Primerjalna književnost

RAZPRAVE

Vid Snoj: DEJANJE V ZAČETKU

Prvi del teksta prinaša branje biblične pripovedi o stvarjenju sveta, ki skuša pokazati tako na vzvišenost dogodka kakor tudi pripovedi o njem. Drugi del pa je razprava o implikacijah te pripovedi v evropski znanosti in pesništvu.

Deed in the beginning. The first part of the text is a reading of the Bibli-cal narrative of creation, which attempts to demonstrate the sublimeness of both the event itself and the narrative. The second part is a discussion of the implications of the narrative for European science and poetry. 

The text begins by preparing the horizon of expectation for the Biblical narrative of creation, by remarking that it is a sublime narrative of a sublime event. This is God’s speech be-re’shit, “in the beginning” , and it calls for a unique narrative position, a mystical communion with God, from which the narrative as testimony ensues. God’s speech in the Biblical narrative-testi-mony is paradigmatically represented by the sequence of creation, in which God’s call is followed by the coming of things into being (e.g. in Gen 1:3). From a grammatical point of view, this call is made of an imperative (“Be”) and a noun, or rather a name (“light”), but here they combine into the great performative, a word-deed, which not only does, but also makes what it says – the thing it calls to – come into being. Through the word of creation a thing comes into being from nothing; only when it is called upon, in its own name, is it suddenly in being and time. But this is not the case with man in the second Biblical report of his creation. In this report, man is the only being that was not called into being by the word of creation; according to an old tran-slative interpretation in Targum Onkelos, when he was given life through God’s Spirit, he was also given the language element. It is from here that the idea of two different namings comes from, God’s and man’s, whereby man's naming is not a pure translation of God’s naming, but rather a translation from God’s names to the extent of man's own knowledge; it is the translation of the language of things, its voicing in the language of man.

The text goes on to discuss the particular conjecture (which, at the end of a long Judeo-Christian tradition, was spread so insightfully by Benjamin) that things created according to the word of creation have in essence a linguistic structure, a structure of logos, in short, their own language. The tradition has carried the image of the two books, the Book of Revelation and the book of the world or nature, from late antiquity into the new age, and was given a new twist with the emergence of modern science, which fought to obtain the right to read the language of the book of the world, that is, the language of things, without the authority of the Book of Revelation, and to put it into human concepts. However, ever since Aristotle, to whom a concept was always some-thing said in human language, European thought has been infused with one basic contradiction: are concepts as “fundamental words” being said from the things themselves, or from the reason, and without bringing out their own structure in the language? Be it as it may, the craving of science for a concept to be a meaningfull structure of thing said in human language grows from a conjecture about the language of things brought about by the very Biblical narrative of creation.

It was the same narrative, which gave an impulse to European reflections on poetry. According to Plato, every art is poietic or poetic in that it brings things into being; on the other hand, poetry in the narrower sense is the bringing of words from one form of being into another, from regular speech into poetic speech, i.e. the production of verse. This understanding of poetry was prevalent in antiquity and was only changed in Renaissance with the intense encounter of Renaissance scholars with Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions. This gave rise to an analogy between the Maker and the poet as a “second Maker”, who brings into being after the first one; in the same way that God creates things, the poet creates human things, deeds, says Scaliger in his poetics, following Aristotle's Poetics, according to which poetry is “a repre-sentation of an action”. For Aristotle, however, it is, as a poietic represen-tation, only a making of an action into a cognizable action based on the human character and not yet a making of character itself, let alone the creation of man. But ever since the Renaissance poetry has often become the very creation or “counter-creation” (Steiner) of man, and reached its first pinnacle in Goethe imaging the poet as counter-creator in the character of Prometheus. The poet’s battle with God for the precedence of creation sharpens in different modernist counter-poetics and, apart from man, also includes the world and language. In many ways these are based in Mallarmé’s proto-modernist poetics, because in his poetry Mallarmé anounces the renouncement to the world, that is, to the being of things in the language, and alongside this renouncement he also wants to find a word for the as yet “non-existent thing”. In modernist counter-poetics then the liberation of the word itself happens to take place, and not only from metric speech, but also from syntax and its own field of meaning, leading, in the extremes of avant-garde movements, to the ultimate destruction of the word. This spells the end of poetry, but – and this question concludes the text – does not the word-deed, despite the destruction, remain in the beginning?

Srečko Fišer: TASSO IN PREŠEREN: PREVAJALČEVE MARGINALIJE IN MALO LITERARNE ZGODOVINE  

Prešernoslovci zvečine soglašajo, da je mogoče govoriti o Tassovem vplivu na kitico Krsta pri Savici, sicer pa naj bi bil avtor Osvobojenega Jeruzalema Prešernu zanimiv bolj s svojo romantično-tragično usodo kot pa s svojo poezijo. Avtor nahaja nekatere kompleksnejše paralele v delih obeh pesnikov in čeprav ne poskuša dokazovati realnega vpliva, postavlja tezo, da zveze zelo verjetno segajo onkraj biografsko-anekdotične in formalne sfere.

Tasso and Prešeren: translator's marginalia and a little literary history. Prešernologists generally agree that Tasso's influence on the stanza in Krst pri Savici can be acknowledged; apart from that, they hold it was Tasso's tragic-romantic destiny rather than his verse that awoke Preše-ren's interest in the poet of Gerusalemme liberata. The present article establishes some more complex parallels between the works of the two poets and, although it makes no effort to prove factual influences, it advances the thesis that the links most probably reach beyond the mere biographical, anecdotal and formal spheres.

Torquato Tasso, while never forgotten in the 200 or so years after his death, gained virtual cult status during the Pre-Romantic and Romantic periods of European literature. Slovene-speaking regions were no exception, although understandably on a lesser scale – Slovene secular literature had then only just begun: Tasso’s is a recurrent name in Matija Čop’s writings; France Prešeren himself mentions him three times, directly or indirectly, in his poems. Despite this fact, Prešernology has had comparatively little to say about the role the Italian poet might have had in shaping Prešeren’s poetry; Prešeren's interest in him is considered to be mainly biographical or anecdotal, springing rather from the romantic myth as established by Goethe and Byron than from Tasso’s poetry itself. Indeed, Tasso is mentioned as the author of a Coronale of Sonnets that might have been one of the stimuli for Prešeren’s; the Slovene poet devotes nearly half of Sonnet No. 3 of his Sonetni venec to a comparison between the Italian and himself; it is therefore beyond doubt that some sort of relationship exists, yet almost no serious attempt has been made to shed light on its nature. ‘Gerusalemme liberata’ and ‘Krst pri Savici’ are similar cases: it is generally agreed that Tasso was probably the main model for the stanza of Prešeren's epic, but few scholars have so far considered it worthwhile venturing any further than that observation.

The starting point of the discussion is the impression that Tasso’s impor-tance for Prešeren's poetry is probably underestimated. It is shown that Prešeren had, had he been interested, easy access to the most important works by Tasso. The aim, however, is not to prove any factual influence, but only to form plausible hypotheses regarding, as it were, intertextual links. The approach is consciously un-methodical: trying to draw some mixed-level parallels that can, or at least could, look into topology, form, substrate of ideas, technique of narration, etc., even biography or the psychology of creation. Such an open approach was felt to be suitable because Prešeren is not the type of poet who takes fragments of other poets’ work in order to integrate them into his own; when he finds a source that inspires him, he tends not to imitate, but rather to enter into a kind of dialogue with it. It does appear that some degree of such dialogue, or elective affinity, existed between him and Torquato Tasso.

Ramona Malita: DESTAËLOVSKI ESEJI. K MNOGOSTRANSKEM BRANJU GOSPE DE STAËL

Prispevek predlaga novo branje destaëlovskih esejev. Pri tem se opira na interpretativno mrežo, povezano s procesom oblikovanja estetskih in lite-rarnih kanonov. Članek skuša s kritiško metodo odkriti notranje mehanizme nastajanja kanona, kot je prikazano pri gospe de Staël, ker je ravno tu mogoče razbrati prve zasnutke romantičnega načrta.

Les essais staëliens. Pour une lecture polygonale de Madame de Staël. Notre exposé propose une nouvelle lecture des essais staëliens pour-suivant la grille interprétative relative au processus de la construction des canons esthétiques et littéraires. La démarche critique tâche de surprendre les mécanismes intrinseques de la formation canonique telle qu’elle est peinte chez Madame de Staël, vu que l’ébauche romantique y remonte ses premieres esquisses.

Comme le titre-meme de l’exposé annonce, nous avons y proposé une lecture polygonale de Madame de Staël. Notre démarche aboutit a examiner son oeuvre selon une grille interprétative nouvelle qui pourrait etre saisie en usant d’une expression latine: Non nova, sed nove, vu que ces approches critiques consi-stent a revisiter les classiques de la littérature. Il serait fort a désirer que la critique revisite les grands auteurs en abordant d’autres criteres, puisque les nuances et les nouvelles interprétations qui en résultent ne peuvent etre res-senties qu’enrichissantes et, par conséquent, utiles a tous: le public, l’en-seignement.

La lecture polygonale des essais staëliens suggérée par nous prend pour prémisse deux points de vue essentiels: le premier vise le processus de la con-struction / de la déconstruction des canons esthétique et littéraire, le deuxieme renvoie au féminisme. Nous esquissons trois reperes en guise de conclusion:

1. La tectonique des gouts littéraires a travers les époques a pour barometre le canon qui enregistre toutes les oscillations et qui se veut un miroir plus ou moins fidele de l’époque en cours. La structure du modele canonique envisagée par la critique moderne comporte deux couches: l’une prise pour stable (en tout cas ayant un degré plus haut de stabilité), formée des écrivains consacrés et une autre juxtaposée, loin d’etre stable, „plus agitée”, plus flottante, marquée par des mutations axiologiques peremptoires. La démarche critique staëlienne annonce et poursuit le meme schema; elle reprend la fameuse Querelle des anciens et des modernes et discute les principes généraux de l’art au lieu de ne s’attarder que sur les genres particuliers. Son échantillonage critique regroupe et des anciens et des modernes, triant selon le critere axiologique. Par cela elle esquisse l’ébauche de la doctrine romantique c’est-a-dire une synthese trans-littéraire appuyée sur des exemples; en un mot, et un canon esthétique et un autre littéraire.

2. L’âme moderne telle qu’elle est peinte a travers les essais et les romans staëliens se caractérise par le sentiment douloureux de l’incomplet de sa destinée: c’est la un tout cas ce qui en fait la grandeur, pas la différence entre les sexes. L’âme féminine comme celle des hommes ressent également le meme besoin d’échapper aux bornes qui circonscrivent l’imagination. L’apport de la femme dans la littérature a venir ne peut etre qu’enrichissant, vu que le monde a été fait pour les hommes et pour les femmes a la fois.

3. Madame de Staël prend le cosmopolitisme pour une possible remede qui puisse guérir la littérature a peine sortie du Siecle des Lumieres de sa stérilité, de sa froideur, de sa monotonie. Il faut obtenir des Français qu’ils connaissent et apprécient les littératures étrangeres: allemande, anglaise, italienne, etc. Elle procede donc a un élargissement du gout esthétique qui sera la prémisse meme du processus de renouvellement littéraire. Aussi est-il possible de concevoir ensemble littératures du Midi et littératures du Nord. Son choix final se portera sur celle du Nord.

Alenka Koron: AVTOBIOGRAFIJA, FIKCIJA IN ROMAN: O MOŽNOSTIH ŽANRA 'ROMAN KOT AVTOBIOGRAFIJA'  

Kristalni čas Lojzeta Kovačiča (1990) in Zaznamovana Nedeljke Pirjevec (1992) sta žanrsko mešani deli, ki nadaljujeta izročilo eksistencialistično-modernističnih pripovednih vzorcev in avtobiografskega modernizma in odstopata od aktualnih postmodernističnih teženj v literaturi na začetku 90. let. Sprejeti sta bili kot romana, njuna sintetična žanrskost pa ustreza tudi nefikcijskemu žanru avtobiografije. Prispevek se zavzema za uvedbo žanrskega razreda 'roman kot avtobiografija', ki združuje besedili/a s podobnim prepletom fikcijskih in nefikcijskih značilnosti. Umestitev obeh besedil v novi žanrski razred, ki priznava uveljavljeno postmoderno prakso, da ni vsa literatura le fikcijska, skuša utemeljiti s pomočjo pragmatičnega modela za razločevanje fikcije in nefikcije.

Autobiography, fiction and novel: on the possibilities of a genre of the ‘novel as autobiography’. Kristalni čas by Lojze Kovačič (1990) and Zazna-movana by Nedeljka Pirjevec (1992) are generically mixed writings which follow the tradition of the narrative patterns of existentialism and modernism and of modernist autobiography, and deviate from the typical postmodern trends in the literature of the early 1990s. They were accepted as novels, but their synthetic genericity also corresponds to the non-fictional genre of autobiography. The article argues for the introduction of a new generic class of the 'novel as autobiography', which would include writings with a similar combination of fictional and non-fictional features. It attempts to place both texts into the new generic class – which follows the established postmodern practice that not all literature is merely fictional. The appli-cation of pragmatic model for distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction also supports this inclusion.

The article discusses two writings of two Slovenian authors, Kristalni čas by Lojze Kovačič and Zaznamovana by Nedeljka Pirjevec, both published in the early 1990s to a very favourable reception and public acclaim, despite the fact that they did not have the then very trendy features of postmodernism in literature. The reading audience mainly accepted the two generically mixed works as novels; however, their synthetic genericity also corresponds to non-fictional autobiography. Taking into consideration the mutual interaction between genres in the two writings, the author first discusses the suitability of generic terms such as ‘autobiographical novel’ or ‘fictional autobiography’, and establishes that they do not appropriately refer to either of the two texts. They do not sufficiently emphasize the referentiality in them and the relative restrictions of imagination that go with the ethics of autobiography.

The discussion of generic classifications is further complemented by some theoretical issues concerning relations between fiction, reality and autobio-graphy, and autobiographical referentiality as studied within the theory of autobiography and of fiction. A short historical outline of reflection on auto-biography is used to illustrate the epistemological uncertainty of autobio-graphy. It was revealed through the problematisation of the basic conven-tionally established generic criteria, and culminated into the deconstructionist “de-facement” of autobiography in Paul de Man, that is into his re-classi-fication of the genre into a paradigm of writing. The examples of Bourdieu, Eco, Iser and Sill are then used to illustrate certain theoretical arguments against the dichotomy of reality and fiction in autobiography, and also to emphasize the inter-subjectivity, or rather, the key role of the reader in detecting the different degrees and nuances of how the two are intertwined; this provides a general theoretical basis for the observation and description of their interaction in autobiographical texts.

The author then argues for the inclusion of Kristalni čas and Zaznamovana into a new generic class, a ‘novel as autobiography’. It would adopt the key features of autobiography on modal, content and partly formal levels, and derive regulative rules from modernist (autobiographical) novels. The application of a pragmatic model for distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction, as developed by Nickel-Bacon, Groeben and Schreier, supports the inclusion of the two novels in the new generic class. The author also discusses the texts within the wider context of Slovene literature of the second half of the 20^th Century. She finds parallels with the autobiographical writings of the so-called post-war critical generation of Slovene writers, and concludes the article by trying to indicate the possibilities for a further verification of their genre analogies and specifics within the global context of postmodern literature.

Metka Zupančič: SREČANJA MED HERMESOM IN AFRODITO

Članek, ki izhaja iz prepričanja o prisotnosti antičnih mitov v sodobni književnosti, filozofiji in kulturi, obravnava različne novejše usmeritve v raziskovanju mitskih vzorcev, zlasti mitokritiko, kot jo je oblikoval Gilbert Durand. Za današnjo dobo se zdita pomembna predvsem mitska vzorca Hermesa in Afrodite. Članek osvetli različne poglede nanju in opozori na nekatera literarna dela, v katerih sta prepoznavna.

Hermes and Aphrodite Encounters. Based on the assumption about the presence of ancient myths in contemporary literature, philosophy, and culture, the article explores trends in recent analyses of mythical patterns, especially in myth criticism such as developed by Gilbert Durand. Two mythical patterns, those of Hermes and Aphrodite, appear prevalent in our times. The article highlights various approaches to these two myths and mentions various literary texts where they can be identified.

In the age of globalization, the rekindled myth of Hermes as the symbolic paradigm of our times seems to incarnate the major features of contemporary communication, trickstery, commerce, crossing of boundaries, connections between worlds, and hybrid ways of existence. In contemporary literature, philosophy, arts and culture in general, various appearances and analyses of these archetypal dimensions seem to call for a complementary feminine mythical figure, through a renewed version of Aphrodite, which combines a number of feminine myths that permeate contemporary literature and culture, such as especially a remodelled myth of a new Eurydice. This essay focuses on the developments and characteristics of myth studies, mainly inherited from C. G. Jung and repositioned in an epistemological leap around a new approach called myth criticism, founded in France by Gilbert Durand, and later by a number of post-Jungian and mainly feminist thinkers in North America. Applied to a number of contemporary literary and cultural pheno-mena, the notions of myth criticism have proven valuable tools in approaching changes in our collective consciousness and in analyzing contemporary lite-rary phenomena.

Krištof Jacek Kozak: O TRAGIČNEM DANES – IZ PERSPEKTIVE SUBJEKTA IN SITUACIJE

Članek zasleduje vpliv, ki so ga imele Aristotelove predpostavke o tragediji, in tako poudarja vprašanje paradigmatizacije Poetike. V zvezi s so-dobnimi oblikami tragedije se članek nadalje posveča institucionalizaciji subjektovega razkroja in poststrukturalističnim hipotezam ter novim temeljem za samo-vzpostavitev subjekta, kakor jih je razvil filozof Lévinas. Članek zagovarja sodobni pogled na tragedijo, ki jo razume kot dramatično, konfliktno situacijo, ki pa mora izpolnjevati dva pogoja: biti mora hkrati neizogibna in nerazrešljiva. 

On the Tragic Today: From the Perspective of the Subject and the Situation. The article traces the influence exerted by the Aristotelian tenets of tragedy, thus emphasizing the issue of the paradigmatization of Poetics. It demonstrates the manner in which the history of tragedy in the West has emerged in light of this foundational treatise. In relation to contemporary forms of tragedy, the article further discusses the insti-tutionalization of the subject’s disappearance in post-structuralist hypo-theses, together with a new basis for the self-reconstitution of the subject developed by philosophers such as Lévinas. The argument endorses the contemporary view of tragedy, which it sees as a dramatic, conflictual situation that is compelled to meet two additional conditions: it has to be at once unavoidable and irresolvable.

The article challenges the presumption of the death of tragedy from a philo-sophical perspective and illustrates the survival of the contemporary form of tragedy.

In a brief preamble, the argument traces the influence exerted by the Aristotelian tenets of tragedy, emphasising the issue of the paradigmatization of Poetics. The article demonstrates the manner in which the history of tragedy in the West has emerged in the light of this foundational treatise. In addition to Aristotle, additional key elements such as myth and its perception further complicated the conception of subsequent tragedies. Later, the deve-lopment of Western society resulted in a major shift in the comprehension of ourselves: the inception of the Cartesian thinking subject that became the key to both philosophical reflections on human subjectivity and considerations about the possibility of representing tragic subjects in drama. This inter-twining of philosophy and artistic representation is particularly pronounced in German Idealist thought, which developed a philosophy of tragedy, and established the subject as the essence of the genre. After Hegel’s demise, a criticism of the idealist perspective was mounted by authors such as Hebbel, which led the way to ever-widening discrepancies between the theory and practice of tragedy that culminated in Steiner’s claim of the genre’s death. At the same time, modernism and, most obviously, post-modernism denied the subject’s entirety and, consequently, lay the foundation for its eradication. The existence of tragedy appeared thus to be doubly in doubt.

The following development of the article’s argument is therefore twofold. First, it goes on to prove that with the critique of post-structuralism new perspectives on the subject emerged. Despite the institutionalization of the subject’s disappearance in post-structuralist hypotheses, theoreticians such as Lévinas found a new basis for the self-constitution of the subject. This article shows how Lévinas’s ethical theory lays the groundwork for a post-decon-structive subject that can be found in contemporary tragedies. Secondly, the article returns to the question of tragedy. The argument endorses the current view on tragedy with its »deviation« from the Aristotelian high-brow genre. Thus, it is difficult to claim that tragedy per se exists. Rather, it is a dramatic, conflictual situation that has to fulfil two additional conditions: it has to be at once unavoidable and irresolvable.

Hence, only after re-establishing the subject and after taking into account the state of modern society can one claim that tragedy in its contemporary form as a tragic situation has survived.