- "I sought, this time, to approach [aborder] him." In what follows this strange attack without capture, the assurance (that of the negation, for example, and of the dialectic or negative theology) is foiled by the unpresentable time of the récit. In the unlimited, elementary medium of a present floating without authority, breathless after the completely other past which no longer even has the form of a past present, of a past which would still resemble it, of a presentable or representable past keeping some common measure with the quasi-now of the récit, the event it derives removes its simple past ("I sought, this time...") over an indefinite depth of repetition or habit. Depth without depth indicated by the imparfaits of state or of recurrence: "I mean I tried [j'essai] to make him understand that, although I was there, still I was couldn't go any farther, and that I, in turn, had exhausted [j'avais épuisé] my resources. The truth was that for a long time now I had felt that [j'avait sentiment] I was at the end of my strength. "But you're not," he pointed out. About this, I had to admit, he was right. For my part, I was not. But the thought that perhaps I did not have `my part' in mind made it a bitter consolation. I tried to put it another way. `I would like to be.' A manner of speaking which he avoided taking seriously; at least, he didn't take it with the seriousness that I wanted to put into it."
In this sequence from the start [d'abord] (start [abord] of the récit in the récit of the start which does not start: without edge [a-bord] without deprivation) from which I always interrupt the quotation most arbitrarily (this logic of the abortive interruption-cutting, border, violence of the centring- brings us closer here, to one another, from one edge to the other; it is this strange logic of the share [part] or the division [partage] which interests us both), in this starting sequence, [p. 104] affect one another nearly four times, in which an imparfait never has the same value. That of the "he pointed out, he was pointing out" evasively implicates the indefinite repetition of similar events; the others, a durable and continuous state ("I felt, I was feeling", "I had exhausted, I am having exhausted", "I was not", etc.). Every single dislocation of the entangled, ephemeral chains is not even separated from any fixed system of reference; it is engaged above the hollowed abyss in the same presence of the narrator who seems only to speak in the present of his presence, but in order to say: "although I was there" ("...I tried to make him understand that, although I was there, still I couldn't go any farther...").
Seemingly homogeneous with the other imparfaits (to the extent that I was there: if is true, agreed, that I was there), this imparfait lets itself be contaminated , in a small, determinable way, one would say vague [vague, also "wave"]-floating-in these parages, by the conditional suspense: if [si] one could think that I was there, supposing that I were there. The decision is not only suspended by it for him but implied, I say implied carefully, between two readings, as always.
John Leavey's authorized English translation of "Pas", by Jacques Derrida, is going to be published in its entirety in the near future. These lines, translated by Clive Madder, are but appetizers!
Step this way...