542
PARTISAN REVIEW
Inessential , uncerta in , the J ourn al is also in authentic. I don 't
mean by this th a t someone wh o expresses himse lf in one is no t sincere.
I mean th at its very form can onl y be borrowed from an antecedent and
mo tionl ess Form (tha t, precisely, of the intima te Journal), whi ch
canno t be subverted . Writing my Journal, I am , by status , doomed to
simula tion. A doubl e simulation , in fact: for every emo tion being a
copy o f th e same emo ti on one has read somewhere, to report a mood in
the coded language of the Collection o f Moods is
to
copy a copy: even if
the text was "orig in al," it would a lready be a cop y; all the more so, if it
is familiar, worn , threadbare: "The writer, by his pa ins, those dragons
he has fondled , or by a certa in vivacity, must set himse lf up , in the tex t,
as a witt y historian " (Mall arme). What a paradox ! By choos ing the
mos t "direct," the mos t "spontaneous" form o f writing, I find myself
to be the clumsies t o f ham-actors. (And wh y not? Are th ere no t
" histor ic" moments when one must be a ham- actor? By practi cing to
the bitter end an antiqua ted form of writing, do I no t say tha t I love
litera ture, tha t I love it in a harrowing fas hion , at the very moment
when it is dying? I love it, therefore I imitate it-but precisely: no t
without compl exes.)
All o f which says mQr or Ie s the same thing: tha t the worst
torment, when I try
to
keep' a J ournal, is the instability of my
I I.\.
judgment. Instabilit .?
~a th
r its inexorabl y descending curve. In the
Journal, Kafk a po in\ed
out
t e a bsence of a no ta tion 's va lue is always
recognized too la te. How (
b
transform what is written a t white hea t
(and takes pride in the fac t) into a ni ce co)d dish? It is this was te, this
dwindling which constitutes the Journ al's uneas iness. Again Mall arme
(who mo reover did no t keep one): "Or other verbi age become just that,
provided it is exposed, persuas ive, pensive, and tru e when one confides
it in a whisp er ": as in tha t fairy tale, under the effect of a curse and an
evil power, the fl owers tha t fall from my mouth are changed into toads.
"When I say something, thi s thing immedia tely and definiti vely loses
its importance. When I wr ite it here, it also loses it, but sometimes
ga ins ano ther impon aftce" (Kafk a) . The difficulty proper to the
Journ al is tha t this secondary importance, libera ted by writing, is no t
certain : it is no t certa in tha t the J ourn al recuperates the wo rd and gives
it th e res istance of a new metal. Of course writing is indeed tha t stran ge
activity (over which , hitherto, psychoanal ys is has had little hold ,
understanding it with difficulty), which miracu lo usly arres ts the
hemorrhaging of the Image-repertoire, o f which speech is the powerful
and pa th etic stream. But precisely: however "well written ," is the
Journ al "writing "? It strugg les, swells, and stiffens: am I as big as the
