5. Trans. note: Rue Sébastien-Bottin is a metonym for Éditions Gallimard, the fabled French publisher, whose offices are located on the street and for whom Quignard worked as a reader and editor.
6. Trans. note: Expavescentia and expavantatio are rare Latin terms related to pavor, which Quignard defines above as “terror.” The idea expressed in expavescentia, a neuter plural present participle of expavesco, is something like “things becoming very terrified.” Expavantatio is the vulgar Latin equivalent, and lies at the root of the French verb épouvanter, “to fill with terror.”
7. “The promontory whose tip juts out into the sea.”
8. Trans. note: The Latin word lingua and the French langue can be translated in English either as “language” or as “tongue,” an ambiguity that is central to Quignard’s use of these words.
9. Trans. note: In French épouvantail, derived from the verb épouvanter.
10. Trans. note: This is a somewhat antiquated meaning of the word. In modern speech, formidable is eminently positive, meaning something like “great” or “excellent.”
11. Trans. note: Tarabust is a noun that has fallen out of use in contemporary French, although its verbal form tarabuster, “to pester or bother,” is still to be heard.
12. Trans. note: La mue des garçons. The French term mue, when used in regard to human boys, indicates voice change. However, mue is also used in French to designate a variety of different animal mutations (moulting, shedding of antlers, etc.). Quignard will constantly make use of this word throughout the text.
13. Trans. note: In French, sept (seven) is pronounced like the English word set.
14. Trans. note: Daine means doe. Logically, daine would be pronounced somewhat like the English den; however, hunters are given to pronouncing it like the English dean, which in French would be written dine.
15. “The moment in which I speak is already far from me.”
16. Trans. note: Expavement here translates Quignard’s expavanté, another of his neologisms. It is based on an old spelling of the French verb épouvanter (meaning “to terrify”), a verb which itself stems from the Latin pavor, which Quignard addresses earlier in this treatise, and to which he will return. Quignard uses this older spelling to create a link with the French word for cobblestone: pavé.
17.
The day is already grand and the shame now clearer
Of the dismayed Apostle advises him to be silent.
His words grow weary and leave him at need.
He sees on all sides that he is seen by none.
Yet the remorse he is given by his soul
Bears witness to the ill without witness.
18.
He has a piercing and harsh voice;
On his head a piece of flesh;
A sort of arm by means of which he rises into the air …
1. Trans. note: In English in the original.
1. Trans. note: In French Quignard uses the expression appeau de mort, where the word appeau evokes the birdcall that appears throughout the book.
2. Trans. note: In English in the original.
1. Trans. note: The French word noise used here — a cognate of the English word — means “quarrel, disturbance,” literally a “nuisance,” that is, something that harms.
2. Trans. note: Quignard uses the French word noise; see above.
3. Trans. note: The French word vacarme means “racket, din.”
4. Trans. note: Quignard uses the English word, the connotations of which in French are predominantly negative.
1. Trans. note: Liberty or death.
1. La Haine de la musique (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1996), 218.
2. Ibid., 217.
3. Rhétorique spéculative (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1995), 11.
4. Ibid., 21.
5. “Les Langues et la mort,” Petits traités II (Paris: Clivages, 1982), 27.
6. Ibid., 31.
7. “Le Misologue,” Petits traités I (Paris: Clivages, 1981), 18.
8. Ibid., 31.
9. “Lectio,” Petits traités V (Paris: Maeght, 1990), 159.
10. Ibid., 151.
11. Boutès (Paris: Galilée, 2008), 14.