A Man of Little Faith

Michel Deguy, Christopher Elson

Description

In A Man of Little Faith the French poet and philosopher Michel Deguy reflects on the loss of religious faith both personally and culturally. Disenchanted not only with the oversimplifications of radical atheism but also with what he sees as an insipid sacralization of art as the influence of religion has waned, Deguy refuses to focus on loss or impossibility. Instead he actively suspends belief, producing a poetic deconstruction that, though resolutely a-theistic, makes a plea for an earthly piety and for the preservation of the relics of religion for the world to come. Two essays by Jean-Luc Nancy and a recent interview with Deguy are included, which reveal the impact and implications of Deguy's ongoing reflection and its significance within his generation of French thought.
Translator’s Notes

Introduction
To Conserve While Leaving Behind: Michael Deguy’s Palinody

A Man of Little Faith

This text is of little faith…

I. Palinody

I will not tell of how “I lost faith”…
There is no transcendent…
If I were a visual artist…
I will reverse a saying of Auguste Comte…
Confiteor
Negligence
The fantasy of forgetting
Cuttings
Paul Valéry’s “to be awake…”
Gift without Exchange
Case of Equality
Love has no why…
Of the Author
Escence
“Super Flumina”
Attached
Poetry is triple
Man is the being who tramps his own transcendence…
“My fellow, my sister…” [mon semblable, ma soeur]
Natives of Eden…
“Everything is full of soul(s)…”…
“Keine Rache mehr”…
“Ecce Homo”
I pause for a moment…
We are in the Fiji Islands…
We are in the Fiji Islands…
Of the Mortal Possessing Speech

II. Notebooks of Disbelief

In Doubt
“Non credo in”
To Mothers
In the imagination…
“The patient breath of the bull”…
Who is God…
Christ
The Incarnate
Why Continue…
Nothing will be destroyed…
Since the body…
The Future of the Illusion
Relics
Of the Holy Family
My Guardian Angel
There are certainly other just men in the city…
The Infernal Machine
Metaphysical Meditation
Descartes and Socrates
Enough with the science!…
Literature And The Good
The Common Nothing
The Reproach Made to Kant
“Minima Moralia”
Logic of Double Negation or of Non-Mathematical, Paradoxical Apodicticity

III. Simone Weil From Memory

Life and Death
Of Purity
Attention
Of Contrariety
And Today
Notes On Paradox
Of the Double-Blind
Digression on Analogy
Transcendence
An Aside
Revelation, continued…
Of Religion
Of the End

IV. Jewish Humanity

Peace-With
“All Men Will Be Jewish”

Appendix A: Dublin Interview
Appendix B: Two Essays on Michel Deguy by Jean-Luc Nancy
Deguy The New Year!
To Accompany Michel Deguy

Notes
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie du langage
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophy
• Philosophy of religion
• Philosophie de la langue

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 19 novembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438453606
• Langue: English

Extrait

A MAN OF LITTLE FAITH
SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought

David Pettigrew and François Raffoul, editors
A MAN OF LITTLE FAITH

MICHEL DEGUY
With Two Essays by
JEAN-LUC NANCY
Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by
CHRISTOPHER ELSON
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS
Frontispiece, illustration by Alain Lestié
untitled acrostic for Michel Deguy’s 80th birthday, by Jean-Luc Nancy
Un homme de peu de foi © Editions Bayard, 2003
Published by
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Kate Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Deguy, Michel.
[Un homme de peu de foi. English]
A man of little faith / Michel Deguy ; translated, edited, and with an introduction by Christopher Elson.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary French thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5359-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5360-6 (ebook)
1. Faith—Philosophy. 2. Belief and doubt—Philosophy. 3. Religion—Philosophy. I. Title. BD215.D4413 2014 210—dc23 2013048559
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

M eteor tracing furious ellipses
I mpalpable bump of worlds in rebound
C ast pebbles, coaldust, silex, micas and gypsums
H umouristic reports, sobs and zounds
E ntrained by the pure avidity of saying
L uxuriant all and one like the other
D rawing on his lyre ingenious before us
E nharmonic with cadences of reason
G rave and gay in turn in the well-milled throat
U lcerous from the saps that its conjugation
Y earning like a gluttonous muse there pours out
—Jean-Luc Nancy, from Deguy le Grand 8
CONTENTS

Translator’s Notes
Introduction To Conserve While Leaving Behind : Michel Deguy’s Palinody
A MAN OF LITTLE FAITH
This text is of little faith …
I. Palinody
I will not tell of how “I lost faith” …
There is no transcendent …
If I were a visual artist …
I will reverse a saying of Auguste Comte …
Confiteor
Love Story
Negligence
The fantasy of forgetting
Cuttings
Paul Valéry’s “to be awake …”
Gift without Exchange
Case of Equality
Love has no why …
Of the Author
Escence
“Super Flumina”
Attached
Poetry is triple …
Man is the being who tramps his own transcendence …
“My fellow, my sister …” [Mon semblable, ma soeur]
Natives of Eden …
“Everything is full of soul(s) …” …
“Keine Rache mehr” …
“Ecce Homo”
I pause for a moment …
We are in the Fiji Islands …
We are in the Fiji Islands …
Of the Mortal Possessing Speech
II. Notebooks of Disbelief
In Doubt
“Non credo in”
To Mothers
In the imagination …
“The patient breath of the bull” …
Who is God? …
Christ
The Incarnate
Why continue …
Nothing will be destroyed …
Since the body …
The Future of the Illusion
Relics
Of the Holy Family
My Guardian Angel
There are certainly other just men in the city …
The Infernal Machine
Metaphysical Meditation
Descartes and Socrates
Enough with the science! …
Literature And The Good
The Common Nothing
The Reproach Made to Kant
“Minima Moralia”
Logic of Double Negation or of Non-Mathematical, Paradoxical Apodicticity
III. Simone Weil From Memory
Life and Death
Of Purity
Attention
Of Contrariety
And Today
Notes On Paradox
Of the Double-Bind
Digression on Analogy
Transcendence
An Aside
Revelation, continued …
Of Religion
Of the End
IV. Jewish Humanity
Peace-With
“All Men Will Be Jewish”
Appendix A: Dublin Interview
Appendix B: Two Essays on Michel Deguy by Jean-Luc Nancy
Deguy The New Year!
To Accompany Michel Deguy
Notes
Index
TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

It is a privilege and an adventure to translate Michel Deguy, to attempt to bring his vigorous inventivity and erudition in the original French to life in an idiomatic, comparably layered, and still comprehensible English. This often seems like an impossible exercise, balancing inspiration and peril, one where difficult choices are necessary on every page. Deguy’s inventivity is that of the extreme contemporary, an already “ future rigor” where the writer of vigilance works ceaselessly to safeguard the linguistic relics of our cultural past at the same time as he seeks to enliven today’s words, which are always at risk of falling behind today’s things and phenomena, keeping both sides open in a continuous retranslation for future uses and astonishments.
1. Neologisms. I have an absolute respect for Deguyan neology and a commitment to rendering it each and every time, even at the cost of occasional awkwardness. “Things change more quickly than words” and culture has been “vampirized” (CPAC, 195 and back cover). Neologisms are sharp wooden stakes in the toolbox of Michel Deguy, Vampire Hunter.
2. Something that may not be immediately apparent to the reader of only the English text is the degree to which I have respected but not absolutely the expansive, exigent syntax of Deguy’s phraseology. Sometimes the precise preciousness of his sentences has been attenuated here, sinuosity abandoned in favor of a straightened-out stretch, his prosody’s rhythmic elongation across the bar lines given more limited measures.
3. The quantity and cumulative, signifying density of allusions in this as in any other of Deguy’s works adds a further dimension to its translation, as well as posing basic editorial challenges. How not to overload the text with parenthetical references or footnotes? I have attempted to find the right balance between useful information and excessive disruption of the text’s flow and appearance.
On the same heading, the French poetic tradition is massively present here as elsewhere in Deguy’s corpus and I have aimed for a balance between compactly indicating author names or/and the titles of works cited by Deguy and the inclusion of a few recapitulative notes gathering together a brief account of the place of Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and others in A Man of Little Faith and Deguy’s other works.
4. A Man of Little Faith is a multilingual book before any translating takes place. There are many citations and expressions in Latin and in Greek, along with a few quotations left in their original English, German, or other languages. Like his late friend, Jacques Derrida, Deguy proceeds from the conviction that any language is always already more than one, always relating to itself diachronically and relating to its others geopoetically in full consciousness of the necessity of translation and a lucid reflection on its conditions of possibility. His 1978 text “The Compass Rose of Languages” (JMUSA, 88–98) is a fine illustration, in a kind of textualist mode, of the poet-thinker’s acute awareness of the necessity of relating one European language to its others.
5. Wherever Deguy has played with a biblical or philosophical citation in Greek or Latin, I immediately give a rendering in square brackets to help the reader avoid mistaking a more or less significant alteration for a familiar reference. Explanation or translation of unaltered quotations in the original languages is treated less systematically, sometimes given parenthetically, sometimes incorporated into endnotes found on the same page, sometimes not provided, if the context is sufficiently rich.
6. The comme of comparison. One of the most important challenges for a translator of Deguy is to find ways to convey the density of his thought of comparison, a reflection that is both poetic and ontological in its implications. The French comme condenses the senses of English “like” and “as” or German wie and als . Deguy has worked on and with its ambivalent twosidedness virtually since the beginning of his career. The cumulative richness of these years of poetic and philosophical reflection on comme is present in the translator’s mind at each occasion of choice. In the subsection “Escence” ( infra 30–31), Deguy makes it clear that he privileges the like over the as but cannot escape from the undividedness of the comparative and the definitive, the proximity in comme of the open multivalence of like and the identitary risks of as . “The work of reason, which always still awaits, is to scrutinize the obscurity of a difference which is reducible to that of ‘ as ’ and ‘ like ,’ [ en tant que / pareil à ] which in French comes down to the homogeneity of the comme where this difference cannot be heard” ( infra 118).
A crucial decision must be made with respect to Deguy’s tendency to substantify the adverb or conjunction “ comme ” in order to treat comparison theoretically: Le comme , when it is used analytically as a conceptual operator, will be treated in English translation as a compound common noun, “the like-or-as,” despite the possible awkwardness of that expansive choice—I think the reader needs this occasional reminder; this will not be the case in expressions like l’ontologie du comme, which is translated as “the ontology of like,” suppressing the implicit definite article and condensing the two-sidedness of like-or-as for the sake of elegance. (Sometimes too it is a matter of rendering an impossible pun like “ le comme-un des mortels, ” which I tend to translate as “as-oneness of mortals.”)
In handling the presence of comme in the poems or passages of quasipoetic condensation, I feel unbound by any such general principles and guidelines, treating each case as a singularity.
Semblance and semblable a