Fears named

The following is an excerpt from Umberto Eco's essay "Analysis of Poetic Language" in The Open Work in which he discusses what happens when the same piece of music is listened to for years and the ability of its form to inspire pleasure has been exhausted.

"Often, to rejuvenate our dulled sensibility, we need to put it in quarantine. [...] But time might not be enough to reawaken pleasure and surprise and to resurrect a particular form for us, which means either that our intellectual development as atrophied or that the work, as organization of stimuli, was addressed to an ideal addressee who does not correspond to what we have become. This might in turn mean that that particular form, aimed at a particular cultural context, is no longer effective for us, though it might yet find some resonance in the future."

Here I am: working on my dissertation which I left in quarantine and finding myself still sifting through layers of stimuli, of form, of organization...and I am afraid that I will find the forms I anticipated will no longer be effective for the communication I set out to achieve.

Of course, this is part of any writing process with a duration that can encompass a significant shift in sensibility or in understanding. Who doesn't approach the end of a dissertation or thesis and not see a very different and less problematic means of completing the project? It is, nonetheless, still daunting to find myself doubting myself and my process. Yes, Mr. Eco proffers that sensibilities will likely shift again and what is dull at present may yet be resonant in a future context, but this does not alter my fear that my moment of intelligibility has passed.