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Abstract
This paper posits that the writings of Hélène Cixous convey a remarkable intimacy, firstly in the representation of love, with its relationship to knowledge and time; and, secondly, in the relationship her texts create with the reader. Cixous’s use of her life, from the publication of her dreams to the life events which are the creative impetus for texts such as The Book of Promethea (1983) and The Day I Wasn’t There (2000) inform a discussion of the figures of the lover, the dead child, and that of the brother, his interdiction against appearing in her texts, and the ethical dimension this produces for the reader. Finally, the implications of Cixous’s imbrication of literature, dreaming, writing and life is considered as a gesture of intimacy which opens a possibility for radically reconceiving our usual separation of these realms of experience.
Notes
My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for their comments, and to Kerry Featherstone and Polly Tuckett for their advice over translations and help with some of the more idiomatic nuances of French.
1. For recent writings on intimacy and the public/private interface, see Berlant.
2. Authors who self-consciously fictionalise themselves necessitate the usual caveats about the distinction between the person who lives, the construct “author” which carries their name, and the “I” created within the text. None of these three – person, author, first-person narrator – are the same or refer to quite the same thing.
3. For a good discussion of genre and Cixous's writing, see M. Calle-Gruber, “Portrait of the Writing” in Hélène Cixous, Rootprints 135–76.
4. Cixous, The Book of Promethea 15.
5 The horse has a special significance in The Book of Promethea, where it can merge with Promethea, who is often described as having horse-like qualities and abilities. As well as standing for the beloved, the horse can stand for Freedom with a capital F and for writing (Cixous, Promethea 11). Elsewhere in her writing, horses refer to dreams and their power, as well as to metaphors themselves. See Hélène Cixous, Rootprints 28. Horses stand for something free, wild, instant, physical and potentially unbridled. They are also ancient indicators, depicted long ago on the walls of caves in France, images which The Book of Promethea calls upon.
6. Cixous, Promethea 103–04.
7. Wilson discusses this in “Hélène Cixous: An Erotics of the Feminine” 130–34.
8. Cixous, Promethea 40.
9. Ibid. 67.
10. Ibid. 65.
11. Ibid. 176–77, 172–73 and 183, respectively.
12. Ibid. 64–65.
13. Cixous, “Coming to Writing” 42.
14. Ibid. 43.
15. Cixous, Promethea 3.
16. Ibid. 11.
17. Ibid. 11.
18. Renshaw 183.
19. Ibid. 185.
20. Cornell 131.
21. Cixous, Promethea 21.
22. Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing 20.
23. Ibid. 32.
24. The translation of Photos de Racines (1994), co-authored with M. Calle-Gruber, carries “life writing” in its English subtitle, Hélène Cixous, Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing, but this is clearly not the original sense of the title.
25. Cixous, Promethea 19.
26. The blurb is on the inside jacket of the English translation of Love Itself in the Letterbox and on the back of The Day I Wasn’t There.
27. Cornell 136.
28. Cixous and Clément 92.
29. Cixous, Three Steps 107.
30. Derrida, Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius 23.
31. Cixous, Dream I Tell You 4.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid. 3.
34. Ibid.
35. Cixous, Three Steps 107.
36. Cixous, Dream I Tell You 9.
37. Ibid. 2.
38. Cixous and Calle-Gruber, “We Are in the Jaws of the Book” 27.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid. 28.
41 Derrida's careful reading of Descartes and the ensuing philosophical tradition which has defined animals as those that do not have language, that cannot respond, is apposite here. See Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am. It is also in this text that he lists Cixous among others he classes as “autobiographical animals,” writers who are interested in the animal and who write autobiographically and close to animals. Kafka is another. See Derrida, The Animal 49. For a different critique of philosophy in relation to animality, but one which is as interested in challenging our assumptions about animals and language, and one which, despite a certain whimsicality, comes close to Cixous's understanding of the important sensuality that animals can teach us to appreciate, see Lingis.
42. Cixous, Three Steps 102.
43. Ibid. 103.
44. Intriguingly, especially given Cixous's numerous writings on Clarice Lispector, the title is similar to that of a Lispector story, “The Imitation of the Rose,” which in turn evokes the meditative Catholic manual “The Imitation of Christ.” See Lispector 53–72.
45. Cixous, Insister of Jacques Derrida 129.
46. Cixous, Rêve je te dis 134.
47. Cixous, Dream I Tell You 118–19.
48. Cixous's text The Day I Wasn’t There does this in detail.
49. Cixous, Dream I Tell You 2, 2, 3 and 5, respectively.
50. Cixous, Rêve je te dis 134 and 135, respectively.
51. With reference to an early novel, Inside [Dedans], Susan Sellers argues that the inclusion of dreams has quite the opposite effect, commenting that “the incorporation of dream scenarios, far from being liberatory for the reader, can be alienating: their intensely personal references often leave the reader outside.” See Sellers 38. However, since the publication of Inside, there have been numerous publications by Cixous discussing the importance of her dreams to her writing, such as Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, which has a whole section on dreams. These help contextualise the role of dreams in her work.
52. Cixous, The Day I Wasn’t There 97.
53. Ibid. 95. The original translation had “see” for “understand” as the translation for “l’entend”:
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J’en ai assez. Mais le livre ne l’entend pas ainsi. L’enterrement, un enfant dans un mur dont on ne se souvient pas, une fiction, une mort de mort une invention elle aura imaginé tout cela. (Cixous, Le Jour où je n’étais pas là 179–80)
54. Cixous, The Day I Wasn’t There 97–98.
55. Ibid. 79. The original translation rendered “will be just as good” as “will do.” See:
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Que vont dire mes amis … Vont-ils croire que je l’ai caché, dissimulé, gardé pour moi dans un tiroir, égaré, renié comme un dieu, abjuré comme une foi, inventé pour un livre? Ai-je des photos de lui? N’importe quelle photo de mongolien ce sera aussi bien. (Cixous, Le Jour où je n’étais pas là 150)
56. Cixous, The Day I Wasn’t There 76. For the French:
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Ensuite je raconte les secrets mais en secret, je ne le dis pas à ma mère, ce que je fais, ses secrets je les garde secrets pour elle mais pas pour le temps des temps. C’est ainsi en désobéissant à son injonction que j’obéis à son souci le plus secret. (Cixous, Le Jour où je n’étais pas là 144–45)
57. Cixous, “The Unforeseeable” 190. The symposium that was organised around the opening of this archive, and where both Derrida and Cixous spoke, took place 22–24 May 2003.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Cixous, Three Steps 21.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Smith and Watson 4 and 9, respectively.
64. Cixous and Calle-Gruber, Rootprints 100. For “méprise,” I have altered the translation from “scorn” to “disregard.” The French reads:
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Je ne crois pas avoir jamais écrit pour qui que ce soit. Cela ne veut pas dire que je méprise le lecteur; tout le contraire. Il ou elle est libre. Il viendra ou il ne viendra pas. Ou elle. Je ne sais pas qui c’est. Je sais seulement: il y en a un. (Ou bien un est une?) (Mais qui?). Devant qui j’écris. Lui devant l’écrire. (Cixous and Calle-Gruber, Photos de Racines 109)
65. Cixous and Calle-Gruber, Rootprints 115 n. 30.
66. Wilson, Sexuality and the Reading Encounter 116.
67. Ibid. 116 and 98, respectively.
68. Ibid. 110 and 96, respectively.
69. Wilson, “Hélène Cixous: An Erotics of the Feminine” 140. Wilson's concerns in this essay stem from a lesbian perspective which sees in Cixous's breaking down of the self/other boundary both a boon for female identity over and above patriarchal dichotomies and a problematic erasure of same-sex lesbian identity, especially in the context of The Book of Promethea, which is staged first and foremost as a tale of love and secondly as one occurring between two women, a move which Wilson thinks does not affirm lesbian erotics.
70. Wilson, Sexuality and the Reading Encounter 100.
71. Ibid. 98.
72. Ibid. 124.
73. Wilson, “Hélène Cixous: An Erotics of the Feminine” 131.
74. Cixous, “The Unforeseeable” 189.
75. Ibid.
76. Cixous, Hyperdream 139.