University of Virginia Library

The critical edition—two contrasting concepts

In 1899 Wilhelm Dilthey gave a programmatic lecture under the heading "Archives for Literature." It was largely thanks to this lecture that manuscript bequests of poets and writers were approved as archive material and ultimately taken into state care.[3] Dilthey, Schleiermacher's biographer, regarded original manuscripts as an invaluable key to an understanding of their authors. He wanted to see them collected and researched

in literary archives. He felt a "human breath" emanating from "drafts, letters, notes"[4] and considered it the joint aim of the appreciative reader and the researching literary historian to comprehend them. "What would we give today to be able to read into the souls of Aeschylus or Plato, through such simple and direct statements" (p. 5). An author's manuscript remains could, as it were, fill in the blank spaces in an author's involuntary self-interpretation of his life philosophy, only partially rendered if "isolated and coolly presented in print" (p. 5). Yet however highly Dilthey assessed the cognitive value of literary manuscripts, for him they were not intrinsically significant—for instance, as witnesses to unknown versions of the text—but indirectly as a part of an entire body of evidence, from which the author's understanding of the world might be deduced. Manuscript archives, accordingly, were not viewed as a preparatory facility for editorial work; on the contrary, such collections would "considerably reduce" the need for printed publication (p. 16).

The central historical interest here is not in the work and its genesis, but in the author and his interpreter. It is ultimately the latter's concern—as reader and researcher—to comprehend the existing work of the author; to express this in terms of experience: "to acquaint himself better with his own self."[5] The author is thus possibly better understood by his interpreter than he understood himself, because he was not conscious of his own creative activity.[6] If it be the common goal of authors and interpreters to develop a durable and representative understanding of humanity on the basis of a shared experience of the fundamental conflict between an individual and a social identity, interpretive empathy, according to Dilthey, weighs decidedly on the social side of the scale. With regard to the affirming of one's own intrinsic existence, moreover, the positions of the artist and the interpreter are exchangeable. Dilthey hence always stressed the "homogeneity of intellectual life" ("Beiträge", p. 251). In his theory of the humanities, creative and interpretive activity correspond structurally, receptive contemplation taking precedence over action in both cases. This receptive contemplation is based in an unforced openness and receptivity for external and internal perceptions (e.g., memories)—a view formalised, for example, in Dilthey's much-quoted circular definition of experience—expression—comprehension. Since Dilthey sees the process by which literary expression is shaped as largely unconscious, he grants it little importance compared to actual experience. It is not the ability of expression, but merely the degree of that ability which distinguishes the author from the interpreter. Similarly, it is only the intensity of the powers of mind and intellect by which they differ. The decisive factor here is that literary production is viewed

from the perspective of the recipient, who wishes to open or entrust himself to the author. This attitude, profoundly influenced by Goethe and the spirit of his age, has had a sustained effect in German literary studies. It is also evident in the development of the modern Germanist edition—as illustrated by the Weimar Goethe edition and the Stuttgart Hölderlin edition (see below: The reception-oriented editorial concept).

A wholly opposite attitude to the process of literary production underlies the so-called "critique génétique" which has arisen in France since the 1970s and concerns itself with the textual genesis of literary works as evidenced in the original manuscripts.[7] It has developed out of French structuralist literary theory, with which it shares a methodical objectivism concentrated on exploring the text in its spatial/temporal dimensions. What distinguishes it from structuralism is a broadening of the field of observation and vision: behind the text as a closed and semeiological object, its perspective takes in the actual production of the text ("textualisation", "avant-texte", "le texte n'existe pas"); behind the written form ("l'écrit") it views the actual writing ("l'écriture"), behind the printed work the original manuscript.[8] This extension of the critical object to include the original handwritten documents is not only quantitative; it also affects the reader's or interpreter's attitude to the works, now enriched by a "third dimension",[9] to their authors, and of necessity thus ultimately to himself.

Exploring a work's textual genesis involves reconstructing the text chronologically and in a multitude of successive states and versions, each discrete and of only relative validity. The reader is thereby presented with a complexity of relations by which to read the text—he may select and combine them at will, exploring a textually structured field according to his combinatory and imaginative powers. "L'organisation du texte sur la feuille, les marginales, ajouts, renvois, less textes croisés [. . .] dedoublent les systemes de significations et multiplient par là les réseaux de lecture."[10] "Critique génétique" objectifies by philological means the tenet of reception aesthetics that in the act of reading the reader imaginatively shapes his own texts.[11] The intellectual appeal of this "approche génétique" to literary works is probably based upon the fact that, perhaps more than any other methodology in modern literary studies, it satisfies the need for subjective self-realisation in constructive activity, providing, as it does, a field for developing analytical techniques, serviceable terminologies or distinct methods of interpretation.[12] It is hence characterized by a tendency towards specialisation and critical self-sufficiency, a kind of "critique génétique pour la critique génétique". Indicative of this tendency is its abstract image of the author, removed into a sort of "instance écrivante".[13] "La notion même d'écrivain se dissout

dans l'incertitude"[14] —to such an extent that the concept appears applicable no longer just to single individuals, but also to collectives.[15] This view of the author as the subject of constructive writing operations limited only by the instrumental conditions of his productivity reflects the interpreter's understanding of his own self. It is a view not derived from an objectified image of man serving an inter-subjective exploration of the self as a community being, but from self-determined work in which the decisive affirmation of the individual is embodied symbolically. The extent and intensity of interest in the processes of production as such and their self-determining quality—for authors as well as for readers—is indicative of the strength of a will to self-realisation in the individual striving for liberation from pre-formed social models. From the point of view of intellectual history, it appears particularly significant that there is a common ground between modern critics and modern writers on this point. "On a déjà beaucoup parlé de cette conjonction entre une littérature qui traite de sa propre pratique et une critique qui explore les mécanismes du travail littéraire."[16] Both sides agree that a more suitable route to self-development can be found in productivity than in receptivity. The fact that "critique génétique" hitherto has been concerned mainly with the autographs of those authors who are regarded as the forerunners of modernism: Flaubert, Heine, Proust, Valéry, Zola,[17] also demonstrates this affinity.

In the German-speaking world there is, as yet, no line of scholarship comparable to "critique génétique." The Germanist literary scholars bent on systematically exploring the text genetics of literary manuscripts are predominantly editors. Their investigations are hence for the greater part guided by pragmatic interests. The perspectives that "critique génétique" develops independently of practical editing can be found within the German-speaking world in critical editions and in related works of editorial theory. Their main characteristics will be clarified with reference to the Goethe Academy edition and the Frankfurt Hölderlin edition (see below: The production-oriented editorial concept).

The decisive criterion by which to contrast the reception-oriented and the production-oriented editorial concepts lies in the difference of the image that in each the editor coins of the author. In the case of the reception-oriented concept, the author is understood as a person who, in his literary expression, establishes an inter-subjectively recognised identity. Here the author is mainly attributed with a characteristically deliberate, even teleological, attitude towards himself, and hence towards what he and others approve as constituent of a personal self. In respect of such identity, the author and the editor occupy reciprocally exchangeable positions: each is a literary producer and each is also the

discerning recipient of such production. Each sees himself as a self (1st person) from the perspective of another self (2nd person) and knows himself as the other (2nd person) for the other. In the production-oriented concept, by contrast, the image of the author is modelled to the assumption that his artistic intent is directed primarily towards his creative work and not towards his own self, which is in principle veiled in obscurity. In respect of this tendency towards an indeterminacy of the personal self, too, the positions of author and editor are reciprocally exchangeable; each relates to himself and to others as a subject (1st person) to the object (3rd person). The relationship of the editor and the author to each other is that of observer and observed creator of self-determined work.