English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Postponement of the commentary on the documentaries on writing 0:49 Good evening, dear friends. I'll leave you for three seconds and come right back. Let me introduce someone to you. Look at this. There, you see, I'm complaining because she's always parked on the radiator. And so, she's letting me down. And so, I'm going to settle her account. There. You can go alert the animal protection society, alert the vegans, whatever you like.
1:19 Actually, she loves it. Yes, we have a bit of a sadomasochistic relationship. I'm very happy to be with you again for this last livestream of 2020, and let me tell you right away that there's a slight change from the program we announced on our Facebook page, which you're kind enough to follow. So, I had planned a reading with you of two documents—three, actually, but mainly two video documents taken from Arte, documentaries made by Arte, which were excellent.
2:09 By the way, I'm not a fan of Arte, but I admit this one was excellent, and it concerns the origin of writing, and they're exceptionally well made, and above all, each of the documentaries developed the two aspects of the problem of memory that we've been working on for many weeks now, and many months, namely both the form of memory and the matter—the great Aristotelian couple, the immense Aristotelian pairing of matter and form.
2:46 One insisted on how it started, you know, the classic problematics—iconic writing through images, for example, hieroglyphic writing, alphabetic writing on the other hand, that's the form, if you like, the code, the codification—and then the other insists on the matter, on the medium. What do you write on? Papyrus? Parchment? There, I don't want to go into it because that would be anticipating—what? I won't do that today because I saw that we'd need to watch a few excerpts from the video, each of which takes a certain amount of time, and so Philippe Moreau and I decided the best thing was to record my commentary on these two videos, which will be broadcast to you very soon, still on YouTube of course, on Facebook and on YouTube, thanks to Philippe, whom I thank in advance.
3:57 And so, in the meantime, I can't recommend enough—since it gives you time, precisely—that you watch these two videos in full. I had selected, for those—thinking always of those who don't have time—I had selected a few passages that seemed to me, the obligatory passages, as they say in music, right? When you talk about a basso obbligato, the ones that are unavoidable, as they'd say in newsrooms or on TV sets, but honestly, given the quality of the two documents, the best thing is, if you have a little time during this lockdown period, which should happen.
4:42 There, while digesting your champagne and your oysters and your foie gras, or your fast, you also have the right to watch these two videos, and the commentary will follow very soon. On the other hand, I'm of course keeping the second part, right? Let me quickly remind you of its outline.
Public and private Mnemosyne: Antigone as read by Hegel 5:16 The titles of this second part were: "The Preservation of Ancient Savagery in the Absolutely Modern." "Ancient savagery" and "absolutely modern," if you look at our Facebook page as announced, are in quotation marks because, of course, poetry lovers know this, they're two quotations from Rimbaud, right? One taken from a text I've often used for other problematics—the best texts are inexhaustible and serve very different problematics.
5:51 Apparently—the proof is that they're connected somewhere. So, this one is taken from "Movement." I'll come back to that text in a moment. As for "absolutely modern," it's in A Season in Hell that there's this famous conclusion by Rimbaud, after having renounced all his whims, all his nostalgias, in short, and above all all his attempts at escape, his escapism, which is the mark—one of the marks, as we've seen together, if you remember—one of the indelible marks of modernity: not to escape, but on the contrary, he says, one must be absolutely modern, and he goes on to say, the opposite of escape: to hold the ground gained.
6:38 Not "le pas gagné" [the step]—"le pas gagné" [the ground gained]. There. And then afterward, I went on to "Public and Private Mnemosyne," because the mechanisms, the contents, and the form of personal memory—I'm thinking of, we've seen enough texts on Proust, etc.—are not the same as those of collective memory, right? We saw a good example with the survey that was done among the European public—in this case, it was in France, at the end of the war, late 1944: which nation contributed most to the victory against Nazi barbarism? At the time, nearly 60% answer the Soviet Union, and 30 years later, right?
7:34 Hollywood's propaganda machine and The Longest Day and everything that followed—in short, and 30 years of Cold War playing their part, things get reversed; all of a sudden it's the United States that supposedly played the most important role. There, to show that memories, the mechanisms of collective memory, don't quite obey the same principle as those of private memory. So that explains a bit this title I'll come back to, "Public and Private Mnemosyne," by showing that the two are very hard to separate.
8:09 Try to separate, at any moment of our day, what is strictly private and what is strictly public. By the way, I'm still on the second point, public and private. By the way, the opposition between public and private—you might think I'm talking economics, the social sector, the nationalized sector versus MEDEF or the CAC 40—it goes further than that, if I may say so.
8:40 Because, you see, a work more than 1500 years old, Sophocles' Antigone, about which Hegel says several times in his work that it's a work quite exceptional in the history of art since it remains valid despite differences in context—we're no longer in a slave-owning society, etc., as the Greek world was. He says, it's...
9:10 of all... He even says—he lets out this cry in his Lectures on Aesthetics addressed to his students—of all the masterpieces of antiquity and the modern world, and I know them all—and realizing that this might sound boastful, right, this expression—he immediately adds: and everyone can and must know them. Implying: I'm here for that, with my course on aesthetics. Of all the masterpieces of antiquity and the modern world, and I know them all, Antigone seems to me the most perfect, the most soothing.
9:43 In her, right, femininity and virility are individualized in the clash of family and state. Well, after that I'll drop it, but there it is: Antigone doesn't want to leave her brother's corpse abandoned to wild birds and beasts of prey, facing Creon, who is absolutely determined, right, to punish this citizen who dared commit the gravest crime imaginable in the Greek world, right, that is, betraying his city in the middle of a war with the neighboring city by defecting to the enemy.
10:17 And there you have it, so it's really a conflict between the values of the private—but not of the individual, the private—here in the sense of the family, of the whole, of the clan, if that means something to you, of the whole, of the community, the family micro-community which is the sum of all those in whom the same blood flows, the same blood kinship, thus with a determination that is here natural, as opposed to the city, which unites instead, on a less natural political bond, I don't know, those who come to vote on the Agora or on the Pnyx, there.
Reading of Rimbaud's "Mouvement" 10:56 So you see that public and private—this conflict doesn't date from today, and it must matter a great deal, for Hegel himself to say that of all the masterpieces, in all the arts—painting, music—Antigone seems to him the most perfect, the most soothing. As the holidays approach, we'll emphasize that aspect. There, and I wanted to end with this—it inspires me to conclude with a little play on words—a "duty of memory" that we're bombarded with, right, especially for those who never apply the duty of memory to what it should apply to, forgetting, right, that is, losing the memory of their duty, precisely, there.
11:41 So, sorry for this rather laborious introduction, but it was mainly a matter of warning you about the change, and so I'll begin right away with "The Preservation of Ancient Savagery in the Absolutely Modern." As, let me remind you, this isn't the worst news, and I thank you for it—we owe you this good news—we've passed the 2000-subscriber mark since last time.
12:12 I even saw—it made me very happy—that quite a few of those who follow us congratulated themselves publicly about it; that made me happy. It means some of you are new, jumping on the moving train, who perhaps haven't followed the texts we've been working on within this research on anamnesis and amnesia, and a fortiori who haven't followed the last seven years of monthly videos, right, which we used to make not live this time, but in the hall of the Goscinny cultural center, in the 13th arrondissement, hoping we'll resume it soon, and so I am, forgive me for those who already know, obliged to recall—the text is so short—it's an illumination by Rimbaud, this very beautiful text called
13:22 "Movement," taken from Rimbaud's Illuminations, and I'll read it to you first without commentary; it's short, and you'll see that "ancient savagery" is mentioned in the very last lines of this fairly short text. Movement. The lacing movement on the bank of the river's falls, the abyss at the sternpost, the swiftness of the incline, the enormous sweep of the current, lead, through unheard-of lights and chemical novelty, the travelers surrounded by the whirlwinds of the Vale and the Stream.
14:07 They are the conquerors of the world seeking personal chemical fortune. Sport and comfort travel with them. They carry the education of races, of classes, and of beasts on this vessel of rest and vertigo in the diluvian light, on the terrible evening of studies. For, from the conversation amid the apparatus, the blood, the flowers, the fire, the jewels, agitated accounts on this fleeting deck, one sees, rolling like a dike beyond the hydraulic motive road, monstrous, endlessly lighting up their store of studies.
14:48 They, driven into harmonic ecstasy and the heroism of discovery. Amid the most surprising atmospheric accidents, a young couple isolates itself on the ark. Is it ancient savagery that one forgives and sings and takes a stand? Full stop. I'll now go back over this text for those who might not yet be quite accustomed to this language, of which Rimbaud said that to understand my word, it must flee and fly.
15:24 No, but it's much clearer than one might think. You've already guessed—even those discovering it for the first time can clearly see the role that modernity plays in the most material, most concrete sense, that of industry, of the industrial avant-garde. Rimbaud was a superb vagabond, and, from the Ardennes—he knew he was from the Ardennes—between Belgium, where he often went, and France, he passed through regions of heavy industrial concentration, and so there were sights like that which struck him, and there's a kind of hymn to the future that these technologies were preparing.
16:06 So it's rather moving to see this ragged kid on the roads, right, being amazed, dazzled—as we'd say today in more casual language—by a world completely sheltered from hardship, not a world of engineers at work. There, I'm giving you the context on purpose, as a voiceover, and you'll see that once this is well established, the text is actually much clearer than it seems.
A hydraulic power plant: Rimbaud's futurist hymn 16:39 So I'll begin. "The movement"—I'll start again, commenting as I go—"the lacing movement on the bank of the river's falls." In fact, it seems that the industrial unit that inspired him there, during a walk, was a hydraulic power plant. You'll see, the word "hydraulic" appears in the text further on. You know, I never interpret. I use strictly textual material. "The lacing movement on the bank of the river's falls, the abyss at the sternpost." The sternpost is the rudder, the steering system.
17:09 Here, it designates the two panels that the locks close, right, or cover the locks. "The abyss at the sternpost, the swiftness"—so the speed—"of the incline, the enormous sweep of the current"—to power the turbines, there does need to be current after all—all that is the subject group, as you'd say in grammar, right? I'll repeat one last time, the subject group: "the lacing movement on the bank of the river's falls, the abyss at the sternpost, the swiftness of the incline, the enormous sweep of the current," and here's the verb, "lead, through unheard-of lights"—here's the agent complement—"and chemical novelty, lead"—lead whom?
17:46 "The travelers surrounded by the whirlwinds of the Vale and the Stream." There's a vision of the future here, right? So, who are these travelers—is it a barge passing by? Is it those crossing the bridge, or the hydroelectric plant, it doesn't matter? But what's interesting is the term "chemical novelty," you see here, which proves how much I'm not interpreting—it really is about the technological avant-gardes of his era, right, lead—we're in the 1870s, you know, people didn't yet talk much about chemical industries at the time; he sees the emergence of this universe, of this industrial wonder, which seems truly opposite to today's degrowth and ecological anxieties.
18:36 I continue. "Lead, through unheard-of lights and chemical novelty, the travelers surrounded by the whirlwinds of the Vale and the Stream." And here begins a kind of hymn to this scientific community he's observing: "they are the conquerors of the world seeking"—second time—"chemical fortune, personal chemical fortune, sport and comfort travel with them." There's a slightly pathetic touch here, right, seeing this kid in dire straits on the roads—elsewhere he says sometimes in the morning his face was so worn out, right, after the fatigue, the lack of sleep, that some of those he passed perhaps didn't even see him.
19:24 And there, all of a sudden, those, up there, are people of the future, surrounded by what? Sport. Sport was still reserved for a social elite at the time; the term is English. "Sport and comfort travel with them." The "them," a distancing personal pronoun. It's not me, it's "them," it's another world. "They carry the education of races, of classes, and of beasts on this vessel."
19:54 So, listen, carrying beasts, classes, on a vessel—that should remind you of something. It sounds like Noah's Ark, right? It sounds like the flood. So, you'll say "there he goes, Pagani, interpreting again, whatever you say." Right? But look closely: if I say "flood," it's because the word, the epithet "diluvian," comes up. "They carry the education of races, of classes, and of beasts on this vessel of rest and vertigo in the diluvian light, on the terrible evening of studies."
20:28 after all, right? "For, from the conversation amid the apparatus," right, "the blood, the flowers, the fire, the jewels," "accounts," c-o-m-p-t-s, right? Mathematical, "agitated accounts on this fleeting deck. One sees, rolling like a dike beyond the hydraulic"—you see, that confirms we're looking at a power plant—"motive road, monstrous, endlessly lighting up."
20:58 What do we see, like this, with suspense, "their store of studies"? Technique and science—it's not them—always "them," over there, that other world within reach yet in fact so far away, "they, driven into harmonic ecstasy and the heroism of discovery." So here we are, in this respect, at the opposite pole from the subject we've been dealing with for some time. There's no allusion here whatsoever to the past. We're on the contrary in a kind of futuristic hymn.
The young couple and the meaning of savagery 21:28 And here comes the strange ending. "Amid the most surprising atmospheric accidents"—there's no poet who isn't attentive to atmospheric accidents, right? A sky clouding over, or on the contrary a clearing, a rainbow, a clearing, or as the magnificent Hölderlin puts it in a superb letter dating from the period right between his stays in Bordeaux and the onset of madness, a letter to Casimir Ulrich Böhlendorff—you may forget this, but if you want to look again at this letter, which is a marvel, he says at one point about light, its force when it comes, its force when it goes.
22:18 "Amid the most surprising atmospheric accidents, a young couple"—now here we're at the opposite pole from the futuristic vision; there's nothing more ancient, right, than—you know, passersby say when they see a young couple flirting on a bench, "lovers are alone in the world,"—it's the most human thing there is; fortunately we didn't have to wait for the modern world for that, right? "Amid the most surprising atmospheric accidents, a young couple isolates itself"—lovers alone in the world—"on the ark," and here comes the question, in dashes, look closely: "is it ancient savagery that one forgives?"
23:00 Question mark. And without waiting for the answer, the ending comes quickly: "and sings and takes a stand." So this young couple sings and takes a stand. It's this conjunction, within the same fairly short text, of a dimension opposite to the one we've dealt with up to now—that of the past—in a text almost entirely oriented toward the future, and even toward the futuristic, in the most anticipatory, most futuristic sense, in the sense that filmmakers give to that word—2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris.
23:46 Fiction films, they used to say in the 50s, of anticipation, a bit later, "Space," as you'd say, since Star Trek and the like—but that's more your generation than mine—opposite to the dimension of memory, opposite to that "tender heart" Baudelaire speaks of in "Harmonie du soir," which turns its back on the future that's coming, there, toward night, toward the vast black void, since we're at dusk—if we let the clock run, we'll fall into the vast black void—which turns its back and, in short, to quote Baudelaire, how better to put it, a tender heart which hates the vast black void, and from the luminous past, you see, it turns its back on the future, and from the luminous past, gathers every trace.
24:44 It's as if he had unrolled, in a single line, the program of the thousands of pages Proust would devote to gathering the slightest trace of the apparently lost time, which, thanks to Proust's pen—but we'll get to that—became a time regained. So, there, almost the entire text is in this dimension of the future. So, in principle, it's outside the program we've been dealing with for quite some time now, throughout this whole cycle, which closes today.
25:19 And then, there, the most distant past suddenly surges up. "Is it ancient savagery?" So let's be clear, "savagery" doesn't mean everything here—not the savage who devours his victims raw, that's not the barbarian. Look, "a young couple"—it's tender, it's not that at all. It's "savage" in the etymological sense, the one who saves himself, who is quite right to save himself when you see what the civilized did to them, right, upon landing.
25:54 There, let's not forget that, if you look closely, the true Latin term for slave is "servus," which gives "servant"—"servus," the one who was preserved, who was not executed and eliminated. So there, it's not at all the savage as a threat, but on the contrary, a precarious, vulnerable savagery, right, one that didn't withstand more civilized, better-equipped, better-outfitted forces—"is it ancient savagery that one forgives."
26:33 so, that's perhaps the most mysterious term, as if, in this futuristic world, the recollection of our ancient savagery—because between us, come on, a young couple, there, it's true, precisely because feeling alone in the world, they touch, there's a physical bond, something animal, something more archaic—and all the better, that's what's touching—it's not a young couple isolating itself on the ark that's a love correspondence between two beings separated by continents or by seas.
27:16 "I wished to be separated from him by seas," said poor Phèdre. So there's something overwhelming here, right? It's as if there were almost a—as if one almost had to forgive this apparent slight indecency of bringing forth our old companionship with our natural and animal origins in the world that is most opposite, in the most sophisticated one, in the "chemical novelty," right?
Tarkovsky's Solaris and Kubrick's 2001 27:49 In the stocks of studies along the hydraulic motive route, you see, as if it weren't meant to go together. And precisely, since I was alluding to things that might seem more familiar to some of you, I'm thinking of cinema, of two successes, two superb achievements of what's called anticipation film, but which couldn't be more opposed, both aesthetically and philosophically and in feeling, whatever you want to call it, namely Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky's Solaris. What's interesting—we had seen this for a completely different purpose—is that just as the rocket, the Soviet space station in Solaris has a somewhat, I won't say grimy, but an almost rural, rustic side—my German father-in-law used to operate, may the earth rest lightly on him, he told me this after his return from Moscow, he'd been struck, as a German, by how clean Moscow was, and he said yes, we took a Soviet plane which was a bit basic,
29:01 well, he had found a word—since he was a former Luftwaffe pilot—there you go, the space station is a bit neglected, they'd give it a sweep here and there, the astronauts wear sweaters—the cosmonauts, sorry, you know how it is with the cosmonauts in the Soviet Union—and on the astronauts' side, the American ones, whereas there's nothing smoother, more Germano-American, more spotless than Kubrick's station, isn't there?
29:31 Look at the scene where we see the coffins—well, they're not coffins, they're not dead, they're in cryogenics, right?—the subjects who are in the ice, but you'd think they'd been polished just five minutes before the film began, to the point where you could see yourself reflected in each one, to borrow a trivial advertising slogan. So when I speak of ancient savagery, what must be forgiven, perhaps, is that it necessarily clashes with the body, with everything organic, everything ancient, primitive.
30:13 that was the word my German father-in-law had chosen to characterize the Soviet plane, etwas primitiv, forgetting that it was nonetheless the Soviets who first reached escape velocity, allowing an object to be put into orbit around the Earth, with the first Sputnik—as if something as innocent as a young couple, as he says, a couple of young lovers, no longer had any place in the world of the future, which would be disturbing.
30:47 That's the case in 2001: A Space Odyssey. You could search the whole film for a love story—there isn't a single one, from beginning to end. The film is a masterpiece, that's not the question. There's simply none at all. Whereas in the Soviet film, I mean, there are the appearances and disappearances of a haunting female figure. So, this ancient savagery, mysterious. Well, Rimbaud, in this very short text—but what a lesson in wisdom, in maturity, from this kid who isn't even 19 when he writes this—shows us here, or allows us to take stock of our entire cycle on memory.
Anamnesis or forgetting: fidelity to shared precariousness 31:32 Because I never got to the end, I never told you, finally, in answer to the question we asked at the start: is it better to make a great effort of anamnesis, to dig, dig into our memory until we reach the most distant memories, the primal scenes, the disturbing ones? Or, as Nietzsche proposed, to cut off the head of this anamnestic effort—I say cut off the head because there's the image of the serpent whose head must be bitten off and spat far away, right?
32:03 In Zarathustra, and on the contrary, that there's nothing healthier than a certain dose of forgetting, because if we had to remember everything that had ever happened to us at every moment, we would lose heart—heart in the sense of courage, that's the old meaning. There you go, we haven't answered. There, I've laid out the problem, haven't I? Must we go all the way, that is, go back, return to our common etymology, to what makes all human society a community?
32:39 Here, for once, I'm not opposing community and society. I am, of course, opposing society to the very restricted, exclusive and dangerous community of communitarianism—community in particularity, in the illusion of believing itself particular. Let me take the opportunity to say, it's extraordinary, when you get societies that boast of their identity to express what's unique about them, they say exactly what every community says.
33:09 I don't know, but with us, we have a sense of hospitality, and we have a pride—well anyway, let's not get worked up. So, no, it's as if all humanity became a community again the moment each of us, pursuing our anamnesis as far back as possible, acts out of fidelity. You see, I'm reviewing everything we've said: the most faithful one is the one whose memory goes back the furthest, isn't it? Back to what? Back to what we all were upon arriving in the world, right?
33:40 That is, a small squalling and barely viable animal, one who wouldn't survive on its own if there weren't the relay of an already-equipped community, whether that of Neanderthal, of the Middle Ages, or of Manhattan, Tokyo or Shanghai now, it doesn't matter—recognizing in each of us this precariousness, not repressing it, not encasing ourselves in shells of defense, intellectual, ideological armor, protecting ourselves, having barrier gestures against everything that might threaten this initial fragility, to which we must remain faithful.
Shells and ideological protective barriers 34:29 Here I'll make a little philosophical development. I just spoke of a shell. There's a beautiful dialectic around this term. It's a metaphor I'm using, since I'm speaking here of intellectual barrier gestures, ideological barriers. And God knows how much this matters in ideology, as much as at the material level—the need to protect oneself against a danger, against a threat. Think of all the efforts made in Nazi propaganda to persuade the German people that Judeo-Bolshevism was a mortal threat to every German, right?
35:08 I do mean Judeo-Bolshevism, the Jew, the Communist, because all of that is the same breed in the mouth of a Nazi, isn't it? We know it all comes from the East, that's where it stems from—whether it's Marx, Jesus, or the ghettos of Berlin or Leipzig. So what are we revisiting here? I'm saying there can be barrier gestures in ideological discourse too, protecting oneself—and remember that chorale composed by Luther, Luther himself, the one with which German national sentiment begins, and superbly so, by opposing the papal dictatorship over Europe at that time, so as not to forget.
36:07 Even if, in good German fashion—may my German friends forgive me, but they know I'm more Germanophile than many Germans—it remains that after fighting for Germany's independence from the Vatican, he then unleashed violence, he asked the Lord to crush the peasant revolts, the peasants who were beginning to take this movement of emancipation seriously, and we clearly saw here all the ambiguity—but that's German history, let's leave it there; I admire Luther as much as I see what's disturbing about him.
36:48 Why am I talking about this? Because I told you he composed a chorale whose title was, well, 'I return to my barriers, my barrier gestures.' 'Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.' Translation: 'Our God is a citadel,' or 'a fortress,' depending on the translation, an impregnable one. You see, already there are the Panzer divisions, the armor, the shell. No, no, I'm not being disorderly. There's continuity in what I'm saying, I'm trying.
37:19 And don't forget that I arrived at the shell, at the armor, at the barrier gesture, starting from the fragility of our common ancient savagery, of that bare flesh, which is what lovers seek and which precisely seeks the protection of walls, of sheets, of the bed, of anonymity, of darkness. I'll come back to this because it's the whole problem of the relationship between the public and the private. You know how much I favor restoring everything that was seized from collective property, everything that was nationalized—the banks, the railways, because the railways still are, in part, but well, let's say, electricity, the steelworks, not to mention those, long ago.
Defending a private sphere: the two poles 38:10 And yet I also defend the idea that there must remain a private sphere. Do you see the dialectic? When Hegel said that the opposition between Antigone and Creon is the most highly tragic ethical opposition, running through all the arts and all times, we begin to understand why this work fascinates him from the beginning to the end of his work, don't we? I say this because he translated Sophocles' Antigone at age 15, in high school, like the good little Hellenist he was, like all of them were, and in his last works, including The Philosophy of Right, his political testament, he returns once again to what he calls one of the most sublime illustrations of the opposition between family and state, between public and private.
39:02 Yes, there must be a private sphere, everyone will agree—I mean, I'm for nationalization, but not of your toothbrush, nor of your girlfriend, and I address myself to your girlfriends too, it's not a matter of nationalizing your boyfriend either. Come on, let's be serious, you see, it's this balance we're working on for my conclusion to this cycle on memory, isn't it? Memory must go back to the most ancient, to our vulnerability, to our ancient savagery, and at the same time, it's no accident that this ancient savagery is introduced by Rimbaud as the fall—the fall of what?
39:48 of a poem entirely devoted to that fabulous promise contained in his vision of the future, before what was supposed to be a power plant that revealed itself along his path. That's what I wanted to lay out with you, the two poles of this problematic. The most ancient, our ancient savagery, vulnerable as an oyster with its shell removed, which still stirs—it's almost New Year's Eve, forgive me, my example is a bit sadistic, but I mean, you know, when you put vinegar or lemon on them, some oysters keep stirring, it's terrible, you see how vulnerable that flesh is.
40:32 And I'll come back to sadism in a moment, it's no accident, but slowly, don't worry. And that's one first pole, this vulnerable ancient savagery, which took millennia upon millennia of history to devise the means to protect itself from all external, even internal, aggression—that's the whole field of psychoanalysis, isn't it? And the other pole is modernity, praxis, collective action, provided of course that we recover, that we reappropriate the great means of production and exchange—you see, we're no longer quite in poetry here, and yet it's so linked, we see it clearly here with Rimbaud's text, which is a hymn to what was most developed in the praxis of his time, and which becomes the occasion for a poetic summit.
Back to Phèdre: Aricie's sadistic drive 41:30 So why did I make this apparently sadistic little allusion to my oysters wriggling under the acid of shallot, vinegar and/or lemon? It's because in my mail, including personal mail, on my personal inbox, someone said, exaggerating somewhat, that Phèdre is nonetheless the least guilty—I'm going back a bit to last time, Phèdre the least guilty, in Racine's tragedy—well, but what about little Aricie, it's terrible, she's condemned by that bastard Theseus, dictator of the city, she, the last survivor of a family Theseus exterminated—well, exterminated all the male offspring—the last survivor, and on top of that, so that she can't produce offspring, he forbids any man from approaching her, posting guards around her residence, right?
42:24 And for once she has a love, and now that love is going to be killed by Theseus's tutelary gods, by the sea monster risen from the ocean at Neptune's command, whom Theseus asked to avenge him against his son. Now, I'd like—I'm opening a small parenthesis in my initial remarks—on a word I'll suspend for a moment; let me return to the tragedy of Phèdre to read a passage I hadn't read at all, the passage where Aricie, the little innocent whom I'm told I take too lightly, isn't it?
43:05 And this Cinderella—I often compare her to Cinderella because she has known nothing but misfortune, and suddenly the prince himself, the most envied prince of the city, Theseus's son, is in love with her. Right? But she's learning this from her confidante, and she doesn't believe it, does she? Because he doesn't have the reputation of being interested in women, this Hippolytus—I won't go over all that. And here's what her confidante tells her—I'll just read the last words of the confidante: 'From your very first glances I saw his eyes, which vainly sought to avoid you, and already full of languor, could not leave you. The name of lover may perhaps offend his pride, but his eyes have it, even if his speech does not.'
43:52 Aricie's reply: 'My heart, dear Ismène, eagerly listens to a discourse which perhaps has little foundation'—you can see Cinderella not believing it, it's a dream—'O you who know me, did it seem credible to you that the sad plaything of a pitiless fate'—so there she is proving my critics right, she really is the unhappiest, how could I say she's guilty of anything—'that the sad plaything of a pitiless fate, a heart ever nourished on bitterness and tears, should come to know love and its mad sorrows? I remain of the blood of a king, noble son of the earth, I alone escaped the fury of war, I lost in the flower of their youth six brothers exterminated by Theseus—six brothers, what hope for an illustrious house—the sword mowed down all, and the moistened earth drank reluctantly the blood of the sons of Erechtheus. You know that since their death a severe law forbids all Greeks to sigh for me; they fear that a sister's rash flames might one day rekindle their brothers' ashes. But you know, you also know well'
45:02 'with what disdainful eye I regarded that concern of a suspicious conqueror'—wait, because this seems a bit obscure, but here suddenly we learn that it actually suits her that Theseus—she has her little proud-young-woman side, doesn't she—men are forbidden to approach me, but am I running after men? 'You know that ever opposed to love, I often gave thanks to unjust Theseus'—see the oxymoron—'whose fortunate severity seconded my scorn.' So we learn that she's a bit like Hippolytus—Hippolytus is very intimidated by the feminine world, he flees it and prefers hunting and the forests, doesn't he, to the court, to the pompous tumult of Athens and the court—and she's a bit the same way about boys. Yet one might think she'd be entitled, in her solitude, to be a bit more surrounded, and instead she says, 'You know that ever opposed to love—'
46:12 here's another one who scorns Venus, doesn't she—'I often gave thanks to unjust Theseus, whose fortunate severity seconded my scorn. My eyes—then my eyes had not yet seen his son'—just as, the very first time, Hippolytus falls in love, as if by chance, with the only woman he's forbidden to approach, by his own father's order—I note, for those who think I'm just interpreting, that this is right there in the text, in the myth, in the people's poem—and she, in a completely parallel way, says she has ever been opposed to love; this is the first time she's felt anything for a boy. But then what does she like, what won her over? Look closely at the innocent one: 'My eyes—then my eyes had not yet seen his son, not that by the eyes alone, basely enchanted, I love in him his beauty, his so-vaunted grace'—a little coquettish side beginning to appear here—but no, it's not because he's good-looking, fine, I mean, fine, there are plenty of good-looking men, so look: 'not that by the eyes alone, basely enchanted, I—here I—love in him his beauty, his so-vaunted grace—'
47:22 'a gift with which nature wished to honor him'—one he himself scorns and even seems to ignore—'I love, I prize in him nobler riches, his father's virtues, and none of his weaknesses. I love, I confess it, that generous pride'—so here she is in love with a man, and what she loves about him is that he doesn't love women—it's quite a problem, isn't it, sacred Racine—'I love, I prize in him nobler riches, his father's virtues, and none of his weaknesses. I love, I confess it, that generous pride which never yet has bent beneath love's yoke'—watch, we're imagining Hippolytus bending a knee, I'm showing you that so far there's nothing criminal in what she says, even if there's a slightly more coquettish side than we thought, a bit less victim, a bit less Cinderella—but here suddenly a sadistic component appears, and I'm not exaggerating, watch, watch what comes next: she's already making him bend a knee—'I confess it, I love, I confess it, that generous pride which never yet has bent beneath love's yoke.'
48:32 'Phèdre in vain gloried in Theseus's sighs; I am prouder, and shun the easy glory of wresting homage offered to a thousand others'—there, I'm not the kind of woman who falls for a man other women love—that's hubris, that's hubris, a pride that puts the gods on alert—'for me I am prouder,' she says it, yes, I'm not interpreting—'and shun the easy glory of wresting homage offered to a thousand others, and of entering a heart open on every side, but of making bend'—second time—'but of making bend an inflexible courage, to be the first, you see, to have the upper hand over Hippolytus—but of making bend an inflexible courage, of bringing pain into an unfeeling soul'—when I say there's a sadistic drive, you see I'm being strictly literal, great texts don't need to be read between the lines, everything important is right there in the lines—that's what great writers are; mediocre writers
49:42 are the ones who constantly demand that we search between the lines for hidden meanings, isn't that so? 'But of making bend an inflexible courage, of bringing pain into an unfeeling soul, of chaining a captive'—there, now she's putting him in chains—'of chaining a captive amazed at his own fetters'—'étonné,' by the way, at the time also meant thunderstruck—'vainly mutinous against a yoke that pleases him—that is what I want, that is what irks me—to disarm Hercules would cost less than to disarm Hippolytus'—so this means the line is extraordinary, excuse me, I accidentally triggered an automatic recording of some music—so disarm, you know, disarming a man, no doubt to bring him back to bare flesh, to ancient savagery—there, I'm closing my little Racinian parenthesis; it was to show you that when I spoke of
50:53 the oyster wriggling under the acid, I can't help thinking of Aricie's aggressiveness, which goes so far as to say, that is what I want, that is what irks me, to disarm Hercules would cost less than to disarm Hippolytus—that foreshadows a strange combat, disarming someone harder to disarm than Heracles, can you imagine? So I return to my polarity—ancient savagery, surrounded by danger, vulnerable, barely viable—I won't go back over the anthropological foundation, though I will a little, because once again some people are jumping on the train mid-journey and it's too important to pass over entirely in silence, but I'll summarize it very quickly—all the physiologists, the anatomists and so on, clearly show that the human species is generically premature, in addition to the prematurity of this or that individual born a bit early, or even very early—I know, I know someone born at six months who's doing perfectly well
Prematurity of the species and founding heroes found abandoned 52:04 now, moreover, the human species is premature in a general way, and this is the consequence of a dramatic moment in evolution when the shift from the quadruped that we all once were, when we were not yet men, when we were still apes or, to be more cautious and less reductive, primates—when the shift from quadrupedalism to bipedalism, by narrowing the pelvic bones, made pregnancy difficult—something the Old Testament religion clearly perceived when it says 'in pain you shall bring forth children,' as if this were, this time, to atone for a fault, whereas it isn't a fault at all, it's a chance event of evolution, it doesn't pursue any intelligent design, whatever certain die-hard materialists may think—and so this general prematurity is very important, because it shows
53:14 that the human species would not have been viable without a social relay—if man is the political animal (politikon), that's why I'm dwelling on this a bit, we must always remember it, if the relation to the other, which is not something humans alone share in the animal world—there are social animals, not all animal species are social, far from it, but some are, and some are even at a level of integration like bees or ants, I don't need to draw you a picture, or dolphins, which have an extremely sophisticated communication system, you know that of course, it's not a language, but it's an extremely refined communication system—since that's not today's subject I won't go back over the abyssal differences separating animal communication from human language, which is not merely a difference of degree, far from it—so, if there weren't the relay of society waiting for the human infant the moment it comes into the world, the moment it's thrown into the world in its distress—I'll extend my sentence by leaving it suspended
54:24 to point out to you that all the founding heroes, in traditions as different as the Hebraic tradition—I'm thinking of Moses, found in a basket floating on the waters of the Nile—I'm thinking of Oedipus, whom we'll discuss again shortly, found with pierced feet, which is where his name comes from, Oedipous, bound, tied up—the king of Thebes, to whom it had been predicted he would have a son who would kill him, asked a shepherd to take the child into the forest, so he'd never hear of him again; the shepherd didn't have the heart to slit the infant's throat, he left him there, and he was found, like Moses, not in the water but in the wilderness, the kind that shows no mercy—and Siegfried, in the more Nordic, more Germanic mythology, whose mother gave birth under the most dramatic conditions, dying as she brought him into the world, and who lay squalling a few steps from the dwelling
55:34 of the blacksmith of the Nibelung, Mime, who raised him so that one day Siegfried would help him recover the Nibelung's treasure—but that's another story, which we'll soon see, as you know. So each time, you see, the founding hero is found—that means one cannot trace his genealogy, tell you who his parents are; to be a founder, one must not be founded, otherwise we're in an endless chain—it's interesting to note that in passing. Now, since I've mentioned Oedipus, I'm moving toward Oedipus as embodying the one who seems to prove Nietzsche most right, the one who should never have made this effort of anamnesis, right, because I challenge you to find a whodunit as well constructed as Sophocles' story—even Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, however cleverly conceived, has the victim—
Oedipus Rex: the investigation of the guilty man and objective morality 56:44 too bad for those who haven't read it, but I'll say it—the victim, sorry, the culprit, you see my slip—the culprit is among those who are already dead before the story begins, so it's all the more difficult to find, since one rarely looks for the culprit among the dead—so here it's even better, isn't it, since it's the culprit himself who conducts the investigation, quite openly and in all good faith, if I may say so—that's where all the ambiguity lies—I remind you that no sooner had he entered Thebes as an adult—having survived, found by another shepherd, raised by another king, Polybus, I'll go quickly—and very tormented since his youth by mockery that he didn't resemble his parents, that he was a foreigner and so on, he had doubts about his origins and he went to consult
57:54 as the Greeks often did when they had a problem, he went to consult the wisest source in the Greek world, the Oracle at Delphi, and you know the oracle never answers the question put to it directly—in this case Oedipus asked, who are my parents, and the oracle replied, you will marry your mother and kill your father—something so appalling, so appalling, a double monstrous crime bordering on lewdness, that Oedipus decides never to return, to give the lie to the oracle, never to return to those he believes are his natural parents, and he heads, inevitably, toward Thebes, where his real parents are, and there he crosses paths with the man he doesn't know is his father, at a crossroads between Daulis and Delphi, and there's a kind of dispute over right of way, the great southern, Mediterranean heat, an angry outburst, and Oedipus, enraged, strikes down with one sword blow the man he doesn't know is his father—so now all he has to do is enter Thebes in triumph, since he's ridding
59:04 Thebes of the scourge blocking the road, the Sphinx, since Oedipus is the one who freed us from the Sphinx, the one who killed us when we couldn't solve his riddles, but who dies if his riddles are answered—the Sphinx—and of course, to thank him for freeing them from this monster, the city offers him the queen, the widow, that is, the woman he doesn't know is his mother. So the prophecy comes true. Now, immediately, some time after he begins to reign—because there could have been a slip, after all, no one is aware—the plague descends on Thebes. That's the whole problem of Crime and Punishment, we might say, on the Dostoevsky side—in ancient morality, in ancient ethics, objective morality, as they say in Hegel, I mean punishment is immanent to the crime, intention matters little, it's no use saying, but I didn't do it on purpose, but I didn't know—that's no use; that's modern, Christian morality, which we can understand, which seems more just to us—but someone who enters a sacred grove by mistake because he was looking for mushrooms, I'm just making things up, I mean
1:00:14 no matter how much he protests, in the ancient world—ah, but I didn't do it on purpose, I didn't know it was a sacred grove—he deserves death, period, I mean whatever was in his mind doesn't matter, it's the act in its objectivity, that's objective morality, and Hegel says this seems barbaric to us, but it's a less developed morality than ours, though more courageous. It's interesting because ours may be more just, but it opens the door to every hypocrisy, all you have to do is say, well, you know I never meant to—and as the expression, which knows so much, puts it so well: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So, once again, Oedipus conducts the inquiry; what he's told by the consulted Oracle of Delphi, on how to rid the city of this scourge, the plague ravaging Thebes and wreaking havoc—you see, I'm passing from one pandemic to another—the oracle says the plague will not vanish until the murderer of Laius is found and punished, and bang, suddenly it points back to the murder
1:01:24 of his father—which no one knows is his father, and above all no one knows that he's the one who killed him; it happened somewhere at a crossroads, out on the roads, far from all eyes; he himself didn't know he was dealing with Laius, the king of Thebes. So he conducts the investigation, and he even overdoes it—Hölderlin, who made an admirable translation, or rather above all a commentary, his last text, roughly, before his madness, is a philosophical-poetic essay of staggering density called Remarks on the Translation of Oedipus and Antigone—but here I'm thinking of Oedipus—says very well that Oedipus interprets the oracle's word too infinitely, I quote; he could be content, like the people of the city, to say, take measures, make sacrifices, try to appease the gods; no, he goes further, demanding that every household be searched, that the house of whoever refuses to give a name or a clue that might lead to the culprit be razed.
1:02:34 You see, he overdoes it, he even has a hubris in the inquiry, as the Anglo-Saxons would say, in the way he conducts the investigation, doesn't he—and you know what the terrible result is, so terrible that when he learns the terrible truth from the very man he found in the forest, the old man he found in the forest, who tells him, you get your name from the fact that your feet were pierced by cords, and Oedipus replies, 'terrible insult inherited from my swaddling clothes'—you see, we return to primal savagery, the swaddling clothes, when he was still in the infant's wrappings—so I'll go quickly because it's a story everyone knows up to this point, but the first thing he does is tear out his own eyes—but what depth, everything is in this myth—what use are my eyes to me now, since I trained them everywhere, I searched with my eyes everywhere on the outside, I looked outside, for eyes
Reading of the ending of Oedipus at Colonus 1:03:44 are made for seeing the outside, not for answering the oracle whose motto is inscribed on the pediment of the temple at Delphi, isn't it—know thyself. It's not that he had forgotten the oracle—had he remembered it, he would have looked for the culprit within. So he tears out his eyes, which have served him for nothing, and since then, as you know—that's why we'll come to my conclusion, that's why I'll go rather quickly—he wanders from city to city, enduring the worst punishment for a Greek; the Greeks held the city so sacred that the worst thing for them wasn't death, it was being condemned to be banished from every city, to wander from city to city—and that's how this appalling tragedy called Oedipus Rex ends tragically. But Sophocles wrote, after Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus—Colonus is a small suburb of Athens—so, years and years after what I've just told you, old Oedipus, who has for years wandered leaning his arm on his daughter Ismene, who is his eyes, his ears, and his senses, who tells him, careful here, lift your foot, there are stones, and so on.
1:04:54 who took the place of it in his eyes, his wandering leads him — as chance arranges things well — to the gates of Athens, over which Theseus reigns at that moment; there he is again, you see, and behold Theseus, in his generosity — alone among all the kings of the small Greek cities — decides to put an end to poor Oedipus's sufferings, and finally grants, agrees to Oedipus's request, made through his daughter and by himself, namely that he asks to be able to die on that land, on the land of Athens, and that if he is allowed to, this will bring happiness to the city — I'm summarizing all this for you — why?
1:05:43 To tell you that you won't get my factual conclusion — but yes, here's the surprise, we can't — you want us to go all the way through with the anamnesis — what happened, what is the final episode of Oedipus's life, how does it end, happy ending or terrifying? Well look, here is the end of the sequel to Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus. We learn — here — Oedipus moves away with two people who guide him toward the place reserved for him to die, you see, he has even left, he made his heartbreaking farewells to his daughter, and the chorus makes this comment: 'If it is permitted for me to implore you, O queen of the dark empire' — this refers to Proserpine — 'and you, Pluto, who reign over the shades, I beg you to grant this stranger a gentle and peaceful death on the banks of the Styx, the river that surrounds the underworld, in the dark abode that receives us all, after so much undeserved misfortune' — you see that the chorus takes pity.
1:06:53 'It would be just that fortune' — that is, destiny, here fortune — 'grant you its favors, infernal divinities, and you, indomitable monster' — referring to Cerberus — 'you untamable monster who, lying at the gates of the underworld, let out from the depths of your lair horrible howls, vigilant guardian, and you, daughter of the earth and of Tartarus, open free access to this old man ready to descend to the dark abode, I beg you, you who sleep an eternal sleep in the depths of the earth.' There's the chorus. The messenger then returns — so we don't see how Oedipus ended, which is why I tell you I couldn't answer you — the messenger returns and says this — you will hear it as you wish — 'Citizens, I can inform you in a few words that Oedipus is dead, but what happened does not amount to a simple account, and the details of it are long.' The chorus: 'So he is dead, the unfortunate one?' The messenger: 'He has ended his life, ever sorrowful.' The chorus: 'In what manner?'
1:08:03 'No doubt with divine assistance' — and here I read you the long answer, here is the end of Oedipus's destiny — 'Yes, and the thing is truly marvelous' — in the sense of prodigy, of supernatural — 'and the thing is truly marvelous. You saw yourselves how he left this place: without a guide, he himself guided us. Arriving at the edge of this chasm that rests on bronze foundations, he stopped at the gates of the underworld, at one of the many paths that divide the road, near a deep cavern where the memory of the eternal fidelity of Theseus and Pirithous survives. There he sat between the Thoricean rock, a wild pear tree, and a stone tomb. Then he stripped off his sorrowful garments and, calling his daughters, told them to bring him running water for the bath and the libations' — the toilette of the condemned man, if you will — 'they went to the hill of fertile Ceres' — that's the origin of the word 'cereals,' goddess of agriculture — 'they went to the hill of fertile Ceres and soon carried out their father's orders. They returned to purify him and clothe him' — again
1:09:13 the work of women, you'll notice — 'of the dead man — and to clothe him in a new robe, in accordance with the sacred rite. When his wishes were fulfilled and all was accomplished, the god of the underworld thundered. At this sound the young girls trembled and, falling at their father's knees, they shed tears and did not stop their sobbing. But he, hearing this fateful sound, pressed them in his arms and said to them: My children, from this day you no longer have a father, all is finished for me; henceforth you will no longer have to give me the care which, I know, must have been painful, but one word rewards you for your pains: no one loved you more than I did. When you no longer have me, the rest of your life will be peaceful. At these words, all held each other embraced, wept and gave way to sobs. However the lamentations ceased, and to these intense outbursts a good silence had succeeded, when suddenly a voice whose sound freezes us with dread, the voice of a god, made itself heard. It called Oedipus, it cried: Oedipus, what are you waiting for?
1:10:13 Come, you are delaying too long. And he, feeling himself called by a god, had Theseus approach and said to him: Beloved prince, give me your hand as a pledge of inviolable faith, and you, my daughters, join yours to his; promise never to consent to abandon them and to do everything your kindness inspires for their happiness. Theseus, too noble to shed tears, makes the oath. Then Oedipus, touching his daughters with a failing hand: My children, he says, you must have the courage to move away from this place; it is not permitted for you to see or hear the rest — that's what I'm telling you, isn't it, you who wanted to know the ending — it is not permitted for you to see or hear the rest, nor for me either to be witness to what must happen — so the primal scene, you see, sends us back to a final scene that escapes us. At these words we all obeyed, and we followed those young girls, their faces bathed in tears. A short distance away we dared to look back: Oedipus had disappeared. Theseus remained alone, holding his hand before his eyes as if in the presence of a terrible spectacle. It's interesting, you see — Orpheus should never have turned around.
1:11:23 To look back — that's how he lost Eurydice. And as for Lot's wives, you know, in the Bible, when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by heavenly fire, they were told above all: don't turn back. Some have even said that this proves it was an atomic attack — you shouldn't look at the flash, right, don't turn back — and Lot's wives, who turned back, were changed into pillars of salt. Well, it's the same here: Theseus, you see, 'Theseus remained alone, holding his hand before his eyes as if in the presence of a terrible spectacle he could not bear to witness. Soon we saw the great Theseus himself prostrate himself and worship both the earth and divine Olympus. The kind of death that carried off Oedipus — listen carefully — is unknown to any other mortal.' That's not it, that's not what killed him, but we know what it wasn't: 'it is neither the thunderbolt of the gods that struck him, nor a violent storm that engulfed him; no doubt some god carried him off to the underworld, where the earth will have gently opened to receive him.'
1:12:33 'In its dark abysses he expired' — listen carefully — 'without effort, without pain, and in a wholly marvelous manner. Those who would find my account hard to believe, I would not find them themselves in their right mind.' There, that's how I come back to the polarity that Rimbaud has guided us to, but first I ask Philippe to find out what time it is, what duration, sorry — very good, perfect, so after an hour ten — so are there any questions for now? No? Very good. So I return to Rimbaud's text and its polarity; you see that of the two poles, since it's an hour ten, I have time to read it to you because I had prepared it but I was wondering if I'd have the time — so this comes at a very good moment, we saw
Remembrance and music as false future 1:13:43 for a long time in our cycle on memory, anamnesis — I'm summarizing everything — texts somewhat enclosed in the past, texts on remembrance, on memory, and 'Harmonie du soir' by Baudelaire, right, and Proust's admirable passages are very beautiful, but somehow, you see, they are all enclosed in a valley, a fracture, a fault line of the past — that's perhaps what sometimes makes the pleasure of memory, because the time of memory is a false time, it's a false future — and here I think of music, you see, it's an interesting problematic — perhaps one of the most profound sentences of Lévi-Strauss, and God knows if I criticize — if I criticize his neo-Kantianism, not his Kantianism, I have nothing to say against Kantianism, but his neo-Kantianism — but on the other hand, when he speaks of music, which he knows well, he said this magnificent sentence when he justified the fact that he saw a parallel between music and myths, that they obey the same logic
1:14:53 namely, everything happens as if — I quote him — music, as much as myth, only entered time in order to better leave it — to leave time is to pass into eternity, being nonetheless important problematics. Indeed, Mozart said: when I compose, when I start composing a work, I already know what its last note will be — so it's not a real future, it's not the true, formidable future, the one where you never know how it will turn out. There is a very beautiful passage in Victor Hugo, you know, when Napoleon finally has a son, finally has an heir with the Austrian woman, with Marie-Louise, in 1811, 'at the time when countless souls waited, prostrate in the shadow, for heaven to say yes' — that's Hugo — and Napoleon suddenly cries out: 'The future! The future is mine!' — that's it, I'm going to have a dynasty like the ancient sovereigns, I, descendant of a little Corsican who not so long ago, in terms of generations, was meant to be a shepherd
1:16:03 and now I'm going to join the Bourbons, the Habsburgs, and others — and Hugo answers in the poem: no, the future belongs to no one, Sire, the future belongs to God. The true future, the real future — we don't know; there is always what Parmenides called the tooth of chance, which means, you know, some go through an entire war and come back unscathed, and others kill themselves falling on the edge of a sidewalk — everyone knows that, right? So of course, time flows within a symphony, within a concerto, within a song, of course within a blues, there is time that flows that a clock can measure, but for the listener — and what I'm going to say is all the more true when the listener knows the music well, and you understand why we never appreciate a piece of music as much as when we have already heard it well and can anticipate what's coming — when I tell you that we hear what we expect, we clearly see there that this is not a real future. So somehow, taking refuge in a past, in the music of the past
1:17:14 — I've just summarized a bit what I said — can also have something deadly about it, it's a way of turning one's back. When Baudelaire says 'a tender heart which hates the vast black void of the future, gathers from the luminous past all its remains' — that means he no longer expects anything from the future, for him whatever is future holds no perspective other than a vast black void. Go explain that to a young generation — mind you, that's a bit what we've been telling them for some time now, for quite a few generations, when we say: well, our regime, bourgeois representative parliamentary democracy — you think I'm losing my thread — it's perhaps not the perfect regime, it has flaws, but still, all the others are worse. Nice for a younger generation: we're heading for disaster but there's no other solution. No, no — we must find a future again, that's why I used Rimbaud here and why I'm going to conclude with him, with another text taken from the Illuminations, titled 'Génie' — not in the romantic sense, the superb genius, the superman, but in the sense, you see, of an intermediate term between the natural and the supernatural.
Reading of Rimbaud's "Génie" 1:18:24 And this text — I'm not the first to remark it — is no doubt the most beautiful self-portrait a poet has ever made of himself, right, even though he speaks of it in the third person, and perhaps even Rimbaud, after all, wasn't thinking of himself, but it's so much him — but judge for yourselves rather, this admirable text, so I'll read it to you, as it's also short, shorter than the previous one — I'll read it straight through first — 'Génie': it is in fact the last poem that closes the collection of the Illuminations — it's interesting — 'He is affection and the present' — 'present' underlined, the dimensions of time begin to appear — 'He is affection and the present, since he has made the house open to winter and to the murmur of summer, he who has purified drinks and food' — you see a supernatural side — 'he who has purified drinks and food, he who is the charm of fleeting places and the superhuman delight of stopping-places. He is affection' — it said, 'He is affection and the present' — he continues — 'He is affection'
1:19:34 and the future — the dimension we hadn't yet had, we had taken only texts sunk into the past; with movement I put into perspective, thanks to Rimbaud, the past, the ancient savagery, and the future, the future of science and technology which must save us from what threatens us — and now here there is no more past, there is only the present and the future — 'he is affection and the future, the force and the love that we, poor humans standing amid rages and troubles, see passing in the tempestuous sky and the flags of ecstasy. He is love, perfect measure reinvented' — in a famous formula, in A Season in Hell, Rimbaud in one of his famous phrases said 'love must be reinvented' — we know it, well everyone knows it even if each acts as though they didn't — well, 'He is love, perfect measure and reinvented, marvelous and unforeseen reason, and eternity.' So he is love and eternity, I repeat
1:20:44 'He is love, perfect measure and reinvented, marvelous and unforeseen reason, and eternity: beloved machine of fatal qualities. We have all felt the terror of his concession, and of our own.' It's dangerous to read a great poet, because he reveals things, you know — unfortunately the great poet is the one who gives a purer meaning to the words of the tribe, who forces us to make anamneses that disturb all our repressions, right? You'll tell me: but no, he produces beauty, a poet, he doesn't produce horror — but remember, for those who've seen the film Death in Venice — everyone forgets, because it goes by quickly in the opening credits like that — there's a quotation from Rilke: 'For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,' right? So you see, 'we have all felt the terror,' regarding the poet, 'of his concession and of our own. O joy, rare, for a beauty so solar and hymnic' — right — 'joy of our health, surge of our faculties, selfish affection and passion for him, him who loves us'
1:21:54 'for his infinite life, and we remember it, and he travels. And if worship departs, ring out his promise, ring out — depart his superstitions, his ancient bodies, his households, his ages' — the old world, this is the period that has collapsed — 'he will not go away, he will not come down again from a sky, he will not accomplish the redemption of women's angers and men's gaieties, and of all that sin' — he won't be puritanical, this is coming — he's not going to prescribe barrier gestures to us all day — 'he will not accomplish the redemption of women's angers and men's gaieties, and of all that sin, for it is done.' So what does it take? 'Him being, and being loved. O his breaths, his heads, his races, the terrible celerity of the perfection of forms and of action. O fecundity of the mind and immensity of the universe! His body: the dreamed release, the breaking free of grace crossed by new violences! His sight: all the ancient genuflections and the pains lifted in his wake, his day'
1:23:04 'the abolition of all suffering, sonorous and moving, in more intense music, his step: migrations vaster than the ancient invasions. Oh, him and us! Pride more benevolent than lost charities. O world! and the clear song of new misfortunes.' And beware of the fall — 'He has known us all and has loved us all. Let us know, this winter night, from cape to cape, from the tumultuous pole to the castle, from the crowd to the shore, from gaze to gaze, strength and feelings weary — to hail him, to see him, and to send him off, and beneath the tides and atop the deserts of snow, to follow his sight, his breaths, his body, his day.' Full stop — 'and to send him off.' There, I won't dwell on it long, because it prepares us well for Rilke. There, he insists on the fact that everything is fleeting, we're no longer enclosed in a pocket of the past, we must restore movement, go toward the future, right, and not a false future this time, but an open future — open perhaps also to danger, right?
1:24:14 We must rediscover frontiers — this was perhaps also what happened when the first Sputnik was launched: a new frontier appeared in the history of humanity, right, which is why so many places of celebration, nightclubs all over the world, including in the West, were called 'Sputnik' — well, you should never take people for complete fools. So I return to this fleeting side, right, I think of Verlaine, who concludes his admirable Art poétique with: 'Let your verse be the lucky chance / Scattered on the crisp wind of morning / Which goes smelling of mint and thyme... / Let your verse be the thing escaped / that one feels fleeing a soul on its way / toward other skies, to other loves. / Let your verse be the lucky chance / scattered on the crisp wind of morning / which goes smelling of mint and thyme, / and all the rest is literature.' So I wanted to rehabilitate here, and very quickly now, what one finds throughout Rilke's poem
1:25:24 which I won't analyze because it's long, but whose most important lesson I will note: he insists on what is most fleeting, on what belongs most to the temporal order — speech, the word, the breath. We mustn't forget that in the Gospel, for example — I'm multiplying references, but it's to circle around the same point — when the disciples ask, but what is the Spirit? The Father, at a pinch, we have a representation, the bearded one, the Son, fine — but the Spirit, what is that? It's a somewhat more complicated notion — and Christ answers: you hear the wind, you see, the breath — you hear the wind, you don't know where it comes from or where it goes; the wind blows where it wills; so it is with the things of the Spirit. One could not better connect the Spirit with freedom — I don't know — 'you don't know where it comes from or where it goes.' There, so I'm restoring this mobility that we need, especially since we've been stuck in lockdown, right, and so I return to the text
Rilke's Ninth Elegy and the speech that interiorizes 1:26:34 So I hope I'll find it again, dammit, I've lost my Rilke text — well anyway, I remember it anyway: 'Are we perhaps here, we humans — are we in the world here, in life, in the phenomenon, not in the beyond — to say house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, window — at most, column, tower' — these are very immobile objects — 'but to say, understand, understand it, to say all that the things themselves never thought they could be in their intimacy.' It's not that complicated, you see — there's a total opposition between the thing, which is condemned to remain in its static state, and the way we express it by making it pass into temporality and interiorizing it. Remember, doesn't Mallarmé — among the few writers who reflected as Mallarmé did on the problem
1:27:45 of language, in particular of poetic speech, but of language in general, which speaks of words — and remember above all, before I quote Mallarmé, what all this began with: the central figure until today of Mnemosyne, who is not only the divinity of memory but also the one to whom we owe the use of words — as it happens, that goes together, doesn't it. Now Mallarmé says: 'What good is the marvel of transposing a fact of nature' — take a jug, sorry, that's a fruit-object, right — 'a source, a tree — what good is the marvel of transposing a fact of nature, an external object, into its almost vibratory disappearance' — look how precise Mallarmé's language is — 'what good,' right, to exchange something as tangible as a tree, a beautiful oak, for the word 'oak,' which is never anything but vibrations in the air, right, the word is a sound — 'what good,' I repeat, 'is the marvel of transposing a fact of nature into its almost vibratory disappearance' through the play of speech
1:28:55 'unless it is so that from it may emanate, without hint, freed, without the approach' — sorry — 'without the discomfort' — of a nearby or a concrete reminder, the empirical object, 'the pure notion' — 'so that from it may emanate, without the discomfort of a nearby or a concrete reminder... the pure notion' may emanate — and he gives a most famous example: 'I say, in speech, I say a flower, I haven't specified, I didn't say a tulip, a carnation, a rose — there we're in botany, we're not in poetry — I say a flower, and out of the oblivion into which my voice relegates any contour' — implied, all the flowers I've just listed insofar as their known calyxes — that's Mallarmé — 'musically arises' — you heard, when I say a flower without specifying, 'musically arises' — a suave music, an idea itself and suave — what arises?
1:29:52 'the one absent from every bouquet.' There's the magic by which the external world is interiorized by us. That's what Rilke develops — so now I'm there — 'Are we perhaps here' — and I continue — 'to say house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, window; at most, column, tower... but to say, understand it, to say all that the things themselves would never think of being in their intimacy — is it not a ruse of this earth which always stays silent?' Right — man and the animal that speaks in this silent universe — remember Pascal — he expresses himself — what is it for them?
1:30:41 'What is it for two lovers' — sorry — 'than to wear a little the older threshold of the... to use it themselves too, after all those who came and before those who will come, lightly? Here is the time of speakable things with man, here is their homeland' — underlined — 'speak, and proclaim more than ever, decline and pass, the things one can live.' Well, I'll skip a bit — 'sing to the angel the praise of the world' — not of the sublime supernatural world, as if to speak of celestial beauties — the angel knows them better than we do, no use — 'sing to the angel the praise of the world, not of the higher world; you will not impress him with the splendor of what you feel, less than he does, and which he feels with more sensitivity; you are a novice too. Tell him the simple thing' — look how all history is recovered, the recovered past, but with a view to the future — 'which, having taken shape from generation to generation, the simple thing has become ours and lives close at hand. Tell him the things, he will be more astonished, as you were before the rope-maker of Rome or the potter of the Nile.'
1:31:51 There, I wanted to conclude on this admirable text, right, and I say, 'as the falling thing, as the thing that serves or dies to become something else' then 'escapes with felicity from the violin' — look, yet again something even more evanescent than a sound escaping from a material object, a thing made of wood and gut and metal — 'and these things whose life is decline understand that you praise them; perishable, they entrust to us — the most perishable of all — the power to save' — look at the paradox — 'us, the most perishable' — the mortals — that reminds you of Hölderlin, 'they cannot, all the gods... the mortals before them reach the abyss' — 'we, the perishable, they entrust us with the power to save; they want us, deep in our invisible heart, to transform them into — oh, infinitely — into us' — you see, the process of interiorization thanks to speech of what is external, whatever finally the earth may be — 'it is not what you want'
1:33:01 'invisible in us, be reborn' — right, is that not your dream, to be invisible for once? Once it has passed into us, it is no longer visible — a tulip taken in a garden here and in a here and in a now, it is visible, but when I say a flower, or tulip, the word itself, right, with its vowels, has become invisible — 'what mission do you impose, if not the transformation? Earth, you whom I love, I want it — oh believe it would not take one more of your springs to win me over to you; one, a single one, is already too much for the blood' — a spring, that's so many sensations, it's already too much for the blood — 'unspeakably I consent to you, from afar I come to you, always you were right, and your holy inspiration is death made familiar' — in another poem Rilke says: anticipate the separation, anticipate every separation, pass into the beyond — 'look, I live, of what neither childhood nor the future diminish, a superabundant existence springs up in my heart.' There, I wanted to end on a text
1:34:11 that opens the future, right, and that isn't a false future already, already coded, right — yes, yes, you're repeating what I said at the beginning, for what would have happened a bit after the start — so there's a slight departure from the program that was published on Facebook yesterday: I confirm that we're going to analyze in depth and enrich ourselves with those two or three excellent documentaries on the origin of writing, and therefore of collective memory — no writing, no history — Philippe recorded the approach I tried to give of them, and the resulting video will be posted very soon on — and on Facebook, our usual page, and on YouTube
1:35:21 Of course, there it is — and well, thank you, and of course, well, I wish you a wonderful, wonderful Christmas, for you, for your children, for your parents, for your grandparents, for everyone. There, thanking you again for your loyalty, and see you next year.
