"Repetition (In the Kierkegaardian Sense of the Term)" Author(s): Arne Melberg Source: Diacritics, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 71-87 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465332 Accessed: 18-03-2015 13:46 UTC
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"REPETITION (IN
THE
KIERKEGAARDIAN SENSE
OF
THE
TERM)"
ARNEMELBERG 1. Kierkegaard'sGjentagelsen The Text Kierkegaardpublished Repetition in 1843; his pseudonym this time was ConstantinConstantius. The Danish title is Gjentagelsen,meaningliterally "thetakingback." It is not easy to decide what sortof text this is: a narration or a philosophical essay or perhapsan ironic mixtureof both. Kierkegaard has Constantinmake fun of this problematicin a sort of appendix,where he turnsto "therealreaderof thisbook,"called "Mr.X, Esq."1Thisrealandideal reader is apparentlynot a critic or an "ordinaryreviewer," since such a specimen would have taken the opportunityto "elucidate that it is not a comedy, tragedy,novel, epic, epigram,story and to find it inexcusable that one tries in vain to say 1.2.3. Its ways he will hardlyunderstandsince they areinverse;norwill theeffortof thebook appealto him,foras arulereviewers explain existence in such a way thatboth the universaland the particularare annihilated"[190/226]. This is said in the final pages, retrospectively,like a "repetition"to remindthe reader-"Mr. X"-in whatway andgenrehe has notreadand,perhaps,to hintat a failed dialectic("triesin vain to say 1.2.3."). And that the "ways"of the text are "inverse." "Inverse"? This odd statementat the end of the text may persuade the reader to "repeat" the very beginning of the text, where Constantin discusses "movement"inrelationtotheconceptsof repetitionandrecollectionandcomes up with this definition: "Repetitionandrecollectionarethe same movement, only in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward;whereas the real repetitionis recollected forward"[115/131]. As a conceptual introductionto this text, where the "ways" at last are called "inverse,"we areinvitedto think"repetition"and"recollection"as the same movement-only in opposite directions. The same but opposite. And "repetition"as a movement "forward." "Forward"? The beginning and the end of the text Repetitionthus give us two directions, both quite surprising. The beginning I quoted is furthermore prefaced by a little anecdote about directionsand movement: Diogenes is 1. I quote Kierkegaardfrom Samlede Vaerker5, in comparison with the English translation by Howard Hong and Edna Hong in Kierkegaard's Writings 6, here 187/ 223. Page references will be given in the text. I have in many cases modified the English translation to make it more literal.
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theresaid to have "refuted"the Eleatics,who "deniedmotion"notby sayinganythingbut by pacing "backand fortha few times" [115/131]. "Back and forth"? If we then regardthe Diogenes of the anecdote ("backand forth")as a heading for the text Repetitionandkeep divergingdirectionsin mind ("forward,""inverse")it could perhaps in a preliminaryway be said that Repetition is a text on movement-and a movementback and forth. This movementgoes on in the temporalityof the text: I will show later how the text changes its narrativemode between past andpresenttime. And philosophicallythetextdiscusses thepast of recollectionandthe nowof "repetition."The text paces between temporalmodes andbetween narrativeandphilosophicaldiscourses. The conditions for the movementof the text are defined in its framework,in the "backof the beginning; and the "inand-forth,""same-but-opposite,""backward-forward" verse" of the end. This movabletext,Repetition,Kierkegaardwroteironicallyundera pseudonymthat suggests permanence. The text was publishedtogetherwith Fear and Trembling-this underthe pseudonymJohannesde Silentio-which concludesin a Heracliteananecdote: Heraclitusis said to have had a disciple who developed the thoughtof the masterthatyou cannot enter the same river twice by saying that one "cannot do it even once. Poor Heraclitus,to have a disciple like that! By this improvement,the Heracliteanthesis was amended into an Eleatic thesis thatdenies motion"[111/123]. Repetition startsin this logical problemof motion and movement;first Constantin praises"repetition"for a couple of pages: "it is realityand the earnestnessof existence" [116/133]. "Repetition"is called the "new"philosophicalidea of the same phenomenon that "the Greeks"called "recollection"(anamnesis). Constantinthen startsto narrate: "Abouta year ago," he writes and remembers,"I became very much aware of a young man"(117/133). This young man-the Danish word is actuallymenneske 'humanbeing'-is melancholicallyin love; Constantin'sdiagnosis is thatthe young man as a poet lives in memoryandthatthe beloved girl lacks reality(for him). '"Theyoung girl was not his beloved, she was the occasion thatawakenedthe poetic in him ... and precisely by that she had signed her own sentence of death" [121/138]. Constantinsuggested a treatment:the young man should fake his love to anothergirl-meaning thatConstantin wanted the young man to say one thing and mean another,thatis, become ironic. This is impossible, however,andConstantinhas to admitthatthe youngmanas a poet only has one languagewhile the ironisthas two: theironist"discoversanalphabetthathas as many lettersas the ordinaryone, thushe can expresseverythingin his thieves' languageso that no sigh is so deep that he does not have the laughterthat correspondsto it in thieves' language"[127/145]. Constantinmakes some furtherphilosophicalreflectionson the concept of "repetition" [131/149-I discuss this later] then changes to a new narrationon the "exploring expedition I made to test the possibility and meaning of repetition"[132/150]. The expedition heads for Berlin, where Constantinhas once been and where he now wants to "repeat"what alreadywas. Extensively and enthusiasticallyBerlin is rememberedas it once was, while the "exploringexpedition"is dismissed as ridiculousand impossible. The longest descriptionis given the memoryof a Posse, a popularfarce, thatConstantin once saw andloved butnow findsunbearable--"Theonly repetitionwas theimpossibility of repetition"[149/170]. This partof the text, thisphilosophicaljourney,seems to me difficultto handle: why this enthusiasmabout(a) memory? Why this drasticrefutationof "repetition"?If it is a refutation-perhaps it is a hint that"repetition"of something,whateverit is, is doomed to failure, while "repetition"as such-as movement-is necessary. The text moves into its second part,called Gjentagelsen 'the taking back': Repetition. The part-the second part-has the same nameas the whole. Or does this mean 72
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that the second part"repeats"the whole as a "repetition"of Repetition? thatthe second partis thesecundaphilosophia,which Kierkegaardin anothercontextcalls "repetition"?2 The narrativeof the second parttells us thatthe never-fulfilledlove story of the first comes to its conclusion as real separation.The young man turnsup again writingletters to Constantin,where we can follow his romanticoutburstsup to the point where the beloved girl turnsout to have married! Something the young man in his last letter calls areal"repetition"-"repetition"realizedas theyoung man'sseparationfromhisbeloved! Gone are the ironies of the first partof the text and we meet instead the privileged form of romanticself-expression: the sentimentalletter. Gone, too, is the temporaldistance of the first part: Constantinmoves into the presenttense and his few comments remain in the same vague now as the letters. NarratologicallyKierkegaardand Constantinmove from diegesis to mimesis, to use the Platonic terminology. In the shape of mimesis the doubling-repetition-reversalthat Kierkegaardcalls "repetition"is made acute. The text is kept in this temporallyvague now until the young man has producedhis last letter. Then Constantin writes his own letter, separated from part two-the "repetition"of Repetition-by a page visualizingan envelope with Mr.X on it-"the real readerof thisbook." We meet, in otherwords,a very literalanddrasticseparationdirectly afterwe have separatedfrom the young man and the young man from his girl. What we meet, again, is irony-and in contrastto the pathos of the young man. Constantinuses this ironic momentto informhis readerof what has happenedand of whatkind of text he has not read. He repeatshis diagnosis from the firstpart,calling the young man a "poet" and in contrastto himself: "I myself cannotbecome a poet, and in any case my interest lies elsewhere" [192/228]. He also calls himself a "vanishingperson"-and in relation to the young man he has been like "a woman giving birth"[194/230]. Constantinsteps parabasicallyforwardto call himself "vanishing"andpromisingto "serve"the readerby being "another"[192/228]. And by calling the "ways"of his text "inverse"[190/226]. It seems thatthe only way to come to termswith his "repetition" would be to read the text again, spelling out thatotheralphabet,the one thatConstantin ascribed to the ironist.
The Concept "Repetition"is, amongotherthingsin Kierkegaard'sRepetition,a philosophicalconcept, formulatedby KierkegaardthroughConstantinas a reply to the Greek(that is, Platonic) recollection (anamnesis)and the "mediation"(thatis, dialecticAufhebungof newer (that is, Hegelian) philosophy. Let me now afterthe paraphraseabove tryphilosophy: thereare two passages in the firstpartwhere Constantindevelops the concept "repetition."The first is in the opening pages, where Constantinsituatesthe concept in relationto "recollection":they are,as we remember, "the same movement, only in opposite directions," "repetition"moving "forward"[115/131]. The second is a transitionbetween the narrationon the young man and thaton the expeditionto Berlin: here Constantindevelops his criticismof "whathas mistakenlybeen called mediation"[130/148], that is, Hegelian dialectics. Against this he remindsus of the "Greekdevelopmentof the teachingof being and nothingness,the developmentof 'the instant,'of 'non-being,"'etc. [131/148]. This is apparentlyanother Greek theory than the one connecting knowledge and reality with recollection, that is, 2. The expression comesfrom Begrebet Angest (The Concept of Agony) [SV 6:119]. One willfind a discussionof "repetition"there,esp. 116n; also in PhilosophiskeSmuler(Philosophical Trifles)[SV6]; Kierkegaard'sPapirer(Papers)from1844; Constantin'spolemicsagainstHeiberg; and chap. 1 in Johannes Climacus's De omnibus dubitandumest.
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anotherPlato:conceptslike beingandnothingnesswe findin Plato'sdialogueParmenides, which is also Plato's most rigorousanalysis of those "Eleatics"who became famous for "denying motion,"accordingto the first page of Repetition. Constantin's discussion makes it apparent that he has found more in Plato's ParmenidesthanPlatonicanamnesis and Eleatic immobility. He has even found a term thatsounds more like KierkegaardthanPlato: oieblikket,literally meaning"theglance of the eye" and here translatedas the "instant." The term probably derives from a suggestivepassageof Parmenides thatI will takeuplater. Herethe"instant"is associated with "repetition"beforeConstantincontinueshis discussionof therelationof the concept to Hegelian "mediation"(dialectics): It is in our days not explainedhow mediationcomes about,if it is a result of the movementof the two elements, and in what way it alreadyfrom the start is containedin these, or if it is somethingnew thatis added, and in that case how. In this regard the Greekideas about the conceptkinesis, which correspondsto the moderncategory 'transition,'shouldbe consideredseriously. Thedialectic of repetitionis easy; because what is repeated,has been, otherwiseit could not be repeated, but thefact that it has been, makesrepetitioninto the new. When the Greeks said that all knowledge is recollection, then they said that all of existence, which is, has been, whenyou say thatlife is a repetition,you say: the existence, that has been, now becomes. Whenyou haven't got the category of recollection or repetition,all life dissolves intoan emptynoise devoidof content. [131/149] First Constantindiscusses dialectics: is the Aufhebungof synthesis ("mediation")the resultof movementin or between thesis andantithesis("thetwo elements")or is it a new movement? The question may seem narrow, but is interesting since it indicates Constantin'sinterest: to makedialectics into a formof movement. The associationwith "repetition"makesclearthatthemovementis a movementin time: a temporalfigure. The second sentence preparesfor this temporalityby way of termslike kinesis (movement) and "transition";the lattermay be Kierkegaard'sversion of metaballonand both these termsare extensively used in Parmenides. The sentence seems unclearto me but underlines Constantin'sfascination: movement. Then the "dialecticsof repetition"is established-in contrast,we may assume, to Hegelian dialectics and in conflict with the "Eleatics"(who "deniedmovement"),but in affiliationwithkinesis. "Repetition"is herea movementin time: re-take,re-peat,re-turn, re-versemeansgoing backin time to what"hasbeen." But still, in spiteof this movement backward,"repetition"makes it new and is thereforea movement forward: it is "the new." The reasonthis movementbackwardis actuallya movementforwardis temporal: you cannot re-peat/re-takewhat has been, since what has been has been. The now of "repetition"is always an after. But not only: since the movement of "repetition"also makes it new, makes"thenew"-simultaneously withbeing a repeatingre-duplication"repetition"suspendsthetemporalorderof before-afterin orby thatnow previouslycalled "the instant."The temporaldialectics of "repetition"suspends temporalsequence: the now that is always an after comes actually before-it is the now of "the instant,"the sudden intervention in sequential time, the caesura that defines what has been and prepareswhat is to become. If there is one sentence summarizing"Repetition(in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term),"then this is that sentence. Next Constantincontrasts"repetition"to Platonic anamnesis. The philosophy of recollectionabsolutizeswhathas been, accordingto Constantin,andtherebyexcludes the movementforward,"thenew." Recollected life is posthumouslife, whereas"repetition"
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recollectionandreduplication transcends byits"takingback"andmakingnew. "Repetition"thusinstallsnowas theimpetusof existenceandbecomingas its movement. Thethirdandfourthsentencesworkto give a temporalprivilegeto thenow. A few sentencesearlierin the text Constantinassociatedthe "instant"and"nonbeing"with He is probablythinkingof a sequenceinPlato'sParmenides[156DE]that "repetition." discussesthe relationsamongmovement(kinesis),standstill(stasis),and changeor transition(metaballon).PlatohasParmenides askhimselfandus whatstrangeposition timeis takingwhenchange-movement-transition occurs.He answers:"theinstant"(to is momentum). Furtherdiscussionunderscores thatthis eksacfnes;theLatintranslation sinceitreferstoaphenomenon thatonlyexistsinthestateof what conceptis anonconcept, Constantin wouldcall "nonbeing."PlatohasParmenides putit like this: "thisstrange instantaneous nature,thissomethingthatis patchedbetweenmovementandstandstilland thatdoesnotexistin anytime;butintothisinstantandoutof thisinstant,thatwhichis in movementchangesinto standstilland thatwhich is at a standstillchangesinto movement." as a temporalfiguregives priorityto thatinstantaneous now thatis "Repetition" calculatedaccordingto theparadoxical "instant" of Plato'sParmenides. The final sentenceof my quotationtakes a step backwardin the dialecticby between"repetition" and"recollection" wasnotabsoluteafter suggestingthatthecontrast all. Botharehereconceptsof orderbringingsomekindof conceptualorganization to an existencethatwithoutthisorderwouldbe a "noise"withoutmeaning.It is worthnoting that when he imaginesthe worldof nonmeaning,Constantinleaves his prominent to evokean auditivehorror:purenoise. temporalor spatialvocabulary *
*
*
TheconceptualexegesisI havetriedaboveshouldhavegivensomehintswhy"repetition" is such a hauntingconceptfor problematicandproblematizing modemthinkerslike Nietzsche,Freud,andDerrida.I will tryto show,in thesecondhalfof thisessay,why and how "repetition" was obsessivefor Paulde Man. HereI can only mentionthat as it is developedin SeinundZeit [especially65-74] may Heidegger'sWiederholung wellbethelinkbetween anddeconstructive Kierkegaard thinking-exceptthatHeidegger's associationof Wiederholung witha dramatictermlikeEntschlossenheit("openingdethe"existential" dimensionsof theconcept:itspathos. cisiveness")tendsto underscore The reasonwhy Kierkegaard mayhavemodemrelevance-even whenhe insiststhat is a "transcendental" "repetition" categorygivingprivilegeto thepresenceof thenow; andevento thinkerswhoelsewhereseemimmuneto thetranscendental andcriticalof all ideasof "presence"-mustbe thathis"repetition" is an"existential" as well as a textual as a temporalterm-tempus category.Thisis possiblesincehe insistson "repetition" andnarratological havinggrammatical, syntactical, meaningbesidesbeingtheverymode forbeingandbecoming,thuscombiningpathosandirony. is furthermore a paradoxicalterm: it temptswith the Kierkegaard's "repetition" thispresence.ThedialecticofKierkegaardian presenceofaprivilegednowwhileexcluding "repetition" is-according to Constantin-"easy":"whatis repeated,hasbeen,otherwiseit couldnotbe repeated,butthefactthatit hasbeen,makesrepetitionintothenew." Thismeansthattheprivilegednowhasalwaysalreadybeen,andwhathasbeencould movementcatchessomethingof thedialecticsof time alwaysbecome.Thisparadoxical as instantandtimeas process;andtimeis, afterall, bothsequentialand"existential" in thesenseof instantaneous. Theparadoxof Kierkegaardian is thatit triesto "repetition" intoa keepthesedivergentdimensionstogetherin onemovement-making"repetition" nonconceptor a conceptnegatingthepresenceit suggests;or a nonconceptrelatedto Plato'sto eksaifnesin Parmenides:"thisstrangeinstantaneous nature,thissomething diacritics / fall 1990
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patched between movement and standstill and that does not exist in any time"; or Derrida'scontemporarynonconceptslike differanceor iteration.
The Story The philosophicalpartsof Repetitionarenarrativelyframed,andthe questionis now how concept andnarrativecombine: do they supporteach otheroraretheretensions? The text is rich in possibilities, but I will discuss just two: its pathos, concentratedin the young man's sublime wishes, and its irony, exemplified by Constantin'stextual "reversal." a. SublimeSilence ? Repetition tells us amongotherthingsof the namelessyoung manunhappilyin love with a nameless young girl. The second partgives the young manthe floor throughthe letters he sends to Constantinreportingon his feelings up to the point he learnsthatthe girl has married.Afterhavingcomparedhis miserablelove storywith theordealof Jobof the Old Testament,the young man seems preparedto interpretthe unhappyoutcome happily,as a real"repetition.""Istherenot, then,a repetition?Did I not get everythingdouble? Did I not get myself back and precisely in such a way thatI might have a double sense of its meaning?"[185 f./220 f.]. The questionform hints thatthe young man is not quiteconfidentthathe has got the thing right. His lack of confidence returnsin several commentaries,where problemsof interpretationare solved by the idea thatKierkegaardmay have transformedan original version, where the young man was to commit suicide.3 Our young man welcomes his liberation. My "yawl is afloat,"he exclaims [186/221], looking forwardto sailing on the sea where "ideas spume with elemental fury, where thoughtsarise noisily ... where at other times thereis a stillness like the deep silence of the South Sea," etc. He compares his new position to a "beakerof inebriation"andpraisesthe"crestingwaves, thathide me in the abyss"and "fling me up above the stars." It is not self-evidentthatthe young man should be inspired by learning that his beloved has married,nor is the "repetition" a apparent. The young man's metaphors,moreover,seem disturbing:the prospectsfor "yawl"on a spumysea seem notverypromising.Andif theyoungmanis the"yawl,"who, then, is the helmsman? The young man's perhapsdisturbingenthusiasmis expressed in terms that only a little earlierin aesthetichistorywere standardwhen describingthesublime: "spumewith elemental fury,""waves thathide me in the abyss ... thatfling me up above the stars." We recognize the vocabularyfrom one of this young man's closest predecessors, that nameless, unfortunate,and sublime lover in Rousseau's Julie (1760), known by the pseudonym "Saint-Preux."When he learns thathis beloved Julie actually has married, he doesn't exactly welcome this, but he bids farewell to everythingfor the sea. And in his final letter[3:26], which also is the lastof the thirdpartof thenovel andits very turning the point, he listens to the signal of the departingboat and welcomes the "vast sea, me."4 immense sea, thatperhapswill engulf 3. It shouldperhapsbe notedthatthetraditionalDanish interpretationofRepetitionis heavily serious biographical and connects the story with Kierkegaard'sbroken engagement. The only treatment of the text as narrative text is found in Aage Henriksen, Kierkegaardsromaner [Copenhagen, 1954]. 4. Oeuvrescompletes 2:397: "Ilfautmontera bord, ilfautpartir. Mer vaste, mer immense, m'engloutirdans ton sein; puissai-je retrouversur tesflots le calme quifuit mon doispeut-etre qui coeur agite!" 76
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ImmanuelKant,too, who was an avid readerof Rousseaubutcertainlynot excessive in his vocabulary,comes upwith seaand starswhendiscussingthe sublime,dasErhabene, in Kritik der Urteilskraft [1790, #29]. The sea in itself is not sublime, but it can be experienced as sublime, according to Kant, if we manage to purge the experience of purposeand meaning. To experience the sea as sublime, writes Kant,we must not see it as we representit in thought,notas, forexample,anelementunitingpeople andseparating continents,because "suchareonly teleologicaljudgments."To find the sea sublime,"we mustregardit as the poets do, accordingto what the impressionupon the eye reveals, as, let us say, when it is calm, a clear mirrorof waterboundedonly by the heavens, or when it is agitated,like an abyss threateningto engulf all."5 Even the "thunderstorm,"which Kierkegaard'syoung man in his last letters is looking forward to as an upsetting preparationfor the instant of "repetition,"has its counterpartin Kant:in #27 he writesthatthe experienceof thesublimeis mobile (bewegt) in contrastto the beautiful,which is experiencedcalmly, in ruhigerKontemplation.The mobilityis morepreciselycalled an agitation(Erschiitterung),thatis, a "rapidlychanging repressionandattractionof the very same object."6(Constantinwould have remindedus of the usefulness of that Greek thinking of kinesis when it comes to the paradoxes of "repetition.") When the young man in his last letter exclaims that his "yawl is afloat," he is apparentlyheadingfor a voyage withoutpurposeormeaning-but expectingthe sublime, or, to say it with Kant,both abyss and heaven. Whatis remarkableis thatthe young man describes his expected experiences in auditive terms: ideas are about to "spume," thoughts to "arisenoisily"; and he also expects a "stillness like the deep silence of the SouthSea"[186/221]. Noise as well as silence indicatethattheyoung man's expectations of the sublime point to the nonverbalor to puresound (thatis, languagewithoutpurpose ormeaning). Orto deep silence. Thedesireof this textfor aprivilegednow canbe realized only beyond a language of meaning. This desire or expectationis realized, althoughwith heavy irony, thatis, in a mode far from the young man's language. Whatfollows afterthe young man has expressedhis spumingdesires to leave languageis neithersilence nor void-but text as object, thatis, beyond purposeor meaning. Whatfollows on the page afterthe young man's last word is the picture of an envelope addressed to the anonymous Mr. X and "containing" Constantin'sletter to "thereal readerof this book." But the text carries anotherexpectation that is not realized in any way, not even ironically, when the young man heads for his sublime noise. I am thinking of the conceptual analysis quoted above, where Constantinstated that both "repetition"and recollectionareconceptsof orderandwithoutthese "alllife" would dissolve in "anempty noise devoid of content"[131/149]. It was apparentin this passage thatrecollection and "repetition"were not opposites in this respect but that both (in different directions?) organized the "noise" of phenomenal world/life into meaning-we may guess from circumstancesthat"repetition"would offer a paradoxicalmeaningbut still a contrastto 5. Kritikder Urteilskraft175f.: "denndas gibt lauter teleologische Urteile; sondern man muss den Ozean bloss, wie die Dichter es tun, nach dem, was der Augenschein zeigt, etwa, wenn er inRuhe betrachtetwird,als einenklarenWasserspiegel,derbloss vomHimmelbegrenztist, aber ist er unruhig, wie einen alles zu verschlingen drohendenAbgrund, dennoch erhaben finden konnen." The passage is thoroughly commentedon by Paul de Man in "Phenomenalityand Materialityin Kant." 6. KritikderUrteilskraft155: "DasGemiitflihltsich in der Vorstellungdes Erhabenenin der
Natur bewegt: da es in dem isthetischenUrteile iiber das Sch6ne derselbenin ruhiger Kontemplationist. Diese Bewegung kann... mit einer Erschiitterungverglichenwerden, d. i. mit einer schnellwechselndenAbstossen undAnzieheneben desselben Objekts."
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pure noise. The young man, however, expects a new life afterhis "repetition"in terms that come suspiciously close to that "emptynoise" fearedby Constantin. Something has gone wrong here in the relationbetween concept and narration-or between Constantinand the young man. PerhapsConstantinshouldhave told us thatthe young man had seriously misunderstoodthe concept of "repetition"and thatby leaping into the nonlinguisticnonorderhe approachessomethinglike Kierkegaardian"despair"? Nothing, however, preventsus from seeing the young man's sublime expectationsas a (narrative) correction of Constantin's conceptual analysis-nothing, at least, until Constantin'sfollowing and final letter. The correctionwould situate"repetition"in the "abyss"or among the "stars"or in "noise"or "silence"-in any case beyond languageas a hintthattheprivilegednow of the "instant"canbe foundonly outsidetimeandmeaning. b. Ordo inversus Constantininformsus repeatedlythatthe young man is a poet. "Imyself cannotbecome a poet" [192/228], he says, and calls himself a "prose writer" [184/218]-the word prosaist can also be understoodas "prosaicwriter." Developed full-scale in Hegel's aesthetics,in Kierkegaard'sday this well-knownoppositionof prosevs. poetrycoincided with something like romanticismvs. prosaicreality,and the romantic-poeticpole of the opposition was associated with subjectivity,imagination,and an orphic vision. Otheringredientsof the text makeConstantinandthe young maninto opposites: the nameand the eye. While Constantinis a telling pseudonym,the young man is nameless.7 And in contrastto Constantinhe has troublewith his eyes: he escapes from his beloved in ordernot to have to look at her;"Thinkof me spottingher,"he writes to Constantin, "I believe I would have gone mad" [166/192]. Constantin,on the otherhand, does not hesitate to use his eyes in contactwith girls: "my eyes soughther,""my eyes were upon her" [146 f./167], he tells us when reportingon a meeting in Berlin. And thatglance of the eye--ieblikket -of course has decisive importancefor Constantin'sdevelopment of the philosophy of "repetition." It is differentwith the young man, our orphicpoet: he escapes seeing his nameless in Eurydice,and his final fantasyof a sublimepresence is beyond the eye and its glance the sense that his fantasy is auditive. The eye and the glance were problemsalso for the mythicalOrpheus,who may well be one allegoricalpatternbehindorbeforeConstantin'syoungpoet andhis sad love story; anotherone could be Psyche, who is blindedby meetingEros, or could face the God only in darkness. The mythof Orpheushas to do with the glance, with retrieval,and with that manifest reversal of Eurydice's turningaround-and, of course, of inspiration,song, poetry. The ambiguityof the mythhas been wonderfullyanalyzedby MauriceBlanchot, when he points out, for example, thatthe orphic"turning"to Eurydicemeansdestruction and Eurydice's returnto the shadows;but not turningwould not be a lesser "betrayal": her againstthat"movement"of Orpheusthatmeansthathe wantsto haveEurydicenot in her to see he wants that in her "distance," "nocturnal in her obscurity," "daily truth"but man our this Like is she invisible."8 when young but visible Orpheus, "not when she is 7. Interestingviewsontheyoungman's namelessnessarefoundinLouisMackey,"OnceMore with Feeling: Kierkegaard'sRepetition," Kierkegaardand Literature: Irony, Repetition and Criticism,ed. RonaldSchleifer and RobertMarkley[Norman: UofOklahomaP, 1984] 98: "The decisive event reportedin the letter of August 15 is the young man's loss of his name." 8. L'espace litteraire [Paris, 1955] 228: "en se tournant vers Eurydice, Orphee ruine se d'efait, et Eurydicese retourneen l'ombre; l'essence de la l'oeuvre, l'oeuvre immnediatement nuit, sous son regard, se revele commel'inessentiel. Ainsi trahit-il l'oeuvre et Eurydiceet la nuit.
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wants to see his girl but still not see her,and to worshipher at a distance. Alreadyat the beginningof the text, Constantinpointsout thatthe young man's love is poetical: the girl "awakenedthe poetic in him and made him a poet" [121/138], allegorically speaking Orpheuscreates his Eurydicein orderto become the power of singing. Constantinadds that"preciselythereby[she] had signed herown deathsentence": the orphic-poeticlove demandsthe absence of the woman or needs the woman as shadow, as death. On only one occasion does the girl stopbeing the shadowof thetext: by her suddenly being married. This-her firstand last sign of life-makes herfinally dead to the young man. The allegoricalreadingaccordingto Orpheuswould indicatethis as a result of the young man's turningaround,his reversal. But this does not work: as faras I can see this is the resultof her turningherback on him and walking reversal-leading-to-"repetition" into theHadesof marriage.Hereanallegoricalreadingaccordingto Psyche andErosmay be closer: in the decisive momentthe eye turnsaway or is blinded;the glance of the eye makes it all dark. No allegorical expectations,however, neitheraccordingto Orpheus's story nor to Psyche's, fit the young man's final fantasies after the girl has turned around and disappeared.His auditiveenthusiasmis insteadanalmostpolemical contrastto the visual fantasies on the conditions of love and languagethatfound mythicalexpressions in the tales of Orpheusand of Psyche and Eros. It is at this decisive point in the text-when voice threatensglance and when sound threatensmeaning-that Constantinmakes his visual coup: thatparabasicalpictureof a letter, framinghis final message to the "realreader"Mr. X. It is an ironic intervention, an ironic punctuation of the pathetic letters of the young man. And the irony is underscoredby Constantin,in his letter,when he addressesthe type of writerwho knows how to write "insuch a way thatthe hereticscould not understandit" [194/225]-that is, the writerwho writes with double meaningor, as Constantinput it in the first partof the text, who "canexpress all in his thieves' languageso thatno sigh is so deep thathe does not have the laughterthat correspondsto it in thieves' language"[127/145]. Constantin's ironic position puts an end to the allegory according to Orpheusor accordingto Psyche and Eros but also to the young man's auditive fantasies. There is neverthelessa connectionbetween his irony and the allegory, and this connection is the same as the concept, the story, and the text: "repetition." In his well-known analysis of allegory Paul de Man writes that the "meaning constituted by the allegorical sign can then consist only in the repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)of a previous sign with which it can never coincide, since it is of the essence of this previous sign to be pure anteriority"["TheRhetoricof Temporality"207]. This formaldefinitionof allegory de Man connects with irony and arguesthatallegory and ironyare "linkedin theircommon discovery of a trulytemporal predicament"[222]. This "predicament"I take to be the discovery of an instantaneous now, or ratherthatthepresentnow, to become thepresenceof an instantaneousnow, must have a precedence. The Kierkegaardian"repetition"thatde Manhas in mindcan only be the"repetition" in those senses I have analyzedabove, the "takingback"thattells us that"theexistence, that has been, now becomes" [131/149]. This is a "temporalpredicament,"to use de Man's judgment, because the now that is privileged by "repetition"is also an after, meaning that the presence of the now presupposesan absence-something like the absence of the girl thatis needed to serve the young man's orphicpassion. Or something Mais ne pas se tournervers Eurydice, ce ne serait pas moins trahir, etre infidele a la force sans mesureet sans prudencede son mouvement,qui ne veutpas Eurydicedans sa veritddiurneet dans son agrdmentquotidien,qui la veut dans son obscuritenocturne,dans son eloignement,avec son corpsfermd et son visage scelle, qui veut la voir, non quand elle est visible, mais quand elle est invisible. . "
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like thatfamous nonmeetingof Psyche andEros: an allegoricalsign for presence, which can take place only in the absence of blinded darkness. How can such a temporaldialectic be recounted? Kierkegaard'sanswer was the "indirectmessage." Kierkegaardcommunicated indirectlythroughpseudonymsandby lettinga pseudonymlike Constantincommunicate ironically, in "thieves' language." IndirectlyConstantintells the readerhow to read the text Repetition, by telling him, in his concluding letter, how not to read it: not as a "comedy, tragedy,novel." And not straight,since its "ways"are "inverse"[190/226]. "Inverse"? The word hardlyexists in Danish but seems to be derived from the Latin inversio, which in classical rhetorics was a term with both syntactical and semantical sense. Syntacticallythe termmeanta reversedorderof the sentence or sentences;semantically the termmeant"tosay in anotherway,"thatis, it translatedtheGreektermallegory. Both these senses of an ordo inversus, a reversed order, combine in Repetition: the young man's allegory is semanticalby repeatinga myth. Constantin'sironic interventionwith his final letter is syntactical: a reversalin the text. Constantintherebygives us a sign confirmedby the letter: thatthe "ways"of the textRepetition are "inverse,"makingthe text into an ironicallegoryof motion: moving, like Diogenes, backandforthbetweeneye and ear, between irony and pathos,between past and presenttime, between concept and story. Whetherall this mobilityfunctionsto organizeor disorganizethe text-and whether ironyand allegoryare unitedor separatedin the conceptof "repetition"-may have to do with our readingof the relationbetween the young man and Constantin,thatis, between pathosandirony,between"repetition"as an "existential"andas a textualpossibility. The irony of Constantinhas the firstandlast wordof the text, but the pathosof the young man creates its tensions. The inversio of the young man seeks life but threatensto leave the text. Constantin'sinversio is a back-and-forthin the wake of Diogenes, who according to anecdote took a walk to refute those "Eleatics"who "deniedmotion"[1 15/131]. But Constantindiffers from Diogenes in using words. Language is his field. The indirect message seems to be that his mobile text keeps language alive-and keeps life within linguistic order. *
*
*
Ordoinversus,the reversed-repeatedorder,meansputtingthings on theirheads: putting them right. The philosophy of the subject inauguratedby Kant and radicalized by Kierkegaardmakes subjectivityinto truth. That is an inversio working ironically in the textRepetition. But thisironyhardlylackspathosandhaseven got some sublimetouches. A late follower of these pre- andpostromantics,Paul Celan, had a sense for this sublime reversal; he once pointed out, "whoever walks on his head, ladies and gentlemenwhoever walks on his head, he has the heavens as an abyss underneathhim."9 2. Paul de Man on the Point of Repetition Paul de Man's interestin "repetition"and "movement"seems to be of an early date. In one of his critical readingsof Heideggerfrom the fifties he finds thatHeideggerbetrays nothing less than "the movement of being" ["TheTemptationof Permanence"38]. In another from the same period he concludes that H6lderlin, contrary to Heidegger's 9. "Der Meridian," Der Meridianund andereProsa 51: "Werauf dem Kopf geht, meine Damen undHerren,-wer auf dem Kopfgeht, der hat den Himmelals Abgrunduntersich."
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assertions, shows no "singularontological reversal,but a lived philosophy of repeated reversal, that is nothing more thanthe notion of becoming."10The odd expression "repeated reversal"readsretournementrepetdin the Frenchoriginal,which seems to be de Man's formulationof the "movementof being"as repetition. Alreadyhere his notionof repetitionseems closer to Kierkegaard'sthanto Heidegger'sWiederholung,thatis, fairly free from thatEntschlossenheit("openingdecisiveness")thatHeideggeruses in Sein und Zeit to connect "repetition"with "fate";insteadde Man seems to be open to "repetition" as a textual phenomenonas well as an "existential"or at least intentionalpossibility. Taking Kierkegaard'sRepetition as an allegory, we could say that Constantinand the young man are strugglingfor the initiativewithin de Man's text. Repetition as a textual phenomenonis developed into the concept of irony in the already-mentionedessay "TheRhetoricof Temporality"from 1969, which must be the startingpoint of an investigationof "repetition"in the de Maniansense of the term. Not only has this been called his "mostfully achievedessay" [Waterslvi], but it has also been judged as the very turningpointleadingfroman earlier,existential-phenomenologicalde Man to a later, deconstructivede Man, exploring rhetoricalanalysis. "TheRhetoricof Temporality" is also the only text (so far published) in which de Man refers to Kierkegaard;and if one were to choose a turningpoint in the essay, itself a turningpoint in de Man's writings,I would suggest the parenthesisin which de Manclaims "repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)"to be the "meaning"of the allegorical sign [207]. In any case thisparenthesismarksa decisive turnin theessay: fromliteraryhistory to epistemology and from allegory to irony. "TheRhetoricof Temporality"is organizedin two parts,the first a historicalstudy of the"symbol,"whereallegoryis introducedas a polemicalcounterpartto "symbol,"the second a more epistemologicalstudyof "irony."In a conclusion the concepts are linked togetherin "theircommon discovery of a truly temporalpredicament"[222]. Textual allegory, in contrastto "symbol,"is said to producea "negative"insight in an "authentically temporalpredicament"[208]-and we observe thatnot only "truly"and "authentically"but also "predicament"seem to be favorite terms. Allegorical insight is called "negative"because the allegoricalsign does not referto "meaning" but to another sign, characterizedby "anteriority." Allegory therefore accentuates"distance"in contrastto the "symbol,"to which de Man ascribes the effort to reachthe full presenceof meaning(or of meaningas presence). But allegory not only remindsus of "distance"but reaches its "negative"insight by establishingits language "in the void of this temporaldifference"[207]. And therede Man's formaldefinitionof allegorysuddenlyacquiresa mysticaltouch: how canlanguage-and notonly allegorical language because allegorical language is here apparentlyan allegory of language in general-be "established"in a "void"?The expressioncarriesa metaphoricalsuggestion of the very type thatde Manis criticizingas mystifyingly"symbolic."But it does not take much reading to discover that de Man in "The Rhetoric of Temporality"uses an abundanceof spatialand/orvisual metaphorsto suggest the temporalityof language,and most strikingare the metaphorsof mirrorsand mirroring. The mirrorbecomes explicit at the end of the essay whereironyis linked to allegory in that common "temporalpredicament." Irony is there called "the reversed mirrorimage"of allegory [225]. This expressionalso strikes me as mystical-are not mirrorimages always "reversed"?what,then,would the reversalof an alreadyreversedmirrorimage look like?-but thephrasegives a visualsuggestionof the"temporalpredicament" 10. "Heidegger's Exegesesof Holderlin,"BlindnessandInsight250. Theoriginal,in Critique100 (Sept.1955),has: "IIn'y a donepas, dansHilderlin,un retournement ontologique unique,mais unephilosophievecuedu retournement repeted, qui n'est autreque la notiondu devenir." 82
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thatincludesa "reversal."(Rememberyoungde Man'sinterestin theretournementrepete 'repeatedreversal'.) The following sentences "temporalize"the mirroringmetaphor,so to speak, by a host of termsindicatingsuddenness: the ironic interventionin allegorical narrationis called "instantaneous,"it takes place "rapidly,""suddenly,""in one single moment." As an example we are given Baudelaire's prose poems, which are said to "climax in the single brief moment of a final pointe" [225 f.]. Pointe could of course mean the "point"of meaningas well as a temporal"instant," the graphicaldot or grammaticalfull stop. Everythingde Man writes on irony in "The Rhetoric of Temporality"emphasizes its sudden break in temporality: time as instant breakinginto time as sequence. With a word like pointe (and all those other words for suddenness),he indicatesa kind of "time"thatis so limited thatit is no longer"time"but instead is a break in time, like a visual dot in the time line. We recognize by now the phenomenonfrom Plato's to eksaifnes in Parmenides and from Kierkegaard'soieblikk and Heidegger's Augenblick. "Repetition(in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)"is what de Man suggests as a solution to the problem of time, "repetition"as the link uniting time as sequence ("allegory")and time as instantexistence ("irony"). De Man emphasizes, however, the Kierkegaardianinterest in the eye that I noted above with allusions to the allegoricalmythical complex Orpheus-Eros-Psyche(and the last is much alluded to in de Man's essay as well). De Man expresses this visual interestby way of this "reversedmirrorimage." And the meaningof the mirroris establishedwith the help of Baudelaire'sDe l'essence du rire (andBaudelaire'srire is unqualifiedlyidentifiedwith "irony").De Man picks upBaudelaire'sexamplewith the manlaughingat himself when falling in thestreet. This has to do with a doubling,dedoublement,of the individualinto a falling man andan observing man. In the state that Baudelairecalls le comique absolue this doubling becomes permanent;according to de Man it is a split of the subject provoking uncanny giddiness: "Ironyis unrelievedvertige, dizziness to the point of madness" [215]. Doubling,split, andvertigoareall spatialphenomenathatareinvestedwith temporal irony by de Man. The intersectionof space with time takes place at that"point"that is a turningpoint as well as a "pointof madness." When de Man a bit furtheron comes to Baudelaire's"instantaneous,""rapid,"and"sudden"pointe,madnessseems againnot far beside the point, so to speak. Thatpointe is namely "the instantat which the two selves ... are simultaneouslypresent,juxtaposed within the same moment";this moment is called "the mode of the present" [226]. And this sounds both like a definition of schizophrenia and like an evocation of that Platonic ousia, usually translated (by Heidegger, for example) as the presence of the present. We may note herethatthis sharp,thin,anddividingpoint-pointe-that de Manuses to describe repetition,or repetitivereversalfrom time into space, is indeed thin but still has a kind of extension: it allows for repetition in the form of reflexion, doubling, mirroring. And it invites the "modeof the present." The only comment I have found on de Man's visual metphors associated with mirroringrepetitionis, of course,JacquesDerrida'sin PsycheM,wherehe quotesde Man's assertion on the "trulytemporalpredicament"discovered by irony and allegory. "The mirroris here the predicament,"writes Derrida,the mirroras a "deadlyand fascinating trap."" What is this-the mirroras trap? Perhaps it is the simple but uncanny effect of mirroringmirrors,something thatWalterBenjaminonce describedbeautifully: "When two mirrorslook intoeach other,Satanplays his mostpopularprankandopens in his own 11. Psyche28: "Lemiroirestici lepredicament....Onestenproieaupiegefataletfascinant dumiroir."Thereis anEnglishtranslation of thisinReadingdeManReading,ed.LindsayWaters andWladGodzich[Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1989]. diacritics / fall 1990
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way (as his partnerdoes in the eyes of lovers) the perspectiveinto eternity."12Derrida, for his part,alludes to the no-less-uncannymythof Eros and Psyche, alreadymentioned here as a backgroundreadingnot only for Kierkegaardbut also for de Man. According to Derridathe blinking meeting of Eros-Psychecreatesgrief, deuil, due to the impossibility of transparencyand presence. The word, or at least "a traceof language,"makes presence impossible and mirroringor reflexion necessary.13 De Man started his essay by defining allegory by way of "repetition (in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)"and ended with irony as a "reversedmirror-image." The question is whether these suggestive termsare new versions of what the young de Man called the moment of being as retournementrepete-or whetherhe has taken an ironicand textualturn. And whetherthis ironic turnis thatof "Satan"or "hispartner"thatis, whetherit is caughtin a mirrortraporopensnew movementsof bothtext andbeing. This is probablylike asking the confusing question whetherde Man's laterwriting on ironyis itself ironic. And the realanswerto this question,andthose above, is probably to be found in the curiously repetitive structureof the typical late-de Man essay: I am thinkingof its convolutedor even circularstructure,with the end reflecting,repeating,or doublingthe beginning. In the best(?) cases this can producethe "dizziness"he found in Baudelaire'scomiqueabsolue and the "reversedmirror-image"of irony (in "TheRhetoric of Temporality").One well-known example is the programmaticarticle"Semiology and Rhetoric,"which begins the collection Allegories of Reading (1979). Here we first get a seductively easygoing polemic against the opposition inside/ outside, regardedas a metaphorand applied to literatureand criticism. Result: "The recurrentdebate opposing intrinsic to extrinsic criticism stands under the aegis of an inside/outside metaphor that is never being seriously questioned" ["Semiology and Rhetoric"5]. De Manthenstartshis "questioning"withexamplesof growingcomplexity, where he turnsgrammaticalmeaningagainstrhetoricalmeaning. Grammaticalmeaning appearsto suspend rhetoricalmeaning; and rhetoricalmeaning suspends grammatical meaning. Finalresult:a stateof "suspendedignorance"[19]. This meansthatwe arenow "suspended"within the metaphorwith which we started,not knowing what is "in"and whatis "out";we areneither"in"nor"out"butratherfallingbetween. Andperhaps,while "falling,"we rememberthatthe "fall"in "TheRhetoricof Temporality"was associated with vertige and irony andthereafterdevelops into de Man's most obsessive metaphor.14 Or is that "fall" taking place within a "reversedmirror-image"(or was it a "repeated reversal"?)of thatvery "reversal"with which we began? At theend of the whole collectionAllegories ofReading,a similar"reversal"is again "repeated"but now explicitly as irony. De Man then finishes his readingsof Rousseau by summarizinghis "mainpoint,"also called a "suddenrevelation": what is revealedis a "discontinuity,"and this suddenand discontinuous"mainpoint"is "disseminated"all over"thepointsof thefigurallineorallegory,"thusbecominga continuousdiscontinuitya permanentsuddenness,or "thepermanentparabasisof an allegory." Becoming: irony. This irony repeatsthe "suspendedignorance"from the firstessay, but suspendsnot only an innocentor limited or temporary"ignorance"but actually the whole "line": irony is now nothing less than "the systematic undoing . . . of understanding"["Excuses 12. Das Passagen-Werk1049: "Blickenzwei Spiegel einanderan, so spielt der Satan seinen liebsten Trick und offnetauf seine Weise (wie sein Partner in den Blicken der Liebendentut) die Perspektive ins Unendliche." 13. Psyche 31: "Carnous l'avons vu, si le deuil n'estpas annonc par le brisdu miroirmais survient comme le miroir lui-mnmeque par l'intercession du mot. C'est une invention et une interventiondu mot ... Le tain, qui interditla transparenceet autorise l' inventiondu miroir,c'est une trace de langue." 14. Some instances of "fall" are noted by Deborah Esch in "ADefence of Rhetoric I The Triumphof Reading," Readingde Man Reading 73. 84
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(Confessions)"300 f.]. Irony, which startedout as a sudden event, has now become permanent-and this strikingparadoxcould well mean thatde Man has entereda trap: ironic"repetition"has been reversed into its own "reversed mirror-image." Already in "The Rhetoric of Temporality"de Man insisted-in contrastto most explorersof the concept of "irony"thattheironicbreakwas "repetitive."At theendofAllegories ofReadingironyhasbecome a "permanent"effect "disseminated"all over the very "line"it was supposedto break. In "TheRhetoric of Temporality"irony was still a "point"breakinglines; in Allegories of Readingthis"point"has growninto the"mainpoint"spreadingover the "line"of all other "points." In anotherlate essay, "Pascal's Allegory of Persuasion,"we learn thatPascal uses zero as a breakor "rupture"of the line of numbersquite analogous to the "parabasis"of irony thatde Man uses as the rhetoricalfigure to breakan allegorical"line." The Pascal essay goes even further:de Man states thatthe "rupture"of the line of numberseffected by zero (read: the ironicbreakof an allegorical"line")cannot"belocatedin a single point ... but thatit is all-pervading"[12]. In "TheRhetoricof Temporality"the ironic effect depended on the final pointe that, in Allegories of Reading, had grown into the "main point." In thePascalessay thepointseems to be gone (orcannotbe found)while the ironic effect remains. The conclusionon ironic"disruption"as "all-pervading"maybe an effect of what Benjamincalled "Satan'smost popularprank": the mirroringmirrors. And it takes de Man to remarkableconsequences, consideringhis earlieressays: in the Pascal essay he states that irony is no longer "susceptible ... to definition," it is not even "intelligible,"and "it cannot be put to work as a device of textual analysis" [12]. It follows thatirony disappearsas a concept or "device"from de Man's last essays. "Repetition"in the sense of mirroringand reflexion does not disappear,however. In "Autobiographyas De-Facement"we readabouta "specularmoment,"but this"moment" is no "event"-that is, no "point"and thereforeno ironic interruption-but rathera "part of all understanding"including"knowledgeof self" [70 f.]. This epistemological idea of reflexion with its vaguely Freudiantouchcould no doubthave been developed into quite another "repetition"than that ironic "point"we met earlier, but still being a kind of "repetition"thatcould be associatedwith Kierkegaard.But late de Manhas a suggestion of quite another "repetition"that seems far away from any "existential"sense of this prolific term. Now it is "repetition"as mechanicalreduplicationwithoutthe slightesthint of any "reversal"or ironic "point." The termnow is stutter,coming up a few times in de Man's late essays on "aesthetic ideology" and associated with something he calls "theessentially prosaic natureof art" ["Hegel on the Sublime" 152]. This "nature"he derives (as always) from a linguistic axiom: thatthe linguistic sign refers to both itself as sign and beyond itself as reference or meaning. Philosophicalaesthetics,as de Manreadsit in Kantand Hegel, operateson the level of meaningbut presupposesa level where the sign is "inscribed"as sign-this he calls the"prosaicmaterialityof theletter"-as thebasis or "bottomline"thataesthetics can neitherdo withoutnormakeinto meaning["PhenomenalityandMaterialityin Kant" 144]. De Man may well be inspired by Derrida here, since Derrida uses terms like repetition, iteration, differance in his deconstructionsof "Westernmetaphysics"and always with the argumentalreadydeveloped in his criticismof Husserl: thatthe linguistic sign has an "originallyrepetitive structure.""5De Man now states that the sign in its materialaspect as "inscription"is alreadya "repetition"that cannotbe used to perform anythingbut "repetition":"Likea stutter,or a brokenrecord,it [the sign] makes what it keeps repeatingworthless and meaningless"["Hegel on the Sublime" 150].
15. Lavoix etlephenomene [Paris: PUF, 1967]56: "lastructureoriginairementrepetitive."
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If this is the endof theline for de Man,thenameof thatend is apparently"repetition." But is it ironic repetition? allegoricalrepetition? Is thereanythingleft of repetition(in the Kierkegaardiansense of the term)? Not according to program(but with the resevation that the stutter is by no means developed into a program): the stutteringrepetition seems more like a mechanical interruptionemerging from linguistic "materiality"but still purely auditive. Stuttering has no "point"-and perhaps de Man associates it with "prosaicmateriality"since it seems free from visuality. Stutteringis in any case devoid of anythinglike "intention" and definitely has no "existential"pathos. Still, visuality-and perhapsa kind of irony and even allegory-sneaks back into "repetition"by way of the metaphorthat de Man uses to illustrate his meaningless "stutter":the brokenrecord. The recordbeing brokenby its own signs is a kind of visual interventionin the auditivescenery. But it is not only visual: it shows tracesof language (as Derridano doubtwould put it). "Record"could be a gramophonerecordbut also a documentor even a story, thatis, any sequence or line of events. If thereis an auditive "break"in this "record"it is visually repairedby the expression"brokenrecord." This metaphorgives visuality to the "break"andeven a kind of meaningto the "meaningless" that the sentence refers to. By the symbolic power of the metaphor-and against what seem to be de Man's prosaicintentionswith his "stutter"-the "break"in therecordleads us back to thatsudden"break"or "point"thatde Manearlierassociatedwith "repetition" and called irony. Thus, irony ironicallycomes back to de Man's recordat the very moment when he has droppedall irony. A reversaltakesplace when reversalsareleft out of consideration. Perhapslanguageis takinga kind of revenge-that poor languagethatde Man (as quoted above) found establishedin a "void"and then never tiredof criticizing for covering up this basic baselessness with the feigned meaningof symbols and metaphors. Language takes its revenge by providing de Man with a meaningful metaphor with symbolic dimensions exactly when he declares language to be a "stutter,"a "meaningless" repetitionof sounds. Or was it perhapsthe "movementof being"thatremindedus of its retournementrepete',to say it with the young de Man-reminded us of kinesis, the Greek termthatConstantinConstantiusaskedus to "considerseriously"as a preparationfor that "easy"dialectic of repetition? WORKS CITED Benjamin,Walter. Das Passagen-Werk. Frankfurt-f-M:GSV, 1982. de Man, Paul. "Autobiographyas De-facement." TheRhetoric of Romanticism. New York: ColumbiaUP, 1984. "Excuses (Confessions)." Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. "Hegel on the Sublime."Displacement: Derrida andAfter. Ed. MarkKrupnick. Bloomington: IndianaUP, 1983. . "Heidegger's Exegeses of Holderlin." Blindness and Insight. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1983. . "Pascal'sAllegory of Persuasion."AllegoryandRepresentation. Ed. StephenJ. Greenblatt. Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUP, 1981. . "Phenomenalityand Materialityin Kant." Hermeneutics: Questionsand Prospects. Ed. Gary Shapiroand Alan Sica. Amherst: U of MassachusettsP, 1984. . "TheRhetoricof Temporality."Blindnessand Insight. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1983. "The Semiology of Rhetoric." Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. "The Temptationof Permanence."Critical Writings1953-1978. Ed. Lindsay Waters. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1989. 86
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Derrida,Jacques. Psyche: Inventionsde l'autre. Paris: Galilee, 1987. Kant, Immanuel. Kritikder Urteilskraft. 1790. Reclam, 1963. Kierkegaard,S0ren. Kierkegaard's Writings. Trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong. Princeton: PrincetonUP, 1983. Samlede Vaerker. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1963. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Oeuvres completes. Paris: Pleiade, 1961. Waters,Lindsay, ed. "Introduction."Critical Writings1953-1978. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1989.
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