Je suis une ... --Helene Cixous (1) Qui n'a jamais contemple une la ..., Who has never contemplated such a flame, a yahrseit candle, a vigil light, vigil light ...--now there's a little sentence that already begins to flicker, and in English as well as French, in dark night of Helene Cixous's photographic, photomatic, cinematic corpus (DI 26/47). It's just opening of a sentence, no more than a sliver of light, a flash or a spark, a tiny apparition or phantom that emerges all of a sudden from out of depths of The Day I Wasn't There, and yet already it begins to sparkle or to flicker. Broken off, isolated, detached, this obscure little phrase plunges reader in turn into dark, at same time as it begins to spread an uncertain, trembling, flickering light of understanding, a light at once insistent and vulnerable, lively and yet exposed, always on verge of being extinguished. Let us try, then, to feed and keep this going for a time, to protect it from both absolute night and blinding light that risks always to eclipse or obscure it. Let us try, in short, to light a for this passage on to set out for it a vigil light or memorial candle for time of a reading. For it is from this single passage, I would like to show, that we can begin to read entire work of Helene Cixous. A vigil lamp, a then, which is not only, as we will see, a privileged image in work of Helene Cixous, an image described or projected by her work, but an image of work itself, an image of Cixous's unique and irreplaceable art of thinking and writing, her irreplaceable art of replacement and her art of calling dead back into light and back to life. If I thus place a la and not some other image at center of my reading here, it is in order to call up phantoms from other side, to feed this hesitant and uncertain light and so feed them, a light that is lifeblood, lightblood, of ghosts and specters. So let us begin again: Who has never contemplated une la veilleuse, Who has never contemplated such a flame, a yahrseit candle, a vigil light. Isolated in this way, sentence seems to take form of a question, even if there is no question mark in sight. One is reminded of Cixous's use of other apparently simple forms of questioning, for example, her unique reinscription of ontological question, what is? or ti esti question, one Jacques Derrida in Of Grammatology calls philosophical question par excellence insofar as it aims always at some general form, essence, or eidos. Instead of thus asking, for example, What is time?, Cixous asks in Love Itself in Letter Box, What is one time? [Qu'est-ce qu'une fois?] (LI 64/90), or instead of What is truth?, What is a limited truth? (LI 104/142), or instead of What is good? even stranger What is a dish? (LI 30/47). There is as yet no question mark, but sentence already interrogates or addresses us like a question. To try to see a bit more clearly, we must read on: Who has never contemplated such a flame [une veilleuse], yahrseit candle, one they would light in my family one week in February, does not wretched glimmer of mourning, and has never seen with his own eyes cruel, very cruel miserly misfortune represented with a dreadful meticulousness in this very poor, very pitiful icon (DI 26/47). It is thus not a question after all, or is no longer a question, since, reading backwards and reconstructing sentence, question was really an affirmation or, better, it came to be replaced by an affirmation. Things are beginning to become clearer or, rather, they are beginning to be transformed: means the one who, whoever: it is the one who has never contemplated a veilleuse who does not know wretched glimmer of mourning, and has never seen with his own eyes cruel, very cruel miserly misfortune represented with a dreadful meticulousness in this very poor, very pitiful icon (DI 26/47). …