To read, to understand Sacher-Masoch, it is necessary to get rid of the misunderstanding of masochism and the clinical or philosophical interpretations that have been attached to it. There remains then a word, whose being is not an affirmation, a clear and self-conscious nomination, but a stammer. Masoch's search for being then becomes a kind of etymological inquiry, which resorts both to the study of Greek and Latin roots and to a series of parentheses on Heidegger or the Roman de Renart that allow us to approach, as mental warfare strategies , Masoch's riddle. Pascal Quignard develops a discourse that is neither psychoanalytic nor structuralist, nor historical nor Marxist, but rather the unveiling of an independent reading, inserted in turn within the vast discourse of literary works, always contemporary with one another, always lost within each other. , always in the process of being read.
The being of babbling was the author's first book, published in 1969, to which this edition adds an unpublished postface from 2014.