One can ask the question: why the flowers in this text? I would ask the question in a slightly different way: how to write after the rose. In Agua viva, there is a whole parade of flowers, there is not only one. Why flowers? What does it mean? Is the question "why" pertinent? It is always pertinent, because, in a certain way, it is in a very general way impertinent in this text: this is a text which does not reveal its reason. In other words, it relegates to the past the question: "why?" At the same time, the question "why" makes texts grow, it is called upon by the text itself. Where one has a feeling of irrationality, and where one is in the position of the little child who says "why"? even if the text answers: "because." Which in fact is a very good answer. Why? I would say that this is the question "flower." So why some flowers? First, there are ready-made expressions. One has dried flowers in the form of rhetorical flowers. Our memory system cannot say flower in the proximity of books and paper—in a field that is another story—without thinking of rhetorical flowers. Everything that deals with metaphor is vital here. One has to work on the space of inscription of this text and on its play with metaphor, on its struggle or play with metaphor. The question of the flowers is the transformation of "with" into "how." How to say flowers without flowers. How to say it without betraying.
One cannot work on metaphor without working on metonymy. And there is, in Clarice, an abundant use of metaphor and of metonymy. How? Its use is in a system of violent rupture with what might be the forms of language. Language is metaphor and metonymy, one cannot avoid it. Clarice attempts to break this off the way one breaks off a relationship. When one breaks off a relationship, one always keeps traces of attachment. It is never completely dislocated. What she detaches herself from is what may be dead, fixed, gluey in the double system of language. Here, for example, when I say "Why the flowers?" there is an internal answer. I take it at random. I do not need this to answer. When Clarice talks about a tulip—which is a tulip only in Holland—first there is no article: "Tulipa so é tulipa na Holanda." In other words, one has begun to make a certain way with the flowers. One has been accompanied by flowers long enough to reach this point. The suppression of the definite article signifies the passage from the common noun to the species. But it is more interesting to think that the flower takes on its proper name rather than to say that it took the name of a woman. It so happens that tulip becomes a proper name. But tulip is properly tulip only collectively. In other words, it is a flower; one does not betray the flower. This gesture works on non-uprooting while one is in the midst of the proper, that is to say on the difference between proper and figurative. "A lone tulip . . . needs an open field to be." This must be heard in what would still seem literal but is only a facsimile. It must obviously already be understood at an allegorical level. Allegorical of what? The tulip makes sense only in its place. Clarice is very ruseful. Her story about Holland is not a question of natural science. It is not as a botanist that she writes this, though there are passages where there is the influence of botany. Clarice is not afraid—even if, in appearance, she is on the side of origins, of the primary—of associations that are almost clichés. Clichés of what? Not of the imaginary, or of the unconscious. True, all this is part of our immense cultural, symbolic memory which crosses the ensemble tulip-Holland-open field. The tulip carries with it the tulips, takes its full meaning of tulip only in the open field of Holland. At the same time, one cannot not hear it at the level of a textual metaphor. But Clarice does not say this and that
is her strength. Because she broke off with metaphor does not mean that there is no metaphor, that there is no "as."
Why flowers? If one read a story of "I talk to you about a rose, the rose is the feminine flower," one would function with a whole system of associations about a singular rose that had been pre-selected and caught in an anthropomorphic space. Besides, Clarice's passage starts with: "The rose is the feminine flower that gives of itself all and so completely. ..." To liberate the rose from the anthropomorphism which comes from the fact that it is spoken in language, the rose must be reinscribed in the species. What emerges in the passage is the need to bring in flowers in order not to betray the rose. One can think that Clarice proceeds by association as freely as possible. There is no free association because one flower calls, beckons another, but beyond the general fact that one thing calls another. There is an intense, incessant worry (souci) which is the moral of her writing and which consists in giving back the flower to the flower by getting closer to the place of origin. Clarice tries to be as essentialist as possible, even if there is, of course, no essence. Therefore she tries to destroy what would be the singular through isolation, captation, while taking into account that there is somebody who is in touch with the flower. In other words, there is exchange. She can say: I am full of acacias. The flower alone is a flower alone; the flower beheld, is a flower beheld, there are differences, alterations. One is in the relative, one is in relation with, and all these flowers are lived flowers precisely. At no point does she make us think that it is an absolute flower. It is a relative flower, but it is as much flower as possible. On the one hand, there is the beholder who looks at the flower, who thinks it, names it, who throws over it this kind of web of human sensitivity. On the other, there are, as in a counterweight, flowers which come to help the flowers,
which make "flower with the flower." That is Clarice's genius. First, she does not philosophize, she simply uses all the means possible. It is on the means that one must work in her text. Means are necessary ruses to be faithful to what is not I.
The technique of reading must be structured here. Let us come back to the little sentence by Kant: "But a flower, for example a tulip," in the third part of Derridas Parergon which bears as subtitle, Le sans de la coupure pure. If one says "sans" (without, blood), the ear does not know what the eye would say. At that moment one obeys associations. It is obvious that the pure cut demands or breathes blood. One could also say that, if there is a cut, it breathes a s'en aller, a going away. It so happens that in Derrida it is written sans, without. The sans of the coupure pure was therefore not blood, it was a cut without blood, but with without, that is to say, without blood. In a certain way, the text by Clarice is without blood and with without. It is written like this and that makes it hard to read. I do not consider this difference negative but as indicative of something in the text that does not give itself to be read without escaping, drowning, submerging, retreating. This is due to its fictional form. Kant's quote with reference to the tulip talks about a certain without which is a without without-blood, that is to say a finality without end, without purpose. A finality without end may be paradoxical, but it signifies something very important: without is not on the side of the negative but on the side of blood, because blood circulates. Kant's little sentence describes the non-rapport, the non-return, and not the interminable or the infinite. There is finality but finality without end. It is not a negative without. It is not, because when there is without, and a cut, one cannot not be drawn into a phantasm of castration, of lack. At some point, Derrida's text says, repeating a
sentence by Kant: "On this sans which is not a lack, science has nothing to say." Kant's sentence reads: "There is no science of the beautiful, only a critique of the beautiful." This does not mean that there is no beautiful, or that we cannot say anything about it. It means that there is no science of the beautiful, or that the beautiful cannot be related to an epistemology. There is positively a non-savoir of the beautiful. For example, in front of his wild tulip, Saussure stood with his mouth open, which does not mean without voice. But at that moment, if there is a cry, it is not cut, it is breath. In front of the tulip, one will exclaim: How beautiful it is. Go and find out later what it meant. That is what phenomena of open mouths are about. It is beautiful! But then what? How? What is there to say? Well, perhaps, the difficulty of saying it, of linking this perception to an énoncé. The fear of losing pleasure while theorizing is one of the questions evoked by Clarice. However, I do not
think that one "loses pleasure." Such a statement is taken in the vast and vague risk of castration. One does not "lose pleasure," nor does one keep it: one scans it. And to scan it while trying to say it is what Clarice does. Her book is about the scansion of pleasure. The tulip is completely philosophical but it is enhanced with poetic charm when one has in ones bodily memory Clarice's tulip. If one proceeds philosophically before proceeding poetically, and this is central to the philosopher, pleasure is crushed. But if one begins by having pleasure, it is like knowing how to swim: one never forgets it.
A few words on what presents itself as what one could call at the same time 'the most and the least' in this text. What does this mean? The least is that which does not announce itself. For example: "Now I'm going to speak to you about. . . flowers." It is a thread. It is inscribed over and again. It is also the earth of all that grows or of all that
swims in Agua viva. That is to say, it is a question of style. One has to laugh when one reads a sentence like: "I write you, seated by an open window." The only thing that Clarice did not deal with is grammar. Examples like I write you, I'm writing to you, I write, I write to you abound, yet the text is put together with few words. There are many repetitions, as in musical scales. The text practices its scales without stopping. There are also variations. I have the vertiginous impression never to know which page I am on. All these relations of false anteriority, posteriority are something of à déjà vu which is not déjà vu. There are recurrences, like chair or apples. This contributes to disorienting the reader. Disorientation is the orient of this text. It is not pure repetition of the identical. The same theme re- surges, draws a little flower, simply because there is never a radical cut. Because, on a vegetal mode, there is interminable ramification, with burial and resurgence. I am still in metaphors; I do not fear them; I obey what this text suggests. The text is metaphor itself, a metaphor which is not a metaphor but agua viva, living water, a metaphor without stop, a gigantic metaphor, a facsimile of a book, which permanently works with the counter-metaphor "with." If, for example, one says that one is going to work on a fragment, if one takes the text one is going to work on a priori, visibly, it becomes a very cut up text. Here, one could say, it is a coast. On the level of signification one cannot find a whole. One could find one on the level of form. Again, one must ask the question: what is form? It is what marks articulation. It is not the beginning or the end of an image, though that can happen. Clarice's gesture which listens to itself write does not hide it. It says it continually. The means of locomotion of this text are inscribed everywhere. The text is its own echo, like a person or a plant. Like a plant it buries itself and surges up, or like a person it reflects upon itself.
The text says what it says which makes reading very difficult. One has to read the very phenomena of writing, reading oneself.
Elsewhere, there is something of a first point, a first sentence. "It's with such intense joy." In Portuguese, the é, 'is,' has only one letter. At the limit, this would be the unit of reading of the text, a sentence-word, one and only word. A word of one letter alone. This first sentence is deceptive. It propulses the text: "It's with such intense joy." One waits for a proposition to come: that this text is born, for example. The sentence triggers a wait, a wait for something that is already there. The sentence does violence to the classical sentence. It sets the tone for what is to come. There are only beginnings, hundreds of them. We take off, without end. It is impossible to divide the text into fragments. There is no narrative, no story, none of the instruments of narrative functions here, so one can only obey the text. One reads in a circle. One obeys a breathing rhythm. All this explodes the temporal reference marks completely. It is put in place from the beginning by the systematic recourse to the present tense. The present imposes itself. One cannot not write this text in the present. Let us come back to the sentence: "I think I'm going to have to ask permission to die." One has two possibilities with such a sentence. Either one looks for where it comes from, in what kind of causal chain the expression is inscribed. But here I cannot, it is too late: "I listened to Firebird—and passed utterly away." This is quite an event. Here, if one goes back to see where this abrupt announcement of death comes from, one comes across the chrysanthemum: "The chrysanthemum is profoundly happy. It speaks through color and dishevelment. It's a flower that impetuously controls its own savagery." That is a finality without end, a wild tulip. It is a flower which, being disheveled, controls its own wildness. What
is the relationship with the following sentence? None, but the two are not without rapport. There is a without rapport. In a certain way one goes abruptly from the chrysanthemum to "I think I'm going to die." Are these two different worlds? There is a hidden rapport. One has to retake the path across the flowers. But if one looks at the passage of the flowers from close up, it too jumps all the time. True, there is a regrouping, there is an ensemble: the ensemble flower. Yet inside the ensemble, there are incessant breakages. There I pick up something again. Every reader is struck by the story of flowers, and this is not by chance. In the passage on the victoria regia, there is the phrase: "é de se morrer delas" literally "one could die" of the pleasure they give. This is the rule of the text. It consists of a release, of a setting in motion. There is an insistence until— I stay in metaphors—one arrives at the acme, at the incandescence of something that is orgiastic, but in a feminine mode, at something that goes over to the limit and then one can say no and everything starts up again. One needs to see the system of starting up again (relance). At times, the mechanism of pleasure can be read clearly. It may be the mechanism of breathing or else it may be called music. It always corresponds to bodily rhythms, but of a body that produces a reading of the world. The body is worldly, not brute. It makes love, it is taken in moments of exchange, of making love with the other, hence the rhythmic variations. It is not always the same rhythm. Yet, on the level of logic or of discourse, there is no plot, no evident causality. It makes reading difficult. If one takes the book as an ensemble, it openly declares that it does not interrupt itself. There are no chapters. True, the first thing, other than obviously writing itself, is: it is about. That is active. What this leads to on the level of the body is non-interruption. I will come back to this. First, let us return to the proof of non-interruption which is continuous, but which is inscribed in most obvious fashion at a certain moment. There is the sentence: "I think I'm going to have to ask permission to die. But I can't, it's too late." A few paragraphs later, we read: "I'm tired. I tire easily because I'm an extremely busy person." Now, if one works on this passage, for example on the sequence of sentences introducing the paragraphs: "I think I'm going to have to ask for permission to die," "I have to interrupt this because-didn't I tell you? didn't I tell you that one day something was going to happen to me?" and "I'm tired," if one reads these three introits, these three incipits of paragraphs, it so happens that they do inscribe interruption: "I think I'm going to have to ask permission to die . . . stop," "I must interrupt . . . interruption;" "I'm tired ..." that is to say I'm tired . . . I'm going to rest. Perhaps one goes toward an interruption, but more exactly: my fatigue comes, my fatigue is going to be put to work, and I'm going to work on the fatigue that overcomes me and makes me interrupt. If one looks at the temporal shuttle that this constitutes, one has: "I think I'm going to have to ask permission to die": one advances. "I can't, I can't, it's too late": it is already past. The time of interruption is the third moment of this paragraph which explains without giving an explanation. One never is in what would be of the order of liaison, of heavy binding: Period. "I listened to Firebird!"— one has the impression that this is juxtaposed—and if we followed the pun on "fire" in the Portuguese verb "afoguei," "I became enflamed entirely." First there is something like a premonition or preparation. It does not happen in the text, therefore we are told: "I can't." Truly, one could read: I am no longer. It is too late, but it has already happened. Obviously, death cannot "happen" other than in this way. C
larice died between two sentences: "It's too late," "I listened to Firebird and I became enflamed entirely." There are all the themes of Agua viva at once. One has: "First I listened," there has been sublation of "to be dying" through music and not through any kind of music: "I became the Firebird." I became music again by going through fire, through the ear and of course through writing. All this happens on the theme which is not mentioned, because that would be vulgar, the theme of the phoenix. The firebird in Brazilian is the sparrow of fire. At the level of the signifier, there is another very subtle play on the passage through fire and water because "afoguei" literally means "I drowned."
Clarice is the champion of the sublime metaphor. Generally, one cannot undo her mechanism which is so fast and so subtle that one is caught in it and carried off into the general motif of the text which is nothing but transport. A statement seemingly as banal as: Tm tired. I tire easily because I'm an extremely busy person," could be read from the point of view of the technique of writing as "to go on while following oneself." Clarice accompanies herself and follows herself. One could define her thus: She follows herself, she follows herself. "I'm tired." This leads to a paragraph on fatigue. She follows her own remarks which she remarks.
The middle paragraph of those three begins with "I have to interrupt this because." There is a staging of interruption. She effectuates the "didn't I tell you? didn't I tell you that one day something was going to happen to me?" I want to insist on the formulation, "didn't I tell?" because it is one of the most frequent marks of the text. There are a certain number of questions and the question is part of the general technique of the text. There are questions which at times are followed by answers and there are questions which remain without answer. If I distinguish between the two, it is because in the ensemble of the play questions/answers, the convention calls for real questions, not rhetorical questions. The questions here address themselves sometimes to you sometimes to herself. A question like "And what if dying tastes like food when you re really hungry?" has no answer. Another "What am I in this instant? I'm a typewriter," has an answer. "Or is the portal already the church, and when you're in front of it you've already arrived?" No answer. "Will my song of the it never end?" No answer. These questions inscribe the generality of a theme that could be called the "I don't know." Sometimes the question mark is the answer. One could talk of the putting into question of this text, as one could talk about its staging. "Didn't I tell you that one day something was going to happen to me?" What is inscribed in the interruption is the event. One has to interrupt so that something can happen. "Didn't I tell you," also inscribes the movement of retrospective anticipation. And then there is a kind of textual genesis: "A man named Joao just spoke to me over the phone. He grew up (literally "created himself') deep in the Amazon jungle." This can be read as a real event or as an imbedded allegory of some kind of a displaced genesis related to the verb. Here a man called Joao, a man already called, called. One has a narrative after the creation. "He says that there's a legend there about a talking plant." One finds again the thread of plants, of flowers. Now, the person who created himself tells something. We are still in the mode of the one: one word, one man, one thing, once. All this is a very distant displacement of genesis. It is unique. "One night he came home very late and as he was walking along the corridor where the plant was he heard the word "João." He thought it was his mother calling him and he answered: "I'm coming." We come back to a naming through the mother, that is to say through Clarice. And he answered: "I'm coming.' This reminds us of the Bible. But when Joao went upstairs, he found his parents fast asleep. There is a return to a kind of realistic scene.
The Stream of Life Page 9