Nevertheless, even Buffon’s famous saying, “Le style est l’homme même,” must be understood not in an individualistic sense at this stage but rather in the sense that style is human virtue.
The idea of a style that goes against the rules appears rather with Cesare Beccaria’s Ricerca intorno alia natura dello stile (Inquiry into the Nature of Style), and reappears later in organicist theories of art, so that with Goethe style will emerge when the work acquires an original, complete, inimitable harmony of its own. Finally we arrive at the Romantic notion of genius (Leopardi himself will say that style is the particular manner or facility that is called originality). So much so that by the end of the nineteenth century, with the advent of the dandy and Decadence, the concept has turned 360 degrees, to the point where style is identical with bizarre originality, the contempt for all models; and it is from this source that the aesthetics of the historical avant-garde movements will emerge.
I would single out two authors for whom style is a distinctly semiotic concept, namely, Flaubert and Proust. For Flaubert style is a way of fashioning ones work, and certainly it is inimitable, but through it a way of thinking of and seeing the world is revealed. For Proust style becomes a sort of intelligence that is transformed or incorporated into the subject matter, so much so that, for Proust, Flaubert’s innovative use of the past definite, the perfect, the present participle, and the imperfect renews our vision of things almost as much as Kant.
From these sources derives the idea of style as a “way of giving form,” which lies at the heart of Luigi Pareyson’s aesthetics. And it is clear that at this stage, if the work of art is form, the way of giving form involves more than just lexis or syntax (as can happen in what is called stylistics), and includes every semiotic strategy deployed both on the surface and in the depths of a text’s nervous system. To the realm of style (as a way of giving form) belongs not only the use of language (or of colors, or of sounds, according to the semiotic systems or universes used) but also the way of deploying narrative structures, portraying characters, and articulating points of view.
Let us take a passage from Proust’s “Observations on Style,” where he claims that Stendhal was less careful about style than Baudelaire. Proust suggests that Stendhal “wrote badly,” and this is an obvious point, if by style we mean lexis and syntax:
When he describes a landscape as “those enchanted places,” “those delightful spaces,” or one of his heroines as “that adorable woman,” “that fascinating woman,” he did not want to be any more precise. He was even so devoid of precision as to write: “She wrote him an endless letter.” However, if one considers the huge, unconscious framework that is covered by the conscious ensemble of ideas to be an integral part of style, there is undoubtedly precision in Stendhal. I would take great pleasure in showing you that every time Julien Sorel and Fabrizio del Dongo forget their vain cares in order to live a life that is disinterested and voluptuous, they are always in some elevated place (whether it be Julien’s or Fabrizio’s prison or the Abbé Blanès’s observatory).*
By this time speaking of style means discussing how the work of art is made, showing how it gradually emerged (even though sometimes this is only through the purely theoretical progression of a generative process), explaining why it offers itself to a certain type of reception, and how and why it arouses this reception. And, for those who are still interested in pronouncing judgments as to aesthetic value, it is only by identifying, tracking down, and laying bare the supreme workings of style that we are able to say why a given work is beautiful, why it has enjoyed different kinds of reception in the course of time, and why, although it follows models and sometimes even precepts that are scattered far and wide in the sea of intertextuality, it has been able to gather those legacies and make them blossom in such a way as to give life to something original. Only then will we be able to say why, although each of the different works by one artist aspires to an inimitable originality, it is possible to detect the personal style of that artist in each of these works.
If this is the case, I believe two points must be made here: one, that a semiotics of the arts is nothing other than searching for and laying bare the workings of style; and two, that semiotics represents the most advanced form of stylistics, and the model for all criticism.
Having said this, I do not really need to add anything further. Everyone remembers how much light has been shed on texts (already loved by all, though in an obscure way) by certain pronouncements by the Russian formalists, by Jakobson, by narratologists and analysts of poetic discourse. But we really are living in obscure times, at least in Italy, where one hears with increasing frequency polemical voices accusing semiotic studies (which they sometimes also call, with pejorative connotation, formalist or structuralist studies) of being guilty of a decline in criticism, of being pseudomathematical discourses, full of illegible diagrams, in whose mush the flavor of literature evaporates, and where the ecstasy to which the reader succumbs is plotted out as in double-entry bookkeeping—where the je ne sais quoi and the sublime, which were supposed to be the supreme effects of art, evaporate in an orgy of theories that crudely abuse, insult, humiliate, and crush the text, removing its freshness, magic, and capacity for ecstasy.
We must therefore ask ourselves what is meant by criticism (of art or literature), and for the sake of convenience I will restrict myself to dealing with literary criticism.
I think that first and foremost we must distinguish between discussing literary works and literary criticism. One can have the most varied discussions of literary works, and a work can be taken as a field of sociological inquiry, a document in the history of ideas, a psychological or psychiatric report, or as a pretext for a series of moral considerations. There are cultures, above all the Anglo-Saxon world, where—at least until the advent of the New Criticism—the discussion of literary works was conducted above all in moral terms. Now all these approaches are legitimate in and of themselves, except that as soon as they come into play, they presume, imply, suggest, or refer to a critical or aesthetic judgment that someone else, or perhaps even the author himself in another work, already pronounced.
This kind of discussion is the discourse of criticism in its proper sense, and it can be articulated in three ways—although we must be clear about the fact that these three ways are “critical genres,” ideal types of criticism, and it is often the case that, under the aegis of one genre or mode, someone provides illustrious examples of another genre, or mixes, to good or bad effect, the three types together.
Let us call the first type the “review,” where one tells readers about a book they have not yet read. A good review can also turn to more complex modes, such as the other two types, which I shall discuss later, but it is inevitably linked to immediacy, to the brief space that intervenes between a work appearing, then being read and subjected to a written verdict. In the best cases, a review can restrict itself to giving its readers a summary idea of a work that they have not yet read, and then imposing on them the critic’s judgment (of taste).
Its function is clearly to inform (it says that a work has been published that is roughly as described) and to offer a reliable diagnosis; the reader believes the reviewer just as he trusts the doctor who makes him say “Ah,” and then immediately identifies the beginnings of bronchitis and prescribes a cough mixture. Such a diagnostic review has nothing to do with the chemical analyses or exploratory probes that nowadays the patient himself can follow on a television screen, and during which he can see and understand what the problem is, and why his body is reacting in that manner. In a review (as in the doctor’s home visit) the reader does not see the work, he only hears it spoken of by a third party.
The second critical mode (the history of literature) discusses texts that the reader does know or at least ought to know, since he has previously heard people talk about them. These texts are often only mentioned, or sometimes summarized, maybe with the help of some typical quotation, and are then grouped together, assigned to various schools, and organized in chronological sequence. A history of literature can be just a dreary manual, but occasionally it becomes at the same time a survey of the works and a history of ideas, as in De Sanctis’s History of Italian Literature. In the best cases, historical criticism pushes the reader toward a final and comprehensive understanding of the work, establishes the reader’s
