Such reading is the most ancient: reading before all languages, from the entrails, the stars, or dances. Later the mediating link of a new kind of reading, of runes and hieroglyphs, came into use. It seems fair to suppose that these were the stages by which the mimetic gift, which was once the foundation of occult practices, gained admittance to writing and language. In this way language may be seen as the highest level of mimetic behavior and the most complete archive of nonsensuous similarity: a medium into which the earliest powers of mimetic production and comprehension have passed without residue, to the point where they have liquidated those of magic.

From Walter Benjamin’s Reflections, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, A Helen and Kurt Wolf Book, 1978, p. 336.

Addendum I (June 28, 1983)

Reading after all languages, from disembodied words, sentences, or paragraphs; reading from the entrails of decomposed precursors, together with all the dancing maggots and flies feasting on the last fragments of what once appeared to be informed by a purpose, a will, or a project; reading the occult practices that have passed into language without residue as nothing but the accursed residue, as nothing but the integument devoid of substance—mummy-like, dry and brittle and dark; such reading is the most modern.

Addendum II (November 5, 1985)

Such reading could be construed as postmodern. Amusing irony and lost innocence… But there is no irony in my rewriting. There is no reluctance to speak innocently, either. Just anger. Anger and something akin to contemplative revindication along the lines of an Indian proverb—raised to the exalted level of a motto—that goes, "Sit on the bank of a river and wait: your enemy’s corpse will soon float by." And presto: here is Italo Calvino, over there Umberto Eco… Eminently quotable fellows!