[The space of passion].

The figures and speech of passion are clinically polymorphous and heterogeneous: from the baroque of the mystical ecstasy, the iconophily of religious and political ideologies, the collector's usual fetishism and the paranoiac insanity of hatred to the passions of knowing and loving. These are at the same time a passion for life as well as for self-destruction, for showing oneself as well for not knowing oneself, for representing oneself as well as for non representing oneself. Passion bares the impossible of mourning, its real point that gives a boost to the continual work. Passion confronts us to the essence of the being, to its fundamental distress. The being, whose shadow is projecting itself on the object of the passion, gives a name and a face to that object, and receives back its marks. That explains why passion is always accompanied by suffering. Moreover, passion is suffering according to its etymology: until the XVIth century, the word "passionate" meant somebody who suffered physically. The nature of the object of the passion (a relic, a part of a sentence, an indication, the track of an object or any other subject) changes nothing to the structure of the speech of passion.