Dark part

 
“Immensity is within us. It is linked to a kind of expansion of being that life restrains, that prudence arrests, but which returns in solitude.”

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Behind and beyond words, there remains a lived immensity, an intimate recognition between the fractured landscape and the “dark part” of oneself. What has not been written is not absent; it is precisely what continues, subtly, to act.
Lucian’s journal
Today I reread my field notes, and I am struck by their dryness. I recorded angles, rock tones, hypotheses about the age of the strata, as if the mountain could be reduced to figures and exact words. I did this almost mechanically, yet at the same time I could not help being overwhelmed by emotions as varied as everything I was observing. And yet, as I reread them, deeply buried, I sense what I omitted, what makes me shiver: the dark part of myself that recognized itself in this broken elevation.
I understand better now why Don Carotte, so compliant with my wishes until then, seems to rebel.
I had written: uplifted schists, sharp ridges, witnesses of an ancient upheaval. But now I understand this upheaval differently… contradictory forces… for the mountain does not merely rise: it resists its own birth.
Like Don Carotte and Sang Chaud…
It fractures as it emerges, as if every true ascent had to bear within it the mark of rupture. In this, it resembles me. I too, like Igniatius, was formed under pressure, in obscure depths, slowly, without knowing what was driving me toward the surface.
These superimposed layers, these folds compressed against one another, I had described them as geological episodes. I no longer see in them only vanished times, but petrified memories. Each stratum is an ancient hesitation, each fault a brutal renunciation. The mountain preserves everything; it forgets nothing. What time destroys at the surface, it preserves in depth. So it is with the human soul: what we believe to be overcome continues to support our present form.
I remember the silence… of the mountain… and that of Igniatius. I had noted it as data: absence of perceptible fauna, constant wind. But this silence ended up speaking to me… just as Igniatius makes his characters speak. It reminded me that nature explains nothing; it exposes. The mountain does not justify its existence; it stands there, massive, indifferent, and it is for human beings to measure what this indifference reveals to them. This is no easy task. Facing it, my ambitions contracted. My certainties lost their sharpness. Little by little I understand that thinking, like rising, requires accepting instability.
Scientifically, I know these forms are destined to disappear. Erosion is already gnawing at them. Grain by grain, drop by drop, everything is reshaped. What the Earth took millions of years to erect, it dismantles with even greater patience. This slow destruction is not decadence. I see it as a continuation of movement. Igniatius continues as well… and this continuation takes place through the mediation of his creation. The mountain teaches me that to endure does not mean to remain intact. It teaches me to consent to transformation. Igniatius, too, despite some reluctance, consents to it.
As I close my notebooks, I realize that this landscape has become my involuntary portrait. It might seem inhospitable. As it is, it is unfinished and, like the mountain, crossed by lines of fracture that no quick glance could understand. I am, like it, the product of contrary forces. I feel a desire for elevation and an inner gravity. Within us there are many sudden impulses punctuated by silent collapses. And if I so wanted to measure the mountain by traversing it, it may be because I am seeking, without admitting it, to situate myself within the vast relief of the world.
Thus the mountain remains, not as an object conquered by science, but as a presence that transforms by transforming itself. It exposes itself to those who expose themselves to it. It broadens my gaze and enriches my thought. It deepens my silence and reveals that of Igniatius. I now know that every true exploration is double: it crosses continents, certainly, but it also cuts into the explorer. It stratifies him and can render him forever more vast… and more obscure.