ABSTRACT
It is while reflecting on writing for the theater in her article, “De la scène de l’Inconscient a la scène de l’Histoire,” that Cixous discusses good and evil, heaven and hell. In the beginning, there is hell, the feeling of being formless, insignificant, wicked: “Our wickedness is one of the breathtaking themes that occupy the realm of writing” (Van Rossum-Guyon, Chemins 226).2 But what is heaven? Cixous asks. We write in order to leave hell for what proves to be the present. For that is what heaven is: coming to live in the present. Our happiness means being in the absolute present: “Here I come back to the problematics of theater”(Chemins 226). For theater, as an expression of the spiritual incarnated in the perishable, is always in the present, tightly bound in its portrayals to the ephemeral substance of the body. Working in theater means accepting the fragility of the present, confining oneself to its consolidation and becoming the “prophet of the present.” But living entirely in the present requires an unceasing effort “of being there.” Admitted for an instant into heaven-this “balcony over the hells of earth”—the writer must plunge again and again into these hells, the burning source of his prophecies. “That is why I sometimes say: ‘Heaven is hellish’” (Chemins 22). A world in which the text is so saturated with religious expression naturally has its saints, angels, and miracles. In the Indiade it is the She-Bear who, chained or unchained, drags us through arduous tracks which may lead us to Paradise: “by caressing the She-Bear, we scratch at the gates of the Lord” (249). As for the Angel of this hagiography-the angel “who is perhaps no more than a plumed bear”—he is there too: he is “that bear without a single hair which is Gandhi” (250-251). Questioned as to her relationship with faith and Christianity, Hélène Cixous denies having a religion. She admits, however, that she is not without links to a space that approximates religious space. A Jew, she rejects the image of Christianity which was, in her childhood, an inimical image. Nevertheless, the words she places in Gandhi’s mouth carry a Christian resonance: love one another. This seeming paradox becomes congruous when we remember that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was a turning point in the development of Gandhi’s thought. But Cixous’ are not explicit allusions to Christianity: they “are rather images” (Chemins 222). Nonetheless, the resulting world vision is so clearly imbued with Catholic Christian thought that a Bossuet
would not disavow it. Certain passages from the Écrits sur le théatre make us think of Saint Theresa of Avila and her spiritual exercises:
“II m’est arrive de me presque mourir en donnant vie a Toi…. Comment arrive cette perte de vie? Cela se passe ainsi: on écrit une scène, de tout son coeur. Le coeur devient la scène. Le monde exterieur a disparu. Plus d’espace, le temps disparaît …. Les larmes je leur fais barrage. Humble scribe d’une douleur mondiale que je suis, je ne dois pas avoir de coeur, seulement des oreilles pour recueillir les plaintes des désespérés, et pour les transcrire. Pas de pitié, car autrement pas d’écriture…. Et a la fin le coeur de l’auteur qui est reste immobile et impassible comme la scène du Théâtre, pour laisser s’inscrire la Passion, le coeur grossi de larmes interdites, éclate. Pas avant la fin. A la fin le barrage cède, et sous le flot, l’on perd conscience.” (L’Indiade 277-278)
“There were times when I almost died giving life to You…. How does this loss of life occur? It happens so: you write a scene, from the bottom of your heart. The heart becomes the scene. The external world disappears. No more space, time disappears…. I stop the flood of tears. Humble scribe that I am of a universal pain, I should not have a heart, only ears to gather the laments of the hopeless, and to transcribe them. No pity, for otherwise there can be no writing…. And finally, the author’s heart, which has remained still and impassive, like the Theater stage, to allow Passion to make its mark, the heart swollen with forbidden tears, bursts. Not before the end. At the end, the dam gives way, and under the flood, you lose consciousness.”
