2023-11-12 08:25:00
You like to cite a seemingly anecdotal war: that waged by writers in 1830 once morest… the advent of the iron pen. For what ?
The iron feather is, in my eyes, one of the most important inventions made by humanity, because it allowed the democratization of primary school from the 1830s. But when it was introduced in Europe, almost all writers refused it. Chateaubriand, Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert never converted to it. If we don’t spend a little time sharpening our quill pen between sentences, we will no longer have the time to think, it was argued at the time. “The iron pen is shame, it is dishonor, it is the scourge of modern societies,” said a writer ironically. I tell you, the world will not die by steam, nor by hydrogen gas, nor by balloons, nor by constitutional charters, nor by railroads… the world will die by the iron pen.”
Yet literature has survived it, just as it has survived the fountain pen, the Bic pen, the typewriter, then the word processor, which nevertheless aroused many fears. Let us therefore be cautious of the appearance of technical innovations from which culture can also benefit.
The history of writing was marked at the end of Antiquity by the invention of the Codex (the paper book as we know it today) and the printing press. With digital technology, are we witnessing a revolution comparable to the scale of these two inventions?
Yes, although in some respects it didn’t happen at all as expected. In 2014, it was announced in the United States that the sale of digital books would exceed that of paper books in 2017. However, following significant growth, the turnover of digital books quickly reached a plateau and has even crumbled since. In 2022 in the United States, this turnover represented only 11% of the book market. The proportion is comparable in France, and half as low if we focus only on the market for so-called literature books. Today we are all hybrid readers (the majority of us read on both media, screen and paper). Digital books, except in specialized fields, for example legal, have not yet met the expectations placed on them.
Do we know why?
The reasons are primarily economic: a digital book almost always costs more than a paperback book. Especially since we buy a digital book only to read it: we can neither lend it nor give it away… Then, many of us retain a great attraction for the paper object which is, it is true, quite perfect and ideal for the use we make of it. Let us also note – this is quite telling – that digital books have not taken off at all in the children’s book sector. This remains a cherished object.
Finally, there are attachments to paper books which are linked to memory. I myself tend to more easily forget a book that I have read on a screen. I no longer know if I really read it, if I finished it… The digital book is more impalpable, whereas we benefit from a visual and spatial memory, that of the pages, of the location of a passage, when holding a book in hand.
Has digital technology revolutionized literature as such?
Apart from a few feats (books written with tweets for example), literature has not, or not yet, changed that much. No truly new literary form has appeared. We’ll see what happens with artificial intelligence…
Does it threaten literature?
It threatens a certain type of literature: that which is not inventive. Artificial intelligence now produces film scripts and station novels, romances. It is a literature that responds to demand, but not a literature that creates a need – as Paul Valéry distinguished them. Such literature may demonstrate inventiveness, but not real invention.
Precisely, while series, for example, are more and more diversified, inventive and popular, what is the specificity of literature today? Are there still things that only she can give us?
Indeed, literature is no longer the unique and privileged mode of acquisition of historical, aesthetic and moral consciousness. However, neuroscientists tell us, attentive, silent and solitary reading remains the most effective activity for the development of intelligence. When you read a book, you are the master of time. The time is ours. You can return to a page, reread it, try to memorize it, learn the finer points of the language. This experience is respectful of the imagination, freedom and prudent inner deliberation. This is not possible with a film or series, and I fear that solitary and silent reading, in an age of notifications and multi-activity, is in danger today.
I also see that we are moving more and more towards shared reading: just look at the extraordinary growth in recent years in the sale of audio books, which we can listen to in the car, while ironing, while tinkering, running or doing the dishes…
If the value of literature lies, in particular, in its patient reading, does listening to an audio book still mean being in deep contact with literature?
This is a legitimate and serious question. Writing is “an ancient and very vague, but jealous practice, the meaning of which lies in the mystery of the heart. He who accomplishes it, in its entirety, withdraws himself,” replied Mallarmé to the question “Do we know what writing is?” Writing involves retrenchment, and so does reading. We must keep these moments of retreat and silence alive.
Literature “disconcerts, disturbs, confuses, disorients”. It “liberates”, you write regularly. Many are concerned regarding the presence, in the Anglo-Saxon literary world that you know well, of “sensitivity readers” who – when it comes to republishing an old book – expunge certain works of all the passages and stereotypes which might hurt communities. Do you fear this current? Does it risk muzzling or censoring literature?
It will never be possible to completely censor literature, but we can indeed be concerned regarding this fashion which intends to rewrite certain old texts, likely today to hurt or offend. As always, the answer lies in the recontextualization of these texts, much more formative than the censorship of history and the past.
More fundamentally, since the Age of Enlightenment, literature has aimed to free the individual from their prejudices. Unfortunately, this is no longer a unanimous premise: many today are wary of the power of literature and want it to be above all the expression of our contemporary concerns.
(1) Entitled “Literature, for what purpose?” it can be found at these addresses: or https://www.college-de-france.fr/fr/agenda/lecon-inaugurale/la-litterature-pour-quoi-faire-0
Antoine Compagnon.
Bio express
Writer of Franco-Belgian origin, born in Brussels in 1950, Antoine Compagnon is a former student of the École Polytechnique. Destined for a life as an engineer, he was returned to the dawn of his career by a sonnet by Joachim du Bellay. “I was twenty years old,” he explained in 2006. “Paris was a celebration of the spirit. A friend’s mother advised me to visit the Collège de France. I had come, I had consulted the poster […]and one morning, not without apprehension, I entered a classroom […]. Hunkered down in the back row, I heard a little man who looked like a frail bird. He explained – meticulously and sumptuously – a sonnet by Du Bellay, in a way I had never seen done or imagined anyone might do. I soon learned his name: it was, invited by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson whom I had just listened to, the immense linguist and poetic who spanned the entire 20th century, from Moscow to Prague, then New York and Harvard.”
Antoine Compagnon’s vocation was born. Today, a great specialist in Marcel Proust, Montaigne, Colette and Pascal, teaching for many years at the Collège de France or at Columbia University in New York, the essayist and literary critic has become a member of the Académie française and a reference to French-speaking letters.
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