“One of the major aspects of the famous ‘Greek miracle’ is that it proceeds from the knowledge of facts to the generality of abstraction. For example, the Ancients had discovered that, in a triangular piece of cultivable land of a given surface area and bounded by a right angle, the sides had a certain length that defined the property. This was surveyor’s knowledge. It took Pythagoras to show that in every right triangle in the universe, the square of the side opposite the right angle was equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. This discovery had one virtue: it could bring any human being, whatever their origin or opinion, into agreement on a fact of knowledge. The first philosophers were often mathematicians because they sought constant laws capable of bringing everyone into agreement. No doubt countless things, great and small, important or futile, are needed to establish concord among human beings. But none is negligible. Every discovery, whether philosophical or scientific in nature, is necessarily precious.
Concord is not an empty concept; on the contrary, it is filled with a multitude of points of agreement on the most varied subjects. It is often only with difficulty that constant laws finally impose themselves; Galileo and Darwin paid dearly for knowing this.”
Concord is not an empty concept; on the contrary, it is filled with a multitude of points of agreement on the most varied subjects. It is often only with difficulty that constant laws finally impose themselves; Galileo and Darwin paid dearly for knowing this.”
Philippe Val, Le sujet face au réel, Éditions in Press
Where theatre, according to Félix’s notebooks, is regarded as the place of appearance, theory as the attempt to understand what appears, and where the Moon Child, without knowing it, already walks within that intermediate space where seeing and understanding have not yet become separate. Beneath the feathers of our two narrators, letters and words slip endlessly onward...
— The fire of the story is not an end.
— Then what is it?
— It is the light of the origin, the light that precedes language and consumes everything that pretends to permanence. Theatre is a mouth...
— And we... the thinkers...
— Oh! How far you go!
— We are always already in the process of being swallowed.
— I hope you are mistaken.
— I do not believe I am. Look instead at the Moon Child. There he goes beneath our ancient perches, his long pilgrim's staff in hand, perhaps persuaded that he is crossing nothing more than an abandoned stage set...
— Is he mistaken?
— Like all travellers worthy of the name.
— Then where is he walking?
— Through a story and a time that preceded him.
— You speak of him as though he were a character.
— Because he persists... just as we do... in being one... or perhaps two...
— And does he know it?
— Fortunately, no.
— Why fortunately?
— Because a character who knows himself completely ceases at once to travel.
— And what if he were merely a passer-by... by chance?
— Passers-by are characters who do not yet know themselves.
— That is a remarkably convenient formula.
— The best formulas always are. They open a door and vanish before anyone thinks to ask for their papers.
— Yet I see only a child moving among beams, ropes, and columns.
— Because you are looking at the stage.
— What else should one look at?
— That which is looking through it.
— There you go again.
— And there you are, resisting once more.
— As you know, someone must undertake the task.
— Certainly. Without sceptics, prophets would eventually believe everything they say.
— Whereas without prophets, sceptics would die of hunger.
— Thus, like them, we are condemned to travel together.
— Like those two ancient verbs mentioned by a scholar we have never read and yet somehow remember.
— I do not follow.
— Precisely... to see and to understand.
— If I trust my instinct, I would have thought them distinct.
— Distinct as the two faces of the same coin. One receives the light; the other preserves its imprint.
— A beautiful image.
— It is not mine.
— Whose is it, then?
— I do not know. Stories are full of lost objects that continue to be useful.
— There is another sentence you have picked up by the roadside as a child might find a seashell.
— Stories are made that way. We invent by remembering.
— That formula pleases me rather more, though it leaves me thoughtful.
— Because it is true.
— Should one not be wary of truths that arrive too elegantly dressed?
— Then look at that child. There he goes, seemingly convinced—perhaps he truly believes it—that he is merely moving through scenery.
— He may imagine himself crossing an abandoned theatre, a forgotten machine, some warehouse of dreams...
— And you think he is mistaken?
— No. I merely think he does not yet realise that he himself is one of the sets.
— That is hardly charitable.
— Why? Mountains are scenery. Seas are scenery. Even the stars consent to play a role. Is it barbarous or cruel to say so?
— You turn the entire universe into a performance...
— ...and you turn it into theory.
— Truly, you would leave me nothing.
— On the contrary. I leave you the most difficult task.
— And what would that be?
— To understand what you see.
— And what task have you taken upon yourself?
— I try, as best I can, to see what no one yet understands.
— That is, at the very least, a considerable ambition.
— You credit me with princely designs, though I do not even possess a properly fitted crown of feathers.
— Please do not evade the question.
— I evade nothing. I merely marvel that you attribute such vast pretensions to our species.
— Forgive me, but seeing what no one yet understands is no small undertaking.
— Certainly. But beyond us... it is not we who look first.
— Who, then?
— The world itself.
— That is a very distant and very obscure answer.
— No more so than dawn. Before men gave it a name, light was already illuminating the mountains.
— I am trying to follow you... Are you suggesting that meaning precedes its interpreters?
— I am suggesting, quite prosaically, that we always arrive a little late.
— Even we?
— Especially we.
— And what do we do then?
— What old storytellers, astronomers, and birds do: we record the traces.
— Traces of what?
— Of that which is still trying to appear.
— You speak like an explorer.
— No... like a witness.
— The difference?
— A fortunate explorer discovers a continent.
— And a daring witness?
— A witness, no less fortunate, discovers that he was already living there.
— That brings us rather strangely back to our traveller.
— Nothing has ever taken us away from him.
— Do you think he knows where he is going?
— Heroes almost never know... nor do they need to.
— And storytellers?
— They are slightly less ignorant...
— That does not greatly reassure me... nor him.
— Reassuring him would be the surest way to lead him astray. Besides, he has little need of reassurance.
— You are cruel.
— No. The story sometimes is. It opens roads whose existence no one had requested.
— Yet that child walks with a steady step... certainly, but calmly.
— Because he still sees only the boards.
— I assume you mean the boards of this theatre. And you... what do you see?
— I already hear the distant sound of applause.
— What applause?
— The applause that precedes the performance.
— I thought applause followed it.
— In familiar theatres, yes.
— And here?
— Here, spectators sometimes applaud before the curtain has even risen.
— A curious custom indeed.
— It is because the spectators, if there are any, salute less what is about to be shown than the simple fact that an appearance is still possible.
— You speak as though every entrance upon the stage were a birth...
— ...and every birth an entrance upon the stage.
— Then this theatre would have no walls.
— Nor a roof.
— Nor an exit?
— Ah! That is a more delicate question.
— Then there is an exit?
— Perhaps...
— You hesitate.
— Some passages, like ancient doors, may be invisible.
— And where do they lead?
— To the same place.
— What place?
— The place from which the journey began.
— That sounds very much like a return.
— No.
— No?
— An appearance.
