Before turning from the question of Bénichou's methodology to his broader historical vision, it is appropriate, perhaps, to apply the generational approach to Bénichou himself, and note that, when pressed, the philosophical vocabulary upon which he relied is one that was developing in France in the period of his own intellectual formation: the late 1920s and the 1930s. One looks in vain in Bénichou's writings, though, for an account of his relation to twentieth-century philosophy. Vincent Descombes has called the philosophical generation of France after 1945 that of the "three H's" (Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger), and the generation after 1960 that of the "three 'masters of suspicion'" (Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud). {45} Of these six figures who, at different times and in different circles, have achieved canonical authority, Bénichou mentions only Marx and Hegel, and then, for the most part, only historically, since their writings fall within the period he is discussing. Even from the point of view of the history of ideas, however, the influence of these philosophical masters can hardly be considered decisive. Hegel (in fact, German philosophy in general) was little read and understood in France before the Second World War. {46} As for Marx, the principles of historical materialism were already clear in the work of Guizot, as Marx and Engels acknowledged. {47} Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Freud are not mentioned in Bénihcou's major works. We can infer, however, from his philosophical commitments that Bénichou opposed the projects of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Freud. But what of Husserl? It is hard to say whether Husserl's work has influenced him directly. But, in "Réflexions sur la critique littéraire," when called upon to define literature (something he had earlier resisted doing, protesting: "What's the point?" {48}), Bénichou used a vocabulary that derives, ultimately, from Husserl's phenomenology:
[E]verything I have just said . . . converges on the idea of that intentional communication of which literature is the agent. . . . . Disenchanted or fervent, a literary work is always the tendentious message that one subject emits for other subjects, and the work feeds on a relation of influence and finality of which objective science as it defines itself has no means of mastering. If this is indeed the case, any effort to suppress or be indifferent to the intersubjective character of the literary message risks being, at its very foundation, nonsensical.It is true that Bénichou, with his disavowal of the possibility of "a strict science" in this domain, {50} denies the goal of certain knowledge which is the driving force behind Husserl's philosophical enterprise. But this denial is articulated in a philosophical vocabulary that owes much to Husserl. The emphasis on the conscious subject, on intentionality, and, one might say, even on ideas, recalls the founder of phenomenology.
In 1984, Bénichou was asked by Tzvetan Todorov to define the role of philosophy in the métier of literary criticism. He summed up his thinking on that occasion in these words:
Not being a philosopher by profession, I shall answer you insofar as reflection on the human condition is natural to each of us. The idea of a transcendence above the world and humanity seems to me most problematical. Human subjectivity, it seems to me, contains a transcendence within itself, in that it incontrovertibly considers that this is the case and -- in spite of every professional doctrine to the contrary -- experiences itself in this way. It is certain that everything that constitutes human selves and sets them apart, in particular the use of knowledge and the conviction that they possess free will, as well as everything that links them to other selves -- culture, law, morality -- transcends the realm of facts, and can only be conceived on a purely objective plane by the verbal rejection of what is self-evident. The idea of a transcendence enclosed in the inner feelings of human beings may seem paradoxical; it is even, perhaps, a philosophical absurdity, but this absurdity, if it is one, includes everything we know about ourselves, with neither exclusion nor addition. . . . [T]he reflexions I have just expressed . . . mean that in literature there is broad and continuous interchange, intersubjective in its nature, humanly transcending its content and universal in its reach because it concerns in principle all selves. This is only to affirm what was long taken to be self-evident in calling literary studies "the humanities." {51}We note once again the recurrence of certain key concepts in the phenomenological project. The adoption of human subjectivity as an irreducible point of departure, at once both "dependent and sovereign," as an antinomy, {52} the notion of an inherent transcendence that yields an empathetic intersubjectivity accomplished in the social realm of which language and literature are constituent parts, the belief that the process through which these things are accomplished necessarily involves moving to a level of thought involving universals (what Husserl called the "essential insight" or "intuition" involved in "ideation" {53}) -- all these elements are basic to phenomenology. The term intersubjectif, in fact, which plays a crucial role in the passage just cited, first appeared in French in 1931 in a translation of Hursserl, according to Robert. The "intersubjective character of the literary message," as Bénichou puts it, is at the center of the work of phenomenology's most important theoretician of literature, Roman Ingarden. {54} Ingarden, writing in the 1930s, describes the literary work as
a purely intentional formation which has the source of its being in the creative acts of consciousness of its author and its physical foundation in the text. . . . By virtue of the dual stratum of its language, the work is both intersubjectively accessible and reproducible, so that it becomes an intersubjective intentional object. . . . As such it is not a psychological phenomenon and is transcendent to all experiences of consciousness, those of the author as well as those of the reader. {55}Thus we do not mean to claim that Bénichou practiced a sort of phenomenological criticism. Nothing could be further from Bénichou's accessible prose than the harsh crabbed jargon of Husserl's philosophical texts. Nor are his historical analyses intricate probings of what might be called the experiential dimension of literary works, like those to be found in Georges Poulet's Études sur le temps humain (1949) or Jean Pierre Richard's Littérature et sensation (1954). Such phenomenological criticism isolates the literary work from history and treats it as a world of its own, a sort of virtual reality. But although it is true that it is ultimately historical in nautre, Bénichou's work is nonetheless not without a tendency in this direction. For example, of Nerval he writes: "The texts are our sole reality, but they represent the universe of Nerval, which is for us what is essential." {56} He was never tempted by a biographical impulse, since this would have demanded that he speculate about what he cannot know. Again: "There is, obviously, in Nerval, a confessed incapacity -- affective, at any rate -- to experience a love that is shared. . . . Whatever the interest of this conjecture . . . the work of Nerval is not at all changed by it, and we risk finding ourselves miles away from it and its author solely on account of this debate concerning which he never opened his mouth." {57}
Thus Bénichou had in common with phenomenological approaches to criticism the following elements: a privilege granted to the work, a belief in the priority of the human subject, a conviction that this subjectivity is in its essence implicated both in intersubjectivity and in a transcendence to general, or universal, ideas, and a certain conception of the essential nature of the literary work as an "intersubjective intentional object." But Bénichou's debt to phenomenology, if indeed there is one, stopped here, for he derives from his belief in human freedom the view that we can never know things about human beings with the sort of confidence given to us by the natural sciences, which are able to objectify what they study. Bénichou's real interest, then, is neither in philosophical certitude nor in the quasi-autonomous world of the work per se that attracts phenomenologically-minded critics, but rather in the relation of this work to the ideologies that govern the thought of the age. {58}
As Bénichou described his own development, after an initial infatuation with Marxist analysis he felt disabused of belief in the self-sufficiency of any single philosophical approach. By his own account, he then fell back on a sort of naive inductionism: "It was necessary to forget system as such and, while maintaining the chosen direction, work without prejudice." {59} In this approach, "preconceived systematic views concerning reality" are avoided because they push us to prejudge the final result. {60}
Perhaps we can see even here a sort of phenomenological bracketing of questions of ontology in the name of concentration on the work itself. In practice, however, the terminological consquences are the opposite of those we find in Husserl's philosophy. Bénichou leaves unchallenged most of the standard concepts that have guided traditional literary-historical analysis, including the author, the work, the literary generation, and the historical period. The fidelity to traditional terms is justified, when need be, on experiential and practical grounds. On the one hand, these are the terms that are closest to the experience of writer and reader alike; on the other, they prove to yield the most coherent and "plausible" account of the past of which we are capable. Bénichou's phenomenological borrowings are put to use in a sort of philosophy of common sense.
Because he conceived of literature as an inherently multifaceted thing, irreducible to any single aspect, Bénichou arrived at his methodological position by rejecting for their one-sidedness a number of popular approaches: sociological, aesthetic, philosophical criticism are all seen as flawed, either because of the exclusiveness of their approach, or because of their futility. Bénichou's work has been associated more often with a sociological approach to literature than with a philosophical approach. Each time this notion was broached, however, he pushed it away. In 1992, he remarked: "Sociologist of literature -- I don't much like that expression, because it highlights sociology, and sociologists who speak of literature are too often reductive in their approach." {61}
Bénichou's concentration on an area he situated halfway between the history of literature and the history of ideas was determined by a rejection of aesthetics as well as by a conviction of the inappropriateness of importing systematic philosophy into literary criticism. For Bénichou, the question of the aestheticvalue of the work under examination is not capable of being explained; it can only be appreciated. What makes some lines by Sainte-Beuve in Pensées d'août "not too good," compared, say, to Nerval's "Delfica," is not a matter one will find explicated in Bénichou's work. Of the latter poem, he remarks in a note: "It seems that in this sort of poetry readers must be contented with what they are told, and recognize beauty there, if it is indeed there, without adding anything to it. As for the nature of the beautiful in poetry, this has been discussed for centuries, without any conclusion. It is amply and indiscutably present in Delfica." {62} In a postscript to his discussion of Mallarmé's "Prose pour des Esseintes," Bénichou develops his point:
I fear that the merit of a poem with regard to its subject and its elocution, which of course makes up a considerable part of its value, escapes critical analysis by a decree of nature. The beautiful in poetry has, perhaps, laws and criteria, but the efforts that have been expended since the beginning of time in trying to discover them, and that our era has multiplied under different doctrinal labels, do not seem to me to have shed much light on what is essential. . . . . If we really possessed the key to poetic success, as we do in other arts -- naval construction, agriculture, or simply the art of killing or of burning --, connaisseurs would be then able to produce masterpieces in poetry, as they are in the case of these other techniques. Our analyses of poetic form have thus far so rarely endowed us with creative power that we can say, even if it seems shocking, that the secret of poetic beauty is still unknown to us. We may lament this or rejoice in it, foresee future progress allowing us entry into these domains of knowledge or just as well believe this to be improbable. In any case it seems to me that when it comes to judging a poem, for the present an empirical approach using intuition and sympathy promises less but can yield more than any system does.
Notes to Part III
{45} Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L.
Scott-Fox and J.M. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980),
p. 3.
{46} Bénichou, Le Sacre de l'écrivain, p.
241n. (The Consecration of the Writer, pp. 391-92).
{47} Cf.
Bénichou, Le Temps des prophètes, p. 23.
{48}
Bénichou, L'Écrivain et ses travaux, p. ix.
{49}
Bénichou, "Réflexions sur la critique littéraire," in
Marc Fumaroli, ed., Le Statut de la littéraire, p. 20.
(Emphasis in original.)
{50} Ibid.
{51} Tzvetan Todorov, Critique
de la critique: Un Roman d'apprentissage (Paris: Seuil, 1984), pp.
176-77. (Catherine Porter's more literal rendering of this passage in
English [translating for
example "sujets" as "subjects" rather than "selves" and "non-sens" as
"nonsense" rather than "absurdity"] may be found in Todorov, Literature
and Its Theorists: A Personal View of Twentieth-Century Criticism,
trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1987), pp. 151-52.)
{52} Ibid.
{53} Edmund Husserl, Ideas:
General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W.R. Gibson (New
York: Collier, 1962), pp. 48-50. [Orig. ed. 1913; English translation
1931.]
{54} Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, trans.
George G. Grabosicz (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp.
356-68.
{55} Roman Ingaraden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of
Art, trans. Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 14.
{56} Bénichou,
L'École du désenchantement, p. 342.
{57} Ibid., p.
299n.
{58} Bénichou understands "ideology" in a broad,
non-pejorative sense, "as an activity of the mind postulating values,
[which] must be viewed in the fullness of its role as one of the
fundamental faculties of humanity." Todorov, Critique de la
critique, p. 146 (for a different English translation, see Todorov,
Literature and Its Theorists, trans. Catherine Porter, p.
125.
{59} Bénichou, "Réflexions sur la critique
littéraire," in Marc Fumaroli, ed., Le Statut de la
littérature, p. 4.
{60} Ibid., pp. 4-5.
{61} Paul
Bénichou, "Du grand siècle au romantisme" [interview],
Magazine littéraire, no. 301 (July-August 1992), p.
98.
{62} Bénichou, L'École du
désenchantement, pp. 32, 364n. Reading Aurélia
causes Bénichou to exclaim in a note: "It would be impossible
to account for these delightful and moving pages; one can only read them."
Ibid., p. 481n.
{63} Bénichou, Selon Mallarmé, p.
236. This passage was first published in a very slightly different form
in 1988 in an article in Saggi e
ricerche di letteratura francese 26 (1988), p. 52.
Last Update August 21, 2001