A hidden letter of a lyric poem, recited by an ancient philosopher within a sleeping interlocutor, contextualizes and reflects the main text of Souvenir: a recount of how a man, blinded by a white light, disappears and reappears, only to find himself inexplicably on the hallway floor with his teeth scattered around the room in front of him. The letter reveals that the sleeping man is haunted by a goddess, who couples with him in his sleep yet remains elusive and enigmatic during the day. His search for her presence results in his unconscious obsession with the linden tree growing in the back of his garden, and a robe of scarlet satin ornamented with golden thread.
Souvenir is a recollection of a sleeping interlocutor who recites prose and sings a lyric poem to himself; a man’s efforts to grasp an event that he is legislated by language and metaphysics neither to know nor to remember; an application of the myth of Lilith; a deconstruction of itself according to Plato’s Pharmacy by Jacques Derrida. -Publisher
