Georg Lukcs: Forms of Longing Author(s): DEBRA A. CASTILLO Reviewed work(s): Source: Criticism, Vol. 28, No.

1 (winter 1986), pp. 89-104 Published by: Wayne State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23110360 . Accessed: 24/12/2012 16:55
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Wayne State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Criticism.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DEBRA

A. CASTILLO

Georg Lukacs:
For Georg Lukacs,
economics, but also

Forms of Longing
represented
an aesthetics,

Marxism
a morality,

not only a politics and an

and even, if the word is

used guardedly, an erotics. On the first and most obvious level, Marxism is a form-giving principleits "scientific" method allowing him to impose order and harmony on a fluid reality and to judge the implications of modern developments through a clear, stable perspec tive. Underlying the surface form of Marxist thought however, the reader will discern a second stratumthat of longingwhich rejects formalism and which undercuts the formalistic certainties with the vaguer yearnings of an unfulfilled, unfulfillable hope. Lukacs criti cism has long implictly acknowledged this subterranean strain in the
Marxist writer, and the recurrence of

metaphors in the writings of admirers and critics alike creates a strik ing pattern in the exegeses of the great Hungarian critic. Thus, writers as various and as distinct as Fredric Jameson, Michael Holzman, Mi
chael

specific

words,

phrases,

and

inherent in Lukacs' vision, a among others, point to the "nostalgia" related to his "impulse to be everywhere at home in the nostalgia
world."1 The

Sprinker,

David

Forgacs,

Andrew

Arato

and

Paul

Breines,

ized in a sense of being truly at home nowhere; in his works, as in his life, Lukacs is frequently uprooted or uproots himself. Haunted by potentialities, at home (however defined), he still yearns (another re
current word in Lukacs

impulse

to

be

everywhere

at

home

is,

of

course,

real

other time. Both desperately

same that whose never time, of the Lukacs' passionate single-minded desire for order fully achieved.

studies)2

for

another

home

elsewhere, stance thinking that which has only

in

an

dislocated
adoption

and
of but the

firmly situated
Marxist of the for

at the
is not man can one

revolutionary, is precisely that: "Every

that

a yearning

be

thought," wrote Lukacs, and the idea of form, which he identifies at the thought of Leo Popper3 is central to him as well. Yet following de Man, we might add that each person's single thought is paired with a of that thought which together form a hidden typical misconception that fuels insights and provokes blindness in a writer and dichotomy his critics. The implicit antinomies of Lukacsian thought are, then, those of form and longing: the longing for a form that will complete itself in a future time, the form of a longing that rejects the very pos sibility of complete form.
Criticism, Copyright Winter, 1986, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, pp. 89-104. o 1986 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48202.

significant

person

89

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

90

Georg

Lukacs

Lukacs
in the between image essayist, the

The privileged status of form is particularly evident in the essay. As notes in his early work, Soul and Form (1910), "Form is reality
writings the as of the critics,"4 status thus of establishing the essay on being form structure form, and or an implicit and that onto equation of poetic The as he are ontological projections in his

parallel however,

of meaningful concentration together as he perceives forms

reality. images instead, facts

abandons reality; as these

central

structure the facts

drawing of life

addresses

them

conveyed
arrangement

in their just representation

of these essential

in another piece of writing. His

of reality in a coherent and

meaningful structure is the focus of the essay. Objective reality, Lu kacs implies, is not at issue. Indeed, in his best writings, considera tions of objective reality are apt to be left to one side; that is, validity
and coherence and of form take precedence than over mimesis objective are the truth crucial value. issues. Selection arrangement rather

Said is correct, therefore, in signalling the problematic of place as cru cial to the discussion of the form of the essay. He observes that place "involves relations the critic fashions with the texts he addresses [approach] and the audience he addresses [intention]; it also involves the dynamic taking place of his own text as it produces itself." At question then, in this assumption of a place congruent with his cho sen form (Said's, Lukacs', or mine) is the problem of whether an es
say is best considered a "text, an intervention between texts,

an

intensification of the notion of textuality, or a dispersion of language tendencies, currents or away from a contingent page to occasion, movements in and for history."5 In these words the force and the limit of Lukacs' thought are sug gested. If form is reality, likewise reality is form. Furthermore, as Ta
vor judge notes, it."6 "To form is therefore longing to not only to represent the life; it is also status to of Lukacs' recuperate ontological

form involves an ideology and a morality which implicitly negate both that being and that assumption of reality. The essayist may dream of a destiny in the world, but his destiny, his condemnation, is to the aesthetics of the word. abandons his longing the destructive influence

Thus, the young Lukacs consciously for a life with Irma Seidler out of a "dread of

of happiness"7 which would distract him from his work and from Life in his chosen area of an intellectually rigorous inquiry into form. As he writes in an early essay: "Certainly most men live without Life and are unaware of it. Their lives are merely social. . . . Indeed, for them the fulfilling of responsibilities is the only possible means of enhancing their lives. . . . These men can

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Debra

A. Castillo

91

never

get lives

beyond a firm

themselves

for

their

contact

with

others

is at best

psychological
their

interpretation,
and secure,

while

the force of responsibility

form."8 The nostalgia

gives
so of

if shallow,

ten noted in Lukacs' involves a ruthlessly repressed longing for life as well as a Life; his extremely suggestive unmailed letter to Irma
"Once complete again the 'ice age' from has life begun and for every the me, complete loneliness, separation of "life" human community"9 for

strongly indicates
separation chosen

his desire for wholeness

and "work."10 As

despite
two

a rigid theoretical
life and

for a Life, conflict, so too the sedimentation

work results in an ambiguous relationship

of these longings
to form as

longings,

in his
For

well.

in Lukacs the provisionality of the essay formby definition an exer in a longing for an ideal cise or trying out of ideasis suppressed form. The issue, already implicit in his early work, is never fully re
solved. For ualization Lukacs the essay order becomes and a center a search for and the intermittent As vis such,

of an

of universal

it is an objectifying and stabilizing force converting the flux of be coming into concrete being, ongoing praxis into a single form held firm ("a solid possession"), if only momentarily. The "theoretical overtotalization" (Said's phrase) of these early essayistic efforts fol lows Lukacs into his later life as well. Cornel West, referring to Lu with ontological kacs' lifelong obsession investigation, asks, "Why
then did Lukacsthe greatest of certainty. Marxist thinker of this centurypur

convergence.

sue such a futile project?"

remained in search

And he answers
. . . He had

his own
to find

question:

"He

a secure

ing for his belief in the objective

meaning";11

possibility
become

of wholeness
a Life closed and

and life
whole, of

ground

become
As

an ideal Life, rounded

Lukacs

petty

lives

andlongings refuses,

with significance.
of course, the Christian notion a

Marxist,

transcendental
restrial kacs's its sphere concept

state of perfect being, but his implicit aim in the ter

often of on seems curiously the nature similar. Demetz finds tradition" typical that "Lu type the . . . rejoins prophetic theological of the through a

emphasis

character,12

statement

which is true not only for the concept of type but for his theoretical reflections on the essay form in general. Through his es says, Lukacs attempts to fix the incessant flux of history in a discrete
moment or in a vision

present

existence

into being does not invalidate the ef cannot be congealed and fort, but acts as a limiting condition that must be acknowledged taken into account. It is longing that prevents form from fully achiev

of earthly

transcendence.

The

fact

that

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

92

Georg

Lukacs

ing its object. For while "form" reflects its alliance

of order, "longing" harmony, draws reality, to itself an totality, opposing recognition, set

with the concepts

and chaos, being, dis

necessity,

of significations:

sonance, appearance, immediacy, disguise, freedom, and becoming. in a certain sense, "longing" is an illicit term in the discussion of Yet, a strictly Marxist critic like the later Lukacs. The language of desire
and Marx, passionate who wishes of attraction is pointedly the absent from of the however, the vocabulary in this favor of of the of to by-pass concerns enough, body

abstractions

science.

Curiously

rejection

the body in favor of the mind involves another form of passion which is not dissimilar in essence. The great mystics of the Church deny the body and reach out persistently for the truth behind the im age, yet, in their description of ecstasy, the language of erotic love is
the only

(and in Lukacs) longing enters surreptitiously through the implica tions of the chosen rhetoric. The operations of longing upon form are perfectly realized in Marx's writings when he says, "It is value,
rather, mysterious that converts operations every of product value upon into a social hieroglyphic."13 it into an The image, form convert

appropriate

one

to describe

their

experience.

So

too

in

Marx

an object of longing, a myth. Substantiality is subsumed in subjectiv ity and a simple object come to partake of (to use another illicit word)
the sacred.

The young, pre-Marxist Lukacs also recognized the significance of the hieroglyph and paid tribute to its evocative power: "the true poets of myth looked only for the true meaning of their themes; they
neither could nor wished to check their

these myths as sacred, mysterious hieroglyphics which it was their mission to read" (S&F, 12). As for Marx, the products of a technologi cal society join the old tales and legends as hieroglyphs, and the un decipherable longings of science unite with those of art. The myths of
the past retain through their the vibrancy subjective and the myths of the present gain their mystery action of longing upon substance.

pragmatic

reality.

They

saw

deciphered.
and

It is contrary to the mode of existence of the hieroglyph that it be Desire can never be fulfilled or the image loses its value
degenerates once again into a simple product: "all representa

istic youth. Carroll concurs.

which the novel attempts

tion," says David Carroll, "is constituted by both production and loss."14 It is one of the great dilemmas of Lukacs' concept of totality that it be so thoroughly conditioned by this unacknowledged para dox, an unresolved problem inherited, perhaps, from his more ideal "Thus,"
to impose on concrete life can only result in

he writes, "the abstract totality

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Debra

A. Castillo

93

the

repeated within

assertion

of

the

distance

separating desired, which

it from

life.

. . ,"15

Disappearing
always

in the distance,
grasp: that

yet all the more present, always

is stirs the

gone,

which

emotions

to their heights, is both necessary as the object of the quest, yet unat tainable if not actually illusory. Roland Barthes, whose critical differ
ences him, from Lukacs are sees far the more scholarly of and this apparent endeavor author. are He both than his similarities that are with highly that prohi nevertheless to the or the in terms acutely under the

pertinent "the writer

discussion critic

observes same

Orpheus

constitutes their 'song': the prohibition from turning what they love."16 Alienation from the (utopian) reality back toward of the work is the destiny of the realistic or dialectical writer as well as his romantic counterpart. There is an unremitting paradox in this bition which
formulation, at all, but well. in of course; order for only desire that to which be arouses desire the can object be known be maintained cannot

known

On another level, the object of longing is not merely that which is

exterior to the writer and resists his efforts to

contrary, the essential motivation of longing is not exterior (i.e., not in the product itself) but interior (e.g., in the values that the individ ual applies to it which invest it with the hieroglyphic quality). Thus
Lukacs inward, is correct in his assertion its paths that may "true lead longing across the is always turned world" however much external

penetrate

it.

On

the

or of a work of (S&F, 92). The discussion of a scientific development art is only ostensibly a discussion of the forms of reality in an exte rior, verifiable world. The critic, in evaluating a work, is remaking
that work and that world in terms of his own value

sential core of "reality"

Thus, ing and ers: This the to come a longing what attitude, form of the to terms with

is constituted
also the reveals conditions the "gnostic suggests,

by this implicit set of values.

the and critic's nature verities narcissistic of his own long desire for oth

system;

the

es

essay

to conceptualize calls Paul de the Man as

essential

of desire

Congdon

tyranny"17 reflects

of Lukacs' the Nietzschean

ideology. side

of Lukacs, at least in his use of rhetoric,18 the will to truth or will to power that directly confronts the necessarily open, arbitrary form of the essay genre. The gnostic tyranny is all the more strictly imposed in the face of the philosophical rebellion of the tyrant's materials. If situates the essential reality within himself, then inevitably an home) and the abyss opens between totality (form, the monumental individual (life force, will to power, nostalgic longing). Thus the form of the essay frustrates the longing that inspires its creation, the long Lukacs

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

94

Georg

Lukacs

ing to be one with the object. Even what Rochlitz calls "l'abandon l'attitude essayiste"19 in the laterworks (but did he ever abandon
stance?) Kantian The concerns expresses no more or less than a visible intensification

de this

of this

longing for form in the face of his struggle with and fear of the neo
separation later, to more the of writing subject but and written object. relegates lost. In these "the programmatically background, they Marxist are not Lukacs entirely

Writer and the Critic," he observes that "the normal relationship be tween writer and critic is to be found in their encounter within this 'intermediate zone': in the cognition and grounding of objectivity in
the creative process."20 idea on of one the hand the forms, Despite critic and flux the as a the emphasis mediator on

and objectivity
doned the other. derive the forms In the

in this passage,

it is clear that Lukacs

the between conceived and too subjectively of immediacy critic Marxist

cognitive the

processes and on effort in an the to un

has not aban

system an totality

confronting essential

making is involved

intentional

distortion of reality through his longing to order it. The critic is a mediator, but the form taken by his engagement with the terms of the dialectic is an ambivalent one; his intentions are masked by a false assumption of critical distance. Lukacs points to "the intensive inexhaustibility
the objective world encompassing modern society him", "life

of man (the subject)

warns that in to relentlessly notwithstand

and

but moves

technologically-oriented

ward reducing
(W&'C, 11). the into

the word to the mechanical

on the evolution

simplicity of a mere sign"

in time

Emphasis form

of forms

ing, Lukacs
longing, generates incarnate there is

implicitly
of the a mere

recognizes
word (the infertile

that, without
Word?) loses Thus, its in

the component
fecundity an ideal and situation,

of
de

the text (historical

as the clear

commodity. force. In

or fictional) becomes
productive that danger technology

the representative
modern subsume society, the may

of Logos
however, meanings

a positive

of history into a cybernetic structure incapable of producing new or new texts: the pure alienation of life which, as noted meanings earlier, also has a form, albeit a shallow one. In the exchanges of lit
erary value commerce, are themselves as Conrad ground notes into in the one of his letters, meaning and machine:

us saya machine. It evolved itself (I am severely scientific) out of a chaos of scraps of iron and be hold!it knits. I am horrified at the horrible work and stand I feel it ought to embroiderbut it goes on knit appalled.

There is alet

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Debra

A. Castillo

95

ting. . . . And the most withering

mous without thing as made itself; without made foresight, conscience,

thought
itself without

is that the infa

without eyes, thought, without

heart. It is a tragic accidentand it happened. You can't in terfere with it. The last drop of bitterness is in the suspicion
that

immortal which lurks in the force that made it spring into ex istence it is what it isand it is indestructible! It knits us in and it knits us out. It has knitted time, space, pain, death, corruption, despair and all the illusionsand
nothing morseless matters. process I'll admit however that to look at the re is sometimes amusing.21

you

can't

even

smash

it.

In

virtue

of

that

truth

one

and

The impersonal efficiency of the machine achieves its power and its terror because it is a pure form free from the exigencies of longing that are required for progress. Through the nihilistic offices of the machine,
ascendency

reality is reduced
of machine

to a code.
man, "the

As Lukacs

observes,
of the

with the
object of

over

production necessarily entails the fragmentation of its subject" with the terrifying result that in advanced industrial countries, "time is
everything, of time To eruption that the this man is nothing; of the he is at most the into human incarnation Conrad's being writers, in the of machine. responds Lukacs by stance an time,"22 knitted relentlessly, remorselessly subject to the

fragmentation

repression of subjectivity.

Turning of time

modernist

notes of

subjectivization a subjective picture the of reality amusement

is reflected

uncritical

major writers to their culture: "the modernist

necessarily distorted machine, experience as a whole. with reality . . ,"23 for

writer identifies what is

as such, thus from becomes giving within an exer a the Writing

of a Conrad,

cise in solipsistic
underlying conception the other extreme side of in time that

example,

self-indulgence
founded it affirms coin, in the the

presupposing
ethics and politics. present

(and
is

disguising)
The ethics hedonistic or, what pleasures of

an
a in

scarcely-recognized

moment of the body

pleasures

is the of

of the

same

withdraws

the mind. As a politics, the rejection of the future in favor of a succes sion of present instants implies the rejection of progress and teleol ogy. There is also a moral issue involved: the conversion of the body into a mere instrument of labor results in (to recall our illicit terminol ogy) a desacralization ties.
In a certain sense,

exclusively

to the

of that body, a mutilation

consequences (and

of man's
conscience)

possibili
of the

the

the

radical formalism of industrial

society, on the one hand, and the at

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

96

Georg

Lukacs

tenuated in the

longings pre-eminence

of a subjectivized of the ironic

vision, form in

on our

the

other,

are "It

reflected is a subtle

literature.

and poignant critic dreams

speaks

irony," says Lukacs in Soul and Form, "when our longing into early Florentine paintings
achievements of scientific research,

the great . . . and

meth

of the

latest

of new

ods and new facts" (S&F

ology in the reverence

12-13).
that is

Art becomes
it, a

a kind of negative
that is at

the
every

shown

reverence

and undermined by the action of the critic. point both acknowledged the irony of irony is not in its distanciation from the Nevertheless, but the submerged longing with which object under contemplation, that object is endowed,
piercing through in

a longing which is exemplified

to the "essences"

in the passion
contained

for

surfaces

in its depths. Malraux

he observes reference

captures the crux of this painful situation when

to contemporary art that "our modern mas

supposedly

ters paint their pictures as the artists of ancient civilization carved or painted gods;"24 that is, the denial of spiritual transcendence is, in its
negation of art. of faith, itself an expression of faith in the supreme values

Clearly, however, the ironic form typical of the modern essay is subject to perversion in a bourgeois society. "This bourgeois way of life is only a mask," says Lukacs, "and like all masks it is negative: it is only the opposite of something, it acquires meaning solely through the energy with which it says 'No' to something" (S&F, 56). The neg
ativity kacs essay, taciturn . . . But of an ironic stance towards

of that reality which mystifies rather than problematizes

himself "Longing and the mask at times and it always also wears Form," disguises represents a version he states itself the of one that behind great, of his "great many two-fold own longing

reality

is perverted

into

it. Still, Lu
masks. is In the always masks. of life:

a negation

different struggle

analysis appropriate to a Marxist philosophy. There is a secret desire, only intermittently revealed, that his works be appreciated in terms other than truth value. This shedding of the mask is particularly evi dent in his careful prefaces to the re-issues of his earlier works. Lu kacs writes in the preface to the 1968 edition of History and Class Consciousness:
any

the struggle to be recognized and the struggle to remain disguised" and imprisons his long (S&F, 92). As a critic, Lukacs impersonalizes ings behind the rhetoric of indirection and the "scientific" modes of

"I

must begin

by confessing
indifferent

that having
for

once

dis

carded

of my

works

I remain

to them

the

whole

of

my life" (xxxviii). Similar statements made explicitly in reference to The Theory of the Novel and Soul and Form, are impossible to take at

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Debra

A. Castillo

97

face

value.

In

each

case,

the

mask. While each of these works represents a complex of philosophi cal attitudes which Lukacs found deficient, yet his own disguised longing returns in his inability to renounce or wholly abandon them. He must repress his deep urge to find in the delimitation of his com
plete works

autobiographical

"I"

can

be

revealed

as

desire, irony trary pull distanciation from the form perceived, form to bridge the gap.
In his revisionary for form, prefaces, for totality. Lukacs On longing a

of

a single

unified

corpus.

In

this

demonstration

of the

con

his

shows

that of and that of longing for a total both its faces:

repress hand, pure each longing form is in his pre

must the one

vented from achieving

perpetual can postponement never be beloved

stability (the end of history, irony, longing)

inherent possessed by in the the concept On of the longingthe other lover.

by

hand,

of longing there are in Lukacs indications that the mechanism or ignores this deferral in an effort to grasp the whole times denies
the

at in

he is, then, not so much

longing At for a complete

present

moment.

When

Lukacs

discusses

the

category

of

totality,

delimiting
in the

a form as describing
instant. Lukacs mediates

his own
for us

the "totality" of his work, that is, he gives it form.

these as points his forms has perhaps and himself the of also in his arguments, verges world out that to on of the a a Lukacs' secularized longing essay ironic consciousness that cre is dispersed ates the Hartman terpart, sues,"25 Lukacs thought the mysticism for form is system. ideally

meaning

Geoffrey "a coun is one; love

recognized counterpoint,, comparison that

desire for ultimate mysticism's is not idle with the an mystics soars higher than itself; great

states

always has something ascetic about it" (S&F, 94). The image of the ascetic attempting inconceivable heights in search of a union with the Ineffable is essentially a mystic one. That the Ineffable is also the is temporarily forgotten, and (and unrepresentable) Unapproachable
from his blindness

"longing

sible utopianism. Like the mystics who are allowed a glimpse of the face of God, the essayist is vouchsafed a momentary vision of truth: "He is delivered from the relative, the inessential, by the force of (S&F, 16). judgement of ideas he has glimpsed . . Totality is, therefore, for Lukacs both a normative and an ontologi cal category as well as (though Lukacs would not admit it) an episte mological one. It provides, as Jameson notes, both a method and a means of critiquing, of demystifying that method.26 The representa tion of that totality in a concrete historical moment is the (impossible)

of longing

evolves

Lukacs'

repressed

and

irrepres

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

98

Georg

Lukacs

goal of every true work of art or criticism. Thus, while Lukacs rejects much of his early Marxist work, History and Class Consciousness, he
points with pride to the fact that it recognizes the

ity as a category and describes the ontological implications of this in relation to the concrete historical and political situation conception of man in the modern age (HCC, xx). Likewise, an artistic work must not be satisfied with the self-enclosed totality of artifact, an avatar of
Conrad's Industrial

importance

of total

social realities of a specific historical and cultural situation.

great artist or the great critic is capable of such an effort

Age

machine,

but

must

reach

out

to comprise

the

Only the

of abstraction

of the typical: "this step-by-step approximation of the hidden reality is accessible only to the greatest and most persevering genius" (W&C, 80). The artist's ability is also the source of his obligation; "totality" is
not the only nature an ontological of reality, but category it also to be encloses grasped the in true descriptions for critique: the of a necessity has

moral and ethical imperative.

can become overwhelming,

In Lukacs,

this (often) normative

which resulted in

drive
fre

The nostalgic tone in quent charges of inflexibility and utopianism. his appreciation of the lost wholeness of the classical age (e.g., The Theory of the Novel) is indicative of this normative drive, as in his
later, Marxist-inspired attraction to the closed narrative structures of

a tendency

the nineteenth-century novel. Aesthetic totality reaffirms the (imag ined) originary totality of existence in a lost Golden Age.
It is in in his this longing pre-1848 that respect for another Europe), Lukacs' time, in the is most utopianism clearly another the past placein future (the projected end evident, (Classical of history,

Greece,

the end of longing). While he formally rejects all forms of Utopian the specter of his longing thought as undialectical oversimplifications,
for 1962 the a New preface reader Eden persists this book in later reflections. Theory on he condemns Thus, of the for Novel, naive History example, Lukacs and and totally Class in his to the that re-issue is of The "based and warns un Con

a highly

founded

sciousness in a 1967 preface because

praxis in this book takes on

utopianism.

. . ,"27

"the conception
overtones

of revolutionary
that are more in

and history in such simplistic terms, this idealism returns to subvert his later rejections of such a stance. Despite all his efforts, his utopi
anism will not remain repressed, and thus, in a 1970 preface to Writer

keeping with the current messianic utopianism of the Communist left than with authentic Marxist doctrine" (TN, xvii). While he deplores the romantic idealism of his youth that led him to conceive of totality

extravagant

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Debra

A. Castillo

99

and Critic the same idealism resurfaces. At the end of the preface, Lukacs expresses once again his longing and his faith: "Yet ulti
mately, I am confident, the forces for progress will gain the upper

hand"

(W&C, 22). In this Utopian aspect of his thought the student of Lukacs will be confronted once again with the displaced mysticism of this critic. In and change,
perfect yearned, on what observes order. but he in spite of his deep He in commitment to the

Lukacs
has his

seems
place

unable
Lukacs

to avoid
the has God

concept towards

of

continual

indulgence
whom a new

in visions
the

progress

of a

dethroned

mystics based Jameson

erected

mythology principles. in that

considers this respect

incontrovertible that "narration

historical is valorized

it presup

of the object (as in science) nor that poses neither the transcendence of the subject (as in ethics), but rather a neutralization of the two, their mutual reconciliation, which thus anticipates the life experience
of a Utopian world in its

thought seems inevitably involved in the masked longing for but Utopiaa longing that is spurned as soon as it is recognized which returns again and again in a new form in his works. kacsian Lukacs'
to

very

structure."28

The

cult

of totality

in

Lu

longing
the say,

takes on the almost

in an early all it destroys as

metaphysical
"German so

quality
longing

he as
is one

cribes strong,

Germans that

essay: form,

so

they of

overpowering

that

cannot express
concept to the

it except by stammering"
functions just such

(S&F,
an

91). In his work, the

force; the

totality that

overpowering

mere invocation
extent

of the word reflecting the internalization

it becomes a stammer of the pen:

of longing not

mean tive,

[The work of art] appears

every extensive totality that work of of

as a totality of life. This does

art life. must On strive the to reflect the the contrary,

objec extensive

duced

totality of reality necessarily is beyond the possible scope of any artistic creation; the totality of reality can only be repro
intellectually in an ever-increasing approximation

through the infinite process of science. The totality of the work is rather intensive: the circumscribed and self-contained ordering of those factors which objectively are of decisive sig nificance for the portion of the life depicted, which determine its existence and motion, its specific quality and its place in the total life process. In this sense the briefest song is as much an intensive totality as the mightiest epic. [My em phases.] While a reductive appreciation of Lukacs' thought (W&C, 38) would interpret

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

100

Georg

Lukacs

this

stammering within simply a pugnacious which so

longing the tension

for he The

totality has

as

longing the reveals of

for

stasis,

as

sus is

pension not from

described, he the

Lukacsian is never

concept separated and Lu

grasped.

longing to

kacs' practice of theory and criticism resides in a mediation

the two

relationship

forms

experience, of

between
dialectical

mode
the

of thought.
and

consistently the

stresses

the

In History and Class Consciousness,

importance of the Hegelian

significance

he emphasizes
of the

originality

construction

dialectic, a construction to which, despite Marx's revisions, he is com pulsively drawn: "Even more original is the fact that the subject is neither the unchanged observer of the objective dialectic of being and bilities . . . the dialectical process, the ending of a rigid confrontation of rigid forms, is enacted essentially between the subject and the ob "the central fact ject" (HCC, 142). Or, in the words of Merleau-Ponty, to which the Hegelian do not have to choose
tween ienation our version of As itself."29 concept . . . nor the practical manipulator of its purely mental possi

dialectic returns in a hundred between

and poles the of version dialectic of do

ways is that we the pour soi and the pour autrui, be

others, not act which upon is al each

thought the two

other rigidly, so too the essence

the mony movement and is not discord, of but the realized rather gyres. in

of artistic expression
a dissonant a focus on says, oscillation what "Eros Yeats is

is motion, but
between would in the call middle" har the

by

interpenetration

Lukacs

(S&F, 92)a statement which is both true and revealing. The focus of the artistic pressure is located in the driving force of the points of the
gyres that force a

tion is tormented by the impossibility of absorbing the other; it is ful filling in its partial transformation, and erotic in the force of its longing and in its desire for fructification.
In age. tion his He of "Introduction" notes reality; that but "praxis reality to Georg is by can be Lukacs, its nature grasped Parkinson a penetration, and penetrated uses a similar a transforma only as a im

passage

through

each

other.

This

mutual

penetra

mediation; the hero is problematic in his relation to the world in that he is both homogeneous to it in certain essential as in others he is clearly no longer part of the totality. By a pects, yet
mutual interpenetration, the values expressed are both authentic and

totality, and only a subject which is itself a totality can do this."30 This penetration represents itself in the classic bourgeois novel by a dialectical

degraded. The critic adds one more level to this dialectic by superim posing a parallel subject (his longing) and object (his ideal form) upon the original one, and this layering produces a tension and a fric

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Debra

A.

Castillo

101

tion

of

texts

that

is

more pierces reviews

than the there

linguistic. first is often a

The

critic's angle. layer own

desires

form

secondary In which Lukacs, the

gyre

that

at a different third his

however, author

of

criticism Roland

in

and

criticizes

work.

Barthes
reader/'31

points
and

to
the

"the
chain

infinite
of criticism

perversity
begun by

of the
Lukacs

critic and
seems to

his
par

take of this perversity in a particularly

corollary the own denial texts of the of open constant category critical of any sacred

full manner.
and Indeed, but those expose

The
not

inevitable
is his as are

undermining texts.

of theory only masters

to correction

and

revision,

of his

well.
of as

Lukacs

is careful to distinguish
Marx, resides his preface Engels, in to and their Lenin,

between
and

the method
warns that the be It would Consciousness,

and

the

conclusions their he

of theories in

essence incorrect, to study

methodology. and Class

notes

History

Marx in terms of the "exegesis of a 'sacred' book" (HCC, xxvi). Given this turn of mind, it would be an act of gross irresponsiblity on Lu
kacs' part to allow it a work contains to be and re-issued without without a a discussion of of the the key misconceptions points mal made.32 re-evaluation

In his preface to The Theory of the Novel, Lukacs

distance between his older self and the

establishes

a for
of his

reincarnation

youthful one: "The author of The Theory of the Novel did not go so far as that. He was looking for a general dialectic of literary genres . . . the alienation he feels from this (16), emphasizing [my emphasis]" earlier text through the use of the third person and making a fair pre
tense of unbiased criticism from the

writer. His mature attitude towards History and Class Consciousness more problematic, and his continuing affinities with many aspects
the text are clearly in evidence. now He to give of admits that the nature of the of the makes it "difficult even a coherent critique book"

point

of

view

of

disinterested

is of

work

(xvi), and even forty-five years after writing the original text, Lukacs
remains made by perplexed Merleau-Ponty as an by some on its central dialectical issues. The observation to literature Lukacs' relation

applies
sciousness

as well to his criticism: "the whole

enigma; it can and thus, being

is always
is always

glimpsed
exposed

in con
to error,

consciousness
ways open

is faced with a permanent

and must

self-criticism, and, being al

by peremptory condem

to truth,

nation."33 In spite of the obvious difficulties he had with this preface, it is clear that for Lukacs the process of criticism and self-criticism is essential to the thinker who espouses a dialectical theory and prac tice.

proceed

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

102

Georg

Lukacs

In this practice
agreement its discourse with (even

of self-criticism, Lukacs
statement in the that most "all if it is

demonstrates
criticism and must modest

an implicit
include manner in

Barthes'

indirect

an implicit reflection on itself. . . ,"34 In his prefaces, imaginable) however, Lukacs makes the indirect direct (implying perhaps another implicit layer of indirection in his self-criticism) by citing himself. In the preface to The Theory of the Novel, he says, "let me quote a few (13), and in the preface to History and Class Consciousness examples"
he

his present

quotes

passages

from

the

text

that

follows

to

clarify senses

and

arguments
and

(e.g., HCC,
self-immolation

xx, xxv). Underlying

the reader

this passion
the

support

for self-revelation

of the critical passion

mechanisms of what is

per se. It is a criticism that loves

currently called the "deconstruction"

the precise
of the

presence

critical object, but paradoxically also evidences its love for the object itself. In quoting an earlier self, Lukacs is at war with himself, deny ing and reaffirming his points at the same time. This paradoxical pas sion and criticism reaches its height in the preface to History and Class Consciousness at the point in which Lukacs cites the postscript to a re-issue of his Lenin book in the context of a criticism of the text to which this preface is directed (HCC, xxxii). These multiple layers of self-reflexivity indicate the degree to which Lukacs is seduced by his
own rhetoric and

longing" (S&F, 93). Like his younger self, the aged scholar continues to put work before life. He writes for Life, for immortality, composing continuously in a longing for survival, in an effort to break the gnos
tic tyranny of the real. The

they

also

reveal

the

"ultimate

hopelessness

of

all

pable version
starting

of capturing
over again

the totality of his dialectic

with the self-critical act,

language

he

so

ably

and

manipulates

is

inca

his longing.
toward

By
a

Lukacs

strains

of self-dialectalization

completely interpenetrate, longing of his form. Cornell University

in which the subject and the object closing the ironic gap and fulfilling the

Notes
1. Western 60; David Andrew Marxism Arato (New and "The Paul Breines, The Press, Young 1979), York: Lukacs and the Origin of references are p. 7. Other Diacritics, 12, No. 3 (1982), in Modern Literary Theory: A David N.J.: (Totowa, Robey Marxism and Form (Prince Holzman, "'Writing,'

to: Michael

Sprinker,

Seabury Part and

the Whole,"

"Marxist Theories," Forgacs, Literary ed. Ann Jefferson and Introduction, Comparative Barnes and Noble, 1982), p. 141; Fredric Jameson, ton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), p. 179; and

Michael

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Debra

A. Castillo

103

Criticism, of course, 2. Golden The See

Lukacs, be

and

the

One,"

Criticism,

24

(1982),

371.

Examples

could,

multiplied. for example

Age,"

Theory

Epic Genres Scientiarum sionism Rebellion, Mass.: Novel an J.F. and

of the Michael Lukacs' Holzman, "Georg Myth of Clio, 10 (1981), 270; Luisa Villa, "The Early Lukacs: Aspects The Italianist, 2 (1982), "The Poszler, 117; GyQrgy of the Novel," in the Aesthetics of the young Acta Litteraria Academiae Lukacs," Hungaricae, Marxism: Stephen 25 (1983), Towards an Eric 46; and Aesthetic Eric Bronner, Stephen "Expres of Emancipation," in Passion and Kellner and (South Douglas Hadley, his recent The Philosophy book, of the

ed.

Bronner

makes Press, J. M. Bernstein 1984), (Minneapolis: He notes of The in this respect. that while the "tone" interesting point is nostalgic of utopianism a critical Theory of the Novel (p. 65) and the charge own repeated refutations of both attitudes commonplace (p. 62), Lukacs' sug of the Marxist critic's concept of totality are gest that systematic misreadings at fault. 3. North 4. MIT ed. Quoted Carolina in Lee Press, The Young Lukacs Hill: Congdon, (Chapel 1983), p. 41. Soul and Form, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, cited in the text as S&F. Univ. Mass.:

Bergin,

1983), Univ.

In p. 413. of Minnesota

of

Lukacs, Georg Press, 1974), p. 8. Hereafter 5. Edward "The Said, Text,

arum, 37 (1982), 111.

7. Quoted Quoted Quoted Lukacs 8. 9. 10. woman,

the World, the Critic," in Textual Strategies, Cornell Univ. Press, Josue V. Harari (Ithaca: 1979), pp. 184-85. 6. Eve Tavor, "Art and Alienation: Lukacs' Late Aesthetic," Orbis Litter in Congdon, in Arato and p. 43. Breines,

. . . saved

p. 45. in Congdon, pp. 44-45. writes in a suggestive passage man for life, but only in order absolute

of Soul to drag

and him

Form down.

that

"woman real

. . . The

the mother, is the most In his discussion 35). ty" (S&F, was not only Lukacs, "marriage reconciliation The the discomfort with his Lukacs mother, felt with

of any yearning for infini opposite of this passage, remarks that for Congdon a surrender to life, it was also symbolic of a a reconciliation he would not accept" (p. 50). his actual mother and home does not negate every immor Markus' of Cul abbrevi 19

thrust of Lukacs' which makes criticism, overwhelming nostalgic where a home, nor does it mitigate his yearning for the infinity and home contructed of his monumental texts. tality of a metaphorical I would also paper, ture" ated 11. 12. 13. 14. Press, 15. "The (Telos, analysis Cornel Peter Karl Soul to acknowledge here my indebtedness to Gyorgy the Life: The Young Lukacs and the Problem 32 [1977], in developing 95-115), my own ruthlessly in this section of my paper. and West, Demetz, "Lukacs: Marx, A Reassessment," and the Poets, The Minnesota trans. Jeffrey like

(1982), 95.

Review, Sammons

(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 210.

Tucker (New David 1982), Marx, Capital, York: W. W. Carroll, The vol I, in Norton, Subject

Engels,

The Marx-Engels ed. Robert C. Reader, 1972), p. 322. in Question Univ. of Chicago (Chicago:

p. 116. Carroll, p. 94.

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

104

Georg

Lukacs

16. 17. 18. 19.

Roland Congdon, Paul de Rainer Georg (London: Joseph

Northwestern

Critical Barthes, Univ. Press, 1972), p. 181. Blindness Man, Rochlitz, "De Writer la and

trans. Essays, p. xviii. and Insight (New

Richard

Howard

(Evanston:

York:

Oxford

Univ.

1971), p. 52.
20.

Press, Revue Arthur text as

d'esth'etique, 1 (1981), 54.

Lukacs, Merlin Conrad, Kahn W&C. 21.

Philosophic Critic 1970), and p.

comme Other 222.

critique

litteraire," and in ed. ed. the C. T.

Press, Letters

Essays, Hereafter

trans, cited

(London: Cambridge 22. Georg Lukacs, stone (Cambridge, as HCC. 23. 24. 25. Univ. 26.

Univ.

Press,

to R. B. Cunninghame 1969), pp. 56-57.

Graham,

Watts

and Class trans. Consciousness, History MIT Mass.: 89. Hereafter Press, 1971), p. Realism The 1978), in Our Time (New trans. the York: Stuart

Rodney Living cited in the text and Row,

1962), p. 51.
Andre Princeton

Georg

Lukacs, Malraux, Press,

Harper Gilbert (New Cornell

Voices

of Silence, in

(Princeton: Haven: Univ. Yale Press,

Univ.

27. Georg The Theory trans. Anna Bostock Lukacs, of the Novel, (Cam MIT Press, Mass.: cited within the text as TN. 1971), bridge, p. 20. Hereafter 28. Jameson, Marxism and Form, p. 190. 29. Maurice The Prose of the World, trans. John O'Neill, ed. Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lefort (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973), p. 85. 30. 31. G. H. R.

1981), p. 52.

H. Hartman, Geoffrey Press, 1980), p. 193. Fredric Jameson, The Political

p. 616. Criticism

Wilderness (Ithaca:

Unconscious

1970), p. 12.
Roland York: 32. Lukacs' ("Georg German Hill and Istvan

Parkinson,

ed.,

Georg

lukacs

(New

York:

Random

House,

Barthes, Wang, Eorsi's

the Gelebtes Denken: The Right to the Last Word," New 23 [1981]) takes a somewhat stance in this respect. Critique, simplistic Eorsi writes, to a passage of the Gelebtes "The Denken, referring child-guer as the mature wielded self-criticism when each illa, as well partisan, only the situation to be such that the rescuing would not arrive in judged papa time. had but After 1956, when he could not not and was not admitted) from self-criticism" completely been out of the Party (because he of being he weaned arrested, Eorsi's is attractive (p. 122). analogy the various Lukacs made compromises in danger critical and work self-crit Bien be thrown

relationships Lukacs and

The Pleasure Miller Richard (New of the Text, trans. 1975), p. 17. otherwise of the permutations discussion of interesting with the Party and the effects of affiliation on his work

himself

Without unconvincing. denying his long career, it is important to note that in major throughout like the late Aesthetics as well as in his prefaces, the revisionary ical thrust is a continuing 33. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Northwestern Univ. Essays, p. 257. trait. integral Adventures Press, 1973), of the Dialectic, p. 68.

trans.

Joseph

(Evanston: 34. Barthes,

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:55:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions