Then, that you and your death shared no family trait.It seems simple. hence: no grounds for dif¤culties or demands for
rude interrogation. just painful chatter, useless. super¤cial and trivial.“Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Is he too honest?”I had to make friends with description.In so many words, what did not move.For this I recognized. Though none of it derived from my experi-
ence.You were dead. this was no lie. (15)Here, Roubaud’s “investigation” into the response of the living to death be-
gins by probing le précipité des ressemblances, since any word or image, as
Wittgenstein taught us, is part of a language game made up of family resem-
blances. If the body in question could only be like something familiar, it
would not seem dead. But by the third sentence, the poet has recognized that
Ensuite que toi et ta mort n’avaient aucun air de famille. There are no family
resemblances between a person and a state of being or nonbeing—in this
case, death. One recalls the aphorism in the Tractatus, “Death is not an event
in life. Death is not lived through.” “None of it,” we read in the penultimate
line, “derived from my experience” (“rien ne s’en déduisait de mon expéri-
ence”). And yet there is more than “painful chatter,” for relationships be-
tween items do manifest themselves, even if they are negative ones. In the
¤fth strophe, Wittgenstein’s “Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Is he too hon-
est?” which I cited earlier, is given an ironic twist. For since in this case the
poet himself seems incapable of simulating feeling, for example, even the
slightest pleasure, perhaps Wittgenstein’s distinction between man and dog
must be quali¤ed, at least so far as human “honesty” is concerned. Given
these circumstances, there can be only resignation—the recognition that Il
fallait faire connaissance avec la description (“I had to make friends with de-
scription”). Philosophy, Wittgenstein was fond of saying, leaves every thing
as it is; it can only describe. The same, Roubaud suggests, may be said of
poetry. And even then the poet can describe only the physical facts—the ce
qui ne bougeait pas or “what did not move.” The ninth sentence is thus the
®at recitation of fact: Tu étais morte, et cela ne mentait pas (“You were dead.
78 Chapter 4