Reflexivity in the Pensées: Pascal's discourse on discourse

French Studies

Volumn 55, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 315-326

  Gilby, Emma ^a  

^a NONE

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Indexed keywords

EID: 34248743810     PISSN: 00161128     EISSN: 14682931     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fs/55.3.315     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. References are to paragraph numbers in the edition of the Pensées published by Louis Lafuma (Paris, Seuil, 1963)
2. According to the former, we need to study hypotheses concerning Pascal's plans for advancing his text towards the form of a more continuous narrative, looking at 'l'œuvre en train de se faire, et non l'œuvre figée dans son dernier état' to obtain a reading which approaches the ultimate meaning of the work (Mesnard, 'Pourquoi les Pensées de Pascal se présentent-elles sous forme de fragments?', Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 18-19 (1983), 635-49 (p. 641))
3. The latter contend that precisely this kind of reading is deeply flawed. Hence Goldmann: 'Chercher le "vrai" plan des Pensées nous paraît [...] une entreprise anti-pascalienne par excellence' (Le Dieu caché: étude sur la vision tragique dans les 'Pensées' de Pascal et dans le théâtre de Racine (Paris, Gallimard, 1955), p. 220)
4. and Melzer: 'My reading, like all readings, is a misreading. Mine, however, differs from most in that it accounts for itself as a misreading' (Discourses of the Fall: A Study of Pascal's 'Pensées' (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986), p. 137)
5. Louis Marin is equally emphatic: 'the contents of Pascalian discourse is the antinomy of extremes, the tension of contradictory elements, a difference that can never open out into possible synthesis" ('"Pascal": text, author, discourse...', Yale French Studies, 52 (1975), 129-51 (p. 147))
6. Certain critics have also distanced themselves from the extremities of these conflicting currents of thought. Notably, Nicholas Hammond pivots his argument on his assertion that 'inseparable from the depiction of the human condition, the problems of language form an integral part of the persuasive process in the Pensées', while warning against 'lifting the Pensées out of its seventeenth-century context and [...] treating it solely as a modernist work' (Playing with Truth: Language and the Human Condition in Pascal's 'Pensées' (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 3-4)
7. Le Problème herméneutique chez Pascal (Paris, Vrin, 1989), p. 207
8. Arnauld and Nicole, for whom the truth (as captured by reason and language) needs no embellishment, consider 'le plus grand de tous les vices' to be 'un stile artificiel et rethoricien' (La Logique; ou, l'Art de penser, ed. by P. Clair and F. Girbal (Paris, Vrin, 1981), p. 29). Their opinion that Pascal 'savait autant de véritable Rhétorique que personne en ait jamais su' (p. 267) ties in with that author's assertion in fragment 513 that 'la vraie éloquence se moque de l'éloquence'
9. At this point, we can clearly observe the distance put between the Pensées and works of a more Cartesian persuasion; not only La Logique, but also that section of Pascal's De l'esprit géométrique where he contemplates axiomatic self-evidences inspired by mathematics
10. See Hammond, Playing with Truth. pp. 63-69
11. for a detailed discussion of this fragment and its ambiguous heading 'Pyrr'. Here, the author's analysis leads him to propose that 'the speaker [...] acknowledges a method of disorder as his own but distinguishes it from the complete disorder of the sceptics and of Montaigne in particular' (p. 66)
12. See, for a further study of the 'moi' in Pascal, Terence Cave's Pré-histoires: textes troublés au seuil de la modernité (Geneva, Droz, 1999), pp. 111-27
13. While I treat 'reflexivity' in general terms, as textual self-consciousness, Cave aligns the concept more specifically with authorial introspection, using it to interrogate inscribed self-identity
14. '"Pascal": text, author, discourse...', p. 129
15. 'Mais qui parle? Voice and Persona in the Pensées', Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 8 (1986), 23-40
16. Melzer, Discourses of the Fall, p. 144
17. Goldmann, Le Dieu caché, p. 220
18. Œuvres complètes, ed. by L. Lafuma (Paris, Seuil, 1963), p. 358
19. Essais, ed. by P. Villey (Paris, PUF, 1965), II, 1, 335
20. Bernard Croquette, Pascal et Montaigne (Geneva, Droz, 1974), p. iii
21. They represent, suggests Barbara Woshinsky, 'divine thought clothed in human guise', in 'Pascal's Pensées and the Discourse of the Inexpressible', Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 14-15 (1980, 57-65 (p. 62)
22. Pierre Force summarizes this as follows: 'Le travail herméneutique consiste donc à faire apparaître le sens unique de l'écriture derrière la multiplicité de ses manifestations', in Le Problème herméneutique, p. 48
23. Mesnard describes 'l'instinct' as 'le meilleur synonyme du mot "cœur"', in Les Pensées de Pascal (Paris, SEDES, 1976), p. 88
24. and Gouhier, Blaise Pascal: conversion et apologétique (Paris, Vrin, 1986), pp. 60-65
25. Descartes, Œuvres et lettres, ed. by A. Bridoux (Paris, Gallimard, 1963), p. 300