The Book of Promethea

From the late 1970s on, Cixous’ fiction moves away from a preoccupation with the difficulties of self-expression to exploration of alternative modes of relating to others in which an enabling, egalitarian and respectful love is the key motivating element. ¹ In Le Livre de Promethea—The Book of Promethea—published in 1983, the author’s endeavor to discover and communicate different forms of perception, relation and representation produce a text that fulfils many of Cixous’ delineations for a feminine writing. Recalling the love letter of “Lemonade Everything Was So Infinite” The Book of Promethea is to be “a book of love” in which Promethea herself, rather than any narrative or intention of the author, is the source of writing. The author is not, however, the passive recipient of this source: she must work at her relationship with Promethea as she must struggle with the process of writing. Inscribing the love relation with Promethea is deemed vital since there is the possibility that through this means the love might be shared and “others can see which way to venture.” This gift of the text is validated as, in a humorous reworking of the earlier figures of “inside” and “outside,” the author describes her reluctance to leave the “silky womb” of the love relation and “invent the tiniest slip of golden thread to hoist outside as a sign.”