romanticism, figuration and comparative literature

PAUL GORDON

ROMANTICISM,

LITERATURE

FIGURATION AND COMPARATIVE

The "great argument" for comparative literature has always been, Ren6 Wellek repeatedly argued, the necessity of studying literature as one, as a unified totality. 1 The common notion that comparative literature is simply the study of literature in more than one language is incomplete, because an English compara- fist who also studies French and/or German, for example, should not, and probably could not, do so without bringing his or her particular point of view to bear. The comparative study of a foreign literature is carried out in the belief that it must also be understood from the standpoint of the native literature, and that the native literature should also be examined from the expanded foreign point of view. Most, if not all, of the problems inherent in definitions of the discipline of comparative literature s ("to what shall I compare thee ?") are a func-

1 Ren6 Wellek wrote a series of articles on comparat ive literature, beginning with the chapter in Theory o f Literature, "Genera l , Compara- tive and Nat ional Literature" (1949). The other principal articles, carried out over almost twenty years, are " T h e Concept of Comparat ive Li terature , , Yearbook o f Comparatice and General Literature, 2, 1953 ; " T h e Crisis of Comparat ive Literature" (reprinted in Concepts o f Cri- ticism, 1959), and "Compara t ive Literature Today", Comparative Litera- ture, 17, 1965. This lengthy series represents a cont inuat ion of the discussion begun in the first article ra ther than any substantial revision of the author ' s earliest views.

The debate about comparat ive literature centers a round a definition of what the discipline is supposed to study as well as how it is to pro- ceed. See WeHek's articles mentioned above, as well as Remak 's " C o m - parative Literature, its Definition and Func t ion" in Comparative Litera- ture, ed. Stallknecht and Frenz, Illinois UP, 1971.

Neohelicon XV[2 Akaddmiai Kiad6, Budapest John Benjamins ]3. V., Amsterdam

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tion of this stated or unstated telos which is the proper goal of comparative literature: if the unity or totality of all literature is its project, comparative literature seems doomed at the outset to a lack of completion which is devastating in its own terms. As Victor Lange states: "Als Universit/itsdisziplin hat sich 'comparat ive literature' allein dort behaupten krnnen, wo ihre Grenzen soweit und damit so anspruchlos gezogen wurden."3

While admitting that the comparat is t is not merely a "poly- lit" who adds a native study of French to a native study of English, some might argue that the goal o f comparative literature can be conceived of in less ambitious terms than the study of literature as such (Wellek). Although the most apparent roots o f comparative literature, like that of many nineteenth- century disciplines, are in Romanticism, 4 the French school (Baldensperger, Van Tieghem, Carrd, Gruyard, Trousson, et al.) at tempted to divert the comparative study of literature along more empirical, less idealistic lines. Baldensperger's study of Goethe en France (1904) is hailed by that school as a classic example of the comparatist 's methodology, but it was only as late as 1931 that Van Tieghem published the manifesto which sought to clearly define the French version of comparative literature for the first time. This lag of more than a quarter of a century is significant, for Van Tieghem's treatise was published closer in time to the demise than to the origin of the French school whose doctrine it outlines for the first time.

Lange, Victor, "Stand und Aufgaben der vergleichenden Litera- turgeschichte in den USA," Forschunysprobleme der veryleichenden Lite- raturyeschichte, ed. Wais, M. Niemeyer, 1951.

4 The romantic origins of comparative literature, which are, to be sure, origins among others, are generally viewed as resulting in the first explicit call for an international or universal approach to literature. This romantic aetiology is also at work in the other nineteenth century comparative disciplines. For a discussion of the romantic forerunners of comparative literature see A. Kappler's Die literarische Ver#leich, Frankfurt: Lang, 1976.

ROMANTICISM FIGURATION COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 241

In order to define clearly a proper methodology for comparative literature Van Tieghem, who is the originator of terms like thematology, genology, and a host of other Hellenic neolog- isms, is forced to eliminate all aesthetic, critical and speculative inquiry into the meaning of literature:

� 9 le caract6re de la vraie litt6rature compar6e, comme celui de toute science historique, est d'embrasser le plus grand nombre possible de faits diff6rents d'origine, pour mieux expliquer chacun d'eux; d'enlarger les bases de la connaissance enfin de trouver les causes du plus grand nombre possible d'effets. Bref, le mot compar~ doit ~tre vidd de toute valeur esthdtique et reeevoir une valeur scientifique. 5

The rationale behind this scientific ideal is understandable. For as soon as one admits "close readings" or other ways of understanding the particular work of art within the domain of comparative literature, a veritable army of related concerns is des- tined to emerge f rom its hollow underbelly. How, Van Tieghem wonders, can a comparatist be expected to adequately account for the explicat ion de tex te (for example, Rousseau's Julie) and then for that of the related works (Richardson's Clarissa) to which it is being compared? For surely an at tempt to understand the particular work of Rousseau's will also include an understanding of his other works, its place within Rousseau's life as well, and the place of those within the broader horizons of French culture and literature of the eighteenth century, and of that age within French literature in general, and of that literature within other European literatures, non-European literatures, and so on and so forth. Then, of course, one must do the same all over again for Richardson, as well as for Goethe, to choose only the most celebrated authors of eighteenth century romans ~pistolaires.

s Van Tieghem, La Litt~rature compar~e, Paris, Libraire Armand Colin, 1931. This is the essential text from which to form an opinion either pro or contra the "French School" for, as Werner Friedrich says, "French criticism stands on Van Tieghem's La Litt~rature comparde", The Challenge of Comparative Literature, Chapel Hill: 1970.

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So it is understandable that Van Tieghem wants to eliminate a concern with unders tanding part icular literary works. He is even on safe philosophical g round in no t wanting to compare two particulars. So-called parallel studies are to be rejected for similar reasons. Studies o f different representations o f one part icular genre or mot i f (the trajectory o f tragedy f rom Aeschy- lus th rough Beckett, d o o m e d lovers g la Tristan and Iseult, etc.) which rely on the reader 's intuit ion o f a similarity based on his interpretation o f the part icular text, are rejected if they foresake revealing actual points o f contact (hence the me taphor o f parallelism). The scientific ideal o f comparat ive literature envisioned by Van Tieghem must restrict itself to the study o f influences, which are the historically verifiable transmissions o f literature "across state lines," as it were:

� 9 si, en parcourant la litt6rature fran~aise, on porte son atten- tion vers ses contacts avec d'autres litt6ratures, s'appergoit im- m6diatement de leur hombre et de leur importance. L'histoire litt6raire relic que nous l'avons d6crite a eonstamment g s'occuper d'influences, d'imitations et d'emprunts . . . le jeu des influences revues ou exerc6es est un 616ment essentiel de l'histoire litt6raire. (pp. 12-13)

Enter Rend Wellek, who is rightly appalled at this violent elimination o f all the essential concerns o f comparat ive literature and at the restriction o f comparat ive studies to the discovery o f actual historical contacts or influences�9 However, Wellek too is suspicious o f the alternative to this empiricism, for he sees parallelism as a threat to the methodological validity o f the discipline he wishes to defend:

. . . comparison is a method used by all criticism and sciences, and does not, in any way, adequately describe the specific procedures of literary study. The formal comparison between literatures- or even movements, figures, and works-- is rarely a central theme in literary history, though such a book as F. C. Green's Minuet, comparing aspects of French and English eighteenth century literature, may be illuminating in defining not only parallels and affinities but also divergences between the literary development of one nation and that of another. ~

Wellek, Theory of Literature, p. 46.

ROMANTICISM, FIGURATION, COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 243

I believe Wellek is correct in saying that "actual comparisons," the literal comparison of two individual works or writers, are "rarely central" in the study of literature. Hence the slight but oft-repeated misgivings Wellek expresses about the name "comparative literature" : the practicioner of "comparative" literature does not actually compare literatures. If the comparatist doesn't actually compare, how shall we define his method, or, to what shall we compare it? Shouldn't we do away with the name altogether ?

On closer examination of Wellek's twenty-year attempt to answer this question, it becomes evident that he does not in ftact eliminate the process of comparison or parallel studies from its particular relevance to comparative studies. To be sure, such approaches are exiled from the comparatist's "central focus" (as a metaphor, "illuminating" may be preferable anyway) for the obvious reason that they all neglect their " t ruly literary" subject matter, the individual work of art. But Wellek does not, despite his links to the New Critics of the forties and fifties, revert to a more formalist, "closed" approach to literature. Like any comparatist Wellek is not only concerned with the individual work but with its relation to other literatures, historical currents and other disciplines which all exist outside the borders of the so-called closed text. In the final analysis, the "proper methodology" he is searching for must study intrinsic external relations, as well as external intrinsic ones. That is, the comparatist must do a close, or closed, reading of particular literary texts, thus remaining true to the aesthetic essence of the text, but he must also study such "external relations" as its historical context as well as its relation to other texts, other authors, other literatures, other disciplines, etc. which are all ' ' illuminated" by as well as illuminate the individual text itself. Wellek even outdoes "Van Tieghem's" Van Tieghem, for, at one point in Theories of Literature, he argues that the comparatist must not only study the literary relationships between nations but between regions within any given nation, because before one can understand a national literature one

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must understand its regional sub-structure. 7 If, to paraphrase Wellek, one is going to study only external relations "across state lines," one had bet ter start with states and not countries. Wellek's point, although not explicitly stated, is that matters are not really made any less complex by trying to isolate the external f rom the internal in literary studies.

The notion of "suggestion" or "i l lumination" is the critical aspect of Wellek's approach, but, unfortunately, he does no more than suggest, or illuminate, its essence. We can, in the light of literary scholarship since 1965 (the date of Wellek's last article on comparative literature) do somewhat better. In insisting throughout his career on the the "non-neutral" literary value of the particular work of art, Wellek was preparing the ground for the more recent insistence on the figurative, or to use Wellek's term, symbolic status of literature and all approaches to literature. Because literary and, in general, artistic "meaning" is symbolic, the individual literary text is capable of meaning anything while denying any strict identification with everything it means. Hence Wellek's repeated insistence on comparative literature as the study of literature as one totality, s while at the same time claiming that the study of parallels, of comparisons as such, can only be marginal concerns. The study of parallels between any two writers, or the study of genre, periods and motifs can only be valid if the individual differences between the different works are revealed by the comparisons which "bring them together" in the first place. This is what Wellek means by the study of literature in its totality: as in the case of Auerbach, whose work, with Ernst Curtius', he upholds as an ideal for comparative studies, the "un i ty" which the comparatist reveals between Homer and the Old Testa- ment, for example, separates as well as joins the individual works

v Op. eit., p. 52. 8 E . g . : "The great argument for comparative literature is the obvious

falsity of the idea of a self-enclosed national literature". ("The Concept of Comparative Literature," p. 5.) Compare similar statements in "Crisis" p. 282, "Theory" p. 49.


being compared. The comparison cannot be central for Wellek, because it serves to illuminate the individual work which thus also denies any strict or central unity.

It now remains for us to clarify the symbolic or figurative status of literature as the essence of comparative literature, of the study of literature in its totality. The writings of two early romantics, Friedrich Schlegel and Mine de Sta~l, will help us to accomplish this. For explicit pronouncements of the symbolic value of literature were an essential, perhaps the central, 9 concern of these early romantics, and it is surely no acci- dent that these same figures are commonly credited with her- alding the cry that resulted in the formal discipline which we are now studying.

A preoccupation with Romanticism seems endemic to the comparatist project, and the reasons for this are at least two- fold: modern comparativism has its roots in the romantic notion that " the time has come to leave national prejudices behind and hasten the epoch of world literature" (Goethe) 1~ and Romanticism has its roots in a concern with the symbolic relation between individual and universal which necessitated the comparatist 's outlook:

Er ~der Dichter~) muss streben, seine Poesie und seine Ansicht der Poesie ewig zu erweitern, und sic der h rchs ten zu n/ihern die t iberhaupt auf der Erde mrgl ich ist; dadurch dass er seinen Teil an das grosse Ganze auf die bestimmteste Weise anzuschliessen strebt: denn die t r t ende Verallgemeinerung wirkt gerade das Ge- genteil. (Gespriich iiber die Poesie.)

It may well be that to properly understand comparativism, we must properly understand Romanticism, and vice versa. In the famous Fragment 116 of Friedrich Schlegel there is a dazzling analysis of Romantische as Universalpoesie:

9 For the importance of the romant ic recognit ion of the symbolic funct ion of language, see Wellek, " T h e Concept of Romant ic ism in Literary History," collected in Concepts of Criticism, pp. 129-198.

10 Goethe 's conversat ion with Eckermann of January 31, 1827.

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Die romantisehe Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie. Ihre Bestimmung ist nieh bloss, all getrennte Gattungen der Poesie wieder zu vereinigen und die Poesie mit der Philosophie und Rhetorik in Beriihrung zu setzen. Sie will und soU aueh Poesie und Prosa, Genialitiit und Kritik, Kunstpoesie und Naturpoesie bald mischen, bald versehmelzen, die Poesie lebendig und gesellig und das Leben und die Gesellschaft poetiseh machen... Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Its mission is not merely to reunite all separate genres of poetry and to put poetry in touch with philosophy and rhetoric. It will, and should, now mingle and now amalgamate poetry and prose, genius and criticism, the poetry of art and the poetry of nature, render poetry living and social, and life and society poetic.., n

The purpose of romantic poetry is not only to reunite the various poetical genre, and poetry with philosophy and rhetoric. Its telos is also to "mix and melt down" a series of classical oppositions between poetry and prose, genius and criticism, naive and artistic poetry, and, finally, to make poetry lively and life poetic. The English translator of this fragment translates rnischen und verschmelzen as "mingle and amalgamate," whereas the context of this metallurgical metaphor also allows the more antithetical notion of "combine and disinte- grate," or, more literally, "mix and melt down." This is important, because Schlegel's point is that the romanticist 1~ both joins and separates the numerous divisions which thus continue to exist in poetry. The structure of Schlegel's thought here is chiastic, for the romanticist converts, he does not actually

11 Schlegel, Friedrieh, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (trans. Behler, Penn State University Press, 1968) contains the translations (occasionally modified) of both the Fragment and Gespriich used in this paper.

1~ Arthur Lovejoy has argued against reading Schlegel's Fragment as "in praise of" the novel, particularly Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (v. "Romantic in Early German Romanticism" in Essays in the History of Ideas, Johns Hopkins Press, 1948). Although for different reasons I also interpret Schlegel's remarks as directed to romanticism in general and not the novel in particular.


compare, the various components within as well as without poetry. That is, poetry should be philosophic, philosophy should be poetic, prose should be poetic, poetry prosaic, life artistic, art lively, etc. It is thus that we can begin to see what Schlegel means by those two key terms with which he begins: "Progressive" and "Universal." The various forms of artistic expression are not to be contained within static boundaries, but must be able to merge and become one as wel l as to maintain their separate integrity, for if poetry is to be philosophic and philosophy poetic, this does not mean a synthesis but rather the two as one, as "universal" while maintaining their individual identities.

"Progressive" in Schlegel's system means that "Die romantische Dichtart is noch im Werden; ja das ist ihr eigentliches Wesen, dass sie ewig nur werden, hie voUendet sein kann." The perfection of a genuine synthesis is never a part of Schle- gel's system. Rather, the individual works, genre, etc. cross their boundaries and those of related disciplines, of related national literatures, and so forth, all in the fulfillment of their own individuality. Romanticism is seriously misunderstood if this care- fully crafted relationship between the individual and universal is thought of as an opposition or as the resolution of this opposition, for one of the essentially fertile paradoxes of romantic ideology is its simultaneous movement toward the individual and the universal. Those who would similarly oppose classic and romantic would be hard put to explain Schlegel's state- ment here that through a broadened Romantic perspective "die Aussicht auf eine grenzenlos wachsende Klassizit/it er6ffnet wird," that is, that classicism, which is nothing if not the creation of boundaries, is not dispensed with but made infinite.

This latter image is expressed most vividly in a metaphor which Schlegel fashions a few sentences before the quotation just mentioned:

. . . und doch giebt es noch keine Form, die so dazu gemacht w/ire, den Geist des Autors roll st~indig auszudriicken: so dass

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manche Kunstler, die nur auch einen Roman schreiben wollten, von ungef~ihr sich selbst dargestellt haben. Nur sic kann gleich dem Epos ein Spiegel der ganzen umgebenden Welt, ein Bild des Zeitalters werden. Und doch kann auch sic am meisten zwischen dem Dargestellten und dem DarsteUenden, frei von allem realen und idealen Interesse auf den Flfigeln der poetischen Reflexion immer wieder potenzieren und wie in einer endlosen Reihe von Spiegeln vervielfachen.

� 9 and yet no form has thus far arisen appropriate to expressing the author's mind perfectly, so that artists who just wanted to write a novel have by coincidence described themselves. Romantic poetry alone can, like the epic, become a mirror of the entire surrounding world, a picture of its age. And yet, it too can soar, free from all real and ideal interests, on the wings of poetic reflection, midway between the work and the artist. It can even exponentiate this reflection and multiply it as in an endless series of mirrors.

Romantic poetry is here "suspended on the wings of poetic reflection" between two mirrors, one representing the poet 's subjectivity ("der Geist des Autors," "den Darstellenden"), the other representing the world outside him ("die ganze um- gebende Welt," "den Dargestellten"). Because poetry is both poles but also neither, an infinite regress, or mise-en-abyme of a sort occurs. The world is reflected in the poet who is reflected in the world which is reflected in the poet, ad infinitum, " in einer endlossen Reihe von Spiegeln vervielfachen." What is most noteworthy here is the sense of "grenzenlos Wachsende" potency which results from hanging suspended or soaring (the German schweben allows both translations, and perhaps re- quires both) "in der Mitte." As in the chiastic interplay just discussed, the boundary between the poet's representation of himself and the world is not dissolved, but rather, each separate component is enhanced because of its reflection in the other.

Schlegel's imagery does not just refer to the structure of romantic poetry, but to its comparative essence as "eine progressive Universalpoesie" as well. The comparatist realizes that


the borderlines which separate the artist from his work, the individual work from the rest of the oeuvre, that oeuvre from those of his contemporaries and their contemporaries in neighboring countries, and the so-called contem- porary age from other so-called periods, all these boundaries are figurative: the essence of figuration being the cross- ing of borderlines (definitions) to predicate a native term with one that is foreign. The study of foreign literatures can thus be modeled on what Aristotle and others have seen as the essence of metaphor: its uncanny quality of being both foreign and native, since metaphor both disrupts and maintains the logic of the literal.

It is because of the figurative status of literary-versus lit- e ra l - boundaries that all the individual components of literary studies just mentioned, starting with the individual text and including the individual national literature, maintain their validity despite the fact that, more often than not, such "individual" approaches involve borrowing from some discipline or other foreign to literature (e.g. linguistics, socio-anthropology, history, philosophy, etc.) and so are not to be upheld as the more "proper" procedures. Within the comparative, figurative schema outlined above, we are only expanding the boundaries of the individual text and its national context, we are never transcending them. In this respect Wellek was right in saying that all professors of literature are comparatists, and all comparatists are or should be designated simply professors of literature.

It is curious that the age which is so closely identified with a rise in national consciousness should also be an age which gave birth to ideal or universal history, where the individual nation takes its place within the larger drama of the world. Why did the romantics stress both the individuality of nations replete with cultural differences and, at the same time, the need for going outside the borders of one's own particular culture?

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Despite the two opposing directions of these concerns, there is really no contradiction. In nineteenth century linguistics, the discovery of a common language underlying the different Indo- European tongues was often combined, as in the case of the brothers Grimm, with an ever-deepening awareness of a nation's individual Volksgeist. For the romantics, the part is the whole, the universal and the particular are synonymous. Ideal- ly, a nation takes its place within the great chain of universal history, not by forfeiting its most distinct characteristics, but by discovering those characteristics within a broader system of meaning than its own. Needless to say, the Hegelian method which was adopted by many comparative studies of literature such as Posnett 's is only concerned with the empirical study of historical facts insofar as it reveals theoretical interrelations. Wellek seems to hold these idealists up as an ideal when he says "Whatever the difficulties into which a conception of universal literary history may run, it is important to think of literature as a totality and to trace the growth and development of literature without regard to linguistic d i s t inc t ions . . . This ideal was envisaged and, within their limited means, fulfilled, by the founders of literary history in the early nineteenth century: such men as the Schlegels . . . ,13

If comparative literature and comparative linguistics thus owe their existence to the same romantic quest for original and/or teleological unity, it is not surprising to find in the earliest statements urging a comparative approach to literature notions to the effect that the "foreign" literature is in a sense native, or somehow one's own:

"Chinesisehen Roman?" sagte ich. "Der muss wohl sehr fremd- artig aussehen." "Nicht so sehr, als man glauben sollte", sagte Goethe. "Die Mensehen denken, handeln und empfinden fast ebenso wie wir, und man fi.ihlt sich sehr bald als ihresgleichen, nur dass bei ihnen alles klarer, reinlieher und sittlicher zugeht. Es ist bei ihnen alles verst/indig, biirgerlieh, ohne grosse Leiden-

~a Wellek, Theory, p. 49.


schaft und poetischen Schwung und hat dadurch viele ~hnl ich- keit mit rneinem "Hermann und Dorothea" sowie mit den eng- lisehen Romanen des Richardson. 1~

Goethe's famous disdain, in his later years, for everything romantic might cause one to suspect this embrace of the classical serenity of the Chinese novel as merely a rhetorical ploy. We will turn, then, to a work written twenty years earlier, Mme de Stall's De l'Allemagne, as equally insistent on finding one's homeland outside the strict borders of one's own native terrain.

Mme de StaSl's revolutionary work De l'Allemagne (1813) was, as is often the case for epoch-making treatises, prompted by a revelation: "Lorsque j'ai commencd l'dtude de rallemand, il m'a sembld que j'entrais dans une sph6re nouvelle ou se mani- festaient les lumi6res les plus frappantes sur tout ce que je savais auparavant. ''15 In Corinne she wrote in a similar vein: "'La littdrature de chaque pays ddcouvre ~t qui sait la connaitra une nouvelle sph6re d'iddes" (bk. 7); there are numerous other statements by Mine de Stall which similarly voice the spirit of discovery with which she approached the study of a foreign literature. This imagery of light and revelation, which is also found in the quotation from Goethe just mentioned, causes both writers to feel estranged from their own cultures, which have thus become foreign. For what would be the justification for beginning the arduous process of studying a foreign literature if it did not at least promise the acquisition of something we do not possess already, something, moreover, which our own literature, our own thought (Mine de StaB1 is equally interested in German philosophy), does not already provide?

This process of "comparison" which is strict in its rejection of any common middle ground or comparison as such, is somewhat paradoxical, and the paradox is an important one. We would not study a foreign literature if it were not, at least

14 Goethe, op. t i t . 1~ De Sta61, De l'Allemayne, Garnier F lammar ion , 1968.


in certain respects, essentially different f rom our own, but we would also not study a foreign language or literature if it did not c o m m u n i c a t e - t r a n s l a t e - i t s difference for our own native understanding. In a chapter entitled "Pourquoi les Frangais ne rendent-ils pas justice h la litt6rature al lemande?" Mme de Sta~l insists that the truly foreign literatures which are the objects o f her study are precisely those which do not translate:

. . . tr6s peu de personnes en France savent l'allemand, et que les beautds de eette langue, surtout en po6sie, ne peuvent ~tre traduites en frangais. Les langues teutoniques se traduisent facile- ment entre elles; il en est de m~me des langues latines: mais celles-ci ne sauraient rendre la po6sie des peuples germaniques. Une musique compos0,e pour un instrument n'est point exgcut6e avec succ~s sur un instrument d'un autre genre. (p. 159.)

The process of comparative literature is thus relatable to this paradox of translation or transposition (which are both, of course, etymologically related to metaphor): the possibility of poetic translation is conditioned by its impossibility. The translation of foreign literary works is necessitated both because the work cannot be kept within the boundaries of its native terrain and because it is not really possible to remove it f rom those boundaries and translate a foreign work of literature. If, as Mme de Stall insists, the pr imary impetus for her comparative treatise is the fact that French and German do not translate, are essentially different (the two cultures exhibit "diff6- rences prononc6es qui existent entre la mani6re de voir et de sentir"), it is nonetheless the case that this very impossibility creates the possibility of discovering "une nouvelle sph&e d'id6es," a "new manner of thinking and seeing." Metaphors, translations and comparisons are all transgressions (another word for metaphor) in that they sneak across borders which continue to maintain their authority.

For Mme de StaN, the way to relate the two opposing terms of French and German culture which do not relate is by means of the many binary oppositions which structure her work:


� 9 le vulgaire des 6crivains et des allemands et franqais rappelle cette fable de La Fontaine o~ la cigogne ne peut manger dans le plat, nile renard dans la bouteille. Le contraste le plus parfait se fait voir entre les esprits d6velopp6s dans la solitude et ceux form6s par la socidt6. Les impressions du dehors et le recueille- ment de l'ftme, la connaissance des hommes et l'6tude des iddes abstraites, Faction et la th6orie donne des r6sultats tout h fait oppos6s. La litt6rature, les arts, la philosophie, la religion des deux peuples attestent cette diff6rence; et l'6ternelle barri~re du Rhin sdpare deux r6gions intellectuelles qui, non moins que les deux eontrdes, sont 6trang~res l'une g l'autre. (p. 163.)

There are few pages in Mme de StaSl's work which are not stamped by these essential oppositions which generate her entire text. Because the two countries, like the stork and the fox, are so essentially different, each having solved its problems in ways suitable to its own needs, Mme de Stall sees value in translating these differences for the benefit of each. It is as though Mme de Stall wished, staying within the context of her fable, that the fox acquired some of the stork's attributes and vice versa, except that, true to her romantic ideology, she also desires that they maintain their individual integrities. To the oppositions just mentioned one can add some of the many others which appear elsewhere in De l'Allernagne: antique/an- cien, concrete/abstract, civil/barbaric, real/ideal, exterior/inte- rior, witty/serious, conversation/reading, and, of course, classic/romantic: "I1 n 'y a dans l 'Europe litt6raire que deux grands divisions tr~s marquees .... on pourrait dire avec raison que les Fran9ais et les Allemands sont aux deux extr6mit6s de la chatne morale, puisque les uns consid6rent les objects ext~rieurs comme le mobile de toutes les id6es, et les autres, les id6es comme le mobile de toutes les impressions" (p. 46).

Since all of Mine de Stafil's terms are analogous (a : b : : c : d : : e : f : : ) to the point where one can predict, at any point in the text, which attribute is predicated upon which country and what its opposing term is, we shall examine two as symptomatic of all the others. The second, classic/romantic, is doubtless the more important for our purposes, but because


the oppos i t i ons are so ana logous one does no t a lways find ou t everyth ing one needs to know u n d e r the te rms in quest ion.

Mine de S t a l l chooses to oppose ' T e s p r i t de conver sa t ion , " no t to si lence (a l though she will have much to say a b o u t silence as well), bu t to l i te ra ture : " L e s A l l e m a n d s o n t le t o r t de met t re souvent darts la conversa t ion ce qui ne conv ien t q u ' a u x l ivres; les Fran~ais on t quelquefois aussi celui de met t re dans les livTes ce qui ne convient qu '~ la conver sa t ion" (p. 47). As M m e de S t a l l ' s a r g u m e n t - o r is i t a conversa t ion ? - d e v e l o p e s , i t seems to the reader tha t i t is mean t to r idicule the vani ty, o r " a m o u r - p r o p r e , " o f the F r e n c h :

En Orient, quand on n'a rien h se dire, on fume du tabac de rose ensemble, et de temps en temps on se salue les bras crois6s sur la poitrine pour se donner un t6moignage d'amiti6; mais dans l'Oc- eident on a voulu se parler tout le jour, et le foyer de l'Ctme s'est souvent dissip6 darts ees entretiens off l 'amour-propre est sans cesse en mouvement pour faire effet tout de suite et selon le goflt du moment et du cercle off l 'on se trouve (p. 101).

Le genre de bien-~tre que fait 6prouver une conversation anim6e ne consiste pas pr~cis~ment [my ital.] dans le sujet de cette conversation; les id6es ni les connaissances qu'on peut y d6velopper n'en sont pas le principal int6r~t; c'est une certaine mani~re d'agir les uns sur les au t r e s . . . (p. 102).

There is much here tha t is mean t to create a cer ta in d i s d a i n for the F rench , for their d iscourse is a false one a t m a n y d i f fe ren t levels. F i rs t , the con ten t o r subject mat ter , what is be ing sa id , is insignif icant ; wha t is fo remos t is the effect o f w h a t is said on the hearer . But even tha t is false, for the desire to c r e a t e an effect on the hearer , which seems a t one p o i n t to be d e s c r i b e d as inter-subject ive ( " sou l age r les uns de l ' excbs m~me de leur vivacit6, et r6veiller les aut res d ' u n e apa th i e p6nib le") , is f u n d a - men ta l ly the desire to create an effect on oneself. The c o n v e r - sa t ional is t man ipu la tes the reac t ions o f the audience so t h a t the i r p leasure will reflect on h im ("I1 n ' es t po in t d ' a r6ne ofa la van i t6 se m o n t r e r sous des f o r m e s p lus vari~es que d a n s la conve r sa - t ion") . The F r e n c h m a n ' s ego is con t ingen t on so c ie ty ' s es teem


and hence external, while the German, Mme de Sta~l informs us, evaluates the truth according to i t- , and himself: "ils sont gais comme ils sont honn&es pour la satisfaction de leur propre conscience, et rien de ce qu'ils disent longtemps avant mSme d'avoir songs ~t en faire rite les autres" (p. 109). The individual is thus placed in opposition to society as truth is opposed to rhetoric: that is, as that which is true according to itself is opposed to that which, for whatever reasons, is accepted by society: "Les Frangais pensent et vivent darts les a u t r e s . . , les 6crivains frangais sont toujours en soci6t6. . ." (p. 160). It is now possible to turn to what is probably the most famous section of De I'Allema#ne, " D e la Po6sie," where this metaphorical opposition between the heroic, natural individual and the cowardly socialite is explicitly related to Mme de Stafil's version of the opposition between classical and romantic poetry.

In the chapter on "l 'esprit de conversation" just discussed Mine de Stall had said "Le cours des id6es depuis un si~cle a 6t6 tout ~t fait dirig6 par la conversation. On pensait pour parler, on parlait pour 6tre applaudi, et tout ce qui ne pouvait pas se dire semblait atre de trop dans l'gtme" (p. 102). One can here see emerging the opposition of symbolic and literal language which Wellek and others were later to focus on as essential to Romanticism. Lyric poetry, as one would suspect, is viewed as the antithesis of the conversational wit of the French:

Ce qui est vra iment divin darts le e0eur de l ' h o m m e ne peut 8tre d6fini; s'il y a des roots pour quelques traits, il n 'y en a po in t pour expr imer l ' ensemble , et sur tout le mystbre de la v6ritable beaut6 darts tous les genres . . . les homrnes les plus vulgaires se se rven t , / t leur insu, d ' images et de rn6taphores; ils appel lent ~t leur secours la na ture ext6rieure pour expr imer ce qui se passe en eux d ' inexpr imable (p. 205-6).

This section, referred to by the editor as a " romant ic manifesto," is filled with references to the symbolic language of the lyric poet. But by the "images" and "metaphores" which men must use " to express the inexpressable" Mme de StaB1 does not evidently mean the kinds of rhetorical figures the

256 PAUL GORDON

conversationalist would use in order to "cheer up the phlegmat- ic and calm down the enervated" (a similar version o f this is at t r ibuted by Aristotle to Gorgias : to treat wit with seriousness and seriousness with wit). 16

My poin t in all this is that the rhetoric o f the F renchman and the metaphors and images o f the German are not essentially different. The " a m o u r - p r o p r e " o f the conversationalist 's rhetoric o f effect is no t essentially different f rom the solitary romant ic ' s equally meaningless ( f rom the s tandpoint o f human understanding) poet ry to God. The symbolist who must " re ly on external nature in order to express what happens in h im that is inexpressable" is not to be opposed to the conversat ion- alist who must rely on the person or persons outside h im to determine his own " inner t ruth ." I am not, o f course, arguing that Mine de StaEl's conversationalist who uses rhetoric and her romant ic who uses lyric poet ry are the same, only that they are no t " a t two opposite poles," for bo th rhetoric and poetics rely on figurative displacements o f the literal. The ult imate confluence o f these two poles is o f course nowhere more apparent than in Mme de StaEl's use o f a decidedly French " c o n - versat ional" style, which is teeming with the kinds o f bons

roots she often derides to describe an opposi t ion between the French and the Germans which is, as an opposit ion, a witty turn o f phrase which substitutes effect for truth. 17 For example,

18 Aristotle, Rhetoric. III. xviii, 7. 17 In their study of early German romanticism, particularly the Athe-

naeum, the authors of L'absolu litt~raire (Laeoue-Labarthe/Nancy, Edi- tions du Seuil, 1978) discuss the importance of Witz as a recurrent motif and essential aspect of the genre Fragment. This seemingly runs counter to Mme de StaN's claim that wit is to be associated with the French in opposition to the Germans, but in fact Mme de Sta6l's own witty and romantic style makes it apparent that the romantic, in contrast to both the French and the Germans, is capable of a more synthetic "serious wit." The authors of L'absolu litt~raire also note that F. Schlegel himself argues for the more synthetic and against the more "French" wit : "L'6criture du fragment constitue doric cn somme l'Aufhebung dia- lectique de l'antinomie interne du Witz" (p. 77).


" E n Allemagne, un diplome vous y faisait entrer; en France, une faute de goat vous en faisait sortir." Or, " U n Frangais s 'ennuierait d'etre seul de son avis comme d'Stre seul dans sa chambre" (p. 106).

The borderline between France and Germany in De I'AI- lemagne is thus, like all borders, one which joins and separates at one and the same time; that is, it joins where it separates and separates where it joins. We have already seen how this schema of figurative truth served Friedrich von Schlegel's purposes of uniting poetry with philosophy to produce a philosophic poetry and poetic philosophy�9 Likewise, Mme de StaSl's goal is to make the French German and the German French without disfiguring the integrity of each. This comparat ive essence, which is also the essence of figuration, is nowhere more apparent than in Mme de StaSl's eminently rhetorical comparison between French and German literature�9 For if symbolic language, here equated with the romantic Germans, is closer to the language of God because it says more than is suited for mere human understanding, it is also not difficult to imagine God something of a conversationalist if he can produce the kind of "electrical sparks" Mme de StaB1 attributes to the best French wit:

� 9 e'est une certaine rnani~re d'agir les uns sur les autres, de se faire plaisir r6ciproquement et avec rapidit6, de parler aussitSt qu'on pense, de jouir ~t l'instant de soi-mSme, d'Stre applaudi sans travail, de manifester son esprit darts routes les nuances par l'accent, le geste, le regard, enfin de produire ~t volont6 comme une sorte d'61ectricit6 qui fair jaillir des 6tincelles, soulage les uns de l'exc~s mSme de leur vivacit6, et r6veille les autres d'une apathie p6nible (p. 102).

One can easily cite other examples of the rhetoric of Mme de StaSl's opposition between rhetoric and truth, conversation and literature, classic and romantic, etc. For example, in the section on " the spirit of conversation" Mme de Stall wavers in her condemnation of the Frenchman 's insincerity just long enough to recognize the virtues of a good wit:

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258 PAUL GORDON

. . . coquetterie n'appartient pas exclusivement aux femmes, il y en a dans toutes les mani~res qui servent h trmoigner plus d'af- feetion qu'on n'en 6prouve rdellement. La loyaut6 des Allemands ne leur permet rien de semblable; ils prennent la grgce au pied de la lettre, ils consid~rent le charme de l'expression eomme un engagement pour la eonduite, et de l~t vient leur susceptibilitr; car ils n'entendent pas un mot sans en tirer une eonsrquence, et ne eonqoivent pas qu'on puisse traiter la parole en art librral, qui n'a ni but ni rrsultat que le plaisir qu'on y trouve (p. 103).

The goal here is not just to reconsider the relevance of Roman- ticism to comparativism in order to warm our hearts with some of its nobler sentiments, which are repeated almost verbatim by Wellek in his effort to return comparative literature to its more idealistic basis: "Once we (comparatists) grasp the nature of art and poetry, its victory over human mortality and destiny, its creation of a new world of the imagination, national vanities will disappear." More importantly, I would like to suggest that the romantic repugnance for reified boundaries and definitions is the essence-boundary or definition, if you w i l l - o f comparative literature. This is nowhere more apparent than in the natural alliance which has been struck as of late between deconstructionism and departments of comparative literature. Where else should a movement reside which takes as its goal the impossibility of literal literary boundaries than in that department of departments which eschews all structure ? The texts of Schlegel and Mme de Stafil have helped to illustrate the figurative nature of comparative boundaries, where lines are drawn only to be denied. The much maligned and misunderstood name of "comparative literature" can and should be retained as referring to the lack of reference, of reification, of literary boundaries, as well as to the discovery of their possibility.

In conclusion, I have tried to argue for the validity of comparative literature as a necessary function of the figurative status of literary boundaries. Figurative borderlines (and what are borderlines i f not figures which are drawn?) assert their meaning in their transgression. Thus, both the original border-


line, as well as its transgression, are equally true. This is very much the structure of metaphor, which predicates a "false" term on a "true" one. It is also the synecdochal structure of the romantic universal/particular relationship which compels us to study literature as one, but where the part (e.g. the individual text) which is reflected in the whole also is the whole. Finally, I have used texts by Friedrich Schlegel and Mine de Stall to show that they not only call boundaries into question but also their transgressions of those boundaries-thus challenging the boundaries of their own transgressions.

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romanticism, figuration and comparative literature

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