Schlegel’Swords, Rightly Used

Michel Chaouli Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used

Philological Disarmament

“Poetry,” Friedrich Schlegelwrites in afragment, “can onlybecriticized by poetry” (Schlegel1991 [1797], 14– 15). Forawhile now,Ihave thought that the line says all one needs to know about poetic criticism, what it is and how to do it,and that it thereforerequires neither commentary nor critique.Itisclear as day, and yet, like so manyofthe best aphorisms,this is an enigmatic clarity,which maybewhy I keep returningtoit.¹ Ikeep failingtofind the right wayofhearing it and responding to it.IfIknew how,then it would stop comingback to me, and before long Icould forgetit. Criticism thinksofitself as memorializing awork, but if it is done right,then it is away of overcoming it,ofdigesting and metabolizing it,and thus of forgetting it. “Poetry can onlybecriticized by poetry.” It is aplain phrase, yetright away Ifeel the urge to poke and prod its every part.After all, can Ibesure what it means by the word poetry,ifpoetry is even the right translation of Poesie,orifthe first usageofthe worddenotes the sameasthe second?AsSchlegel usesthe term elsewhere, poetry is not restricted to agenre such as the lyric nor even to verbal artworks in general, but reaches for the essence of creative making itself, whatever form it might take. Does that hold here? Then there is the word only: am Itotake literallythe assertion that poetry can be criticized by poetry alone and by nothing else? Now Inotice the pas- sive voice and find myself asking by whom – by what unnamed agency – it can only be thus criticized?And what of this criticizing?The worditself – kritisiert – rankles, as does the idea it evokes:does poetry stand in need of being criticized?These mis- givingsare further roused by the very next concept the fragment offers: “Ajudgment of art,” it reads, “thatitself isn’tawork of art […]has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.”“Ajudgment of art”:aphrase Ihavecome across athousand times, yet onlynow do Ihear how off-key it sounds, how gratingitistojoin “judgment” to “art.” Worse, this “judgment” is apt to give the aimless drift of associations that have been stirred up by “criticize” aKantian bent.And suddenlyall Iamableto see in “criticize” is “critique,” thatprosecutor that summons the accusedbefore the Tribunal of Reason to press them for answers. Before Iknow it,anair of anxiety has settled over the line, and rather than enjoying the cloudless simplicity that it had once offered, Ibecome restless and turn over each of its words.

 One response to the fragment can be found in my essay “‘We Hear That We MaySpeak’:Overtures for DoingCriticism,” Arcadia:International Journal of LiteraryCulture,forthcoming. SinceIdo not start from scratch, some passagesfromthat essayreappear here.

OpenAccess. ©2021MichelChaouli, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110688719-003 20 Michel Chaouli

But whysuch unease? Iapproach the phrase as though in it Iconfronted abeing that speaks an unintelligible idiom whose meaning requires decipherment,when instead Icould begin by crediting its affinity. It is, after all, not very mysterious: “Po- etry can onlybecriticized by poetry.” Thewords show the way, by astrokeofluck more clearlyeveninthe English translation, which begins and ends with “poetry.”² Poetry is whereIset out and whereIland, my dwellingand my destination. Though I maynot know its dimensions nor the measure of its boundaries, Idonot face in it an alien object,but something with which Imaintain an unknown intimacy.Often Iap- proach it as though it wereanobscure substance to be probed from adistance with the stick of scholarlyanalysis,but then Iforgetthat Iknow it from inside, even when its meaning confounds me – forgetthat its meaning confounds me in the waythat poetry does because Iknow it from inside. Knowingitfrom inside does not meanthat it harborsnomysteries. It meansthat poetry is not an object to be studied,dissected, and decoded. It is, in fact,noobject at all. That,too, is something the line intimates:when poetry encounters poetry,the two do not occupy opposite poles – here I, the readingsubjectdeploying “poetry,” there apoetic object thatIapproach and whose meaning Iseek to parse – with critique or criticism coursing between us. If criticism itself is done “by poetry,” as Schle- gelputs it,then poetry is the medium through which Imove, not athing Iholdbefore me. Even the term “medium,” recruited to dissolve the dyad of subjectand object, will not quite do. It failstocapturethe strangeaffinitythat Ihavewith poetry – and it with me – if Iamtohearitinthe right way. Forpoetry is not amedium in the sense of ameans, not atool Iwield or achannelIselect to tune into aspecial form of communication. Nor is it amedium in the more capacious sense of asetting, the stageofmyactions or the stream that carries me away.Ineither case – whether I hold it or it holds me – it remains alien to me, something Ithink of as belongingto the world rather thantomyself. Yettodocriticism by poetry names something more intimate: aform of comportment,awayofdoing things.

Hearing That We May Speak

We scholars have been readingthis fragment (along with the otherfragments,essays,dialogues, and other writingsinthe archive of “EarlyRomanticism”)asabuild- ing block in an intricate theory of literature, when in fact it is acall to action. It presents us not merelywith new thoughts,but with ademand. It asks us to “hear,thatwe mayspeak,” as Emerson says (Emerson 2001 [1837], 60). But do we need to learn how to hear and speak?Dowenot do it in our sleep?Ofcourse we do, but that is just the reason Emerson urgesadifferent mode of hearing and speaking.Every day, language passes through me without leaving aripple. Yetfrom time to time Icome across

 The original reads, “Poesie kann nur durch Poesie kritisiert werden” (Schlegel 1967[1797], 162). Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 21

words, and something happens.The words snapmeout of my slumber and suddenly Ihearinthem acall thatdemands something of me. No longer do Iread to add to my stock of interpretations; Iread, rather,totake part in aform of making.Iremain vig- ilant about the ways of seeing – the theories – that the text unveils, yetmainly because it can lead me to new ways of doing.Ichangemyposture and lean forward, readytolearn how these words set in motion something in me, rather than leaning back, content to behold the shape they reveal. So: IhearSchlegel’swordthatImight act.The wayofacting towardswhich they guide me is clear.Iam to encounter poetry with poetry,toact poeticallywhen coming across poetry,wherepoetry is not aspecial category of artful writing (lyrical, complex, sophisticated – what have you), but names ways of making thatoutstrip utility – call it passionatemaking.The fragment asks me to face the cominginto being of something new not with the aim of fixing its location in agrid of meanings, but rather with agesture that launches my own ways of making.Ifcriticism names my encounter with the poetic, then areal encounter,and real criticism, must itself be poetic.How do Ibring about such an encounter?The fragment does not say. Yet, in whatever wayIgo about it,mywork – criticism – no longer remains the same. It ceases to serveasthe mere occasion for assigningpraise or blame, nor does it docu- ment an arrangementofmeaningsderived from – or imposed on – asource. Some- thing different happens. Forone thing,something happens. In poetic criticism, someone speaks, someone venturesanact of speech – an act in speech. Even if it has been uttered before, such aspeech act is unheard of. Ideas that have grown flaccid gain fresh vigor,likeamus- cle that one learns to feelanew. Yetthis speaking,though new,emergesnot out of thin air,but follows upon another act,this being an act of hearing – hearing this fragment,for example – an act as fragile as the speech to which it givesrise. For to hear “that we mayspeak,” to hear poetically, demands of me to open not my ears alone, but also my self, to allow myself to be exposed to what speaks to me, un- shielded by my usual armaments – with effects Icannot foresee. Learningtobecome vulnerableinthis waylies at the coreofencounteringpoetry with poetry. What changes, then, what is at stake in hearing the fragment,ismore than criticism. If Isucceed in hearing the poetry in some arrangement of words (just as Imight perceive it in acomposition of images, sounds, or movements), then they rouse me from the torpor of my habits and bring to consciousness ways of encountering things that had lain dormant.Mywhole organism comes alive,and as Ilearn to hear and see and feelanew,fresh possibilities of making sense of the world reveal themselves, which turn out to be justfresh possibilities of making the world. That would change everything. 22 Michel Chaouli

Second Thoughts

Have we been readingtoo much into this line? Does it reallysay that poetry is not an object nor Iasubject, that hearing it involves knowing it from inside, that it names a form of intimacy? If so, how and where? These are fair questions. Still, it is irksome that they interrupt our reverie. Wasnot the idea to keep at baythe unease that our usual modes of readinghavetaught?Yet here we are, readytoshadowboxwith challenges of our own making.And once we start,there is no stopping: behindthese questions ahundred others lurk, each readytotake aswing. When interpretation runs into trouble, we like to place the blame on the ‘difficul- ty’ of the object before us (for example, the line by Schlegel), when the real obstacle lies elsewhere. Strangethat ease does not come easilytous. Second thoughts molest us before we have come to know the first.But then, whynot simply plugupour ears and getonwith it?Are we too hidebound? No doubtweare.We know well how to vex each other with textual and historical riddles, but we are at aloss at how to go about hearing the words someone has uttered. The new,wefear,might ask toomuch of us, so we stickwith old tricks. But this timidity is not onlyaflaw. It masks another,moresignificant reason for whyskeptical questions hold our attention. If ease wereastate that we once pos- sessed, astate we had lost to the agitation that roils our lives, then shutting out questions would be atechnique worth trying;itmight smooththe wavesand return us to stillness. Yetnothing we know from experience or history lends weight to this sup- position. There does not seem to be aprimitive condition in our childhood,nor in the ‘childhood of humanity,’ in which human beingsenjoy acalm that is then dis- turbed by psychic and social traffic. Even infants are plagued by disquiet.(They aim to sooth it by dreamingupgames such as fort-da.)Tranquility,itseems, is something to be attained, not something to be retrieved, since the most strident voices re- verberate in our heads. Plugging our ears does not silence them, far from it; it per- mits them to echo more violently. The lament about first and second thoughts may have it backwards:what are called second thoughts in fact beset us first.Westart with ahead full of noise, and we managetoget some peace when the quarrelsome voices have lost their edge.Itisonlythen that they teach us something worth knowing. In attemptingtohearSchlegel’sfragmentorany poetic configuration, we cannot,then, simplyshrug off challenges issued by philology, by history,orbycritique, hoping to return to astate of mind unmolested by questions, for we never knew such astate. Instead, the wayofmaking we seek is alsoawayofrelatingtoknowledge – knowledge derivedfrom philology, history,critiqueand other sources – that,rather than unspoolingmore and morequestions,allows us to find words adequate to our experience.Weseek aform of knowledge that allows it to lend shape to this experience. Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 23

Self-referencevs. Intensity

How do Iknow that Iamtoread the fragment poetically? Who tells me that Imust lean in to hear it,that Imust know it from inside? The answer is trivial: the text itself does – who else? If we now ask how the text tells me, we think we know whereto look. When the fragment says that to hearand understand poetry one must hear it and speak about it poetically, there is just asmall steptoconclude that it speaks not onlyabout poetry as such and in the abstract,but also about itself, about this very line by Friedrich Schlegel. Now we know what to imagine: the fragment’smean- ing forks in two, one prongraising itself abovethe other and from thatperch speaking about the one below.The imagecomes easily. Forsome time, scholars of literature, like interpreters of otherarts, have turned our gaze from the world that the artwork evidentlyshows to the waythe artwork reflects on itself: the novel turns out to be about writing,the movieabout film making,the painting about painting. When it comes to our fragment,weare all the happier to hold fast to this imagebe- cause the writingsofFriedrich Schlegel, and earlyRomanticism generally, often use the figure of doublingthrough self-reflection to describe poetic production, something thatreaders such as Walter Benjamin have noted. So at home are we with this figureofself-reflection that it takes time to notice that the fragment does not tell me to read it poeticallybysplitting itself into fragment and meta-fragment (or fragment to the power of two, as some of the Romantics like to put it). It does not announce itself as poetry in the same waythat it speaks about poetry.Weknow what goes on whenthe text speaks about poetry:itdeploys concepts and puts theminrelation to one another to yield aproposition. It makes an assertion, such as:poetry can onlybecriticized by poetry.The meaningofthe line maybemysterious, but thereisnomystery to the fact thatitisaproposition about some matter. What about the othercase, when Itake the words not to be issuing astatement or adirective about ways of criticizing poetry,but ademand to hear the very words of the fragment as poetry,ademand thereforetohear them poetically? Though spelled in the same letters and composed of the same words, now they do not seem to speak in the samemanner as before, and thus solicit adifferent wayofhearing.Like every poetic act,nomatter its form or the medium in which it shows itself, the fragment guides me to read it poeticallynot by splitting itself in two to supplymeta-informa- tion about itself.Itholds up no sign alerting readers that they are enteringapoetic zone. There is no about,nocleavage between words communicating ideas and words instructing readers that they are to take this communication poetically. In apoetic act,the words bring forth the thingsbychafing at conventional systems of meaning. They arrive with atension that shakes off theirordinariness and chargesthem with an unforeseen intensity.Like an electric surge,this intensity leaps from the words to the thingsthey name and lights them up. The tension is not always easy to notice. Some texts – our fragmentisanexample – keep their readers so busy with the mys- 24 Michel Chaouli

teries of the propositions they contain that their poetic intensity takes time to unfold. Their prose works likebait that distracts from their poetry,wherepoetry and prose do not name genres but degrees of vibrancy:what is conventionallylabeled prose at times pulsates with apoetry lacking in much of what is called lyric poetry – open anypagebyKleistorConrad, Nietzsche or Emerson.

The Intense LifeofLanguage

The philosopher Gaston Bachelard maybethinking along these lines when he writes that “poetry puts languageinastate of emergence.” How to picture this state of emergence? Hereishow Bachelard develops the thought:

The poetic image is an emergencefromlanguage, it is always alittle abovethe languageofsignification. By livingthe poems we read, we have then the salutary experienceofemerging. This, no doubt,isemergingatshort range. But these acts of emergenceare repeated;poetry puts lan- guageinastateofemergence, in which life becomes manifest through its vivacity.(Bachelard 2014 [1957], 11)

The passagebegins wherewetoo find ourselves, namelywith the mystery at the heart of the poetic image: poetry partakes of language, and yetstands apart from it.Tograsp this excess of poetic languageoverthe ordinary languageofnaming, Bachelard, like so manyother thinkers,reachesfor aspatial imageinwhich poetry “is always alittle above the languageofsignification.” Now he has us thinkingthat languagehas separated itself into layers,the poetic layerfloating atop the signifying layerlike oil over water. But then he catches himself, drops the spatial image, and switches to atemporallogic:heasks us to live the poems we read, and thus to live the emergence from language. Poetry now does not hover over ordinary language, regarding it from above, but names the metamorphosis of the ordinary.If readingapoem is living apoem, then the poetic emergence from languageisnot arelease from language; it offers no escape into ineffability or wordless ecstasy. This emergencefrom language, this intensity that shakes languageloose from its en- crustations, occurs in language. Poeticacts, we now see, rather than splitting lan- guageintwo, effect atransformation within language – atransformation of language by language. Which just means thatpoetry is not something that enters language from outside (thanks to amuseortogenius, for example), nor is it aspecially marked region of language, “parasitic” on its “normal” uses, as philosophersoflan- guageand linguists often assert.³ It is, rather,one of the basic thingsyou do with words. It reveals itself as aforcethat languageholds in reserve, allowing it – com-

 J.L. Austin, for example, writes apropos of poetry: “Thereare parasitic uses of language, which are ‘not serious,’ not the ‘full normal use.’” (Austin 1962, 104) Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 25

pelling it – to emerge from itself. Hearingthe poetic edge in languageishearing lan- guageasthough it had not been heard before. We have become accustomed to finding the poetic in clearlymarked regions (the book, the classroom, the museum, the theater,and so on), but we recognize thatthis emergence can come about anywhere. As Schlegelwrites in another fragment,poetry “embraces everything that is purelypoetic, from the greatest systems of art,contain- ing within themselvesstill further systems, to the sigh, the kissthat the poetizing child breathes forth in artlesssong” (Schlegel 1991 [1798], 31). Even if there werea sign alerting me to the presenceofpoetry – the book cover,for example, might identify its content as “literature”–it can at best servetosharpen my attention, the waya gallery encourages me to look, but it can never yield the exuberance of feeling “languageinastate of emergence.” Has the mystery of poetic speech been lifted? If youare of ascholarlyorscientific disposition, then hardly,for then youwish to know what,precisely, propels words beyond their practical utilityinto the orbit of poetry.What does that forceconsist of and how does it unfold?You would be in your rights to ask for acatalogue of features that characterize the state of emergence, the better to identify poetry.When Bachelard then offers the thought that “poetry puts languageinastate of emergence, in which life becomes manifestthrough its vivacity,” youcannot help but be disap- pointed. Do we know how life manifests itself in its vivacity anybetter than we know how languagemanifests itself in poetry?Itseems that one mystery – thatofpoetry – has been replaced with another – life. Yetwecould also be ledtoadifferent insight. Instead of feelinglet downby Bachelard’sfailure at providinganexplanation, we mightwonder what an explana- tionofthe force of poetry mightlooklike. Areweeveninneed of explanation?Is poetry?The texture of Bachelard’smeditation – the fact that it has texture – reveals that Icannot learntograsp the force of poeticwords by launchingatheoretical inves- tigation.Icome to see,rather,thatthe accountIgive of the wayIread poetry – the accountIgive of livingit: callitcriticism – mustitself occur in languagethatisina state of emergence. Schlegel’sfragment says nothingmorethan what Bachelard’s wordsshow. One wayofcriticizing poetry by poetryistosay that in the poetic image “life becomesmanifestthrough its vivacity.” Ascholar or scientistmight,inan- other bout of scruples, insist on alistoffeaturesthatcharacterizelife(metabolism, reproduction,etc.),which would then be usedtojudge every case that presents itself. Yettosay thatlifemanifests itself through its vivacity simplymeansthat life can only be known through life, as poetry canalsobecriticizedbypoetry. The poeticedgeof the phrase lies in the audacitywithwhich it turnsonitself. And thereisanother turn worth following.Life, we begin to see, is not merelya model for poetry.Poetry showing itself through the intensity of languageisnot like life showing itself through its vivacity.No, the very waylife manifests itself through its vivacity comes about in the intensity of poetry.The quickeningwefeel in poetic intensity is amanifestation of life in its vivacity. “These linguistic impulses,” Bach- elard continues, “which stand out from the ordinary rank of pragmatic language, are 26 Michel Chaouli

miniatures of the vitalimpulse”–this being the élan vital made famous by Henri Bergson, whose vitalism Bachelard sees everywhere in poetry.The élan linguistique is not asign – arepresentation, ametaphor – of the élanvital,but one of its instan- ces.Ifwelearn to see “language-as-reality,” rather than “language-as-instrument,” then Bachelard promises thatwe“would find in poetry numerous documents on the intense life of language” (Bachelard 2014 [1957], 11). Here, then, is another non-definition of poetry:languagelived intensely.

What and How

“Language-as-reality”:what of this “as”?When we think of words announcing themselves “as poetry,” we risk imaginingthe words appearing as something,asthough they wereengaged in impersonation. But words do not lead aquotidian existence that issues into poetry through an act of masquerade. The conjunction “as” yields another form of doubling, distinct from the self-reflection thatBenjamin and others have noted in the Romantic conception of the work of art,yet as likelytolead us off track. It opens adistance between words and poetry justwhere we want to feeltheir intimacy.Bachelard, too, seems to be led by this intuition, which is whyhespeaksof langage-réalité and langage-instrument,leaving as little daylightbetween the terms as he can getawaywith. (The spacing insinuates itself in the English translation.) If instead of asking how words appear “as poetry,” we wonder how they come to speak poetically, then we nudge ourselvesthe right way. Fornow,weare more likely to see that poetry is not an object nor aphenomenon, not abeing to which Ican point.Its center of gravity lies not in anoun, but in an adjectiveoranadverb. It is not “poetry” we seek, then, but rather the manner – the style – in which a word, agesture, or amotion comes to make itself felt poetically. Agreed, but does that bear saying?DoInot alreadyknow that Imust look to the how and not to the what? Of course Ido, yetstrangelythis wayofknowing seems to maintain its claim on me for onlyaslong as my gaze is fixed on it,and no longer.The instant my mind wanders, the insight,which onlymoments before had the clarity and cogency of self-evidence, slips into obscurity,and as Ilose my grip on it,I reach for the solidity of nouns to steadymyself: Italk of “poetry,” its features,its history,its influence, its effects, its essence.The habit is hard to break, but at least I come by it honestly, for Ihavelearned it from philosophers and critics, Friedrich Schlegelamong them. To be fair,manyofthem do mention the how,but usually the wayone recommends adish for its nutritional benefits. Their duty discharged, they proceed to feast on arich spread of whats: on “poetry,”“art,”“literature,” “the absolute,”“the work of art,”“the beautiful,”“the sublime”–each concoction more elaborate than the next,each requiring years of exacting training to construct and assess. As so often, the master showing the wayisPlato, whose signatureskill lies in turning adjectives into nouns. By asking what the beautiful dress,the beautiful Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 27

horse, and the beautifulface have in common, with each other and with all other beautifulthings, he means to direct our attention from surfaces,which,byhis lights, shimmerwith illusion, to the essence of things, imagined as restinginaremote region, shielded from change. Platohas the integrity to admitfailure – at the end of the Greater Hippias,the dialogue devoted to discovering what makes beautiful things beautiful, we find Socrates empty-handed – yetthis failureturns outtobearmore fruitthanmostsuccesses do.Now thereissomething called “beauty” to be accounted for,unseen yetubiquitous,manifest in countless shapes yetunchanging, an entity filled with metaphysical mysteries in need of examination and explanation, which along roster of keen minds strive to supply: philosophers, theologians,poets, rhet- oricians, historians,psychologists,anthropologists, sociologists,biologists,and manyothers. (The most recent to try theirhand are neuroscientists, as devoted to the laws of beauty as anyPlatonist,exceptthat they seek to find them etched not in immutabletablets handed down from the realm of ideas, but in the soft tissue of the brain.) It is true that in Plato’swritings “beauty” maintains no especiallyclose link to “poetry” or to “art”;onlycenturies laterwill these concepts be woven into anetwork that in the Western tradition is called aesthetics. Yetwhenthe network emerges, its nodes are understood by aesthetic theorists, even by those who decline to carry the full weight of Plato’sphilosophy, accordingtoaPlatonic model. The perplexity at the heart of poetic experience is made to disappear with an elegant act of metaphysical legerdemain: the poetic forceofwords is taken to be caused by their “poetry,” the how by a what. (Nietzsche debunks the process by doing what good debunkers do: he shuts out the magician’spatter and keeps the eyes fixed on his hands. An expert demonstration of this technique can be observed in the first few pages of his essay “On Truthand LyinginanExtra-Moral Sense.”)

The Knot of Experience

The question thatled us here was how something – how aconfiguration of words, sounds, colors,shapes – can come to make itself felt poeticallyand in turn elicit a poetic reception: how poetry can be criticized by poetry,how it can be heard so that we mayspeak.Wewould be barking up the wrongtree(the treeofphilosophy and of science) if we sought the answer to this how in a what: in atechnique, agenre, aconvention, an essence, an object belongingtothe genus “art,” or in other such conceptual determinations. The poetic is the how. It is how language-reality emerges from language-instrument. We won’tbeable to undo the knot at the coreofpoetic experience, nor would we wish to, for then the experienceitself would unravel. Yetwecan follow the twists and turns that make up the knot,the better to see what kind of grip the experience has on us. The first twistofthe thread seems to pull away from the objective world and into subjectivity.That is because of the sort of thing apoem – which just means: anything 28 Michel Chaouli

poetic – is. And we know what sort of thing:itisasingular thing.One waythe power of the poetic manifests itself,wesaid, lies in its being singular.But singular in what way? Is the poetic something utterlynew,something never before seen or heard?Yes and no. An image, aphrase in aworkofreflection (take Bachelard’s), the pause an actor makes in delivering aline – when they arrive with poetic intensity,then Iam led to think thatthey have not been invented or written or performedbefore. But their novelty is not exhausted by the fact that anew phenomenon has appeared on the horizon.Asolareclipse or astock market crash too maybesingular: it maybetrue that in our lifetimes there has not been an eclipse or acrash quite like this one. Yetthe event has not thereby become apoetic singularity,and not because eclipses and crashes are not poetic or artistic, but because apoetic singularity cannot appear in ageneral guise.Acknowledging it is not amatter of scientific ver- ification or collective consensus.This includes ascholar’sassurance, backed by historical evidence and formal analysis,that some phenomenon – Schlegel’sfragments, say, or Manet’s Olympia – breaks new ground. The scholar’sinsight mayevenper- suade me, but unless Imake it my own, it is just something Iread in abook.The poetic must not onlyhavebeen made singularly, but also experienced as having been made singularly – here, now,byme. What if Imiss the poetic forcethat others have felt in awork, because Iamdis- tracted or adunce? That will be my loss. Imay feel shame for having failed where others have succeeded, yetIwould be mistaken to conclude that what continues to elude me is something hard and real whose presencecould be demonstrated by objective means. The idea that aesthetic experience remains deaf to the forceofcon- cepts is not new;itlies at the heart of Kant’saesthetic theory. “If someone reads me his poem or takes me to aplaythat in the end fails to please my taste,” Kant writes,I am moved neither by famous critics trying to swaymenor by rules that supposedly govern asuccessful work. Quite the contrary:

Iwill stop my ears,listen to no reasons and arguments,and would rather believethat those rules of the critics arefalse or at least that this is not acase for their application than allow that my judgment should be determined by means of apriori grounds of proof. (Kant 2000 [1790], 284–85)

Coming upon this one image – ImmanuelKant himself plugging up his ears against arguments, an obstinate child shutting out the voice of reason – is fair recompense for the hours spent navigating the long,cheerless corridors of the Critique of Judg- ment.⁴ But its drollness should not mislead us about how far-reachingthe idea is for the enterprise of criticism. Criticism thatoperateswith “reasons and arguments,” Kant is saying,has no authority over aesthetic experience – none. The reasons may

 Iexaggerate. One of the wonders of readingKant is that these corridors can suddenlybecome the sites of intense joy and illumination. My Thinking with Kant’sCritique of Judgment (2017) seeks out such moments. Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 29

be airtight or specious and the arguments well supported by evidence or not: it makes no difference. By the sametoken, apiece of scholarship thatplaces awork in aconceptual frame – ahistoricaltrajectory,agenre, aphilosophical truth, apo- litical program, asocial tendency, atechnique – can be right onlyatthe cost of crushing what is poetic in apoetic work. Which means thatmost of what passes for critical scholarship of poetic works (literary studies, art history,film studies, mu- sicology,and so on), whatever elseitdoes that might be of value, misses the poetic coreofthose works.The thoughtmay seem insurrectionary to professional critics; everyone else knows thatifIfail to pick up the poetic forceofawork because I am inattentive or tone-deaf, then no amount of formal or historical analysis can make up for my failure, just as little as ameticulous studyofthe words someone has uttered is able to disclose their seductive or sarcastic overtones. Following the thread leading into the knot seems to have landed us in the thick of subjectivity.Now it sounds as though the poetic is whatever Isay it is. Is that what we are saying?Again, yesand no. We said that acknowledging the forceofthe poetic cannot happen in general, not in the “we” of science,scholarship, or common opin- ion. (Another question crowds in: Is the snake devouring its own tail here? The “we” of science and scholarship is being rebuffed by none other than …“we.” Is this sen- tencenot sufferingfrom an acute caseofperformative contradiction?Itwould be if all “we”swerecreated equal and if the “we” speaking here had effaced itself to chan- nel the disembodied voice of science.) To acknowledge the poetic,asharplycon- toured “I” is required. This “I” need not be confined to an individual: the audience in atheater,the crowdinastadium, or,indeed, We the People of the United States, seeking to establish amore perfect Union, can become such an “I.” But the poetic has not thereby become arbitrary.Icannot,led by aflight of fancy, simplydeclare athing poetic and be done with it.That is because the experience of poetic singularity – and here is another loop in the knot – is not mine alone, walled off from others by the boundaries of my person, by my particular tastes and distastes. In its very makeupand quite apart from my intentions and my place in the social order,itopens to others and calls on others. Society is woven into it.The experience is social,and essentiallyso, even if it takes place on adesertisland or in the solitude of my skull, yetnot social in the sense that it must align itself with the acclaim of others. Itsvalidation lies not in market value or in market share. Nor is it social because it typifies asocial position. Poetic experience,evenatits most intenselysingu- lar,exceeds myself not because sociologyhas revealedittobeshared with agroup or to exhibit awell-defined marker of identity (myclass, my nation, my sexuality,my geography, and the rest). It is true thatmyexperiencecannot help but emerge from the welter of ways of knowing,feeling,judging,making,acting,speaking, imag- ining,daydreaming, even hallucinating that have pressed on my life. And how could it? “There is no delirium,” Gilles Deleuze has written, “thatdoes not pass through peoples, races,and tribes, and thatdoes not haunt universal history” (Deleuze 1998 [1993], 4). What goes for my feverish reveries alsogoes for my experience of the poetic. Yettobehaunted by history and to haunt it does not mean thatmyexpe- 30 Michel Chaouli

rience adds up to the sum totalofhistoricalforces and no more. It means, rather, that,having passed through them, it surpasses them. The experience registers the singularity of the poetic just when it lays bare not the commonalities of shared life but the impersonal in my person, the place whereanopacity keeps me distant from my quotidian self. We have been tracking the loops in the knot of poetic experience. Hasitbrought us anything but more entanglement?Recall how we came upon the knot.Wesaid that encountering the poetic –“criticizing” it,asSchlegel likes to say, hearing it “that we mayspeak,” in Emerson’swords – has ashape thatdiffers from my experience of ordinary objects. To hear and feel the poetic impulse – the élan poétique – means hearing and feelingthingsinawaythat takes them beyond their ordinary ways of signifyingand functioning.Familiar things – words, colors,materials,movements – now have an intensity that jolts them out of known circuits of meaning and into something unknown, something singularlynew.That was our first description of the knot.Infollowing the thread that leads into it,wewereled from objectivity into subjectivity – from an account of the singularity that would characterize the poetic thing to the singularity with which Ireceive it.Then we sawhow this subjectivity loops backout of the subject and opens to the public. But we have not gone in one end of the knot onlytoemerge from the other into the sameobjective world. Rather,the waymyexperience of the poetic relates to the thing Iencounter and to myself deforms the conceptsofobjectivity and subjectivity beyond recognition.We are better off without them, since they lend afalse familiarity to what is unfamiliar.Kant’snotion of “subjective universality” is an attempt at cap- turing this dimension of poetic experience with receivedphilosophical terms.Its un- gainliness acknowledgeswhat Kant’sanalysis of aesthetic judgment in the Critique of Judgment reveals,namely that in these judgments bothsubjectivity and universality are profoundlyaltered by the experience. Is asubjectivity “not grounded in anyin- clination of the subject(nor in anyother underlying interest)” (Kant 2000 [1790], 211) still worthyofits name? Andwhat about auniversality so toothless that it can only issue demands for assent without means of enforcing it?Kant has zeroed in on are- gion of experience,flagrant in the encounter with an aesthetic object,wherethe subject,byreaching apoint that exceeds subjectivity,achievesanegative universality.It is the same point Emerson has in view when he says of the poet that “the deeper he divesinto his privatest,secretest presentiment,tohis wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public and universallytrue” (Emerson 2001 [1837], 64). The knot,then, does not lead us out of the dimness of subjectivity back into the daylight of the objective world, but urgesusfurther into knottiness,aplace whereIno longer feel my known self, but,tomywonder,find something public and universallytrue. Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 31

Making Freedom

The poetry that Schlegelhas in mind, the poetry to be criticized and the poetry criticizing,isnot exhausted by markers of genre or convention, we have said, not confined to lyrical or elevated language. It is amoregeneral phenomenon. In one of his lectures,Schlegeldescribes it as akind of thinking. “There is […]akind of thinking that produces something,” he notes.Hecalls this productive thinking “the making of poetry [das Dichten],” which “creates its material itself” (Schlegel 1964 [1804– 1805], 371). Understood this way, the key characteristic of poetry is not beauty,not truth, not pleasure, nor is it its ability to engagemoral or political quandaries, but acreativity in thinking. Creativity must then also be the mark of anyform of criticizing that wishes to maintain its citizenship in the realm of art. But whyprize creativity?Why pursue it?What does creativity create?Suppose youheed Schlegel’swordand find ways of respondingtopoetry poetically: what does this response convey? When youlearn to hear thatyou mayspeak, what do yousay?Well, manythings. The themes, methods, and goals of criticism practiced in Schlegel’sorEmerson’svein are endlesslyvaried, as are its forms. Your speech maybeverbose or terse, highflying or modest.Oritmay cease. Whatyou hear maysodumbfound you, that youfallinto astutter or muteness. Yet, however varied content and form maybe, your speech – your silence included – is apoetic act.That maynot sound like much, but if youmanagetoperform such an act,then – besides whatever the “content” or the “message” of your act maybe–youhaveenlargedthe space of what youallow yourself to sayortodo. By venturing something new,you surprise yourself. Youdosomething that youdid not know youknew how to do. This bit of extraelbowroom givesyou space for new ways of acting (towards others, towards things, and also towards yourself), ways youcould not have foreseen. Now the world has become wider and deeper.Thisenlargement does not merely augment the known world, but changes its very make-up. Foryou have done more than to add this one new possibility of speaking and acting stimulated by asolicita- tion; what has also been introduced is the very possibilityofproliferating the possibilities that the world affords.True, the quantum of new wiggle room maybeminute and in itself hardlymomentous;inthe grand scheme of things, how significant could the words be that youutter in response to the fragment?Yet your actions betoken a profound freedom. Forwith even the humblest poetic act youalter the very textureof the world: it is no longer simplythere as the sum total of what presses on youand what must be administered. No longer are youlimited to responding to demands issuing from the environment,the wayanimalsdo, or the wayweimagine animals do. The world turns out not to be exhausted by what is given, but is now immeasurably enlargedtoinclude what it could become, and become through your doing.Itistrue that apoetic act – hence poetic criticism – cannot become apractice; it will never entirelybegovernedbyatheory or shoehorned into amethod. There is something in this wayofdoing thatsurpasses the capacities and competences of asubject. 32 Michel Chaouli

Still, poetic making is not counterfeit making,asWestern philosophykeeps charg- ing.⁵ Itsway of making is as real as anyaction. In poetic acts, the world, and not its semblance,istransformed. In this way, it reveals itself as something youcan form. (Or, if youare aHeideggerian, youmight justsay:itreveals itself.) Even if youmanagetovaryits shape by onlyasmall degree, bending acorner here and flex- ing an edge there, youface aworld whose physiognomyhas softened: what was once an unyielding arrangement of circumstances beyond your reach, younow find to be pliable – something given, yes, but giventobemade. What is more,the freedom to make something of this world – the freedom to say and do what youdid not know could be said and done, which is the freedom to make poetically – this freedom has not been ceded to youbysome agency,nor does it rest in youasasilent reserve(a“natural endowment”)into which youmay tap, nor has it fallen to youbychance. Rather,the freedom to speak and act poeticallycomes about in the very saying and doing.Inshapingthe world in some way – putting together words or soundsorgestures “in which life becomesmanifest through its vivacity”– youmake not onlysome object but also the very freedom needed to make that object. Youmay not be able to recount the steps exactly, but thereisnodoubt that it was you who shaped the added elbowroom. This elbowroom was not there all along,apocket of vacant spaceofdefined dimensions waitingtobeoccupied, but itself has come into being thanks to an act of poetic making.When youspeak poeticallyinthe face of poetry,the freedom youfeel in your bones is not the freedom of speech that asovereign has bestowed on you; if challenged, it would not help holding up alicense youhavebeen issued. Speaking poeticallybringsforth the freedom that en- titles this speech. When yousurprise yourself, youdosonot just with what yousay (its propositional content), but with the fact of speaking:before doing it,you didn’t know it was permitted or possible. And that is not all. It can happen thatwhen youmanagetohear and to speak – if youmanage – others hear your words, and hear them that they mayspeak.Soyou surprise not just yourself, but others too, me perhaps,spurring me to make my own elbowroom, by my own lights and in my own way. My movemight in turn rouse others, youfor example, to attempt theirown moves, and before long the freedom to make the worldhas spread like acontagion of fresh possibilities. What communicates itself from utterance to utterance is not amessagenor an idea, but away of relating to the world and to myself, and it is this that provides the sharpest thrill. Foronlyinthe actions of others does it begin to dawn on me that Imyself have acted, and not because they “reflect back” to me what Ihave done; if Ifound in others merelywhat Iknew from myself, Iwould feel flattered, no more. But what Ifind is that they have taken my act – my words – in their

 Even Theodor Adorno, as constant an advocateofthe aesthetic sphereasone is likelytofind amongphilosophers, considers their “semblancecharacter” to be an essential featureofworks of art (Adorno 1997[1970], 103). Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 33

own wayrather than in mine, just as Iused Schlegel’swords for my own purposes rather than his. And if they hear in my words avoice that was alien to myself, then it is in these departures from my ownwaysthat Imay see how,when Iacted, Itoo departed from my habitual ways and ventured – or juststumbled – into a new situation. It is in acknowledging what is alien to me in what others have done that Iamapt to gain an intimacy with the stranger that Iamtomyself.

Respondingtopoetry with poetry;hearing that we mayspeak;feeling the vivacity of language – these gnomic formulas reveal themselvesaswaysofreaching for the same idea, embarrassing almostinits plainness: they urge me to saysomething new,something that might startle me with its newness. And, again, this urgency lies not mainlyinthe messagethey carry,inarequest or exhortation, but in alan- guagechargedwith enough intensity thatitthrows off sparks, which, with luck, kin- dle poetic acts in those gatheredaround them. We might put it this way: poetic acts do not just bring forth products, which by convention we call works of art (though who can saywherethe edgesofthis group of thingsrun?); they are rather acts that,inbringingforth products, bring forth other poetic acts. And poetic criticism is not amode of speaking and writing thatmakes assertions about objects; rather it is amode of speakingand writingthat, in making assertions, engenders more criticism. Youknow the feeling:you read an essayorjust afragment,and youfeel en- couraged – no, urged – to sit and write. Youwrite not to playuporplaydown what youhaveread, nor to amplify or object,but because something youread – the twistinanidea or an adjectivethat had no business being there – wokesome- thing up in you. “Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst,” Emerson writes in the essaywehavebeen going back to. “What is the right use?” he asks, and provides his own answer: “They are for nothing but to inspire.” And just as we are getting comfortable with the thought,reachingfor the pencil to mark it,he adds: “Ihad better never see abook,thantobewarped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit,and made asatelliteinstead of asystem” (Emerson 2001 [1837], 59). The pencil hesitates.Are we readytoundersign this last thought?Havewenot said that we go to books to lose our wayand not to keep to the path?When reading abook, do we know when we are satelliteand when system?Dowewhen not reading abook?But now we see thatwehavelet Emerson’sline warp us clean of our orbit and put us on asatellite’scourse, even though he has just told us its right use.We read to be inspired. If that is toomawkish, then we can sayinstead: we hear so that we mayspeak. And if that sounds too oracular,then we can say: we read – we look, we listen, we feel – to learn to do thingswedid not know we could or would or should do. Or just: to act with more freedom. 34 Michel Chaouli

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