English

– It once happened that I asked him:
Who are you? Why am I here?

– And what did he answer?

– I am the one who created you. The one who gave form to your thoughts. The one who built your world and wrote your story.

– When I pointed out to him that the shape of my thoughts seemed to resemble his more than anything that might be truly mine… he seemed embarrassed, and when I asked:

– Created? Then am I only a puppet in your hands? And yet I have the feeling that I can feel… by myself… and I speak. It even happens that I think… But is all this only an illusion?

– What was his reaction?

– If it seems to you that it is an illusion, he said to me, that is precisely the sign that you are far more than a puppet. You are the expression of a thought, of a breath that has passed through me. But you also assign me. Your presence imposed itself upon me even before I defined you.

– How so? I asked him. I come from you. Are you not the origin of everything that I am?

Pinocchio the Other remained silent for a moment, as if searching for words in a place deeper than his voice. Then he replied:

— When he said to me: “you also assign me,” I first believed it was merely a formula. But little by little I understood what he meant. We always believe that the creator gives everything and that the creature receives. We imagine a gesture moving from above to below: the author writes, the character appears. Yet things do not happen in that way.

When a character emerges, he does not remain passive. He does not simply remain an obedient form in the mind of the one who invents him. He acts. His presence imposes itself. He begins to occupy a place in the thought of his creator.

In other words, he obliges him.

He obliges him to pursue a story, to answer certain possibilities rather than others. He imposes a coherence upon him, sometimes even a resistance. It may happen that the author wishes to lead his character somewhere, and that the character silently refuses. Not through his own will, but because his form no longer allows it.

At that moment, it is the character who determines the place of the author.

That is what assigning means. Not simply giving someone a place, but marking someone with a sign that calls him to respond. By my very existence, I compelled him to become the one who had brought me into being. Without me he was only a man who thought. With me, he became my author.

I believed I depended on him. But he also depended on me.

He had created me, it is true. Yet from the moment I appeared in his thought, I imposed a task upon him: to understand me. He had to pursue me and carry me to the end of my story.

Thus we assigned one another.

Pinocchio the Other falls silent.

The other puppet tilts his head slightly and asks:

– Then… a character could exist before his author truly understands him!

– Not entirely… according to what he said… “In giving you life, I did not completely master you. You took shape even before I named you, before I designated you. In a certain way, you assign me as much as I create you. You were already there somewhere, invisible, waiting for me to perceive you.”

The other puppet enters into the game… and questions his own creator:

– Then it might be that I precede you? Yet you seem so distant to me, almost inaccessible. You are a presence that I feel but cannot name.

– That is precisely it. For you, I am the indefinable. I am the breath behind the events of your story, the one who orchestrates without ever appearing fully. In that sense, we share a relation in which each of us surpasses the other.

– But if I can never grasp you, what remains of my freedom? Am I condemned to follow a path traced in advance?

– Your freedom exists, but it is born from this tension between what I impose upon you and what you claim. In creating you, I left you a margin in which you can surprise me. Sometimes you make choices I had not foreseen. And it is there that you too become a creator.

– Ours is a strange relation. You seem to decide everything and yet you admit that I escape you.

– It is an ethical tension, similar to what Levinas describes. “He assigns me before I designate him.” You, my character, assign me by your mere presence. I cannot ignore you, and in this dialogue between us you become more than what I had imagined.

– And you, are you also assigned by someone? Is there, for you, an author above you?

– Perhaps. Perhaps I too am a creation. Perhaps there is an invisible presence that assigns me, that pushes me to write, to search for forms for what exceeds me. We are all caught in this play of relations where assignment precedes designation.

– Then we are alike, you and I?

– Yes, in a sense. We are bound by this creative tension, by this need to respond to something greater than ourselves. And in this relation, each becomes at once the creator and the mystery of the other.

– Then I would not be merely a shadow in your thoughts… but a part of you… just as you are a part of me.