Little Treatise on Angels

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Pascal Quignard

Translation of an extract from Petit Trait sur les Anges by Pascal Quignard, first published as the preface to a new translation of Apuleiuss The Demon of Socrates by Colette Lazam. Submitted for validation of the seminar Thme anglais by Pdraic Lamb Mail: lambp@tcd.ie

Note: This Little Treatise has not (yet) been collected into the published volumes (eight so far) of Little Treatises which have garnered much attention from literary critics and literary readers. Somewhere between a reserved Montaigne and an unclassified encyclopaedia, Quignards Treatises are drawn-out reading-notes, very often of the classical canon, which he meditates in a way which shows a refusal of a rupture between the wisdom and folly of the ancients and the life of a contemporary literary artist. The translation is of all the complete paragraphs on pages 38-39 of the following edition: APULE, Le dmon de Socrate, translated by Colette Lazam, preface by Pascal Quignard, Paris, Rivages Poches, 1993.

Is the interiorised tradition a guardian angel? Yes. Is language a demon? Yes. Are we as present in our dreams as our dreams are in our lives? No. Are we as present ourselves to ourselves as dreams are present in the genius which they establish, in the fascinus (fascination) which they develop? Never. It has never seemed to me that we are much more ourselves than the damon who crosses our mind. In On the God of Socrates, Apuleius was the first philosopher, after 557 years, to have equated the damon of Socrates and the word conscience. When Paul wrote to the Romans in the year 57 A.D., Quod enim operor, non intelligo. Non enim quod volo, hoc ago; sed quod odi malum, illud facio (In fact I do not understand what I do. I do not do as I wish but that which I hate, I do1), there the demonic begins to become the diabolic. It is no longer a voice which inhibits evil actions. It is a divine voice hindered which does not hinder an evil action being committed. Another law struggles against the law of my reason and keeps me captive under the law of sin which is in my very members 2. Two laws are in conflict in the body: lex mentis et lex peccatis quae est in membris meis (The law of my

I have followed Quignards translation of the Vulgate, Romans, 7: 15. Cf King James Version: For that which I work, I understand not. For I do not that good which I will: but the evil which I hate, that I do. Cf KJV: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my members.

mind and the law of sin which are in my members 3). It is the intermediary distance which goes from ourselves to ourselves. In the same way that the damons occupy the

intermediary distance between the earth and the ther, sins occupy this distance in the soul. Ob-audire (obedience) means to hear the voice. The obsequium was the legal and social revolution which marked the coming of the Empire. The obsequium defined the respect the slave owed the master. It became the respect the citizen owed the ruler. Therein lies the greatest change which prepared the way for Christianity: the extension of the piety which the Populus Romanus began to owe to the genius of the prince, the institutionalisation of liberty which became obsequious for all classes and all statuses, including the Fathers of the Senate. The obsequium and the dependence on the interior voice had only been

temporarily sacrificed at the sacrifice of Socrates in Athens. A child, hostage to the voice of his mother, becomes hostage to an interior voice, a voice prescriptive and almost punitive. The English say addiction for the state of dependence to which the drug-addict dedicates himself, independently of the toxicity of the drug he has elected as his angel. The revolution of the obsequium which came about with the establishment of the Roman Empire, relayed by Christianity, can be translated as the addiction to dependency itself (which even the lament itself reinforces, be it that of the Emperor Tiberius or that of Tacitus).

Translation of Quignards reworking of the Vulgate, Romans, 7: 23: video autem aliam legem in membris meis repugnantem legi mentis meae et captivantem me in lege peccati quae est in membris meis.