Intoxication

72 Pages·2015·0.271 MB·English

by  Jean-Luc Nancy

INTOXICATION
I D I O M INVENTING WRITING THEORY

Jacques Lezra and Paul North, series editors
INTOXICATION
JEAN- LUC NANCY
Translated by PHILIP ARMSTRONG
Fordham University Press New York 2016
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This book was originally published in French as Jean- Luc Nancy, Ivresse ©
Éditions Payot & Rivages, 2013. The quotation from Malcolm Lowry’s Under
the Volcano is reprinted by permission of SLL / Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., ©
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Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The text that follows was originally read at a vineyard in
Alsace in April 2008, in the town of Ribeauvillé, part of a
discussion organized around the theme of intoxication.
I would like to thank Mark Bender, Jennifer Branlat, May
Mergenthaler, Bert Harrill, and David Petrain, especially for
help tracking down sources and quotations. I would also like
to thank Tom Lay and Eric Newman for their care and help in
bringing the text to publication.
In response to a number of questions, Jean-L uc Nancy of-
fered unusually generous feedback and advice. While his
suggestion to add inebriated asides to the translation was
tempting, the translation seeks to remain faithful both to the
spirit in which it was written and to its original layout in the
edition published by Éditions Payot & Rivages. All footnotes
are my own.

INTOXICATION

You must be drunk always. That is everything:
the only question. Not to feel the horrible bur-
den of Time that crushes your shoulders and
bends you earthward, you must be drunk with-
out respite.
But drunk on what? On wine, on poetry, on
virtue—take your pick. But be drunk.1
(Thus speaks Baudelaire—perhaps we know this
only too well—because, in the end, why this com-
mandment as an exergue to modernity? Why do we
need this imperative regarding intoxication if not
that one perceives that it is lost, forgotten, dried
up . . . ? because the “burden of Time” is felt as
such, when time could be intoxication’s cadence,
the rhythm of impulses and torpor, of pleasures, of
1
2 JEAN-LUC NANCY
extravagance and calm, which make the revival of
intoxications attractive . . .)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
She will go along an uncertain path,
stumbling method
attempting to take a step backward
toward a more originary illumination,
giddiness of revelation,
or of indistinction between the world and
emotion
Sixteen centuries before Baudelaire, Li Bai writes in
“Song of the Kingdom of Wei”:
How does one chase away the sorrow that
oppresses us?
Wine, wine alone has the power to do this.2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .