ABSTRACT
From such circularity and enclosure there are various ways out. One is mysticism, let’s call it the apprehension of what is beyond time and space for the moment; another is Buddhistic apprehension of suchness, quidditas, the immediacy of things, of which language is the dualistic distorting expression; and a third is music. George Steiner, in his important book, Real Presence, insists on music having a vital duty to represent the awkward weakness in the arguments of contemporary critical theory; it is a pointer to a transcendence that one ignores at one’s folly.
