SILENCES

let there be no mistake. our intention is not to pay homage to samuel beckett, knowing as we do that the very word, with its inevitable air of glorification, always remained foreign to him. in a way, when molloy, then malone dies first appeared in france, it was naive of us {georges bataille, maurice nadeu and myself} to hope to alert the prix des critiques to these texts, even though so many remarkable writers and critics were on that committee, admittedly still as members of the 'literary establishment', when it was clear that even beckett's early books {which still retained several features which might be termed classical} were foreign to all the resources of 'literature'. but does literature need resources? if, as was said once {rightly or wrongly}, literature tends towards its essence which is to efface itself or disappear, this exhaustion, which is perhaps profoundly mournful, but can also be a mixture of seriousness and sarcasm, constantly appeals to its own perseverence by making itself heard as a ceaseless, interminable voice. samuel beckett was entrusted with this movement of the end that never reaches the end. in his final published text {but not, i think, his very last one}, under the title stirrings still, a wish is formulated which is all the more clearly expressed because it is affirmed in vain: 'only ever fainter oh to end. no matter how no matter where. time and grief and self so-called. oh all to end.'

in dying, did samuel beckett himself reach the end? did he leave us with the pain of bearing the burden of what could not acheive completion with him? or else, by a cunning twist that would hardly be surprising, is he still keeping watch in order to find out what we intend doing with his silence, the silence that still speaks, since, beneath all language may be heard the obligation to say the 'voice that speaks, knowing that it lies, indifferent to what it says, too old perhaps and too abased ever to succeed in saying the words that would be its last'?

in the obituaries respectfully delivered to mark his passing, the great works of the age have often been mentioned, proust, joyce, musil and even kafka, these finished-unfinished works, which nevertheless retain, in what one can barely call their failure, 'a form of appearance of truth', including, most of all, a concern to glorify, if not the author, then at least art itself by pushing traditional literature {even if one then calls it modern} to its furthest limit. but compare sartre and beckett, both having to contend with the false glory of the nobel prize for literature. this prize that, nobly, sartre refused, one might say he did everything possible to be awarded it by the very act of writing words, a book which, he believed, by the sublime power of its rhetoric, would henceforth make it impossible to hope for a finer work. the dream is a touching but childish one {entirely in keeping with sartre's own child-like nature}. and the punishment for having wanted to write {and publish} a necessarily glorious text followed immediately, in the form of the award of the nobel prize, from which he derived additional glory by rejecting it. nothing of the sort happened to beckett: he had neither to accept nor refuse a prize that was for no particular work {there is no work in beckett} but was simply an attempt to keep within the limits of literature that voice or rumble or murmur which is always under the threat of silence, 'that undifferentiated speech, spaced without space, affirming beneath all affirmation, impossible to negate, too weak to be silenced, too docile to be constrained, not saying anything, only speaking, speaking without life, without voice, in a voice fainter than any voice: living among the dead, dead among the living, calling to die, to be resurrected in order to die, calling without call' {and i quote -- to end -- these lines from awaiting oblivion because beckett was willing to recognize himself in that text}. [maurice blanchot]

... this heaviness which posits lightness. is being language? is language recognition of being? being holds language {which cannot encompass it} in check, but language likewise checks being {which cannot master it}. then being owes its possibility to be to language, and language owes to the meditation of being its possibility to exist. bond of nothing and nothing. of void and void. of empty and empty. hyphen of ashes .... silence precedes us. it knows we will catch up. [edmond jabès]

paul auster: is it a method? / edmond jabès: no, i'm not suggesting a method ... / paul auster: i mean a personal method, a means of arriving at a certain kind of reflection. / edmond jabès: yes. but i'm not proposing it to others. it works for me, but it might not be valid for someone else ... i have always worked on this principle ... which is something one of the rabbis in my next book says: do not hesitate to question the book, even those things about it which might seem absurd to others. because everything can hide within itself a certain truth ... i think of this in terms of the sea, in the image of the sea as it breaks upon the shore. it is not the wave that comes, it is the whole sea that comes each time and the whole sea that draws back. it is never just a wave, it is always everything that comes and everything that goes. this is really the fundamental movement in all my books. everything is connected to everything else. there is the whole questioning of the ocean, in its depths, in its movement, in the foam it leaves behind, in the delicate lace it leaves upon the shore ... at each moment, in the least question, it is the whole book which returns and the whole book which draws back. / paul auster: in a sense, the project is inexhaustible by definition. each book gives birth to the next. / edmond jabès: yes ... or at least, i am incapable of abandoning it. because the book i am going to do is never the book i want to do. if i could do the book i carry inside me, it would be the last book. and this book is impossible. if i write, it is because there is always this book i want to do over again. / paul auster: earlier, we were talking about samuel beckett, and i'm reminded now of something he wrote in the late forties: "to be an artist is to fail, as no other dares fail ...." / edmond jabès: that's a very beautiful statement. it's very beautiful ... and that's it, exactly. / paul auster: it seems to me that you have been saying more or less the same thing. / edmond jabès: absolutely. that's it, exactly.

we have, first, two great distinctions which correspond to the dialectic and the nondialectic demands of speech: the pause that permits the exchange; the waiting that measures an infinite distance. but this waiting assures not only the beautiful hiatus that prepares the poetic act, but also and at the same time, other forms of cessation, very deep, very perverse, more and more perverse, and always such that the distinctions one can make between them do not avoid but solicit ambiguity. we have 'distinguished' three: one where the void becomes achievement; another where the void is tiredness, misery; and another ultimate, hyperbolic one where idleness shows {and perhaps thought}. to interrupt yourself in order to hear yourself. to hear yourself in order to speak. finally, to speak only in order to interrupt yourself and make possible this impossible interruption.

i had promised myself to say nothing about the book, the books of edmond jabès -- a silence i prefer to keep in regard to certain austere, even remote works that have been talked about too quickly and, as a result of their strange renown, are reduced to a fixed and categorical meaning. there are thus certain works that trust in our discretion. we do them a disservice by pointing to them or more exactly, we take from them the space which had been that of reserve and friendship. but in the end there comes a moment when the austerity that is the center of every important book, be it the most tender or the most painful, severs the ties and takes it away from us. the book no longer belongs to anyone: it is this that consecrates it as a book.

in the totality of fragments, thoughts, dialogues, invocations, narrative movements, and scattered words that make up the detour of a single poem, i find the powers of interruption at work, so that the writing, and what is proposed to writing {the uninterrupted murmur, what does not stop}, must be accomplished in the act of interrupting itself. but here, in the book of questions -- the very title speaks of its insecurity, its painful force -- the rupture is not only marked by poetic fragmentation at its various levels of meaning but also questioned, suffered, regrasped, and made to speak, always twice, and each time doubled: in history, and in the writing in the margins of history .... [maurice blanchot]

what when words gone? none for what then. but say by way of somehow on somehow with sight to do. with less of sight. still dim and yet --. no. nohow so on. say better worse words gone when nohow on. still dim and nohow on. all seen and nohow on. what words for what then? none for what then. no words for what when words gone. for what when nohow on. somehow nohow on. worsening words whose unknown. whence unknown. at all costs unknown. now for to say as worst they may only they only they. dim void shades all they. nothing save what they say. somehow say. nothing save they. what they say. whosesoever whencesoever say. as worst they may fail ever worse to say. remains of mind then still. enough still. somewhose somewhere somehow enough still. no mind and words? even such words. so enough still. just enough still to joy. joy! just enough still to joy that only they. only!

enough still not to know. not to know what they say. not to know what it is the words it says say. says? secretes. say better worse secretes. what it is the words it secretes say. what the so-said void. the so-said dim. the so-said shades. the so-said seat and germ of all. enough to know no knowing. no knowing what it is the words it secretes say. no saying. no saying what it all is they somehow say.

that said on back to try worse say the plodding twain. preying since last worse said on foresaid remains. but what not on them preying? what seen? what said? what of all seen and said not on them preying? true. true! and yet say worst perhaps worst of all the old man and child. that shade as last worst seen. left right left right barefoot receding on. they then the words. back to them now for want of better on and better fail. worser fail that perhaps of all the least. least worse failed of all the worse failed shades. less worse than the bowed back alone. the skull and lidless stare. though they too for worse. but what not for worse. true. true! and yet say first the worse perhaps worst of all the old man and child. worst in need of worse. worse in -- blanks for nohow on. how long? blanks how long till somehow on? again somehow on. all gone when nohow on. time gone when nohow on. [samuel beckett]

maurice blanchot: "oh all to end," translated by leslie hill, in the blanchot reader, edited by michael holland, blackwell publishers. maurice blanchot: awaiting oblivion, translated by john gregg, university of nebraska press. edmond jabès: the book of shares, translated by rosmarie waldrop, university of chicago press. paul auster: the art of hunger: essays, prefaces, interviews, penguin books. maurice blanchot: "interruptions," translated by rosmarie aldrop and paul auster, in the sin of the book: edmond jabès, edited by eric gould, university of nebraska press. samuel beckett: nohow on: company, ill seen ill said, worstward ho, grove press.