Literature and weak thought

278 Pages·2013·1.77 MB·English

by  Vattimo

Literature and Weak Thought
Cross-Roads.
Polish Studies in Culture,
Literary Theory, and History

Edited by Ryszard Nycz
and Teresa Walas

Volume 2
Andrzej Zawadzki

Literature and Weak Thought
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the
internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

The publication was financially supported
by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education -
National Programme for the Development of Humanties.

Translated from the Polish by Stanley S. Bill
(in consultation with Benjamin Koschalka)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zawadzki, Andrzej.
Literature and weak thought / Andrzej Zawadzki. — 1 [edition].
pages cm. — (Cross-roads, ISSN 2191-6179 ; v. Volume 2)
ISBN 978-3-631-63649-7
1. Literature—Philosophy. 2. Philosophy, Modern, in literature.
3. Vattimo, Gianni, 1936—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Noica,
Constantin—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PN45.Z36 2013
801—dc23
2013029771

ISSN 2191-6179
ISBN 978-3-631-63649-7 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-03589-6 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/ 978-3-653-03589-6
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2013
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Table of contents

Preface .................................................................................................................. 7
I. WEAK THOUGHT: PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS ..................... 11
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 11
Noica: The Romanian Fragility of Being ........................................................... 24
Vattimo: Nihilism, Hermeneutics, Art ................................................................ 47
Weak Thought in the Context of Philosophical and Cultural Tradition ..... 55
The Weakening of Nietzsche ............................................................ 56
Nietzsche, Marx, Emancipation ........................................................ 57
Between Dialectical Reason and Hermeneutical Reason ................. 64
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hermeneutics ................................................ 69
Weak Thought and Post-Structuralism ............................................. 73
A Lexicon of Weak Thought: Verwindung, Andenken, pietas ................... 78
Nihilism and Hermeneutics ........................................................................ 92
The Death of Art, Death in Art ................................................................. 109
The Abyss of Language .................................................................. 117
II. THE WEAK ONTOLOGY OF THE LITERARY WORK .................. 125
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 125
Imitating as Tracing the World ......................................................................... 131
The Three Forms of Mimesis in Plato’s Philosophy ................................ 131
The Republic: The Mimesis of Participation .................................. 132
The Sophist: The Mimesis of Similarity ......................................... 139
The Theaetetus: The Mimesis of the Trace ..................................... 146
The Ethics of the Trace ................................................................... 152
The Three Versions of the Trace in Contemporary Philosophy ..... 156
Appendix: Plato’s Mimetic Triangle ............................................... 163
Sketching the Author ................................................................................ 167
The Crisis of the Subject: Difference, Interpretation, Critical Point ... 167
6 Table of contents
The “Unfortunate Contradiction” of Modern Subjectivity
– A Provisional Diagnosis ............................................................... 172
The Author’s Traits: The Trace as a New Formula
for the Presence of the Subject in a Text ........................................ 176
III. MODERN LITERATURE AND TRACES .......................................... 183
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 183
“Tracing the Traces”: An Overview of Weak Ontology
in Polish Literature of the Twentieth Century .................................................. 184
“Nothing Comes Before Something”: Nihilism before Nihilism ............. 185
“Impoverishment, Weakening, Disintegration”:
Weak Form in Twentieth-Century Art ..................................................... 188
“The Disappearance of the Contents of the World” ................................. 191
“Tracing the Traces” ................................................................................. 194
“The Generosity of the Trace”: On Leśmian’s “Snow” ...................................... 201
Gombrowicz and Weak Thought ...................................................................... 214
Weakness and the Trace in the Poetry of Tadeusz Różewicz ........................... 221
“The Poet Weakens, Images Lose Their Strength”:
Różewicz’s Weak form ............................................................................. 222
“The traits destroyed by time / portray our common face”:
Traces of the Subject, Subject as Trace .................................................... 228
IV. OTHER FORMS OF IMITATION/TRACING:
DANCE, MIME, ORNAMENT ............................................................. 237
“Only in dance do I know how to speak the parables of the highest things”:
The Metaphor of Dance in the Modernist Tradition ......................................... 237
Mime and Mimesis: Mime and Pantomime in Modern Literary Consciousness . 245
The Language of Movement: Mime and Pantomime
in the Conceptions of the Framers of the Great Theater Reform ............. 247
Norwid, Mallarmé, Leśmian: Mime as the Representation
of a Representation ................................................................................... 251
Creating Presence: Mime and the Phenomenon of Representation ......... 257
The Metaphor of the Ornament in Philosophical Discourse:
From Kant to Vattimo ....................................................................................... 267
Preface
Literature and Weak Thought consists of four parts. In the first part I reconstruct
the fundamental philosophical assumptions of so-called “weak thought,” which
has been shaped in particular by two thinkers – Constantin Noica and Gianni
Vattimo – both of whom remain little known and seldom discussed in Poland. In
spite of various differences between their philosophical styles, historical
experiences and political views, these two thinkers are linked by a characteristic
inclination that in my opinion might be regarded as the essential feature of
modern philosophical, artistic and literary sensibilities. This inclination involves
focusing particular attention on all that is existentially fragile, deficient, crippled
or defective, as well as the formation of a point of departure for philosophical
and cultural reflections on the basis of these areas of experience. From weak
thought I also adopt the idea that the way in which weak being, or perhaps
“weakened” being, manifests itself can be best expressed by using the concept
of the trace (just as in colloquial language we speak of “trace” quantities of
certain substances).
In the second part, on literary theory, I propose the employment of motifs
from weak thought – particularly the idea of the trace – in an attempt to
reinterpret certain fundamental concepts of poetics. Firstly, there is the concept
of mimesis, or imitation, treated here as a kind of tracing, with particular
emphasis placed precisely on the question of the trace.1 Secondly, I address the
concept of the textual subject as trace, or track, with all the meanings inherent in
these words, including among others the fundamental characteristics allowing
for the identification or differentiation of a person (facial features or “traits”),
the creation of a portrait or picture (drawing, tracing, portraying), as well as
damage, deficiency and defectiveness (marks or traces).2 I propose that the

1 Translator’s Note: The Polish word for “imitation” (“naśladowanie”) contains the word
for “trace” (ślad) within it. Therefore, “imitation” already includes a concept of
“tracing.” This connection cannot be so naturally implied in English.
2 Translator’s Note: The Polish text refers to the “ślad-rysa,” meaning literally “trace-
scratch” (which I have translated here as “trace, or track”). In fact, Zawadzki’s argument
consistently alludes to certain connotations of – and connections between – these two
words in Polish. These semantic links do not exist in the same manner in English. The
Polish “ślad” may be translated as “trace,” “mark,” “track,” “trail,” “vestige,” or even
“print.” “Rysa” may be translated as “scratch,” “crack,” “rift,” or “flaw.” Another related
word, “rys,” may be translated as “trait,” “feature,” or “outline.” The verb “rysować”
means “to draw,” “to depict” or “to portray.” In my translation of these terms, I draw
heavily on etymological connections between “trace,” “track,” “trait,” “portray” and
“portrait” (all stemming from the Latin tractus and trahere) in order to bring out these
important associations as clearly as possible.
8 Preface
“poetics of the trace” – for this is the term I propose to use – be considered as a
crucial tradition within the current of modern and especially late-modern
reflections on the status of the literary work, on its form, on poetic language, and
on the fundamental categories used to describe it.
The third part of the book is concerned with literary history. Here I attempt
to reconstruct and describe – without claiming to possess any complete or
entirely coherent perspective – those tendencies in modern literature in which
the intuition of “weak” being has most fully expressed itself in various ways and
by diverse artistic means. In the most general terms, this intuition is that of a
reality that has lost its substantiality and essentiality. It is most frequently
expressed by the motif of the trace in its various different meanings: as the
imprint, the remnant, the sign-message. It constitutes the essential thread of
thought – though it is by no means easy to uncover or analyze – in the creative
work of such writers as Roman Jaworski, Bolesław Leśmian, Witold
Gombrowicz, Tadeusz Różewicz and Tadeusz Kantor, to name but a few of the
most important “protagonists” from this part of my study. It also appears that
this “weak reality” and its trace-like mode of existence gains even greater
significance in Polish literature after 1989. For instance, we might mention the
work of Magdalena Tulli, Andrzej Stasiuk, and Stefan Chwin, as well as Olga
Tokarczuk and Jacek Podsiadły3 (whom I do not discuss here). This allows us to
formulate a tentative thesis about the existence of a distinct current in modern
literature (and one that is parallel, as it were, with “weak poetics” understood as
immanent poetological reflections in the sphere of modern aesthetics)
concentrated on the question of the trace in various contexts – ontological,
existential and cultural.
The final part takes the form of an appendix. Here I analyze three metaphors
for mimesis that can be found in modern literature, but also in philosophy: the
metaphors of dance, mime and the ornament. In my view they constitute an
important interpretive context for the question of the trace and of imitation (or
tracing). The modern crisis of mimeticism as imitation or copying has led to
attempts by modern writers to turn to older, pre-modern models of mimeticism
and to evoke the original meanings of mimesis, which have been
unacknowledged or marginalized as result of the dominance of the imitative
model. Among these models, two are very common in modern literature: dance
and mime. These refer to a participatory mimesis understood not as copying,
recreating or representation, but as lively, dynamic participation in the

3 G. Koziołek has written about the question of the trace in Podsiadły’s work in an
unpublished undergraduate thesis entitled Ślady transcendencji w poezji Jacka Podsiadły
(defended at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow in 2009).
Preface 9
movement of the world (dance) or as its direct and “natural” manifestation
(mime). However, both metaphors take on an ambivalent character in the
modern context: they express a yearning for a choreic order or a unity of the
world and the human being, while also emphasizing their disintegration and
utopian nature. They tantalize us with the hope of creating a living presence,
while also revealing the “conjuring tricks” of its artificial and conventional
nature. The third of the metaphors distinguished here – the ornament – illustrates
the place where the various orders of mimeticism overlap or interpenetrate one
another, thus indicating its paradoxical or even aporetic aspects.