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A Secret in Spite of Itself: Recursive Meaning in Henry James’s “The Figure in the Carpet”

TO THE EXTENT THAT TRANSCENDENT BELIEF is Waning, Culture becomes the authoritative source of meaning. As Wallace Stevens puts it: "in the absence of a belief in God, the mind turns to its own creations and examines them, not alone from the aesthetic point of view but for what they reveal, for what they validate and invalidate, for the support that they give."1 Instead of explaining this world in terms of another, secular societies tend to explain what there is in their own terms: as social constructions. Consequently, meaning merges with self-knowledge. The very works, however, which promise a particularly profound insight into human nature are those which appear to withhold their ultimate meaning. Plato's dialogues and Shakespeare's plays, for instance, puzzle rather than reveal so that we cannot say what exactly they validate or invalidate. Separated from absolute transcendent faith, self-knowledge turns into relative and uncertain belief. Quoting the New Testament in a Christian society, a believer can assert, "This is the unconditional meaning of life"; quoting from Hamlet, a critic in a secular culture may only suggest a reading relative to culturally and historically conditioned perspectives. Just like interpretations of Shakespeare, our take on human nature, society, or history must not claim to be absolute, universal, and certain. The more secular and reflexive self-knowledge becomes, the more willingly it admits its own inherent negativity. For John Keats negativity marks a merit: "at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature 8c which Shakespeare possessed so enormously?I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact 8c reason."2 Yet such an attitude is itself deeply uncertain. A theoretical justification of negative capability would compromise its subject and refute itself. But do we need a theory in the first place? Why not just enjoy the negativity of self-knowledge? It