Rhythms
Subtitle: on the work, translation, and psychoanalysis
By: Nicolas Abraham ; collected and presented by Nicholas T. Rand and Maria Totok [i.e. Torok] ; translated by Benjamin Thigpen and Nicholas T. Rand.
Contributors: Rand, Nicholas T.; Torok, Maria.
Series: Meridian : crossing aesthetics; Meridian (Stanford, Calif.)
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 169
Subjects: Poetics.; Rhythm.; Psychoanalysis and literature.
Description: Despite Nicolas Abraham's fame as a psychoanalyst and philosopher, few people are aware of the direct relevance of his work to issues of poetics and literary theory. The fourth volume of his posthumous publication, Rhythms explores the relationship between the interpretation of texts and psychoanalysis.

The three essays offer a new approach to the problem of literary creation and a psychoanalytic definition of temporality. In contradistinction to both Husserl and Heidegger in the German tradition, and Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in France, Abraham links the emergence of human time to a form of poetic creation. He identifies in rhythm a previously unexplored mode of inquiry elicited by poetry and by what may be called one's life as a work of art.

In Rhythms, Abraham develops a systematic theory of the poetic position of writers, readers, and psychoanalysts.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-169).
Collection of three previously unpublished essays written between 1948 and 1962.
Table of contents: title: Outline of a phenomenology of poetic expression; title: Rhythmizing consciousness : an essay on the temporality of rhythm; title: Psychoanalytic aesthetics : time, rhythm, and the unconscious; title: Paradeictic : translation, psychoanalysis, and the work of art in the writings of Nicolas Abraham / by Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok.