Abstract
In the chapter entitled “Double Meaning As Hermeneutic and Semantic Problem” in Conflict of Interpretations, Paul Ricoeur says: “Symbolism, taken at the level of its appearance in texts, thus attests to the fact that the language explodes, rushing towards the other than itself.”1 Not just contents, but also the special picturesque and dramatic expressiveness of the above statement shows how tense, dynamic and energetic is the discussion in philosophy dealing with the issue of interconnection between the external and internal in the text. Literary criticism, in turn, considers this issue as the key question in discussing the essence of a literary work. The most important facet of this question is the relationship between the ethical and the aesthetical in literature. Reading and understanding a literary work, enjoying it, and other activities brought about by a person’s encounter with literature, constitute a problem that remains unsolved despite numerous efforts by scholars. The wonderful sensations experienced by a reader still remain a mystery, an aporia. I would like to offer a synthetic theory capable, in my opinion, of describing the entire complex of reading-related phenomena.
But there is a mystery of language, concerning the fact that the language speaks, something speaks, something speaks about the being.
-Paul Ricoeur. “Double Meaning As Hermeneutic and Semantic Problem,” Conflict of Interpretations
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, trans. I. Sergeeva (Moscow: “Medium,” 1995), p. 102.
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980), pp. 107–108.
Aleksei Losev, “Dialektika mifa,” in Filosofiia. Mifologiia. Kultura (Moscow: Izdatelstvo politicheskoy literatury, 1991), pp. 21–186.
Ibid., p. 169.
Ibid., p. 162.
Ibid., p. 166.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), pp. 197–204.
Losev, “Dialektika mifa,” op. cit., p. 168.
Ibid., p. 166.
Ibid., p. 170.
Aleksei Losev, Istoriia antichnoy estetiki. Itogi tysiacheletnego razvitiia, Vol. 2 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1994), pp. 375–376.
See: Aleksei Losev, “Filosofiia imeni,” in Bytie. Imia. Kosmos (Moscow: Mysl, 1993), pp. 732–764.
Ibid., p. 734.
Aleksei Losev, “Istoriia esteticheskikh ucheniy,” in Forma. Stil. Vyrazhenie (Moscow: Mysl, 1995), pp. 321–404.
Emmanuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse, trans. Gary D. Mole (London: The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 129.
Ibid., p. 133.
Ibid., p. 144.
Ibid., p. 133. Compare “the philosophy of deed” of Mikhail Bakhtin, according to which the uniqueness of man is realized in his deeds, and the function of a concrete man in his deeds and his responsibility, for it cannot be replaced. See Mikhail Bakhtin, K filosofii postupka (Moscow: Nauka, 1986).
Emmanuel Levinas, Outside the Subject, trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1994), pp. 56–58.
Levinas, Beyond the Verse, p. 142.
Ibid., p. 125.
Ibid., p. 146.
Ibid., p. 148
Ibid., p. 145. Compare Jacques Waardenburg’s opinion that what is told in myth is, on the one hand, at an infinite distance from the given, regular, reality but is, on the other hand, relevant to this reality (Jacques Waardenburg, “Symbolic Aspects of Myth,” in Myth, Symbol, and Reality, ed. Alan M. Olson [Notre Dame & London: U of Notre Dame P, 1980], p. 55).
Levinas, Beyond the Verse, op. cit., pp. 148-149.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, op. cit., pp. 206-207.
Levinas, Beyond the Verse, op. cit., p. 138.
Ibid., p. 171.
Ibid., p. 134.
Ibid., pp. 110-111.
Ibid., p. 121.
Ibid., p. 171.
Ibid., p. 179.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, op. cit., p. 293.
Compare Northrop Frye, whose opinion is opposed to this: “Patterns of imagery … or fragments of significance, are oracular in origin, and derive from the epiphanic moment, the flash of instantaneous comprehension with no direct reference to time….” (Northrop Frye, “The Archetypes of Literature,” in Literary Criticism and Myth, ed. Robert A. Segal [New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996], p. 111).
Levinas, Beyond the Verse, op. cit., pp. 122-123.
Ibid., p. 137.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, op. cit., p. 293.
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God. Creative Mythology, trans. M. O. Chernova (Moscow: ADE “Zolotoy vek,” 1997), p. 42.
Ibid., pp. 43–44.
Ibid., p. 46.
Hazard Adams, Philosophy of the Literary Symbolic (Tallahassee: UP of Florida, 1983), pp. 326–329.
Mikhail Bakhtin defines this coalescence by the term “social evaluation”; see: Mikhail Bakhtin (P. N. Medvedev), “Formalnyi metod v literaturovedenii,” Tetralogiia (Moscow: Labirint, 1998), p. 238. The social-dialogical mechanism of meaning-making is questioned neither by Bakhtin, nor by us; however, in my opinion, the term “social evaluation” does not solve the problem of the “external-internal” connection in the literary text, because it does not describe in a sufficiently complex way the connection between the reader and the text.
See: Kurt Hübner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos, trans. I. Kasavin (Moscow: Respublika, 1966). See especially Chapter 3, “The History of Myth Interpretation.”
Levinas, Beyond the Verse (Munich: Beck, 1985); see, for example, op. cit.; p. 139.
Hübner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos, op. cit., pp. 264-265.
Lawrence J. Hatab, Myth and Philosophy (Illinois: Open Court, 1990), p. 293.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Katsman, R. (2002). The Miracle of Literature. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Visible and the Invisible in the Interplay between Philosophy, Literature and Reality. Analecta Husserliana, vol 75. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0485-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0485-5_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-3881-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0485-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive