The Style of Greimas and Its Transformations

Cesare Segre; John Meddemmen

New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 3, Greimassian Semiotics. (Spring, 1989), pp. 679-692.
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T h e Style of Greimas and Its Transformations

Cesare Segre

a chance encounter with the recent de

l'irnperfection (1987) of A. J . Greimas on the part of a reader
who had never heard of its author; he would, I believe, at
once relate the book to the most recherchk tradition of contemporary
French essay writing, to Blanchot and Barthes.
Two passages in italics at the beginning and end of the book serve
to frame the whole, and the way they are constructed manifestly aims
for syntactical and rhetorical effect. The opening section, in prose, is
made up of two "strophes." The two sentences of the first "strophe"
are scanned by the rhyme paraftre, Ctre, uouloir-Ctre, devoir-&re, followed
by paraitre, peut Ctre, peut-itre (with subtle semantic correctio); it concludes with syntagms which fall outside this schema: de'uiation du sew,
a peine uiuible.' The second sentence opens with an assertive proposition followed by two interrogative elements of increasing length. The
final statement of the first "strophe," and the first statement of the
second, constitute the underlying theme: "Seul le paraftre en tant que
peut itre-ou peut-Ctre-est a peine uiuible. Ceci dit, il constitue tout de rnCrne
notre condition d'hornrne" (Only seeming as possibility-or possibly-is
barely tolerable. Nonetheless this is what constitutes our human condition) ( 9 ) . But the final interrogative sees this paraftre as a foundation, albeit a hypothetical one, fragile and elusive, for crucial questions of life and death: "Et, pour solde de tout cornpte, ce voile de furne'e
peut-il se dkchirer un peu et s'entr'ouuir sur la vie ou la rnort, qu'irnporte?"
(And, all things said and done, if this veil of smoke clears a little and
opens onto life or death, what does it matter?) ( 9 ) .
What we are being invited to, then, is a journey into the world of
paraftre, on the assumption that it will reveal to us, in however sibylline
a fashion, something about itre. It is a journey that takes the form of
an analysis of short literary passages, from Tournier, Calvino, Rilke,
Tanizaki, Cortazar, all brought together under the common heading
"La fracture," and of considerations of a more general nature, entitled "Les echappatoires."
The passage which brings the book to a close is made up of three
prose "strophes," these too shot through with rhyme and assonance
(indicible, inuzsible, unique, possible; e'panouies, vie, partie); they are furET U S I M A G I N E

680

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

ther linked together by parallelisms in their syntactical construction:

"Vaines tentatives . . . quCte de l'inattendu qui se derobe. . . .
L'innocence: reve d'un retour aux sources . . ." (Vain attempts . . . the
quest for the fleeting unexpected. . . . Innocence: the dream of a
return to origins), and so on; "l'imperfection, dkviante, remplit ainsi
en partie . . ." (imperfection, divergent, thus in part fulfills . . .), and
so on; "L'imperfection apparait comme un tremplin . . ." (imperfection appears as a trampoline . . .), and so on (99).
In this latter passage, figures of being (la chose, unique, la vie), or of
its revelation (le sew), stand in sharp contrast to marks of impossibility
(indicible, invisible, nigatiuiti). This impossibility finds expression as
longing, and thus becomes a temporary surrogate of being: "Nostalgies
et attentes nounissent l'imaganaire dont les formes, fanies ou bpanouies, tiennent lieu de la vie" (Nostalgias and expectations feed the imaginary
whose withered or full forms take the place of life) (99). But in the
event, they act as a means of arriving at being; it is, then, a victory of
the very imperfection which forms the subject of the volume:
"L'imperfection apparaz^t comme u n tremplin qui nous projette de
I'insignifiance uers le sens" (Imperfection appears as a trampoline that
projects us from insignificance toward meaning) (99).
That the "nostalgies et attentes," or, as we read a little further on,
the "qugte de I'inattendu," should tend toward the safeguarding of
aesthetic values ("les ualeurs dites esthitiques sont les seules propres, les
seules, en refusant toute nigatiuitb, a nous tirer uers le haut" [aesthetic
values are the only ones, the ones that, in refusing all negativity, can
draw us upwards] [99]) becomes possible once the word "esthktique"
is taken back to its original root derivation and regarded as
"sensation" and "sensibility." This is why, toward the end of the book,
Greimas can speak of "esthksis" rather than of aesthetics: "l'espoir
attentifd'une esthbis unique . . ." (the expectant hope for a unique aesthesis . . .) (99). Sensation, sensibility: it comes down to a longing for
the primordial activity of the mind. This is why the negative terms
with in- give way at last to a positive in-: innocence: "Que reste-t-il?
L'innocence: r2ue d'un retour aux sources alors que l'homme et le monde ne
faisaient qu'un duns une pancalie oripnelle" (What remains? Innocence:
the dream of a return to origins when man and the world were united
in an original pancalia) (99). Thus the final strophe, interrogative at
its beginning ("Que reste-t-il?"), ends on a note of invocation: "Mehr
Licht!", and not, say, "plus de sens!" or "plus d'etre!"
The book as a whole is coherently in line with this approach. Rather
than follow out its line of reasoning, I too will follow up the faintly
discernible traces of a technique whose research is conducted through
suggestions. It should be noted in passing that semiotic technical

THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

68 1

terms and visual, and even tactile, sensations now coexist: "La narrativisation du comportement de la goutte, manifestee a l'aide d'une
aspectualisation spatiale-inchoativite lente, allongement, enflures'achkve par un figement momentank, en forme de poire, suggkrant,
du fait d'une forte pathemisation, certaines galbes du corps feminin,
mais surtout les volumes et les courbures de I'esthetique baroque"
(The narrativization of the behavior of the drop, that is manifested by
means of a spatial aspectualization-slow inchoativity, lengthening,
swelling-ends in a momentary coalescence, in the form of a pear,
suggesting, through strong pathemization, certain curves of the female body, but especially the volumes and curvatures of Baroque
aesthetics) (20). Here we have, on the one hand, nun-atiuisation, aspectualisation, inchoatiuitk, and so on, and on the other, allongement, enflure,
galbes, courbures.
This movement from sensation to knowledge takes place amidst
perfumes and harmonies; it is subject to fascinations, and aspires to a
carnal and spiritual union with the sacred, from which new meanings
can be expected; the immanence of the sensible is rediscovered by way
of the changing moods of the subject:
Encore faut-il que des harmonies parfumees, cachees sous ces appellations
d'origine, devoilent au sujet leurs coalescences et leurs correspondances pour
le guider, par des fascinations atroces et exaltantes, vers de nouvelles significations que procure une conjonction intime, absorbante avec le sacre, charnelle et spirituelle a la fois . . . Les humeurs du sujet retrouvent alors
I'immanence du sensible.
[Yet, hidden under these original designations, perfumed harmonies must
unveil their coalescences and correspondences and, through dreadful, exalting fascinations, guide the subject toward new significations produced by
intimate and absorbing conjunction with the sacred, carnal, and spiritual . . .
The subject's temperament hence regains the immanence of the sensible.]

(78)

The sacred as a perspective of knowledge also reappears with respect

to poetic language, whose nonprofane nature is underlined (rhythm
of expectations and expectations of expectations, while expectation
has as its language, music: "un fond sonore, musical sert de soubassement A cette isotopie de I'attente" [a background musical noise serves
as a base for this isotopy of expectation] [40]); it will lead, if not
directly to the sacred, at least to its threshold (93-94).
Engagement with this half-glimpsed new knowledge involves traditional, time-honored entities like body and soul, object and subject,
death and life. In point of fact, subject and object come into contact

682

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

thanks to the "saisie esthetique" (the syntagm is recurrent in the

book); but behind this contact there loom the potentially eschatological hypostases of body and soul, in the expectation of attaining to an
intuition of life and of death. The conceptual shifts involved are often
spelled out: "Le tressaillement, concretisation de l'esthksie, se trouve
donc distribuk a la fois sur le suject et l'objet, il marque le syncrktisme
de ces deux actants, une fusion momentanee de I'homme et d u
monde, reunissant en m@metemps, pour dire comme Descartes, la
passion de I'ame et celle du corps" (The shudder that materializes
aesthesis is thus distributed over both subject and object, it marks the
syncretism of the two actants, a momentary fusion of man and the
world, joining at the same time, to quote Descartes, the passions of the
soul and the body) (31). The need for such a fusion of subject and
object is repeatedly stressed ("le desir d'une conjonction 'reelle' avec
l'objet" [the desire for a real conjunction with the object] [39]; "une
fusion totale du sujet et de l'objet" [a total fusion of the subject and the
object] [73]), and its realization on the physical plane is insisted upon:
"C'est sur le plan physique, au niveau de la sensation pure-les parcelles de la matiere resplendissant de toutes les couleurs et allant
s'introduire dans les yeux--que se fait la conjonction de l'objet et du
sujet ou, plut8t, l'envahissement du sujet par l'objet" (It is at the
physical level, that of pure sensation-particles of matter radiating all
the colors and penetrating the eyes-that the conjunction of .he object and subject occurs or, rather, the invasion of the subject by the
object), and so on (52). In this fusion (it is a metaphor, but one which
clearly points to the domain of vision, if not of ecstasy) an important
aspect, underlined elsewhere, is the chromatic element: "Ainsi, m$me
dans le monde rationalis6 d e la visualitk, le plus superficiel des sens,
on distingue des paliers echelonnes de I'eidCtique, du chromatique et,
en dernihe instance, de la lumiere" (Hence, even in the rationalized
world of the visual, the most superficial of the senses, we can distinguish a gradation in levels of the eidetic, of the chromatic, and finally
of light) (73). Nor, to go back to primary forms of contact, is the tactile
aspect absent (30), or even the olfactory (42).
The process seemingly sketched out in these pages of Greimas appears to start from the subject and move to a reality that is seized upon
as vision; it then moves back to the subject, absorbed now into the
bosom of a reality whose outlines have been enriched at its surrealist
margins. The starting point is the woman's bare breast glimpsed by
Palomar ("la saisie esthetique est une transfiguration d u sein nu en
une vision surnaturelle" [the aesthetic apprehension is a transformation of the naked bosom into a supernatural vision] [23]); by way of
the antinomy visionlreality, the aesthetic isotopy is endowed with an

THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

683

extension which leads from reality to the surreal (32). The conclusion,
based on a tragic narrative of Cortazar, is that "ce n'est qu'a ce prix,
en acquerant une dimension tragique universelle, qu'une fiction peut
se transformer en surrealitk, susceptible d'accueillir dans son sein, lors
de la saisie esthetique, le sujet lui-mCme" (It is only at this price, in
acquiring a universal tragic dimension, that fiction can be transformed into surreality, capable of enveloping the subject himself,
during aesthetic apprehension) (64). This fusion of the subject with a
reality which almost entirely absorbs it is the conclusive moment of the
aesthetic experience, but it is also, and contemporaneously, the dissolution of the subject itself, ultimately its annihilation: "Car enfin,
l'efficacite supreme de I'objet litteraire- ou plus gCnCralement esthetique-, sa conjonction assumke par le sujet, n'est-elle pas dans sa
dissolution, dans le passage oblige par la mort du lecteur-spectateur?
Mort ou vie extatique, peu importe, n'est-ce pas I'esthCsis rCvCe?"
(For, finally, is not the supreme effect of the literary or, more generally, aesthetic object-that is, its conjunction assumed by the subject-to be found in its dissolution, in the obligatory passage of the
reader-spectator through death? Death or ecstatic life, it does not
matter, is this not the aesthesis one dreams of?) (67).
That there is something erotic here is undeniable since, in the closing pages, female attire is so insistently regarded both as an obstacle
and stimulus to transgression; for what we are offered in outline is a
theory of expectation, or, rather, of an "attente de l'inattendu" (expectation of the unexpected). What has happened to the theoretical
approach? There is some intimation of it when Greimas suggests that
we should "reskmantiser la vie en changeant 'les signes en gestes' "
(resemanticize life by changing signs into gestures) (go), or when he
suggests transcending the aesthetics of taste with the aim of attaining
to "l'intuition d'une esthetique imaginaire" (the intuition of an imaginary aesthetics) (91); or, again, when he goes so far as to reflect:
On peut r@ver:et si, au lieu d'une ambition totalisante qui cherche a transfigurer toute la vie et met en jeu l'ensemble du parcours du sujet, on pouvait
proceder a la parcellisation de ses programmes, a la valorisation du detail du
"vecu,"si un regard metonymique et soutenu s'exer~aita aborder serieusement les choses simples.
[We can dream: and if, instead of a totalizing ambition that seeks to transfigure all of life and brings into play the subject's entire trajectory, we could
begin by fragmenting these programs, by valorizing the detail of the "lived,"
if a metonymical and concentrated gaze attempted seriously to consider simple things.] (97)

684

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

The closer one comes to the end of the book, the more questions
one finds being posed-evidence, surely, of a deliberate intention to
avoid apodictic conclusions, of an effort to remain within the area of
suggestion and of as yet unexpressed desire. Indeed, the expository
section ends on an interrogative note, the question itself being explicitly founded upon the soft inconsistency of sand: "Bstir sur du sable,
n'est-ce pas cultiver l'attente de l'inattendu?" (Does building on sand
not constitute cultivating the expectation of the unexpected?) (98).
I imagined at the outset a reader, should such exist, entirely ignorant of all that Greimas had earlier produced; but for those who do
know his work, the amazement is all the greater. Having attained his
seventieth year, Greimas has abandoned (momentarily or for the time
being, who can tell?) a path he had till now followed consistently.
Maupassant (1976), his most wide-ranging undertaking in the literary
field, had in itself been an occasion for astonishment, coming as it did
from an author whose attachment to the cloisters of semiotics was all
but monklike. His analyses there were, though, semiotic in kind, and
if light was thrown, as indeed it was, on the text in terms of its appreciation, this was the end result of a strenuous in-depth investigation of the field of meanings traversed (more than 250 pages of comment dealt with fewer than 6 pages of text); it did not derive from any
overt quest for aesthetic values.
With Maupassant, Greimas in effect brought the whole of his imposing semiotic arsenal into play (actants, isotopies, modalities, the
semiotic square), and was attentive above all to the general validity of
his findings, even though these involved no more than particular
points and events; he was also concerned that the techniques he
adopted for the individuation of a general discourse should be coherent: "L'effet de sens global que produit une telle organisation
textuelle est clair: le texte se presente comme un signe dont le discours, articule en isotopies figuratives multiples, ne serait que le signifiant invitant a dkchiffrer son signifie" (The global meaning effect
that such a textual organization produces is clear. T h e text appears as
a sign whose discourse, articulated into multiple figurative isotopies,
could be considered the signifier inviting the deciphering of the
signified).* Greimas, along the same lines as Propp, succeeded in
showing that narrative action is much more complex, even in its semantic organization, than the Russian Formalists and the French
Neo-Formalists had ever imagined.
T o conclude this brief parenthesis, let me state that Maupassant is
far closer to the earlier activity of Greimas, despite the impressive
reemergence in it of a literary interest, than it is to a book like de

THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

685

l'imperfection. In 1976, there was as yet no sign of the kind of engagement with style that is so characteristic an aspect of the icriture of de
l'imperfection. There were none of those vibrations and openings, none
of the "dissipations" to which the latest volume is so inclined. Nor was
there any surrender to the suggestions of the text of the kind we meet
with continually in de 17impe$ection.

It is well-known that the fame and authority of Greimas owe their

origin to Simantique structurale (1966).~
Among the many products of
semiotics, which in those years was in the process of establishing itself,
Greimas's book stood out because its approach was systematic. T h e
impression it gave was that the new science was not still awaiting
construction, but that it had already been constructed. Greimas had
ties with the more creative conceptions of anthropology (LeviStrauss), and with structural linguistics as well, and was especially
close to innovative semantics, like that of Bernard Pottier. In the
semantic and semiotic fields, the various hypotheses formulated before the appearance of Greimas's work were all more or less pioneering in character; only rarely did they offer anything like a selfcontained system. Greimas's book, on the contrary, while it did
indicate some areas as needing further investigation, was characterized by its thoroughly systematic approach.
T o this approach a name can be given: Hjelmslev. T h e Danish
author is repeatedly cited by Greimas, who indeed derived the basic
definitions for his semiotics from the Prolegomena to a Theory of Langzuzge ( 1 9 4 3 ) ; i~t is a fact which very clearly marks him off from the
American school. Now, the whole of Hjelmslev's linguistics is of its
very nature programatically and systematically d e d ~ c t i v e both
: ~ as a
theoretical position, and as a heuristic technique (moving from the
text to the process, from the class to its components). Greimas adopts
a similar stance, although his contribution, given its anthropological
foundations, is at once more concrete and more flexible.
A whole history of his activity and teaching might be based entirely
upon this systematicity. It is clearly a characteristic that lends itself to
the requirements of a school, and it at once attracted imitators. What
is more, a doctrine of an inductive cast gives an illusion of being
somehow definitive: once the fundamental axioms have been accepted, progress will predominantly take the form of deductions, of
deductions from deductions, as in mathematics. It is a way of overcoming an inferiority complex on the part of the humanities. In the
wake of Simantique structurale, a Greimassian uulgata came into being;
the techniques of the master would be applied over and over again
without any investigation of their bases, researchers accepting them

686

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

uncritically, in block. It is indeed obvious that a doctrine whose character is so deductive is, in fact, a philosophy.6
The success of the Greimas uulgata, however, did not depend on the
consequentiality of the doctrine alone. Greimas has shown that he is
perfectly capable of creating a semiotic language that is both wideranging and useful, and a great many of its elements have become
part of the usage even of those who do not follow him. Greimas's
lexical inventiveness takes the following forms: (1) acceptance, or enhancement, of terms used by individual linguists, or derived from
other scientific fields (for example, from physics); (2) creation of derivatives, of abstract terms, and so on; and (3) constitution of clusters
of terms which serve to enlarge an entire semantic field.
Here are a few examples of the terms Greimas has taken from
others and turned into words commonly used in his own language,
and which have become common in the language of others as well. I
have used the Dictionnaire razronni to locate the sources, which are
given in parentheses:7 actant (Tesniere); biplane, se'miotique
(Hjelmslev); catalyse (Hjelmslev); classtme (Pottier); compe'tence (Chomsky); conversion (Hjelmslev); corrilation (Hjelmslev); destinataireldestinateur (Jakobson); die'gtse (Aristotle, Genette); donateur
(Propp); effet de sens (Guillaume); ernbrayeur (Ruwet, as a translation of
shifter, Jakobson); endotaxiquelexotaxique (Rengstorf); Cnonce'l
Cnonciation (Benveniste); ipiste'mi (Foucault); expression, plan de 1'
(Hjelmslev); extiroce~tiuitilintiroceptiuite'(psychology of perception);
figure (Hjelmslev); focalisation (Genette); giniralisation, principe de
(Hjelmslev); gine'ration (Chomsky); ge'ne'ratiue and transformationnelle
grammaire (Chomsky); icBne (Peirce); illocution, locution, perlocution
(Austin); immanence, principe d' (Hjelmslev); indicateur (or marqueur)
syntagmatique (Chomsky); index (Peirce); intertextualite' (the concept is
attributed to Bakhtin); isotopie (physics and chemistry); lexie
(Hjelmslev);manifestation (Hjelmslev); matitre ["purport"] (Hjelmslev);
me'tase'miotique (Hjelmslev); monoplane, simiotique (Hjelmslev);
narrateurlnarrataire (Genette); paradigmatiquelsyntagrnatique
(Hjelmslev); performatif (Austin);phtme (Pottier); pluriplane, simiotique
(Hjelmslev); procblsystime (Hjelmslev); recatkgorkation thdmatique (L.
Panier); sche'ma linguistique (Hjelmslev); se'mtme (Pottier); solidariti
(Hjelmslev); uirtutme (Pottier).
The enormous influence of Hjelmslev, even on the terminology, is
immediately evident, as is a certain affinity with the techniques of
Pottier. But the most interesting aspect is the number of occasions on
which a single term proliferates, giving rise to a whole series of derivations, compounds, syntagms. Take the successful actant, borrowed
from the debatable but pioneering study of Lucien ~esniere;'we now

THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

687

find actantiel(le)-catkgorie
actantielle, r6le actantiel, statut actantiel, and so
on; protoactant, and also actants de la communication, de la narration,
syntaxiques, fonctionnels, and so on. Another term successfully
"launched" by Greimas is isotopie; a number of terms are based on it,
bi-isotopie and pluri-isotopie, and with the addition of attributes, isotopie
grammaticale, skmntique, skmiologzque, actorielle, partielle, totale, figurative, thbmtique, complexe, and so on. Sometimes the multiplication of
terms is the outcome not only of the addition of attributive adjuncts,
but of the application of the "carre skmiotique": thus destinateur, as
well as assuming the attributes of manipulateur and of judicateur, generates out of its own bosom an anti-destinateur and a nonantidestinateur.
The same techniques (creation of new terms, derivation, and setting
up of lexical fields) are to be found even when it is Greimas himself
who has taken the lexical initiative. Here a complete census is an even
more precarious undertaking, because Greimas does not always do
what on some occasions he does: give clear indications that the initiative is indeed his own (by saying, for example, "on entendra par . . ."
[we shall define by. . .I, "Nous designons par l'expression . . ." [By the
expression we designate . . .I, "Nous proposons d'appeler . . ." [We
propose to call . . .I, "on est oblige d'introduire le concept operatoire
de . . ." [we need to introduce the operational concept of . . .I, "on
appellera . . ." [we shall call . . .I, "on peut designer comme . . ." [we
can designate as . . .I, "on peut reunir sous le nom de . . ." [we can
designate by the term . . .I, and so forth; and it should be borne in
mind that the Dictionnaire raisonnk has a second author, Joseph Court&). Here too, though, I shall provide an exemplary list which is, I
believe, sufficiently comprehensive: actorialisation; confipration discursive; connecteur d'isotopies; constitutional, modlle; dbbrayage, dkbrayeur
(compare embrayeur in the earlier list); discursivisation or mise en discours; existence skmiotique; figuratif, parcours; figurativisation; figurativitk;
gkntratif, parcours; macroskmiotique; micro-univers; narrat$ parcours; observateur; occultation; pivot narratf; pratique skmiotique; prksence; programm t i o n spatio-temporelle; programme narratif;- rkduction; skmantique fondamentale; spatialisation; subcontrariktk; syntaxe discursive; syntaxe
fondamentale; syntaxe narrative de surface; syntaxe textuelle; temporalisation; textualisation; thymique, catkgorie; topique, espace (paratopique,
hktbrotopique).
In my opinion, it is of considerable interest even on the theoretical
plane to remark that very rarely indeed does Greimas forge actual
neologisms. More frequently he has recourse to derivation (actorialisation, discursivisation, figurativisation, spatialisation, temporalisation), to
metaphor (configuration, andfiguratif, pivot, espace), to specialized use

688

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

of everyday terms (obseruateur, pisence, rkduction) or, lastly, to elative

terms (constitutionnel, modkle, grammaire, skmantique, and syntaxe fondamentale). In the case of metaphor and specialized use of everyday
terms, we have moved into a freer, more inventive sphere, one that is
less implacably deductive.
It should be made perfectly clear, though, that Greimas's style,
down to 1976, smacks of the treatise; it is certainly not that of an
essayist. Its ideal is scientific language, though it is true that semiotics,
in the more adventurous recesses of its procedure, does not necessarily reject the power of words or use of the figurative expression.
Some elementary but symptomatic examples might be adduced simply by turning to the titles of the paragraphs which subdivide the
chapters of Maupassant. For example, chapters 3 and 4 of "Sequence
11," on the one hand, present paragraphs with titles like "Le programme discursif" (The Discursive Program), "La valorisation du
programme" (The Valorization of the Program), "L'installation de
l'actant duel" (The Installation of the Dual Actant), "Reconnaissance
des valeurs" (The Identification of Values), "Le carrC ~Cmiotique"
(The Semiotic Square), alongside others like "Les transfigurations du
soleil" (The Transfigurations of the Sun), "La buCe aquatique"
(Aquatic Mist), "La buee celeste" (Celestial Mist), "Le sang solaire"
(Solar Blood), "Le paraitre du Ciel" (The Seeming of the Sky).
In reality, Greimas is, at every moment, systematic; but his undertaking, although it is deductive in type, at each stage posits conceptual
standpoints at once more all-embracing and differentiated. The first
considerable revolution is attested by the Dictionnaire (1979) and by Du
sens 11 (1983): the former is concerned with the sketching out of new
categories and new approaches, while the latter regards the revolution as already achieved ("la rupture radicale entre deux 'etats de
choses' " [the radical break between two 'states of things']; "Qu'il
s'agisse d'une crise de croissance ou d'un retournement decisif, un
nouveau visage de la skmiotique se dessine peu 2 peu" [Whether one
is dealing with a crisis of growth or a decisive turn of events, a new
phase of semiotics is slowly emerging]).g
T o put it briefly, what has happened is that the study of discourse
articulations and the study of narrative articulations (Propp) have
been made to converge and have coalesced; the actants of narration
have installed themselves inside the discourse, and have become the
protagonists of the communication. Communication types, seen in the
light of their finalities, have revealed their modal foundations, in a
dimension that Greimas defines as altogether cognitive. It might be
said that the different spheres of Greimas's earlier research, seem-

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689

ingly unconnected until now, have all been drawn into a single, comprehensive movement.
Although Greimas may now speak of the riel, of objet and of sujet, he
is clearly not doing so in any experimental or inductive sphere; in
short, he is not (philosophically speaking) a realist. Suffice it to see
how, even in his overall semiotic organization, simiotique naturelle and
the monde nature1 itself are linked to something that is construit and
scientifigue, and substantially subordinated to it. Nor is this all. By
positing the "carre semiotique" as the logical articulation of any possible semantic category, the actants of the narration, who are progressively transformed into the actants of communication in general, in
practice give rise to a series of entities (near hypostasies, one might
say), such as the non-destinateur and the non-anti-destinateur, the antisujet, and so forth. In short, it is the overriding character of the system
as such which brings on stage a number of characters whose necessity
arises out of the coherence of the construction itself, independent of
any observable descriptive exigency.
And so it is that an inveterate empiricist like the present writer can
only rejoice when he finds himself reading a declaration like
the following, whose clarity and sincerity of expression are readily
appreciable:
la semiotique qu'on avait r&vee,loin de se satisfaire de la pure contemplation
de ses propres concepts, devait mettre, a tout instant et a tout prix, la main a
la p2te et se montrer efficace en mordant sur le "rkel": I'objet a construire
determinait alors, dans une large mesure, la visee du sujet.
[the semiotics of our dreams could not be content simply with the pure contemplation of its own concepts, but urgently and at all costs had to get involved and confirm its effectiveness by getting a handle on "reality." In this
case, the object to be constructed determined to a great extent the objectives
of the subject.] (7)

It is a declaration which is integrated by another, even more clear-cut

perhaps and theoretically clear-minded: "La reflection theorique,
pour peu qu'elle soit fkconde, comporte l'inconvenient de dkpasser
presque toujours les concepts qu'elle se forge et les termes qu'elle
choisit pour les dbigner" (Though theoretical reflection may be fruitful, it has the inconvenience of almost always outstripping the concepts it creates and the terms used to designate them) (17). And there
is even more occasion for rejoicing when we observe that, once
Propp's model has been transposed to a communication schema, what

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NEW LITERARY HISTORY

is underlined in the communication in question is its intersubjective

character, and that this is further recognized as being "fiduciaire,
inquiet, t2tonnant, mais en mCme temps rusk et dominateur" (fiduciary, uneasy, groping, and at the same time cunning and dominating ) (11).
The fundamental introduction to D u sens II thus opens u p perspectives which Greimas's initial semiotic presuppositions had hardly
glanced at, or which they had totally ignored: the semiotics of action,
it is now understood, entails a further semiotics of manipulation and
of sanction; one should note as well the explicit attention now devoted
to behavior and situations. Semiotics of the subject/semiotics of the
object is a pair that gives due weight to the level of perception, while
the eventuality is considered that the "figures du monde" (figures of
the world) may have repercussions on the subject, that they may even
participate in his construction. The point is reached of calling for a
systematic investigation of the theories of passion, and questions are
asked about the "possibilites d'une esthktique" (possibilities of an aesthetics) (13).
How are we to set about delineating the "nouveau visage de la
semiotique" (new phase of semiotics) which Greimas now offers us?
One possible approach is suggested by the Dictionnaire: there, under
the word st?miotique, reference was made, in ascending order, first to
"une grandeur manifestke quelconque, que l'on se propose d e
connaitre" (any manifested entity under study)-natural languages
are part of it, as are "contextes extra-linguistiques," considered as
"rCservoirs de signes" and defined, globally, as "macrosemiotiques";
second, to an object of knowledge, as it appears in the course of, or as
the outcome of, a description (we are dealing with an object-semiotics
regarded as an object of description, as itself subject to analysis, and
last as a constructed object-so that, on the one hand, we have a
typology and a hierarchy of semiotics, and on the other, the possibility
of varied syncretistic kinds of semiotics); last, we are offered a theory,
that is, a global account of the means that make knowledge possible.
This formulation, seemingly univocal, not to say inductive, is in reality
biunequivocal, because there is talk of semiotics right from the earliest
phase of research, contact with the world itself; this means that the
domain of theory is being retroactively enlarged, almost as if one were
afraid that any item of data, left in its natural, crude, unelaborated
state, might somehow slip through the net. This, in turn, is tantamount to saying that absolutely everything is semiotic, even when
semiotics has not yet taken it into consideration.
In the introduction to D u sew II, what we are offered is a seemingly

THE STYLE OF GREIMAS AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

69 1

more modest formulation, one based on the setting up of analytical

strategies:
Se consacrant d'abord timidement a l'elaboration et a la formulation
rigoureuse d'un petit nombre de sequences canoniques, [la pratique
semiotique] en arrive a se construire petit a petit de nouveaux dispositifs et de
nouveaux objets ideels qui se substituent progressivement, dans la strategic
de la recherche, a des explorations des semiotiques definies par les canaux
de transmission de leurs signifiants de par des domaines culturels qu'elles
articulent.
[At first it was cautiously concerned with the elaboration and rigorous formulation of a small number of canonical sequences. In the strategy of research adopted, it has progressively and slowly constructed new procedures
and new intellectual constructs that are replacing semiotic explorations defined both by the channels of transmission of their signifiers and by the
cultural domains they articulate.] (14)

This is the breach: and through it, in the more recent semiotics of
Greimas, that of de l'imperfection, minute sensations have found their
way, chromatic, tactile, and olfactory elements in full flood; there is
now respect for (or recognition of) imperfection; through it too the
sacred, life, death have begun to reveal themselves. The sentence
from p. 97 of de l'imperfection (see my discussion on p. 683-84 above)
seems to be the continuation, though a more decisive continuation, of
the phrase just quoted from Du sens II. Indeed, in the sentence from
de l'imperjection any "ambition totalisante" (totalizing ambition) had, at
least hypothetically, been abandoned, whereas in Du sens 11, Greimas
had only limited the "elaboration et formulation rigoureuse d'un petit
nombre de sequences canoniques (elaboration and rigorous formulation of a small number of canonical sequences) while still nursing his
ambitions; the construction "petit P petit" (little by little) of "nouveau
dispositifs" (new procedures) and of "nouveaux objets" (new objects)
gives way before a "parcellisation de . . . programmes" (parceling of
. . . programs) and a "valorisation du detail d u 'vkcu' " (valorization of
the detail of the "lived").
What does Greimas offer us to compensate for these sacrifices? (I
too use the interrogative modes to which he himself now so willingly
has recourse.) The first answer is: the style he uses. T h e less apodictic
and problematic the exposition becomes, the more the style intervenes to integrate, suggest, allow glimpses. T h e subjective, the ecstatic, the sacred are spheres dominated by the ineffable-spheres
where style, however, may continue to move forward while demonstrative reasoning remains blocked. But only Greimas's future work

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NEW LITERARY HISTORY

will be able to provide an answer to the fundamental problem. What

we want to know is whether this radical about-face, all too evident, is
the prelude to a new semiotics, or whether it announces a shift to
different heuristic methods, different kinds of problems.
I am sure that we are all looking forward with great interest to the
reply Greimas will give. I do, though, consider that it has been an
interesting and happy parabola which has taken him from a programmatically closed system, with all its inherent dangers of dogmatism
and sclerosis, to a new phase, in which, with a potential we are not yet
able to measure, the game has been opened anew, so that Greimas,
with his customary lucidity, can place new objectives before us.
UNIVERSITA
DEGLI STUDIDI PAVIA
(Translated by John Meddemmen)
NOTES
1 Algirdas Julien Greimas, & I'imperfection (Pbrigueux, 1987), p. 9; hereafter cited in

text. Here and elsewhere, unless otherwise noted, translations are by Paul Perron.

2 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Maupusant: La skmwtique du texte: exercices pratiques (Paris,

1976). p. 267; hereafter cited in text.

3 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Skmantigue structurale: Recherche & rne'thode (Paris, 1966).

4 Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1943), tr. Francis J. Whitfield

(Madison, Wisc., 1963).

5 Hjelmslev, 913.

6 See Cesare Segre, "Greimas's Dictionary: From Terminology to Ideology," Semiotics,

50 (1984), 269-78.

7 Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph Courtks, SCmiotique: Dictionmire raisond de la

thkorie du langage (Paris, 1979).

8 Lucien Tesniere, Bkmentr de syntaxe structurale (Paris, 1969).

9 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Du s m 11: Essais shiotique (Paris, 1983), pp. 7, 18; here-

after cited in text.