Passages: In Lieu of Flowers

Seriously, what did this man teach us if not irreducible lessons on the impossible, singular nature of death—each time unique, the end...in his name, add this nameless impossibility to the discourse on mourning, not one more proper name, sharing a judgment ... plus jamais ... Did the notes immediately burst into flames? Because there's no way from Glas, from the texts of JD, to some notion of baleful loss. Sheet, that's the in-your-face JD, in the face of Hegel, in the face of philosophy or thinking itself, not with inscrutable "nonsense" (recall they're "very regular squares" of torn Rembrandt, torn representation), but with an other logic: literature before philosophy, before its law, but in a quasi-transcendental (non)relation. A skeleton, bathed in flickering neon, checks into the Noir Motel, signs the guest book JD, and begins to dance: "I am only good for embalming."