Franco Moretti

In the past two decades, there has been a complete change in the dominant
attitude of Marxist criticism towards Modernism. Essentially, Marxist read-
ings of avant-garde literature are increasingly based on interpretative theor-
iesRussian Formalism, Bakhtins work, theories of the open text, decon-
structionismwhich, in one way or another, belong to Modernism itself.
This sudden loss of distance has inevitably paved the way to a sort of
interpretative vicious circle. But what seems to me even more significant is
the transformation which has occurred in the field of values and value-
judgements, where recent Marxist criticism is really little more than a left-
wing apology of Modernism. We need only think of such pioneer Marxist
work as that of Benjamin or Adorno, and the extent of this cultural somersault
is evident. Benjamin and Adorno associated fragmentary texts with melan-
choly, pain, defencelessness, loss of hope; today, they would evoke the far
more exhilarating concepts of semantic freedom, de-totalization and pro-
ductive heterogeneity. In the deliberate obscurity of modern literature,
The Spell of Indecision
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Benjamin and Adorno saw the sign of some kind of threat; nowadays,
it would be taken rather as a promise of free interpretative play. For
them, the key novelist of the modern world was, quite clearly, Franz
Kafka; today, just as clearly, he has been replaced by James Joyce,
whose work is just as great, but certainly less urgent and uncanny.
By and large, I agree with the emphasis on the anti-tragic, or non-tragic
elements of Modernism. What does not convince me at all, however,
is the widespread idea that what we may call the ironic dominant of
modernist literature is subversive of the modern bourgeois world-view.
Open texts contradict and subvert organicist beliefs, there is no doubt
about this; but it remains to be seen whether in the past century the
hegemonic frame of mind has not in fact abandoned organicism, and
replaced it with openness and irony. I will try to show that such is
indeed the case, and that, although irony is an indispensable compnent
of any critical, democratic and progressive culture, its modernist version
has a dark side with which we are not familiar enough, and which may
be even more relevant to Marxist culture than those aspects focused
upon in the recent past.
Let us start with a small classic of Modernist imagination (which, I
believe, we owe to Lautramont): an umbrella and a sewing-machine
meeting on an anatomical table. Dada, Surrealism, Pound, Eliot and
several others have produced countless variations on this basic pattern,
which, to be sure, ironically negates any idea of totality and any
hierarchy of meanings, leaving the field free for a virtually unlimited
interpretative play. And yet: is this really such a subversive image? It
would seem that Lautramonts dream was shared, not only by fellow
poets, but by the owners of the first department stores as well. Descri-
bing their windows, DAvenel wrote in 1894 that the most dissimilar
objects lend mutual support when they are placed next to each other.
Why should this be? wonders Richard Sennett, to whom I owe the
quotation. The use character of the object, he replies, was temporarily
suspended. It became stimulating, one wanted to buy it, because it
became temporarily an unexpected thing; it became strange.
1
A common
object transformed into something unexpected and strange: is this not
precisely the de-automatization of everyday perception advocated by
that crucial Modernist principlethe ostranenie of Russian Formalism?
Is it not also the basic technique of modern advertising, which took off
shortly after the golden age of avant-garde movements, and whose task
is to endow commodities with a surprising and pleasant aesthetic aura?
These are just local affinities, so I shall try to broaden the field of inquiry
a little. At the turn of the century, Georg Simmel wrote an essay
The Metropolis and Mental Lifein which he maintained that the
main psychological problem of the city-dweller lies in the swift and
continuous shift of external stimuli . . . the rapid telescoping of changing
images . . . the unexpectedness of violent stimuli.
2
In this typical
Modernist text which is Simmels metropolis, stimuli can be danger-
1
Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, Cambridge 1976, p. 144.
2
Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life, in On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings,
Chicago 1971, p. 325.
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ouscan be shocks, as Benjamin will put it when writing on Baudelaire.
One has to protect oneself from them. But one cannot do that simply
by being blind to them, because they are the best which the modern
world has to offer and suggest: objects to be owned, social roles to be
played, fascinating situations to be experienced.
One has then to see and not to see, to accept and to disavow at the
same time. It is a contradictory predicament, and in order to make us
feel at home in the bourgeois metropolisa feeling which is bound
to be very near the core of what we call a hegemonic world-view
both external stimuli and subjective perception have to possess rather
peculiar attributes, which, once more, turn out to be barely distinguish-
able from those usually associated with literary Modernism. As for the
stimulus, it has to be evocative more than meaningful: it must possess
as little determinacy as possible, and therefore be open to, or better still
produce, such a plurality of associations that everybody may be able to
find something in it. It has, in other words, to centre on that keyword
of Modernismambiguity. What must develop on the side of the
subject, on the other hand, is the idea that this galaxy of associations
is valuable as such: not as a starting point from which to move towards
a definite choicewhether the choice of a specific object, in advertising,
or a semantic choice, in the reading of a poembut as a field of
possibilities whose charm lies precisely in its growing irreducibility to
the field of actuality.
Romantic Irony
The aestheticironical attitude, whose best definition still lies in an old
formula, willing suspension of disbelief, shows how much of Modern-
ist imaginationwhere indeed nothing is unbelievablehas its source
in Romantic irony. And Romantic ironyobserved one of its sharpest
critics, Carl Schmitt, in Politische Romantikis a frame of mind which
sees in any event no more than an occasion for free intellectual and
emotional play, for a mental and subjective deconstruction of the world
as it is. Devoted to the category of possibility, Romantic irony is
therefore incapable of a decision, and even hostile to whatever resembles
one. But decisionleaving aside Schmitts reactionary development of
this conceptis inseparable from praxis and history. Decisions have to
be taken all the time; even, paradoxically, to ensure the existence of
that realm of possibility and indecision to which Romanticism and
Modernism have attached such a central meaning. In order to come to
terms with this paradoxical coexistence of decision and indecision,
modern literature has developed one of its most powerful metaphors,
of which I shall now briefly sketch three different stages.
In the first chapter of Balzacs La Peau de chagrin, the hero has just lost
his last francs at roulette. Tonight he is going to drown himself in the
Seine, and in the meantime he wanders through an old curiosity shop
much more than that, really: lets say, something mid-way between the
Louvre and the Bon March. He is bewitched by the heterogeneous,
almost surrealist collection of objects that surround him. His imagin-
ation flares up in a perfect romantic rverie . . . and, all of a sudden,
his dream comes true thanks to that metaphor I have announced: the
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pact with the Devil. The Devil is a highly popular character with all
oppositional cultures, so I will not attempt to criticize him/her, but will
simply point out the price of the pact. And what shall be my counter-
service therefore? asks Goethes Faust; and Mephisto: The time is
long: thou needst not now insist.
3
The time is long: over a century
later, Thomas Manns Mephisto will echo this line: We sell time . . .
thats the best thing we have to offer . . . (Doktor Faustus, ch. 25).
We sell time: and buy it too, in fact. What happens is that Faust
and Mephisto, so to speak, exchange times: to Faust, the unlimited
possibilities of the future; to Mephisto, not eternity (Fausts soul, in the
end, will go to Heaven) but the present. The line I have just quoted
The time is long: thou needst not now insistdoes not defer Fausts
payment: it enacts it. Precisely by not worrying for the present, Faust
ends up surrendering it completely to Mephisto. In Goethe, then, time
splits: there is Fausts time, devoted to explorations and experiments,
always fully and splendidly in view; and there is Mephistos time, more
often than not invisible, but devoted precisely to those ruthless actions
which are necessary in order to realize Fausts desires and visions, but
of which Faust himself would prefer to feel innocent. I grudge thee
not the pleasure/ Of lying to thyself in moderate measure (vv. 3297
8) is Mephistos sarcastic and truthful reply to Fausts disavowals in the
crucial scene of the Gretchen tragedy (and a similar exchange will take
place again in the episode of Philemon and Baucis).
One major psychological result of the pact is therefore a growing sense
of irresponsibility on Fausts part: the enjoyment of all treasures of the
earth is severed, although not completely, from the awareness of what
is necessary to their production: Before chaste ears one may not name
straight out/ What chaste heart cannot do without (vv. 32956). It is
clear that the issue of decision, here, has not been erased but rather
entrusted to someone who, being the Devil, will act in a totally
unscrupulous way. Decision has not been eliminated: that cannot be. It
has become even more cruel, precisely because Faust leaves it to
Mephisto; but it has also become less visible, and it is almost possible
not to feel its weight.
In our second textFlauberts LEducation SentimentaleMephisto has
become a hidden devil. Frdric Moreau already enjoys the gifts tradition-
ally offered by Mephistoyouth, beauty and moneywithout having
to sign any contract. A wealthy old uncle dies, and thats it: there is
really no responsibility on Frdrics part. The distribution of social
power is the product of an entirely autonomous mechanism which is
also, for the same reason, utterly unpredictable. The course of history
is no longer contradictory and cruel (as in Goethe), but rather inscrutable
and erratic. Potentially, it is even more catastrophic, but it has also
become so remote that Frdric can see itand does see it, in the first
days of the 1848 revolutionsimply as a show to be contemplated.
This aesthetic attitude towards life and history is the key to another
novelty of Flauberts work. Here money ceases to be the medium
3
J. W. Goethe, Faust, translated by Bayard Taylor, Sphere Books, London 1969, vv. 164950.
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through which desire is satisfied, as Marx pointed out was the case
with Goethes Mephisto. In LEducation Sentimentale money is desirable
because it allows, not satisfaction, but its postponement. Now that he
is rich, Frdric can finally indulge in his dreams as dreams: since he
knows that he can realize them whenever he wishes, theres no need to
do it now: And indeed there will be time . . . And time yet for a
hundred indecisions,/ And for a hundred visions and revisions . . .
Frdrics life is really a monument to ironic indecision: so much so
that he manages to remain undefined even in those crucial years
between 1848 and 1851when everybody has to take sides. You will
probably recall the last page of the novel: the best thing we have had,
says an aged Frdric to his lifelong friend Deslauriers, is that flight
from the brothel, in early adolescence, when the sight of so many
women, all at his disposal paralysed Frdrics capacity for decision.
The best thing we have had is an experience which, not having taken
place, can be re-experienced in a totally unconstrained and subjective
way. The Romantic charm of indecision has found its most adequate
temporal expression: no longer Fausts violent desire for the future, but
daydreaming, which can freely handle past, present and future alike. The
split between two different times, and two parallel lives, has gone a step
further.
Stream of Consciousness
Daydreaming is the kernel of Blooms stream of consciousness in
Ulysses, which is our third text. Stream of consciousness, we know,
deals not with consciousness but with what is usually called the pre-
conscious, which contains the countless possible selves of each individ-
ual: what he/she would like to be, or to have been, but, for whatever
reason, is not. From this point of view, Blooms daydreaming completes
the separation between objective or public time, and its subjective
or private version. The latter, this goes without saying, is by now
considered the most interesting of the two: life as actuality has become
far less meaningful than that parallel form of life, life as possibility.
But Joyces more significant, and typically Modernist, innovation lies
in the fact that he has managed to break down the connection between
possibility and anxiety. This connection was still strong in Goethe
(in the interplay of streben and Sorge in Faust), in Kierkegaard, and in
that great and pained exploration of the logic of a possible second life
which was the nineteenth-century novel of adultery (of which Flaubert
was, predictably, a master). In Ulysses, adultery has become a harmless
pastime, and even the most extreme experiments of its Modernist
imagination may well produce stupefaction but no longer evoke any-
thing threatening.
How did this disconnection between possibility and anxiety come to
pass? The remarkable weakening of guilt feelings which has occurred
in our century is certainly part of the answer, but perhaps something
else has been at work too. The possibilities of a second life produced
anxiety because they constituted a challenge to what was real, and
forced everybody to rethink his/her own first life. Imagination, so to
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speak, was taken quite seriously: to the extent that it was a promise, it
was also a threat. This implied a great deal of discomfort and stiffness
of anxiety and guilt, toobut precisely because the products of the
imagination were a source of inspiration and transformation for mans
and womans first and actual life.
It is this feedback which has ceased to work in our century. Modernist
imagination has become immensely more ironical, free and surprising
than it was in the pastbut at the price of leaving our first life wholly
bereft of these qualities. From this point of view, Modernism appears
once more as a crucial component of that great symbolic transformation
which has taken place in contemporary Western societies: the meaning
of life is no longer sought in the realm of public life, politics and work;
it has migrated into the world of consumption and private life. This
second sphere has become incredibly more promising, exciting and free,
and it is within its boundaries that we can indulge in our unending
daydreams. But they are symmetricalindeed, they owe their very
existence to the bored and blind indifference of our public life. Day-
dreamseven the most subversive onesreally have no interest in
changing the world, because their essence lies in running parallel to it;
and since the world is merely an occasion for their deployment, it may
just as well remain as it is. Romanticism, observed Carl Schmitt,
managed to coexist with all sorts of political regimes and beliefs: this
is even more true of Modernism, whose extensive range of political
choices can be explained only by its basic political indifference.
There is a complicity between Modernist irony and indifference to
history. One of its most perfect expressions is in Joyces rhetorical
choice of rewriting what is practically the same passage in two or more
different styles: a device emphasized in several chapters of Ulysses and
present in the text as a whole. Almost never motivated (by the
personality of the speaker, for instance), this technique is put in front
of the reader as a breathtaking exercise in literary competence and, we
should add, in literary irony, since the root of irony lies precisely in
being able to see something from more than one point of view. Still,
this rhetorical choice has a rather evident consequence for our perception
of time and history. The status of history in Ulysses is intrinsically rather
low: to put it plainly, very little happens in the book. But more
than that, Ulysses multiplicity of styles forces our attention away from
whatever happens, and focuses it entirely on the various ways in
which events can be seen. To use narratologys standard terms, Joyce
radicalized that narrative tendency which aimed at overdeveloping the
level of discourse at the expense of the story. What is really meaningful
is not what happensthe logic of events and decisionsbut unmotiva-
ted, free subjective reactions to it. And in order for them to be fully
unconstrained, the story should exert as weak a pressure as possible: if
it stands still in eternal repetitionas will be the case in Finnegans
Wakeso much the better.
Novels, of course, can stop stories but not history, and the forms with
which we picture historical movement to ourselves are crucial for the
fashioning of our identity. Once avant-garde literature abandoned plot,
the void was inevitably filled by a parallel systemmass literature
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which, just as inevitably, has acquired an ever increasing relevance. The
appeal of mass literature is that it tells stories, and we all need stories:
if instead of Buddenbrooks we get The Carpetbaggers, then Harold Robbins
it is. Its certainly no progress, in our perception of history, but it is a
fact that, in this century, narrative forms capable of dealing with the
great structures and transformations of social life have more often than
not belonged to the various genres of mass literature and, more broadly,
mass culture.
I believe that Marxist criticism has not only underestimated the relevance
of mass culture in our century, but has been blind to its systematic
connection with avant-garde experiences. If the study of Modernism is
to be a study of modern culture and its role in historyand not just
of a chosen section of itit will have to realize that the silence of
Modernism is as meaningful as its words, and that it has been covered
by other, quite different voices. Finally, what a century of Modernism
teaches us is that irony, extraordinary cultural achievement though it
is, has to recover some kind of problematic relationship with responsi-
bility and decisionor else, it will have to surrender history altogether.
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