"What does it mean to read between the texts? In a certain sense we always read, when we read, 'between' (the lines, for example), because reading always involves a space of presentation where the figures gesture to each other in configurations and constellations that present more than any single figure means. But the structure of the space between the figures, which is determined by them and determines them, is shaped in more particular ways than by the mere universal differential relation of all signs."--from the ...
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"What does it mean to read between the texts? In a certain sense we always read, when we read, 'between' (the lines, for example), because reading always involves a space of presentation where the figures gesture to each other in configurations and constellations that present more than any single figure means. But the structure of the space between the figures, which is determined by them and determines them, is shaped in more particular ways than by the mere universal differential relation of all signs."--from the Introduction In a series of readings of Sophocles, Hvlderlin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Benjamin, Rainer Ndgele investigates the extraordinary territory that lies not merely between texts but also between languages--in translations. This space between texts and langauges is approached in the figure of the echo. It is the figure of a transmission through and with the help of resistance. It is a complex figure that cannot be reduced to the simple repetition of a stable entity or origin. And yet, Ndgele argues, it is in this "echo chamber" of resonances that history in all its concreteness has its place and becomes readable. "In Rainer Ndgele's new book, translation becomes a pretext for assembling a Benjaminian constellation of master-texts prodigious merely in their decipherment: Hvlderin, Baudelaire, Benjamin himself, Kafka, and Brecht; Heidegger and Derrida in the background; and so on. In three separate chapters, one focusing on echolalia, one on the names of the gods, and a consummate one on Eros, Ndgele assembles works corresponding to a Romantic early modernist aesthetic of translation--a hovering between languages and linguistic modalities that is in keepingwith other Romantic scenarios for an aesthetic transcendence grounded in secular culture and human capability. Indicative of Ndgele's mastery of the essayistic form, each chapter is founded on prodigious feats of reading and interpretation, each is solidly argued, and each is backed by a wonderful stock of textual scholarship."--Henry Sussman, State University of New York at Buffalo
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