Fictionalizing the Anthropological Dimension of Literary Fictions

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Fictionalizing: The Anthropological Dimension of Literary FictionsAuthor(s): Wolfgang IserSource: New Literary History, Vol. 21, No. 4, Papers from the Commonwealth Center forLiterary and Cultural Change (Autumn, 1990), pp. 939-955Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/469193

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Fictionalizing: The AnthropologicalDimension of Literary Fictions

Wolfgang Iser

M OST PEOPLE would associate the term fiction with the story-

telling branch of literature, but in its other guise it is what

Dr. Johnson called "a falsehood; a lye."' The equivocalnessof the word is very revealing, for each meaning sheds light on the

other. Both meanings entail similar processes, which we might term

"overstepping" what is: the lie oversteps the truth, and the literarywork oversteps the real world which it incorporates. It is therefore

not surprising that literary fictions would so often have been branded

as lies, since they talk of that which does not exist, even though

they present its nonreality as if it did exist.

Plato's complaint that poets lie met its first strong opposition in

the Renaissance, when Sir Philip Sidney rejoined that "the Poet. . .nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth," as he does not

talk of what is, but of what ought to be,2 and this form of oversteppingis quite different from lying. Fiction and fictionalizing entail a duality,and the nature of this doubleness will depend upon the context:

lies and literature are the different end products of the process of

doubling, and each oversteps the boundaries of its contextual realityin its own way. Inasmuch as this duality precedes its forms of

realization, boundary-crossing may be viewed as the hallmark of

fictionalizing. The liar must conceal the truth, but so the truth ispotentially present in the mask which disguises it. In literary fictions,

existing worlds are overstepped, and although they are individuallystill recognizable, they are set in a context that defamiliarizes them.

Thus both lie and literature always contain two worlds: the lie

incorporates the truth and the purpose for which the truth must

be concealed; the literary fictions incorporate an identifiable reality,

subjected to an unforeseeable refashioning. And so when we describe

fictionalizing as an act of overstepping,3 we must bear in mind that

the reality overstepped is not left behind: it remains present, therebyimbuing fiction with a duality that may be exploited for different

purposes. In what is to follow, we shall focus on fictionalizing as a

means of actualizing the possible in order to address the question

New LiteraryHistory, 1990, 21: 939-955



NEW LITERARY HISTORY

why human beings, in spite of their awareness that literature is

make-believe, seem to stand in need of fictions.

I

Even if nowadays literary fictions are no longer charged with

lying, they are still stigmatized as being unreal, regardless of the

vital role fictions play in our everyday lives. In his book Ways ofWorldmaking,4Nelson Goodman shows that we do not live in one

reality, but in many, and each of these realities is the result of a

processing which can never be traced back to "something stolidunderneath" (6, 96). There is no single, underlying world, but

instead we create new worlds out of old, and they all exist at the

same time in a process which Goodman describes as "fact from

fiction" (102-7). Fictions, then, are not the unreal side of reality,let alone the opposite of reality, which our "tacit knowledge" still

takes them to be; they are, rather, conditions that enable the pro-duction of worlds whose reality, in turn, is not to be doubted.

Such ideas were first articulated by Sir Francis Bacon, who argues

that fictions "give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind . .. inthose points wherein the nature of things doth deny it."5 This is

not quite the same as Goodman's ways of worldmaking, but it shows

how we can gain access to the inaccessible by inventing possibilities.It is a view that has survived down the ages, and four hundred

years later Marshall McLuhan described the "art of fiction" as an

extension of humanity.6It is, however, a view that runs counter to the criticism leveled

against fictions since the rise of modern epistemology. Locke de-

nounced fictions as "fantastical ideas,"7 as they did not correspondto any reality, and it was not till fifty years later that David Hume

spoke of "fictions of the mind,"8 which condition the way in which

we organize our experiences. But Hume was mainly concerned with

exposing the cognitive premises posited in epistemology, and it was

Kant who initiated an almost total turnabout, by conceiving the

categories of cognition as heuristic fictions to be taken as if they

corresponded to something. This as if was, in Kant's view, an

indispensable necessity for cognition. Necessities without alternatives,

however, must be true,9 even if one has to add that such truth willbe anthropological rather than epistemological.

If fictions have primarily an anthropological bearing, it seems

hard to provide an ontological grounding for their epistemological

inevitability. This may be one of the reasons why we cannot talk of

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FICTIONALIZING

fiction as such, for it can only be described by way of its functions,that is, the manifestations of its use and the products resulting from

it. This is evident even to cursory observation: in epistemology wefind fictions as presuppositions; in science they are hypotheses;fictions provide the foundation for world-pictures and the assump-tions that guide our actions are fictions as well. In every one of

these cases, fiction has a different task to perform: with episte-

mological positing, it is a premise; with the hypothesis, it is a test;with world-pictures, it is a dogma whose fictional nature must remain

concealed if the foundation is not to be impaired; and with our

actions it is anticipation. Since fictions have such manifold appli-

cations, we might well ask what they appear to be like, what theyachieve, and what they reveal in literature, and for this purpose it

is appropriate to turn to an example from which we may then

extrapolate further insights.

II

There is one particular form of literature in which fictionalityitself is graphically depicted; this is pastoral poetry, which found

its most elaborate expression in the Pastoral Romance of the Ren-

aissance. Already in Virgil's Arcadia, a world invented by poetry was

coupled with a political world.10 In the Pastoral Romance two rad-

ically different worlds are telescoped: the artificial and the socio-

political. The degree to which the Pastoral Romance highlights these

two diverging realities can be gauged from the fact that there is a

sharp dividing line between them, and if the main characters wish

to cross this borderline, they must themselves be doubled-theymust disguise themselves as shepherds in order to act, and theymust use the disguise in order to hide who and what they are. Such

a division of the protagonists into character and disguise shows the

importance of the boundary that separates the two worlds. Once

again boundary-crossing comes to the fore as the epitome of fic-

tionalizing, by means of which two divergent worlds are brought

together in order to act out their difference.

From this observation we may derive the basic formula of fic-

tionality: it brings about a simultaneity of what is mutually exclusive.As this, however, is also true of the lie, literary fictions embrace

another condition which sets them apart from the lie: they disclose

their fictionality, which lying, in turn, cannot allow. Therefore literaryfictions contain a whole series of conventionalized signposts which

941




indicate to the reader that their language is not discourse but "stageddiscourse,""1thus indicating that what is said or written should only

be taken as if it were referring to something, whereas in actual factall the references are bracketed and only serve as guidelines for

what is to be imagined. The pastoral shepherds, for instance, and

indeed all the literary genres themselves, are just such convention-

governed signals. The shepherds do not represent the rustic life of

the country, but are only the trappings for staging something whose

reference is no longer given and therefore has to be conceived.

Literature is always a form of enacting, and the Pastoral Romance

is a prominent case in point, as in its most elaborate phase it

thematizes fictionalizing itself.Touchstone, in a play adapted from a Pastoral Romance, claims

that "the truest poetry is the most feigning,"'2 a statement that is

beyond Audrey's comprehension. Only the fool has grasped that

true poetry is a heightened form of fictionalizing, because only he

is at home in two worlds at the same time.'3 If doubling is constitutive

of fictionalizing and becomes operative in continual boundary-cross-

ing, then the question arises as to what such an activity may be able

to reveal. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia provides an important hint at

an answer.Sidney's protagonists, coming out of the historico-political world

of Greece and Asia Minor, have to mask themselves when they cross

into Arcadia and again have to don different disguises when crossinganother borderline that marks off a strictly forbidden realm inside

Arcadia itself. They undertake these boundary-crossings because

they want to be close to the king's daughters, with whom they have

fallen in love. Under their guises-with Pyrocles as an Amazon and

Musidorus a shepherd-they entertain the princesses with tales of

their heroic adventures in the historico-political world. They confessthat it had been their aim to prove their courage and virtue-yetnot in the way in which the epic heroes of yore, such as Ulyssesand Aeneas, conceived of such tasks. Instead, they were driven bythe desire to "go privately to seek exercises of their virtue."14

Although they had saved one kingdom after another in such a

pursuit, had reestablished social order, and had resolved personalconflicts, all their glorious deeds remained inconsequential, for the

exercise of courage and virtue does not in itself change anything.

It is therefore fitting that the sequence of their heroic adventuresends in shipwreck.

If the exemplarity of Ulysses and Aeneas gives way to privategoals ("go privately"), if the epic questeis replaced by "an unknown

order" (A 275), as the princes explicitly state, and the epic norms

of fortune and necessity are replaced by personal decision, then all

942



FICTIONALIZING

the heroic adventures assume a "minus function," invoking epicideals only to draw attention to their absence. Instead of reintegrating

the world into a social unity, the princes leave it in a state ofuncontrollable instability, characterized by the emptying out of all

epic schemata.15

The protagonists, however, narrate their adventures to the prin-cesses they are in love with, because they had to double themselves

in order to cross the border into the forbidden territory. When

they tell Basilius's daughters of their deeds, the epic queste is un-

expectedly restored, for now through their disguises, the princesmust use their tales in order to intimate their true selves to the

princesses without having to remove their masks. Thus the aim oftheir queste is not to reproduce what they have achieved in the

world, but to endow their adventures with a meaning which is not

inherent in them. This meaning does not consist in the demonstration

of virtue and courage, the rescue of the oppressed, the overthrow

of tyrants, or the punishment of envy and vindictiveness; it is, rather,the desire to impress the princesses with the suggestion that the

Amazon and the shepherd are in fact the heroes of these adventures.

Thus the manifest meaning of the heroic adventures has simul-

taneously to be understood as a different meaning in order to makethe mask transparent without lifting it. As the protagonists want to

mean something other than what they say, the tales of heroic deeds

are turned into carriers for a latent meaning, without ever ceasingto mean what they say in the first place, since the princesses have

to be impressed by what the protagonists did. Therefore the specialuse that is made of the tales begins to fictionalize them; they are

turned into signs for spelling out a hidden reality, as only the

fictionalized meaning of the tale can bring to light what is to remain

elusive. However, if the one meaning (that of the heroic deeds)serves as a sign for another meaning (that of the desire to be taken

for what the protagonists are), then a mutual displacement is out

of the question, and hence this inseparable duality presents itself

as the structure of double meaning. The latter entails that there is

always a manifest meaning adumbrating a latent one, which obtains

its salience by what the manifest says.This structure of double meaning resembles that of dreams. Paul

Ricoeur points out: "All questions of schools aside, dreams attest

that we constantly mean something other than what we say; indreams the manifest meaning endlessly refers to hidden meanings;that is what makes every dreamer a poet."'6 In view of such a

correlation it is all the more revealing that in Arcadia itself dream

and double meaning are considered to be interchangeable phenom-ena; at a critical moment in the development of the story, we learn

943




that "As for Pamela, she kept her accustomed majesty, being absent

where shewas,

andpresent

where she was not.Then,

thesupper

being ended, after some ambiguous speeches which might, for fear

of being mistaken, be taken in two senses, or else were altogether

estranged from the speaker's mind (speaking, as in a dream, not

what they thought, but what they would be thought to think)" (A

624-25). Double meaning and dream-structure are explicitly

equated.Once the manifest meaning is released from what it designates,

it becomes free for other uses. If it is now to be taken for a

metaphor, bringing some hidden reality to light, then, clearly, aplay space opens up between the manifest and the latent meaning.It is this play space that makes literary fictionality into a matrix for

generating meaning. For now what is said and what is meant can

be differently correlated, and according to how they are linked,new meanings may continually be derived both from the manifest

and the latent.

As the structure of double meaning bears a close "family resem-

blance" (Wittgenstein) to the dream, the question poses itself as to

the extent to which literary fictionality modifies the identical patternthat seems to underlie both of them. Double meaning in literature

is neither a repetition of the duality in dreams nor a representationof the latter, in spite of the fact that contemporary descriptions of

the Pastoral Romance constantly harped on the dream analogy.'7The differences will become apparent if we again consider the

disguises in Sidney's Arcadia.

The disguises bring out something that also plays a part in dreams,but is generally left on the margin in dream theory: that is, the

forms of the disguise in which the dream thoughts are wrapped.Sidney's division of his protagonists into character and mask still

resembles the dream insofar as the disguise serves to conceal what

the princes are in order to gain them access to a forbidden world.

Deceit is necessary in either case to permit the crossing of borders.

But once the princes have entered the forbidden realm, they also

desire to be perceived as what they are (because they want to win

the love of the princesses). This inevitably leads to them playing

games with their own masquerade, and such free play with one's

own doubleness begins to set it off from that of the dream.In the dream, concealment is paramount, for it must be maintained

to facilitate the disguised return of the repressed. The princes,however, want to puncture their own disguises in order to displaytheir princehood. Thus they must combine concealment with dis-

closure. Disclosure, however, cannot entail discarding the masks, for

944



FICTIONALIZING

the princes must still circumvent the forbidden and cross closely

guarded borders. If they are to achieve their aim, they must practice

concealment and revelation at the same time. And this simultaneityof the mutually exclusive is exemplary for the whole process of

fictionalization, which uses deception to uncover hidden realities.

Here, then, in this veiled unveiling, we have one basic departurefrom the structure of the dream. The character must enact itself

through a disguise in order to bring about something that does not

yet exist. The person in the mask is not, therefore, left behind, but

is present as something which one cannot be as long as one is

oneself. Unlike the dream, in which the sleeper is a prisoner of his

or her own images, the images of disguise fan out the characterinto a welter of possibilities. If, in the course of one's self-staging,one steps out of oneself, one must nevertheless remain present,because otherwise no staging can take place.

This already gives us a first glimpse of what can be achieved bythe structure of double meaning operative in fictionalizing, and also

what sets it apart from that of the dream. To be present to oneself,and yet to view oneself as if one were another, is a condition of

"ecstasy" in which, quite literally, one is beside oneself. One stepsoutside the enclosure of oneself, and so is enabled to have oneself.

In this respect, literary fictionality outstrips the dream analogy whose

structure it shares. Paul Ricoeur, who still tends to bracket dream

and poetry together, calls special attention to this veiled unveiling:"To overcome what remains abstract in the opposition between

regression and progression [that is, in the dream] would require a

study of these concrete relations, shifts of emphasis, and inversion

of roles between the functions of disguise and disclosure."'8

Perhaps at this point we might pause to sum up the argumentso far. Literary fictionality has the structure of double meaning,which is not meaning itself but a matrix for generating meaning.Double meaning takes on the form of simultaneous concealment

and revelation, always saying something that is different from what

it means in order to adumbrate something that oversteps what it

refers to. Out of this duality arises the condition of "ecstasy,"

exemplified by Sidney's protagonists who are at one and the same

time with themselves and outside themselves. Thus fictionalizingepitomizes a condition otherwise unattainable in the ways in which

normal life takes its course.

How does this structure of double meaning function, and to what

extent does it point to dispositions in our anthropological makeup?

945




Here once again we can take the veiled unveiling as our starting

point. In Sidney's Arcadia the disguise of the protagonists means

that their princehood is absent, although it remains present to theextent that it directs the operations of the disguise. They have to

master situations with which they are unfamiliar, and so what theyare may prove-more often than not-an obstacle to their meetingthe demands of the situations concerned. Many of the attitudes and

abilities, norms and values which they have hitherto regarded as

binding are no longer applicable, and so must, at least temporarily,be suspended. Consequently, changing interconnections arise con-

tinually between their princehood and their disguises, revealing the

generative nature of double meaning as a means of actualizing thepossible. Neither mask nor princehood can be purely and exclusively

present, and the constant interchange between absence and presenceshows that the character always exceeds its bounds. This "ecstasy"is not sought for its own sake, however, and the question arises as

to what is actually entailed in being simultaneously within and outside

of oneself. If disguise enables one to step beyond the bounds of

what one is, then fictionalizing can also enable us to become what

we want to be. Thus being "beside oneself" turns out to be the

minimal condition for creating one's own self and the very worldin which one finds oneself.

III

Fictionalizing in literature points to a further anthropological

pattern integral to human beings: the structure of the doppelganger.An observation by the social anthropologist Helmuth Plessner is

pertinent for assessing such a disposition: "Our rational self-under-

standing can be formalized through the idea of the human as abeing generally inseparable from a social role but not defined byone particular role. The role-player or bearer of the social figureis not identifiable with that figure but cannot be conceived of

separately from it without losing his or her humanity. . . . Only

through the other of oneself does one have-oneself. With this

doppelganger structure which links together role-bearer and role-

figure, we believe we have found a constant.... The doppelgangerstructure . . . makes all self-understanding possible, but in no way

is the one half to be set against the other in the sense that it is 'bynature' better."'9

A vital feature of Plessner's observation is his rejection of any

ontologically based structure of the self which might-to use idealistic

terminology-contrast the homo noumenon with a homo phenomenon,

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FICTIONALIZING

a contrast which has remained equally virulent both in Marxism

and psychoanalysis. Marxist self-alienation presupposes an idealis-

tically inspired basis in humankind, through which a true self canbe distinguished from the forms of its debasement; psychoanalysis

speaks of a core-self which can view itself in the mirror-self. But

as their own doppelgangers, human beings are at best differential,

travelling between their various roles which supplant and modifyone another. Roles are not disguises with which to fulfill pragmaticends; they are means of enabling the self to be other than each

individual role.

Of course the individual role will be determined by the social

situation, but although this conditions the form, it does not conditionhumankind's doppelganger status; it puts its stamp on the division,but neither binds nor eliminates it, thus unfolding humanity's dualityinto a multiplicity of roles. This duality itself arises out of human

being's decentered position-our existence is incontestable, but at

the same time inaccessible to us. Ludwig Feuerbach suggests that

"In one's ignorance one is at home,"20 and to this we might add

the comment of the French social philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis:

"Man can exist only by defining himself ... but he always outstrips

these definitions-and, if he outstrips them . . . this is because they

spring out of him, because he invents them . . . and hence because

he makes them by making things and by making himself,and because

no rational, natural or historical definition allows us to establish

them once and for all. 'Man is that which is not what it is and is

what it is not,' as Hegel has already said."21This deficiency provesto be the mainspring of fictionalizing, and fictionality, in turn,

qualifies what it has set in motion: the creative process and both

the whys and the wherefores of what it stages.

IV

As we have seen, the structure of double meaning links literary

fictionality to the dream, although the former is by no means a

representation, let alone a repetition of the latter. Even if the dreamer

should be aware that he or she is dreaming, he or she will still

remain within the confines of his or her dream, whereas fictionalizingin literature brings about a condition of "ecstasy" which allows oneto be simultaneously with oneself and beside oneself. Hans-GeorgGadamer considers this to be a major achievement of humankind.

It makes him take a critical stand against Plato: "Even Plato, in his

Phaedrus, makes the mistake of judging the ecstasy of being outside

947




oneself from the point of view of rational reasonableness and of

seeing it as the mere negation of being within oneself, ie as a kind

of madness. In fact, being outside oneself is the positive possibilityof being wholly with something else."22

The implications of this may again be gauged through the dream

analogy, though from an angle not in focus for Freud and those

following him. According to the research conducted by Gordon

Globus, the dream is not confined to a syntactic arrangement of

mnemic images, let alone to the recurrence of what has been

displaced; it is a creative event in which on every occasion a world

is to be created anew.23 By contrast, the real world in which we live

is always there, and at best we have to interpret it in terms ofwhatever concerns us. Although in the dream there occurs a con-

tinual creation of alternative worlds whose bizarre character is con-

ditioned by the interruption of sensory input during sleep, dreamers

cannot transport themselves to the fringes of these worlds in order

to see what dreaming has produced. For even "lucid dreaming"24cannot permit more than the mere awareness that one is dreaming.

Fictionalizing, however, spotlights a different mode according to

which a basic human disposition is able to manifest itself. If the

human self is the meeting point of its manifold roles, literary fictionsshow human beings as that which they make themselves and that

which they understand themselves to be. For this purpose one must

step out of oneself, so that one can exceed one's own limitations.

We may therefore describe literary fictionality as a conspicuousmodification of consciousness which makes accessible what merely

happens in the dream. The dreamer is inextricably bound up in

the world he or she creates, but fictionalizing in literature permitsa loosening of these very bonds. Eduard Dreher says that the dreamer

is split into a "dream-liver" and a "dream-player,"25who must alwayssuffer the worlds he or she has created; literary fictions which

disclose themselves as an "as if," reveal themselves to be a seemingas opposed to a being; they show that our ability to transmute

ourselves into different shapes cannot be reified. At the same time,this seeming permits humankind constantly to invent itself anew.

And finally it shows that there is no ultimate frame of reference

for what we make of ourselves through fiction, even though fic-

tionality functions as an extension of the human being and thus

gives the impression that it is in itself just such a frame of reference.Literary fictionality may therefore be regarded as an indication

that human beings cannot be present to themselves-a condition

which makes us creative (even in our dreams) but never allows us

to identify ourselves with the products of our creativity. This constant

948



FICTIONALIZING

enactment of self-fashioning never encounters any restrictions,

though the price to be paid for this boundless extension is the lack

of definitiveness of all the shapes assumed. If fictionalizing provideshumankind with possibilities of self-extension, it also exposes the

inherent deficiency of human beings-our fundamental inaccessi-

bility to ourselves.

V

Fictionalizingis the enactment of humankind's

creativityand as

there is no limit to what can be staged, the creative process itself

bears the inscription of fictionality: the structure of double meaning.In this respect it offers the paradoxical and (perhaps for that veryreason) desirable chance to be both in the midst of life and at the

same time outside of it. This simultaneous involvement in and

detachment from life through a fiction which stages the involvement

and thereby brings about the detachment, offers a kind of intra-

mundane totality that is otherwise impossible in everyday life. Thus,

fictionalizing enacts our beingin

the middleof

things by turningthis very involvement into a mirror for itself. But what do we hopeto gain from this detached involvement through which fictionality

gives us the impression that we know what it is to be in the midst

of life?

We might consider a passage in Milan Kundera's novel The Un-

bearableLightnessof Being:

Staring impotently across a courtyard, at a loss for what to do; hearing

the pertinacious rumblingof one's own stomachduring a moment of love;betraying, yet lacking the will to abandon the glamorous path of betrayal;raising one's fist with the crowds in the Grand March;displayingone's witbefore hidden microphones-I have known all these situations, I have

experienced them myself, yet none of them has given rise to the personmy curriculum vitae and I represent. The characters n my novels are myown unrealized possibilities.That is why I am equally fond of them alland equallyhorrifiedby them. Each one has crossed a border that I myselfhave circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which myown "I"ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the

secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author'sconfession; it isan investigationof human life in the trap the world has become."26

The possibilities Kundera speaks of lie beyond what is, even though

they could not exist without what is. This duality is brought into

949




focus through writing, which is motivated by the desire to overstepthe reality which surrounds the novelist. Therefore he does not

write about what is, and his overstepping is related to a dimensionthat retains its equivocalness, for it depends on what is, yet cannot

be derived from what is. On the one hand the writer's reality fades

into a range of its own possibilities, and on the other hand these

possibilities overstep what is and thus invalidate it. But this penumbraof possibilities could not have come into being if the world, to which

it forms the horizon, had been left behind. Instead, they begin to

uncover what hitherto had remained concealed in the very world

now refracted by the mirror of possibilities, thus exposing it as a

trap.In the novel, then, the real and the possible coexist, for it is only

the author's selection from and textual representation of the real

world that can create a matrix for the possible, whose ephemeralcharacter would remain shapeless if it were not the transformation

of something already existing. But it would also remain meaninglessif it did not serve to bring out the hidden areas of given realities.

Having both the real and the possible and yet, at the same time,

maintaining the difference between them-this is a process denied

us in real life; it can only be staged in the form of the "as if."Otherwise, whoever is caught up in reality, cannot experience pos-

sibility, and vice versa.

In what sense, though, is our world a "trap," and what compelsus to overstep the boundaries? All fictionalizing authors do this,

and so too do readers of fiction, who go on reading despite their

awareness of the fictionality of the text. The fact that we seem to

need this "ecstatic" state of being beside, outside, and beyond our-

selves, caught up in and yet detached from our own reality, derives

from our inability to be present to ourselves. The ground out ofwhich we are remains both unplumbable and unavailable to us.

Samuel Beckett's Malone says: "Live and invent,"27 for we do not

know what it is to live, and so we must invent what eludes penetration.There is a similar dictum, equally pithy, by H. Plessner, who cor-

roborates Beckett from a rather different angle, that of social

anthropology: "I am, but I do not have myself."28 "Have" means

knowing what it is to be, which would require a transcendental

stance in order to grasp the self-evident certainty of our existence

with all its implications, significance and, indeed, meaning. If wewish to have what remains impenetrable, we are driven beyondourselves; and as we can never be both ourselves and the tran-

scendental stance to and of ourselves necessary to predicate what

it means to be, we resort to fictionalizing. Beckett gave voice to

what Plessner had posed as a problem: that is, self-fashioning is

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FICTIONALIZING

the answer to our inaccessibility to ourselves. Fictionalizing beginswhere knowledge leaves off, and this dividing line turns out to be

the fountainhead of fictions by means of which we extend ourselvesbeyond ourselves.

The anthropological significance of fictionalizing becomes unmis-

takable in relation to the many unknowable realities permeatinghuman life. Beginning and end are perhaps the most all-pervadingrealities of this kind. This means no less than that the cardinal

points of our existence defy cognitive and even experiential pen-etration. The Greek physician Alkmaeon is believed to have earned

Aristotle's approval when saying that human beings must die because

they are not in a position to link beginning and end together.29 Ifdeath is indeed the result of this impossibility, it is scarcely surprisingthat it should give rise to ideas that might lead to its abolition.

These would entail concocting possibilities in order to do away with

what resists penetration, thus linking up ineluctible beginnings and

endings and thereby creating a framework within which we mightlearn what it means to be caught up in life. The unending prolif-eration of such possibilities points to the fact that there are no

means of authentication for the links provided. Instead, the fash-

ioning of the unknowable will be determined to a large extent byhistorically prevailing needs. If fictionalizing transgresses those

boundaries beyond which unrecognizable realities exist, then, the

very possibilities concocted for the repair of this deficiency, caughtbetween our unknowable beginning and ending, become indicative

of how we conceive of what is withheld, inaccessible, and unavailable.

In this respect, fictionalizing turns out to be a measuring rod for

gauging the historically conditioned changeability of deeply en-

trenched human desires.

If the borderlines of knowledge give rise to fictionalizing activity,we might perceive an economy principle at work: what can be known

need not be invented, and so fictions always subsidize the unknow-

able. There are realities in human life which we experience and

yet cannot know. Love is perhaps the most striking example. Once

more we seem unable to rest content with what is; we also want to

"have" it, in Plessner's terms. We overstep love's reality in order to

impose on it a form that will make it accessible. It is the same with

Kundera's desire to overstep himself in order to have himself through

his own possibilities. We know that certain things exist, but we alsoknow that we cannot know them, and this is the point at which our

curiosity is aroused, and so we begin to invent.

That is also the point at which literary fictions diverge from the

fictions of the ordinary world. The latter are assumptions, hypoth-eses, presuppositions, and more often than not, the basis of world

951




views, and may be said to complement reality; Frank Kermode calls

them "concord-fictions"30 because they close off something which

by its very nature is open. Fictionalizing in literature, however,appears to have a different aim. To transgress otherwise inaccessible

realities (beginning, end, and being in the midst of life) can onlycome to fruition by staging what is withheld. This enactment is

propelled by the drive to reach beyond oneself, yet not in order

to transcend oneself, but to become available to oneself. If such a

move arises out of a need for compensation, then this very need

remains basically unfulfilled in literary fictions. For the latter are

always accompanied by convention-governed signs that signalize the

"as if" nature of all the possibilities they adumbrate. Consequently,such a staged compensation for what is missing in reality never

conceals the fact that in the final analysis it is nothing but a form

of make-believe, and so ultimately all the possibilities opened upmust be lacking in authenticity. What is remarkable, though, is the

fact that our awareness of this inauthenticity does not stop us from

continuing to fictionalize.

Why is that so, and why are we still fascinated by fictionality,whose self-disclosure reveals any hoped-for compensation as pure

semblance? What accounts for the potency of semblance is thefollowing:

(1) None of the possibilities concocted can be representative, for

each one is nothing but a kaleidoscopic refraction of what it mirrors

and is therefore potentially infinitely variable. Thus semblance allows

for a limitless fashioning of those realities that are sealed off from

cognitive penetration.(2) The possibilities concocted never hide or bridge the rift between

themselves and the unfathomable realities. Thus semblance invali-

dates all forms of reconciliation.(3) Finally, the rift itself can be acted out in an infinite number

of ways. Thus semblance lifts all restrictions on the modes accordingto which that play space may be utilized.

This state of affairs throws a rather unexpected light on the

human condition. The firmly rooted desire within us not only to

have ourselves, but even to know what it is to be, makes fictionalizinghead off in two different directions. The fictions ensuing from it

can depict the fulfillment of this desire, but they can also provide

an experience of what it means that we cannot be present to ourselves.As regards fulfillment, it must be noted that this will very swiftlybecome historical, whereas a far more lasting effect ensues when-instead of a compensatory fulfillment-the fleeting illusoriness ofsuch a desire is staged. In such a case, staging is not an escape

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FICTIONALIZING

route, but reveals that none of the possibilities concocted could ever

be an authentic compensation for what remains elusive. And if this

is the form of staging that continues to be effective, then it mustfollow that the fulfillment of our desire to penetrate the inscrutable

cannot be the anthropological root of literary fictions.

Corroborative evidence for this rather surprising situation is pro-vided by the fact that the possibilities arising out of the overstepping

process cannot be deduced from the realities they have overstepped.This distinguishes literary fictions from all kinds of Utopian fantasies.

In the latter, the possibilities are always extrapolated from what is.

This is why, as Hans Jonas has contended, "any determinate spec-

ification of the Utopian condition is naturally so meagre in literature,because Utopia is meant to be so different from what we know;and this meagreness applies particularly to the question of what

humankind, living under Utopian conditions, or even day-to-day

living will be like, although the liberating power of Utopia is meant

to release the still hidden abundance of human nature."3' Possibilities

that cannot be derived from what is can only be narrated, but the

narrative will only highlight the mode of their existence, and will

tell us nothing of their provenance.

In dreams we constantly build worlds anew; as Gordon Globus-following Leibniz-put it, we might be called the possibilities of

ourselves. But since we are the originators of these possibilities, we

cannot actually be them-we are left dangling in-between what we

have produced. To unfold ourselves as possibilities of ourselves,and-instead of consuming them to meet the pragmatic demands

of everyday life-displaying them for what they are in a medium

created for such an exposure, literary fictions reveal a deeply en-

grained disposition of our makeup. What might this be? The fol-

lowing answers as to the necessity of fictionalizing suggest themselves:we can only be present to ourselves in the mirror of our own

possibilities; as monads we are determined by bearing all imaginable

possibilities within ourselves; we can only cope with the opennessof the world by means of the possibilities we derive from ourselves

and project onto the world; or, in staging our own possibilities, we

are incessantly striving to postpone our own end.

But in the final analysis fictionalizing may not be equated with

any of these alternative manifestations. Instead, it spotlights that

in-between state whose indelible traces mark the structure of doublemeaning, that of the doppelganger as well as that of the boundless

options for self-fashioning. Fictionalizing, then, might be considered

as opening a play space between all the alternatives enumerated,thus setting off free play which militates against all determinations

953




as untenable restrictions. In this sense, fictionalizing offers an answer

to the problem which Alkmaeon regarded as insoluble: linking

beginning and end together in order to create one last possibilitythrough which the end, even if it cannot be overstepped, may at

least be illusively postponed. Henry James once said: "The success

of a work of art . . . may be measured by the degree to which it

produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for

the time that we have lived another life-that we have had a

miraculous enlargement of experience."32

UNIVERSITY OF KONSTANZ

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

NOTES

1 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1983).2 Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesie, in The Prose Works,ed. Albert Feuillerat

(Cambridge, 1962), III, 29.

3 See my essay "Feigning in Fiction," in Identity of the Literary Text, ed. Mario J.Valdes and Owen Miller (Toronto, 1985), pp. 204-28.

4 See Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking(Hassocks, 1978), esp. pp. 6-10;hereafter cited in text.

5 See Sir Francis Bacon, The Advancementof Learning and New Atlantis, ed. Arthur

Johnston (Oxford, 1974), p. 80.

6 See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York,

1964), pp. 42, 66, 107, 235, 237, and 242; also Susan Sontag, "The Basic Unit of

Contemporary Art is not the Idea, but the Analysis of and Extension of Sensations,"in McLuhan: Hot and Cold, ed. Gerald Emanuel Steam (New York, 1967), p. 255:

"The new sensibility understands art as the extension of life."

7 See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1971), I,

315-17, 127, and 335.

8 See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford,1968), pp. 216, 220 ff., 254, 259, and 493.

9 See Dieter Henrich, "Versuch uber Fiktion und Wahrheit," in Funktionen des

Fiktiven,Poetik und Hermeneutik, X, ed. Dieter Henrich and Wolfgang Iser (Munich,

1983), p. 516.

10 See Bruno Snell, "The Discovery of a Spiritual Landscape," in his The Discovery

of the Mind: The GreekOrigins of European Thought, tr. T. G. Rosenmeyer (Oxford,

1953), pp. 283 and 291; also Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus

and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley, 1973), p. 214.

11 See Rainer Warning, "Der inszenierte Diskurs. Bemerkungen zur pragmatischenRelation der Fiktion," in Funktionen des Fiktiven, pp. 183-206.

12 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Agnes Latham (London, 1975), p. 80.13 See my essay "Dramatization of Double Meaning in Shakespeare's As You Like

It," in my Prospecting:From Reader Responseto LiteraryAnthropology Baltimore, 1989),

pp. 98-130.

14 Sir Philip Sidney, The Countessof Pembroke'sArcadia, ed. Maurice Evans (Har-mondsworth, 1977); hereafter cited in text as A. All quotations are taken from this

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FICTIONALIZING

edition of the CompleteArcadia, which is based on Sir William Alexander's edition

of 1621, and combines the revised, fragmentary New Arcadia with parts of the Old

Arcadia which first appeared as a complete edition in 1912. Sir William Alexander

himself wrote the linking text.

15 Such an omitted but expected technique has been described as a "minus-function,"

i.e., minus prijom by Jurij M. Lotman, Die Struktur literarischerTexte,German tr. Rolf-

Dietrich Keil (Munich, 1972), pp. 144 ff., 207, and 267.

16 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy:An Essay on Interpretation,tr. Denis Savage(New Haven, 1977), p. 15.

17 This description is applicable from Sannazaro to Cervantes. See Iacopo Sannazaro,

Opere, ed. Enrico Carrara (Torino, 1952), pp. 193 f., and Miguel de Cervantes

Saavedra, Obras Completas,ed. Angel Valbuena Prat (Madrid, 1967), p. 1001.

18 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy,p. 522.

19 HelmuthPlessner,

"Soziale Rolle und menschlicheNatur,"

in GesammelteSchriften,ed. Gunter Dux et al. (Frankfurt/M., 1985), X, 235; my translation.

20 Ludwig Feuerbach, SdmtlicheWerke,ed. W. Bolin and F. Jodl (Stuttgart, 1911),

X, 310; my translation.

21 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, tr. Kathleen Blamey

(Cambridge, 1987), p. 135.

22 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, tr. Garret Barden and John Cumming(New York, 1975), p. 111.

23 See Gordon Globus, Dream Life, WakeLife: The Human ConditionthroughDreams

(Albany, 1987), p. 57.

24 See Stephen LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming (Los Angeles, 1985), p. 6.

25 Eduard Dreher, Der Traum als Erlebnis (Munich, 1981), pp. 62-93: "The dream-liver discovers . . . the potential possibilities of a self freed from self-control" (68);"The dream-player has at his disposal a creative fantasy which as a rule clearly goes

beyond the wish-fantasy of the dreamer" (84).26 Milan Kundera, The UnbearableLightness of Being, tr. Michael Henry Heim (New

York, 1987), p. 221.

27 Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies (New York, 1956), p. 18.

28 Helmuth Plessner, "Die anthropologische Dimension der Geschichtlichkeit," in

Sozialer Wandel. Zivilisation und Fortschrittals Kategorien der soziologischen Theorie, ed.

Hans Peter Dreitzel (Neuwied, 1972), p. 160.

29 Aristotle, Problemata,in Vol. VII of Works,ed. E. S. Forster (Oxford, 1927), p.

916a.30 See Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studiesin the Theoryof Fiction (New

York, 1967), pp. 4 and 62-64.

31 Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung Frankfurt/M., 1989), pp. 343 f.

32 See Henry James, Theory of Fiction, ed. James E. Miller, Jr. (Lincoln, Nebr.,

1972), p. 93.

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Fictionalizing the Anthropological Dimension of Literary Fictions