Einstein On A Beach Metaphor

"Einstein on the Beach": The Primacy of Metaphor Author(s): Craig Owens Source: October, Vol. 4 (Autumn, 1977), pp.
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Einstein on the Beach: The Primacyof Metaphor
CRAIG
OWENS
If, as is frequentlyand strikinglyattestedeverywhere today, itsfidelity or wrongly, to Artaud, boldness in theater proclaims,rightly of cruelty, of its presentnonexistenceand the question of the theater the has ineluctablenecessity, forceof an historicalquestion. Historical not in its possible inscriptionwithin what we know as the history of theater,not because it would mark a stage in the developmentof theatricalformsor because of its place in the successionof models of The question is historicalin a sense thatis theatricalrepresentation. both radical and absolute. It declares the limit of representation. Jacques Derrida, "The Limit of Representation," fromL'ecritureet la diffkrence. which segregatethe dominant attitudestowards Across those differences in into eitherexpressionistic our or analyticmodes,' there century performance a commitment which with neither: a challengeto maybe associated appears single structure of which has the been identicalwith thatof theater ever representation dramatic poetryas mimetic.This identification since Aristotlecharacterized of of action tragedywith the imitation,ratherthan the immediatepresentation, and text, posits a fundamentaldualism at the heartof the theater.Performance and are seems Theatrical representer represented, (it irrevocably) split. representation establishes itselfin that riftwhich it alone creates between the tangible and that absence which is necessarily physical presence of the performer implicated in any concept of imitation or signification. The imitated action (the theatricalsignified)is situated outside of the closed circuit establishedby the and spectator.Thus what is represented is always an copresenceof performer "elsewhere." As a result,while the performer is in fact both a presenceand a
I. "There are, in the contemporary renewal of performance modes, two basic and diverging impulseswhichshape and animateitsmajor innovations.The first, groundedin theidealistextensions of a Christianpast, is mythopoeicin its aspirations,eclecticin its forms, and constantly traversed by the dominant and polymorphic style which constitutesthe most tenacious vestigeof that past: secular in its commitmentto objectification, expressionism.... The second, consistently proceeds fromCubism and Constructivism; its modes are analytic ." AnnetteMichelson, "Yvonne Rainer, Part One: The Dancer and the Dance," Artforum, XII (January ... 1974),57.
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as a representative for (foran absence),we always regardhim as thelatter, signifier somethingelse-the actor as perpetual stand-in. The major innovations in performance of the last fifty years have been addressedto this rift, eitherto exaggerateit (Brecht)or to annihilate it (Artaud). Both strategies shift fromrepresentation to presentation. Since thepresence of the is anteriorto, and a necessary condition for, any theatrical performer representaas modernist, a tion,theimpulse which animates thatshift mightbe characterized reductionto that which is unique and absolutelyfundamentalto the theatrical situation. Modernist performance abandons representationby establishing betweenrepresenter and represented. The performer no longerstandsfor identity other than himself. of in interest dance at thebeginning (The resurgence anything of this centurywas a manifestation of the same impulse. According to Yeats' formula,dance has always eluded any such dualism.) Since the structureof representationis identical with that of verbal language-a system of signs which always substitutefor nonpresence-the ambition to overturn an entrenched theatrical has frequently representationalism manifested itself in programs which would radicallyalter,ifnot eliminate,theuse of speech on stage. The nonverbalspectacleis itsoffspring. Yet theoverthrow of cannot be restricted to nonverbalmodes,sincean identicalimpulse representation has also animated the poetic theaterof our century. Thus, modes traditionally conceivedas antithetical become complementary. In Artaud'spolemical writings on theater, it is the conjunction of the nonverbaland the poetic thatconstitutes the verypossibilityforthe revivification of theater. While Artaud's modernism is apparent in his move to disestablish the author-"the theater,an independentand autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text,pure speech, and all other fixedand written does not follow that he literature, means"2--it meant to eliminate speech from the stage altogether.If the theaterwas to be reconstituted outside of verballanguage, theauthor to be replacedby thedirector and thestage to become thelocus of research into alternative languages ofgesture and scenographywhich would "always express[thought]more adequately than 3 it was simplythattheauthority the preciselocalized meaningsof words," of the word was to be undermined. Artaud advocated the overthrowof all spoken hierarchical rankings of theatrical languages, which had assigned speech a and reducedthe mise en scene to a subsidiaryrole. The position of preeminence, theaterof crueltywas to be characterized by a pluralityof equipollent voices: If spoken, musical, gestural,scenographic. in the spectacleshe envisioned "the in a new sense,"4still,the spoken and written portionswill be spoken and written sensuous, physical side of language-everything which characterizes its poetic use-was to be retained:
2. Antonin Artaud,"Letterson Language," The Theater and Its Double, trans.M.C. Richards, New York, Grove, 1958,p. 106. 3. Ibid., p. 109, 4. Ibid., p. 111,
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But let there to theactive,plastic,respiratory be theleast return sources of language, letwordsbe joined again to thephysicalmotionsthatgave them birth,and let the discursive,logical aspect of speech disappear beneath its affective, physical side, i.e., let words be heard in their rather than be takenforwhat they mean grammatisonority exclusively let them be as and let these movements movements, cally, perceived turninto othersimple,directmovements themselves as occursin all the circumstances of life but not sufficiently with actorson the stage,and behold! the language of literatureis reconstituted, and revivified, in thecanvassesof certainpaintersof thepast-objects furthermore-as themselves begin to speak.5 Artaud's ambition was thus more than the revivification of theater;it was less than the reanimation of one nothing complete poetic language. Or rather, the other.' This of his extended to necessarily implicated poetic aspect enterprise his instructions forthe manipulation of scenic elements: The language of the theater aims then at encompassingand utilizing extension,that is to say space, and by utilizingit, to make it speak: I deal with objects-the data of extension-like images, like words, bringing them togetherand making them respond to each other according to laws of symbolismand living analogies: externallaws, thoseof all poetry and all viable language, and, among otherthings, of Chinese ideogramsand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.7 That Artaud'sprescriptions forthestage should constitute an ars poetica suggests a historicalfiliationwith a numberof modernpoets who also identified the stage as an appropriate locus for researchinto intensifying the purely physical, i.e. sonorous, movementsof language. Mallarm6 wrote Igitur for the stage. Eliot the poetic momentsof tragedy identified as those at which the language reflects back into itself,becomes aware of itselfas a theatricalpresence. Further,in a of Artaud'sproposal thatwords be perceivedas movements, passage reminiscent he suggested that if verse drama were to be given new life, it might look to such as the Mass and the ballet forparadigms. nonverbalmodes of performance Both poet and metteuren scene would transform language into an entirely materialevent.And Valery,describing his own workforthestageas a concatenation of music and architecture, called theresultant genre "melodrama": "I found no other termto describethis work, which is certainlyneitheran opera, nor a ballet,nor an oratorio." Like Eliot, he drewa parallel withreligiousliturgy: "To of a religious my mind, it must and does bear some resemblanceto a ceremony
5. Ibid., p. 119. 6. Susan Sontag has stressed the importanceof thisstrategy forArtaud:"The function thatArtaud is to heal the split betweenlanguage and flesh.... Artaud'swritings on the theater gives the theater of mind and body." Antonin Artaud: may be read as a psychological manual on the reunification Selected Writings, New York, Farrar,Straussand Giroux, 1976,pp. xxxv-vi. 7. Artaud,pp. 110-1.
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nature." Yet he reiterated its poetic nature:"The action,limitedand slightas it is, must be further subordinatedto the meaning and poetic substanceof each of its moments."8 Robert Like Valkry's"melodrama" (which it resembledin severalrespects), Wilson's recentspectacleEinstein on the Beach (in collaborationwith composer Philip Glass) resistsassimilation to any of the conventional genres of perforas an "opera", and while its scoremight mance. AlthoughEinsteinwas identified be anatomized accordinglyinto arias, duets, choral passages, and ballets, the betweenmusic and dramaticaction thatdefines productionlacked thecorrelation concrete aural references to thevisual thatgenre.Glass occasionally incorporated and logical subject of a scene into his score, but his insistenceon structure progressiononly emphasized the independenceof music fromaction. One was betweensound and image which Cunningham remindedof thatdisjunctiveness as broughtto thedance. Actionexhibiteda similarautonomy:Einsteinprogressed a sequence of highlyallusive visual images thatappeared to succeedone another according to an internal logic of association. They centeredon the figureof and scientific models Einstein. Habits of his dressand personality;mathematical the products of technological progress,such as trains,spaceand instruments; a complexportrait ships, and atomic explosions,coalesced to form byassociation. From scene to scene, the spectator'ssense of both scale and durationwas altered, of the centralhypothesisof Einstein's thinking(that perhaps in demonstration dimension and velocityare interdependent). Because of thefrequent arbitrariness of the selectionof the images, no detail being too insignificant forinclusion, as well as thefreedom withwhich associationsweremade-organization was neither nor work has been compared with dreams. If thematic-Wilson's chronological one importantdifference the space evoked in Einstein was dream-like, must be noted. Wilson's images, unlike those of dreams,are not open to interpretation. of dream-thoughts; hence, their Dream-imagesare the mediatedrepresentations Wilson's images are, on thecontrary, immediate, interpretability. presentational, resistantto analysis. This is supported by the subsidiaryfunctionassigned to in all ofhis works.For language is, above all, themedium speech and spoken texts of interpretation. With Einstein, Wilson carries ambivalence towards language one step Even thepublished "text" fortheproductionis nonverbal,a seriesof 113 further. charcoal sketches made by Wilson himself and reproduced in a book which assemblesmusical scores,spoken texts, and choreographic as diagrams.Arranged a sequence of cinematic stills, these atmospheric drawings chart Einstein's division into four acts, nine scenes and fiveintermezzi (hinges or "knee-plays") and describethreebasic scenic motifs: a train,a courtroom, and a field of dancers over which a spaceship passes. This pictographictextproceedsfromand extends
8. Paul Valbry, "History of Amphion," trans. Haskell Block, Collected Works, New York, Pantheon, 1960,vol. 3, p. 220.
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9. Vicky Alliata, Einstein on the Beach, New York, E.O.S. Enterprises,1976. This attitude,so of criticism, has infected thosewho have written clearlyhostileto theenterprise about theproduction: nearlyall of thepublished accountsof Einstein to date have been content withsimpledescription. For such description,which is not attemptedhere, see in particular,Barbara Baracks in Artforunm, XV (March 1977),30-6; and Susan Flakes in The Drama Review, 20 (December 1976),69-82.
Wilson's ambition to mount a spectaclewhich cannot be containedwithinverbal language: Wilson shuns recipesand thisis whyto writeabout him,who is always so loath to expressjudgement[sic] or opinions, is to riskincapsulating him in one of those airtightwrappers of culture towardswhich the whole of his work is directed,if not as an accusation at least as an into wordsitsexpressive alternative. To translate means,in complexity a way, to prevaricateon both the author's and the public's emotive participation.To single out a particularlinear developmentor a new definitionof theatrein his work is to misrepresent its underlying on the stage everything which life premise,the attemptto reconstruct shatters. systematically [italics added]9 Wilson's theaterdoes not intend to provoke articulateresponse; rather,it argues the povertyof those systemsthroughwhich such a response might be formed-primarilylanguage, but also all processesof logical thoughtaccording to which we parse,analyze,literally come to terms withexperience. The ambition to stage a semblance of the unanalyzed,amorphous continuum of sensorydata which is subsequentlysegmentedby the formative action of language ("everythingwhich life systematically shatters")involvesan implicit argumentthatthe of language upon thatcontinuumis a violationof itsintegrity. activity Language inevitablyproduces an endless stringof synecdocheswhich, in spite of their intentionto signify, will neverreproducethe original unitywhich is prior to all analysis,all logical thought. This argumentabout the synecdochiccharacter of language is hardlynew, While it has bothpsychologiyetit seems to have exhaustedlittleof its authority. cal and philosophical ramifications-Merleau-Ponty, for example, has written that speech "tears out or tears apart meanings in the undivided whole of the nameable"-it also underpinnedthe revolutionin linguisticswhich dates from the beginning of this century.Saussure's now-famousdiscussion in his Cours of the arbitrariness of the sign was rooted in the distinctionbetween "form" and "substance"; the latter was considered a nebulous continuum anteriorto language: Withoutlanguage, thoughtis a vague, unchartednebula. There are no pre-existingideas, and nothing is distinctbeforethe appearance of language.... Phonic substance is neithermore fixednor more rigid than thought;it is not a mold into which thoughtmustof necessity fit but a plastic substancedivided in turninto distinct to furnish the parts needed by thought. The linguistic fact can therefore be oignifiers
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picturedin its totality-i.e. language-as a seriesof contiguous subdivisions markedoff on both theindefinite plane ofjumbled ideas ... and the equally vague plane of sounds.... Language worksout its unity while takingshape betweentwo shapelessmasses. ... Their combination produces a formnot a substance.1' While Saussure's intentionwas simply to restrict linguistics to the analysis of of the form,and despite his recognitionof the fundamentalunintelligibility the effect of his formulation is nonethelessto uphold a traditional prelinguistic, distinctionbetweenwhat is thoughtand what is expressedin language. Saussure's notion of substance as a shapeless mass was interpreted by the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev as purport:an unformedmass of physical or schematized psychicaldata which,while common to all languages,is nevertheless differently by each. It is like one and the same handful of sand that is formedin quite different or like thecloud in theheavensthatchangesshape in patterns, Hamlet's view fromminuteto minute.Just as thesame sand can be put into different and the same cloud take on evernew shapes, so molds, also the same purportis formedor structured in different differently languages." a mass of objective, Hjelmslev cites as an example of purportthecolor spectrum, measurable data which is different physically segmented differently by languages: Behind the paradigms that are furnished in the various languages by the designations of color, we can, by subtractingthe differences, disclose such an amorphous continuum,thecolor spectrum, on which each language arbitrarily sets its boundaries.While formations in this zone of purportare for the most part approximatelythe same in the most widespread European languages, we need not go far to find formations thatare incongruent with them.'2 If thoughtis conceivedas a shapelessmass,just as on the(pre-)phonological level sounds form an indistinct continuum, then both the plane of content (the and thatof expression(the signifier) will require,according to Hjelmsignified) of both formand substance.While theanalysisof form slev, descriptionin terms belongs in both instancesto linguistics,thatof substancelies outside its domain: "The descriptionof purport... may in all essentialsbe thoughtof as belonging partly to the sphere of physics and partly to thatof (social) anthropology. ... Consequently,forboth planes both a physical and a phenomenologicaldescrip10. Ferdinandde Saussure, Course in GeneralLinguistics,trans.Wade Baskin,New York,McGraw Hill, 1966,pp. 112-3. 11. Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, trans. F.J. Whitfield, Madison, of Wisconsin, 1963,p. 52. rUniversity 12. Ibid., p. 52.
Einstein on theBeach: The Primacyof Metaphor
27
tion of the purportshould be required." 3 such a descriptionin Einstein on theBeach. A phenomWilson undertakes enological descriptionof purportwould presumablyaim to recoverthat unity which underlies the constantly changing appearances of things (including linguisticobjects) as theysurfacein experience.In Husserl, thatunityis understood to be a functionof (synthetic) consciousness,of a transcendental subject. Einstein implies both that aim and that understanding.Each of threemotifs (train,trial,and field)is brokenup into a setof images which,since homologous, is theconsciousness The locus of thisprocessof reintegration maybe reintegrated. is thus inborn, that is, emergeswhile the of the individual spectator.Structure work is performedas the spectator spontaneously apprehends the relations obtaining among images. Thus, coherenceis not a resultof any logical sequence of images (the series train-trial-field repeated three times) as program notes but residesin intuitively among imagesderivedfrom graspedsimilarities suggest, in Wilson's text.The train,as it a common motif.This is clearlydemonstrated appears in Act II, its observationdeck recedinginto the night, reappears as a building in Act IV. This relationship, rather than the individual images in isolation, is the subjectof thesetwo scenesand makes thema unit. Similarly,the sharplydelineatedtriangleof lightprojectedby thelocomotive'sheadlightin the with thatwhich streams froman elevatorshaftin the opening scene is congruent finalscene-a visual linkingof end withbeginning.And thefluorescent bed in the of thecourtroom center duringthetrialscenesin ActsI and III becomes,in ActIV, a column of light which slowly ascends into the fliesand which, in turn,is of thestripof lightwhich painteditself down thebackdropin thefirst reminiscent scene. These images do not functionas isolated signs; instead theirconjunction reveals patternsof interrelationship which make Einstein a complex, resonant experientialunit,or gestalt. To theextentthatWilson generates a unified fieldthrough visual means,his is nonverbal.Nevertheless, the techniquesaccordingto whichhis imagery theater is manipulated can only be described as poetic. Here poetic does not mean evocativeor allusive, but indicatesa particularprocess of establishingrelationships betweenimages. Wilson's manipulation of images is primarily analogical, that is, metaphoric.Metaphor,based exclusivelyon purelymaterialor sensuous has been isolated by the linguist Roman Jakobsonas the fundamental features, of all poetic texts. If the two poles of language are selection and structure based on equivalence (metaphor),the second upon conticombination,the first of equivapoetryas the transference Jakobsoncharacterizes guity (metonomy),14 lence fromthe pole of selection to that of combination.'5 In poetic language,
13. Ibid., pp. 77-8. 14. On this twofoldcharacter of language, see Roman Jakobson,"Two Aspectsof Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances," Fundamentals of Language, The Hague, Mouton, 1971, pp. 90-6. 15. Roman Jakobson,"Linguistics and Poetics," Style in Language, ed. T.A. Sebeok,Cambridge, M.I.T., 1960,pp. 358 ff.
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Robert Wilson. Einsteinon the Beach, 1976. Act I,
scene 2. (Photos: Babette 1; ActI, scene 2; ActIV,scene Mangolte.) or rhymicsequences because of words are combined into rhythmic, alliterative, their equivalence as pure sound. In this way, new semanticrelationshipsare established-or lost ones restored-on thebasis of purelyphysicalparallelisms. of metaphor that the poetic It follows fromJakobson's characterization the signifying the of chain (what of transcend constraints must necessity image in toward its movement one mightcall themetonymic force) meaning.Metaphors of are nevercontext-sensitive. They do not reachout to other, contiguouselements the chain that might determinetheir meanings. Two images standing in a by those pressuresfromwithoutwhich metaphoricrelationshipare unaffected because of their would have us perceive them as somehow absolutelydifferent different positions in a linear, i.e. horizontal, sequence. Rather, the proper each metaphorappropriately locatedin a set of themetaphoris vertical, direction of equivalent images. The principleof equivalence or congruencethatcharacteron each of its membersbecomes a kind of izes that set and conferssignificance centertowardwhich each metaphorgravitates. transcendent a linear timespan (roughlythelifetime If Einsteinon theBeach describes of nonlinear work.Eventsdo remains a resolutely AlbertEinstein), it nevertheless not preceedor followone anotheraccordingto any (temporal)logic. As a resultof their metaphorical aspect, Wilson's images resistfalling into any meaningful linear sequence. The imposition of a logical scheme(train-trial-field-train-trialof Einstein'stemporalstructure. The field, etc.) only emphasizesthearbitrariness formula checks linear In activated that any by effectively circularity development. of spoken textsworksto neutralizethe an analogous way, a recursivetreatment
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of spoken language. A single textis repeatedagain and ordinarydirectionality again, itsfinalword being nothingmore thana cue to thespeakerto begin again, until that linear time in which all narrative and all spoken discourseoperate is effectively suspended. Since metaphorworksto suspend the temporalizing effects of the signifying chain (its syntactic or syntagmatic been associated dimension),it has frequently with a corresponding motive.Metaphorrevealsan atemporalprincipleof similarthat is, of homology or isomority (be it a resultof divergenceor convergence, that constitutes the of relation of images whatsoever. That possibility any phism) in contexts and to different been a identified as ends, law, a principlehas, varying an whether one it or form, essence; yet grants regulatory ontological status,it remains that with which poetryhas been principallyconcerned.The poet has been continuallychargedwith theresponsibility ofuncoveringthatwhichrenders all relationship possible. It is thus, through its metaphoricbase and not its thematiccontent,thatpoetryparticipatesin the investigations of metaphysics. Yet this motive is operative only within a particular attitude towards characteristics of which have been identified and analyzed language, the primary by Jacques Derrida: To concern oneself with metaphor-a particular figure-is ... to presuppose a symbolist position. It is above all to concernoneselfwith thenonsyntactic, nonsystematic pole, with semantic"depth," with the of similarity ratherthan with positional combinamagnetizingeffect tion, call it "metonymous,"in the sense definedby Jakobson,who between symbolism (not only as a rightly underlines the affinity linguistic notion, but also, we should claim, as a literaryschool), Romanticism(witha morehistorical-that is, historicist-orientation, and more directed towards interpretation), and the prevalence of metaphor.[italics added]16 Certainlythe argumentsthat everyday language is essentiallysynecdochicand therefore in need of rehabilitation, and thatit is thefunction ofpoeticmetaphorto restore nature,maybe tracedto a specific language to its supposedlyprimary body of theoryarticulatedat the end of the 19th Century:the poetic of the French as enunciated in the criticaland theoretical Symbolists, of particularly writings which he Stephane Mallarm&.Accordingto Mallarme, the revolutionin poetry, dated to Verlaine, was involved in a returnto "certain primitiveresourcesin language."'7 Fascinated with speculations concerningthe primal symbolization of thesuggestiveness of woras rooted processesof mankind,he sketcheda theory in "a belief that a primitivelanguage, half-forgotten, existsin each half-living, man. It is a language possessing extraordinaryaffinities with music and
16. Jacques Derrida,"White Mythology," VI (Autumn trans.F.C.T. Moore,New Literary History, 1974), 13. 17. Stephane Mallarm&,Selected Prose, trans. BradfordCook, Baltimore,Johns Hopkins, 1956, p. 35.
Einstein on theBeach: The Primacyof Metaphor
31
This primitivelanguage was conceived as a pictographic idiom of dreams."'18 hieroglyphswhich was the predecessorof the more abstractmedium, verbal have been erectedand language, with which philosophic and scientific systems which corresponded to a particular state of the world which preceded the of time.19 deployment For Mallarme, the poet's task was to recover thatdata of pre-history. Poetry to objectstheiroriginalresonanceor complicasprangfroman impulse to restore tion which logic and language had strippedfromthem.And metaphor(rhythm, rhyme, etc.) made thatrestoration possible: The poetic act consists of our sudden realization that an idea is into severalmotifs of equal value which mustbe naturallyfractionized assembled.They rhyme; and their outwardstampofauthenticity is that common meterwhich the finalstressestablishes.20 This conception of language remains tacitly operative in the texts of phenomenology and gestalt psychology (in which the task of reassemblyand remainsprimary).It also persists in at leastone othercontemporary reintegration structural of discipline-the anthropology Claude Levi-Strauss. Whereas pheof thatdata with prehistory nomenologywould dispense with the identification of us to it in has access the raw material of (each perception), Levi-Strauss His descriptions of la pensbesauvage center emphasizesitslink with theprimitive. vehicle of myth: upon metaphor,which is isolated as the primary The effectiveness of symbolswould consistprecisely in this"inductive which built out of property,"by formallyhomologous structures, different materialsat different levelsof life-organic processes, unconscious mind, rational thought-are related to one another. Poetic metaphorprovidesa familiarexample of this inductiveprocess.21 Thanks to the myths,we discover that metaphorsare based on an intuitivesense of the logical relations betweenone realm and other the first realm with the totality of the realms; metaphorreintegrates to others,in spite of the factthatreflective thoughtstruggles separate
18. Wallace Fowlie, Mallarmb', Chicago, Phoenix, 1962,p. 264. 19. The neo-Platonic base of this theory of language has been discussedby Gilles Deleuze in his writingon Proust,which embeds the novelistwithina decidedlySymbolisttradition:"Certain neoPlatonistsused a profoundword to designatetheoriginal statewhich precedesany development, any the deployment,any 'explication': complication, which envelops the many in the One and affirms did not seem to themtheabsence ofchange,noreven theextensionofa unityof themultiple.Eternity limitlessexistence,but the complicated stateof time itself(uno ictu mutationestuas complectitur). The Word, omnia complicans,and containingall essences,was defined as thesupremecomplication, the complication of contraries,the unstable opposition. From this theyderived the notion of an essentially expressive universe, organized according to degrees of immanent complications and following an order of descending explications." Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard, New York, Braziller,1972,pp. 44-5. 20. Mallarme,p. 39. 21. Claude Levi-Strauss,StructuralAnthropology,trans. Jacobson Schoepf, New York, Basic Books, 1963,pp. 201-2.
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them.Metaphor,farfrombeing a decorationthatis added to language, it and restores it to its original nature,throughmomentarily purifies obliterating one of the innumerable synecdoches that make up
speech.22
If, as LUvi-Strauss claims, the poetic and the mythicare essentiallyanalogous functions,then they themselvesstand in a metaphoricrelation and must be conceived as a single function. If the techniques according to which myth are primarily unityor totality reproducesan original, pre-discursive poetic--i.e. intuitive ratherthan logical and rootedin metaphor-then it followsreciprocally thatthe "purpose" of poetrywill be to createmyths. Here, Levi-Straussrearticuin all of thegreattexts lates theoperationprescribed of literary Symbolism:those of Mallarme,Valkry, and Eliot, and certainly ofArtaud.23 And thewordwhichbest describesthatoperation,mythopoesis, becomes profoundly tautological. Einstein on the Beach, an essentially metaphoric structure, cannot be in thismythopoeic isolated fromthis poetic motive.Because Wilson participates impulse, his attitudetowardslanguage may be ascribedto a particularlinguistic and poetic position and his formalstrategies assimilatedto a specific performance itself identified tradition, by its argumentabout language. Elsewhere,he has been thatEinsteinwas chosen as centralfigure because he exhibited quoted to theeffect of both thinker(physicist,mathemetician, characteristics of the representative and dreamer of the analytic) (musician, visionary,representative idealistic).24 Wilson's desire was to synthesize those divergent modes of perforAccordingly, mance (analytic,expressionistic) noted at the beginningof thisessay.Hence, his collaboration with composer Philip Glass and choreographer Lucinda Childs, both of whom have previouslyworked in an analyticmode. Still, this synthetic ambition is profoundlymythopoeic,an inductive reintegration of previously distinctorders; and Wilson's desire to transcendthe polarityof contemporary modes remained wholly contained within one of its terms.As a performance result,the profoundlyintuitivecharacterof the frameprovidedfor the work of Glass and Childs qualified and at times subverted the objective nature of their of Wilson's images seemed diluted by the styles.(At the same time, the strength presenceof antithetical material.)Had Einsteinachievedencyclopaedicstatusthe claims thathave been made forit would be justified. As it is, Wilson's work,which has so frequently been hailed as totally innovativeand withoutprecedent, remains enmeshedin a particulartradition,the coordinatesof which have alreadybeen mapped.
Claude Lkvi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, trans.J.and D. Weightman, 22. New York,Harper & Row, 1969,p. 339. 23. is to createmyths."Artaud,p. 116. "The truepurpose of the theater 24. the fusion was the subject itself, AlbertEinstein,a "According to Wilson ... what triggered but at the same time a dreamer.... It is the contradiction, mathematician, the interplay, and the thatformthe centraltensionof thiswork." Flakes, p. 70. harmonyof dreamsand mathematics

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"Einstein on the Beach": The Primacy of Metaphor Author(s): Craig Owens Source: October, Vol. 4 (Autumn, 1977), pp.

Einstein on the Beach: The Primacyof Metaphor

Einstein on the Beach: The Primacyof Metaphor

Einstein on the Beach: The Primacyof Metaphor

Einstein on theBeach: The Primacyof Metaphor

Robert Wilson. Einsteinon the Beach, 1976. Act I,

Einstein on theBeach: The Primacyof Metaphor

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