thus equivalent to other layers of the text. For Meschonnic, the poetic (and more broadly literary) subject is irreducibly related to rhythm, which in turn serves as the primary anthropological element and signifier within discourse. Rhythm constitutes speech, not in the sense of language [langue], but as discourse, not as a sign; as signification that occurs beyond the sign. In transcending all signs, rhythm also encompasses speech where it pertains to the bodily and inter-​bodily. Thus, Meschonnic’s concepts and analytic tools complement and develop theses about the prereflexive and reflexive subjective modes in literary discourse, and particularly in poetry. Indeed, poetry is the genre that most frequently actualizes the prereflexive subjective mode. At the same time, Meschonnic’s concepts of rhythm and recitative illuminate dimensions of the poem’s embodiment, an aspect of poetry that is not specifically addressed in the nonegological theories of the subject from which we derived the concept of the prereflexive subjective mode. For Meschonnic, this specific conception of rhythm means the constitution and organization of the subject with discourse and within discourse. Moreover, rhythm is the primary agent through which the intersubjective charge of poetic discourse is mobilized and inscribed into the poem as an artwork. In light of this, rhythm is also the element that stimulates the prereflexive subjective mode within this process, thereby also establishing speech as corporality through oral gestures. Thus, the recitative mobilizes the prereflexive subjective

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mode of consciousness in the event of enunciation by containing prereflexive elements inscribed within its system of singular values and then actualized. The orality that is established through enunciation is thus the common denominator of the body and language, and the element by which the corporality of poetic enunciation is revealed, particularly as it is articulated in rhythm as one part of a plural poetic system. On this level, then, the poem’s process does not imply the self-​referential function of the poem in the sense of Jakobson’s poetic function or the non-​ semantic “musicality” of the poem, which is a kind of harmonious quality. Indeed, this subject layer implies the opposite: a specific semantics of discourse’s orality, functioning beyond lexicality, and an oral gesture in the performative sense. Here, orality is not conceived of merely in the sense of the vocalization of a poem. It also encompasses the visual-​graphic image of discourse. Meschonnic’s concept of orality [oralité] nullifies the difference between spoken and written discourse. At the same time, orality does not represent the diferentia specifica of poetry. Instead, poetic discourse articulates (often more intensively and with different strategies) the bodily-​sensory dimension of enunciation, a dimension that is inherent to all literary forms and genres –​indeed that is inherent to language itself. The maximal emphasis that is produced by recitative, to use Meschonnic’s concept, or style, to use Schleiermacher’s, allows the poem to illuminate the nature of language as intersubjective, dialogic, and world-​forming, rather than merely representational and mimetic. *** The next step is to approach the subject levels that encompass the enunciatory apparatus as a dispositive of mediation, and that are made manifest in the subject of enunciation and the subjects of the enounced. In the discours-​histoire diad used by Benveniste, the dimension of the enounced corresponds to histoire, while discours corresponds to enunciation. This schema was also adopted in narratology and described in the case of narrative texts although with different terms: histoire is termed story, diegesis, and storyworld, and discours is discourse or narration.97 Within poetic discourse, the dimension of enunciation forms various structural-​ semantic relations and values through the use of the enounced or diegesis. At the same time, these units are always situated within the relation of difference between enunciation and the enounced which is inherent to 97 Later variations further differentiate this dyadic schema into happenings–​story and narration–​presentation (e.g. Schmidt 1982).

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language itself. In each speech act, the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced represent two different positions of the speaker.98 Throughout the historical development of poetry, in which the illusorily monological model of the poem has predominated, this difference has not necessarily been apparent on the surface of the text just as it is not apparent in everyday speech. The I as an instance of discourse is irreducibly instantiated in a double movement: as persona (moi) on the level of the enounced and as self (je) on the level of enunciation. Novalis describes this instantiation most precisely in his Fichte-​Studien, as “…the voice accompanying our developing self ” (2003: 135–​136). It is in this sense that Benveniste suggests that enunciation produces the double I. He claims that third person pronouns are non-​persons, as they are only expressed in the enounced (in literature, the enounced functions as diegesis or the storyworld) rather than in enunciation. Bakhtin defines the relation of difference between enunciation and the utterance as it occurs in the literary event of the text as the “outsideness” of the author in relation to the protagonist. In Bakhtin, both of these entities are conceived of as textual and discursive instances, as voices. It may be posited, then, that poetic enunciation is also always metapoetic, as what is expressed always tends towards enunciation itself, the intersubjective event of enunciation as the performative. This is also expressed in the mobilization of the intersubjective charge of the system of the poem despite the fact that enunciation itself does not always directly structure the metadigesis or metapoem.

The Dimension of Enunciation as the Mediative Dimension of the Storyworld: The Subject of Enunciation Thus, the subject of enunciation is always distinct from the subject of the enounced and is the instance that serves as the source of enouncing and mediating the storyworld. As such, it corresponds to the narrator in theories of narrative. The subject of enunciation must then also be distinguished from the diegetic actants (personae), which serve as the drivers of events and the sites of experiential affairs and states, which are largely of a psychic character in the lyric prototype (thoughts, experiences, feelings, psychic impulses, etc.). Similar to narrative texts, this instance may acquire various degrees of personalization and individualization with the features of a specific identity and person. When a subjective effect in the context of identity formation is not produced, we speak

98 We avoid the term “speaker” because it obscures the differentiation among all speakers into two instances: the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced.

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of a covert lyric voice. In this respect, this voice approximates the narratological concept of the covert narrative voice. The subject of enunciation or the lyric voice may not always be situated at the site of the storyworld’s persona, but it nevertheless always serves as the source of the enouncing of a given storyworld. Persons and other focal points of subjectivity that appear in the storyworld may in turn function as subjects of the enounced and thereby produce a hierarchy of enunciative levels. In this hierarchy, the lyric voice is always superior to all other enunciative instances. In accordance with mediative hierarchization and the hierarchy of narrative and enunciative levels as developed in narratology, we may describe the lyric voice as that which organizes the enunciation of speakers on inferior enunciative levels (diegetic or hypodiegetic). In the historically dominant and ostensibly monological prototype of the poem that seeks to reinforce the impression of the unity of subject instances, the subject of enunciation is equated with the lyric persona, which in turn serves as the subject of the enounced. In this case, the subject is, to use narratological vocabulary, autodiegetic or homodiegetic. At the same time, given the relation of difference between the subject of enunciation and the subject of the enounced, which is inherent to speech, this subject is also always extradiegetic in relation to the production of poetic diegesis. In other cases, the subject of enunciation does not resemble the personae and subjects of the enounced within the poetic storyworld and is therefore heterodiegetic. Given the frequency of the autoreflexive mode of the poetic act (that is, the procedure of metapoetry) during the history of poetry, the subject of enunciation can also often be described as a metadiegetic subject. This level of poetic discourse may also involve the articulation of different perspectives and focalizations as special kinds of focal point of subjectivity. These are often mobile and transcend diegesis, and are thus articulated through a lyric persona, the lyric voice or through the textual subject on higher textual levels. The dimension of enunciation is configured differently depending on the degree to which the “enunciative world” is developed. It is certainly the case that one of the prototypical qualities of poetry is the impression that poetic plot is constructed within enunciation itself and remains within enunciation. Poems typically express enunciation as a performative act, a vocal gesture. Moreover, the frequently emphasized materiality of poetic enunciation enables a clearer development of vocal-​signifying paradigms and matrices. This development is supported by the second prototypical quality of poetry: the common representation of experiential, reflexive, and affective processes by which a different kind of plot is produced. Contemporary transnarratological analyses of the lyric

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reveal the manner in which the events of the poem are instantiated on the level of enunciation, and thereby require detailed analysis of the eventmential quality of the poem on the level of the storyworld and on the level of enunciation (Hühn 2005: 162–​165; Hühn and Kiefer 2005: 7). The degree of the development of the level of enunciation, like other textual dimensions, involves the parameters of verb tense, spatio-​temporal deictics, and textual directionality (e.g. direct address). The level of the enounced and the level of enunciation have a complex relation to each other. This is because their configuration within poetic discourse through a specific kind of emplotment and the use of shorter sequences (which we call poetic microdiegeses) frequently creates the impression of the fluidity, intrusiveness, and saturation of different enunciative and textual levels. Certainly, a significant task for further development in this area would be a more precise characterization of the relation between enunciation and the enounced within poetic discourse on the basis of detailed analyses of a broader and more historically diverse corpus of texts. Each poem establishes a singular system that is always also singularly interpreted by new readers. Thus, the formalistic elucidation of potential elements of poetic discourse which we have developed here can only serve as a rudimentary platform. Each analysis would need to draw on and modify elements of this platform while developing new instruments and concepts in relation to each specific text. It is from this conclusion that Meschonnic derives his claim that a theory of the poetic subject is always primarily a negative theory, and as such must ceaselessly originate from practice itself. Once again, we note that the level of the subject of enunciation as the source of speech also involves the instantiation of orality, that is, the bodily-​sensory aspect of discourse described above, and for which we used Meschonnic’s term recitative. Because recitative expresses aspects of the rhythmic-​signifying organization of discourse, we situate recitative in the domain of the textual subject, which has attributes of the text’s organization but does not serve as a source of speech. A more precise characterization of the relation between the subject of enunciation and the textual subject, the determination of their differential relations in specific texts, and in specific historical formations are all issues that will require more precise practical analyses and subsequent theoretical derivations in the future.

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The Level of the Storyworld and the Enounced: The Lyric Persona, Focal Points of Subjectivity The poetic subject is configured on the level of the enounced or diegesis, with specific strategies for the configuration of poetic plot. These strategies typically consist of the deployment of the ipse principle as conceived of by Ricœur, specifically as discontinuity, disconnectedness, contingency, and alterity in the structuration of text and identity. The ipse principle is formed with strategies of emplotment and depiction (metaphorization, metonymization, allegorization, symbolization, etc.) and typically creates the effects of a poetic identity. This identity can also create the effects of a person in the sense of the lyric persona, and function as an agent (in terms of exterior and interior activity) and/​or the focal point of the subject’s experience of states, thoughts, moods, experiences, beliefs, convictions, and other internal, conscious, or unconscious movements. On the level of the poetic storyworld, the lyric persona may be figured as homodiegetic or autodiegetic and thus may come to resemble the subject of enunciation, although these are always distinct subject positions of speech. The relation between these two instances, also in cases where they appear identical, is additionally qualified by a temporal aspect. The persona may resemble the subject of enunciation, but is distinct from it on the basis of differences in the temporality of enunciation and the temporality of the storyworld. The aspect of focalization as determined by temporal parameters becomes significant here. Lyric events may be focalized through the lyric persona or the subject of the enounced which is always distinct from the subject of enunciation because of differences in the temporality of enunciation and the temporality of the enounced. To the contrary, lyric events may be focalized through the subject of enunciation, which, notwithstanding its similarity, is temporally distinct from the subject of the enounced. Despite the historically dominant prototype of the poem and the central lyric persona, poetic diegesis features numerous focal points of subjectivity expressed as personae (anthropomorphic or not, concrete or abstract). The development of a central lyric persona depicted as a dynamic figure, and sometimes as a host of auxiliary, less dynamically-​figured personae that engage the lyric persona in various relations of identity or difference, is a common strategy. These focal points of subjectivity are frequently signified with personal pronouns and the effect of their autonomy as entities is thus enhanced, whereas in other situations they may be featured as elements in the soliloquies of the subject of the enounced (a specific use of the second-​person pronoun). In his literary theory, Slovenian theorist Janko Kos emphasizes the following elements which are useful to the analysis of the lyric persona: the person of the

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lyric subject, the time and place of his/​her speech, the directionality, source, manner, and point of view of his/​her speech (Kos 1996: 95–​98). Autonomous personae may function as speakers, their speech occurring through the superior instance of the subject of enunciation. The distinction between external and internal dialogic relations becomes particularly fragile in the lyric, especially in its modern and contemporary forms, and may hinder the distinction between aspects of enunciation or voice and aspects of perspectives or focalizations, or, to use Ducrot’s term, enunciators. Focal points of subjectivity may also serve as sites of prereflexive (affective or pathic) dynamics. These dynamics suffuse various levels of discourse, from recitative to more figurative domains (in the depiction of the storyworld) when the levels on which prereflexive elements are instantiated engage in relational networks. Benveniste’s insights into the specifics of the poetic sign as iconicity, evocation, and pathem reveal this dynamic. Moreover, the bodily-​sensory aspect of the poem, and particularly the specific relational networks between discursive elements –​Meschonnic’s concepts of rhythm and continuity encompass this activity –​are involved in the constitution of the power of images inscribed in the text’s systems of semantic and figurative isotopies (metaphoric-​metonymic, allegorical, and symbolic). Isotopies are among the primary paradigmatic relations through which poetic plot, and the lyric persona(e) along with it, are constituted. It is through these elements and other aspects of the articulation of the prereflexive subjective mode inscribed in the concept of recitative that either the dominant prereflexive, affective, and pathic tonality or a sequence of equivalent tonalities are established (cf. Rodriguez 2003: 150–​152).

Perspective and Focalization In the theory of the lyric, several categories have been neglected until only recently. Narratologists have devised a range of different conceptualizations and terms for these concepts –​focalization, perspective, point of view. Only in the past two decades have cross-​genre narratological studies of poetry began to include perspective and focalization in their research. Nevertheless, both concepts remain scantly theorized and analytically discussed. Two works stand out in the trans-​narratological research: Hühn’s paper “Plotting the Lyric” (2005) and Hühn and Kiefer’s monograph Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry (2005). In the introductory essay to this book, Hühn and Schönert classify focalization in the category of modes of mediation, which is distinct from the category of mediating entities (Hühn and Schönert 2005: 8). As regards modes of mediation, Hühn and Schönert differentiate between two facets of perspective: voice

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and focalization. The term perspective appeared in the theory of the lyric in Rodriguez’s book Le pacte lyrique (2003). The term focalization has been widely adopted as an umbrella term for various kinds of perspective, this despite the fact that many narratological theorists distinguish between the two concepts (see Zupan Sosič 2017: 184). In the context of lyric discourse, we believe that differentiating between the two concepts is unnecessary. In poetry, these entities are usually less distinct than in prose fiction often simply due to the length of the text. In comparison to fiction, poetry tends to use a limited number of protagonists. Lastly, poetry’s prevalent prototype throughout history has been the monological model in which the protagonist, speaker, and focalizer often coalesce into a single entity. In the theory of the narrative, focalization denotes the selection or restriction of narrative information and experience relative to the perception, knowledge, and imagination of the narrator, the characters, and other narrative and discursive entities (Jahn 2007: 173; Niederhoff 2009). Following Hühn and Schönert (2005: 8), we believe that a productive beginning to our investigation is the application of contributions by classical narratologists to the lyric: specifically, Mieke Bal’s revision and supplementation of Gérard Genette’s conceptualization of the basic aspects of focalization, and Rimmon-​Kenan and Uspensky contributions on aspects of focalization other than perception. In terms of focalizing subjects and focalized objects, Bal’s reconceptualization of Genette’s typology can inform the study of the lyric, as can her distinction between perceptive and imperceptive focalizers, the latter being visible only in characters’ consciousness or imagination. Due to the specific nature of the lyric, which can more easily be compared to everyday speech than to prose fiction, the classical narratological framework can also be supplemented by Bakhtinian metalinguistics and Ducrot’s transposition of Bakhtin’s findings onto discursive pragmatics. Using the term enunciator, which he explicitly compares to Genette’s center of perspective, Ducrot transposes the Bakhtin/​Voloshinov concept of point of view into everyday speech. In the analysis of focalization and perspectivization in the lyric, Ducrot’s theory is useful as it focuses on the appearance of the enunciator on the level of a single utterance of everyday speech and not necessarily on the level of the whole text. In order to grasp the complex relations between subjective entities in the poem, we must thus differentiate between speaking and focalizing. This means that the agent to which enunciation and the enounced can be attributed must be distinguished from the agent to which a reader attributes perception (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting), cognition, affection, reflection, judgment, evaluation, ideological framing, etc. Focalization is the perspective from which events,

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existences, and incidents, and other more hypothetical elements of the poetic storyworld (as well as other levels of the lyric discourse) are formed, presented, filtered, and interpreted at a particular point or at several points in a poem. In the lyric, relations between agents of speech and agents of focalization are sometimes subtler due to the fact that the lyric often creates an “aesthetic illusion” of the collapse of the two different subject positions of enunciation (Wolf 1998, cf. also Müller-​Zettelman 2002). By using simultaneous narration, poems often suggest the identity of the lyric voice and the persona as well as the coincidence of voice and focalization. Focalization can be articulated on the level of the storyworld, on the level of enunciation, and on the level of the textual subject. It can also fluidly pass from one level to another. Time and restriction of knowledge are important variables that participate in focalization, but distance and speed can also play an important role (Culler 1996: 88–​90). Focalization and perspective on the level of the storyworld can even be articulated as opposite subject positions of a single lyric persona. In this case, various Bakhtinian “voices” or points of view shift within the same focalizer, creating a range of quasi-​identities of the same persona in different sequences of the poem, a process for which we use the term microdiegesis. For this type of focalization, we may use an adapted typology of dialogic relations proposed by Bakhtin in fiction. The so-​called “active type” of double-​voiced discourse or the reflected discourse of another (sometimes including concealed internal polemics, hidden dialog, polemically decorated autobiography, discourse that takes into account the foreign discourse) are all potentially relevant (Bakhtin 1984: 199). Intertextuality represents an important method for investigating focalization and dialogism in the lyric. Gérard Nerval’s sonnet “El Desdichado” offers an interesting example of autodialogization based on the intertextual construction of fluid identities of the lyric persona. Identities are created by invoking characters from the treasure trove of classic and French literature with whom the lyric speaker identifies in sequence: Orpheus, Guilhem, Duke of Aquitaine, the first troubadour, Virgil, Amor, and Apollo, who are joined by other, less known characters. Perspectives are formed implicitly or even hypothetically in reference to each character’s story and its symbolic dimension. The reader should be acquainted with these characters and their symbolic dimensions; if not, the identity and its perspective is not fully realized. We could call this type of perspectivization hypothetical or implicit. The Bakhtinian typology of active double-​voiced discourse helps to elucidate some of the aspects of this method. In order to demonstrate how focalizations are manifested in the lyric, it is necessary to establish the level of the textual subject, especially as it relates to

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the ethic, ideologic, and axiologic aspects of focalization. Frequently, these types of perspectivizations can only be fully grasped by invoking the dialogic relations between different entities on inferior discursive levels while the process of dialogization is attributed to the category of the textual subject. As emphasized above, this level is often the most difficult to define because the textual subject has neither voice nor the effect of a person.

Additional Parameters in the Establishment and Analysis of Subject Configuration Dimensions of Discursive Situations In order to function as discourse, each text must inscribe and anticipate within itself numerous levels of communication. Empirical discursive dimensions (the level of the initial empirical reader and the level of each new empirical reader) must be distinguished from virtual discursive dimensions. Relying on the developments of Bakhtin and Meschonnic’s ideas, we propose that the reader undergoes a trans-​or intersubjectivation within the artistic event of the poem. This occurs in potential (conscious or unconscious) relation to all subject instances of subject configuration which serve as formal clarification of the dimensions of the poetic subject. Virtual discursive situations are established within various dimensions of enunciation and the storyworld. In poetic discourse, empirical and virtual discursive dimensions produce a number of entanglements and overlays. For example, direct address to the empirical reader activated through an address to the virtual reader often overlap with an address to the person of the storyworld or self-​address of the subject of the enounced. At the same time, the empirical reader may identify with the addressee through empathic identification, indices that produce the virtually established figure of the reader, or direct dedications to the reader. The possibilities of such interweaving are dependent on each reader’s interpretation. Throughout history, specific historical periods (as, for example, we saw in the case of the troubadours) presupposed the poem’s directionality as being oriented towards the empirical collective as well.99

99 In his newest book on the theory of the lyric, Jonathan Culler claims that the model of direct communication with the audience has been a rare phenomenon during the history of poetry. The lyric address is, he claims, typically indirect (Culler 2015: 191).

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Personal Pronouns There is a general conviction that poetic discourse focuses on the first-​person singular, and this has come to serve as the dominant receptive topos. This conviction can be explained by the number of poetic texts with a central first-​person persona or speaker. Typically, this figure has been equated with the empirical author in accordance with the Romantic topos of the confessional and sincere character of poetry, a position which remains ubiquitous today, particularly in institutional education and the broader consciousness of readers. This topos, related to the degree of the fictionality of the poetic discourse, also structures the reader’s relation to the authorial lyric persona by means of empathy and/​or identification. Throughout the historical development of poetry, poetic discourse has employed personal pronouns in various ways that have contributed to the complexity of the establishment of subject configuration. As previously noted, the subject of enunciation may be expressed as a lyric voice devoid of self-​reference within the storyworld; that is, as heterodiegetic, as merely the source of enunciation. In the case of the relation between the first-​person singular and autodiegesis, it is necessary to bear in mind the dyadic quality inherent to discourse. As Benveniste observes, the pronoun I appears in the process of discourse as a dyadic instance. For this reason, Benveniste situates the pronoun couple I and you on a different dimension than other personal pronouns. The I and you are instances of speech, discursive persons that occupy the dimension of enunciation, whereas other pronouns are representational and referential, thereby occupying the dimension of the enounced. On the dimension of enunciation, the I is the source of enunciation and does not refer to any concept or individual. It is “an empty space” available to any singular individual in all times and places. Meschonnic went further, expanding Benveniste’s I of enunciation onto the whole of poetic discourse, the consequence of the I’s performative availability that occurs in the relation between the poetic subject and the reader with each repeated transsubjectifying of the reader. On the level of the enounced, or the storyworld, the I obtains the status of the third-​person pronoun: namely, the I of enunciation speaks about the persona to which we append it. The “empty space” of the I is thereby “occupied” in various ways which depend on the degree of the specific discourse’s fictionalization (cf. e.g. Rodriguez 2003) and the reader’s concretization. As one of the parameters in the analysis of subject configuration, the degree of fictionalization primarily concerns the relation between fiction and fact, particularly in the establishment of the so-​called autobiographical pact (cf. Lejeune), therefore in cases of

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a clearly figured authorial lyric persona, the presence of other real personalities, references to real events, dates, places, etc. The range of fictionalization in the establishment of the storyworld’s persona corresponds to Kos’s shift in the definition of the person of “the lyric subject” from the impersonal, authorial to the fictive.100 Nevertheless, the authorially-​figured lyric persona in each poetic text is as virtual as the situation itself. The entrance into discourse is itself transformative. The I of discourse, as Benveniste has shown, cannot be equated with the individual. In discourse, the individual that says I and addresses the you is always reconstituted as a subject. While this does not mean that there is no subject prior to discourse, it does mean that it is not possible to postulate an “identical identity” of the subject that obtains in both forms of enunciation. In combination with the “as if ” principle of fiction, proper to all literary genres, this otherness is only amplified. “I is someone else” even when it is I. In all discursive situations, including poetic ones, each I has its you. This you may be present or not, an interlocutor or not. In poetic discourse, we encounter a sequence of addresses: within the given virtual discursive situation, these addresses may be personae that become interlocutors or they may be characters that are not present in the virtual discursive situation. They may be anthropomorphic or present as abstractions and objects. On the level of the empirical discursive situation, they may be persons to whom the poem is dedicated, that is, the direct addressees of the poem, the original or initial audience and also the potential readers of the poem throughout history. According to Meschonnic, the literary work functions as an individuality, perpetually open to the other, as it is the origin of the “endless sequences of repeated enunciations” (Meschonnic 1982: 87). This quality produces the work’s transhistoricityand collaborates with the perpetually new moment and its continual becoming. Likewise, each pronoun you tends towards some I, even if this figure is not clearly articulated in the poem. Thus, the use of the second person reciprocally effects the formation of the subject of enunciation and the enounced. On the level of enunciation, the pronoun you is as empty as I. In contrast to I, the pronoun you, on the level of the enounced and the storyworld, tends towards the person for which a given utterance is intended. On both of these levels, the you may function as the speaker. During the historical development of poetry, the reflexive use of the second-​person pronoun has been quite common. In this

100 We recommend the use of the term “character persona” for Kos’s fictive persona, as the authorially-​figured persona is always also fictive.

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case, the subject of the enounced addresses his/​herself. The address may in turn combine and unite various levels of discursive situations, both empirically and virtually. The third-​ person pronoun has a different character than the first-​and second-​person pronouns, as it is not established dyadically either on the level of enunciation or on the level of the enounced. It appears in extradiegetic and heterodiegetic enunciation, within which the subject of enunciation may obtain various degrees of individualization: from the covert lyric voice to the personalized subject of enunciation and across intermediary dimensions. Strategies for the use of the third-​person pronoun consist of the poem’s emphasis on the narrative level, and this procedure is typically, though not necessarily, accompanied by other strategies of narrativization. According to the concept of the refraction of subjectivity focal points (Rodriguez 2003: 149), the third-​person pronoun may be appended to the subject of enunciation, and this produces a peculiar form of homodiegetic enunciation. These cases typically include the additional procedures of metonymization, metaphorization, allegorization, and symbolization. Moreover, plural personal pronouns introduce a degree of complexity into the discursive situation and storyworld. Slovenian in particular embellishes this diversity with the use of the dual and the differentiation of female and male forms of personal pronouns. The first person singular and dual do not necessarily imply a multiplication of the I, although cases of this do occur. The use of the first-​person plural, notwithstanding transitions into singular pronouns, frequently establishes the plural subject of enunciation and the enounced, referring to a specific (social) group. Alternatively, it can acquire dimensions of generality, thereby referring to humanity or living creatures in general. The first-​person plural pronoun thus opens a number of possibilities, among them those that virtually involve the reader themselves. A particular form of dialogic relations is produced by the alterations of pronouns (from the first-​person to the second-​or third-​person, from the singular to the plural) in cases where individual pronouns may be definitively attributed to a greater or lesser degree to one persona and/​or the subject of enunciation. In this case, the pluralization of the subject and the occupation of various enunciative positions is signified.

Temporality An analysis of temporality requires us to make a distinction between the temporality of enunciation, the temporality of the storyworld, and the temporality

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of the reading. Relations of simultaneity, retrospectivity, and prospectivity are established between the temporality of enunciation and that of the storyworld. In the course of a poem, these levels of temporality may subtly and rapidly alternate and transform, impacting the configuration of the poetic plot (including events on different levels, on diegesis and enunciation, the sequentiality of transformations of enunciation into the storyworld in the poem), relations between different subject instances in different moments of the poem, and the specific form of performativity initiated in the poetic discourse. The temporality of enunciation in poetic discourse frequently occurs in the present tense, thereby creating an impression of the immediate production of the poetic world, directly from the gesture of enunciation itself.101 The use of metapoetic procedures, common in the history of poetic discourse, that are expressed in lexical-​semantic dimensions in the present (the troubadourial ferai un vers) only enhance this impression. Metapoetic gestures are also articulated through poetic recitative within enunciation. The potency of the recitative (the notable presence of elements of the prereflexive subjective mode) often obscures representation within the storyworld, thereby emphasizing enunciation itself as the vocal gesture of the here and now. The illusory equivalence between the temporality of enunciation and the temporality of reading that is produced by the use of the present tense further bolsters this performativity, which is also connected to the reader’s specific subjectivation in the poem as an artistic event.

Temporal and Spatial Deictics Deictics function in the service of various linguistic phenomena, which both construct the “reality” of the storyworld and situate the utterance within it, and also contribute to the configuration of the subject of enunciation and the subjects of the enounced. In this context, the specifics of poetic discourse consist of the production of an impression of the storyworld’s immediate construction through enunciation as such. This impression is itself the consequence of the dominant use of the present tense as the temporality of enunciation in the history of the lyric. The role of deictics proportionally increases in relation to the specific formation of the poetic plot and the density of representation, particularly in cases where abstract elements predominate. This is because deictics offer concrete sites and points of anchorage within abstractions, despite the fact 101 Certain researchers, such as Antonio Rodriguez for example, speak about the creation of an impression of “presence,” which tends towards the pathic “now.” They name the lyric temporality “time of presence” [temps de présence] (Rodriguez 2003: 168–​174).

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that they do not signify concrete objects within the storyworld. In poetic discourse, their function is less the signifying of clear referents than it is the signification of mobility within the storyworld (this can be mere perception or actual movement). At the same time, deictics are involved in the production of effects of presence, as they signify absent referents, thereby amplifying the impression of embeddedness within the present tense of enunciation. Spatial and temporal deictics play a particularly important role in the characterization of focalizations as enunciation with the use of deictics leads the reader to pursue (a perceptible) focalization and its subsequent transformations.

Appendix I Henri Michaux: “La Ralentie” 1. Ralentie, on tâte le pouls des choses ; on y ronfle ; on a tout le temps ; tranquillement, toute la vie. On gobe les sons, on les gobe tranquillement ; toute la vie. On vit dans son soulier. On y fait le ménage. On a plus besoin de se serrer. On a tout le temps. On déguste. On rit dans son poing. On ne croit plus qu’on sait. On n’a plus besoin de compter. On est heureuse en buvant ; on est heureuse en ne buvant pas. On fait la perle. On est, on a le temps. On est la ralentie. On est sortie des courants d’air. On a le sourire du sabot. On n’est plus fatiguée. On n’est plus touchée. On a des genoux au bout des pieds. On n’a plus honte sous la cloche. On a vendu ses monts. On a posé son oeuf, on a posé ses nerfs. Quelqu’un dit. Quelqu’un n’est plus fatigué. Quelqu’un n’écoute plus. Quelqu’un n’a plus besoins d’aide. Quelqu’un n’est plus tendu. Quelqu’un n’attend plus. L’un crie. L’autre obstacle. Quelqu’un roule, dort, coud, est-​ce toi, Lorellou ? 2. Ne peut plus, n’a plus part à rien, quelqu’un. 3. Quelque chose contraint quelqu’un. 4. Soleil, ou lune, ou forêts, ou bien troupeaux, foules ou villes, quelqu’un n’aime pas ses compagnons de voyage. N’a pas choisi, ne reconnaît pas, ne goûte pas. 5. Princesse de marée basse a rendu ses griffes ; n’a plus le courage de comprendre; n’a plus le coeur à avoir raison. 6. Ne résiste plus. Les poutres tremblent et c’est vous. Le ciel est noir et c’est vous. Le verre casse et c’est vous. 7. On a perdu le secret des hommes. Ils jouent la pièce “en étranger.” Un page dit “Beh” et un mouton lui présente un plateau. Fatigue! Fatigue! Froid Partout! 8. Oh! Fagots de mes douze ans, où crépitez-​vous maintenant ?

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9. On a son creux ailleurs. 10. On a cédé sa place à l’ombre, par fatigue, par goût du rond. On entend au loin la rumeur de l’Asclépiade, la fleur géante. 11. … ou bien une voix soudain vient vous bramer au coeur. 12. On recueille ses disparus, venez, venez. 13. Tandis qu’on cherche sa clef dans l’horizon, on a la noyeé au cou, qui est morte dans l’eau irrespirable. 14. Elle traine. Comme elle traine ! Elle n’a cure de nos soucis. Elle a trop de désespoir. Elle ne se rend qu’à sa douleur. Oh misère, oh, martyre, le cou serré sans trêve par la noyée. 15. On sent la courbure de la terre. On a désormais les cheveux qui ondulent naturellement. On ne trahit plus le sol, on ne trahit plus l’ablette, on est la soeur par l’eau et par la feuille. On n’a plus le regard de son oeil, on n’a plus la main de son bras. On n’est plus vaine. On n’envie plus. On n’est plus enviée. 16. On ne travaille plus. Le tricot est là, tout fait, partout. 17. On a signé sa dernière feuille, c’est le départ des papillons. 18. On ne rêve plus. On est rêvée. Silence. 19. On n’est plus pressée de savoir. 20. C’est la voix de l’étendue qui parle aux ongles et à l’os. 21. Enfin chez soi, dans le pur, atteinte du dard de la douceur. 22. On regarde les vagues dans les yeux. Elles ne peuvent plus tromper. Elles se retirent déçues du flanc du navire. On sait, on sait les caresser. On sait qu’elles ont honte, elles aussi. 23. Epuisées, comme on les voit, comme on les voit désemparées !

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24. Une rose descend de la nue et s’offre au pèlerin ; parfois, rarement, combien rarement. Les lustres n’ont pas de mousse, ni le front de musique. 25. Horreur ! Horreur sans objet ! 26. Poches, cavernes toujours grandissantes. Loques des cieux et de la terre, monde avalé sans profit, sans goût, et sans rien que pour avaler. 27. Une veilleuse m’écoute. « Tu dis, fait-​elle, tu dis la juste vérité, voilà ce que j’aime en toi. » Ce sont les propres paroles de la veilleuse. 28. On m’enfonçait dans des cannes creuses. Le monde se vengeait. On m’enfonçait dans des cannes creuses, dans des aiguilles de seringues. On ne voulait pas me voir arriver au soleil où j’avais pris rendez-​vous. 29. Et je me disais : « Sortirai-​je? Sortirai-​je ? Ou bien ne sortirai-​je jamais ? Jamais ? » Les gémissements sont plus forts loin de la mer, comme quand le jeune homme qu’on aime s’éloigne d’un air pincé. 30. Il est d’une grande importance qu’une femme se couche tôt pour pleurer, sans quoi elle serait trop accablée. 31. A l’ombre d’un camion pouvoir manger tranquillement. Je fais mon devoir, tu fais le tien et d’attroupement nulle part. 32. Silence ! Silence ! Même pas vider une pêche. On est prudente, prudente. 33. On ne va pas chez le riche. On ne va pas chez le savant. Prudente, lovée dans ses anneaux. 34. Les maisons sont des obstacles. Les déménageurs sont des obstacles. La fille de l’air est un obstacle. 35. Rejeter, bousculer, défendre son miel avec son sang, évincer, sacrifier, faire périr… Pet parmi les aromates renverse bien des quilles. 36. Oh, fatigue, effort de ce monde, fatigue universelle, inimitié !

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37. Lorellou, Lorellou, j’ai peur… Par moments l’obscurité, par moments les bruissements. 38. Ecoute. J’approche des rumeurs de la mort. 39. Tu as éteint toutes mes lampes. 40. L’air est devenu tout vide Lorellou. 41. Mes mains, quelle fumée ! Si tu savais… Plus de paquets, plus porter, plus pouvoir. Plus rien, petite. 42. Expérience : misère ; qu’il est fou le porte-​drapeau. 43. … et il y a toujours le détroit à franchir. 44. Mes jambes, si tu savais, quelle fumée ! 45. Mais j’ai sans cesse ton visage dans la carriole… 46. Avec une doublure de canari, ils essayaient de me tromper. Mais moi, sans trêve, je disais: « Corbeau! Corbeau! « Ils se sont lassés. 47. Ecoute, je suis plus qu’à moitié dévorée. Je suis trempée comme un égout. 48. Pas d’année, dit grand-​père, pas d’année où je vis tant de mouches. Et il dit la vérité. Il l’a dit sûrement… Riez, riez, petits sots, jamais ne comprendrez que de sanglots il me faut pour chaque mot. 49. Le vieux cygne n’arrive plus à garder son rang sur l’eau. 50. Il ne lutte plus. Des apparences de lutte seulement. 51. Non, oui, non. Mais oui, je me plains. Même l’eau soupire en tombant. 52. Je balbutie, je lape la vase à présent. Tantôt l’esprit du mal, tantôt l’événement… J’écoutais l’ascenseur. Tu te souviens, Lorellou, tu n’arrivais jamais à l’heure.

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53. Forer, forer, étouffer, toujours la glacière-​misère. Répit dans la cendre, à peine, à peine ; à peine on se souvient. 54. Entrer dans le noir avec toi, comme c’était doux, Lorellou… 55. Ces hommes rient. Ils rient. Ils s’agitent. Au fond, ils ne dépassent pas un grand silence. Ils disent « là ». Ils sont toujours « ici ». Pas fagotés pour arriver.Ils parlent de Dieu, mais c’est avec leurs feuilles.Ils ont des plaintes. Mais c’est le vent.Ils ont peur du désert. 56. … Dans la poche du froid et toujours la route aux pieds. 57. Plaisirs de l’Arragale, vous succombez ici. En vain tu te courbes, tu te courbes, son de l’olifant, on est plus bas, plus bas… 58. Dans le souterrain, les oiseaux volèrent après moi, mais je me retournai et dis : « Non. Ici, souterrain. Et la stupeur est son privilège. » 59. Ainsi je m’avançai seule, d’un pas royal. 60. Autrefois, quand la Terre était solide, je dansais, j’avais confiance. A présent, comment serait-​ce possible? On détache un grain de sable et toute la plage s’effondre, tu sais bien. 61. Fatiguée on pèle du cerveau et on sait qu’on pèle, c’est le plus triste. 62. Quand le malheur tire son fil, comme il découd, comme il découd ! 63. « Poursuivez le nuage, attrapez-​le, mais attrapez-​le donc », toute la ville paria, mais je ne pus l’attraper. Oh, je sais, j’aurai pu… un dernier bond… mais je n’avais plus le goût. Perdu l’hémisphère, on n’est plus soutenue, on n’a plus le coeur à sauter. On ne trouve plus les gens où ils se mettent. On dit: « Peut-​être. Peut-​être bien, » on cherche seulement à ne pas froisser. 64. Ecoute, je suis l’ombre d’une ombre qui s’est enlisée.

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65. Dans tes doigts, un courant si léger, si rapide, où est-​il maintenant… où coulaient des étincelles. Les autres ont des mains comme de la terre, comme un enterrement. 66. Juana, je ne puis rester, je t’assure. J’ai une jambe de bois dans la tire-​lire à cause de toi. J’ai le coeur crayeux, les doigts morts à cause de toi. 67. Petit coeur en balustrade, il fallait me retenir plus tôt. Tu m’as perdu ma solitude. Tu m’as arraché le drap. Tu as mis en fleur mes cicatrices. 68. Elle a pris mon riz sur mes genoux. Elle a craché sur mes mains. 69. Mon lévrier a été mis dans un sac. On a pris la maison, entendez-​vous, entendez-​ vous le bruit qu’elle fit, quant à la faveur de l’obscurité, ils l’emportèrent, me laissant dans le champ comme une borne. Et je souffris grand froid. 70. Ils m’étendirent sur l’horizon. Ils ne me laissèrent plus me relever. Ah ! Quand on est pris dans l’engrenage du tigre… 71. Des trains sous l’océan, quelle souffrance ! Allez, ce n’est plus être au lit, ça. On est princesse ensuite, on l’a mérité. 72. Je vous le dis, je vous le dis, vraiment là où je suis, je connais aussi la vie. Je la connais. Le cerveau d’une plaie en sait des choses. Il vous voit aussi, allez, et vous juge tous, tant que vous êtes. 73. Oui, obscur, obscur, oui inquiétude. Sombre semeur. Quelle offrande ! Les repères s’enfuirent à tire d’aile. Les repères s’enfuient à perte de vue, pour le délire, pour le flot. 74. Comme ils s’écartent, les continents, comme ils s’écartent pour nous laisser mourir ! Nos mains chantant l’agonie se desserrèrent, la défaite aux grandes voiles passa lentement. 75. Juana ! Juana ! Si je me souviens… Tu sais quand tu disais, tu sais, tu le sais pour nous deux, Juana ! Oh ! Ce départ ! Mais pourquoi ? Pourquoi ? Vide ? Vide, vide, angoisse ; angoisse, comme un seul grand mât sur la mer. 76. Hier, hier encore ; hier, il y a trois siècles ; hier, croquant ma naïve espérance; hier, sa voix de pitié rasant le désespoir, sa tête soudain rejetée en arrière,

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comme un hanneton renversé sur les élytres, dans un arbre qui subitement s’ébroue au vent du soir, ses petits bras d’anémone, aimant sans serrer, volonté comme l’eau tombe… 77. Hier, tu n’avais qu’à étendre un doigt, Juana; pour nous deux, pour nous deux, tu n’avais qu’à étendre un doigt.

Henri Michaux: “The Slowed Down” Translated by Nathan Hoks 1. Slowed down, one feels the pulse of things; one snores; one’s got tons of time; all of life, calmly. One gobbles up the sounds, one gobbles them calmly; all of life. One is living in its shoes. One is cleaning up. One no longer needs to squeeze. One’s got tons of time. One savors. One laughs in her fists. One no longer believes in what one knows. One no longer needs to count. One is happy drinking; one is happy not drinking. One makes a pearl. One is, one has time. One is the slowdown. One pulled out of the slipstream. One’s got the smile of a clog. One’s no longer tired. One’s no longer touched. One’s got knees at the end of her toes. One’s no longer ashamed under the cloche. One sold her mountains. One stashed away her egg, one stashed away her nerves. Someone speaks. Someone’s no longer tired. Someone no longer listens. Someone no longer needs help. Someone’s no longer tense. Someone’s no longer waiting. One cries out. The other’s in the way. Someone rolls, sleeps, sews, is that you, Lorellou? 2. No longer can, no longer has a part in anything, anyone. 3. Something constrains someone. 4. Sun, or moon, or forests, or even flocks, crowds or cities, someone doesn’t like her fellow travelers. Hasn’t chosen, doesn’t recognize, doesn’t taste. 5. The low-​tide princess has retracted her claws; no longer has the courage to understand; no longer has the heart to be correct. 6. …Resist no longer. The beams tremble, and it’s you. The sky is black and it’s you. The glass breaks and it’s you. 7. We lost the secret of men.

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They perform the play “as strangers.” One page says “Baa” and a sheep presents itself on a platter. Fatigue! Fatigue! Cold everywhere! 8. Oh! My twelve years of firewood, where are you crackling now? 9. One’s emptiness is elsewhere. 10. One surrendered to the shadow, out of fatigue, out of fondness for circles. One hears the far-​off noise of the Asclepiade, the giant flower. 11. … or suddenly a voice starts wailing in your heart. 12. One gathers up her departed, come, come. 13. One scans the horizon for her key with a drowned woman around her neck, dead in the unbreathable water. 14. She drags on. Oh how she drags on! She doesn’t care about our problems. She’s got too much despair. She can only feel her own pain. Oh, misery, oh martyrdom, the drowned woman ceaselessly squeezes her neck. 15. One feels the Earth’s curvature. From now on one has naturally wavy hair. One doesn’t betray the earth, one doesn’t betray the bleak, one is sister by water and by leaf. One no longer has the look of her eye, one no longer has the hand of her arm. One is no longer vain. One no longer envies. One is no longer envied. 16. One no longer works. There’s always knitting, there, everywhere. 17. One has signed her last leaf, and the butterflies are leaving. 18. One no longer dreams. One is dreamt. Silence. 19. One’s no longer in a rush to know. 20. The voice of the expanse speaks to nails and bones. 21. Home at last, among the pure, wounded by a sweet jab.

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22. One sees waves in the eyes. They can no longer deceive. Disappointed, they pull back from the side of the ship. One knows, one knows how to caress them with a gaze. One knows they, too, are ashamed. 23. They’re exhausted, as one can see; as one can see, they’re helpless. 24. A rose comes down from the cloud and offers itself to the pilgrim; sometimes, it’s rare, so rare. The chandeliers have no foam, and the face has no music. 25. Horror! Horror without an object! 26. Pockets, expanding caves. Rags of the heavens and of the earth, the world swallowed up without profit, without taste, for no reason but to swallow. 27. A nightlight listens to me. “You speak,” she says, “you speak the real truth, that’s what I love about you.” These are the nightlight’s actual words. 28. They stuffed me into empty canes. The world was taking revenge. They stuffed me into empty canes, into syringe needles. They didn’t want me get to my appointment with the sun. 29. And I said to myself: “Will I get out? Will I get out? Or will I never get out? Never?” The moans are louder far from the sea, as when the young man we love wanders off like a snob. 30. It is of great importance that a woman goes to bed early to cry, otherwise she’d be too overwhelmed. 31. In a truck’s shade you can eat in peace. I do my duty, you do yours, without a crowd. 32. Silence! Silence. Don’t even empty a peach. One is careful, careful. 33. One doesn’t visit the rich. One doesn’t visit the wise. Cautious, coiled up in her rings. 34. Houses are obstacles. Movers are obstacles. The girl of air is an obstacle.

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35. Driving out, pushing back, defending her honey with her blood, ousting, sacrificing, killing off… a fart among spices even knocks over the ninepins. 36. Oh, fatigue, the strain of this world, universal fatigue, the enemy! 37. Lorellou, Lorellou, I’m afraid… At times darkness, at times rustlings. 38. Listen, I’m getting close to the sounds of Death. 39. You’ve switched off all my lights. 40. The air has entirely emptied out, Lorellou. 41. My hands, what smoke! If you only knew… No more luggage, no more lugging, no more power. No more anything, darling. 42. Experience; misery; how crazy is the flag-​bearer! 43. … and there’s always the straits to get across. 44. My legs, if you only knew, what smoke! 45. But I’ll always have your face in my cart. 46. They would try to trick me with canary’s double. But I’d call them out, ceaselessly, “Raven! Raven!” They grew tired of it. 47. Listen, I’m more than half eaten up. I’m soaked as a sewer. 48. Never, said grandpa, never have I seen so many flies. And he spoke the truth. He spoke it with certainty. Go ahead and laugh, you little fools, you’ll never understand how much every word makes me sob. 49. The old swan no longer bothers to defend its rank on the water. 50. He no longer fights. Just makes a show of fighting.

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51. Yes, no, yes. Well yes, I am complaining. Even water sighs as it falls. 52. I’m babbling, now I’m lapping up sludge. Sometimes the evil spirit, sometimes the event… I was listening to the elevator. You remember, Lorellou, you never showed up on time. 53. Sinking, sinking, choking, always icebox-​wretchedness. A breather in the ash, hardly, hardly; hardly does one remember. 54. Entering the darkness with you, how sweet it was, Lorellou… 55. These men laugh. They laugh. They’re getting restless. Deep down, they don’t get beyond a vast silence. They say “there.” They are always “here.” Wearing nothing special. They speak of God, but with their leaves.They moan and groan. But it’s all wind.They’re afraid of the desert. 56. …The cold in the pocket, and always the road in the feet. 57. Pleasures of Arragale, you succumb here. In vain you bend, you bend, sound of the olifant, one lowers oneself more and more… 58. The birds flew after me in the underground, but I turned and said: “Not here, underground. And stupor is its privilege.” 59. Thus I moved forward alone, with a royal step. 60. Once, when the Earth was solid, I would dance, I had faith. Now how would that be possible? As you know, one removes a grain of sand and the whole beach collapses. 61. Tired, one peels at the brain and one is aware that one peels, it’s so sad. 62. When misfortune pulls a thread, how it all unravels, how it all unravels!

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63. “Chase the cloud, catch it, oh but catch it,” the whole town bet on it, but I couldn’t catch it. Oh, I know, I could have… one last jump… but I didn’t have the feel for it. Having lost the hemisphere, one is no longer sustained, one’s heart no longer leaps. One no longer finds people where they belong. One says, “Maybe, well, maybe,” one just tries not to offend. 64. Listen, I am the shadow of a shadow that’s bogged down. 65. In your fingers, a stream so light and fast, where is it now, … where did the sparks flow off to. Others’ hands are like earth, like a burial. 66. Juana, I can’t stay, I assure you. I’ve got a wood leg in the money box because of you. I’ve got a chalky heart and dead fingers because of you. 67. Little heart on handrails, I still needed to hang on. You ruined my solitude. You ripped off my sheet. You made my scars bloom. 68. She took the rice off my knees. She spit on my hands. 69. My greyhound was put in a bag. One took the house, do you hear it, do you hear the noise it made when, under the cover of darkness, they took it, leaving me in the field like a boundary stone. I was terribly cold! 70. They hung me out on the horizon. They kept me down. Ah! to be stuck in the gears of a tiger. 71. Trains under the ocean, what suffering! Come on, this is beyond being bedridden. Thereafter one is a princess, one has earned it. 72. I tell you all, I tell you all, really, there where I am, I’ve also come to know life. I know it. The brain of the wound knows something about it. It sees you, too, come on, and it judges you all, so long as you live. 73. Yes, darkness, darkness, yes worry. Somber sower. What an offering! The landmarks took flight. The landmarks fly off as far as the eye can see, for delirium, for the flood. 74. How they part, the continents, how they part to let us die! Singing agony, our hands came apart, the tall sail suffered a slow defeat.

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75. Juana! Juana! If I remember… You know, when you would speak, you know, you know it, for us both, Juana! Oh! This departure! But why? Why? Emptiness? Emptiness, emptiness, anguish; anguish like a tall mast alone at sea. 76. Yesterday, just yesterday; yesterday, three-​ hundred years ago; yesterday, wasting my naive hope; yesterday, her voice of pity razing despair, her head suddenly thrown back like a June bug in a tree that flips over on its elytra and all at once flutters its little anemone arms in the evening breeze, loving without squeezing, willfully the way water falls… 77. Yesterday you only had to spread out a finger, Juana; for the two of us, for both of us, you only had spread out a finger.

Appendix II Basic Schema of the Subject Configuration Views on the subject in the lyric discourse102 1. M. Bakhtin (In: “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” including the lyric poetry 1920–​1924?) Author Hero 2. H. Meschonnic (various works, particularly Critique du rythme, 1982) Subject of the poem: recitative =​subject of enunciation =​ transsubject =​ I-​you 3. A. Easthope (Poetry as Discourse, 1983) and Peter Hühn 1 (“Watching the Speaker Speak,” 1998) Subject of enunciation Subject of utterance/​the enounced 4. J. Kos (Literary theory, 1996, The Lyric, 1993) Lyric subject =​speaker and persona, character in the storyworld Various aspects of the lyric subject: person, chronotope of the speech, address, source of speech, directionality of speech, mode and perspective

102 We are connecting ideas that seem the most promising for further consideration and, which, have to a greater or lesser degree been included in our definitions of (potential) elements of subject configuration on both the speculative level and as a synthesis of the findings of various theories.

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5. J. Schönert (“Empirischer Autor, Impliziter Autor und Lyrisches Ich,” 1999) The level of textual production: real (empirical) author The level of textual organization: abstract (implied) author The level of utterance: speaker (voice) 6. A. Rodriguez (Le pacte lyrique : Configuration discursive et interaction affective, 2003) Empirical enunciative instance: the writing subject Discursive fictional instances: –​  Producer of enunciation: lyric voice –​  Lyric patient and subject of utterance (when she/​he speaks) –​  Center of perspective –​ Diffraction of pathic tonalities into personifications, metaphors, allegories, landscape When these discursive instances occur and overlap, the lyric subject is established. 7. P. Hühn 2 (“Plotting the Lyric,” 2005) Agents of mediacy (who speaks?) –​  The subject of composition (the redefined implied author) –​  Speaker or narrator –​  Protagonist Types of perspectives (who sees?) Linguistic views on the structuration of discourse 1. M. Bakhtin (In: “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” also the lyric poetry) Author Hero

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2. Bakhtin/​Voloshinov (“Slovo v žizni i slovo v poèzii,” [Discourse in Life, Discourse in Poetry] 1926) Point of view 3. E. Benveniste (Problems in general linguistics, 1971 and Problèmes de linguistique générale II, 1978, every discourse) Subject of enunciation Subject of the enounced 4. O. Ducrot (Le dire et le dit, 1985, ordinary speech-​acts) Locutor L Locutor λ Enunciators (centres of perspective)

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Subject Configuration in the Poem103 Empirical level of discursive production Empirical author     Empirical reader He/​she dialogizes with all instances below. Discursive levels of the enunciative event i Level of textual organization textual subject Meschonnic’s recitative (subject-​rhythm) as an important aspect of textual subject (with a high level of prereflexive subjectifying elements, see the second case study) ii Level of enunciation corresponds to the level of the narrative voice in narrative fiction from covert lyric voice to overt, personalized subject of enunciation Types of subject of enunciation 1. Extradiegetic and homodiegetic/​autodiegetic (identified with the subject of the enounced, the lyric persona) A. Rimbaud’s “The Dawn,” Keat’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” E. A. Poe’s “The Raven” 2. Extradiegetic and heterodiegetic (not identified with personae or other focal points of subjectivity in the storyworld) R. M. Rilke’s “Roman Fountain,” M. J. Lermontov’s “The Angel,” G. Trakl’s “Kaspar Hauser’s Song” 103 In the following outline of typologies, examples of the potential realizations of subject configuration are intended as points of orientation only. The detailed elaboration of these typologies, to the extent it is possible, would require grounding in an extensive corpus of precise analyses and therefore cannot be summarized in outline form. This is particularly true of perspective (point of view) and recitative.

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3. Metadiegetic or metapoetic (frequent implicit strategy in the history of poetry) Horace’s “Ode III. 30 Exegi monumentum aere perennius” (“I Constructed a Monument of Pyramids More Durable Than Bronze”), Guilhem IX’s “Ferai un vers” (“I shall make a poem”), W. Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII, J. Ashbery’s “Some Trees” iii level of storyworld =​The level of the enounced – lyric persona (one or more) =​subject of the enounced (when she/​ he speaks) –  other focal points of subjectivity on the level of the storyworld Frequently intensive prereflexive mode (Benveniste’s iconicity, evocant, pathem, Rodriguez’s pathic tonalities). When these focal points acquire a voice, enunciative dialogism occurs Basic typology of focal points of subjectivity in the storyworld 1. Absence of character with effects of a person: E. Dickinson’s “After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes,” S. Mallarmé’s “A Lace Vanishes,” A. Rimbaud’s “Seapiece” 2. Monological diegesis with a central lyric persona who is also the subject of the enounced: W. Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” W. Whitman’s 1. poem from “Song of Myself ” 3. Monological diegesis with a central lyric persona, who is not the subject of the enounced: Rilke’s “The Panther,” M. Tsvetaeva’s “The Sybil,” Ph. Larkin’s “Home Is So Sad” 4. Fragmentation onto different focal points of subjectivity

a) focal points of subjectivity that can be identified with the central lyric persona:

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Ch. Baudelaire’s “Spleen II,” G. de Nerval’s “El Desdichado,” S. Plath’s “Ariel,” A. Rich’s “Diving Into The Wreck”

b) focal points of subjectivity with the effect of autonomous beings/​characters: -​ central lyric persona with non-​speaking addressee(s): Louise Labé’s sonnet XVIII “Kiss me, kiss me again, and then kiss,” F. Prešeren’s master sonnet from “A Wreath of Sonnets,” W. B. Yeat’s “When You Are Old”



–​ external dialogism: Sappho’s Fragment 1 (“Hymn to Aphrodite”), Dante’s sonnet “Within my heart I felt the sudden stir,” A. de Musset’s “The May Night,” P. Verlaine’s “Sentimental Conversation,” R. Frost’s “Home Burial”

–​ combinations of external and inner dialogism: T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” E. Pound’s “Near Périgord,” H. Michaux’s “The Slowed Down,” J. Ashbery’s “A Boy”



c) personifications, allegories, symbols accompanied or not by a central lyric persona, speaking or not: Ch. Baudelaire’s “Recueillement,” J. Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” A. Rimbaud’s “Dawn,” F. G. Lorca’s “The Cricket,” D. Zajc’s “The Big Black Bull”



d) element of nature, landscapes, places, objects etc. (accompanied or not by a central lyric persona): Ch. Baudelaire’s “Evening Harmony,” F. Ponge’s “The Candle,” Wang Wei’s “Deer Park,” M. Basho’s haiku “The Old Pond,” F. G. Lorca’s “Riddle of the Guitar,” C. Guillén’s “The Horizon,” J. Murn’s “Sky, Sky”



e) combinations and/​or overlappings: focal points of subjectivity with the effect of a character, elements of nature, landscapes, personifications, allegories, symbols: A. Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat,” R. M. Rilke’s “Sonnets to Orpehus” and “The Duino Elegies,” T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

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types of lyric personas 1. Antrophomorphic: Speaking: W. Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” S. Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” Non-​speaking: W. C. Williams “The Farmer,” R. M. Rilke’s “Buddha in Glory,” B. Vodušek’ “Judas” 2. The animal world: Speaking: E. Bishop’s “Giant Toad,” M. Vidmar’s “The Snail” Non-​speaking: R. M. Rilke’s “The Panther,” D. Zajc’s “Big Black Bull” 3. The plant world: Speaking: Luise Glück’s “The Wild Iris,” Denise Levertov’s “A Tree Telling of Orpheus,” B. Korun’s “The First Bud of a Hellebore” Non-​speaking: W. C. Williams “The Rose” 4. The world of objects Speaking: C. Baudelaire’s “The Pipe,” A. Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat” Non-​speaking: A. de Lamartine’s “The Lake,” R. M. Rilke’s “The Roman Fountain,” F. Ponge’s “The Soap,” P. Larkin’s “Home Is So Sad,” W. C. Williams’s “Pot of Flowers” 5. Mythological and supranatural creatures Speaking: P. Valéry’s “The Young Fate” Non-​speaking: P. Valéry’s “The Angel,” R. Alberti’s poetry collection The Angels, 50. poem from C. Vallejo’s collection Trilce 6. Individual: F. Pessoa’s/​A. Caeiro’s “The Keeper of Sheep” 7. Collective: F. Villon’s “Epitaph (Ballad of the Hanged Men),” P. Celan’s “Death Fugue” 8. Authorial: V. Hugo’s “To My Daughter,” F. O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Day Died,” T. Šalamun’s “America” 9. Fictional (dramatic monologue): A. Webster’s “A Castaway,” T. S. Eliot’s “Alfred Prufrock’s Love Song,” Langston Hughes’s “Negro Speaks of Rivers,” C. A. Duffy’s “War Photographer”

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Basic Schema of the Subject Configuration

Perspectives and focalizations104 Possible levels of manifestation: –​ level of the storyworld/​the enounced –​ level of enunciation –​ level of the textual subject Types: sensory (smell, eyesight, hearing, touch) psychic (cognitive, affective) axiological, ethical, ideological, aesthetic Variables: time restriction of knowledge (with regards to the degree of objectivity/​subjectivity) distance speed Combinations: 1) Identity/​overlapping of focalizer, lyric persona/​subject of the enounced, subject of enunciation 2) Difference of focalizer, lyric persona/​subject of the enounced, identity of focalizer, and subject of enunciation 3) Indeterminacy of focalization/​point of view on the level of diegesis and subject enunciation In poems, these are typically subtle, hardly noticeable transitions between these possibilities. Perspectives and focalizations in the storyworld (both in the case of identity and in the case of difference between the lyric persona and the subject of enunciation)

104 In the case of perspectives and focalizations, it is difficult to provide concrete examples without more detailed analysis.

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1. Internal fixed focalization: various focalizations within a single focalizer manifested through the shifting of different and opposing standpoints of a single focalizer: Ch. Baudelaire’s “Spleen II,” H. Michaux’s “The Slowed Down,” J. Ashbery’s “Self-​Portrait in a Convex Mirror” 2. Internal multiple focalization: T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” several of E. Pound’s “Cantos,” Ashbery’s “A Boy,” R. Frost’s “Place for a Third” 3. (Genette’s) external and zero focalization focalizations that cannot be ascribed to neither of the lyric personas but to agents of mediacy on a superior discursive level

-​ Ascribed to a subject of enunciation: R. M. Rilke’s “The Panther,” “The Spanish Dancer,” E. Bishop’s “Some Dreams They Forgot”



-​ Ascribed to the textual subject: Marcabru’s “In an orchard down by the stream,” A. Webster’s “A Castaway,” C. A. Duffy’s “War Photographer”

4. Doubling of focalizing and subtle shifts between focalizing on the level of enunciation and on the level of the storyworld in the case of difference of subject of enunciation and the lyric persona: R. M. Rilke’s “The Carousel. Jardin de Luxembourg,” Cavafy’s “Dareios,” poems from I. Svetina’s collection “The Cloud and the Mountain”

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Todorov, Tzvetan (ed). Mikhaïl Bakhtine le principe dialogique suivi d’Écrits du Cercle de Bakhtine. Paris: Seuil, 1982. Uspensky, Boris. Poetics of Composition. Los Angeles: California University Press, 1973. Vadé, Yves. “Hugocentrisme et diffraction du sujet” Le sujet lyrique en question. Ed. Dominique Rabaté, Yves Vadé & Joëlle De Sermet, 1996a. 85–​99. Vadé, Yves. “L’ emergence du sujet lyrique à l’époque romantique” Les figures du sujet lyrique. Ed. Dominique Rabaté, 1996b. 11–​37. Valéry, Paul. Oeuvres complètes I. Paris: Gallimard, 1957. Vološinov, Vladimir N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Trans. V. Matejka & R. Titunik. New York, London: Seminar Press, 1973. Watteyne, Nathalie (ed). Lyrisme et énonciation lyrique. Québec & Bordeaux: Nota bene, 2006. Wellek, René. Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Weststeijn, Willem G. “Plot Structure in Lyric Poetry. An Analysis of Three Exile Poems by Alexandr Puškin” Russian Literature 26 (1989): 509–​522. Wolf, Werner. “Aesthetic Illusion in Lyric Poetry?” Poetica 30 (1998): 251–​289. Wolf, Werner. “The Lyric: Problems of Definition.” Theory into Poetry. Ed. Eva Müller-​Zettelmann & Margarete Rubik, 2005. 21–​56. Wood, David W. “Introduction” Notes for a Romantic Encyclopedia: Das Allgemeine Brouillon. Ed. & trans. David W. Wood. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007. ix–​xxx. Zink, Michel. La subjectivité littéraire autour du siècle de saint Louis. Paris: PUF, 1985. Zupan Sosič, Alojzija. Teorija pripovedi. Maribor: Litera, 2017. Žerjal Pavlin, Vita. Lirski cikel v slovenski poeziji 19. in 20. stoletja. Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU, 2008.

Index of Subjects A act of consciousness  117, 154 actant subject  76 activity  24, 27, 29, 75, 78, 88, 89, 92, 99, 100, 114, 116, 117, 121, 139, 146, 156, 157, 159, 167, 181, 212, 238, 243, 244, 267, 268 actualization  70, 117, 127, 177, 204, 235 aesthetic illusion  57, 246 affective  51, 53, 56, 75, 76, 84–​88, 133, 151, 167–​169, 173, 175, 197, 215, 217, 241, 244, 268, 274 affective-​pathic Subject  84 affectivity  53, 55, 86, 88, 234 agents of mediacy  44, 79, 268, 275 aisthesis  22 alienation  21, 32, 33, 54, 59, 60, 87 alterity  31, 104, 177, 243 anaphora  224 anti-​essentialism  35, 42, 44 arbitrariness  137, 138 authenticity  40, 52, 53, 54, 79 author  19–​21, 24, 29, 47, 48, 51, 54–​ 58, 60, 61, 66–​68, 71, 72, 74, 76, 78, 85, 93, 104, 106, 112, 113, 116–​ 119, 124, 131, 148, 149, 174, 177, 179, 190, 201, 213, 219, 236–​238, 240, 248, 267, 268, 270 authorial function  118 authorial persona  56 autobiographical  53, 57, 177–​ 179, 248 autobiographically-​profiled lyric persona  106 autodiegetic  218, 241, 243, 270 autonomous–​autotelic paradigm  55 autoreferentiality  201

B bodily dimension  70, 236 bodily-​sensory organization of the text  238 body-​in-​language  141 C canso  190, 201, 202 Cartesian subject  90 chivalric romance  181 classicist poetry  40 code  20, 21, 24, 71, 74, 80, 92, 98, 114, 137, 160, 163–​165, 182, 202, 206 cogito  64, 66, 67, 108, 117, 148, 154, 156, 159, 181, 182 cognitivism  37 collective subject  147, 148, 205 common theory  136, 149 communication model  20–​22 concretization  20, 97, 248 confessional–​authentic paradigm  55 configuration of poetic discourse  121 configurational act  100, 104 consonantal paradigm  225 consonantal-​vocal series  238 continuous  99, 135, 139, 141, 144146, 159, 167, 203, 221 convention  56, 57, 98, 115, 131, 138, 190, 202, 217 corporality  238, 239 courtly culture  198, 207 courtly love  190 covert  241, 250, 270 cross-​genre narratological studies  244

292

Index of Subjects

D Darstellung  55, 87, 94, 157 deictics  145, 218, 242, 251, 252 depersonalization  60, 61 dialogic angles  174 dialogic positions  179 dialogical relations  25, 98 dialogism  26, 97, 110–​112, 114–​117, 121, 129, 147, 173, 191, 203, 235, 246, 271, 272 dialogism of the lyric  110 dialogization  60, 203, 219, 247 dialogue  20, 110, 111, 112, 116, 118, 127, 181, 197, 209, 211, 215, 227, 246 dictatorial imagination  41 diegesis  59, 80, 104, 122, 174, 175, 190, 213, 217, 239–​241, 243, 251, 271, 274 diegetic frame  56 diegetic levels  190, 218 directionality  81, 218, 242, 244, 247, 263 discontinuity  93, 103–​105, 109, 220, 243 discours  71, 123, 234, 239 discourse theory see theory of discourse  71 discursive act  100 discursive instances  118, 128, 174, 240, 268 discursive practices  137 discursive-​anthropological  7, 48, 235 dithyrambic poetry  55 domna  205 double signify  24 double-​layered nature of the word  129 double-​layered structure  24, 25, 98 double-​layering of the text  173

double-​voiced discourse  246 dramatic monologue  69, 273 E Early German Romantics  87 embedded voices  219 embodiment  28, 31, 72, 86, 164, 173, 238 emotion  122, 132–​134 empirical author  48, 51, 57, 61, 66, 85, 104, 174, 219, 248, 270 empirical speaker  67, 68, 124 emplotment  103, 123, 224, 242, 243 energeia  159, 164, 167 enounced  23, 24, 48, 56, 58, 72–​74, 76, 89, 98, 119, 121–​126, 128, 130, 139, 142, 164, 175, 187, 190, 197, 198, 201, 206, 213, 215, 217–​219, 222, 234–​243, 245, 247–​251, 267, 269–​271, 274 enthusiasm  55 enunciation  21–​23, 25, 27, 39, 48, 69–​74, 76, 77, 79, 81, 89–​93, 98, 99, 105, 109, 114, 115, 119, 121–​ 126, 128–​130, 133, 136, 138–​148, 161–​169, 173, 174, 182, 187, 190, 197, 198, 203, 204, 206, 207, 210, 212, 213, 217–​219, 221–​226, 233–​ 237, 239–​252, 267–​270, 274, 275 enunciative apparatus  130, 145, 148, 169, 198, 222 enunciative instance  122, 124, 214, 216, 219, 235, 241, 268 enunciative level  124, 174, 210, 213, 215, 216, 218, 219, 241 enunciative polyphony  57 enunciative position  48, 130, 179, 250 enunciator  122, 123, 125, 126, 130, 197, 201, 213, 214, 219, 239, 244, 245, 269

Index of Subjects

epic  35, 36, 39, 40, 44, 47, 51, 54, 59, 69, 70, 78–​80 epiphora  224 essentialism  19, 35, 42, 44, 93, 94, 112, 233 essentialist approaches  19, 70 event  22, 25, 27, 58, 68, 71, 72, 77, 98–​100, 116–​119, 121, 129, 138, 145, 146, 148, 152, 154, 155, 158, 162, 168, 173, 177, 182, 190, 201, 206, 207, 216, 218, 235, 237, 239, 240, 247, 251, 263, 270 eventmential  25, 58, 114, 116, 157, 159, 162, 163, 235, 242 everyday speech  169, 218, 240, 245 evocant  133, 166, 167, 271 evocation  105, 132, 134, 159, 165, 244 evoked  133 experientiality  40, 79 external dialogism  111, 272 extradiegetic  218, 241, 250, 270 F family resemblance  36, 37, 81 feeling  42, 52, 55, 58, 88, 94, 127, 134, 136, 146, 154–​159, 164–​166, 169, 206, 222, 271 feminist critique  178 fictional world  80 fictionality  41, 51, 52, 67–​69, 248 fictive lyric subject  189 figurative isotopies  109, 231, 244 fin’amor  205–​207 first-​person persona  177, 179, 248 first-​person point of view  180, 181 flesh  86, 169 floating signifier  98 focalization  47, 79, 81, 197, 198, 207, 212, 215, 217, 220, 222, 224, 227, 228, 236, 243–​247, 252, 274, 275

293

focalizer  79, 245, 246, 274 form of language  136, 159 formalism  25, 67, 70, 75, 204 forms of life  76, 146 Frankfurt School  137 functioning  137, 138, 141, 144, 150, 159, 221, 237, 239 G Gefühl  88, 155, 159 gemination  224, 231 gender analysis  178 gender studies  178 generalized semantics  203, 204 genotext  92, 93, 168 genre  35–​40, 42–​44, 51–​53, 57, 63, 65, 68–​72, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 92–​ 94, 112–​115, 123, 136, 139, 140, 219, 233, 234, 237–​239, 244, 249 genre theory  7, 35–​37, 42–​44, 81, 93, 94, 113, 233 grammatical subject  63, 76, 210 grand narrative  33 H hermeneutics  25, 26, 38, 98, 103, 144, 152, 153, 163, 233 hero  47 heterodiegesis  218 heterodiegetic subject  218 heteroglossia  112, 114–​116 histoire  123, 234, 239 historical anthropology  29, 30, 135, 141, 149 historical formations  59, 146, 158, 174, 242 historicity  20, 23, 31, 69, 89, 93, 114, 121, 127, 129, 136–​141, 146–​148, 158, 165, 249 hypersubjectivity  145, 147 hypokeimenon  63

294

Index of Subjects

I I-​ Origines  65 iconicity  132–​134, 159, 166, 167, 244, 271 iconized  133 iconizing  133 idem  103–​106, 108, 109, 235 identity formation  240 ideology  19, 41, 113, 114, 129, 135, 143, 190 I-​for-​myself  187 I-​for-​the-​other  116, 187, 205 illocutionary act  99 imaginary  73 imago Dei  181 immediate consciousness  83, 154, 156, 163–​165 implied author  48, 118, 174, 179, 236–​238, 268 individual universal  153 individualization  31, 32, 56, 76, 144, 180, 191, 240, 250 instances of experientiality  79 instances of speech  128, 248 intellectual intuition  155 intensity  144, 164 interlocutor  110, 181, 249 internalization  154, 180, 197, 207 interpretant  25, 29, 30, 129 intersubjectivation  221, 247 intersubjectivity  20, 23, 58, 69, 70, 86, 97, 99, 115, 127, 147, 169, 173, 219 intertextuality  37, 89, 93, 98, 178, 183, 204, 246 intonation  92, 112, 113, 117, 122, 142, 164, 226 intradiscursive instance  72 I-​Origo  65 ipse  103–​106, 108–​110, 220, 235, 243 ipseity  109

irony  198, 200 iterability  20, 98 iterativity  98 L langage  22, 29, 75, 83, 89, 114, 115, 129, 135, 142, 162, 166, 174 langue  22, 24, 115, 142, 160, 161, 238 lexical meaning  139, 142 lexical semantics  174, 225, 238 lexical sense  142 linguistic rhythm  143 linguistic sign  22, 25, 70, 80, 98, 101, 128, 131–​135, 138, 139, 165, 166, 169, 221 linguistics of discourse  65, 131, 138, 158 literariness  20, 89, 93, 138, 139 literary absolute  40 literary artwork  97 literary code  206 literary conventions  177, 179, 198 literary criticism  19, 35, 43, 79, 93, 134, 136, 149, 178, 234 literary discourse  19, 20, 22, 51, 68, 71, 104, 121, 123, 138, 139, 145, 147, 152, 167, 238 literary genres  38, 63, 65, 70, 81, 84, 85, 112, 123, 139, 249 literary hermeneutics  25, 163 literary kinds  36 literary morphology  48, 76, 80 literary pragmatics  22, 25, 68, 130 literary rhythm  143 literary subject  52, 55, 63, 81, 149, 178, 222 literary system  37 literary theory  19, 23, 35, 38, 40, 47, 48, 53, 72, 79, 84, 93, 149, 222, 235, 243, 267 literary types  35, 51, 78, 136

Index of Subjects

literary-​morphological  48, 83, 234–​236 locutor –​λ  122, 123, 190, 197 locutor L  122, 123, 190, 197, 264 lurikos  39 lyric  20, 25, 26, 35–​44, 47–​49, 51–​ 61, 63–​81, 83–​88, 93, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103–​110, 112–​114, 120, 123, 130, 146, 148, 149, 151, 166, 167, 170, 173, 174, 177, 182–​184, 187, 189–​191, 198, 200, 202, 205–​207, 209, 213, 217, 218, 222, 231, 233–​ 235, 237, 240, 241, 243–​251, 267, 268, 270–​272, 274, 275 lyric “I”  48 lyric address  112, 247 lyric diegesis  59 lyric discourse  59, 69, 70, 72, 87, 105, 123, 245, 246 lyric pact  75, 85–​88, 166, 167 lyric poetry  39, 40, 51–​55, 78, 84, 177, 244, 267, 268 lyric prototype  43 lyric speaker  48, 246 lyric voice  48, 174, 217, 237, 241, 246, 248, 250, 268, 270 lyricism  40, 42, 61, 75, 182 lyrisches Ich  60, 61, 66, 268 M macrosystem of the poem  223–​225 material sources of speech  175 meaning-​making  125, 135, 140, 142, 144, 145, 147, 162, 174, 203, 204, 229, 231 mediacy  44, 70, 79, 268, 275 mediating  55, 70, 240, 244 medieval literature  178, 181, 203 Medieval studies  177, 178 melikè poièsis  39 melodic Subject  205, 206 memoria  181

295

metadiegesis  190 metadiegetic subject  241 metagenre  36 metalinguistics  26, 27, 98, 112, 131, 233, 245 metaphor  42, 105, 155, 207, 221 metaphorical discourse  105, 106 metaphorization  105, 184, 218, 243, 250 metapoem  187, 203, 240 metapoetic procedure  190 metapoetry  190, 241 metasemantics  25, 112, 131 metonymization  243, 250 mezura  185 microdiegesis  210, 211, 215, 216, 219, 223, 246 mimesis  51–​54, 63, 65, 70, 91, 92, 141, 152, 187, 207 mimetic  20, 51, 52, 65, 83, 87, 138, 162, 168, 218, 239 mirror stage  187 mise en forme (putting into form)  85, 87 monolithic subjectivity  111 monologic model of the poem  79 monological  37, 57, 69, 79, 112, 114, 129, 219, 234, 235, 237, 240, 241, 245, 271 monologism of the lyric  47, 113 moral self  180 multiple signifier  139, 166, 168 music  24, 42, 54, 59, 60, 85, 142, 166, 182, 205, 206, 261 musical  39, 59, 164, 177, 182, 205–​207 N narrative  30, 33, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 65, 78, 79, 81, 86, 92, 93, 100, 101, 103–​105, 109, 123, 136, 140, 160, 174, 203, 217, 234, 239–​241, 245, 250, 270

296

Index of Subjects

narrative identity  103–​105, 109, 234, 235 narrative procedures  41 narrative voice  44, 79, 174, 217, 241, 270 narrativity  79, 103, 105, 123, 234 narrativization  33, 42, 136, 250 narratological approach  78 narratological turn  234 narratology  43, 78, 79, 81, 105, 123, 234, 239, 241 narrator  44, 47, 69, 75, 79, 80, 124, 217, 218, 237, 240, 245, 268 natural forms of poetry  40 negative poetics  149 nonegological theories of the subject  72, 151, 238 nonelogical subject  83 non-​linear connectivity  222 non-​Self  58 Nouvelle critique  19 O Occitan civilization  179, 207 ocular metaphor  155 oral gesture  239 orality  135, 239, 242 ordinary speech see everyday language  121, 123, 269 ordo inversus  157 otherness  86, 103–​105, 109, 110, 147, 177, 204, 249 P paradigmatic  36, 133, 142, 159, 222, 244 pathem  132, 133, 167, 244, 271 pathic  53, 83–​88, 133, 159, 166–​168, 234, 244, 251, 268, 271 pathic subject  83, 84, 86, 88 performative  24, 27, 51, 68, 70, 99, 139, 147, 148, 162, 187, 190, 206, 233, 239, 240, 241, 248

performativity  27 personalization  240 personification  175 phenomenology  25, 85, 86, 88, 98–​ 100, 127, 169 phenomenology of the affective  84–​ 86, 169 phenotext  12, 92, 93, 168 philosophy  26, 27, 29–​31, 47, 60, 83, 97, 111, 116, 121, 144, 151, 152, 156, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 180, 207, 233, 234 physicality  70, 141, 164, 166, 169, 221, 222 picture poem [Bildsgedicht] 69  plot  105, 199, 210, 211, 213, 216, 218–​220, 225, 231, 241, 243, 244, 251 poésie  39, 40, 75, 85, 203 poetic discourse  23, 41, 51, 54, 73, 74, 78, 91, 105, 109, 114, 119, 125, 133–​135, 137, 138, 144, 145, 148, 149, 152, 158, 159, 162, 166–​169, 173–​175, 177, 179, 182, 187, 203, 206, 218, 221, 235, 236, 238, 239, 241, 242, 247, 248, 249, 251, 252 poetic language  25, 41, 89, 91, 92, 113, 114, 119, 130–​134, 159, 164, 167, 168 poetic representation  55 poetic story, see poetic plot  109, 189, 210, 220 poetic subject  48, 83, 94, 97, 108, 112, 117, 120, 125, 130, 143, 145–​ 149, 151, 159, 160, 163, 169, 173–​ 175, 179, 201, 205, 206, 219, 221, 222, 224, 229–​232, 235, 236, 238, 242, 243, 247, 248 poetic subjectivity  43, 75, 76, 77, 88, 93, 94, 113, 116, 146, 174, 179, 234 poetic system  133, 159, 164, 167–​ 169, 203, 222, 239 poetic transformation  59

Index of Subjects

poetics  21, 22, 39, 41, 57, 75, 76, 113, 114, 119, 125, 131, 133–​141, 143–​145, 148, 149, 152, 158–​160, 163, 168, 169, 178, 183, 203, 209, 211 poetics of negativity  41 poiesis  54, 55, 157, 207 point of view  113, 122, 126, 130, 180, 181, 198, 200, 201, 211, 220, 230, 244, 245, 269, 270, 274 polyphony  56, 57, 115, 116, 118, 121–​123, 191, 201, 203, 215–​217, 219, 220 polysemy  113, 204 postclassical narratology  78 poststructuralism  23, 98, 161 poststructuralist  19, 23 pragmatic discourse  71, 72 pragmatic semantics  121, 124 pragmatics of discourse  20 preflexive mode  166, 167, 173 prereflection  159, 166, 167, 206 prereflexive self-​consciousness  152 pre-​Socratic understanding of rhythm  141 process of becoming  117, 154, 156, 182 processuality  83, 97, 98, 104, 166, 235 prosody  135, 141, 142, 169, 213, 221, 223, 225, 231 protagonist  79, 104, 105, 108, 200, 237, 240, 245 proto-​Cartesian shift  181 prototype  36–​39, 81, 93, 233, 237, 240, 241, 243, 245 psychoanalysis  88, 89, 139, 143, 144, 145, 148, 166 psychologization  48, 144, 167 psychology of language  53, 80 pure author  60, 118, 236 pure poetry  41, 209

297

Q quasi-​isosyllabic segments  223 R radical historicity  69, 121, 129, 136, 137, 147, 148 radical non-​identity  151, 154, 162 reader  20, 22, 36, 58, 69, 74, 85, 97, 99, 100, 134, 135, 146, 174, 177, 182, 204, 210, 215, 218, 235–​237, 245–​248, 250–​252, 270 reception aesthetics  25 recitative  76, 178 redescription  105, 106 refection  157 referencing  69 reflection  21, 43, 44, 49, 54, 58, 64, 69, 73, 76, 83, 88, 94, 99, 117, 127, 130, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 167, 187, 190, 245 reflexive consciousness  72, 152, 154, 156, 165 reflexive mode  87, 156, 157, 166, 190 reflexive model of self-​ consciousness  154, 157 register  21, 143, 178, 182, 183, 204 Renaissance poets  111 representation  33, 42, 54, 55, 57, 65, 68, 69, 74, 78, 83, 94, 113, 136, 137, 139, 152, 157, 159, 165, 187, 190, 197, 203, 222, 241, 251 restriction of knowledge  246, 274 rhetorical rhythm  143 rhyme  132, 147, 204 rhythm  55, 87, 134, 135, 137, 139–​ 147, 151, 159, 160, 163, 164, 166–​ 169, 173, 203, 221–​224, 231, 235, 237, 244, 265 rhythmic module  223–​225, 231 role poem [Rollengedicht]  69 Romantic aesthetics  40, 53, 57

298

Index of Subjects

Romantic lyric  57 Romantic philosophies of language  162 Romantic philosophy  60, 158, 162 Romantic poetry  57 Romantic subject  57, 59 Romantic topos  42, 248 Romantic traditions  40 Russian Formalists  137 S Selbst-​Gefühl  159 Self  58 self-​alienation  54, 60 self-​consciousness  26–​29, 32, 54, 127, 151–​162, 165, 166, 206, 234 self-​familiarity  153–​156, 166, 169 self-​feeling  154, 156, 159, 164–​ 166, 169 self-​positioning  155 self-​presence of being  156 self-​understanding  154 semantic innovation  105 semantic mode  23, 25, 98, 128, 129, 131, 134, 138 semantics of enunciation  25 semiotic  23–​25, 30, 89–​94, 98, 99, 100, 125, 128, 131, 134, 139, 164, 168, 203, 221, 222 semiotic chora  90–​93 semiotic mode  23, 25, 89, 98, 125, 128, 134, 164 semiotic practice  89 semiotic signifying system  131 semiotic systems  24, 25, 139 semiotics  25, 98, 165 senhal  202 sensing  86, 169 sequentiality  105, 251 signified  73, 74, 85, 89, 90, 93, 98, 108, 132, 133, 137, 139, 145, 211, 243, 250

signifier  73, 74, 85, 88, 90, 98, 101, 125, 132, 133, 137, 139, 145, 161, 164, 166, 167, 168, 203, 221, 238 signifying  24, 25, 64, 88–​93, 98, 129–​131, 134, 139, 146, 147, 157, 164, 165, 173, 205, 210, 219, 221–​ 223, 225–​228, 230, 231, 238, 241, 242, 252 signifiance  13, 85, 88, 89, 135, 139, 144, 149, 221 signifying practice  91–​93 sincerity  53, 197 singular universal  153 singularity  94, 99, 134, 141, 150, 151, 153, 158, 165, 169, 173, 204, 235 social sciences  19, 22, 23, 29, 30, 32, 33, 233 sociality  140 societalization  25, 129, 147 sonnet  106, 108, 109, 246, 271, 272 speaking subject  71, 81, 90, 121, 123–​125, 128 speaking subjects  73, 80 speech act  21, 24, 27, 28, 68, 71, 99, 141, 240 speech instance  47, 162 speech-​act theories  21 spring stanza  185, 200 statement-​subject  63–​69 statement-​system of language  63–​67 Stimmung  84–​87 stratification  78, 113 structural semantics  88 structuralism  22, 23, 25, 97, 137, 161, 178 structuralist  19, 22, 23, 29, 41, 47, 138, 178 structuring of the lyric discourse  59

Index of Subjects

style  55, 84, 85, 159, 163, 164, 165, 168, 202, 239 subgenre  35–​37 subject in language  125, 162 subject in the poem see poetic subject  29, 48, 104, 125, 139, 149, 218, 234 subject instances  121, 122, 124, 125, 218, 241, 247, 251 subject of art  76, 147, 149 subject of composition  118, 236, 237, 268 subject of enunciation  71–​74, 76, 89–​92, 119, 122, 123, 126, 128, 130, 143–​146, 174, 175, 207, 213, 217, 218, 219, 235–​244, 250, 251, 267, 269, 270, 274 subject of speech  80, 217 subject of the enounced  56, 58, 72–​74, 76, 119, 123, 126, 128, 130, 175, 216, 237, 238, 240, 241, 243, 250, 269 subject of the poem  48, 58, 76, 79, 83, 99, 143–​146, 148, 151, 152, 160, 161, 163, 167, 182, 207, 226, 235, 267 subjectifying see subjectivation  23, 24, 25, 99, 100, 119, 124, 127, 128, 134, 162, 166, 173, 182, 233, 270 subjectifying in language  23, 25, 127–​130, 134, 166, 173, 182, 233 subject-​in-​process  89, 90, 93, 94 subjectivation  30–​32, 76, 99, 101, 124, 127, 129, 137, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 160, 163, 165, 168, 173, 177, 180, 182, 184, 187, 205, 206, 207, 233, 238, 251 subjective modes in the poem  158, 235 subjective pole  66, 69, 80, 85, 113 subjectivity  21, 26, 30, 40, 42, 43, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 71–​77,

299

80–​83, 86, 88, 93, 94, 99, 100, 108, 111–​113, 116, 117, 125, 127–​130, 139, 141, 143–​146, 153, 160–​162, 165, 173–​175, 178, 179, 182, 183, 185, 198, 201, 202, 206, 207, 234, 235, 241, 243, 244, 250, 270, 271, 272, 274 subjectivity in discourse  81 syllabic organization  223 symbol  113 symbolic  71, 73, 90, 91, 92, 152, 166, 168, 219, 221, 229, 232, 244, 246 symbolization  92, 113, 218, 243, 250 syntactic organisation  224 syntagmatic  73, 133, 142, 159, 222 system of signs  19, 22, 24, 25, 83, 114, 115 systems of semantic signifying  131 systems of signifying  24, 25, 139 system-​subject  138 T temporality  31, 103, 104, 154, 243, 250, 251 textual subject  118, 174, 201, 207, 236, 237, 241, 242, 246, 247, 270, 274, 275 theory of affective forms  86 theory of language  64, 124, 126, 131, 135, 136, 143, 152, 163 theory of discourse  20, 22–​24, 26, 27, 36, 44, 65, 67, 69, 70–​72, 74, 81, 89, 90, 98, 99, 111, 112, 114–​ 117, 119, 124, 125, 128–​131, 134–​ 142, 144–​146, 148, 149, 158, 160, 163–​165, 167, 168, 169, 173, 174, 187, 210, 221, 233, 234, 236, 238–​ 240, 242, 244, 248, 249, 268 theory of the rhythm  142 theory of the self  101 theory of the sign  25, 87, 114, 137, 145

300

Index of Subjects

theory of the subject  29, 90, 93, 94, 124, 125, 135, 143, 149, 152 theory of the text  233 thetic  91, 94 thetic break  87, 166, 187 tornada  202 transcendental poetry  58, 157, 158 transformative dispositive of poetry  55, 60 transhistoricity  140, 146 translinguistic  25, 131, 139, 164 transparent model of the lyric subject  57 transsubject  99, 145, 146, 167, 177, 206, 237, 267 transsubjectivity  58, 140, 145, 146, 147, 173 triad of literary forms  35, 39, 40 tripartite definition  40 trobar clus  201, 202 trobar leu  202 troubadour artistic configuration  205, 207 troubadour poetry  42, 175, 177, 178, 183, 187, 201, 203–​207, 237 troubadours  32, 111, 175, 177–​179, 181, 183, 187, 189, 190, 191, 196, 201, 203, 204, 247 trouvères  178, 183, 202

U ultima species  180 unconscious  73, 74, 89, 90, 93, 144, 145, 168, 243, 247 unified subject  148, 169, 217 unitary subject  89, 90 unsayable  55, 164, 166 utterance see enounced  21, 23, 25, 27, 65, 68, 70, 89, 98, 112–​116, 121–​125, 134, 196–​198, 200, 203, 233, 240, 245, 249, 251, 267, 268 V value  31, 117, 118, 132, 137, 138, 140, 148, 164, 168, 177, 181, 189, 203, 205, 217, 222, 223–​227 vernacular  202, 203 verset  210, 211, 215, 221, 223, 225–​228 visual-​graphic  239 voice  21, 47, 48, 58, 74, 81, 112–​114, 118, 119, 122–​124, 140, 141, 169, 174, 175, 190, 196, 197, 200, 205, 207, 209–​215, 217–​222, 226, 228, 230, 231, 236, 237, 240, 241, 244–​ 248, 250, 258, 260, 261, 263, 265, 268, 270, 271 W world-​forming  27, 239

Index of Names A Adam, Jean-​Michel  131 Alberti, Rafael  273 Alighieri, Dante  55, 56, 203, 272 Apollinaire, Guillaume  149 Arendt, Hannah  31 Aristotle  31, 39, 65 Ashbery, John  271, 272, 274 Augustine, St.  32 Austin, John Langshaw  21, 22 B Bakhtin, Mihail  21, 22, 24–​27, 30, 47, 60, 70, 78, 98, 99, 111–​125, 129, 131, 147, 148, 177, 187, 190, 203, 233, 235, 236, 240, 245, 246, 247, 267–​269 Bal, Mike  245 Barthes, Roland  97 Batteux, Charles  40, 51–​53 Baudelaire, Charles  41, 60, 76, 85, 130–​134, 149 Behrens, Irene  39, 51 Benveniste, Émile  21–​27, 30, 65, 70, 73, 74, 83, 90, 98, 99, 100, 101, 112, 115, 119, 121–​134, 137–​139, 141–​148, 158, 159, 161, 162, 164, 166–​169, 173, 175, 182, 217, 222, 233–​235, 239, 240, 244, 248, 249, 261, 271 Bishop, Elisabeth  273, 275 Bollnow, Otto Friedrich  86, 87 Bowie, Andrew  26, 27, 87, 155, 156, 159, 161, 162, 164 Brik, Osip Maximovich  137 Browning, Robert  111

Burdorf, Dieter  51 C Cabo Aseguinolaza, Fernando  57, 71 Cavafy, Constantine  275 Celan, Paul  110, 273 Chatman, Seymour  279 Chiss, Jean-​Louis  279 Cigala, Lafranc  197 Collot, Michel  53, 75, 85, 86 Combe, Dominique  39–​41, 60, 61, 68, 77 Culler, Jonathan  19, 39, 51, 68, 99, 246, 247 D d’Alvernha, Peire  202, 204 Daniel, Arnaut  189, 197, 201–​204 d’Aurenga, Raimbaut  185, 191, 203, 204, 207 de Bornelh, Giraut  191 De Man, Paul  38 de San Circ, Uc  197 de Troyes, Chrétien  185 de Ventadorn, Bernart  184, 186, 188, 204 Deleuze, Gilles  31, 167, 213 Derrida, Jacques  21, 37, 161 Descartes, Ren  30, 154, 181 Dessnos, Gérard  58, 75, 115, 128, 130, 132, 133, 136, 140, 279, 280 Dilthey, Wilhelm  31, 67 Ducrot, Oswald  65, 121–​125, 148, 175, 190, 197, 201, 213, 214, 219, 235, 244, 245, 269 Duffy, Carol Ann  273, 275

302

Index of Names

E Easthope, Anthony  73, 74, 119, 234, 267 Eihenbaum, Boris Mihajlovich  137 Eliot, Thomas Stearns  74, 111, 149, 272–​274 F Faidit, Gaucelm  191 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb  88, 154–​ 157, 240 Ficino, Marsilio  55 Foucault, Michel  31, 60, 71, 73, 99, 118, 119, 144, 149 Frank, Manfred  21, 24, 26, 27, 83, 84, 87, 98, 117, 137, 151, 152–​154, 156–​165, 169, 173, 180, 206 Freud, Sigmund  88, 94 Friedrich, Hugo  24, 40, 41, 86, 141, 233 Frost, Robert  42, 111, 272, 274 G Gadamer, Hans-​Georg  21, 31, 145, 154, 161 Garelli, Jacques  85, 86 Genette, Gérard  39, 51, 122, 245 George, Stefan  60, 61 Gilson, Étienne  181 Gleize, Jean-​Marie  75 Glück, Luise  273 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  40, 61 Gofette, Guy  75 Groethuysen, Bernard  31, 149 Guattari, Félix  167, 213 Guerrero, Gustavo  39, 51 Guilhem, de Peitieu, Duke of Aquitaine  183, 202, 246, 271

H Habermas, Jörgen  31 Habjan, Jernej  21, 22, 121, 123, 124 Hamann, Johann Georg  27 Hamburger, Käte  63–​70, 80, 85, 113, 234 Hamon, Philippe  48, 76 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich  30, 31, 40, 53–​55, 145, 234 Heidegger, Martin  30, 84, 86, 145, 161 Henrich, Dieter  151, 156, 162, 169 Herder, Johann Gottfried von  27 Hölderlin, Friedrich  57, 58, 71–​74, 84, 151, 155–​157, 159, 166, 169 Hoquard, Emmanuel  75 Horace  55, 271 Hughes, Langston  273 Hugo, Victor  56–​58, 111, 149, 273 Hühn, Peter  78, 105, 118, 125, 174, 234, 236–​238, 242, 244, 245, 267, 268 Humboldt, Wilhem von  24, 27, 30, 129, 141, 151–​153, 159, 163 Husserl, Edmund  67, 86, 90, 91 I Ingarden, Roman  63, 66, 68, 97 Iser, Wolfgang  52, 97, 99, 100 J Jakobson, Roman  20, 106, 136, 239 Javornik, Miha  111 Jean-​Paul  40 Jenny, Laurent  68, 76–​78 Juvan, Marko  19, 20, 35–​38, 92, 98, 115, 165, 190 K Kant, Emmanuel  26, 27, 30, 31, 100, 162

Index of Names

Kay, Sarah  178, 179, 189, 191, 196, 201, 205 Keats, John  272 Keržan, Marko  121, 123 Kiefer, Jens  242, 244 Klepec, Peter  47 Kneller, Jane  156 Koron, Alenka  9 Korun, Barbara  74 Kos, Janko  35, 38–​40, 48, 51, 53, 61, 79–​81, 111, 113, 234, 243, 244, 249, 267 Kristeva, Julia  48, 87–​94, 166, 168, 169, 173, 234 L Lacan, Jacques  73, 74, 88, 89, 90, 91, 119, 124, 144, 145, 161, 166 Laforgue, Jules  111 Lamartine, Alphonse de  56, 273 Lamping, Dieter  47, 111, 112 Laplantine, Chloé  131, 132 Larkin, Philippe  271, 273 Lautréamont 61 Lecointe, Jean  55, 180 Lejeune, Philippe  248 Lotman, Yuri Mikhailovich  97 Luján Atienza, Angel Luis  21, 68 Lyotard, Jean-​Franois  31 M Mallarmé, Stéphane  41, 60, 92, 107 Mandelstam, Osip  110 Martin, Serge  136 Maulpoix, Jean-​Michel  39, 40, 75 McHale, Brian  78, 105 Merleau-​Ponty, Maurice  86, 169, 173 Meschonnic, Henri  22, 23, 26, 75–​ 77, 83, 99, 130, 134–​152, 158–​170, 173, 174, 82, 203, 217, 221, 235–​ 239, 242, 244, 247–​249, 267, 270

303

Michaux, Henri  42, 109, 11, 175, 209–​218, 220, 222–​224, 226, 228, 230–​232, 272, 274 Michon, Pascal  22, 29–​22, 129, 36, 137, 147–​149 Müller-​Zettelmann, Eva  36, 43, 78, 190 Murn, Josip  272 Musset, Alfred de  272 N Nelli, René  184, 186, 188, 189 Nerval, Gérard  60, 106–​109, 149, 246, 272 Nietzsche, Friedrich  26, 29–​31, 59–​ 61, 108 Novak, Boris A.  190, 204, 223 Novalis, von Hardenberg, Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr  55, 58, 84, 87, 88, 94, 117, 151, 152, 155–​ 159, 164, 166, 167, 169, 173, 206, 234, 240 Nünnig, Ansgar  236 Nünnig, Vera  236 O O’Hara, Frank  273 P Pasternak, Boris  149 Pavese, Cesare  42 Pessoa, Fernando  111 Pestalozzi, Karl  288 Peterson, Julius  111 Petrarch, Francesco  55, 56 Pintarič, Miha  178, 184, 184, 185, 204–​206 Pizarnik, Alejandra  149 Plath, Sylvia  272 Plato  39, 55, 90, 141, 180 Ponge, Francis  76, 272, 273 Pound, Ezra  74, 111, 272, 274

304

Index of Names

Prešeren, France  272 Prince, Gerald  282 Proust, Marcel  149 R Rabat, Dominique  19, 75 Réda, Jacques  75 Ricœur, Paul  52, 54, 86, 100, 101, 103–​110, 154, 220, 234, 235, 243 Rilke, Rainer-​Maria  61, 271–​ 273, 275 Rimbaud, Arthur  60, 85, 109, 149 Rimmon-​Kenan, Shlomith  245 Roche, Denis  75 Rodriguez, Antonio  39, 43, 48, 53, 75, 76, 78, 85–​88, 100, 166–​169, 173, 175, 234, 244, 245, 248, 250, 251, 268, 271 Rogier, Peire  191 Ronsard, Pierre  56, 111 Roubaud, Jacques  204 Rubik, Margarete  36, 43 Rudel, Jaufré  188, 202 Rutebeuf  111 S Saint-​John Perse  223 Sartre, Jean-​Paul  41, 84, 151, 153, 156, 162, 165 Saussure, Ferdinand de  19, 23, 30, 73, 130, 132, 137, 138, 143 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph  40, 151, 155, 164 Schlaffer, Heinz  288 Schlegel, August Wilhelm  40, 53 Schlegel, Friedrich  40, 53 Schlegel, Johann Adolf  40, 53 Schleiermacher, Friedrich  24, 26–​ 28, 30, 55, 98, 117, 141, 151–​154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162–​165, 168, 173, 206, 233, 239

Schmidt, Wolf  21, 237, 239 Schönert, Jörg  61, 78, 125, 236, 237, 244, 245, 268 Schopenhauer, Arthur  60 Searle, John Rogers  21, 22 Shakespeare, William  271 Simmel, Georg  149 Spence, Sarah  178, 183, 202, 203 Spinner, Kaspar H.  61 Staiger, Emil  48, 84, 85, 234 Stierle, Karlheinz  71–​73, 99, 119, 234 Straus, Erwin  86, 87 Š Šalamun, Tomaž  273 Šumič-​Riha, Jelica  121, 123–​125 T Taylor, Charles  31, 180, 181 Tomashevsky, Boris Victorovich  137 Thomas Aquinas, St.  180 Trakl, Georg  270 Tsvetaeva, Marina  271 Tynyanov, Yuri Nikolayevich  137 U Uspensky, Boris Andreyevich  245, 290 V Vadé, Yves  57 Valéry, Paul  41, 149, 273 Vallejo, Cesare  273 Verlaine, Paul  61, 272 Vernant, Jean-​Pierre  149 Vidmar, Maja  273 Villon, François  111, 273 Virk, Tomo  10 Vischer, Friedrich Theodor  40, 84 Voloshinov, Valentin Nikolayevich  117, 129, 245

Index of Names

W Wagner, Richard  40 Walzel, Oskar  61 Watteyne, Nathalie  290 Weber, Max  31 Webster, Augusta  111 Wei, Wang  272 Wellek, René  38, 63–​68 Weststeijn, Willem G.  105

305

Williams, William Carlos  272, 273 Wolf, Werner  36, 38–​40, 48, 79, 97, 237, 246 Wordsworth, William  271, 272 Z Zajc, Dane  272, 273 Zink, Michel  178, 179, 189, 201, 202 Zupan Sosič, Alojzija  245

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