She had a pregnant pause that only literature could confess. Georges Bataille, Literature and Evil Sory now rewriting（2022年12月30）
When the Catholic Mass begins, there is always time to reflect on one’s ‘evil’. How many of us really have a clear view of our own heart while we look back there? The human mind is multi-layered and polysemous. It is not an easy thing to do. The Catholic Church is not meant to be a ‘building’. The agape Jesus is the heart and the believer is the ‘body’. That is why the ‘body’ needs to ask its heart before Mass. That mind is Jesus. It ‘thinks’ by repeating differences in self-awareness and cognition. Even if the prayer is the same every day, that time never comes back. Like ‘introspection’, which was the beginning of psychology, it is a religious kneeling and return to the primitive.
In 2018 I came back from the brink of death; in 2019 Adam the cat came into our home. His presence was a ray of light that came into my life. To touch the blue eyes that pooled light, the mystery of life, was a step away from death for me. The beginning of life from now on gave me a budding. Since when did the world plan for this child to be born, I had no way of knowing the plan for this little soul to be born. In the past I could not wait for happiness to come this way. Like Osamu Dazai’s schoolgirl, ‘I waited and waited for happiness, and finally, unable to hold back, I ran out of the house’, reflecting the nature of people who could not wait for the generation of time. （According to Deleuze, the daily repetition is the repetition of difference, and the failure to wait for the generative change of new things to come.）
Whereas Bergson said that time is connected, Hume said that time is disconnected.
The being I am has no substance. I am nothing but a ‘theatre’ in which perceptions appear and disappear, a ‘bundle of perceptions'”.
Deleuze incorporates both Bergson and Hume. For me, ‘expectation’ is Bergsonian and judgement is Humean. For Christians in particular, everything is a deus ex machina, a cycle of returning to the Bergsonian. Deleuze is again collating the time frames that Hume worked on. In the first time, Deleuze is ‘present’ and the time of sensibility, based on Augustine’s theory of time. In the second time, it is the time of memory, the past and Bergsonian. The third time is also known as Thanatos (desire for death) and is future, Nietzschean. This implies an infinite ‘straight line’. Deleuze was also drawing on Bergson in Augustine with regard to the first time. What becomes important in this is ‘repetition and difference’, but ‘repetition is Hume’s famous assertion that nothing changes in the thing that repeats itself, but something changes in the contemplation of repetition, and the reading of a story (literature) is at the heart of this.
Consider the stages of a novel before it is considered a reading. First there is the author’s time-line, the completed work, which is read, and then it is read by a third person who repeats it. The quality of the person’s voice and performance, which may not completely match that of the author, nor may they be able to play the part of the story. Readings have a different appeal from voice acting. The ‘signifier’ that Deleuze did not disregard may also be the sentence. Writing is a series of sensations, but it is also a symbol. A voice actor acting does not try to make a text remain a text. It means that the images and characters try to come alive. Sometimes, it may even smack of life lessons. A reading, by contrast, is different. Just as Jean Renoir’s ‘acting instruction’ suppresses emotions and bars and inspires the actor, a reading is not about becoming a character or setting the scene for a work. It gives the reader imagination from a unique perspective while maintaining both the chain of images and symbols of the text. It is not the author’s voice, nor the voice of the characters, but the symbols they represent that speak.
So what if it is not read out loud by a human voice, but by a machine? I reflected back on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘body without organs’. Today’s Vocaloids have become so precise that they are indistinguishable from the human voice, but they lack the vital breathing.
An organless body is not inorganic. Even if it is stripped down to symbols, it still must not forget to breathe. This is also what philosophy itself tries to be a living discipline. It is a language, but it must not be inorganic. Just as Deleuze and Guattari wrote about writing together, with concepts moving autonomously in a space between them that was neither, so author and reader are bound together without seemingly having the same roots. They are the creation of two beings that have no boundaries and waver.
Narratives continue to breathe invisibly behind the symbols. I think that what makes this world possible is a symbol that is a symbol, but a breathing symbol at the same time.
Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’ also begins to exist by being aware that one’s heart is beating, but this is not always the case with art. In the real world, we do not check to see if the hearts of the people we pass by are beating, but art was meaningless unless it made us want to see the other person’s heart beating.First, the existence of a work of art is a first time, living a habit, while having a second time.Second, the existence of a work of art is a second time, living a habit, while having a first time. After all, you cannot love yourself in the moment. Habits and achievements, the accumulation of the past, leave behind only a seemingly ‘present’ production. The date of publication, the date of publication, is shown, but if you delve into the history of the symbols of those years, you will find that people will perceive the time line in a more complex way. And a work of art lives a third time in the end. It passes through death and becomes a linear time entity. Why is it a loss when a masterpiece is damaged? It starts with the fact that the artist’s soul is only seen in the body after death. To place the value of a human being solely on his or her body and while he or she is alive is not ultimately valuing the person.
People have forgotten the importance of posthumous paintings because of the high price paid for them. As the saying goes, “Man shall not live by bread alone.”
As the saying goes, a person’s value includes what is beyond his or her body. I do not value only my body and soul. I believe that everything around me represents my existence.
It is obvious that what constitutes me need not be my organ, but it is constituted by the other, and that is the only explanation for ‘otherness’ and ‘polysemy’. By the other I exist, it is not so. For the body without organs is ‘unidimensionality’. René Chérère, who further delved into Deleuze’s term nomadism, took the selfhood itself, in which I am me, as a new image and said that through the constant hospitality of the Other, I deviate from my fixed self-identity and generate myself into the Other. It is not only the assertion of self-territory and belonging, but also the hospitality of the Other, which is also ‘love’.
Love, to return to the story of Jesus’ apostles, was rich in diversity. God’s love would be for anyone at random if the only purpose was conversion. This is because if conversion is the only purpose, it is enough to force them by force. That is unity without the love of God. Jesus did not force his apostles’ hearts by violence or brainwashing. In testimony to this, Judas betrayed Jesus, and Peter said he did not know Jesus. If Jesus was brainwashing, none of that would have happened. And anyone who understands modern religion knows that liking Paul does not separate him from Jesus.
They are ‘unities’ connected by love (agape).
Future philosophy will go further, confronting religion, but if we trace back to the source, we find that they are like one with each other, and that these two beings are also ‘bodies without organs’. Confining each part to a certain role, it has meant mutual decline. When religion dominated, it was important to get out of it. However, the same invisible precepts have been created for the non-religious as well. With this trapped perception, the perception of love is constantly distorted. The same applies to philosophy. A philosopher who has never read the Bible is, after all, accompanied by Deleuze’s ‘stupidity’. The possibility of diverse combinations must seek new conjunctions.
Deleuze and Guattari may also have embodied the ‘body without organs’. The two contrasting figures became rhizomes (eternally identical rhizomes) between conjunction and separation, and succeeded in becoming the kind of ‘being’ that I can hold in my hands today. Philosophy is not a mere inorganic treatise. It gives pleasure to reason and intellect from generation to generation. It must be the same with the love of God.
In 2018, that line, similar to Dazai’s “because I can no longer write”, made me experience a false third time. In the midst of all this, at the end of 2020, I met someone with a beautiful voice. It was so beautiful that I wanted her to read something for me to try. So I suggested that she read Dazai Osamu, from his critique of Dazai, which she had been working on before the accident in 2018. The famous line, ‘Mine has been a life of much shame’ – that’s where we began.
There was no visual information in the recorded reading. However, his voice seemed to lend itself to recitation. For me, at least, more than hearing and little linguistic information, synaesthesia was about to be created. It brings with it colours, music and even scents. His voice was not just a trendy voice, there was subtlety in his voice and an impermanence deep within the gentle personality that was apparent. His voice generated an imagery of different emotions in me. The world of words was not simply visible, and the words of the great writers of the past could not replace his recitation. He just fascinated me with the invisible everyday life. Just as the scenery I always see looks different, just by putting his voice to beautiful music, the music becomes my own personal ‘sound’ and memory. Music and literature, which were beautiful when listened to alone, became my own personal ‘sound’ and memory. The addition of others, the generation of which was the ideal formation of the world.
He has always chosen to read only words that have some love and light in them. The destination of the literary world is not to change people. It is to empower people’s thinking. Words can empower people in all kinds of ways. Words and silence, in silence I gaze into the abyss. His and my abysses are never connected. We have different ‘roots’. Yet we become unities.
Recently, I was asked to read ‘God bless you’. It is well known that Jesus’ choice of apostles was not outstanding, except for John, but it seems that he didn’t need even more people who could perfectly embody God’s teachings. Why was this the case with Jesus? It was because he always wanted ‘hospitality’. That is why the soul must ‘confess’ at the beginning of Mass. Just as Jesus is connected to those who pray, even though they are apart. May you be able to understand the Bible reading and the role one day, even if you don’t understand the meaning, even in the ‘bar reading’. Always remember that the Bible is a way of life.
‘God bless you’ is a phrase I like very much. I told a friend of mine who died of an absurdity that God had blessed him. So much so that I have chosen this word carefully and have never taken it lightly. I let him read a lot of things to me because I sincerely wanted to bless him. I hope that God’s love will be extended to him and that he will realise it. How we, with different roots, are generated, was in a dark dream. It loves without any lasting plan, even on days when I don’t want to think about anything, even in the darkness when I am tired and can’t think of anything.
God bless you.
We are feeble but strong.
We have the poorest talent.
Just until the day we can be in the past tense.
God bless you.
