The Literary Mind

by Mark Turner

O Lord . . . Your years neither go nor come, but our years pass and others come after them, so that they all may come in their turn. Your years are completely present to you all at once, because they are at a permanent standstill. . . . Your years are one day, yet your day does not come daily but is always today, because your today does not give place to any tomorrow nor does it take the place of any yesterday. Your today is eternity.

  Augustine, Confessions

  A P E R s ON has a single life, by which I mean not that we live only once, true as that is, but that a human being—a mind in a brain in a body—leads a singular rather than a general existence. A God’s-eye view is a general view—it can belong only to a being whose existence is without limit or locale. Since God’s eye is everywhere, eternal, and all-seeing, it is undifferentiated. To the eye of God, there would not be alternative ways of seeing, but only seeing pure and absolute and permanent. A human being does not have a God’s—eye view. A human being has always only a single view, which is always local. This is so unacceptable as to have been sufficient reason for the invention of God.

  It is astonishing that we forget so easily that we have only a single, local view. What we see of an event may look entirely unlike what a person on the other side of the event may see or entirely unlike what we ourselves actually do see when we walk to the other side, but we imagine that these views from either side are nonetheless views of the same story, despite the manifest differences in percep- tions. This is evidence of our considerable mental capacity to integrate fragmen- tary information, to blend it into one mental construction.

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  SINGLE LIVES Q. 117

  Our sensory apparatus is located in space. We necessarily recognize a small spatial story from a particular spatial location. We can direct our sensory appa- ratus, and we can move our body so that our sensory apparatus is in a different location. To recognize a small spatial story—a baby shaking a rattle—is always to do so with a single focus and from a single viewpoint.

  There is a basic human story here--the story of a person recognizing a story. This basic human story shows us a new aspect of parable. In this general story, there is a recognizing agent who has a single focus and a single viewpoint. Let us consider some of the structure of this story. Suppose we see a baby shaking a rattle. Sequentially, we can focus on the smile, the nose, the jerky movement of the shoulder, the frozen elbow, the hand, the rattle. Our focus changes, but we feel that, regardless, we continue to look at the same story: The child is playing with the rattle. We are able to unify all of these perceptions, all of these different foci. The mental spaces corresponding to the different foci will all have a child, a rattle, a rattling motion, and so on, and we connect these elements in each space to their counterparts in the other spaces. We conceive of these various spaces as all attached to a single story.

  Now imagine that we walk around to the other side of the baby. Our visual experience may change substantially. It is even possible that we will see none of what we saw before, strictly speaking. Yet our new view will not seem entirely new. The space of the newviewpoint will have a baby, a shoulder, a hand, a rattle, a rattling motion, and so on, and we will connect these elements to their coun- terparts in the spaces of other viewpoints and other foci, allowing us to think of the different small spatial stories we see as one story, viewed from different view- points and with different foci.

  As sensorybeings, our view is always single and local because we have a single life and not a general life. As imaginative beings, we constantly construct mean- ing designed to transcend that singularity. We integrate over singularities. If we are on one side of a small spatial story, viewing “it,” and a friend is on the other side, viewing “it,” we can construct, mentally, a space that contains what the friend sees and connect that space to the space that contains what we see, to create an integrated space that is meant to be transcendent and unitary.

  It is part of our notion of the story of someone recognizing a story with a single focus and from a single viewpoint that there are other foci and other viewpoints, and that the spaces corresponding to all the different foci and different viewpoints are connected as having the same story as their object. We expect correspondences to run across all these spaces. The general story of a person recognizing a small spatial story is, in these details, considerably more complicated than it seemed at first: There are many foci and many viewpoints, and the agent perceiving the story just happens to have this particular focus and this particular viewpoint.

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  As sensory beings, we are subject to obvious constraints on actually switch- ing focus and viewpoint because to change them actually requires bodily move- ment. But once we have the story in imagination, we are not subject to these constraints. We can mentally focus on this part or that part, and move around, perceiving it from this angle or that. Subjects asked to draw an imagined event (a surfer wiping out on a wave, for example) from the front, the back, the side, above, below, and so on will all produce drawings with the expected regularities.

  In imagination, we can construct spaces of what we take to be someone else’s focus and viewpoint. We can, for example, in imagination, take the spatial view- point of one of the actors in the story. Consider a story with some actors: Grand- mother watches father hand mother clothes as she dresses her son‘, grandmother is an observer, father is an accessory agent, mother is the principal agent, and the child is the patient-—in the sense that he is the object on which the action is performed, not in the sense that he is patient as it happens! In imagination, we can switch viewpoint from grandmother to father to mother to son in the story. Consider another story: Father watches mother watch the son shake a rattle. We can take the focus and viewpoint of father, mother, son, even rattle (try it). We have single live s, but in imagination, we are suddenly free of the consequent singularity.

  In the literary mind, parable projects stories onto other stories. The story in which a person with a particular focus and a particular viewpoint recognizes a story is a skeletal story of spatial perception. It, too, isprojettea’. Most notably, it is projected onto the skeletal story of perception in time. For example, if we are in the second day of our three-day trip, we can “focus” on yesterday from the “viewpoint” of today, or “focus” on tomorrow from the “viewpoint” of today. We can do much more: Suppose our companion says, as we are traveling, “Imagine it’s the end of the trip; how do you feel?” and we respond, “I feel sleepy. I had plenty of energy at the beginning of the trip, but nowI am exhausted.” Of course, the person saying this does not at the moment of speaking want to go to sleep. Instead, he is taking as his “viewpoint” in time the end of the trip and as his “focus” in time first the end of the trip (“I feel sleepy”), then the beginning of the trip (“I had plenty of energy”), and then the end of the trip again (“nowI am exhausted”). He could, however, have said, “I will feel slee py.” In that case, his “viewpoint” in time is the moment of speaking (during the second day of the trip) and his “focus” in time is the end of the trip.

  Projecting the story of perception in space (with spatial focus and spatial viewpoint) onto the story of perception in time gives us temporal focus and tem- poralviewpoint. Someone recognizing a story in time has, by means of this pro- jection, a particular temporal focus and a particular temporal viewpoint.

  SINGLE LIVES Q. 119

  We saw above that it is part of our notion of the story of someone recogniz- ing a story with a single spatial focus and from a single spatial viewpoint that there are other foci and viewpoints, and that we connect the spaces that corre- spond to the different foci and viewpoints as all having the same story as their object. The same is true of perceiving a story with a single temporal focus and from a single temporal viewpoint. There are other temporal foci and temporal viewpoints; we connect the spaces that correspond to the different foci and view- points as all having the same story as their object. For example, the person “view- ing” the story of hi
s three—day trip, who shifts his temporal focus from yesterday to tomorrow, has shifted mental spaces, but he is still “viewing” the same story from those different spaces.

  All stories take place in time. Counterfactual stories, stories about heaven before time was invented, imagined stories, stories about repetitive habitual events--even these stories involve temporal sequence. Although we can only

  _perceive a story from a unique moment in time, namely the present, once that

  story is in imagination, we can understand different temporal moments of the story as if they belong to different temporal “spaces.” Spaces are defined relative to spatial focus and spatial viewpoint; by projection, spaces are defined relative to temporal focus and temporal viewpoint. As we can focus on this or that spa~ tial component of the story, so, by projection, we can “focus” on this or that tem- poral component of the story. Spatially, we may focus on the rattle, the eyes, the hand. Temporally, we may “focus” on the moment the baby picked the rattle up, the temporal period of rattling, or the moment the baby dropped the rattle. As we can view a story from this or that spatial viewpoint, so, by projection, we can “view” a story from this or that temporal “viewpoint.” We may imagine the small spatial story of the baby’ s shaking the rattle from the viewpoint of the future of the story (“The baby shook the rattle”), from the viewpoint of the present of the story (“The baby is shaking the rattle”), or from the viewpoint of the past of the story (“The baby will shake the rattle”).

  By projecting the basic abstract story of spatial perceiving onto the basic abstract story of temporal perceiving, we understand ourselves as able to focus on one or another temporal space from one or another temporal “location” or “viewpoint.” We can “focus” on the temporal space of “yesterday” from the view- point of “today”: “I did it yesterday.” We can “focus” on the temporal space of 1066 from the temporal “viewpoint” of 1066: “It’s raining as William lands on English shores.” We can “focus” on the temporal space of the day after tomor- row from the temporal space of today, and in the space of the day after tomor- row, there can be someone who is focusing on his yesterday (our tomorrow) from the viewpoint of our day after tomorrow, as in “He will come home tomorrow

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  night and we will ask him the following morning whether he has made the phone call, but he will say he did it as soon as he came home.” The complexities of this everyday competence in narrative imagining have been surveyed by rhetoricians and literary critics for many centuries—the body of research in literary theory on focus and viewpoint is large. Focus and viewpoint have emerged relatively re- cently as fundamental topics in linguistics.

  Let us take one small example of the phenomena of temporal focus and view- point. Proust beginszf la rerherthe du tempsperdu, “For a long time I used to go to bed early" (“Longtemps,je me suis couché de bonne heure”). This sets up a space of narration. The temporal viewpoint at the opening of the book is from this space of narration. This opening sentence also sets up a space of habitually going to bed early; this space is the temporal focus. The temporal viewpoint, in the space of narration, lies in the future of the temporal focus—the space of habitually going to bed early. From the temporal viewpoint of the space of nar- ration, the narrator begins to describe various phenomena of memory and dream- ing that belong to the space of temporal focus, like the following:

  Then the memory of a new position would recur, and the wall would slide away in another direction—I was in my room at Mme de Saint-- Loup’s, in the country: Good Heavens, it is at least ten o’clock, they must have finished dinner! I must have overslept myselfin the little nap that I always take when I come in from my walk with Mme de Saint—- Loup, before dressing for the evening. For many years have now passed since Combray when, upon our tardiest homecomings, I saw the glow-- ing reflections of the sunset on the panes of my bedroom window.

  Puis renaissait le souvenir d’une nouvelle attitude: le mur filait dans une autre direction:j’étais dans ma chambre chez Mme de Saint—Loup, :1 la campagne; mon Dieu! il est au moins dix heures, on doit avoir fini dc diner! ]’aurai trop prolongé la sieste queje fais tous les soirs en rentrant de ma promenade avec Mme de Saint—Loup, avant d’endosser mon habit. Car bien des années ont passe’ depuis Combray, ou, dans nos retours les plus tardifs, c’étaient les reflets rouges du couchant que je voyais sur le vitrage de ma fenétre.

  In the beginning of this passage, the temporal viewpoint is the space of narration. The temporal focus is the general habitual space of nightly perception and dreaming. The temporal focus lies in the past of the temporal viewpoint. At the phrase “I was in my room,” the temporal viewpoint remains in the space of narration, but the temporal focus shifts to the more local temporal space of the

  SINGLE LIVES Q. 121

  dreamer experiencing the particular dream of being in his room at Mme de Saint- Loup’s. This more local temporal space is a specific space that is an instance of the general habitual space of nightly perception and dreaming. At “Good Heav- ens!” there is a double shift. Temporal viewpoint and temporal focus both shift to the space of the dream itself. At the phrase “they must have finished dinner,” temporal viewpoint is inside the dream as the dreamer (who, in this space, does not know he is dreaming) uses narrative imagination to make sense of his immediately relevant past. It is important to see that it would have been entirely possible for the mental viewpoint to be the dreamer’s while the temporal view- point lay with his counterpart in a different and later temporal space, as in “I concluded that they had finished dinner and that I had overslept.” At “they must have finished dinner; I must have overslept myself,” the temporal viewpoint is the moment of reaching these conclusions, but the temporal focus is the space of the events that are the subject of those conclusions (the finishing of dinner, the oversleeping of the appropriate moment to awaken), which the dreamer takes to lie temporally in his immediately relevant past. He marks his knowledge explicitly as resulting from his mental reasoning by saying “They must have fin- ished dinner” rather than “They have finished dinner,” and “I must have over- slept” rather than “I have overslept.” At “in the little nap thatI always take,” the temporal viewpoint and the temporal focus both float up to the temporal habitual space we might call “life at Mme de Saint—Loup’s, in the country,” in its func- tion as dreamed inclusive background of the specific dreamed event of waking up in the room at Mme de Saint—Loup’s. At “For many years have now passed,” the temporal viewpoint remains inside that temporal space of “life at Mme de Saint—Loup’s, in the country,” but the temporal focus now shifts to the tem- poral space we might call “life at Combray,” which lies “many years” in the past of the temporal viewpoint. Needless to say, by the end of the passage, temporal viewpoint and temporal focus are both extremely far from the space of narration.

  Proust’s report is distributed over different temporal spaces. Temporal view- point and focus can shift variously over such spaces. As they shift in this man- ner, we maintain an account of how each of these temporal spaces connects to the particular distinguished temporal space we might label “the moment of nar- ration by Proust.” The tense of the verb is an instrument for indicating temporal viewpoint and temporal focus on a story partitioned over temporal spaces. All the spaces Proust narrates lie in the past of the space of narration, but it would be a misconception to expect that his verbs would therefore have past tenses. Tense is an instrument for indicating temporal focus and viewpoint; it is to be expected that, in narrating events that lie in his past, the narrator will of course use a great range of tenses, including present tense and future tense, to indicate focus and viewpoint. The everyday mind is very good at shifting temporal focus

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  and temporal viewpoint; this capacity leaves its mark on the structure of language and on the artifacts of literature.

  Just as the everyday mind is extremely adept at co
ordinating different men- tal spaces distinguished by spatial viewpoint and focus, so it is extremely adept at coordinating different mental spaces distinguished by temporal viewpoint and focus. We have seen many times that different spaces can be connected by struc- ture they share; in particular, we have seen that structure shared by two input spaces, contained in a generic space that applies to both of them, establishes counterpart connections between them. One kind of shared structure can be identity. We saw that the two monks in the two input spaces in the riddle of the Buddhist monk were counterparts in two ways: First, each has the role of “trav- eler” in the frame for traveling along a pail); second, they are viewed as the iden- tical person. Following Fauconnier, we say that identity counterparts like these in different spaces are connected by an “identity connector.” An identity con- nector does not imply that the counterparts are the same in every respect--the monk in one space is a day older than the monk in the other, for example-but rather that the counterparts share an identity.

  Identity connections tie together spaces of different viewpoint and focus, whether spatial or temporal. This tying together of mental spaces by identity connectors—making them all spaces that concern the same story-—-greatly reduces the amount of work that needs to be done in conceiving, imagining, or telling a story. If we think of all the mental spaces involved in the story of Shahrazad, we expect that Shahriyar in any one of them connects identically to Shahriyar in any other. When we shift viewpoint or focus to a different temporal space, we do not have to build up everything in that space explicitly. For example, in imag- ining the marriage of Shahrazad to Shahriyar, we do not have to build explicitly into that imagined space the vizier, the relation between the vizier and Shahrazad, the relation between King Shahriyar and the vizier, and so on. All of that flows forward through identity connectors. An event established in one space as. tem- porally ongoing flows forward through identity connectors to the appropriate future spaces.