That is the definition of truth, it is the thing you must not say. The miracle into which the child and the poet walk [Tsvetaeva] as if walking home, and home is thereThe thing that is both known and unknown, this is what we are looking for when we write. We go toward the most unknown and the best unknown, this is what we are looking for when we write. We go toward the best known unknown thing, where knowing and not knowing touch, where we hope we will know what is unknown. Where we hope we will not be afraid of understanding the incomprehensible, facing invisible, hearing the inaudible, thinking the unthinkable, which is of course: thinking. Thinking is trying to think the unthinkable: thinking the thinkable is not worth the effort. Painting is trying to paint what you cannot paint and writing is writing what you cannot know before you have written: it is preknowing and not knowing, blindly, with words. It occurs at the point where blindness and light meet. Kafka saysone very small line lost in his writingto the depths, to the depths.
About This Quote
About Hlne Cixous
Hlne Cixous was a contemporary French writer. Hélène Cixous is a French writer, playwright and literary critic. During her academic career, she was primarily associated with the Centre universitaire de Vincennes, which she co-founded in 1969 and where she created the first centre of women's studies at a European university. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Truth — Meditations on honesty, authenticity, and the search for truth