Krystyna Pomorska writes:
When Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin's first book to be published in English, appeared in 1968, the author was totally unknown in the West. Moreover, his name, his biography, and his authorship were a mystery even in his native Russia. Today, Bakhtin (1895-1975) is internationally acclaimed in the world of letters and the humanities generally. His biography is gradually becoming better known as scholars from both East and West discover information and reconstruct the data.
His books, previously neglected or unknown, are being republished, such as the one introduced here. What accounts for the new popularity of this theoretician who wrote his pioneering works half a century ago and whose deep concern was a subject as "enigmatic" as literature? In response, we must look to his fundamental ideas about art, its ontology, and its context.
His roots in the intellectual life of the turn of the century, Bakhtin insisted that art is oriented toward communication. "Form" in art, thus conceived, is particularly active in expressing and conveying a system of values, a function that follows from the very nature of communication as an exchange of meaningful messages.
In such statements, Bakhtin recognizes the duality of every sign in art, where all content is formal and every form exists because of its content. In other words, "form" is active in any structure as a specific aspect of a "message." Even more striking are Bakhtin's ideas concerning the role of semiosis outside the domain of art, or, as he put it, in the organization of life itself. In opposition to interpretations of life as inert "chaos" that is transformed into organized "form" by art, Bakhtin claims that life itself (traditionally considered "content") is organized by human acts of behaviour and cognition and is therefore already charged with a system of values at the moment it enters into an artistic structure.
Art only transforms this organized "material" into a new system whose distinction is to mark new values. Bakhtin's semiotic orientation and his pioneering modernity of thought are grounded in his accounting for human behaviour as communication and, his recognition of the goal-directedness of all human messages. As a philosopher and literary scholar, Bakhtin had a "language obsession" as Michael Holquist calls it, or, as we might also say, a perfect understanding of language as a system; lie managed to use language comprehended as a model for his analysis of art, specifically the art of the novel.
As a philosopher and literary scholar, Bakhtin had a "language obsession" as Michael Holquist calls it, or, as we might also say, a perfect understanding of language as a system; lie managed to use language comprehended as a model for his analysis of art, specifically the art of the novel. Besides his revolutionary book on Dostoevsky, his essay "Discourse in the Novel" , written in 1934-35, belongs among the fundamental works on verbal art today. In it Bakhtin argues first and foremost against the outdated yet persistent idea of the "randomness" in the organization of the novel in contrast to poetry. He proved this assertion by demonstrating in his works the particular transformations of the comical in the epoch prior to the Renaissance parallels the rejection of "subcultures" in the years prior to the Second World War.
As Trubetzkoy showed in his unjustly neglected book, Europe and Mankind, this cultural "centrism" pertains not only to a social but also to an ethnic hierarchy. The danger of European cultural "centrism," the recognition of the multiplicity of cultural strata, their relative hierarchy, and their "dialogue" occupied Trubetzkoy all his life. The same is true of Bakhtin, as manifested in his works from the study on Dostoevsky (1929) to the Rabelais book (1965). This interest ties the author of Rabelais and His World to modern anthropology in America and in Europe.
Bakhtin's ideas concerning folk culture, with carnival as its indispensable component, are integral to his theory of art. The inherent features of carnival that he underscores are its emphatic and purposeful "heterglossia" and its multiplicity of styles. Thus, the carnival principle corresponds to and is indeed a part of the novelistic principle itself. One may say that just as dialogization is the sine qua non for the novel structure, so carnivalization is the condition for the ultimate "structure of life" that is formed by "behavior and cognition." Since the novel represents the very essence of life, it includes the carnivalesque in its properly transformed shape.
In his book on Dostoevsky, Bakhtin notes that "In carnival the new mode of man's relation to man is elaborated." One of the essential aspects of this relation is the "unmasking" and disclosing of the unvarnished truth under the veil of false claims and arbitrary ranks. Now, the role of dialogue—both historically and functionally, in language as a system as well as in the novel as a structure—is exactly the same. Bakhtin repeatedly points to the Socratian dialogue as a prototype of the discursive mechanism for revealing the truth.
Dialogue so conceived is opposed to the "authoritarian word" in the same way as carnival is opposed to official culture. The "authoritarian word" does not allow any other type of speech to approach and interfere with it. Devoid of any zones of cooperation with other types of words, the "authoritarian word" thus excludes dialogue. Similarly, any official culture that considers itself the only respectable model dismisses all other cul-tural strata as invalid or harmful.
Long before he published his book on Rabelais, Bakhtin had defined in the most exact terms the principle and the presence of the carnivalesque in his native literary heritage. However, the presence of carnival in Russian literature had been noted before Bakhtin, and a number of earlier critics and scholars had tried to approach and grasp this phenomenon. The nineteenth-century critic Vissarion Belinsky's renowned characterization of Gogol's universe as "laughter through tears" was probably the first observation of this kind.
The particular place and character of humour in Russian literature has been a subject of discussion ever since. Some scholars have claimed that humour, in the western sense, is precluded from Russian literature, with the exception of works by authors of non-Russian, especially southern, origin, such as Gogol, Mayakovsky, or Bulgakov. Some critics, notably Chizhevsky and, especially, Trubetzkoy, discussed the specific character of Dostoevsky's humour, and came close to perceiving its essence; yet they did not attain Bakhtin's depth and exactitude.
The official prohibition of certain kinds of laughter, irony, and satire was imposed upon the writers of Russia after the revolution. It is eloquent that in the 1930s Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Commissar of Enlightenment, himself wrote on the subject and organized a special government commission to study satiric genres.
The fate of Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, and Zoshchenko—the prominent continuers of the Gogolian and Dostoevskian tradition—testifies to the Soviet state's rejection of free satire and concern with national self irony, a situation similar to that prevailing during the Reformation. In defiance of this prohibition, both Rabelais and Bakhtin cultivated laughter, aware that laughter, like language, is uniquely characteristic of the human species.
 |
| Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin |
When Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin's first book to be published in English, appeared in 1968, the author was totally unknown in the West. Moreover, his name, his biography, and his authorship were a mystery even in his native Russia. Today, Bakhtin (1895-1975) is internationally acclaimed in the world of letters and the humanities generally. His biography is gradually becoming better known as scholars from both East and West discover information and reconstruct the data.
His books, previously neglected or unknown, are being republished, such as the one introduced here. What accounts for the new popularity of this theoretician who wrote his pioneering works half a century ago and whose deep concern was a subject as "enigmatic" as literature? In response, we must look to his fundamental ideas about art, its ontology, and its context.
His roots in the intellectual life of the turn of the century, Bakhtin insisted that art is oriented toward communication. "Form" in art, thus conceived, is particularly active in expressing and conveying a system of values, a function that follows from the very nature of communication as an exchange of meaningful messages.
In such statements, Bakhtin recognizes the duality of every sign in art, where all content is formal and every form exists because of its content. In other words, "form" is active in any structure as a specific aspect of a "message." Even more striking are Bakhtin's ideas concerning the role of semiosis outside the domain of art, or, as he put it, in the organization of life itself. In opposition to interpretations of life as inert "chaos" that is transformed into organized "form" by art, Bakhtin claims that life itself (traditionally considered "content") is organized by human acts of behaviour and cognition and is therefore already charged with a system of values at the moment it enters into an artistic structure.
Art only transforms this organized "material" into a new system whose distinction is to mark new values. Bakhtin's semiotic orientation and his pioneering modernity of thought are grounded in his accounting for human behaviour as communication and, his recognition of the goal-directedness of all human messages. As a philosopher and literary scholar, Bakhtin had a "language obsession" as Michael Holquist calls it, or, as we might also say, a perfect understanding of language as a system; lie managed to use language comprehended as a model for his analysis of art, specifically the art of the novel.
As a philosopher and literary scholar, Bakhtin had a "language obsession" as Michael Holquist calls it, or, as we might also say, a perfect understanding of language as a system; lie managed to use language comprehended as a model for his analysis of art, specifically the art of the novel. Besides his revolutionary book on Dostoevsky, his essay "Discourse in the Novel" , written in 1934-35, belongs among the fundamental works on verbal art today. In it Bakhtin argues first and foremost against the outdated yet persistent idea of the "randomness" in the organization of the novel in contrast to poetry. He proved this assertion by demonstrating in his works the particular transformations of the comical in the epoch prior to the Renaissance parallels the rejection of "subcultures" in the years prior to the Second World War.
As Trubetzkoy showed in his unjustly neglected book, Europe and Mankind, this cultural "centrism" pertains not only to a social but also to an ethnic hierarchy. The danger of European cultural "centrism," the recognition of the multiplicity of cultural strata, their relative hierarchy, and their "dialogue" occupied Trubetzkoy all his life. The same is true of Bakhtin, as manifested in his works from the study on Dostoevsky (1929) to the Rabelais book (1965). This interest ties the author of Rabelais and His World to modern anthropology in America and in Europe.
Bakhtin's ideas concerning folk culture, with carnival as its indispensable component, are integral to his theory of art. The inherent features of carnival that he underscores are its emphatic and purposeful "heterglossia" and its multiplicity of styles. Thus, the carnival principle corresponds to and is indeed a part of the novelistic principle itself. One may say that just as dialogization is the sine qua non for the novel structure, so carnivalization is the condition for the ultimate "structure of life" that is formed by "behavior and cognition." Since the novel represents the very essence of life, it includes the carnivalesque in its properly transformed shape.
In his book on Dostoevsky, Bakhtin notes that "In carnival the new mode of man's relation to man is elaborated." One of the essential aspects of this relation is the "unmasking" and disclosing of the unvarnished truth under the veil of false claims and arbitrary ranks. Now, the role of dialogue—both historically and functionally, in language as a system as well as in the novel as a structure—is exactly the same. Bakhtin repeatedly points to the Socratian dialogue as a prototype of the discursive mechanism for revealing the truth.
Dialogue so conceived is opposed to the "authoritarian word" in the same way as carnival is opposed to official culture. The "authoritarian word" does not allow any other type of speech to approach and interfere with it. Devoid of any zones of cooperation with other types of words, the "authoritarian word" thus excludes dialogue. Similarly, any official culture that considers itself the only respectable model dismisses all other cul-tural strata as invalid or harmful.
Long before he published his book on Rabelais, Bakhtin had defined in the most exact terms the principle and the presence of the carnivalesque in his native literary heritage. However, the presence of carnival in Russian literature had been noted before Bakhtin, and a number of earlier critics and scholars had tried to approach and grasp this phenomenon. The nineteenth-century critic Vissarion Belinsky's renowned characterization of Gogol's universe as "laughter through tears" was probably the first observation of this kind.
The particular place and character of humour in Russian literature has been a subject of discussion ever since. Some scholars have claimed that humour, in the western sense, is precluded from Russian literature, with the exception of works by authors of non-Russian, especially southern, origin, such as Gogol, Mayakovsky, or Bulgakov. Some critics, notably Chizhevsky and, especially, Trubetzkoy, discussed the specific character of Dostoevsky's humour, and came close to perceiving its essence; yet they did not attain Bakhtin's depth and exactitude.
The official prohibition of certain kinds of laughter, irony, and satire was imposed upon the writers of Russia after the revolution. It is eloquent that in the 1930s Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Commissar of Enlightenment, himself wrote on the subject and organized a special government commission to study satiric genres.
The fate of Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, and Zoshchenko—the prominent continuers of the Gogolian and Dostoevskian tradition—testifies to the Soviet state's rejection of free satire and concern with national self irony, a situation similar to that prevailing during the Reformation. In defiance of this prohibition, both Rabelais and Bakhtin cultivated laughter, aware that laughter, like language, is uniquely characteristic of the human species.
No comments:
Post a Comment