Writing Itself 1965–1966 157
If Artaud absolutely resists – and, we believe, as was never
done before – clinical or critical exegeses, he does so by virtue
of that part of his adventure (and with this word we are desig-
nating a totality anterior to the separation of the life and the
work) which is the very protest itself against exemplifi cation
itself. The critic and the doctor are without resource when
confronted by an existence that refuses to signify, or by an
art without works, a language without a trace [.. .]. Artaud
attempted to destroy a history, the history of the dualist meta-
physics which more or less subterraneously inspired the essays
invoked above: the duality of the body and the soul which
supports, secretly of course, the duality of speech and exist-
ence, of the text and the body, etc. [.. .] Artaud attempted
to forbid that his speech be spirited away [souffl é] from his
body.^5On the publication of this issue of Tel Quel, Derrida received a
phone call from Paule Thévenin, editor in chief of the Oeuvres com-
plètes. Derrida had not yet met her: she told him how much she had
liked the article. She repeated her praise in a long letter, spelling out
the importance of this text for her:
I must thank you: basically, this is the fi rst, or almost, time
that something seems to have been given to me. If I except
Blanchot’s articles, one or two sentences of Foucault’s in
the History of Madness, I had felt for fi fteen years that I was
working in a vacuum, and never encountering any response. Of
course, I’m not identifying with Antonin Artaud. It’s just that
I thought his work was one of the most important of our day,
that it was worth, more than worth all the time I was devoting
to him, and that until now I hadn’t met anyone who told me
that I wasn’t mistaken. It’s in this sense that I thank you, as I
thank Philippe Sollers. But in his case, I had long since known
what he thought on this matter.^6Thévenin and Derrida soon met and struck up a friendship.
Henceforth, Thévenin kept Derrida abreast of her research and
regularly sent him as yet unpublished texts by Artaud. She had
gathered together Artaud’s papers on the very day he died, in
controversial circumstances, and she deciphered them with both
passion and patience for the expanding Oeuvres complètes.^7
It was at the home of Paule and Yves Thévenin that Marguerite
and Jacques Derrida met a small circle of major artists and writers,
at dinners that the couple organized regularly in their apartment on
the boulevard de la Bastille. Among the usual guests were Francis
Ponge, Pierre Klossowski, Louis-René des Forêts, Michel Leiris,