Dear _________ (one long letter)

I return to passe-partout and parergon. 2 months ago, I read a smattering of pages from the Truth in Painting. I found it absolutely fascinating and knew, that despite my lack of time to read it very well (the three or more times it would require), that I wanted to understand something about it to write about letters in Cárcel de amor. Understanding The Truth in Painting is an idiotic statement. Probably to really get it [receive, have it delivered, grammatically, or not], I would not only have to read a significant amount of Hegel, Kant, and Lacan, but also a lot more Derrida. This is not presently an option, so I will have to make do. My only hope is that when I plunk the citations in the paper and comment them, I will not, in two or three months after reading more, be horrified.

I’ve come to want to read Cárcel de amor not as an early novel that presents letters, allegory, and chivalric episodes, but as a series of intimate postcards or opened and opening letters, all constantly mediated and impossible to deliver.

Beginning with

1) the prologue which explains that the work is commissioned and that its writing represents an act of obedience (“Porque de vuestra merced me fue dicho que devía hazer alguna obra al estilo de una oración que embié a doña Marina Manuel), to 2) the letters written by Leriano and Laureola (directed and misdirected by the Auctor), to 3) the Auctor’s reporting of information, of action, to 3) Leriano’s consumption of the letters,

we see that the text is not only structured, or framed by letters, but is letter, a series of seamless, but nevertheless unintelligible letters. Returning to my thoughts on Vitz’s Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology, which, despite my dislike of much of the book, has helped me to begin to shape a series of opinions on narrative space in the Middle Ages, here the reader is never permitted to step either inside or outside: we are kept in the space between, in the space of mediation and in the act of mediation.

Dear patron, dear reader, dear reader again, dear Leariano, dear Laureola, dear reader

If I were to read Lacan, I would see that Derrida’s description of the parergon and passe-partout is dialoguing with (and probably erasing), Lacan’s idea of the magic circle that surrounds and constitutes culture, its strange membrane that allows the passing from that which is outside of the circle called culture to the inside. The passe partout [which I think ?? Derrida reads as a type of culture and psychological parergon. It is urgent that I figure this out] is a similarly unstable space. It is between. Not inside or out. I recite a passage from the Truth in Painting on parergon:

neither work (ergon) nor outside the work (hors d'oevre) neither inside nor outside, neither above nor below[;] it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work. It is no longer merely around the work. That which it puts in place--the instances of the frame, the title, the signature, the legend, etc.--does not stop disturbing the internal discourse on painting, its works, its commerce, its evaluation, its surplus values, its speculation, its law, its hierarchies. (The Truth in Painting, Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod trans. Unv. of Chicago Press, 1987; 9)

I requote ideas on the passe-partout:

I write right on the passe-partout well know to picture-framers. And in order to broach it, right on this supposedly virgin surface, generally cut out of a square of cardboard and open in its “middle” to let the work appear. The latter can, moreover, be replaced by another which thus slides into the passe-partout as an “example”. To that extent, the passe partout remains a structure with a movable base; but although it let it lets something appear, it does not form a frame in the strict sense, rather a frame within the frame. Without ceasing [that goes without saying] to space itself out, it plays its card or its cardboard edge, and the external edge of what it gives us to see, lets or makes appear in its empty enclosure: the picture, the painting, the figure, the form, the system of stokes, and of colors (The Truth in Painting, 12).

At one point, I thought that the prison of love allegory image was somehow played out in “real terms” in the second half of the text: in the court, on the battlefield, in the exchange of letters, in Leriano’s [courtly] suffering. I subsequently have begun to think the allegory is not really performing, or playing out on a different plane than the letters. It is a continuous fictional reality made real by the fact that it is constantly mediated, that we cannot take hold of it, or read it, (if we are accepting the text as a series of letters). A mediated fiction, or a mediated letter, however, does not necessarily imply an indeterminate one. I go back to the parergon: even though it is essentially a non-space, neither inside, nor outside, it is not indeterminate.

neither work (ergon) nor outside the work (hors d'oevre) neither inside nor outside, neither above nor below[;] it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work.

It is a space of action. A space of pushing along. A space of becoming.

In a brief, but very illuminating introduction to Studies on the Spanish Sentimental Romance, Michael Gerli says the following of Spanish sentimental romances:

The romances systematically question textual and linguistic truth at all levels and dramatically bring home the point not only by heightening the indeterminate role of narrators, but also by inscribing the performative role of readers in the production of meaning. …A mise en abîme of the medieval tools of literary representation (narrative perspective, glosses, visions, allegories, plot structures, etc.), sentimental romances are characterized, then, by their amalgamation and incorporation of other generic traditions, producing a deliberate subversive, at times humorously ironic, confrontation between newly fashioned texts and orthodox models. Creating referential impasses and exposing the presuppositions anticipations, and narrative mechanics that shape their sources, they place into question the very axiologies of telling.

I would argue that the Auctor in Cárcel de amor is far from indeterminate. He, like the the newly-fashioned models that Gerli mentions, is determined by his difference and in effect, his movement, his activity. Like the parergon, as Derrida describes it, the space of mediation, that non, but not indeterminate space, gives rise to the work. The Auctor, while appearing more character, more surrogate lover, more teller of details at determined parts of the narrative, never steps out or off the narrative plane that holds the text together. He is writing and telling or facilitating the telling, either directly or indirectly, lettering throughout, starting with patron and reader, then lover and beloved, and finally, in watching his dear friend wet and eat his story, after having been torn to pieces.

Prisions of love, letters done wrong [sic]

Tonight after some further thinking about a couple Derrida citations and receiving some very helpful ideas from JRV, I’ve come to a series of brief conclusions about letters which I'll set down here before attempting sleep.

The men in love in Prison Amoureuse and Cárcel de amor are incapable of addressing themselves directly to their beloveds: their letters not only are mediated by messengers, advisors, confidants, and readers, but are literally made of mediated material: past letters, any instances that might occur in the delivery process (e.g. mutilation), and the interpretations of the beloved’s behavior according to a determined messenger, friend, or intimate friend (almost surrogate lover in the case of Froissart). This chain of mediations precludes, obviously, a straight delivery, “without courier” as Derrida might say of a postcard, but possibly, and most importantly, any actual arrival, a “real delivery”. Is it possible that a letter suffer so much mediation that upon delivery to some intended recipient, its message lacks any ability to perform, to be activated, to produce a speech act in the presence of said recipient? After how many instances of mediation (and partial or even full deliveries to mediators), does delivery become insignificant? It is perhaps for this reason, the fact that letters, even in envelopes, are at risk of being mediated, that we must complicate the idea of “the recipient”?

I think for a very brief moment about the Querelle letters. Before I go on, I think about whether the two professors who will grade these papers will accept the idea that I am basically selling the Middle Ages letter as a postcard. 79 cents. I’m not sure if others would accept this idea either. Maybe I don't believe me either.

The Querelle documents also constitute a series of nondeliveries save Christine’s corpus that arrived safely in the four hands of the Provost of Paris and the Queen of France. It is difficult to know, however, whether I should decide that delivery means a recipient's physical contact with the letter or card, (or book), or whether it means some sort of understanding of the item sent. These debate letters are also made of mediated stuff, material overheard and read, re-read, surely misread according to some. Letters written in response to a specific text, but specifically “addressed”, the To the Great and Honorable…. to someone else. Shifting of content, sender, recipient, addressed around 1402, a few hundred years, a few billion blank spaces, before Carte Postale.

Return to [sender]

I am still undecided about how to read the Querelle documents: chronologically? Christine’s selection of documents as they appear in the Bancroft MS and Harley 4431 and Bibliothèque Nationale fr. 835? Christine’s selection and then all of the documents in order by their supposed dates? I am wondering if reading them only chronologically would be to read something completely artificial, fake, a never was, or a was, that was, only according to linear time. I’ll probably end up reading Christine’s corpus and then the documents in their linear order.

Below I list the documents in the order that they appear in the Bancroft MS. From the Hick’s edition, it seems [although he does not say so] that the Harley, BN fr. 835, and another Bibliothèque Nationale MS (fr. 1563) form one redaction of Christine’s corpus, one distinct from another, possibly earlier redaction, in that the second includes Christine’s letter to Pierre Col, “Por ce que entendement…” (#8 in the list below).

fol. 1r: [rubr.] Cy commencent les epistres du debat sus le Romant de la Rose entre notables persones Maistre Gontier Col General Conseillier du Roy nostre Sire Maistre Jehan Johannes Prevost de Lisle et Christine de Pizan. La premiere epistre a sa Royne de France.]

1. fol. 1r-v, Christine de Pisan's letter to Isabel of Bavaria, Queen of France: "Tres excellent tres hauste et tres redoubtee princesse ma dame ... " [dated "la vielle de la chandeleur lan iii c et j" i.e., 1 February 1402]. Letter is signed.

2. fol. 2r-v, Christine de Pisan's letter to Guillaume de Tignonville: "A vous monseigneur le Prevost de Paris ...

3. fol. 3r-v, Brief indication of exchange of letters between Jean de Montreuil and Jean Gerson: "Comme ja pieca parolles fussent meues ...

It is here that Christine introduces Jean de Montreuil, albeit indirectly, and then makes a chronological jump to Gontier Col’s first letter. This note about the exchange of letters is unique in that it does not include a rubric, like the other sections of the MS. It is distinguished, in part, as a not letter, and some sort of other text, by its lack of signature.

4. fol. 3v-5r, Gontier Col's first letter to Christine de Pisan: "Femme de hault et esleve entendement ... " [September 13, 1401].

5. fol. 5v-13r, Christine de Pisan's letter to Jean de Montreuil: "Reverance honneur avec recommandacion ... " Returns to Montreuil. In replacing the Montreuil letter, she reorients it, rendering it a double response.

6. fol. 13v, Gontier Col's second letter to Christine de Pisan: "Pour ce que la divine escripture nous enseigne ... " [dated 15 September (no year)]. This letter is out of chronological order, dated just two days after #4.

8. fol. 16r-40r, Christine de Pizan's letter to Pierre Col: "Pour ce que entendement humain ... vuielle toy et tous ceuls par especial qui amient [sc?]ience et noblece de bonnes meurs [?] enluminer de si vraye clarte [?] que estre puisset conduis a la ioye celestielle. Amen. Script et compleit par moi Christine de Pizan le iie jour d'Octobre l'an mil iiiie et ii [i.e., 2 October 1402] Ta bien vueillant amie de [sc?]ience Christine." fol. 40v-41r prepared for writing, ruled, but blank. Christine does not include Pierre Col’s letter that preceded her response.

Letters reordered, resigned [in some cases, resigned with a non-signature], readdressed. I say readdressed, but to whom? To the Queen of France, Madame Isabeau of Bavaria? To Guillaume de Tignonville, the Provost of Paris? Christine’s dedicatory letters seem to posit these two specific recipients. At the same time, it becomes clear, as we note her clever arrangement of the letters, that while the debate might be for the Provost of Paris and the Queen, it is more likely to all those who might read her book and particularly those who she may be able to convince not only that 1) she is right, but also, that she has the right and sufficient skill to write about such matters. In her taking apart of linear time, in disrupting the chain of recipients (which was naturally disrupted due to the public nature of letters in her time), Christine has created a new [very real] fiction. Let’s see if I can explain.

One element that recurs again and again in Christine’s letters is her insistence that Jean de Meun (there are no dead authors here, Christine gives Meun credit for book and all of his characters and any “live performance” or reading events or Dagenaisian book-coming-of-life that could result from the Rose) has nothing good and productive to teach. In effect, he is diabolical in his writing, in that he writes very well and includes wonderful rhymes in his overwhelmingly amoral text. It is the inclusion of these pretty parts that makes the book doubly sinful. [Ainsi, selon ma petite capacité et foible jugement, sans plus estre prolixe en lengage, non obstant que asséz plus pourroit estre dit et mieulx, ne sçay considerer aucune utilité ou dit traictié; mais tant m’y semble appercevoir que grant labour fu prins sans aucun preu. Non obstant que mon jugement confesse maistre Jehan de Meun moulte grant clerc soubtil et bien parlant… je ne reppreuve mie Le Rommant de la Rose en toutes pars, car il y a de bonnnes choses et bien dictes sans faille. Et de tant est plus grant le peril: car plus est adjoustee foy au mal de tant comme le bien y est plus auttentique; et par ce ont mains soubtilz aucunes foiz semees de grans erreurs par les entremesler et palier d’aucune verité et vertus.]

Her dossier submitted to the Queen is thus a type of public service, a gesture of protection of the weak reader. It is also a work of literature. It is also a letter to the Queen and the Provost of Paris. It is a memory of Le Debat sur le Roman de la Rose. It is also a letter to Christine to Pizan that might go something like this:

Dear [Christine],

You have created something very important:

1) a book to make the Rose debate remembered.
2) texts that will be used by feminists in the 20th century and onward [backwards too] to say that “there was a great woman who lived and wrote professionally” at the turn of the 15th century. [Unfortunately, Christine, some of them will miss the point completely and give incredibly boring readings of your texts, as if all they did was say “girls kick ass”, or something to that effect, in Renaissance French.]
3) you were asking questions [whether intentionally or not] about how we read literature, what type of vocabulary is required for talking about literature, what is its impact on people, nation, or “Republic”, as you cite in your letter to Montreuil.

Thank you for your book.

Yours,

[52 billion blank spaces, or 8 Querelle documents].

---

52 mute spaces. I do a little requoting of the Carte Postale so I can do some more thinking tomorrow.

At bottom, I am only interested in what cannot be sent off, cannot be dispatched in any case. In English: more than ever I pretended to speak, or to think what I was saying at the same time...Afterward, on the lawn where the discussion continued, wandered along according to switch points as unforeseseable as they are inevitable, a young student (very handsome) thought he could provoke me and, I think, seduce me a bit by asking me why I didn’t kill myself. In his eyes this was the only way to “forward” (his word) my “theoretical discourse,” the only way to be consequent and to produce an event. (From 6 June 1977)

I accept.

Apocopated insides, blue characters.

Yesterday and today I’ve been writing about Alfonso, spending about 10 too many pages citing prologues and laws of the Partidas [preparing] to write about apocope in the Lapidario and the Primera Crónica General. I enjoyed it, albeit half-heartedly, knowing that at some point I would have to put an end to my background and pass through to apocope. Unfortunately, nether yesterday nor today (yet) have I reached apocope. I’ve ended up cutting it off like those poor e’s and o’s.

Actually it went through the worm holes of the Christine de Pizan. Apocope in motion on those long dark tables at the Bancroft, the a, then the p, the c and the others sucked towards and through those holes and then towards and through the glossy laminate hiding under my notebook. They'll end up on the blue gray carpet and then someplace else.

It was Friday that I went to the Bancroft for the first time in quite a while. It never ceases to amaze me how good I feel in that library. They gave me the Christine de Pizan in the blue box. I opened it and smelled the old, saw the worm holes [apocope of paper], the pores of the parchment, hairside, margins, beautiful batarde, red rubrics, the hand of Gontier Col. I noted the absence of signatures on some of the letters. I will have to see which ones are missing, determine those that have just a send-off line, la toute/le tien, those signed with just a name.

1) Did Christine omit them before she gathered the documents and submitted the dosier to the Queen of France? Were they ever there? Surely something significant to have gone missing. Explicit destinateur removed (if one were ever present), new bridges formed between texts that were not chronologically adjacent, omitting, editing, the creation of a new reading, commenting on literature:

what do we do with it
how can we discuss it
what's it good for?

I recently read most of Vitz’s Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology (NYU Press, 1989). This book is very useful for its close readings of certain passages from the Romance of the Rose and for forcing me to think more critically about my throwing around of arrive / not arrive, (un)grammatical deliveries, public-private postcard, fan-flip, performances of allegory, identity, passe-partout etc. in the realm Medieval studies. Sometimes I need to get out of the horse's belly.

In a chapter on the Roman de la Rose, Vitz distinguishes between ideas of outside/inside in the middle ages and “modern” ideas of interiority and exteriority. Throughout her discussions of structuralist and post-structuralist narratology, in which she at once complicates and supports reading Medieval texts through such lenses, she contends that in the middle ages, the “I” is not “inside”, in the sense of psychological interiority. The Medieval text offers no sense of coming to grips with, no sense of mental activity, no psychological plurality. Medieval “I” can express sentiment, but cannot analyze or reflect upon it. In the event that the “I” slips into analysis of his experience, he is forced to switch into a “transindividual” and “external” vocabulary, not “his.”

I think about Machaut’s Voir Dit and Foissart’s Prision Amoureuse. What would Vitz say about the expressions of psychological torment of the lover in Mauchat, the playing out, but also most importantly, his commenting on his own neuroses? I go back to her contrast of “external” vocabulary vs. “his” vocabulary. In saying that he cannot express himself in “his” terms is to admit that there exists such a thing. If the Medieval “I” were really so one-dimensional, including Machaut’s lover, Foissart’s lover and friend (or surrogate lover) Rose, how could we even think that “he” would have a vocabulary and speculate as to the character of his lexicon? I wonder if Vitz would respond that a lover’s lament is not the same as self-reflexivity and analysis, a going in. We know, however, that there is much more, expressed in ballads, letters, than simple complaint, a stating of distress—enough, according to the lover, Rose, and Machaut himself, to fill a large book.

Vitz suggests that the self can contain or be contained in the Middle Ages, but one cannot be in be “in oneself” or “contain” oneself. All of these ideas are inline with Vitz’s idea that the medieval character is flat, he knows little except how to go towards an ultimate inside, which is God, virtue: these narratives are structurally Christian. Any stops along the way are thus negligible—maybe reading too closely episodes Jean de Meun’s Pygmalion, or the highly tormented passages in Machaut represent the telling of “false-insides”, or allegorical personifications which often resist any easy read or identification, would then, be somehow erroneous, just delays, albeit labyrinth-like ones on our journey to the inside.

While I am willing to admit that one important inside is God, this inside (or other Christian insides) is often subverted and maybe even thrown off, by dream, allegory, letters, poetry, the comforts of a refrain, maybe even the desires of the readers. We only need to remember the Querelle to know that enough, a significant number, really, were concerned about readers ending up in a right place.

Ramblings.

Many times in the process of explaining what I am writing about, I change ideas or realize that despite all the notes I’ve written and ideas I've thrown around in hallways and on walks to school, I have little idea where I am going or even where I am. Today I have been wandering.

Tonight as I should have be doing something serviceable like grading essays and tests, I broke into my papers. What will I really try to say about letters, correspondence, arriving-not-arriving, in the Cárcel de amor, Prison Amoureuse, and the Querrelle? I have a feeling that I am writing about theories of letters. I suspect that the letters create a false sense of stability and frame, a security that looks like a real but is constantly mediated, prodded, and entered by allegory, personifications, breathing persons, self-doubt, and self-disbelief.

In the Querelle, letters that may start with a clear recipient end up realizing [both understanding and playing out] their own fictionality. The “frame” or idea of paper as a stable support is constantly entered, passed through. Lines between real and unreal, book and life, feigned and true are constantly redrawn and negotiated, forced to rethink and replay, possibly, in part, due to the following:

1) self-doubting on the side of Christine and Gerson, the difficulty of expressing a distaste for the taboo while writing passionately (and knowledgeably) about it; 2) the wearing out of certain vocabularies [good, bad, moral, right] in the realm of the Rose, 3) the playing out (even if unnoticed by the debate’s participants, but I doubt it), of a theory of reading.

These letters are noisy spaces, creative, constantly-generating spaces that cannot be situated simply “in contrast”, or role as fixed frame, to other textual forms [personification allegory, poetry, songs] which may appear in a given work. It is not that letters are just as fictional as allegory, or love ballads, but that they merit the same active reading as the other textual forms.

Letters are free spaces and not free spaces:

they are not moments of rest from the mental work of taking apart and putting back together of personifications, or of decoding poetry.

but they are free in that they permit endless entry and delivery and re-delivery (also myriad possibilities of nondelivery), endless sliding in, endless circulation, endless possibilities for mutilation [the cutting away of the songs contained in Floss’s letter in Prison Amoureuse], manipulation and publication [Christine’ s presentation of select documents to the queen.]

Enough wandering at the desk, I'll try some on the pillow.

Of post cards, ballads, and untimely visions.

I commented today that Carte Postale, or Post Card as I am reading it for the most part, is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever tried to read. I also said that I am not certain as to whether the parts I especially like (which are many), are meant to poke fun at sensitive people like me who wouldn’t mind lifting up a few of the paper fibers and taking a nice rest in the figures of the letters that are there (or not) in spirit. I’d like to inhabit those blank spaces inserted in the text. Inserted, I say, rather than “left”, because there is something very noisy about those apparent nothings. I bet there is a lot going on in those spaces. Parties, wars, definitely negotiation, erasing, rewriting, delivery, and non-delivery. It is quite possible that there is not much “figuring out” to be done with this text. Is there a line of thought? Are there many lines?

Here is a passage I am thinking and being romantic about. I’ll comment it, but I’m certain that I’ll want to delete my comments. I am no Derrida. I’m not sure if my observations are under erasure, or were never here:

[ ] Would like to address myself, in a straight line, directly, without courier, only to you, but I do not arrive, and that is the worst of it. A tragedy, my love, of destination. Everything becomes a post card once more, legible for the other, even if he understands nothing about it. And if he understands nothing, certain for the moment of the contrary, it might always arrive for you, for you too, to understand nothing, and therefore for me, and therefore not to arrive. I mean at its destination. I would like to arrive to you, to arrive right up to you, my unique destiny, and I run I run and I fall all the time, from one stride to the next, and for there will have been, so early, well before us [ ] If you had listened to me, you would have burned everything, and nothing would have arrived (23, Alan Bass trans., Univ. of Chicago UP, 1989.

If one understands the postcard [maybe “gets it” is actually a good word to use here here], the other cannot possibly “receive it”? Must only one understand the card for it to arrive to the other? Would it be a sort of “double delivery” for both to understand it, a double-delivery that negates the idea of delivery and sending, that destroys the impetus for sending and delivery? It seems that is it essential that the postcard have as part of its vocabulary, its makeup, grammar, etc, the possibility of not arriving.

--

In seminar we discussed several ballads from Cent Balades and many from Cent Ballades d’Amant et de Dame. I thought I was faring quite well considering I had plodded pitifully through the ballads, the renaissance French weighing on me like a sack of lead, until, until, the professor looked into my eyes and uttered the worst, scratching off a bit of charlatan:

What happens in this collection of ballads?

Horrors! Eh, um, I think, there is a debate between lovers, some rejection, the death of the lover. Figuring I had missed something else, many else’s in my skimming of more than a few of the ballads, I had a sick feeling, a green-going, knowing for sure that my last week's visions of people asking me to

translate Latin and French poems in a daunting public, to pick out and comment obscure authorial interventions in the Ovide Moralisé, detail 77 episodes from Amadís de Guala using ample citations, painting miniatures and then explaining how my readings of the episodes erase my miniatures, or how my miniatures erase my comments on the episodes, write 10 postcard exchanges between Derrida and Minaya, focusing on images of hands, spurs, and proper names, write a debate between Don Juan Manuel and Dagenais that ends with a exchange of ethical aphorisms, 15 each, write apologies in the form of 12 sonnets (each) to Chrétien de Troyes, Christine de Pizan, Alfonso X, Diego de Valera, and Fernando de Rojas (maybe) for putting them in the same room as Nietzsche

would surely come true. We’ll see

what

happens.

Writing about love and understanding writing about love can be difficult. I really enjoyed this ballad from Cent Ballades. I copy it and comment a little, but just a little. I’ll comment a little in-between the lines. I have a feeling it will feel violent and disgusting.

L

Aucunes gens porroient mesjugier
Pour ce sur moy que je fais ditz d'amours,
[these love poems are not about me]
Et diroient que l'amoureux dongier,
Je sçay trop bien compter et tous les tours,
Et que ja si vivement
N'en parlasse, sanz l'essay proprement.
[how could I possibly speak about the affairs of love without having lived them—she uses the opposite argument in the Querelle to suggest that her opponents have little right to make observations about women, without being women themselves]
Mais, sauve soit la grace des diseurs,
Je m'en raport a tous sages ditteurs.
[Justification and alignment with the old poets, as opposed to those who make comments about her production, the “diseurs”. Something to think about: what does it mean to write something “new” here and in Foissart, for example? Recombination and translation of old texts? A “new” and very or ever present omission, pronouncement [on paper] and reading of old tales?]

Car qui se veult de faire ditz chargier
Biaulz et plaisans, soient ou longs ou cours,
Le sentement qui est le plus legier,
Et qui mieulx plaist a tous de commun cours,
C'est d'amours, ne autrement
[best inspiration is from love]
Ne seront fait ne bien ne doulcement,
[no other inspiration will produce such well composed and sweet poems]
Ou, se ce n'est, d'aucunes belles meurs,
[without love, there is no pleasant life. I can produce, however, without being in love. Maybe like the knowledgeable poets did.]
Je m'en raport a tous sages ditteurs.

Qui pensé l'a, s'en vueille deschargier,
Qu'en verité ailleurs sont mes labours.
[I have other ambitions [and worries] than to compose love poems. What does this imply about love poetry? From where does Christine’s inspiration come (if it is not love): desire for fame, respect, prestige?]
Pour m'excuser ne le dis ne purgier;
Car amé ont assez de moy meillours,
[better people than I have been in love. A seize-reject, pull-push positing of having to admit a wrong to step forward]
Mais d'amours je n'ay tourmentJoye ne dueil; mais pour esbatement
En parlent maint qui ont ailleurs leurs cuers,
Je m'en raport a tous sages ditteurs.

Fin.

Empty enclosure

Yesterday while sitting in a meeting chair, I thought about the following, in much less eloquent diction:

I write right on the passe-partout well know to picture-framers. And in order to broach it, right on this supposedly virgin surface, generally cut out of a square of cardboard and open in its “middle” to let the work appear. The latter can, moreover, be replaced by another which thus slides into the passe-partout as an “example”. To that extent, the passe partout remains a structure with a movable base; but although it let it lets something appear, it does not form a frame in the strict sense, rather a frame within the frame. Without ceasing [that goes without saying] to space itself out, it plays its card or its cardboard edge, and the external edge of what it gives us to see, lets or makes appear in its empty enclosure: the picture, the painting, the figure, the form, the system of stokes, and of colors (The Truth in Painting, Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod trans. Unv. of Chicago Press, 1987, 12).

Although it might be better to be fascinated by the work of art itself, that which the passe-partout gives us to see, I am itching to enter the idea of the “empty enclosure.” Where do some of what seem to be big questions floating through the parts of the The Truth in Painting that I have read such far

[e.g. responses to the Cézanne’s statement in a letter to Emile Bernard “I owe you the truth in painting and will tell it to you”, such as: Does painting have its own truth, one specific to painting that is separate from discourse? Is a “true” painter a very knowledgeable painter?]

end up in relation to passe-partout? It seems as though the passe-partout is a space of mediation and negotiation, to the point in which a contemplation of this space which, again, does not really have a form, or even a figure, gives rise to the idea of: the right to painting. If we were to paint a picture of passe-partout, what would it look like? Could it be me [ha!], waving my arms wildly, my arms an external, physical manifestation of the very physical rapid-firing of ping-pong balls, those bouncing off my brain-walls, 10 balls per word, as I pronounce a series of words, trying to produce an articulate thought for the person across the desk? In this scenario, it is undecided whether the person across the desk would be frame, or if the work I am discussing let’s say, Foissart’s Prison Amoureuse, would be the frame? The work of art, which in this case, would be quite unpleasant to observe, would be my idea, my interpretation, my reading [of the moment] of said work. This work of [nonart] can easily be substituted for another, it, and thankfully this is in fact the case, is just an example. Send something else through the “empty enclosure”—because my arm waving does not constitute a filling, but rather is a metaphor for invisible activity—and we’ll have a new [art] piece.

Middle (un)ground. Passe-partout.

Today I received my very own The Truth in Painting. I buy these books, thinking that through the purchase of the paper and underlining rights, that I will come closer to grasping. But no, not true, especially not in the present case, no such frame, no such pinning down, putting around or inside has occurred. Its all still in the middle between frame and painting, one leg on each side of the frame-painting (non)fence, but no leg in either. I am stuck in the space between the surface of the skin of the tomato [in this case, the tomato is not Nietzsche or Rorty], and its potential place of contact on my square cutting board placed on my countertop. I mean what I just said, but I am not sure what I mean, or, for that matter, what Derrida means when he appears to give shape to:

passe-partout

in the introductory chapter.

He tells us that he borrows the word passe-partout from framing-speak to denote a topos that partially consists of the following ideas:

One space remains to be broached in order to give place to the truth in painting. Neither inside nor outside, it spaces itself without letting itself be framed but it does not stand outside the frame. It works the frame, makes it work, lets it work, gives it work to do [let, make, and give will be my most misunderstood words in this book). The trait is attracted and retrac(t)ed there by itself, attracts and dispenses with itself there. It is situated. It situates between the visible edging and the phantom in the center, from which we fascinate…Between the outside and the inside, between the external and internal edge-line, the framer and the framed, the figure and the ground, form, and content, signifier and signified, and so on for any two-faced opposition. The trait thus divides in this place where it takes place.

The passe-partout creates an event, a constant push-pull that is both harmonious and antagonistic. It seems, however, that we should not be able to visualize this combat-love dance: the letting and allowing mixed with making and forcing that gives rise to the space. It is a mute, but noisy space. Noisy with activity. Mute, maybe, because it resists the notion of bringing together, of singularity, but also, at the same time, runs from (but also probably attracts in the same breath), reproducibility, of making more.

Is the passe-partout a noplace, or everyplace, as the most literal and crude English equivalent suggests: passing everywhere? Next question: does it, with its beveled edges, pass everywhere forever? Does it stay middle? Surely [I think] we could add to the above dialectics, those cited in the qotation, the space between text and author.

Derrida says that he might have called his book in which he goes around painting four times Of the Right to Painting. In saying this, Derrida is gesturing towards the friendly-fighting, the rosy push-pull, the inability to pull apart ideas of singularity and mass reproducibility that crop up as early as the first paragraphs, that crop up in passe-partout.

A little idea pulling: Cárcel de amor, The Truth in Painting. Letters. Arriving, not-arriving. Parergon.

Today I have been thinking about mediated letters and the nature of the exchange of information, emotions, pleas, requests, art, poems, and ballads. Letters or postcards, and the information contained within these texts, can be stolen, not delivered, delivered and misunderstood, delivered and shared, distributed, copied, cut in pieces, cut in half, or delivered and destroyed. Of course we could attach the prefix re to almost all of the above consequences, perhaps better termed events. We might also note that all of these various stop-points and instances of telling and reception point to the various ways in which we might conceive of the delivery and non-delivery (and also, re-delivery and re-non-delivery) of letters. These are problems I am considering as I read and attempt to write about Jean Froissart, La Prison Amoureuse, Cárcel de Amor, and the Querelle. These meanderings, later medieval wanderings coupled with confused readings of Carte Postale and The Truth in Painting will result (I hope) in two papers. Ya veremos.

Allegory, letters, messengers. I am particularly interested in the interplay between the allegory image presented at the start of Cárcel, the image of the prison and [its] subsequent playing out, or rather playing in, in the remainder of the text. In this subsequent performance of the allegory, we learn that the world of letters and court are not, in effect, a “real world” equivalent of the fiery castle, but rather more manifestations of castle: ones in which the letters, the manipulations of the auctor, the rules of the court, the King’s need to perform his role of king are not simply “real life” manifestations of the seemingly quite real chains, flames, crown of thorns of the allegory-image presented at the start of the text, but allegories, events, stories in and about themselves. It has been said that the letters in Cárcel de Amor make the romance more “realistic” and they add to the creation of a nice frame, they participate in the creation of a neat narrative. The letters, however, are not any more “realistic” than any other part of the narrative: they are in a sense, phantoms, floating castles of text, events of allegory mediated not only by the auctor, but also the reader, one letter never delivered, others misinterpreted, some, due to the cases just mentioned (among others), never delivered. The image allegory and the letter allegories, the letter castles, among other textual forms present in the text, are both processes, events employed to investigate and play out desire. Is there an in and an out of this novel? If there is a frame, of what does it consist?

Some thoughts on frame. Although someone quite close to me has been pushing ideas of parergon [frame-drapes-columns-extraordinary] my way for many years now, I don’t begin to grasp it yet. This is perhaps, the point, and indeed, indeed, natural [maybe] in the eyes of Derrida. In the Critique of Judgment, of which, I have only read a very small part, Kant attempts to explain parergon using various examples, including the ones I have referenced above: the frame around a picture, the drapes partially covering a nude statue, etc. Part of Derrida’s summary of several of Kant’s ideas of parergon, which, perhaps paradoxically, is difficult to separate from several parts of his critique, is as follows: (1) the parergon “inscribes something which comes as an extra, exterior to the proper filled…but whose transcendent exteriority comes to play, abut onto, rush against, rub, press against the limit itself and intervene in the inside only to the extent that the inside is lacking. It is lacking in something and it is lacking from itself.” [Nota bene: this needs commenting, but I will return to it. It needs to sit a few days]. In reading Derrida’s reading of parergon in The Truth in Painting, it appears that the more we attempt to say, or define what parergon is, the more unclear the idea becomes. His complication of Kant’s example of the clothing on statues is a sometimes humorous way of arriving at a picking apart of frame-inner-outer-extraordinary-ordinary-real-fiction and of course, parergon. I plunk this down here to think about it later, to let it seep, like the citation above, because I need to return to tomorrow’s seminar reading:

(2) This delimitation of the center and the integrity of the representation, of its inside and its outside, might already seem strange. One wonders too, where to have clothing commence. Where does a parergon begin and end. Would any garment be a parergon. G-strings and the like. What to do with absolutely transparent veils. And how to transpose the statement to painting. For example, Cranach’s Lucretia holds only a light band of transparent veil in front of her sex: where is the parergon? Should one regard as a parergon the dagger which is not part of her naked and natural body and whose point she holds toward herself, touching her skin (in that case only the point of the parergon would touch her body, in the middle of the triangle formed by her two breast and her navel)? A parergon, the necklace that she wears around her neck? The question of the representative and objectivizing essence, of its outside and its inside, of the criteria engaged in this delimitation, of the value of naturalness which is presupposed in it, and secondarily or primarily, of the place of the human body or of its privilege in this whole problematic. If any parergon is only added on by virtue of an internal lack in the system to which it is added…what is it that is lacking in the representation of the body so that the garment should come and supplement it?

Frame-framed, allegory-explanation, body-clothing: what happens when we disintegrate these dialectics? With what are we left? A G-string? Fuzzy all-allegory? Everything = a letter event, all expression of desire? Hmmm.