1The issue of literary communication, usually presented with regard to the sender of a work, has for some time been met with a renewed interest among Polish scholars. The hitherto universal category of the literary work’s sender has been reinterpreted and, to some degree, limited. To speak of the narrator and the lyrical subject has, indeed, become some|thing of a general commonplace, and the omni-competence ascribed to these notions has reached parodically exaggerated dimensions.1

2 The necessity of making more complex and richer the repertoire of concepts referring to literary phenomena has resulted both from transformations in ways of thinking about literature and from the development of literature itself. In literature today, the most important place is taken by texts that particularly set forth subject construction, and at the same time complicating it to a hitherto unseen degree. All the studies published recently in Poland that partially or radically revise the issue of the work’s sender propose the introduction of additional interpretative categories, alongside that of the literary subject. Kazimierz Wyka proposes “the host of the poem” [gospodarz poematu] (Wyka 1963, 153ff); Lipski has “the name designating the author” [nazwa oznaczająca autora] (Lipski 1965); Janusz Sławiński suggests “the subject of creative actions” [podmiot czynności twórczych] or “the giver of the rules of speaking” [nadawca reguł mówienia] (Sławiński 1966); and, finally, Balcerzan comes up with “the internal author” [autor wewnętrzny] (Balcerzan 1968). Irrespective of what field of competence is ascribed to this second embodiment of the sender of a work, and of how the manner of its existence is defined (within or also outside the text), its existence is always limited to a certain degree and specifies the range of control exercised by the narrator or the lyrical subject. Discussion of this matter is not yet complete nor resolved. My consideration of the issue of the sender is intended as a contribution to that discussion. Here, the sender is entangled in the network of participant relations that are proper to literary communication, and that are concentrated in the work. I thought it right to assimilate and employ all the ideas of my predecessors that I was able to assemble in what seems to me a coherent vision of the issue. Further, I have not avoided certain rather obvious truths, as they seemed to be important links in understanding. I am more concerned with the systematic nature of my formulations here than their brilliance.

3The basic outline of the relations of the persons participating in the literary work is one common to all acts of linguistic communication. Three main participant roles can be distinguished, depending on the function performed in terms of this act:

1. the sender: the person who speaks;
2. the receiver: the person who is spoken to;
3. the character: the person spoken about.

4These roles determine, in differing degrees, the ontological status and the personal identity of the sender, receiver, and character. Of course, all of these may actually exist in the world external to the text as socially defined individuals, but the actual extra-textual existence of a character is, from the point of view of the act of communication itself, a matter of complete indifference.2 The role of character in an utterance establishes this figure’s objectified existence as a component of the transmitted information, and therefore only his/her passive intra-textual existence. On the other hand, if the character takes an active part in the communication, he/she appears by virtue of that very feature in the role of the sender or receiver of the utterance. Both these latter roles, though fixed in the semantic structure of the text (just as the role of the character is), nevertheless establish an extra-textual activity. This is the coding and decoding of information contained in the text, and, therefore, command of a system of norms, applying to the text, but existing beyond it. The completion of an act of communication, therefore, demands the extra-textual existence of both a sender and a receiver. The text itself, however, attests to the real existence only of its sender, but neither from the act of communication itself, nor from the existence of the text, can any indications be drawn as to the extra-textual existence of a character.

5These three above-mentioned roles exist of necessity and, of necessity, function within any literary communication, but this fact does not determine either the personal identity, or the number of persons actually fulfilling these roles in a particular utterance. There can be many of these persons, considering the unlimited number of characters, the possibility of the appearance of a collective sender and collective receiver, several narrators, etc. Rather than specifying the maximum number of such figures at the disposal of any utterance, I think it would be more instructive here to fix the permitted minimum. Doubtless, each of these roles can be assigned to another person (Jan tells Piotr about Antoni), but equally an accumulation of roles is possible:

1. sender and character (Jan tells Piotr about himself, i.e. about Jan):
2. character and receiver (Jan tells Piotr about himself, i.e. about Piotr);
3. sender and receiver (Jan tells himself—i.e. Jan—about Antoni).

6The final possibility can be realized as an interior monologue delivered by Jan on the subject of Antoni. The ultimate example of the accumulation of roles is an interior monologue, the theme of which is the sender himself (Jan speaks to himself about himself, i.e. to Jan about Jan). One and the same person plays all three parts to the full—that is, the person of the sender.

7Previously, I suggested that the completion of an act of communication demands the extra-textual existence of both sender and receiver, and here I would like to express this in more precise terms. It is a question of a purely functional, not personal, doubleness of existence, as both the above-mentioned roles can be realized by one person.

8The role of the sender can be seen as particularly foregrounded, and not only from the point of view of his/her irreducibility and presence in every communicative situation and on every level of communication (extra- and intra-textual), but also because the configuration of both the remaining roles is dependent on that primary role. This is because the positioning of the role of sender (“I”) defines the allotment of the roles of receiver (“you”) and of character (“he/she”). Piotr is not the receiver because he is Piotr, but because Jan addresses him. In the same way, Antoni is a character because Jan speaks about him. The whole paradigm of personal pronouns is founded on an attitude towards this “I”, in other words, towards the sender. The configuration of personal pronouns within the utterance is of a relative and ad hoc nature. Each change in the position of the speaking “I” fixes anew the hierarchy of persons.3

9So far, we have pointed to certain determinants that define the literary work just as they do other linguistic communications, without regard to their character and degree of complexity. A further sequence of considerations will touch on the complex situation of the literary work. This will nevertheless be treated, as before, as a phenomenon which is certainly unique, but subject to the general laws of linguistic comprehen|sibility. I take as a point of departure, along with the above point, the assertion that each utterance (and, therefore, the literary work too), on one hand, attests to the existence of a sender outside that utterance, just as each act of creation attests to its originator. On the other hand, however, it reveals its sender through its own internal semantic organization. The connections between that sender, existing within the limits of the text and through that text (I will call him/her “the subject of the utterance”), and the extra-textual sender are quite complicated. Before I attempt a sketch of these, I would like to consider the intra-textual existence of the subject.

10As is well-known, literary works can present different configurations of utterances, and therefore also complex relations among many uttering subjects. The complexity of the situation of the sender, as presented in the text, depends on (1) the number of speaking persons, and (2) the hierarchical relationships among their utterances.

11The most straightforward example in this respect is represented by works (usually lyric confessional verse) composed of a single figure's monologue. Dramatic texts introduce complexity in terms of numbers, where a series of utterances of different persons appears on a single level, presented in a non-hierarchical fashion. The most complex situations are created by the multiplication of levels, whereby individual utterances are ordered, in relation to others, according to the paradigm: I speak about Piotr, who speaks about Jan, who speaks about Antoni, etc. Such a (frequently multi-level) structure of quotation within quotation can appear within the framework of the lyric monologue or the dramatic dialogue, but in normal circumstances it is proper to the epic narrative, the distinguishing feature of which is the subordination of the character’s speech to that of the narrator. There is no theoretical limit to the complexity of this configuration of subordination. Every character, and thus every figure presented by the narrator, may in his turn constitute a narrator telling of other figures, those of yet others, and so ad infinitum. Practical considerations, such as the readability and usefulness of such a complex construction, suggest a limit to this, however. For example, the text of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa [Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse] by Jan Potocki introduces in places an eight-level hierarchy of utterances.4 The double-level relation of narrator-character creates a double-level configuration of the sender only when the narrator quotes the words of the character and permits him/her to have an independent voice. In other circumstances, only the narrator emerges in the role of the subject of the utterance.

12The information contained in the text concerning speaking figures is of a two-fold kind: first, thematic information contained in the meanings of the words and sentences used; and, second, information implied through the conventions of spoken discourse. The distinction between thematic information and that which is implied points to a general property of the semantic construction of every text. There are no limits to the scope of thematic information, transmitted through the content of the utterance. This information may equally well present an image of the subject, addressee, or character, as contain opinions relating to its own organi|zation, and finally touch on all other themes unconnected with the communicative situation. However, the scope of implied information, encoded in the construction of the utterance, is rather more specialized. Such information reveals the code of the utterance and the realization of that code, indirectly characterizing the sender and receiver as users of this code—the sender as an actual user, the receiver as a potential one. Thematic information concerning a particular figure may equally well come from that figure’s own utterance, as from the utterances of his/her fellow figures or of the narrator (or possibly narrators). Implied information about a figure is hidden only in his/her own speech. It is, therefore, the case that silent figures can only be presented in a thematic manner. In exceptional circumstances, however, it does happen that implied information does not give clear information regarding the speaker. This occurs when certain features of the speech of the narrator take shape under the pressure of the manner of speaking of a character. Formally the subject of the utterance remains the narrator, but another voice attaches itself to his/hers, and the narrator does not bear full responsibility for his/her own speech. This “duality of voice”, described by Bachtin (1984) and Vološinov (1973), can be heard most clearly in free indirect speech, but it is also possible to hear it in indirect speech, and even in a narration which does not give any information about the character’s words, but is conducted from his/her point of view.

13There is no utterance which does not conceal in itself some information about the sender. Every utterance contains implied information about him/her, although not every utterance presents him/her in a thematic manner (this is called “concealing the narrator behind the presented world”). The device of free indirect speech in combination with the lack of thematic information creates, in my opinion, a minimum of documen|tation as regards the speaking person. Maximum documentation, however, is supplied by, for example, a first-person narration. This foregrounds the way of speaking characteristic of the sender, simultaneously thematicising him/her in the roles of the subject and character of the story, and, thus, both on the level of narration (present) and on the level of story material (past).

14Thematic information about the sender is derived from semantic levels other than that of implied information. Both types of information, which differ in origin and scope, differ too in their manner of disclosure in the text. As a general definition, the first is disclosed directly (it would be possible to call it explicit information), the second—as the term used indicates—only indirectly. This does not mean that thematic information is, in its entirety, simply given in completed form, and is not subject to any interpretative operations. It means, however, that it emerges from formulated meanings, that the person of the sender constitutes to some extent the theme of the utterance, and that the utterance itself speaks of the sender, irrespective of whether it speaks in a clear or obscure way, open or allusive, whether it straightforwardly names his/her features, or whether it supplies only circumstantial evidence and coded indications. Without defining either the scope or the course of the semantic operations of combination, leading to the emergence in the text of a global image of the sender of the utterance, and, therefore, of the processes constituting the creation of such a “great semantic figure” (Sławiński 1967b) as the represented figure is, I draw attention here only to the explicit character of the elementary meanings constituting such a figure, thus distinguishing thematic information from implied.

15It would be possible to define implied information concerning the speaker as the subject-related aspect of the autothematic and metalingual information concealed in every utterance, as information flowing ceaselessly beneath the thematic surface like a subterranean current of meanings. It touches on all those norms which first permitted the creation of those meanings, norms revealing themselves in the linguistic construction of the utterance, but pointing not only to the connection of the utterance with the linguistic system, but also with the so-called secondary modelling systems (literary, ideological, religious, and so on) expressed through language and built upon the linguistic system.5 Each utterance, being a sequence of diversely ordered signs, documents the rules of its own organization. These rules reveal themselves both in the relationship of a sign to other signs in the linear course of the utterance, and, thus, through the syntagmatic order, and also in the relationship of the sign used to the system of signs external to the text, and, therefore, through the paradigmatic order.

16Every use of language is a response to some collective experience. By the same token, implied information concerning the manner of using language in a given text gives information concerning its sender as the realizer of a certain communal practice. This practice embraces a variety of linguistic behaviour, which permits us to identify the status of the speaker not only in strictly sociological terms, pointing to his/her social affiliation, professional or class identification, etc., but in all other terms charac|terizing varieties of language users, for example, in psychological terms (the speech of nervous, intelligent, distracted, or peremptory types), or even physiological ones (the speech of tired people, of those who stammer, drunks, aphasiacs, etc.).

17Not all pieces of information implied by the text characterize the speaker equally distinctly. A respect for the rules of grammar, such as agreement of gender, number, and case between nouns and their qualifying adjectives, indicates with regard to the speaker only that in a given area of discourse he/she has command of correct Polish. In terms of linguistic information, the clearest significance is possessed by the most strongly characteristic, that is what refers to smaller groups within the broad class of those who speak a given natural language. An image of the individualized subject of an utterance arises as a result of its configuration of linguistic features, by no means unique, but proper to certain socially defined types of behaviour or situation. The so-called individualization of speech seldom relies on linguistic novelty and the creation of new rules, or the transformation of existing ones. It is only exceptionally that such linguistic creativity characterizes the subject of an utterance as an individual using language in an “unusual” fashion in practical circumstances, and it rather situates him/her on a higher, literary level of textual organization as the subject of poetic activity. For the linguistic characteristic of the sender is not only encoded in his/her speech, but also—if we consider it in the context of the repertoire of norms transmitted by literary tradition—his/her literary status and genealogy. Similarly, the manner of speaking can be seen as significant for other areas of human activity that are dependent on verbalization. Everything depends only on which system of rules the text cares to choose from.

18Although implied information, as well as thematic information, characterize the speaker, there is an essential difference of kind with regard to the characteristics of these two types of information. Implied information permits the reconstruction of the personality of the speaker on the basis even of those utterances in which he/she devotes not a single word to him/herself. This information however does not go beyond data drawn from certain collectively defined modes of verbal behaviour, and cannot provide details about behaviour that are not revealed in the manner of speech. By means of it, one would not be able to recreate either simple fictional situations or any concrete features applying to the appearance, the dress, or the actions of a figure. In this respect, the sphere of thematic information is limitless. Implied information may arise as a result of sociological interpretation of types of utterance, but thematic information does not require such operations. In certain circumstances, it can become their object, but it is not a result of these.

19All the information present in a literary text does not emerge merely by a process of progressive accumulation, and global information, that is a full picture of the particular sender of an utterance, does not arise as a result of a simple summation of different pieces of partial information. The communicative structure of a work produces a complicated configuration of signals correcting and endorsing individual pieces of information. This configuration is based on the differences in the degree of authoritativeness of thematic information and implied information, and of information coming from the different levels of the text associated with the sender. Two basic principles of the operation of this configuration can be formulated as follows: (1) in the event of a conflict between implied and thematic information, the implied information will show itself to be of superior validity and will determine the manner of reinterpreting the thematic information; (2) in the event of a conflict between pieces of thematic information on different levels of the text, superior validity will be ascribed to that coming from the highest level. Information from lower levels is always subject to interpretation, and often to reinterpretation in the light of thematic information on higher levels. Authentication of information produced on a lower level occurs when unanimity reigns among subjects on different rungs of the hierarchy, and when each narrator expresses complete confidence in his/her characters. Conversely, any views of a character about him/herself or another figure can either be openly negated by the narrator (for example, Jan was wrong when he said that Piotr had gone to Warsaw), or called into question by revealing new circumstances or by furnishing a character with increasingly untrustworthy qualities. The cancellation of the narrator’s opinion of the protagonist may only occur at the higher level associated with the sender. Similarly, in the event of a conflict between pieces of thematic information in different utterances on the same level (for example, in the utterances of two characters), superior validity is ascribed to that one which comes from the figure enjoying the clearest approbation of the narrator.

20Within the utterance of one subject and on one level, an internal process of valorisation is conducted based on the semantic play between thematic information and implied. This last, which always has the final say, can confirm or undermine thematic information. A conflict between them arises when traits that the speaker applies to him/herself as he/she speaks, or also his/her opinions on other matters, are called into question by his/her manner of speaking. Within a literary text, such disjunction (well-known, indeed, in real life) is usually a purposeful effect, a considered semantic complication.

21A still higher degree of complication, similar to this, occurs when implied information on a lower level contradicts thematic information on a higher level, that is when the mode of verbal behaviour of the character questions or calls in doubt the opinions formulated about this character by the narrator. Such a situation, quite alien to the narrative conventions of the classic novel, would arise, for example, if the narrator discussed a character as if he/she were an unmannered boor, and simultaneously quoted the character’s witty conversational repartee.

22A less refined, but more popular way of compromising the narrator is connected with the complication mentioned above, that arising out of the conflict between thematic information and implied, when that conflict takes place on the level of the narrator’s own speech. Even if the narrator is a dominant narrator, one whose utterance stands on the summit of the hierarchy of all the utterances of the work, his/her speech can (just as the speech of every subject presented in the text) discredit his/her judgments, and at any rate incline one to treat them with some distance or enhance them with new meanings inaccessible to the speaker. This happens if the narration moves away from the linguistic conventions collectively recognized as proper to the speech of people who are “reliable”, or also if it shows a specifically literary inauthenticity, for example if it is clearly stylized or exaggerated in parodic fashion, or finally if it provokes one to search for the sense of a higher order above its literal meaning.6 The utterance of the narrator must also be treated with distance in works presenting a concrete narrator—not even necessarily a so-called naïve narrator, for example a child, a madman, a foreigner—but simply a defined specimen with all the imperfections of an individual determined by bodily factors, personality, learning, biography, etc. In any case, I am less interested in motifs which demand a reinterpretation of the opinion of the narrator, but rather in the theoretical consequence of this fact which is important in defining the highest level associated with the sender within the work.

23The narrator cannot form this highest level. Within the narrator’s competence lies neither a reinterpretation of the meanings of his/her own words, nor the transformation of the semantic structure of the whole work which results from such a reinterpretation. They are, nevertheless, operations which are laid down by the text of the work and steered in a specific direction by it. Thus, there exists within the text a configuration of rules over which the narrator exercises no control, and of which he/she is not the sender. To put it another way, in the work there appears implied information that refers to a subject in possession of a higher level of consciousness than the narrator. This subject is not a presented figure, no thematic information applies to him/her, and no individual utterance is attributed to this subject within the text. However, he/she is the subject of the whole work. Edward Balcerzan calls this “the internal author”, taking this term as equivalent to the English “implied author” and the Russian “obraz avtora” (Balcerzan 1968, 19). However, he ascribes to him/her a somewhat different status, more uncertain and more limited, less systematic than that which I would like to give him/her.

24The subject of the work is the highest level associated with the sender, which appears in every literary text. The example of works with a narrator of limited liability, an example that serves as an argument for the existence within the work of a constructive consciousness superior to the main narrator, does not by any means exhaust either the scope or the type of the functions that fall to this level. Dramatic works illustrate the role of this level more clearly, not giving one the slightest chance to attribute the constructional order of the whole text to any one of the presented narrators. In order not to make the arguments for the existence of this supra-narrational, sender-associated level too easy for myself, I will from now on consider works in which the narrator is —as Michal Głowinski has defined it—an authority (Głowiński 1968), that is in which we can observe no impulses compelling a distance towards the narrator’s view of things. The narrator's account presents the entire world of the work, and within its framework are placed all the utterances of the protagonists and subordinate narrators.

25Is the domination of the narrator over the utterances of a lower level absolute, or is it also limited? I insist on the latter. The narrator has unfettered control over the speech of a character, in the sense that he/she decides on the form of that figure’s appearance in the work, recounts that figure’s speech or quotes him/her, provides authoritative and arbitrary commentary, controls and conducts the moments of the character’s introduction, and passes judgement on him/her. As long as the character is silent, he/she is completely a narrational construction, but a decision by the narrator to give the character a voice immediately grants him/her a certain autonomy. Through commentary, the narrator can change the sense of the character’s words. However, the narrator has no control over the character’s manner of speaking, which exists ready in the very nature of the narrational situation and which is only waiting to be passed over in silence, recounted, or quoted. And, therefore, only thematic information in the speech of the character is subject to the interference of the narrator’s commentary. Implied information, however, remains beyond the narrator’s reach. The narrator cannot question the character’s way of speaking, and it is rather the character who influences the speech of the narrator (the case of free indirect speech, for example) rather than the other way round.

26What is more, we can find beyond the competence of the narrator implied metalinguistic information that is produced throughout the whole text, and that refers to the rules of its construction. The syntagmatic relationships between signs that are found within an individual utterance collectively define that utterance. A literary work is a complex configuration of many utterances, and throughout the whole work, “supra-utterance” and “intra-utterance” constructional rules arise. In very general terms, they determine the structure of the work from various perspectives (and, thus, its linguistic, compositional, genre-oriented, and ideological aspects). The structural principles of a work are not brought into relation to the subjects of individual utterances, but to the subject of the whole work.

27I have in this way returned to the matter of the highest level associated with the sender in a work. I consider that this level is formed by the subject of the work, whose existence is implied by the metalinguistic information concerning the complete structure of the text. Within the framework of the text, this subject has no utterance of its own, it is represented by no thematic information, and neither narrator nor characters know of its existence, although it does happen sometimes that the narrator usurps its competence. It seems, however, that it is possible to ascribe to this subject—as Balcerzan does with regard to the internal author—certain special utterances of a higher level, which are inscribed in the work and which constitute a commentary on the main text. These are: the title of the work, the titles of the chapters, mottoes, and authorial notes.

28The subject of the work is not identical with the main narrator or with the lyrical subject, just as the text of a work is not identical with the utterance of the main narrator or the lyrical subject, particularly as these are generally not present in a large group of works (dramatic works, lyric dialogues, epistolary novels of the past, and recently an increasingly large number of novels and stories, etc.).7 This lack of identity is attested to—among other things—by a lack of concordance between the form of the narration or lyric monologue and the text in its finally transmitted form. The narration (and also, to some extent, the lyric monologue) can be transformed into written speech, declaimed in public, sung, delivered as a tale or yarn, etc. It may simply not contain any signals indicating a specific form for its realization. Conversely, the work always possesses such a form. It is independent of the existing form of the narration or lyric monologue and plays an important role in the perception of the text. Nowadays, it most commonly takes the form of a written and printed text. All the principles governing its final notation point to the subject of the work. Various graphic signals come into play: the type of print, the distin|guishing features of the letters, the lay-out of the page, the divisions of the text, etc. It does not matter who has really decided on these matters – the author, the illustrator, or the technical editor. In the semantic structure of the text, one single subject of the work is fixed; for the work is single, irrespective of whether it has come into being as a collective piece of work, or as a result of individual creativity.

29For our discussion up to now, it has been sufficient to establish the internal connection of implied information with the sender of the work. However, it is now time to turn our attention to further consequences of this connection, ones which go beyond the text of the work. Thus, the rules that govern an utterance permit, within certain boundaries described above, the building-up of a picture of the speaking subject. It is, therefore, possible to say of the speaking subject that it is a semantic correlative of the rules realized in its own speech and that, as the product of these, it exists in the text only as a figure defined by these very rules. At the same time, however, the existence of these rules in an utterance points to someone who has selected them from the external repertoire of construc|tional possibilities, and who has realized them in speech, and, therefore, to someone who has also decided what does not enter the text and what is not possible to reconstruct from the text. The realization of these rules implies, in addition, the status of the sender who exists outside the utterance, the status of someone in command of the appropriate rules, who can locate the utterance in terms of the linguistic system and the system of the literary tradition.

30Let me repeat that implied information points to the sender, the originator of the utterance, and, at the same time, encodes its image in the text, the accuracy of which is guaranteed by the elementary requirements of literary communication. No other picture of the sender that may be present in the text and created by thematic information comes with such guarantees. Nor can any other such picture occur in such intimate dependence on its own model.

31But although every utterance creates a picture of the speaking subject through the implied information concealed in it, it is not the case that every utterance simultaneously portrays its actual creator. This role only occurs with independent utterances, not connected with others, within an utterance of a higher order. It is a matter of indifference whether such independent utterances are completely simple ones, or as complicated as a literary work. In the case of a literary work, only its subject (and therefore the highest level associated with the sender present in the text, being the correlate of all the implied information that encompasses the whole structure of the text) is the equivalent of the real architect of that structure, the one bearing responsibility for it.

32From the point of view of the work, this is the only external sender whom the text directly indicates and who can be inferred from it. This role, however, ensures the sender a purely functional existence, that is, one related to the communication itself and the underlying code, but deprived of the attributes of real human existence. Its features, implied through the organization of the work, characterize it exclusively as an individual user of all the rules realized in the text. From the point of view of the actual process of literary communication, the starting point of which is the author (and, thus, an actual human individual), this figure, derived from the communicative situation and competent in the appropriate rules, is only “a specific role of the author which he/she acts out in the course of the creative process”. It is, therefore, that very figure whom Sławiński describes as the “subject of creative activity” (Sławiński 1967a, 56). The whole metalingual consciousness encoded in the work can be attributed to this figure, although it is by no means identical with the actual conscious|ness of the author who—as is the case with every user of language—speaks, irrespective of whether he/she is able to formulate the grammatical rules which are realized in his/her own speech.

33On the basis of the work itself, it would be difficult to judge to what extent any implied information representing the sender of the work characterizes authorial consciousness. However, clearly formulated meta|lingual comments do reliably testify to this, but only when they appear through the kind of configuration already described, active within the work itself and correcting all the thematic information. Thematic information of a metalingual nature may appear in utterances at any level. It is subject to evaluation by implied information or thematic information coming from a higher level associated with the sender. Thus corrected, it becomes an essential component of the characteristics of individual speaking subjects. The opinions expressed by the principal narrator or accepted by him/her, and verified in the light of the information implied by the entire structure of the text, constitute the formulated poetics of the work. The scope of these poetics is always narrower than the scope of the work's immanent poetics for the reason that beyond any piece of thematic metalingual information there automatically develops some implied information. Implied information always possesses superior validity over thematic information. The same is true of the immanent poetics of a text over those formulated, and of the sender of the work over the author.

34The configuration of the sender sketched out above finds its analogy in that of the receiver. Every act of communication constitutes a combining of the activities of the sender and the receiver of a communication in a relationship of inverted symmetry. Every level associated with the sender is in effect a level of sender-receiver. The characteristic feature of communi|cation within the limits of the same level is the possibility of dialogue, that is, changes of role between sender and receiver. However, the hierarchical dependence between levels is manifested in a one-way and asymmetrical subordination of character to sender-receiver. The lower level knows nothing of the higher. The character does not know that someone is telling his/her story, nor can the character become the sender of an utterance about the narrator or the reader, nor can the character direct remarks to them, nor change roles with them. All initiatives in this area are the property of figures from a superior level. Thus, the narrator may, addressing a character, make him/her the addressee of the narrator’s words and, thus, grant the character a new role, take him/her out of the past tense and make him/her the narrator’s partner. Similarly, in relation to him/herself, the narrator can give him/herself the role of addressee and also of a character, and, thus, give him/herself roles realized on two levels—on that of story and of narration.

35The lowest level associated with the sender within the work is created by speaking characters. The addressees of their utterances are, or may be, other characters. Contact between them often assumes dialogic form. There are not, on this level, substantial differences in the manner of presenting both sides in communication with each other. However, such differences are strongly marked on the highest level of narration. The addressee of this narration appears most frequently as a silent figure and not as an active participant in the dialogue. If it is, however, possible to ascribe some verbal response to this figure, we learn of this as a result of the account or behaviour of the narrator. A clear dialogising of the narrative situation is not met with frequently, but there is valuable documentation of this possibility, at least in Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. The narrator may very clearly sketch out the shape of his/her interlocutor, but may, on the other hand, not give a single verbal hint concerning the interlocutor. In that case, only implied information provides an image of the addressee. Manner of speaking both presents the speaker and equally defines the addressee of an utterance. This dependence is well-known nowadays, and I do not propose to dwell on its description.8

36While describing the highest level of the work, it should be said that the image of the addressee of the narration differs from the image of the addressee of the work to the same extent as the narrator differs from the subject of that work. The addressee of the work, as opposed to the addressee of the narration, can possess no personal features beyond those which are connected with the use of the specific code invoked. The structure of the work completely defines the scope of the addressee’s decoding responsibilities, and these are the only properties which it is possible to assign to him/her. It is known, however, that the work not infrequently possesses certain features that promote a fuller personalization of both the subject and the addressee. For when the structural rules of the work in no way undermine the authority of the narration, then the image of the principal narrator overlaps, as it were, with that of the subject of the work (which is deprived of personal concreteness). This occurs all the more easily, as the narrator often speaks of him/herself as the creator of the work. The case of the addressee is similar. If an authoritative narration concretises the figure of the addressee, then it is easy to supplement the disembodied picture of the addressee of the work with features of that figure.

37The guarantee of a symmetrical link between the sender and the receiver is a mutual and equal acquaintance with the code realized in the work. In the case of sender-receiver relations presented within the text, all misunderstandings between subject and addressee occur to the extent that they are misunderstandings formed by the text and presented in a thematic or implied manner. The text of the work, therefore, contains all the information about the internal course of its acts of communication, and the degree to which the participants in that communication share a code is defined and the effects of their understanding is manifested.

38However, the actual receiver is, from the point of view of the text, only a pure potentiality, and the text can know nothing of its course of action, but only defines the conditions which guarantee understanding, indicating the type and scope of the group of norms which refer to it. Such groups or systems of norms external to the work create an interpretative screen which, always flickering, with shifting edges and scope, and changing with each new work, determines the meanings of the text. It has to be noted that a work, as it develops, constitutes a particular state of the screen, and it is precisely to this particular historically unique moment that the activity of the sender of the work refers (as someone who has competence in and is able to realize the rules of the work’s structure). One should note too that an acquaintance with this unique state of the code defines the duties of the receiver on this level. This would be the level of the activities of the ideal receiver, reconstructing the historical meaning of the work, which was assigned to it at the moment of the work’s creation. Since it is proper to treat the sender of the work as a role of the author, it is possible to treat the ideal receiver as a specialized role of the actual receiver, in other words, of the reader. This is a role which the reader undertakes when he/she aims to reconstruct the historical meaning of the work. The level of the activities of sender-receiver discussed above is, therefore, defined by the rules of historical poetics. On this level, only one meaning is invested in the work as the product of a defined code in a defined situation.

39However, on the final level of reception, that of the activities of an actual reader, the work can manifest an unlimited number of new or altered meanings, depending on the context of the groups of rules in which it is read. Of course, the distance between the initial state of the code and that defined by the consciousness of the reader cannot be too great, especially with regard to the linguistic system, inasmuch as, if this were not so, the work would not so much gain new meanings as lose its sense entirely. This rigour weakens with regard to those norms built up on language and all the resulting literary, ideological, ritual, aesthetic, etc., meanings of the work. The latitude in the choice of interpretative contexts for a work in the area of supra-linguistic rules is quite considerable. It is possible to project the work onto various screens, and in this way it can give answers not only to questions set by the average “lover of fiction” or by students of literature and language. It can also give answers to questions set by the psychologist, politician, historian, and even by the botanist, the numismatist, or meteorologist, the student of cooking and of fashion. However, I am not suggesting that the meanings of which we are speaking at present are arbitrarily projected onto the work, or—to put it differently – that they are not there. I can only say that they were not in the work, that they developed in the semantic material fixed in the text along with the historical changes of the codes which refer to this material. No actual reader has private command of the kind of consciousness of the code which would permit him/her to bring to light all the possible meanings of the work. Such a consciousness, embracing all the meanings of a work, therefore, exists only as a potential and supra-individual phenomenon, realized in a defined historical situation within a delimited area as a range of incomplete individual readings.

Configuration of roles in literary communication
Levels of communication	intra-textual	Levels of sender	Levels of receiver
		speaking character main narrator (lyrical subject) subject of text	character addressee of narration (addressee of lyric monologue) addressee of text
	extra-textual	sender of text (determines rules, subject of creative actions) author	receiver of text (ideal reader) actual reader

Notes

• 1 Not only in students’ work, but also in scholarly publications, one is alarmed and amused by formulations like “the narrator rushed off in pursuit of the bandits” or “the lyrical subject chose for its confessions the form of terza rima aba bcb”. Both these invented, but typical comments are examples of the excessive extension of the functions of the literary subject, in the first case, at the cost of character, and, in the second case, at the cost of text-external allocator of literary rules.
• 2 It only begins to be of importance when it comes to making judgments concerning the origins or the truthfulness of the information transmitted. This essay will completely ignore the issue of denotative meaning in the text.
• 3 On the subject of relations within the paradigm of personal pronouns, see Benveniste (1966, 258-266; 251-257; 225-236).
• 4 The following is a typical realization of such a configuration. On page 429 of the Polish translation of Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie (Potocki 1965), we find the text of a letter: “Tomorrow we sail to San Domingo with kind-hearted Cornadez’s doubloons” (1). This is quoted by a clerk of the court (2); the reader learns of him through Frasqueta Salero’s narration (3); the reader learns of her through Don Roque Busquero’s (4); of him through Lope Suarez’s (5), who is one of the characters in the Gypsy Chief’s story (6); this story, in turn, occurs in that of Alfons van Worden, author of the manuscript (7), discovered by an officer of the French Army, with whose account the work begins (8). I am grateful to Krzysztof Okopień for this example.
• 5 I use the term “secondary modelling system” as it is used in Soviet semiotic studies. Compare: Lotman (1965, 22-37); Ivanov & Toporov (1965).
• 6 Is it possible to ascribe a consciousness of the ambiguity of his/her own manner of speaking to the narrator in such circumstances? Or does it function beyond his/her knowledge? There is no way of judging this arbitrarily and in advance. On every occasion, this decision depends on the presence or absence in the text of a variety of signals that indicate whether the narrator is deliberately shaping his/her speech, consciously entering into the role of a stylizer, or whether, him/herself defined by certain conventions, he is realizing these without knowing it, ignorant of their complex significance. The concept of narrational omniscience which usually concerns the narrator’s attitude to the created world, could be enriched and given depth by including in the concept the consciousness of the narrator with regard to his/her own rules of speaking.
• 7 See, e.g. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying or Julio Cortázar’s La señorita Cora.
• 8 See: Głowiński (1967); Handke (1969). The issue of the sender-receiver relationship is always to the fore in Stanisław Lem’s Filozofia przypadku (1968).