This concept of reading is by no means new. In the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne was already writing in Tristram Shandy: "...no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own."(2) Thus author and, reader are to share the game of the imagination and, indeed, the game will not work if the text sets out to be anything more than a set of governing rules. The reader's enjoyment begins when he himself becomes productive, i.e., when the text allows him to bring his own faculties into play. There are, of course, limits to the reader's willingness to participate, and these will be exceeded if the text makes things too clear ' or, on the other hand, too obscure: and overstrain represent the two poles of tolerance, and in either case the reader is likely to opt out of the game.
Sterne's thoughts on reader participation are echoed some two hundred years later by Sartre-whom one would otherwise scarcely consider to be a kindred spirit of the eighteenth-century English humorist. He calls the relationship a "pact"(3) and goes on: "When a work is produced, the creative act is only an incomplete, abstract impulse; if the author existed all on his own, he could write as much as he liked, but his work would never see the light of day as an object, and he would have to lay down his pen or despair. The process of writing, however, includes a dialectic correlative the process of reading, and these two, interdependent acts require two differently active people. The combined efforts of author and reader bring into being the concrete and imaginary object which is the work of the mind. Art exists only for and through other people."(4)
THE WANDERING VIEWPOINT
In our attempts to describe the intersubjective
structure of the process through which a text is transferred and translated,
our first problem is the fact that the whole text can never be perceived at any
one time.In this respect it differs
from given objects, which can generally be viewed
[pg.108]
or at least conceived as a whole.
The object of the text can only be imagined
by way of different consecutive phases of reading.
We always stand outside the given object, whereas we are situated
inside the literary text. The relation between text and reader is therefore
quite different from that between object and observer: instead of a
subject-object relationship, there is a moving viewpoint which travels along
inside that which it has to apprehended. This mode of grasping an object is
unique to literature.
A further complication consists in the fact that literary texts do not serve merely to denote empirically, existing objects.Even though they may select objects from the empirical world-as we have seen in our discussion of the repertoire-they depragmatize them, for these objects are not to be denoted, but are to be transformed.Denotation presupposes some form of reference that will indicate the specific meaning of the thing denoted.The literary text, however, takes its selected objects out of their pragmatic context and so shatters their original frame of reference; the result is to reveal aspects (e.g., of social norms) which had remained hidden as long as the frame of reference remained intact.In this way, the reader is given no chance to detach himself, as he would have if the text were purely denotative.Instead of finding out whether the text gives an accurate or inaccurate description of the object, he has to build up the object for himself - often in a manner running counter to the familiar world evoked by the text.
The reader's wandering viewpoint is, at one and the same time, caught up in and transcended by the object it is to apprehend. Apperception can only take place in phases, each of which contains aspects of the object to he constituted, but none of which can claim to he representative of it. Thus the aesthetic object cannot be identified with any of its manifestations during the time-flow of the reading. The incompleteness of each manifestation necessitates syntheses, which in turn bring about the transfer of the text to the reader's consciousness.The synthesizing process, however, is not sporadic - it continues throughout every phase, of the journey of the wandering viewpoint.
It may help us to understand the nature of this
synthetizing activity if we examine in detail one paradigmatic moment in the
process of reading.We shall, for the
present, restrict our analysis to the sentence perspective of the text, and
here we may turn for support to the empirical findings of
psycholinguistics.What is known as the
"eye-voice span,"(5)
[pg.109]
when applied to the literary text will designate that
span of the text which can be encompassed during each phase of reading and from
which we anticipate the next phase: "...decoding proceeds in 'chunks'
rather than in units of single words, and
...these 'chunks' correspond to the syntactic units of a
sentence."(6) The syntactic units of sentences are residual 'chunks' for
perception within the literary text, although here they cannot be identified
merely as perceptual objects, because the denotation of a given object is not
the prime function of such sentences. The main interest here lies in the
sentence correlate, for the world of the literary
object is built up by these intentional correlates.
"Sentences join in diverse ways to form semantic units of a higher order which exhibit quite varied structures; from these structures arise such entities as a story, a novel, a conversation, a drama, a scientific theory.By the same token, finite verbs constitute not only states of affairs which correspond to the individual sentences, but also whole systems of very diverse types of states of affairs, such as concrete situations, complex processes involving several objects, conflicts and agreements among them, etc. Finally, a whole world is created with variously determined elements and the changes taking place in them, all as the purely intentional correlate of a sentence complex.If this sentence complex finally constitutes a literary work, then I call the whole stock of interconnected intentional sentence correlates the portrayed world of the work."(7)
How is one to describe the connections between these correlates especially as they do not have that degree of determinacy pertaining to a declarative sentence?When Ingarden speaks of intentional sentence correlates, the statement and information are already qualified in a certain sense, because each sentence can achieve its end only by aiming at something beyond itself. As this is true of all the sentences in a literary text, the correlates constantly intersect, giving rise ultimately to the semantic fulfillment at which they had aimed. The fulfillment, however, takes place not in the text, but in the reader, who must 'activate' the interplay of the correlate prestructured by the sequence of sentences. The sentences themselves, as statements and assertions, serve to point the way toward what is to come, and this in turn is prestructured by the actual content of the sentences. In brief, the sentences set in motion a process which will lead to the formation of the aesthetic object as a correlative in the mind of the reader.
In describing the inner consciousness of time, Husserl once wrote:
"Every originally constitutent process is inspired
by protensions, which will construct and collect the seed of what is to come,
as such, and bring it
[pg.110]
to fruition."(8) This remark draws attention to
an elementary factor which plays a central part in the reading process.
The semantic pointers of individual
sentences always imply an expectation of kind - Husserl calls these
expectations "pretensions." As this structure is inherent in all
intentional sentence correlates, it follows that their interplay will lead not
so much to the fulfillment of expectations as to their continual
modifications.Now
herein lies a basic structure of the
wandering viewpoint. The reader's position
in
the text is at the point of intersection between retention and protension.
Each individual sentence correlate prefigures a particular horizon, but this is
immediately transformed into the background for the next correlate and must
therefore necessarily be modified.
Since each sentence correlate aims at things to come, the prefigured
horizon will offer a view which-however concrete it may be-must contain
indeterminacies, and so arouse expectations as to the manner in which these are
to be resolved.Each new correlate,
then, will answer expectations (either positively or negatively) and, at the
same time will arouse new expectations. As far as the sentences is concerned,
there are two fundamentally different possibilities.
If the new correlate begins to confirm the expectations aroused
by its predecessor, the range of possible semantic
horizons will be correspondingly narrowed.
This is normally the case with texts that
are to describe a particular object, for their concern is to narrow the range
in order to bring out the individuality of that object.
In most literary texts, however, the
sequence of sentences is so structured that the correlates serve to modify and
even frustrate the expectations they have aroused.
In so doing, they automatically have a retroactive effect on what
has already been read, which now appears quite different.
Furthermore, what has been read shrinks in
the memory to a foreshortened background, but it is being constantly evoked in
a new context and so modified by new correlates that instigate a restructuring
of past syntheses. This does not mean chat the past returns in full to the
present, for then memory and perception would become indistinguishable, but it
does mean that memory undergoes a transformation.
That which is remembered becomes open to new connections, and
these in turn influence the expectations aroused by the individual correlates
in the sequence of sentences.
It is clear, then, that throughout the reading process
there is a continual interplay between modified expectations and transformed
memories. However, the text itself does not formulate expectations or their
modification; nor does it specify how the connectability of memories is to be
implemented. This is the province of the reader himself, and so here we have a
first insight into how the synthetizing activity
[pg.111]
of the reader enables the text to be translated and
transferred to his own mind.This
process of translation also shows up the basic hermeneutic structure of
reading.Each sentence correlate
contains what one might call a hollow section, which looks forward to the next
correlate, and a retrospective section which answers the expectations of the
preceding sentence (now part of the remembered background).
Thus every moment of reading is a dialectic
of pretension and retention conveying a future horizon yet to be occupied,
along with a past (and continually fading) horizon already filled; the
wandering viewpoint carves its
passage through both at the same time and leaves them to merge together in its
wake.There is no escaping this
process, for-as has already been pointed out-the text cannot at any one moment
he grasped as a whole.But what may at
first sight have seemed like a disadvantage, in comparison with our normal
modes of perception may now be seen to offer distinct advantages, in so far as
it permits a process through which the aesthetic object is constantly being
structured and restructured.As there
is no definite frame of reference to regulate this process, successful
communication must ultimately depend on the reader's creative activity.
We must now take a closer look at the basic structures that regulate this process.Even on the level of the sentences themselves, it is clear that their sequence does not by any means bring about a smooth interaction of pretension and retention. This fact has been pointed out by Ingarden, though his interpretation of it is debatable:
"Once we are transposed into the flow of thinking the sentence, we are prepared, after having completed the thought of one sentence, to think its "continuation" in the form of another sentence, specifically, a sentence which has a connection with the first sentence. In this way the process of reading a text advances effortlessly.But when it happens that the second sentence has no perceptible connection whatever with the first, the flow of thought is checked. A more or less vivid surprise or vexation is associated with the resulting hiatus.The block must be overcome if we are to renew the flow of our reading."(9)
Ingarden regards this interruption to the flow as a defect,
and this shows the extent to which he applies even to the reading process his
classical concept of the work of art as polyphonic harmony.
If the sequence of sentences is to be
regarded as an uninterrupted flow, each sentence will obviously have to fulfill
the expectations aroused by its predecessor, and a failure to do so will arguse
"vexation." But in literary texts, not only is the sequence full of
surprising twists and turns, but indeed we expect it to be s ven to the extent
that if there is a continuous flow, we will look for an ulterior motive.
There is no need for us now to go into
Ingarden's reasons for demanding a 'flow of sentence thinkinle; what concerns
us here is the fact that there is such a hiatus, and that it has a
[pg.112]
very important function. The 'obstacle' condemned by
Ingarden enables the sentence correlates to be set off against one
another.On the level of sentences
themselves, the interruption of expected connections may not be of any great
significance; however it is paradigmatic of the many processes of focusing and
refocusing that take place during the reading of the literary text.
This need for readjustment arises primarily
from the fact that the aesthetic object has no existence of its own, and can
consequently only come into being by way of such processes.
It is difficult for individual sentences to he distinguished from one another as regards the textual perspectives they establish, because as a rule the repetoir of signals the literary text is extremely restricted.Quotation marks are perhaps the most striking of these, to denote that a sentence is in fact the utterance of a character.Indirect speech is less clearly indicated, and there are no specific markers to indicate the ' intervention of the author, the development of the plot, or the position ascribed to the reader.A sequence of sentences may contain something about a character, the plot, the author's evaluation, or the reader's perspective, without any explicit signals to distinguish these very different points of orientation from one another. But the importance of such differentiation can be gauged from the manner in which some authors insist on different lettering (e.g., italics) to draw distinctions which would not otherwise have emerged from the sequence of sentences.
In James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner
(particularly The Sound and the Fury), such signals are most frequently to be
found where different depths of consciousness are to be plumbed; these cannot
be explicitly formulated, and so the use of differentiated signals enables the
various layers of consciousness to be offset from one another without recourse
to extraneous codes.In most novels,
however, as has already been observed, there are no signals to distinguish
between the various the narrator, the characters, the plot and the reader´s
position are represented.Although we
have a syntactic ordered sequence of sentences, each sentence is only part of
the textual perspective in which it is situated, and such segments will alternate
with segments of other perspectives, with the result that the perspectives are
continually throwing one another into relief.
This alternation can be accelerated to the point at which each new
sentence switches the viewpoint in a positive kaleidoscope of perspectives, as
occasionally in Ulysses for instance.
The term perspective here implies a channeled view (from the standpoint
of narrator, characters, etc.), and it also sets out the specific mode of
access to the object intended.(10) In a nondenotative text,
[pg.113]
both characteristics are of equal importance;
standpoint and accessibility are two basic conditions under which the aesthetic
object is to he produced.
As the sentences of a text are always situated within the perspective that they constitute, the wandering viewpoint is also situated in a particular perspective during every moment of reading, but-and herein lies the special nature of the wandering viewpoint-it is not confined to that perspective.On the contrary, it constantly switches between the textual perspectives, each of the switches representing an articulate reading moment; it simultaneously offsets and relates the perspectives.What Ingarden rejected as "hiatus" in a sequence of sentences, is in fact an indinspensable condition for the process, for reciprocal spotlighting, an without the process of reading would remain nothing but an inarticulate time-flow.But if the wandering viewpoint defines itself by way of the changing perspectives, it follows that throughout the reading past perspective segments must be retained in each present moment.The new moment is not isolated, but stands out against the old, and so the past will remain as a background to the present, exerting influence on it and, at the same time, itself being modified by the present.This two-way influence is a basic structure in the time flow of the reading process, for this is what brings about the reader's position within the text. As the wandering viewpoint is not situated exclusively in any one of the perspectives, the reader's position can only be established through a combination of these perspectives. But the act of combining is only possible by way of the retained modifications in the many reading moments made articulate by the spotlighting process.
For the sake of analysis we might halt the time-flow
of reading and take as an example of one paradigmatic reading moment an
incident in Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
During one particular phase of reading, the viewpoint of the reader is
situated within Becky Sharp's perspective, as she writes a letter to her friend
Amelia to tell her what she is hoping to gain from her new position at the
Crawley's country seat; here the narrator's perspective is present as a
background.It is evoked by a signal
from the author, who has called this chapter "Arcadian
Simplicity."(11) This pointer ensures that the reader will never lose
sight of the narrator's views on the social ambitions and, especially, the
flexibility with which the "little Becky puppet" performs her social
high-wire act.This evocation of the
narrator's perspective throws the new segments into sharp relief.
But at this particular moment, both
perspectives undergo a degree
[pg.114]
of modification.
On the one hand, Becky's naive desire to do all she can to please her
new masters no longer seems to express the amiability she intended, but instead
denotes her habitual opportunism. On
the other hand, the narrator's general metaphor for Becky-a puppet on a
tightrope-begins to take on the more specific significance of a form of
opportunism characteristic in nineteenth-century society: the opportunist could
only succeed through moral conduct, though this was not motivated by the
selflessness normally inherent in morality.
At this reading moment, the ability to manipulate morality-and with it,
the central code of conduct of the nineteenth-century middle class-emerges as
the developing individualization of the narrator's perspective as against the
characters' perspective.
In the same way, every reading moment sends out stimuli into the memory, and what is recalled can activate the perspectives in such a way that they continually modify and so individualize one another. Our example shows clearly that reading does not merely flow forward, but that recalled segments also have a retroactive effect, with the present transforming the past. As the evocation of the narrator's perspective undermines what is stated explicitly in the characters' perspective, there emerges a configurative meaning, which shows the character to be an opportunist and the narrator's comments to have a hitherto unsuspected individual connotation.
It is clear, then, that the present retention of a past perspective qualifies both past and present. It also qualifies the future, because whatever modifications it has brought will immediately affect the nature of our expectations. These may radiate in several different directions at once.The expectations arising from our Thackeray example will in the first place relate to the future success or failure of Becky's opportunism. If she succeeds, we shall then expect to learn something about society, and if she fails, it will be something about the fate of opportunism in that society. However, it may be that at this particular reading moment, the character perspectives are already so clearly individualized that such general expectations serve only as a frame, and instead of waiting for success or failure, we wait for a detailed picture of this particular type of conduct. Indeed, the multiplicity of character perspectives tends to lead us in this direction, for the perspective of the simple-minded and sentimental Amelia, to whom Becky addresses her letter, is liable to yield a different view of opportunism from that of the upper-class society in which Becky now finds herself. Consequently, the reader will expect an individualization of that form of opportunism which the author wishes to convey as typical of that society.
This example clearly illustrates what we might call
the basic fabric of
[pg.115]
the wandering viewpoint.
The switch of viewpoints brings about a spotlighting of textual
perspectives,(12) and these in turn become reciprocally influenced backgrounds
which endow each new foreground with a specific shape and form.
As the, viewpoint changes again, this
foreground merges into the background, which it has modified and which is now
to exert its influence on yet another new foreground.
Every articulate reading moment entails a switch of perspective,
and this constitutes an inseparable combination of differentiated perspectives,
foreshortened memories, present modifications, and future expectations.
Thus, in the time-flow of the reading
process, past and future continually converge in the present moment, and the
synthesizing operations of the wandering viewpoint enable the text to pass
through the reader's mind as an ever expanding network of connections.
This also adds the dimension of space to
that of time, for the accumulation of views and combinations gives us the
illusion of depth and breadth, so that we have the impression
that we are actually present in a real
world.
One further aspect of the wandering viewpoint needs to
be discussed if we are to pinpoint the way in which the written text is grasped
by the reader.The reciprocal evocation
of perspectives does not normally follow a strict time sequence.
If it did, what had been read earlier would
gradually disappear from view, as it would become increasingly irrelevant.
The pointers and stimuli therefore evoke not
just their immediate predecessors, but often aspects of other perspectives that
have already sunk deep into the past.
This constitutes an important feature of the wandering viewpoint.
If the reader is prodded into recalling
something already sunk into memory, he will bring it back, not in isolation but
embedded in a particular context.The
fact of recall marks the limit to which the linguistic sign can be effective,
for the words in the text can only denote a reference, and not its context; the
connection with context is established by the retentive mind of the
reader.The extent and the nature of
this recalled context are beyond the control of the linguistic sign.
Now if the reference invoked is embedded in
a context (however variable), clearly, it can be viewed from a point outside
itself, and so it is possible that aspects may now become visible that had not
been so when the fact had settled in the memory.
It follows that whatever is evoked from the reading past will
appear against the background of its own observability, and it is at this point
that the textual sign and the reader's conscious mind merge in a productive act
that cannot be reduced to either of its component parts.
As the past fact is recalled against the
[pg.116]
background of its own observability, this constitutes
an apperception, for the invoked fact cannot be separated from its past context
as far as the reader is concerned, but represents part of a synthetic unit,
through which the fact can be present as something already apprehended.
In other words, the fact itself is present,
the past context and synthesis are present, and at the same time the potential
for reassessment is also present.
This feature of the reading process is of great significance for the compilation of the aesthetic object. As the reader's conscious mind is activated by the textual stimulus and the remembered apperception retums as a background, so the unit of meaning is linked to the new reading moment in which the wandering viewpoint is now situated. But as the perspective invoked already possessed a configurative meaning and does nort return in isolation, it must inevitably provide a differentiated spectrum of observation for the new perspective which has recalled it and which thereby undergoes an increasing degree of individualization.
We can illustrate this process with the Thackeray example.The textual sign "Areadian Simplicity" invokes the narrator's perspective just when the reader is more or less immersed in the perspective of the character, because Becky at the time is writing a letter. Our position is that deseribed by Butor: "If the reader is placed in the position of the hero, he must also he placed in the hero's time and situation; he cannot know what the hero does not know, and things must appear to him precisely as they appear to the hero."(13) The textual sign "Areadian Simplicity" is explicitly ironic and invokes the attitude characteristic of the narrator's perspective. The term "Areadian Simplicity" is in itself a comparatively mild form of irony, but it bears with it the whole panoply of past ironies.Against this background of ironic variations, the term is open to observation and judgment as regards its appropriateness.It is, in fact, present against two backgrounds-that of the narrator's perspective and that of the character's perspective.As each of these influences and modifies the other, Becky's desire to please everyone is not to be viewed solely in relation to the background of irony; it also calls forth a judgment as to whether the irony is appropriate or inappropriate, and the extent to which it is inappropriate endows Becky's intentions with a dimension which-although it remains unformulated-possesses a high degree of semantic individuality.
In this way the two perspectives throw each other into
distinct relief.The narrator's irony
demands an evaluation of what the character is after, while the ambitions of
the character subject the narrator's perspective to an evaluation of its
appropriateness.Once again, then, the
backgrounds and their connections are differentiated, and it is this constant
[pg.117]
reshuffling of viewpoints and relations that spurs the
reader on to build up the syntheses which eventually individualize the
aesthetic object.
As we have seen, the perspectives invoked are present in the articulate reading moment as configurative meanings and not as isolated elements, and this intersubjective structure always conditions the way in which it will be subjectively realized.The degree to which the retaining mind will implement the perspective connections inherent in the text depends on a large number of subjective factors: memory, interest, attention, and mental capacity all affect the extent to which past contexts become present.There is no doubt that this extent will vary considerably from reader to reader, but this is what first conditions the apperceptions that arise out of the interaction between the fact invoked and its context. The resultant retroactive link-up in turn helps to individualize the stimulant perspective, and the nuances of this individualization will depend precisely on these subjective factors. This is why the same intersubjective structure of the literary text may give rise to so many different subjective realizations, and without this structure there could be no basis for comparing and assessing interpretations.
To sum up, then, we have observed that the wandering viewpoint permits the reader to travel through the text, thus unfolding the multiplicity of interconnecting perspectives which are offset whenever there is a switch from one to another.This gives rise to a network of possible connections, which are characterized by the fact that they do not join together isolated data from the different perspectives, but actually establish a relationship of reciprocal observation between stimulant and stimulated perspectives. This network of connections potentially encompasses the whole text, but the potential can never be fully realized; instead it forms the basis for the many selections which have to be made during the reading process and which, though intersubjectively identity as is shown by the many different interpretations of a single text-nevertheless remain intersubjectively comprehensible in so far as they are all attempts to optimize the same structure.
CORRELATIVES PRODUCED BY THE WANDERING VIEWPOINT
Consistency-Building as a Basis for Involvement in the
Text as an Event.The wandering
viewpoint is a means of describing the way in which the reader is present in
the text.This presence is at a point
where memory and expectation converge, and the resultant dialectic movement
brings about a continual modification of memory and an increasing complexity of
expectation.These processes depend on
the reciprocal spotlighting of the perspectives, which provide interrelated
backgrounds for
[pg.118]
one another.
The interaction between these backgrounds provokes the reader, reader
into a synthesizing activity.It
"is the prerogative of the perceiver not a characteristic of the stimuli,
to decide which differences significant-which sets of features shall he
criterial-in the establishment of equivalences."(14) These syntheses,
then, are primarily groupings that bring the interrelated perspectives together
in an equivalence that has the character of a configurative meaning.
Here we have one of the basic elements of
the reading process: the wandering viewpoint divides the text up into
interacting structures, and these give rise to a grouping activity that is fundamental
to the grasping of a text.
The nature of this process is shown clearly by a remark of Gombrich's: "In the reading of images, as in the hearing of speech, it is always hard to distinguish what is given to us from what we supplement in the process of projection which is triggered off by recognition ... it is the guess of the beholder that tests the medley of forms and colours for coherent meaning, crystallizing it into shape when a consistent interpretation has been found."(15) Inherent in this process-which Gombrich originally derived from decoding distorted messages and then applied to the observation of pictures-is a problem which is highly relevant to the consistency-building that takes during the reading process. The "consistent interpretation” or gestalt, is a product of the interaction between text and reader, and so cannot be exclusively traced back either to the written text or to the disposition of the reader.Now psycholinguistic experiments have shown that meanings cannot be merely by the direct or indirect decoding of letters or words, but can only be compiled by means of grouping.
“When we read a printed page, our attention is not focused on the little flaws in the paper, even though they are in the middle of our field of vision, and in fact we get nothing but a blurred and latent idea of the form of the letters used.On a still higher plane of observation, we know from the extensive work done by perception psychologists in connection with the reading of the printed page (e.g., Richaudeau, Zeitler, Shen) that during continuous reading, the number of focal points for the eye does not exceed two or three per line, and it is physically impossible for the eye to grasp the form of each individual letter.There are innumerable examples of 'typographical illusions', and all the findings lead psychologists to accept the gestalt theory, as opposed to the one-sided concepts of scanning.”(16)
For if the reader were really to scan letters and
words like a computer, the reading process would simply entail registering
these units which,
[pg.119]
however, are not yet units of meaning. "Meaning is at a level of lan where words do not belong.... Meaning is part of the deep structure, the semantic, cognitive level. And you may recall that between the surface level and the deep level of language there is no one-to-one correspondence. Meaning may always resist mere words."(17)
As meaning is not manifested in words, and the reading process therefore cannot be mere identification of individual linguistic signs, it follows that apprehension of the text is dependent on gestalt groupings. If we may borrow a term from Moles, we can define these gestalten elementally, as the “autocorrelation” of textual signs."(18) The term is apposite, because it relates to the interconnection between the textual signs prior to the stimulation of the individual reader's disposition. A gestalt would not be possible if there were not originally some potential correlation between the signs. The reader's task is then to make these signs consistent, and as he does so, it is quite possible that the connections he establishes will themselves become signs for further correlations. By "autocorrelation", then, we mean that connections constitute the gestalt, but the gestalt is not the connection itself-it is an equivalent, in other words, the projection of which Gombrich speaks. The reader's part in the gestalt consists in identifying the connection between the signs; the "autocorrelation" will prevent him from projecting an arbitrary meaning on the text, but at the same time the gestalt can only be formed as an identified equivalence through the hermeneutic schema of anticipation and fulfillment in relation to the connections perceived between the signs.
To illustrate this process and its consequences, we might refer to an example already adduced in another context."(19) In Fielding's Tom Jones, Allworthy is introduced as the homo perfectus. He lives in Paradise Hall “and... might well be called the favourite of both nature and fortune."(20) In a new chapter, Dr. Blifil enters the Allworthy family circle, and of him we learn: "the doctor had one positive recommendation-this was a great appearance of religion. Whether his religion was real, or consisted only in appearance, I shall not presume to say, as I am not possessed of any touchstone which can distinguish the true from the false."(21) However, it is said that the doctor seems like a saint. And so at this point in the text, we are given a certain number of signs which set in motion a specific interplay of correlations. The signs denote first that Blifil gives an appearance of deep piety and that Allworthy is a perfect man. At the same time, however, the narrator lets out a warning signal that one must differentiate between true and false appearances. Next Blifil meets Allworthy, and so the Allworthy perspective-retained in the
[pg.120]
reader's memory-now becomes present again. Because of the narrator's explicit signal, two different segments of the characters' perspective now confront one another with reciprocal effect. The linguistic signs are correlated by the reader, who thus forms a gestalt of the two complexes of signs. In the one case, these signs denoted Blifil's apparent piety, and in' the other Allworthy's perfection, and so now the narrator's sign makes it necessary for the reader to apply criteria for differentiation. The equivalence of the signs is established at the moment when we anticipate Blifil's hypocrisy and Allworthy's naiveté and this, too, is the point at which we fulflll the narrator's demand for differentiation. Blifil's appearance of piety is put on in order that he may impress Allworthy, with a view to worming his way into the family and perhaps gaining control of their estate. Allworthy trusts him, because perfection is simply incapable of conceiving a mere pretence of ideality. The realization that the one is hypocritical and the other naive involves building an equivalence, with a consistent gestalt, out of no less than three different segments of perspectives-two segments of character and one of narrator perspective. The forming of the gestalt resolves the tensions that had resulted from the various complexes of signs. But this gestalt is not explicit in the text-it emerges from projection of the reader, which is guided in so far as it arises out of the identification of the connections between the signs.
In this particular example, it actually brings out something which is not stated by the linguistic signs, and, indeed, it shows that what is meant is the opposite of what is said.
Thus the consistent gestalt endows the linguistic signs with their significance, and this grows out of the reciprocal modifications to which the individual positions are subjected, as a result of the need for establishing equivalences. The gestalt coherency might be described in terms used by Gurwitsch, as the perceptual noema of the text.(22) This means that as each linguistic sign conveys more than just itself to the mind of the reader, it must be joined together in a single unit with all its referential contexts.
The unit of the perceptual noema comes about by way of the reader’s acts of apprehension: he identifies the connections between the linguistic signs and thus concretizes the references not explicitly manifested in those signs. The perceptual noema therefore links up the signs, their implications, their reciprocal influences, and the reader's acts of identification, and through it the text begins to exist as a gestalt in the reader's consciousness.
The perceptual noema is quite straightforward in our Fielding example, as far as it goes, and the gestalt coherency will, for the most
[pg.121]
part, be regarded as intersubjectively valid.
However, this gestalt does not stand in
isolation.The different
Allworthy/Blifil sign complexes brought about a tension which was quite easily
resolved by an equivalence, but now the question,arises as to whether this
gestalt-with Allworthy naive and Blifil hypocritical-is self-sufficient.
Open gestalten naturally bring about further
tensions, which can only be resolved by way of a wider range of
integration.Now if the naive
Allworthy/hypocritical Blifil gestalt is regarded as self-sufficient, the conclusion
must be simply that Allworthy is deceived by a Tartuffe.
But generally readers will tend to be
dissatisfied with such a conclusion.
There arise such questions as 'how'? and 'why'?, and these are
stimulated not least by the sign of the narrator himself, who has pointed out
to us how difficult it is to find a touchstone that can distinguish the true
from the false.The reader's attention
is thus drawn to the problem of criteria; but if these criteria were confined
to this one single case, the narrator´s perspective would automatically be
deprived of its original function, namely, to establish the overall
pattern.The resultant gestalt (i.e.,
that Allworthy is taken in by a Tartuffe) takes on considerably more
significance when viewed (as it must be) in the light of all its ramifications.
This 'extra' significance is, of course, not arbitrary; it is moulded by the
weight of the narrator's sign and by the now obvious paradox that something is
missing from Allworthy's 'perfection´.
However, the manner in which the latent openness of the gestalt may be
closed is by no means defined.There
are various possibilities. (1) The reader may, for instance, ask why it is that
he can see through Blifil, whereas Allworthy, who is supposed to he perfect,
cannot.He must conclude that
perfection lacks one vital attribute: discernment.
And then the reader will recall a previous misjudgment of
Allworthy's, when as justice of the peace he convicted Jenny Jones, an
irreproachable maid-servant, simply because she had seemed to be guilty. (2)
The reader may also ask why lack of discernment should be illustrated through a
perfect man.He may conclude that this
paradox helps lay stress on the importance of discernment-a gestalt which the
narrator supports with his own comments. (3) If we should feel superior to the
perfect man, because we can see things he cannot, we may now begin to wonder
what qualities he possesses that we ourselves are lacking.
Clearly, then, the initial open gestalt can lead in several different directions toward another, closed gestalt, and this fact automatically brings into play a process of selection. The perceptual noema therefore involves subjective preferences in relation to the intersubjective acts of consistency-building. All the possibilities outlined above are legitimate, though they all point in different directions.The first instance illustrates the major theme of the novel: discernment is a basic factor in human nature.
[pg.122]
The second instance illustrates the significance of that theme: discernment can only be acquired through negative experiences and is not a faculty dependent on fortune or nature; this is why Fielding allows discernment and perfection to clash-in order to underline the vital importance of experience.Our third possibility fulfills the didactic purpose.The reader should see himself reflected in the characters, and so should come to a better understanding of himself; a sense of discernment is useless without a moral foundation, for it would then only lead to the cunning deceit of a Blifil.
These are only some of the possibilities of selection, but from this one example we can already draw a general conclusion as regards the process of consistency-building. We have seen that there are two distinct stages in this process: first, the formation of an initial, open gestalt (Allworthy is deceived by a Tartuffe); second, the selection of a gestalt to close the first.These two operations are closely linked, and together they make up the product of the consistency-building process.Now the primary gestalt emerges out of the interacting characters and the plot development, and it is clear from our example that both components depend on gestalt-forming and are not given by the printed text. This Allworthy-Blfil gestalt emerged from the reader's retention of past gestalten and subsequent modification of present linguistic signs; the denoted perfection of Allworthy and the denoted piety of Blifil were both equally transformed in the equivalence of the gestalt. Thus even the plot level of a text develops through gestalt-forming.However, the plot is not an end in itself – it always serves a meaning, for stories are not told for their own sake but for the demonstration of something beyond themselves. And so a gestalt that represents the plot development is still not completely closed.The closing can only come about when the significance of the action can be represented by a further gestalt. And here, as we have seen, there are many different possibilities which can only be fulfilled selectively.
On the level of plot, then, there is a high degree of intersubjective consensus,but on the level of significance selective decisions have to be taken which are subjective cause they are arbitrary, but because a gestalt can only be closed if one possibility is selected and the rest excluded.The selection will depend on the reader's individual disposition and experience, but the interdependence of the two types of gestalten (plot-level and significance) remains an intersubjectively valid structure. This relation between subjective selection and intersubjective structure has been described by Sartre as follows:
“The reader is left with everything to do, and yet
everything has already been done; the work only exists precisely on the level
of his abilities; while he reads and creates, he knows that he could always go
further in his reading, and that
[pg.123]
he could always create more profoundly; and this is
why the work appears to him as inexhaustible and as impenetrable as an
object.This productiveness, whatever
its quality may be, which before our very eyes transforms itself into
impenetrable objectivity in accordance with the subject that produces it, is
something I should like to compare to the "rational intuition' KANT
reserved for divine reason.”(23)
This more profound creating, with its resultant impenetrable objectivity, can be seen from the developments of our Fielding example, where the plot-level gestalt broadened out into a range of different significances.Each individual selection retains the character of "impenetrable objectivity" in so far as the resultant gestalt remains intersubjectively accessible, even though its restrictive determinacy excludes other possibilities, thereby revealing the impenetrability of the reader's subjectivity.
This brings us to an important aspect of the gestalt, which the literary text exploits in order to build up its correlatives in the reader's consciousness.A gestalt closes itself in proportion to the decree in which it resolves the tensions between the signs that are to be grouped. This is also true of gestalt sequences dependent on the good continuation principle of coherence, The equivalence of the signs comes about through their reciprocal modification, and this in turn depends on the extent to which expectations are fulfilled. Expectations, however, may lead to the production of illusion, in the sense that our attention is confined to details which we imbue with an overall representative validity. Gombrich is right when he says: Whenever “consistent reading suggests itself... illusion takes over."(24)
Consistency-building itself is not an illusion making process, but consistency comes about through gestalt groupings, and these contain traces of illusion in so far as their closure-since it is based on selection-is not a characteristic of the text itself, but only represents a configurative meaning.
The importance of illusion to acts of comprehension, has been highlighted by Eco, in his description of television viewers' reactions to live transmissions.Here we have a "narrative type which, however, coherent and consistent it may seem, always uses for its original material the raw sequence of natural events; here the narrative, even if it has a continual plot-line, is always going off at a tangent in order simply to take note of inessentials."(25) And so in a live transmission-as in the deliberate contingency of some modern films-there is a "frustration of the viewer's fictional instinct.”(26)
[pg.124]
The course of the live transmission is determined by the specific expectations and demands of the public – a public which, in its demand for a report on events, thinks of these events in terms of the traditional novel, and only recognizes life as real if its contingent elements are removed and it seems to have been selected and united in a plot.... It is only natural that life should be more like Ulysses than like The Three Musketeers; and yet we are all more inclined to think of it in terms of The Three Musketeers than in terms of Ulysses-or, rather, I can only remember and judge life if I think of it as a traditional novel.(27)
One might continue the argument by saying that only in memory do we have the degree of freedom necessary, if we are to bring the disordered multiplicity of everyday life into the harmonious form of a coherent gestalt-perhaps because this is the only way we can retain meanings of life.Thus the gestalten of memory extract meaning from and impose order on the natural heterogeneity of life. If this is so, then the traditional realistic novel can no longer be regarded as a mirror-reflection of reality, but is, rather, a paradigm of the structure of memory, since reality can only be retained as reality if it is represented in the terms of meaning. This is why the modern novel presents reality as contingent and 'meaningless', and in so doing it shows a reaction to conventional habits of perception by releasing reality from the illusion-making structure of memory.This very unmasking of a traditional way of grasping reality must also be represented, however, and so the need for illusion in consistency-building-the precondition for securing uptake-is not even obviated by those texts that resist illusion-making in order to direct our attention to the causes of this resistance.
The illusion element in gestalt-forming is one vital condition for grasping the literary text. "The reader is interested in gaining the necessary information with the least trouble to himself.... And so if the author sets out to increase the number of code systems and the complexity of their structure, the reader will tend to reduce them to what he regards as an acceptable minimum. The tendency to complicate the characters is the author's; the contrastive black-white structure is the reader's."(28)
The Text as an Event. Consistency-building is the
indispensable basis for all acts of comprehension, and this in its turn is
dependent upon processes of selection. This basic structure is exploited by
literary texts in such a way that the reader's imagination can be manipulated
and even reoriented.We must now take a
closer look at the modes of influence that
[pg.125]
guide the reader.
Walter Pater once wrote, apropos of the experience of reading.
"For to the grave reader words too are
grave; and the ornamental word, the figure, the accessory form or colour or
reference, is rarely content to die to thought precisely at the right moment,
but will inevitably linger awhile, stirring a long 'brainwave' behind it of
perhaps quite alien associations”(29). Thus consistency-building brings in its
wake all those elements that cannot he integrated into the gestalt of the
moment.Even in the
background-foreground dialectic of the wandering viewpoint, we saw that the
interaction and interrelation of textual perspectives leads inevitably to
selections in favor of specific connections, for this is the only way in which
gestalten can be formed.But selection
automatically involves exclusion, and that which has been excluded remains on
the fringes as a potential range of connections.
It is the reader who unfolds the network of possible connections,
and it is the reader who then makes a selection from that network.
One of the factors conditioning this
selection is that in- reading we think the thoughts of another person.
Whatever these thoughts may be, they must to
a greater or lesser degree represent an unfamiliar experience, containing
elements which at any one moment must be partially inaccessible to us.
For this reason, our selections tend first
to be guided by those parts of the experience that still seem to be
familiar.They will influence the
gestalt we form, and so we will tend to leave out of account a number of other
possibilities which our selective decisions have helped to) formulate but have
left on the fringes.But these
possibilities do not disappear; in principle they always remain present to cast
their shadow over the gestalt that has relegated them.
It might be said, then, that the selections, we snake in reading produce an overflow of possibilities that remain virtual" as opposed to 'actual.. These incorporate that section of the unfamiliar experience which is outlined without being brought into focus. From their virtual presence arise the "alien associations" which begin to accumulate and so to bombard the formulated gestalten, which in turn become undermined and thus bring about a reorientation of our acts of apprehension. This is why readers often have the impression that characters and events have undergone a change in significance; we see them 'in another light’. This means, in fact, that the direction of our selection has changed because the “alien associations” - i.e., those possibilities that had hitherto remained virtual - have now so modified our earlier gestalten that our attitude has begun to shift.
It is this process that also lends itself to being
manipulated by textual strategies.They
can be devised in such a way that the range of virtual
[pg.126]
possibilities-bound to arise out of each selective
decision-will be eclipsed during the processing of the text.
In such cases, the text takes on a didactic
tone.But if the strategies are so
organized that they increase the pressure exerted by the "alien
associations"-i.e., the equivalence of the signs represented in a gestalt
no longer corresponds to the apparent intention-then we have a text in which
the original implications of the signs themselves become the objects of
critical attention.This is what
normally happens with literary texts where gestalten are so formulated as to
bring with them the seeds of their own modification or even destruction.
This process has a vital bearing on the role
of the reader.Through gestalt-forming,
we actually participate in the text, and this means that we are caught up in
the very thing we are producing.This
is why we often have the impression, as we read, that we are living another
life.For Henry James, this
"illusion of having lived another life "(30) was the most sticking
quality of narrative prose.It is an
illusion because our involvement makes us leave behind that which we are.
An "event in which we participate is
not knowable apart from our knowledge of our participation in it."(31)
Gombrich comes to a similar conclusion in relation to experiments in Gestalt
psychology: "... though we may be intellectually aware of the fact that
any given experience must he an illusion, we cannot, strictly speaking, watch
ourselves having an illusion. "(32) This entanglement brings out another
quality of illusion, different from that which we considered in our discussion
of consistency-building. There the illusory factor was that gestalten
represented totalities in which possible connections between signs had been
sufficiently reduced for the gestalt to he closed.
Here illusion means our own projections, which are our share in
gestalten which we produce and in which we are entangled.
This entanglement, however, is never total,
because the gestalten remain at least potentially under attack from these
possibilities which they have excluded but dragged along in their wake.
Indeed, the latent disturbance of the
reader's involvement produces a specific form of tension that leaves him
suspended, as it were, between total entanglement and latent detachment. The
result is a dialectic - brought the reader himself – between illusion-forming
and illusion-breaking. It provokes balancing operations, if only because a
gestalt that has been undermined by "alien associations" will not
immediately fade out of the reckoning; it
[pg.127]
will continue to have after-effects, and these are
necessary if the "alien associations" are, to attain their ends.
The 'conflict can only be resolved by the
emergence of a third dimension, which comes into being through the reader's
continual oscillation between involvement and observation.
It is in this way that the reader,
experiences the text as a living event.
The event links together all the contrary strands of the gestalten and
it takes on its essential openness by making manifest those possibilities which
had been excluded by the selection process and which now exert their influence
on these closed gestalten.The
experience of the text as an event is an essential correlative of the text; it
arises out of the manner in which the strategies disrupt consistency-building,
and by thus opening the potential range and interaction of gestalten, it
enables the reader to dwell in the living world into which he has transmuted
the text.
These balancing operations have been described by B. Ritchie, with, reference to the nature of expectations. From the very beginning, each text arouses particular expectations, proceeds then to change these, or sometimes fulfills them at a time when we have long since ceased to envisage their fulfillment and have already lost sight of them altogether.
“Furthermore, to say merely that our "expectations are satisfied" is to be guilty of another serious ambiguity.At first sight such a statement seems to deny the obvious fact that much of our enjoyment is derived from surprises, from betrayals of our expectations, The solution to this paradox is to find some ground for a distinction between 11 surprise" and "frustration".Roughly, the distinction can be made in terms of the effects which the two kinds of experiences have upon us.Frustration blocks or checks activity.It necessitates new orientation for our activity, if we are to escape the ‘cul de sac’. Consequently, we abandon the frustrating object and return to blind impulsive activity. On the other hand, surprise merely causes a temporary cessation of the exploratory phase of the experience, and a recourse to intense contemplation and scrutiny.In the latter phase the surprising elements are seen in their connection with what has gone before, with the whole drift of the experience, and the enjoyment of these values is then extremely intense.Finally, it appears that there must always be some degree of novelty or surprise in all these values if there is a progressive specification of the direction of the total act... and any aesthetic experience tends to exhibit a continuous interplay between "deductive" and "inductive" operations.” (33)
It follows that the meaning of the text does not
reside in the expectations, surprises, disappointments or frustrations that we
experience during the process of gestalt-forming.
These are simply the reactions that take place when the gestalten
are disturbed.What this really means,
though, is that as we read, we react to what we ourselves have produced,
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and it is this mode of reaction that, in fact, enables
us to experience the text as an actual event.
We do not grasp it like an empirical object; nor do we comprehend it
like a predicative fact; it owes its presence in our minds to our own
reactions, and it is these that make us animate the meaning of the text as a
reality.
Involvement as a Condition of Experience. The event-correlative of the text arises out of a gestalt-forming process in which the individual gestalt is both a unit and a transition. A basic element of this process is the fact that each gestalt bears with it those possibilities which it has excluded but which may eventually invalidate it.This is the way in which the literary text exploits the consistency-building habit which underlies all comprehension.But as the excluded possibilities become more and more obtrusive, so they may come more and more to take on the status of alternatives rather than fringe influences. In everyday language we call these alternatives ambiguities, by which we mean not just the disturbance but also the hindrance of the consistency-building process. This hindrance is particularly noticeable when the ambiguity is brought about by our own gestalt-forming, for then it is not merely the product of the printed text but that of our own activity. Obvious textual ambiguities are like a puzzle which we have to solve ourselves; ambiguities arising from our own gestalt-forming, however, stimulate us into trying to balance all the more intensively the contradictions that we have produced. Just as the reciprocal disturbance of the gestalten brings about the dimension of the event, in which illusion-building and illusion-breaking are integrated, here too we have a need for integration. What, though, is the effect of this intensified struggle for balance?
This question might best be answered by taking a
relatively straightforward example from Joyce's Ulysses.
There is a passage which induces the reader
to compare Bloom's cigar to Ulysses's spear.
The spear is evoked as a specific part of the Homeric repertoire, but is
equated with the cigar as if they were two things of a kind.
The very fact that we equate them causes us
to he aware of their differences, and so to wonder why they should have been
linked together.Our answer may be that
the equation is ironic - at least that is how many reputable Joyce critics have
interpreted the passage.(34) Irony would then he the gestalt through which the
reader would identify the connection between the signs.
But what exactly is the recipient of this
ironic treatment-Ulysses's spear, or Bloom's cigar?
The lack of clarity already poses a threat to the gestalt of
irony.But even if irony does appear to
endow the equation with the necessary consistency, this irony is of a peculiar
nature.After all, irony
[pg.129]
normally leads us to the conclusion that the meaning
is precisely the opposite of what is formulated in the text, but such an
intention is not evident here. At best we might say that here the formulated
text means something that has not been formulated, but perhaps it may even mean
something that lies beyond a 'formulated' irony, though this irony may be, as
it were, a stepping-stone to such an interpretation.
Whatever may be the significance of the equation, it is clear
that the consistency vital for comprehension will bear with it a discrepancy.
This will be more than just an excluded possibility, because in this case the
discrepancy has the effect, not just of disturbing a formulated gestalt but of
showing up its inadequacy. Instead of being modified or replaced, it becomes
itself an object of scrutiny, because it seems to lack the motivation necessary
for an equivalence of signs to be found.
This, of course, does not mean that it is pointless to formulate such inadequate gestalten.On the contrary, their very inadequacy will stimulate the reader into searching for another gestalt to represent the connection between the signs – and, indeed, he may do so precisely because he has been unable to stick to the original, most obvious gestalt.Again we may illustrate this with reference to the Joyce example. Many readers have tried to smooth out the discrepancy of the irony gestalt by taking the phallus as the connection between the signs.As far as the spear is concerned the equation seems to work, both in terms of tradition and mythological dignity; but we must also incorporate the cigar into our gestalt.The cigar, however, jerks the imagination onto so many different planes that it not only shatters the@ mythological paradigm but also explodes the gestalt. The apparent consistency now fragments itself into the various associations of the individual reader's imagination. But as he indulges in these associations he will become more and more subjected to the influence of the discarded irony gestalt, which now returns to belittle every product of the gestalt-forming imagination. In such cases, the vital process of consistency-building is used to make the reader himself produce discrepancies, and as he becomes aware of both the discrepancies and the processes that have produced them, so he becomes more and more entangled in the text.
Such processes certainly occur more frequently in modern than in older literature. However, throughout the history of narrative prose, certain literary devices have been built into the structure of the work in order to stimulate the production of discrepancies. From Cervantes to Fielding, we find the interpolated story that functions as a reversal of the main action, so that gestalten are formed by way of an undermining interaction between plot and subplot.
This brings to
the fore hitherto concealed possibilities, which in turn produce a
configurative meaning. In the nineteenth century, the traditional narrator
frequently assumes the character
[pg.130]
of an unreliable narrator who either openly or
indirectly disputes the judgments of the implied author.(35) Conrad's Lord Jim
(1900) introduced divergent textual perspectives which resist integration and
so devalue their own individual authenticity. Joyce then split up the textual
perspectives and intermingled them in such a way as to prevent the reader from
ever gaining a single reliable vantage point. And, finally, Beckett has devised
a sentence structure in which each statement is followed by a negation, which
itself is a statement eliciting further negations in an unending process that
leads the reader to search for the key, which becomes more and more elusive.
What all these techniques of inversion have in common is the fact that the discrepancies produced by the reader make him dispute his own gestalten. He tries to balance out these discrepancies, but the questionable gestalt which was the starting-point for this operation remains as a challenge in the face of which the newly attempted integration has to prove itself.This whole process takes place within the reader's imagination, so that he cannot escape from it. This involvment, or entanglement, is what places us in the 'presentness' of the text and what makes the text into a presence for us. In so far as there is entanglement, there is also presence.
This entanglement entails several effects at the same time. While we are caught up in a text, we do not at first know what is happening to us. This is why we often feel the need to talk about books we have read - not in order to gain some distance from them so much as to find out just what it is that we were entangled in. Even literary critics frequently do no more than seek to translate their entanglement into referential language. As our presence in the text depends upon this involvement, it represents a correlative of the text in the mind, which is a necessary complement to the event-correlative. But when we are present in an event, something must happen to us. The more ‘present’ the text is to us, the more our habitual selves-at least for the duration of the reading-recede into the ‘past’. The Literary text relegates our own prevailing views into the past by itself becoming a present experience, for what is now happening or may happen was not possible so long as our characteristic views formed our present.
Now experiences do not come about merely through the
recognition of the familiar."It
is true that we should never talk about anything if we were limited to talking
about those experiences with which we coincide."(37) Experiences arise
only when the familiar is transcended or under-
[pg.131]
mined; they grow out of the alteration or
falsification of that which is already ours.
Shaw once wrote: "You have learnt something.
That always feels at first as if you had
lost something."(38) Reading has the same structure as experience, to the
extent that our entanglement has the effect of pushing our various criteria of
orientation back into the past, thus suspending their validity for I the new
present.This does not mean however,
that these criteria or our previous experiences disappear altogether.
On the contrary, our past still remains our
experience, but what happens now is that it begins to interact with the as yet
unfamiliar presence of the text.This
remains unfamiliar so long as our previous experiences are precisely as they
had been before we began our reading.
But in the course of the reading, these experiences will also change,
for the acquisition of experience is not a matter of adding on-it is a
restructuring of what we already possess.
This can he seen even on an everyday level; we say, for instance, that
we have benefited from an experience when we mean that we have lost an
illusion.
Through the experience of the text, then, something happens to our own store of experience. This cannot remain unaffected, because our presence in the text does not come about merely through recognition of what we already know. Of course, the text does contain a good deal of familiar material, but this usually serves not as a confirmation but as a basis out of which the new experience is to be forged. The familiar is only momentarily so, and its significance is to change in the course of our reading. The more frequent these 'moments' are, the clearer will be the interaction between the present text and our past experience.What is the nature of this interaction?"The junction of the new and old is not a mere composition of forces, but a re-creation in which the present impulsion gets form and solidity while the old, the 'stored', material is literally revived, given new life and soul through having to meet a new situation."(39) For our purposes, Dewey's description is revealing in two respects: first, as an account of the interaction itself, and second as showing the actual effects of this interaction. The new, experience emerges from the restructuring of the one we have stored, and this restructuring is what gives the new experience its form. But what actually happens during this process can again only be experienced when past feelings, views, and values have been evoked and then made to merge with the new experience. The old conditions the form of the new, and the new selectively restructures the old. The reader's reception of the text is not based on identifying two different experiences (old versus new), but on the interaction between the two.
[pg.132]
This interrelationship applies to the structure of experience in general, but it does not in itself manifest any aesthetic qualities. Dewey tries to bring out the aesthetic element of the structure with two different arguments: "That which distinguishes an experience as esthetic is conversion, of resistance and tensions, of excitations that in themselves are temptations to diversion, into a movement toward an inclusive and fulfilling close.... An object is peculiarly and predominantly esthetic, yielding the enjoyment characteristic of esthetic perception, when the factors that determine anything which can be called an experience are lifted high above the threshold of perception and are made manifest for their own sake."(40)
The first argument accords with the views of the Russian formalists, who regarded the prolongation of perception as a central criterion for aesthetic experience. Dewey's other argument is that aesthetic experience differs from ordinary experience because the interacting factors become a theme in themselves.In other words, aesthetic experience makes us conscious of the acquisition of experience and is accompanied by continual insight into the conditions that give rise to it. This endows the aesthetic experience with a transcendental character. While the structure of everyday experience leads to pragmatic action, that of aesthetic experience serves to reveal the working of this process.Its totality lies not so much in the new experience brought about by interaction, as in the insight gained into the formation of such a totality. Why this is so is explained by Dewey as being due to the nonpragmatic nature of art.
Now Dewey's observations may be developed along a different line.
Apprehension of a literary work comes about through
the interaction between the reader’s presence in the text and his habitual
experience which are now a past orientation.
As such it is not a passive process of acceptance, but a productive
response.This reaction generally
transcends the reader's previous range of orientation, and so the question
arises as to what actually controls his reaction. It cannot be any prevailing
code and it cannot be his past experience, for both are transcended by the
aesthetic experience. It is this point that the discrepancies produced by the
reader during the gestalt-forming process take on their true significance.
They have the effect of enabling the reader
actually to become
[pg.133]
aware of the inadequacy of the gestalten he has
produced, so that he may detach himself from his own participatioon in the text
and see himself being guided from without.
The ability to perceive oneself during the process of participation is
an essential quality of the aesthetic experience; the observer finds himself in
a strange, halfway position: he is involved my and he watches himself being
involved. However this position is not entirely nonpragmatic, for it can only
come about when existing codes are transcended or invalidated.
The resultant restructuring of stored
experiences makes the reader aware not only of the experience but also of the
means whereby it develops.Only the
controlled observation of that which is instigated by the text makes it
possible for the reader to formulate a reference for what he is
restructuring.Herein lies the
practical relevance of aesthetic experience: it induces this observation, which
takes the place of codes that otherwise would be essential for the success of
communication.
[pg.135]
Notas
1.See Manfred Naumann et al.,
Gesellschaft-Literatur-Lesen.
Literaturrezeption in thearetischer Sicht (Berlin and Weimar, 1973), p.
35.
2.Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy II, 11 (Everyman's
Library; London, 1956), P. 79.
3.J.P. Sartre, Was ist Literature? (rde 65), transl.
by Hans George Brenner (Hamburg, 1958), p. 35.
4.Ibid., pp. 27f.
5.See I. M. Schlesinger, Sentence Structure and the
Reading Process (The Hague, 1968), pp. 27ff.
The similarity between and indeed congruence of the "eye-voice
span" and the span of short-term memory has been demonstrated with
psycholinguistic experiments by Frank Smith, Understanding Reading.
A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and
Learning to Read (New York, 1971), pp. 196-200.
His book also contains important observations on the part played
by the "eye-voice span" in "identification of meaning."
6.Schlesinger, Sentence Structure, p. 42; see also
Ronald Wardhaligh, Reading: A Linguistic Perspective (New York, 1969), p. 54.
7.Roman Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work
of Art, transl. by Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston, 1973), p. 31.
8.Edmund Husserl, Zur Phdnomenologie des inneren
Zeitbewufltseins, Cesammelte Werke X (The Hague, 1966), p, 52.
9.Ingarden, Cognition, p. 34.
10.For a closer description of this function, see C.
F. Graumann, Motivation.Einfiihrung in
die Psychologiel (Berne and Stuttgart, 21971), p. 118.
11.For further details, and also for the premises underlying
the following argument, see my book The Implied Reader: Patterns of
Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore and London,
21975), pp. 108ff.
12.Smith, Understanding Reading, pp. 185ff., uses
psyeholinguistic experiments to show the extent to which differences and
contrasts in the reading process itself have to be discovered and stabilized.
13.Michel Butor, Rdpertoire II, transl. by H. Scheffel
(Munich, 1965), p. 98.
14.Smith, Understanding Reading, p. 113,
15.E.H. Combrich,
Art and Illusion (London, 21962), p. 204.
16.Abraham A. Moles, Informationstheorie und
dsthetische Wahrnehmung, transl. by H. Ronge et
al. (Cologne, 1971), p. 59.
17. Smith, Understanding Reading, p. 185.
18. See Moles, Informations theorie, pp. 14Off.
19. See Part II, Chap. 3, pp. 65-67.
20. Henry Fielding, Tom bones I, 2 (Everyman's Library; London, 1962), p. 3.
21. Ibid., 1, 10, p. 26.
22. See Aron Ctirwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh, 21964), pp. 175ff.; he develops this concept in conjunction with Husserl's concept of the sense of perception.
23.Sartre, Was ist Literature, p. 29; see also Pierre
Bourdieu, Zur Soziologie der Symbolischen Formen (stw 107), transl. by Wolfgang
Pietkau (Frankfort, 1974), pp. 165,169.
24.Combrich, Art and Illusion, p. 278.
25.Umberto Eco, Das offene Kunstwerk, transl. by G.
Memmert (Frankfort, 1973), p. 202.
26.Ibid., p. 203.
27.1bid., p. 206.
28.JU.M.
Lotman, Die Struktur literarischer Texte (UTB 103), transl. by RolfDietrich
Keil (Munich, 1972), pp. 418f.
29.Walter Pater, Appreciations (London, 1920), p. 18.
30.Henry James, Theory of Fiction, James E. Miller,
Jr., ed. (Lincoln, Nebraska,
1972), p. 93.
The exact quotation reads: "The success of a work of art...
may be measured by the degree to which
it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the
time that we have lived another life-that we have had a miraculous enlargement
of experience." The statement was made in 1883.
31.Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed (New York, 1971),
p. 128.
32.Combrich, Art and Illusion, p. 5.
33.Benbow Ritchie, "The Formal Structure of the
Aesthetic Object," in The Problem of Aesthetics, Eliseo Vivas and Murray
Krieger. eds. (New York, 1965), pp. 230f.
34.Richard Ellmann, "Ulysses.
The Divine Nobody," in Twelve Original
Essays on Great English Novels, Charles Shapiro, ed. (Detroit,
1960), p. 247, calls this allusion "mock-heroic."
35.See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction
(Chicago, 41963), pp. 21 Iff., 339fF.
36.Wilhelm Schapp, In Ceschichten verstrickt (Hamburg,
1953), p. 143.
37. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception,
transl. by Colin Smith (New York, 1962), p. 337.
38.G. B. Shaw,
Major Barbara (London, 1964), p. 316.
39.John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York, 121958),
p. 60.
40.Ibid., pp. 56f.; see also p. 272.
Elisco Vivas, Creation and Discovery
(Chicago, 1955), p. 146, describes the aesthetic experience as follows:
"Grounded on this assumption the aesthetic experience can be defined, I
submit, in terms of attention.The
advantages of such a definition are manifold, and the only difficulty it
presents is the rather easy task of distinguishing aesthetic attention from
that involved in other modes of experience.
A brief statement of such definition would read as follows: An aesthetic
experience is an experience of rapt attention which involves the intransitive
apprehension of an obiect's immanent meanings and values in their full
presentational immediacy."