The poetics of performativity in Pascal's Pensées (performativity as an approach to the problem of artistry of Pascal's Pensées)

Abstract

The author notes that Pascal, given the peculiarities of the publication and translation of his works, existed in the minds of readers rather as a literary phenomenon. Such an attitude dominated primarily in France, where Pascal's work was undoubtedly considered to be the sphere of interest of philologists and literary critics. But serious scholar interest in Pascal was practiced only in the field of philosophy. Philologists, on the other hand, gave Pascal a place mainly in historical surveys of French classicism and moralistic literature. This ambivalence is not least due to the ambivalence of Pascal's own attitude to philosophy. The author concludes that Thoughts is not just an unfinished work, but also a collection of fragments that were originally created as fragments. Thus, we may consider two strategies of reading Thoughts, neither of which is dominant, as well as about the genre ambiguity of this work.