Literary Theory Today

The Critic in the Wilderness : On Hartman's Romance with Romanticism

THE CRITIC IN THE WILDERNESS : ON HARTMAN'S ROMANCE WITH RO說 ANTICISM Martin Aske 1 begin with a proposition which 1 think few wou!d disagree with…that the most ambitious and innovative writing on the Romantic poets in recent years has come from the so呻called "Ya!e" critics. It is obvious that the work of Haro!d Bloom, J. HillisMil1er, paul de Man and Geoffrey Hartman .has been formidable in the rewriting of 訣。 mantic poetics. 1 And "poetics" needs to be stressed. We can say, perhaps, that it is less in the realm of "practical criticism" (the analysis of individual texts favoured by the "New Criticism") but rather in the effort towards a theory not just of Romanticism but of reading (of 1iterature in 惡eneraI) that these writers have issued their rhetorical challenge. This preference of theory to more conventional critica! 阻axis should not be taken qualitatively 的 a form of se1f-evident literary superiority; on the contrary, the tendency towards an aUiance of speculation_ and c10se reading, as a mode of "phi1osophical criticism,"L ~creates its own problems and anxieties, intensìfying fhe fatality of reading rather than aUaying it. 1 have neither the wish nor the ability to give a summarizin惡 account of each of the four writers mentioned, or else to subsume them as a coUective phenomenon and review them as a "tota1ity." Rather 1 should 1ike to concentrate on some 必spects relating to the work of just one of them, Geoffrey Hartman. The wide-rangin息， speculative scope of his most recent book, Criticism in the Wilderness (1 980), invites one or two reflections on the development of certain theoretical issues alre以ly evident in !)eyond Formalism (1 970) and The Fate of Reading (1975). But first; a brief retrospect is perhaps called for. We need go back no further than a decade to find a moment of particular significance for our 的emιIn 1971 two books appeared, antithetical and, from a theoretical point of view, seemingly irreconcilable: M. H. Abrams' 也旦旦至1 Supernatura1ism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, and Paul de Man's Blindness and Insi又ht: Essays 186 in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. Were the historical coincidence to be interpreted "positiveJy,1I it might be argued that both texts constitute an interestingJy fertiJe moment in a larger dialectic, as they emerge simuJtaneously and subvert each other, in order to clear the way for further discourse. But this is not how they have been accommodated. Their profoundly antithetical relation has revealed the 迪拉豆豆 on the brink of which a great deal of criticism, including de Man's, has been hovering ever since. Obvious differences present themselves. Abrams' work is based on a reverent appeal to "primary" texts, de Man refuses that appeal. Abrams trusts in an unambiguous, transparent movement between text and reader, where the critic makes use of his position as a privileged observer to elucidate hitherto unrecognized relations within a text or between a series of texts. But the "postulate of a privileged observer," says de Man, is a fallacy, as is the possibility of "a finite and single interpretation" of a text: "There are no longer any standpoints that can a priori be considered privi1eged, no structure that functions v叫idlyas a model for other structures, no postulate of ontological hierarchy that can serve 的 an organizir可 principle from which particulal' structures derive in the manner in which_a deity can be said to engender man and the wor1d.1I3 Abrams, a genuine literary humanist, has no doubts about the status of his activity as a critiCj interpretation plays a secondary role, yet is a necessary adjunct to creative writing. The literary text and its interpretation exist in a kind of ideal, mutually enabJing simultanei哼， repeating a symbolic correspondence between language and object which Abrams takes to be the primary achievement of 紋。 mantic discourse. But in de Man's view, the critic's entry into the hermeneutic circle is an 友盟主 gesture， insofar as interpretation, as a mode of understanding, must always la在 behind its "object." For lan惡uage itself can never be anythipg more than a 旦旦旦旦的errida)， a mode of transference and deferral rather than one of precise cO.r:r.espondence between terms.τhe ironic "temporal 抖抖叫 ure of the hermeneutic process," where 門he implicit Y foreknowledge [contained within the liter治ry text] is 187 always temporaHy ahead of the explicit Interpretative statement that trìes to catch up with 屯的 is a...