Lucien is somewhat lost. He speaks to himself… more precisely, he speaks with himself.
– Forgive my inattention. How did I fail to see the transformation occurring in the child? Isolation, perhaps, disturbs my perception. Let us observe carefully what now presents itself to his eyes on this island of rock and silence.
Ah… his face has changed indeed. It is no longer the image of a childlike purity that crosses this strange landscape. Now the rider bears the mask of an aging man. A nearly white beard, dark and enigmatic eye sockets concealing every expression, every trace of recognizable humanity. Could this change be… significant?
The blue top hat remains, incongruous and yet persistent, like a vestige of an identity or a function. The body, clothed in the same garments as the vanished child, seems more angular. There is a rigidity in his posture, a palpable tension in the way he grips his staff.
The winged mount, the spectral donkey, continues its improbable flight through this mineral environment.
The landscape itself has changed. A luminous disc, warm orange in hue, appears in the background, haloed by what resembles clouds of smoke or vapor tinted with pink and violet. This light contrasts violently with the grey-green sky and the dark rocks, introducing a new dimension—perhaps of warmth, of danger, or of some cosmic presence.
The torn flags still flutter, yet they seem more faded now, almost absorbed by this new ambient light. Their meaning, therefore, may have evolved.
The mind of Lucien, the stranded psychiatrist, sets itself to work again, confronted with this new visual enigma. The replacement of the child by this figure—almost a mask—what meaning might it carry?
– The mask… a universal symbol of concealment, of social role, of what we choose to show or to hide. Who hides behind this enigmatic whiteness? Is it the loss of innocence? The entrance into a more complex age, where identities are constructed and concealed behind façades?
The persistence of the hat—still far too large, moreover—is it an attempt to preserve a part of that lost innocence? A stubborn memory of a former identity? Or merely an absurd ornament in this surreal journey?
The rigidity of the body… does it translate an increased anxiety, the loss of childhood’s lightness? The tension in the grip of the staff—or the cane—does it betray the fear of falling, of losing control of this strange ride?
And this light… this warm and diffuse source. Is it a new hope rising on the horizon of this desolate landscape? Or an imminent threat, a source of danger coloring the sky with an unsettling hue? The pink and violet spirals… are they not the emanations of an intense emotion—perhaps passion, anger, or even a form of madness?
The faded flags… has their meaning been diluted by this new light? Are they memories drifting away, regrets fading before a new reality?
If the first image could evoke a dream of lost innocence, this one seems to plunge more deeply into the complexities of identity, concealment, and ambivalent emotions. The journey continues, but the direction has reversed, and the passenger has changed. The landscape has taken on a new light, carrying as many promises as threats.
And tell me, Lucien… what does this transformation reveal to my own unconscious? The mask… does it not echo my own attempts to conceal my weaknesses, my doubts, behind the façade of clinical rationality? And this new light, so intense… is it not the reflection of an awakening, a sudden illumination that disrupts my isolation?
How can one speak of a book that one has read… but that does not exist? And that nevertheless begins to exist at the very moment one speaks about it. The situation may seem absurd… yet perhaps it is not entirely so. The book in question does not present itself as an ordinary novel that one could follow from beginning to end according to the reassuring progression of a plot.
The first word of the title itself deserves a moment of attention: “abracadabrant.” The term obviously derives from abracadabra, a magical formula whose history goes back to antiquity. Its first recorded appearance dates back nearly eighteen centuries in the writings of Quintus Serenus Sammonicus. In his Liber Medicinalis he recommended inscribing the word on an amulet intended to cure fever by arranging it in the form of an inverted triangle, each line removing a letter until only a single “A” remained. This progressive reduction was supposed to drive away the spirit responsible for the illness.
One cannot help being struck by this strange operation that consists in gradually reducing a word until its simplest core remains. Such a decomposition almost evokes an alchemical process: removing the superfluous, dissolving successive forms in order to reach what remains when everything else has disappeared. This reduction to the essential has a particular resonance if we recall that the first letter of the alphabet, the “A,” probably finds its origin in Proto-Sinaitic writing, where it represented a stylized bull’s head. This primitive sign, slowly rotated and simplified over the centuries, would become the initial letter of our alphabets. Thus the magical formula that contracts into a single “A” seems almost to rediscover a point of origin where writing, symbol, form and animal force still merge.
Abracadabra was therefore originally an apotropaic word, a formula intended to ward off misfortune. Its exact origin remains debated: some see in it a Hebrew root meaning “I create through speech,” others an Aramaic formula linked to the creation of man. In any case, the word gradually left the medical and magical domain to become the universal sign of improbable marvel, unexpected trick, sudden metamorphosis. To use today the adjective “abracadabrant” is therefore to suggest that a strange phenomenon is taking place before our eyes—something belonging at once to mystery, transformation, and a kind of prestidigitation of meaning.
This is exactly the impression the book gives.
It resembles rather a collection of traces: recovered notebooks, recurring drawings, letters, fragments of narratives, interrupted dialogues, philosophical quotations. Everything seems scattered, as if the story had to be recomposed from dispersed materials.
At this stage it may be necessary to clarify that the principal difficulty does not lie in the existence of these fragments but in their organization. The word itself must here be understood in its most concrete sense. It derives from the word “organ,” itself from the Greek organon, meaning an instrument but also a living part of a body. To organize therefore does not merely mean to classify or arrange elements. It means making different parts function together like the organs of an organism. The fragments of this book— notebooks, drawings, voices, narratives—are perhaps not simply scattered pieces that one might arrange at will. They resemble rather the still-dispersed organs of a body in the process of forming. Their exact place remains uncertain, yet one senses that they belong to the same living structure. The problem is therefore not so much to align them in a rigid order as to find the circulation that will allow the whole to breathe.
At the center of this ensemble stands a psychiatrist named Lucian. He has not always borne this name: formerly he was called Lucien. The modification is not merely graphic. It also refers to a more ancient origin of the name. “Lucian” refers to the Latin Lucianus, derived from Lucius, itself from lux, light. The displacement of the name may thus be understood as a paradoxical movement: not a rupture with the origin but a return toward it. A kind of reverse evolution bringing the character back to the luminous root of his own name.
Lucian is therefore not only the one who listens. He gradually becomes the one who attempts to bring something to light within the darkness of a collection of documents that seem to tell a story—but a fragmented one.
These documents reach him through a patient named Igniatius.
The name itself deserves attention. It seems to carry within it the idea of a beginning. Its initial—this upright “I”—appears like an inaugural stroke, almost like the first line of a drawing. Yet this vertical line already contains an ambivalence. It stands in space and suggests an upward movement, as if something were rising from the ground toward the light. Yet when one draws it, the elementary gesture moves in the opposite direction. The hand descends from top to bottom. From sky toward earth. The sign of beginning is therefore drawn as a vertical fall preceding the emergence of what is about to appear. In this simple stroke—one of the most elementary graphic gestures—the paradox of an origin that descends in order to allow something to emerge is already inscribed.
Igniatius thus appears, within the economy of the narrative, as the one who sets something in motion. The one through whom the story begins. One might almost say: in the beginning was Igniatius… if…
The first word of the title itself deserves a moment of attention: “abracadabrant.” The term obviously derives from abracadabra, a magical formula whose history goes back to antiquity. Its first recorded appearance dates back nearly eighteen centuries in the writings of Quintus Serenus Sammonicus. In his Liber Medicinalis he recommended inscribing the word on an amulet intended to cure fever by arranging it in the form of an inverted triangle, each line removing a letter until only a single “A” remained. This progressive reduction was supposed to drive away the spirit responsible for the illness.
One cannot help being struck by this strange operation that consists in gradually reducing a word until its simplest core remains. Such a decomposition almost evokes an alchemical process: removing the superfluous, dissolving successive forms in order to reach what remains when everything else has disappeared. This reduction to the essential has a particular resonance if we recall that the first letter of the alphabet, the “A,” probably finds its origin in Proto-Sinaitic writing, where it represented a stylized bull’s head. This primitive sign, slowly rotated and simplified over the centuries, would become the initial letter of our alphabets. Thus the magical formula that contracts into a single “A” seems almost to rediscover a point of origin where writing, symbol, form and animal force still merge.
Abracadabra was therefore originally an apotropaic word, a formula intended to ward off misfortune. Its exact origin remains debated: some see in it a Hebrew root meaning “I create through speech,” others an Aramaic formula linked to the creation of man. In any case, the word gradually left the medical and magical domain to become the universal sign of improbable marvel, unexpected trick, sudden metamorphosis. To use today the adjective “abracadabrant” is therefore to suggest that a strange phenomenon is taking place before our eyes—something belonging at once to mystery, transformation, and a kind of prestidigitation of meaning.
This is exactly the impression the book gives.
It resembles rather a collection of traces: recovered notebooks, recurring drawings, letters, fragments of narratives, interrupted dialogues, philosophical quotations. Everything seems scattered, as if the story had to be recomposed from dispersed materials.
At this stage it may be necessary to clarify that the principal difficulty does not lie in the existence of these fragments but in their organization. The word itself must here be understood in its most concrete sense. It derives from the word “organ,” itself from the Greek organon, meaning an instrument but also a living part of a body. To organize therefore does not merely mean to classify or arrange elements. It means making different parts function together like the organs of an organism. The fragments of this book— notebooks, drawings, voices, narratives—are perhaps not simply scattered pieces that one might arrange at will. They resemble rather the still-dispersed organs of a body in the process of forming. Their exact place remains uncertain, yet one senses that they belong to the same living structure. The problem is therefore not so much to align them in a rigid order as to find the circulation that will allow the whole to breathe.
At the center of this ensemble stands a psychiatrist named Lucian. He has not always borne this name: formerly he was called Lucien. The modification is not merely graphic. It also refers to a more ancient origin of the name. “Lucian” refers to the Latin Lucianus, derived from Lucius, itself from lux, light. The displacement of the name may thus be understood as a paradoxical movement: not a rupture with the origin but a return toward it. A kind of reverse evolution bringing the character back to the luminous root of his own name.
Lucian is therefore not only the one who listens. He gradually becomes the one who attempts to bring something to light within the darkness of a collection of documents that seem to tell a story—but a fragmented one.
These documents reach him through a patient named Igniatius.
The name itself deserves attention. It seems to carry within it the idea of a beginning. Its initial—this upright “I”—appears like an inaugural stroke, almost like the first line of a drawing. Yet this vertical line already contains an ambivalence. It stands in space and suggests an upward movement, as if something were rising from the ground toward the light. Yet when one draws it, the elementary gesture moves in the opposite direction. The hand descends from top to bottom. From sky toward earth. The sign of beginning is therefore drawn as a vertical fall preceding the emergence of what is about to appear. In this simple stroke—one of the most elementary graphic gestures—the paradox of an origin that descends in order to allow something to emerge is already inscribed.
Igniatius thus appears, within the economy of the narrative, as the one who sets something in motion. The one through whom the story begins. One might almost say: in the beginning was Igniatius… if…
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