The Scrivener De-Scribed: Logos and Originals in Nineteenth-Century Copyist

The Scrivener De-Scribed: Logos and Originals in Nineteenth-Century Copyist Fiction DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Sara Ceilidh Orr, B.A., M.A. Graduate Program in Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Alexander Burry, Advisor Angela Brintlinger Helena Goscilo Copyright by Sara Ceilidh Orr 2014 Abstract This dissertation examines works of copyist fiction by Gogol, Melville, Dostoevsky, Dickens, and Flaubert. I argue that, through their exploration of copies and originals, these authors anticipate questions about the nature of language and literature posed a century later in post-structuralist texts like Derrida's The Double Session and Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. Rather than a simple sociological exposition of the plight of the little man, copyist fiction is a reaction to a world destabilized by the absence of an authoritative text (Logos), and the act of copying is presented variously as a search for Logos, a new language of immediacy that replaces Logos, and an abolition of meaning. In the process, copyist texts interrogate the relationship between language and the human subject, the physicality of writing, and the limits of mimetic art as (potentially) a type of copying. ii Dedication Dedicated to the memory of Robert J. Orr iii Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank Alexander Burry for his patient direction of the project and for helping me to become a better writer. Heartfelt thanks also to the members of my committee, Angela Brintlinger and Helena Goscilo, for their painstaking reading and editing and their innumerable valuable suggestions; to Jessie Labov, who worked with me through the project‘s formative years; and to Irene Delic, for her feedback on the earliest plans. I owe a great deal also to colleagues who let me run various aspects of the project by them: special thanks to Lauren Ressue, for countless conversations, input on the linguistics elements, and formatting expertise; to Marina Pashkova, for her help with Saussure; to Robert Mulcahy, for his early reading of the chapter on Melville; to Will Britt and Erin Stackle, for consultations on Heidegger; to Ryan Miller, for the conversation that inspired the dissertation; to Michael Dennis, for his translation of Demorest; and to all of the members of the Slavic Literature and Culture Forum, whose generosity and enthusiasm for literature carried me through these years. The earliest version of this project was undertaken under the direction of Thomas Epstein at Boston College, and his guidance then has inspired everything I have done since. Finally, all my thanks to my family, without whose support this would never have been possible. iv Vita 2001 ....................................................... Northmont High School 2005 ....................................................... B.A., Boston College 2007-2008 ............................................. Distinguished University Fellowship 2008-2011 .............................................. Graduate Teaching Associate, Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University 2011-2012 ............................................. Distinguished University Fellowship 2009 ....................................................... M.A. Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures 2012-present .......................................... Graduate Teaching Associate, Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures v Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ..................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................... iv Vita..................................................................................................................................v Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................1 A History of Copying: From Westminster Abbey to Wall Street ...................................5 Copyists and Authors ................................................................................................. 17 Copyists and Readers: Parricide and the Death of the Author ..................................... 23 Mimesis and the Status of the Copy ........................................................................... 25 Logos in the Twentieth-Century: The Copy as Original? ............................................ 31 Chapter 2: Gogol ........................................................................................................... 46 ―The Overcoat‖ .......................................................................................................... 48 Logos and the Copyist ........................................................................................ 48 Scribe Without Scripture .................................................................................... 51 A World without Logos ...................................................................................... 58 vi ―The Overcoat‖ and Copying ............................................................................. 69 ―The Diary of a Madman‖.......................................................................................... 71 Authors and Order.............................................................................................. 71 Empty Thrones, Empty Signs ............................................................................. 80 Copyists, Authors, and the Lost Logos ............................................................... 83 Chapter 3: Dostoevsky ................................................................................................... 86 The Dostoevskian Copy Clerk ................................................................................... 88 Copying in Dostoevsky‘s Early Works ............................................................... 92 Mimetic Art and Mediation ................................................................................ 94 The Idiot .................................................................................................................... 98 Myshkin as Copyist .......................................................................................... 102 Myshkin as calligrapher ................................................................................... 105 Logos in The Idiot: Images and Likeness ......................................................... 111 Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 123 Chapter 4: Melville ...................................................................................................... 124 Bartleby the Unnameable ......................................................................................... 130 Copyists and Names ................................................................................................ 138 Bartleby's Language................................................................................................. 149 Chapter 5: Flaubert ...................................................................................................... 157 vii The Copyist Pair: Repetition in Search of Difference ............................................... 162 Bouvard and Pécuchet's Copying: Repetition that Abolishes Difference ................... 174 Towards an Aesthetics of Difference ........................................................................ 185 Conclusion............................................................................................................... 190 Conclusion: The Work of Copying in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ................. 194 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 203 viii Chapter 1: Introduction ―A blessed purpose, a praiseworthy zeal, to preach to men with the hand, to set tongues free with one‘s fingers and in silence to give mankind salvation and to fight with pen and ink against the unlawful snares of the devil.‖ –Cassiodorus, Institutions Book I ―For man must strive, and striving he must err.‖ –Goethe, Faust Part I "You write well; but can you write correctly without a book?" "I can write from dictation in French, Latin, and Spanish." "Correctly?" "Yes, sir, if the dictation is done properly, for it is the business of the one who dictates to see that everything is correct."—Casanova, History of My Life In the pages of nineteenth-century literature, one encounters with remarkable frequency the shabby, ink-smeared figure of the scrivener or copy clerk. So populous are their ranks and so mysterious their stories, that it is surprising the copyist has eluded systematic study for so long. While certain individual works focusing on a copyist protagonist, such as Melville's ―Bartleby the Scrivener‖ and Gogol's ―The 1 Overcoat,‖ have received a lot of attention in their own right, there have been few attempts to view copyist fiction as a category

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