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a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s ‘‘Friends,’’ wrote the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, ‘‘mysterious finger shown, appeared , chasing away the false.’’ I have been graced by many such friends in the course of writing this book. Thomas Altizer, Karl Ameriks, Jon Gunneman , Dieter Henrich, Brooks Holifield, William Mallard, Rudolph Makkreel, Richard Velkley: each read portions of this manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions for revisions along the way. Mark C. Taylor and James Wetzel championed the book, offering decisive encouragements when I was beset with discouragement. Russell Richey, former dean of the Candler School of Theology, made funds available for my archival research. Among my students, Trish Anderson, Elizabeth Corrie, Michael DeJonge , and Adam Ployd not only diligently pressed me for clarification, but also offered willing hands in various aspects of the technical preparation. Two of them lent keen editorial eyes: Sarah Alexander and Stacia Brown discern what for many of us goes unnoticed. They saved me from much infelicity of style, many errors of fact and reference, and logical incongruities . Their generosities of spirit—and Sarah’s Promethean efforts—have helped make it possible to bring this book to fruition. Helen Tartar and the good people of Fordham University Press have accorded me a welcome reception to their list of authors, and have extended to me every help imaginable along the road to publication. John Ashbery and Jack Gilbert graciously granted me permission to incorporate extensive portions of their creative work, for which I am honored. My family retained a remarkably good sense of humor during the long hours that I secreted myself away in the study, never failing to remind me that the world consists of more than Kant, Wittgenstein, and Freud, and that life often instructs in more telling ways than books. xi xii Acknowledgments The first contours of this book emerged in a 1992 series of lectures that I shared with congregants at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta. Our son, Pierce Louis, was born during the course of this series, and accompanied me, in infant transport, to a number of them. Death struck down this small creature, whose gaze is not among the dead, but always in us. Again, the words of the knowing poet: ‘‘A dead being lives in us, our thought— what is best in him happens through the love and care we take of his being in our thought—in this there is a magnificent beyond.’’ As long as these words go on living, he lives with all of us: they are a memorial to him. ...

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