"Notes for a Preface": Traduction inédite de John Taylor

Some maniacs cannot keep themselves from jotting down, as if instinctively, the barely intelligible results of their thinking in the margins of the book whose pages they have just opened by fervently cutting the pages. They make a hybrid book out of the work read.

Sometimes their remarks are more interesting than the text that provoked them.

Being myself an inveterate jotter, in what margin can I take notes unless it is that of the vast open book of life? And what is this life if it is not the Other's text, which we madly beseech?

I have no desire "to write a book." I'll have the time to do so when I'm dead and, so it seems, fully busy as a devouring reader. When I'm absolutely eager and curious not to skip a line.

I feel neither the need nor the courage to stop a machine at others' expense. A liking for business is totally foreign to me. The upkeep of this reading factory without a boss is thus more difficult, more unrewarding. It runs the risk of falling apart without my noticing. A fire might start in the south while I'm strolling on the beaches in the north. It even runs the risk of burning up completely, without any of its pieces ever being usable again. But this is what I wish. The terms of my pleasure. To die with it. As definitively useless.

________

Whatever is at hand works fine to keep me from losing anything from my incessant reading—scraps of (often toilet) paper, metro tickets, match boxes, pages of books. I'm covered with them. Most of these notes, I know, are left unfinished. And do not wish, are not willing, to put in an unclothed appearance. "Naked, so be it, if I am beautiful. But may my nylons and my slip be removed. May my hair be done up." A pure matter of form. For form's sake. At bottom, they couldn't care less, and I'm not far from thinking the same. This is perhaps the ransom of my weariness. My punishment. For I wonder what could have worn me out so much. I'm fully ready to consider myself responsible. A prosecuting lawyer. I dislike my weariness. And I can see what I want to arrive at by getting rid of the witnesses to my affliction. If my memories are accurate when the time comes, it's surely an attempt at removing myself from what prevents me from breathing.

________

Indeed, I notice that love is often the subject matter of these notes. This doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that love is not always the issue. When I listen to myself live, love seems to be my only topic, my only embarrassment, my only terror. And perhaps my only vexation.

________

Love is not the only thing. When I reread myself, I spot pride. It's easy to criticize oneself. Pathetically easy. This is why it's better to leave this pleasure to others. Moreover, it isn't a "critique" I'm making, but rather a report. In fact, it's intriguing to see how far one can go when judging oneself, and the extent to which it's useless. One only ever writes what one is able to write. That's a kind of justice.

Hence the pride. A pride that I don't disavow, but that I too often find a little flabby, a little immature, a pride that tends to flush into purple but has trouble separating itself from its offspring. A pride which, out of fear of being recognized, skids across ice of dubious hardness and both wishes and dreads that it will cave in. The pride of a candidate for killing himself, not for living. For death. Love, solitude, suffering, the body, etc., do not form a very original, delectable bouquet. It's to get out of this mire, out of this vase, to exasperate this tilting stem, that I probably write and continue to live. A nagging pride, which resembles a...