Monday, November 22, 2004

Pas

What should one do in order to read everything? And even if one can read everything here, quoting everything "integrally" once more, the everything would still be missing... I turn some three pages and read again: " he/it: at the border of writing [il: au bord de l'écriture]...".
It-paralyses it. Is this the coat of arms of his name, this "barred zero, heraldic"? of his name without name (not Without-Name, this is still too much), or equally, of an anonymous island, bordered on every side, as the borders of the o or the o of the borders, without any other quality or determination, white or black island, white water [eau]/black water, zero degree of the appearance, of the first step [pas] or of the first word, when this begins to walk or to speak, to heave up upon itself or to raise its voice. The white and the black are just as suitable to this o of the name without name. Isn't the eau, white or black, the o, clear or obscure, day/night, this double zero, this "equal power of the 0 and the 2 in the distance not marked and not measurable as difference", this equal power that the Eternal Return neither permits nor identifies, nor resembles, nor excludes the one nor the other? Thinking of the o, I then allow myself to drift towards what he says about 0/2 in Le pas au-delà, or about the "word-gap" in L'Entretien infini ("a hole-word, hollowed out in its centre by a hole, the hole in which all the other words should have been buried": so he quotes Marguerite Duras and he [il] is this word-gap, "immense, endless, an empty gong", he is the "narrative voice"), but there is also a similar hole in all names, in all words, in his name, in his words hollowed out by the o at [p. 110] their centre (le bord [border], la bouche [mouth], le mot [the word], le mort [death, the dead], le trou [gap], le nom [name, noun], le non [no], le moment [moment]). The double colour (white/black) of the o, the opposition day/night is effaced without confusion in the night remarked upon as follows: "All that which Anne still loved [...] were called the night. All that which Anne hated [...] were called night. Absolute night where there were no longer contradictory terms, where those who suffered were happy, where white found a common substance with black. And yet, night without confusion..." I read this in Thomas l'Obscur which you [vous] described, at the moment when, from the start, from first word, "Thomas sat down and looked at the sea", as a genesis of colour, from the "absolute night" "where white found a common substance with black. And yet, night without confusion..."


No comments: