s'amuser comme Charlot / se suicider

It’s a too often repeated and propagated myth among French students (and teachers!) that se suicider is one of those idiosyncrasies that any language has, in this case the French. For often they ask, isn’t se redundant, for how can someone else do the suicide for you? But, can one not? It’s a myth that exists even on Wikipedia as of now: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbe_pronominal

Strangely, I never checked (se) suicider on the CNRTL website, my first point of reference otherwise: in a way it’s good that I never did so, for CNRTL would have busted the myth immediately and I wouldn’t have chanced upon my own path of enlightenment (since later on I found the CNRTL verifying all those conditions of suicider existing as transitive verb that I discovered through my reasoning). As is often the case with me when I am learning something new, the route I took was a bit osé and triggered by a certain memory.

S’amuser comme Charlot isn’t a highly-used expression, and I have no idea why this Charlot should be capitalized, since to me it is rather the usual, old charlot, the executioner, and not the modern clown, who gets a huge, even erotic kick out of his business of torture, or at least he is supposed to, as I am not all that familiar with the once-daily European business of tortures and inquisitions. But perhaps, the expression refers to Chaplin? That would be interesting, to say the least. However, whether it be ill or well used, and wherever it comes from, it’s a reflexive expression, for another highly reflexive thing: se masturber. Or is it really all that solely reflexive?

J’aimerais bien te masturber. That’s a phrase you would imagine quite common among the young: more than … me masturber! So if one can masturbate someone else, an activity that till some years back I only associated with the practice of giving pleasure to “self,” then why cannot one suicide someone else? That may sound illogical to people hung on to the (Latin) roots of a word: while the former doesn’t have any element of “self” in it, suicider does contain sui, self, so the word in itself means “to kill self.” So, then, the myth gets reinforced through something that seems a redundancy: se se tuer?

Why not? Because se tuer in French only means to get yourself killed, maybe in an accident: of course, hardly anyone “gets” oneself killed in something that would still be qualified as an accident, but that is the joy of French: one gets oneself robbed, murdered, fooled, etc. To say in an ironic voice: one is robbed, murdered, fooled, etc. But why not se fait tuer then, why se tuer? The difference for me lies in that while se faire tuer points always to an agency, seen or unseen, said or unsaid, human or inhuman, se tuer simply points to the fact without bringing up the element of pathos or destiny or omniscience or even some merciless irony, all of which is the purpose of se faire tuer. And since se tuer could also mean to get killed by an agency that is not necessarily oneself, it’s quite logical to have a se se tuer!

As for how is it possible to have a je te suicide, think of it in terms of je te masturbe! In cases of assisted suicide, mercy killing (or euthanasia, call what you will) or provoked suicide, it is in fact the other person doing the job for you: he is doing the killing act and the will to die is yours – a collaborative effort. Just as someone else does the caressing and the pleasure is yours!

legs, lait, laid, laisse, laisser

(Inspired from Jacques Derrida’s Post Card)

legs means legacy; old French had the pronounciation same as one would pronounce “lais”, old French for "leave (v.)" (laisser today). The legacy which one leaves; to whom? What is the legacy? The money one earned, and for which the heirs are going to fight and make their lives laides? Does one know what one is leaving behind? We leave the quelque chose, but we don’t know what that quelque chose is? And if we die intestate, maybe not even the quelqu’un to whom we lais we don’t know what. When we don’t even know the quelqu’un, why are we always so worried about our legacy? Are we so narcissistic? Are we ourselves the legs that we want laisser to the world, the whole world as quelqu’un. Certainly in the case of artists, certainly in the case of dictators. Doesn’t laisser then become intransitive then? It is only the case of je laisse, nothing more after all. I am more concerned with leaving; in fact, it’s more a case of je me laisse. Isn’t all laisser in the sense of legs then se laisser?

When I fuck a girl, I might leave a small imprint of myself in that girl. So, it’s really that je me lais. But, in the age of contraceptives, I might only je lais, intransitively. Why am I so eager pour me laisser? Why do I make myself so cheap so as to lais myself to n’importe qui? And why have I started to enjoy laisser more than legs? The woman gives all her lait to the child; isn’t it transitive on the part of woman but intransitive on the part of child? The child’s instinct says to drink it, to put his lips there, but not intent. Can I equate instinct with intent? Isn’t instinct Nature’s intent? So, here it’s a transitive action on the part of the third party, the Nature? (see my early post, envoyer, s’envoyer, ...)

When I laisse quelque chose, do I also put on a laisse (noun: "leash") on myself? Or on others through my legs? Do I want to guide the legs of everyone that follows as I wanted mine to and couldn’t? And, more importantly, why do they accept the legs that binds their legs?

envoyer, s'envoyer, vois, voix

(Inspired by Jacques Derrida's Post Card)

When I send a letter to someone, it might not reach its intended destination. It might fall into 'wrong hands', into 'unknown hands', it might be just blown by wind and caught up in nettles, to become a fluttering, torn fragment of desires, of all that I felt. It might reach its destination but might not be opened for many days or many years even after. The destined person might not be that eager as I anticipate him to be. So how much is it a completed action when I send someone something? Does my sending imply the receiving? Then why do I feel so much pleasure in sending it, just in sending it? Why don't I feel the illusory transitivity of "envoyer quelque chose à quelqu’un”?

Why don’t I send myself, in that case? Even if I cannot avoid the chance of the recipient, at least the object is intact, it cannot be torn, and it will have some reason on its head, it can redirect itself to the quelqu’un. Why don’t je m’envoyer, or why does not one s’envoyer? Isn’t it possible?

When I say “I love you” to a girl, I give myself, for acceptance or rejection, to the girl; I send myself, whole and as I am, in the envelope that I have chosen to be in in front of her or as an open post card; yes, I send myself. But I might not strike the heart, I might never reach her, I might never convince her, or I might arrive late. It might be that late that by the time she recognises my marks on her, I would already have me suis envoyé to countless others in that long, tepid wait. By the time her voix does give utterance to what I waited for, the effort and the process might have become meaning much more to me than her final oui, and I may not vois her the same.

s'envoyer is also a slang to give oneself for sex. Why the intransitive usage? Since when you give yourself to someone for sex, you do it only for the pleasure of fucking, and don’t care to whom you are giving yourself? Can there be a legacy that can be left without leaving it? An intransitive laisser? Yes, je me laisse aller is possible, but when I let myself go, who guides me? In case there’s a destiny, it does not remain as intransitive; it’s only that I don’t know the quelque chose reserved for me. And in case there’s no destiny? The objects are random, desire’s random, nothing is planned. But still don’t I let myself go “on something”? Is the whole intransitivity concerned with intent, you mean to say? Yes, it rains, and the rain is not concerned with where it’s going to land; it does without intent, without thought, it just rains. But at the end of the day, isn’t there something that it is going to rain on? So, it’s intransitive for the principal actor/s and transitive for the third party observer? Anything?