ON Paut RICOEUR NARRATIVE AND INTERPRETATION edited by DAVID Wood, aes Paul Ricoeur at the Uni By kind permission of the Photogray ‘Warwick of Warwick in 1966, London and New YorkFs 2 LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE Paul Ricoeur It has always been known and offen repeated that life has some- thing to do with narrative; we speak of a life story to characterize the interval between birth and death. And yet assimi a story in this way is not really obvious; it narrative, a knowledge which appears to distance narrative from lived experience and to confine it to the region of fiction. We are between history and life, in such a way that fiction contributes to mi logical sense of the word, a human life. I a between narrative and life Socrates? ry I shall now be discussing is at once very developed form it dates from the Russian and in the and from the French general and formal my part, [have r : of emplotment, which in Grek i mats and which sgn both 20 LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE fable (in the sense of an imaginary story) and plot (in the sense of a well constructed story). It is this second aspect ruthos that Lam taking as my guide; of plot that T hope to draw 2 the reader or in the spe the living receiver of the narrated I mean the work of com, to the story recounted: what is recounted is a particular story, one and complete in itself. I rructuring process of emplotment at T shall put to the test in the first part of my presentation, ves a dynamic identity EMPLOTMENT | shall broadly define the operation of emplotinent as a synthesis ements. Synthesis between what elements? First , a synthesis between the events or incidents which are mule and the story which is unified and complete; from this first of view, the plot serves to make one story out of the multiple dents or, if you prefer, transforms the many incidents into one story, In this respect, an event is more than an occurrence, I mean ve than something that just happens; it is what contributes to Progress of the narrative as well as to its beginning and to its the recounted story is always more than the ion, in an order that would be merely serial or succes of the incidents or events that it organizes into an inte whole. The plot, however, is also a synthesis’ from a second point of view: it organizes together components that are as heterogeneous a unintended circumstances, discoveries, those who perform 's and those who suffer them, chance or planned encounters, interactions between actors ranging from conflict to collabor means that are well or poorly adjusted to ends, and finally tended results; gathering all these factors into a single story makes plot a totality which can be said to be at once concordant and why I shall speak of discordant concordance or 2PAUL RICOEUR fas the story moves along, unt ss captivated by the unexpected aspects of the story and more srenive fo the way in which it lado toi condunon, Fal, emplotment it 4 synthesis of the heterogeneous in an even more profound sense, one that we shall later use 10 characterize the temporality specific to all narrative compositions. We could sa that there are two sorts of tine in every story told: on the one hand, a discrete succession that is open and theoretically indefinite, a series of incidents (for we can always pose the question: and shen? and then?) on the other Band the sory fold presets another remporal aspect characterized by the integration, culmination an Closure owing fo which the sory receives a porialr configu ‘sense, composing a story is, from the te of view, drawing a configuration out of a succes already guess story from the tality and the poetic act as the creation of n between time as passage and time as duration. If we may speak of the temporal identity of a story, it must be character- ized as something that endures and remains across that which passes and flows away. From this ani geneous, of the hetero- performed by and unified story; the finally, the compe- the story reveals universal aspects of the human condi this respect, poetry was more philosophical hhistory, which is too dependent on the anecdotal aspects of Whatever may be said about this relation between poetry and history, it is certain that tragedy, epic and comedy, to cite only 2 LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE ¢ genres known to At le, develop a sort of understanding ve-understanding and which is much of moral judgment than to science, more generally, to the theoretical use of reason. This can be shown in a very simple way. Eth ee aspects of human conduct and happiness and misfortun means of poetry we learn how reversals of fortune result from or that conduct, as this is constructed by the plot in the narrative, ‘we have with the types of plot received from our culture that we lean to 8, or rather forms of excellence, with happiness or unhappiness. These ‘lessons’ of Ne the ‘universals’ of which Ari re universals that are of a lower degree wan those of logic i theoretical thought. We must nonetheless speak of understand gave 0 phronesis (which the but in the sense that Aris translated by prudentia), In of phronetic understanding in order to contrast it with theoretical derstanding. Narrative belongs to the former and not to the This epistemological corollary to our analysis of plot has, in ‘umn, numerous ions for the efforts of contemporary tology to construct a genuine science of narrative. In my these enterprises, which are, of course, perfectly themselves justified only to the extent that they simulate inderstandi is always prior to them; by this ight degp structures unknown to those who which place narratology on the same iguistics and the other sciences of language. € rationality of contemporary narratology by its wer of simulating at a second order of di kings, it is simply to in the hierarchy of degrees of knowledge. ‘could instead have sought somewhere else than in Aristotle more modern model of thought, like that of Kant, for ce, and the relation he establishes in The Critique of Pure 3PAUL RICOEU! SOEUR LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE, Reason between the schematism and the categories. Jus by that of the models that are sedimented there. It also takes i account the opposite phenomenon of innovation, Why? Because the moda, themacvessemming fom an carer maareton ees guide for a later experimentation in the narrati rules change under the pressure of innovati lowly and even resist change by reason of this process of sedimen- n. Innovation thus remains the pole opposite to that of tradition. There is lways room for innovation to the extent that at has been produced, and in the ultimat in the categories the principle of the order of the understanding, in utes the creative centre of the the rational reconstruction , provide a domain. The , but they change what it seeks to reconstruct are the logical and semiotic constraints, along with the rules of transformation, which preside over the workings of the narrative. My thesis, therefore, expresses no ‘with respect to narratology; ted to saying that narratology is a second-order discourse which is always preceded by a narrative understanding stemming from the creative imagin- ation. “My entire analysis will henceforth be located on the level of this firstorder narrative understanding. ‘Before turning to the question of the relation between the story fe, I should like to consider a second corollary which wil set me on the path, precisely, of a reinterpretation of the relation and life. a life of narrative activity which is inscribed in the notion of tic of the narra- tive schema, ‘To say that the narrative schema itself has its own history and 1¢ features of a tradition, is by no means 35 soon as we go beyond the field of these ; deviance wins out over the rule. The con- example, can toa Tange extent be de an anti-novel, for it is a nel i gtaiiara a feen these poles gives the productive imagin- nara of ‘own historicity and keeps the navrative uadiion # living .9 factors, innovation and sedimen- that we ascribe the models tha spology of emplotment which allows ry of literary genres; but we must not lose sight of the fact that these models do not constitute eternal essences but proceed from a sedimented history whose genesis has been obliterated. If sedimentation, however, allows us to identify a work fas being, for instance, a tragedy, a novel of education, a so drama or whatever, the identification of a work is never exhauste or FROM NARRATIVE TO LIFE tack the paradox we are considering here: stories ‘d. An unbridgeable gap seems to separate is gap, the terms of the paradox must, 19 my mind, Let us remain for the moment on the side of the narzative, 5PAUL RICOEUR LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE than the one recognized by structural analysis borrowings from linguistics. the wor its is a mediation between man and between man and man, between man and hims: between man and the world is what we call refee the mediation between men, conimunicabil the text but in the reader and, under this condition, makes possible the reconfiguration of life by narrative. I should say, more precisely: the sense or the significance of a narra- 5 the mediation ve stems fom the intersection of the world of the text and the world of between man and himself, self-undestanding. ‘work contains the rner, "The act of reading hoa become, he cel moment of these three dimensions: referentiality, communi and self oblem begins, then, where to discover new features of refer- ive, features of communicability which are not se are engendered. by the literary work. Tn a ‘tmeneutics is placed at the point of intersection of the ternal) configuration of the work and the (external) refiguration if. In my opinion, all that was stated above concerning the dynamics of configuration proper to literary creation is but a long preparation for understanding the true problem, that of the dynamics of transfiguration proper to the work. In 1 reader. terms I have used here: the world of the To speak of a world of the text is rary work of oper in which le-to live. A text is not something closed in upon is the projection of a new universe distinct from that in ‘which we live. To appropriate a work through reading is to unfold the world horizon it which includes the actions, the characters and the events of the story told. As a result, the reader belongs at once to the work’s horizon of experience in imagination and to that of his or her own real action, The horizon of expec- another and fuse togeths ‘fusion of horizons’ ess: I am well aware that the distinction between the inside of the text and its outside. Te considers any exploration of the linguistical universe as outside its range. "The analyse of the text extends then, to the fonters of e text and forbids any attempt to step outside the text. Here, sree toe, the disdawton benveen Be inde and the uti of texts and does not is the act of reading which completes the a guide for reading, with its. zones of ts power of 's in new historical contexts, sis, we are already able to glimpse narrative and life can be reconciled with one another, for ading is itself already a way of living in the ficive universe of this sense, we can already say that stories are recounted but they arc also lied in the mode of the imaginary. We must now readjust the other term of this opposition, what we . We must question the erroneous sell-evidence according to nary nor in grammar. It is precisely this extrapolation from. ling to poetics that appears (0 me to invite criticism: the methodological decision, proper to structural and outside, From a hermeneu to stress the pre-narrative capacity of - What has to be questioned is the overly simple n made between life and experience. A life is no more than 7 6PAUL RICOEUR a biological phenomenon as long as it has not been i And in interpretation, fiction. plays a medi ‘way for this new. phase of the anal the mixture of acting and suffering constitutes the very this mixture which the narrative attempts to ition he gives of the narrative; itis, he says, ‘the imitation of an action” mimesis praxeos. We therefore have to Jook-for the points of support that the narrative can find in the living experience of acting and suffering; and that whieh, in this ‘experience, demands the assistance of narrative and expresses the need for it. ‘The first point of anchorage that we find for narrative under- standing in living experience consists in the very structure: of human acting and suffering. In this respect, human life differs widely from animal life, and, with all the more reason, from min- eral existence, We understand what action and passion are through our competence to use in a meaningful way the entire network of expressions and concepts that are offered to us by natural lan- guages in order to distinguish between action and mere physical stand what is signified by pr so on. All of these notions taken together cons of what we could term the semantics of ection. find all the components of the synthesis of ity we have with the is the same phron derstanding of \¢ narrative finds in pr Tesourees of the pra ich aspects of doing, of being LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE meaning, before the autonomous ensembles belonging to speech and writing are separated off from the level of practice. We find tese when we discuss the question of ideology and utopia. Today shall confine my remarks to what could be termed or immanent symbolism in opposi symbolism. What, for an anthropologist in fact, characterizes the symbolism cit in action is that it const of description for particular actions. In other words, +a given ‘mbolic convention that we can gesture as ignifying this or that: the same gi depending on the co Is provide the rules of signifi ich a given conduct can be interpreted. of anchorage of the narrative in life consists in sd the preenarratie quality of human experience, It this that we are justified in speaking of life as a story in '§ nascent state, and so of life as an activity and a passion in search of action is not restricted to th the conceptual network of action, and with mediations, i in temporal I for narration. It is not by ‘hance or by mistake that we commonly speak of stories that happen to us or of stories in which we are eaught up, or simply of the story of a life. be objected here fall human experience our analysis rests on a vicious already mediated by all sorts of To this objection I shall reply with a series of situations, which, my opinion, compel us to grant to experience as such # virtual which stems, not from the projection of literature onto + but which constitutes a genuine demand for narrative, The expre: troduced above of pre-narrative structure of experi= serve to characterize these situations 29PAUL RICOEUR Without leaving the sphere of everyday experience, are we not inclined to see in a given chain of episodes in our own life some- thing like stories that have not yet been told, stories that demand to be told, stories that offer points of anchorage for the narrative? Once again, are not stories recounted by definition? This is indisputable ‘when we are speaking of actual stories. But is the notion of a potential story unacceptable? top to consider two less common situations in forces itself upon us wi surprising strengch. The patient who addresses the psychoanalyst brings him the scattered fragments of i i scenes’, conflictual episodes. One can legitimat to analytical sessions that their aim and their effect is to allow the analysand to draw out of these story-fragments re which, would be at once more bearable and more intelligible. This narra- tive interpretation of psychoanalytic theory implies that the story of a life grows out of stories that have not been recounted and wwe been repressed in the direction of actual stories which take charge of and consider to be constitutive of ty whi story and the There is another situation for story seems to be well suited. This is the case of a judge who attempts to understand a defendant by unravelling the skein of plots in which the suspect is entangled. The individual can be said to be ‘tangled up in stories’ which happen to him before any entanglement chen appears as the pre- the beginning of which is chosen by the narrator. The pre-history of the story is what connects it up to a vaster whole and gives it a background, This background is made ng imbrication of ‘And as they emerge, the implied subject also emerges. We can then say: the story answers to the man. The main consequence of this existential analysis of man as being entangled in stories is ‘a secondary process grafted on our “being-entangled in stories’. Recounting, following, understanding. stoi simply the continuation of these unspoken stories. From this double analysis, it follows that fiction, narrative LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE ly completed in life and that life ca understood only through the stories that we tll about it, then'eg ranined life, inthe sense of the word as we have borrowed fe recounted. recounted? It isa life in which we find all the basic este oe nee enh a eh particular the play between concordance and discordance, which appeared to us to characterize the narrative. This conelusio 20 way paradovical or surprising. Ifwe open St Augontney Sessions a XI, we discover a description of human ime which corespnds entirely to the sticure of dsconant concerns which At f pe le had discerned several centuries before in poetic compesition. Augustine, in this famous treatise on time, seey ty 2s born ost of the incessant dissociation between the three aspects of the present ~ expectation, which he calls the ‘present of the future, memory which he calls the present of the past, and ion which is the present of the present. From i Augustine defines time as a consists in the permanent cont of the human present and the stal cludes past, present and future between the unstable of the divine present the unity of a gaze and In this way we are led to place side-by-side and to coniront th each other Aristotle's definition of plot and Augustine's def- n of time. One could say that in Augustine discordance wins ‘out over concordance: whence the misery of the’human condition, ‘And that in Aristotle, concordance wins out over discordance, ‘whence the inestimable value of narra i there would be no ‘hing, ing che simple example he -m: when I am about to recite the poem, ; is wholly present my mind, then, as I recite it, its parts pass one after the other fiom the future to the past, tran: fature having been exhausted, the poet has moved enti ‘0 the past. A totalizing intent therefore, preside over 9 mus the investigation if we are to feel the never ceases to disperse the soul by placing i ‘ion, memory and at ion. So, if in the 31 ving experience ofPAUL RICOEUR time discordance wins out over concordance, the latter still remains the permanent object of our desire. The opposite can be said about Aristotle. We stated that the narrative is a synthesis of the heterogeneous. But concordance is-never found without discor- dance, Tragedy is a good cxample in this respect. There is n0 tragedy without peripeteia, strokes of fate, terrifying and pitiful events, a profound error, hemartia, made up of ignorance and of disdain rather than of meanness. If concordance wins out, then, over discordance, what constitutes narrative is indeed the struggle between them, Let us apply to ourselves this analysis of the discordant concord- ance of narrative and the concordant discordance of time. Our fe, when chen embraced in a single glance, appears to us as the of a constructive activity, borrowed from narrative under- standing, by which we attempt to discover and not simply to rative identity which constitutes us. Tam. for what we call subjec- of events nor an immutable jon. This is precisely the sort mn alone can create through story, without apply to ourselves the symphony of great works 5 novels. The difference is th who is disguised as the narrator various characters and, among nant narrative w our own narrator, in \d who wears the mask these, the mask of the di and that stories are told. An unbridgeable difference does remain, 32 LIFE IN QUEST OF NARRATIVE s difference is partially abolished by i is our power of applying of trying on the different roles assumed by the favourite characters of the stories most dear to us. It is therefore by means of imaginative variations of our own ego that we attempt to obt a narrative understanding of ourselves, the only kind d the apparent choice between sheer change and absol Between the swo lies narrative identity In conclusion, allow me to say that what we c is never given at the start, Or, ifit dice ores eh the narcissistic, eg So, what we lose on the side is cata we Tose on the side of narcissism, we win back on the In place of an ego enamoured of itself as i cultural symbols, the first among which are the Seine ia dow’