Tag Archives: double

from “Envois” by Jacques Derrida

Disclaimer: the following is a passage that I adore
from a critical theory work by Jacques Derrida.
My only contribution is to arrange the lines for presentation.

You are my only double, I suppose, I speculate,
I postulate, in sum everything that sets
me on my march today, the entire postulate
of my practical reason, all my heart, and I speculate
on you, you are now the name,
yourself, or the title of everything
I do not understand.  That I
never will be able to know, the other side

of myself, eternally inaccessible, not un-thinkable,
at all, but unknowable, unknown, — and so lovable.
As for you, my love, I can only postulate (for who else,
with whom would I have dreamed this?)
the immortality of the soul, liberty, the union of
virtue and happiness, and that one day you might love me.

Jacques Derrida on being photographed and being identified as an “author”