Hyperdream

by Hélène Cixous

Hyperdream is a major new novel by celebrated French author Hélène Cixous. It is a literary tour de force, returning anew to challenge necessity itself, the most implacable of human certainties: you die in the end – and that’s the end. For you, for me.


But what if? What if death did not inevitably spell the end of life?



Hyperdream invests this fragile, tentative suspension of disbelief with the sheer force of its poetic audacity, inventing a sort of magic telephone: a wireless lifeline against all the odds to the dearly departed.



It is a book about time, age, love and the greatest loss. A book which turns on death: on the question or the moment of death, depending on it, expecting it, living off it, taking place at once before and after, but at the same time turning against it, contesting it, outwriting it hopefully, desperately, performatively, as an interruptible interruption.



Hyperdream is a book of mourning, but also of morning, a tragedy-with-comedy and a universal family romance in which it transpires that the narrator is the veritable offspring of a “treasure of literature” in the form of a bed, purchased by her mother from a certain W. Benjamin in 1934, slept on for 40 years by her brother and dreamt of by her friend “J.D.”

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, France, Feminism, Novels, Poetry

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Hélène 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.

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely breathtaking already. I sat up in bed last night and poured over each sentence, grey lead in hand. This is what prose is.

I have just finished this beautiful piece of art, and I am left speechless. I really can find no way of reviewing such a novel, as to me, reviewing requires one to have a certain amount of objectivity; and I see no way of peeling myself away from inside of her writing. This book worked around me like the most delicate, yet powerful web. It is also the saddest piece of writing I have ever read. If anyone can translate the inner world onto paper, Cixous has done it. She is a genius.

[Julián Floria Cantero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como si Lispector se pasase de rosca en un viaje de setas. Ligerito no es. Pero wow.

[Christian Molenaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hélène Cixous is my favorite rapper

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quise comparar este libro con Clarice Lispector y dije "El corazón del daño" en vez de "Cerca del corazón salvaje". Efectivamente, además de Lispector me remitió inmediatamente a ese libro de María Negroni, también en torno a una madre y un duelo. Es una prosa poética desgarradora pero por momentos eufórica, que te coloca adentro del cerebro de Hélène mientras atraviesa el duelo por Derrida y la enfermedad de su madre. Me sorprendió lo gracioso que se permite a veces ser. En fin, maravilloso.

[James Tingle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I randomly stumbled across this book when I was on amazon, perusing away, and I think the title jumped out at me- 'Hyperdream'- it had an intriguing ring to it and when I read the synopsis, I decided to buy it and give it a go, even though I'd never heard of this author before. It is loosely categorized as a novel, but it doesn't have a conventional plot at all and is more like a surreal dream recounted in poetic, philosophical prose. There are themes which run through the book however, such as Derrida, the famous philosopher who was also her friend, who had died by this point, and she also discusses her Mother, mourning and death in general; all of which are mused upon in cryptic fashion throughout the course of this strange work. Every time you pick up the book and start reading it, you almost have to slip into the right mindset to be able to ingest the very abstract content that you are met with and the loose poetic style, but once you keep going, it does draw you in and your head becomes awash with the subtle, delicate images and ideas it gradually feeds you...
I think this will appeal to open minded readers and lovers of poetry, even though its not classed as such and for anyone searching for a unique and very different reading experience, which doesn't sit comfortably in any one category and is pretty much impossible to classify.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiero volverlo a leer inmediatamente pero me voy a frenar para dejarlo reposar y volver con ojos frescos. Ojalá pudiera leerlo en francés original; habiendo dicho eso, increíble la traducción de Alicia Ortiz. Un libro íntimo como pocos. No sabía que se podía plasmar así el pensamiento en palabras.

[Rochu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno de los libros más hermosos que leí quizás en toda mi vida.

No quiero extenderme porque no sabría qué decir. Las cosas que hace esta mujer con el lenguaje me admiran: hace suya la gramática desestimando toda norma, se apropia de la lengua para convertirla en un vehículo casi perfecto del pensamiento y del ensueño. Y tener acceso a ese pensamiento es un enorme privilegio. Creo que todos podemos sentirnos hasta cierto punto identificados con su paranoia, su lógica circular, su credulidad de a momentos irónica, su misticismo. El dolor entre el duelo y el pre-duelo, el desarme del tiempo que se produce cuando percibe el presente como pasado, el futuro como el presente del que el presente es el pasado al que añora. Es magnífico.

Es un libro que atesorar, sobre el que reflexionar y al que volver. La traducción de Dujovne Ortíz es absolutamente magistral. No puedo dejar de recomendar tanto la obra como la edición.

[Lizette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tengo que ser honesta con mis sentimientos: amo este libro y tal vez sea lo más impresionante que leí este año. Me gustaría hacer que todos lo leyeran; el trance de esta lectura es algo que pocas veces he experimentado, aunque exige harto de una misma. Esta narración fragmentada obedece a la locura del dolor. Hélène cuida a su mamá enferma y además tiene que atravesar un duelo por la muerte de Derrida, su amigo íntimo. El miedo a perder todas las cosas provoca un torbellino personal que se traslada a su escritura: “acababa de entrar temblando en el tiempo de los últimos tiempos me diré, la horrible primavera de los últimos tiempos tenía su horrible verdor”. Uno se pregunta qué se puede hacer en el tiempo de los últimos tiempos. Hélène decide escribir, no del dolor, sino con la voz del cuerpo que adolece. Muchas veces no se entiende, pero sentimos su fractura. Su escritura es una rajadura, un cuerpo que avasalla, laberintos, acercamiento al borde, a lo inteligible. Poesía. Es también una manera de convencerse a sí misma, retener a su mamá, a su amigo muerto. Insistir hasta en lo que no cree, rasguñar, revolcarse en el miedo. Encontrar en los objetos vestigios espirituales de sus antiguos dueños. Usar las palabras como alfileres para fijar un sueño y rescatar lo que fue y ya no es. La rabia interminable, el sinsentido interminable de que tu amigo ya no exista y tu mamá esté muriendo. Pero es sobre todo una muestra tan hermosa de alguien que se abalanza a su escritura transparente y vulnerable. Se escribe machacando: “Hay que cortar con esa palabra, hay que romperle la cara, hay que partirle la sílaba, sacar de sus desechos el homónimo secreto”. Lo que hace con las palabras me recordó mucho a cosas que describe Montalbetti en El pensamiento del poema: “Aquello que no se puede nombrar, el nombre que no se puede nombrar, es la sintaxis puesta en vacío”. En efecto, Hélène nombra cosas que no se pueden nombrar, nombra nombres que no tienen nombre: la pérdida, que tu amigo no sea más. Se muere demasiado pronto. “Nosotros no esperamos el auxilio de un despertar porque esto no es un sueño. Aquí es el tiempo de los últimos tiempos los que solo llegan una vez”.

[Alec · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Mightiest are the calls without voices.”

“Power belongs to the smallest and to the dead.”

Wow, reading Cixous is a mystical experience for sure. My tears ran because of a special and undefinable human challenge her writing brings.

I cried because in her words I could, in a manner of speaking, see her with her hands feeling around in the dark of the human experience, reaching the corners of death, struggle, loss...

It’s a saddening little piece of writing, but profound. Somehow it brought me soft joy. It’s perfect because it’s real.

Read in the morning. Let her language wash over you.

“I felt everything, I understood nothing,”

[Araceli.libros · Rating 4 out of 5]

La narradora/autora se encuentra en un momento intermedio: entre la reciente muerte de su amigo y la muerte inminente de su madre. El amigo en cuestión es Jaques Derrida, al que ya no puede telefonear para contarle sobre esta inminencia, y por eso, escribe. En un momento, su madre le revela que cierto somier desvencijado que tenían en la casa fue de Walter Benjamin, lo que la lleva a la carta que Derrida le dedicó a un Benjamin fallecido, también a reflexionar sobre el aura de las obras de arte y de los objetos. ¿Ese somier tiene aura? Le hubiera preguntado a su amigo Derrida, ¿y los platitos de su madre, y su paraguas? Objetos que sobrevivirán a sus dueños y que al final se perderán, nada permanece. Somier en francés significa sueño, cima, eminencia, cumbre. La escritura se construye como un sueño dentro de otro… Lo que soñaba Benjamin sobre una parva de heno, mientras pensaba tal vez en ese somier/ sueño que ahora es de Hélène, que escribe sobre lo que tal vez soñó Benjamin, etc.
A su vez, piensa en la muerte prematura de su padre, en la proximidad de la muerte de su madre (estas fueron las partes que más me conmovieron), y en ella misma en el futuro cuando recuerde ese momento pasado en el que ya pensaba en el tiempo después de la muerte de su madre. Escribe en un presente sobre un pasado en el cual imagina un futuro próximo que ya se volvió presente… Y es todo así de ensortijado😆.

Es verdad que es como Clarice Lispector en un viaje con hongos (por ese jugueteo con el lenguaje y por la flasheada constante), pero no tan así, porque hay más juegos de palabras, más intertexto y más referencias a autores y a títulos. Perdí el hilo varias veces.
También es verdad que es como si estuviera rapeando Medio corriente del pensamiento, medio poesía… Su prosa tiene cierto ritmo trepidante y que se va enroscando. Comentario de la traductora Alicia Dujovne Ortiz: “Cixous se inventa la puntuación y la sintaxis adecuadas pa una escritura que fluye en oleadas sucesivas y avanza en círculos. Es como si alzar la barrera de la gramática ‘normal' nos permitiera entrar en la cabeza de la mujer que escribe”.

🌀_🌀

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intus et in cute
I was anointing my mother. "I am skinning Mummy" I tell myself, doing her skin. It was a little before the end, tu es le temps, you are time, killing time, I was thinking, the time of before the end. I was now living in the time before the death of my mother, I watched my mother rise and set day after day on my horizon, overcome with admiration I was living in anguish.
Lately - these last times - I tell myself, I've not stopped feeling everything has changed, all the things that I call "everything" confusedly, have begun to happen completely differently from before the Events. Suddenly I come under the regime of the "last time," I mean the ultimate, the last last, those that are coming up, but which at the same time are in collusion with "lately": the times which have just happened. Some go off into past, others go off into the future. The difference between the ultimate last times and the lately-last-times is that the latter have a date, whereas the ultimate, no.
The ultimate - the last lasts - I'm in them, I know this now without knowing it except in every pore of my being. These times are divided into two stretches of time, shifting, unstable, like two transparent continents that in turn meet mingle, mix, separate. There's the time before the interruption of my mother. There's the time after the interruption of my friend. Henceforth I am paradoxical. I am before after the after after I am late and I am early I am alreadyafter déjàprès and already-before déjàvant I am tossed into rings within rings, encircled, distanced.
You can always lose more I thought, I twined my thought around this thought, I was anointing my mother with circular gestures, pressing rapidly lightly precisely, no longer shying at the blisters and craters that at the start of the previous year had intimidated me, darting wide cyclopean glances at me whenever I tried to get close to them, my fingers smeared with cream, I didn't dare tell my mother then, last year, that morning and evening I fought with myself, between my powers of reason and my instinct wild with repulsion, it was the idea, an illusion, that the round crevasses edged with a piping of charred skin were looking at me, next thing I knew I'd be putting a finger in their eye, you can always lose more, I told myself, absorbed in the meticulous work of encircling and anointing the sores whose constant presence in the end tames the vibrations of mind and soul - and vice versa tames the ulcers and the sores, which let themselves be coated with animal docility. "I go on living" I told myself, thought marvelously bitter, bitterly marveling, "I went on living, therefore losing," I was thinking, "it's without end," if I set this phrase, I always beginning with her right shoulder, if I set this phrase devoid of breath and intonation down on a sheet of paper it would have the face of a mask, it would be equivocal, it would be chilling, with the strengthless chill of uncertainty, besides I myself, on my knees in front of my mother standing, back to the light which enters through the window, I find it strange and sad and saddening, this phrase which comes to me from the far-off bottom of my whole history an at the same time from what is right under my eyes, beneath my nose, my mother's skin upon which I spread, beginning with the upper part of her body and the dorsal face, always in small but regular amounts the contents of a tube of pomade then a second. It crosses my mind that the skin of my mother standing in front of me July morning in which we go on living, in which, that is, life continues to weave its fabric within the framework of the body of my mother and within the framework of my body - that my mother's skin, dated, would be the most faithful canvas, or mirror or painting of my most basic, dated state of mind and soul, or of what one calls life, or maybe time's horizon-line on which are painted or deposited the physical effects of what we happen to live. Of what happens to us, living.
I go on living therefore losing, I tell myself, "attacking" as they say, attacking myself, taking myself by the scruff of the neck of my resistances in order to see to the bigger and most recent of the ulcerations, the gutted boil on the underside of her left arm.
This takes us, as they say, most of an hour, this anointing, no rushing it, one's touch must be delicate in order to be precise and painless, moderate therefore. During this hour we don't talk much. A small mass you might say. I don't say this to my mother. Mass is not kosher. You could say a touch of witchcraft.
"I go on living" thinks my mother's body.
- Since they tell me "that's how it is, it doesn't get better" I put up with it, says my mother. - You don't get better from living, I was thinking but I don't say this.
- Turn a little, I say.
In the end death will win. Until the end one doesn't know who wins.
I'll be this skin tomorrow
I anoint my old helmet-maker ma vieille beaulmière I confess myself
I'll be this skin tomorrow
And as I anoint her I cultivate time with both hands, one on top of the other hers yours mine ours, I spread them, I browse and I ruminate the future. I study: the way death lets us feel its delicate, intricate bites. How it is already here a little, nibbling. Its inroads. How life gives them back. How it gets its strength and body back by stirring up, citing, resuscitating along the paths of dreams.
And it is during these times, when all is lost that I finally come up with the answer to death, the road to happiness through pain: this is something-other-than a dream, this is the hyperdream.

- Author's Foreword, pg. vii-x

[Fen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the marketing, Hyperdream isn't a novel, so much as a stream-of-consciousness memoir. Anyone familiar with Hélène Cixous knows she is not your average writer, but one renowned for her contributions to feminist and philosophical thinking. Thus, this is not your average memoir--not by a long shot.

Hyperdream can be a bit hard to follow. The book has no conventional structure, and Cixous scarcely explains what she means by anything. That is simply not the point. Instead, it is a fascinating look into the mind of a brilliant person, exploring events in her life, particularly her mother's illness and subsequent death. Cixous has many concepts she has created for herself to understand life and death; in early pages, a particularly prominent one is that of the tower. The metaphor begins with the Twin Towers, and their destruction on 9/11, but expands in ways both concrete and abstract, as Cixous connects the felling of the towers with devastating events in her life. Many other metaphors follow, and a debate Cixous has long had with Jacques Derrida: whether death comes too slowly or too quickly.

More than any other book I've read, this one reminded me of Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector, though Hyperdream is much more dense, with more narrative, and therefore easier to follow. While Agua Viva literally translates to "life water" and represents the author's attempt to capture life in language, this one is in many ways the inverse. It is the author's attempt to capture the dreamlike state one lives in while a loved one is dying. I won't pretend I understand everything Cixous writes in this book, but she has priceless insight into the human psyche, and I am lucky to have read it.

[Fizza · Rating 3 out of 5]

"One discovers by breathing that one had stopped breathing. One only discovers one's stopped breathing when one takes the next breath."

A memoir, depicting the author's precious time spent with her ailing mother. A sort of confession, her grief was all over the pages so the words were in jumble. Couldn't understand while still find passages that deeply resonated with me.

[Magali · Rating 4 out of 5]

me pareció raro, descarnado e intenso, me gustó lo que hace con las palabras

[Sara G · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's so messy and all over the place and repetitive and I loved it, I felt every word, every sentence, every punctuation mark. Exquisitely written.

[michal k-c · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to believe how lucky we are to be alive at the same time as Cixous. What if instead of transcending Plato’s cave for some higher abstract realm we simply explored the cave a little bit. Here we have no characters or identity in the traditional narrative sense, but rather an alterity of affects both human and non-human. A person is a life which is an assemblage, and a creature is born to a backdrop of adieux.

[moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

an immensity.
the utterly unutterable, the unutterable unbearable fatality of one dies in the end, too fast, too fast the winding labyrinth of memory, memory all at once, time collapses, suddenly i am back where i never could be, at once suddenly i am Time not yet and Time never again. the flat world in which i am always here and never here. the final last times.... the losses i keep on losing...

semo te aravi....

[teresa connolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"No sabemos nada de ser. Ni de decir. No se conoce. No nos acordamos para nada de este mundo. El mundo del que nos acordamos, en el que todavía estábamos ayer a la noche, se ha vuelto tan lejano súbitamente que se diría un sueño. Está descalificado. Es el horror de ser cero y sin memoria sin ninguna relación con el ser que se ha sido y todo lo que se siente es que todo lo que siento no me ha sucedido nunca."

[Viv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hazy and liquid, shifting structure and imagery content that weave in and out of each other like looping strings of pearls--on language, on mortality, on (ir)reality, on tragedy, on loss, on mourning, on survival.

Reminiscent of de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death.

Not something to be read so close to bed, lmao--demands a reread.

[Facundo Lizarraga]

Arrancó bien pero ya después de las 70 páginas me perdió, no tenía idea de que carajo estaba hablando, derogatory. Cuando le mostré a mi vieja me dijo “y bueno era amiga de Derrida era de esperar” (lo que sea que signifique eso). Tal vez haya sido mi cansancio lector que hace que mi mente no pueda procesar nada más a esta altura del año, voy a intentar más tarde con una re-lectura, pero no se.

[Frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Pascal · Rating 5 out of 5]

INCREÍBLE

[Maria Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful lush writing but too fragmented and incoherent as novel to fully engage me.

[julieta · Rating 4 out of 5]

qué cosa extraña

[Aldana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este es de esos libros que me hacen amar, no la literatura, sino el lenguaje en su estado de ebullición.

“Aun tenía el gusto del acontecimiento en la lengua”, escribe en un momento.

Librazo.

[Adrian Cahun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hyperdream is a book that is both challenging and fascinating. Cixous, the author, has poured out her emotions after losing her mother and best friend Jacques Derrida. It's a book that I found difficult to read at first, but then I was captivated by Cixous' poetic skills and the use of symbolism.

I was particularly moved by the sentences that she used; they were both beautiful and heartbreaking. I lost a friend a few years ago, and I found that many of the things that Cixous wrote in this book really resonated with me.

If you're looking for a book that will challenge you and make you think, then I highly recommend Hyperdream. It's a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading it.

[Pin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This is a hyperdream. Nothing more violently real."

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novel/memoir about the period in her life when Cixous was caring for her elderly mother, suffering from a chronic skin condition, and also disturbed by the illness and death of her long-time friend and collaborator "J.D" (Jacques Derrida). Jacques' thoughts on life and death and his cryptic hints at a religious conversion are meditated over.

[Denim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cixous dream talking her way through losing both her mother and her best friend/constant telephone acquaintance Jacques Derrida.