- 著者
-
片岡 大右
- 出版者
- 日本メルロ=ポンティ・サークル
- 雑誌
- メルロ=ポンティ研究 (ISSN:18845479)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.23, pp.83-102, 2020-01-31 (Released:2020-02-04)
- 参考文献数
- 27
In 1953, Merleau-Ponty, freshly appointed as a professor at the Collège de
France, dedicated one of the first two courses to the “Studies in the Literary Usage of Language,” with particular focus on Paul Valéry and Stendhal. The choice of the latter would have been accepted as quite natural at the time: on the one hand, from the reissue of Jean Prévost’s Creativity in Stendhal through important studies of Jean-Pierre Richard or Jean Starobinski to the crucial works of Georges Blin, the 1950s were characterized by the rise of a new theoretical, that is, phenomenological approach to this author; on the other, this same period saw the emergence of a communist version of Stendhalism, embodied by Louis Aragon, among others. The significance of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to Stendhal resides in the fact that it relates with both tendencies having normally nothing to do with each other.
So, the philosopher, influencing the first stage of what came to be known later as “nouvelle critique,” tries to offer his own interpretation of one of the major figures in this literary criticism movement. In referring implicitly to an analysis of Jean Starobinski, he takes notice of the feature of “not being penetrated,” of which Stendhal had been accused by a lover in his early days. For Merleau-Ponty, it is precisely this feature of inter- vening in situations without being penetrated or detaching oneself from any attribution that is the fundamental prerequisite for a writer. This intrinsic detachment distinguishes writers from other human beings. However, that is how writers, together with philo- sophers, take the initiative in exemplifying the general paradox of being a human being: “To be completely human is to be a little more and a little less human.” Such a definition of writer had an important meaning for the philosopher who, after a brief period of rapprochement with communism in the aftermath of WW II, was moving toward breaking off this relationship with his Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). Stendhal’s phrase “to be human is a party” seems to be interpreted in the context of the establishment of humanity over all parties, including at first the Party, that is, the Communist Party.