The Schoo! o

f Ro

ots

1. Birds, W

omen, and W

riting

I am interested in a chain of associations and signifiers com

posed of birds, w

omen, and w

riting. This m

ay sound funny, it may sound gratui-

tous, but it is noto We only have to read the chapter in Leviticus in the

Bible to realize that it is deadly serious. T

he chapter gives Moses and

humanity in generaI law

s on eating: dictating what is edible and w

hat is noto In E

nglish the distinction is between m

eats that are c!ean and meats

that are unc!ean. I need the French: in French unc!ean is imm

onde, which

comes from

the Latin i17l177Undus; it is the sam

e word in B

razilian-im

mundo-and l'H

need this later.

And these are they w

hich you shall have in abomination am

ong the fow

ls, they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination, the eagle and

the ossifrage and the vulture. And the ow

l and the nighthawk, and

after his kindj and the little owl, and the great onej and the sw

an and the pelican, and the deer eagle. The stork, the heron and the lapling and the bat. A

ll fowls that creep, going on all fours, shall be an

abomination unto you. l

So this is what w

e are not supposed to eat. These are abominable. W

hy are they abom

inable? While there are others one can eat: for exam

ple:

The locust and after his kind, and the bulliocust after his kind. The beetle after his kind and the grasshopper after his kind. B

ut all the creeping things w

hich have four feet shall be an abomination unto

you. And for these you shall be unclean.

2

We can dream

round the mystery of the stork's "im

mundity." W

e can have aH kinds of reveries regarding the sw

an and the swan's abom

i-nation. A

nd of course, if we w

ere childlike enough, we'd w

orryj or, if w

e were Percival, w

e'd wonder w

hy there are birds that are abominable.

And w

e would have to accept the law

's answer: B

ecause. It is what the

Bible says.

In T/le Passion According to G. H

., G. H

., a wom

an reduced to her

111

Tlze ScI7001 oJ Ro

ots

initials, encounters in complete solitude, face to face-even eye to e

ye-

a cockroach, an abominable cockroach. J In B

razilian the word for coclc-

roach is barata, and it is feminine. So a w

oman m

eets a barata, and it becom

es the focus for a type of fantastic, total, emotional, spiritual, and

intellectual revolution, which, in short, is a crim

e. The revolution leads

G. H

. to completely revise her clichéd w

ay-our clichéd way

-of think-

ing: our relations to the world in generaI and to living things in particu-

lar. She must deal w

ith the phobia, with the horror w

e have of so-called abom

inable beings. I will now

quote from a chapter in the m

iddle of the book, after G

. H. has had an initially ordinary reaction to the barata:

that is, she has almost "killed" it by crushing it. A

kind of white paste

spurts out of the barata, which is nonetheless im

mortal. G

. H. com

es into contact w

ith this paste; she starts thinking about what the w

hite paste is and how

to relate to it. This is w

hat she says at one point:

I had comm

itted the forbidden act of touching something im

pure. +

In Brazilian "im

pure" is im1l1ulldo.

And so im

pure was I [so im

mollde w

as I], in my sudden indirect

mom

ent of self-knowledge, that I opened m

y mouth to caU for help. 5

The A

merican translation continues:

They proclaim, the B

ible does, but if I understand what they pro-

claim, they wiU caU m

e crazy. People like me had proclaim

ed that understanding them

would be m

y destruction. "But you shaU not eat

'-the impure, the eagle, the griffon, and the haw

k." Nor the ow

l, nor the sw

an, nor the bat, nor the stork, nor the enti re tribe of crows. 6

Now

let me correct that translation. A

ctually G. H

. does not say: "T

hey proclaim, the B

ible does ... "

E tao imunda estava eu, naquele m

eu subito conhecimento indirecto

de mim

, que abri a boca para pedir socono. Eles dizem tlldo,

a Biblia, eles dize1ll tlldo-m

as se eu entender o que eles dizem, eles

112

Tlze ScI7001 oJ Ro

ots

mesm

os me cham

arao de enlouquecida.7 Pessoas iguais a m

im hav-

iam dito, no entanto entende-las seria a

derrocada. "M

as nao comereis das im

puras: quais sao a aguia, e o grifo, e o esm

erilhao." E nem a coruja, e nem

o cisne, e nem o m

orcego, nem

a cegonha, e todo o genero de CO

l·VO

S. 8

What C

larice actually suggests is that the Bible is a m

asculine "they." O

ne might have translated it like this: "Those H

e-Bible, those B

ible, they say everything." It sounds aw

kward, but it is the w

ay Clarice w

rites, aw

kwardly, roughly, and as truly as possible to w

hat she wants us to

feel. So those He-B

ible, it is tlley who tell us w

hat is unclean and abomi-

nable. Clarice Lispector is a w

riter who has dealt throughout her w

ork, am

ong other questions, with this notion of the abom

inable in our lives, in all its form

s. Let those birds be "abom

inable": I associate wom

en and w

riting with this abom

ination. I do this, of COUl-se, half playfully, half seriously. It is m

y way of indicating the reserved, secluded, or excluded

path or pIace where )iou m

eet those beings I think are worth know

ing w

hile we are alive. Those w

ho belong to the birds and their kind (these m

ay include some m

en), to writings and their kind: they are all to be

found-and a fair company it is-outside; in a pIace that is called by

Those Bible, those w

ho are the Bible, abom

inable. EIsew

here, outside, birds, wom

en, and writing gather. N

o! ali wom

en how

ever: quite a number of this kind linger inside, as w

e realize daily, and identify w

ith "those-He-B

ible" and their kind. Outside w

e shall find alI those precious people w

ho have not worried about respecting the law

that separates w

hat is and is not abominable according to Those B

ible. I have deliberately included G

enet among those w

riters I have chosen to m

eet today. I wanted you to have the French version and the E

nglish translation, w

hich is both correct and misleading. G

enet is particularly difficult to translate: he inhabits a verbal land that resists all attem

pts at "naturalization" as w

e say in French. One has to travel to his elsew

here, that is m

eet him on his ow

n idio-grounds and read along his specific paths in order to becom

e acquainted with his universe.

113

The S

cho

o! oJ R

oo

ts

This is like the w

riting of Clarice Lispector and those w

riters with

whom

I have a dee p and everlasting love affair: A

nna Akhm

atova, M

arina Tsvetaeva, Ingeborg Bachm

ann, Ossi p M

andelstam. T

hey

all-w

ithout having decided to, without having m

et, without having read one

another-inhabit what G

enet calls in French: "les domaines inférieurs"

(the nether realms).9 T

hey dwell som

ewhere in that m

ost evasive of countries w

ithout a precise address, the one that is most difficult to find

and work w

ith, and where it is even difficult to live w

ithout effort, danger, risk. T

his risky country is situated somew

here near the uncon-scious: to reach it you have to go through the back door of thought.

If I gather these beings to talk about them in the sam

e way, if I am

w

orried by the fate of birds and wom

en, it is because I have learned that not m

any people--unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately---can really love, tolerate, or understand a certain kind of w

riting; I am using w

omen and

birds as synonyms.

This is w

hat Clarice Lispector w

isely says at the beginning of The PassÌOll According to G

. H. lO

The translation says: "T

o potential readers." It should say: "T

o possible readers." T

he translation says: "This is a book just like any other book" (106),

so be reassured. But this is w

hat Clarice Lispector says: "T

his book is like any other boole." Il

The translation goes on: "B

ut I would be happy if it w

ere re ad only by people w

hose outloole is fully formed." 12

I don't know w

hat "outlook" is, so let me tell you w

hat Clarice says:

"But I w

ould be pleased if it were re ad only by persons w

hose souls are already m

ature." A

nd so I continue:

Those who know

that the approach to anything is done progressively and painfully-and includes as w

ell passing through the opposite of w

hat is being approached. These people and they alone will un der-

stand very slowly that this book takes nothing aw

ay from anyone. To

me, for exam

ple, the character G. H

. gradually gave a difficult joy; but it is called joy. 13

114

The S

cho

o! oJ R

oo

ts

This is how

you are greeted when you open the book. Y

ou are told that this book is a book like others. T

hen you must ask yourself w

hether you are one of those persons w

hose souls are already mature.

It is threatening, disquieting. A

sking yourself: "Is my soul already m

ature" m

ight sound prohibitive, but it isn't. The m

oment you read the next

sentence you are either in or outside what is approaching. Y

ou must at

least once in your life have realized you were undergoing the opposite of

what w

as coming. I suppose this to be the case,

but if it has not yet happened it w

ill. W

hat comes next is m

ost important: after having been severe C

larice says: "B

ut this book does not talee anything from anybody. T

o me, for

example, the character G

. H. gradually gave a difficult joy." In w

riting this C

larice Lispector wisely and em

phatically sides with us readers: she

is not the author, she is like us before the book. She too is reading it and has to deal w

ith the character who com

es to her in the book and gives her alI kinds of em

otions. Yet it is a w

arning that this book wilI give us pain,

which is of course a joy. W

hat about the boole not taking away anything

from anyone: the w

riting moves fast, and you m

ight not even noti ce the rem

ark, though I believe this to be one of the keys to our lives together. Each one of u

s-the w

hole of manleind, irrespective of sexual differ-

ence-must deal w

ith the feeling of things being taken away from

uso W

hat is interesting is that birds, writing, and m

any wom

en are con-sidered abom

inable, threatening, and are rejected, because others, the

rejectors, feel something is taken aw

ay from them

. But let m

e leave w

omen asi de for today, since this is a controversial issue, and keep only

birds and writing. N

either birds noI' writing take anything aw

ay, yet people feel

that some form

s of writing do take som

ething from us.

Clarice Lispector has never been a fem

inist, Genet is not a fem

inist, though theirs are w

ritings that may hurt, m

ay dissatisfy, and give the feeling that som

ething is taken away.

This is exactly (and I have chosen this exam

ple in order to make

things dear) what happened to G

andhi. I imagine you believe he w

as for the m

ost part adored; in fact he was hated and he is stilI hated today.

115

The School oJ R

oots

Hatred is stilI alive in India and he di ed of it. Those w

ho were for

Gandhi w

ere mostly from

what is called the scheduled castes, those w

ho belong to the gutters w

ith whom

he had sided. Y

et he did not ask anything of anyonej he sim

ply went his ow

n way. H

e did not ask people to change. H

e did what he felt he had to do. W

hen people approached, he never asked,

he never exacted anything from them

, he never de-m

anded anything from the people w

ho approached him, not even his

cIose friends: they went on living the w

ay they wanted to live. B

ut the sim

ple fact that he lived according to his own law

-w-.Q

ich was asceti c

and demanding of him

self-was som

ething that people could not toler-ate. T

here are ways of w

riting that are perceived in the same w

ay as G

andhi was perceived by the Indians.

Clarice

Lispector had

to deal

with

this perception,

as did

In-geborg

Bachm

ann and

Tsvetaeva. Fortunately,

there is

always

a sm

all group

who

love such

writings.

But

the m

ajority are

"those B

ible." N

ow w

hat about what is called in French l'im

monde,

in Brazilian

i1Jlll11do, and in English tlle uncleall? T

his is what C

larice says:

I was know

ing that the Bible's im

pure animals are forbidden be-

cause the imund is the root. 14 For there are things created that have

never made them

selves beautiful, and have stayed just as they were

when created, and only they continue to be the entirely com

plete m

ot, they are not to be eaten. The fruit of good and evil, the eating of living m

atter, would expel m

e from the paradise of adornm

ent and require m

e to walk forever through the desert w

ith a shepherd's staff. M

any have been those who have w

alked in the desert with a

staff.

To build a possible soul, a soul whose head w

ill not devour its own

tail, the law com

mands that one uses only w

hat is patently alive. And

the law com

mands that w

hoever partakes of the imund, m

ust do so w

ithout knowingj for, he w

ho partakes of the imund know

ing that it is im

und, must also com

e to know that the im

und is not imund. ls

that itilS

116

T/ze School oJ Roots

She quotes the Bible:

"And everything that craw

ls on the gmund and has w

ings shall be im

und, and shall not be eaten." I opened m

y mouth in fright to ask for help. W

hyi Because I did not w

ant to become im

und Iike the cockroach. What ideaI held

me from

the sensing of an ideai Why should I not m

ake myself

imundi Exactly as I w

as revealing my w

hole self, what w

as I afraid ofi B

eing imundi W

ith whati

Being im

und with joy. 16

That is m

y theme for today: to be "im

und," to be uncIean with joy.

Imm

onde, that is, out of the mltlldus (the w

orld). The m

onde, the world,

that is so-called clean. The w

orld that is on the good side of the law

that is "proper," the w

orld of order. The m

oment you cross the line

law

has drawn by w

ording, verb(aliz)ing, you are supposed to be out of the w

orld. You no longer belong to the w

orld. O

ut there we shall be in the com

pany of swans, storks, and griffons.

Imagine this list on the other side, celebrated by som

eone like Dante.

Dante loves birds, and in Paradise he has visions of birds like letters in

the sky. So why are those birds im

undi Because. A

s you know, this is

the secret of the law: "because." T

his is the law's logico It is this terrible

"because," this senseless fataI "because" that has decided people's fate, even in the extrem

ity of the concentration camps. People w

ere divided, som

e were sent to gas cham

bers while others w

ere "spared" for a later da.te, "because." It is this becallse that rules our lives. It pervades every-thl11g. It can even reach the fragile w

orld of translation. N

ow C

larice says explicitly that what is im

und is joy. They are

synonymous. Joy is im

und, it is 1/ot lf1/cleall: if you use the English

expression lfncleaJl you lose the necessary meaning "out of the w

orld." Joy is out-of-the-w

orld-this is what C

larice wants us to understand. It

is true that what is really forbidden is enjoym

ent, jubilation. As C

larice a. stroke of genius, the point for Those B

ible is that joy, jubdatlO

n, blrds are forbidden because they are the root. So the purpose of Those B

ible is to forbid the root. This is w

hat I

117

The School o

f Roots

wanted to bring to the surface, though w

e wilI not rem

ain here; instead our ladder w

ilI grow dow

n into the earth. W

riting is not put there, it does not happen out there, it does not com

e from outside. O

n the contrary, it comes from

deep inside. It comes

from w

hat Genet calIs the "nether realm

s," the inferior realms (d01l7aines

illfériettrs). W

e'll try to go there for a time, since this is w

here the treasure of w

riting lies, where it is form

ed, where it has stayed since the

beginning of creation: down below

. T

he name of the pIace changes

according to our writers. Som

e call it helI: it is of course a good, a desirable hell. T

his is what C

larice calls it: illferno. She does not always

use the word hell but alI kinds of parallel denom

inations ("tlze otller side" cited in Tlle Stream

of Life is Tsvetaeva's abyss). 17 lt is dee p in my body,

further down, behind thought. T

hought comes in front of it and it closes

like a door. This does not m

ean that it does not think, but it thinks differently from

our thinking and speech. Somew

here in the depths of m

y heart, which is deeper than l think. Som

ewhere in m

y stomach, m

y w

omb, and if you have not got a w

omb-then it is som

ewhere "else."

Y ou m

ust climb dow

n in order to go in the direction of that pIace. But

as l said yesterday, this sort of descent is much m

ore difficult to achieve, m

uch more tiring, m

uch more physically exacting (p17ysically because

the soul is body), than climbing up. It is a clim

b, but it requires the w

hole strength of everything that is you-which l don't w

ant to call "body," since it is m

ore complex than the body-to go through the

various doors, obstacles, walls, and distances w

e have forged to make a

life. l know besides that w

hat al so prevents us in our society from going

thèi-e is not our inability-because all of us are able-but our cowardice,

our fear. Our fear, since w

e know perfectly w

ell that we w

ill reach the dangerous point w

here those who are excluded live-and w

e hate exclu-sion. T

his is our emotional, our personal, and political problem

, the fact that w

e can't bear exclusion. We are afraid of it, w

e hate to be separated, that is w

hy we are apt to com

mit all kinds of sm

all crimes, self-denials,

and treachery. B

ut one has to choose between losing w

hat is mund and losing the

118

T/ze School of R

oots

best part of ourselves that is called imund. Since w

e are shaped by years and years of all kinds of experiences and education, w

e must travel

through alI sorts of places that are not necessarily pleasant to get there: our ow

n marshes, our ow

n mud. A

nd yet it pays to do so. The trouble is

we are not taught that it pays, that it is beneficiaI. W

e are not taught the pain nor that in pain is hidden joy. W

e don 't know that w

e can fight against ourselves, against the accum

ulation of mental, em

otional, and biographical clichés. T

he generaI trend in writing is a huge concatenation

of clichés. It is a fight one must lead against subtle enem

ies. Our personal

enemies in this fight are those K

afka denounced as preventing our return to paradise. K

afka insists paradise is not lost, it is there. But w

e are lazy and im

patient. lf we w

ere neither lazy noI' impatient w

e would be back

in paradise. But w

e have to deal with this laziness and im

patience. And

of course with alI the re presentati ves of "Those B

ible." There is a w

hole list of institutions, m

edia, and machines that m

ake for the banishment of

birds, wom

en. and writing. W

e are mistaken if w

e think aparatc17ik is a R

ussian word. A

parachtiks exist in all countries, especially in France; they are pow

erful against birds, i.e., wom

en, i.e., writing, and people

are afraid of them.

What is forbidden is unfortunately the best and that is joy. W

e are told by the law

, "Thou shalt not eat of those birds, and thou shalt not

read those books," i.e.: Thou shalt not eat of those books that are joy.

Thomas B

ernhard told us in "Montaigne" how

when he w

as a child his fam

ily would say to him

: if you go to the library and take a book you w

ilI go mad,

insane; it is bad, wrong, rotten, vicious.

Reading is a

wonderful m

etaphor for all kinds of joy that are called vicious. Tsvetaeva di ed early: she w

as a very strong, powerful, rebellious

wom

an, much too pow

erful and full of joy to be allowed to survive. In a

long poem called "T

he Poem of the E

nd" there is a short line where she

suddenly strikes out and says: "A

lI poets are Yids." 18 T

he word is

extremely insulting; it is a synonym

of imund. Poets are unclean, abom

-inable in the sa m

e way w

omen are abom

inable. When Tsvetaeva used

this word in the context of R

ussian society, the most abom

inable of the

119

T17e Sch

oo

l of R

oo

ts

abominable at that tim

e, poets, she felt, were yids. It w

as equivalent to alI the other abom

inables. In another text she suggests that the abomina-

ble-she-Ioved, the abominable w

ith whom

she identified, was the nigger.

So in the same line of substitutions you find: Jew

s, wom

en, niggers, birds, poets, etc., alI of them

excluded and exiled. Exile is an uncom-

fortable situation, though it is also a magical situation. I am

not making

light of the experience of exile. But w

e can endure it differently. Some

exiles die of rage, some transform

their exile into a country. I understand those w

ho die of (out)rage. It is what happened to Sakharov. R

ecently I m

et his wife, E

lena Bonner, w

ho is utterly mad w

ith rage. She suffers day and night because alI she feels

is a desperate rage, w

hich I do

understand. Some exiles can draw

joy from ragej those w

ho are able to benefit from

this strange experience relearn, recapture what w

e have lost. T

his was our experience as children, but w

e have lost the taste of bread, since, as C

larice Lispector says, we have eaten lobster in the m

eantime.

We have lost the taste of hands, of the touching of hands. W

e have lost alI the sm

all and great secrets of joy. But the country of exile is not

unattainable. It is

even easier to go to that country,

Exile, than it

sometim

es is to cross the border of a country lilce the United States.

2. The Passage of AH Frontiers

A) B irtlz C

ertificates

We are going to a pIace to w

hich the Christian im

agination has given a negative connotation, that is, hell, but w

hich, on the contrary, has a joyous (I don't w

ant to say positive in opposition to the negative) conno-tation in the texts that are dear to m

e. Beginning by saying: w

e are going to hell, I am

designating an approach I am perfectly aw

are I chose in a context I selected, and thereby privilege a certain pIace and path. C

learly, I am

not the only one, for if I go in that direction it is because I am

calI ed by others, by those I love. Not everyone goes there. Preferring

what som

e calI hell to what som

e calI paradise involves libidinal choices: for hell is paradise.

I am not opposing them

. I am

simply w

orking tow

ard libidinal and geographical reorientation.

120

T17e Sc17001 of R

oo

ts

I have already pointed oqt that Genet called a certain pIace the "nether

realms," w

hich is obviously an equivalent. At the sam

e time I noti ce that

Genet spealcs in term

s of "realms" (dom

ail1es), in other words, he intro-

duces the domillus, the m

aster. He does this m

ore or less consciouslYj I

tend to thinlc he does this rather more than less consciously, since G

enet is som

eone who w

orlcs on each word lilce a galley slave: in G

enet's texts w

e are in the convict prison of language (although it's a go od convict prison, since the convict prison is good for him

). When G

enet says "nether realm

s" (domailles infé1"iellrs), I hear the m

aster passing through. T

oday we w

ill worlc in a sim

ilar area, on the meeting betw

een the econom

i es of Genet and C

larice. Their econom

ies are both similar and

different, and I feel they are exemplary. G

enet and Clarice are inhabi-

tants of those countries that Genet deliberately and m

agnificently calls the "nether realm

s" and that Clarice calls not the "nether realm

s" but "hell." T

his is the word that appears in alI her texts: in Tlle Stream

of Lije, in T/le Passioll According to G

. H. T

here is not a single text by Clarice in

which hell does not ari se and ari se jubilantly. H

ell is a pIace of jouiss-ance, a pIace of happinessj w

e might im

agine that hell, despite its name,

is situated celestially, though it is situated in the lower realm

s.

And if m

any times I paint caves it's because they are m

y submersion

into the earth, dark but clouded with charity, and I, nature's bIood-

extravagant and dangerous caves, Earth's talisman, w

here stalactites, fossils, and stones together and w

here creatures crazy through their ow

n evil nature seek refuge. Caves are 1I1y Ilell. 19 C

aves, dreamlike

always w

ith their mists, m

emory or Ionging? Frightening, frighten-

ing, esoteric, greenish with the ooze of tim

e. Rats, w

ith the crosslike w

ings of bats, hang glimm

ering in the dark cavern. I see black, hairy spiders. Rats and m

ice run frightened on the ground and aiong the w

aHs. A

mong the stones the scorpion. C

rabs, unchanged since prehistoric tim

es, through countless births and deaths, would seem

threatening beasts if they w

ere human-sized. A

ncient cockroaches drag them

selves aiong in the half Iight. And aH this am

I. Every-thing is heavy w

ith dreams w

hen I paint a cave or write to you about

one-out of it comes the clatter of dozens of unfettered horses to 121