The Lobster of Language.
Firstly, I think it needs to be said clearly what this essay is not. It is not a full engagement with the character of Blandois; the Self whose being (and t is a being ) is given only in his excess of self love. That engagement will wait, until in a another series the Darker automatically breaking principles of thought are considered. All that is attempted here is the relatively modest endeavour of tracing exactly how and why blandios, the assassin needs Bapsite so very much. My starting points the cell where the to meet. Blandois hogs light and food, and money (standing by the window and cheating and cards); while Bapiste stays in the dark. Blandois (called at this point Rigaud), is very clearly set to here o be a man of indescribably shallowness. An opportunists, with eyes which scillitate, and yet are set far too close together for comfort., and with a nose perfect isitsel, and yet too large for Blandios face.. Here then is a shallow gentlemen of the load. And e there is clearly far more to Blandios than that. He is brutal, and acoward a bully and a liar, but also far more importantly a demand for selfhood. Or better the demand for the assertion in the face of circumstance of a selfhood. The nature of this assertion is conveyed in the most singular of gestures. When blandois wants to assert his rights agaist the world, his chin and hose move together, and his moustache shoots up. This loo, which is habitual in him (as he asserts his own rights,his own value), turns his looks, which might (if one was shallow be thought to be god looking) into arrarrent hideousness.
More than that in this dual assertion of his selfhood it is clear that Blandios is almost the lobster of l
Being. He asserts himself, by gripping the world between nose and chin, sch hat I must include himself. He claims as much. Frequently boasting that whatever happens Blandios wins. On one level Blandios is therefore a mere cipher. He lacks any ability to change any situation. He goes with (and hollows out) he situation he finds himself within. This hollowing out is frequently violent and highly destructive. And yet this destruction is far from random (Balndios is assassin not a murderer): He murders such that (deah of his soul) his identity might life. O to put is another way, in the lobster grip of nose and chin, and in the violence Blandois in the name of himself (and for himself alone) seeks to rivet together the rivetable world of word and passion. He attempts to force them into coalescences. In doing this Bladios has a second string o his bow. He plays a dark game of bluff an double Bluff. He might be the self, and yet what that self was, and how it is given, where it will erupt from is never (for other principles) so easy to predict. Blandios therefore in asserting himself, catches up the other principles in thoughts, in feelings, which blandois himself feeds of, even as he eldudes the grasp of those other principles. He is therefore an invisible vampire, an assassin (or a mosequito), who rings dry his victims. Moreover, in both these moves it is clear Bapiste has a very considerable role to play, a s witness or servant, or cheated victim: A person Blandois cannot react to merely as a figure of passion. A person he needs (the self needs empirical language, even though tht language dreads it).
Before these moves can be considered in detail however it is probably worth point out he deepness of this dependence. Blandios ( or Rigand or Ligaund) is clearly caught up n a world of empirical language. One of the hidden elements in the book is the degree to which Blandios adopts quietly the language of others, which he then makes his own (in his own objectional way), Hence the great oath Blandios habitual swear ‘Death of My Soul’ is an oath he adopts from the jail keeper of Marsillies. Even more ciritical the song (which which clennam knows of the link between Bapsite ad Blandios), and which clearly becomes utterly importantly in Blandios (who identifies with its hero, a knight who was always was only learnt by him from the jailers child in Marseillies (while it was well known by Baspite). Blandios language is therefore, like himself, utterly opportunistic. He flourishes, and speaks where he finds, creating in that speech a web to trap others. And yet he boasts to Arthur that words do not matter, and hat the game he plays is always other than words (its correct image is cards) – a game of bluff, in which words are a mere tool. Langague is a once where he comes to be able to give his existence, and yet also that which he must utterly enslave, and disparge and dominate.
Blandois, in the strange confessional he makes toBapsite about the nature of first his marriage and second the murde rof his wife, makes both these point subtly makes both these point. O the one hand the marriage had not been planned. In marrying he had been merely opportunistic. Moreover this opportunism was ot so very different from the opportunism of his wife, who had 9in his account at least) married a husband far older than herself in the exectation than he would dies. Blandios arrent selfishness was therefore mere an exaggeration of the selfishness of his wife. Or perhaps the difference between them, was thatwhile his wifehad allowed her jackishness to be caught up (and to a degree dependent upon) others be they her husband or here family, the same is not ture of Blandios. He does not share his selfisheness with anyone. He asserts his rights (once he has insintuated himself at least). This assertion is then violent. And yet. Once again one needs care here. The text make sit quite clearly that Blandios was a domestic monster, and yet Blandois argues this was not quite the case. He lies, saying the punishment me meted out dwas merely appriopriate, given the situation. That is givenhis lack of control over his wife. Vpilencewas merely a consequence or adjuct to control therefore (and therefore appropriate t that).
That is to the selfish man, the level of violence he has a right to inflict on others is measured by his need. Blandios here is no sadist therefore. merely the asserter of rights were no rights exist, the rights to possess someone elses property (and do it by custom). likewise his final account of his wives death is deliberately self serving (she apparently attacked him, the killed herself to spite him). Blandios’ violence in this case was moved out, and placed on someone else. The violence was therefore in one sensual his own. He murdered his wife, and yet in his own account, the violence was real enough, and yet external to him.
Moreover , this account matters, as it was the one which the law had to accept, as it lacked any ability to proof otherwise. the People (even that target of most of Little Dorrit – society) knew this account was not true, and yet that knowledge was not enough, to convict Bladois. Te message then is clearly, that odd trick Blandios pulls, an odd trick of language, or pulling the violence he need as outside himself (and placing himself therefore at its placid centre), is caught up with the way law, and its judgements of individual operate. The Law misses its mark (and Blandios the Guillotine’s blade) because the law needs to condemn the individual (and not the act of violence itself, which could have been even as Blandios account had it). Blandois’ self is therefore a self who is given over into violence, and yet, in being violent, alllways demands that violence is caughtup in others. One thinks hear of the violent hugs he gves to Fliintchwhich 9which are possibly the only time in the entire novel that flintwich looks humane).a Hug professing, ostenisvelyat least affection, bit also giving the ufortuante fellow domestic monster, to know that Blandionis capable of utter violence.
Here then is the first principle of violence and the first great use for Blandios of Baspitse. The violence he commits is always elsewhere, always of and in another. Or better I is always in the thought of another. It is in that which they additionally know. Langauge in this game becomes the means for the evacuation of violence beyond his own concern. Here he needs to be remembered that Blandios tells Bapiste exactly what his crime had been , immediately prior to being summoned of for trial. In telling Bapiste, therefore we is able to restitch the language in such a way that his own guilt was removed outside of the orbit of the violence. In this vein perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say the song to the jailers child (which forms such a refrain in the book) is also vital in this regard. In the refrain ‘always Gay,’ Blandios sees himself, winning out against the odds (as he had one out against Bapiste in a game of cards, and so had all the good food) . The song therefore gives him the one dominant feeling of his life: that come what may he alone must triumph, come what may.
In this first encounter three things are therefore perhaps observable. Firstly the hidden nature of the violence of Blandios. He is either violent by , and then moves that violence into another (they are all o aware of it) or else (and this will emerge latter), his very absence is a form of violence.: in this first of these cases Bapsite matters, and the one who holds the secret of the transmutation. To tell Bapsite is to effect the exchange where one is not. In the second (as will be returned to) Bapiste again matters, as the ferret who finds such violence. That is, the agent who alone can track Blandios the violent hidden down. Secondly, the refrain, and the knowledge of the refrain, is in a sense what keeps Blandios going. It is this that gives him the confidence that he is always gay. Language (or better Bapiste’s knowelge of a ditty- provide Blandios with the necessary internal language to allow him to conquer over thos who he sees as his enemeies. A prhaze, and a demand (to be gay) become givealbe, thinkable in the single simple refrain. Thirdly, and least developed so far, there is that other relation between passion and language: the fact that the greedy passionate Blandios cannot play cards without cheating at the game. That is his passion (for food and for victory) means that he warps the order of play, to ensure his constant victory. The jailer himself gets concerned over this play, and adivses Bapiste against playing cads. Missing of course the point hat Bapsite has contment to spare. He can of his own will (as a master of empirical languages( change the nature ofhis own food, and so needs no such consideration.
Balndios therefore at once wants to cheat language of its resources (its food), the then is utterly reliant upon it to give it its own internal intgretity, and integrity which s itslf caught up with the movement of violence )so necessary t the nature of Balndios0 beyond himself.
But this of course begs a further question. Why does this violence matter so very much? What us in the mattering here? Take as example the violence Blandios performs of flinctwhch in the name of friendship. This violence is then is clear service of the word ‘friendship’. It is is violent demand. That is the demand you Will be my friend or else. Or to be more accurate it is the statement ‘if you do not behave as my friend then…” the violence forces passions to accord with the meanings of words. Or better it forces the behaviour of he passion to accord. Here one needs care. Blandios has of course been the friend of Flintwhich’s twin brother. He is therefore the friend, the genuine friend of the double. Or better given that Blandios is never anyone friends, but himself) he is a man who the double would think of as a friend. Blandios is then taking that as if and demanding the same of flntwhich, and using violence to do so.
Friendship, which as it is applied to the self is empty (Blandios values only his own ain), even if it was real enough 9from another angle), is then doubled up (via language) and demanded to exist elsewhere (through violence). Or to put in another way the mere ac of saying someone is my friend, breeds in ones mind so very readily another some ones friend, of whom one can make endless demands.
Or again in the case of the mistreated wife. There are clearly many tales here. Firstly their was the young wife, who genuinely loves or at least felt regard for Blandios. Ths was the women hhe married (and no doubt hoped to dominate). But in marrying her, a second wife arrive. The wife of marriage. This wife has property rights of her own (and the relations to backup those rights)” it was this wife that violence was used on, to intimidate here, and to force her to accord to Blandios desire. It was this wife then you resist him (or whose family ensures she resists him) and this wife who he ‘murders’ (or better assassinates). In stroking her,(because she has commited, the absolute sun of leaving him or at least was abaout to he of course reveals to depth of his violence. That is the depth of his demand that in spite of the fact that a situation has quietly changed (Flintwhiches, or Wives) the meaning remains the same. The forces itself to be the forcing house of such sameness.
This the problem then of the Law has with Blandios. The law would like to punish someone as they are the same, it cannot effect however impact upon the process which sets of the sameness in the first place (a process which Blandois embodies). This does not of course then prevent the public themselves (that is, the roit of passions ) from realizing that therehas been a deep injustice here. Nor does it stop Bapiste hisemlf realizing, even as he listens to the story the importance of the final words the accusation o assisnation, and not murder. For, for Balndios to have a soul (inspite of its much avowed death), is for him to assinate the life of others: that is slay them for final benefit or rather to kill them mechanically for his own creature comforts). Moreover it is also worth noting that in the conversation is which Blandios describe the first wive, and h=of her Love for him, he was very aware of the problem Blandios was bringing up: the problem of the double wife. He responds however to this problem by muttering the word ‘altro’ to infinity. So that private language and the slip of endless meanings, communicate the shere appriateness of Blandios feelings (his demand for sameness in defiance of any possible truth). It is then no wonder, when Bapsite and Blandios meet once again by chance upon the road, that Blandios (name now Ligaud) wishes to take bapsite into his service. He wishes to annex thereby the the power to rework languge. It is likewise no surprise that Bapiste feels him.
However, in spite of all the complexitity involved here (as already mentioned) this is by no means the end of the exchange between Bapiste and Blandios. The opportunist blandios, in attempting to back mail Mrs clennam (over Arthur’s illegitimacy) decides to put pressure on her by going to earth and hiding after having seen her). The nuancing here is highly complex. He is of course using the fact that as a small bloc of selishness he has the endless power to rework his own nature. He can be a gentlemen or pretend to be a soilder (as all is pretence for him anyway). The self for other can be or not. It comes and goes. As it is hidden is appear to defy language (within the only means to capture it). It therefore defys the adverts and the reward offered to find him. It almost occupies the gap between words and passion here. The words remain the same the attempt to locate the missing man, but the passions become more fraught. The are riveted together into a disjunction by the single phrase ‘where is Blandios). Ad as riveted devolve into endelssl extra words extra feelings.
Here is it important to remember the oddity of Blandios position (at least as Empircism will have it). The Self is not simply not their Hume says, is rather a feeling generated as the creative mind attempts to create a single element capable in it imagination at least, of straddling the divide of thought. Blandios position here is clearly that of a surfer who has the deep power to predict the next wave –and yet no power to create the waves themselves. The self therefore insinuates itself into production. It is produce in between elements which in that production it claims as its own as its identity (it is difficult not to think of the I Think here). As such it has a real feedom both of wher it is produced (it can be caught into other passions – Hume is clear here there is always something of the self in any feeling, even though those feelings are none to stable). In each of these production points the same self will then conceal itself, and yet in hiding also be able to preduct the consequence of that hiding. The self, own indvidualization is in a sense given in this freedom to hide form other aspects of itself. That is as it is always generated within a mind (,it only has an identity based on the passage of time (hume makes this clear), a passage which is deep rooted custom rather than anything else (and so not memory). This rooting allows the self then to redirect what will happen or to ask questions of what will happen). However at any one time it will be being produced in a particular circumstance. Its power lies then in the fact that it oscilliates between the two. That is as Blandios says it will win whatever happens. It alone traces a thread of being across time (Kant read Hume aright here, even though the consequences he then drew were so very different)> its power then to be at all lies in the very fact that one cannot see it: that is ia custom or better an idea that a custom must be true. As it hides, in its hiding away form certain feeling (where oen might assume it ought to be) and is locating itself where it should not be, its own being is actively felt.
Te empirical self therefore wants to wrong foot passions, and drive words to form a disjunctive synthesis of passions capabole of putting a halter of a man neck, by hiding.T he formal word of writing and bills fit to locate such a renagade; and yet empirical lanaguage has no such reserves. On the contrary if (inspite of its initially worries about the matter) is more than able to visit the forgein necessary o find the disguised man. That is it is able to rummage around in dialectcs,and the twist and turns of private language, to find that private series of passions (and linked language – the Soildier) in which the identical has current scluded itsef( by which it generated itself).
The role of langague in this discovery needs t be grasped in two directions. On the one hand, from a rationlist perspective, it is clearly Bapiste can find blandios because on his access to ‘Italian, French and Germaan circles whom he vists upwards of fifteen times. And yet in this remark one sees that other language emer. I is not enough for Bapiste to visit one language he needs to visit three five times three times. Moreover it is this very repetition that eventually yields results (someone tells him of a solider with white hair which he holds): That is, it is the repetion, and not he search which reveal Blandios hiding place. A move all the more remarkable as their is no hint that Blandios , whose English was perfect would revert to forieng communities or any real reason while such a group should know of him.
Bapiste himself is clear on this point. When initially charged by Clennam to find Blandios he claims not to know where to look or even where to begin to look, a remark which he then qualifies with the remark ‘but courage’, as if where he needed to start as ingorance but determination, and courage. Hence the visit the fifteenfold visit to find a man who baspiste dreads, is a moment to courage. A Courage, and with it no doubt a sense of urgency which has pitched itself in between the three languages he deals within, and thereby expresses itself in a mixed up, private lanagge of shifting words and asssingations (a language Bapsite draws attention to in English by stretching out .his adverbs). The Coruage, the determination therefore sparks of a private, eddy acoss language, forming a series of juxatpostions, as it, in its repeated action, enfolds English French, italian and German.
Bapsite in a sense pursues Blandios here be constructing the opposite pole to blandios. A Language is given which is no real language, merely the listing of different languages, but in this language a given concern a single passion is enshrouded,a passion which pursues Blandios and needs Bandios to refer to Baspite as mad).
This inverted Balndios leads Baspite to knowledge of who Bandios is, and yet not to a knowledge exactly where he is , and how to find him. To find him, Bapiste needs to turn to that old mainstay of Emiricim Belief. Many Belief that Blandios is hereor there (creating no doubt a storm of potential affects in Baspite), and yet Bapiste directly confronts that storm with the great empirical virtue of patients. By waiting, patiently he finds .. For find Blandios for Bapisite is not an active constructive question: But rather merely an act of empirical patients. That is he transmutes what would no doubt be Blandios trap, in which once an language had produced its aim, and the word given, that Blnadios was about tha very word (ande hope t become caught up it) wjod create an overwhelming number of passions. The esacpe is then by not inverting Blandios so much as crating a facsimile postion, but one that (unlike the selfish Blandios) was open upon the world. To wait patently is to allow Bapiste a the empirical lanaguage to still have its head. It can still produce a large number of occasions. That is in patients (which he claims is a peculiarly Italian virtue) he allows his language still its resonance, and prevent himself being overwhelm by the Blandios trap.
Empirical language can get right to the heart of the assassins Blandios, by at once creating a net of language within which he must enrmge: that is a yet that he must always use o construct what he is Blandios therefore emerges almost noises of (gradually out of the dark). ASioldier within white hair which he holds, and who walks and smokes after inner. He emrges is what he must to be at all rather than very directy. In making this move, lanague inverts the urgency o the Blandios trap, making the lanague the created and prducte (and disjunctive) element, while keeping the affect steasdy, enough.
Blandios reaftino at this point is highly interesting. Bought then befor Arthur,he denies that he game he was playing was a game of words. In analogy being here to cards. The message isclar enough, that Blandios mght have lost the emrial game of words within Bapsite this time, but he has another came to play. This game saw his once again (and with more visicousness) to enslave Bapiste to his cause. Bapsite responds, and yet his response clearly verges n the violent. Blandios makes Bapiste act as his servant while all the while watching him carefully, fearing the Bapiste might erupt in violence : A Fear Bapiste himself plays upon (and find humours). Blandios might therefore still be in control of the game, in the sense he I playing a game he knows he will win with Clennam (or at least the fees he will win), and yet that game is a game which requires Bapsite at his side (that is the giver of the empirical language of the self). But this giving is itself, is now highly problematic for Blandio, as the language even in serving him, now does him violence : that is in allowing him his triumph, in allowing him (blandios) to tirmpuh, the langaue of that triumph also qualifies that trimuph. He knows that Blandios victory, and his defeat depend upon it alone. Blandios might then claim he ca do without words (and so hope to enslave Bapiste, by not needing him or better, by trapping him in another, a different game), and yet cannot do so with provoking Bapsite sense of humor.
The only strategy open to Blandios is then the old trust one of enslaving Bapiste, but this time of the grounds that he will be forced to have him anyway. Blandios attempts to do this, and make himself the master again (that is he attempts to regain the control of the empirical language, which has already lef him), through forcing Bapiste to sing the chorus to the child’s song, and in applying its application to a knight always gay to himself. That is, he deliberately pitched himself within the history they share (a history in which Blandios was master) in order to attempt to confirm his control. Bapsite responds from old habit, but also in the interests of Clennam, and the lack of anything else to do. So that the self, with its greate resource of emptying time, call upon Bapiste paat service. A move that is then successful (for empricis I always subject to the problems of the past), and yet only patially so, as the same empirics never can use the past in the way it had been used before. Moreovewr in the vienc and the humour of Baspite, in the fact that Bladions has to treat his as a servant (for he will never now get rid of Bpaitiste, not while living anyway, the threat bapiste now posses to Blandios is real enough. In that look, in being a servant who is pulling utterly away from his master: Or perhaps slightly more sinsterly, Bapsite has trapped in the violence look and the son Blandis in one cause of action. Blandios feels that he will trimuph and always be gay 9his last words were a mediation on how he always trimuphed), and cannot see that other dangers, or forces could intervene to prevent that victory. Bapiste does not therefore just serve Blandios, and thereby monitor him, he ensures he turns up at the Clennams, and also ensures that the language which fills Blandios mind is absolutely the language of trimuph. Blandios can therefore look at the beam, which is alout to fall and crush the life out of him, with utter complacency, seeing to merely as another of his great servants, or trimuphs. That is the Blandios of the eventually unmasking of Arthurs illegitimacy, has come so far don the path of single minded egotist, that he has become blind to obvious perils: His survival mechanism which had been so evident in Rome had dwindled away to nothing, in the moment of his trimpuh.
Empircial language and the empirical self are to all intense and purposes rivals. It no concidence that it is Bapsite who brands Blandois an assassin,, miming out the act as he does so. For in his own quite way Bapiste also assinated. While Blandios is the assassin of the gap between words and passion – or better the silent agent who attempt to occupy that space, and uses violence (always experienced in the other alone) to sake out that territory. A man therefore for whom his soul’s own death is merely but another oath to swear – is catching up others (and slaying their souls if only he could : one needs to remember at this point that a full investigation of Blandios is needed here to define the full ramification of this point. One needs to consider therefore that Blandios was the model Gowan, the artists of human suffering and pain chose to paint… Blandos is always caught up therefore in the image of what he is, on reflections (Gowan is here the othr side of the exchange, to master of wrining hearts, that is of creating a single word within multiple meanings, and art he always uses fo dark purposes of this own0.. Language is by no mean unique in this regard. However language does have the one additional feature that it likes Blandios the would be aristocrat not with Gowan he would be Barancle, but with Bapiste, the contraband agent. That is, while Blandios othe image making devices are firmly ‘respectable’ the empirical language by which he houses his soul (after it death) is always of plebian origin (hence using a vulgar song)..
In this commonness a secret other assassin lurks. Blandio might seek to master the gap between language and feeling, and yet language will not cooperate in this mastery (even is feeling does in part) . language might be his servant, and yet in that servanthood is both flight and resistence. Language can therefore, once it has fallen under the influence of the story teller, pull radically away from the orbit of the selfish self, and set its self up as is rival. It is Bapiste therefore who acts the assassins part, hiding and watching, hiding and watching, and does in a way that neatly inverts Blandios own strategy. Blandios is thereby trapped as all the more so as language after that trapping robs him of any other ability save the mediatitoin on his own power and splendour, meditation. Bapsite is then the most silet of assins (and Blandois attemot to deny the importance of words, leads to his own destruction, as without words, the game cannot commence).
Emprical language is therefore caught up in an exchange with the self, which seeks to enslave it, and yet it seeks to betray. However here a further problem opens up. In he previous essay I discussed the sense in which empirical language evactuated rationalism, creating a new relation within words to a formal structure , and in the introduction to these essays, this relationship was said to involve that deep problem of a words meaning. And yet here, that meaning appears to have been lost, in stories about empirical selves, and emprical langages (and their perpetual battle). It I therefore hightime to return to that other problem – the problem of meaning, and to attmept to understand how the citing of language within its rational housing, leads one to confront a world in which meaning is demanded (by Blandios as much as anyone else). A Meaning which links one back into travelling is history (which always posed such a problem for pure empirical language), and grounds Bapsite back in Little Dorrit herself (who Bapiste never actually met.). I is to this and to Amy’s letters from Italy, the land of Bapiste) that the nextessay will turn.