Dictations: On Haunted Writing - Softcover

Ronell, Avital

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803289456 ISBN 13: 9780803289451

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1993

Synopsis

"["Dictations"] will change not only the way we read Goethe, but the way we read." - Rainer Nagele, author of "Reading after Freud". Avital Ronell, author of "Crack Wars" and "The Telephone Book", defies the undefiable. In "Dictations" she looks at Goethe, the dictator. A figure whose every word is treated with reverence by Germanists, Goethe is exemplary. But of what? As if teetering between life and death, Goethe was born in a legendary way: thought to be stillborn, he was brought to life by extraordinary efforts. Eighty-three years later he died, or seemed to, and was praised as an immortal spirit. His spirit immediately began to haunt. Four years later Johann Peter Eckermann published two volumes recounting his conversations with Goethe. Goethe quickly got the best of him. He spoke eerily through Eckermann to a world eager to hear his latest words. Eckermann's books are usually considered to be by Goethe, and Eckermann himself has become another of Goethe's creations.The master of Faust and Wilhelm Meister keeps coming back. He visited the dreams and anxieties of persons as sensitive as Kafka, Nietzsche, and Freud, speaking up in quotations or casting his shadow over poems, stories, and the birth pangs of psychoanalysis. He is a difficult case. Avita Ronell has never shied from the difficult. In "Dictations", her first book, originally published in 1986, she starts at the edge of an abyss - the question of spirit, as exemplified by an author whose writings transcended even himself. Often invoked but never seen, spirit has been a matter literary scholars have declined to look at or look for. Here, though restless, it comes into view. In a new preface, Ronell describes the circumstances surrounding the writing and reception of the book.

About this title

Review

"["Dictations"] will change not only the way we read Goethe, but the way we read."--Rainer Nagele, author of "Reading after Freud"--Rainer Nagele

About the Author

Avital Ronell is a professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma & Violence project. She is author of The Test Drive and many other books.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803289456
• ISBN 13: 9780803289451
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 205