Absence (english translation)

I had no intention of returning to it.
I wrote that word as one records a fact, without commentary. A material, banal absence: Lucian leaves the room for a few minutes, his notebook remains open on the desk. Nothing more.

And yet, I return to that word.
In our field, no absence is neutral. I know this too well to pretend otherwise. Absence is never merely a withdrawal of the body; it marks a momentary breach in the holding of a position. It opens something. It authorizes a gaze, an intrusion, sometimes an irreversible displacement.

I could write: absence of the analyst.
I try to prevent myself. Too late. That formulation is already charged, too quickly interpretable. I prefer to remain as close as possible to the fact. Lucian steps out. His notebook remains there. What strikes me is not so much that Igniatius saw the drawings, but that they offered themselves to him without mediation. Not shown, but left visible. As if, for a moment, the boundary between what is noted for oneself and what may be seen by the other had been erased.

I wonder—and this question irritates me—whether this absence was merely contingent. Whether it was not, on the contrary, necessary for what was to follow. Images acquire authority only from the moment no one can explicitly claim their origin. Present, Lucian could have spoken. Absent, he let them be seen.

I note this, then reproach myself for noting it. I have the impression of forcing meaning, of exaggerating the importance of a detail. And yet, I cannot consider this episode indifferent. Perhaps absence is not what is lacking here, but what acts.

I close this parenthesis. Provisionally.

I reread what I have written about absence.
It is not false. It is even too accurate. Too well contained. As if I had closed too quickly what I had opened. Something is missing.

I feel it without being able to name it. And this very feeling—this lack, this slight discomfort—brings me back precisely to what I am trying to think: absence is never only what is not there. It is what leaves a vacant place, a place that continues to exist even when it is no longer occupied.

I spoke of absence as withdrawal, suspension, lack of presence. But I was not attentive enough to this point: one is absent only from something. One is absent in relation to an expectation.

Absens, ab esse. To be separated from being-there. Not not to be, but to be elsewhere than where one should be.

What may have escaped me in my first note is that absence does not produce emptiness. It produces a charge. A tension. Something that insists precisely because it is no longer there.

I wonder whether what troubles me so much in Lucian’s absence is that it displaced authority. As long as he was present, Lucian could speak, explain, orient. That is his role. His gaze and his words held the images at a distance. But when he stepped away, the drawings ceased to be held within discourse. They presented themselves as they were.

Present, he could have said: these are my sketches, or these are yours.
Absent, he said nothing. And that silence is not neutral.

I realize that I am still confusing absence and lack. Yet they are not the same. Lack refers to a loss. Absence refers to a place left vacant—a place that continues to call for someone. Who?

In the consulting room that day, the analyst’s place was not empty. It was unoccupied. And perhaps that is what made Igniatius’s gaze toward the notebook possible. As if absence had authorized a crossing.

What was absent may not have been Lucian as a person, but the function he embodied at that precise moment. And with it, the guarantee of origin.

I understand better now what disturbed me in my own writing. I analyzed absence as a concept, whereas what troubles me is simpler and more unsettling: absence acts. It does not erase; it displaces. It opens a space where attribution becomes uncertain, where authority wavers.

I believe this is what was still missing from my first note: the recognition that absence is not merely what one observes after the fact, but what produces the situation itself.

I stop here. Not because everything is clear, but because I sense that continuing would take me too far. There are absences that are better not filled too quickly.