The Meaning of Fiction

Post by **petercowlam** » December 6th, 2006, 9:45 am

The tradition of the fairy tale is arguably the tradition of transformation (princes-to-frogs and back, rags-to-riches, the curse recast as blessing). Here is the basis of a fairy tale, not from the annals of European fantasy, but from the grind of its intellectual quern:

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Id, the wise and fair-minded king married a beautiful princess. After one year, a prince was born. After a further twenty, the king had grown old and the prince had come of age. Then there was sorrow, all over the land of Id, when the king, whose eyes had grown dim, stood at his balcony for the very last time, and waved to his people. In the dying rays of the evening sun, he retired to his chambers, and there, in the shadows, he died. Yet sorrow soon gave way to joy, when the new king was crowned, and stood in his father's place, waving to all his people from the balcony. Great were the celebrations in the magical land of Id.

Or to place this (a transformation in itself) into an alternative grammar of signification - Boolean algebra:

x(1 - y) = 0

which means, the product of class-x and not-class-y ('not' is a technical term - in this case it denotes the binary opposite of class-y) is empty - which means, 'the class of kings who are not mortal is empty' (where x is the class of 'kings' and y is the class of 'mortality'). Or to put this simply into English,

All Kings Are Mortal

Boolean expressions, operating in accordance with the rules of algebra, are used to solve problems involving logical relationships between classes - a method that has found fruitful extension in computer programming techniques. This may cross your mind as you sit gazing into your PC screen. [Boole: 1815-1864]

'Semantic condensation' is a term borrowed from Lacan, who views the unconscious - and perhaps would view my kingdom of Id - as structured like a language. The 'unconscious' he means is that elaborated by Freud - receptacle of repressed matter that may potentially engender neurosis or even psychosis. Lacan's language structure is very specific - that set out by Saussure in his Cours de linguistique generale, which fully lays out language as a sign system, operating and evolving as signifier/signified pairs in both the synchronic and diachronic planes. 'Condensation' is a term Freud himself applied, in his The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud's position is roughly this: i) that a dream is a wish-fulfilment; ii) that the wish often (but not always) has some selfish origin (and can be sexual desire); iii) that if dreams were directly translatable to consciousness, their revelations would be too shocking, and counter to the principles of ego and super-ego, which as higher levels of consciousness adapt our lives into an acceptable pattern of everyday behaviour; iv) dreams therefore are a coded representation of repressed desires, able to announce themselves to consciousness only in this coded form. 'Condensation' is a form of omission (within any dream). What is omitted is much of the detail surrounding the original desire or wish, which consciousness necessarily overlooks, and which once 'decondensed' (as it were) becomes a chain of explicit significations. This is not to be confused with 'displacement', which I shall come to.

Here are some linguistic figures as semantic condensations:

Allegory narrative description of a subject under guise of another having similarities to it, e.g. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress describing life as a journey; picture in which meaning is symbolically represented; emblem.

Autonomasis presumably cognate with 'automasy': naming, and explained as the use of a common name in a connection in which it acquires an accepted specific sense; e.g. 'town' for 'London', 'river' for 'Thames', in 'He is in town and has gone across the river (to Lambeth)', it being held that 'town', 'river', here virtually name themselves 'London', 'Thames'. But as this is a strained etymology, and the word exactly corresponds in meaning to 'autonomasia', it seems more reasonable to suppose that it is a mere mistake due to a turned n (= u) in printing.

Catachresis incorrect use of words.

Metaphor application of name or descriptive term or phrase to one object or action to which it is imaginatively but not literally applicable (e.g. 'a glaring error', 'food for thought', 'leave no stone unturned'); mixed metaphor = combination of inconsistent metaphors ('this tower of strength will forge ahead').

Metonymy substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant (e.g. 'crown' for 'king', 'the turf' for 'horse-racing').

Synecdoche figure of speech in which part is named but whole is understood ('fifty sail' for 'fifty ships') or whole is named but part is understood ('England beat Australia at cricket').

What Lacan would seem to be pointing to is these as not only aspects of the structure of language, but also of the structure of the unconscious. I think Lacan would argue for each of these terms, on the evidence of Freud's interpretation of dreams, as whole chains of association connected with a single image - linguistically and unconsciously.

'Displacement' operates similarly to 'condensation' in Freud's discussion of dreams (The Interpretation of Dreams). What it amounts to, as content in a dream, is displacement of an attribute from one thing or person to another. Freud discusses, in a study of one of his own dreams, displacement of a yellow beard from its owner's face to that of another (two persons he knew, who appeared in his dream). You can think of many examples in your own dreams where you behold what appears to be person x (your mother, for example), yet somehow know it was person y (a colleague at work, say). 'Syntactic displacement' is another of Lacan's terms.

Here are some linguistic figures as syntactic displacement:

Apposition placing side by side; (Gram.) placing of word syntactically parallel with another, esp. addition of noun to another (William the Conqueror).

Ellipsis omission from sentence of words needed to complete construction or sense; omission of sentence at end of paragraph; set of three dots etc. indicating such omission.

Hyperbaton (Rhet.) inversion of normal order of words esp. for sake of emphasis (e.g. 'this I must see').

Pleonasm use of more words than are needed to give the sense (hear with one's ears; preceded his successor).

Regression backward movement, retreat.

Repetition repeating or being repeated.

Syllepsis figure of speech applying a word to two others in different senses (e.g. 'took the oath and his seat') or to two others of which it grammatically suits only one (e.g. 'neither you nor he knows').

I wonder, is there an argument for ellipsis appearing in both lists? Here are some other linguistic figures:

Accimus a feigned refusal of that which is earnestly desired.

Antiphrase antiphrasis: to express by the opposite. A figure of speech by which words are used in a sense opposite to their proper meaning.

Hypallage (Rhet.) transposition of natural relations of two elements in a proposition (e.g. 'Melissa shook her doubtful curls').

Litotes ironical understatement, esp. expressing of an affirmative by the negative of its contrary ('I shan't be sorry' for 'I shall be glad', 'not a little').

Arbitrary devices I can think of:

Allusion covert, passing, or indirect reference (to).

Analogy agreement, similarity (to, with, between)... (Philol.) imitation of existing words in forming inflexions or constructions of others, without the existence of corresponding intermediate stages.

Euphemism substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for harsh or blunt or direct one; expression thus substituted ('intimacy' is a euphemism for 'sexual intercourse').

Hyperbole (Rhet.) exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally.

Paronomasia A play on words, a pun; punning.

Paragram A play on words consisting in the alteration of one letter or group of letters of a word, esp. an initial letter.

Portmanteau Of a word, expression, etc. consisting of a blend, both in spelling and meaning, of two other words.

Syllogism form of reasoning in which from two given or assumed propositions called the premises, and having a common or middle term, a third is deduced called the conclusion, from which the middle term is absent.

Hobbes and Locke dismissed figurative usage as superfluous. Nietzsche drew, as did Derrida, the conclusion that the ubiquity of metaphor undermines the search for fixed truths. However Shelley linked metaphor with truth-bearing, or even truth-creating possibilities. For our contemporaries the debate is focused on meaning.

Wittgenstein, in his later philosophy, rejected the view he had earlier set out in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, whose basic premise is that the structure of language, at a level below the sentence, corresponds to the structure of reality, or that language in some sense 'pictures' reality.

What Wittgenstein espouses in the Tractatus - 'that there is in principle the one perfect scientific language with the sole task of describing the world' - is abandoned, with language viewed as an indefinite set of social activities, each serving different ends. The distinct ways of using language Wittgenstein called language games. There might be a way of using language to describe the world, and it might be called 'picturing'. But there are too many other uses of language - asking, thanking, cursing, etc. Wittgenstein gave a substantial list of different language games in Paragraph 23 of Philosophical Investigations. In his opinion, we learn to play all these games correctly, but are likely to become rooted in a narrow use of language. Because of that, a word becomes always the name of something, learnt by ostensive definition. When we reflect on different uses of language, which we are masters of when using language automatically, and in context, we try to fit them all into a single pattern. This, for Wittgenstein, has been the core problem of philosophical thinking throughout its entire history. The point to be carried forward is that of language 'as an indefinite set of social activities, each serving different ends'. One may think of some conspicuous examples: the Law, Statute, Procedures of Parliament, Church Ritual, Education. We can see, as an extension to Wittgenstein, each of these social phenomena (and many more besides) embodied in what is common to all peoples - language.

As far as Chomsky is concerned, transformational grammars aren't just theoretical - they are in fact encoded in language-users. To know a language is to know, implicitly, its grammar. In his Language and Mind (1968), he argued that an analysis of linguistic competences could be generalised into a 'favourable perspective for the study of human mental processes'... Chomsky believes that it isn't possible for children to learn a language from scratch - rather that they're already equipped with 'innate knowledge' of 'linguistic universals'.

Perhaps it's as well to end on a question (or two), which I frame as follows:

1 assuming Chomsky is correct, and grammar is innate; and assuming Saussure is correct, and langue exists as a system (necessarily an innate system); and assuming that Lacan is correct, and at some profound level humans function according to an innate structure of language; and assuming that Wittgenstein is correct, and that language is a social tool (i.e., what is organically within us is directly applied to our exterior constructs); and given that

2 the world changes (for example English common law will in all likelihood be swept away by a Europe-centred corpus juris), then

3 does language increase its potential in a re-absorption of its social manifestations, or are all possible realities already inherent in it? If the latter, is that not the meaning of fiction?

Post by **Zlatko Waterman** » December 6th, 2006, 10:42 am

A powerful taxonomic intelligence sets itself the task here of using phyla to lever out some solution to why fiction possesses that "quick electric fur"
( as cummings said) that engages an attentive reader again and again.

Borges might be said to have used ( or invented) genres in the same way-- in order to shake out of the dungarees all the scorpions before you dress-- to quicksilver your way through writing so that the contact with a reader isn't like the phlebotomist's needle, but instead like a lover's tongue.

To do it without thought of a frame-- like Howard Hodgkin's paintings--

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibiti ... rdhodgkin/

to make the frame , the image and the surrounding air, one. To fictionalize so well that the frame of fiction vanishes.

Imagery seems the best way to repond to your brilliance here, Peter. As usual, your essay is filled with profitable speculation and teaches me much. Again.

Thank you for posting.

Zlatko
(NM)

Post by **petercowlam** » December 6th, 2006, 11:11 am

...and thanks for that hyperlink, Zlatko. As ever you throw pictorial illumination on all these ramblings. [And by the way I've completed that Davenport volume. He's as brilliant on writers as he is on painters. Thanks for putting me on to him.]

Post by **Zlatko Waterman** » December 6th, 2006, 3:44 pm

I hang on to my letter from Wm. Gass like it was a holy relic.

He's the one who put me on Davenport, though in my ramblings around the deep on art writers I had actually read some introductory essays by Guy D..

Guy is, alas, no longer with us. And I fear the same ( soon) about my beloved Gass, a wonderful entertainer and educator. His book on translating Rilke

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/ ... rilke.html

( interesting review of Gass's book by a sometime dissenter from his versions of Rilke, at the link above)

forming the mighty trio of AFTER BABEL

http://www.amazon.com/After-Babel-Aspec ... 0192828746

( which you probably already know-- no condescension intended on my part, of course . . .)

by Steiner, and TRANSLATING NERUDA, by John Felstiner

http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=%201327

( what's with all these stone names?)-- whose name is connected ( with an intrusive "e") with one of my comic strip professor/heroes.

Anyway you ripple it, I depend on these three books for the foundation
( along with my own piddling efforts over the years) of my understanding about translation.

I also love comparing Michael Hamburger's versions with the original Paul Celan. Not that my German is good enough to understand Celan on my own-- but it's fun to see what "The Burger" makes of Celan, one of my favorite poets.

Your friend,

--Z

Post by **stilltrucking** » December 6th, 2006, 10:35 pm

"This is what I've meant over the years when I've said that the brain is a syntactic engine mimicking a semantic engine." Dennett

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The Meaning of Fiction

The Meaning of Fiction

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