Reading the story a few times and it is a masterpiece which eludes the definitive, some observations will I think stand. The voice is that of an effete aesthete who for reasons which are unstated is performing a scalpel job on Menard. He seems a Prufrock (1915) with extra added resentment. This is evident from the catalogue of the works and pomps of Menard which are in short; futile, otiose and doomed. The Quixote project then is the crowning achievement of sublime idiocy. The sere bise of irony blows steadily.
To this third interpretation (which I judge to be irrefutable) I am not sure I dare to add a fourth, which concords very well with the almost divine modesty of Pierre Menard: his resigned or ironical habit of propagating ideas which were the strict reverse of those he preferred.
There is a semi truth, a Menardian truth, to the view that quotation is not just that thing that is quoted but has the sheen of intention hovering ectoplasmically over it. The Brillo Box is an emanation in a subtle medium neither cardboard nor indeed plywood.
Menard (perhaps without wanting to) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the halting and rudimentary art of reading: this new technique is that of the deliberate anachronism and the erroneous attribution. This technique, whose applications are infinite, prompts us to go through the Odyssey as if it were posterior to the Aeneid and the book Le jardin du Centaure of Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier. This technique fills the most placid works with adventure. To attribute the Imitatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand Céline or to James Joyce, is this not a sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual indications?(James E. Irby trans.)
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I'm not one who keeps up, but this post brings back to mind my confusion when reading blog discussions of intentionality. What I intend is what I mean to do, the purpose behind my action; I'd never considered that intention could have anything to do with representation, with the correspondence between my thoughts and what I'm thinking about. So a work of art would be intentional to the extent that it represents accurately its subject. A sculpture of Christ could have intentionality if it's an imitation of Christ, whether that's what the sculptor had in mind, regardless of whether the sculptor had the mind of Christ while doing the work. A quotation has maximal intentionality: it perfectly represents the quoted phrase. As an art object a real Brillo box has maximal intentionality: it perfectly represents a real Brillo box. But right: do the acts of quoting and imitating produce some emanation in excess?
Since we are discussing art and intention let us first mention the concept of the image. Let us say that you have an image of the Parthenon (Sartre ht) can you count the number of pillars on your image? Unless you are an eidetic savant probably not. The image represents your intention, the goal of your consciousness. For the moment your mind is filled with the savor of that noble edifice, you remember the cool of the marble paving on your bare feet and how much bigger it was than the photos would suggest. They have to go back a long way to get it all in. An intention then is a direction.
The Brillo Box must be the switch of intention away from the cardboard item to the ‘art’ object. A.C. Danto would say that the original is transfigured.
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