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Sense, Nietzsche defines truth, veritas, not as a statement
or representation of things as they are, but as a tropological
fabrication, in short, as literature. Truth, says Nietzsche, is
a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropo-
morphisms. The reader will note that Nietzsche sees cultural
forms, including literature, as warlike, aggressive, a mobile
army that must be resisted by equally warlike weapons
wielded by the critic. The reader will also note that Nietzsche
gives an example of this by using an anthropomorphism of
his own in calling truth a mobile army. He turns truth s own
weapon against itself.
No doubt about it, these two forms of critical reading,
rhetorical reading and cultural studies, have contributed to
the death of literature. It is no accident that critical reading
as demystification arose in exacerbated forms at just the
time literature s sovereign power for cultural indoctrination
was beginning to fade. We no longer so much want, or are
willing, to be bamboozled by literature.
WHY I LOVED THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
I return now to The Swiss Family Robinson. I shall use it to
exemplify the uneasy co-presence of the two kinds of reading
I have defined. I have just re-read this novel, almost sixty-five
years after my last reading, to see what I make of it now. I
must confess that I have been as enchanted, or almost, as I was
at my first reading, at about the age of ten. I can still see that
tree house in my mind s eye, the one the Robinson family
builds after being shipwrecked. I have rediscovered again that
wonderful, safely uninhabited, tropical island, teeming with
126
On
Literature
every sort of bird, beast, fish, tree, and plant. I can still see the
fully developed farm the Robinson family constructs, with a
winter house and a summer house, farm buildings, fields of
potatoes, rice, cassava, vegetable and flower gardens, fruit
trees, fences, aqueducts, all sorts of domesticated animals
multiplying like anything ducks, geese, ostriches, cattle,
pigs, pigeons, dogs, a tame jackal, tame flamingos (!), and so
on. You name it, they have got it in abundance plenty of
sugar, salt, flour, rice, utensils, even farm machinery. I still
rejoice in the decision the father, mother, and two of the
children make at the end to stay in their colony of New
Switzerland, even when they are rescued and could go back
to civilization.
I think I know now, however, just why I found The Swiss
Family Robinson so enchanting. One of my earliest memories is
of being carried in a pack basket on my father s back on a
camping trip with the rest of my family and another family to
the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York State.
Camping out was for me magical in the same way that read-
ing The Swiss Family Robinson was magical. Equipped with no
more than you could carry on your back, you could set up
camp, cut some fragrant balsam boughs for bedding, make a
camp fire for cooking and heat, and, in short, create a whole
new domestic world in the wilderness. I can still remember
the pleasure of falling asleep in the open-fronted lean-to
with the other children, wrapped in my blanket (no sleeping
bags then), smelling the balsam, and listening to the murmur
of the adults voices as they sat by the dying campfire. The Swiss
Family Robinson is a hyperbolic version of that pleasure. It is a
deep satisfaction of the nest-making instinct. It is the creation,
out of the materials at hand (plus a few things saved from the
wreck, of course!), of a new world, a metaworld. In this, The
127
How to Read Literature
Swiss Family Robinson is a marvelous allegory of what I am
claiming every literary work does. Within the story the family
creates a new realm, with hard work and ingenuity. The
reader of the book creates within his or her imagination a
new realm. This is a virtual reality that for the time seems
more real, and certainly more worthy to be lived in, than the
real world.
READING THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON LENTO
So much for the allegro reading the lento reading, the suspi-
cious reading, produces something very different. Almost
sixty-five years of training and professional practice have
made me unable to suspend my habits of critical reading. I
would certainly not have been able to perform the lento read-
ing at the age of ten, nor would I have wanted to. Evidence of
that resistance is my annoyance when my mother told me the
work is a fiction and pointed out the author s name on the
title page. It was the beginning of a break in the magic.
This fictitious, factitious quality is rubbed in, unnecessar-
ily, it seems to me, by a gratuitous disclaimer on the verso of
the title page of one paperback copy of The Swiss Family Robinson
I have procured: This is a work of fiction. All the characters
and events portrayed in the book are fictitious, and any
resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Why bother to say that? Who but an innocent child of ten,
such as I was, would think The Swiss Family Robinson is anything
but a work of fiction? Who in the world would think at this
late date of suing Tor Books for giving away secrets about real
people in a book first published, in the original German ver-
sion, in 1812? Moreover, the disclaimer, it happens, as is so [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl aikidobyd.xlx.pl
Sense, Nietzsche defines truth, veritas, not as a statement
or representation of things as they are, but as a tropological
fabrication, in short, as literature. Truth, says Nietzsche, is
a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropo-
morphisms. The reader will note that Nietzsche sees cultural
forms, including literature, as warlike, aggressive, a mobile
army that must be resisted by equally warlike weapons
wielded by the critic. The reader will also note that Nietzsche
gives an example of this by using an anthropomorphism of
his own in calling truth a mobile army. He turns truth s own
weapon against itself.
No doubt about it, these two forms of critical reading,
rhetorical reading and cultural studies, have contributed to
the death of literature. It is no accident that critical reading
as demystification arose in exacerbated forms at just the
time literature s sovereign power for cultural indoctrination
was beginning to fade. We no longer so much want, or are
willing, to be bamboozled by literature.
WHY I LOVED THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
I return now to The Swiss Family Robinson. I shall use it to
exemplify the uneasy co-presence of the two kinds of reading
I have defined. I have just re-read this novel, almost sixty-five
years after my last reading, to see what I make of it now. I
must confess that I have been as enchanted, or almost, as I was
at my first reading, at about the age of ten. I can still see that
tree house in my mind s eye, the one the Robinson family
builds after being shipwrecked. I have rediscovered again that
wonderful, safely uninhabited, tropical island, teeming with
126
On
Literature
every sort of bird, beast, fish, tree, and plant. I can still see the
fully developed farm the Robinson family constructs, with a
winter house and a summer house, farm buildings, fields of
potatoes, rice, cassava, vegetable and flower gardens, fruit
trees, fences, aqueducts, all sorts of domesticated animals
multiplying like anything ducks, geese, ostriches, cattle,
pigs, pigeons, dogs, a tame jackal, tame flamingos (!), and so
on. You name it, they have got it in abundance plenty of
sugar, salt, flour, rice, utensils, even farm machinery. I still
rejoice in the decision the father, mother, and two of the
children make at the end to stay in their colony of New
Switzerland, even when they are rescued and could go back
to civilization.
I think I know now, however, just why I found The Swiss
Family Robinson so enchanting. One of my earliest memories is
of being carried in a pack basket on my father s back on a
camping trip with the rest of my family and another family to
the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York State.
Camping out was for me magical in the same way that read-
ing The Swiss Family Robinson was magical. Equipped with no
more than you could carry on your back, you could set up
camp, cut some fragrant balsam boughs for bedding, make a
camp fire for cooking and heat, and, in short, create a whole
new domestic world in the wilderness. I can still remember
the pleasure of falling asleep in the open-fronted lean-to
with the other children, wrapped in my blanket (no sleeping
bags then), smelling the balsam, and listening to the murmur
of the adults voices as they sat by the dying campfire. The Swiss
Family Robinson is a hyperbolic version of that pleasure. It is a
deep satisfaction of the nest-making instinct. It is the creation,
out of the materials at hand (plus a few things saved from the
wreck, of course!), of a new world, a metaworld. In this, The
127
How to Read Literature
Swiss Family Robinson is a marvelous allegory of what I am
claiming every literary work does. Within the story the family
creates a new realm, with hard work and ingenuity. The
reader of the book creates within his or her imagination a
new realm. This is a virtual reality that for the time seems
more real, and certainly more worthy to be lived in, than the
real world.
READING THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON LENTO
So much for the allegro reading the lento reading, the suspi-
cious reading, produces something very different. Almost
sixty-five years of training and professional practice have
made me unable to suspend my habits of critical reading. I
would certainly not have been able to perform the lento read-
ing at the age of ten, nor would I have wanted to. Evidence of
that resistance is my annoyance when my mother told me the
work is a fiction and pointed out the author s name on the
title page. It was the beginning of a break in the magic.
This fictitious, factitious quality is rubbed in, unnecessar-
ily, it seems to me, by a gratuitous disclaimer on the verso of
the title page of one paperback copy of The Swiss Family Robinson
I have procured: This is a work of fiction. All the characters
and events portrayed in the book are fictitious, and any
resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Why bother to say that? Who but an innocent child of ten,
such as I was, would think The Swiss Family Robinson is anything
but a work of fiction? Who in the world would think at this
late date of suing Tor Books for giving away secrets about real
people in a book first published, in the original German ver-
sion, in 1812? Moreover, the disclaimer, it happens, as is so [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]