Less legible meanings : between poetry and philosophy in the work of Emerson

238 Pages·1999·0.89 MB·English

by  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Schirmeister, Pamela

Less Legible Meanings
Between Poetry and Philosophy
in the Work ofEmerson

Less Legible Meanings
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Between Poetry and Philosophy
in the Work of Emerson
Pamela Schirmeister
Stanford University Press
Stanford,California

Stanford University Press
Stanford,California
© by the Board ofTrustees ofthe
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
data appear at the end ofthe book
For Everett Seymour and Sara

Acknowledgments
One ofthis book’s main ideas is that community occurs at an inter-
face we neither will nor choose.When we are most ourselves,we
simply offer ourselvesand take one another up in ways we can nei-
ther guarantee nor answer for.We are possibilities for each other,
and in this potential exchange lies the essence of responsible com-
munity.Writing is a pursuit that at every step implies community in
this sense.
What I have been unable to take up in this project will become
clear in the following pages,and yet I have also benefited,some-
times in the least expected of ways and from the least expected of
places,from the community formed by making this book.I cannot
promise that I have taken up the possibilities offered in the ways
intended,but as Emerson has it,“The benefit overran the merit the
first day and has overran the merit ever since.The merit itself,so-
called,I reckon part ofthe receiving.”1
For me these benefits have been of many different sorts,and I
... vii
viii ... Acknowledgments
am grateful for all ofthem.Jacques Derrida’s seminars,across many
years,taught me to ask the kinds ofquestions that ultimately shape
the work here.I was particularly fortunate to have the opportunity
to team teach with him in the fall ofon the subject ofhospital-
ity;perhaps more than any other single factor,his remarks in that
class made this book a different and far better one than it could oth-
erwise have been. In a quite different way, Stanley Cavell’s work
sparked the thoughts that enabled me to start on this book,and his
continuing influence will be evident on every page.I can only hope
that neither will object to the ways in which they have been taken
for what Cavell would call “incentives for thinking.”
Many of my colleagues offered untiring intellectual and per-
sonal support as I wrote this book.I would like to thank Josephine
Hendin,in particular,for providing both the time and the encour-
agement that writing required,and also Kenneth Silverman,Denis
Donoghue,John Maynard,Larry Lockridge,and Una Chaudhuri.
Carolyn Dever very generously read parts ofthe manuscript,as did
Edgar Dryden,and I thank them for their thoughtful commentary
and patience.I have also been fortunate to know some extraordi-
nary graduate students who helped me to think through the ideas
that eventually showed up here.Sheila Boland,Peter Chapin,Eliza-
beth Duquette,Tony McGowan,Anthony Reynolds,Shaindy Rud-
off,and Deanna Turner all deserve thanks for the intellectual com-
munity they created and for the privilege they offered ofseeing their
own work unfold.Robert Gunn provided important bibliographical
help.Helen Tartar,as always,has been the best editor anyone could
hope for,and Kate Warne was of indispensable help as this book
reached its final stages.
Because a large amount of the thinking that gives contour to
this book is psychoanalytic in nature,I also owe much of what I
have written to colleagues well outside of my field.I have had the
benefit and pleasure of working with them at various conferences,
in study groups,and on graduate courses.Many of them have also
been good friends.I am very thankful to Dr.Leonard Barkin,with
whom I have cochaired a faculty colloquium on psychoanalysis and
the humanities for a number ofyears,for many productive conver-
sations and for making it worthwhile to go on trying to create a
Reading Transference ... ix
forum for genuinely interdisciplinary work;to Dr.Harvey Bezahler,
for his help with the graduate course we team taught on the subject
ofreading and transference;to Dr.Charles Goodstein,for giving me
the opportunity to try out some of my ideas on his appropriately
skeptical analysts-in-training; and to Dr. Adrienne Harris, with
whom I team taught a course on identification and transference in
literature and psychoanalysis,for all ofthe comments and ideas that
helped me as I revised and expanded a first draft ofthis work.I am
especially grateful for the help ofDr.Patricia Stevens without whom
this book would have been neither started nor finished.Her contin-
ued kindness and insight got me from one chapter to another and
taught me much more than shows up in these pages.
Some debts are harder to discharge than others.As always,my
parents have believed in what I do and supported it in many differ-
ent ways.To Everett Seymour and Sara go special thanks:to Everett,
for patiently putting up with the worst ofme so that the best ofme
could come out on these pages; and to Sara, for her remarkable
sense of perspective,which has helped me to keep mine.No,Sara,
you still cannot practice dancing on the computer keypad,but yes,
the next book may well have pictures.
P.S.
Konstanz,Germany
December