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FIGURAL LANGUAGE
IN T H E N O V E L

W
FIGURAL LANGUAGE
IN THE NOVEL
The Flowers of Speech from
Cervantes to Joyce

R A M O N SALDIVAR

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

 Copyright © 1984 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Guildford, Surrey

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be
found on the last printed page of this book

ISBN 0-691-06587-X

This book has been composed in Linotron Aldus

Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books

are printed on aad-free paper, and binding materials
are chosen for strength and durability

Printed in the United States of America

by Princeton University Press
Princeton, New Jersey
For Paulette
 Table of Contents

PREFACE XL

CHAPTER ONE: Rhetoric and the Figures of Form:

Peirce, Nietzsche, and the Novel 3
CHAPTER TWO: In Quest of Authority: Cervantes, Don
Quijote, and the Grammar of Proper Language 25
CHAPTER THREE: The Rhetoric of Desire: Stendhal's Le
Rouge et Ie Noir. Tl

CHAPTER FOUR: The Apotheosis of Subjectivity:

Performative and Constative in Melville's Moby-
Dick 110

CHAPTER FIVE: Reading the Letter of the Law: Thomas

Hardy's ]ude the Obscure 156
CHAPTER SIX: The Flowers of Speech: James Joyce's A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses 182
AFTERWORD 249

INDEX 259
 For there is a language of flowers.
For there is a sound reasoning upon
all flowers.
CHRISTOPHER SMART
Jubilate Agno

Now, to be on anew and basking again

in the panaroma of all flores of speech.
JAMES JOYCE
Finnegans Wake

Such a flower [the heliotrope of Plato or Hegel, Nietzsche

or Bataille] always bears its double within itself, whether
it be seed or type. . . . The heliotrope can always be
releve. And it can always become a dried flower in a book.
There is always, absent from every garden, a dried flower
in a book.
JACQUES DERRIDA
White Mythology
 Preface

Every novel, every didactic poem that is truly poetic,

establishes first its peculiar individuality.
FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL
Werke 8:150

My idea for this book rose from a passage in Melville, in which

the naive young Ishmael, faced with the fantastic and awesome
circumstances of the hunt for Moby Dick, admits that the entire
situation was "so mystical and well nigh ineffable . . . that I
almost despair of putting it in comprehensible form." These
words made me consider whether the wonder of the story Ish­
mael relates in Moby-Dick is finally caused less by the whale
than by Ishmael's dogged but successful attempts to represent
an aspect of the unknowable and ineffable in narrative.
What kind of "despair" was this, and what kind of "com­
prehensible form" does Ishmael provide? At base, the questions
seemed to involve not just the formal features of the narrative,
but also the entire enterprise of storytelling, of narration itself.
Ishmael could not understand the meaning of those fabulous
events without first naming the "ineffable" and taming the
"mystical." This could be done only by constructing a "syntax"
to organize sentences and to establish the most basic links be­
tween subjects and objects, between words and things. His task
was to formulate the very possibility of a grammar by which
the mythical and subjective lyricism of his oceanic visions might
be meaningfully communicated.
It then struck me that it is this very possibility of expression
and representation through narration which forms the funda­
mental assumption of all narrative fiction. All "poor fictional-
ists," to use Trollope's phrase, must be in fact first the authors
of a system of expression before they can be authors of particular
expressions. In an interview published shortly before the ap-
xii PREFACE

pearance of Swann's Way in 1913, Marcel Proust expressed

precisely this idea in remarkably similar terms: "I first perceived
[the elements of my book] deep within me without understand­
ing them, and have had as much difficulty putting them into
intelligible form as if they were alien to the intelligence. ..."
The present study analyzes the assumptions behind such state­
ments in order to examine the processes by which narrative
establishes the grammar and syntax proper to the expression
of its particular meaning. Following Nietzsche and Charles Sanders
Peirce, I have termed these processes the creation of rhetorical
form. My book investigates the enabling conditions of narrative
fiction and the various ways in which modern narrative seeks
to create an epistemological ground upon which coherent ver­
sions of the world may be produced. In detailed readings, I trace
this central problem of narrative from Cervantes, to Stendhal,
Herman Melville, Thomas Hardy, and James Joyce.
These readings, however, are based on assumptions of a more
general nature. First, I assume that at the center of each literary
text stands the central question of "how can the story be told?"
Every novel in its own way attempts to answer this question
by creating figures and narrative stances that will allow the
truth of the story to shine forth. While each novel is distinct
and attempts to locate its own procedure for the expression of
meaning, the interpretation of any text will always appeal to
narrative as the path to knowledge.
Second, since literary language seems persistently tempted
to fulfill itself in one single moment, in the unique expression
which would explain its ineffable mysteries, we are constantly
faced with the frustration of attempting to define something
that continually resists definition. The novel is always "novel,"
always something new, and constantly subverts our general­
izing tendencies. As soon as one definition for the genre is
offered, a series of texts arises to belie the definition. Again the
notion of storytelling is at issue: how is one to specify the
 PREFACE xiii

history of the relations among the various elements of this

subversive genre?
Third, the problem of interpretation is never simply one among
others; it is the problem of problems. Literary theory has always
taken the stand that the interpretation of narrative may be
accomplished simply by reading through the language of the
text toward some external, non-linguistic object of interest. I
would like to propose in contrast a theory of reading which
concerns itself in practical terms with the texture and the rhe­
torical resources of language, as well as with the formal and
referential aspects of the work at hand. To read is to question
and to understand these resources, to see them "forcing, ad­
justing, abbreviating, omitting, padding, inventing, falsifying,
and whatever else is of the essence of interpreting" (On the
Genealogy of Morals, III, 24). It is to see the aesthetic structure
of knowledge. I do not claim a special privilege for my readings.
No point of view, including my own, can ever be entirely free
from the rhetorical screening of the real which interpretation
necessarily imposes upon us. But I do claim that a critical aware­
ness of this rhetorical screen can provide insight into the validity
of any statement which seeks to describe or prescribe the real.
My procedure is a basic one. I reevaluate the texts in the
light of their own individual concerns with the story to be told.
I allow the text to formulate its own theory of interpretation.
I then place these distinctive data about the novel in a literary
history, a generic story. To discuss these and related issues, I
turn in the following chapters of this study to close readings of
Cervantes, Stendhal, Melville, Hardy, and Joyce after a brief
consideration of the nature and limitations of critical discourse.
While it is comforting to assume that critical discourse is neutral
and does not affect the subject it considers, we have reached a
point in literary studies where it is no longer possible nor fruitful
to ignore the fact that the assumptions and conventions of lit­
erary criticism affect, support, and to some extent condition the
results of our reading. "To pretend that we can go direct to the
xiv PREFACE

text," argues Colin MacCabe, "is to take literary criticism at

its word and believe that the text is a simple and definable object.
But every text is already articulated with other texts which
determine its possible meaning and no text can escape the dis­
courses of literary criticism in which it is referred to, named,
and identified." Nowhere is insight into the relationships be­
tween literary and critical discourse clearer than in the works
of Charles Sanders Peirce and Friedrich Nietzsche.

I am grateful to colleagues and friends who read various drafts

or sections of this book. Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller read
the book in early drafts and made many beneficial comments.
Charles Sherry, Walter L. Reed, Warwick Wadlington, Larry
Carver, and Wayne Lesser helped me overcome difficulties in
the argument. I made many changes of both substance and style
in response to their objections. The main part of the book was
written in 1979 during a research leave of absence from the
University of Texas at Austin. The National Council on Chi-
canos in Higher Education and the University Research Institute
of the University of Texas at Austin supported my research and
writing with generous grants, and I am grateful to these insti­
tutions for their assistance.
Portions of Chapters Two, Five, and Six appeared in MLN 1
ELH, and The James Joyce Quarterly respectively. I am grateful
to the editors and publishers concerned for permission to reprint
this material.
For the sake of convenience and economy, I cite the German,
Spanish, and French texts of Nietzsche, Cervantes, and Stendhal
in translation where translations exist. In those cases where my
argument depends on the original phrasing, or where in my
opinion the existing translations depart too radically from the
letter of the original, I offer my own translations. I have used
the standard primary language critical editions.
I wish to dedicate this book with love to Paulette, estrella y
norte de mis caminos.
FIGURAL LANGUAGE
IN THE NOVEL
 W ONE W

Rhetoric and the Figures of Form:

Peirce, Nietzscher and
the Novel

The symbol may, with Emerson's Sphynx,

say to man:
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE

Echoing the sentiments of many literary figures, Gustave Flau­

bert once wrote that "Criticism occupies the lowest place in the
literary hierarchy; as regards form, almost always; and as re­
gards 'moral value,' incontestably. It comes after rhyming games
and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness."1
Understandably, Flaubert's statement is not one that literary
critics have wished to face in the hundred years since it was
written. Blunt and forthright as his words are, and without a
trace of mitigating irony, Flaubert's accusation seems all too
uncomfortably close to the mark. And yet, the literary vocation
which Flaubert himself did so much to raise to the highest of
"literary hierarchies" has itself not escaped the sting of truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche, himself not one to mince words, claimed
in his "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" in The Birth of Tragedy
that while "art and not morality is . . . the truly metaphysical
activity of man," it is still the case that "the existence of the
world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon." He then
adds, however, that all life and art depend on "deception, points
1 Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance; cited and trans, by Francis Steegmuller

in the introduction to The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857 (Cambridge,

Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), p. xv. Here, as
in other chapters of my study, I will cite the original language m the body of
the text only when the argument depends on the original phrasing.
4 PEIRCE, NIETZSCHE

of view, and the necessity of perspectives and error."2 Without

exploring at this point the implications of Nietzche's claim that
life and art depend on "the necessity of error," it is worth our
while to note that Nietzsche's most literary texts, The Birth of
Tragedy and On the Genealogy of Morals, examine the nature
of the critical act and conclude with a position that, while not
inconsistent with Flaubert's, allows to the critic a justifiable base
for his error and a modest share in the novelist's world. In fact,
it is one of Nietzsche's more interesting conclusions that the
critical thinker, represented on a worldly level by Socrates and
on a more refined plane by Apollo, stands in the same relation
to the reality of existence as the aesthetically sensitive man, the
Dionysian poet, stands in relation to the reality of appearances.
Both are willing inventors of the relations among the images
they see.
Nietzsche's parable of the split between the Apollonian and
the Dionysian tempers might well serve to illustrate the im­
plications of the assumed dichotomy between the creative and
the critical act and of its relevance to the study of meaning in
the novel. Flaubert once again provides the pertinent text. Writ­
ing to Louise Colet, Flaubert notes a moment in his writing
during which he seems to have attained the ideal impersonality
he has sought to achieve in his work: ". . . it is a delicious
thing to write," he says, "to be no longer yourself but to move
in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance,
as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest
on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also
the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered,
even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned

2 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New

York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1967), pp. 22-23 (hereafter cited as BT).
I have also consulted the new Nietzsche Werke Kritische Gesamtausgabe (WKG),
ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 5 vols, to date (New York: Walter
de Gruyter, 1972- ), Die Geburt der Tragodie, vol. 3:1:11-12.
 PEIRCE, NIETZSCHE 5

eyes."3 In this "delicious" moment, the line between self and

other, between subject and object disappears, and the writer
dissolves into the blissful unity of the universe. It is a mood
Nietzsche describes as Dionysian, in which "everything sub­
jective vanishes into self-forgetfulness. . . . Under the charm
of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man
reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated, hostile, or
subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her lost
son, man" (BT, p. 37). As Flaubert will later realize, and as
Nietzsche now explains, this ecstatic moment brings with it,
however, the unexpectedly negative result that individual ex­
istence, divorced from Dionysian unity with the world, now
seems meaningless and absurd: "In this sense the Dionysian
man resembles Hamlet: both have looked truly into the essence
of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits
action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal
nature of things" (BT, p. 60). In the light of this existential
knowledge concerning his worldly isolation, man loses the abil­
ity to act: "Knowledge kills action," writes Nietzsche, because
"action requires the veil of illusion." Apollo, "Der Scheinende,"
as the god of appearances and dreams, now arises to represent
for Nietzsche the creative integration of truth and illusion which
makes human action possible. "When the danger to will is
greatest," Nietzsche argues, Dionysian insight and Apollonian
veiling merge to create the grandest of illusions, art itself: "art
approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone
knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror
or absurdity of existence into notions with which one could
live" (BT, p. 60).
The conjoined Dionysian and Apollonian aspects of the hu­
man imagination, creating "notions with which one can live,"
thus represent for Nietzsche one enlightened form of the union
3 Steegmuller, T h e Letters of G u s t a v e Flaubert, p. 203. Letter of 23 December

1853 (no. 446) in O e u v r e s c o m p l e t e s d e G u s t a v e Flaubert, C o r r e s p o n d a n c e

1852-1854, vol. 3 (Paris: Louis Conard, 1927), pp. 404-405.
6 PEIRCE, NIETZSCHE

between creative action and critical insight. This union is of

course a mythical one and thus not necessarily one which we
the inhabitants of the historical world are likely to experience.
And, indeed, Nietzsche thereafter introduces into this happy
marriage of illusion and truth the disrupting figure of Socrates,
the theoretical man, who also suffers the malaise of illusion
but not at the Apollonian level, where illusion is an act of willful
self-deception. Apollonian insight stresses the doubly fantastic
quality of narrative realism. It not only recognizes that all rep­
resentation is an imitation of a thing or an event and not the
represented thing or event itself, but also that empirical reality
is itself already a representation, a fantastic creation of the
human imagination.
Socratic knowledge is a construction based on empirically
given elements and the empirically observed correlations among
them. In contrast to the Apollonian vision, which never forgets
that its representations are but the signs of appearance and not
the represented things, the Socratic view imagines that its in­
sights reveal what actually "is": "Whenever the truth is un­
covered, the artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still
remains covering even after such uncovering; but the theoretical
man enjoys and finds satisfaction in the discarded covering and
finds the highest object of his pleasure in the process of an ever
happy uncovering that succeeds through his own efforts" (BT,
p. 94). Thus, while Apollo and Dionysos continue to veil and
unveil for the sake of truth this image of the "one nude goddess"
of truth, the critical thinker is perversely enraptured by the
fetish of the search rather than by its ends. This is the case
even of Lessing, writes Nietzsche, "the most honest of theo­
retical men, [who] dared to announce that he cared more for
the search after truth than for truth itself" (BT, p. 95). Lessing
had thereby revealed the secret of critical discourse to be its
profound illusion that its cognitive powers could penetrate the
deepest mysteries represented in art, to illuminate and correct
them. This "sublime metaphysical illusion," as Nietzsche calls
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