Confinement in Paul Auster's Moon Palace and the New York Trilogy

C GASPING FOR CORRESPONDENCES

1/ Transparency and liberty

Between the man and the world: the sign

In spite of the many problems they encounter with language, some Austerian characters -as we have seen- nevertheless manage to make a `successful' use of language. However, the reader is prone to ask to what degree this use of language is really successful. Even though they somehow manage to convey the essence of things, the characters nonetheless rely on the language of words, a system which
-according to Auster- is flawed. Therefore, from the very start, the characters' attempts at mastering language perfectly are bound to fail, for the medium used is imperfect. What is imperfect in the language of words is precisely the smallest unity of the system: the word, or more exactly, the sign. Let us turn to Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of linguistics, for a definition of the sign:

Le signe linguistique unit non une chose et un nom, mais un concept et une image acoustique. [le signifié et le signifiant] (...) Le lien unissant le signifiant au signifié est arbitraire, ou encore, puisque nous entendons par signe le total résultant de l'association d'un signifiant à un signifié, nous pouvons dire tout simplement : le signe linguistique est arbitraire.^224(*)

So, the language of words is a system whose very basic unity is defective, thereby, it is the whole system which is defective, as Umberto Eco explains:

Les mots n'expriment pas les choses ; nous ne connaissons en effet celles-ci qu'à travers la construction d'idées complexes élaborées à partir d'idées simples. Les mots renvoient aux idées comme à leur signifié immédiat. Et dès lors, c'est un rapport arbitraire qui s'établit entre les mots et les choses.^225(*)

This opinion is exactly that of Peter Stillman in City of Glass: «The word (...) can no longer express the thing. It is imprecise; it is false; it hides the thing it is supposed to reveal»^226(*) And this comes from the arbitrariness of the sign. The language of words is therefore an `independent' system whose only relationship with reality is symbolization: the representation of the `real' by a sign and the understanding of this sign as a representation of the `real'. Consequently, the sign is a gap, or a barrier between us and the world and this is what the linguist Benveniste asserts in Problème de Linguistique Générale:

Qu'un pareil système de symboles existe nous dévoile une des données essentielles, la plus profonde peut être de la condition humaine : c'est qu'il n'y a pas de relation naturelle, immédiate et directe entre l'homme et le monde, ni entre l'homme et l'homme ; il faut un intermédiaire, cet appareil symbolique qui a rendu possible la pensée.^227(*)

With regard to this theory, language itself is a confining structure and man is to some extent locked in it. This is what Auster tends to imply when he presents us with the issue of the representation of the world through words and the problems of communication among people.

* ²²⁴ Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de Linguistique Générale (Paris: Payot, 1972), pages 99-100.

* ²²⁵ Umberto Eco, Le Signe : Histoire et Analyse d'un Concept (Bruxelles: Labor, 1988.), page 171.

* ²²⁶ City of Glass, page 77.

* ²²⁷ Encyclopédia Universalis.