Authors: Monique Wittig
They say that the event is memorable even though long in preparation and mentioned in diverse fashion by historians writers versifiers. They say that war is an affair for women. They say, is this not gratifying? They say that they have spat at the men's heels, that they have cut the legs off their boots. They say, moreover, that although laughter is the prerogative of man, they want to learn how to laugh. They say yes, henceforward they are ready. They say that the breasts the curved eyelashes the flat or broadened hips, they say that the bulging or hollow bellies, they say that the vulvas are henceforth in movement. They say that they are inventing a new dynamic. They say they are throwing off their sheets. They say they are getting down from their beds. They say they are leaving the museums the show-cases the pedestals where they have been installed. They say they are quite astonished that they can move.
OMPHALE CORINNA ELFREDA
LU-HU MEI-FEI VICVAVARA
QI-JI VIJAYA BHATIKARIKA
LUDGARDE GERTRUDE DIANA
ROGNEDE MALAN CLEOPATRA
AMERIZ BATHSHEBA CLAUDIA
The women descend from the hill carrying torches. Their troops advance, marching day and night. They say, where shall we carry the flame, what land set ablaze, what murder perpetrate? They say, no, I shall not lie down, I shall not rest my tired body before this earth to which I was so often compared, turned upside down from top to bottom, shall be incapable of bearing fruit. They light the pine-trees cedars cork-oaks olives. The fire spreads with great rapidity. At first it is like a distant murmur. Then it is a roar that swells and finally drowns their voices. Then they fly, faster than the wind, carrying fire and destruction everywhere. Their cries and their fury compete with the noise of the fire.
They say, you are speedy like Gurada the messenger, with the wings and feet of a swallow, who stole ambrosia and fire from heaven. They say, like Esée you can steal power over life and death, like her become universal. They say, you advance with the sun's disc on your head, like Othar of the golden countenance who represents love and death. They say, in your anger you exhort Out, who upholds the sky and whose fingers touch the earth, to shatter the celestial vault. They say, conquered like Itaura, you readjust the two halves of your body, heaven and earth, you stand erect and go shrieking, creating monsters at every step. They say, you leap on the corpses, eyes bloodshot, tongue lolling, teeth fanged, palms red, shoulders streaming with blood, carrying necklaces of skulls, corpses at your ears, garlands of serpents round your arms, you leap on the corpses.
The women address the young men in these terms, now you understand that we have been fighting as much for you as for ourselves. In this war, which was also yours, you have taken part. Today, together, let us repeat as our slogan that all trace of violence must disappear from this earth, then the sun will be honey-coloured and music good to hear. The young men applaud and shout with all their might. They have brought their arms. The women bury them at the same time as their own saying, let there be erased from human memory the longest most murderous war it has ever known, the last possible war in history. They wish the survivors, both male and female, love strength youth, so that they may form a lasting alliance that no future dispute can compromise. One of the women begins to sing, Like unto ourselves/men who open their mouths to speak/a thousand thanks to those who have understood our language/and not having found it excessive/have joined with us to transform the world.
It is evident that the women can go on no longer. They march by continually holding on to their bending legs. Now some fall down. They are seen to weep. Their hair is seen falling the length of their bodies. They tear it out in handfuls and throw it down alongside themselves in masses. Marie-Laure Hibon weeps saying, where is my long hair, my fair curly hair? They march casting their hair beside them without, so it seems, the strength to trample it underfoot. Old women stumble along after them, hopping and uttering little cries, look, they say, all that hair. Then they run here and there heaping up the balls of hair to make enormous masses, some sit on top and laugh saying all this hair. Others cannot manage to climb the hillock made of the hair they have collected. The women march holding on to their ever-bending legs, weeping it seems out of great fear and misery. Some fall down, no one sees them get up again. Sometimes an ululation is heard followed by other lesser sounds in concert. The ululations grow, suddenly it is as if two hundred ships in distress were calling for help in the night.
HIPPOLYTA PETRONILLA
APAKU EVE SUBHADRA
LOLA VALERY AMELIA
ANIKO CHEN-TE MASHA
SEMIRAMIS THESSA OUR
EURYDICE SE CATHERINE
They say, hell, let the earth become a vast hell. So they speak crying and shouting. They say, let my words be like the tempest the thunder the lightning that the mighty release from their height. They say, let me be seen everywhere arms in hand. They say anger hate revolt. They say, hell, let the earth become a vast hell destroying killing and setting fire to the buildings of men, to theatres national assemblies to museums libraries prisons psychiatric hospitals factories old and new from which they free the slaves. They say, let the memory of Attila and his warrior hordes perish from history because of his meekness. They say that they are more barbarous than the most barbarous. Their armies grow hourly. Delegations go before them when they approach the towns. Together they sow disorder in the great cities, taking prisoners, putting to the sword all those who do not acknowledge their might.
They quote long verses, We are truly the dregs of this world. Wheat, millet, spelt and every cereal, it is for others we sow them, as for us, wretched ones/with a little sorghum we make ourselves bread./The cocks fowls geese pullets/it is the others who eat them, as for us, a few nuts/we eat roots like the pigs./Wretched we are and wretched we shall be/we are truly the dregs of this world. They cite as a subscription to this quotation the phrase of Flora Tristan, Women and the people march hand in hand.
They say, take your time, consider this new species that seeks a new language. A great wind is sweeping the earth. The sun is about to rise. The birds no longer sing. The lilac and violet colours brighten in the sky. They say, where will you begin? They say, the prisons are open and serve as doss-houses. They say that they have broken with the tradition of inside and outside, that the factories have each knocked down one of their walls, that offices have been installed in the open air, on the esplanades, in the rice-fields. They say, it would be a grave mistake to imagine that I would go, me, a woman, to speak violently against men when they have ceased to be my enemies.
Whether they are marching or standing still, their hands are always stretched far out from their bodies. Most often they hold them at each side at shoulder height, which makes them resemble some hieratic figure. The fingers of their hands are spread out and in incessant movement. Spinning-glands are at work on each of their limbs. From their many orifices there emerge thick barely visible filaments that meet and fuse together. Under the repeated play of movement in the fingers a membrane grows between them that seems to join them, then prolong them, until eventually it extends beyond the hand and descends along the arm, it grows, it lengthens, it gives the women a sort of wing on either side of their body. When they resemble giant bats, with transparent wings, one of them comes up and, taking a kind of scissors from her belt, hastily divides the two great flaps of silk. The fingers immediately recommence their movement.
The women have their backs to the city they defend and face the oncoming male attackers. Their invulnerable bodies, protected by the fire-proof material that clothes them, that no bullet can breach, stand rigid and immobile. From a distance they might be taken for great standing scarecrows whose empty sleeves are not stirred by the wind. The attackers approach, surprised by their immobility. The foremost are mown down by bullets while the women begin to utter fearful cries. The second wave of attackers retreats in confusion. Then the women launch themselves in pursuit and try to catch up with them.
ATHENAÏS OREA CHARLOTTE
BRUNEHAUT RACHEL ELMIRA
RANAVALO ON-TA CALLIOPE
THEOCTISTA PORPHYRA GOPA
SCHEHERAZADE ZUO-WEN-JUN
ENGUERRANDE BULLE MEDEA
They say, we must disregard all the stories relating to those of them who have been betrayed beaten seized seduced carried off violated and exchanged as vile and precious merchandise. They say, we must disregard the statements we have been compelled to deliver contrary to our opinion and in conformity with the codes and conventions of the cultures that have domesticated us. They say that all the books must be burned and only those preserved that can present them to advantage in a future age. They say that there is no reality before it has been given shape by words rules regulations. They say that in what concerns them everything has to be remade starting from basic principles. They say that in the first place the vocabulary of every language is to be examined, modified, turned upside down, that every word must be screened.
On the squares where the trestle tables are set up they sing and dance and sing,
Dansons la Carmagnole/vive le son/dansons la Carmagnole/vive le son du canon.
Someone interrupts them to praise those males who have joined them in their struggle. Then, in the sunshine, a handkerchief on her head, she begins to read an unfolded paper, for example, When the world changes and one day women are capable of seizing power and devoting themselves to the exercise of arms and letters in which they will doubtless soon excel, woe betide us. I am certain they will pay us out a hundredfold, that they will make us stay all day by the distaff the shuttle and the spinning-wheel, that they will send us to wash dishes in the kitchen. We shall richly deserve it. At these words all the women shout and laugh and clap each other on the shoulder to show their contentment.
The women say, shame on you. They say, you are domesticated, forcibly fed, like geese in the yard of the farmer who fattens them. They say, you strut about, you have no other care than to enjoy the good things your masters hand out, solicitous for your well-being so long as they stand to gain. They say, there is no more distressing spectacle than that of slaves who take pleasure in their servile state. They say, you are far from possessing the pride of those wild birds who refuse to hatch their eggs when they have been imprisoned. They say, take an example from the wild birds who, even if they mate with the males to relieve their boredom, refuse to reproduce so long as they are not at liberty.
They say, without realizing what they were doing the men have constructed stupas dagbas chortens in many places. They say, the men have multiplied the symbols that refer to a different conception. They say, how to interpret these monuments whose basic design is the circle in all its modalities? The principal building is a hemisphere. Paths encircle it at different levels. One follows them in the direction of the sun. Thus one passes at the four cardinal points before those women of the East who are in process of being born, one passes before those of the South who indicate the light and whose faces reflect it. At the West one passes by those who have triumphed and imposed their will, at the North one passes by those who compile all the legends. After passing by all these an incalculable number of times one arrives by an ascending path at the zenith, at those who record the deeds of those of the East South West North. Their register is an immense musical stave that instruments progressively decipher. This is what has been called the music of the spheres.
They say, if I relax after these great achievements I shall reel drunk with sleep and fatigue. They say, no, one must not stop for a single moment. They say, compare yourself to a slow fire. They say, let your breast be a furnace, let your blood become heated like metal that is about to melt. They say, let your eye be fiery, your breath burning. They say, you will realize your strength, arms in hand. They say, put your legendary resistance to the test in battle. They say, you who are invincible, be invincible. They say, go, spread over the entire surface of the earth. They say, does the weapon exist that can prevail against you?
They go to meet the young men, their groups mingle forming long chains. They take them by the hand and question them. They lead them away on to the hills. With them they climb the steps of the high terraces. They make them sit down by their side on the terraces. The men learn their songs during the hot afternoons. They taste their cultivated fruits for the first time.
The men try to recognize the flowers the women point out to them in the flower-beds shrubberies meadows fields. The women choose names with the men for the things round about them. They make them look at the space which everywhere extends to their feet. It is a limitless prairie covered with flowers, daisies in the spring, marguerites in summer, in autumn white and blue meadow saffron. It is a green-blue ocean the colour of milk with ships passing or else empty. It is a field shorn of every edifice where as far as eye can see the corn grows the rye or the green barley, the orange-coloured rice. The women make them savour the mildness of the climate, identical throughout the seasons, unchanging by day and night.
The rounded shields protect them. Every weapon is shattered against them. Dart-filled bombs and grenades sink softly into their thick substance. If they are at all defective they break at the first impact and fly into splinters like glass. A brightly-coloured cloud similar to a Bengal light then rises concealing the bearer of the shield from sight. It is at once replaced by another, passed from hand to hand. During the day the women hardly change their position. It is at night that great movements take place along the whole length of their defensive front, some bringing up victuals, others weapons, others still supplying fresh news to the entire front.
The young men signal to the women from a distance. They have identical blue garments. Their faces are smooth and round. When they approach some of the women strike up with them the song in their honour.