English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Strikes, crisis of capital and political regression 0:00 Apparently, we are online. Good evening, dear friends, dear comrades. And I'm not only addressing those who are kind enough to attend tonight's live broadcast, nor even those who don't have time to listen tonight but know they'll be able to listen a bit later if they're busy elsewhere.
0:54 So, when I say "good evening comrades," I have a special thought for the comrades who are currently facing Macronian repression. And that's why I'm giving a short introduction on this subject, which tries to echo the title of this episode, isn't that right? Because I'm not the only one noticing that things are tending to spiral out of control, to put it euphemistically.
1:26 Except that most people, and that's a good thing, notice it mainly at the most immediate level, that is, at the national level, but what is appalling and at the same time shows the gravity of the situation—I'm choosing a word, I try to weigh my words in this kind of circumstance. "Gravity" doesn't mean it's good or bad for now. "Gravity" means the stakes are high.
1:56 Without yet anticipating how it will turn out, for better or worse, the fact remains that England is paralyzed by strikes we haven't seen in more than 40 years. Even under Thatcher, more than 40 years ago, even under Thatcher it didn't have this global character.
2:26 And at the same time, the populations—the English rabble, if you'll excuse the expression, is suffering, and we understand them. They're not really used to going into battle like this, so it's remarkable on their part. Athens hasn't stopped, the Greek people keep proving that the horror of that train accident was the spark that overflowed the cup, but the powder keg didn't start forming with that accident.
3:01 We mustn't forget how many years ago the social democracy of Tsipras shamefully betrayed, because to begin with, it wasn't any more revolutionary than "me, you die"—we experienced that in France in '68. We often heard it said that those who claimed to be to the left of the Communist Party were to the right of De Gaulle. In fact, it's been quite a while—the parallels are interesting—that in Greece, not only did they yield to the demands of Mrs. Merkel at the time, in short, to financial orthodoxy, let's not even talk about the nation-state, the financial orthodoxy of the European Union, or of course the Buba, the Bundesbank, which indeed plays a major role, but on top of that, quite plainly—a pattern we know all too well in France, alas—it allowed the most reactionary forces to return to power.
4:00 A left that disappoints at the ballot box generally ushers in a period of political and social regression. The United States, which each time thought itself safe—you know, each time, Marx, the general crisis of capital that he expected practically in his own time—what nonsense, since a century later, more than a century later, we're still waiting for his great crisis—it really is naive to talk like that.
4:34 It did arrive, the crisis—that of the 1930s. Well, it only took 50 million deaths to bring it to an end. So something even more serious than the crisis itself. And as soon as capital returns to cruising speed, after a short period of reconstruction, the difficulties start again—the difficulties of the dollar, the special drawing rights, I say this for those who are younger, who are less familiar with it, because people are careful not to tell this history—it's not the fault of young people.
5:07 And the recurring monetary crises, then the creation of the euro—now that's the icing on the cake, isn't it—which, unlike in the earlier period when you could revalue or devalue currencies, how should I put it, puts a mask over the face so you can't see the leprosy eating away at it underneath. That's what the euro is in monetary terms. In strictly monetary terms—and I'm not even talking about its economic and social damage.
5:39 And so, every time we think the problem is solved—after the 2008 crisis—it's always the same crisis, the one Marx foretold, that bounces back each time, but at what cost? After what convulsions and what distortions? I say this because I saw in some comments someone say—understandably, but really it's a bit hasty to say—that anyway, the tendential fall in the rate of profit, since capitalism solved the problem, didn't it, by relaunching the economy.
6:27 Well, listening now and then to BFM Business, to keep myself informed, like Marx—forgive the parallel—devoured the bourgeois economists, I heard an economist on BFM Business who swore by nothing but Schumpeter, you know, that theory with a certain cynicism—I'm only talking about the moral aspect, not the theoretical flaws, there would be much more to say, but our comrade and friend Antoine Vatan has written decisive things on this level, and I recommend it, he has an excellent dialogue with Aymeric Monville on the Éditions Delga channel.
7:21 So, creative destruction—you know his thesis—yes, fine, it creates unemployed people, it creates suffering, it creates misery, but it's funny how we always find the same infatuations, just as the Nazis couldn't hide their fascination with Brahmanism and Buddhism, with Schopenhauer—Schopenhauer who called the police during the demonstrations, which was serious in 1848 in Germany, to say "they're there, the rioters, I can see them from my window."
8:00 Schopenhauer swore, didn't he, by nothing but the Buddha's four noble truths. I'm not saying this against Buddhism. I'm talking about the way it gets regurgitated by the ruling classes of the bourgeoisie when they're panicked by the rise of a proletariat that's starting to have had enough. And my list wouldn't be exhaustive—it would be too long.
8:37 I won't make it, but the number of regions of the world currently, or situations that had been stuck for two, three generations sometimes, are now being resolved at breakneck speed. I'm not even talking about the danger of war, which is more pressing than ever, but rather about what's positive—because for now, in terms of pseudo-revolutions, pseudo-popular ones, you know I always oppose the "people" as spectacle to the genuinely popular—the so-called color revolutions, aren't there, which are actually counter-revolutions organized by funded NGOs.
9:19 You know all this, I notice it in reverse. Afterwards, it's by looking at the internet that many people get informed, and not in a conspiracy-theory way, but with well-documented sources. It's not just Soros, you know—Soros is even small potatoes compared to enormous American lobbies, less known to the public but far more effective still, and that's saying something.
Pakistan, Moldova, the Sahel: blocked situations that give way 9:52 The RAND Corporation, among others—there are so many of them. But look at a country that's a nuclear power. This isn't a guessing game, but well, a nuclear power that is the largest Muslim country in the world. I quote "along with Indonesia." Along with Indonesia, let's say tied. Which has been a faithful ally of the pro-American camp since the postwar period, which was even a creation of the British, not the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, when India gained its independence—you guess that I'm talking about Pakistan.
10:31 The English executive, in which the future husband of Queen Elizabeth, Mountbatten, played a decisive role—the old imperialist tactic, isn't it, which consists in not losing everything, since nothing more could be done against the resistance of the Indian people under Gandhi's leadership. Well then, at least let's try to salvage the Muslim part.
11:03 There's nothing easier than throwing fuel, blowing on the embers of animosity between Hindus and Muslims. It caused a million and a half deaths. Look it up, it was in '46-'47, immediately upon India's independence, which included present-day Pakistan—the Indian subcontinent, the British Empire of India contained present-day Pakistan. Now it's divided between two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan.
11:36 "Nice work if you can get it," as a jazz standard says, isn't it? You have to hand it to them. And above all, a hatred that has caused conflicts spanning several generations and that periodically claims victims at the Indo-Pakistani border, and that caused a million and a half deaths when the split occurred, like a terrible amputation, of the Muslim part of the Indian Empire. And now the former Prime Minister, who had the audacity and the nerve to have understood that his interests could align with those of today's China, which holds less Atlanticist positions than the current executive, was removed by Parliament on the pretext of corruption.
12:30 You know, that's generally what gets trotted out in these cases. And when you look closely, it's thin—the corruption consists not, like most of our own elites, in stashing billions in Panama or the Bahamas, but here, it consists of having sold gifts given to him by diplomats. You see roughly how... And now he makes a triumphant return, and today he went to his trial, escorted by an entire crowd protecting him.
13:00 He has hundreds of thousands of people as his bodyguards, doesn't he? In front of his house. Well, I imagine some of you are following this unprecedented situation. And today he was summoned to the courthouse, he went, he didn't shirk it even though he was threatened with a conviction, and, wouldn't you know it, he was released. Imagine the jubilant crowd that welcomed him in Pakistan.
13:31 Let me move on to Moldova. Now here, you see, we're getting closer to the eye of the storm, aren't we? Ukraine is right next door to Moldova—these are all countries that... how did they used to put it... at the start of the [Cold] War, well, the sanitary cordon against communism, that's what it was called back then. And now it's the old plan of American strategy, but one that goes back... some people still think the situation started deteriorating in February of last year, well, February of the year before.
14:08 It's still not quite... rather stale, that one, I mean, from the very beginning of the Cold War, and even before, American strategists have always dreamed of recreating what was the dream of fascist-leaning Poland before the war, that of Pilsudski, Colonel Beck—look it up, it's all very well documented, even on Wikipedia—which consisted in joining the two seas. Yes, you heard right, the Baltic Sea—you see the tensions there currently, with Finland soon joining NATO, the Baltic states right there, the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad—and creating a whole series of fiercely anti-Russian states between the Baltic and the Black Sea.
15:06 You find again the scenario of what has happened in recent years. Well, this introduction seems a bit laborious, a bit long, but listen, I'll come back now to what's happening in the streets of Paris as I speak. And that's why I began by saluting the comrades who have the courage to go out and demonstrate, since this time, given the success they had yesterday at Concorde, the demonstrations have been banned today. I pay tribute to them, in passing.
15:39 So, forgive me, I hesitate because I'm sure I'm still forgetting two or three conflicts. I'm not even talking about certain countries that people don't even know how to place on a map, whether in Africa or elsewhere, or again, if you've at least heard about the kicks in the backside, to put it politely, that Macron's France has received, for example, from Mali and Burkina Faso.
16:14 If you had told me, I don't know, a year ago, that people would be demonstrating in the streets of Bamako or Ouagadougou shouting "Macron out" and waving Russian flags, I would have said, oh come on, it's not April Fools'. And yet it's a region I've had some experience with, more than most, I think. And there you have it, things really are speeding up and spiraling. Now I see that plenty of comrades are celebrating.
Not personalizing: Macron, union unity, 2005 16:47 I'm not saddened that Macron is having difficulties pushing through his reform. It's not Macron—I need to stop personalizing this, let me take the opportunity to say so. It suits capital just fine when we personalize things like that. It gives the impression that they pulled Macron out of their pocket or their hat. That could happen again at any moment, just as they pulled out Sarkozy, and then the other one—not the repressive kind of word—I'm thinking of Hollande. And let's stop this regressive analysis.
17:27 That, of course, isn't what saddens me, but I mean, watch out for the outcome. Never—you've heard me talk often enough about the danger of this unprecedented resurgence, since I've had political awareness in the most perceptive sense—of the far right. And God knows, to point this out, you have to fight against people, including those who believe themselves to be on the left, who say "oh but no, left, right, that's a bit outdated"—that's always been the refrain of the right.
18:09 There you go. And while in Scandinavian governments, I'm thinking in particular of Sweden, but not only Sweden—it's a government of the far right and neo-Nazis, well, a government, a far-right and neo-Nazi party without which the current government wouldn't have a majority in Sweden. The same is true in Austria, the same is true in Italy, it's even the premiership itself, as they say, the leadership of the government itself, which is openly aligned with the far right, well, which has the same roots as the famous Italian Social Movement, to speak of what I know has been neo-fascist since the 1950s, isn't that so?
18:55 At a time when this resurgence is happening, I'll end my introduction on another note—I won't say pessimistic, I don't want to, I especially don't want to weigh down the wings of those who are rightly beginning to rejoice at seeing that this isn't just going through unopposed—nothing less than a divine surprise is the trade union unity in our country right now, something we haven't seen in ages. I kept expecting some unions, as usual, to pretend to be the most militant and then, at the last minute, fall in line with positions convenient for the MEDEF, the government—and well, that hasn't been the case, we should be glad of it, we should congratulate them, I'll go that far—but as for the outcome, that's where I'm going to strike a serious note, coming back to the word with which I began this long detour, as I close it, the political divide
20:06 in Europe, in the West—I don't want to give a whole development on the West, but I might do so during the question-and-answer session that awaits us shortly, right after this—but let's say, I prefer to speak of the Atlanticist camp, because that's the only objective way to know who and what we're talking about, because there are very good people in the United States too, and conversely, I don't know, there are Bulgarians or Ivorians who are Atlanticist—I mean, there are some, not the majority, but there are some.
20:44 but that's it, and here I'm anticipating what I wanted to conclude with: the political divide is no longer between left and right—the left has long since disappeared. I know that's harsh to say. No, no, I'm not talking about the people currently facing Macronian repression in the streets of Paris, nor even those who, for days and days, over several weeks, have demonstrated en masse in numbers we hadn't seen in a long time—that is a left whose left-wing commitment I don't dispute at all, but in terms of organization, as they say in political discourse, there are no longer left-wing parties and unions that make people tremble. When I say there are none left, I mean nothing has power anymore. You know, back then people used to say, when Renault goes on strike, France is paralyzed; when Billancourt catches a cold, France falls ill. We're far from that now. Up till now, everything went through like clockwork
21:54 by means of Article 49-3 or shameful parliamentary maneuvers—above all, the great turning point was the 2005 referendum, where you had the majority of French people—I believe there are quite a few among those listening to me—who voted against the European constitutional project, and it was imposed on us anyway, and we shouldn't speak of it in the past tense, it continues to be imposed on us. We are living under a system of a coup d'État. It's the first time I've seen a direct universal suffrage vote contradicted and annulled by a representative vote.
22:34 We need to think about this, and not only is it scandalous, but on top of that, a narrative has taken hold that says, yes, but a referendum is a bit like a plebiscite—do you see the shift in meaning? It's gotten to the point where now referendums, your vote, can only serve a Hitler or a Napoleon—it's really extraordinary. So I'll end by saying this: the real divide today is between two far rights in the world. Yes, now I'm broadening the scope, I'm trying, I'm trying to be...
The real divide runs between two far rights 23:09 These are stakes too serious to be resolved by a single person. And I'm sure I'd be saying foolish things as long as I'm not better supported by teamwork. It's a bit late for me, but I mean, I'm saying this as advice, aren't I? It's better to have a collective to think things through. But I'll tell you what I really think: the real divide lies between two far rights. Yes, I'm serious—between a far right, I'll say, planetary—less and less so now, but globalizing—which attempted a globalization, the Atlanticist globalization, you guess it?
23:50 if you look at the number of dead, the carnage, the wars unleashed, from Latin America, Afghanistan, through Korea, Vietnam, the toll is frightful. up to... And then, which, when it fails to use them, runs into local far rights nearby, at worst national and most often regional.
24:23 You see? This is a serious thing I'm saying. It doesn't matter whether the front for these local far rights is nationalism or religion or the fusion of the two, does it? After all, the Spanish fascists indeed spoke of... did say they were the army of Cristo Rey, Christ the King. It makes my mouth sour when I think of the Gospel according to Matthew—it's strange, isn't it.
24:55 Fortunately there were the liberation theologians who came to save the honor of Christianity. There you go—I've already spoken about this, there will be other occasions to discuss it. Well, I wanted to give this introduction so that we could rejoice that things are moving, and to warn that nothing is settled and that these are extremely ambivalent periods, aren't they? And that this is not the moment, for instance, to fall into provocations.
25:25 There you go. Well, I've tried hard to be reasonable, but I wanted to point out that—look at this enormous cloud of the Atlanticist far right over almost the entire planet, less and less now—China, it's difficult to gain influence there—despite all their pleadings and their hope that China would help them fight Russia and divide them, as was done, and with what success, in '68?
25:59 when 14-year-old kids, armed as Red Guards with Kalashnikovs, threatened those who had made the Long March alongside Mao and made gigantic sacrifices to bring communism to power in China, encouraged by a Mao who had lost his grip on the party at that time—when you see that, I reflect on today's situation, and once again, I'm glad it's moving, but nothing is settled, it can be co-opted, and there are always exasperated and generous people—those are good qualities—but who are vulnerable prey for the manipulators you know.
26:55 So, I say that I'm dealing with two big boys, it's of course a metaphor, a joke. I'm dealing with people who are often experienced. Well, I would like it to seem like I'm completely changing the subject, since we're going to talk about poetry, you know my hesitation, but here, there's no more hesitating, that's why I wanted to start with this introduction. Peoples are in the process of settling things without hesitation, and you'll see that we're not really changing the subject.
Thanks to faithful commentators 27:33 Text, please. The text of the question I'm going to give priority to this evening is from someone recent, whom I thank. But before reading it, I would like to address some much older commentators, even faithful followers from the very beginning, some of whom I have never really devoted the time I would have liked to answering their own questions or their own comments.
28:08 So I would like to say here, in no particular order, to people as different as our friend Kouti, whom I thank again for... I recommend, our friend Kouti, K-O-U-T-Y, has just published a study, I'll show it to you actually, on someone you know and whom I had the good fortune to work alongside for a while with Michel Clouscard, especially since he was in Poitiers with Michel — it's about Jacques D'Hondt, isn't it?
28:54 A superb essay on Jacques D'Hondt — I thank him for kindly sending it to me, from the Vexin, if I understood correctly, it's a beautiful region, the Vexin — but he too is a relatively recent member of our audience. But I'm also thinking of companions, male and female, I'm thinking of Cathy Gall, whom I ask to call me on the phone, because she made some extremely kind remarks and expressions of solidarity, especially in December 2021, which touched me enormously, and also our friend — wait, let me not mix up my files — there we go, Joël Lassie, that's right, Lassie, I'm pronouncing it — no, Lassrie, I'm not going to distort names, you shouldn't do that,
30:05 as they say in French-speaking Africa, you shouldn't spoil my name, it's like spoiling the organs of the body — Joël Lassrie, I tell them in advance, I include in the list, of course, it goes without saying, Claude Gallier, so I mentioned last time that he was kind enough to subscribe me to that extraordinary journal, isn't it, centered around Aragon and Elsa Triolet and their writings, an extraordinary body of work by Aragon — some people know it, others don't know it at all, others barely know his poems, and let's not forget that he's an immense poet, novelist, essayist, scholar, I'm not even talking about his political activity, I don't know, there you go — and I say to Jacques, don't worry when I seem unresponsive or not quick to reply, it's because, on top of a few minor health issues normal for my age, I don't want to sound alarmist,
31:15 but still, I am getting on in years, plus a few little technical worries that often come up, and I'm not even talking about those strikers — because of whom we're now running late for the live broadcasts since the RER trains aren't running — no, I'm quite happy about it, I'm in solidarity with that — and all in all, I mean, whoever is worried shouldn't be, there will be replies for each of them, and to those I've just listed, I ask them to get in touch or call me on my personal phone number so I can thank them in a way that matches their loyalty, their generosity, there you go.
A listener's question: endless rigor or intuition? 31:59 So I now come back to Louis Baril, whom I'm practically discovering through this comment, on one of our very latest videos, and who writes this. So, hi Dominique, I'm one of those who have only known you for a short while; our meeting was indeed made possible thanks to your musical podcasts — so here's someone who came in through the musical door and through the podcasts, the wonderful podcasts we owe to our friend Aliocha — I admit I started with them out of a somewhat frivolous curiosity — I'm skipping some considerations, not because I judge them minor, but because they're less central to the continuity of what I'm saying.
32:47 I had just finished The Brothers Karamazov, an excellent read, and the name Aliosha was dear to me. So I clicked on the thumbnail and met you. I'm now browsing through all your videos at random, still with frivolity as my only guiding star — perhaps that's lucky; it sounds light, but you know, someone who lays their frivolity on the table like that proves they aren't really frivolous — but it always takes me to great places.
33:17 A title or an image is enough for me, sometimes chance too — in short, it follows its own lucky star. And in each session, I discover a world that is teeming, alive, strangely soothing. It's the first time I've been given these epithets, or at least my talk has, and I admit it's rather gratifying. It's better than toxic. Alive and strangely soothing. I listen to you sometimes attentively, sometimes a bit distractedly — I imagine this lack of rigor hurts me a little, but I manage to comfort myself by remembering the words of a filmmaker who was delighted to see people falling asleep during his films.
33:59 I was nonetheless deeply moved by several passages from works accompanied by your commentary — and here, you see, we get into the serious part. Because he could have, you see, appreciated passages that everyone knows, even independently of me, that people didn't need me to appreciate. And no, but here it is, Hegel's girl with the fruit — you know it's through this remarkable figure, remarkably well written, it's a true prose poem, the passage where Hegel talks about it — you know that it's with this passage that I concluded the cycle we did on aesthetics, and that our relationship, modern consciousness's relationship to art, is the one Hegel perfectly illustrates in 'The girl with the fruit,' isn't it, in the last chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit.
34:57 So, Hegel's 'girl with the fruit,' modernity and its wild lovers of Rimbaud — I'm sure some in my audience understand his allusion, some who remember that I had alluded to a text I'll detail for you shortly, precisely inspired by this passage from our friend Louis's comment, and that's why our friend Louis — sorry — that's why I'll move past it for now, but you can guess that it's about a passage from that illumination, that marvelous prose poem called 'Mouvement'
35:44 in the singular, of astonishing modernity moreover, from a purely literary point of view — but anyway, 'Mouvement' in the Illuminations, in the collection of Illuminations, and which, roughly — we'll see this later, so I'll say it a bit crudely for now — for a setting, a very modern setting, especially for the time, since it seems to involve a hydroelectric plant that he must have encountered during his nomadic wanderings, 'the man with wind-soled shoes,' to speak of Rimbaud, isn't that so?
36:23 It's an incessant walk between France, Belgium, the Ardennes, England, London, Paris, and then a bit later, from a lesser-known period, since it concerns Germany, and then of course afterward, the Abyssinian kingdom and Aden. Now, in contrast with the ultra-modern, technical, scientific setting, with an intoxication such as he takes up again in other texts where he says, beyond bands of rare music, I was attentive to the ghosts of future nocturnal luxury — you see, as if we were visiting great airports at night, isn't that so?
37:09 And so, at the end, in contrast with this — full stop, new line, it's often during the closing that there's a tiny little phrase — 'to the most surprising atmospheric accidents,' the most surprising atmospheric accidents, when you're walking on foot, you know, there are showers and rainbows and storms and sun, clear spells — a young couple, and there, we're no longer in the scientific and technical universe, a young couple isolates itself on the arch, no doubt a bridge above the watercourse that had been the occasion for the dam — a young couple isolates itself on the arch, comma, is it, is it, ancient savagery that is forgiven.
37:57 It's overwhelming. As if all human history, the entire prodigious journey of that nomad of time that is man, isn't it, and of space — I spoke of this not long ago, in one of my recent videos — but it's the path that led from the first descendants of Australopithecus who scattered into the savannah, all the way to Homo sapiens, going back up toward Asia and Europe, the Middle East. What a nomad!
38:28 What a magnificent movement! But he's also a nomad of time, because all that presupposes histories, stages in the development of productive forces, in the thresholds of civilization, of culture. And here, all that... But this kid, where did he find this meteoric way, isn't it, of crossing through temporality by grasping, I don't know, in one month of life what others, in an entire lifetime, haven't grasped a quarter of?
39:05 It's quite astonishing. So there you go, is it ancient savagery that is forgiven? From the ultra-modern where we were, a hydroelectric plant around the years 75, let's say, 1875, to... to the very first stammerings of the first couples of humanity, isn't it, is it ancient savagery that is forgiven? Savagery — let us recall the term savagery, we place it right at the border of culture and nature, of history and nature, which has an evolution but no history, that's not the same thing, and of anthropology and zoology — ancient savagery, you see, almost a connotation that plunges down.
40:01 And so our friend Louis says allusively, but there's no mistaking it, isn't there, modernity and its wild lovers of Rimbaud. And now, just now, the detachment of a body into the infinite of Hölderlin — there, of course, he's alluding to the close reading I tried to do, far from exhaustive for a text of such beauty that it defies — indeed, one of the great translators of Hölderlin said that its beauty, its clarity, discourages any desire for elucidation.
40:41 although I suspect that — and there, you see, he digs deeper into his question — although I suspect that the feeling that leads me to group these three fragments — I can well guess that he chose these three references carefully, everything I can bring up as a reference is not equally weighted — that the feeling that leads me to group these three fragments falls far short of exhausting their singularity.
41:15 That's intelligently put, if I may say so — I'm not here to judge, but it means it's not just that he likes it, that's a matter of feeling, he senses that there's something at stake. Allow me to attempt a somewhat general question. And here we come back, don't we, to the heart of philosophy, so to speak. In the author, at the moment of composing a passage of such visionary power — so the author in general, here now, no matter whether it's Hölderlin or Rimbaud — in the author, at the moment of composing a passage of such visionary power — he's of course taking up Rimbaldian semantics here — what is it that speaks?
41:55 So, perhaps Louis will correct me, but I'll put forward the hypothesis, I ask him the question through the audience, through this live broadcast — I wonder, I think it's likely he must have asked himself the question while writing, hesitating over whether to write 'who is it that speaks' or 'what is it that speaks,' but I salute the boldness of his final choice, 'what is it that speaks' — that is, we're not even sure it's someone.
42:25 Which makes me think, since we're making references here to Rimbaud, that in a strange passage — already strange — of A Season in Hell by Rimbaud, there's suddenly this outburst of a few seconds, such as a second of reading, where Rimbaud says 'There is no one here and there is someone.' There's a dialectic for you — 'There is no one here and there is someone.' So, since there's uncertainty, let's be modest, what is it that speaks?
42:56 What is the subject of the speech? Especially when this speech utters the passages we've just listed, the girl with the fruit, the illumination called Mouvement, etc. Or does he mean that it's now something that rather opposes the scientific approach?
43:35 Or is it rather the song of the child that the flash of intuition — unlike the long chain of reasoning as in physical or mathematical research — or rather the song of the child that the flash of intuition has just struck, and who, seized by such fervor at the moment of the song, no longer remembers it the next instant? A very fine question. In other words, are the summits of thought — and he sums up the philosophical stakes well — the fruit of endless rigor, that's the scientific world, rigor, hypotheses, backed up by experience or by demonstration, endless rigor — in short, everything that falls under what Kant calls the understanding, as distinct from reason, that's the world of reasoning but not always of reason — are they the fruit of endless rigor, or of the intuition of creative genius?
44:41 What a fine question that is. So, the object — not the subject, isn't it — of speech this time, poetic speech, but the object of Louis's question — this question calls into question the subject of poetic speech, the subject if only in the grammatical sense, because he didn't say 'who is it that speaks,' he said 'what is it that speaks'?
Someone or something: eroticism and Bergson 45:18 If that's the case, it's perhaps something merely in the grammatical sense of subject, isn't it? And here again, I'm sure some remember texts because of this kind of question — we come back to absolutely singular references, that's actually the word he used to characterize the texts he selected, I don't know, among the references in our talks, and singular texts, I mean unmatched so far in the questions they raise, in the way the questions they raise are treated.
45:55 I'm thinking of that author whose name we don't know, since to this day the riddle of Bonaventura has never been solved. Bonaventura — you guess I'm talking about him — that's the pseudonym he chose from the years around the end of the 18th century and the very beginning of the 19th, so right in the middle of the Frühromantik, the first age of Romanticism, which was by far the most substantial in depth — that's the era of Hölderlin in poetry, of Jean Paul in the novel, of Novalis, and much less known, the extraordinary Bonaventura — there are several hypotheses, some have even spoken of Schelling, Hegel's companion — you see, I haven't lost my thread, I'm illustrating this because some are saying to themselves, but what, what is it that speaks, if something speaks, it must be someone, not something.
46:54 We would like to be sure, wouldn't we? I'm in the process of answering his question, before moving on to the Rimbaud text, and look how this question intersects with dizzying stakes — I was about to say, as I speak, that's the small thing that characterizes these questions, I can allow myself to say this, it's not boastfulness on my part — even at the very height of eroticism, perhaps one of the keys to the ardor we sometimes see in eroticism, no need to be much more precise since I'm addressing things known to everyone, and for a long time, and forever, since ancient savagery — is it one of the keys, because it's a mystery, what makes it that the human being consumes — the man, the human being, the woman, the man — devotes so much energy, isn't it, to this stake which has no other immediate benefit,
48:04 than erotic pleasure, apparently, from which we wake up without having advanced in the worries, in everything that makes up everyday life, in the quests — well, and it happens that I often think it's the anxiety of knowing whether, in the person of the partner, we're dealing with someone or with something. You see the connection all of a sudden.
48:34 Hence the importance of speech in erotic exchange, the importance of words. Why an act — I don't want to be crude, isn't it, nor a voyeur — I'll give you a simple example — why, instead of simply saying, I don't know, I love your mouth, or I love your eyes — instead of just enjoying, isn't it, the partner's mouth or eyes — I say it, I love your mouth, etc.
49:05 and that adds to the pleasure of saying it — which proves indeed that when the other expresses themselves, speaks, we're suddenly reassured, in what I think is — I don't want to reduce everything to a single factor in this kind of domain, you can imagine, out of epistemic caution — that one of the factors constituting the essence of eroticism is precisely being sure, for once, that we're dealing with someone and not with a mechanism, like someone who always repeats the same things, isn't it — you see the difference — someone who becomes an object, in the sense that they lose their status as a subject and become an object by having a sheep-like, mechanical behavior — already, Bergson — that's not a reference I cite often, wrongly, because there's good in him, no, no, in the field of memory, of music, and the reflection on the inner perception of duration, if I may say so, he went much further than most
50:15 philosophers, but he wrote a well-known essay, well, a bit less fashionable now than in the 1950s, especially since — I recall that during the Vichy regime, when the Vichy regime wanted to award honors to Bergson, the Jew, as Merleau-Ponty admirably puts it — I refer you to his text in Éloge de la philosophie, which originally was a speech given at the Collège de France, when he had been asked to deliver a eulogy for Bergson on the occasion of a commemoration — Merleau-Ponty speaks of a shameful power betraying its own principles, isn't it, ready to award the honors of the French State to this Jew because he was the darling of reactionary circles who wanted to rehabilitate intuition against the concept, isn't it — there, I'm also partially answering his question, isn't it, he does say, I quote the last sentence of his question, in other words, are the summits of thought the fruit of endless rigor, the opposite of intuition,
51:25 the opposite of immediate grasp, but on the contrary, a slow pursuit of the real through a series of mediations, of intermediaries, of reasonings — this proposition is true because it does not contradict the previously established true proposition, theorem, or definition — that's the opposite of immediate recognition, discursive knowledge, which in Plato is called dianoia — or else, and here I take up his quotation again and continue it, in other words, are the summits of thought the fruit of endless rigor, or of the intuition of creative genius?
52:05 The champion of the second solution is of course Bergson, who does it admirably, I might add. And I'll close this little historical parenthesis, because it's worth knowing, especially in the times we live in. Bergson's whole spiritual journey had led him to want to convert, from his birth Judaism, his family's Judaism, to Catholicism, a kind of conviction. And at the last moment, he gave it up so as not, I quote, 'to disassociate myself from those who will be persecuted tomorrow.'
52:41 And people didn't yet dare speak of the death camps, but there were already, of course, the pogroms, and Germany in the 1930s was already stirring nearby. He refused the honors so as not to disassociate himself from those who would be persecuted tomorrow. So when I say that Bergson's thought was never so honored as under the Vichy regime, in a certain bourgeoisie that this suited — we'll see a bit more why later — it's not, it's not meant to drive a nail into the body and the corpus of Bergson's work, far from it.
53:22 So, the question has been asked; it's an old one, as old as philosophy itself. That doesn't mean it's been superseded, no, quite the opposite, isn't it? So, since this is a sequence of answering questions and not a sequence of a general dissertation, as in my sessions which last two and a half hours, I will nonetheless answer in an intertextual way. So I move on to the text he alluded to, by Rimbaud, isn't it, regarding ancient savagery, and so, judge for yourselves, isn't it?
Reading of Rimbaud's "Mouvement": the dam and the arch 53:56 You remember that I'm wary of interpretation, and that when I talk about a hydroelectric plant and so on, judge for yourselves, and let's not forget that Rimbaud spent his time wandering through the most industrialized region of Europe at the time, isn't it, between France and Belgium, the basin, yes, well, moving on. 'The zigzag movement on the bank of the river's falls, the gulf at the sternpost' — the sternpost, that is, you see, the lock gates opening like that, it's also the term used for the modern rudder from the 12th century among the Arabs, the 15th century for us, and the 10th century among the Chinese, isn't it, who were the first to use it.
54:38 Better than a paddle, if you will, the rudder, there's nothing more to it. 'The gulf at the sternpost, the zigzag movement on the bank' — the bank, you see, people, one's foot almost slipping, you see — you remember I do a whole series on edges, the notion of edge — an edge is always a place, an eminently dialectical place. When you're at the edge of a cliff, you're at the junction of what should exclude one another, the horizontal and the vertical.
55:13 When you're at the edge of a watercourse, a river, a torrent — Szene am Bach, the admirable second movement of the Pastoral Symphony, the scene by the brook. When you're at the edge of a watercourse, you're straddling the solid ground of the bank and the liquid beneath your feet — or so close to your eyes that some have ended up drowning in it, I'm thinking of Narcissus or of Schubert.
55:46 Since the outcast of... 'Die schöne Müllerin,' The Fair Maid of the Mill, one of the most beautiful song cycles ever composed, which is the story of a miller's apprentice who moves from one mill to another, following the river, and arrives at a mill where there's a beautiful miller's daughter who will prove fatal to him, and he'll end up at the bottom of the stream. For with Schubert, the water is so transparent — I'm playing a little with words — his music is so transparent, like the water he loves so much, isn't it?
56:21 Who doesn't know the Trout, even without ever having heard it musically, without even knowing it, right? But trout only frolic in clear water, they're not catfish or wels. And the number of lieder that only make sense at the edge of clear water is a constant with him, but so clear that this is the trap: you can no longer tell where the surface is, distinguishing it from the sky mirrored in the water.
56:58 And you have to be careful not to do as Narcissus did, not to pass through the mirror and end up at the bottom of the stream. So, let me go back. Movement — already there's the dynamic marking, right? The zigzag movement along the bank of the river's falls, the abyss at the stern. The feet were now sliding right along, and a rush toward the abyss. Celerity, which means great speed, right? You know that in Einsteinian physics that's the speed of light, right?
57:29 Because it's the C of celerity. The celerity of the incline, as if one had to hold on, right? The enormous surge of the current. Well, you've all seen up close, perhaps, big dams, big power plants, or even small ones — it's impressive, with the turbines coming from very high up. Everything I've just read is called, in your schoolteachers' terms, and you remember from primary school, the subject group.
57:59 There's no verb for now, right? All that — leads through unheard-of lights and chemical novelty. You see the scientific-technical context of this text, right? As I was saying, it's a text set against the backdrop of the most advanced modernity, technically and scientifically, of its time. "Leads through unheard-of lights and chemical novelty, leads" — we've seen the subject group, we've just seen the verb, the verb group, and now, a complement group.
58:32 "Leads through unheard-of lights" — leads whom? Leads what? "The travelers, surrounded by the swirling floods of the valley and the strom." And yes, he's a native of the Ardennes. Rimbaud, right? So at the border between the French-speaking and German-speaking worlds — as often happens, just as in "Aube," one of his most famous texts, where he speaks of the Wasserfall, that is, the waterfall in German. Waterfall. "I laughed at the blond wasserfall that dishevelled itself through the firs."
59:02 But there, you see the strom — you find the English "stream" in it — it's of course the force of the current, "the travelers surrounded by the swirling floods of the valley and the strom." And then, all of a sudden, he pulls back. Look at these scientists who are there, who work on this dam, who study — the engineers, the workers — these are "the conquerors of the world seeking personal chemical fortune. Sport and comfort travel with them." Careful with the personal pronoun, "with them."
59:35 "Them" — that's a third person plural over there. It's not me, I'm a little vagabond, I'm Rimbaud, I don't know. I don't know anymore. Yes, yes, it's in A Season in Hell where he says, sometimes, after nights like that, wandering in the cold, "my countenance was so undone that some people perhaps didn't even see me." And then, all of a sudden, the other extreme: those who really live at the forefront of economic and social progress, in the classes that can benefit from it — but it's not me who brought in the notion of class, you see, it follows in the sentence, in the line after.
1:00:21 "Sport and comfort." Already, "sport" carries a connotation of avant-garde at the time — it's the English, the word is English — and at the time, contrary to what we believe, it's the elite at first, it's not that sport later became popular; it's the elite at first who invested enormously in it — look at boxing, they called it "the noble sport." It's not brawling in the street. "Sport and comfort travel with them." "Comfort." They — still those people, those people who are somewhat the masters of the world today, the ruling class, broadly speaking — "they carry the education of races, of classes, and of beasts on this vessel."
1:01:06 Wait, wait, they're loading beasts onto a vessel, but that reminds me — but yes, but you too. But it's Noah's Ark. Dam, Noah's Ark, water, flood. "Pagani, you said you don't like interpretation." But I'm not interpreting, it's in the text. You have to look at the next line. "Rest and vertigo in the diluvian light" — see, I told you. I was sure of my move, well yes, it's not that I know the text so well after all.
1:01:39 "Diluvian" is the adjective for "flood." The monsters discovered by Buffon, which were the very first seeds of the reflection that would lead to the Darwinian theory of evolution, were called antediluvian monsters, because they were felt to have existed before the era when, in the Bible, the flood is spoken of, right? Antediluvian monsters, meaning they relate to the flood. So here we are indeed in the light — almost biblical light — whereas we were in the scientific-technical register.
1:02:16 Let me pick this sentence back up from "They carry the education of races, of classes, and of beasts" — it's more than one sentence, it's a whole period — "on this vessel, rest and vertigo in the diluvian light, on the terrible evening of study." You see how my hesitation returns here? There's a hesitation between fascination and the beauty of this world, the liberation it implies from all our worries — and it's going to solve all our problems, this technology and science — when you see poor people pushing carts, whereas now, with an engine, you can transport a hundred times more weight.
"Is it ancient savagery that one forgives?" 1:02:55 Yes, but right from the start there's an unease. If we go back to the beginning — sorry, Pierre-Alain, I just wanted to go back a little to the start of the text — thank you — there's still, right at the start, that's why I insisted on the fact: the bank, the feet seem to be sliding, the fall of the river, the abyss at the stern, the celerity of the incline — you still have to be careful, the enormous surge of the current — you could drown. And afterward it becomes more the marvelous side that we retain: "leads through unheard-of lights and chemical novelty, the travelers surrounded by the swirling floods of the valley and the strom" — these are "the conquerors of the world seeking personal chemical fortune" — it's almost like the conquest of the West, right? "Sport and comfort travel with them" — so there, we're reassured. "They carry the education of races, of classes, and of beasts on this vessel, rest and vertigo in the diluvian light." Wait — but if we're safe inside the ark, it's because we've just escaped a terrible danger after all — with the flood there were millions who drowned.
1:04:05 There are supposed to have been some — "in the light, on the terrible evening of study," there, that epithet — because then we'll see what will win out, right, unease or fascination, toward — toward getting out of trouble thanks to progress — "for from the conversation among the instruments, blood" — there I have to insist a bit on the syntax — "for from the conversation" — that is, here we place ourselves a little inside the laboratory of this dam, in the offices, and through a bay window we look out into the distance, right? "For from the conversation among the instruments" — that's inside — "blood" — oh my, "blood, flowers, fire, jewels" — but what author could ever assemble, in one sentence, blood, flower, fire, jewels, accounts, calculations, right — the calculations, the scientists', of accounts — "unsettled at this fleeing edge" — because from there, what do we see? "Rolling like a dam beyond the road, hydraulic motive power" — so it really is a monstrous dam, endlessly lighting itself up.
1:05:15 What do we see? "Their stock of studies" — pure science, the conquerors of the world — that gives — it's not about scientific research — "in their stock of studies, they" — still that distancing pronoun, it's not me, I'm in the old world, I won't take part in this promised Eden of a regenerated earth, a humanity regenerated by scientific progress — no, I've come too late — "they, hunted into harmonic ecstasy and the heroism of discovery" — there's even a musical note — "they, hunted into harmonic ecstasy and the heroism of discovery" — and there you have it, right, for the ultra-modern avant-garde of this new world embodied here by this power plant, by this dam — and then, all of a sudden, on the next line: "at the most surprising atmospheric events" — did he see a rainbow, a clearing in the sky, right? In any case—
1:06:26 —the gaze lifts upward, toward the meteors, meteorology, astronomy — that was the study of meteors in Antiquity, and even still in Descartes' time — "at the most surprising atmospheric events," the most ancient thing there is, the opposite — it's not about the world — "a young couple, the lovers, alone in the world, isolate themselves on the ark" — there was doubtless a bridge crossing this waterway — and then the question that he — and I thank him — alludes to, and I thank him for being sensitive to that detail so that we don't forget it once we've understood, once we've been — I was about to say harpooned — by Rimbaud's words: "is it ancient savagery that one forgives" — well, why forgive? And yes, yes, well, what's love doing here, sex, the animal part? There's more to it than that, far from it — love begins precisely where, unlike sexuality which concerns only the species in the animal world—
1:07:36 —the interests of the person and the individual join in, which completely contradicts the Schopenhauerian view of love, which sees behind love nothing but the reproduction of the species, whereas, more intelligently, back in the 18th century, Diderot has — Diderot, sorry, Marivaux — it's roughly the same world at the time of the Enlightenment — has Figaro say, right, Beaumarchais — sorry, I'm mixing up the Enlightenment — it's Beaumarchais in The Marriage of Figaro who has Figaro say: making love at any time of year is indeed what distinguishes us from beasts — which proves it's not solely due to the necessity of reproducing the species, or at least to a mating season. Come on, let's be serious: "is it ancient savagery?"
1:08:24 Does it place love within this world of calculation, of rationality? It's staggering. The question remains suspended, framed by two dashes precisely so that it keeps traveling on in our reflection, all the way to Louis's thought, to mine, to yours, I hope, right? On the next line: "and sings and stands watch" — let's pick back up and conclude — the couple does nothing but sing, there you go. Now, I don't want to leave Louis hanging on the properly philosophical aspect of his question, but you see there's real philosophical material in this Rimbaud text, which as usual with him is astoundingly dense. I'll answer his question — not like a Norman, maybe — maybe yes, maybe no — especially since he's a Norman himself, he's cagey, no, no, I'm sure there are very decisive Normans — what needs to be said, what I haven't said—
The fragmented body and the mother who gathers it up 1:09:35 —but I don't see what's contradictory about it, or rather, it's not certain that it's contradictory: intuition and the concept. No doubt nothing would begin without the initial intuition, without — he's alluding to the child, which is a very beautiful allusion — and there I'm forced to bring in another reference, you see, I proceed by intertextuality — I'll be right with you — there — when he spoke of the child I couldn't help thinking of some of the latest fragments by Hölderlin — indeed he's mentioned earlier too — so I'll start by giving the reference first, I'll give the page number in the Pléiade edition, but I'll say it's a bit expensive, so I'll just give the title—
1:10:46 To the Madonna — a hymn to the Madonna. You know Hölderlin is not a Catholic, he did Protestant theology studies like his fellow students there — but there — ah, this is a reflection I'm forced to make because there's a philosophical stake here, one of political philosophy or philosophical politics, you'll judge for yourselves — as German Romanticism developed rapidly and dramatically, what Armel Guerne, one of its best translators, calls the fabulous verbal ocean of German Romanticism — more and more German Romantics were drawn — I'm thinking in particular of Novalis, the Schlegels — toward Catholicism, whereas they had started out Protestant. First there's a strictly political reason — in the politician's sense, I won't dwell on it too much — geopolitical, let's say — the great Catholic power among the Germanic countries, in German-speaking lands, was Austria, right?
1:11:49 So it's a way of — of showing the difference between the fragmented side — I'm sure those with some Lacanian notions in my audience already guess the comparison I'm going to make — between the fragmentation of Germany before it was reunified nearly a century later, the fragmentation of Germany, the dismembered body, the dread each of us carries — right, I'm making lots of parentheses within the parenthesis, but to dig into the same problem, since I'm trying to pull it—
1:12:27 —out of the darkness where we repress it, into the light that I share, that I try to share with you, and that I wouldn't have without you, moreover. Kafka — an apparent detour, not at all — Kafka's father was an extremely severe father from a traditional Jewish family, of puritanism — I was going to say of Judaic orthodoxy — had a stormy relationship with his son, who wasn't quite making the career he'd have wished. But all that is thoroughly classic, and not only Jewish. And he had once threatened his son with this terrible phrase: "I will tear you apart like a fish" — the fragmented body, the body that comes apart, right, this body that we took so long — but the human being, how many times have I told you — without connecting it to what we're looking at today, with the stakes and the waves that it sends rippling through each of our unconscious — how many times have I told you to compare—
1:13:38 —the antelope on the African savanna, or the wildebeest, right, which has just fallen, just come into the world by falling, that's exactly the phrase for it, since it falls from nearly a meter up, right, from its mother — and which within two or three days starts standing on its legs and is ready to flee from danger in a very short time — whereas we, how long it takes us, right, to become autonomous at the motor level — and, in short, all sorts of handicaps specific to the human animal, since — there are always those looking for slightly more serious differences than that one, right, among many others — it's the famous generic prematuration that all physiologists know about the human species, which means, roughly, to put it in plain terms, that the human species gives birth prematurely — of course there are premature babies, those born even earlier still — but generally speaking, that's why we speak of generic prematuration — the shift from the quadrupedal stance—
1:14:48 —to the bipedal stance, because even apes are almost never bipedal except in very circumstantial ways — from the spider monkeys — the gibbon is the best known, which can do that swinging motion with its arms — the chimpanzee, the gorilla can run a few meters, but otherwise, as soon as it's a matter of fleeing over a longer distance, it's immediately back on all fours. The shift from the quadrupedal to the bipedal stage produced a narrowing of the pelvic bones — here we're squarely in physiology, especially for women — and that caused catastrophic consequences at the obstetric level, hence — the Bible, which — you know it was written among a people of herders — it's among a people of herders that the Bible, the Old Testament, appeared, people who know animal behavior very well, and births — that's practically all they see, it's even the preoccupation of a herder — look, in a French farm today, the event that a cow calving constitutes, right, and how—
1:15:58 —often the farmer is assisted by a neighbor for the birth of the calf — so they know all about it if they had the Eternal say "you shall give birth in pain," it's to mark a difference they had clearly noticed between man and other animals at that level. And so we all carry deep within us, somewhere, a dread of being threatened by this original fragmentation, and so we emerged — now this is a hypothesis I'll leave to Lacan, I'm not contradicting it either, but I mean I'll sign off on it, I'll have it signed, I'm not imposing it as an obvious truth — that the unity we found again, through which we overcame the dread of this fragmentation — which is why the infant at first can't manage to put its thumb in its mouth — the dread of this fragmentation is overcome thanks to the relation to the other, that's the famous mirror stage — I don't expect to have to inform you about Lacan, mirror stage, you'll find all sorts of texts—
1:17:08 —on Google — interesting, I'm not being ironic. There you go. I'm not saying either that it's the Bible, but it's unavoidable given the problem we're stirring up here. In any case, if I shift from the analytic field here to the pictorial field, for instance, in art history — if you look at works by a painter like Hieronymus Bosch, the painter Hieronymus Bosch in the 16th century, right — do we need commentary? Put "Hieronymus Bosch image" into a search engine and you'll be stunned, sometimes frightened, right, by his bodies, his muscles, his limbs cut and scanned with scissors, with stakes, with lances, you see — and it's not only with him that it's most spectacular, you find it in Bruegel the Elder, you find it in the admirable painter of the Isenheim Altarpiece — if you ever pass through Colmar, make the detour, in one of the most beautiful museums in Europe, the Unterlinden Museum on the outskirts—
1:18:19 —of Colmar, in Alsace, and you'll see this extraordinary triptych showing the Temptation of Saint Anthony — you see those monsters right there — and the Resurrection — in short, and there's a marvelous account of it, a dazzling account, in any case he's capable of saying so in Huysmans' novel Là-bas — you see, I seem to be making detours, no — if we needed this — I was talking about whom, the German Romantics — I was reading and beginning to comment on the title "To the Madonna" — if there is an instance that unifies, that gathers up the fragmented body, it's indeed that of the mother — but not this or that mother of each of us individually, beyond even her, through her, but beyond, as a universal figure, in the symbolic order — it's the mother goddess, whether it be the Virgin Mary or Isis, to make clear that what we're looking at with "To the Madonna" isn't narrowly Catholic.
1:19:29 There, Isis — you know that in ancient Egyptian mythology Isis gathers up the fourteen pieces, twice seven, of Osiris's phallus, which had been torn apart by an enemy brother — Cain and Abel, we come back to the same things, Romulus and Remus, and the parents of Hagen too, in short — it gets complicated, we move on to the Nibelungenlied, it's the same, these are kinds of stories of brothers deeply torn apart, and the sibling rivalries, and Eteocles and Polynices in the tragedy, in Antigone — and you'll see that the mother is the unification, she's what welds the pieces back together — "Stabat Mater dolorosa"—
1:20:33 —the sorrowful mother stood there, before what, implicitly? Before this near-corpse of her son on the cross. You see, these are symbols that come from far back, even from before Christianity — I'm not saying Christianity invented nothing, there are things that only begin with it — but this relation to the fragmented body, to use the phrase that just came out of me now — and to its antonym, its recollection, holy and whole, within maternal unity — I'll conclude with this phrase drawn from the fifth walk of Rousseau's Reveries, at the moment when he is most fragmented — he's been chased from one dwelling to another, right, his books are burned in the public square, he suffers from the stone disease, he takes swift refuge on the Île Saint-Pierre in the middle of Lake Biel — a little wave here to David Lépé, he'll understand why — while leaving—
Rousseau on the Île Saint-Pierre and "To the Madonna" 1:21:45 —because he's threatened with arrest, they could shoot him down with a musket, right, with a rifle, if the police of one of the three powers that condemned him — Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of France — should encounter him. So he takes refuge on this island, and there he has his admirable — he believed he'd be there, when he was there he thought he'd stay forever, and he only stayed six weeks — and it's there that modern literature was born. And so he's by the water's edge, the famous reverie — I don't want to, I quote it often, but I'll go straight to this phrase where he says that sometimes he tries to fight against the hypnosis of this reverie and return a little to thought, for instance by making comparisons, and he says — and here I quote — "sometimes a few brief and feeble reflections were born" — that's thought, reflection on the instability of the things of this world; in the surface of the waters — the waters of the lake — offered me the image — but soon these light impressions themselves faded away — you see, the recollection, there's no more plurality—
1:22:55 —but soon these light impressions themselves faded away — into what? Into the uniformity of the movement — that's Rimbaud's title, of the continuous movement — which rocked me, and which, without any active involvement of my soul — he's become an infant again — and which, without any active involvement of my soul, did not fail to attach me to it, to the point that, called by the hour and the agreed signal — one had to call him from afar with a bell, a horn, or a chime to signal that it was dinner time — to the point that, called by the hour and the agreed signal, I could not tear myself away from it without effort. It is to this same Madonna that Hölderlin devotes this hymn — there are obscure passages in it, but I'm only quoting to you what relates to Louis's question about song and childhood, right?
1:23:51 Let me give you, quickly, the first stanza. "Much have I, for you and for your son, suffered" — well, the translator — I tried to keep the German syntax — "I have suffered much for you and for your son, O Madonna, since I heard tell of him in tender youth" — you see already there is childhood, for it's not only the seer, he echoes Christ — they stand under one destiny, the servants too, the apostles, so myself and those who follow him — and there's this phrase: "and many a song" — there we truly reach the poem, the key to the poetic enigma that Louis rightly tries to untangle, wondering whether it belongs to rational mediation, right, or to intuitive immediacy — "and many a song that I had meditated to sing, destined for the Father on high, has been devoured from me"—
1:25:02 —melancholy, the song has expired on my lips — melancholy has made the song of my childhood expire, right? It's a way of answering, of echoing for now, right, not of settling — how are we going to settle it like that — but of answering, of making progress in the answer to Louis's question. And still in this same Hymn to the Madonna, you find this — it's a hymn running three pages, I'll show you all the same, on purpose, these strange spellings, you see there are sentences that don't finish, there are gaps, but rest assured, the little passage I'm about to quote now, two pages further on, is continuous, where he says this: "one more thing, however, must be said" — sounds like a testament, seems serious, as if these were the last words — "one more thing, however, must be said, for it would have come to me almost too suddenly, happiness once more" — a return to what he called his tender youth — "too early I had been sensitive to" — how to put it — a word—
Jaccottet: Hölderlin as a child on the banks of the Neckar 1:26:12 —illuminations, poetic ecstasies — and there I'm forced, to illustrate it, it's not a detour, on the contrary, so you understand better, right — Jaccottet, whom I've already told you about, since I had the honor of dining once at his home, because I was in the same orchestra as his wife, a baroque music orchestra in the Drôme, in their wonderful house in Grignan — Jaccottet, a marvelous translator, a great poet, is marvelous at spotting a symptom in the young Hölderlin — Hölderlin is 16, he's a kid, a boarder at the Protestant seminary of Maulbronn, from which he will leave — that's the very beginning of his foreword, you see, these are the very first words, he's right to begin there — he's a boarder at the Protestant seminary of Maulbronn, from which he will leave two years later to complete his theological training at Tübingen, where he will meet a Schelling — but already it's mainly on poetry that he feeds, "for it would have come to me almost too suddenly, happiness" — the solitary — that's the books one reads alone, the ecstasies one has—
1:27:23 —while walking in the forest or along the Neckar — happiness, the solitary — but already it's mainly on poetry that he feeds, without any rebellion moreover, at least for now, against the atmosphere of austere piety, the Protestant rigorism surrounding him. So too the long poem he devotes to his family naturally takes the form of a prayer asking God to protect them from the banalities of the age — sincere, certainly, but emphatic and conventional — "may God protect you," etc.
1:27:55 However, in the midst of these edifying clichés, one clumsy but intensely true image suddenly holds our attention. Hölderlin, thinking of his half-brother, recalls their childhood games — you see, we started from his adolescence at 16, and he recalls, he reminds his younger brother of games he used to play as a small child — Hölderlin, thinking of his half-brother, recalls their childhood game by the Neckar — and here we are again by the water, like Rousseau and like Rimbaud. He's a child, 10 or 11, in the questioning that plays and that suddenly — don't forget we're playing there by the Neckar — by chance lifts his eyes, and there he quotes — he quotes what's in Hölderlin's letter — "the river stood" — it's written small, excuse me — "the river stood, shimmering in the evening," he quotes—
1:29:08 —in stupor he staggers — so he goes on commenting on his letter — falls to his knees to pray — is this not childish exaltation? Jaccottet resumes speaking: two years later, he makes it his duty to tell his mother about a hike in the Rhine valley — to recount a journey — clearly he's no bored observer, no idle onlooker, but he does recall the sight of the Rhine near Speyer, a small town — everything changes — quote — "at the sight that offered itself to me, I believed I was being resurrected, the dimension of my feelings grew, my heart beat harder, my mind took flight as far as the eye could see, my eyes remained stunned, I no longer knew what I was seeing, and it left me motionless like a statue" — the vision of the river immobilizes him — I hope some of you remember when I commented in much greater detail on the fifth walk of Rousseau's Reveries — the sound of that, the murmur of that water, the waves that never cease breaking on the shore where they daydream—
1:30:18 —the murmur of that water, its continuous sound, but swelling at intervals, striking my ear and my eyes without let-up — so he's no longer anything but a direct object, it's not him who saw — "striking my ear and my eyes without let-up, supplied for the internal movement that the reverie was extinguishing within me" — you see, he's hypnotized too, Rousseau, right, by the movement of the water, and in Rousseau, who's a musician, by the sound, the sound of the waves, the murmur of the torrent, or here, of the lakeshore. So I go back to the Hymn to the Madonna so you understand better, much more concretely, what he means when he says "for it would have come to me almost too suddenly, happiness" — I recall the opening — "one more thing, however, must be said, for it would have come to me almost too suddenly, happiness" — and here I tell Louis to be careful — the poetry, Rimbaud, and I showed it — I'm sure it didn't escape Louis's notice—
1:31:28 —since he apparently paid close attention to the commentaries, or to the close reading of "Bottom [En bleu adorable]" — and there was a bit of a risk right there, at the top of the bell tower — "in adorable blue the roof's metal blooms, the sun overhead" — how can one be above, even further above the tip of the bell tower, right — a hubris in wanting to go so high into the blue infinite — like that, the sun goes very high, colors the sheet metal all around, a swallow's cry hovers — and it's when he comes back down that the stature of man, the figure, the opposite of the infinite, what has a clear, delimited outline, as he says, "the stature of man henceforth is manifest" — and that's a way of protecting oneself against what may be — and I'm coming to it — fearsome in poetic illumination, right, because now I continue: "for it would have come to me almost too suddenly, happiness, the solitary that" — listen carefully — unreasonable—
1:32:39 —as concerns property, instead of doing as everyone else does, seeking a trade, an income, having a house — I know some of you remember my analytic reveries — you remember Nerval's problem in Promenades et souvenirs, it's the very first sentence: it's becoming truly difficult to find lodging in Paris, and afterward there's the quest for a home, for property — and indeed Nerval says, with a mix of humor, offhandedness and bitterness: one must resign oneself, I will never be a property owner. So you might say all this is coincidence, but when it accumulates — "it would have come to me almost too suddenly, happiness, the solitary that" — consequence — unreasonable as concerns property — instead of tending to my concrete interests I turned toward shadows, toward poetry, toward I know not what — "for since you gave mortal man, through the Madonna, so many figures of gods, why not one word too," I thought — there you go.
"In the Forest": shame and speech, the most perilous of goods 1:33:49 So these are, right, intertextual ways of answering Louis's excellent question. Well, I'll close this intertextual excursion with a short but dense text titled either "The Stag" — départ, it was the stag, the barred animal, so we return to a forest screen, barred — and then afterward it's the title he left, "In the Forest" — it's very short, it's in prose, I'll show it to you here, you see, I'll show you this strange text, you see there are numbers, you see the numbers in tiny letters, there are numbers, each number corresponds to an independent fragment — that's what was being blackened at the time in the carpenter's tower — so you see some are half a line, others are — the one I'm going to read is eight lines long — so I don't know what the mosque of Agadez in Niger is doing here, it's just to mark the page — "oh you, noble beast."
1:35:00 speaks to you, to me, to anyone — that's man; you noble beast, but man dwells in huts, ah, we were talking about dwelling, and wraps himself in the garment of his shame — man is the animal who is ashamed of something. I said earlier that from original sin, that is, from having tasted the fruit — don't think we're in pious talk; Rimbaud, who is quite the opposite, really, you couldn't be more opposed — is a profaner, a provocateur, a rebel, he delights in sacrilege, but Rimbaud himself says theology is serious. Now theology says — the text of Genesis itself, without even interpreting it, says this — that the Eternal, among the changes that are going to appear as punishments to sanction the fact of having tasted the fruit, says: you shall earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. Well yes, man is the animal of praxis who must work to produce his subsistence,
1:36:10 and not simply find it and seize it — and you shall bring forth in pain, as I recalled earlier. But there's another one: that shame, modesty, appears. Well yes, because how does the Eternal notice and guess that Adam has tasted the fruit? Because he calls him in the garden — Adam — and Adam says, I am hiding because I don't want you to see me, implying, naked. And there the Eternal understands, he says: you have tasted the fruit, since you don't want to be seen naked. You see, there are those who think that the origin of our clothes is positivism — always the same thing, utilitarianism — it seems so self-evident: the first men invented clothing to protect themselves from the cold, as if the Tahitians had no clothes. It's an incredible piece of stupidity all the same, and yet it's widely shared — as a kid I believed it too. No, the first garment is not the coat to protect from the cold, especially in a hot country — the first garment is the loincloth.
1:37:24 You noble beast, but man dwells in huts — it's a bit more concrete, with my detours. Well yes, I'm advertising for myself, but it's not — it's to tell you that this isn't time wasted, it's to reassure you. And he wraps himself, man wraps himself in the garment of his shame — the garment of his shame, for he is more intimate, more attentive too, and it preserves the spirit like the priestess the celestial flame — you should read 'vestal.' You know, in Rome these were young girls, virgins, in charge of tending the flame that must never go out; she could be punished with death if the flame accidentally went out — and tending it, as is done now for the unknown soldier. And it preserves the spirit like the priestess the celestial flame — so man represses, we would say in more recent terms, shame; he represses his former savagery. You see how it all holds together — we're not dealing with just a word here, it's to help you understand what follows. And that is why, if he represses, it is because he knows that repression
1:38:34 is a lie to oneself — it's not a lie to the other, it's not the child's lie who says 'it wasn't me who ate the candy,' that's not a serious lie — but the lie spoken of in theology: the prince of this world comes, and his essence is lies. As everything holds together — it's not, but it's because something is lacking, and that's something new — it's that somewhere he sees the truth, otherwise he wouldn't try to hide it. And so I take up again and continue with the consequence of what we just saw: he preserves the spirit like the priestess the sacred flame — that is his understanding, and that is why freedom is given to him, and the highest power to fail as well as to accomplish, to miss as well as to succeed. Miss what?
1:39:27 The most perilous of goods, speech, is given to man so that, creating, destroying and perishing, and returning to the eternally living, to the mistress and mother — with a capital M — so that he may bear witness to what he is, having inherited, learned from her, what is most divine in her — colon — actually, comma — love, which sustains everything. I could go beyond these texts, which seem to me clearer and clearer as they echo one another, as, in Mallarmé's phrase, it 'lights up with reciprocal reflections.' And I want to hand the floor over to you, since this is a Q&A session — I dwelt on that one. I named a few of the people I'll come back to in future Q&A sessions in much more detail, but asking them not to hesitate to send me a message on Messenger to give me their phone number so I can call them, because I have many things
Pentecost, not Epiphany 1:40:37 to tell them, to make up for the delay I often take in responding to their initiatives or thanking them for their generosity. I'm speaking to Pierre-Alain, and I'm wondering whether for now there really aren't any questions — there were questions left over from last time. I can display them, of course. Excellent idea, so the questions will appear, I'll be able to — yes, yes, I remember I'll start with one that's very short, well, the answer doesn't need to be drawn out — a question from Cochardim, to use the pseudonym, who asks me: isn't there confusion between Epiphany and Pentecost? You know, when I alluded to my drama in three acts in the Bible, this time even including the New Testament, the tragedy of speech — it was I who somewhat invented this scenario, but still,
1:41:47 it really does correspond to quite clear passages in the Bible. First act — a paradisiacal moment in the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam the privilege, I quote, of naming the creatures, of calling each by its name. Then the antithesis, the opposite, the loss, in contrast to communication: it's the Tower of Babel, where, worried to see that man, by dint of technical progress, risks rivaling the divine, God, to thwart, to foil the building project of the Tower of Babel, decides this time to send not water, as he had done for the flood, or fire, as he did for Sodom and Gomorrah, but the confusion of tongues — people speak but no longer understand each other, humanity is divided into different languages. Then, good news, the happy ending of my story — it's a tragicomedy in three acts — oh no, I was about to say — you see, I'm a repeat offender — I was about to say Epiphany,
1:42:57 no, Cochardim is right, I don't know what — I'd need to see a psychoanalyst, it's not that serious, so I don't think I'd go see one just for that — but every time I say Epiphany when he's right, it's Pentecost. It's the moment, it's the first gathering of the disciples, the first celebration of the Last Supper, of the sharing of the corpus Christi, of the host, but in the absence of Jesus, who has died in the meantime, unfortunately for them. And at that moment, for the Eternal, he sends them — I quote the text — a comforter, they say, it's hard to translate, the famous Paraclete. It's the spirit, it's the third term of the Trinity, because the Father we saw in Genesis, especially the Son, who has just accomplished his sacrifice on the Cross, and so there is the third term, the spirit, which is the synthesis of all that — of the transcendence of the Father and the immanence of the Son, of the beyond of the Father and the Son that one can touch, who did us the kindness of appearing to us and of incarnating, and
1:44:07 the spirit manifests itself as flames above the head of each apostle, and afterward they go on to preach in every language. And I think, without going to see a psychoanalyst, I think it's these flames that each time make me slide from Pentecost toward Epiphany, because the 'phan' of epiphany, you find it in phosphorus, photon, particles of light in physics — it's all about light, precisely, the flames. So somehow I tend to think it's the feast of light, Saint Lucy among the Scandinavians, among the Swedes, lux, light, Saint Lucy — and yet he's right, it's Pentecost that is celebrated at that moment. Thank you Cochardim for catching me out, as they say in the Canard Enchaîné, when the duck admits it made a mistake. Jean-Vincent Berto — to what extent is the polis — ah yes, the city — is the city of today still the work of measure, of balance? Isn't the city of today, on the contrary, in excess, just as man, who made it, can undo it? Let me read the whole question — is it to say
The modern city: civil society, the state and the state apparatus 1:45:17 that certain men, those who govern the city, turn toward the infinite, seeking to flee, to flee themselves, and lead us into war instead of seeking man within man? So what you're saying — implying, what I'm saying — must be alluding to something I must have recalled several times, namely that, unlike — one couldn't be more opposed — for instance, unlike today's ecologism, the Greek ethos consists in fleeing nature to take shelter in the city. Nature is a world of hubris, of an infinity of monsters, and you'll notice moreover that most monsters are at the entrance, on the periphery of cities — take just the Sphinx, who devours those who don't solve its riddles, and who is at the entrance of Thebes, for example. And so he tells me: yes, that may have been true for antiquity, or the city that was under the law of measure, of balance — that's what he says, it was still the man of measure, of balance — but is today's world not, on the contrary,
1:46:27 a dreadful chaos? Well, that's a very interesting question, because it allows us to clear up some confusions. If we stay binary, I'd answer yes, today's city is hopeless — one should, as is quite fashionable now, — I'm not saying that's Jean-Vincent Berto's point of view, he's asking the question, I don't think he settles it — but even if he clearly sees what's unsatisfactory in today's city, I don't think he goes as far as Michéa or others in saying 'it was better before' — I'm caricaturing, well, I'm simplifying, I'm not caricaturing, he does say it, but it's more nuanced than that, and better substantiated. But still, it comes down to as if it were just him — there are those who say it with far less caution. Except here the two terms are 'now' and 'before.' But what is this city of today, this 'now,' which, as he says, is in excess? It's not — it's not society
1:47:38 in general — it's this society called civil society. That's where we need to recall the three stages: the family, the most homogeneous thing there is, the family; then the total entity, civil society, into which I am thrown, which each of us discovers in our world — for instance, when we go into the schoolyard, there's no more mommy picking me up on her lap when I've bumped into a chair, etc. — no, or my father telling me stories — yes, all the same, no, no, it's fend for yourself, we're thrown in at the deep end there, in the playground — and no, no, I'm not saying you're a victim in the playground, the others too, the poor things, our schoolmates — but that's civil society, that's — it's a political choice, well, 'choice' is a manner of speaking, it's a political option, and one typical of capitalism. It's not society, it's not modernity
1:48:48 that condemns us to live, as he very rightly says, in excess — war, everything that undoes, that is, this shelter that the city offered when the city — and here we're touching on important things that will echo what I said in the previous question about the mother, you know, the figure of the mother who mends the pieces of our original torment, our original distress, our dehiscence, as we say — namely that the city is somewhat a relay of the mother. The city, yes, the ancient city, with its balance, its harmony, its rules — the fact that there were little strips, you know, on the agora, of bright paint, at election time, so that whoever came late would get stained — it was rather shameful not to participate, not to have enough civic spirit to take part
1:49:58 in the common direction of the city. There, that's to say we're a long way from the chaos of — I was about to say, following on from Jean-Vincent — of modern societies, but it's not the modern world, there can be a modern society that is much more organized and doesn't leave the individual in such distress, a more solidary society. That is indeed the issue that Jean-Vincent's question brings us back to — my introduction on the heroism shown by those who now continue to consent to pay cuts, since every day of strike is a loss of wages, in solidarity with those they know cannot do it for several days, because otherwise there would be nothing left to hold out with in the confrontation with the authorities, with the repressive apparatus of the state — the state apparatus in its repressive version, that's saying a lot,
1:51:08 isn't it, and this calls not for a world that isn't modern, but for a more solidary modernity, one that keeps the gains of modernity, gains which help with that recollection the mother provides — because we weren't born wailing under the hail, under the cold, or under the August sun in torrid countries, and wherever it may be, the sun — it's rarely ever been this hot, I who've been to the edges of the Sahara — well, in Germany in summer, the continental heat, I saw the asphalt melt on the Rhine plain. But we're not born thrown into that — we're born in a pram, in a house with electric power, it took time, technique, and modernity to get there. So that's how I answer Jean-Vincent Berthaud — so, the three stages: the family, the archaic, the bond of blood; civil society,
1:52:18 where there's no blood tie between the different school friends, other bonds form; and the third stage is the state. Now of course this division, typical of German political philosophy, à la Paris, and in Hegel, scandalizes libertarians for whom the state is the bogeyman. Yes, but for capitalism too, it's strange — so who is one fighting against, at Concorde? Against the state, against capitalism? I already answered this at length last time, to answer the excellent question asking me to clarify the distinction I make, that we made together with Clouscard, between the state and the state apparatus. Those who are at Place d'Italie or Concorde are fighting against the state apparatus of the government, among the most liberal, the most capitalist we've had to endure, and against attaching to the essential the country that was in power, and destroying what was collective in the notion of the state — precisely our common property, nationalization, which is the very opposite of state-apparatus-ization
1:53:28 in fact, this state apparatus is at the service of the private sector, which ought to be — isn't it — the opposite of the state. The state is not private accounting; the state is, in principle, at the service of every private individual — the reimbursement of social security is not made only to Pierre-Alain and not to me, or only to me and not to Pierre-Alain. Ah yes, that's quite something, that state. But that's the state in Rousseau's sense, in the sense of the French Revolution, isn't it,
1:54:04 of the general will, of the collective interest — and they want to make us spit on it by deliberately confusing it, by sowing confusion between this state that saves us from the savagery of civil society and now — I answer Jean-Vincent Berthaud — which is not modernity, which is a stage called the capitalist stage. So there it is, but there are those who would have us spit on that state by putting in its place the state apparatus, which is in fact in the process of destroying precisely our common good. There, I'm at your disposal, Pierre-Alain, but I think, given that we have quite a few interesting questions, if you want me to display them, go ahead — ah!
Intuition, the result of forgotten labor 1:55:08 Geoffrey Jo, it's been a long time — I'm glad, it's good, it's been a long while, it's not a reproach, it goes both ways, I too should have taken into account several comments he made that I left in the shadows, sometimes for lack of time, for lack of — how does one say — for lack of time, for lack of means, for lack of everything, unfortunately — but about his reply that to be a good writer one must have suffered a great deal, isn't intuition simply the result of a work one is more or less unaware of? Now I don't know if I understand correctly the 'more or less,' which does great credit to Geoffrey Jo — does it mean that between clear, transparent knowledge and murky ignorance, one never knows which is which, everything unfolds between the one and the other, but one must have suffered greatly — intuition is not simply the result of a work — ah yes, yes, yes, is what we believe to be intuitive therefore immediate, isn't it — a very good question — at that point, isn't it in fact a whole
1:56:18 set of mediations, but which has happened so often, which we've grown so used to, that we believe it has become immediacy? Let me give an example — I think Geoffrey Jo himself will grant that it matches what he wants us to understand, and with which I agree, by the way — it's that the gearshift in cars, in cars that aren't automatic, at first, when you're driving, when you've just barely got your license or are in the process of getting it, you spend your time thinking, what am I doing, do I put it in second here, there's a hill coming — once you're practiced, and you've done it ten, a hundred, a thousand times, you no longer think about it, it no longer goes through the mediation of thought, of inner speech, because I do it even before having thought about it, it's a reflex — and I might have the illusion, as a result, that it's the reflex arc that passes through the spinal cord without even going through the brain. No — it had to pass
1:57:28 first through learning — what he calls there 'the result of a work one is unaware of' — quite right, if that's what it means. But in that case, one shouldn't praise intuition against the concept, nor a concept devoid of all intuition — one must show precisely that the two are not contradictory, if intuition is a stage that must be overcome to arrive afterward, that is, at mastery. There, thank you very much Geoffrey Jo for this intuition of the true essence of intuition. Laurent Angot — one of the finest literary cultures — sorry, I'm going to make him blush — among our regulars — speaking of Nerval, it seems to me Dominique was able to say he does better than think it, he says it — I said that about all successful poetic formulas — there is a saying of the poet that seems to bypass the conceptual approach. All the questions have a family resemblance tonight, everything still revolves around
"He does better than think it, he says it": Racine's line 1:58:38 this opposition, which I told you goes back almost to the origins of philosophy, even if it's posed differently — we're not going in circles, between an apparently immediate grasp, we just saw it, of reality, of being, of whatever you like, of objectivity, and of objectivity in the most immediate, external sense — and on the other hand a progressive grasp through successive mediation, etc., in short, mediate, and therefore discursive, passing through the world of language, of discourse, and hence of words, and hence of the concept. Yes, so, by praising the concept at the expense of intuition, which is very Hegelian, he takes the opposite stance of the Romantics of his generation — at this level, doesn't this contradict the fact that I say, when for instance I point out
1:59:48 I try to point out the logic, the incredible, the rigor, the logical construction there is in — I take the two lines, I think he's alluding to that — there's no Nerval in it, but I must have done the same thing with a passage — ah well, yes, in prose — but here I take two verses to go faster, a verse of Rimbaud and one of Racine. The one from Racine, you remember, it's the extract from Mithridate — 'sovereign of the seas that must bear you' — Pharnaces, the treacherous brother who collaborates with his father's enemies and who, on top of that, wants to steal his favorite from him, since word is going around that his father is dead, which will turn out to be false, otherwise there'd be no tragedy — and who therefore tries to persuade the young captive whom his father had reserved for himself, a little Greek girl, telling her: come on, let's just leave for Rome, my father's done for, he's dead — so he says, better than that, this is Racine — 'Until when, madam, will you wait for your father? Witnesses of his death come at every moment to condemn your doubt'
2:00:58 'and your delays' — stop asking yourself whether he's dead or not, come flee the sight of this savage climate, the Black Sea — that's the news of the day — which speaks to your eyes only of sad slavery; an entire people awaits you on its knees, under a sky happier and more worthy of you, Italy, Rome, master of this state that my father leaves me — which is false, madam, it's up to me to fulfill his promise, to make you a queen, that is, to marry you — our common interests, and my heart, demand it, our ships, ready to receive you, await you — and there, the magic — 'and from the foot of the altar you may board, sovereign of the seas that must bear you.' It's curious how everything holds together tonight, not only the themes but the statements themselves — we're very far from Rimbaud, there's nothing in common with Racine — the seas (mers) that bear, the mother (mère) that bears the child — well, you're playing on words there, there's no accent grave, no silent e. What is it
2:02:11 that makes us grant, in the symbolic order, in poetry, in feeling, such importance to notions of vessel, ship, skiff, bearing? 'Helen, thy beauty is to me like those Nicaean barks of old, which gently bore the weary traveler to his native shore' — a youthful poem by Edgar Poe. You see what it's doing — it's that, like the mother, M-È-R-E, the mother, M-E-R, bears, opposes our dread of falling back, because we've known the fall, the fear of cadere, to fall, cadaver — how many times have I recalled that the dream of flying is euphoric — ask anyone who has flying dreams, they'll rarely tell you it's a moment of torture, whereas dreams of falling — from a house, a building, a tree, no matter, a cliff — are always on the verge of nightmare, so that when we wake up with a start we say, thank goodness my bed caught me, that my bed is bearing me. There, sovereign of the seas
2:03:22 but the rigor — 3 v's in this line, 'sovereign of the seas that must bear you,' v — I'll cite 'wave' in English — you're switching languages — yes, but in 'wave' there are 3 v's — in the word there are 3 v's, and yes, w is 2 v's — in short, everything undulates in this line, there's what's called in stylistics an imitative harmony between the sounds of the line, which have nothing to do with the meaning — the sounds aren't intelligence — so there, I'm answering the question, the sounds and the content, the logical content — now you're going to sail on seas that belong to you and over which you'll reign politically, less pretty, that — if you want to say 'sovereign of the seas that must bear you' but you see, there's between these things we oppose arbitrarily, as if it were cut with an axe — here I'll draw a somewhat philosophical conclusion, since it's the same problem running through all three questions, and all the better, it's a genuine dossier —
Rimbaud's dawn: poetry is an exact science 2:04:34 between these two apparently extreme things: thought, theorem by theorem, demonstration by demonstration, concept by concept, chain by chain, mediation by mediation, going to infinity without ever being satisfied — in the end it's always, in a sense, the finite — and on the other hand, isn't it, what Freud calls an 'oceanic feeling,' in Civilization and Its Discontents — an admirable little book, whichever translation you use — there is this intermediary of the symbolic order, we just saw it here, if only through musical sonority, which in a way proves — proves the concept right, rationality right — but proves it not through a chain of reasoning but in the mode of what is called in Baudelaire correspondence, or analogy. I took the example of that Racine line, then there's the Rimbaud line, remember: 'the exalted dawn, like a flock of doves,'
2:05:44 same problem — why 'like'? As if he told me: he's black as ebony, strong as a bull, white as an aspirin tablet, isn't it, on the beach, because he's just arrived on the first day of vacation — and that was once a positive value, and now it's a negative one, compared to the monarchical era when one had to have white skin to prove one didn't lower oneself to work in the sun, to till the fields, and that one belonged to the ruling class — let's be serious: 'the exalted dawn, like a flock of doves' — I had shown how much whiteness there is in that line, because at first you don't understand — 'he's black as ebony' — there's nothing poetic about that precisely because there's no mystery, he's black as ebony, is black, everyone knows it; 'he's white as an aspirin tablet,' you could say, but you could also say 'white as a lily,' which connotes virginity, that's already different in the symbolic order, yes — you know the lily is the symbol of the Virgin Mary, precisely — but you could also say 'white as arsenic' or 'as heroin,' for good or ill, it's whiteness
2:06:54 when we say 'known as the white wolf' — but on the other hand, what's striking is that in this line we don't see that common point between what's to the left and right of 'like,' which would justify the comparison, as in 'he's black as ebony' — there you see black on the left, he's black, on the right, ebony is black, that's fine, we understand, but there's no poetry — whereas here, the analysis — you showed it has implacable rigor — dawn, alba, albino, alabaster, albatross, all of that shouts that we're talking about white, at the hour when dawn whitens the countryside. And I had pointed out that if you protest by saying, well, dawn, I see everything but white, I see yellow, gold, when the sun rises, pink — remember, rosy-fingered dawn, as Homer says — yes, we're not doing meteorology here, we're doing poetry, it's the return of light
2:08:04 in relation to the darkness, and that's a stake, isn't it, that far exceeds material objectivity — that's the symbolic order, and the line plays on that. So, to the left, we haven't finished yet, you see the analysis — to the left of 'like,' as, in the image of, in the manner of, there's the whiteness of the dawn, which any French speaker, even a Togolese, understands — it's not just French — you'd say, yes, but you have to know the French language — yes, the French language is more extensive, isn't it, than those who pass for French — in the French language there's alabaster, albino, albatross, etc., so that as soon as we have that root, it connotes whiteness — but in the last part of the line, 'exalted, like what — like a flock of doves' — well, there you go — and so there's white on the left, white on the right, that's it, we've turned the line into an equation, we can put an equals sign between the two, and that's what makes me say
2:09:14 that poetry — the only difference between mathematics and poetry, you know my quip, but I like repeating it — the only difference between mathematics and poetry is that poetry is an exact science. And Laurent Angot is right, the worst misinterpretation, after what I've just shown, would be to believe that authors have a computer, or a computer in their brain, a super-computer, not artificial, in order to say, I'm going to put a 3-v here so it resembles a sea that undulates, like wave, voguer, etc. — no, no need, that's where I stand by saying he does better than think it, he says it, he expresses it, because this truth circulates, which is demonstrated, as we just saw in Rimbaud's line, where there's white on the left and white on the right, and not only — excuse me, let me finish with this line — the doves, that flies away like birds, 'exalted dawn,' exalted, alt, altitude,
2:10:25 altimeter, highness, everything that goes from low to high — but yes, this line is rigorous, it's perfectly rigorous, it repeats the same thing twice with different semantics, you see — there, so I have nothing to change in Laurent's statements when he says there is a saying of the poet that seems — look how careful he is — to bypass the conceptual approach — we just saw that it's not a bypass, it's perfectly justified, there's objective rigor in the choice of these formulas, but a rigor that doesn't pass through conscious thought, because it belongs to the order of the language we practice every day, and that is a collective treasure. There, well, listen, you see it takes me many Q&A sessions to catch up on the backlog that
2:11:35 I've built up, to live up to your participation in our sessions — don't think I take this lightly, I try to do the utmost to make up for this delay, but in any case I'm delighted by your participation, look, look at the giant strides it makes us take, you see, by taking, not a look back at footage, but a look back at my rambling, thanks to your comments asking me to return to it, look how much better we see. Thank you so much, and until next time, and let's stay attentive to the ongoing rumor, isn't it, to the rumor of the world. Thank you so much, and thanks to Pierre-Alain, thanks to Thom.
