Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 19:14:29 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Joking around with Thoth




... As in "His Master's Voice" ... some recognized Hermes (Thoth, or
'Theuth') as possessor of an engendering _logos_: a word with the
power to animate. 'Concrete' traces, even etched upon a 'malleable'
tablet, lack the power of self-_engendrance_ expected of a true
_speaking_ being, an existent standing in the full light of day, of
the sun -- _aletheia_.  "If a speech could be purely present," as
Derrida writes, "unveiled, naked, offered up in person in its truth
{its _sun_ ~~ P.V.}, without the detours of a signifier foreign to it,
if at the limit an undeferred _logos_ were possible, it would not
seduce anyone" (_Dissemination_, p. 71).  The "seduction" refers to
the power of a word to make someone, the hearer or textual receiver,
leave himself, eyes and mind turned upward -- the bodily senses
asleep, while the mind does soar (see 'Poimandres', _Corpus
Hermeticum_, book I).  What animates, then, this word, is a breath
(_pneuma_) bestowed upon it from above, and to which it owes a debt of
rejuvenation.  For the true and transcendent meaning of the word
"doesn't come from around here.  It comes from afar, it is external or
alien: to the living ..." (_Dissemination_, p. 104).  What is the
violence there, the danger, from a Platonic viewpoint, of the return
gaze of one whose eyes were ever turned upward?  How to speak and
render intelligible that which is only too easily passed off as
(divine) inspiration, and yet possesses a truth so artificial it can
only be called an origin?   

The idea of the power of speech, the Logos, as a means of creation is
out of place in a system that relies upon a concept of primal
emanation for its cosmogony and subsequent philosophic mo(ve)ment
(and, I may ask, what philosophy, even in modern times, is not founded
in some way on a cosmogony?).  Hermes would then already be a god of
death, even in the midst of his creative act, for the origin of the
Word is already in identification with something -- a power, a wish?
-- even more ancient than the sun.


~~ P.V.











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