Interminable hesitation

“You must know that I am made in such a way that any lasting relationship with people is painful to me, not for lack of attachment, but because it requires from me a presence that I cannot sustain. I then write in order to defend myself, not to explain myself. The letter becomes a form of survival, almost a hiding place. It replaces the speech I do not have the strength to utter and, at the same time, makes it more dangerous, because what is written can no longer be withdrawn.
That is why every letter is preceded by an interminable hesitation, and followed by an exhaustion whose nature I never know whether it is moral or physical. I would like to remain silent, but silence destroys me; I would like to speak, but speech betrays me. There remains only this constrained writing, this attempt to remain faithful to something that constantly escapes me. I do not write to be understood, but in order not to lose myself entirely.”

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

Félix’s notebook

I am writing this letter to myself with the very reasonable illusion that, by laying things out clearly, I will manage to set them aside. I know, even before beginning, that this method has never produced the expected effect on me. It illuminates and orders things in appearance. And then I must add that it insists… perhaps too much… But I persist, as if writing could still serve as a barrier.
I return, then, to Lucian. To what he writes and to what he keeps silent… but also to what he lets slip between the lines with an ease that is not entirely innocent. First hypothesis: he is hiding nothing from me, and I am confusing the fineness of his gaze with excessive involvement. It is possible that he is simply describing what he sees, and that my discomfort comes from the very quality of his attention. Some descriptions, when they are too accurate, give the impression of a commitment that does not exist.
Second hypothesis, more troubling: Lucian is more involved than he himself believes. He presents himself as a witness, but he chooses his words with a precision that is not neutral. He seems to follow the shifts of Don Carotte, then of Anatole, with a curiosity that exceeds clinical obligation. Perhaps he allows himself to be seduced by this circulation of roles, by this loss of center that he attributes to Igniatius, without recognizing that it affects him as well.
Third hypothesis, which I formulate reluctantly: Lucian knows very well what he is doing. He measures the effect of his letters; he knows what he gives me to read. He also knows, and I insist on this point, what he withholds. I cannot say that he lies. But he guides. He does not conceal… like a good photographer, he frames. From this perspective, his accounts would be less reports than discreet stagings, intended to test my own reading. This idea troubles me, because it implies an intention I have never wanted to attribute to him.
Fourth hypothesis, which concerns me more than him: I am too sensitive to this affair because it reactivates something older. Something like the confusion of names or the passage from one figure to another. There is also the impossibility of fixing a stable identity, which touches me more than I want to admit. I reproach Lucian for what, in reality, worries me in myself. In that case, my suspicions would be less analyses than convenient displacements.
I could continue… imagine that Lucian protects Igniatius more than he says. Suppose that he becomes attached to Don Carotte, then to Anatole, as figures that allow him to think differently about his own role. Consider that he uses me as a relay, consciously or not, to stabilize what escapes him. Each hypothesis seems to call for the next, not to contradict it, but to expand it.
This is where I should stop. I know it. I feel very clearly the moment when reflection ceases to illuminate and begins to produce its own fog. Laying things out clearly was supposed to help me set them aside. I note, without excessive surprise, that I have mostly made them more present.
I therefore close this letter while pretending that it has served its purpose. I leave it here, for myself alone, with the modest hope that, in writing it, I have at least shifted the center of gravity of my worries. As for whether I will manage not to return to them, I prefer not to answer.

Félix