The Lover's Discourse

(The world is full without me, as in Nausea; the world plays at living behind a glass partition; the world is an aquarium; i see everything close up and yet cut off, made of some other substance; i keep falling outside myself, without dizziness, without blur, into precision, as if i were drugged. "Oh, when this splendid Nature, spread out here before me, appears as frozen as a varnished miniature...")

The resistance of wood varies depending on the place where we drive in the nail: wood is not isotropic.  Nor am I; I have my "exquisite points." The map of these points is known to me alone, and it is according to them that I make my way, avoiding or seeking this or that, depending on externally enigmatic counsel: I should like this map of moral acupuncture to be distributed preventively to my new acquaintances (who, moreover, could also utilize to make me suffer more).

In order to find my exquisite point, there exists an instrument which resembles a nail: this instrument is a joke: I do not suffer jokes lightly...even everything the world finds amusing seems sinister to me; you cannot tease me without danger: irritable, hypersensitive? -- Let us say, rather, tender, easily crushed, like the fiber of certain kinds of wood.