These last few days I have been, and for the time being am required to remain, in a condition caught between blindness and seeing, in imitation perhaps of Saramago’s two famous novels which were given those words as titles in their English translations, about which, although over the years these two books have sold many copies and been very highly praised in the Anglophone world, he never gave up his protest against their shortened, and, to him, misleading titles in English; these works, Saramago always insisted, although grounded in the tradition of the novel, were essays – ensiaon – not simply fictions.
Between blindness and seeing, in imitation of the sudden onset of a mysterious trauma and interruption of everyday life, such as was described in those two works by Saramago, when on last Saturday afternoon the main telecom cable which serves the valley in the west country, within which this ‘writing desk’ is located and from where every one of these words is constrained to flow, was violently severed, abruptly cutting off nearly all the telephone, email and internet communications with the outside world of those living in the valley, including myself here.
A sudden blindness descending upon us and continuing, so that I was forced to use whatever remained of my powers of recollection of the world that went before, including for instance the account given by my friend last week below, and then to reach out again and again into this new, unfamiliar and disabling dark in repeated attempts – ensiaon – to make a moment of contact with the outstretched hand of an other. Even her hand, and then asking, Is this still her? Are you that Judith Butler who was described before? Is this her touch, and are these – and, now I remember, must the texture of her clothes still be leather – her self-same words?
Or can I postpone the notion that accompanies, and had for so long become the habit of my seeing mind, Oh, now I know who you are, it spoke, disturbing and doing violence to, and with, the reach of my desires? Then, as I recalled other incidents from the just past, I also remembered that she too, equally not knowing within this darkness, had been feeling towards me, and this is what she had said in what seemed to be an extended continental mode of address, and towards our being “addressed” together in a way that did not result in a violence either of the body or mind, including the risk of falling for the texture of and scent upon her clothes, and the possibility at any moment of reaching too far.
It has proved fruitful enough to attempt to explore – ensiaon – thus far, and now there is the further novelistic task to find a sufficient and imaginative way for these words to reach out themselves in order to be seen and read in the world… Next week I am away, I had planned it some time ago, which is now framed by this recent and unexpected turn of events, and account of blindness and seeing… And when I return, will the people of Egypt and elsewhere also have come through their time of darkness, and will they too have found and collectively reached a way of being “addressed” without violence?