Something in the world forces us to think…
It may be grasped in a range of
affective tones: wonder, love,
hatred, suffering.
— Gilles Deleuze
Naked Anachronism
from: James the Minimalist
Henry James’s last completed novels—The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl—are among the greatest achievements of modern fiction. The stories are perverse; characters are compelling even in their most cruel acts; acts themselves are often calculating and loving at the same time; every couple is troubled by the clash—or mesh—of love and self-interest; the fate of the heroes and heroines is ultimately decided by something that lies just beyond the reach of their own will and decision; the stories draw on deep-seated myths and fables but end with unsettling lack of finality. What more could readers want from a novel?
Passages.
Keats
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
These lines open the third and final stanza of “Ode on Melancholy” and seem to express the thematic node of the poem: melancholy arises because whatever is beautiful dies, because pleasure arcs from ache of anticipation to poison of fulfillment, and because joy departs as soon as it is realized….
Freud, Sigmund
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the founder of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiberg, Moravia, today in the Czech Republic. His father Jakob, 40, and his mother Amalia, 21, were from families of tradesmen in the Jewish villages (shtetls) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Jakob was twice a widower with two grown sons. The family moved to a poor, predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Vienna when Freud was a child. He completed his medical studies at the University of Vienna at the age of twenty-five, specializing in zoology, neurology, and physiology. Initially intent on a career in research, he turned to a training in medicine and soon took an interest in what were called “nervous illnesses….”
From the Archive.
Fredric Jameson, 1934-2004
In April I was thrilled that he was celebrating his ninetieth birthday. When contacted by Critical Inquiry in June I was amazed to learn that he had a new book on French theory coming out. And then on the day I sat down to sketch out these reflections on The Years of Theory came the news that Fredric Jameson had died. Delight, marvel, and sorrow arrived in such rapid succession that they remain tangled and fused in my heart….
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