Resonant Noise: Poe's Pit and Deleuze's Pendulum

Frank W. Stevenson

《Concentric： Literary and Cultural Studies》 27卷1期 (2001/01) Pp. 31-67

https://doi.org/10.6240/concentric.lit.200101_27(1).0002

並列摘要

Deleuze in ”The Logic of Sense” (1969) bases his emergent theory of language on a duality of body/surface: out of ”noise” in the corporeal depths arises voice, from voice comes speech and finally the ”pure event of the verb” at the body's ”surface.” This body/surface duality is set in relation to dualities of (Freudian) Eros/Thanatos (where the latter, the death-drive, encompasses and dissipates the depth-drives of Eros) and Chronos/Aion (where Aion is the ”pure empty form” or ”surface” of time which absorbs Chronos-time within its more encompassing ”repetition of difference”). Here I read Poe in terms of these dualities: whereas ”The Raven”'s self-reversing time-frame (of death and memory) suggests a line or horizontal plane that can be interpreted in the light of Deleuze's Aion, ”The Pit” brings into play the vertical-horizontal dynamics of the descending pendulum, a figure of time/Eros/Thanatos. This figure I read specifically in terms of Deleuze's own ”pendulum”-figure at the close of ”The Logic of Sense”, which embodies the forced movement of depth-drives in relation to or toward a ”metaphysical surface”, the interplay between the deep-body (”erotic”) function of eating and the surface (or conscious) functions of speaking and thinking. ”Thinking” in its most abstract (surface) projection is again tied to Thanatos as the ”purely speculative death-instinct” which, like Aion, encompasses the repetitions of Eros and Chronos. Deleuze and Poe are finally both guided by the awareness of an encompassing ”noise” (nonsense) whose wider repetitions ”give sense.”

並列關鍵字

repetition ； reversal ； body ； metaphysical surface ； the Verb ； noise ； nonsense ； Eros ； Thanatos ； Chronos ； Aion