Toward Defining Aesthetic Perception: Semiotics and Utopian Reflection

Author(s): Wladimir Krysinski

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 3, Greimassian Semiotics (Spring, 1989), pp. 693-
706
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/469362
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Toward
Defining
Aesthetic
Perception:
Semiotics and
Utopian
Reflection
Wladimir
Krysinski
L'imperfection apparait
comme un trem-
plin qui
nous
projette
de
l'insignifiance
vers le sens.
Algirdas Julien
Greimas,
de
l'imperfection'
1.0 What Does Greimassian Semiotics Have to
Say
about Aesthetics?
De
l'imperfection
(On
Imperfection),
the latest book
by Algirdas
Julien
Greimas,
comes as a
surprise.
No one who has followed the
development
of his
epistemological
discourse would have foreseen
the next
step
in his semiotic
system
to be a work such as On
Imperfec-
tion. This short but
very
dense book
opens
a
completely
new field
within Greimas's semiotic
investigations.
Neither his semiotics of nar-
rativity
nor his semiotics of modalities intimated the theme and
method,
the aesthetic and ethical
considerations,
raised
by
the anal-
yses
which this new work offers. At the heart of its critical
project
lies
the
problem
of aesthetic
perception
(saisie
esthetique),
or
aesthesis,
whose
parameters
and variants are
systematically
and
progressively
explored through
five studies
focusing
on certain modern narrative
texts and a
single poetic example,
Rilke's
"Ubung
am Klavier."
Greimas has not written an aesthetic treatise.
Rather,
he seeks to
describe various
configurations
of the
subject-object relationship
in
which
specific
aesthetic
perceptions
arise. The form of the
subject-
object relationship may vary,
but the
reciprocal
transformation of
subject by object
and
object by subject
remains the common event in
aesthesis. A dialectical
process
of transformation constitutes the
"pathemic" invariant of aesthesis.2 What Greimas tries to
capture
are
the
precise stages
and forms of the transformation which
subject
and
object undergo.
One cannot
say
that the
question
of aesthetic
judg-
ment is the dominant theme of the
analyses
in On
Imperfection.
The
work is not a discourse about a
discourse,
nor does Greimas seek to
define
beauty; beauty
is
implicitly
understood as that which
pleases
the
subject.
The Kantian
parameters "universally"
and "without
concept"
have been omitted.3 Kant's
philosophical
aesthetics is not
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
Greimas's
epistemological guide.
He follows
Baumgarten's principles,
looking
for the constitutive elements of "sensitive
knowledge"
(die
Sinnliche
Erkentniss),
this
cognitio
sensitiva
perfecta
which
according
to
Baumgarten
is aesthesis.4
Greimas
presupposes
the existence of
being
(etre),
perfection,
above
or behind
seeming (paraztre),
or
imperfection.
Thus the
cognitive
and
quasi-utopian
stance of this discourse is to be found in the conviction
that
although every seeming
is
imperfect,
it hides
being-if only,
at
times,
to unveil it and to
open
unto death or life. This is
precisely
the
sense of aesthetic
experience:
to
surpass seeming
and to be
projected
toward
meaning.
The dialectical link that unites transcendence of the
meaninglessness
of
seeming
with an
opening
toward
meaning pre-
supposes
the search for aesthesis and
ecstasy.
Aesthesis is understood
as a fundamental human
experience
that
triggers
a new understand-
ing
of life. In this
way,
Greimas's
message
is
fundamentally
ethical;
it
leads to a new definition of
being
in the world
beyond
the
imperfec-
tion of
seeming.
Greimas deals with aesthetic semiosis which is
narratively
or actan-
tially present
in a text. On
Imperfection
undertakes an elaboration of
the
ways
in which
specific
states of mind are created
through
the
reader's or actantial
agent's
encounter with
specific
textual
objects
or
situations of value.
2.0
Beauty
Does Not Lie
Only
in the
Eye of
the Beholder
Greimas's
analyses
are based on
premises
about narrative and do
not find their
authority
in
psychology, philosophy,
or art
theory.
The
aesthetic
experience originates
in the canonic actantial
relationships
between a
subject
and an
object
of value.
Beauty
is not accessible to
the
subject through contemplation.
It
springs
forward when an
object
of value
abruptly
manifests itself in a
particular way
and strikes the
sensory apparatus
of the
subject/beholder. Beauty appears
in a nar-
rative
process
and can be
analyzed
in terms of narrative
sequence,
contract
(the
object "says":
"look at
me"),
and transformation. In the
literary
texts chosen
by
Greimas for the demonstration of his
views,
aesthetic communication
always produces
itself at the level of visual or
sensory perception.
It
implies,
however,
a
specific
tension between
subject
and
object.
The former is
penetrated by
the
object's
aura and
is transformed into a
subject
of
passion.
This
"pathematization"
of the
subject
is therefore a conditio sine
qua
non of aesthesis. Greimas un-
derlines the
narrativity
of aesthetic
experience by insisting
on the
temporal
and dialectical character of
beauty.
It does not lie in the
eye
of the beholder alone. It is the
synthetic coming together
of a
partic-
694
TOWARD DEFINING AESTHETIC PERCEPTION
ular situation: the
object's emergence
as visible form and the
surpass-
ing
of
everyday
life
by
the
subject.
It is
only through
the aesthetic
recontextualization of
reality
that we can assume the task of trans-
forming imperfection
into
perfection, seeming
into
being.
3.0 Five
Literary
Cases
of
Aesthetic
Experience
3.1
Hope
Lies in the Silent
Space
Between
Falling Drops
It is
by
means of a visual and acoustic
experience
described
by
Michel Tournier in his novel Vendredi ou Les Limbes du
Pacifique
(Fri-
day
or the Limbos of the
Pacific)
that Greimas
begins
to unfold his
explanation
of aesthetic vision. The
pathematization
of the
subject
is
prepared
for
by
discontinuous
visionary
and acoustic
experiences
which structure the whole
process
of the narrative. The hero of
Tournier's
novel, Robinson,
who lives alone on an
island,
is
looking
at
a
drop
of water about to fall into a
copper
basin. As soon as one falls
the
suggestion
of another swells. The
falling drop
is linked to the next
one which refuses to fall.
Having
fallen,
the
drop
is transformed back
into its
original
state;
it
returns,
as Greimas
puts
it,
to
being
a "nor-
mally objectified
form"
(20).
The aesthetic
process, occurring
as both
an
experience
of vision and an
experience
of
cognition,
consists in a
sort of
epiphanic
moment for Robinson. Under the
impact
of
vision,
looking
at this motionless
drop
of
water,
precariously
attached,
he
suddenly
realizes that time has been
suspended,
that a new life is
possible.
This awareness of a
possible change
in his existence stems
from the observation of the two modalities of the
being
of
things.
The
first
one,
according
to
Greimas,
consists in those
things existing
func-
tionally
for others. The second one is the existence of
things
in the
"perfection of their
immobility"
(18),
in the fulfillment of their es-
sence. Perfect
being
is a sort of
being-for-itself
in which is manifested
the whole existential and essential
amplitude
of an
object
or a
subject.
Robinson's
cognitive experience
concerns another
island,
different
from the one on which he
presently
lives so
unhappily.
On this new
and different
island,
perfection
would
completely
fulfill itself. It
would be a
fresher, warmer,
and more fraternal island.
In order to attain or deserve this
perfection,
one has to
pass
through
the
segments
of aesthetic
experience posited
as a
complex
and
complete
narrative
process.
This
process
involves various actants
which could be called
temporal. They
determine the coherence and
the
meaning
of the aesthetic
process.
If the moment of aesthetic
per-
ception
for the
subject
is a moment of
"dazzling"
(eblouissement)
which
transforms the
subject's
vision,
it is also the
vanishing point
of a co-
herent,
albeit
polyreferential,
structure. After
having analyzed
the
695
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
sense and the
progress
of Robinson's
aesthesis,
Greimas summarizes
the
components
of aesthetic
perception
(saisie)
as follows:
(1)
embed-
ding by everyday
life; (2)
the
wait; (3)
rupture
of an
isotopy;
(4)
shock
(ebranlement)
of the
subject;
(5)
particular
status of the
object;
(6)
a
sensory
relation between the
two; (7)
uniqueness
of
experience;
and
(8)
hope
of a future total
unity (conjonction)
(22).
It seems that the
paradigmatic
dimension of the aesthetic
process
is
that which determines its
utopian finality.
The
temporal
actants-
everyday
life,
waiting, rupture
of an
isotopy
(a
drop
which does not
fall),
shock of the
subject,
and
hope
for oneness or fusion in the
future-embody
within the form of the narrative's
organization
a
quest
for
perfection. By
the same
token,
the
overcoming
of the
fatality
of
seeming,
of
imperfection,
is
produced
in
cognition, through
critical
commentary
on
everyday
life.
We will see to what extent Greimas's
paradigm
of the aesthetic
process
is
applicable
to the
variety
of texts which he
analyses
in On
Imperfection.
3.2 Mr. Palomar on the Beach: The
Spectacle
of the Breast
and "Guizzo"
Mr.
Palomar,
an observer of life and a
philosopher
in his own
right,
is
walking along
a deserted beach when he
suddenly
sees a woman
lying
in the
sun,
her breasts uncovered. How is one to look
correctly,
morally,
at a naked breast? he asks himself. Mr. Palomar is
uncertain;
his
glance
hesitates. Greimas examines the aesthetic
perception
of the
breast,
Mr. Palomar's
gaze,
and Calvino's
description
of the
process.
The alternative
portraits
of the breast sketched out
by
Calvino are
considered
by
Greimas to be either too "aesthetic" or too banal. Grei-
mas
suggests
that the
way
in which the breast is
visually
seized is
incorrect,
exaggerated,
incommensurable with the "real"
meaning
of
the breast as an
aesthetic, erotic,
or cultural
object.
He defines the
breast as a "new
phrastic subject"
(27)
and as a
"syntactic
actor" in
Calvino's discourse. But his new actor
"goes
forward" in the direction
of the
subject-observer.
In this
way
it manifests its
"pregnant"
form.
The
glance (regard)
of the observer becomes his active
"delegue."
It
advances,
it
goes
back,
it
places
itself outside of the somatic
subject.
Aesthetic
perception presents
itself as a
reciprocal conjunction,
as an
encounter between
subject
and
object.
In Mr. Palomar's field of
per-
ception,
the breast
produces
a
rupture,
a deviation
(ecart) or,
in the
words of
Calvino,
a "scarto"
and,
more
precisely,
"almost a flash of
lightning" (quasi
un
guizzo).
Guizzo is a difficult word to translate. It
connotes a sudden
eruption,
like a fish
breaking
the water's surface.
696
TOWARD DEFINING AESTHETIC PERCEPTION
According
to
Greimas,
the
guizzo epitomizes
Calvino's aesthetics. It is
also the term which best
expresses
the event of aesthetic
perception.
For
Calvino,
in
opposition
to
Tournier,
the
subject's
bedazzlement
is not
primarily
an effect of the visual
system,
the
eye,
but rather of
tactile associations with the visual
image.
In Greimas's
analysis,
the
other
important concept
is
"quivering"
(trasalimento, tresaillement).
When Palomar's
gaze
moves over and
along
the skin of the
breast,
it
also
"goes
backwards as
though
it were
appreciating
with a
light quiv-
ering
the different
consistency
of the vision and the
particular
value
it
acquires."5
For
Greimas,
appreciation
of the breast is of a tactile
order;
it is not the
product
of a
cognitive process.
Palomar's
appre-
hension of the breast in
proxemic
terms,
in terms of the feel of the
skin,
expresses
the utmost
intimacy. Cognitively,
the
shocking
en-
counter of Palomar's
glance
with the breast
gives recognition
to the
quest
for total
conjuncture.
The
quivering,
mediated
through
the
glance,
affects the
object
and not the
subject.
What characterizes the
subject
is a "vivid emotion" and an
"unexpected
sensation" or
feeling.
These are the
pathemic
and
sensory
reactions of the
subject.
The
quivering
is an instantiation of aesthesis. It touches both
subject
and
object, producing
their
syncretism.
Greimas remarks that vision
("a
supernatural representation")
is the
opposite
of
reality, yet
it is
reality
which
provides
the
background
for aesthetic
perception
when
subject
and
object
are united. Once vision loses its
brilliance,
the
subject
be-
comes
just
an observer.
The aesthetic
subject
is for Greimas a
special
kind of
subject.
It is at
once a
narrative,
pathemic,
and
cognitive
actant;
the receiver of a
particular
vision and the donor of the
cognitive experience.
The most
notable
aspect
of the aesthetic
subject
is its
potential
to
change
and
become different.
3.3 Paradoxical Parameter of the
Quest
for a New
Reality:
The
Process of
Actively Waiting
If in the
sequence
on Calvino the
particularly
active
temporal
act-
ants are
negative
and dialectical in nature-the
rupture
of an
isotopy,
shocking
of the
subject,
and dissatisfaction with
everyday
life-the
section on Rilke's
poem "Ubung
am Klavier" can be said to deal with
the
hope
for total
unity
with an
object
in the future and the
expec-
tation of a new
reality.
The
quest
for this
reality
is
presented
as im-
patience.
The
subject
of
enunciation,
a
young girl playing
the
piano,
almost touches this new
reality
when
interrupting
her etude she looks
out the window at the
park. Suddenly
she
"pushes
back" the scent of
jasmine.
Irritated,
she finds that the
jasmine
offends her
(Siefand
dass
er sie
krankte).
Total fusion with the
object
does not occur here. What
697
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
is
underlined, however,
is the aesthetic value of
waiting. Through
waiting
the
object
is idealized and
everyday
life is
depreciated.
The
rejection
of the
jasmine's
scent enhances the
immensity
of the ideal-
ized
object,
the new
reality
(die
Ungeduld
nach einer
Wirklichkeit).
In this
sense,
aesthetic
perception
in the
poem
is a
potential process
rather than the narrative of a fusion between
subject
and
object.
On
the other
hand,
as Greimas
notes,
if both Tournier and Rilke con-
ceptualize
aesthetic
perception
as the
conjunction
of
subject
and ob-
ject,
the
object
is,
for
Rilke,
as it is not for
Tournier,
something
in
excess of
reality. Hermeneutically speaking,
Rilke's
poem
refers to
both an idealized
object
and to the
idiosyncratic subjectivity
of the
young girl.
To
interpret
it in terms of aesthetics would
imply
some
heuristic distance from the
problem
of the aesthetic
subject.
The
poem
is a
pathemic receptor
as well as a
cognitive
actor inasmuch as
it
participates
in the
experience
of
perfection.
The fact that Greimas
has chosen this
particular poem
is
significant.
It
explores
the
problem
of
perfection
to show that it cannot be an absolute. It is much more an
ideal,
a
wish,
opposed
to the
mundanity
of
everyday
life. It is a choice
made
by
the
subject
in
respect
to its
passions.
In this
sense,
the aes-
thetic
subject
cannot
escape
the
problem
of cathexis.
Being
also the
cathectic
subject,6
this
particular pathemic
receiver enters a
complex
structure of desire. The Freudian
"Besetzung"
("cathexis,"
investisse-
ment)
would
certainly explain
the
part
of
fantasy
(as
wish
fulfillment)
in the aesthetic
process.
3.4 Aesthesis as Fusion or Dialectical
Interplay
between
Subject
and
Object?
In Praise
of
Shadow
by
the
Japanese
writer Tanizaki
Junichiro
is a
reflection on
darkness,
Greimas tells us. In this short
story
the aes-
thetic
object
is
epiphanically
revealed,
like the breast in Calvino's Pal-
omar.
However,
this
Japanese guizzo
unfolds
during
a
particular
act of
perception,
that
is,
during
the
apprehension
of the
composite
form of
the aesthetic
object.
Darkness is first
perceived
as form whose com-
ponents
can be
precisely
described in terms of
verticality, density,
and
uniformity.
This
description
is followed
by
what Greimas calls a
"gen-
erative
analysis" (I'analyse qu'on
dirait
generative
[49]).
Darkness is seen
by
Junichiro
as an
object
with a
specific composition. Contemplation
of its form affirms the
specificity
and
uniqueness
of the aesthetic
experience,
which is circumscribed in
space
and not iterative in time.
For Greimas, Junichiro's
is a
negative description
of darkness. It
pre-
supposes
the exclusion of
any
other
possible
darkness. His second
effort at
description
relies on
impressions
("darkness
seems to be
698
TOWARD DEFINING AESTHETIC PERCEPTION
made of..
.")
and is
positive;
it
attempts
to
capture
the essence of the
object.
The matter of the
object
itself is
being interrogated.
It fasci-
nates but much more as an
object
of
cognition
than as an
object
which
affectively
transforms the
subject.
As
opposed
to the
descriptions
and
examples
of aesthetic
experi-
ences found in the works of
European
writers such as
Rilke, Calvino,
and
Tournier,
aesthetic vision for
Junichiro
stems from different
fundamental
premises. By looking
for the colors of
darkness, Ju-
nichiro,
who sees in darkness all the colors of the
rainbow,
is an
analyst
rather than a
subject
who could
fully
lose his boundaries in
contemplation
of the
object.
Greimas sees in this the constitution of an
aesthetics of dissection and of
contemplation.
To the
European
total-
izing
vision can be
opposed
the
Japanese contemplation
of the infi-
nitely
small. The
European
"totus" is
opposed
here to the
Japanese
"unus"
(52).
In the
very
last sentence of Junichiro's text the aesthetic
experience
is described as
taking place. Paradoxically,
instead of in-
volving
the ecstatic transformation of the
subject,
it occurs
through
the invasion or
absorption
of the
subject by
the
object.
The limit of the
aesthetic is reached when the
subject's
consciousness is almost dis-
solved into the
world,
where a sense of
separate identity
is annihi-
lated.
Junichiro's
subject
cannot
help
but defend himself
against
this
loss of
identity.
He closes his
eyes.
This is an autodefensive reflex
against
the
unattainable,
says
Greimas-and,
he adds
suggestively,
"Horror of the sacred?"
(53).
What
actually happens
in this aesthetic scenario? Does Greimas
want to demonstrate the fundamental difference between two aes-
thetic
worlds,
the
European
and the Oriental? I believe he has a
different
purpose
in mind. It consists in
scrutinizing
a
range
of
pos-
sible aesthetic
experiences
available within the
subject-object
relation-
ship.
We should therefore review the
play
of
parameters
in
Junichi-
ro's
particular
aesthetic fable.
What is
striking
here is the fact that some of the
temporal
actants
seem to have
disappeared,
for
example,
"the wait" and
"hope
for a
future total
unity." Dwelling upon
the colors of darkness sketched
by
Junichiro
enables Greimas to restate his conviction that aesthetic ex-
perience implies
a
primarily
visual
relationship
between
subject
and
object.
At the same
time,
the
very
fact that the
subject
both
recognizes
the
object's uniqueness
and dissects its form allows Greimas to
give
shading
to the
meaning
of aesthesis. The
analytical
attitude of the
subject
transforms the
object
to the
point
that it threatens the
subject
who,
in
turn,
runs the risk of
being
absorbed
by
the
object. By seeing
in this interaction the limits of aesthesis Greimas seems to
imply
two
things:
first,
that aesthetic
pleasure
is
produced
with
respect
to the
699
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
subject's
intellectual and
psychological
needs,
and
second,
that the
maintenance of some
degree
of distance between
subject
and
object
is,
if not
normatively necessary,
at least
practically
desirable even while a
mutual transformation is
being
effected. In other
words,
the
subject
must not be lost in the
process
of aesthetic
perception;
it has to be the
implicit
master of its
subjectivity throughout
the aesthetic
experience.
Thus the
Japanese example
enables Greimas to reaffirm both the
spontaneous
character of the aesthetic
experience
and the constant
equilibrium
it demands of the
interplay
between
subject
and
object.
One
might
formulate this
precarious
tension as "vision incites
passion
but death in
passion
must be forestalled." The
pathemic subject
must
control aesthetic
perception cognitively.
3.5 Aesthesis as Confusion of Boundaries
In
Julio
Cortazar's short
story
"Continuidad de los
parques"
(Con-
tinuity
of the
Parks),
the
problem
of aesthetic
perception acquires
a
new dimension. In this
allegory
of the
reading process,
the
subject
finds a new
identity through conjunction
with the
object
of aesthetic
experience.
"Continuity
of the Parks" is a
story
of a man
reading
a novel in
which he becomes so absorbed that he enters the fictional world to
become one of its
participants.
A
literary object
transforms the sub-
ject,
who becomes more than
just
a reader. The reader
projects
him-
self into the fictional world. As an aesthetic
artifact,
the
story
called
"Continuity
of the Parks" is created out of a thematic structure-
intrigue,
characters,
names-and a
figurative
manifestation of se-
quential
or
englobing images.
The reader is
passionately caught up
in
the
intrigue.
The
story
takes
place
in a
park
where a man meets a
woman in a hut. We learn a murder will be committed. Cortazar's
discourse maintains an aura of
ambiguity
and
suspense.
This secret
meeting
of the lovers is a rehearsal for a murder. Since the narrator
relates but does not comment on the
story,
the
relationship
of reader
to
story
is conditioned
by
a
particular
figurativization7
of the
story
and
the transformation of the
subject-reader
into a witness of the murder.
The
subject-reader passes
from the level of enunciation to the level of
enunciated. Greimas
points
out that this movement is linked to the
new roles assumed
by
the
subject:
the
pathemic
and the ethical. The
reading subject
becomes the
judge
of events. He reacts
emphatically
to what he is
witnessing.
In this
way
an identification of the reader
with the
participants
has been
accomplished.
Herein arises the
prob-
lem of aesthetic
perception.
According
to
Greimas,
aesthesis is in this case achieved
only
on the
700
TOWARD DEFINING AESTHETIC PERCEPTION
level of
passion.
But,
on the other
hand,
the
pathematization
of the
literary figurative object
is
possible only
because of the excessive
dramatization of the
story.
The
pathemic
commitment of the reader
can
only
be achieved on the condition that the
story
is of real interest
to the reader. In Cortazar's discourse the
logic
of the mise en
abyme-
the
story
within a
story-implies
that the reader cannot
completely
disappear
within the textual horizon of the discourse. Some
signifiers
in the text
clearly point
to the reader's
presence.
For
example,
in the
following
sentence a new
subject
is assumed whose voice can be com-
pared
to that of the chorus in Greek
tragedy:
"A breathless
dialogue
flowed like a river of reptiles across the
pages
and one had the feeling
that
everything
had
already
been decided."
Greimas identifies the
following
structures as
underlying
the
orga-
nization of Cortazar's discourse: the
polemical
structure of the
story,
pathemic
tensions,
and the deontic universe where
necessity
and
"having-to-do"
(devoir
faire) reign
(64).
In
fact,
observes
Greimas,
at
this
stage
of the
story,
the deontic universe
prevails
and constitutes
the
guarantee
of the
autonomy
of the
tragic
universe which
governs
superstructurally
"what" the
story
is "about." Thus Greimas
points
out that it is
only by acquiring
a
tragic
dimension that fiction can
transform itself into
something beyond reality
(surrealite)
susceptible
to
receiving
and
absorbing
the
subject during
aesthetic
perception.
Because of Cortazar's
astuteness,
and because of his discursive
craft,
the
person
of the reader coincides
narratively
and
symbolically
with
the
person
to be murdered. The man whom we come across at the
beginning
of
"Continuity
of the Parks" is the reader of the
story
in
which a murder is committed. He is
sitting comfortably
in an arm-
chair. After the
meeting
of the lovers in the
hut,
the man who will be
the murderer sees the
garden walkway leading
to the house in which
the man to be murdered is
sitting comfortably
in an armchair
reading
a novel. La boucle est bouclee.
Greimas notes that
"Continuity
of the Parks" can be read as an
allegory
of
reading
in which the
problem
of
knowledge,
truth,
and
self-identity
is
always
involved.
However,
he is drawn to the "conti-
nuity
of
parks"
as a hermeneutical
principle
and as a
metaphor
for the
impossibility
of
fixing
a
point
of
epistemological
reference. For Grei-
mas,
the
meaning
of the
"continuity
of the
parks" signifies
more than
the
simple
coincidence of two
parks
that surround the house of the
reader
reading
the
story
and the house of the reader in the
story.
Since the same ethical lesson
(cruelty,
violence, fate)
is
probed
in each
of the two
stories,
the
meaning
of life resides in the
possibility
of
safeguarding
aesthetic contact with others. The reader of the
story
touches the
green
velvet of his chair from time to time. The
tragic
701
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
universe of the
story
is at one
particular
moment
interrupted by
the
gesture
of one of the
lovers,
who
softly
touches the other's cheek.
Greimas concludes: "An
ephemeral
tactile
sensation,
a delicate con-
tact of the
subject
with other-the
velvet,
the cheek-that's all that
remains when no
hope
is
permitted"
(68).
The last of the five
analyses
finishes with this
emphatically
under-
lined ethical
perspective,
if not
postulate,
of human life.
Greimas,
the
analyst,
meets
Greimas,
ethical aesthetician.
4.0
Aesthetics,
Life, Meaning,
and
Perfection
While the first
part
of Greimas's
book,
entitled "La fracture"
(The
Fracture),
presents
the five textual
analyses
discussed
above,
the sec-
ond
part,
"Les
echappatoires" (Ways
Out),
is an
extremely
dense
gen-
eral reflection on and
plea
for aesthetic
experience
in life in
today's
society.
Three
chapters
make
up
this section: "Immanence du
sensible"
(The
Immanence of
Sensitivity),
"Une
esthetique
forclose"
(A
Repudiated
Aesthetics),
and "L'attente de l'inattendu"
(Waiting
for
the
Unexpected).
In this
part,
Greimas moves from a
sketchy synthe-
sis of the
analytical
first
part
of the book to raise some
important
questions
about the
meaning
of life and the sense of
imperfection
which for him characterize
everyday reality
in Western
society today.
Greimas is concerned above all with the
ways
in which a sthetic
perception
could enable the
subject
to overcome the sense of mean-
inglessness
and
imperfection
of his life. Restoration of the
categories
of
"meaning,"
"perfection,"
the
"unexpected,"
and the "sacred" is the
implicit postulate
of Greimas's
program
for the
recovery
of the sub-
ject's capacity
for aesthetic
experience
as the
way
to a
knowledge
of
perfection.
These
categories,
in Greimas's semiotic
system,
have been
invested with new semantic content related to
"hope"
as a crucial
axiological principle
of aesthetic
experience.
That is to
say, every
time
aesthetic
perception
occurs it entails
hope
for a "true life"
(73).
The
"truth" or
meaningfulness
of the
experience
would come from the
fusion of
subject
with
object. Although
we do not know
exactly
what
this aesthetic event
is,
suggests
Greimas,
it embodies the
beautiful,
the
good,
and the true.
Cognitively ungraspable,
it can be
interpreted
in
various
ways,
but it
always presupposes
both the
hope
for
perfection
and a state of
imperfection.
In this
context,
imperfection
is tanta-
mount to alienation since the
subject
is
separated
from the
continuity
of aesthetic
perception.
He
simply
endures the monotonous
spectacle
of a
meaningless
life.
The Greimassian discourse on aesthetics hints at a
political project
where,
in
any
better or
utopian society,
the aesthetic
axiology
would
702
TOWARD DEFINING AESTHETIC PERCEPTION
have to be dominant. The
utopian aspect
of On
Imperfection
is obvious
as well as
being
a clear index of the
closing chapter
of Greimas's
semiotic
enterprise,
which has taken him from
Semantique
structurale to
Du sens II.9 His endeavor to
conceptualize
and describe aesthetic ex-
perience
in semiotic terms in turn reveals both a search for new
ways
of
practicing
semiotics and an
attempt
to draw semiotics into an en-
gagement
with life.
An
important question
for Greimas arises with
respect
to the trans-
temporal
versus circumscribed historic
validity
of the
process
of aes-
thetic
perception
described
semiotically
in the five
analyses
of the first
part
of the book. Do aesthetic events
really happen
in these
ways
to
"real" historical
subjects?
Do
they
communicate
something
about the
human condition in
general?
Semiotics has
always
been
preoccupied
by
these
questions,
but as
yet
it has
produced
no definitive answers.
In
"Ways
Out,"
Greimas makes some observations about the
many
facets of the
process
of
aesthesis,
namely:
coalescence of
sensations,
Japanese
tea
ceremony, pictorial language, style
as a
cognitive oper-
ation,
poetic language,
the
relationship
between the
expected
and the
unexpected,
the
syncretism
of the aesthetic
object
(functional,
myth-
ical,
and
aesthetic),
and the
monotony
of
everyday
life in the modern
world. His
always
subtle consideration of these
disparate
issues serves
primarily
to
specify
the sense of his
cognitive
and
axiological project:
how to rise above or to see
through imperfection,
and how to live a
new
understanding
of life.
The triad of aesthetic
perception, hope
for a true
life,
and the
feeling
of
imperfection
makes
up
the central motif of the Greimassian
contribution to aesthetic
theory.
It
postulates
a
praxis
in which mean-
ing
and
perfection
would be central instead of the
repetitive
and
meaningless gestures
Greimas sees as
characterizing
life
today.
In
fact,
Greimas's contribution
(that is,
his insistence
upon
the
imperfect
being
of man in the
world,
for whom aesthetic
perception
must not
only
be
possible
but
necessary)
bears some resemblance to that of
Marcuse,
who
emphasizes
the function of
subjectivity
as a sort of
objective
correlative of aesthetic
perception,
understood as a mode of
praxis.10
For
Greimas,
imperfection
is
necessary
to the dialectical
process
of
which aesthesis is a
part,
since it is the
unhappy starting point
from
which we are
projected
into a search for
meaning,
and
through
mean-
ing,
to the
apprehension
of
perfection.
No doubt in this context
"meaning"
not
only
has sense in semiotic
terms,
but it is also intended
to coincide with
"finality.""
Greimas is
suggesting
that a semiotic
understanding
of the world will also lead to the
subject's ability
to
change
the world.
703
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
On
Imperfection implicitly proposes
that aesthesis is the means to
reach an
experience
of
perfection
which would also constitute the
grounds by
which to formulate a
restructuring
of the world. It is an
axiological presupposition
and should be understood within the con-
text of Greimas's
discourse,
which
seeks,
it
seems,
to
convey
in semi-
otic terms a
very general
sense of the beautiful or the true in human
life,
rather than to
propose
a
metaphysics
of aesthetic
perception.
5.0 A
Paradigmfor Utopia
Although
On
Imperfection surprises
us,
it
may
be understood as a
necessary
addition to Greimas's semiotic
system,
which heretofore has
overlooked
any
discussion of aesthetics in communication.12 It could
be seen as an
attempt
to rise to the
epistemological challenge
of ex-
plaining
in semiotic terms the
subject-object relationship
instantiated
in aesthetic
experience.
We can take the
subject-object relationship
as
a sort of
meta-isotopy
within Greimas's discourse. This
relationship
has been
given
some
specificity
with
respect
to its forms and their
characteristics and should
by
no means be reduced to the narrative
dimension alone.
This
relationship
is informed
by
various
stages
of semiotic articu-
lation.
First,
it is an actantial
relationship. Projected
toward the
object,
the
subject
is in the
position
of
willing
while in
quest
of the
object
of
value. We know that in the canonic Greimassian schema the
subject
may
be
given
a
contract,
be
helped
or
prevented
from
accomplishing
its
quest.
Second,
by
means of a modal
relationship
the
subject
and
object
are
put
into relief.
Development
of the semiotic modalities
formed an
important chapter
in Greimas's
system.
The modalities of
wanting, knowing, being-able-to,
and
having-to-do
define the differ-
ent
configurations
of the
subject.
The last
type
of canonic
relationship
is
pathemic.
It concerns the
being
of the
subject
as
opposed
to the
subject
as
agent,
in
doing. Although
the
being
of the
subject
is con-
ceived of
essentially
in narrative
terms,
it is also a construct of a
configuration
or "ensemble" of the
subject's positions
in
relationships
of
passion
(roles
passionnels).13
It is
here,
at the level of various
path-
emic
roles,
that the aesthetic
subject appears.
It is
through
the
path-
emic roles that the construal or
coming-into-being
of the
object by
the
subject may
be
specified.
It seems that the aesthetic
subject
is the
product
of the
actantial, modal,
and
pathemic subjects,
but it is some-
thing
else as well. Since the
axiology
of aesthesis involves not
only
a
given pathemic
role of the
subject
but also the whole
system
of the
world in which the dialectic of
perfection/imperfection, meaningful/
meaningless, expected/unexpected
is
potentially
in
process,
the aes-
704
TOWARD DEFINING AESTHETIC PERCEPTION
thetic
subject
is much more a
subject
of ecstatic
being
than a
subject
of
narrative
doing.
Greimas shows how the
plurality
of aesthetic values and
experi-
ences
may
be
only partially
available to
description by
semiotic tools
and, therefore,
aesthetic
perception
neutralizes,
so to
speak, any
claim
for the universal
appositeness
of semiotic
descriptions
of the
states,
actions,
and transformations of the
subject-object relationship.
What
strikes the reader of On
Imperfection
is the
coming together
of heter-
ogenous languages,
visions,
and views that
point consequently
to the
complexity
of aesthetic
perception
and to the
problem
of
knowledge,
be it semiotic or
otherwise,
and to the
utopian
status of aesthesis
within the horizon of Greimas's discourse.
UNIVERSITi DE MONTREAL
NOTES
1
Algirdas Julien
Greimas,
de
l'imperfection (Perigueux,
1987),
p.
99;
hereafter cited in
text. Unless otherwise
noted,
all translations in the
body
of the text are
my
own.
2
According
to Paolo
Fabbri,
"Pathemique,"
in
Semiotique:
Dictionnaire raisonne de la
thiorie du
langage,
II,
ed.
Algirdas Julien
Greimas and
Joseph
Courtes
(Paris, 1986),
p.
165,
pathemique
is defined as the role which "concerns the
being
of the
subject,"
in
opposition
to the "thematic" role which concerns the
"doing
of the
subject."
3 In his
Critique ofJudgement,
tr.
J.
H. Bernard
(New York, 1951),
Kant defines
beauty
as "that which
pleases universally
and without
concept."
4 Alexander Gottlieb
Baumgarten,
in his Aesthetica
(Frankfurt, 1750;
rpt.
Hildesheim,
1961),
describes the notion of the aesthetic
faculty
common to humankind as interme-
diate between sensation and ideation.
5 Italo
Calvino,
Palomar
(Turin, 1983),
as
quoted
in
Greimas,
de
l'imperfection, p.
25:
"Lo
sguardo
avanza fino a sfiorare le
pelle
tesa,
si
ritrae,
come
apprezando
con un lieve
trasalimento la diversa consistenza della visione e lo
speciale
valore che essa
acquista
6
According
to Charles
Rycroft,
A Critical
Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
(Middlesex,
1977),
p.
16,
Freud used the German word
Besetzung
as an economic
concept
to de-
scribe the
quantity
of
psychical energy
attached to
any object-representation
or mental
structure.
Applied
to the case of the aesthetic or
pathemic subject,
this notion of
cathexis draws attention to the fact that
any subject-object relationship
entails both an
object-representation
(an idea)
and a
quota
of affect
(libidinal
energy
from the uncon-
scious structure of desire understood in the sense of
Begierde
or Lust rather than in the
sense of
Wunsch) by
which it is cathected.
7 Let us remember what Greimas understands
by figurativization.
It is characterized
"by
the
specification
and the
particularization
of abstract discourse insofar as it is
grasped
in its
deep
structures,
and
by
the introduction of
anthroponyms, toponyms,
and
chrononyms (corresponding respectively,
on the
plane
of discursive
syntax,
to the
three
procedures
constitutive of discoursivization:
actorialization,
spatialization,
and
temporalization)
that can be inventoried as
going
from the
generic ('king,'
'forest,'
'winter')
to the
specific (proper
nouns,
spatio-temporal
indices, dates, etc.).
As
such,
figurativization
is
supposed
to confer the desirable
degree
of
reproduction
of the real
upon
the text." See
Algirdas Julien
Greimas and
Joseph
Court6s,
Semiotics and Lan-
705
706 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
guage:
An
Analytical Dictionary,
tr.
Larry
Crist et al.
(Bloomington,
Ind., 1982),
pp.
119-20.
8
Julio
Cortizar,
"Continuidad de los
parques,"
in Ceremonias
(Barcelona, 1968),
as
quoted
in
Greimas,
p.
60;
my emphasis:
"Un
dialogo
anhelante corria
por
las
paginas
como un
arroyo
de
serpientes, y
se sentia
que
todo estaba decidido desde
siempre."
9 The aesthetic
axiology
differs from the
epistemic
and the ethical
by
the
impossibility
of
being grounded
on a
binary
foundation. If the
epistemic axiology
is based on the
opposition
between true and
untrue,
the ethical one rests on the
binary
foundation of
good
versus bad. In the case of the aesthetic
axiology, says
Greimas,
taste does not
imply
distaste and "the beautiful
reigns solitary
on all
lips"
(le
beau
regne
solitaire sur toutes
les
levres).
While
underlying
the fact that it is the
"beauty
of
ugliness" (la
beaute de la
laideur)
and not
ugliness
alone which constitutes an aesthetic
value,
Greimas neverthe-
less remarks that the
impossibility
of
guaranteeing
the same formal status to the foun-
dations of three
types
of value
per
se is troublesome
(de
l'imperfection, p.
85).
10
Marcuse,
recuperating subjectivity
both from reduction to a
bourgeois
notion and
from reduction
by vulgar
Marxism to social
consciousness,
thereby bracketing
the
particularity
of individual
consciousness,
writes in The Aesthetic Dimension
(Boston,
1978),
p.
5,
that
"subjectivity
strove to break out of its inwardness into the material and
intellectual culture. And
today,
in the totalitarian
period,
it has become a
political
value
as a counterforce
against aggressive
and
exploitative
socialization.
Liberating subjec-
tivity
constitutes itself in the inner
history
of the individuals-their own
history,
which
is not identical with their social existence. It is the
particular history
of their encounter,
their
passions, joys,
and
sorrows-experiences
which are not
necessarily grounded
in
their class situation, and which are not even
comprehensible
from this
perspective."
11 In the context of the Greimassian discourse on aesthetics which concerns the
problem
of
meaningfulness
in life, "meaning" (sens)
is
synonymous
with
"finality,"
understood
philosophically
as the idea that
everything
exists and was crea cd for a
particular purpose. "Meaning"
in On
Imperfection, therefore, has a
prospective
sense in
that a
system
of values must be adhered to in order for life to have
purposefulness.
As far as the semiotic sense of
meaning
is concerned, we can
rely
on the
way
in which
Greimas discusses it in the
study
"Elements of a Narrative Grammar,"in On
Meaning:
Selected
Writings
in Semiotic
Theory,
tr. Paul
J.
Perron and Frank H. Collins
(Minneapolis,
1987), pp. 64-65, where he describes the two
"goals
of
meaning
when it becomes
manifested: to
appear
as articulated
meaning,
that is, as
signification,
and as discourse on
meaning,
that is, as a
great paraphrase
that in its own
way develops
all earlier articula-
tions of
meaning.
In other words, the
generation of meaning
does not
first
take the
form of
the
production of
utterances and their combination in discourse; it is
relayed,
in the course
of
its
trajectory, by
narrative structures and it is these that
produce meaningful
discourse articulated in
utterances.
12 Greimas's
analysis
would have
certainly
benefited from
taking
into account the
following
who have reflected on the
problem
of aesthetics:
Georg Lukacs, Die
Eigenart
des Asthetischen (On
the
Specificity
of the
Aesthetic),
Vol. 1 of Asthetik
(Neuwied
am
Rhein,
1963);
Susanne K.
Langer, Feeling
and Form: A
Theory of
Art
(New York, 1953);
or Hans Robert Jauss, Aesthetic
Experience
and
Literary Hermeneutics, tr. Michael Shaw
(Minneapolis, 1982).
In
spite
of Greimas's
ingenious approach
to the five
literary pieces
he
analyzes
in On
Imperfection,
his method still has the
exploratory
character of a
discourse
looking
for an
object.
13 In the section on "Passion"
by
Per
Aage
Brandt in the second volume of
Semiotique:
Dictionnaire raisonne de la theorie du
langage,
the
problem
of
pathemic
roles is considered
from the
perspective
of a
subject
understood as invested with
passion
and formed out
of "a set of
pathemic
roles"
(164).
These
specify
the
relationship
of
subject
to
object.