« The Journal is filled with remarks that seem connected to a theoretical knowledge that is easy to recognize. But these thoughts remain foreign to the generality whose form they borrow: they exist there as if in exile, falling back into an equivocal mode that prevents them from being heard either as the expression of a unique event or as the explanation of a universal truth.
Kafka’s thought does not relate to a uniformly valid rule, but neither is it merely the marker of a particular fact in his life. It is an elusive swimming between these two waters. As soon as it becomes the transposition of a series of events that actually took place (as in a journal), it imperceptibly turns toward the search for the meaning of these events, seeking to pursue their approach. It is then that the narrative begins to merge with its explanation, but the explanation is not really one: it does not succeed in exhausting what it must explain, and above all it fails to rise above it. It is as if it were drawn, by its own gravity, toward the particularity from which it must break free: the meaning it sets in motion wanders around the facts; it is explanation only insofar as it detaches itself from them, but it is explanation only insofar as it remains inseparable from them. The infinite meanders of reflection, its recommencements starting from an image that breaks it, the minute rigor of reasoning applied to a null object—these constitute the modes of a thought that plays at generality but is only thought insofar as it is caught in the thickness of a world reduced to the singular.»

Maurice Blanchot, From Kafka to Kafka, folio, p. 64

The following image does not contradict the previous one; it performs a kind of decantation. As if it had let fall whatever could still speak in a human voice, retaining only forces or postures.
The plank-boat is still there, but it is now deserted by the man. His absence is decisive. What, in the first image, belonged to salutation through gesture or speech—or even to “uncovering”—has disappeared. All that remains is the narrow line, still balanced upon the coiled wave. This spiral, now even more visible, takes on increased importance: it is no longer a secondary detail, but the true silent motor of the scene. The movement of the world continues without an explicit human witness.
On the left, the blue dog appears alone, smaller, almost at the edge of the boat. It is no longer carried: it stands by itself, but precariously. Its body is stretched toward the right, toward the donkey. The dog retains something of the absent speech: even without the man, it remains a figure of relation, of impulse, of a desire for address. But this impulse now occurs without articulated language, without arms to encircle it. The blue here becomes more melancholic: it is fidelity left to itself, affective thought deprived of its human interlocutor.
On the right, the donkey dominates the composition. Its position is high, stable, almost sovereign, without becoming authoritarian. It looks downward, toward the dog, but without any movement of descent. It does not approach. It does not withdraw. It holds. The donkey now fully embodies what the first image merely suggested: a wisdom of accepted gravity, an intelligence of slow time, a way of being in the world that does not depend on human mediation. Its body fits the plank as if it knew exactly where to place its hooves. Where the man had to sit, uncover himself, speak, the donkey has nothing more to do than be there.
The fact that the scene unfolds without the man radically transforms the overall meaning. In the first image, the boat held because several regimes coexisted: speech, gaze, fidelity, endurance. Here, equilibrium persists despite—or because of—the effacement of the human figure. This does not mean that the human is disqualified, but that it is no longer the necessary center of the relation. The world can hold otherwise.
The relationship between the dog and the donkey thus becomes essential. It is not symmetrical. The dog stands on the side of movement, of appeal, of risk. The donkey stands on the side of stability, of waiting, of inscription in duration. Neither “corrects” the other. They embody two ways of inhabiting the same unstable balance. Here again one finds the key sentence: each way of seeing, however different, may have its merits. The image does not decide in favor of one or the other. It holds them on the same plank, above the same coil.
The wave, finally, seems almost indifferent to the figures. It continues its cyclical gesture, like a memory of the world that precedes and will outlast human scenes. It supports the boat without intention, without promise. It is not a threat, but an impersonal condition. The boat goes nowhere; it holds. Meaning does not progress; it persists.
If the first image could be read as a scene of conscious navigation, inhabited by speech and unveiling, this one resembles more a scene of aftermath. After the withdrawal of the man—or his fall. After the gesture. After the word. What then remains are forms of life that continue to look at one another, to measure themselves, to coexist on a line that is too narrow, and yet still hold.
The image thus seems to pose a more radical, almost silent question: what becomes of meaning when the one who names it is absent? And the answer is neither tragic nor consoling. It is simply there, embodied by a blue dog stretched toward an immobile donkey, on a boat that is still floating.