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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ANIMALS AND LITERATURE

Derrida and
Textual Animality
For a Zoogrammatology of Literature

Rodolfo Piskorski
Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature

Series Editors
Susan McHugh
Department of English
University of New England
Biddeford, ME, USA

Robert McKay
School of English
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK

John Miller
School of English
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK
Various academic disciplines can now be found in the process of executing an
‘animal turn’, questioning the ethical and philosophical grounds of human excep-
tionalism by taking seriously the nonhuman animal presences that haunt the
margins of history, anthropology, philosophy, sociology and literary studies. Such
work is characterised by a series of broad, cross-disciplinary questions. How might
we rethink and problematise the separation of the human from other animals?
What are the ethical and political stakes of our relationships with other species?
How might we locate and understand the agency of animals in human cultures?
This series publishes work that looks, specifically, at the implications of the
‘animal turn’ for the field of English Studies. Language is often thought of as the
key marker of humanity’s difference from other species; animals may have codes,
calls or songs, but humans have a mode of communication of a wholly other
order. The primary motivation is to muddy this assumption and to animalise
the canons of English Literature by rethinking representations of animals and
interspecies encounter. Whereas animals are conventionally read as objects of
fable, allegory or metaphor (and as signs of specifically human concerns), this
series significantly extends the new insights of interdisciplinary animal studies by
tracing the engagement of such figuration with the material lives of animals. It
examines textual cultures as variously embodying a debt to or an intimacy with
animals and advances understanding of how the aesthetic engagements of literary
arts have always done more than simply illustrate natural history. We publish
studies of the representation of animals in literary texts from the Middle Ages to
the present and with reference to the discipline’s key thematic concerns, genres
and critical methods. The series focuses on literary prose and poetry, while also
accommodating related discussion of the full range of materials and texts and
contexts (from theatre and film to fine art, journalism, the law, popular writing
and other cultural ephemera) with which English studies now engages.

Series Board
Karl Steel (Brooklyn College)
Erica Fudge (Strathclyde)
Kevin Hutchings (UNBC)
Philip Armstrong (Canterbury)
Carrie Rohman (Lafayette)
Wendy Woodward (Western Cape)

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14649
 Rodolfo Piskorski

Derrida and Textual

Animality
For a Zoogrammatology of Literature
Rodolfo Piskorski
Cardiff University
Cardiff, UK

Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature

ISBN 978-3-030-51731-1 ISBN 978-3-030-51732-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51732-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
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 To
Fernando
 Praise for Derrida and Textual
Animality

“With its novel readings underpinned by the conceptual paleonym of

‘arche-animality’, Derrida and Textual Animality: For a Zoogrammatology
of Literature is a groundbreaking contribution not only to (Derridean)
Literary Animal Studies but also to the kind of Critical Posthumanism
that is still willing to engage with deconstruction’s vital insights into the
trace and into humans’ relationship to ‘the animal’.”
—Laurent Milesi, Tenured Professor of English at Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, China, and editor of James Joyce and the Difference of
Language (2003)

“Derrida and Textual Animality is a rare beast: a contribution to literary

animal studies that is equally invested in the question of the literary as it
is in the question of the animal. Recuperating the ‘linguistic turn’ for the
‘animal turn’, Piskorski shows how writing is always already co-implicated
with animality. This is a welcome and productive reminder that literary
animal studies must come to terms with Derrida’s infamous dictum that
‘there is no outside-text’.”
—Kári Driscoll, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature,
Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and co-editor of
What Is Zoopoetics?

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Animal as Text, Text as Animal: On the Matter

of Textuality 29

3 The Arche-Animal: Totemic Deconstruction

and Psychoanalysis 65

4 The Thought-Fox: The Poetics of Animal Form 119

5 Transcending Signs: Becoming-Animal in Black Swan 167

6 Animal Supplementarity in Lispector’s The Apple

in the Dark 209

7 Conclusion 259

Index 263

ix
 List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Nina and her mother Erica sit near the three-part mirror 171
Fig. 5.2 The camera has been digitally erased from the image so
that it is not visible in the reflection 177
Fig. 5.3 The camera, clearly positioned very near Portman’s right
arm, is not visible in the mirror 178
Fig. 5.4 Pankejeff’s drawing of the tree and wolves from his dream
(Freud in Davis 1995, 32) 187
Fig. 5.5 Bidirectional line of textual influence in The Wolf Man 193
Fig. 5.6 Davis’s diagram for the structure of Nachträglichkeit in
the Wolf Man’s childhood (1995, 35) 194
Fig. 5.7 Bidirectional line of textual influence in Black Swan 198
Fig. 5.8 Nina’s arms fully transform into black wings 198
Fig. 6.1 Simia Dei, detail of an illuminated initial (Hunterian
Psalter, folio 176r). Another ape holding a mirror is
included in an initial in folio 76v 249

xi
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 Absolute and secondary mimologism and conventionalism

(Genette 1994, 51) 126
Table 4.2 Distribution of lines into three poetic levels 150

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Why do animals matter for literature? They might matter as simply an

‘end’ that can then be conveyed by any given ‘medium’—literature,
for example. Conversely, the recent scholarly attention towards literary
animals highlights a more radical relevance of animality beyond that of
mere topic: it could be argued that in recent criticism illuminated by
posthumanism and Animal Studies, animals matter precisely due to their
matter. The material embodiment of animals is believed to offer a stark
contrast to the linguistic constitution of textuality, to the extent that
animals ‘in’ literary texts are said to illuminate—and sometimes chal-
lenge—the workings of literature. This is a relatively common view in
the literary scholarship on animals, a tendency which Kari Weil names the
‘counter-linguistic turn’, in which animals’ supposed lack of language is
refashioned as an asset reliant on their bodiliness:

Although many current projects are intent on proving that certain animals
do have language capabilities like those of humans, other sectors of animal
studies are concerned with forms of subjectivity that are not language-
based. Instead, they are concerned with ways of knowing that appear to
work outside those processes of logocentric, rational thinking that have
defined what is proper to the human, as opposed to the nonhuman animal.
(2006, 87)

© The Author(s) 2020 1

R. Piskorski, Derrida and Textual Animality,
Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51732-8_1
2 R. PISKORSKI

As Weil’s term suggests, this turn critiques the ‘linguistic turn’ in

twentieth-century Continental philosophy which, in literary studies, is
most often associated with Jacques Derrida. Writing in PMLA in 2005,
James Berger describes the wider consequences (in scholarship, art, and
popular culture) of this counter-linguistic turn:

[W]ith increasing influence over the past fifteen or twenty years we can
see in the academic humanities, in some literary fiction, and in areas of
popular culture varieties of what we might call a counter-linguistic turn.
[…] Their central claim is that there is an other of language, whether or
not this other can be conceptualized, and that language does not go “all
the way down.” (2005, 344)

As one of the symptoms of this counter-linguistic turn, Berger cites

‘studies across several fields that stress materiality or physicality. This
work often focuses on the body, which serves as a crucial and contested
boundary marker for the limits of language’ (ibid.). And in neurologist
Oliver Sack’s popular writings, he argues that ‘the deepest experience of
living as a human–animal, the most basic form of consciousness, is not
symbolic or linguistic. It is bodily, a sense of at-homeness in the body’
(350). In his 2017 book Bioaesthetics, Carsten Strathausen identifies a
rise of biologism in the humanities, detectable in the prominence of the
digital humanities and other strands of the ‘posthumanities’. For him,
deconstruction and hermeneutics are losing ground to empirical models
for the study of texts and culture due to a fatigue introduced after almost
a century of focus on the ‘being of language’ (2017, 4). He credits the
1996 Sokal hoax with a considerable impact on the credibility of ‘con-
structivist’, to the benefit of ‘realism’ (which he glosses as ‘an utterly
nonsensical juxtaposition’) and biologism.
In this biologically informed approach to the humanities, the focus on
the animal side of the human, or on what we could call our uncanny
proximity to animals, functions to stress their distinct type of embodi-
ment, since the material existence we share with them encounters in our
linguistically saturated nature a limit to this proximity. The emphasis on
bodily matter engendered by such similarity would serve to posit matter
once again as that which would ground ontology, as a way of writing
it out of ‘theory’ and the constitutive powers of language. Such matter
could easily be found in objects, or the mineral and vegetal kingdoms, but
the fact that humans and animals are otherwise extremely similar works
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

to underscore this materiality—and its push into language—in ways not

available to other beings. Animals would represent, then, an exteriority to
language, conceptuality, reason, and literature, exposing literary texts to
their own limitations. I shall attempt, however, to expose the metaphys-
ical foundation of such an analytical frame by revisiting Derrida’ s critique
of the simple evocation of matter. His complication of the material/ideal
dichotomy will be shown to represent a more productive response to this
duality and this will have crucial consequences to a thinking of animality
as grounded on bodily materiality.
The counter-linguistic turn is often associated with a strand of critical
theory, philosophy, and political theory known as New Materialism, iden-
tified broadly as a ‘return’ to materiality after the supposedly excessively
textual focus of post-structuralism. Thus, in their edited collection New
Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Diana Coole and Samantha
Frost situate New Materialism in opposition to ‘constructivism’, the claim
that reality is socially/culturally/linguistically constituted, which they
attribute to the cultural or linguistic turn. According to them, ‘the domi-
nant constructivist orientation to social analysis is inadequate for thinking
about matter, materiality, and politics in ways that do justice to the
contemporary context of biopolitics and global political economy’ (2010,
6). Materiality is here contrasted with idealism or ideality, in which the
cultural turn is deemed to be interested. However, it is important to high-
light that ‘ideality’ for Coole and Frost functions similarly to what some of
the contributors call ‘mentation’—products and processes of the human
mind. Conversely, in the Continental tradition which I discuss throughout
the book, ideality as opposed to materiality is characterised by not being
located in spatio-temporality. Therefore, even mental processes—to the
extent that they are events —are materialised in time and space in a way
that pure idealities are not. This difference will have sizable consequences
to my discussion of the destabilisation of the dualism materiality/ideality
undertaken by deconstruction. Another crucial aspect of mentation as
described by New Materialists, which is thought to include culture, signi-
fication, language, etc., is that it refers to an exclusively human sphere of
existence and experience. Hence, they critique constructivists’ inability to
analyse the non-human world and occasionally describe them as reducing
reality to a set of human concerns. However, for thinkers often charac-
terised as constructivists and post-structuralists, such as Derrida, some
issues ascribed to mentation (language, for example) are neither wholly
4 R. PISKORSKI

or primarily human, nor are they essentially ideal, as I discuss in detail

throughout the book.
Having said that, it is not clear if Jacques Derrida is one of the
constructivists Coole and Frost have in mind, even though he, of il n’y a
pas d’hors-texte fame, is often identified as one of the main postmodern
and post-structuralist thinkers. One therefore wonders who has claimed
or is claiming the points they are criticising. When they argue that ‘mate-
riality is always something more than “mere” matters, [it is] an excess,
force, vitality, relationality, or difference that renders matter active, self-
creative, productive, unpredictable’ (9), it is reasonable to assume they
are positing someone who does argue that materiality is mere matter,
and that it does not contain theses forces that make it active. Because
the constructivist thinkers are not named or cited, one would be safe to
include Jacques Derrida or Judith Butler in that list, even though what
is presented as a critical, new approach to matter—such as the point that
matter has a difference that renders it productive—is similar to ‘construc-
tivist’ arguments often posed by Derrida, among others. That similarity
is sometimes openly acknowledged, as when Coole and Frost point out
that new materialists have ‘reinvent[ed] materialism in response to the
criticisms that radical constructivists and deconstructionists righty made
of earlier critical materialisms and realisms, Marxism in particular’ (25).
However, picturing Derrida and Butler among the targets of New
Materialism might turn out to be inaccurate, as the contributions to the
volume often engage in depth with both in a way that explores their
thinking of materiality. For example, Pheng Cheah shows that matter in
Derrida must be thought in connection with text, where the latter is not
allowed to be reduced to idealism (2010, 73). Cheah argues that decon-
struction explains the emergence of both matter and text by means of
the mechanism of iterability, which produces materialities and idealities.
In her contribution, Sara Ahmed defends the cultural turn as engaging
with the phenomenology espoused in the introduction, citing Butler as an
example (2010, 234, 246). In fact, Ahmed opens her chapter with a refer-
ence to her article ‘Imaginary Prohibitions’ (2008) in which she stakes
out a position critical to the radicalism claimed by the New Materialisms.
More focused on feminist thought, her article cites several thinkers who
identify—and criticise—Butler as a constructivist, which is, as we saw, not
the case in Coole and Frost’s volume. Despite the identification of Butler
and others as targets, Ahmed still pinpoints a common rhetorical gesture
by New Materialists characterised by asserting that something is not so,
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

suggesting other uncited writers who would argue that it is so (2008,

34–5). The methodological problem with this gesture is twofold. Firstly,
often the criticised arguments, either implied or articulated, are untrace-
able to any reasonable writer, such as a belief that subatomic particles
are invented, not discovered (Coole and Frost 2010, 11–2). Secondly,
the theoretical formulations presented as critically incisive and innova-
tive New Materialist claims are strikingly similar to arguments already put
forth by constructivists. In short, as Coole and Frost describe it—and
Ahmed analyses it—New Materialism seems to be either another name for
the critical approach to materialism already under way in post-structuralist
thought, or a rebuttal to claims no sensible thinker would defend, which
then compels it to linger on the defence of simple facts, such as the reality
of subatomic particles.
In the register of literary criticism, this materialism more often than not
goes hand in hand with a methodological anti-formalism: literary texts are
read as intricate forms of paraphrase of the real, material, embodied lives
of animals, which means their textual form is secondary (see Shapiro and
Copeland 2005). Interestingly, a radical formalist approach to texts could
be attempted in the name of the very focus on embodiment and materi-
ality that guides the interest in animals within certain sectors of Literary
Animal Studies. Hence, this formalism could be defended as a type of
anti-speciesist literary criticism. If we read this in Cartesian terms, this
sort of formalism would suggest an independence of the (animal) body
(form as the body of the text) from the soul-or-mind, or even some kind
of radical materialism that prioritises bodies before souls. However, as we
shall see, many literary scholars approach animals as objects in literary
texts, as subject matters that can be and indeed are at stake at any other
medium. At the level of object, this approach attempts to circle the speci-
ficity of animality as a different form of embodiment, while at the level
of method, the text itself, as the form or embodiment of signification, is
overlooked.
For example, Robert McKay frames the emergence of Literary Animal
Studies by stating that ‘[i]n the mid- to late-1990s, very few scholars
were concerned with the near omnipresence of nonhuman animals in
literary texts’, and he accuses those works which did try to address ‘the
animal question’ before then of ‘coming nowhere near capturing the full-
ness of animals’ presence in literary and cultural history’ (2014, 637).
Similarly, Marion W. Copeland praises Literary Animal Studies which
‘approached canonical literature […] and found rich untapped sources of
6 R. PISKORSKI

information on both human relations with and attitudes toward other

animals’, sources whose ‘mining […] has become one goal of Literary
Animal Studies’ (2012, 99, emphasis added). McKay and Copeland
defend seemingly disparate views on the relationship between animal
‘presence’ and textuality: whereas the former believes animals are present
in texts (omnipresent, in fact), the latter seems to suggest that literary
discourse is a medium capable of delivering us hard nuggets of important
information about animals, who one assumes are therefore very present,
albeit elsewhere. But McKay’s subtle shift from ‘omnipresence in texts’
to ‘presence in literary and cultural history’ points towards a belief in that
material presence of animals despite and outside texts. If animals are ‘pre-
sent’ in texts, they are apparently represented therein, à la Copeland, as
pieces of information. She finally confirms hers and McKay’s similarity
by asserting that some ‘poetry […] brings readers into the presence of
other-than-human animals’ (ibid.). The ‘presence of non-human animals
in works of fiction’ is also mentioned by Shapiro and Copeland, who also
decry (the presence of?) animal ‘absent referent[s]’ (2005, 343).
Two interrelated gestures are performed in these position papers. On
the one hand, we have the belief that animals can be made to be present in
texts by means of appropriate writing or reading practices. On the other,
there is a clear sense in which animals inhabit a completely separate realm
against which the literary pushes. Both are joined in the assumption that
some sort of presence may be evoked by means of textual networks of
references, and, more importantly, that this evocation is the overarching
work of textuality and literature. This formulation owes its logic to the
very concept of form and how it has been understood in poetics.
However, as I shall discuss in more detail, there are many reasons why
a formalist textual approach that could rightfully be called anti-speciesist
is ultimately untenable. Still, as we saw, the animalised meanings that
underpin the very formulation of formalism would seem to invite us to
strive to make formalism work in the name of a non-speciesist poetics and
criticism that would liberate the body of form from subjugation to the
soul of content. The whole problem seems to stem from the double pres-
sure exercised on form—that it be the way texts appear but also that it
always points to a what other than itself—and this connects to some of
Derrida’s complications of the material/ideal duality in the concept of the
signifier. Echoing such Derridean caution, Strathausen criticises the unnu-
anced approach to this dichotomy present both in the counter-linguistic
turn and in some forms of constructivism:
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Today’s biologism fetishizes material objectivity and scientific reductionism

in much the same way that constructivism fetishized abstract concepts and
social conventions. Both “isms” pit matter against meaning, objects against
concepts, when, instead, they should concentrate their efforts to examine
how each of them codetermines and reproduces the other.’ (2017, 12)

Despite the fruitful suggestion, Strathausen’s ‘constructivism’ is more

often than not associated with deconstruction and Derrida, in such a
way that would constitute a misreading of the project of deconstruction.
Derrida is not a thinker of ‘language’ in the traditional sense, and his
deconstructive approach, as I will show, represents precisely the sort of
effort Strathausen is proposing.
Another contribution to the area of Literary Animal Studies is Pieter
Vermeulen and Virginia Richter’s introduction to their edited volume of
the European Journal of English Studies titled Modern Creatures, where
they put forward the privileging of the concept of ‘creature’ and of ‘the
creaturely’ as key frameworks in the work of animal studies (2015, 2).
Their main reference point is the work of Anat Pick, whose definition
of the creaturely they cite: ‘[t]he creaturely is primarily the condition of
exposure and finitude that affects all living bodies whatever they are’ (3).
And it is crucial to their project that Pick situates her emphasis on crea-
tureliness as part of a resistance against the tendency to project human
traits onto animals. Another important influence is the work of Eric
Santner, whom they credit as also responsible for the scholarly relevance of
the term ‘creaturely’. However, they underline some differences between
Santner and Pick regarding creatureliness, especially the former’s under-
standing that human vulnerability and exposure is not only a product of
its biological, animal nature. For him, human contingency is determined
not only by its embodied vulnerability, but also by its exposure to ‘spir-
itual forces’ and ‘social textures […] that uncannily animate the human
body’ (5).
In the area of Literary Animal Studies, Susan McHugh’s writings are
among the most perceptive to this problem and to the perceived necessity
of some kind of formalist poetics of animality. For her, animals ‘at once
serv[e] as a metaphor for the poetic imagination and voic[e] the limits of
human experience’. But, beyond that, their ‘peculiar operations of agency,
these ways of inhabiting literature without somehow being represented
therein, present tremendous opportunities for recovering and interro-
gating the material and representational problems specific to animality’
8 R. PISKORSKI

(2009a, 487), but also to literature, since she entertains that ‘species
being works in literary texts as a function of what we think of as their liter-
ariness’ (488). She argues that ‘the problem of animals [is] written into
the metaphysics of speech and subjectivity’ (489). Despite her discussion
of animal agency, she criticises the temptation of transferring subjectivity
onto animals, suggesting that ‘sublimation of cross-species violence […]
derives from the valorization of psychic interiority as the defining quality
of the human in literary research’ and such ‘subjectivity entails a very
specific and limiting story of agency’ (2009b, 365). She understands that

the focus on embodiment, surfaces, and exteriority […] perhaps most

clearly distinguishes animals as agents of an order different from that of
human subjectivity—more precisely, as actors operating in accordance with
a logic different from that of intentionality or psychological interiority.
(2009a, 491)

However, she does not believe that privileging this beyond-human

embodiment is the answer to the methodological problems posed by
animals, since this reliance on animal transcendence misses the point of
the enmeshing of animality and text. She holds that the argument for
the irrelevance of literature and textuality for animals is groundless, since
‘messy entanglements of human and animal agents become sedimented
even in cultural practices without immediate ties to animals’ (490). There-
fore, she defends the argument I am putting forth that one must find an
answer to animal representation which is, at the same time, a methodolog-
ical and a theoretical position. She couples the issue of how to account for
animal subjectivity (and/or animal embodiment) with the cultural prac-
tices that support and are supported by the very concepts of animal being.
Thus, in literature, for example, McHugh would suggest both that one
not privilege texts about animals being portrayed as transcendent to textu-
ality or to the human world, and that one be attuned to how textuality
itself as a cultural practice is suffused with the very issues it is trying to
represent. As it is, her thinking is not only a call for a different thinking
about animals, but also a qualified call for a formalist criticism attuned to
the animality of textuality itself, to the ‘countless animal aspects of texts’
(2009b, 363).
Nevertheless, McHugh arrives at a conundrum. Texts exhibit animal
aspects and animal being is enmeshed into textuality, but that still does
not tell us about the texture of animal agency. An animal subjectivity
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

similar to a human’s threatens to efface any animal specificity, and misses

the fact that even human subjectivity is constructed on the basis of a meta-
physics of inside and outside wholly organised by concepts such as body
and soul. On the other hand, ascribing to the animal a transcendence to
language and text suggests wishful thinking, and ignores the extent to
which this transcendence is prescribed by language itself. McHugh’s way
out is openly guided by ‘the Deleuzian assumption […] that animality
permeates language, literature, and everything as a line of flight or poten-
tial for becomings’ (2009a, 493), a position with which I not only agree
but that I also explore to some extent in Chapter 5. I believe, however,
that there is a second, Derridean answer to the problem, which is more
attuned to the issues raised by literary signification.
Several other literary scholars have approached the issue of animality
from a Derridean perspective. In their introduction to Seeing Animals
After Derrida, Sarah Bezan and James Tink stress the importance of
considering Derrida’s work on animals (and the wider ‘nonhuman turn’
in the humanities) against a backdrop of questions and challenges posed
to Derrida and his overall thought (2018, ix). For example, they iden-
tify in readings of Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am, even by
those supportive of its general project, a disappointment with the text’s
apparent refusal ‘to consider fully what the animal is as such’ and with the
‘lack of specificity’ of Derrida’s animal (x, xii). A different approach under-
scored by them is reading the animal in Derrida as part of ‘the ongoing
problem of the trace of the Other’: the argument goes that, even if the
animal as a motif only emerged in his later texts, it came about as contin-
uation of the issues of différance and the trace. As they put it, ‘in this case
the condition of the living is far from being a state of the human being
that could be simply attributed as animality, but instead an idea of arche-
writing, as in an organization of traces and signs as a text that are the
preconditions of understanding subjectivity and being’ (xii). However, the
‘restatement’ of the early Derrida of arche-writing in the animal lectures
is not an uncontroversial observation, since literary studies, critical theory,
and philosophy have seen a turn towards ‘ideas of life, the bioethical
and the affect, and indeed ecocriticism, which are sometimes levelled
against deconstruction’, in the years after Derrida’s death (xiii). Bezan
and Tink then identify Timothy Morton and Claire Colebrook as two
examples of thinkers who are attempting to bridge deconstruction with
the recent ‘non-textual turn’. Finally, Bezan and Tink’s own project is to
explore the visual aspect in Derrida’s anecdote of being naked before the
10 R. PISKORSKI

cat’s gaze in order to inquire ‘how the human comes to be exposed and
made vulnerable in relation to the (in)visible animal’ (xiv). For them, the
ethical project before us involves acknowledging ‘the inherent meaning of
nonhuman materiality’, and ‘the limitations of human perception’. This
ethical call is similarly polarising, since it also separates the field of animal
studies in two. They cite Giovanni Aloi’s diagnosis of two different views
on the issue of animal visibility, with one group reliant on the posthu-
manist distrust for visibility as ‘truth-constructing’ and another counting
on visibility as an epistemological strategy (xv).
Sarah Bezan connects Derrida’s project in The Animal That There-
fore I Am to some emerging areas such as new materialism, speculative
realism, and object-oriented ontology (Bezan 2018, 66). She sees those
fields as allies to animal studies, as she argues that ‘a wide variety of
scholars in the environmental humanities, ecocriticism, posthumanism,
and animal studies more broadly’ are united in ‘dismantling transcen-
dental humanism’ and criticising ‘the human’s strategies of mediation of
the natural world, whether it be through consciousness, language, [or]
spectrality’ by means of a ‘combat’ against the ‘transcendental mediation
of “Nature”’ (69). This is a very sweeping statement, as the fields she
mentions clearly contain a wide range of different views of materiality.
Timothy Morton, especially, whom she mentions in this context, writes
against the belief in the possibility of simply doing away with the media-
tion of ‘Nature’. More serious, however, is the mischaracterisation of the
Derridean position by his inclusion in this list (nominally, but also as an
important thinker for many within those fields). The so-called linguistic
turn with which Derrida is commonly associated actually emerges in his
work as a rejection of transcendentalism that still constantly rejects any
kind of simple material reality. Derrida addressed the pitfalls of materi-
alism as a solution against transcendentalism several times in his writing,
and answered questions directly on this issue in interviews.
Christopher Peterson has criticised the general impulse of posthu-
manisms that interpret the linguistic turn as excessively humanist, and
thus reject it in the name of a critique of human exceptionalism and
a focus on materiality. For him, these critics, such as New Materialists,
in their attempt to read humanity in other-than-human terms (embod-
iment, affect, biology, evolution, etc.) overestimate their own power of
controlling the meaning of the human, thereby reasserting the very excep-
tionalism they sought to overturn. Bluntly, he entertains, ‘does what we
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

call the human retain any sense outside the discourse of anthropocen-
trism?’ (2018, 2). He does not suggest that we simply accept human
exceptionalism, but recognise its phantasmatic endurance beyond declara-
tions of its demise. Similarly, he stresses the necessity of a methodological
(but also an epistemological and a phenomenological) human-centredness
for any relation to the other as other. I shall discuss attempts to over-
turn anthropocentrism (and their failure) throughout the book and
more specifically when I analyse Donna Haraway’s similar posthumanist
critiques of Derrida for being overly humanist.
A crucial contribution to the field of Derridean Animal Studies is the
edited collection The Animal Question in Deconstruction. In her intro-
duction, editor Lynn Turner states clearly that the collection’s remit
is ‘to take Jacques Derrida seriously when he says that he had always
been thinking about the company of animals and that deconstruction has
never limited itself to language, still less “human” language’ (2013, 2).
Apparently as a response to the title ‘The Autobiographical Animal’—
the conference in which the The Animal That Therefore I Am lectures
were given—Derrida provides a helpful overview of animal figures that
populated his texts. However, Turner argues that ‘these […] animals
have largely escaped wider attention’. On the other hand, she points out
that many scholars have emphasised that ‘Derrida’s work pointed to the
deconstruction of the elevation of “man” above all others well before the
pedagogical “tipping point” of The Animal That Therefore I Am’ (3).
Thus formulated, the remit of the book seems two-pronged. On the
one hand, it is concerned with the exploration of animal figures in Derri-
da’s texts that have been overlooked in Derridean scholarship (the insect
of ‘Tympan’; the sponge in Signsponge; the wolves, elephants, and lions
in The Beast and the Sovereign; the mole in ‘Freud and the Scene of Writ-
ing’; the lion in his ‘Introduction’ to Husserl’s Origin of Geometry; not
to the mention the more famous hedgehog from ‘Che Cos’è La Poesia’;
and the cat from The Animal That Therefore I Am). On the other hand,
the book strives to locate the importance of animality as a structural
concept for the very project of deconstruction (embedded in a discussion
of more-than-human language, for example) even when animal figures are
not being directly discussed by Derrida. It is arguable that the book excels
mostly in the former endeavour, but it is the latter venture with which I
am especially concerned. Throughout this book, the decision to privilege
structural—rather than topical—animality will be continuously argued in
theoretical, methodological, philosophical, and ethical terms.
12 R. PISKORSKI

Therefore, I argue that it is symptomatic of the co-implication of

animality and language as they are understood by philosophical tradition
that this conundrum concerning the animal is the one Derrida faces when
deconstructing the linguistic sign. More specifically, the question of how
to approach the materiality of signs is the problem that opens the way
for Derrida to propose most of his ideas. In his lengthy intervention in
Husserl’s thought, Derrida attacked phenomenology’s disavowal, in the
name of ideal transcendentality, of all that is bodily and material. This
attack did not entail a triumphant materialism, since Derrida’s deconstruc-
tive reading, instead of simply refuting what Husserl proposes, identified
in his formulation the unspoken possibility both of Husserlian idealism
and of a naïve empirical materialism. Originary difference, its play and
work, différance, the trace, iterability—these are all names for that which
is enmeshed in its material support but which cannot be reduced to it.
Literary Animal Studies can, therefore, find both the specific materiality
of the animal and the bodily form of texts in the impure undecidable of
that which is neither material nor immaterial. Similarly, it is well known
that, in Of Grammatology, Derrida frees writing from its subordination
to speech to show that all of language depends on a certain scriptural
function derived from what he terms arche-writing.
Just as arche-writing is situated ‘before’ the common differentiation
between speech and writing, I argue that ‘before’ the distinction between
human and animal as the metaphysical distinction between spirit and
body, there must be a sort of pure difference that makes the differen-
tiation between body and soul possible. I call that the arche-animal .
Leonard Lawlor has discussed this Derridean recourse to old names in
the ‘second phase’ of deconstruction, after the initial moment of over-
turning the classical hierarchy (e.g. speech/writing, human/animal) (see
Derrida 1987, 41–3, 71). The second phase ‘reinscribes the previously
inferior term as the “origin” or “resource” of the hierarchy itself’, so that
this term ‘becomes what Derrida calls an “old name” or a “paleonym”’.
Lawlor sees these terms as ‘the experience of a process of differentiation
that is also repetition’, or as ‘the experience of language where language
is taken in a broad sense’ (2007, 30).
In a Derridean Literary Animal Studies, animals cannot be regarded as
simply matter, since it is clear that they are animated matter, whose spark
of life engenders auto-affection and movement. Their bodies cannot,
however, be wished away in a repetition of speciesist, Cartesian conclu-
sions that would consider these bodies to be simply cases for animal
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

minds. An animal subjectivity, constructed in the human mould, would

make the animal itself vanish. And if this entire formulation is, as I argued,
coextensive with the structure and functioning of signification, it should
be both possible and desirable to read the animated matter of texts, their
play of form. The form of a text (its grammar) should be detachable from
both its content (semantics) and its substance (phonology, graphematics,
typography, etc.), in order for us to get at the animal aspects of texts. But
is that even possible? Is form ever identifiable in texts in any way separable
from its meaning and material support?
The representation undertaken by signs is essentially linked to
animality. As I shall show, there could be no representation without
animals, insofar as they provide us with the play of form. However, it
is impossible for it to emerge phenomenally, in texts, as such, for that
would require the process of signification to appear without actually signi-
fying anything. Similarly, there is no signification which is not, in a way,
trapped in the support of a substance, since there are no signs without
a sensible face. It is therefore only possible to identify the moment
when or the site where textuality reveals the scar of the impossibility of
simply signifying. In a text, signification appears to collapse into either
dumb marks on a page or abstract, conceptual meaning, both of which
I believe to be counterproductive objects for Literary Animal Studies.
But pinpointing signification as such—that which makes specific mean-
ings possible—would be crucial for understanding the arche-animal as it
works in literary texts and I shall explore whether signification as such can
be an object of literary analysis.
Other scholars have also stressed the enmeshing of animality and
textuality. Kári Driscoll, discussing animal literature under the name
‘zoopoetics’, advances that the latter is engaged with the ‘constitution’
of the animal in language but also with the constitution of language
in relation to the animal. He entertains that zoopoetics might even be
‘the most fundamental form of poetics’, since it involves the funda-
mental distinction between human and animal as it is usually based on
language (2015, 223). Driscoll includes an important historical aspect to
his point, since he maps an explosion of zoopoetics around the time of
early twentieth-century literary modernism and industrial modernity. The
crisis of language, or Sprachkrise, explored by the animal texts of the early
1900s, represents, for Driscoll, a diminished faith on the representative
powers of language, which he views as intrinsically intertwined with a
crisis of anthropocentrism and a crisis of the animal. An acute awareness
14 R. PISKORSKI

of the ‘prison-house of language’ and the desire to escape it led artists and
writers to explore zoopoetics, since ‘any attempt to escape the boundaries
of linguistic consciousness must proceed via the animal, which exists on
the boundary of language and meaning, forever eluding conceptualisa-
tion, slipping toward the ineffable’ (222). Ultimately, Driscoll defends
that the question of language itself has always been (also) the question
of the animal. In his view, Literary Animal Studies approaches animals
as ‘present[ing] a specific problem to and for language and representa-
tion’ (227) and he justifies this position with reference to the privileged
position of animals in the mythical accounts of the origins of art, music,
poetry, and language.
His volume, co-edited with Eva Hoffmann, What Is Zoopoetics? Texts,
Bodies, Entanglement furthers the project of zoopoetics. In their intro-
duction, they emphasise that ‘zoopoetic texts are not—at least not
necessarily and certainly not simply—texts about animals’, which is a claim
I will be exploring in depth. Rather, these texts’ ‘“poetic thinking” (i.e.
the way they reflect on their own textuality and materiality), on ques-
tions of writing and representation, proceeds via the animal’ (2018, 4).
Crucially, they stress that literary animals thus understood are no less real
or more alienated from animals in the ‘real world’. Firstly, because in texts
‘there are, strictly speaking, no “actual” animals […] that “we” might
allow to “be themselves”: there are only words, or rather, animots ’,1
which means that there is a limit to how ‘accurate’ a ‘real’ animal might
be textually represented. Secondly, because even ‘our encounters with
animals in the “real” world are both material and semiotic, and hence […]
the relationship between “real” animals and “literary” animals is not that
of an original to a copy, but rather reciprocal and irreducibly entangled’
(6).
The chapters collected in What Is Zoopoetics? explore these theoret-
ical and methodological positions in various ways, although some essays
undertake readings which I argue to be grounded on arguments from
the counter-linguistic turn, which means they deviate somewhat from the
definition of zoopoetics offered by Driscoll and Hoffmann, and are thus
less relevant to my project of zoogrammatology. For example, Nicolas
Picard, in ‘Hunting Narratives: Capturing the Lives of Animals’, argues
that zoopoetics ‘examin[es] the way in which creative language constructs
textual animals’ (2018, 27–8). However, the exact meaning of the expres-
sion ‘textual animal’ is not made clear, with an abundance of arguments
that emphasise that the animals in question are not textual, and that the
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

role of the text is simply to translate these non-textual animals. Animals

are said to be ‘transcribed’, ‘captured’, and ‘restored’ by poetic language,
which is tasked with ‘(re)establish[ing] the connection between man
and the rest of creation’ (28). This rehearses classical arguments about
language as that which both estranges humans from the material truths
of nature and offers the means to bridge that gap, if properly reformed—
in this case as zoopoetics (as I discuss in more detail in Chapter 4 with
reference to Gérard Genette). Picard’s focus on hunting narratives—and
hunting as a motif—leads him to privilege the notions of capture and
decipherment, as when a hunter interprets signs and traces in order to
capture an animal. This priority threatens to relegate attention to textu-
ality (and to poetics) to the background to the benefit of a focus on
extra-textual animal materiality, as gathered by the image of the animal
footprint, ‘the physical production of a living organism’ (31). For Picard,
in hunting narratives, footprints signal ‘someone passed this way’—a
metaphysical understanding of the trace, which in Derrida is understood
as not reducible to a modified form of presence. The interpretation of
animal tracks leads to the insight that ‘the world is a book, the earth a
blank page’ (33), but this realisation clashes with continuing references
to a simple process of decryption of animal truths. The insight that the
reality of the world itself is textual does not affect the conceptualisation
of the nature of animals and their signs, nor, crucially, the methodolog-
ical approach to textual analysis. Despite suggesting that all narratives
derive in some way from a hunting quest, Picard abandons this metafic-
tional line of thought in order to analyse the subject matter and plot of
actual hunting narratives. His assertion that the ‘poetics of the zoon […]
questions and constructs animals’ lives through semiotic and hermeneutic
processes’ is belied by a sustained textual approach that envisions animal
presence as extra-textual, and semiosis as a temporary detour on the way
to such presence.
In ‘The Grammar of Zoopoetics: Human and Canine Language
Play’, Joela Jacobs analyses stories in which dogs narrate by means of
human language and underscores the moments in the texts in which
such language fails their canine users (2018). She argues that the dogs’
moments of unsuccessful language use point to a distinction between
human language (together with narration and literature in general) and
canine communication. For Jacobs, the dogs experience human language
‘as a central obstacle to the perception of the world and the self’, whereas
their scent-based communication is able to ‘instantly’ (i.e. directly)
16 R. PISKORSKI

perceive reality (67). The characterisation of human linguistic abstraction

as a screen that covers over a prelinguistic and extra-textual reality is a
common feature of the counter-linguistic turn, but is also an echo of a
tradition of ascribing human exceptionalism to a human defect which is
rooted, according to Derrida, in Greek, Biblical, and Freudian thought,
among others. I believe that the insights from this tradition are not
productive for a zoopoetics as they separate the zoo- from -poetics, while
relegating textuality at the same time as it fetishises animals’ connection
with nature.
Michaela Castellanos presents an approach to Moby-Dick which aims
to avoid ‘reading [whales] as metaphors representing something other
than whales’ (2018, 130). For that purpose, she gives an overview
of nineteenth-century discourses about the taxonomic classification of
whales and their impact on theories of evolution and frames Melville’s
novel as openly about whales. However, some of the methodological
statements contradict this strategy, as she highlights the fact that the
whale is a ‘literary animal’, an ‘animal created by words’, and she quotes
theories on zoopoetics by Aaron M. Moe and Kári Driscoll approvingly,
which do not support her materialist focus on ‘real’, non-textual whales.
She reads Moe’s and Driscoll’s zoopoetics differently, however, arguing
that Moe’s contention that ‘the material animal body creates an impulse
to grasp it in language’ (131) frames the poetic process as a ‘straight-
forward translation’ from animal into language. Conversely, she praises
Driscoll’s claim that animality and language are inseparably intertwined
and holds that this is the case of Moby-Dick. Nevertheless, her overall
historicist approach to the novel’s whale repeats the metaphor and trans-
lation gestures that she criticises. The whale is repeatedly said to be the
‘site’ on which discourses are negotiated, or a ‘repository’ and ‘recepta-
cle’ that ‘registers’ historical anxieties. If the animal body is the scriptural
space where discourses collide, it is not co-constituted alongside such
discourses. And the language of ‘receptacles’ for pre-existing meanings
describes precisely the notion of a straightforward translation from one
discourse (historical, political, biological, cultural, etc.) into a literary one
by means of animals. While extremely valuable, the historicist approach
is, in my view, less productive for zoopoetics precisely because it does
not take into account the ‘inseparable intertwinement of animality and
language’ and sees literary texts as paraphrases of cultural and historical
discourses, whereas zoopoetics criticises just this gesture of paraphrase,
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

such as in approaches that see animals as mere stand-ins for human

meanings.
Paul Sheehan proposes a ‘zoopoetics of extinction’, introducing it by
means of the killed albatross in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, which is said to have taken a symbolic and ‘metapoetic signifi-
cance’ (2018, 167). While a poetics of species extinction is both produc-
tive and urgent, the actual poetic framing of the issue by means of the
Rime and the disappearance supposedly engendered by its language seems
to diminish the theoretical complications of animal textual ‘presences’.
There are two main complications: one concerning the structure of pres-
ence and absence in texts, and another associated with the relationship
between animal species and animal individual.
The first complication is detectable in Sheehan’s claim that the
metaphoric meanings acquired by the noun ‘albatross’ (a source of
frustration, a burden, etc.) mean that ‘the actual, material animal is
occluded, […] forced to become a metaphorical substitute’ (167). For
him, ‘the material embodiment of the bird’ is ‘“swallowed up” by
language, absorbed into its predetermined anthropocentric directives’
(168). However, the Rime’s albatross never had, at any point in its textual
trajectory, a material embodiment, as Driscoll and Hoffmann point out in
their introduction regarding the ‘presence’ of animals in zoopoetics texts.
There was never an albatross—or albatrosses—in the poem, only networks
of references, whose only materiality is the materiality of the signifier itself.
Thus, Sheehan’s argument that ‘language can also restore and reaffirm
what language has taken away’ (169), in this context, suggests that appro-
priate writing and/or reading practices could in fact make animals present
in texts, and constitutes a belief in what Gérard Genette calls ‘poetic refor-
mation’, which I discuss in detail in Chapter 4. For Genette, it is an
illusory trust in the (potential) mimetic power of language that supports
the view that poetry’s calling is to improve on everyday, failed language.
This relates to the second complication, as Sheehan argues that zoopo-
etics can ‘restor[e] to the albatross its status as a particular species with
a particular history—an actual bird, not just a metaphorical substitute’
(169). This misses the fact that the poem is not concerned with alba-
trosses as a species or a group of birds, but with one individual animal
that is then killed by the Mariner. In fact, the material embodiment that
Sheehan mourns depends on precisely this individuality—as I argue in
Chapter 3, an animal species is never a material entity, since it is always
18 R. PISKORSKI

already implicated in the abstractness necessitated by its iterative produc-

tion. As Sheehan puts it, ‘the animal itself [the albatross in the poem] [is]
a large oceanic bird comprising about twenty-one species’ (167). This
reveals a tension between the (singular) albatross in the poem (‘a bird’,
‘the animal itself’) and the abstract multitude of a whole or even several
species. Discourses on extinction are indeed focused on the disappear-
ance of animal species, but Sheehan’s point about the animal disappearance
supposedly undertaken by language focuses on one animal individual; in
fact, his argument depends on the materiality that can only accrue to
singular individuals in order to lament its erasure. As I argue in detail
throughout the book, the dynamics between animal species and animal
individual is not only vital for any discussion of literary representations of
animal, but also for any theory of signification itself , since the iterative
play of ideality and materiality is at the heart of the functioning of the
linguistic sign, a functioning I claim is essentially linked to animality.
Much more attuned to the concerns of zoogrammatology is Belinda
Kleinhans’s article on Günter Eich’s late texts. In her analysis of his prose
poems, Kleinhans privileges not animals as ‘objects’ of writing, but as a
part of a ‘complicat[ion] [of] the relationship between the animal in the
text and the animal as text’. Kleinhans’s analysis is grounded on her argu-
ment that the lines between ‘language and animal(ity)’ are blurred, which
has major consequences for conceptions of language and meaning (2018,
45). She demonstrates that Eich, by naming the genre of prose poems
he wrote a ‘mole’ and having them ‘burrow through language’, disturbs
the traditional framework whereby language captures animal reality, and
introduces moles not only as subject matter of the text but as ‘the textual
genre itself’ (51). In her conception of zoopoetics, animality is some-
thing that is not only followed by language in order to be represented,
but rather forms literary language and textuality themselves. This clearly
has sizable consequences both for texts and for animals, as it suggests that
the former are more material than mere cultural abstractions and that the
latter are not simply bodily matter. Her conception relies on the deci-
sion—present both in her methodology and, according to her, in Eich’s
poetics—‘to break the referentiality and metaphoricity of language’ (55).
With that, she seems to insist that a zoopoetics must grapple with the
meaning-making procedures of language (and with how these are related
to animality), and not only with the referential content of texts.
Another crucial contribution to the theorisation of zoopoetics is Aaron
M. Moe’s Zoopoetics: Animals and the Making of Poetry. Moe defines
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

it as ‘the process of discovering innovative breakthroughs in [literary]

form through an attentiveness to another species’ bodily poiesis ’ (2014,
10). This focus on form is, I argue, very welcome, as it allows Moe
to theorise poetics and animality together. For him, zoopoetics ‘moves
toward material gestures of the text’ and identifies in those gestures the
echoes of animal poiesis —animals’ ‘makings through their innumerable
nuances of bodily movement, symbolic gesture, [and] symbolic vocaliza-
tion’ (7). Thus, analysing a poem by Ray Gonzalez that describes several
snakes nailed onto a wall, forming ‘twisted letters’ as they writhe, Moe
argues that the poem ‘finds a way to give the writhing bodies voice’,
since ‘the poem’s materiality […] emerges from an attentiveness to the
snakes’ [movement]’ (6). I discuss such a focus on form—as well as on the
materiality of language—in detail in Chapter 4, where I argue it is essen-
tial in order to understand how signification and animality both work
according to an iterable logic of ideality and materiality. Therefore, in
my reading of Ted Hughes’s ‘The Thought-Fox’, I answer Moe’s call to
‘look at alphabetic language differently’ (7). For him, zoopoetics must
take the question of iconicity seriously, whereby ‘an attentiveness to the
spatial, temporal, visual, and auditory dynamics of a poem’ is encour-
aged. This reinforces Moe’s argument for the importance of form, since
‘iconic poems move away from emphasizing the “meanings” of words
and toward a word’s shape, gestures, and therefore implied movement’
(7). This same impulse is also present in zoogrammatology as I propose
it, and it is borne out of methodological, theoretical, and philosophical
conclusions regarding the intertwinement of animality and signification,
and the speciesist consequences of treating the materiality of the text (its
body) as a transparent vehicle for extra-textual presences. Moe argues that
this latter approach is systematically part of the ‘Western tendency to look
through words rather than at them’, according to a belief that ‘language is
something “invisible”—something that exists less in the body and more in
the interiority of the mind’ (7–8). The enquiry of this tendency occupies
a considerable portion of Derrida’s deconstructive project, and I discuss
in depth his analyses of the reasoning—present in Saussure, Husserl, and
others—that language is not material. I argue, following Derrida, that
the dematerialisation of spoken language—together with the insistence
on, and the denigration of, the materiality of writing—explains not only
the phono-logocentrism of the Western tradition, but also its anthro-
pocentrism and speciesism. As I demonstrate, Derrida does not simply
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
loan-office law, under the provincial government,[204] directed the
emission of ten times the original sum; to be applied, in aid of land-
improvements, in loans for the term of sixteen years; and repayable
in like manner, with an annual interest of six per centum.

The same policy was pursued by the independent government of

Pennsylvania. Under the first loan-office law of that state,[205] the sum
of fifty thousand pounds was issued in bills of credit; and eight years
afterwards, a further sum of half a million of dollars (or 187,500l.)
was appropriated for the purposes of a loan-office on similar
principles, in pursuance of a law of the state.[206] But, as the
individual state-governments were prohibited by the constitution of
the United States, then recently established, from emitting bills of
credit, or making any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in
payment of debts,—the money to be employed in loans, on
mortgages of real estates, was to be borrowed, according to the
provisions of the law last mentioned, from the bank of Pennsylvania;
a power which the state had reserved, for that express purpose, in
the act to incorporate the subscribers to that bank.[207]

This loan-office law was, however, the last in Pennsylvania.[208]

The establishment of banks, for facilitating the purposes of trade,
together with the great improvements and wealth to which the landed
interest of the state had attained, by means of a widely extended
foreign commerce, coming in aid of the benefits which the cultivators
had previously derived from the loan-office system, superseded, in a
great degree, the utility of this institution. In one year after the last
loan-office was erected, the law for that purpose was repealed; the
repealing act declaring—that it had been found inexpedient, and not
to answer the purposes intended by the legislature. In fact, the
establishment of banks in the interior of the country, not only
supplies the place of a loan-office, in relation to the farmer, but
greatly facilitates the extensive inland trade of the state. Experience
has demonstrated, that, operating in this way, they are productive of
all the important advantages of the loan-office system: and of this
institution, the late governor Pownall speaks in these remarkable
words—“I will venture to say, that there never was a wiser or a better
measure; never one better calculated to serve the uses of an
increasing country; that there never was a measure more steadily
pursued, or more faithfully executed, for forty years together,[209] than
the loan-office in Pennsylvania, formed and administered by the
assembly of that province.”[210]

In the year 1782, Mr. Rittenhouse was elected a Fellow of the

Academy of Arts and Sciences, of Boston: his certificate bears date
the 30th of January, in that year. This academy, which Dr. Morse
ranks among the first literary institutions in the state of
Massachusetts, holds a very respectable station in relation to
science: yet it was not established till so lately as May 4, 1780. The
end and design of the institution are stated to be—“to promote and
encourage the knowledge of the antiquities of America, and of the
natural history of the country, and to determine the uses to which its
various natural productions may be applied: also, to promote and
encourage medical discoveries, mathematical disquisitions,
philosophical enquiries and experiments; astronomical,
meteorological and geographical observations, improvements in
agriculture, arts, manufactures, commerce, and the cultivation of
every science that may tend to advance a free, independent and
virtuous people.”[211]

It is supposed to have been somewhat about this time, that Mr.

Rittenhouse exercised his ingenuity upon an object, which, though
not of great importance, is nevertheless a matter of considerable
utility and some curiosity; the invention of an Hygrometer, made
wholly of wood. The simplicity of the construction of this instrument,
renders it easily attainable by almost every one; and as it is found to
answer, very well, the end for which more expensive instruments are
often employed, it may be considered as being more generally
useful. Descriptions of the construction, and principle of operation, of
this Hygrometer, having been furnished to the writer through the
obligingness of two of his friends,[212] a very concise account of it,
drawn up from those descriptions, is given in the Appendix.
 A circumstance shall be noticed in this place, which, although
trivial in itself, will serve to shew the grateful sense entertained by
our Philosopher of the merits of General Washington. It appears, that
just about the time when the provisional articles of peace, concluded
on between the United States and Great-Britain, were made known
in America, Mr. Rittenhouse had forwarded to the General, at the
head-quarters of the army, a pair of spectacles, and reading glasses,
—as a small testimonial of his respect for the character and services
of that great man. The terms of the letter that accompanied this little
present, are not known to the writer of these memoirs; but, of what
complexion they were, may be inferred from the General’s answer,
which is in these words:

“Newburgh, 16th Feb. 1783.

“Sir,

“I have been honoured with your letter of the 7th, and beg you to
accept my sincere thanks, for the favor conferred on me, in the
Glasses—which are very fine; but more particularly, for the flattering
expressions which accompanied the present.

“The Spectacles suit my eyes extremely well—as I am persuaded

the Reading-Glasses also will, when I get more accustomed to the
use of them. At present, I find some difficulty in coming at the proper
focus; but when I do obtain it, they magnify perfectly, and shew those
letters very distinctly, which at first appear like a mist—blended
together and confused. With great esteem and respect, I am, Sir,
your most obedient and humble servant,

“Go. Washington.

“David Rittenhouse, Esq.”

The grinding and polishing of the glasses were of Mr.

Rittenhouse’s own workmanship; and they were made for the
purpose. This circumstance, added to the manner and occasion of
their being presented, could not fail of being highly acceptable to the
General.

In the year 1784, Mr. Rittenhouse was employed on the part of

Pennsylvania, for the purpose of determining the western extension
of that state; and was associated in that business with Mr. Lukens,
Dr. Ewing, and Capt. Hutchins: the commissioners in behalf of
Virginia were Dr. (afterwards bishop) Madison, Mr. Ellicott,[213] Mr. J.
Page, and the Rev. Mr. R. Andrews. A record of the astronomical
observations which were made on this occasion, and on similar ones
of an important nature, will be found detailed in a letter, under the
date of April 2, 1795, addressed by Mr. Ellicott to Mr. Patterson, in
the fourth volume of the Am. Philos. Society’s Transactions. Among
the observations contained in the first part of that letter, are those of
the immersions of the satellites of Jupiter, taken at Wilmington on the
Delaware, by Messrs. Rittenhouse, Lukens, Page and Andrews, at
divers days from the 1st to the 23d of August, in the year 1784;
together with those taken at the western observatory by Messrs.
Ellicott, Ewing, Madison and Hutchins, at divers days from the 17th
of July to the 19th of August; also, the emersions of those satellites
by the same eastern observers, from the 29th of August to the 19th
of September; and by the same western observers, from the 27th of
August to the 19th of September; all in the same year.

“After the determination,” says Mr. Ellicott, “we completed the

southern boundary of Pennsylvania; it being likewise the north
boundary of Maryland, and a part of Virginia; and which had been
carried on some years before,[214] by Messrs. Mason and Dixon, the
distance of 242 miles.” This line is in the parallel of 39° 43′ 18″ North
latitude.[215]

It was at the close of this year, that the college of William and
Mary, in Virginia, complimented Mr. Rittenhouse with an honorary
degree of Master of Arts, by an unanimous vote of the rectors and
faculty of that institution. His diploma, which is a special one, and
wherein he is styled the Chief of Philosophers,[216] has a place in the
Appendix.
 The college of William and Mary was founded in the joint reign of
the king and queen of those names, who endowed it with twenty
thousand acres of land, besides a small duty on certain exported
tobaccoes, granted by stat. 25 Ch. II: in addition to which, the
assembly of Virginia also gave to it, by temporary laws, a duty on
liquors imported, and on skins and furs exported. And from these
resources, its funds amounted, on a medium, to more than 3,000l.
Virginia currency, (or $10,000,) per annum. The Hon. Robert Boyle,
[217]
of England, had also made a liberal donation to this college, for
the purpose of instituting a professorship, called the Brafferton, (the
name of the English estate, purchased with the money granted by
him to the college,) for the purpose of compensating missionaries, to
instruct the Indian natives and to convert them to Christianity. After
the revolution, the constitution of the college of William and Mary
underwent a considerable change: three of the six original
professorships, that is to say, two of Divinity, and one of the Greek
and Latin languages, were abolished; and three others, namely, one
for Law and Police—one for Anatomy and Medicine—and a third for
Modern Languages, were substituted in their stead; the Brafferton, it
is presumed, has been diverted into other channels, if not wholly
neglected.

This once respectable college, or university, is at present in an

unprosperous condition; and will not probably soon, if ever, regain its
former reputation. A country of which a large portion of the
population consists of slaves, is ill suited for the site of an extensive
seminary of learning, and for the education of youth: nor can it be
expected, that where an almost despotic sway of masters over their
slaves[218] is daily exhibited to the view of both young and old, the
children of those masters will submit to that degree of subordination,
and to that exercise of authority by their literary preceptors, which
the discipline of an academic education renders indispensable. The
late Bishop Madison contributed much by his abilities, his suavity of
manners and his prudence, to maintain a due degree of order in this
institution, over which he long presided with distinguished reputation;
but the death of that respectable man, it is feared, augurs ill for the
future prosperity of the seminary.
 In the year following, the tracing of a meridian, northward, for the
western boundary of Pennsylvania,—and, consequently, the eastern
boundary of part of Virginia,—was commenced, from the western
end of the southern line of Pennsylvania before mentioned. On this
occasion, Mr. Rittenhouse addressed the following letter to Mr.
Ellicott.

“Philadelphia, April 28th, 1785.

“Dear Sir,

“For some months past I had not the least apprehension of being
obliged to visit the Ohio, this spring; but our affairs have taken such
a turn, that at present it is probable I shall meet you, at the time and
place appointed. Capt. Hutchins has been sent for to New York, by
Congress, as the trustees of the university will not consent to Dr.
Ewing’s absence. One or other of us will certainly set off in a few
days, to meet you: our waggons are already gone.

“I have earnestly recommended to council to commission you to

act in behalf of Pennsylvania,[219] after we pass the Ohio; and the
president directs me to inform you, that they mean to send you a
commission for the purpose: I hope it will suit your convenience.

“I ought long since to have informed you, that you were elected a
member of our Philosophical Society—I wish you would favour us
with a communication, on any subject you please. Pray let me hear
from you, before you leave Baltimore. Have you any account from
Virginia? I am, dear sir, yours with respect and sincerity.

“David Rittenhouse.

“Andrew Ellicott, Esq. Baltimore.”

This boundary-line was begun in May, 1785, by Messrs.

Rittenhouse, Ellicott, Porter, and Nevill; assisted by the present Dr.
Benjamin Smith Barton, then a youth about nineteen years of age,
whose medical and other scientific acquirements rendered him, even
at that early period of life, an useful associate of the commissioners.
Mr. Nevill (who was employed on the part of Virginia) left the other
commissioners late in August; and Mr. Rittenhouse, about the middle
of September.[220] Dr. Barton remained until some time in October,
when these operations ceased for that season. The line then wanted
about 55⅓ miles of being completed: and this part of it, to its
intersection of the margin of Lake Erie, was finished in the following
year, by Col. Porter and Alexander Maclain, Esq.[221]

It will be readily conceived, that a person of Mr. Rittenhouse’s

delicate constitution, and regularity in his mode of living when at
home, must have experienced much inconvenience and felt many
privations of comfort, while climbing rugged mountains, traversing
vast uncultivated forests, and sleeping in a tent, for successive
months, as he was necessarily obliged to do, when employed on
occasions of this kind. For, although the government afforded to the
gentlemen engaged in these arduous services, very liberal
accommodations, there were, nevertheless, numerous
conveniencies which the nature of the duty to be performed rendered
unattainable. Yet it is a fact, that Mr. Rittenhouse always returned
from these excursions with a better stock of health, than he sat out
with; notwithstanding the hardships he sometimes endured, and the
many unpleasant circumstances in regard to weather, diet, bedding,
&c. which he was compelled to encounter. The two following letters,
written by him to his wife, while he was engaged in the service of
establishing the boundary-line last mentioned, will enable the reader
to form a pretty good judgment of the kind of life he then passed.
They will at the same time serve to shew, in some degree, the bent
of his mind and the disposition of his heart.

The first of those letters, dated at “Wheeling Creek,” June 30th

1785, is in these words.

“My dearest H,

“I have not heard one word from Philadelphia, since I left you.
About a month ago I wrote to you from Union Town, and I promise
myself a letter from you by the first messenger from that place, who
is now daily expected. To-morrow Mr. Armstrong sets off for Hanna’s
Town, where he expects to meet brother Isaac Jacobs, so that I write
in confidence of my letter reaching you.

“If I were to view only the dark side of my situation, I should

complain that I am here secluded from the society of those I love,
deprived of books and every other of my most favourite
amusements; confined to homely fare by day, and a hard bed at
night; and obliged, by our business, to take rather too much
exercise. But these inconveniences are in some measure
counterbalanced by several advantages: I am not condemned to
hear that eternal din for money, which it pains me to think you are
every day perplexed with;[222] politics have no existence here;
constant and regular exercise causes me to sleep much better at
nights, than I did at home;—we have a woman to cook for us, so that
our bread is good, and every thing else tolerable. Colonel Porter is
attentive, and cousin Benjamin[223] has recommended himself as an
agreeable companion, to all of us; and I could almost call Mr. Ellicott
a congenial soul.

“I ever delighted in a wild uncultivated country; this is truly

romantic, and, at this season of the year, beautiful and luxuriant in
the highest degree. A few days ago, I walked up a little rivulet, in
company with Mr. Ellicott, for a considerable distance, in order to
enjoy the romantic scene. It was bounded on each side by steep hills
of an immense height: its bottom was finely paved with large flag-
stones, rising in steps, with, every now and then, a beautiful
cascade. The further we went, the more gloomy and cool we found
it. At last, I advised Mr. Ellicott that we should proceed no further; for,
if we did, we should in all probability find some of the water-
goddesses,—perhaps stark naked and fast asleep. Mr. A—— went
with us, for company-sake; but neither the nymphs nor their shady
bowers have any charms for him.[224]—Nothing but your company
was wanting to me, to heighten the enchanting scene.

“Deer are incredibly plenty here—I was the first that caught a
young fawn, and hoped to have sent the beautiful little animal a
present to H****. We kept it about a week, and it became quite tame;
but our cows ran away, and it was starved for want of milk. Col. P.
called it F—— B——, and says H**** shall at least have the skin. We
have all been very healthy; my cough diminishes slowly, my old
complaint is less troublesome, and I have no other.

“I am not yet determined, as to the time of my return. Later than

September, I have no thoughts of staying; perhaps the fear of riding
in hot weather may induce me to stay till then.

“We have, hitherto, made so slow a progress, that I am much

dissatisfied with it; but do not know how to help it. Our greatest
difficulty arises from the nature of the ground; and the idleness of the
people of the country, is not the least. We have had about thirty men
employed, and are not yet able to go more than a mile per day. I was
about writing to the Vice-President, on this subject; but, on second
thoughts, concluded it best not to do it: I wish, however, that council
would, by some official letter, urge us to proceed with all the dispatch
consistent with the accuracy they expect.

“I wish to write to B***** and H****; but you will not readily imagine
how little leisure I have: Tired of the exercise of the day, I rejoice at
the approach of night; and, after a cup of tea, generally lie down to
rest as soon as it is dark, unless we have observations to make; and
then we have generally half a mile to walk, through dark woods, from
the place of observation to our encampment: this, however, does not
happen above once in a fortnight.

“Sun, gallop down the western skies;

Go quick to bed, and quickly rise;”

Until you bring round the happy day, that will restore me again to the
dear woman and children I so much love.

“Give my love to my children, and the few friends that are really
concerned for my welfare. God bless you, and make you at least as
happy as I am; and then, I am sure, you will not complain. Your ever
affectionate
 “D. Rittenhouse.

“Mrs. Hannah Rittenhouse.”

The other letter, dated at the “Head Waters of Buffalo,” the

thirteenth of July, is as follows.

“My dearest H,

“I need not say how much I feel for you, on account of the
disagreeable situation in which you last wrote. The only advice, I
believe, which I thought it necessary to give you, at leaving you, was
to keep up your spirits and endeavour to bear the fatigues of the
office. What will you say, or what will you think, when I tell you, I
believe it scarcely possible for any thing to contribute so much to
reconcile me to your absence, as the aversion I have to the plagues
of that same office.

“You have heard the reports concerning the Indians. We are still
ignorant of the true state of matters; but, from every information we
can get, it seems very improbable that we shall cross the Ohio this
summer: on this side of the river, we do not apprehend the least
danger.

“On Saturday last, we suddenly emerged from the gloomy,

uncultivated desert, into a habitable country; and encamped with joy
in an open field where we could once more see the heavens around
us,—a sight we had not been blest with, for five weeks past. Wheat,
rye, and Indian-corn, growing, afforded a very pleasing sight; even
the barking of dogs and crowing of cocks were agreeable. The next
day being Sunday, several of the neighbours, their wives and
daughters, paid us a visit; and amongst them, at least one spruce
young lady, bred at the metropolis, Fort-Pitt.[225] But would you
believe it? such is my unreasonable and incurable aversion to
company, that their visits soon became irksome. They hindered me
from enjoying a lonely walk, or some passage in Milton,—or,
perhaps, a loll on my bed. Nay, even our fellow-commissioners, the
Virginians, I mean; I sometimes wish their wine was better, and
flowed more plentifully: not that I might enjoy it with them; but that I
might enjoy myself the more, alone.

“Whether you will believe me or not, I do not know; but my health

is really much better. As I told you in my last, my old complaint is the
only one I have; and this is, and has been for several weeks,
infinitely more supportable, than I have known it for months together.
I do not, indeed, flatter myself with a cure; it is, in all probability, fixed
for life: but an alleviation of the pain I have usually felt, is to me of
much importance.

“We have, for three weeks past, had a much greater proportion of
dry weather; and in this country, when it does not rain, the sky is
always fair, of a beautiful blue, and the air serene. There has been
nothing like a storm, nor scarce a puff of wind, since we came here.
Though thunder, lightning, and rain, are so very frequent, they are
never attended with high winds, nor scarcely a perceptible motion of
the air. For a month past, we had a very decent woman to cook for
us, but some little family broils obliged us to pack her home again.
Our boys have, however, learnt from her to bake good bread, and to
cook much better than they did. I mention this, because you will be
pleased with any thing that can contribute to my comfort.

“I expect several opportunities of writing, before we reach the

Ohio, none of which shall be neglected. I must lay down the pen, to
retire to rest after the fatigues of the day. Wishing you a very good
night, I conclude, &c. your ever affectionate

“David Rittenhouse.

“Mrs. Rittenhouse.”

“P. S. Having mentioned the fatigues of the day, I must assure you
that I find my strength fully equal to them: As to walking up the hills, I
never pretend to it, having always a horse to ride—Col. P. is every
thing I could wish; I mean, so far as is necessary to me.”

This arduous business of determining the territorial limits of

several great states, which commenced before the American
revolution, was not terminated until some years afterward. And on
every occasion of that kind, where Mr. Rittenhouse’s situation, in
respect to health and official duties, admitted of his being employed,
his talents placed his services in requisition.

He had been at home but a few weeks, after being engaged in

running the Western boundary of Pennsylvania, before he was
elected by Congress, together with the Rev. Dr. Ewing, and Thomas
Hutchins, Esq. afterwards Geographer of the United States, a
commissioner “for running a line of jurisdiction between the states of
Massachusetts and New-York, conformably to the laws of the said
states.” This appointment was made on the 2d day of December,
1785.[226] It was not, however, until the year 1787, that the legislature
of New-York ceded to the state of Massachusetts all the lands within
their jurisdiction, Westward of a meridian to be drawn from a point in
the Northern boundary of Pennsylvania, eighty-two miles West from
the river Delaware; excepting one mile along the Eastern side of the
Niagara river; and also ten townships between the Chenengo and
Owegy rivers; reserving the jurisdiction to the state of New-York: a
cession which was made to satisfy a claim of Massachusetts,
founded upon their original charter.

This line was accordingly run, in the year 1787, by the

commissioners so appointed for the purpose:—And “this last
business, which was executed with his usual precision and
integrity”—says Dr. Rush, speaking of Mr. Rittenhouse,—“ was his
farewell peace-offering to the union and happiness of his country.”
 It was not until the year 1786, that the American Philosophical
Society were enabled to publish a second volume of their
Transactions:[227] it then made its appearance. Into that volume is
introduced a letter to the Society, in the original Latin, (accompanied
with an English translation,)[228] from the celebrated C. Mayer, the
Elector Palatine’s[229] Astronomer at Manheim, dated so long before
as the 24th of April, 1778. The receipt of that letter had been
acknowledged by Mr. Rittenhouse, according to a special order of
the Society, so early as the 20th of August, 1779; and the answer, it
is presumable, was duly transmitted to Mr. Mayer. Yet, although
there was a lapse of seven years, from the date of Mr. Rittenhouse’s
letter to the time of Mr. Mayer’s communication being printed in the
Society’s Transactions, the former was, by some unaccountable
circumstance, omitted and unnoticed! Nor will the reader’s surprise
on this occasion be diminished, when he learns, that a member of
the Society, having obtained from Mr. Rittenhouse a copy of his
letter, had it read at their stated meeting on the 16th of March, 1792,
—twelve years and a half after its date; that it was, thereupon,
“referred to the committee of selection and publication:” and,
notwithstanding, by some other fatality, that letter remained
unpublished until now; being twenty-one years afterwards!

On a perusal of the answer to Mr. Mayer’s communication (in the

Appendix,) it will be found, that the “eminent utility,” which he
expected to result, at some future day, to astronomical science, from
a prosecution of such discoveries as he had recently made among
the fixed stars, had been long before anticipated by our Astronomer.
In that answer Mr. Rittenhouse mentions, that he is induced to
request his correspondent’s acceptance of a copy of the Oration he
had delivered before the American Philosophical Society, “some
years” before:—“because,” says the writer, “I therein gave my
opinion, that the fixed stars afforded the most spacious field for the
industry of future astronomers; and expressed my hopes, that the
noblest mysteries would sometime be unfolded, in those immensely
distant regions.”
 This early opinion of his own concerning the fixed stars, to which
Mr. Rittenhouse refers in his letter, is expressed in his Oration, in this
short paragraph: “If astronomy shall again break those limits that
now confine it, and expatiate freely in the superior celestial fields,—
what amazing discoveries may yet be made among the fixed stars!
That grand phænomenon the Milky way, seems to be the clue, that
will one day guide us.”

Such were the expectations entertained by our Philosopher, more

than three years before the date of Mr. Mayer’s communication of his
discovery to the Philosophical Society;—a discovery which Mr.
Rittenhouse, in his letter to that great astronomer, styles “excellent;”
and one that proves his own “presage” to have been well founded.
He, at the same time, modestly suggests to Mr. Mayer, the institution
of a comparison between the many observations he had already
made, in order to determine, whether the several changes observed
will agree with any imagined motion of our system; remarking, that
those he had communicated, seemed to favour such a supposition.

How important soever, in relation to astronomy, the phænomena

observed by Mayer may be, the honour of first discovering them
certainly belongs to him. Mr. Rittenhouse was not the discoverer: nor
had he ever access to so complete and expensive an astronomical
apparatus, as that used by Mayer on the occasion, and with which
he was furnished by means of princely munificence. But all candid
men of science will, nevertheless, be disposed to allow the American
Astronomer no inconsiderable share of merit for the early “presage,”
which his deep-discerning and vastly comprehensive mind enabled
him to suggest, of some such future discoveries.

The writer of these memoirs deemed it his duty to do justice to the

memory of the subject of them, by giving publicity to these
interesting circumstances; and the performance of this duty is the
more gratifying to the writer, because he alone possesses a
knowledge of all the facts he has stated, concerning them.

The late discoveries of Dr. Herschel, among the fixed stars, in

addition to those previously made by Mr. Mayer, have in a greater
degree realised the expectations which were formed, many years
before either, by our Astronomer; such, indeed, as are almost
entitled to the character of prescient annunciations, respecting that
portion of the heavens which should, some time or other, be the
scene of the most important astronomical discoveries. According to
Herschel, the Milky Way is an immense nebula, near one of the
sides of which, is placed the solar system; and he imagines, that
each nebula, of which he had observed more than nine hundred,
consists of a group of suns, with their attendant planets!

Mr. Rittenhouse never possessed the means of acquiring such

stupendous and costly telescopes, as those used by Herschel, for
the purpose of exploring the heavens. But the penetrating genius of
our countryman seems to have contemplated, by anticipation, the
actual existence of those sublime phænomena, some of which the
vastly superior instruments of the Germano-Anglican Astronomer
have since manifested; when, in language apparently prophetic, but
certainly dictated by the most exalted pre-conceptions of the
grandeur of celestial objects which were yet undiscovered, the
American Philosopher observes, as he does in his Oration,—that “all
yonder stars innumerable, with their dependencies, may perhaps
compose but the leaf of a flower in the Creator’s garden, or a single
pillar in the immense building of the Divine Architect.” Well might he
exclaim, with rapturous extacy, after so beautiful and sublime a
reflection,—“Here is ample provision made for the all-grasping mind
of man!”

It will be evident to such as duly reflect on this subject, that those

expectations which occupied the mind of Mr. Rittenhouse, so long
since as the year 1775—concerning the “amazing discoveries” which
should, at some future period, be made among the fixed stars, were
not mere conjectures or vague hypotheses; but, that they were
rational anticipations of realities, founded on the most acute
observation and laborious research, as well as the profoundest
philosophical judgment. As Newton is said to have revealed those
truths in physics, which his predecessor, Bacon, had preconceived;
so, that great practical astronomer, Herschel, and some other
eminent observers of our day,[230] have been enabled, by means of
the very important improvements recently made in astronomical
instruments,[231] to verify a grand hypothesis in his favourite science,
which had long before been conceived by the towering genius of
Rittenhouse.

From the time our astronomer became established in Philadelphia,

until the year 1787, he resided in a house belonging to the late Mr.
Thomas Clifford, at the south-east corner of Arch and (Delaware)
Seventh streets: But the mansion which Mr. Rittenhouse had erected
for himself, the preceding year, on his Observatory-lot at the
diagonal corner of those streets, being then compleated, he removed
thither; and there continued his residence, during the residue of his
life. It was about this time, perhaps towards the close of the year
1786, that he was compelled by the duties of his office, as sole
trustee of the loan-office, to put in suit the bonds which accompanied
the mortgages of sundry delinquent loanees. The bonds were placed
in the hands of the Writer of these Memoirs, for that purpose; with
instructions to treat the delinquents with every reasonable degree of
forbearance. This lenity was observed, agreeably to Mr.
Rittenhouse’s desire; few suits were instituted, and payment of the
monies due, or the greater part of them, was not long after obtained.

Early in the year 1787, the expected appearance of a new comet

in that year, engaged Mr. Rittenhouse’s attention: and on that
occasion he addressed the following letter to Mr. Ellicott.

“Philadelphia, Feb. 12, 1787.

“Dear Sir,

“The elements of the new Planet have been pretty well determined
by several European astronomers. The following I have extracted
from the Almanack[232] for 1787.

Mean Longitude 4h 2° 21′ 58″ To Dec. 31,

Mean Anomaly 4 8 53 56 1787, at noon,
Place of Aphel. 11 23 28 2 Paris.
Ascending Node 2 12 52 54

Mean Motion in Long. in 365 days 4° 19′ 47″

in 30 days 21′ 21″
in 24 hours 42″.7
“The Aphelion and Nodes move according to
the precession of the Equinoxes; that is 50″.3 per ann.
Inclination of the Orbit 46′ 13″

Log. of greatest distance from the Sun 6.3007701

Log. of least distance 6.2594052
The Log. of the Earth’s mean dist. from ☉
being 5.0000000

“Dr. Halley’s Table of the equation of ♃’s orbit will do very well for
computing the place of Herschel’s planet, only subtracting 1/16 part of
the equation there found; the greatest equation of this planet being
5° 27′ 16″. So, if from the Log. to any degree of anomaly, in the Table
for Jupiter, we subtract 1/76 part of the excess of that Log. above the
least, and to the remainder add the constant Logarithm .5647750,
we shall have the Log. for ♅ sufficiently accurate. On these
principles, I have computed the Right Ascension of ♅, and find both
agree with my own observation, to a few seconds.

“I am sorry you have engaged the notice of *******. Men of his

principles, with a printing-press at command, are the greatest pests
of society.

“My very bad state of health, and a multiplicity of business, have

prevented my answering yours as soon as I wished to have done it. I
am, Dear Sir, your Friend and Humble Servant,
 “David Rittenhouse.

“Andrew Ellicott, Esq. Baltimore.”

The correctness of the calculations respecting the Georgium

Sidus, stated in this letter, is noticed in the following extract from one
of Mr. Ellicott’s Almanacks.

“The reader will find in this Almanack a continuation of the planet

♅. The elements on which the calculations were made, appear by
observation to be very accurately determined, not only by the
astronomers in Europe, but by my ingenious friend Mr. Rittenhouse,
whose knowledge of the theory and practice of astronomy, is not
surpassed in the old world.”

From this time, until his resignation of the treasurership of

Pennsylvania in the autumn of 1789[233], Mr. Rittenhouse appears to
have continued to be pretty much engaged in the duties of that
office. A short time before this event, the Writer of these Memoirs
visited the city of New-York; where the first congress, chosen under
the present constitution of the United States, were then convened,
having commenced their session on the fourth day of March
preceding: and on that occasion, Mr. Rittenhouse addressed a letter
to General Washington, then President of the United States,
recommendatory of his friend and nephew. Delicacy forbids this
relative to present to public view that portion of the letter, which more
especially relates to himself: but the introductory part of it is here
presented to the reader, for the purpose of testifying the continuance
of the high esteem entertained for the truly great man to whom it was
addressed, by one who never disguised his sentiments. This extract
is as follows:

“Philadelphia, Aug. 14, 1789[234]

“Sir,

“However unwilling I am to add to that multitude of letters which

must encroach so much on your precious time, I cannot altogether
forbear, without doing violence to my feelings. As we have, all of us,
through the course of life, been greatly indebted to the good offices
of others; so we are no doubt under obligations to perform the same
in our turn, as well with respect to our particular friends, as society in
general.

“Mr. William Barton, my sister’s son, knowing that you have

heretofore honoured me with your acquaintance, I might, perhaps,
say friendship, is willing to believe that any thing I can say in his
favour, might have some weight with your Excellency.—

* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *

“Wishing your Excellency every happiness, I have the honour to

be, Sir, with the greatest respect, your most obedient humble
servant,

“David Rittenhouse.

“His Excellency the President of the U. States.”

On the 10th of November, 1789, the following letter from Mr.

Rittenhouse, offering his resignation of the office of treasurer of the
state, was presented to the general assembly; and, after having
been twice read, was, by order of the house, entered on their
minutes.

November 9, 1789.

“Sir,

“On account of the very unfavourable state of my health, as well

as because I most earnestly wish to devote some of the few
remaining hours of my life to a favourite science, I find myself under
the necessity of declining the office of treasurer.
 “I have now held that office for almost thirteen years, having been
annually appointed by the unanimous voice, so far as I know, of the
representatives of the freemen of this state; a circumstance I shall
ever reflect on with satisfaction, and which does me the greatest
honour.

“I will not pay so ill a compliment to those I owe so much, as to

suppose the principal motive in these repeated appointments was
any other than the public good; but I am nevertheless very willing to
believe, that a regard to my interest was not wholly out of view. And I
shall, perhaps, never have another opportunity of expressing, with so
much propriety, my sincerest gratitude to the representatives of my
countrymen, whose favour I have indeed often experienced on other
occasions.

“I accepted the treasury, when it was attended with difficulty and

danger, and consequently when there was no compensation for it.
Soon afterwards, a depreciated currency, prodigiously accumulated,
made it extremely burthensome, without any prospect of profit.

“In a more favourable situation of our affairs, it might have been

lucrative, had not the very small commissions allowed by law, been
scarcely equal to the risk of receiving and paying. In 1785, my
commissions were increased, and the office was for some time
profitable; but the difficulties or remissness in collecting the public
revenues, again reduced it to a very moderate compensation.

“If, however, the embarrassments of the office have, in general,

been little understood by those not immediately concerned in it; if the
emoluments of it have been greatly exaggerated in the public
opinion; I am still the more obliged to the several assemblies, who,
under these impressions, have nevertheless continued me so long
their treasurer.

“The confidence of the public I have ever esteemed so invaluable

a possession, that it has been my fixed determination not to forfeit it,
by any voluntary act of impropriety. Where my conduct has been