The Seventh Function of Language

by Laurent Binet

  Prolonged applause.

  Bayard nervously lights a cigarette.

  Simon leans on his lectern.

  He had a choice between preparing his speech while the other man was speaking or listening attentively so he could turn his words against him, and he preferred the second, more aggressive option.

  “To say that classicism does not exist is to say that Venice does not exist.”

  A war of annihilation, then. Like Lepanto.

  By using the word classicism, he knows that he is committing an anachronism but he doesn’t care because “Baroque” and “Classical” are ideas forged in retrospect, inherently anachronistic, summoned to support unstable, debatable realities.

  “And it is all the more curious that these words should be pronounced here, in La Fenice, this neoclassical pearl.”

  Simon uses the word pearl deliberately. He already has his plan of attack.

  “It also means wiping the Giudecca and San Giorgio from the map rather quickly.” He turns to his adversary. “Did Palladio never exist? Are his neoclassical churches just baroque dreams? My honorable opponent sees the Baroque everywhere, and that is his right, but…”

  Without any discussion, then, the two adversaries have come to an agreement on the subject’s central problem: Venice. Is Venice baroque or classical? It is Venice that will decide the tie.

  Simon turns to the audience again and declaims: “Order and beauty, luxury, peace and pleasure: Is there a more appropriate line to describe Venice? And is there a better definition of classicism?” And Barthes, to follow Baudelaire: “Classics. Culture (the more culture there is, the greater and more diverse the pleasure). Intelligence. Irony. Delicacy. Euphoria. Mastery. Safety: the art of living.” Simon: “Venice!”

  The Classical exists and its home is here, in Venice. Step one.

  Step two: Show that your opponent has not understood the subject.

  “My honorable adversary must have misheard: it is not Baroque or Classical, but Baroque and Classical. Why oppose them? They are the yin and the yang that comprise Venice and the universe, like the Apollonian and the Dionysian, like the sublime and the grotesque, reason and passion, Racine and Shakespeare.” (Simon does not dwell on this last example, as Stendhal quite obviously preferred Shakespeare—as he does, for that matter.)

  “It is not a question of playing Palladio against the bulbs of the San Marco basilica. Look. Palladio’s Redentore?” Simon peers toward the back of the theater as though visualizing the bank of the Giudecca. “On one side, Byzantium and the flamboyant Gothic of the past (if I may put it like that); on the other, Ancient Greece resurrected eternally by the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation.” Nothing ever goes to waste for a duelist. Sollers smiles as he looks at Kristeva, who recognizes his words, and he makes smoke rings of contentment, tapping his fingers on the gilded wood of his box.

  “Take Corneille’s Le Cid. A quasi-picaresque baroque tragicomedy when it was written, later reclassified (after much debate) as classical tragedy when genre fantasies went out of fashion. Order, unities, framework? Doesn’t matter. Two plays in one, and yet the same play: baroque one day, classical the next.”

  Simon has other interesting examples—Lautréamont, for instance, champion of the darkest romanticism, who transforms into Isidore Ducasse, perverse defender of mutant classicism in his incredible Poésies—but he does not want to digress: “Two great rhetorical traditions: Atticism and Asianism. On one side, the West’s rigorous clarity, Boileau’s ‘Whatever is well conceived is clearly said’; on the other, the lyrical flights and ornaments, the abundance of tropes of the sensual, tangled East.”

  Simon knows perfectly well that Atticism and Asianism are concepts without any concrete geographical foundation, at most transhistorical metaphors. But by this point he knows that the judges know he knows this, so he has no need to make it clear.

  “And at the confluence of the two? Venice, the crossroads of the universe! Venice, amalgam of Sea and Earth, earth on sea, lines and curves, Heaven and Hell, the lion and the crocodile, San Marco and Casanova, sun and mist, movement and eternity!”

  Simon takes one last pause before closing his peroration resoundingly: “Baroque and Classical? The proof: Venice.”

  Prolonged applause.

  The Italian wants to strike back without delay, but Simon has deprived him of his synthesis, so he is forced to play against his nature. He says, in French, which Simon admires but interprets as evidence of his annoyance: “But Venice is the sea! My opponent’s poor attempt at dialectics makes no difference. The liquid element is the barocco. The solid, the fixed, the rigid, is the classico. Venice è il mare!” So Simon remembers what he has learned during his stay here: the Bucentaur, the ring thrown into the sea, and Eco’s stories: “No, Venice is the husband of the sea; that is not the same thing.”

  “The city of masks! Of mirrored glass! Of sparkling mosaics! The city sinking into the lagoon! Venice is made of water, sand, and mud!”

  “And stone. Lots of marble.”

  “The marble is baroque! It is striated with veins, full of internal layers, and it breaks all the time.”

  “No, marble is classical. In France, we say gravé dans le marbre.”

  “The Carnival! Casanova! Cagliostro!”

  “Yes, in the collective unconscious Casanova is the king of baroque par excellence. But he is the last. We bury a bygone world in an apotheosis.”

  “Ma, that is the identity of Venice: an eternal agony. The eighteenth century is Venice.”

  Simon senses that he is losing ground, that he cannot maintain this paradox of solid, straight-lined Venice much longer, but he refuses to give up: “No, the Venice of strength, glory, dominance, is the Venice of the sixteenth century, before its disappearance, its decomposition. The Baroque that you defend is what is killing it.”

  The Italian sees his chance and takes it: “But decomposition is Venice! Its identity is precisely its inevitable advancement toward death.”

  “But Venice must have a future! The Baroque that you describe is the rope that supports the hanged man.”

  “Another baroque image. First you argue, then you condemn, but everything brings you back to the Baroque. Which proves that it is the spirit of the Baroque that forms the grandeur of the city.”

  In terms of purely logical demonstration, Simon senses that he has begun an argument where his opponent has the upper hand. But, thankfully, rhetoric is not all about logic, so he plays the pathos card: Venice must live.

  “Perhaps the Baroque is that poison that kills her but renders her more beautiful in death.” (Avoid making concessions, Simon thinks.) “But take The Merchant of Venice: where does salvation come from? Women who live on an island: on earth!”

  The Italian exclaims triumphantly: “Portia? Who disguises herself as a man? Ma, that’s totalmente barocco! It is even the triumph of the Baroque over the obtuse rationalism of Shylock, over law, behind which Shylock shelters to claim his pound of flesh. That inflexible interpretation of the letter of the law is the very expression, dare I say, of a proto-classical neurosis.”

  Simon can feel that the audience appreciates the audacity of this phrase, but at the same time he can see that his adversary is rambling a bit about Shylock, and this is a good thing because he is beginning to be seriously perturbed by the theme under discussion: his doubts and paranoia about the solidity of his own existence are returning to haunt his mind when he needs all his concentration. He rushes to move his pawns toward Shakespeare (“life is a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage”: Why does this line from Macbeth come to him now? Where does it come from? Simon forces himself to push the question away for later consideration): “Portia is precisely that mélange of baroque madness and classical genius that enables her to defeat Shylock not, like the other characters, by recourse to feelings but with firm, unassailable legal arguments, with an exemplary rationality, founded on Shylock’s own demonstration, which she throws back at him: �
�A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine; the court awards it, and the law doth give it … [but] this bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.’ At this moment, Antonio is saved by a piece of legal trickery: a baroque gesture, admittedly, but a classical baroque.”

  Simon can feel the public’s approval. The Italian knows he has lost the initiative again, so he strives to dismantle what he calls Simon’s “specious and pathetic convolutions” and, in doing so, makes a small mistake of his own. To denounce Simon’s dubious leaps of logic, he asks: “Ma, who decided that the law was a classical value?,” when it was he himself who had presupposed it in his previous argument. But Simon, too tired or too distracted, misses his opportunity to point out the contradiction and the Italian is able to go on: “Are we not reaching the limits of my opponent’s system?”

  And he puts his boot on Simon’s neck: “What my honorable adversary is doing is very simple: he is forcing his analogies.”

  So Simon is attacked where he normally excels—in the area of metadiscourse—and he feels that if he lets that happen, he risks being beaten at his own game, so he clings to his argument: “Your defense of Venice is booby-trapped. You had to reinvent it with an alliance, and that alliance is Portia: that cocktail of trickery and pragmatism. When Venice risks losing itself behind its masks, Portia brings from her island her baroque madness and her classical common sense.”

  Simon is finding it harder and harder to concentrate; he thinks about the “prestiges” of the seventeenth century, of Cervantes fighting at Lepanto, of his course on James Bond at Vincennes, of the dissecting table at the anatomical theater in Bologna, of the cemetery in Ithaca and a thousand things at the same time, and he understands that he can only triumph if he overcomes, in a mise en abyme that he would savor in other circumstances, this baroque vertigo that is taking hold of him.

  He decides to bring an end to the discussion of Shakespeare, which he thinks he has safely negotiated, and condense all his mental energy into changing the subject, to turn his adversary away from the metadiscursive approach he had begun, where, for the first time, Simon does not feel at ease.

  “One word, again: Serenissima.”

  With this, he obliges his opponent to react and by interrupting the rhetorical sequence that he was about to build, to wrestle the initiative away from him again. The Italian ripostes: “Repubblica e barocco!”

  At this stage of the improvisation, Simon plays for time and says everything that comes to mind: “That depends. A thousand years of doges. Stable institutions. Firm authority. Churches everywhere: God is not baroque, as Einstein said. Napoleon, on the contrary [and Simon deliberately invokes the man who was the gravedigger of the Venetian Republic]: an absolute monarch, but he moved all the time. Very baroque, but also very classical, in his way.”

  The Italian tries to respond, but Simon cuts in: “Ah, it’s true, I forgot: the Classical does not exist! In that case, what have we been talking about for the last half hour?” The audience stops breathing. His opponent reels slightly under the force of this uppercut.

  Heads spinning from the effort and the nervous tension, the two men are now debating in a way that can only be described as anarchic. Behind them, the three judges, appreciating that they have each given the best of themselves, decide to put an end to the duel.

  Simon suppresses a smile of relief and turns toward them. He realizes that these three judges must be sophists (because normally the jury is composed of members of higher ranks than the duelists). All three wear Venetian masks, like the men who attacked Simon, and he understands the advantage of organizing these meetings during Carnival: that way, one can preserve one’s anonymity with complete discretion.

  The judges vote amid oppressive silence.

  The first votes for Simon.

  The second for his opponent.

  So the verdict rests in the hands of the last judge. Simon stares at the sort of cutting board, stained red by the fingers of the previous competitors. He hears a murmur in the theater as the audience watches the third judge vote, and he dares not look up. For once, he is unable to interpret that murmur.

  No one has picked up the machete lying on the table.

  The third judge voted for him.

  His opponent breaks down. He will not lose his finger, because Logos Club rules dictate that only the challenger risks his digital capital, but his rank was very important to him and he is clearly upset at the prospect of demotion.

  The audience cheers as Simon is promoted to the rank of tribune. But above all, he is formally given an invitation for two people at the next day’s summit meeting. Simon verifies the time and the place, waves to the audience one last time, and joins Bayard in his box, while the theater begins to empty out.

  In the box, Bayard reads the information on the invitation card and lights a cigarette, at least his twelfth of the evening. An Englishman pokes his head in to congratulate the victor: “Good game. That guy was tough.”

  Simon looks at his hands, which are trembling slightly, and says: “I wonder if the sophists are much better.”

  92

  Behind Sollers is Paradise: Tintoretto’s gigantic canvas, which also, in its time, won a competition—to decorate the Chamber of the Great Council in the Doge’s Palace.

  At the base of the picture is a huge platform where there are seated not three but ten members of the jury: the full complement of sophists.

  In front of them, three-quarters turned to the audience, the Great Protagoras in person, and Sollers, leaning on a lectern.

  The ten judges and the two duelists wear Venetian masks, but Simon and Bayard had no trouble recognizing Sollers. Besides, they already spotted Kristeva in the audience.

  Unlike in La Fenice, the audience here is standing, gathered in this immense room designed in the fourteenth century to host more than a thousand nobles: 175 feet long, with a ceiling that makes viewers wonder how it is held up without a single column, inlaid with innumerable old master paintings.

  The room’s effect on the audience is such that a sort of fearful hubbub can be heard. Everyone whispers respectfully under the gaze of Tintoretto and Veronese.

  One of the judges stands up, formally announces the start of the meeting in Italian, and draws the subject from one of the urns in front of him.

  “On forcène doucement.”

  One fanatics gently?

  The subject seems like it ought to be French, but when Bayard turns to Simon, his partner makes a gesture that suggests he has no clue either.

  A wave of perplexity moves through the 175 feet of the room. The non-Francophone spectators check that their simultaneous translation machine is tuned to the right channel.

  If Sollers had a second’s hesitation behind his mask, he doesn’t let it show. In any case, Kristeva, who is standing in the audience, does not bat an eyelid.

  Sollers has five minutes to understand the subject, to problematize it, to come up with a thesis, and to back it up with coherent and—if possible—spectacular arguments.

  In the meantime, Bayard asks the people around him: What is this incomprehensible subject?

  A handsome, well-dressed old man with a silk pocket handkerchief that matches his scarf explains: “Ma, the Frenchman is challenging il Grande Protagoras. Surely he can’t expect ‘for or against the death penalty,’ vero?”

  Bayard is willing to agree with this, but he asks why the subject is in French.

  The old man replies: “An act of courtesy by the Grande Protagoras. I’ve heard he speaks every language on earth.”

  “He isn’t French?”

  “Ma no, è italiano, eh!”

  Bayard watches the Great Protagoras calmly smoking his pipe while scribbling a few notes. His figure, his appearance, the shape of his jaw (because the mask covers only his eyes) … all of this is vaguely familiar.

  When the five minutes are up, Sollers stands tall behind his lectern, eyes the audience, makes a little dance step punctuated by a complete rotation, as if he want
ed to verify the presence of the Ten behind his back, bows more or less soberly to his opponent, and begins his speech, a speech he already knows will remain in the annals as the speech made by Sollers in his duel with the Great Protagoras.

  “Forcène … forcène … Fort … Scène … Fors … Seine … Faure (Félix) … Cène. President Félix Faure died of a blow job and a heart attack, which caused him to enter history but exit the stage. As a prolegomenon … A little appetizer … An introduction (ha ha!)…”

  Simon thinks that Sollers is attempting a boldly Lacanian approach.

  Bayard observes Kristeva out of the corner of his eye. Her expression betrays nothing but absolute attentiveness.

  “La force. Et la scène. La force sur scène. [Strength. And the stage. Strength onstage.] Rodrigue, basically. Forêt sur Seine. (Val-de-Marne. Apparently they still nail crows to the doors there.) To squeeze or not to squeeze the Commander’s peepee? That is the question.”

  Bayard gives Simon a questioning look. He replies in a whisper that Sollers has apparently chosen an audacious tactic of replacing logical connections with analogical connections, or rather juxtapositions of ideas, even sequences of images, rather than pure reasoning.

  Bayard tries to understand: “Is it baroque?”

  Simon is surprised: “Er, yes, I suppose it is.”

  Sollers goes on: “Fors scène: hors la scène. Obscène. [Save for the stage: offstage. Obscene.] It’s all there. The rest is of no interest, naturally. The thundering article on ‘Sollers the obscene’ by Marcelin Pleynet? Without hesitation. Well, well, what? Oh there, oh! Gently … From where … seed … From where does the seed come? From up above, of course! [He points to the ceiling and Veronese’s paintings.] Art is the seed of God. [He points to the wall behind him.] Tintoretto is his prophet … D’ailleurs, il tinte aux rets … [What’s more, he rings the net…] Blessed is the age when the bell and thread will once again replace the hammer and sickle … After all, are these not the two tools of the fisherman?”

  Does Bayard detect a faint wrinkle of concern on Kristeva’s Slavic face?