OASES OF AIR A Phenomenological Study of John Banville’s Science Tetralogy Joakim Wrethed Stockholm University © Joakim Wrethed, Stockholm 2006 ISBN 91-7155-233-2 Cover image: Jacob van Ruisdael, Die Bleichen von Haarlem (View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds), c 1665. Oil on Canvas, 62,5x55,2 cm. © Kunsthaus Zürich. Typesetting: Intellecta Docusys Printed in Sweden by Intellecta Docusys, Stockholm 2006 Distributor: Stockholm University Library ii Abstract Wrethed, Joakim, 2006. Oases of Air: A Phenomenological Study of John Banville’s Science Tetralogy. Pp. 141. Stockholm: ISBN 91-7155-233-2 This phenomenological study of John Banville’s fiction exhibits the way in which Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Newton Letter, and Mefisto persistently present air as a constituting factor. Irreducible to other phenomena, air occurs as a phenomenological oasis permitting constitution to effectuate disclosure ex nihilo. As a self-constituting field of forms rather than as a system or arrangement of signs, Doctor Copernicus promotes a vision of reality that bypasses a world of scientific or aesthetic representation where objective or subjective deciphering has precedence over immediate revelation as immanent showing. In Kepler, air’s aseity marks a process of constitution intense enough to erase any sense of separation between the flight-paths of discovery and the thing discovered—thus producing the impression of an intriguing parity between the constituting and the constituted. Phenomena of aviation outline the experience of air’s constituting capacity as a prehuman directedness with no source outside itself. The scientist is drawn into an airborn or airborne allure recasting his life in more profound ways than those made available in cosmological inquiry. By means of the slightness of its constituting touch, air is shown as giving birth to apparently insignificant phenomena highlighting an explorability that cannot be defined in terms of mathematical models or logical postulations. In The Newton Letter penurious phenomena gain ascendancy over the scientist through a process defined as autochthonous substantiation. As in Mefisto, the destructive power of accidental fire reduces material and immaterial worlds to an empirical nothing where air, almost indistinguishable from that emptiness, becomes a form of saying facilitating recovery, or the semblance thereof. Finally the study elucidates the phenomenon of monozygotic gemination in Mefisto, a constituting force that allows a phantom brother or phantom limb to function as a regenerating resource rather than as a missing entity. The entire text is drawn into air’s substantiating and desubstantiating sway. The analysis shows that what is forcefully accentuated in Mefisto—as well as in the tetralogy as a whole—is constitution’s perplexing autonomy. iii Contents Prologue................................................................................................................................7 Introduction .........................................................................................................................11 SECTION I — DOCTOR COPERNICUS ...........................................................................35 1. The Aseity of Air ........................................................................................................35 2. Blueness....................................................................................................................38 3. Nameless Elation ......................................................................................................42 4. Pneumatic Self ..........................................................................................................45 5. Fear ...........................................................................................................................53 SECTION II — KEPLER .....................................................................................................59 6. The Flaw, the Pearl ...................................................................................................59 7. Recasting the World ..................................................................................................66 8. Bruise ........................................................................................................................71 9. Billowing Briefly .........................................................................................................74 10. Empty Air .................................................................................................................80 11. The Telltale Bulge ...................................................................................................83 SECTION III — THE NEWTON LETTER ...........................................................................87 12. Drift ..........................................................................................................................87 13. Autochthonous Substantiation ................................................................................90 14. Afterglow..................................................................................................................94 SECTION IV — MEFISTO..................................................................................................98 15. Geminated Constitution...........................................................................................98 16. Poise......................................................................................................................105 17. Vehemence ...........................................................................................................110 18. Falling ....................................................................................................................113 19. Breath ....................................................................................................................116 20. Surge .....................................................................................................................120 Concluding Remarks.........................................................................................................123 Acknowledgements...........................................................................................................128 Select Bibliography ...........................................................................................................129 Index .................................................................................................................................137 iv Plates Plate 1. Yves Klein, IKB 79, 1959. Paint on canvas on wood, 139,7x119,7 cm. Tate Gallery, London. © Tate, London 2006. (p. 34) Plate 2. Alberto Giacometti. L’homme qui chavire (Man Staggering), 1950. Bronze, 60x14x22 cm. © Kunsthaus Zürich. (p. 58) Plates 3 & 4 © J. Wrethed. (pp. 86, 97) v Abbreviations AD Gaston Bachelard, Air and Dreams AFE Krystyna Wilkoszewska ed., Aesthetics of the Four Elements BT Martin Heidegger, Being and Time CI Rüdiger Imhof, John Banville: A Critical Introduction DC John Banville, Doctor Copernicus EF Derek Hand, John Banville: Exploring Fictions EM Michel Henry, The Essence of Manifestation FHC Robert Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution FO Ingo Berensmeyer, John Banville: Fictions of Order K John Banville, Kepler M John Banville, Mefisto MHL Laura P. Zuntini de Izarra, Mirrors and Holographic Labyrinths MI Vladimir Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable NL John Banville, The Newton Letter OWL Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language PCI Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time PES Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint PM Wolfgang Fasching, Phänomenologische Reduktion und Mushin RM Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor SF Joseph McMinn, The Supreme Fictions of John Banville SP Alain Badiou, Saint Paul VA Elke D’hoker, Visions of Alterity vi Prologue In her seventeenth century poem “The Four Elements,”1 New England poet Anne Bradstreet finally allows air to speak, asserting its priority over fire, earth, and water: Content (quoth Air) to speak the last of you, Yet am not ignorant first was my due Invisibly, air is at the heart of articulation as such, whether discursive or musical. Nay what are words which do reveal the mind? Speak who or what they will they are but wind. Your drums, your trumpets, and your organs sound, What is’t but forced air which doth rebound, And such are echoes and report of th’ gun That tells afar th’exploit which it hath done. Your songs and pleasant tunes, they are the same, And so’s the notes which nightingales do frame. Ye forging smiths, if bellows once were gone, Your red hot work more coldly would go on. Ye mariners, ’tis I that fill your sails, And speed you to your port with wished gales. The drum, trumpet, organ, nightingale, singer, smith, and sail seem to be the agents of production––but behind lies a deeply-embedded and more prolific origin, namely air itself as ultimate resource. I help to ripe the corn, I turn the mill, And with myself I every vacuum fill. In so far as air is a medium, it is typically this medium’s source. In filling the vacuum with the medium that it itself is, air is also the agent behind that mediation. Such a sense of magic has something to do with air’s lack of viscousness. Being slight, supple, transparent, and mobile, air can reach the remotest cracks and alcoves of reality––and do so without performing