The Emergence of the Double

One against the other their forces wildly hurled,
And the mountain shook with formidable blows
When they charged each other, through the mist, in the glows
Of great flashes followed by tumults shadow-whirled.

José-Maria de Heredia, “The Combat”, Other Sonnets and Various Poems

 

The sky, sad and heavy with storm and with cloud,
Presses down on the paths, in the exhausted shade,
The heightened scents of the lovestruck rose-bowers,
The sobbing rosebushes that lament to one another.

Anna de Noailles, “Voluptuousness”, Les Éblouissements

 

Félix, although it was late, the evening, then the night, far advanced, and the time allotted for their session long since exceeded, was still standing in his office. He moved a step away from the armchair where Lucian sat slumped. Something in his mind had radically shifted.
He took all the drawings brought by Igniatius, stacked them neatly on his desk with almost the delicacy of a collector, then, one by one, spread them out over the large low table like an investigator reconstructing a puzzle whose importance he senses as he begins his search.
Lucian watched him, too weary to prevent anything at all, like a man beginning to understand that something is being played out beyond him.
Félix contemplated the drawings in silence. A rare silence for him. All of him was dense, wholly absorbed.
Suddenly he stopped. Frozen.
His gaze suspended. Looking and pointing out a particular detail with precision, while giving the impression he was looking far away… much farther away…
— Ah.
He uttered this “ah” like a man who has just discovered a clue he would rather never have seen.
— Lucian… come here. Look at this.
Lucian got up and, mechanically, almost in spite of himself, stepped closer.

 

 

 

Félix pointed to a sketch in the notebook… then to a drawing… no, three drawings… where there appeared, partially, at the edge, like a sketched silhouette, finely traced… like the trace of a shadow on the white page. Clearly, the man dancing on a burning book recalled a figure he felt he recognised…
Félix touched and indicated the drawing with the tips of his fingers.
— You see, Ignatius… oops… I meant Lucian, he said. Look carefully at the lines. Not at what they show, Lucian: at what they make you think!

 

 Lucian bent over. And what he saw literally took his breath away.
The suggested profile, the slightly high forehead, the straight nose, the fine mouth, the discreet fold at the corner of the eye… all of it…
looked like him.
Félix watched him without moving.
— And here… and here… and again here…
He showed him other drawings where the same face appeared, sometimes clearer, sometimes barely outlined, but always recognisable.
Lucian stepped back and murmured with a strange mixture of timidity and certainty:
— I… I don’t understand…
Félix smiled briefly, a smile in which amusement, perplexity, unease, the urge to laugh, and a hint of gravity, which Lucian had never seen in him before, were all mingled.
— Neither do I, my dear… I do not understand. That is never a good sign. When the analyst and the supervisor stop understanding, it means something essential is trying to speak through an unavowed form.
He picked up one drawing and held it up to the light.
— This face doesn’t just resemble you, Lucian. It recognises you. Or rather… Igniatius recognises you in it. And you recognise yourself in him… But… would it be going too far to say that the drawing itself recognised you before you ever saw it?
Lucian remained speechless. Félix went on, more solemn still:
— This changes everything. Or rather, it confirms everything I’ve said — but on an even sharper register.
He laid the drawings and the notebook back on the table with a slow movement, as though he were handling a set of archaeological fragments that must be assembled.
— Lucian, if Igniatius sees you in his drawings, it means that your presence has taken form before even being thought through. You are, for him, the face that borders his mental archipelago. The witness. The guardian. The Other — in the Lacanian sense: the one who looks from behind the curtain. There may be a trail to follow here…
Félix drew a deep breath, as if about to say something dangerous.
— But it also means that, in a way you have not yet understood, you were already in his story before he met you. Not you, obviously… your figure. Your function. Your symbolic outline. The analyst pre-inscribed on the island of the other.
Lucian’s hands were shaking. Normally, that never happened to him.
— Are you saying that…
Félix interrupted him, gently but firmly:
— I’m saying that you have become, for Igniatius, the master of the edges… of the borders, if you like. The one who traces the edge of his archipelago, like those silhouettes in the drawings: too close to be ignored, too vague to be named. He places you at the origin because he has no origin. He places your face where he has no memory. It’s dizzying, but logical.
Lucian sank heavily into a chair. Félix continued, more softly, but with a depth that seemed to come from very far away:
— And now… a doubt imposes itself. Not a doubt about him: a doubt about you. Why did you leave that notebook open, Lucian? Why did you draw those forms, even without thinking? Why does this face return in the drawings of a man you didn’t yet know?
Lucian, in a muffled voice:
— I don’t know…
Félix gestured for calm.
— Don’t look for it yet. To find it too soon would destabilise you. But know this: what is happening between you two is not a simple transference. It is a knotting. A knot… an entanglement of your lacks. You have become a figure in his world. And he, without your intending it, has become a revealer in yours.
He concluded, sinking back into his chair with that joyful and cruel lucidity that was so characteristic of him:
— The problem, my dear Lucian, is not that Igniatius draws you. It’s that you have begun, without noticing it, to draw through him.
Silence. Then, very softly:
— And now… the two of you will have to stand together on that tightrope without falling into the abyss that opens between you.