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It may be a temptation to build the science of letters upon the concept of individuality. In this case the researcher tries to isolate the qualities which distinguish one work from other works by the same author, and these works from those of his contemporaries, predecessors, and successors. This approach evokes objections of a logical and of an empirical kind.
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- Copyright © 1968 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 A spectacular example occurs in Arthur Koestler, "Anatomie des Snobismus," Der Monat, 1957/58. Reprinted in, Über den Snob, Piper, Munich, 1962, p. 57 f.
2 Even this basis is hypothetical: assurance is never complete, as can be deduced from the logical objection formulated above.
3 Such as the average length of words. And when the machine treats qualities more perceptible to the reader (such as the average length of sentences), it notices quantitative differences which escape the most perceptive of readers.
4 Structure du langage poétique, Flammarion, Paris, 1966.
5 Gustav René Hocke, Manierismus in der Literatur, Rohwolt, Hamburg.
6 We do not dispute the educational and social utility of such a concept, but its scientific validity.
7 Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France, November 1967.
8 Le mythe et l'homme, Gallimard, Les Essays, VI, p. 140.
9 Especially, Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression, Verlag Dr. G. Borotha-Schoeler, Wien, 1963 (20th edition in 1966). And above all: Über tierisches und menschliches Verhalten. Aus dem Werdegang der Verhaltenslehre. Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Piper, München, 1962, 2 vols.
10 This resumé cannot be as convincing as the author's exposition of his argument.
11 Op. cit., p. 182.
12 On this concept: Roger Caillois, L'Homme et le sacré, P.U.F., 1939, pp. 88-127.
13 Sigmund Freud, Totem et tabou, Paris 1924, quoted by R. Caillois, in Le Mythe et l'homme.
14 Le Génie du Christianisme, IV, I, VII, quoted by Paul Robert, Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française, under the article on fête.
15 "Coût." The word is taken in the sense understood by information theory.
16 Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. In: Abriss der Psychoanalyse. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, Fischer-Bücherei, No. 47.
17 The analogy with Mallarmé's "le bleu azur" leaps to mind. The stammering of sense is called redundance.
18 Dr. Benjamin Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, Collection Marabout, Verviers, s.d., p. 325.
19 Similarly Brecht, Das Tanzfest oder der Augenblick ewiger Verdammung, Prosa I; Suhrkamp 1965: "They abandoned themselves to their limbs, and these danced." Classical dancing is clearly quite another matter, where the body mimes the spirit, solemnizes culture, and simulates weightlessness.
20 L'Homme et le sacré, p. 90.
21 "Innere Reizerzeugung" in Lorenz.
22 Lorenz, II, p. 336.
23 This variant of the "fascinosum" is especially notable in The Tin Drum of Günther Grass, where emetic situations abound. More generally, this vital force, which displays itself with a magnificently triumphant lack of shame, explains all the fascination exercised by the early works of Brecht (Prosa I, op. cit., and, above all, Baal).
24 Le sacré, Paris, Payot, 1949.
25 Was Valéry aware of the import of his discovery when he made the Pythia say, as it was disturbed by the uprush of hysteria: "Honneur des hommes, saint langage"?
26 Tel Quel, Suite, Pléiade, II, 759.
27 The second restitution of instinct in Valéry is the erotic humour of the meet ings of daily life. The author of Sur Phèdre Femme slanders the flesh, but Valéry the worldly conversationalist is fond of blue jokes.
28 The fact that the poets of the strict kind replace the code by another one makes no difference, since however strict they may be, poetic laws all aim at the organisation of the obscuration of the message. Moreover, the systematic and difficult nature of these infringements allows them to preserve the credibility of their illusion of angelicism.
29 In Valéry's sense.
30 Peter R. Hofstätter, Psychologie, Fischer-Bücherei, 1957, p. 216.
31 At the time that the hysteric could still consider herself as an irresponsible invalid, and could demand the indulgence that belongs to any victim of an organic deficiency, she enjoyed without remorse the satisfaction afforded by this sham love. If the illusion is destroyed, such scandalous conduct vanishes, to be sure, but frustration remains, and now it is totally unappeased. The progress of illumination thus risks provoking accidents comparable to those occasioned by aversion therapy against homosexuality: the patient returns to normality, but since access to the only formula for equilibrium known to him has been barred, he kills himself.
32 Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Rowohlt, Hamburg, 1952, p. 1438. (End of the third part, and fourth part of the posthumous notes, chapter 93, "Clarissa and Friedenthal.")
33 Baudelaire saw the functional analogy existing between hysteria and poetry (see the articles on "hystérie" and "hystérique" in Paul Robert's Dictionnaire.
34 The backwash after a lecture. "The bourgeoisie of the German language and the indencency of modern novels," Le Monde, 24th. May 1967, p. VII. Also: "Der Zürcher Literaturstreit," Sprache im technischen Zeitalter, 1967 April/June (22).
35 Lorenz, II, p. 240.
36 We can thus measure the opportuneness of Christianity, wich makes sense of the difficulty of being, by interpreting it as the expectation of the City of God. Far from this religion's propagating the distaste for life, it on the contrary represents an effort to reabsorb it, to live with the minimum expense. The Nie tzschean critiques takes the effect for the cause.
37 491, for instance, a film by the Swede Vilgot Sjoeman. On the strikes of 1936, there is the evidence of Simone Weil, in: Louis Bodin and Jean Touchard, Front Populaire 1936. Kiosque, A. Colin.
38 Deep in the heart of every research-worker nestles the ambition to disprove the evidence of contemporary culture. The research-worker is the Don Juan of knowledge, but a Don Juan with a fat wage-packet.
39 Vitus Droescher, "Stufenleiter der Intelligenz," Die Zeit, 1966, No. 50, p. 46. This is a résumé of Peter Winter, "Verständigung bei Totenkopfaffen," Umschau in Wissenschaft und Technik. (Frankfurt a.M., 15. October 1966, pp. 653-58.)
40 Lorenz, II, 195. Since the oppression of culture is not the only cause of resentment the living being encounters on his way, it is obvious that asocial attitudes can arise from other sources than those described here. The mourning of the dog left at home by its master to the loving care of his family can turn him into a dirty vagabond and a chicken-chaser. In this case, his return to society coincides with his master's return. (Konrad Lorenz, So kam der Mensch auf den Hund, pp. 20-22).
41 Beyond Good and Evil. From, Werke in drei Bänden, Hanser Verlag, München, 1955, vol. II, pp. 693 ff.
42 Lorenz, II, 235-238, 335-339.
43 Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele, 1929-1932.
44 Honoré de Balzac, La recherche de l'absolu.
45 Lorenz, II, 151. On conflicting situations in dogs: Lorenz, So kam der Mensch auf den Hund, DTV, München, 1965, 88-92, 112-119.
46 This last expression is metaphorical: what has been presupposed in our in quiry stays purely Darwinian.
47 This study enters its name in the movement for the rediscovery of the nature of humanity, established by Roger D. Masters in Critique, October 1967, pp. 857-876.
Similarly, when Tournier tells Le Monde (18.XI.67) that his novel is Rous seauian, hence visceral, blasphematory and antisocial, and that only the Rous seauists know how to celebrate the cult of the atomic bomb, he brings up before the conscience, consequently in an extreme form, a configuration in which we see the origin of all poetic creation.