Marginal modernity : the aesthetics of dependency from Kierkegaard to Joyce

350 Pages·2013·2.092 MB·English

by  Lisi, Leonardo F

Marginal Modernity

Marginal Modernity
the aesthetics of dependency
from kierkegaard to joyce
Leonardo F. Lisi
fordham university press New York 2013
this book is made possible by a collaborative grant
from the andrew w. mellon foundation.
Copyright © 2013 Fordham University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lisi, Leonardo F.
Marginal modernity : the aesthetics of dependency
from Kierkegaard to Joyce / Leonardo F. Lisi. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-4532-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Modernism (Literature) 2. Dependency
(Psychology) in literature. 3. Aesthetics in literature.
4. Philosophy in literature. I. Title.
PN56.M54L57 2013
809'.9112—dc23
2012027756
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
For Emily—
Lad saa Gud beholde Himlen, naar jeg maa
beholde hende.

contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Citations xiii
Introduction: The Aesthetics of Modernism 1
part one
Philosophical Foundations
1. Presuppositions and Varieties of Aesthetic Experience 23
part two
Aesthetic Forms at the Scandinavian Periphery
2. Johan Ludvig Heiberg and the Autonomy of Art 57
3. Aesthetics of Fragmentation in Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt 87
4. Nora’s Departure and the Aesthetics of Dependency 117
part three
Modernism and Dependency
5. Henry James and the Emergence of the Major Phase 169
6. Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Language of the Future 204
7. Conflict and Mediation in James Joyce’s “The Dead” 220
8. Intransitive Love in Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Notebooks
of Malte Laurids Brigge 247
Conclusion 269
Notes 273
Bibliography 301
Index 331

acknowledgments
It seems inevitable that a book concerned with the concept of depen-
dency should be deeply conscious of the many debts it has incurred.
The present project was begun in the Department of Comparative
Literature at Yale University, where, from its inception, it received the
invaluable support and encouragement of Pericles Lewis and Paul Fry.
Many other members of Yale’s faculty were instrumental in provid-
ing feedback at early stages of the manuscript and in challenging me
to explore some of these ideas in their initial form, including Karsten
Harries, Katie Trumpener, Carol Jacobs, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Benja-
min Harshav, and Moira Fradinger. No better beginning to this book
could have been wished for, and I am deeply grateful for their contin-
ued interest and support.
Early on in the research for this book, I had the great fortune of
spending a summer as a visiting researcher at the Søren Kierkegaard
Research Center at the University of Copenhagen, then under the
direction of Niels Jørgen Cappelørn. The opportunity to use the cen-
ter’s resources, to engage in discussion with the outstanding schol-
ars it has gathered, and to benefit from its director’s extraordinary
intellectual generosity and dedication proved a utopian experience.
Additional research stays at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidel-
berg and at the Howard and Edna Hong Kierkegaard Library at St.
Olaf College were likewise critical in developing my work. I am grate-
ful especially to Cynthia Lund for helping to make my stay at St. Olaf
as productive as possible.
The book obtained its final form after I had the privilege of join-
ing the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University. The vibrant
intellectual life of this community is extraordinary, and the support
and encouragement that my colleagues at the Humanities Center have
x Acknowledgments
offered me during this time have been invaluable. I am particularly
indebted to Michael Fried, Gabrielle Spiegel, and Hent de Vries, who,
with unlimited generosity, provided repeated guidance and assistance
for this project during its concluding stages. Without them, my doubts
about the possibility of finishing would certainly have been more fre-
quent than they were, and the final product has benefited immeasur-
ably from their involvement.
More people than I can thank here have had the kindness to share
their ideas with me on many of the topics that I develop in the pages
ahead. Ruth Leys, Paola Marrati, and members of the Johns Hopkins
Mellon Seminar led by Gabrielle Spiegel have patiently listened to
my arguments and challenged me to think about them in new ways.
Jon Stewart at the University of Copenhagen has repeatedly encour-
aged me to pursue my work on Kierkegaard and first suggested that
I write on Heiberg. Tobias Boes arranged for me to present an early
version of the material on Hofmannsthal to the German Department
at the University of Notre Dame, where I benefited greatly from the
audience’s comments. I had the opportunity to share an early version
of the chapter on Joyce with the English faculty at Bowdoin College,
and their remarks and questions likewise helped me clarify my argu-
ment further. Frode Helland from the Ibsen Center at the Univer-
sity of Oslo and Mark Sandberg from the Scandinavian Department
at the University of California, Berkeley, offered me extremely kind
encouragement and support at a very early stage of this project. Glenn
Odom and Gísli Magnusson made me question my reasoning anew at
a point when I already thought that it was settled. At Fordham Uni-
versity Press, Helen Tartar’s outstanding editorial guidance, and the
help of Thomas C. Lay and Tim Roberts, among many others, made
the process of completing the manuscript and preparing it for publi-
cation as effortless and pleasurable as I could possibly have wished.
Laura Iwasaki provided scrupulous and excellent copyediting of the
manuscript. I am also indebted to the referees for Fordham University
Press, whose detailed comments and suggestions were extremely use-
ful in bringing this project to its conclusion.
Finally, my deepest gratitude is to my family. Dispersed across
four countries and three continents, their love has been with me at
all times. Emily, sola per cui . . . , shared every moment of this book.
With infinite patience, she tested every thought that it contains and,
in her superior intelligence, forgave the author for his failings.