ABSTRACT
The odd mixture of gratification and embarrassment attendant upon the confirmation of the already known in the previously unread is a sentiment familiar to most critics. The gratification is often what prevails: the satisfaction at finding one’s critical presuppositions recognized by the text one brings them to is so constitutive a feature of the hermeneutical project that it must seem perverse not to embrace it as legitimate. Yet, if a critic is committed to reading, a sense of embarrassment at having been right all along typically refuses to go away. One strategy to defuse this refusal consists in rephrasing the confirmation as an affirmation, as a truth spoken by the text prior to its being spoken in the reading, now understood as a mere echo. A further strategy then characteristically serves to dispel the disabling sense of belatedness this entails: the text is seen as having always already said what the critic, too, had always already said. Critic and text merge, and since the critic’s self-definition requires that his or her voice be that of the text, this unison is staged as the total disappearance of the interpretation in the face of its object. A notorious instance of this gesture is Heidegger’s remark on his own readings of Hölderlin:
Der letzte, aber auch der schwerste Schritt jeder Auslegung besteht darin, mit ihren Erläuterungen vor dem reinen Dastehen des Gedichtes zu verschwinden. Das dann im eigenen Gesetz stehende Gedicht bringt selbst unmittelbar ein Licht in die anderen Gedichte. Daher meinen wir beim wiederholenden Lesen, wir hätten die Gedichte schon immer so verstanden. Es ist gut, wenn wir das meinen.3
