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Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. - book reviews

Style, Fall, 1995 by C. Dirk Wethington

In 1975, in "The Laugh of the Medusa," published in L'Arc, Helene Cixous argued for a revolutionary reconception of writing that would explode traditionalism and allow for what she then called ecriture feminine. Her intentions in this volume, a series of lectures given at the Wellek Library in May 1990, are not so forthrightly ideological, nor does she offer much pragmatic assistance for the teacher of composition or the would-be-famous novelist. Instead, Cixous explores three distinct "schools" that produce what she envisions as great writing - the Schools of the Dead, of Dreams, and of Roots. Cixous invests much weight in the purposefully ambiguous nature of the word "school"; she seems to refer to a motivation, conscious or unconscious, that directs, influences, and shapes writing; at other times she seems to want to speak of actual places from whence we get instruction (again, consciously or unconsciously).

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Cixous' first journey, to the School of the Dead, is divided into eight numbered sections. The association of death with writing and creation has been discussed before (for example, in Bruce Robbins's "Death and Vocation"), but Cixous discusses both how death is influential and how writing, reading, and creation all enact and (re)present different kinds of deaths. Discussing the need for this school, she writes, "When do we reach the hour when we say we have deceived everyone in our lives in order to keep what we call life going? I don't know. We go to the School of the Dead to hear a little of what we are unable to say" (53). This unlocking, or bringing forth, of the unutterable is what writing from the School of the Dead enables, and has certain effects on the reader that Cixous describes variously as wounding, stabbing, and hurting. It becomes obvious, even at this early point, that the types of texts Cixous wants to discuss here are the ones that take us to extremes, that push the envelope, as it were. Cixous draws from a large array of writers (Poe, Kafka, Lispector, and Tsveteava are mentioned often) to illustrate different facets of her ideas here, ultimately arguing that "writing is learning to die" (10), not to mention that reading reflects similar urges and allows us to "annihilate the world with a book" (19). The writer can, through association with the School of the Dead, "proceed to the burning point, reach that last hour, when we'll be able to write or say everything we have never dared say out of love and cowardice" (48). This opening up of the writer proceeds not from definite inclinations; Cixous gives the impression that this process happens without our knowing, takes shape in our writing as we write. She claims that she herself has never been fortunate enough to study in this school, but that she is able to go to a place where she has something in common with the dead - the School of Dreams.

Interestingly, the thirteen subsections of this chapter are the only ones in the book that are not numbered - suggesting, perhaps, that dreams abandon numbers and logical progression and that a similar mindset can creep in when the writer is immersed in the act of creation. Again, the School of Dreams provides access to the unsayable. Cixous reads Jacob's dream of the ladder as a metaphor for what the School of Dreams can enable by allowing us to leave home and to move "toward the foreigner in ourselves, that inner foreign country" (69-70). It is in this foreign country that we can face our-'selves' directly:

We can hope to move closer to everything we can't say without dying of fright through the School of Dreams. What makes us flee, . . . what no man, no prophet could ever do, is look right at God, look him in the eye. This is a metaphor. It's looking at what must not be looked at, at what would prevent us from existing, from continuing our ordinary, domestic lives, and what I call, for better or worse: "the truth." (61)

Cixous explains how dreams offer four distinct lessons for the writer. First, dreams teach us the magic of moving without transition, without being "transported"; instead, in them, we suddenly realize that we are not where we were, and that this is a new place. Second, dreams also negate the idea of time, so that we are able to find ourselves in new places "at the stroke of a signifier. . . . It's the cancellation of opposition between inside and outside" (81). This idea of "speed," as she calls it, allows us to enter the text immediately, so quickly that we realize there is no entrance. Third, dreams allow us to taste the forbidden, to experience the secret - "Dreams remind us that there is a treasure locked away somewhere, and writing is the means to try and approach the treasure" (88). Last, dreams enable us to experience the delight that is a part of fear, but an amplified version of that delight, since we know that we are just dreaming. It is important to note that Cixous is not espousing dream interpretation, since this type of process dirties the purity of the dream experience. What is important for the writer is to recognize the dream as a dream, something free of the entanglements and theorizing that eventually destroy the writer's power.

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. - book reviews

Style, Fall, 1995 by C. Dirk Wethington

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