A few preliminary remarks

Michał Głowiński

A few preliminary remarks

Literary Studies in Poland 11, 7-13

Articles

M ichał G łow iński

A Few Prelim inary Rem arks

The literary researcher engages in reflection upo n his own activity, his own situation as a theoretician, historian o r critic. N o t only does he w onder why in fact he selected this particu lar subject to exam ine, ra th e r th a n th at one, o r w ho the addressee o f his texts m ay b e —he also considers the questio n o f how the language at his disposal influences the results and n atu re o f his w ork. L an gu ag e—in the m ost literal sense o f the ethnic o r native to n g u e —not only largely determ ines the accessibility o f w hat he w rites; it also affects the very essence o f the activity he pursues. In this respect the literary researcher, like any o th er hum anist, finds him self in a different p o ­ sition to th at o f a representative o f the n atu ra l sciences. A different situation, fo r he is unable to proffer the results o f his efforts in the form o f a dry-as-dust com m uniqué, couched exclusively in the register o f a repo rt. A physicist, a biologist o r a d o cto r is able to convey in the sim plest m an n er both the results o f his labo rato ry w ork and his theoretical concepts: all the m ore so since he is aided here by the international system s o f sym bols and m odels. Looked at from one p oin t o f view, the representative o f the exact sciences co u ld n ’t care less w hether his texts are w ritten in his native tongue o r in a foreign language accessible to scholars th ro u g h o u t the world. A nd it is this aspect o f the m atter th at particularly interests us here. W hether com posed in his own o r in a foreign language, a text by a naturalist has in fact to fulfil one fu ndam ental con ditio n: it m ust be com prehensible, has no right to violate the rules o f gram m aticality. E verything else is o f lesser im portance, o r ev e n —to ­ tally beside the point. H e is under no obligation to a d o p t a rhetoric, a stance vis à vis the stylistic trad itio n , o r even a m inim al care

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for the literary elegance o f his excurses. Such a po sitio n is o f its essence u n attainable fo r the hum anist —except for those rare and exceptional occasions when he wishes, say, to re p o rt on a d o cu m ent th a t has been discovered o r to pass on a piece o f in fo rm atio n o f purely factual interest (e.g. a w riter’s d ate o f b irth, w hich he has m anaged to pinpoint). F o r after all these are special cases, peripheral to o u r discipline.

If the literary researcher, philosopher o r histo rian were to present his findings in the sam e m anner as the naturalist, he w ould in fact be condem ning him self to o b scu rity —even when he h ad im p o rta n t an d original ideas to convey (in this respect perhap s only logicians and sociologists sum m arizing the results o f their em pirical research are in a different position). H is texts w ould sim ply go unread, and this is because he is com m itted to a certain rhetoric, respect for stylistic traditions, constru ctio n o f his argum ent, which co n stitu te a peculiar em bodim ent o f “academ ic literariness.” U nlike in physics, chem istry o r biology, here a poverty o f “ fo rm ” w ould be c o n ­ strued as entailing poverty o f “co n te n t.” A dvocates o f m eth o d o lo g i­ cal purism m ight conclude on this basis th a t the hum anistic sciences, for which the m odes o f w riting are o f such im portance, are not sciences a t all, or a t least n ot sciences in the strict sen se—but we are not concerned here with th a t side o f the issue.

With the rare exception o f those who are ideally bilingual, people only write well in one language: their own, the one they have grow n up with. (Joseph C o n rad is an unusual exception.) A nyone who sought to m ake pronouncem ents a b o u t the w ork o f the great R om an tic Słowacki on the basis o f the few texts he hap pened to com pose in French w ould be b o u n d to declare him one o f the num berless second-rate poets o f the p erio d ; sim ilarly, anyone w ho used the tw o verse cycles Leśm ian w rote in R ussian as a yardstick for his poetry w ould have to place him am ong the low er divisions o f the Sym bolists. T he language one assigned m ay be o f less ruthless significance for the science o f literature th an for literature itself, but nevertheless it represents a phenom enon w ith weighty and m u lti­ farious consequences. Let us take a closer look a t them .

A researcher w riting in Polish, D anish, H u n g arian o r D u tch has a sm aller public, an d for obvious reasons, th a n one w ho em ploys a language to which the w orld has general access (there are surely

A Few Prelim inary R em a rks 9

n o researchers now adays w ho d o not read English and French). H ow ever, q u an tity is not the issue here. A nother fact ap p ears to be far m ore im p o rta n t: th at o f a restriction in the degree o f p a rti­ cip atio n in a certain com m unicative com m unity, and even in p a rti­ cularly h arsh cases —o f exclusion from it. F or com m unities o f this kind com e into being in every discipline an d m anifest them selves in the exchange o f concepts, experiences an d ideas. H ow often is p artic ip a tio n in this com m unity reduced to m erely ad op tin g w hat h as been w ritten out there in the wide w orld! At tim es the ch aracte­ ristic com plexes o f the province m ake themselves felt: for everything th a t derives from th a t w orld is treated with a m inim um o f criticism an d som etim es e v e n —received in the o d o u r of sanctity. T his som e­ tim es assum es grotesque p ro p o rtio n s, yet they are not w hat I wish to write a b o u t. W hat m atters is som ething else: som ething I would define as the feeling th at com m unicatio n is one-way. I know that I can be w riting in Polish an d be a fascinated o r a critical, an app ro v in g o r a disapp roving reader o f the things th at are brought o u t in the w o rld ; but I m yself do n ot have the w herew ithal to speak to those w h o —by m aking their statem ents in a universally accessible tongue, with w orld-w ide r e s o n a n c e - a r e also talking to m e; n o r do I have the w herew ithal when I th ink I have som ething to say, som ething o f equal m om ent or perhaps even m ore im portant o r original. All one-w ay com m unicatio n is to som e extent u nn atu ral com m unication — and thus leaves the m ark o f its iron b rand ed on all condem ned to it.

This b ra n d s them with a m ultiple iron, since it causes various an d som etim es contrastin g reactions: all the way from extrem e hum ility to extrem e arrogance. I have already m entioned the hum ility. It m eans th a t any thing fo rm ulated in Paris. New Y ork or any o ther centre o f learning appears to tak e on the co lo u r o f a revelation, arouses interest and, often, a tendency to snobbish fascination. C o n ­ sidered in this light, one-w ay com m unication lulls criticism to sleep.

In the case o f extrem e criticism it can m agnify it, blowing it up to en o rm o u s p ro p o rtio n s: I could not care less w hat they write out there in the big w orld, I m ove within the round o f my own traditio n and con sider w hat lies w ithin its b o u n d s to be quite sufficient; I have no need o f novelties, which so often are passing fashions, forgotten as soon as the new season com es alo n g bringing further

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discoveries and Further notions, each with a life-span as s h o rt as th at o f its predecessor.

In depicting these tw o consequences o f one-w ay com m u nicatio n — — and how diam etrically opposite they a r e !—I have painted them in their m ost lurid form s. N evertheless, they deserve to be taken seriously, since they represent im portant, co m po nen ts o f a certain intellectual situation. Paradoxically, each o f them has its good points, albeit for different reasons. T he first attitu d e, alth oug h it stem s from a provincial com plex, som etim es allows this com plex to be overcom e. F o r the greedy interest in everything th at occurs in the w orld in o n e ’s ow n discipline does no t ju s t m ake it possible to take o n e ’s bearings an d speedily to assim ilate theoretical an d m etho do lo gi­ cal novelties; it also allow s one to develop an d enrich t h e m - o n the conditio n how ever th at o n e ’s attitu d e is no t lim ited to th a t o f the apostle, raptly attentive to the d istan t voice o f the m aster; on the con ditio n, th a t is, th a t the attitu d e becom es one o f p artnership. U nder certain circum stances the second attitu d e can also have its positive side: nam ely, when the revulsion against concepts im ported from the outside w orld perm its one to notice an d d o justice to the things th a t have been created, an d continue to be created, on on e's own line o f latitude. F or it can happ en th a t som ething th at passes fo r a novelty turn s ou t to be som ething with which one’s own trad itio n in particu lar is acquainted. A t such tim es one both feels satisfaction because the idea can be found in the classic studies o f Z ygm unt Lem picki, o f M anfred K ridl o r Juliusz K leiner, and reflects th a t due to the linguistic b arrier these concepts are not generally know n, are inaccessible to those who have no Polish. T hus one-w ay com m unication can persuade one to a d o p t the characteristic p ostu res o f superiority o r inferiority: attitu d e s which, in certain circum stances, afte r all, coexist.

U p to this point I have w ritten o f only one aspect o f one-way co m m u nication : o f the position o f the researcher w ho does not em ploy those languages which, for the m odern world, have become the fungible equivalents o f Latin. But the issue also has a profo un der resonance. In the hum anistic sciences, unlike in physics o r biology, language is not ju st a relay system which can be replaced, u ndi­ m inished, by an artificial language; it is not ju st an object o f research, since w hatever one says o f m an one also says — directly o r indirectly — o f

A Few P relim inary R em a rks 11 language; and language is (from one view point, is above all) the prim ary bearer o f trad itio n , an elem ent em bedded in a given culture, a n d one o f the co a u th o rs o f th a t culture. F o r literary science is n o t just the analysis o f linguistic facts structu red in a certain m anner, divided up according to principles accepted in a given cu ltu re; it is also a p articular way o f deploying language w h ich —let us re p eat—can n o t be lim ited to a drily edited com m uniqué. Like literature the hum anistic sciences have their own specific varieties o f utterance. A nd each one o f these varieties has its own “literariness,” albeit largely different from the one th a t is characteristic o f literature, it finds its expression in the p erm itted ways o f stuctu rin g a scientific discourse, and these are not justified solely in term s o f their sub­ o rd in atio n to certain universal m ethodological directives, which by their n atu re transcend the boundaries between cultures an d languages. They also express them selves in those things th a t may, in so general a perspective, a p p e ar to be p articularist, em bedded in a specific national trad itio n . These p articu larist elem ents are m anifest for in­ stance in reference to the literature o f which one is w riting, to th a t which connects it with a language an d a history.

It is a fact th a t literary researchers trained w ithin the sphere o f E uropean culture have a good deal in com m on, since there exist regions which engender a b ro a d universum o f statem ent w ithin o u r cultural sphere. They include th e Jud eo -C h ristian trad itio n , and above a l l—the B ible; they include the trad itio n s o f th e classics, which form the m agnificent fo u n d atio n stones o f M editerranean cultu re; an d , finally, they include the trad itio n s o f E uropean th ou gh t and culture in all their diverse m anifestations. O bviously, this is a lot, a very great deal. A nd, last o f all, they include the individual literary w orks, the universally know n texts th a t m ake up the fu n d a­ m ental can o n o f m asterpieces. W hatever his language o r subject, a writer can rest assured th at allusions to such lyric m asterpieces as Ueber alien Gipfeln, Ode on a Grecian Urn o r L e Bateau

ivre will be grasped im m ediately and w ithout an y difficulty. H ow

different is the situation o f the m an w ho wishes to allude to N ad

wodą wielką i czystą, th a t m agnificent poem by Mickiewicz, in a study

addressed to a non-Polish audience. Obviously, the allusion will not by understood, despite the fact th at this poem to o is a m asterpiece. I do not write this in o rd e r to bewail the fact th a t even the

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finest texts w ritten in languages which are w ithout w orld-w ide currency will rem ain un know n outside the language o f th eir origin. I d o so ra th e r because this fact represents an im p o rtan t co m p o n en t o f the com m unicative situation in which the researcher finds him self: because it is one o f the elem ents th at m akes for w hat I have term ed one-w ay com m unication.

K azim ierz W yka, one o f the finest historians o f P olish literature, once rem arked jokingly th at literary h isto rians are able to u n d er­ stan d each o th er by m eans o f a wink an d a nod, for, w hatever the case, they will com prehend im m ediately, and grasp w h at is at stake and a d o p t their stance in a flash. All explication w ould be red und ant. A nd when I am referring to the verses o f G oethe, K eats, or R im baud, irrespective o f w hat reader I m ay be addressing, I really do need only to give a wink o r a n o d ; but when I sum m on up a poem by Mickiewicz, I can only wink an d nod when addressing my w ords to an histo rian o f Polish literature. Let me d raw on my own experience. W hen, a few years ago, I lectured on Polish literature at the U niversity in A m sterdam , I h ad to provide ex p lan atio n s for basic m atters (am ong o th er things, literary allusions th a t are im m edi­ ately com prehensible to a Polish reader), an d yet I had stu d en ts who were not m erely quick on the uptake, but also genuinely inter­ ested in the subject. A n d yet som ehow o r other, m atters th a t seemed to me to be far m ore com plicated, and far m ore in need o f ex plan ation , did not need to be cleared up. When a Pole writes fo r a foreign audience o f K ochanow ski, M ickiewicz o r Leśm ian - th a t is. o f our greatest poets - he is com pelled to change his view point com pletely; the E nglishm an w ho writes o f Shakespeare, the M etaphycical Poets o r D ickens is certainly under no com pulsion to do so. He can assum e in principle th a t his w inks an d nods will be com prehended, easily an d correctly, even on the continent.

An add itio n al area th a t hinders the achievem ent o f u n d erstand ing is that o f term inology. T his m ay a p p e ar paradoxical, since term in o­ logy o ught not in fact to depend upon the characteristics o f a given language and ought -by its very nature, as it w ere—to represent an in tern atio n al phenom enon. A nd o f course to a large extent it is intern ational, though not com pletely so (the m ethodological purist w ould doubtless deem this fact a sign o f th e dubiousness o f the “scientific c h a rac te r” o f literary study). W hat m atters from o u r point

A Few Prelim inary R em a rks 13 o f view is th at term inology is also a constituent o f a p articular trad itio n , and can thus ham per com m u nication. It is both an elem ent in a literary and philosophical trad itio n and - in add itio n to th is —the result o f the specific developm ent o f a p articu lar discipline within a given culture. T h us one peculiarity o f Polish literary study, for instance, is the fact th at the term inology devised by R om an Ingarden in his phenom enological aesthetics h as been ad o p ted universally: ad o p ted even by those researchers w ho keep their distance from phenom enology o r w ho even have n o th ing in com m on with it. In the course o f recent decades this term inology has becom e som ething o f a “given” for Polish researchers, som ething self-evident, albeit in m ost cases it has none o f the philosophical im plications it held fo r Ingarden. T his will obviously not be a p p a ren t to a reader o f Polish studies who is ignorant o f this p ecu liarity —and thus it points his a tte n tio n in a direction th a t was far from the in ten tio n o f those studies.

T he particu larity o f the n atu re o f a term inology also stem s from its origin in individual inv ention ; as a result o f this, certain term s com e to be a t hom e in one language which have no direct equi­ valent in others. F or instance, a q u a rte r o f a century ago th e term “au to tem aty zm ” [tra n sla to r’s n o te : to be literal, “au to -th em aticism ”] (coined by A rtu r S andauer) well-nigh entered the colloquial language as a way o f defining certain characteristics o f the co n tem p orary novel (a novel th at speaks o f itself, o f its own rules, o f its own genesis etc.). T he subject is o f im portance for researchers o f con tem p o rary literatu re in general, but w hereas the term has entered into the Polish trad itio n it seems to have no direct equivalent in o th er languages, despite the fact th at it is b o th felicitous and handy.

As we can see, m any elem ents com bine to m ake for one-w ay com m unication. Let us reiterate: all one-w ay com m u nicatio n is crippled com m unication. P erhaps it ca n n o t be done all at once, but one has to strive to rem ove the one-w ay ch a racter from u n d ersta n d in g —from the u n d erstanding w ithout which there w ould be no science. It is not fo r us to draw a balance o f the results, but all the sam e we can state th a t this is one o f the aim s o f the jo u rn a l we publish. O f course, we are aw are th at we can n o t co u n t on im m ediate results, but as the old Polish pro verb says— “C racow was not built in a d ay .”