birds, women, and w - duke university...cau for help. 5 the american translation continues: they...
TRANSCRIPT
The Schoo! o
f Ro
ots
1. Birds, W
omen, and W
riting
I am interested in a chain of associations and signifiers com
posed of birds, w
omen, and w
riting. This m
ay sound funny, it may sound gratui-
tous, but it is noto We only have to read the chapter in Leviticus in the
Bible to realize that it is deadly serious. T
he chapter gives Moses and
humanity in generaI law
s on eating: dictating what is edible and w
hat is noto In E
nglish the distinction is between m
eats that are c!ean and meats
that are unc!ean. I need the French: in French unc!ean is imm
onde, which
comes from
the Latin i17l177Undus; it is the sam
e word in B
razilian-im
mundo-and l'H
need this later.
And these are they w
hich you shall have in abomination am
ong the fow
ls, they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination, the eagle and
the ossifrage and the vulture. And the ow
l and the nighthawk, and
after his kindj and the little owl, and the great onej and the sw
an and the pelican, and the deer eagle. The stork, the heron and the lapling and the bat. A
ll fowls that creep, going on all fours, shall be an
abomination unto you. l
So this is what w
e are not supposed to eat. These are abominable. W
hy are they abom
inable? While there are others one can eat: for exam
ple:
The locust and after his kind, and the bulliocust after his kind. The beetle after his kind and the grasshopper after his kind. B
ut all the creeping things w
hich have four feet shall be an abomination unto
you. And for these you shall be unclean.
2
We can dream
round the mystery of the stork's "im
mundity." W
e can have aH kinds of reveries regarding the sw
an and the swan's abom
i-nation. A
nd of course, if we w
ere childlike enough, we'd w
orryj or, if w
e were Percival, w
e'd wonder w
hy there are birds that are abominable.
And w
e would have to accept the law
's answer: B
ecause. It is what the
Bible says.
In T/le Passion According to G. H
., G. H
., a wom
an reduced to her
111
Tlze ScI7001 oJ Ro
ots
initials, encounters in complete solitude, face to face-even eye to e
ye-
a cockroach, an abominable cockroach. J In B
razilian the word for coclc-
roach is barata, and it is feminine. So a w
oman m
eets a barata, and it becom
es the focus for a type of fantastic, total, emotional, spiritual, and
intellectual revolution, which, in short, is a crim
e. The revolution leads
G. H
. to completely revise her clichéd w
ay-our clichéd way
-of think-
ing: our relations to the world in generaI and to living things in particu-
lar. She must deal w
ith the phobia, with the horror w
e have of so-called abom
inable beings. I will now
quote from a chapter in the m
iddle of the book, after G
. H. has had an initially ordinary reaction to the barata:
that is, she has almost "killed" it by crushing it. A
kind of white paste
spurts out of the barata, which is nonetheless im
mortal. G
. H. com
es into contact w
ith this paste; she starts thinking about what the w
hite paste is and how
to relate to it. This is w
hat she says at one point:
I had comm
itted the forbidden act of touching something im
pure. +
In Brazilian "im
pure" is im1l1ulldo.
And so im
pure was I [so im
mollde w
as I], in my sudden indirect
mom
ent of self-knowledge, that I opened m
y mouth to caU for help. 5
The A
merican translation continues:
They proclaim, the B
ible does, but if I understand what they pro-
claim, they wiU caU m
e crazy. People like me had proclaim
ed that understanding them
would be m
y destruction. "But you shaU not eat
'-the impure, the eagle, the griffon, and the haw
k." Nor the ow
l, nor the sw
an, nor the bat, nor the stork, nor the enti re tribe of crows. 6
Now
let me correct that translation. A
ctually G. H
. does not say: "T
hey proclaim, the B
ible does ... "
E tao imunda estava eu, naquele m
eu subito conhecimento indirecto
de mim
, que abri a boca para pedir socono. Eles dizem tlldo,
a Biblia, eles dize1ll tlldo-m
as se eu entender o que eles dizem, eles
112
Tlze ScI7001 oJ Ro
ots
mesm
os me cham
arao de enlouquecida.7 Pessoas iguais a m
im hav-
iam dito, no entanto entende-las seria a
derrocada. "M
as nao comereis das im
puras: quais sao a aguia, e o grifo, e o esm
erilhao." E nem a coruja, e nem
o cisne, e nem o m
orcego, nem
a cegonha, e todo o genero de CO
l·VO
S. 8
What C
larice actually suggests is that the Bible is a m
asculine "they." O
ne might have translated it like this: "Those H
e-Bible, those B
ible, they say everything." It sounds aw
kward, but it is the w
ay Clarice w
rites, aw
kwardly, roughly, and as truly as possible to w
hat she wants us to
feel. So those He-B
ible, it is tlley who tell us w
hat is unclean and abomi-
nable. Clarice Lispector is a w
riter who has dealt throughout her w
ork, am
ong other questions, with this notion of the abom
inable in our lives, in all its form
s. Let those birds be "abom
inable": I associate wom
en and w
riting with this abom
ination. I do this, of COUl-se, half playfully, half seriously. It is m
y way of indicating the reserved, secluded, or excluded
path or pIace where )iou m
eet those beings I think are worth know
ing w
hile we are alive. Those w
ho belong to the birds and their kind (these m
ay include some m
en), to writings and their kind: they are all to be
found-and a fair company it is-outside; in a pIace that is called by
Those Bible, those w
ho are the Bible, abom
inable. EIsew
here, outside, birds, wom
en, and writing gather. N
o! ali wom
en how
ever: quite a number of this kind linger inside, as w
e realize daily, and identify w
ith "those-He-B
ible" and their kind. Outside w
e shall find alI those precious people w
ho have not worried about respecting the law
that separates w
hat is and is not abominable according to Those B
ible. I have deliberately included G
enet among those w
riters I have chosen to m
eet today. I wanted you to have the French version and the E
nglish translation, w
hich is both correct and misleading. G
enet is particularly difficult to translate: he inhabits a verbal land that resists all attem
pts at "naturalization" as w
e say in French. One has to travel to his elsew
here, that is m
eet him on his ow
n idio-grounds and read along his specific paths in order to becom
e acquainted with his universe.
113
The S
cho
o! oJ R
oo
ts
This is like the w
riting of Clarice Lispector and those w
riters with
whom
I have a dee p and everlasting love affair: A
nna Akhm
atova, M
arina Tsvetaeva, Ingeborg Bachm
ann, Ossi p M
andelstam. T
hey
all-w
ithout having decided to, without having m
et, without having read one
another-inhabit what G
enet calls in French: "les domaines inférieurs"
(the nether realms).9 T
hey dwell som
ewhere in that m
ost evasive of countries w
ithout a precise address, the one that is most difficult to find
and work w
ith, and where it is even difficult to live w
ithout effort, danger, risk. T
his risky country is situated somew
here near the uncon-scious: to reach it you have to go through the back door of thought.
If I gather these beings to talk about them in the sam
e way, if I am
w
orried by the fate of birds and wom
en, it is because I have learned that not m
any people--unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately---can really love, tolerate, or understand a certain kind of w
riting; I am using w
omen and
birds as synonyms.
This is w
hat Clarice Lispector w
isely says at the beginning of The PassÌOll According to G
. H. lO
The translation says: "T
o potential readers." It should say: "T
o possible readers." T
he translation says: "This is a book just like any other book" (106),
so be reassured. But this is w
hat Clarice Lispector says: "T
his book is like any other boole." Il
The translation goes on: "B
ut I would be happy if it w
ere re ad only by people w
hose outloole is fully formed." 12
I don't know w
hat "outlook" is, so let me tell you w
hat Clarice says:
"But I w
ould be pleased if it were re ad only by persons w
hose souls are already m
ature." A
nd so I continue:
Those who know
that the approach to anything is done progressively and painfully-and includes as w
ell passing through the opposite of w
hat is being approached. These people and they alone will un der-
stand very slowly that this book takes nothing aw
ay from anyone. To
me, for exam
ple, the character G. H
. gradually gave a difficult joy; but it is called joy. 13
114
The S
cho
o! oJ R
oo
ts
This is how
you are greeted when you open the book. Y
ou are told that this book is a book like others. T
hen you must ask yourself w
hether you are one of those persons w
hose souls are already mature.
It is threatening, disquieting. A
sking yourself: "Is my soul already m
ature" m
ight sound prohibitive, but it isn't. The m
oment you read the next
sentence you are either in or outside what is approaching. Y
ou must at
least once in your life have realized you were undergoing the opposite of
what w
as coming. I suppose this to be the case,
but if it has not yet happened it w
ill. W
hat comes next is m
ost important: after having been severe C
larice says: "B
ut this book does not talee anything from anybody. T
o me, for
example, the character G
. H. gradually gave a difficult joy." In w
riting this C
larice Lispector wisely and em
phatically sides with us readers: she
is not the author, she is like us before the book. She too is reading it and has to deal w
ith the character who com
es to her in the book and gives her alI kinds of em
otions. Yet it is a w
arning that this book wilI give us pain,
which is of course a joy. W
hat about the boole not taking away anything
from anyone: the w
riting moves fast, and you m
ight not even noti ce the rem
ark, though I believe this to be one of the keys to our lives together. Each one of u
s-the w
hole of manleind, irrespective of sexual differ-
ence-must deal w
ith the feeling of things being taken away from
uso W
hat is interesting is that birds, writing, and m
any wom
en are con-sidered abom
inable, threatening, and are rejected, because others, the
rejectors, feel something is taken aw
ay from them
. But let m
e leave w
omen asi de for today, since this is a controversial issue, and keep only
birds and writing. N
either birds noI' writing take anything aw
ay, yet people feel
that some form
s of writing do take som
ething from us.
Clarice Lispector has never been a fem
inist, Genet is not a fem
inist, though theirs are w
ritings that may hurt, m
ay dissatisfy, and give the feeling that som
ething is taken away.
This is exactly (and I have chosen this exam
ple in order to make
things dear) what happened to G
andhi. I imagine you believe he w
as for the m
ost part adored; in fact he was hated and he is stilI hated today.
115
The School oJ R
oots
Hatred is stilI alive in India and he di ed of it. Those w
ho were for
Gandhi w
ere mostly from
what is called the scheduled castes, those w
ho belong to the gutters w
ith whom
he had sided. Y
et he did not ask anything of anyonej he sim
ply went his ow
n way. H
e did not ask people to change. H
e did what he felt he had to do. W
hen people approached, he never asked,
he never exacted anything from them
, he never de-m
anded anything from the people w
ho approached him, not even his
cIose friends: they went on living the w
ay they wanted to live. B
ut the sim
ple fact that he lived according to his own law
-w-.Q
ich was asceti c
and demanding of him
self-was som
ething that people could not toler-ate. T
here are ways of w
riting that are perceived in the same w
ay as G
andhi was perceived by the Indians.
Clarice
Lispector had
to deal
with
this perception,
as did
In-geborg
Bachm
ann and
Tsvetaeva. Fortunately,
there is
always
a sm
all group
who
love such
writings.
But
the m
ajority are
"those B
ible." N
ow w
hat about what is called in French l'im
monde,
in Brazilian
i1Jlll11do, and in English tlle uncleall? T
his is what C
larice says:
I was know
ing that the Bible's im
pure animals are forbidden be-
cause the imund is the root. 14 For there are things created that have
never made them
selves beautiful, and have stayed just as they were
when created, and only they continue to be the entirely com
plete m
ot, they are not to be eaten. The fruit of good and evil, the eating of living m
atter, would expel m
e from the paradise of adornm
ent and require m
e to walk forever through the desert w
ith a shepherd's staff. M
any have been those who have w
alked in the desert with a
staff.
To build a possible soul, a soul whose head w
ill not devour its own
tail, the law com
mands that one uses only w
hat is patently alive. And
the law com
mands that w
hoever partakes of the imund, m
ust do so w
ithout knowingj for, he w
ho partakes of the imund know
ing that it is im
und, must also com
e to know that the im
und is not imund. ls
that itilS
116
T/ze School oJ Roots
She quotes the Bible:
"And everything that craw
ls on the gmund and has w
ings shall be im
und, and shall not be eaten." I opened m
y mouth in fright to ask for help. W
hyi Because I did not w
ant to become im
und Iike the cockroach. What ideaI held
me from
the sensing of an ideai Why should I not m
ake myself
imundi Exactly as I w
as revealing my w
hole self, what w
as I afraid ofi B
eing imundi W
ith whati
Being im
und with joy. 16
That is m
y theme for today: to be "im
und," to be uncIean with joy.
Imm
onde, that is, out of the mltlldus (the w
orld). The m
onde, the world,
that is so-called clean. The w
orld that is on the good side of the law
that is "proper," the w
orld of order. The m
oment you cross the line
law
has drawn by w
ording, verb(aliz)ing, you are supposed to be out of the w
orld. You no longer belong to the w
orld. O
ut there we shall be in the com
pany of swans, storks, and griffons.
Imagine this list on the other side, celebrated by som
eone like Dante.
Dante loves birds, and in Paradise he has visions of birds like letters in
the sky. So why are those birds im
undi Because. A
s you know, this is
the secret of the law: "because." T
his is the law's logico It is this terrible
"because," this senseless fataI "because" that has decided people's fate, even in the extrem
ity of the concentration camps. People w
ere divided, som
e were sent to gas cham
bers while others w
ere "spared" for a later da.te, "because." It is this becallse that rules our lives. It pervades every-thl11g. It can even reach the fragile w
orld of translation. N
ow C
larice says explicitly that what is im
und is joy. They are
synonymous. Joy is im
und, it is 1/ot lf1/cleall: if you use the English
expression lfncleaJl you lose the necessary meaning "out of the w
orld." Joy is out-of-the-w
orld-this is what C
larice wants us to understand. It
is true that what is really forbidden is enjoym
ent, jubilation. As C
larice a. stroke of genius, the point for Those B
ible is that joy, jubdatlO
n, blrds are forbidden because they are the root. So the purpose of Those B
ible is to forbid the root. This is w
hat I
117
The School o
f Roots
wanted to bring to the surface, though w
e wilI not rem
ain here; instead our ladder w
ilI grow dow
n into the earth. W
riting is not put there, it does not happen out there, it does not com
e from outside. O
n the contrary, it comes from
deep inside. It comes
from w
hat Genet calIs the "nether realm
s," the inferior realms (d01l7aines
illfériettrs). W
e'll try to go there for a time, since this is w
here the treasure of w
riting lies, where it is form
ed, where it has stayed since the
beginning of creation: down below
. T
he name of the pIace changes
according to our writers. Som
e call it helI: it is of course a good, a desirable hell. T
his is what C
larice calls it: illferno. She does not always
use the word hell but alI kinds of parallel denom
inations ("tlze otller side" cited in Tlle Stream
of Life is Tsvetaeva's abyss). 17 lt is dee p in my body,
further down, behind thought. T
hought comes in front of it and it closes
like a door. This does not m
ean that it does not think, but it thinks differently from
our thinking and speech. Somew
here in the depths of m
y heart, which is deeper than l think. Som
ewhere in m
y stomach, m
y w
omb, and if you have not got a w
omb-then it is som
ewhere "else."
Y ou m
ust climb dow
n in order to go in the direction of that pIace. But
as l said yesterday, this sort of descent is much m
ore difficult to achieve, m
uch more tiring, m
uch more physically exacting (p17ysically because
the soul is body), than climbing up. It is a clim
b, but it requires the w
hole strength of everything that is you-which l don't w
ant to call "body," since it is m
ore complex than the body-to go through the
various doors, obstacles, walls, and distances w
e have forged to make a
life. l know besides that w
hat al so prevents us in our society from going
thèi-e is not our inability-because all of us are able-but our cowardice,
our fear. Our fear, since w
e know perfectly w
ell that we w
ill reach the dangerous point w
here those who are excluded live-and w
e hate exclu-sion. T
his is our emotional, our personal, and political problem
, the fact that w
e can't bear exclusion. We are afraid of it, w
e hate to be separated, that is w
hy we are apt to com
mit all kinds of sm
all crimes, self-denials,
and treachery. B
ut one has to choose between losing w
hat is mund and losing the
118
T/ze School of R
oots
best part of ourselves that is called imund. Since w
e are shaped by years and years of all kinds of experiences and education, w
e must travel
through alI sorts of places that are not necessarily pleasant to get there: our ow
n marshes, our ow
n mud. A
nd yet it pays to do so. The trouble is
we are not taught that it pays, that it is beneficiaI. W
e are not taught the pain nor that in pain is hidden joy. W
e don 't know that w
e can fight against ourselves, against the accum
ulation of mental, em
otional, and biographical clichés. T
he generaI trend in writing is a huge concatenation
of clichés. It is a fight one must lead against subtle enem
ies. Our personal
enemies in this fight are those K
afka denounced as preventing our return to paradise. K
afka insists paradise is not lost, it is there. But w
e are lazy and im
patient. lf we w
ere neither lazy noI' impatient w
e would be back
in paradise. But w
e have to deal with this laziness and im
patience. And
of course with alI the re presentati ves of "Those B
ible." There is a w
hole list of institutions, m
edia, and machines that m
ake for the banishment of
birds, wom
en. and writing. W
e are mistaken if w
e think aparatc17ik is a R
ussian word. A
parachtiks exist in all countries, especially in France; they are pow
erful against birds, i.e., wom
en, i.e., writing, and people
are afraid of them.
What is forbidden is unfortunately the best and that is joy. W
e are told by the law
, "Thou shalt not eat of those birds, and thou shalt not
read those books," i.e.: Thou shalt not eat of those books that are joy.
Thomas B
ernhard told us in "Montaigne" how
when he w
as a child his fam
ily would say to him
: if you go to the library and take a book you w
ilI go mad,
insane; it is bad, wrong, rotten, vicious.
Reading is a
wonderful m
etaphor for all kinds of joy that are called vicious. Tsvetaeva di ed early: she w
as a very strong, powerful, rebellious
wom
an, much too pow
erful and full of joy to be allowed to survive. In a
long poem called "T
he Poem of the E
nd" there is a short line where she
suddenly strikes out and says: "A
lI poets are Yids." 18 T
he word is
extremely insulting; it is a synonym
of imund. Poets are unclean, abom
-inable in the sa m
e way w
omen are abom
inable. When Tsvetaeva used
this word in the context of R
ussian society, the most abom
inable of the
119
T17e Sch
oo
l of R
oo
ts
abominable at that tim
e, poets, she felt, were yids. It w
as equivalent to alI the other abom
inables. In another text she suggests that the abomina-
ble-she-Ioved, the abominable w
ith whom
she identified, was the nigger.
So in the same line of substitutions you find: Jew
s, wom
en, niggers, birds, poets, etc., alI of them
excluded and exiled. Exile is an uncom-
fortable situation, though it is also a magical situation. I am
not making
light of the experience of exile. But w
e can endure it differently. Some
exiles die of rage, some transform
their exile into a country. I understand those w
ho die of (out)rage. It is what happened to Sakharov. R
ecently I m
et his wife, E
lena Bonner, w
ho is utterly mad w
ith rage. She suffers day and night because alI she feels
is a desperate rage, w
hich I do
understand. Some exiles can draw
joy from ragej those w
ho are able to benefit from
this strange experience relearn, recapture what w
e have lost. T
his was our experience as children, but w
e have lost the taste of bread, since, as C
larice Lispector says, we have eaten lobster in the m
eantime.
We have lost the taste of hands, of the touching of hands. W
e have lost alI the sm
all and great secrets of joy. But the country of exile is not
unattainable. It is
even easier to go to that country,
Exile, than it
sometim
es is to cross the border of a country lilce the United States.
2. The Passage of AH Frontiers
A) B irtlz C
ertificates
We are going to a pIace to w
hich the Christian im
agination has given a negative connotation, that is, hell, but w
hich, on the contrary, has a joyous (I don't w
ant to say positive in opposition to the negative) conno-tation in the texts that are dear to m
e. Beginning by saying: w
e are going to hell, I am
designating an approach I am perfectly aw
are I chose in a context I selected, and thereby privilege a certain pIace and path. C
learly, I am
not the only one, for if I go in that direction it is because I am
calI ed by others, by those I love. Not everyone goes there. Preferring
what som
e calI hell to what som
e calI paradise involves libidinal choices: for hell is paradise.
I am not opposing them
. I am
simply w
orking tow
ard libidinal and geographical reorientation.
120
T17e Sc17001 of R
oo
ts
I have already pointed oqt that Genet called a certain pIace the "nether
realms," w
hich is obviously an equivalent. At the sam
e time I noti ce that
Genet spealcs in term
s of "realms" (dom
ail1es), in other words, he intro-
duces the domillus, the m
aster. He does this m
ore or less consciouslYj I
tend to thinlc he does this rather more than less consciously, since G
enet is som
eone who w
orlcs on each word lilce a galley slave: in G
enet's texts w
e are in the convict prison of language (although it's a go od convict prison, since the convict prison is good for him
). When G
enet says "nether realm
s" (domailles infé1"iellrs), I hear the m
aster passing through. T
oday we w
ill worlc in a sim
ilar area, on the meeting betw
een the econom
i es of Genet and C
larice. Their econom
ies are both similar and
different, and I feel they are exemplary. G
enet and Clarice are inhabi-
tants of those countries that Genet deliberately and m
agnificently calls the "nether realm
s" and that Clarice calls not the "nether realm
s" but "hell." T
his is the word that appears in alI her texts: in Tlle Stream
of Lije, in T/le Passioll According to G
. H. T
here is not a single text by Clarice in
which hell does not ari se and ari se jubilantly. H
ell is a pIace of jouiss-ance, a pIace of happinessj w
e might im
agine that hell, despite its name,
is situated celestially, though it is situated in the lower realm
s.
And if m
any times I paint caves it's because they are m
y submersion
into the earth, dark but clouded with charity, and I, nature's bIood-
extravagant and dangerous caves, Earth's talisman, w
here stalactites, fossils, and stones together and w
here creatures crazy through their ow
n evil nature seek refuge. Caves are 1I1y Ilell. 19 C
aves, dreamlike
always w
ith their mists, m
emory or Ionging? Frightening, frighten-
ing, esoteric, greenish with the ooze of tim
e. Rats, w
ith the crosslike w
ings of bats, hang glimm
ering in the dark cavern. I see black, hairy spiders. Rats and m
ice run frightened on the ground and aiong the w
aHs. A
mong the stones the scorpion. C
rabs, unchanged since prehistoric tim
es, through countless births and deaths, would seem
threatening beasts if they w
ere human-sized. A
ncient cockroaches drag them
selves aiong in the half Iight. And aH this am
I. Every-thing is heavy w
ith dreams w
hen I paint a cave or write to you about
one-out of it comes the clatter of dozens of unfettered horses to 121