I began to read these syllables for you in the parages of Thomas l'Obscur, from the first few pages: "...the next [moment] the absence of water took hold of his body and drew it along violently. His breathing became slower; for a few moments he held in his mouth the liquid which the squalls drove against his head: a tepid sweetness, strange brew of a man deprived of the sense of taste [...] the same sense of foreignness that the water in which they were tossed [...] reverie in which he confused himself with the sea. The intoxication of leaving himself in the thought of water, made him forget every discomfort. And even when this ideal sea which he was becoming ever ..."

- He is your ideal sea, the real sea. For you, to love his text, to drown there, now, to have loved it, as the original first name...

- "...more intimately had in turn become the real sea, in which he was virtually drowned, he was not moved as he should have been [...] his endless journey with an absence of organism in an absence of sea. The illusion did not last. He was forced to roll from one side [bord] to the other, like a boat adrift, in the water which gave him a body to swim. What escape was there? To struggle in order not to be carried away by the wave which was under his arm? To go under? To drown himself bitterly to the end? That would surely have been the moment to stop, but a hope remained; he went on swimming as if, deep within the restored core of his being, he had discovered a new possibility. He swam, a monster without fins. [...] so perfectly suited to him [...] he tried to tell in which direction he was gone [...] he discovered a man who was swimming far off [...] the swimmer was always escaping him. He would see him, then lose sight of him, though he had the feeling that he was following his every move: not only perceiving him clearly all the time, but being brought near him in a completely intimate way, such that no other sort of contact could have brought him closer." This is from the first chapter. The second, as you know, [p. 116] begins thus: "He nevertheless decided to turn his back on the sea..."
Here, at the end of the last chapter, the twelfth, in the parages of a time which is greatly distanced from both: "Could the world be more beautiful? The ideal of colour spread out across the fields [...] an immense sea spread out across his feet. He walked [...] The man immersed in the waves piled up by the absence of flood spoke to his horse in a dialogue consisting of a single voice. [...] Thomas still went forward. Like a shepherd he led the flock to the constellations, the tide of star-men toward the first night. Their procession was solemn and noble, but toward what end, and in what form? They thought they were still captives within a soul whose borders they wished to cross. [...] But little by little forgetfulness came. [...] Some who proudly plunged their glance into the sea, others who clung with determination to their name, lost the memory of speech, while they repeated Thomas's empty word. [...] The guardian of the impossible seized them, and they were engulfed in a shipwreck. A prolonged, heavy fall [...] the monsters which had terrified them when they were men came near them, they looked on them with indifference, saw nothing, and, leaning over the crypt, remained there in profound inertia, waiting mysteriously for the tongue whose birth every prophet has felt deep in his throat to come forth from the sea and force the impossible words into their mouths. [...] they all recognised the ocean, and they perceived a glance whose immensity and sweetness awoke in them unbearable desires. Becoming men again for an instant, they saw in the infinite an image they grasped and, giving in to the last temptation, they stripped themselves voluptuously into the water."

- Viens.

- Yes, yes.

 

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 back...