Bianca Theisen, The Four Sides of Reading. Paradox, Play, and Autobiographical Fiction in Iser and Rilke.

The Four Sides of Reading: Paradox, Play, and Autobiographical Fiction in Iser and Rilke Author(s): Bianca Theisen
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 1, On the Writings of Wolfgang Iser (Winter, 2000), pp. 105-128 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057590 . Accessed: 09/03/2014 11:06
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The Four Sides of Reading:

Paradox, Play,
in Iser and Rilke

Bianca Theisen
over and over
and Autobiographical
Fiction
whether an angel you.1
you should
again you could hide have
to see lifted up a poem it . . . and only to search for been allowed behind
BY
foregrounding
either
semantic
approach
to
the
literary
text or one emphasizing theories of reading have signification, a paradigmatic to privilege either condensation of tended a or of syntagmatization equiva paradigmatic syntagmatic differentiality Iser has taken the relation between the work of Wolfgang lencies. While as one of its guiding principles, it has charted selection and combination
a more complex model of a four-sided form, in which the very
distinction
combination
between
and
combination
selection, the
and selection
syntagmatic and
is reinscribed
the paradigmatic
into both
axes.
By reinscribing other theories In The Act of Reading

foreground-background-relation
the distinction, of reading. Iser
Iser provides targets

on the
a distinctive a four-sided
axis
alternative form with

and the theme
to the
such
paradigmatic
on the syntagmatic horizon-relation axis, but ultimately subjects combi to In The Fictive and the Imaginary, on the other hand, nation selection. dominate Iser has combination he anthropologizes their selection;
distinction as a play structure that unfolds within the four sides of map
imitation and symbolization. The Act of Reading territory a as the distinction determination of the indeterminate, when, pinpoints the reading process aims at cathecting through a shifting of perspectives, indeterminate voids. By contrast, The Fictive and the Imaginary stages the as an ind?termination of the determinate, since the reader will in distinction nature of the last instance always fail to cathect the purely differential and backgrounds selection combi play. The Act of Reading foregrounds as a foregroundable their distinction turn. in nation, stabilizing "figure" The Fictive and the Imaginary, on the other hand, foregrounds combination
and
and
New Literary H?tory,
2000, 31: 105-128
106
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
and backgrounds the paradoxical selection, mollifying unity of their in an emphasis on pure difference. distinction to be read in The models in both books, charted then, need we want to if the relation between conjunction, conceptualize paradigma
and syntagma as a systemic relation, and, more specifically, as a four
"form" that can account for the otherwise unity of incompatible a paradigmatization the distinction between of the syntagma and a of the paradigma. the relation between syntagmatization Reconfiguring one us to as a and will allow the syntagma paradigma systemic highlight influence of systems and communication (Niklas Luhmann) theory on Iser's work?an influence that is most theory (Gregory Bateson) as a the when Iser obvious describes reading process self-regulating in nature as it involves a feedback of effects system that "is cybernetic sided
and or information when he throughout conceives of relationship.2 a the A sequence text's systemic of reference changing to situational "world" as a frames" system and
environment
relation
between
paradigma
from the limitations of syntagma will also allow us to trace the departure the "linguistic turn," which Iser targets when he shifts the emphasis from
a cognitive to a functional and paradigma interest in the in literature.3 text, The then, relation does not between merely syntagma literary
the linguistic replicate differentiate literariness

relation or a four-sided
its follow-up of how to axes, with problem from the linguistic norm. Seen as a systemic
form, syntagmatic indication does not merely
mean
not
it says and thereby what equivalence, suspends paradigmatic and different. that it does it into both itself Saying splitting something
mean what it says, syntagmatic indication reveals what Iser calls its
it indicates that it does not indicate, but such an indication of duplicity: course in turn indicates. It is this paradox of indication that The Act of
Reading and even more so The Fictive and the Imaginary explore. I trace
and paradigmatization the relation between syntagmatization through other theories of reading from Georges Poulet to Michael Riffaterre and to set it off from Iser's configuration of this in order Paul de Man in the four game relation as a four-sided form. That form is figured structures in The Fictive and the Iser discusses and reader responses he outlines in The Act four the and arrangements Imaginary perspectival an fictive I of Rilke 's close with autobiography ofReading. interpretation text that The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) as a modernist the recursive observation central to Iser's theory. The inter exemplifies and intraliterary reference relation of extraliterary emerges as a process to the paradox of its form, which involves masking that calls attention and unmasking itself as an autobiography.
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
107 Poulet to de Man and Beyond
I. Reading
The art and
Theory:
artifice
once suggested, of reading, Friedrich Schlegel an to read the reading that consist in reading is, attempting other, a a of reading: notion of reading envisions of others.4 Such pragmatics the the reading of others embed reading with an other and reading Theories that in communication. of intersubjective reading technique tend to conceive of intersubjective the reading process semanticize with
communication as an interaction between subject and subject, trans
formed
outside
and
as
enclosed
the
in a textual
a container. process of
object
as
that organizes
heuristic, a transformation for
inside
of
and
the
if it were
Poulet's reading
reader
instance,
conceptualizes
In external, material reality of signs on a page into an inner experience. the the reading of interrelation, down this process subject, breaking the mediation self and other, through of the book, between distinction or ghosting as the site of a doubling in which "the I who is posited I read a book is the I of the one who reads the 'thinks in me' when book."5 attitude evolved
this
on a historically is modeled heuristic Since Poulet's specific toward reading?namely extensive, reading as it identificatory in the late eighteenth intensive, repetitive century and replaced a to to in increase remains due indebted general literacy6?it reading,
particular historical semantics of reading. Such a semantics advo
cates
a process identification between of intersubjective author the paradigmatic of reader and privileges principle similarity A model
and and
equivalence.
in which the text enshrines the author as the of reading can then identify himself other of the self who reader's intersubjective of reading as a one-way process the direction with his other, determines
from text to reader. model" Norman with Holland has model" "bi-active a "transactive attempted starts that to overcome with the such response a
of the reader
Holland defense
instead of focusing
such against a and
on the effect of the text on the reader;

in fantasy psychoanalytical transformation terms of the as a text. With
conceives mechanism
response
to ex Holland his four-sided formula, unity/text/identity/self, hopes of text-reader ceed the unidirectionality but since he interaction, only in two directions, it draws out the four sides of his formula reading as as to text to it and is is self, horizontally, were?unity vertically identity is to self?he uni redoubles identity merely t? takes his four-sided formula indicate that directionality a self if I look at it as a were I in find the it is text." "identity unity though does not make explicit in his formula, What Holland the premise that we can see the self as unity only if we turn to the text as identity and unity when he is to text as
108
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
obvious if one reads his four terms chiasmatically: becomes constitution, as to text is self is to identity. This however, unity implicit premise, onto the four sides in here another, yet collapses psychoanalytically of model identification. formed, intersubjective Reaffirming subject are a and interpretation that reading by insisting object positions cannot of identity,"7 Holland's model "function the operationalize as reader's response as a feedback he it in claims does his loop, critique of Iser.8 By interpreting of the reader's viewpoint in the the implication text in Iser as a bi-active text in which the the determines trajectory
response of the reader, Holland has misunderstood it as a stimulus
that would indeed preclude feedback. While Holland's response text and reader may, as identification between model of intersubjective seat in he phrases the the "reader driver's it cannot it, put (cybernos),"
account for the recursive feedback of communication into communica
model
tion that a "cybernetics

semantics between or relay In such version of text consciousness and reader
of reading" would
or can only one or circle, identity be
have
conceived
to explicate.9
as an
Bound
to a
constitution,
communication intersubjective and another. only be another to bear
a mediation a view, of the any
between "feedback"
subjective bi-directionality in which
consciousness can the reader
hermeneutic
"brings
the questions identity" (P46). While for Holland

allows us to "read
on
text as he
understands still operates

perceive
them
through pretext
already
his unique that then

maintains
identity
as a given
reality," Iser
literature
as we
in The Act of Reading

tion or cathexis of its of reality selections constructive reference, traditions.
that the reader's

textual contexts from
ideational
is as
process,
constructed and
his combina
by intertextual and and
segmentation, as the text's sociohistorical
extraliterary environments of
Reinterpreting
Ingarden's
category
indeterminacy,
literary which
he no
longer
sees as the passage

to grasp trying text and reader, itself Iser
to the hidden
in an argues and a pre-given other, for but a
truths of a subjective
as a communicative
consciousness
between relay between text-environment That relationship
(selection) not represent
systemic relationship text-reader (combination). "reality" but constructs
does
it in the acts of selection and combination. in the process A discontent with the semantization of indeterminacy con onto subjective of reading and its projection of communication a concern the with sciousness has, on the other hand, triggered level of text-reader interaction. Lucien D?llenbach primarily syntagmatic as a "suture" of the textual blanks, that reading unfolds has argued and thus creating a is unconnected and what combining connecting that reading then tries to invest with meaning chain of interConnectivity
in order to grasp or recreate the "unity" of the text. Yet a semanticizing
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
109
of those blanks, D?llenbach that the cathexis suggests, tends to overlook of each blank only opens up another blank, and that the process of it has established, is reading, drawn into the chain of interconnectability therefore no longer in control of its own operations. The semantic seam bursts when the reader realizes that the text frustrates and neutralizes to create it in turn already offers attempts probable isotopes, because on if of the level the interconnectivity, signifier and not on that of and withholds code the that could direct the reader's semantics,
suturing activity.10
The
focus
on of
delineation
context-dependent,
the syntagmatic level of textual perception invited a variable and which, literary competence, historically
would describe the codes that guide reader re
sponses. Reader Fish's "informed reader's

him and
attempts
disorients
or Stanley like Riffaterre's "archilecteur" heuristics, this of what orients the reader," address problem to supplement a code while the text withholds it from
his semantic efforts. Riffaterre reformulates Roman
as the of paradig Jakobson's poetic syntagmatization matic equivalencies?as "stylistic function"; a stylistic stimulus perceived in the text triggers certain responses that then retroactively allow for the of the stylistic information in the text.11 Riffaterre not only description relies on a behavioral that model Holland had dubbed stimulus-response function?defined
"bi-active," he also presupposes the subjective consciousness of the
perceiving
"archilecteur,"
reader who
being
responds
the sum of
to the text's stylistic stimuli. Riffaterre's

the responses that then allow for the
of the text, is therefore based on a notion of description as an if context. reception underlying, historically reality changing, While Riffaterre presupposes such a reality context in the perceiving the literary competence subjectivity of real readers, Fish tries to model
or code-orientation of the reader on transformational grammar; his
structural
evolves as a linguistic a as (from ordinary language reality context then deviate, and encode its deviation in as Culler well from Jonathan extrapolates "informed reader"
grammar and argues for a "grammar of
that presupposes which literary language can turn in a deep structure).12 the idea of an internalized
that could account
function
literature"
for the transformation

not immanent and in the codes conventions
of linguistic
text, Culler by shared
into literary competence.

emphasizes, author, reader but evolves and the
Meaning
from a set institution
is
of of
literature at a certain time; meaning but emerges from an internalized

system.13
is no longer localized in the object within a given literary competence
Such a shift to code-orientation or literary competence foregrounds the syntagmatic axis over paradigmatic over combination equivalence, one maps selection. When onto the a of into reading signs stringing
110
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
chain in which each sign iswhat it is by being different from syntagmatic its immediate in particular that Fish and Riffaterre context, an operation
have in mind, one runs into a deadlock of intrasystemic reference.
of codification, Problems be differentiated from distinction literary

literature
between the system,

and
has argued, have to of reference. Reference relies on a problems to the self- and heteroreference. With regard one between reference of would be problem however, Niklas Luhmann
("world" or "reality"). Problems of codifica
non-literature
tion revolve
operations reference to
around
as its own.
the value difference

The code to thus "world"
with which
or only to to the
any system marks

the system itself. The extraliterary context
its
refers
non-literature,
of ordinary language, for instance, or the subjective (the linguistic as the negative cannot of the reader), consciousness simply function to its value with which the literary system organizes its internal reference
own operations as acceptable or unacceptable; it cannot function as the
norm
or literary code. Reference, else (non-literature, something observations;

the distinction
and
of a literary work from a delimits "world"), only specific space of or "form" (as the unity of it is this very delimitation, the distinction
selfand heteroreference), that then serves as
between
the ideation of "world" for the literary work and renders invisible the on. The problem of how to account distinction it operates for the with which the observes observations itself, on literary system specific
the other hand, is a question of codification: the code, Luhmann says,
"both
system's
symbolizes
and
interrupts
In their
the
fundamental
to reference as
circularity
intraliterary an
of
the
as codi
self-implication."14 by advertising of advocates
attempt
reformulate
selection
combination, fication, the
extraliterary "literary"
competence
encounter
aporia
of
inverted
De Man
inside-outside
therefore
relationships.
argues that "deconstructive" models of reading,
trying to read metonymy

using, combination within
within metaphor,
selection, have
or, in the terms we have been

poised themselves between
of the readings?the paradigmatization incompatible logically of Instead the of the and playing syntagma paradigma. syntagmatization out the distinction those incompatible between readings, or instead of wishes terms, deconstruction "Reading itself," in de Man's allegorizing two to stabilize the of the this distinction by allegorizing "crossing" as a of Man chiastic elucidates operation "Crossing," which de readings. a at on aims the level of metonymy, establishing metaphor employed of the syntagma and the the paradigmatization between conjunction as syntagmatization. It thus runs of but the paradigma, syntagmatization one side of the distinction between the two into the aporia of employing and could only modes of reading to account for the overall distinction, as already implicit in what is being observed, mask its own observations
two
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
111
namely, the two modes of "reading" played out by the text itself. De Man describes this move as one of pure self-reference: "If one of the readings is declared to undo it by means of the true, it will always be possible it will to be demonstrate that other; if it is decreed false, always possible it states the truth of its aberration." Such a self-referential allegory of reference or as for reading passes extraliterary intraliterary codification; de Man says: it aims at "including the contradictions of reading in a
narrative that would be able to contain them."15 The deconstructive
allegorization
functions as
of
reading
includes
and is in
an outside
turn based on
in an
an
inside
inclusive
that
relation
still
a container,
inside and outside. The potential of inside four-sidedness ship between outside distinctions would of the characterization then, if de Man's move holds, again be collapsed deconstructive the inside. by amplifying De Man calls up Walter Benjamin's sock, whose figure of the rolled-up outside is also its own inside when it is unrolled like a M?bius strip, to
map out an alternative to the emphasis on syntagmatization.
Among direction
the few clues with which de Man points in an alternative that could unfold deconstructive allegories of reading with an of Reading is the term "re-entry" (DAR 76). Deconstructive allegory can the net of substitutions readings, de Man believes, spotlight govern the recurrence of such ing the text, but they invariably fail to prevent
substitutions in their own discourse because they cannot "uncross" these
exchanges
readings In order
(DAR242).
treat to distinction
De Man may here be suggesting

as operation de Man's but notion not of
that deconstructive
distinction. and "uncross
as a re-entered "re-entry"
reformulate
ing" in those
Spencer-Brown distinction or
terms we have
has "cross" outlined and
to draw
it.
on distinction
theory
as
George
between a
Spencer-Brown re-entered distinction
distinguishes or "marker."
While
distinction marked guishes

tion
between its two sides, a marked and an un distinguishes a re-entered distinction distin side, an inside and an outside, the distinction itself from what it distinguishes. a distinc While
operation, a re-entered distinction is a second-order
is a first-order
of its own operation, observation since it distinguishes itself as distinc tion from what it distinguishes. As a "marker" or a re-entered distinction, the distinction is the distinction it is and yet no longer is what it is. It is can as the and be observed paradoxical unity of its two sides or its
"form." can then A distinction take de Man's can thus claim be observed as a cross or as a marker.16 can We that deconstructive readings observe
distinctions
own
only
as cross and cannot

to intimate that
"uncross"
deconstruction,
them on the level of their

because it cannot
observations
cross and marker, between remains blind to its own level of distinguish observation: it has to posit it as being implicit in the set of distinctions in text. the De Man's of Reading," on already operative "allegorization
112
the other re-entry:
of Proust,
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
hand, seems it is impossible

because
to target the paradoxes of indication implied in to read "Reading," as he suggests in his analysis
Proust's text indicates is something else
whatever
than what it represents. the text indicates both ing" for de Man. On the basis of
Indication itself and we
is processed "something can then
on a double else"?and look
plane where that is "Read
at the two "logically of the syntagma and the incompatible paradigmatization readings"?the terms of in of their difference the paradigma?both syntagmatization as a four and in terms of their unity, and can formalize this distinction a two sided form. While distinction it sides between which posits the this case the paradigmatization of the syntagma and distinguishes?in re-entry of the paradigma?the the syntagmatization form or unity of a distinc moreover constructs tion that from which is in turn this distinction as from another unmarked then distinguish space. We distinguished, the fact that we distinguish the paradigmatization between of the of the paradigma: we distinguish this syntagma and the syntagmatization the distinction distinction into itself, from itself within itself. Re-entering we distinguish the paradigmatization of the syntagma and the syntagma
tization of the paradigma as a marked space from the paradigmatization
and of paradigmatization Such operationalization an unmarked seems as to Man in be what de had space syntagmatization a mind with "Reading" as the "something else" processed by paradoxical indication.
paradigmatization
syntagma unmarked space.
of
the
and
the an
syntagmatization
of
the paradigma
as an
Distinguishing
and
paradigmatization
syntagmatization in
and syntagmatization
this way, we attain a
from
four
sided marked
spaces.17
form: we spaces
Observing
can observe or the unity

such
the unity of the distinction between of the distinction

in terms of its marked
its between its unmarked

allows for
a form
spaces
a re-entry
terms of
of
its
the distinction
unmarked spaces
back
into
the distinction;
a re-entry of
observing
the excluded
it in
prompts
included distinction foregrounds

crossing
third
the re-entry of the back into the distinction. While to its form, while it into the distinction calls attention excluded the re-entry of the included third, distinction,
into an unmarked space, collapses or cancels distinction.
over
II. Iser's Four-Fold

Iser develops his alternative
Play of Reading
to other theories of reading into a more certain takes deconstructive of that views, in up general theory play a in them constructivist but transforms of Roland those Barthes, particular model of reading.18 He does so because reading as a systemic relation
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
113
is not adequately described by the recourse and as an act of construction to linguistic codes and literary competence advocated by Fish, Riffaterre, a as form of and Culler. Describing reading play, Iser instead focuses on
re-entry acts of or reinscription, as outlined above, in order to account for such construction.
a to the paradox of re-entering similar Play involves a paradox it does not mean what it says and, playing into distinction: distinction and saying, explores out this duplicity between meaning the paradoxical their difference and In of their the way that a both simultaneity unity.19 not is and is the it distinction both distinction re-entered is, play both indicates and at the same time does not indicate what it indicates. Play indication in a context of thus suspends the code that would govern
non-play, and, transforming this code, reinscribes it as its own rule. In
The Fictive and the Imaginary, Iser draws on Gregory Bateson's analysis of In play, Bateson believes, a bite is not a play to account for this paradox. context that signaled fight. In bite, as it would be in a communicative order to indicate that the bite is not a bite, and yet is a bite, in order to differentiate within the play between play and non-play, it is necessary for to the metacommunicative frame "this is a play."20 This establish play its which, rule, by differentiating explicit play from non-play, organizes
"reference" (as the distinction between selfand heteroreference),
however,
certain
is simultaneously
and excludes
processed
others,
as an implicit
or determines what
rule that allows

is acceptable
for
and
moves
an is unacceptable for this play to be the play it is. If play processes or re-enters rule it into its it with dovetails explicit implicitly, operations, as reference and code. Iser formulates what we had earlier differentiated this problem with Bateson's distinction between map and territory, and a of of that he also defines with Anthony pure differentiality speaks play as a "digitalization of the analog." While Wilden the digital marks on crosses and the analog differences, distinctions, boundaries, operates a a digitali of forth condensation Iser coherence.21 unfolds such figures what
zation code of in the the analog?which deconstructive a relationship responds version between to of four the the sides: aporia of reference of territory, and the and syntagmatization and map
paradigm?as
imitation
different reader
and symbolization.
game structures
This
or
four-sided
distinction
and
then yields
their
four
textual
strategies
respective
responses.
The textual play on an implicit explicit code prompts the reader to react to the ind?termination of its code. Since the rules that guide the since they coincide neither with the reading of the text are "unmarked," nor with the constitutive rules with which Searle had circum regulative, scribed the language game, Iser refers to them as aleatory: they guide it through a maze of textual moves. While reading only by misguiding
114
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
the reader is led to discover the rule that governs the text, the text's moves the out. rules it shift The reader constantly may thus be plays to own of substitute the code his of attitudes or beliefs, system prompted norms for the indeterminacy and codelessness of the textual code, to his own disposition onto the textual game; but coding the project of the textual code, the reader centralizes codelessness its paradoxical
structure and ends the movement of its play. Or, as Iser formulates it, the
reader
cathects
the differential
semanticize on it; supplementing the play of the text what is not play. The game then is his, but the textual is up. A reader that proliferates from a need for game response to the that tries the that text, understanding appropriate experiences the text seems to offer, or that sets itself up as a defense the against
unknown and the unfamiliar is prone to produce such a semantic
play of the text in his attempt itwith his own code, he superimposes
to
reading
then,
with a
which meaning.
the
substituting
reader "wins" out over the textual game by The first of the four typified reader responses,
is semantization.
If, on the other hand, the reader does not play it safe by semanticizing, but plays the game of the text, he will have to suspend his own attitudes and codes and will himself be played by the text. Iser here outlines the other three possible (2) the reader lets himself be drawn into responses: a game in which he to gain experience by "tilting" his own code hopes for the codeless code of the text, which he nevertheless by appropriates it part of his own experience; that his (3) the reader discovers making discovery of the rules of the game is in turn a game in which he activates his cognitive and emotive faculties, and thus comes into play himself; (4) the reader does not only come into play himself, he gambles with his own Self, his own attitudes are put at stake when and beliefs he
reinscribes into the the game; distinction that is, the between reader's his own moves position and those is drawn of the into text and observer
in what Iser calls the ineradicable of play. Iser difference operationalized refers to this last response with a term borrowed from Barthes as the
"pleasure of the text": the reader erases himself as his own reference
frame. The
utterance
reader's
as Lacan
position,
has analysed
similar
it,
to the subject's
"fades" into the
position
split or
in the split
the ineradi
cable
difference subject, and even
difference
is itself "subject" of the text?and that is not an less so cognizant but of operationalization subject, I distinction have (?T279). In the terms of Luhmann's theory that
introduced between play (the codeless code above, the very distinction of the text) and what is not play (the reader's code), is being re-entered into the play so as to become play itself. The "pleasure of the text" thus to a game in which the reader plays on and is being indicates a response played by the very paradox of play.
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
115
These four attitudes of reading?semantization, gaining experience, to the activation of faculties, and the pleasure of the text?correspond terms but reformulat four game structures that Iser, following Caillois' calls ag?n, alea, mimicry ing them as textual strategies or constituents, in which colliding is staged as an antagonistic ilinx. Agon contest, so overcome as are to out the difference of play played positions of controlling of semantization, ("Spieldifferenz"). The reader-response a code and overcoming the play of textual difference by superimposing and ludic difference
aleatory rule
by bringing
that governs of a contest
it to a halt, can be seen as the flip-side

this that game revolves structure, around namely gain or the loss. Alea
of the
as a
ultimate
uncontrollability
in the the determinateness of positions of chance explodes generator text, as they are poised against each other in agon, into what Iser calls of its semantics" "an unpredictable (FT 261). Alea plays on structuring that organize the fact that the nodal points the combination and the
selection of extratextual and intertextual references within the text are
contingent
and unforeseeable.
as a difference rule
It intensifies
between of this game
the difference
the axes of structure?an
of play, which
selection extension and of
Iser conceptualizes combination. The
aleatory
alternative
semantics
and contingent
of determinate
decisions
that defamiliarizes
to
and
an
implodes
attitude
a
of
positions?corresponds
to suspend its familiar codes in order to let itself reading that is prepared as the be drawn into the play of the text; and it functions flip-side of this a such of codes rule, if it ultimately suspends suspension by appropriat as a play of transformation and masking Mimicry ing it as experience. blurs the determinate of positions delineation in the text so as to create an illusion that tries to dissimulate the difference between play and non axes are here framed The of selection and combination play altogether. an if "as that that is said is what is what meant, by pretends thereby while also revealing the very structure of play itself, which concealing does not mean what it says. According to the aleatory rule of mimicry, the illusion of play aims at pretending that it is not play, but at the same as illusion time makes in order itself transparent still to be play. Differentiating between this disappearing and reappearing distinction own reader the will activate his and faculties that discover play/non-play, he is implied in his observation; and his response would turn into the flip-side of this aleatory rule as soon as he identified with or cathected the very illusion that the textual play is not a play on itself as play but a to world, or to non-play. reference or Ilinx, by subverting, undercutting, a to textual of them carnivalizing positions degree vertigo, makes it almost exceeds itself as play, not like mimicry indeterminate; by
its ludic structure for the simulation of "reality" or non dissimulating of play (Iser refers to it as the every outside play, but by drawing
116
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
into play. Ilinx then reintroduces the distinction between "repressed") or in that and makes other which words, play play play, back non-play, into the play. Play difference third excluded itself, as the included turn between in out and is within the play non-play, played play. Iser
describes the aleatory rule of this game structure as a return of the
excluded
as a reapplication to the the repressed, of the outside inside; it "allows the absent to play against the present, and in everything a difference that is present it opens that makes whatever has been or it.Whatever fight back against the representative from is present is as if mirrored
corresponds to a reader response
excluded
Ilinx then
claims of what excluded its reverse side" (i<7262).

where the reader's own
are played on, where his "outside" position is drawn into expectations and erased in the play of the text; eliminating the difference between the play of the text and the code of the reader, and halting the textual game in this way, would account for the flip-side of the aleatory rule of
ilinx. These can be four seen game as a structures four-sided and and form. their In corresponding and agon over reader mimicry responses denotation They are
dominates
over
figuration,
imitation
symbolization.
both play structures in which the bite is taken to be a fight, in which play is confused but in and as play. Since those two ludic with non-play,
strategies try to overcome or erase the distinction between play and non
play within play, we could more, Alea distinction. over denotation, to be a fight,
and as non-fight.
it
the very paradox of play all the and thereby highlight a into the of also speak re-entry of this distinction on and ilinx, the other hand, foreground figuration over imitation; the bite is not taken and symbolization as fight is taken as play, and it functions simultaneously
Play can here be experienced as a play on and a re
as its included excluded third. entry of this very distinction In The Act of Reading, Iser charts four textual strategies (counterbal
ancing, opposition, to or echelon, and serial) that organize perspective or the
reference
are of correlative the
of text to world
the its four text,
within
game
the text. On
structures of as well reference its as that own
the level of reference,

organize moves the and "codedness" operations.
they
Perspective and
establishes
organization external the external
internal of the
reference, text occasions
selection, a fore
combination:
is in which element the selected relationship ground-background at which is its from and context, original foregrounded depragmatized as selection onto a the same time still referenced Mapping background. a primarily it from Iser disengages relationship, foreground-background the associa in is semantics which through meaning produced linguistic of an absent sign, an effect that tion of the latent, repressed presence presupposes paradigmatic equivalence. Rather, meaning emerges from
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
117
and visualization,
selection as
a shifting
and
between
actualization
which pinpoints
or
foregrounding
"Mean
backgrounding,
contingency.
ing is selection" Even though reference while
of selection as systemic in The Act ofReading, he further specifies it for the literary text: social systems refer to and distinguish themselves from the pure
of world or world as a "meaning correlate,"23 and, through
for Iser, as it is for Luhmann.22 Iser draws on Luhmann's notion
contingency
selection, to world;
is environment
the complexity of world, the literary text does not refer it refers to the reference of other social systems to world. What reduce
for the literary or text is not "reality" a or "world," or even,
qua
the
intertextuality,
predominant
the literary
social
system, but
systems
the complexity
at particular
reduction
time. The
of
literary
literary text does not reinforce

and perceptions these social
the dominant
systems generate,
set of beliefs,
but references
expectations,
their very
delimitation references they make: against

this
the basic a background

structure
from something else (the contingency of the world). It the blind spot of the distinctions they draw and the selections "In this respect, the literary text is also a system, which shares structure of overall systems as it brings out dominant meanings of neutralized
operative not
and negated
in relation
possibilities.
to a contingent
However,
world,
becomes
in relation to the ordered the text pattern of systems with which to interfere" (AR 72). Textual reference interferes or ismeant thus takes the very distinctions and delimitations of social systems as its starting It makes selections and the contingency of those point. highlights what had left virtual. selections, reference, by actualizing they Literary but
then, dominant reconstructs does not ideologies constructs and "represent" of a a social given reality?be environment?it Literary it does reference, the world, not denote, that is to or the but say,
liminality.24
is a second
understood and
order
as
observation;
to
the fictional
"reality" but
text can
has to be
then no
seen as
longer
interaction
be
a correlative
communication. Such a selection organized of selection, in an or the external network reference of references" of the text, through is
furthermore
"internal
combination.
understands specifies it as a
Following
combination theme-horizon
Jakobson
as
's idea of
that
the poetic
of the constitutes
function,
paradigma, the system
Iser
and of
syntagmatization relationship
intratextual
perspectives
references
(AR 96).
characters, (as selection
The
plot, of
shifting
and reader selection,
and
tilting
of
four
on
perspectives?narrator, the extraliterary
position?arrange or observation
observation) by thematizing perspective, backgrounding on the horizon. This other perspectives shifting of perspectives yields the meaning of the text or what Iser calls the "aesthetic object." Iser differentiates of the perspectival among four modalizations arrangement
one
while
118
according to the theme-horizon
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
structure: (1) A counterbalancing one hierarchizes ("kontrafaktisch") arrangement perspectives, privileges and restricts others, and excludes uncertainties that might emerge from so as to foreground a the shifting of perspectives, ideology specific one the associated of For Iser, with and sustained by perspectives. or propagandistic literature takes to such an didactic, devotional, not because of perspectives, it simply imitates the domi of its but because it wants to compensate for time, systems or blind spots. It combines their shortcomings the selection of selection in such a way, however, that it obscures its own viewpoint by foregrounding one dominating and thereby becomes in turn; perspective "ideological" norms or An belief (2) systems against arrangement oppositional posits each other, so that each one with its limits and limitations is observed from the position cancel each thus opposed of the other. The norms and backgrounding show them other out; their mutual foregrounding for what they are: functional in a specific system, but contingent; (3) An arrangement nant belief
echelon one arrangement perspective over of the perspectives other; instead levels out all hierarchization of refer of it offers a multitude
enced systems and viewpoints the reader's attempt to find that disorients a dominant same at sets him up to project his own time it the one; yet attitudes onto the leveling of the text's perspectives between theme and a as A serial his horizon, disorientation; (4) arrange against stronghold ment
point within a
of perspectives
where one the sentence;
heightens
perspective serialization
the leveling
shifts from of
of the echelon
sentence to sentence alternates
structure
or even between
to
perspectives
theme
recognize
and
horizon
the referenced
so
quickly
subtexts.
that
A
it becomes
"continual
almost
process
impossible
of transforma
to
of referenced the identification tion that leads back into itself replaces a structure of serialized perspec systems (AR 102). Disoriented by such
tives, tion the here reader proceeds realizes as a the text's very of process the text's of selection. Combina reference, its feedback external
selection
If we structures
of selection,
map and those their four
back
into itself.
arrangements reader responses, onto the four game or
perspectival
respective
counterbalancing
the hierarchization
order agonistic to consolidate game
of perspectives
structure specific that norms arranges
that posits
or positions intratextual
one
over
the others
to antitheti
in
an
corresponds positions
cally
and
arrives
at a similar
oppositional point where

conforms to
arrangement, the contingency

alea, as a
in which
The stabilization. to a cancel each other perspectives norms becomes of the referenced evident, determination and
structure that dissipates the semantic
game
worlds relations building up from the referenced them up to a combinatory multiplicity. Prompting
and
texts and opens the reader to project
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
119
belief structure that simultaneously system onto a textual such an identification, the echelon arrangement agrees with as a game structure that plays on deception, role playing and mimicry, the transfiguration of identity. Serialization of perspectives?that draws the reader into an oscillation where his attempt to produce is meaning exceeded constantly by an ever changing trajectory of actualized possi structure bilities?tallies that disrupts the ilinx, as a game up with of and so subverts any determinate textual positions stability perceptions that the reader ismade aware of his own eccentricity. And as perspectival a feedback serialization of the text's external reference back presents his undercuts into itself, ilinx re-enters the intratextual distinction between play and as well as transgresses back into itself and observes, it, as non-play distinction. Iser models While both the perspectival and the game arrangement
structures and their respective reader responses on four-sided forms,
own
selection as selection and play as play, both need to geared to observing be read in conjunction to account in order for the unity of the distinction between reference and codification in the literary text. The Act in with The Fictive and the of Reading Reading conjunction us a in involves four-sided from a distinction Imaginary distinguishing four-sided
entails
distinction,
else" (in
reference
between other selfwords,
from
and
codification.
heteroreference,
Whereas
or
reference
and we had
a distinction
literature "world"), the
"everything with argued with which
non-literature revolves operations around as
Luhmann, a system marks
codification its own
self-reference and therefore
its own,
relies on a distinction between what is acceptable and what is unaccept able for its self-reproduction. on Luhmann and general systems Drawing Iser reformulates the of in The Act reference theory (AR 70ff.), problem as one of and such as a of Reading perspective specifies perspective and on of observations observations: with its selections, shifting tilting the text does not reference it references other selections world, (of social
pure
systems,
contingency
other
of
texts or art works)

"world."25 With its
that have
selection of
already
selection,
cut
into the
literature
itself as a second-order observation: it observes the blind spot in the selections of social systems or other art works, and entailed points to what they left as virtual and But while it organizes the text's potential. distinction between self- and heteroreference, such an observation is but an operation which in turn involves a blind it as a functions cross, spot, delineates
and not as a marker.
When, codification Imaginary indicates,
on
the other hand, on the paradoxical
and suggests he delineates
Iser models the problem of literary structure of play in The Fictive and the that play indicates else than it something an intratextual reference with which the text
120
points to and reproduces its own operations and
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
moves.
We
can
also
say
that
the
literary
text here
frames
that
its frame The

the
within rule of
itself:
it as
it frames
literature
its
and
extratextual
reference?as
which
delineates
differentiates
metacommunicative
it from
non-literature.
reiterates
the game,
to
or
its
frame,
external
reference
non-play
on
the
the inside of the play and

game reproduces itself as
traces out
game. The
the internal moves

re-entry of the
with which by the

frame,
metacommu
nicative
game extratextual reference marker.
frame
structures
into what
Iser reference
it frames
As the the re-entered is at
can
same
then be played
metacommunicative processed moves: time own
through
as
describes.
a framed
intratextual function reference as
and And
reproduces as marker or
text's
it
can
distinction,
extratextual
it is (between literature it is the distinction becomes paradoxical: or play and non-play) and yet no longer is what non-literature
Extratextual reference delimits a space of operations and observations
and it is. is re
specific
entered We can
for
into also
literature
the say
and fiction
as
as play;
of a these
this very delimitation

operations and observations. of observation
self-reproduction that selection
second-order
the
literary
as that
text within
which
the literary
observe.
text here
zooms
in on
its own blind
spot
it cannot
of reference The conjunction Iser's concern with problems between in in The Act of Reading and his emphasis on the problem of codification of as an observation of the The Fictive and the Imaginary can be conceived
unobservable. As a second-order observation, literature observes the
blind
historical
spot of what
contexts, back
are first-order
other into texts, its own
observations
other art and
for it?sociopolitical
also feeds itself observes observing.
and
its own
works?but
observations
operations,
Especially
longer only Iser, modernist
with
shows
the rise of modernism,

what literature it observes, therefore but tends
Luhmann
wants towards
has suggested,
how such it observes. structures
art no
For as the
to show
serialization
paradoxes of
of perspectives
observation,
or
modern
the game
art
strategy
intends to
of
be
ilinx. Unfolding
observed as ob
server
itself
(KG 74, 96).
III. Staging Autobiography:
Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge
in a world that of observers If literature stages itself as an observation it on recursive observations, it is no longer referential: is constructed or world, it does not represent does not imitate nature something or historically given, but in turn creates and calls phenomenologically As fiction, forth what it refers to when it relies on recursive observation. not it does itself on what model Iser says, literature outlines possibilities,
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
121
to be given, but invokes horizons of potentiality (TL 22). I would 's Rilke The like to consider a key modernist Notebooks narrative, ofMalte to recursive such a shift from representation Laurids Brigge, to exemplify in modernist literature in the fictional concern with what we observation
have called an observation of the unobservable.
seems
or memoir Staged as a fictive autobiography aristocrat and poet Malte Laurids young Danish
comprise scenes, observations, and memories
of
that
the
are
Brigge,
impoverished the Notebooks

apparently un
the poor, the dying, or a blind connected. Portrayals of the homeless, in Paris, descriptions of decaying houses newsvendor turned inside out, or of overcrowded alternate with hallways and rooms in the Salpeti?re
the narration of childhood memories, the narration of art works and of
the
literature
To
Malte
connect
has
what
read,
seems
and with
unconnected,
the portraits
readers
of
have
historical
mostly
personae.
threads that run through the narrative, looked for the loose thematic intransitive love (a love that exceeds such as remembrance, its object), or Malte's formulated of "I am agenda programmatically "seeing": see. more to me don't enters I it know but is, why learning everything once and where it I doesn't used said to."?"Have it before? stop deeply I am learning to see. Yes, I am beginning. It's still going badly" (N5, 6). to Husserl's, 's Kate Hamburger Rilke notion of seeing and compares a at here that aims world whose argues seeing phenomenological
objects, as it were, invade subjective consciousness.26 Judith Ryan, on the
narration indeed departs from any suggests and instead constitutes his own reality given reality phenomenologically turn a completely in the outside world with very selectively, permeating so that would be less than subjective imagination, seeing receptive hand,
constitutive.27 For Ryan, Malte aims at a "hypothetical narration": he
other
that Malte's
does
not narrate
alternatives possibilities" Although

conjunctive
is, but what could have been, when to the historical accounts he gives, or when in retelling the biblical story of the prodigal what I agree with Ryan's insight
that
he opens up he "plays on son. highly

it
about
the hypothetical,
revokes the perspective
mode
of
narration
constantly
has just offered and presents the reader with would not ground such a narrative suspension
reference consciousness. frames The in an narrative all-determining sets rather and up its
I yet another alternative, of fixed perspectives and

overbearing highly confusing subjective alterna
tion of perspectives, its very dense network to historical, of allusions and facts and and social, literary, legendary, personae, autobiographical of apparently unconnected scenes and vignettes, itsmontage in order to
break down any external reference frames, such as subjective conscious
ness, be external
it of narrator, character or reader. Through this breakdown of reference frames, the reader is in turn drawn into the narrative
122
and
own
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
ismade
criteria
to act out one of the many Autobiographical

of observation and
autobiography.
roles with which it theatricalizes coding here points the reader to his
so that to a certain degree he
selection,
in Malte's autobiographical will always read his own reading reading of or in his present and his childhood, past reinterpretation surroundings of the historical past. The reader will read his own autobiography. visible what is the Notebooks are concerned with making Throughout, that invisible: Malte and his mother believe that they can see a house had burnt
they can
down
see
but which
Brahe's
is in fact still "there" for them;

or Ingeborg's ghosts. Malte's
they believe
maternal
Christine
how to tell stories, narrates grandfather, a protean his memoirs from his figure Count visible and the Saint-Germain, childhood, present to his impostor to "'Do you see memoirs her: Abelone he dictates his while daughter one at her. And of the silver him?' he bellowed he seized suddenly Count Brahe, who still knows in such a way as to make candlesticks remembered
the other hand,
and
into her face. Abelone held the light blindingly on that she had seen him" (TV153). Malte's own narration,
is to a second degree removed from an immediate and
forceful narrative
of the invisible visualization that, as in his grandfather's on at the of the its recipient. Looking still relies style, blinding ? in the Muse? de "La la Malte Licorne" dame Cluny, imagines tapestries is present for him, and that he shows her what that the absent Abelone in the tapestries. the order in which is represented they are Inverting into a the medieval he transforms exhibited, representations pictorial the last tapestry is said to mirror narrative that closes in on itself when it visible what is invisible when It makes of an absence. the presence a is is she the unicorn: "What of the mirrored shows holding image
Do you see: that absence she you are is am imagining If Abelone's showing Do here. the you unicorn understand, as, according its image?. Abelone?" to Abelone, (A/T30). legend, the I
mirror.
is made
present,
unicorn's
Abelone,
invisibility
also a virgin,
is made
visible
to
in a mirror
see in this
held
mirroring
by a virgin, what
narrative is
is made
herself,
Abelone her see
simultaneously
to make herself her seeing. see
mirrored
what
and mirroring.
cannot be seen, Malte's
Instead
of blinding
makes
narration
and the Notebooks part with mimesis invisible, we with is being represented, could say Whatever Iser, is representation. seems to be "as if; whatever with the fictional marker bracketed sig such nified only indicates that it does not indicate what it indicates?yet as a (bracketed) indication that can in turn functions non-indication Making visible the then
accesses
call
into existence
the inaccessible,
what
makes
is not
present
given
what
(TL 15).
is absent,
If literature
actualizes what
thus
is
virtual, or observes
the unobservable,
it does not dwell on an ontologically
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
123
is inaccessible
form of observation.
concealed
own mode
space, or on a realm of the ineffable. What

of access, what is unobservable is its own
is its
of "staging" and of the Iser captures this operation with the metaphors text as a "mirror world." Staging implies a "crossing of boundaries," and the play of the text, Iser suggests, "stages transformation and at the same time reveals how the staging is done," exhibiting "its own procedural as an to so to road the "access which inaccessible," provide workings" us to is both what inaccessible both "allows have things ways, by making a and and absent" of presence (P 260). Such simultaneity present
absence, or, in Luhmann's terms, the paradoxical unity or "form" of
it the fictional for Iser; he also describes their distinction, characterizes as "a in which is reflected, mirrorings, everything place of manifold
refracted, fragmented, telescoped, perspectivized, exposed, or revealed"
(FI 79). With

stasis, Iser
his notion
on
of fiction
as a paradoxical
anthropology
doubling
of
or as ek
draws
Helmuth
Plessner's
eccentricity,
to which man both is and has body, an ambivalent according position him from animals, who only are body and therefore that differentiates in themselves from themselves.28 If do not have to distinguish themselves
fiction and us as ek-stasis can from ourselves allows us stage ourselves, at to the see same our for us the it is a time own simultaneous paradoxical from within blind spot, inclusion enactment and to from in ourselves that allows exclusion to see
without. our own
Fiction
observe
its own blind spot in turn, setting but invariably entails observations, itself up as the "form" or the unity of the distinction between first and
second-order observations.
the mask are paradigms of such fictional enactment for Iser: they suggest the simultaneity of a presence with an absence, the of a role with its indeterminability: "In order to produce determination The actor and
the determinate form of an unreal character, the actor must allow his
reality to fade out. At the same time, however, he does not know who, is, for one cannot say, Hamlet precisely properly identify a character who has never existed. Thus role-playing endows a figment with a sense of reality in spite of its impenetrability which defies total determination" (P244). Acting, theatricality, disguise, masks, and face lessness as the flip-side of the face (that is, as something that cannot be in with the visible of the invisible, are, seen) making conjunction another of Rilke 'sNotebooks. While "dominant" the concern with face and facelessness is certainly an intertextual to what Baudelaire reference in his Petits Po?mes en Prose, "tyrannie de la face humaine" mentioned in the it also Rilke 's poetic Notebooks, explicitly pinpoints to as or the "hollow form" the virtual back capture attempt negative of actualized Malte the foregrounded, ground figuration. perceives in Paris as something wear wear faces of passers-by out and the until they had called
own
124
non-face
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
an old woman whose face is shows through; he describes see "I it in two could there: its hollow her hands: left suddenly lying form. It cost me an indescribable effort to stay with those two hands, not to see a face to look at what had been torn out of them. I shuddered from the inside, but I was much more afraid of that bare flayed head there, faceless" (N7). As a child, Malte on occasion waiting plays the his mother has never had, to role of Sophie, the imaginary daughter commiserate about the villainous Malte; he holds one role present as he is playing
with scarves
the other. Or
and mask
he disguises
as a sorcerer.
himself
The
in an elaborate
at first
costume
the
mirror
reflects
grandiose
to unwrap to were,
image Malte
scarves refract and a monstrous
has created
cloak in front reality
of himself,
of that exceeds
but
then, as he struggles
it turns on him, and as inverts it role
the mirror,
Malte's
the positions
It forced reality, me, a
of mirrored
I don't
and mirror:
to to me that an no me a
know
how,
look
reality permeated at I stared and I was the mirror. one, stronger to be alone and felt in front with of me, stranger terrifying appalled I lost all I thought him. But at the very moment this, the worst thing happened: I felt an indescribable, sense to exist. of myself, I For one ceased second, simply my against this large, piercing, futile longing for myself, then only he remained: there was nothing
strange, incomprehensible, will: for now the it was
up, and monstrous
dictated
image,
except him. Different mirroring
(TV 107) to see herself simultaneously who is supposed here finds himself in the tapestries, Malte
that no merely or a non-person. longer the mirror refracts as In the an image, a role, a "incomprehensible terms we could
from Abelone, and mirrored

into a mirror but a mask, third person
transfigured or even face, reality" of a
Iser's
then
say that
distinction
this passage
between
plays
identity
out
and
a double
role, and
game
between
on
face
the unity
and
of
the
facelessness
by shifting "whatever
namely
into that of ilinx. As in ilinx, from the structure of mimicry from its reverse side" (FI 262), is present is as if mirrored
itself as mirrored by Malte as a mirror, and the non
the mirror
as the excluded third between included person emerges seeing and a "I" into the third to fades the where seen, point autobiographical was now was to he that but it run, ("I began person running"). to ilinx, from an erasure of the such shifts from mimicry Enacting distinction between role and identity to the re-entry of such a distinc as a fictive autobiography that tion, the Notebooks stage themselves to the and calls attention of autobiography subverts the textual positions as a first or "form" that guides them. Written mostly very distinction person narrative, the Notebooks seem to comply with autobiographical
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
125
discourse
and functions can also be narration. is therefore
in which the "I" splits itself between discourse and story level, as both subject and object of its own narrative, a split that underscored first- and third-person by shifts between
has suggested, discourse, Jean Starobinski Autobiographical a It double.29 counterfeits of the non always simultaneity simultaneous: of the present with the past, of a former sinful self with a
repentant self, of a remembered "I" with a remembering or "I."
current
The
characteristic
the
use of the narrative

simultaneity as a of the
present
and the linguistic

the
variable
of
"I" establish
non-simultaneous,
paradox
autobiographical
pronoun functions
form. As Emile
linguistic
Benveniste
variable, as
has shown,
a non-referential
the first-person
instance
it represents a "reality of discourse." ad believes, language dresses the problem of intersubjective communication and solves itwith an "ensemble of 'empty' signs that are nonreferential with respect to of discourse
'reality.'"30 We could also say that the linguistic instance "I" can mark
that refers but to itself as discourse: such pronouns, With Benveniste
what
The
as marked is unmarked instance of its own discourse:

third person, on the
it refers to itself as the present only when it operates on the inside of this distinction.
other hand, does not function as a mere
referent of discourse. According to value by being opposed

perspective person." correlation Only of of discourse, with such a the
to Benveniste, the "I" of

person or also
it assumes enunciation;
be
its differential from

of refer
the
can "the calls
the
the to
third
non-person,
only unmarked
situated member discourse
as a "non
person,"
as Benveniste
it, can
first- and apparent symmetry should thus be seen as an asymmetry that figures third-person pronouns forth the distinction as an act in discourse, between and language as and combination substitution (222). language to the form of With reference this linguistic asymme autobiography, can as a four-sided be unfolded distinction. With try first-person something
narrative, autobiography while side of marks what is unmarked as marked and refers
outside
itself. The
between
but to itself as autobiographical

remembering, or the other autobiographical third-person
discourse,
narrative,
or to the "now" of writing

as the unmarked into what correlative crosses over as
and
autobiography,
is non re-enters it
discourse?fiction,
as well
"reality"?and
as the included excluded third. The shift between first- and third-person narrative in Rilke 's Notebooks?between Malte's present and his past, and even more so the past of the historical and literary personae whose feed into and alternate with the memoirs of the autobio biographies "I"?would thus play on the very code of autobiography as a graphical that is, on its "form" as the unity of the distinction between genre, and non-autobiography. autobiography What the seemingly unconnected scenes and vignettes have in common
126
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
is the code of their genre: autobiography and biography. The narratives of historical personae such as Jacob de Cahors from (pope at Avignon or the French 1316-1334) king Charles Le Fou (Charles VI, 1368-1422), the stories of the death of the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold and of Grischa Otrepjow, to the false czar, the reference (1433-1477) as Julie Reventlow or the (1763-1816),31 personae, socially notable
characterization of the adventurer and impostor Count St. Germain, the
or of such writers and artists as Sappho, Ibsen, Beethoven, portraits or confessions Bettine von Arnim, hagiographies to their core, reduced the reinterpreted son and the portraits of biblical legend of the prodigal
the "faceless"?the homeless, the dying, or Malte's neighbors?are all
biographical
as with a
miniatures narration.
that are With

of diarist memoir
set off those

within
against
or
autobiographical
memoirs
third-person
are an
into Malte's as well biographies,

Brahe's reference
tied
mise-en-abyme within Malte's
memoir?Count intertextual
notebooks
to Lavater's journal from his travel to Copenhagen in 1793 (to observe the spiritist sessions at the court)32?Rilke serializes the autobiographi cal perspective and destabilizes its intent to bridge a split identity. When
Malte's fictional autobiography does not simply reconstruct an indi
vidual
"remembers" letters, legend, biography, biography, memoir, as and confession its and reinscribes precursors hagiography, generic them into its form, it subverts the code-orientation of autobiography (as it had been newly defined in the late eighteenth It subverts its century).
regulative rule, in Iser's terms, with an aleatory rule that, by re-entering
but
the earlier,
multiplies or
excluded
even
literary
"carnivalizes"
forms
the
into The
the form subverted
of autobiography,
concern with
autobiographical
individuality
ography a very rily then
and
dense
identity-constitution.
extratextual intertextuality?as
"code" of autobi
the Notebooks prima This
organizes
reference?in intratextual
self-reproduction.
its reader autobiography challenges to read in But disguise. autobiography a would merely disguise supplement this complex game of mirrorings and
masks to an end. Even though Malte
to see it as it sees itself: as an in it as Rilke 'sown autobiography code of identification and bring or autobiographical biographical
may be roughly the same age as
and lives at Rilke when he began working on the Notebooks (1902-1903) references his the same address in Paris, even though Rilke constantly or more own from his and less his letters, quotes poetry, biography
narrator, character and author are certainly not identical in the Note
in disguise rather masks that the autobio books. This autobiography as are acts out the pretext of a much roles it "entirely without graphical one as in those of the actress it describes of its scenes without role" naming her. Eleonora Duse foresaw the reality of her own future fate in to Rilke, she held a bouquet her first great tragic role when, according
THE
FOUR
SIDES
OF READING
127
of roses in front of her face like a mask that would hide the disappear ance of her reality in a fiction so dense that her audience would mistake it for her reality. Seen by all, the actress became then her invisible?but in like the it novel which is men performance, (autobiographical) tioned, shows precisely this. Hopkins University
Johns NOTES
1 Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks cited of Malte in text as N. (Baltimore, Laurids
Brigge,
tr. Stephen
Mitchell cited
(New in text
York,
1982);
hereafter
2 Wolfgang as AR. 3 Wolfgang 4 Friedrich
Iser, The Act of Reading Iser, Theorie der Literatur "Fragmente (Paderborn, einem anderen
1984),
pp. 67, 70ff.; hereafter
1981), p. 309, No. Ausgabe, auch darin, da? man mit liest, n?mlich 5 George the Experience "Criticism and Poulet, Criticism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore, 1980), p. Das Lesen und die Lesewut 6 See G?nther Erning, Siegfried (Frankfurt, 7 Norman 8 See J. Schmidt, 1989), pp. Die Selbstorganisation 335-59. Text des
Schlegel, ed. E. Behler
cited in text as TL. (Constance, 1992); hereafter zur Poesie und Literatur," Kritische-Friedrich-Schlegel 669: of 45. (Bad Heilbrunn, Literatur 1974), p. 69, and im 18.Jahrhundert p. 123. 1989), pp. "Das k?nstliche anderer Lesen zu lesen besteht sucht." das Lesen
Interiority,"
in Reader-Response
Sozialsystems in
Holland, the Holland-Iser
"Unity Identity "Interview"
Self," inWolfgang
Reader-Response Iser, Prospecting
Criticism, (Baltimore,
cited in Text as P. 42-69; hereafter 9 See for instance Gary Lee Stonum 945-68), reading William who process Paulson draws and on cybernetics
of Reading," 92 ("For a Cybernetics MLN, to account for the "constitutive uncanniness"
[1977], of the
to reinterpret in light of open indeterminacies See also systems. Chaos and Order: Complex ("Literature, Complexity, Interdisciplinarity," in Literature and Science, ed. N. Katherine 19911, pp. 37-53), Dynamics Hayles [Chicago, who suggests that the production the reader should be seen as self of meaning through organization necessary noise. 10 Text: 11 Lucien Balzac since the from noise; to understand the literary D?llenbach, and Claude reader text, will it will not always be able remain to actualize partially all the codes that is, uncoded,
Criticism
Poetic to Baudelaire's Structures: Two Approaches "Describing in Reader Response Criticism, pp. 26-40. 'Les Chats,'" See also Michael Strukturale Riffaterre, Stilistik (Munich, 1973). E. Fish, "Literature in the Reader: 12 Stanley Affective in Reader-Response Stylistics," Criticism, pp. 13 Jonathan 14 15 Proust 16 Niklas Paul text as KG. de Man, Allegories 1979), in Rousseau, of Reading. Figurai Language cited in text as DAR pp. 77, 72; hereafter Laws of Form (New York, 1972). Nietzsche, Rilke, and 70-100. Culler, "Literary Competence," Die Kunst der Gesellschaft in Reader-Response (Frankfurt, 1995), Criticism, pp. 101-17. cited p. 304; hereafter
(New York, Michael Riffaterre,
as Suture "Reading in Mirrors Simon)," 1986), pp. 25-37.
of Reception (Problems and After: Five Essays
of the Fragmentary on Literary Theory and
Luhmann,
in
(New Haven,
George
Spencer-Brown,
128
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
und Bewu?tsein," 17 Dirk Baecker, zwischen Kommunikation "Die Unterscheidung and G?nter Krohn 1992), pp. 217-68. (Frankfurt, Emergenz, ed. Wolfgang K?ppers 18 Wolfgang inMimesis und Simulation, ed. Gerhard Neumann Iser, "Mimesis?Emergenz," and Andreas Kablitz 1998), pp. 669-84. (Freiburg, 19
in
in Probleme der Form, ed. D. Baecker See also Dirk Baecker, "Das Spiel mit der Form," (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 148-58. in des See Gregory "Eine Theorie des Spiels und der Phantasie," 20 Bateson, ?kologie and Bateson, "The Message 'This is a Play,'" in Group Geistes (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 241-61, Processes: Transactions 1955), ed. B. Schaffner (Princeton, of the Second Conference (October 1956), pp. 145-242. 21 Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology cited in text as FI. 1993), p. 275; hereafter einer Unterscheidung," 22 Niklas Luhmann, "Anfang und Ende: Probleme Anfang und Ende. Fragen an die P?dagogik, (Frankfurt, 1990), p. 16. Luhmann, on Iser expands weil Texte deshalb, 24 denotieren, Zielpunkt enthalten, des Lesens 25 See sondern haben. zugleich Sie 23 Niklas "Die Form this notion sie weder viel aber eher beziehen als dessen of das dessen sich ed. Niklas Luhmann (Baltimore, in Zwischen Schorr
and Karl Eberhard
des Zeichens," liminality
in Probleme der Form, pp. 45-69. in Der Akt des Lesens: "Fiktional sind Sinnsystem noch bzw. Struktur dessen des dessen
diese
entsprechende
Abschattungshorizont auf etwas, das in der aktualisierbar
Geltung als Grenze
Grenze
ist." See Wolfgang as one
nicht Systems Iser, Der Akt of the "four in Rilke in
(Munich, 1976), p. 120. Iser lists general also Prospecting, p. 69, where systems theory reference frames" for this theory design. "Die ph?nomenologische Kate Hamburger, Struktur der Dichtung 26 (Stuttgart, Erz?hlen':
Rilkes,"
neuer Sicht, ed. Kate Hamburger 27 Judith Ryan, "'Hypothetisches in Rilkes 'Malte Laurids Brigge,'" 1987), pp. 245-84. 28 Helmuth Plessner, (Frankfurt, 1970), pp. 29 Jean Starobinski, (Princeton, 30 Emile in text. 31 The Notebooks draw on 1980), "Lachen 43, 46. "The Style
1971), pp. 83-158. von Phantasie Zur Funktion Rilke, ed. R?diger
und Einbildung (Darmstadt, ed. G. Dux,
in Rainer Maria und Weinen,"
G?rner
in Philosophische
Anthropologie,
of Autobiography,"
in Autobiography, (Miami, as one of 1971),
ed. James
Olney cited
p. 78. Problems Benveniste,
in General Linguistics archive
p. 219; hereafter sources
the Reventlow
the main
for Malte's
family background. See August 32 Stahl,
Rilke-Kommentar
(Munich,
1979),
p. 201.

Bianca Theisen, The Four Sides of Reading. Paradox, Play, and Autobiographical Fiction in Iser and Rilke.

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The Four Sides of Reading: Paradox, Play, and Autobiographical Fiction in Iser and Rilke Author(s): Bianca Theisen

The Four Sides of Reading:

in Iser and Rilke

whether an angel you.1

again you could hide have

By reinscribing other theories In The Act of Reading

the distinction, of reading. Iser

Iser provides targets

alternative form with

New Literary H?tory,

2000, 31: 105-128

the linguistic replicate differentiate literariness

107 Poulet to de Man and Beyond

on the effect of the text on the reader;

tion that a "cybernetics

communication intersubjective and another. only be another to bear

a mediation a view, of the any

subjective bi-directionality in which

consciousness can the reader

the questions identity" (P46). While for Holland

understands still operates

his unique that then

in The Act of Reading

that the reader's

segmentation, as the text's sociohistorical

sees as the passage

between relay between text-environment That relationship

(selection) not represent

systemic relationship text-reader (combination). "reality" but constructs

sponses. Reader Fish's "informed reader's

to the text's stylistic stimuli. Riffaterre's

for the transformation

into literary competence.

literature at a certain time; meaning but emerges from an internalized

is no longer localized in the object within a given literary competence

of codification, Problems be differentiated from distinction literary

between the system,

the value difference

any system marks

or literary code. Reference, else (non-literature, something observations;

self-implication."14 by advertising of advocates

combination, fication, the

trying to read metonymy

or, in the terms we have been

De Man may here be suggesting

Spencer-Brown re-entered distinction

distinction marked guishes

as cross and cannot

them on the level of their

hand, seems it is impossible

Indication itself and we

is processed "something can then

on a double else"?and look

plane where that is "Read

syntagma unmarked space.

can observe or the unity

the unity of the distinction between of the distinction

its between its unmarked

included distinction foregrounds

II. Iser's Four-Fold

rule that allows

difference subject, and even

it to a halt, can be seen as the flip-side