ABSTRACT
Limonade tout était si infini—‘Lemonade Everything Was So Infinite’— published in 1982, takes its title from one of the phrases written by the dying Kafka. In the first of two passages translated here, the feminine subject strives to write a “love letter” that will communicate her “joy of feeling herself exist thanks to her.” The word “thanks”—merci—becomes a figure for this endeavor. Like language generally, the meaning of merci has become debased, and is dependent for its value on the “soul” the writer can “breathe into it.”
