534
PARTISAN REVIEW
seriously, I can attempt to prove that "I am worth more than what I
write" (in my books): the writing in my Journal then appears as a
plus-power
(Nietzsche:
Plus von Macht),
which it is supposed will
compensate the inadequacies of public writing; let us call this motive:
utopian, since it is true that we are never done with the image–
repertoire. The fourth motive is to constitute the Journal as a work–
shop of sentences: not of "fine phrases," but of correct ones, exact
language: constantly to refine the exactitude of the speech-act (and not
of the speech), according to an enthusiasm and an application, a
fidelity of intention which greatly resembles passion: "Yea, my reins
sha ll rejoice, when thy lips speak right things"
(Proverbs
23, xvi). Let
us call this motive: amorous (perhaps even: idolatrous-I idolize the
Sentence).
For all my sorry impressions, then, the desire to keep a journal is
conceivable. I can admit that it is possible, in the actual context of the
Journal, to sh ift from what at first seemed to me as improper in
literature to a form which in fact rallies its qualities: the individuation,
the scent, the seduction, the fetishism of language. In recent years, I
have made three attempts; the first and most serious one-because it
occurred during my mother 's last illness-is the longest, perhaps
because it corresponded in some degree to the Kafkaesque goal of
extirpating anxiety by writing; each of the other two concerned only
one day: they are more experimental, though I can't reread them
without a certain nostalgia for the day that has passed (I give only one
of these, the second one involving others besides myself).
u . ..
,July
13, 1977
Madame
«on,
the new cleaning woman, has a diabetic grandson
she takes care of, we are told, with devotion and expertise. Her view of
this disease is confused: on the one hand, she does not admit that
diabetes is hereditary (which would be a sign of inferior stock), and on
the other, she insists that it is fatal, absolving any responsibility of
origin. She posits disease as a social image, and this image is beset with
pitfalls. The Mark certainly appears as a source of pride and of pain:
what it was for Jacob-Israel, dislocated, disconnected by the Angel:
delight and shame of being
re-marked.
Depression , fear , anxiety: I see the death of a loved one, I panic,
etc. Such an imagination is the very opposite of faith. For constantly to
imagine the inevitability of disaster is constantly to accept it: to utter it
is to assert it (again the fascism of language). By imagining death, 1
