V. Man and monster: the same breath

“For the monster is not what we think it is. It is not out there, lurking in the forests or in the depths of the sea. It is within us, and whoever seeks to destroy it destroys himself. Perhaps, instead, we must recognize it, welcome it, let it breathe. For within it lies the oldest part of our breath, the part that binds us to the night of the world and to its beginning. And if we manage not to turn away our eyes, then, in its dark gaze, something divine gazes back at us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge 

 

 

 

— Tell me, Lucian… it seemed to me, without meaning to be indiscreet, that you do more than just write in that notebook that occupies you all the time, and… if I’m not mistaken, you rather deftly turned the page when I came close to you…

— Listen, my friend, man and monster are the two faces of the same being: one on the side of the visible, the other on the side of the hidden.

— Like in your notebook!

— They mirror one another, like the wave and its reflection. And if the figure sometimes disappears into the light, it is because he now belongs to the cycle of the Leviathan: he resurfaces in the gaze of the spectator.

 I had sensed it, and he had foreseen it:

 — The monster and the man are bound like background and figure. One exists only through the other. And the observer, by looking long enough, ends up becoming part of the monster.

 

The Submerged Critic

 — You see, as I write, I realize that I am no longer speaking about “him,” but about myself…

 — That’s what I thought I discerned the last time I looked at that drawing…

— For each time I describe an image, I enter it. I become that castaway. I become part of the monster. I too am swallowed by what I look at.

— That’s exactly what I see, the figure has changed… or perhaps it was always you!

Could it be that you are the author of the drawing I acquired from that gallery I told you about?

In that case, I understand better now…

A small part of the mystery becomes clearer.

Without really confirming this hypothesis, and without dwelling on it, he continued:

— Critical vision is not an analysis from a distance: it is a descent into the image.

The critic is a diver. Each sentence is an act of apnea. And when he surfaces again, he no longer quite knows what he has seen, only that it has changed him.