“…I’ve always been fascinated by the imbalance between the physical author of a book, the individual who puts his name onto the cover, and the authentic author who I am not certain is the same person. Take War and Peace, for example. On the cover it says, ‘Leo Tolstoy.’ You open the book on the first page, and somebody starts speaking to you. Is this Tolstoy real? No, it is the one that can be perceived as the narrative voice of Tolstoy. One that is very different from the man called Tolstoy. The stories, it seems to me, are written by a certain place in our interior which is unknown and inaccessible to us. This is the reason why the biography of the writer and his work are never in accordance. A biographical study will never tell you where exactly the work came from.”
Quite out of the blue a bizarre and compelling idea came to my head today: that we have ended up as human beings through forgetfulness, through lack of attention, and that in reality we are creatures participating in a vast, cosmic battle that has probably been going on since time immemorial, and which, for all we know, may never end. All we see of it are glimmers, in blood-red moons, in fires and gales, in frozen leaves that fall in October, in the jittery flight of a butterfly, in the irregular pulse of time that can lengthen a night into infinity or come to a violent stop each day at noon. I am actually an angel or a demon sent into the turmoil of one life on a sort of a mission, which is either carrying itself out without my help, or else I have totally forgotten about it. This forgetfulness is part of the war – it’s the other side’s weapon, and they’ve attacked me with it so that I’m wounded, invalided out of the game for a while. As a result, I don’t know how powerful or how weak I am – I don’t know anything about myself because I can’t remember anything, and that’s why I don’t try to look for either weakness or power in myself. It’s an extraordinary feeling – to imagine that somewhere deep inside, you are someone completely different from the person you always thought you were. But it didn’t make me feel anxious, just relieved, finally free of a kind of weariness that used to permeate my life.
Olga Tokarczuk. House of Day, House of Night. Trans. Anotonia Lloyd-Jones. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2003. p 72-73
God is in a word. God is in a word. God is in HER. She said, “Her, HER, HER, I am Her, I am Hermione… I am the word AUM.”
“I am the word AUM” frightened her. She tired to forget the word AUM, said “UM, EM, HEM” clearing her throat, wondered if she had offended something, clearing her throat trying to forget the word… I am the word… the word was with God… I am the word… HER.
《聖經》的「作者群」很明顯不只是為了當地、當代人的個別社會情境的溝通。《聖經》的寫作成為了對歷史，對遙遠的未來的一種歷史性介入和重劃：只要一天有人相信、信仰，嘗試理解，以至質疑「In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….」這一句話，裡面的「上帝」就會一路在人們的信心中存在，或在辯證中成為可能。
I am the word AUM：她連一個「字」都不是、她只是一個啍聲，無以形容，無法區分。
她聽見自己說，「I am the word AUM」，她嘗試忘記但她不能忘記，她害怕，說出真相會冒犯了甚麼（something）。在男人的語言裡，「她」是第三身單數，但她名叫HER，「她的」，那麼一定有屬於她的甚麼、以至她的全部，只是那並不屬於「世界」的部分、不算作「世界」的內部，「世界」沒有涵蓋。一切以外，還有。
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1. H.D. HERmione. New York: New Directions. 1982. p32
2. 於是我想到Ina Grigorova的一句話：「having the word may have the magical power against the unravelling of the world.」
3. 希伯來原文「מְרַחֶ֖פֶת」一詞，英譯多為「hovering」、「moving 」，並沒有中譯「運行」所隱含的規律或方向性。
4. 這樣我們會比較容易明白，何以《浮士德》的主人公在復活節的早上，概嘆行醫者無能、殺人比戰禍更多，才又一個人回到書房裡，一輪斟酌苦思，把《約翰福音》首句翻譯做「Im Anfang war die Tat 」，「 die Tat」，即行動 （Deed / Act），也就是意志的體現；現代神學家／哲學家Gordon Clark （1902-1985） 更直接把它譯作「邏輯」：「In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God. 」；天主教教宗本篤十六世亦曾強調，基督信仰（Christianity ）始終應被理解為邏各斯的宗教（Religion of Logos）（01/04/2005, Lecture at Convent of Saint Scholastica in Subiaco, Italy.）見： http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0143.html。
Derrida 甚至認為，猶太人作為一沒有國土之民（People），乃基於對一部經傳的篤信。
Derrida describes an ‘unnatural’ ghostly haunting whereby the dead are taken into us, but they are not internalized as they would be under more ‘normal’ circumstances (a psychoanalytic view of mourning) – he labels this as ‘terrifying.’
Derrida recounts his 1982 arrest in Czechoslavakia on trumped-up drug charges …
see also this clip in which Derrida plays ‘himself’ in the film and comments upon ghosts as they pertain to cinema and representation itself; the late Pascale Ogier (1958-1984) plays ‘Pascale’ who is questioning Derrida.
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