The metatext

“Metaphor and metonymy both, it strikes me, are devices of the lover; they are the devices of one who seeks to render or capture the other. What are the devices of the beloved? We don’t know, because it always the lover, never the beloved, who speaks. Why? Perhaps it’s the orientation toward unhappiness of literary work — the orientation toward trouble. If you were happily loved, literature implies, you would have nothing to say. Ask: why do you always write of unsatisfied desire? Where do you find such a continual source for that lack?” – Lightsey Darst, “The Anne Carson Workout”