We know that language is a collection of conventions and habits, which are common to writers of the same era. This means that language is like a natural attribute that completely runs through the writer's words without giving them any form or even giving birth to them: it is like an abstract circle that contains all kinds of truths. A single verb begins to flesh out only outside this circle. It encompasses the entire literary creation, almost as sky, earth, and their junctions delineate man's usual habitat. It is not a material reservoir but a horizon, that is to say, it is both a limit and a place of residence, in a word, it is the reliable range of a layout. Strictly speaking, the writer cannot draw anything from language: for the writer, language is more like a straight line, and going beyond it will also illustrate the supernatural properties of speech activities: it is a field of action, a response to a person. The determination and expectation of possibilities. It is not a place for social intervention, but just a physiological reflex without choice. It is the common wealth of people, not the wealth of writers; it exists independently of literary formulas; it is by definition A social object rather than a selected social object. No writer can naturally put his freedom into chaotic language, because what runs through language is the entire history. It is a complete and unified history existing in a natural way. Therefore, for writers, language is just a kind of horizon for people, which establishes some kind of intimate relationship in the distance, and this relationship is completely negative: say Camus[1] and Quennot[2] The same language, which is but a conjecture of all ancient or future languages ??that they do not speak: the language of the writer is suspended between abandoned and unknown forms, it is not a land but A limit; whenever a writer speaks, he loses, like Orpheus, the stable meaning of his gait and the fundamental gesture of his social activity, and language is the trajectory of everything he says.
Therefore, language exists in literature. Style is almost external: certain images, certain narrative methods and vocabulary all come from the writer himself and his past, gradually forming the regularity of his art. Thus, under the name of style, a self-sufficient speech activity is formed, which only penetrates into the author's personal secret myth, only into the sub-body of speech, and the first accident between words and things Here the conjunction is formed; here the important verb stem concerning the existence of style is established once and for all. No matter how delicate the style, there is always something rough about it: it is a form without a purpose, it is the product of a drive rather than a will, it resembles a single vertical dimension of thought . It relies on a biology and a past, not a history: it is the writer's "thing", his glory and fetters, his quiet place. Style, as a closed step of the individual, has nothing to do with society but is understood by society. It is by no means a product of choice and a product of literary thinking. It is a personal part of the ritual that rises from the mysterious depths of the writer's heart but soars beyond the writer's responsibility. It is a secret carnal ornament unknown to all; it operates by necessity, like the sprouting of a flower, and is but the expression of a blind and tenacious metamorphosis which arises in body and world. part of the subverbal activity within the limits. To be precise, style is an emergent phenomenon and a transformation of state of mind. So the hints of style are distributed deep down; speech has a horizontal structure, its secrets lie on the same line as its words, and what it conceals is revealed by the time of its continuance; in speech, Everything is ready-made, intended to be immediately usable, while verbs, silences and their movements rush towards an abandoned meaning: a transfer that leaves no trace and without hesitation. On the contrary, style has only one vertical plane. It sneaks into people's closed memory and forms its own chaos based on certain experiences. Style is never something other than metaphor, that is to say, it is just literary intention and the author's body structure. An equation between (it must be remembered that structure is a kind of accumulation of time)
Therefore, style has always been a secret; but what it silently relies on is not the changing and continuous nature of speech activity; its secret is a memory sealed in the body of the writer; the suggestive power of style does not It is not a phenomenon of speed like speech (in which the unspoken words are still a temporary pause in speech activity), but a phenomenon of density, because, deeply upright Underneath the style, or gathered together with difficulty or flexibility in its rhetorical figures, are fragments of real life that have nothing to do with the activity of speech. This miracle of transformation makes style a kind of super-literary operation, and it is this operation that brings people to the threshold of power and magic. Because of its biological origin, style lies outside art, that is, outside the contract that connects the writer to society. Therefore, we can imagine that some writers would rather have the security of art than the loneliness of style. The typical example of a styleless writer is Gide[4]
He used craftsmanship to excavate modern tastes from a certain spirit of classicism, and adapted Bach like a perfect Saint-Saint-Saint [6] Works. Or like Bronk's [7] adaptation of Schubert's [8] works.
In contrast, modern poetry—the poetry of Hugo, Rampo, or Charles—is full of style. And it is art only when it discusses issues from the perspective of poetic intention. It is the majesty of style, the absolutely free connection between the activity of speech and the double body of the writer. Forcing writers to become a breath of fresh air floating over history.
Therefore, the horizontal line of language and the vertical line of style delineate a natural attribute for the writer. Because he can neither choose this line nor that line. Voice operates as a negative operation of the first limits of what is possible, and style is a necessary expression of the connection between the writer's temperament and his speech activity. In the former, the writer finds an affinity with history; in the latter, he finds an affinity with his own past. In both cases, a natural attribute is involved, a gesture of intimacy in which the energy of the human body is merely operative, used for the enumeration of styles, for the transformation of language, But never used to judge and indicate a choice.
However, every form is also a value; therefore, between language and style, there is room for another tangible reality: writing. Regardless of the literary form, there is always a general choice of mood, temperament, and it is here that the writer clearly expresses his personality, because it is here that he intervenes. Language and style are materials that exist before any question of speech activity, language and style are the natural products of time and biological man; but the exact identity of the writer can only be real outside the invariants of grammatical norms and style can be determined, because there, the continuum of writing that first converges and closes in a completely innocent nature of language will finally become a complete symbol, a choice of human behavior and an affirmation of a certain interest. . Thus, the writer is placed in the elaboration and communication of a happiness or anguish, and at the same time connects the normative and specific form of his speech to the broader history of others. Language and style are blind forces; writing is an act of historical connection. Language and style are objects; writing is a function: it is the link between creation and society. It is a literary speech activity that can be transformed for its social purpose. It is a form that is understood because of its human will and is therefore inseparable from major turning points in history. For example, Mérimée[11] and Fénelon[12] differed by linguistic phenomena and stylistic changes; however, they used speech activities with the same intention, they relied on the same ideas about formation and content, and they accepted The same regulatory category, they are the birthplace of the same technical reflections. They are separated by a century and a half, but they use the same tools in the same attitude. Maybe the appearance of this tool has changed, but from the situation and situation in which it is used, The usage has not changed at all: in short, they have the same way of writing. On the contrary, Mérimée and Lautréamont [13], Mallarmé [14]② and Céline [15], Gide and Queneau, Claudel [16] and Camus, who are almost contemporary writers, Although they spoke or still speak our language in the same historical situation, they wrote in completely different ways; these writers' tone, narrative style, ending, moral teaching, and simplicity of language all combined. They are so distinct that the identity of the times and the agreement of language are nothing compared with a writing so opposed and so deeply defined by this opposition itself.
Although these writings are different, they are comparable because they all arise from the same activity, which is the writer's use of his personal form in society and the choices he makes. think. Since writing is at the center of literary problems (there are literary problems only when there is writing)
, therefore, it is basically a formal ethics. It is the writer's decision to place the nature of his speech activity in it. choices made in social space. But this social space is by no means an effectively utilized social space. For the writer, the problem is not to choose the social group for which he writes: he knows very well that unless he expects a revolution, the choice can only be for the same society. His choice is a choice of consciousness rather than a choice of efficacy. His writing is a way of thinking about literature, not a way of promoting literature. Or to put it further: it is precisely because the writer cannot change the objective conditions of literary creation at all (these are purely historical conditions that elude him, even if he is aware of them), that he voluntarily changes the conditions for a The need for a free speech activity is transferred to the origin of this speech activity rather than to its completion stage. Therefore, writing is an ambiguous reality: on the one hand, it indisputably arises from the opposition between the writer and the society in which he lives; on the other hand, starting from the purposiveness of society, it through a certain tragic empathy, Return the writer to the original means on which his creation depends. Unable to provide the writer with a freely accomplished speech act, history advises him to adopt a freely produced speech act.
Thus, the choice and responsibility of writing clearly propose a kind of freedom, but the limits of this freedom are different in different periods of history. The writer cannot choose the way he writes among some timeless library of literary forms.
The writing that a known writer may have practiced can only be established under the pressure of history and tradition: there is a history of writing; but this history is twofold: even before history in general proposes - or imposes - a When new questions arise about literary speech activity, writing is still imbued with the memory of its previous usage, because speech activity is never innocent: words have an auxiliary memory capacity, and they can mysteriously enter new meanings. To be precise, writing is the reconciliation between freedom and memory, it is the freedom of memory, and this freedom is only free in the gesture of choice and no longer in its continuation of time. Today, I may be able to choose this or that kind of writing, and in this gesture I can confirm my freedom and pursue a freshness or a tradition; if I do not gradually become a prisoner of other people’s words or even my own words, I will This freedom can no longer be developed within a temporal continuum. A stubborn residual influence from all previous writing, even writing from my personal past, overshadowed the present sound of my words. Each written trace precipitates quickly like a chemical element that was first transparent, pure and neutral, because within this element, as long as time continues one by one, the entire reaction process will emerge and will Make all hidden things appear more and more densely.
Like freedom, writing is a moment. But this moment is one of history's clearest moments, because history is always and first of all a choice and the limits of that choice. Precisely because writing derives the meaningful actions of two writers, it is more obviously on the same level as history than other sections of literature. The consistency of classical writing has not changed for centuries, while the diversity of modern writing has continued to multiply over the centuries, even reaching the limits of the literary phenomenon itself. In France, this split in writing is in line with the major changes in the entire history. The crisis is very consistent, and this kind of crisis is extremely vague in the strict sense of literary history. What differentiates the "thoughts" of Balzac and Flaubert is the change of school; what sets their writings in opposition is the moment when two economic structures alternate, causing decisive changes in spirit and consciousness in the process of their joining. a basic break.
Excerpt from Roland Barthes
, translated by Huaiyu: "Selected Essays of Roland Barthes", Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House Annual Edition, pp. 3-10.