264 Derrida 1963–1983
whether it’s theatrical or not, simply, instead of the two
columns, and a page layout, writing it in the form of a Platonic
exchange(!), situating it in time, in place, but above all, let me
insist, without worrying whether the content is dramatic or
not. The subject you choose will inevitably be the fi re that we
will then just have to set on the stage. I sincerely believe, after
this experience of reading you, that you’re also an author of a
certain, as yet indefi nable, form of theatre, something eloquent
and at the same time moving. [.. .] Try it – what have you got
to lose? In comparison with your own research, nothing but the
constraint of a form.^17Bourseiller’s intuition was quite correct. Though he had not yet
done so, Derrida would launch out, over the following months,
into modes of writing that, without being conceived directly for
the theatre, adopted the form of a dialogue. This was the case
with ‘Pas’, published in the review Gramma in 1976 before being
reprinted in Parages. And he was very happy to create audio ver-
sions of two of his works: Cinders fi rst – with Carole Bouquet –,
then ‘Circumfession’, which he read alone, superbly, in its entirety.^18
Glas was the occasion for an important meeting, with the painter
Valerio Adami. The poet Jacques Dupin, who ran the publish-
ing arm of the Galerie Maeght, suggested that Derrida join forces
with a painter to produce a silk-screen mixing drawing, painting,
and writing. He also suggested the name of Adami and presented
his work to Derrida. A lunch date was fi xed for October 1974, but
before the scheduled meeting, Jacques and Marguerite came across
Adami and his wife Camilla in another context:
By a curious chance, a few hours after leafi ng through his cata-
logues, I was fortunate to meet him at the home of friends we
had in common, in the rue du Dragon, where we’d both been
invited for dinner. And it was here that I saw Valerio’s face for
the fi rst time. The lines of his face, his style of drawing, and his
drawing [graphie] as such – the way he writes, traces letters –, all
of this seemed immediately, in my view, to constitute a world,
an inseparable confi guration. [.. .] It all came together that fi rst
evening, in the unity of action of twenty-four hours, as Joyce
would say.^19This was the fi rst time that Derrida ventured to write about a pic-
torial work. But the meeting was not based merely on an aesthetic
attraction. Adami was a man of great literary and philosophical
culture, drawn to works and authors about whom Derrida, too, was
passionate: