NOTES

The Rocket

1In 1973 the Soviet Tu-144 crashed, killing 13 people.

2Blast-off = mise à feu, which literally reads as “put to fire.”

3Meaning = sens, which can also mean “direction.”

4Us = nous, which serves as both a subject and an object in French.

5Fall under the blow of = tombent sous le coup de. This phrase can also mean fall within the scope of, be covered by, be subject to.

6It rains = il pleut. The pronoun il could either mean either “he” or “it.” So Serres’s point is that “he is raining stones [down upon something]” becomes “it is raining stones.”

7Here is a short rendering of the story from The Aesop Romance that I found here: http://www.language-translation-help.com/greek-translation.html

Aesop was a slave of Xanthus, a rich man, but much wiser than his master. One day, he cleverly helped Xanthus and his wife to reconcile. The next day, Xanthus, wishing to give a dinner for his friends, entrusted Aesop to go to the market and buy the choicest victuals that money could buy. Aesop bought tongues.

The dinner consisted of four courses. When Xanthus with his guests found that each course was made of tongues cooked in a different way, they got furious. “Didn’t I tell you to buy the best thing imaginable that money could buy?” asked Xanthus. “Yes,” replied Aesop, “But is there anything better than the tongue? It is a channel of learning, a key to all knowledge, an organ that proclaims truth and praises God.”

“Well,” said Xanthus, “Go to the market tomorrow and buy the worst thing you can find for the dinner. We’ll see what you’ll bring.”

Aesop went to the market and bought tongues again. When Xanthus asked for explanations, Aesop said, “It was an evil tongue that caused a quarrel between you and your wife. The tongue is the source of deviation and wars. It is used to spread blasphemy, slander and lies. Undoubtedly, there is nothing worse in the world than the tongue.”

8“For better or for worse” is written using superlatives in French, so it echoes the Aesop reference.

9Holistic = ensembliste, which normally means having to do with sets.

10Polytechic = polytechnique, which literally means many techniques or technologies as well as referring to someone or something that embraces several arts and sciences.

11Narrowly specialized = pointues. The translation misses the metaphor of the point as opposed to the whole. Holistic projects = les projets de l’ensemble. The following instance of “holistic” translates ensembliste.

12One etymology of the word “religion” has it coming from the Latin religare, to bind. Such bonds are rendered by the French word lien, which I have translated as both “bond” and “link,” depending on the context.

13By small points = en pointillé.

14Gift = don; injury = dommage.

15Another word the French have for news. We have only the one.

16The next man = le voisin, which also means neighbor; neighbor = le prochain, which as a term is based on proche, near or close.

The Shell, The Cannon

1Cockpit = habitacle, which evokes a habitation.

2“Ark” above is arche in French.

3“Forget” in the previous sentence is oublier.

4That which brings itself back and brings back = ce qui se rapporte et rapporte. I haven’t succeeded in discovering the source of this etymology. The use of se rapporte here is also unclear to me. It could also mean “that which is brought back.”

5Ghosts = revenants, which literally reads as “those who come back.” Every instance of “ghost” in this text translates revenant.

6From Wikipedia’s entry Serdab: “A serdab … is an ancient Egyptian tomb structure that served as a chamber for the Ka statue of a deceased individual. Used during the Old Kingdom, the serdab was a sealed chamber with a small slit or hole to allow the soul of the deceased to move about freely. These holes also let in the smells of the offerings presented to the statue.”

7Cadavre is the word that I have usually been translating as “corpse” and sometimes “body.”

8Expliquait, dépliait ce qui s’impliquait, all of which have a word meaning fold as a root, pli.

9A statue of Hermes that the Romans used to indicate routes. It was a quadrangular pillar with Hermes’s head perched on top.

10Authority = instance. The usage is puzzling since instance can mean an authority that has the power of decision or the agencies of the psyche in Freudian psychology. Is the term perhaps meant in its etymological sense of in and stand, in-stare? The term “statue” also derives from stare. Every instance of “authority” or “deciding authority” in this book translates instance (except on page 103).

11“Here lies” = ci-gît, the phrase used on tombstones. I’ll put “here lies” in quotes when it translates this phrase. Layer = gisement, which might normally be translated as “deposit,” in a geological sense.

12Cast at the bottom of = fondu au fond de. “Cast” in the metallurgic sense.

13What Serres means is a double cone. Each cone above and below the apex is called a “nappe.”

Driftings in the Cemeteries

1Tenants = locataires.

2Yonder: and beyond = Là-bas: et au-delà.

3It would be more idiomatic to render par où passons-nous by “which way are we going?” or “by which route?”, but Serres’s repeated use of the metaphor of passing requires this more formal translation.

4Landscape = paysage; place = lieu.

5Stage right, stage left = côté cour, côté jardin, which literally mean courtyard side and garden side. The Comédie-Française used to perform in a building that had a courtyard on one side and a garden on the other. This phrase really should be translated as “house right, house left,” since the perspective is from the audience, but the given version is much more familiar and nothing is lost by the switch. All the phrases in this paragraph containing “side” involve the French côté.

6Cour can mean a “yard” or “courtyard” as well as a judicial “court.” The high and low courts = les hautes et basses-cours. Basse-cour means “farmyard,” hence the agriculture reference.

7“Closing” in the previous sentence is fermeture; “closes itself off” is se ferme. Farm = ferme.

8Cleanliness = propreté, property = propriété.

9Enclosure or fence = clôture.

10Blossoming opening out = éclosion.

11Landscape = paysage, which is derived from pagus.

12See Descartes’s second maxim in the Discourse on Method.

13Ensign-bearing thing = chose porte-enseigne, or standard-bearing thing, but clearly Serres is highlighting the shop sign that enseigne can also mean.

14Unit = cellule, which can also mean “cell.”

15Being-there = l’être-là. This Heideggerian term is usually left in the German in English, dasein, so the reference may be a bit obscure if I don’t point this out.

16Lise is the silty local soil of the Garonne that’s deposited by flooding.

17Here = ci. The archaic spelling for ici makes it clearer in French that the “here” of “here lies”—ci-gît—is meant.

18Software = le logiciel, which doesn’t contain the French term “soft,” but does evoke the softness of the logos.

19You are Peter and on this rock = tu es Pierre et sur cette pierre. In this book, pierre has mostly been translated as “stone.” The beginning of the following sentence reads: Voici la transformation du Pierre-prénom, de la pierre-chair en pierre matière …

20An allusion to a war memoir by Jacques Pericard.

21Squander = dilapide. Lapidate = lapider, which, besides stoning, can also mean to represent in stone.

22Ancient = antique.

23Here I was a ghost = me voici revenant, which could also be translated as “here I was coming back.”

24My epitaph or signature = mon épitaphe ou mon paraphe.

25Snowdrop = perce-neige, which literally reads as “snow-pierce.” The steles are piercing the snow like the first spring flowers.

26From country to page = de pays en page. Both pays and page are related to pagus. Provining = provignement, which can also mean “proliferating.”

Fetishes

1Narrow anxiety = angoisse étroite, which could also mean intimate, close, or cramped anxiety.

2Running of the bulls = course de taureaux. The Spanish corrida de toros, or bullfight, means “running of the bulls.”

3Manuel Laureano Rodríguez Sánchez (1917–47), known as Manolete, a Spaniard, was one of the most famous bullfighters of his era. He died in Linares after being gored in the groin.

4Lieutenancy = lieutenance, which literally reads as “place-holding.” “Vicariance” is also meant in its etymological sense. See the first chapter, page 10.

The Gates of Hell

1The rue de Varenne is the site of the Rodin Museum in Paris. In French, The Gates of Hell is la Porte de l’Enfer, the door or gate of hell, in the singular. I will be translating porte by “gate” or “gates,” depending on the context.

2La porte est une espèce de port. This latter term is used to designate a pass between France and Spain in the Pyrenees.

3Gate of the Sun = porte du Soleil. Since I haven’t been able to ascertain just what structure Serres is referring to, I’m uncertain as to how to translate it. I’ve given a literal version.

4Being from there = de là étant; Being = l’Être.

5Serres probably means this in the sense of Being saying “I am.”

6Raw = brute, which could also be translated as “unhewn.” This word recurs throughout the text.

7Golden mouth = bouche d’or. Perhaps the closest equivalent we have is a “silver tongue,” except a golden mouth is always eloquent with beauty and wise or clear words.

8Lover = amante. The lover is female. Sex = sexe, which could also be translated as “genitalia.”

9For example, in a letter to Arnauld, “To be brief, I hold as axiomatic the identical proposition which varies only in emphasis: that what is not truly one being is not truly one being either” (April 30, 1687).

10With all hands = corps et biens, literally “bodies and goods.”

11Partitive articles are used in some languages to indicate an indefinite quantity of some mass noun. The closest we have to it in English is “some.” Rock, coal, and information are used with the partitive here.

12By “catastrophe” here, Serres means defining the indefinite, giving it borders. In other words, the cutting and shaping of the indefinite.

13Subject catalog = catalogue matières, catalog of matters.

14The Latin materia can mean the hard inner wood of a tree. It derives from mater: mother, source or origin. Offshoots = rejetons, which can mean both “kids” and “offshoots.” Womb = matrice.

15In the previous sentence “lies” translates gît. Layer = gisement. Serres’s use of surgit, “surges,” may not be fortuitous. In that case, it might mean “over-lies” or even “super-lies.”

16Palette’s mixed paints = pâte, which can also mean “dough.”

17Full-size = en pied, which contains the word for foot.

18Womb-box = boîte-matrice; beams = madriers.

19From which it is even born = d’où elle naît encore, which could also mean: from which it is born again.

20Parasites = parasites, which can also mean “interference.”

21Or: is the gate closing over the lack of works?

22The Tribunal = Le tribunal, which would more typically be rendered as “The Court” but this could lead to confusion given the previous uses of the latter term in this book.

23Levée de troupes, levée de terre ou de pierres, le mauvais temps se lève.

24It was such a massive labor to establish the Roman nation. The Aeneid 1.33.

25Go to the coal = aller au charbon, which means “going to a regular job” or more idiomatically “off to the mines.”

26Matrix = matrice; womb = matrice.

27Shows things outside of any case, exonerated = montre les choses hors de cause.

The Eiffel Tower

1Only this place in the middle of the legs = seul ce lieu au milieu des jambes.

2Layer = gisement.

3Shades = ombres. Serres is playing off the two meanings of ombre here: shade, as in ghost, and shadow. Keep this in mind four paragraphs below.

4Descended into hell. From the Apostles’ Creed.

5Turba = tourbe, which means “mob.” Readers of Serres’s first book of foundations, Rome, will know that he means the turbulent crowd, as the Latin root indicates.

6In which languages merge, the first rocket = où fusionnent les langues, première fusée.

7Busy = passante. “Passers-by” below is passants.

8That the masons are pouring. Flow does the Garonne = que les maçons coulent. Coule Garonne … Couler can mean pouring or flowing.

9Unfinished = non finie, which could also be read as “not finite.”

10“This will kill that” is from Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, where one character worries that the printing press will kill the church or architecture.

The Tic

1I highly recommend reading these three short stories by Maupassant before continuing. You should be able to find them on the internet, perhaps the Gutenberg site. For that matter I recommend reading every story Serres comments on before reading his commentary. “The Tic” is usually translated as “The Spasm,” “The Hair” as “A Tress of Hair,” and “Beside a Dead Man” as “Beside Schopenhauer’s Cadaver.”

2Blossomings = éclosions, which means the opening of a flower. Its etymological root is to un-close.

3Bad passage = mauvais passage.

4Takes and understands = prend et comprendre. I’m not sure it’s important but both involve the verb for taking.

5When the direction will be called the “meaning” = quand la direction s’appelera le sens. Sens can mean both “meaning” and “direction.”

6“Toc” is the French onomatopoeia for “knock.”

7Le taquet ou pieu fiché en terre comme un stock nomme la première borne.

8Deals were concluded with a slap in the hand.

9“The Horla” is a short story by Maupassant. Serres reads it as saying hors là, outside there.

10Are always rational = ont toujours raison, an idiom which means “are always right.”

The Hair

1“The snows of yesteryear” is a phrase from a famous poem by Villon, The Ballade of the Women from Times Past.

2The “door” we hear pronounced in “adoration” does not exist in French. “Door” is porte. It is not at all clear how “adoration” says the opening of doors and drawers. It derives from adorare, to speak formally, to pray. Is Serres making a bilingual pun?

3The quote is from Plutarch’s Moral Works, The Treatise of Isis and Osiris.

4Piece of furniture = meuble, which is derived from mobilis, what can be moved, the movable.

5It is called “animistic” in the English literature.

6Its master key lies around everywhere = son passe-partout traîne partout.

7Immovable = immeuble, which contrasts here with meuble or “piece of furniture.”

8The women are mentioned in Villon’s poem.

9In this paragraph, “rest” and “remains” both translate reste.

10Piece of furniture = meuble, which once again is derived from mobilis. Device = appareil, which is translated as “dentures” in the subtitle of the following chapter and can also mean many other things, as we shall see.

Beside a Dead Man

1Edges = lèvres, which reads as “lips.” “Edges” as in the edges of a wound.

2“Monk” and “monad” share the Latin root monos, meaning “alone.”

3A reference to the Tintin comic book Red Rackham’s Treasure. The Knight of Hadoque is Captain Haddock’s ancestor from the time of Louis the XIV. He was shipwrecked on an island, and Tintin and Haddock found a totem of him there.

4Psalm 26.6, I will wash my hands among the innocent and will compass Thine altar.

5Crockery dogs glaring at each other = chiens de faïence. Se regarder en chiens de faïence is an idiom for standing and glaring at one another. Authorities = instances in this paragraph. Again, it could also be translated as “agencies” in the Freudian sense.

6Fitted to the living flesh of the subject, similar to it = appareillées au vif du sujet, pareilles à lui.

7We make ourselves incomplete, we set sail piece by piece = nous nous dépareillons, nous appareillons pièce à pièce. Serres will make much of the verb appareiller and the noun appareil in what follows. Appareiller can mean to set sail, to fit with a prosthesis, and to pair or to match things up. The word also contains pareil, which means similar or alike. I’ll let the text demonstrate all the various meanings of appareil.

8Artificial = factice.

9Serres’s footnote: I have analyzed the transformation of a statue into a bell in “La Vénus d’Ille” in the Stanford French Review, October 1987.

10Hand to hand = corps à corps, which literally reads as “body to body.”

11Or: at the same time as language.

12Mordancy = mordant, which has a clear linguistic connection to biting in French.

13Rejoicing = réjouissance, which in this context strongly evokes jouissance, orgasm.

14The happy juxtaposition of birth and death here is not in the French.

15Serres’s footnote: Michèle Montrelay, “L’appareillage,” Seminar of May 25, 1981, Confrontation, Fall 1981, pp. 23–43.

16Remember the French word for furniture has “movable” as its root.

The Beam

1Serres’s footnote: La Fontaine, The Frogs who Ask for a King, III, 4; Aesop, #44.

2Cf. Matthew 18.20.

Costumes

1Plenty of elbow room = les coudées franches, which also means having complete freedom of action.

2Flabby flesh = les chairs molles, which would normally be translated as “soft” here, but as Serres also uses doux in this passage and this latter is a somewhat technical term for Serres I shall always translate mou and molle as “flabby” in this section.

3The third person plural present form of farder, presumably meant in all the above senses.

4Coat of fur = poils, which can refer to the hair of an animal or the body hair of a human.

5L’une appareillée, en grand apparat, les autres dépareillés.

The Hammer

1This is not fair to Nietzsche. The hammer he wanted to philosophize with in Twilight of the Idols was the hammer for a tuning fork, so he could test idols for their hollowness. Surely, Serres knows this, and yet he perpetuates this misinterpretation.

2The Armenian prince is Polyeuctus.

3A mass = une masse, which can also mean a “sledgehammer.”

4Offshoots = rejetons, which can mean “kids” as well as plant “shoots.”

5On May 21, 1972, Laszlo Toth hit the Pieta fifteen times with a three-pound hammer.

Magdalene and Lazarus

1Lying one = gisant, which is derived from gésir, to lie, as in “here lies.” It can also mean a recumbent statue.

2This is a reference to the ancient Greek flood story. Serres more or less retells it below, on page 173. Hear = entendons, which can also mean “understand.”

3A reference to Sartre’s novel Nausea, in which an important scene involves the root of a chestnut tree. Fire hydrant = borne, which has usually been translated as “boundary stone” in this work.

4Which does not weigh = qui ne pèse pas, which could also mean “which has no weight” or “is not heavy.”

5Serres’s footnote: Cf. E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, Princeton, 1957 and R. Hertz, Sociologie religieuse et folklore, Paris: PUF, 1928. The paper on double funerals dates from before the First World War, in which the author was killed.

6On Ushant, for example.

7Thinks = pense; weighty = pesant.

8“Reflection” in this sentence and the next does not mean an image in a mirror.

9Toward its mouths or mouth = vers ses bouches ou son embouchure.

10Discrete = discrète, which could also mean “discreet” in this context.

11Speech = Parole, which in a religious context should be translated as “Word”. But I translate it here as “Speech” to distinguish it from Verbe, the Word.

12Its face = sa face. The sa here could equally be translated as “her.” Serres probably means both.

13The French word for halo is auréole, which originally meant a gold crown.

Rapture

1“Seat” as used in horsemanship, hence a kind of balance in motion.

Empedocles’s Return

1A giant who fought the Olympians and was buried under Etna.

2Warp = gauchisse, which has “left” as a root.

3Becoming all, everywhere = devenant le tout, partout.

4Lost, distraught = perdu, éperdu.

The Secret of the Sphinx

1Serres’s footnote: Nina M. Davies and A.H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Paintings, Chicago; The University of Chicago Press, 1936, Volume II, Plate 75.

2Raw = brute, which evokes “brutes” in the sense of animals.

3Serres’s footnote: Du Culte des dieux fétiches, 1760, pp. 247–8 [On the Cult of the Fetish Gods].

4Seat = assiette, which may be related to the French for “sitting,” and means the “seat” of good horsemanship.

5Serres uses the term Sphinge here instead of sphinx, which he has been using uncapitalized throughout this interchange. A Sphinge is the Greek sphinx, whose the human part is female, unlike the masculine Egyptian sphinx. I will translate sphinge as “sphinxe,” adding the final e to denote femininity.

6Deviners of riddles = oedipes.

7Wooden club = massue; slaughtering = massacrant.

8Talons = serres. Tightly bound = serré in the above sentences.

9Golden skins = oripeaux, which is the etymological meaning. It normally means something like “rags” or “flashy rags.”

10Word = mot, which also means the answer to a riddle.

11Accuracy = justesse. In the previous sentence, precise = juste.

12Enigma = enigme, which has been translated as “riddle” up to here, but from here on “enigma” will sometimes be more appropriate.

13“Play” is not meant in the theatrical sense.

14Case = cause, which can mean a legal case, a “cause” in the sense of something you fight for, and an efficient cause.

The Myth of Sisyphus

1Serres’s footnote: I have analyzed these three returns with regard to the same myth in Hermès IV, La distribution, Paris: Minuit, 1977, pp. 219–25, “Sisyphe et les Danaïdes.”

2We tread on the earth, we drive back the rock = Nous foulons la terre, nous refoulons la pierre. “Drive back” could also be translated as “repress.”

3Corporated = corporés, an uncommon word which means “well-built” when referring to a person. Etymologically, it derives from a word meaning “which has a body.” I’ve translated pierre as “rock” in this section.

4Stands = se tient; supports = soutient, which adds a prefix signifying below to hold.

5From the county court to the ultimate authority = de la première à la dernière instance or more literally, from the first to the last authority.

6Remember that the French cause can mean both “case” and “cause.” I’ll combine the two when both seem to be meant.

7The following is a brief summary of the “statues” in Serres’s previous works. Hermès I concludes with a discussion of Molière’s Dom Juan, in which a statue of a commander appears. Thales and the Pyramids appear in the appendix to Hermès II. Both of which are translated in Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy.

Orpheus, Lot’s Wife

1See Volume I, Book 3, Chapter 10.

2According to Wikipedia’s Book of the Dead entry, this is the original name for that text, though I changed “light” to “daylight” since the light of day is meant. In French, “emerging forth” is la sortie, the exit into the daylight. For Diodorus Siculus, see: Bibliotheca historica, Book I.

3Passover = pâque; Easter communion = pâques.

4Folded = plie.

5In the previous sentence, survived = survivait. Over-kills = surtue, which is not a standard French word.

6Develop = développe; enveloped = enveloppés, which I’d normally translate as “unwrap” and “wrapped,” but since Serres uses these same terms in different ways in this section (but always in the their etymological senses) I feel the awkwardness is justified in the name of conceptual continuity.

7Squander = dilapident.

8The first “folds” in this sentence is plie; the second is replis.

9“Balls” and “paving stones” are both terms invented for topology by Bourbaki. I’m not sure whether pierre or “stone” here was as well.

10Kant uses these two terms in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.

11Or: in the sense of the little energies.

12Work = œuvre. In the previous sentence, work = travail.

The Statue of Hestia

1“Hestia” is derived from a verb meaning “to dwell, stay.”

2Episteme’s root means something like “to stand near” or “over.”