—Father-in-law, my father-in-law,
I’ve come to complain to you.
—What’s your complaint
Jean Gilles, my son-in-law?
My daughter is all yours.
—Yes, but what should we do
When we’re by ourselves?
—Don’t you screw her?
My daughter is all yours.
—Yes, but if I screw her
She’ll stick me with kids.
—Don’t you feel her up,
Jean Gilles, my son-in-law?
My daughter is all yours.
—Yes, but if I feel her up
Her breasts will sag.
—Don’t you fuck her,
Jean Gilles, my son-in-law?
—Yes, but if I fuck her
We’ll be fucked over.
—Don’t you bugger her,
Jean Gilles, my son-in-law?
—Yes, but if I bugger her
I’ll lose my taste for it.
—Don’t you ball her,
Jean Gilles, my son-in-law?
My daughter is all yours.
—Yes, but if I ball her
She’ll be a pain in the ass.
You’re the pain in the ass,
Jean Gilles, my son-in-law.
Shit! Shut up and fuck off!
In one heterological leap, let’s return to analytical discourse: the obvious relationship between the enumerative form and disappointment should be investigated. The list (no matter what its contents) may always be deceptive, basically, and Flaubert would be the author who has best realized the essential nature of enumeration (La Tentation de saint Antoine, Salammbô). What’s interesting is that enumeration assumes an inventiveness (of inventory) and sometimes takes the appearance of triumph (Aeschylus, the catalogue in Perseus; children listing, between gasps, everything they’ve done, everything they want). We are at the heart of the imaginary with a frantic increase of the self (as in Kleinian manic triumphalism),75 followed by a merciless deflation of that self. That manic-depressive structure corresponds to infantile depression: this is obviously the case with Bouvard et Pécuchet. And in our song, it’s clear that Jean Gilles and his father-in-law form a single subject, master of enumeration (sexual triumph) and its disappointment.
* * *
To close …
“Yes,” says Flaubert, “the bêtise consists of wanting to conclude.” So I will not conclude—although not without risking the bêtise, nevertheless. Because even if I don’t conclude, I must put the analysis of these seven sentences into the perspective of what continues to interest me in Bouvard et Pécuchet: the engine of languages that never stops running. Or again: the freewheel of languages. Or again: the levels, the gradual stepladder of the statement (“the bathmology”).76
1. We must first establish what is it in the sentence, as Flaubert complies with it (and he exaggerates this obedience to the code), that produces a stop to language, a stasis of statement, the static illusion:
(a) We will first note the illusion of complete meaning, of the sentence as a space saturated with a complete meaning (classic definition, Classical rhetoric, in combination with the logic of Port-Royal, the center for predication).77 Complete meaning? That’s an illusion that proceeds from two devices:
—The prevalence of the relationship of causality, presented as often as possible (one moves from cause to effect: everything seems to be said).
—The control, that is, in fact, the restriction of catalysis. Yielding to catalysis would be to open the sentence, the meaning, to infinity, would be to lack the “special substance” of the sentence (according to Proust with regard to Balzac). The measured, studied ellipsis, the ellipsis that doesn’t present itself as such, produces a disregard for everything that could extend beyond the meaning. It produces the illusion of a sentence that might be made to measure to the very body of thought (Flaubert is very good at that, he is a luxury tailor).
b) Next we will note all the operators of closure, all the devices that say, “attention, full stop, period, nothing more after!” (which, given the linearity of language, of the sentence, stands for “nothing more below”), all the internal symmetries of the sentence, the antithesis. In sentence 4, we saw the sentence functioning as an envelope, a sealed membrane that encloses, and therefore constitutes, the couple, an ideologically complete meaning, if ever there was one.
The stasis of statement (that is to say, in fact, the stated) is so strong in Flaubert that the Flaubertian sentence seems to achieve the very essence of the classical (predicative) sentence. Thetic, it poses the truth. That is why I could say this: the Flaubertian sentence is the tableau vivant of Truth, Reality, the Referent, and Denotation. It is the simple state of things that Bataille discusses.78 Flaubert’s sentence always has the air of being without rest, like Nature (only not including the et caetera, according to Valery).79
2. That all makes the Flaubertian sentence a pure block of language, a finished block, within which language is stopped, does not escape, does not drift, is not delivered to anyone (see the allocutory deficiency). Nevertheless, this block has surreptitious fissure points, which Flaubert desired, according to a clandestine, surreptitious disintegration from within the structure.
(a) We must recall that when a particular form, an idiolectal structure, repeats itself, renews itself (as is the case with Flaubert’s sentence), it seems to copy itself, to recopy itself, it becomes a paradigm of itself. Every author is in a parodic relationship with himself. Moreover, and paradoxically, that is why writing takes language for the world. Bataille: “It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that is to say, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or the same thing in a deceptive form” (Anus solaire).80 Flaubert’s sentence is this deceptive parody: parody of itself, but also, since “content” and “form” can never be separated, parody of truth, of denotation. Perhaps Flaubert’s pride and achievement was to found an art of deceptive parody thanks to a “perfect” (finished) form that, through its perfection, makes the referent escape in a sort of hemorrhage. Because, inversely, to feel one’s way, so to speak, would allow the understanding that there is a truth. Only the lie, the void, the ungraspable, the unstoppable are tidy: we must get used to that paradox.
(b) Another point of disintegration: What I have called the anacoluthons (the places of anacoluthons) as ruptures in construction, not in grammar, but in discursivity, in the underlying schema of the statement. As examples, I will cite the anacoluthon of the two truths, the scientific and the mundane (no. 1), the Collège de France (no. 5), and I will come back to the paradoxical role of the Flaubertian “and,” which is often an anacoluthon marker. We constantly see this double movement in Flaubert: cracking, breaking, and making the rupture slip. Is it a matter of a “Hypocrisy” of subversion? I think that’s something to study; there is a hypothesis there, a lead.
(c) We will note once again a surreptitious disintegration: The enumeration—a typical feature of Flaubert—which is not unrelated to the anacoluthon. The enumerative “and” has the appearance of a logical enumerator, of an accumulator that joins homogenous units, which, in fact, are nothing of the kind. What is accumulated, spun out, is heterogeneous, heteroclite. What underlies the Flaubertian list is an aesthetic of the preposterous (see the child or bird who suddenly turns its head). This is clearly seen in Proust’s pastiche. On the other hand, we have seen (sentence 3) that enumeration is the very essence of kitsch: the display, the preposterous parade. Finally (sentence 7), enumeration is a powerful operator of disappointment: it denies any possible conclusion, exhausts itself in failure, defers pleasure even further (Jean Gilles’s complex).
What is the principle of these processes of phrasal disintegration and how are they related to the general question of infinite engines of language? I will summarize in this way: Flaubertian production both establishes (the sentence in all its classic splendor) and perverts its order. It establishes it all the better to subvert it as in Littl
e Red Riding Hood: “Grandmother, what big teeth you have!—All the better to eat you, my child.” With all the submission of a zealous slave, Flaubert accepts the order of classical language (and, coincidentally, through the sentence, the order of logic and grammar), but on the sly, through certain pretenses, he perverts that order. And therefore he repeats once more, on the level of the sentence, what Bouvard et Pécuchet, as macrostructure, never stops saying, that there is no bottom or end to language, to languages, that languages circle round and round until finally the truth of language is revealed, that is, the fatal exemption of Truth: the Copy.
3. Thus we come back to the copy—and through the same dimension of theme, we arrive at History, great and monumental History: How are Bouvard and Pécuchet inscribed there?
(a) All European literature, for centuries, was based upon mimesis (the referential function defines realism, in the broad sense). Here (maybe earlier, here and there), another mimesis is established: the mimesis of languages. Now, immediately, this mimesis is defined (described) as bottomless. It’s all copy, the original endlessly recedes and, in this recession, engenders other copies. For example:
—all sciences are covered; like so much discourse, they all collapse in failure, only the copy remains;
—Bouvard and Pécuchet successively cover all the “roles” of psychoanalysis: obsessional, hysterical, perverse;
—each language is a level of bêtise for the higher level. But that level itself is topped with a new one that renders it stupid, and this continues with no end in sight:
—Chavignolles (France) is stupid;
—Bouvard and Pécuchet top Chavignolles, bêtise A: they are intelligent and subversive, morally and politically;
—Flaubert tops A and B: he makes the bêtise appear before us;
—we can top A, B, C (Sartre and Flaubert), etc.
On this decoding, we can refer to the second argument of the Neo-Skeptics (Sextus Empiricus):81 infinite regression. But regarding languages, it is better to say perpetual than infinite. Language has the structure of a perpetual calendar (see Argo, the ship).82
(b) One could conceive—and of course refine—a typology of subjects according to if they stop language or not, provide it with a gear wheel, a catch, or let it go freewheeling:
—those that don’t stop language: the chatterbox, the lunatic, the baby (babble), the text-writer, Bouvard and Pécuchet;
—the one who stops it: essentially, the (dogmatic) militant, political, theological, sexual, the ideological subject.
(c) So, it bears repeating: Flaubert’s object is language, languages. The subject is man grappling with language, languages, like an onion, being nothing other than layers, skins of language. How is this located in History?
It is said that Leibniz was the last man who was able to hold all (scientific) knowledge in his head. After him, this assembling could only be done by many, hence, the idea of the encyclopedia. Likewise, in France, Balzac was the last fiction writer able to contain by himself all social knowledge; after him, a “social” novel could only be written by many.
The Encyclopedia of knowledge? It triumphed with Diderot. After him, it returned (or remained) as farce: Bouvard et Pécuchet is an encyclopedia-farce (“a kind of encyclopedia as farce”).83 Today Bouvard et Pécuchet would be two typists who would buy a small farm, read the Alpha or Bordas Encyclopedia, raise chickens (this would be a failure), do hand weavings (which wouldn’t sell), go through phases of Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, biology, etc.84
Thus the Encyclopedia of knowledge, in the Flaubert-moment, corresponds to the farce stage. But with Flaubert, the Encyclopedia of knowledge is replaced by another encyclopedia: the Encyclopedia of languages. This one cannot be serious: its tone, its ethos is uncertain, because language, languages are neither within nor outside of truth. And that is very much Flaubert’s ethos. Uncertain, no one has yet been able to fix him: Flaubert as neat and uncertain enunciator.
Flaubert is stuffed with languages, but none definitively, “truly,” prevails. One object has the same hypersemantic, underdogmatic function: not the Encyclopedia, relegated to the rank of farce, but the Dictionary, and better yet the Dictionary of phrases (articles by Littré). In the Dictionary of Received Ideas, the important, generative word is not “received ideas” (the bêtise); it is the word “dictionary.”
aA resin used for blotting paper to keep ink from soaking in.
5
Exchanges
1. Roland Barthes to René Char
There is no reason to think that René Char (1907–88) and Roland Barthes ever met, nor that there was a silent dialogue between them like the one Michel Foucault persistently constructed with the poet’s work, from Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Gallimard, 1961) until Souci de soi (Gallimard, 1984). Nevertheless, Char’s was the first living poet’s name to appear in Barthes’s first book, Le Degré zéro de l’écriture. In that book, which, in some way, returns poetry to a mythological form of “literature,” Char himself, along with Francis Ponge and Henri Michaux of course, escapes the collapse of poetic writing into artificiality, “this diffuse tone,” “this precious aura,” which are “usually” called “poetic feeling.” With Char, it’s “the Word” that is “the dwelling place” and that “gratifies and fulfills like the sudden revelation of a truth.” Barthes then adds, “To say that this truth is of a poetic order is merely to say that the Word in poetry can never be untrue because it is whole.”1 Barthes would subsequently refer to Char’s work, either through his own readings or through those of his friends like Maurice Blanchot or Roger Laporte.
* * *
March 5, 1955
Dear Sir,
I was very touched that you thought to dedicate your latest and very beautiful book to me.2 Perhaps, if I feel capable of it, I will try to talk about it.…3 That would be the best, least rhetorical way to convey to you my friendship and my deep admiration.
Roland Barthes
* * *
November 18, 1968
Let me express my gratitude for your kindness in thinking to send me your text—and for the words that you thought to send with it.4 And let me convey with my gratitude my deep and faithful friendship.
Roland Barthes
2. Roland Barthes to Georges Perros
Barthes never cites the name of Georges Perros (1923–78) in any of his books; however, the letters from Barthes to Georges Perros, like Perros’s references in his texts to Barthes’s work, testify to great closeness. They met in 1954 and, with Michel Butor and Pierre Klossowski, formed a small group of friends who shared the same taste for piano, the theater, and writing.5 Perros’s exile in Brittany in the early 1960s no doubt contributed to this “correspondence” that geographic separation encouraged. Geographic, but also “mythological” separation, as Perros’s Brittany was very different from Barthes’s Basque country. Beyond theater and piano (which Barthes and Perros practiced four-handed at the Klossowskis’ home in Paris), there was writing, and primarily fragmentary writing. It was the “fragment” that prompted Barthes to ask Perros to participate in the Blanchot venture, the “Revue internationale,” in 1962. Barthes wrote this to him: “You, the triumphant hero of the successful fragment, are the man for the job; the note from Blanchot, attached, will give you a sense of this column: to be presented there through a few fragments, flashes of that indirect light that literature ought to shed on the world.”6 Beyond Perros’s public comments on Barthes, the letters from Perros to Michel Butor suggest a mutual admiration and no doubt the same friendly reservations: “I received Barthes’s little book [Critique et vérité]. Very interesting as always. But, beneath all that, what extraordinary nostalgia for the work. Shh! That said, there is more “creation” in three lines of Barthes than in a hundred pages of our young creators today. Again, shh!”7 The letters from Georges Perros to Roland Barthes have not been found.
* * *
[Paris,] Tuesday, [June 1, 1954]
Dear friend
,
I’m afraid you don’t have my new address: it’s 11, rue Servandoni, Paris VIe, Danton 95–85.8
I wonder if you have moved, and I don’t really know how to get in touch with you. If this note reaches you, please be kind enough to call me so we can arrange to meet.
Very best,
R. Barthes
* * *
[Paris,] February 7, 1955
Dear friend, I haven’t forgotten you and I was glad to get your note, however sad you may be right now, so very far from Paris.9 For me, the year is sinking into the displeasure of increasing dispersion, the whole thing complicated by “systemic” trouble over the theater. We are in full Brechtian crisis, fascinated by the power of this man’s theory and, as we haven’t yet assimilated the issue very well, we only have a totally negative take on all the theater we see anymore (bad theater, moreover, even empirically); furthermore this creates tensions and ruptures in the review.10
Otherwise, I’m forever trying to get clear of the papers I promised, to be able to begin some “disinterested” writing finally; but I never manage it, and that’s a bit of a grind. Now I’m going to have to get busy on my application to the CNRS, because it’s only in some serious sociology that I see the means to find my way anymore.11 I am, in fact, sick and tired of the theater, and I don’t know how to extract myself victoriously, that is to say, making something out of this nothing.
You see that not much has changed since your departure. Won’t you come to Paris for a bit? I would love to see you.
At least send me your news and trust in my faithful friendship.
R. Barthes
11, rue Servandoni, Paris VIe
* * *
Friday, [February 18, 1955]
Dear friend,
Try to come to Paris, so we can see you a bit; let me know as soon as you arrive, but keep in mind that I’ll be in England from March 6 to 12.12 It would be a shame to miss you.