(90) Summary of the Story (continuation 1)

 

Félix’s Notebook

The story is not seeking a fertile plain. It is seeking a rare patch of earth, like a fissure in basalt or a pocket of soil capable of receiving a root. Sometimes a single one is enough.
The characters seem to live according to this law. The Moon Child finds temporary refuge in a drawing. Don Carotte in a staff. Pinocchio the Other in a word he has not yet spoken. Igniatius in an image. Lucian in a copy. I myself, perhaps, in these notes. None of us seems settled.
We resemble travelers moving from island to island. And yet, for some time now, another image has imposed itself upon me…
The circus.
I am surprised that it took me so long to see it.
For almost from the very beginning, everything was already there.
The circus arrives from nowhere.
It appears on the horizon like a new island.
It chooses a patch of ground. It raises its poles. It stretches its ropes. Then, within a few days, it builds something that resembles a dwelling.
Yet no one is deceived… this dwelling is temporary. Its poles enter the ground without ever taking root there. They draw the image of rootedness. They borrow its form. They refuse its duration. Thus the big top possesses something profoundly paradoxical.
It gives the impression of a center.
Yet… this center travels.
It gives the impression of a home… and that home lives by departure.
It gives the impression of a place whose only truth lies in passage.
I am beginning to suspect that the story I am reading functions in much the same way. Every drawing resembles a tent raised in the midst of the wind.
Every letter temporarily creates a habitable space. Every character acts like a pole supporting a canvas larger than himself… and then the whole structure is dismantled… and moves on…