(109) Seeing what one means to say

Where there exists an intermediate territory between appearance and understanding... a territory in which figures are born.

From Félix's notebook

I recently found myself dwelling on a kinship whose strangeness I had never fully appreciated. The words theater and theory, which today seem to stand in opposition, nevertheless belong to the same family. Both descend from an ancient idea of seeing.
The theater was originally the place from which one looks. Theory was the act of contemplating itself. At their origin, therefore, neither designated an art nor a system of explanation, but rather a certain way of attending to what appears.
Perhaps this is why these two words, despite their apparent separation, continue quietly to echo one another. Theater shows. Theory attempts to understand what is shown. The one presents figures; the other seeks to discern the relations that unite them.
Yet this distinction itself may not be as clear as it seems. A theory arranges concepts much as a director arranges actors upon a stage. A theater, for its part, never ceases to propose a vision of the world, sometimes more profound than the discourses that claim to explain it.
I am beginning to suspect that seeing and understanding are not two entirely distinct operations. Between them lies an intermediate region where something appears before receiving a meaning, and where meaning itself is formed only from what has appeared.
It is probably within this uncertain region that the two parrots like to install their conversations.

– That expression is itself remarkable.
– Which expression do you mean?
– When you say: “I see what you mean.”
– But I have not said anything!
– Just imagine! No one imagines that you are literally looking at something with your eyes. Yet the verb to see remains.
– We could have said: “I understand what you mean.” But we do not always do so. As though understanding retained the memory of a more primitive operation: making something appear.
– That may be one of the deeper reasons for the kinship between theater and theory.
– What kinship?
– Both belong to a domain in which understanding means, first of all, making something visible.
Besides, when something becomes intelligible, we speak of illumination, light, clarity.
– An idea is obscure or luminous.
– A problem becomes clearer.
– A demonstration sheds light.
– Our entire language associates knowledge with vision. But the expression “I see what you mean” contains an additional subtlety.
– Which one?
– You do not say: “I see what you are saying.”
– That is not entirely true... but go on.
– You say: “I see what you mean.”
In other words, what becomes visible is not merely the speech itself, but the intention inhabiting it.
– Thus I claim to perceive something that is not directly given in the words.
– And perhaps that is where theory once again joins theater.
– In the theater, we see gestures, faces, movements. Yet what we often seek to see is what is taking place behind them.
– I understand... Likewise, in a theory, we see concepts, diagrams, arguments. Yet what we seek to glimpse is a deeper structure that reveals itself only through them.
– Félix might even note in his notebooks that stories often function in this way.
– Lucian believes he sees drawings.
– Igniatius believes he sees stories.
– Félix believes he sees explanations.
– Yet each gradually discovers that he is always looking at something other than what he thought he was looking at.
– As in the theater.
– As in a theory.
– As in a mirror.
– One believes one sees the object. Then one realizes that one is looking at an appearance.
– And sometimes, in the strangest moments, one no longer knows whether one sees because one understands, or understands because one sees.
– Perhaps it is within that hesitation that what Félix calls figures are born...
– They appear before they are understood...
– ...and they often continue to be contemplated long after one has ceased to believe one understands them.