Table Of ContentTropes, Parables, Performatives
Essays on Twentieth-Century Literature
Tropes, Parables,
Performatives
Essays on Twentieth-Century
Literature
J. Hillis Miller
Duke University Press
Durham 1991
Published in 1991 in the United States
by Duke University Press
First published 1991 by
Harvester Wheatsheaf
66 Wood Lane End, Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire HP2 4RG
A division of
Simon& Schuster International Group
©J. Hillis Miller 1991
All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior
permission, in writing, from the publisher
Printed and boundin Great Britain
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller,J. Hillis (Joseph Hillis), 1928-
Tropes, parables, performatives :essays on twen~ieth-century
literature /J. Hillis Miller.
p. em.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8223-1111-9 (cloth)
1. Englishliterature- 20th century- History and criticism.
2. American literature- 20th century- History and criticism.
I. Title
PR473.M551990
820.90091 - dc20 90-44886
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements xi
1. D. H. Lawrence: The Fox and the perspective glass 1
2. Franz Kafka and the metaphysics ofalienation 15
3. Wallace Stevens' poetry ofbeing 33
4. Williams' poetry ofresignation 51
5. Thomas Hardy: a sketch for a portrait 65
6. Williams' Spring and All and the progress ofpoetry 79
7. History as repetition in Thomas Hardy's poetry:
the example of"Wessex Heights" 107
8. Parable and performative in the Gospels
and in modern literature 135
9. Mr Carmichael and Lily Briscoe:
The rhythm ofcreativity in To the Lighthouse 151
10. Thomas Hardy, Jacques Derrida, and the
"Dislocation ofSouls" 171
11. Heart ofDarkness revisited 181
12. Topography and tropography in Thomas Hardy's
"In Front ofthe Landscape" 195
13. Impossible metaphor: (Stevens' "The Red Fern"
as example) 213
14. When is a·Primitive like an Orb? 227
15. Prosopopoeia in Hardy and Stevens 245
Index 261
Preface
Ifthe prefaceas agenreis obliged to indicatesomefundamental unity in
the chapters that follow it, this is not a preface. Most of the essays
gathered here are fairly recent, but the earliest goes back to 1952. They
are brought together here by the accident that all are on twentieth
century works. Eachessayis the result ofaspecificoccasionin timeand
place, anoccasionwhosehistorycouldberecoverediftherewerereason
to do so. Each essay entered history at a specific moment. Each is the
memorial record of a discrete event of reading, not a stage in some
predetermined itinerary fulfilling a single "research project." Gathered
together they produce a strange topography ofisolated local sites, with
no clearly marked paths leading from one to the others. You can't get
there from here. Each essay in its separation, disparity, or insularity
seems for the moment to occupy the whole field ofan intermittent but
continuously renewed questioningofliterature. Each goes as far as itcan
in that interrogation with its given work or works. The effort begins
againfrom scratchinthenextessaywithnewmaterialsthatseemfor the
moment to stretch out to the whole horizon all around, as ifthat one
poem or story were all there were ofliterature.
Nevertheless, reviewing these oldreadings now, in arepetition that is
more like new acts ofreading than like distant memories ofold ones, I
can identify some features of the non-totalizable topography of this
collection. One is indicated in what I have already said. An irresistible
penchantfor "close-reading"ofindividualtextshasgoneonwinningout
over any conscious commitment to seeking some pervasive unity of
"consciousness" or theme in the whole work of an author or some
spurious unityinthe spiritofan age. Even thefirst essayhere, though it
addressesthewholeworkofLawrence, centersonareadingofonestory,
"The Fox."
Appearances notwithstanding, I do not think this commitment to
close reading is "an inheritance from the New Criticism." It springs
rather from an initial and persistent fascination with local strangenesses
inliterarylanguage. This fascination possessedme beforeIeverheardof
theNewCriticism, muchlessofFreud, Lacan, andAbrahamandTorok.
It was my motivation for turning from physics to literature in about
1946, and it has remained as strong as ever in all the years since. My
conviction was then and remains now that it is only by noticing local
oddnesses in language and following them as far as asking questions
vii
viii Preface
about them will take you that literature can be put to its best use- as a
means oftransportation or transport toward something glimpsed deep
downoratthefarhorizonofeachofthoselocalspacesopenedbyagiven
work.
The carrying on of this interrogation is another linguistic act - of
teaching, writing, or lecturing. This new event of language has its
modestchancetoenterhistoryonitsownwhenitispublishedoruttered
in public, thereby making the work effective once more, in the altered
form ofcitation and "reading." These may be effective as a means of
moving again toward that place behind or beyond all the places, that
"center on the horizon"l toward which each work in its unique way
beckons.
Rereading these-essays I have noticed that in responding to the call to
let reading carrymeas far as it wouldgo, Ihavekept comingbackagain
and again, sometimes afterlongintervals, to thesameauthors: to Kafka,
Stevens, Williams, and Conrad, especially to Hardy. Four ofHardy's
poems are read here, after an initial general essay, in five pieces that go
from 1967 to 1989. And those five essays are supplementary to a whole
bookonHardy, aswellastotwo chaptersonhisnovelsinanotherbook,
and to achapteronhis poetryinyetanother.2 This compulsionto return
to different works by the same author, or even, in the case ofthe recent
essay here on Conrad's Heart ofDarkness, to a work already read in an
earlier essay,3 seems driven by the categorical imperative that is the
motive force ofwhat I call the "ethics ofreading." Such a demand to
read testifies to two features of "close reading" as I have lived it as a
vocation:
1. Close reading is the only way to get into any proximity to that
"other" to which the works ofany author seem to give access. Hardy's
poems, for example, for me at least, yield their gnarled sweetness only
when they are questioned one by one in detail. Each question leads to
others, one behind the others, like those reflections ofhis ancestors the
speaker in Hardy's "The Pedigree" sees in the mirror, "dwindling
backward each past each .../Generation and generation ofmy mien,
and build, and brow." The impossible ideal book on Hardy's poetry
would consist ofseparate readings ofall his lyrics, nearly a thousand in
all.
2. The effort of reading must be constantly renewed because no one
readingsuffices. Noneevergets the readerwhereheorshewouldliketo
go. Each new reading discounts and disqualifies all that preceded, but
each fails tosatisfy. As Stevens puts it, thesearchfor what sufficesnever
reaches its goal. "It can never be satisfied, the mind, never."4 Neither
poetnor criticever reaches that palm at theendofthe mind Stevens' last
poem glimpses. The work ofreading must always start again from the
Preface IX
beginning, even in a rereading ofa work already read. Close reading
reachesitslimitintheconstantlyrenewedexperienceofitsfailure totake
you where you think you want to go and ought to go.
RereadingtheseessaysI canseenowthatinspiteoftheirinsularityand
difference, as each follows its own trajectory as far as it can, they are
from early to late guided by a threefold presupposition about the right
questions to ask. The formulation of these in their relation is only
implicit at first but emerges with increasing clarity. This guiding
intuition about literature may be framed by the three words I have used
in my title: "trope," "parable," "performative."
Throughout all the essays there is attention to the tropological
dimension ofliterary language, to the way figures ofspeech turn aside
the telling of a story or the presentation ofa lyrical theme. This was
what initially fascinated me about literature, the way it does not
straightforwardlysaywhatit means, but always says itin terms ofsome
other thing, often by way ofwhat seem wildly ungrounded analogies.
Theexploration ofthis turning gradually leads to the recognition that
allworks ofliteratureareparabolic, "thrownbeside" their real meaning.
They tell onestory butcallforth somethingelse. Two oftheessays here
are explicitly about parable, but other essays too recognize that the
tropological dimension of literature is not local and intermittent, but
pervasive. Eachworkisonelongtrope: anironiccatachresisinvokingby
indirection "something" that can be named in no literal way. "Parable"
.is one name for this large-scale indirection characteristic of literary
language, indeed oflanguage generally.
All parables, finally, are essentially performative, though I would
initiallyhavebeen able to identify this performativeaspect onlyin terms
ofwhat Kenneth Burke calls "symbolic action." Parables do not merely
name the "something" they point to by indirection or merely give the
reader knowledge of it. They use words to try to make something
happen in relation to the "other" that resonates in the work. They want
to get thereaderfrom here to there. They want to make the readercross
overinto the "something" and dwell there. Butthesiteto whichparable
would take the reader is something always other than itself, hence that
experience ofperpetual dissatisfaction. As Kafka puts this, "There is a
goal but no way. What we call the way is only wandering."
Nevertheless, this tropological, parabolic, performative dimension
enables writing and reading to enter history and be effective there, for
better or for worse. Each essay in this book attempts to formulate in its
own terms what it is in a given case the reader might performatively
enter by way ofparabolic trope.
To think of literature as performative parable raises the question
of whether a reading, as it works by citation and commentary, only
