University of Virginia Library

I.
The Concept of Version ("Fassung")

"Eclectic editing", the establishing of a text from more than one authoritative document, comprises two types of multiple authority which are essentially different from one another, although they may occur in combination. In the first type, the missing original is represented by several radiating texts, from which their common original is to be reconstructed through the adapted application of the stemma rules of classical editing.[6] I too approve this procedure. What is under dispute here is the second type of multiple authority: only in this case do I speak of contamination. Here one eclectic text is produced from authoritative documents which differ from one another in essence through the intervention of the author. This eclectic text is supposed, among other things, to realise the final intention of the author, as far as this is possible on the basis of extant documents. In the first type of multiple authority the textual differences are exclusively errors caused by the process of transmission; in the second, there is an added difference between versions which is intended by the author. Texts with authorial variation I designate as different versions ("Fassungen"). In the most extreme case a version is constituted by a single variant. A holograph with one alteration which does not simply correct an error thus represents two versions of the text. Though it is unusual to express oneself in this way, it is not possible to give a useful definition of the concept in any other terms. The significance of the definition will become apparent immediately.

The main difficulty in realising Greg and Grumach's undertaking, namely in establishing a text representing as reliably as possible the demonstrably final wish of the author, lies in separating from one another transmissional and authorial variants. In order to achieve this, Greg set up the well-known rules: "An editor should in every case of variation ask himself (1) whether the original reading is one that can reasonably be attributed to the author, and (2) whether the later

reading is one that the author can reasonably be supposed to have substituted for the former. If the answer to the first question is negative, then the later reading should be accepted as at least possibly an authoritative correction. . . . If the answer to (1) is affirmative and the answer to (2) is negative, the original reading should be retained. If the answers to both questions are affirmative, then the later reading should be presumed to be due to revision and admitted into the text. . . . It will be observed that one implication of this procedure is that a later variant that is either completely indifferent or manifestly inferior, or for the substitution of which no motive can be suggested, should be treated as fortuitous and refused admission to the text."[7]

Characteristic of this procedure is that the same set of questions is applied to each individual reading, and it is left to the discerning judgement of the editor to classify it. There can be no doubt but that what results is assured of the maximum authority with regard to the sum of all its elements.[8] The question is, however, whether the sum of authoritative readings yields an authoritative text. Should not the authority of a text be considered to extend equally to the texture of the text, to the relationship of its elements to one another and to the whole, and therefore to what constitutes a text as a text, to what makes it into a particular version?

As far as I know, the methods of textual constitution under discussion take this basic aspect of the version into consideration only in special cases: "In some literary works it is generally recognized that a revision may be so thoroughgoing — so motivated throughout by the author's altered political, social, or artistic concepts"[9] — that the variants cannot be transferred and the editing of more than one version in parallel texts or in separate editions is required, because the later version represents an entirely new creative act, and demanded in a sense a new manuscript. As examples the different versions of Wordsworth's Prelude are cited, or Henry James's revision of his early works

Roderick Hudson and The Portrait of a Lady. "There are two 'final' versions." "Each of these texts deserves to stand in its own right as a separate text."[10] I assume that the differentiation is made not merely for the sake of avoiding an overflow of variants in the textual apparatus, that is to say, for practical reasons, but as a response, in these cases, to an altered authorial conception of the work, and thus for reasons of theory and principle.

The question then arises as to whether it is in fact possible to mark a borderline between the two differently treated cases, whether it is practicable to make the distinction in every instance. One could not, for instance, decisively distinguish two versions by quantitative criteria, which might demand that the variants should exceed a certain number, or that a certain time must have elapsed before the revision. In the line "Dass endlich zerbräche das kühle Haupt", in the last version of Trakl's poem Passion (Agony), the manuscript has the adjective "kühle" (cool) for deleted "glühende" (glowing), but one cannot maintain that this alteration is more far-reaching than when in the same manuscript the "Purpurne Wolke" (purple cloud) is replaced by "Goldene Wolke" (golden cloud).[11]

The first stanza of Hölderlin's Feiertag hymn describes parabolically the condition after a storm. In the prose draft of the poem we read "vom erquikenden Reegen des Himmels"; in the metrical version "von des Himmels erfreuendem Reegen". At first sight one might not raise objections if an editor or commentator considered the two readings ("erquikenden / erfreuendem Reegen") simply in terms of stylistic improvement as the replacement of a commonplace expression by a clearly metaphorical adjective. Yet related within the text the matter looks different:

• 1 Wie wenn am Feiertage, das Feld zu sehn
• 2 Ein Landmann geht, des a) Abends, b) Morgens, wenn
• 3 Aus heisser a) Luft b) Nacht die kühlenden Blize fielen
• 4 a) Den ganzen Tag b) Die ganze Zeit und fern noch a) hallet b) tönet der Donner,
• 7 Und von des Himmels a) erquikendem b) erfreuendem Reegen
• 8 Der Weinstock trauft

One might still regard the variants in l. 4 "hallet / tönet" in this manner, namely as synonyms, and similarly, without regard to the context, "Den ganzen Tag / Die ganze Zeit" in l. 4. But related within the text it becomes apparent that this is just as impossible as with l. 3 "Luft / Nacht", and that the same difference exists as between the variants in l. 2 "des Abends / des Morgens". Here it is impossible to regard the variants as synonymously varying expressions. The variation emerges as a contrast in meaning, and therefore in intention, and thus it is determined that in l. 4 "Tag / Zeit" are not synonymous; rather, "Tag" 4a contrasts with "Nacht" 3b. These variants do not only occur between the prose draft and the metrical version, but also internally in the latter.[12] The draft and the metrical version are directly consecutive in the manuscript, and were presumably written down in direct chronological sequence. The variation attests a differing concept of time within the one manuscript. Therefore, contamination between the variants of the two versions is out of the question, Instead of saying merely that the variants correspond to a new concept, however, I can also say that there is a certain relatedness between them, that they result from a relatedness, the relatedness of a version.

In one quite specific case contamination in establishing a text is probably the only correct procedure. This is when it can be proved that the author did not make alterations which bore a relationship to one another and to the whole, but simply altered things here and there in isolation. But can that be proved?

In adopting the procedure of contamination the editor starts in general from the premise that the intention of the author and the concept of the work remain the same even when a revision is made, unless this assumption can be disproved by such obvious contradictions as that "Abends" and "Morgens", "Tag" and "Nacht" be synonymous. Such cases are regarded as special cases. But in the remaining cases the editor is to my mind doing in principle just what he would be doing if he were to adopt the procedure of contamination with Hölderlin, only it is less obvious. Fredson Bowers once said of a distinction of this sort, an editor who strains at a gnat may swallow camels too.

What is disturbing to me in this construction of categories is that it is not founded on any explicit theory, that it tends rather to mark as special cases those intractable instances which would in fact refute

the implicit hypothesis. The hypothesis consists in the tacit assumption that the alterations of the author do not in general result from relatedness,[13] and the assumption in turn is based on the usual absence of striking evidence to the contrary. The very opposite answers to my own general view of the essence of a literary work, but this again can be proved only in special cases, for instance when there are close syntactic links between the newly introduced textual elements, or links in rhyme or metre, or—as in the instance cited (Hölderlin)—clear semantic relationships. But what becomes obvious only in such instances is to my mind almost always the case. My conception rests on the linguistic idea of the text as a complex of elements which form a system of signs, both denoting (signifiant) and denoted (signifié).[14] That it is a system means that the work consists not of its elements but of the relationships between them. However, the clear relationships between the elements form only a part of the relevant relationships. Relationships exist likewise on the phonological level of the text, on the lexical level, etc.

Seen in this way, a version is a specific system of linguistic sings,

functioning within and without, and authorial revisions transform it into another system. As I said, in principle a new version comes into existence through a single variant. Since a text, as text, does not in fact consist of elements but of the relationships between them, variation at one point has an effect on invariant sections of the text. In considering different versions one must therefore not confine one's attention to the variants. This is most clearly exemplified when the title of a work is altered. Fundamentally, therefore, whether the variants are numerous and of far-reaching effect is not a necessary condition for the constitution of a version.[15] A new version implies a new intention.