Athens, Still Remains: The Photographs of Jean-Franois Bonhomme

A T H E N S , S T .I L L

R E M A I N S

Athens, Still Remains The Photographs of Jean-Franr;ois Bonhomme

JACQUES

DERRIDA

_)

Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK

2010

Copyright© ~010 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may he reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or hy any me:1ns-electronic,

mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Athen•, StilL Remains was published in French as Demeure, Athenes by Editions Galilee,© ~oo9 Editions Galilee. Library of Congress Catal(!ging-in- Publication Data Derrida, Jacques. [Demeure, Athenes. English] Athens, atill remains, the photographs of Jean-Fran~ois Bonbomme I Jacques Derrida; translated hy Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-o-8~3~-3~05-5

(cloth' alk. paper)-

ISDN n8-o-8~3~-3~o6-~

L

(pbk. 'alk. paper)

Death. z. Grief. 3. Sepulchral monuments-Greece-Athens-Pictori:ll

works. 4· Athens {Greece)-AnliquiL1es-P.i.clul"ial wu1·kt>. I. BuJilioilllll~. Jean-Fran~ois,

1943- !L Brault, Pascale-Anne. IlL Naas. Michael N. Title.

~0100~0610

Contents vii

LIST 0 F ILL US T RAT I 0 N S

T R A N S L AT 0 R S' N 0 T E

ix

* * * * * ATHENS, STILL REMAINS

* * NOTES

* 'l'3

Illustrations 1 •

Kerameikos Cemetery, Stn:t'l orTombs, Sepulcher ~

· Oroonia Sqwn-e-the Old 1\ eon Cafe 3 • A Few Moments in theN eon C~ft'

4 • Strt:Ot'l Organ

5 • Athinas Street 6 · Athinas-Meut Mal'ket

7 • Athinas-Fruil and Vl':getable Market [J • Athi.nas-~ahyChickVendur

9 · Photop;rapher un Lhe A£:ropolis 10 •

Kerameikos c.~mr.ter:y-Funcrary Stde

n • The Parthenon· Phulogl'aphy in Waiting

1:.: • Statue in th~Agora 18 • Athinas-Fish Market 14 · Agora--Column Fragments •5 • Kerameikos Cemetery-Lck)'thus J(, • ~-\ntique Dealer in Monastirnki

17 · Agora, Tnsc:ripti.on

18 · Keramcikos C:P.metery Museum-Detail f•·om a Funerary Stele 19 · ~fonl!;;tin1ki Market 40 • ~~

i\drianou Street Market

• SundayattheAdrianouSio'ef".tMD.Tket ~~

• Athina~ Market-Two Brothers

il • .Bouzouki Player ~4

· Persephone Street

25 • N ea1· the Tower of the Winds ~6

· Kl"rameikos Cemctcry--Suet:Ol ofTomh;; 27 · Site oft he Tu .... er ofthe Winds ~A

· Stoa of Attalos

29 ·Agora-Apollo Patroos 3o ·

Acropolis--f:~ryatidesBound :~1

·Agora--Sarcophagus

3:.>, · Theater of Dionysus-Thmnr, of the Priest 33 · Frieze of the Theater of Dionysus Dionysu~. Zt:Ous Seaterl

.14 • frieze ofthe Thcate1' of Dionys11s-the Silenus

Translators' Note Atheros, S~il! Remo.i11.s (Dem.~IJ.n!, Athllne.~) w.a.:: fu~t published in 1996 by Editions OLKO s (Athens) in a bilingual Fnmch-Modem Greek P.rlition. it appeared there as the preface to a wllection of photograph:; by JeariFr:tn': without compromising in the least its absolute independenr.~. each of them is what it is, no do LAbt all on its ovm, but each one calls at once <Jorne other one and a.H the mhcrs. I will be able to sa.ythis better later. Whence the idea of a series of aphorisms analogous to till: multiple tries or takes of thP. amateur photographer I am, a stream of snapfihots or stills I clichesP-now th(';re's a possible title-sometimes just negativef·nvaitingto b~ developed. Here and there a few enlargementsof the "thing" itself or of a detail. I would thus tion prP-pared me for this feeling? (There w~s. first of all, Athens (three times in fact), and Mykonos and Rhodes (where I had Lhc impression uf swimming for the very f:t:rst timF:), and th~n Ephesu~ and P.atmos. v.'ith George and Myrto, and then the .Knisariani l1onasleqwilh Calhe1·ine Vel.issa1·is and DemoiiSthenes Agranoti~,

following the footsteps of Heidegger, who, near the very same Greek Orthodox temple, did not fail to indict yet again in his

Auft:r~thaltt: not ouly Rurne, along with its Ch1,1rch, its law, its state, and

its theology, but technology, machines, tourism. tourist atrractinnF>and above all photography. the ··operating of cameras and video cameras," which, in organized tours, ·~replaces" the authentic experience of the stay orth e sojourn.)

We owe ourselves to death, we owe ourselves to death, we owe ourselves to death. we owe ourselves to death: the sentence kept on repeating itself in my head, so full of sun, but without reproducing itself.

11

.

~

.

12

IL produced itself each time fo1· Lhe llrst time, the same, to be SLAre, but each time anew completely new. like an original-or a negative without origin. Once and fur all, the thing it,;~lfwas lacking in this original nt:gative.

It's now time; let us begin to lohk. Look at the Plwtogro,pher on. the AcropoUs (no. 9), whom you can see meditating or sleeping. his head resting on his chest, in the middle of the book. I -w-onder-if he ha.sn'tsct

up in front of him, in I runt of you, an archaic figure of this delay mechanism. In order to photograph the photograph and its photographer. in order to let ~verythingthat

h~s to

do with photography be seen, in or-

der to bookmark everything in this book. What exacdywould he ha,re done, the author-photographer of this book, the author, therefore, of

this self-portrait? He would h.we !'lettheanim.al machineU'p on a Delphic tripod. In following here the echo of myf.:mtasy. everything would thu~;

be suspended in the i11terval of this dela')'. a sort of diaphanous

time in an air of invisibJ.lity. His e.reR are closed, but Lhe photographer

protects them further from the lighl with sungla~t$\e~;. The author o£ a photograph would have also looked for, indeed even sought out, the shade of a parasol, unlc:,;:; it happens to he a reflector.

Still VII

We owe ourselves to death. This semeucc was right away, al'i we have comf- to understand, greater than the inlltant, whence the desire to photograph it without delay iu lhe noonday sun. Without letting any more time pass, but for a latenime. Whythi3 lime delay'! .An untranslatable sentence (and I was sure, from the very :f:trst instant.. that the economy of this sentence belonged to my idiom alone, or rather, to the domesticity of m,y old love affair with this ::;tranger whom 1 call my French languag~),

a sentence that resists trani;lation, as if one could

13

14

only photograph it. as if on~

in~tantaneom;ly

had to take its im.ag~ by

surprise at its birth: immobile. monumental, impassive. singular. ab-

stract. in retreat from all treatment, unreachable in the end by any peri · phrasis. by any transfer, by rhetoric itself, by the eloquence of tr.1111\position. Reticent like a word that know::; how w keep sJenl in order Lo say so much, a word frmen in itF: tracks [trlm.hPe Fm. a.rrP-t], or pretemrling. rather, to be freeze-framed lmTit su.rima.gd before a video camera. An oracle of silence. It gives itself in refusing itself. One time for

all times. As soon as it takes [prend] in language (but who will translate Lhis p,.endl'e i.n the phrase "des qu' elle prend dans la langue"), and once it is taken by it, it resembles a photograph. The sentence takes in photography, or takes a photograph of the language that photographs it (like the photographer who photographs himseli when he lakes a photogri!ph ofhim~~lfinthi!'\ hook). Th~' aretakf.n, t.he one and the other, in the unique example ofthis apparition. this sentence here and not another, in this irreplaceable language; it i~ thus, it was thus, it hap pened, it took place, this senten~e here,

om~

time for all timf:~, as "we

owe our~ elves to ut:alh."

Still VIII

Prendre u.n.e photographi.e, to take a photograph. prendre en photographie, to take a photograph but also to take in photography: is this translatable? At what moment docs a photog-raph come to be taleen? And taken by whom"? lam perhaps in the process, with :mywordB, of making off with his photogJ·aphs, oftald.ng rromhim the photographs that he once took. Can one appropriate another's mourning? And if a photograph is taken as one takes on mourning [prend le deiti!], that is, in separation, huw would. such a Lhcil be possible? But then also. how could such a theft be .a.voinerl?

15

16

Still IX I was coming back that day with friends from Brauron to Alhens. It was around noon, and we were on our way to go gwimming. after having paid our respects to the young girls walking in a procession tOivard the altar of Artemis. The Q.ay before I had already

rctl.lrn~J..

yet ltga.in to

Athens, butthattime itwasfromthe tip ofC;:~pe S01mion, where we al~n went swimming, and I had recalled at the time the other signature of Byron, the other petroglyph marking his passage-at Lerici this time, near Porto Venere. And 1rec~lle d the time it took for Socrates to die aftcrthc verdict cundcmn.i.ng him (and lhe name So union, as we know. is ins epa m hie from this) . .Thi:; was my third stay in Greece. Barely stays, regrellably, more like visits, multiple, fleeting. and all too late. \'V'hy so late? Wny did I wait so long to go there, to give myself over to C reece?

So late in life? But a delay, thes~ day:>. is something I always love as what gives me the most to think, more than the present moment, more than the fu · ture and more than eternit:j·, .1 del a)' before time itself. To think the atpresent of the now (prc~nt, pal:!t, or to come). lo L'eLhinkinstantaneity ·on the basis of the delay ..t before the shot. the secondsin.ct< the shot was taken, and the last later still, for another day, though it is imminent, after the appearance of the print. But if the imminence ofwhal is thus due for death suspends the c:omingdm.:, as epoch of eve-ryphotogTaphdoes, it signs at the same Lime the verdict. It confu:ins and seals jts ineluc table authority: this v..ill have lo die, the m.i..c;e. en demeure is underwny,

me

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28

nol.i.ftcation has been given, the r.ountdovm. ha;; already st:.rrted, there i" only a delay. the Lime to photograph. though when it comes to death

no one even dreams of escaping il -or dreams that .:mything will be spared. I am thinking of the dei!th of Socrates, of the Ph.aedo and the

Cri.to. Of the incredible r·eprieve that delayed the datP. of r:xccution for so many day-s after the judgment. They awaited the sails, their appearance off in the dis lance, in the light, at a prtlcise, unique, anJ. inevitable

moment-fatal like a click.

Still XIV We kno¥~ what Cape Sounion meant for the death of Socrates. It is from

there, in short, that Athens s<J.w it coming-hi~'. death, that is. By ship. Fromthetempll'lofPoseidon, at the tip of the cape, duringmynrST:>'isit (itwasthc day before the sentence "we owe ourselvcl:! to death"), I imagined .a photograph, and I saw il before me. It eternalized, ina snap~hot

the time of this extraordinary moment:

Socral~s

awaiting death. That

he was told aboullhe passing oft he Rails so close to AtlH;ns, just off the cape, offthiR w·ry cape and not another. from the heights of this very promontor:r where l found my.~elfwith friends before going sv..imming down below, atth:e ~ yl'.nly pilgrimage or "procession" (theona) to Delos. The law (nonws) of Athens thus prescribes that duringth~en­ tire. time ofthe theoria "the city must he pure and no one may be pub-

licly executed until the ship has gaM to Delos and back" (Ph(J,e;do s8b). This time is not calculable. and neither is the delay, the.refore, bec:mse

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the voyage took a lorig time and the v.i n cl.;; were so metirnes, w1fo1·eseeably. unfavorable. Such an uncontxollable delay m~r.hanism (what is

calledph:rsis), suchincalculahihry. grants So~.:rales an indeterminable reprieve. One knows when thetheiiria begins, hut one does not see the end. One can determine the ark/~~ Les lheoria.s. the moment wh~n the priest ofApollo crowns the stern of !-he ship. hut one.: never knov.-s when the theiiria v.ill end, and when a sail will announce the return from off Cape Sounion. That is the inten..-al that :separates the verdict from the death; that is the delay lhat_ stands bet•ween these TWO morm.:nls. That is why, Phaedo conclude~ ...Socrates pas~ed a longtime [polw; khrorws] in prison between his trial anrl his death [mela::cu tis dikes te kai tou. thana.tou]" (Phaedo sSe). One never knows when the theona will end. And yet-a story of the eye.-Socratcs claimt:d lo know it; he r::l.a imed to knowwhen the &heona. would end thanks to a dream or, mort;: precise~y, by means of a kr\owledge [sa voir] based on a seeing [voir]. the seeing of a vi:sion (enupnion) come to vi sir him in the middle of the night in the, course of a dream. A dream in black nnd white that was awaiting us. It will await us even longer. It is right ttt th.i.s moment of presumption that I dreamed of photographing him, photo graphing Socra lcs as he speaks and claims to have foreseen the instant of his death. Wbcn he claims. by a kind of knowledge, ;m unconscious knowledge, it is tme, to l';ee in adva-nce, to foresee and no longer let himself he taken by :surpdse by the delay of death. My own dream Lelesympathized with his. It was in accord with whalhe says about it.

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Still XV Meeting with aPhotographel'on t/LeAcropol.is. He seems to he sleeping, dreaming perhaps, unless he has died, ~truck dovm right there by a

sun stroke, his head slouched do-w-n on his che~L He is perhaps the author of this book. He would have photographed himself. in full sunlight. Here, then, is the heliogl'aph: he wear~ a hat on his head, hut he is still too exposed because the 11ar.1fiol or the reflcclor behind him is no longer 0\'er his head, protecting, il would seem, only other photo-graphic images, already a few reproductions, no doubt. You can make out another camera, much smaller, behind him. And in front of him, on a Delphic tripod, a camera from another age is looking at him. 1.m-less it is looking elsewhere, perhap.'\ equipped wiLh a delay mechanism. The autophm:o~::rraphcr has laid out around him, as if he had saved them onh.is ark, an e:xample or copy of every species ofthing, not each ofthe genres of being distinguished in Plato's Sophi~t {being, move.inent and rest, the same and the other). not each of the ontological rt!gions of transcendental phenomenology. not the categories orexistenti.als of Being and Ti.mc (Dase~n. Vorhandensein, Zuha,ndense~n), hut 8 + n "other thing~>." He thought he had. thus divided up phJ'Sts or the kM;mos, the world and then the world of culture within it, if you want to hold onto these later categories, the world or its photographic archive: in8 +nkinds of"things." He dreamed lhat all these photograph:;; would take these things by surprise, in order or out of order, at random, there .where they h.nppened to be found. He inspert~rl and inventoried them. 1. The mineral and canhen tl1ing, materiali1y withoul life, whether ruins or not, whether with or withoul inscription: a.!/. these photos helong in ~ome way to this first class. 2. The ~egeta~. growing thing: almost all the photos (the onl.Y exceptions to this form of physis, to this more or less "natural" form of growth, arc a few images of the m:~rk~t or the cafe, a few f1·agment.o;

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36

of frescoes, Zeus ::;eated in the frie1.e from the Thcaler of Dionysus, a detail of a funeral stele, th~ Lhmne of the priest of Dionysus, and the bouzoUki player: everywhere else, somdhing isgrow&ng). 3. The divine thing (nearly all the statues and the ;$tclcs, all the tempies, a good hnlfthe images).

4· The anima! thing. Dut here things get a Lit too complicated, for there is the subclass of Lil'in.g beings (the pigeon outside, m;ar !he pho-

tographer, for example, and the dog in!iide. just as black.

m~ar

the

sculpture in the Stoa ofAtta.!os [no. 29]) and then Lhe subclass of the dead (ofthose put to death in tmlh. killed en m.a.5se, hut less "naLural." already "merchandise or" commodities" in the meat or nsh market. in the hands ofmcrcha.uts): and then there are the livmg beings roamingfredy (whether "natural," thr.; pigeon, or "dome~tir.ated," the dug) M

and living beings in ca,ptivity (this ()thcr kind of me1·chandise in thl' form ofhahychicks in cages in the Athintts Mark~t [no. 8]). The dream run:; uul of steam, but tht'\ dreamer gucs on. fu does his taxonomy. Wt: arr, only about halfway there. One is reminded of all the classincatio ns of the Sophi.~t (one wo-uld be lcmpted to try them

:~ll

om. but this has

to be given up). all those we encounter even before getting to the numetic arts, notably, the photographer :1" n!';herman or angler, an image hunterwhos~ art is uncla:::~s.ifLable bec<J.use it part.t

37

l( •

· '1ryto adapt all thePlatoDic categories here, for example, the ''mime lie" 'arid the "phant.a~matic,'' just give it a try. and have a tield day! , , 5· Thehumc.nthing (thethingwith ahu.manjace, subcatego.ries' artist.~,

a photographer and the specter of nn ah::;e:nt painter. m.r:rchan(s

and.pa,ssersby, and thtm merchants of art ()I" uj'past~mes, like the org:mgrinder). 6. The technica~ thing (a hLlman thing as well, b1Jt thi,; time without u,face) seems to defy classification even more. Vi'hy? Beyond the difncult di:otinctio.ll between tool and machine, b ffVrf' P.ll everyday impJements (chair,; and glasses inA Few Moments in the Neo1t Ca:fe [no. 3], the little bench of Photographer on theAcropolis [no. 9], the scales of the Athinas Market [no.~:.~], the bouzouki of Dou.zmiki Pla~1-er [no. 23]) and machine-tools (tht! fltreet organ, radios, telephones. the fan, the cameras themselves). one has to acknowle.dge tha1 nothing il; altogether natural in thi~ world, everything is shot thro\1gh with Jaw, conventionality, technology (nomfl~. thesis, tekhn~). (Tlu:se have in adYance invadedph.ysis and ruined its principle or it~ phantasm of purity. HistOl}' as well, and th:1t ill fmough to thre nonetheless and, in going, goes away, rem.aing in the procc:s:; uf going away, h~re

fornfteen years, the fifteen rears during which the photographer

paraded his meditation throughAthcru;, camera in hand, curious about everything. Multiplying the spectacles of ruins, and of ruin:; of modern

39

· IR ·

41)

itiJl1es; s.omeone thus went out of his way to rerall the emblem of such 1 '.

%iri~:il1these im.a.ges of .a flea market, whose studied order exposes :;o

many "technical" or" cultural" object~ that have in common their beingdefunct (defUnctus), that is, ""'ithoutfunction, ohsole1e, uul of com. mission, dysfunctional, fallen into dit~usc ldc5~ffecte]. The tool and the machine are stripped down lo being mere "things." But the. thing is also a fetish, a disused objeCt, divested of u.se but then rrnnvested wilh the

surplus value of a fetish, a fetish to keep an eye on, to keep, to ;;ell, to see being sold. An original affect, an affect with om: pathos, surrounds the aura of these photographs: the sense o1' obsolescence U'aff'ect d~; la

desa,ffgction], precisely. the affect of the one affected by this disuse or obsolescence oftechnical objects. defunct sign~ of culture. Is not this

affection ofthe photographer for these imiJlements or signs fallen imo disuse also an affect of lhe delay, of the delay withoul reLurn'? Without return, and that is why I he8itale to use the Greek ·word Lhat you no doubt ha\'C on Lhe tip of your tongue, the Creek word that speaks of the longing for return, oi homesickness-nostalgia.. If there is nostalgia in these photographs, nothing makeil it ohvio11s. But that il! not aiL Among these fetishes (and it v.'ill be incumbent upon us later to recallthat the photograph of a fetish fetishizes in it3 turn its own ubyss, for every photogr-aph is a fetish), hiswry, history 3R the historidty of technology, is seen to be discreetly but surelr expo~cd, recounted, a.nalyzed, "objectified" by the objective or the lens-precisely as the hiswry

of ruin or disuse, the history of ohflolescencc. Two or three examples: besides the measuring instrume.a.ts (scales and weights), besides th~ recording or transmitting devices (radios,

typewriter~.

tape record-

ers), besides the 'instruments of ~rt and technology (music, painting, and photography),

)'011

'Nlll be able

tO

connrm that, Wheiher in use

Or

out of use, the cameras belong to !levcral different technological gc.:n · , erations. Is this just a coincidence? Tt is at the very least the sign of a

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history of photographic technology and, as always, of its min and its

mourni-ng,

it~> ~r~hiv~ ~nd it~ f~ti::;hiz.ation.

The:n th~re are the musi-

cal instruments: they are not alone in reca.lling a history of sonogra-

phy, jllilt a,; the tape rccunkr recalls a history of phonography. Here is a telephonography (and Socrates' daimon enters momentarily into the dream of the photographer) that annoLtnces Lo you its pmg.ram: there are at least two old telephones for sale (one has to wonder what was the last message to be interrupted at the moment of disconnecting these conveyers of voices), and the two telephones are both to be found in

the "PPP-rl~ft, in the di~=;play~> of lvl'o different merchants, one at the Mouastirald. Market (no. 19) and the other at the Adrianou Street Market

(no. 20). Neither ofthcm is working, true, but one Ia oks like the ancestor of the other. (It is, moreover, right next to a photographed ancestor. a prominent Athenian, I imagine, with a full mustache in an oYal frame, an effi.gy t.hat the heirs wanted to get rid of for a little money.

yet another v.-ay of mourning.) The ancestral telephone has a dial, the younger one is a louchlonc. Black and white too en a byrne: the old telephoneis black...,oith awhitespot in the miclrile; theyrmnger cme is light, with a dark s-pot on its tummy. Each telephone is placed on top of an

old radio. It's as if we were being reminded, in the middle of all Lhesc musical instruments, that these photographs bear the mourning of sounds ami voices.

Kegativ~:o;

of sonvgrams or of phonograms, mulli-

mediainmourning, compact disks (ens, video cassettes, or c..w ROI\ors) all of a sudden voiceless-allowing us to hear all that much better the spectral echo of what they silence. The echo becouH::; in us the origi-

nal. The.c;e photo grams would resonate like echographic whispers; they v.uuld immediately emanate from out of memory. That is the photographer's touch, in the service of his gaze, of his

reflection~

of the light

he projects or reflects. And somf'times it is an a.rtifr.ci.a.lligh t.

?· UndeL' the heading of refler::t~on. precisely. there would be even

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44

more to say: everything is reflected and reflected upon, of course, by both the photographer and the photographic process. But in addition, the "te~hnologicar art and artifice of reflection, such as those found in arli.Uciallighting. turn ou ll o be represented at every moment. Count, fort:xamplt:: (1) the numerous light bulbs above the displays of the meat market or the fish market (nos. 6 and t3), and then those in the Neon

Cafe

(no.~).

11\'ltich hang down from the ceiling on a long wire (given

a11 the discarded appli.'lnces or instruments exhibited here-ndio, t~pe

recorder, fan-this book fuc:es or focuses on a certain epoch of electric culture in modern domesticity, a short history of Athenian electricity, arid every1hing seems to be calculated on the basis ofthis electrology, right up to that calculating tlring that goet~ by the name of an ,electric meter, just to the left of the two brothers in the Athinas Market .[no. 2~D: (2) parasol-r'4f!ectors; (3) the mirrors in the ::-leon Cafe and behind the two brothers in the Athinas Market. fl. Refl~ctions on rdlection and the inf:mite mirroring of the mise en. a.byme (in the large sense of the term: the metonymic representation of a representation), reflections on the phantasms of simulacra or the sim11lacra of phantasms (to ~it~ or tn F>irletrark Pla.to)-the innumerable, playful ways in which photography, or else painting, is photographr.d. H r-re again, between painting and photography mere is a pseudo-difference of generations, as the art of one generation represents in its own fallhion the art of an earlier generation. JW:!t look at the easel on which there is .a pa.inti ng ofmins in perspective (Ne.arth.P-TouJer

of the Winds. no.

~5):

the painter is gone, the -photographer remains

invisible, and the woman spectator, seen from behind, seems at once to look on v.'ithoutunderstanding and to let heTself be taken in by the

spectacle. Even though. in a certain sense. everything is "representation" in what is photographed in this way. one can count the representations of representations, for example, certain photographs or paint-

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48

all thMe mul':ieal instrumentt;. rad.ios, telephones, and tape

recorder~

did not recall it, the phonogram of this mW:!ic of J.caLh \vould resonate here in black and while, from one photo to the next. Like a silent song. Like a dirge of mourning that recalls, for example, Demeter weeping for Persephone, who bad been abducted by Hades and whom Theseus, y~s. him

again, tried to carry away by descending into the underworld.

At the center of one of thr. photographs, a spectacular· street sign. the

only one, commemorates Kore, the young girl: 011m: ITEPl:E4I>01\"Hl:, just I:'~.Ksto:l'ONIS (no. 24). Does not Persephone reign over tbis entire book, Persephone, vl'i.fe of Hades, the goddess of death and of pha:utoms. of souls wandering in search of their mcmory? But also (and this is another world of significations v.ith which the ngure of Persephone is associated) a goddess ofthe iinagc. of waterand of tears. at once transparent and reflecting, mirror :md pupil? Kore, Persephone's other name, mean~:~ both young girl and the pupil of the eye. "what is called the pupil [korenkn.Lmkmen)," and in which, as Plato'llAI.cibi.ades I reminds us, our face is reflected, in its image, in. its "idol," when it looks at itself in the eyes of another. One must thus look at this divinity, the best mirror of human things (t33c). And all that would be due to de~th, along with the spectei'S, and the photographic pupil, and the symphony of a II th~se musical in!ltru.mcnls. above itF. transliteration.

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Still XVI To photograph Socrates as a mu~ir.al instrument. And musical instruments al:l so many Socrateses. For what does Sorrates do? He waits. bu.t withm1t waiting: he awaits death and dreams of annulling its delay by

composing a sacrificial hymn. De<Jth is indeed slow in coming. buL he knows, he bcliGvcs he knows, how to calculate the arrival of the day of reckoning. Not that hP. .~ees it coming, sees dt.:ath coming. from Cape Sounion, uo, he k!s il come, he hears it coming, y01n~ill recall. and this too is a kind of music. He dreams, he dreams a lot, Socmtes does, a:nd he interprets his dreams. He describes them and wards to comply with what they prescribe. He wants to do what he has to and he kno'\11-s what he Mfl to do, what he owes. One uf lhese dreams announces death to

him: it tells him tvhen death v.ri II r.ome. when the delay will end, along >vithits imminence. The otheJ' enjoins him to pay a debt by composing music to

off~r to the

god whose ''otivc fcsti\•al was re:;punsilile for de-

ferringhi:; death. In the Grito, as we know, Socrates owes to a dream the powerto l':alculatethc momentofhi~ death. The dream of a nightallov.>: him to see and to hear. Apparition and appellation: tall and bea1..1Liful,

clothed in white. a woman calls him by name in order to give him this rende1.-vou;;, the moment of death, thu:; annlllling in advance both the delay and the contretemps. (Is this :not the very desire of philoaophy, the destruction of the delay, as will soon be eonf:trmed ?) She comes to him. this woman does, a;; beautiful, perhaps, as the name of Socrates: he "thuugbl he saw" her coming, thus seeing the death that would not be long in coming. One has the feeling that his own name has all of a sudden become inseparable from the h~auty of this woman. Ncilher thisbcautynorhis name, as a result, can he separated from the: news of his death: news announcing to him nullhal he will die, but rathert~t he will die at a particular moment and not another. The woman pre diet~

for him not a departure but an arrival. More precisely, she

ori~

ents the departure-for it is indeed ne ccssary to depart and part ways,

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5.2

to leave and take one's leave-Jrorn the voyage's l'uint of aniva~ by citing; the flia.~. But Crito persists in deeining this dream to be extravagam, l>trange, or mad (otopon to en.upnion), and he continues to dream

ofSoct·ates' "salvaLiou." so CliAT:t:~: W'hatilo this news? Has the ship comcfrom Delos, attheaxrival ofwhiflh J .:lm to die? C"R T ro,

Jt has not e"ll".actly come, hut l think it will come today from the

reports of some men who have come Imm So 1.miou amlldt it there. Now

it is clear from what they say tha1: it v.'ill come torlar, and :;;o tomorrow, Socrates, your life must end. soc R A I' E s, Well, Crito, good luck be with us! If this is the "'ill of the gods, so be it. Howcvc1·, I do nut think it will come today.

c:ano: Whal is your rc1Ulon for not thinking so? so CRA'IE s: I will tell you. I must die on the day after the ship comes in, mm;t I nnt? C:R ITO:

So those say who have charge of these matters.

~OCRAns:

Well, I think it will not come in today, but tomorrow . .And

my reason.forthi;;; is a dream which I had a little while ago in the course ofthls night. And perhaps you l~t me Rl~f'P juRt at th~ right time. CRITO:

What was the drt:a.m?

socR P.Tl': s: I thought I saw a beautiful, fairwoinan, clothed in white rai-

ment, who came to me and called me and said, "Socrates, on the third dar thou wouldst come to fertile Phthia. "4 A little later, so to speak, on the next day (thi.~ i~ in the Phaedo, "'the day before. when we left the prison in the evening we heard that the

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ship had aniv\:d .from Delos" 5 ), adrea.m again dictates the law. Unlike the other dream, this one does not give Socrates a.aythingto see or to hear~ it gives an order, it "prescribes ·• or orners him to compose and devote a hymn to the god who, while ghing him death, thereby

grants him the time of de.

Still XVII We owe ourselves to death. To commemorate the arrival of this sentence iuto my language, l would have to dedicate centuries of books

to this memory. I immediately declared it to bt untnmslatable, lurning to Myrto (who was behind me, to my left, beautiful like her name, in lhe back of the car), to Georges, who was driving and laughing like a demon-tender. sarcastic or 3ardonic, innocently perverse (more or less perveTse than he believM orwoulrllike others to believe, like

all sclf-rcspc{-1ing individuals of this sort), and first and foremost to V.:mghelis, behind me on the right, whose genius would appreciate more than anyone the aporia called "translation" (and I Frtill hope that he vl'ill agree to traru!latc this tcxl. for· nothing better could happen to these words in Greek).

I began explaining to my friends the different ways in which, forme,

nou.s rwus demns ala mort would forever remain photographed. in some re~omce:; of this sentcnc c lcnl to its logic, an innocently perverse logic, perverse despite itself, a desperate taste of eternity. lending thi11 taste then to liS, who, al that moment, felt our desire being burnt by a sun the likes of whic:h I had never known. The!'e was but one sun, and it had only a homonymic rebtion with all the others. Over the road that led us back to Athens, lhal Wednesday, july 3. 1996. there blazed a sun like no other Thad ever known. We were coming hack from Brauron, vo'hen: we had seen the Chapel of Saint George, with itB small ritual drinking cups decorated withy oung naked girls running or virgins in a procession toward the alt!irof Artemis, the so-called votive bas ·rchef"ofthe gods" (Zeus, Apollo,Artemis-lphigenin in nhsentia), fltatueB of young girls (arlctos), Artemis the hunt res~:~. Ancmis on hu 1hrone, I\rtemis Kourotrophos. the remains of the necropolis of Merenda (on the rim of an amphora I recall an" exposition of the dead"), and we were going to go swimming. I had to take a plane later that day; delay was on the day's ageLJ.da, and sense, in the French language. The grammatic::JI

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we were laughing about it. My friends know that if llove delayed action [le retardem.entl. the least delay kills me, !:!Specially when I am about to

leave for the train ~tation or the airport, th::~t is, at the moment of arriving at the point of rlep:n1:ure. I began to explain all these reasons why, for me, not~s n.ous devons a !a murtwould remain foreveruntranslated, spelled out, phororthograp hed in an album of the French language. ·~·irst, it did

greal

pu~t

ethic5~

not necessarily have to be understood in the scn~c of the

Socratic and sacriii.cial tradition

ofh~ing-for-cleath,

this

of dedication o:r devotion that immediately comes to take this

sentence into its purview in order lo say, for example: we must devote oUl'sdves to death, we have duties vdth regard to death, we must dedicate on:r meditations to it, our care, om· concern, our exerci:.;es and our

practice (eplrneleia. !au £hanawu, mdete thanatou, as it is saidatPha~do 8ta), we must devote ourselves to the death to which we are destined, and so on. ln addition. one musl respect the dead (so as, the implicaLion would he, to keep death at a respectful distance, out of a respect for

life).ltis the death of So crater;, in short, that never stops watching over us. the culture of death ur the (.:ult of mourning, the v.,ray in whir.h thit=; poor Socrates, between the verdict and the pMsin g of the sails off Cape

Smmi on, believed that by not fleeing or saving h.i.s skin he wa:l ::saving him~elf and ::;aving within him, at the samr. moment, philosophy, all th:lt mm;ic that is philosophy, "the greatest kind of music." But as for me, I persist in belie.,-.i.ng thal philu:mphy might have another chance. This ethico-Socratic virtue of "we owe ourselves to death" can easily be translated into every language and no doubt every "world view ... Bu:c that is .not Lhe only meaning that is held in reserve in my sentence, and I proteste.d ~ilf'ntly against it. As for the redoubling of the nous in no u.s no us devunli, it is no doubt difficult, i£not impossible (I meanaccordingto the economy of a wordfM-word translation), to retain in ·another language its relation to the

59

e, hut without ceasing to await lhis surprise. He awaits (himself), this bonhomme does, this good fellow photographer. Right there in the theater of Dionysus, he reckons with the in('.alnulable. 1 then dream his "Iris ion, the fire of a declaration of lo\'e, a flash in

bnJad daylight, and one would say to the other, "lt takes me. by surprise to he waiting for you today. my love, as always." Dion.ysianism, philos'-Qp]J,y, photography. It remains tO he known what is (ti esti) the cs~ence of the photog1·a ph.ic form from the point of view of a delay that gf.tE! carried aw:1y with overtaking time. A silcnl avo"\1\ial, perhaps, and reticent as well. because it knows how to keep silent, an infmitely elliptical dis · course, mad with a single desire: to imp1·ess time. ll.-i.th all times, at all times, and then furtively, in 1he night. like a lhief of fuc, archive at the speed oflighlthe speed oflight.

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Still XX Heturn to Athens. Let one not hasten to conclude that photography du~.;l! away with words and can do without translation, as i:f an art of si ~ lenr.e would no longer be indebted to a language. "After all,'' the tour-

ist of photographs "'-ill say, ··these images of .Athens are all the .more precious to me insofar as they speak to me in a univerl;allanguage. If they reJruJ.in untranslatable and untransJatably singular, it is because

oftheirveryunivel·salit_y; they show the same thingto everyone, whatever their language may he: the di.,.ine play of shadow and light in the Kerameikos Cemetery, in the Agora, the Acmpolis, the Parthenon, the AdriB.nou Street Market, the pause of a photographer before the name PerF>ephnne."

No. photographs are um.ranslatable in another way, according to the laconic rnse of a ~per.ter or .a phantasm, when this economy acts as a letter, when it succeeds in saying to us. with or without words. that we owe oun1dvcl! to death.

-Wf:? What "we"? And, fm;t of all, who is inclndedin this we? Like a negative still in the camera, an impressed question remains in abeyance, still pending. Willit ever he developed?WhoV~>ill have signed the nons, whether the f:trst or the second, of this nous no us devons d ta, mort?

Me. rou, she, he, all of you? And who will have inherited iL in the end?

-But I am reading this in translation, am I not? It wa~ v.Titten in French and I am reading it in Englishu ... ·· .v.;'hat docs that prove? Evl:ry time you look at these photographs, ~nd to recall that one day, ha11ing come J.rom Athens and on their way ba