A Question of an Other Order: Deflections of the Straight Man

Abstract

Jacobs' admirably subtle and reading dislocates our claustrophobic auditor-reader and leaves him desperate straits. In the face of such a text-J acobs', Kleist's, and Kant's-words like admirable, subtle, difficult only betray a refusal to read and hence miss the mark entirely. The only way to leave a mark on this text is to read it. And yet the demand for a reading of the text only increases the discomposed auditor-reader's anxiety and places him an even more embarrassing predicament. Not only is the auditor-reader inscribed Jacobs' text (just as the historian and the critic are inscribed Kleist's text) but his thrusts are parried and his feints met only by an impassive (and ironic) motionlessness: whether we run to the past or to the future in the hope of escaping the text through another sort of Geschichte and another sort of Kritik, we find them already included and ironized within the Whatever our critical stance, it is always somehow the same story. Indeed, we are a position similar to that of the fencer the third story of Kleist's Uber das Marionettentheater. After having soundly defeated Mr. von G.'s son, the fencer (Mr. C., the narrator's interlocutor) is led to the wood-shed to meet his master: a bear standing on his hind legs and leaning against the post to which he is tied. His right paw lifted and ready to strike-his fencing stance-the bear looks into the fencer's eye. Whatever the fencer does, it is the same story: the bear parries his thrusts and is not at all moved by feints. Now I was almost the position of the young Mr. von G. The earnestness of the bear succeeded robbing me of my composure, thrusts and feints were exchanged, sweat dripped from me: vain! Not just that the bear parried all my thrusts like the best fencer the world; he was not at all taken by feints (something no fencer the world could imitate after him): eye to eye, as though he could read my soul it, he stood, paw raised ready to strike, and when my thrusts were not meant seriously, he did not move. If we tell this story, it is not (only) order to escape Jacobs' reading of Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten by going outside to another story, another text, another reading. Rather than allowing us to escape the text by our going before or after to its past or future, this story would bring us closer to the mark, for it allows us to go, as it were, beneath the text. First of all, Jacobs' text is clearly marked by the story of the bear insofar as the reading is organized by the pairs thrust/feint, straight line/deflection, and is to this extent a reading not only of Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten but also Uber das Marionettentheater. But the story of the bear is of supplementary interest to the extent that it is precisely a story of