48 definitions
The book's index
Literature in Secret
35 concepts · 48 definitions
- animals1
- desacralization1
- desire1
- destinerrance1
- dominion1
- filiation1
- forgiveness7
- God3
- grace1
- innocence1
- Isaac2
- Letter to His Father1
- literariness1
- literature5
- marriage1
- meteor1
- meteorite1
- mnemonic1
- Noah1
- oath1
- obedience1
- parasitism1
- Perjury1
- poem1
- pseudonymity1
- rainbow1
- repentance1
- retraction1
- right to say everything1
- secrecy1
- secret1
- self-forgiveness1
- suspension1
- third party1
- unconditional love1
Forgiveness (n.) always carries the plea forgive me for forgiving you, since it guiltily assumes sovereignty.
Forgiveness (n.) is a history of God: a covenant between God and God passing through the flaw of human desire.
Forgiveness (n.) was in the beginning: no literature fails to ask for it from its very first word.
Forgiveness (n.) does not dissolve the fault but extends it, as if one always had to be forgiven for forgiveness itself.
Literature (n.) begins wherever one no longer knows who writes and signs the call between Father and Son.
Literature (n.) is a religious remainder, a relay for the sacrosanct in a society without God.
Literature (n.) might never have emerged without Abraham's secret, kept from Sarah and Isaac.
Literature (n.) betrays its Abrahamic filiation twice, faithless at the very moment it reveals its truth.
God (n.) can hardly be named today without asking forgiveness: God, if you'll pardon the expression.
God (n.) as Abraham knows him, unlike the God of philosophers, goes back on his order as if in remorse.
God (n.) repented after the flood: smelling Noah's sacrifice, he took back his curse, as though asking forgiveness.
Isaac (n.) shares Abraham's silence: he saw the knife, while Abraham sees without seeing himself seen.
Isaac (n.) is the child of promise, so sacrificing him meant ending the future and all that breathes faith.
Destinerrance (n.) is the undecidable drift of origin and end, sender and addressee, that leaves a trace open to literature.
Obedience (n.) too needs forgiving: Abraham asks God's pardon for listening too faithfully and sacrificing the other other.
Parasitism (n.) is the father's charge against literary writing: the son writes instead of working or marrying.
A Poem (n.) is a gift like forgiveness: it need not be asked for, and in essence must not answer a request.
The Right to say everything (n.) and to hide everything defines literature and makes it inseparable from a democracy to come.
Secrecy (n.) was the test on Mount Moriah: could Abraham keep a secret to the point of being unable to mean anything?