APPENDIX B

TWO ESSAYS ON MICHEL DEGUY BY

JEAN-LUC NANCY

DEGUY THE NEW YEAR!1

"Deguy the new year!" it came to me like that. I mean to say: the title came
to me right away,-from the very moment that I was asked for a title, sud
denly and without any waiting, without reflecting on what I might say or
might want to say beneath that title. Too fast, too fast of course: and that's
already like Deguy. We are, one like the other, people in a hurry, precipi
tated. Afterward, I asked myself where it had come from, that title, just like
thatknowing already that with Deguy it would be a matter of "like" and
of "likening," as he says, in all genres, but not knowing how.
(All I know is that on New Year's Day this year [1996], having already
given my title, I had a suitcase stolen where a first draft for today could be
found. I had to change, to begin again from elsewhere.)
But I do not know why I love mistletoe [le gui] and the custom of
mistletoe at New Year's. I like cutting it in the countryside for the night of
the new year. I like this strange plant, hard and brittle, planted in stars, with
its clear outline, its little white balls like sticky pearls. What is mistletoe
like? It is as though it is at home on the tree which it parasites, it is like
a springtime in the heart of winter, its name, gui, smacks or cracks like a
sharp cry. And with that, stories of Druids, Norma, or Asterix, the whole
legend that will never have taken the form of an epos, but only an as if of
an epos, and finally, that of a Latin satura: mixture of genres, ratatouille,
one genre like the other.
So then, Deguy like all of that. Deguy as always new in die dead of
winter. Deguy like a poetry that always itself remains like some poetry, as if
there were poetry, as though there could still be some poetry, poetry that
remains and that is thereby renewed, as before, as such, yet incomparable,
possible. For in the very end, but this should be said right away even if
displaced, deported, today not like yesterday, today threnody and prose,
it is a banality, and because it is one, in the very end it is up to the poet
yesterday a great rhetorician, a poet always of circumstance but never estab
to find the poet. No discourse is sufficient for that and reflection knows in
lished in that state, he has been saying it himself: the status of poetry and
advance that it comes up short. He has written that, "Reflection finds itself
the status of the poet are all finished, and as though entrusted to a new
outdone; there is a remainder in the production or in the dramaturgy of
circumstance.
the thinkable, something left over which constrains it to a supplementary
metaphoricity, one unappeased, one.seeking out a new figuration, an allegory
that might be better suited to bringing back into a language of language
I said "Deguy the new year!" with that sense of being carried away, that drive
[en langage de langue] speech in its struggle with that which is not itself."4
which drives me forward, amused and curious, with each book of Deguy's,
Reflection is outdone, falls short. Philosophy is outdone, outdone with
respect to poetry and left owing something to poetry. It is the philosopher
always elsewhere and newnew [neuf] but not novel [nouveau], not another,
for like everyone else, he repeats a small number of propositions (for he
in Deguy who is seeking to be a poetin Deguy as with everyone, that is
"makes propositions," he says so, he says it, he says that poetry makes propo
the common condition. But it is the poet who says that he is not a poet,
sitions)repeating then what he has to repeat, like anyone else, and very
that he is a "stateless poet," which is also, once again, the common condi
tion. Philosophy and poetry are outdone by one another, fall short of one
simply, for he is very simple when you get right down to it, but each time
new, each time as though anew. Others deepen their long grooves, keeping
anotherleft owing, in supplement, inmetaphor, in allegory, inheteronomy,
in a parasitism, and in sharing, one like the other. But this is not the effect
to a tense tone, a recto tono. Deguy plants his tufts of mistletoe all over
of the insufficient constitution of the one or of the other. It comes from the
the place, parasite in all genres, just a bit scattershot, jumping from here
to there, changing his manners, changing his turns of phrase from one page
fact that they are, together and separately, one like the other and precisely
to another, or even within the same phrase. Changing his fashions and his
through this like, which holds them out to one another while dis-joining
them, the mode of existencethe necessarily double mode of existenceof
modes, turning himself, immobile, toward all turns because, says he, "there
is no proposition which is not turned in some way"2 and, as he says too, as
the falling-short of words. The word falls short because it "is in a struggle
with what is not itself." But neither is that the effect of an insufficient
he chants out with precision:
constitutionlike philosophers dreaming of a "well-made language" or like
Every three hours a poem
poets, thinkers of silence. This is due to the fact that speech or word is the
mode of existence of the being that struggles with what is not itself. There
Becomes new then tarnishes
is not speech and something else, being, world, meaning or truth. There is
Beneath its reading then grows anew in silence3
the being that is outdone by itself, coming up shortthe being in a lack
and in an excess of its own identity and unicity of being. The speaking
being, then, which is not at all man, but being itself and as such. Being
(But as does happen, as often happens to me, after having joyously sent off
that is always more and less than being, being to which it occurs to be, to
not be, to be beyond its being, the being existing life death.
that title, worry hit me. Worry, itself redoubled later by the fact of having
to speak after so many well-informed speeches, in all the senses of informed,
As he says, "non-being is euphemism"5: a way of saying things well
of course, around Michel Deguy, here. Everything will have been said, and
that softens and soothes and will not avow the deafening smash, the stupor
I will no doubt repeat a little bit of everything.)
of disappearance and the hard knowledge that says: "I know that I do not
bring her back to the surface alive."6 Monique, poetry must be understood
in what he calls this "shred of Orphic allusion," at the very opening of
the threnody. Not Monique and poetry but one as the other. Not the one
Speaking of poetry and speaking of a poetand it may even be of an
that captures the other, prettying up the other or making the other into
absent poet, insofar as he is not "poet" but is "seeking to be"speaking of
something touching. Not the intimate as it is exploited but the intimate
a sought-after poet: there can be nothing more risky, perhaps nothing less
that is exposed because there must be a laying-bare, and that is precisely
necessary so as not to poeticize. Philippe [Lacoue-Labarthe] would say, I
 think would say for once in Michel's fashion: intimation of the intimate. stitute benediction for malediction, nor to sublimate the moan or the cry.
Not a poetic trafficking in death, not a morbid traffic of poetry. But one Ridding oneself of blasphemy is ridding oneself also of its opposite: it is ridding
like the other because the same is brought up not living from the past that oneself of a grip, of a desire to grasp "what is not itself," ridding oneself of a
is past, from the infinite past, infinitely finite, the infinite past with which will to grasp "what is not speech, not word" that is to saya grip on the passing,
the bringing to the surface comes to grips. Euphemism, he recalls somewhere a grasp on the infinitive to pass. Being-in-struggle-with is just precisely not-
else, "was invented by the Greek language to allow death to pass in silence."1 having-a-grip-on. Deguy writes: "There is no pornography of agony. Horror is
Giving death back to its silence while saying it, which also means: letting not sublime either, for the sublime is still linked to the beautiful."9 There is
death speak in the midst of our too-human silence, speaking with its very no pornography at all: no embellishing writing of the nude, if the nude, the
ancient and very new voice. Allowing death to pass: not crossing through being stripped bare, is that with which existing comes to grips, but in that
it nor maintaining oneself there, but passing with it, in it, at the level of struggle as though with nothing, nothing on which it might have purchase,
its eloquent silence, if that is possible. because it is nothinginfinitive passing, the most new, the most ancient.
Consequently, if the poem "makes the very much elsewhere come,"10
that does not mean that it causes it to return from its very distant region.
The recall of the unforgettable is just as well a recall of the immemorial:
Deguy writes: "in the experience of the it which so ordinarily makes it rain of that of which there is no memory. Death recalls (us for) that of which
or makes it shine, and in the experience of a making which is not of our there is no memory. And so it is with speech. The poem brings close the
doing, so close to the 'there is,' I have no control, the sun rises, the world very much elsewhere as an elsewhere, while keeping it elsewhere. That is
arises . . ."8 Being, that is always new, and speech comes to grips with that also what "I do not bring her back to the surface alive" means. I come
newness. Always new, that is to say that it has always been new, that its back with the very much elsewhere, I do not come back from it, don't get
newness ismore ancient than anything. Always new returning always, always over it, I do not carry it back with me, I do not seize and search it. Now
the new yearthe recall of the unforgettable: that the there is might arise malediction and benediction are the same way of seizing the very much
and go off, that it passes. The threnody, then, with the new year. And so he elsewhere. Deguy wants to keep speech out of the way of one and of the
has counted all of Monique's birthdays, one by one, simple finite enumera other, and to hold it, in that way, to its diction alone.
tion of the infinite passing, making nothing heard but the passing in the
infinitive, calculating the incalculable "to pass."
An enumeration like the unhearing metre, like the schematic prosody
of the poem's engendering at the very level of the disposition of speech on It is in that way too that Deguy is a poet "after Auschwitz." He writes that
the edge of what is not speech, struggling with what is not itself. Speech: the camps reveal the modern twist in Greek euphemism. Extermination
the mode of existence of what is thus struggling with the absolute pass could only be said while allowing itself to go unsaid, passing unnoticed
ing of absolute newnesswhich means finally: the mode of existence quite underneath the discourse of the "final solution" and while naming the cre
simply, the very modality of the existing (of the ek-sisting), an absolute matorium, "the international information centre," as Deguy notes11 in order
mode consequently, mode, measure, conformity of being to what is even to underline the euthanistic euphemism that cannot leave death to death,
more remote than non-being, conformity to that which shields itself from to its elsewhere, which conceals it while saying-wel! the unremitting male-
that euphemism, from that which could only call forth a blasphemy (a .diction of the killing field, [bien-dire/maudire]
malediction of existence), if After Auschwitz, one can no more speak-ill in malediction than one
-if speech, precisely, were not in a struggle with just that. The word, speech, can speak-well in benediction. This is perhaps the meaning of the Ador-
struggling with that which it is not, that is first of all the word coming to nian double injunction about poetry after Auschwitz. And such is the sense
grips with what in itself is not it, with a blasphemy that is always near, of a poetry "of afterwards" which is made as such, that knows this and
nearby, insistent, a word, a speaking that would damn being and itself along says it. It has the sense of leaving resolutely aside both benediction and
with it. malediction, the one obscene and the other derisory. It has the sense of
Speech struggling with its blasphemy: we see from whence philosophy leaving behind itself declamation or the poetic pose in general. Adorno's
and poetry proceed together, one lacking the other. But not in order to sub- sentence pronounces nothing about Auschwitz, perhaps, that we cannot

172 173
 know in some other way. But it pronounces something about the poetry Or rather, instead, it is poetry itself that returns one more time
of "before," about blessing poeticization or imprecatory poeticization. (It from the most distant, from the most ancient, like the most ancient, the
pronounces then something about what poetry "poeticized," well before Aus very much elsewhere, elsewhere right here. Prose or the new year of poetry
chwitz, something about what at one and the same time exalted poetry, set renounced, not brought back up alive.
it outside of itself and put it into crisis . . .)
Deguy goes slowly over this history of poetry "to be put back into
Responding expressly to Adorno, a German poet of today writes: prose,"14 as he titles one poem. (He ruminates without pause on the history
of poetry, we would never have enough time to show that.) He goes at it
We believe that poems
have only now once again
slowly, softly, taking little stabs, without violence, with no fracas, rather
more with play, with syncopated wordiness. Rhythm stirs inthe shadows. He
become possible, namely insofar
says: "All is somber and yet dance, dense, dance and cadence."15 He wants
as only in the poem is allowed the saying "an art of poetry that might disconcert poems."16 Not ruin, not refusal, nor
of what otherwise
bloodless 'sublimation of poetry. But the poem's countenance falling, losing
mocks all description.12
its assurance, its pose, and its transcendental mastery. Deguy parasites and
dis-assures the poemthat is to say the work and the substance, the thing
Something has withdrawn from saying, euphemia and blasphemy, itself of the poem, the hymn or the epos, the formed and closed song. He
incantation and imprecation. Something has withdrawn which assured say chooses instead the poet. The poet is not the subject ofthe poem. The poet
ing beyond itself, which leaves it denuded in its struggle with that which is not substance but displacement, he is not subject, but he is to come, the
is not itself. Something that made Orpheus able to bring back Eurydiceor to-come of the "it" that there is. [I'd-venir du "il" qu'il y a]
able at least to believe it. What has withdrawn is poetry insofar as it could For a long time poet and not yet, never . . .17
be the announcement of the words of the gods, a voice plunged deep into poet, the one returned from what is most ancient, which is making no
death, into birth, into creation, into love and into destiny. A speech that return, but which comes again, ancient as new, the former new. Deguy can
tamed and enchanted that which was not itself.
say then: "What you are seeking, that is near, is hereand is not that."18
Or at least we used to believe that, at least we wanted to believe it, His poem is not organized following any organicity of the work. But it
and we made that representation ofpoetry, that overdetermined and overes- surpasses itself, it is the passage and the passing of the poet, its passing-being
sentialized, surrealistic and overdone representation of poetry: the thought which sows little pebbles, little calculations of passage, upon the passageway
of a transcendence over words through words. Then began the hatred of itself. "Everything begins again on each page, everytiling ends on every
poetry. Then Zarathustra was able to say that the net cast amongst the poets page."19 Going elsewhere, always having things to do elsewhere, agitated,
never brought up anything other than "the head ofancient gods." Then it because it has much to do: not to produce some poetry but to render ser
was a question of insulting beauty [Rimbaud].
vices. Deguy's poem must be "a poem which would not be heard from very
Then began something about prose, namely, something of untran- much, useful like Martha, translatable, reducible, exportable, which might
scendable word and speech. After Hegelian prose, that is to say, to the set off in columns with other supports."20
prosaicness of a gray world, deprived of the colors of life, regretting and Thus it is that he responds to the great question, to the question that
hoping for poetrypoetry, or pure thoughtto that prosaicness there suc will have preceded and prepared the possibility that poetry might disappear:
ceeded prose as the refusal of poetry. The prose of a world which is no why poets in times of distress? Henceforth, the question is enunciated: why
longer gray, neither gray nor coloured, that is no longer the questionbut poets in times of poetry's distress? He responds simply with patient utility,
a world where the word is openly struggling with that which is not word. discreet and fleeting, about the patient usefulness of "that which does not
Then poetry doesn't even have to damn itself itselfnot any more than
make itself heard very much."
it would have to bless itself. It deposes, it deposes its turns, it advances (At least he makes himself believe this. He has some difficulty. He
straight ahead, prorsa, straight ahead toward nowhere, like the everyman, still finds it necessary to launch imprecations against the modern world:
the as-oneness of mortals [le commun des mortefc].13 Straight from the very again as a reflex ofpoetry threatened in its sacred works, even while we are
much elsewhere to the very much elsewhere.
no longer there, and even when he himself is seeking something else. He

174
 seeks to hold speech back from speaking too much, to care for it, giving it But leaving the thing, the being, in order to propose it, to its presence
bounds, tucking it in as it overflows.) and to its silence, that is no less to give or to take the turn of a particular
That, this reserved word, retained, withheld speechalways held back proposition and one that is of circumstance. For there is not the thing in
by the distant from whence it comes back and to which it returnsit is that itself. In itself the thing is some thing and the being is some taking place.
which struggles with what is not itself. Struggling in order to cause to return He says: "there is no proposition that is not turned in some fashion."26
or to allow to return what is lacking indistress. What is missing is the "very "That like what it is" demands a turn that is every time singular. Deguy is
much elsewhere." The "very much elsewhere," that is presence, and it is the a poet, a prose writer, a proponent of the turn and of the turn of phrase,
silence that goes with it. Deguy says: "presence, that must be made," "silence, of the trope which turns presence, like a turn of the turner at the lathe, or
we must make it."21 There we have our job, the poetic making; the service like having the knack of drawing.
of aid that we must attempt to provide. Caring for presence in passage! Not And that's what makes his trade, his skill, his work and his job of
at all shielding it from passage, but passing along with it, discreetly, almost work, that about which he says, "it is the craftsman's life, of making with
furtively. A furtive eternitythat is what we are lacking, that is within our out true knowledge, of life in poems."27 Without true knowledge, but with
reach. Passing beneath a silence of words, speaking beneath the passage of know-how, the knack, Handgriff, that which the philosopher despairs of
a silence. Immortals elsewhere, very much elsewhere, right here. catching, like the sleight of hand or the helping hand of a schematism, of
the tracing-out of the archi-outline of things, of their sensible identity, the
trait of their presence.28
For of course ut pictura, as he likes to repeat it, the turn of the propo
The presence that must be made, the silence that goes along with it, this is sition, the turn capable of offering how it is that the situation stands with
not the immutable present of the gods. It is the fleetingness of being, that "that like what it is," that is the outline of presence. Circumstancethat
is to say, its eternity. And the "making" of the poet is not a "producing," it which stands-round-aboutis the exact contour of being, each time in its
is a proposition. What the poet proposes is nothing other than "that like turn. Such is the imperious necessity of its work. "It is necessarysays
what it is."22 This like-what is just that, here or there, in the instant that hethat I draw her life with exactitude, what was her courage, devotion,
passes. The thing itself. Deguy speaks of a "proposition of recognition."23 endurance and the discouragement, the resolution, the limitation, the per
Recognizing the thing itself in passing. In passage, recognizing the thing manent dread and the laughter, the defeat and the horror."29 Already, he
itself. Even in passage, recognizing the thing. This may be named "circum does not need to make things more precise: each of these words which by
stance."24 He says that "any poem is ofcircumstance" (situationist, in point itself only says things vaguely and in general, gives another sound because it
of fact). We must make the presence and the silence of circumstance, they is placed beneath the injunction of exactitude, precision, accuracy. It gives
must be proposed. Proposing them because neither presence nor silence are the rather dull sound, almost silent, of a unique circumstance, the contour
ever posed. Nor supposed, nor, what is more, deposed. But only proposed of someone, of a female someone, a person whose face does not appear ("If
in passage. To be taken or left, very quickly, at the speed ofpoetic light. A I accommodate the rememoration of her face that is growing petrified in my
speed limit, which calculation approaches and decides arbitrarily, in order head, the tears flood up, rhumus of the soul, the soul is streaming between
to fix the limit, the passage to the limit. body and memory").30 That is because exactitude is not precision, in no way
We must have recognized in the passage the presence and the silence is it precision. Precision approaches, searching within the closest proximity
of"that like what it is." Recognition must be proposed incircumstance, in the to presence, which it therefore supposes to be approachable, and therefore
circumstance of the "that like what it is"or of "that like what it is"that fixed in some manner. But exactitude is not to be found in proximity that
is to say of the presence and of the silence of the thing or of the being. always leaves to "even closer" and even to "as close as possible" the inde-
Proposing them like/as what they are, and consequently, proposing them termination of the "close enough" [a peu pres]. Exactitude is exigencethat
without withdrawing them from their reserve, their distance, their passage. is its etymonexigency "ex-acted" ["exagie"], accomplished, at its term, with
The thing or the being: what is happening, at bottom, that which passes no remainder: the strict observance of the thing, of its presence, without
at bottom, the event of the bottom. He says: "That which you are seeking, the slightest separation. The thing is not approached nor brought closer in
it is nearby, is thereand is not that. The treasure is in the field; it is the rapprochement: it remains in its elsewhere, in the distance of its being, in
labor of prose, language holds things at a distance while acceding to them."25 its passage. It is only, strictly, exactly retraced upon itself:

176 177
 As it happens in drawings by Rubens, by Watteausays Deguy
That the perfect line picks up again so
That several drawings of the same thing From the unheard (of) to the audible [de I'inoui a I'audible] from the else
Draw that thing in double impression31
where to the here, hiatus is not abolished:
Double impression [surimpression], or even moreanother word to say
Staunch hiatus in any trial
the same thing of samenesscoincidence. He asks: "What does he favour The incessant aggravation of which might
for the things that are waiting for nothing in the silence of grayness?" and Gradually be repaired near and far only by the poem's thunderstorm
he responds "coincidence."
Aggravating here and there its incessant reparation37
The thing itself, then, falling away from itself with itself and as though Hiatus: the opening up of coincidence, the retracement of exactitude,
on itself. The thing itselfwhich is itself the "thing itself of the philosopher,
the gaping of the same. Repairing it and aggravating it, together and one
or even the philosopher's "thing in itself:" the very matter of the being-in- through the other, the one like the other, that is what is called being exact,
itself of something in general of something-and-not-nothing, but the thing making a trade of exactitude. (In Horace, it sometimes occurs that hiatus
itself seized in passage in its very sameness, in accordance with presence
means "speech, word.")
and silence, in accordance with the presence elsewhere and the resonant The audible exactitude of the unheard, that is timbre. Poetry is like
silence of its being-same, being the same as itself. As he says:
an emancipation of the timbre of worjd within word itself. "Just as at the
The same right
moment of entering into a musical state, Valery preferred the preparations
Up against same
of the orchestra warming-up, trying to find the "A" in all timbres and tones,
In addition32
so it is with us, readers or writers . . ."38
the thing, then, or the someone, the person of whom it must be said:
Timbre for itself, brought free of any justness of tuning and of the
She took back her words shrouded within herself33
composition of the songthe song at the bottom of the song, the deep
And it is indeed she whom he will not bring back to the surface alive:
songtimbre opened up in itself to its own background noise, the thing
she herself. Not only will he not bring her back, but he, himself, he will
itself at bottom struck or rubbed upon itself, vibrating from only its tension
not come back to the surface either. He will not recover from not bringing
there right up against itself, stridence and cadence of coincidence.
her back alive either. He remains down there, at her level, the thing, that
(One might also say that prose is the poetry of timbre, the asympto-
person. He stays down at that level, fallen down upon her with her.
sis of an autonomized timbre, almost without modulation, or instead: the
But it is thus that with her he recovers also his words, he gets back
modulation, the mode, the measure and the turn of which would be the
all the words, he returns them to the coincidence of the thing. All of the
striking, the beat or the immanent echo of timbre itself, the resonance of
words of this language about which he repeats on any topic that he loves
the same. As if' one were saying: poem, a piece for the rustling of paper
it or that he is devoted to it,34 this language that he can't get over, which
alone, or for throat clearing.)
remains right with the thing where it withdraws.
That is how, for him, music might be "elsewhere," "in an unheard
A long time ago already he had written: "Heading toward the word
{of) space, I mean non-allegorical, non-reflecting, non-recognizable; in other
"fountain" it is (to) the fountain thing that he attends; he does not drink
terms: not even enigmatic, rather: without solution, if the enigma and the
of its water: it flows, grief and sense, in memory . . ."35
solution are together."39 That which is not allegorical is tautegorical (said
The thing itself as the co-inciding retrait of the word in the exacti
Schelling): that says the same right in close to itself, and by itself. Deguy
tude of its drawing. There where another poet says there "where no thing
wants the same to resonate from out of itself, as such and without resem
can be, there where the word defaults," he says rather: the thing is in the
blance, without it all coming down to the same. He wants to hear that, he
default of the word, but this defect is the very exactitude of the word. What
who can never recover from it.
is unheard of about the thing is there heard and understood, with its own
But he says just as quickly, he underlines that "it would seem that there
timbre. So it is that "a phrase shakes up language, as a brass instrument jars
may be some non-semblance [. . .], something at bottom unknown and new."
the musical realm, it is each time the invention of the viola for the audible
The non-resemblant can itself only seem to be such. The thing itself
or of the triangle or of the oboe."36
exhibits its evidence and its certitude through the exactitude of its "like

178
179
 Any thing can be the measure of any thing. Every thing can be the
itself in the impeccable "superimpression of itself or the coincidenceand common measure of the incommensurable commensurability of all, and of
this "as such" can only be presented as as (if it were) identical to itself. There
the indifferent difference of the whole, of its proportioned disproportion.
is a vertiginous collision in the coincidence of the "as as" [comme comme].
Like makes for measure: the common measure of being, that is what causes
That does not mean that the thing itself and as such is not. Certainly, it
presence be like another presence, and the being as such to be nothing other
isand it is as it is such. But being as it is, it is immediately resemblant to
than its own analogy (old Aristotle made new beneath the semblance of the
itself. It goes without delay, and yet not without hiatus, from the same to
poet). From which, too, comes a singular ontological lightness, a smiling
all the same [du meme au pareil]. From the depth of its retreat it is already
graveness, a childlike application to playing as not playing.
within recognition. At the peak of its exception it is within resemblance.
Apposed to itself it is in an "apposition that the comme keeps under surveil
lance"40 and it is thus that it can be the object of a proposition.
If the proposition is always a proposition of recognition, it is always
The "how it is" (Beckett's "comment c'est," which Deguy re-cites and makes
made by like or as [comme]. And if the proposition is always turned in some
as though his own)44the how [comment] communicating necessarily with
way, the common way of its turns is the like-or-as. Deguy's poetics is a
the comparison [comme] of "it is like that" [c'est comme ga].i5 Therefore,
poetics of the comme: it is the common assumption of a rhetoric, of a logic
the poet is the one who finds the words to propose the multiplied turn of
and of a dialectics of the like-or-as, just as his philosophy has the as as its
being's like.
transcendental. He is as though crazy about as, crazy about like. Because
In order to propose it, it is .necessary to transpose. "Blind man, they
the latter, no sooner has it been introduced, scarcely has it been slid into
used to say of the poet, because for him to transpose was to find."46
the intimate interstice of the hiatus of sameness, than it sets off powerful
He transposes, he transports, he assembles things, he assembles, says
waves of proximity, all of those family stories:
he, "a thing character, a qualification which in advance runs through a cer
There is some like in being
tain number of "things" [. . .] or: the world being born under an aspect of its
A family air an air of nothing41
common sense ... A character that would be ontic and transcendental."47
The resemblance of self to self, the as of as such, the adjoining of same
Deguy thinks like an empiricist or like an analysand in psychoanalysis: he
to same, that is to say, just as well, its setting apart, hardly is this opened up
associates. From that moment he authorizes himself, as a poet (but it is thus
even just a crack than it opens up onto all resemblances. If the one is like
that he authorizes himself absolutely as a poet, even if that poet were the
itself, as the one that it is, then it is also already like the otherlike the
one he still keeps seeking to be), he allows himself all of the "metaphori
other of the one as its very own other. Deguy loves this vertigo. As soon as
cal transactions," beginning with the transaction between resemblance and
we have opened the series of resemblances, they show themselves little by
assembly, he traffics in the tropic transport, in all of the possible turns of
little more different from one another in the resemblance of some to others
phrase, from the pun to the metaphor and from the more-or-less to the
and the like-or-as is unfurled, gets spread out right up to resemblance, general
proposopoeia, with the prolixity and the insolent laxism of anxiety.
difference, the liberty-equality-fraternity of as-oneness, of this comm(one)
What cannot be said
ism7, ["comme-unisme"] the rule of "us" of which it makes, of an "us" who
(he says)
says "we are neither Jews nor Germans but like them "feature for feature,"
Must be written48
through a comm-unary trait which is not visible in the visible"42and the
To write is to allow oneself all of the turns and all of the turns of
same disparity, disproportion, unfolding, and demultiplication that populates
phrase of the proposition, it is to write one thing as another, in spite of
presence with its innumerable semblance and resemblance.
and along with disproportion (despite and with the "sadness of Disproportion
He addresses himself to the thing:
itself,"49 the "revealed sadness" in the death of she who "aligned, bringing
Your comparant celebrates you, brings you down to size
Your beauty prepared, withcompared. For what
strictly together the two sides of imposed things"50), writing for example:
The (damned) poem word-said [Le poeme mot-dit]51
Would you exchange yourself, am I to arrange your trade
and how this poem, in consequence, like that unique poem common to
And the metamorphosis I look to measure
every thing with you43
all of the poetry of this poet who seeks himself as poet, like that poem the

181
180
name of which satirizes all of the poetic sacralities, writing out all of those which resembles nothingwhich we might also say when speaking, as he
"metaphorical transactions between this and that thinghe saysthat one does, of the "meaning that a life has which has no more meaningin
will find, naturally drawn together and resemblant,"52 writing then for the other words [. . .] meaning."56 In Derrida's terms, one would say: "there is
reading which will operate, all in all, the similitude of what writing will have no difference as such," and that's it, that is the dried flower in every book,
put side by side, the reading which thereby makesa second nature, a new space and the inappropriability of a unique and literal proper meaning as such. But
of proximity, the very proximity of the distant, the words like their things Deguy responds: there is an as such of the as such, and it is the as-alike,
and the things themselves like another thing, and always, to finish up and the alikeness of the nonpareil (as they used to say in the Grand Siecle): the
to begin, Worte wie Blumen, as he recites from Holderlin,53 words like flowers. unalike flash of the alike, which arouses another blooming, that of desire.
but he immediately adds: "the like-or-as of poetry, that is not metaphor, That which resembles nothing; and above all not itself, defers end
it is something else": the comme of poetry is not h'ke the like of comparison lessly from itself and is transported from word to word, reassembles desire
(a question then, in passing here: which like is like the others and which for its image without resemblance and without illusion. The object of desire
one is different? why are there in French as many commes, homonyms of is always that which resembles desire, like the blooming of a flower. He
synonyms, or synonyms through homonymy, as Deguy desires, unless it were says: "I call image that which makes appear as woman a naked woman,
the reverse, or perhaps both at once), the like-or-as of poetry is not that nudity gathering together the beautiful and the desire; that which resembles
of comparison which metaphor condenses (in the poem from Out dire he is desirable."57 Making a naked woman appear as woman, that is putting
refused to give comparison the right to name the tropic regime in general).54 her into superimposition with herself, that is recognizing her or presenting
The comme of poetry gives us the like of as such and not the like of what her as such, or being exposed to her as such, it is making her being (the
is similar or same [parei!]. woman) coincide with her appearing (the naked woman): so it is then to
(And so, and in a more than exemplary manner, it will be necessary make the being be, nothing less. The image is the being as such, there you
to say that poetry like proseas Lacoue-Labarthe, another philosopher, says, have what this definition says (which is not by chance, at the same time,
underlining the comme55it is indeed the as such of poetry, poetry's essence, a snapshot allusion, immense, to a whole swath of the history of painting,
the Idea or poetic exigency itself: the exigent essence of poetry is there as of photography and of cinema.) The imageand consequently, one might
prose, in prose. Prose is not the same, it is much less and much more, it is suspect this, all of poetryis the as such of the being, it is that "as such"
the insistence and the resistance of poetry itself. On those grounds, prose is itself extracted from its concept and from its discourse, that "as such" as
still, it is absolutely still a proposition of poetry and on poetry, a manner of gesture, monstration, deixis, presentation of being. And this very presenta
saying, or rather of making poetry as such. One manner against another, but tion as desire. The monstration of the being is desire for being, desire for
like or as another, also, likewise. Against, everything against: with (coram-, the as such of being, because that which is desirable is never being alone
cum) in the mode of {quomodo, comme). (naked), being alone, but the monstration wherein it comes to be offered
The like-or-as as Deguy wants it is the alike as as or the alike which as such. Here is what Deguy says.
is the same as the as [le pareil pareil au en tant que]. It is as if Holderlin He says, then he writes:
had written, as he ought to have done, Worte als Blumen, Worte wie Blumen Palms rolling the pastry of buttocks
als Blumen, Worte wie als Blumen. Or left hand bracing right breast
This is the alike as it allows the as (such) of what it resembles to be And thumb excising you gently . . .
seen. Worte wie Blumen makes us see words as flowers, that is to say that Thighs' horizon spreads open the mauve nymphs
as they are like words they are in their being flowers. But how are flowers? Without image appears the vulva
For Holderlin, they surge up, they bloom. For Mallarme, the flower rises, And then like a face it is [. . .]58
absent. For Silesius, it grows without reason. For Novalis, it speaks, and Coincidence as coitus in a superimpression of its own image like an
the poet becomes flower. For Derrida, a friend of Deguy's, there is always a oculary flowernot an oracular one. For nothing is revealed about the
dried flower lost in a book. uninscribable, nothing is revealed and all is written, written as the "natural
The flower is the damned word-said par excellence, sticky poetry rapprochement" of the uninscriptible, of disproportion "itself," and of its
(Bataille) or inadmissible poetry (Roche), but this is because it raises up own image. The image is the desirable exactitude of being, and desire is
the incomparable comme which compares nothingthe how-it-is of being that which gets regulated on the basis of that exactitude.

182 183
 the arts, there is no unity of their assumption, there is only this ut, like
the tonic of their accord, and thus like their spacing, their difference. And
But the image or the figure which the like-or-as makes in that way like a
poetry is never like painting and like music except insofar as it is neither
the one nor the other: but poetry like poetry, poetry as poetry.
collision and a comparition [comparwtion], an appearance for the purpose
In the same way, the name, the elementary prose of the name is nei
of testifying, like the summons of the very much elsewhere to come while
ther the face nor the voice. It is the spreading gap inscribed, the putting
remaining elsewhere, that figure makes neither a trompe I'oeil nor a trompe
off to one side of the one as of the other. It is there, alone and new like
I'dme [tricking of the soul], as he says.59
never before. The new year happens in the middle of the winter, like the
The flower, or the woman, is also she whom he cannot bring back up
winter solstice. The very much elsewhere is much further than any heaven
alive. Once he wrote of the orange blossom, the one that Nicolas [Deguy's
or any other world. "Buthe addssince we can live only as if we weren't
son] carried at the wedding. He wrote:
the hortensias prefer the house
going to die, the thoughts that wear the veil of incurable sadness add noth
(For her I describe life with exactitude).60
ing to truth."66
Immortality as if we were not to die: all of the commes refer to this as
And now he writes
if, to this als ob which seems to be borrowed from a Kantian regulation. But
Here is the garden of the marble mason61
this regulation does not consist of simulating what is not and of fomenting
The tombstone, it is the flower, the tombstone like a flower, like a
a poetic lie about immortality. It consists in regulating oneself absolutely
naked woman. The word said like a flower like a stone, and it is upon the
according to that for which there is no object. Our immortality is nothing
stone that nothing, he says, must be inscribed as a trompe-l'ame.
objectifiable and hence it is nothing, absolutely, but it is absolute as such,
And that is why
as ours and nothing other. Immortality as death. We are already in it and
I will leave the tombstone with only the inscription of the name62
"resurrection" is not a paradisiac fantasmagoria: it is the asyndeton, death/
The flower that reflowers in this new jear is not a flower, it is a bunch
eternity.
of mistletoe [gui], like it, dry and brittle and like it, a parasite of its own
Put another way, what is at work with death and that the poem binds
"like/as." Yet he was able to say even of this that it was like a resurrection:
on earth, this is nothing that would come beyond: truth has nothing to
he has always behaved as if he could comm-une in the religion that was
Monique's and which is with her in the tomb. He said, indeed:
add to itself, no supplementary negativity to join to sense. The truth of
sense is found only in sense as such: that sense which is said, and, as it is
I believe something like an air of resurrection
is at work with death and it's up to the poem [. . .]
said, through all of the likes or ases of all of the turns of writing, by all of
those commes that only come down to the same by ceasing their infinite
to say of poetry that whatever you bind
in its name shall be bound on earth63
deferral among themselves, in the absolute disproportion of resemblance
The poem resuscitates the world as world, up to and including death and rapprochement.
To the law of disproportion among all the turns that make something
as death (the incommensurable commotion of the comme) and no world-
like sense, there is nothing to be written, nothing but a proper name, the
beyond, no other world.
All of resurrection is in the tombstone, as the name is on the marble:
property of which is to have no meaning. Poetry is the "closed-up one"67
the poem comes there like the name, and as if it were accomplishing thereby
(he is quoting Holderlin again), it is she, too, in the tombstone. Not under
the very being of the poem and its desire. He cannot bring her back to the it, as though something or someone subsisted, but within it, compactified,
surface alive, but her name. in peace.
He also says, further on:
He writes: "reading me, stranger . . ."he reminds us that we will
Going back up toward the actress ringed by night Vega always have remained strangers to all of the meaning to whichhe will have
Like Yvette Guilbert or the lashes of a Degas64
seemed to invite us". . . you do not hear the euphemia of this prose
He also says elsewhere, "lit musica, Ut pictura, Ut poesis"65: the one
which seeks itself out in truths, which distinguishes between the ways in
like the other, their triple "like" in common, this is remounting the night which meaning goes about things."68 This prose is the euphemia of damaged
within the night, but each time isolatedly and with no relation to one and closed-up poetry, of that poetry which remains very much elsewhere
another except the gap of the ut (in the same way as, similarly to). Among and which does not come back up alive. Between all of the propositions

185
184
 with their turnings, there is then some difference, but there is no supple 5. JLN note. A ce qui n'en finil pas (Paris: Seuil coll. La bibliotheque du
mentary turn for difference. What is being sought, making difference, is the siecle 1995) 122 (in this book with no page numbers, I have numbered the right-
poet. He seeks himself, impossible to find, and even impossible to seek. He hand pages in sequence in order to keep myself located). Hereafter cited as ACFP.
seeks himself as poet and he finds himself as though poet: ahead of himself, 6. JLN note. Ibid., 1.
further off than self, with neither object nor subject, on his own traces 7. JLN note. AHA 128.
alone, already effaced, struggling with what is not him nor is it the word or 8. JLN note. Ibid. 53.
speech. He writes straight ahead before himself, going nowhere else but to 9. JLN note. ACFP 80.
the common elsewhere ofall common sense, inscribing upon the tombstone 10. JLN note. Interview in Le Croc'ant, op. cit., 75.
the asyndeton of the name and the dates, like a poem, a poem name-said, 11. JLN note. AHA 128.
a poem non-said [comme un poeme nom-dit].
12. JLN note. Hans Sahl in Lyrik nach Auschwitz7 Adomo uvd die Dicker
(Stuttgart: Reklam 1995) 144.
June 1995 13. Nancy is playing here with one of Deguy's serious neologizing puns: le
From Le Poete que je cherche a etre 164-181. commun des mortels is an idiomatic expression that suggests the everyman, the aver
age Joe, etc., but it becomes in Deguy's attentive hearing le comme-un des morteh, a
NOTES perfect homonymy, suggesting in its dilated, hyphenated written form the likeness
or the OS-oneness of mortals.
1. Nancy's opening reflections turn on an unsaid connection underlying his 14. JLN note. GIS 20/REC 19.
title, the nature of which he elucidates in short order. In Michel Deguy's family 15. JLN note. Ibid., 69.
name one might perceive the homonymy "gui/guy." Le gui in French is mistletoe, 16. JLN note. Ibid., 63.
which Nancy associates here with the festive season, with the New Year, with its 17. JLN note. Poemes 27.
celebrations and its enthusiasms. In "How to Name" Jacques Derrida makes the 18. JLN note. ACFP 106.
same connection in passing, with reference to turnings, to Heidegger: "I do not 19. JLN note. Ibid., 17.
believe, any more than in the case of Heidegger, that there are two Deguys; there 20. JLN note. GIS 47/REC 59.
is one Deguy, there is only one of those and there are more Deguys than we can 21. JLN note. Interview in Le Croc'ant op. cit., 75.
imaginehe is always new, it is always New Year's Day" (PQCE, 197). The erudite, 22. JLN note. Ibid., 77.
acerbic French erotic poet Jude Stefan, writing a text of homage to Deguy for the 23. JLN note. Ibid.
same E.N.S. colloquium, also had a similar, musically attentive intuition, in his case 24. JLN note. Ibid.
associating the 'guy' of Deguy with the Germanic paleonym Wido. One of Stefan's 25. JLN note. ACFP 106.
forty fragments from his "Lexicon of Friendship" gives this: 26. JLN note. Interview, Le Croc'ant, op. cit, 73.
29) Patronym 27. JLN note, (lost reference . . . there was bound to be one and M.D. himself
Deguy=Son of Guy cannot find it: That's the craftsman's life . . .)
Guy=germanic Wido (wid=bois, foret/wood, forest) 28. JLN note. Of the transcendental schematism, he says that it is the "wailing
therefore: Deguy like Dubois, but more elegant: wall of philosophers" (in a paper given in Strasbourg in June 1995). This seems to
Deguy/Dubois = Poet/Evryone [Tt le monde] hint that the poet traces out some graffiti there.
PQCE: 15. 29. JLN note. ACFP 22.
2. JLN note. Interview with Deguy in Le Croc'ant, (Lyon) no. 15 (printemps- 30. JLN note. Ibid.
eTe 1994) 73. [This is a very difficult source to locate. Many of the same themes and 31. JLN note. GIS 35. [I give Wilson Baldridge's translation from Recumbents
expressions including some verbatim quotations may be found in the more readily 41. Note hischoice of"double impression" for Deguy's surimpression; I choose another
accessible "Entretien" with Stephane Bacquey in the journal, Pretexte (Carnet no. 9 option, superimposition, in other instances for translating the same word inNancy.
Hors-Serie 1998) 12-26. What is particularly useful in this interview is the contrast In some of the quotations from Gisants that follow, I simply reproduce Baldridge's
that Deguy develops between his theory of presence and that of Yves Bonnefoy, very effective and idiomatic versions. For others, to align better with Nancy's interpreta
likely the most well-known living French poet and who has been closely associated tions or my own, I offer my variations. In those cases, I give a page teference to
with a poetic thought and meditation of presence for several decades.] Recumbents to allow for comparison, which is after all what is at stake here.]
3. JLN note. Poemes I (Paris: Gallimard coll. Poesie 1973) 51. 32. JLN note. ACFP 46.
4. JLN note. Aux hemes d'affluence (Paris: Seuil 1993) 55. Hereafter cited 33. JLN note. Ibid, 67.
as AHA.
34. JLN note. Brevets (Seyssel: Champ Vallon 1986) 22, for example.

186
187
 TO ACCOMPANY MICHEL DEGUY
35. JLN note. Ibid, 67.
36. JLN note. Poemes 110.
37. JLN note Idem, 127. Jean-Luc Nancy
38. JLN note. AF, 110.
39. JLN note. GIS I was not able to participate in the 2006 Cerisy Colloquium around Michel
40. JLN note. Po 71. Deguy: I had just been struckas we rightly sayby a double grief and a
41. JLN note. AF 62. very close one. It was impossible for me to work, for I had wanted to offer
42. JLN note. Am sujet de Shook, 47. Michel a word about grief, or a word of grief, had wished that for a long
43. JLN note. GIS 132. [I have given my own version of this fragment rather time. To aggrieve myself, to enter into mourning with him. To carry grief
than the published version from Recumbents. I have chosen here as elsewhere to
with him. Perhaps I had wanted that ever since the publication of his great
"naturalize" the Frenchword, comparantx which one does find occasionally in English
texts on poetics. "Comparator" or "compared thing," etc. just do not bring the same threnody. Very surely, in any case, ever since the day when I heard his vehe
punch for identifying the terms of (a given) comparison. I feel it needs to be put ment lament, unforgettable, with which he announced to me the death of
into play for the full power of Deguy's reflection on the comme to come through.] his grandson. Between the two, he had me read the words he wrote after
44. JLN note. BR 153. the burial of Jacques, our common friend with whom I had discussed this
45. See Deguy's play with his recent title Comme si; comme ca in the "Inter undiscussable: whether there can be any consolation or if only desolation
view" (appendix) for a recent example of his appropriation and reorientation of befalls us. . . . Thus it was that a kind of funeral procession drew us in.
Beckett's Comment c'est. A very rare, very exceptional bearer of grief, and bearing more than
46. JLN note. GIS 30. cf. REC 33. just mourningbearing its infinite painnot that of its supposed "work,"
47. JLN note. Idem, 106. cf. REC 149. is the one among us who writes: and death is to be all alone. Saying in that
48. JLN note. GIS 131. cf. REC, 183.
way that the deceased is alone and that the one who is left behind is alone.
49. JLN note. ACFP 128.
50. JLN note. Idem,4.
In one way or the other, it is only because of that that we are alone: the
51. JLN note. AF 115. death of the other or our own. Are then incessantly foresaken. Essentially
52. JLN note. GIS 106. cf. REC 149. so. United by forsakenness.
53. JLN note. Interview in Le Croc'ant op. cit., 84- Perhaps right there where all appearances of links other than those
54. JLN note. POEMES 61. of love are undonesociety, culture or worldthere where the general
55. JLN note. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Lapolitique des poetes, collectif, (Paris: regime of living beings gets metamoiphosized, it is there that death becomes
Albin Michel, 1992) 63. pregnant. But this there, it is here, it is with us, where we live, it is us. The
56. JLN note. ACFP 14. world is slipping its hinges. Life is no longer in solidarity with itself and
57. JLN note. GIS 96. cf. REC 135. love stronger than death is experienced numb, irradiated.
58. JLN note. Ibid. REC, 135. The summer of Cerisy having passed, in the fall when the year sets
59. JLN note. ACFP 126.
about its departure, I set myself to the work of mourningI mean of griev
60. JLN note. Ibid. 11.
ing, not the work of separating-out and reabsorbing sadness. I received just
61. JLN note. Ibid, 127.
' 62. JLN note. Ibid, 126. then Le sens de la visite [The Direction of the Visit], Michel's new book. I
63. JLN note. GIS 39. REC 47. read in it: "Sadness is assured; it is philosophical" and he continues: "Skin
64. JLN note. ACFP 88. is more or less sensitive. Mine is poetic." I will have to elucidate his ellipse,
65. JLN note. GIS 98. REC 136. there. If the poetic is not evenly philosophical, it won't be all sadness either?
66. JLN note. ACFP 31. I promise myself to come back to this.
67. JLN note. ACFP 77.
68. JLN note. ACFP 118. SO AS NOT TO CONSOLE THE INCONSOLABLE

That is the first promise to make and to keep. Not wanting to dry the
tears, letting them go about their work, which is of cleaning and of clarity,

189
188
 their work which is to cloud the view and to clear up the simple thinking (The finite: the sense of words, the effects of meaning, the assignments
of absence.
and assignations of truth, the imputations of justice, the determinations of
A very young man recently remarked, near me, on the difference
knowing, the prospectives and the retrospectives.)
between funerals where all are already consoled and those where only the Being separated from the finite constitutes the property of the finite
inconsolable appear. But only these latter ones are truly carrying out the itself: touching its limit, it does not cross it, but changes itself into itself,
rite, which the others imitate. The rite makes us enter into the rhythm, an impeccable contour.
that of life/death, that of coming/leaving. It doesn't efface the departure, it That is true, exact. That is just, impeccable. Every figure loops back
marries it, it takes on its cadence.
upon itself, closing itself and sinking deeper into its recess.
I am renewing in this way that so-recent and already so-old dialogue But that, we cry, makes no sense. This is vanity. Nonetheless such
with J.D, him telling me that there is no consolation, me replying to him vanity molds us. Each one of us, every man, every woman, takes on our liv
that the very phrase, saying it, writing it, and having it published, already ing with that recess around them, as horizon. With that memento mori that
canies consolation. Against all expectations and all intentions, irresistibly has opened up our memory along with our birth and that we forget every
in a nevertheless extreme fragility, in the desolating precarity, in its turn, morning but that every night revives. Such vanity makes us and makes us
of the lightness of words.
live despite itself, it fashions us, kneads and forms us, knowing not the day
Lightness? Vanity? Yes and vanitas vanitatum. Putting the word face nor the hourbut knowing that any hour is right for making the contour
to face with death: a wind, another death, a confirmation of a death. Yet
worthy of eternity.
the hollowness of words has the power to resonate with the infinite and
We know that we die but we know that what is vain for the world
insatiable absence of those who are no more.
opens the outside as the fullness of a world. Hollow cavity of infinite reso
At times, it is true, the hollow words, the punctured words, denounce nance wherein we tarry, eternize: we become the Idea of ourselves, not the
themselves, not merely as vain, but as abusive, usurping, and pitiful. Reason ideal nor the representation, but the true Form, immortal and perfect in
fot tears, cries, and shudders.
this sense, that it per-fects its figure and its experience. Accomplishing it,
At times however the same words can offer their hollowness to that
fulfilling it, transfiguring it far from any figuration.
same echo itself, to thatstrange resonance from without wherein they inexist,
those whom we call our "dearly departed." Philosophy says very simply that death is the nothingness of that fin
ishing. Nothingness because it is nothing more than the end of the finite,
And that is why, ever since forever: threnodies and songs of grief, the finiteness of the finite, adding nothing to it, not extending it outside
elegies upon tombs, the languageless telling ofmusic, its complaints devoid
of itself, but all the while finishing it, withdrawing it from the bad infinity
of words, and the epitaphs whose hard stone counts more than the inscrip of perpetuation, of pursuit, of accumulation, and inscribing it as a burst of
tion, the commemorations punctuated by silences. This renewed deepening
infinity in an act, immanent to the end of the finite, immanent to that
of the word returns to open up our mouth, to keep open, gaping open, the
space of resonance. dark transcendence.
In some way, philosophy therefore says nothing: but it says it, and this
What seems at first to ward off absence opens it up and stirs it up.
utterance is worth something on its own, absolutelynot reparative, not
Even once the sadness has dried, grief does not finish. Even without pain,
consoling. It stands in for the strength of a speaking in charge of taking
even in joy if it is possible, the cleanness of the cut has not faded, since
they are no longer there, nor anywhere. charge of this: that there is no last word. It substitutes a chagrined tone for
a last word, a tone of gray, Hegel takes pains to say.
WHAT THEN DOES PHILOSOPHY SAY?
BUT WE CRY

It has never said that we shouldn't cry for the dead, even if it has said that
we must not deplote death. Indeed itsays that death is nothing, nothing but But we cry. We cry for the dead, our dead, our dearly departed. In crying
for them we keep them. We keep their prizedness, their dearness, their en
the effect of resonance of that infinite cut through which we are separated
from the finite. dearment. They are our tears, through which the world clouds over and loses
its form. Thus we lose them once again. The loss is interminable. It gets

190
191
aggravated even more when we do not cry any more, when we no longer perseveres for nothing else but itself and whose perseverance comprehends
make the departed one relive in any manner whatsoever. Disappearance
nevertheless the endincludes, strangely, an end that is not fixed but that
disappears as such: there is nothing left, if we want to go looking for it, is certain and the certainty of which cannot prevent injustice.
nothing but the memory of what was and is no more. We demand justice and our tears are also tears of anger. Our demand
Memory is the seal of loss. Loss consummated: that moment when is well founded for indeed life is for nothing else but its perseverance. Of
we are not expecting it, we're no longer vigilant for an arrival or a call, a itself, by itself, perseverance is justthat incredible, that stupefying stub
response, all that wasn't yet memory, everything that was always and forever bornness of the living who live with so much tenacity, with an endurance
still desperately he, she.
worthyso we thinkof a bettet lot, who live the unliveability ofmisery,
At the moment of the finite, of the end of the finite through which it of violence, of cruelty, ofpitilessness and also always from beginning to end
accomplishes its finitude, the infinite is opened up. The infinite is opened up the injustice of all of those deaths they must traverse, all of those "dear
and seizes hold of it. But this is at once the. infiniteness of the inscription ones" who disappear and whose prized value was to not-disappear and to
of the finite and the infiniteness of its loss. accompany stubbornness.
At once which is not a passage. At one and the same time that is at We say: "he orshe loved life"but who does notlove it provided that
once: side by side, together and without relation, without exchange, without its perseverance does not turn against itself and provided that still living does
sharing, irreconcilable intimates. At once the infinite as an infinite end, not become what we dread and that we come to be unable to tolerate it?
as an incommensurable vertiginous and cosmic exaltation of presence, and Michel Deguy writes in The Direction of the Visit:
the infinite as privation of the end, withdrawal, lack, injustice, ingratitude.
There is no gratitude for the fact that they have lived right up to their If the bearers of life could tonight put down their burden, onus
death, there is only bitterness for that death. No gratitude for that life that grave, as so often they dream of doing (overburdened, less and less
they lived, except when it has bom witness through the advanced age it interested in anything, as though they hadfallen into a deep, eternal
attained to having exhausted its possibilities. We do not cry the same tears hole) there might be two billion suicides. What would we say of
when death, in fact, has already fulfilled most of its function. But, in the the man fallen to the bottom of a vast dried-up cistern with slick
absence of advanced age, life can appear to have been lived for nothing. and high sides right up to the sky, a temple without any tesoutce
And for what else then is it ever lived, if we really ask about life what is beneath the vain auguries of clouds?1
its meaning or value, and not about all of the types of works that the living
being can accomplish? It is always life for life's sake, for its own motion or Overburdened they are, the bearers of life, and this cistern has gone
drive, the beating of which at every instant keeps it on the edge of itself. dry from the deaths of the dear ones, the very dear ones, the ones too
Life rubs shoulders with death while oblivious to it, life forgets death right cherished to be lost. And yet it is not possible that anyone could be too
away, it lives on that forgetting, and it is that which ends up changing the dear, since they are cherishedthe cherishing, the tender care of the loved
absent ptesence into memory. one, the caritas that sets a price beyond price, which makes the priceless
But we still cry, we cry without tears and without end for those who price, the price outside of value, inestimable and estimated absolutely, of
left too early, without it being in any way permitted for us to define the the loved ones toward whom there is a dilection, a predilection; a privi
measure of that "too" in "too early," which all the same we discern only lege then and an exorbitant preference. The dear, here, is priceless, outside
too well.
of price, without measure or equivalence, without currency, even without
value, infinitely prized.
THERE'S NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT SENSE
(Less the pathetic, pathic, and violent side of love than its other face,
affectionate and peaceful; less, consequently, the desire for the other's dying
If we know, despite all that we allow to be said, that this one or that one than that of holding the other tendetly right up to his or her death and
was too young to die, even while the growing count of medicalized old easing it for him, for her: the reason for wanting to be there, the reason for
ages may be no less heavily charged with questions, it is because we know being present, for hastening to the bedside, near to the dear head, but so
something about the justice of living beings. We know that there is a truth often it is impossible, we are too far away, it is too late, death did its work
with no measure or accounting, a justice of life that preserves itself, that too fast or too slowlyit will go that far to undo our attention, our care.)

192 193
 Love is the reason for the tears, but it is also, precisely, identically, of seeing-through. It is made of a closeness to which vision and object-
the reason without reason of having held to that other life up against our presentation remain foreign. We cannot-recognize the poetry or the music
own, for having held to life because it was living with her, with him, with of our dead, of our dying ones: that is forbidden to us, we must cryand
these few ones who are the companions, the company, the accompaniment in crying remain in their company.
without reason of the duration of the days, of that pursuit with no other
aim but pursuing and accompanying. Essentially, life accompanies life. As THE SALT OF TEARS
we know, the companion shares the bread, that bread on which we must
feed to live. Company is the sharing of the life that is nourished in being is part of the salt of life; the salt of death that burns our wounds and our
shared and which goes nowhere else. pains salts our food as well, in such a way that it is bitter at the same time
as it makes us live and persevere.
COMPANIONS OF MISERY Why can't the bearers of life that Deguy names set down their burden?
Because with this burden they are also carrying their dear companions
as the old laments sing . . . companions of company, simply: the care for a little further. They are still perpetuating a little bit, not their "memory,"
life is made up of this care among us, the dear ones, the cherished ones as we say, for that, memory, is immobile and congeals, fixes on the loss. But
whose cherishing consists ofbeing exempted from any care for sense, mean they lead the company itselffurther, for some while, in the accompaniment
ing. And sense only appears as denied, devastated by the death of the dear through which we nourish one another, the beneficial necessity of being-
companions. But nothing has been devastated, nothing but the company of with, that is to say apud hoc, close to, within proximity.
the living which is the only meaning of life. The proximity of the with is nothing that gets added on afterward
How not to cry and yet why cryinasmuch as along with death there to given singular beings: they are, on the contrary, given in the with, with
also enters into lifehas always already enteredthe very simple revela the with. They are given living as distinct bodies, the contours of which,
tion of that insouciance, that exemption from sense that also makes for the skins, are not envelopes but on the contrary surfaces of contact, light
the taste for life?
strokes, approaches. Death takes away the body and with it proximity. It
What accompanies us the most faithfully is nothing other than this does not carry off the soul that remains the ungraspable, the untouchable,
taste, this very humble, very harshly-seasoned taste of the exemption from the inapproachable that was also there in proximity. The soul turns around,
sense: that we neither must conclude nor make significant, simply pass on. toward that body that abandons it, and is changed into a statue of salt.
With that, there is nothing left to do: no assembly, no command, no pre
scribed conduct. No philosophy, no religion. But that puts us in company. HE IS NO LONGER THERE
Deguy:
At its very closest, the other remained distanced by the distance of its soul.
The big word is ACCOMPANIMENT. Poetry accompanies and it Its body made this distance visible, it gave to it something that could be
is accompanied? Everything is "of company" as music "accompanies" touched, allowed it to catch a whiff of the very delicious approach, the
life, and life accompanies music. The sense is with life. fragrant passage. The salt of tears and their pungency allow us to scent the
void of the air, there where there was less void, without there having been,
Of course we are suspicious, for today the "accompaniment" of the for all that, full continuity.
dying is a definite task, there are norms, it has got its instruments, the Less than empty and less than full, the just cadence and the spacing
naming of which indicates only too well its limit: we accompany, for a of bodiespassages, close touches, happy and unhappy bumps, transmitted
stretch of the road, and then the company is broken. But that poetry, that tremors, vibrations of words, odor of skins, sweats, familiarity of faces and
music, that sense that makes company for life, how can we not recognize of silhouettes that there was no longer any need to recognize, which were
in it so much more than that little stretch of road? For it is death itself, it knowing itself: the immediate knowledge, immanence of the with, of the
is immortal death that keeps company with us. set, of less than that sometimes, just something of the just-there.
But the lot of that accompaniment, the fate of that with, is precisely She, he, were there: all is said. She, he, is no longer there. This there is
that it is not a face-to-face. It is not made of recognition or of any kind not that of the simple place, it is not simply local even if it does designate too

194 195
the opening of a place: the one that he or she should always have occupied;
from greater depths, which probably belongs to all of themin the migra
should still occupy. The da of their Dasein, not a situation but a coming, an
entry onstage, a formation of space, a world configuration. She, he, were the
there: making a guidepost and a cardinal point, engendering from their body
tion of souls, in nirvanas or even in the infernal shades: "resurrection" is
another measure of life. It is the setting upright of that which, fot the time
of a lifetime, stretches forth a shade walking upon a ground. Standing up,
an unprecedented cartography, an orientation, some itineraries. She, he, were
anastasis: setting upright, rising, elevation, erection, surging up.
here, down here, there, here, somewhere in the map and in the cosmography.
But the anastasis does not follow, like a second life. There is no second
It was not a fixed position, it was the ever-moving coming-forth of
life; the first is the only and the last one. Anastasis precedes; it is already
a praesentia, of a being in advance, ahead or alongside of oneself, who was given, accorded to the living. This is why the only article which should sum
coming close to me, close to us, who was approaching and moving away,
Upshould have summed up?the Christian confession is that ofthe faith
coloring the landscape and making the dwelling, the street, our own pres
in the given resurrection. Love, which flows from itthe caritasdenomi
ence resonate differently. Here was their here, like a fundamental note of
nates the relation among all of the resurrected: the dilection of all in such
which she, he, alone had the exact frequency.
a way that each by each picked up, risen, elevated to the true dimension,
That was somewhere, some where, and we cry for that, cry that there
which is uprightthat is to say turned toward heaven, toward the outside
of the world. That is how all enter the world and all leave it.
is no more where, even only, as it was most often, perfectly ordinary. There
is no longer a place or a part where we might partake in its coming, in
For it is a matter of nothing else: of not being %of this world. In this
its departure. And death is not a departure, no one goes off, it is without
world, drawing away from this world, not to reject it but to open it in such
destinationbut there, right there where an instant ago there was, suddenly
a way that the earth might not be simply ungrateful for the lives that it
there had been and therefore there is no more. Death passes from the imper takes back and buries deep in itself.
fect to the perfect, it is done, accomplished, finished. For there is nothing
But we cry, because this elevation redeems nothing. The horizontal
to be understood. That it be finished, this allows for no domestification,
ground absorbs any life that stretches itself out upon it. It is not a matter
no acclimatization to our world: it is the outside-of-world that bursts in.
of redemption: it is a mattet, on the contrary, of that which cannot be
And beneath that bursting-in, that devastation, even the more distant
redeemed at any price, exceeding any price and any estimation. Nothing to
become close, even the indifferent become dear, although not cherished.
be redeemed, or to be redeemed for, purchased. No salvation, said the friend
Suddenly all are more there, in the gaping place. It is too easy to mock
whose tomb in Ris-Orangis Michel salutes. No salvation but a "salutl," an
funeral eulogies: it is not only because we always say good things about the address, a "take care, carry on" and a "carry me" . . .
dead, it is because death gives them worth, does justice to them without
(the same, citing Celan: that is all for the world/I must carry you).
reserve. It is alone in recognizing their right, recognizing each one integrally,
. . . the world gone off, disappeared, what needs to be carriedthe
man or woman who must be carriedit is each one, each one raised out of
without calculation.
the world, each one as he or she is a rising into this outside, or perhaps even
ANASTASIS
as he or she is a rising of this outside in the very middle of the world in flight.
Deguy finishes up:
"Resurrection," says religionalmost all of our religions. And that signi
That which is not of this world
fies return-to-life, revivesence, the recovery of integrity but in glory and
is of this world2
beatitude. Eternal life intact and prodigious. It is miracle wherein loss is
abolished.
Even in religion, however, no one has seen someone resurrected, and That's just it, that is what it's all about, it is about that, that unforgive-
chief among them, the one who, for Christianity, opens up and takes on able volte-face where death takes a face from its there. That in the world
the resurrection of all; he only allows that mystery to be attested by faith. there might be room, a place for what has no place, there is being-there for
He does not truly give it to be experienced. what is not there, and the world is made only of the obscure signals that
Stripped of miracle, magic, belief, stripped of other worlds and the its absent ones exchange.
dead surging out of the sepulchre, there remains this, which is perhaps no That, that absence there, that absence present there, this salt of the
longer Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim, but which comes from further off, earth that burns our eyes, the eyes of we who will not understand, we who

196
197
ate not destined to understand but to take and to cherish with tears those
we forever alone without you
who have neither contour nor skin but the somber and ineffaceable flash
what is there
of having been there, this is what is not a survivor, not a revenant, not a is no longer there for you
phantom, not a shade, that is what is not of here and that, in that pre the cigarette burns from your death the sea of your absence
cisely, is here, outside of space and time, it is of this outside-with that neither rushes back
philosophy nor religion speak, even while nothing else concerns them. No
word says it, but a chant is being addressed. Without rest, a threnody, a I will take in my hands your dead face
cantus firmus, a cante jondo rises up, in music or in wordspoetry, yes, if rather the funerarium than the tomb
you will, but first of all, call and lament, first of all the tone which makes rather the hospital room
heard here the resonance of there, of that outside. morphine ketamine hypnovel
They make us sing, our dearly departed, they make us hum the lam- and not your closed eyes
entate in which our tears say nothing but the saying nothing, nothing but a nor sealed up in your mouth those words which you alone said
speaking that is a crying and a crying that is a sob, if the sob is nothing
other than the shaken-up voice, sob tripping up in the throat and giving And so unto death faces united
up on speaking, the crying like this renunciation, and this giving-up as a this is about you
consent to desolation, to its stammering. about the passion of you of our caring hands which held
This is what philosophy and religion are not capable of. It is at the your shoulder and stroked your stomach
edge of this that they remain held back: it is the sob. Philosophical sadness about you
is morose, the Lecons des tenebres are majestic: on one side and the other dead stretch
we hold ourselves exempt from the sob, from that hiccup or hocket [hoquet] a rose in your hands
that was once a musical term for the antiphon of two voices. frail
Likecomme, as with, in the same way as, as much astwo voices in the veil of Islamabad enshrouded
alternating while responding from here to the outside and from nowhere our faces upon your face
to here, two voices, one of which is saying nothing. But we do not always Adieu face in May
know which one, in truth. already we are burying your death
already the memory of you and the awaiting of dreams
WITHOUT YOU
in dreams you would say it is like before
o how I would like to carry you again day after day
Here, to finish, I will allow to be heard what someone close, someone very like the angel on that night
close, wrote upon the death of a sister whose life accompanied her own for who received your words
fifty years. Allowing us to hear nothing but a voice, one among so many "all is dark"
others who cry, nothing but one in response to that of Michel and to another
and to much more than one song. My godthe end already

Without You Helene

to my sister Annik
From L'AIIegresse pensive 203-216
We do have to keep watch near the dead face
NOTES
a cigarette
looking at the sea 1. Deguy, SV 176.
never again 2. Nancy refers to Deguy's poem "Ris-Orangis" in Desolatio, 85.

198
199
Meteor tracing furious ellipses
CONTENTS
Impalpable bump of worlds in rebound
Cast pebbles, coaldust, silex, micas and gypsums
Humouristic reports, sobs and zounds
Entrained by the pure avidity of saying
Luxuriant all and one like the other
Drawing on his lyre ingenious before us Translator's Notes xi

Enharmonic with cadences of reason

Grave and gay in turn in the well-milled throat Introduction
Ulcerous from the saps that its conjugation To Conserve While Leaving Behind: Michel Deguy's Palinody
Yearning like a gluttonous muse there pours out
Jean-Luc Nancy, from Degu;y le Grand 8 A MAN OF LITTLE FAITH

This text is of little faith .

I. Palinody

I will not tell of how "I lost faith" . . . 11

There is no transcendent . . . 12
If I were a visual artist . . . 13
I will reverse a saying of Auguste Comte . . . 14
Confiteor 17
Love Story 19
Negligence 21
The fantasy of forgetting 22
Cuttings 23
Paul Valery's "to be awake ..." 24
Gift without Exchange 25
Case of Equality 28
Love has no why . . . 29
Of the Author 30
Escence 31
"Super Flumina" 32
Attached 34
Poetry is triple . . . 36
Man is the being who tramps his own transcendence . . . 37
"M^y fellow, my sister ..." [Mon semblable, ma soeur] 39
Natives of Eden . . . 40
"Everything is full of soul(s) . . ." . . . 41
"Keine Rache mehr" . . . 42
 "Ecce Homo" Notes On Paradox 109
43
I pause for a moment . . . Of the Double-Bind 111
46
We are in the Fiji Islands . . . 47 Digression on Analogy 114
We are in the Fiji Islands . . . 48 Transcendence 116
Of the Mortal Possessing Speech 50 An Aside 117
Revelation, continued . 118

II. Notebooks of Disbelief Of Religion 119

Of the End 121
In Doubt 57
"Non credo in" 62 IV. Jewish Humanity
To Mothers 63
In the imagination . . . Peace-With 125
64
"The patient breath of the bull" . . . 66
"All Men Will Be Jewish" 128
Who is God? . . . 67
Christ 68
Appendix A: Dublin Interview 147
The Incarnate 69
Appendix B: Two Essays on Michel Deguy by Jean-Luc Nancy
Why continue . . . 70
Deguy The New Year! 169
Nothing will be destroyed . . . 71
To Accompany Michel Deguy 189
Since the body . . . 72
The Future of the Illusion Notes 201
73
Relics 75
Of the Holy Family 76
Index 211
My Guardian Angel 77
There are certainly other just men in the city . . . 78
The Infernal Machine 79
Metaphysical Meditation 81
Descartes and Socrates 82
Enough with the science! . . . 83
Literature And The Good 85
The Common Nothing 87
The Reproach Made to Kant 90
"Minima Moralia" 92
'Logic of Double Negation or of Non-Mathematical, Paradoxical
Apodicticity 93

III. Simone Weil From Memory

Life and Death 99

Of Purity 101
Attention 103
Of Contrariety 104
And Today 106

Vlll IX