10.3726/85609_ 99
Enigma and “Unappeased Desire” in Henry James’s “The Figure in the Carpet”
Evi Fountoulakis
The solution of the enigma amounts to giving the reason for its insolubility, which is the gaze artworks direct at the viewer.1
I. The institution of literature in modernity seems to be perpetually torn between two poles: to supersede philosophy as the new and better medium of self-reflexivity or to revert to a mere surface of language effects, protracting literature’s origin in rhetoric.2 Self- questioning modern literature, as it were, is permanently over- shadowed by the age-old conflict between philosophy and rhetoric about the adequate use of language. Whereas the latter considers logos, ethos, and pathos to be inextricably linked to each other, phi- losophy begins by a caesura that eliminates pathos from any re- flection on logos and ethos, as demonstrated by the famous exclusion of the poets from Plato’s Politeia. And when Aristotle was asked to teach rhetoric at the Academy, it was precisely to dis- mantle the otherwise unnoticed affectual processes of the rheto- ricians and to logically expound the mechanisms of language. As the Sophist incessantly repeats, rhetoric is based on the systematic concealment of its means, while philosophy consists precisely in reflecting on the means used. This understanding treats philosophy as fundamentally characterized by self-reference, that is, as making its own instru- ments apparent, and views literature as rhetoric in a constant process of detracting from itself, as it would immediately lose its power of pathos as soon as it were to expose the stuff it is made of. In other words, the power of literature stems from its non-
1 Theodor W. ADORNO, Aesthetic Theory, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, trans., ed., and with a translator’s introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor, London: Athlone, 1999, 122. 2 Stathis GOURGOURIS, Does Literature Think? Literature as Theory for an Antimythical Era, Stanford: University Press, 2003.
Variations 18 (2010) 100 Evi Fountoulakis reflexivity. The effects of language will remain concealed as long as there is no external agent, such as the interpreter or the critic, to unfold its hidden machinery. And yet, as this paper will argue, literature (and especially modern literature) has explored ways of exposing its own operative principles without having to sacrifice its efficacy by transferring the interpretative process to an external stance. This ‘immanentization’ of literature went hand in hand with a growing awareness of its structural means. The tacit and indirect self- commentary of the works has been a frequent topic of research for romantic, modern, and postmodern texts.3 However, it has not been considered quite as exhaustively for texts from the realist and early modern periods (with the exception of certain, predomi- nantly French authors such as Flaubert), as a realist aesthetics seems to aim at a nonreflective, transparent depiction of what is real. As this paper intends to show, even in so-called realist literature, the self-reflective moment, although less evident than in fragmentary writings, is ineradicable too. Far from narrating a preexisting world, literary texts including so-called realist ones constitute an event of their own and create something that did not previously exist. As Henry James’s story “The Figure in the Carpet” will exemplify, literature becomes performative in the twofold meaning of the word: not only do performatives modify the world4; they are also (and this aspect is sometimes marginalized) self-reflective acts (“sui-referential”5 utterances, to use Émile Benveniste’s expression), as they refer to themselves by describing the act by which they make something happen.6 Performativity not only entails a modification of the state of the world, but, precisely when the relationship to the world becomes opaque, may entail performing a self-reflective act on language itself.
3 Cynthia CHASE, Decomposing Figures. Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition, Balti- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986; Mark CURRIE, Postmodern Narrative Theory, Houndmills: Macmillan, 1998. 4 For instance by implying real-life consequences such as a change in confessional/legal status after being baptized/put under oath by a performative speech act. 5 Émile BENVENISTE, Problèmes de linguistique générale II, Paris: Gallimard, 1974, 79. 6 For example: ‘I hereby pronounce you husband and wife’. Enigma and “Unappeased Desire” 101
II. Henry James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” (1896)7 has been a subject of contention on the methodological battlefield in literary theory.8 This explicitly meta-aesthetic novella deals with attempts at interpreting (reading and writing) and with the relationship be- tween literature, literary criticism, and – consequently – literary theory. James famously confronts readers with a secret that in- creasingly assumes the form of a riddle: What begins as a challenge to the narrator, a literary critic, with a hint to an author’s “little secret” (372)9, turns into an accumulation of “clue(s)” (368), “tip[s]” (372), and “exquisite scheme[s]” (366) that remain inaccessible to both the narrator and the reader. Vereker is the acclaimed fictive author of the book that the first-person narrator is asked to review at the beginning of the story. He stages “the finest fullest intention” (366) behind his work as a secret, albeit “a secret in spite of itself” (367), and thereby establishes the structure of a motif. The first-person narrator’s re- port (re)presents an event of its own10, exposing the author’s hints, the involvement of his friend Corvick in the search – who succeeds in detecting the secret and passing it on to his fiancée, Erme – and the narrator’s failure to detect the secret.11 Assuming the story forms “both [...] a text available for interpretation and [...] a kind of fictionalized parable of the reading process”12, also the secret of lite- rature, it becomes the narrator’s (and every reader’s) task to resolve the secret. The narrator’s reaction to Vereker’s disclosure of the secret’s existence in itself almost defines the riddle as a “puzzling
7 Henry JAMES, “The Figure in the Carpet”, The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories, ed. Frank Kermode, New York: Penguin, 1986, 357–400 (hereafter cited by page numbers only). 8 To name only some of the most influential: Tzvetan TODOROV, The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977, especially chapters 10–11; Wolfgang ISER, “Partial Art – Total Interpretation. Henry James’s ‘The Figure in the Carpet’, in Place of an Introduction”, The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, 3–10; J. Hillis MILLER, “The Figure in the Carpet”, Poetics Today 3/1 (1980), Special Issue: Narratology I: Poetics of Fiction, 107–118. 9 “By my little point I mean – what shall I call it? – the particular thing I’ve written my books most for. Isn’t there for every writer a particular thing of that sort, the thing that most makes him apply himself, the thing without the effort to achieve which he wouldn’t write at all, the very passion of his passion, the part of the business in which, for him, the flame of art burns most intensely? Well, it’s that!” (365) 10 For the present use of ‘event’ see Chase, Decomposing Figures, 7–8, and Jacques DERRIDA, “A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event,” trans. Gila Walker, Critical Inquiry 2/33 (2007), 441–461. 11 “The secret belongs to the structure of the event […] as that which doesn’t appear.” See Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event”, 456. 12 M. A. WILLIAMS, “Reading ‘The Figure in the Carpet’. Henry James and Wolfgang Iser”, English Studies in Africa. A Journal of the Humanities 2/27 (1984), 107–121, 112. 102 Evi Fountoulakis or dark utterance“ and “enigma”13, when he infers that “[Vereker’s] description’s certainly beautiful, but it doesn’t make what you describe very distinct” (365). The descriptions of the “secret” (367) or “mystery” (372) vary from “the thing I’ve most written my books for” (365), to “an ex- quisite scheme” (366), to the description of an aesthetic quality, “The loveliest thing in the world!” (369), to several ‘figurative’ descriptions as represented by the title of the story and the following passages:14
My whole lucid effort gives him the clue – every page and line and letter. The thing’s as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It’s stuck into every volume as your foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses every word, it dots every i, it places every comma. (368)
It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan, something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly approved of this image when I used it, and he used another himself. ‘It’s the very string’, he said, ‘that my pearls are strung on!’ (374)
Although the terms used in James’s text for the thing in question center mostly on the semantics of the secret and mystery, its in- distinct descriptions place it closer to the sphere of the enigma. A detailed look at the conceptual differences between riddle and secret renders this affiliation with the enigma15 quite obvious: A riddle differs from a secret insofar as the formulation and solution of the former take place in one and the same medium, whereas the latter experiences a transformation from one state to another, usually from a state of ignorance or invisibility to a state of knowl- edge or apparentness. While the secret itself is mute and requires initiation in order to attract interest, the riddle as a question is clearly accessible to the interested public. It experiences a circu- larity due to the fact that both its formulation and its solution are of the same, namely verbal, nature; this is also what renders it pro-
13 Entry “riddle1”, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. T. F. Hoad, Oxford: University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online,
16 Jochen HÖRISCH, “Vom Geheimnis zum Rätsel. Die offenbar geheimen und profan er- leuchteten Namen Walter Benjamins”, Geheimnis und Offenbarung. Schleier und Schwelle 2, ed. Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998, 161–178 (Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation 5/2), 162. 17 Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, 145. 18 Hörisch, “Vom Geheimnis zum Rätsel”, 163. 19 Hörisch, “Vom Geheimnis zum Rätsel”, 165. 20 Entry “read”, Oxford English Dictionary (OED), online edition. 104 Evi Fountoulakis being profane, it (or its detection) depends on a postmetaphysical age: there are “no secrets behind being and language [...], because being and language are themselves riddles”.21 As art is considered “the cipher of the indecipherable”22, it is in the realm of the artistic literary text that this riddle is expressed, or, with a different em- phasis, it is manifested as the presence of that which is absent, the solution of a problem that is identical with its own exposition. It would thus still be consistent with the claim that “the secret of lit- erature is thus the secret itself”23, but behind the secret lies the riddle that is language. In the following I would like to show that James’s text demon- strates this enigmatic quality of language by presenting it as a secret that is, in fact, a riddle, thereby taking further the quasi-tau- tological argumentation exhibited by some critical texts (namely, that the solution of the problem lies in its exhibition). In this reading, the story also dismisses the notion of a language that is anything but rhetorical by staging the rhetorical power (metaphors, comparisons, and analogies for the secret).24 This is undermined at the same time25 by the use of ‘conflicting’ analogies and metaphors – or catachreses – that result in an unreadable reference or solution.26 The story simultaneously exposes the text’s constant yearning for a signifié or transcendent reading27, as fostered by Vereker: to look beyond the present text to find something that is presently absent. This yearning is presented in “The Figure in the Carpet” as desire or obsession (or enjoyment, passion, and life).28 I will return to this in the last part of this article.
III. The question how rhetoric – or literature, that is, the nondiscursive, performative use of language – could show self-reflexive traits without turning into something else foreshadows the question im-
21 Hörisch, “Vom Geheimnis zum Rätsel”, 165. 22 Maurice BLANCHOT, The Book to Come (Ch. 14: “The Turn of the Screw”), trans. Charlotte Mandell, Stanford: University Press, 2002, 130; see also Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, 175. 23 Jacques DERRIDA, Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius. The Secrets of the Archive, trans. Beverly Bie Brahic, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 18. 24 Other figures, such as irony, will not be considered in this article. 25 In analogy to what Frey calls undermining the figurativeness of the figure, see Hans-Jost FREY, Die Autorität der Sprache, Lana: Howeg, 1999, 210. 26 The “unreadability” of the story due to catachreses has been pointed out by Miller, “The Figure in the Carpet”, 107–118. 27 See Jacques DERRIDA, “This strange institution called literature”, Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge, New York: Routledge, 1992, 33–75, 44f. 28 See pages 374, 385, 389f., 391, 395, 400. Enigma and “Unappeased Desire” 105 plicit in Henry James’s story: namely, what is the literary critic’s task in relation to literature? Due to the divergence between the narrator’s profession as a literary critic and his production of the present text (which is more difficult to categorize in terms of genre or discourse), the relation between literature and criticism is pre- sented as a major theme in the story, in which the task of the literary critic is commented upon: the narrator-critic who sets out to find the secret and exploit it (he even thinks he has succeeded in his first review, see 360) ends up as the narrator-‘author’ of the pre- sent novella. Remarkably, none of the critics comes to write about the secret as a critic: Corvick dies, leaving “a mere heartbreaking scrap” (389), and Erme’s second husband Deane remains ignorant and avoids the topic of Vereker altogether (see 396). It seems that co-signature29 – participation, “penetration”30, and not paraphrasing – is required, which would yield an understanding of literary theo- ry that does not treat literature as an object to be discarded once its meaning has been revealed, that is, once the text has been “con- sumed”.31 Vereker, the author, claims authority over his text by playfully and enigmatically suggesting a cryptic quality in his works.32 The aforementioned hints at his “idea” (366), “the thing for the critic to find” (366), are presented as figures (analogies, comparisons, meta- phors), though some of them are also deictic.33 The clues referring to ideas behind the fictive texts, organizing patterns (concerning the fictive texts as well as the life of the “initiated”), wished-for de- sires, structure, and content are so abounding that they achieve a universal quality. Strikingly, these clues – whether deictic hints or figures, that is, whether “the marble of this chimney” (332) or “a
29 “There is as it were a duel of singularities, a duel of writing and reading, in the course of which a countersignature comes both to confirm, repeat and respect the signature of the other, of the ‘original’ work, and to lead it off elsewhere, so running the risk of betraying it, having to betray it in a certain way so as to respect it, through the invention of another signature just as singular.” Derrida, “This Strange Institution”, 69. 30 Henry JAMES, “Preface”, The Lesson of the Master. The Death of the Lion. The Next Time and Other Tales, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909, xvi. 31 The consumption of a text is, of course, a reading that James’s text refutes, as Iser has pointed out. 32 The story not only undermines the mystery by presenting it in the form of an enigma; it even emphasizes its properties as a game, beginning with “the hermeneutic game of the tale” (Eric SAVOY, “Embarrassments. Figure in the Closet”, The Henry James Review 3/20 (1999), 227–236, 235) set in motion by Vereker’s ‘indiscretion’, the antagonistic game of the figures as “clues”, the interplay between the modes of language and image, and the anagrammatic nature of names and concepts (Vereker/Corvick/Eureka; enigma/in-game), including the numerous game references and the chess scene. 33 “To me it’s exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney.” (367, emphasis added) 106 Evi Fountoulakis figure in the carpet” – are equally inaccessible to the reader; neither Vereker’s fictive text nor the chimney is available, or, as Miller puts it: “One remains always face to face with some mediating sign, ob- stacle as well as promise, trace of an absence”.34 The distinction be- tween literal and metaphoric meanings is blurred for the reader of this narrative, which is caught in constant self-reference. Vereker, by stating – paradoxically – a general intention be- hind/in/of his texts, evokes the call for a transcendent reading. The other characters seem to share this belief in the authorial and authoritarian intention (this is what the text says), but the present text suggests otherwise: the ambiguity of the first-person narrator, who oscillates in the presentation of most parts of his life, for instance between arrogance (357) and underevaluation (365), yet succeeds in writing this story35 of a presumed failure to find the unique sense attributed by the author, suggests a plurality and polyvalence of readings (what the text does); the only one who writes about the secret is the narrator – but his discursive mode re- mains ambiguous: is it fiction, a lie? A confession? However, the two contradictory readings taken together – Vereker’s suggested single reading and the narrator’s suggested multiple readings – render the story “undecidable” and thus “unreadable”.36 The title of the story takes up a special position, as it forms part of the text and at the same time stands outside it by naming it. “The Figure in the Carpet”, as a figure, calls for its identification or decipherment in the text by creating a figure or riddle of its own in the form of James’s text, and not just of Vereker’s fictive texts in the narrator’s reading (where it is, interestingly, more vaguely “a […] figure in [a] carpet”). This figure is supplemented, replaced, and contended by other figures, which turn it in its verbal constitution into a riddle, thus ultimately questioning the existence of a single, consistent, uniform meaning or solution.37 The substitutions, how- ever, are not limited to the rhetoric of the story; in fact, deferral and supplementation make up the constant movement of the text, ren- dered most obvious in the characters’ interpersonal relations. The narrator’s desire for logos is inspired by his interpersonal rela- tions38, not by the texts themselves – this distinguishes him from
34 Miller, “The Figure in the Carpet”, 116. 35 The metafictional self-reference becomes evident in a few passages, see 388, 389, 395, 400. 36 Miller, “The Figure in the Carpet”, 113. 37 See also Miller, “The Figure in the Carpet”, 114. 38 “You fire me as I’ve never been fired,” I declared; “you make me determined to do or die.” (367) Enigma and “Unappeased Desire” 107 the other characters, especially Corvick.39 The narrator’s depen- dence on others is repeatedly made apparent, thereby rendering the question of (in)dependence a recurrent theme. Again, Corvick is the character the narrator centers on: he initiates the challenge to review Vereker, although the narrator has so far not been con- sidered fit for a task such as this (357). It is only when Corvick asks him to write “an article for which he [Corvick] had made himself responsible” (357) that the narrator sees an opportunity to improve his reputation. In an ironic turn, the overestimation of his own ca- pabilities (see 357) foreshadows the events to come, his imminent failure to “get at” Vereker. Noticeably, this assignment reinforces the impression of dependence on the narrator’s side: he assumes Corvick’s promise (“Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had time to read it”, 358) and, basically, his voice – he is to speak of Vereker in Corvick’s voice, as the narrator’s own thoughts are branded “silly”, thereby implicitly undermining his authority and reliability as a narrator:
“Of course you’ll be all right, you know.” Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: “I mean you won’t be silly.” “Silly – about Vereker! Why what do I ever find him but awfully clever?” “Well, what’s that but silly? What on earth does ‘awfully clever’ mean? For God’s sake try to get at him. Don’t let him suffer by our arrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as I should have spoken of him.” (358f.)
However, it is not merely a case of imitating Corvick’s style, but of expressing the “pleasure so rare” (359) that Corvick experiences – he is to become Corvick in a way. This figure of supplementation is repeated when Vereker, after confessing to a certain scheme carried out in his works, asks the narrator to put this scheme into the words of a literary critic.40 Corvick asks the narrator to write as the former would have written, so the latter takes on an acolytic, even
39 Corvick expresses his premonition from the beginning, when he entrusts the narrator to write about Vereker’s book: “‘But he gives me a pleasure so rare; the sense of’ – he mused a little – ‘something or other.’ I wondered again. ‘The sense, pray, of want?’ ‘My dear man, that’s just what I want you to say!’ […] Mrs. Erme was pulling round, and I hadn’t at all said what Vereker gave him the sense of.” (359) 40 “‘Can’t do?’ He opened his eyes. ‘Haven’t I done it in twenty volumes? I do it in my way,’ he continued. ‘Go you and don’t do it in yours.’” (369) 108 Evi Fountoulakis supplementary function.41 Thus he cannot ‘speak’ in an inde- pendent manner or create a singular ‘text’ signed with his signa- ture – it can be a reply at best, to a text and to an invitation or chal- lenge42; this is the case with both Corvick’s and Vereker’s ‘calls’. The anagrammatic names of these figures, at least regarding the consonants – Vereker/Corvick – and the similarity of the tasks (re- producing or reformulating their thoughts in the narrator’s words) hint at a certain comparability between the author (Vereker) and the literary critic on the verge of becoming a writer (Corvick). The narrator is requested to act as co-author, but in his profession as a critic he is not capable of operating independently; he does not achieve a “co-signature” of Vereker’s texts43; getting caught in the author’s game of “authorial mastery and […] ideology of the transparent signified of the work”44 as critic, his emancipation sets in as narrator-“author” of the text (“The Figure in the Carpet”), and he maintains it by presenting the incidents and himself as ambiguous and unreliable. Noticeably, there is no name attached to the story’s narrator. The lack that the story presents in the form of the failure to “get at” the author’s secret may be difficult to grasp in critical discourse. As a literary text, it can be rendered as an experience (a performative) rather than as definite constative knowledge (never- theless in the form available to both of them: language). However, in the creation of the event, the story asks about the secret (which refers to the riddle that language is) and thus about its own possibility within the medium of language. The one consistent point of reference is therefore language or, presently, textuality, by which the performativity of the literary text is underlined and which marks the text as event. There is no consistent difference between the presumably constative elements of the text (such as descriptions, comparisons, metaphors, and hints) and the performative elements (the creation of a secret, fictive prototexts to which the characters repeatedly refer, etc.). Conveying knowledge, the usual task of constative speech acts, is rendered impossible for this text, which comes into existence as the search for knowledge
41 Derrida discusses the anacoluthon and the (an)acolyte in: Jacques DERRIDA, “‘Le Parjure’, Perhaps. Storytelling and Lying”, Without Alibi, ed., trans. and with an introduction by Peggy Kamuf, Stanford: University Press, 2002, 161–201. 42 See Derrida, “This Strange Institution”, 68. 43 See Derrida, “This Strange Institution”, 68f. 44 Savoy, “Embarrassments”, 227. Enigma and “Unappeased Desire” 109 turns into an experience of ignorance and, finally, into what might be called a kind of confession (that is, a performative).
V. An alternative reading, which would transpose the intellectual enigma the narrator has construed into something different, may be hinted at by the other characters, but is not further considered by the narrator: the many references to figurative “imagery” – which forms an opposition to the discourse of knowledge pursued by the narrator – used in order to render the “idea” more palpable. As Iser has pointed out, the meaning of the text may be compre- hensible only as an image, but the narrator cannot understand this, as “for him meaning can only become meaning if it can be grasped within a frame of reference”.45 To Iser, the critic “remains blind to the difference between image and discourse as two independent concepts that cannot be reduced to one”.46 However, image(ry) and discursivity are language effects. Similar to the event, “language is not a mere human faculty”47; man does not command language, as language cannot be mastered. Man finds himself always already embedded in the event of revela- tion and disclosure of language.48 Language speaks soundlessly, to which man answers with his voice: “[…] language concerns us […], us who can speak only as we respond to language”.49 Speech acts are thus a response to this being addressed, concerned, or “looked at” by things, the proffering of language’s desire for language. In James’s story, the narrator’s desire for language is provoked by language itself; this self-declared “ardent young seeker for truth” (365) wishes to understand the things that look at him, that is, address him. What concerns the narrator is language manifested as speech acts: the already spoken language of Vereker’s novel and the personal challenge and provocation of the characters who set him on it. The obvious starting point is Vereker’s provocation50 or possibly Corvick’s request to review Vereker’s latest book, both being speech acts calling for a response. What is important here is
45 Iser, “Henry James”, 9. 46 Iser, “Henry James”, 9. 47 Martin HEIDEGGER, “The Nature of Language”, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz, New York: HarperOne, 1982, 57–108, 107. 48 See Heidegger, “The Nature of Language”, 90. 49 Heidegger, “The Nature of Language”, 107. 50 “‘I live almost to see if it will ever be detected.’ He looked at me for a jesting challenge; something far within his eyes seemed to peep out. ‘But I needn’t worry – it won’t!’” (367). See also Jacques DERRIDA: “Provocation. Forewords”, Without Alibi, XV–XXXV, XV. 110 Evi Fountoulakis the structure of these provocative statements insofar as each of them calls for a reaction. Language inspires in the addressee the desire for language in return, for turn-taking. This also marks the structure of the narrator’s desire. Accor- ding to Lacan, the unconscious is structured like a language; answer and understanding are lacking because man has not yet re- sponded to being addressed. Desire bears intentionality regarding the appearance of an object; intentionality towards an object – that is, desire – leads to consciousness. In phenomenological terms, the desire, that is, the intentionality would fulfill itself in the experience. The aroused desire is already verbally structured such that it corresponds to the disruption between signifier and signified. The signifier alone would constitute the simple appearance of writing and would thereby be reduced to a mere phenomenon. To avoid this, the signifier must keep the intention towards the signified, a function taken on by desire. That is to say the relation between signifiers must somehow inherently maintain the relation to the signified, although this relation is marked by a rupture; it is over this rupture that desire persists. In other words, the call for transcendence or the desire to transcend (from signifier to signified) on the part of the text is in a state of constant suspense.51 The narrator takes on the secret or truth as a presumably intel- lectual enigma. In his desire for language and understanding, which he equates with “knowledge”, he does not acknowledge that transparence, unveiling, and the ‘clearing up’ of obscurity are impossible (as he suggests by the use of metaphors such as “enlighten”, etc.52) in the realm of language.53
51 See Derrida, “This Strange Institution”, 48: “There is no literature without a suspended relation to meaning and reference. Suspended means suspense, but also dependence, condition, conditionality. In its suspended condition, literature can only exceed itself. No doubt all language refers to something other than itself or to language as something other.” 52 See for instance 365, 367, 373, 375, 389. 53 See Heidegger, “The Nature of Language”, 58: “We speak our language. How else can we be close to language except by speaking? Even so, our relation to language is vague, obscure, almost speechless.” Enigma and “Unappeased Desire” 111
VI. James’s story is marked by a double self-reflection: on the one hand, self-reflection takes place in examining the process of inter- pretation, represented by the narrator’s search for the transcendent ‘thing’ or mystery in Vereker’s œuvre, thereby implicitly com- menting on an interpretive practice (or rather questioning it, as the search eventually fails to discover the secret and thus dismisses the possibility of transcendence). The narrator represents this critical position very early on, namely, from the moment of his first review of Vereker. On the other hand, self-reflexivity is also exercised in the formulation of what I have called the riddle: as soon as the enigma of the indecipherable text emerges, a process of self-reflec- tion must necessarily begin. When the impenetrability of Vereker’s works comes to light through his indistinctly phrased hints at his secret (especially the many conflicting figures), thus establishing a riddle, (self-)reflection sets in as the action of attempted retrieval. This is the action the narrator engages in, and it is also the action the reader finds him- or herself analogously performing. The novella is construed as the narration of a failure, namely the failure to transcend the text and detect the hidden secret. It speaks of something that does not appear and thus results in a re- presentation of absence; at the same time, this absence brings forth a presence, namely, the present text. The failure explains itself as the text does not form the desired discursive analysis. The aspired critical (that is, constative) analysis must yield to a literary story, a quest – the function of language here consists neither in represen- tation nor in cognition. The narrative is closer to an accounted experience of ignorance (possibly even shame) and presumably best classified as a kind of confession; as a personal ‘exposure’ and perhaps, eventually, a revelation (that is, confession) of an act of re- venge of a “victim […] of unappeased desire” (400). The story is thus marked as an event and, consequently, a performative. It creates its own paradoxical ‘secret of undecidability’ in the cata- chrestic figures and clues referring to equally unavailable trans- cendent objects, hinting at the signifier’s desire for the relation to the signified, which is suspended. The anonymous narrator is caught in a chain of supplements, yet acts as source of the singular event of the general (human) experience of the irreducibility of lan- guage. “The Figure in the Carpet” thereby refutes the long-held assumption that realist texts are unaware of their rhetoricity. It appears to discuss literary procedures as secrets whose contents lie 112 Evi Fountoulakis behind an opaque screen, but the present text as performative language reverts this by constantly (re)formulating a riddle whose elements all lie patently open but are impenetrable all the same.
Evi Fountoulakis studied English Language and Literature, German Litera- ture and General Linguistics in Basel, Madrid and Melbourne. She currently works as an assistant at the Department of German at the University of Basel.
Abstract “The Figure in the Carpet” deals with a riddle presented as a ‘secret of undecidability’ by the use of catachrestic figures and clues refer- ring to equally unavailable transcendent objects, hinting at the suspended relation between signifier and signified. It thereby refutes the long-held supposition that realist texts are unaware of their rhetoricity. Literary procedures may appear as secrets whose con- tents lie behind an opaque screen, but James’s story reverts this by constantly (re)formulating a riddle whose elements lie patently open but nevertheless remain impenetrable.