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Mutual Implications Otherness in Theory and John Berryman's Poetry

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Mutual Implications Otherness in Theory and John Berryman's Poetry Mutual Implications Otherness in Theory and John Berryman’s Poetry of Loss Elias Schwieler Umeå 2003 Mutual Implications Otherness in Theory and John Berryman’s Poetry of Loss Elias Schwieler Skrifter från moderna språk 9 Institutionen för moderna språk Umeå universitet 2003 Umeå universitet SE-901 87 Umeå universitet Tfn. +46 90 786 51 38 Fax. +46 90 786 60 23 http://www.mos.umu.se/forskning/publikationer Skrifter från moderna språk 9 Umeå universitet ISSN 1650-304X Skriftseriens redaktör: Raoul J. Granqvist © 2003 Elias Schwieler Omslag: Francis Bacon, “Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror” (1976). © Francis Bacon/BUS 2003 Tryckt av Print & Media, Umeå universitet 2003:304049 ISBN 91-7305-450-X ISSN 1650-304X ἐδιζησάµην ἐµεωυτόν (I searched myself) Heraclitus, Fragment 101 Contents Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... 8 Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 9 Shoshana Felman’s Theory of Mutual Implications ........................................................ 10 Commentary, Dialogue, and the Other............................................................................. 13 Previous Research ............................................................................................................ 21 Departure...................................................................................................................... 21 The Subversive............................................................................................................. 23 Anasemia...................................................................................................................... 24 Death ............................................................................................................................ 28 Berryman Research and the Poetry of Loss ................................................................. 30 Synopsis ........................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter One....................................................................................................................... 35 Beginnings: Departure in Berryman and Heidegger .............................................. 35 The Departure of The Dream Songs................................................................................. 36 Departure in Heidegger’s “Language in the Poem”......................................................... 40 The Call of Difference and the Metaphysics of Mourning .............................................. 49 Nostalgia: Berryman, Heidegger, Derrida........................................................................ 60 Chapter Two...................................................................................................................... 68 The Subversive in Theory and Practice ..................................................................... 68 David S. Reynolds’s Exposition of the Subversive.......................................................... 68 Implications: The Subversive as a Concept and The Dream Songs................................. 76 Chapter Three ................................................................................................................... 88 Anasemia: Berryman’s Poetry of Loss and Biography.......................................... 88 Nicolas Abraham’s Concept of Anasemia ....................................................................... 88 Biographic Anasemia ....................................................................................................... 92 Anasemia and Berryman’s Poetry.................................................................................. 105 Chapter Four.................................................................................................................... 116 Death and the Work of Poetry.................................................................................... 116 Preliminary Analysis of Death and Berryman’s Poetry of Loss .................................... 117 Image, Poetry, and Death in Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature ................... 126 Departure and Death in Berryman’s Poems of Loss ...................................................... 141 Conclusion........................................................................................................................ 149 Bibliography.................................................................................................................... 152 Acknowledgements When I began this project some six years ago I departed on a journey into unknown territories. First of all it meant moving to a new town, it also meant becoming a doctoral student in a new academic environment, and it meant getting to know new people. I can conclude now that my journey has been successful, and for that I have many to thank. First, I want to express my gratitude to my supervisor Professor Raoul Granqvist, who with a firm but friendly hand, with knowledge and skill, has guided me through the struggle of finishing what I started. For inspiration and being in different ways my academic models and mentors, I wish to thank Professor Emeritus Sven-Johan Spånberg and Associate Professor Mark Troy. Another important and inspiring force has been UCI Distinguished Professor J. Hillis Miller, who kindly invited me to spend a year at the University of California, Irvine. However, without my friends this thesis would not have been possible. I want especially to mention those who are, have been, and continue to be true pillars of strength in my life: Philip Grey, Dr. Katarina Gregersdotter, Dr. Anders Steinvall, Mats Deutschmann, Peter Nissnis, Jon Olzon, and Anders Wiklund. Furthermore, I owe many thanks to those friends and colleagues at the department who have given me useful and inspiring comments at seminars and provided me with excellent company at the pub or at coffee: Dr. Maria Lindgren, Dr. Berit Åström, Morgan Lundberg, Åsa Olsson, Dr. Heidi Hansson, Martin Shaw, Malin Isaksson, Maria Svensson, Dr. Patrik Svensson, Dr. Lena Karlsson, Kristian Dyrvold, and Van Leavenworth. Special thanks go to Anna Linzie who admirably served as my opponent at my final seminar, and to Dr. Mark Shackleton who without notice and without being given much time meticulously proofread my manuscript. I also wish to thank Gerd Lilljegren, Christina Karlberg, and Gunn-Marie Forsberg for helping me with all kinds of practical matters. Knut & Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse generously financed two years of full time study, and Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse granted me a generous stipend that made the last months of finishing the thesis so much easier. My family has supported me every step of the way and, of course, deserves my extreme gratitude: my mother Catherine, my father Hans and his wife Gunnel, my brother Sebastian, his wife Katja, and my niece Cornelia. It is to my family I dedicate this book. Jeanette and Stefanie, what can I say except I love you. Introduction In his introductory “Note” to The Dream Songs, John Berryman states that the protagonist of the poem, Henry, “has suffered an irreversible loss,”1 in the lyric poem “The Ball Poem,” Berryman introduces what he calls “the epistemology of loss,”2 and in his long poem Homage to Mistress Bradstreet loss appears as the impossibility of absolute presence in the poet’s attempt to conjure up Anne Bradstreet from the absence of history and death. It is the purpose of this thesis to examine how loss in Berryman’s poetry functions as a poetic strategy, and how loss can come to relate to the act of interpreting Berryman’s poetry and the act of interpretation itself. I have chosen four different theoretical perspectives, which provide a space for the interaction between Berryman’s poetry of loss and literary and critical theory. The four perspectives are: departure in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger; David S. Reynolds’s analysis of the subversive in the American Renaissance; Nicolas Abraham’s concept of anasemia; and poetry and death in the thinking of Maurice Blanchot in his book The Space of Literature. My starting point is the idea that Berryman’s poetry of loss and the different theories I take up to discussion implicate, and as a consequence complicate, each other. This premise includes the assumption that there is more to the relation between theory and literature than the mere application of theory to literature. As a consequence, each analysis in the thesis, the analyses of poetry through theory and theory through poetry, shapes and involves the interpretation of the different texts I examine. Furthermore, to involve theory and poetry in a dialogue necessarily distorts both the perception of the theory and the poetry, and it becomes, then, a question of perspective, a perspective that is never free from distortion but always formed, deformed, and reformed by the context, including, of course, the context this study provides. It is, in other words, my reading that brings these apparently unrelated texts together, and by analyzing the texts through the double perspective of poetry and theory, but without the authority and hierarchy of theory over poetry, as is often done, I want to trace what could be called the otherness of each text. This move, however, is not meant to signal the end of interpretation, but, on the contrary, is intended
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