Hélène Cixous : Rêvoir

Feminist and literary theorist, playwright, philosopher, memoirist and novelist Hélène Cixous returns to the show to discuss her latest genre-defying hybrid work of prose. Written during the first year of the pandemic, Rêvoir explores the effect of pandemic confinement on time, the effect of pandemic time on writing, and what plagues and confinement show us about the nature of time, memory, dreams, history, language, home, flight, cats, love and death. Struggling to find purchase on her own writing within the timelessness of that year, she conjures and contemplates the works of everyone from Thucydides to Kafka, Shakespeare to Shackleton, to uncover how literature always begins with an ending, always opens with no way forward. What does Cixous mean that language is haunted by writing? That it is not just the writer who writes, but the words themselves?  Join us to find out!

For the bonus audio, enjoy a long-form conversation with Cixous’ translator, the poet Beverley Bie-Brahic. Given that Cixous breaks the norms of form, syntax and punctuation, not in predictable or consistent ways, but from a place of instinct and intuition, and given that her playful use of homophones in French, an essential quality of her writing that often leads where her writing ultimately goes, Cixous’ writing presents some unusually difficult challenges for a translator. Something we explore with Bie-Brahic in this conversation. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.

Finally here is the BookShop for today’s episode.