The metaphysical foundations of the literary genres

Olavo de Carvalho

Translated by Pedro Sette Câmara

Author's note to the first brazilian edition (1991) 

I. Formulating the question  

II. Some contemporary opinions  

III. The mode of existence of genres  

IV. Ontological foundations  

V. Verse and prose 

VI. Narrative and exposition 

VII. Species of the narrative genre 

VIII. Species of the expository genre 

IX. The lyrical genre. Conclusion 

Author's note to the first brazilian edition (1991)

The text of this small book is composed of four classes, delivered in April 1987 in

my course Introduction to Intellectual Life. In the oral exposition I was able to add

comments and developments which, even though omitted from the book, can be

hinted at by the footnotes.

Now, looking from a distance of four years at this work so full of good intentions as

it is of faults, I noticed at least two which, if cannot be completely remedied,

should at least be confessed.

The first is the use of the plural form which some call 'modest' and others

'majestic', a vice I have forever abandoned.

The second is that the concept of number, so fundamental to my exposition,

remained vague and obscure. Perhaps the following clarifications will help it

become more exact: The concept of number, as I understand it, is at the same time

quantity (or a pure nexus undetermined in terms of quality, as Husserl defined it in

his Philosophy of Arithmetic) and form, or qualitative number as understood by the

ancient Pythagoric school (see Santos, Mário Ferreira dos. Pitágoras e o Tema do

Número. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Matese, 1965. pp. 67-105). In this second meaning,

number can also be synonymous with order and relation (or system of relations). In

the text, I go from one meaning to the other without any ceremony or previous

warning. I know that I explain it, even though I do not justify it, by saying that the

text was originally intended to be read only by my students, who, being used to the

double understanding of the word, would not face any difficulty in making the

correct choice according to the context.

I thank Ana Maria Santos Peixoto for the priceless effort she devoted to the

publishing of this book.

Olavo de Carvalho

Rio de Janeiro, August 1991.

 

The question of the literary genres has been disputed for centuries. It is one of the

most important matters in the Theory of Literature. While excusing ourselves from

the narration of the historical evolution of the debate, we will present a summary

of the problem and of the solutions we will offer.

Should those solutions seem scandalously new to scholars in the field, we assure

that any attempt to novelty is far from our intention. We have limited ourselves to

applying to the study of an old question the ontological principles which are old as

the world.

I. Formulating the question

The first reason we have to believe that there are the literary genres is that many

authors, such as Aristotle and Boileau, have written treatises to expose the rules

that define them.

The second reason is that these rules have been followed by thousands of writers

for many centuries, and so, for that reason, we are able to find works which

perfectly exemplify the classic conception of Lyric, Tragedy etc.

The first reason we may have for believing there are no the literary genres is that

there is an equally large amount of works, old and modern, but above all modern,

that do not fit perfectly in any of the genres defined by the treatises.

The second reason is that some authors, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce

as a case in point, say that genres do not exist . In the understanding of these

authors, only individual works exist1, which are taken account of by history, and a

posteriori can be subjected by the scholar to some dubious classification according

to their differences and similarities, which, being in their turn so varied and large

in number as the works themselves, do not amount to groups constant and distinct

enough to be labelled as 'genres'.

The third reason is that many writers, knowing the first two reasons, decided to

write their books in a way that deliberately escapes the rules and regulations of all

known genres. Thus exception has become rule and rule exception; and the

systematic mess that followed seemed to provide extensive confirmation to Croce's

argument.

The problem of genres is similar to the dispute between Realism and Nominalism:

do universal concepts express realities which exist by themselves, extra mentis, or

are they just a mental assembling of common characteristics that a more or less

happy circumstance allowed us to distinguish in various individual beings? Are

universals 'real beings' or mere 'reason beings'? Is there a horsehood or just

horses? Is there a trianglehood or just triangles? Likewise, are the literary genres

universal and necessary structures underlying all possible literary invention, or are

they nothing more than mere formal conventions laid down by habit, comfort, and

sometimes by pretentiousness?

II. Some contemporary opinions

Some contemporary scholars are inclined to compromising solutions. In their

work, Theory of Literature, today a classic, René Wellek and Austin Warren state

that.

'The literary kind is an 'institution' - as Church, University or State is an institution.

It exists, not as an animal exists or even as a building, chapel, library, or capitol,

but as an institution exists. One can work through, express oneself through,

existing institutions, create new ones, or get on, so far as possible, without sharing

in polities or rituals; one can also join, but then reshape, institutions.

Theory of genres is a principle of order: it classifies literature and literary history...

by specifically literary types of organization and structure...

Do genres remain fixed? Presumably not.'2

This position deserves the credit of distinguishing between a physical, individual

mode of existence, and a non-physical, or 'institutional' mode of existence, putting

genres in the latter. It is certainly better than denying the existence of genres after

looking for signs of them where they were not to be found. However, all in all, this

distinction is no other than the same there is between individual works and genres

- between horses and horsehood -, names only changing. Individual works exist like

animals and buildings exist; genres, like institutes of zoological research and

schools of architecture. That does not absolutely explain where genres come from,

or whether they emanate from a necessity inherent to the real order of things, or

from a mere human desire of systematisation and comfort. The problem continues:

in order to know about the origin and worth of zoology institutes, it is not enough

just to realise they are not a kind of animal.

The Brazilian critic Masaud Moisés, giving a very up-to-date account of this

debate, comes a little closer to the solution when he says that genres are born

from 'a kind of natural imposition, something like the adjustment of the individual

to the cosmic rhythm, marked by an unchanging regularity'3. However, even

though he explains that 'the reiteration of an expressive module obeys an innate

tendency to order that exists in man', and even though he quotes in his support

Emil Staiger, to whom genres 'represent fundamental possibilities of human

existence in general'4 , he does not explain what is this 'something', nor what is the

intrinsic relationship between genres and the cosmic rhythm. So it is that the

'thing', being so vague and imprecise, does not offer the least resistance to his

writing lines after that that genres were 'invented by certain writers', apparently

without realising he's contradicting himself. In fact, were it the way he puts it, we

would have to believe that until someone had the kindness of inventing genres, all

writers lived outside the cosmic rhythm, and that would have been quite a disaster.

It is therefore clear that we must distinguish between the 'cosmic phenomenon' of

genres (man's innate tendency to reiterate certain expressive modules, in

obedience to an implacable regularity of nature) and the formal concept or verbal

definition of genres, which simply translates in logical language the more or less

consistent appearance of this phenomenon. The concept, the verbal definition, may

have been invented by men, but the actual phenomenon, if it comes from nature,

was not invented by anyone, unless we are talking about God or we understand the

verb 'to invent' in its original Latin meaning - inveniere meant 'to discover', 'to find'

-, depriving it of all connotation of creation and artificial construction. And the

problem in dispute is precisely that of knowing whether the concept of genres, as

it has been set forth by 'certain writers', actually portrays a real relationship

between human expressive modules and the cosmic regularity, or if, on the

contrary, genres are nothing but a set of arbitrary rules, beings of reason with no

fundamentum in re. If the relationship exists, genres are a necessity, a 'constant of

the human spirit'; and the fact that people eventually write books that do not fit in

any genre does not deny in any way the existence of genres just like the existence

of illnesses does not deny the laws of physiology, rather demonstrating them

through a contrario proof: no matter how occult and disguised they may be under

the thick layers of inventive and extravagant combinations, genres will always

remain the fundamental principles of all literary composition. If, on the contrary,

the relationship does not exist, then genres do not reflect any cosmological or

ontological necessity, being nothing but a rule invented after the preferences of a

certain time, which we may follow or not as we please, running no risk at all of

subverting the cosmic order.

The whole problem amounts, therefore, to knowing if there are ontological or

cosmological laws of which genres are an extension, a manifestation or expression

at the level of the literary and linguistic microcosm, or if they just do not exist at

all.

III. The mode of existence of genres

In our understanding, such laws do exist; and the mode of existence of genres, if it

is not similar to that of animals, is neither similar to those of 'institutions' of human

society, which are contingent and more or less conventional. Genres exist, not like

the Rotary Club or the city budget, but in the same way that the laws of logic exist.

These laws are immutable in themselves, but can be indefinitely applied and

combined, even in ways that can lead to perfectly illogical results. The fact that

people may perform wrong ratiocinations does not prove that they are thinking

'without' logic, but only that they, even with logic, think poorly, being unable to

handle the laws of reason, which they even so cannot escape; for, if they could,

their illogical reasoning would never allow itself to be refuted as being wrong,

since there would be no criteria for correct reasoning; and, actually, the study of

wrong ratiocinations is part of the science of logic.

The literary genres neither exist 'in themselves', like substances in the scholastic

understanding of the word, neither are a posteriori generalisations obtained from

more or less fortuitous similarities among individual works, neither rules dictated

by the arbitrary taste of an age. They are sets of possibilities5 for the organisation

of literary works. Their mode of existence and action consists in establishing the

boundaries of the possibilities of literary invention, differentiating it in a certain

number of directions and orientations which, once taken, necessarily bring specific

consequences to the posterior development of the work, restricting the author's

range of arbitrary decision; and the ability the author possesses to account for

these consequences without distancing himself from his central goal produces a

final standard of internal coherence, which is the means which will render us able

to judge the work according to its own laws, freely chosen by the author among the

number of possible genres and combinations.

We can say that genres exist and differ among themselves like the directions of

space. If a man goes North, he necessarily distances himself from South; and even

though he might come and go as many times he wants, North will always be

opposite to South, and perpendicular to East and West. The pattern of the trail

depends on each one's liberty, but it is necessarily staked out by the extreme

directions. Genres are thus the extreme differences among the many possibilities

of literary structuring; as we advance ourselves coherently along one of those lines

of direction, the harder - but never impossible - it becomes to combine it with

others: the more the essential nucleus of a work is strictly committed to the rules

of a genre, the harder it will be, in composing the rest, to escape those rules or to

combine them in a creative and effective manner with those of some other genre. It

is like a chess game: once a direction for the game is defined, an ever greater skill

is required to be able to revoke the consequences which threaten to follow

irrevocably suit at every new turn6 . The artist's ability consists either in coherently

following up to the end the rules of the chosen direction, or in intelligently

combining them with other possible directions7 , creating mixed textures.

However, even in the richest and most inventive mixture, the laws of genres would,

at least latently, always remain active as articulating principles and minimum

elements of which the mixture is composed.

But Wellek and Warren's emphasis on the difference between the mode of

existence of individual works and that of genres still can prove worth a look.

Individual works are beings, or substances, produced by man. They exist because

they were written, and they only exist after being written. Genres, in their turn,

are sets of possibilities, and as such exist before and independently of anyone

doing anything whatsoever. For a possibility to exist, it is enough that it not be

impossible - and being theoretically possible, escaping the absolute impossibility

even if through a little tiny fringe of possibility, is certainly easier than actually

writing a book, as anyone who has ever tried knows well. For a set of possibilities

to exist, it is enough that it remains sufficiently distinguishable from other sets; for

the mode of existence of a set of possibilities consists in nothing more than being a

clear standard of differentiation between some possibilities and others; as long as

this difference exists, the set exists. If that is so, genres are indestructible, no

matter how many mixed works are written and how difficult it may become, in

practice, to distinguish them inside the mixture. Only the absolute impossibility - in

theory, not in practice - would authorise us to speak of the 'non-existence of

genres'. But this will obviously never happen, because genres derive from an

ontological necessity, that is, from the conditions that stake out and determine the

physical cosmos wholly considered; and their suppression, were it possible, would

result in an actual cosmic mess. It is not by chance that the difficulty to define

genres and the following proclamation of their extinction arrive at the peak of an

age that harbours every sort of eschatological omens.

IV. Ontological foundations

The modern quest for 'interdisciplinarity' sometimes makes us forget that, for the

ancient peoples, all knowledge was always interdisciplinary. They simply could not

conceive of some 'specialised' piece of knowledge, independent from universal

principles, through which each science always maintained a net of necessary

relations with all other sciences, not mattering whether they were neighbour,

superior or subordinate to each other.

In order to understand correctly even the smallest and most particular concept of

Aristotelian, Scholastic, Chinese or Islamic sciences, it is necessary to render it

back to the universal, metaphysical principles in which it is grounded, for any such

concept never is anything other than their explanation or example in a specific and

restricted domain8.

After that, it is necessary to find out what is the level, what is the place of this

concept - of the thing conceptualised - in the 'great chain of Being', that is, in the

scale of planes of reality that descend from the Absolute to the most particular and

contingent domains of experience. The acceptance of metaphysical principles in

every science, and a cosmology that divides the universe in an indefinite number of

planes or concentric spheres, are characteristics present in all ancient or

traditional cultures.

If we do not consider this, any concept of the ancient science we might study will

be floating in space like some gratuitous and inexplicable enigma, an arbitrary

creation of a primitive and barbaric mind that turned science into a slave of taste

and fantasy. And obviously we do not believe that contemporary men are the first

intelligent people ever to appear on the face of this Earth, or that the fact that we

came after the ancients grants us a feeling of superiority absolutely unjustified by

our deeds. Much of the modern attitude towards genres comes simply from the

ignorance of their ontological foundations in the old science.

The metaphysical principal par excellence is the Absolute, or Infinite, or Universal

Possibility. The Infinite - as we will call it from now on - is a necessarily unique

principle (for we cannot conceive of two infinites), unlimited in every direction,

necessary by definition (for a contingent infinite would be a limited infinite,

therefore finite). We speak of the metaphysical Infinite and not of a presumed

'mathematical' infinite, which is limited to quantity and for that very reason is not

an infinite properly speaking, but only a metaphorical one, or of second degree:

infinitum secundum quid, 'infinite under a certain aspect', as used to say the

Scholastics9.

The Infinite comprises and transcends, in its absolutely unlimited possibility, all

dimensions and directions of the finite. And finite beings, being derived from the

Infinite, thus can neither be identical to it, nor be radically different from it, that is,

not have any point of contact with it. Beings are neither identical nor different

from Infinite: they are analogous to it. The main connection between finite beings

and the Infinite is the notion of oneness, which is a characteristic common to both.

All that exists has oneness, because if it does not possess oneness, it is two and

therefore has no consistency, no cohesion. The attribute 'being' and the attribute

'oneness' are, for that reason, said to be mutually convertible: to all that is

attributed being, is also attributed oneness and vice-versa. Ens et unum

convertuntur. However, the oneness of the Infinite is absolute (being inseparable)

and simple (not being composed of parts), whereas that of finite beings is

composite (always being constituted of parts or aspects) and relative (being

separable, when the being is extinguished)10.

Hence that every finite being, whatever be its place in the 'great chain of Being',

has with Infinite two kinds of simultaneous relationships: on the one hand, the

essential continuity, that is, the ultimate oneness of its essence with the Infinite's

essence, for we could not, without contradiction, conceive of a being which

essence is totally separated from Infinite; on the other hand, the existential

discontinuity, because finite beings, being one with Infinite through their essence,

are distinguished and distanced from it according to their conditions, forms, levels,

planes and modes of existence, which, descending from universality to

particularity, from necessity to contingency, from permanence to fleetingness,

compose precisely what is called 'the great chain of Being'11.

Thus from the absolute limitlessness of Universal Possibility to the most restricted

areas of contingent existence are disposed successive degrees of possibility, or

'worlds'. Each one of these worlds is therefore defined by a set of limitations or

conditions that define what, in their proper domains, is possible or impossible.

That which we call 'our world', the world of sensible human experience, is defined

by three conditions: time, space, and number or quantity. There is nothing, in the

whole extent of the physical world, that is not subjected to the imperious law that

ordains it to be in some place and not in other, during some time and no more, and

to be limited to a certain quantity under all aspects12.

These limitations evidently do not befall only on beings, but on all their actions and

manifestations as well. So it is that human intelligence, even though it may even be

able to grasp some mysterious, instantaneous and unexpressed realities that are

well above the conditions of time, space and number (without which it would never

be able to grasp the notions of 'Infinite' or 'essence'), will have to subject itself to

these same conditions in order to be able to manifest or express itself, in the form

of thought, speech or action. Now, the written manifestations of the human mind

would not be able to escape these universal conditionings, nor how to exist without

differentiating themselves in patterns defined according to time, space and

number. These patterns are precisely the principle of genres.

The three 'conditions of bodily existence' mentioned by the traditional and

particularly Hindu doctrines frame and shape all structures of human perception

and action. For that very reason there is not, among all functions of perception and

action, any one that cannot, ultimately, be reduced - at least in its logical concept -

to some modality of number, space and time (eg. vision remits us to simultaneity,

hearing to succession, walking to succession, apprehension to simultaneity,

generation to number etc.). The same, necessarily, happens with language. From

the basic distinction between name (simultaneity) and verb (succession),

everything refers to combinations and complications obtained from these three

principles. Similarly, when man first began to write down his thoughts, the

modalities in which he could do it had to be differentiated according to the three

conditions of bodily existence.

V. Verse and prose

The most general of genres, comprising all others (and for the same reason, being

'genres of genres', should be more properly named categories) are verse and

prose. The distinction between verse and prose mirrors on the level of the literary

microcosm the condition of 'number' or quantity. No matter what scholars may

have been saying for the past hundred years in endless discussions, the fact is that

the distinction of verse and prose is only a distinction between the two most

general forms of quantity, continued and discontinued. A verse is a verse as long

as some principle of discontinuity or sectioning, be it either rhythmic or metric,

prevails, performing some sort of sound reiteration; and prose is prose as it flows

without ever returning. Verses are like rain drops, sprinkling repetitively, whereas

prose is a river running without interruption. Hence there is a certain 'superiority'

in verse, because it 'comes from the heavens' like the discontinued and enigmatic

speech of angels and oracles, whereas prose slides along the ground like the

everyday talk of men.

This distinction reflects, therefore, the principles of the essential continuity and

the existential discontinuity between the Infinite and the finite.

The traditional symbol of the circle can make it all the more clear. If we represent

Being, unique and infinite, by a point, the rays that emanate from it represent its

distinct possibilities of manifestations in many directions; they are the qualities or

properties that prolong its essence without being separated from it. If, from this

point, we draw many concentric circles, they will represent the various levels of

nearness and farness in which every point and segment of the rays can be in

relation to the central point. The rays represent the essential continuity, and the

circles the existential discontinuity; the rays, the oneness of reality; the circles, the

multiplicity of planes or levels13. This figure applies to the distinction of verse and

prose in a double way, according to the rule of traditional symbolism that always

allows for the coexistence of direct and inverse symbolism14. We can say, on the

one hand, that the rays express the continuous flow of prose, and their sectioning

by the concentric circles the rhythm of verse. On the other, we can see the figure

in reverse sense, and say that prose revolves or goes about continuously like

planets in their orbit, and that the rays of verse section or scan rhythmically these

circles according to the directions of space.

The possible combinations of distinct shades of verse and prose must not make us

lose the essential distinction, because every combination, no matter how complex,

will always be made of continued and discontinued elements.

The most recent critical trend is to forget the key role of the quantitative factor -

metric or rhythmic - in the distinction of verse and prose, and to search for a

semantic type of distinction. That is, with or without metrics and rhyme, a text is

considered to be 'poetic' or 'prosaic' according to whether a 'connotative' or

'denotative' use of language prevails; verse is supposed to speak in modo obliquo

and prose in modo recto15. This new distinction arose from the need to account for

the great amount of works written without any commitment to metric. But, on one

side, denotation and connotation are nothing but the semantic equivalents of

continuity and discontinuity, as we can see from the direct or indirect - continued

or discontinued - reference from signifier to signified. On the other, this is a

derived and secondary distinction, and not a primary one. For millennia, poetic

works have possessed metrics and rhyme, being either connotative or denotative

(even treatises on science and philosophy, which semantically we would call

prosaic, were written in poetic forms, without calling the attention of anyone). We

could admit, so as to wrap up the question, a fourfold classification, patterned after

the crossing of semantic and phonetic criteria: thus, we would have continued-

connotative and continued-denotative; discontinued-connotative and discontinued-

denotative; and the gradations of these four would easily account for all possible

combinations without further complications, which by the way could have been

solved from the beginning by the realisation of the ambiguous meaning of the word

'prose', understood as opposed, on one side, to 'verse', and on the other, to

'poetry'.

However, according strictly to their origin, verse and prose are not modes of

signification, but rather modes of elocution. To avoid any further confusions, we'll

say that an intensely 'connotative' text lacking in any sort of rhythmic or metric

reiteration, is not verse: it is poetic prose or something alike; and a purely

'denotative' text, such as some purely prosaic and informative lines in the

tragedies of Shakespeare and Racine - not to speak of the old treatises of

Geometry and Physics composed in rhyme - is verse. In short: continued text,

either connotative or denotative, is prose; and discontinued text, either connotative

or denotative, is verse, be it 'poetic' or not. If anyone wishes to change that,

preferring to employ the semantic criterion, it will not make the least difference;

only, in behalf of clarity, we recommend bearing in mind that the distinction of

verse and prose refers primarily to elocution, and secondarily (metaphorically, or

secundum quid) to signification; and that in going from the direct employment of a

concept to its metaphorical employment it is necessary to make adjustments and

compensations in order to avoid cheap, mechanical and unintelligent

transpositions.

From this point of view, we'll see that theoretically all the literary genres can be

indifferently put into prose or verse (or in distinct gradations in a combination),

and that they in fact have been, according to the taste and the preference of the

ages. If today it seems a bit strange to write treatises on Physics with metrics and

rhyme, to the ancient Greeks symbolist poetic prose would not seem less strange.

We insist that the existence of various gradations of mixture, and even of nearly

undecomposable mixtures, does not change anything of the general concept: the

fact that Northeast is neither to the North nor to the East does not suppress the

existence of North and East, which must remain in place in order for someone to

be able to stand in the Northeast. The obsessive cult of exceptions - which

ultimately can always be reduced back to the rule, if such a work were worth -

does not come from any other thing than the taste for what Ortega y Gasset used

to call 'the philosophy of grey cats.'

Before we enter the discussion of specific genres, we must explain that the

distinction of genres is altogether different from that of verse and prose. It is a

two-folded difference:

1. Verse and prose are differentiated according to number - or order, or relation -;

whereas the literary genres are differentiated as they reflect the categories of

space and time and the various modalities of space and time. Verse and prose are

'categories', or genres of genres; they comprise all genres just as number

comprises space and time.

2. If genres are bodies of possibilities, and if these bodies are distinct from each

other, then each body defines itself as a principle or rule for the structuring of

matter taken as a whole, while verse and prose are principles for the structuring of

the smallest parts - sentences and periods - separately considered. A tragedy is a

tragedy because the totality of the events narrated necessarily concurs for a tragic

outcome according to the rule of tragedy, even though there may be, here and

there, along the work, pleasurable or comic elements. But verses are verses

because their sentences are sectioned and sewn, one by one, according to some

kind of reiterative module; and prose is prose because its sentences follow each

other in a continuing flow, with no commitment to reiteration. In order to know

whether a work is written in verse or prose, it is enough to read some paragraphs,

or even to just look at the text's disposition in the page, whereas to know whether

a work is a comedy or a tragedy, unless it is stated on the cover, we must read it

entirely and get to know the intimate connections among its elements and levels of

meaning.

Genres, as we were saying, are bodies of possibilities for the combination of

literary matter, and these bodies distinguish themselves from each other as they

reflect in their inner structure the two other great dimensions of bodily existence:

time and space. Hence the first great division of genres: the temporal or successive

mode is expressed in the narrative genres, and the spatial or simultaneous mode in

the expository genres. The internal subdivisions of these genres - or, if you will,

their species - will be defined, therefore, according to the many modalities of space

and time, modalities which, in their turn, are distinguished by number: continued

and discontinued. Continued - or unterminated - time, discontinued - or terminated

- time: such is the criterion for the distinction of the narrative genres. Continued

space - or encompassing totality -, discontinued space - or subdivided in distinct

places -: such is the criterion for the distinction of the expository genres.

VI. Narrative and exposition

If, as we were saying, the narrative genres manifest the dimension of time, they

can, in principle, be rendered either in verse or prose by the very fact that this

dimension contains an aspect of continuity as well as another of discontinuity: time

flows irrevocably and uninterruptedly, but is sectioned by the quantitative and

qualitative distinction of its various moments.

Similarly, expository genres can appear in verse or prose as they reflect continued

extension or the differentiation in dimensions, planes, places, lines and points (the

point, in geometry, coincides both structurally and symbolically with the temporal

notion of 'moment' and the arithmetical notion of 'zero'. It is in this 'zero' that

dimensions meet, it is in it that their differentiation according to quantitative

patterns of continuity of discontinuity begins).16

In order to understand what we are about to say it is necessary to bear in mind

that these principles of genres are ontological and not psychological; they need not

be present in the author's mind as he writes his work; they stay, so to speak,

behind the act of literary creation, staking out its field of possibilities. Any author

who is deeply aware of these principles certainly can make deliberate use of them

as technical elements; however, even if he does not have the slightest idea about

them, they will nevertheless exercise their delimitating action. It may also happen

that the artist harmonises himself with them in a totally unconscious way, sufficing

that he remains faithful to the formal intention that is his inspiration, for making

art is but to give form, and man cannot give form but according to his own form of

existing, perceiving, and making.

We say that the narrative genre expresses the dimension of time not because all

narratives elapse in a uniform flow of time, but rather because even though they

may consist of a continued duration, or of a crossing of psychological lapses of

time, or of comings and goings between past and present, or of moments of

minimum and indefinite extension atomistically taken, and not mattering the

immense variety of the modes for the treatment of time in historical or fictional

narratives, the most important structuring factor of the narrative is time, and the

narrative is the narrative because of it and of nothing else.

The eventual interference of expository or spatial elements - as it happens, for

example, in the description of settings, in the profiles of characters, or even in the

small philosophical essays that authors such as Tolstoi and Dostoievski insert in

their novels - does not deprive the work of anything of its narrative character; their

presence is explained, ultimately, by the fact that for man there is no other way to

perceive and represent time than through the reference of a spatial frame and

some movement in it, as anyone who possesses a clock may realise. Strictly

speaking, there is no 'pure narration', made only of succession, without any

reference to space or simultaneity. Time is time and space is space, but man is

man, and in him these two dimensions cross, articulated by number or order.

Likewise, expository genres are 'spatial' to the extent that they reflect the

simultaneousness of the elements in a logical (or ontological, for it is the same

thing) hierarchy. The expository genre is shaped by logical order, abstracting

itself, in principle, from the temporal element, from chronological succession.

However, just like there is no 'pure narrative', there is no 'pure exposition',

because the oral or written exposition of an idea, even when this idea has been

grasped in a completely simultaneous way, demands that it be successively

unfolded in the forms of reason and speech. Here, impurity too comes from the

nature of things: being symbols or manifestations of the cosmic dimensions of

space and time, genres could not possess all the notes that define these

dimensions, because in that case they would be identical, and not analogous17.

VII. Species of the narrative genre

The narrative genres will then differentiate themselves in species according to

their internal divisions or modes of temporality. These modes are expressed

basically through verbal tenses.

The two major modalities of time are defined by the two forms of quantity:

continued and discontinued. In almost every ancient language - such as Arabic,

Hebrew, Sanskrit and Greek, for example - verbal tenses are divided in two basic

forms: one that expresses continuing verbal action, pure flow, without reference to

any specific moment, being a kind of 'continuous present' that speaks of an action

more or less perennial or cyclical; and a second one that expresses verbal action

fixed in a moment of time. Therefore, these two forms manifest, respectively,

continuity and discontinuity. This division is quite varied in all languages, but

always follows a basic pattern. In Greek, as a case in point, there are primary

verbal tenses and one secondary tense: primary tenses are present, past and

future, which place the action in distinct moments; the secondary tense is called

aoristo, or pure verbal action. In Arabic, the division is even more radical, only two

tenses being acknowleged strictly speaking: terminated (mádi'), 'action terminated

in a remote time, which result is manifested at this moment', and unterminated

(mudari), 'which action does terminate in the present, continuing into the future'18;

there is also the imperative ('amr), completely independent from tense and time.

Sanskrit follows a division more or less similar to that of Greek.

In order to understand these properties of the ancient languages, and their

consequences for the theory of genres, it is necessary to be acquainted with the

traditional doctrine of 'triple time', which can be found with insignificant variations

in the metaphysical teachings of Greece and the East. According to this doctrine,

the relations between time and being are echeloned in planes or levels. The

highest is eternity, the complete non-existence of time or any kind of flow, the

absolute simultaneousness of all moments. Universal Possibility is eternal: the

transformations that go in the inferior planes do not diminish nor alter even

slightly the infinitude of the possible.

In the other end, at the level of particular and sensible beings, there is temporality,

the continuing and irreversible flow of individual events that are not repeated. The

past does not come back; it is the realm of necessity and destiny, the realm of

factum. Between these two zones there is the intermediate zone of cyclical time, a

realm that, even though it is subject to flow and to ruin, is periodically

reinvigorated by the restoration of the initial possibilities at the moment the cycle

is closed, for it is the same moment that it is reopened. It is the realm of

perenniality, the intermediate world of archetypal images, the mundus imaginalis,

where they live and move according to the laws of perennial return of the mythical

beings - such as the signs of the Zodiac and the characters from mythological

epopées - that express in forms apprehensible by the cognitio imaginativa the

archetypes that stake out possibilities of the temporal world19.

Eternity is the realm of the divine by excellence, from where descend, through the

mediation of the Logos or Divine Intelligence, the determinations which, taking

live forms progressively defined in the funnel of perenniality, are finally

crystallised as irreversible facts in the temporal order. Eternity is fiat; temporality,

factum; and perenniality, the perpetual in fieri.

Structurally, therefore, the narrative must express - not necessarily in its content

nor in its technique, but always in the principle or establishing rule that makes this

technique possible - either perenniality or temporality, because the imperative, the

'amr', is above the possibility of being narrated, or can only be narrated by the

mediation of its image in perenniality.

So, just as the temporal order is the realm of particular facts, and perenniality the

realm of myths and symbols which group these facts in categories that remit to

Universal Possibility, the first division of the narrative genres is that existing

between factual narratives and symbolic narratives. Factual narratives express

what has already happened, is already finished and cannot return. Symbolic

narratives express events which, even though they may be metaphorically placed

in the past (as they must be in modern languages, deprived of aoristo or mudari),

in reality represent possibilities destined to be reactualised. This division

corresponds more or less to that which is imprecisely called 'historical' narrative

and 'fictional' narrative; we say 'imprecisely' because what distinguishes these two

species is not properly the real or fictional nature of events, but rather the fact

that the reality of the historical narrative is in that the events have really happened

in a past moment, whereas the 'reality' of fictional narrative is in the possibility of

a psychological reactualisation of its symbols in the act of reading. When Carlyle

tells the story of the death of Louis XV, he wants to make clear that this has

already happened and will not happen again; however, when the evangelist tells

the story of Christ's death, what he has in mind is not the finished fact, but rather

the possibility of its ritual reactualisation in the soul of the Christian; and

Desdemona's death, which in fact never happened, is intended to happen in the

soul of the spectator when he watches the play. Now, Christ's death was a

historical fact as much as the death of Louis XV; the difference is that the

evangelist talks about it as a symbol, as a repeatable archetype, while Carlyle only

speaks of a past fact. Thus, the narrative of the Gospel and of Carlyle are both

historical, while that of Desdemona is fictional; but the Gospel and Othello are

symbolical narratives, while Carlyle's book is a factual narrative.

The factual narrative comprises thus all the facts which, belonging to the order of

temporality and irreversibility, are narrated as such. This includes the works of

testimony, chronicles, and memoirs as well as works of History itself. The

difference between memoirs and works of History is in the interference of a spatial

factor, the narrator's point of view. The writer of memoirs tells things from his own

point-of-view, while the historian collects various testimonies (among which can

evidently be his own). We can still bring in another spatial difference between the

books of memoirs and those of testimony or chronicle, because the first are

narrated from the point of view of the author of the actions, whereas the latter are

narrated from an observer's point of view. Even though these divisions are spatial

in principle, they also have a temporal counterpart to the extent that there is a

differentiation between a subjective or personal temporality and a social

chronology - being therefore intersubjective.

The symbolic narrative species are also divided according to the continued and the

discontinued, the terminated and the unterminated. The unterminated species is

drama, which, even though narrating an action metaphorically placed in the past,

reproduces it in the present by means of the actors' performance on stage.20 The

terminated modality is what we call epic, or properly narrative (myth, legend,

novel, etc.), which does not reproduce the action in the present, but simply evokes

it or narrates it as past21.

The species of drama is also divided according to the terminated and the

unterminated. The terminated subspecies reports itself to the factum, the time that

unfolds in the direction of the irreversible concatenation of causes and

consequences: it is tragedy, celebrating the victory of necessity and fate over man.

When, on the contrary, the chain of factum can be broken by Providence, returning

to man initial possibilities which would be lost under the effect of irreversibility,

we have the subspecies of comedy22.

Likewise, terminated narrative or epic genres are divided according to the

modality of time that informs them:

1. The mythical subspecies expresses events that occurred 'in that time' (in illo

tempore), that is, in the mythical time of perenniality and of the mundus

imaginalis. This is the real time of the Biblical and Koranic narratives, as well as of

the Greek myths.

2. At the other end, we have the novelesque genre (novels and short stories), which

is definitely delimited by terrestrial temporality (no matter how creative is

technical treatment the narrator gives to time).

3. Between both, we can admit an intermediate species, composed of jests and

legends, which, dealing essentially with the divinisation of a human hero, establish

a bridge between temporality and perenniality. Novels of 'initiatic' content are

evidently likely to offer difficulties for classification, hesitating between the

novelesque and the legendary. What's best, in almost all cases, is to call them

legends disguised as novels.

The enormous development of the novelesque species in the modern age, parallel

to the retraction of legends, is a sign of the progressive loss of the sense of

perenniality in our civilisation. This loss occurs concomitantly to the spread of

modern European languages deprived of aoristo, and to the loss of symbolical

understanding of the universe in favour of a more terrestrial experience,

temporalised and empirical, in the transition from the medieval worldview to that

of the Renaissance.

VIII. Species of the expository genre

Just as narratives are classified according to the continuity or discontinuity of time,

the expository species are also differentiated according to the continuity or

discontinuity of the spatial and simultaneous whole that represents the logical and

ontological order. If the continuity and the discontinuity of time were expressed in

the concepts of 'terminated and unterminated' and in the corresponding verbal

tenses, the concepts equivalent to the spatial order are the notions of whole and

part, and of inclusion and exclusion.

We will provide here but a schematic outline of the expository genre, but we

believe that these minimum criteria can be indefinitely applied in successive

divisions of species and subspecies, accounting for all possible combinations.

Expository works then are divided at first on those dealing with the 'whole' and

those dealing with 'the part'; and each of them is subdivided according to whether

its subject is dealt with in an 'including' or 'excluding' manner.

The notions of 'whole' and 'inclusion' give the shape of all literary species that

possess a nature of list, of index, of inventory, of accumulation and enumeration,

which model is by excellence the enciclopædia. They are works that are ultimately

destined to contain 'everything', or as much possible: de omne re scibili. Belonging

to this species are all subspecies of didactic and informative works, ranging from

Natural History by Plinius the Old, to the Encyclopædia Britannica, including Saint

Isidore's Etymologies.

Opposed to the indiscriminate encompassing of the list, the idea of system, or of

organisation, is also aimed towards a 'whole', but a whole that is separated and

ranked in its parts, aspects and dimensions, being therefore subjected to a

sequence of 'exclusions'. This is the treatise or systematic species. Aristotle's

Organon, for example, is a treatise, and so is the Summa Theologica by Saint

Thomas of Aquinas, or Euclides's Elements; each one these works intends to

enclose the totality of a subject, but systematising it according to its constitutive

and intrinsic parts, and not just list them after some casual, extrinsic and

convenient order as in the encyclopædias.

On the other end, we have the works patterned after the idea of part or aspect.

These are works which focus on a specific phenomenon, or group of phenomena,

an idea or a particular group of ideas, without the purpose of creating a system of

total knowledge. But even this approach to the part can be done according to two

modalities: inclusion or exclusion.

On one side, there are the works which, dealing with a particular subject, intend to

insert it in a pre-existent body of knowledge, which has already been systematised.

For example, when Apolonius of Perga writes his treatise on Cones, he does not

intend to build a complete geometric system, nor to just throw a few ideas: he

intends to fit these ideas in a precise place of the pre-existent body of geometric

science; and this goal directs and informs the treatment he gives to his subject,

which must be a systematic treatment according to the concepts and norms

admitted in Geometry. This species of works is denominated thesis, which comes

from a Latin verb that means 'to put'. He who makes a thesis is putting a piece in a

pre-existent frame, and the piece's shape must be perfectly adjusted to the specific

hole it intends to fill.

However, if the idea to be presented has no formal or decisive commitment with a

pre-existent system of knowledge, then what the author does is to freely add one

more idea to the extensive and vague repertoire of human ideas. This is precisely

what the species essay does.

The differentiation of the expository species may thus go on indefinitely, by means

of the sheer application of the criteria of whole and part, inclusion and exclusion.

There is an infinity of possible mixtures as well. It is unnecessary to proceed with

the enumeration, for we believe to have proved the effectiveness of the criteria.

Just to give an idea of the possibilities of developments: the essay species can be

subdivided according to whether the essay is more or less committed to some pre-

existent scientific criteriology: Science as Vocation, Politics as Vocation and other

works collected in Weber's Essays of Sociology differ thus from Montaigne's

Essays because the first are closer to 'exclusion' and the second to 'inclusion'. And

so on. It is not necessary, at this moment, to carry the criteria forward to more

detailed applications.

IX. The lyrical genre. Conclusion

It really is necessary to say a word about the lyrical genre, which seems to have

been mysteriously left out of our arrangement. What happens with lyric is that,

strictly speaking, it is not patterned after simultaneity or succession, neither after

space or time. On the contrary, it is defined precisely by its supra-spatial and

supra-temporal character. Either in the form of verse or prose, lyric expresses the

only terrestrial equivalent of the dimension that surpasses both perenniality and

temporality; it is structured after the aspiration for eternity, and its formal module

is the concept of 'moment', having 'point' as a spatial equivalent, an expression of

what arithmetically is the unit.23 Lyric takes a moment in time, a point in space,

and projects it in the non-time and the non-space. That in order to do this it has to

make use of verbal instruments derived from space and time, from continuity and

discontinuity, from the successive and simultaneous, is what defines precisely the

limits of the humanly expressible and the mutual annihilation of time and space in

the crossing of the 'point' or 'moment'.

Lyric is, therefore, the purest expression of relation, or order, or number, that is,

the dimension that articulates, comprises and contains space and time.

The literary genres, strictly speaking, are archetypical realities: they frame and

guide the multiplicity of facts in literary history, without ever being manifest in

their whole purity - for temporality imitates perenniality without being able to

identify with it - and also without ever totally vanishing away, no matter how

unrecognisable they may be behind the usually confusing multitude of particular

facts and variations. The difficulty felt by the contemporary man in understanding

genres and recognising them in the midst of the confusion of empirical data is

exactly the same he has to find any archetypal meaning in the facts of a daily life

that has been entirely trivialised and reified, cut from the realm of archetypes by

the smoke and the noise of commercial and industrial instantaneousness, as well

as by the polluting distortions the mass communications industry criminally

introduces in the world of images and symbols. The difficulty in seeing in the

subject and not in the object.

Notas

1 Croce, Benedetto. Estetica come Scienza dell'Espressione e Linguistica Generale.

11th edition. Bari: Laterza, 1965. I:IV, pp. 40-44

2 Wellek, René and Warren, Austin. Theory of Literature, 3rd. ed. New York:

Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956. pp. 226-227

3 Moisés, Massaud. A Criação Literária. Introdução à Problemática da Literatura.

5a ed. São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1973. p.37

4 Staiger, Emil. Conceptos Fundamentales de Poética. Spanish translation. Madrid:

Rialp, 1966. p. 213, quoted in Moisés, p. 37

5 On the notion of 'sets of possibilities', see Santos, Mário Ferreira dos. A

Sabedoria dos Princípios, São Paulo: Matese, 1968.

6 Carlos Bousoño (Teoria de la Expresiõn Poética. 4th ed. Madrid: Gredos, 1966.

pp. 31-32) remarks: 'Each sentence the author conceives as definitive grants the

poematic movement an irrevocable direction which naturally excludes, simply by

the means of its existence, many others possible at the moment, from which

different impulses could have arisen, and which now are inaccessible. The poem, in

its development, ordains in growing proportion the general arrangement of its

unfolding, and all the poet does is to particularise this arrangement, to pick a card

that is offered to him from the board, less and less thick at every moment.'

7 Purism and an intelligent combination of different genres can both deliver good

results. The two greatest literary works of the Portuguese literary renaissance -

Antonio Ferreira's Castro and Luís de Camões's Os Lusíadas - follow each one

these two strategies, respectively. Ferreira wished to write a tragedy that attained

in the strictest fashion to Aristotelian rule, and with that he obtained the

tremendous dramatic concentration that makes his play one of the works of

greatest impact in Portuguese language. Camões, in his turn, unable to follow by

the book the model of mythical (Homeric) epopée in face of the chosen historical

topic, articulated mythical narrative with historical chronicle, producing a work

with two parallel strata without match in world literature. On Os Lusíadas as an

'impure epopée', see Saraiva, Antônio José. 'Os Lusíadas e o ideal da epopéia'. Para

a História da Cultura em Portugal. 5th ed. Lisbon: Bertrand, Vol.I, pp. 81 ss.

8 See our 'Introduction to the concept of traditional sciences', in Astrologia e

Religião. São Paulo: Nova Stella, 1987, Cap. IV: 'Traditional sciences are the body

of methods and knowledge which, in every known civilisation - including the West

up to the sixteenth century - unfold in coherent manner in every direction from a

central core of metaphysical principles, and which intend to reveal, on all more or

less contingent orders of reality, the eternal and immutable validity of these same

principles' (p. 53).

9 On the distinction between 'infinite' and 'mathematical infinite' or 'indefinite', see

Guénon, René. Les Principes du Calcul Infinistésimal. Paris: Gallimard, 1946.

Chap. 1. The distinction was also highlighted by Descartes on §27 of Philosophy

Principles.

10 For an exposition of Oneness from the logical and ontological point-of-view, see

Santos, Mário Ferreira dos. A Sabedoria da Unidade. São Paulo: Matese, 1968;

from the point-of-view of the mystic and sapiential doctrines, see Burckhardt,

Titus. An Introduction to Sufi Doctrines. Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1976, Chap.

VII.

11 On the concepts of essential continuity and existential discontinuity, see

Schuon, Frithjof. Forme et Substance dans les Réligions. Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1975,

pp. 53-86.

12 The traditional astronomical and astrological symbolism is the integral

representation of the coexistence of these three conditions. See Burckhardt, Titus.

Clef Spirituelle de l'Astrologie Mussulmane. Milano: Arché, 1978; and also our

work 'Natural and Spiritual Astrology', in Astrologia e Religião, op. cit., Cap. II.

13 Cf. Bakhtiar, Laleh. Sufi. Expressions of the Mystic Quest. London: Thames &

Hudson, 1979. pp. 10-11; and Guénon, René. Symboles de la Science Sacrée. Paris:

Gallimard, 1962. Chap. VIII-XIII.

14 Guénon, René. Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps. Paris:

Gallimard, 1945. Chap. XXX.

15 The exclusively semantic distinction is argued by Massaud Moisés, op. cit.,

Chap. IV.

16 See our work 'Questions of Geometrical Symbolism', in Astrologia e Religião,

op. cit., Chap. V; and especially the study by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy about the

number zero, to be quoted later. See also Kandinsky, Wassily. Point-Ligne-Plan.

Contribuition à l'Analyse des Élements Picturaux. Paris: Denoel, 1970, which, very

much to our purpose, defines the geometrical point as 'the ultimate and unique

union of silence and word' (p. 33).

17 On the subject of analogy, see our work 'Symbolical Dialectics', in Astros e

Símbolos. São Paulo: Nova Stella, 1985. Chap. II, and also Santos, Mário Ferreira

dos. Tratado de Simbólica. São Paulo: Logos, 1964. Tema III, art. 5.

18 Sáfady, Jamil. A Língua Árabe. São Paulo: Sáfady, 1950. p. 120. See also on this

point Gardet, Louis. 'Concepções muçulmanas sobre o tempo e a história', in Paul

Ricoeur et al. Brazilian translation. As Culturas e o Tempo. Petrópolis: Vozes, pp.

229-262; especially p. 232. For an explanation on Greek verbal tenses, see Horta,

Guida Nedda Barata Parreira. Os Gregos e seu Idioma. Rio de Janeiro: di Giorgio,

1983. Vol. I, pp. 152-153. Aoristos literally means 'indefinite', 'undetermined'. It is

derived from orisma, meaning 'limit', 'frontier', 'term' and 'definition', from which

are also derived the words 'hour' and 'horizon'. The study of Greek myths related

to the horizon as limit between Heavan and Earth shows the inseparable link

between the 'unterminated' verbal tense - aoristo - and the perennial time of

mythology. Cf. Souza, Eudoro de. Horizonte e Complementaridade. São Paulo:

Duas Cidades, 1978.

19 On 'triple time', see Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.. French translation. Les Temps

et l'Eternité. Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1976, especially the appendix 'Kha et autres mots

signifiant 'zéro' dans leurs rapports avec la métaphysique de l'espace', pp. 117 ss.;

and Guénon, René. La Grande Triade. Paris: Gallimard, 1957. Chap. XXII. On the

restoration of possibilities, see Eliade, Mircea. Le Mythe de l'Eternel Retour.

Archétypes et Répetition, Paris: Gallimard, 1969. Chapters. I and II. On the

mundus imaginalis and its perfectly real inhabitants, see Corbin, Henry. En Islam

Iranien. Aspects Spirituels et Philosophiques. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. T.I, pp. 167-

185.

20 It is therefore obvious that film narrative is included in the subspecies 'symbolic

unterminated species'.

21 It is also obvious that romances and short stories written in the present tense

are inspired in a technique that is ultimately cinematographic; and that, as in them

the present tense of verbs does not grant real actuality to events which are really

just being narrated and not shown, the supposed 'present time' is metaphorical

and not real as in theatre. But, in a certain way, the 'present time' of film is also

metaphorical, because the actors are not really acting at the moment the spectator

watches the movie.

22 We see no need to deepen in the essence of every particular genre, for this is

not the purpose of our work; we only intend to show the ontological foundation of

the very idea of genres. Maybe it would be interesting for the reader to compare

our arrangement with that of Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Critic, Chapter IV,

whose angle is different from ours, but not opposed.

23 See note #16.