… and nothing else happens or is even possible except for the frantic imitation of this ebbing away …
This is from Phrase by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, translated by Leslie Hill (2018, 2000):
… All in all what I call “phrase” is what brings me face to face, as it has always done, with what is not and cannot be. I am forever without relation to it, and this is the reason it leaves me deeply affected or afflicted, to the point of slipping or stumbling, losing or abandoning myself, being almost nothing at the moment when it happens to me — that is, when it is already no longer happening to me.
… something, though never a thing, withdraws or retracts, and nothing else happens or is even possible except for the frantic imitation of this ebbing away: the body bordering on the untouchable, the phrase on the inaudible. Whence the painstaking and cautious attentiveness, the ceremonial, the rituals.
[line break added] Whence the fear too: not to falter, to be able at the very least — as when you’re listening, yes, to a devastating piece of music you would like to have written and which you know deep down you could have written because you’ve always heard it resonate as far as possible from yourself in yourself — to be able at the very least to accompany it to breaking point, to the point where “it collapses,” the motionless crossing of this uncrossable distance.
My most recent previous post from Lacoue-Labarthe’s book is here.
-Julie
Coloring 