the essay as genre

5/15/2018 The Essay as Genre

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The Obeeromg Sel fearlier forms, we can also see essayistic discourse as a specialinstance of the widespread departure from the procedures ofmedieval discourse that took place in the late sixteenth century..Foucault has expressed this change succinctly: "Commentaryhas yielded to criticism" (80).The task of commentary is first toassemble, and only then to add to, all of the existing writing onthe topic. This compilation represents the discursive dimensionofthe object's existence, which is not radically separate from itsnon-discursive existence. Foucault's example is from naturalhistory, itself an odd locution for us now. This history is itswritten history, the complete file to date, as itwere. .When one is faced with the task ofwriting an animal's history, it isuseless and impossible to choose between the profession ofnaturalist and that of compiler: one has to collect together into oneand the same form of knowledge all that has been seen and heard, allthat has been recounted, either by nature or bymen, by the languageof the world, by tradition, or by the poets. (40)

On the same page Foucault quotes Montaigne's expression ofimpatience with' this infinite growth of secondary discourse(which is also reminiscent of the limitless "textuality" ofpost-structuralism): "II y a plus affaire a interpreter lesinterpretations qu'a interpreter les chases, et plus de Iivres surles livres que SUI autre subject: nous ne faisons que nousentregloser" (G ii:520)i "It is more of a job to interpret theinterpretations than to interpret the things, and there are morebooks about books than about any other subject; wedo nothingbut write glosses on one another" (F818).The critical attitude tothis accumulated lore is to review and select only parts of it,those which correspond to observable fact. This implies a clearseparation ofthe order ofwords from the order ofthings, and acomparison of the first to the second to check its accuracy ofrepresentation. "Criticism questions language as if languagewere a pure function, a totality of mechanisms, a greatautonomous play of signs: but, at the same time, it cannot fail toquestion itas to its truth or falsity, its transparency or opacity"(40).In his Essais , Montaigne confronts the accumulation of

classical.learning in a crit ical manner: this decisively separateshim from the medieval approach. In the Middle Ages, accordingto Curtius, "all authors are authorities" (49); later, he adds:"Medieval reverence for auctores went so far that every source2

The essa y a s genrewas held to be good" (52). Montaigne's critical or skepticalattitude to sources allies his writing with empirical science,with its stress on observation and proof: Bacon, of course, wasone of its founders, while Sir Thomas Browne's PseudodoxiaEpidemica aims to sift the true from the false in the accumulationof pseudo-scientific lore. But the essay did not become part ofthis new mode oflearning, despite certain affinities. It emergesbetween the old and the new learning, rejecting the old methodof uncritically accumulated commentary, but also refusing thesystematic ambitions of the new science, despite sharing itsconception of language. Empirical science aims to be cumula-tive and progressive, though in a critical and selective way,preserving and building only on proven observations and laws.The essay does not aim at system at all; its empirical data areused in a much more limited way.In so far as its utterances are not presented as fictional, the

essay does imply a claim to count as knowledge. But thisknowledge is not part of an organized whole; in fact, asknowledge, it is specifically unorganized. The form emergesduring the reorganization of knowledge inthe late sixteenthand early seventeenth centuries, but it is not actually incorpo-rated into the "new philosophy" of the seventeenth century(essentially what we now call "science"). We can see the essayas a conunentary which has broken free from its "text," andimplicitly from "textuality" conceived as the unity and inter-dependence of all writing, to become seif-contained and suigenerk At the same time, the essay remained independent of-the new enterprise of empirical science, as sketched for examplein Bacon's The Advancement o f L ea rn in g. In this work, Baconattacks academic Scholastics on the same grounds asMontaignedoes. Joseph Mazzeo in Renaissance lmd Revolution paraphrasesBacon's view thus: "Their thought remained entirely within thecompass of their books, and, far from discovering .newknowledge, they spent their time in disputation and commen-tary. Neither fresh ideas nor fresh observation could possiblyarise from such an approach to learning" (196). But althoughreorganized and founded on empirical principles and methods,Bacon's project for modem science was specifically "co-operative, public, and cumulative" (190).The essay, even aspracticed by Baconhimself, did not fulfill these aims, though itwas not opposed to them either, asR. s . Crane's article on "Therelation ofBacon's Essays tohis Program for the advancement of

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The Observing Selflearning" makes clear. The essay refused both the classical-medieval and the modern-scientific syntheses of knowledge,though it drew freely .on the first and shared the empiricalimpulse of the second. In Montaigne we see that impulseplaying over the inherited stock of ideas and selectivelycomparing them with his own direct observation andexperience.What sort ofknowledge does the essay, then, offer?The essay

presupposes an independent observer, a specific object, and asympathetic reader. It also presupposes a language capable-ofrendering and communicating observations, whether physicalor mental. Its starting-point is like that ofCartesian philosophy:an isolated selfconfronting a world ofwhich nothing is knownfor certain. But the two forms of writing immediately diverge:Descartes is seeking certain knowledge, and a method forfinding it. The skepticism of the essay takes a different form. Itis spontaneous and unsystematic, and accepts its occasional,even accidental, nature. Like Cartesian philosophy and Baco-nian science, its observations are free, and do not seek authorityfrom tradition and doctrine. Butunlike them, the essay does nottry to organize a new discipline on this new basis.The essay exists outside any organization of knowledge,

whether medieval ormodern. In it, an open mind confronts anopen reality. An uncertain, unorganized world enters anunprejudiced awareness, and the essay results as a record andprovisional ordering ofthe encounter, In a sense, selfand objectorganize each other, but only in a temporary way. Nothing canbe built on this configuration, no rules or methods deducedfrom it. Selfand object define each other, but momentarily. Theself will go on to other definitions through other objects; theobjects (whether places, works of art, or issues) will find otherdefinitions in other selves.The essay makes a claim totruth, butnot permanent truth. Its truths are particular, of the here andnow. Other times and places are not its affair. Descartes wanteda fresh start for knowledge, but the essay starts afresh everytime. Nothing is carried over. .The essay opposes doctrines and disciplines, the organizing

structures of academic knowledge ~ hence the essay's neglect inthe higher levels of the academic literary system. Hence, also,its wide cultivation at the lower levels as a preliminary form stilIreliant on personal knowledge, ofuse only until the student hasacquired enough impersonal knowledge to write research4

The essay as genrepapers and perhaps eventually scholarly articles, where thepersonal element is minimized. Doctrine and discipline wereoriginally paired concepts, the first referring to teaching (asperformed by doctores), and the second to learning (as per-formed by students or disdpuli). Butgradually the first term fellinto disuse because of its association with authority, especiallyreligious, and the accent fell on knowledge as "learning" and"discipline"; Bacon did not entitle his magnum opus "theAdvancement of Teaching." Doctrine and discipline, in theirmedieval or modern forms alike, are inimical to the spirit of theessay, and Chaucer's Clerk ofOxenford ("gladly wolde he Ierneand gladly teche") so often cited with relish by academics,would be an antitype to the essayist. Montaigne states explicit-ly, "je parle enquerant et ignorant ... [e n'enseigne poinct, jeraconte" (Gii:224);"I speak as one who questions and does notknow ... I do not teach, I relate" (C237).The essay offers personal experience, not disciplinary exper-

tise. Modern "disciplines" tightly govern the content and formof individual contributions. First, the area of proper investiga-tion is distinguished from other areas, and the borderlinescarefully watched. Then, the proper method of investigation isdefined in theory and practice. Finally,access to the discourse islimited: the general reader 'is discouraged from participatingbecause the tone and style indicate a "specialist" audience ofinitiates, while access to publication is normally limited tothose who have the appropriate certification (such " 'S a"doctorate") and position (a university appointment). Rulesalso govern the relations between contributions within thediscipline. Each acceptable contribution hasta take account ofprevious contributions on the topic, especially recent ones. Thedisciplinary enterprise is defined as collaborative, cumulative,and progressive (though in practice it is often competitive andrepetitive). Supposedly, disciplines advance from year to yearthrough new work by individuals. These new items are notself-sufficient, but are judged by the effectiveness of theirrelations (addition, correction, reaffirmation) to the existingdiscourse. (All of this neglects the ample evidence thatcontroversies in many disciplines rage for a few years and arethen simply abandoned unresolved. as interest shifts else-where.) Contributions ate impersonal in the sense that twotrained specialists could conceivably produce substantially thesame article unknown to each other (the fear of this is actually

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The Observing Self

quite common in academia). In contrast, the discourse of the. essay is uni~uely ~er~oI_laland thus non-discipl,inary (thoughnot necessarily undlsclplmed).lts claim to significance does notrest on its finding a place in an organized, interpersonal body ofknowledge.The essay cultivates diversity where the disciplines seek

unity. Disciplines aim to "cover the field" they have defined,and this spatial image corresponds to the temporal idea ofprogress. Gradually the "gaps" in the discourse are filled inuntil theoretically the discipline could be declared finished. Butlong before this happens, it is discovered that the whole fieldhas to be covered again, this time on correct principles; or anew and more "successful" discipline invades its territory. Inany case, the drive to unity always dominates the disciplines.They seek to derive general rules from specific instancessubordinating them through classification and hierarchicalarrangement. Paradoxically,this stress on generality produces adiscourse of little interest to the common reader, who is more~i~elyto appreciate theparticularity of the essay. Theparticular-ities ofthe essay are ofgeneral interest because they are still the: d.ata"of experienc~,.unclassified and unassigned to anydiscipline, When generalitIes do ar~sein the essay they come'asspontaneous responses to phenomena. The particular haspriority over the general and often overturns it: the essay ismore hospitable to exceptions than to rules. The essay presents"special" instances to the "general" reader, where the disci-plines present "general" conclusions to the "specialist."Although the essay is not itself a "learned" work in the sense

of tontributi~g to a common system ofknowledge, the essayistoften uses hISown personal learning. There are often quota-tions in the essay, but rarely footnotes. The modern "article" isrequired tohave an apparatus ofcitations and referenceswhichbind it into the "textuality" of its discipline. In contrast theessay~st.often. ';Iuotes from memory (Montaigne began theessayistic tradition of doing so fallibly), and in any case the~eaderis not ex~e~ted towant to find orverify the quotation asif he were a discipulus. Quoting in the essay introduces anelement of dialogue; disciplinary prose quotes to provideauthority for its statements through an accepted doctor of itsdiscipline. Montaigne writes: "[e ne dis les autres, sinon pourd'autant plus me dire" (Gi:157);"1 quote others only to makemyself more explicit" (C52); and again, "je fay dire aux autres

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The es sa y a s genrece que jene puis si bien dire" (Gi:448); "Imake others say whatI cannot say sowellmyself" (C159).The essay does not, like theprofessional contribution, aim to be "definitive," that is, todefine for others in terms of the discipline what the correctexplanation of a given phenomenon is. This "definitive"quality is in any case liable to, be superseded by a latercontribution which can adduce new evidence or deploy a newapproach. The essay cannot be superseded in this way since itmakes no claim to be definitive in the first place.Ultimately, the essayist's authority is not his learning, but hisexperience. The essay's claim to truth is not through itsconsistency in method and result with an established body ofwriting. Its method is not collaborative and its findings do notneed corroboration. Its claimis to yield flexibly to individualexperience. Instead of imposing a discursive order on experi-ence, the essay lets its discourse take the shape of experience.Judgments may result, but there are no prejudgments, noprejudices. Conclusions may arise, but they are not foregoneconclusions, nor can they be used as a foundation by anotherwriter, though they may be cited for interest. They areprovisional, and cannot be detached from their occasion.Reflections in the essay rise from and return to particularexperiences, The literature and philosophy ofthe past are not arealm apar t from experience and used to judge it; rather,reading and thinking are themselves felt as experiences mixedin with other experiences.Thought in the essay stays close to its objects and shares their

space and atmosphere, The connections between thoughts inthe essay are often made through things, rather than beinglinked directly in a continuous argument. The term "reflection"is perhaps better than "thought," since itsuggests the intellec-tual mirroring of an object. The truth of the essay is a limitedtruth, limited by the concrete experience, itself limited, whichgave rise to it. The essay is a provisional reflection of anephemeral experience of an event or object. If one eventfollowed another, we would have a narrative; if one objectfollowed another, we would have a descriptive catalogue; ifonethought followed another, we would have a logical argument.But in the essay, event and reflection, object and idea, areinterwoven andlimit each other's development. The ideas arevalid for here and now, while the sense-impressions of theobject-experience are still fresh in the mind. Thought in the

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TheObseruing Selfessay tends to be presented a s e xp e ri e n ced , not as afterthought;as it responds to objects and events on the spot, not as itis laterarranged and systematized. This is the essential uniqueness ofessayistic discourse: neither' the order of thoughts nor the orderof things predominates. Each constantly interrupts and inter-penetrates with the other: As Montaigne puts it, "La raison atant de formes, que nous ne scavons a laquelle nous prendre;l'experience u'en.a pas moins" (G ii:516); "Reason has so manyshapes that we do not know which to take hold of; experiencehas no fewer" (C 344). The essay's fabric is woven from thesealternations.The essay offers knowledge of the moment, not more, The

moment is one of insight, where self and object reciprocallyclarify and define each other. Orwell believed a writer's prosebecame most distinctly personal exactly where he was mostforgetful of self and most intent on the object. The essay is builtaround this moment of reciprocal identification. A loss of self isfollowed by a sharpened sense of self. But this illumination istempo.rary; it can be recorded and shared by other individuals,but not incorporated into any collective enterprise. Its wisdomis not abstractable from the moment. The essayist's truths are"for me" and "for now," personal and provisional. The essaystays closer to the individual's self-experience than any otherform except the diary.The mixture of elements in the essay - the unsorted

"wholeness" of experience it represents - can only be heldtogether by the concept of self. The selection and order of theideas and objects can have no other basis. The order is "as itoccurred to m e," not "as it usually occurs." But the generalitythat is lost at one level is regained at another: everyone'sexperience of being an individual is mixed in this way. Theessayist's personality is offered as a "universal particular," anexample not of a particular virtue or vice, but of an "actuallyexisting" individual and the unorganized "wholeness" of hisexperience. This creates a new kind of writing, as Montaignewas well aware': "Les autheurs se communiquent au peuple parquelque marque particuliere et estrangere; may, le premier, parman estre universel, comme Michel de Montaigne, non commegrammarien, au poete, au jurisconsulte" (G ii:223); "Authorscommunicate with the world in some special and peculiarcapacity: I am the first to do so with my whole being, as Michelde Montaigne, not as a grammarian, or a poet, or a lawyer"

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The es sa y a s genre

(C 236). A particular individual presents himself in a ge~eral(i.e. unspecialized, non-disciplinary) way, and thus attains aknowledge unavailable to those who study human nature enmasse . Montaigne justifies his self-study thus: "chaque hommeporte la forme entiere de l'humaine condition" (G ii:222);"Every man carries in himself the complete pattern of humannature" (C 236). Although "man" is differently realized in everyindividual, the study of one man is nevertheless one way tostudy "man." The essayist is representatively unt~presentative,typical of how we experience ourselves as untypical.

The essay as artDespite its non-fictional status, the essay ha~ a stron~ affinitywith the novel. Much of Ian Watt's theory 10 The RIse o f theNovel can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to the rise of the essay.Both emerge from the same intellectual climate:The general temper of philosophical realism has been critical,anti-traditional and innovating; its method has been the study ofthe particulars of experience by the individual investiga:of, who,ideally at least, is free from the body of past assumptions andtraditional beliefs; and it has given a peculiar importance tosemantics, to the problem of the nature of the correspondencebetween words and reality. (12)

We can attribute to the essayist the same aim Watt ascribes tohis philosopher and novelist: "the production of ~hat pur~or~sto be an authentic account of the actual expenence of indi-viduals" (27). The world view of the essay is essentially the oneWatt finds in the novel: in place of the medieval unity, "adeveloping but unplanned aggregate of individuals h~vingparticular experiences at particular tim~s and at _particularplaces" (31). This, Watt states, is the baSIC per~pectIve of themiddle class, who provided most of the audience for bothgenres. In terms of eighte~nth-century England, in fact, Wattsees the Tailer and Spectator as preparing the way for the novel,both in general taste and through specific features, especiallythe de Coverley Papers, which show many techniques laterused in the novel (51). Conversely, many novelists, fromCervantes and Fielding to Mann and Musil have includedessays or essayistic material in their novels. . .We can see the same essay-novel conjuncture at work also In

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The Observing Self"I the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century in continental

Europe. Watt's title should have been qualified as the "Rise, oft~e English Novel," since' as Claudio Guillen: has shown inL ite ra tu re a s S y~ te m the ~ew genre was recognizable in Spain by~605. ~s he pomts out, It takes two works to constitute a genre;In this case, the anonymous L aza rillo de Torm es (1556) andAleman:s Guzman d e A l fa r ach e (1604) together formed the genreof the pIcaresque, as a kind of inversion of the quest romancepreserving i~s loose, episodic structure, but negating its value;and world VIew. Cervantes then combines both in Don Q u 'i xo te(~605, 1615) by sending out his quest-romance 'knight into theplca~esque world. The knight of medieval and Renaissanceromance approaches his world armed with knowledge of thecodes, conventions, and traditions of his calling, as well as withhis sword, shield, and lance. Don Quixote is the ultimate"textualist" in t~is ~egard, refusing to acknowledge any reality~hat does not fit hIS mental and literary constructs, and thusmcap~ble ,of ~ea~ing anything new. The picaro is just theopposite: .begmmng. as a naif, he soon discards his credulityand acqu~es the skills needed to survive and prosper at the~xpense of others. His .am?ral attitude and observant empiric-Ism eve~tually make him into an accomplished rogue.The figure of the essayist, emerging in the same period in

Montaigne's Eseaie (1580) and Bacon's Essays (1597), belongss?mewhere b~tween the two. He is more rooted in society thaneither, but still has a detached, skeptical view of his environ-ment. His "essays" are equivalent to the "episodes" of knightly~dventure ~r picaresque trickery: none of these forms is tightlyintegrated into a plot or systematic structure. Like the twoot~ers in the trio, the essayist goes out on each foray, physicalor intellectual, into an open world where almost anything canbe encountered. But generally his adventures do not involve thephysical violence th~t co~stantly befalls (or is inflicted by) theknight or rogue. We imagine the essayist as more sedate: eitherac~all~ sitting ~eading or watching, or walking (the praise ofwhIch. IS a ~oP?S of the genre). The essayist goes out not tovanquish villains and succour maidens, nor to cheat ands~indle, but out of disinterested curiosity. His implied rank ismIddl~ class, or, esp~cial1y in the early essay, lower gentry, likeMontaigne, (Don QUIxote, or rather Alonzo Quijano, as he waskno~ before his knighthood, came from this class, and it istempting and easy to imagine him as an essayist if he had spent10

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I1l The essa y a s genrehis time reading Montaigne's Essais instead of Amadis de Gaul.)Certainly the essayist does not live in fear of hunger,homelessness, robbery, and violence, like the picaro. Nor arewe usually conscious of him as having work to do: this would

give him too specific a place in society and too interested aviewpoint. Like the .h onn ete h om me of French seventeenth-century literature, the ideal essayist should be dis interested, hisoutlook uncolored by any particular trade or profession. Thisdoes not conflict with the essayist'S own fascination withparticularities, as it is precisely his general interest that leadshim to observe them. This disinterest negates the stress onself-interest in bourgeois economics, at least from Adam Smithonwards, which actually the picaro reflects more strongly,though in an anarchic, antisocial way. The essayist's disinterestis then a kind of bourgeois self-critique, which also foundexpression in Arnold's attacks on the "narrowness" of themiddle-class outlook. In the same way, the essayistic theme of"the praise of idleness" is a critique of the bourgeois stress onthe virtue of "industry." However, the leisure implied in theessayist's attitude does not imply great wealth, or, usually, amoral or ascetic revulsion against the ways of the world. Since"experience" of one kind or another is his theme, he presentshimself as an "experienced" individual, which tends to furtherconnote "maturity," being middle-aged as well as middle-class.The essayist is contemplative, but not as a monk or scholar whohas never known the world; rather as someone who has beenactive in public affairs, like Montaigne, who wrote his essays intemporary retirement from office, as Seneca .did his letters. Thissituation often gives the essay a pastoral mood: its perspectiveis removed form the centers of power and influence, though thetone remains urbane. Rural innocence and city experiencecombine, just as the essayist himself, though well read and welltraveled already, is not too set in his ways and opinions to rejectnew experiences and attitudes. Andre Gide's concept ofdisponibil i ie perfectly describes the essayist's state of mind:spontaneous, available, eager, and curious.Freedom is the essay's essential mood and quality, in that the

essayist is free temporally (he has leisure), spatially (he canwalk and travel), economically (he has at least a "sufficiency"),but most of all mentally (he is unprejudiced; curious, observantabout himself and the world, quick to respond to newexperience and new ideas). Of course, to use Sartre's term,

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every freedom is situated; but each new "essay" or venture is are-situation of the self in relation to the object or eventdescribed. In this respect .it is a highly "existentialist" form:neither the selfnor the world is fixed, but reciprocally shape orreshape each other within the experimental or experiential field -of each essay. Montaigne writes of his endeavor of self-portraiture, "Je ne puis asseurer mon object. ... 5i man arnepouvoitprendre pied, je ne rn'essaierois pas, je me resoudrois:elle est tousjours en apprentissage et en espreuve" (Gii:222); "Icannot fix my subject.... Couldmy mind find a firm footing, Ishould not be making essays but coming to conclusions; it is,however, always in its apprenticeship and on trial" (C235). Theessayist is as "errant" in the physical sense asthe knight or thepicaro, but his identity and values are much more fluid thantheirs. They are either proud or repentant of their deeds inrelation to a fixed code of morality, but neither attitudecharacterizes the essayist. Where thepicaro routinely repents ofhis ways at the end of his confession, Montaigne says simply,"je me repens rarement" (G ii:224); "I rarely repent" (C237).Nor is he given to boasting or seeking high renown in theworld's eyes.He accepts the fluidity of the self and the relativityof the conscience, and uses the essay as the record of theirprovisional accords with the world.I have been presenting the essay as a sort of fiction, in the

context of the novel, and seeing the essayist as a sort of hero,whose function is well captured by same eighteenth-centuryperiodical titles, like The Tatler, The Spectator, or The Observer.And in fact the "Character," the sketch of a human type like"The Happy Milkmaid," invented by Theophrasrus , andpopularized in early seventeenth-century England by SirThomas Overbury, was an important influence on the develop-ment of the essay, especially the de Coverley papers ofAddisonand Steele. But despite its affinities with fiction, the essay isrightly classed in libraries as non-fiction. This distinction hasblurred in the recent "non-fiction novel" as well as in recentcritical theory,' which tends to treat all writing, includinghistory and philosophy, as "fictional." And certainly, asHayden White (1975) has shown, historiography makes use ofnarrative techniques and mythic plots which are common tofiction. Since no event can be exhaustively represented, it isargued, the selected aspects must be arranged according to apre-existing schema. But it does not follow that, because every12

The essay as genrerepresentation is a construct, it is thereby a fiction. Nor does itfollow, incidentally, that a fiction cannot represent reality; itdoes so under certain rhetorical conditions, i.e. an understand-ing with the reader implicit in the choice ofgenre that what isrepresented is figuratively rather than literally true. Theessayist implies that his representations are literally true withinthe terms of his relationship to his reader.This relationship is defined throughout the essay tradition

fromMontaigne onwards as one of friendship iMontaigne gavethe death ofhis friend Etienne de La Boetie as his main reasonfor beginning essay-writing as a substitute for their conversa-tions. Thus the kind of truth offered in the essay is not that ofthe witness stand or the scientific laboratory, both of whichrequire fixed and consistent evidence, but a mixture of anecdote(perhaps heightened and "pointed" for effect), description(again selective), and opinion (perhaps changing). You do notshow that Orwell was writing "fiction" by pointing outdiscrepancies between his notebooks and the published text ofThe Road to Wigan Pier, because individual details are notdecisive. If, however, you can prove that Orwell never saw ahanging or shot an elephant, then you have a case forreclassifying IIA Hanging" or "Shooting an Elephant" as shortstories (curiously, Orwell never wrote any) rather than essays.Theywould be equally effectiveas either, but the reader wouldrespond within a different framework for actual or imaginedevents. To describe an event in fiction carries an implicationthat i t is in some way typical, whereas inthe essay this is notimplied, and would have to be made explicitly if at all.We have considered the essay as a non-fictional cognate of

certain kinds offiction. Butwhat of the broader category ofart?Like the novel, the essay existed a long time before peoplebegan to speak of it as an art. Montaigne sees his activity asartless rather than artistic: he begins his essay "Of Friendship"with an account of a mural painter who uses "grotesques" to fillup the gaps and margins. Montaigne continues: "Que sont-ceicy aussi, a la verite, que crotesques et corps 1-0nstrueux,rappiecez de divers membres, sans certaine figure, n'ayantsordre, suite ny proportion que fortuite?" (Gi:198); "And whatare these things of mine, in truth, but grotesques andmonstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, withoutdefinite shape, having no order, sequence, or proportion otherthan accidental?" (F135). Perhaps with the diffidence of

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someone working in what was not yet an acknowledged genre,Montaigne sees his work as artless, an ad hoc response tochancecircumstances and thoughts as they occurred to him. His"grotesques" are on the fringes ofthe established art fonns, andhave the disunity of the experiences they reflect. They are likerough sketchesrriade on the spot as compared to finished"studio" works. They fill in the edges of the recognized andprestigious arts. Their content is miscellaneous and oftenhumble or homely, and in this respect their visual analog isseventeenth-century Dutch or Spanish painting of "Jawlife" or"still life," perfected by Rembrandt and Velasquez. Here, theclose study of particular objects and individual charactersshows the same impulse that is at work in the essay and therealistic novel. In Adam Bede, George Eliot expresses herpreference for Dutch over Italian paintings in these terms:I tum, without shrinking,fromcloud-borneangels,fromprophets,sibyls, and heroicwarriors,to an old woman bending over herflower-pot,or eatingher solitarydinner, while the noondaylight,softenedperhapsbya screenofleaves,fallsonhermob-cap,andjusttouchesthe rim ofher spinning-wheel,and her stonejug, and allthosecheap commonthingswhich are the preciousnecessariesoflifeto her. (Ch.17)

The sensibility described here, with its ability to find signifi-cance and beauty in the detail of a small world and little-regarded people and things, is often found inthe essay, whichalso turns aside from the grand design and the imposingstatement for minor truths.

The essay as aesthetic knowledgeUp to this point, we have been seeing the essay as a form ofknowledge which is unorganized either by the medievalstructures oflearning or by the modem disciplines of empiricalscience and post-Cartesian philosophy, and seeing it as a formof art historically, philosophically, and to some extent fonnallyakin to realistic fiction and painting. Now we are in a positionto see that it offers aesthetic knowledge, that is to sayknowledge which is organized artistically rather than scientifi-callyor logically.The essay's open-minded approach to experi-ence is balanced by aesthetic pattern and closure. It is not awork of art in the full sense, but a kind of hybrid of art and14

The essay as genrescience, an aesthetic treatment ofmaterial that could otherwisebe studied scientifically or systematically. The subject matter ofthe essay is constantly being taken up by disciplines likepsychology, sociology, and the recent attempts at systematicpoetics. Yet the essay has survived repeated appropriations ofits content by the developing "human sciences." The scientifictreatment does not exclude the artistic, and the two can happilycoexist, though a new discipline often seeks to establish itselfwith attacks on "amateur" or essayistic treatments of a subjectthat it claims now for the first time to study in properlyorganized fashion; this we have seen in successive attempts to"professionalize" literary study. Unfortunately, the essay usual-ly goes unrecognized either asknowledge (because it is seen astoo "artistic") or as art (because it is "knowledgeable" ratherthan "creative").There is, however, one intellectual tradition which stresses

the value of the essay as providing a unique combination ofempirical knowledge and aesthetic form. This is a branch of thetradition ofsystematic aesthetics in Gennany, which runs fromBaumgarten in the mid-eighteenth century, through Kant andHegel, down to Emil Staiger'SGrundbegrif fe der Poetik in themid-twentieth. Although the essay is not much discussedbefore Lukacs, this tradition always took seriously the cognitiveaspect of art, and thus prepared the ground for a seriousphilosophical account of the essay. Lukacs's contributions togenre theory - ofthe novel in The Theory of the Novel (1916), ofthe novella in his essay "Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life ofIvan Denisouich" (1964),and ofthe essay in "On the Nature andFormofthe Essay" (1909)- couldbe read as filling inthe gaps inHegel's Aesthetics, which did not treat any of the three in anydetail. Adorno, too, whose "The Essay as Form" (1958)we willbe discussing, belongs to the tradition; like Lukacs,he wrote asystematic aesthetics, though (perhaps appropriately) bothreserved their accounts of the essay for separate, self-containedpieces. SinceKant's placing ofaesthetic judgment as a mediatorbetween Verstand, the theoretical philosophy of Nature, andVernunft, the practical philosophy ofmorality, art as knowledgeand knowledge of art have been central issues in Germanphilosophy. Inthe twentieth century this produced a theory ofthe essay as a combination ofboth, and provided an account ofthe genre much more profound than anything in England orFrance, though paradoxically those two cultures have had

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I I I 'I I I 'ilII III: 1 ' ,

The O bse rving S elflonger and fuller traditions of actual essay-writing than Ger-many, as Adorno notes. The relatively late development of thegenre in Germany meant that it lacked the associations withscience and philosophy it had in France and England. Instead" ittended to be associated with art, thus Germanic theory usuallyequates the crit ical essay with the essay as such, defining it asthat form of art which has art as its subject matter.The lo cu s c la s si cu s of this approach is Lukacs's "On the

Nature and Form of the Essay," which is cast as a letter to LeoPopper, dated from "Florence, October 1910,"and printed as apreface to the collection of essays S oul a nd F orm . In it, Lukacstries to define the genre he is using in the rest of the bookExactly the same occasion, the collection of his o w n essays,provoked Adorno's reflections on the form as a preface forNoten zur Liieratur (1958).ForLukacs, who in 1910is showing astrong influence from Pater and Wilde, especially Wilde's "TheCritic as Artist," the modem essay's content is "usually" art;though he acknowledges that many essays deal with life-problems directly (3),and in factincludes the Platonic dialogueand the medieval mystical vision as earlier periods' equivalentforms of "essayistic" or non-systematic thought. Essays are"intellectual poems," he maintains, quoting the elder Schlegel(19).They are s econdary creations, or recreations, but creationsnone the less. "The essay has tocreate from within itself all thepreconditions for the effectiveness and validity of its vision.Therefore two essays can never contradict one another: eachcreates a different world" (11). This principle of non-contradiction of course differentiates the essay from thescholarly article, which is, at least in theory, open to correction,qualification, or rebuttal within the discourse of its discipline.For Lukacs, critical essays have creative autonomy in common.with the works of art they discuss. We could formulate theimplicit claim of the Lukacsianessay as something like: myview of this work recreates the work within my world, andrepresents the work as I see it: as such it cannot enter intoconflictwith your view. But Lukacsdoes not maintain this viewconsistently in the rest of his book; for instance "Richness,Chaos and Form: A Dialogue Concerning Lawrence Sterne,"which is incidentally a revealing picture of the intellectual andsocial milieu of his youth, contains a quite vehement argumentabout the literary value of T ri st ram Sh an d y.But Lukacs does not take a purely aesthetidst view of the

16

The es sa y a s genreessay; for him, it is mimetic aswell as creative; itaims ata kindof truth, as well as imaginative response ..The analogy he takesis portrait.painting, The essay's re-creation of its object is partcreation and part mimesis, analogous to the painter's strivingfor a "likeness" of his sitter (10--11).Lukacs claims that we donot need independent knowledge of the subject in order tosense the likeness. Here he seems to verge on a Leavisite"vitalism of the text" in asking the essayist to rival theportraitist's struggle to bring his subject "to life":Heretoo[inthe essayaswellas in theportrait}thereisa strugglefortruth,forthe incarnationofa lifewhichsomeonehasseenin aman,anepochor a fonn;but itdependsonlyon the intensityoftheworkandits visionwhetherthe writtentextconveystousthissuggestionof thatparticularlife.(11)

This intuitive intensity in the critic-essayist is directed towards"the mystical moment .of union between the outer and theinner, between soul and form" (8);by re-experiencing the formhe can re-create the mornent offormation,and this is somethingquite different from merely explaining the work, though thatmight superficially appear to be the goal. Lukacs's approachand terminology is full of early twentieth-century vitalism orLebensphilosophie, where form is simply seen as a temporaryaccommodation for the restless, renewing energy of the life-force; the essay form is more sympathetic to his vitalism thanthe fully elaborated intellectual system because item'phasizesdynamic process rather than finished product: "the essay is ajudgment, but the essential, the value-determining thing aboutit is not the verdict (as is the case .with the system) but theprocess of judging" (18). In this view, the essay is seen as arenewal ofthe "life" ofart works in the lives of the critic and ofhis readers.The second important contribution to Germanic essay-theoryis MaxBense's "Uber den Essay und seine Prosa" (1947).LikeLukacshe offers an account of the essay as an aesthetic form ofknowledge, with both a creative and a cognitive dimension, Hiskey term is" configuration": "The essayist is a combiner, anindefatigable producer of configurations around a particularobjecL.Configuration is an epistemological category whichcannot be reached by axiomatic deduction, but only through aliterary ars combinatoria, in which imagination replaces strictknowledge" (422; my translation). The essay, according toBense, only declares its "tendency" or ethical message after a

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The O bs erv in g S elf"combinatorial play of idea and image": its presentationcombines "the experimental demonstration of a natural e.ffectand the repatteming of a kaleidoscope" (423-4; my translatl~n).Bense's idea of configuration as the essay's way of relating

objects and ideas is an interesting one, and we m~ght s~e in it asecular or humanist adaptation of the medieval Idea of"Figura." Auerbach's classic article of that _title shows ~ow thepervasive analogism ofmedieval thought vHtuall~ c~nsht.uted a"figural method," used to unify ~hewhole. ~f .Chn~tIan histo.ry,and still surviving in modem literary criticism m terms hke"adumbrate" or "prefigure." The essay would then, after thebreak-up of this unity, represent a te~pora~ ind~~dualpatterning of an experience from a single viewpoint, amiruatu-rized attempt to create a provisional "world" through a nowpurely private and momenta~ "configur~tion" wi~hout accessto a higher synthesis but still recaptunng a brief sense of"wholeness." This would connect with Bense's finding an"epic" or world-creating drive ~n the es.saYi but inst~ad of theepic hero enacting and embodying the life-world of his people,as in Hegel's theory of the epic, the isolated essayist has to givemeaning and pattern to his own experience, through repeatedreconfigurations of it.Another analogous concept to Bense's "configuration" is

Walter Benjamin's "constellation," which represents the basicstructure of his essays, and is discussed in his "Epistemo-critical Prologue" to The O rigin of G erm an Tra gic D ra ma , writ~enin the mid-1920s as his Habilitat ionsschrif t but, perhaps predict-ably, rejected bythe University authorities a~d not publis~eduntil long after his death. Although he IS not speakingspecifically of the essay, his succinct simile "Ideas are to.objectsas constellations are to stars" (34) could form the baSIS of anapproach to the essay in general as well as a k~y ~oBenjamin_'sown practice of it. The moment of intellectual i.nsight work~ 10the same way as the "image" provided by the constellationunites and characterizes a previously unpatterned aggregate ofstars. Analysis and recreation converge to produce sim_ul-taneously "the salvation of phenomena and the representationof ideas" (35); the ideas are embodied or illustrated concretelyat the same time as the object is intellectually illuminated.This idea, as well as those of Bense and Lukacs, is certainly

influential on Adorno's "The Essay as Form," which can be seenas a kind of summation, as well as development, of the earlier18

The essa y a s g enrecontributions. Adorno sees the essay in musical terms asinvolving thematic rather than conceptual unity: this is re-flected in the title of the essay-collection to which "The Essay as 'Form" serves as preface: N ote n z ur L ite ra tu r, where the word"notes" has the sense of musical accompaniment as well aswritten comment. Adorno was himself a mustcologist andcomposer, and as Susan Buck-Morss puts it, he "didn't writeessays, he composed them, and he was a virtuoso in thedialectical medium. His verbal compositions express an 'idea'through a sequence of dialectical reversals and inversions"(101). The essay in general he sees as a musical composition ofideas, which, if organized in other ways, could become parts ofsystems of knowledge. He writes: lilts transitions disavow rigidded uction in the interest of establishing internal cross-connections, something for which discursive logic has no use.... theessay verges on the logic of music, the stringent and yetaconceptual art of transition" (169). In other words, the ideas inan essay are arranged aesthetically, forming a pattern ofrelationships rather than a straight line of necessary consequ-ences; its ideas need not follow in the logical sense. "In theessay, concepts do not build a continuum of operations,thought does not advance in a single direction, rather theaspects of the argument interweave as in a carpet. Thefruitfulness of the thoughts depends on the density of thistexture" (160). That is, there are multiple points of contactamong the thoughts, rather than a hierarchy in which, say,ideas of a higher order of generality govern the more particular.Qpes.Since the insights are of equal value, they are best united by a

spontaneous aesthetic design, comparable to the symbolicpatterns that are meant to be grasped simultaneously inmodernist works like Eliot's F ou r Q ua rt ets , which also usesmusical structures. As Adorno says of the essay, "It co-ordinates elements rather than subordinating them" (170). Thislatter observation clearly reflects his own stylistic practice,which like Benjamin's is heavily paratactical. The difficultiesmany readers experience with their essays are partly due toexpecting hierarchical distinctions between the general mes-sage, the subordinate points, and the illustrations of the points;but Benjamin and Adorno on principle omit these structures, sothat each paragraph, each sentence and even each clause standson its own. The reader has to pattem the work for himself, and

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T he O b se rv in g S e l fthis can take as much effort as reading a complex modernistpoem. Of course their practice is by no means typical of essa~sin general, which are usually much easier on the reader. But th~sis really due to their being less densely textured, not to thenhaving tight logical structures. As we w~l1s:e, Bacon's es~ayshave clear rhetorical outlines, but Montaigne s essays, particu-larly the longer ones, are ~ften densel~, textur:~ thro~gh layersof additions as well as being hard to follow m a linear way.Thus Adorno's comment about the essay co-ordinating ratherthan subordinating its elements does not merely apply to hisown writing, which simply carries that form to an extreme. Infact his essays might be much more widely appreciated throughgreater awareness of their musical ~tru~tures, such as. therepetition of themes in different keys, in different connections.and in harmony or dissonance wit~ ~th~; theme~. . "Adorno's account of the essaYlst s compositlOn of histhought bears an intriguing similarity to Eliot's account ofpoetic creation (to be discussed i~ Chapter.8) ..ln each ~ase themind takes an almost passive attitude to Its Ideas or Images,allowing them to form. "wholes" almost of their own arranging.Adorno writes, "the essay urges the reciprocal interaction of itsconcepts in the process of intellectual experience ".' Actu~lly, thethinker does not think, but rather transforms himself into anarena of intellectual experience, without simplifying it" (160-1).The essay aims, in other words, to preserve something of theprocess of thinking, whereas systematic thought presents a fullyfinished and structured product. Adamo's image for this kind ofspontaneous, unstructured conceptualizing is a man forced tospeak the language in a foreign country with?ut access togrammars and dictionaries, learning thro~gh .tnal and e~ror,through personal experience of different situations. We mightsay that through repeated "essays" in and of the language, ~eeventually acquires a "feel" for it, and that the essay leam~ Itsobjects in the same way. The essayist, like the immersion-method language learner, has to improvise, and may make,mistakes, but this insecurity and uncertainty are vital to theenergy of his work. .Adorno provides two similes for the results of th~ essayist'sthinking process, which correspond to the two sIde~ Of. thedialectic of "form" and "life" in Lukacs's essay. The first ISofthe essay's formation or taking shape: "Through their own Imovement the elements crystallize into a configuration" (161).20

The essa y as genreThe second is a dynamic simile of transfonnation -o r dissolvingshape: "It [the essay] is a force field [Kraftfeld], just as under theessay's glance every intellectual artifact must transform itselfinto a force field" (161). As force field, the essay breaks up andenergizes its object as a second force field with which itinteracts; as configuration, as "a constructed juxtaposition ofelements" (170), the essay shows an "affinity with the visualimage" (170), since it is "composed of tensions, which, as itwere, have been brought to a standstill" (170). Through thiscrystallization "it constructs the interwovenness of concepts insuch a way that they can be imagined as themselves interwovenin the object" (170). Inother words, the essay presents us withinterpenetrating ideas and images, with objectified concepts orconceptualized objects. For Adorno, the essay produces aunique combination of subject and object, like a constellation'scombination of human design and celestial phenomenon. Butthe essay's insights cannot be transferred into organizeddiscourse;' they remain within the bounds of the text, which inthis respect is as autonomous as a work of art.Adorno's treatment of the subjective component of the essayremains curiously impersonal, like Eliot's treatment of thepoet's "crucible" of experience. For Adorno, ideas and objectsseem to combine and form patterns like molecules in a scientificexperiment, and the same is true to a lesser extent of BenseLukacs, and Benjamin. They seek to construct a subjectivizedobject in which the object is central and the subject simplyrefracts ~spects of it. My approach has given the subjectiveaspect of the essay equal prominence. The similes these writersuse for the essay can be adapted to this emphasis quite easily.Lukacs, for example, speaks of the essay as creating a "likeness"ofi ts object in the same way as a portraitist seeks a "likeness" ofhis sitter. But the portraitist, we might add, also represents hisow n likeness in his painting, in the sense that we can recognizea family resemblance in the different portraits by the sameartist. In fact we tend to identify portraits by the artist's ratherthan the sitter's name: a Rembrandt, rather than the particulardignitary depicted. If we compare two portraits of the samefigure by different artists, the differences between the artists'visions will be as apparent as the resemblances which establishthe identity of the sitter. That is why I prefer to see the conceptof "likeness" as Janus-faced, including the artist as well as hismodel. The literary term "characterization" can encompass both

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The O bse rving Se lfdimensions, and is a good one for the essay: itis a characteriza-tion of its object (a place, a work, a person), but also of itsmaker; a reciprocal characterization, in fact.BobHullott-Kentor.in his introduction to Adorno's "The Essay as Form," writes,"The idea is to phenomena as is an expression to a face" (143).This is an excellent simile; but the facial expression, as well asbeing of that person's emotion, is often to an onlooker; further,when that expression is artistically represented by the onlooker,his personality is expressed inthe representation as well. Theresult is a kind offusion ofexpressions: an aspect of the objecthas elicited an aspect ofthe observing subject, and in the essay(as in the portrait) the two aspects are represented together.The heart of the essay as a form is this moment of

characterization, of recognition, of figuration, where the selffinds a pattern in the world and the world finds a pattern in theself. This moment is not the result of applying a preconceivedmethod, but is a spontaneous, unpredictable discovery, thoughoften prepared by careful attention and observation. Thisdiscovery can be about the selfor about the world, but ismostlyabout a combination ofboth. Selfand objectare configured in amutually illuminating way. But the insight is confined to thatmoment; the generalization cannot be separated from itsparticular circumstances of time and space, and made into a law- it remains an isolated occurrence. The essay's ideas areessentially inapplicable elsewhere, because essayistic experienceis not governed by known laws. Instead, chance plays adominant role in the essay's world. What happens happens tome, and has no design other than what I cangive it. The essay isthe record of these provisional designs. Events are not pro-vidential. The world is chaotic and disenchanted, but also freefor me to order it "for now." The essay is always a "firstaccount" of its object, since it does not borrow its firstprinciples from outside its particular situation. Nor can itsreflections be used as a basis for further accumulation ofknowledge, though they may provide illumination. Theessayist is like a traveler; he can choosethe placeshe visits, andcompare his impressions with others', but he cannot determinewhat happens while he is there, orwhether his experience is inany way typical. The place is always the place at one time, forone person.In the essay, the identity of neither self nor object is

predetermined. Both are changeable, and take a particular

II J

22

T he e ss ay as genreshape in conjunction, in configuration, with each other. Theessayis a reflection ofand on the changing selfin the changingworld, not the pure, abstract, Cartesian construction of the selfor Newtonian construction of the world, but a construction of,and a response to, this time and place in the world, by this self.The in~ete~mi~acy of both self and world attains a temporarydetermination inthe essay. The essay aims to inspire confi-dence not by its authority, not by the mastery of general lawsand principles applied to the particular, but by its capacity torecord.the particulars o~experiences and responses accurately~sparticulars. ~e es.sa~IS an act ofpersonal witness. The essayIS at once the inscrIption of a self and the description of anobject. Self and object are freed from their places in social andsc~e~tificsy.ste.msrespectively, but at the price of remainingwithin the limits of a specific situation.This view ofthe essay is suggestive of existentialism; indeed,

the essay was a key formfor Camus and Sartre, and Heideggertoo t~rn~d awa~ from systematic philosophy to the essay.~ar:res ~tle for hIS vol~mes of essays is S itu atio ns - many goodinsights mto the potentials ofthe essay formcan be gained fromthe titles of collections. Existentialism, like the essay, prefersopen intellectual experience, accepting the limitations on theknowledge that results: knowledge that is forhere, fornow, andfor me - situated knowledge, in fact. This idea has to bedistinguished fromtheNietzschean relativism or "fictionalism"which proclaims that there are no "truths," only "constructs" or"myths" which are imposed as history by the victorious. AsAdorno puts it: "the essay is not intimidated by the depravedprofundity which claims that truth and history are incompati-ble" (158).Moral and logical absolutes have to be discarded infavour of a spontaneous response to personal encounters withothers, with the past, orwith works of art. The essays ofSartreand Camus are their best non-fictional prose, as their attemptsat full-scale system (which in some ways is at odds withexistentialism anyway) clearlydemonstrate. Sartre's L es M ots isa classic of the extended autobiographical essay because it isnot dominated by a method, unlike the vast and overblownC ri ti qu e o f D ia le cti ca l R ea so n or themonstrous 2,750-pageL'Idioide la [amille , his study of Flaubert. Likewise, Camus's earlyessays, collected in L 'E nu ers e t l'e nd ro ii and Noces are muchpreferable to the treatise L'Homme reuolie. Adorno says muchthe same of Lukacs in "The Essayas Form," that he was better

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'I~ IIi ''I

The Observing Selfas an essayistic critic than a systematicone, and the same could,even be said of Adorno himself; his beautifully titled collectionPrisms is more satisfying, for example, than the abstractions ofNegative Dialectics.However, it is not necessary to denigrate the treatise in

generaUn order to praise the essay.Itis simply that the prestigeof the full-scale treatise within academic disciplines hasoccluded the essay and turned it into a minor form, perhapsbecause its insights are non-transferable. They are thus felt asless useful; they do not offer a theory or a method which canthen be applied to other objects. The essay starts without thesepre-conceptions, and it is fitting that none of the writers wehave discussed offers a "theory" of the essay, that is, a set ofpropositions capable of controlling or marshalling this vastfield. Instead, each put forward an "essay on the essay." Atfirstsight this might seemweaker than a theory; but itis stronger inthe sense that each is demonstrating or enacting the formwhilecommenting on it. It is not an accident that systematic poeticshas had solittle to say about the essay.Instead ofa theory, then,Adorno and Lukacs give us meta-essays, essays raised to ahigher power of self-consciousness.With Benjamin and Adorno, and indeed with Sartre and

Lukacs, we have to confront the paradoxical relationshipbetween Marxism and the essay. Lukacs calls the essayist "thepure type ofthe precursor" (16),maintaining that the essay is tothe fullyarticulated intellectual system as John theBaptist is toChrist. Unlike Eliot, whose essays will be discussed later inconnection with this idea, Lukacswent on to deliver systematictreatises. But Adorno rejects this "precursor" idea and sees"theory" as Lukacs's downfall as an essayist: "It [the essay]neither deduces itself rigidly from theory - the cardinal fault ofall Lukacs'slater essayistic work- nor is it a down-payment onfuture syntheses. Disaster threatens intellectual experience themore strenuously it ossifies into theory" (165)- a disaster, oneis tempted to add, which Adornohimself did not entirely avoid.Certainly Sartre did not. Of the four, Benjamin is the mostconsistently essayistic, and even his attempts at longer worksremain more or less essay-collections or amassed fragments.The tension in his writing between Marxism and Messianicreligion can perhaps best be understood by seeing both as"totalizing" systems of signification, one modem and one

, ,ancient, one worldly and one other-worldly, which he only24

The essay as genreapproaches through particular objects. His religion and hisMarxismare both inhibited by his essayism, his intent focus onthe particular, and his Proustian faith that past worlds could beresur~ecte~ .whole from the material relics. Conversely' hisessayism IS Incessantly checked and complicated by his desireto transcend the here and now, Despite his stretching of the~ormt? its limits, Benjamin is best understood as an essayist,including the travel and autobiographical pieces in One-WayStreet as ~ell as. the critical essays in Illuminations, The essaymust obviously be at odds to some extent with Marxism andreligion in that both the latter approach phenomena in the lightofaccepted principles or articles offaith, where the essay worksfrom particular phenomena outwards (and not very far out-wards). Theintensity ofBenjamin's essays is this hint of "total"vision amidst the detail of highly particularized objects.Adorno's brilliantJy chosen epigraph fromGoethe for his "TheEssay as Form" is apposite here: "Bestimmt, Erleuchtetes zusehen, nicht das Licht." "Destined to see the illuminated, notthe light" (151).The source of visionary power and meaning,the first principles from which the world can be totalized,remain hidden from the essay, yet its indirect effects areeverywhere. Benjamin differed from other essayists onlythrough the power ofhis visionary urge to glimpse the sourceofhis illuminations, Adorno's musicalization of ideas to form a"setting" or "accompaniment" to the object is lessmystical, andprovides a more general approach to the essay as counterpointof image and idea, aesthetics and thought, as well as acontinuing refusal of ideological system in favor of the unique"constellation" of subject and object, self and world,

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the essay as genre

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