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"Repetition (In the Kierkegaardian Sense of the Term)" Author(s): Arne Melberg Source: Diacritics, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 71-87 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465332 Accessed: 18-03-2015 13:46 UTC

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "REPETITION(IN THE KIERKEGAARDIAN SENSE OF THE TERM)"

ARNEMELBERG

1. Kierkegaard'sGjentagelsen

The Text

Kierkegaardpublished Repetition in 1843; his pseudonym this time was ConstantinConstantius. The Danish title is Gjentagelsen,meaning literally "thetaking back." It is not easy to decide what sortof text this is: a narration or a philosophical or perhapsan ironic mixtureof both. Kierkegaard has Constantinmake fun of this problematicin a sort of appendix,where he turnsto "thereal reader of thisbook," called "Mr.X, Esq."1This real andideal reader is apparentlynot a critic or an "ordinaryreviewer," since such a specimen would have taken the opportunityto "elucidate that it is not a comedy, tragedy,, epic, epigram,story and to find it inexcusable that one tries in vain to say 1.2.3. Its ways he will hardlyunderstand since they areinverse; nor will the effortof thebook appealto him, for as arule reviewers explain existence in such a way thatboth the universaland the particularare annihilated"[190/226]. This is said in the final pages, retrospectively,like a "repetition"to remindthe reader-"Mr. X"-in what way and genre he has notreadand, perhaps, to hintat a failed dialectic ("triesin vain to say 1.2.3."). And that the "ways" of the text are "inverse." "Inverse"? This odd statement at the end of the text may persuade the reader to "repeat" the very beginning of the text, where Constantin discusses "movement"in relationto theconcepts of repetitionand recollection and comes up with this definition: "Repetitionand recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward;whereas the real repetitionis recollected forward"[115/131]. As a conceptual introductionto this text, where the "ways" at last are called "inverse,"we are invitedto think"repetition" and "recollection" as the same movement-only in opposite directions. The same but opposite. And "repetition"as a movement "forward." "Forward"? The beginning and the end of the text Repetition thus give us two di- rections, both quite surprising. The beginning I quoted is furthermore prefaced by a little anecdote about directions and movement: Diogenes is

1. I quote Kierkegaardfrom Samlede Vaerker5, in comparison with the English translation by Howard Hong and Edna Hong in Kierkegaard's Writings 6, here 187/ 223. Page references will be given in the text. I have in many cases modified the English translation to make it more literal. diacritics / fall 1990 diacritics 20.3: 71-87 71

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions theresaid to have "refuted"the Eleatics, who "deniedmotion" not by saying anythingbut by pacing "backand forth a few times" [115/131]. "Back and forth"? If we then regardthe Diogenes of the anecdote ("backand forth")as a heading for the text Repetitionand keep divergingdirections in mind ("forward,""inverse") it could perhaps in a preliminaryway be said that Repetition is a text on movement-and a movement back and forth. This movement goes on in the temporalityof the text: I will show later how the text changes its narrativemode between past and present time. And philosophicallythe text discusses thepast of recollectionand the now of "repetition."The text paces between temporalmodes andbetween narrativeand philosophicaldiscourses. The conditions for the movement of the text are defined in its framework,in the "back- and-forth,""same-but-opposite," "backward-forward" of the beginning; and the "in- verse" of the end. This movable text,Repetition, Kierkegaard wrote ironically under a pseudonymthat suggests permanence. The text was publishedtogether with Fear and Trembling-this underthe pseudonymJohannes de Silentio-which concludes in a Heracliteananecdote: Heraclitusis said to have had a disciple who developed the thoughtof the masterthat you cannot enter the same river twice by saying that one "cannot do it even once. Poor Heraclitus,to have a disciple like that! By this improvement,the Heracliteanthesis was amended into an Eleatic thesis that denies motion" [111/123]. Repetition startsin this logical problem of motion and movement; first Constantin praises "repetition"for a couple of pages: "it is reality and the earnestnessof existence" [116/133]. "Repetition"is called the "new"philosophical idea of the same phenomenon that "the Greeks"called "recollection"(anamnesis). Constantinthen starts to narrate: "Abouta year ago," he writes and remembers,"I became very much aware of a young man"(117/133). This young man-the Danish word is actually menneske 'humanbe- ing'-is melancholicallyin love; Constantin'sdiagnosis is that the young man as a poet lives in memoryand thatthe beloved girl lacks reality(for him). '"Theyoung girl was not his beloved, she was the occasion that awakened the poetic in him ... and precisely by that she had signed her own sentence of death" [121/138]. Constantin suggested a treatment:the young man should fake his love to anothergirl-meaning thatConstantin wanted the young man to say one thing and mean another,that is, become ironic. This is impossible, however,and Constantin has to admitthat the young manas a poet only has one languagewhile the ironisthas two: theironist "discovers an alphabetthat has as many lettersas the ordinaryone, thus he can express everythingin his thieves' languageso that no sigh is so deep that he does not have the laughterthat correspondsto it in thieves' language"[127/145]. Constantinmakes some furtherphilosophical reflections on the concept of "repeti- tion" [131/149-I discuss this later] then changes to a new narrationon the "exploring expedition I made to test the possibility and meaning of repetition"[132/150]. The expedition heads for Berlin, where Constantinhas once been and where he now wants to "repeat"what alreadywas. Extensively and enthusiasticallyBerlin is rememberedas it once was, while the "exploringexpedition" is dismissed as ridiculous and impossible. The longest descriptionis given the memoryof a Posse, a popularfarce, thatConstantin once saw andloved butnow finds unbearable--"Theonly repetitionwas the impossibility of repetition"[149/170]. This partof the text, this philosophicaljourney, seems to me difficult to handle: why this enthusiasmabout (a) memory? Why this drasticrefutation of "repetition"?If it is a refutation-perhaps it is a hint that"repetition" of something,whatever it is, is doomed to failure, while "repetition"as such-as movement-is necessary. The text moves into its second part, called Gjentagelsen 'the taking back': Rep- etition. The part-the second part-has the same name as the whole. Or does this mean

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions that the second part"repeats" the whole as a "repetition"of Repetition? that the second partis the secundaphilosophia,which Kierkegaardin anothercontext calls "repetition"?2 The narrativeof the second parttells us thatthe never-fulfilledlove story of the first comes to its conclusion as real separation. The young man turnsup again writing letters to Constantin, where we can follow his romantic outbursts up to the point where the beloved girl turnsout to have married! Something the young man in his last letter calls areal"repetition"-"repetition"realizedas the young man's separationfrom hisbeloved! Gone are the ironies of the first partof the text and we meet instead the privileged form of romanticself-expression: the sentimentalletter. Gone, too, is the temporaldistance of the first part: Constantinmoves into the presenttense and his few comments remain in the same vague now as the letters. NarratologicallyKierkegaard and Constantinmove from to , to use the Platonic terminology. In the shape of mimesis the doubling-repetition-reversalthat Kierkegaardcalls "repetition"is made acute. The text is kept in this temporallyvague now until the young man has producedhis last letter. Then Constantin writes his own letter, separated from part two-the "repetition"of Repetition-by a page visualizing an envelope with Mr. X on it-"the real readerof this book." We meet, in otherwords, a very literaland drastic separation directly after we have separatedfrom the young man and the young man from his girl. What we meet, again, is irony-and in contrastto the pathos of the young man. Constantinuses this ironic moment to informhis readerof what has happenedand of what kind of text he has not read. He repeatshis diagnosis from the firstpart, calling the young man a "poet" and in contrastto himself: "I myself cannot become a poet, and in any case my interest lies elsewhere" [192/228]. He also calls himself a "vanishingperson"-and in relation to the young man he has been like "a woman giving birth"[194/230]. Constantinsteps parabasicallyforward to call himself "vanishing"and promisingto "serve"the readerby being "another"[192/228]. And by calling the "ways" of his text "inverse"[190/226]. It seems that the only way to come to terms with his "repetition" would be to read the text again, spelling out that other alphabet,the one thatConstantin ascribed to the ironist.

The Concept

"Repetition"is, among otherthings in Kierkegaard'sRepetition, a philosophicalconcept, formulatedby Kierkegaardthrough Constantin as a reply to the Greek (that is, Platonic) recollection (anamnesis)and the "mediation"(that is, dialecticAufhebung of newer (that is, Hegelian) philosophy. Let me now afterthe paraphraseabove try philosophy: thereare two passages in the first partwhere Constantindevelops the concept "repetition."The first is in the opening pages, where Constantinsituates the concept in relationto "recollection":they are,as we remember, "the same movement, only in opposite directions," "repetition"moving "forward"[115/131]. The second is a transitionbetween the narrationon the young man and that on the expedition to Berlin: here Constantindevelops his criticism of "whathas mistakenlybeen called mediation"[130/148], that is, Hegelian dialectics. Against this he reminds us of the "Greekdevelopment of the teaching of being and nothingness, the developmentof 'the instant,'of 'non-being,"'etc. [131/148]. This is apparentlyanother Greek theory than the one connecting knowledge and reality with recollection, that is,

2. The expression comes from Begrebet Angest (The Concept of Agony) [SV 6:119]. One willfind a discussion of "repetition"there, esp. 116n; also in PhilosophiskeSmuler (Philosophical Trifles) [SV6]; Kierkegaard'sPapirer (Papers)from 1844; Constantin'spolemicsagainstHeiberg; and chap. 1 in Johannes Climacus's De omnibus dubitandumest. diacritics / fall 1990 73

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions anotherPlato:concepts like beingand nothingness we findin Plato'sdialogue Parmenides, which is also Plato's most rigorousanalysis of those "Eleatics"who became famous for "denying motion,"according to the first page of Repetition. Constantin's discussion makes it apparent that he has found more in Plato's Parmenides thanPlatonic anamnesis and Eleatic immobility. He has even found a term that sounds more like Kierkegaardthan Plato: oieblikket,literally meaning "the glance of the eye" and here translatedas the "instant." The term probably derives from a suggestive passage of Parmenides thatI will takeup later. Herethe "instant"is associated with "repetition"before Constantincontinues his discussionof the relationof the concept to Hegelian "mediation"(dialectics):

It is in our days not explained how mediationcomes about, if it is a result of the movementof the two elements, and in what way it already from the start is contained in these, or if it is somethingnew that is added, and in that case how. In this regard the Greekideas about the concept kinesis, which correspondsto the moderncategory 'transition,'should be consideredseriously. Thedialectic of repetitionis easy; because what is repeated,has been, otherwise it could not be repeated, but thefact that it has been, makes repetitioninto the new. When the Greeks said that all knowledge is recollection, then they said that all of existence, which is, has been, whenyou say that life is a repetition,you say: the existence, that has been, now becomes. Whenyou haven't got the category of recollection or repetition,all life dissolves into an emptynoise devoidof content. [131/149]

First Constantindiscusses dialectics: is the Aufhebungof synthesis ("mediation")the resultof movementin or between thesis and antithesis("the two elements")or is it a new movement? The question may seem narrow, but is interesting since it indicates Constantin'sinterest: to make dialectics into a form of movement. The association with "repetition"makes clear thatthe movement is a movementin time: a temporalfigure. The second sentence preparesfor this temporalityby way of terms like kinesis (movement) and "transition";the lattermay be Kierkegaard'sversion of metaballonand both these termsare extensively used in Parmenides. The sentence seems unclearto me but under- lines Constantin'sfascination: movement. Then the "dialectics of repetition"is established-in ,we may assume, to Hegelian dialectics and in conflict with the "Eleatics"(who "deniedmovement"), but in affiliationwith kinesis. "Repetition"is herea movementin time: re-take,re-peat, re-turn, re-versemeans going back in time to what"hasbeen." But still, in spite of this movement backward,"repetition" makes it new and is thereforea movement forward: it is "the new." The reason this movementbackward is actuallya movementforward is temporal: you cannot re-peat/re-takewhat has been, since what has been has been. The now of "repetition"is always an after. But not only: since the movement of "repetition"also makes it new, makes"the new"-simultaneously with being a repeatingre-duplication- "repetition"suspends the temporalorder of before-afterin orby thatnow previouslycalled "the instant."The temporaldialectics of "repetition"suspends temporalsequence: the now that is always an after comes actually before-it is the now of "the instant,"the sudden intervention in sequential time, the caesura that defines what has been and prepareswhat is to become. If there is one sentence summarizing"Repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term),"then this is that sentence. Next Constantincontrasts "repetition" to Platonic anamnesis. The philosophy of recollectionabsolutizes what has been, accordingto Constantin,and thereby excludes the movementforward, "the new." Recollected life is posthumouslife, whereas"repetition"

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions transcendsrecollection and reduplication by its "takingback" and making new. "Repeti- tion"thus installs now as the impetusof existenceand becoming as its movement. Thethird and fourth sentences work to give a temporalprivilege to thenow. A few sentencesearlier in the text Constantinassociated the "instant"and "nonbeing"with "repetition."He is probablythinking of a sequencein Plato'sParmenides [156DE] that discussesthe relationsamong movement (kinesis), standstill (stasis), and changeor transition(metaballon). Plato has Parmenides ask himself and us whatstrange position timeis takingwhen change-movement-transition occurs. He answers:"the instant" (to eksacfnes;the Latin translation is momentum).Further discussion underscores that this conceptis a nonconcept,since it refersto a phenomenonthat only exists in the state of what Constantinwould call "nonbeing."Plato has Parmenides put it like this: "thisstrange instantaneousnature, this something that is patchedbetween movement and standstill and thatdoes not exist in any time;but into this instant and out of thisinstant, that which is in movementchanges into standstilland that which is at a standstillchanges into movement." "Repetition"as a temporalfigure gives priorityto thatinstantaneous now thatis calculatedaccording to theparadoxical "instant" of Plato'sParmenides. The final sentenceof my quotationtakes a step backwardin the dialecticby suggestingthat the contrast between "repetition" and "recollection" was not absolute after all. Bothare here concepts of orderbringing some kind of conceptualorganization to an existencethat without this order would be a "noise"without meaning. It is worthnoting that when he imaginesthe world of nonmeaning,Constantin leaves his prominent temporalor spatialvocabulary to evokean auditivehorror: pure noise.

* * *

Theconceptual exegesis I havetried above should have given some hints why "repetition" is such a hauntingconcept for problematicand problematizingmodem thinkers like Nietzsche,Freud, and Derrida. I will tryto show,in the secondhalf of thisessay, why and how "repetition"was obsessivefor Paul de Man. HereI can only mentionthat Heidegger'sWiederholung as it is developedin Seinund Zeit [especially65-74] may wellbe the linkbetween Kierkegaard and deconstructive thinking-except that Heidegger's associationof Wiederholungwith a dramaticterm like Entschlossenheit("opening de- cisiveness")tends to underscorethe "existential" dimensions of theconcept: its pathos. The reasonwhy Kierkegaardmay have modem relevance-even whenhe insiststhat "repetition"is a "transcendental"category giving privilege to thepresence of thenow; andeven to thinkerswho elsewhere seem immune to thetranscendental and critical of all ideasof "presence"-mustbe thathis "repetition" is an"existential" as well as a textual category.This is possiblesince he insistson "repetition"as a temporalterm-tempus havinggrammatical, syntactical, and narratological meaning besides being the very forbeing and becoming, thus combining pathos and irony. Kierkegaard's"repetition" is furthermorea paradoxicalterm: it temptswith the presenceofa privilegednow while excluding this presence. The dialectic of Kierkegaardian "repetition"is-according to Constantin-"easy":"what is repeated,has been,other- wise it couldnot be repeated,but the fact that it hasbeen, makes repetition into the new." This meansthat the privilegednow has alwaysalready been, and what has beencould alwaysbecome. This paradoxical movement catches something of thedialectics of time as instantand time as process;and time is, afterall, bothsequential and "existential" in the senseof instantaneous.The paradox of Kierkegaardian"repetition" is thatit triesto keepthese divergent dimensions together in one movement-making"repetition" into a nonconceptor a conceptnegating the presenceit suggests;or a nonconceptrelated to Plato'sto eksaifnesin Parmenides:"this strange instantaneous nature, this something

diacritics / fall 1990 75

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions patched between movement and standstill and that does not exist in any time"; or Derrida's contemporarynonconcepts like differance or iteration.

The Story

The philosophicalparts of Repetitionare narratively framed, and the questionis now how concept andnarrative combine: do they supporteach otheror are theretensions? The text is rich in possibilities, but I will discuss just two: its pathos, concentratedin the young man's sublime wishes, and its irony, exemplified by Constantin'stextual "reversal." a. Sublime Silence ?

Repetition tells us among otherthings of the namelessyoung man unhappilyin love with a nameless young girl. The second partgives the young man the floor throughthe letters he sends to Constantinreporting on his feelings up to the point he learnsthat the girl has married.After having comparedhis miserablelove storywith the ordealof Job of the Old Testament,the young man seems preparedto interpretthe unhappyoutcome happily,as a real "repetition.""Is therenot, then,a repetition?Did I not get everythingdouble? Did I not get myself back and precisely in such a way thatI might have a double sense of its meaning?"[185 f./220 f.]. The question form hints thatthe young man is not quite confidentthat he has got the thing right. His lack of confidence returnsin several commentaries,where problemsof interpretationare solved by the idea thatKierkegaard may have transformedan original version, where the young man was to commit suicide.3 Our young man welcomes his liberation. My "yawl is afloat,"he exclaims [186/221], looking forwardto sailing on the sea where "ideas spume with elemental fury, where thoughtsarise noisily ... where at other times there is a stillness like the deep silence of the South Sea," etc. He compares his new position to a "beakerof inebriation"and praises the "crestingwaves, thathide me man in the abyss" and "fling me up above the stars." It is not self-evident that the young should be inspired by learning that his beloved has married,nor is the "repetition" a apparent. The young man's metaphors,moreover, seem disturbing: the prospectsfor "yawl"on a spumysea seem not verypromising. And if the young manis the "yawl,"who, then, is the helmsman? The young man's perhapsdisturbing enthusiasm is expressed in terms that only a little earlierin aesthetichistory were standardwhen describingthe sublime: "spumewith elemental fury,""waves that hide me in the abyss ... that fling me up above the stars." We recognize the vocabulary from one of this young man's closest predecessors, that nameless, unfortunate,and sublime lover in Rousseau's Julie (1760), known by the pseudonym "Saint-Preux."When he learns thathis beloved Julie actually has married, he doesn't exactly welcome this, but he bids farewell to everythingfor the sea. And in his final letter [3:26], which also is the last of the thirdpart of thenovel andits very turning the point, he listens to the signal of the departingboat and welcomes the "vast sea, immense sea, that perhapswill engulf me."4

3. It shouldperhaps be notedthat the traditionalDanish interpretationofRepetition is heavily serious biographical and connects the story with Kierkegaard's broken engagement. The only treatment of the text as narrative text is found in Aage Henriksen, Kierkegaardsromaner [Copenhagen, 1954]. 4. Oeuvrescompletes 2:397: "Ilfaut montera bord, ilfautpartir. Mer vaste, mer immense, mon qui doispeut-etre m'engloutirdans ton sein; puissai-je retrouversur tesflots le calme quifuit coeur agite!"

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ImmanuelKant, too, who was an avid readerof Rousseaubut certainlynot excessive in his vocabulary,comes up with seaand starswhen discussingthe sublime,dasErhabene, in Kritik der Urteilskraft [1790, #29]. The sea in itself is not sublime, but it can be experienced as sublime, according to Kant, if we manage to purge the experience of purpose and meaning. To experience the sea as sublime, writes Kant, we must not see it as we representit in thought,not as, for example,an elementuniting people and separating continents,because "suchare only teleologicaljudgments."To find the sea sublime,"we must regardit as the poets do, accordingto what the impressionupon the eye reveals, as, let us say, when it is calm, a clear mirrorof waterbounded only by the heavens, or when it is agitated, like an abyss threateningto engulf all."5 Even the "thunderstorm,"which Kierkegaard'syoung man in his last letters is looking forward to as an upsetting preparationfor the instant of "repetition,"has its counterpartin Kant: in #27 he writesthat the experienceof the sublimeis mobile (bewegt) in contrastto the beautiful,which is experiencedcalmly, in ruhigerKontemplation. The mobilityis moreprecisely called an agitation(Erschiitterung), that is, a "rapidlychanging repressionand attraction of the very same object."6(Constantin would have remindedus of the usefulness of that Greek thinking of kinesis when it comes to the paradoxes of "repetition.") When the young man in his last letter exclaims that his "yawl is afloat," he is apparentlyheading for a voyage withoutpurpose or meaning-but expectingthe sublime, or, to say it with Kant,both abyss and heaven. What is remarkableis thatthe young man describes his expected experiences in auditive terms: ideas are about to "spume," thoughts to "arise noisily"; and he also expects a "stillness like the deep silence of the SouthSea" [186/221]. Noise as well as silence indicatethat the young man's expectations of the sublime point to the nonverbalor to pure sound (thatis, languagewithout purpose or meaning). Orto deep silence. The desireof this text for aprivileged now can be realized only beyond a language of meaning. This desire or expectationis realized, althoughwith heavy irony, that is, in a mode far from the young man's language. What follows afterthe young man has expressedhis spumingdesires to leave language is neithersilence nor void-but text as object, thatis, beyond purposeor meaning. What follows on the page after the young man's last word is the picture of an envelope addressed to the anonymous Mr. X and "containing" Constantin'sletter to "the real readerof this book." But the text carries another expectation that is not realized in any way, not even ironically, when the young man heads for his sublime noise. I am thinking of the conceptual analysis quoted above, where Constantinstated that both "repetition"and recollection areconcepts of orderand without these "alllife" would dissolve in "anempty noise devoid of content"[131/149]. It was apparentin this passage thatrecollection and "repetition"were not opposites in this respect but that both (in different directions?) organized the "noise" of phenomenal world/life into meaning-we may guess from circumstancesthat "repetition"would offer a paradoxicalmeaning but still a contrastto

5. Kritikder Urteilskraft175f.: "denndas gibt lauter teleologische Urteile; sondern man muss den Ozean bloss, wie die Dichter es tun, nach dem, was der Augenschein zeigt, etwa, wenn er inRuhe betrachtetwird,als einen klarenWasserspiegel, der bloss vomHimmelbegrenzt ist, aber ist er unruhig, wie einen alles zu verschlingen drohenden Abgrund, dennoch erhaben finden konnen." The passage is thoroughly commentedon by Paul de Man in "Phenomenalityand Materiality in Kant." 6. Kritikder Urteilskraft 155: "Das Gemiitflihltsich in der Vorstellungdes Erhabenenin der Natur bewegt: da es in dem isthetischen Urteile iiber das Sch6ne derselbenin ruhiger Kontemplationist. Diese Bewegung kann ... mit einer Erschiitterungverglichen werden, d. i. mit einer schnellwechselndenAbstossen undAnziehen eben desselben Objekts."

diacritics / fall 1990 77

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions pure noise. The young man, however, expects a new life after his "repetition"in terms that come suspiciously close to that "emptynoise" feared by Constantin. Something has gone wrong here in the relationbetween concept and narration-or between Constantinand the young man. PerhapsConstantin should have told us thatthe young man had seriously misunderstoodthe concept of "repetition"and thatby leaping into the nonlinguisticnonorder he approachessomething like Kierkegaardian"despair"? Nothing, however, prevents us from seeing the young man's sublime expectations as a (narrative) correction of Constantin's conceptual analysis-nothing, at least, until Constantin'sfollowing and final letter. The correctionwould situate"repetition" in the "abyss"or among the "stars"or in "noise"or "silence"-in any case beyond languageas a hint thatthe privilegednow of the "instant"can be foundonly outside time andmeaning.

b. Ordo inversus

Constantininforms us repeatedlythat the young man is a poet. "I myself cannotbecome a poet" [192/228], he says, and calls himself a "prose " [184/218]-the word prosaist can also be understoodas "prosaicwriter." Developed full-scale in Hegel's aesthetics, in Kierkegaard'sday this well-knownopposition of prose vs. poetrycoincided with something like romanticismvs. prosaic reality, and the romantic-poeticpole of the opposition was associated with subjectivity,imagination, and an orphic vision. Otheringredients of the text make Constantinand the young man into opposites: the name and the eye. While Constantinis a telling pseudonym,the young man is nameless.7 And in contrastto Constantinhe has troublewith his eyes: he escapes from his beloved in ordernot to have to look at her; "Thinkof me spotting her,"he writes to Constantin, "I believe I would have gone mad" [166/192]. Constantin,on the other hand, does not hesitate to use his eyes in contact with girls: "my eyes sought her,""my eyes were upon her" [146 f./167], he tells us when reportingon a meeting in Berlin. And that glance of the eye--ieblikket -of course has decisive importancefor Constantin'sdevelopment of the philosophy of "repetition." It is different with the young man, our orphicpoet: he escapes seeing his nameless in Eurydice, and his final fantasyof a sublime presence is beyond the eye and its glance the sense that his fantasy is auditive. The eye and the glance were problemsalso for the mythicalOrpheus, who may well be one allegoricalpattern behind or before Constantin's young poet andhis sad love story; anotherone could be Psyche, who is blindedby meetingEros, or could face the God only in darkness. The myth of Orpheushas to do with the glance, with retrieval,and with that manifest reversal of Eurydice's turningaround-and, of course, of inspiration, song, . The ambiguityof the mythhas been wonderfullyanalyzed by MauriceBlanchot, when he points out, for example, thatthe orphic"turning" to Eurydicemeans destruction and Eurydice's returnto the shadows;but not turningwould not be a lesser "betrayal": her againstthat "movement" of Orpheusthat means thathe wants to have Eurydicenot in "daily truth"but in her "nocturnalobscurity," in her "distance,"that he wants to see her "not when she is visible but when she is invisible."8 Like this Orpheus,our young man

"OnceMore 7. Interestingviews ontheyoungman's namelessnessarefoundinLouisMackey, and with Feeling: Kierkegaard's Repetition," Kierkegaardand : Irony, Repetition Criticism,ed. RonaldSchleifer and RobertMarkley [Norman: UofOklahomaP, 1984] 98: "The decisive event reported in the letter of August 15 is the young man's loss of his name." 8. L'espace litteraire [Paris, 1955] 228: "en se tournant vers Eurydice, Orphee ruine l'oeuvre, l'oeuvre immnediatementse d'efait, et Eurydice se retourne en l'ombre; l'essence de la nuit. nuit, sous son regard, se revele comme l'inessentiel. Ainsi trahit-il l'oeuvre et Eurydiceet la

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions wants to see his girl but still not see her, and to worshipher at a distance. Alreadyat the beginning of the text, Constantinpoints out thatthe young man's love is poetical: the girl "awakenedthe poetic in him and made him a poet" [121/138], allegorically speaking Orpheuscreates his Eurydicein orderto become the power of singing. Constantinadds that"precisely thereby [she] had signed her own deathsentence": the orphic-poeticlove demands the absence of the woman or needs the woman as shadow, as death. On only one occasion does the girl stop being the shadowof the text: by her suddenly being married. This-her firstand last sign of life-makes her finally dead to the young man. The allegorical readingaccording to Orpheuswould indicate this as a result of the young man's turningaround, his reversal. But this does not work: as far as I can see this reversal-leading-to-"repetition"is the resultof her turningher back on him and walking into the Hades of marriage.Here an allegoricalreading according to Psyche andEros may be closer: in the decisive moment the eye turnsaway or is blinded;the glance of the eye makes it all dark. No allegorical expectations, however, neither according to Orpheus's story nor to Psyche's, fit the young man's final fantasies after the girl has turned around and disappeared.His auditiveenthusiasm is insteadan almostpolemical contrastto the visual fantasies on the conditions of love and language that found mythical expressions in the tales of Orpheusand of Psyche and Eros. It is at this decisive point in the text-when voice threatensglance and when sound threatensmeaning-that Constantinmakes his visual coup: thatparabasical picture of a letter, framing his final message to the "realreader" Mr. X. It is an ironic intervention, an ironic punctuation of the pathetic letters of the young man. And the irony is underscoredby Constantin,in his letter,when he addressesthe type of writerwho knows how to write "in such a way thatthe hereticscould not understandit" [194/225]-that is, the writerwho writes with double meaningor, as Constantinput it in the first partof the text, who "can express all in his thieves' languageso that no sigh is so deep thathe does not have the laughterthat correspondsto it in thieves' language"[127/145]. Constantin's ironic position puts an end to the allegory according to Orpheusor according to Psyche and Eros but also to the young man's auditive fantasies. There is neverthelessa connectionbetween his irony and the allegory, and this connection is the same as the concept, the story, and the text: "repetition." In his well-known analysis of allegory Paul de Man writes that the "meaning constituted by the allegorical sign can then consist only in the repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term) of a previous sign with which it can never coincide, since it is of the essence of this previous sign to be pure anteriority"["The of Temporality"207]. This formaldefinition of allegory de Man connects with irony and argues that allegory and irony are "linkedin theircommon discovery of a truly temporal predicament"[222]. This "predicament"I take to be the discovery of an instantaneous now, or ratherthat the present now, to become thepresence of an instantaneousnow, must have a precedence. The Kierkegaardian"repetition" that de Manhas in mindcan only be the "repetition" in those senses I have analyzedabove, the "takingback" that tells us that"the existence, that has been, now becomes" [131/149]. This is a "temporalpredicament," to use de Man's judgment, because the now that is privileged by "repetition"is also an after, meaning that the presence of the now presupposesan absence-something like the ab- sence of the girl that is needed to serve the young man's orphic passion. Or something

Mais ne pas se tourner vers Eurydice, ce ne serait pas moins trahir, etre infidele a la force sans mesure et sans prudence de son mouvement,qui ne veutpas Eurydicedans sa veritddiurne et dans son agrdmentquotidien, qui la veut dans son obscurite nocturne,dans son eloignement,avec son corpsfermd et son visage scelle, qui veut la voir, non quand elle est visible, mais quand elle est invisible. . "

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions like thatfamous nonmeetingof Psyche and Eros: an allegorical sign for presence, which can take place only in the absence of blinded darkness. How can such a temporaldialectic be recounted? Kierkegaard's answer was the "indirect message." Kierkegaardcommunicated indirectlythrough pseudonyms and by letting a pseudonymlike Constantincommunicate ironically, in "thieves' language." IndirectlyConstantin tells the readerhow to read the text Repetition, by telling him, in his concluding letter, how not to read it: not as a "comedy, tragedy, novel." And not straight,since its "ways" are "inverse"[190/226]. "Inverse"? The word hardly exists in Danish but seems to be derived from the Latin inversio, which in classical was a term with both syntactical and semantical sense. Syntacticallythe term meanta reversedorder of the sentence or sentences; semantically the termmeant "to say in anotherway," thatis, it translatedthe Greekterm allegory. Both these senses of an ordo inversus, a reversed order, combine in Repetition: the young man's allegory is semanticalby repeatinga myth. Constantin'sironic interventionwith his final letter is syntactical: a reversal in the text. Constantinthereby gives us a sign confirmedby the letter: thatthe "ways"of the textRepetition are "inverse,"making the text into an ironicallegory of motion: moving, like Diogenes, back and forthbetween eye and ear, between irony and pathos, between past and presenttime, between concept and story. Whetherall this mobility functionsto organizeor disorganizethe text-and whether irony and allegory are unitedor separatedin the conceptof "repetition"-may have to do with our readingof the relationbetween the young man and Constantin,that is, between pathosand irony,between "repetition"as an "existential"and as a textualpossibility. The irony of Constantinhas the firstand last word of the text, but the pathosof the young man creates its tensions. The inversio of the young man seeks life but threatensto leave the text. Constantin'sinversio is a back-and-forthin the wake of Diogenes, who according to anecdote took a walk to refute those "Eleatics"who "deniedmotion" [1 15/131]. But Constantindiffers from Diogenes in using words. Language is his field. The indirect message seems to be that his mobile text keeps language alive-and keeps life within linguistic order.

* * *

Ordo inversus, the reversed-repeatedorder, means puttingthings on theirheads: putting them right. The philosophy of the subject inauguratedby Kant and radicalized by Kierkegaardmakes subjectivityinto truth. That is an inversio working ironically in the textRepetition. But this ironyhardly lacks pathosand has even got some sublime touches. A late follower of these pre- and postromantics,Paul Celan, had a sense for this sublime reversal; he once pointed out, "whoever walks on his head, ladies and gentlemen- whoever walks on his head, he has the heavens as an abyss underneathhim."9

2. Paul de Man on the Point of Repetition

Paul de Man's interestin "repetition"and "movement"seems to be of an early date. In one of his critical readingsof Heidegger from the fifties he finds thatHeidegger betrays nothing less than "the movement of being" ["TheTemptation of Permanence"38]. In another from the same period he concludes that H6lderlin, contrary to Heidegger's

9. "Der Meridian," Der Meridianund andere Prosa 51: "Werauf dem Kopf geht, meine Damen und Herren,-wer auf dem Kopfgeht, der hat den Himmel als Abgrundunter sich." diacritics / fall 1990 81

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions assertions, shows no "singularontological reversal,but a lived philosophy of repeated reversal, that is nothing more than the notion of becoming."10The odd expression "re- peated reversal"reads retournement repetd in the Frenchoriginal, which seems to be de Man's formulationof the "movementof being"as repetition. Alreadyhere his notion of repetitionseems closer to Kierkegaard'sthan to Heidegger's Wiederholung,that is, fairly free from thatEntschlossenheit("opening decisiveness") thatHeidegger uses in Sein und Zeit to connect "repetition"with "fate";instead de Man seems to be open to "repetition" as a textual phenomenon as well as an "existential"or at least intentionalpossibility. Taking Kierkegaard'sRepetition as an allegory, we could say that Constantinand the young man are strugglingfor the initiative within de Man's text. Repetition as a textual phenomenon is developed into the concept of irony in the already-mentionedessay "TheRhetoric of Temporality"from 1969, which must be the startingpoint of an investigationof "repetition"in the de Maniansense of the term. Not only has this been called his "mostfully achieved essay" [Waterslvi], but it has also been judged as the very turningpoint leadingfrom an earlier,existential-phenomenological de Man to a later, deconstructivede Man, exploring rhetoricalanalysis. "The Rhetoric of Temporality" is also the only text (so far published) in which de Man refers to Kierkegaard;and if one were to choose a turningpoint in the essay, itself a turningpoint in de Man's writings,I would suggest the parenthesisin which de Man claims "repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)"to be the "meaning"of the allegorical sign [207]. In any case thisparenthesis marks a decisive turnin the essay: fromliterary history to epistemology and from allegory to irony. "The Rhetoric of Temporality"is organizedin two parts,the first a historicalstudy of the "symbol,"where allegory is introducedas a polemical counterpartto "symbol,"the second a more epistemological study of "irony."In a conclusion the concepts are linked together in "theircommon discovery of a truly temporalpredicament" [222]. Textual allegory, in contrastto "symbol,"is said to produce a "negative"insight in an "authen- tically temporalpredicament" [208]-and we observe thatnot only "truly"and "authen- tically" but also "predicament"seem to be favorite terms. Allegorical insight is called "negative"because the allegorical sign does not refer to "meaning" but to another sign, characterizedby "anteriority." Allegory therefore accentuates"distance" in contrastto the "symbol,"to which de Man ascribes the effort to reach the full presenceof meaning (or of meaningas presence). But allegory not only reminds us of "distance"but reaches its "negative"insight by establishing its language "in the void of this temporaldifference" [207]. And therede Man's formal definitionof allegory suddenlyacquires a mystical touch: how can language-and not only allegorical language because allegorical language is here apparentlyan allegory of language in general-be "established"in a "void"?The expressioncarries a metaphoricalsuggestion of the very type thatde Man is criticizingas mystifyingly "symbolic."But it does not take much reading to discover that de Man in "The Rhetoric of Temporality"uses an abundanceof spatialand/or visual metaphorsto suggest the temporalityof language,and most striking are the metaphorsof mirrorsand mirroring. The mirrorbecomes explicit at the end of the essay where irony is linked to allegory in that common "temporalpredicament." Irony is there called "the reversed mirror- image" of allegory [225]. This expression also strikes me as mystical-are not mirror- images always "reversed"?what, then, would the reversalof an alreadyreversed mirror- image look like?-but the phrasegives a visual suggestionof the "temporalpredicament"

10. "Heidegger'sExegeses of Holderlin,"Blindness and Insight 250. Theoriginal, in Cri- tique100 (Sept.1955), has: "IIn'y a donepas, dansHilderlin, un retournementontologique unique,mais unephilosophie vecue du retournementrepeted, qui n'est autreque la notiondu devenir."

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions thatincludes a "reversal."(Remember young de Man's interestin the retournementrepete 'repeatedreversal'.) The following sentences "temporalize"the mirroringmetaphor, so to speak, by a host of terms indicatingsuddenness: the ironic interventionin allegorical narrationis called "instantaneous,"it takes place "rapidly,""suddenly," "in one single moment." As an example we are given Baudelaire's prose poems, which are said to "climax in the single brief moment of a final pointe" [225 f.]. Pointe could of course mean the "point"of meaningas well as a temporal"instant," the graphicaldot or grammaticalfull stop. Everythingde Man writes on irony in "The Rhetoric of Temporality"emphasizes its sudden break in temporality: time as instant breakinginto time as sequence. With a word like pointe (and all those other words for suddenness),he indicatesa kind of "time"that is so limited that it is no longer "time"but instead is a break in time, like a visual dot in the time line. We recognize by now the phenomenon from Plato's to eksaifnes in Parmenides and from Kierkegaard'soieblikk and Heidegger's Augenblick. "Repetition(in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)"is what de Man suggests as a solution to the problem of time, "repetition"as the link uniting time as sequence ("allegory")and time as instantexistence ("irony"). De Man emphasizes, however, the Kierkegaardianinterest in the eye that I noted above with allusions to the allegorical- mythical complex Orpheus-Eros-Psyche(and the last is much alluded to in de Man's essay as well). De Man expresses this visual interestby way of this "reversedmirror- image." And the meaning of the mirroris established with the help of Baudelaire'sDe l'essence du rire (andBaudelaire's rire is unqualifiedlyidentified with "irony").De Man picks up Baudelaire'sexample with the manlaughing at himself when falling in the street. This has to do with a doubling,dedoublement, of the individualinto a falling man and an observing man. In the state that Baudelairecalls le comique absolue this doubling be- comes permanent;according to de Man it is a split of the subject provoking uncanny giddiness: "Ironyis unrelievedvertige, dizziness to the point of madness" [215]. Doubling, split, andvertigo areall spatialphenomena that are invested with temporal irony by de Man. The intersectionof space with time takes place at that "point"that is a turningpoint as well as a "pointof madness." When de Man a bit furtheron comes to Baudelaire's"instantaneous," "rapid," and "sudden"pointe, madness seems againnot far beside the point, so to speak. Thatpointe is namely "the instantat which the two selves ... are simultaneously present,juxtaposed within the same moment";this moment is called "the mode of the present" [226]. And this sounds both like a definition of schizophrenia and like an evocation of that Platonic ousia, usually translated (by Heidegger, for example) as the presence of the present. We may note herethat this sharp,thin, and dividing point-pointe-that de Man uses to describe repetition,or repetitivereversal from time into space, is indeed thin but still has a kind of extension: it allows for repetition in the form of reflexion, doubling, mirroring. And it invites the "mode of the present." The only comment I have found on de Man's visual metphors associated with mirroringrepetition is, of course,Jacques Derrida's in PsycheM,where he quotes de Man's assertion on the "trulytemporal predicament" discovered by irony and allegory. "The mirroris here the predicament,"writes Derrida,the mirroras a "deadlyand fascinating trap."" What is this-the mirroras trap? Perhaps it is the simple but uncanny effect of mirroringmirrors, something thatWalter Benjamin once describedbeautifully: "When two mirrorslook into each other,Satan plays his most popularprank and opens in his own

11. Psyche28: "Lemiroir est ici le predicament....On est enproie aupiegefatal etfascinant dumiroir." There is anEnglish translation of thisin Reading de Man Reading, ed. Lindsay Waters andWlad Godzich [Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1989].

diacritics / fall 1990 83

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions way (as his partnerdoes in the eyes of lovers) the perspective into eternity."12Derrida, for his part,alludes to the no-less-uncannymyth of Eros and Psyche, alreadymentioned here as a backgroundreading not only for Kierkegaardbut also for de Man. According to Derridathe blinking meeting of Eros-Psyche creates grief, deuil, due to the impossi- bility of transparencyand presence. The word, or at least "a trace of language,"makes presence impossible and mirroringor reflexion necessary.13 De Man started his essay by defining allegory by way of "repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)"and ended with irony as a "reversedmirror-image." The question is whether these suggestive terms are new versions of what the young de Man called the moment of being as retournementrepete-or whether he has taken an ironic and textualturn. And whetherthis ironic turnis thatof "Satan"or "his partner"- thatis, whetherit is caughtin a mirrortrap or opens new movementsof bothtext andbeing. This is probablylike asking the confusing question whetherde Man's later writing on irony is itself ironic. And the real answerto this question,and those above, is probably to be found in the curiously repetitive structureof the typical late-de Man essay: I am thinkingof its convolutedor even circularstructure, with the end reflecting,repeating, or doubling the beginning. In the best(?) cases this can producethe "dizziness"he found in Baudelaire'scomique absolue and the "reversedmirror-image" of irony (in "TheRheto- ric of Temporality").One well-known example is the programmaticarticle "Semiology and Rhetoric,"which begins the collection Allegories of Reading (1979). Here we first get a seductively easygoing polemic against the opposition inside/ outside, regardedas a metaphorand applied to literatureand criticism. Result: "The recurrentdebate opposing intrinsic to extrinsic criticism stands under the aegis of an inside/outside metaphor that is never being seriously questioned" ["Semiology and Rhetoric"5]. De Man thenstarts his "questioning"with examplesof growingcomplexity, where he turnsgrammatical meaning against rhetorical meaning. Grammaticalmeaning appears to suspend rhetoricalmeaning; and rhetoricalmeaning suspends grammatical meaning. Final result: a stateof "suspendedignorance" [19]. This meansthat we arenow "suspended"within the metaphorwith which we started,not knowing what is "in"and whatis "out";we areneither "in" nor "out" but rather falling between. And perhaps,while "falling,"we rememberthat the "fall"in "TheRhetoric of Temporality"was associated with vertige and irony and thereafterdevelops into de Man's most obsessive metaphor.14 Or is that "fall" taking place within a "reversedmirror-image" (or was it a "repeated reversal"?)of that very "reversal"with which we began? At the end of the whole collection Allegories ofReading, a similar"reversal" is again "repeated"but now explicitly as irony. De Man then finishes his readings of Rousseau by summarizinghis "mainpoint," also called a "suddenrevelation": what is revealed is a "discontinuity,"and this sudden and discontinuous"main point" is "disseminated"all over "thepoints of thefigural line or allegory,"thus becoming a continuousdiscontinuity- a permanentsuddenness, or "thepermanent parabasis of an allegory." Becoming: irony. This irony repeatsthe "suspendedignorance" from the first essay, but suspendsnot only an innocent or limited or temporary"ignorance" but actually the whole "line": irony is now nothing less than "the systematic undoing . . . of understanding"["Excuses

12. Das Passagen-Werk1049: "Blickenzwei Spiegel einanderan, so spielt der Satan seinen liebsten Trick und offnet auf seine Weise (wie sein Partner in den Blicken der Liebendentut) die Perspektive ins Unendliche." 13. Psyche 31: "Carnous l'avons vu, si le deuil n'estpas annonc par le brisdu miroirmais survient comme le miroir lui-mnmeque par l'intercession du mot. C'est une invention et une interventiondu mot ... Le tain, qui interditla transparenceet autorise l' inventiondu miroir,c'est une trace de langue." 14. Some instances of "fall" are noted by Deborah Esch in "A Defence of Rhetoric I The Triumphof Reading," Reading de Man Reading 73.

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions (Confessions)"300 f.]. Irony, which startedout as a sudden event, has now become permanent-and this strikingparadox could well mean thatde Man has entereda trap: ironic "repetition"has been reversed into its own "reversed mirror-image." Already in "The Rhetoric of Temporality"de Man insisted-in contrastto most explorersof the concept of "irony"- thatthe ironic break was "repetitive."At theend ofAllegories ofReadingirony has become a "permanent"effect "disseminated"all over the very "line"it was supposedto break. In "The Rhetoric of Temporality"irony was still a "point"breaking lines; in Allegories of Reading this "point"has grown into the "mainpoint" spreading over the "line"of all other "points." In anotherlate essay, "Pascal's Allegory of Persuasion,"we learn that Pascal uses zero as a breakor "rupture"of the line of numbersquite analogous to the "parabasis"of irony thatde Man uses as the rhetoricalfigure to breakan allegorical "line." The Pascal essay goes even further:de Man states thatthe "rupture"of the line of numberseffected by zero (read: the ironicbreak of an allegorical"line") cannot "be locatedin a single point ... but that it is all-pervading"[12]. In "The Rhetoricof Temporality"the ironic effect depended on the final pointe that, in Allegories of Reading, had grown into the "main point." In the Pascal essay the point seems to be gone (or cannotbe found)while the ironic effect remains. The conclusionon ironic"disruption" as "all-pervading"may be an effect of what Benjamin called "Satan's most popularprank": the mirroringmirrors. And it takes de Man to remarkableconsequences, consideringhis earlieressays: in the Pascal essay he states that irony is no longer "susceptible ... to definition," it is not even "intelligible,"and "it cannot be put to work as a device of textual analysis" [12]. It follows that irony disappearsas a concept or "device" from de Man's last essays. "Repetition"in the sense of mirroringand reflexion does not disappear,however. In "Autobiographyas De-Facement"we readabout a "specularmoment," but this"moment" is no "event"-that is, no "point"and thereforeno ironic interruption-but rathera "part of all understanding"including "knowledge of self" [70 f.]. This epistemological idea of reflexion with its vaguely Freudiantouch could no doubthave been developed into quite another "repetition"than that ironic "point" we met earlier, but still being a kind of "repetition"that could be associatedwith Kierkegaard.But late de Man has a suggestion of quite another "repetition"that seems far away from any "existential"sense of this prolific term. Now it is "repetition"as mechanicalreduplication without the slightest hint of any "reversal"or ironic "point." The term now is stutter,coming up a few times in de Man's late essays on "aesthetic ideology" and associated with something he calls "the essentially prosaic natureof art" ["Hegel on the Sublime" 152]. This "nature"he derives (as always) from a linguistic axiom: that the linguistic sign refers to both itself as sign and beyond itself as reference or meaning. Philosophicalaesthetics, as de Man reads it in Kantand Hegel, operateson the level of meaning but presupposesa level where the sign is "inscribed"as sign-this he calls the "prosaicmateriality of the letter"-as the basis or "bottomline" thataesthetics can neitherdo withoutnor make into meaning ["Phenomenalityand Materialityin Kant" 144]. De Man may well be inspired by Derrida here, since Derrida uses terms like repetition, iteration, differance in his deconstructionsof "Westernmetaphysics" and always with the argumentalready developed in his criticismof Husserl: thatthe linguistic sign has an "originally repetitive structure.""5De Man now states that the sign in its materialaspect as "inscription"is alreadya "repetition"that cannot be used to perform anythingbut "repetition":"Like a stutter,or a brokenrecord, it [the sign] makes what it keeps repeatingworthless and meaningless" ["Hegel on the Sublime" 150].

15. Lavoix etlephenomene [Paris: PUF, 1967]56: "la structureoriginairement repetitive." diacritics / fall 1990 85

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions If this is the end of the line for de Man,the nameof thatend is apparently"repetition." But is it ironic repetition? allegoricalrepetition? Is thereanything left of repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)? Not according to program(but with the resevation that the stutter is by no means developed into a program): the stutteringrepetition seems more like a mechanical interruptionemerging from linguistic "materiality"but still purely auditive. Stuttering has no "point"-and perhaps de Man associates it with "prosaic materiality"since it seems free from visuality. Stutteringis in any case devoid of anythinglike "intention" and definitely has no "existential"pathos. Still, visuality-and perhapsa kind of irony and even allegory-sneaks back into "repetition"by way of the metaphor that de Man uses to illustrate his meaningless "stutter":the brokenrecord. The recordbeing brokenby its own signs is a kind of visual interventionin the auditivescenery. But it is not only visual: it shows tracesof language (as Derridano doubt would put it). "Record"could be a gramophonerecord but also a documentor even a story, that is, any sequence or line of events. If there is an auditive "break"in this "record"it is visually repairedby the expression "brokenrecord." This metaphorgives visuality to the "break"and even a kind of meaningto the "meaningless" that the sentence refers to. By the symbolic power of the metaphor-and against what seem to be de Man's prosaicintentions with his "stutter"-the "break"in the recordleads us back to thatsudden "break" or "point"that de Man earlierassociated with "repetition" and called irony. Thus, irony ironically comes back to de Man's recordat the very moment when he has droppedall irony. A reversaltakes place when reversalsare left out of consideration. Perhapslanguage is takinga kind of revenge-that poor languagethat de Man (as quoted above) found established in a "void"and then never tired of criticizing for covering up this basic baselessness with the feigned meaning of symbols and metaphors. Language takes its revenge by providing de Man with a meaningful metaphor with symbolic dimensions exactly when he declares language to be a "stutter,"a "meaningless" repetitionof sounds. Or was it perhapsthe "movementof being" thatreminded us of its retournementrepete', to say it with the young de Man-reminded us of kinesis, the Greek termthat Constantin Constantius asked us to "considerseriously" as a preparationfor that "easy" dialectic of repetition?

WORKS CITED Benjamin, Walter. Das Passagen-Werk. Frankfurt-f-M:GSV, 1982. de Man, Paul. "Autobiographyas De-facement." The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: ColumbiaUP, 1984. "Excuses (Confessions)." Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. "Hegel on the Sublime."Displacement: Derrida andAfter. Ed. MarkKrupnick. Bloomington: IndianaUP, 1983. . "Heidegger's Exegeses of Holderlin." Blindness and Insight. 2nd ed. Minne- apolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1983. . "Pascal's Allegory of Persuasion."Allegory andRepresentation. Ed. StephenJ. Greenblatt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. . "Phenomenalityand Materialityin Kant." Hermeneutics: Questions and Pros- pects. Ed. Gary Shapiroand Alan Sica. Amherst: U of MassachusettsP, 1984. . "TheRhetoric of Temporality."Blindnessand Insight. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1983. "The Semiology of Rhetoric." Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. "The Temptationof Permanence."Critical Writings1953-1978. Ed. Lindsay Waters. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1989.

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:46:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Derrida,Jacques. Psyche: Inventions de l'autre. Paris: Galilee, 1987. Kant, Immanuel. Kritikder Urteilskraft. 1790. Reclam, 1963. Kierkegaard,S0ren. Kierkegaard's Writings. Trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong. Princeton: PrincetonUP, 1983. Samlede Vaerker. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1963. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Oeuvres completes. Paris: Pleiade, 1961. Waters,Lindsay, ed. "Introduction."Critical Writings1953-1978. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1989.

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