Glas 1973–1975 265
In Adami, what seduced me immediately and allowed me to
draw near to his painting, to get into it, so to speak, was of
course that while he is an absolute draughtsman, and painter,
in spite of it all he welcomes into the space of the works which
he signs various arts, especially literature – you fi nd in it
phrases, texts, characters from literature, the family of writers,
Joyce or Benjamin for example.^20For the silk-screen they were going to produce together, it was
Adami who took the initiative, suggesting that they base it on Glas,
which had just been published, and whose plastic qualities had
struck him greatly. As Derrida related:
He chose a passage, isolated a phrase and asked me to write it
then sign it in pencil on a piece of paper – then he set to work.
He soon presented me with a drawing that swiftly became
a massive picture on which he had written the said phrase,
through an immense fi sh caught on a hook. His work was a
response, so to speak, to what was written in Glas. He counter-
signed the passage in question, taking up a teenage poem, with
the following line of verse: ‘Glue of the pool milk of my death
drowned’, which I discuss at length in the work.^21Derrida and Adami went on to sign together fi ve hundred large-
format silk-screens. Then, for Maeght’s review Derrière le miroir,
the philosopher wrote a text entitled ‘+ R (Into the Bargain)’ This
was not really a piece of art criticism: Derrida developed his ideas
on the letter and the signature, the line and frame, before focusing
on the question of technical reproducibility in Walter Benjamin and
the issue of the art market. Derrida, as ever very sensitive to matters
of context, pondered in particular the eff ects generated by his own
intervention: ‘What happens when a surplus-value is placed en
abyme?’^22
What might have been no more than an ephemeral collaboration
was soon transformed into a profound and enduring friendship with
Adami and with his wife Camilla. From 1975 onwards, the Derrida
family stayed on several occasions in the Adamis’ large house in
Arona, on Lake Maggiore. This was a huge palace, partly destroyed
during the war, rich in stories and legends, a little intimidating for
the children. The fi rst and second fl oors were completely occupied,
while on the third an independent apartment had been arranged
for friends who came from pretty much all over the world, from
Mexico, Venezuela, India, and Israel. As Adami relates,
[T]here was room for everyone in this rather tumbledown,
decadent place, which regained its youth in the summer. We’d