Abstract My article has two interrelated aims: to subject a text-focused criticism to a symptomatic demand and, in the process, to introduce, or rather re-introduce, a neglected but significant voice: that of the poet, Ruth Miller. I relate my own earlier textual response to my later symptomatic reading and conclude that, whatever the potential or limitations of the two responses, this South African poet of the 1960s continues to move beyond categorisations such as women’s poet, or political or non-political poet, to engage readers in a compulsion of language, thought, and feeling: what is it to live with awareness in the shadow of death? As Miller’s two collections are long out of print, I regard it as integral to my task of introduction to quote substantially from her poems.

中文翻译：

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症状批评的潜力和局限性：以露丝米勒的诗歌为例

摘要 我的文章有两个相互关联的目标：使以文本为中心的批评服从于有症状的需求，并在此过程中引入，或者更确切地说是重新引入一种被忽视但重要的声音：诗人露丝·米勒的声音。我将我自己早期的文本反应与我后来的症状阅读联系起来，并得出结论，无论这两种反应的潜力或局限性如何，这位 1960 年代的南非诗人继续超越诸如女性诗人、政治或非政治诗人之类的分类，让读者沉浸在语言、思想和感觉的强迫中：在死亡的阴影下有意识地生活是什么？由于米勒的两本合集早已绝版，我认为这是我引言任务不可或缺的一部分，大量引用她的诗歌。