ABSTRACT
Reading literature necessarily includes both ‘presence’ and ‘absence’. The characters and the author are simultaneously there and not there, and the words also constitute a substitute for the missing objects. Thus, reading swamps the reader’s inner coping with the two forces in his psyche pulling in opposite directions: his attempt to complement the lack as against the necessity and wisdom of coming to terms with the lack.
Two central aspects of the dialectic between the present and the absent that arise in reading are explored and illustrated: (1) the writer as a present-absent and (2) the absent as a motive.
The dialectic between the present and the absent is illustrated in Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ ([1844] 2011) and in Henry James’ novel The Aspern Pages (1888).
