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Issue 18. Thinking Pictures

The Time of Reading

Author: Sönke Hallmann
Published: September 2007
A bstract (E): He ine r Mülle r's Explosion of a Memory/Description of a Picture,
writte n in 1984, is usually conce ive d as a poe tic re fle ction on the lim its of
those form s of re pre se ntation, which are characte ristic for Mülle r's work at
that tim e . Starting with a sce ne of daily viole nce , Mülle r's play e nds with
an apocalyptic sce nario of history, in which its lite rary re pre se ntation
always alre ady se e m s to tak e part. At the sam e tim e a proce ss of
construction and de struction of im age s sugge sts a re lation be twe e n
Mülle r's te x t and Be njam in's notion of the diale ctical im age . Thus a
diffe re nt conce pt of re ading is introduce d that once m ore allows for an
inte rrogation of lite rature 's pote ntial to participate in history.

A bstract (F): La piè ce de He ine r Mülle r, "Ex plosion d'une

m é m oire /De scription d'un table au" (1984), e st gé né rale m e nt considé ré e
com m e une ré fle x ion poé tique sur le s lim ite s sur le s form e s de
re pré se ntation qui é taie nt typique s de la dé m arche de l'aute ur dans ce s
anné e s-là. La piè ce s'ouvre sur une scè ne de la viole nce quotidie nne ,
pour se te rm ine r par un scé nario apocalyptique de l'histoire qui donne
une large place à sa re pré se ntation litté raire . En m ê m e te m ps, le
proce ssus de construction e t de struction d'im age s se m ble indique r qu'il
e x iste un rapport e ntre le te x te de Mülle r e t la notion be njam inie nne
d'im age diale ctique . O n pe ut e n dé duire une nouve lle façon de lire qui
s'inte rroge sur le pouvoir de la litté rature à participe r aux é vé ne m e nts
historique s.

keywords: History, diale ctial im age , le gibility, re sistance to inte rpre tation,
Giorgo Agam be n

T o c ite this artic le:

H allmann, S. T he T ime of Reading. I mage [&] Narrative [e- journal], 1 8 (2 0 0 7 ).
A vailable: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/thinking_pic tures /hallmann.htm

Introduction

According to its title, Müller's text is a description of a picture. However, what

follows in the course of Explosion doesn't give the reader the time to get a proper
idea of the depicted picture. Even though Müller seems to pay attention to every
detail of the picture, a drawing by a student from Sofia (see Müller, 1990: 137),
little more can be said about this picture, as that it shows a landscape, at its
center: house, bird, woman, man. Müller's text speculates about what's going on,
what might and what has happened, and uses the composition of the picture as
the material for a series of scenic experiments. But instead of a cohesive
narrative, what one faces while reading, is an excess of motifs and references to
other literary texts as well as to Müller's own writings. A kind of legend at the end
of the text attests to this impression. A repetition of the title - the title in German
just says "Bildbeschreibung" (Description of a Picture) - it compares Müller's text
as such with the "explosion of a memory in a distinct dramatic structure" (1989:
102). In other words, if the dramatic structure has become inoperative, incapable

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to assure the cohesion of the dramatic action, what seems to remain are loose
fragments, suitable for multiple connections. Not only for this reason appeals
Explosion for a reflection on its structure and Müller's technique of writing as we
will see later on.

Now Müller himself has compared the "writing principle" of his text with an act of
overpainting of one image by another, so that these images fade into each other
(see Müller/Weimann, 1992: 190). It is in respect of this writing principle, that I
will pursue the question of reading My aim is to relate Müller's notion of reading
with a concept of reading implied in Walter Benjamin's notion of the dialectical
image, which is further explored by Giorgio Agamben, in particular regarding the
time of reading.

Simulation of History

In Fatzer ± Keuner, written in 1979, Müller introduces a relation between literary

and political history that finds an echo ten years later in a talk with Robert
Weimann on postmodernity. In this earlier text Müller argues that the "non-
appearance of the bourgeois revolution in Germany enabled and enforced Weimar
C lassicism as a suspension of the positions of Sturm und Drang" (1989: 31, my
translation). Here, literary and political history appear to be bound in a
paradoxical situation, in as much the progression of literary history seems to be
caused by a political event, the bourgeois revolution, which itself has not
occurred. It is in this respect that we should apprehend Weimar C lassicism as the
"substitute for revolution" (31). A statement by Müller from his talk with Weimann,
which took place only a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, allows for a
similar formulation regarding the relation between Müller's own writings and the
political present to which they belong. "Our postmodernity, if we regard Lenin as
the socialist modernity, is Stalinism, the substitution of reality through the word,
writing, paper. Our simulacra are the (fictive) documents, with which history is
simulated" (Müller/Weimann, 1992: 183, my translation). It would take me too
much time here to elaborate properly on Müller's understanding of Stalinism, the
more so as Müller has been an author from the GDR. I would like to conclude
from this statement that literature, including Müller's own work, seems to be
determined by a situation in which history is merely simulated, lacking any
mediation of an authentic experience of history as such - which again would count
as much for the so called era of globalization. Albeit the intricate relation between
Weimar C lassicism and Müller's writing, in both cases then literature follows, is
enforced as well as enabled by some kind of political catastrophe, and thus
determined as a substitute for the failure of politics.

According to Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, for Müller, this catastrophe is no less to be

seen as a catastrophe of literature itself. Following this interpretation, the
continued failure of socialist as well as communist revolution, which culminates in
the mere simulation of history, is always already bound to a catastrophe of
narration (420). With some respect this construction of literary and political history
can then be interpreted as the inception of Müller's writing. Thus if Müller states
that our contemporary society exhibits an economy of images, which primarily
produces "adaptable stereotypes" (Müller/Weimann, 1992: 183), he implicitly
questions the potential of poetic images and of literature as such to mediate
experience. It is this vague construction of a nexus between political history and a
certain potentiality of literature, from which my essay departs. Now, the following
reading of Explosion is no less speculative, in so far as it speculates, first and
foremost, on the legibility of Müller's text itself.

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Poetic Reflection

The common construction of Müller's work distinguishes his early didactic plays in
their affirmative manner from the montages and collages of the 1970s, which
expose a rather destructive view on German history, and then again both phases
from Müller's late writings, which mean a progressive deconstruction of the
dramatic structure. Topical and formal continuity, the re-use of some material in
different contexts and the practice of self-quotation as well as the development
and adaptation of some works over decades put this distinction into perspective
(see Weitin, 2003: 179). Alongside debates on Fascism and Stalinism, these
movements' theoretical foundation in the philosophy of the 19 th century and their
continuation in contemporary theory and politics (see Müller-Schöll, 2002: 411),
right from its start, decisive for Müller's literature has been the exposure of the
practice of writing and the role of the author. This instance coincides with a
reflection on representation that rather than supporting the unifying potential of
imagination, emphasises a poetics of rupture. Thomas Weitin, in his study on Ernst
Jünger and Heiner Müller, examines this potentiality of literature with regard to the
constitution of human community. At issue is the capacity of the imagination to
evoke a fictive community that assembles and unifies in order to compensate the
lack of a real bond (see Weitin, 2003: 212). Müller's writing attempts to interrupt
such fictions of community by means of an insistent fragmentation (213). I would
suggest to situate Müller's Explosion also in this context, as a reflection on the
potential of poetic images, and thus of literature as such, to mediate experience
with regard to such fictions of community.

Collapse of Legibility

As a commission work for the Steirischer Herbst (see Müller, 1992: 342), and thus
meant as a dramatic text, Explosion lacks fundamental dramatic elements such as
character, dialogue and action. Müller's text displays an elliptic structure
accompanied by an extremely reduced punctuation and several phrases that are
set in capital letters, which interrupt the appearance of the text and causes a
disruption of the flow of reading. Furthermore Explosion is dictated by a semantic
of probability (see Weitin, 2003: 358), which coincides with an accelerating
process of construction and destruction of images, so that the reader faces
isolated sequences, thus a fragmentary image as well as various narrative
fractions. It is as if the text would move forward in stills, which could hardly be
called images, but rather "fragments of a gesture" (Agamben, 2000: 55), to use
an expression from Giorgio Agamben.

As mentioned earlier, any interpretation of Explosion has to start out from the
recognition of an excess of motifs and references, most of which are quotations
from former works by Müller. In addition there seems to be no cohesive narrative.
The imagination of an assumed content won't succeed. Any attempt of reading, as
the continuous realisation of such content, is disrupted and suspended. Evidence
of this resistance to interpretation may be found with such approaches that first of
all introduce terms or metaphors in order to evoke an image of Müller's text,
which might then again structure the dispersive fragments. Jorge Riechmann for
instance speaks with regard to Explosion of a "tableau vivant" (204), Hans-Thies
Lehmann of a "dream landscape" (186) and Herbert Grieshop uses the notion
"palimpsest" (87). Thus it can be said that Müller's prose institutes a movement,
which in the first instance suspends the process of interpretation. A question of
legibility precedes and asserts itself in any interpretation of Explosion, which is in

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some respects characteristic of Müller's later works in general (see Müller-Schöll,

2002: 471). It seems something like an archaeological practice that would
establish the legibility of Müller's text is at issue here. Perhaps what Theodor W.
Adorno said about Franz Kafka's writings, namely that every sentence demands
its interpretation, while rejecting it at the same time (255), might also count for
Explosion equally. But decisive in the first place is, that, while reading Müller's
play, one experiences the collapse of the time of reading. The progressive
construction and destruction of images, the acceleration of meaning and its
interruption causes the contraction and expansion of this time. Thus with
Explosion, an experience of the time of reading is at issue that coincides with the
exposure of a semantic emptiness.

Logic of Failure

In his autobiography (1992) Müller defines Explosion as an "autodrama" (342), a

play for readers, which is performed by and for oneself. As another comment
suggests, the inception of the writing of this autodrama is located in the failures
and disruptions of the picture (see Müller, 1990: 137). The lack of perfection
opens within the drawing a space for Müller to write. Failure, disruption and lack
already point to a literary method of fragmentation, which, again, is already
inscribed in the title and that aims to abolish the imaginary unity of poetic
representation. A kind of legibility of Explosion emerges from Müller's comments,
which will result in the recapitulation of what can be called logic of failure.

Following a broadly accepted division of Müller's autodrama into five sections (see
Weitin, 2003: 358), after the exposition, which fails to achieve a distinct
description of the landscape and the figures that are depicted in the picture, Müller
displays a murder scene. It opens up to the vision of a "perhaps daily murder of
the perhaps daily resurrected women" (100) in which the roles of murderer and
victim are exchangeable and past and future have become reversible. The "blow
shove stab has happened, the shot has been fired, the wound no longer bleeds,
the repetition hits a void" (97). The third section of Müller's text then describes an
apocalyptic scenario. The daily excess of violence passes on to the "vision of a
revolution of nature" (Weitin, 2003: 359, my translation). But again, this
"resurrection in the flesh" (Müller, 1989: 100), which seems to announce the
possibility of an exit from the continuum of violence, is abruptly crossed, this time
by a reflection on the act of representation as such. Expressions like "amputated
by the picture's edge" (98) address the picture as a picture and thus introduce a
distance to the represented scene. At issue is the scene of spectatorship as well
as the scene of description. Müller intensifies this impression with explicit
references to language and the act of writing, for instance in such passages as
"word carcasses and language debris" (98) or "his knife writes from right to left"
(99). The text emphasises the "crude design" and "the whim of a careless crayon"
(101), before the scene of representation and the represented scenario
completely fade into each other. This is the case at the very moment the blood is
identified with "the ink that inscribes its paper life with colors" (101). The act of
description occurs in a "metonymic relation" (Weitin, 2003: 361) with the bloody
circle of violence as its continuation on the level of representation.

In line with this endless circulation of violence is the logic of failure, which forms
the core of the final section. If at first the text suggests looking for "the gap in the
procession, the Other in the resurrection of the Same, the stammer in the
speechless text, the hole in eternity, the possibly redeeming ERROR" (Müller,
1989: 101), then just a few lines later the "fallible surveillance", that which seems
to indicate, in Müller's view, the starting point for Explosion, appears to be part of
the plan (102). In short, the gap, the error or the stammer, and thus a literary

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method of fragmentation are identified as agents of that, which has to be

abolished, namely the unity of imagination and representation as such - all of
which Müller connects here with violence. If, throughout Müller's work, history
appears as a continuum of violence or else as the continuity of catastrophe in
which its representation always already takes part, then the logic of failure
belongs no less to this history. Müller's poetic reflection on the potentiality of
literature demonstrates the incapacity of literature to mediate experience and thus
to intervene and redeem.

Exposure of Emptiness

In his study on Müller's writing Müller-Schöll offers some insights that open up the
possibility of a different approach to Explosion. It is the accelerating process of
construction and destruction of images that Müller-Schöll describes as a "principle
of fading" (423). Starting from this formula I now would like to turn to the
question of reading once more. Müller's writing principle seems to suggest itself
this revision. It is to be understood as an act of "overpainting" so that these
images fade into each other and comply with the ban of images. The ban of
images can be assigned to the process of representation in general. Müller's
fading images then suggest a dissolve of which the result is the dissolution of
meaning. The principle of fading indicates a process that has an emptiness of
meaning as its effect. Therefore reading is paralysed and associates itself with a
notion of waiting.

Another statement by Müller supports this interpretation. While characterising his

adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus, also written in 1984, as an "arsenal of forms
for coming works", Müller qualifies Explosion here as a "model for playing", which
would be available for everyone "who can see and write" (Müller, 1992: 343, my
translation), therefore an autodrama. From this point of view, the text is a finger
exercise for "muted trumpet" (343), a kind of mechanism without sound or else an
investigation in the movement of language. The following note corresponds with
this proposition. As Müller states in Fatzer ± Keuner, the "fear of the metaphor is
the fear of the proper movement of the material" (31). Müller-Schöll has shown
that in the context of Müller's works, the notion of material points to the matter of
an intervention from the realm of literature into that of politics (553). Another
statement from Müller then takes this interpretation further: "Are you familiar with
Kafka's sentence: 'Literature is a matter of the people'. Literature takes part in
history by participating in the movement of language" (Müller/Weimann, 1992:
197, my translation). Kafka's famous phrase from his diaries refers to the very
brief conception of a "small literature" (see Kafka, 1994: 245), which as a mode of
subversion is always already potentially included in the bourgeois literature. But
what is crucial here, is, that Müller's appropriation of Kafka's expression permits
to relate the initial question of this essay, that is the potential of literature to
mediate experience, to a movement of language, which is supposed to be
conceived as the proper movement of the linguistic material. This movement, as
Müller writes elsewhere, takes place primarily in jargon. In this sense literature is
not a matter of literary history, but a matter of the people. The "illiterate [are] the
hope of literature", says Müller (Müller, 1992: 98, my translation).

In Languages and Peoples Giorgio Agamben addresses the notion of jargon a

"pure experience of language" (70), which he refers to a specific concept of
community. What I would like to ask for now, is, if such an experience might be at
issue with Müller's Explosion ? As I see it, the principle of fading and, what I have
called an exposure of semantic emptiness are in correspondence with this kind of
experience, which of course demands clarification. Literature, as Müller argues,
participates in history only by means of a participation in the movement of

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language. In reference to Agamben, such participation first and foremost would

mean a "pure experience of language". If my assumptions apply in this context,
then an act of reading might be required, which, both as an act of playing and of
waiting, would address this semantic emptiness - or else language in its exposed
emptiness.

Time of Reading

Müller's Explosion reminds us to rethink and discard a method of fragmentation,

which pays tribute to the logic of failure. But at the same time, almost within the
same movement, a writing principle occurs, that leads to a concept of text, which
could be described as a mnemonic space, as an archive, and which calls upon a
different theory of reading (see Müller-Schöll, 2002: 411). For now, I will solely
concentrate on this theory of reading and leave the concept of text aside, as much
as possible. If we then take a look at Benjamin's notion of the dialectical image,
we may be able to outline a theory of reading that would be in correspondence
with Müller's principle of fading.

Benjamin's notes on the dialectical image in The Arcades Project imply two
aspects, which are of particular interest here. The first concerns a certain
movement of the dialectical image. "For the historical index of the images,"
Benjamin writes, "not only says that they belong to a particular time; it says,
above all, that they attain to legibility only at a particular time. And, indeed, this
acceding 'to legibility' constitutes a specific critical point in the movement at their
interior" (462). As the dialectical image seems to belong first and foremost to the
realm of language, this "movement at their interior" might point in the same
direction as Müller's comment on the proper movement of the linguistic material,
which lead us back to the potentiality of literature to mediate experience.
Moreover at issue in Benjamin's passage is a specific relation between reading
and time. If it is the case that Müller's text demands and rejects at once its
interpretation, then its possible further legibility evolves here with regard to
Benjamin's notion of the historical index. This instance becomes graspable with
another fragment from Benjamin' notes. The "image that is read - which is to say,
the image in the now of its recognizability - bears to the highest degree the
imprint of the perilous critical moment on which all reading is founded" (463).
Here a concept of reading emerges, which reveals a temporality that seems to be
in accordance with Müller's principle of fading. As the second fragment suggests,
is the "acceding 'to legibility'" of the dialectical image bound to the "now of its
recognizability". Therefore the legibility of the dialectical image indicates a
"perilous critical moment", a moment, as Benjamin explicitly writes, "on which all
reading is founded".

It can be said, that Müller's autodrama appropriates this perilous and critical
moment, the "now of recognizability", as it occurs in the theatre as a collapse of
the time of reading through contraction and extension of this time itself. Then an
exegetical principle is required that is not directed to the exposure of intention,
but concerns a completely different potentiality of text. Benjamin writes, the "now
of recognizability" is "charged to the bursting point with time", and this point is
"the death of the intentio " (463). As I see it, the death of intention points to a
similar experience of language, which Müller as well as Agamben address with the
notion of jargon - and which seems to be also at stake with Kafka's "small
literature". Such an exegetical principle doesn't rest on a somehow continuous
time of reading. Thus Benjamin's implicit theory of reading introduces a
temporality that belongs to the register of discontinuity.

A passage from Agamben's writings illuminates another aspect of this specific time

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of reading. It is in his commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans, that Agamben

speaks of a "time within time" (67), interior to chronological time. "For in order to
form the words in which thought is expressed," Agamben explains, "thought would
have to take recourse to an operational time, which cannot be represented in the
representation in which it is still implicated" (67). By the very end of his
commentary on Paul's Letter, it becomes clear, that this notion of an operational
time is related to Benjamin's exegetical principle as it occurs in his notes on the
dialectical image. Thus Agamben emphasises the messianic appeal in the "
acceding 'to legibility'", when he refers the topos of the operational time to a
definition of messianic time. The messianic time, according to Agamben, "is the
time that time takes to come to an end " (67).

Model for Playing

And now? What can we do with this rather vague notion of a messianic time in
relation to the act of reading? C ould the interpretation of Müller's prose Explosion
be advanced, if the principle of fading is compared to this conception of messianic
time? C ould the contraction and extension else be revealed as an experience of
the time that reading takes to come to an end? What kind of end? And if such an
experience would be at stake, what again would be its relation to the exposed
emptiness of language?

I would like to conclude, with a passage from Agamben, which will allow me to
briefly recapitulate aspects, crucial for the theory of reading in Müller's Explosion.
In his book Nymphae, Agamben describes the emergence of dialectical images
due to the suspension of meaning, due to a "semantic emptiness" (26). This
applies to Müller's text. Demanding its interpretation, while rejecting it at the same
time, Explosion is sublated in a semantic emptiness. As such is the legibility of
Müller's autodrama constituted in a movement at its interior that, in the "now of its
recognizability," indicates a perilous moment of reading - perilous, insofar this
very moment threatens to fade. But rather than being exterior to those exegetical
principles directed towards intentionality, this act of reading would operate
precisely at their interior. How else can we understand the "death of the intentio "?
This "death" indicates a redemptory practice that renders first of all any
intentional reading inoperative. That is, why Müller-Schöll calls Müller's later works
"radically illegible" (583).

In addition, the pronounced self-referentiality of Explosion emphasises the

impression that this autodrama is a model for playing, which at the same time
should be called an archive. Müller's text is thus a kind of mnemonic space, in
which fragments of images as gestures are crowded, an artificial space that,
instead of being a substitute for the failure of politics, is settled down within the
progression of history - bearing a contingent potential of emancipation. But as
much as this marks the partition of Müller's literature in history, is its " acceding
'to legibility'" bound to a "pure experience of language".

As Agamben writes in The Coming Community, the "era in which we live is also
that in which (.) it is possible for humans to experience their own linguistic being -
not this or that content of language, but language itself, not this or that true
proposition, but the very fact that one speaks" (1993: 83). Despite its
indeterminacy, how could we relate this experience, which opens up, following
Agamben, to a community "with neither presuppositions nor a state" (83), with the
question of a time of reading that could be called redemptive? What usage, habit
or custom of reading is at our disposal here? Well, the direction, in which an
answer to these questions might be found, leads me to the notion of play. To
render a text inoperative, to sublate it in a semantic emptiness, brings us to the

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realm of playing. My initial question then would concern this transcription of

reading. What exactly does it mean to conceive of reading as a matter of playing?

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zur Theorie eines Theaters der A-Identität bei Walter Benjamin, Bertold Brecht
und Heiner Müller, Stroemfeld (Frankfurt am Main), 2002.

RIEC HMANN, Jorge, "Ein 'Tableau Vivant' jenseits des Todes, Annäherung an
Bildbeschreibung", Material - Texte und Kommentare (edited by Frank Hörnigk),
Reclam (Leipzig), 1989, p. 203-212.

WEITIN Thomas, Notwendige Gewalt, Die Moderne Ernst Jüngers und Heiner
Müllers, Rombach (Freiburg im Breisgau), 2003.

WEIGEL, Sigrid, Entstellte Ähnlichkeit, Walter Benjamins theoretische

Schreibweise, Fischer (Frankfurt am Main), 1997.

Sönke Hallmann is currently researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
His research on modern literature theorizes on the nexus between texture and
collectivity. In 2006 Sönke Hallmann has initiated the Department of Reading, an
on-line module to promote new ways of reading and textures for prior existing
texts. soenkeh@gmail.com

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