… What then remains is precariousness itself: these few words in the back of the throat. And what remains is adoration: help me, love me. Or what remains is imprecation.
This is from Phrase by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, translated by Leslie Hill (2018, 2000):
… The beginning always comes too late. And yet all it needed was a hand placed on the nape of your neck (without the least authority, without the least submissiveness), a laconic “I’ll explain later,” a whole night spent (till the pale glimmer of dawn) in approximations, in the sound and silence of voices, in the limpid tale of what we did not know about each other and still do not know.
On each occasion, less — much less — may be required. The approximations are endless, but however vulnerable we are, we are constrained to admit it.
This infinite paraphrase I also call literature.
[ … ]
… Imagine a body retreating into the “oh, it’s nothing, really” of suffering or the unanswerable “why?” of misery; imagine it ailing, short of breath, but speaking — murmuring. That’s what I mean by supplication.
Imagine it also loving, in the grip of something, clinging on, emptied out — raising itself up to be free of the weight, refusing to be wrenched away.
Imagine something inexorable.
What then remains is precariousness itself: these few words in the back of the throat. And what remains is adoration: help me, love me. Or what remains is imprecation.
In any case: pure, empty address.
It’s possible it may be heard: if not, why would we write at all? But it changes nothing as far as the distress is concerned. Adoration is unrelated.
That’s why it makes demands, exorbitant demands, not knowing what it’s demanding or even of whom it’s demanding it.
Which is also the reason it approves nothing.
It releases. Someone knows full well what I’m referring to: the unprecedented joy of mourning: I am going to die, I am going to die. Nothing equals its clarity.
My previous post from Lacoue-Labarthe’s book is here.
-Julie
Coloring 