Phenomenology and Literature: Towards a Literary Description of de Phenomenon or How to Express the Sea

Abstract

This article aims to establish a relationship between Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and literary expression. This proposal relies on the importance that Merleau-Ponty acknowledges to the expressive ability of literature. In order to achieve this objective, first of all, literary expression will be elucidated using the tools of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and the need to use literary expressions to achieve a true description of the phenomenon. In this first section, we will describe the importance of literature and its particular mode of expression of the lived world. Then we will show how literary language can express the mute world of perception by analysing some passages from Merleau-Ponty’s work in which the mode of presentation of Marcel Proust’s novel is elucidated. The second part of the article will aim to carry out a brief analysis of Baricco’s novel Ocean Sea in order to illustrate the first part. In this section, we will make explicit the capacity of literary language to express the world, seeking to show how a literary work makes possible the expression of essences, in this particular case, that of the sea. In our conclusion, we will argue that Merleau-Ponty considers the task of the writer and that of the philosopher to be almost analogous in that both are called upon to say the world through a language that allows us a more original approach to the wild being, that of literature, that arises in the sensible and entails the relations that have seen it come into being.