Bartleby

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

Deleuze has written this essay, "Bartleby; or, The Formula",
which is included in _Essays Critical and Clinical_. (U of
Minnesota Press 1997.) Deleuze sees that the agrammatically
incomplete "formula" of "I prefer not to" opens a rip in the
fabric of the social, confronting the social with something
it does not know how to react to, stymieing [sp?] all speech
acts....or something.

Am 100% sure that the essay has been translated not only into
English but also German and other major European languages, as
it exists in Finnish...

One could almost swear that Melville was familiar with Gogol.



Heikki


On Sun, 12 May 2002 KXX4493553 at aol.com wrote:

> Just read Melville's "Bartleby" in a German translation about the man who
> would "prefer not to do". Never laughed so loudly: indeed a grotesque, in
> spite of the tragic ending. A-and it reminds me on a "real existing"
> person:-))))) (but not on the list - I assure you). My question: are there
> any commentaries or interpretations about this short story available?
>
>
>
> kwp
>