In the satirical novel “Tristram Shandy” (published 1759-67), Laurence Sterne tells the story of Tristram Shandy, a gentleman who sets out to narrate “the history of myself.” Tristram wants to begin with the beginning of his life. 

This, however, turns out to be a complex task. Although the novel starts with a scene during which a woman is about to give birth to Tristram, our hero is actually not born until many pages later, about halfway through the novel. For Tristram realizes that before he can narrate his own birth, he must recount the circumstances leading up to this event.

Somewhat later, however, he realizes that these circumstances have a pre-history as well. And so on. Tristram’s writing regresses further and further as he continuously discovers details, anecdotes, and events that in increasingly peripheral and peculiar ways relate to his life. In attempting to narrate his life story as thoroughly as possible, Tristram stumbles into a multitude of other stories, which he feels compelled to recount before he can tell his own.

Even after he is born, Tristram remains a marginal character in the novel ― sidelined, as it were, by the stories of his father, his mother, his uncle and a host of other characters. Tristram’s project ― to write the story of his life ― no doubt belongs among the most ludicrous and hilarious failures ever portrayed in the canon of western literature. In another sense, the novel makes an important point about the relationship between life and work.

In “The Poetics,” one of the earliest treatises on the literary work, Aristotle explains that a work is a whole, and that it is complete. “A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” Aristotle writes; “A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be.

An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it.” The important thing to note about this definition is the way in which Aristotle defines both beginning and ending negatively ― the former being defined as something which has nothing prior to itself, whereas the latter has nothing following after it. Only the middle is defined positively; as something with a beginning and an ending. The middle comes out of a nothingness and progresses into a nothingness.

But how can something emerge out of nothing and disappear into nothing? In the Christian bible, God creates the world out of nothing, creation ex nihilo; the world ends with the apocalypse or the revelation ― when the meaning of the world is finally revealed.

In a secular context, however, beginnings and endings are less absolute, less secure. Aristotle’s definition of the work underlines the anthropological function of “the work.” The notion of the work constitutes a cognitive frame by which we understand the great mysteries of existence, birth and death. We don’t remember our own birth and we don’t experience our own death.

That is to say, we don’t control the beginning and the ending of our lives ― let alone what comes before or after. We experience, and to some extent have control over, the middle. But without being in control of the beginning and the ending, this middle remains fundamentally contingent; at some random point we are born, and at some random point we die. It is here that the notion of the work plays a crucial role. The work helps us understand life’s span.

Underneath this we find a darker truth; that life is essentially accidental, devoid of meaning ― or, life’s meaning is always changeable because it is not fixed by the beginning or the ending.

Beginnings and endings guarantee permanence; they prevent flux. Even the most voluminous works contain a beginning and an ending. In “The Arabian Nights” ― or, “One Thousand and One Night” ― the narrator Scheherazade chronicles one story after another to the king in order to avoid being killed.

The stories are marvelous, but what saves her ― as E.M. Forster points out in “Aspects of the Novel” ― is the simple fact that she continuously postpones narrating the ending. Eventually, however, she runs out of stories; but instead of killing her, the king decides to marry her. One is tempted here to say that the king marries into her work; the work that saves her, the meaning of her life ― and the king wants to become part of that work.

Whatever happens after the work has finished is irrelevant. The classic fairytale always begins with “Once upon a time” and ends with “They lived happily ever after.” That is the work; and it is also, of course, a fiction because lives continue and meanings change.

The work is a cognitive fiction which we use to make sense of our lives. It demarcates our life, our self, our mind; the work endows them with a beginning and an ending, and thus a stable meaning.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume described the human mind as “a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.” We can never be too sure who we are, Hume seems to suggest. If we nonetheless feel certain about our identity it is because we understand our lives in terms of the work.

The work’s great insight is that everything, in the end, is contingent. And it is precisely because of this contingency that we need the notion of the work to establish ― fictionally, as it were ― borders; this is where my self begins, this is where it ends. It is therefore a categorical mistake to believe that the literary work merely imitates life. It would be more correct to say that it is the other way around; life emulates the work ― that is, life understood as middle with a beginning and an end.

When Sterne’s novel “Tristam Shandy” finally comes to an end, we find ourselves, once again, at a point before Tristram is born. Tristram’s autobiographical efforts utterly fail to create any sense of his life ― precisely because Tristram attempts to imitate life, life’s multitude of stories that pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations, to quote Hume again.

Tristram attempts to capture too much, and thus, ends up capturing nothing at all. His life is a middle that expands infinitely, and purposelessly, backwards and forwards. But in spite of all its acrobatic excursions, the novel “Tristram Shandy” is of course also a work. It may be one of the most ironic works ever written, and no doubt intentionally so; as if Laurence Sterne wanted to make the point that the work is ― after all ― just a fiction. 

By Eli Park Sorensen

Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.