- Since you [vous] affect to speak to me, here at length, there briefly, opening or closing your mouth, all that you pronounce o (like zero, eau [water], faut [necessary], faux [false], fors [except], fort [strong], mot [word], moment [moment], mort [death, dead], and now bord [edge], always outside [dehors]), with a detective's eagerness, are you not going to decipher the identities once more, are you not going to shadow a signature there, a concern (Sorge conceals or [gold] on his body, in Le Très-Haut, Dorte also, the other character; and then, in the same novel, there is Louise and Roste, and then elsewhere, as if he never choses his names by chance, there is Thomas, and once again o, om, mo at work or sleeping in his titles), an insistent preoccupation with his name? the more or less anagrammatic dissimulation of his complete signature, in each case around its edges (maur / chot, m' : o [ie, nullify me, drown me])? Do you seek to take everything, as though in a round up or a net, with so over obliging a zeal as to unmask the absence of name, the pas-de-nom, no name; are you still going to say, playing page after page with the name of the name, with the letters (n,o,m), from right to left, and why not the non of pas, since you have already pointed out the a and pa redoubled in his titles (Faux Pas, Celui qui ne m'accompagnait pas, La Part du feu, L'Espace littéraire..., etc.)? Isn't this consequently a little facile? too short? Where would all these letters be absent the words of our language? in Me? in the Other? and isn't his concern also the forgetfulness of the name, and the false name of forgetfulness? yes, why, since you affect to speak to me...
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...