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Barthes meets Benjam in?

A

Relating

of

their

Views on the Conjunction between L anguage and

Literature

John Thobo-Curlsen, University of Odense, Odense, Denmark

For Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes literature appears to be

inseparable from the language in which it speaks. With their theor-

ies of language as the starting point,

I

discuss how their views on

literature meet.

Their paths cross, for example, in the antithesis: the idea that

the allegorical counter-image creates the field of tension in the text

that is able to release one from all that which is cramped and

unfree in existence. This release always comes ‘from within,’ from

language’s concrete use of emblematic or coded stereotypes. And

not ‘from without,’ like the impact of an already existing truth or

release in a symbolic indirectness in the text. In Benjamin’s critique

of the ‘profane concept

of

symbols’ of classical-romantic aesthetics

and in his indication of the cognitive potential of the dialectic

concept of allegory there is an attitude which is fundamentally in

agreement with that of Barthes regarding the semiotic way in

which both the content and the expression sidesof language func-

tion.

When,

on the one hand, Roland Barthes (1915-1980) claims that the pleasure

and distaste, that a person feels when reading or writing literature is linked

to the challenge and the trouble which the body has in reconciling itself to

the generality of language, and, on the other hand, Walter Benjamin (1892-

1940) is of the opinion that one’s body and those of others are only cogniz-

able in the act of naming only, of course, to the extent that the body is

disposed to be announced (“mitteilbar ist”),

or, to

put it in another way, the

announceability concerning human beings and things is that which has to do

with language

then

it would seem to be obvious that for both of them

language was something there simply was no getting round.

Barthes also says that “literature resembles Racine’s heroine Eriphile in

the tragedy

ZphigCnie,

who dies on discovering who she is, but who lives by



Barthes m eets Benjamin?

3

Language, literature and morality

By

means of literature (and the study of literature) we attempt in a tragic

and, as far as literature is concerned, in an almost ‘hysterical’- way to avoid

the sometimes uncomfortable fact that we are bound by language when we

are to understand the world. The evasion assumes the character of a gigantic

mimetic role play. On the one hand, we have insight into the language’s funda-

mental status and unavoidable role in human selfunderstanding and compre-

hension of the outside world and the relationship between them. Or, as

Benjamin puts it:

“There is no event or thing either in non-living or living nature that does not

in some way partake in language, for it is essential for everything to announce

its spiritual content. The use of the word ‘language’ in this context, however, is

by no means a metaphor. For it is a cognition that has completely to do with

content when we say that we are unable to imagine anything which does not

announce its spiritual content in its expression; the higher or lower level of

consciousness with which such an announcement apparently (or in, reality) is

linked cannot alter the fact that we in no instance can imagine the absence of

lang~age.”~

On the other hand, we have a longstanding experience of language actually

being used for practically anything at all also, therefore, in our (almost)

hopeless struggle to be allowed to do something as apparently simple as live

and reflect at one and the same time. For we have discovered that language

has a number of functions or roles we can play on, and allow to play off

against each other3 the first one we can refer to as

the pragmatic.

We play

on this one when we place ourselves at the disposal of the practical under-

standing of reality which is also the dominating form. When we want to

pair with normal language usage in an attempt, via analogy and imitation to

reach the reality we demonstrably crave for. The second form we can call the

utopian,

even though it is

concretely linguistic,

in Benjamin’s case too. For it

has realized the hove-to position of the first project and prophesies in a

sort of deconstruction process of an allegorically concrete nature (since it has

to live with and yet reshape the first function) the idea of a freedom in an

immediate and unmediated understanding of man’s life in and with reality.

So one could in fact n Barthes’ case at any rate call the second function

the more realistic and the first one the more idealistic.

No

matter what one

calls them, both language roles have the same objective: to experience the



4

Joh n Thobo-Carlsen

adventure of reality. That is, what advenes from the reality, if you are set

towards it.

The first role uses language as a tool he ‘direct’ route through language.

In

fact it seems illusionistic to the extent it is satisfied with ‘usual practice,’

and as a system of signs, it tends toward a renunciation of its reflexive and

reversible roles, or ‘simply’ decides or ‘agrees’ (consensus)

that this is reality

and it is a fact .

The second role has to remain in language, in the speech of signs, since it

has to live with the consequences of the unconcernedness of the first one. It

has to make the detour which is required to litigate or neutralise, as fa r as it

is actually possible,

the meanings that the

first

one has institutionalised. Of

course, we meet both language roles in literature.

The second role is linked to textuality and is concretised as mode in

a

more

or less intense edition of its semiotic symbiosis with the first one. The first

role is linked to

the text

as a

semiotic concretisation

and typically

finds

its

form in the work. Concerning the possibilities of advancing along this second

route using the given conditions, Barthes says the following:

“In language servility and power are inextricably mixed. If that which one calls

freedom is not simply the ability to avoid power but also - and especially is

the ability not to make anyone servile, then freedom can only exist outside

language. Unfortunately, human language does not have anything outside: it is

a closed door. One can only get outside it by paying an impossible price: by the

mysterious singularity, as described by Kierkegaard when he defines Abraham’s

sacrifice as an unheard of act which, emptied of every even inner word, stands

up against the common, flock mentality, the morality of language; or by the

Nietzschian amen which is like

a

jubilant support of the servility of language,

of that which Deleuze calls its

manteau

reactif; its reagent cloak. But for

us,

who are neither crusaders or supermen, there is nothing else to be done, if I

may put it thus, than to cheat with language and lead it up the garden path.”7

Literature can be the way to

do

it. After Barthes’ pointing out of the compel-

ling nature of language’s manifestation of power (rather than execution of

violence), against which his view of literary use of language has to be seen,

it is characteristic to see how Benjamin arrives at the conclusion that lan-

guage must be society’s non-violent sphere par excellence. The proof of this

would be that the lie goes unpunished:

“Is

it at all possible to settle conflicts non-violently? [...I The profoundest ex-

ample

is

perhaps the conversation, seen as a technique for civil agreement. Here

non-violent agreement is not only possible; that violenceis principally excluded

can be proved by an important condition: that the lie goes unpunished.[...I This




proves tha t

in agreements

between

people there exists

a

sphere that is so non-

violent tha t it is completely inaccessible to violence: the

true

sphere of ‘under-

standing’

language.”’

If Barthes’ view of the relationship between the power manifested in the com-

mon use of language and the

possibility

of literary language circumventing

this has its roots in the transcendental being of existentialism, this example

confirms that Benjamin’s view of language which will be presented in the

next section ~ has been reduced a priori to that which is disposed to be

announced. Since language,

no

matter in what guise it appears, idealistically

announces itself, violence and power are broken down in language into

special, mythical versions of that which is disposed to be announced which,

if they are to be challenged in the service of truth, have to be opposed to

images, which show the hollowness of the myth whilst also revealing the striv-

ing towards a truth that not only transcends being but also transcends the

finite world.

In this somewhat inverted way, Barthes’ and Benjamin’s relationship to

literature also gradually becomes a question of morality, i.e. how far litera-

ture and the study of literature decline to make any form of self-presentation

(in an anti-subjective perspective). “Morality should be understood here as

the exact opposite of morals (i.e. thought concerning the body in a linguistic

~ense).”~ore explicitly: if literature as language and writing lives up to its

obligation to present the body, or more precisely to link the body and

emotional life, which ‘modern’ civilisation has dissociated and separated,

Benjamin, as we shall see, would view this division from the perspective of the

Fall and define it as a purely metaphysical construction that has its origins in

an empirical consciousness and its basis of cognition in a scientific picture of

the world. Literature would be the concrete, historical place which, by means

of its special linguistic formative ability (allegories and the like) can mediate

the hope of a healing of the divided, of the undifferentiated, of the paradisiac.

Barthes has written

off

belief in a religious sense, replacing it by the ritual in

a broad sense of the term (loc.cit., p. 146). His highest pleasure is so much

of this world that it does not get past language, i.e. the act of performing in

language; on the other hand, language assumes an almost physical character.

One of his more amusing versions of this coincidence

of

physical sensuality

and speech the reader should hardly be spared so here it is in its entirety:

“According to

a

hypothesis of

Lerio-Gourhan’O

man became

able

to talk when

he

had

managed to free

his

forelimbs from

walking

and

thereby

his

mouth from



6 John Thobo-Carlsen

his prey. I would add:

and able to kiss.

For the organ of speech is also that of

kissing. When man began to walk on two legs, he discovered he was free to

invent language and love: this perhaps marks the anthropological birth of a

double perversion: talking and kissing. Consequently, the more people have

been free (mouthwise), the more they have talked and kissed; and a logical

extension

of

this is that on the day people, thanks to progress, are liberated

from all man ua l work, they will d o noth ing else than talk a nd kiss

Let us imagine

a

com mo n exceeding of this double, jointly located function

born of a sim ultaneous use of talking and kissing:

talking while kissing, kissing

while talking. One must assume that this pleasurable experience takes place,

since lovers constantly ‘drink the words th at com e fr om the beloved’s lips.’ Th at

which they taste is then, in the lovestruck competition, the play of meaning as

it unfolds and is interrupted: the function which

is interrupted:

in short ,

the

stammering body.

”

(/oc.cit. p. 144)

The above contains his moral conception of the entire textuality complex,

role qf writer-texl-role o reader as a whole.

Language and cognition

For Benjamin an d Barthes literature app ears, as mentione d, to be inseparable

from the language in which it speaks. On the one hand, it is so to such an

extent that its value for those wh o

make

use ofit (the formu lation is deliber-

ately neutral) lies in the particular ability language has that makes it capable

of

taking measures against itself. This we know from Roman Jakobson as

languuge’s po efic jun ctio n. I O n the other han d its value would quickly dim in-

ish if this quality of language did not at the same time have the function of

making its users better able in a subtle way of understanding, accepting and

challenging the reality in which they live. But in order to understand better

why things are like this, we must look a bit more a t Benjamin’s and Barthes’

mo re fundam ental attitudes to the phenom enon of language, after which we

will return to literature.I2

Wultrr Benjamin.

Benjamin’s epistemological perspective is transcendentally

absolutistic, while his routes are concretely linguistic. Barth es break s free of

an epistemological view that is based on a purely empirical objectivity in

challenging its mythical conception of Truth via the approximate nature of

the presentation seen from t he perspective of th e linguistic subject.

Seen from Benjamin’s point

of

view, man’s ‘language ability’ is closely

linked to the Fall, as previously m entioned: “the Fall is the mom ent

of bir th



Burthes meets Benjamin? 7

of the human word” (see no te

5 ,

p. 153). Very summarily put, it is true that

Benjamin follows the sto ry of the C reation:

“In

the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John I, l) , with Go d

creating things in nature and man in and with language. But things and

human beings were not created in the same way

~

there was a crucial differ-

ence. Natural things were created in language by name. And it was by its

name that the thing became

capable of being cognized,

But the

absolute

re-

lation of the name to cognition only exists with God, only there does the

name exist, because at its innermost level it is identical with the creating

word, the pure medium of cognition”

h e i t . , p.

148). Since Go d names the

things after they have already been given names and thereby cognizes them

“and God saw that it was good,” as Benjamin quotes, and

so

also man.

Therefore, man was no t created by the word, man was not nam ed, Go d did

not want to make man subservient to language, but instead to give man a

language himself. M an was created in God’s image (the image of the C rea tor ,

i.e. in the image of the Creator’s language) an d thereby became t he cognizer

in the language in which God created. At the same time, man received the

language in which God had created as a gift and thereby was able to name

things. God passed

on

the language to man of which everything minus man

has been created and made capable of being cognized; on the other hand,

man was created capable of cognizing and naming. By which is understood

that “man’s spiritual nature

is

the language in which creution took place”

(loc.cit., 149), while man’s language, when used for

naming, is

only a reflec-

tion of the Creator’s. Thereby man’s spiritual nature as language must be

understood as differing from his language fo r naming, bu t therefore differing

as the difference between two languages. Two languages which can never

reach each other without mediation and which can never cover each other.

The closest they can get to e ach oth er is in

proper names

and

in

man’s naming

of things. The proper name, however, has a special nature, which does

not

correspond to any cognition t almost has the natu re of an invocation. “The

prop er nam e is man’s fellowship with God’s creating word” ( locc i t . , p. 150).

Thing s, on the o the r hand , were created by God’s word a n d are cognized

via man’s naming of them with th e language that was hand ed down to m an .

Thereby they also participa te in a “language fellowship with God’s word,”

as

Benjamin puts it though o ne less close tha n the fellowship of the pro pe r

name. Even

so,

man’s naming in language is no t unrestricted o r spontaneo us,

but

‘governed’ b y the original so

to speak by its

availability,

Barthes would



8

John Thobo-Carlsen

say. The cognition in the naming

is

in fact dependent on how the thing an-

nounces itself to man.

According to Benjamin, the ability to cognize which

is

handed down to

man in language manifests itself a s f a r

as

some are concerned as receptivity

(loc.cit., p. 150). Th is receptivity is to be understo od as a special responsive-

ness (or sensibility) to that in the language of things which

is

disposed

to

be

announced (now understood as the communicable in the language of things)

which man cognizes in the human act of naming. There is, then, a “trans-

lation of an imperfect language into one th at is mo re perfect” (loc.cit, p. 151).

H um an language adds something to the language of things in the receptivity

of

the communicable and in the naming respectively, says Benjamin, some-

thing the language of things lacked, i.e. the name. But what is it that man

names and cognizes by the process of nam ing? No t the thing as such, as we

have experienced that it cannot be reached (since the Fall), but that part of

the things or its spiritual na tur e - that is disposed to be announced, i.e. its

nature as language. This might perha ps be called its predisposition t o b ecome

more completely or validly named. Benjamin provides an example that I

think many people would nod to in agreement:

“The language

of

this lam p does not a nno unc e the lam p (for the lamp’s spiritual

natu re, insofar as it

is

disposed

to he

annou nced is by n o m eans the lam p itself),

but: the language lamp, the lamp in a presentation, the lamp unfolded.”

(loc. cit. p. 142)

‘The lamp’ in a language version, just like fashionwear in the fashion lan-

guage version,13 the sun in a poetic v ersion, Paris in Baudelaire’s version, etc.

The thing has its own language, insofar as it is disposed to be a nn ou nc ed .

This

language

is

picked up

by

man, insofar if (the thing’s own language) is

disposed to be announced (that must be a consequence to which Benjamin

does not seem to draw sufficient attention, although it is important in this

context ) and in the naming, i.e. the translation in to hu m an language, man

adds cognition to the thing’s language.

The back ground for an understandin g of Benjamin’s general view of the im -

possibility of standing ou tside language in any com m unication of a spiritual

con tent is thus inextricably linked to the difference between the spiritua l na tu re

an d the linguistic he language of nam ing (the Fall yet again ). The linguistic

is only identical with the spiritua l nature to th e extent tha t the sp iritual is dis-

posed to be announced . A hum an being w ho ann ounces som ething essential

in the sense of moving a spiritual message from o ne place to a no the r -will no t



Barthes meets Benjamin?

9

be able to grasp this if the spiritual message does not “allow itself” to be an-

nounced, which in turn means: if it is not disposed to be cognized. Benjamin

says:

“so

there is no such speaker of the languages, if one thereby means a

speaker who announces himself via these languages. The spiritual nature an-

nounces itself

in

a language and not

via

a language.” (Benjamin,

loc.cit.,

p. 142).

And, in continuation

of

what has been said about receptivity, one can surely

allow oneself to understand this speaker as the person who, generally speaking,

names, i.e. all of us when we attempt to cognize in linguistic acts. For man has

certainly been entrusted with the linguistic ability to name hough, it should

be noted, in

a

controlled and not an ‘untamed’ version controlled as it is by

that which

is disposed

to be named. And as Benjamin also finally draws atten-

tion to directly

in

“Uber Sprache uberhaupt und uber die Sprache des Mensch-

en” as a symbol of that (and controlled by that) which is not disposed to be

announced (... “zugleich Symbol des Nicht-Mitteilbaren”,

loc.

cit. 156). (And

what is that? Here one can begin to feel a bit anxious, for how much is there of

that which is not disposed to be announced compared to that which isdisposed

to be announced?) Although the direction or purpose

of

the ability to be

announced or communicability contained in the lingu istic allowing itself to be

named, is clear in Benjamin.

Things announce themselves to man. “This is no anthropomorphism. The

truth of this answer is shown in cognition and perhaps also in art. Moreover:

if the lamp, the mountain and the fox did not announce themselves to man,

how would he ever be able to name them?” (Zoc.cit., p. 143). Things are also

able to announce themselves to each other “via a more or less material fellow-

ship’’ (loc.cit., p. 147) (It would seem somewhat unclear, however, how this

could take place. What is the material fellowship’s relationship to their cre-

ation by God’s word?) But since things are cognizable in their names, in the

act of naming, it ought to be possible for man’s special, God-established

receptivity to crack the code of this internal communication and ‘understand’

it in the sense of cognizing it. Since the language of things is, as mentioned,

imperfect, man, with his cognition, can perhaps bring a greater degree of

perfection to these languages, so that they become able to translate each

other more richly, more satisfyingly (i.e. more completely) and more validly.

This would mean less frustration in the internal communication of things.

Mun announces himself to God. Or, more precisely: in the naming of

things, man announces his spiritual nature to God. There is nothing remark-

able about that really - it is a form of returning the compliment. The circle



10

John Thobo-Curlsen

is complete. Who understands me better than He who created me in His

image, although imperfect yet with (almost) the same creative powers? But

with this last reference this train of thought also runs the risk

of

ending up

as self-affirmation. As G od saw tha t H is own work of creation was good, so

too He is

to

sanction man’s. It looks like a tautology which omits taking an

essential condition into account. When man was created out of matter, he

not only was given language but a body as well. Where has it

got

to in

Benjamin’s view of man?

I

shall return

to

this later.

Benjamin’s own underlining of the fact th at th e spiritu al nature is identical

with the linguistic nature to the extent that it is disposed

to

be announced

(understood actively), does, however, create the possibility of reading him

ulong

with

Barthes, and perhaps in doing

so

of giving him back the body

O ne could thus claim that from a Barthesian perspective although still

showing solidarity with Benjamin’s understanding of language ~ the striving

is intercepted by a second, receptive ‘linguistic subject’ (even though it was

directed towards something transcendental, e.g. God), whereby cognition is

added

to

the ‘spiritual nature’ of the first in a linguistic edition by the na ming

of the second linguistic subject us t as when man translates the mu rky

language of things to human language, adding cognition to it. And

so

on:

the naming of this second subject is intercepted

...,

etc., etc. In such a n in ter-

pretatio n one uses each o ther as each other’s allegories, contrasts, antitheses,

where the real synthesis, even though it cannot be gained from God and in

the direct confrontation with Truth, is even more

so

than that which Benja-

min gives aesthetical consideration, i.e.

the

p u m d o x i s m

in the “Truuerspiel”

(Benjamin

UddT,

p .

390)

and more than something as meek and intimating

as

the

imuge of un expectation, which is the synthesis of Goethe’s

Die

Wuhlverwundtschujten [T h e Elective Affinities]

according

to

Benjamin.

Something has now manifested itself that resembles an Eliot-like objective,

concretely linguistic correlative between two hu m an nam ers which is oriented

towards m utually

translating

“the yearning

to

break the mist of the symbolic

relations that constitute it as a mythical web

~

o r, a text fo r ~ h o r t . ” ’ ~he

orientation of the naming towards the absolute referent o n the one hand an d

its orientation towards a second linguistic subject on the other hand is per-

haps

the

decisive difference between Benjamin an d Barthes.

Rolund Buuthes. Barthes’ relation to language is also concrete, though more

pragmatic. He is interested in language as a fact, a powerful fact linked, as it



Barthes

meets

Benjamin? 1 1

always is, to the actual discursive event and the possibilities of avoiding this

immediate powerfulness with the aid of language’s own built-in hesitancy or

dual nature.

A

way of trying to u nderstand this could be to clarify wh at B arthes act u-

ally said an d w hat it was th at caused such a g reat furore when, in 1964, he

took Saussure at his word an d aired the possibility th at linguistics “ on e day”

should n ot only be understood as “ pa tron general de toute sCmiologie”,’6 a s

Saussure had called it, but as the overall concept for semiology, in the sense

that the science of signs could be considered as being part of a science of

language:

“In sh ort , one now h as to reckon with the possibility

of

one day breaking down

Saussure’s theorem, i.e., that linguistics is not a part of the general science of

signs, not even a privileged part but that, [on the contrary], it is semiology

which is part of linguistics: to be completely precise, the part which seeks to

deal with the

large signifVing

units of discourse; in that way the unity in the

research concerning the concept of signification th at is a t present takin g place

within anthrop ology, sociology, psychoanalysis an d stylistics would become vis-

ible.”17

(My addition in [ I).

From the outset we have

to

realise that, as far as Barthes is concerned, it is

not a question of demarcating language from signs, that is,

if

signs exist

which are no t language o r vice-versa. In other words, if anim als comm unicate

with each other with the aid of something we humans would call signs. Or if

things can be signs for each other. Or even if something living can be a sign

for som ething non-living, whether o r no t it

has

been living at some point or

not. Signs can only be signs as signs for something or someone. There are

endless examples of this in nature an d am ong h um an s (and, by the way, also

within hum ans, seen from a somatic an d psychosomatic po int of view).18So:

the quality of language is contained in the quality of the sign. This is w ha t

we are not dealing with. That which we are here exclusively dealing with is

whether the science of language is a pa rt of the science of signs, o r vice-versa.

It is at this level that Barthes has made his remarks, not whether signs exist

tha t are no t language, or w hether all signs are language.

The schism is

apparently linked to the whole problem area of dislocation

that I dealt with earlier. We reflect in and with language ~ and only there,

Only in language (and here I am thinking only of

man’s

doubly articulated

verbal language, not of some other understanding of the concept of lan-

guage

~

a meta pho rical o r ‘semiological’ one) do we unders tand ourselves as

being dislocated in relation to some form of origin or beginning as an



12

John Thoho-Carlsen

individual and as a species. This must surely be what is referred to as the

‘language-philosophical’ version of the myth of the Fall.

In

that sense all

othe r sign-giving is non-reflexive (and non-reflective) it can no t reflect on

itself, it cannot, for example, be self-ironical. The signs of nature, for ex-

ample, see no purpo se in expressing dou b t why shou ld they? It may well

be th at we think tha t they do ; in which case they do so without knowing it

themselves Nature does not

know

anything; it

is

hum ans w ho know. An d we

know

in

and with our talking and writing. So what sort of knowledge is it

that we possess which the rest of nature d oes n ot possess? It is the knowledge

we have by virtue of language and nothing else. Knowledge and language are

two sides of the same coin. Not only that. Since language is inextricably

linked to ou r being different, o u r knowledge is also different. Or, our knowl-

edge is linked to ou r dislocation from the rest of nature, in the sam e way that

language is dislocated. Furthermore, we know that we know, but here too

only by virtue of language. There is no end to this involution (a verbal mise

en ahime).

Only nature fixes the limit, either

as

power or

as

fatigue. From

that position knowledge of language, science

of

language or linguistics is

superior t o knowledge of signs, science of signs o r semiology (semiotics).

In 1977, Barthes wrote about the relationship in this way:

“Semiology, which c an be defined cano nically a s the science

of

signs - all types

of signs is with its oper ation s, concep ts derived fro m linguistics. B ut linguistics

itself, it seems to me, is [ I on the point of be ing torn ap ar t f rom wi th in : o n

the one hand, it is attracted towards a formal pole

-

a n d a s a result of this

inclination it becomes [ I increasingly formalised; o n th e other h and , it gains

control of more a nd m ore contents that l ies further an d furth er away from i ts

original sphere

[ I

in the political, the social, the cultural. In that sense, the

subject-matter

of

linguistics is boundless: Iunguuge,

us

Benveniste reulised,

is

the

sociul itself: [My italics]. In a nutshell, an excess of asceticism or an excess of

hunger, thick or thin: linguistics is

o n

the poin t

of

becoming deconstructed. It

is this deconstruction which, for my part, I call semiolugy.”

(Barthes: Leqon, p. 29-30)

Benveniste understands language as

the

sociul

itself

“convinced with B enveni-

ste that all culture is exclusively langu age” (see no te 9, p. 142, my italics). For

Roman Jakobson language is the centre of all human, semiotic systems, and

the most imp ortant of them.19

But there is anoth er hurdle to all of this an d it is perhaps the most i m po rt-

an t aspect of the entire language question w hen we are talking ab ou t Barthes.



Barthes meets Benjamin.? 13

When the language system wants to understand itself, wants to gain knowl-

edge about what it itself says in a rational sense, this knowledge will unfortu-

nately never be exhaustive (this Godel*’ has almost proved), even though one

might immediately think that language would be able to get closer to itself

than the other ‘alien’ systems of signs. On the other hand, a challenge exists

in things being that way. That one can only approach oneself and one’s com-

munication partner through language asymptotically. f one wants to tak e up

this challenge, one comes across the ‘we’ that all the time has to understand

or know or communicate. As mentioned, in the science of signs and the

science of language the ‘we’ only has language to unfold in.

So

in one way

of other its status as a

language-unfolded

1st person, an

‘I’

or

a

‘we’, must be

included. When we talk about a science of signs or a science of language we

are talking about the formation and communication of knowledge. But this

always takes place via an ‘I’ or a ‘we’ that incorporates both the writer and

reader aspects o the communication. This ‘I’

or

‘we’ that understands and

forms knowledge are also signs in a system of signs, which as a science can

only be understood in language.

A

scientific discourse on any system of signs,

including that of language, must therefore also be a statement which includes

an ‘I’ or a ‘we.’

A

scientific discourse communicates then at the same time

with the unfolding of knowledge by virtue of a ‘self-presentation, to which

cognition is linked. ‘Self’ understood as an active subject-perspective and

not as

a

subject in a unifying sense. An analysis or a scientific discourse can

thus be either subjectively interpreting, with a metaphorical relation to the

object of analysis, or

self-presenting,

with a metonymic relation to that which

the discourse presents.

Barthes felt it was important to take up this challenge. In current scholar-

ship there is a tendency to treat this relation in isolation, as an independent

area of research within the framework of psychoanalysis. Co-reflection rarely

takes place in scientific discourses at all. Such co-reflections are like atmos-

pheric interference, having an adverse effect on the ‘objective,’ purely com-

municative use of language in which one is engaged. This insight Benjamin

and Barthes would seem to be in complete agreement about. Goldbrek sum-

marises Benjamin’s standpoint as follows:

“For Benjamin, cognition is exclusively linked to presentation as self-presen-

tation , i.e. to the concept a s mediator of the non-subjective, the name-language,

the utopian status

of

things outside the subjectively jud ging sphere of language.

For Benjamin, the most important cognition-critical prerequisite is thus that



14

John Thobo-Cavlsen

science recovers its mimetic aspect. By mimetic he does not mean the imitation

of the factual, but of the authentically possible and non-realised, of the virtual

in history and in things.”

(see note

28,

p. 125)

It

would seem as if it

is

through Benjamin’s thoughts a bo ut the comm unicat-

ive quality of language and about the investment of the

translutubility

of

the

text or the attempts to d o so in connection with the establishing of symbolic

or allegorical prophecies, that a person like Barthes would find (finds)

an

echo for his thoughts a bo ut und erstanding linguistic statem ents on the basis

of

an inclusion in the ‘self-presentation

of

that which one could call the re-

versibility of ’announceability’ (‘Mitteilbarkeit’), on the basis of a

non-ddin-

eution of the reference points

of

that which now can be described as com-

munica tion. Th is is textuality’s (Barth es: “T he Text’s’’)

intentio sine qua non,2’

whether it is considered a scientific concept or not:

“ I no longer believe

-

nor do

I

desire tha t Sem iology should be a simple

science, a positivist science, and this for a primordial reason: it is the responsi-

bility

of

Semiology, and perhaps

of

Semiology alone of all the hum an sciences

today, to question its own discourse: as

a

science of language, of languages, it

cannot accept its own language as a datum, a transparency, a tool, in sh ort as

a metalanguage; strong with the powers of psychoanalysis, it interrogates itself

as to the place fr om which it speaks, an interrogation without which any science

an d any ideological criticism a re ridiculous: f or Sem iology, at least so

I

hope,

there exists no extraterritoriality for the subject, even if he is a scientist, with

regard to his discourse; in other words, finally, science know s n o site of security,

and in this

i t

must acknowledge itself as

writing.”22

Barthes considered this question to be o ne a bo ut scientific ethics. H e defined

a science, using Nietzsche’s term, as an udiuphovic science, an indifferent

science, when it keeps its speaking or w riting a nd urge tow ards such activities

ou t of its discourse.

In

1977, he talks unequivocally about this,

so

that there

is no doubt anymore to anyone, including himself

“If it is true th at the subject of science

is

the subject which does not make itself

visible and that it is basically this retention of the scene which we call ‘meta-

language,’ then, when I want to talk ab ou t signs using signs, I am forced to face

this ridiculous coincidence full on, forced to assume this strange cross-eyedness

which brings me into the ranks of Chinese shadow-actors, which at one and

the same time shows me their han ds an d th e rab bit, duck, wolf, whose silhouette

they are imitating. And if anyone exploits that condition

to

deny the active, the

writing seniiologist any connection with science, one must make them compre-

hend that it was an epistemological misunderstanding

that is beginning to

crumble

preci.wly

now

when we equate meta-language with science - as if the

one is a necessary condition for the other, even though it is only its historical,



Barthes m eets Benjamin? 15

i.e. disputable, characteristic; perhaps it is time to distinguish between meta-

linguistics, which

is

a label like everything else, and science, whose criteria are

to

be found elsewhere.”

(Barthes: Legon, pp. 36-37)

The theory of textuality would thus seem to have gained another disciple in

Benjamin retrospectively so to speak. But this calls for an explanation,

as

the ‘agreement’ is not complete. Barthes and Benjamin only meet in language

and in literature because their paths cross there; their aims, however, were

not identical. And this is interesting for a number a reasons. Partly because

it opens up a language- and history-philosophical perspectivising of Barthes’

position concerning literature and the concept of reading which others have

been distinctly sparing in providing,2’ possibly because he himself has been

relatively understated in the areas of his own production that were not linked

to the reasonably accepted structuralist trend, and without a doubt also be-

cause

of

diverse power struggles in academic circles.24And of course because

he also had other energies and ambitions connected to writing and working

on language. This was an obvious extension of the view he had of language

and the functional roles of language.

Conversely, it is interesting because the comparison of Barthes and Benja-

min accentuates, actualises and, if necessary, demystifies Benjamin’s lan-

guage- and philosophy-historical theses. Just let me remind readers of the

following Benjamin theses: “In every epoch the same attempt must be made

anew

to

wrench the tradition from the conformism which is in the process of

subjugating it,” or

“To articulate the past historically

does not mean to recog-

nize ‘how it actually happened.’ It means to tak e possession

of

a recollection

that strikes in the hour of With Barthes’ prophecies about a science

of language as a superior, unifying form of reflection for other sciences and

with his pointing out that insight, validity and truth can only be retained in

an(other) in a traditional sense non-metalanguage discourse, Benjamin would

seem to have found support for an important part of his theory of self-

presentation as described above.

Literature as a simultaneously original and utopian site

So

despite these quite different approaches to the phenomenon of language,

Barthes and Benjamin would both seem to be interested in the same essential

qualities in language, i.e. its immediate capacity for communication and its



16

John

Thobo-Carlsen

proximity to that which it presents. It is therefore interesting to investigate

to what extent they might possibly qualify and supplement each other’s

points of view.

To recapitulate: language has at least two functions, those we refer to as

the pragmatic and the utopian. The pragmatic presents the practical under-

standing of and striving for reality, while the utopian presents the idea of

a freedom in an immediate, unmediated understanding of man’s life in and

with reality. In other words, an insistence

on

languages utopian function in

coexistence with the pragmatic. And yet, “the utopia, naturally, offers no

guarantee against power”, as Barthes puts it, “the utopia

of

language is rein-

corporated as the language

of

utopia

t

is a genre like any other (se note 7,

p.

25).

For Barthes, utopia is not identical with something principally unat-

tainable or transcendental in relation to reality; it is rather making linguisti-

cally visible that which cannot otherwise be said or be taken for granted (e.g.

‘naturally’). For Benjamin, there lies in the linguistically presented utopia a

striving for a Truth beyond finiteness.

One of the problems could therefore be: How do we live with two lan-

guages simultaneously how do we live with the simultaneous presence of

finiteness and infinity?

Apparently it takes place in a productive complementarity (or reconcili-

ation). We are well able to function with systems of variety or infinity. For

we are after all unable to survey infinity. But this does not mean that we deny

their existence. I am perfectly capable

of

looking at the stars and enjoy the

experience without disappearing into the infinity

of

the universe. My physical

finiteness restricts my gazing, but infinity lives on both there and here in me,

influencing what I say and

do

as if I was not limited. My field of vision is

limited, but my body as such takes part in infinity and contributes to my

experience. Both finiteness and infinity are the basis

of

my experience. With

both feet planted firmly in this world and without being engaged to its limited

vista, cognition does not surpass the experience, but the experience surpasses

the empiricism. Therefore the utopia can be set in motion here and now by

every so-called linguistic subject which in its linguistic utterance gives mean-

ing to the obvious and names the nameless. In this way literature is of course

the utopian site

par

excellence.

For Barthes, characterized by an asymptotic

attempt to approach language to reality. For Benjamin, by the shadow theatre

of truth we perform with whatever images and reusable fragments we happen

to be in possession of.



Barthes meets Benjamin? 17

Barthes and Benjamin meet from their respective positions in an under-

standing of the fact that a new cognition is only attained in an antithetic

dynaniism, a dialectic with the discourse that has established itself. Barthes

often calls this

doxa

(Gr.=opinion, assumption). This, for example, is treated

in a myth-analytical way by him under the title “Petite mythologie du mois”

in the 1950s in the journal Lettres Nouvelles (later published in extracts in

the book Mythologies (1957)). But everywhere Barthes works he both reads

this dialectic oscillation between doxa and paradoxa,26 between ‘image’ and

‘contra-image’ in the text he is reading and practices it himself in his own

writing. As is seen in his reading of such writers as Racine, Balzac, Poe,

Flaubert, Proust, and many others. He explains himself (with the social as-

pect in focus) in the following way:

“Principle of explication: this work swings between two terms:

~ at the original term one finds the intransparency of the social relationships.

From the outset this intransparency has manifested itself in the burdensome

form of the stereotype (the obligatory figures

of

the school essay, the co mm unist

novels in Le DegrC zCro de l’kcriture). Since then, thousa nds of o ther form s of

the

Doxd;

~ at the final (utop ian) term o ne finds the transparency: the tender feeling, the

desire, the sigh, the yearning for a rest, as if the texture

of

social conversation

one day could be clarified, lightened, perforated to the invisible.

1 The social division creates intransparency (ap par en t paradox: there where the

social is heavily divided, it appears intransparent, massive).

2.

The subject struggles against this intransparency in every way it can.

3 . But if he himself is a linguistic

subject,

[my italics], his struggle c an no t directly

gain a political solution, for that would mean refinding the intransparency of

the stereotypes. So this struggle becomes apocalyptical in its movement: he

divides to the extreme, he exhausts a complete set of values, and at the same

time he is living in a utopian way

-

one could say: he is

inspiring:

the final

transparency of the social relationships.”

(Barthes: Roland Burthes, p. 141)

1.e.

on

the basis of

an

intransparency (the hypothesis [1])27 a transparency

(the utopia or the synthesis [3]) is created (the antithesis [2]). The antithesis

is itself the active contrasting. 1.e. both the linguistic reading

of

the inner

dialectic (ifit exists he whole thing could be pure doxa Or, to use Benja-

min terminology: if it

is diposed to be anonnounced)

and the unfolding or

presentation of this reading in a new text, or something similar.

As

we recall,

Benjamin made a part of the human powers of creation

a

receptivity. For

Benjamin, the dynamic lies in the allegorical opposition to that which is laid



18 John Thobo-Carlsm

down and already determined in advance, as he demonstrates, for example,

in the Trauerspiel study and the analysis of Romanticism.28

But what about (the) science (of literature)? Is it prepared to challenge

reality on language’s premises (for it too cannot avoid its language role)?

A

reaction could be that if science is not to be satisfied with the analogous

formation of knowledge (and myths about it), as called for by the pragmatic

role of language, it must find a form in which it can allow itself to think

along other lines than those laid down by other language users. Not to

be

understood to mean that one is not to adopt an attitude to such lines, for

that is precisely what one has to do in a way there is nothing else to do.

Rather than one includes in one’s thoughts the projection of one’s own point

of departure (e.g. language usage codes),29 n the understanding of the object

one is investigating. Steinhagen formulates Benjamin’s view on this in

a

way

reminiscent of that of Barthes:

..

when the projections

of

all dealings with literature,

also

the academic, are

unavoidably at stake and cast doubts

on

its academic nature there is no point

in closing one’s eyes to the fact, in the belief that it can be eliminated by a

methodically objective procedure; then the surmounting

of

the simple projec-

tion of meaning on the object ~ which certainly cannot claim to be academic

cognition

~

only conceivable when one consciously recognizes the projection as

being unavoidable, as Benjamin constantly did; then one can only acknowledge

its unavoidability and at the same time hope for cognitions that fit the objects,

i.e. where the previous projections are broken. For Benjamin, therefore, all inter-

pretation, all

explication de te xte

and all criticism are first and foremost allegor-

esis which, like the classical Homeric allegoresis, adds its own meanings to the

text, project into the objects their subjective conjectures, assumptions, ideas and

views. It therefore

is

at the same stage as pre-understanding in the hermeneutic

approach, which produces a first, subjective draft

of

meaning, which is subse-

quently, step by step, replaced by a matter-of-fact understanding that at the

same time self-critically corrects the pre-understanding or virtually becomes

criticism of the object.”30

The difference between pure, analogous knowledge (or literature for that mat-

ter), which dons the pragmatic mask (without knowing it is a mask), and the

antithetical, which dons the utopian mask (and points to it all the time)

is

fundamental. The first

in

a utopian way

is

retrospective, one could say,

whereas the other in a utopian way is prospective. In a utopian way retrospec-

tive because its idea of the Origin

is

a naturalised Beginning (related to the

unifying feel of the concept

of

Truth, by the way) and it always fades out




19

into all that is past. The antithetical conception of

a

science, on the other

hand, imagines that cognition (insight, transparency, change for the better)

lies immanent in the actual language dynamic. For this reason, existence must

constantly be ‘re-created’ to be understood and accepted. This is closer to

Benjamin’s concept of

Ursprung

(cf. note 21, pp. 225-226), here summarised

by Goldbzk: “Ursprung means the complete cognition of an event seen from

the final point, from the finished process. But

Ursprung

also means this pro-

cess in its further, future, not yet cognized course towards a utopian realis-

ation.” (see note

28,

p. 98)

For all sciences, the point of departure is important where the phenom-

enon

is

seen from, in what perspective, what is taken for granted, the nature

of the dynamics in the phenomenon, etc. For this reason the concept of

origin

is important. Both science perspectives relate explicitly to the idea of origin

and dynamics. The retrospective utopia of the first has to do with the special

mythical form of conception of origin that underlies its conception of science

and which contrasts it with the antithetical idea of science conception about

origin that can be linked to the opposing concept

of

genesis (Benjamin: “Ent-

stehung”), the coming into existence of that which is created, or,

as

mention-

ed, to the concept of

Ursprung,

according to where the perspective is.

There would appear to be a conception of the beginning of life inspired by

natural science, in a naturalised mythical version, behind the tendency and

the need to round off and demarcate ~ such as in the discourse which is

partial to concluding, to summarising, ‘to determining how far we have got,’

to appealing to ‘the reasonableness of the meaning of this or that thing being

determined as being’ such and such, ‘so that we can know where we stand,

etc. This form of mythologisation

of

the Origin differs from the prospective

utopian creation myths with which we are dealing here, i.e. by being ‘word-

less,’ and by only considering language as a tool. In the pragmatic concept

of Genesis the perspective is always: the world seen from the outside: The

individual, man,

comes into bring

and is defined (named) in relation to his

immediate surroundings (in relation to everything else he is undefinable). He

thus

gets a language which he can use to understand the rest of mankind and

the world around him, which defines him. That is how it is, that is how the

individual and things coming into existence in an intracontextual system

of

causation. Language is a tool like all other possible tools. It has its function;

it is defined in relation to that which it is to be used for, as all other things

are. Its meaning is determined by relations to its surroundings, i.e. they point



20

John Thobo-Carlsen

at them as signs for them. Everything is defined by being the sign for other

things. Language, the com ponen ts of language, hum an beings, things, every-

thing in nature. Everything is held together in a vice, as it were. Everything

clings to each other in a m utu al understanding for and of each other, as if

saved from

a

fear of the great, emp ty signless and wordless void aro un d them .

The causal logic of science, whereby we understand nature

on the basis o

physica l and chemical laws, is without a d ou bt in many respects ad equ ate and

conforms to the actual conditions. But it simply cannot explain man’s con-

scious (and unconscious) way of cognizing, experiencing and understanding

the world as adequately (i.e. as validly). In or de r to gain a total understand -

ing

of

human life and nature it has to be supplemented

by

an epistemology

that, with the concrete human being as its starting point, in a n ad equ ate way

lives

up to the language-based semiosis-logic which we happen to make use

of - for we can d o n o other when seeking the t rut h. “T he idea is a linguistic

and very likely

the

feature of the nature of the word, in which it is a symbol”

(Benjamin:

EJ ,

p. 216, see note 21). Barthes says, almost taking the words

ou t of B enjamin’s m ou th:

“The Origin is one of Nature’s (Physis’) harmful figures: by a calculated fallacy

Doxa ‘presses’ Origin and Truth together to make them into one proof, where

each

of

them in turn neatly comes

to

each other’s rescue: are not the humanities

etymological

in their search for the etymon (origin and truth) of all things?”

(Barthes: Rolund Burthes,

p .

142)

And continues, for his own account an d risk, with a

sort

of self-commentary:

“In order to counteract the Origin he [Barthes himselfj first completely cul-

turalises Nature: nothing natural anywhere, only something historical: this cul-

ture (convinced with Benveniste that all culture is exclusively language) he then

reinstates in the infinite movement

of

discourse, the one placed on top of the

other (and not generated), as in the pancake game [the one with hands placed

alternately on top of each other]”.

( o p c i t . ,

p. 142, my square bracket)

Th at so rt of logic does not have as its point of depa rture the dawn of history

bu t the present day. Th e present day a nd each of history’s now s are the actual

origin,

the actual starting point for all cognition. O ur now is a m elting down

of all other nows. “Th e Origin stands in th e midst of th e Genesis current like

a whirlpool, pulling the material of genesis into its rhythm” (Benjamin:

UddT, p. 226). An anecdote and a m etaph or of this: Barthes was once

asked by a student to comment on a project she had called “An ideological



Barthes meets Benjamin?

21

critique of semiology.” This provoked him so much tha t he fo un d a n occasion

to acco unt fo r what Semiology m eant to him as a science. In sh or t, he divided

his life with Semiology into three periods, with the titles Hope, the Sciences

an d Text. Th e first phase was dominated by th e attemp t to c om bine linguis-

tics, existentialism and marxism into an ideology-critical, hopeful unmasking

project. The second phase was dominated by the idea that Semiology had a

future for itself within the academic world, when he discovered that it was

mainly the systematics in the project that stimulated him, and that it had a

more exciting future outside the academic world, but “a chambermaid

( )

relationship to certain sciences,” a s he later put it. Th e third phase was dom i-

nated by the concept of the Text, which started with the g rou p arou nd Kriste-

va, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and

Tel Quel.

Now to the metaphor . When

Barthes was to explain where he stood “today” he replied as follows:

“It is said that Louis XVIII , a royal gourmet, had his chef prepare several

cutlets piled upon the other, and ate only the one on the bottom, which had

recieved the juices trickling into it from all the others. In the same fashion, I

should like the present moment of my semiological adventure [from

udvenes:

what comes to me f rom the signifier] to receive the juices of the earlier ones -

for the sieve to be, as in the case of the royal cutlets, woven of the very substance

that i t strains, for the filtering medium to be the filter itself,

as

the signified is

the signifier- so that consequently you will find in my present work the pulsion

which have animated the whole past of this semiological adventure: the will to

unite myself with a community of rigorous investigators, and loyalty to the

tenacious alliance of the political and the semiological.”

(se note 22, p.

7)

Presentation and literature

In the following I want to deal in greater depth with the literary and litera-

ture-related forms of presentation (Benjamin’s Davstellung) and to see how

on the one han d they convey the interaction between Benjamin’s an d B arthes’

theories

of

language and naming and, on the other hand, between the role

of the writer and that of the reader. There will, however, not be room here

for a more detailed presentation and discussion of the special view of the

receiver or reader of a work of art that finds expression in “Die Aufgabe des

Ubersetzers”,31an d in Benjamin’s language-philosophical w ritings. In them ,

the reader-subject or recipient position is considered on the basis of the fun-

damental philosophy of language and naming presented above, which has

been shown to have strong resemblances t o Barthes’ theories of reading.



22 John Thobo-Curlsen

As Peter Collier rightly points out in his short presentation “Roland

Barthes: the c ritical subject, ( an idea fo r research),”32 there is everywhere in

Barthes and f one look s carefully n the early Mythologies as well, a sense

of unease with the simply structural myth- and ideology-critical analysis of

the treated ‘consciousness products of everyday life,’ as they were called. In

Barthes’ text, both in the mythologies and the subsequent “Myth Today,” we

come across a critical, active subject perspective, whose namings and con-

siderations can only extremely inadequately be explained by the structuralist

myth model put forward by B arthes. T he ‘n arra tor ’ of the mythologies is not

only

a

naturalised I-object who is to be manipulated to a certain expected

reaction based on the analysis’ structural determination or how the text

de

f u c f o is constructed an d functions. The ‘na rrat or’ of the mythologies

is

the

active reader- and observer-subject who reveals himself in this way early on

in his writing, but who we meet in a more explicit version as Barthes gradu-

ally drops his ambitions within the structuralist field.

Desire, pleasure and that which is stronger when reading (in the broad

sense of the term) comes through as the perversion of the system which the

text immediately manifests, but and this is crucial his takes place a t the

request or invitation of the text itself.’3 And, generally speaking, we are get-

ting more and more of these invitations and are becoming more and more

sensitive to the m in this m od er n age, i.e. from the middle

of

the 19th century

onw ards.34 Th is particularly applies as a result of the increasing sense of

unease at capitalist society’s hypostasising and naturalising

of

the ego. A

meaningful explanation has been given, as by Barthes himself, from within

the F re ud ia n-Lac an ia n framew ork o f ~n d e r s t a n d i n g , ~ ~ut it can definitely

be supplemented by the Benjamin concepts concerning cognition through the

presentation of the self-presentation of

things

(and of language), leading to a

critical theory of the narrator- and reader-subject, for which Benjamin pro-

vides a basis in his language-philosophical and literary studies from Baroque

Trauerspiel via such authors as Goethe, Baudelaire and Lesskow to Proust.

Dialectics

and

allegory. Litera ture is, or can be, such a self-presentation. Tex-

tuality is this. It is its determination, its modus vivendi. Seen in this light it is

no t

so

surprising that Benjamin and Barthes both take a stand on Hegel’s

dialectics, even though they diverge in their conception of the nature and

status of the synthesis. Indeed, taken to its utmost conclusion it is resolved

for both

of

them. For Benjamin, literally speaking in the idea, the synthesis



Burthes m eets Benjumin? 23

can never be represented (in the symbol, for example), only presented as

a counter-image. For Barthes, in the subject-loss and discursiveness

of

the

presentation, in the move towards le neutre:

“As a figure of opposition, the sharpened form of binarism, the Antithesis is

the very theatre of meaning. One comes out of it: either by the neutral or

through the exit to the real (...) or with the aid of the supplement

(...),

or by

the invention of a third (deporting) term.

He himself often resorts to the Antithesis (...). Yet another contradiction? -

Yes, and one which will always be explained in the same way: the Antithesis is

a linguistic

rape: I borrow the violence of everyday speech

for

the benefit of my

own violence, of the-meaning-for-me.”

(Barthes,

Roland Burthes,

p. 142)

An example of this antithetical theatre of meaning could be Goethe’s mythi-

cal shadow play as presented in the novel D i e W ~ h I v e r w a n d t s c h a j t e n . ~ ~n

Benjamin’s manuscript for his book on Goethe’s D i e W u ~ Z v e r ~ ~ u n ~ t s c h u f t e n

we find in the plan the division: “Part One: the mythical as Hypothesis [ I

Part Two: the redemption as Antithesis

[ I

Part Three: hope as the Syn-

t h e s i ~ . ” ~ ’he opposition between the mythical and the redemption is spiced

in Benjamin’s analysis with the pair of concepts “Sachgehalt” and

“Wahrheitsgehalt,” which for Goldbaek are respectively the concrete pattern

in the novel and the primeval images. Goldbaek continues:

“Between the level of ideas [Wahrheitsgehalt] and the external signs [Sachgehalt]

there is

a n

abyss. Which in turn means that the concrete, the things

of

empiria,

have become impenetrable riddles and gestures they cannot be directly related

to a whole: ‘If man has sunk to this stage, then even the lives of dead things

assume power.

A

criterion for the mythical world is precisely this inclusion of

all things in life’ (Benjamin:

G’s

Wahlw., p. 139, cf. note

38).”

(Goldbzk, p. 67, see note

28)

Benjamin reads a n antithetical s tructu re explicitly in to the novel, in the sense

that the main story or framework is read

mythically

(as the hypothesis) and

conceived of as Sachgehalt, while the novel itself, most strongly in the in-

serted novella, provides images of the ideu (the antithesis), which is conceived

of as the Wahrheitsgehalt. In the first instance, the point is meant to be

tha t w hile the external signs

of

life can be presented directed and concretely

(although still as a shadow play, in costumes), the level of ideas can only be

shown in counter-images. It

so

happen s th at the antithetical ca n assume vari-

ous

disguises. The allegory can take part in the

play of opposites

with a

greater or lesser degree of serenity. In Die Wahlverwandtschaften there are



24 John Thobo-Curlsen

several examples of this. I do not intend at this point to carry out an actual

analysis of the novel, only to point to the relative serenity of the novella in

relation to a number of the more painful images for the setting of the myth

in the outer story. Everyday life, social life,

is

seen

f rom the inside

as destiny,

but by the Nurrutor Benjamin, as Goldbzk calls him, “as a mythical shadow

play in G oethe-age costum es their con tent man ifests itself.”38 In any case, it

is everyday life, social life even when experienced as destiny, that feeds the

fire, i.e. the hope

of

its own destruction. It builds up in the grudging way that

it breaks down. “Only with the will of hopelessness is hope granted us” (op.

cit., p.

201).

The synthesis in a semiotic version. Or, to use Barthes’ words:

“Literature is like phosphorus, it gleams most brightly in the instant it is

broken down” (see note 34, p. 39), as yet anot he r contribution to t he host of

light-metaphors for transfiguration that we often find in Benjamin’s work:

“

..

based in the very form of her light”, “

..

it is a completely different light

from the tr iumphan t light,” ... the light of reconciliation,” “

..

like a star fall-

ing from the sky,” ... pre-light,” etc.

If one was to trunslute the concept-pair “Sachgehalt” and “Wdhrheitsge-

halt,” it would be important to retain their mutual relative relationship of

dependency and opposition.

As

is known, semiotics supplies a number of

models which take account of this, but the

denotation-connotation mo del,

as

used by Barthes in the reversible version, fulfils these requirements. In the

sense that Sachgehalt can be read in both a denotative and connotative per-

spective. Connotatively in relation t o the de no tati on system of reason, a s the

myth in Die Wuhlverwandtschaften

is

co nte nt for, an d denotatively in relation

to the Wdhrheitsgehalt (primeval images) as conn ota tion .

The basic model is the well-known diagram provided with the co nn ota tio n

an d the reversibility between the deno tation an d the con no tatio n:

LANGUAGE OF ign2

LANGUAGE OF

ignl

DENOTATION

expression

.

content



Bart hes m eets Benjum n?

25

~~

The model for Benjamin’s reading of Goethe’s Die Wuhlverwandtschaften,

where each ‘higher’ level is connotation for each (lower) as denotation:

Benjamin

as

reader

personsand

1

the shadow play in the

Goethian costumes

Level

One

is

the actual shadow play in the Go eth ian costumes, a s it imm edi-

ately takes places am on g humans an d things. It functions as den otatio n for

Level Two, which consists of the characters presented in and with their lives

as subject to an d fighting against what is conceived of as the force of destiny.

In relation to Level On e the presentation conno tes destiny. A t the same time

it functions as denotation for

Level Three, which is the contemp orary reader’s presentation of (and the author

Goethe’s own o pinion ab ou t) the relation of the players to destiny: nature f i -

nally triump hs over reason. In relation t o Level Two the prese ntation con note s

the presentation

mj’th.

A t the same time it functions as denotation for

Level Four,

which is the reader Benjamin’s presentation of what takes place

in and with the textuality, i.e. the actual text and invested writer and reader

roles, including his own. Here, for example, Goldbaek’s

narrator Goethe

(see

note 28, p. 80) is to be fo un d. The Goethe that Benjamin ‘saves.’

Benjamin reads: a) three mythical efforts in the text and

b)

two breaks

with the myth:



26

John Thobo-Carlsen

a )

Nuture

seen as myth,

Rationality

seen as myth an d the

Primeval images

as

mythical mediation of an extra-textual meaningfulness.

b) The myth of nature is broken in the struggle for rationality and the myth

of rationality is challenged in antithetical allegories. The will to reconciliation

in the midst of hopelessness func tions as a n image of hop e. Herein lies the

novel’s self-understanding, which at the same time has to be its ability to

announ ce itself o r its translatability. Its ‘writability,’ as Ba rthes migh t well

have called

it

(cf. note 39, p. 1l), as it is this about the novel that can only

be presented as rewriting, which cannot be represented in, for example, an

interpretation. For that would mean returning to the myth of rationality,

which is precisely what is under attack.

Benjamin calls the analysis that is on levels 1-3

the Commentary.

It deals

with the work’s Sachgehalt. A nd the analysis tha t goes fur the r evels 1 4

and deals with the work’s

Wahrheitsgehult,

he refers to as

the Critique.

With

a little ingenuity this could be said to correspond to a distinction between

the

structuvul

and the

textual

analysis (see note 2 3 ) .

Our reading (and Benjamin’s) of the myth has its counterpart in the role

of the writer. The writer here assumes two main roles. The one invested in

the special presentation of the destiny-linked nature of everyday life, which

provides food for the life of the myth. The other (th e narrator Goethe) in-

vested in a breaking down of the myth through various

caricatures

of the

belief in destiny of the players. It is always the way in which, it is always as

f o r m

tha t a den otation becomes th e expression of a new content.

A

structure

which Barthes has dealt with in such a stimulating way in “M yth Today” an d

which, by the way, also underlies

his

allegorical view of much of the literature

he reads a nd ‘saves’ in the sam e way a s Benjamin ‘saves’ the B aroque an d

Goethe. But i t is important

to

note,

if

one compares the two models, that in

the semiotic reading-writing model or, to use more Benjamin-like terms, the

cognition-naming model, the possibility of synthesis does not only exist as a

transcendental wholeness but

-

when it takes place as

a

‘worldly’ cogn ition

and new naming which, for Barthes, has a corporal nature and

can

have the

quality of

bliss

(jouissance). In other words, utop ia realised but as theatre .

Pleasure (plaisir) is of a less enjoyable na tu re a nd is, broadly speaking, linked

to recognition an d legitimization.

Benjamin and Barthes agree that the truth of a work cannot be extracted

an d considered by means of analysis t can only be grasped en

passant ,

be

presented, be “caught up in a discourse” (see note 30, Le bruissement de lu



Burthes meets Benjumin? 27

langue, p. 51), as Barthes says ab ou t the phen om enon “Text” (textuality). But

for Ba rthes this is then possible. W hen it is successful, that’s it ha t is th e

closest you will ever get. There is no point in waiting for somebody to come

along and sanction w hat you have done.

You

will no t get any closer n th at

particular staging Fo r Benjamin, trut h cann ot even be caught up in a dis-

course, only the image of it and, nota bene, not as a depiction but as a

counter-image. But, on the other hand, he allows himself truth as a distant

utopian sighting point:

“The mystery is the dramatic element where it moves from its own language

into a higher language that is unattainable for the former language.

I t

(the

mystery) can therefore never be expressed in, words, solely in the p resen tation ,

it

is,

in

the strictest sense

of

the word, the ‘dramatic’.”

(Benjamin,

op.

cit . , pp. 200-201)

This is the essential na ture of Benjamin’s concept of Durstellung (presen-

tation), compared to Barthes’ concept of ‘writing’ as a signifying process.

The concepts of naming and unfolding belong to the same category “that

which lies outside th e articulated language, but n on e the less within the co m -

munication” (see note

48,

p. 55).

The autonomy

o

the literary work.

It is on the basis of the same underlying fear

of the pow erful an d possibly terroristic consensus of systematic tho ug ht co n-

cerning that which is tru e an d that which is good in cognition an d in existence

as such ha t Benjamin argues fo r the literary work as the fo rm of tru th par

excellence an d tha t B arthes rejects understandin g literature as being “a corp us

or a series of works.” In the sam e spirit, Ro m an Jak obson was unwilling to re-

duce th e poetic sphere to p oetry an d, conversely, to restrict poetry to t he poetic

function (cf. note 11, p. 356). For Barthes, the work is a strongly coded, struc-

tural whole th at “is the Text’s imaginary tail” (B arthes , Zoc.cit., p. 71, cf. note

30).

But Benjamin does not , however, absolutise the work quite the opposite.

When Benjamin insists on th e autonom y of the literary work it is partly in o rder

to coun teract a tendency towards centralisation an d sectorisation of science

and the form s of cognition, an d partly t o su pp ort the literary work’s stat us as

not capable of being annexed - by virtue of its special, exemplary form of

Wuhrheitsgestultung - by a hermeneutics which seeks to consider the work as

being metaphorical

in

relation

to

a truth. Benjamin never abandoned the

thought of the absolute, but it could only be attained along a metonymically

imaging route. Barthes a nd B enjamin were no t in disagreement ab ou t the route.

But also for Barthes there is too m uch language an d thoug ht of power as well




as institutionalisation linked to the work a n d the history of the work fo r it to

be able to be used

as

an absolute model. So Benjamin would perhaps have ap -

plauded Barthe’s immortal definition of literature:

“This pleasing fraud, this dribbling, this magnificent bluff which makes it poss-

ible to apprehen d language outside of power, in the lustre of a pe rm an ent revol-

ution

of

language use, I give the name of literature.

By literature I do not understand a corpus or a series of works, not even a

line of business or an education sector, but rather the complex graph of tracks

left by practice: tracks of a writing practice.”

(Barthes: L e p n , p.

16)

And it is

this

literature then which

Barthes

wants to ‘save,’ no t fo r posterity

like some gem, but fo r the cognition of it in the naming. Th ink , for example,

of his well-known analysis

S/Z

of Balzac’s novella S ~ r r a s i n e , ~ ~f his reading

of F l a ~ b e r t , ~ ~ven though he belongs to the authors who in

a

linear-time

perspective has begun to ‘save’ himself by

as

Barthes says on a number of

occasions proceeding while pointing to their ma sks (Larevatus p rodeo), or

of the reading of the dramatist Baudelaire, where Barthes in

a

fascinating

analysis4’ reads the hopeful in Baudelaire’s fiasco as a dramatist as a basis

for the special form

of

Lesf leurs

du

mnl.

In the article “Tacite et le baroque funkbre”. (“Tacitus and baroque of

death”)42Barthes offers a n analysis

of

Tacitus’

Annuls

(c. 90-100AD concern-

ing the dead an d destruction spread by the R om an terror regimes (Tiberius).

His aim is to analyse the Baroque way of presenting Death. T h e analysis is inter-

esting

in

this context, because, apart from being congenial as far as the Ba-

roqu e is concerned ~ with Benjamin’s view of the Baroqu e,

as

it emerges in his

analysis of Trauerspiel, it partly confirms his saving an d actualising way o f con-

sidering things o n the basis of an analysis of non-literary m aterial, the chronicle

type, and partly provides an example of a relationship between Barthes’ theory

of discourse and Benjamin’s view of history. B arthes en ds his reading of Ta-

citus’ presentation of the one gruesome m anner of dea th after the other

in

the

following w ay:

“To die, here, is to sensc life. [ I everything reproduces itself and yet nothing

repeats itself

-

that is perhaps the meaning of this universe of Tacitus, where

the brilliant description of The Phoenix Bird VI, 34) seems to establish death

as life’s purest instant.”

( locci t . ,

p.

1

11,

my italics)

Th e article appeared in 1959 in the journ al L’Arc, the same year incidentally

as

Benjamin’s CEuvres Choisies was published in Paris (which did not, how-

ever, include the Trauerspiel study).




Symbol and semiotics. Seen in such perspectives it does not seem all that

remarkable that a semiotic approach to Benjamin is fruitful. The indirect or

the symbolic are from “The Creation” the basis of his conception of human

beings’ way of reflecting. For Benjamin, the idea is the symbolic nature of

language, or that of the nature of language that is symbolic. At first, not all

that far from Saussure’s understanding

of

the sign, which

on

the one hand is

arbitrary both as regards its reference to reality and internally in the relation

between le signijiant and le

sign$&,

and on the other hand is a purely spiritual

phenomenon, or phenomenon of consciousness as we normally call it; Ze

signijii

is a (‘concept’) and le signfiant is an ‘image,’ an inner picture. For

Benjamin, however, this ‘distance’ is not determined by convention. “Lan-

guage never gives mere signs” (see note 5, p. 150). It is true that man is

creative, but also receptively creative. Things are created by God’s word and

they are cognized by the name which man gives the things at their invitation.

Things announce themselves, and this self-announcing man is able to pick

up and, in accordance with this, man names each thing. In this name man

announces his spiritual nature to God - but that is another matter.

That which distinguishes Benjamin’s conception of language and signs

from, for example, Saussure’s, is at the same time that which moves him in

the direction of, for example, Barthes. This should be understood as meaning

that in the semiotic showdown with Saussure, as formulated by Barthes, Kris-

teva, Derrida, e t ~ . , ~ ~aussure’s conception of the sign was criticised for being

too static, nominalistic, logocentric and formalistic in the sense ‘algebraic,’

which was also by the way Roman Jakobson’s reason for rejecting the Danish

linguist Louis Hjelmslev’s attempt to distinguish between phonemes and

sound. A form-substance issue, which may be related in some way to the

arbitrary nature or intentio of language that interests

us

here. I do, however,

not intend to go any further into this in this article.44 Instead, a draft for

semiotics was prepared that was less mentalistic and more substantial, as it

dealt with practice in a more detailed way than the distribution life of Saus-

sure’s signs in society and, first and foremost, it was generally dynamic and

open.

But

it

was the widespread understanding of the fundamental significance

of dialectics and reversibility for the formation of language and signs and

the use of these which underlay the idea that the discourse of the individual

only existed by virtue of another person’s discourse and that it is always

directed towards this second person at the same time as it is being directed



30

John Thobo-Carlsen

towards what is being spoken about. Kristeva clearly formulated it at that

t ime in the concepts of translinguistics and inter te~tuali ty,~~nd later in her

distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic,46 as two inseparable sides

of the fo rm at io n of the signifying process.

A

distinction that collects together

experiences stretching way back in ou r life with language an d signs. It is that

intentio which lies in the orientedness, this always already th at f or m s a bridge

to Benjamin’s semiotics of self-announcing , o r semio-symbiosis.

In the article “Reading signs of illness” (see note

14)

I have tried to show

how this symbiosis develops in the respective reading of sym ptom s an d n arra -

tive presentation of the body, the patient, the doctor or the person carrying

ou t the treatmen t.47 In his article “Le troisieme

sen^ ^'

Barthes has dealt in

an image-analysing context with the tremendously com plex, mimetic fo rm of

comm unication of which art a n d literature in particular m ake use and which,

in the distinction made between the obvious and the obtuse focus on the

transition from the semiotic

to

the symbolic or, more specifically, from the

denotative to the c ~ n n o t a t i v e . ~ ~

In th at way, language can b oth stand

f o r

w hat it says (the symbol) and for

precisely what it does

not

say (the allegory). It can do this by virtue of both

being

wha t it says (self-announcing) a nd

not being

wh at it says (message). O n

several occasions, Benjamin poin ts to this link between language’s ‘symbolic’

way of functioning and the sign, where he also expresses his understanding

for the complexity of the way in which the sign functions:

“For language is always not simply announcing that which is disposed to be

announced but also a symbol of that which is not disposed to be announced.

The symbolic side of language has to do with its link to the sign, but also

stretches, for example, in certain respects to nam e a nd judgm ent. These d o not

only have a communicating aspect but in all probability also have

-

closely

linked to this ~ a symbolic function.”

(see note 5, p.

156 ”

Their paths cross once more in the antithesis. Here, for example, their idea

that the allegorical counter-image creates the field of tension in the text that

is able to release one from all that which is cramped and unfree in existence.

Th is release always comes ‘from w ithin,’ from language’s concrete use of em-

blematic stereotypes.” And not ‘from without,’ like the imp act of a n already

existing truth or release in a symbolic indirectness in the text. In the case of

Benjamin and the Baroque this takes place with roots in the hieroglyphics of

antiquity;“ fo r Barthes, with roots in the doxa of everyday speech, a s fo r



Barthes meets Benjumin? 31

example in his reading of the fragmentary discourse

of

loves3 and the myths

of everyday.s4In Benjamin’s critique of the ‘profane concept of symbols’ of

classical-romantic aesthetics and in his indication of the cognition potential

of the dialectic concept of allegory there is an attitude which is fundamentally

in agreement with that of Barthes regarding the semiotic way in which both

the content and the expression sides of language function.

“Like a flame, all the mimetic about language can more likely only become

visible with the aid of a bearer. This bearer is the sem iotic. Such is the cohesion

of meaning involved by words or sentences the bearer whereby the similarity

can not become visible except as a stroke of lightning. For its

production through

the humun being is ~ in the same way as the taking care of it through the humun

being

-

in many, and especially the important, instances linked to

a

sudden

flaring up. The similarity rushes past. So it is not improbable that the speed of

writing an d reading increases the fusion of the sem iotic and the mimetic within

the field of language.”55

In the classical-romantic interpretation the symbolic, qua its mere production

or appearance, was to mediate a direct transmission of the Beautiful to the

True (the divine).shAccording to Benjamin, it is in such mystifying consider-

ations of the symbolic that traditional art criticism finds fertile ground for

its ideas about the permanent, static interconnectedness between expression

and content and thus lacking any dialectic feeling and experience it avoids

taking account of the content in its analysis of the expression and of the

expression in its analysis of the ~ontent.’~

It is in opposition to the classically direct intimacy in the understanding of

how literature functions and works that Benjamin’s focusing on the dialectic

character of opposites in allegory is to be ~n d e r s t o o d . ~ ~his is not so dissimilar

to Levi-Strauss’ theories of myth in character consider, for example, the

linkings of mutual structures of opposites in the (Edipus analysis. The counter-

myth speaks (in the sense readdspeaks: understands it

in

itself,

in

its language)

the primary myth by virtue of the opposition

notu bene

on

a

common basis.

Dialectics only functions on a common semantic axis. The myth speaks its own

language

as

Barthes also emphasized in

Myth Today:

“Myth is a type

of

speech.” (see note 54, p. 193). A speech different from the immediate type of

speech. In the same

way,

allegory challenges established speech,

it

offers itself

as a counter-image for only in the interaction with it is the hardened (em-

phatic) and illusory opened up in immediate speech.

For Benjamin ~ and that must not be suppressed his theory of crackling

contains a hope of returning by this path, and only by this concrete path,

to



32

John Thobo-Curlsen

wholeness, a cognition of and a life in spiritual and physical unity and bal-

ance. But even though this method of paradoxality par excellence really has

this aim for Benjamin, a number of elements in the method seem to indicate

that he and Barthes are rather aiming for a more ‘realistic’ objective - an

epistemology

of

language, a theory of cognition that is based on man’s life

and experience in and with language. In a way, this was the point of departure

for both of them. The story of the Creation for Benjamin, and the corre-

sponding conception of a language without blemish that may lie behind the

early concept in Barthes of an

Pcriture b l ~ n c h e , ~ ~

ike a,fata

morguna

of writ-

ing. The idea of an ‘ecriture blanche’ has to do with an actual, ongoing

‘desacralization’ and ‘deritualisation’ of the way of writing literature, as prac-

ticed by Mallarme and others. A revolt against the naturalising and mythol-

ogising tendencies in the evaluation of literary language usage. The aim was

“to create an ‘ecriture blanche’ that has been freed of every type of depen-

dency on a certain norm of language usage” (see note 2,

Le

degrP

z t r o

de

I’tcriture,

p.

55).

An attempt to create a literary form that broke with the

stereotype, with the cliches, with the mannerisms, whilst re-establishing itself

as a ‘neutral,’ innocent,’ ‘indicative,’ linguistic form of naming. With a refer-

ence to Camus

1’Etrunger

Barthes sums up as follows:

“the writing is thus reduced to a sort

of

negative mode, where the social and

mythical characteristics in a language use are suspended for the benefit of the

neutral and immobile status of the form; in this way thought retains all its

responsibility, without filling in an ancillary commitment concerning the form

in a historical situation which does not suit it.”

op.ci t . ,

p. 56)

The relationship of this aim to that of Benjamin’s becomes more and more

evident. The allegorical counter-structures of the Baroque, which function

with the aid of hieroglyphic sanctities, must, according to Benjamin, be inter-

preted as (Barthes would say: connotes with) an expression of the conception

of

an Adamical language. “Allegory is both convention and expression;

and that is basically a contradiction.”h0 In its form, Baroque Truuerspiel is

fragmentary in its mode of expression, as is language. The parts speak the

whole not i n the form of an addition, but rather like a multiplication:

“Perhaps it

is

that which is baroque: a progressive opposition between unity

and the whole, an art where the extension is not summative, but multiplicative

-

in brief, an accelerative density”.

(Barthes: “Tacite

..”

p. 108,

se

note

42)



Barth es meets Benjamin.?

33

Like myths and folk tales, by the way, which speak their sorrow. A ‘bricolage’

which we first came across in Levi-Straws, but which we realise is a funda-

mental condition for our semiotic way of announcing ourselves.

To

read these

conventionalities is like carrying our active mourning. One follows the labori-

ous path one has to take if one is to understand in a valid way what (after

all) is being said. Like the one haiku poem that reads the other. As a reader

one reads in one’s own language. And that which one reads is the second

and other language. In this case, the Baroque

Trauerspiel,

which performs

a language where the code is known.61 It consists of culturally laid-down

unambiguities, which in the special allegorical shadow play rouse the reader’s

own language ability.

Truth and Beauty

Barthes had to abandon the hope of writing that was totally immaculate,

that was not to “be subservient to some triumphant ideology” ( L e degrk

zkro ...,

p.

55,

see note

2),

because “nothing (‘after all’ [my addition])

is

more

unfaithful than an ecriture blanche”

( locci t . ,

p. 57). He later revised his con-

cept of ecriture from being a diachronic, transitive entity to being a dia-

chronic, intransitive entity. In a corresponding way, Benjamin seems to be on

a collision course with himself. His wholeness utopia as a return to God’s

Word

prevents him from attaining the final atonement of body and soul in

human language production, as Barthes in his way supplies a draft theory of

textuality. But when Benjamin insists on the exemplary, fragmentary

Wahrheitsgestaltung in literature, as we have seen, in a constant perspective

of modernity and not ‘classical-centristic,’ as Barthes called it, then it seems

to be even more difficult to argue for an extratextual total synthesis. And

when Benjamin even

so

seemingly have to do this, it rather favours the neo-

Kantian progressive ideology of harmony, peace and tolerance between

people than his important epistemological project on the presentation and

development of science and literature “not of the factual but of the authenti-

cally possible” (Goldbaek, p. 125, see note 28).

The Benjaminean redemption is found in allegory’s illusion-free insight-

fulness into the mythical substratum, based on a physical presence, but com-

bined with an expectation concerning the reversal in the symbol, as the syn-

thesis, the finite reference to truth or God. The Barthesean redemption is

found in the same place as regards the allegorical level. And he could prob-



34

John Thobo-Carlsen

ably also conceive of a pure language of the imaginary as a language utopia,

but as he regards language as a place for the body to be lost in and the act

of writing one’s reading as being the actual act of physical release ~ with the

bliss experienced thereby (when successful) as a sy n t he d 2 he must in his

efforts to

attain reality

“give up his ‘sincerity”’

(Fragments d’un

discours

am-

oureux, p. 115, see note 2) and not look back :

“What the writing demands, and what

no

person in

love

would be prepared

to

accept without being torn apart, is to offer Ljust] (my bracket)

/ i t f le of

the

Imaginary and in that way secure a bit of reality footing round its language.

[ I

The Imaginary language

would be

(my italics) nothing less than the utopia

of language; a completely original, paradisiacal Adam-language, a ‘natural lan-

guage completely free of distortion and illusion, a cloudless mirroring of the

senses, a sensual language (die sensualische Sprache)’: ‘In the sensual language

all

souls

talk to each other, they do not need anything else than language, since

it is the language of nature’.”

(opc i t . ,

p.

115,

Barthes mentions that the inserted

quotations are from Jakob Bohme)”

Thereby Barthes differs

immediately

from Benjamin on an important point

that seems to have to do with the difference in their conception of and interest

in the reader. This in turn has to do with the fact that where Benjamin was

unable to look for the synthesis in the meeting or confrontation with the

other in a Lacanian or psychoanalytical sense - as Barthes seems to do, even

though everything in Benjamin’s way

of

looking at the language of literature

points in this direction there Benjamin goes for an unambiguous solution.

Not because he calls upon the beloved as a martyr that is both in accord-

ance with Barthes and an immanent consideration but because he, in

answer to the relevant question “whether truth is able to do beauty justice,”

sticks to Plato, who “ascribes to truth the task of letting beauty be respon-

sible for being.” Truth is transcendental and

is

more than beauty for Benja-

min. While Barthes chases truth

in

beauty and has to admit that truth

will

never be able to do beauty justice. Beauty is more than truth.

“Eros (..,) is not unfaithful to his original endeavour when he lets his longing

be for truth; for truth

is

also beautiful.

It

is not

so

much beautiful in itself as

for Eros. The sume applies to human love: u person is beautiful for the beloved

not in himself or herselji and precisely becuuse his or her body presents it se lf in a

higher order than that of

the

beautiful. The same also applies to truth: it

is

not

so

much beautiful in itself as

fo r the person seeking it.

(...)

Truth’s nature,

us

richness qf ideas presented by itself rather embodies the idea thut talk o f truth’k

beauty can never be hroken of : (...) The appearance of the beautiful as a se-

ducer, as long as

it does

not seek to

d o

anything else than appear, attracts the

pursuit of reason and allows its innocence to be cognized when it flees to the




“The

altar of truth. Eros follows this flight, not as

a

pursuer, but as a lover; in such

a way that beauty for its own appearance’s sake always flees, both out of fear

of the reasonable and out of fear of the lover. And only the lover can bear

witness to the fact that truth is not a revealing that destroys the secret, but

instead a revelation which does it justice.

Is

truth able to

do

beauty justice? is

the crucial question raised in Plato’s Symposium. Plato answers it, since he as-

cribes truth the task oj let tin g beauty he responsible fo r being. In this sense he

therefore unfolds truth as the content of beauty.”

(see note 21, p. 21 1) [my italics]

person is beautiful for the beloved, not in himself or herself:’ and pre-

cisely because his or her body ‘(Presents itselfin a higher order than itself.”

Truth is beautiful for “the person who is seeking it.” “The appearance of the

beautiful as

u

seducer

I ’

“Only the lover can bear witness” that truth does

not appear as the result of a revealing, but it rather “appears in an event”

(loc.cit., p. 211).

At last the body comes into focus, here seen through Benjamin’s special

prism, although Barthes would relish the issue for, as he says:

“I

do

not dream

1

am forming sentences: it is the body as

I

regard it, and no

longer the body as I listen

to

it, which acquires a

phatic

(contacting) function

between my language production and the fluid desire on which this production

feeds

-

by latching on to an observing, not a message”

(Barthes: Roland Burtlies, p. 144-145)

As

we saw in Benjamin, man is naming and cognizing in language, but was

created of matter. Man was created in God’s image, i.e. in the image of the

creating substance, which is language. In other words, the body too was

created in the image of the creator language. 1.e. the body, one’s own and

that

of

others, is cognizable in the act of naming, but, it should be noted,

only that part of it which is disposed to be communicated. At the same time,

the nature of naming is dependent on how it is diposed to be communicated.

For, as we recall, “spiritual nature is only identical with the linguistic insofar

as it is disposed to be announced [...nur sofern es mitteilbar ist]” (see note 5,

p. 142). In other words, what we are talking about is the body’s linguistic

communicability. Bodies are also able to communicate excellently without

recourse to words, as we all know. Like all other things in nature they have

their own silent language. It is this silent language which we translate with

our verbal language and to which we add cognition.

So we can conclude that nor is truth about the body beautiful in itself, but

it might become

so

in a (literary) presentation, a self-presentation, and only

for the person set towards it. For Barthes (and for Benjamin) Truth has no




relation to the intentional: language announces that which is djposed

to

be

announced an d that which

is

disposed to be announced is the linguistic.

Truth does not take

up

with the intention; it manifests itself as a certain

procedure. For Barthes, Truth is the approachin g n ature of th e presentation,

e.g. writing (or in some oth er way unfolding) one’s reading. T his seems to be

the only possible way

of

com bining the world

of

cognition a nd th at

of

living.

(Translation

by John

Irons)

NOTES

1. Ro land Barthes: “Litterature e t meta-langage” (orig. 1959) in:

Essais critiques,

Paris

1971. p. 107.

2. Ro land Barthes:

Le de gr i zPro de l’ecriture,

Paris, 1953, p.

5 5 ,

see also p. 12 an d

Frag-

ments

d’un

discours amo ureux ,

Paris 1977,p. 1 15.

3. Walter Benjamin: “Der Begriff der K unstkritik in der deutschen Ro m antik ” (1919)

in: Gesammelte

Schrijten

I,1, Fra nkf urt a m M ain 1974, p. 21, which quotes Joha nn

Gottlieb Fichte:

Sumtl iche Werke,

Vol. I, (1845-1846), Berlin 1965, p. 67: “[Die]

Handlung d er Freiheit, durch welche die Fo rm zur F orm der Fo rm als ihres Gehaltes

wird und in sich selbst zur iickk ehr t, heiBt Reflexion.”

4. Joh an n Gottlie b Fichte: “D as System der Sittenlehre nach d en Principien de r Wis-

senschaftslehre” in: Samtliche

Werke,

Vol. IV, (1845-1846) Berlin 1965, pp. 23-24.

5. I 140-141 in Walter Benjam in: “U be r Spr ache iiberhaupt und i iber die Spra che des

Menschen” in:

GesammelteSchriften,

I I I Fran kfurt am M ain 1977.

6. Cf. Samuel Beckett:

Murphy

(orig. 1938), Lo nd on 1963, where M’s daily life is di-

vided into zones tha t correspond to the various functions an d roles of language as

mentioned here. In M ., Dante’s three stages: Inferno, P urg ator io an d Paradiso are

the compa rison. In the 1st zone “the fo rm s have parallels,” says M., “here the pleas-

ure was reprisal, the pleasure of reversing th e physical experience” (p .78) “here t he

entire physical fiasco cou ld become a roa ring success.” Th e 2nd zone is the sphere

of

contemplation and aesthetics. Here there

is

a cha ir which

M.

sits down on w hen he

wants to s top registering the world of realities. This zone is the space of peace a nd

individuality. The 3rd zone, Paradiso in Dante, is the goal of M’s dreams. It

is

the

place of the irratio nal, the resolution

in

a higher totality - he calls it abso lute free-

dom

-

Cf. my analysis of the b oo k in: Joh n Thobo -Carlsen:

Es te t i k og kommunik -

ation (Aesthetics and

C o ~ m ~ ~ i c a t ~ o n ~ ,dense 1984.

7. Roland Barthes:

Legon.

Leqon inaugurale de la chaire de semiologie littkraire du

College de France, p rononce le 7 janvier 1977. Paris, 1978, pp. 15-16.

8. Walter Benjamin: “Z ur Kr itik der Gew alt”, in:

Gesammelte Schriften,

II,1, 1977.

9.

Roland Barthes:

Roland

Barthes,

Paris, 1975,

p.

148.

10. Andre L eroi-Gourhan: “L e geste et la parole”, Paris 1965.

1 1. Ro m an Jak obson: “Linguistics an d Poetics” (orig. 1960), in: Style in

Language,

T.

A . Sebeok(Ed.), Mass. 1966. Rom an Jakob son uses the expression “the set toward”

an d writes ‘Einstellung’ in a n ex planatory parenthesis concerning setting toward

oneself. Of course, it is always possible to discuss whether language can d o a ny thing



Barthes mee ts Benjamin? 31

by itself, or whether language can only unfold in the meeting between language users

in reader and writer roles respectively and therefore also can set toward itself or ad-

opt a position towards itself in the special form of communication which places its

own communicability in focus.

For

a further discussion and use of this passage in

Roman Jakobson you are referred to Thobo-Carlsen:A st e ti k og konzmunikation, p.

77ff. (see note 6).

12. A more thorough presentation is provided in John Thobo-Carlsen: Ankomsten ti1

virkeligheden. Om orholdet mellem litterar sprogbrug og la m ing i orlrengelse af Ro -

land Barthes, R oman Jakobson og Walter Benjamin. [ Th e adventure of Reality. On

the Relation between the Literary

Use

of Language and Reading in Continuation of

Roland Barthes, Rom an Jakobson and Walter Benjamin]

Odense: Pjecer fra Institut

for Litteraturvidenskab og Semiotik, Odense Universitet 1993, of which this article

is

a

revised version of the final section.

13. Cf. Roland Barthes:

SystPme de la mode,

Paris 1967.

14. For a possible application of these ideas, cf. John Thobo-Carlsen: “At lase syg-

domstegn [Reading Signs of Illness]”, in:

Agrippa.

Psykiatrisk Tidsskrift, Cop. 1993.

15. Rodolphe Gasche: “Saturnine Vision and the Question

of

Difference: Reflections

on Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Language” in: Rainer Nagele (Ed.): Benjamin’s

Grounds. ew Readings

of

Walter Benjamin, Detroit: Wayne State University Press,

1988, seep. 91.

16. Ferdinand de Saussure:

Cours de linguistique gknir ale ,

(orig. 1915), Paris 1968, p.

101.

17.

Roland Barthes: “Presentation,” in: Communications 4 Paris 1964,p. 2: “I1 faut en

somme admettre dbs maintenant

la

possibilite de renverser un jour la proposition de

Saussure: la linguistique n’est pas une partie, mime privilegike, de la science generale

des signes, c’est la semiologie qui est une partie de la linguistique: trbs precisement

cette partie qui prendrait en charge les grandes unitks signifante s du discours; de la

sorte apparaitrait l’unite des recherches qui se mbnent actuellement en anthropolog-

ie, en sociologie en psychoanalyse et en stylistique autour du concept de significa-

tion.”

18.

Cf. Thobo-Carlsen:

A t

l a w

sygdornstegn

(see note 14).

19. Roman Jakobson: Essa is de lingu istique gCnCrale, Vols. 1 and 2, (orig. 1963), Paris

1973, p. 28.

20.

Cf. Kurt Godel: “Uber formal unentschiedbare Satze der Principia Mathematica

und verwandter Systeme I” in: Monatshefte fur Mathematik und Physik, Vol. 38,

1931, pp. 173-198 and John Thobo-Carlsen: “Semiotique de la lecture” in:

DegrPs

no. 72: L’interpretation (II), Brussels, 1992.

21. Intentio understood acc. to Walter Benjamin:

“ ..

Intention auf die Sprache als sol-

che” (in “Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers” in: Gesamm elte Schrijten I V , 16) in a non-

subjective and nonempirical perspective; intentio not understood as consciousness

through its will having an intentional relation to a Truth that it wants to bring out

but as a discourse being directed or oriented towards something or other

-

ts com-

municability. Or “Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis als ein in der Begriffsintention

bestimmter ist nicht die Wdhrheit. Die Wahrheit ist ein aus Ideen gebildetes inten-

tionsloses Sein.

(...)

Die Wahrheit ist der Tod der Intention” (Walter Benjamin: “Erk-

enntniskritische Vorrede” (preface to: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (orig.

1925) in: Gesamm elte Schrijten. I , l , Frankfurt am Main, 1974, see p. 216).

22. Roland Barthes: “L‘aventure semiologique” (orig. 1974) in: L hventure skmiolo-



38

John Thobo-Curlsen

gique,

Paris 1985, pp. 13-14, Here translated from “In trod uc tion: Th e Semiological

Adventurer” in Roland Barthes: The Semiotic Challenge, Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

1988, see pp. 7 8.

23. Cf. John T hobo-C arlsen: “Liesningens semiotik” (“Semiotics of Reading”), in: K &

K no. 75, Cop . 1993 (in French: “Skm iotique d e la lecture” in: D egres no. 72: L ‘inter-

pretation

(11), Bruxelles, 1992) an d “ Om glz de n ved a t Iiese” [On the Pleasure of

Reading]” in Svejgaard og Thob o-Carlsen (Eds.): Fantusi og$ktion (Imagina tion

and

Fiction]

Odense 1989.

24. Barthes was obliged to pu t up with quite a lot himself, partly in conn ection with the

argume ntation for the rejection of the dissertation Systime de

la

mode and not

least in connection with the protracted dispute with P rof. Ra ym on d Picard a nd a

whole series of university- and o the r personalities of established and traditional lit-

erary-critical a nd literary-interpretative persuasion concerning Racine a nd litera-

ture in general. Barthes’ bo ok Sur Racine appeared in 1963, bu t it was written in the

years 1958-1960. Picard’s atta ck o n Barthes an d the so-called “Nouvelle Critique,”

to which he believed Bar thes belonged,

Nouvelle Critique

ou

nouvelle imposture

was

published in 1963, an d Barthes’ reply an d gathering together which was also a

sketch of the possibilities of establishing a real science of literature

Critique

e t

Vkr-

i t k appeared in 1966. Th e same year, by the way, as Gre imas’ Skmantique Structurale,

which by m any is considered t o be the basis fo r an d the beginning of the science of

literature as an independent university discipline, in Denmark at any rate. This is

interesting to note. But, on the o ther ha nd , one can also say tha t B arthes, in the argu -

ment with Picard, struck one of the blows that was apparently going to be stru ck on

behalf of the future literary discipline. It is also interesting, that it was not only

Barthes who ha d dissertations o r draft dissertations tur ned down. D errida, du ring

roughly the same period, had a dissertation o n related issues turn ed down in Paris,

and a ‘Habilitationsschrift’ [a do ctor al thesis th at would qualify for university lec-

turing] by Benjamin suffered the same fate at the o ther end of the E uro pea n axis in

Berlin. Despite the difference in time, I would da re to claim th at the essence of the

advanced reasons was virtually the same. The recognition of Barthes comes as a

compromise with a professorship a t College de Fra nce (n ot on the initiative of F ou-

cault, as implied in various sources, but on th at of Barthes himself, later su pp orte d

by Fo ucau lt) Benjamin’s recognition as a university teacher never comes, altho ug h

he gains a certain degree

of

recognition through the Fran kfu rt School (e.g. Ad orn o

teaches for a term in 1931 in Benjamin

s

rejected Habitationsschrift (U dd Tse e note

21) at F ran kfu rt U niversity). Derrida’s dissertation becomes a Doc tora t d’Eta t sur

travaux, i.e. a comp ilation of formerly published works hu s achieved de facto . In

1967 Barthes published the third version of

SystPme

u

mode

instead of handing

it in as a dissertation, although Andre M artin et already ha d accepted to diriger lu

thPse.

25. Fr om Walter Benjamin: “U be r den Begriff der G eschichte (1940)” in:

Gesammelte

Schrijtten, 1,2, 1974,VT my italics).

26.

Paradoxa is also a central aesthetic mode of presentation in Benjamin: e.g. UddT, p.

390 and

E.v.,

p. 93. Also fou nd in innumerable instances in B arthes, thou gh in

Ro-

land

Barthes,

Paris 1975, p. 75 the risk of th e pa rad ox a tipping over into doxa is also

discussed: the coun ter-language can also become rigid.

27. Th e figures in the square brackets refer to those of th e quota tion immediately above.

28. A fine treatment of these analyses is to be fo un d in Henning Goldbiek: De

tavse sire-




29.

30.

31.

32.

33

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

ners

sang. Oplysningens dialektik hos den tidlige W alter Benjamin (T h e Song of the

Silent Sirens. The Dialectics of the Enlightenment at the Early Walter Benjumin]

Cop. 1990.

Codes are here to be understood as a linguistic tendency, convention or quotation-

perspective, as

in

Roland Barthes:

S/Z,

Paris 1976 (orig. 1970) and in “Analyse tex-

tuelle d’un conte d’Edgar Poe” (orig. 1973) in: L’aventure semiologique, Paris 1985

i t is talked about as a deji-vu, -ecrit, -lu, -fait og vecu, i.e. as the “already” that con-

stitutes our culture and everything we undertake. Cf. Thobo-Carlsen: “Lresningens

semiotik” (see note 23), which deals with the code concept

on

the basis of the men-

tioned texts.

Harald Steinhagen: “Om Walter Benjamins allegori-begreb [On the Concept of Alle-

gory of Walter Benjamin]” (orig. 1978) in: Kultur

&

Klasse 47, Cop. 1983, pp. 100-

101. Cf. about the inclusion of the reference points in the study object, Roland

Barthes: “De L‘oevre au texte” (1971) in:

Le

bruissement de la langue. Essais critique

IV.

Paris 1984.

Walter Benjamin: “Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers [The task of the translator]” in: Ge-

sammelte Schrijten,

IV,

l , 1974.

In the article “Roland Barthes: the critical subject (an idea for research)” in:

Paru-

gruph

vol. 1 no.

1 ,

1988, pp. 175-1 80 Peter Collier puts forward the idea

of

a study

on

the relation between Barthes og Benjamin:

“A

full-scale study

of

the conjunction

of Barthes and Benjamin would be a daunting and exciting project” (p. 178). Cf. also

Catherine Coquio: “Roland Barthes et Walter Benjamin: image, tautologie, dia-

lectique” in: Catherine Coquio et Regis Salado (Eds.): Barthes

aprPs

Barthes. Une

actualitk en question,

Pau 1993 and Dieter Mettler: “Friedrich Schlegel- Walter Ben-

jamin

-

Roland Barthes. Philosophische Begrundungsversuche der Literaturkritik”

in: Wit-kendes Wort Deutsche Spruche und iterutur in Forschung und Lehre. Vol. 40

(3), 1990, pp. 422434.

Cf. the articles “Sur la lecture [On reading]” and “Ecrire la lecture w rit ing reading]”

in:

Le

bruissement de

la

langue

f

The R ustle

of

Lan gua ge]. Essais critique

IV.

Paris

1984, which is dealt with in Thobo-Carlsen: “Om glreden ved at lcse” (see note 23).

Roland Barthes: Le Degrk zero de I’kcriture, (see note 2) provides a brief history of

literary language usage during the period.

Cf. i.e. Thobo-Carlsen: “Om glreden ved at Irese” on this subject (see note 23).

In

the following

I

have sought support in Henning Goldbak’s interpretation of Ben-

jamin’s analysis of Goethe’s novel. Cf. Goldbrek “De tavse sireners sang” (see note

28).

Walter Benjamin: Gesamm elte Schrijten 1,3: 835-837: Erster Teil: Das Mythische als

Thesis

(...)

Zweiter teil: Die Erloschung als Antithesis

(...)

Dritter Teil: Die Hoffnung

als Synthesis”.

Walter Benjamin: “Goethes Wuhlverwandtschaften,” (orig. 1925) in: Gesammelte

Schrijten, I,1, Frankfurt am Main 1974, pp. 140-141.

Barthes: S / Z (see note 29).

Barthes:

Le

DegrC zt ro de l’kcriture,

the section on “The Craft of Style” (see note 2).

Barthes:

Le Degrk zkro

de I’kcriture, the section

on

“The Dramatics of Baudelaire”

(see note 2).

Roland Barthes: “Tacite et le baroque funebre” (orig. 1959) in: Essa is critiques, Paris

1971.



4

John

Thobo-Car l sen

43

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51

~ ~

Emblemata. M artin Opitz:

Deutsche Poeterey ( I

624) calls em blems

hidden theology.

An emblem consists of: image (picture), title (inscriptio), epigramme (subscriptio).

Cf.Thobo-Carlsen: B s t e t i k og kommunikation, the section “E n skematisering af det

semiotiske sted [A S ketching of the S emiotic Site]” p. 241ff.

I have dealt with this in op.cit., p. 61f and p. 132.

Introduction and references concerning this, see e.g. Thobo-Carlsen

op.cit.,

es-

pecially the section “Tekstproduktion og det poetiske sprog [Text Production and

Poetic Language].”

Cf. Julia Kristeva:

La rtvolution

du

languge p ottiyu e,

Paris 1974. Here she also

proses that the term intertextuulity be replaced by the term transposition (p. 60), be-

cause, as she says, there has been a tendency to interpret intertextuality as being a

fo rm of sou rce critique. By the word transposition she wishes to stress that moving

from a system of meaning to an othe r system calls for a completely new form ulatio n,

i.e. in term s of the den otatio n and the statement.

See also the article John T hobo -Car lsen: “A t laese spillet [Reading the Game],” in the

daily newspaper

Injormation,

18.6.92.

Ro land Barthes: “ Le troisikme sense” (orig. 1970), in: L’obvie et lbbt us. Essais cri-

t i m e

ZII Paris 1982.

For a treatment of this, linked to R om an Jakobson’s concept of the poetic, see Joh n

Thobo-Carlsen: “At laese det man ser [Reading what you see]” in: Bo Hakon

Jsrgensen, L ars Ole Sauerberg an d Anne S cott Ssrensen (Eds.):

A t

se

teksten

[Re-

garding the te xt ], Odense 1993.

Therefore i t would seem to me to be not only more prom ising but also more valid

to emphasise the similarities between Benjamin’s conception of language, signs and

semiotics an d tha t of Barthes and Kristeva rath er tha n their dissimilarities, as e.g.

Lars Erslev Andersen does in: “[Benjamin on the M ove. Ab ou t the Use

of

Benjamin

in Am erica],” in: Tore Eriksen et al. (Eds .) Tankestreger. Essa ys

om

Walter Benja-

min. Arhus 1989, p. 113, note 3: “In Benjamin, the Expression ‘Semiotic Languag e

refers to a Lan guag e which conveys M eaning , which is Intentional. ‘The Semiotic’

thus has the oppo site meaning for him th an the on e given by Kristeva in Die Revo-

lution der poetischen

Spruche (F ra nk fu rt am Main 1978). Firstly, intentionality in

Benjam in is in this con text language’s built-in comm unicability an d no t a question

of my manifesting som e intention or other, c f. note 21 above. Secondly, Benjamin is

fully aware of language’s various layers of p resentation , as is

so

beautifully revealed

in this and the following Benjamin quo tations from “Ub er S prache uberhau pt ...”,

p. 156 and from “U ber d as mimetische Vermogen,” p. 123 (see no te

55).

On the other

han d, the semiotic in K risteva is not the un coded o r non-directed. o r in som e wav

or o ther the m ere presence of more or less chance p articularities as a basis for sign

formation (cf. the description of the symptom in my above-mentioned article on

signs of illness). The semiotic in Kristeva consists of a stadium which has always

already been articulated , w hich in itself is not made u p of signs but wh ich is oriented

towards being able to enter in to

a

sign relation (“pre-signes,” Kristeva,

p.

39). You

are reminded of Hjemslev’s substance category as formed meaning. Sign derivates

or functives which ‘seek like’ to enter into a sign relation with. E.g. in the d iagnosis

and therapy situation in the form of the subject, who comes o nto the stage an d takes

(responsibility for) sign formation by naming the thing or telling its story. Benja-

min’s an d Kristeva’s pa ths also cross in language, the sign an d nam ing as the path to

understanding.



Bar thes meets Benjamin? 41

(Goldblek, p.

11

7 an d p. 11 : “the emblem books the public was familiar with”).

Benjam in names emblems in U d d T , p. 339. See also B arthes’ fragm ent ‘“L‘emblbme,

le gag ” in: Roland Barthes, p. 83 (see no te 26).

52. Hieroglyphs. Benjamin quotes Schopenhauer UddT, p. 338, who mentions hiero-

glyphs. “T he historical basis of allegory was the enigmatic hieroglyphs, which were

an antiq ue puzzle system of images which stood fo r words an d letters. This an tique

system was discovered in the Renaissance, when people believed th at th e enigm atic

hieroglyphs were the anc ient Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were considered t o be div-

ine images” (G old bz k, p. 117).

53. Cf. Roland Barthes: Fragments d’un discours amoureux, (see note 2 ) .

54. Cf . Ro land Barthes:

Mytologies,

Paris, 1957.

55. Walter Benjamin: “U ber d as mimetische Vermogen” in: Cesamm elte Schriften, I I , l ,

Fra nk furt am M ain 1977, p. 213 (my italics).

56. “Als symbolische Gebilde sol1da s Schone bruchlos ins Gottliche ubergehen” (Ben-

jamin: UddT, p. 337).

57. “Bei diesem, dem vulgaren Sprachgebrduch, ist da s Auffallendste, daB der Begriff,

de r in gleichsam imperativischer Ha ltun g auf eine unzertrennliche Verbundenheit

von F orm und Inh alt sich bezieht, in den D ienst einer philosophischen Beschoni-

gung der Unk raft trit t , der d a mangels dialektischer Stahlun g in de r Formanalyse

der Inhalt, in der Inhaltsasthetik die F orm entgeht.” (Benjamin, opci t . ,

P.

336).

58. “D em gegenuber ist die barocke Apotheose dialek tisch. Sie vollzieht sich im U m -

schlagen von E xtremen.” (Benjamin, opci t . , p. 337).

59. In

Le Degr t

zPro

de

I’tcriture p. 55f (see no te 2) .

60.

..

die Allegorie ist beides, Konvention und A usdruck; und beide sind von H au s au s

widerstreitend.” (B enjamin: UddT, p. 351).

61. Concerning reading and codes, see Thobo-Carlsen: “Llesningens semiotik” (see

no te 23).

62. A construction that unifies Barthes’ efforts from his very first meeting (through

Gre imas) w ith the D anish linguist Viggo Brerndal’s concept of n eutrality via le deg rt

z t r o (cf. Barthes: “Rkponses” in:

Tel

Qu el47 , 1971, p. 98) an d

tcriture blanche,

to

his work with “le neutre” (cf. Barthes:

Roland Barthes,

p. 128 ). (Cf. also Bern ard

Comment: Vers le Neutre, Paris 1991).

63.

Frugm ents d’un

discours amoureux was written o n th e basis of a systematic reading of

Goethe’s

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.

In this book Barthes also mentions Jakob

Bohme (p. 197), bu t here quoted in No rm an

0

Brown

Life Against Death.

The

psychoanalytic Meaning ofH istory London : Sphere Books 1968 1959). Bohm e lived

1575-1624. He was a Ge rm an p hilosopher, but m ade his living as a cobbler. He de-

veloped a theory o n the inner relationship between opposites: something ca n only

be explained by its opposite. In connection with this, theories about natural lan-

guage an d sensual language (“die sensualische Sprache”). H e was a source of inspi-

ration for many G erm an philosophers, i.e. Hegel, as well as for W alter Benjamin.

John

Thobo-Carlsen.

Bo rn 1943. Ph.D. (Copen hagen). Lecturer in Gen era l Literature,

University of Odense. Has published books on Knut Hamsun and general aesthetics

john thobo-carlsen, benjamin&barthes

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