In search of a creative identity: Gustave Flaubert’s biographical “blur”
Abstract
The considerations are devoted to the biography as an ontologically “blurred” genre, focusing on one writer – Gustave Flaubert. The books that served as the basic point of reference for the reflection presented in the article are, from the analytical point of view, two monographs (biographies) of the writer: Renata Lis’s Ręka Flauberta (Flaubert’s Hand) and Piotr Śniedziewski’s Flaubert – w poszukiwaniu opowieści (Flaubert – In Search of a Story), and from the theoretical point of view – selected works by Roman Witold Ingarden on the philosophy of literature. Specialist literature focused on the biography (Hanna Gosk), Flaubert’s style (Marcel Proust), and the Gestalt quality (Barry Smith) was also used. The methodological background here is the ontology of the literary work proposed by Roman Witold Ingarden – the phenomenologist’s concept of “image”. Assuming the research hypothesis that the properties of the ontological blur of the biography are embodied in the subordinate blur expressed linguistically (genological), two variants of investigating the creative identity of the French writer were analysed: the ontological blur expressed as a harmonisation of the intentional with the real (Renata Lis’s anatomical biography) and the blur embodying the effort of matching intentionality with the real (Piotr Śniedziewski’s biographical story). The conclusions resulting from the juxtaposition of the two genological variants of Flaubert’s biography allow us to extract the basic features of the ontological blur focused on searching for someone’s creative identity and subjected to verbalisation – they are mentioned as a result of the application of the concept of Gestalt quality, primarily in the terms of Edmund Husserl and Carl Stumpf. In consequence, the impossibility of talking about the biography as an undisturbed genre is depicted. This is the crowning conclusion of the considerations presented in the paper.
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