The Melancholic and Messianic Allure of Venice, or How Best to Access the Inaccessible

Philosophy Today 60 (2):371-395 (2016)
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Abstract

This article engages Agamben’s view that philosophy and poetry need to remarry, to heal a fracture that springs from the origin of Western culture between knowing and having the object. While Agamben would like philosophy to wax more poetic and poetry to show more awareness of its philosophical implications, he also encourages direct interventions between these two arenas. This essay thus stages an interpenetration of poetic writing and philosophy. James’s embodiment of Agamben’s theory of melancholia in The Aspern Papers set alongside Brodsky’s reflection of Agamben’s notions of nudity, the specter, and the messianic in Watermark—in relation to depictions of Venice—leads to the realization that Agamben’s messianic renders melancholia inoperative. Agamben’s messianic vision that finds salvation in loss cancels the desirability of clinging to the lost object by showing the redemption of its passage.

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