ABSTRACT
Contra epic teleology, in lyrical song all reality becomes—or is revealed as—reflection and even self-reflection. The lyric subverts the epic and its linear genealogies and etymologies by substituting in their place an economy of signs, with its infinite series of metaphorical substitutions. The aspects of self-reflection belong to any complete picture of lyric: they form a counterweight to some of its other, more conservative connotations. The self-reflexivity of lyric can thus sing “beyond the genius of the sea,” as Wallace Stevens writes in “The Idea of Order at Key West.” Such self-reflection is the royal road to turning upon one’s own presumable starting point or foundation and seizing it as only an image of an ideal toward which one remains in evolution. Only self-reflection can create structure and differentiation within an open sea of limitless possible sense. Self-reflexivity forms the basis of a metaphysical dynamism in which identity is actively synthesized rather than imposed as objectively given.
