Idealism without Absolutes: Philosophy and Romantic Culture

Romanticism and the Invention of Literature

15 Romanticism and the Invention of Literature
Jan Plug This is no—or hardly any, ever so little—literature. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination I Contrary to Derrida’s provocative assertion, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and JeanLuc Nancy’s seminal L’absolu littéraire maintains not only that there is literature but that its conception can be dated rigorously as the advent of Romanticism. But what can it mean that Romanticism marks the “invention of literature”? That it “constitutes, very exactly, the inaugural moment of literature as the production of its own theory—and of theory thinking itself as literature”?1 As Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy’s discussion of the literary absolute will make clear, even to speak of the invention of literature is in effect to describe a metaphysics in which literature’s self-conceptualization is identical with its very “being” as literary. As long as literature “is” as its own theorization, its ontology will be indistinguishable from that of thinking. Literature’s theorization of itself closes it off as self-contained, in effect excluding all difference in its relation to itself, the (self-) identity of literature as its own thinking. The literary absolute recuperates difference for identity, establishing itself as the ultimate identity of being and thinking, reality and ideality. As such, it ultimately maintains the structure of absolute idealism with the “difference” that the absolute now finds its ultimate fulfillment in the literary.2 16 Jan Plug As long as literature is thought as self-production and self-theorization, there can be no literature where there is no thought, literature as the thinking of itself. How to think literature without already being implicated in its ontological and metaphysical claims? Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy would seem to bypass precisely this critical question. For them the literary absolute not only justifies but necessitates a “properly philosophical” reading of Romanticism because of an “inherent necessity in the thing itself” that is, however, properly neither philosophical nor literary, but rather their absolute identity. Die ganze Geschichte der modernen Poesie ist ein fortlaufender Kommentar zu dem kurzen Text der Philosophie: Alle Kunst soll Wissenschaft, und alle Wissenschaft soll Kunst werden; Poesie und Philosophie sollen vereinigt sein.3 L’histoire toute entière de la poésie est un commentaire suivi du bref texte de la philosophie; tout art doit devenir science, et toute science devenir art; poésie et philosophie doivent être réunies. (AL 95) (The whole history of modern poetry is a running commentary on the following brief philosophical text: all art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one.) (CF 115)4 Absolutely crucial for an understanding of the literary absolute, this fragment nonetheless reveals that the identity of poetry and philosophy is hardly unproblematic. Translating dem kurzen Text der Philosophie as “the following brief philosophical text,” the English identifies the text of philosophy as a determinate text.5 It is not that philosophy itself or as such is a brief text that is commented upon by modern poetry; rather, the philosophical text says that art should become science, science art, and that poetry and philosophy should be united. By (over)determining the text of philosophy, the translation reduces the desired unity of philosophy and poetry to a brief philosophical text and sublates the apparent unity, thereby reasserting the priority of the philosophical over that alleged unity. Insofar as it is philosophy that announces the desirability, if not the present reality, of that unity, philosophy takes precedence over art and even over the unity of art and science. As long as this relation is maintained and philosophy usurps its ostensible unification with poetry in a dialectical movement, that unity will remain merely apparent. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy’s argument for a philosophical reading of the literary absolute would seem justified by such a (re)imposition of a philosophical ascendancy over poetry, but it also risks becoming complicit in philosophy’s metaphysical claims. Their own translation presents the possi- 17 Romanticism and the Invention of Literature bility of another reading. While the German speaks of “running,” fortlaufen, the French, though idiomatically perfect, introduces the ambiguity of a commentary that can be read as “running,” un commentaire suivi, or as “followed by,” suivi du, the brief text of philosophy. The difference is crucial, if imperceptible , since what is at stake is whether commentary is continuous, consequential , running, as we say, running...