Freud's Masterplot Author(s): Peter Brooks Source: Yale French Studies, No. 55/56, Literature and Psychoanalysis.

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PeterBrooks Freud'sMasterplot
As if theywould confine th' Interminable, And tie him to his own prescript.

In one of his best essays in "narratology," wherehe is working of principles towarda greater formalization advancedby Vladimir a model TzvetanTodorovelaborates Proppand ViktorShklovsky,
of narrative transformation wherebynarrativeplot (le recit) is con1 Transformation-a change in a predicate term comresemblance. of difference mon to beginning and end-represents a synthesis and resemblance; it is, we mightsay, the same-but-different. Now "the is a common (and if inadequate, not altogether same-but-different" that the master false) definition of metaphor.If Aristotleaffirmed

difference stituted and in the tensionof two formal categories,

moderntreatmust have an eye for resemblances, of metaphor mentsof the subjecthave affirmed of difequallythe importance
ference includedwithinthe operationof resemblance, the chiefvalue of the metaphor residing in its "tension." Narrative operates as of resemblance,in that it brings into metaphorin its affirmation relationdifferent actions,combinesthemthrough perceivedsimilarities (Todorov's common predicate term), appropriatesthem to a common plot, which implies the rejectionof merelycontingent (or unassimilable)incident or action. The plottingof meaning cannot

do without metaphor, formeaning in plotis the structure of action

1 Tzvetan Todorov, "Les Transformations in Poetique de la narratives," prose (Paris: Seuil, 1971), p. 240. Todorov's terms recit and histoirecorrespondto the Russian Formalistdistinction betweensjuzet and fabula. In English,we mightuse with the same sense of distinctions: narrativeplot and story. I wish at the outset of this essay to expressmy debt to two colleagues whose thinking has helped to clarify my own: Andrea Bertoliniand David A. Miller. It is to the latter that I owe the term "the narratable."

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Peter Brooks in closed and legible wholes. Metaphor is in this sense totalizing. Yet it is equally apparentthat the key figureof narrativemust in some sense be not metaphorbut metonymy: the figureof conrelations.2 The tiguityand combination,the figureof syntagmatic as the figureof movedescriptionof narrativeneeds metonymy chain, of the slippage of the ment, of linkage in the signifying That Jacques Lacan has equated meunder the signifier. signified tonomyand desire is of the utmost pertinence,since desire must be considered the very motor of narrative,its dynamicprinciple. of as a definition The problem with "the same-but-different" and stasis in the narrativewould be the implicationof simultaneity The postulationof a static model indeed is the central formulation. work on narrative, deficiencyof most formalistand structuralist structures of narrativein which has sought to make manifestthe spatial and atemporalterms,as versionsof Levi-Strauss'"atemporal 3 Todorov is an exception in that, faithful to matrix structure." Propp, he recognizesthe need to consider sequence and succession as well as the paradigmaticmatrix.He supplementshis definition with the remark: "Rather than a 'coin withtwo faces,'[transformaat once resemtion] is an operation in two directions: it affirms blance and difference;it puts time into motion and suspends it, in a single movement; it allows discourse to acquire a meaning without this meaning becoming pure information;in a word, it I The image possible and revealsits verydefinition." makes narrative
2 See Roman jakobson, "Two Types of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,"in jakobson and Halle, Fundamentalsof Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1956). Todorov in a later articleadds to "transformaof narrative. tion" the term "succession," and sees the pair as definitional He discusses the possible equation of these termswith Jakobson's"metato conclude that "the connectionis possible but phor" and "metonymy," does not seem necessary." (Todorov, "The Two Principles of Narrative," Diacritics,Fall, 1971, p. 42.) But thereseem to be good reasons to maintain to two aspects of virtually Jakobson'sterms as "master tropes" referring any text. 3 See Claude Levi-Strauss, "La Structure et la forme,"Cahiers de l'Institut de science 6conomique appliquee, 99, sdrie M, no. 7 (1960), p. 29. This termis cited withapprovalby A. J.Greimasin Sgmantiquestructurale (Paris: Larousse, 1966) and Roland Barthes,in "IntroductionA l'analyse 8 (1966). structuraledes recits," Communications 4 Todorov, "Les Transformations narratives,"Poetique de la prose, p. 240. Translationsfromthe French,here and elsewhere,are my own.

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Yale French Studies of a double operationupon time has the value of returning us to the evident but frequently eluded fact that narrativemeaningsare developed in time,that any narrative partakesmore or less of what Proust called "un jeu formidable ... avec le Temps," and that this game of time is not merelyin the world of reference(or in the fabula) but as well in the narrative,in the sjwtet,be it only that 5 the meaningsdeveloped by narrative take time: the timeof reading. If at the end of a narrative we can suspend time in a momentwhere past and present hold togetherin a metaphorwhich may be the veryrecognition which,said Aristotle, everygood plot should bring, that moment does not aboiish the movement,the slidings, the errors and partial recognitionsof the middle. As Roland Barthes points out, in what so far must be counted our most satisfactory dynamicanalysis of plot, the proaireticand hermeneuticcodescode of actions,code of enigmasand answers-are irreversible:their interpretation is determined linearly, in sequence, in one direction. 6 Ultimately-Bartheswriteselsewhere-the passion thatanimates I Since for us as readersof narrative is the passion for(of) meaning. Barthes meaning (in the "classical" or "readable" text) resides in full predication,completionof the codes in a "plenitude" of signification, this passion appears to be finallya desire for the end. It is at the end-for Barthesas forAristotle-that recognition brings its illumination,which then can shed retrospectivelight. The function of the end, whetherconsideredsyntactically (as in Todorov and Barthes) or ethically(as in Aristotle) or as formalor cosmological closure(as in Barbara. H. Smithor Frank Kermode) continues to fascinate and to baffle.One of the strongeststatementsof its determinative position in narrativeplots comes in a passage from Sartre's La Nausee which bears quotation once again. Roquentin is reflecting on the meaningof "adventure" and the difference be5 Proust's phrase is cited by Gerard Genette in "Discours du recit," Figures 1II (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 182. Whereas Barthesmaintainsin "Introduction A I'analyse structurale des recits" that time belongs only to the referent of narrative, Genette gives attentionto the time of reading and its necessarylinearity.See pp. 77-78. 6 See Roland Barthes,S/Z (Paris: Seuil, 1970), p. 37. 7 "Introduction A I'analyse structurale des r~cits,"p. 27.

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Peter Brooks tween livingand narrating. When you narrate,you appear to start with a beginning.You say, "It was a fineautumn eveningin 1922. I was a notary'sclerk in Marommes." But, says Roquentin:
In realityyou have startedat the end. It was there,invisibleand present, it is what gives these few words the pomp and value of a beginning. "I was out walking,I had leftthe town withoutrealizingit, I was thinking about my money troubles." This sentence, taken simply for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundredmiles froman adventure, exactlyin a mood to let thingshappenwithoutnoticingthem.But the end is there,transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story.His moroseness, his moneytroublesare much more preciousthan ours, they are all gilded by the light of futurepassions. And the story goes on in the reverse: instantshave stopped piling themselvesup in a haphazardway one on another,theyare caughtup by the end of the story which draws themand each one in its turndraws the instantprecedingit: "It was night,the street was deserted." The sentence is thrownout negit seems superfluous;but we don't let ourselvesbe duped, we put ligently, it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we will understand later on. And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night as annunciations, as promises,or even that he has lived only those that were promises,blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure.We forgetthat the futurewasn't yet there; the man was walking in a night withoutpremonitions, which offered him in disorderlyfashionits monotonous riches,and he did not choose.8

The beginningin fact presupposesthe end..The verypossibilityof meaningplottedthrough timedepends on the anticipatedstructuring force of the ending: the interminable would be the meaningless. We read the incidentsof narration as "promisesand annunciations" of final coherence: the metaphor reached throughthe chain of metonymies.As Roquentin furthersuggests,we read only those incidents and signs which can be construed as promise and annunciation,enchained toward a construction of significance-those signs which, as in the detective story,appear to be clues to the underlying intentionality of event. The sense of beginning, then, is determined by the sense of an ending.And if we inquire further into the nature of the ending,we no doubt findthat it eventually has to do withthe humanend, with
8 Jean-PaulSartre,La Nausee (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1957), pp. 62-63.

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Yale FrenchStudies his reflection on ends. death.In Les Mots, Sartrepushesfurther and the sense of how in orderto escape contingency He describes he had to imagine as one of the children himself beingunjustified as promiseand in L'Enfancedes hommesillustres, determined, He began annunciation, by what he would becomeforposterity. to live his life retrospectively, in termsof the death that alone on existence. As he succinctly and necessity wouldconfer meaning is obituary All narration puts it, "I became my own obituary."9 death. in thatlifeacquiresdefinable meaning onlyat, and through, has WalterBenjamin In an independent but convergent argument, form claimedthatlife assumestransmissible onlyat the moment of narthisdeathis the very"authority" of death.For Benjamin, the knowledge of death,whichin our rative: we seek in fictions but in the own livesis deniedto us. Death-whichmaybe figural is so often ofthegenre classicinstances literal-quickens meaning: at which it is the "flame," saysBenjamin, we warmour "shivering"
lives. 10

We need to knowmoreabout this death-like endingwhichis of relation to in nonetheless animating meaning initiatory desire, of thetwo determines, and abouthow the interrelationship shapes, necessitates the middle-Barthes' "dilatory space" of retard, postand ponement-and the kindsof vacillation betweenillumination blindnessthat we find there.If the end is recognition which retrospectively illuminates beginning and middle,it is not the exclusive truth of thetext, whichmustinclude theprocesses along the way-the processes of "transformation"-in theirmetonymical is desire, complexity. If beginning and is ultimately desireforthe end,between lies a process we feelto be necessary (plots, Aristotle tellsus, mustbe of "a certain length") but whoserelation to originatingdesire and to end remainsproblematic. It is here that Freud'smostambitious investigation of ends in relation to begin9 Sartre,Les Mots (Paris: Gallimard,1968), p. 171. 10Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller," in Illuminations,translatedby Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 101.

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PeterBrooks nings maybe ofhelp-and maysuggest a contribution to a properly dynamic modelof plot. an essayaboutthedynamic ofendsand beginnings, interrelationship and thekindofprocesses thatconstitute themiddle. The enterprise may finda generalsort of legitimation in the fact that Beyond thePleasurePrinciple is in somesenseFreud'sownmasterplot, the text in whichhe mostfully lays out a total schemeof how life proceeds from beginning to end,and how each individual lifein its own way repeatsthe masterplot. Of Freud'svariousintentions in this text,the boldest-and most mysterious-may be to provide a theory ofcomprehension ofthedynamic ofthelife-span, itsnecessaryduration and its necessary end,hence,implicitly, a theory of the verynarratability of life.In his pursuit of his "beyond," Freud is forced to follow theimplications of argument-"to throw oneself intoa line of thought and follow it wherever it leads,"as he says late in the essay-to endsthathe had notoriginally or consciously ofa masterplot madenecessary bythestructural demands ofFreud's thought, and it is in thissensethatwe shallattempt to read it as a modelfornarrative plot. Narrative alwaysmakesthe implicit claimto be in a stateof repetition, as a goingover again of a ground alreadycovered: a the fabula, as the detective retraces the tracksof sjuzet repeating 12 This claim to an act of repetition-"Ising," "I the criminal. tell"-appears to be initiatory of narrative. It is equallyinitiatory that Freud confronts. Evidenceof a "beyond"that does not fit neatly intothe functioning of the pleasure principle comesfirst in
11 Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920), in The Standard Edition of the CompletePsychologicalWorks of SigmundFreud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1955), 18, 59. Subsequent page references will be given between parenthesesin the text. 12 J. Hillis Miller, in "Ariadne's Web" (unpublishedmanuscript), notes that the term diegesis suggeststhat narrativeis a retracingof a journey already made. On the detectivestory,see Tzvetan Todorov, "Typologiedu roman policier," Poetique de la prose, pp. 58-59.

We undertake,then, to read Beyond the Pleasure Principle as

conceived.11Beyond the Pleasure Principleshows the veryplotting

of Beyond the Pleasure Principle; it is the firstproblem and clue

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Yale French Studies the dreams of patients suffering from war neuroses, or from the traumaticneuroses of peace: dreams which returnto the moment of trauma,to relive its pain in apparentcontradiction of the wishfulfillment theory of dreams. This "dark and dismal" example is superseded by an example from "normal" life, and we have the celebrated momentof child's play: the toy thrownaway, the reel on the stringthrownout of the crib and pulled back, to the alternate exclamation of fort and da. When he has established the equivalence between making the toy disappear and the child's mother'sdisappearance,Freud is faced with a set of possible interpretations. Why does the child repeat an unpleasurableexperience? It may be answered that by staginghis mother'sdisappearanceand return,the child is compensatingfor his instinctualrenunciation. Yet the child has also staged disappearance alone, without reappearance, as a game. This may make one want to argue that the essential experience involved is the movementfrom a passive to an active role in regard to his mother's disappearance, claiming masteryin a situationwhich he has been compelled to submit to. Repetitionas the movementfrompassivityto masteryreminds us of "The Theme of the Three Caskets," whereFreud, considering Bassanio's choice of the lead casket in The Merchant of Venice -the correctchoice in the suit of Portia-decides that the choice of the right maiden in man's literaryplay is also the choice of death; by this choice, he asserts an active mastery of what he must in fact endure. "Choice stands in the place of necessity,of destiny. In this way man overcomes death, which he has recognized intellectually."t3 If repetitionis mastery,movement from the passive to the active; and if masteryis an assertionof control over what man must in fact submit to-choice, we mightsay, of an imposed end-we have alreadya suggestive commenton the grammar of plot, where repetition, takingus back again over the same ground,could have to do with the choice of ends.

13 Freud, "The Theme of the Three Caskets" (1913), Standard Edition, 12, 299.

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Peter Brooks But otherpossibilitiessuggestthemselvesto Freud at this point. The repetitionof unpleasant experience-the mother's disappearance-might be explained by the motive of revenge,which would yield its own pleasure. The uncertainty which Freud faces here is whetherrepetition can be considereda primaryevent,independent of the pleasure principle,or whetherthere is always some direct yield of pleasure of anothersort involved.The pursuitof this doubt takes Freud into the analyticexperience, to his discoveryof patients' need to repeat, ratherthan simplyremember, repressed material: the need to reproduceand to "work through"painfulmaterialfrom the past as if it were present.The analystcan detect a "compulsion to repeat," ascribed to the unconscious repressed, particularly discernablein the transference, whereit can take "ingenious"forms. The compulsion to repeat gives patientsa sense of being fatefully subject to a "perpetual recurrenceof the same thing"; it suggests to thempursuitby a daemonic power. We know also, fromFreud's essay on "The Uncanny," that this feelingof the daemonic,arising frominvoluntary is a particular attribute repetition, of the literature
14 of the uncanny.

Thus in analyticwork (as also in literary texts) thereis slim but real evidence of a compulsion to repeat which can over-ridethe pleasure principle, and which seems "more primitive,more elethan the pleasure principlewhich it overmore instinctual mentary, itself rides" (23). We mightnote at this point that the transference is a metaphor,a substitutiverelationship forthe patient's infantile and the experiences, thus approximates status of a text. Now repetitionis so basic to our experience of literarytexts that one is simultaneouslytempted to say all and to say nothing on the subject. To state the matterbaldly: rhyme, alliteration, assonance, meter, refrain, all the mnemonic elements of fictionsand indeed most of its tropes are in some manner repetitionswhich take us back in the text, which allow the ear, the eye, the mind to make connections between different textual moments,to see past and
14 See Freud, "The Uncanny" (Das Unheimliche)(1919), in Standard Edition, 17, 219-52.

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Yale FrenchStudies present as related and as establishing a future which willbe noticeable as some variation in the pattern. Todorov's"same but different" depends on repetition. If we think of thetrebling characteristicofthefolk tale,and of all formulaic literature, we mayconsider thattherepetition to the bythree constitutes theminimal repetition intentional perception of series, whichwouldmakeit the minimal structure of action, the minimum musteverpresent plot.Narrative and itselfas a repetition of eventsthat have alreadyhappened, of a generalized within thispostulate it mustmakeuse repetition of specific, perceptible repetitions in orderto createplot,thatis, to showus a significant Eventgainsmeaning interconnection ofevents. otherevents.Repetition is a return by repeating (withvariation) in thetext, is a a doubling back.We cannot saywhether thisreturn or a return return to or a return of: forinstance, a return to origins of the repressed. this ambiguity Repetition through appears to suspendtemporal process,or rather, to subjectit to an indetermoments minate shuttling or oscillationwhich binds different or back. This together as a middle which mightturn forward The relation inescapable middleis suggestive of the daemonic. of narrative plot to storymay indeedappearto partakeof the daeand the monic,as a kind of tantalizing play withthe primitive instinctual, themagicand thecurseof reproduction or "representathe operations tion." But in order to know more precisely of repetition, we need to read further in Freud'stext. "What followsis speculation" (24). With this gesture, Freud, in themanner of Rousseau'sdismissal of thefactsin theDiscourse on the Originsof Inequality, beginsthe fourth chapterand his sketchof the economicand energetic model of the mentalapparatus:thesystem Pcpt-Cs and Ucs, the roleoftheouterlayeras shield againstexcitations, and the definition of traumaas the breaching of the shield, producing a floodof stimuli whichknocks the pleasureprinciple out of operation. Given this situation, the repetition of traumatic experiences in the dreamsof neurotics can be seen to have the function retrospectively to master of seeking the floodof stimuli, to perform a mastery or binding of mobile 288

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PeterBrooks the anxietywhose omissionwas the energy through developing is Thus the repetition compulsion cause of the traumatic neurosis. before thedominance carrying outa taskthatmust be accomplished is hencea primary can begin.Repetition of the pleasure principle and moreprimitive. event,independent of the pleasureprinciple 15 oftheinstincts. Freudnowmoves intoan exploration ofthetheory the The instinctual is therealm offreely "unbound" energy: mobile, discharge, where "primary process," whereenergy seeksimmediate no postponement It appears thatit must ofgratification is tolerated. mental "the the of the to bind be task of strata apparatus higher process"before the the instinctual excitation reaching the primary pleasure principlecan assert its dominanceover the psychic economy (34-35). We maysaythatat thispointin theessaywe have as the assertion of mastery of repetition movedfroma postulate to activity in the child'sgame) (as in the passage from passivity works as a to a conception processof binding whereby repetition constant-state situation which towardthe creation of an energetic of postwill permit the emergence of mastery, and the possibility ponement. evokesonceagainthedaemonic ThatFreudat thispoint and the us not onlyto children's and refers uncanny natureof repetition, in storytelling, demand forexactrepetition playbut as wellto their in all its literary Repetition pointsour way back to literature. a binding oftextual manifestations mayin factworkas a "binding," theminto by putting energies that allows themto be mastered of the narrative. economy serviceable formwithinthe energetic mustin this case meanperceptible form Serviceable form:repetiall thesejourneys back in the text, tion,repeat, recall,symmetry, moment returns to and returns of,thatallowus to bindone textual to another of similarity or substitution rather thanmere in terms
15 I shall use the term"instinct" since it is the translation of Trieb given throughoutthe Standard Edition. But we should realize that "instinct" is inadequate and somewhatmisleading, since it loses the sense of "drive" associated with the word Trieb. The currently accepted French translation, me here might pulsion,is more to our purposes: the model that interests indeed be called "pulsional."

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Yale FrenchStudies continguity. Textualenergy, all thatis arousedintoexpectancy and possibility in a text-the termwill need moredefinition, but corresponds well enoughto our experience of reading-canbecome usablebyplotonlywhenit has beenboundor formalized. It cannot otherwise be plotted in a courseto significant whichis discharge, what the pleasureprinciple is chargedwith doing.To speak of "binding" in a literary textis thusto speakofanyoftheformalizations(which, like binding, maybe painful, thatforceus retarding) to recognize sameness within or of difference, the veryemergence a sijzet from thematerial offabula. We needat present Freudintohis closerinquiry to follow conthe the to cerning relation between compulsion repeatand the lies in "a universal instinctual. The answer ofinstincts attribute and perhapsof organiclife in general," that "an instinct is an urge
inherentin organic life to restorean earlier state of things" (36).

Instincts, which we tendto think of as a drivetoward change, may rather of"theconservative be an expression ofliving nature things." The organism has no wishto change;ifits conditions remained the of same, it would constantly life. repeatthe very same course Modifications are theeffect ofexternal and thesemodificastimuli, tionsare in turnstoredup forfurther so that,while repetition, the instincts may give the appearance of tending towardchange, they"are merely seeking to reachan ancientgoal by pathsalike old and new" (38). Hence Freudis able to proffer, witha certain
bravado, the formulation: "the aim of all life is death." We are

givenan evolutionary imageof the organism in whichthe tension created by externalinfluences has forced living substanceto "diverge ever morewidelyfrom its original courseof life and to make ever more complicated detoursbeforereaching its aim of death"(38-49).In thisview,the self-preservative instincts function to assurethatthe organism shall follow its own path to death,to ward offany ways of returning to the inorganic whichare not immanent to the organism itself.In otherwords,"the organism wishesto die only in its own fashion." It muststruggle against 290

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PeterBrooks events (dangers) whichwouldhelpit to achieveits goal too rapidly -by a kindof short-circuit. We are here somewhere near the heartof Freud'smasterplot a certainanalyticforcein its for organiclife,and it generates superimposition on fictional plots.Whatoperates in thetextthrough repetition is the deathinstinct, the drivetowardthe end. Beyond and underthe domination is thisbaseline of the pleasure principle ofplot,its basic "pulsation," sensible or audiblethrough therepetitionswhichtake us back in the text.Repetition can take us both have becomereversbackwards and forwards because theseterms ible: the end is a timebeforethe beginning. Betweenthesetwo moments of quiescence, plot itself standsas a kindof divergence or deviance, a postponement in the discharge whichleads back to the inanimate. For plot starts(mustgive the illusionof starting) fromthat moment at whichstory, or "life,"is stimulated from a kind of quiescenceinto a state of narratability, into a tension, irritation, whichdemandsnarration. Any reflection on novelistic beginnings shows the beginning as an awakening, an arousal,the 16 To say thisis birth ofan appetency, desire ambition, or intention. of courseto say-perhapsmorepertinently-that beginnings are the arousal of an intention in reading,stimulation into a tension. eroticnatureof the tensionof writing (The specifically and its a number rehearsal in reading of could be demonstrated through exemplary texts,notably Rousseau'saccount, in The Confessions, of how his novelLa NouvelleHeloise was bornof a masturbatory reverie and itsnecessary or thevery similar ofJean fictions, opening des fleurs; Genet'sNotre-Dame butof coursethe sublimated forms of the tensionare just as pertinent.) The ensuing narrative-the Aristotelean "middle"-is maintained in a state of tension, as a the quiescence prolonged deviance from is of the "normal"-which to say, the unnarratable-until it reachesthe terminal quiescence ofa narrative oftheend.The development is showsthatthetension
16 On the beginning as intention, see Edward Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York: Basic Books, 1975). It occurs to me that the exemplarynarrativebeginningmight be that of Kafka's Metamorphosis: into a monstrousvermin. waking up to find oneselftransformed

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Yale FrenchStudies as an ever morecomplicated postponement or detour maintained leadingback to the goal of quiescence.As Sartreand Benjamin compellingly argued, the narrative musttendtowardits end,seek death, the illumination in its owndeath.Yet thismustbe theright is related to thedanger correct end.The complication ofthedetour the dangerof reaching the end too quickly,of of short-circuit: death. The improper end indeed lurks the im-proper achieving as thewrong choice: choiceofthe throughout frequently narrative, of the magicalagent,false erotic wrongcasket,misapprehension in theclassicalnovel object-choice. The development of thesubplot has a different intimated) usuallysuggests(as WilliamEmpson workedthrough by the main plot,and solutionto the problems 17 standsas of The subplot the short-circuit. illustrates danger often that offthe danger of short-circuit, assuring one meansof warding to the right end. The desire the mainplot will continue through of the text(the desireof reading) is hencedesireforthe end,but the at least minimally desirefor the end reachedonly through whichis in tension, complicated the intentional deviance, detour, the plotof narrative. whichis irritation: these are Deviance,detour,an intention of characteristics of the narratable, of "life"as it is the material or is a of kind arabesque narrative, of fabulabecomesjutet.Plot Trim'sarabesquewith squiggle toward the end. It is like Corporal his stick, in Tristram Shandy, retraced by Balzac at the startofLa Peau de chagrin to indicate the arbitrary, transgressive, gratuitous its deviancefrom line,the shortest line of narrative, the straight distance between beginning and end-which wouldbe the collapse death.Freud'stextwill of one intotheother, oflifeintoimmediate in a moment oftheformal organizatakeus closerto understanding tionof thisdeviance toward theend.But it also at thispointoffers further suggestions aboutthebeginning. For whenhe has identified both the death instincts and the life (sexual) instincts as conserstateof things, vative, tending toward the restoration of an earlier
17 See William Empson, "Double Plots," in Some Versions of Pastoral (New York: New Directions, 1960), pp. 25-84.

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Peter Brooks Freud feels obliged to deconstructthe will to believe in a human drive toward perfection, an impulsionforwardand upward: a force which-he here quotes Faust as the classic text of man's forward striving-"ungebdndigt immervorwdrts dringt."The illusion of the striving toward perfection is to be explained by instinctualrepression and the persistingtension of the repressed instinct,and the resultingdifference between the pleasure of satisfactiondemanded and that which is achieved,a difference which "providesthe driving factorwhichwill permitof no haltingat any positionattained" (36). This process of subtractionreappearsin modified formin the work of Lacan, where it is the difference between need (the infant'sneed for the breast) and demand (which is always demand for recognition) that gives as its result desire, which is preciselythe driving power, of plot certainly, since desire for Lacan is a metonymy, the forwardmovementof the signifying chain. If Roman Jakobsonis able, in his celebrated essay, to associate the metonymic pole with prose fiction (particularlythe nineteenth-century novel)-as the metaphoricpole is associated with lyric poetry-it would seem to be because the meaningspeculiar to narrativeinhere(or, as Lacan would say, "insist") in the metonymic chain, in the drive of desire toward meaning in time.18 The next-to-last chapterof Beyond the Pleasure Principlecannot here be rehearsedin detail. In brief,it leads Freud twice into the findings of biology,first on the track of the originsof death,to find out whetherit is a necessaryor merelya contingent alternativeto interminability, then in pursuit of the origins of sexuality,to see whetherit satisfies the description of the instinctual as conservative. Biologycan offer no sure answerto eitherinvestigation, but it offers at least metaphorical confirmation of the necessary dualism of Freud's thought,and encouragement to reformulate his earlier opposition of ego instincts to sexual instinctsas one between life instinctsand death instincts, a shiftin the groupingof oppositional
18 See Jakobson,"Two Types of Language...". See, in Lacan's work, especially "Le Stade du miroir" and "L'Instance de la lettre dans Finconscient,"in Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966).

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Yale French Studies forces which then allows him to reformulate the libidinal instincts themselvesas the Eros "of the poets and philosophers"whichholds all living things together,and which seeks to combine things in ever greaterlivingwholes. Desire would then seem to be totalizing in intent,a process tending toward combination in new unities: metonymy in the search to become metaphor. But forthe symmetry of Freud's oppositionto be complete,he needs to be able to ascribe to Eros, as to the death instinct,the characteristicof a need to restore an earlier state of things. Since biology will not answer, Freud, in a remarkablegesture,turns toward myth,to come up with Plato's Androgyne, which preciselyascribes Eros to a search to recover a lost primal unity which was split asunder. Freud's apologetictone in this last twistto his argumentis partlydisingenuous, for we detect a contentment to have formulatedthe forces of the human masterplotas "philosopherand poet." The apology is coupled witha reflection thatmuch of the obscurity of the processes Freud has been considering"is merelydue to our being obliged to operatewiththe scientific terms,that is to say withthe figurative language, peculiar to psychology"(60). Beyond the Pleasure Principle, we are to understand, is not merelymetapsychology, it is also mythopoesis, necessarily resembling "an equation withtwo unknown quantities" (57), or, we mightsay, a formaldynamicthe terms of which are not substantialbut purely relational. We perceive that Beyond the Pleasure Principleis itselfa plot which has formulated that dynamicnecessaryto its own detour. The last chapter of Freud's text recapitulates, but not without difference. He returnsto the problem of the relationshipbetween the instinctualprocesses of repetitionand the dominance of the pleasure principle.One of the earliestand most important functions of the mental apparatus is to bind the instinctualimpulses which impingeupon it, to convert freelymobile energyinto a quiescent cathexis. This is a preparatory act on behalf of the pleasure principle, which permitsits dominance. Sharpeninghis distinctionbetween a functionand a tendency,Freud argues that the pleasure principleis a "tendencyoperatingin the serviceof a function whose 294

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PeterBrooks from excitation entirely apparatus it is to freethe mental business or to keep it as in it constant of excitation or to keep the amount "withthe most is concerned low as possible"(62). This function to the to return substance-namely ofall living endeavour universal quiescence of the inorganicworld." Hence one can consider theexcitation which prepares function to be a preliminary "binding" In thismanner, of discharge. in thepleasure elimination foritsfinal and the deathinstinct compulsion we could say thatthe repetition thepleasure principle, sense, in a larger principle; servethepleasure and especially without from ofstimuli watchon theinvasion keeping serves the death instinct, seekingtheir discharge, fromwithin, to quiescence. to return is permitted surethattheorganism making appearsas a taming of the mentalapparatus The wholeevolution tamed, displaced principle-itself so thatthepleasure oftheinstincts calledlifewhich detour to dominate -can appear in thecomplicated leads back to death.In fact,Freudseemshereat the veryend to in a serve one another instincts that the two antagonistic imply economy and self-regulatory whichis a perfect interaction dynamic and internecessary whichmakesboth end and detourperfectly mustlive in orderto die in the proper The organism dependent. to die the rightdeath.We musthave the arabesqueof manner, in order plot in orderto reachthe end. We musthave metonymy to reachmetaphor. quiescence, ends(death, effectively structures modelwhich dynamic intotension, (Eros,stimulation against beginnings non-narratability) the middle that necessitates in a manner the desireof narrative) of towardthe end underthe compulsion as detour,as struggle space of the text.We imposeddelay,as arabesquein the dilatory beginbetween distance of the necessary detectsome illumination the prevent them butwhich connect which ningand end,the drives back into the other: the way in whichmetonymy one collapsing of the temporality and metaphor the necessary serveone another, transthenarrative constitutes which to Todorov same-but-different that along the way of the further formation. The model suggests
295 We emergefromreadingBeyond the Pleasure Principle with a

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Yale FrenchStudies path frombeginning to end-in the middle-we have repetitions serving to bind the energy of the textin orderto make its final discharge more effective. In fictional plots,these bindings are a systemof repetitions whichare returns to and returns of, confounding the movement forward to theend witha movement back to origins, reversing meaning within forward-moving time,serving to formalize the system of textual energies, offering the possibility (or theillusion) of "meaning" wrested from "life." As a dynamic-energetic model of narrative plot,then,Beyond thePleasurePrinciple givesan imageof how "life,"or the fabula, is stimulated intothecondition ofnarrative, becomessju'et: enters intoa stateof devianceand detour(ambition, quest,thepose of a mask)in whichit is maintained-for a certain an at time,through least minimally complexextravagance, before returning to the quiescence ofthenon-narratable. The energy generated by deviance, extravagance, excess-an energy to thetextual which hero's belongs careerand to the readers'expectation, his desireof and for the text-maintains the plot in its movement the vacillating through play of the middle, whererepetition as binding workstowardthe generation of significance, and the retrospective toward recognition illumination which willallowus to grasp thetextas totalmetaphor, but not therefore to discount the metonymies thathave led to it. The desireof thetextis ultimately the desireforthe end,forthat recognition whichis the moment of the death of the readerin the text. Yet recognition cannot abolish textuality, does not annulthe middlewhich,in its oscillation betweenblindness and recognition, between origin and endings, is thetruth ofthenarrative text. It is characteristic of textual in narrative energy thatit should be on theverge always ofpremature ofshort-circuit. discharge, The readerexperiences the fear-and excitation-of the improper end, which is symmetrical to-but far more immediate and present than-the fearof endlessness. of short-circuit The possibility can of coursebe represented to theprotagonist in all rnanner of threats or to any of the functional it logics whichdemandcompletion; 296

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PeterBrooks mostcommonly takestheform oftemptation to themistaken erotic objectchoice, who maybe of the "Belle Dame sans merci" variety, or maybe thetoo-perfect and henceannihilatory bride.Throughout the Romantictradition, it is perhapsmost notablythe imageof incest(of the fraternal-sororal variety) whichhoversas the sign ofa passioninterdicted becauseitsfulfillment wouldbe too perfect, a discharge indistinguishable from death, theverycessation of narrativemovement. Narrative is in a state of temptation to oversameness, and wherewe have no literalthreatof incest (as in or Faulkner), Chateaubriand, loverschooseto turnthebelovedinto a soul-sister so thatpossession willbe either or mortal: impossible Werther and Lotte, ofthetradition, forinstance, or,at theinception Rousseau'sLa NouvelleHeloise,whereSaint-Preux's to Julie letter their following night oflove begins: "Mourons, o ma douce amie." Incestis onlytheexemplary version ofa temptation of short-circuit fromwhichthe protagonist and the text mustbe led away,into intothe cure whichprolongs narrative. detour, It mayfinally be in the logic of our argument that repetition speaksin the text of a return whichultimately subverts the very notionof beginning and end,suggesting thatthe idea of beginning presupposes theend,thattheendis a time before thebeginning, and hencethatthe interminable nevercan be finally bound in a plot. Freud would eventually is inherently interminAnalysis, discover, able, since the dynamics of resistance can and the transference new beginnings in relation alwaysgenerate to any possibleend.19 It is the roleof fictional an end which plotsto impose yetsuggests a return, a new beginning: a rereading. A narrative, thatis, wants at its end to refer us back to its middle, to theweb of thetext: to us in its doomedenergies. recapture One ought at thispointto makea newbeginning, and to sketch the possibleoperation of the modelin the studyof the plot of a fiction. One could,forinstance, take Dickens'GreatExpectations. One would have to show how the energy releasedin the textby
19 See Freud,"AnalysisTerminable and Interminable" (1937), in Standard Edition, 23, 216-53.

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Yale FrenchStudies "primal scene"-Pip's terrifying meeting withMagwitch itsliminary of desired bound in a number in the graveyard-issubsequently Pip's "being bound" as apbut unsatisfactory ways (including of intent the "dream"plot of Satis House, the apparent prentice, but ultimately in censored and simultaneously the "expectations"), all the returns of the repressed more satisfying ways (through The mostsalientdevice of of Pip and his convict). identification back-fromLondon the journey this novel's"middle"is literally is origins which to apparent return town-a repeated to Pip's home ofwhatPip calls "thatold spellofmy oftherepressed, also a return that each of to demonstrate childhood.'It would be interesting forward life-furthering, whileconsciously Pip's choicesin thenovel, questionof origins, oriented, in factleads back, to the insoluble ofhis name,so thattheend of thenarrative-its to thepalindrome "discharge"- appearsas the imageof a "life"curedof "plot,"as celibateclerkforClarrikers. the searchforprogress, ascension, whileostensibly Pip's story, of an attempted all be the narrative mayafter and metamorphosis, of origin through to reachan assertion of the effort homecoming: the timebeforein the to findthe same in the different, ending, novels tell this timeafter.Most of the greatnineteenth-century form same tale. GeorgLukacs has called the novel "the literary of the idea," and arguedthatit of the transcendent homelessness thattime,the is in the discrepancy idea and the organic between of the novel as of no becomesconstitutive processof duration, other genre:
to findthe is seeking and failing Onlyin the novel,whoseverymatter of is timeposited withthe form:timeis the resistance together essence, of life-to the present a meresemblance the organic-whichpossesses enclosed imits owncompletely within thewill of lifeto remain meaning, from life,and hencethe is separated manence.... In the novel,meaning essential we might almostsay that the entireinner fromthe temporal; 20 oftime. against thepower buta struggle actionof thenovelis nothing

20 Georg Lukacs, The Theoryof the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), p. 122.

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PeterBrooks the transformation of the The understanding of time,says Lukdcs, is the workof struggle againsttimeintoa processfullof interest, memory-or moreprecisely, we could say withFreud,of "rememreebering, repeating, working through." Repetition, remembering, nactement are the ways in whichwe replaytime,so that it may time not be lost.We are thusalwaystrying to workback through to thattranscendent home,knowing of coursethatwe cannot. All we can do is subvert or, perhapsbetter, pervert time: whichis whatnarrative does.21 To forgoany true demonstration on a novel,and to bringa to theassertion, semblance ofconclusion, we mayreturn byBarthes of a set and Todorov,thatnarrative is essentially the articulation ofdesire. ofverbs.These verbsare nodoubtultimately all versions Desireis thewishfortheend,forfulfillment, butfulfillment delayed so thatwe can understand it in relation to origin, and to desire of stories. the story itself. The story of Scheherezade is doubtless This suggests that the tale as read is inhabited by the reader's desire, and thatfurther analysis shouldbe directed to thatdesire, not (in the manner desireand of NormanHolland)his individual and its originsin his own personality, but his transindividual intertextually determined desireas a reader.Because it concerns themiddle endsin relation to beginnings and theforces that animate in between, Freud'smodelis suggestive of whata readerengages as essentially whenhe responds to plot.It imagesthatengagement dynamic, an interaction witha system of energy whichthe reader Thisin turn thePleasure activates. suggests why we can readBeyond Principle as a text concerning textuality, and conceivethatthere can be a psychoanalytic criticism of the textitself thatdoes not become-as has usually beenthecase-a study ofthepsychogenesis of the text (the author'sunconscious), the dynamics of literary of response (the reader'sunconscious), or the occult motivations the characters (postulating an "unconscious" forthem). It is rather
21 Genette discusses Proust's "perversion" of time in "Discours du recit,"p. 182. "Remembering, Repeating,and WorkingThrough"(Erinnern, Wiederholenund Durcharbeiten)(1914) is the subject of one of Freud's papers on technique. See Standard Edition, 12, 145-56.

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Yale FrenchStudies of the mental of the modelof the functioning the superimposition the possibility of the textthatoffers apparatus on the functioning of criticism. And here the superimposition of a psychoanalytic on the of fiction seems a valid and plots masterplot Freud'spsychic with the contradictory Plot mediatesmeanings usefulmaneuver. humanworld of the eternaland the mortal.Freud's masterplot and speaksto our verydesire of desire, speaksof the temporality forfictional plots.

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