Love Itself: In the Letter BoxLove’s memories, love recalling itself in letters lost and found over an interval of forty years: Cixous’s writer-narrator advances here far into a labyrinth of passions long ago delivered and yet still arriving through the mail, through letters and literature, in other words, the poetry of the post. As for the lovers’ returning scenes, they have their addresses in Paris (rue Olivier de Serres, Avenue de Choisy, street names that endlessly feed love’s unconscious language) and in New York, but also in a lost oasis of the Egyptian desert during the Napoleonic wars, in Athens and along the shores of a great lake centuries ago in the country of myth. The lovers are poets or soldiers, philosophers or students madly in love with poetry and poets. They are as well mermaids or panthers. Panthers? Yes, for it is the passion of the animal that drives all these lovers to bare themselves, and sometimes their claws, before the beloved. Misunderstandings are often, even inevitably the result. Seconded and witnessed by her passionate, truth-telling cats, Cixous’s narrator-writer returns unerringly to moments of errancy inflicted on address and language, those errors and faults when love, perhaps, is listening only to itself, without subject or object, lover or beloved, just love itself, l’amour même, l’amour m’aime, love loving me, in the letter box of memory. |
Contents
I OLIVIER DE SERRES A SINGLE PASSION TWO WITNESSES | 1 |
II THE CAULIFLOWER OF THE LAUTARET | 21 |
III THE FIRST LUCIDITY | 52 |
IV ONE TIME AVENUE DE CHOISY ECHO MY LOVE FIRST EPISODE | 60 |
V FIRST LETTERS | 73 |
VI NOTEBOOK LIFE | 78 |
VII FAITHFULLY FOREVER | 90 |
VIII WHEN I BECOME A FRENETIC KEEPER | 117 |
IX ON FEBRUARY 12 I COMMITTED AN ERROR LAST EPISODE | 133 |
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afraid Algiers alive amphora Andromache Armance arrive Artaud Avenue de Choisy beautiful believe body caress cats Cauli Flower cauliflower Celan cerfs coming dear dear death desert didn’t divan drawer dream envelope everything eyes face faith faithfully fear feel fidèlement forever forget Francis Jammes French front Genica grandmother hand happened head imagine instant Jacques Derrida keep kill Kleenex language Lautaret lemons letter letter box lips live longer look lucidity Medea Médée memory Montaigne mouth never notebooks Olivier de Serres once pain panther paper Paris pass passion perhaps plane poems remember S/he says my mother scene Search of Lost secret sentence shortbreads side skull soul speak Stendhal story suddenly telephone tell thing thought tongue voice witness words write