"In the Mystic Circle": The Space of the Unspeakable in Henry James's The Sacred Fount

(14.) See my essay "Risking the Cracks: The Mystic Self in Henry James's The Golden Bowl."

(15.) Sicker cites an entry in James's Notebooks in which James cogitates a story about a brother and sister who "have, in a word, exactly the same experience in life. Two lives, two beings, and one experience." The sister "understands, perceives, shares with every pulse of her being. He has to tell her nothing--she knows: it's identity of sensation, of vibration" (119). This is, I would argue, a variation on the idea of interconnection between lovers explored in Fount and also evident between Kate Croy and Merton Densher in The Wings of the Dove and Charlotte Stant and Prince Amerigo in The Golden Bowl, as well as, more challengingly, between Maggie Verver and her father, Adam.

Works Cited

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Blackall, Jean Frantz. Jamesian Ambiguity and The Sacred Fount. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1965.

Bulzan, Daniel. "Apophaticism, Postmodernism and Language: Two Similar Cases of Theological Imbalance." Scottish Journal of Theology 50.3 (1997): 261-87.

Cross, Mary. Henry James: The Contingencies of Style. New York: St Martin's, 1993.

De Certeau, Michel. The Mystic Fable. Vol. 1. Trans. Michael B. Smith. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.

Derrida, Jacques. "How To Avoid Speaking: Denials." Trans. Ken Frieden. Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory. Ed. Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser. New York: Columbia UP, 1989.

_____. On The Name. Trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr., and Ian McLeod. Ed. Thomas Dutoit. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995.

Edel, Leon. "An Introductory Essay." The Sacred Fount, by Henry James. New York: Grove Press, 1953. v-xxxii.

Gillespie, Vincent and Maggie Ross. "The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich." The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium V. Ed. Marion Glasscoe. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992. 53-77.

Hadewijch. Hadewijch: The Complete Works. Trans. Mother Columba Hart. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.

James, Henry. "Is There A Life After Death?" The James Family: Including Selections from the Writings of Henry James, Senior, William, Henry, and Alice James. Ed. F.O. Matthiessen. New York: Knopf, 1947.

_____. Letters. Vol. lV. 1895-1916. Ed. Leon Edel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984.

_____. The Golden Bowl. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1985.

_____. The Sacred Fount. New York: Grove, 1979.

Katz, Steven T. "Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning." Mysticism and Language.Ed. Steven T. Katz. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.3-41.

Mortley, Raoul. From Word to Silence: The Way of Negation, Christian and Greek. Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1986.

Porete, Marguerite. The Mirror of Simple Souls. New York: Paulist Press, 1993.

Przybylowicz, Donna. Desire and Repression: The Dialectic of Self and Other in the Late Works of Henry James. U Alabama: of Alabama P, 1986.