reading actually evokes. For the uncanny is incompatible with nonsense, physics with magic, the sociology of the aristocracy with the scullery’s notions about it, and the process of cognition with the adventures of puppets called scientists. Thus kitsch is a product counterfeited to pass for what it is not. The contradictions in interpretation of Kafka’s writings not only can but must be grasped by the reader; only so, thanks to “indecision of manifold scope,” will he apprehend the aura of mystery established by the text. Per contra, the contradiction specific to kitsch must remain unrecognized by its readers, since otherwise generic disqualification of what has been read will take place. The reading of kitsch as
Because our superior knowledge decreases as the themes of literature become increasingly remote from reality, kitsch takes up residence in regions inaccessible to the reader: in the palace, in the far future, among the stars, in history, in exotic lands. Every literary genre has its masterwork-ceiling, and kitsch, by a tactics of crude mimicry, pretends to have soared to such an altitude. Todorov, fettered by the immanence of his procedures, has deprived himself of any possibility of recognizing mimicry of values, and accordingly his implicit reader
A possible rejoinder at this point would be that idiotic stories are written for idiotic readers. And indeed, we observe this state of affairs in the book market, dominated by the laws of supply and demand. But this is not an extenuating circumstance for a theory of literature. A “theory” is synonymous with a generalization that applies without exception to all elements of the set under investigation. Since the structuralists’ generalizations balk at applying thus, or, more precisely, because when they are made to apply thus everywhere they yield such nonsense as no advocate of the school would like to acknowledge (for structural equivalence democratically places the counterfeit on an equal footing with the masterpiece), the theoreticians carry out certain sleight-of-hand manipulations when they assemble their materials for public dissection. They place on their operating table, to wit, only what has already earned a respectable reputation in the history of literature, and they conjure away under the table works that are structurally of the same kinds but artistically trashy. They have to proceed thus, because their method impels them toward simple texts such as the detective story; their overweening ambitions, on the other hand, toward celebrated works. (Kitsch, being subject to relativization in the process of reception, is not the structurally simplest case, for it
Now we can more readily understand the make-up of Todorov’s bibliography, as to the names (Balzac, Poe, Gogol, Hoffmann, Kafka) and the works it includes. The theoretician has taken as his “sample” that which could not involve him in difficulties, since it had already passed its cultural screening examination and by that token could give him no trouble. A therapist, if he were to proceed analogously, would take as patients only robust convalescents. A physicist would test his theory only on facts that he knew beforehand would confirm it, carefully avoiding all others. Let us spare the structuralist the description that the philosophy of science would give to such a method of selecting “representative samples.” A theory of literature either embraces all works or it is no theory. A theory of works weeded out in advance by means beyond its compass constitutes not generalization but its contrary, that is, particularization. One cannot when theorizing discriminate beforehand against a certain group of works — i.e., not bring them under the scope of analysis at all. A taxonomically oriented theory can set up a hierarchy in its subject matter — i.e., assign nonuniform values to the elements of the entire set under investigation — but it should do this openly, not on the sly, and throughout its whole domain, showing what sort of criteria it employs for making distinctions and how they perform their tasks of evaluation.
These obligations are binding not for humanistic studies alone. They stem from the set of directives to which all scientific cognition is subject. A zoologist cannot ignore cockroaches because they’re such nasty little beasties, nor a cosmologist ignore the energy balance of quasars because it makes his calculations blow up in his face. The sleight-of-hand artist’s activities are not always and everywhere admirable. So, we conclude, if structuralism desires to avoid expulsion from among the sciences, it must rebuild itself completely, from the ground up, since in its present state it is, in the words of Pierre Bertaux, a procedure that from its point of departure in logic has strayed into useless mythology.
UNITAS OPPOSITORUM: THE PROSE OF JORGE LUIS BORGES
I admit that this essay is a very subjective review of Borges’s fiction. If someone asked me why I am stressing the subjective aspect of this piece of criticism, I would be hard-pressed to give a conclusive answer. Perhaps because I have been trying for years to enter the territory in which the Argentinian’s best work was created, although I went by quite another road. Therefore his work is very close to me. At the same time it is foreign to me, for I know from my own experience the traps into which he has sometimes fallen in his writing, and I cannot always approve of his literary methods.
Nothing could be simpler than to list Borges’s best stories. These are: “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “Pierre Menard — Author of the Quixote,” “The Lottery in Babylon,” and “Three Versions of Judas.”
I justify my preference in the following way: each of the stories mentioned has a double-decker, perverse, but logically perfect structure. Viewed superficially, they are fictionalized paradoxes of the Greek type (Zeno’s, for instance[13]).
In “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Borges bases the story on the idea of reversing our concepts of “idea” and “reality.” Borges suggests that a secret society has created a new world where the mind creates its own external objects, and the only external objects are those created by the mind.
In “The Lottery in Babylon” Borges contrasts two mutually exclusive explanations of the universe: (statistical) chance, and (total) determinism. Usually we consider these notions incompatible. Borges tells of a world system based upon a lottery, and reconciles two cosmological explanations without destroying the logical bases of each system.
“Pierre Menard — Author of the Quixote,” on the other hand, is a satire on the uniqueness of the act of artistic creation, logically driven to its utmost point. (In this story Pierre Menard seeks to rewrite “Don Quixote” precisely — without copying it. The story shows the paradoxes behind the idea that art is created necessarily and uniquely. Borges reduces the idea
Finally, “Three Versions of Judas” is a logically improvable heresy.[14] Borges builds a fictitiously heterodox system of Christian dogmatics in which he “proves” that Judas not Jesus was the Christ. In its “radicalism” this fictitious heresy surpasses all historical types of heresy.
In each story we can find the same kind of method: Borges transforms a firmly established part of some cultural system by means of the terms of the system itself. In the fields of religious belief, in ontology, in literary theory, the author “continues” what mankind has “only begun to make.” Using this
But when we look at Borges’s work only superficially we see the “comicallogical” effect alone. However, each of these tales has in addition another — wholly serious — hidden meaning. At base, his curious fantasy is, I claim, quite realistic. Only after some thought do you first note that the heterodoxy contained within “Judas,” for instance, might really be possible. Such a perfidious interpretation of the myth of the redemption, if historically not very plausible, is at least thinkable. I could say the same about “Lottery.” Under certain conditions even the reinterpretation of the notions of chaos and order shown here may be historically plausible. Both stories, diiferent as they may appear to be from one another, are hypotheses about the structure and attributes of existence. Because they are both borderline cases, isolated to one edge of the real paradigm corresponding to them, it was very unlikely that they would come true historically. Yet, considered from a logical point of view, they are totally “correct.” The author therefore has the courage to deal with the most valuable goals of mankind just as mankind himself does. The only difference is that Borges continues these combinatory operations to their utmost logical
