Literary Production and Reception Author(s): Manfred Naumann and Peter Heath Source: New Literary History, Vol.

8, No. 1, Readers and Spectators: Some Views and Reviews (Autumn, 1976), pp. 107-126 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468616 . Accessed: 05/05/2011 17:29
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Literary Production and Reception*

Manfred Naumann
E STARTfrom the view that author, work, and reader, the literary processes of writing, appropriation, and communication, are mutually intercoordinated and form a relational structure. As a whole, in its parts, and in its means, it is diachronically embedded in the whole historical process, and synchronically so in the existing and changing material and ideological relationships of the current social formation. From thence it becomes clear how limited, heuristically, are the methods of a science of literature which allow themselves to be guided by an isolating view of elements which in fact are inseparably intermeshed. A necessary consequence of this isolation has been, and still is, the repeated elaboration of particular aesthetic theories, which, depending on the element that is isolated from the rest, are put forward as theories of expression or creation, of the work or its presentation, of its reception or effect. The absolutizing of the production aspect (of the "creator," the "creation" of the work), tends to lead to an alienation of literature from individual and social custom, to an autonomy of literature, and to an immanent, at times even structuralist, view; the absolutizing of the reception aspect, to a handing-over of literature to the uncontrolled needs, purposes, and interests of the recipients, to a succumbing to the opportunity of the moment and the consumer demands of the market. In research on literary history, the isolation of elements is above all reproduced in the fact that the historico-genetic account of a work's origin and the historico-functional account of its effect stand opposed to one another, thereby neglecting the connection that holds between the prehistory of a work, its subsequent history, and its current standing at any time. In contrast to this, we aim at a methodical procedure which permits us to grasp the complexity of the processes actually occurring in the interaction between the writing and reading of literature, among author, work, and reader.

I. Production and Reception

As a starting point for the elaboration of such a procedure, we have at hand the categories of production and consumption, whose dialectical inter* This article is an authorized translationof two sections from Literatur Gesellschaft Lesen(Berlinand Weimar, 1973).

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relation was set forth by Karl Marx in a penetrating logical analysis, to be found in his Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, written in 1857 and first published in 1903.1 These categories express in general and abstract form the reciprocal relations obtaining between those productive and consumptive activities of man which form the basis of the historical process whereby he makes and maintains himself. Marx tells us that production and consumption are linked together in a dialectical relationship.2 Production produces consumption insofar as it creates (a) the material, the object to be consumed; (b) by way of the object, which is always a definite one, the manner of consumption; (c) the need for consumption, the urge to it, the "ability to consume," and thus a subject for the object. Marx gives as an example: "The object of art, as well as any other product, creates an artistic public, appreciative of beauty" (p. 26). But conversely, consumption also produces production, and does so inasmuch as it creates (a) the real product, for unlike a natural object, the object created by man only becomes a product when it has proved itself to be such in consumption: "the result of production is a product, not as the material embodiment of activity but only as an object for the active subject" (p. 25); consumption creates (b) the need for new production, "the ideal, inward, impelling cause which constitutes the prerequisite of production" (ibid.), and thus "the disposition of the producer" (p. 26): "It is clear that while production furnishes the material object of consumption, consumption provides the ideal object of production, as its image, its want, its impulse and its purpose" (p. 25). From the fact that consumption is also productive and production also consumptive it does not follow, though, that the two are identical. In the first place, production represents the "predominating factor" (p. 27) vis-a-vis consumption, and in the second, there intervenes between production and consumption the sphere of exchange and distribution, which determines the individual's share "in the world of products" (p. 28). Yet neither are the two separated from each other: either one ... while it completes itself, creates the other and itself as the other. Consumption completes the act of production by giving the finishing touch to the product as such, by dissolving the latter, by breaking up its independent material form; by bringing to a state of readiness, through the necessity of repetition, the disposition to produce developed in the first act of production; that is to say, consumption is not only the concluding act through which the productbecomes a product, but also the one through which the producerbecomes a producer.On the other hand, production produces consumption, by determining the manner of consumption, and, further, by creating the incentive for consumption, the very ability to consume in the form of need. (p. 27) The concept of production in regard to art and spiritual activity was already employed by Marx and Engels in their early writings. "Religion, the family, the state, law, morality, science, art, etc. are only particular forms of production and come under its general law"-so we are told in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.3 In the German Ideology4 there is talk of

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the "production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness," or "mental production as expressed in the language of the politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics of a people." Men are the "producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc." We find references to "products of their thinking" (p. 15), to the "means of mental production" (p. 39), to the "production and distribution of ideas" (p. 39). In a letter to Annenkov (December 1846), Marx points out that men not only produce social relations, but "also produce ideas, categories, that is to say, the abstract ideal expressions of these same social relations."5 Marx later returned to the special features of "spiritual production," above all in the Theories of Surplus Value, where he describes science, for example, as a "product of mental labour," art and poetry as branches of spiritual production, and so on.6 When Marx and Engels, in these and other passages, employ the concepts of production and consumption in regard to mental activities, it is obviously not a matter of any metaphorical transposition of economic concepts to the mental sphere, and still less of those superficial "analogies and relations between spiritual and material wealth,"'7 which Marx very sarcastically criticized in the methods of the vulgar economists. Marx repeatedly pointed out that although there are connections and interactions between "spiritual and material production," and although "for example different kinds of spiritual production correspond to the capitalist mode of production and to the mode of production of the Middle Ages," only "insipid belletristes" could draw from this the conclusion "that the production of spiritual products or the production of services is material production." Marx commented on this "nonsense" by remarking "that even the most sublime spiritual productions should merely be granted recognition, and apologies for them made to the bourgeoisie, that they are presented as, and falsely proved to be, direct producers of material wealth. . . . These people are so dominated by their fixed bourgeois ideas that they would think they were insulting Aristotle or Julius Caesar if they called them 'unproductive labourers.' "8 Distinguishing sharply between productive and unproductive labor in the economic sense, Marx observes in the Grundrisse: Is it not absurd, asks Mr. Senior, for example (at least something like this), that the piano-makeris regardedas a productiveworker,but not the pianist, althoughwithout the pianist the piano would have no meaning? But this is exactly the position. The piano-makerreproducescapital;the pianist merely exchanges his labour for income. But the pianist producesmusic and satisfies our musical sense; perhapsto some extent he producesthis sense. In fact he does this: his work does producesomething, but it is not thereforeproductive labour in the economic sense, any more than the work of a madman is productivewhen he produces hallucinations.9 There are similarly sarcastic statements in Theories of Surplus Value: "According to Storch, the physician produces health (but also illness), professors and writers produce enlightenment (but also obscurantism), poets, painters, etc., produce good taste (but also bad taste), moralists, etc., produce morals, preachers religion, the sovereign's labour security, and so on ... It

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can just as well be said that illness produces physicians, stupidity produces professors and writers, lack of taste poets and painters, immorality moralists, superstition preachers and general insecurity produces the sovereign."10 In truth-to remain with the artists-writers, poets, painters, and so on produce neither understanding of art nor a lack of understanding, and do not even produce by providing stimuli to production, "products of material labour." On the contrary, they produce in the field of immaterial production "products sui generis,"11 namely "art objects," which indeed take on the character of commodities and may serve for material enrichment, but whose productivity "sui generis" is first realized only when they have become objects of spiritual consumption by those on whom they have an effect. That art objects can also influence material production in this indirect fashion, by way of those who receive them, in that they raise "our individuality to a more active, livelier level,"12 is possible, but not essential to art: "Man himself is the basis of his material production, as of any other production that he carries on. All circumstances, therefore, which affect man, the subject of production, more or less modify all his functions and activities, and therefore too his functions and activities as the creator of material wealth, of commodities. In this respect it can in fact be shown that all human relations and functions, however and in whatever form they may appear, influence material production and have a more or less decisive influence on it."13 The conceptual subsuming of material and spiritual activities under the terms "production" and "consumption" is not, therefore, intended to obliterate the differences between material and spiritual wealth, or the production and consumption of material and ideal goods. What it expresses, rather, is one of those "rational abstractions" whose usefulness was pointed out by Marx in this very Introduction in which he elaborates the dialectic of production and consumption: Wheneverwe speak, therefore,of production,we always have in mind productionat a certain stage of social development, or production by social individuals. Hence, it might seem that in order to speak of production at all, we must either trace the historicalprocess of development through its various phases, or declareat the outset that we are dealing with a certain historical period, as, for example, with modern capitalist productions. ... But all stages of production have certain landmarks in common, common purposes. "Productionin general" is an abstraction, but it is a rationalabstraction,in so far as it singles out and fixes the common features, thereby saving us repetition.14 This "rational abstraction" must leave unregarded the differences and connections between material and spiritual production and consumption,15 precisely as it does with the differences and connections between individual "branches of spiritual production." It must also disregard the fact that in speaking of production we always have in mind production "at a certain stage of social development, or production by social individuals,"16 and thus can take no account of the particular historical form under which production and consumption are to be viewed at any time. When working with "rational abstractions" it must always be remembered that

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these general or common features discovered by comparison constitute something very complex, whose constituent elements have different destinations. Some of these elements belong to all epochs, others are common to a few. Some of them are common to the most modern as well as to the most ancient epochs. No productionis conceivable without them; but while even the most completelydeveloped languageshave laws and conditions in common with the least developed ones, what is characteristicof their development are the points of departure from the general and common. The conditions which generallygovern productionmust be differentiatedin orderthat the essential points of differenceshould not be lost sight of in view of the generaluniformity which is due to the fact that the subject, mankind, and the object, nature, remain the same.17 But though its "essential points of difference" may not be lost sight of, even "art production" then constitutes, not a different kind of production, but only a "special mode" of it, and as such falls under the conditions "which generally govern production" and which Marx again summarized in the Introduction as follows: "All production is appropriation of nature by the individual within and through a definite form of society."18 In Capital, Marx elucidates the content of this "appropriation" in terms of the concept of labor in the following way: Labouris, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate,and in which man of his own accordstarts, regulates and controls the materialre-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in orderto appropriateNature'sproductionsin a form adaptedto his own wants. By thus acting on the externalworld and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to
his sway. 19

When Marx and Engels speak of "art production," "artistic production," or "artistic appropriation of this world," and-abstracting "rationally" from the "essential differences" to the economic sphere--continue to regard the dialectic of production and consumption as valid also in the sphere of artistic activity, what they are concerned with is the fact that such activity is conditioned by the labor process, and has its independent productive share therein.

II. The Sense of Art and its Humanizing Function

By incorporating artistic and literary production and reception into the social process of production and reproduction, into the law of "what is called world history," which is nothing but "the creation of man by human labour, and the emergence of nature for man,"20 Marx has furnished the theoretical basis for defining the independent, necessary, and therefore irreplaceable share of these activities in the self-production of the human species, in history as "the act of genesis of human society,"21 in the process of humanizing human nature.

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Historical and dialectical materialism made it possible to maintain that art no longer needs to grasp or "imitate" the "object, reality, sensibility merely under the form of object or intuition,"22 as pre-Marxist art was accustomed to do; art became recognizable as a practical and spiritual activity, in which man cognitively and evaluatively appropriates "Nature's production in a form adapted to his own wants," and so develops and changes "his own nature."23 When Marx emphasizes that "art objects" create the "sense of art" and a "public appreciative of beauty," and hence a "subject" for art, he is referring to the fact that works of art, like those other products in which men objectify their "faculties," alter the "nature" of man, in that they produce the wealth of subjective human sensibility: "It is only through the objectively deployed wealth of the human being that the wealth of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye which is sensitive to the beauty of form, in short, senses which are capable of human satisfaction and which confirm themselves as human faculties) is cultivated or created.'"24 Senses capable of human satisfaction, which include the "sense of art," the "capacity for appreciating beauty," and also, as we may add by way of supplement, that special literary and poetic sense whose formation presupposes the art that uses language, operate in men as a motive of their development: "The capacity for enjoyment ... is the development of an individual's talents, and thus of the productive force."25Through the development of this talent man enlarges the "wealth of his real connections," on which the "real intellectual wealth of the individual" depends.26 In this way the activities exercised in the aesthetic (and especially the artistic-aesthetic and literary-aesthetic) appropriation of the world, and in the reappropriation by receptive processes of the "art objects" thereby produced, will be brought to comprehension by Marxist materialism as productive components of the "eternal" process whereby men develop the "slumbering powers" in their species. The ideal that makes its appearance in art no longer needs to be interpreted, as in objective idealism, by way of an alien "Idea" confronting men, a "God," a "World Spirit" or consciousness, which art has only to illustrate or symbolize; the consciousness engaged in, and created by, artistic production and reception is in fact their own consciousness, being a form of their social consciousness. The "concepts in our heads" which have a function in the fashioning and reception of works of art are not images of an alien spiritual being, but "images of real things"27 and as such "complex, contradictory translations of the material into the ideal,"28 products of an active mental process whose results embrace "the contradictory unity of objective and subjective, immediacy and mediation, sensory and rational, universal and individual, abstract and concrete, empirical and theoretical."29 Artistic production and reception are no longer considered, as in the triflings of subjective idealist thought, to be merely the manifestation or expression of subjectivity, a mere "object of delight apart from any interest."30 Art is also more than a "joyous realm of play and illusion";31 in and by means of it men also carry on their historical struggles, their class struggles; by its aid they also produce ideologies and come to terms with the objective natural and social conditions of their existence. The history of artistic activity be-

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comes perspicuous: it is rooted, as by law, in the material and ideological relationships of social being, in which all human activity, including the artistic, is carried on, and which are at the same time the result of this activity, including the artistic. Historical and dialectical materialism is first of all able to refute, upon a sound theoretical basis, the rationalistic claim that rational cognitive activity, proceeding on the model of the sciences, is the only way of enlarging human knowledge, and that the task of art consists merely in symbolizing the findings thus rationally obtained; it is equally able to guard against sensualist or irrationalist demands that art should content itself with a role in the domain of affects, emotions, and lower nervous activity, or allow itself to be misused for the mobilization of error, incomprehension, or unreason against rationality. Marxist philosophy's rehabilitation of reason against sensualism, and of the senses against rationalism, makes it possible to define more exactly the specific nature of artistic activity against the incursions of rationalism and sensualist irrationalism. In artistic activity man affirms himself, "not only in thought, but through all the senses,"32 in a special manner: "Art addresses the whole. It penetrates into the ultimate unconscious and inmost springs of feeling."33 In presupposing the "whole man" and addressing the "whole man," it can at the same time create "order and unity"34 in his world of thought and feeling. In the artistic activity, through the rational, emotional, and ethical elements combined in it, discoveries can be made and knowledge secured, which are not to be gained, or can only be gained later, through other ways of appropriating the world; discoveries and knowledge which not only present men with what they are, but also with what they could be or ought to be; possibilities of acting and thinking, feeling and willing, living and dying, enjoying and suffering, speaking, dreaming, and foreseeing, which, but for art, would have remained hidden, and in ignorance of which men would therefore not have been, or been able to be, what they are. In the totality of "art objects" there is stored an inexhaustible treasury of information, insight, experience, and aesthetic stimulation; man's relations to himself as a "species-being," who establishes his human relationship to the world through the activity of all the "organs of his individuality,"35 are there directly objectified; his historical self-knowledge, the values, ideals, and conceptions that have formed from the nature and genesis of his species, are there so condensed that even later generations can still recognize and enjoy in them an image of their own nature. Whereas other human achievements, such as products of material culture, for example, but also the findings of science and philosophy, are overtaken by development and can thus become obsolete, works of art, so long as there is a "subject" having a "sense of art" for them, are both now and forever continually taking on new life and actuality, when the age that gave birth to them has long since faded into the past. They are able, potentially, to be brought back again and again into man's current life, to be made productive for its future development, and thus ever to increase anew that wealth whose potential amount Marx answered with the questions:

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what else is wealth but the universality of needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive forces, etc. of individuals, created in the universal process of exchange? The full development of human domination over naturalforces, those of so-called Nature, no less than his own nature?The absolute working-out of his creative talents, with no other presupposition save the antecedent historical development, which takes as its own purpose this totalityof development, i.e., the developmentof all human forces as such, unmeasuredby any yardstickgiven in advance?Where he does not reproduce himself in a determinacy,but produces his totality?Does not seek to remainanything he has become, but exists in the absolute motion of becoming?"3 Historical and dialectical materialism has rooted the objective function of artistic production and reception in the historical process, in which man's creative talents will be "absolutely"worked out, which is "its own purpose" and has no "yardstick given in advance" save that of past history; at the same time, however, it has demonstrated these activities to be determined by laws underlying the process; and in doing these things it has also made possible, inter alia, an understanding of the fact that even in art "there is an absolute within the relative.""37 For the absolute which glimmers through the relative of artistic phenomena is the participation of art "in the absolute motion of becoming," in the historical development, driven on by contradictions and struggles, wherein men become creators of themselves; in the "eternal" process of our species' history, wherein men come to terms with the objective natural and social conditions of their existence, develop an ever deeper consciousness and knowledge of these conditions, and thereby learn to master them, wherein men evolve their capacities, their intellectual and sensuous culture, their personality, and enlarge their power over nature and society. The productive functions of art that are based on this participation, which it perceives in the interaction of world appropriation, the giving of form to the world as appropriated, and reappropriation of the world given form in its works, we shall sum up under the concept of the humanizing function of art. [Note: After this discussion there follows an outline of the genesis of the literary work with regard to the author's relations to reality, to his audience, and to the literary process. This section has been omitted from the translation.]

III. The Realization of the Work of Art: The Reader as "Active Subject"
In the logic of our sketch of the problem we have now arrived at the point where we can consider the literary work to be present and available for reception. The history of its birth is concluded. It bears within it the totality of its genetic conditions, resulting from its author's relations to reality, to his audience, and to the literary process. Its readers have taken a share in its production that is partly direct (in the shape of persons collaborating in the process of its creation, who function as coauthors), but primarily indirect (by

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way of the audience relation). As a statement about reality in its relation to man (work-reality relation, copy relation), it is at the same time a message to the reader (work-audience relation); it stands in relation to other works, has a literary character (work-literary process relation), and is stamped with the individual uniqueness of its originator (work-author relation). As a product which has received its individual, unrepeatable uniqueness from the sociohistorical and literary-historical conditions of its birth, it is structured, in its aesthetic efficacy, upon the reader, upon reception and effect, upon the perception of functions. As available for reception it has the tendency to regulate its dealings with the reader on its own account, to determine the mode and effect of its reception. But precisely because the work is destined for reception, it remains, when once produced but not yet become an object of reception, still really incomplete. It is not only destined for the reader; it also has need of him, in order to become a real work. In virtue of the interval between literary production and reception, the creative process ends in the shape of the manuscript work, which has an existence distinct from its producer and the act of bringing it forth. The living spiritual labor expended in the processes of literary and artistic creation ends neither in "nothing" nor in the "mere subjectivizing of the objective"; in the shape of the work resulting from it, it again posits itself, rather, as object. It becomes "fixed, materialized, out of the form of activity into that of the object, rest"; it objectifies itself into a "being."38 In the product of literary and artistic activity presented by the manuscript work, its becoming has been transformed into its "being." Out of activity "objectified activity" has come about. But for the work in this state the same considerations apply as hold in general for products of human activity-as contrasted with mere objects of nature: they can exist "in possibility" and "in actuality." For since production is directed to appropriating, not just "natural matter," merely, but the latter in a form that men can use, the product proves good, and is a "real" product "not as objectified activity, but only as an object for the active subject." As "objectified activity" the product is a product "in possibility" only. It becomes one "in actuality" only as an object "for the active subject," i.e., in consumption. It is here that it first receives the "finishing touch" and is completed.39 In the interval beginning with the conclusion of its genesis, its literary and aesthetic gestation by the "active subject" and its separation from the latter, and finally endirig when it becomes an object of reception for the "active subject" and thus enters upon the history of its effect, the literary work also has an existence only "in possibility."40 So long as works, on being received, are not incorporated once more into the social and individual consciousness from whence they have emerged in objectified form, they have the status of an incomplete existence, are not "ready," and are merely potential works. This was precisely what Goethe meant in observing that the work consisting merely of "words and letters" must be recalled by men "into the life of the spirit and heart"41 in order to become efficacious. After their separation from the "active subject" who has begotten them, works only become real works when they are again conjoined with "active subjects" in being received.

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That readers are "active" in this should not be understood metaphorically. To the activity of aesthetic production on the author's part-which includes a component of aesthetic efficacy-there corresponds an activity of aesthetic reception42 on the part of the reader. The concept of reading singles out one from the total group of human activities. Like any other activity, reading, too, is primarily determined in its structure by the object to which it is directed-in our case, therefore, by the literary work, whose specific properties as a literary and aesthetic object also lend their peculiarities to the activity whereby it is appropriated. The constitution of the work as a specific product, which comes into the reader's hand as available for reception in the shape of a text, and conveys objective determinacy to the receptive activity, is dealt with at length in the fifth chapter of Gesellschaft-Literatur-Lesen. We merely wish to point out here that readers can realize a work only within the limits of the possibilities which it marks out for this purpose on the basis of its availability. The reader's freedom in dealing with a work has its limits in the objective properties of the work itself. The proof of this can be given both positively and negatively: many works, in virtue of their objective properties, repeatedly compel the reader to come to terms with them; others again, and these are the majority, bring it about for the same reasons, that after a certain time readers reject them as objects of reception. Works evoke among their readers a gradual approach to a judgment that is either positive or negative in tendency. The novels of Auguste Lafontaine, for example, which enjoyed much popularity in their day, are no longer read nowadays. Balzac, on the other hand, still has a place on the best-seller list. It would be trivial to lengthen the list of such examples. Strictly speaking, the judgment is never final. A work buried for centuries in the "literary graveyard" can suddenly awaken to new "life," as with Robert Chasles' novel Les illustres Franpaises, published in 1713, which, after a long period in oblivion, has since the 'fifties of this century again attracted public attention.43 Such chances, however, are not visited upon works in independence of their objective constitution. But the very example last mentioned also indicates that the object does not mechanically force its way into receptive activity. Whatever qualities a work may have as a candidate for reception, they do not act of themselves, but only by way of the "active subjects" who receive it. This, too, is in no special need of demonstration. Even when readers have agreed upon a work's value, this is based on very different grounds. The same work is quite differently received, not only by posterity, but even by its audience at the time of publication; even the same reader takes the work differently, if he reads it several times. From this it must be concluded that the receptive activity is conditioned by both work and reader alike, the work being the objective side of the relation established in this activity, and the reader the subjective side (itself in turn objectively conditioned in the final analysis). If we begin by disregarding the factors of social history, individual biography, and special features of literary history which condition both the before44of reception, the processes within the actual relation between work and reader, and the after, the consequences of reading, then the interrelation between the work-governed

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and reader-governed aspects can be characterized as a special case of the general dialectic of appropriation. In appropriating the work the reader reconstructs it for himself; in developing its "slumbering powers" (or realizing what it has to offer) he subjects it "to his own dominion." At the same time, however, in reconstructing the work for himself, he also alters himself; in realizing its inherent possibilities, he enlarges his own possibilities as subject; as the reader receives the work, and so actualizes it, the work has an effect upon him. The activity of aesthetic reception is a process consummated in the unity of these opposite modes. In failing to demarcate clearly the boundaries between the concepts of reception and effect, language preserves in the two concepts something of the double-sidedness of the relationship set up in reading. The concept of reception is centered upon the reader: it implies that he "takes" the work as an object given to him. The concept of effect, on the other hand, emphasizes the work aspect: in being received, the work also takes over the reader; it has an effect upon him. The work is what makes the effect, the processes in the reader in and after reading are the effect made; but at the same time, the readers are also the takers, and the work is what they take possession of. In making themselves subjects of the receptive relationship, the readers simultaneously make themselves objects of an effect relation, and conversely: in that the work exerts a power upon the readers, the latter simultaneously take power over it. The readers are both active and passive at once; the work is the object of their activity, and at the same time guides this (by way of its own availability for reception). We are not therefore confronted with a causal relation in which the work figures as cause and the processes in the reader as effect, or, conversely, in which the effect of the work has its causes in the reader. What is involved, rather, is the special form of an interrelationship, whose two constituents mutually permeate each other. The mediation between them is established by the valuing relation which the reader necessarily takes up toward the work when he receives it. The work itself calls forth this relation, since the aesthetic activity in which it was produced is itself structured by a valuing relation to its object. In the work's availability for reception there is an implicit appeal to the reader to relate it to the totality of his person, his entire rational and emotional life-activity, his conscious, his subconscious, and his mind as a whole. The reader cannot do otherwise than react to this appeal. In relating the work to himself (the subjective side), it (the objective side) has its effect on him. The reader makes the work an object of aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual enjoyment by using it to satisfy his reading needs and literary interests. It becomes for him a means of knowledge, of extending his acquaintance and information; a means of assistance in life, of finding his identity, of realizing and confirming himself; a means of amusement, diversion, and play, of edification and consolation; a means of getting to know an author better, of enlarging his aesthetic and historical knowledge of literature, of penetrating into the beauties of poetic language, or into literary laws and technique. But as the work thus becomes a means and an object to the reader, so the latter is at the same time exposed to its effect.

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In the process of reception, the two aspects can be quite differently subordinated to one another. The work can so bear upon the reader that the subjective element is reduced to a minimum: he is "swept away" and "riveted" by it; in enjoying the work he submits to its effect without being able to view it critically, at a distance. The positive evaluation that automatically sets in here is objectified, if at all, in oral or written statements framed on the model of "the story delighted me, was exciting, interesting, moving" etc. But conversely, the reception process can also be characterized by the work's withdrawing of itself from the reader. This distanced reading by no means restricts enjoyment of the work; on the contrary, if interest is concentrated on the work itself, its aesthetic structure, language, etc., there can even be a special deepening of enjoyment; the effect may be thereby raised to a higher level. Such a reading, which has generally to be presupposed in poetry, is often interrupted by reflection; the reader penetrates into the heart of the work; he listens consciously to the message that it has in store for him. A more solidly grounded evaluation results; the book is related to processes of literary history or to overall considerations of aesthetics and world view. A perversion of this mode of reading occurs when the work retreats so far that the reader foregoes enjoyment. Goethe wrote of this: "There are three kinds of reader: a first, who enjoys without judging, a third, who judges without enjoying, and the middle case, who judges with enjoyment and enjoys with judgement; the latter truly reproduces an art-work anew."45 To this it was added by Johannes R. Becher "that the first kind of reader, who enjoys without judging, deprives himself of the full enjoyment that consists in enjoying with judgement, whereas the third kind of reader, who judges without enjoying, forfeits his powers of judging, since the enjoyment of art is also part of the total judgement."46 The reception of a literary work is not, in fact, the outcome of a knowing that could be separated off from the experience itself. Such a reception is only a special case, rather, the result of a particular sort of abstraction in the course of reading, which sets in when the work is considered theoretically. When not in its theoretically specialized form, reading is a complex process, which actually includes experiencing. The same holds of this experience as is true of experience generally: "There is no doubt that anything as it is given in immediate experience cannot be given to us in any other way. No description, however vivid, could enable a blind man to know the color of the world, or a deaf man the musical character of its sounds, in the same way as if he immediately perceived them. For the man who has not himself felt love, or fighting spirit, or the joy of creation, no psychological treatise can take the place of what he feels when he undergoes these experiences himself."'47 The indirect effects of a literary work can also reach the reader. Anyone can gather information about such works in places other than the works themselves, e.g., from the statements of others about the reading of them. But no review, or commentary, or history of literature can take the place of an actual acquaintance with the book. Secondarily acquired knowledge about the work and its genetic and functional context can be an aid to its reception by the individual, and may color this more or less-but it cannot take the latter's

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place. The special and distinctive thing that literature has to offer can be attained only in the commerce of the individual with the individual book. Experiencing and knowing can here be distinguished only in the abstract: "Consciousness of the concrete living personality," says Rubinstein, " ... is always immersed, as it were, in a dynamic and not fully conscious awareness, forming a setting more or less clearly illuminated, changing and fluid in its contours, from which consciousness is projected but can never wholly break loose. Every act of consciousness is accompanied by a more or less muffled resonance that it calls forth among experiences less consciously felt, just as, conversely, the obscure but very intense play of experiences not fully risen to consciousness often finds an echo in consciousness itself."48 The complex mental processes that occur in reading take on a different stamp according to the quality of the object to which receptive activity is directed, and also in virtue of this activity itself, which is carried on by the "active subject" within a context of concrete material and social relations of an ideological kind. The concrete individual reception of the work is always a social process mediated by many factors. Before they reach the reader, the works produced always have forms of social appropriation already behind them; they have been selected for reception through social institutions, made available by the latter, and in most cases also have already been evaluated thereby. Examples of this mediating function are to be found in publishing houses, bookstores, and libraries, as well as in literary criticism and propaganda, literary instruction in schools, the study of literature, and all other institutions which mediate, materially or ideally, between the work produced and the reader. It is not therefore literature or works "in themselves" to which the reader establishes a relation in reading them. It is works, rather, which out of the potential stock of produced works have been selected, propagated, and evaluated by social institutions, according to ideological, aesthetic, economic, or other viewpoints, and whose road to the reader has additionally been cleared by measures of the most varied sort (advertising, book production, reviews, commentary, discussions of the work, public readings, literary prizes, popularization of the author, and so on). By his individual decision to choose a particular work from among those selected, the reader at the same time constitutes a social relationship. A decisive role in bridging the gap between produced work and reader is played by social modes of reception. By this term we designate the fact that particular modes of thought and canons of evaluation are formed in regard to traditional and contemporary literature, according to the objective social functions transmitted to literature by the material and ideological relationships in a given social formation. These modes are to be seen as concrete embodiments of the consciousness of that society, its classes, groups, and strata, in regard to problems connected with literature: ideas, for example, of what literature was, is, ought to be, can do, and must have done; of how works, authors, movements, schools, whole literary epochs, and the history of literature as such, are to be evaluated, interpreted, and understood; of which works and authors the reader ought to read, and which not; ideas of

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norms for realizing the possibilities inherent in literary production and reception for a specific mode of social communication and cultivation of consciousness. The verbal fixation of social modes of reception engages everyone who works in the ideological field, but especially scholars, critics, and teachers of literature. By their publications, teaching activities, and pronouncements they contribute to the development of views about the course of literary history, the significance of works and authors, the function of literature, of the artist, the work, and the reader-views which have a more or less strongly regulative effect on the "before" of the individual process of reception, during the actual course of it, and also on its "aftermath." There have been few investigations, as yet, of the genesis and operation of social modes of reception. The direction they should be pursued in has been shown, for example, by Franz Mehring in his Lessinglegende. Against the prevailing bourgeois "legends," i.e., modes of reception in regard to Lessing and his epoch, Mehring laid the foundations of a historical materialist mode of reception, which set a lasting stamp on the social reception of the literature of this period by the Marxist workers' movement, and later by the socialist society. A great contribution to the development of a new mode of reception in regard to classical German literature has been made by Georg Lukacs. Paul Rilla accurately hit off some characteristic features of bourgeois modes of reception, when he wrote: "And it ended with that mythologizing of the image of Goethe, whereby the reader no longer needed to entertain any historical scruples, or even to think at all, since he was favored with the soothing revelation that genius transcends both historical conditions and thoughtful consideration of any kind."49 In general it can be stated that before a work becomes the object of individual reception, and depending on how far back its time of inception lies, it has already gone through a more or less large number of social modes of reception. Through the mediating organs operative in the interval between the produced work and the beginning of the individual reception process, there is always an indication given, along with its availability for reception, of what processes of reception and effect have been going on in and after its realization. These regulative indications can be so powerful that the reception of particular works, and even of works of a whole literary period, is either hampered or so manipulated that their effects fulfill functional tasks which contradict the qualitative makeup of the original. We here have the basis for the partial truth of the thesis, that even humanistic offerings have a stabilizing effect upon the imperialist system of society. But in fact this is only a half-truth. For the indications of the social modes of reception are by no means strictly followed. Individuals do not find themselves mechanically dependent on the prevailing relations of literary communication. The social conditions of reception-starting with the appeal of the works available, the impulse to take up particular works, or literature in general, and extending to the social consensus about the outcome of reception-take effect in the currently determined historical form for particular individuals, classes, and groups. We need only make mention here of the dialectical determinedness of individuals in "society as the comprehensive system of relations for the

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activity and development of man."50 If we presuppose the ability to read, then, within the framework of his dialectical determinedness by sociohistorical being and consciousness, the "before" of reading, in regard to the reader, is determined by his world view and ideology; by his membership of a class, stratum, or group; by his material situation (income, leisure, living and working conditions, and general way of life); by his education, knowledge, and level of culture, his aesthetic needs; by his age, and even by his sex, and not least by his attitude to the other arts, and especially to the very literature that he has already given a reception to. Every individual reception of a work has always been preceded already by other receptions. Acquaintance with literature begins at such an early stage of personal development-with listening to poetically colored narratives, tales, rhymes, etc.-that the capacities thus acquired for understanding poetical works appear, as it were, a "natural" characteristic of man. It is a question, however, of sociocultural capacities which the reader has acquired in the course of his life. In so doing, the social capacities, the rules of commerce with literature, are subjectively "broken" in the individual's appropriation, corresponding to his concrete sociohistorical and individual situation. Here there are also marked out the special kinds of individual difference which help to condition the appropriation of literature, and of the work-personal constants "as appropriations, assimilations and reinforcements through learning of the norms and rules of behavior that are primarily determined socially ... in which process the inborn bases of these constants must be viewed in the light of their individual variability.""51Upon these many-levelled foundations, both socially and individually conditioned, the reader forms particular reading motivations, reading needs, literary interests,52 particular qualities of his "literary sense,""53 particular expectations, demands, and attitudes to literature, which in their totality are not only decisive for his choice of work from among the socially mediated stock of literature available, but also help to determine the complex processes of influence and evaluation, when and after the offer for reception has been taken up. It must always be borne in mind here, that even the more or less chance personal situation in which the reader finds himself also has an effect on the course and consequences of reading. Subjective situations are as diversified as life itself and furnish additional variations to the reception process. In his relation to the work, the reader is apt to bring in the whole of his constantly changing and situationally conditioned experience: "all that he has ever been through and experienced, all his ideals, thoughts and aspirations, in short, all the information vested in him as a biological being, in the subconscious no less than in the conscious sphere."54 The experience, knowledge, and enjoyed values resulting from the interrelation between what is offered for reception and the sociohistorical conditions (often "broken" in the individual case) under which reception is realized, have a more or less deep, general, and lasting effect on the reader's modes of perception, feeling, thought, behavior, and action. We can speak, therefore, of a process of "internalizing"55 experiences transmitted through literature. There is a problem here in the largely unconscious nature of such

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supposed effects. It is not a matter of any process of internalizing taking place inside the personality. The interrelation produces confirmation or change in behavior and action, in the views taken, and in social activity-that is just how the effect enters society, how it develops from an individual into a social effect, and how literature gains the power to shape history. But only in exceptional cases is it possible to demonstrate this effect of literature from the effect of a given work or on a given reader. It is a component of numerous other social influences, incentives, and impulses, and only rarely can it be isolated from this totality and thus made accessible to inquiry. Such effects, however, are evinced in examinable form once they do not continue to be "tacitly" embodied in thought and action, but are expressly defined and described-in oral or written texts containing observations on the effects of one's own reading or that of others. The verbally framed testimonial concerning the effect, evaluation, or reception of literature or particular works (in the form of the conversation, discussion-contribution, reader's letter, review, and the literature on literature generally, but also in that of relevant utterances in documents of any other type) confirms the social and individual effect of literature, and, when it is relayed back to the authors, can enter productively into the advance of the literary process. The reader's formulation of such texts represents an activity having a productive literary function. Such evidences of receptive acts can sometimes change the author's image of his audience, and may operate in this intermediate fashion as an "internal motivation" for new literary production. From this situation there necessarily arises the demand to recognize reception and the reader as a motive force in the literary process, and thence to draw methodological conclusions for research into literary history. Demonstrable effects of the reception process are also present where (within the relation of author to literary process) a link is established with particular elements and structures of earlier works, with particular literary traditions, in order to render them fruitful in a new process of literary creation. And the following, too, points clearly to such an effect: experiences met with in the reception of particular works are carried over, as production experiences, into the author's armory of methods and material. The very possibility just mentioned, of relaying the results of reception into the prior phase of a new process of literary production, is an indication that the historico-genetic study of literature and the historico-functional account,56 whose special object is to inquire into the reception and effect of literature, cannot be pursued in independence of each other. The produced literature, whose mode of function is studied by historico-functional inquiry, becomes an element in the conditions for engendering new literature. The same also holds good in a specific manner for the sociological study of effects,57 which has special methods for questioning living readers, in order to investigate reception processes and their results. The Marxist inquiries pursued in this field start from a recognition that the relation between work and reader represents, on the one hand, the basis for the sociohistorical effect of literature, which also produces literature in the individual and special case; but concede on the other that the encounter

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between a reader and a work, in its prehistory, its "aftermath," and its intervening course, displays so many variants, that generalizing conclusions can only with difficulty be drawn from it. The individual reception of a work is at once the terminus and starting point of a chain of sociohistorical, individual, biographical, and special events and processes belonging to literary history, of linkages and interactions of a social, psychological, and aesthetic nature, such that every attempt to push on from thence to general laws is attended with insuperable difficulties. Only in appearance does the individual reception of a work present the simplest relationship whereby the social appropriation of literature is mediated. However concrete it may seem to be, as the real presupposition for the realization of what is offered for reception, it actually represents an abstraction from a multitude of diverse determinations. It is the form of appearance of the social appropriation of literature. The latter in turn stands, in the context of production, transmission, and function of literature, within socially conditioned and classconditioned literary relationships, which are part of the overall social and historical nexus. From this nexus it is also possible to make concrete the relations entered into by the "active subjects," when by means of their receptive activity they realize and make productive the values contained in literature and its works.
AKADEMIE DERWISSENSCHAFTEN DERDDR

(Translated by Peter Heath)

NOTES 1 This uncompleted study was first published in 1903 in the newspaper Neue Zeit. The significance of the dialectic of production and consumption for aesthetics has been pointed out by Hans Koch, Marixisms und Asthetik (Berlin, 1962), pp. 150-66; Lenore and Norbert Krenzlin, "Bitterfeld, einige Fragen der Literaturtheorie and 'Ole Bienkopp,' " Weimarer Beitrdige, 6 (1964), 872-88, Erwin Pracht and Werner Neubert, Sozialistischer Realismus-Positionen, Probleme, Perspektiven (Berlin, 1970), pp. 30f. 2 MEW, XIII, 622-26; English in Karl Marx, The Grundrisse, ed. and tr. David McLellan (New York, 1971), pp. 25-28. 3 MEW, Erganzungsband 1, p. 537; English in Karl Marx, Early Writings, ed. and tr.

T. B. Bottomore(New York, 1963), p. 156.

4 MEW, III, 26f. and 46; English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, ed. and tr. R. Pascal (New York, 1947), pp. 13-15, 39. 5 MEW, XXVII, 459; English in Marx-Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1951), II, 407. 6 MEW, XXVI, 329, 257; English in Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, tr. E. Burns (Moscow, 1963), pp. 353, 258. 7 Ibid., p. 258; English, p. 286. 8 Ibid., p. 257-59; English, pp. 285-87. 9 Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie (Berlin, 1953), p. 212; English in McLellan, p. 79n. 10 MEW, XXVI, 258f.; English in Theories of Surplus Value, pp. 286-87. 11 Cf. ibid., p. 259; English, p. 287.

12 Marx,Grundrisse, 212; McLellan,p. 79. p.

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13 MEW, XXVI, 260; Theories of Surplus Value, p. 288. 14 MEW, XIII, 616f.; McLellan, p. 18. 15 Cf. V. Riabov: "Der Gegenstand der geistigen Produktion und die Besonderheiten seiner Konsumtion," Kunst und Literatur, 1 (1970), 26-34. 16 MEW, XIII, 616; McLellan, p. 18. 17 Ibid., p. 617; English, p. 18. 18 Ibid., p. 619; English, p. 21. 19 MEW, XXIII, 192; English in Karl Marx, Capital, tr. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York, 1906), I, 197-98. 20 MEW, Erganzungsband 1, p. 546; Bottomore, p. 166. 21 Ibid., p. 543; English, p. 164. 22 MEW, III, 5; (not in Pascal). 23 MEW, XXIII, 192; English in Capital, p. 198. 24 MEW, Erganzungsband 1, p. 541; Bottomore, p. 161. 25 Grundrisse, p. 599; McLellan, p. 148. 26 MEW, III, 37; English in Pascal, p. 27. 27 MEW, XXI, 292ff.; MESW II, p. 350 (Engels on Feuerbach). 28 MEW, XXIII, 27. 29 Philosophisches W6rterbuch, 6th ed., Vol. I of 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1969), p. 33; cf. M. Rosenthal and P. Yudin: A Dictionary of Philosophy (Moscow, 1967), p. 32 (s.v. Art). 30 Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, tr. J. C. Meredith (Oxford, 1911), I, ?6, 50. 31 Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. and tr. E. M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby (Oxford, 1967), Letter 27, pp. 205-19. 32 MEW, Erganzungsband 1, p. 541; Bottomore, p. 161. 33 Johannes R. Becher, "Unsere Front," Sinn und Form, Zweites Sonderheft Johannes R. Becher, p. 201. 34 Johannes R. Becher, Erziehung zur Freiheit. Gedanken und Betrachtungen (Berlin and Leipzig, 1946), p. 112. 35 MEW, Erganzungsband 1, p. 539; Bottomore, p. 159. 36 Grundrisse, p. 387; (not in McLellan). 37 V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1961), p. 360. 38 Grundrisse, p. 208; (not in McLellan). 39 MEW, XIII, 623; McLellan, p. 27. 40 This is repeatedly stated in Soviet writings. Thus M. S. Kagan, for example, writes: "Every work of art is created to have an effect on the minds and feelings of men. Apart from this effect, a statue is no more than stone, wood or metal that has been given a particular form; a picture, a bit of canvas with the colored representation of an object thrown upon it" (M. S. Kagan, Vorlesungen zur marxistisch-leninistischen Asthetik, p. 20). Elsewhere he says: "We write and utter many true and clever words about the great educational significance of art, about its ability to contribute to the formation of a harmoniously developed personality ... but for some reason we forget in so saying that art only has an educational effect when people receive works of art-read novels, see plays and films... " (Kagan, "Kunst und Zuschauer," Kunst und Literatur, 4 [1971], 358). B. Mejlach argues: "The work of art, or more properly the life of it, only begins when it becomes a fact in the consciousness of social man, when it enters into relation with his views and aesthetic criteria. The novel which does not become a part of the reader's consciousness is no more than a piece of book-binding with 'nothing' inscribed in it. A movie that gets no showing is no more than a strip of film, a sonata a und mere score" (B. Mejlach, "Die Kunstrezeption-Forschungsaspekte Untersuchungs-methoden," Kunst und Literatur, 2 [1971], 151). In regard to works of pictorial art, V. Glasychev remarks: "If a work is 'invisible' (exists only in a museum-

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vault, or has been lost, or subsists only in the artist's mind), it remains a 'thing-initself', remains dead, however great its artistic qualities may be" (V. Glasychev, "Probleme der gesellschaftlichen Rezeption der monumentalen Kunst," K.u.L., 6 [1971], 644). 41 Goethe to Zelter, 24 Aug. 1824, in Works (Weimar ed.) IV, Vol. 38, p. 228. 42 Cf. on this point Mejlach, pp. 142-47. The reader is "not a passive user of finished products" (A. Miasnikov, "Sozialistischer Realismus und Literaturtheorie," Sinn und Form, 3 [1967], 681). For criticism of theories which define reception as a process in which the recipient is only passively involved, see V. Sokolov, "Perspektiven der heutigen asthetischen Wissenschaft," K.u.L., 8 [1967], 812-18. For B. Kublanov, also, " 'co-creation' is not a passive appropriation of what the artist has created, but an
active engagement of the imagination . . . " (B. Kublanov, "Asthetik und

Psychologie," K.u.L., 1 [1970], 41). Boris Suchkov takes the view that "the subject is never a mere passive receiver of the aesthetic phenomenon" (B. Suchkov, "Leninismus and Literatur," Sinn und Form, 2 [1970], 430). See also M. S. Kagan, "Ktinstlerische Wahrnehmung und Kunst-kritik," K.u.L., 2 (1972), 129-31. 43 Robert Chasles, Les illustres Franqaises, Vols. 1-2 (Paris, 1967). 44 These concepts, introduced by Georg Lukacs in his Aesthetics, are used here in a purely descriptive fashion, without taking over the meaning attached to them. 45 Goethe to J. F. Rochlitz, 13 June 1819, in Works (Weimar ed.) IV, Vol. 31, p. 178. 46 Becher, Poetische Konfession (Berlin, 1959), p. 119. 47 S. L. Rubinstein, Grundlagen der allgemeinen Psychologie, 6th ed. (Berlin, 1968), p. 17. 48 Ibid., p. 21. 49 P. Rilla, Goethe in der Literaturgeschichte (Berlin, 1950), p. 6. 50 H. Hiebsch, Sozialpsychologische Grundlagen der Persdnlichkeitsformung (Berlin, 1966), p. 60. 51 Philosophisches Wdrterbuch, II, 893. 52 Cf. Achim Walter, "Soziale bedingte Lesemotivationen," Weimarer Beitrdge, 11 (1970), 124-44; Dietrich L6ffler, "Zur Spezifik literarischer Interessen," WeimarerBeitriige, 10 (1972), 70-94. 53 Cf. Christa Herber, "Erziehung zu Kunstsinn und Kunstverstandnis," Weimarer Beitrdge, 12 (1972), 68-85. 54 B. Runin, "Sehnsucht nach einer Kunstmetrie," K.u.L., 7 (1970), 748. See also Mejlach: reception "is determined by a whole complex of special features of the personality of the reader, spectator or auditor. The content of the work of art is always compared with the subject's own life-experience and combines with the associations peculiar to the perceiver; it thus depends both on the social milieu and on the current situation in which the act of perception takes place" (B. Mejlach, p. 145). Kagan: "One and the same work of art is perceived, felt, interpreted and viewed by each personality in his own way, according to the peculiarities of his life-experience, artistic culture, taste, temperament, inclinations, interests, education and ideals" (M.S. Kagan, "Kunst und Pers6nlichkeit," K.u.L., 5 (1968), p. 442). 55 We use this term in the sense employed by Marxist social psychology. Cf. Hiebsch, p. 58. The "mechanism of social transmission rests on one of the basic attributes of human nature, labor. Through specifically human activity, the experiences of one generation (and of preceding generations generally) are objectified in material and ideal productions. It is these objectified results of man's social activity which confront a member of the young generation (but also of the mature one) as initially external event-structures, to which he must relate his activity and behavior. In actively coming to terms with them they are internalized and built up into 'inner

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mental frames of reference.' " According to Hans-Dieter Schmidt (Allgemeine Entwicklungspsychologie, [Berlin, 1970]), who relies on this, but especially also on Soviet psychologists, the build-up of mental actions by this process is a thoroughly explored field-not so, however, the process of internalizing other matters, or hence that which is involved in the appropriation of ethical norms of behavior (p. 346). 56 Mikhail Khrapchenko, "Die Zeit und das Leben literarischer Werke," K.u.L., 1 (1973), 3-25. 57 Dietrich Sommer and Dietrich L6ffler, "Soziologische Probleme der literarischen Wirkungsforschung," Weimarer Beitrdge, 8 (1970), 51-76; Elizabeth Simons, "Asthetische Wirkungsforschung und sozialistische Realismustheorie," Einheit, 9 (1968), 1171; Walter Hohmann, "Es geht um die Erforschung der literarischen Wirkung," in the Leipzig bibliographical Zeitschrift far das Bibliothekswesen, 19 (1965), 505-15.