OTHER VOICES, OTHER ARTS WHEN “ART OBJECTS” LILIANE LOUVEL University of Poitiers Abstract: By analysing G. Josipovici’s novel, The Goldberg Variations, this paper investigates the validity of a new critical perspective, namely that of applying pictorial language to the analysis of literary texts. The investigation draws on a number of critics, E.M. Forster among them, who have acknowledged the need to borrow terms from other arts to be able to “describe” certain aspects of a literary text when literary criticism is found lacking. Key words: art, E.M. Forster, Josipovici, painting, pictorial language 1. Introduction In this paper, I will start from “une idée de recherché”, as Barthes once put it (Barthes, 1980:35), and will try to propose a new critical stance or position. This, I will argue, is no foolish fancy of mine as it has, in different ways, already been suggested by Forster, Barthes, Marin, Clüver, and Ortel. If we take E.M. Forster for instance, in Aspects of the Novel (1990) he acknowledged the need to borrow terms from other arts to be able to “describe” certain aspects of a literary text, when literary criticism is found lacking. Now we must consider something which springs mainly out of the plot, and to which the characters and any other element present also contribute. For this new aspect there appears to be no literary word. We will borrow from painting first and call it the pattern. Later we will borrow from music and call it rhythm. Forster’s notions of pattern and rhythm – which nicely tie in with the overall project and thematic inclines of the text I will study entitled Goldberg Variations (Josipovici, 2007), in which music and painting play a major role – may help to define literature and its techniques for they need to do so the more the arts develop (Forster, 1990). So, in a way, this intuition and proposal of Forster’s, among other critics, justify the following hypothesis of mine: literature and language have long been used to analyse painting, and painting has duly been assimilated to language. Endlessly, critics such as Barthes, L. Marin, M. Foucault, Hillis Miller, K. Varga, have questioned the relationship between language and painting: “La peinture est-elle langage, peut-on valablement lui appliquer le modèle linguistique?” (Marin, 1971:89). Now I propose to envisage things the other way round, to turn the argument upon its head, and to see to what extent pictura may help to “criticize” poesis, when no “literary word” exists while pictorial parlance or idiom is necessary to “open” the eye of the text. Let it be remembered that krinein means to open, to separate, to judge. At least, this might be a way of envisaging criticism. And perhaps a whole critical system may be grounded on the study of previous literary discourse, realizing this discourse often “defines” literary effects by resorting to pictorial techniques or mores. When critical language falls short of its object, the other arts have come in to the rescue, a practice which runs deep as we shall see. Therefore, let me focus on a particular example of painting-in-text that will help me to prove my point thanks to a case analysis. Then I will see if my critical proposition is valid and, if it is, what the consequences are, what the issues at stake are when the literary text resorts to painting, picture, image, i.e. the visual at large, and does not limit its scope to language about things or about language. In short, when different semiotic systems are put to work together, how can critical theory observe and analyze what happens? Conversely what does the visual do to the text? How does it affect the written dimension and the vision as conveyed in writing? The medieval diptych articulating two painted panels will serve as a model or “pattern” in more ways than one as I will try to show. 2. First panel of the diptych: “Containers” Chapter 11 of G. Josipovici’s novel, Goldberg Variations (2007), is entitled “Containers”. It consists of a sole autonomous section, as it is the case with other chapters, such as “The Sand”. It displays, over 82 lines, a very particular kind of description which finds a brief but significant echo some thirty pages later. The text purports to provide a very detailed description by a heterodiegetic narrator of several objects under the pantonym “containers” as indicated by the title (for this definition and modes of action, see Philippe Hamon, 1981). By the end of the description, in the reader-viewer’s mind, “une image s’est levée” (a picture has arisen), as D. Arasse put it (2000). It evokes the ghost of paintings and in particular of a genre of painting. If this intuition of mine is confirmed (as a consequence of the text “affecting” the reader), conversely the nature of the object must “affect” (I shall come back to the term) the nature of the text and turn it into an ekphrasis, possibly that of an existing painting to be found in our world. The reader-viewer then turns detective, a function in keeping with textual and hermeneutic analysis. This text is particularly interesting as it asks and partially answers some of the critical questions I addressed above as well as a few more such as: What are the stylistic devices which provoke such a vision? What triggers the reader’s feeling that this description is that of a picture and of a particular genre of painting first thanks to textual elements, then to art history? How can a text (after a painting) fool the eye? What are its diegetic and metatextual functions? Its anthropological and phenomenological stakes? 2.1. The art of describing objects: Objects and objectivity “The art of describing” objects is a phrase that obviously alludes to Svetlana Alpers’s seminal book (1990) mostly dedicated to Dutch Painting, which is in keeping with my subject. What strikes one when first reading the eleventh chapter with an “innocent” eye is a kind of obsessive dedication to the location of objects, testifying to a kind of maniac precision or accuracy, to an apparent – although quickly belied – objective point of view, and eventually to the uncovering of an inner yet fruitful contra-diction. Let it be remembered that Josipovici’s first novel was entitled The Inventory (1968) and chapter 11 of Goldberg Variations, truly is one: the repetition of “below”, “above”, “the further edge”, “in the middle”, “in the centre”, “to the left/the right hand side”, “bottom”, “next to”, etc., literally madden the reading eye, making the reader feel she is being made a fool of. The text is replete with terms related to mathematical precision, fractions, and measurements (size, height, width): “within an inch or two”, “a/three quarter(s) of”, “one third of”, “half of”, “a few inches away”, “three reddish-brown threads”, “two containers”. Eleven objects, “two books, a round box, seven bottles and jars, and a fruit”, their sizes, shapes, colours, material, are presented in the mode of an enumeration: “They are disposed in the following fashion : at the bottom, on the left flush with the left hand wall, lies a large book bound in dark leather, its white pages facing us.” The result of this descriptive choice is that objects strongly come to the fore as in a list, in a collection, a catalogue or an inventory, testifying to the mastery of the narrator, for “lists are a form of power” as A.S. Byatt remarked in The Virgin in the Garden (1994:90). The syntactic choice is that of parataxis and juxtaposition: “This one identical to the other, except that it is shut tight, the bolt in place and the key in the hole. A large bunch of keys hangs”, etc. The sentences are often verbless or the verb of the main clause is omitted and action rests on relative clauses: “A shelf in a shallow recess, above which is a cupboard with two small doors, one of which is partially open, but not enough to allow one to see inside, the other firmly shut”; or: “Next to it, a little higher and hanging down just to the right of the lemon, a jar or bottle encased in a yellow wicker basket with a twisted wicker handle attached to the top edge, which is covered with a dark green cloth”. The text displays an obsession with extreme nomination and the desire to focus on a close-up of the viewed objects seized in all their dimensions before any kind of action is taken. The eye takes in the object in its entirety (a bottle) together with its colour, material, then concentrates on smaller details. “God is in the details” Mrs Goldberg quotes (the famous phrase is actually ascribed to Aby Warburg, cf Georges Didi-Huberman (2000:92). Quoted in G. Josipovici, 2007 :107.) It satisfies the scopic urge more than the optic one. This tallies with what an “ob-ject” is, according to the Webster’s Dictionary: “put in the way of some of the senses”. But an object may also turn subject, as the ambiguity of the term testifies and as Barthes acknowledges too (1982: 175). 2.2. YET: the subjective description of objects: there is more to it than meets the eye Although the description under scrutiny purports to be as “objective” as possible moving objects to the fore and insisting on material details, signs of a human presence or of a human gaze soon become identifiable: the precise location of the objects reveals the position of the viewer for everything is located in relation to his/her position: “to the right” (of her gaze), “to the left as one looks at it”.