7. The Time before First
However. somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate—-
*But Oh!" thought Alice. suddenly jumping up. "if I don't make haste, I
shall have to go back through the Looking-glass, before I've seen what the
rest of the house is like! Let's have a look at the garden Ile parcl first!"
You are retracing your Steps. The last vestiges lead you deeper into the
park; you are advancing backward, toward it natively. "The triangle with
its point downward. the lower part of Solomon's seal, is a traditional
symbol Of the feminine principle, exploited extensively in Finnegans Wake.
It goes without saying that the value Of the letter V is more justly derived
from a vague, vast group of associations. The classic Mallarméan example
is found in 'Hérodiade' "
All oppositions based on the distinction between the original and the
derived, the simple and the repeated, the first and the second. etc., lose
their pertinence from the moment everything "begins" by following a
vestige. I.e. a certain repetition or text. Better than ever you will have
understood this in reading Numbers.
Everything there goes on beyond the opposition between one and two
(etc.); everything plays itself out despite or against the distinction
between perception and dream, perception and memory, consciousness
and the unconscious. the real and the imaginary, story and discourse,
etc. Beyond these oppositions or between these terms, but not in total
confusion. In a different distribution. "IWo is no more an accident of One
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