by Jean-Luc Nancy
1
A speech for you, a speech to you − one more time still, for it is impossible for me to speak or write about you. I can only stand before you, and at the same time speechless.
You say that speechlessness is speech-openness, openness to language and openness of language. I know. It is even one of your leitmotifs.
I hear you immediately: “Or motif of sorrow [Leidmotiv]…”
– Yes, sure, because only through the ineffability of suffering can a language be true.[1]
I do not yet hear you speak of the pain that exceeded you… Not only not of the last, overwhelming pain, but also not of that pain that long before your suffering and lamentation − illness or various duties − took your breath away, burdened you, and constricted the unaltered buoyancy of your body, soul and thought. There was never enough time and space, never enough words, pages and gestures to say and do what an amazing force wanted to achieve through you − amazing in its intensity as well as in its everlasting desire to put all power out of use. The word power[2] is most often encountered in your syntagma out of power [außer Kraft].[3]
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