Ubestemthedens akkorder: Tværæstetiske sonderinger i moderniteten

The dissertation, The Chords of Indeterminateness – Cross Aesthetic Explorations in Modernity, is an attempt to examine the implications of a vitalistic paradigm for art in modernity. In a Danish context, a traditional and cultural pessimistic interpretation of the modernistic work of art has been prevalent for decades. It has had its roots in the idea of alienation of man in modern capitalistic and industrial society, and in the consequent lack of meaning as a prime motivation for the manifestation of the work of art as a metaphor for collapse and disruption. Hence, the fragmentarity of many modernistic works of art has been interpreted as disjecta membra; torn off ”limbs” of an archaic, pre-industrial organic totality, no longer making sense in its disrupted state.In opposition to that idea, the dissertation focuses on the fact that the brake up of a mimetic artistic syntax in modernistic works of art took place in close association with the anti-rationalistic currents of mental life around the portal of the 20 th century. The reaction against positivistic thinking found its most pregnant articulation around the thinking of Henri Bergson, and his ideas of élan vital and la durée and other central concepts play a vital part in the dissertation’s attempt to find a vocabulary and an operational model for the transformation of reality’s characteristics to the work of art.The dissertation is a cross aesthetic examination, operating with structural similarities between literature, music and pictorial art, beyond a ”usual” cross aesthetic interest in correspondences of themes and motifs of the art forms.On the mentioned background, the hypothesis of the dissertation is the assumption that a number of works of art, particularly modernistic works, relate to reality as ”motivated” signs. This means that art (literature, music and pictorial art) displays qualitative properties of the world as such on the formal premises of the works themselves. It is by virtue of this capacity that the dissertation operates with the work of art as a correlation of reality. The dissertation is divided in two. Positions of Research (Chapters 1-3) unfolds a discussion based on various researchers understanding of the significance of indeterminateness for the literary work, and it accounts for concepts, made operational in the second parts Analyses and Perspectives (Chapters 4-8).First part sets off with a discussion of ”The Open Work” in relation to Umberto Eco’s observations in the article ”The Poetics of the Open Work”, the first chapter of his book about the open work, Opera aperta from 1962. The basic point of the article is that the ”openness” of the literary work is caused by its indeterminacies, which in the process of ”determination” close the work. The closure is realized by the reader as artistic experience in the course of reading. In opposition to this idea, the dissertation suggests a basic view on the work of art, as not necessarily being ”open” to be ”closed”. From this point of view, the openness can be seen as a correlation of reality, exposing properties of reality through the textual premises of indeterminateness (when the speaking is of literature).This assumption is followed by an account for conclusions of parts of the most recent cognitive research in connection with the idea of ”The literary Mind”. More precisely, it is Mark Turner’s work on the presumption that the human mind evolutionary has developed to understand through ”stories”. ”Story” in the broadest sense of the word is also believed to be constituent for language, as research presumes of human language, that it has developed through application of sounds to stories, unfolding in accordance with a ”horizon of expectation”. These suppositions of the human mind’s way of orientation are basic for the dissertation’s development of the ”horizons of expectation” of the respective artistic forms, unfolding a ”plot scheme” in the broadest sense.At the same time, the results of cognitive research are in accordance with Henri Bergson’s idea of the human mind as ”pragmatic”; only fit to manoeuvre expedient in the world, and not to ”understand” the world. This means that the mind, in order to promote itself, sets aside aspects of reality that cannot be ”used” practically. This is the very point where art can have a role to play, as the ”place”, where one realizes a nature of reality, hidden away for every day interaction with the world.Chapter 1 deals with the concept of ”Negative Capability”. Claiming that the attention on the particular character of reality in question is not determined by epoch, it is reasonable to look for signs of that attention outside modernity. This leads to John Keats and his idea of ”negative capability”, the capacity that the artist has to possess in order to sense life’s character of indeterminateness and be able to make poetry in accordance with it.Then Keats’ ”Ode on a Grecian Urn” is analysed as an expression of the idea of negative capability. To expose the opposition between the dissertation’s point of view on ”permanent” openness and approaches, believing in provisional openness as a capacity, first fulfilling its existence in ”closure”, Keats’ ode is then read in accordance with phenomenologic theory as proscribed by Roman Ingarden (but in Wolfgang Isers execution, suspending Ingarden’s idea of organizing the various layers of the analysis in accordance with ”polyphonic harmony”). As a quest for alternative understandings of the artwork’s capacity, the chapter then accounts for T.S. Eliot’s critique of Bergson, which turns out to be based in a dissatisfaction with the capability of the logical language to live up to Bergson’s own claims. Hence, it becomes an argument in the dissertation, that the modernistic work of art claims itself, where rational language gives up.Finally, the chapter unfolds an example of the dissertation’s idea of the relationship between the work of art and the world, at the borderline of modernity, with the critique of Søren Kierkegaard on Hans Christian Andersen as a novelist. It is concluded, that a number of the special features and omissions, Andersen is criticized for, are in fact artistic manoeuvres, all present in modernistic art. Implicitly, Kierkegaard is aware of Andersen’s value, as he himself describes his critique as bound by norms: the highly praised ”view on life” (”Livsanskuelse”) covers up properties of reality, that it might be Andersen’s ambition to bring into focus.Chapter 2 describes how the thinking of Henri Bergson filled the gab, caused by the decline of natural science around the shift from the 19 th to the 20 th century. Central concepts of the Bergsonian universe are established, such as élan vital, the character of potential and high density, which according to Bergson is the prime characteristic of reality, and la durée, ”duration”, his special concept of time, which can be defined as a weakened and more determined version of élan vital. It is further accounted for, how the Bergsonian idea of time is in opposition to the Kantian one, perceiving time as a kind of space.Chapter 3 attempts to present the tradition of research with the same focus as chapter 1: it uncovers the prevailing understanding of art’s openness as provisional. This is the case for both the reception theory of Wolfgang Iser and the semiotic theory of Umberto Eco. The intention of openness is for both lines of theory to close the work of art in one or more directions. Hence the experience of art becomes the closures or realizations of the ”intentionality” of the work of art. For such views, the work of art becomes a complex structure with an immanent ”meaning”, the revelation of which is the raison d’etre of the work of art – or a document, the potential of which becomes of epistemological, psychological or anthropological nature.It is by no means the attempt of the dissertation to reject the prevailing tradition of research. Rather, it has been an objective to sketch a point of view, best described as ”complementary” to the closure oriented perception of the work of art. The concept of complementarity has in this respect clear address to an important awareness, constituent for modernity from the dissertation’s point of view: The fact, that physics operate with light as either waves or particles. It is not possible to make calculations and determinations that take into account both properties of light at the same time; the alternating nature of light rules out the possibility, not in question in an actual experiment. The fact, that light is dealt with as both waves and particles, without anyone being able to explain why it exposes this double nature, accentuates an important characteristic of modernity: Modern man realizes the extreme complexity of the world, but he relates to this pragmatically in order to manoeuvre expediently in the world.It can be concluded that the dissertation ascribes two important functions to the modernistic work of art: a structurally thematic and a correlative.Firstly, the dissertation suggests that the structurally thematic quality in modernistic works of art can be described as a study in the anatomy of encroachment. This phenomenon is defined as the fact, that human produced and received significant utterances are determined by the capacity of the mind for a certain structural nature, causing a dominance of ”release oriented” structures of understanding in normal human interaction. This dominance ignores or subjugates all, not cathegorizationable and generalizationable in accordance with the special capacity for understanding of the mind. As an example of the artistic implications of the anatomy of encroachment, the dissertation suggests in chapter 4, that Richard Wagner’s famous musical approach of using a dissonance chord, which is never satisfactorily dissolved in a releasing consonance, in the ouverture of Tristan and Isolde, is in reality an account for the mechanisms in the anatomy of encroachment. The impossible desire, moving the protagonists of the opera, is not dissolvable at the level of the libretto or ”significance” of the opera, whereas the structural nature of the ouverture gives reference to a much more basic understanding of the concept of desire as a certain pattern, extremely appealing to the mind. Through the deliberate use of an unpleasant chord as response to the harmony expecting listener, Wagner’s musical work becomes a testimony of a nature of reality and appeal, which the listener might not have been conscious of.Likewise, the anatomy of encroachment becomes a structural theme in second part of the dissertation: the Chapters 4-7, dealing with very different works of art and literature from Henrik Pontoppidan’s The Promised Land (Det forjættede Land) to Klaus Høeck’s Home (Hjem).In The Promised Land there are obvious links between the realized indeterminacies of the novel – as the well known ”dual vision” of Pontoppidan and the discrepancies between the actions of the characters and their psychology – and all, refinely unfolded at the semantic level. The search of the protagonist, Emanuel Hansted, for the promised land is in effect a dream of a locus amoenis with concordance between nature and appearance. The dream about this place, operating through motivated signs, is of course an encroachment on reality and its every day premises of communicating, and the impossible claim on the utopic place eventually results in Hansted’s decline and death. In this way, we observe a formal ”jarring” (the indeterminacies) in The Promised Land, equivalent of the Tristan chord of Wagner, and in opposition to the desire and release oriented manoeuvres at the work’s level of significance.In Klaus Høeck’s Home, the usual balance of power in the anatomy of encroachment is turned over. The significance of Home in a semantic sense is constituted within the framework of a strictly defined process, which as a machine exposes language material and its shifts as a result of calculations of entropy and other definitoric actions, operating with syntactic rather than semantic aspects. Hence, ”significance” is exposed as a kind of attached phenomenon to primary operations in a principally ”insensitive” material universe of language.Secondly, the dissertation has established how works of art, characterized by a broken syntax in different ways (depending on the art form), can be viewed as an attempt to create a correlation of reality in accordance with the dissertation’s developed ”vitalistic” view. To such a view, the prime characteristic of reality is ununfolded potential or ”formation”. Is this respect, the philosopher Henri Bergson’s idea of a stream of life, élan vital, running through the world, and the basic implications of that idea, become the basics on which the dissertation is written. In order to be able to compare the work of art’s ”unreleasedness” with that of the world, the dissertation uses the concept of entropy, working as a contact between two basically incompatible systems, as the physical universe as well as the textual/ communicative operate with entropy as a means of the level of order in the physical universe and the informational value of a message respectably. Based on the concept of entropy as a connection between the world and the work of art, the dissertation sketches its basic scheme, showing the relationship between the world and the arts.Chapter 8 of the dissertation, ”Perspectives”, tries to account for the connections between the world and the arts in an American context compared to the European context, sketched in the former chapters. In can be described as a shift from modern score music, classic modernistic art and literature to bebop jazz, pop art and literature with inspiration from the American beat culture. In that connection, it can be generally concluded, that the concept of ”stream” in a Bergsonian sense finds a more ”mimetic” manifestation in the American versions. The phenomenon of ”improvisation” becomes a vital capacity as the potential, bound in the clichés of ”American Standards” in music and ”Commercial Icons” in pictorial art, are unfolded and realized. However, the multiple versions of the works of art, seen for example in the music of Charlie Parker and the paintings of Andy Warhol, are in fact an authentic parallel to the correlativity of European art.It can finally be concluded, that the dissertation has proved a likely structural relationship between art forms beyond significant thematic similarities, and sketched how art can be dealt with in accordance with a vitalistic presumption of reality as primarily characterized by the concepts of formation and potential.
Afhandlingen Ubestemthedens akkorder. Tværæstetiske sonderinger i moderniteten, er et forsøg på at undersøge implikationerne af et vitalistisk paradigme for modernistisk kunst. I en dansk kontekst har en fremherskende forståelse af det modernistiske værk taget udgangspunkt i begrebet fremmedgørelse, der angiveligt skulle være en følgevirkning af samfundets industrialisering og kapitalisering. Som en manifestering af disse fænomener er modernistisk kunst blevet opfattet som metafor for sammenbrud og splittelse, og værkets fragmentariske beskaffenhed er blevet fortolket som disjecta membra – afrevne lemmer af en oprindelig, meningsfuld og førindustriel totalitet, der ikke længere giver mening i sin forrevne modernitet.Som et opgør med den forestilling fokuserer afhandlingen på den kendsgerning, at ombrydningen af en mimetisk kunstnerisk syntaks i modernismens kunst fandt sted i tæt sammenknytning med antirationalistiske strømninger i europæisk åndsliv ved indgangen til det 20. århundrede. Reaktionen imod positivistisk tænkning fandt sin mest prægnante udformning omkring Henri Bergson, og hans ideer om élan vital og la durée spiller sammen med andre centrale begreber fra hans filosofi en afgørende rolle for afhandlingens forsøg på at finde et vokabular og en operationel model for transformationen af realitetens kendetegn til kunstværket.Afhandlingen er tværæstetisk anlagt, og den beskæftiger sig med strukturelle ligheder mellem litteratur, musik og billedkunst hinsides en sædvanlig tværæstetisk interesse med udgangspunkt i motiviske og tematiske overensstemmelser mellem værkerne.På den skitserede baggrund bliver afhandlingens hypotese, at en række kunstværker, særligt modernistiske værker, forholder sig til virkeligheden som motiverede tegn. Dette bevirker, at kunsten fremviser kvalitative egenskaber ved realiteten som sådan på værkernes egne formelle præmisser. Det er i kraft af den egenskab, at afhandlingen opererer med kunstværker som virkelighedskorrelater.Afhandlingen falder i to dele. Forskningspositioner (kapitel 1-3) udfolder en diskussion, der er baseret på forskellige forskeres opfattelse af ubestemtheders betydning for det litterære værk, ligesom første del redegør for begreber, der gøres operationelle i afhandlingens anden del: Analyser og perspektiver (kapitel 4-8).rto Eco har samme grundforestilling om et værks åbenhed som Wolfgang Iser (der behandles i afhandlingens kapitel 3), nemlig at værkets åbenhed er et resultat af ubestemthed, og at åbenheden er provisorisk. Først når værket lukkes af læserens (eller lytterens eller betragterens) realisering af værket som kunstnerisk oplevelse, skabes værket i overensstemmelse med dettes intentionalitet.Heroverfor foreslår afhandlingen et syn på kunst, der ikke opfatter værkets åbenhed som en opfordring til at lukke dette. Ud fra den betragtning fungerer åbenheden som et virkelighedskorrelat, der udfolder egenskaber ved virkeligheden på værkets formelle betingelser. Denne tese følges op af en redegørelse for den nyeste kognitive forskning i ”Den litterære bevidsthed”. Mark Turner og andre mener, at den menneskelige bevidsthed har udviklet sig til at forstå i kraft af ”historier”, ligesom ”historie” opfattes som sprogkonstituerende, idet det menneskelige sprog er udviklet ved at applicere lyde på historier.Disse basale antagelser om den menneskelige bevidstheds måde at orientere sig på er grundlæggende for afhandlingens udvikling af en ”forventningshorisont” i forbindelse med de respektive kunstformer. Det drejer sig om en forløsningsorienteret forventningshorisont, der udfolder et ”plot-skema” i videste forstand.Samtidig konstateres den kognitive forsknings resultater at være i overensstemmelse med Henri Bergsons forestilling om, at den menneskelige bevidsthed er pragmatisk; egnet til at manøvrere hensigtsmæssigt i verden, men ikke til at ”forstå” verden.I de første 3 kapitler læses endvidere Keats’ ode: ”Ode on a Grecian Urn” for at diskutere dens udsagn i forhold til afhandlingens hypotese og Keats’ begreb om ”negativ formåen” og i forhold til en fænomenologisk analyse af oden. Der redegøres for T.S. Eliots kritik af Bergson, som viser sig at være en utilfredshed med det logiske sprogs mulighed for at leve op til Bergsons egne krav, hvorfor det konkluderes i afhandlingen, at det modernistiske værk netop kan sætte ind der, hvor det fornuftige sprog må give op. Endelig læses Søren Kierkegaards kritik af H.C. Andersen som romanforfatter som et tegn på, at Andersen i virkeligheden gør fælles front med den modernistiske kunst, idet han lader sit værk korrespondere på tværs af vanemæssige og tillærte forbindelseslinjer.Det understreges i afhandlingen, at den ikke har til hensigt at forkaste en traditionel kunstog modernismeforståelse. Den vil snarere præsentere en anskuelse, der kan opfattes som komplementær til den fremherskende, og hermed tilknyttes afhandlingen et begreb om komplementaritet, som afhandlingen anser for kardinalt i konstitueringen af moderniteten. Sammenfattende kan afhandlingen siges at tilskrive det modernistiske værk to vigtige funktioner: en strukturel/tematisk og en korrelativ.For det første foreslår afhandlingen, at den strukturelt/ tematiske beskaffenhed af det modernistiske værk kan beskrives som en undersøgelse af ”overgrebets anatomi”. Fænomenet defineres som det forhold, at menneskelige producerede og reciperede betydende ytringer er bestemt af bevidsthedens kapacitet for forståelse. Dette bevirker en dominans af ”forløsningsorienterede” forståelsesstrukturer i almindelig menneskelig omgang. Dominansen ignorerer eller underlægger sig det, der ikke lader sig kategorisere eller generalisere i overensstemmelse med bevidsthedens særlige kapacitet for forståelse.Som eksempel på de kunstneriske implikationer af overgrebets anatomi gennemgås Richard Wagners berømte musikalske greb med at bruge en dissonant akkord, der aldrig opløses tilfredsstillende, i forspillet til operaen Tristan og Isolde, hvorved mekanismerne i overgrebets anatomi udstilles. Det umulige begær, som hovedpersonerne i operaen er besat af, kan ikke forløses på operaens libretto- og betydningsniveau, hvorimod ouverturens strukturelle beskaffenhed åbner for en langt mere indsigtsfuld forståelse af begær som særlige mønstre med stor appel til den menneskelige bevidsthed.Analysedelen beskæftiger sig med meget forskellige kunstværker, og relevansen af overgrebets anatomi demonstreres i forhold til flere af dem, fra Henrik Pontoppidans Det forjættede Land til Klaus Høecks Hjem. I Hjem er det sædvanlige forhold i overgrebets anatomi ligefrem vendt om, så værkets betydning i semantisk forstand fremkommer inden for rammerne af en stramt defineret proces, der maskinelt fremviser sprogmaterialet og dets forskydninger som et resultat af entropiberegninger og andre definitoriske greb, som opererer med syntaktiske og ikke semantiske aspekter. Derfor bliver ”betydning” udstillet som et slags følgefænomen til primære operationer i sprogmaterialets univers.For det andet redegør afhandlingen for, hvordan kunst, der er karakteriseret ved ombrudt syntaks (afhængig af kunstformen), kan ses som et forsøg på at skabe et virkelighedskorrelat i overensstemmelse med den udviklede ”vitalistiske” anskuelse. For en sådan anskuelse er virkelighedens fremmeste kendetegn uudfoldet potentiale eller ”tilblivelse”. På den baggrund bliver filosoffen Henri Bergsons forestilling om en livsstrøm, élan vital, der gennemstrømmer verden, grundlæggende for afhandlingens konklusioner. For at kunne sammenligne værkets grad af forløsning med verdens bruger afhandlingen entropibegrebet som en mulighed for at skabe forbindelse med to principielt inkompatible systemer. Det sker, fordi såvel virkelighedens fysikalske system som et tekstligt/ kommunikativt system opererer med entropi som et mål for orden i det fysikalske univers henholdsvis informationsgraden af en meddelelse. På det grundlag skitseres afhandlingens grundskema over forholdet mellem virkeligheden og kunstværket i en vitalistisk anskuelse.Afhandlingens kapitel 8, ”Perspektiver”, tilstræber at redegøre for forholdet mellem verden og værk i en amerikansk kontekst, baseret på konklusionerne i forhold til europæisk kunst, som redegjort for i de foregående kapitler. Det kan beskrives som et skift fra moderne partiturmusik, klassisk modernistisk kunst og litteratur til bebop jazz, popkunst og litteratur med inspiration fra den amerikanske beatkultur. I den forbindelse kan det generelt konkluderes, at begrebet ”strøm” i en bergsonsk forstand får en mere mimetisk afbildning i en amerikansk kontekst.”Improvisation” bliver ligeledes en vital kapacitet, idet det potentiale, der er bundet i klichéer som ”American Standards” inden for musikken og reklameikoner inden for billedkunsten, udfoldes og realiseres. Imidlertid kan den amerikanske kunsts ”mangfoldige versioner”, som det ses i Charlie Parkers musik og Andy Warhols malerier, opfattes som en autentisk parallel til den europæiske kunsts korrelativitet. Det kan således endeligt konkluderes, at afhandlingen har sandsynliggjort en strukturel forbindelse mellem kunstformerne hinsides tematiske og motiviske sammenfald samt skitseret, hvordan modernistisk kunst kan opfattes i overensstemmelse med et vitalistisk paradigme for verden som primært karakteriseret ved begreber som potentiale og tilblivelse.