Abstract

Critically starting from Elster's interpretation of the "failure" of Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen, this essay aims at showing the relationship that exists between narrative mind, performativity and creativity. The core issues of this contribution are: in what sense and how the literary mind expresses its own creativity, that is, what does it mean for a literary mind to be creative? When is it possible to maintain that a literary mind is creative in a sense that is considered as positive (given that creativity is not necessarily evaluable in positive terms nor the outcome of creativity is necessarily to be evaluated positively)? Usually, when attempting to answer these questions, only the isolated and finished product of the creative act is taken into consideration. Contrariwise, we will here maintain that a literary mind's creativity, or creativity more generally, should be evaluated by considering also the experiential fulfillment of the aesthetic production, and hence narration as bound not to the intentional transparency of cognitive acts but to their material components. From this standpoint, creativity results as a radically aesthetic competence in its performativity, if not even the very basis of that mind's extension that is typical at least of human beings.