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Page 1: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 112

Philosophy and Literature Volume 37 Number 2 October 2013 pp

531-541 (Article)

DOI 101353phl20130025

For additional information about this article

Access provided by your local institution (27 May 2015 0020 GMT)

httpmusejhuedujournalsphlsummaryv037372ardoinhtml

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141 2013 37 531ndash541 copy 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

THE DIFFICULTIES OF READING WITH A CREATIVEMIND BERGSON AND THE INTUITIVE READER

by P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983141983154 H983141983150983154983145 B983141983154983143983155983151983150 983144983137983155 written at length about the cre-ative process of artists and poets the poet starts from ldquoa fuller view

of realityrdquo than that of most people and then ldquoplumb[s] the depths ofhis own nature in so powerful an effort of inner observation that helays hold of the potential in the real and takes up what nature has leftas a mere outline or sketch in his soul in order to make of it a finished work of artrdquo1 The result ldquoenables usrdquo the audience for art ldquoto discoverin things more qualities and more shades than we naturally perceiverdquo2 According to Bergson our view of reality is thereafter altered and webegin to realize ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is pos-siblerdquo (TCM p 136) For Bergson then the primary use of art andliterature is to urge us toward a philosophical life and a closer identi-fication with our inner life and the various durations surrounding us Art does important but limited work it ldquodilates our perception but onthe surface rather than in depth It enriches our present but it scarcelyenables us to go beyond itrdquo (TCM p 157)

In order to go beyond that Bergson argues we need philosophythrough which ldquoall things acquire depthmdashmore than depth somethinglike a fourth dimension which permits anterior perceptions to remainbound up with present perceptions and the immediate future itself to

become partly outlined in the presentrdquo (TCM p 157) This is not theonly moment in which Bergson places ldquothe art of readingrdquo in contrastto ldquothe intuition I recommend to the philosopherrdquo despite ldquoa certainanalogy be it said in passingrdquo he makes between the two (TCM p 87)It is my aim here to use Bergsonrsquos ideas to connect the twomdashthe act

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of reading and the exercise of intuitionmdashmore closely (and in a wayconsistent with his own philosophy)

When he contrasts the act of reading with the philosophical act thatcreates ldquosomething like a fourth dimensionrdquo Bergson assumes that artand literature are experienced in a particular vacuum that isolates the viewer or reader from her past This is an assumption that seems to beshared with even the most apparently Bergsonian of authors (Proust forexample) But the assumption is not only false it is contrary to muchof what Bergson demonstrates throughout his body of workmdashin Matterand Memory for example Bergson argues ldquoevery perception is alreadymemory Practically we perceive only the past rdquo3 We know from Bergson

that we cannot avoid bringing our prior experience into any presentperception including the perceiving of a work of art I argue that wecan then use that experience to expand the role of reading beyond amere push toward a more philosophical life In fact we can approachliterature itself philosophically and become truly Bergsonian readers who enter a work of literature without shedding the past and insteadutilize that past toward a creative reading experience

I

Proust in his multivolume novel In Search of Lost Time (Agrave la recherchedu temps perdu ) frequently returns to the image of the kaleidoscopeone of several metaphors for the rearrangements that spur involuntarymemory4 Ultimately these rearrangements and Marcelrsquos experiences will lead that protagonist to become the artist capable of producing thenovel itself or one like it The novel is well-known for demonstrating

the power of involuntary memory and certainly might lead a readerto realize ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo(TCM p 136) but Bergson might suggest it cannot do much morethan that at the level of content which is necessarily restrictive

The medium of the written word for example brings with it numer-ous problems words are notmdashBergson tells usmdashthe thought only itsexpression the thought is ldquoabove the word and above the sentencerdquoIt only ldquoexpresses itself by means of a sentence that is by a group of

pre-existing elementsrdquo (TCM p 121) This limits the thought whichitself ldquois a movementrdquo to an inadequate expression that is ldquoessentiallydiscontinuous since it proceeds by juxtaposing wordsrdquo leaving ldquoa gulf which no amount of concrete representations can ever fillrdquo (M amp M p 125) Words after all ldquohave a definite meaning a conventional value

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533P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

relatively fixed they can express the new only as a rearrangement of theoldrdquo (TCM p 82) Words themselves are limited in meaning-making totheir own brand of kaleidoscopic rearrangement

This is the same shortcoming Bergson finds in science philosophyand ordinary logic historically ldquoordinary logic sees in a new formor quality only a rearrangement of the oldmdashnothing absolutely newrdquopreventing us from accessing and understanding ldquoa duration in whichnovelty is constantly springing forth and evolution is creativerdquo (TCM p26) Marcel accesses this duration and emerges from the experience anartist The question remains though whether the reader can do morethan simply observe this process

If there is a ldquomodernist projectrdquo one of its goals is to move beyondthe concrete experience of words sentences and content to do morethan simply ldquoundertake the study of the soul in the concrete uponindividual examplesrdquo (TCM p 27) These modernist works seek to attendto the form of the work itself as the content affecting readers directlythrough Woolfrsquos undulating waves of words or Joycersquos multidimensionalsentences5 In the case of Proust this means taking the reader throughMarcelrsquos experiences involuntary memory and development with him

that is we are reading the book as it is being written through experi-ence This reflexive process should move us beyond the twin hurdles ofconcrete specific events told through the concrete specific medium of word However beyond these are the hurdles of time and experience

Bergson tells us for example ldquoto the artist who creates a picture bydrawing it from the depths of his soul time is no longer an accessoryit is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened without thecontent being altered The duration of his work is part and parcel

of his work To contract or to dilate it would be to modify both thepsychical evolution that fills it and the invention which is its goal Thetime taken up by the invention is one with the invention itselfrdquo6 Thisagain sounds like In Search of Lost Time in which the work follows theevolution that invents the work

The problem is that the evolution of a real life takes a long timeeven longer than could fit into three thousand pages Bergson in Matterand Memory uses the example of a second of red light Red light ldquothe

light which has the longest wavelengthmdashand of which consequentlythe vibrations are the least frequentmdashaccomplishes 400 billion succes-sive vibrationsrdquo in a single second For a consciousness to completelyperceive even that second would take ldquomore than 25000 yearsrdquo (M ampM p 205ndash6) On a moment-by-moment basis ldquomillions of phenomena

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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succeed each other while we hardly succeed in counting a fewrdquo (M amp M p 207) Could Proust really capture a lifetime of development in threethousand pages and could we read and sympathetically experience itover the course of a few weeks or months ldquoCan you shorten the lengthof a melody without altering its naturerdquo (TCM p 19) Is not writingalways compression selection and division of experience into eventsIt would be a wonder if a reader even took from the book an idea ldquothatan extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo when there is notime in the reading process or space in the book to describe the realduration of artistic creation

We run into related problems when a novel attempts to have us

experience what a character does (or when the novel aims at a specificgeneral experience for the reader at all) Again there are dual obstaclesfirst we cannot share the exact experiences of a character even if wecome across formal techniques designed to simulate those experiencesand second we cannot leave our unrelated experiences outside of thenovel Bergson refutes the idea of sharing identical experiences in TheCreative Mind by answering the question of whether someone other thanShakespeare could have written Hamlet ldquoIt is clear that a mind in which

the Hamlet of Shakespeare had taken shape in the form of the possible would by that fact have created its reality it would thus have been bydefinition Shakespeare himselfrdquo (TCM p 102) That is this otherpossible writer in order to create Hamlet would have been ldquothinkingall that Shakespeare will think feeling all he will feel knowing all he will know perceiving therefore all he will perceive and consequentlyoccupying the same body and the same soul it is Shakespeare himselfrdquo(TCM p 103) To create In Search of Lost Time it would be necessary

to have all the experiences thoughts and perceptions of Proust overthe same course of time and not simply read about a condensed listof experiences and perceptions taken out of the flow of time and thecontext of duration

In addition to gaining all the experiences and perceptions of Proust we would also need to lose all of our own something Bergson impliesis possible (in fact usual) when he claims that art simply ldquoenriches ourpresentrdquo Our past experiences though are always with us that is the

centerpiece of Bergsonrsquos philosophy Even if I made a concerted effortto empty my mind before beginning to read a novel I could not doso Bergson explains as much in his discussion of the idea of nothingin Creative Evolution

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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535P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

I am going to close my eyes stop my ears extinguish one by one the

sensations that come to me from the outer world Now it is done all

my perceptions vanish the material universe sinks into silence and the

nightmdashI subsist however and cannot help myself subsisting I am stillthere with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface

and from the interior of my body with the recollections which my past

perceptions have left behind themmdashnay with the impression most posi-

tive and full of the void I have just made about me How can I suppress

all this How eliminate myself (CE p 278)

Bergsonrsquos goal here is to interrogate the idea of ldquonothingrdquo as less than

ldquosomethingrdquo but he also demonstrates the difficulty of leaving yourselfbehind Even if it were possible to do so even if you could forget all your past experiences you could not block out the sensual present you would feel the book in your hands the chair at your back the variouscramps that come with reading a three-thousand-page book And eventhat condensed list of experiences and perceptions is still too long toconsume in one uninterrupted sitting Would the effort of forgetting yourself last through meals and trips to the mailbox Would you beable to forget your entire past while reading a moving book when ldquoaneffort an emotion can bring suddenly to consciousness words believeddefinitely lostrdquo (TCM p 154) Does not Proust himself demonstratehow easy it is for the past to overwhelm you at a momentrsquos notice Isthat not what involuntary memory means Ironic that in order to reallyexperience what Marcel does we would have tomdashby our undivertableattentionmdashprove involuntary memory impotent or trivial

In fact even the author who insists upon this impossible feat ofattention dependsmdashconsciously or notmdashon the reader bringing past

experiences into present interaction with the book How for examplecould a reader make sense of the written language without memory andexperience Of the process of reading words on a page Bergson reportsldquoOur mind notes here and there a few characteristic lines and fills all theintervals with memory-images which projected on the paper take theplace of the real printed characters and may be mistaken for them Thus we are constantly creating or reconstructing Our distinct perceptionis really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-image

going toward the mind and the memory-image launched into spacecareen the one behind the otherrdquo (M amp M p 103)

The memory of letters and word meanings may seem trivial butaccording to Bergson ldquoAny memory-image that is capable of interpretingour actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no

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536 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

longer able to discern what is perception and what is memoryrdquo (M ampM p 103) What other memories necessarily intertwine with perceptionsimply as a prerequisite for understanding a text like In Search of LostTime Knowledge of French history Social hierarchy The Dreyfus affairFrom the level of the letter and the word to the level of sociopoliticalhistory at least the process of memory is inseparable from the processof reading and making meaning which means that entering into a lit-erary work purely is an impossibility In fact by writing the author setsprior knowledge as a necessary prerequisite How can he then expect with such a list of invited previous experience to keep some kinds ofexperience out How can he expect when acknowledging (by the use of

the written word) that the reader existed prior to opening the book todemand of the reader an exact and restricted combination of experience And how could the reader possibly do that kind of filtering work evenif she wanted to and knew which experiences were useful and allowed

Yet that is just what a text like In Search of Lost Time expects It is whatany text that purports to marry form and content (and thereby createa specific experience for each of the individual members of a generalaudience) expects This particular strain of modernism then is not the

way to go beyond the surface expansion of our present attention thatBergson sees in art It cannot even limit the reading experience to thesimple present as Bergson claims art does

Nor do I know either of any book that fits Bergsonrsquos example ofan artwork that simply expands our present perception while avoidingaccess to our past If such a book existed though there would need beonly one That book would affect every reader in the same way (a trickmodernist literature cannot pull off even with its expanded repertoire

of formal tricks because it can avoid neither time nor experience)and would require no prior knowledge even of words It is no wonderBergson uses the example of visual art when describing its experienceas a purely atemporal one

Visual art of course carries with it similar burdens of time andexperience but we will bypass that concern for now If this perfect work existed and could cause us to realize during one instantaneous view ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo why

would there ever need be a second piece of art The same work of art would serve the purpose for all people since no viewer would bring anyoutside experiences to the work and once that purpose were fulfilledevery viewer would know that faculties of perception can be expandedBergsonrsquos very definition of the effects of art seems to eliminate theneed for all future works of art

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II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

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III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

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541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 2: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141 2013 37 531ndash541 copy 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

THE DIFFICULTIES OF READING WITH A CREATIVEMIND BERGSON AND THE INTUITIVE READER

by P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983141983154 H983141983150983154983145 B983141983154983143983155983151983150 983144983137983155 written at length about the cre-ative process of artists and poets the poet starts from ldquoa fuller view

of realityrdquo than that of most people and then ldquoplumb[s] the depths ofhis own nature in so powerful an effort of inner observation that helays hold of the potential in the real and takes up what nature has leftas a mere outline or sketch in his soul in order to make of it a finished work of artrdquo1 The result ldquoenables usrdquo the audience for art ldquoto discoverin things more qualities and more shades than we naturally perceiverdquo2 According to Bergson our view of reality is thereafter altered and webegin to realize ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is pos-siblerdquo (TCM p 136) For Bergson then the primary use of art andliterature is to urge us toward a philosophical life and a closer identi-fication with our inner life and the various durations surrounding us Art does important but limited work it ldquodilates our perception but onthe surface rather than in depth It enriches our present but it scarcelyenables us to go beyond itrdquo (TCM p 157)

In order to go beyond that Bergson argues we need philosophythrough which ldquoall things acquire depthmdashmore than depth somethinglike a fourth dimension which permits anterior perceptions to remainbound up with present perceptions and the immediate future itself to

become partly outlined in the presentrdquo (TCM p 157) This is not theonly moment in which Bergson places ldquothe art of readingrdquo in contrastto ldquothe intuition I recommend to the philosopherrdquo despite ldquoa certainanalogy be it said in passingrdquo he makes between the two (TCM p 87)It is my aim here to use Bergsonrsquos ideas to connect the twomdashthe act

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 312

532 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

of reading and the exercise of intuitionmdashmore closely (and in a wayconsistent with his own philosophy)

When he contrasts the act of reading with the philosophical act thatcreates ldquosomething like a fourth dimensionrdquo Bergson assumes that artand literature are experienced in a particular vacuum that isolates the viewer or reader from her past This is an assumption that seems to beshared with even the most apparently Bergsonian of authors (Proust forexample) But the assumption is not only false it is contrary to muchof what Bergson demonstrates throughout his body of workmdashin Matterand Memory for example Bergson argues ldquoevery perception is alreadymemory Practically we perceive only the past rdquo3 We know from Bergson

that we cannot avoid bringing our prior experience into any presentperception including the perceiving of a work of art I argue that wecan then use that experience to expand the role of reading beyond amere push toward a more philosophical life In fact we can approachliterature itself philosophically and become truly Bergsonian readers who enter a work of literature without shedding the past and insteadutilize that past toward a creative reading experience

I

Proust in his multivolume novel In Search of Lost Time (Agrave la recherchedu temps perdu ) frequently returns to the image of the kaleidoscopeone of several metaphors for the rearrangements that spur involuntarymemory4 Ultimately these rearrangements and Marcelrsquos experiences will lead that protagonist to become the artist capable of producing thenovel itself or one like it The novel is well-known for demonstrating

the power of involuntary memory and certainly might lead a readerto realize ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo(TCM p 136) but Bergson might suggest it cannot do much morethan that at the level of content which is necessarily restrictive

The medium of the written word for example brings with it numer-ous problems words are notmdashBergson tells usmdashthe thought only itsexpression the thought is ldquoabove the word and above the sentencerdquoIt only ldquoexpresses itself by means of a sentence that is by a group of

pre-existing elementsrdquo (TCM p 121) This limits the thought whichitself ldquois a movementrdquo to an inadequate expression that is ldquoessentiallydiscontinuous since it proceeds by juxtaposing wordsrdquo leaving ldquoa gulf which no amount of concrete representations can ever fillrdquo (M amp M p 125) Words after all ldquohave a definite meaning a conventional value

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533P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

relatively fixed they can express the new only as a rearrangement of theoldrdquo (TCM p 82) Words themselves are limited in meaning-making totheir own brand of kaleidoscopic rearrangement

This is the same shortcoming Bergson finds in science philosophyand ordinary logic historically ldquoordinary logic sees in a new formor quality only a rearrangement of the oldmdashnothing absolutely newrdquopreventing us from accessing and understanding ldquoa duration in whichnovelty is constantly springing forth and evolution is creativerdquo (TCM p26) Marcel accesses this duration and emerges from the experience anartist The question remains though whether the reader can do morethan simply observe this process

If there is a ldquomodernist projectrdquo one of its goals is to move beyondthe concrete experience of words sentences and content to do morethan simply ldquoundertake the study of the soul in the concrete uponindividual examplesrdquo (TCM p 27) These modernist works seek to attendto the form of the work itself as the content affecting readers directlythrough Woolfrsquos undulating waves of words or Joycersquos multidimensionalsentences5 In the case of Proust this means taking the reader throughMarcelrsquos experiences involuntary memory and development with him

that is we are reading the book as it is being written through experi-ence This reflexive process should move us beyond the twin hurdles ofconcrete specific events told through the concrete specific medium of word However beyond these are the hurdles of time and experience

Bergson tells us for example ldquoto the artist who creates a picture bydrawing it from the depths of his soul time is no longer an accessoryit is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened without thecontent being altered The duration of his work is part and parcel

of his work To contract or to dilate it would be to modify both thepsychical evolution that fills it and the invention which is its goal Thetime taken up by the invention is one with the invention itselfrdquo6 Thisagain sounds like In Search of Lost Time in which the work follows theevolution that invents the work

The problem is that the evolution of a real life takes a long timeeven longer than could fit into three thousand pages Bergson in Matterand Memory uses the example of a second of red light Red light ldquothe

light which has the longest wavelengthmdashand of which consequentlythe vibrations are the least frequentmdashaccomplishes 400 billion succes-sive vibrationsrdquo in a single second For a consciousness to completelyperceive even that second would take ldquomore than 25000 yearsrdquo (M ampM p 205ndash6) On a moment-by-moment basis ldquomillions of phenomena

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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534 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

succeed each other while we hardly succeed in counting a fewrdquo (M amp M p 207) Could Proust really capture a lifetime of development in threethousand pages and could we read and sympathetically experience itover the course of a few weeks or months ldquoCan you shorten the lengthof a melody without altering its naturerdquo (TCM p 19) Is not writingalways compression selection and division of experience into eventsIt would be a wonder if a reader even took from the book an idea ldquothatan extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo when there is notime in the reading process or space in the book to describe the realduration of artistic creation

We run into related problems when a novel attempts to have us

experience what a character does (or when the novel aims at a specificgeneral experience for the reader at all) Again there are dual obstaclesfirst we cannot share the exact experiences of a character even if wecome across formal techniques designed to simulate those experiencesand second we cannot leave our unrelated experiences outside of thenovel Bergson refutes the idea of sharing identical experiences in TheCreative Mind by answering the question of whether someone other thanShakespeare could have written Hamlet ldquoIt is clear that a mind in which

the Hamlet of Shakespeare had taken shape in the form of the possible would by that fact have created its reality it would thus have been bydefinition Shakespeare himselfrdquo (TCM p 102) That is this otherpossible writer in order to create Hamlet would have been ldquothinkingall that Shakespeare will think feeling all he will feel knowing all he will know perceiving therefore all he will perceive and consequentlyoccupying the same body and the same soul it is Shakespeare himselfrdquo(TCM p 103) To create In Search of Lost Time it would be necessary

to have all the experiences thoughts and perceptions of Proust overthe same course of time and not simply read about a condensed listof experiences and perceptions taken out of the flow of time and thecontext of duration

In addition to gaining all the experiences and perceptions of Proust we would also need to lose all of our own something Bergson impliesis possible (in fact usual) when he claims that art simply ldquoenriches ourpresentrdquo Our past experiences though are always with us that is the

centerpiece of Bergsonrsquos philosophy Even if I made a concerted effortto empty my mind before beginning to read a novel I could not doso Bergson explains as much in his discussion of the idea of nothingin Creative Evolution

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535P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

I am going to close my eyes stop my ears extinguish one by one the

sensations that come to me from the outer world Now it is done all

my perceptions vanish the material universe sinks into silence and the

nightmdashI subsist however and cannot help myself subsisting I am stillthere with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface

and from the interior of my body with the recollections which my past

perceptions have left behind themmdashnay with the impression most posi-

tive and full of the void I have just made about me How can I suppress

all this How eliminate myself (CE p 278)

Bergsonrsquos goal here is to interrogate the idea of ldquonothingrdquo as less than

ldquosomethingrdquo but he also demonstrates the difficulty of leaving yourselfbehind Even if it were possible to do so even if you could forget all your past experiences you could not block out the sensual present you would feel the book in your hands the chair at your back the variouscramps that come with reading a three-thousand-page book And eventhat condensed list of experiences and perceptions is still too long toconsume in one uninterrupted sitting Would the effort of forgetting yourself last through meals and trips to the mailbox Would you beable to forget your entire past while reading a moving book when ldquoaneffort an emotion can bring suddenly to consciousness words believeddefinitely lostrdquo (TCM p 154) Does not Proust himself demonstratehow easy it is for the past to overwhelm you at a momentrsquos notice Isthat not what involuntary memory means Ironic that in order to reallyexperience what Marcel does we would have tomdashby our undivertableattentionmdashprove involuntary memory impotent or trivial

In fact even the author who insists upon this impossible feat ofattention dependsmdashconsciously or notmdashon the reader bringing past

experiences into present interaction with the book How for examplecould a reader make sense of the written language without memory andexperience Of the process of reading words on a page Bergson reportsldquoOur mind notes here and there a few characteristic lines and fills all theintervals with memory-images which projected on the paper take theplace of the real printed characters and may be mistaken for them Thus we are constantly creating or reconstructing Our distinct perceptionis really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-image

going toward the mind and the memory-image launched into spacecareen the one behind the otherrdquo (M amp M p 103)

The memory of letters and word meanings may seem trivial butaccording to Bergson ldquoAny memory-image that is capable of interpretingour actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no

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longer able to discern what is perception and what is memoryrdquo (M ampM p 103) What other memories necessarily intertwine with perceptionsimply as a prerequisite for understanding a text like In Search of LostTime Knowledge of French history Social hierarchy The Dreyfus affairFrom the level of the letter and the word to the level of sociopoliticalhistory at least the process of memory is inseparable from the processof reading and making meaning which means that entering into a lit-erary work purely is an impossibility In fact by writing the author setsprior knowledge as a necessary prerequisite How can he then expect with such a list of invited previous experience to keep some kinds ofexperience out How can he expect when acknowledging (by the use of

the written word) that the reader existed prior to opening the book todemand of the reader an exact and restricted combination of experience And how could the reader possibly do that kind of filtering work evenif she wanted to and knew which experiences were useful and allowed

Yet that is just what a text like In Search of Lost Time expects It is whatany text that purports to marry form and content (and thereby createa specific experience for each of the individual members of a generalaudience) expects This particular strain of modernism then is not the

way to go beyond the surface expansion of our present attention thatBergson sees in art It cannot even limit the reading experience to thesimple present as Bergson claims art does

Nor do I know either of any book that fits Bergsonrsquos example ofan artwork that simply expands our present perception while avoidingaccess to our past If such a book existed though there would need beonly one That book would affect every reader in the same way (a trickmodernist literature cannot pull off even with its expanded repertoire

of formal tricks because it can avoid neither time nor experience)and would require no prior knowledge even of words It is no wonderBergson uses the example of visual art when describing its experienceas a purely atemporal one

Visual art of course carries with it similar burdens of time andexperience but we will bypass that concern for now If this perfect work existed and could cause us to realize during one instantaneous view ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo why

would there ever need be a second piece of art The same work of art would serve the purpose for all people since no viewer would bring anyoutside experiences to the work and once that purpose were fulfilledevery viewer would know that faculties of perception can be expandedBergsonrsquos very definition of the effects of art seems to eliminate theneed for all future works of art

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II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

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Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

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III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

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molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

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541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 3: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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of reading and the exercise of intuitionmdashmore closely (and in a wayconsistent with his own philosophy)

When he contrasts the act of reading with the philosophical act thatcreates ldquosomething like a fourth dimensionrdquo Bergson assumes that artand literature are experienced in a particular vacuum that isolates the viewer or reader from her past This is an assumption that seems to beshared with even the most apparently Bergsonian of authors (Proust forexample) But the assumption is not only false it is contrary to muchof what Bergson demonstrates throughout his body of workmdashin Matterand Memory for example Bergson argues ldquoevery perception is alreadymemory Practically we perceive only the past rdquo3 We know from Bergson

that we cannot avoid bringing our prior experience into any presentperception including the perceiving of a work of art I argue that wecan then use that experience to expand the role of reading beyond amere push toward a more philosophical life In fact we can approachliterature itself philosophically and become truly Bergsonian readers who enter a work of literature without shedding the past and insteadutilize that past toward a creative reading experience

I

Proust in his multivolume novel In Search of Lost Time (Agrave la recherchedu temps perdu ) frequently returns to the image of the kaleidoscopeone of several metaphors for the rearrangements that spur involuntarymemory4 Ultimately these rearrangements and Marcelrsquos experiences will lead that protagonist to become the artist capable of producing thenovel itself or one like it The novel is well-known for demonstrating

the power of involuntary memory and certainly might lead a readerto realize ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo(TCM p 136) but Bergson might suggest it cannot do much morethan that at the level of content which is necessarily restrictive

The medium of the written word for example brings with it numer-ous problems words are notmdashBergson tells usmdashthe thought only itsexpression the thought is ldquoabove the word and above the sentencerdquoIt only ldquoexpresses itself by means of a sentence that is by a group of

pre-existing elementsrdquo (TCM p 121) This limits the thought whichitself ldquois a movementrdquo to an inadequate expression that is ldquoessentiallydiscontinuous since it proceeds by juxtaposing wordsrdquo leaving ldquoa gulf which no amount of concrete representations can ever fillrdquo (M amp M p 125) Words after all ldquohave a definite meaning a conventional value

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 412

533P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

relatively fixed they can express the new only as a rearrangement of theoldrdquo (TCM p 82) Words themselves are limited in meaning-making totheir own brand of kaleidoscopic rearrangement

This is the same shortcoming Bergson finds in science philosophyand ordinary logic historically ldquoordinary logic sees in a new formor quality only a rearrangement of the oldmdashnothing absolutely newrdquopreventing us from accessing and understanding ldquoa duration in whichnovelty is constantly springing forth and evolution is creativerdquo (TCM p26) Marcel accesses this duration and emerges from the experience anartist The question remains though whether the reader can do morethan simply observe this process

If there is a ldquomodernist projectrdquo one of its goals is to move beyondthe concrete experience of words sentences and content to do morethan simply ldquoundertake the study of the soul in the concrete uponindividual examplesrdquo (TCM p 27) These modernist works seek to attendto the form of the work itself as the content affecting readers directlythrough Woolfrsquos undulating waves of words or Joycersquos multidimensionalsentences5 In the case of Proust this means taking the reader throughMarcelrsquos experiences involuntary memory and development with him

that is we are reading the book as it is being written through experi-ence This reflexive process should move us beyond the twin hurdles ofconcrete specific events told through the concrete specific medium of word However beyond these are the hurdles of time and experience

Bergson tells us for example ldquoto the artist who creates a picture bydrawing it from the depths of his soul time is no longer an accessoryit is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened without thecontent being altered The duration of his work is part and parcel

of his work To contract or to dilate it would be to modify both thepsychical evolution that fills it and the invention which is its goal Thetime taken up by the invention is one with the invention itselfrdquo6 Thisagain sounds like In Search of Lost Time in which the work follows theevolution that invents the work

The problem is that the evolution of a real life takes a long timeeven longer than could fit into three thousand pages Bergson in Matterand Memory uses the example of a second of red light Red light ldquothe

light which has the longest wavelengthmdashand of which consequentlythe vibrations are the least frequentmdashaccomplishes 400 billion succes-sive vibrationsrdquo in a single second For a consciousness to completelyperceive even that second would take ldquomore than 25000 yearsrdquo (M ampM p 205ndash6) On a moment-by-moment basis ldquomillions of phenomena

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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534 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

succeed each other while we hardly succeed in counting a fewrdquo (M amp M p 207) Could Proust really capture a lifetime of development in threethousand pages and could we read and sympathetically experience itover the course of a few weeks or months ldquoCan you shorten the lengthof a melody without altering its naturerdquo (TCM p 19) Is not writingalways compression selection and division of experience into eventsIt would be a wonder if a reader even took from the book an idea ldquothatan extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo when there is notime in the reading process or space in the book to describe the realduration of artistic creation

We run into related problems when a novel attempts to have us

experience what a character does (or when the novel aims at a specificgeneral experience for the reader at all) Again there are dual obstaclesfirst we cannot share the exact experiences of a character even if wecome across formal techniques designed to simulate those experiencesand second we cannot leave our unrelated experiences outside of thenovel Bergson refutes the idea of sharing identical experiences in TheCreative Mind by answering the question of whether someone other thanShakespeare could have written Hamlet ldquoIt is clear that a mind in which

the Hamlet of Shakespeare had taken shape in the form of the possible would by that fact have created its reality it would thus have been bydefinition Shakespeare himselfrdquo (TCM p 102) That is this otherpossible writer in order to create Hamlet would have been ldquothinkingall that Shakespeare will think feeling all he will feel knowing all he will know perceiving therefore all he will perceive and consequentlyoccupying the same body and the same soul it is Shakespeare himselfrdquo(TCM p 103) To create In Search of Lost Time it would be necessary

to have all the experiences thoughts and perceptions of Proust overthe same course of time and not simply read about a condensed listof experiences and perceptions taken out of the flow of time and thecontext of duration

In addition to gaining all the experiences and perceptions of Proust we would also need to lose all of our own something Bergson impliesis possible (in fact usual) when he claims that art simply ldquoenriches ourpresentrdquo Our past experiences though are always with us that is the

centerpiece of Bergsonrsquos philosophy Even if I made a concerted effortto empty my mind before beginning to read a novel I could not doso Bergson explains as much in his discussion of the idea of nothingin Creative Evolution

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 612

535P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

I am going to close my eyes stop my ears extinguish one by one the

sensations that come to me from the outer world Now it is done all

my perceptions vanish the material universe sinks into silence and the

nightmdashI subsist however and cannot help myself subsisting I am stillthere with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface

and from the interior of my body with the recollections which my past

perceptions have left behind themmdashnay with the impression most posi-

tive and full of the void I have just made about me How can I suppress

all this How eliminate myself (CE p 278)

Bergsonrsquos goal here is to interrogate the idea of ldquonothingrdquo as less than

ldquosomethingrdquo but he also demonstrates the difficulty of leaving yourselfbehind Even if it were possible to do so even if you could forget all your past experiences you could not block out the sensual present you would feel the book in your hands the chair at your back the variouscramps that come with reading a three-thousand-page book And eventhat condensed list of experiences and perceptions is still too long toconsume in one uninterrupted sitting Would the effort of forgetting yourself last through meals and trips to the mailbox Would you beable to forget your entire past while reading a moving book when ldquoaneffort an emotion can bring suddenly to consciousness words believeddefinitely lostrdquo (TCM p 154) Does not Proust himself demonstratehow easy it is for the past to overwhelm you at a momentrsquos notice Isthat not what involuntary memory means Ironic that in order to reallyexperience what Marcel does we would have tomdashby our undivertableattentionmdashprove involuntary memory impotent or trivial

In fact even the author who insists upon this impossible feat ofattention dependsmdashconsciously or notmdashon the reader bringing past

experiences into present interaction with the book How for examplecould a reader make sense of the written language without memory andexperience Of the process of reading words on a page Bergson reportsldquoOur mind notes here and there a few characteristic lines and fills all theintervals with memory-images which projected on the paper take theplace of the real printed characters and may be mistaken for them Thus we are constantly creating or reconstructing Our distinct perceptionis really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-image

going toward the mind and the memory-image launched into spacecareen the one behind the otherrdquo (M amp M p 103)

The memory of letters and word meanings may seem trivial butaccording to Bergson ldquoAny memory-image that is capable of interpretingour actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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longer able to discern what is perception and what is memoryrdquo (M ampM p 103) What other memories necessarily intertwine with perceptionsimply as a prerequisite for understanding a text like In Search of LostTime Knowledge of French history Social hierarchy The Dreyfus affairFrom the level of the letter and the word to the level of sociopoliticalhistory at least the process of memory is inseparable from the processof reading and making meaning which means that entering into a lit-erary work purely is an impossibility In fact by writing the author setsprior knowledge as a necessary prerequisite How can he then expect with such a list of invited previous experience to keep some kinds ofexperience out How can he expect when acknowledging (by the use of

the written word) that the reader existed prior to opening the book todemand of the reader an exact and restricted combination of experience And how could the reader possibly do that kind of filtering work evenif she wanted to and knew which experiences were useful and allowed

Yet that is just what a text like In Search of Lost Time expects It is whatany text that purports to marry form and content (and thereby createa specific experience for each of the individual members of a generalaudience) expects This particular strain of modernism then is not the

way to go beyond the surface expansion of our present attention thatBergson sees in art It cannot even limit the reading experience to thesimple present as Bergson claims art does

Nor do I know either of any book that fits Bergsonrsquos example ofan artwork that simply expands our present perception while avoidingaccess to our past If such a book existed though there would need beonly one That book would affect every reader in the same way (a trickmodernist literature cannot pull off even with its expanded repertoire

of formal tricks because it can avoid neither time nor experience)and would require no prior knowledge even of words It is no wonderBergson uses the example of visual art when describing its experienceas a purely atemporal one

Visual art of course carries with it similar burdens of time andexperience but we will bypass that concern for now If this perfect work existed and could cause us to realize during one instantaneous view ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo why

would there ever need be a second piece of art The same work of art would serve the purpose for all people since no viewer would bring anyoutside experiences to the work and once that purpose were fulfilledevery viewer would know that faculties of perception can be expandedBergsonrsquos very definition of the effects of art seems to eliminate theneed for all future works of art

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537P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

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III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

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molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

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541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 4: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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relatively fixed they can express the new only as a rearrangement of theoldrdquo (TCM p 82) Words themselves are limited in meaning-making totheir own brand of kaleidoscopic rearrangement

This is the same shortcoming Bergson finds in science philosophyand ordinary logic historically ldquoordinary logic sees in a new formor quality only a rearrangement of the oldmdashnothing absolutely newrdquopreventing us from accessing and understanding ldquoa duration in whichnovelty is constantly springing forth and evolution is creativerdquo (TCM p26) Marcel accesses this duration and emerges from the experience anartist The question remains though whether the reader can do morethan simply observe this process

If there is a ldquomodernist projectrdquo one of its goals is to move beyondthe concrete experience of words sentences and content to do morethan simply ldquoundertake the study of the soul in the concrete uponindividual examplesrdquo (TCM p 27) These modernist works seek to attendto the form of the work itself as the content affecting readers directlythrough Woolfrsquos undulating waves of words or Joycersquos multidimensionalsentences5 In the case of Proust this means taking the reader throughMarcelrsquos experiences involuntary memory and development with him

that is we are reading the book as it is being written through experi-ence This reflexive process should move us beyond the twin hurdles ofconcrete specific events told through the concrete specific medium of word However beyond these are the hurdles of time and experience

Bergson tells us for example ldquoto the artist who creates a picture bydrawing it from the depths of his soul time is no longer an accessoryit is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened without thecontent being altered The duration of his work is part and parcel

of his work To contract or to dilate it would be to modify both thepsychical evolution that fills it and the invention which is its goal Thetime taken up by the invention is one with the invention itselfrdquo6 Thisagain sounds like In Search of Lost Time in which the work follows theevolution that invents the work

The problem is that the evolution of a real life takes a long timeeven longer than could fit into three thousand pages Bergson in Matterand Memory uses the example of a second of red light Red light ldquothe

light which has the longest wavelengthmdashand of which consequentlythe vibrations are the least frequentmdashaccomplishes 400 billion succes-sive vibrationsrdquo in a single second For a consciousness to completelyperceive even that second would take ldquomore than 25000 yearsrdquo (M ampM p 205ndash6) On a moment-by-moment basis ldquomillions of phenomena

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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534 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

succeed each other while we hardly succeed in counting a fewrdquo (M amp M p 207) Could Proust really capture a lifetime of development in threethousand pages and could we read and sympathetically experience itover the course of a few weeks or months ldquoCan you shorten the lengthof a melody without altering its naturerdquo (TCM p 19) Is not writingalways compression selection and division of experience into eventsIt would be a wonder if a reader even took from the book an idea ldquothatan extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo when there is notime in the reading process or space in the book to describe the realduration of artistic creation

We run into related problems when a novel attempts to have us

experience what a character does (or when the novel aims at a specificgeneral experience for the reader at all) Again there are dual obstaclesfirst we cannot share the exact experiences of a character even if wecome across formal techniques designed to simulate those experiencesand second we cannot leave our unrelated experiences outside of thenovel Bergson refutes the idea of sharing identical experiences in TheCreative Mind by answering the question of whether someone other thanShakespeare could have written Hamlet ldquoIt is clear that a mind in which

the Hamlet of Shakespeare had taken shape in the form of the possible would by that fact have created its reality it would thus have been bydefinition Shakespeare himselfrdquo (TCM p 102) That is this otherpossible writer in order to create Hamlet would have been ldquothinkingall that Shakespeare will think feeling all he will feel knowing all he will know perceiving therefore all he will perceive and consequentlyoccupying the same body and the same soul it is Shakespeare himselfrdquo(TCM p 103) To create In Search of Lost Time it would be necessary

to have all the experiences thoughts and perceptions of Proust overthe same course of time and not simply read about a condensed listof experiences and perceptions taken out of the flow of time and thecontext of duration

In addition to gaining all the experiences and perceptions of Proust we would also need to lose all of our own something Bergson impliesis possible (in fact usual) when he claims that art simply ldquoenriches ourpresentrdquo Our past experiences though are always with us that is the

centerpiece of Bergsonrsquos philosophy Even if I made a concerted effortto empty my mind before beginning to read a novel I could not doso Bergson explains as much in his discussion of the idea of nothingin Creative Evolution

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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535P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

I am going to close my eyes stop my ears extinguish one by one the

sensations that come to me from the outer world Now it is done all

my perceptions vanish the material universe sinks into silence and the

nightmdashI subsist however and cannot help myself subsisting I am stillthere with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface

and from the interior of my body with the recollections which my past

perceptions have left behind themmdashnay with the impression most posi-

tive and full of the void I have just made about me How can I suppress

all this How eliminate myself (CE p 278)

Bergsonrsquos goal here is to interrogate the idea of ldquonothingrdquo as less than

ldquosomethingrdquo but he also demonstrates the difficulty of leaving yourselfbehind Even if it were possible to do so even if you could forget all your past experiences you could not block out the sensual present you would feel the book in your hands the chair at your back the variouscramps that come with reading a three-thousand-page book And eventhat condensed list of experiences and perceptions is still too long toconsume in one uninterrupted sitting Would the effort of forgetting yourself last through meals and trips to the mailbox Would you beable to forget your entire past while reading a moving book when ldquoaneffort an emotion can bring suddenly to consciousness words believeddefinitely lostrdquo (TCM p 154) Does not Proust himself demonstratehow easy it is for the past to overwhelm you at a momentrsquos notice Isthat not what involuntary memory means Ironic that in order to reallyexperience what Marcel does we would have tomdashby our undivertableattentionmdashprove involuntary memory impotent or trivial

In fact even the author who insists upon this impossible feat ofattention dependsmdashconsciously or notmdashon the reader bringing past

experiences into present interaction with the book How for examplecould a reader make sense of the written language without memory andexperience Of the process of reading words on a page Bergson reportsldquoOur mind notes here and there a few characteristic lines and fills all theintervals with memory-images which projected on the paper take theplace of the real printed characters and may be mistaken for them Thus we are constantly creating or reconstructing Our distinct perceptionis really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-image

going toward the mind and the memory-image launched into spacecareen the one behind the otherrdquo (M amp M p 103)

The memory of letters and word meanings may seem trivial butaccording to Bergson ldquoAny memory-image that is capable of interpretingour actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 712

536 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

longer able to discern what is perception and what is memoryrdquo (M ampM p 103) What other memories necessarily intertwine with perceptionsimply as a prerequisite for understanding a text like In Search of LostTime Knowledge of French history Social hierarchy The Dreyfus affairFrom the level of the letter and the word to the level of sociopoliticalhistory at least the process of memory is inseparable from the processof reading and making meaning which means that entering into a lit-erary work purely is an impossibility In fact by writing the author setsprior knowledge as a necessary prerequisite How can he then expect with such a list of invited previous experience to keep some kinds ofexperience out How can he expect when acknowledging (by the use of

the written word) that the reader existed prior to opening the book todemand of the reader an exact and restricted combination of experience And how could the reader possibly do that kind of filtering work evenif she wanted to and knew which experiences were useful and allowed

Yet that is just what a text like In Search of Lost Time expects It is whatany text that purports to marry form and content (and thereby createa specific experience for each of the individual members of a generalaudience) expects This particular strain of modernism then is not the

way to go beyond the surface expansion of our present attention thatBergson sees in art It cannot even limit the reading experience to thesimple present as Bergson claims art does

Nor do I know either of any book that fits Bergsonrsquos example ofan artwork that simply expands our present perception while avoidingaccess to our past If such a book existed though there would need beonly one That book would affect every reader in the same way (a trickmodernist literature cannot pull off even with its expanded repertoire

of formal tricks because it can avoid neither time nor experience)and would require no prior knowledge even of words It is no wonderBergson uses the example of visual art when describing its experienceas a purely atemporal one

Visual art of course carries with it similar burdens of time andexperience but we will bypass that concern for now If this perfect work existed and could cause us to realize during one instantaneous view ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo why

would there ever need be a second piece of art The same work of art would serve the purpose for all people since no viewer would bring anyoutside experiences to the work and once that purpose were fulfilledevery viewer would know that faculties of perception can be expandedBergsonrsquos very definition of the effects of art seems to eliminate theneed for all future works of art

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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537P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 912

538 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1012

539P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 5: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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succeed each other while we hardly succeed in counting a fewrdquo (M amp M p 207) Could Proust really capture a lifetime of development in threethousand pages and could we read and sympathetically experience itover the course of a few weeks or months ldquoCan you shorten the lengthof a melody without altering its naturerdquo (TCM p 19) Is not writingalways compression selection and division of experience into eventsIt would be a wonder if a reader even took from the book an idea ldquothatan extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo when there is notime in the reading process or space in the book to describe the realduration of artistic creation

We run into related problems when a novel attempts to have us

experience what a character does (or when the novel aims at a specificgeneral experience for the reader at all) Again there are dual obstaclesfirst we cannot share the exact experiences of a character even if wecome across formal techniques designed to simulate those experiencesand second we cannot leave our unrelated experiences outside of thenovel Bergson refutes the idea of sharing identical experiences in TheCreative Mind by answering the question of whether someone other thanShakespeare could have written Hamlet ldquoIt is clear that a mind in which

the Hamlet of Shakespeare had taken shape in the form of the possible would by that fact have created its reality it would thus have been bydefinition Shakespeare himselfrdquo (TCM p 102) That is this otherpossible writer in order to create Hamlet would have been ldquothinkingall that Shakespeare will think feeling all he will feel knowing all he will know perceiving therefore all he will perceive and consequentlyoccupying the same body and the same soul it is Shakespeare himselfrdquo(TCM p 103) To create In Search of Lost Time it would be necessary

to have all the experiences thoughts and perceptions of Proust overthe same course of time and not simply read about a condensed listof experiences and perceptions taken out of the flow of time and thecontext of duration

In addition to gaining all the experiences and perceptions of Proust we would also need to lose all of our own something Bergson impliesis possible (in fact usual) when he claims that art simply ldquoenriches ourpresentrdquo Our past experiences though are always with us that is the

centerpiece of Bergsonrsquos philosophy Even if I made a concerted effortto empty my mind before beginning to read a novel I could not doso Bergson explains as much in his discussion of the idea of nothingin Creative Evolution

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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535P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

I am going to close my eyes stop my ears extinguish one by one the

sensations that come to me from the outer world Now it is done all

my perceptions vanish the material universe sinks into silence and the

nightmdashI subsist however and cannot help myself subsisting I am stillthere with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface

and from the interior of my body with the recollections which my past

perceptions have left behind themmdashnay with the impression most posi-

tive and full of the void I have just made about me How can I suppress

all this How eliminate myself (CE p 278)

Bergsonrsquos goal here is to interrogate the idea of ldquonothingrdquo as less than

ldquosomethingrdquo but he also demonstrates the difficulty of leaving yourselfbehind Even if it were possible to do so even if you could forget all your past experiences you could not block out the sensual present you would feel the book in your hands the chair at your back the variouscramps that come with reading a three-thousand-page book And eventhat condensed list of experiences and perceptions is still too long toconsume in one uninterrupted sitting Would the effort of forgetting yourself last through meals and trips to the mailbox Would you beable to forget your entire past while reading a moving book when ldquoaneffort an emotion can bring suddenly to consciousness words believeddefinitely lostrdquo (TCM p 154) Does not Proust himself demonstratehow easy it is for the past to overwhelm you at a momentrsquos notice Isthat not what involuntary memory means Ironic that in order to reallyexperience what Marcel does we would have tomdashby our undivertableattentionmdashprove involuntary memory impotent or trivial

In fact even the author who insists upon this impossible feat ofattention dependsmdashconsciously or notmdashon the reader bringing past

experiences into present interaction with the book How for examplecould a reader make sense of the written language without memory andexperience Of the process of reading words on a page Bergson reportsldquoOur mind notes here and there a few characteristic lines and fills all theintervals with memory-images which projected on the paper take theplace of the real printed characters and may be mistaken for them Thus we are constantly creating or reconstructing Our distinct perceptionis really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-image

going toward the mind and the memory-image launched into spacecareen the one behind the otherrdquo (M amp M p 103)

The memory of letters and word meanings may seem trivial butaccording to Bergson ldquoAny memory-image that is capable of interpretingour actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 712

536 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

longer able to discern what is perception and what is memoryrdquo (M ampM p 103) What other memories necessarily intertwine with perceptionsimply as a prerequisite for understanding a text like In Search of LostTime Knowledge of French history Social hierarchy The Dreyfus affairFrom the level of the letter and the word to the level of sociopoliticalhistory at least the process of memory is inseparable from the processof reading and making meaning which means that entering into a lit-erary work purely is an impossibility In fact by writing the author setsprior knowledge as a necessary prerequisite How can he then expect with such a list of invited previous experience to keep some kinds ofexperience out How can he expect when acknowledging (by the use of

the written word) that the reader existed prior to opening the book todemand of the reader an exact and restricted combination of experience And how could the reader possibly do that kind of filtering work evenif she wanted to and knew which experiences were useful and allowed

Yet that is just what a text like In Search of Lost Time expects It is whatany text that purports to marry form and content (and thereby createa specific experience for each of the individual members of a generalaudience) expects This particular strain of modernism then is not the

way to go beyond the surface expansion of our present attention thatBergson sees in art It cannot even limit the reading experience to thesimple present as Bergson claims art does

Nor do I know either of any book that fits Bergsonrsquos example ofan artwork that simply expands our present perception while avoidingaccess to our past If such a book existed though there would need beonly one That book would affect every reader in the same way (a trickmodernist literature cannot pull off even with its expanded repertoire

of formal tricks because it can avoid neither time nor experience)and would require no prior knowledge even of words It is no wonderBergson uses the example of visual art when describing its experienceas a purely atemporal one

Visual art of course carries with it similar burdens of time andexperience but we will bypass that concern for now If this perfect work existed and could cause us to realize during one instantaneous view ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo why

would there ever need be a second piece of art The same work of art would serve the purpose for all people since no viewer would bring anyoutside experiences to the work and once that purpose were fulfilledevery viewer would know that faculties of perception can be expandedBergsonrsquos very definition of the effects of art seems to eliminate theneed for all future works of art

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 812

537P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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538 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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539P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 6: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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535P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

I am going to close my eyes stop my ears extinguish one by one the

sensations that come to me from the outer world Now it is done all

my perceptions vanish the material universe sinks into silence and the

nightmdashI subsist however and cannot help myself subsisting I am stillthere with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface

and from the interior of my body with the recollections which my past

perceptions have left behind themmdashnay with the impression most posi-

tive and full of the void I have just made about me How can I suppress

all this How eliminate myself (CE p 278)

Bergsonrsquos goal here is to interrogate the idea of ldquonothingrdquo as less than

ldquosomethingrdquo but he also demonstrates the difficulty of leaving yourselfbehind Even if it were possible to do so even if you could forget all your past experiences you could not block out the sensual present you would feel the book in your hands the chair at your back the variouscramps that come with reading a three-thousand-page book And eventhat condensed list of experiences and perceptions is still too long toconsume in one uninterrupted sitting Would the effort of forgetting yourself last through meals and trips to the mailbox Would you beable to forget your entire past while reading a moving book when ldquoaneffort an emotion can bring suddenly to consciousness words believeddefinitely lostrdquo (TCM p 154) Does not Proust himself demonstratehow easy it is for the past to overwhelm you at a momentrsquos notice Isthat not what involuntary memory means Ironic that in order to reallyexperience what Marcel does we would have tomdashby our undivertableattentionmdashprove involuntary memory impotent or trivial

In fact even the author who insists upon this impossible feat ofattention dependsmdashconsciously or notmdashon the reader bringing past

experiences into present interaction with the book How for examplecould a reader make sense of the written language without memory andexperience Of the process of reading words on a page Bergson reportsldquoOur mind notes here and there a few characteristic lines and fills all theintervals with memory-images which projected on the paper take theplace of the real printed characters and may be mistaken for them Thus we are constantly creating or reconstructing Our distinct perceptionis really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-image

going toward the mind and the memory-image launched into spacecareen the one behind the otherrdquo (M amp M p 103)

The memory of letters and word meanings may seem trivial butaccording to Bergson ldquoAny memory-image that is capable of interpretingour actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 712

536 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

longer able to discern what is perception and what is memoryrdquo (M ampM p 103) What other memories necessarily intertwine with perceptionsimply as a prerequisite for understanding a text like In Search of LostTime Knowledge of French history Social hierarchy The Dreyfus affairFrom the level of the letter and the word to the level of sociopoliticalhistory at least the process of memory is inseparable from the processof reading and making meaning which means that entering into a lit-erary work purely is an impossibility In fact by writing the author setsprior knowledge as a necessary prerequisite How can he then expect with such a list of invited previous experience to keep some kinds ofexperience out How can he expect when acknowledging (by the use of

the written word) that the reader existed prior to opening the book todemand of the reader an exact and restricted combination of experience And how could the reader possibly do that kind of filtering work evenif she wanted to and knew which experiences were useful and allowed

Yet that is just what a text like In Search of Lost Time expects It is whatany text that purports to marry form and content (and thereby createa specific experience for each of the individual members of a generalaudience) expects This particular strain of modernism then is not the

way to go beyond the surface expansion of our present attention thatBergson sees in art It cannot even limit the reading experience to thesimple present as Bergson claims art does

Nor do I know either of any book that fits Bergsonrsquos example ofan artwork that simply expands our present perception while avoidingaccess to our past If such a book existed though there would need beonly one That book would affect every reader in the same way (a trickmodernist literature cannot pull off even with its expanded repertoire

of formal tricks because it can avoid neither time nor experience)and would require no prior knowledge even of words It is no wonderBergson uses the example of visual art when describing its experienceas a purely atemporal one

Visual art of course carries with it similar burdens of time andexperience but we will bypass that concern for now If this perfect work existed and could cause us to realize during one instantaneous view ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo why

would there ever need be a second piece of art The same work of art would serve the purpose for all people since no viewer would bring anyoutside experiences to the work and once that purpose were fulfilledevery viewer would know that faculties of perception can be expandedBergsonrsquos very definition of the effects of art seems to eliminate theneed for all future works of art

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 812

537P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 912

538 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1012

539P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 7: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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536 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

longer able to discern what is perception and what is memoryrdquo (M ampM p 103) What other memories necessarily intertwine with perceptionsimply as a prerequisite for understanding a text like In Search of LostTime Knowledge of French history Social hierarchy The Dreyfus affairFrom the level of the letter and the word to the level of sociopoliticalhistory at least the process of memory is inseparable from the processof reading and making meaning which means that entering into a lit-erary work purely is an impossibility In fact by writing the author setsprior knowledge as a necessary prerequisite How can he then expect with such a list of invited previous experience to keep some kinds ofexperience out How can he expect when acknowledging (by the use of

the written word) that the reader existed prior to opening the book todemand of the reader an exact and restricted combination of experience And how could the reader possibly do that kind of filtering work evenif she wanted to and knew which experiences were useful and allowed

Yet that is just what a text like In Search of Lost Time expects It is whatany text that purports to marry form and content (and thereby createa specific experience for each of the individual members of a generalaudience) expects This particular strain of modernism then is not the

way to go beyond the surface expansion of our present attention thatBergson sees in art It cannot even limit the reading experience to thesimple present as Bergson claims art does

Nor do I know either of any book that fits Bergsonrsquos example ofan artwork that simply expands our present perception while avoidingaccess to our past If such a book existed though there would need beonly one That book would affect every reader in the same way (a trickmodernist literature cannot pull off even with its expanded repertoire

of formal tricks because it can avoid neither time nor experience)and would require no prior knowledge even of words It is no wonderBergson uses the example of visual art when describing its experienceas a purely atemporal one

Visual art of course carries with it similar burdens of time andexperience but we will bypass that concern for now If this perfect work existed and could cause us to realize during one instantaneous view ldquothat an extension of the faculties of perceiving is possiblerdquo why

would there ever need be a second piece of art The same work of art would serve the purpose for all people since no viewer would bring anyoutside experiences to the work and once that purpose were fulfilledevery viewer would know that faculties of perception can be expandedBergsonrsquos very definition of the effects of art seems to eliminate theneed for all future works of art

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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537P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 912

538 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1012

539P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 8: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 812

537P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

II

Because we determined it is impossible to remove time and prior (or

even simultaneous) experience from the equation of reading we knowby logical extension that since no two readers can enter a book thesame way neither can two readers take the same experience away fromthe book when leaving it Nor could one reader experience a book thesame way twice even in the case of immediately successive readings Ifmy present always brings with it my past while pushing its way into myfuture (a favorite description of Bergsonrsquos) then my first experience with a book becomes part of my overall past experience along with

everything that happens until the next time I read the book ldquoTime isinvention or it is nothing at allrdquo (CE p 341) A book will necessarilyhave a different effect on me as an adult than it did when I read it as ateenager because I am a different person with different experience bythe time I read the book again This common experience is enough todemonstrate that a work of art does more than simply allow its audienceto realize something about philosophical living

What a book does instead is encourage me to access something in

myself and to create a new unique experience that can only appear when that exact me reads that book at that exact time in that exactenvironment in that exact edition at that exact pace etc Otherwiseeven experiencing art becomes a type of habit offering only a variationon what we have already learned (that perception can be expandedfor example) rather than a unique experience every time This expe-rience is unique because it is intuitive not just intellectual It invitesme to enter into myself when I enter into a book rather than simply

focusing on the book that is it invites me to approach art in the sameldquophilosophicalrdquo way Bergson suggests we approach other aspects of lifeRather than simply trying to enter the vertical experience of the sen-tences in Finnegans Wake for example the philosophical reader mustalso in fact primarily enter vertically into herself7 This would requirepaying more attention to the individual in the reading process andmore attention to the past she brings with her to the book not lessldquoIt would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part ofthe universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turningit back toward what serves no practical purpose This conversion of theattention would be philosophy itselfrdquo (TCM p 138 italics in original)If anything the novel is the perfect starting place for this process sinceit already tends to stray away from serving a clear practical purpose

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 912

538 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1012

539P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 9: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

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538 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

Bergson encourages the scientists among us to turn away from thepractical ldquodown into our own inner selves the deeper the point we touchthe stronger will be the thrust which sends us back to the surface Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from the depth we shallregain contact with science as our thought opens out and dispersesrdquo(TCM p 124ndash25) By diverting attention away from normal practicalinteraction with the universe the intuitive scientist avoids the trap of sim-ply rearranging the old and can instead recognize something truly new

When we read a work of literature intellectually we can at best rear-range our current view of old elements a little more The differencebetween an intellectual reader and an intuitive reader is the difference

between rearrangement and re-creation It is the difference between viewing reality as a kaleidoscopic reordering of familiar elementsmdashldquoamere prearrangeable juxtaposition of things already knownrdquomdashor as aldquocontinuous creation of unforeseeable noveltyrdquo (TCM p 91) If we readintuitively we live more philosophically and we can perhaps better fillin the gaps between the words on Proustrsquos page and find the motionbehind the years of Marcelrsquos life that necessarily appear as ldquoa system ofpointsrdquo (CE p 348)

To find the motion the system of points divides we must simplyread the way Bergson demands we practice philosophy and sciencerecognizing ldquoall the consequences which the intuition of true durationimpliesrdquo that ldquocreationrdquo is ldquocontinuousrdquo (CE p 346) that thereforereassembling the jigsaw puzzle of a book (no matter the difficulty of thepuzzle) is not creation but an effort to halt creation Time is instead vital to the individual intuitive reader She knows ldquowhen a child playsat reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in

a puzzle game the more he practices the more and more quickly hesucceeds The reconstruction was moreover instantaneous the childfound it ready-made when he opened the box on leaving the shopThe operation therefore does not require a definite time and indeedtheoretically it does not require any time That is because the resultis givenrdquo (CE p 340) The intuitive reader has no use for the resultas given since the result of a great work of art as given is simply thatperceptive faculties can be expanded and she has already learned that

and is ready to discover something new through an act of re-creationthat invites the previously closed book into a world of motion

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1012

539P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 10: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1012

539P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

III

Woolf lauds the book of motion in her essay ldquoModern Novelsrdquo placing

it in contrast to earlier materialist work ldquoso well constructed and solidin its craftsmanship there is not so much as a draught between theframes of the windows or a crack in the boardsrdquo8 Her chief complaint ofldquomaterialistrdquo work is that it attempts to contain spirit inside of meticulousplotting however she explains ldquowhether we call it life or spirit truthor reality this the essential thing has moved off or on and refuses tobe contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we providerdquo Wemust instead acknowledge ldquothe mind exposed to the ordinary course

of life receives upon its surface a myriad impressions From all sidesthey come an incessant shower of innumerable atoms composing intheir sum what we might venture to call life itselfrdquo The ldquochief taskrdquo ofthe author for Woolf becomes to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

Woolfrsquos philosophy here and elsewhere is correctly noted by crit-ics like Mary Ann Gillies as closely aligned with Bergsonian thought9 Bergsonrsquos own words suggest he would agree with Woolf that the suc-cessful modern novel is able to ldquoconvey this incessantly varying spiritrdquo

To receive information about spirit that has been conveyed though isnot the same as to experience that spirit Gillies attempts to walk a fineline on this issue regarding Woolfrsquos ldquomoments of beingrdquo ldquoSome criticsrdquoGillies writes ldquothink of these moments as instances of frozen time anotion contrary to Bergson ideas about timersquos constant flowrdquo Insteadshe argues ldquoit would be more accurate to think of these moments ofbeing as examples of dureacutee that become spatialized because they are writ-ten downrdquo (Gillies p 59) Bergson himself seems to argue in favor of a

spatialized view in his second introduction to The Creative Mind whenhe praises a method of teaching literature that encourages children inldquolearning to read the text aloud with the proper intonation and inflec-tionrdquo focusing on ldquopunctuation and rhythmrdquo (TCM p 86)

One hopes here ldquoto get back the movement and rhythm of thecomposition to live again creative evolution by being one with it insympathyrdquo (TCM p 87)10 but this very strategy depends on a kind ofspatializationmdashone that is the focus of Bergsonrsquos repeated critiques ofZeno movement and duration cannot be ldquotranslate[d] in termsof spacerdquo (M amp M p 191) though language cannot help but do soLanguage is doomed to spatialize because it ldquoregard[s] the becoming asa thing to be made use ofrdquo The wordsmith has ldquono more concern withthe interior organization of movement than a workman has with the

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 11: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1112

540 P983144983145983148983151983155983151983152983144983161 983137983150983140 L983145983156983141983154983137983156983157983154983141

molecular structure of his toolsrdquo (M amp M p 191) The ordinary readerthen is at the receiving end of a mechanical intellectual expression ofthe authorrsquos own intuitive experience

What I suggest as a possible first step beyond the apparently doomednature of language is the illumination of that doom in Beckettianattempts to ldquofail betterrdquo when movement and duration are never trans-latable by language but language is all we have11 In Beckettrsquos worksreaders can experience something more than the second-hand exten-sion of faculties of perception and the lesson that they can enact thatextension in their own lives Beckett reveals the absolute impossibilityof transmitting anything more than a spatialized (and therefore frozen)

moment of being through a language that is limited to cataloging ourldquomyriad impressionsrdquo

F983148983151983154983145983140983137 S983156983137983156983141 U983150983145983158983141983154983155983145983156983161

This project emerged from Florida State Universityrsquos Bergson reading group all the members of whichdeserve thanks for their feedback and input

1 Henri Bergson Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic trans Cloudesley

Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York Macmillan 1911) pp 83ndash84

2 Henri Bergson The Creative Mind trans M L Andison (Totowa Littlefield Adams

amp Co 1946) p 157 hereafter abbreviated TCM

3 Henri Bergson Matter and Memory trans Nancy M Paul and W Scott Palmer

(Brooklyn Zone Books 2005) p 150 hereafter abbreviated M amp M italics in original

4 Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time trans Lydia Davis et al (New York Penguin

2004)

5 See Samuel Beckettrsquos argument in ldquoDante Bruno Vico Joycerdquo Our ExagminationRound His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris Shakespeare and Co 1929)

6 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution trans Arthur Mitchell (Mineola Dover 1998) p

340 hereafter abbreviated CE

7 James Joyce Finnegans Wake (London Faber and Faber 1939)

8 Virginia Woolf ldquoModern Novelsrdquo The Times Literary Supplement (April 10 1919)9 Mary Ann Gillies Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal McGill-Queenrsquos

University Press 1996) p 58 hereafter abbreviated Gillies

10 Suzanne Guerlac in her extended reading of Bergson (Thinking in Time ) puts it

thus ldquoArt does not operate like a physical cause It addresses us It invites us into

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)

Page 12: The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

7232019 The difficulties of reading with a creative mind

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-difficulties-of-reading-with-a-creative-mind 1212

541P983137983157983148 A983154983140983151983145983150

a relation of sympathy We feel with the poet dancer or musician by entering into the

rhythms of his or her artrdquo (p 52) This rhythm is a less literal one than Bergson discusses

in The Creative Mind and the strategy feels more Bergsonian than his own suggestion

of training an ldquoart of dictionrdquo (TCM p 87)mdashthat is more like the Bergson of Time and Free Will than the Bergson of The Creative Mind who was concerned with the kinds of

hurdlesmdashlinguistic and otherwisemdashthat I have discussed here See Suzanne Guerlac

Thinking in Time An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca Cornell University Press 2006)

and Henri Bergson Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness trans F L Pogson (London George Allen and Unwin 1910)

11 See various especially Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (New York Grove Press 1984)