It is strange that no one is willing to admit the fact of the matter: that the work brings into head-on collision a swarm of conflicting interpretations, each of which can be defended on its own grounds. If what we had before us were a logical calculus, the sum of these conflicting judgments would clearly be zero, since contradictory propositions cancel one another out. But the work is just not a logical treatise, and therefore it becomes for us, in its semantic undecidability, a fascinating riddle. “Single-axis” structuralism fails utterly for it, but the mechanism of undamped oscillation of the reader’s surmises can be formalized by a topology of multiple decision-making, which in the limit turns the compass card into a surface representing continuous aberrations of the receiver. However, the structuralist model even as we have thus amended it is not fully adequate to a work such as Kafka’s. It falls short because its axiomatic assumption of disjointedness of opposed categories (allegory : poetry, irony : earnestness, natural : supernatural) is altogether false. The crux lies in the fact that the work can be placed on the natural and the supernatural level at the same time, that it can be at once earnest and ironic, and fantastic, poetic, and allegorical as well. The “at the same time” predicated here implies contradictions — but what can you do, if such a text is founded just on contradictions? This is made plain by the throng of equally justified but antagonistic interpretations that battle vainly for supremacy, i.e., for uniqueness. It is only mathematics and logic and — following their example — mathematical linguistics that fear contradictions as the Devil fears holy water. Only these can do nothing constructive with contradictions, which put an end to all rational cognition. What is involved is a trap disastrous for epistemology, in that it is an expression that contradicts itself (much like the classic paradox of the Liar). Yet literature manages to thrive on paradoxes, if only on ones strategically placed — precisely these constitute its perfidious advantage! Not, to be sure, from its own resources. It has not invented such horrendous powers for itself. We find logical contradictions ready-made, firstly in culture: for — to take the first example to hand — according to the canons of Christianity, whatever happens happens naturally, and at the same time it happens by the will of God, since nothing can be apart from this. The nontemporal order thus coexists with the temporal — eternity is in every moment and in every inch. The collisions of behavior provoked by this “overlapping” predication are buffered by successive interpretations of dogma, e.g., in a species of theological consent to the use of anesthesia in childbirth. Nonetheless there is a contradiction involved that culminates in “Credo, quia absurdum est.” Secondly, overlapping categorizations of percepts become the norm in dreams as well as in hyponoic states, thus not only in psychiatric symptomatology (cf. Ernst Kretschmer, Medizinische Psychologic). The coexistence in apperception of states of affairs that exclude one another both empirically and logically is, consequently, a double regularity — cultural and psychological — on which structuralism finally breaks every bone in all its “axes.” Thus the whole literary-critical procrustics or catalogue of adulterations, errors, and oversimplifications formed by this Introduction à la littérature fantastique is of value only as an object lesson illustrating the downfall of a precise conceptual apparatus outside its proper domain.
We still have with us the dilemma of the hard-headed reader, who, if he is not scared by a ghost story, relabels it with respect to genre. Todorov would hold such a receiver to be an ignoramus who ought to keep his hands off literature. But when we examine the situation in which someone reads an “uncanny” or a “tragic” text and splits his sides laughing, we will realize that this situation can be explained in either of two ways. Perhaps the reader is in fact a primitive oaf who is too immature to appreciate the work, and that is an end of the problem. Or perhaps the work is kitsch and he who laughs at it is an experienced connoisseur of literature, so that he cannot take seriously what the work presents as serious, i.e., he has outgrown the work. In the second case the text really does change its genre: from a story about spirits (intentionally uncanny) or about galactic monarchs (intentionally science-fictional) or about life in high society (intentionally edifying romance) it turns into an unintentional humoresque.
Todorov bars saying anything at all about an author’s intentions — to mention these amounts to covering oneself with the disgrace of “fallacia intentionalis.” Structuralism is supposed to investigate texts only in their immanence. But if one is free to recognize, as Todorov does, that a text implies a reader (not as a concrete person but as a standard of reception), then in accord with a rule of symmetry one should recognize that it also implies an author. Both of these concepts are indissolubly connected with the category of messages, since a message, in information theory, must have a sender and a receiver.
The words of Roger Caillois about “the irreducible impression of strangeness” as a touchstone for the fantastic represent the psychological correlate of the linguistic state of things constituted by the full-valued character of the artistic text, which guarantees that it is not kitsch. The irreducibility of the impression certifies the authentic values of the text and thereby abolishes the relativism typical for writing with unwarranted pretensions, which produces kitsch as an incongruity between intention and realization.
The relativism of kitsch lies in the fact that it is not kitsch for all readers, and, what is more, it cannot be recognized as kitsch by those who esteem it. Kitsch identified as such forms a special case of paradox within the set of literary works; namely, contradiction between the reactions anticipated by the text and the reactions that its reading actually evokes. For the uncanny is incompatible with nonsense, physics with magic, the sociology of the aristocracy with the scullery’s notions about it, and the process of cognition with the adventures of puppets called scientists. Thus kitsch is a product counterfeited to pass for what it is not. The contradictions in interpretation of Kafka’s writings not only can but must be grasped by the reader; only so, thanks to “indecision of manifold scope,” will he apprehend the aura of mystery established by the text. Per contra, the contradiction specific to kitsch must remain unrecognized by its readers, since otherwise generic disqualification of what has been read will take place. The reading of kitsch as kitsch is nonimmanent — the reader appeals to his own superior knowledge about how a work of the given kind ought to look, and the chasm separating what ought to be from what in fact is amuses him (or offends him).
Because our superior knowledge decreases as the themes of literature become increasingly remote from reality, kitsch takes up residence in regions inaccessible to the reader: in the palace, in the far future, among the stars, in history, in exotic lands. Every literary genre has its masterwork-ceiling, and kitsch, by a tactics of crude mimicry, pretends to have soared to such an altitude. Todorov, fettered by the immanence of his procedures, has deprived himself of any possibility of recognizing mimicry of values, and accordingly his implicit reader must, by dint of solemn exertions, see to it that the silliest twaddle about spirits sends chills up and down his spine. On pain of a structuralist curse he is forbidden to poke fun at such rubbish; since structuralism establishes absolute equality in literature, the right of citizenship that the text usurps for itself is a sacred thing.
A possible rejoinder at this point would be that idiotic stories are written for idiotic readers. And indeed, we observe this state of affairs in the book market, dominated by the laws of supply and demand. But this is not an extenuating circumstance for a theory of literature. A “theory” is synonymous with a generalization that applies without exception to all elements of the set under investigation. Since the structuralists’ generalizations balk at applying thus, or, more precisely, because when they are made to apply thus everywhere they yield such nonsense as no advocate of the school would like to acknowledge (for structural equivalence democratically places the counterfeit on an equal footing with the masterpiece), the theoreticians carry out certain sleight-of-hand manipulations when they assemble t
heir materials for public dissection. They place on their operating table, to wit, only what has already earned a respectable reputation in the history of literature, and they conjure away under the table works that are structurally of the same kinds but artistically trashy. They have to proceed thus, because their method impels them toward simple texts such as the detective story; their overweening ambitions, on the other hand, toward celebrated works. (Kitsch, being subject to relativization in the process of reception, is not the structurally simplest case, for it seeks to be one thing and is in fact another; the detective story, on the other hand, devoid of pretensions, is decisionally unimodal.)
Now we can more readily understand the make-up of Todorov’s bibliography, as to the names (Balzac, Poe, Gogol, Hoffmann, Kafka) and the works it includes. The theoretician has taken as his “sample” that which could not involve him in difficulties, since it had already passed its cultural screening examination and by that token could give him no trouble. A therapist, if he were to proceed analogously, would take as patients only robust convalescents. A physicist would test his theory only on facts that he knew beforehand would confirm it, carefully avoiding all others. Let us spare the structuralist the description that the philosophy of science would give to such a method of selecting “representative samples.” A theory of literature either embraces all works or it is no theory. A theory of works weeded out in advance by means beyond its compass constitutes not generalization but its contrary, that is, particularization. One cannot when theorizing discriminate beforehand against a certain group of works — i.e., not bring them under the scope of analysis at all. A taxonomically oriented theory can set up a hierarchy in its subject matter — i.e., assign nonuniform values to the elements of the entire set under investigation — but it should do this openly, not on the sly, and throughout its whole domain, showing what sort of criteria it employs for making distinctions and how they perform their tasks of evaluation.
These obligations are binding not for humanistic studies alone. They stem from the set of directives to which all scientific cognition is subject. A zoologist cannot ignore cockroaches because they’re such nasty little beasties, nor a cosmologist ignore the energy balance of quasars because it makes his calculations blow up in his face. The sleight-of-hand artist’s activities are not always and everywhere admirable. So, we conclude, if structuralism desires to avoid expulsion from among the sciences, it must rebuild itself completely, from the ground up, since in its present state it is, in the words of Pierre Bertaux, a procedure that from its point of departure in logic has strayed into useless mythology.
Translated from the Polish by Robert Abernathy
UNITAS OPPOSITORUM: THE PROSE OF JORGE LUIS BORGES
I admit that this essay is a very subjective review of Borges’s fiction. If someone asked me why I am stressing the subjective aspect of this piece of criticism, I would be hard-pressed to give a conclusive answer. Perhaps because I have been trying for years to enter the territory in which the Argentinian’s best work was created, although I went by quite another road. Therefore his work is very close to me. At the same time it is foreign to me, for I know from my own experience the traps into which he has sometimes fallen in his writing, and I cannot always approve of his literary methods.
Nothing could be simpler than to list Borges’s best stories. These are: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “Pierre Menard — Author of the Quixote,” “The Lottery in Babylon,” and “Three Versions of Judas.”
I justify my preference in the following way: each of the stories mentioned has a double-decker, perverse, but logically perfect structure. Viewed superficially, they are fictionalized paradoxes of the Greek type (Zeno’s, for instance[13]).
In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Borges bases the story on the idea of reversing our concepts of “idea” and “reality.” Borges suggests that a secret society has created a new world where the mind creates its own external objects, and the only external objects are those created by the mind.
In “The Lottery in Babylon” Borges contrasts two mutually exclusive explanations of the universe: (statistical) chance, and (total) determinism. Usually we consider these notions incompatible. Borges tells of a world system based upon a lottery, and reconciles two cosmological explanations without destroying the logical bases of each system.
“Pierre Menard — Author of the Quixote,” on the other hand, is a satire on the uniqueness of the act of artistic creation, logically driven to its utmost point. (In this story Pierre Menard seeks to rewrite “Don Quixote” precisely — without copying it. The story shows the paradoxes behind the idea that art is created necessarily and uniquely. Borges reduces the idea ad absurdum.)
Finally, “Three Versions of Judas” is a logically improvable heresy.[14] Borges builds a fictitiously heterodox system of Christian dogmatics in which he “proves” that Judas not Jesus was the Christ. In its “radicalism” this fictitious heresy surpasses all historical types of heresy.
In each story we can find the same kind of method: Borges transforms a firmly established part of some cultural system by means of the terms of the system itself. In the fields of religious belief, in ontology, in literary theory, the author “continues” what mankind has “only begun to make.” Using this tour d’adresse Borges makes comical and absurd those things which we revere because of their current cultural value.
But when we look at Borges’s work only superficially we see the “comicallogical” effect alone. However, each of these tales has in addition another — wholly serious — hidden meaning. At base, his curious fantasy is, I claim, quite realistic. Only after some thought do you first note that the heterodoxy contained within “Judas,” for instance, might really be possible. Such a perfidious interpretation of the myth of the redemption, if historically not very plausible, is at least thinkable. I could say the same about “Lottery.” Under certain conditions even the reinterpretation of the notions of chaos and order shown here may be historically plausible. Both stories, diiferent as they may appear to be from one another, are hypotheses about the structure and attributes of existence. Because they are both borderline cases, isolated to one edge of the real paradigm corresponding to them, it was very unlikely that they would come true historically. Yet, considered from a logical point of view, they are totally “correct.” The author therefore has the courage to deal with the most valuable goals of mankind just as mankind himself does. The only difference is that Borges continues these combinatory operations to their utmost logical conclusions.
Borges’s best stories are constructed as tightly as mathematical proofs. It is impossible to refute them logically, however lunatic the stories’ premises may sound. Borges is successful because in any single case he never questions the implied premises of the model structure that he transforms. For instance, he pretends to believe (as some humanists do) that a truly brilliant work of art contains no trace of chance, but is indeed the result of some (higher) necessity. If one thinks that such a statement is generally true, it is possible, without contradicting logic, to claim that a masterpiece could be created, word for word, a second time, and quite independently from its first birth (as one can really do with mathematical proofs). We can only see the nonsense of such a procedure when we attack its very premises; but of course Borges is careful never to do this. He never creates a new, freely invented paradigm structure. He confines himself strictly to the initial axioms supplied by the cultural history of mankind. He is a mocking heretic of culture because he never transgresses its syntax. He only extends those structural operations that are, from a logical point of view, “in order,” i.e., they have never been seriously “tried out” because of historical extralogical reasons — but this is of course another matter altogether.
Basically, Borges just does what he claims for the fictitious philosophers of his “Tlön” (in philosophy they “do not seek truth, only amazement”). He cultivates a fantastic philosophy, for the characters and settings in his stories are not discur
sive arguments, but just as much literary objects as the objects which appear in “normal” literature. This group of tales forces me to ask how we may distinguish a fictitious ontology (one that cannot be taken seriously) from a real (historically valid) philosophy. The answer to this question is shocking: no essential difference separates the two. Things are quite trivial: those ontological-philosophical concepts that some thinkers had, and that were preserved by mankind in her historical treasure trove of ideas, and that she therefore acknowledges as serious attempts to interpret and understand the world in one grand sweep — those ideas are our religions and philosophical systems.[15] But ideas that cannot present such a genealogical attestation and cannot show such an assimilation by the real history of mankind (and Borges’s cannot) are just “fictitious,” “freewheeling,” “privately invented” meaningful structures, and for no other reason than that mentioned above. Because of this, they can never be taken seriously as an interpretation of the world and existence. These stories cannot be refuted even when the most severe criteria are applied, but only because things happen to be so. To refute them, it would not be sufficient merely to show their absurd consequences. To refute them, it would be necessary to call into question the total syntax of human thought, and thinking in its ontological dimensions. Therefore, Borges’s work just confirms that no cultural necessity exists in our growth toward knowledge; for we often take that which has arisen by accident for what is necessary, and mistake the ephemeral for the eternal.
I’m not sure whether Borges would agree with my explication of his work, but I do fear that I have attributed more to him than he deserves, and that he has not written his best work with so serious an intent (in its semantic depths, not its comical-paradoxical surface, of course). Which means that I suspect that Borges “privately” has not seen the final point of his fictional chain of proof. This guess is based on a knowledge of all of his stories. By talking about his other stories, I pass onto the other, more dubious aspects of his work. Seen as a whole, his work is a universe of literature whose secondary, repetitious aspects diminish and slight his best efforts by their very neighborhood, because these aspects structurally debunk his best work. In Borges’s best stories one can find flashes such an intellectual power that they do not lose impact even after many rereadings. If at all, they are lessened only when one reads all of his stories at a sitting.
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