Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Phrase (extracts)

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Phrase (extracts) Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe Translated by Leslie Hill PHRASE I ... let—let it come (or yield, more likely,or rise up, though barely so),that which won't come and can't reach where it's going, if onlyfor lack of an infallible line in the sandand because it's evident that, in you, somewhere else,not a place where you get agitated, is where it flowsor dissolves (I don't know, I thinkof a face exhausted, betrayed, drenched with tears,etc.—of a gesture, in fact, of supplication),let, yes, let that which did not take placegrow old in you and wane:we are held or forced to it, just as we are to thethings that can't be undone, which separate us, each foreverbeside the other, and bind us, each apart from the other;for what exposes us is that the echo inside should be of almostno voice, and the things, around us(this garden, for instance, here,this meadow, ever the same),bear of course the trace of no passage. [End Page 1267] And don't say: it's dreadful—"don't implore,"don't be frightened either.It is, it is true, unanswerable, and we areindisputably abandoned. But accept, all the same,"don't look away," as whenyou hold your head up, shamefaced, knowing nothingof what is causing your downfall, accept this slow disasteror exodus, rather, which is more or less what we are. (July 20, 1976) [End Page 1268] PHRASE II (A CLARIFICATION) 1 Phrase: what has spoken within me—in the distance, elsewhere, almost outside—for a very long timeever since, I believe, I was given the possibility of forgetting,this I call literature. It's—empty of meaning, deprived most of the time of content,barely organized into words—justa phrase. Practicallyalways the same, it seems to me; but I can'tsay anything about it positively.It, the phrase, is modulated in different ways: aslament, jubilation, disarray, energy, fatigue.Adoration too. I'll say more about that later. And yet, I don't have the sense of ever having received it.Never entirely. I don't think that I produceit either. It is likely that in the languageto which I'm subjected and to which, vaguely, andwith difficulty, I am forever being born and dying,in the same way as I am to things, other people, and whoever is supposedly me,it is likely, then, that it reaches far back to some story long ago,deeply buried, inaccessible to thought: an ancient scribble beyond memory,an old indistinct murmur counting outthe generations. I therefore rather believe that it—the phrase, I mean—is still seeking toform itselfand has never, in fact, reached an end. I havenever in any case heard it. On the contrary, Isuspect that if at times I do happen to hear certain words,a kind of diction or a sort of music, it is becauseof this phrase still waiting, indefinitely,for its conclusion and closure. If pushed, that is, at those moments of terrifying oblivion when the merest winter light falling on a wall, or grass growing sparsely in a garden, or water flowing in a river, is a pure sign, like a hiatus, that I am going to die, I might say (and this too would speak, in silence, and be captured in the phrase): I will have been a phrase. [End Page 1269] Or rather: there will have been a phrase, this phrase—which will have haunted me, and never crossed my lips. This abortive utterance, this sense of being haunted, this decidedly I call literature. [End Page 1270] 2 The story I should like to tell (or recite: perhaps it is, unfortunately, something like a myth) is therefore a story of renunciation. To "renounce" originally meant: to announce or enounce. To "phrase," in Greek, more or less says the same. Today, however, to "renounce" means: no longer to want, to accept. Like one's destiny or fate: that which has already been spoken. Let us therefore assume

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