Distance (english

 

“Speaking is not seeing.
To speak is to move away from what is,
to enter the movement of absence.”

Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature (1955)

Lucian’s notebook

If Sapiens narrans is the human who tells stories, Sapiens dissimulans is the one who selects. He censors and adjusts. He is the one for whom a story is not only what is said, but above all what is not said. Human narrative is never transparent. Beneath each sentence stands a shadow. Beneath that shadow works a veil which, in turn, conceals from view and reveals. We do not merely construct stories; in constructing them, we install silences. Before being moral, concealment is biological. In the animal kingdom, camouflage is a condition of survival. In humans, camouflage migrates from the body to the mind. We have learned to hide our fears so as not to be dominated. We rarely show our doubts so as not to be excluded. Our desires become discreet so as not to be judged, and we hide our vulnerability so as not to be wounded. Concealment is first and foremost an armor. It is not the opposite of truth. It is a strategy of preservation.

“Language begins where presence falls apart.”

This sentence by Maurice Blanchot says something very simple: we speak when what we live is no longer entirely there. As long as an experience is immediate and whole, it has no need of words. It suffices unto itself, in a natural silence. Language appears when this immediacy fades. When the direct bond with what we feel loosens, a distance is established. It is in this space that words become possible. They arise when experience is no longer fully present, when it asks to be understood. A word never fully covers what it designates. It comes after the experience. It retains a trace of it, a form, without being able to restore it as it was lived. To speak is to step back, to transform what has been felt into something that can be thought. This distance is essential in human life. We need words in order to pass through what affects us. Pain becomes speakable when it can be recognized and named. Fear becomes clearer when it can be formulated. Putting things into words helps us not to remain trapped in the raw intensity of sensations. Language always implies a selection. It cannot contain everything. It brings certain things into view and leaves others in the background. Silence remains present around words. It gives them space and allows them to exist. From this perspective, language makes it possible to give a human form to what we live through. It preserves something of experience when immediacy has receded. Meaning is born from this discreet work of shaping and transmission. Language is therefore not merely a means of communication. It is the space in which the human being learns to live with the distance that separates him from what he experiences. It is from this distance that narrative can unfold. It is there that the key is to be found that may open the door allowing access to the mystery of Igniatius.