Abstract
Asking how contemporary book fictions play with the materiality of the codex to reflect on the cultural work of literature, Monika Schmitz-Emans approaches the topic from the perspective of comparative literature and takes as her test case the novel Santa Esperanza by the Georgian author Aka Morchiladze. Schmitz-Emans situates Morchiladze’s experiment with book design and narrative order in a broad history of (mostly) European book art and avant-garde literature that uses constraints, combinatory aesthetics, or gaming strategies. Her analysis elucidates how the material form and visual layout of a literary text can contribute substantially to the building of a fictitious world—and at the same time serve the self-referential purpose of reflecting on the cultural relevance of literary fiction.
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Notes
- 1.
Roman Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 176–177. See also Christian Benne, Die Erfindung des Manuskripts. Zur Theorie und Geschichte literarischer Gegenständlichkeit (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2015), esp. Benne’s comment that Ingarden wished to disregard the sensory perception of the medium’s materiality, considering the analysis of physical objects a waste of research time (Benne, Erfindung, 67).
- 2.
Michel Butor, “Le livre comme objet,” Répertoire II (Paris: Éditions Minuit, 1964), 104–123.
- 3.
Roland Barthes, “Variations sur l’écriture,” 1973, Oeuvres completes, Vol. 2 (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 1535–1574. Since the 1960s, Barthes has been one of the leading and most influential theorists of text and writing.
- 4.
Cf. Johanna Drucker, The Century of Artists’ Books, 2nd ed. (New York: Granary Books, 2004); Artur Brall, Künstlerbücher, artists’ books, book as art: Ausstellungen, Dokumentationen, Kataloge, Kritiken (Frankfurt a. M.: icon, 1986).
- 5.
Cf. Holland Cotter’s Introduction in Drucker, Century, xi–xxii.
- 6.
Drucker, Century, 4.
- 7.
Cf. for instance: Michael Ende, Die unendliche Geschichte (Stuttgart: Thienemann, 1979); R. Murray Schafer, Dicamus et Labyrinthos: A Philologist’s Notebook (Bancroft, Ont: Arcana, 1984) and Ariadne (Bancroft, Ont: Arcana, 1985); Gérard Wajcman, L’interdit (Paris: Denoël, 1986); Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (Boulder: Fiction Collective Two, 1992); Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000) and Only Revolutions (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006); Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper (San Francisco: McSweeny’s Books, 2005); Benjamin Stein, Die Leinwand (München: Beck, 2010); Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams, S (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2013).
- 8.
Umberto Eco, The Open Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
- 9.
Marc Saporta, Composition No. 1, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), no pagination.
- 10.
Aka Morchiladze, Santa Esperanza (Tbilisi: Bakur Sulakauri Publishing, 2004). For another text by the author that refers to card games, see Aka Morchiladze, Playing Patience in August (Tbilisi: Bakur Sulakauri Publishing, 2001).
- 11.
Since there exists no English version of the novel to date, I provide my own translation, citing the German edition of the novel in parenthesis or endnotes. See Aka Morchiladze, Santa Esperanza: Ein Kosmos aus vielen Romanen, translated by Natia Mikeladze-Bachsoliani (Zurich: Pendo, 2006).
- 12.
Morchiladze shows affinities especially to Borges’ narrative about imaginative world building “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis tertius,” in Labyrinths, trans. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (New York: New Directions, 1962), 3–18.
- 13.
The book’s hyperlinks to fictional websites include: www.santaesperanzaholiday.sant.sol.sa (“Home/History/Sights/Maps/Hotels/Information/Contakt”); www.santaguide.santa.so.sa (“Home/Geography and Form of Government/Federal Institutions/Demography/Society/News”); www.amazon.com (about the writer Edmond Clever and his books, including a novel chapter)—www.sandrodacosta.santa.sol.sa (personal website of another writer, linked to an email address: dacostapoetry@santa.san.sa).
- 14.
The titles of these possible novels are listed, according to the different sequences of booklets numbered with a One, a Two, a Three, and so on: “Hefte von der Liebe des einsamen Genuesen” (“Booklets of the Love of the Lonesome Genovese”), “Das Buch des Reißaus nehmenden Inti-Spielers” (“The Book of the Inti Player Who Ran Away”), “Geschichten von der Klagefrau und vom Leben” (“Tales of the Lamenting Woman and of Life”), “Die Beschreibung der letzten dreihundertfünfzig Tage im Leben der Küstenkönigin” (“The Account of the Last Three Hundred and Fifty Days in the Life of the Queen of the Shore”), “Die Leistungen der Nachkommen der Medrosche” (“The Accomplishments of Medrosche’s Descendants”), “Die Tage des Letzten seiner Familie” (“The Days of the Last of His Family”), “Ein Bündel Geschichten aus dem Leben der Armseligen Gottes” (“A Bundle of Stories from the Life of the Meek”), “Lobpreisungen des Schriftstellers Luka” (“Praise for the Writer Luka”), “Quellen über den Fall des Sungalenlandes” (“Sources about the Fall of the Land of the Sungals”).
- 15.
My translation. The German edition reads: “In Mathe war ich zwar schwach, begriff aber dennoch, dass an den Schnittstellen, wo sich die langen und kurzen Geschichten kreuzen, neue Hefte entstanden. Man kann schließlich dieses Buch der Geschichten nicht nur entlang der geraden Linien lesen. … aus diesen sechsunddreißig Heften [müssten] nicht nur linear angeordnete Geschichten entstehen. Es könnten auch andere Abenteuer herausgeschmolzen werden, wenn man die Hefte richtig auswählt und anordnet.”
- 16.
My translation. “Man braucht nicht alle Hefte hintereinander zu lesen. Wenn man sich für eine Geschichte aus dem Inhaltsverzeichnis interessiert, sucht man die entsprechenden Hefte heraus, legt diese der Reihe nach hin und liest sie so.”
- 17.
Such possible (or virtual) “novels” within the novel are: “Leben und Taten des Chetia aus der Familie des ehemaligen Priesters” (“Life and Actions of Chetia, of the Former Priest’s Family”), “Das Buch der drei alten Könige” (“The Book of the Three Old Kings”), “Wisramiani, ein Buch über das Leben der beiden Liebenden” (“Wisramiani, a Book about the Life of the Two Lovers”).
- 18.
My translation from the German edition: “Erst nachdem ich die drei verschiedenen Inhaltsverzeichnisse erstellt hatte, begriff ich, dass man aus den sechsunddreißig Heften unendlich viele Buch-Büchlein und Lebensgeschichten verschiedenen Umfangs und Inhalts machen kann./Diese sechsunddreißig von mir geklebten Hefte erzählen beliebig viele Geschichten über die Johannesinseln. … Deshalb verzichtete ich darauf, neue Büchlein daraus zu erstellen … jeder, der die Hefte in der Hand hat, [kann] beliebig damit verfahren.”
- 19.
Cf. Garrett Stewart, Bookwork. Medium to Object to Concept to Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
- 20.
Cf. Dominique Moldehn, Buchwerke, Künstlerbücher als Buchobjekte 1960–1994 (Nürnberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 1996), 181.
- 21.
My translation from the German edition: “Wenn man sich entscheidet, alle Hefte zu lesen, ist es egal, wo man beginnt. Man muss nur das Gelesene mit einem Kreuz kennzeichnen und dann zu einem anderen Heft greifen. Die Geschichte wird so oder so verständlich, egal in welcher Anordnung.”
- 22.
“To the ones who want to continue, poetize and add, I can give hope with the words of Marco Polo, the coolest of reporters, whose last words before his death were: ‘I haven’t told half of what I have seen!’” The German edition reads: “Den Fortsetzenden, Nachdichtenden und Hinzufügenden kann ich … mit den Worten Marco Polos, des coolsten aller Berichterstatter, Mut zusprechen, dessen letzte Worte vor seinem Tod waren: ‘Ich habe nicht die Hälfte von dem erzählt, was ich gesehen habe!’” (Morchiladze, Santa Esperanza, white booklet, 42)
- 23.
Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel (New York: Knopf, 1989).
- 24.
See the special issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction 18, no. 2 (1998), featuring the following essays: Andreas Leitner, “Dictionary of the Khazars as an Epistemological Metaphor,” 155–163; Dagmar Burkhart, “Culture as Memory: On the Poetics of Milorad Pavić,” 164–171; Rachel Kilbourn Davis, “Dictionary of the Khazars as a Khazar Jar,” 172–182; Tomislav Z. Longinovic, “Chaos, Knowledge, and Desire: Narrative Strategies in Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars,” 183–190.
- 25.
“Without this information you would not find a beginning or an end, even though neither beginning nor end have to be understood necessarily.” The German edition reads: “Ohne diese Angaben findet man keinen Anfang und kein Ende, obwohl weder Anfang noch Ende unbedingt verstanden werden müssen” (white booklet, 5).
- 26.
Pavić, Dictionary, 12–13.
- 27.
Pavić, Last Love in Constantinople, 172.
- 28.
Chris Ware, Building Stories (New York: Pantheon, 2012).
- 29.
Drucker, Century, xi and passim.
Bibliography
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Cotter, Holland. 2004. Introduction. In The Century of Artists’ Books, ed. Johanna Drucker, 2nd ed., xi–xxii. New York: Granary Books.
Danielewski, Mark Z. 2000. House of Leaves. New York: Pantheon.
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———. 1985. Ariadne. Bancroft: Arcana.
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Schmitz-Emans, M. (2019). Book Design as Literary Strategy: Aka Morchiladze’s Novel Santa Esperanza and Its Poetics of Playful Storytelling. In: Schaefer, H., Starre, A. (eds) The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22545-2_10
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