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PARTISAN REVIEW
devastations of it. Literature thus makes a double argument. It invites us
to return to that variety of scenes of desire which is stifled by the interpretive
tracing back of all desires
to
a single, continuous design in a supposed
maturing of desire . The literary imagination reinstates the world of desiring
fantasies as a world of reinvented , richly fragmented , and diversified body–
memories. But, at the same time , it also gives ample space
to
those processes
by which we make a continuous
story
of our desires, processes which also
teach us
to
give up the intensities of an infinitely desirable hallucinated
world for the somewhat disappointing enjoyments of fulfilled desires .
