ELLIPSIS
I cannot speak without being misheard; I cannot write without being misread, even by myself. Already I have lost my intention and your attention.
I cannot speak and yet, that is all there is to say. Never can I say what I mean although I mean everything that I say. I cannot speak, and that is why I do. I can neither speak nor write, and yet that is what is going on.
There is speaking and writing here but my relation to them is no relation at all. What is happening here is impossible, and yet it persists. It is the limit of all that I can do, the end, the edge, the period. It is finitude, and yet it is itself infinite, an endless repetition of ending, an infinite finitude, a repeating period: an ellipsis. What is this ellipsis? A pause, which appears
between other pauses, although it doesn’t appear for there is nothing there to appear. Language is nothing but this endlessly repeated encounter with its own limits, an ellipsis in which and as which it persists.
How do we speak in this? What are we in this ellipsis, if we are not that by which this ellipsis is? We are that against which its gaping extends and that which is extended. Speaking is only possible here where I speak that I cannot speak, where I am the extension, the repetition of that limit.
What does it mean to be unable to speak and yet to be able to say that? This is a question of language; indeed it is the question of language, as it is the question that language itself raises: How can I speak of that which gives speech but cannot itself be spoken? What kind of language can I use to speak the impossibility of language? Not in such a way that I am simply speaking of impossibility, for that would be only to describe it rather than to say it, but in such a way that I would say something altogether different, which is to speak impossibly.
But who would hear this, and how could it be heard? And if it could not, what then would I be saying? Is not hearing necessary for language, even if it is only my own? And what if by speaking impossibly I could not hear what is said, even as I say it? What has happened to me in speaking of language is nothing less than a dispossession of my self. I can neither speak nor hear, and yet that is what is going on, or rather, language is speaking and hearing and “I” have no place in this. “I” am its limit, just as it is mine.
What kind of language is this and what is it saying? Despite its closeness it is foreign to any language we know, except poetry. The question, “how can I speak?” lies at the heart of poetry, but in trying to answer it poetry is brought up against its own limits. These limits enable poetry to speak, but also prevent it from ever fully speaking; hence the question at the heart of poetry is always inflected by its own constraints.
Ellipsis - Of Poetry and the Experience of Language
after Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot
William S. Allen
I cannot speak without being misheard; I cannot write without being misread, even by myself. Already I have lost my intention and your attention.
I cannot speak and yet, that is all there is to say. Never can I say what I mean although I mean everything that I say. I cannot speak, and that is why I do. I can neither speak nor write, and yet that is what is going on.
There is speaking and writing here but my relation to them is no relation at all. What is happening here is impossible, and yet it persists. It is the limit of all that I can do, the end, the edge, the period. It is finitude, and yet it is itself infinite, an endless repetition of ending, an infinite finitude, a repeating period: an ellipsis. What is this ellipsis? A pause, which appears
between other pauses, although it doesn’t appear for there is nothing there to appear. Language is nothing but this endlessly repeated encounter with its own limits, an ellipsis in which and as which it persists.
How do we speak in this? What are we in this ellipsis, if we are not that by which this ellipsis is? We are that against which its gaping extends and that which is extended. Speaking is only possible here where I speak that I cannot speak, where I am the extension, the repetition of that limit.
What does it mean to be unable to speak and yet to be able to say that? This is a question of language; indeed it is the question of language, as it is the question that language itself raises: How can I speak of that which gives speech but cannot itself be spoken? What kind of language can I use to speak the impossibility of language? Not in such a way that I am simply speaking of impossibility, for that would be only to describe it rather than to say it, but in such a way that I would say something altogether different, which is to speak impossibly.
But who would hear this, and how could it be heard? And if it could not, what then would I be saying? Is not hearing necessary for language, even if it is only my own? And what if by speaking impossibly I could not hear what is said, even as I say it? What has happened to me in speaking of language is nothing less than a dispossession of my self. I can neither speak nor hear, and yet that is what is going on, or rather, language is speaking and hearing and “I” have no place in this. “I” am its limit, just as it is mine.
What kind of language is this and what is it saying? Despite its closeness it is foreign to any language we know, except poetry. The question, “how can I speak?” lies at the heart of poetry, but in trying to answer it poetry is brought up against its own limits. These limits enable poetry to speak, but also prevent it from ever fully speaking; hence the question at the heart of poetry is always inflected by its own constraints.
Ellipsis - Of Poetry and the Experience of Language
after Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot
William S. Allen
