The Pathos of Distance: Affects of the Moderns

(Hardback)

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Jean-Michel Rabat uses Nietzsches image of a pathos of distance, the notion that values are created by a few gifted and lofty individuals, as the basis for a wide-ranging investigation into the ethics of the moderns. Revealing overlooked connections between Nietzsches and Benjamins ideas of history and ethics, Rabat provides an original genealogy for modernist thought, moving through figures and moments as varied as Yeats and the birth of Irish Modernism, the ethics of courage in Virginia Woolf, Rilke, Apollinaire, and others in 1910, T. S. Eliots post-war despair, Jean Cocteaus formidable selfmythology in his first film The Blood of a Poet, Siri Hustvedts novel of American trauma, and J. M. Coetzees dystopia portraying an affectless future haunted by a messianic promise.

Reviews

An often fascinating mix of theoretical reflection, intellectual history and literary criticism ... The Pathos of Distance is invariably interesting and its amazing erudition is simply dazzling. * Literary Research *
In his latest book, the prolifically inventive scholar Jean-Michel Rabat offers a lyrical meditation on Nietzsches famous concept of the 'pathos of distance,' drawing out the implications of this pathos for modernist aesthetics. Instead of a conventional go-ahead academic argument, Rabat presents a 'chronotopic mosaic,' ranging across several languages and cultural traditions. In this panoramic vista, unexpected affinities emerge between such figures as Benjamin and Duchamp, Eliot and Lukcs, Kierkegaard and Siri Hustvedt. Breathtaking in range and erudition, and crafted with elegance and wit, The Pathos of Distance enriches our understanding of modernism while pioneering a new mode of thinking and writing about art and literature. * Maud Ellmann, Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Professor of the Development of the Novel in English, University of Chicago, USA *
Jean-Michel Rabats exceptional grasp of the broadest landscapes of modern literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis and culture is brought to bear in this volume on a range of writings and visual representations from the late nineteenth century to the present, from Yeats and Eliot to Coetzee and Hustvedt. In these brilliant readings and explorations of terms for thought aura, allegory, affect we find texts, images and concepts opened up in entirely new ways. * Laura Marcus, Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature, New College, University of Oxford, UK *
The Pathos of Distance is an inspiring achievement, a work of remarkable breadth and precision. It is an invaluable addition to the conversation on modernism and affect The book reminds us that critical reading at its best the kind of generous reading that revitalizes conversations and opens up new interpretive avenues is often complicit with methodological inventiveness. * James Joyce Quarterly *

Author Bio

Jean-Michel Rabat is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Crimes of the Future (2014), The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis (2014), the edited volume 1922: Literature, Culture, Politics, and Think, Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human (2016).