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More Questions concerning QuotationAuthor(s): Paul HernadiSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Spring, 1981), pp. 271-273Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430160 .
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Aesthetics and Worldmaking
tain features which exemplify lack of con- vention and constraint, poor mad Vincent, the "free and isolated personality" who painted with "a pure uprush of elemental sensibility" is created. This latter Vincent, who permeates our appreciative perception of Van Gogh's paintings, is in effect a sig- nature applied to a collection of features, some of which are exemplified in certain as- pects of Van Gogh's paintings and some of which are exemplified in certain aspects of Van Gogh's life. The stylistic features of Van Gogh's paintings function symbolically be- cause they exemplify the constructed Vin- cent, and the constructed Vincent is an ex- emplar of "uncompromising individualism, quite untainted by education and tradition."
The position I present here is not an al- ternative to Goodman's remarks on style. My proposal is perhaps a perspicacious, perhaps an imprudent embellishment of Goodman's account. It seems to me that signature and symbolic function, which Goodman treats as components of style, are more closely inter- connected than Goodman indicates. Al- though Goodman's treatment of style im- proves on traditional approaches by present- ing a theory on which the presence of style is expected to be rarer than its absence, his account of how, when and why we identify a work with an individual or group and also as an aspect of the work's symbolic func- tioning remains somewhat obscure. My emendation is that, in at least some cases, stylistic features function symbolically by exemplifying the individual or group whose signature labels the collective of exemplified properties.
Aesthetics and Worldmaking
tain features which exemplify lack of con- vention and constraint, poor mad Vincent, the "free and isolated personality" who painted with "a pure uprush of elemental sensibility" is created. This latter Vincent, who permeates our appreciative perception of Van Gogh's paintings, is in effect a sig- nature applied to a collection of features, some of which are exemplified in certain as- pects of Van Gogh's paintings and some of which are exemplified in certain aspects of Van Gogh's life. The stylistic features of Van Gogh's paintings function symbolically be- cause they exemplify the constructed Vin- cent, and the constructed Vincent is an ex- emplar of "uncompromising individualism, quite untainted by education and tradition."
The position I present here is not an al- ternative to Goodman's remarks on style. My proposal is perhaps a perspicacious, perhaps an imprudent embellishment of Goodman's account. It seems to me that signature and symbolic function, which Goodman treats as components of style, are more closely inter- connected than Goodman indicates. Al- though Goodman's treatment of style im- proves on traditional approaches by present- ing a theory on which the presence of style is expected to be rarer than its absence, his account of how, when and why we identify a work with an individual or group and also as an aspect of the work's symbolic func- tioning remains somewhat obscure. My emendation is that, in at least some cases, stylistic features function symbolically by exemplifying the individual or group whose signature labels the collective of exemplified properties.
271 271
Style's secret is that some of its putative nephews are really sons; the entities whose names designate various styles are creations of the symbolically functioning features which constitute the styles. The extent to which my proposal applies to styles requires much more analysis than is possible here; and I am by no means prepared to claim that no style label names a "real" rather than a "constructed" entity.
Of course, my truncated answer to the question "When is style?" does not address a related question, "Why is style?" Why do we bother to construct or create styles? I am tempted to suggest that the special sym- bolic functioning of style-that is, the exem- plification of artist, period, region, or school -may be conducive to art objects possessing further significance or symbolic power. If we contrast the two animated visual media, films and television, we notice all of the following: we have no sense of the persons or periods that produce televised shows, but we have a hagiography of the persons and the periods that produce films; we recognize filmic styles but not television styles; and we attribute significance or symbolic function- ing to films but not to television. I believe that these phenomena are related and that further exploration of them will reveal more of the secret of style.
ANITA SILVERS
San Francisco State University 1S. N. Behrman, Duveen (New York, 1951), pp.
156-57. 2 Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Modern Painting (New
York, 1927), pp. 326-28.
Style's secret is that some of its putative nephews are really sons; the entities whose names designate various styles are creations of the symbolically functioning features which constitute the styles. The extent to which my proposal applies to styles requires much more analysis than is possible here; and I am by no means prepared to claim that no style label names a "real" rather than a "constructed" entity.
Of course, my truncated answer to the question "When is style?" does not address a related question, "Why is style?" Why do we bother to construct or create styles? I am tempted to suggest that the special sym- bolic functioning of style-that is, the exem- plification of artist, period, region, or school -may be conducive to art objects possessing further significance or symbolic power. If we contrast the two animated visual media, films and television, we notice all of the following: we have no sense of the persons or periods that produce televised shows, but we have a hagiography of the persons and the periods that produce films; we recognize filmic styles but not television styles; and we attribute significance or symbolic function- ing to films but not to television. I believe that these phenomena are related and that further exploration of them will reveal more of the secret of style.
ANITA SILVERS
San Francisco State University 1S. N. Behrman, Duveen (New York, 1951), pp.
156-57. 2 Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Modern Painting (New
York, 1927), pp. 326-28.
More Questions Concerning Quotation More Questions Concerning Quotation LITERARY CRITICS have long been exercised by quotation and its extended family: para- phrase, parody, allusion, plagiarism, and other forms of intertextuality. Nelson Good- man's brief but most suggestive inquiry of 1974, reprinted in Ways of Worldmaking, should thus prompt us to add quite a few to his "Questions Concerning Quotation."
LITERARY CRITICS have long been exercised by quotation and its extended family: para- phrase, parody, allusion, plagiarism, and other forms of intertextuality. Nelson Good- man's brief but most suggestive inquiry of 1974, reprinted in Ways of Worldmaking, should thus prompt us to add quite a few to his "Questions Concerning Quotation."
I will restrict my public display of curi- osity to the verbal rendering of speech, thought, and perception. Professor Good- man's twenty or so examples for (and against) verbal quotation were labeled A to F. Let me invite him to comment on three groups of further samples.
G1. All of a sudden Mary declared: "My
I will restrict my public display of curi- osity to the verbal rendering of speech, thought, and perception. Professor Good- man's twenty or so examples for (and against) verbal quotation were labeled A to F. Let me invite him to comment on three groups of further samples.
G1. All of a sudden Mary declared: "My
I I
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272
brother is innocent." G2. All of a sudden Mary declared that
her brother was innocent. G3. All of a sudden Mary could not be
reasoned with; her brother was innocent, and that was that.
G4. All of a sudden Mary insisted on her brother's innocence.
It should not be difficult to agree that, strictly speaking, only G1 quotes Mary's words; G2 and perhaps also G3 paraphrase, while G4 reports them. Lest the entire group of sentences be dismissed as presenting no serious problem, I submit that each sentence might occur in a work of fiction. In that case, of course, nobody would have said, "My brother is innocent," before the sen- tence was written down or dictated by the author. In what sense could we then say that G1 quotes, G2 and G3 paraphrase, and G4 reports Mary's words? And there is more and a different kind of trouble ahead.
HI. Mary secretly worried: "Will John be punished after all?"
H2. Mary secretly worried that John would be punished after all.
H3. Mary secretly worried; yes, silly old John was going to be punished after all.
H4. Mary secretly worried about John's being punished after all.
The analogy is tempting: H1 quotes, H2 and H3 paraphrase, H4 reports. But what is being quoted, paraphrased, or reported in those sentences? Whether Mary exists or is a fictive character, her worry is specifically described as secret and thus unspoken. Hence the problem: how can words paraphrase, let alone directly quote, a mental state?
Clearly, we make our words appear to do so all the time after such phrases as "She secretly worried that . . .", "He thought that ... ," or "I firmly believe that ...." From a linguistic point of view, those preambles have exactly the same function as these: "She kept explaining that ...," "He said that...," or "I explicitly told him that...." Is this close parallelism between our verbal rendering of speech and of thought, ours as well as other people's, a misleading or a profoundly revelatory feature of language?
The answer one gives to that question
GOODMAN, HERNADI
will clearly depend on whether one consid- ers concepts and propositions verbal, quasi- verbal, or nonverbal "ways of worldmak- ing." I, for one, suspect that special cases of Nelson Goodman's "cross-system" or "cross- modal" quotation occur whenever we say or write down what we thought and whenever we recall what we said, wrote, read, or were told on a previous occasion. But, then, should even remembering an earlier thought be viewed as quoting it more or less accu- rately?
I will conclude these queries about various kinds of verbal and mental quotation with a brief passage from Saul Bellow's Herzog.' Broken up into individual sentences, the passage reads as follows:
I1. Then the traffic opened and the cab rattled in low gear and jerked into second.
12. "For heaven sake, let's make time," the driver said.
13. They made a sweeping turn into Park Avenue and Herzog clutched the broken window handle.
14. It wouldn't open. 15. But if it opened dust would pour in. 16. They were demolishing and raising
buildings. 17. The avenue was filled with concrete-
mixing trucks, smells of wet sand and pow- dery grey cement.
In "Dual Perspective: Free Indirect Dis- course and Related Techniques,"2 I at- tempted to demonstrate that the passage just quoted subtly moves from reporting non- verbal events (I1, 13) and directly quoting fictive speech (12) to covertly quoting or at least paraphrasing a fictive character's per- ceptions (especially 14 and 15 but, in the context, also 16 and 17). Would Professor Goodman agree that attentive readers of the text envisage the scene and events described in it from the central character's spatial and mental perspective even though neither Herzog's words nor his consciously held opinions are overtly quoted, paraphrased, or even reported by the narrator? If so, how can the theory of quotation sketched in Ways of Worldmaking account for 14, 15, 16 and 17 in their narrative context? In the article cited above, I described the kind of
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Aesthetics and Worldmaking
discourse exemplified here by G3, H3, and 14 to 17 as follows: "the narrator says in propria persona what one of the characters means." Is such a departure from Plato's distinction between presentation or diegesis and representation or mimesis (Republic, Book Three, 392c and d) acceptable to Pro- fessor Goodman as a way of identifying and analyzing some of the less obvious instances
Aesthetics and Worldmaking
discourse exemplified here by G3, H3, and 14 to 17 as follows: "the narrator says in propria persona what one of the characters means." Is such a departure from Plato's distinction between presentation or diegesis and representation or mimesis (Republic, Book Three, 392c and d) acceptable to Pro- fessor Goodman as a way of identifying and analyzing some of the less obvious instances
273 273
of quotation, both verbal and nonverbal?
PAUL HERNADI The University of Iowa
1 Saul Bellow, Herzog (New York, 1964), p. 32. 2 Paul Hernadi, "Dual Perspective: Free Indirect
Iiscourse and Related Techniques," Comparative Literature, 24 (1972), reprinted as all appendix to Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classifica- tion (Cornell University Press, 1972).
of quotation, both verbal and nonverbal?
PAUL HERNADI The University of Iowa
1 Saul Bellow, Herzog (New York, 1964), p. 32. 2 Paul Hernadi, "Dual Perspective: Free Indirect
Iiscourse and Related Techniques," Comparative Literature, 24 (1972), reprinted as all appendix to Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classifica- tion (Cornell University Press, 1972).
Replies Replies In these papers, James Ackerman fears
that my stress on works of art as symbols cheats the subjective and emotional aspects of the aesthetic, Jens Kulenkampff examines the way music may function in worldmak- ing, Richard Martin dismantles and pro- poses to replace my taxonomy of reference, Alan Nagel queries the basis for my selec- tion of symptoms of the aesthetic, Joseph Margolis resumes his crusade against the aesthetic function of exemplification, Anita Silvers inquires into quantitative notions of style, and Paul Hernadi raises consequential questions concerning quotation.
These essays sometimes clarify my work, sometimes scramble it, sometimes carry it forward, sometimes sideways, sometimes backward. To all seven authors and to the editors of this Journal, I am grateful for the attention they have paid to my work.
1. JAMES ACKERMAN'S essay often shows an understanding of my work uncommon among writers who are not professional phi- losophers. For example, while even philoso- phers have often fumbled the notion of ex- emplification, Ackerman not only sees and accepts the main point but provides a perti- nent illustration of his own (see his note 3).
His main worry is that I do not sufficiently stress the role of the viewer-the audience- in art, and that I therefore underrate the subjectivity of art and the drastic difference, on this score, between art and science. He writes that science unlike art is primarily a
In these papers, James Ackerman fears that my stress on works of art as symbols cheats the subjective and emotional aspects of the aesthetic, Jens Kulenkampff examines the way music may function in worldmak- ing, Richard Martin dismantles and pro- poses to replace my taxonomy of reference, Alan Nagel queries the basis for my selec- tion of symptoms of the aesthetic, Joseph Margolis resumes his crusade against the aesthetic function of exemplification, Anita Silvers inquires into quantitative notions of style, and Paul Hernadi raises consequential questions concerning quotation.
These essays sometimes clarify my work, sometimes scramble it, sometimes carry it forward, sometimes sideways, sometimes backward. To all seven authors and to the editors of this Journal, I am grateful for the attention they have paid to my work.
1. JAMES ACKERMAN'S essay often shows an understanding of my work uncommon among writers who are not professional phi- losophers. For example, while even philoso- phers have often fumbled the notion of ex- emplification, Ackerman not only sees and accepts the main point but provides a perti- nent illustration of his own (see his note 3).
His main worry is that I do not sufficiently stress the role of the viewer-the audience- in art, and that I therefore underrate the subjectivity of art and the drastic difference, on this score, between art and science. He writes that science unlike art is primarily a
matter of experimentation and proof; that in art unlike science the observer cannot be counted on to act consistently, and con- cludes:
I cannot accept the concept of autonomous aes- thetic objects. The aesthetic experience can occur only when an observer is on hand to have it; it is compounded not only of emanations from the ob- ject but also of the mode of receptivity of the observer. The event differs a little or a lot for different observers.
Our disagreement, I think, is less about the nature of art than about the nature of science. Whereas Ackerman looks upon sci- ence as "concerned primarily with the proc- esses of experimentation and proof," I think of it, in the words of Lewis Thomas,1 as
a mobile unsteady structure . . . with all the bits always moving about, fitting together in different ways, adding new bits to themselves with flour- ishes of adornment as though consulting a mirror, giving the whole arrangement something like the unpredictability and unreliability of living flesh. . .. The endeavor is not, as is sometimes thought, a way of building a solid, indestructible body of immutable truth, fact laid precisely upon fact.... Science is not like this at all.
Despite Ackerman's early remark concerning Ways of Worldmaking that
Insofar as it deals with art, it struck me as stand- ing in relation to classical aesthetics as relativity theory does to classical physics
he seems sometimes to forget that my rejection of the usual contrasting of the scientific-objective-cognitive with the ar- tistic-subjective-emo,tive depends as much
matter of experimentation and proof; that in art unlike science the observer cannot be counted on to act consistently, and con- cludes:
I cannot accept the concept of autonomous aes- thetic objects. The aesthetic experience can occur only when an observer is on hand to have it; it is compounded not only of emanations from the ob- ject but also of the mode of receptivity of the observer. The event differs a little or a lot for different observers.
Our disagreement, I think, is less about the nature of art than about the nature of science. Whereas Ackerman looks upon sci- ence as "concerned primarily with the proc- esses of experimentation and proof," I think of it, in the words of Lewis Thomas,1 as
a mobile unsteady structure . . . with all the bits always moving about, fitting together in different ways, adding new bits to themselves with flour- ishes of adornment as though consulting a mirror, giving the whole arrangement something like the unpredictability and unreliability of living flesh. . .. The endeavor is not, as is sometimes thought, a way of building a solid, indestructible body of immutable truth, fact laid precisely upon fact.... Science is not like this at all.
Despite Ackerman's early remark concerning Ways of Worldmaking that
Insofar as it deals with art, it struck me as stand- ing in relation to classical aesthetics as relativity theory does to classical physics
he seems sometimes to forget that my rejection of the usual contrasting of the scientific-objective-cognitive with the ar- tistic-subjective-emo,tive depends as much
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