Shared vigilance

While Lucian and Igniatius continue to line up words, Anatole takes distance, taking with him Sang Chaud, who has become Don Carotte…

 

 

It happens to me, over the course of the episodes of this long and chaotic story, whose constant occupation could give the illusion of a fully lived life, to feel within myself a singular fatigue, different from the one left by work or effort. It is a fatigue of presence, as if I had crossed the pages without ever truly stopping in them, and as if life, while unfolding around me with tireless generosity, had touched me only in places, where my attention had consented to settle.

 

 

I discover, and this discovery, far from reassuring me, gently unsettles me, that nothing really belongs to me in what I live… or in what we live… as long as I have not engaged that silent, almost secret faculty by which I make myself available to what is. The familiar islands, our circus, the changing light of the sky, certain beloved voices whose every inflection I nevertheless recognize, become foreign to me when my mind, occupied elsewhere, grants them only an oblique glance. You are there, unquestionably, but as if relegated to an inner penumbra; and I then understand that my life is not composed of what surrounds me, but of that to which I make myself present.

 

 

Dear Lucian,

I am writing to you after letting your last letter rest, not out of indifference but out of prudence. It called for this delay. Some texts benefit from being reread; yours demanded first to be endured. The formula with which you conclude, the one you know, has continued to accompany me, not as a confidence, but as a discreet indication of what is already beginning to unfold.

You put forward the idea that Igniatius presents himself as an author while, in reality, he would be a place of passage for figures he no longer governs. This hypothesis, as you know, is not insignificant. It involves less a theory of writing than a conception of responsibility. To be an author, even of fiction, presupposes a form of sovereignty. To be possessed, even by characters, implies a progressive dispossession that language then attempts to cover over.

What strikes me in your analysis is the way Igniatius always seems to arrive after the fact. You show him attentive to what occurs, quick to explain it, but rarely to initiate it. The transformations he attributes to an internal necessity of the narrative then take on another coloration. They resemble attempts at recovery more than decisions. He speaks to catch up. He justifies to maintain a coherence he senses to be threatened.

The disappearance of Don Carotte, followed by his reappearance under the name Anatole, seems to me significant in this respect. It is not so much the change of name that matters as the fact that it occurs without Igniatius being able to claim its source. He notes the effects, arranges the consequences, but does not master the impulse. The character does not transform; he shifts. And this shift directly affects the one who claimed to have created him.

As for Sang Chaud, his advance toward a central position seems to confirm your reading. This figure does not wait to be summoned. He occupies the available space with an assurance that does not proceed from permission granted. Igniatius, far from directing him, accompanies him as one follows a movement already under way. There is no conscious strategy here, but a continuous adaptation to what imposes itself.

I thus understand your recourse to the term possession, which you handle with a restraint that keeps it from any unnecessary dramatization. You do not describe a spectacular invasion, but a lasting porosity. Igniatius seems traversed by his own figures, affected by them, compelled to give them meaning after they have acted. This inversion of the usual relation between author and creation suffices to explain the feeling of revolt he attributes to his characters.

I do not believe this hypothesis should be taken as a verdict. It nonetheless sheds light on an essential point: what we call the insurrection of figures may well be the direct consequence of an authority already weakened. The characters do not rise up against a power that is too firm, but take advantage of a center that maintains itself only by force of discourse.

Your letter, by its very precision, bears witness to the attention you pay to this slippage. You write with a lucidity you know to be exposed, and this awareness of risk seems to me, for the moment, your best guarantee. It places you in a delicate position, but one that remains readable.

I send you these remarks not to contest your reading, but to acknowledge its scope. It seems to me that you are touching something that is right, and perhaps uncomfortable, for each of us. If Igniatius is less an author than a being traversed, then those who observe him are not entirely sheltered from this movement.

I therefore write to you with this shared vigilance, and with the conviction that what is at stake here already exceeds the categories we use to speak of it.

Please accept the expression of my attentive consideration,

Félix

Lucian, in relation to what Félix has just written to him and to the reply he has already sent, makes yet another addition… a response… perhaps an attempt at justification, concerning: “With an attention that still seeks to be lucid.”

Dear Félix,

Even before awaiting your response to the questions I addressed to you, I feel the need to add a few lines, as one returns to a word that, after the fact, has begun to weigh more heavily than expected. You isolated the formula with which I concluded my letter, and I acknowledge that it did not impose itself upon me by mere stylistic coquetry. It undoubtedly deserves that I attempt to respond to it, however imperfectly.

When I wrote “with an attention that still seeks to be lucid,” I did not intend to signal a wavering lucidity, nor to announce an imminent loss that I would be complacently anticipating. This still does not mark an announced fall. It rather designates an effort. It indicates that lucidity is no longer an acquired posture, but a task to be taken up again, almost to be reconquered, as what we observe slips away from familiar forms.

Your remark about the surpassing of categories led me to recognize this: what I call attention is no longer directed solely toward Igniatius. It sometimes folds back upon itself, as if to verify its own steadiness. I can no longer claim to observe from the outside a play of displacements that would not affect me. Attention must now watch itself as much as it watches. That is what this still, which you so rightly isolated, refers to.

I do not ignore that this word can be heard as a disguised confession. Perhaps it is one. It acknowledges that the boundary between analysis and implication is no longer as clear as I might have wished. Yet I cling to it as to a guardrail. As long as I can say still, I maintain the idea that a difference subsists between what is being played out and the way I look at it, even if this difference now needs to be actively maintained.

You ask me what I mean by what is at stake here. I believe I can say, without venturing too far, that what is at stake puts to the test our confidence in the positions we occupy. Author, observer, supervisor, character—these terms continue to circulate, but their use no longer guarantees the stability they once promised. My still acknowledges this instability without surrendering to it.

It is therefore less a dramatic premonition than an assumed vigilance. I write knowing that language here does not merely describe, but acts. It may illuminate, and in certain circumstances it may also displace. To say still is to accept remaining in this interval where one has not ceased to understand, but where one can no longer claim to understand as before.

I wished to share this clarification with you before you replied to me. Not to influence your reading, but to acknowledge that you touched upon a point that, for me as well, remains sensitive. Perhaps this is ultimately what allows us to continue writing without yielding to the temptation to close things too quickly.

With an attention that persists,

Lucian