Mantissa

The novel, Mantissa, immediately delves the reader into a world of detailed imagery, fascination with language as well as formulated impressions of the human mind. The influence of Lacan’s view on the ‘Real’ and symbolism of that ‘Real’ can relate to Jean Baudrillards use of the simulcrum to explain the image and its part in reality. These ideas are clearly represented in the first pages of this novel. Through the psychoanalytic theory, one can see the relationship between language, the self, and reality to be important causes in the character’s response, and therefore his relationship, to other people.
“…conscious of a luminous and infinite haze…over a sea of vapor and looking down; then less happily, after an interval of obscure duration, of murmured sounds and peripheral shadows, which reduced the impression of boundless space and empire to something much more contracted and unaccommodating” (Fowles 3).
In a moment of pure weakness and fragility, when one is at their most vulnerable, the abnormal and strange can seem to be regular. When one hopes for a recognition of reality, the mind will stretch one’s awareness to believe in a reality from whatever is available. Baudrillard’s simulation, simulcrum, is a false representation of reality. These images can be seen as a simulation in that they stand in for a reality, a true reality that the character cannot grasp at this time. The ‘Real, for Lacan, is impossible and different from reality. It is a perversion of reality, but one that shares the meaning of truth for the character. The language used to describe this reality of obscure detail, is the language that the character acknowledges to be part of reality, or at least his reality. Lacan’s view of the symbolic is a relationship between the self and language—we desire an understanding of reality and through the creation and use of language one creates a symbolic representation of that reality. Language is the ‘effect of the symbolic’.