For Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes literature appears to be inseparable from the language in which it speaks. With their theories of language as the starting point, I discuss how their views on literature meet.
Their paths cross, for example, in the antithesis: the idea that the allegorical counter‐image creates the field of tension in the text that is able to release one from all that which is cramped and unfree in existence. This release always comes ‘from within,’ from language's concrete use of emblematic or coded stereotypes. And not ‘from without,’ like the impact of an already existing truth or release in a symbolic indirectness in the text. In Benjamin's critique of the ‘profane concept of symbols’ of classical‐romantic aesthetics and in his indication of the cognitive potential of the dialectic concept of allegory there is an attitude which is fundamentally in agreement with that of Barthes regarding the semiotic way in which both the content and the expression sides of language function.
Om litteratur på taersklen til en verden uden litteraturEn sammenholdning af Barthes' og Benjamins syn på forholdet mellem sprog og litteratur Når Roland Barthes (1915-1980 på den ene side haevder, at nydelsen og ubehaget for den enkelte ved at laese og skrive litteratur er knyttet til den udfordring og det besvaer, som kroppen har med at forlige sig med sprogets generalitet, og Walter Benjamin (1892 -1940) på den anden side mener, at ens krop og andres kun er erkendbare i benaevnelsen -vel at maerke i den udstraekning kroppen lader sig meddele, eller sagt på en anden måde, at det ved mennesker og ting, der lader sig meddele, er det sproglige -så synes det klart, at der for dem begge ikke har vaeret nogen vej uden om sproget.Barthes siger også, at »litteraturen ligner Racines heltinde Eriphile i tragedien Iphigénie, som dør af at vide, hvem hun er, men som lever ved at søge sig selv«, 1 og ved andre lejligheder naevner han Orfeus-myten direkte som allegori på det litteraere faenomen og det at skrive og laese: »Denne mallarméske sprogbrug er Orfeus, som kun kan redde det, han elsker ved at give afkald på det, men som alligevel vender sig lidt om; det er litteraturen på taersklen til Det forjaettede Land, eller taersklen til en verden uden litteratur som det alligevel er forfatternes opgave at vidne om.« 2
For Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes literature appears to be inseparable from the language in which it speaks. With their theories of language as the starting point, I discuss how their views on literature meet.
Their paths cross, for example, in the antithesis: the idea that the allegorical counter‐image creates the field of tension in the text that is able to release one from all that which is cramped and unfree in existence. This release always comes ‘from within,’from language's concrete use of emblematic or coded stereotypes. And not ‘from without,’like the impact of an already existing truth or release in a symbolic indirectness in the text. In Benjamin's critique of the ‘profane concept of symbols’of classical‐romantic aesthetics and in his indication of the cognitive potential of the dialectic concept of allegory there is an attitude which is fundamentally in agreement with that of Barthes regarding the semiotic way in which both the content and the expression sides of language function.
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