These are a few quotes from hearing Hélène Cixous speak at the conference entitled Untying the Mother Tongue along with a little rant about getting into the conference hall itself.

“German is the language spoken by the hearts mouth.”

“I think she speaks in English because you can speak it anywhere, even in death.”

The eternal return.

Language is myth.

To Montaigne

“I wasn’t simply going there. I was waiting for myself, there.”

“It was a bible, a house of memory…”

“And so I return to death, always suddenly and premature.”

“I discovered my father mummified under sheets of paper… I dared to read him dead.”

“I am an archeologist of traces always impure.”

“The moment the repetition produces. The moment we return we give it power… We
learn what comes back to us.”

“It means The face that comes back to me. No. It means The face that I can bare that I love.”

“I did not lose them. They did not return. They arrived.”

“My mother tongue is religion.”

We stole our way into the conference and talk. They were not allowing more in. As if we were scum coming like rats without the correct and prompt planning capacity they clearly had squired through rigorous patience and practice. As if they could with one glance asses what had brought us to be late and that in that moment met them at the door with disdain. An intuitive move by Kendra allowed entrance to this rebel force, made of angry students, resigned and knowing professors and the like, some Berliners and some not, planning a coop of greater and greater lengths the more we were withheld from entry. We checked our plan at the door and became terrorists of opportunity. Only one counter measure was raised and caused more disturbance than any of us who entered quietly. It was a perfect moment of inappropriate action, an even more inappropriate counter, and the resolution of our arrival.

“I have it and I have only it and it is not mine.”

“Colonial wars were always coupled with internal wars.”

“I was writing without knowing it at thirteen.”

“When I write I don’t decide to use this language or that language because the language I use is writing.”

“When we need it. We the writing we use whatever language comes.”

“One does not calculate… It just comes… The voices come. They orchestrate and they play several instruments.”

“Let’s hold on to the lost.”

“There is a strange benefit in experiencing loss. It is an engagement with our mortality. We need the help of large strange forces and we do this through art.”

The salamander.

“If the translator is an artist then the new work that is born out of the past work can rival with the original. Which you know can happen, but It is impossible, and it can happen.”

“When I talk to you I echo something that has not been adequately received so I know.”