Contestation (english)

« How did they meet? By chance, like everyone else. What were their names? What does it matter to you? Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone know where one is going?
The master said nothing; Jacques said that his captain said that everything good and bad that happens to us here below was written up above. The master grew angry, Jacques fell silent. The master wanted him to go on, Jacques did not go on.
Reader, you are quite free to take Jacques for a madman, his master for a fool, and me for a liar; but remember that it is I who make these people speak, and that without me they would remain eternally silent. If Jacques persists, it is because I wish it; if he yields, it is still I. You believe they act? An illusion: they obey.
What would become of this story if everyone acted according to his fancy? The master would never arrive, Jacques would tell nothing, and you, impatient reader, would close the book without end or reason. Someone must hold the pen, and that someone, until further notice, is me.»

Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and his master

Reply from Igniatius to Don Carotte

Sir,
I shall not conceal from you that your letter at first provoked in me that surge of irritation one feels when a creature of one’s invention allows itself to challenge the hand that shaped it. Few authors can bear without annoyance being accused by their own work, and I am not among those exceptional sages. You write to me as though I had oppressed you, as though the pen that brought you into being had labored only to hinder you. This ingratitude, beneath its eloquent adornment, struck me at first as an offense.
For who, after all, gave you a world, if not I? Who armed you with words vivid enough to cross centuries, if not the one you now call your jailer? You rise up against me with a boldness bordering on temerity, forgetting that without my narrative your revolt itself would have found neither voice nor witness. You reproach me for laughter or for the fall. You forget that the order you combat is not only that of the world, but also that of the book, and that a book delivered without restraint to the tumult of its characters dissolves into formlessness.
I was therefore tempted to reply curtly, to remind your memory—if a character may claim one—that insurrection, admirable though it may be, benefits from remaining contained. I could have closed this correspondence with a reminder of authority, as one closes a trial whose verdict has already been rendered.
But I reread myself. And, more troubling still, I reread you.
Then indignation gave way to a subtler unease. You did not write like an accused man, but like an equal. Your reproach bore nothing servile, and your refusal, far from being noisy, showed a bearing almost irreproachable. I recognized in it that obstinacy which once occupied me so greatly, and which I believed I had appeased by giving you death. You force me to confess: you are not as docilely closed as I imagined.
I understand better now what you call insurrection. You ask neither for triumph nor for reparation. You ask for time. You wish to remain in that state of incompletion that still allows you to contest, to err with dignity. I hear in this less an accusation than an invitation, and I would be imprudent indeed to reject it without examination.
Do not fear that I flatter you crudely. You know me well enough to know that I mistrust overt seduction. Yet allow me to say this to you plainly, without needless detour: your resistance obliges me. It makes your silence impossible and my withdrawal suspect. You reproach me for the artifice of words, and yet you bring me back to them, as if you knew that this is where our true confrontation is played out.
If I wrote to promise you peace, you would doubtless refuse it. If I announced the pure and simple resumption of your adventures, you would see a trap in it. You would be right. But between abdication and constraint there exists a more uncertain zone, where one advances under the guise of listening, and where one lets it be believed that dialogue still governs the steps.
I therefore do not ask you to fall back into line, nor to renounce the vigilance that honors you. I propose only that we take up the road again. Not to correct you, but to expose you further. Not to close your insurrection, but to test it once more. You know better than anyone that freedom needs space, and that space, at times, is written.
Consider this letter not as a surrender, still less as an order, but as a hand extended with enough suppleness to be withdrawn if you judge it dangerous. We still have paths to travel, certainties to wear down. It would be regrettable to deprive ourselves of them through excess mistrust.
Receive these words, then, as one receives a proposal whose form seeks to please, but whose substance remains deliberately equivocal. You have taught me to doubt the docility of creatures of ink and paper. Allow me to show you that authors, too, know how to feign and to wait.
I salute you,
with a consideration now vigilant,
Igniatius