Reading with the eyes of history or time found in sollersian criticism

This article is intended as a reflection on the literary and artistic criticism of Philippe Sollers who has published three such volumes to date: La guerre du goût (1994), Éloge de l'infini (2001) and the more recent Discours parfait (2010) mainly featuring short articles originally printed in the French newspaper Le Monde. The objective of this study is to show how Sollers' criticism, labelled as a defensive war against bad taste, is contingent upon a specific historical consciousness, described by the author as "alive and vertical," the essence of which confronts the more commonplace understanding of time and history derived from the concepts of linearity, succession and obsolescence. The nature of this historical consciousness will first be delineated using the Nietzschean concept of monumental history as well as Heidegger's interpretation of this concept, recalled by Sollers in his preface to La guerre du goût wherein he states that "History is not a mere succession of eras but a unique proximity of the Same, which concerns thought in multiple unpredectible modes of destination, and with variable degrees of immediateness." The dialogue established between these two philosophers will lead us to the conclusion that the war against bad taste advanced by Sollers is in fact a war against resentment and metaphysical nihilism, considered as the basis for the "society of spectacle" and its contempt for grandeur, uniqueness and intellect. This account of Sollers' take on time and history will provide insight into the composition of the author's critical work, which, by bringing together artists and thinkers such as Rimbaud, Sade, Montaigne, Joyce, Dante, Proust, Voltaire and Picasso, seeks to reveal the "universal singularity" of art that prevails over the historical distance separating individual work. This notion of artistic criticism will ultimately shed light upon Sollers' understanding of the act of reading itself, which consists of distinguishing, appreciating and criticizing that which, out of the immense sum of what is considered readable, History itself reveals as an incarnation of its own singularity.