What is a beginning? What must one do in order to begin? What is special about beginning as an activity or a moment or a place? ・・・ Beginning is not only a kind of action; it is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness. It is pragmatic―as when we read a difficult text and wonder where to begin in order to understand it, or where the author began the work and why. And it is theoretic―as when we ask whether there is any peculiar epistemological trait or performance unique to beginnings in general. For any writer to begin is to embark upon something connected to a designated point of departure. Even when it is repressed, the beginning is always a first step from which (except on rare occasions) something follows. So, beginnings play a role, if not always a very clearly understood one. Certainly they are formally useful: middles and ends, continuity, development―all these imply beginnings before them. A complex form, however, has a logic of its own. Does a beginning?