Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Roman Ingarden and the "Appropriate Aesthetic Attitude" to the Literary Work of Art Author(s): Menachem Brinker Reviewed work(s): Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1984), pp. 129-148 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772430 . Accessed: 25/05/2012 18:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Duke University Press and Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Poetics Today.

http://www.jstor.org

ROMAN INGARDEN AND THE "APPROPRIATE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE" TO THE LITERARY WORK OF ART*
MENACHEM BRINKER
Philosophy and Hebrew Literature, Hebrew University

1. Ingarden recognizes a plurality of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" attitudes to the literary work of art (LWA). This discussion is not concerned with the attitudes not directly relevant to the aesthetic concretization of the LWA. Yet in order to understand the appropriate aesthetic attitude (AAA) more accurately, we must mention the existence of various attitudes to the LWA that ignore its specific artistic character. The approach of an historian or a scholar searching for the identity of the author of a given literary work (LW) or for the date of its creation is parallel to the approach of an art historian interested in similar questions. These scholars are dealing with questions that pertain to the identity of a work of art. Yet, they could supply us at any time with a series of true statements concerning the work without relating thematically to the work's artistic values. Theoretically they might even perform their job without being aware of the existence of such values. In the same way, the approach of an ethnographer, a philologist, or an historian of ideas which utilizes a LWA in order to acquire information concerning the development of society, language, or ideas is legitimate in its own right. There is nothing wrong with it as long as these scholars are fully aware of their manner of dealing with the LWA and are not confusing their attitudes with the appropriate aesthetic attitude to the LWA (Ingarden 1973b:221-222). One of Ingarden's aims (in my opinion also one of his achieve-

* I wish to thank Rela Mazali for her help in preparing the English version of this paper. Poetics Today, Vol. 5:1 (1984) 129-148

130

MENACHEM BRINKER

ments) is to demonstrate that up to a certain point - and for specific needs - questions that concern the work's identity and characterization may be separated from questions dealing with its artistic values. No doubt, specific artistic value-structures belong to the individual character of a specific work. These can be intuited only within an AAA. Any report on the work - no matter how many true assertions it contains - will not apprehend the full identity of the work as long as it does not contain assertions concerning these artistic values. Yet a selection of the work's properties which does not comprise artistic values is always possible, and theoretically one may assemble the totality of its aesthetically-neutral properties (its "neutral skeleton") (Ingarden 1973b:209) in order to offer a partial characterization of the work. In this context, Ingarden also discusses the possibility of a complete concretization of the LWA which is not an aesthetic concretization (cf. Ingarden 1973b:221). Such a concretization does not lead to the construction of an aesthetic object. Nevertheless, it is a concretization of the work, as it succeeds in performing the necessary transitions from one stratum to another and from one phase of the work to the succeeding one: it "realizes" the sound formations of the first stratum correctly and moves on to a correct understanding of the meaning-units contained in the sentences and It then projects states of affairs, intentional sentence-complexes. of the two "lower" strata - which Ingarden also calls correlates the "dual linguistic stratum" (cf. Ingarden 1973b:159), finally ending in a successful objectification; that is: the construction of represented objectivities from states of affairs and from the stratum of the schematized aspects. These operations are necessary for the concretization of every LW, artistic or non-artistic, as stratification and quasi-temporal "extension" are the two dimensions of any LW (actually, of any text) (Ingarden 1973b:12). Such concretization, however, while appropriate to a scientific work, for example, is only an abstraction of a full aesthetic concretization. It completely misses the valuestructures distributed among the different strata of the work in accordance with its specific nature. Of course, such a concretization also misses the "polyphonic" value-structures created by the interrelations between the various artistic values emerging from the different strata. True, even in the case of an appropriate aesthetic concretization these value structures are partially obscured. In accordance with the reader's personality, literary-aesthetic experience and sensitivity, such an obscuration will occur in relation to the specific values of a particular stratum (the stratum of sound formations or the stratum of represented objectivities, for example)

INGARDEN ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

131

or in relation to specific phases of the work. Yet, in each and every aesthetic concretization at least some of the artistic values are concretized, thereby creating aesthetic values which are directly intuited by the reader. The concept of non-aesthetic concretization, like all the concepts used by Ingarden to describe various "readings" of the LWA, is an idealization. It is hard to imagine an actual reading of an aesthetically valuable work which totally misses all of its value-structures, though teachers and historians of criticism may supply examples approaching this ideal. 2. The various descriptions of the LW offered in Ingarden's first book deal, for the most part, with its nature as a stratified object and as a quasi-temporal one; that is to say, with the "essential features" of LWs (texts) of all kinds. This, along with the fact that the theory introduced concepts such as "neutral skeleton" and "nonaesthetic concretization," caused several misunderstandings of Ingarden's position. The most famous of these is Wellek's criticism, briefly represented by the claim that "there is no structure outside norms and values" (Warren and Wellek 1956:144 and Wellek 1970). Wellek's criticism received an energetic but unfocused retort from It is obvious, I think, that Wellek Ingarden (Ingarden 1966:43-55). transformed several of Ingarden's distinctions regarding mistakenly possible subjective operations on the LWA into ontological distinctions. It seemed to him that Ingarden was making a distinction between an aesthetically-neutral substratum within the work itself and an aesthetic "addition" superimposed on it by the reader. However, there is no place in Ingarden's theory for an ontic distinction such as this. All strata and all phases of the LWA can be given a complete characterization only on the basis of their component, artistic values. They possess such values as objectively as they possess all their other features, even though acknowledgement of these values requires a unique attitude towards the LWA and a unique cognition of it. Influenced by Mukarovsky and the "new criticism," Wellek preferred to apply the label "materials" to the totality of those elements of the LWA that are aesthetically neutral when regarded on their own (cf. Warren and Wellek 1956:231). He admitted the existence of a "structure" only at the "moment" when these materials became aesthetically effective. It is precisely this "moment" that Ingarden sees as the "moment" of aesthetic concretization and his terminology is better suited to emphasize two important factors regarding the LWA: (a) Among the non-aesthetic "materials" used by the LWA there are some which are already pre-aesthetically

132

MENACHEM BRINKER

structured (those comprising the structures of syntax, meaning, or representation), and (b) These structures are common to artistic and non-artistic literary works, in fact to all - or most - linguistic texts. As regards the LWA, there is no doubt that Ingarden, no less than Wellek or Mukarovsky, sees every "structure" (every "material") be it phonetic, semantic, or representational - as potentially relevant to the work's aesthetic value (or "aesthetic effectiveness").1 Only aesthetic concretizations, however, can determine the role played by various materials or structures in founding the value-structures of the complete aesthetic object (AO). Only post-aesthetic reflection on such a concretization can trace the evolution of these values, and only a pre-aesthetic, investigative cognition of the LWA can discern the emergence of the aesthetic value structures of the AO from the artistic value structures of the "work itself." 3. We must now clarify the specific nature of the above-mentioned attitudes to the LWA. All of them relate to it as to a work of art and all of them are related to the aesthetic concretization, i.e., to the creation of an aesthetic object through the act of reading. Yet, aesthetic concretization itself - the aesthetic attitude par excellence - is only one of these three. For simplicity's sake, we shall call the other two the pre-aesthetic and the post-aesthetic attitudes.2 We may then say that the pre-aesthetic attitude (or "reading") anticipates the creation of one or several aesthetic objects on the basis of the "work itself," the aesthetic reading creates such an AO, and the post-aesthetic (reflective) attitude investigates the AO and the process of its creation. a. The pre-aesthetic reading investigates the LWA as a schematic formation. Therefore, it must avoid any attempt at concretization, particularly that of filling out zones of indeterminacy opened by the text. As it is concerned, unlike the scholar's attitude mentioned above, with revealing the artistic values of the work itself (these artistic values being no more than the basis for a possible creation of aesthetic values),3 the pre-aesthetic reading must foresee or delineate possible aesthetic concretizations. This attitude, then, must rigorously guard the shaky borderline between foreseeing or anticipating
1. The expression is Mukarovsky's. 2. Ingarden's full name for the latter is "the reflective cognition of the aesthetic concretization of the literary work of art" (see Ingarden 1973b:300-331). 3. "The artistic value is the value of a means, of a tool, so to speak, which has the ability to cause an aesthetic value to appear, if circumstances favor it" (Ingarden 1973b:294). The relation of artistic to aesthetic values is partly clarified in Ingarden (1964).

INGARDEN

ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

133

aesthetic objects and becoming absorbed in an actual process of concretization. The conductor of an orchestra or the director of a theatrical group who scrutinizes a score or a script to discover its aesthetic potential exemplifies ':his type of attitude to various works of art.4 It should be clear, however, that this kind of reading cannot be conceived of without an intimate relatedness to the "idea" and the image of possible concretizations. b. The second attitude is the aesthetic attitude par excellence, i.e., the aesthetic concretization. In distinction from the pre-aesthetic attitude, its aim is not "pure cognition." It is a reading that fills various gaps and spots of indeterminacy in the work. Every LWA, being a schematic formation, allows for various completions of the same work. Thus, several aesthetic objects may be created on the basis of a single work. These objects and concretizations may be more or less "effective," more or less "close to the work," and they may "do more or less justice" to it (Ingarden 1973b:267-396). The borderlines between these three evaluations are not sufficiently clear in Ingarden's exposition. In particular, the meaning of "doing justice to the work" is indefinite. Nevertheless, it is clear that concretizations may be comparatively evaluated from three different points of view, with the aid of these three normative concepts. One, an "effective" concretization succeeds in realizing a comparatively greater number of aesthetic values or a greater unity between these values (a richer polyphonic harmony). Two, concretization which is "closer to the work" is one that avoids filling those indeterminacies in the text that are meant to stay "empty" and completes the other schematic structures in a way which is closer to the "spirit of the work" (which is not, of course, the only way open to the reader). Three, a concretization that "does justice to the work" is one that is either "effective" or both "effective" and "close to the work." Any discussion of Ingarden's position on the epistemic status of interpretations should not overlook these distinctions. Ingarden's introduction of "closeness to the work," in his second book, suggests that different concretizations ascribe different features to the work, and may therefore be evaluated in terms of their truth values. Yet, the existence of "aesthetic effectiveness" rules out the possibility of evaluating different concretizations (or interpretations) only in terms of truth value. Two concretizations may be indistinguishable as regards "closeness to the work," yet we regard one of them as "doing more justice to the work" because of its richer aesthetic content. Thus, the distance between the work and the AO can never be com4. The two examples are my own, yet I think they fit Ingarden's distinctions.

134

MENACHEM BRINKER

pletely bridged. Every statement we make about the work itself may be either true or false. Yet some aspects of the AO do not presuppose or imply such true or false statements. These should be judged according to the independent value of "aesthetic effectiveness." It is a pity that some of Ingarden's critics (notably Iser) did not take notice of these important distinctions.5 c. The third attitude, which we have called the post-aesthetic attitude, combines elements of the first two attitudes. Like the preaesthetic reading of the LWA, it aims at "pure cognition." This cognition, though, does not refer to the work itself but to the AO constructed from it. This reflective attitude may be taken in regard to one's own or someone else's concretization. The critic or historian of criticism who scrutinizes the various ways in which a certain work was read is taking such an attitude. He employs his own cognitional attitude to investigate a plurality of (earlier or contemporary) aesthetic attitudes to the LWA. When such a critic is concerned not only with cognition but also with evaluation of the success of various concretizations, his approach will necessarily include a new and independent pre-aesthetic reading of the LWA. The enterprise of evaluation may motivate a critic to form his own concretization which will then serve him as a model. This indicates the possibility that readers may shift from one kind of attitude to another in the course of the continuous reading of a work. A reader may stop the process of concretization in order to return to an earlier chapter to find out whether something was said or suggested by the work itself. In doing this, he shifts from the aesthetic to the pre-aesthetic attitude. As this will result in acts of correcting, rejecting, or reaffirming earlier phases of the concretization, it will also include another shift from the pre-aesthetic to the reflective, post-aesthetic attitude. Only then will the reader shift back to the aesthetic attitude, resuming the process of concretization. This is obviously done quite naturally by every aestheticallyconscious reader. Yet, a mistaken impression may arise from Ingarden's terminology - the pre-aesthetic, aesthetic, and reflective readings - and from the fact that the idealizational character of the readings described by these terms is not clearly stated. The impression is that by shifting from one kind of reading to another, the reader breaks the unity of his aesthetic experience and endangers the whole process of concretization. At times, Ingarden's tendency to forget the idealizational character of his descriptions brings him to the point of irrealism. Consider
5. For Iser's criticism of the notion of "an adequate concretization" see Iser (1978: 171-176). For a discussion of this critique, see Brinker (1980).

INGARDEN ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

135

the feasibility of completing an aesthetic concretization of a semantically complex poem without "going back" to lines or words one has already read, which necessarily means "going back" to earlier phases of the concretizing process. Of course, one may recognize the possibility that many shifts of the kind described above will eventually destroy the continuity of the aesthetic concretization. Yet more credit should be given to readers and works alike. To the extent that readers and works are better suited to a richer aesthetic experience, shifts of this kind will occur with less negative effects. However, Ingarden is quite clear on one important point: In regard to the literary work of art, the basic and most important attitude is the aesthetic attitude (i.e., the attitude of aesthetic concretization). The other two attitudes necessarily presuppose it: the preaesthetic, in anticipating it and forming a schematic delineation of it, and the post-aesthetic, in considering it reflectively. The aesthetic attitude itself is not necessarily tied to the two other attitudes. Theoretically, at least, it may be self-sufficient. This asymmetry reflects a functional hierarchy: the pre- and post-aesthetic attitudes derive their raison d'etre from the aesthetic attitude - they are meant to serve it, to improve it, to enrich it, to broaden its possibilities, and to make it more precise. On the other hand, the aesthetic attitude does not exist for the sake of the two epistemological attitudes: i.e., the two cognitions (of the LWA and of the AO). From the point of view of Ingarden's general philosophy of art, culture, and value, the aesthetic attitude may and should be considered an end in itself. 4. Aesthetic concretization, veritably the only form of aesthetic experience recognized by Ingarden, is not meant to serve or lead to any other human activity. As the focus for aesthetic experience, the work of art plays a unique role in human life and culture. Aesthetic experience culminates in the intuitive beholding of aesthetic values. Yet the fact that a work of art requires a concretizing process makes the beholder a co-creator of the values he beholds. Aesthetic experience is a creative beholding: an act of creation that creates and contemplates its products at one and the same time. In a proper aesthetic experience, a delicate balance is maintained between understanding (the work), creating (the aesthetic object), acknowledging (the aesthetic values), and deriving pleasure (from these values). When this balance is disrupted, an aesthetic experience may easily degenerate into another kind of experience. In a proper aesthetic experience, pleasure merely accompanies the acknowledgement of aesthetic value. Posited as the ultimate goal of the whole process and sought in itself, it makes the experience "improper" at best and non-aesthetic at worst. One tends to seek

136

MENACHEM BRINKER

pleasure through one's subjective psychological reactions rather than through what is actually seen, read, or heard, thereby losing touch with the work of art. The proper balance may also be disrupted in cases where the work's properties evoke images, feelings, thoughts, and even cognitions which lead the reader (viewer or listener) elsewhere. In such cases, realization of some of the work's properties will arrest creation of an AO by giving the reader (viewer or listener) emotional or intellectual satisfaction which cannot be regarded as part of a "proper" aesthetic experience. The last danger imminent in the case of any aesthetic experience is much more frequent in the case of a LWA. The LWA belongs to two larger groups of works simultaneously: the group of literary works (texts) and that of works of art. The reader may base his reading of the LWA on motives, interests, and reading-habits that served him in connection with non-artistic literary works. This base may shift him towards non-aesthetic values as well as non-aesthetic satisfactions. The acknowledgement of a moral or intellectual value may quite easily suggest itself as the culmination of the reading-process of a LWA (as happens quite often with other kinds of literary works). The whole experience will then tend to loose its proper aesthetic character. Classical aesthetics, with its duality of a completed and closed AO on the one hand and a passive consumer-observer contemplating its beauty on the other, is abandoned by Ingarden's theory of concretization. Yet his belief in the purity of aesthetic values and experiences proves him a disciple of this same aesthetics. A disciplined aesthetic experience subordinates all other motives and interests to the creative beholding of pure, unmixed aesthetic values. In the following sections we shall question this hasty subsumption of the LWA under the general notion of "works of art." For the moment, however, let us emphasize that, as a result of it, Ingarden prescribes that the LWA be read with the same "attitude" and motives one has in mind when a painting is viewed and a symphony heard. As language, the ontic basis of this specific work of art which is the LWA, is prone to trigger varied movements of thought and feeling, special care must be taken to preserve the aesthetic character of the act of reading. Ingarden's first book is concerned, for the most part, with the phenomenology of the literary-work-in-general and of reading-ingeneral. His notions of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" aesthetic attitudes act in this book as delegates of his other phenomenology, that of the aesthetic experience and the work-of-art-in-general. That is why these notions are never defined in this book or in any of

INGARDEN ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

137

Ingarden's other writings on literature. Their meaning is taken for granted. In fact, each of Ingarden's examples of "inappropriate" readings has a counterpart in his discussion of the other arts ("inappropriate" viewings or hearings) (see Ingarden 1962 and 1973b: These are normative terms defining readings rather than 175-218). works, and they serve to emphasize that only a specific kind of reading modelled on Ingarden's phenomenology of aesthetic experience is "appropriate" to the LWA as a work of art. However, it should be understood that adoption of an AAA is no guarantee of a successful aesthetic concretization. It shows the reader's correct understanding of the goals, motives, and spiritual interests that may legitimately enter an aesthetic reading. Success of an aesthetic concretization implies more than this understanding. Moreover, it entails different things in the case of different works. There can be no doubt, though, that, although an insufficient condition, the AAA is a necessary condition for the success of an aesthetic concretization. 5. My discussion will now move from the present account of Ingarden's stance on the AAA to a critique of one of its most crucial points: its treatment of the relation between the referential meanings ascribable to the LWA and the aesthetic concretization of this work.6 My criticism may be interpreted in two different ways: If one accepts Ingarden's phenomenology of the aesthetic experience, this critique should raise doubts as to the justifiability of subsuming a phenomenology of the LWA to this phenomenology of the aesthetic experience. An alternative possibility, however, is to see my remarks as implying the existence of serious limitations and in Ingarden's phenomenology of the aesthetic misconceptions experience, made manifest by the fact that it cannot be used to illuminate the experience of reading a LWA without placing highly artificial limitations upon this experience. I shall begin with a certain ambiguity characteristic of Ingarden's attitude towards the issue of the LWA's referential meanings. May or
6. I have chosen this term from among the many offered by contemporary Anglo-American philosophy for designating the possible relation between a fictional work and its or our vision of reality. It is borrowed from Kaplan (1954), but used in a different way. Hospers uses "implied truths," Beardsley "implicit predications," and Searle speaks of "serious speech acts" conveyed by "pretended speech acts." The scope of this discussion does not allow elaboration upon the complex question of whether and how attribution of referential meanings to LWAs (and to fiction in particular) is justifiable. I will make do with the assumption that such meanings may exist in specific works (such as fables and allegory, satires, didactic novels, philosophical tales) and that the reader may also think of such meanings while reading other types of fictional works.

138

MENACHEM BRINKER

may not the LWA possess referential meanings, in Ingarden's opinion? This simple, indeed perhaps simplistic, question is not given an unequivocal answer in any of his writings. What is presented on several occasions is the claim that the sentences and sentencecomplexes of the LWA are in fact quasi-judgments, and that nothing having to do with reality can therefore follow from them.7 These claims may seem to imply that the absence of referential meaning in a LWA follows from the phenomenology of the literary work and not from the separate phenomenology of the aesthetic experience superimposed upon the former through the notions of an "appropriate" and a "non-appropriate" aesthetic attitude. They - in any possible may seem to imply that the reader simply cannot - attribute referential meaning to the LWA. reading These implications, and - accordingly - these claims of Ingarden's are gravely misleading for the following two reasons: first of all, we must keep in mind that Ingarden's notion of quasi-judgments is very different from some ordinary notions of fictional discourse.8 Quasijudgments are not necessarily sentences whose semantic subjects cannot represent existing entities because of the simple fact that no such entities exist. These are, rather, sentences that we are supposed to understand without assigning them any such entity, whether or not one exists. The importance of this difference cannot be overemphasized. Here, the modification undergone by assertive propositions in becoming quasi-judgments does not exclude them from a truthfalsity status because of the actual impossibility of considering them descriptions of real entities. On the contrary, such a possibility always exists, whether the sentence's semantic subject is Napoleon or Rome, Anna Karenina or Eldorado. Reading the sentences of a LWA as quasi-judgments means, exactly, an understanding of their meanings and a projection of the states of affairs described by them as "purely intentional states of affairs." Such an act of understanding is an actual blocking of the normal procedure for understanding real judgments. The normal procedure usually ends in a transition from an understanding of the judgment's contents towards the identification of this content with an objectively existing entity - in Ingarden's terminology - "in an auton(an entity that "exists" of Being"). Quasi-judgments are affirmative proposiomous sphere tions for whose contents we do not make this final identification.
7. "Such a proposition [i.e., real proposition] cannot be found in a LWA nor can it be deduced from sentences that are contained in it. For a true proposition cannot follow from sentences that are not genuine judicative propositions" (Ingarden 1973a:303). 8. Such as Beardsley's or Searle's.

INGARDEN ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

139

The very acknowledgment of the sentences of a LWA as quasijudgments is consequently part of the reader's "appropriate attitude" towards it, and accordingly cannot follow from the phenomenology of the literary work in general. What it necessarily follows from is the system of norms guiding the reading of literary works of a specific type: literary works of art. When this norm system is absent, the reader may naturally derive various referential meanings from his reading of a LWA. One novel may imply the truth that: "The winter of 1881 was a bad one in St. Petersburg"; another novel may imply the "truth" that: "There once was an Anna Karenina, who fell in love with Vronsky, etc." Secondly, and this is by far the more important point, even when the affirmative propositions have been appropriately modified into quasi-judgments, it is still possible to attribute referential meanings to a literary work. The referential meanings of an acknowledgedly fictional work of literature are not, as a rule, derived directly from the sentences (or quasi-judgments) themselves. They are derived from, or suggested by, the (fictional) representation constructed from these sentences: the fable, the characters, and the conflicts in which they are involved. The tenth of Aesop's fables is the first instance in the corpus of which it is a part where there is no independently summarized moral (Aesop 1954:12). Its cast of characters is comprised of a crow, a fox, and a piece of meat. Any reader is fully aware that the fable is not "about" them only, but (at the very least) also about flatterers, simpletons, and the gains to be got by flatterers of simpletons. The referential meaning (the moral) of this fable may be represented in various forms: in keeping with speech act theory (see Searle [1969:65-71]), it may be seen as an assertion: "Such is the of the world; sly flatterers exploit simpletons"; it may be taken way as a warning: "Beware of flatterers"; it may also, however, appear as a form of recommendation. "Exploit simpletons." The differences between these three versions of the "moral," the "idea," or the "serious speech act" conveyed by the fable concern what theorists such as Iser or Hirsch (Iser 1978:151 and Hirsch 1967:62-67) term the story's significance, but not its signification (or meaning). This signification is clearly referential and pertains to "objectively existing entities" (flatterers, simpletons, and so forth); it remains invariant in the various versions offered. It is no accident, perhaps, that Ingarden does not mention allegory as a literary genre anywhere in his writings on literature, except in a brief discussion of an allegorical reading under the heading of "symbolization." Such a transition from a fictional representation to a real "theme"

140

MENACHEM BRINKER

is often possible. At times, however, it seems to be required by the text, and omitting it will count as missing the "point" of the whole narrative. Ingarden's view allows only two alternatives for treatment of this transition. The first recognizes that texts such as this humble fable indeed require that their readers make a transition of this type and determines, on this basis alone, that the said texts may not be considered literary works of art, but only non-artistic literary works. The second attempts to prevent such a transition to referential meaning by establishing a norm of reading under which the reader is obliged to refrain from making the shift from fictional objects to entities "existing in an autonomous sphere of being" "symbolized" by them. As I can recommend neither of these alternatives for the treatment of Aesop's fable, I see no possibility of accepting these implications of Ingarden's concept of the appropriate aesthetic attitude to the LWA. 6. Contrary to several of Ingarden's remarks, then, a phenomenological description of the literary work demonstrates that the transition from reading the work to determining its referential meaning in the form of real judgments (which are either true or false) is often a possibility. Such transitions may occur on two different levels of the literary work: that of its sentences and that of its representations. In a work of fiction known to the reader as such, they are of course only possible on the second level. Ingarden rejects them for the single reason that, from a certain point on, his description becomes dependent upon a normative conception of the AAA towards the LWA. This normative stance follows from a highly specific view of the aesthetic experience in general, and cannot be based upon the phenomenology of the LW. Our interest in the possibility of deriving referential meanings from the sentences in the LWA is, perhaps, secondary but by no means marginal. True, most LWAs are fictional and are known to their reader as such. Any attempt to understand their sentences as real (false) judgments indicates a misunderstanding of literary conventions, so basic as to make it extremely rare even among children to whom Ingarden (mistakenly, I believe) ascribes a stronger tendency towards the misconstrual of aesthetic illusion. Nevertheless, there are non-fictional literary works which may be read both as actual histories and as LWAs. It is obvious that in Ingarden's view they cannot be read as both simultaneously. He clearly sees the reading of a Biblical tale, such as that of David and Bathsheba, as a historical account and as a LWA as mutually

INGARDEN

ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

141

exclusive. When the sinful king and his innocent victim are conceived of as actual historical figures, the result must be such that "what is purely intentional will disappear from view" (Ingarden 1973a:245). Awareness of the Biblical narrator's intention of elucidating the fate of David's dynasty must also be foreign to a reading of the tale as a LWA. An AAA towards the story obliges the reader to limit himself to an impression of the quasi-reality of its "world" and to that alone. Any transition towards reality itself - including a transition to the author's "vision" of a reality - necessarily destroys the purely intentional nature of the represented objects and the story. This is also true of any attempt to assign referential meanings to fictional works of literature made on the basis of the represented objects instead of the sentences. For Ingarden, both cases represent an inappropriate aesthetic attitude towards the LWA, in just the same sense and for just the same reasons. In both cases, the quasireality of the purely intentional objects is abandoned in favor of reality. The quasi-reality of a represented world is the only domain in which the literary-aesthetic illusion exists. From section 37 of the most difficult section of Ingarden's Ingarden (1973a:242-467), on literature, it follows that the illusion "proper" to the writings reading of a LWA may be destroyed in one of two manners, both of which involve an exchange of quasi-reality for reality. One of these is what we may call delusion: seeing the represented objects as too real. Ingarden attributes this childlike attitude not only to children but also to those naive readers whose only interests lie with the vissicitudes of the fictional heroes. The second is to see the represented objects as symbolizing objectively existing, real entities. In this case these objects become too non-real, or - as Ingarden puts it - transparent. Here, too, the purely intentional nature of the represented "world" disappears behind something conceived of as real. But here it is not the represented "world" itself, but another world symbolized by it that destroys the proper illusion. Quasireality, then, is a sort of golden mean which is imperative if a "proper" literary illusion is to be maintained. Digression from this mean in any direction constitutes an inappropriate aesthetic attitude towards the LWA. In keeping with the ambiguity discussed above, Ingarden considers the difference between a view of the represented objects as purely intentional and the view of them as symbols for real objects, an
9. For the distinction between illusion and delusion, see Brinker (1977).

142

MENACHEM BRINKER

internal difference between two types of literary works such as the historical novel and the scholarly historical work (Ingarden 1973a:245). cal novel and the scholarly historical work (Ingarden 1973a:245). He tends to overlook just that type of literary work which would be of the greatest interest to this issue, an example of which would be the popular history book which supplies its readers with the results of scholarly research in a lively and dramatic manner. Such a work illustrates that what separates the reading of a work of literature as a LWA from its reading as a scholarly work is at times no more and no less than the interests and norms guiding the reading. Multi-functional aesthetic objects of this type, which play such a central role in Mukariovsky's (1978) theory, for instance, are utterly ignored by Ingarden, who bases his classifications on pure essences. both Ingarden [1973a:328-330] and Ingarden (Accordingly, [1973b:146-167] give works of natural science and mathematics as examples of scientific works, rather than history books.) Ingarden's neglect of such cases does not, however, conceal the fact that he partly derives the "essence" of a LWA from the attitude of reading construed as the appropriate attitude towards it. Ingarden simply wants the reader's imaginative consciousness of the represented objects and his awareness of the polyphonic harmony of the work to count as the culminating point of the reading experience for LWAs. At the culmination of the reading-experience of literary masterpieces, Ingarden locates also the contemplation of metaphysical qualities. He takes pains to emphasize that the beholding of these qualities is not an understanding of referential meanings of the literary masterpiece. The reader or spectator, following Othello, does not recognize the tragic as an aspect of the real world or of real human life. He is enveloped by tragedy just as he is enveloped by the quasi-real presence of Othello and Desdemona, the mislead jealousy and the horrible murder. In order to avoid the possibility of readers misunderstanding this complicated issue, Ingarden even refuses to see metaphysical qualities as internal references within the purely intentional world represented in the work. The tragic is in no way separate or separable from the jealousy and murder in Othello. I will not go into the question of the extent to which Ingarden succeeds in clarifying his ideas on metaphysical qualities without disrupting his general view of the "proper" aesthetic experience. In any case, it is clear that his choice of examples of metaphysical qualities is far from accidental. He chooses terms representing emotional literary effects that are characteristic of "established"

INGARDEN ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

143

literary and artistic genres (the sublime, the tragic, the shocking, the inexplicable, the grotesque, the peaceful, etc.) (Ingarden 1973a: This choice is designed to prevent the possibility of an 290-291). over-intellectual understanding of the encounter with these essences. As regards literary works where the reader is apparently confronted with specific aspects of reality itself, the reader is simply given the following choice: he may use them in order to "get to know the world" (in other words, he may adopt an inappropriate aesthetic attitude, characteristic of naive and inexperienced readers), or he may adopt an AAA and perform an aesthetic concretization, while simply ignoring any referential meanings that may be possessed by the work's sentences or representations in other kinds of readings. This is just the choice that proves so difficult to accept, in connection with specific works (such as allegories, satires, philosophical tales, historical novels, etc.). However, its status with regard to "normal" LWAs such as fictional novels, plays, and novellas is also very problematic. 7. The roots of Ingarden's bias against introducing intellectualreferential "moments" into the purely aesthetic experience are made explicit in a specific section of his treatment of architecture in Ingarden (1962). A tourist viewing Notre Dame in Paris is faced, according to Ingarden, with a choice very similar to that confronting the reader of a LW which may be read either as a scholarly work or as a LWA. What the observer may form on the basis of his perception of the building, its materials, its colors, and its other visible, physical properties is either a consciousness of it as a cultural-religious object or a (different) consciousness of it as an AO. The possibility of a unified consciousness of the "two" objects is not considered (Ingarden 1962:257-268). A possible model for this (false and actually impossible) "eitheror" may be identified in Husserl's famous description of the experience of observing a Diirer engraving. At a certain moment, says Husserl, the perceptual consciousness is replaced by an aestheticimaginative consciousness, which "sees" Death, the Knight, and the Devil (Husserl 1931:309-311). This either-or concerns the impossibility of forming a perceptual consciousness and an imaginative consciousness of the same object at one and the same time. On the other hand, the either-or of Ingarden's description concerns the impossibility of unifying an ordinary act of cognition and an aesthetic act within one and the same act of consciousness. Husserl describes the imaginative consciousness of the engraving as an act that has absorbed and reshaped the materials and data of the anterior, perceptual consciousness, adjusting them to the new

144

MENACHEM BRINKER

intentionality. In contrast, Ingarden speaks of two different acts of consciousness which are unrelated despite the fact of their common basis - one and the same perceptual consciousness. From the point of view of this basis, the two of them represent two possible shifts of interest in opposing directions. Ingarden ignores the possible case where consciousness of Notre Dame as a social-religious object is absorbed in the aesthetic consciousness, becoming one of its "moments" (in the Hegelian sense of the term). It is similarly impossible, within the framework of Ingarden's phenomenology, for ideas, themes, theses to act as determined elements of an aesthetic consciousness or determinate components of the AO while their referential nature is kept intact. Anything touched by an aesthetic consciousness must either be transformed into a "purely intentional" object or excluded from the aesthetic experience. Consequently, Ingarden cannot admit of anything that is anywhere near the interrelationships between the intellectual-referential values possibly existing in a LWA and its artistic values. Owing to the pure essence of aesthetic values and the AAA, the former values are relegated to becoming the object of a separate (non-aesthetic) consciousness of the same LW. The total dependence of this part of Ingarden's theory on classical aesthetics becomes obvious when we notice that his approach is one that was very common between the two World Wars, when there was a revival of classical aesthetics. I. A. Richards, for example, also drew a demarcation line between science and poetry aided by his theory of pseudo-statements and a philosophy of the two totally different and autonomous interests nourishing these two types of literary texts (Richards 1958). In France, Paul Valery regarded the instrumental attitude towards "the word" as an attitude typical of scientific literature (discours) and one diametrically opposed to that of poesie.10 The transparence and transitivity that he attributes to the words of a scientific text, the ability and even the need to forget them in understanding the cognition for which they stand, is identical to the transparence attributed by Ingarden to the linguistic and representational formations that symbolize "objectively existing entities" and which cannot therefore be regarded as "purely intentional." Ingarden's great advantage over theories such as Valery's lies in his insistence that non-transparence and intransitive presence be attributed not only to language but to images and to the represented "world" as well. Intransitivity of the type described by Valery and the early Russian Formalists is only ascribed to poetic works whose
10. A clear presentation of his view may be found, for example, in Valery (1977).

INGARDEN ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

145

artistic values derive, at least in part, from the linguistic strata. Ingarden, however, makes it clear that there are LWAs where these strata contribute very little to the work's polyphonic harmony. In the AO based upon such a work, aesthetically-valuable structures will, for the most part, be derived from the work's "dual representational stratum." Language - the material quality of the words - will be unnoticed in the transition to the purely intentional "world" in much the same way as it becomes transparent in a scientific LW while conveying the referential meanings or "truths" introduced by this work. Yet these representations, this purely intentional "world," are, in the LWA, themselves non-transparent. Ingarden's recognition of the heterogeneous origins of aesthetic-values makes his theory better suited to giving an account of how it is that the aesthetic value structures of some great novels are preserved in translation.11 However, this advantage is of no avail when - like Richards or Valery - he falls victim to classical aesthetics' spurious dichotomies. Indeed, his failure is even underlined in contrast to his recognition of the relative "autonomy" of the simulated "world." The replete quasi-reality of the purely intentional "world" is partly derived from what Ingarden calls the "objective consistency" of the represented objectivities.12 This "objective consistency" explains the reader's ability to exploit his acquaintance with the structures of the real world in constructing the "people" and "events" of the represented "world." Is it always possible, in point of fact, to prevent the reader from seeing the represented objectivities modelled upon real objects as, themselves, models of these same real objects? Note my emphasis of the word "always." Obviously, the heros of science fiction novels and other forms of fantastic literature (modelled upon real structures of the world no less than those of any "realistic" novel) are not in turn modelling any aspect of the real world. (At least, as long as we are not reading these novels as allegories.) Even the characters and events of ordinary, illusionistic and trivial, realistic stories do not necessarily evoke the impression of a new cognition of one or more aspects of the real world. This is so precisely because such stories adjust themselves to our ordinary beliefs without questioning them, and thus without
11. These values are connected to "aesthetic ideas" (in the Kantian sense of the term) and may be embodied in a non-linguistic art. Ingarden (1973b:232) makes some remarks concerning them that may astonish many modern theorists of literature: they "are of the kind which can also be actualized in so-called plastic art, i.e., in a picture or a work of sculpture; they are thus nothing specifically literary." 12. This concept used in Ingarden (1973b) is central to Ingarden (1960-1961).

146

MENACHEM BRINKER

supplying us with any new cognitions.13 It is obvious that we cannot and are also not required to attribute a fixed and determinate referential meaning to a work such as Kafka's Metamorphosis. Yet can we prevent the reader from seeing some of Gregor Samsa's fictional and indeed fantastic experiences as possible models for real experiences? And granted the possibility of such an endeavor, is it desirable to control his reading in such a manner? Will this actually enrich his aesthetic experience or will it, rather, impoverish it? Elsewhere, while discussing another phenomenology of reading, I have expressed the opinion that there is a type of literary work which does not lead the reader to seek an "overall" (referential) meaning (see Brinker 1980 and 1983b). Conversely, there is another type of LWA for which it is practically impossible to reach a concretization of any kind, without attributing highly fixed and determinate referential meanings to its fictional representations. (Ingarden's pejorative allusions to didactic and tendentious "shallow" works [cf. Ingarden 1973a:303] by no means exhaust this type of LWA. It is doubtful whether he would wish to expel Voltaire's Contes Philosophique or Swift's Gulliver's Travels from the domain of the LWA.) The main problem, however, remains within the central tradition of the novel, the short story, and the play. As contended above, it is impossible and, at the same time, superfluous to ascribe fixed, determinate, and unambiguous referential meanings to the greatest works in these categories. However, factors such as thoughts on the social types represented by Dostoevsky's heroes, or thoughts on Dostoevsky's vision of man, that definitely occur in the process of reading and, naturally, constitute two different referential meanings, do not necessarily dissipate the quasi-reality of a Raskolnikov or an underground man. Similarly, thoughts on the values of class and family bonds in nineteenth-century Russia or anywhere else need not undermine the illusion of reality in an Anna Karenina. On the contrary, emergence of possible candidates for the referential equivalents of fictional heroes and situations, and their hesitant rejection tinged with the sense that these "meanings" do not exhaust the fictional world, may even sharpen and intensify our illusion, i.e., our feeling of "reality" in the quasi-real world. These aspects of our reading enhance our sense of the fictional "world's" precise nature because of our construal of it (or its parts) as possible models for (portions of) reality, and they are by no means typical only of naive and aesthetically inexperienced readers. An understanding of the reading experience at its fullest is impossible without them. Ingarden's fear of interruptions in the continuous aesthetic interest,
13. This non-cognitive illusionism is discussed in Brinker (1983a:264-267).

INGARDEN

ON THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE

147

which stem from thoughts and feelings of the reader's that are not focused upon the simulated "world" and the polyphonic harmony, is highly exaggerated. It is based on an aesthetic prejudice and on a desire to model the reading experience on an aesthetic experience tailored to suit all of the arts and perhaps even natural aesthetic objects. It is doubtful whether the common denomination of the (let's say) seven beautiful - or fine - arts is of more importance than the distinctions between them. It is very doubtful whether the experience of reading a novel is similar, in any significant sense, to the experiences of viewing a beautiful flower garden or listening to birdsong, both of which were often considered paradigms of "pure" aesthetic experiences. Classical aesthetics was at ease with such a reduction of various and varied experiences to a single common denominator, as this common denominator evolved from the concept of a complete beautiful object always passively observed. Strangely enough, however, the very Ingarden who made such a crucial contribution to the philosophy of art in his concept of concretization, who probably did more than any other theorist to illuminate the nature of the concretization of a LWA, repeatedly refers to classical aesthetics as a basis for his definitions of "proper" and "improper" aesthetic concretization. Ingarden's concept of the AAA is actually an agent of classical aesthetics operating within the territory of a theory that has already gone far beyond it. The central role assigned this concept results in a drastic and artificial restriction of the reading experience. Is it so obvious that the reader of The Possessed who never steps outside the purely intentional world of Dostoevsky's novel is necessarily superior to the one who pauses from time to time to reflect on Russian believers and heretics, Russian history, or the nature of human action? It seems to me that Ingarden's insistence on the purity and continuity of the aesthetic experience creates an extreme idealization of reading. Its problematic relation to the realities of the reading process is revealed especially in the case of rich and complex works. Consequently, his phenomenology does not do much to clarify the very real interrelations between the intellectualreferential and the imaginative-aesthetic factors that do exist at the heart of the reading experience.
REFERENCES Aesop, 1954. Fables of Aesop, trans. S. A. Handford (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books). Beardsley, Monroe C., 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World). Brinker, Menachem, 1977. "Aesthetic Illusion,"Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36, 90-96.

148

MENACHEM BRINKER

1980 "Two Phenomenologies of Reading: Ingarden and Iser on Textual Indeterminacy," Poetics Today 1:4, 203-212. 1983a "Realism, Conventions and Beliefs," New Literary History 14:2, 253-267. 1983b "Farce and the Poetics of the Vraisemblable," Critical Inquiry 9:3, 565-578. Hirsch, E. D., 1967. Validity in Interpretation (New Haven/London: Yale UP). Hospers, John, 1960. "Implied Truths in Literature," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 19, 37-46. Husserl, Edmund, 1931. Ideas, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: Allen and Unwin). Ingarden, Roman, 1960-1961. "A Marginal Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 20:2 and 3, 163-173, 273-285. 1962 Untursuchungen zur Ontologie der Kunst (Tibingen: Max Niemeyer). 1964 "Artistic and Aesthetic Values," British Journal of Aesthetics 4:3, 198-213. 1966 "Werte, Normen und Strukturen nach Rene Wellek," Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift und Geistesgeschichte 40:1, 43-55. 1973a (1931) The Literary Work of Art (Evanston: Northwestern UP). 1973b (1937) The Cognition of the Literary Workof Art (Evanston: Northwestern UP). Iser, Wolfgang, 1978. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore/ London: Johns Hopkins UP). Kaplan, Abraham, 1954. "Referential Meaning in the Arts," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 12, 457-474. Mukarovsky, Jan, 1970 (1935). Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts, trans. Marc E. Suino (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Studies). 1978 Structure, Sign and Function, ed. and trans. John Burbank and Peter Steiner (New Haven/London: Yale UP). Richards, I. A., 1958 (1935). "Science and Poetry," in: M. Schorer, J. Miles, and G. McKenzie, eds. Criticism: The Foundations of Modern Literary Judgement (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World). Searle, John R., 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP). 1979 "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse," in: Expression and Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge UP). Valery, Paul, 1977. "Po6sie et pensee abstraite." English translation in: J. R. Lowler, ed. Paul Valery, an Anthology (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton UP). Warren, Austin and Wellek, Rene, 1956. Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World). Wellek, Rene, 1970. "Stylistics, Poetics and Criticism," in: Discriminations (New Haven/ London: Yale UP).