Cixous’ essay was thirty pages of admiration and contemplation of various artists and the ways they express their meaning through their paintings. How they are able to properly express a scene in an exact moment in time to their audiences, who they become, if they become anyone, at the end of their lives and how they are able to portray themselves properly only when they are no longer the same being. What specifically made an impact on me were a couple short paragraphs at the bottom of page 107.
“I am the awkward sorceress of the invisible: my sorcery is powerless to evoke, without the help of your sorcery. Everything I evoke depends on you, depends on your trust, on your faith. I gather words to make a great straw-yellow fire, but if you don’t put in your own flame, my fire won’t take, my words won’t burst into pale yellow sparks.”
In the beginning she expresses her inability to make the reader feel a scene or a moment like a painter does through their canvas and paint. She cannot make you see the colors on the page, hear anything, smell anything, she can only give you words. This should be the same for every writer I should think, isn’t it our purpose to make a reader feel as in the moment, in the time and place, as we possibly can? But, how? I know for me and my style of writing I am constantly struggling with descriptions and details and the fine medium between over-crowded and too simplistic.
I’ve yet to find that answer in her essay, though I’m sure it’s there hiding from my mind which is unable to decipher it, but regarding the quote, it struck me as a kind of accusation. Sometimes I think, as writers, we get too caught up in what we want our text to represent and we write only for ourselves rather than rearranging a text for our readers. If we write for an audience then essentially our text becomes for and only for said audience. It is our job then to make sure our readers can understand what we are writing and take our words into their own power and make our sparks into flames. At least, that’s what I believe. For me, I get too caught up in what I want from my writing and forget about the reader’s interests but without readers, we have no writing simply because words were meant to be read.
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