The Seventh Function of Language

“No, marble is classical. In France, we say gravé dans le marbre.”

“The Carnival! Casanova! Cagliostro!”

“Yes, in the collective unconscious Casanova is the king of baroque par excellence. But he is the last. We bury a bygone world in an apotheosis.”

“Ma, that is the identity of Venice: an eternal agony. The eighteenth century is Venice.”

Simon senses that he is losing ground, that he cannot maintain this paradox of solid, straight-lined Venice much longer, but he refuses to give up: “No, the Venice of strength, glory, dominance, is the Venice of the sixteenth century, before its disappearance, its decomposition. The Baroque that you defend is what is killing it.”

The Italian sees his chance and takes it: “But decomposition is Venice! Its identity is precisely its inevitable advancement toward death.”

“But Venice must have a future! The Baroque that you describe is the rope that supports the hanged man.”

“Another baroque image. First you argue, then you condemn, but everything brings you back to the Baroque. Which proves that it is the spirit of the Baroque that forms the grandeur of the city.”

In terms of purely logical demonstration, Simon senses that he has begun an argument where his opponent has the upper hand. But, thankfully, rhetoric is not all about logic, so he plays the pathos card: Venice must live.

“Perhaps the Baroque is that poison that kills her but renders her more beautiful in death.” (Avoid making concessions, Simon thinks.) “But take The Merchant of Venice: where does salvation come from? Women who live on an island: on earth!”

The Italian exclaims triumphantly: “Portia? Who disguises herself as a man? Ma, that’s totalmente barocco! It is even the triumph of the Baroque over the obtuse rationalism of Shylock, over law, behind which Shylock shelters to claim his pound of flesh. That inflexible interpretation of the letter of the law is the very expression, dare I say, of a proto-classical neurosis.”

Simon can feel that the audience appreciates the audacity of this phrase, but at the same time he can see that his adversary is rambling a bit about Shylock, and this is a good thing because he is beginning to be seriously perturbed by the theme under discussion: his doubts and paranoia about the solidity of his own existence are returning to haunt his mind when he needs all his concentration. He rushes to move his pawns toward Shakespeare (“life is a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage”: Why does this line from Macbeth come to him now? Where does it come from? Simon forces himself to push the question away for later consideration): “Portia is precisely that mélange of baroque madness and classical genius that enables her to defeat Shylock not, like the other characters, by recourse to feelings but with firm, unassailable legal arguments, with an exemplary rationality, founded on Shylock’s own demonstration, which she throws back at him: ‘A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine; the court awards it, and the law doth give it … [but] this bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.’ At this moment, Antonio is saved by a piece of legal trickery: a baroque gesture, admittedly, but a classical baroque.”

Simon can feel the public’s approval. The Italian knows he has lost the initiative again, so he strives to dismantle what he calls Simon’s “specious and pathetic convolutions” and, in doing so, makes a small mistake of his own. To denounce Simon’s dubious leaps of logic, he asks: “Ma, who decided that the law was a classical value?,” when it was he himself who had presupposed it in his previous argument. But Simon, too tired or too distracted, misses his opportunity to point out the contradiction and the Italian is able to go on: “Are we not reaching the limits of my opponent’s system?”

And he puts his boot on Simon’s neck: “What my honorable adversary is doing is very simple: he is forcing his analogies.”

So Simon is attacked where he normally excels—in the area of metadiscourse—and he feels that if he lets that happen, he risks being beaten at his own game, so he clings to his argument: “Your defense of Venice is booby-trapped. You had to reinvent it with an alliance, and that alliance is Portia: that cocktail of trickery and pragmatism. When Venice risks losing itself behind its masks, Portia brings from her island her baroque madness and her classical common sense.”