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The Third Body
In The Third Body, the poet, novelist, feminist critic, and theorist Hélène Cixous interweaves a loose narrative line with anecdotes, autobiography, lyricism, myth, dream, fantasy, philosophical insights, and intertextual citations of and conversations with other authors and thinkers. Cixous evokes the relationship of the female narrator and her over, a relationship of alternating presences and absences, separations and rejoinings. This relationship assumes protean forms within a complex web of writing, creating a "third body" out of the entwined bodies of the narrator and her lover.
161 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
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1022 people want to read
About the author
Hélène Cixous
193 books853 followersHélène Cixous is a Jewish-French, Algerian-born feminist well-known as one of the founders of poststructuralist feminist theory along with Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. She is now a professor of English Literature at University of Paris VIII and chairs the Centre de Recherches en Etudes Féminines which she founded in 1974.
She has published numerous essays, playwrights, novels, poems, and literary criticism. Her academic works concern subjects of feminism, the human body, history, death, and theatre.
She has published numerous essays, playwrights, novels, poems, and literary criticism. Her academic works concern subjects of feminism, the human body, history, death, and theatre.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 3, 2021
was fortunate to read while falling in some kind of love
Read
May 17, 2024guys i gotta be honest i had no idea what she was talking about 😭
March 17, 2009
I have been reading a photocopy copy of the book. The book is expensive and dense. Beautiful and moving but not an easy read.
Excerpt
"Lying on my side, in the corner of Melaeger's garden under my cover of ashes. Waiting. It's been two thousand years since I lay down for you. He'll be surprized when he digs through the ashes to find here no more than my soul, form of forms. As I wait, I become waiting. I am latent. Waiting for you to make me appear. My body was streched out. Bring me awakening, get me up! I am molded, red clay, originally."
page 38
Excerpt
"Lying on my side, in the corner of Melaeger's garden under my cover of ashes. Waiting. It's been two thousand years since I lay down for you. He'll be surprized when he digs through the ashes to find here no more than my soul, form of forms. As I wait, I become waiting. I am latent. Waiting for you to make me appear. My body was streched out. Bring me awakening, get me up! I am molded, red clay, originally."
page 38
September 13, 2014
If ever there were a compelling reason to study the French language, it would be to read Cixous in all her original and intended meaning, absent of the failures necessary to translation.
January 18, 2023
No es una lectura fácil pero es un completo ejercicio del lenguaje.
Bello, filosófico, onírico, devastador y muy elaborado, no puedo encontrar solo una forma de describir este libro. Con seguridad una lectura para enamorados y para leer muy despacio. Gracias al derroche de figuras retóricas y recursos del lenguaje también puede ser un libro para el propio ejercicio de la escritura.
Lo negativo: El libro desborda en referencias a la gradiva, tantos detalles y relaciones pueden tornarse aburridos o complejos si el lector desconoce sobre el tema.
January 3, 2024
Me hubiese gustado leer la gradiva antes. Lastimosamente tuve que parar la lectura y leer La Gradiva porque Hélène hace constantemente referencias a esa obra y no entendía absolutamente nada de lo que decía DE QUE LAGARTIJA ME HABLÁS HÉLÈNE.
Después de retomarlo se hizo mucho mas amena la lectura y terminó de gustarme mucho.
Después de retomarlo se hizo mucho mas amena la lectura y terminó de gustarme mucho.
August 4, 2023
Hélène Cixous kills and resurrects the spirit of the Lizard King. It is 1970.
Abstractly poetic in all directions, and yet the imagery is vivid in its unabashed gore. Logical constructs and dialectics at all the appropriately wrong times in this gender reconstruction. The father, or the spirit of man hollowed by its use. Dead like the spirit that leaves upon a woman’s rebirth. Looking to the mother for the reestablishment of what it is to be a man or woman.
Cixous leaves a lot up for interpretation to the works advantage. I see this as a guttural retaliation against or compound of the Lacanian anti-philosophy of the day. A romanticized dance with, and nod to Derrida? Harder to say exactly where she has taken him…
This work is spoken in the best form that can be used to dismantle abstract rationalist critique…of abstract rational critique. I hope that Deleuze and Guattari enjoyed this like a beautiful slow motion crash of language that you can’t look away from.
“the body is already inside as my dream is already in another dream that writes it. On the other side of the hole, through which the tail should enter, there's the place where its being written. The lizard affair will have to be noted carefully and in detail: how the mouse (feminine gender) was the lizard (masculine gender). How my mother's presence was an absence. How the past was located at the endpoint of a line, the prolongation of the molding on the wall, represented here by the molding and the hole. How, three weeks ago, I refused to get a lizard belt for It. on the pretext that it was made from an animal. How I never saw the lizard except through the windowpane and I never thought of going around to see its back, whereas I did see my father's back. It's quite possible that its back would have been green and gold. How I did algebra, as well as German, with my mother after my father's death. Yes, you'll have to note all that, so that we understand it.
And finally, that command so forceful, so imperious, so playful too, drama, myth, battered door, laugh of the woman who's just given birth, of the dead man dying, that superb, outrageous password that springs forth at this instant of recording and, without spilling any blood, tears apart that lymeneal dream, and is said in a strong, loud voice, a vertical voice, eyes lifted toward the great accomplice in whom all tie archives are engraved, in the voice of a son or daughter of God- for am I not either one of the other and isnt this voice the radiant sign that I am? LIZARD. ARISE!* A living, superhuman phrase. The breaking of latency.
Lizard. The dream departs from the dream. I leave the dream departed from the dream, expelled headfirst, and I don't leave alone: following me are all the letters of words taken as a whole from a voice quite relevant to the oldest of my laughs. Lizard- arise! Who gave me this gift, who gave back to me the belly and the back? And the lizard and the wisteria, and inside the cabin, the bathtub in which I float no memory of my memory, the mirror into which all my forces plunge”
Abstractly poetic in all directions, and yet the imagery is vivid in its unabashed gore. Logical constructs and dialectics at all the appropriately wrong times in this gender reconstruction. The father, or the spirit of man hollowed by its use. Dead like the spirit that leaves upon a woman’s rebirth. Looking to the mother for the reestablishment of what it is to be a man or woman.
Cixous leaves a lot up for interpretation to the works advantage. I see this as a guttural retaliation against or compound of the Lacanian anti-philosophy of the day. A romanticized dance with, and nod to Derrida? Harder to say exactly where she has taken him…
This work is spoken in the best form that can be used to dismantle abstract rationalist critique…of abstract rational critique. I hope that Deleuze and Guattari enjoyed this like a beautiful slow motion crash of language that you can’t look away from.
“the body is already inside as my dream is already in another dream that writes it. On the other side of the hole, through which the tail should enter, there's the place where its being written. The lizard affair will have to be noted carefully and in detail: how the mouse (feminine gender) was the lizard (masculine gender). How my mother's presence was an absence. How the past was located at the endpoint of a line, the prolongation of the molding on the wall, represented here by the molding and the hole. How, three weeks ago, I refused to get a lizard belt for It. on the pretext that it was made from an animal. How I never saw the lizard except through the windowpane and I never thought of going around to see its back, whereas I did see my father's back. It's quite possible that its back would have been green and gold. How I did algebra, as well as German, with my mother after my father's death. Yes, you'll have to note all that, so that we understand it.
And finally, that command so forceful, so imperious, so playful too, drama, myth, battered door, laugh of the woman who's just given birth, of the dead man dying, that superb, outrageous password that springs forth at this instant of recording and, without spilling any blood, tears apart that lymeneal dream, and is said in a strong, loud voice, a vertical voice, eyes lifted toward the great accomplice in whom all tie archives are engraved, in the voice of a son or daughter of God- for am I not either one of the other and isnt this voice the radiant sign that I am? LIZARD. ARISE!* A living, superhuman phrase. The breaking of latency.
Lizard. The dream departs from the dream. I leave the dream departed from the dream, expelled headfirst, and I don't leave alone: following me are all the letters of words taken as a whole from a voice quite relevant to the oldest of my laughs. Lizard- arise! Who gave me this gift, who gave back to me the belly and the back? And the lizard and the wisteria, and inside the cabin, the bathtub in which I float no memory of my memory, the mirror into which all my forces plunge”
February 23, 2025
no entendí muy bien pero le creí todo
September 5, 2021
Cixous uses the metaphor of The Third Body to explore her relationship with her lover (who is fifteen years her senior), such as:
As her own identity dissolves into this Third Body, Cixous is clearly alarmed, but can do nothing else:
This novel may not move very far from its central frame (so to speak), but it certainly explores the territory with an unmatched vision.
We crossed History, his memory and mine, the blue waters and the red waters, and I was just about out of breath, for I had kept on carrying him, when at last I sensed his eyes crossing the deserts to come back. Lying on my side, calm. patient, gigantic, I hold him tight, his eyes have returned, his eyelids are poised on first questions; I've been carrying him for months and now he looks at me; I look at him, and we no longer know who we have been. At that precise instant of counterbirth we are granted a third body through which we come into being. It enters headfirst.
As her own identity dissolves into this Third Body, Cixous is clearly alarmed, but can do nothing else:
It's always the same story: go out in order to come back in, leave in order to arrive, begin in order to finish, and vice versa. I had gone out, left, begun, but everything else was in his power, except the points of my limbs and of my desires, which limbs and desires were at that time inert. This story has already been told, I've already lost all that, and I've already forgotten, and it's the memory of that forgetting that reassures me. I know it all in advance: the only part that eludes me is the ending. Looked at from the other side, from the outside, the ending could be taken for the beginning: this waiting has already taken up time, has already come to an end.
This novel may not move very far from its central frame (so to speak), but it certainly explores the territory with an unmatched vision.
May 1, 2025
"Suddenly the earth is immense. I write: it's bigger." (p. 160)
Her imagery is so strong that it *does* capture your attention throughout the book, albeit how braided/nonlinear the novel itself is. One day, I hope to have a love that possesses me so strongly it demands my trust, like Cixous describes. Did you know love was real in the 1970s too? Even before that? I do now.
The translation felt too masculine, which pulled me out of the texts ornateness, and it's big wordiness. If it had been a translation imbued with more 'woman,' the concepts would've been more body/book involved, the body as the book even.
Cixous is always unapologetically herself in her work, which is honestly all you could ask for. So many pretty pictures & good quotes. So many standalone lines, colorful images, that have their own life, they are all talking to each other.
"I said: it's good that you're coming; and not: it's good that you're here. What I wanted was therefore not presence, not the staying, but the repeated coming, the present of trust and appearance, the time of the desired, renewable eruption, the limitless future of the recent past."
"Say come. The word is said. The fingers on your hands are said, but I do not hear them. The spit speaks to the skin on my lace. Will I ever be able to forget that? What's that going to do to us? Is that going to become ingrained in me? One wonders when this pain will stop hacking up my heart."
Very fun book
Her imagery is so strong that it *does* capture your attention throughout the book, albeit how braided/nonlinear the novel itself is. One day, I hope to have a love that possesses me so strongly it demands my trust, like Cixous describes. Did you know love was real in the 1970s too? Even before that? I do now.
The translation felt too masculine, which pulled me out of the texts ornateness, and it's big wordiness. If it had been a translation imbued with more 'woman,' the concepts would've been more body/book involved, the body as the book even.
Cixous is always unapologetically herself in her work, which is honestly all you could ask for. So many pretty pictures & good quotes. So many standalone lines, colorful images, that have their own life, they are all talking to each other.
"I said: it's good that you're coming; and not: it's good that you're here. What I wanted was therefore not presence, not the staying, but the repeated coming, the present of trust and appearance, the time of the desired, renewable eruption, the limitless future of the recent past."
"Say come. The word is said. The fingers on your hands are said, but I do not hear them. The spit speaks to the skin on my lace. Will I ever be able to forget that? What's that going to do to us? Is that going to become ingrained in me? One wonders when this pain will stop hacking up my heart."
Very fun book
December 31, 2023
Hard for me to read this without feeling a bit detached. Perhaps having not read the text she was referencing, perhaps too much is lost in translation. I kept thinking ‘good for her’ having felt the presence of her very original voice and thinking. But I was unmoved by it. A weird reading experience. Not bad… just incredibly different. I have another book of hers on the shelf but intend to do a bit more work to get where she is…read what is referenced, etc.
July 9, 2024
The third body is what is formed when two people forge a romantic relationship. Like the third space, the third wave, the third body redefines what it means to be a body. At times the body is earth, ash, taken up in the wind. It is a metaphor. And when the lover leaves, what is left? The pain of knowing, of having had, now of longing. This is the beginning. The body soon reconstitutes itself as one, stands on two legs, learns to love again.
July 31, 2024
"And in my mother's country, on the edge of the Rhine, they push men into the river. All those countries and beds are far off, I've forgotten them."
what a read. when i picked this (e)book up, i thought to myself, "i'll only try a couple of pages if it's for me or no". it's hélène cixous, of course it's for me. she is for us real lover girls, whose love cannot bear compartmentalization
what a read. when i picked this (e)book up, i thought to myself, "i'll only try a couple of pages if it's for me or no". it's hélène cixous, of course it's for me. she is for us real lover girls, whose love cannot bear compartmentalization
April 9, 2025
"Lying on my side, in the corner of Melaeger's garden under my cover of ashes. Waiting. It's been two thousand years since I lay down for you. He'll be surprized when he digs through the ashes to find here no more than my soul, form of forms. As I wait, I become waiting. I am latent. Waiting for you to make me appear. My body was streched out. Bring me awakening, get me up! I am molded, red clay, originally."
page 38
page 38
Read
June 8, 2024first encounter with cixous and struck by the humility to say that most of this went over my head, but in the same instance I immediately knew I was in the presence of an extraordinary writer. I'm sure much was lost in translation - perhaps one day I can return to this after learning how to read in french.
Read
June 28, 2025todos los caminos conducen a Roma. y Roma es todos los lugares deseados... el fracaso no es sino una experiencia. si no llegan al punto donde el infinito se da vuelta sobre sí mismo, es porque no lo han querido lo suficiente... todo lo que vive libre así en el encadenamiento es vivo y sutil... <3
June 19, 2018
"I remember the fatal phrase: 'I shall die the day that I can no longer make love with you.' Ever since, I'm always on the lookout for that day. Because of my dread of it, I invoke it; making love (faire l'amour) becomes a little more, each day making death (faire la mort) ..."
Reading Cixous' The Third Body was a hard and joyful adventure, the ambiguity and the references interrupting the flow of the narrations were tiring though beautiful for the most of the book. I admit that in some references it felt too pushy, trying to create a deeper meaning with far-fetched matters or the repetitive references, I got suffocated from time to time.
But overall, it was a beautiful book, one of the most surprisingly different books that I've read so far.
"There is too much death, not enough end."
Reading Cixous' The Third Body was a hard and joyful adventure, the ambiguity and the references interrupting the flow of the narrations were tiring though beautiful for the most of the book. I admit that in some references it felt too pushy, trying to create a deeper meaning with far-fetched matters or the repetitive references, I got suffocated from time to time.
But overall, it was a beautiful book, one of the most surprisingly different books that I've read so far.
"There is too much death, not enough end."
January 21, 2024
This was a bit of an abstract read at times, but the parts that I enjoyed, I loved a lot. I had read an excerpt in French and this translation feels more stale, stagnant.. feels like an intensity has been lost. Must read again in its original form.
“Le temps est venu d'interroger : quels rapports y a-t-il entre mes langues ? Entre toutes nos langues ? Tu m'as croisée. Nos langues se sont croisées. Nous connaissons les terreurs, les doutes, les trous noirs et les trous blancs, les présences éternelles, les puissances primordiales, les premières eaux et les dernières. Au croisement de nos langues il nous est venu un troisième corps, là où il n'y a pas de loi.”
“Le temps est venu d'interroger : quels rapports y a-t-il entre mes langues ? Entre toutes nos langues ? Tu m'as croisée. Nos langues se sont croisées. Nous connaissons les terreurs, les doutes, les trous noirs et les trous blancs, les présences éternelles, les puissances primordiales, les premières eaux et les dernières. Au croisement de nos langues il nous est venu un troisième corps, là où il n'y a pas de loi.”
December 11, 2016
In The Third Body, the poet, novelist, feminist critic, and theorist Hélène Cixous interweaves a loose narrative line with anecdotes, autobiography, lyricism, myth, dream, fantasy, philosophical insights, and intertextual citations of and conversations with other authors and thinkers. Cixous evokes the relationship of the female narrator and her over, a relationship of alternating presences and absences, separations and rejoinings. This relationship assumes protean forms within a complex web of writing, creating a "third body" out of the entwined bodies of the narrator and her lover.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews