Where we witness something profoundly disconcerting taking place: Igniatius finds himself surprised by his own images. They are no longer comparisons that he deliberately fashions; they return to him as though they knew something about him before he himself did. It is a moment of recognition, but of a strange kind: he recognizes himself in an image made entirely of words... an image he had never intended to bring into being. Those words, at first, seemed to say almost nothing. So he wrote that the sea stood at the foot of the rocks "like a beast that had forgotten how to breathe."
Igniatius' Notebook
I stopped. I had not meant to create an image. I had wanted only to make more precise what I was seeing. And yet, scarcely had I finished the sentence than I no longer saw the sea in the same way. It no longer resembled a beast. It had become one. There it stood, at the foot of the rocks, immense, silent, come from that distant place where, only a moment before, I had looked without distinguishing anything beyond the dark line of the horizon. I could not understand how it had crossed that entire expanse without my ever seeing it approach. No swell had announced its coming. No wave seemed to have carried it. It was simply there. Stranger still, I did not have the impression that it had come toward me. I had the impression that it had always been there, and that it was I who had only just arrived before it.
For a long while I remained without writing. The word I had just placed upon the page was looking at me more than I was looking at it. I had written it as one names a thing. It answered me as a presence.
Then I understood why certain drawings had held me for so long without my ever being able to say what was so singular about them. I believed I was observing them. I expected them to reveal their secret to me. But perhaps, from the very beginning, they had been waiting for me to recognize my own.
Leviathan.
I do not know why that name presented itself to me. I had not been searching for it. It solved no riddle. It merely offered that presence a place where it might dwell, for a moment, within words. As I wrote it, I felt something unexpected. I was not merely recognizing the sea. I was recognizing myself in the manner in which it had come to me.
For a long time I had believed that I was, in some sense, leading the images. I chose them... how and why... I do not know. I brought them together as actors gather upon the stage of a theatre, and at times I left them behind... just as theatre-goers disperse and return to their homes once the performance is over. Deep down, I was convinced that they followed me like obedient travellers.
And now one of them stood before me—immense, ancient—as though it had been waiting for me for far longer than I had ever been searching for it.
Then I understood... how and why... I do not know... that I had never gone in search of those images. They were the ones that had patiently led me to themselves.
I believed I was speaking only of a drawing. I discovered that it was already speaking... of me. Not of my life, nor of my history, but of a place within me that I did not yet know had long been inhabited.
Then, all at once, I remembered every drawing I had looked at without ever entering it. They had remained before me like doors one admires without crossing their threshold. Today I understand that I had never allowed them to look back at me.
Perhaps that is what happens when an image becomes true. It ceases to stand before us. It finds us. And when it finds us, we can no longer say with certainty whether we invented it or whether it had recognized us all along.
Since that day, I have become wary of words that seem to obey too readily... what they do not say.
The ones that truly matter are often those that surprise me. They make me lift my eyes from the page as though someone had just entered the room. I then reread what I have just written with the strange feeling of encountering a stranger who has known my name for a very long time.
Perhaps that is what writing is.
Not adding words to images.
But discovering, with an astonishment that never wears away, that certain images had already been waiting, in silence, for our voice to allow them to recognize us.
For a long while I remained without writing. The word I had just placed upon the page was looking at me more than I was looking at it. I had written it as one names a thing. It answered me as a presence.
Then I understood why certain drawings had held me for so long without my ever being able to say what was so singular about them. I believed I was observing them. I expected them to reveal their secret to me. But perhaps, from the very beginning, they had been waiting for me to recognize my own.
Leviathan.
I do not know why that name presented itself to me. I had not been searching for it. It solved no riddle. It merely offered that presence a place where it might dwell, for a moment, within words. As I wrote it, I felt something unexpected. I was not merely recognizing the sea. I was recognizing myself in the manner in which it had come to me.
For a long time I had believed that I was, in some sense, leading the images. I chose them... how and why... I do not know. I brought them together as actors gather upon the stage of a theatre, and at times I left them behind... just as theatre-goers disperse and return to their homes once the performance is over. Deep down, I was convinced that they followed me like obedient travellers.
And now one of them stood before me—immense, ancient—as though it had been waiting for me for far longer than I had ever been searching for it.
Then I understood... how and why... I do not know... that I had never gone in search of those images. They were the ones that had patiently led me to themselves.
I believed I was speaking only of a drawing. I discovered that it was already speaking... of me. Not of my life, nor of my history, but of a place within me that I did not yet know had long been inhabited.
Then, all at once, I remembered every drawing I had looked at without ever entering it. They had remained before me like doors one admires without crossing their threshold. Today I understand that I had never allowed them to look back at me.
Perhaps that is what happens when an image becomes true. It ceases to stand before us. It finds us. And when it finds us, we can no longer say with certainty whether we invented it or whether it had recognized us all along.
Since that day, I have become wary of words that seem to obey too readily... what they do not say.
The ones that truly matter are often those that surprise me. They make me lift my eyes from the page as though someone had just entered the room. I then reread what I have just written with the strange feeling of encountering a stranger who has known my name for a very long time.
Perhaps that is what writing is.
Not adding words to images.
But discovering, with an astonishment that never wears away, that certain images had already been waiting, in silence, for our voice to allow them to recognize us.
