A philosophical essay: "Meaning and Distance"

Part I: Paradoxes

In this study, dating from 1994, we attempt to elucidate the principle that on the plane of non-scientific thought — yet clearly voluntary — some distance between words causes one to neglect connecting their meanings, when no reminder of notion exists. To set this out, we take an easy case to treat: that of the paradoxes of Baudelaire's poem „Correspondences“. This text offers the advantage of presenting a minimal logical form, with very few explicit reminders of signification. Conditions are therefore favourable for observing, on reaching a given point, the effect of distance on the forgetting of earlier words. First, in „Correspondences“ the most important paradoxes are made up of words at a slight distance. Next, paradoxes that one might imagine with distant words remain, for everyone, without force. Finally, paradoxes that are mutually compatible, to intuition, do not clearly reinforce one another except when they have few other words between them. To measure these facts, we develop a fraction with 1 in the numerator and a series of numbers measuring the risks incurred in the denominator. The results are the quantities of plausibility of the interpretations examined, such as “this judgement is a paradox” and “these paradoxes mutually reinforce one another”.

Part II: Locations of problems

Here we seek to generalize the calculations of the preceding inquiry. The descriptions of the strongest difficulties of meaning, found in „Correspondences“, the collisions, give a basis of calculation for the plausibility of the descriptions of weaker difficulties: the problem glosses. The principle of Part I — that of an empirical mathematics — is found again in Part II. With dice, if one looks for the chances of throwing a double-six on the first throw with two dice, there is 1 sought-after event achievable among 36 possible ones, which gives 1/36 as the probability. Here, with the plausibility of interpretations, instead of seeking the probability (x/y) — that is, the number (x) of sought-after events among a number (y) of equally possible events — one looks for the reciprocal of the mass of obstacles that threaten to prevent the sought-after event from occurring. In this case, it is the mass of obstacles that threaten to render false the judgement according to which the author expressly wanted such-and-such a connection between two ideas of the text. We are therefore very far from the calculation of probabilities, strictly speaking. We give an imitation of it, with greatly reworked foundations, which is found empirically: from the experience one has, over decades, in textual explication. The critical mainspring behind this is that we know many cases in which interpreters have asserted, as dogmatically as questionably, that an author thought this or that. So as not to follow them blindly, we evaluate the chances of each interpretation, within a very schematic framework, by means of a numerical ratio of the type 1/(1)(1)(1)(1) or 1/(2)(2)(2)(2), or by means of an intermediate quantity of this kind, such as 1/(1)(2)(1)(2). For problems in general — including some which are minor — one must be still less confident; we therefore move from four elements in the denominator to seven, which gives, in the chosen language, 1/(q)(e)(p)(f)(z)(g)(j) for the general case of problem glosses, seen in Part II, instead of 1/(t)(s)(m)(w) for the collisions studied from the outset in Part I. Within this empirical mathematics, each of the elements — (q), (e), (p) and so on — figures an obstacle. If the obstacles prove considerable, one obtains in particular q=2, e=2, p=2, f=2, and so the interpretation will have a lower plausibility value. Equally, within the same calculation, we evaluate the means of better defining each difficult meaning, thanks to the plausibility calculation relative to what we call attenuation glosses. Likewise, we seek an estimate of those views claiming to bear on mere observations: the neutral glosses. Finally, we attempt to see which numerical quantities make it possible to express the plausibility of reinforcements between glosses. The logic followed is the same as that previously used, in Part I, to find the chances that two great paradoxes have of mutually reinforcing one another.

Part III: Influences

In poetics, the part of linguistics concerned with the formation of imaginative texts, it is of interest to study the influence of words external to the problems of signification upon the formation of the latter. When, within „Correspondences“, Charles Baudelaire's poem, one finds a sharp clash of meaning, one has a connection between significations as embarrassing on the plane of the interpretation of the text as it is fascinating on the plane of the workings of the mind. Linguistic or poetic commentary must therefore turn its attention to the conditions in which this bringing-into-contact of two images that seem not to belong together is realized. To be sure, one may expect many things of poetry by way of personal or collective reverie, but it is equally legitimate to take it as an interesting example of arrangements between ideas. In this way, we look at the cases in which the presence of words neighbouring those that bring about the clash between the significations seems to be one of the motors of the problematic meaning. The basic perspective on the distance of words remains here the same as before, and so we look to see whether, in Baudelaire's shaping, it is indeed words very close to the difficulties that influence them most. We start from the plausibility of a clash of meaning, by multiplying its measure of plausibility by that of the influence it undergoes. Each of the quantities is of the form 1/(…), exactly on the model of those seen in the preceding parts of the essay. We define a positive influence, which favours the emergence of a problem, and a negative one, which prevents its formation. The ways of calculating are different, since the influence goes in one direction, or the opposite, according to the case. We carry out trials that consist largely in removing, in an imitation of „Correspondences“, the word conveying the meaning that exerts the influence, and each time one must compare what happens to the problem concerned, with and without the word suspected of being decisive.

Part IV: Analogies

Starting from the ancient determination of analogy by Aristotle, we compare it to the equality of fractions 2/3 = 4/6, and we develop a measurement of the interpretations of analogical phrases. Indeed, the exegete may claim to see an analogy such as “old age is the evening of life” well veiled within a tortuous discourse, when the author has not thought of it. It is therefore always a matter of determining the degree of confidence one may have in those who explain imaginative texts. The distance between words is, there, still very important, since in the case where the words of the supposed analogy are very far apart from one another, the plausibility 1/(…) becomes low. We come to distinguish several types of analogy, and we write them thus, on the model of Empedocles, concerning life and the day: (old-age-/life-/evening-/day), (old-age-/life-/evening), (old-age-/evening), (old-age./evening). Finally, for each of the sets thus distinguished, a particular form of calculation is developed, in order to estimate the plausibility of their elements, and most particularly that of the examples of them found in texts.

Part V: Riddles

The present literary analysis, using the same general technique of measurement as in the preceding parts, with quantities of plausibility of the type 1/(…)(…)(…)…, allows the study of figures of speech such as “you are a Homer” or “how I love her horse”. These very numerous traditional turns of phrase, neighbouring one another, resemble analogies or transpositions weakened and diverted into easy riddles. We describe the detail of these turns, in order to justify reducing them all to a single category. The determination of the degree of confidence to be granted to interpreters, who claim to guess at hidden meaning within non-scientific texts, remains the aim of this literary analysis — the great number of plausibility measurements attempted coming simply from the multitude of cases that present themselves.

Part VI: Onomatopoeias

The intrusions, within ordinary language, of onomatopoeias and excessive signs — such as the two cases present within “she's gone, crack!!!” — form the object of a new inquiry, also giving rise to plausibility measurements, which once again have as their aim the verification of whether the author of a text actually had the intention attributed to him. With onomatopoeia and all kindred intrusions, the interest lies in finding oneself at the boundary between the material and the spiritual, since on the one side, the irruption into a sentence of a barely linguistic sonority departs from the best-recognized academic meaning, whereas on the other side, there is indeed a sort of evocation nonetheless. Linguistics is not only curious about the workings of traditional vocables, given the diversity of the resources of language; our contribution therefore takes its place, in the end, within the general framework of the study of verbal expression, whether written or spoken.

Part VII: Interpretation

In this inquiry, dating from 2010, we confront the fact that it is vexing to circle ceaselessly around the lines of the poem „Correspondences“ without ever following it word for word as a whole at one go. So we make good this gap, in order to see whether some recesses of meaning had not escaped us until then. Throughout numerous paragraphs, the operations follow two very different perspectives, which alternate with one another. On the one hand, we set off in search of the most economical overall meaning possible — and so the most literal and the least inventive — in relation to what is openly said in the poem. In the pursuit of this basic signification, we return, with broader definitions than those of Part I of the essay, to the obscurities of content, this time adding the notion of a solution of minimum meaning to each great difficulty. Thus, starting from the very modest procedures of the earlier parts, in which we confined ourselves to combining images found solely within the text, we now elaborate an invented meaning, yet as faithful as possible to the original appearance of the lines, because designed solely to overcome a crisis, with the minimum of suppositions. On the other hand — and this is the second perspective announced above — we give of Baudelaire's sonnet two interpretations, neither of which is worth more than the other. Each removes from the reader the idea that its counterpart might be the only good one. Each is applied from the first line to the last. Each develops a single audacious idea, but one distant from what is directly readable.

Part VIII: Pairs of images in which one prepares the other

The eighth part of “Meaning and Distance” concerns no longer the clearly voluntary thought of an author producing a work of any length whatever, but his reverie or very rapid thought bearing on a very brief work that has emerged from his thought. The great advantage given by this arrangement, in comparison with what has been seen previously, is that the mind of the author may be considered as traversing his own text in every direction without any difficulty. We draw from this situation the methodological consequence that the plausibility of an interpretation of a passage of the text, uniting two ideas coming from it, is no longer ever dependent on the number of important words separating these ideas. Indeed, dreamy or extremely rapid thought unites images with ease, from one end to the other of a tiny work. There remain therefore, as obstacles to the connections of ideas that are the interpretations of the text, only difficulties of meaning — those of distance being effaced.

Part IX: Pairs of interpretations such that one prepares the other

Provisionally, the ninth section of the essay has been placed after the index of the eight preceding parts. The principle of this ninth chapter remains that of the description of a reverie of the author, or of a fleeting thought arising from him, in the course of which he envisages that A prepares B. But, unlike what was the case in the preceding section VIII, A and B are now two interpretations, the most elementary preparing the other. Thus, in relation to «green», a word of the first tercet of „Correspondences“, the sense “of green colour“, applied to «perfumes» resembling «meadows», is seen as preparing the sense ”sour to the eyes", from the perspective of a correspondence uniting different faculties: those of taste and of sight.