Morte D'author: an Autopsy Harvey Hix
Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 17 Article 39 Issue 1 Winter
1987 Morte D'Author: An Autopsy Harvey Hix
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Recommended Citation Hix, Harvey. "Morte D'Author: An Autopsy." The Iowa Review 17.1 (1987): 131-150. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.3482
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me to "it would be enough for know who is writing this" ? W. S. Merwin
IN 1968, ROLAND BARTHES proclaimed the death of the author in a manner reminiscent of Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God. manner two are Yet, similarities in notwithstanding, the proclamations nature. an radically different in Nietzsche's proclamation is obituary; an one Barthes' is a suicide note, and enigmatic at that, for "this enemy of an a authors is himself preeminently author, writer whose varied products a worse reveal personal style and vision."1 And what is than the fact that an Barthes, himself author, proclaimed the death of the author, is that he to not proclaimed it in writing. Assent Barthes' claim has been, surpris recent ingly, far from universal; however, in years increasing attention has to it to been given the phenomenon attempts describe. one nor In the investigation of any mysterious death, of the first steps is Yet seems to mally the positive identification of the body. this step have one been left out of the investigation of the death of the author. No (in as as seems to sure cluding Barthes himself well his detractors) be who to an died. For this reason, I shall attempt in this paper perform autopsy in senses a both of the word.2 I shall examine the author's corpse with special concern to establish its identity, and I shall study the event of the author's to death by analyzing texts relevant it. at Barthes only hints the history of the author; he says that the "author a our as it is modern figure" which society produced discovered (under the influence of British empiricism, French rationalism, and the Reformation) a ac "the prestige of the individual."3 Michel Foucault gives slightly fuller an count in his essay "What Is Author?" noting two features of the author's history. First, in apparent agreement with Barthes' characteriza as tion of the author "the epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology" (p. 143), Foucault says:
was a it at the moment when system of ownership and strict copy right ruleswere established (toward the end of the eighteenth and
131
University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org beginning of the nineteenth century) that the transgressive prop act im erties always intrinsic to the of writing became the forceful perative of literature.4
The intrinsic transgressive properties of writing result from its being "an action situated in a bipolar field of sacred and profane, lawful and It came to con unlawful, religious and blasphemous" (p. 124). only be a or to of sidered product possession be "assigned real authors" instead or to mythical religious figures when "the author became subject punish out is of ment" (p. 124). The second feature Foucault points that the role over we now texts the author has changed time. What call "scientific" were were, in the Middle Ages, only considered truthful if they sanctioned name an by the of author; however, this changed in the seventeenth and to so texts came to eighteenth centuries, according Foucault, that these be on own texts we now "accepted their merits." On the other hand, call were once concern "literary" accepted without for the author's identity; " texts so then the attitude toward literary shifted that 'literary' discourse was it an acceptable only if carried author's name" (pp. 125-26). are If Barthes and Foucault right about the author's history, then the a or fact that the author is modern figure raises questions about his her as as place in larger historical movements, well questions about whether a the death of the author is not merely result of the decline of the historical or factors that created her him. But the history of the author is not the main concern of Barthes or Foucault, nor will it be my concern in this to essay. Iwill mention the history of the author only in order further my to as are attempt identify the author, just Barthes and Foucault interested as to "in our in this history only insofar it points the fact that day, literary are works totally dominated by the sovereignty of the author" (Foucault, an p. 126). Barthes makes this his first real criticism. After only introduc at tory paragraph and brief hints the author's history, he says:
The author still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of as men writers, interviews, magazines, in the very consciousness of of letters anxious to unite their person and their work through to diaries and memoirs. The image of literature be found in ordinary on culture is tyrannically centered the author, his person, his life, his ... tastes, his passions (p. 143)
132 to new The attempt dethrone the author, though, is hardly with Barthes. to It is easy find examples of this project in many earlier twentieth-century critics. For instance, T. S. Eliot said, "The progress of an artist is a con a tinual self-sacrifice, continual extinction of personality."5 To the New was a Critics, the "intentional fallacy" mortal sin. And Northrop Frye in Criticism: says Anatomy of
The absurd quantum formula of criticism, the assertion that the to a critic should confine himself "getting out" of poem exactly what to aware the poet may vaguely be assumed have been of "putting in," one is of the many slovenly illiteracies that the absence of systematic to criticism has allowed grow up. This quantum theory is the liter ary form of what may be called the fallacy of premature teleology.6
How, then, is Barthes' proclamation of the death of the author any as different from such statements these? Gregory T. Polletta points out one most way in which Barthes is different: critics expelled authorial in to ensure correct tention "in order the interpretation of literary works. Barthes, on the other hand, excludes the author's declared intention in or order to release the text from any authoritarian control interpretative we can or circumscription."7 Before isolate any further differences evaluate Barthes' claim, it will be necessary to decide just who the author is. seems to to Traditionally, the author have been credited with (and have two source taken credit for) primary functions: being the of the work and/or the channel through which the work flows. Any random survey of to see literature will confirm this, and it is especially easy in the tradition of invocation. the The Iliad and Odyssey strongly emphasize the channel function. The Odyssey begins:
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.
some From point our here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin story.8
to a in an It is not surprising find the bard claiming such role oral tradition, comes not even where the story almost "ready-made," only in plot but in
133 the formulae which are the basic units of composition. Ovid's invocation to the author as source: the Metamorphoses, though, emphasizes
My intention is to tell of bodies changed To different forms; the gods, who made these changes, me?or a Will help I hope so?with poem runs to our own That from the world's beginning days.9
are Here it is the poet who is doing the telling. The gods only helpers; the not even sure or poet is of their help, and capable of writing with without In Troilus and the roles are more Chaucer them. Chaucer's Criseyde, equal: as seems to takes the poem his project, but he also need the help of Thesiphone. I have intentionally avoided questions about the purpose of the invoca seems to tion because it fair say that, regardless of its role within the poem, to as source as the invocation still points the conception of the author and ex channel.10 But there are other questions which cannot be avoided. For ample, is the bard really the author of theOdyssey? IsChaucer himself really on or a account calling Thesiphone, has he created persona? To for the as to problems raised by such questions these, and evaluate properly "the death of the author," amodel of the author is necessary, one which tradi not tion will supply. The following diagram represents the model of the author I propose.
scribe
'real" // "fictional" / / / / / /
poet proxy
x = source axis = y channel axis 'creative" / "created" / / narrator 134 narrator are The poet, scribe, proxy, and four "aspects" of the author, are sense. are and differential entities in Saussure's That is, they "defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being as what the others are not."11 In any given text, itmay be that not all four are or are pects of the author present, it may be that two of the aspects in as text. It case distinguishable regards that may also be the that, for in are or not a stance, the poet and scribe different people that the poet is per son at me some all. With those qualifications in mind, let offer approx some to imate definitions and then examples help clarify the differences be tween the four aspects. The poet is the person to whom the work is attributed. I use the word most poet because of its etymology; the poet is often the person given is credit for having made the work. The poet the person who carries (and to It out lends the work) authority. should be pointed that, although for to as a men the sake of convenience I refer the poet person, the poet (as as in some cases not a tioned above, and the examples will show) will be person. The scribe is the historical person who wrote down the work. are are These the two "creative" aspects of the author, and they usually as to "real" people compared fictional people. The two "created" or "fictional" aspects of the author are the narrator and the proxy. The narrator, of whom critics have long been aware, is sometimes referred to as the persona. The narrator is a character in the work, and is most visible and also closest to the scribe and poet in a nar rative written in the first person. The proxy is what Foucault describes an we as an when he says: "these [facets] of individual, which designate an as are author (or which comprise individual author), projections, in more or our terms always less psychological, of ways of handling texts."12 In other words, when we ascribe motivations, intentions, etc., to an can so on as author, we only do the basis of the author presented by the not on or text, the basis of the historical author (the poet scribe), who is, as to us at least regards the text, lost forever.13 Thus, the proxy is the as text "author" created by the interaction of and reader. to A few examples should help distinguish between the poet, scribe, proxy, and narrator, and should demonstrate the usefulness of this model a case of the author. Homer, for instance, has been problematic of author we mean we to ship. Whom do when refer Homer? Milman Parry showed
135 in the 1930s that the Iliad were and Odyssey composed orally, and since then the consensus seems to be that the Iliad and were scholarly Odyssey not same nor was composed by the person, either poem written down by it.14 the bard (or bards) who composed What is more, the fact that the were made poems almost entirely from formulae garnered from the long oral tradition blurs the distinction between the composition of the poems and of It is the performance them. clear that the author/text relationship not nor in the Homeric poems is simple, does it fit well into the "naive" idea of authorship. And while the model of the author I propose does not answer all the about the of the Iliad and it questions authorship Odyssey, at us an does least give improved way of describing the complex author/ text relationship. Since the composition of the poems appears to have been distinct from we can as the writing of them,15 speak of the composer the poet, and the writer as the scribe. In this instance, the poet could be said to include not only the bard (or bards) who composed the poems, but the tradition were which provided the story and the formulae from which the poems case almost wholly composed. One could, of course, include in every the out a as a am tradition of which work arises part of what I calling the poet. to on However, I want avoid that pragmatic grounds, and include the a as an tradition of work aspect of its author in only this and equally cases. unusual My only justification for including the tradition here and sense excluding it elsewhere is the intuitive in which the Homeric oral more to tradition is immediately linked the creation of the poems than, tradition is to The say, the pastoral Lycidas. Iliad and Odyssey apparently same a reached their respective composers in much the condition in which crew pre-fabricated house reaches the construction for final assembly. The were in were poems already recognizable units which simply fitted In was to together. this sense, the bard(s) who composed the Iliad unable go outside his or her tradition, while Milton could have chosen to "bewail a our a learned Friend" and "foretell the ruin of corrrupted Clergy" in non-pastoral mode.16 to Though the role of the scribe (to record the poems in writing) is easy case as to identify in the of the Homeric poems, the scribe is difficult locate as not a one the poet. Indeed, the scribe may be single person. No knows or were when by whom the poems first written. Speculation has centered on term to the "Pisistratean recension"; this refers the "hypothetical Athe
136 nian stabilization of the text" of the poems in connection with the Panathenaean festival and under the supervision of Pisistratus.17 But scholars are unsure about Pisistratus' exact role; no one knows whether was or Pisistratus directly involved in the process whether he only super vised no one or not the written version it, and knows whether first official was (the version produced by the Pisistratean recension) also the first writ ten our version of any kind. Probably for purposes it is best to talk of as sense us Pisistratus the scribe, but only in the that he symbolizes for the process of writing down the poems. an Homer is unusually clear example of the distinction between the poet and scribe, since in the case of Homer the poet and scribe are at least two not different people. However, it is necessary that there be two individuals for there to be a distinction between the poet and scribe. For instance, Coleridge describes the composition of "Kubla Khan" in the following way:
in a at The Author continued for about three hours profound sleep, least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid not to confidence, that he could have composed less than from two three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition inwhich rose as a all the images up before him things, with parallel production or con of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation to to a sciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared himself have dis tinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, are instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that here preserved. was out a on At this moment he unfortunately called by person busi ness . . . on return to ... rest and his room, found [that] all the had passed away.
one state as Though only individual is involved, his when he is acting source as is different enough from his state when he is acting channel for us to make a clear distinction between the poet and the scribe of "Kubla state to same Khan." Any significant change of will be sufficient make the distinction. For instance, Descartes' Conversation with Burman, since it was
apparently written down in its final form four days after the conversation seems to a a itself, be good example of distinction between poet and scribe on as based scenic change. Burman acts poet when he visits Descartes and
137 not act as initiates the dialogue, but he does scribe until four days later when he visits Clauberg. Homer, Coleridge, and Burman provide clear examples of the poet/ scribe distinction. But perhaps the clearest example of the proxy/narrator is in a satire as A distinction found such Swift's Modest Proposal. Northrop Frye calls satire "militant irony," that is, irony with clear moral norms, and with "standards against which the grotesque and absurd are can measured." He says that irony consistently maintain "complete real on ism of content" and "the suppression of attitude the part of the at a a author." However, satire "demands least token fantasy, content as at an which the reader recognizes grotesque, and least implicit moral standard." Frye concludes that satire
content too to breaks down when its is oppressively real permit the or tone. maintaining of the fantastic hypothetical Hence satire is to irony which is structurally close the comic: the comic struggle of two societies, one normal and the other absurd, is reflected in its double focus of morality and fantasy.18
two as a This "struggle of societies" could also be thought of struggle of a two levels of awareness, struggle which has been described in two to as a different ways. The first way is to refer irony "the narrowness of as more character's vision revealed by the inclusive vision shared by author to user and reader." The second way is accord the of ironical language "an awareness not our of irony that is necessarily less complex than own." a awareness a con Here "irony is simultaneous of contrarities by single to a sciousness.19 The first way, according Everett Zimmerman, is charac teristic way of explaining irony in narrative, and makes the narrator "a character in a tale that defines him"; the second is a characteristic way of in narrator explaining irony polemic, and makes the "an authorial figure who defines the tale."20 On my model of the author, though, both of theseways of describing two awareness are nar the struggle between levels of captured in the to on a rator/proxy distinction. Satire, according this model, works dis awareness parity between the level of of the narrator and that of the proxy, awareness to can whose level of is equivalent that of the reader. The model we incorporate Zimmerman's first explanation of irony if take the narrator
138 and proxy as distinct individuals. Ifwe take the narrator and proxy as the same individual, impersonating another (or others) in the first instance and as or we her- himself in the next, then have Zimmerman's second explana tion. We get, that is, "an image of Swift, sitting with his fellow wits in an room . . . a Augustan drawing and personating [aWotton, Bentley, etc.], on an . . . on while simultaneously carrying ironic running commentary com their absurdities."21 The "personating" Swift is the narrator and the menting Swift is the proxy. out inA nar My model works Modest Proposal something like this. The rator "I" is the who offers the proposal, and the effect of the work depends on to his being naive enough be sincere. As Frye puts it: "one is almost led to narrator not even feel that the is only reasonable but humane; yet that can never out sane as as re 'almost' drop of any man's reaction, and long it mains there the modest proposal will be both fantastic and immoral."22 It narrator is the "almost" which creates the proxy, for though the must be no sane sincere for the piece to work, person would believe the "author" to be sincere. And this "author" who is neither naive nor without ironic
intent is the proxy.23 narrator not as The and proxy do begin separate individuals; the first out at a narrator two paragraphs lay the problem hand, problem both and are sentence it is proxy concerned with. But by the last (when suggested a to an asset that whoever could find way make the children of poor people to the commonwealth should "have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation"), the author has put his tongue in his cheek by identifying with that great ironist Socrates. By the time the heart of the proposal is reached, narrator are narrator of course, the and proxy completely separate. The a at a relates his discovery that young, healthy child year old is "a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food," while the proxy by his very to absence lends this discovery its heavy satire. The model of the author I propose is also effective on such unusual cases as of authorship the pre-Socratic philosophers. The fragments of Heraclitus are a good example, and will help in demonstrating the usefulness of this our case model and in refining concepts of its four main terms. In the of Heraclitus, there seem to be two poets, rather than one. Heraclitus our sources to himself is the first, since all attribute the fragments him. " one It not to me to But of the fragments says, iswise, listening but the to are seems to [logos], agree that all things one."24 The implication be
139 that what gives Heraclitus' words their authority is their agreement with so is the behind the of the logos, that the logos authority authority is a If Heraclitus' case Heraclitus. In other words, the logos second poet.25 an is more for is unusual for having auxiliary poet, then it unusual having at 28 hands recorded one or multiple scribes: apparently least different more a of the fragments. This is feature which all the pre-Socratics share; are the only extant works available for them groups of fragments recorded by various scribes. of the of By far the most interesting aspect of the authorship fragments as an Heraclitus is the proxy, who is also the most important interpretive as is the case the tool. Not only is he created by the text, always with to create proxy, but in the case of Heraclitus the proxy himself helps the one are tested for text by being of the standards against which fragments of own method of authenticity. Charles Kahn's careful elucidation his He makes use of two funda reading Heraclitus will help make this clear.26 resonance His definition of these mental principles, and linguistic density. at terms is worth quoting length:
mean a By linguisticdensity I the phenomenon by which multiplicity are in a or resonance Imean of ideas expressed single word phrase. By a a theme or relationship between fragments by which single verbal one text to a image is echoed from another in such way that the are meaning of each is enriched when they understood together. are resonance is one These two principles formally complementary: factor making for the density of any particular text; and conversely, resonance it is because of the density of the text that is possible and can more meaningful. This complementarity be precisely expressed terms we mean oc in of'sign' and 'signified,' if by sign the individual currence a or in a we of word phrase particular text, and by signified or mean an idea, image, verbal theme that may appear in different a texts. Then density is one-many relation between sign and signi fied; while resonance is a many-one relation between different texts a or and single image theme.27
statements Resonance, Kahn says, "taken together with explicit of iden . . . serve to of tity and connection will link together all the major themes a Heraclitus' discourse into single network of connected thoughts"
140 of one "essen (p. 90). Linguistic density makes the meaning any fragment mean tially multiple and complex" (p. 91); that is, it makes the fragment ingfully ambiguous. Here the proxy enters as an interpretive tool, for Kahn says, "It will to or I often be convenient speak of deliberate intentional ambiguity. think are as as it is these expressions harmless and justified, long clearly no understood that there is external biographical evidence for imputing to In it is such intentions Heraclitus" (p. 91). other words, harmless and justified to speak of deliberate or intentional ambiguity as long as it is understood that the reference is to the intention of the proxy, not the
poet. in "a Reading the fragments with Kahn's assumptions results prose as style which fully justifies Heraclitus' reputation 'the obscure' (ho sko a not at a teinos)" (p. 95). However, such reading does stop creating proxy to to with this reputation; it also forces him live up it. For instance, Kahn to same gives primacy fragment L, "As they step into the rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them," instead of its more celebrated counter same part, "one cannot step twice into the river," because the former is statement on is "the only the river whose wording unmistakably Heracli on Kahn tean" (p. 167). Then, commenting fragment CXVII,28 first notes comment: its length and clarity, and then makes this "The absence text cast on its of anything enigmatic in this might almost doubt authen were not ticity, if different portions cited by good and independent sources in has (Clement, and Celsus Origen)" (p. 266). The proxy a to developed such reputation for obscurity and ambiguity that he is able not sources render any unambiguous text backed by dependable doubtful or to a account inauthentic. And he does just that doxographical of the logos in Sextus Empiricus.29 Kahn says of the "physical identification of the or that it is 'common logos' with the circumambient atmosphere pneuma" unsupported by evidence from the fragments and that
this doctrine is also un-Heraclitean in its unambiguous precision: it states a psychophysical theorywhich happens to be false, but which some ancients believed to be true. But it preserves no hint of that resonance own poetic and density that make Heraclitus' statements on a can no sleep profoundly meaningful for modern reader, who longer take seriously the ancient theory stated in the commentary, (p. 295)
141 It seems, then, that Kahn and the fragments have created a proxy who not a now could have merely stated with "unambiguous precision" theory to no a known be false and longer "profoundly meaningful for modern In not text reader." this way the proxy is merely shaped by the but also to helps shape it simultaneously. With his model of the author inmind, itwill now be possible to under our an take the second leg of autopsy, examination of texts relevant to the death of the author. Iwill focus on Barthes' "The Death of the Author" to an same andWilliam Gass' response that work in essay by the name.301 to to sever hope show that Barthes' fundamental project is the "creative" nar author (the poet and scribe) from the "created" author (the proxy and to rator), while Gass attempts reestablish their unity. a Barthes is rebelling against model of reading which could be compared to the pre-Socratic search for the arche. Aristotle says the earliest philosophers sought a single material principle, "that of which all things are come to that consist, the first from which they be, the last into which are source they resolved." This principle is the of all things, and is always conserved.31 Thus, the first step toward understanding the world is to locate this principle. Criticism has often taken the author to be similar to not sense source the arche only in the of being the of the work, but also as being conserved in it. Barthes, though, makes it clear in the first paragraph of "The Death of the Author" that he is out to show that the not author is conserved in the text, for he says, "Writing is the destruc tion of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, com our posite, oblique space where subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing" (p. 142). The word "writing" appears three times in this passage, and in two not means the first instances it is clear whether Barthes by "writing" act or a) the of writing, b) what iswritten. The word appears throughout the essay, and it appears with both meanings. In the first part of the essay, Barthes seems to concenrate on the first meaning. He mentions several writers who have tried to loosen "the sway of the Author," beginning with Mallarm?, who, Barthes says, recognized "it is not that language which speaks, the author" (p. 143). The reference ... is to the act of writing, for Barthes continues, "to write is to reach " not that point where only language acts, 'performs,' and 'me' (p. 143). as Barthes cites further examples Val?ry and Proust, then mentions Sur
142 to realism, which "contributed the desacrilization of the image of the Author by ceaselessly recommending the abrupt disappointment of expec tations of meaning (the famous surrealist 'jolt'), by entrusting the hand with the task of writing as quickly as possible what the head itself is unaware on of" (p. 144). Again, the focus is the act of writing. Here, to though, the focus begins shift. Barthes says that modern linguistics has an shown that "the whole of enunciation is empty process, functioning perfectly without there being any need for it to be filledwith the person of to mean the interlocutors" (p. 145). Barthes takes this that the action is actor. no own separated from the The author is longer "the past of his text book." The temporality of writing is different; "every is eternally means written here and now." This that Barthes is free to conflate writing (act) andwriting (what iswritten); there is no longer any difference. And, more means can not importantly for Barthes, it that only writings write, to to ones authors. The author's "only power is mix writings, counter the . . . can no never with others" (p. 146). Now "writing know halt: life more a does than imitate the book, and the book itself is only tissue of an signs, imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred" (p. 147). Barthes' shift now can no of the meaning of the word "writing" is complete: "writing an longer designate operation of recording, notation, representation, 'de piction' (as the Classics would say)" (p. 145); instead, it should supplant the world "literature" (p. 147). Now Gregory Polletta's statement, quoted above, explaining how Barthes' "death of the author" differs from other attempts to dethrone the author, is clearer. Barthes releases the text "from any authoritarian con trol" by releasing it from the hands of the "Author-God" into the hands of the reader, and he relegates the author to the rank of "scriptor." He says:
In is to the multiplicity of writing, everything be disentangled, structure can nothing deciphered; the be followed, 'run' (like the a at at thread of stocking) every point and every level, but there is to not nothing beneath: the space of writing is be ranged over, to pierced; writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly evaporate it. (p. 147)
text was a to Previously, the cloth be unraveled by the reader; if the cloth were unwound all the way, the reader would find the author holding the
143 other end. But Barthes makes the text into a shroud, and no one, not even a corpse, is holding the other end. The Author-God has not been resur or terms rected; he she has simply disappeared. In of my model of the two author, Barthes completely separates the "real" aspects of the author two nar (the poet and scribe) from the "fictional" aspects (the proxy and More to rator). importantly, though (and this iswhat prompts him speak of are of the "death the author"), he says the "real" aspects of the author are ones. fictional and the "fictional" aspects the only real That is, he denies any real creative power to the "creative" author, who has become a more for Barthes "only ready-formed dictionary," "never than the in stance to extent are are writing."32 The poet and scribe, the that they real, narrator completely severed from the text; only the proxy and remain, and are at they the mercy of the reader. William Gass, however, rejects this conclusion. He affirms the creative power of the author, and attempts to reunite the "creative" and "created" aspects of the author. Gass begins by criticizing the comparison of the death of the authorwith the death of god; not only is there a disanalogy, are are reverse he says, but the "two expressions metaphors which the of one never another." The death of god implies that gods have existed and that belief in god "is no longer even irrationally possible" (p. 3). But the a death of the author "signifies decline in authority, in theological power, as were on if Zeus stripped of his thunderbolts and swans, perhaps residing now a Olympus still, but living in camper and cooking with propane. He no a is, but he is longer god" (p. 3). Gass quotes John Crowe Ransom's from an about that of some if statement, essay Lycidas, "Anonymity, real a not literal sort, is condition of poetry," and makes the important point case that "In this the arrogance, the overbearing presence, of the author is at one with his disappearance" (p. 4). It is the act of writing which is the so "essental artistic task," and if the author hides, it is only that the reader will seek. The hiding is a ploy, as inMoll Flanders,Gulliver's Travels, and The History ofHenry Esmond:
to are These novels have authors, be sure, but they artificial ones, or no one replacement pens "dildoes." Still, will imagine that Defoe or Swift or Thackeray felt that by placing these fictions in front of were one a themselves they risking their lives. No is done in by dil . . . doe These artful dodges (and itwould be awful if they fooled
144 source anyone) strengthen the concepts of and voice and purpose, control and occasion, which are central to the notion of a command creator, ing (pp. 6-7)
Gass' more to point, which he takes several pages develop, is that "the ele or a not an aes vation removal of the author is social and political gesture, a no on thetic one" (p. 11). The level of work's anonymity has bearing the mean no one work's quality, and, Gass says, it certainly doesn't that did it. are Even authors who deliberately efface themselves creators. to or What does happen, according Gass, is that in removing him- her self from the text, an author also removes the reader; "if no one has writ ten or no one is posted the word, then addressed by the word" (p. 13). even in an not to Still, removing the self, author "does omit leave his sig nature same. not behind, just the Indeed he only signs every sheet, he signs is as every word" (p. 14). This how writing differs from speech, and Gass sees it, this iswhat makes an author an author.33 There are many author as a less texts, such grocery sacker mindlessly saying, under orders of the store a one manager, "Have nice day." No authors those words, Gass say, "It to we we but is necessary say author what write precisely because what we we write is disconnected from any mouth might actually observe" (p. It to not texts 19). is the ability create, merely regurgitate previously in gested, which defines the author for Gass, and the absence of the author from the text in no way diminishes this. The person of the author, or whether discovered not, still determines the quality of the work: sentences are or or "literally millions of penned typed spoken every day a source?a or a not an which have only spigot signboard?and author" (p. 24). Gass ends his article by saying that authors "re-fuse," while readers "simply comprise the public" (p. 26). Gass' last-second insult against his audience is perhaps the most pointed example of the primary difference between himself and Barthes. Barthes over privileges the "created" author, the "creative" author, which makes a on the reader powerful figure. Gass, the other hand, privileges the "creative" author, and makes the reader almost powerless. a Both Barthes and Gass recognize distinction between the creative author and the created author. Barthes, as mentioned above, makes a sub as an as tle transition between writing act and writing what is written, during which the "Author" (creative) is replace by the "scriptor" (created author):
145 as The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of the past of own ... his book. In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born no a simultaneously with the text, is in way equipped with being or not as preceding exceeding the writing, is the subject of the book predicate, (p. 145)
aware same at some Gass is of the distinction. He talks length about the poet the reader projects from the poem, and he makes it clear that this pro a jected poet is not person, "but the poet of the poem." He mentions are a a Hume's warning that if we to infer creator from the evidence of we can to to creation, only attribute it what would be necessary produce means name not that creation. This that the author's designates the "per . . . sonality behind the art, but another kind of slippery fiction." And,
if we believe at all in the Unconscious, or in the impossibility of awareness literally nothing escaping the author's clear and control, text not then the artificial author (the author which the creates, the creates author who the text) will be importantly different from the one of flesh and blood, envy and animosity, who holds the pen, and whose picture enlivens the gray pages of history, (p. 21)
to means Barthes' privileging of the created author is the clue what he by "the death of the author." Barthes observes, quite correctly, that the a access not reader, encountering text, has only to the proxy and narrator, errs the poet and scribe. But Barthes synechdochically; he concludes that are because the poet and scribe "dead" (i.e., separated forever from the text), the whole author, including the proxy and narrator, is dead, he were in term would perhaps escape this charge if he consistent using the to to use "author" refer only the poet and scribe, and kept his of "author" use on always distinct from his of "scriptor." But his discussion pp. 143ff. et. own of Mallarm?, Val?ry, Proust, al. is inconsistent wih his claims: he to to texts clearly refers creative authors in their relations the they created, to as were not and he refers them if they "dead."34 as were not in Gass also speaks of creative authors if they dead, but do so not to ing he does violate his claims, since he is trying show that Barthes to own iswrong. Gass directs attention his crime, though, with this criti cism of Barthes:
146 IfRoland Barthes had been interested in radically simplifying the to ... final solution the Author Question he could have adopted the . . . ? "single author" theory. Then, with this plurality of persons both real, inhuman, artificial, and imaginary?reduced to manage a across able proportions, single stroke the top of the word would have been enough, (p. 23)
not The implication is that Barthes could have made authors homogeneous, but that he did make authors homogeneous. Unfortunately, Gass is guilty same reverse: of the sin in he affirms the heterogeneity of authors, but he makes readers homogeneous. course nor are answer Of neither authors readers homogeneous, and the to the question of the death of the authorwill not be found by choosing sides. The relationships between authors, their texts, and the readers of texts now a their vary greatly, but it should be clear by that there is always in sense mutual interdependence. The author is dead the limited that the poet and scribe are forever removed from the text and the reader as soon as the creative act is finished. But the author is dead in that for the only sense, author includes that proxy and narrator aswell as the poet and scribe, and are as as these created much by the reader by the poet. as a Barthes and Gass both take the question of the death of the author so our ameta theological question, it is only fitting that autopsy end with no phor taken from religion. Barthes and Gass agree that the author is a as our at a longer god. However, autopsy has shown, the author is least a a human, with body (the creative author) and soul (the created author). Viewed in this way, Barthes' claim seems to be that the author has died and there is no afterlife; Gass, on the other hand, seems to claim that there is an a resurrection. I our au afterlife for the author?with bodily think to a topsy, though, points via media: the author's body has died; there is an afterlife; the author's soul lives on.
Notes
1. Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), p. 11.
2. Webster's New World Dictionary lists two definitions for autopsy (from the Greek a with one's own "1. an examination and dissection of a dead autopsia, seeing eyes): body, a to cause of esp. by coroner, discover the death, damage done by disease, etc.; post mortem 2. a a or some detailed critical analysis of book, play, etc., of event."
147 - - 3. Roland "The Death of the in Music trans. Barthes, Author," Image Text, sel. and Stephen Heath (New York: Hill andWang, 1977), pp. 142-43. Further quotations from Barthes will be from this essay and will be cited parenthetically within the text by reference to the page numbers of this edition.
4. "What Is an Author?" in ed. Donald F. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 124-25. Further quotations from Foucault will be from this essay andwill be cited paranthetically within the text by reference to the page numbers of this edition.
5. "Tradition and the Individual Talent," in Twentieth Century Criticism: The Major Statements, ed. William J. Handy and Max Westbrook (New York: The Free Press, 1974), p. 30.
6. Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 17.
7. "The Author's Place inContemporary Narratology," inContemporary Approaches to Narrative, ed. Anthony Mortimer (Tubingen: Narr, 1984), p. 111. Polletta, in the paragraph from which I quote, is specifically comparing Barthes with Wimsatt and Beardsley. I have taken the liberty of applying his words to "most critics," since his in sight seems to apply aswell to Eliot, Frye, etc.
8. The Odyssey ofHomer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 27.
9. trans. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1955), p. 3.
10. I take it that no readerwill doubt the conception of the author as the source of his since this seems to commonest notion as a work, be the today. That the author channel is notion that has been taken seriously is best shown by Plato's Ion.
11. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger, trans.Wade Baskin (New York: Book 117. In concern McGraw-Hill Co., 1959), p. this passage, Saussure's is, of course, linguistic value, but Imean to borrow only his definition of differential entities.
12. "What Is an Author?" 127. I have use p. replaced Foucault's of the word "aspects" with the word "facets" in order to use to avoid confusion with my of "aspects" denominate the parts of my model of the author.
13. This is not only true of authors now dead, but living authors aswell; it is the basis of the New Critical dictum that the author is no more an authority on the text than any other reader.
14. Of the many discussions of this problem, two of the best are: Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), and G. S. Kirk, The Songs ofHomer (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962).
15. So as that, Cedric Whitman points out, writing is severed from composition, and becomes mere of the Homer and theHeroic preservation poems. Whitman, Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 5. 1965), p.
148 16. There is amore difficult sense inwhich tradition has a (rather large) hand in the crea tion of the work: clearly, language defines the possibilities of the work. This will be discussed more in relation to Barthes, but I exclude language from my model of the author because it is outside of what is normally included in the concept of the author. even who creative control to sets (And Barthes, gives complete language, language one ... it against the concept of the author, instead of including within the other:" is language which speaks, not the author" [Barthes, p. 143]).
17 Kirk, Songs, pp. 308-9.
18. Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 223-24.
19. Everett Zimmerman, Swift'sNarrative Satires:Author andAuthority (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1983), p. 68. I feel justified in pitting Zimmerman's discussion of irony against Frye's discussion of satire since Zimmerman's concern here iswith the irony in Swift, while satire for Frye is the type of irony which Swift makes use of.
20. Zimmerman, p. 69. a 21. From Gardner Stout, "Speaker and Satiric Vision in Swift's Tale of Tub," Eighteenth as Century Studies 3(1969), p. 183, quoted in Zimmerman, p. 69.
22. Anatomy of Criticism, p. 224.
23. I have mentioned above that the proxy can never be identified with the "historical author" (i.e., the poet and/or scribe), in this case Swift himself.
24. Iwill refer inmy discussion of Heraclitus exclusively to Charles H. Kahn's excellent book The Art and Thought ofHeraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979). This is fragment XXXVI inKahn's translation, though I have retained theword logos for the purposes of my discussion.
25. seems not to be that the is the source of his own Heraclitus claiming logos words, which would be placing himself on the channel axis rather than the source axis; instead, he seems to be claiming that the logos is a touchstone on which his words will prove themselves true.
26. In "On Reading Heraclitus," pp. 87-95 of The Art and Thought ofHeraclitus.
27. Kahn, p. 89.
28."They are purified in vain with blood, those polluted with blood, as if someone who stepped inmud should try to wash himself with mud. Anyone who noticed him doing thiswould think he was mad. And they pray to these images as if theywere chatting with not what or even heroes are like." houses, recognizing gods (Kahn, p. 266)
29. Against theMathematicians VII. 126-34, in Kahn pp. 293-96.
30. William Gass, "The Death of the Author," Salmagundi 65 (Fall, 1984), pp. 3-26. Further references to this essaywill be noted parenthetically within the text of the paper.
31. Metaphysics, A 3, 983b, trans.W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), pp. 693-94.
149 32. It is worth that Barthes is not no one noting making the claim that "did it," as Gass mistakenly claims (p. 11); instead, he ismaking a claim about what is involved in, and what follows the act of after, "doing it." 33. Whether Gass is correct in notion his of the signature is not immediately clear. For a more one thorough discussion of this issue, might profitably consult Jacques Derrida's Event 172-97. In essay "Signature Context," Glyph 1, pp. that essay, Derrida contends that a similar claim by J. L. Austin iswrong. Derrida says instead that the condition of the of the of the possibility power signature is also the condition of the impossibility of that in that claim he uses a to power. Interestingly, making metaphor similar Barthes' metaphor (mentioned above) of the text as a cloth. Barthes says that when the text is no disentangled, there is author clinging to the end of the thread; Derrida says that the is not of to signature capable "tethering [the text] the source." (p. 194) 34. The clearest is on where he example p. 144, talks of "Proust himself" (my italics) a blurring the relation between writer and his characters.
150