Table Of ContentTHE DIALOGIC
IMAGINATION
Four Essays
by
M. M. BAKHTIN
Edited by
Michael Holquist
Translated by
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
AUSTIN
Copyright © I98I by the University of Texas Press Dedication
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
There is nothing more fragile than the word, and Bakhtin's was
almost lost. This translation is dedicated to those devoted Rus
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
sian scholars who gave so generously of themselves to Mikhail
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Mikhailovich the man and to the cause of preserving dialogue.
The dialogic imagination.
(University of Texas Press Slavic seriesj no. I)
Translation of Voprosy literatury i estetiki.
Includes index.
I. Fiction-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Literature
Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Holquist, J. Michael.
II. Title. III. Series.
PN333I.B2513 8or'·953 80-I5450
ISBN 0-292-7I527-7
ISBN o-292-7I534-x (pbk.)
I Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be
sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 78I9, Austin, Texas
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The publication of this volume was assisted in part by a grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency
whose mission is to award grants to support education, scholarship, me
dia programming, libraries, and museums in order to bring the results of
cultural activities to the general public. Preparation was made possible
in part by a grant from the Translations Program of the endowment.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments [xi]
A Note on Translation [xiii]
Introduction [xv]
Epic and Novel [3]
From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse [4
1]
Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel [84]
Discourse in the Novel [259]
Glossary [423]
Index [435]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due first of all to the Executors of the Bakhtin AI
chives, Vadim Kozinov and Sergej Bocorov. Their devotion to
Bakhtin is matched only by their generosity toward those who
would study him. To 1. R. Titunik we owe a special debt of grati
tude. He read large parts of the first draft of this translation and
if, as we hope, there were improvements in subsequent drafts, it
is because we constantly had his image before us, the threat
of one of his red-penciled "ughs" or "cute, but wrong, utterly
wrong" in the margin. The high standard of scholarship as well as
translation that he has established in his own work was a con
stant inspiration to us. He did not see the final version and there
fore cannot be charged with any inaccuracies, all of which are our
own responsibility. Thanks also to the many scholars from vari
ous departments who helped us in the task of identifying some of
Bakhtin's more recherche examples: to Millicent Marcus in Ital
ian; Robert Hill in French; James Wimsatt, Medievalist, in En
glish; Robert Mollenauer in German; Michael Gagarin and Carl
Rubino in Classics, all of the University of Texas. Thanks also
to Vadim Liapunov of the Slavic Department, Indiana University,
to whom we turned when all else failed. We are grateful as well to
llya Levin and Sofia Nikonova who played the role of native
speakers, with resource and wit.
Preparation of the manuscript was particularly complex due to
the many languages, two sets of footnotes and so forth. We could
not have done it without Elaine Hamilton. The person who has
borne with this for three years now and still had the patience and
dedication to come in on weekends when it was necessary to re
type yet another version of some arcane passage is Gianna
Kirtley. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the
University Research Institute at the University of Texas provided
generous grants to support this translation.
[xii] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is also a sponsored activity of the Institute of Mod
ern Russian Culture at Blue Lagoon, Texas.
Thanks as always to Katerina Clark, who was ready to give help
whenever it was needed, whether it was a technical term in Rus
A NOTE ON TRANSLATION
sian or a word of encouragement in English. Thanks to Snugli
Cottage Industries. Thanks finally to the anonymous donor
whose Medician gesture made not only this book but the whole
series in which it appears possible.
The IPA transcription system is used in this book, except in those
cases where a word or a name has entered general English usage
via' another system (i.e., Bakhtin, not BaxtinJ.
Bakhtin's footnotes are indicated by superscript numbers; the
editor's footnotes are indicated by superscript letters.
This book contains four essays that originally appeared in
Vopros.yJi.t-eratm-¥--r~ (~~.9w, !.21.5 J. Two additional es
says are not included here, because they either have already been
translated into English or do not bear directly on the theme unify
ing the other four, t1,1e novel and itsrelatiori to lanS!la~e.
The "Translator's Note" to non-Russian versions of Bakhtin's
works has become a geme in its own right. More often than not,
the peculiarity of Bakhtin's Russian is invoked to justify a certain
awkwardness in the translated text. We believe the matter is
more complicated. Bakhtin himself provides the best context for
perceiving the true nature of the problem in the distinction he
draws between "§tyle" and "language"-especiaUy as it pertains
to the "image ot~ lanK\l~~.:." We have sought to make a transla
tion at the level of images of a whole language (obraz ;azykaJ.
The translations are complete. Bakhtin is not an efficient
writer, but we believe he pays his way.
* * *
Since junior members of team projects frequently receive less
credit than is their due, I wish to emphasize that this translation
is the result of a real dialogue: Caryl Emerson and I went over
every word of Bakhtin's text together.
MICHAEL HOLQUIST
INTRODUCTION
I
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin is gradually emerging as one of
the leading thinkers of the twentieth century. This claim will
strike many as extravagant, since a number of factors have until
recently conspired to obscure his importance. Beyond the diffi
culties usually attending the careers of powerful but eccentric
thinkers, there are, in Bakhtin's case, complications that are
unique. Some of these inhere in his times: his two most produc
tive periods occurred during the darkest years of recent Russian
history: the decade following I9I7, when the country reeled un
der the combined effects of a lost war, revolution, civil war and
famine; and the following decade, the thirties, when Bakhtin was
in exile in Kazakhstan, and most of the rest of Russia was hud
dling through the long Stalinist night. It was in these years that
Bakhtin wrote something on the order of nine large books on top
ics as major and varied as Freud, Marx and the philosophy of lan
guage. Only one of these (the Dostoevsky book) appeared under
his own name during these years. Three others were published
under different names (see section III of this introduction); some
were partially lost during his forced moves; some disappeared
when the Nazis burned down the publishing house that had ac
cepted his large manuscript on the Erziehungsroman; some were
"delayed" forty-one years in their publication when journals that
had accepted manuscripts were shut down, as happened to the
Russian Contemporary in I924; others, such as the Rabelais
book, were considered too aberrant for publication, due to their
emphasis on sex and body functions (see section II of this
introduction).
Another factor that has clouded perception of the scope of
Bakhtin's activity in the anglophone world,' at least, is the tradi-
[xvi] INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION [xvii]
tion in which he was working. He was trained as a classicist dur dealing with the nineteenth century; it is the relatively un
ing a period when the German model of philology dominated familiar Wezel or Musiius he cites.
Russian universitiesj thus he inherited a certain heaviness of Bakhtin throws a weird light on our received models of intel
style and a predilection for abstraction that English or American
lectual history. It is as if he set out to carnivalize-to use a verb
readers, accustomed to a more essayistic prose, sometimes find that has become modishly transitive due to his own work on
heavy going. Bakhtin's style, while recognizably belonging to a
Rabelais-the normal periods and figures we use to define the re
Russian tradition of scholarly prose, is, nevertheless, highly idio
lay of culture. Clearly; one could make such a perverse undertak
syncratic. Language in his texts works somewhat as language ing pay its way only if possessed of two prerequisites: enormous
!
does in the novel, the ~enre that obsessed him all ~is life: accord learning and a theory capable of sustaining a balance between
f ing to Ian Watt (The Rise of the Novell, "the genre Itself works by such an aberrant history and more conventional historical
exhaustive presentation rather than by elegant concentration." models.
The more we know about Bakhtin's life, the clearer it becomes Of Bakhtin's preternatural erudition there can be no doubt-he
that he was a supreme eccentric, of an order the Russians express belongs to the tradition that produced Spitzer, Curtius, Auerbach
better than we in their word cudak, which has overtones of such and, somewhat later, Rene Wellek. Many times when we have
intense strangeness that it borders on cudo, a wonder. And this consulted specialists in the various fields from which Bakhtin so
peculiarity is reflected not only in the strange history of his texts easily draws his recherche examples, it was only to be told that
(why; ultimately; did he publish under so many names?), but in such and such a work did not exist, or, if it did, it was not "charac
his style as well, if one may speak of a single style for one who teristic./I A few days later, however, after some more digging or
was so concerned with "other-voicedness." Russians immedi thinking, the same specialist would call to say that indeed there
ately sense this strangeness: again and again when we have gone was such a work, and, although little known even to most ex
to native speakers with questions about a peculiar usage of a fa perts, it was the most precisely correct text for illustrating the
miliar word or an unfamiliar coinage, the Russians have thrown point Bakhtin sought to make by invoking it.
up their hands or shaken their heads and smiled ruefully. He has, then, a knowledge of West European civilization de
Another difficulty the reader must confront is the unfamiliar tailed enough to permit him to use traditional accounts as a di
shadings Bakhtin gives to West European cultural history. He alogizing background to sustain the counter-model he will pro
tends to ignore the available chapterization into familiar periods pose. And that counter-model is motivated by a theory that can
and -isms. It is not so much Periclean Athens or Augustan Rome rationalize not only its own subversions, but the effects of main
that attracts him as it is the vagaries of the Hellenistic age. He is stream traditions as well.
preoccupied by centuries usually ignored by othersj and within I say theory and not system-the two do not always go hand in
these, he has great affection for figures who are even more hand-because Bakhtin's motivating idea is in its essence op
obscure. A peculiar school of grammarians at Toulouse in the sev posed to any strict formalization. Other commentators, such as
enth century A.D. may appear to others as an obscure group work Tsvetan Todorov in a forthcoming book devoted to Bakhtin, have
ing in a backwater during the darkest of the Dark Agesj for seen this as a weakness in his work. They have come to this con
Bakhtin the work of these otherwise almost forgotten men con clusion, I believe, because they bring to Bakhtin's work expecta
stitutes an extremely important chapter in the human struggle to tions based on the kind of thinking characteristic of other major
accommodate the mysteries of human language. He keeps re theorists who engage the same issues as Bakhtin.
turning to the Carolingian Revival or the interstitial periods be Bakhtin is constantly working with what is emerging as the
tween the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. When he does cite a central preoccupation of our time-Janguage. But unlike others
familiar period, he often tends to isolate an otherwise obscure fig who have made substantial contributions to our understanding of
ure within it-thus his focusing on Pigres of Halicarnassus or Ion language in the twentieth century-Saussure, Hjelmslev, Ben
of Chios among the Greeks, on Varro among the Romansj when veniste and, above alI, Roman Jakobson (all of whom-are system-
[xviii] INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION [xix]
atic to an extraordinary degree)-Bakhtin is not. If you expect a Secondly, language must not be understood in these essays in
Jakobsonian order of systematicalness in Bakhtin, you are bound the restricted sense in which it occupies professional linguists.
to be frustrated. This does not mean, however, that he is without As Bakhtin says (in "Discourse in the Novel"), "At any given mo
a peculiar rigor of his own. It is rather that his concept of lan ment . . . a language is stratified not only into dialects in the
guage stands in relation to others (of the sort that occupy lin strict sense of the word (i.e., dialects that are set off according to
guists) much as the novel stands in opposition to other, more for formal linguistic [especially phonetic] markers), but is ... strat
malized genres. That is, th,!:.!l9,Xel-as Bakhtin more than anyone ified as well into languages that are sOcio-ideological: languages
else has taught us to see-does not lack its organizing princin~, belonging to profeSSions, to genres, languages peculiar to particu
b!!! th~l_ar~of a_Q!ff~!e!!t_ o!de~ from those regulating so~ets..2! lar generations, etc. This stratification and diversity of speech
odes. It may be said Jakob~!l works with poetry because lie as a !raznorecivost'] will spread wider and penetrate to ever deeper
Pushkinian love of order; )Bakhtin, on the contrary, loves novels levels so long as a language is alive and still in the process of
because he is a baggy monste:t;,J becoming. "
At the heart of everything Bakhtin ever did-from what we The two contending tendencies are not of equal force, and each
know of his very earliest (lost) manuscripts to the very latest (still has a different kind of reality attaching to itt ~!~.if.E:g~n~rce~,are
unpublished) work-is a mgh.ly.Jiil?.tinctive c.oncept qf la~su..age. clearly more powerful and ubiquitous-theirs-is the r~~Ji1:y_of ac-
The conception has as its enabling a priori an almost Manichean 1;!!.al_~iculation. They are always in praesentia; they determine
sense of opposition and struggle at the heart of existencefa cease- the way we actually ~xperience language as we use it-and are
(
less battle between centrifugal forces that seek to keep things used by it-in the dense particularity of our everyday lives. Uni
(
apart, and centripetal forces that strive to make things cohe~e: I fying, centripetal forces are less powerful and have a complex on
This Zoroastrian clash is present in culture as well as nature, and tological status. ;Their relation to centrifugal operations is akin to
in the specificity of individual consciousness; it is at work in the the interworking that anthropologists nominate as the activity of
even greater particularity of individual utterances. The most cultur.e in model~g ~ com~letely different order called nat~ As
complete and complex reflection of these forces is found in Bakhtm says (agam In "DIscourse"): "A unitary language is not
human language, and the best transcription of language so und~r something that is given [dan], but is in its very el?sence some
stood is the novel. thing that must be posited [zadan]-at every moment in the life
Two things must immediately be added here. First, while lan of a language it opposes the realities of heteroglossia !~aznorecie],
guage does serve to reflect this struggle, it is no passive stuff, no but at the same time the [sophisticated] ideal [or primitive delu
mere yielding clay. Language itself is no less immune from the sion] of a single, holistic language makes the actuality of its pres
effects of the struggle than anything else. Its nature as a system is ence felt as a force resisting an absolute heteroglotstate; it posits
even more fraught with the contest, which m~ be why it oc definite boundaries for limiting the potential chaos of variety, thus
cupies so central a place in the activity of mind\Ba~tin, nee~ it guaranteeing a more or less maximal mutual understanding~ ..."
be said, is not working in this dichotomy of forces WIth the kmd The term Bakhtin uses here, "heteroglossia" [raznorecie], is a
of binary opposition that has proved so important in structuralist master trope at the heart of all his other projects, one more funda
linguistics (and so seductive to social scientists and humanists mental than such other categories associated with his thought as
lusting for a greater degree of systematicalness). That opposition "polyphony" or "carnivalization." These are but two specific
leads from human speech to computer language; it conduces, in ways in which the primary condition of heteroglossia manifests
other words, to machine~ Bakhtin.'s sense of .a d~el b.etween itself. Heteroglossia is Bakhtin's way of referring, in any utter
more widely implicated forces leads m the OppOSIte dIrectIOn and ance of any kind, to the peculiar interaction between the two fun
stresses the fragility and ineluctably historical nature of lan damentals of all communication. On the one hand, a mode of
guage, the coming and dying of meaning that it, as a phenome transcription must, in order to do its work of separating out texts,
non, shares with that other phenomenon it ventriloquates, man. \ be a more or less fixed system. But these repeatable features, on
-""
[xx] INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION (xxi]
the other hand, are in the power of the particular context in
thinkers-both in other ways very different from Bakhtin-to
which the utterance is made; this context can refract, add to, or,
come to grips with the way intimacy with our own voice conduces
in some cases, even subtract from the amount and kind of mean
to the illusion of presence: HusserI in the Logical Investigations
ing the utterance may be said to have when it is conceived only as
and ~errida in his 1967 essay "Speech and Phenomenon.")
a systematic manifestation independent of context.
It I~ the need to ~onfront ~his multiplicity in a principled way
This ext.~aQ!.~m ~en§!tiYity to the immensep.l~alio/ ot~~
that Impels BakhtIn to COIn some of his more outre terms
~ence more than anything else distinguishes BakhtIn from !tJ:te wo~d "heteroglossiil" itself, "word-with-a-loophole/, "~_
oer modems who have been obsessed with language. I empha
with-a-sidewards-glance~ "intonational quotation marl{s" and so
size experience here because Bakhtin's basic scenari~ for mo~el
forth). He uses these rather than the more conventional terminol
ing variety is two actual people talking to each other In a specIfic
ogy we assoc.iate with a linguistic concern for language first of all
dialogue at a particular time and in a particular place. But these
because trad~tio~al linguistics has taken little heed of the prob
persons would not confront each other as soverei~ egos capable
lem of altenty In language. Bakhtin like Austin !How to Do
of sending messages to each other through the kind of un~lut ~hings wit11. Words, I962),~~ !S;eech Act~:-;969) and par
tered space envisioned by the artists who illustrate most receIver
tIcularly gJ!_~-:ithe legendary but still unpublished 19 7 James
sender models of communication. Rather, each of the two per 6
lectures on LOglC and Conversation), stresses the speech aspect of
sons would be a consciousness at a specific point in the history of
language, utterance, to emphasize the immediacy of the kind of
defining itself through the choice it has made-out of all the p~s-
meaning he is after. He ddes so as well to highlight his contention
. sible existing languages available to it at that moment-of a dis
th~t langu~g~ is never-except for certain linguists-what lin
course to transcribe its intention in this specific exchange.
guIStS say It IS: There is no such thing as a "generallanguage/' a
The two will like everyone else, have been born into an en
language that IS spoken by a general voice, that may be divorced
vironment in which the air is already aswarm with names. Their
from a specific saying, which is charged with particular over
development as individuals-and in this Bakhtin's thought paral
tones. (Language, when it means, is somebody talking to some
lels in suggestive ways that of Vygotsky in Russia (see Emerson,
body else, even when that someone else is one's own inner
1978) and Lacan in France (see Bruss, in Titunik's translation of addresseeJ
Volosinov's Freudianism, I976)-will have been prosecuted as a
Bakhtin's t,h.eory of. metalap.guage. is extremely complicated
gradual appropriation of a specific mix of discourses that are capa
and deserves detailed study. I have merely alluded to it here in
ble of best mediating their own intentions, rather than those
or~er.to provide a context for the more particular subject matter
which sleep in the words they use before they use them. Thus
~g these four essays-the novel. I began with Bakhtin's in
each will seek, by means of intonation, pronunciation, lexical
SIstence on ~e. primacy of speech because what he has to say
choice, gesture, and so on, to send out a message to the. other
about novels IS Incomprehensible if the emphasis on utterance is
with a minimum of interference from the otherness constItuted
not always kept in mind. In section IV we shall once again take
by pre-existing meanings (inhering in dictionaries or ideologi~s) u? t~e ~ela~ionship between Bakhtin's ideas about language and
and the otherness of the intentions present in the other person In
his distInctIve theory of the nnvel!.s.extraliterar.yjmIlQX1ance.
the dialogue.
Implicit in all this is the notion that all transcription systems
including the speaking voice in a living utterance-are inadequ~te
II
to the multiplicity of the meanings they seek to convey. My VOIce
gives the illusion of unity to what I say; I am, in fact, constantly
Bakhtin.~asEo!:1! I6 NovembeI(l:89~in Orel into an old family of
expressing a plenitude of. meanings, some i~tend~d, o~ers of the nobIlity, datIng from at leastt:lie fourteenth century, that no
which I am unaware. (There is in this obseSSIOn WIth VOIce and
longer owned property at the time of his birth. Bakhtin's father
speech a parallel with the attempts of two important recent
was a bank official who worked in several cities as Mikhail
[xxii] INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION [xxiii]
Mikhailovich was growing up. The early years of his childhood Ba~tin-was Ger~an philosophy. At this point Bakhtin thOUght
were spent in Orel, then in Vilnius (Lithuania)' and finally Odessa, ofhhilmself essentIally as a ph~!!?§opper and not as a literary
where he finished the gymnasium and entered the historical and sc 0 ar.
philological faculty of the local university in 1913. He soon trans A v~ry ~~portant member of the group for him, then, was
ferred to Petersburg University, where his brother Nikolaj (later ~atveJ IsaI~ Kagan, later an editor of the monumental Encyc1ope
professor of Greekand'Tfiigl:Listics at Birmingham University) ~la of SO~let Energy Resources, but at this time still a profes
was a student. SIOnal philosopher-a philosopher, moreover, who had just re
It was an exhilarating time to be in St. Petersburg. There was turne~ from Germany, where he had spent almost ten years
the stimulation of attacks and counterattacks by Symbolists, Ac studYIng ~t Marburg and Berlin. He had been close to the Marburg
meists and Futurists in poetry. Criticism, too, took on a new Neo-Kantians: he translated Natorp and was highly thought of by
urgency and glamor: the very year Bakhtin came to the city H.erm~nn Cohen and Ernst Cassirer. K:.8!!D was Bakhtin's best
Shklovsky published the article that was to be the first salvo in friend In these years, in some ways fiiITng tIle personal and intel
the battles that raged around the Formalists. The university was lectual gap left by the departure of Bakhtin's brother, Nikolaj. We
an especially exciting place to be, notably in the areas of Bakh can s.ee traces of Kagan's influence in the concern for such Neo
tin's interests. D. K. Petrov, the distinguished Hispanist and stu K~ntian preoccupations as axiology and the need to rethink the
dent of Baudouin de Courtenay, the philosopher A. 1. Vvedenskij ~Ind/wor1d opposition that are present in Bakhtin's first pub
and Aleksandr N. Veselovskij, a founder of the modern study of hshed work: '~Art and Responsibility." This small 1919 piece is ac~
comparative literature, were teaching at this time. But Bakhtin tually. a preClS of ~ major work on moral philosophy to which
was influenced particularly by the great classicist F. F. Zelinskij; ~akhtIn devoted hImself while in Nevel' that was never pub
some of Bakhtin's key concepts can be traced back to suggestions hshed (except in portions, and then only sixty years later in
in ZeliIlskij's works, primarily those dealing with the Roman or 1979). '
atorical tradition. Q!!!il}g the~~-Yf<EU:~ B~1dltjrdaW tb..~J9!!1!djl In 1920 he ~oved to Vitebsk, in the same general area. Vitebsk
~q1.ls oL~~ p.~dig1ou~knO'wl~~e-Qf.philg~9PJ,J,Y, ~spec:!eny"cle~~i was at that tIme a cultural boom town, an island of light in the
cal and Gerrn.an thi.I1kers. Vvedenskij was the leading Russian dark c~r~nt~.of revolution and civil war, a refuge for such artists
Kanti'm, and N~ o. Lossitij, another of Bakhtin's teachers, had as. El ~ISItskiJ, ~ale.vich and Marc Chagall. Several prominent
studied under Windelband and Wundt. In 1918 Bakhtin finished sCientI~ts also l~v~d m the Belorussian city at this time, as well
the university and moved to Nevel', a west Russian city, where he as leading mUSICIans from the former Mariinskij Theater who
taught school for two years. taught at the Conservatory. A lively journal, Iskusstvo, was
It was here that the members of the first "Bakhtin Circle" (with started, and there were constant lectures and discussions.
the exception of P. N. Medvedev, who became associated with it .T wo eve~ts of. great personal importance occurred during the
in 1920 in Vitebsk) came together: Lev Pumpianskij, later pro Vitebsk. penod: m ~92~ Bakhtin married Elena Aleksandrovna
fessor in the Philological Faculty at Leningrad University; V. N. OkO~OVIC, who was mdispensable to him until her death in 1971;
Volosinov, later a linguist, but at this time a musicologist and ~d In 1923 the bone disease that was to plague Bakhtin all his
would-be Symbolist poet; M. V. Judina, later one of Russia's great life-~nd that would lead to the amputation of a leg in 1938-
est concert pianists; 1. 1. Sollertinskij, later artistic director of the made ItS ~st appearance. In 1924 Bakhtin moved back to Lenin
Leningrad Philharmonic; and B. M. Zubakin, archeologist, Ma grad, wor~In~ at the Historical Institute and consulting for the
son and grand eccentric. There were others as well who attended S~ate PublIshmg House. Bakhtin was finally moved to let some of
discussions less frequently, but who shared the passionate inter his work see the light of day.
est of the group in threshing out literary, religious and political . ~ the fate of an early article we can see the emergence of a
topics. But the most frequent topic of discussion, the subject of ~ICIOUS pattern that was to repeat itself throughout his life: con
most burning concern for the majority of the group-certainly for tinually, Bakhtin's manuscripts were suppressed or actually lost,
