Semblance

I feared that during our next meeting the atmosphere of our conversation might be disturbed by the mutual misunderstandings we had displayed. Yet, either I was mistaken, or Lucian — whom I was preparing to call Mr. Lucian… not without a touch of anger… at least a little… or out of defiance — simply continued, as though nothing had happened, addressing me by my first name in the same tone.
– You see, Ignatius, I suggest we explore theatre — in general, certainly, but here… in particular. I mean the theatre of your images. It reveals that identity is never fixed, but a play of roles, a passage… the passe, a performative construction.
– You think that through a drawing we might play with identity… as others play the piano!
Without a second’s hesitation, Lucian replied with disarming ease:
– Yes, identity is played, but this play must lead to inner appropriation, to an authentic “becoming oneself.”
Confused, Ignatius tried to explain himself, mixing initiation and barely veiled revolt:
– Yet, you know… or at least you must suspect… when I draw… what lies before us, since, according to you… I would be the author of these drawings… right now, here in front of you, I no longer know who I am… and afterwards — and you know it better than I — I do not remember having done it…
– Where theatre reveals the plurality of masks, there lies the risk of remaining in the mask: one may perform life rather than live it. And I see that this is precisely what is happening to you. In drawing you wear a mask… Look closely, and you cannot deny a striking resemblance to yourself!
– So you are saying there is no given identity, only processes — changing roles or constructing oneself through representation.
– Kierkegaard would say:
“Man is not first himself. He must become himself.”
But this becoming does not occur on the social stage — it takes place within. There is within us an “inner stage” where the drama of the self unfolds.
– And the outer theatre?
– The outer theatre reveals the multiplicity of the self. What matters, in the end, is: who is the spectator?
– When I play a social role, the spectator is the public, but when I “become myself,” is the spectator the one some call God… or… I prefer this, my conscience.
– You are right and you know it, Ignatius: authenticity is not performance but inner testimony. Being is built through play, rupture, passages…
Within, Ignatius still felt a deep disagreement with Lucian. This feeling had arisen the moment he saw Lucian’s sketches and instantly recognised their kinship with the drawings he had purchased in a gallery and brought to the man he believed to be his friend — who now claimed that, on the contrary, Ignatius himself had drawn them. Childish, even infantile behaviour, he thought… especially since Lucian was clearly recognisable in the drawings… The more he pondered it, the more the feeling grew quietly inside him and the less open he became to dialogue.

How — by erasing evidence with clever rhetoric and false pretexts — had play become a trap into which Lucian sought to make him fall? Ignatius wondered, as Lucian’s armchair, at times, replaced the monster’s mouth and seemed ready to devour him…
– You may perhaps think the social game is a trap, Ignatius? asked Lucian, as if he had read his patient’s thoughts.