Karl Maurer (Bochum)

5

Karl Maurer (Bochum)

The Invisible Hand

Death of the Textual Variant in the Electronic Age?

Among the events of the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated Germany in the Seventeenth Century, there is an intriguing episode centered on a point of textual variance. To back up Wallenstein, their commander-in-chief, in his conflict with the imperial court, his officers are invited to join an initiative giving their unconditional support, „provided His Grace continue to serve the Emperor’s cause“[1]. This clause however turns out to be missing in the document which finally is to circulate after the banquet and to be signed by all present. In Schiller’s play, typically, the one among Wallenstein’s generals to „observe“ that „before we sat down to supper, it was read differently“[2] is field marshal Tiefenbach, who does not know how to write.

At the time, the organizers of the plot had to take considerable pains to pass off the fake document as genuine: The aide-de-camp of one of the conspirators had to copy the original meticulously, line by line, just leaving out those few words[3]. Things have become much easier in the age of computer-based parliamentarism. In May 2000, in commemoration of the victory in World War II, the Duma of the Russian Federation voted in favor of an amnesty for past and present members of the armed forces, for pregnant women and mothers of under-age and disabled children, for men over 55 and women over 50, for persons decorated in merit for their services to the country, for disabled persons and people infected with tuberculosis, provided they had not been sentenced for dangerous crimes[4]. When the law was enacted, its provisions were extended generously: Before the second reading, the latter restriction had been modified inconspicuously so that only prisoners of the first three categories were concerned, whereas bearers of decorations, invalids and consumptives, among them thousands of ruthless criminals had to be liberated no matter how grave their offence. It was impossible to find out who had changed the wording of the motion – an invisible hand had been at work[5].

Undoubtedly, the consequences which the development from writing proper, typing and printing to electronic text production might involve, are less dramatic in the literary field. Still, it is a ghastly vision to imagine invisible hands – censors, conformist publishers, last minute correctors – changing the original text of an author without leaving any trace. Henceforth, there need to be no more blanks, or dashs and dots in the printed text indicating suppressed information or comments as in the censored press of the German 19th century[6], and it is even very easy now to pinpoint and eliminate throughout a book or an article any terms considered improper or no longer politically correct[7]. But actually all this has been done before, though in a less perfect way. The final, „authorized“ version of Quevedo’s Sueños, the Juguetes de la niñez of 1631, offers an instructive example of the shortcomings and inconsistencies characteristic of – reluctant – religious self-censorship in the age of Wallenstein: Any references to sacred subjects must be cut out or, at least, disguised in an inoffensive way, „Jove“ put in for „God“, „Avernus“ for „hell“, „tormentors“ for „devils“ etc. The author entrusted a friend of his, Alonso Messía de Leyva, with this thankless task, who performed it mechanically and, more and more, in a desultory manner[8].

Nevertheless, the impact of the new „means of production“ on literary work is considerable. 75 years later, the closing remarks of Boris Pil’niaks „story from the East“ on his old and his new typewriter, Orudiia proizvodstva (1927) ring almost prophetic:

[...] if in the past millennia the means of writing have been brush and pen, and if in our present century it is the typewriter – and the means of writing inevitably have their impact on style [and on literatures, and on epochs] –, if all this is so, then it is in no way possible to prognosticate what style the future millenia shall have and how mankind shall, in view of eternity, record current events – maybe even without letters at all.[9]

Unlike Gustave Flaubert, who would have loved to have in view at one time the whole text of Madame Bovary, Part I[10], the writer of the electronic age contents himself with a limited look at his work in progress, not only in space, but also in time, all traces of preceding versions being deleted ipso facto. Lucky the author who, if need be, remembers his aborted attempts and rejected alternatives once they have vanished from the screen! In the electronic age, Plato’s warning has come literally true at last that with the progress of writing memory necessarily must diminish[11]. Today, we learn with amazement how strictly Charlemagne imposed the exact wording of his manifestoes and instructions, which had to be read aloud to him in consecutive versions[12], because „he had begun too late in life to try to write“, as his biographer Einhard tells us[13], and similar achievements are reported of the great Mongol conqueror Tamerlane, 600 years later, who also, though far from being illiterate, did not know how to write[14].

It is the reader who loses still more. He may no longer follow the steps that led from the original conception of the work of art to its final version, unless its author is willing to document for posterity the different stages of his text, a provision scarcely imaginable. There shall be no more „brouillons“ like the interminable rewordings of Paul Valéry’s La Jeune Parque executed at a shaky typewriter during World War I[15], no more drafts of articles written in different „hands“ like Théophile Gaultier’s and Gérard de Nerval’s co-authored review of Heine’s Buch der Lieder[16]. Yet there are also some benefits to be expected for the lover of pre-texts, of author’s corrections and copyist’s interventions. What he must miss in prospective objects, he may hope to win in the capability to present the material available from the past. Facsimiles of autographs unreadable to the non-specialist have been complemented by computer-based transcription line by line; this practice might prove essential e. g. for an adequate reproduction of the bewildering notations of Friedrich Hölderlin’s unfinished poems, where all the strata of the text in progress coexist on the same page, from the clearly defined first key-words to the last, tiny additions and corrections (see Figure 1[17]). Historical arrangements of scriptorial and pictorial elements may be preserved thanks to the new media. With the use of word processors it has become much easier e. g. to combine the woodcuts of the popular illustrated novels of the Japanese Late Edo period with modern types, so that today’s reader may enjoy, in the same way as the reading public of the time, the mixture of kabuki-like scenes, fragments of dialogue and continuous narration in the famous Inaka Genji of Tanehiko[18] or in the countless „yellow covers“ (kibyôshi) of Santô Kyôden (Figure 2[19]).

Electronic media might prove still more useful in highlighting text dynamics, viz. in reconstructing the field of textual alternatives beyond the author’s individual choice and in thus revealing the impulses which led to the making of this particular text. It is 75 years since one of the spokesmen of Russian Formalism, Boris Tomashevskii, defined this ultimate goal of textual criticism – to fill the gaps between the phases of the text on hand by „interpolating“ the missing links in the chain of text evolution[20]. Tomashevskii, of course, thought of taking advantage of authors’ drafts and rough copies, but only few poets provide posterity with such ample material as did the great Italian poet and illustrious philologist Giacomo Leopardi in the margins of his Canzoni (1824). For the fourth verse of the tenth and last canzone, Alla sua donna, he records no less than 28 different versions besides the one he retains at last, „Ombra diva mi scuoti“ (Figure 3):

Beata ombra. Ombra vaga. Vaga larva. Dolce imago. Leggiadra, vezzosa, gentile, fugace, beata larva scuoti. Aurata larva. Candida larva. mi stringi, pungi, tenti, sproni, fiedi. Ombra vana commovi. Beato sogno scuoti. inciti, accendi. Ombra vana percoti. Serena ombra. Felice ombra.

And still more:

Divina larva, ombra, Celeste. Diva larva, imago.[21]

Wouldn’t it be of great help to the critical reader to have present on the screen in a similar way the whole set of verbal combinations which the poet had at his disposal at a given historical moment in a particular literary genre? This would bring the modern reader, more or less, into the same position of assumed authorship as the classical scholar who is to reconstruct the corrupt reading of a manuscript and who thus must necessarily become „a producer of the text“, in Roland Barthes’ terms[22], himself.

The „death of the author“ was heralded in the late sixties by Barthes[23], by Michel Foucault[24], and by others[25]. Now it seems indeed that in the computer age the author and his activities escape us more and more and that at the same time we have become at last fully aware of the potential of the text. There is not so much difference after all between the circumstances of electronic text production in our days and the conditions under which the luxuriant manuscript culture of the Middle Ages flourished, where very often we do not know what the author actually wrote, but only what, among other possible versions, he might have written[26]. We all have become scribes of our texts – and of others’ texts – again.

[1] See the official report Außführlicher vnd gründtlicher Bericht der vorgewesten Fridtländischen und seiner Adhaerenten abschewlichen Prodition [...] (1634), in: Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, Beyträge zur Geschichte des dreyssigjährigen Krieges [...], Nürnberg: Bauer and Mann, 1790, pp. 203-296; p. 247: „So lang Er in Ihrer kais. Maj. Diensten verbleiben und zu Befürderung deroselben Diensten Sie gebrauchen würde“.

[2] Die Piccolomini, IV, 7, v. 2245:

„Tiefenbach. Zu Colalto. Ich merkt es wohl, vor Tische las mans

anders.“

– Trans. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in: S. T. C., The Collected Works, ed. Kathleen Coburn, London: Routledge/Princeton, N. J.: Princeton UP, 1969 sqq., vol. 16, 3, 1, p. 443.

[3] Cf. Die Piccolomini IV, 2. In his Wallenstein Golo Mann even pretends that the „trick“ would have been „incapable of implementation“ (trans. Charles Kessler, London: Deutsch, 1976, p. 768). In fact, Piccolomini’s Relazione confirms only that Ilow, the perpetrator of the fraud, had „specified by word of mouth“ („a boccha [...] specificato“) the wording of the clause – maybe because, the original document being destroyed, he could not expect the Vienna court to believe him otherwise. See Hubert Jedin, „Die Relation Ottavio Piccolominis über Wallensteins Schuld und Ende“, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Geschichte Schlesiens 65/1931, pp. 328-357; p. 343.

[4] Resolution of 26 May 2000, Sobranie zakonodatel’stva rossiiskoi federacii (SZ RF) 2000, nr. 22, art. 2286, modified by resolution of 28 June 2000, SZ RF 2000, nr. 27, art. 2818.

[5] See Friedrich-Christian Schroeder, „Das Ende der Dekoriertenamnestie“, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 270 (20 November)/2001, p. 16, and Siegfried Lammich, „Hintergründe und Auswirkungen der russischen Amnestie vom Mai 2000“, WGO - Monatshefte für Osteuropäisches Recht 43 (2000), pp. 173-184.

[6] On this subject see Heinrich Hubert Houben, Polizei und Zensur. Längs- und Querschnitte durch die Geschichte der Buch- und Theaterzensur (Die Polizei in Einzeldarstellungen. 11), Berlin: Gersbach, 1926, ch. 7: „Bedenkliche Gedankenstriche“.

[7] Recently, in his satire on his lifelong antagonist Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Death of a Critic (2002), the German novelist Martin Walser had the bad taste to have his protagonist use the supposedly Yiddish form of the adjective „doitsch“ for „German“. When critics almost unanimously protested, the publisher changed it to „deutsch“ before starting distribution, only to call forth still more indignation for this act of camouflage. See „Fassungslos. Tod eines Kritikers, variantenreich“, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 138 (18 June)/2002, p. 45.

[8] Cf. Ilse Nolting-Hauff, „Literatur und Zensur am Beispiel der Sueños von Quevedo“, in: I. N.-H. (ed.), Textüberlieferung – Textedition – Textkommentar (Romanica Monacensia. 40), Tübingen: Narr, 1993, pp. 31-55; pp. 43-45.

[9] First published in: Boris Pil’niak. Rasskazy s Vostoka (Biblioteka „Ogonek“. 300), Moskva 1927, rpt.: B. P., Krasnoe derevo i drugie (Russian Study Series. 65), Chicago: Russian Language Specialties, 1968, pp. 256-262; p. 262: „[...] esli u otoshedshikh tysiacheletii orudiiami pis’ma byli kist’ i pero, esli u tepereshnego stoletiia orudiem pis’ma est’ mashinka, – orudie pis’ma neminuemo vliiaet na stili (i literatur, i epokh), – esli vse èto est’, – to nikak nel’zia znat’, kakoi stil’ budet u griadushchikh tysiacheletii i kak chelovechestvo budet – pered litsom vechnosti – zapisyvat’ svoe vremia, – byt’ mozhet, dazhe sovsem bez bukv.“ For a similar – marxist – view on visual arts see Walter Benjamin, Notes and Materials for Passages, F „[Eisenkonstruktion]“, in: W. B., Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann et al., 7 voll. (in 15) and 3 voll. suppl., Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1972-1999, vol. 5,1, p. 217: „We are just beginning to become aware of the forms, hidden in the machines, which will stamp our age.“ („Welche Formen, die für unser Zeitalter bestimmend werden, in den Maschinen verborgen liegen, beginnen wir erst eben zu ahnen.“)

[10] Cf. letter to Louise Colet from 22 July 1852, in: Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance, 9 voll. and 4 voll. suppl., Paris: Conard, 1926-1954, vol. 2, p. 468: „Je voudrais d’un seul coup d’œil lire ces cent cinquante-huit pages et les saisir avec tous leurs détails dans une seule pensée.“