Christopher Smart Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Geoffrey H. Hartman

Critical Essay by Geoffrey H. Hartman

SOURCE: "Christopher Smart's 'Magnificat': Toward a Theory of Representation," in The Fate of Reading and Other Essays, University of Chicago Press, 1975, pp. 74-98.

In the following essay, which was first published in 1974, Hartman addresses questions regarding the nature of verbal representation which arise from Smart's elaborate word-play in Jubilate Agno.

What is the consummation of perfect freedom? Not to be ashamed of one's self.

Nietzsche

For when men get their horns again, they will delight to go uncovered.

C. Smart

Theory As Prologue

When we present one person to another, a feeling of formality persists. It may be a residual awe, relating to exceptional presentations (of the child to elders in early or ritual circumstances) or it may be a more general sense of the distance between persons. The latter feeling would still have a psychological component, for the distance between persons is like that between...
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