Cynthia Ozick Reframing Henry James: From “Publishing Scoundrel” to False Messiah

Abstract: This essay invites a dialogue between Henry James’s “The Aspern Papers” and Cynthia Ozick’s The Messiah of Stockholm through the notion of literary speculation. In both texts, the relations between the experiential and the literary are explored via Paul Ricouer’s theory of “threefold mimesis .” Jacques Derrida’s account of hauntology and secular messianism, moreover, underscores failures of justice, ethics, and hope. James’s poised tragi-comic narrative is juxtaposed with Ozick’s critique of imaginative self-indulgence. Both works culminate in the burning of manuscripts, figuring in turn the demise of personal or editorial yearnings, then the Holocaust’s merciless incineration of Jewish life and creativity.