The Flying Manuscript, Helene Cixous

The Flying Manuscript
Author(s): Hlne Cixous and Peggy Kamuf

Reviewed work(s):
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 37, No. 1, Hlne Cixous: When the Word Is a Stage
(Winter, 2006), pp. 15-46
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057925 .
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The Flying Manuscript*

H?l?ne
Cixous
and the
7TH of April,
2005,1 was in Arcachon, my Arcachon
in Blanchot's Death Sentence. I had the sad good fortune of
of Veils, yes, the first draft, the "very
finding again the manuscript
The
one
first,"
in from
blown
"from the furthest

to me,
for
as
soon
as
far,
very
"from
reach possible
you
show
very
far,"
you
say,
write
you
say it seems
of the truth," you would

in whatever
yourself,
form
or
or
kind
body
itmay be, I recognize you, one recognizes you by the veritable shower of
truth, with the showering of thought from the first breath you throw us
off our feet,
sad good
fortune
a
unexpectedly,
but good
manuscript
fortune
whose
every
in truth
feature
to come
leaps
into
upon
view,
again,
and
all
the graphisms,
in the house but dazzling,
I see at once
apocalypse
see
I
and
nothing
everything
Voil? Veils has come back!
found in a bottle I say to myself)
(I am going to reread the manuscript
a
an
to
-One has
bottle like
imagine
airplane deprived of a pilot you say
As for you, you would write the sentence
like this:
-I am going to reread the manuscript
found in a bottle
in a bottle?
-You think that you find yourself
a
as
-In
It is
if I am in a machine.
Klein Bottle, perhaps.
-Who's
Who
-For,
etc.
piloting?
is the pilot of the pilot ? . . .

in a visible,
readable,
spectacular
way,
you
have
always
staged
the
the interior to declare

entry of voices into your interior scene pushing
and show itself, underscoring
the dissociated
of the
dialogic dimension
I-of-me
game
of
your
"I"
caught
unawares,
despite
your
always
standing
guard, inscribing so many times the theater of the drama in which you
are the blind man and the
you, unlike me, stage the irruption
prophet,
to say into your inner forum
of foreign forces into your course, Imean
*
"Le manuscrit
in H?l?ne
volant," originally
Cixous,
Insister, ? Jacques Derrida
published
45-80
for
thank Editions
Galil?e
Galil?e,
(Paris: Galil?e,
2006),
(? Editions
2006). We
to publish
as
An earlier version of this text was first delivered
this translation.
permission
a lecture
comme
at the conclusion
in June,
of the conference
"L'?v?nement
2005,
?criture:
Lire
Cixous
et Derrida
se lire,"
organized
by Marta
Segarra
at the University
Barcelona.
New Literary History, 2006, 37: 15-46
of
16
NEW
own
[for]?your
foreign
to
say:
I mean
yourself.
forces,
you
fight
your
over
own
LITERARY
you
polemos,
you
yourself,
tear
HISTORY
with
fight
apart.
yourself
let it be seen by the people who follows you and who looks
to witness
this tearing to
longingly at you, and whom you call upon
an
to
And
this
pieces.
people,
immensity, you say You, you name it and
And
you
bring
As
it toward
for me,
you,
I
embroidered
with
name
the
You.
and
my
keep
shatterings
in
parentheses.
gaps
of me
sewn
in my
up
text,
for you, you pick your seams apart and pick fights with yourself,
you lacerate, you take your life by the throat and throttle it, you strike
blows against yourself,
like a king of Greek tragedy.
to
Each time I say
myself: how Greek he is, and how strange that is.
to the secret origin of his very
And then: this is due to his antiquity,
-As
at the
had been
soul, his psyche
forged
of the Judeogreek
and Christian worlds, at the
gives birth to the firstborn of the condemned-to
of the Greek Jews.
let us view Veils, let us open the still virgin book,
still uncut, kept hidden by Mr. Galilee's
instinctive wish to
unanalyzed,
hand over to the reader a volume still in its chrysalis. I half-open
it (yes,
*
I confess,
this copy, my copy, is intact) to page 25. Here begins your
chant and as I leaf through without
tearing it, I see through the portal
ancient
being. As if
confluence
conflictual
moment
of clash that
die, J. C. orj. D., king
(Look, for example,
that
the
act
first
to page 40
announced
Before
of
the verdict,
of
you
rivalry
least
three
itself
place
play
is
con
altogether
trove
my
will
have
sorts
by
your
voices,
up
verdict.
to specify which first words
between
rsed
of the stations of a cross

in underlined
characters:
Cruel accounting
[42]. Dispute.
the
first
intratextual
words
by
(I'm obliged
usual,
this
his
multibegun,
opening
the
pretenders-to
of vers "succeed"
each
in a place and behind

and behind a different
a mask
as
I'm talking about because,

in
this way
as well
a little
each
at
where
the-status-of-first-words,
other,
arena
situating
pretender
itself in a
(or character)
situating
(or character, or font), like this:
mask
i
Sero
Toward
Before
[Vers] Buenos
Aires, November
the verdict, my verdict, before,

down with it in its fall, before
te amaui
24-29,
1995
befalling me, it drags me

it's too late, stop writing.
THE
FLYING
MANUSCRIPT
17
advance at the same time in

to be waiting for them at the
in such a way that the three beginnings

the direction
of a Penelope who pretends
of
bottom
-To
you
the
page.2
succeed
other
oneself/each
[Se
that's
succ?der],
what
awaits
me,
tell me)
Now
I ask my
mother
"to
cut
Veils
for me."
Now I go down to the kitchen where my mother has rung the bell. She
has prepared an orange juice for me. I say very loud: you will have to cut
a book for me.
I have
I say I feel good with you. She says: Me,
are
not
I
She
I'm
What
you saying?
says:
say.
completely.
disappeared
visible.
very
I go back up toward the paper,

I say: I see you anyway.
come
To
says: I am not very visible?
this sheet. Who
to the manuscript
of Veils, I had forgotten
back
the
in your hand in a drawer and it came back, by itself, while I
in Barcelona
around the impossible theme of this colloquium
manuscript
was musing
for which I take up the pen today
theme of a very impossible
almost impossible
impossible
colloquium
to
not
to
it
this
invitation
accept
accept
impossible
impossible
(you did
a
on
commentary
this
to the two of us
wise,
in Fourmis)
Two words
about
Iwill come,
merci.
merci,
addressed
first
of
(of the two of us you did a commentary

first of all to Marta
(you again!)
Marta:
in Passions)
in advance
Or
else
alas.
Alas,
I will come perhaps
for Marta
Segarra,
Marta
title
all,
in advance
to whom
naturally. Or else: I will come,
and
said
you
yes
perhaps,
naturally.
In any case, you will add this "now-in-2003"

each time, if I couldn't
(can't) come, God forbid, you must do it.With me without me. For lover
of the impossible you destine us, all, to the impossible.
What did I think on hearing
I did a lot of
these words? Nothing.
and of trembling
in the place of thinking during all
nothingthinking
those
you.
months
me
without
must
One
very
well
[mois
obey,
sans
one
moi],
is
me
within
drowning,
me
one
but
grabs
not
on
without
to
the
one
is obliged with
in
the words
watchword,
very well, one drowns
to
to yourself. You
obedience.
One bends
your will that is hidden
obey the order given. Who
yourself
gives? It can only be life. And
we
thereupon
agree.
As for you, you

-You
can
say
that
think on death,
again
you
all the time, I say.
say?
you think on death [ tupenses ? la mort] the way you say Iwrite
on
[j'?cris au r?ve]. That is to say: on the force of dreaming,
dreaming
to its address, with its help. But you think living you
under its impulsion,
think of living, to live is that, I say
-I mean
18
NEW
-But
who's
HISTORY
of
talking
go, we're
we
Here
LITERARY
say
you
living!
once
over,
starting
we
again,
shift
the
agreement,
yet I am sure that we agree you hold onto life like no one else, you want
it all totally including
the end that does not exist, ?I
hold onto life like
no one else in flesh and bone,
to life in person but not the other, the
we
here
unknown,
we
go
start
over
the
endless
with
the
words
word
that
and
sparkle
mystify,
The
autrement.
otherwise,
that
conversation
on mighty
and insubstantial
food
food, phantom
and phantasm. We
rich, prepared by imagination
words.
will-o'-the-wisp
otherwise,
you
say,
For
is the
not you but the other who lies [c'est l'autre qui ment].
So yesterday 2003 we reached an accord, you with me,
as a way of outsmarting
scene of conversation,
the difficulty
if
and the time. Of diminishing
fatigue
possible, by dividing
well-tested
already
us
between
and
one
that
day
feeds
in some way, refined,

speak to one another
we'll
is
to imagine a
of the theme
it.A practice
to
have
example
truth.
It
talk
about.
to keep one's word on this subject, the subject of the

Impossible
"The
Event asWriting: Reading Cixous and Derrida Read
colloquium:
or any other, I don't see
at this moment
Each
Other/Themselves"
ing
these last days, how to be able, it's only
how, said I tormenting myself,
we are,
barely that I can want to, but to be able to, in the state in which
said I to myself, half dead, and thus half alive, and no one to say which
is which
[lequel laquelle], and how to keep the word together, how in
these
and
obscure
I was
togethering.
unknown
circumstances
keep
like two worms
twisting
word
together
[vers] or two pieces
and
of worm
verse.
This
on
feeling
this
earth
am
a semblance
merely,
weakness
senses,
was mine,
of impotence
who
under
laboring
of
sans,
of my
step
fright
that
of
is
not yours, quite

the
the
sensation
self
learning
before
obviously.
of
sans.
the
new
to walk/work
It is I
sensation
senses
otherwise
of
all
my
impotence.
of Veils made
its ghostly return from
It was then that the manuscript
out of one of my drawers where it had been sleeping utterly forgotten by
me but not by the gods, quite obviously. Voil? it comes back and not just
once
but
twice.
The first time there is the surprise of the rediscovery

eight days ago: as
if I were receiving for the first time, the second first time, and a wholly
other time, this manuscript
that you sent me already years ago. Thanks
to
breakdown
in
of itwith
the
oblivion.
I made
its
joy. All of you who

the thing: you had sent me
in the Rep?blica
Argentina,
sorrowful
acquaintance
or
took
are listening to me or
by air mail from the
30-11-95
cognizance
reading me, here's
Aspen Towers Hotel,
of Veils, first draft, first spurt
the manuscript
[premier jet]. The
de los
in a jet plane above the Cordillera
of Veils scribbled
manuscript
THE
FLYING
MANUSCRIPT
19
Andes.
o? Jet was, I believe,

in
Jet (the last time you did the commentary
GGGG. In this text you grabbed hold of a spurt of "jet" and G harvested
in a text of mine so as to restitch it into yours, by setting it like a grain of
salt
into
sea water.
your
I note
this
course?has
because
always
in a jewel,
your
a
been
of
way
reading
mode
fashion/'a
not
me?and
of
just
sets
as one
setting,
of
me,
a stone
a magnifying
that your quick glance

setting, an overinsetting
on
texts
first
of
all
the
of
Blanchot, Genet, Celan, and so forth
practiced
texts
cite
here
the
called
(I
literary, for which you reserve an even more
bejoyous
reading than your enhancing
reading of the philo
a
what
I
word!
sophical corpus. (Bijou [jewel],
give it to you. It comes to
us from the Breton bizou in 1460. I'm not
joking. As a ring, the turning
round of the biz?the finger. And, imagine this, it is said of any relatively
. . .)
small work in which a highly refined art is revealed
was
To come back to this resuscitated manuscript,
I
first of all seized
byjoy at the apparition of the face of your handwriting.
Joy, joy. The blue
on
Secret of a face depicted
self-portrait on the slightly dark envelope.
x
cm
cm.
19
paper. Veil 24
Joy amplified
by another joy born of the
bejeweled,
of
feeling
For
rarity.
that
knows
everyone
your
are
works
in
the
vast
if not almost all of them, typed, done on the machine

majority,
(allowing
for exceptions
and correspondence).
Joy of the face printed for resur
as if at the
rection-re-edition.
Joy ensorrowed
sight of the Veil of
Veronica. Veiled joy.
The forgotten
which obviously I remember
circumstances,
right away,
some time ago this handwritten
had demanded
air mail missive.
It had
in the air for you to make
this urgent
required anguish and suffering
(1) write very quickly and by hand. And from
gesture, doubly urgent:
afar.
Send
(2)
missive
it
was
that
away,
right
here mine.
keeping,
(3) I add
accompanied
by
is
to
say,
turn
it over
that the safekeeping

to
request
keep
to
secret
secret,
another's
intended
from
by the
myself,
this closed envelope

slipped into an envelope and put on hold. (4) That
is not all, later on Iwill be seen to receive still more.
to
(5) Iwas obliged
make
an
effort,
either
not
to cry
or
not
to call
you
right
away
to
tell
you
the news of this April 3rd, 2005.

In 1995 you put into my care the keeping of a secret
a secret
envelope,
not
fold [pli], while
that
I
here
then
is the
it,
open
recommending
scene. There
fabulous
is the miraculous
sail, the white one in the
Promise
distance.
me
not
to
open
it.
. .
you
say. Right
away
the
strange
powers that lurk in fables and myths

leap up and surround us. Us: me,
the secret letter, you. Veil not to be read. Veil to non-unveil.
Flying,
volatile
letter.
do you ask me: promise,

and I promise
I
(you), naturally.
a
was
blank
As
if
in
to
blank
"Inside
it
God.
promise
promise.
prescribed
to install the ark of the
testimony. This veil will be for you, says Yah weh to
Hardly
20
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
As we know only too

(Voiles 31; Veils 29). Veil of separeunion.
Threats
of
is
full
of
threats.
the
well,
terrifying reprisals if the
promise
sure.
to
all indecipherable
be
But
above
should
be
word
betrayed,
given
secret
for a period
of
threats linked to the magic
necessity
keeping
a
can
term
be
decided
whose
[arr?t] in your
only by you, by
judgment
a
a
sentence
of
life
of
that
of life of death
death,
sentence/arrest
destiny,
Moses"
are
you
will
that
awaiting,
to
known
be made
one
you
or
day
and
other,
in your turn in my turn an other day,

that you will make known
Not that you will reveal the secret to me
whose date is still postponed.
on the verdict, you will let me know what is to be the
but that, depending
the verdict, one will never know the truth. All
fate of the missive. About
it is handed down, and all that you
that you say about it, here, before
to me
is that:
know
won't
"you
even
escape,
if the
is favorable,
verdict
that
is, negative"
Veils 32).
(VoilesM;
is a verdict (that is) negative?

is going to render it?A terrifying father? A judge? A jury??
Who
are so many of them you say (see the list Voiles
For which fault?there
etc.
35; Veils 32 . . .), perjuries, blasphemings,
profanations,
of which you are innocent.
from the world and time,
In another book, you will see how, detached
on white paper the following
to
himself
he
sends
from
hour
hour,
flying
order in two lines: "Write this from very far away, as if after life, in the
What
lower
as
corner,
himself
and
injunction
possible
I will
"as
low
as
to the
"as
written
again,
in my
house,
or
then understand
if after
or
possible
executes
almost."
life"
if after
by
All
in
will
on
the
see
how
I myself
lower
he
will
corner,
addresses
this
find
the
lowest
almost
what
successively
I had not
then understood,
life."
All of this will have always happened

air,
You
letter. Later
mountains
after
as if after life?in
a race by sea, by
life.
life long to run after
life.
it asks me by sinking its teeth

-I am asking myself
today, no, suddenly
this manuscript
found
into my heart, if that iswhy I had utterly forgotten
a drawer. As if, no sooner
the
of
chance
the
reshifting
again by
to
to
not
been
edict
had
the
the
obedience
lifted
then
interdiction
to keep closed remaining
all the
alive beyond
the promise
revived,
events,
the
promise
and
(the)
reason,
or
instinct.
THE
FLYING
MANUSCRIPT
me.
-Promise
-I
21
not
-Do
you.
promise
-Until
open.
return.
my
-Until
return.
your
not
Do
not
do
open,
read.
this injunction more

than once. As if I
And naturally you repeated
than once and really
couldn't really promise except by promising more
only
keep and you, as if you could feel the firmness of the promiseland
after testing itwith tip of your toe more than once. Interdiction,
verdict,
a few of the words from the same fire, which we always fed
promised,
with
respect.
I say,
-The
interdiction,
-The
interdiction
sense
makes
of what
The
stokes.
is not a form of combustible

I say.
it take
is a
-It
fuel, you say. -In

law
general
you
the
say.
is his daily dog.
interdiction
Never
will
it have been seen, I have never seen in history?never
a titanic battle against
Freud have seen in his life?such
will
nuncle
my
himself.
a combattitant
are
-You
I say.
Don't go thinking, you friends who are listening to this little story, that
in me.
the reiteration of the demand
signified an absence of confidence
a
or
one
to
at
On the
odds with
hand, reiteration has always been
party
structure
the
more
of
once.
than
the
the
promise:
a week
Once
"once
let's
and
say. On
for
all"
the
other
to be
has
renewed
if there
hand,
is
and that is right, it is in destiny. Iwas posted by you

lack of confidence,
then that we be two holding up the sail
in front of destiny. You needed
of
the
stake
For
promise
do
the
alreadythen
[dejalors]
not
this
injunction
supposed
not
against
explanation.
so.
I never
asked
gale
was
You
him
to
of
destiny.
a verdict.
open,
too
for
I could
imagine
an
At
stake
propose
diverse
explanation,
then
was
a verdict.
more
At
one
than
I will
interpretations.
never.
promised
it. He
me:
This depicts
reminds
it at least??No."
the two
"you didn't open
am
to
I
This could be compared
characters.
many familiar
describing.
models
of you not to,Adam, Eve, Abraham,
But that is not it.
Bluebeard.
It's
something
else.
the explanations,
there is one I can give. It does not have to
Among
to share a text that he
do with the secret: his customary
reluctance
to term. The rigor
deems to be still imperfect or not altogether
brought
of his signature. The need to be impeccable?as
much as possible. All
to him.
the other explanations
belong
22
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
-Why
Among
does he send this text, enclosed

in an envelope,
one:
we
the possible
here
is
had agreed,
answers,
on
departure
a distant,
distant
very
to Ren?
for
that
voyage,
he
would
to H. C?
before his
write
text
the
issue of Contretemps devoted

to Vais
promised
Major
out
the
take
of
first
from, around, starting with Savoir,
(thus
Veils) setting
the text on which he desired to prop up the fatigue?he
talks about it in
an
almost
tone,
desperate
the
will
everyone
have
heard
it
well?caused
quite
by the veil persecution?
It was
as
long
the
and
first
time
that
sent
you
me
an
not
envelope
to be
so
opened
until?
itwas indeed the first time Iwas not sure. Imight have thought
the only and the last?
It comes back to me today that the same scene took place one other
time. Itwas inMay 2003. You were returning from a faraway trip. In front
of you the announcement
of a trip without
fixed harbor, without
measure.
to the archives I
You had written
for a colloquium
devoted
was
at
to
at
the
which
take
the end of that
BN,
deposited
supposed
place
a
me.
text
whose
title
tell
This
time
it
is
into my
you
May,
deposited
That
it was
hands
that
written
from
opened.
you
from
"send,"
you
a very
distant
Except
didn't
and
say: you
unless.
it at
open
other
wholly
in
interior,
promised.
least. This
More
scene
envelope.
once
you
us. -I
than
depicts
text
this
distance,
great
closed
to
Not
call me
swear
be
and
to
you
if only I could believe you!

trust me. It is in believing
that he has difficulty
me
reasons for which
to
I
This
time
it
seemed
could
the
guess
believing.
I was not to open. This text in his absence.
I haven't touched
it. Oh
It's not that he doesn't
is it going
-How
about
the
translators.
to be possible
On
the
one
to translate
hand.
in dribbling
around translation.
pleasure
the little football player in you.
I didn't open the envelope.
How would I have opened
it?
With a knife, you will say to me,
On
this sentence?
the
other
you
You worry
take
great
That's why you keep watch
in your equivocal
guise.
on
THE
MANUSCRIPT
FLYING
23
comes
into the study with a large kitchen
My mother
hand. It is for Veils.
-Why do you say that you are not visible? I say.
-Because
one
seeing
lot of
each
other
here.
you're
Maybe
the
visible.
I say.
-Maman?
are inspired?
-You
-I
not
we're
is not
who
in her
knife
love
it that
-Like
the
you're
She smiles.
here.
cats.
I look at her.
I look at her visibility.

visibilities, you say.
Two different
I see what
She cuts the book.
She smiles.
you
mean,
For a long
time.
yes.
Two different visibilities. And two different non-visibilities.

Some day I
will talk about your present visibility, the one to which
I am applying
I am employed,
"au-dedans de moi," as you say in
myself and at which
B?liers, in that "inner forum [for int?rieur] that never closes" as you say (p.
and
19)
where
the most
and
you
de"
"Au-dedans
moi"
to
interior
are
as
at once
always
the
strongest,
that
is,
the most
fort
da.
say
"within
and
more
is an
me."
the
than
sheltering
She has finished. -I will

She gets up. The knife.
As
for me
I
yours.
usually
one who
is
Au-dedans
right.
en.
of
expression
are
You
try to read it a little, this book,
use
"en
is more
says my mother.
-Me with this butcher knife. It gives me the willies.

This butcher knife, I say to myself,
in order to cut Veils, I'll tell you
about
it.
you gave me the not

I didn't remember
colloquium,
When
to be opened
envelope
the first envelope.
before
the BN
second coming back of the manuscript

took place a few days later,
I arrived in April 2005 at my writing house where I went on your
order as given in 2003: "If I can't go to Barcelona,
itwill be necessary
[to
all
the
order
same."
and
Absolute
Order
without
go]
commentary.
The
when
without
authority.
24
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
I have been thinking about it like a poor beast being led

For months
to the impossible.
I have no tricks in me, only anguished
submission.
I can describe
in broad
strokes my interior state concerning
this
ordeal:
that swirls and whirls and will never end?
there's anguish
in my opinion)
the
(neither in my life nor with my death,
concerning
For [Pour], your famous double-doored
For, the one that offers and the
one that takes back and substitutes.
Instead of spreading out the load,
the weight, as hoped, here I am summoned
by fate to keep the word for
silence or the appearance
of your silence, having to keep
your apparent
account
of the different
kinds of absence,
the
presence,
impossibly
of absence, knowing full well that there is no absolute absence,
presence
made
of different
stuff, with different
thicknesses,
only presences
not
to
How
solidities,
endurance,
stability, tangibility.
betray! Oh!
me and
the
of
I
know
that
hear
Translate,
you,
my anguish.
you
depth
an
that you are unhappily
if
I
And
know
such
unhappy.
apparently
I am a mystic or inspired (which I am,
mysterious
thing, it is not because
but that would not suffice) as my mother
says, inspired, but it's because
I know you a little and that having never ceased suffering for the other
his and her whole
life, you continue.
"Don't
love,
be
so
These
are
and
so often.
seriously,
Cruel
be
words
sad"
say. That's
you
to disobey you?
But you when
I say to you:
on
command.
we
Thereupon
co-mandate
We
don't
too,
saddles
like
just
be
those
you
of tenderness.
every feeling
you.
whom
sad.
not
How
to
obey
you?
not
happen
never
to all
addressed
you
-You
sadness, which
saddening
"Don't
mean:
sad."
one
over
argue
another.
their
observe
Don't
"forget,"
forget,
you
you
the who,
the
Words
motives,
you point
say
to me.
the
how
out
that this cannot

are
You
of
the
in command.
command,
we
words.
their
movement.
They
are
never
still,
they
die.
Mystique. The word mystique takes hold of him. For example one day in
in whose
1989, a certain use of the word mystical,
vicinity, nosing
around,
he
meets
up
with
Pascal,
Montaigne.
this is authority,
the foundation
of authority. No reason can
Mystical:
now he's
be given! That's
the way it is. This word mystical,
pleased,
Jacques Derrida, when he plays with this word. What does itmean, what
will one say of this play? Philosophically?
A playful vein, played out in words, circulates
through all his philoso
phy. Philosophy
always
in translation.
THE
FLYING
Two
MANUSCRIPT
words
The
bad words
one
words:
Words
words.
regarding
Les bons moments
25
between
German
us?often
words.
in his philosophical
work are always word moments.
on evil
can also be good. But there is an interdiction
must
evoke
them
a distance
from
and
beware
pronouncing
them.
are
There
words
are
mots?there
of
the
power,
There
passwords.
to have
to write
the
words,
magic
I am
two-words.
going
are
bons
of
book
year. There will be a chapter on the word port?e. Port?e in

a chapter
on the word porter [to carry, to bear]
in
And
next
words,
French.
is
German?Tragen?Tragen
ear.
Heidegger's
the word
Tragen.
word.
preferred
The
extraordinary
Derrida's
ecstasy:
that
play
he,
Ausgetragenes
He
Heidegger,
Kind.
To carry the voice of the friend

something within that is not self. That
him. But as for him, Proteus Derrida,
into the world.
bring
tragen. To bear
this isme with
takes
it
from
practices
bear
and
To
on
to
in oneself,
bei sich
is different. This,
he bears in him
that is the one who is his antagonist,

himself his adversary, his
something
once
at
and
his
double
double:
other,
persecutor. Port?e des mots,
prophet
Prot?e des mots, the import of words, Proteus of words twenty times.
He adds them up and tells me the story of tragen, in 1988 for example,
in 1995. One cannot imagine the ancientness
and the import of certain
words.
The
word
m?glich
for
secret
example?its
powers.
How not to obey you! If I can. Can I?Might I?

I am inhabited by the enormous
force of the Unm?glichkeit. This is the
word that comes to me. I bless it: it is one of the words around which we
have sojourned.
I'll come back to it later. I hear Omi my grandmother
out
crying
often:
"das
ist
ja
How
unm?glich."
to communicate
to you
the
the exclamativity,
the tonicity of the language and the body, in
the idiomaticity,
the supplement
of ja the hammering
of the
German,
it to you over the telephone.
I imitate Omi.
un, the sigh? I communicate
accents,
out
I sound
semantic
philosophic
for
you
family
nose,
all
the marvelous
and
of m?gen. You, with

your
taste,
your
German
your
zophic
reserves
superphilosophical
refinement,
you
in the
merely
have
ear your
guessed,
all your senses, eight, ten?more

perhaps, by reading Heidegger,
Eckhardt ou ?ngelus
resources,
Silesius, that this m?gen has unheard-of
in translation.
inaudible
with
26
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
You dig, you drill, you raise the stakes.

call me: -How would you translate m?gen? Verm?gen?
I switch into German.
Ich m?chte gern, I rediscover
itwhile slipping
You
so
these
subtle
very
idiomatic
connotations
that
cause
to melt
you
one
into
another the verbs to want/to will to be able to to savor, that mix and only
on the German
I
tongue the taste of self and the taste of the object.
would
like to know how far you are going to be able to go (still) further
in French.
-M?gen? That's to want or to will and to be able to, to have the power
It is:
[vouloir et pouvoir]. What do you want to know? says my mother.
one wants to do but
difficult to translate. It is: to be able to do something
that one is not sure of being able to do. I would really like to be able to
translate
m?gen.
mother.
says my
es nicht
I wir k?nnten
sister
and
aber wir
My
ausgehen,
m?gen
an
There
is
with
Eri,
always
uncertainty,
always.
Ich mag das nicht, says Eri says my mother,

that you eat, it
something
means you don't like it. That, that's Eri. I don't like this, I don't like that.
-Ich
m?ge
das
gern,
that means
we
like
that.
Wir
das
m?gen
nicht,
to
it's not
our
liking.
a hundred
it's impossible,
it's not at all possible
Das ist unm?glich,
a
not
out
ist
it's
of
hundred.
Das
100%
percent.
m?glich,
possible,
in Unm?glichkeit?
is the willing or wanting
-Where
to
There's
be
done!?Ganz
nothing
unm?glich, it's utterly
-Unm?glich?
impossible.
it seems possible.
M?glich,
-And Verm?gen? the verb?It
not
obligatory,
possession.
When
a fortune,
cost
there's
means
that I want nearly.

says my
possibility,
you have money.
Das
mother.
Das
I could
but
Verm?gen:
it's
that's
kostet ein Verm?gen: it's going
to
mother.
says my
ist ja unm?glich: so it's impossible.

It's a word that allows several
see.
Es
k?nnte
neh? It could be possible, huh.
s?n,
you
m?glich
possibilities,
You need this word?
-Es
-Not
me,
Jacques
Derrida.
not possible. Das Wort ist wirklich unm?glich.

Ich verm?ge das Rezept zu machen
Ob er m?gt oder nicht
-It's
It's
really
an
elastic
word
Ich mag nicht, it's not
says my
to my
mother,
overwhelmed.
liking.
THE
FLYING
MANUSCRIPT
27
of work on Pardon, Perjury,

m?gen enchants him, in the middle
comes
to
used
in the sense
here
it
the
surface,
Hospitality,
by Heidegger
amazement.
This Letteron Humanism,
of to desire, love. What a delightful
this thing, he had read it I don't know how many times in the last forty
years, and it's the first time he notices what Heidegger's
doing, and him
to desire,
he
it
far
in
that
with
the
word
too,
direction,
very
possible,
pulls
This
love.
to work on M?glichkeit, verm?gen, power,

It's difficult for French people
to be able to, the faculty of being able to, one must be able to. A power
close to authorization
also to the possibility given, it enchants him to be
to
able
discover after forty years a word that he is going to be able to be
in French. And to have missed
it for forty years. Felix
the message,
is
with delay, which
culpa, it moves him to have received
how it has to be. You would think itwas life, you would think itwas love,
or toolateo'clock,
think this too late, this toolateness
that
you would
to make
able
work
the scales of time swing back,
makes
is written,
is no
there
comes
that
present
amazement
it
to be
begins
too
say
in
late,
it with
other
the
take
We
reading.
seasoning
something
everything
too
to
itself
late": by
to
able
Fortunately
is never
It
reading.
to
present
constant,
back,
"it is never
this expression
swing ahead.
in
too-late
than
little
one
what
think. One never gets bored with Heidegger,

he says, a guy who
might
to
attention
he
he
what
The
-With
pays
says,
laughs.
Heidegger-text.
other one, the Black Forest one, the dullard with the hand-knit
socks,
you don't like him at all.
-One never gets bored with any Jacques Derrida,
I say. It is the able-to
to what
pay-attention
take
Let's
Inodiare. Ennui
someone
who
this
speaking,
someone
down.
who
barely hides
pays
is so
attention
pays
attention
true:
odium,
we
hatred.
One
say.
to what
the
guy
to
he
who
says.
pays
the
who
one
have
no
who
awakens
love
for
are
at
never
one
On
the
dictionary.
that
side,
to what
to where
On
the
feels hatred with
attention
other;
love.
compassion,
boredom.
Here
that some odium of resentment
guarantees
The
excludes
I
[boredom],
Carefulness,
those
that
say
you
ennui
he
puts
other
says
words
the
live.
for
pain,
At
love
ill,
to
the
and
read.
nothing
attention.
attracts
who
words,
same
hatred.
To
time
take
is
in the secret of
to attention,
attention
one who weighs his words

(you say: "I am weighing my words,"
and
that
the
word "to weigh") attracts as well,
weigh
expression
and
the
his
side,
is not brewing
of
he
It's
pains
read
because
to
live.
everything
he
shows,
Learn
(in
to
other
teaches,
take
pain
words:
the
then you
for good
takes
learns,
in order
see
to
to
and
28
NEW
provide for reading, seeing, writing,

come what you ended up calling with
Surmission
and
submission.
LITERARY
HISTORY
thinking) go seek and receive, let

a
vastly hospitable word: the event.
two
The
together.
so like to be able
Iwould
I to myself.
(I sense
to want
to be capable of the impossible

say
all the same that Imight.
I sense very well
It will be necessary
sans
sans
knowing
sans
certainty
that if you cannot "come" to Barcelona

there: There
is no limit or boundary
I sense
presumption)
very
well
nothing prevents you from being

to the suppleness
of being.
It's raining. I am writing on this rainy Wednesday

2005. I hear your
voice. Where? How? Clearly. Internally. It is aWednesday
in the month
of March
one
of
2001.
of
those
"Comment
one
pronounce
without
J. D.,
signed
untranslatables:
your
You
internally.
Clearly
sentences
peer
voulez-vous
of
que je
sentences,
your
without
one
equivalent
meure?"
you
say.
one of your feats I say, a defeated

A real find. Another
feat you say, I'm
blown off my feet I say you dare to wave lefichu [the rag, the scarf, but
in front of a room of
also the guy who is done
in, done for, finished]
an
listeners
incredible
to
thinking,
ment
of
the
provocation
threaten
reassure,
sacrifice,
need
for
you
meaning,
to
thinking,
defiance
go
fate
to
spend
of mastery,
one
better.
oneself
un
admonish
Fate:
Pour
in
Hebrew.
You have just sent fate to its fate, played one of your turns on for, that
rimmed
round the pour, this French pour whose
disseminal
a
to
red.
the
blood
fore,
dissemination,
you brought
pourple
opening
one
"if
On this Spring day of 2001, a seminar Wednesday,
you say:
day I
is, pour,
pour means
to think what
then I could
perhaps
[pourrais-je] die while
me
to
is
[ce qui m'arriv?]!'
beginning
happening
you say is under the care of if [tout ce que tu dis est sous si].
Everything
to die? / How
How do you want me to die? / How can I be expected
ever can I die? you say to the people who follow you. You say these
terrible and scintillating
things to your seminar, you throw them into the
knew
balance,
them
what
you
between
them
oscillate
care
and
above
carefree,
the
heads
impossible
did he say? what are you saying??everything

of perhaps,
that is stirred up
everything
terror.
That
is what
you
do:
you
sow
terror.
of
your
to
take
listeners,
you
you
flex
literally?what
is literal but under the seal

is sent back, you say to sow
The
sower
sows.
The
sower
so
THE
MANUSCRIPT
FLYING
himself
loves
and
and
you
not want
cannot
for
weeps
want
ahead,
29
you
to be
not
in
himself,
advance,
to be
do
not
want
lost
one
second
over,
wept
from
are
you
far
want
you
from
view,
so
out
you
when
hearing
the sequence for which you want to push

you sketch out in the distance
or
to
to
of thought:
"die while
the extremity
the
summit
thought
to
to
that
is
what
think what is happening
me,"
you'd like to
beginning
as
one said.
was
to
you,
up
give yourself, du m?chtest, if you could if it
or
surpossibles
Only you do not say only this, which already surpasses
To
itself.
same
the
to me.
happen
yes,
the
versa,
hear
what
hear
that
cannot
you
that
we
is what
or
(remember
to
response
want
not
do
not
pain
or
on
it. I am
at least most
meconium
want,
you
I hear
up with dying,
some
with
vice
it for me.
that
to want
to die?
or
the
in wishing
know
as
Even
want,
choose
floor,
do
you
you
to die.
the
of
tongue,
love me
his
tortuous
on
love.
the time I have

he
testimony)
been
to each
says
it to you?
telling
and
one
every
of
or else does it not have the

it not impregnated
tinted with a desire for life, or vice versa and
I love me
as
you are letting me
It is for you that I would surrender

to say to me.
what pour means
in knowing
love, since
seminar
my
who
love's
not
do
you
for yourselves
what
newborn
his breathless people?is

tint of a desire for death
you
what
is like that all mixed
if I succeeded
I tell you,
Love,
what
I do not want
perhaps,
Testimony
want,
if. Unless.
Except
are.
"As for me,

myself
I hear
The
birth.
want
beneath
say,
Love
Like
time.
afraid.
to die? This will never
"In what way do you want me
you
that you wish
not
do
you
that
circulates
you wish,
not a magician.
the
well
very
drive
death
punishment
are
If you
que je meure?
for me
is it possible
in the same breath:
I know
yes,
voulez-vous
s&y.-Comment
assured.
Rest
you say to them

Oh,
you
the same you say: how
To
do
not
you
me
want
also
to
to what
say yes
hear? You follow me?"

it is
He
is
One
hears
How
do you want me to die!/ How can I possibly die! he says to the

who are following him, and who open up and split themselves
people
into
more
hear
the
one
than
pour
voice,
it is year
year,
-You're
one,
depending
sense
in one
playing
this evening,
the
again
first
or
to win,
or
once
the
who's
always
on
part,
turning
It is springtime
raining.
in
worrying
one
whether
the
for
of
hears
the
or
other.
doesn't
other.
again you make
second
about
winning,
century,
the rounds
of the
yours.
qui pour
gagne,
I say
to
you
Kippor did you say? But how do you expect, how can you want
anyone to translate you? you say And you? I say. Do you want it?How?
How much? To read you? You who set all texts spinning. All Testes. All
Heads. Who
else, in the whole French
language, will have ever been
a
out
such
sentence? You really stuck it to us that
capable of throwing
day
[Tu t'es bien fichu de nous].
I can still hear
it, I can still hear you that
30
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
day, crying up your sleeve and smiling at the disarray you will have sown
in the heart of your hermeneuts.
One day like another. One other day
like each of your days. Nothing
special. Every day is perhaps this day that
is perhaps
the day If [le jour Si].
sentence
I cite this giant of an unsigned
to my daughter with
When
the philosophical
ear, her voice says to me: "Derrida would be speaking
of a kind of generalized
homonymy." He alone would say this sentence,
from out of his uninterrupted
solitude, he, in his solitude, would
say:
"how do you want me to die / how can I possibly die." One might
then
hear resonating Blanchot's
complaint mixed with the fear and the pain
of Jacques Derrida. Who
is capable
of death? Such a thing is not
mean
me. No, it is the other who has
wants
You
who
death.
Not
possible.
for my death, the desire of my fear.
the responsibility
so haunted
"He alone" this Sentence
would
say. He alone,
other,
I don't
by
know
-I am listening
know
-You
think? Me,
toi en
c'est
So we
croix
-I don't
these
the
know how
weave
thought
itself.
that I hear
[Moi je crois que
other.
it can be translated,
settings.
a conventional
between
text
your
little
cut
one
the
the
say.
I think it's you on the brink
que j'entends].
ourselves
by
more.
into French.
you worry,
All of
nested
I have
to your
you
yourself,
even
him
forlorns
I say, I listen
to hear
how
scandalize
whom,
to you,
-You
who
I fish
slow,
them
-You're
tions,
out
them
the
lecture
a
I'm
because
for
mode,
the
the
whereas
pedagogue,
difference
ones
who
are
you,
you
loose.
the one
interrogative,
he's the
-And
and
I see
When
concept.
pedagogical
mine!
In
saying
one,
that?!
this reply with
(pronounce
all intona
etc.)
exclamatory,
the almost
one
vibratory
disappeared
to
according
"on a
a little Mallarm?
the play of his speech

(you will have recognized
us with his tricky sentence from the 21st of March,
subject"), who really got
if he were right?
What
2001, he's the one who finds me disconcerting.
I'm thinking of his way of struggling on the subject of truth. How

and feints himself.
himself. Dodges
equivocates
We
make
another
round
of
the
year,
it's our
eternal
that
dispute
he
needs
each one his hobbyhorse,

you claim that
up its merry-go-round
is called Life, I assert that Life is yours, you say to me Death or Debt
to wind
mine
[Mort
ou Mors]
the thirteenth
one
round
can
never
tell,
it's
a circus,
or the first, anguished
the
one
of
Circumfession,
he turns around
the bed of
THE
31
MANUSCRIPT
FLYING
with a desolate
his mother with compassion,
circoncupiscence
belief of the "believers in days of old" I have already told you
but
times,
knowledge
it, he
appeases
were
they
nothing
that
those
envies
to
going
be
were
who
for the
so many
in
tranquil
reunited?in
the
paradise?
aunt and uncle in Belgrade?in

happy they
paradise?how
Marguerite's
were in days of old you don't doubt it?
-I have already told you - You believe? - Yes I believe. Paradaysofold.
in
I believe I believe - Ha! you see. Future centuries. You really believe
that? Tell me - On earth?
The
interrupted. That there will still be some me that will be

in life, death in life. One can die only in life,
only interruption,
in death. To be killed, in the fullness of life.
not
it is not
to
-Have
have
But
alterity.
-There
renounced
already
in what
singularity
ten
whirls.
merry-go-round
-That
me. The
the
little
will
me
no
longer
that
says
to be someone
has
the
have
me
me
to keep
me
any
in
its
mortal
absolutely
into an
trace. To merge
me.
alive. We'll
talk about
it again
in
in 2001.
years,
each death of a loved one, with each life that passes we make the
round of belief in place
I am running
[cours] in place today he says, mail, mail, mail
[courrier,
With
courrier]
courrier,
My father lives in me, I say. And his little me? he says. His great me
me I say. Do you realize, if I forgot? I would
then make him die.
me
-In
still
father
I say.
lives,
kind of life gives him a lot to think about.
This
-I
my
in
remember
my father. He
very
well
he
says
said: I'm done
for
the
day
of my
[je suis fichu].
sister's
son's
Bar
I remember
Mitzvah,
very well
this
memory.
Our
merry-go-round,
circumversation
you
ageless
or
say,
young,
I say.
It could
he says, "I am always reminding

her that one dies
to
I
And
have
always
quickly.
begin again" he says in June
And I always have to begin again reminding/remembering
Me,
Right
Portrait:
common
The
after
from
gesture
gesture
be
called
circumversion.
in the end, too

1998 at Cerisy.3
it.
reading his Portrait en Jeune Saint Juif, that is to say my

us the question
the beginning
between
of French,
the
regarding
that we make
the
French
together
language,
differently
a kind
of
effraction
together
32
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
I listen to him, telephonidiomatically.

Since our debut. Debut what a
word! Everything
began by ear. With a certain music of French, no one
in the world speaks like that, I said to myself, no one signs, marks speech
in such a strong way. Since forever I have been listening
to his second
nature.
"Nature"
his
?,"
fugitive
He
always
already
for the sentence
required
hand
to
according
cantata
on
the
to
body
Jacques
there.
Derrida.
to take shape.
tame
the
chaos
His
Whereas
I need
into
"as for's,"
his
case
in my
"quant
is
paper
the skin, the body, right
sentence.
To
the
He
the most
trap
words.
remarks
the word
You
"trap."
use
it all
time.
me
catches
at
to what I say. (We talk a lot about

traps me. He pays close attention
and
have
hadn't noticed.
Now
this
you noticed?)-I
hunting
fishing,
is marked
I try to avoid it, it catches up with me
word
remarked,
I ask myself why I am trying to
it betrays my dreams. Then
elsewhere,
it.He
I fall upon the word remark. His word. And that

flee what he remarked.
of my paternal
She made
remarks to me.
I feel myself
grandmother.
cat
of
the
the
remarked? Yet another
deconstruction.
paw by
swipe
is good and it is not good. I chase away the cat the way one
Remarked
chases away a fly. I now no longer know if I'm fleeing or pursuing
Imean
his
remark.
desiring
He
snares,
I admit
noticed
I
trap,
I
it,
trap,
he
fishes
I track,
out.
words.
For
him
instead
it's
vocables,
have
you
that?
do
-Why
you
say
"vocable"
so
often?
Me,
never.
You
right
away
with
The Origin of Geometry, you initiate it and probably much earlier. It's with
it I remember.
The Origin that I remarked
Your vocablation.
Your
vocation,
your
vocabulation.
likes this word in voices, a little scholarly, a little singerly

he says, who with several vocables,
-I am (following)
the worm/verse,
a new word
to the language
makes
and as if
[mot nouveau] foreign
He
incantatory.
I did not say total on purpose,

and I didn't say neuf either. Total is not
of his thinking. Nouveau provides us [nous vaut] with a supplement
of
sense,
/ am
It's
he
"knows
(following)
six
been
manuscript
how."
the Worm
pages
of Veils. You
. . .
le Ver
suis
Je
I announced
since
thought maybe
. . .
the
second
I had forgotten,
return
of
the
lost the thread.
THE
MANUSCRIPT
FLYING
I was merely
as
just
and
he
wan
meaning/
Yet
ting
another
I am
says:
to
but not unwittingly,

of Verdict
question
Him,
you
know
dire"
vouloir
one
what
wants
he's
for
[Pardon
like,
not
say].
sentence
that
would
require
of
chapter
was
words
the
fateful
scene,
Urteil,
a dark
Das
Kafka's,
to me
that he will have confided
out
acting
Verdict,
. . .
coming
Just two more

the
it is a
I will not do that. I want to turn to this Return. The

in his hand is spread on my desk, to my right, I hear it
breathing.
of
as
But
explanation.
he
soon
the message.
de ne
"Pardon
pas
homonymie
manuscript
when
it on purpose
doing
as
suspension
to receive
want
case
this
without
delaying,
is a
there
doesn't
in
33
in his
seminar.
tale,
example
that Spring
It was
of mortal
2001
question
auto
him of itsmeanders.
For me it is once again
immunity. Iwas reminding
father
who
himself
suicided
the
other his internal and
my
gets
Georg
by
external father. I know this horror by heart. The last blow, the last page,
would be a premonitory
version of Etats d'?me de la psychanalyse. It is a
are
"suicide."
You
eats and drinks death, his
magical
killing me. Georg
death, with an insane appetite. To please his father. He dies for him. He
lets himself fall off a bridge. During
this time, on page 9 o??tats d'?me,4
he makes
"to
the
suffer"
pronouns
personal
turn
around
the
the
semantic
variations
It
"cruelly."
is
of
suffering,
the
verb
hurting
too much.
It's
everywhere.
and
word
In diesem Augenblick ging ?ber die Br?cke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr.
the act of falling off a bridge in my car is
says Jacques Derrida,
-Me,
one
So
recurrent
of my most
. . .
I answer
him:
And
he
answers
me:
phantasms.
. . .
is in his books.
Everything
-Have I finished digressing?

How not to digress? And what is more why not digress? There are
illustrious
of digressers
Sterne, Diderot,
Stendhal,
many
examples
"First
Freud, Jacques Derrida. You, you even begin with digression.
in confidence,"
digression,
sis. True
and
"confidences,"
droll
they
you
"incipit"
are
addressed
say
as
to
they
to
the
States
say.
each
One
one
General
knows
of
of
all
everybody.
Psychoanaly
about
your
Not
that
34
NEW
are
you
of
fun
making
division
structural
of
and
everybody
the
me,
every
one.
each
LITERARY
But
cruel
implacable,
HISTORY
to
it's
recall
the
Not
destinerrancy.
and everyone,
that you don't make fun a little of everything
including
are
All
the
fatalist
is even the
Jacques
yourself.
Jacques's
digressers,
name
proper
of
deconstructor.
every
the Digress have an end?

Life is a digression. All of literature
is a volubilis, the wordy French name
Does
say: one must

me
a little,
you
also
line,
But digressing,
standable.
You
will
knows
have
French
of.
capable
not
does
usage
"First
said
like. That's
under
come
must
Next
the
. . ."it was
in confidence
digression,
who
thousand
psychoanalysts
if you would know who is capable
knowing
straight-arrow
descartized.
to the
wink
The
however.
necessity,
you.
traditional
are
We
a fated
It is not
say.
the
sentence,
One
very well digress.
aflower
is digressions. Mallarm?'s
of the morning
You
would
glory.
we
invent
the
verb
day
digre. Digre
second
come
had
of death
gift,
in the hope of
and what death is
at
digression,
so
least
one
believes, on the promise of these first words. Will anyone have found it?
One has to imagine the faithful and assiduous
reading going through
this book listening to this address of genius right to the end, a reading
left behind,
thrown off course, dragged onto "indirect paths," the "other
cleared
paths"
and
Freud,
by
henceforth
translated,
recognized,
the
carried beyond knowledge,
beyond
by Jacques Derrida,
of
with
the
into the space
launched
foreseeable,
energy
undecidability
revives the value
of this Indirektheit in which
Derrida,
he, Jacques
reinscribed
overlooked
virtue
ness,"
a new
irrectitude,
a
in
uncovered
"non-straightness"
live action,
or
at
the
name.
An
active
(which
non-straightness
does
"non-right
of
quick
the
and named
not
mean
non
active even while passive, acting affectively, not subjected either

or evil, guided only by the bound. To bound outside
the circle
passive)
to good
of
of
by the force of his soul at the dawn of the century
subject,
with
by Freud
and
virtus
Kafka
assassins,
within
assassins
would
say.
To
ourselves.
But
bound
this
is not
easy
the
beyond
we
when
beyond,
you
carry
our
toward
say,
a life other than possible

life you say, this can be imagined even found,
not
The only good
but
[bon] is the bound. The leap into
hoped-for.
like to
This
is the gift that he would
ethics
ethics that blows
sky-high.
at
meditation
and
this
the
end
of
this
end
of
this
make us,
the
speech,
make
it
without
in
if
he
could
it, by magic, by
making
century,
passing,
almightiness:
make
this
the
gift
but
it for us. Wish

But
none
is given,
can
gift
he
of
discontinuous
cannot
make
it. He
indirection.
But
can
to do
wish
he
so,
can
want
he
can
to
wish
it for himself.
give
it happens
this
gift,
none
that someone
can
command
may
have
it. This
this gift,
gift
gives
it will have
itself,
been
THE
MANUSCRIPT
FLYING
35
or by whom,
one knows not when
granted
a traceable
can
One
heritage.
imagine
but not with
attributed
where,
it, one
must
at
least
to
try
imagine
is what he does.
it. That
At the close of the first digression,

the
affirmation,"
one
comes
who
the one he calls "originary
appears
on
forward
its own,
her
and
own,
he
as of a land in advance,
its promise
and beyond,
before,
glimpses
would
rootless,
aerial,
(he
say "spectral")
transparent
departing from
of
which
(and he underscores
departing from [? partir], an affirmation
the
one
for
departing-from,
from)
gives departing
is his dream.
not
does
"a thinking
arrive
there,
as
of life is possible,"
soon
as
it is
it
given
a "living on." That
I said "at the close of the first digression"
is also the close of this

It is time: the lecture
book.
deeply moving,
encouraging,
discouraging
lasts a time that you will not have been able to exceed beyond a certain
excess. And to think that you announced
to
that you would propose
to
of
the
soul-states
and
(those
begin by responding
psychoanalysis,
at least seven times (beginning
yours) once the digression was finished,
. . ."
on p. 15 [241]: "But before
I begin, assuming
that I ever begin
start
Followed
31
"Still
I
before
will
off
[250].
by p.
beginning,
again,
now
on
another
foot."
at
myself
Interrupting
salute
the States General
thanks
Why
give
I don't
know,
not
certainly
something
Here
this point,
having
of Psychoanalysis.
to some
to
begin
salute,
myself?to
in another
namely,
the
form,
inaugural
hardly
begun,
I would
General
of Psychoanalysis?
or who
which
what,
title,
as I have
while
done,
just
States
with,
like the States General
then,
beginning,
which
of Psychoanalysis.(45;
....
(37;
authorizes
to
I said,
like,
253)
me?
them,
thanking
256-57)
is the
of the
and
thus of
question
principle
act that is
to
event.
the
supposed
produce
the
. .
(49;259)
In the end, you will not have had the time to begin, but this you knew in
advance. What does itmatter. It is the before-there
and the beyond-there
of the beyond-there
that interest us. Toward which you will have indirected
that make us suffer cruelly. Cruelty,
us, by loosening the vice of judgments
what
is it?Where
does
it begin? Where
does
it end? Thought?
Life?
36
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
long can one postpone?

notes
am up to page 501 "(I have not yet left Grenoble"
I
["Here
some
one
he
that
derives
of
H.
He
in
his
Life
Stendhal
B.).
(the
suspects
return
am
to
I
return
the
Grenoble.
later
second
benefit there. I
leaving
But how
of Veils.
of the manuscript
In the meantime
the
one
to
calling
of
Dozens
around me,
other.
sketchpads,
of
witnesses
the
texts have proliferated
Derrida's
Jacques
books
notepads,
the long path
disorder
text
from
unfolding
countless
themselves,
to text.
In text-?-text,
fortyears.
This
say,
fills me with
overabundance
no
ten,
a hundred
say
and
ten
Imust multiply
despair.
and
still more,
of thoughts of words
keep
one must tend toward
humanly
impossible,
to tend,
it, to attempt
always attempted
alive your worlds
life by,
my
to
in order
to
attempt
of sentences
it's impossible
I have
the superimpossible,
to tend to attempt
is the
minimum.
to my desk. I pile Pelion on Ossa on Babel on

the two cats Philia and Aletheia my autobio
I add four levels of work

I add
Still more.
Moriah.
animals.
faber
graphical
More.
Magis.
not?
Why
Magic?
If I too were
what
admission,
I am
paper?
Suddenly
I do
would
She
Aletheia.
reappears
with
communication
a cat,
these
mountains,
Exhumes.
rummages.
This
the manuscript.
the
have
like you
with
been,
by your
trees,
Rushes
time, I am going
own
of
grottos
all
around.
to enter
into
revenant.
is perhaps always the way it is, as may be verified by consulting

I. First they receive the figure who comes back like a shock.
Act
Hamlet,
The second time they want to know more about it. Or as may be verified
first one takes the sip, tastes it,
the taste of the madeleine,
by analyzing
I
know
didn't
it
sucks
[le suce]
yet [ne susse pas encore], Proust
"Although
to put off until much
later
suce
had
and
and susse)
writes (?he writes
me
so
chez
c?t?
de
made
Swann,
(Du
happy"
learning why this memory
This
Folio
47)
one
trembles,
one
has
received
message
from
a dead
one,
THE
MANUSCRIPT
FLYING
37
(the passed one, the dead one) "in

says Proust
(in the feeling that this material object would give
the past, it is hidden,

some material object,
that we
us)
object before
Folio 44)
no
But
nary
that
was
on
depends
love
not
sip, mixed
to me,
operates,
in me,
that we
chance
encounter
the
with
me
through
happening
no
with
indifferent
way
essence
the
ran
isolated,
something
vicissitudes
same
had
a shiver
that was
thing
It
suspect.
dying, or that we don't
sooner
than
palate
not
do
and
in me.
crumbs
stopped,
delicious
of its cause.
suggestion
its disasters
inoffensive,
me
by filling
I had
it was me.
with
ceased
encounter
this
it" (Du c?t? de chez Swann,
of
the
touched
cake,
my
the extraordi
upon
had
invaded
me,
pleasure
at once
And
life's
it made
intent
its brevity
precious
to feel
essence;
in the
illusory,
or rather
this
mediocre,
contingent,
mortal.
before dying
It is thus that, coming out of the drawer, I encountered
the face of the manuscript,
the shape of Jacques Derrida's
hand, whose
saw
at
I
in
I
first
had
the
oblivion.
only the
living presence
forgotten
It never
face.
hand.
to
the
day
awaiting
and
death.
This
to
read
essence
of
this
treasure.
I
contemplated
in me.
It was
was
presence
the
me.
Up
when?
that I am in search of lost time, but impelled
-not
is
to me
occurred
I halted
me
the event
on
in Barcelona
of
reading
the
between
subject
of
by the question
reading,
us, Jacques
of
Derrida
the
that
adventure
and H?l?ne
Cixous
-I go back over the published, manifest

texts, where one is reading the
is
in
It
the second stage, that I begin to read at a
other explicitly.
then,
as if for the first time, thus
glance then slowly page 1 of the manuscript,
ever
read it? already read it?When will I have
for the first time. Had I
to open the envelope?
read it?When will you have given me permission
not
Here
is the page. Notice
that it is
called Veils.
It is not yet called Veils. Nor Le Ver ? soie.
Look at it closely. It is to be seen, you see that: it is drawn at least as
much
as written,
it is drawritten,
a breathless
self-portrait.
One
sees
the
breath, one sees the wind push the sail, rush the fabric (tissu, one of his
beloved words, that issued him forth from texts, textiles and textguiles in
all genders)
toward the Orient
and toward the north, I would write a
book to de-pict or re-picture
this painting with its quivering
signs that
into
look like they've been hurled from a brush, with its letters changed
38
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
?4,::^^^>><-A/
il
sown with
the beatings
of wings, of lashes, of see's minutely
living
of
silences.
punctuations,
highly eloquent
Look at this portrait from left to right, from top to bottom,
it can also
be read vertically like a poem?which
it secretly is.One would have to be
able to respect the modest will of the scribe, to remain faithful to the
exact
alignment.
to follow the first words of each line: ?crire/qui/soit/

example
autre figure/autre figure/quelqu'un/
depuis/messie/v?rit?/d?voilement/une
For
THE FLYINGMANUSCRIPT
? toUr^
39
r*e?tt
i^M^^y^
^?
ou mort/fin
[to write/that/might
'
be/from/the
yH'
messiah/truth/unveil
dead/end].
figure/someone/or
figure/other
ing/another
Or to note the last line of the first "stanza," that is to say, the last verse,
later, he will have done a
just as later, eight years or eight poems
a
of
Celan
hold
poem, grabbing
reading
instinctively of the last verse. Die
Welt ist fort, ich mu? dich tragen, this verse made
forever immortal for
been
raised
lifted
read,
invoked,
up,
gathered,
having
praised by your
artist's
love
40
NEW
the
last
vicinity
in
then,
"verse,"
of
Buenos
these
savage
an
Aires,
fin
de
sans
l'histoire?et
of history?and
by
all
the
the
against
or after the original
worm
shroud]
an arrow
with
charged
raging
appearances.
does the arrow lead us?

Where
To the other side, of the page, of the map,
of
in
sky
linceul
without
it is not final.
And it is not finished,
Within
reach of these words he fires
momentum
HISTORY
the
rage
protest,
of a Verdict. The Verse before

theateningness
ver, the first and the last, here it is:
[end
at
hurled
psalms
elevated
LITERARY
of the world,
of history
time,
time, if that could exist, in a virgin time, a virgin, virgin time

beyond
on the verso of a
oh! might you hear this lost sigh, exhaled
confided
once
more
on
verso
the
then
of
the
page
following page sigh permitted,
to
free
excess
the
express
nor
not-on
the
in this
for
in an
earth,
moment
debtless
launch
himself,
of
the
the
two
the
airs
good
times
or
accusation
and
he
in-between,
and
reproach
bad
airs,
can
the
cry
out
word
of
enough!
enough!
of inheriting.
Enough
the moment
for
since
suffering,
between
airplane,
between
exhaustion
soul's
text owes nothing

to anyone,
it is addressed only
in detachment
from himself, neither on the earth
this suspiring, expiring

to him, Jacques Derrida,
is always already
Enough
too much.
is no
There
enough.
can't take it
it's always enough of inheriting, isn't it. He
Enough!
more.
want
He
Of
doesn't
(and therefore of
any
anymore.
inheriting
a
to
Of
this
malediction?it's
like
derivative
from
inherit).
giving
-this
Derrida?D'h?ritage
of ancient
truth,
headstrong,
to a
veritage,
to an
demnation,
repetition
overdue
dues,
of
compulsion
of
immemorial,
payment
for
debt,
sin
of
the
owing
con
congenital
decreed
since
time
It's a veritable explosion

of revolt in the airplane. And no one
began.
one
to
to
there
know it. No
hear him crying out Enough. He cries, into
of God while he tells himself He does not
the air. In the very direction
exist?No
Toward.
remains
God,
He
cries
toward
in the very direction
the Vers, Verse,

Vers,
in
he
verse,
cries
of
the
like
vermiformally,
like any reader of

inaudible cry, the silky cry of a self, knowing,
that
there
is
Rilke, from the first Duino
elegy,
perhaps no angel who
would hear him, wenn ich schrie?"if I cried." If ever he cried out, the cry
or the deafness of the angel. So he can cry
annuled by the indifference
worm,
out,
a vain
not
to
cry,
cry
pray,
an
not
immense
cry,
to
To
pray.
in
alone
cry:
to
the white
pray,
without
of
a vain
sky.
To
response.
cry,
THE
MANUSCRIPT
FLYING
didn't
Crying
philosophical
fated
against
table
start yesterday, this inscribed cry of Jacques Derrida

this
texts
of
heard
in
all
his
revolt
its
be
rage,
rumblings may
of
sorrow
from
to
accounts
indebtedness,
contamination
suffer
41
love?even
until
be
evil,
by
the
against
one
to his
He
pain.
more
time,
whoever
the
and
cries,
ineluc
to
death.
And no one to hear him cry out with this naked,

no one. For if someone
had heard
Fortunately
yet again,
guilty
concern
or
worry,
the
against
condemnation
settled,
he
for
been
having
person
me
might
this cry
sends
shaking cry, fortunately.

it, he would have felt
cause
the
have
been
of
someone's
was
who
witness
in some
enveloped
paper,
it/he has been

advising me not to receive it before
I
read
it
therefore
the
cry.
extinguished,
only extinguished.
Cryore.
To tell the truth: I read it not. I so much read it not that it is upon this
rainy April that I read it, "for the first time," that I listen to it absolutely,
from Buenos
this
Aires
cry-sigh,
and
vibrant,
kept
for
audible,
perfectly
cry
starts
up
again
like a flame, as soon as it is kindled with a loving gaze.

I am not deaf. I believe I am able to say (NB: "je crois pouvoir dire" is an
idiomatic formulation,
derridiomatic
my shrewd daughter would
say,
one of those
of French that he is fond of, a double
infinitive,
possibilities
even better: si je pouvais croire pouvoir dire, if I were able to believe I am
able to say) that he dictated me and inculcated me I believe I am able to
the worrisome
say it in the somewhat desperate
hope of moderating
commotion
I here surrender
of my temperament.
(1) to his deserved
admonishment,
(2) and to the pleasure of believing
being able to say
that I almost always heard him cry out and at the same time hold back
his
out
indignation,
possible
of
consideration
for
others.
as
So
to cause
the
least
suffering.
I believe
I am
to
able
say
as well
that more
than
once,
from
guessing
the rhythm of my breathing

that Iwas hearing him and listening to him,
with my whole heart
in truth, he called me an "angel" to my great
detriment.
For
for
again
the
we
exact
too well,
knew
as much
he
from
quotation
the
as
second
I?from
Duino
he
whom
asked
every
elegy?that
is terrible?Jeder Engel ist schrecklich

- Schrecklich.
Angstlich? Or Schrecklich?
angel
that's terrible. Like him I could have done without

this
Schrecklich,
terrible being.
Und dennoch, weh mir, ansing ich euch fast t?dliche V?gel der Seele), wissend
um
euch.
Weh
mir
knowing
and
weh
dir,
sometimes
that this always points
one
needs
all
messenger
to the limit of misfortune,
the
same,
to
therefore
misfortune.
In that strange
message
that
was
autumn
a
little
of the year 1995 I therefore

schrecklich:
the-text-not-to-be-read.
received
a double
And
the
42
NEW
readable
that
message
constituted
the
of
sending
LITERARY
casketed
this
HISTORY
text,
and
that painted
indirectly and directly the state of a soul in danger. Was I
I do not know which gods or signs prevented me then from
anxious?
than in solidarity.
being anxious otherwise
To be sure the closed mailing
signified: "if something were to happen
in
I can say here that at the time I didn't believe
it, I didn't believe
some fatal outcome
at the end of this trip in the New World
(Buenos
Aires, Santiago de Chile-Valparaiso-Sao
Paolo)5
. . ." is a familiar
"If something were to happen
thought in his internal
he
but
forum,
was
He
not
does
finish
the
sentence,
naturally.
a verdict.6
awaiting
to reread Veils, say I to myself. This immense text (Imerely have

to glimpse
to glance, for example at p. 68 [70], randomly,
its extraordi
to
nary scope) I admit to myself not having "so
speak" read it.And why?
And how? How did I "succeed" in not reading it except so to speak inmy
I have
absence,
absent-mindedly?
read all Jacques Derrida's

texts, with at least three readings that
then at least
I could name, just before, at the time, just after publication,
of
and
with
researcher
in
front
I
each
times
text,
friends,
read,
my
thirty
Iwho
in our
As
from
seminars,
if I had failed,
to dare
to
think?or
that touches,
rise
above
or garments
text
this
Veils?
this
tallith,
on
and
summary
touching,
to want
had failed
thought,
touch
with
my
in the form of the tallith, whose
reader,
touches
not
to touch,
look,
and of every modeling
that
for
Except
not dared,
else?to
especially
every
to year.
year
refused,
this
eyes
veils and
extension
of
text
sails
linens
all
of skin, sailcloth
of life and of death
on
on
the
touched,
the
of
question
from the body "like a

itself as a tallith inseparable
by unfurling
if I had stood before
As
Voiles
Veils
the
of
circumcision"
68;
(
70).
memory
touch,
the
the
memory,
of
metonymy
in an
distance
dazzled.
absolute
alarmed
into
an
restraint,
all
singularity,
unheard-of
woven
felt or sensed
Having
very far, from
the
circumcision,
life death
the
genre,
prophecy,
animal
nearer,
prayer,
and
carnal
spiritual
shawl at a respectful
alarm,
in
in appearance,
that
of
it comes
from
this text of a still
that you murmur

revelation
in its
of your being
the sacred presence
in yourself
the furthest
the
body,
that prayer
an
indecipherable
of love, to this utterly unique sublime being, your

secret, and declaration
the other
unlike
the unique
tallith the unique
one, I mean
unique,
unique
ones
all,
unique
has no other,
non-unique
things
and
beings.
Tallith.
Tunic,
one
that/she who will always

except
to Jacques Derrida.
This
is
the
have accompanied
you.
mystery according
tallith more
than
It's not that you love your tunic your unique
no
that
knows
lives
the
love
that
there
in
the
it's
world,
only
anything
which
life itself. The
THE
FLYING
MANUSCRIPT
43
be
than one secret, if not it wouldn't
yet it has more
to
of
less.
The
faithful, your tunic,
your way
thinking nothing
analyst
of the altogether
ask about
the overdetermining
might
importance
it a kind of
traits of your own tallith, which will have earned
peculiar
of
For
all
talliths
and
unlike
them, your tallith is all
song
songs.
among
And
substitution.
like the beloved

iswhite and like his beloved
is black. The analyst
if
also
wonder
there
exist
another
tallith
all white and then
could
might
us
were
to happen
to this
let
say, "something"
slowly yellowed by time, if,
or
own
if
chance
shawl"
this
the
tallith, crossing
your tallith,
by
"my
white,
of
hymen
could
virginity
have
or
successor,
twin,
or
a descendent,
despite your desire to have done with inheritance.

I had therefore almost not touched this enveloped
textual tallith. Put
on guard. Thus will I not have read itwell "too late" as he had ordered,
too late that is to say late, that is to say rather late. So that he might not
accuse himself of having anguished
the reading with the enormity of his
anguish.
I have just reread

-No,
because
we're
here
fault,
all
have
been
the point
the
calling
to me
it is no
A
not
short),
tortuous,
twisted,
even
a
delay
it
about
But
of
the new
be
a late
the
against
year only
conversion.
I am
do
Anklagen.
to this
question
reply
Is it to God?
d'?tre?
for
Was
Imake
the
in question,
verdict
for
but what
precisely,
an indeterminable
there
sacrileges,
like it to happen
otherwise.
Because
profanations,
lost. But
I'd still
thus and
not
open
up a new
finally
it
that
could
mime
rhythm,
en me
this
is so
era,
the quasi
late," in what
forever
the "so late, too
by sealing
"A so late, too late, sero" (life will have
while
about,
sorry for myself
feeling
complaining
moi-m?me
[me plaignant
to whom
[32-33].
me
longer
unknown
still
the perjuries
so many.
paradoxical,
resurrection
ing
is that
verdict.
35
in the world,
blasphemies,
In any case, as for me,
I'm
and cause my downfall
[que cela m'arrive]
that the time of this verdict,
if it could
I feel
will
times page
twenty
de
plaignant
Would
complaint?
complaint
immediately
to Christ
it even
that
been
so
complain
lui]. Accusing,
Klagen,
to be able
it suffice
to
to have
my
poor
late" when
he
no
further
old
raison
incorrigible
was
"so
addressed
his
"too
to
late,"
finally
speaking
... ? "So late have
sero te amavi,
tarn
nova
et
tarn
I
loved
beauty,
pulchritudo
antiqua
so ancient
and so new," or rather,
because
it is
thee, beauty
late, "late will
already
. . ."A future
I have
loved
thee
once
is wrapped
in the past,
"late"
up
perfect
means
a
it
it's
"so
late"
and
"too
late."
is no
There
does,
(as
always
tautology)
Augustine
lateness
How
in nature?neither
can
one
tolerate
in the
such
thing
itself,
cruel
nor
in the
beauty
same
without
in general.
(Veils)
complaining,
without pitying oneself? Me neither, I do not know this when Iwrite this
sentence and pose this question. Who
is complaining
of whom to whom?
Am I speaking of the beauty of the page or of that of Saint Augustine's
God? Or of the mad beauty of the complaint?
44
NEW
one
Could
live without
hetero-accusation,
or
complaint
is to say without
that
LITERARY
or
accusation
or
self-accusation,
without
writing,
HISTORY
oneself
accusing
of living, of not living, no time, too late. "I have just reread page 35" I
noted this in a blue notebook
3 January 2004. "I have just received your
sent
in
1995."
complaint
to
But what kind of reading can one perform when one finds oneself
some degree
text
to
within
the
be
read?
invited, lodged,
as best I can about what comes to me, has come to

speak here
three
times
and differently
each time,
me,
already, from your direction,
when I have "found" myself
in front of Veils, in front of H. C. pour la vie,
and in front of GGGG, "found" in front of even as I "found" myself
within. "Find" is not exactly the word. I lost myself
right away, as in my
as
a
native city of Oran when
child I had gone completely
astray there, it
I will
was
not
it was
me,
not
her,
of
veil
great
fog
us
enveloped
I recounted
this in Savoir, which you, no sooner written, had "lifted" from me (piqu?
was your word) so as to restitch it [repiquer] into your other veil-sail thus
it, by means
assuring
of
this
transplanting,
sumptuous
growth.
Drawing
chant (I can hyperbolize

my little text all the way toward your glorious
I have always thought it. One day the little epic will have
you shamelessly,
to be told of the several propitious
in the journey of Veils).
contretemps
read? For I am inside and
Where to put myself,
where to begin?to
outside.
is a
This
(?tats
myself
psychoanalysts
and
humor
familiar
44-45;
as
considered
you
scene
the
where,
"I don't
question.
dame,
256)
you
with
whether
said
elegance,
liked
you
even
know
to the vast
exactness,
it or
not,
where
vance.
nothing.
knowing?as
I have
nothing
even
I don't
but
nothing,
any more
power,
with,
I don't
than
what,
I know
what
the possible
and
which
title, or who
me
of
or
of the
almost
I ad
the essential?without
regards
anything,
knowing
or
to tell you, and
I know
simply
possible
basically
simple
to admit
how
that not only do I know
know
that, to admit
even know where
to put
me
and
my nonknowledge,
myself,
about
you understand
moment.
(?tats
put
perplexity,
consciously
you found yourself, for a time, put in the place

unconsciously,
on that occasion,
I could
Analyst of Analysis. And what you said
it
to
myself
apply
Without
to
audience
very
dame44-45;
well,
to do
with
the beyond
authorizes
I have
my
questions
of the possible.
me?certainly
been
authorized
about
knowledge
I don't
and
to begin
know,
. . .And
not
yet,
myself.
to address
for the
you,
256-57)
THE
FLYING
MANUSCRIPT
45
in my case ( 1 ) with Veils I am not

With some differences
am
(following)
-How do you know that? you will say to me
I understand
what
(2) The most

[savoir]
for
You,
without
one
No
part,
will
can
"Without
say
anything,
Wise
you.
struck with
the
knowing
essential
part?
(44; 256)
is he
for the essential
anything
same?
the
is the blow
knowing?for
I advance"
contradict
knowing
all
thing here
mystifying
knowing
without
cally
your
mean?but
you
the analyst;
who
can
say
he
advances
part, philosophically
analyti
wise.
But as for me,

me
before
seeing
in Veils, here
a
text
called
I go "advancing" while
advancing
without
Savoir.
have called it, as a precaution,

Sans Savoir. But it's too late. I
in
to
defense
that
be
with hesitation.
say my
savoirbegs
pronounced
I should
will
From
the
reader's
graces.
good
am I?
to put myself? Where
-Where
I find suddenlly
I
that
resemble
somewhat
floats
between
your
stanzas
in
the
that
manuscript?that
, the black dot

I am
that
to
going
now with the supertitle Points de vue

designate
piqu?s sur l'autre voile
[Points of (No) View Pricked on/Picked
up from the Other Veil] (these
are
the first words that came to this meditation.
But one will
perhaps
never know)
This
would be altogether me: A point of (non-)view. Imean a point
without
around which,
from which, you
sight, a pupil without
light.
execute your fascinating dance of Veils. But this goes and disappears
in
the book Veils.
Where
to
Where
to
place
now?
myself,
myself?
place
I that
I heard
read
you
to
Where
place
myself
as one
a look
casts
says
as where
the same
complaint
more
once.
than
proffer
to go, where
where
[o? me mettre,
is not
you
around
for
a crack
am
/who
to hide]
am
one
a mousehole.
to go to be able to delight
in peace therefore without
"me,"
and
frankly, in the beauty of this text without
accusing myself
pitying
myself for too much and for too late?
Where
I return
to
the
manuscript.
Now
Cixous, note the present

you write: "I know H?l?ne
(you add
tense
of
this
for
the
last
and
here
since
verb,
"improbable")
thirty years,
forever without knowing
..." This is a now (from 1995) that is now ten
years old. H?l?ne Cixous? So it is no longer a question of me, precisely.
46
NEW
H.
at bottom,
C,
when
her,
you
I have
name
her,
always
I rise,
I was
that
doubted
I trust
as
you,
for
LITERARY
HISTORY
you
call
have
my
she. When
me
I still
doubts.
You,
without
-You
on
your
knowing,
know.
side,
you
and
it's
know
to me
her
that
with
you
since
perhaps,
forever
say:
I give you my assent. What do I know? You, surely you know it.
of me, precisely,"
I've just lifted
This "So it is no longer a question
to name nor
from you. It was a knot in a fringe from page 35. Neither
to sign nor not to sign. I already wrote that thirty
not to name neither
years ago, forty years perhaps, at the setting of the Sun. From Portrait of
the Sun.1
And
do
we
now
awaken,
after
the
where
night,
do we
the
keep
you
day,
watch
would
on
say, where
awakening
TRANSLATED
are
this
we,
new
BY PEGGY
where
us?
KAMUF
NOTES
Voiles (Paris: Galil?e,
1
H?l?ne
Cixous
and Jacques
25; Veils, trans.
Derrida,
1998),
refer
Stanford University
Press, 2001),
20; [henceforth,
(Stanford:
Bennington
Geoffrey
citations
and the translation;
in both
the original
ences will be given
in the text to pages
as
as
to reflect
H.
be modified
from
the translation
will occasionally
closely
possible
of
Derrida's
Cixous's
text.?Trans.]
reading
to give herself,
that Penelope
that's the injunction
Don't
lose the thread,
2
pretended
. . . "Not even a
as she did one day,
of
but also the feint or the fiction
question
pretending,
thus
a shroud by saving the lost threads
to be weaving
[lesfils perdus: also the lost sons],
the
a winding
for
of
Ithaca
and
father
of
sheet
for
Laertes,
very
Odysseus,
King
preparing
one that Athena
(Voiles 25; Veils 22).
rejuvenated
by a miracle"
. . . (Paris: Galil?e,
9.
3
2002),
Jacques Derrida, H.C. pour la vie, c'est ? dire
4
?tats d'?me de la psychanalyse
Derrida,
2000);
(Paris: Galil?e,
"Psychoanalysis
Jacques
in Without Alibi, ed. and trans. Peggy Kamuf
Searches
the States of Its Soul,"
(Stanford:
Stanford
followed
256.
Press, 2002),
[Hereafter,
page
University
by those of the translation.?Trans.]
names. Names
of Cities.
Names
of Countries,
numbers
of
the original
will
be
Good Airs
5
The
[Buenos Aires], Saint
to which
and worried
he lent an incredulous
Saint Paul, bearers of signs, omens
Jacques,
secret
thus more
ear.
these places more
personal,
They exalt fears and desires by making
and more
powerful.
a thesis. Verdict, in French.
Is there
another
6
"Verdict" in Jacques Derrida:
subject for
even one text that is not haunted
by it?
here Spirale, 195, "Fid?lit? ? plus d'un," March-April
2004. How
Reread
past it is,
with
it is this beautiful
how changed
issue, concerned
journal
terribly past, terribly present,
to Ginette
who
is a
here
I want to pay homage
the apodas
of J. D.'s thought.
Michaud,
the
liminal explorations
extend
in the limbo of limbos, and whose
detective
magnificent
like the Inuits, let us
and weak peoples
the Thules, mighty
of criticism beyond
continents
7
say.

The Flying Manuscript, Helene Cixous

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The Flying Manuscript, Helene Cixous

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The Flying Manuscript

Author(s): Hlne Cixous and Peggy Kamuf

The Flying Manuscript*

"from the furthest

of the truth," you would

is the pilot of the pilot ? . . .

the interior to declare

to specify which first words

of the stations of a cross

in a place and behind

I'm talking about because,

the verdict, my verdict, before,

befalling me, it drags me

advance at the same time in

in such a way that the three beginnings

I go back up toward the paper,

says: I am not very visible?

this sheet. Who

(of the two of us you did a commentary

I will come perhaps

naturally. Or else: I will come,

In any case, you will add this "now-in-2003"

As for you, you

all the time, I say.

in some way, refined,

to keep one's word on this subject, the subject of the

like two worms

[vers] or two pieces

not yours, quite

The first time there is the surprise of the rediscovery

joy. All of you who

o? Jet was, I believe,

that your quick glance

if not almost all of them, typed, done on the machine

that the safekeeping

this closed envelope

the news of this April 3rd, 2005.

powers that lurk in fables and myths

do you ask me: promise,

As we know only too

in your turn in my turn an other day,

is a verdict (that is) negative?

All of this will have always happened

life long to run after

it asks me by sinking its teeth

this injunction more

is not a form of combustible

fuel, you say. -In

is his daily dog.

and that is right, it is in destiny. Iwas posted by you

does he send this text, enclosed

issue of Contretemps devoted

by the veil persecution?

if only I could believe you!

That's why you keep watch

I look at her visibility.

She cuts the book.

Two different visibilities. And two different non-visibilities.

She has finished. -I will

try to read it a little, this book,

-Me with this butcher knife. It gives me the willies.

you gave me the not

second coming back of the manuscript

I have been thinking about it like a poor beast being led