Ex-Cities

Hélène Cixous

Edited by Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté

Foreword by Eric Prenowitz

Philadelphia: Slought Books

With the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender

Contemporary Artist Series, No. 5

© 2006 Hélène Cixous, Maria Chevska, Contributors, Translator, Slought Foundation

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any
form, without written permission from either the author or Slought Books, a division of
Slought Foundation. No part may be stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for
inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

We gratefully acknowledge the translation of Hélène Cixous’ “Promised Cities” by

Laurent Milesi. Images and artworks reproduced in this book courtesy of artist Maria
Chevska and Slought Foundation. The audio recording accompanying this volume is
derived from a reading by Hélène Cixous at Slought Foundation in October 2005, also
available online at http://slought.org

This publication, and the exhibition and event from which it was derived, was made
possible in part through the generous financial support of the British Council USA; the
Mission du livre program of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Alice Paul Center
for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Pennsylvania, under the
direction of Rita Barnard; and Dean Rebecca Bushnell and former Associate Dean Joe
Farrell at the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper by Coach House Books, Ltd. Set in 11pt Arial
Narrow by Sinder Design, Philadelphia. For more information, http://slought.org/books/

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cixous, Hélène, 1937-

[Villes promises. English & French]
Ex-cities / Hélène Cixous ; edited by Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté; foreword by
Eric Prenowitz.
p. cm. -- (Contemporary artist series ; no. 5)
In English and French.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-9714848-8-0 (pbk., audio cd : alk. paper)
I. Levy, Aaron, 1977- II. Rabaté, Jean-Michel, 1949- III. Title.

PQ2663.I9V5513 2006
843'.914--dc22
 The Archive Song of Ruins: Introducing Ex-Cities 9

CONTENTS
Aaron Levy

A Biographicosmopolitical Note 17
Eric Prenowitz

Promised Cities 27
Hélène Cixous

Vera’s Room 73
Maria Chevska

Villes Promises 89
Hélène Cixous

Eight Paragraphs for Hélène Cixous 135

Jean-Michel Rabaté

Companion Audio CD
Hélène Cixous reads Promised Cities
The Archive Song of Ruins: Introducing Ex-Cities
Aaron Levy

The destruction of the city. Is it a good thing is it a bad

thing? It is a bad thing which causes an art. A sorrow that
causes. Literature is a field of destruction a field in ruins,
the song of ruins, the archive song of ruins.
—Hélène Cixous

We undertook this publication not just to document a

memorable visit to Philadelphia by the celebrated author Hélène Cixous,
but to also convey and reproduce her singular presence in book form. It
is in part for this reason that we have reproduced her handwriting and
image on the cover, and included an audio recording of her reading.
Acts of documentation often reduce presence to a sentimental
collage of disjointed gestures. It is our hope that we do not merely
reduce Hélène Cixous to a series of impressions or the grain of her
voice, and that the very nature of her practice makes this an appropriate
way to convey her work.
In an afterword to this volume, Jean-Michel Rabaté refers to
Hélène Cixous’ writing as a sort of “‘fiction’ in which language comes as
close as possible to a poetic register without losing the thread of a
narrative.”1 We intend for this publication to facilitate an experience of
this form of writing. But how does one devise such a publication?
We can think of no better way to convey her style of writing—

9
what Jean-Michel Rabaté describes as “always double, punning, in the “foreign” relationship to the French language itself and the way her texts
wake of innumerable idioms and locutions”—than to join in one necessitate careful readings that are “capable of interpreting subtle
publication several permutations of “Promised Cities.”2 This project is displacements of the French language within the French language.”5
unique among Hélène Cixous’ numerous publications in that it features Reading Hélène Cixous’ work thus requires not only interlingual
not only English and French versions of the same text, but also an audio but also intralingual acts of translation. As Jacques Derrida has noted,
recording by the author. In so doing, we offer readers and translators an her work demands of the reader an ingenuity and flexibility not dissimilar
opportunity to observe the ways in which Hélène Cixous reads and from what is asked of the translator. Readers who approach her work
writes across languages and her fearless expansion of linguistic with a translator’s ingenuity gain access to a multi-profound dimension
conventions. of her oeuvre. In Hélène Cixous’ work, reading and translating are
While it is not unusual to encounter a bilingual publication, it is inseparable acts.
unusual to encounter one that features a series of simultaneous
translations such that they illuminate an issue of central importance to
the author’s work. In this case that issue is translation itself. The work A shared concern for displacement and exile in the work of
of Hélène Cixous so thoroughly plays with different languages across Hélène Cixous and British artist Maria Chevska resulted in a program at
many levels of meaning as to problematize our very understanding of Slought Foundation. Visual documentation of “Vera’s Room,” Maria
translation, challenging us to rethink the practice anew. Chevska’s installation in the galleries, is interspersed throughout this
In H. C. for Life, That Is to Say..., Jacques Derrida remarks that publication.
Hélène Cixous’ work is “literally [...] untranslatable, therefore not far from “Vera’s Room” incorporated real objects—functional furniture,
being unreadable, if reading still remains a kind of translating [...].”3 Eric for example—and a number of phantasmatic sculptures of both found
Prenowitz has suggested that Derrida’s comment “does not mean that and made objects. The phantasmatic objects, simple forms made from
[her work] is simply untranslatable, but neither is it simply translatable.” cloth or paper rendered solid in kaolin, looked familiar and functional. By
Shuttling back and forth between the simply translatable and the simply virtue of being mere abstractions, they were not quite the same as the
untranslatable, Eric Prenowitz argues that acts of translation become articles they resembled and had an uncanny and abstract quality. The
“creative in the manner of a reading.”4 He also notes her intense and installation evoked a sense of transience and precariousness and

10 11
conveyed the nomadic domesticity of a displaced person or refugee. In cities are more than just habitats or geographical entities. They extend
this way, Maria Chevska’s work presented visitors with the fragile beyond networks of communication, commerce, sociality, or politics.6
existence of a stranger who achieves visibility only on account of her Cities often exist in the form of memories and aspirations, and these
sheer resourcefulness. cities are no less real despite their intangible nature. We always carry
The very manner of constructing the installation explored with us the memories of the cities that we have lived in or lost,
displacement, creativity, and collaboration. The artist established a abandoned or destroyed. These memories permit us to rebuild them
relationship with the curators premised on her physical displacement from their ruins; we build new cities upon the memories of others.
from the site, such that her absence until the exhibition opening became In an age marked by urban catastrophe (Baghdad and New
a defining feature of the project. The artist met with the curators abroad Orleans, to name just two that were in our thoughts), Hélène Cixous
and prepared meticulous renderings in notebook form detailing the reminds us that the destruction of cities is “a bad thing which causes an
installation, as if in homage to Marcel Duchamp’s The Green Box (which art. A sorrow that causes.”7 Melancholy is the result of the city in ruins,
permanently resides in The Philadelphia Museum of Art). These and mourning is the text that follows. In this sense, literature becomes
materials were beautifully and delicately prepared by the artist, although an archive that preserves the memory of all that has already been lost.
their execution was colored by the curators’ interpretations. The destruction of a city does not just give us cause for sorrow. It is a
The opening marked the end of Maria Chevska’s displacement condition of possibility that causes literature to be written and art to
from the site of her work, and an opportunity for the two artists to view be made.
“Vera’s Room” together in Philadelphia. It also served as the occasion
for Hélène Cixous to read “Promised Cities,” the featured text in this
publication, before a capacity audience. Her reading that evening
addressed “Vera’s Room” and was a profound meditation on memory
and mourning that enriched our understanding of the installation.
“Promised Cities” takes displacement and exile as its points of
departure in exploring the relation of art and literature to cities and their
destruction. We can begin to read this meditation by remembering that

12 13
Notes

1. Jean-Michel Rabaté, "Eight paragraphs for Hélène Cixous," in this book, p. 141.
2. Ibid.
3. Jacques Derrida, H. C. for Life, That Is to Say..., tr., with additional notes, by
Laurent Milesi and Stefan Herbrechter, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2006,
pp. 65-67.
4. Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous, ed. Eric Prenowitz, London, Routledge, 2004,
p. viii.
5. Ibid.
6. Cities Without Citizens, ed. Eduardo Cadava and Aaron Levy, Philadelphia,
Slought Books, 2004, p. xv-xvi.
7. Hélène Cixous, "Promised Cities," in this book, p. 66.

14
 A Biographicosmopolitical Note1
Eric Prenowitz

If biography means the writing of (a) life, if it means life in

writing, then all of Hélène Cixous’ writing is biographical. Indeed doubly
autobiographical: not just the writing of the self, an author’s written
account of her life, but life itself writing itself as it lives, such that the
reader can never separate the written from the lived, the life written from
the writing of life. Hélène Cixous’ dates, for example, have all been
fictionalized in her writing: even when they seem to correspond to dates
in her personal history (“She was born in…,” etc.), they have invariably
been changed, transmuted into bits of text, poems, and offered up to
dissemination. Her family history too, her father, her mother, her brother,
her cats and dogs, her friend Jacques Derrida, even certain flowers,
have all gained new lives in and as literature through her writing.
This generalized autobiographicality is intimately related to
another trait of Cixous’ writing, its extreme poetic performativity. Her
texts—and even her most apparently staid, “theoretical” essays—are
forever saying something and doing something simultaneously: the
philosophical or theoretical content cannot be disentangled from the
most singular poetic invention which out-thinks thought, challenging it,
goading it, sublating it perhaps, though never appropriating it or
reducing it.
One effect of this poetic harnessing of the work of the signifier
(which functions as an unmistakable signature of Cixous’ work even
where the conscious authorial instance must cede the place of the
master), and particularly insofar as it is allied with an uncompromising

17
philosophical-ethical project, is the implacable resistance that Cixous’ she was a young child. Her mother then moved back to Osnabrück with
writing offers to translation. Not only do her texts make use of all the the children. But in the early 1930s, after finishing school, and
idiomatic resources of the French language, and thereby demand an (fore)seeing Germany’s descent into Nazism, Eve moved to Paris,
enormous creative interpretative effort on the part of the translator, but where she worked as a stenographer and translator between German,
they also, in turn, fictionalize French idiomatic expressions, folding them French and English.
in on themselves or unpacking them, deconstructing them and over- Eve Klein and Georges Cixous were married in Oran, where he
overdetermining them, exiling them from the French language, but within established his practice. However during the Second World War, the
it, in relation to it. Such that the said language finds itself speaking in collaborationist French Vichy regime in Algeria revoked the citizenship of
tongues: foreign tongues of its own. French Jews (in spite of the fact that the Nazis never occupied North
Africa). Georges Cixous was forbidden to practice medicine by the anti-
Jewish laws of Vichy and Hélène and her brother were excluded from
Hélène Cixous was born in Oran, Algeria in 1937. Algeria was school until the arrival of the Allied troops in 1942. This experience of
then part of France, having been colonized more than a century earlier. precarious citizenship—in the context of the terrible hypocrisy and the
Cixous’ father, Georges, came from a family of Algerian Sephardic Jews, brutal injustice of the colonial relation, in which the Algerian Jews had a
with distant Spanish origins, who had been French citizens for several particularly unstable position, being neither French-from-France nor in
generations. Georges Cixous, himself from Oran, studied medicine in any simple way indigenous Algerians, combined with the unusual
Algiers, specializing in the treatment of tuberculosis. In the early 1930s, Sephardic-Ashkenazi composition of the Cixous-Klein family—certainly
while in Paris to defend his dissertation, he met Eve Klein, Hélène’s contributed to Hélène Cixous’ profound mistrust of nationalism and
future mother, a German Ashkenazi Jew born in Strasbourg when patriotic ideologies of native appropriation. After the war, when Hélène
Alsace belonged to Germany. Eve’s mother’s family was from was nine years old, the family moved to Algiers, and her father set up a
Osnabrück, in Hanover, and her father had come to Strasbourg from new radiology clinic. But he died from tuberculosis in 1948. Her mother
Trnava, a small town between Vienna and Prague in what was then the then trained as a midwife to support the family.
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Eve’s father volunteered to serve in the The first European city Cixous lived in was not Paris but
German army during the First World War, and was killed in 1916 when London, where she was sent by her mother to learn English for several

18 19
months in 1950. After obtaining her baccalaureate in Algiers and through virtually every domain of the humanities since the 1960s. She
completing a further intensive year of Hypokhagne (at Lycée Bugeaud, taught in Bordeaux—not far from Montaigne’s château—and then at the
where Derrida had studied several years earlier), Hélène Cixous moved University of Paris, where she was a young professor of English
to France in 1955 to continue her schooling. Her mother, who had Literature when France exploded in May 1968. She was nominated to
remained in Algeria after Independence, was expelled virtually overnight devise the academic structure of a new experimental university, and in
in 1971. consultation with Derrida she brought together a team of innovative
Cixous’ first meeting with Jacques Derrida took place in 1962; academics to form the core teaching staff: the turbulent saga of what
thirty-five years later, in H.C. for Life, an extraordinary meditation on his would later become the Université de Paris 8 began in 1969 in a group
reading of and friendship with “H.C.,” Derrida says, “it is as if we have of prefab buildings hastily assembled in a wooded park on the outskirts
nearly never left each other.”2 By both of their accounts, their of Paris, the Bois de Vincennes. Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze
friendship—literary, philosophical, political—was vital for them were among Cixous’ friends and colleagues who came to teach at Paris
throughout their careers, and they have each re-inscribed it at length in 8. In 1974 Cixous created a doctoral program in Women’s Studies
their texts. (Études Féminines) at Paris 8. It was the first such program in France,
In 1963 Cixous was presented to Jacques Lacan: he was and Cixous has taught there ever since.
looking for an introduction to the work of James Joyce, and for two years Starting in 1971, Cixous collaborated with Foucault in the
she gave him informal tutorials. In 1964, she went to the U.S. on a Group Information Prisons (GIP), protesting the conditions in French
Fulbright scholarship to consult Joyce’s manuscripts, visiting libraries prisons and demanding a profound transformation of the justice system.
across the country. Cixous’ doctoral thesis, which was published in With Ariane Mnouchkine, the founder of the Théâtre du Soleil, they
1969, was the first major study of Joyce to appear in French. invented a form of protest theatre, composing mini-plays which they
attempted to perform in front of prisons, invariably provoking the violent
intervention of the police.
As an author of fiction, a playwright, a professor, a theorist and In the 1970s, Cixous became deeply involved in the Women’s
a critic, Hélène Cixous has been a central figure in the profound movement. Her much-anthologized essay-manifesto “The Laugh of the
reassessment of prevailing intellectual paradigms that has swept Medusa” appeared in 1975. In the same year, Antoinette Fouque,

20 21
founder of the women’s organization Psych et Po (Psychoanalysis and India of Their Dreams”). And even her frequent teaching and lecturing
Politics) and of the Éditions des Femmes publishing house, asked her voyages seem to involve studies in cultural difference that often leave
for a manuscript to publish, and for the next 25 years Cixous published traces in her writing.
most of her work with Des Femmes. Cixous’ theoretical essays of this
period contributed to her reputation, particularly in the English-speaking
world, as a “new” French feminist theorist. But she is first and foremost Cities appear frequently in Cixous’ texts, and yet the figure of
a “creative writer”: her first novel,3 Dedans, appeared in 1969 and the city, which is both a theme and a character in her works, inevitably
received the prestigious prix Médicis. She has published on average plays an ambivalent role. A few telegraphic examples of cities, and titles,
one major book of fiction per year ever since. In the early 1980s, Ariane in Hélène Cixous’ oeuvre will perhaps clarify this point.
Mnouchkine asked Hélène Cixous to write a play for the Théâtre du In Manhattan,4 for instance, which is a kind of portrait of the
Soleil. Thus began Cixous’ on-going collaboration with this remarkable artist as a young woman, New York is the setting of a doubly literary
theater. At the same time it is true that Cixous has been a prolific and primal scene. It takes place in literature, about literature, but it also
unrelentingly original theorist and literary critic for more than four anticipates the future as if the author-to-be were already writing, as she
decades. Along with her celebrated seminar at Paris 8 and the Collège lives, as if she were already in writing, before writing. The distinction
International de Philosophie, she lectures regularly throughout Europe, between fiction and reality (or rather book and city) is effaced as the city
North America and beyond. becomes an oneiric space par excellence, channeling the as-yet
Indeed, Hélène Cixous is an inveterate traveler. In books, those unrealized potentiality of poetic writing. But it is also, and by the same
she reads and those she writes; in dreams (she published a sampling of token, a place of terrifying madness. It is true that the irrecoverable loss
her dreams in Dream I Tell You); and of course in languages (she speaks of (the) self in the dis-articulated subject may later be harnessed active-
French, English, German and has a reading knowledge of several other passively as the very source of the artist’s creative energy. But here, in
languages). But also in “reality”: she made extended trips as a poetic the author’s prehistory, it is a life-threatening motif of insanity.
ethnographer to the Cambodian-Thai border and to India while writing Osnabrück,5 on the other hand, is the forever-lost city of the
her first two plays for the Théâtre du Soleil (“The Terrible but Unfinished mother, a city that exists (for the daughter) only in and through the
Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia” and “The Indiad or the maternal narrative. It is thus the paradigm of the desirable city, and yet

22 23
it also conveys a deeply menacing, deadly image. On the one hand Notes
because it cannot help being, in historical and biographical terms, an
infanticidal figure, having destroyed its own offspring (its Jewish 1. This note has been prepared using information from several sources,
community annihilated during the War). But on the other hand because including Portfolio: Hélène Cixous, ADPF Ministère des Affaires Étrangères,
the city that exists in reality and goes by the name of Osnabrück today Paris, 2005, Rootprints, New York and London, Routledge, 1997, and H.C.
threatens to destroy the remembered, fantasized, recounted and herself.
rerecounted city (and signifier) that inhabits Cixous’ writing. 2. Jacques Derrida, H.C. pour la vie, c'est-à-dire…, Paris, Galilée, 2002, p. 12.
A final example is The Perjured City,6 a play Cixous wrote for 3. As Cixous has herself noted, the term "novel," insofar as it refers to a highly
the Théâtre du Soleil and which opened in 1994. The play is set in a codified literary form, is inappropriate for her books of fiction—which refuse to
Cemetery that is just outside the City. The Cemetery is a place of death, submit to the rules that the novel form imposes.
but also of intensely vivacious and tenacious life, a place of resistance 4. Hélène Cixous, Manhattan, Lettres de la Préhistoire, Paris, Galilée, 2001.
to the profound injustice of the City, which is all the more unjust in that it 5. Hélène Cixous, Osnabrück, Paris, Des Femmes, 1999.
attempts to monopolize the discourse on “justice.” 6. Hélène Cixous, La ville parjure, ou le réveil des Erynies, Paris, Théâtre du
It is tempting to read a similar ambivalence into Hélène Cixous’ Soleil, 1994.
“life”: she has lived and worked in Paris for some forty years and yet she
has always maintained an eccentric position within the literary, political
and intellectual life of the city. This is reflected symbolically in the fact
that her university (Paris 8) and her theater (the Théâtre du Soleil) are
both located, like the cemetery in The Perjured City, just outside the city
limit. And more importantly, for many decades she has gone to write
every summer in her “house of books,” in a patch of forest by the ocean,
as far as can be from any city.

24 25
Promised Cities
Hélène Cixous
 In homage to the author from Dublin, who was both my hunter
and my prey for so many years, I mean to the thief from Dublin to his
translator, and his transhater, by way of epigraph I shall take my first
steps in Cities via a small detour through Finnegans Wake where on
p. 301 an air of nostalgia for Trieste awaits us. Trieste, the at least triple
city where as a young man Joyce used to pass on languages [était
passe-langue] at the Berlitz School.

Dear and he went on to scripple gentlemine born,

milady bread, he would pen for her, he would pine for her,
how he would patpun fun for all with his frolicky frowner so
and his glumsome grinner otherso. And how are you,
waggy? My animal his sorrafool! And trieste, ah trieste
ate I my liver! Se non é vero son trovatore. O jerry! He
was soso, harriot all! He was sadfellow, steifel! He was
mistermysterion. Like a purate out of pensionee with a
gouvernament job.

Whereupon I could stop my lecture, for everything is plurasaid

[pluridit] in one go, how a city is like another one how a language always
speaks more than another language, that Babel is not bababbeaten
[babattue], and that there is always more than one animal wagging at
the end of a tail, and how, as a dog I eat and gnaw at myself, my own
bone, as both a vulture and Prometheus I tear my own liver to pieces.

29
 Promised Cities. Everyday she had to pass by the castle. Help came
from the statue of Joan of Arc. The great golden woman
I am from Oran. I translate: I am from Hors En [Out In]. I go brandished her flaming lance and showed her the way to
from Or [gold] in Hors. I translate: I go from Hors in Hors. To start with I the castle. By following the golden sign she would finally
am from without [du hors]. I am and follow [suis] to the letter and to the get there. Until the day when. One morning in the square
voice. Then I am an adoring being. I could take all my life by his/her there was nothing. The statue was not there. No trace of
letters of gold [d’or]. Letters came to me before the book. The first the castle. Instead of the sacred horse a world of shadow.
letters, the first sounds were my city, my land, my family. Since I started All was lost. Every step would increase the confusion. She
feeling and turning my mind to thinking [me tourne à penser], I have not stopped, petrified, deprived of the statue’s help. She found
been able to distinguish the city theaters from the word theaters. Word herself stalled at the heart of the invisible. Everywhere she
and cities swap places, the city makes a theater for words, the words saw this limitless pale nothingness, as thought by some
make place, city, mines. The word city has always incited me to sing flase step she had entered, living, into death. The here-
search for double. I write: I cite. To put it otherwise: I translate. I was nothingness stayed, and no one. She, seized up, fallen
born in translation, with translation. upright into the fathomless expanse of a veil, and voilà all
Everything I write and say, here,—first I say it in my head, that remained of city and time. The catastrophe had
straightaway, from my head to fingers with pen I write, everything that happened in silence.
gets out and that I get out of En/In, all that today stands in front of me And now who was she? Alone. A little nail stuck in the
outside me, a few years ago still stood—back, behind my thought, gap.
before me. I did not think of city, I was in it, and I was with it, with my Later in the gap someone abruptly come from the
cities. We were only one city which translated itself into twelve cities as nothing told her that things hadn’t fled at all. They were
well as into dreams of cities. Oran and myself are inseparable. And yet definitely in their place. So was it she who could not see
—I quote from Savoir, Veils: the statue or the castle or the edges of the world or the
bus? 1

30 31
 As one can see, she cannot see where she is. She is so lost
that she is in the third person of herself, far from me and I.
She is lost in the lost city. Of the whole city there only remains
a remainder of Gold [Or]. She is outside [dehors] inside. And it will
always be like that.
And the word ville in French, this present, not cité, not city, not
Stadt, no ville not vile, villa, not domus, not domus aurea, neither family
mansion nor house of gold, but villa of pleasures. Ville-villa. Ville,
expansion and extension of villa. In Algeria we lived in the Clos-
Salembier villa in the upper districts of Algiers. One said villa in Algeria.
Our houses with gardens were gilded with the Roman word. J.D. El-Biar
villa.
Later on I called my house with a garden in Arcachon villa Eva.
It was natural. A city within a city.
And yet, between city and myself, there has always been a veil.
I said Oran in the first place, as one would say Ouranos or Gaia. But
Oran has always already been complicated occupied contained
fabulated by whom? And by what? By Osnabrück.
But before coming back to Oran, I shall call up the cities that
live in me and that have made their nests their knots their walls and
citadels in my work: congenitally at first, then sometimes cultured, at first
underground then more and more overground until they took control of
writing, all unbeknownst to me. There they were, fomenting for decades
until the day when there was Osnabrück.

32
 But before and ever since there have been Algiers, Pompeii, place” [se passe] in Dublin which passes through Ulysses. In passing
Manhattan, Prague, in other words: Jerusalem, Babel, Ur, and even a the character Ulysses Homerizes and Odysseizes Dublin in an
little later Elsinore and its ramparts. All my cities have their mythical imperceptible movement of comeback and haunting [revenance], of
doubles, their models and my roots. spectral colonization, of elevation and lowering which reminds us first of
I see I have omitted Paris. This will call for an explanation. And all that a city is such only if it bears within its wall-girt sides the traces of
I should not forget Strasbourg. What makes a city be? The promise. another city, its ancestor, its archaic model. A city worthy of being sung
What does the promise promise? Threat, paradise, ruin, loss, reunion, always sites cites another city.
salvation, destruction, the end of errancy, alas the end of errancy, the What is beautiful and surprising is that, when a city dies in
end of history; no, expulsion, prohibition, exile, Ovid’s Tristia, Tristia, order to be reborn, the same happens to it as to the Tibetan or Egyptian
Mandelstam’s Tristia, the no-arrival, the no-return, the no-reunion. One dead. It travels, transmigrates, reincarnates in a most faraway city, but
does not come back, not in reality. By dint of not finding (oneself) again one which can harbour it in its bosom, that is to say receive it in
while coming back and not coming back, one produces cities which translation, through acquaintances or connivances, which are either
come back in dreams, cities on the horizon, serial Cities. By dint of topological or thematic or literal, and quite often small, tiny in
repeating the names of the desired and never hoped-for Cities, one appearance.
causes the movement of literature. Next year in Venice. But in order to So then there was a book which advanced under the title of
get to Venice you will have to fulfill twelve conditions and pay the full Osnabrück and the character that inhabits it is my mother, Eve Klein.
price for admission: you will go to Venice but only without Albertine. It is Osnabrück my mother’s name as a native city. The name of a small city
the choice of the two caskets. One enters a city half dead. in the province of Hanover. Name: foreign. The titles of my books always
So there was a book called Osnabrück. Now that was not done remain foreign to me, like the cities—no matter how I pretend to inhabit
on purpose. I do not give names, they are given to the books, and this them. A city takes me. Captures me. Hunts me. I am afraid of cities.
very late, once the book has departed from me, by some god or other. That was a city. Now when I say Osnabrück I no longer know
So there was a book which bore the name of a city. And conversely. whether I am in the book or in the city.
Maybe the book is a city? True there are books that are kinds of cities. This book when in French was nearly not called Osnabrück.
Memoirs, archives, plans, monuments. Ulysses, as they say, “takes That would have been a French book’s suicide. For a book, I am keen

34 35
to stress, is somehow contained entirely in its title. It could be the first of my ruin cities, the place of the first runes would
Yes, that’s the mystery: the title makes the being. The title—for therefore be American.
me at any rate—is the essential and sublime translation of the book. Immediately I ask myself what is the city of the prehistory of my
Now I nearly didn’t. And why? I analyse after the fact: Osnabrück, a prehistory.
barbarously sounding name. Just as Babel sounds well in all languages. There is no simple city in my books and in my life. What is the
Osnabrück: unpronounceable in French. Like Cixous. Osnabrück first city? There are several, obviously. Let’s say it would be Troy. Trois
Cixous, what a name! More and more foreign, brutal, brück, cix three. There are at least three cities in each of my cities.
scissors… O Phonemes. Onomatopoeiae! At the last minute I clang to I was born in Oran and I lived in a double city there. For
the principle of anti-cowardice loyalty that drives me. —What is that? historical reasons Osnabrück had come to find shelter in Oran. On my
Well precisely: it is my treasure and my heritage. I note that I do not have double city there was War and the shadow of Pétain with Hitler. In our
a book with Oran in its title. I did not do it on purpose. flat rue Philippe I never knew whether I was in Oran, Algeria, or in
I said I would come back to Oran, at least in these pages. I’ll Osnabrück, Germany. I said: I am from Oran. I should say: I am from
come back to it. Oran with Osnabrück, from Oran in and out of [en et hors] Osnabrück.
Whereupon came Manhattan. It is then that this insistence of An impossibility made possible in a very specific place, 54 rue Philippe
cities, of names of books of cities of bookcities, drew my attention. There on the 3rd floor.
appeared to me in fiction what I had always known and practised in the In Oran Osnabrück hidden Oran slipped into Osnabrück I lived
theater: places are powerful and decisive characters. They do half of within without and I still live, in my first house where the christians the
fate’s work. They are deities, active hidden powers. Places archive us jews and the muslims lived in keeping with the cruel reality, all refugees
and act upon us. Chance and necessity. To be born and to die. One falls fresh from exile, within was the kingdom of my father the fair doctor, and
in order to be born, in such and such a city and the die is cast. To die in the street was France a word in front of which, all those living at no.
one can think about it. Montaigne wanted to die on horseback, a 54, the Spaniards the French Jews (the Arab), the german jews the Arab
marvelous death without a roof. I myself do not know yet. Manhattan, were taking identity tests. Within no. 54 there was a grace.
subtitled: Letters from the Prehistory. Manhattan would therefore be the I was in the one and in the other scene at once and separately
site and the city of the prehistory of my (hi)story? I’ll be able to think so. North in South, man in woman, the masculine in the feminine, together

36 37
and separately. My German mother and grandmother were recounting
about Osnabrück. The staircases in the buildings of Osnabrück were
using the staircases of Oran. I described the mythical structure of my
native city in Osnabrück.
The moment when I was born in Oran, I was adopted by
Osnabrück. My understanding began with two O’s and two A’s. I was
living in Algeria Allemagne [Germany] or in Allemagne Algeria
anagrammatically, in several languages. My countries begin with Al,
aleph, alfa. Everything has always been a stage and a theater. This is
peculiar to the City: the City is a theater, on whose doorstep the place
where the drama, that is to say the theater, is played out (again), stands
erect. The theater, Shakespeare’s, Aeschylus’, the war theater, the one
which translates the fate of the city into a work of art and rebellion, is a
hut which stands erect, directing its words to the sleeping inhabitants in
the city, right on the city gate, against the deaf wall of the city. The
Theater which is put outside, the prophet, directs its warnings to the deaf
and blind theater which resides within the constructions put up inside.
My double city with a double childhood had a center, a central
stage. It so happens that my family lived twice in the first row of seats
which overlook the stage. Once in the Nikolaïort building in Osnabrück.
Once at no. 54 rue Philippe, second gallery on the right facing the stage
of the Place d’Armes.
All the Algerians know the Place d’Armes. One cannot imagine
anything more theater-like, more Arabo-Greek, more Shakespearian.

38
The backdrop: a town hall flanked by two lions. On the right, the theater, case. The idea of “doing” a translation frightens me. The idea of
on the left in the background, Plato’s Pharmacy, run by my rendering a text in another, to secure (as Jacques Derrida says) the
pharmagicians, stage left the Military Academy [Cercle Militaire] where survival of the body of the original:
all that makes me enraged, ethically astounded politically foreseeing etc.
happened to me. It would thus secure the survival of the body of the
Up in the flies “The mountain,” on which santa crousse is original (survival in the double meaning given to it by
seated… The marabout etc. Benjamin in “The Task of the Translator”, fortleben and
The theme of Oran-as-theater: “how to enter?”, a theme with a überleben: prolonged life, continued life, living on, but also
double stage and a double plot, one reflecting, relieving or sublating life beyond death).
translating the other: how to enter the desired city which can never be Is it not what a translation does? Does it not secure
found, always never there veiled commanded by a fort da? And how to these two survivals while losing its flesh during an
enter among the inhabitants of the city among whom one is without operation of exchange? While elevating the signifier
being one finds oneself but crossed out, barred with bars [barré de towards its meaning or its value, but while keeping the
barreaux], struck through, thrown spat out. mournful, indebted memory of the singular body, the
My theme: how to enter, how to arrive and manage [arriver] to primal body, the unique body which it thus elevates, saves
enter, how to get out of the outside in which one is locked up within the and relieves or sublates? Since it is a work, even, as we
inside? were saying, a work of the negative, this sublation
Kafka’s theme: how to get out of the burning bush which one [relevance] is a work of mourning, in the most enigmatic
did not enter? My theme: land as one may on the shore on the other side sense of this word, which deserves another development
of the sea, or in the middle of the country, one does not arrive. which I attempted somewhere else but which I must give
This is the theme of translation: one does not arrive. There is up doing here. The measure of relief [relève] or sublation,
the “arrival” or target language [langue d’arrivée], one paces it, one rents the price of a translation, is always what one calls
it, one is a tenant, one adopts and is adopted, one tastes in it the meaning, even value, keeping [garde], truth as keeping
delights of new surroundings one is not of one’s blood. At least this is my (Wahrheit, bewahren) or the value of meaning, that is what

40 41
 elevates itself above the body from which it frees itself, banishment from birth would have stopped at the portal, I had believed,
internalizes it, spiritualizes it, keeps it in memory. A faithful, it will be enough, it is going to be enough I thought for me to enter the
mournful memory. One does not even have to say that garden, to take a few steps for the internal mutation to keep up with the
translation keeps the value of meaning, the meaning of change already performed by my personal envelope.
meaning, the value of kept value is born from the mournful Let’s say I was expecting a birth of myself, to be born in the
experience of translation, from its very possibility. 2 garden, my being brought into the world, to bring myself (in)to it, I felt full
of promise and of exulting anticipation, I squatted in the paths of rich
earth lined with flower beds in bloom and it was not coming. The sudden
The experience of Cercle Militaire that is the Military Academy. magical metamorphosis was not coming.
There were two worlds and I knew it, (she knew it) what I did I took the entrance exam in the language or in the codes of the
not yet know was that it was forever impossible for me to pass (live) into other so many times. Each spectacular, failed attempt, working through
the other world, impossible as much as forbidden even if (perchance) the voice, signs and discourses; I told ten times and shall still do so ten
one belonged, or a hundred times my attempts my failures my obstinacies for all the
even if, perchance, by some extraordinary chance, I found or wound and all literature will be drawn from these traumatic moments
find myself overnight in the world on the other side, even if by some later. How aged three I was initiated within the Military Academy in Oran
extraordinary chance the ban was apparently lifted, and I could believe into as much negative philosophy as there is in Dostoyevsky, I killed and
the messages of the senses: believe that a portal opened that I entered was killed, I was inside and I wasn’t. How aged four I had the honour of
the garden, that I was inside, singing “Maréchal here we come” out of a pleasure of doing like all the
even if I could believe and had believed that by entering other children and how my father exorcized me, how aged five I saw
Canaan I would become an inhabitant of the inside of Canaan. Here I marching in with great pomp those that enter by right and might as in
could believe my definition as a foreigner different from others would Shakespeare, the Americans De Gaulle Fortinbras Henri Vth Giraud all
thus have ended. The outside which was in me had from then on stayed parading in tanks and on horses right in front of my sandals. How I
outside, outside the garden. This being—of the out(side) [du hors] I was on the balcony, a hen by my side, the hen and its egg, like a
could think I had stowed it in a cupboard from the outside, this state of Scandinavian divinity which follows the human world events while crying

42 43
powerlessly. How I danced on the stage of the Oran theater, almost blind
following the thick chalk strokes drawn for me on the floor so I would not
hurl myself into the pit, a scene which started over and over again all my
life as a puppet, last time it was at the BN (National Library) two years
ago I was dancing on (my) words, clinging to my paper and I could not
see anything. How each time I have been inside I was radically outside,
when I entered the University I came in by the way out. I could add that
this movement of a needle which pricks passes enters exits pricks
again, or of a fish, is my destinal signature. I will always be found at the
door. I know all the secrets of doors. Keyholes.
Now I am going to talk about the hole in the door, this pupil on
the face of the wood through which one must imagine looking for it is
while sneaking a furtive glance between all these marvelous words of
the locks and keys of the psyche, from the seredure which clasps the
key, a little marvel of eroticism, to the bold [pêne], striking plate, mortise,
the whole scene which translators play ceaselessly, and which make of
me as a translator a born locksmith—thus it is while threading one’s way
(J.D.’s metaphor in Veils) and while twisting and turning that, following
my child mother wherever she went, I never stopped moving from Oran
to Osnabrück, from Osnabrück to the Niebelungen and back. When my
mother/and thus myself/were six years old, there was an Osnabrück
epiphany through the keyhole. An epiphany in the Judeoworld. One day,
my mother and therefore I saw, through the keyhole of the bedroom door
in Osnabrück, a whole station. A population of dwarfs was busying itself

44
loading and unloading a train. Then the train left. What my mother did not go. I still have not been there. Always I don’t go there. It would
believed she saw [cruvoir] I also believed I saw. Osnabrück is to believe be terrible if I didn’t go I say to myself it would be terrible if I went. When
to have seen and there is no difference between believing one sees and I completed Osnabrück or when Osnabrück was done (as Balzac would
seeing. Where were these active dwarfs from, who were carrying say–A Passion in the Desert) I only had to resurrect the small city which
promised yet unavailable treasures? Later on I had my own station, my had turned into my mother’s book. That was the least I could do. But
trains, syntax, rhetoric, poetics and a profusion of verbal dwarfs. We had before telling you what happened to my trip to Jerusalem Osnabrück I
seen the journey of language. I said had. I will add the plane to the train, must introduce to you our Osnabrück as I experienced it through the
naturally. Travel tickets spring from language. All of us here today, no stories my mother and my grandmother told. According to me it was a
matter how glued we may sometimes be at our tables, we are on a gigantic Jewish city, some Lodz or Odessa. Until the day when I
journey, entravelled [envoyagés], sent journeying we pass through the discovered that Jewish Osnabrück was made up of 450 people or so up
keyholes of sentences, through the doors of words, through the panes to the days of Nazism, about fifty families, that must be the number of
of frames. I mean the window panes. families in the Iliad. I started writing the book of what remained of
Two words about Osnabrück. This city has a twin: Münster. In Osnabrück it was Benjamin à Montaigne. When I completed this
two cities at once the treaty of Westphalia was signed. Europe starts remainder I said to my mother and her sister : next year in Osnabrück in
here. All the future of the world passed through the tiny city, in 1648. reality. Nobody wanted to go. Nobody said to nobody that nobody
Oran Osnabrück city-worlds/world-cities, have I ever seen wanted to go. We thought of going to Osnabrück during a whole year,
them? I desired to see them face to face. I think I never saw Oran. I left and when the day came to do the suitcases, we undid them.
it. I never came back. Will I be back? Have I ever seen Osnabrück? But for a year I was afraid of the end: the end of the sentence
That’s the enigma. I think I went there with my grandmother Omi, in next year in Jerusalem. All the while I was afraid of going to Osnabrück
1952, we were again in Germany for the first time I think but maybe it is and it was not only the book that would be done completed, it would be
a dream, but dream is also a reality. life itself. Then my mother said: Eri (her sister) does not feel like going
Osnabrück-Jerusalem or next year in Osnabrück to Osnabrück. And nor do I. We are not interested. That day I
From the 1990s onwards arose the thought of going to understood that for them too the return to the beginning is the end, the
Osnabrück, to get lost now—or previously [voir si j’y suis, ou si j’y fus]. I pilgrimage on one’s own grave. We felt relieved but none of us said

46 47
anything. We left everything outside translation. I could write a book on us in our own way, both hidden under the belly of the French language
the impossible, what is deferred, promised, hoped for, next year, I could in order to try and escape from the Cyclops. This appalling condition with
write next year, we’ll see. its cunning remedy must have contributed to bringing us closer. What we
I never wanted to go to Jerusalem-Jerusalem. I had a few cities feared above all else was the word France, we wanted French the
where not to go. Among which Prague, Pompeii, Jerusalem delivered. French language and its abundant brilliance but not France. We were
Cities too precious in fantasy to risk sinking them to the bottom of reality. each differently hidden pariahs who had stowed away from one
Ten thousand times in thought, in dream, in the imagination. Venice for clandestine state to another on board the City of Algiers. Cities are also
Proust, how much does it cost him? To go there? Not to go there. boats.
I have known for a long time that one does not go anywhere. It Is there a more forceful metaphor, a boat which is a city or
is the cities or the countries that come or do not come to you. Cities are rather a city which comes and goes from one end to the other. One left
fateful letters. They only arrive lost. They only arrive posthumously. the city of Algiers for the City of Algiers the ground was shaking, one did
not know one was in a metamorphosis. The being in a trance that we
Though I never saw my cities with-my-eyes-of-flesh, I would at were was spewing its guts out, one was changing bodies.
least have “seen” them with my ears, I inhabited their names, their Later on when I went to the United States for the first time, and
sounds, I tasted them through all my senses, traveled them spelling since it was said that here over there I would be admitted into literature,
them out, I received everything in gold as an angel [en or en ange], I I voyaged myself between two lives on the France. A fine steamer that
sucked their juice, their bones, I did not inhabit the name Paris, it never was [pas-que-beau].
came to my mind, I cried enormously in Oran, I never laughed in Paris
never, I never got there I have never been there and I am not coming
back from there. One of my lives eventually took place in Ris-Orangis. My languages: I cannot say like J.D. that I only have one
The word-nouns are our fateful commanders, one cannot escape them. language and it is not mine.
Before fleeing from Paris as I do secretly everyday, I must still I lived in a languaged house [maison à langues], on the second
acknowledge a debt to it. It is in Paris, not in Algiers, nor in New York floor Spanish Mrs Rico, on the third German with French, on the fourth
City, that I met J.D. We were both in exile in Paris, both terrified, each of French with Spanish, on the fifth the Hispano-French of Mr Emile and

48 49
Mrs Alice Carisio, sibling pharmagicians, makers of potions and liqueurs
for the Oran Town Council, under the stairs Mohamed’s Arabic, on the
galleries Spanish, all these languages tasted of spices, kitchens and
languages communicated, fortunately I desired them all except
aubergines I don’t know why, and grouper’s heads I know why. I ate
cabbage in German Kraut and carrots in cumin in Hispano-Arabic. I
could–I should do a lecture on my way of cooking. It is exactly like my
way of working a language. I can say that I have never wished to eat-
speak pure French. I love and practise French as a foreign language.
My father too (the Larousse dictionary)—I sow to the four
winds.
I never did anything but translate that is to say want to taste the
taste of all the tastes, try all the words, invent new mixtures, bring
extremes closer, go to the roots, return to the sources of sources. Geff
earth Oklahoma. Since we can no longer speak-enjoy in Montaigne’s
language, except by solitary enjoyment, Montaigne who wrote foreign
Greek Latin Italian in French, we must then foreignize [forainer] forward
and on all sides.
Since I was a child I have always eavesdropped on words
because they were all equally foreign to me, French neither more nor
less than German. Still today as in Oran and at the Clos-Salembier, I can
hear their declensions, their gradations, their articulations just as they
were pronounced, once long ago, for the first time. Still today as in Oran
I am hurled into the hunting of the Snark and what a delight when I hear

50
at the end of a ride that the Snark is a Boojum, “after all”, as Lewis 1st chapter—
Carroll says. My grandfather Samuel Cixous who aged eleven went from A pipe in his mouth,
the street barefoot to the counter founded the family’s first play of Under arm two young dogs
signifier-without-doing-it-on-purpose by opening a hat shop bearing the That old Kaspar Schlich was carrying. –
name HighLife. Iglif. First hieroglyphs. Later on I found it hard then a He can smoke awfully.
pleasure to move from my language gemtoys [bijoujoux] to English and But though his pipe is glowing
school German. What languages, so much alive and droll, were for me Oh, how cold is his nature!
first refused to let itself be spelt. I thus started and ended up by always “What for” say his words
having two languages to play with, one having come to me by air the “What do I need this breed for?
other shemblable and freer arriving by letter. Does it perhaps give me pleasure?
Do you know Wilhelm Busch? When I was six years old in Oran Not at all is my reply.
Wilhelm Busch was my other Bible. Homer, the Bible, Wilhelm Busch. But when there’s something I don’t like
Wilhelm Busch is the Iliad. Get rid of it is my principle.”
Wilhelm Busch is Vilaine Bouche [Naughty Mouth].
(I adored him) Wilhelm Busch is Hokusai Daumier Hugo Blake In front of the pond he stands still
and Chaplin for children and criminals. For he wants to drown them.
Max and Moritz, in other words my brother and me, more than Anxiously with their legs
once fell into the impenetrable Busch as scoundrels or as rogues, J.D. The two young quadrupeds thrash about;
would say, and as dogs. Let me introduce to you briefly Plisch and Plum For the inner voice speaks:
our fellow four-legged creatures: This affair I don’t trust!

Oops! One is sent flying already.

Plisch! - there it slips into the water.

52 53
 Oops! The second right behind. 2nd chapter—
Papa Fittig, faithful and peaceful,
Plum!! thereupon disappears. Mama Fittig, very homey
[gemütlich - untranslatable in English],
Job done! shouted Kaspar Schlich, Are sitting tenderly linking arms,
Puffing and going away. Carefree and well contented
Shortly before their evening feast
But here, as ever, A little bit longer in front of the house,
Things don’t turn out as one thinks. For the day was a mild one,
Paul and Peter, who it so happened And they are waiting for their children.
Had stripped for a bath Look, here they both come,
Watched still in hiding Plisch and Plum are also with them. —
What evil Schlich was doing. But this is not to Fittig’s liking.
Who violently shouts: “Now I say!”
Swift and like frogs But Mama with a tender mien
Hopped they both into the pond. “Fittig!!”, she begged, “don’t begrudge them that!!”
Each carries in his hand Already prepared was the fresh
A little dog to the shore. Evening milk on the table.
“Plisch!” shouted Paul “I name mine thus” With joy they rush to the house,
Plum—is how Peter named his. Plisch and Plum swiftly in front.
And thus Paul and Peter carry Ah! Here they are shamelessly
Both their little puppies In the middle of the sweet cream
With haste, yet not without full care, And let their well-being be known
Toward the parental abode. By a noisy clapping of their tongues.

54 55
 Schlich, who was looking through the window,
Shouts astonished: “Now look at that!
This sure is annoying,
Eh eh! but not for me!!”

3rd chapter—
Paul and Peter, unmoved,
Just as if nothing had happened,
Rest in their bedchamber,
For they could not care less.
In and out through their noses
A soft snore is sighing.
Plisch and Plum on the contrary seem
Not yet quite decided
On the subject of their bed.
Finally they too go to sleep.
Our Plisch, as is his wont,
First three times in a circle turns round.
Our Plum unlike him shows
Himself inclined to tenderness.
To those who like their rest,
Most are a nuisance.
“Off with you!” — With this curt word
Are they driven outside. —

56
 The coolness awakens activity; 4th chapter—
Activity makes time shorter. Finally in the wired trap
Most welcome are to that effect The cockiest of mice got caught,
Here the trousers, there the shoe; Which made Mama Fittig always,
Which, before the day begins, Now in the cellar, now in the room
Are already transformed. And especially at night
For the father what a fright Terribly nervous.
When he came to wake them up. This gave Plisch and Plum
The thought makes him pale A hoped-for amusement;
When he asks: How much will it cost? For now this means: “Now come out,
Already he wants to punish the boys, You nasty old nibbling mouse!”
Who pretended they were asleep.
But the mother beseeches: “I beg you, Quick, Peter’s trouser leg,
Don’t be cruel, dear Fittig!!” It thought, ought to provide shelter.
These loving words Plisch follows it in the pipe;
Melt his paternal wrath. Plum stands in front at the other end.
Paul and Peter don’t much care. Snip! into its smell organ
Peter sets off first in front The mouse bores its gnawing tooth.
In two slippers, Plisch wants to pull it by the tail,
Paul in his jagged trousers. Snip! it grabs him by the ear.
Plisch and Plum, because they lack manners, D’you see, there it scampers
Go into the dog kennel. Into the neighbour’s flower bed.
“’Tis fatal”—remarked Schlich— Crick-crack, woe to you,
“Eh eh! but not for me!” Beloved flower ornament!

58 59
 Mrs Kümmel is just about (Born 15 April 1832 at zu Wiedensahl)
To put oil in her lamp. Doing silly things with language
Her heart almost broke Wilhelm Busch, theater of cruelty,
As she glanced into the garden. Eater of dogs’ tails during the 1870 war-famine
She quickens her step, How my mother, a genius for military doggerel [mirliton
And brings her watering can along. mirlitaire], translated him during the war. Just as she also translated the
Furious but with pleasure times into puppets. This is how we got a theater of dolls with bodies
She gives each of them a shower: made of electric wire among which some little Hitler was lashing out.
First to Plisch and then to Plum. My father, a marevelous speaker of French, set about learning
Stinging is the paraffin; an invented German language, a kind of hilarious, pantomimed
And the effect it has, Aliengerman [autreallemand]. It is not Joyce but he who initiated me into
Mrs Kümmel had not contemplated. embodied wordplay [jeu de mots incarnés], into transsubstantiation, into
But what happens now signifying acrobatics.
Makes Mrs Kümmel so aggrieved (the story of ichweißnicht—Schweiß)
That she, as if fanned by wild delusion, At table, in Oran, we played (at) languages
Closes her eyes and smiles.
With a sighing breath, Aah!
Passes out unconscious.
Paul and Peter, cocky and cold, And so I was initiated into homophony and homonymy by the
Show little compassion; sweat [sueur] of my father, sweating it out as he was translating himself
The pains of strangers’ souls into my mother’s language
They do not take to their hearts.
“’Tis fatal”—remarked Schlich— Homonymy will also be the place of all metonymies, of
“Eh eh! but not for me.” all the substitutions operated by this great opus of

60 61
 substitution. Well, if I already insist on the homonymy, as I
will again and again, it is because I would like, much later,
I do not know exactly when, during the course of this
session, to select this question of homonymy and
therefore of untranslatability as a main thread. For
homonymy is, as you know, the crux of translation; it is
what, in a language, signals and signs the untranslatable.
[…] if I was given the time, I could demonstrate
scientifically not only that address is not, far from it, the
only example in this work, not only that there are many
other, spectacular ones, but that the entire work of Hélène
Cixous is literally, and for this reason, untranslatable,
therefore not far from being unreadable, if reading still
remains a kind of translating (paraphrase, circumlocution,
metaphrase). Yes, I would like later, I do not know when
but I hope today, to select this question of homonymy as a
main thread […]
And this miracle would come about in the writing of
her own language, whose coming, event, and arrivance
would lie precisely in this effectiveness, in this coup, which
abolishes the difference between making come and letting
come. The grace, the address, would lie in making while
letting, in making come while letting come, in seeing come
without seeing come.

62
 Naming thus the writing of her language, I ask myself movement: deconstruction is no more of/more than one language [plus
whether I am not already summoning, before her father, d’une langue]—we were Babel and already having fun deconstructing
her mother, whose presence radiates over all of us here— our idioms, seasoning them, tossing them, without being able to say
and not her mother tongue, which was French, but her which one was the spice which one was spiced.
mother's language, which she knows like no one else, and I feel nostalgia for a language which would speak several
in which, as you well know, the difference between making languages freely, without apologizing, according to my whim,
come and letting come remains at times indistinguishable: unexpectedly. It is a dream: this language, we would be several to speak
kommen lassen, means at once letting come and making it, this would mean or want to say [voudrait dire!] that the players would
come, letting arrive and ordering to come. 3 have several equally foreign and familiar languages at their disposal.
This hardly exists. This is not done. Save for exceptions, of course, like
Finnegans Wake, but I do not know whether Joyce spoke Wakese at
Ichweiß nicht, I do not know how this primal scene of home. One wipes one’s feet apologetically when one feels one is
acrobatranslatability which inaugurated my eyes of writing, how I could borrowing a word from the neighbours. One is committing one feels a
decide which of my languages was the most motherly, that of my father breach of hospitality.
great specialist of tongue in cheek or that of my mother. I feel nostalgia for the word Sehnsucht, its languid appetites, its
All that took place at the table in Oran, which was always phonemes.
endowed with numerous functions and magical powers and on whose To tell the truth I do not feel any nostalgia properly speaking.
top—yet another theater—one could find now a chicken’s skeleton— On the contrary. Using the word nostalgia bothers me, betrays me. What
thanks to which my father taught us the rudiments of anatomy—now a I meant was “yearning.”
chess game, now the sewing machine called Singer or Singer To come back to my cities and their languages.
depending on whether one felt on the side of my aping [singeur] father
or of my mother. The result of these duets, duels, these acrobatics of Why am I telling you these stories? I feel that the idea of City is
trapeze artists these wordliftings [vols de mots à la tire] is that—to repeat my overexcitement my hyperviving. At the beginning of literature there is
here one of the definitions of deconstruction which J.D. gives of its own a city, a city-to-be-destroyed. That’s what literature is: to destroy the city.

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The destruction of the city. Is it a good thing is it a bad thing? It is a bad pejorative.
thing which causes an art. A sorrow that causes. Literature is a field of I’m gonna bash your face in, kisser is out of date and replaced
destruction a field in ruins, the song of ruins, the archive song of ruins. by (literally translated) I’m going to put you in misery.
I should tell you later about the first destroyed bombarded- From the most run-down estates come the most powerful
gutted city I saw, it was London in 1950, it was still eviscerated. There I phrases. Money: a “bag” [sac], a buck said bock and recently in the
felt my first emotion of a foreign language in my mouth. First kiss: to suburbs: sequin!
speak the other language, to suck its phonemes, to appropriate and It’s brilliant: it’s mortal. Less literally = it’s balls [c’est de la
snap up, the most common idioms, to enter a language whose walls balle]. For “to find a job” one says trouver un taf—j’ai du taf = plenty on
have collapsed without the effort of knocking at the door. I entered the my hands—a mutation of “tough.”
English language as an innocent conqueror and I helped myself, without Mec [bloke] is still used, fortunately for Genet.
plundering. One no longer says nana [chick], gonzesse is back in use.
I loved to say: gorgeous or tremendous, I revelled with the How can one translate buck top tough or big or cool into English? Since
sounds of visa-words in my throat, in other words these shibboleths they became native to the lingo spoken in Paris and its northern suburbs
through which one is admitted into the camp of a teenage gang, like [du 93 ou du 75]?
grave [the pits—literally: serious], cassé (owned-argument: you’re From London to Manhattan there will only be one step left later
wrong, you’re owned), cool (for super, great), ap- cimer (afternoon and on. London, I say here. I was thirteen. I lived in Golders Green, London.
thanks in French back slang)—she rocks—when there’s something And here’s something curious: the fate of this proper noun, which is so
great, one says oh it’s big. proper to England, submitted to translation, like a certain number of
For like cassé there’s haché [minced]. other names of capitals, are gallicized whereas other aren’t. Why
Thirty years ago one would say it sucks, nowadays it’s top or London, why not Berlin or Madrid, why Prague and why not New York
not top, even tip top—as my son says but my grandson says it’s no City? And what of Algiers? I lived in a city brought before a translation
longer in. tribunal for on-the-spot colonization [traduite en procès de colonisation].
Grave is used indiscriminately, like a gravy that goes with I went to Manhattan by sea and in texts. I went there to the
everything, as it were [à toutes les sauces]. Grave is the universal letter, to the word. I go to Manhattan as one goes to Monomotapa, this

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country where the true friends live as La Fontaine tells us, if there is wondered, shall we make this journey to New York City can we do it and
such a thing. I go there in pursuit of Joyce and following Kafka. Himself by dint of wondering and conjuring up we made the journey a hundred
following Karl Rossman on the Hamburg. Me following Benjamin Jonas times without doing so in reality.
from Osnabrück, on the France, like my grandmother’s brother on the
Hamburg. I am always already in text, when the Statue of Liberty We had already “outlived” Nine Eleven we had suffered it,
appeared to me in a sudden burst of light, and everything was already thought it, turned it inside out in every direction, we had transformed the
written. One cannot talk about Manhattan, on can only try and write it in two towers we loved into ghost characters in our works
translation one writes it and that’s not it. Manhattan is a non-finite yet another loss of a member of our body, of a family member.
amount of sleep inhabited by dreamers, Manhattan is also Leviathan or Then I lost Jacques Derrida my double, my twin, my selfsame. One
Dreamyathan, one tries to dream the dream but it is impossible, one is believes one has lost everything. But one can still lose what one has
dreamt, one is the dreamt subject of the dream, and likewise as soon as lost. One can still lose even more. I have never been to New Orleans.
one enters Manhattan one is metamorphosed into what? Into a walk-on And yet I lost it. Yet another city which not only its inhabitants lose but
or a puppet in the grand Oklahoma theater one feels like an atom played us too, yet another buried Babel, another destroyed Troy, another city
in a play where millions of atoms bustle about, a word in a cosmogonic not to be forgotten. Another Chicago burnt in order to be reborn from its
Narrative, an ant from Lilliput transported on to Brobdingnag Avenue (i.e. ashes. If Jacques Derrida were here we would have circulated amongst
as Fatima “translated” it: Broadingway Av.). A walk-on in the Citiest of us the legend of N.O., we would have deconstructed the No, relaunched
Cities, the City itself and the Figure-City of any City, like the City big with the yes to life. I would have reinscribed the or [gold] in Orleans in Oran.
more than one City, the Old-Young, promised and threatened one, Each city lost or doomed is the first Jerusalem.
seducing and impregnable, eminent therefore vulnerable. “Each Time Unique, the End of the World” [a book whose
—it is on this word that this text was cruelly interrupted in English title is The Work of Mourning], says my friend. There are lots of
October 2004 by Jacques Derrida’s death. “unique times.” How can what is unique be numerous?
I went there so often with Jacques Derrida or at the same time Because we are the subjects of memory and of metaphor.
as Derrida, we were going there, that is to say by plane on 9th October There is only one city. There is only one mother. Yes. But each city bears
2004, during the whole of September we said to each other and within itself the face of another city, each city is haunted by another city.

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 Because we are beings, actors or spectators, or both, who artistically. Not forget it. Not bury it. Translate it. Recall it. Continue to live
officiate at the Sacrificial Scene which the world is, as Shakespeare it. Die Welt ist fort, ich muß dich Tragen. We must work towards the end.
used to say With the end, by transfiguring and traversing it.
Why did I suddenly decide to speak to you about Cities, in a
place which is dedicated to art, to the search for the secrets of creation?
Because the work, the ideal, dreamt work, does not exist Translation by Laurent Milesi
without its stage, its support, its subjectile, its earth. The “stage” of the
visual work of art is double: 1) the work (painting, photo, installation,
sculpture, etc.) is born in a genealogy, in a vast time, a sort of library-
landscape which remembers-and-forgets, which keeps and brings back
to life all the previous works. 2) The other stage is its genetic geography,
its spatial context, its urban, political site.
We are heirs and haunted, unknowingly. We are the
descendants of a body-city. What I do, or dream, or live, what I flee from
or find back in Chicago as well as in Mnahattan results from the cross
between my cities and my lives. I found and lost beings in Chicago, I Notes
found myself and lost myself in Chicago. In Chicago I am both
Chicagoing and Chicagone by necessity. And what shall I say about 1. Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida, Veils, Stanford, Stanford University
New Orleans? Beyond the thousands of political reflections which spring Press, 2001, p. 5-6 (tr. slightly modified).
from the catastrophe, there is the specter of the Flood (I wrote a lot 2. Jacques Derrida, "Qu'est-ce qu'une traduction 'relevante'?," Quinzièmes
about the Flood) and the themes of chaos and hospitality. It is the Assises de la Traduction Littéraire, Arles, Actes Sud, 1999, p. 46 (tr. mine).
twentieth time in my existence that I have to return a figure to a city and 3. Jacques Derrida, H. C. for Life, That Is to Say..., tr., with additional notes, by
its inhabitants, that is to say to a shattered, disjoined, exiled people. We Laurent Milesi and Stefan Herbrechter, Stanford, Stanford University Press,
owe New Orleans a reply. We must invent it. Politically of course, and 2006, pp. 65-67.

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Vera’s Room
Maria Chevska
Villes Promises
Hélène Cixous
 En hommage à l’auteur de Dublin, qui fut mon chasseur et mon
gibier pendant tant d’années, je veux dire au voleur de Dublin à son
traducteur, et son transhater, en guise d’exergue je ferai mes premiers
pas en Villes par un petit détour du côté de Finnegans Wake où nous
attend p. 301 un air de nostalgie pour Trieste. Trieste, la triple ville au
moins où Joyce tout jeune était passe-langue à l’école Berlitz.

Dear and he went on to scripple gentlemine born,

milady bread, he would pen for her, he would pine for her,
how he would patpun fun for all with his frolicky frowner so
and his glumsome grinner otherso. And how are you,
waggy ? My animal his sorrafool ! And trieste, ah trieste
ate I my liver ! Se non é vero son travatore. O jerry ! He
was soso, harriot all ! He was sadfellow, steifel ! He was
mistermysterion. Like a purate out of pensionee with a
gouvernament job

Sur ce je pourrais arrêter ici ma conférence, car tout est pluridit

d’un coup, comment une ville en est une autre comment une langue
parle toujours plus d’une autre langue, que Babel n’est pas babattue, et
qu’il y a toujours plus d’un animal en train de remuer au bout d’une
queue, et comment su en tant que chien je me ronge et me mange, moi-
même mon os, en tant que vautour et Prométhée en même temps je me
déchiquète mon foie.

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 Villes promises. Elle devait passer tous les jours au large du
château. L’aide venait de la statue de Jeanne d’Arc. La
Je suis d’Oran. Je traduis : je suis d’Hors En. Je vais d’Or en grande femme en or brandissait sa lance flamboyante et
Hors. Je traduis : je vais d’Hors en Hors. Pour commencer je suis du lui montrait la direction du château. En suivant l’indication
hors. Je suis à la lettre et à la voix. Ensuite je suis un être adorant. Je d’or elle finissait par y arriver. Jusqu’au jour où. Un matin
pourrais prendre toute ma vie par ses lettres d’or. Les lettres me sont sur la place il n’y avait rien. La statue n’était pas là. Il n’y
arrivées avant le livre. Les premières lettres, les premiers sons ont fait avait pas trace de château. A la place du saint cheval une
ville, terre, famille pour moi. Je ne peux distinguer, depuis que je sens pénombre mondiale. Tout était perdu. Chaque pas
et me tourne à penser, les théâtres des villes des théâtres des mots. augmenterait l’égarement. Elle resta pétrifiée, privée de
Mots et villes s’échangent, la ville fait théâtre à mots, les mots font lieu, l’aide de sa statue. Elle se vit arrêtée au sein de l’invisible.
cité, mines. Le mot cité m’a toujours incitée à chanter chercher double. De toutes parts elle voyait ce rien pâle sans limites, c’était
J’écris : je cite. Autrement dit : je traduis. Je suis née en traduction, comme si par un faux pas elle était entrée vivante chez la
avec traduction. mort. L’ici néant durait, et personne. Elle saisie, tombée
Tout ce que j’écris et dis, ici,—d’abord je dis dans ma tête, debout dans l’étendue insondable d’un voile, et voilà tout
aussitôt, de ma tête aux doigts à stylo j’écris, tout ce qui sort et que je ce qui restait de la ville et du temps. La catastrophe s’était
sors de En, en cet an 2004, tout ce qui aujourd’hui se tient devant moi produite en silence.
hors de moi, se tenait il y a encore quelques années—en retrait, derrière Et maintenant qui était-elle ? Seule. Un petit clou
ma pensée, avant moi. Je ne pensais pas ville, j’y étais, et j’étais avec de travers dans l’intervalle.
elle, avec mes villes. Nous ne faisions qu’une ville qui se traduisait en Plus tard dans l’intervalle quelqu’un abruptement
douze villes comme en rêves de villes. Oran et moi nous sommes surgi du rien lui affirma que les choses n’avaient pas fui du
inséparables. Et pourtant… je cite Savoir, Voiles : tout. Elles étaient à leur place assurément. Ainsi c’était elle
qui ne voyait pas la statue ni le château ni les rebords du
monde ni l’autobus ? 1

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 On le voit, elle ne voit pas où elle est. Elle est tellement perdue
qu’elle est à la troisième personne d’elle-même, loin de moi et de je.
Elle est perdue dans la ville perdue. De toute la ville ne reste
qu’un reste d’Or. Elle est dehors dedans. Et ce sera toujours comme ça.
Et le mot ville en français, ce cadeau, pas cité, pas city, pas
Stadt, non ville pas vile, villa, pas domus, pas domus aurea, ni maison
du maître ni maison de dieu, mais villa des plaisirs. Ville-villa. Ville
agrandissement extension de villa. Nous, en Algérie, nous vécûmes à la
villa du Clos-Salembier en haut d’Alger. On disait villa en Algérie. On
dorait nos maisons avec jardin du mot romain. J.D. villa d’El-Biar
Plus tard j’ai appelé ma maison avec jardin d’Arcachon villa Eva.
C’était naturel. Une ville dans une ville.
Et pourtant entre ville et moi il y a toujours eu voile. J’ai dit Oran
en premier lieu, comme on dirait Ouranos ou Gaïa. Mais Oran a toujours
déjà été compliquée occupée contenue affabulée et par qui ? et par
quoi ? Par Osnabrück.
Mais avant de revenir à Oran, je vais faire l’appel des villes qui
vivent en moi et qui ont fait leurs nids leurs nœuds leurs enceintes et
citadelles dans mon œuvre : de manière congénitale d’abord, puis
parfois cultivées, d’abord souterraines puis de plus en plus surterraines
jusqu’à prendre la tête, la direction des opérations d’écriture et cela
totalement à mon insu. Elles étaient là à fomenter pendant des dizaines
d’années jusqu’au jour où il y a eu Osnabrück.
Mais avant et depuis toujours il y avait Alger, Pompéi Manhattan,

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Prague, autrement dit : Jérusalem, Babel, Ur, et même un peu plus personnage homérise et odysséise Dublin dans un mouvement
tard, Elsinor et ses remparts. Toutes mes villes ont leurs doubles imperceptible de revenance, de colonisation spectrale, d’élévation et
mythiques, leurs modèles et mes racines. d’abaissement qui nous rappelle d’abord qu’une ville n’est une cité que
Je vois que j’ai omis Paris. Cela demandera une explication. Et si elle porte en ses flancs ceints de remparts les traces d’une autre ville,
ne pas oublier Strasbourg. Qu’est-ce qui fait ville ? La promesse. Que son ancêtre, son modèle archaïque. Une ville digne de chant site cite
promet la promesse ? La menace, le paradis, la ruine, la perte, la toujours une autre ville.
retrouvaille, le salut, la destruction, la fin de l’errance, hélas la fin de Ce qui est beau et surprenant c’est que lorsqu’une ville meurt
l’errance, la fin de l’histoire, non l’expulsion, l’interdit, l’exil, Tristia, Tristia pour renaître, il advient d’elle comme des morts tibétains ou égyptiens.
d’Ovide, Tristia de Mandelstam, le sans arrivée, le sans-retour, le sans- Elle voyage, transmigre, vient se réincarner dans une ville très lointaine,
retrouver. On ne revient pas, pas en réalité. A force de ne pas (se) mais qui peut la loger dans son sein, c’est-à-dire la recevoir en
retrouver en ne revenant pas et en revenant, on produit des villes à traduction, par des accointances ou connivences, lesquelles sont soit
revenir en rêve, des villes à l’horizon, des Villes à répétition. A force de topologiques soit thématiques soit littérales, et très souvent de petite
répéter les noms des Villes désirées et jamais espérées on cause le taille, minimes, en apparence.
mouvement de la littérature. L’an prochain à Venise. Mais pour arriver à Voilà donc qu’un livre s’est avancé sous le titre Osnabrück et le
Venise tu devras remplir douze conditions et payer le prix fort de l’entrée personnage qui l’habite c’est ma mère, Eve Klein. Osnabrück nom de
: tu n’iras à Venise que sans Albertine. C’est le choix des deux coffrets. ma mère en tant que ville natale. Nom d’une ville, petite, du Hanovre.
On entre en ville à moitié-mort. Nom : étranger. Les titres de mes livres me restent toujours étrangers,
Voilà qu’un livre s’est appelé Osnabrück. Alors ça on ne l’a pas comme les villes—quelle que soit la façon dont je fais comme si
fait exprès. Les noms je ne les donne pas, ils sont donnés au livre, et j’habitais. Une ville me prend. Me capture. Me chasse. J’ai peur des
très tard, une fois le livre parti de moi, par un dieu ou un autre. Voilà villes.
qu’un livre portait le nom d’une ville. Et inversement. Le livre est peut- C’était une ville. Maintenant quand je dis Osnabrück je ne sais
être une ville ? Certes il existe des livres qui sont des genres de villes. plus si je suis dans le livre ou dans la ville.
Mémoires, archives, plans, monuments. Ulysses « se passe » comme Ce livre a failli ne pas s’appeler Osnabrück. C’eût été un suicide
on dit dans Dublin qui passe dans Ulysses. Au passage, Ulysse le de livre. Car, je tiens à le dire, un livre tient d’une certaine manière tout

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entier dans son titre. Elle pourrait être la première de mes villes-ruines, le lieu des premiers
Oui, c’est le mystère : le titre fait l’être. Le titre—en tout cas pour runes serait donc américain.
moi,—est la traduction essentielle et sublime du livre. Or j’ai failli ne pas. Aussitôt je me demande quelle est la ville de la préhistoire de ma
Et pourquoi ? Après coup j’analyse : Osnabrück : nom à résonance préhistoire.
barbare. Comme Babel sonne bien dans toutes les langues. Osnabrück Aucune ville dans mes livres et dans ma vie n’est simple. Quelle
: imprononçable en français. Comme Cixous. Osnabrück Cixous, quel est la première ville ? il y en a plusieurs, évidemment. Disons que ce
nom ! De plus en plus étranger, brut, brück, cix ciseau… O. Phonèmes. serait Troie. Il y a au moins trois villes dans chacune de mes villes.
Onomatopées ! Je me suis raccrochée in extremis au principe de Je suis née à Oran et j’y ai vécu dans une double ville. Pour des
loyauté antilâcheté qui me commande. — C’est quoi ça ? Eh bien raisons historiques Osnabrück était venue s’abriter dans Oran. Sur ma
justement : c’est mon trésor et mon héritage. Je note que je n’ai pas de double ville il y avait Guerre et l’ombre Pétain avec Hitler. Dans notre
livre au titre d’Oran. je ne l’ai pas fait exprès. appartement rue Philippe (lequel ?) je ne savais jamais si j’étais à Oran,
J’ai dit que je reviendrai à Oran, du moins dans ces pages. J’y Algérie, ou à Osnabrück, Allemagne. J’ai dit : je suis d’Oran. Je devrais
reviendrai. dire : je suis d’Oran avec Osnabrück, d’Oran en et hors Osnabrück.
Là-dessus arrive Manhattan. C’est alors que cette insistance des Une impossibilité possibilisée en un lieu très précis, 54 rue Philippe au
villes, des noms de livres de villes de villelivres, a attiré mon attention. Il 2ème étage.
m’est apparu en fiction ce que je savais et pratiquais depuis toujours au Dans Oran Osnabrück cachée Oran glissée dans Osnabrück je
théâtre : les lieux sont des personnages puissants et décisifs. Ils font la vivais dedans dehors et je vis encore, dans ma première maison où
moitié du travail du destin. Ce sont des déités, des puissances actives habitaient en accord avec la cruelle réalité les chrétiens les juifs et les
cachées. Les lieux nous archivent et nous agissent. Hasard et musulmans, tous fraîchement exilés et réfugiés, dedans c’était le
nécessité. Naître et mourir. On tombe pour naître, en telle ou telle ville royaume de mon père le docteur juste, et dans la rue c’était la France
et tout est joué. Pour mourir on peut y penser. Montaigne voulait mourir un mot devant lequel, tous les habitants du 54, les Espagnols les Juifs
à cheval, merveilleuse mort sans toit. Moi, je ne sais pas encore. (l’Arabe) français, les allemands juifs l’Arabe passaient des examens
Manhattan, sous-titre : Lettres de la préhistoire. Manhattan serait donc d’identité. Dedans le 54 il y avait une grâce.
le site et la cité de la préhistoire de mon histoire ? Je pourrai le penser. J’étais dans l’une et l’autre scène à la fois et séparément le nord

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dans le sud, la femme dans l’homme, le masculin dans le féminin,
ensemble et séparément. Ma mère et ma grand-mère allemandes
racontaient Osnabrück. Les escaliers des immeubles d’Osnabrück
empruntaient les escaliers d’Oran. J’ai décrit la structure mythique de
ma ville natale dans Osnabrück.
Au moment où je suis née à Oran, j’ai été adoptée par
Osnabrück. Mon entendement a commencé par deux O et deux A. Je
vivais en Algérie Allemagne ou en Allemagne Algérie
anagrammatiquement, en plusieurs langues. Avec Al, aleph, alfa
commencent mes pays. Tout a toujours été scène et théâtre. C’est le
propre de la Ville : La Ville est un théâtre, à la porte duquel se dresse
le lieu où se (re)joue le drame, c’est-à-dire le théâtre. Le théâtre, celui
de Shakespeare, celui d’Eschyle, celui de la guerre, celui qui traduit le
destin de la ville en œuvre d’art et de révolte est une hutte qui se dresse,
s’adressant aux habitants endormis dans la ville, juste à la porte de la
ville, contre le mur sourd de la ville. Le Théâtre qui est mis dehors, le
prophète, adresse ses avertissements au théâtre sourd et aveugle qui
loge dedans les constructions élevées à l’intérieur.
Ma ville double à double enfance avait un centre, une scène
centrale. Il se trouve que ma famille a vécu deux fois au premier rang
des fauteuils qui donnent sur la scène. Une fois dans l’immeuble de
Nikolaïort à Osnabrück. Une fois 54 rue Philippe, deuxième galerie à
droite face à la scène de la Place d’Armes.
Tous les Algériens connaissent la Place d’Armes. On ne peut

100
imaginer plus théâtre, plus arabogrec plus shakespearien. La toile de m’effraie. L’idée de faire passer un texte dans un autre, d’assurer
fond : un hôtel de ville gardé par deux lions. A droite, le théâtre, à (comme dit Jacques Derrida) la survie du corps de l’original :
gauche au fond, la Pharmacie de Platon, tenue par mes pharmagiciens,
à gauche côté cour le Cercle Militaire où tout ce qui me fait, rage, Elle assurerait ainsi la survie du corps de l’original
stupéfaction éthique prévoyance etc. politique, m’est arrivé (survie au double sens que lui donne Benjamin dans La
En haut du côté des cintres « La montagne », sur laquelle est Tâche du traducteur, fortleben et überleben : vie
assise santa crousse… Le marabout etc. prolongée, vie continuée, living on, mais aussi vie par-delà
Thème d’Oran-théâtre : « comment entrer ? », un thème à la mort).
double scène et double intrigue, l’une reflétant, relevant traduisant N’est-ce pas ce que fait une traduction ? Est-ce
l’autre : comment entrer dans la ville désirée toujours introuvable qu’elle n’assure pas ces deux survies en perdant la chair
toujours jamais là voilée commandée par un fortda ? Et comment entrer au cours d’une opération de change ? en élevant le
parmi les habitants de la ville parmi lesquels on est sans être on se signifiant vers son sens ou sa valeur, mais tout en gardant
trouve mais barré, barré de barreaux, raturé, jeté craché. la mémoire endeuillée et endettée du corps singulier, du
Mon thème : comment entrer, comment arriver à entrer, corps premier, du corps unique qu’elle élève et sauve et
comment sortir du dehors dans lequel on est enfermé à l’intérieur du relève ainsi ? Comme il s’agit d’un travail, voire, nous le
dedans ? disions, d’un travail du négatif, cette relevance est un
Le thème de Kafka : comment sortir du buisson ardent dans travail du deuil, au sens le plus énigmatique de ce mot, qui
lequel on n’est pas entré ? Mon thème : on a beau débarquer sur la mérite une réélaboration que j’ai tentée ailleurs mais à
côte de l’autre côté de la mer, ou atterrir au centre du pays, on n’arrive laquelle je dois renoncer ici. La mesure de la relève ou de
pas. la relevance, le prix d’une traduction, c’est toujours ce
C’est le thème de la traduction : on n’arrive pas. Il y a la langue qu’on appelle le sens, voire la valeur, la garde, la vérité
d’arrivée, on l’arpente, on la loue, on est locataire on adopte on est comme garde (Wahrheit, bewahren) ou la valeur du sens,
adopté, on y goûte les délices du dépaysement on n’est pas de son à savoir ce qui, se libérant du corps, s’élève au-dessus de
sang. Du moins c’est mon cas. L’idée de « faire » une traduction lui, l’intériorise, le spiritualise, le garde en mémoire.

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 Mémoire fidèle et endeuillée. On n’a même pas à dire que jardin, que je fasse quelques pas pour que la mutation intérieure suive
la traduction garde la valeur du sens ou doit y relever le le changement déjà effectué par mon enveloppe personnelle
corps : le concept même, la valeur du sens, le sens du Disons que je m’attendais à une naissance de moi, à naître dans
sens, la valeur de la valeur gardée naît de l’expérience le jardin, à ma mise au monde, à m’y mettre, je me sentais pleine de
endeuillée de la traduction, de sa possibilité même. 2 promesse et d’une exultation anticipatoire, je m’accroupissais dans les
allées de terre grasse bordées de plates-bandes fleuries et ça ne venait
pas. La métamorphose soudaine féérique ne venait pas.
L’expérience du Cercle Militaire J’ai passé tant de fois l’examen d’entrée dans la langue ou les
Il y avait deux mondes et je le savais, (elle le savait) ce que je ne codes de l’autre. Chaque tentative spectaculaire, manquée, en passant
savais pas encore, c’est qu’il m’était impossible à jamais de passer par la voix, par les signes par les discours, j’ai raconté dix fois et je
(vivre) dans l’autre monde, impossible comme interdit même si raconterai encore dix ou cent fois mes essais mes échecs mes
(d’aventure) appartenir obstinations car de ces moments traumatiques on tirera plus tard toute
même si, d’aventure, par extraordinaire, je me retrouvais ou me la blessure et toute la littérature. Comment à trois ans j’ai été initiée
retrouve du jour au lendemain dans le monde de l’autre côté, même si dedans le Cercle Militaire à Oran à autant de philosophie négative qu’il
par extraordinaire l’interdiction était levée en apparence, et que je y en a dans Dostoïevski, j’ai été tuée et j’ai tué, j’étais dedans et je n’y
pouvais croire aux messages des sens : croire qu’un portail s’ouvrait étais pas. Comment à quatre ans j’ai eu la gloire de chanter Maréchal
que j’entrais dans le jardin, que j’étais dedans, nous voilà par plaisir de faire comme tous les autres enfants et comment
même si je pouvais croire et j’avais cru qu’en entrant dans mon père m’a exorcisée, comment à cinq ans j’ai vu entrer en pompe
Canaan je devenais une habitante de l’intérieur de Canaan. Ici pouvais- ceux qui entrent par la force et le droit comme dans Shakespeare, les
je croire aurait donc cessé ma définition d’étrangère, de dissemblable. Américains De Gaulle Fortinbras Henri V Giraud tous caracolant en
Le dehors qui était en moi, était désormais resté dehors, hors du jardin. chars et chevaux juste devant mes sandales. Comment j’étais au balcon
Cet être – du hors, je pouvais croire l’avoir déposé dans une armoire du avec une poule à mon côté, la poule et son œuf, comme une divinité
dehors, cet état de bannissement de naissance se serait arrêté au scandinave qui suit les événements humains mondiaux en pleurant
portail, avais-je cru, il suffira, il va suffire pensais-je que j’entre dans le d’impuissance. Comment j’ai dansé sur la scène du théâtre d’Oran,

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presqu’aveugle en suivant les gros traits de craie tracés pour moi sur le
plancher pour que je ne me précipite pas dans la fosse, scène qui a
recommencé toute ma vie de marionnette, la dernière fois c’était à la BN
il y a deux ans je dansais sur mes (les) paroles, accrochée à mon papier
et je ne voyais rien. Comment chaque fois que j’ai été dedans j’étais
radicalement dehors, quand je suis entrée dans l’Université je suis
entrée par la sortie. Je pourrai ajouter que ce mouvement d’aiguille qui
pique passe entre sort repique, ou de poisson, est ma signature
destinale. On me trouvera toujours à la porte. Je connais tous les
secrets des portes.
Maintenant je vais vous parler du trou dans la porte, cette pupille
dans la face de bois par laquelle il faut s’imaginer regarder car c’est en
glissant un regard subreptice, furtif, entre tous ces mots merveilleux de
la serrurerie psychique, depuis la seredure qui serre la clé, petite
merveille d’érotisme, jusqu’à pêne, gâche, mortaise, toute cette scène
que les traducteurs jouent sans arrêt, et qui font de moi une traductrice
serrurière-née – c’est donc en se faufilant (métaphore de JD dans
Voiles) et en se tournant et se retournant que, suivant ma mère enfant
à la trace je n’ai cessé de passer d’Oran à Osnabrück d’Osnabrück chez
les Niebelungen et retour. Quand ma mère/et donc moi/eûmes six ans,
il y eut épiphanie d’Osnabrück par la serrure. Une épiphanie dans le
judéomonde. Un jour, nous vîmes, ma mère et donc moi, par le trou de
la serrure de la chambre d’Osnabrück toute une gare. Une population de
nains s’activait chargeant et déchargeant un train. Puis le train partit. Ce

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que ma mère avait cruvoir je crus aussi le voir. Osnabrück c’est croire dis-je ce cerait terrible si j’y allais. Quand j’ai achevé Osnabrück (comme
avoir vu et il n’y a aucune différence entre croire voir et voir. D’où dirait Balzac – Passion dans le désert) je n’avais plus qu’à ressusciter la
venaient ces nains si actifs porteurs de trésors promis non disponibles petite ville qui s’était transformée en livre de ma mère. C’était la moindre
? Plus tard j’ai eu ma propre gare, mes trains, la syntaxe, la rhétorique des choses. Mais avant de vous dire ce qu’il advint de mon voyage à
la poétique et une profusion de nains verbaux. Nous avions vu le voyage Jérusalem Osnabrück je dois vous présenter notre Osnabrück telle que
de la langue. Avions dis-je. J’ajouterai l’avion au train, naturellement. De je l’aie vécue par les récits de ma mère et de ma grand-mère. Selon moi
la langue surgissent les billets de transport. Tous ici aujourd’hui, si collés c’était une gigantesque ville juive, un Lodz ou un Odessa. Jusqu’au jour
que nous soyons parfois à nos tables, nous sommes en voyage, où je découvre qu’Osnabrück juive se composa jusqu’au nazisme de
envoyagés, envoyés nous passons par les serrures des phrases, par les 450 personnes environ, une cinquantaine de familles, ce doit être le
huis des mots. nombre des familles de l’Iliade. J’ai commencé à écrire le livre du reste
Deux mots sur Osnabrück. Cette ville a une jumelle : Münster. d’Osnabrück c’était Benjamin à Montaigne. Quand j’ai achevé ce reste
Dans deux villes à la fois on signa le traité de Westphalie. Ici commence j’ai dit à ma mère et à sa sœur : l’an prochain à Osnabrück en réalité.
l’Europe. Par la toute petite ville passa tout l’avenir du monde. Personne ne voulait y aller. Personne n’a dit à personne que personne
Oran Osnabrück villes-mondes, les ai-je jamais vues ? J’ai ne voulait y aller. Nous avons pensé aller à Osnabrück pendant toute
désiré les voir face-à-face. Je pense n’avoir jamais vu Oran. J’en suis une année, et le jour venu de faire les valises, on les a défaites.
partie. Je ne suis jamais revenue. Reviendrai-je ? Ai-je jamais vu Mais pendant un an j’ai eu peur de la fin : la fin de la phrase l’an
Osnabrück ? C’est l’énigme. Je crois y avoir été avec Omi ma grand- prochain à Jérusalem. Pendant tout le temps j’avais peur d’aller à
mère, en 1952, nous étions à nouveau en Allemagne pour la première Osnabrück et ce n’est pas seulement le livre qui serait achevé, ce serait
fois, je crois mais c’est peut-être un rêve, mais le rêve est aussi une la vie même. Alors ma mère a dit : Eri (sa sœur) n’a pas envie d’aller à
réalité Osnabrück. Et moi non plus. Ça ne nous intéresse pas. Ce jour-là j’ai
Osnabrück-Jérusalem ou l’an prochain à Osnabrück compris que pour elles aussi le retour au commencement c’est la fin, le
A partir des années 90 s’est levée la pensée d’aller à Osnabrück pèlerinage sur sa propre tombe. Ça nous a soulagées mais aucune n’a
voir si j’y suis, ou si j’y fus. Je n’y suis pas allée. Je n’y suis toujours pas rien dit. On a tout laissé hors traduction. Je pourrais écrire un livre sur
allée. Toujours je n’y vais pas. Ce serait terrible si je n’y allais pas me l’impossible, le différé, le promis, l’espéré, l’année prochaine, je pourrais

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écrire l’année prochaine, on verra. cachés sous le ventre de la langue française pour essayer d’échapper
Je n’ai jamais voulu aller à Jérusalem-Jérusalem. J’avais au Cyclope. Cette condition épouvantable avec son remède rusé a dû
quelques villes où ne pas aller. Parmi lesquelles Prague, Pompéi, contribuer à nous rapprocher. Ce que nous redoutions par dessus tout
Jérusalem délivrée. Des villes trop précieuses dans le fantasme pour c’était le mot de France, nous voulions le français la langue française et
qu’on se risque à aller les couler au fond de la réalité. Dix mille fois en ses abondances géniales mais pas la France. Nous étions chacun
pensée, en rêve, en imagination. Venise pour Proust, ça lui coûte différemment des pariahs cachés passés d’une clandestinité à l’autre à
combien ? D’y aller ? De ne pas y aller. bord du Ville d’Alger. Les Villes sont aussi des bateaux.
Il y a longtemps que je sais qu’on ne va nulle part. Ce sont les Y a-t-il plus forte métaphore, un bateau qui est une ville ou plutôt
villes ou les pays qui vous arrivent ou ne vous arrivent pas. Les Villes un ville qui va et vient d’un bord à l’autre. On quittait la ville d’Alger pour
sont des lettres fatidiques. Elles n’arrivent que perdues. Elles n’arrivent le ville d’Alger le sol tressaillait, on ne savait pas que l’on était en
que posthumes métamorphose. L’être en transe que nous étions vomissait tripes et
boyaux, on changeait de corps.
Si je n’ai jamais de-mes-yeux-de chair vu mes villes, je les aurai Plus tard pour me rendre aux USA pour la première fois, et
du moins « vues » de mes oreilles, j’ai habité leurs noms, leurs sons, comme il était dit qu’ici là-bas j’entrerais en littérature, je me voyageai
je les ai goûtées par tous les sens, parcourues en toutes lettres, j’ai tout entre deux vies sur le France. Un pas-que-beau.
reçu en or en ange, j’ai sucé leur jus, leurs os, je n’ai pas habité le nom
de Paris, cela ne m’est jamais venu à l’esprit, j’ai pleuré énormément à
Oran, je n’ai pas ri à Paris jamais, je n’y suis pas arrivée je n’y ai jamais Mes langues : je ne peux pas dire comme J.D. que : je n’ai
été et je n’en reviens pas. Une de mes vies a fini par se passer à Ris- qu’une langue, et elle n’est pas la mienne.
Orangis. Les noms-mots sont nos commandants fatidiques, on ne peut J’ai vécu dans une maison à langues, au premier étage
pas leur échapper. Avant de fuir Paris comme je le fais chaque jour en l’espagnol Mme Rico, au deuxième l’allemand avec le français, au
secret, je dois quand même lui reconnaître une dette. C’est à Paris, non troisième le français avec l’espagnol, au quatrième l’hispano-français de
à Alger, ni à New York, que j’ai rencontré J.D.. Nous étions tous les deux Mr Emile et Mme Alice Carisio, pharmagiciens frère sœur, fabricants de
en exil à Paris, tous les deux terrifiés, chacun de son côté, tous les deux philtres, liqueurs pour la Mairie d’Oran, sous l’escalier l’arabe de

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Mohamed, sur les galeries l’espagnol, toutes ces langues avaient un
goût d’épices, les cuisines et les langues communiquaient, par chance
j’avais envie de toutes sauf des aubergines je ne sais pas pourquoi, et
des têtes de mérou je sais pourquoi. Je mangeais du chou en allemand
Kraut et des carottes au cumin en hispanoarabe. Je pourrais—je devrais
faire une (conférence) sur ma façon de faire la cuisine. C’est
exactement comme ma façon de travailler la langue. Je peux dire que je
n’ai jamais désiré manger-parler pur français. J’adore et je pratique le
français langue étrangère,
Mon père aussi (le Larousse)—Je sème à tous vents
Je n’ai jamais fait que traduire c’est-à-dire vouloir goûter le goût
de tous les goûts, essayer tous les mots, inventer de nouveaux
mélanges, rapprocher les extrêmes, aller aux racines, remonter aux
sources des sources. Puisque nous ne pouvons plus parler-jouir dans la
langue de Montaigne, sauf par jouissance solitaire, Montaigne qui
écrivait latin grec italien forain en français, alors il nous faut forainer en
avant et de tous les côtés.
J’ai toujours, d’enfance, eu l’oreille à l’huis des mots parce qu’ils
m’étaient tous également étrangers, le français ni plus ni moins que
l’allemand. Encore aujourd’hui comme à Oran et au Clos-Salembier,
j’entends leurs déclinaisons, leurs dégradés, leurs articulations comme
lorsqu’ils furent prononcés, un jadis, pour la première fois. Encore
aujourd’hui je suis élancée comme à Oran dans la chasse au Snark et
quel ravissement lorsque j’apprends en/fin d’une chevauchée que le

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Snark est un Boojum, « after all » comme dit Lewis Carroll. Mon grand- Que portait le vieux Kaspar Schlich
père Samuel Cixous qui passa à onze ans de la rue pieds nus au Il peut fu-mer terriblement
comptoir fonda le premier jeu de signifiant-sans-le-faire-exprès de la Mais bien que sa pipe rougeoie
famille en ouvrant une chapellerie à l’enseigne de HighLife. Iglif. Oh que son esprit est froid
Premiers hiéroglyphes. Plus tard j’eus du mal puis du plaisir à passer de « Pour quoi » disaient ses paroles
mes bijoujoux de langues à l’anglais et l’allemand scolaire. Ce qu’étaient À quoi me sert cette espèce ?
les langues si vivantes et drolatiques pour moi refusa d’abord de se Me fait-elle peut-être plaisir ?
laisser orthographier. Je commençai donc et j’ai fini par avoir toujours Mais pas du tout me dis-je
deux langues à jouer, l’une venue à moi par air l’autre shemblable et Mais lorsque quequ’chose me plaît pas
freer m’arrivant par lettre. Débarrasse-t’en c’est mon principe
Connaissez-vous Wilhelm Busch ? Quand j’avais six ans à Oran
Wilhelm Busch a été mon autre Bible. Homère, la Bible, Wilhelm Busch. Devant l’étang il s’arrête tranquille
Wilhelm Busch c’est l’Iliade. Parce qu’il veut les noyer pile.
Wilhelm Busch c’est Vilaine Bouche. Angoissés remuent les deux petits
(Je l’ai adoré) Wilhelm Busch c’est Hokusai Daumier Hugo Blake Quadroupèdes avec leurs jambes
et Chaplin pour enfants et criminels Car une voix intérieure leur parle
Max und Moritz, autrement dit mon frère et moi, nous sommes Cette histoire je m’y fie pas
plus d’une fois tombés dans l’impénétrable Busch en tant que vauriens
ou voyous dirait J.D. et en tant que chiens. Laissez-moi vous présenter Hups ! L’un s’envole déjà d’un grand arc
brièvement Plisch et Plum nos semblables à quatre pattes :
Pouf ! Le voilà qui glisse dans la vague
1er chapitre—
Une pipe à la bouche Pouf
Sous le bras deux jeunes chiens Hups Le deuxième derrière lui.

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 Pouf ! Plum. Sur ce il disparaît 2ème chapitre—
Papa Fittig fidèle et pacifique
Bon débarras ! Bien fait ! s’écrie Kaspar Schlieh Mama Fittig—très gemütlich—das wort gemütlich
En fumant il s’éloigna. [on peut pas le traduire en français]
Sont assis bras dessus bras dessous geschmiegt
Mais ici comme souvent, ça vient tout autrement penchés
qu’on croit Sans soucis et bien contents
Paul et Peter qui justement Peu avant leur dîner du soir
Se sont dénudés pour un bain Encore un peu devant la maison
Avaient surveillé tranquillement en cachette Car la journée était douce
Ce que le méchant Schlich faisait Et ils attendent les enfants
Regarde. Les voilà tous les deux
Rapides et comme des grenouilles Plisch et Plum sont aussi là.
Tous les deux sautent dans l’étang Cela lui dit rien à Fittig.
Chaam porte dans sa main Violemment dit : mais alors là je dois me
Un petit chien (au sec) sur le bord. demander !
Plisch ! crie Paul ainsi je nomme le mien Mais mama avec une tendre mine
Plum ! c’est comme ça que Peter appelle le sien Fittig, le prie-t-elle, laisse-leur ce plaisir
Et c’est ainsi que Plisch et Plum portent Préparé se trouvait le lait
tous les deux leurs chiots. frais du soir déjà sur la table
Vite mais en toute prudence Gaîment se hâtent vers la maison
vers la maison paternelle Plisch et Plum rapides en avant
Ah ! Les voilà sans honte
Au milieu de la crème sucrée.

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 Et annoncent leur bien-être
par un sonore claquement de langue
Schlich qui regarde à travers la fenêtre
Cria tout étonné : Eh bien regardez-moi ça!
Ça c’est évidemment fâcheux
Mais pas pour moi.

3ème chapitre—
Paul et Peter pas touchés
Juste comme rien ne se serait passé
Se reposent dans leur chambre à coucher
Qu’est-ce qu’ils s’en fichent
A travers leur nez souffle un doux air
Plisch et Plum par contre semblent
Pas tout à fait décidés
- Ce qui concerne le lit de repos
Enfin ils vont aussi se coucher
Notre Plisch d’après son habitude
Se retourne d’abord trois fois en rond
Notre Plum par contre une certaine tendresse
montre
A ceux qui ont l’habitude (de la tranquillité) du
repos
Ça semble (pas) hors de propos

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 « Marche ! » Avec ce mot cruel Viennent dans la niche à chien
On les pousse vers le dehors C’est fatal remarqua Schlich.
La fraîcheur réveille l’activité Voyez ? Mais pas pour moi.
L’activité abrège le temps
Très bienvenus sont alors ici le pantalon 4ème chapitre—
Et là le soulier Enfin s’attrapa dans la boîte grillagée
Qui avant que le jour commence La plus impertinente de toutes les souris
Aussi déjà sont transformés Que Mme Fittig tantôt dans la cave
Pour le père quel effroi Tantôt dans la chambre et surtout la nuit
Lorsqu’il arrive Etait rendue terriblement nerveuse
Et veut les réveiller Ceci donnait pour Plisch et Plumm
L’idée le fait pâlir Un plaisir espéré
Lorsqu’il se demande qu’est-ce que ça veut me Parce que maintenant il s’agit
coûter Dehors vieille et méchante souris grignoteuse !
Déjà il veut punir les garçons
Qui faisaient comme s’ils dormaient En avant ! Le pantalon de Peter pensait-elle
Mais la mère fleht le supplie Pouvait lui donner protection
Je t’en prie ne sois pas cruel, cher Fi Plisch la suit dans ce tuyau—
Ces mots affectueux fondent sa grogne paternelle Plum se trouve devant de l’autre côté.
Paul et Peter ça leur est égal La souris, dans son organe sentant,
Peter marche en avant Vrille la dent qui gratte
Dans deux grandes pantoufles Plisch veut la tirer par la queue
Paul dans son pantalon effrangé Knipp elle l’attrape par l’oreille
Plisch et Plum parce que sans manières Tu vois ! La voilà qui court dans la plate-bande de

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 la voisine Ne touchent pas leur cœur
Kritze-Kratze ! Cric-Crac gare à toi pauvre C’est fatal remarqua Schlich—
garniture de fleur adorée Voyez ! Mais pas pour moi—
Mme Kümmel voulait justement mettre de l’huile
sur sa lampe
Presque son cœur s’est arrêté (Né 15 April 1832 zu Wiedensahl)
Lorsqu’elle a regardé dans le jardin Faire des bêtises avec la langue
Elle accélère son pas Wilhelm Busch, théâtre de la cruauté,
Et porte en même temps son arrosoir Mangeur de queues de chiens pendant-la-famine-guerre 1870
Furieuse mais avec Plaisir Comment ma mère le traduisait, génie du mirliton mirlitaire,
Elle donnait à chacun une bonne douche pendant la guerre. Comme elle traduisait aussi l’époque en
D’abord au Plisch ensuite au Plum marionnettes. C’est ainsi que nous eûmes un théâtre de poupées aux
Piquant est le petroleum corps en fil électrique parmi lesquels se débattait un petit Hitler.
Et l’action que cela cause Mon père merveilleux parleur en français, s’est mis à un
N’était pas dans l’esprit de Mme Kummel allemand inventé, une sorte d’autreallemand hilarant, pantomimé. Ce
Mais ce qui se passe maintenant n’est pas Joyce c’est lui qui m’a initiée au jeu de mots incarnés, à la
Rend Mme Kummel si malheureuse transsubstantiation, à l’acrobatie signifiante.
Que entourée d’hallucinations (histoire de ichweißnicht—Schweiß)
Elle ferme les yeux et elle sourit A table, à Oran, on jouait des langues
Avec une expiration soupirée
Oh elle tombe dans les pommes
Paul et Peter impertinents et glaciaux
Montrent très peu de commisération
Les douleurs de l’âme des étrangers

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 Et c’est ainsi que je fus initiée à l’homophonie et à l’homonymie
à la sueur de mon père, sa sueur en français, suant à se traduire dans
la langue de ma mère

L’homonymie sera le lieu aussi de toutes les

métonymies, de toutes les substitutions opérées par ce
grand opus du remplacement. Eh bien, si j’insiste déjà,
comme je le ferai encore et encore sur l’homonymie, c’est
que je voudrais, beaucoup plus tard, je ne sais pas encore
quand dans le déroulement de cette séance, faire de cette
question de l’homonymie et donc de l’intraductibilité un fil
conducteur. Car l’homonymie est, vous le savez, la croix
de la traduction ; c’est ce qui, dans une langue, signale et
signe l’intraduisible. […] si vous m’en donniez le temps, je
ferais la démonstration scientifique que non seulement
adresse n’en est pas, loin de là, le seul exemple dans
cette œuvre, non seulement qu’il y en a beaucoup d’autres
et spectaculaires, mais que tout l’œuvre d’Hélène Cixous
est littéralement, et pour cette raison, intraduisible, donc
non loin d’être illisible, si lire reste encore un espèce du
traduire (paraphrase, périphrase, métaphrase). Oui, je
voudrais plus tard, je ne sais pas quand, mais je l’espère
aujourd’hui, faire de cette question de l’homonymie un fil
conducteur […]

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 Et ce miracle adviendrait dans l’écriture de sa —encore un théâtre—on trouvait tantôt un squelette de poulet, à l’aide
langue à elle dont la venue, l’événement, l’arrivance duquel mon père nous enseignait les rudiments de l’anatomie, tantôt un
consisteraient justement en cette efficace, en ce coup qui jeu d’échec, tantôt la machine à coudre appelée Singer ou Singer selon
abolit la différence entre faire venir et laisser venir. La que l’on se sentait être du côté de mon père singeur ou de ma mère. Le
grâce, et l’adresse, consisteraient à faire en laissant, à résultat de ces duos, duels, ces voltiges de trapéziste ces vols de mots
faire venir tout en laissant venir, à voir venir sans voir à la tire, c’est que,—si je reprends ici l’une des définitions de la
venir. déconstruction que donne J.D. de son propre mouvement ; la
Nommant ainsi l’écriture de sa langue, je me déconstruction c’est plus d’une langue—nous étions babel et bien déjà
demande si je ne convoque pas déjà, avant son père, sa en train de nous amuser à déconstruire nos idiomes, à les assaisonner,
mère dont la présence rayonne ici sur nous tous – et non les faire sauter, sans pouvoir dire laquelle était l’épice laquelle l’épicée.
pas sa langue maternelle, qui fut le français, mais la J’ai la nostalgie d’une langue qui parlerait plusieurs langues
langue de sa mère, qu’elle connaît comme personne, et librement, sans s’excuser, à ma fantaisie, à l’improviste. C’est un rêve :
dans laquelle, vous le savez bien, la différence entre faire cette langue, on la parlerait à plusieurs, cela voudrait dire (voudrait dire
venir et laisser venir reste parfois indiscernable : kommen !) que les joueurs disposeraient de plusieurs langues également
lassen, c’est à la fois laisser venir et faire venir, laisser étrangères et familières. Cela n’existe guère. Cela ne se fait pas. Sauf,
arriver et ordonner de venir. 3 bien sûr, exception, genre Finnegans Wake mais je ne sais pas si Joyce
parlait le Finnegans Wake chez lui. On s’essuie les pieds et on s’excuse
lorsqu’on a le sentiment d’emprunter un vocable chez les voisins. On se
Ichweiß nicht, je ne sais pas comment cette scène primitive sent en faute d’hospitalité.
d’acrobatraductibilité ayant inauguré mes yeux d’écriture, comment je J’ai la nostalgie du mot Sehnsucht, de ses langueurs de ses
pourrais décider laquelle de mes langues fut la plus maternelle, celle de appétits, de ses phonèmes
mon père grand spécialiste du tongue in cheek ou celle de ma mère A vrai dire je n’ai pas de nostalgie proprement dite. Au contraire.
Tout cela se passait à la table d’Oran qui fut toujours dotée de User du mot nostalgie me contrarie, me trahit. Ce que je voulais dire
nombreuses fonctions et pouvoirs magiques et sur la plateau de laquelle c’est yearning

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 Pour en revenir à mes villes et à leurs langues Je vais te péter la gueule, la tronche est dépassé par je vais te
Pourquoi vous raconté-je ces histoires ? Je sens que l’idée de mettre dans la misère
Ville est ma surexcitation. Au commencement de la littérature il y a une Des cités les plus glauques sortent les expressions les plus
ville, une ville-à-détruire. La littérature c’est ça : détruire la ville. La puissantes. L’argent : un sac, un buck dit bock et récemment dans les
destruction de la ville. Est-ce bien est-ce mal ? C’est un mal qui cause banlieues : sequin !
un art. Une peine qui cause. La littérature est un champ de destruction C’est génial : c’est mortel. Au second degré = c’est de la balle.
un champ de ruines, le chant des ruines, l’archive chant des ruines. On dit trouver un taf—j’ai du taf = de quoi faire—mutation de tough
Je devrais vous raconter plus tard la première ville détruite Un mec se dit toujours, heureusement pour Genet
bombardée-éventrée que j’aie vue, c’était Londres en 1950 elle était On ne dit plus une nana, gonzesse revient.
encore éviscérée. J’y ai eu ma première émotion de langue étrangère Comment traduire buck top tough ou big ou cool en anglais ?
dans ma bouche. Premier baiser : parler l’autre langue, sucer ses depuis qu’ils sont devenus du 93 ou du 75 ?
phonèmes, m’approprier happer, les expressions idiomatiques les plus De Londres à Manhattan il n’y aura plus tard plus qu’un pas.
courantes, entrer dans une langue aux murs effondrés sans l’effort de Londres, dis-je ici. J’avais treize ans. J’habitais à Golders Green
frapper à la porte. Je suis entrée en anglais en conquérante innocente London. Et voilà une curiosité : le sort de ce nom propre et si propre à
et je me suis servie, sans piller. l’Angleterre soumis à traduction, comme un certain nombre d’autres
J’adorai dire : gorgeous ou tremendous, je me gargarisais de noms de capitales sont francisés alors que d’autres, non. Pourquoi
mots-visas, autrement dit ces schibboleths par lesquels on est admis Londres pourquoi pas Berlin ou Madrid, pourquoi Prague pourquoi pas
dans le camp d’une tribu ado, genre grave, cassé (dispute : t’as tort, New York ? Et quoi d’Alger ? Je vivais dans une ville traduite en procès
t’es cassé) cool (pour super, chouette) ap- cimer (en verlan)—elle est de colonisation sur place.
canon—quand il y a un truc qui est bien, on dit ah c’est big Manhattan, j’y suis allée par mer et par textes. J’y suis allée à la
Du genre cassé y a haché, lettre, au mot. Je vais à Manhattan comme on va au Monomotapa, ce
Y a trente ans on disait ça craint, aujourd’hui c’est top et pas top, pays où vivent les vrais amis, s’il existe de vrais amis. J’y vais à la
voire tip top—dit mon fils mais mon petit-fils dit que c’est périmé poursuite de Joyce et à la suite de Kafka. Lui à la suite de Karl Rossman
Grave est à toutes les sauces. Grave est le péjoratif universel. sur le Hambourg. Moi à la suite de Benjamin Jonas d’Osnabrück, sur le

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France, comme le frère de ma grand-mère sur le Hambourg. Je suis nous avions déjà " survécu " au 11 Septembre nous l'avions
entrée en texte d’avance, lorsque la Statue de la Liberté m’est apparue souffert, pensé, retourné dans tous ses sens, nous avions transformé
dans un sursaut de lumière, et tout était déjà écrit. On ne peut parler de les deux tours que nous aimions en personnages fantômes de nos
Manhattan, on peut seulement essayer de l’écrire en traduction on l’écrit œuvres
et ce n’est pas ça. Manhattan est une somme non finie de sommeils encore une perte d'un membre de notre corps d'un membre de
habités de rêveurs, Manhattan c’est aussi Leviathan et Rêvyattend, on la famille. Puis j'ai perdu Jacques Derrida mon double, mon jumeau,
essaie de rêver le rêve mais c’est impossible, on est rêvé, on est le rêvé mon même. On croit avoir tout perdu. Mais on peut toujours encore
du rêve, et de même dès que l’on entre dans Manhattan on est perdre ce qu'on a perdu. On peut toujours perdre encore plus. Je n'ai
métamorphosé en quoi ? en figurant ou marionnette du grand théâtre jamais été à la Nouvelle-Orléans. Et pourtant je l'ai perdue. Encore une
d’Oklahoma on sent que l’on est un atome joué dans une pièce où ville que non seulement les habitants perdent, mais nous aussi, encore
s’agitent des millions d’atomes, un mot dans un Récit cosmogonique, une Babel atterrée, encore une Troie détruite encore une ville à ne pas
une fourmi de Lilliput déportée sur Brobdingnag Avenue (i.e. comme l’a oublier. Encore un Chicago brûlé à faire renaître de ses cendres. Si
« traduit » Fatima : Broadingway Av.). Un figurant dans la plus Ville Jacques Derrida était là nous aurions fait circuler entre nous la légende
des Villes, la Ville même et la Ville-Figure de toute Ville, comme la Ville de N.O., nous aurions déconstruit le No, relancé le oui à la vie. J'aurais
grosse de plus d’une Ville, la Vieille-Jeune, la promise et menacée, réinscrit l'or d'Orléans dans Oran. Chaque ville perdue ou condamnée
séductrice et imprenable, éminente donc vulnérable est la première Jérusalem.
—c’est sur ce mot que ce texte s’est interrompu. Chaque fois unique la fin du monde, dit mon ami. Il y a
J’y suis allée si souvent avec ou en même temps que Derrida, beaucoup de Fois unique. Comment ce qui est unique peut-il être
nous étions en train d’y aller c’est-à-dire en avion le 9 octobre, pendant nombreux ?
tout le mois de septembre nous nous sommes dit et demandé, le voyage Parce que nous sommes les sujets de la mémoire et de la
à New York le ferons-nous pouvons-nous le faire et à force de nous métaphore. Il n'y a qu'une ville. Il n'y a qu'une mère. Oui. Mais chaque
demander et d’évoquer nous avons cent fois fait le voyage sans le faire ville porte en elle le visage d'une autre ville, chaque ville est hantée par
en réalité une autre ville.

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 Parce que nous sommes des êtres, acteurs ou spectateurs, ou les vivre. Die Welt ist fort, ich muß dich Tragen. Travailler à la fin. Avec la fin, en
deux, officiants à la Scène sacrificielle qui est le monde, comme la transfigurant et la traversant.
Shakespeare nous le disait
Pourquoi ai-je soudain décidé de vous parler de Villes ? Dans un
lieu qui est voué à l'art, à la recherche des secrets de la création ?
Parce que l'œuvre, l'idéale, la rêvée, n'existe pas sans sa scène,
son support, son subjectile sa terre. La " scène " (stage) de l'œuvre d'art
visuel est double : 1) l'œuvre, (peinture, photo, installation sculpture …) naît
dans une généalogie, un vaste temps, une sorte de paysage-bibliothèque
qui se souvient-et-oublie, qui conserve et ranime toutes les œuvres
précédentes. 2) L'autre scène est sa géographie génétique, son contexte
spatial, son site, urbain et politique.
Nous sommes héritiers et hantés, sans le savoir. Nous sommes les
descendants d'une ville-corps. Ce que je fais, ou rêve, ou vis, ce que je fuis
ou ce que je retrouve, à Chicago est un résultat du croisement entre mes
villes et mes vies. J'ai trouvé et perdu des êtres à Chicago, je me suis
trouvée et perdue à Chicago. A Chicago je suis nécessairement Chicagoing
et Chicagone. Et que dirai-je de la Nouvelle-Orléans ? Au-delà des milliers Notes
de réflexions politiques, il y a le spectre du Déluge (j'ai beaucoup écrit sur le
Déluge) et le thème du chaos, et celui de l'hospitalité. C'est la vingtième fois 1. Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida, Voiles, Paris, Galilée, 1998, p. 11.
dans mon existence que j'ai à rendre une figure à une ville et ses habitants 2. Jacques Derrida, "Qu'est-ce qu'une traduction 'relevante'?," Quinzièmes Assises
c'est-à-dire à un peuple fracassé disjoined, exilé. Nous devons à la Nouvelle- de la Traduction Littéraire, Arles, Actes Sud, 1999, p. 46.
Orléans une réponse. Nous devons l'inventer. Politiquement bien sûr, et 3. Jacques Derrida, "H.C. pour la vie, c'est à dire…," Hélène Cixous, croisées d'une
artistiquement. Ne pas l'oublier. Ne pas l'enterrer. La traduire. Continuer à la oeuvre, Paris, Galilée, 2000, p. 60-61.

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 Eight paragraphs for Hélène Cixous
Jean-Michel Rabaté

1. I took a look at Hélène Cixous’ books in the University of

Pennsylvania Van Pelt library: 82 entries, plus 6 theses. Total 88 books!,
I repeated with ravishment. The double sign of infinity, the flat projection
of a Moebius strip in its dedoubled shape. I found all at once the
concrete confirmation that I could never finish reading her, and an
incentive, the need to keep on struggling with an inexhaustible material.
Even if I spent a life-time with these 88 books, they would split into one
another, create loops, lassoes, quote themselves, send me to other
books by Derrida, Joyce, Kafka, Clarice Lispector, and many others; 88
is the number of the babelized library, of the infinitely expanding
pluralized book. Derrida’s final homage to Hélène Cixous—Genèses,
genealogies, genres et le genie. Les secrets de l’archive1—develops a
sustained evocation of her archive. It starts with an autobiographical
confession: in 1964, as Hélène Berger (as she was called then) was
reading as many Joyce manuscripts as she could in American libraries,
from Yale’s Beinecke to Buffalo, she was already entering the allegorical
Library. Manhattan, Lettres de la Préhistoire provides only one of these
accounts, all her other books are in one way or other inscribed in the
double lasso, little 8’s of the big 88.

2. I can admit that, in a sense, I have spent all my adult life with Hélène
Cixous, at least since the winter of 1968. I was then 19, still “yung and
easily freudened,” as Joyce had it, and was delighted that she accepted
to supervise an all too ambitious MA on “Parody in Finnegans Wake”

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that I sprang on her. It is rare to have a supervisor who is a prolific Poetics of Blanchot; Joyce, Kakfa, Kleist, Lispector and Tsvetayeva
author, and one whose advice was always: “Write!” Being a writer (1991), Coming to Writing (1991), Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
nevertheless left her time to read—it was as a reader that she guided (1993), The Hélène Cixous Reader (1997), Stigmata: Escaping Texts
me, and it took me some time to realize that she was an exception in the (1998) and The Third Body (1999). Favorites of mine are those books
French university. The typed chapters of my thesis would always be that include dialogues with the editor, like Verena Andermatt Conley’s
returned a week or so later heavily marked, replete with annotations. In Hélène Cixous: Writing the Feminine (1991) and the English version of
exchange, I also read her novels, but they belonged to a different time, Hélène Cixous, Photos de Racines, with Mireille Calle-Gruber, Hélène
corresponded to different investments. I remember reading in rapid Cixous, Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing (1997). They belong to
succession Prénoms de Dieu (1967) and Dedans (1969). Their list soon another setting, another culture, in which Theory is still alive despite its
grew; all these novels, plays and essays first published by Grasset; proclaimed demise, and thrives even in that mode half-way between
Seuil, Denoël, and then Editions des Femmes, would go to a different creative writing and philosophical meditation—a genre brilliantly
shelf (it is still, although not in a chronological order, in my Paris illustrated by books like Veils (2001) with Jacques Derrida, and Portrait
apartment) than the Joyce shelf in which L’Exil de Joyce ou l’art du de Jacques Derrida en Jeune Saint Juif (2001). These books I annotate,
remplacement (1968), this massive thesis of more than 800 pages, but make selections from, to be able to teach them to undergraduates who
less than 888, which, by its rumpled light gray binding, looks so much literally need them.
like my first French edition of Vico’s New Science. Now, I collect the
elegant creamy volumes published by Galilée, and I count one or two a 4. In October 1990, I was invited to speak at a conference entitled
year. “Readings of Sexual Difference” which was in fact a conference devoted
to Hélène’s work. I arrived one night before my talk, which was a joint
3. Then there were the books in English, those I would teach in the US presentation with my friend Daniel Ferrer on Joyce, Molly Bloom, and
after 1992: mostly “theory” books, books made up of innumerable the neuter. As I was sitting in the crowded amphitheater of the Collège
readings, all sharp, astute, clinging to the letter of the other authors she de Philosophie, a woman next to me asked me slyly: “Have you noticed
would read. These were the groundbreaking dialogue with Catherine that you are the only man in the room?” I hadn’t, indeed, I looked
Clément, The New Born Woman (1991), and include Readings: The around, saw that this was true. I turned to her and asked: “No, but why

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should that matter?” Close to the end of the conference, Daniel and I social fear of not being adequate to superegoic norms, of being
talked about Molly’s Yes. I explained that I had first counted 88 “yeses” “ridiculous” or looking excessive, in the wrong tone. This was
in the last episode of Ulysses, which fitted very well my intuition that this emphasized by the generation that reacted against their elders, the
chapter, written in eight unpunctuated sentences (I claimed that there flamboyant but at times shallow prophets of liberation spawned by
should be a period at the end of the fourth section) aimed at embodying May 1968. The generation born in the late 1960s has tended to be
textual infinity through a female voice. Then I had to admit there were 89 timorous and conformist, and the cult of the logo in clothes was the other
“yeses.” Which does not totally disprove the thesis since Molly is often face of a new religiosity hidden as a defense of human rights. The
confused about her main life-dates, which triggers interesting humanitarian crusades brought positive changes abroad but confirmed
hesitations: “… and the 8 of diamonds for a rise in society yes wait it all a barely sublimated conformism at home. For the 1968 generation, on
came out and 2 reds 8s for new garments (…) I wonder is he too young the other hand, once the big party was over, to keep on acting politically
hes about wait 88 I was married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday 89 what age is demanded more than recklessness, it required acting upon the strength
he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88” (U, 18: 1319-28).2 I cannot sum up of one’s convictions. Thus I remember the news of Hélène being
our talk here, I’ll just recall here the moment of silence which followed matraquée (clubbed unconscious) by cops, next to Foucault, as they
Daniel’s section (he had introduced us, I had given the first part and he denounced the conditions of life in French prisons. This took place in
had concluded). Were we right when we claimed the dominance of a Nancy in 1972, but could have happened later in India, Cambodia, in
certain “neutrality” for a fictional character like Molly? Hélène responded, Chicago or in Serbia. To define Hélène’s courage, no adjective is
humorously: “I always knew that Joyce’s buttocks were hidden behind adequate, since “bold,” “impetuous,” or “fearless” too quickly point to
Molly’s buttocks.” The huge peal of laughter that greeted this sally told either fake heroism or sheer recklessness. One would need a word that
us that we were, from then on, perfectly safe. captures the courage of one who knows the risks, who is not willing
jeopardize it all on a whim, yet feels impelled to go on, to militate as a
5. What I admire most about Hélène Cixous is her absence of fear— way of actively exploring the world of history that we are all making
fear being the most obviously rampant French disease. By this, I don’t together. This means looking at the world with fresh, unblinking eyes. A
mean physical cowardice, of course, but a moral cringing, a social sentence from Saint John Perse’s poem Vents condenses this well:
timidity which is taught very early on: the peur du qu’en dira-t-on, the “Tout à reprendre. Tout à redire. Et la faux du regard sur tout l’avoir

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menée.” To have passed the scythe of one’s gaze on everything—this de l’‘Oeuvre’ rêvée à pas de loups, à pas de fous...” Unlike Mallarmé,
defines well Hélène Cixous’ desire, her strenuous and interminable who had to be content with dreaming Le Livre, Hélène Cixous writes it,
program. but in such a way that its writing is always double, punning, in the wake
of innumerable idioms and locutions, which, to be translated in other
6. This program is also, evidently, a writing program, a program that languages, will request similar feats of the linguistic imagination. This is
factors in other fears, fears that have to do with other people’s fates, why it is wrong to say that she writes novels—she writes “fiction” in
especially all the loved ones, or with the writing itself. Among many which language comes as close as possible to a poetic register without
similar admissions and declarations, I’ll quote the preface to the fifty losing the thread of a narrative—no matter how looping, discontinuous,
dreams collected in Rêve je te dis (2003). Hélène mentions that at times and digressive it may be. What we used to call “the materiality of the
she is afraid of losing her dreams or of not remembering them. “This fear signifier” has never ceased determining part of these effects if not the
came to me when, as I started to write, I discovered with terror that this meaning itself. In that sense, Hélène is one of the most direct
gesture, to write, that had become my life, my permission, my possibility, successors of Lacan, since she has blown up long ago the last
my reason to live, was unhappily at the mercy of and in thanks to remainders of “phallogocentrism” from psychoanalytic discourse while
dreams, as a child is at the mercy of the mother’s breast.”3 When enacting with a vengeance the logics of signifier. This logic sums up a
literature becomes your dominant passion, it requires power, speed and whole literary life. It is determined by the metamorphic power of
a readiness to give everything for it. Here again the preliminary note to language, and this is what catches the reader and empowers her or him
Manhattan: “Everything takes place in the pre-Work, where characters, so much in these texts. This in a wonderful passage of L’Amour même
in love with great dead authors, see themselves in a dream as turned dans la boîte aux letters, one sees Balzac’s cat insensibly turn into a
into books, as volumes, and step closer to the dreamed Work stealthily, woman’s cunt and a wild lover. The text is quasi untranslatable, since all
craftily, insanely.”4 its signifiers (chatte, queue, bander) have an obscene meaning in
French, while keeping as well their usual denotational function.
7. The previous quote is a good example of a reductive translation, or
of an impossible translation. I needed three adverbs to try and translate 8. This constant attention to the letter of the text or the literality of the
two French phrases that ring like an echo of each other: “...s’approchent name was brought home to me on the day of my thesis's defence.

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Hélène, the supervisor, started by asking me why I had chosen three Notes
names with an “o” in the middle: Joyce, Broch, Pound. Surprisingly, I had
never thought about this coincidence, and muttered something about 1. Paris, Galilée, 2003. This was the talk delivered by Jacques Derrida for a full
the sea and fluidity (as we say in French “Que d'eau!”). The true answer morning to open the conference “Hélène Cixous: Genèses Généalogies
came to me as I was leaving the university: there is an “o” in the middle Genres” at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France on May 22, 2003.
of her name. The codicil to these stray remarks is a worry: no doubt, this 2. I have developed this in “Molly’s Gordian Knot”, Joyce Upon the Void,
book will soon be acquired by my university's library. The total of entries London, Macmillan, 1981, p. 43-68. I quote Joyce’s Ulysses in the Hans Walter
for Hélène Cixous will be 89, a double infinity plus one and one and still Gabler version, Garland, New York, 1984, by chapter number and line number.
one... See Lectures de la Différence Sexuelle, ed. Mara Negron, Paris, Des Femmes,
1994, p. 245-282.
3. Hélène Cixous, Rêve Je te dis, Paris, Galilée, 2003, p. 14.
4. Hélène Cixous, Manhattan, Lettres de la Préhistoire, Paris, Galilée, 2001,
prière d’insérer, p. 3.

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