ABSTRACT
With Beethoven à jamais ou l’existence de Dieu, Hélène Cixous takes the oath of music. Promise, f aith, credit, belief, memory: these are a matter of time, an adventure of time, in the course of time akin to music. The writer gives her word, and music soars. Music flows from (her) speech. What is there to say, what is there to write, when, in giving your word, giving it up, you follow the thread of writing? This question is precisely what is at stake in the process of thinking: follow the clue, follow the right clue, lose the clue. For thought is inherent speech: ponderous thought bearing the burden of words, measurable in terms of the tension that keeps them suspended; or measurable in terms of the friction of air against the arrow of meanings; the blank surrounded with letters and the blank “autour d’eux deux” [around both of them] (121); sound or silences surrounded with signification, “toi mon être le plus cher-ma nue-inconnue” [you my dearest-naked cloud-unknown] (103). And thought nonetheless coming across, that cannot afford not to ford the word around, word after word, paving the way, giving the password, distilling, one drop at a time, the effects of absence: the advance consisting of oblivion and promise entangled.
