The Concept of Hidden Polemic in Two Editions of Bakhtin’s Work on DostoevskyABSTRACT
This article is the result of a comparative analysis of two editions of Bakhtin’s work: Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creation, first published in 1929, and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, revised and published in 1963. The objective is to compare how the two editions present the concept of hidden polemic focusing on the forms in which the other’s discourse is present. The methodology relies on a Bakhtinian analysis of the novella Notes from Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, in particular, the linguistic-discursive formation of the hidden polemic. In what ways do the alterations in the second edition contribute to new insights regarding the polemic? Results point to the existence of preservations and changes that clarify the importance of the concept of polemic for the analysis of the other’s discourse in literary discourses, and also discourses in social circulation.
KEYWORDS:
Hidden polemic; Other’s discourse; Alterity; Dostoevsky;
Underground Man
RESUMO
Este artigo é o resultado de uma análise comparativa entre as duas edições da obra de Mikhail Bakhtin: Problemas da obra de Dostoiévski, primeira edição, em 1929, e Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski, revista e publicada em 1963. O objetivo é estabelecer uma comparação do conceito de polêmica velada presente nesses livros, com foco nas formas de presença do discurso do outro. A metodologia é partir da análise bakhtiniana da novela Memórias do subsolo (1864), de Fiódor Dostoiévski, em especial quanto à formulação linguístico-discursiva de polêmica velada. Em que medida as alterações presentes na segunda edição contribuem para novos esclarecimentos da polêmica? Os resultados apontam a existência de mudanças e de permanências, o que permite esclarecer a importância central do conceito de polêmica para a análise do discurso alheio nos discursos literários e também nos discursos de circulação social.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Polêmica velada; Discurso alheio; Alteridade; Dostoiévski;
O homem do subsolo
His various redactions of the Dostoevsky books, covering a period of over forty tumultuous years, make clear that Bakhtin learned well the polyphonic lessons of the figure he chose as his authority […] Bakhtin pleads for the superiority of a dialogic approach to literature and life over a monologic approach, but he does so in different voices and by different arguments.
Katherine Clark and Michael Holquist 1
Notes from the Underground, more than all of Dostoevsky’s other works – except for perhaps The Grand Inquisitor –, is responsible for this situation. It gives one the impression the text presents direct testimony of Dostoevsky-the-ideologue. This is where we must begin if we want to read Dostoevsky today.
Tzvetan Todorov 2
Initial Remarks
Mikhail Bakhtin’s important study about Dostoevsky occupies a special place in literary, linguistic, cultural and epistemological studies as it allows us to think about culture as a response to social questions and knowledge development issues.3 Since the release of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creation (1929),4 at the beginning of Bakhtin’s career, 34 years had passed before the language philosopher, at the height of his career, presented his revised and expanded edition, entitled, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963).5 In 1981, Brazilian readers gained access to this latter edition through Paulo Bezerra’s translation directly from the Russian original. Revisions to the translation of the first 1963 edition were published by the same translator in 2008 and in 2010. The translation from Russian of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creation (1929) is underway by professors Sheila Grillo and Ekaterina Américo.
The objective of this article is to compare the concept of hidden polemic present in the 1929 and 1963 editions.6 To this end, we take up the analysis developed by Bakhtin regarding the various discursive procedures of this concept and, particularly, the monologue of Notes from Underground ([1864] 2004),7 following the Bakhtinian study on overt and hidden polemic among the Underground Man and the writers as well as the opinions and the philosophy of his time. The narrator-hero, without a name, performs a type of confession from the underground of human pain and adds to his narrative the voice of I-other. The story takes place in the city of St. Petersburg in the Czarist Russian of the 19th century. According to the critic Schnaiderman, “the underground of the hero, that ‘paradoxicalist’ and ‘anti-hero’, as the writer himself described him, constitutes the peak of ‘groundlessness’ on which a good part of Russian society was living” (1983, p.31).8 The character is constructed in the clash with the other’s discourse, with his interlocutors, at times intimate, at others despised.
To understand what in the two editions was added and what was preserved regarding the concept of polemic, the article is organized in three sections: the first recovers the sequence of chapters in both the 1929 and the 1963 editions, focusing on issues related to the other’s reflected discourse, in particular the concept of hidden polemic; the second looks at the Bakhtinian analysis of the literary and the human discourse in Notes from Underground to understand hidden polemic, not as a category set a priori, but as a discourse reflected from the other, preserving the comparative study of the editions; and finally, the third examines alterations and preservations in both editions without aiming at a stylistic analysis of the texts by Dostoevsky, since this would hinder the comparison between translations in two different languages, Italian and Portuguese, not the original works in Russian.
1 Comparing the Editions
Reading Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creation (1929/1997) enables the identification of differences in the revised edition, as various studies have indicated. The American researchers, Morson and Emerson, point out that: “Compared with the later redaction, then, the 1929 volume is a learner study, more oriented toward the prosaic word” (1990, p.85).9 The first edition presents a sociological angle, and the second a dialogical one, as well as some suppressions and substantial additions. Bubnova also highlights some of the differences between the two editions:
The 1963 book has a structure distinct from its 1929 prototype; the ‘sociological’ phraseology, very ad hoc to the ideological demands of the time in which the book was written, was considerably cut out; a new, extensive chapter was added (IV), which describes the origins of the dialogical novella (2012, p.39).10
Remembering the context in which this book was produced, Brait explains:
The epoch of development, publication, and reception of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creation must be thought of as a long and complex period, involving intellectual, and artistic effervescence, simultaneously, political, intellectual and religious stances that were subject to harsh punishment: Bakhtin was imprisoned in 1928 (2009, p.50).11
From this brief contextualization, provided by some Bakhtinian scholars, we move on to present the arrival of both editions to the West, specifically, the translations, the structure of the works to underscore what was preserved and what was changed in the focus of the work. So far, the first edition (1929) has only one Italian translation by the researcher Margherita De Michiel, published in 1997,12 whereas the second edition (1963) has been translated to many languages: Italian, by Giuseppe Garritano (Einaudi, Torino), in 1968/(2002); two French translations appeared in the 1970s, one by Isabelle Kolitcheff (Seuil, Paris) and another by Guy Verret (L’âge d’Homme, Lausanne, Switzerland); two English translations, one by R. William Rotsel in 197, and another by Caryl Emerson in 1984 (2006) (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis); Spanish, translated by Tatiana Bubnova, in 1986, in Mexico (Cultural, Economic Fund of Mexico).
Then, we start comparing the structure of these works by the prefaces. In the 1929 edition, Bakhtin explains the focus on Dostoevsky’s prose and on the methodology: “At the basis of our analysis lies the conviction that every literary work is internally and immanently sociological. Within it living social forces intersect; each element of its form is permeated with living social evaluations” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.276 [1929]).13
Next, the table of contents of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creation is divided into two parts: “Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Novel” (Outline of the Problem), and “The Word in Dostoevsky” (Essay on Stylistics); each part is subdivided into four chapters. In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, the table of contents was reorganized in five chapters, with modifications and additions to the text.
As for the chapters, the first chapter of the 1929 edition is called “The Fundamental Peculiarity of Dostoevsky’s Work and its Focus on Literary Criticism” (32p.),14 which conveys Bakhtin’s theoretical proposal without mentioning the narrative of Notes from Underground. In the first chapter of the 1963 translation, entitled “Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Novel and its Treatment in Critical Literature” (48p.) (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.5 [1963]),15 the discussion revolves around the polyphonic novel. According to the notes of the Italian translator, De Michiel (1997, p.124, note 52), Bakhtin resumes the proposition of the literary critic Boris Engelhardt about Dostoevsky’s ideological novel and discusses it with a mention to Notes from Underground:
Every thought of Dostoevsky’s heroes (the Underground Man, Raskolnikov, Ivan, and others) senses itself to be from the very beginning a rejoinder in an unfinalized dialogue. Such thought is not impelled toward a well-rounded, finalized, systemically monologic whole. It lives a tense life on the borders of someone else's thought, someone else's consciousness. It is oriented toward an event in its own special way and is inseparable from a person” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.32 [1963]).16
In the end of the chapter, fourteen pages were added to update the critique of Dostoevsky’s work from the 30s to the 40s. Bakhtin gives voice to various critics to defend that “Dostoevsky had the capacity to auscultate dialogical relationships everywhere, in all manifestations of conscious and rational human life; for him, the dialogue begins where the conscience begins” (BAKHTIN, 2015a, p.47).17 Next, he revisits critics from the 1950s through works that favor predominantly historical-literary and historical-sociological analyses. He pays special attention to the two texts in which dialogical relations are present: Pro and Contra. Remarks on Dostoevsky (1957), by Victor Shklovsky, and The Artist Dostoevsky (1959), by Leonid Grossman.18
Shklovsky explains the dialogic nature of Dostoevsky’s novelistic structure and the concept of polemic: “It is not only the heroes who quarrel in Dostoevsky, but separate elements in the development of the plot seem to contradict one another: facts are decoded in different ways, the psychology of the characters is self-contradictory; the form is a result of the essence.” (BAKHTIN, 1984 [1963], p.40).19 The Russian writer, Grossman explains the musical principle of polyphony drawn from music and cites Notes from underground:
This makes it possible to decode the brief but highly significant reference Dostoevsky made in a letter to his brother on the subject of the forthcoming publication of "Notes from Underground" in the Journal Time-. "The tale is divided into three chapters . . .The first chapter is perhaps one-and-a-half printer's sheets in length […] You know what a modulation is in music. […] The tale is built on the principle of artistic counterpoint. The psychological torment of the fallen girl in the second chapter corresponds to the insult received by her tormentor in the first, but at the same time, because of its meekness, its refusal to answer back in kind, her torment contradicts his feeling of wounded and embittered self-love. This is indeed point versus point (punctum contra punctum). These are different voices singing variously on a single theme (BAKHTIN, 1984, pp.41-42 [1963]).20
Given Grossman’s observations, the language philosopher adds: “for Dostoevsky everything in life was dialogue, that is, dialogic opposition.” (BAKHTIN, 1984 [1963], p.42).21
In the second chapter of both editions, Bakhtin refers to the consciousness of the self, of the world of the Underground Man, and to what others think of the world; preserving the text from the earlier version in the later edition.
In this second chapter of the 1963 edition, there are seven additional pages that deal with the internal incompleteness of the man, with the non-coincidence with himself. Bakhtin reiterates how the hero in Dostoevsky tends always to split the frame of the other’s words, which define and complete him. He considers the Underground Man “the first hero-ideologist in Dostoevsky's work.” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.59 [1963]),26 thus creating controversy among the socialists, since he defended the freedom of men and the possibility of breaking with imposed laws.
The title of the third chapter and the text are the same in the two editions with a focus on the hero in Dostoevsky and on the relationship of the fundamental open-endedness of many narratives. It exemplifies the way in which the Underground Man engages with the world, because he is deeply self-conscious and because of the rigid relationships that dominated the social system of the 19th century Russia, turning him into an ideologue.
As the analysis progresses, Bakhtin explains the articulation of the polemic to the Dostoevskian narrative and claims that syntactic constructions are a manifestation of language with strong polemical coloration. In Notes from Underground, in Chapter 3 of the first part, for example, the narrator uses quotation marks and repeats the expression “two and two are four” to stand against the scientific discourse, establishing polemic with the positivism of the time. The idea is to produce another meaning, to attack rationalism.
“For pity’s sake,” they’ll shout at you, “you can’t rebel: it’s two times two is four! Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. And so a wall is indeed a wall … etc., etc.” My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? (DOSTOEVSKY, 2004, p.13).31
Moving forward in the 1929 edition, the reader finds about 11 pages, in Chapter 4, entitled “Function of the adventure plot in Dostoevsky’s works.” Here, the focus is on the functions of the plot and, in the first paragraph, Bakhtin explains that the principles of the connection between the consciousnesses and the voices of the heroes do not fit within the limits of the plot, so they are approached in the second part of the book.
In the 1963 edition, Chapter 4 was substantially rewritten with the addition of 90 pages and an extensive analysis of the traditions of genre in the development of the European artistic prose to which Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel is connected. Bakhtin adds some of Dostoevsky’s works and resumes Notes from Underground as a narrative that is “constructed as a diatribe (a conversation with an absent interlocutor)” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.154 [1963]).35 He also observes that this novella is filled with overt polemic, that is, directed to the refutable discourse of the other, as well as with hidden polemic, directed to a common object but attacking, indirectly, the other’s discourse, therefore coming into conflict with it through the object itself. They present essential traces of confession.
2 Notes from Underground and the Hidden Polemic
The concept of hidden polemic is present in both editions, which we compare to identify the preservations and additions to the text. In the 1929 edition, the second part is entitled “The word in Dostoevsky (Essay on Stylistic)”36 and subdivided into four section, whereas, in the 1963, edition this part is found in Chapter 5 under the title, “Discourse in Dostoevsky.”37 Morson and Emerson state about the original 1929 edition: “First and most important, we note that the book in its original form gives proportionately a much larger emphasis to prose discourse typology than does the 1963 edition. Not only is the word poetics absent from the title and table of contents, but the word prosaic is present” (1990, p.85).38
In the 1929 edition, Chapter 1 of the second part “Types of prosaic word. The word in Dostoevsky” (BACHTIN, 1997, p.185)39 analyzes the stylistic importance of the twofold direction of the other’s discourse. In the 1963 edition, there were some changes, still much was preserved. The chapter “Discourse in Dostoevsky” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.181 [1963])40 is organized in four sections, encompassing the four chapters of the second part in the 1929 edition. At the beginning of this chapter, Bakhtin adds an important introduction, subtitled “A few preliminary remarks on methodology” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.181 [1963]),41 establishing his position in relation to the dialogical discourse.
In the two editions, Bakhtin presents the typology of the discourse in prose and identifies the double-voiced discourse of a singular direction that expresses the intentions of the author without refracting upon the other’s discourse (monological discourses), the double-voiced discourse of twofold direction and the active type or the reflected discourse of the other, in which the word of the other influences the author’s discourse from outside to within. The internal hidden polemic is among the forms of the active type as an active form of dialogism. The polemic is constructed in the confrontation with the words of others that are imposed upon the author, demanding modifications in the structure and in the trajectory of the text.42 In any case, the author’s discourse is tense, ambivalent and brings two accents, as it maintains both its own presence and that of the other. The other’s discourse directs the narrator’s discourse not only in regard to the content, but to the syntactic forms and to expressions such as repetition or constant reformulation of the same expression.
According to Bakhtin, the polemic discourse is extremely widespread in everyday life, in the moments when the aim is to be hostile toward the other’s discourse and the “jabs” and the “stabs” are incorporated into the discourse. Also, the notion of the overt discourse is expanded when another's discourse is faced as if at its own referential object and which is refuted, therefore not penetrating one’s discourse. It is a discourse about another’s discourse. Undoubtedly, the more detailed analysis concerns the concept of the hidden polemic in Dostoevsky’s literary discourse, in which narrators of autobiographies and confessions structure their discourses in polemic ways.
The scheme that summarizes the notion of the double-voiced discourse is present in both editions (BACHTIN, 1997, pp.205-206/BAKHTIN, 1984, pp.195-196 [1963]).43 In reference to the active type, the most complex discourse, the language philosopher grants the other’s discourse a direction, such as the internal hidden discourse as well as the polemically reflected double dialogue, hidden dialogue, autobiography and confession. Bakhtin explains his understanding of the hidden polemic:
As Tezza (2003, p.239) argues, the framework of types of discourse proposed by Bakhtin is not an abstraction, but open to a detailed stylistic analysis of Dostoevsky’s texts, in which the concepts of internal hidden polemic and polemically reflected double dialogue, hidden dialogue, autobiography confession are elaborated in the following chapter.
Let us consider two aspects: the extensive Bakhtinian analysis of the other’s discourse in Notes from Underground and the concept of hidden polemic in both editions of Bakhtin’s work. Among many examples highlighted by Bakhtin, we begin with the different polemics of the Underground Man present in chapter one of the second part of the novella, entitled, “Apropos of the Wet Snow” (DOSTOEVSKY, 2004, p.37).47 On the one hand, the narrator knows he is a ridiculous subject, and, on the other hand, he desires the admiration of others. Feeling anguished, he seeks to isolate himself in his underworld, and refuses to identify as part of the “flock” in which he lives. In the streets and at work, he polemicizes with the other’s discourse, that is with his work colleagues, his superiors, ultimately, with the ideology of his time.
I was also afraid to the point of illness of being ridiculous, and therefore slavishly worshiped routine in everything to do with externals; I loved falling into the common rut
and feared any eccentricity in myself with all my soul. But how could I hold out? I was morbidly developed, as a man of our time ought to be developed. And they were all dull-witted and as like one another as a flock of sheep. Perhaps to me alone in the whole office did it constantly seem that I was a coward and a slave; it seemed so to me precisely because I was developed (DOSTOEVSKY, 2004, pp.40-41).48
Following the exposition of Chapter 2 in the 1929 edition and of section 2 of the 1963 edition, Bakhtin recovers yet another discourse of the Underground Man, directed to the imbeciles, scoundrels, respectable and perfumed grey-haired elders. His suffering relates to his awareness of his unhappiness and to the awareness that there is something better in life, but that it is unreachable. There is a cynical polemic with the notes on human nature, which is frightening, and which he sees out of the corner of his eye through a crack of the underground.
In this section, Bakhtin analyzes the protagonist’s discourse in this first chapter of Notes from Underground, presenting intonations as markers of hidden polemic. He highlights, however, that the interlocutor is invisibly present. The gradient of the negative tone in the excerpt conveys the polemical discourses in the lexical repetition (forty, sixty, seventy, eighty) whereas the use of exclamation point, question mark, and ellipses expose the other’s discourse. This characterization presents the marks of anticipation of the other’s reaction, of the polemical attack against the respectable elders. It emphasizes the narrator’s conclusion through the anticipation of the other’s response, the gentlemen who despise him, nonetheless, he sustains himself on his intellectual superiority:
From this perspective, the word of the narrator is related to the other’s discourse. At the beginning of the second chapter of the novella, another discursive procedure is employed by the author: the anticipated response, similar to the hidden polemic, as highlighted by Bakhtin.
In both editions, Bakhtin maintains the same analysis, showing that the narrator provokes contradictory reactions in the reader and anticipates the other’s reaction to make him laugh and, at the same time, to establish irony. In this trajectory, the analysis focuses on the discursive-stylistic phenomenon of anticipating the other’s responses as a “sui generis” structural peculiarity. The aim is that the hero sustains the final word, since he fears they will come to think that in facing the other he either regrets or asks for forgiveness, however this fear shows his own dependence.
According to Bakhtin, the Underground Man’s suffering originates from his total awareness and from his walking in circles: to humiliate or to destroy the other as a way to recover his self-love, albeit unsuccessfully. Thus, “thanks to this relation with the consciousness of the other an original perpetuum mobile of the internal polemic of the hero is obtained with the other and himself, an endless dialogue in which a double generates another, the other generates a third in perpetual motion” (BACHTIN, 1997, p.247; BAKHTIN, 2015, p.266; BAKHTIN, 1984, p.230[1963]).58 The example from Notes from Underground, selected especially for the analysis, was taken from Chapter 2 of part 2, and materializes the dialogical oppositions with no way out, opening to no door.
The way in which the protagonist situates himself in the delicate situation of one who is dialoguing/polemicizing with the other, the way he defends himself, proves, in fact, that he depends on the other. However, it is an accounting of affections and hate in which the hidden polemic is the example of how the protagonist becomes at times impious, and cruel to his readers, even to himself (dialogized self-consciousness).
The protagonist’s consciousness shows this “perpetuum mobile,” a resource that generates an interminable dialogue, in which a response always begets another. In the 1963, North American version, Emerson recovers a footnote from the Russian original, in which Bakhtin refers to this circle of dialogue: “This can be explained by the generic similarities between Notes from Underground and Menippean satire” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.268 [1963]).61
Bakhtin also cites some examples that convey human suffering. Among them, the narrator’s toothache over the span of an entire month, and, simultaneously, the pleasure he felt in feeling the pain. Here, attention is necessary to understand how much this comment reflects the extremely polemical internal discourse.
Dostoevsky adds to the process of the Underground Man’s consciousness and discourse another linguistic-discursive resource, the evasive, reserved to change the final and definite meaning of his discourse. According to Bakhtin, if the discourse displays this evasion, this must be reflected fatally in its structure:
This potential other meaning, that is, the loophole left open, accompanies the word like a shadow [...] For example, the confessional self-definition with a loophole (the most widespread form in Dostoevsky) is, judging by its meaning, an ultimate word about oneself, a final definition of oneself, but in fact it is forever taking into account internally the responsive, contrary evaluation of oneself made by another (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.233 [1963]).64
The analysis observes a cyclical process, which unfolds and deepens in the confession with examples of dialogue with various interlocutors, treated with great respect in the use of the formal “you” – “vós” in Portuguese –, at the same time that the readers and he himself are mocked, all confronted relentlessly until the end. In the following excerpt, the mark of the interlocutor as a shadow, absent presence, is indicated by Bakhtin with the use of italics.
Bakhtin argues that the materiality of the polemic is indicated at the end of the narrative, in which the narrator refuses to continue writing his memoirs. The protagonist returns to face himself with an accountability of hate, before himself and the other, polemicizing not only the people, but other’s ideologies, and his own thought. Bakhtin states that “This polemic with the other on the subject of himself is complicated in “Notes from Underground” by his polemic with the other on the subject of the world and society. The underground hero […] is an ideologist” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.236 [1963]).67
The characterization of the other’s discourse and the concept of hidden polemic appear in Chapter 4, “Dialogue in Dostoevsky” (23p.), of the 1929 edition, and is preserved in the 1963 edition under the same name in Chapter 5 “Discourse in Dostoevsky.” Bakhtin dedicates a chapter/section to analyze the types for the other’s discourse in Notes from Underground, particularly, the other’s anticipatable response, internal dialogue and internal polemic.
To understand these discourses, the language philosopher examines an example of the cruelty and perhaps of the greatest pain in the relationship between the Underground Man and Liza, a prostitute, who had fallen in love with him and who goes after him in his apartment. In light of the man’s pain, she feels compassion for him and understands him. But, in his fear of loving her, he humiliates and abuses her, since he is not capable of accepting the compassion of that young woman. The polemic thus instated concerns the human nature: “The Underground Man remains in his inescapable opposition to the ‘other person’” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.254 [1963]).68
Final Remarks
The importance of reading and rereading the 1929 edition Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creation, focusing on the concept of hidden polemic and comparing it to the 1963 edition to indicate preservations, suppressions and additions, casts light on the concept of hidden polemic, not only as a discursive modality that unfolds in the internal discourse, originated in the outside and present in the hero’s consciousness, but as an approach that is expanded by the additions to the text, and makes it possible to understand the presence of the polemical discourse in the different spheres of social life in which it circulates.
Concerning the additions to Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 1963, mostly in Discourse in Dostoevsky (Chapter 5), there is a change in conception: Bakhtin focuses on Dostoevsky’s poetics. When Bakhtin analyses Dostoevsky’s narratives, he focuses on the other’s discourse, including hidden polemic, evasive, forewarnings, which are marks of a privileged space of evaluative procedures.
Reading Notes from the Underground through Bakhtinian lenses challenges the views of the traditional world and manifests in the confrontation of ideas, discussing the concept of hidden internal polemic not as a linguistic device but discursive-linguistic. Also, the notes to the Italian translation allow us to understand the re-elaboration of the double-voiced discourse in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art and the essential additions to the notion of ideological nature. The notion of Metalinguistic appears only in 1963:
Stylistics must be based not only, and even not as much, on linguistics as on metalinguistics, which studies the word not in a system of language and not in a "text" excised from dialogic interaction, but precisely within the sphere of dialogic interaction itself, that is, in that sphere where discourse lives an authentic life (BAKHTIN, 1984[1963], p.202).71
This formulation replaces the sociological reasoning of the 1929 edition which was suppressed in the revised edition, hence we recover the 1929 excerpt: “The problem of discourse orientation to the other’s word is of the greatest sociological importance. Discourse is by nature social” (BACHTIN, 1997, p.210).72 There is the systematic effacement of sociological traces in the 1963 edition which can be seen in the replacements made in that same passage: from “basic problems of discourse sociology” (1997, p.211 [1929])73 to “metalinguistics study” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.181 [1963]);74 “a certain social group” (1997, p.211)75 is reformulated to “a given epoch” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.202 [1963]);76 “social situation” becomes “historical situations”; the expression “paramount importance for the sociology of the artistic discourse” (1997, p.212)77 is turned into “paramount importance for the study of artistic discourse” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.203 [1963]).78 De Michiel writes on a footnote that the Bakhtinian equivalence between the two editions is clear from a distance: the “social” becomes “dialogical” so that the linguistic, which splits the surrounding reality also chances (1997, p.210).
Finally, the Bakhtinian vision of the polemic, based on the concept of the other’s discourse, is radically related to the literary discourse and to human social life. So much so, that the change in the 1963 edition is related to the perspective of a science of language, in other words, Metalinguistics. Grillo (2013) and Souza (2002) outline an important trajectory for the construction of Metalinguistics as a science of language, and comment on the privilege of the double-voiced discourse. On this issue, I conclude with Souza’s remarks on the confrontation of the two editions:
The coexistence of this sociological angle with the dialogical angle and the inversion of the category of the dialogue from the second linguistic plane to the first led Bakhtin to his own creation of a new science of language whose objects are precisely the dialogical relations in dialogical communication of “man with man,” of the “utterance in the utterance” (SOUZA, 2002, p.7)79
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