Album

by Roland Barthes

  Each behavior (each praxemy), however functional, is excessive, emphatic. It includes an excess of function (see Sartre and the analysis of the café waiter).62 The fact of whipping sauce like a graybeard corresponds to an excessive ease of experience, to the fact of protecting oneself excessively with tasks, with utterances. This accumulation of excess is kitsch as the drunkenness of consumption.

  In general, Bouvard and Pécuchet are kitsch. Or rather, in Chavignoles (their garden, their galleries) they make kitsch. They have the pleasure of producing it (after which they unmake it for another kitsch like the garden). This highlights the proximity of kitsch to tinkering, like making an instrument with pieces meant for some other use, making drama with functions that were not meant for drama.

  3. Bouvard Is Parading (on Display)

  A roquentin (graybeard) is an old soldier in retirement, a part-timer in castles and citadels, and the word also refers to a singer of vaudeville songs, as well as a ridiculous old man who pretends to be young (roc, roquette, forteresse). Amorous display to seduce women, the amorous laugh of Pécuchet who is himself caught up in kitsch.

  4

  “Bouvard smoked his pipe, loved cheese, regularly took his demitasse; Pécuchet took snuff, at dessert ate only preserves, and soaked a sugar lump in his coffee. One was confident, flighty, generous; the other unassuming, thoughtful, thrifty” (p. 38).

  1. Closure

  This is a very rhetorical sentence with a list of contingent traits (an analysis) and a psychological synthesis. Thus the succession of analysis and synthesis, with an antithesis in each part, forms a canonical sentence.

  What’s interesting for us is the antithesis (and not the analysis and synthesis that correspond to the parts of the content). Why? The antithesis is a strong operator of closure. Because it is the mirror image: impossible to add anything. When the second term is given, it’s finished (symmetry establishes completion). Thus closure is what defines the sentence (stylistically). Let us recall another definition of the sentence, that of Chomsky (J. Rychner, Mort Artu, cited by Kristeva, p. 288),63 as statement unit limited by a conclusive pause. Let us also recall that for Flaubert, the bêtise was conclusion (in Latin, “closed” is conclusus). Flaubert’s sentence continually mimics the bêtise. He evades the conclusion of content (syllogistically), but shifts it, fixes it, parodies it in the form: the sentence concludes itself. That form creates the laughable for nothing.

  2. All the Same, Let Us Return to the Analysis/Synthesis Split

  The analytical part focuses on “tastes.” In themselves, tastes signify nothing: I like/I don’t like. What’s so interesting about that? It doesn’t interest anyone, but it always concerns the other. It presents a body opposite my own, a body that is not my own. By individuating the body, tastes initiate the process of intersubjectivity. The other is other for me; I am other for him. Each I is an other; each other is an I. That’s what every taste tells us, in its very gratuitousness.

  The duller and more anarchic tastes are, the more disturbing. Hence the great effort immediately to give them meaning, to return them to a meaningful order, in an interpretation (meaning is soothing, reassuring: it undoes the body of the other by dialecticizing it into a reading space).

  That’s the role of the final synthesis. It gives tastes a psychological meaning. It transcends them through a well-known, very socialized order, the order of everyday psychology (through adjectives): characterology. We discover the reifying, pacifying function of psychology, of predication.

  3. Through Psychological (Final) Synthesis, Contingency Is Outstripped by Meaning

  Here again antithesis intervenes; it serves to produce paradigm, to produce meaning. Everything is literally paradigmaticized, term by term:

  Smoking a pipe

  Taking snuff (women take snuff)

  Cheese: savory

  Preserves: sweet

  Demitasse

  “Canard”

  = coffee—black

  = the idea of coffee, its taste, not its power

  Confident

  Unassuming

  Flighty

  Thoughtful

  Generous

  Thrifty

  Bouvard

  Pécuchet

  Man

  Woman

  It goes without saying that the paradigm has a double meaning:

  (a) It’s a matter of differentiating Bouvard and Pécuchet (the ongoing enterprise is to differentiate without dissociating them), of making them recognizable without separating them. This recognition of pure identity is in some way gratuitous, nonfunctional, justified by the simple pleasure of intellection (of distinction), because they are not at all opposed on the level of action (see Plick and Plock).64 Their character distinctions have no diegetic effect.

  So it’s a plausible constraint; for them to be readable, there must be a fiction of meaning—even if it serves no purpose—since the overall meaning is Bouvard and Pécuchet.

  (b) The paradigm allows for the implicit opposition of Bouvard-man/Pécuchet-woman, mythologically (pipe/snuff, savory/sweet, arousal/fear of arousal). The masculine/feminine opposition has no genital, sexual import (or depth). Its function is to establish the couple. The couple is distinguished from the pair (twinship) of strictly identical organisms. The couple implies a split cell, the confinement of differences (literally, term by term). The sentence is basically the envelope that makes the couple, a sack of oppositions.

  So the “meaning” of the sentence is the couple.

  5

  “On one occasion they attended a lecture on Arabic at the Collège de France, and the professor was astonished to see these two strangers attempting to take notes” (p. 39).

  Here is a sentence that never ceases to fascinate me—ever since I first read it long ago—and, because it fascinates me, I don’t really know how to dismantle it; isn’t fascination just short of explanation? An abutment? The abutment of the Mirror.

  Nevertheless I do see what it is that, analytically, I am “circling” (this is an action, a research method, that clearly recalls the action of the child at the originary scene, itself “fascinating”).65

  1. The Anacoluthon

  An anacoluthon again—and a sizeable one. Who else knows so precisely that to write (to write in the classical sense, because clearly it’s a whole other question with “modern” writers) is to establish an order and subvert it? And that is precisely what the anacoluthon does; it establishes and subverts a logic of construction, of sentence, of discourse.

  This anacoluthon is reversal, sudden inversion of points of view, without warning, not only within the sentence, but the sentence itself, according to the even line of its delivery.

  To really understand the power of this reversal, to imagine the shot, it would take two cameras. With one, we enter the room with Bouvard and Pécuchet from the rear (view of the room, desks, dais in the distance, etc.); the camera is through the eyes of Bouvard and Pécuchet (no doubt tracking). Now, without warning, camera two is substituted for this one, opposite it, from the eyes of the professor (no tracking for this one). The professor raises his head and sees a scene (speaking generally, this is a process to study: Flaubert is very cinematic). In short, the sentence implies two technicians.

  Nevertheless the two levels glide over each other without the solution of continuity (the anacoluthon is glued, joined, as though clandestine). The operator of this glide is the “and” (another appearance of that famous “and”). “And,” as slack link, conveys the heterogeneities on the same level and gives them a single skin, like a lock, like a vestibule in a railway car, a well-oiled rotating plate. Now the surreptitious joining of two heterogeneities produces the monstrous. Maybe the monstrous is always that: members of different classes (or even just members) joined without warning, as though this were natural (think of Hieronymus Bosch’s creatures, of Bataille’s pineal eye, etc.)66 The Monstrous is a Flaubertian category to investigate, the episode of the Melons, for example.67 One can say that, a
s with disordered botany, the second buds suddenly from the first, as opposed to Michelet’s analyses by which it’s the alliance of homogeneous bloodlines, themselves, that produces the monster. Kings are caught in the closed circuit of heredity. A sanguine stasis characterizes the Anjou kings; the Plantagenet kings present abnormal size (William the Conqueror did not fit in his tomb); they are voracious, hateful, satanic.

  Another effect—or content—of the anacoluthon: two subjects approach (“they attended”) and suddenly, without warning, they are transformed into objects (“these two strangers”), or, worse, into vague, anonymous objects (silhouette). It’s a truly magical effect (conversion of one class into another: lead into gold, etc.), but an evil kind of magic: the familiar touched with a wand (verbally) that transforms him into stranger. It’s the very process of the nightmare when the beloved is transformed into a distant, unknown being; it’s the painful theme of fading.68 That strangeness, that vertiginous remove, that fall (hemorrhage) from nature, constitutes the very domain of enchantment (fascination).

  2. The Allocutory

  I would like to connect this (gentle) rupture, this fading with a general feature that often strikes me in Bouvard et Pécuchet. We might say that in Bouvard et Pécuchet, there is no allocutory framework. No one addresses anyone; we never know where the message comes from. For example, Bouvard and Pécuchet perfectly mirror each other (that’s the meaning of their partnership); they don’t address each other with words. They form an amorous block (amorous Discourse is not allocutory, being a closed image). But—this is all Flaubert’s work—that block is not projective; the book is not addressed to us—and that’s the trouble with it. Here is what Sartre says (L’Idiot de la famille, p. 629–40) on the Dictionnaire des idées reçues: “Strange work: over a thousand articles and who feels addressed? No one, except Gustave himself.”69 I will express a reservation on this last idea because, for me, it doesn’t account for the fascination. What is specifically fascinating is the absolute loss of the allocutory, as the anacoluthon produces something like a perversion of the statement. We have a fading not of the message (that’s very clear, very readable), but of the allocutaries, the addressees; we could say that we are (monstrously) faced with a language (and not a speech) block.

  This loss of allocution (but not of signification, because the fiction of denotation, of referent always survives in Flaubert) is tied to another loss that marks Bouvard et Pécuchet throughout: the loss of the gift. Bouvard and Pécuchet never give anything. Everything is exchanged, but all exchanges go wrong; there is no expenditure. The world—of nature and of language—is dull. Even excrement (see the episode with the dung that’s worth gold) is salvaged, but that fails as well. Expenditure is negated by Exchange, but Exchange fails. The world is doubly closed; it is abolished in a kind of tableau vivant without addressee (tableau vivant or tableau mort, as we say nature morte, still life). What makes the book’s tableau vivant terrible is that the “subjects” of the story (Bouvard and Pécuchet) are continually within; they are never cast out (that’s why they are never bored). But Flaubert is always tidying up, through the sentence, so that nothing ever remains outside of the tableau vivant: the enormous paradox of an elliptical art with nothing leftover nonetheless. That is the very effect of our sentence.

  6

  “The monotony of the desk became odious to them. Continually the eraser and the sandarac,a same inkwell, the same pens, and the same companions! Considering them stupid, they talked to them less and less” (p. 40).

  There is nothing to say (I have nothing to say) on the form of this sentence. Except: (1) to recall the dominant relationship of causality, naturalized by the present participle (“Considering them stupid”); (2) to note there should be a subtle analysis of the rhythm of the enumeration and the place of the two “ands.” Thus I will formulate two remarks on content:

  1. Cleavage

  The sentence marks a split between Bouvard and Pécuchet, on the one hand, and their occupation, other people, everyday life, that is to say, the world (the worldly) on the other. The world invites or incites separation in two forms: work and language (the “stupidity” of others as language event). This cleavage, which fills the world with distance, boredom, and a vague nausea, is generally characteristic of the Lover; he feels the world as an absolute void. That feeling comes over Bouvard and Pécuchet as soon as, having discovered each other, they form a couple. This term typically involves passion. Whereas for them, passion illuminates the alienation of work. It serves as initiator, mediator of truth; it is pedagogical.

  2. Copy

  Again, the copy. It is not copying that disgusts them; it is the protocols of the copy (which otherwise could give one pleasure). Objects are no longer fetishes, mediums for bodily acts (the mania of “stationers”); they become flat objects once again, without resonance, without symbolism (neither metonymy nor metaphor). The copy is then returned to what general opinion considers it to be: a fastidious bêtise.

  For Bouvard and Pécuchet, freedom (through an inheritance) will involve taking financial responsibility for the management of the copy (“applying” books to reality). And from then on, it becomes exciting. From slaves, they become amateurs (while awaiting the finale: the nothing of the copy freely assumed).

  * * *

  I would like to end this analysis of the sentence with a very short digression: the place of Bouvard et Pécuchet in the vast panorama of the copy, of copied languages (I mean in Flaubert’s work). That would come back—methodologically—to presenting fictional characters as creatures of language, agents of language. These characters could be divided (classified) according to their relationship to the copy of language. In Flaubert, we would have:

  (a) the consistency, the persistence of a single language, a single copy, the confinement of the idiolect with its model: this is linguistic monomania (Homais, Madame Bovary);

  (b) the varied, hysterical, circular copy of languages; this is a matter of changing languages as one changes a shirt (clothes), of making languages revolve, of listing languages (a library of languages) as in Bouvard et Pécuchet and, but only shifting the field a bit, in La Tentation de saint Antoine;

  (c) the nonlanguage, the just-short-of language, aphasia, the affective as that for which one does not take responsibility, noted through phraseology: Charles Bovary (Charles dies from the death of Emma); Berthe, proletarianized, disappears from language;70

  (d) the ideal language, outside of social nature, the ideality of language, the beyond-copy as in Saint Julien l’Hospitalier.

  These four categories correspond to the bêtise, hysteria, stupidity, art.

  7

  “To learn where to settle, they reviewed all the provinces. The north was fertile, but too cold; the south delightful for its climate, but unpleasant due to the mosquitoes; and the central part, frankly, possessed nothing of interest. Brittany would have suited them, were it not for the sanctimoniousness of its inhabitants. As for the eastern regions, because of the Germanic patois, they were out of the question” (p. 43).

  1. The name flushes an image (as we say, “to flush game”). That was Proust’s whole theory (place names: Guermantes, Balbec, Parme, Coutances).71 The name is the foundation; the name expresses nothing, it does not translate, it is not subsequent. In the case of Bouvard et Pécuchet, the name doesn’t flush an image, but a stereotype: the geographical touristic dictionary of received ideas.

  Note that all tourist advertising, the endoxal geography of mass travel, functions according to this same mechanism, but positive—not deceptive.

  2. The stereotype does not express a distaste (“I don’t like that”); it establishes it. To form and to support are the same operation here; I let myself be formed by what supports me. Now as we know, the stereotype is a sentence, a phrasal strike: “the central part, frankly, possessed nothing of interest.” This is a sentence, closed: period, that’s all, neither, nor, it’s done. I am formed by the sentence of others (like Sartre’s Genet).72 Thu
s it is enough to undo the sentence to undo the stereotype and reverse the value. That is the case with Michelet regarding the Center of France (in the Tableau de la France):73 France functions historically because the Center has nothing of interest.

  3. The sentence as a whole is doubly disappointing:

  (a) within each proposition, it’s fine, but there is a little something that makes the whole (moment of choice) not work. The object is de-ceived—through a point of hemorrhage: it turns (like mayonnaise turns);

  (b) enumeration is obviously a powerful operator of deception. By becoming general and systematic, it escapes contingency, the aleatory, and returns to structure. Perhaps there is a hysteria of disappointment (as there are hysterias of boredom, sleepiness, failure). Psychologically, it is a matter of Distaste, the Difficult, the (infantile) chaouchoun.74

  Now, interestingly, the disappointing enumeration of Bouvard et Pécuchet reproduces homologically and symbolically the disappointing enumeration of sexual practices, presented in a popular song, the Gallic “guardroom” song, which I’m going to quote in its entirety regardless, because it’s so symbolically exemplary: “The Complex of Jean Gilles” (“Jean Gilles My Son-in-Law”). I’m omitting nothing except the repetitions:

  —Father-in-law, my father-in-law,