The Production of Lateness. Rahel Rivera Godoy-Benesch

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СКАЧАТЬ this stage, it must be emphasized that contemporary authors use late style in a complex manner and employ different levels of literary communicationcommunication. Their texts do not exhibit Adorno’s late-style characteristics such as the fragmentariness of the artwork and the dissociation between subjectivitysubjectivity and conventionconvention. Rather, they are influenced by the image of the late artist and guided by the belief that lateness is an indicator of artistic accomplishment. However, even if we notice such similarities between the individual works, this cannot – and should not – result in a universalist approach, since the way in which authors implement late style is highly individualized. What McMullanMcMullan, Gordon and SmilesSmiles, Sam suggest is all too true: “Late style […] is a process still made more complex as creative artists become more and more versed in ideas of lateness” (Introduction 6). It would thus be disproportionate (and all too reductive) to simply read Adorno’sAdorno, Theodor W. characteristics into a contemporary late work.2 However, late style cannot be considered simply an invention of the critics either, since the late-style narrative explicitly refers to lateness and thus includes late-style concepts in the literary text. In view of these implications, late style will here be approached as a code of production, that is, a means of communication that is consciously and purposefully used by the authorial figure. Yet, late style is also a code of production with regard to the reading process; it is thus an essential meaning-making tool within the text. This presupposes a common ground of understanding between the authors and their audience, which may be one of the core reasons why authors resort to the late-style narrativelate-style narrative. With its semi-biographical artist-protagonists, its mise-en-abîmemise-en-abîme, and its metafictionalmetafiction mode, it is a particularly convenient medium: it can deliver its own theory alongside its narrative content, providing its readers with the necessary theoretical basis.

      In the late-style narrative, late style firstly becomes a personal code of production in the way authors fashion their creative identity. HutcheonHutcheon, Linda and HutcheonHutcheon, Michael, even though they generally view late style as a concept imposed upon the text by the critic, acknowledge in a footnote that there may also be “the artist’s own view of his or her […] self-construction as a ‘late-artist’” (“Historicizing” 54, original italics). This self-fashioning may have a variety of biographical reasons, which obviously cannot be determined via deduction, using the creative product as a kind of symptom. A comparison with earlier, non-late texts of the same author, in turn, promises valuable insights. As ZanettiZanetti, Sandro argues, late works can only be considered late in reference to what has been there earlier (9). Moreover, the metatextual comments in the late work itself provide some additional clues. What stylistic adjustments were performed? How does the late work refer back to the author’s earlier style, and how are the stylistic changes justified? These are questions that can be pursued. Moreover, the historicalhistory development of the late-style debate provides its own clues. Not only has AdornoAdorno, Theodor W. supplied us with a model that praises lateness, but earlier approaches also view late style as the highest possible achievement, granted only to truly great artists. As a consequence, the opposite is also evoked and it becomes a daunting prospect: without a late style, an author’s previous work is threatened to be devalueddevaluation (cf. Urbanek 220), and the peak-and-decline modelpeak-and-decline model of creative production, which suggests that “artistic creation declines with advancing age” (Cohen-Shalev, “Old Age Style” 22), is confirmed.3 This was not always the case, as Painter states:

      Before the romanticromanticism period, when the concept of late style gained a foothold in aesthetics, the greatest praise one could bestow on an older artist’s output was to report no change – which is to say, no declinedecline – in quality from earlier works. (2, original italics)

      Already in the early 19^th century, however, the peak-and-decline model was firmly established. The fact that the ageing BeethovenBeethoven, Ludwig van was believed to be unable to compose a fugue (as taken up in Mann’sMann, Thomas Doctor Faustus) can be seen as an example. Two centuries later, contemporary ageing authors feel compelled to develop a late style of their own, and the fear of creative failure in old age is deeply ingrained in their works.

      If a late style is established, then, the author affirms his or her agency, although the attempt itself may be even more valuable than its success. HutchinsonHutchinson, Ben notes a paradox in such a willful production of late style:

      [T]he achievementachievement of late style implies a hermeneutic circle: the artist must know what he – it is an overwhelmingly male category – is setting out to achieve, but by definition he cannot know until he achieves it, else he is not yet ‘late.’ (Afterword 238)

      This is an interesting proposition. Hutchinson’s view, however, depends on an understanding of late style as superiority in artistic quality, and, moreover, it is produced as a response to critics who believe late style to be a universaluniversal late style, natural phenomenon. Here, the distinction between latenesslateness and late stylelate style becomes important: whereas the former refers to the artist’s attitude, to his/her setting out to achieve a late style, the latter is its imprint upon the artistic product. When this distinction is made, the idea of late style is purged of the clinging notion of high quality and achievement. In an author-centered approach, lateness itself – the will and decision to attempt a stylistic change – is valued. The ageing American writer Nicholas DelbancoDelbanco, Nicholas, in his very own late-style intervention titled The Art of Old Age, confirms that “to the aging writer, painter, or musician the process can signify more than the result; it no longer seems as important that the work be sold” (16). Lateness as an authorial attitude, therefore, is an important and useful concept to explore the authorial self-fashioning that late style allows for. Hence, as a personal code of production, the concept of late style gains a plurality of meanings that can hardly be appreciated in a classical approach to art as autonomousautonomous art.

      A second and distinct way of assessing late-style narratives is by considering them as self-referential systems and by aiming to detect their work-internal logic. In such an approach, the code of production is considered self-referential in that the work provides its own theory in whose light late style should be viewed. Narratives that encourage such an approach are usually overtly and explicitly metafictionalmetafiction. They are characterized by a propagated self-sufficiency, and their most important feature is mise-en-abîmemise-en-abîme: the artist-protagonist is portrayed as setting out to fashion his/her identityidentity as a late artist much in the same way as the real author does by writing the fictional or semi-biographical late-style narrative. Rather than just duplicating the protagonist’s struggle with late style and projecting it onto the real author,4 however, one should consider this mise-en-abîme a more complex site of meaning-making. Protagonists may be ironic figures, as happens in John Barth’sBarth, John Development and, to a certain extent, also in Karen Blixen’sBlixen, Karen “Echoes,” which creates distance between author and character. Furthermore, if the characters are not fully autobiographicalautobiography, every little difference to their authors carries meaning. A further complication arises with these narratives’ combined diegetic-mimeticmimesis method, that is, the way in which they simultaneously tell and enact the principles of late style. This entails a systemic curiosity: in a first, straightforward approach, we may consider the protagonist to be enacting lateness and late style, whereas the author tells about it. However, once we take the real author’s lateness into account, we turn the tables. Now, the protagonist’s story tells us about late style, and the narrative as a whole enacts the late style of its author. Hence, the self-referentiality works both ways, which provides this approach with considerable complexity and productivity.

      By pretending to be self-sufficient, the late-style narrative also attempts to resist a traditional assessment via mainstream late-style discourse. Since the narrative provides its own theory, it suggests that no other theoretical input is required (or appropriate, for that matter). This is a mere demonstration of power. The author assumes a very convenient position from where he/she can controlcontrol the meaning and thus also the reception СКАЧАТЬ