Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Pneumopathology and Individual Consciousness -- "The Iceberg Rises and Sinks Again" : Elizabeth Bishop's Pneumopathologic Imagination -- Human Beings in the Metaxy: Dilemmas and Extremes in Henrik Ibsen -- "Ce n'est pas ma faute" : The Strange Fortunes of Piety and Consciousness in Choderlos de Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses -- Part II: The Loss of Public Order and the Search for Its Recovery -- Styles of Truth in Dazai Osamu's Setting Sun -- Recovering Stefan George's Poetry of the Spirit from the Reductio ad Hitler -- A Gnostic Moment in Anglo-American Culture: Parousiasm of the Voice in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus -- D. H. Lawrence: The Prophet's Cul de Sac -- Part III: Existence in the Tension of the Metaxy -- The Tension of the Metaxy in Emily Dickinson's Poetry -- The Truth of the Novel: Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu -- Between Poetry and Philosophy: The Challenge of Hermann Broch -- Contributors -- Index.