segre, cesare - the style of greimas and its transformations

The Style of Greimas and Its Transformations

Cesare Segre; John Meddemmen

New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 3, Greimassian Semiotics. (Spring, 1989), pp. 679-692.

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The Style of Greimas and Its Transformations

Cesare Segre

LET US IMAGINE a chance encounter with the recent de l'irnperfection (1987) of A. J . Greimas on the part of a reader who had never heard of its author; he would, I believe, at once relate the book to the most recherchk tradition of contemporary French essay writing, to Blanchot and Barthes. Two passages in italics at the beginning and end of the book serve

to frame the whole, and the way they are constructed manifestly aims for syntactical and rhetorical effect. The opening section, in prose, is made up of two "strophes." The two sentences of the first "strophe" are scanned by the rhyme paraftre, Ctre, uouloir-Ctre, devoir-&re, followed by paraitre, peut Ctre, peut-itre (with subtle semantic correctio); it con- cludes with syntagms which fall outside this schema: de'uiation du sew, a peine uiuible.' The second sentence opens with an assertive proposi- tion followed by two interrogative elements of increasing length. The final statement of the first "strophe," and the first statement of the second, constitute the underlying theme: "Seul le paraftre en tant que peut itre-ou peut-Ctre-est a peine uiuible. Ceci dit, il constitue tout de rnCrne notre condition d'hornrne" (Only seeming as possibility-or possibly-is barely tolerable. Nonetheless this is what constitutes our human condition) ( 9 ) . But the final interrogative sees this paraftre as a founda- tion, albeit a hypothetical one, fragile and elusive, for crucial questions of life and death: "Et, pour solde de tout cornpte, ce voile de furne'e peut-il se dkchirer un peu et s'entr'ouuir sur la vie ou la rnort, qu'irnporte?" (And, all things said and done, if this veil of smoke clears a little and opens onto life or death, what does it matter?) ( 9 ) . What we are being invited to, then, is a journey into the world of

paraftre, on the assumption that it will reveal to us, in however sibylline a fashion, something about itre. It is a journey that takes the form of an analysis of short literary passages, from Tournier, Calvino, Rilke, Tanizaki, Cortazar, all brought together under the common heading "La fracture," and of considerations of a more general nature, enti- tled "Les echappatoires." The passage which brings the book to a close is made up of three

prose "strophes," these too shot through with rhyme and assonance (indicible, inuzsible, unique, possible; e'panouies, vie, partie); they are fur-

680 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

ther linked together by parallelisms in their syntactical construction: "Vaines tentatives . . . quCte de l'inattendu qui se derobe. . . . L'innocence: reve d'un retour aux sources . . ." (Vain attempts . . . the quest for the fleeting unexpected. . . . Innocence: the dream of a return to origins), and so on; "l'imperfection, dkviante, remplit ainsi en partie . . ." (imperfection, divergent, thus in part fulfills . . .), and so on; "L'imperfection apparait comme un tremplin . . ." (imperfec-tion appears as a trampoline . . .), and so on (99). In this latter passage, figures of being (la chose, unique, la vie), or of

its revelation (le sew), stand in sharp contrast to marks of impossibility (indicible, invisible, nigatiuiti). This impossibility finds expression as longing, and thus becomes a temporary surrogate of being: "Nostalgies et attentes nounissent l'imaganaire dont les formes, fanies ou bpanouies, tien- nent lieu de la vie" (Nostalgias and expectations feed the imaginary whose withered or full forms take the place of life) (99). But in the event, they act as a means of arriving at being; it is, then, a victory of the very imperfection which forms the subject of the volume: "L'imperfection apparaz^t comme u n tremplin qui nous projette de I'insignifiance uers le sens" (Imperfection appears as a trampoline that projects us from insignificance toward meaning) (99). That the "nostalgies et attentes," or, as we read a little further on,

the "qugte de I'inattendu," should tend toward the safeguarding of aesthetic values ("les ualeurs dites esthitiques sont les seules propres, les seules, en refusant toute nigatiuitb, a nous tirer uers le haut" [aesthetic values are the only ones, the ones that, in refusing all negativity, can draw us upwards] [99]) becomes possible once the word "esthktique" is taken back to its original root derivation and regarded as "sensation" and "sensibility." This is why, toward the end of the book, Greimas can speak of "esthksis" rather than of aesthetics: "l'espoir attentifd'une esthbis unique . . ." (the expectant hope for a unique aesthesis . . .) (99). Sensation, sensibility: it comes down to a longing for the primordial activity of the mind. This is why the negative terms with in- give way at last to a positive in-: innocence: "Que reste-t-il? L'innocence: r2ue d'un retour aux sources alors que l'homme et le monde ne faisaient qu'un duns une pancalie oripnelle" (What remains? Innocence: the dream of a return to origins when man and the world were united in an original pancalia) (99). Thus the final strophe, interrogative at its beginning ("Que reste-t-il?"), ends on a note of invocation: "Mehr Licht!", and not, say, "plus de sens!" or "plus d'etre!" The book as a whole is coherently in line with this approach. Rather

than follow out its line of reasoning, I too will follow up the faintly discernible traces of a technique whose research is conducted through suggestions. It should be noted in passing that semiotic technical

THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS 681

terms and visual, and even tactile, sensations now coexist: "La nar- rativisation du comportement de la goutte, manifestee a l'aide d'une aspectualisation spatiale-inchoativite lente, allongement, enflure- s'achkve par un figement momentank, en forme de poire, suggkrant, du fait d'une forte pathemisation, certaines galbes du corps feminin, mais surtout les volumes et les courbures de I'esthetique baroque" (The narrativization of the behavior of the drop, that is manifested by means of a spatial aspectualization-slow inchoativity, lengthening, swelling-ends in a momentary coalescence, in the form of a pear, suggesting, through strong pathemization, certain curves of the female body, but especially the volumes and curvatures of Baroque aesthetics) (20). Here we have, on the one hand, nun-atiuisation, aspectualisation, inchoatiuitk, and so on, and on the other, allongement, enflure, galbes, courbures. This movement from sensation to knowledge takes place amidst

perfumes and harmonies; it is subject to fascinations, and aspires to a carnal and spiritual union with the sacred, from which new meanings can be expected; the immanence of the sensible is rediscovered by way of the changing moods of the subject: Encore faut-il que des harmonies parfumees, cachees sous ces appellations d'origine, devoilent au sujet leurs coalescences et leurs correspondances pour le guider, par des fascinations atroces et exaltantes, vers de nouvelles significations que procure une conjonction intime, absorbante avec le sacre, char- nelle et spirituelle a la fois . . . Les humeurs du sujet retrouvent alors I'immanence du sensible.

[Yet, hidden under these original designations, perfumed harmonies must unveil their coalescences and correspondences and, through dreadful, exalt- ing fascinations, guide the subject toward new significations produced by intimate and absorbing conjunction with the sacred, carnal, and spiritual . . . The subject's temperament hence regains the immanence of the sensible.] (78)

The sacred as a perspective of knowledge also reappears with respect to poetic language, whose nonprofane nature is underlined (rhythm of expectations and expectations of expectations, while expectation has as its language, music: "un fond sonore, musical sert de soubasse- ment A cette isotopie de I'attente" [a background musical noise serves as a base for this isotopy of expectation] [40]); it will lead, if not directly to the sacred, at least to its threshold (93-94). Engagement with this half-glimpsed new knowledge involves tra-

ditional, time-honored entities like body and soul, object and subject, death and life. In point of fact, subject and object come into contact


thanks to the "saisie esthetique" (the syntagm is recurrent in the book); but behind this contact there loom the potentially eschatolog- ical hypostases of body and soul, in the expectation of attaining to an intuition of life and of death. The conceptual shifts involved are often spelled out: "Le tressaillement, concretisation de l'esthksie, se trouve donc distribuk a la fois sur le suject et l'objet, il marque le syncrktisme de ces deux actants, une fusion momentanee de I'homme et du monde, reunissant en m@me temps, pour dire comme Descartes, la passion de I'ame et celle du corps" (The shudder that materializes aesthesis is thus distributed over both subject and object, it marks the syncretism of the two actants, a momentary fusion of man and the world, joining at the same time, to quote Descartes, the passions of the soul and the body) (31). The need for such a fusion of subject and object is repeatedly stressed ("le desir d'une conjonction 'reelle' avec l'objet" [the desire for a real conjunction with the object] [39]; "une fusion totale du sujet et de l'objet" [a total fusion of the subject and the object] [73]), and its realization on the physical plane is insisted upon: "C'est sur le plan physique, au niveau de la sensation pure-les par-celles de la matiere resplendissant de toutes les couleurs et allant s'introduire dans les yeux--que se fait la conjonction de l'objet et du sujet ou, plut8t, l'envahissement du sujet par l'objet" (It is at the physical level, that of pure sensation-particles of matter radiating all the colors and penetrating the eyes-that the conjunction of .he object and subject occurs or, rather, the invasion of the subject by the object), and so on (52). In this fusion (it is a metaphor, but one which clearly points to the domain of vision, if not of ecstasy) an important aspect, underlined elsewhere, is the chromatic element: "Ainsi, m$me dans le monde rationalis6 de la visualitk, le plus superficiel des sens, on distingue des paliers echelonnes de I'eidCtique, du chromatique et, en dernihe instance, de la lumiere" (Hence, even in the rationalized world of the visual, the most superficial of the senses, we can distin- guish a gradation in levels of the eidetic, of the chromatic, and finally of light) (73). Nor, to go back to primary forms of contact, is the tactile aspect absent (30), or even the olfactory (42). The process seemingly sketched out in these pages of Greimas ap-

pears to start from the subject and move to a reality that is seized upon as vision; it then moves back to the subject, absorbed now into the bosom of a reality whose outlines have been enriched at its surrealist margins. The starting point is the woman's bare breast glimpsed by Palomar ("la saisie esthetique est une transfiguration du sein nu en une vision surnaturelle" [the aesthetic apprehension is a transforma- tion of the naked bosom into a supernatural vision] [23]); by way of the antinomy visionlreality, the aesthetic isotopy is endowed with an

683 THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

extension which leads from reality to the surreal (32). The conclusion, based on a tragic narrative of Cortazar, is that "ce n'est qu'a ce prix, en acquerant une dimension tragique universelle, qu'une fiction peut se transformer en surrealitk, susceptible d'accueillir dans son sein, lors de la saisie esthetique, le sujet lui-mCme" (It is only at this price, in acquiring a universal tragic dimension, that fiction can be transformed into surreality, capable of enveloping the subject himself, during aesthetic apprehension) (64). This fusion of the subject with a reality which almost entirely absorbs it is the conclusive moment of the aesthetic experience, but it is also, and contemporaneously, the dissolution of the subject itself, ultimately its annihilation: "Car enfin, l'efficacite supreme de I'objet litteraire- ou plus gCnCralement esthetique-, sa conjonction assumke par le sujet, n'est-elle pas dans sa dissolution, dans le passage oblige par la mort du lecteur-spectateur? Mort ou vie extatique, peu importe, n'est-ce pas I'esthCsis rCvCe?" (For, finally, is not the supreme effect of the literary or, more gen- erally, aesthetic object-that is, its conjunction assumed by the subject-to be found in its dissolution, in the obligatory passage of the reader-spectator through death? Death or ecstatic life, it does not matter, is this not the aesthesis one dreams of?) (67). That there is something erotic here is undeniable since, in the clos-

ing pages, female attire is so insistently regarded both as an obstacle and stimulus to transgression; for what we are offered in outline is a theory of expectation, or, rather, of an "attente de l'inattendu" (expectation of the unexpected). What has happened to the theoretical approach? There is some intimation of it when Greimas suggests that we should "reskmantiser la vie en changeant 'les signes en gestes' " (resemanticize life by changing signs into gestures) (go), or when he suggests transcending the aesthetics of taste with the aim of attaining to "l'intuition d'une esthetique imaginaire" (the intuition of an imaginary aesthetics) (91); or, again, when he goes so far as to reflect:

On peut r@ver: et si, au lieu d'une ambition totalisante qui cherche a trans-figurer toute la vie et met en jeu l'ensemble du parcours du sujet, on pouvait proceder a la parcellisation de ses programmes, a la valorisation du detail du "vecu," si un regard metonymique et soutenu s'exer~ait a aborder serieuse- ment les choses simples.

[We can dream: and if, instead of a totalizing ambition that seeks to trans- figure all of life and brings into play the subject's entire trajectory, we could begin by fragmenting these programs, by valorizing the detail of the "lived," if a metonymical and concentrated gaze attempted seriously to consider sim- ple things.] (97)


The closer one comes to the end of the book, the more questions one finds being posed-evidence, surely, of a deliberate intention to avoid apodictic conclusions, of an effort to remain within the area of suggestion and of as yet unexpressed desire. Indeed, the expository section ends on an interrogative note, the question itself being explic- itly founded upon the soft inconsistency of sand: "Bstir sur du sable, n'est-ce pas cultiver l'attente de l'inattendu?" (Does building on sand not constitute cultivating the expectation of the unexpected?) (98).

I imagined at the outset a reader, should such exist, entirely igno- rant of all that Greimas had earlier produced; but for those who do know his work, the amazement is all the greater. Having attained his seventieth year, Greimas has abandoned (momentarily or for the time being, who can tell?) a path he had till now followed consistently. Maupassant (1976), his most wide-ranging undertaking in the literary field, had in itself been an occasion for astonishment, coming as it did from an author whose attachment to the cloisters of semiotics was all but monklike. His analyses there were, though, semiotic in kind, and if light was thrown, as indeed it was, on the text in terms of its ap- preciation, this was the end result of a strenuous in-depth investigation of the field of meanings traversed (more than 250 pages of com- ment dealt with fewer than 6 pages of text); it did not derive from any overt quest for aesthetic values. With Maupassant, Greimas in effect brought the whole of his im-

posing semiotic arsenal into play (actants, isotopies, modalities, the semiotic square), and was attentive above all to the general validity of his findings, even though these involved no more than particular points and events; he was also concerned that the techniques he adopted for the individuation of a general discourse should be co- herent: "L'effet de sens global que produit une telle organisation textuelle est clair: le texte se presente comme un signe dont le dis- cours, articule en isotopies figuratives multiples, ne serait que le sig- nifiant invitant a dkchiffrer son signifie" (The global meaning effect that such a textual organization produces is clear. The text appears as a sign whose discourse, articulated into multiple figurative isotopies, could be considered the signifier inviting the deciphering of the signified).* Greimas, along the same lines as Propp, succeeded in showing that narrative action is much more complex, even in its semantic organization, than the Russian Formalists and the French Neo-Formalists had ever imagined. To conclude this brief parenthesis, let me state that Maupassant is

far closer to the earlier activity of Greimas, despite the impressive reemergence in it of a literary interest, than it is to a book like de


l'imperfection. In 1976, there was as yet no sign of the kind of engagement with style that is so characteristic an aspect of the icriture of de l'imperfection. There were none of those vibrations and openings, none of the "dissipations" to which the latest volume is so inclined. Nor was there any surrender to the suggestions of the text of the kind we meet with continually in de 17impe$ection.

It is well-known that the fame and authority of Greimas owe their origin to Simantique structurale (1966).~Among the many products of semiotics, which in those years was in the process of establishing itself, Greimas's book stood out because its approach was systematic. The impression it gave was that the new science was not still awaiting construction, but that it had already been constructed. Greimas had ties with the more creative conceptions of anthropology (Levi- Strauss), and with structural linguistics as well, and was especially close to innovative semantics, like that of Bernard Pottier. In the semantic and semiotic fields, the various hypotheses formulated before the appearance of Greimas's work were all more or less pioneering in character; only rarely did they offer anything like a self-contained system. Greimas's book, on the contrary, while it did indicate some areas as needing further investigation, was character- ized by its thoroughly systematic approach. To this approach a name can be given: Hjelmslev. The Danish

author is repeatedly cited by Greimas, who indeed derived the basic definitions for his semiotics from the Prolegomena to a Theory of Lan- gzuzge (1943) ;~it is a fact which very clearly marks him off from the American school. Now, the whole of Hjelmslev's linguistics is of its very nature programatically and systematically ded~c t i ve :~ both as a theoretical position, and as a heuristic technique (moving from the text to the process, from the class to its components). Greimas adopts a similar stance, although his contribution, given its anthropological foundations, is at once more concrete and more flexible. A whole history of his activity and teaching might be based entirely

upon this systematicity. It is clearly a characteristic that lends itself to the requirements of a school, and it at once attracted imitators. What is more, a doctrine of an inductive cast gives an illusion of being somehow definitive: once the fundamental axioms have been ac-cepted, progress will predominantly take the form of deductions, of deductions from deductions, as in mathematics. It is a way of over- coming an inferiority complex on the part of the humanities. In the wake of Simantique structurale, a Greimassian uulgata came into being; the techniques of the master would be applied over and over again without any investigation of their bases, researchers accepting them


uncritically, in block. It is indeed obvious that a doctrine whose character is so deductive is, in fact, a philosophy.6 The success of the Greimas uulgata, however, did not depend on the

consequentiality of the doctrine alone. Greimas has shown that he is perfectly capable of creating a semiotic language that is both wide- ranging and useful, and a great many of its elements have become part of the usage even of those who do not follow him. Greimas's lexical inventiveness takes the following forms: (1) acceptance, or en- hancement, of terms used by individual linguists, or derived from other scientific fields (for example, from physics); (2) creation of de- rivatives, of abstract terms, and so on; and (3)constitution of clusters of terms which serve to enlarge an entire semantic field. Here are a few examples of the terms Greimas has taken from

others and turned into words commonly used in his own language, and which have become common in the language of others as well. I have used the Dictionnaire razronni to locate the sources, which are given in parentheses:7 actant (Tesniere); biplane, se'miotique (Hjelmslev); catalyse (Hjelmslev); classtme (Pottier);compe'tence (Chom-sky); conversion (Hjelmslev); corrilation (Hjelmslev); destina-taireldestinateur (Jakobson); die'gtse (Aristotle, Genette); donateur (Propp);effet de sens (Guillaume);ernbrayeur (Ruwet, as a translation of shifter, Jakobson); endotaxiquelexotaxique (Rengstorf); Cnonce'l Cnonciation (Benveniste); ipiste'mi (Foucault); expression, plan de 1' (Hjelmslev); extiroce~tiuitilintiroceptiuite'(psychology of perception); figure (Hjelmslev); focalisation (Genette); giniralisation, principe de (Hjelmslev); gine'ration (Chomsky); ge'ne'ratiue and transformationnelle grammaire (Chomsky); icBne (Peirce); illocution, locution, perlocution (Austin); immanence, principe d' (Hjelmslev); indicateur (or marqueur) syntagmatique (Chomsky); index (Peirce); intertextualite' (the concept is attributed to Bakhtin); isotopie (physics and chemistry); lexie (Hjelmslev);manifestation (Hjelmslev);matitre ["purport"] (Hjelmslev); me'tase'miotique (Hjelmslev); monoplane, simiotique (Hjelmslev); narrateurlnarrataire (Genette); paradigmatiquelsyntagrnatique (Hjelmslev); performatif (Austin);phtme (Pottier);pluriplane, simiotique (Hjelmslev); procblsystime (Hjelmslev); recatkgorkation thdmatique (L. Panier); sche'ma linguistique (Hjelmslev); se'mtme (Pottier); solidariti (Hjelmslev); uirtutme (Pottier). The enormous influence of Hjelmslev, even on the terminology, is

immediately evident, as is a certain affinity with the techniques of Pottier. But the most interesting aspect is the number of occasions on which a single term proliferates, giving rise to a whole series of der- ivations, compounds, syntagms. Take the successful actant, borrowed from the debatable but pioneering study of Lucien ~esniere; ' we now


find actantiel(le)-catkgorie actantielle, r6le actantiel, statut actantiel, and so -

on; protoactant, and also actants de la communication, de la narration, syntaxiques, fonctionnels, and so on. Another term successfully "launched" by Greimas is isotopie; a number of terms are based on it, bi-isotopie and pluri-isotopie, and with the addition of attributes, isotopie grammaticale, skmntique, skmiologzque, actorielle, partielle, totale, figurative, thbmtique, complexe, and so on. Sometimes the multiplication of terms is the outcome not only of the addition of attributive adjuncts, but of the application of the "carre skmiotique": thus destinateur, as well as assuming the attributes of manipulateur and of judicateur, gen-erates out of its own bosom an anti-destinateur and a nonanti-destinateur. The same techniques (creation of new terms, derivation, and setting

up of lexical fields) are to be found even when it is Greimas himself who has taken the lexical initiative. Here a complete census is an even more precarious undertaking, because Greimas does not always do what on some occasions he does: give clear indications that the initiative is indeed his own (by saying, for example, "on entendra par . . ." [we shall define by. . .I, "Nous designons par l'expression . . ." [By the expression we designate . . .I, "Nous proposons d'appeler . . ." [We propose to call . . .I, "on est oblige d'introduire le concept operatoire de . . ." [we need to introduce the operational concept of . . .I, "on appellera . . ." [we shall call . . .I, "on peut designer comme . . ." [we can designate as . . .I, "on peut reunir sous le nom de . . ." [we can designate by the term . . .I, and so forth; and it should be borne in mind that the Dictionnaire raisonnk has a second author, Joseph Cour- t&). Here too, though, I shall provide an exemplary list which is, I believe, sufficiently comprehensive: actorialisation; confipration discursive; connecteur d'isotopies; constitutional, modlle; dbbrayage, dkbrayeur (compare embrayeur in the earlier list); discursivisation or mise en dis- cours; existence skmiotique; figuratif, parcours; figurativisation; figurativitk; gkntratif, parcours; macroskmiotique; micro-univers; narrat$ parcours; ob- servateur; occultation; pivot narratf; pratique skmiotique; prksence; program- m t i o n spatio-temporelle; programme narratif;- rkduction; skmantique fondamentale; spatialisation; subcontrariktk; syntaxe discursive; syntaxe fondamentale; syntaxe narrative de surface; syntaxe textuelle; temporalisation; textualisation; thymique, catkgorie; topique, espace (paratopique, hktbrotopique). In my opinion, it is of considerable interest even on the theoretical

plane to remark that very rarely indeed does Greimas forge actual neologisms. More frequently he has recourse to derivation (actoriali-sation, discursivisation, figurativisation, spatialisation, temporalisation), to metaphor (configuration, andfigurati f , pivot, espace), to specialized use


of everyday terms (obseruateur, pisence, rkduction) or, lastly, to elative terms (constitutionnel, modkle, grammaire, skmantique, and syntaxe fondamentale). In the case of metaphor and specialized use of everyday terms, we have moved into a freer, more inventive sphere, one that is less implacably deductive. It should be made perfectly clear, though, that Greimas's style,

down to 1976, smacks of the treatise; it is certainly not that of an essayist. Its ideal is scientific language, though it is true that semiotics, in the more adventurous recesses of its procedure, does not neces- sarily reject the power of words or use of the figurative expression. Some elementary but symptomatic examples might be adduced simply by turning to the titles of the paragraphs which subdivide the chapters of Maupassant. For example, chapters 3 and 4 of "Sequence 11," on the one hand, present paragraphs with titles like "Le programme discursif" (The Discursive Program), "La valorisation du programme" (The Valorization of the Program), "L'installation de l'actant duel" (The Installation of the Dual Actant), "Reconnaissance des valeurs" (The Identification of Values), "Le carrC ~Cmiotique" (The Semiotic Square), alongside others like "Les transfigurations du soleil" (The Transfigurations of the Sun), "La buCe aquatique" (Aquatic Mist), "La buee celeste" (Celestial Mist), "Le sang solaire" (Solar Blood), "Le paraitre du Ciel" (The Seeming of the Sky). In reality, Greimas is, at every moment, systematic; but his under-

taking, although it is deductive in type, at each stage posits conceptual standpoints at once more all-embracing and differentiated. The first considerable revolution is attested by the Dictionnaire (1979) and by Du sens 11 (1983): the former is concerned with the sketching out of new categories and new approaches, while the latter regards the revolution as already achieved ("la rupture radicale entre deux 'etats de choses' " [the radical break between two 'states of things']; "Qu'il s'agisse d'une crise de croissance ou d'un retournement decisif, un nouveau visage de la skmiotique se dessine peu 2 peu" [Whether one is dealing with a crisis of growth or a decisive turn of events, a new phase of semiotics is slowly emerging]).g To put it briefly, what has happened is that the study of discourse

articulations and the study of narrative articulations (Propp) have been made to converge and have coalesced; the actants of narration have installed themselves inside the discourse, and have become the protagonists of the communication. Communication types, seen in the light of their finalities, have revealed their modal foundations, in a dimension that Greimas defines as altogether cognitive. It might be said that the different spheres of Greimas's earlier research, seem-


ingly unconnected until now, have all been drawn into a single, comprehensive movement. Although Greimas may now speak of the riel, of objet and of sujet, he

is clearly not doing so in any experimental or inductive sphere; in short, he is not (philosophically speaking) a realist. Suffice it to see how, even in his overall semiotic organization, simiotique naturelle and the monde nature1 itself are linked to something that is construit and scientifigue, and substantially subordinated to it. Nor is this all. By positing the "carre semiotique" as the logical articulation of any possible semantic category, the actants of the narration, who are progressively transformed into the actants of communication in general, in practice give rise to a series of entities (near hypostasies, one might say), such as the non-destinateur and the non-anti-destinateur, the anti-sujet, and so forth. In short, it is the overriding character of the system as such which brings on stage a number of characters whose necessity arises out of the coherence of the construction itself, independent of any observable descriptive exigency. And so it is that an inveterate empiricist like the present writer can

only rejoice when he finds himself reading a declaration like the following, whose clarity and sincerity of expression are readily appreciable:

la semiotique qu'on avait r&vee, loin de se satisfaire de la pure contemplation de ses propres concepts, devait mettre, a tout instant et a tout prix, la main a la p2te et se montrer efficace en mordant sur le "rkel": I'objet a construire determinait alors, dans une large mesure, la visee du sujet.

[the semiotics of our dreams could not be content simply with the pure contemplation of its own concepts, but urgently and at all costs had to get involved and confirm its effectiveness by getting a handle on "reality." In this case, the object to be constructed determined to a great extent the objectives of the subject.] (7)

It is a declaration which is integrated by another, even more clear-cut perhaps and theoretically clear-minded: "La reflection theorique, pour peu qu'elle soit fkconde, comporte l'inconvenient de dkpasser presque toujours les concepts qu'elle se forge et les termes qu'elle choisit pour les dbigner" (Though theoretical reflection may be fruit- ful, it has the inconvenience of almost always outstripping the concepts it creates and the terms used to designate them) (17).And there is even more occasion for rejoicing when we observe that, once Propp's model has been transposed to a communication schema, what


is underlined in the communication in question is its intersubjective character, and that this is further recognized as being "fiduciaire, inquiet, t2tonnant, mais en mCme temps rusk et dominateur" (fidu- ciary, uneasy, groping, and at the same time cunning and dominat- ing ) (1 1). The fundamental introduction to Du sens II thus opens up perspec-

tives which Greimas's initial semiotic presuppositions had hardly glanced at, or which they had totally ignored: the semiotics of action, it is now understood, entails a further semiotics of manipulation and of sanction; one should note as well the explicit attention now devoted to behavior and situations. Semiotics of the subject/semiotics of the object is a pair that gives due weight to the level of perception, while the eventuality is considered that the "figures du monde" (figures of the world) may have repercussions on the subject, that they may even participate in his construction. The point is reached of calling for a systematic investigation of the theories of passion, and questions are asked about the "possibilites d'une esthktique" (possibilities of an aesthetics) (13). How are we to set about delineating the "nouveau visage de la

semiotique" (new phase of semiotics) which Greimas now offers us? One possible approach is suggested by the Dictionnaire: there, under the word st?miotique, reference was made, in ascending order, first to "une grandeur manifestke quelconque, que l'on se propose de connaitre" (any manifested entity under study)-natural languages are part of it, as are "contextes extra-linguistiques," considered as "rCservoirs de signes" and defined, globally, as "macrosemiotiques"; second, to an object of knowledge, as it appears in the course of, or as the outcome of, a description (we are dealing with an object-semiotics regarded as an object of description, as itself subject to analysis, and last as a constructed object-so that, on the one hand, we have a typology and a hierarchy of semiotics, and on the other, the possibility of varied syncretistic kinds of semiotics); last, we are offered a theory, that is, a global account of the means that make knowledge possible. This formulation, seemingly univocal, not to say inductive, is in reality biunequivocal, because there is talk of semiotics right from the earliest phase of research, contact with the world itself; this means that the domain of theory is being retroactively enlarged, almost as if one were afraid that any item of data, left in its natural, crude, unelaborated state, might somehow slip through the net. This, in turn, is tanta- mount to saying that absolutely everything is semiotic, even when semiotics has not yet taken it into consideration. In the introduction to Du sew II , what we are offered is a seemingly

THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS 691

more modest formulation, one based on the setting up of analytical strategies:

Se consacrant d'abord timidement a l'elaboration et a la formulation rigoureuse d'un petit nombre de sequences canoniques, [la pratique semiotique] en arrive a se construire petit a petit de nouveaux dispositifs et de nouveaux objets ideels qui se substituent progressivement, dans la strategic de la recherche, a des explorations des semiotiques definies par les canaux de transmission de leurs signifiants de par des domaines culturels qu'elles articulent.

[At first it was cautiously concerned with the elaboration and rigorous formulation of a small number of canonical sequences. In the strategy of research adopted, it has progressively and slowly constructed new procedures and new intellectual constructs that are replacing semiotic explorations defined both by the channels of transmission of their signifiers and by the cultural domains they articulate.] (14)

This is the breach: and through it, in the more recent semiotics of Greimas, that of de l'imperfection, minute sensations have found their way, chromatic, tactile, and olfactory elements in full flood; there is now respect for (or recognition of) imperfection; through it too the sacred, life, death have begun to reveal themselves. The sentence from p. 97 of de l'imperfection (see my discussion on p. 683-84 above) seems to be the continuation, though a more decisive continuation, of the phrase just quoted from Du sens II. Indeed, in the sentence from de l'imperjection any "ambition totalisante" (totalizing ambition) had, at least hypothetically, been abandoned, whereas in Du sens 11, Greimas had only limited the "elaboration et formulation rigoureuse d'un petit nombre de sequences canoniques (elaboration and rigorous formulation of a small number of canonical sequences) while still nursing his ambitions; the construction "petit P petit" (little by little) of "nouveau dispositifs" (new procedures) and of "nouveaux objets" (new objects) gives way before a "parcellisation de . . . programmes" (parceling of . . . programs) and a "valorisation du detail du 'vkcu' " (valorization of the detail of the "lived"). What does Greimas offer us to compensate for these sacrifices? (I

too use the interrogative modes to which he himself now so willingly has recourse.) The first answer is: the style he uses. The less apodictic and problematic the exposition becomes, the more the style inter- venes to integrate, suggest, allow glimpses. The subjective, the ecstatic, the sacred are spheres dominated by the ineffable-spheres where style, however, may continue to move forward while demon- strative reasoning remains blocked. But only Greimas's future work


will be able to provide an answer to the fundamental problem. What we want to know is whether this radical about-face, all too evident, is the prelude to a new semiotics, or whether it announces a shift to different heuristic methods, different kinds of problems.

I am sure that we are all looking forward with great interest to the reply Greimas will give. I do, though, consider that it has been an interesting and happy parabola which has taken him from a program- matically closed system, with all its inherent dangers of dogmatism and sclerosis, to a new phase, in which, with a potential we are not yet able to measure, the game has been opened anew, so that Greimas, with his customary lucidity, can place new objectives before us.

UNIVERSITADEGLI STUDIDI PAVIA (Translated by John Meddemmen)

NOTES

1 Algirdas Julien Greimas, & I'imperfection (Pbrigueux, 1987), p. 9; hereafter cited in

text. Here and elsewhere, unless otherwise noted, translations are by Paul Perron.

2 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Maupusant: La skmwtique du texte: exercices pratiques (Paris,

1976). p. 267; hereafter cited in text.

3 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Skmantigue structurale: Recherche & rne'thode (Paris, 1966).

4 Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1943), tr. Francis J. Whitfield

(Madison, Wisc., 1963).

5 Hjelmslev, 913.

6 See Cesare Segre, "Greimas's Dictionary: From Terminology to Ideology," Semiotics,

50 (1984), 269-78.

7 Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph Courtks, SCmiotique: Dictionmire raisond de la

thkorie du langage (Paris, 1979).

8 Lucien Tesniere, Bkmentr de syntaxe structurale (Paris, 1969).

9 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Du s m 11: Essais shiotique (Paris, 1983), pp. 7, 18; here-

after cited in text.

segre, cesare - the style of greimas and its transformations

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