Postmodernismi: Eero Tarasti

Possibilities of (mis)understanding – Eero Tarasti’s Le secret du professeur Amfortas as a semiotic novel



Eero Tarasti’s (b. 1948) first work of fiction is Le secret du professeur Amfortas (Professori Amfortasin salaisuus, 1995 [The secret of Professor Amfortas]). It is examined in this article as a semiotic novel, and my focus is on the questions of understanding, misunderstanding and communication in this book. Firstly, I present a short introduction to Eero Tarasti and to the term semiotic novel. Secondly, I analyze the acts of misunderstanding described in the novel. Thirdly, I deal with the possibility to deepen one’s understanding of human existence in the light of Tarasti’s novel.

1 Introduction

1.1 Eero Tarasti and his work
Eero Tarasti is one of the most interesting writers in contemporary Finnish literature. As a novelist he belongs to Finnish postmodernism together with Henri Broms and Harry Forsblom. Besides their writing careers, they are also scholars, and each one has published studies on postmodernism. The style of their fictional work is synthetic, eclectic and pluralistic, with a narration that unites traits from different periods and different literary genres. They use irony, perspectivism and hybridization. The interplay between quotations from different discourses such as myths and light reading is common in their texts, as well as complex structures, rich intertextual dialogue and many-sided analogies with literary romanticism. They use fragmentation and cliché, parody and plagiarism. They deconstruct grand narratives in their prose, and they rewrite tradition and history imaginatively. NOTE 1

As a novelist Eero Tarasti belongs, together with Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, to the cultivated, playful and aesthetically orientated branch of literary postmodernism. Le secret du professeur Amfortas contains cultural criticism, but it represents this with a light touch. Umberto Eco and Eero Tarasti belong to the leading semioticians in the world, and they carry out a dialogue with other semioticians in their prose.

Professor in musicology at the University of Helsinki, Eero Tarasti has developed musical semiotics as an independent discipline. He has renewed the theory of semiotics and he has also found new ways for analyzing art and literature. In his theory, music is not an object but “a situation comprised of many various elements” (Tarasti 2002: 70). In recent years he has been involved in constructing a theory of existential semiotics. This new epistemological model will also contribute to creating new methods for studying music.NOTE2

As with Umberto Eco, for Eero Tarasti understanding is an important term. Tarasti introduces the reader to the matter in his article “Understanding, Misunderstanding, and Self-Understanding” (2003), in which he investigates the conditions, processes and particular aspects of understanding. Tarasti writes: “One may go on to ask, What, then, is self-understanding? To this one may answer: it is precisely existential understanding. I understand myself via objectified signs; that is to say, my aspirations are crystallised into something objective.” (Tarasti 2003: 7) In his existential theory Tarasti stresses the role of the subject: existence is opened by a subject who is able to change and re-articulate his being. The theory “rejects a violent analysis that damages phenomenon (an ethical-moral principle); the universality of the phenomena consists of their being seen as something, and in some light; what is said or expressed may be less important than in what sense or mode it is said; as for temporality: the meaning grows denser over time, and is completed in the moment we know we have to give it up” (Tarasti 2003: 197).


1.2 The term semiotic novel
It is useful to read the novel by Tarasti against the background of his studies, because Le secret du professeur Amfortas is metasemiotic by nature: it describes scholars and their work, and it discusses the programme of e.g. existential semiotics. It also is a semiotic novel in the sense given by Tarasti himself.

Eero Tarasti has written and edited many books about art and literature. When creating a new theory and new scientific terms he often analyzes some works of art as an illustration. In Tarasti’s essay about the semiotic novel (1996: 215-228), the starting point is a novel by Henri Broms. Tarasti describes this work as a fine example of the semiotic novel, comparing the work by Broms to the novels by J.W. von Goethe, Hermann Hesse, Marcel Proust and Umberto Eco. According to Tarasti, the theme of a semiotic novel is an existential one, and the novel gives birth to semiotic consciousness which poses questions and is critical. In the article, Tarasti uses an “existential” method in a parodic way when clarifying the term by asking simple questions and answering them.

Tarasti shows that the novels by Umberto Eco, Julia Kristeva and Henri Broms are semiotic by nature. He asks whether the writer of this kind of work is always a semiotician; jokingly, he maintains that no one has the right to classify a person as a semiotician and another a non-semiotician…

Especially in postmodernism, the characteristics of a semiotic novel include parody, the abandoning of illusions about reality, playing around with the conventions of the narrative, frequent allusions to other texts, and often also polyphonic structure. Tarasti emphasizes that this kind of prose is deeply rooted in European humanity and scholarship. In his book Esimerkkejä [Examples] Tarasti writes that Parsifal by Richard Wagner is semiotic in a particular way, because it is based on meditating and reproduction of previous things (1996: 255).

Corresponding to Tarasti’s article, Henri Broms uses the term systems novel (1993a: 33-36). He underlines that this kind of prose work is a metanovel and often an encyclopaedic and labyrinthine work talking about many things at the same time. A systems novel consists of many levels, one of which is the semiotic one, and the events are signs pointing to something else (Chesterman 1995, 23). When writing about Le secret du professeur Amfortas as a semiotic novel Henri Broms (1993b) defines the term in the same way as Eero Tarasti in his article. In addition, Broms maintains that a semiotic novel contains a utopia.


2 To understand or not to understand

The novel Le secret du professeur Amfortas discusses and parodies the programme of the existential semiotics by Eero Tarasti in the form that the writer himself stated it in the year the novel first was published in Finnish: “We have to be able to study the life of signs from within, as well as to study in what kind of factual universe of meanings we live our whole life during its process in time” (Tarasti 1995:45). The novel tells indeed about the birth and change of signs and meanings, as well as the processes of semiosis. It also discusses the starting points of semiotics, its representatives and orientations.

The ethical tone of the novel is found behind the parody and laughter. The existential semiotics created by Tarasti is among other subjects about ethical questions and e.g. about values. In his book Existential Semiotics Tarasti considers the basic problems of human condition – in the nutshell: how to live in the world. The novel shows that to understand is to see the structure of culture and of human existence. It is to see the system of connections between things that are usually believed to be separate. But the novel shows these things in a negative way. The reader will see how the misunderstanding arises from the lack of deepness and from the inability to see the nuances of meaning. In the fictional world of this novel the situation actually is that of misunderstanding, and the consciousness of the characters is not an existential one in its fullness. On the contrary, we could say it is a false consciousness, falsches Bewusstsein, which is one of the topics in an essay by Tarasti, namely Ideologies manifesting axiologies (2004).

In the fictional world there is a total cultural, spiritual and social crisis and the state of misunderstanding caused by the common one-sided materialism and the excessive faith in science. Le secret du professeur Amfortas actually is a story about the conditions of understanding – and also of misunderstanding – in the postmodern world. The existential theme of the novel is this: where can we find the power to set us free as individuals and as a culture. Where can we find the salvation?

Tarasti himself points out that the redemption of the man is the main subject in Wagner’s Parsifal. He writes (1978: 110): “Wagner’s development ultimately encompassed a shift from hero-mythical and nature-mythical categories to the Christian sacred sphere in the musical mystery play, Parsifal”. The redemption really is together with the themes of quest and of human growth one of the general topics in western myths, arts, literature and philosophy from the classical period to the postmodern world. In Tarasti’s novel the questions of understanding and misunderstanding are involved in these themes.

Le secret du professeur Amfortas uses and exaggerates the emblems of utopia and dystopia. It belongs to the literary genre of utopia. The origin of this word, topos, comes from Greek, and it means a place. The negative prefix u changes the meaning; so it is literally “the place that does not exist”, or “nowhere”. This concept was created by the renaissance humanist Thomas More. His work Utopia (1516) is one of the best known in the genre together with Città del Sole (written in 1602) by Tommaso Campanella, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). The intertextual dialogue Le secret du professeur Amfortas enters with other utopias gives material for the critique so central in the novel. The most important of these are The Republic (Politeia) by Plato and The glass bead game (Das Glasperlenspiel) by Hermann Hesse.

The novel is set in future North American Americana. Most of the events take place in a university town into which a few top scientists have moved from Europe, destroyed by a catastrophe, and in which two schools of semiotics are active. The leading position of the scientific community of professor Amfortas, from Finland, is threatened, and the future of the university is uncertain. Especially two of the students, Sebastian, a relative of the professor, and his friend Felix see him as a saviour of the world of science. To remove the obstacles hindering his work and to solve the riddle connected with him, they collect information about his life and study his writings. In the novel, the most important places are Americana – lead by women - , the town of Irokesh, the university and Europe.

In a utopia as a literary genre it is possible to represent the collision between/of two different ideologies or sets of values. Because it is often set in a faraway place, and the time of it is a past or a future better than the present, it serves as a means of comparison and for cultural or social critique. This kind of fiction is in many cases also parodic. The central topic often is an ideal form of society, which does not actually exist. The starting point offers place for comic misunderstanding and in dystopias for tragic and frightening elements. It is even possible to suggest that most characters of the novel are unable to understand deeply anything important. In fact, the understanding itself is the main utopia in the novel.

Tarasti offers us as a prosaist and as a scientist a critical insight into the present state of European life and thought at the same time as he builds something totally new in intense dialogue with European writers and scholars. What kinds of (mis)understanding and communication are there in Americana in the field of rational and irrational forms of consciousness? The starting point in this analysis is the fact that science and art –thinking and imagination - are in the novel different forms of knowing, which illuminate each other. Now I will focus first on the rational and secondly on the irrational aspect of knowing. It is important to see how the educational system is in Americana, because it opens for us the door to the utopia of understanding in this novel.


3 The university and the misunderstanding

Note that Le secret du professeur Amfortas is a university novel and an educational utopia, where the main focus is on education: on its means and goals, as well as the values behind it. The University of Americana is a sign pointing to the misunderstanding as a problem of a human being and of a community. The sharp critique on the university found in this novel is common in postmodernism.

The keywords of the university in Le secret du professeur Amfortas are competition, obedience, prohibitions and censorship. Now we’ll see how these things come true in Americana. What about competition? Everyone learns that the meaning of one’s life is to be better than the others. Not a better human being but better in all kinds of fights.

At school and even at the university the obedience to establishment is important. Such an extreme obedience is demanded, that the status of the pupils, students and their teachers, too, resembles that of a slave in Plato’s republic.

As an institution and as a building, the University of Americana is functionally similar to a church. Science has stolen the place that once belonged to religion - intellect has replaced spirituality. In Americana people believe in science, and they also search for holiness in it. Science is a form of materialist religion, and as in religious sects, everybody’s attitudes are controlled. Many things are forbidden, or at least discouraged, such as reading of novels, romantic music, wondering in nature - and the criticism to the establishment.

Everyone has to work very hard in the studies, but it is not a way to a deep understanding. Approved information has been saved in the central computer, and the students are passive receivers. No one notices that somebody has modified and chosen the information for them. It is almost impossible to get any new and valuable knowledge in the university. Because there is only a sort of scrap-knowledge, one cannot comprehend larger entities.

Education unifies the way of thinking in Americana. In fact there is strict censorship. However, at the same time decision making is said to be transparent. All information is said to be available for everyone. In reality, information is strictly controlled. In Americana education serves the totalitarian society, as it does in the republic by Plato. Furthermore, Americana and the university incorporate a model of a consensus society. That is why the citizens of Americana are satisfied with the university the novel describes: they do not know alternative educational systems. So they say they have the most efficient educational system in the history of the world! The critical voice comes through some young students and through Amfortas, who is born in Finland.

Amfortas and some students know Americana is in a dead-end and that in a way it is inferno. The university is compared to a pyramid, and many things are there in a dead condition, e.g. such languages and literatures as those of Germany and Finland.

The predominant set of values is a completely and consistent opposite to anything that is normally appreciated in western cultures. In Americana, education is quite different from that in Europe. Americana lives here and now, without a past; we can say it is in a collective amnesia. The vital connection between present and tradition is in fact interrupted in the fictional world of the novel. Apart from that the obedience to the establishment is important, not the following to one’s own conscience. That means: the Socratean maximes “know yourself” is valid not any more.

For Americanians, Europe is taboo; they know very little of it, and they have been taught to underrate its culture. The history and humanism of Europe is interpreted in a distorted way. Misunderstood signs and concepts point to other misunderstood signs and concept, and together they give rise to false interpretations. The rich multi-dimensional culture of Europe can no longer be comprehended. Instead of platonic dialog, the usual mode of communication is a battle. Even semioticians are masters in fight. Such persons as Grimaldas, Alcan and Peirce are mentioned, as equivalents of Greimas, Lacan and Peirce. Barthes and Lévi-Strauss appear under their own names. But their doctrines are misunderstood, and the opponents are silenced. In fact the rulers have given their language and their discourse to the whole country. At the same time the digital culture strengthens against human culture.

Now it is necessary to remember Eero Tarasti’s semiotics: it is valuable in that it gives us new perspectives on questions of cultural memory and the role of postcolonialism in this context. Eero Tarasti writes about “Post-colonial Semiosis”. He points out that post-colonial theory is intimately related to existential semiotics (2000: 139). Tarasti writes: “One colonizing technique is that of silencing. Pre-colonial practices are suppressed simply by the fact that one no longer talks about them. The colonized subject keeps silent [--]. The colonizing discursive practice has taken the voice into its possession.“ (2000: 138.)


4 The irrational and the understanding

Eero Tarasti proves in his essays and in his fictional work, that the dilemma of rationalism and irrationalism is most topical in European culture. In order to solve it, men need a kind of inside knowledge and a new way of understanding.

Finally, how can the ethic and cultural problems be solved in Americana and elsewhere, or can they be?

Some characters of the novel realize that the salvation could be found in the myth, in the arts and in the literature of romanticism. People do not remember the myths about their origin, and the door to the real art is shut. Anyhow it is obvious that there still could be a bridge from the rational to irrational and even from aesthetics to ethics. Some young students try in vain to find it. The knowledge about both the rational and the irrational aspect of life and of human existence proves to be essential for the full understanding.

I would like to point out that the rise of humanism and human rights is only a utopia without strong and free persons making it happen. As Eero Tarasti (2000: 88) writes: “The discovery of ethics seems to be related first to the problem of the subject – and, paradoxically, simultaneously to both the foregrounding of the subject and its disappearance. Without the concept of subject there is no ethical choice. Norms, external devoirs can be programmated into computer or robot, whereas inner ethical ‘will’, i.e., deliberate choice with complicated factors and criteria with their hierarchies, cannot be inserted.”

There are still some areas, where to look for the new humanity. The most important of them is the written and spoken word - literature, narratives, and language. The language and the human consciousness are as poor or as rich. In fact language is the way to understand things. As Hans-Georg Gadamer (1986: 478) writes: “Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache” [Being that can be understood is language]. Because of the dead condition of language, one cannot see the world in its richness. Latin, German and Finnish are dead languages, and there is only the superficial English left. Note that the novel is critical of the excessive admiration for America and of the anglosaxisms invading our culture and education.

There is one concrete direction where professor Amfortas and some of his students try to find the solution: they travel to Europe, and – to imaginative Finland, the county of myths and poems. Or to that country that used to be Finland, since it is now an area destroyed by a big catastrophe. The search for the Finnish identity is a useless attempt, because they do not find the culture of Finland any more. Professor Amfortas could be a saviour in the situation. He is a personification of those humanistic values that are missing in the superficial and competitive Americana. These values are justice, equality, respect for individuality, a positive outlook on life, and at the same time: scepticism.

The salvation could be found in the values of European humanism and in a living connection to cultural heritage, especially the respect for one’s own language. It is important to be conscious of one’s own roots. Stream of personal and collective memories has energy for renewing mankind. These will be the bases of a new understanding.



Notes
NOTE 1 A good guide into postmodernism is the study Concepts of postmodernism by Harry Forsblom.
NOTE2 Paulo C. Chagas (2003) writes about Eero Tarasti’s recent musical semiotics apposite remarks.

References
Broms, Henri 1993a. A system novel: Robert Pirsig’s Lila. LEIF. Life and education in Finland 30(4): 33-36.
Broms, Henri 1993b. Romaanimuoto ja nykyhetki [The structure of novel and the present]. Synteesi 12(4), 95-99.
Chagas, Paulo C. (2003). JMM book review. Tarasti, Eero. Signs of music: A guide to musical semiotics. JMM: The journal of music and meaning. 1 (fall), section 5. http://www.musicandmeaning.net/issues/showArticle.php?artID=1.5
Chesterman, Andrew 1995. Combining the visionary and the everyday. LEIF. Life and education in Finland (4): 22-26.
Forsblom, Harry 2001: Concepts of postmodernism (= Jyväskylä Studies in the arts, 75). Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä.
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Tarasti, Eero 2000a. Existential Semiotics. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
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Tarasti, Eero 2003. Understanding, Misunderstanding, and Self-Understanding. In: E. Tarasti (ed.): Understanding/Misunderstanding (Acta Semiotica Fennica, XVI). Helsinki: International Semiotics Institute at Imatra, 3-22.
Tarasti, Eero 2004. Ideologies manifesting axiologies. Semiotica 148(1/4), 23-46.