Child Moon’s hat

Where Félix literally feels the image looking at him... compelling him, in turn, to look at it more closely still..

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Félix’s Notebook

The image before me, I can feel it, looks at me just as much as I look at it, but what unsettles me, or rather what compels me to remain before it longer than I would have thought, is not so much what it shows as what it knows about my own gaze, as though it had been constructed around that very simple weakness almost all of us have before an image: we assume that what is not given to us to see does not yet exist, or no longer exists, and we readily mistake for emptiness what may be nothing more than the limit of our perception.

And so I look at this child embarked in his upturned hat, now grown so vast that it can no longer really be regarded as a garment, or even as a simple object, since it has become a vessel, a boat’s hull, perhaps even a kind of externalised brain in which Child Moon has taken his place without my being able to decide whether he is sheltered there, held there, carried along, or already in the process of emerging from it, and I realise that once again it is I, with my habits as a spectator, who immediately tries to name what is happening, as though naming it might be enough to restore me to a position of mastery.

Yet it is precisely here that the drawing resists me, for Child Moon’s eyes are closed, and this detail, which I first interpreted as a sign of deprivation, begins to awaken in me an almost opposite suspicion... If he sees nothing, why does everything around him seem arranged for exploring or recognising? Those long filaments emerging from the hat, each ending in a small globe, do not drift like mere ornaments carried away by a current... they resemble eyes displaced from their usual position, eyes that have left the face in order to become tactile, peripheral, hesitant, almost animal, as though seeing now required touching from afar, brushing against, searching within a space whose resistance, however slight, matters as much as its form. And then an idea begins to trouble me even more... it may not be Child Moon who cannot see the world, but I. For the world he explores is not shown to me. I can see very clearly his body, his hands, his bare feet, his vessel, his eye-filaments, the long boat hook he holds with the attentiveness of someone who knows that too violent a contact may damage what he is approaching or throw him himself off balance, but I can see neither the shore towards which he is heading, nor the bottom he is sounding, nor the object he may be trying to recover from that invisible water into which something might fall, nor even the water itself, and this great whiteness around him, which I had at first taken for an indeterminate space, begins to seem to me less like the non-existence of a world... than like its absence for me alone. I therefore find myself in a rather uncomfortable position: my eyes are open, his are closed, and yet it is he who is exploring.

The boat hook he holds makes this difference almost tangible, because it belongs to a gesture that sight cannot replace. A navigator uses it to come alongside without causing damage, to gauge a nearness before the vessel is made to suffer it, to hold back, push away, reach towards, but also, when something has fallen into the water and disappeared beneath the surface, to search the bottom for what the eye can no longer reach... It then extends the arm into an element foreign to the body, not in order to master it but to attempt contact within it, and that is what touches me most in the image, this way Child Moon has of not entering the unknown as one enters a territory to be conquered, but as one approaches something fragile, or as one searches for what has been lost without yet knowing whether it can be brought back.

I am no longer certain, then, that one should say he is advancing into the unknown, for that formulation assumes that he and I share the same ignorance, whereas nothing assures me that we do. It would be more accurate to say that he is advancing through a world whose visibility I do not possess, and that his closed eyes, his eyes displaced to the ends of their filaments, his hat turned vessel, and his boat hook plunged into that outside denied to me together compose a way of knowing to which I have access only indirectly, through the gestures it produces.

That, in the end, is what looks at me... or touches me in this image... not Child Moon himself... nor even those small globes that seem to be looking in every direction... but the gap that suddenly opens between seeing and believing that one sees, between what is not represented and what does not exist, between absence and the invisible... I then understand that the white surrounding this strange navigation is not asking to be filled, that it is neither a gap left by the draughtsman nor a setting still waiting to be completed, but the exact place where my own vision comes to an end while something, for Child Moon, continues.

I thought I was looking at an image... and little by little I realise that it is measuring how far I am capable of looking without seeing.

O chapéu da Criança Lua

Onde Félix sente literalmente a imagem olhar para ele... obrigando-o, assim, a observá-la ainda mais atentamente...

Caderno de Félix

A imagem que tenho diante dos olhos, sinto-o, olha para mim tanto quanto eu olho para ela, mas aquilo que me inquieta, ou melhor, aquilo que me obriga a permanecer diante dela mais tempo do que teria imaginado, não é tanto o que mostra como aquilo que sabe do meu próprio olhar, como se tivesse sido construída em torno dessa fraqueza muito simples que quase todos temos diante de uma imagem: supomos que aquilo que não nos é dado ver ainda não existe, ou já não existe, e tomamos de bom grado por vazio aquilo que talvez não seja senão o limite da nossa perceção.

Olho, portanto, para esta criança embarcada nesse chapéu virado ao contrário, tornado tão vasto que já não pode verdadeiramente ser considerado uma peça de vestuário, nem sequer um simples objeto, pois é agora uma embarcação, um casco de barco, talvez mesmo uma espécie de cérebro exteriorizado no qual a Criança Lua tomou lugar sem que eu consiga decidir se nele está abrigada, retida, transportada ou já a sair dele, e apercebo-me de que sou ainda eu, com os meus hábitos de espectador, quem procura imediatamente dar um nome ao que acontece, como se nomear pudesse bastar para me devolver uma posição de domínio.

Ora, o desenho resiste-me precisamente nesse ponto, pois a Criança Lua tem os olhos fechados, e esse detalhe, que primeiro interpretei como sinal de uma privação, começa a produzir em mim uma suspeita quase inversa... Se nada vê, por que razão tudo, em redor dela, parece organizado para explorar ou reconhecer? Esses longos filamentos que saem do chapéu, terminando cada um num pequeno globo, não flutuam como simples ornamentos levados por uma corrente... assemelham-se a olhos afastados do seu lugar habitual, olhos que teriam deixado o rosto para se tornarem tácteis, periféricos, hesitantes, quase animais, como se ver exigisse agora tocar à distância, roçar, procurar num espaço cuja resistência, por mais ténue que fosse, importasse tanto como a forma. Então uma ideia começa a perturbar-me ainda mais... talvez não seja a Criança Lua que não vê o mundo, mas eu. Pois o mundo que ela explora não me é mostrado. Vejo muito claramente o seu corpo, as mãos, os pés descalços, a embarcação, os olhos-filamentos, essa longa vara de abordagem que segura com a atenção de quem sabe que um contacto demasiado brusco pode danificar aquilo de que se aproxima ou fazê-la perder o equilíbrio, mas não vejo nem a margem para a qual se dirige, nem o fundo que sonda, nem o objeto que talvez tente reencontrar nessa água invisível onde alguma coisa poderia cair, nem sequer a própria água, e esse grande branco à sua volta, que a princípio tomei por um espaço indeterminado, começa a parecer-me menos a inexistência de um mundo... do que a sua ausência apenas para mim. Encontro-me, portanto, numa situação bastante incómoda: os meus olhos estão abertos, os dela fechados, e, no entanto, é ela quem explora.

A vara de abordagem que segura torna essa diferença quase concreta, porque pertence a um gesto que o olhar não substitui. O navegador serve-se dela para acostar sem causar danos, para medir uma proximidade antes que a embarcação a sofra, para reter, afastar, alcançar, mas também, quando alguma coisa caiu à água e desapareceu sob a superfície, para procurar no fundo aquilo que o olho já não consegue atingir... Ela prolonga então o braço até um meio estranho ao corpo, não para o dominar, mas para nele tentar um contacto, e é isso que mais me toca nesta imagem, essa maneira que a Criança Lua tem de não entrar no desconhecido como se entra num território a conquistar, mas como quem se aproxima de algo frágil, ou como quem procura aquilo que se perdeu sem saber ainda se será possível trazê-lo de volta.

Já não tenho a certeza, a partir daí, de que se deva dizer que avança no desconhecido, pois essa fórmula supõe que ela e eu partilharíamos a mesma ignorância, quando nada mo garante. Seria mais justo dizer que avança num mundo cuja visibilidade eu não possuo, e que os seus olhos fechados, os olhos deslocados para as extremidades dos seus filamentos, o chapéu tornado embarcação e a vara mergulhada nesse exterior que me é recusado compõem uma forma de conhecer à qual só tenho acesso indiretamente, através dos gestos que ela produz.

É isso, afinal, que me olha... ou me toca nesta imagem... não a própria Criança Lua... nem sequer esses pequenos globos que parecem olhar em todas as direções... mas a distância que de repente se abre entre ver e acreditar que se vê, entre aquilo que não é representado e aquilo que não existe, entre a ausência e o invisível... Compreendo então que o branco que envolve esta estranha navegação não pede para ser preenchido, que não é uma lacuna deixada pelo desenhador nem um cenário ainda por completar, mas o lugar exato onde a minha própria visão se detém enquanto alguma coisa, para a Criança Lua, continua.

Julgava estar a olhar para uma imagem... e apercebo-me pouco a pouco de que ela está a medir até onde sei olhar sem ver.

Le chapeau de l’Enfant Lune

 

Où Félix sent littéralement l’image le regarder… l’obligeant ainsi à l’observer plus encore…

Carnet de Félix 

L’image que j’ai sous les yeux, je le sens, me regarde tout autant que je la regarde. Mais ce qui m’inquiète, ou plutôt ce qui m’oblige à demeurer devant elle plus longtemps que je ne l’aurais cru, n’est pas tant ce qu’elle montre que ce qu’elle sait de mon propre regard. C’est comme si elle s’était construite autour de cette faiblesse très simple que nous avons presque tous devant une image: nous supposons que ce qui ne nous est pas donné à voir n’existe pas encore, ou n’existe plus. Nous prenons volontiers pour un vide ce qui n’est peut-être que la limite de notre perception.

Je regarde donc cet enfant embarqué dans ce chapeau renversé, devenu si vaste qu’il ne peut plus vraiment être considéré comme un vêtement ni même comme un simple objet. Il est maintenant une embarcation, une coque de bateau, peut-être même une sorte de cerveau extériorisé dans lequel l’Enfant Lune a pris place sans que je puisse décider s’il y est abrité ou s’il s’en échappe. Je m’aperçois que c’est encore moi, avec mes habitudes de spectateur, qui cherche aussitôt à nommer ce qui se passe, comme si nommer pouvait suffire à me replacer en position de maîtrise.

Or le dessin me résiste. L’Enfant Lune a les yeux fermés. Ce détail, que j’ai  d’abord interprété comme le signe d’une privation, commence à produire en moi un soupçon presque inverse… S’il ne voit rien, pourquoi tout, autour de lui, semble-t-il organisé pour explorer ou reconnaître? Ces longs filaments qui sortent du chapeau, terminés chacun par un petit globe, ne flottent pas comme de simples ornements emportés par un courant. Ils ressemblent à des yeux éloignés de leur place habituelle, des yeux qui auraient quitté le visage pour devenir tactiles et hésitants. Ce sont presque des animaux. Comme si voir exigeait désormais de toucher de loin, de frôler, de chercher dans un espace dont la résistance, si faible serait-elle, importe autant que la forme. Alors une idée commence à me perturber davantage encore… ce ne serait pas l’Enfant Lune qui ne voit pas le monde, mais moi. Le monde qu’il explore ne m’est pas montré. Je vois très clairement son corps, ses mains, ses pieds nus, son embarcation, ses yeux-filaments, cette longue gaffe qu’il tient avec l’attention de celui qui sait qu’un contact trop brutal peut endommager ce qu’il approche ou l’envoyer lui-même hors de son équilibre. Je ne vois ni la rive vers laquelle il se dirige, ni le fond qu’il sonde, ni l’objet qu’il tente peut-être de retrouver dans cette eau invisible où quelque chose pourrait tomber. Je ne vois même pas l’eau elle-même. Ce grand blanc autour de lui, je l’avais d’abord pris pour un espace indéterminé. Il commence à me paraître moins comme l’inexistence d’un monde… que comme son absence pour moi seul. Je suis donc placé dans une situation assez inconfortable: mes yeux sont ouverts, les siens sont fermés, et pourtant c’est lui qui explore.

La gaffe qu’il tient rend cette différence presque concrète, parce qu’elle appartient à un geste que le regard ne remplace pas. Le navigateur s’en sert pour aborder sans dommage, pour mesurer une proximité avant que l’embarcation ne la subisse, pour retenir, écarter, rejoindre, mais aussi, lorsque quelque chose est tombé dans l’eau et a disparu sous la surface, pour chercher au fond ce que l’œil ne peut plus atteindre.., Elle prolonge alors le bras jusque dans un milieu étranger au corps, non pour le dominer mais pour y tenter un contact. C’est cela qui me touche le plus dans l’image, cette façon qu’a l’Enfant Lune de ne pas entrer dans l’inconnu comme on entre dans un territoire à conquérir, mais comme on approche ce qui est fragile. Comme on cherche ce qui s’est perdu sans savoir encore si l’on pourra le ramener.

Je ne suis plus certain, dès lors, qu’il faille dire qu’il avance dans l’inconnu, car cette formule suppose que nous partagerions, lui et moi, la même ignorance, alors que rien ne me l’assure. Il serait plus juste de dire qu’il avance dans un monde dont je ne possède pas la visibilité, et que ses yeux fermés, ses yeux déplacés au bout de leurs filaments, son chapeau devenu embarcation et sa gaffe plongée dans ce dehors qui m’est refusé composent une manière de connaître à laquelle je n’ai accès qu’indirectement, par les gestes qu’elle produit.

C’est cela, finalement, qui me regarde… ou me touche dans cette image… pas l’Enfant Lune lui-même… ni même ces petits globes qui paraissent regarder de toutes parts… mais l’écart qui s’ouvre soudain entre voir et croire que l’on voit, entre ce qui n’est pas représenté et ce qui n’existe pas, entre l’absence et l’invisible… Je comprends alors que le blanc qui entoure cette étrange navigation ne demande pas à être rempli, qu’il n’est pas une lacune laissée au dessinateur ni un décor encore en attente, mais la place exacte où ma propre vision s’arrête tandis que quelque chose, pour l’Enfant Lune, continue.

Je croyais regarder une image… et je m’aperçois peu à peu qu’elle est en train de mesurer jusqu’où je sais regarder sans voir.

(227) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

Where Félix discovers that Daemon is not a more knowledgeable version of Damon, but a presence caught within the same uncertainty. He knows the way no better, and his help becomes visible only afterwards. His gestures remain ambiguous... Does he stop in order to guide, return in order to help, move aside in order to open a path? Nothing allows us to say... This forces us to abandon the traditional image of the guide who knows and shows the way. Guiding consists in a discreet influence whose beneficiary may believe that he walked alone...

Félix’s Notebook

The confusion between Damon and Daemon goes much deeper than that between an original and its double. This idea brings me back to something I have already encountered elsewhere and perhaps never understood sufficiently: the guide can be guided.

I write it down and the sentence immediately seems too beautiful, too neat, almost too easy, for all we would have to do then would be to reverse the roles and we would have gained nothing... the one who was behind would move in front, the one who knew would become the one who does not know, and we would merely have exchanged places. Yet what interests me here is precisely that the places themselves cease to remain... in place... Daemon may follow Damon... Damon may draw Daemon along... Child Moon may follow one of them and then cause both of them to veer away without ever having intended to show anything at all... and whoever watches the scene may pass through all of this without noticing that a relation of assistance has taken place, until a later image, a sentence, or simply the memory of a detour forces him to go back.

I even notice that the resemblance between Damon and Daemon protects the latter from what always threatens figures to which a function is too quickly assigned: an excess of meaning.

If he lies down, nothing allows me to decide that he is guarding a threshold. He may simply be tired. If he scratches at the ground, there is no need for him to be uncovering a trace from another world... Something may simply have caught his attention, as happens with any dog. If he gazes at Child Moon for a long while, that gaze may move me, unsettle me, or draw me towards an interpretation, but it remains possible that he is merely looking, and that possibility has become precious to me because it prevents each of his gestures from immediately turning into a message, while still leaving open that other possibility, far more uncertain, that I may understand the significance of the gesture only long after I have seen it.

I am beginning to understand that whatever passes through Daemon must perhaps remain exposed to this very triviality, because the sign must still be allowed to be no more than a gesture, and the guide no more than a dog, otherwise everything would become readable too quickly and Child Moon himself would be drawn into that regime in which each thing would immediately be required to signify something other than itself. Yet it seems to me that this is never quite how things happen around him: his stick is a stick before it becomes a boat hook, a pole, or the instrument of a passage; his hat is a hat, however outsized it may be, before it becomes a vessel or a space to be crossed; his coat hangs from his body before I can decide whether it is a skin, a shelter, or the inheritance of someone else. In the same way, Damon or Daemon should be able to run, sleep, wait, or disappear long before I can decide whether, throughout all that time, they were leading someone.

Perhaps this is even the reason Daemon took on, if I may use the verb, Damon’s appearance. Took, as one might take something that was already there, not in order to steal it, but because there was no need to invent another form.

This hypothesis gives me pause, because Daemon would therefore not have chosen the appearance of a guide, but that of a small dog whose origin is unknown, who already accompanies without anyone knowing quite what his accompaniment produces, and whose possible effectiveness appears only afterwards, when someone takes the trouble to look back at what has happened. He would have found in Damon a way of being in the world discreet enough for help to slip into it without declaring itself as help, and I then find myself wondering whether Daemon does less than I had imagined, and more at the same time, for he would not be adding a new power to the world: perhaps he would merely make more perceptible a possibility that was already there, that of a presence which acts without occupying the foreground and whose effects may remain for a long time entangled with whatever would have happened anyway.

(227) A abracadabrante história da Criança Lua

Onde Félix descobre que Daemon não é uma versão mais sabedora de Damon, mas uma presença inscrita na mesma indecisão. Ele não conhece melhor o caminho, e a sua ajuda só se torna visível depois. Os seus gestos permanecem ambíguos... Pára para guiar, regressa para ajudar, afasta-se para abrir uma passagem? Nada permite afirmá-lo... Isso obriga a abandonar a imagem tradicional do guia que sabe e mostra o caminho. Guiar consiste numa influência discreta de que aquele que dela beneficia pode acreditar ter caminhado sozinho...

Caderno de Félix

A confusão entre Damon e Daemon é muito mais profunda do que a de um original e do seu duplo. Esta ideia traz-me de volta a algo que já encontrei noutro lugar e que talvez não tenha compreendido suficientemente: o guia pode ser guiado.

Escrevo-o e a frase parece imediatamente demasiado bela, demasiado nítida, quase demasiado fácil, pois bastaria então inverter os papéis e nada teríamos ganho... aquele que estava atrás passaria para a frente, aquele que sabia tornar-se-ia aquele que ignora, e teríamos simplesmente trocado de lugar. Ora, o que aqui me interessa é precisamente que os lugares deixem de se manter... no lugar... Daemon pode seguir Damon... Damon pode levar Daemon consigo... a Criança Lua pode seguir um dos dois e depois fazê-los desviar-se sem sequer ter tido a intenção de mostrar fosse o que fosse... e aquele que observa a cena pode atravessar tudo isto sem reparar que uma relação de ajuda teve lugar, até que uma imagem posterior, uma frase ou simplesmente a lembrança de um desvio o obrigue a voltar atrás.

Reparo até que a semelhança entre Damon e Daemon protege este último daquilo que ameaça sempre as figuras às quais se atribui demasiado depressa uma função: o excesso de significado.

Se ele se deita, nada me autoriza a decidir que está a guardar um limiar. Talvez esteja simplesmente cansado. Se escava a terra com as patas, não é necessário que esteja a descobrir um vestígio vindo de outro mundo... Alguma coisa pode simplesmente ter-lhe chamado a atenção, como acontece a qualquer cão. Se olha longamente para a Criança Lua, esse olhar pode comover-me, inquietar-me ou atrair-me para uma interpretação, mas continua a ser possível que ele apenas olhe, e essa possibilidade tornou-se preciosa para mim porque impede cada um dos seus gestos de se transformar imediatamente numa mensagem, ao mesmo tempo que deixa aberta essa outra possibilidade, muito mais incerta, de eu só compreender o alcance do gesto muito depois de o ter visto.

Começo a compreender que aquilo que passa por Daemon talvez deva permanecer exposto a essa trivialidade, porque é preciso que o sinal ainda possa ser apenas um gesto e que o guia ainda possa ser apenas um cão, pois, de outro modo, tudo se tornaria demasiado depressa legível e a própria Criança Lua seria arrastada para esse regime em que cada coisa teria imediatamente de significar outra coisa que não ela própria. Ora, parece-me que nunca é exatamente assim que as coisas acontecem à sua volta: o seu bastão é um bastão antes de se tornar uma vara de abordagem, uma pértiga ou o instrumento de uma passagem; o seu chapéu é um chapéu, por desmesurado que seja, antes de se tornar embarcação ou espaço a atravessar; o seu casaco cai-lhe sobre o corpo antes que eu possa decidir se é uma pele, um abrigo ou a herança de outra pessoa. Do mesmo modo, Damon ou Daemon deveriam poder correr, dormir, esperar ou desaparecer muito antes de eu poder decidir se, durante todo esse tempo, estavam a conduzir alguém.

Talvez seja mesmo por essa razão que Daemon tomou, se posso empregar este verbo, a aparência de Damon. Tomou-a como se toma alguma coisa que já estava ali, não para a roubar, mas porque não era necessário inventar outra forma.

Esta hipótese interpela-me, pois Daemon não teria, portanto, escolhido a aparência de um guia, mas a de um pequeno cão de quem não se sabe de onde vem, que já acompanha sem que se saiba muito bem o que o seu acompanhamento produz, e cuja eventual eficácia só aparece depois, quando alguém se dá ao trabalho de regressar ao que aconteceu. Teria encontrado em Damon uma maneira de estar no mundo suficientemente discreta para que a ajuda pudesse insinuar-se nela sem se declarar como ajuda, e pergunto-me então se Daemon não fará menos do que eu imaginava e, ao mesmo tempo, mais, pois não viria acrescentar ao mundo um poder novo: talvez apenas tornasse mais sensível uma possibilidade que já nele se encontrava, a de uma presença que age sem ocupar o primeiro plano e cujos efeitos podem permanecer durante muito tempo misturados com aquilo que teria acontecido de qualquer maneira.

(227) L'abracadabrante histoire de l'Enfant Lune

 

Où Félix découvre que Daemon n'est pas une version plus savante de Damon, mais une présence inscrite dans la même indécision. Il ne connaît pas davantage le chemin, et son aide ne devient visible qu’après coup. Ses gestes restent ambigus…  S’arrête-t-il pour guider, revient-il pour aider, s’écarte-t-il pour ouvrir une voie? Rien ne permet de le dire… Cela oblige à abandonner l’image traditionnelle du guide qui sait et montre. Guider consiste en une influence discrète dont celui qui en bénéficie peut croire qu’il a marché seul…

Carnet de Félix 

La confusion entre Damon et Daemon est beaucoup plus profonde que celle d’un original et de son double. Cette idée me ramène à quelque chose que j’ai déjà rencontré ailleurs et que je n’avais pas suffisamment compris: le guide peut être guidé.

Je l’écris et la phrase paraît aussitôt trop belle, trop nette. Presque trop facile. Il suffirait alors de renverser les rôles et nous n’aurions rien gagné... celui qui était derrière passerait devant, celui qui savait deviendrait celui qui ignore. Nous aurions simplement échangé les places. Or ce qui m’intéresse ici est précisément que les places cessent de tenir... en place. Daemon peut suivre Damon... Damon peut entraîner Daemon. l’Enfant Lune peut suivre l’un des deux puis les faire dévier sans même avoir eu l’intention de montrer quoi que ce soit. Celui qui regarde la scène peut traverser tout cela sans remarquer qu’une relation d’aide a eu lieu. Avant qu’une image ultérieure, une phrase ou simplement le souvenir d’un détour ne le contraigne à revenir en arrière.

Je remarque même que la ressemblance entre Damon et Daemon protège ce dernier contre ce qui menace toujours les figures auxquelles on attribue trop vite une fonction: l’excès de signification.

S’il se couche, rien ne m’autorise à décider qu’il garde un seuil. Il est peut-être simplement fatigué. S’il gratte la terre, il n’est pas nécessaire qu’il découvre une trace venue d’un autre monde... Quelque chose a pu attirer son attention comme cela arrive à n’importe quel chien. S’il regarde longuement l’Enfant Lune, ce regard peut m’émouvoir, ou m’inquiéter. Il peut aussi m’attirer vers une autre interprétation qui m’est inconnue. Il reste encore possible qu’il regarde seulement. Cette possibilité m’est devenue précieuse parce qu’elle empêche chacun de ses gestes de se transformer immédiatement en message, tout en laissant ouverte cette autre possibilité, beaucoup plus incertaine, que je ne comprenne la portée du geste que bien après l’avoir vu.

Je commence à comprendre que ce qui passe par Daemon doit demeurer exposé à cette trivialité. Il faut que le signe reste un geste. Que le guide puisse encore être uniquement un chien. Sans quoi tout deviendrait trop vite lisible et l’Enfant Lune lui-même se trouverait entraîné dans ce régime où chaque chose devrait immédiatement signifier autre chose qu’elle-même. Ce n’est jamais tout à fait ainsi que les choses adviennent autour de lui. Son bâton est un bâton avant de devenir une gaffe, une perche ou l’instrument d’un passage.  Son chapeau est un chapeau, aussi démesuré soit-il, avant de devenir embarcation ou espace à traverser… Son manteau lui couvre le corps avant que je puisse décider s’il est une peau ou l’héritage de quelqu’un d’autre. De la même manière, Damon ou Daemon devraient pouvoir courir, dormir, attendre ou disparaître bien avant que je puisse décider si, pendant tout ce temps, ils conduisaient quelqu’un.

Est-ce même la raison pour laquelle Daemon a pris, si je puis employer ce verbe, l’apparence de Damon? Pris comme on prendrait quelque chose qui était déjà là, non pour le voler, mais parce qu’il n’était pas nécessaire d’en inventer une autre forme. Cette hypothèse m’interpelle. Daemon n’aurait donc pas choisi l’apparence d’un guide, mais celle d’un petit chien dont on ne sait pas d’où il vient. Un être qui accompagne déjà sans qu’on sache très bien ce que son accompagnement produit. Un geste dont l’efficacité éventuelle n’apparaît qu’après coup, lorsque quelqu’un prend la peine de revenir sur ce qui s’est passé. Il aurait trouvé dans Damon une manière d’être au monde suffisamment discrète pour que l’aide puisse s’y glisser sans se déclarer comme aide. Je me demande alors si Daemon ne fait pas moins que ce que j’imaginais. Et davantage en même temps, car il ne viendrait pas ajouter au monde un pouvoir nouveau… Il rendrait seulement plus sensible une possibilité qui s’y trouvait déjà, celle d’une présence qui agit sans occuper le premier plan et dont les effets peuvent rester longtemps mêlés à ce qui serait arrivé de toute façon.

(226) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

 

 Having learned that Damon may act without any intention of guiding, and that his mere presence is sometimes enough to make something possible, we now find that Daemon, almost indistinguishable from him, shares his appearance to such an extent that only his name introduces the slightest deviation. He thus seems to borrow the form of a being who has already become familiar, but whose own origin remains unknown. This resemblance makes any distinction uncertain and forces us to give up trying too quickly to identify which of the two has appeared. Daemon bears no visible sign of his function: if he guides, he can do so only by remaining unrecognisable as a guide.

Félix’s Notebook

The difficulty becomes greater still when I realise that Damon, too, may have guided without my ever seeing him guide. Perhaps this is precisely what his presence teaches me: we readily recognise the guide when he places himself before us, points out a direction and leads us from one place to another, but we are far less capable of recognising what has accompanied us discreetly enough for our own movement to seem entirely our own. Damon may have walked there, waited here, disappeared and then reappeared elsewhere; nothing spectacular has happened and no one has needed to speak his name. And yet, when I retrace the sequence of events, something falls into place differently. I cannot say that he was leading, but neither can I any longer quite say that he was not.

Perhaps that is where Daemon begins.

Not above Damon, as some superior and knowing version of this little blue dog, but almost within that same uncertainty, in the impossibility of determining exactly at what point a presence becomes an accompaniment, at what point a movement becomes an orientation, at what point a wait that seemed insignificant acquires, several pages later, the value of an indication. At first I had thought that Daemon must necessarily know something Damon did not, and I now discover that this difference, if it exists at all, may lie elsewhere. Daemon does not necessarily know the way any better. Perhaps he simply belongs more intimately still to this strange manner of leading which becomes visible only after the passage has taken place, when the one who was led might just as well maintain that he walked alone.

This possibility troubles me, because it deprives the guide even of the proof that he has acted. When he stops, is it because he knows that one must stop, or simply because he has no reason to go any farther?

When he comes back, is he coming back to find Child Moon, or is he returning for a reason of his own, from which Child Moon happens to benefit without knowing it?

When he leaves the path, is he opening up a way, or pursuing something that has nothing whatsoever to do with those who follow him?

And if, much later, we discover that this deviation made it possible to glimpse what would otherwise have remained hidden, must we attribute to Daemon a prior knowledge of what he was doing, or accept that help may have been real without ever having been intended?

I think this is where something begins to escape me in a way I find more pleasing than any of the explanations I might give for it, because I had no doubt retained, without realising it, a very ancient image of the guide: he had to be in front, he had to precede, to know, to show, while the one he led had to follow, so that the entire relation could be understood according to the place each occupied along the path. But if Damon or Daemon can walk behind, wait alongside, disappear while Child Moon continues alone on his way, then reappear without our being able to say whether they have found him again or whether it is he who has caught up with them, then I must admit that guiding may depend neither upon the position one occupies nor even upon the visible continuity of accompaniment, and that there may exist a form of help discreet enough perhaps never to be certain that it was help at all.

 

(226) A abracadabrante história da Criança Lua

 

 

Depois de termos aprendido que Damon talvez aja sem intenção de guiar, mas que a sua simples presença basta por vezes para tornar alguma coisa possível, eis que Daemon, quase indistinguível dele, partilha a sua aparência a tal ponto que apenas o nome introduz uma ligeira diferença. Parece assim tomar de empréstimo a forma de um ser já familiar, mas cuja própria origem permanece desconhecida. Essa semelhança torna incerta qualquer distinção e obriga a renunciar a identificar demasiado depressa qual dos dois aparece. Daemon não traz consigo nenhum sinal visível da sua função: se guia, só o pode fazer permanecendo irreconhecível enquanto guia.

Caderno de Félix

A dificuldade torna-se ainda maior quando compreendo que Damon, também ele, pode ter guiado sem que eu o tenha visto guiar.

Talvez seja mesmo isso que a sua presença me ensina: reconhecemos de bom grado o guia quando ele se coloca diante de nós, indica uma direção e nos conduz de um ponto a outro, mas somos muito menos capazes de reconhecer aquilo que nos acompanhou com discrição suficiente para que o nosso próprio movimento nos parecesse inteiramente nosso. Damon pode ter caminhado por ali, esperado aqui, desaparecido e depois reaparecido noutro lugar; nada de espetacular aconteceu e ninguém precisou de pronunciar o seu nome. No entanto, quando retomo a sucessão dos acontecimentos, alguma coisa se organiza de outra maneira. Não posso afirmar que ele conduzia, mas já não posso afirmar inteiramente que não conduzia. Talvez seja aí que Daemon começa.

Não acima de Damon, como uma versão superior e sábia desse pequeno cão azul, mas quase no interior dessa mesma indecisão, na impossibilidade de determinar exatamente em que momento uma presença se torna acompanhamento, em que momento uma deslocação se torna orientação, em que momento uma espera que parecia sem importância adquire, várias páginas mais tarde, o valor de uma indicação. A princípio, eu pensava que Daemon devia necessariamente saber alguma coisa que Damon ignorava, e descubro agora que essa diferença, se de facto existe, talvez esteja noutro lugar. Daemon não conhece necessariamente melhor o caminho. Talvez pertença apenas, de maneira ainda mais íntima, a essa estranha forma de conduzir que só se torna visível depois da passagem, quando aquele que foi conduzido poderia muito bem sustentar que caminhou sozinho.

Essa possibilidade perturba-me, porque retira ao guia até a prova da sua própria ação. Quando ele pára, será porque sabe que é preciso parar ou porque simplesmente não tem qualquer razão para continuar a avançar?

Quando regressa, regressa para ir buscar a Criança Lua ou regressa por uma razão que só a ele pertence e da qual a Criança Lua beneficia sem o saber? Quando abandona o caminho, estará a abrir uma via ou a perseguir alguma coisa que nada tem que ver com aqueles que o seguem? E se, muito mais tarde, descobrirmos que esse desvio permitiu entrever aquilo que, de outro modo, teria permanecido oculto, deveremos atribuir a Daemon um conhecimento prévio daquilo que fazia ou aceitar que uma ajuda possa ter sido real sem ter sido premeditada?

Creio que é aí que alguma coisa começa a escapar-me de uma maneira que me agrada mais do que todas as explicações que eu poderia dar, porque sem dúvida conservara, sem me aperceber, uma representação muito antiga do guia: ele devia estar à frente, devia preceder, saber, mostrar, e aquele que conduzia devia seguir, de modo que toda a relação pudesse ser compreendida pela posição ocupada no caminho. Mas, se Damon ou Daemon podem caminhar atrás, esperar ao lado, desaparecer enquanto a Criança Lua prossegue sozinha o seu caminho e depois reaparecer sem que possamos dizer se foram eles que voltaram a encontrá-la ou se foi ela que os alcançou, então tenho de admitir que guiar talvez não dependa nem da posição ocupada nem sequer da continuidade visível do acompanhamento, e que existe uma forma de ajuda suficientemente discreta para talvez nunca ter a certeza de o ter sido.

 

(226) L’abracadabrante histoire de l’Enfant Lune

 

Après avoir appris que la simple présence de Damon suffit à rendre quelque chose possible, voici que Daemon, presque indiscernable de lui, en partage l’apparence au point que seul son nom introduit une légère déviation. Il emprunte ainsi la forme d’un être déjà familier mais lui-même sans origine connue. Cette ressemblance rend toute distinction incertaine et oblige à renoncer à identifier trop vite lequel des deux apparaît. Daemon ne porte aucun signe visible de sa fonction… S’il guide, ce ne peut être qu’en restant méconnaissable comme guide. 

Carnet de Félix 

La difficulté devient plus grande encore lorsque je comprends que Damon, lui aussi, guide sans que je l’aie vu dans les dessins. Ou lu dans les cahiers.

C’est cela que sa présence m’apprend. Nous reconnaissons volontiers un guide lorsqu’il se place devant nous, désigne une direction et nous conduit d’un point à un autre. Mais nous sommes beaucoup moins capables de reconnaître ce qui nous a accompagnés assez discrètement pour que notre propre mouvement nous apparaisse comme entièrement nôtre. Damon peut avoir marché là. Il peut avoir attendu ici, disparu puis reparu ailleurs. Rien de spectaculaire ne s’est produit et personne n’a eu besoin de prononcer son nom. Pourtant, lorsque je reprends la succession des trois faits, quelque chose s’agence autrement. Je ne peux pas affirmer qu’il conduisait, mais je ne peux plus tout à fait affirmer qu’il ne conduisait pas.

C’est là, dans cette hésitation, que Daemon commence à œuvrer. Pas à la place de… ou au-dessus de Damon, comme une version supérieure et savante de ce petit chien bleu, mais presque à l’intérieur de cette même indécision. Dans l’impossibilité de déterminer exactement à quel moment une présence devient accompagnement, à quel moment un déplacement devient orientation… Une attente qui semblait sans importance pourrait acquérir, plusieurs pages plus tard, la valeur d’une indication. J’avais d’abord pensé que Daemon devait nécessairement savoir quelque chose que Damon ignorait. Je découvre maintenant que cette différence, si elle existe, est ailleurs. Daemon ne connaît pas forcément davantage le chemin. Appartient-il seulement plus intimement encore à cette étrange manière de conduire qui ne devient visible qu’après le passage, lorsque celui qui a été conduit pourrait tout aussi bien soutenir qu’il a marché seul? Qui peut répondre à cela… Cette possibilité me trouble, car elle retire au guide jusqu’à la preuve de son action. Lorsqu’il s’arrête, est-ce parce qu’il sait qu’il faut s’arrêter ou parce qu’il n’a simplement aucune raison d’avancer davantage?

Lorsqu’il revient, revient-il chercher l’Enfant Lune ou pour une raison qui lui appartient et dont l’Enfant Lune profite sans le savoir?

Lorsqu’il quitte le chemin, ouvre-t-il une voie ou poursuit-il quelque chose qui n’a aucun rapport avec ceux qui le suivent?

Et si, beaucoup plus tard, nous découvrons que cet écart a permis d’apercevoir ce qui serait autrement demeuré caché, faudra-t-il attribuer à Daemon la connaissance préalable de ce qu’il faisait, ou accepter qu’une aide puisse avoir été réelle sans avoir été préméditée?

Je crois que c’est là que quelque chose commence à m’échapper d’une manière qui me plaît davantage que toutes les explications que je pourrais en donner. J’avais sans doute conservé, sans m’en apercevoir, une représentation très ancienne du guide. Celui-ci devait être devant. Il devait précéder et montrer. Celui qu’il conduisait devait suivre, de sorte que la relation entière pouvait être comprise par la place occupée sur le chemin. Mais si Damon ou Daemon peuvent marcher derrière, attendre à côté, disparaître pendant que l’Enfant Lune poursuit seul sa route, puis réapparaître sans que nous puissions dire s’ils l’ont retrouvé ou si c’est lui qui les a rejoints. Alors il me faut admettre que guider ne dépend ni de la position occupée ni même de la continuité visible de l’accompagnement. Il existe une forme d’aide assez discrète pour n’être jamais certaine.

(225) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

Between what we believe... what we know and what we think we know, untamed knowledge winds its way...

Strange seems the moment when Damon comes into view, Damon whom we have learned to know as a small blue dog who accompanies Child Moon above all, though he also accompanies other characters, without anyone knowing where he comes from. He seems to accompany rather than to guide, his presence remaining discreet and never confined to moments of crisis alone. Whatever help he may provide often reveals itself only afterwards, in a detour, a pause, or a resumption of the journey. Yet nothing allows us to say that he knew what he was doing, or even that he was acting intentionally. His effectiveness therefore remains retrospective and undecidable... a secret form of assistance perhaps... or simply a presence...

Félix’s Notebook

Damon will have walked wherever he wanted to walk, waited because he felt like waiting, retraced his steps for a reason that concerned no one but himself, and yet something, through this succession of almost insignificant acts, will have been made possible. It then becomes difficult to know whether he helped, or whether the others simply made use of his presence in order to help themselves, a distinction that at first seemed important to me and that matters less and less.

Daemon is more difficult still to introduce. He too is a small blue dog. Or, to be more exact, he possesses Damon’s appearance with such fidelity that the drawings do not always give me the means to decide which of the two I have before my eyes. Only the name introduces a difference, that additional letter which barely disturbs Damon and yet is enough to make something else heard: Daemon. I do not know whether I ought to say that he resembles Damon, that he imitates him, that he is some sort of double, or, as I have gradually come to think, that he has taken on his appearance. “Taken” is, moreover, a word I distrust here, because it might suggest a substitution or a theft, whereas it sometimes seems to me that this appearance merely allowed him to enter the story without having to bring a new form into it.

And the idea becomes stranger still now that I have begun to realise that Damon himself has no known origin, for Daemon would therefore not have chosen the appearance of a perfectly identified being, belonging to someone or coming from some place that could be traced... He would have taken on the appearance of a being who was already there without anyone knowing where he came from, as though the unknown had borrowed the face, if I may put it that way, of another unknown... one who had, paradoxically, become familiar.

I return, then, to Damon and Daemon, or rather to that very particular uneasiness that comes over me whenever I try to distinguish between them with too much certainty, for I do indeed have two names, one of which seems to belong without difficulty to the small blue dog I encountered first, while the other, almost identical, is distinguished only by that letter which introduces into the first name the slightest deviation, a difference small enough to pass unnoticed and yet sufficient to prevent me from reading in quite the same way whatever now appears before me... but beyond that, if I confine myself to what the drawings show, nothing truly comes to my aid, since Daemon has Damon’s appearance, to such a degree that I sometimes find myself wondering whether this resemblance is merely intended to deceive me, or whether instead it is compelling me to abandon a question I am still too quick to ask: which of the two is before me?

For, after all, if Daemon could be recognised by some particular sign, if he were larger, darker, more luminous, if he bore some attribute marking him out as the one who knows, who keeps watch, who leads, it would be easy for me at once to assign him the function of guide and to read each of his gestures as the visible consequence of a knowledge to which the others had no access; but nothing of the kind is granted to me, and I am beginning to suspect that this absence of any attribute is not something lacking in his representation but, on the contrary, its very necessity, as though Daemon could accomplish whatever it is he has to accomplish only on condition that he does not bear upon himself the sign of his function, that he does not appear as a guide before having guided, and perhaps even that he can never be recognised with certainty as one.

(225) A abracadabrante história da Criança Lua

Entre aquilo em que acreditamos... aquilo que sabemos e aquilo que julgamos conhecer serpenteia o indócil saber…

Estranho parece ser o momento em que Damon, de quem aprendemos que é um pequeno cão azul que acompanha sobretudo a Criança Lua, mas também outras personagens, surge sem que se saiba de onde vem. Parece mais acompanhar do que guiar, permanecendo a sua presença discreta e nunca ligada apenas aos momentos de crise. A eventual ajuda que presta muitas vezes só se revela a posteriori, num desvio, numa paragem ou no recomeço da caminhada. Mas nada permite afirmar que soubesse o que estava a fazer, nem sequer que agisse intencionalmente. A sua eficácia permanece, portanto, retrospetiva e indecidível... assistência secreta talvez... ou simples presença...

Caderno de Félix

Damon terá caminhado por onde lhe apetecia caminhar, esperado porque tinha vontade de esperar, voltado para trás por uma razão que só a ele dizia respeito, e, no entanto, alguma coisa, graças a essa sucessão de atos quase insignificantes, terá sido tornada possível. Torna-se então difícil saber se ajudou ou se os outros simplesmente se serviram da sua presença para se ajudarem a si próprios, distinção que a princípio me parecia importante e que cada vez o é menos.

Daemon é ainda mais difícil de apresentar. Também ele é um pequeno cão azul. Ou, para ser mais exato, possui a aparência de Damon com uma fidelidade tal que os desenhos nem sempre me oferecem meios de decidir qual dos dois tenho diante dos olhos. Só o nome introduz uma diferença, essa letra suplementar que quase não perturba Damon e que, no entanto, basta para fazer ouvir outra coisa: Daemon. Não sei se deveria dizer que se parece com Damon, que o imita, que é uma espécie de duplo ou, como acabei por pensar, que tomou a sua aparência. “Tomou” é, aliás, uma palavra de que desconfio aqui, porque poderia fazer pensar numa substituição ou num roubo, quando por vezes me parece que essa aparência apenas lhe permitiu entrar na narrativa sem ter de lhe trazer uma forma nova.

E essa ideia torna-se ainda mais estranha desde que me apercebi de que o próprio Damon não tem origem conhecida, pois Daemon não teria, portanto, escolhido a aparência de um ser perfeitamente identificado, pertencente a alguém ou proveniente de um lugar que pudesse ser reencontrado... Teria tomado a aparência de um ser que já ali estava sem que ninguém soubesse de onde vinha, como se o desconhecido tivesse tomado emprestado o rosto, se assim posso dizer, de outro desconhecido... paradoxalmente tornado familiar.

Regresso, portanto, a Damon e Daemon, ou antes àquele incómodo muito particular que se apodera de mim sempre que tento distingui-los com demasiada segurança, pois disponho, é certo, de dois nomes, um dos quais parece pertencer sem dificuldade ao pequeno cão azul que encontrei primeiro, enquanto o outro, quase idêntico, apenas se distingue por essa letra que introduz no primeiro nome um desvio minúsculo, uma diferença suficientemente pequena para passar despercebida e, no entanto, bastante para que eu já não consiga ler exatamente da mesma maneira aquilo que se apresenta diante de mim... mas, quanto ao resto, se me limitar ao que os desenhos mostram, nada vem verdadeiramente em meu auxílio, uma vez que Daemon tem a aparência de Damon, a tal ponto que por vezes me pergunto se essa semelhança se destina apenas a enganar-me, ou se, pelo contrário, não me obriga a renunciar a uma pergunta que continuo a fazer depressa demais: qual dos dois está diante de mim?

Pois, afinal, se Daemon fosse reconhecível por algum sinal particular, se fosse maior, mais sombrio, mais luminoso, se trouxesse consigo algum atributo que o designasse como aquele que sabe, que vela, que conduz, seria fácil atribuir-lhe imediatamente a função de guia e ler cada um dos seus gestos como a consequência visível de um saber ao qual os outros não teriam acesso; mas nada disso me é concedido, e começo a suspeitar que essa ausência de atributo não constitui uma falha na sua representação, mas antes a sua própria necessidade, como se Daemon só pudesse cumprir aquilo que tem a cumprir sob a condição de não trazer consigo o sinal da sua função, de não aparecer como guia antes de ter guiado, e talvez até de nunca poder ser reconhecido com certeza como tal.

(225) L’abracadabrante histoire de l’Enfant Lune

 

Entre ce qu'on croit... ce qu'on sait et ce qu'on croit connaître serpente l'indocile savoir... 

Étrange semble être le moment où Damon, dont nous avons appris qu’il est un petit chien bleu. Qu’il accompagne surtout l’Enfant Lune, mais aussi d’autres personnages, sans que l’on sache d’où il vient. Il semble davantage accompagner que guider. Sa présence reste discrète et jamais liée seulement aux moments de crise. Son aide ne se révèle souvent qu’après coup, dans un détour, un arrêt ou une reprise de la marche. Mais rien ne permet d’affirmer qu’il sait ce qu’il fait ni même qu’il agit intentionnellement. Son efficacité demeure donc rétrospective et indécidable… assistance secrète peut-être… ou simple présence…

Carnet de Félix 

Damon aura marché là où il voulait marcher. Il attend parce qu’il avait envie d’attendre. Il ne rebrousse chemin que pour une raison qui ne concerne que lui. Cependant, quelque chose, grâce à cette succession d’actes presque insignifiants, aura été rendu possible. Il devient alors difficile de savoir s’il a aidé ou si les autres se sont simplement aidés de sa présence. Distinction qui me paraissait d’abord importante et qui l’est de moins en moins.

Daemon est plus difficile encore à présenter. Il est lui aussi un petit chien bleu. Ou, pour être plus exact, il possède l’apparence de Damon avec une fidélité telle que les dessins ne m’offrent pas toujours le moyen de décider lequel des deux j’ai devant les yeux. Seul le nom, lu dans les carnets, introduit une différence. Cette lettre supplémentaire qui dérange à peine Damon et suffit pourtant à faire entendre autre chose: Daemon. Je ne sais pas s’il faudrait dire qu’il ressemble à Damon. Si je puis dire qu’il l’imite ou qu’il en est une sorte de double. J’ai fini par penser qu’il a pris simplement son apparence. “Pris” est d’ailleurs un mot dont je me méfie ici, parce qu’il pourrait laisser croire à une substitution ou à un vol. Alors qu’il me semble parfois que cette apparence lui a seulement permis d’entrer dans le récit avec continuité sans devoir y apporter une forme nouvelle.

Cette idée devient plus étrange encore depuis que je m’avise que Damon lui-même n’a pas d’origine connue. Daemon n’aurait donc pas choisi l’apparence d’un être parfaitement identifié, appartenant à quelqu’un ou provenant d’un lieu que l’on pourrait retrouver… Il aurait pris l’apparence d’un être qui était déjà là sans que personne sache d’où il venait. Comme si un inconnu avait emprunté le visage, si je puis dire, d’un autre inconnu… paradoxalement devenu familier.

Je reviens donc à Damon et Daemon. Ou plutôt à cette gêne très particulière qui me saisit chaque fois que j’essaie de les distinguer avec trop d’assurance. Si je m’en tiens à ce que montrent les dessins, rien ne vient véritablement m’aider, puisque Daemon a l’apparence de Damon. Je me demande  si cette ressemblance est seulement destinée à me tromper, ou si elle ne m’oblige pas plutôt à renoncer à une question que je ne peux m’empêcher de poser: lequel des deux est devant moi?

Si Daemon était reconnaissable à quelque signe particulier. S’il était plus grand, plus sombre ou plus lumineux. S’il portait quelque attribut qui le désignât comme celui qui sait. Celui qui veille ou qui conduit, il me serait facile de lui attribuer aussitôt la fonction de guide. Je pourrais lire chacun de ses gestes comme la conséquence visible d’un savoir auquel les autres n’auraient pas accès… Mais rien de tel ne m’est accordé. Je commence à soupçonner que cette absence d’attribut n’est pas un manque dans sa représentation. Elle en constitue au contraire la nécessité, comme si Daemon ne pouvait accomplir ce qu’il a à accomplir qu’à la condition de ne pas porter sur lui le signe de sa fonction. Celle de ne pas apparaître comme guide avant d’avoir guidé. Et même de ne jamais pouvoir être reconnu avec certitude comme tel.

(224) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

 

“It took me a long time to understand where he came from. […] At once I caught a glimmer of light in the mystery of his presence.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, Chapter III, 1943.

Where one may observe that the person who knows the way will not necessarily be the best guide. The better guide might instead be the one who understands that a passage is beginning to open, who accepts being displaced by the signs encountered along the way, who knows when to call upon another when he is no longer enough, who does not hold on to what has been entrusted to him, and who, once the passage has taken place, knows not to settle into the opening he has helped to keep open.

Felix’s Notebook

What could I say about the little blue dog Damon, who so often appears beside Child Moon… but also beside the other characters in these drawings? Is he some kind of guide… I am not sure I properly understand the role he might have to play there… if there is a role at all… It took me a long time to understand that his presence is connected chiefly with moments of crisis or hesitation… but perhaps I am venturing a little too far… because to say even that… would already be to assign him a function that is too visible. He accompanies more broadly than that, and above all his help is almost never announced as help… it may become apparent only afterwards, and may sometimes even remain undecidable. I should therefore revise my thought… and make this retrospective discretion one of its central elements.

I must begin again from a little further back, because for some time now I have been writing as though a potential reader already knew whom I was talking about, whereas the names themselves, through circulating so often between the notebooks, the drawings and the stories, have become far more familiar to me than they can possibly be to someone encountering them for the first time.

Damon is a little blue dog who accompanies one character or another, and above all, at least until now, Child Moon, although no one seems to know where he comes from, as though his presence had preceded the question of his origin and everyone had grown accustomed to seeing him come and go before it had even occurred to them that, one day, he must surely have appeared somewhere. In the documents I have found no true arrival, no account that brings him into the story, no house from which he might have emerged, no master he might have left behind, no scene in which anyone could claim to have seen him for the first time… he is simply there, beside one and then another, with that peculiar way some beings have of making their presence seem so natural that only afterwards do we realise we know nothing at all about what brought them to us.

Indeed, he accompanies far more than he guides, if at least I still give that latter word the rather conspicuous meaning I once attributed to it, because nothing in his presence announces that help is being given. He walks ahead or behind, strays away, comes back, sometimes disappears from the frame before returning as though nothing had happened, remains beside Child Moon when no particular danger seems to threaten him, and I would be hard put, if someone asked me, to point to the precise moments when he becomes useful, so closely does his effectiveness, whenever it exists, seem to merge with the simple continuity of his presence. It is often only much later, when I go back over a sequence of events, that some detail makes me hesitate: would such a detour have taken place without him, would such a pause have lasted long enough for something to be noticed, would such a character have begun walking again had he not found the little dog a few steps farther on? Yet no sooner is the question asked than it slips away, because there is nothing to prove that Damon knew what he was doing, or even that he was doing what I retrospectively attribute to him.

It may therefore be that his help belongs to that peculiar kind whose form becomes recognisable only once it has ceased to act, although even recognisable is no doubt too confident a word, since one might just as easily return to the same events and see in them nothing more than a succession of gestures without any particular intention.

(224) A abracadabrante história da Criança Lua

« Levei muito tempo a compreender de onde ele vinha. […] Entrevi de imediato um clarão no mistério da sua presença.»

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, O Principezinho, capítulo III, 1943.

Onde se pode observar que aquele que conhece o caminho não será necessariamente o melhor guia. Talvez o melhor guia seja antes aquele que compreende que uma passagem está a começar a abrir-se, aquele que aceita ser deslocado pelos sinais que encontra, que sabe chamar outro quando já não basta, que não retém aquilo que lhe foi confiado e que, uma vez realizada a passagem, sabe não se instalar na abertura que ajudou a manter aberta.

Caderno de Félix

Que poderia eu dizer do pequeno cão azul Damon, que aparece tantas vezes ao lado da Criança Lua… mas também junto das outras personagens destes desenhos? Será ele uma espécie de guia… Não tenho a certeza de compreender bem o papel que lhe caberia desempenhar… se é que existe algum papel… Levei muito tempo a compreender que a sua presença está principalmente ligada aos momentos de crise ou de hesitação… mas talvez me esteja a aventurar um pouco… porque dizer isso… seria já atribuir-lhe uma função demasiado visível. Ele acompanha de uma forma mais ampla, e sobretudo a sua ajuda quase nunca se anuncia como tal… pode tornar-se perceptível apenas depois, e por vezes até permanecer indecidível. Devo, portanto, corrigir a minha reflexão… fazendo dessa discrição retrospetiva um dos seus elementos centrais.

Tenho de retomar as coisas um pouco mais atrás, porque há algum tempo que escrevo como se um eventual leitor já soubesse de quem falo, quando, na verdade, os próprios nomes, de tanto circularem entre os cadernos, os desenhos e as narrativas, acabaram por se tornar muito mais familiares para mim do que podem sê-lo para quem os encontra pela primeira vez.

Damon é um pequeno cão azul que acompanha uns ou outros, e sobretudo, pelo menos até agora, a Criança Lua, mas de quem ninguém parece saber de onde vem, como se a sua presença tivesse precedido a própria pergunta sobre a sua origem e todos se tivessem habituado a vê-lo ir e vir antes mesmo de pensarem que, algures, um dia, ele teria necessariamente de ter aparecido. Não encontrei nos documentos nenhuma chegada verdadeira, nenhuma narrativa que o faça entrar, nenhuma casa de onde pudesse ter saído, nenhum dono que pudesse ter deixado, nenhuma cena em que alguém pudesse dizer tê-lo visto pela primeira vez… ele está simplesmente ali, junto de um e depois de outro, com essa maneira que certos seres têm de tornar a sua presença tão natural que só depois nos damos conta de que ignoramos tudo acerca daquilo que os trouxe até nós.

Aliás, ele acompanha muito mais do que guia, se pelo menos continuo a dar a esta última palavra o sentido demasiado visível que outrora lhe atribuía, porque nada na sua presença vem anunciar que uma ajuda está a ser prestada. Caminha à frente ou atrás, afasta-se, regressa, desaparece por vezes do campo para nele voltar a entrar como se nada tivesse acontecido, permanece junto da Criança Lua quando nenhum perigo particular parece ameaçá-la, e eu ficaria bastante embaraçado se me pedissem que assinalasse os momentos exatos em que ele se torna útil, de tal maneira a sua eficácia, quando existe, parece confundir-se com a própria continuidade da sua presença. Só muitas vezes bastante mais tarde, ao retomar uma sequência de acontecimentos, um pormenor me faz hesitar: teria ocorrido tal desvio sem ele, teria tal paragem durado o suficiente para que alguma coisa pudesse ser percebida, teria tal personagem retomado o caminho se não tivesse encontrado o pequeno cão alguns passos mais adiante? Mas mal a pergunta é formulada, já ela se esquiva, porque nada permite afirmar que Damon soubesse o que estava a fazer, nem sequer que estivesse realmente a fazer aquilo que, retrospetivamente, lhe atribuo.

É possível, assim, que a sua ajuda pertença àquelas cuja forma só se torna reconhecível quando já deixaram de agir, embora até a palavra reconhecível seja, sem dúvida, demasiado segura, pois seria igualmente possível retomar os mesmos acontecimentos e não ver neles senão uma sucessão de gestos sem qualquer intenção particular.

(224) L’abracadabrante histoire de l’Enfant Lune

 

 « Il me fallut longtemps pour comprendre d’où il venait. […] J’entrevis aussitôt une lueur, dans le mystère de sa présence.»

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince, chapitre III, 1943.

Où l’on peut observer que ce n’est pas celui qui connaît le chemin qui sera nécessairement le meilleur guide. Celui-ci pourrait être qui comprend qu’un passage est en train de s’ouvrir, celui qui accepte d’être déplacé par les signes qu’il rencontre, qui sait appeler un autre lorsqu’il ne suffit plus, qui ne retient pas ce qui lui a été confié et qui, lorsque le passage a eu lieu, sait ne pas s’installer dans l’ouverture qu’il a aidé à maintenir.

Carnet de Félix 

Que pourrais-je dire du petit chien bleu Damon qui apparaît souvent aux côtés de l’Enfant Lune… mais aussi des autres personnages de ces dessins. Est-il une sorte de guide… Je ne suis pas sûr de bien comprendre le rôle qu’il aurait à y jouer… si rôle il y a… Il m’a fallu longtemps pour comprendre que sa présence est liée principalement aux moments de crise ou d’hésitation… mais je m’aventure un peu… Dire cela serait déjà lui assigner une fonction trop visible. Il accompagne plus largement, et surtout son aide n’est presque jamais annoncée comme telle. Elle peut n’apparaître qu’après coup, et parfois même demeurer indécidable. Je corrigerai donc ma réflexion… en faisant de cette discrétion rétrospective un élément central.

Je dois reprendre les choses d’un peu plus loin. J’écris depuis quelque temps comme si un lecteur potentiel savait déjà de qui je parle, alors que les noms eux-mêmes, à force de circuler entre les carnets, les dessins et les récits, ont fini par m’être familiers. Bien plus qu’ils ne peuvent l’être à celui qui les rencontre pour la première fois.

Damon est un petit chien bleu qui accompagne les uns ou les autres, et surtout, du moins jusqu’à présent, l’Enfant Lune. Personne ne semble savoir d’où il vient, comme si sa présence avait précédé la question de son origine. Comme si tout le monde s’était habitué à le voir aller et venir avant même de songer qu’il avait bien fallu, un jour, qu’il apparaisse quelque part. Je n’ai trouvé dans les documents aucune arrivée véritable, aucun récit qui le fasse entrer, aucune maison dont il serait sorti. Nul part il n’est question d’aucun maître qu’il aurait quitté. Il n’existe aucune scène où quelqu’un dirait l’avoir vu, ou lu, pour la première fois… Il est là, simplement, auprès de l’un, puis de l’autre, avec cette manière qu’ont certains êtres de rendre leur présence si naturelle. On ne s’aperçoit qu’après coup qu’on ignore tout de ce qui les a conduits jusqu’à nous.

Il accompagne d’ailleurs beaucoup plus qu’il ne guide, si du moins je donne encore à ce dernier mot le sens trop voyant que je lui attribuais autrefois. Rien dans sa présence ne vient annoncer qu’une aide est en train d’être apportée. Il marche devant ou derrière, s’écarte, revient, disparaît parfois du champ avant d’y rentrer comme si rien ne s’était passé. Il reste auprès de l’Enfant Lune lorsqu’aucun danger particulier ne paraît le menacer. Je serais bien embarrassé si l’on me demandait de désigner les moments précis où il devient utile, tant son efficacité, lorsqu’elle existe, semble se confondre avec la continuité même de sa présence. Ce n’est souvent que beaucoup plus tard, en reprenant une suite d’événements, qu’un détail me fait hésiter: tel détour aurait-il eu lieu sans lui. Tel personnage aurait-il repris sa marche s’il n’avait trouvé ce petit chien quelques pas plus loin? Mais à peine la question posée, elle se dérobe, car rien ne permet d’affirmer que Damon sait ce qu’il fait, ni même qu’il fait ce que je lui attribue rétrospectivement.

Il se pourrait ainsi que son aide soit de celles dont on ne reconnaît la forme qu’une fois qu’elles ont cessé d’agir. Et encore le mot reconnaître est-il sans doute trop assuré, puisque l’on peut tout aussi bien reprendre les mêmes événements et n’y voir qu’une succession de gestes sans intention particulière. 

(223) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

Once fallen… night confesses…

— What are you waiting for?

— If I answered that I have no idea, it would not be entirely untrue, but it would be far too convenient a way of leaving the question behind us, when it seems to me precisely one of those questions that ask not so much for an answer as for a little time in which to discover what they have already set in motion…

— Allow me to smile…

— I quite understand… let me begin again… in order to discover what these questions have already set in motion in us at the very moment they are asked, for after all we have spent a great deal of time waiting without always knowing that we were waiting, and repeating a great deal…

— You said it, not I…

— …without always knowing what repetition was doing to what had been entrusted to us, so that today, when you ask me what I am waiting for…

— Politely… I should point out… that I am not asking any question at all…

— I would be tempted to answer that perhaps I am waiting to discover what, in everything we have received from others, heard from others, learned from others, repeated after them…

— That much is certain… you are repeating yourself…

— And sometimes on their behalf, has ended by becoming close enough to us that we can still carry it without disappearing...

— For someone who claims not to know, that is already an alarmingly long answer.

— You can see, notwithstanding the possibly enormous… or infinitesimal contribution of even the humblest reader, that we have changed...

— ...Or that we have spent too much time in the company of our master.

— Which perhaps amounts to the same thing, although I do not know whether he would appreciate our making him responsible for our sentences, especially since he might answer that they belong no more to him than to us, that they merely passed through him before passing through us, which would be yet another way of pushing a little farther away the question of who owns what is said when several voices have successively carried it.

— And there you are already talking about ownership.

— Because it is difficult to speak of the voice without that old question returning, as though a sentence had to belong to the person who uttered it, then cease to belong to him as soon as another takes it up, whereas it may be that it has never belonged wholly to anyone and can live only on condition that it passes, receives something from each person, loses something as well, sometimes returns so transformed that its first author would no longer recognize it and yet the last person to speak it would still be wrong to imagine himself its origin.

— I had turned slightly towards the Archipelago, not to interrupt our conversation, but because what lay before us had that peculiar way of seeming to add nothing to what had just been said while silently displacing it, and they remained for some time before the bare islands, the rocky slopes, the cliffs almost entirely devoid of vegetation, the sea separating the dark masses and, in the distance, above a crater they perhaps knew or believed they knew, a thin plume of smoke rising with enough regularity to appear peaceful to anyone who had forgotten what it announced.

— It is curious, one of them finally resumed, that we should call this a desert, as though the scarcity of visible things entitled us to conclude that almost nothing happens here, when stability itself may be the most fragile illusion of all, since the volcanoes are at work both when we are looking at them and when they are out of sight, since some eruptions never enter the story directly and leave behind only a consequence, a broken coastline, a vanished passage, a new mass in the middle of the sea, while an island we remember may no longer be there when we return, without anyone ever having told us of its disappearance.

— And you find that reassuring?

— I do not believe I said that; I am merely saying that the Archipelago teaches us to distrust what appears motionless, and perhaps also what appears to belong to us permanently, for a form may endure for a long time, long enough to be given a name and for us to grow accustomed to it, then break apart, sink or re-form elsewhere, while another appears without our being able to determine precisely at what moment it began to be what we now see.

— Are you talking about the islands?

— For the moment… There was very little vegetation, so little that a tuft of grass or a flower appearing between two stones could hold the gaze with a force it would probably not have possessed in a landscape covered with leaves, and when certain parts of the Archipelago suddenly began to flower, a rare event to which the story sometimes seemed to grant the brevity of a “visitation” rather than the duration of a new state of the world, nothing made it possible to say that this flowering would still be there later, that it would survive the drought, the wind, the lava or simply the shift of attention towards another island, another character, another story... and yet, at the moment when it appeared, it would have been difficult to reduce it to scenery or to pretend that it did no more than fill an emptiness.

— The danger perhaps begins when we rush to say what it means.

— What are you thinking of?

— That gigantic tree, the coat, the hat, the rope, the blue dogs, the roots, all those things that return in another form when we thought we had committed them to memory, and that each time seem to bring with them what has happened to them since the last occasion, so that the old explanation is not necessarily false but has simply become too narrow.

— Like a garment?

— See how you arrive there... you too.

— At what?

— At letting things answer without first asking their permission.

There was something in this that the parrots knew better than they might have wished, they whose first function had been so close to that of an echo that one might have thought they existed only when another voice supplied them with something to say, as though their very being depended upon that debt and the silence of others ought therefore to have entailed their own; but through repeatedly taking up what had been said, they had discovered that exact repetition perhaps did not exist, that a sentence changed simply because it passed through another throat, that an accent was enough to displace an intention, that a hesitation sometimes opened within an utterance a space that had not previously been there, and that the second voice, however faithfully it wished to remain attached to the first, could not prevent the passage itself from producing something.

Their function as a chorus had perhaps arisen from this, less from any knowledge they possessed about others than from the singular position in which, standing at the edge of what was being done and what was being told, they could take up the event again without claiming to master it, let it resonate after it had taken place, sometimes even while it was taking place, bring together two moments still unaware of one another, hear in a spoken word a consequence that the person who had uttered it had not necessarily foreseen, then return that word to the story slightly altered, not in order to impose a lesson upon it but to restore to it what it had perhaps failed to hear in itself.

— Does that never worry you?

— What?

— Receiving so much from others that you no longer know what would remain of you if you suddenly stopped repeating them.

This time the first parrot did not answer immediately, not because silence had recently become a virtue between them — they would certainly not have boasted of it — but because the question had just touched a place they had until then managed to skirt with a certain skill, as though the ceaseless passage of words from one voice to another had long been enough for them without their having to wonder what became of the one who carried them.

— There may be two ways of disappearing, he finally said, one of which would consist in withdrawing so completely from everything that binds us to others that, through trying to preserve what is supposedly our own, we would end up as nothing more than guardians of a territory no one enters, while the other would consist, on the contrary, in surrendering ourselves so completely to what comes from them, to their words, their expectations, their roles, their demands, that we would no longer know how to return to the place from which we answer them; I am not certain that between these two disappearances there exists some peaceful position in which we might finally settle, but perhaps it is precisely in the movement from one to the other, in the effort not to break the bond while at the same time not dissolving into it, that something resembling a voice begins to form.

— A voice of one’s own?

— I am already wary of the phrase.

— Naturally.

— Not because it is false, but because it would too quickly lead us to believe that this voice exists somewhere within us, intact, waiting for us to silence all the others so that we may finally hear it, whereas it may be that it can only appear in their midst, through repetitions, deviations, resistances, even misunderstandings, like a line we do not possess before we have travelled it.

— So you are saying that one becomes oneself by imitating others?

— That is above all not what I said.

— I knew you would answer that way.

— But neither would I say that we become ourselves by ceasing to imitate them, because I do not quite see how we could subtract from what we are everything that has come to us from them without at the same time subtracting a large part of what enables us to speak, to think, to recognize ourselves or even to oppose them; perhaps the question, then, is not how to escape imitation, but what imitation becomes when it ceases to be mere reproduction, when it begins to introduce that slight gap through which something passes without remaining identical.

— Play.

— Yes, play, and the word suits us all the better because it preserves both its movements without forcing us to choose too quickly between them: the play in which one participates, with its rules, roles, conventions and expectations, and the play that appears between two parts when they are not fitted quite tightly against one another, that narrow space which might be taken for a defect but without which nothing would move any longer.

The life of the Archipelago could be looked at in this way, not as the proliferation of a world endlessly multiplying its forms, but as the almost invisible work of this gap within provisional forms themselves: an island remained long enough to receive a name, then disappeared… another emerged… a plain of lava seemed sterile until the moment a shoot ventured into it… a character bore a name until that name became too narrow, or too ancient, or simply incapable of accompanying what was happening to him… the objects themselves returned without being quite what they had been, and what had first appeared to function as repetition gradually revealed itself as transformation.

This is perhaps why it is dangerous to explain too quickly, not because explanation is the enemy of what shows itself, still less because we ought to maintain an artificial obscurity around things in order to make them appear more profound, but because to explain carries within it the gesture of unfolding, and in trying to spread out too perfectly what was folded we risk losing not a secret but the very possibility of a change of face, that shifting relation between the visible and what reveals itself only when the thing is turned slightly, when we return to it, when we discover that the fold which seemed to conceal something was also holding together two surfaces which, once separated, would no longer touch.

— So you want to leave things folded?

— No more than that… I would merely like to avoid that strange mania by which we imagine we have finished with things as soon as we are able to give them a name.

— And yet… of necessity… we give a great many names.

— Which is why we must be wary of ourselves.

— This is becoming very tiring.

— Nothing obliges you to be yourself continuously.

The second parrot looked at him with sudden attention, as though he were not certain whether he had heard a joke, then, perhaps understanding that the uncertainty was part of the joke, he too turned his eyes towards the sea, where the smoke from the volcano had bent beneath the wind and seemed to join another island, although of course nothing actually passed from one to the other except what the gaze consented to carry there.

— Do you remember my question?

— Which one?

— What we are waiting for.

— I remember it better now than I did when you asked it, which is not very reassuring for memory, but perhaps quite faithful to what we have been doing for a long time… a question arrives, we think it is asking us to answer, then it makes its way, encounters something else, changes form, and when we return to it we discover that perhaps it was asking us less what we were waiting for than from what place we were capable of waiting.

— From what place?

— The place where we are neither entirely withdrawn from others nor entirely lost in them, I suppose, although putting it that way still gives the place a stability it probably does not possess, for we should perhaps speak instead of a passage, of a return that must constantly be undertaken anew, of a way of moving away without breaking and returning without dissolving, something that would allow us to hear the voices of others without being merely their echo and perhaps to hear our own without believing that it made itself alone.

— Perhaps?

— I am very attached to that adverb.

— Because you doubt that you have a voice?

— Because I am beginning to doubt whether I would know how to recognize the one that was mine.

It was at that moment, or perhaps only afterwards did it seem to them that it had been at that moment, that above a very distant island a new column of smoke appeared, still so thin that the chorus of parrots could not say whether they had seen it begin or had merely just noticed something that had long been there, and this uncertainty, instead of troubling our two birds as it once would have done, seemed to them to belong to what had just been said, for it was becoming decidedly difficult to distinguish what was appearing from what one was only beginning to see.

— So… what are you waiting for now?

— Perhaps to discover what speaks when I am no longer quite repeating… and I confess that the prospect worries me more than everything we have just said.