Introduction to « Seduce » by J. H. Matthews : Georges Sebbag / 1942-
« What is to be done? Overturn the order of the elements examine next the differences, dive into the ocean »
« you hardly intervene. I have an idea, a standard one, by the way. It’s a matter of introducing into the conversation words like deduce, reduce, seduce »
« by the way, a friend and I asked this question: does one think while speaking, while writing? I replied that thinking included writing or speech; at the moment I am interested in what is stirring, being invented; what do free action (open to pleasure) and intuition in its mechanism for elaborating the real signify? »
« 1know that the magnificent lived details melt away, and I am convinced something emanates from enumeration, lists, inventories. One example, so far as we are concerned who is seducing whom? »
« that’s true, thinkers begin by effecting a reduction. The philosophical path: reduce, then deduce, with one secret and perverse intention: seduce »
« what’s the point of further development! »
« give me your hand, ephemeral body »
« that’s fine »
« ephemeral as in the theater, like an emotion. The actor saying their lines tremble, eat, get ready for a journey, fade like a family portrait. They follow one another, answer one another, return on stage, when the curtain has fallen »
« the cries of sensuality, the rhythm »
« to besmear »
« yes, I bet you have no animals at home. Do you even play a musical instrument? »
« I avoid doing anything »
« I want to remain a beautiful woman, young »
« the amount of the conscious in the unconscious, the confident woman, isn’t that it? »
« yes »
« who will write for the other a scenario, an essay? »
« who will marry whom? »
« your acting »
« my acting »
« romance is for you, with that hand near the chair; for me, the desire to think of your body (now that I’ve seen it) »
« myth, divination, adoration »
« I kept on the alert for the word that would contradict your physical person, I forgot to plunge into adventures, I made wrong deductions »
« phantasmal Nature, long and serene, nature with infinite meanings, revolting prayers, shades that exasperate you, green Nature, black Nature, nascent monochrome, turgid readings, transparent death, the body of nature with five senses and more, I throw myself onto its sex and go deep into it, I exhaust myself with the effort to understand it, I speak of myself, and it seduces me »
« no, yes »
« I imitate in silence and shadow, between the flower that grows automatically and the flying spores, between the absence of desire and the sign of a white presence, certain voices: fashion expressed in language, repetition staged, the burning tongue, the image of an infinitive, coinable ideas, fragile punctuation, girls on posters desired by women, substantives with expressionless faces, the drowned child coming back to the surface, the empty suitcases, the unaffected indifferences, the discreet storm, the brutal sun, the head without nose, mouth, and ears, the varnished lips, the hollow or painted cheeks, the sky-blue lashes, the hairless sex, moaning and letting itself be seen, a butterfly with frozen wings, finally a heap of crumpled paper. Tell me a story. I will listen to what will be badly told, the grass nibbled by an urchin will sprout, our sons will read the pages buried in the ground, the savage will bequeath us some of his skill, suffering will spread »
« natural pregnancy of discourse. Why is your skin as delicate and white as the envelope of words? Vou reject theoretical accumulations, brilliant or attractive constructions. And yet people draw for us beautiful formulae, show us bizarre processes: together we are heading for the spacious lake of indecision, into the bath of joyous atoms, forestalling disappointing encounters »
« deduce for the happy »
« reduce for the unhappy »
« signs deduced, expectation of an understanding, passing in neutral or in haste, the links of the chain tighten, from the provision al hue to the definitive portrait, from birth to death, from puddles to the heavy downpour, from the multiplication table to the axiomatic, from the frescoes and the revolutions, a silhouette, a person advanced in years, an insignificant comma, a suppressed laugh, one syllable too many and a drama commences »
« bad luck, mediocrity, hard consonants against soft vowels, pitched battles, the encircled enemy always wins, resistance from the essential core, the final carapace, the touch of madness, the vital seed, the not very sociable association, camaraderie and murder, let us shorten the hours of sleep, the sexual communication with no palaver, the elite corps, reduced saintliness and space »
« and seduce? »
« seduce. »
She wished that he would say something, play, that a wild or lyrical novelty would be suggested. She understood but was not at ease. Never would he relate his past; they themselves would live only that which cannot be written down. He was not thinking of her, he was absorbing her, as he went along. It was his place to amuse her, bore her. They would not watch one another, they would not soothe one another. For the moment, they were there, body in body. Human hand, smell of sweat. Pursuit of pleasure, going on indefinitely, eternal recurrence of beauty. The traditional vocabulary burst forth, the enumerations, the interruptions, the skill at storytelling. Neutral replies or replies that flashed like lightning. Dryness of effusion. The limbs were moving about, speech was fading. The exoticism of nouns. Harmony or heavenly mechanism. They were surveying an undesirable region. They would understand one another and would scarcely be heard. With a view to tying up atrocities and peace; rather than binding life hand and foot. The allies would not come to their assistance. With risks taken, moments used up, they would no longer erect a jetty, they would advance along a dusty path of darkness. To call to one another. To have already slept, to wake up again. The endearments of lulling. Father and mother forgotten. Depth without breadth or length, shape without movement. Horizon in place, a line of departure or of flight. They were not still here, since it happened that they sometimes slept. They were waiting, like a man in love in front of a clock. She lost patience; she would imprison that masculine body which would confess the inexpressible secret; she would conceal from his sight the opening of her sex; she would not rebel, for he would compare the conflagration to dead calm.
« You are full like matter. The whole flesh rises, breathes, fills out. Lips everywhere. An impression of immensity. I run over your warm skin –a silky perfume. I stretch out. I touch the flesh that obsesses. Sensual skin, a smooth and aggressive mixture. An inarticulate body into which I plunge, firm and supple, against which I press myself, vibrant as a muscle, violent. »
« purple lips that suck me in, the bones of head and shoulders; a love of death, a burning log like a romantic décor, a crypt where the paving stones rise up, a green nature of night trees, your skeleton your corpse your clothes your elegant desires »
« white and brown rubbed epidermises, 1make love with a decomposing body, with ashes »
« I kiss the saliva, tongue, arms, and the sex that stirs within me »
« we think of death and we push it aside, we weep for joy »
« for pleasure only »
« only for pleasure »
« you are crushing me »
« I am looking at your gigantic mad eyes, you are asking for me »
« I am giving you, your hand alone takes me, occupies the surface of the earth, five long fingers thrust me into space, a palm and five sex organs shake me »
« the mouth is like the skin, the nervures, the fields where people sleep, the howls near a waterfall, the tongue is a branch that whips me »
« the passion of the body »
« a body of nature that you take with you, that brushes against me, snaps me up, that I attack, generous nature in the body of a woman, resplendent Nature, a body of light and blood, an ecstatic freshness, you offer me a body, we untie one another, we release one another, we repeat gestures, delightful promises, silence, panting. Our exhaustion, our imprints »
« I feel myself nailed, you envelop me, everything is whirling, I am burning despite the water you are pouring, your face that 1see with eyes dosed. The image of our bodies. »
They were making love again. In frenzy, athirst. The brown furniture, the heavy drapery, the high windows; the rain, the lightning; the ticking of watches; the bluish color of a moonless night, the bed as spacious as a field of red poppies; an atmosphere for awakening the various natural species: death, storm, solidity, the smell of the earth; a warm wind; they were growing excited to the point of bruising their flesh; each pleaded with the other for the torture to stop. Their bodies were trembling with fatigue. They were motionless, crumpled like the bedsheets.
« The power of the image resembles the former power of God over Nature. Now that God no longer exists, that Nature is in pieces, strength lies with the image. Man, who is almost nothing, claims for himself the virtues of the image; in fact, the image is trifling with him; it lives within him: from time to time he makes use of it, speaks of it, looks at it, reproduces it, is dazzled. The sad living image of a dead God, a human mortal body possessed by the image. Are we not images of death? To make love, so dose to death. Life related by paintings of death.
I believe the body is an image. To you, the one I adore, I say that you are my image, that you are a body. I do not only say it, I palpate the flesh of your body, I lay my hand on your image.
Your lashes and eyelids, specters. Image-body, I forbid you to disappear. Oh woman, seated, nude, you are an image in spite of your body. We make love in the image, in death. A mortal image. The living image of death, image death of life. But the image drives out the image. Body after body, body after body. Does an image love a body? Is there a feeling? Is it on the side of the body? How does it join images? Are you listening to me? »
« Why overwhelm me, who am hardly beginning to know you? Why should I suffer? Like you, I believe, I say I love this body, this image. A love like an image, a body like death. Kiss me. »
To foresee a story and to stop. To sum up what has been seen already. The unforeseen arrives, drier, colder, emptier than meditation. To forget the narrative, reheat the dishes. To repeat the difference, tear oneself away from indifference. Publicity pictures without words, an active and tenacious glance. Pictures of substances associated by sight. Transparent delicate envelopes, neutral or bright colors. Posters in the nick of time. Movable mirrors of signs that stand still. An aggressive style despite the fixity, the materiality. One gives a glance, one grasps opportunities. Flat letters and an absence of punctuation that take one’s attention. Beaches hollowed out in the paper. Black signals engraved in the memory. Indifference to the poetry of childhood, the recollection of pleasures anchored in mind and body. He could make out in a corner of skin the inscriptions of an astounding duel, he was reconstructing the news items and the serial from a newspaper. She was combing out a tiny square of hairs, so many personages of noble lineage. The news bulletins rained down, while they were resting. They were no longer thinking of anything. Then the drama occurred.
*
An hallucination or a film set? On the white wall, an outline. A feeling of consistency. To be afraid of a density, of an irruption; to huddle together; terror; no sound, an apparition; in the town, Nature missing: the rain is no longer lashing the layer of humus, the storm is no longer howling, the trees are not bending, the weeds are no longer hiding from the unleashed elements insects and larvae; in the bedroom a density has stood out from the wall; a body, an image, a composite, a horrible creature? a veiled dazzling form, translucent and shadowy, crouching and elongated, seems to be dancing on the spot. How does an image-body move? Why has it come? So far as she is concerned, in the course followed by her eyes, dread, a vague comfort. Like a blind man, he touches a body; he lives with her, with a second thing. Now the third thing dilates, becomes rarefied. The third bursts into flames. The third happens to be there, by accident. Later, it will boast: I existed in their heads, I slipped in, I danced, I jigged. The third, beautiful and ugly, is a body, a breath, a blank; swollen with emptiness, the third makes fun of the two of them, tyrannical and cruel; red and orange; dressed in several coats, in shirts, the third shifts about like a baby; its legs are crossed, its hands clenched on its thighs, its chin pulled in and its fingers skipping about like worms. The puppet is a mechanism, but the third, falling back upon its own thoughts, smiling, gnashes its teeth. Is it a woman, a man? The third has appeared calmly, on the wall.
« The third is not an image, darling. Look at the sparkling brown-haired woman on the poster: sexuality is painted on her lips. The third is not a body; it has no gait »
« I recoil before it; that flesh without bones, those soulless eyes, that speechless irruption; pain, solitude. Make it go away! »
« Will you have me? »
« No, not now. »
To provoke laughter. Not to beware of third parties, of indefinite forms, of mixtures. To meet four or five persons at a time, with each of them to experience the same agitation, to be just as at ease. To interpret the one person from the ethers, the whole from the succession of parts, the first from the last. To succeed at the beginning and at the end, to have difficulties in the middle. To fail almost everywhere, not to lose hope. The drama or the third’s amusement? Trigger or fuse? Difference or indifference? The probable repetition of an event past and future. Broad deserted avenues. The slipping of feelings, subsidence of the ground. A word for an existence, a slogan for a country, a trade name for a widely used product. They were engaged in calling up ghosts, they were reviewing ways of corning back to life. They were counting bones, ashlar, jewels, papers carefully preserved. They were exhausting the question. But was there even a problem? After emulation, discouragement, and not a single thought for humor. They did not conceal their silence from one another very well. At the opposite pole from obsession. For whom the torture? They had escaped the drama. But an indefinite love could sow discord. They knew how not to systematize. They did not have a base of operation; they gazed at one another. Tomorrow, would he recognize her? Would she listen to him? A delicate timid fusion. A distance never cleared. The very thing that brought them together escaped them: an intimacy denied by everyone, accentuated by them. To air one’s opinions as one delivers an oration. To stir those listening, with harmony and softness. To excite so as to earn approval. They knew the obstacles and were falling into the traps. They appreciated life and disparaged their adventure. To hoard language, to cash blows. Abstractly, they were like other individuals. Love appeared or disappeared? It matters little! The third was not an enigma. Fleeting and beautiful. They lay in one another’s arms: she was exhausted, he was as white as the silence. They had just spent a few hours together.
Georges Sebbag
Références
« Seduce », in The Custom-House of Desire, A Half-Century of Surrealist Stories, translated with an Introduction by J. H. Matthews, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles, London. Voir « Séduire », L’Archibras, n° 2, octobre 1967.