In Lieu- The Antinomies of the preface.
Probably Hegel was right. The preface is an odd beast. Usually written at the end, and placed and the start. It is in mutual friend of course places at the end. It is the conclusion beyond the book. The point the book breaks into reality. Or better the point that points out the antinomies of thing and living. That is the strange settle cock truth that webs itself between the twin polls of actual reality and the remembered (or written) world.
Dickens presents seven antinomies., tree of time, two of fiction and two of reality.
The antinomies of time.
i- The present is the place of myriad stories. to tell a tale is to as on reads it (at last) in chapter on chapter to be enmeshed in many stories and tale. To publish a book or live a life, in episodes (days or chapters) is therefore to no longer be reading the one story. One is reading or thinking about any different stories, and can never decide which s which. I is a mistake therefore to understand ourselves in the one universe. The attraction of the Leibniz argument for many possible universes is that we all feel we are there. We all share to a degree God’s visions of the many worlds We is a sense share in those worlds or at least feel we might love in them/ That we eventfully do not is almost not our concern. On the spinning age of a story, the episodes end the tale itself carries into the visions of many outcomes many tales. It account so far is therefore the gateway to universes to come.
There is a real ethic of the episode. It is the moment when one heart must allow for very man universes and many different tales. It is the therefore where and when I allow others as characters in our tale into a life. The point hat ever account I have so far of them, every memory is pitched into the myriad affective vortex of active possibility.
ii) The past to come of a stories is though of course a rather different fish. Each past is always complete and always looks as if it would have to happen. The myriad voices of the present, those spinning universes are then naturally and absolutely gathered within the one universe, the one tale. The aborted threads of tales wither, and everything appears a s a fate. The one story, the one charting in fates tale. Stories are therefore such that they can complete in a life (that is in the tale of a life) all these threads. The story takes up these treads and makes then make sense. The story also traces developments in the plotline , things that will happen or no, ideas aborted or confirmed elements . It all appears so simple and so natural once the tale is born and complete.
As such the stories the plot represent as the end that false unity all the story appears always be tending to in the finishing. This past is of course essentially for free. However it poses for life a real problem. To be moral (in the Hume/Kant sense0 is always to ct in the light of the unity to come. That is all ones actions ought to be such that they fit within that unity and are made whole in and through it. To act morally is not to in the one plot according t a series or principles or an appear foreknowledge of where the story is going. On the contrary it is to act in the one according to what one knows and yet in the belief that whatever plot one is in the action will be thought of well and interpreted as beneficial in someway. Perhaps a dream, but a worthy one.
iii) The final antinomy is arranged across these points. The end of a book is always the start of many things. It is the start the point a life takes over a tale and tells its tale, is effect and reception. This other tale the tale of that tale is the a complex one. It combines elements from the story (how is this or that character received) as well as moment in history (both nation and personal, Britain in 1865 and Dickens life story). If is therefore a pint where the to elements above, the episodes in a story and the knowledge that all is in a unity collide, and exchange what they are. The episodes are pitched into a different unity that there eventual plotline- the unity of conflicting histories which might try to hold them differently and in different ways. The story of the talk of mutual friend is likewise renders episode (this epoch I different in its thought about it that others). All is s for grabs.
The moment one finish the book is therefore in a sense the best bit. The moment before the reaction, or where the reaction is coming- the moment of supreme othering creation. No wonder one needs then a preface to defend as trammel this creation.
The future’s antinomy therefore lies in the fact that at the end of something and before the start of something else, everything’s open, including the tale (as the characters slip in and to of fiction and fid their own realities in the world.
The Antinomies of Fictions.
A) Fact or fiction? To outline a system in its complete horror is f course in a sense to fictionalize it. The mere account of how individuals respond to a life, of all the choices they have made or not all the powers they have had or not is of course to create a fiction. How can it be anything else. The actual reality of messy life with its millions of quick half chewed choices is not such that it can be neatly fitted into a personality or a history. It is rather a sliding scale of different cock ups and odd successes. It is nothing really to be written about in a tale pr a report. Is too dam odd for that.
To actually write an account (or to have a view of a system) is therefore o to a degree circumlocution the subject. ? one creates a thread a story and fits latter facts into that story. One therefore in finishing reality creates characters. The choice Dickens says between his account, his fiction of the poor law and the real thing, in that his is more thorough and complex, his is closer to actually what occurs (or at east might) happen, then the official accounts. Both might be fictions, and yet both are not fictions of the same depth and power.
To fictionalise is o tell an account. T is not to make it up, any more that a government report makes things up, it s rather to draw threads together to create a single axis or powerful account. The game for such accounts is always at each and every point to allow the threads to articulate something that actually is happening. Hey will need therefore to be on conversion with reality (or conversation), But this is not to ever actually confuse the two.
B) The antimony of characters. Reading a tale and having to invent the person in ones own mind opens that mind up to understanding the world rather differently. H people one creates are of course externalized you (or memories of you and someone else). They are not then complete people, and never need to be. They are rather motifs repeated strains in a me or in a you- chord line across a people. They are then always a description or an attitude to an affect. They re always there in the affective power. They are there across individuals. They float across then shared opinions and attitudes.
There position as a fiction is therefore an antinomy. N the one level of course they are a mere part in a story, and yet the very conditions of reading them and their power in that sort lies not n the tall itself, but rather in the power beyond the tale to exist as a fragment in human life- a point r power of thinking, an element beyond individuals and free to float across different people. They become therefore he true interpersonal junction box, rich and complex, at always society and individuals to articulate them(and its) self. Fiction has therefore a power in not being real. That reality allows it to find a new power, a owner based on shared thought (anwords0 and more mere flesh and blood.
The Antinomies of Reality.
1) It is always he case ha reality has its own poet, a power beyond every perception or any one instance. Realty is then that scheming force that hooks element together in odd ways, and makes every a little provision. Whatever you write will then not the truth or at least it is never o whole truth. The shame of reality and is cunning needle will take up the thread and pull the fabric slightly differently from the ay one intended. On might therefore write down an odd account for a simply tale, only to find that in reality things were weirder yet. I power lies always in this odding power. This power to render the obvious and straight forward other and merely provisions
Perhaps Dickens owners this power has two aspects. On the one hand this is the power of the richoet. One is always therefore caught between the hypothesis one had and the oddities that are coming one is always lurching between fixed fictional accounts and what is tumbling into those fictions from the orbit beyond them, and making then even odder. One is therefore always finding stuff out, and always attempting to alter ones account. On the other it is always a mistake to ever assume that anything on make up is odder than what can happen. The power of reality is rather in its very monstrosity. That is in it power to hook memories together, memories hat it forces to accept each other (why bitter taste and this lemon after all – yellow could have been sweet). There is no rhythm or la in this hook there are mere occasion, merely the fact that this does happen nod will happen, and nothing more. The power of reality I therefore the power to suspend or refuge sense
To fictionalize and write apparently odd sortie s to take on some of that power. The story is only complete because like reality it challenges ones, to think thing differently. It is of course the power of the writer the power in the writer that this posing of the boundaries into reality is carried out in such a way that you take people, with you. Tat is hat the world you create appear for them as real, and not mere fictions or worse than that nonsense tales.
2) The antinomy of life (reality is on the side of fiction, and truth realties to death) . Life is the point one feels that one is caught up facing death. Dickens ends mutual friend with the very real account (with the additions of the Boffins) of the rail crash he was caught up in. This account (possibly fictionalize, by his reckoning he was a hero in the hour, made him, he thought fact p to death. It made him therefore appreciate the revel of his life, the revel o having readers, and the joy in living I made him therefore think about how in living, with the help of the Boffins, on fictionalizes a life as a part of it. That is in facing death, he realized just how much of his life was a fiction (including his relationship with his readers), and yet how could that creative power actually was, and how that too was a part in life. So that life was not merely about being it was also always about creating in oneself and to or for others a fiction, and extra dimension to what is. Reality itself as that ludicrous excess or vivacity I almost the name or part of the part (the other is passions) for this other. Affects is this power when shared. Death is what then would rob one of it entirely. The joy in writing and living is therefore the joy to set against death and its truth. It is the joy of the real to functionalize. That is the joy of the real of always outflank staid imagination and obvious perceptions, and to reinvent the wheel in contrasting shapes, powers and colours. The Antinomy of the lived is therefore that if one reaches for the world of absolute truths one finds only death: Actually reality, actual power rests in retuning to the carriage of life and rescuing the Boffins and in so downing dissolving he lines between facts and fictions in ones own life and in others, and actually therefore opening oneself to the power to reality (the outsiding other) to change what one is, and the power of the others to hook up with that that change and render it even more powerful through the affect. A vision that Dickens makes one muse is in the end more powerful than a death, for all its truth.
Hang then the world of the actual accident, the world of death and life the world of iron and truth (there the outside is real enough). The joy of living is the affect, and reality , and their discordant howl. It is this Dickens suggests that in the end matters, and the dress of the Boffin’s rescued matters, as much as the y of the actual accident.