An English trans of 'Recoltes et Semailles' Part III, done by AI

THIRD PART：THE BURIAL(2) — OR THE KEY TO YIN AND YANG

Editor's note

The diamonds in the text refer, in the margin, to the pages of the original typescript. The internal references in the footnotes refer to the pagination of the typescript.

In footnotes 40 (p. 142), 41 (p. 145) and 42 (p. 146) in Volume I, the author gives indications as to how the text and footnotes were written and can be read.

Notes 9 to 11 on page 183 give information on the links between the notes, which can be seen in the table of contents (numbers preceded by !; * or underlined).

The editor would like to thank Olivia Caramello and Laurent Lafforgue for their accurate proofreading of the mathematical formulae.

To the memory of Claude Chevalley

XI THE DEFUNCT (STILL NOT DEAD...)

Contents

The incident - or body and mind

Note 98

The trap - or ease and exhaustion

Note 99

A farewell to Claude Chevalley

Note 97

Surface and depth

Note 101

In praise of writing

Note 102

The child and the sea - or faith and doubt

Note 103

The incident - or body and mind

NOTE 98 [◊ 421] (22 September) The last of the notes for the ‘Burial’ (apart from a few footnotes) is dated 24 May - so four months ago. The two weeks that followed, until 10 June, were mainly spent re-reading and adding to or reworking the notes already written, not to mention a visit of a day or two from Zoghman Mebkhout, who came to read all the notes for ‘Burial’ before I sent it off to be typed, and to give me his comments. I was confident that the final manuscript would be ready by early June, and that it would be typeset and printed (that was optimistic, after all...) before the university holidays. I really wanted to send out my ‘five hundred page letter’ to everyone before the holiday rush!

In fact, the text of the ‘Burial’ is still not finished as I write: as it was four months ago, it still lacks the final two or three notes - plus 1 that has been added in the meantime: the one I've just started with the lines I'm writing, as a quick account of what's happened in the meantime.

On 10 June, a new unexpected event burst upon the writing of Récoltes et semailles, which is full of unexpected events: I fell ill! A stitch in my side suddenly appeared (when the minute before I didn't suspect anything) and pushed me onto my bed with a peremptory force that had no answer. Suddenly I found standing or even sitting very difficult, only lying down seemed to suit me. It was really silly, especially at a time when I was just about to finish a very urgent job, and I didn't want to hear any more about it! Typing while lying down was out of the question, and even writing by hand in this position is no picnic...

It took me almost two more weeks, during which I tried as best I could to carry on with my work against all odds, to realise the obvious: my body was exhausted and was insisting, without me even pretending to hear, on complete rest.

I had found it so hard to hear, because my mind had remained fresh and alert, all wriggly to keep up its momentum, as if it had an autonomous life, totally separate from that of the body. It was even so fresh and wriggly that it had the greatest difficulty in taking into account the body's need for sleep, constantly refusing, to the point of exhaustion, the deadline for sleep, that obstacle to going round in circles!

Throughout my life and up until three or four years ago, the unlimited capacity to recover through deep and prolonged sleep had been the solid and salutary counterpart to sometimes inordinate investments of energy: when sleep is safe, you no longer fear anything, you can afford (without it being madness) to throw yourself headlong and to the point of exhaustion into orgies of work - even if it means making up for it with orgies of restorative sleep! This ability, which all my life I had taken for granted just as much as the ability to work, the ability to discover (and surely the two are intimately linked...) has in recent years ended up being eliminated, and sometimes disappearing, for reasons that I can't really discern at the moment, and that I haven't really made the effort to fathom yet. More and more, when, after a long day spent at my typewriter (or working on handwritten notes) and obeying the injunctions of my body, which refuses to go on, I decide to go to bed, the reclining position (and the partial relief it provides from the tension of sitting) immediately revives my thoughts. It starts all over again, for hours or even for the whole night (or rather what's left of it...). I'm well aware that the system isn't profitable (assuming it's sustainable in the long term), given that (for me at least) prolonged reflection without the support of writing ends up going round in circles, often becoming a kind of rehashing - the bad habit is well established, and tends to get worse. It had become, it seems to me, the great focus of energy dispersion in my life in recent years, while other mechanisms of dispersion have been eliminated one by one, gradually, over the years.

If this mechanism has taken root in my life with such tenacity, if I've been prepared all these years to pay such a price, it's surely because something in me has found its reward in it, and would find its reward when the time came. It would not be a luxury for me to examine the situation closely - more than once in the past four months I have been on the verge of doing so.

[◊ 423] This was undoubtedly an urgent task. I eventually realised, however, that there was something even more urgent. First I had to deal with the most urgent thing: to renew the broken contact with my body, to help it to recover from the state of exhaustion that I had come to feel and admit, and to regain the vigour that had disappeared. I realised that to do this, I would have to give up all intellectual activity for an indefinite period - even meditating on the meaning of what was happening to me. Today's notes bring to an end this long and salutary ‘parenthesis’ in my major investments, which for a time (since February of this year) had come together in the writing of Récoltes et semailles. This note is an initial reflection, or at least a kind of summary report, on this four-month ‘parenthesis’.

By the time I realised, at the end of the ends, the need for complete rest, great fatigue had become profound exhaustion. Because I failed to listen to the peremptory language of my body, the paltry few pages of comments and retouching in l'Enterrement, torn from a state of physical exhaustion in those first two weeks, were at the cost of an investment of energy which, with hindsight, seems to me to have been insane! The fact remains that after these feats, I had to lie down for long weeks, only getting up a few hours a day for the essential practical tasks.

Remarkably, once I finally understood the need for complete rest, I had no difficulty whatsoever in completely abandoning all intellectual activity, with no desire to ‘cheat’. I didn't even have to make any decisions as such - just by understanding, I'd already given up. The tasks that had kept me on my toes just the day before suddenly seemed very far away, as if they belonged to a very distant past...

But the present was not empty. For weeks and months, sleep was reluctant to come, and I lay there for long hours, seemingly in total inactivity, but not once do I remember feeling that time was dragging on. I reacquainted myself with my body, and also with my immediate surroundings - my bedroom, or sometimes the patch of grass or dry grass bathed in sunlight right in front of my eyes, wherever I happened to lie down, near the house or during a short (and careful...) walk. I would spend long moments following the dance of a fly in a ray of sunlight, or the peregrinations of an ant or tiny green or pink translucent bugs along endless blades of [◊ 424] grass, in inextricable forests of such blades tangling before my eyes. These are also the dispositions in which, in silence and in a state of great fatigue, one follows with solicitude the hesitant wanderings of the slightest wind through one's guts - the dispositions, in short, in which one reconnects with elementary and essential things; those in which one knows how to fully measure all the benefits of a restorative sleep, or even what a marvel it is to simply pee without a problem! The humble workings of the body are an extraordinary marvel, but we only become aware of them (sometimes reluctantly) when they are disrupted in one way or another.

It was quite clear that, ‘technically’, the root of my ‘health problem’ was sleep disturbance. The underlying reasons for this disturbance escaped me and still do. It was by trial and error that I tried above all to get back to sleep, the good old sleep I'd known, which mysteriously slipped away just when I needed it most! I've only recently found it again. Needless to say, the idea would never have occurred to me to rely on pills, and if I tried herbal teas or orange blossom water (which I got to know on this occasion), I knew deep down that they were only expedient. On a more serious note, I took the opportunity to make some major changes to my diet: a reduction in starchy foods in favour of green vegetables and fruit (both raw and cooked), the (moderate) reintroduction of meat as a regular ingredient in my diet, and above all, a drastic reduction in the consumption of fats and sugars, where I (like many others in affluent countries) had been systematically unbalanced since at least the end of the war. My son-in-law Ahmed, who practises Chinese medicine and has a very good feel for these things, was a great help to me in realising the importance of such a change of diet in restoring a disturbed balance in my life. He was also the one who insisted, without tiring, on the importance of significant physical activity, on the order of a few hours a day, to keep up with intense intellectual activity. Intellectual activity otherwise tends to exhaust the body, drawing available vital energy towards the head and creating a strong yang imbalance.

Ahmed didn't content himself with lavishing me with good advice, accompanied by a yin-yang dialectic to which I'm quite sensitive, in the four or five years since I've had ample opportunity to familiarise myself with this delicate dynamic of things. As soon as I was well enough to do some gardening, [◊ 425] and seeing that I was doing my bit to get a mini-garden back on its feet, Ahmed took the initiative and started work on a larger scale: clearing new strips of land, bringing in soil, transplanting and sowing, making terraces and retaining walls, rearranging the compost heap... As the days and weeks went by, under the impetus of my indefatigable friend, I saw enough landscaping tasks unfold before me to keep me busy for years, if not for the rest of my life!

It was exactly what I needed, and what I'll need in the long term to counterbalance my over-enthusiastic intellectual activity. In this respect, daily walks, which I could impose on myself, as has been suggested to me for a long time, would not be of much help: my head continues to grind during walks as it does in bed, without being disturbed by the beauty of the landscape, which I pass through without seeing much of anything! On the other hand, when I'm watering the garden - it's up to me to make sure it's doing well - and even better, when I'm hoeing a bed of vegetables, I can't help but pay attention and get a little bit involved - to see the texture of the soil and how it's affected by the hoeing, by the vegetable plants and by the ‘weeds’ that grow in it, by the compost and by the mulching - and also, over time, to become aware of the condition of the plants I'm supposed to be caring for, a condition that reflects to a large extent the greater or lesser attention I've paid to them. This activity of gardening, and all that revolves around it, responds to two strong aspirations or dispositions within me: the one that pushes me towards an action where I see something coming out of my hands every day (which is by no means the case for walking, and even less so for the weights suggested to me by a colleague and friend...); and the one also pushing me towards an action where, at every moment, I have the opportunity to learn from contact with things. It would seem that I'm most likely to learn in situations where I'm actually ‘doing’ something - ‘something’ that takes shape and is transformed by my hands...

Once I got past the state of exhaustion proper, my convalescence came about, it seems to me, thanks to two types of activity, or rather, two types of important and beneficial factors in my day-to-day activities, both in the house and in the garden. On the one hand, there was the physical effort: even though I often felt tired and lackadaisical before setting to work - the ‘harder’ the work was, requiring me to handle [◊ 426] a heavy pickaxe or large stones let's say, the more fit I felt afterwards, heavy with good fatigue. And there was also the contact with living things: the plants that had to be tended; the soil that had to be prepared for them, then mulched or hoeed; the food that had to be prepared and that I ate with as much pleasure as I had had in preparing the meal; the cat demanding its pittance, and its share of affection; the various utensils and tools too, and even the rough and often unpolished stones that had to be turned over and over in all directions, in order to assemble them into low walls that would stand upright...

Physical effort and contact with living things - these are precisely the two aspects that are lacking in intellectual work, and which mean that such work is by nature incomplete, piecemeal, and ultimately, if it is not supplemented and compensated for by something else, dangerous or even harmful. This is the third time in just over three years that I've had the opportunity to realise this. It's even become quite clear now that I'm facing a draconian deadline: to change a certain lifestyle, to rediscover a balance where the yin pole of my being, my body, is not constantly neglected in favour of the yang pole, the mind or (to put it better) the head - or else, to lose my skin in the very next few years. That's what my body has been telling me, as clearly as it can be told! I've now reached a point in my life where the need for a certain basic ‘wisdom’ has become a matter of survival, in the literal sense of the word. That's surely a good thing - otherwise ‘wisdom’ would be perpetually put on the back burner, in favour of the kind of bulimic intellectual activity that has been one of the dominant forces throughout my adult life.

Faced with such a clear deadline: ‘change or die! - I didn't have to examine myself to know what my choice was. That's why, for nearly four months, I was able to abstain from all intellectual activity, maths or no maths, without ever feeling like I was doing anything violent to myself. I knew, without having to tell myself, that at the end of the day, a living gardener is even better than a dead mathematician (or a dead ‘philosopher’ or ‘writer’, never mind!). With a little mischief, we could add: even better than a living mathematician! (But that's another story...)

Moreover, I do not believe that I will ever find myself in such a ‘borderline’ situation, where I would have to give up all intellectual activity, whether mathematical or meditative, in the long run. Rather, the most immediate practical task [◊ 427], the most urgent in the years to come, seems to me to be precisely that of achieving a balance in life where the two types of activity coexist from day to day, that of the body and that of the mind, without either becoming all-consuming and crowding out the other. I make no secret of the fact that my most powerful investments since childhood have been in the ‘spirit’, and that the two main passions that have continued to dominate my life in recent years still lead me in this direction today. Of these two passions, the passion for mathematics and the passion for meditation, it seems to me that it is the first named above all, if not exclusively, that acts as a factor of imbalance in my life - as something that still has an unfortunate tendency to ‘devour’ everything else for its own sake. It's no coincidence, surely, that the three ‘episodes of illness’ in my life since June 1981 that have marked a situation of imbalance have occurred precisely at times when it's the mathematical passion that has taken centre stage.

It could be said that this is not quite the case for this latest episode, which occurred during the writing of Récoltes et semailles, which constitutes a period of reflection on myself, not to say a period of meditation strictly speaking. But it is also true that this reflection on my past as a mathematician was constantly fuelled by my passion for mathematics. This was especially the case in the second part, l'Enterrement, it seems to me, where the egotic component of this passion was involved in a particularly strong and constant way. And yet, even in retrospect, I don't get the impression that at any point this reflection took on an all-consuming, even demented, rhythm and pitch, as on the two previous occasions when my body was finally forced to let out an unanswerable ‘fed up! Seen separately from the context of an entire life, my intellectual activity over the last year and a half (since ‘resuming’ with the writing of La Poursuite des champs, followed by Récoltes et semailles) seems to have continued at a very reasonable pace, without forgetting to eat or drink (but sometimes, just a little, to sleep...). If it eventually led to a third ‘health episode’ (to put it euphemistically), it was undoubtedly against the backdrop of a whole life marked by the eternal imbalance of a head that is too strong, imposing its rhythm and its law on a robust body that has long endured without flinching $^2$ .

[◊ 428] Over the past two months, I have had ample opportunity to realise the irreplaceable benefits of working with the body, in intimate contact with humble living things, speaking to me in silence about the simple and essential things that books or reflection alone are powerless to teach. Thanks to this work, I found sleep again, a companion even more precious than food and drink - and with it, a renewed vigour, a robustness that had suddenly seemed to have vanished. And I have come to realise that, in this season of life of mine, if I want to continue this new mathematical adventure I began last year for a few more years, I cannot do so without endangering my health and my life, except with my two feet firmly planted in the soil of my garden.

The coming months will be those in which a new way of life will have to be put in place, in which the work of the body and that of the mind find their place and are reconciled on a daily basis. There's a lot of work to do!

The trap - or ease and exhaustion

NOTE 99 (23 September) Last night I had to cut things short to avoid going on until two or three o'clock in the morning and getting caught up in a spiral I know only too well. I was feeling refreshed and ready to go, and if I'd followed my natural inclination, I'd even have carried on into the early hours of the morning! The trap of intellectual work - at least that which you pursue with passion, in a subject where you end up feeling like a fish in water, following a long familiarity - is that it is so incredibly easy You just pull and pull, and it always comes, you just have to pull; it's only sometimes that you have the feeling of an effort, of friction, a sign that it's resisting just a little...

I remember, though, from my early years as a mathematician, a persistent feeling of heaviness, of heaviness that had to be overcome by a stubborn effort, leaving a feeling of tiredness in its wake. This corresponded above all to a period in my life when I was working with insufficient or even inadequate tools; or to a later period when I had to acquire tools more or less painfully, under the pressure of an environment (essentially, that of the Bourbaki group) which used them routinely, without their raison d'être becoming apparent to me as I went along, or even sometimes for years. I had the opportunity to talk about these years, which were sometimes a bit painful (see ‘The welcome stranger’, s. 9, and ‘A hundred irons in the fire — or there is no use in drying!’, note no. 32), in the first part of Récoltes et semailles. It was mainly the period from 1945 to 1955, which coincides with [◊ 429] my period of functional analysis. (It seems to me that in the students I had later, between 1960 and 1970, this resistance against learning without sufficient motivation, where we swallow notions and techniques on the faith of the authority of elders, was much less strong than it was in me - to tell the truth, I didn't perceive any at all).

To come back to my point, it was especially from 1955 onwards that I often had the impression of ‘flying’ - of doing maths by playing with myself, without any feeling of effort - just like some of my elders whom I had once envied so much for such almost miraculous ease, which had seemed well beyond the reach of my modest and ponderous self! Today, it seems to me that such ‘facility’ is not the privilege of some exceptional gift (as I have come across in some people, at a time when such a ‘gift’ seemed entirely absent in me), but that it appears of its own accord as the fruit of the combination of a passionate interest in a subject (such as mathematics, say), and a more or less long familiarity with it. If ‘gift’ does indeed play a part in the emergence of such ease, it is undoubtedly through the time factor, which varies from one person to another (and sometimes from one occasion to another in the same person, it's true...), to arrive at perfect ease in working on a given subject$^3$ .

The fact remains that the more things go - as the years go by - the more I have this impression of ‘ease’ when I do maths - that things are just waiting to reveal themselves to us, if only we take the trouble to look at them, to scrutinise them just a little. It's not a question of technical virtuosity - it's quite clear that, from this point of view, I'm in much worse shape than I was in 1970, when I ‘gave up maths’: since then I've had the opportunity above all to unlearn what I'd learnt, ‘doing maths’ only sporadically, in my own corner, and in a spirit and on themes quite different (at first sight, at least) from those of yesteryear. Nor do I mean that it would be enough for me to get to grips with some famous problem (Fermat's, Riemann's or Poincaré's, let's say), to make my way straight to its solution, in a year or two or even [◊ 430] three! The ease of which I speak is not that which proposes itself and allows us to achieve such and such a goal, fixed in advance: to prove such and such a conjecture or to give it a counterexample... It is rather that which allows us to dash into the unknown, in such and such a direction which an obscure instinct tells us is fruitful, with the intimate assurance, which will never be denied, that each day and each hour of our journey cannot fail to bring us its harvest of new knowledge. We can sense exactly what knowledge is in store for us the next day, or even the hour after that on this very day - and it is this ‘sense of foreboding’, constantly caught short, and the suspense with which it is interwoven, that constantly propels us forward, while the very things we are investigating seem to draw us into them. What becomes known always surpasses what was foretold, in precision, flavour and richness - and what is known in turn immediately becomes the starting point and material for a renewed foreboding, hurtling forward in pursuit of a new unknown eager to be known. In this game of discovering things, the direction we are taking at any given moment is known to us, while the goal is forgotten, assuming that we did in fact start out with a goal that we set out to achieve. This ‘goal’ was in fact a starting point, the product of ambition or ignorance; it played its part in motivating ‘the boss’, setting an initial direction, and triggering this game, in which the goal has no real part. Provided that the journey undertaken does not last a day or two, but is a long one, what it will reveal to us as the days and months go by, and where it will lead us at the end of a long cascade of unknown adventures, is a total mystery for the traveller; a mystery so remote, so out of reach in fact, that he hardly cares! If he happens to scan the horizon, it is not for the impossible task of predicting a point of arrival, and even less to decide as he pleases, but to take stock of where he is at the moment, and from among the directions open to him for continuing his journey, choose the one he feels is the most burning...

This is the ‘incredible facility’ I spoke of earlier, in relation to the work of discovery in an entirely intellectual direction, such as mathematics. It is slowed down neither by inner resistance$ ^4$ (as is so often the case in the work of meditation such [◊ 431] as I practise it), nor by a physical effort to be made, generating a fatigue which ends up giving an unequivocal signal to stop. As for intellectual effort (assuming we can even speak of ‘effort’, having reached a point where the only ‘resistance’ left is the time factor...), it does not seem to generate either intellectual or physical fatigue. More to the point, if there is any physical ‘fatigue’, it's not really felt as such, apart from the occasional aches and pains caused by sitting in a fixed position for too long, and other incidental problems of the same kind. These are easily eliminated by a simple change of position. Lying down has the unfortunate virtue of making them fade away, thus encouraging you to get on with your intellectual work instead of the much-needed sleep!

However, I've come to realise that there is a physical ‘fatigue’ that is more subtle and insidious than muscular or nervous fatigue, which manifests itself as an unquestionable need for rest and sleep. The term ‘exhaustion’ here (rather than ‘fatigue’) would capture the matter better, on the understanding that this state is not perceived as such, in the usual sense of this term, which designates extreme fatigue, manifested in particular by the great effort required just to get up, walk a few steps, etc. It is rather a state of ‘tiredness’ that is more subtle and more insidious than muscular or nervous fatigue, manifested as such by an unquestionable need for rest and sleep. Rather, it refers to a ‘depletion’ of the body's energy for the benefit of the brain, manifested by a gradual lowering of the body's general ‘tone’ and level of vital energy. It seems that this exhaustion, caused by excessive intellectual activity (by which I mean activity that is not compensated for by sufficient physical activity, leading to physical fatigue and the need for rest), is gradual and cumulative. These effects depend on both the intensity and duration of intellectual activity over a given period. At the level of intensity at which I pursue intellectual work, and with my age and constitution, it would seem that the cumulative exhaustion in question reaches a critical, dangerous threshold after a year or two of uninterrupted activity, without compensation by regular physical activity.

In a sense, this ‘ease’ of which I speak is only apparent. Clearly, intense intellectual activity involves a considerable amount of energy: energy is taken from somewhere and ‘spent’ on work. It would seem that the ‘somewhere’ is in the body, which ‘absorbs’ (or rather disburses) as best it can the (sometimes dizzying) expenses that the head spends without counting the cost. The normal way of recovering the energy provided by the body is through sleep. It is when the head becomes bulimic that it ends up encroaching [◊ 432] on sleep, which amounts to eating up energy capital without renewing it. The trap and the danger of the ‘ease’ of intellectual work is that it tirelessly encourages us to cross this threshold, or to remain beyond it as soon as it is crossed, and that moreover this crossing does not signal itself to our attention by the usual, unmistakable signs of fatigue, or even, exhaustion. It takes a great deal of vigilance, I realise, to detect the approach and crossing of the threshold in question, when you are fully engaged in the pursuit of an exciting adventure. To perceive this emptiness of energy in the body requires a state of listening to the body, which I have often lacked and which few people have. Moreover, I doubt that such a state of communion of conscious attention with the body could blossom in anyone at a time of life dominated by purely intellectual activity, to the exclusion of all physical activity.

Many intellectual workers instinctively feel the need for this kind of physical activity, and organise their lives accordingly: gardening, DIY, mountains, boating, sport... Those who, like me, have neglected this healthy instinct in favour of a passion that is too invasive (or a lethargy that is too strong), sooner or later pay the price. I've paid the price three times in the last three years, and I've done so without complaint I might add, or rather, with gratitude, realising with each new episode of illness that I was merely reaping the rewards of my own negligence, and what's more, that it was also teaching me a lesson that no doubt only he could give me. Perhaps the main lesson I learned from the last of these episodes, which has just come to an end, is that it's high time I took the initiative and made such reminders unnecessary - or more concretely, that it's high time I cultivated my garden!

A farewell to Claude Chevalley

NOTE 97 In my reflections yesterday and today, I have deliberately left out an event that occurred right in the middle of the illness episode, in the early days of July, at a time when I was still bedridden. This was the death of Claude Chevalley.

I found out about it from a vague article in Libération, more or less devoted to the event, which a friend had passed on to me by chance, thinking it might interest me. There was almost nothing about Chevalley, but a bit about Bourbaki, of which he was a founding member. I felt quite stupid when I heard the news. I'd been thinking for months that I was going to finish Récoltes et semailles, minted, printed, paperbacked and all - and go up to [◊ 433] Paris straight away to bring him a copy still warm! If there was one person in the world whom I was sure would read my pamphlet with real interest, and often with pleasure, it was him - and I wasn't at all sure whether there would be any other than him!

Right from the start of my reflection, I realised that Chevalley had brought me something, at a crucial moment in my itinerary, something that had been sown in effervescence, and which had germinated in silence. What I felt connected to him at the time wasn't so much a feeling, let's say of recognition, or sympathy, or affection. These feelings were certainly present, just as they are present towards one or other of the ‘elders’ who had welcomed me as one of their own, more than twenty years earlier. What made my relationship with Chevalley different from my relationship with any of them and with most of my friends, if not all of them, was something else. It's the feeling, I think, or to put it better, the perception, of an essential kinship, beyond the differences in culture, the conditioning of all kinds that marked us from our earliest youth. I can't say whether something of this ‘kinship’ shines through in the lines of my reflection where he is mentioned 5 . In the period of my life to which these lines refer, Chevalley appears perhaps more as an ‘elder’, this time at the level of an understanding of certain elementary things in life, than as a ‘parent’. This is a distance, however, that my subsequent maturation must have reduced and perhaps abolished, as had been the case for a long time at the mathematical level, in my relationship with him as with my other elders. If I now try to put into words the meaning of this kinship, or at least one of its signs, what comes to mind is this: we are both ‘cavaliers seuls’ - travellers each on our own ‘solitary adventure’. I speak about mine in the last ‘chapter’ (of the same name) of ‘Fatuity and Renewal’6 . Perhaps, for those who knew Chevalley well (and even for others), this part of the reflection is more apt to suggest what I would like to express than the part that concerns him by name.

Meeting him and talking with him would certainly have given me a better understanding of this friend than I had in the past, and would have given me a better idea of both our essential kinship and our differences. If there was one person, apart from Pierre Deligne, [◊ 434] for whom I was anxious to be able to give him the text of Récoltes et semailles in person, it was Claude Chevalley. If there was one person whose commentary, whether mischievous or sarcastic, would carry particular weight for me, it was him again. On that day in the first week of July, I knew I wouldn't have the pleasure of bringing him the best I had to offer, nor the pleasure of still hearing the sound of his voice.

The strange thing - and which no doubt contributed to making me feel so stupid on hearing this news - was that on more than one occasion over the past few months, when talking about meeting Chevalley in the near future, I remembered that he was having health problems - and there was a worry in me, constantly brushed aside, that this meeting might not take place, that my friend might disappear before I came to see him. The idea of course crossed my mind to write or phone him, if only to ask about his health and how he was, and to say a few words about the work I was engaged in, and my intention to go and see him about it. The fact that I dismissed this idea as silly and unwelcome (that there was really no reason why..., etc.), as people so often do in situations like this, is a good illustration of the extent to which I, like many others, continue to live ‘below my means’ - dismissing the obscure foreknowledge of things that I am too busy and too lazy to hear...

Surface and depth

NOTE 101 (24 September) After the digression of the previous two days around the ‘illness episode’ of the past few months, it's time for me to pick up where I left off in June. I foresaw that there would still be two final notes to write: a ‘The Funeral Eulogy (2)’ (which would follow on from and complete the note ‘The Funeral Eulogy (1) - or the compliments’ of 12 May), and a final De Profundis, in which I intended to sketch out an overview of all my thoughts on the Burial.

The substance of these two notes was still warm when I fell ill - I was about to throw it all out on paper, just long enough to finish putting the finishing touches to all the previous notes, so as to feel that I was working on a solid and tidy ‘backbone’... During the three full months (since 23 June to be exact) when I practically stopped all work on the Burial, apart from a few occasional typing corrections, it has, alas, slipped my mind a little. I even feel a bit foolish, embarrassed in any case, to start wisely filling in the blank pages waiting behind titles-pensums, on the pretext that these [◊ 435] appear in a provisional table of contents, and that I was unwise enough to allude to them here and there in a certain text intended for publication. This is especially the case for ‘The Funeral Eulogy (2)’, and even rereading the first juice, ‘The Funeral Eulogy (1)’ (aka ‘les compliments’), wasn't enough to warm up for me a substance that for months had had the leisure to cool in its corner!

And yet, from the day after 12 May when I wrote this note, and throughout the month that followed, my hands were tingling with the desire to delve deeper into this new mine that I had just found, without even realising it. When Nico Kuiper was kind enough to send me the brochure celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the IHES last year, I must have spent half an hour going through it (including the two half-page fact sheets on Deligne and me), without finding anything in particular. The only thing that struck me was the absence of any reference to the difficult early years of the IHES, when its reputation was established in makeshift premises, myself (with the first seminars on algebraic geometry) being the only one to represent it ‘in the field’. I thought about it again months later, when writing the note ‘L'arrachement salutaire’ (No. 42), in March 1984. Not being sure of my memory, I conscientiously asked Nico to send me another copy of the booklet (as I couldn't find the first one). This was a second opportunity to go through the two topo's again, perhaps with a slightly less hasty eye. However, this time I'm definitely not into it. I note in passing, with some surprise, that it says in the Deligne topo that ‘The main thrust of his work is to “understand the cohomology of algebraic varieties”’ - who would have thought! So I forgot about it for a month or two (until I remembered by writing the note ‘Refus d'un héritage - ou le prix d'une contradiction’, No. 47). On the other hand, I don't notice that the word ‘cohomology’ isn't mentioned in the topo about me, any more than the word ‘schema’ is. In my inattentive state at the time, there was still nothing to make me suspect that this anodyne text, a little overloaded with hyperbolic epithets, was being used as a eulogy, ‘served’ (moreover) ‘with perfect fingering’! Such perfect fingering, in fact, that I wonder if any of the readers of this booklet (a little dull around the edges, with its deliberate use of all-out pomade, as the occasion demanded, I suppose...) noticed it more than I did, on my first and second readings.

This immediately brings me back to an observation that is constantly made whenever, for one reason or another, I am led to look with a somewhat intense and sustained [◊ 436] attention at something that I had previously been content to look at ‘in passing’ with the ‘usual’, routine attention that I give to the small and large things and events that pass in my life from day to day. Such a situation frequently arises during meditation, which often leads me (more often than not, moreover, ‘one thing leading to another’ and without any deliberate intention) to subject to closer scrutiny certain events of the day or night (including dreams), which had passed more or less unnoticed in my customary state of attention, or whose meaning (often clear and obvious) had entirely escaped my conscious attention at first.

When I speak here of ‘attention that is a little intense and sustained’, what I really mean is an awakened gaze, a fresh gaze, a gaze that is not weighed down by habits of thought or the ‘knowledge’ that serves as a facade for them. If, for one reason or another, we are led to take an alert, attentive look at things, they seem to transform before our very eyes. Behind the apparent flatness of the dull, smooth surface of things presented to us by our everyday ‘attention’, we suddenly see an unsuspected depth opening up and coming to life. It has always been there, part of their intimate nature, whether we are talking about mathematical objects, a garden lawn or all the psychic forces at work in a particular person at a particular time.

Thought is one instrument among others for revealing and enabling us to fathom this depth behind the surface, this secret life of things, which is only ‘secret’ because we are too lazy to look, too inhibited to see. It's an instrument that has its advantages, just as it has its disadvantages and limitations. But in any case, thought is rarely used as an instrument of discovery. Its most common function is not to discover the secret life in us and in things, but rather to mask and freeze it. It is a multi-purpose tool available to both the child worker and the boss. In the hands of the former, it becomes a veil, capable of capturing the forces of our desire and carrying us far into the unknown. In the hands of the other, it becomes an immovable anchor, unshaken by storms and tempests...

The thought process was getting a bit lost, and now it's coming back to a starting point - which is also the observation I made yesterday: to what extent, because of inveterate habits and conditioning, I'm living below my means! (In which I find myself, moreover, in very numerous company...) It was through a gradual discovery of Burial, from facts as large as volume LN 900 7 , that a lazy attention finally came to life. A reading of the note ‘Refus d'un héritage - ou le prix d'une contradiction’ (No. 47) led me on 12 May to reread the two famous ‘topos’ a third time (!). This time, however, I noticed something rather unusual: there was no mention whatsoever of ‘cohomology’ (or algebraic varieties or diagrams) in the small, laudatory text devoted to me in the jubilee booklet! The whole thing struck me as funny enough to merit a footnote, which I set about writing as quickly as possible. Along the way, I became aware of one or two other ‘funny’ details that hadn't caught my attention before: although this was a third reading, it too had been superficial and mechanical - I'd pretty much just repeated and reproduced the readings I'd done previously. It was only when I wrote what was supposed to be a footnote, and which became the note ‘The Funeral Eulogy (1)’, that I gradually got into the game, that a curiosity was awakened that made me return to these texts once again, this time looking at them a little more closely. It was only then that the transformation I mentioned earlier took place - that a ‘depth’ opened up, an intense life behind the flat façade of a dithyrambic discourse, served up in the fanfare of a grand occasion! It is this curiosity that has transformed a mechanical, repetitive, distracted gaze into an ‘awakened’ gaze...

The ‘awakening’ in question was not instantaneous, moreover; it occurred gradually, with the progress of the reflection pursued in this footnote (sic). To tell the truth, it wasn't complete until the final point of this note, even though the hour was late (I seem to remember) and urged me to ‘get it over with’$^8$ . But no sooner had I made that point, or at least the very next day, than I realised that I was far from having exhausted the subject of L'Éloge Funèbre. It was only then that I felt [◊ 438] fully how rich in meaning these two texts, so short and anodyne in appearance, were, real mines to say the least! And that I was far from having come to the end of what they had to say, as long as I listened carefully...

(September 25) Last night I had to cut short my reflection, even though it had only just started, it seemed to me. I'd been sitting at my typewriter for three and a half hours straight, and little signs were beginning to show me that it was time to get up and move.

I remember well the first time I had to devote ‘intense and sustained attention’ to written texts, and experienced day after day, for months on end, the astonishing metamorphosis of a dull, flat ‘surface’ coming to life and revealing a rich, precise meaning, an unsuspected ‘depth’. It was also, at the same time, my first long-term meditation, in the spirit of a journey into the unknown, which would last as long as it did... The starting material was the voluminous 1933/34 correspondence between my father (who had emigrated to Paris) and my mother (who was still in Berlin at the time, with me, who was then five). My aim was to ‘get to know’ my parents. I'd discovered the previous year that the admiration I'd devoted to them all my life, which had eventually congealed into a kind of filial piety, covered up and maintained a very great ignorance about them. This phenomenal ignorance, in which I had been happy to maintain myself all my life, only became apparent to me in its full dimension during the long-term meditation of the following year, from August 1979 to March 1980.

I had begun to ‘prepare the ground’ throughout July 1979, in particular by doing an initial reading of all this correspondence, alongside work on a ‘poetic work of my own composition’9 which I was then putting the finishing touches to. Every evening I spent a few hours reading three or four letters-replies, certainly with interest and, I would have said without hesitation, attentively. However, I was obscurely aware that I remained a stranger, an outsider to what I was reading - that the true meaning escaped me. What I was reading was often quite crazy, as if [◊ 439] these men and women I saw living and parading before my eyes had nothing in common with those I had thought I knew - those whose memory gave me a clear, intangible image, In the absence of patient, meticulous, demanding work on what I was reading, which I would have pursued as I went along, I was simply stunned, without more, by the (relatively) little in these letters that was ‘big’ enough to catch my superficial attention. What was recorded in this way was superimposed on the ‘well known’, which had been the invisible and unchanging foundation of my life, of my sense of identity, since my early childhood and up to the present day (without my ever realising it, of course). Assuming that I had stuck to this first reading, the thin layer of new and undigested ‘facts’ that had been superimposed on the master layers would soon have been eroded and swept away without leaving much trace in the months and years that followed.

At the time of this preliminary work, my main investment was elsewhere, in writing a book that was absorbing most of my energy at the time. I was well aware of the limits of a piece of work done in parallel with another, and that I would have to come back to it from start to finish, through a piecemeal process in which I would invest all my energy. I anticipated that it would take a few weeks - in fact I spent seven months in a row, devoted to a meticulous examination of the letters and writings left by my parents, the most ‘burning’ part of which is surely the 1933/34 correspondence. Seven months, moreover, at the end of which I ended up cutting it short, realising that the subject (‘getting to know my parents’) was inexhaustible, so to speak. It had become more urgent now to get to know myself, with the help of all the things I'd just learned about my parents and, indirectly at least, about my own forgotten childhood...

I've just spent nearly two hours going through the early notes of this meditation on my parents, begun on 3 August 1979. Contrary to what I thought I was hastily remembering, I didn't yet realise, except perhaps in a very confused way, that I needed to go through all the letters and other written records of my parents that I had read over the past month, ‘from beginning to end’ (as I wrote earlier). At least I don't suggest anything to that effect in my notes. After a day or two's recapitulative reflection, taking provisional stock of my multiple, somewhat [◊ 440] confused impressions aroused by this reading, I make no pretense of resuming it with meticulous piecework. Instead, I follow on (as if this were self-evident) with a (similarly brisk) reading of other letters (and in particular a voluminous correspondence from my parents in the years 1937/39), and with a parallel reflection fuelled by reading impressions. One thing leading to another, over the course of August and the following month, I began to learn what it means to work on a letter (or any other written record of a life) in such a way as to be able to grasp its true meaning, which is sometimes striking - a meaning, however, that the person writing often likes to ignore, to conceal from themselves and from others, unseen and unknown! while still managing to display it ‘between the lines’ in a way that is sometimes ostentatious and incisive. And it must be rare for an insinuation or provocation (sometimes ferocious...) not to reach the addressee, for it not to be perceived and ‘taken in’ by him at a certain level, when he too is careful not to let this perception, this knowledge penetrate the field of his gaze, and he too enters with all sails unfurled into this same game of ‘neither seen nor known’. It is unfailingly the most obscure passages, those that seem to border on debility (or insanity...) and defy all rational interpretation, that reveal themselves to the curious eye to be the richest in meaning: veritable mines, providing irreplaceable keys to penetrate further into the simple and obvious meaning behind the accumulation of apparent nonsense. Passages like these, frequent in the correspondence between my parents, and especially in the letters from my mother, who was running the show, of course completely ‘went over my head’ when I first read them in July. I began to pick up on them, here and there, over the following month. It wasn't until September that various cross-checks made me realise that I'd perhaps missed something essential in what I had to learn from the 1933/34 letters, and brought me back to them, prompting me to do a first ‘in-depth’ reading of some of them. Reading them immediately changed my childhood image of my parents and their relationship with me and my sister.

In praise of writing

NOTE 102 (26 September) It's been two days now since I got into the swing of ‘autobiographical reminiscences’, just as I was about to write (‘coldly’) the sequel to a certain note on a certain Éloge Funèbre. I don't know if this digression did anything to warm my ardour! It's about time, at least, that I got to the point I had in mind when I launched into it before [◊ 441] yesterday, a little in the direction of : ‘On the art of reading a message that pretends not to say what it has to say’. This kind of text-message is much more frequent than I would have imagined...

It goes without saying that the question of the ‘how’ of this ‘art’ does not arise, as long as you are prepared (as I was for most of my life) to take at face value and to the letter everything you are told or written, and not to look for or see, in anything or anyone, any intentions other than those expressly expressed by the person concerned. On the other hand, it arises when you are confronted with the indefinable expression that in a given statement, tirade or narration, something is ‘wrong’, that there is something fishy about it, that something has ‘passed’, somewhere, that is not supposed to have been said (what would you imagine there!). Sometimes it's also the basic, disconcerting perception of an incoherence, an absurdity, sometimes so enormous and at the same time so seemingly elusive that it seems to defy all formulation, to the point of appearing to be debilitating or delirious. These situations are often overloaded with anguish - and it was indeed by an instantaneous influx of anguish, never recognised as such but blurred and immediately swallowed up by a wave of violent, distraught anger, that I invariably reacted to such situations, where absurdity suddenly burst into my life: an inadmissible, incomprehensible absurdity, fraught with threats, shaking my serene vision of the world and of myself to its very foundations! At least that's how it was until I discovered ‘meditation’, when an intrepid and enterprising curiosity defused and took over from these waves of anger and anguish...

It was curiosity, in other words the desire to know, that made me spontaneously find, under pressure of need, this ‘art’ of deciphering a blurred text-testimony - or more modestly speaking, a method that suited the limited means and heaviness that were mine. No matter how hard I tried and no matter how curious I was, on first reading (or even on second reading) of these letters full of meaning, all the essentials went right over my head - ‘I couldn't see a thing’. Sometimes, commenting on a few often confused impressions, perhaps about this or that particularly obscure and confusing passage, I managed to penetrate further into the meaning of a text that had seemed hermetic. Along the way, I sometimes found myself copying, for quotation purposes, passages of varying length, which stood out either because they were obscure or because they seemed to me to be ‘important’, for one reason or another. As the days and weeks went by, I realised that the simple fact of copying in extenso [◊ 442] such and such a passage from the text I was scrutinising changed my relationship with it in a surprising way, opening me up to an understanding of its true meaning.

This was completely unexpected, whereas my initial motivation (on a conscious level at least) had been a matter of pure convenience. I even remember that for a long time there was a certain restrained impatience in me, to devote precious time to acting as a copyist, no more and no less, I was gnawing at the bit to get to the end and writing as fast as I could... But there is no comparison between the speed of the eye reading written lines and that of the hand transcribing them word for word. No matter how fast you write, the ‘time factor’ is absolutely not the same. And I suspect that this ‘time factor’ does not act in a purely mechanical, quantitative way - or to put it better, that it is only one aspect of a more delicate and richer reality. Nor is there, for me at least, any common measure between the action of the eye that scans lines that someone else has thought and written, and the act of the hand that letter after letter, word after word, rewrites those same lines. There is undoubtedly a profound symbiosis between the hand and the mind or thought; and at the very rhythm of the hand that writes, and without any deliberate purpose, the mind cannot help but reform, rethink the same words, assembling themselves into sentences charged with meaning, and these into discourse. Provided that a desire for knowledge drives this hand that reproduces letters, words and sentences, and that it drives this mind which, in unison, also ‘reproduces’ them, on another level - surely this double action creates a more intimate contact between myself and this message of which I become the scribe-writer, than the act, above all passive and without any support or tangible trace, of the eye that is content to read.

This groping intuition is in line with a long-standing observation - that for me the rhythm of working thought (be it mathematical work or any other, including the work I call ‘meditation’) is most often (if not always) that of the hand that writes, and by no means that of the eye that reads 10 . And the written trace [◊ 443] left by my hand (or sometimes, by the typewriter operated by my hands...), at the pace of the thought that progresses without haste and without ever dawdling, is the indispensable material support of this thought - both its ‘voice’, and its ‘memory’. I suspect, moreover, that it must be more or less the same (though perhaps to a lesser degree) for most if not all ‘intellectual workers’.

The child and the sea - or faith and doubt

NOTE 103 (27 September) In any case, the fact is there; just as I can only ‘enter’ a mathematical theory by writing, I can only begin to enter a text-message, the ‘between the lines’ of a message, by rewriting it. My first work of meditation ‘on texts’ was transformed, an apparent platitude began to open up into a living depth, and the absurd began to find meaning, from the moment I began to rewrite the message in extenso, or (in the case of a message of prohibitive dimensions) the passages that a sense of intuition made me feel were crucial.

People will tell me that in the absence of reliable ‘objective’ criteria to guarantee the validity of an ‘interpretation’, presented as the result or outcome of (so-called?) ‘work’ on a text, let's say, we can make any text or discourse say exactly what we want, inventing whatever ‘message’ we like to attribute to it. Nothing could be further from the truth, and examples certainly abound! What's more, I doubt (except perhaps in a limited discipline like history - and even then...) that it would be possible to identify such criteria. It wouldn't do much good anyway: it wouldn't stop anyone inventing fanciful interpretations, nor would it enable anyone to fathom and discover the true meaning of a message, a situation or an event. Rules and criteria are the ingredients of a method, which has its usefulness and importance (often overestimated, incidentally, to the detriment of other factors and forces of a completely different nature), as a tool for discovery and consolidation in the development of scientific or technical knowledge, and also in the development of any kind of know-how: driving or repairing a car, etc. On the other hand, when it comes to knowing and discovering oneself and others, the role of the method becomes entirely incidental: it's the ‘stewardship’ that follows, when the essential is there. And being inspired by a method, or even clinging to it, does nothing to encourage the emergence of that more essential thing - quite the contrary!

To put it another way: the person who sets out to find something decided [◊ 444] in advance (which he will call ‘true’, or ‘truth’) will have no trouble finding it, and even proving it to his own satisfaction - and he will surely find along the way some other person, if not a whole crowd, quite happy to make an alliance with him and share his convictions and satisfaction. He's like the butterfly hunter who sets off with a beautiful butterfly in his net (a stuffed one, if that's possible), and takes it out all happy (and to his own satisfaction) when he returns from his ‘hunt’.

And then there's the person who finds himself in front of an unknown, like a naked child in front of the sea. When the child wants to get to know it, he goes in and gets to know it - whether it's warm or cool, calm or rough. Anyone who is attracted by an unknown thing and sets out to discover it will surely know it to a greater or lesser degree. With or without a net, he will find the truth, or at least some truth. His mistakes and his discoveries are all stages in his journey, or to put it better, in his love affair with what he wants to know.

I know what I'm talking about, because in my life I've been both a butterfly hunter and a naked child. There's no difficulty in distinguishing one from the other. I doubt that ‘objective criteria’ will be of much help here, it's much simpler than that! All you have to do is use your eyes...

And there is no difficulty either in distinguishing the successive stages, the successive stages of decantation, in this journey I have just been talking about, starting from this ‘dead’ stage where no presentiment surfacing in consciousness yet makes us suspect ‘something’, beyond a certain flat and amorphous surface presented to us by sleepy eyes, and which through successive ‘awakenings’ leads us towards a more and more delicate, more intimate, more complete apprehension of this ‘something’. The nature of the journey of discovery of mathematical things is not essentially different from that of the journey of discovery of oneself and others. The feeling of progress in knowledge, which deepens little by little (even through an accumulation of errors, patiently and tirelessly corrected) - this feeling is just as indisputable in the latter case as in the former.

This assurance is one side of an inner disposition, the other side of which is an openness to doubt: an attitude of curiosity, excluding all fear, towards one's own mistakes, which enables one to detect and correct them constantly. The essential condition of this double foundation, of this faith that is indispensable for welcoming doubt as well as for discovery, is the absence of any fear (whether apparent [◊ 445] or hidden) about what will ‘come out’ of the research undertaken - any fear, in particular, that the reality we are about to discover will upset our certainties or convictions, that it will disenchant our hopes. Such fear acts as a profound paralysis of our creative faculties, of our power of renewal. We can discover and renew ourselves in sorrow and pain, but not in fear of what is about to be known, what is about to be born (any more than a man can know a woman and make her conceive, in a moment when he is afraid of her, or of the act that brings him into her). Such fear is no doubt relatively rare in the context of scientific research, or any other research whose subject does not involve our own person in any profound way. On the other hand, it is the great stumbling block when it comes to self-discovery or the discovery of others.

Yet the feeling that accompanies a discovery, whether great or small, is just as indisputable in the case of self-discovery or the discovery of others, as it is in the context of impersonal research, such as mathematics. I've already had occasion to allude to this feeling. It's the reflection, at an emotional level, of a perception of something that has just happened - the appearance of something new - and this ‘something’ appears to be as tangible, as irrefutable (I apologise for the repetition!) as the appearance of a mathematical statement, let's say, or a notion or a demonstration, that you'd never thought of before. In fact, I find it difficult to distinguish or separate this feeling, which accompanies a particular discovery, from the feeling of progress I mentioned earlier, which accompanies an entire research project. Discoveries ‘great and small’ are like the successive stages that materialise a progression, like successive thresholds that we have to cross. Progression is nothing other than the sequence of thresholds crossed, of accesses from each of these levels to the next.

The ‘feeling’ or, better still, the perception that reflects and reproduces this process, is a sure and unmistakable ‘criterion’ - I don't remember it ever misleading me, whether in maths or meditation: I don't remember having to realise, with hindsight, that this feeling would have been illusory. Often it allows us, without any residual doubt, to distinguish truth from falsehood, or to discern truth from falsehood, and falsehood from what is supposed to be true. But above all, it is an irreplaceable guide in any true search - a guide ready to inform us at any moment (provided we take the trouble to consult it) if we are on the wrong track, or on the right one.

The willingness to listen to this sure guide is nothing other, [◊ 446] it seems to me, than what in another place in my reflection$^{11}$ I called ‘rigour’. This rigour is no different in essence, it seems to me, whether we are talking about the requirement in mathematical research, or that in self-knowledge, without which there can be no such knowledge. But it goes without saying that this in no way means that the presence of this rigour, at the level of such intellectual work, is a guarantee or sign of its presence for the knowledge of oneself and of others. In fact, the opposite is true, as I have observed on countless occasions, starting with myself. In this area, the ‘rigour’ I'm talking about here appeared in my life at the same time as meditation. Or to put it another way, I can't really distinguish between one and the other. The moments of meditation in my life are none other than those when I examine myself (most often through my relationship with others) in such a way as to be extremely demanding of myself.

(23 September) In fact, it appears that this planned ‘note’ was split into three separate notes (nos. 99-101).
I should make the exception here of the five years from 1974 to 1978, which were not dominated by any major task, and when manual occupations absorbed a not inconsiderable part of my time and energy.
However, I know several mathematicians, each of whom has produced a profound work, and who have never seemed to me to give this impression of ease, of ‘facility’ that is referred to here - they seem to struggle with an omnipresent heaviness, which they have to overcome with effort, at every step. For one reason or another, the ‘natural fruit’ just mentioned did not ‘appear of its own accord’ in these eminent men, as it was supposed to. Which goes to show that not all unions bear the fruit we might expect...
However, I know a remarkably gifted mathematician whose relationship with mathematics is typically conflictual, hampered at every step by powerful resistances, such as the fear that a certain expectation (in the form of a conjecture, let's say) might turn out to be false. Such resistance can sometimes lead to a state of genuine intellectual paralysis. Compare this with the previous footnote.
See ‘Encounter with Claude Chevalley - or freedom and good feelings’ (section 11), and the last paragraph of the following section, ‘Merit and contempt’.
See especially, in this sense, the two sections ‘The forbidden fruit’ and ‘The solitary adventure’, nos. 46 and 47.
See the note ‘Memory of a dream - or the birth of motives’, no 51, and the following note, ‘The Burial - or the New Father’.
All the more so, I am sure, because that very day I had already gone through the long and substantial reflection ‘The Massacre’ (no. 87), to which I refer towards the end of the note ‘The Funeral Eulogy - or the compliments’ which followed on from it.
Allusion is made to this work, and to the episode in my life that it represents, at the end of the section ‘The Guru-not-Guru - or the three-legged horse’, no. 45, and in note no. 43 to which it refers.
This circumstance, which seems to affect me to a greater degree than most of my mathematical colleagues, once made it difficult for me to join in the collective work sessions of the Bourbaki group, finding myself unable to keep up with the readings as they went along. I've never really enjoyed reading mathematical texts, even beautiful ones. My spontaneous way of understanding maths has always been to do it, or to redo it (with the help, here and there, of ideas and indications provided by colleagues or, for want of a better word, books...).
In the section ‘Rigour and rigour’, no. 26, where I speak of ‘rigour’ as ‘a delicate attention to the quality of understanding present at each moment’ in a piece of research.

XII THE FUNERAL CEREMONY

Contents

The Funeral Eulogy
(1) The compliments

! Note 104

(2) Strength and halo

Note 105
The key to yin and yang

(1) Muscle and gut (yang buries yin [1])
Note 106
Note 1061

(2) The story of a life: a cycle in three movements

(a) Innocence (the marriage of yin and yang)
Note 107
(b) Superpère (yang buries yin [2])

Note 108
Note 108$_1$
Note 108$_2$

(c) The reunion (the awakening of yin [1])

Note 109

(d) Acceptance (the awakening of yin [2])

Note 110

(3) The couple

(a) The dynamics of things (yin-yang harmony)

Note 111

(b) Enemy spouses (yang buries yin [3])

Note 111'

(c) The half and the whole - or the crack

Note 112

(d) Archetypal knowledge and conditioning

! Note 112'

(4) Our Mother Death

(a) The Act

Note 113

(b) The Beloved

Note 114

(c) The messenger

Note 114'

(d) Angela - or farewell and goodbye

Note 115

(5) Refusal and acceptance

(a) Paradise lost

Note 116

(b) The cycle

Note 116'

(c) The spouses - or the enigma of ‘Evil‘

Note 117

(d) Yang plays yin - or the role of the Teacher

! Note 118

(6) Yin and yang mathematics

(a) The most ‘macho’ of the arts

Note 119
(b) The beautiful unknown
Note 120
(c) Desire and rigour

Note 121

(d) The rising sea...

Note 122

(e) The nine months and five minutes

Note 123

(f) The funeral of yin (yang buries yin [4])

Note 124

(g) Supermum or Superdad?

Note 125
(7) The reversal of yin and yang

(a) The reversal (1) - or the vehement wife

Note 126

(b) Retrospect (1) or the three sides of a picture

Note 127

(c) Retrospect (2) or the knot

Note 127'

(d) The parents - or the heart of the conflict

Note 128
Note 128$_1$

(e) The enemy father (3) - or yang buries yang

Note 129

(f) The arrow and the wave

Note 130

(g) The mystery of conflict

Note 131

(h) Reversal (2) - or ambiguous revolt

Note 132

(8) Masters and servants

(a) Reversal (3) - where yin buries yang

Note 133

(b) Brothers and spouses - or the double signature

Note 134
Note 134$_1$

(c) Yin the Servant (1) - or the new masters

Note 135

(d) Yin the Servant (2) - or generosity

Note 136
Note 136$_1$

(9) The claw in the velvet

(a) Velvet paw - or smiles

Note 137

(b) The reversal (4) - or the conjugal circus

Note 138

(c) Ingenious violence - or the handover

Note 139

(d) The slave and the puppet - or the valves

Note 140

(10) Violence - or games and the goad

(a) The violence of the just - or letting off steam

Note 141

(b) Mechanics and freedom

Note 142

(c) Greed - or the bad deal

Note 143

(d) The two kinds of knowledge - or the fear of knowing

Note 144

(e) The secret nerve

Note 145

(f) Passion and hunger - or escalation

Note 146

(g) Sugar daddies

Note 147

(h) The nerve within the nerve - or the dwarf and the giant

Note 148

(11) The other Self

(a) A suspended grudge - or the return of things (2)

Note 149

(b) Innocence and conflict - or the stumbling block

Note 150

(c) The providential circumstance - or the Apotheosis

Note 151

(d) The disavowal (1) - or the recall

Note 152

(e) Disavowal (2) - or metamorphosis

Note 153

(f) Staging - or ‘second nature‘

Note 154

(g) Another self - or identification and conflict

Note 155

(h) The enemy brother - or passing on (2)

Note 156
Note 156$_1$
(12) Conflict and discovery - or the enigma of Evil

(a) Without hatred or mercy

Note 157

(b) Understanding and renewal

Note 158

(c) The cause of causeless violence

Note 159

(d) Nichidatsu Fujii Guruji - or the sun and its planets

Note 160

(e) Prayer and conflict

Note 161

(f) Belief and knowledge

Note 162

(g) The hottest iron - or the turning point

Note 162'

(h) The endless chain - or handing over (3)

Note 162''

1. THE FUNERAL EULOGY

(1) The compliments

NOTE 104 [◊ 447] (12 May) 1 Remarkably, in the little ‘overview’ of my work given in this same brochure 2 , the word ‘cohomology’ or ‘homology’ is not mentioned! Nor is the word ‘schema’. There is certainly mention (as circumstances demanded, when I was acting as the first Fields Medal recipient at the IHES) of the ‘titanic aspect’ of my work, the number of volumes published, the identification of essential problems, with the greatest natural generality (funny French, that), very careful terminology, an allusion to ‘Grothendieck groups’ (another one of those great natural generalisations, I bet!), and even topos and their usefulness in logic (but certainly not elsewhere!)... But there's not a single hint of a result, or a theory that I'd developed that might have been useful - it must be that these twenty titanic volumes were rigorously empty, or just collections of problems (never solved) and notions, with the greatest natural generality it's understood: Grothendieck's group is awarded (since my name is already stuck to it afterwards), presented as the ‘ancestor’ of algebraic K-theory (! ) (which has nothing to do, of course, with topological K-theory, about which not a word is said) 3; as for the Riemann-Roch theorem, it must have been the descendants of the ‘ancestor’ who took care of it - the ones who do the real theorems, the serious stuff!

At a time when it is fashionable to scorn generalities (persifuted, as it were, by the vaguely ridiculous phrase ‘greatest natural generality’...), [◊ 448] the anonymous pen that has taken care of my eulogy here has gratified me abundantly with what today is given over to disdain 4 . I also fully appreciated (perhaps I am the first to do so...) the humour of the same anonymous pen in this passage from the eulogy

‘He created at the IHES a school of algebraic geometry, gathered around the seminar he led and nourished by the generosity with which he communicated his ideas’ (my emphasis). Unfortunately, just like my ‘titanic work’, this ‘school of algebraic geometry’ that I nurtured so well is rigorously empty - not a single name is mentioned, and no one has come to complain that it has been forgotten, at least not me.

Starting from there [classical Hodge theory] and from $ℓ$-adic analogies suggested by Grothendieck [one wonders where Gr. found the time to learn such serious things, while writing his twenty volumes of larger natural generalities], he [Deligne] derived the notion of mixed Hodge structure and equipped the cohomology of any complex algebraic variety with it. In $ℓ$-adic cohomology, so [?] for varieties over a finite field, he proved Weil's proverbially difficult conjectures. This result seemed all the more surprising [!!] since Grothendieck, after having constructed the theory of cohomology in geometry over any field [one wonders what he was still looking for there], had reduced the remaining conjecture [???] to a series of conjectures that are as unapproachable today as they were then.

To put it plainly, far from having contributed in any way to proving this surprising result of such proverbial difficulty, these grothendieckeries (with a name to scare off the most hardened generalist-naturalist) were just good enough to encumber us again with conjectures as they should be (he never makes any others!) and unaffordable what's more (one would have guessed), just as much today as when he had the preposterous idea of making them.

[◊ 450] However, I think I remember tackling these unaffordable conjectures, but it was probably because I was ill-informed. It was around the time when I left, I mean died, and my posterity, better informed than me, was careful never to put its nose in that stuff, since Deligne was formal: it was unapproachable!

I recognise the style: we did our homework, quoted Grothendieck extensively (neither he nor anyone else will be able to claim that we are burying him on this solemn day), and even made a passing reference to the ‘ℓ-adic analogies’ that had played a role in the beginnings of the mixed Hodge theory. This must be the second time since the famous lapidary half-line thirteen years before 6; both allusions bear an uncanny resemblance to the ‘weighty considerations’ of a certain 1968 article 7: one is ‘thumbed’, and has led the reader by the nose at the same time! Here, the solemn occasion helping, the thumb reference does more than drown the fish - the impression that this text wants to suggest about this famous Grothendieck is precisely that carried by this ‘wind’ of fashion that I have felt for some years now - the one that I have already had the opportunity to feel today 8 , no longer in the tones of a funeral eulogy and grand occasions before a large audience, but in those of a massacre...

I'll continue the quotation, it's worth it:

This theorem (ex-Weil's conjecture) has helped to make $ℓ$-adic cohomology a powerful tool, and there is no need to name the brilliant and modest inventor of such a powerful tool... applicable to questions seemingly far removed from algebraic geometry, such as, for example, Ramanujam's conjecture. More recently, he has studied Hodge cycles on abelian varieties, taking the first step towards a ‘motivic’ theory such as Grothendieck had dreamed of. He also proved the algebraic mechanism of ‘intersection cohomology’, the topological theory of MacPherson and Goresky. This made it possible to transpose it to ℓ -adic theory, where it proved surprisingly useful.

So, one year after the publication of the ‘memorable volume 9’, an anonymous writer (I'm guessing the same one) has finally put right a small ‘oversight’ in the aforementioned volume. Somebody may have asked a question anyway, and Deligne here goes about repairing the oversight in his own way (it's nice, though, to quote that dreamer [◊ 451] Grothendieck, when it comes to, well, serious mathematics!). And always deceiving the reader, given that the ‘first step’ was taken as early as 1968 with Deligne's launch of the Hodge-Deligne theory, rooted in the yoga of motives which he had indeed ‘fed on’ through my contact, throughout the four years that had preceded. This yoga, from which his work stems, from which he has never known how to detach himself while denying it, is in fact dispatched in the periphrase of the first quotation under the name of ‘ℓ -adic analogies’. A reader who was not both very informed and very attentive would certainly not suspect a link between these ‘ℓ -adic analogies’, which would have played a role as a starting point (but certainly not beyond... ) for the theory of Hodge-Deligne$^{10}$ , and a ‘motivic theory’ of which I had indeed dreamt (and a devilishly precise dream at that) - if not this link, that it is still this same dreamer Grothendieck who manages (by dint of greater natural generalities) to suggest analogies to real mathematicians, on the condition that they do some real work.

As for the famous ‘algebraic mechanism of intersection cohomology’, here we are in the middle of Colloque Pervers$^{11}$ (although the word ‘perverse’ is not used). Admittedly, we've gone easy on one of the IHES's ‘four Fields medals [◊ 452]’, given the solemnity of the occasion - but there's no need to shy away from Grothendieck's posthumous pupil. My own burial on this exceptional occasion in the limelight, ministerial speech and all, is not burial by silence, but by compliment, skilfully measured and administered. But where MacPherson and Goresky are named, it goes without saying that for the posthumous pupil Zoghman Mebkhout silence is de rigueur, as it had been two years earlier at the Colloque Pervers, and as it still is today.

(2) Strength and halo

NOTE 105 (29 September) The ‘previous’ note, ‘L'Éloge Funèbre (1) - ou les compliments’ (No. 104), was dated 12 May - more than four months ago. It began as a footnote to ‘Refus d'un héritage, ou le prix d'une contradiction’ (note no. 47, from the end of March), just to mention in passing a little ‘funny’ fact that I had only just realised. But as I was writing it, I realised as the lines and pages went by that these two short, seemingly innocuous texts on which I was commenting, without really having planned or sought it out, were a real ‘mine’12 . It was also the day on which I had just painted the picture of a massacre (note 87), a picture that had gradually emerged from the mists of the past few weeks. Here it had suddenly materialised, had taken shape by the mere virtue of an enumerative description, and now it was calling out to me forcefully. The massacre and the ‘compliments’ - the funeral eulogy to the deceased - were like two complementary parts of the same striking picture, both appearing on the same day!

I was certainly overwhelmed! From the very next day, my hands were ‘tingling’ to keep up the momentum and, in particular, to probe further into this little jewel of a mine that I had just unexpectedly got my hands on. It had become clear that the first thing to do was to quote in extenso the two passages in question from the jubilee booklet - at the same time it would also be the best way to get to grips with these texts and better imbibe their real message, the message ‘between the lines 13’... Without even having had the [◊ 453] leisure yet to copy out the two texts, the previous day's contact had already been enough to arouse or awaken in me several associations of ideas, which I felt were juicy. I was eager to pursue them, without really knowing where they would lead me...

Finally, I didn't go on like that in the days and weeks that followed, although I did promise myself that I'd come back to it in the next few days. An unforeseen ‘incident’ put an end to all work on Harvest and Sowing for more than three months, and even to any intellectual work whatsoever$^{14}$ . The ‘warm moment’ favourable to pursuing this direction of reflection, which had just opened up in those days, has now passed. It's not certain that it will come back, or even that I want to make the effort to ‘blow’ (the heat!) to bring it back at all costs. To tell the truth, my real desire right now is to come to the final note, drawing a provisional balance sheet of the whole reflection called ‘The Burial’ - and to draw a final line! As far as this note is concerned, I'm at least going to give the full quotation I promised myself (and promised the reader, moreover); and perhaps at least a few summary indications too, about certain associations of ideas that these two texts (and perhaps also the fact of rewriting them in black and white) will have aroused in me.

The two texts in question (pp. 13 and 15 respectively, from the 1983 jubilee brochure entitled ‘Institut des hautes études scientifiques’) are part of a series of ‘minute portraits’ of the ‘permanent’ and ‘long-term guests’ who have passed through the IHES since it was founded in 1958, arranged in chronological order of entry. These are fairly brief texts, each about half a page long, and each includes the dates on which the person joined IHES and the position (professor or long-term visitor), the main honours, the main areas of interest and the most important contributions, with (where appropriate) the names of certain collaborators. For my humble self, however, there is a remarkable gap regarding these last three ‘objective’ aspects of a work and a personality - areas of interest, main contributions[◊ 454] , main collaborators or pupils - which gap is filled by these ‘compliments’ in dithyrambic style, some of which have already been noted and quoted in the previous note...

The series in question, which I have the honour of opening, is made up of the following mathematicians and physicists: A. Grothendieck, L. Michel, R. Thom, D. Ruelle, P. Deligne, N. H. Kuiper, D. Sullivan, P. Cartier, H. Epstein, J. Fröhlich, A. Connes, K. Gawedzki, M. Gromov, O. Lanford.

I thought I remembered that Dieudonné had been a professor at the IHES at the same time as I was, and I see from this list that he was not - he had therefore been content to run Publications mathématiques. However, I now realise, on page 3 of the brochure, in the curriculum vitae of the IHES, that this is not the case, that Dieudonné was indeed, like me, a ‘permanent professor’ from 1958 (and until 1964), at least theoretically. A rather strange contradiction! I'm copying here the beginning of the curriculum vitae, at the first two ‘dates’, 1958 and 1961:

1958 Creation of the Institut des hautes études scientifiques association in Paris by Léon Motchane, assisted by world-renowned scientific advisers and a group of European industrialists.

The scientific activity was launched by two mathematicians: Jean Dieudonné (→1964) and Alexandre Grothendieck (→1970), who were appointed permanent professors. Issue 1 of ‘Publications mathématiques de l'IHES’ is published.

1961 Recognition as a public utility.

……

I note in passing that it seemed useful, in this brief curriculum vitae, to mention the (somewhat symbolic) publication of number 1 of the Publications mathématiques (consisting of a twenty-four page article by G. E. Wall, the author of which had no particular connection with the association that had just been founded), but not the algebraic geometry seminars (well known by the familiar acronyms SGA 1 and SGA 2) through which I began to single-handedly ensure the scientific reputation of an institution, during years when it hardly existed at all ‘on paper’. Moreover, until about volume 24 of the Publications mathématiques, the bulk of these publications consisted of the successive volumes (1 to 4) of the Éléments de géométrie algébrique$^{15} $, all the other volumes being [◊ 455] around fifty pages each (of a high scientific level, it goes without saying). Moreover, on page 19 (after the series of ‘minute portraits’ from which Dieudonné was absent, God knows why $^{16}$ ), we read, in a very ‘advertising placard’ layout (with a tantalising photo of the impressive stack of volumes in full from the prestigious Publications):

Publications mathématiques

It was Jean Dieudonné alone [!] who, in 1959, brought Publications mathématiques to the pinnacle of world excellence.

Since 1979, it has appeared as a regular 400-page annual publication, under the direction of an editorial board headed by Jacques Tits.

Distribution is handled by... (etc.)

If Publications mathématiques is highlighted in this way, in this jubilee presentation of a prestigious institution whose main vocation has never been that of publishing a periodical, there is no doubt that it is to make people forget a certain fact that is unpleasant to some$ ^{17}$ : that the said institution would no doubt have been written off and forgotten a long time ago, if for three or four critical years a certain quidam, stubbornly pursuing his own ideas (which had the good fortune to catch on with some people, including in the ‘big world’), had not then provided him, against all the odds$^{18}$ with a guarantee and a credibility that the [◊ 456] finest statutes of association in the world, and even the finest ‘world-renowned scientific advisers’ (sic), are powerless to give.

(September 30) The style of this jubilee brochure (which I will come to know very well!) is certainly not that of my friend Pierre, nor that of Nico - they surely have other things to worry about, both of them, than composing this kind of occasional text. On the other hand, it's obvious that the two minute portraits I'm interested in, one of me and the other of Deligne, weren't written without Deligne at least providing the key words - if only because he's the only one at the IHES in a position to do so; and it's just as clear to me that these two texts, at least, weren't delivered to a printer without Deligne having first read them and given the go-ahead. So it seems clear to me from the outset that the two texts in question reflect in any case and first and foremost my friend's dispositions and intentions - the image he is endeavouring to give of me and of himself, both to himself and to the mathematical public. It is in this respect, of course, that these two passages interest me. This interest does not depend on whether or not Deligne is the author of these revealing lines, or whether the author is someone else (no doubt the one who ‘thought up’ the brochure as a whole), who for one reason or another would have espoused this ‘message’ that my friend wanted to get across.

Here, at the end of the booklet, are the two minute portraits, taken from the portrait gallery (p. 13-19) entitled ‘Activities of permanent and long-term visiting professors’.

ALEXANDRE GROTHENDIECK, mathematician, professor at the IHES from 1958 to 1970, Fields Medal.

During the 12 years he spent at the institute, A. Grothendieck renewed the foundations and methods of algebraic geometry, and opened up new applications for it, in particular arithmetic. He created a school of algebraic geometry at the IHES [◊ 457], built around the seminar he ran and nourished by the generosity with which he communicated his ideas. The titanic aspect of his work is reflected in his publications, including the treatise ‘Éléments de géométrie algébrique’, in collaboration with Jean Dieudonné (8 fascicules) and the 12 volumes of the ‘Séminaires de géométrie algébrique du Bois Marie’, in collaboration with numerous students.

In algebraic geometry, he identified the essential problems and gave each concept its greatest natural generality. The concepts introduced have proved essential far beyond algebraic geometry. They often seem so natural that it's hard to imagine the effort it took. If they are self-evident today, this was undoubtedly facilitated by the great attention he paid to terminology.

We should also remember that the ‘Grothendieck groups’, linked in algebraic geometry to the theory of intersections and used in topology, are the ancestors of algebraic K-theory. The topos introduced in algebraic geometry on a general base field to transpose results previously proved on ℂ by topological means are now used in logic.

He left the IHES in 1970, at a time when his passion for mathematics was fading. Are we to believe that the problems he was working on had become too difficult?

......

PIERRE DELIGNE, mathematician, professor at IHES since 1970, Fields Medal, Henri-Poincaré Gold Medal, Foreign Associate of the Académie des Sciences.

The main thrust of his work is to ‘understand the cohomology of algebraic varieties’. If the complex algebraic variety X is projective nonsingular, the theory of harmonic integrals provides a Hodge structure on H*(X). From this and from ℓ- adic analogies suggested by Grothendieck, he derived the notion of a mixed Hodge structure and equipped the cohomology of any complex algebraic variety with it. In ℓ-adic cohomology, i.e. for varieties over a finite field, he proved Weil's proverbially difficult conjectures. This result seemed all the more surprising given that Grothendieck, after constructing the theory of cohomology over any field, had reduced the remaining conjecture to a series of conjectures that are still as unapproachable today as they were then.

This theorem helped to make ℓ-adic cohomology a powerful tool, applicable to questions seemingly far removed from algebraic geometry such as, for example, the Ramanujam conjecture.

[◊ 458] More recently, he studied Hodge cycles on abelian varieties, taking a first step towards a ‘motivic theory’, such as Grothendieck had dreamed of. He also demonstrated the algebraic mechanism of ‘intersection cohomology’, the topological theory of MacPherson and Goresky. This made it possible to transpose it into ℓ -adic theory, where it proved surprisingly useful.

He is currently interested in non-commutative harmonic analysis (theory of functions on real or p-adic - or finite classical - Lie groups and certain homogeneous spaces), as an extension of his work on automorphic forms (Ramanujam conjecture) and, with G. Lusztig, on representations of finite groups.

He is quick to assimilate and penetrate all mathematics and, as a result, has enlightening and constructive reactions to every question put to him.

These two texts need to be supplemented by a third, in which Deligne and I appear in one breath. I found it in a loose leaf inserted in the booklet, under the same title, ‘Orientation of research at the IHES’, as the chapter in which the ‘portrait gallery’ is inserted, with the subtitle: ‘Summary note on the “prospects for scientific activities”’. This is essentially a draconian ‘shortening’ of the portrait gallery, reduced this time to ‘permanent professors’ (present or past) 19 , with two or three lines devoted to each. These are (in the order in which they are mentioned) myself, Deligne, Michel, Thom, Ruelle, Sullivan, Connes, Lanford III and Gromov. This is the order of the more detailed portrait gallery, except that this time Deligne has ‘moved up’, for the benefit of being quoted in one breath with me. An amusing detail is that in this text the proper names of the eminences reviewed all appear underlined, with the sole exception of my humble self 20! Here is the passage [◊ 459] about my friend and me:

The theories of legendary depth of Alexandre Grothendieck and the brilliant discoveries of Pierre Deligne (both Fields Medal winners) have linked topology, algebraic geometry and number theory by ‘interdisciplinary’ means (cohomology). More recently, this has enabled G. Faltings from the Federal Republic of Germany (who had already worked at the IHES) to prove an arduous theorem that is a landmark in number theory and sheds light on the famous ‘Fermat theorem’.

I should point out in passing that the ‘Fields Medals’ have been given a capital M in this mini-gallery - and that ‘interdisciplinarity’ has been a favourite theme of its founder-director since the early days of the IHES. It is perhaps thanks to this circumstance, moreover, that this digest finally seems to imply that my person might have something to do with a certain ‘interdisciplinary means’ called ‘cohomology’ (which also happens to be the ‘guiding axis’ of Deligne's work, by who knows what coincidence).

But here I am, taking this text by the scruff of the neck! The occasional reference to Faltings, who had just, overnight, shot to the top of the scientific news with his sensational result (described here as ‘arduous’, as if that's what it was all about - but that's beside the point...) - is also part of the ‘small end’ of the text: the scribe's ‘signature’ in short, and hardly worth my attention. It's the first sentence about Deligne and me that obviously contains the essential ‘message’ of the passage.

It tells me a lot about certain dispositions in my friend and former pupil - and above all about a profound Unsicherheit (insecurity, lack of assurance, of a deep inner grounding) 21 . Here, no more than in any of the published texts signed by him 22 , or in the two minute portraits that preceded it, there is nothing [◊ 460] to suggest that my friend could at any time have learned anything from me. But here he is, in no uncertain terms, presenting himself as another father of a vast unifying vision ‘taken’ from others 23 , as if subjugated by the intimate conviction of his profound inability to conceive himself and allow his own visions, as vast or even more vast, to blossom within him ; and as if, in order to be and appear ‘great’, all that was left to him from then on was the derisory resource of taking back for himself the halo with which it had pleased him from his youth to surround a prestigious elder who is now deceased (or at least, declared as such by a providential consensus...). ). Taking hold of a halo, rather than letting the still unformed and nameless things within him germinate and blossom, waiting to be born and named - rather than living his own strength, which lies within him, and which is also waiting...

(1 October) Last night it seemed to me that I was once again touching on the heart of the conflict - the same one I had mentioned in general terms at the very beginning of Récoltes et semailles, eight months ago (in the section ‘Infaillibilité (des autres) et mépris (de soi)’, no. 4), and which I found again ‘in an extreme and particularly striking case’, towards the beginning of L'Enterrement (in the note ‘Le nœud’, no. 65, 26 April). It was another unexpected encounter, in the course of a quotation that I ended up including in the wake of the other two, as a matter of conscience! I'd spotted the passage a few days ago, while leafing through the famous booklet, and it struck me at the time, but I didn't dwell on it. But yesterday, once I'd written it down in black and white, it immediately struck me as more meaningful, and more striking, than the two detailed passages I'd just copied down and which were supposed to form the main theme of the note I was writing. Yet there was no shortage of places that clicked in these two passages, giving rise to associations that I would not have failed, even four months ago, to develop as dryly [◊ 461] over another ten pages if not twenty. But it suddenly seemed to me that what I could have developed in this way was basically, with one exception at most, something already known that I was finding confirmed, perhaps from a somewhat different angle, and above all: that they were incidental aspects after all, the kind of aspects I had dwelt on sufficiently in the previous ‘Compliments’ note in May (and even throughout my thoughts on the Burial). The third passage, on the other hand, brought me back to something essential, which I'd tended to lose sight of during the long ‘investigation’ that was (among other things) my work on L'Enterrement.

I was tempted to leave it at that, without at least trying to put into words what this single, pithy four-line sentence was saying to me, and which on one level was indeed ‘heard’. In the end I ignored it. The words came slowly and hesitantly, while the impression, diffuse at first, became clearer as I wrote. Once I'd written it down in black and white, and trimmed away what seemed unnecessary, I knew I'd captured what I'd ‘heard’ as well as I ever could.

It was getting prohibitively late, I really had to stop there. I went to bed happy, but not yet sure whether I'd include what I'd just written in my account for publication. After all, I could just as well leave it to the reader, if he was interested in going beyond the surface of a message, to find out for himself what he heard in it! It was only today that I realised that I would be including this passage, which does indeed express a certain perception or understanding that I have (or think I have) of something that seems to me to be important, and even crucial as the mainspring of this Burial.

2. THE KEY TO YING AND YANG

(1) Muscle and gut (yang buries yin [1])

NOTE 106 (2 October) I would still like to pursue at least one of the associations of ideas aroused by the three-part Éloge Funèbre (from which I finally gave the full quotation yesterday). This association came to me the day after 12 May, when I had just written the note ‘L'Éloge Funèbre (1) - ou les compliments’ (no. 104). It touches on a certain aspect of things that often goes unnoticed, and which I only began to really realise [◊ 462] five or six years ago.

Between the lines in the texts examined, we see the cult of certain values asserting itself. Thus, what is highlighted in connection with Weil's conjectures, proved by Deligne, is their ‘difficulty’$^{24}$ - not their beauty, their simplicity, the vast perspectives they opened up from the very moment they were enunciated by Weil. I am also thinking of the fruits borne by these glimpsed perspectives, long before they were demonstrated, and of other glimpsed fruits which now fall at the right moment, once the last step has been taken in the long journey that led to their demonstration. It is the beauty, the extraordinary internal coherence of these conjectures, and the previously unsuspected links that they reveal, that have made them such a powerful and fertile source of inspiration for two generations of geometers and arithmeticians. The most profound part of my work (both the ‘fully completed’ work and the ‘dream of motives’) is directly inspired by them (through Serre, who was able to capture and communicate the full force of the vision expressed in his conjectures). Without them, neither ℓ -adic cohomology nor even the language of topos would probably have seen the light of day. To put it better, the ‘vast unifying vision’ of (algebraic) geometry, topology and arithmetic that I set out to develop over the next fifteen years or so of my life, I found in these ‘Weil conjectures’ a first and striking outline. And as the vision gained in breadth and maturity, it was this vision itself and the previously hidden things that it enabled me to grasp one by one, that told me step by step what to do, by which end to ‘take’ what was at hand. The last step in the demonstration of Weil's conjectures was no more and no less than one of the steps in a long and fascinating journey that began, I can't say when, long before I was born, and which, after my death, will still not be finished!

[◊ 463] But following the spirit of the text quoted, one might think that Weil's ‘conjectures’ were a question of weights: here is the weight to be lifted ‘à l'arrachée’! Two hundred kilos is no mean feat, the difficulty is proverbial, many have tried and not one has succeeded - until ‘H-day’ (like ‘Hercules’)! The result is astonishing (1061 ), just think of the two quintals - no one would have believed that it could ever be done... The same spirit can be seen in the laconic commentary on the ‘difficult theorem’ proved by Faltings: here again, in the very designation of this new stage in our knowledge of things, it is the difficulty again that is highlighted, to arouse the admiration of the crowds - not the prospects that open up, once a new summit has been reached$^{25}$ . It did not even seem useful to mention the name ‘Mordell conjecture’ (unknown, it is true, to a non-mathematical public) - as if the apprehension and formulation of the conjecture (here, by Mordell) were an accessory, because ‘easy’. Instead, a phoney perspective on ‘Fermat's theorem’ (which is supposed to be ‘enlightened’). It is true that the latter is universally known (even outside mathematical circles) as a weight of well over three hundred kilos (which has withstood three centuries of effort).

The first point I wanted to make is that the values exalted in these texts (with the discretion befitting the occasion, of course) are those that can be called the values of muscle, of the ‘cerebral muscle’ in this case: the one that makes it possible to surpass, by sheer strength of the wrist, proverbial records of ‘difficulty’.

These are not just the values of the hero in the spotlight here, like those of the author of a certain jubilee brochure (an anonymous author whom I think I recognise). They are also the values that increasingly (it seems to me) dominate the mathematical world, and more generally, the scientific world. Even beyond this world, which is still relatively restricted, [◊ 464] it can be said that these are also, and increasingly so, the values of a certain ‘culture’, described as ‘Western’26 . Nowadays and for a long time now this ‘culture’ and its values have conquered the surface of our planet wiping out all others, irrefutable proof of their superiority. The planetary symbol, the heroic embodiment of these values, is the cosmonaut in his waterproof armour, the first to set foot on some unimaginably remote and desolate planet, in front of millions of breathless television viewers, slumped in front of their screens.

These values, which for want of a better understanding I have confined myself to referring to by a summary term of symbolic value, ‘muscle’, are not new. In ethnologist's jargon, we could also call them ‘patriarchal’. One of the first written texts, it seems to me, in which their primacy is forcefully affirmed (force without reply!) is the Old Testament (and more particularly, the book of Moses). However, you only have to read this fascinating document from a remote era to realise that the primacy of ‘patriarchal’ values, that of man over woman, or that of ‘spirit’ over ‘body’ or ‘matter’, was far from going so far as to negate or despise complementary values (which were perhaps not yet perceived as ‘opposing’ or ‘antagonistic’) 27 . I don't know if the history of the vicissitudes of these two sets of complementary values has ever been written - and it must be a fascinating thing to pursue this history, through centuries and millennia, from the time of Moses to the present day. It is also the story, no doubt, of the gradual deterioration of a certain balance of ‘values’, ‘patriarchal’ or ‘masculine’ on the one hand, ‘matriarchal’ or ‘feminine’ on the other - ‘muscle’ and ‘guts’, ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’; a degradation that has visibly moved in the direction of ‘male’ values (or ‘yang’, in traditional Eastern dialectics), to the detriment of ‘female’ values (or ‘yin’).

[465] It seems to me that our era is characterised by an excessive exacerbation of this cultural degradation. Among the final acts of this history are those, intimately intertwined, of the ‘space race’ between the two antagonistic superpowers (imbued with essentially identical values), and the arms race (nuclear in particular). As the final act and probable outcome of this headlong rush to outdo each other in terms of a certain type of ‘force’ or ‘power’, we can already foresee some kind of nuclear holocaust (or other, there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from...) on a planetary scale. Perhaps it will have the merit of solving all the problems at once and once and for all...

My intention here is not to paint a tantalising picture of the ‘end of the world’ (they didn't wait for me to do that), and even less to wage war against ‘muscle’ or ‘brain’ (aka ‘spirit’). I'm well aware that even my ‘guts’ would have nothing to gain from it! I value my muscles and my brain, which are no doubt very useful to me, just as I value my ‘guts’, which are no less useful. Rather, I think it would be useful to say a few words here (if I can) about how this deep conflict between these two types of values, conveyed by the surrounding culture, has played itself out in my own person. In more down-to-earth terms, it's also about the history of my attitudes (of acceptance or even exaltation, or rejection) towards two equally real and tangible aspects or faces of my person, inseparable and complementary by nature, and in no way antagonistic in themselves. I could call them ‘the man’ and ‘the woman’ in me, or (to use less ‘loaded’ names, which are less likely to be misleading) the ‘yang’ and the ’yin’.

It would seem that for most people, the ‘game is up’ from early childhood, when the essential mechanisms are put in place that will silently dominate attitudes and behaviour for the rest of their lives, with the efficiency of a perfectly tuned automaton. At the heart of these mechanisms are those of affirmation or rejection of such and such traits within us, or of such deep-seated drives, with either a yang or yin ‘signature’, or of such and such ‘bundles’ of traits and drives with a given signature, or even of the entire ‘yang’ or ‘yin’ bundle. It is these mechanisms which, to a very large extent, determine all the other choice mechanisms (affirmation or rejection) structuring our ‘self’.

[◊ 466] For reasons that are still mysterious to me, in my own case the history of the relations (both conscious and unconscious) between the ‘I’ (‘the boss’) and the ‘male’ and ‘female’ in my person (both in the ‘boss’ himself and in the ‘worker’, both of whom are dependent on the double yin-yang aspect of all things) - this history has been more eventful than usual. I can distinguish three periods. In a way, the last period is similar to the first, which spans the first five years of my childhood. This third period, which I can call that of maturity, can be seen as a kind of ‘return’ to that childhood, or as a gradual reunion with the ‘state of childhood’, with the harmony of the uneventful marriage of ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ in my being. This reunion began in July 1976, at the age of forty-eight - the same year that I discovered (three months later) a hitherto unknown power within me, the power of meditation 28 .

The dominant values in each of my parents, both my mother and my father, were yang values: willpower, intelligence (in the sense of : intellectual power), self-control, ascendancy over others, intransigence, Konsequenz (which means, in German, extreme consistency in (or with) one's options, ideological in particular), ‘idealism’ on both a political and practical level... In my mother's case, this valorisation took on an exacerbated force from a young age, it was the flip side of a genuine hatred she had developed towards ‘the woman’ in her (and from then on, towards the feminine in general). (I myself only discovered these things five years ago, three years after meditation came into my life). In such a parental context, it is a mystery (and yet a fact that is not in doubt for me) that I was able to develop fully during the first five years of my childhood - until the moment of the uprooting from the parental environment and the destruction of my family of origin (formed by my parents, my older sister, and myself), by my mother's will and through the favour (if one may say so) of the political events of the year 1933.

NOTE 1061 [◊ 467] (3 October) Neither I nor Deligne ever had the slightest doubt that Weil's conjectures might not be valid, and I do not recall hearing anyone express such doubts. To describe the ‘result’ (i.e. the demonstration of these conjectures) as ‘surprising’ is again a deliberate attempt to impress. In fact, at no time since the introduction of ‘topology’ and scalar cohomology did I have the feeling that these conjectures were out of reach, but rather (from 1963 onwards) that they were bound to be proved in the very next few years. When I left in 1970, I had little doubt that Deligne, who was in the best position of all to do so, would soon prove them (which he did), along with the stronger ‘standard conjectures on algebraic cycles’ (which, on the other hand, he set out to discredit).

Indeed, Deligne is right to express reservations about the validity of the latter conjectures, of which I am no more convinced than he is. But the significance of a conjecture does not depend on whether it turns out to be true or false, any more than its so-called ‘difficulty’ makes it ‘out of reach’ - which is entirely subjective. It depends solely on whether the question on which the conjecture puts its finger (and which had not been perceived before it was posed) - whether this question touches on something truly essential for our knowledge of things. It is clear (to me, at least!) that there can be no question of having a good understanding of algebraic cycles, or of the so-called ‘arithmetic’ properties of the cohomology of algebraic varieties (or even of ‘pattern geometry’), as long as the question of the validity of these conjectures has not been settled. Even today, as at the Bombay Congress in 1968, I consider this question, along with that of the resolution of singularities, to be one of the two most fundamental questions in algebraic geometry. I am well aware of the significance of both! This potential fruitfulness cannot fail to manifest itself, as soon as we no longer limit ourselves to bumbling around a conjecture that has been declared ‘too difficult’, and someone finally takes the trouble to roll up their sleeves and get to grips with it!

(2) The story of a life: a cycle in three movements

(a) Innocence (the marriage of yin and yang)

NOTE 107 [◊ 468] (October 4) I have already had occasion to mention an important aspect of these first five years of my life, as a ‘privilege’ of great price$^{29}$: a deep and unproblematic identification with my father, which was never touched by fear or envy. I became aware of this circumstance, and of the very existence, as well as the silent strength, of this identification with my father, only four years ago (during the meditation on my childhood and my life that followed the one from August 1979 to March 1980 on my parents). This identification was like the peaceful and powerful core of an identification with the family we formed, my parents, my sister (who was four years older than me) and me. I had boundless admiration and love for both my father and my mother. For me, they were the measure of all things.

This in no way means that my attitude towards them was one of automatic approval, of blissful admiration. I probably didn't know that they were the measure of all things for me, but I knew very well that they were fallible like me, and there was no fear in me that would have prevented me from noticing a disagreement and making it clear. In the conflicts around me, I wasn't afraid to take sides in my own way. This had nothing to do with a certain faith, a certain assurance that formed the deep, unshakeable foundation of my being - rather, it flowed spontaneously from that faith, from that very assurance.

Sometimes my father, in fits of impotent anger when my sister (without seeming to) took pleasure in provoking him, would hit her brutally - and each time I was outraged, in an outburst of unreserved solidarity with my sister. I think these were the only big clouds in my relationship with my father (there were none with my mother). It's not that I approved of my sister's sometimes dodgy tricks, nor do I think they really troubled me - she wasn't the measure of things for me. Her tricks (the reason for which surely escaped me as much as it did my father, who always ‘worked’, or my mother, who never intervened either before or after) - in a way, these tricks didn't really have any consequences for me. She was my sister, she was just the way she was, that's all. But for my father to indulge in such blind brutality...

The three people who were closest to me, who together formed the matrix of my early years, were torn apart by the conflict, pitting each of them [◊ 469] against himself and against the other two: the insidious conflict, with its impassive face, between my mother and my sister, and the conflict with its violent outbursts between my father and my mother on the one hand, and my sister on the other, each of whom, on her own account (and without anyone in my parents' lifetime ever pretending to notice...) made it work in her own way. The mysterious and extraordinary thing was that, surrounded by conflict in this way during the most sensitive and crucial years of my life, it remained outside me, that it didn't really ‘bite’ into my being during those years and take up permanent residence.

The division in my being, which has marked my life as much as anyone else's, didn't set in during those years, but in the two or three years that followed, from my sixth to my eighth year or so. At a certain point (which I thought I could pinpoint to within a few months of my eighth year) there was a certain switchover, after more than two years of separation from my parents (who didn't bother to give me any sign of life) and from my sister. It was above all a break with my childhood, ‘buried’ from that moment onwards by effective mechanisms of forgetting (which have remained in place, more or less, to this very day). At some deep level (not the deepest though...) my parents were then declared by me to be ‘strangers’, just as my childhood was now declared to be ‘foreign’. I gave in, in a sense: to be accepted in the world that now surrounded me, I decided to be like ‘them’, like the adults who made the law there - to acquire and develop the weapons that command respect, to fight on equal terms in a world where only a certain kind of ‘strength’ is accepted and prized...

In fact, it was this kind of strength that was favoured by my parents, who surrounded me in my early years. And here I come back to that ‘mysterious thing’ (which I've just moved away from, following the thread of another association aroused by this thing), the absence of division in me, in those first years of my life.

Perhaps the mystery for me no longer lies in this absence, but rather in this: that my parents, my father and my mother, each accepted me in my totality, and totally: in what in me is ‘virile’, is ‘man’, and in what is ‘woman’. Or to put it another way: that my parents, both torn apart by conflict, each denying an essential part of their being - each incapable of a loving openness to themselves and to the other, as of a loving openness to my sister... that nevertheless they found such openness, such unreserved acceptance, towards me [◊ 470] their son.

To put it another way: at no time in these first five years of my life have I felt ashamed of being who I am, whether in my body and its functions, or in my impulses, inclinations and actions. At no time have I had to deny anything about myself in order to be accepted by those around me and to be able to live in peace with them.

Of course, there were times when I did things that didn't ‘fit in’: like all children, I was bound to be annoying, even unbearable when I got down to it - and it was clear from time to time that I needed to put things right. I didn't lay down the law, nor was I tempted to do so, because I didn't have to compensate for some secret mutilation. And in my parents' love for me, there could have been no room for adulation, for indulgence in whims - for unconditional approval. But while I was bound to be ‘sent packing’ by my father or my mother (just as the reverse could sometimes happen), in those years neither of them ever made me feel ashamed of an act or behaviour that didn't please them.

Against the backdrop of a deep and unambiguous identification with my father, I see myself as a child today as imbued with both virility and femininity, both strong.

It seems to me that in each being and in each thing, in this indissoluble and fluctuating marriage of the yin and yang qualities that make it what it is, and whose delicate balance is the profound beauty, the harmony that lives in this being or this thing - that in this intimate union of yin and yang there is often (perhaps always) a background note, a ‘dominant’, which is either yin or yang. This background note is not always easy to detect in a person, because of the more or less effective and complete mechanisms of repression, which distort the game by substituting a borrowed image for the original harmony. So my ‘brand image’ for forty years was almost exclusively masculine - without ever being questioned or even detected as such, either by myself or (it seems to me) by others, until I was forty-eight. I tend to believe, however, that the background note present at birth remains present throughout life, at least in deep layers that will perhaps never find the opportunity to come to light. In my own case, strangely enough, I am still unable to say what this dominant note is, the one [◊ 471] which permeated my early childhood and which was already ‘mine’ when I was born. Various signs have made me suspect more than once that this note is ‘yin’, that it is the ‘feminine’ qualities that dominate in my being, when it finds occasion to manifest itself spontaneously, in the moments when it is free from conditionings of all kinds that have accumulated in me since childhood. To put it another way: it could be that what is the creative force in my body and mind, what I have sometimes called ‘the child’ or ‘the worker’ in me (as opposed to the ‘boss’ who represents the structure of the self, i.e. what is conditioned in me, the sum or result of the conditioning accumulated in me) - that this force is even more ‘feminine’ than ‘virile’ (whereas by nature and necessity it is one, and the other).

This is not the place to go into all these ‘signs’. The important thing is not whether this deep dominant note in me is ‘feminine’ or ‘virile’. It's rather that I know how to be myself at every moment, welcoming without reticence both the traits and impulses in me that make me ‘woman’ and those that make me ‘man’, and allowing them to express themselves freely.

When I was a child, in those early years, it wasn't unusual for strangers to mistake me for a girl - without this ever creating the slightest unease or feeling of insecurity in me. I think it was mainly my voice that had this effect, a very clear, high-pitched voice - not to mention the fact that I had long hair (usually dishevelled), perhaps simply because my mother (who had plenty of other things to worry about) didn't often take the time to cut it for me. I was also as strong as a Turk and I didn't mind playing games that were a bit violent or daredevil, which didn't prevent me from having a penchant for silence, even solitude, and a penchant for playing with dolls 30 . I don't remember anyone making fun of me for this, but it certainly happened here and there. If such incidents passed without leaving any trace of injury or humiliation, it's surely because they were not echoed or amplified by any feeling of insecurity in me, whereas the acceptance of who I was by those who were the only ones who really mattered to me was beyond question. Mockery could never have reached me, it could only have been directed at the person who must have seemed so foolish to pretend to find fault with the most natural thing in the world.

[◊ 472] I was well aware, moreover, that this kind of rather strange silliness is by no means an uncommon thing, that the mere sight of nudity can cause scandal! Yet for as long as I could remember, I had had occasion to see my mother, father and sister naked, and every opportunity to satisfy my legitimate curiosity as to how each of them and myself were made. It was quite clear that there was no cause for scandal in the conformation of men or women, which seemed to me to be just fine as it was - and more particularly (I made no secret of it) that of women.

(b) Superfather (yang buries yin [2])

NOTE 108 (5 October) It was in 1933, when I was in my sixth year, that the first crucial turning point in my life took place, which was also a crucial turning point in the lives of both my mother and my father, in their relationship with each other and with their children. It was the episode of the violent and definitive destruction of the family that the four of us formed, a destruction of which I was the first and only person, forty-six years later, to acknowledge and follow the events, in my parents' correspondence and in one or two exsanguinated, enigmatic and tenacious memories, patiently probed and deciphered - long after the death of my father and that of my mother 31 .

It is not my intention to dwell here on what I have learnt and understood in the course of this long work, about the significance and meaning of this episode. Three days ago I referred to this turning point 32 as marking the abrupt end of the first of the three great periods in the history of the marriage of yin and yang in me. In December 1933, I found myself hurriedly dumped into a foreign family that neither I nor my mother, who had brought me there from Berlin, had ever seen. In fact, these unknown people she was taking me to were simply the first people to come along who would take me in as a ‘boarder’ for a more than modest pension, and with no guarantee whatsoever that it would ever be paid, while my mother prepared to join my father as quickly as possible, who was moping around waiting for her in Paris. My parents had agreed that everything would work out for the best, both for me in Blankenese (near Hamburg) and for my sister, who for several months had been dumped at the end of the line in an institution in Berlin for handicapped children (where she had been well looked after, even though she was no more handicapped than I or our parents).

At the end of six strange months, heavy with dull menace and anguish, I found myself overnight in a world totally different from the only world I had known in my life, the one formed by my parents, my sister and myself. I found myself as one of a group of boarders, eating separately from the family and looking like second-class children to the children in the house, who formed a world of their own and looked down on us. I received a hasty, stilted letter from my mother from time to time, and never a line from my father in the five years I stayed there (until 1939, on the eve of the war, when I finally rejoined my parents under the pressure of events).

The couple who took me in quickly took a liking to me. Both he, a former pastor who had left the priesthood and lived on a meagre pension and private lessons in Latin, Greek and mathematics, and his vivacious and sometimes mischievous wife were unusual people, endearing in many ways. He was a humanist of vast culture who had lost his way a little in politics, and had run afoul of the Nazi regime, which eventually left him alone. After the war I got back in touch with them and remained in regular contact with them until both died 33 .

From him and especially from her, as from my parents, I received the best as well as the worst. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I am grateful to them (as I am to my parents) for the ‘best’, as well as for the ‘worst’. It was this best and worst that I received, first from my parents, then from them, that formed the bulk of the voluminous ‘package’ I received as a child (as everyone receives theirs...), which it was up to me to unpack and examine. They are part of the substance, the richness of my past, and it's up to me to nourish my present.

My new environment was all ‘as it should be’ and conformist in many respects, with in any case the repressive attitudes de rigueur to everything to do with the body and, more particularly, sex. However, it took [◊ 474] several years, I think, before I internalized and took on board these attitudes, such as the shame of showing myself naked, which went hand in hand with an ambiguous relationship with my body. This shame, inculcated from an early age, is one aspect of a deep-seated division, in which the body is the object of tacit contempt, while so-called ‘cultural’ values (confused with the intellectual capacity to memorise and so on) are given pride of place. This division in me remained ignored until my forty-eighth year, when it began to be resolved. This was the second major turning point in my life, marking the advent of the ‘third period’ in the history of my relationship to myself, that is, my relationship to my body and to the ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in me. But before that, I had ample opportunity to help pass on this division to my children 34 , whom I've seen pass it on in turn...

I alluded yesterday 35 to the ‘shift’ that finally took place in me. With a time lag of more than two years after the uprooting from the initial family environment (or to put it better, after the destruction of that environment), this shift consecrated the setting up of the usual repressive mechanisms, from which my childhood had had the rare good fortune to be exempt until then. I have so far detected two major forces of a repressive nature, which have dominated my adult life and a large part of my childhood (1081 ). I think I can say that they did not emerge gradually, but that in my case these mechanisms appeared more or less overnight and in all their force, as the consequence of a deliberate choice, at an unconscious level. I described this choice earlier as ‘abdication’, but at the same time it was also a powerful principle of action: ‘I'll be like “them”’ (and not ‘like me’) also meant: I'm going to ‘bet’ on ‘the head’, no worse in me than in anyone else after all, and fight and ‘them’ with their own weapons!

One of these mechanisms, and the one that interests me most here, is one of the most common: it's the repression of my ‘feminine’ traits (or those felt to be feminine by common consensus), in favour of ‘masculine’ values. The other side of the coin was, of course, the over-investment in and over-development of my ‘manly’ traits and aptitudes, which took on an inordinate amount of importance.

[◊ 475] If there is something unusual here, it is not of course the simple presence of this double mechanism, nor (it seems to me) the strength of the ‘repressive’ component in the strict sense, the strength of the repression of ‘yin’ traits, attitudes and impulses. There's no comparison here with what happened to my mother, whose life (and that of those close to her) was devastated by her hatred (which remained hidden all her life) of what made her a woman. At no time, I think, were my ways entirely devoid of a certain gentleness, even tenderness, which stubbornly smoothed the edges of the persona I had carved out for myself as a child, and which often won me sympathy and affection. The exceptional side of me is more likely to be found in the excessiveness of my investments, in the excessiveness of the energy I invest in my tasks, without letting myself be distracted by a glance to the right or to the left! Outside of the work itself, my mind is constantly focused on accomplishment, on completing this or that stage of the work. This attitude (Zielgerichtetheit in German, aimdirectedness in English) is par excellence a yang attitude, an attitude of tension, of closure to everything that doesn't seem directly linked to the task.

This excess was likely to conjure up in others the image of a kind of ‘superman’ or ‘superman’, admirable of course, alas (given the prevailing values), but immediately arousing (at a level that remains unconscious for the most part) instinctive reactions of defence or even antagonism in the face of such a display of strength, perceived as threatening or even aggressive, or in any case dangerous (1082 ). Above all, this image irresistibly evokes the image of the ‘super-father’, and immediately sets in motion the ambiguous multiplicity of reactions of attraction and repulsion woven around the perennial conflict with the father... This is my contribution to these relationships of ambiguity, which have been so common in my life, and with which I found myself confronted so many times in the course of Harvest and Sowing. This ambiguity is reinforced, not diminished, by the persistence of yin traits in me that fuel a sympathy that the mere hypertrophy of yang traits into a kind of gigantic ‘superman’ would be powerless to arouse.

And once again I can see, in these endless ‘relationships of ambiguity’, that I'm only reaping what I've sown myself, even if each time the harvest turns out to be unexpected (and unwelcome...)! For hasn't the motivation (or at least one of the motivations) that drives the ‘boss’ in me to constantly surpass himself in the accumulation of works, been precisely to constantly challenge and boost the esteem of my peers (first and foremost) and of my mistakes (moreover); to hear some of the best lament that they can't keep up with me, at the rate I'm going! Yes, there was indeed this secret desire in me to arouse in others (as in myself) this ‘larger than life’ image, disproportionate, like the very person it reflects - and which obstinately comes back to me through the other: in clear and lofty words, through the praise expected (and taken as a due) - and also, through the obscure and deep channels of muted enmity and conflict 36...

NOTE 1081 [◊ 476] (6 October) What I mean is that the forces of a repressive nature at work in my life seem to take mainly, if not exclusively, one of two specific forms: burying the past, and emphasising my ‘manly’ features to the detriment of my ‘womanly’ ones. I don't mean to say that these two ‘forces’, both repressive in nature (i.e. aimed at ‘repressing’ and concealing a certain reality), are the only ones that have ‘dominated my life’! This would be to forget the whole non-egotic aspect of my being, the drive for knowledge expressing itself as much in the body as in the mind (on this subject, see ‘My passions’, section 35).

Even among the forces structuring the ego, emanating from the ‘boss’, there is at least one that is not repressive in nature, that predates the forces of repression and whose role in my life was even more essential: identification with my father, who was like the ‘peaceful and powerful heart’ of the feeling of my own strength. This identification was in no way an exaltation of certain values or qualities (virile, let's say) to the detriment of others (‘feminine’). Irrespective of the values my father professed, his personality (until 1933, when a shift took place within him 37 ) was marked by a strong yin-yang balance, in which intuition and spontaneity were no less important than intellect and will.

Finally, another important ‘force’ of an egotistical nature, intimately linked to the repressive mechanisms (or, to put it better, of a ‘repressive’ nature itself), is eternal vanity, which has played as big a role in my life as it has in anyone else's. But this ‘force’ is not the only one. But this ‘force’ is so universal in nature, just like the dominant role it plays in everyone's life (in a more or less coarse or subtle form), that there is hardly any point in including it expressly, in a survey of the specific forms taken in a person by the forces and mechanisms that structure the self, and give it its particular physiognomy and foundation.

NOTE 1082 [◊ 477] (October 6) In this ‘display of strength’ there is no ‘aggressive’ intention in the usual sense of the term, conscious or unconscious, only an unconscious desire to impress, to force esteem. It's true that the term ‘forcing esteem’, which comes back to me spontaneously, already carries a connotation of constraint, close to that of ‘aggression’. This unconscious intention to coerce, also perceived at an unconscious level, must often be experienced as a kind of aggression (even though this experience remains hidden, as do the antagonistic reactions it triggers). At the same time, this experience is often confused with similar childhood experiences involving the father, who appears as the main repressive authority figure, or even as a crushing rival who is both envied and hated.

Even without such an amalgam, and independently of any perception in others of an intention to ‘coerce’ me, there must often be the perception of a strong imbalance, a fundamental disharmony, in this exclusively yang ‘deployment of force’ (in spirit and intention, at least). This disproportion is harmful to the main person involved, namely myself, and ultimately quite ‘dangerous’ for his very physical survival (as the health incidents of recent years have shown me!). This is undoubtedly what I was thinking about when I wrote that ‘such a deployment of force’ was felt ‘in any case to be dangerous’ - dangerous ‘by nature’, an example not to be followed...! Such a feeling is surely enough to provoke ‘defensive reactions’, even in the absence of any aggression or intention to aggress.

It is true that such relationships of ambiguity recurred after 1976, with some of my students in particular, at times when there was no mathematical investment, and when there was no apparent ‘deployment of force’ in my life. It's also true that the ‘deployments’ in question in the past have created a reputation which continues to stick to me, especially in my professional life, and which to some extent replaces the perception of who I am in the present. What's more, I've acquired such ease in dealing with certain mathematical subjects that, even outside my mathematical periods and with my reputation to help, this ease or natural mastery can already have the effect of ‘deploying force’, on unmotivated students, and make me feel to them (despite certain pleasant or even reassuring features) like some sort of Superman (a bit Superpere around the edges!).

[◊ 478] What's more, as the flip side of the ease I'm talking about, I often tend to underestimate how difficult it can be for a particular pupil to acquire a particular skill or develop a particular tool - which tends to put them at odds with my expectations. (On this subject, see the note ‘Teaching failure (1)’, No. 23IV). A situation like this must often be one of the important ingredients in a false relationship with the father...

(c) The reunion (the awakening of yin [1])

NOTE 109 (9 October) When I finished the previous note 38 four days ago, I felt very happy. I found myself unexpectedly reconnecting with an intuition that had come to me on a certain Sunday 17 October 1976 (eight years ago, give or take a few days) - the intuition of the devastating effect, in my life and in my mother's, of a ‘certain force’ within me. It was the first time in my life that I had given any thought, however brief, to what my life, and above all my childhood, had been like. It was also the day after I had discovered the power of meditation 39 , and it was the first time since then that I had made use of this power, so long ignored. It was not by design, but by the effect of a profound impulse, as if moved by a very sure instinct, that the reflection that day ended up being directed towards my childhood. Only in retrospect can I appreciate the extent to which it was the source of my true strength, as well as of the conflict and division within me, that a deep need to know had driven me at the time. For nearly three years I would never return to it, distracted as I was by the sole issues of the ‘agenda’, without realising that I was remaining on the periphery of the conflict in my life, while stubbornly staying away from the very heart: from that childhood drowned in mist, which seemed so infinitely far away...

I have just gone through again, diagonally, the eighteen exceptionally dense pages of this crucial meditation on my life. It was during the night that followed this meditation, or rather in the early hours of the morning after this night of meditation, that I had a dream of overwhelming force - the first dream in my life whose message I probed passionately. I was no more aware then of where I was going and what was happening, than I had been the day before when I was ‘discovering meditation’. [479] For four hours I delved into the meaning of this experience, this dream-parable, through successive layers of increasingly burning meaning, before arriving at the heart of the message, its simple and obvious meaning.

It wasn't like a sudden burst of understanding, or even like a sudden light in a darkness or half-light. It was more like a deep wave born within me that suddenly surged through me and in its vast waters brought me a meaning that had eluded me until then: that I was at that moment reuniting with a very dear and precious person, whom I had lost since childhood...

That moment felt like a birth, like a profound renewal. This feeling remained very strong throughout that day, and again in the days that followed. Looking back over eight years, that moment still seems to me to be the most creative moment of all in my life, and an essential turning point in my spiritual adventure. It had certainly been prepared for by many other ‘moments’ in the days and months leading up to it. Perhaps the first precursor was that ‘salutary uprooting’, more than ten years earlier, from an institution where I intended to end my days40 . These earlier moments seem to me to be the ingredients, or rather the means at my disposal, with which I could cross that other ‘threshold’ that lay before me unseen, that lay at a deeper, more hidden level than others I had crossed. Everything had been in place, for a few days or hours, for me to cross it - and I could cross it, just as I could not cross it, day after day for the rest of my life...

And once this threshold was well and truly crossed, the way was opened to other crossings, to other ‘awakenings’, each of which by its very nature is also a renewal, and to some extent a ‘new birth’, a re-birth. I've avoided some of them for months, even years, before finally taking the plunge, relieving myself of some nagging illusion that had stood between me and the full flavour of my life and the world around me. And I'm sure there are some I'm still avoiding as I write these lines...

[◊ 480] From the point of view of the reflection of these last few days, it is this moment of reunion with my childhood, believed lost and dead for a long life, which marks the end of the ‘second period’ of my spiritual journey: that of the predominance, in my personal life, of egotistical mechanisms, against the creative forces, the forces of knowledge and renewal, which had passed through an almost complete stagnation of forty years. It was also the time when a ‘certain strength’ prevailed, a strength that was almost exclusively ‘masculine’ in character, in the image of the values in honour in the surrounding world, at the expense of the deep ‘feminine’ aspects and strengths of my being, ignored and repressed (with never complete success, thank God!).

The very first intuition about the destructive nature of this force, which had dominated my life as well as my mother's, and that of other women who had also been important in my life - this intuition made a brief appearance in these days of intense maturation, thanks no doubt to the resurgence of yin, ‘feminine’ energy, in my conscious apprehension of things. Contrary to what I thought I'd hastily remembered earlier, this appearance didn't take place in the meditation on the eve of the reunion, but a few hours afterwards, in a short meditation on the meaning of what had just happened. The intuition was born and took shape at the very end of the few pages of notes in this meditation. I saw the destructive nature of this ‘force’ (which today I would call ‘superyang force’, i.e. with an excessive yang dominance) in my mother first, then in other women, and then these final lines:

As for the ‘strength’ in myself, it was certainly this that made me the target and object, expected throughout a young life, of the secret hatred and resentment of M., then of J., then of S. - a hatred deposited in them long before they knew of my existence, in the distraught days of a childhood deprived of love.

The word ‘childhood’, in the last line of the book, which still bears witness to an important day in my life, appears for the last time for almost three years! As for the intuition about the nature of the superyang force in me, as provoking antagonistic reactions, even hatred and resentment, it tended (it seems to me) to sink into oblivion until the last few days. More precisely, it remained present only in my perception of certain important relationships in my life (and above all, relationships with women I've loved). On the other hand, it has scarcely [◊ 481] really penetrated situations of conflict that are a little ‘commonplace’41 , with certain pupils in particular, as I have had to examine or evoke many times in the course of Harvest and Sowing. Throughout all this reflection, the fact that, by a kind of involuntary ‘provocation’, I myself had made my own contribution to the conflict situations that I mentioned or examined here and there - this fact often remained completely hidden, whereas the contribution of the protagonist was quite clear to me. This is of course a very common reflex, not to say universal! My reflections over the last few days have managed to defuse it and, at the same time, to make me see it again in myself - by suddenly bringing me face to face with myself - with a certain myself, at least - at the bend in the road (of a reflection on yin and yang...).

My brief reflection of four days ago barely scratches the surface of the many aspects of myself through which the yang imbalance in the ‘character’ I'd played since childhood was felt; and the crushing effects this imbalance could sometimes have on others. On those in particular where the yang-type strength was still lacking - and first and foremost on my own children. I'm thinking here above all of a certain ‘mode’ of peremptory assurance on which I operated, in all the things (and there were many of them) about which I had, rightly or wrongly, a way of seeing or feeling, or strong opinions. Of course, the idea would never have occurred to me to impose these ways of seeing on anyone, least of all on my children - and because of this absence of any desire for constraint on my part (at the conscious level at least), for most of my life I was incapable of realising the extent to which these ways of being within me (which seemed spontaneous and natural to me, and whose complex nature I was far from discerning...) - the extent to which they had an impact on my life. ) - to what extent they had the same effect on my children and others as a constraint; or rather, an even more insidious effect: that of arousing or nurturing in others an insecurity about the value of their own feelings, ways of seeing, opinions - as if these (in the face of my unfailing assurance, or even my pained astonishment) didn't even have a place.

I have a feeling that the development of this propensity in me, particularly in my relationship with my children, could well be quite complex, intertwined as it is with the vicissitudes of my married life. This is not the place to try to follow its mysteries; nor is it the place to make a [◊ 482] more or less complete inventory of yet other aspects of my person through which this imbalance manifested itself, of which I tried in the previous note to pinpoint one particularly apparent aspect: that of the ‘deployment of strength’.

It would be wrong to think that this imbalance, cultivated over a lifetime, and the multitude of psychic mechanisms through which it manifested itself, disappeared overnight as if by magic. I wasn't expecting anything like that either on the day of the reunion, or in the days and weeks that followed.

(10 October) These were days of melting ice, carried along by a powerful influx of new energy - days of inner work and wonder at the new worlds I saw opening up day after day, taking shape in the humble weave of everyday events and unfolding under the intense action of eyes eager to see. These were also the days when I began to feel the first inkling of the richness of this unknown that was suddenly calling out to me, that I had ignored just the day before. I apprehended it through these ‘bits’ that had just made themselves known to me, in the very moment of the reunion, and in the unpredictable and unforeseen journey that had followed. I sensed that this ‘birth’ I had just experienced was just the beginning of something entirely unknown, or rather the restarting of something that had been interrupted, cut off or stifled one day, and then mysteriously started again. To tell the truth, this intense ‘becoming’ had already started up again in the preceding months, but at a level where introspective thinking had hardly played a part...

One of the profound aspects of this ‘becoming’ that had come to life again, of this work that had resumed, was the gradual restoration of the original balance of ‘woman’ and ‘man’, of yin and yang in me, over the days, weeks and years. In a way, I can say that since the moment of my reunion, ‘childhood’ or the state of being a child has remained present, ‘in power’, through a deep and indelible knowledge within me of my own nature, of my essential, indestructible unity, beyond the effects of a certain ‘division’ that often continues to agitate the surface of my being. The very word ‘child’ or ‘childhood’ to designate the thing, this unity of being, did not [◊ 483] moreover appear until years later, around the time when I began to become acquainted, at the level of conscious thought, with the double yin-yang aspect of all things. This was also the moment when I came to know (or at least to sense) that the state of childhood, the creative state, is that of the perfect balance of yin and yang forces and energies, that of the ‘marriage’ of yin and yang, manifesting itself in a state of creative harmony.

It seems to me that at a certain level, this knowledge of my fundamental unity is present at all times, and that it is active at all times. It is also true that this action is more or less sensitive and effective according to the moment, and that it is by no means in the nature of a more or less permanent elimination, or even a wholesale destruction of the egotic forces, of the ‘boss’ therefore - nor even of an elimination of the forces of repression (which form a good part of the ‘I’, if not its entirety...). These are the forces of surreptitious concealment of the reality that surrounds me and the reality that unfolds within me - the forces silently and obstinately at work to maintain against all odds the tenacious illusions, which without them would immediately collapse under their own weight... Some of these mechanisms of repression have been spotted one by one and have disappeared. I got rid of certain illusions that weighed heavily on me, and I cleared up the few stubborn doubts that, for a lifetime, had been relegated (by the ‘boss’) to rotting in the subterranean dustbin, never to be examined. Their message finally heard, these doubts have disappeared, leaving a peaceful and joyful acquaintance. I've also spotted some very powerful mechanisms of repression, deeply rooted in the ego, which I've come to realise (over the last few years) have had a considerable impact on my life, today as never before. They work towards yang imbalance, towards blocking out certain yin forces and faculties. I don't know whether these mechanisms will ever be defused - and I know it's up to me. No doubt they will vanish on the day, and only on the day, when I have entered into the origins of the conflict in my life much more deeply and fully than I have done so far.

For the time being, with the present orientation of my life towards a major mathematical investment, I can safely say that it's not going anywhere!

(d) Acceptance (the awakening of yin [2])

NOTE 110 [◊ 484] (October 11) I've been wanting for the last day or two to take stock, in a few words, of where I am (after eight years) with this ‘gradual restoration of the yin-yang balance’ in me.

Perhaps the most important change of all is a much greater acceptance than in the past of who I really am from moment to moment. Another way of putting it is that the mechanisms of repression within me have become much more flexible. As I said yesterday, some have disappeared once they've been discovered and understood, and others, which I'd ignored all my life, have become familiar to me in their everyday manifestations. I see them in action, not as enemies that I must try to extirpate at all costs, but as part of the multiplicity of facets of my conditioned being, and therefore of the richness of the present ‘given’, which faithfully reflects my past history; both the ‘ancient’ history of my conditioning and the roots of division in my being, and the more recent history of my maturation, the work by which I end up unpacking, ‘eating’ and assimilating the initial package bequeathed to me by my parents and their successors. This ‘acceptance’ within me therefore includes not only the impulses and traits of the ‘child’ that I had long ignored and repressed (particularly those that reflect the feminine aspects within me), but also the mechanisms of repression specific to the ‘boss’, in other words the inveterate mechanisms of ‘non-acceptance’! Accepting the latter has nothing in common with ‘cultivating’ or strengthening them. On the contrary, it's an essential first step towards unravelling them or defusing them to some extent, through the effect of curious and loving attention. The experience of these eight years gives me the conviction that, as long as this attention goes deep enough and to the very root of the repression, the latter is resolved and disappears by releasing considerable energy - the energy that until then had been immobilised to maintain against all odds such and such a set of repressive mechanisms, and the habits of thought and others that serve to maintain them.

But it wasn't in relation to the ‘knotted’ aspects of myself that this new acceptance of myself first appeared in my life. It came without fanfare, even before the discovery of meditation, and therefore even before the ‘reunion’ that closely followed it. It was in July 1976, during a brief love affair with a young woman, G., perhaps a little more ‘mannish’ in her ways than the women I'd loved previously. As chance would have it, the material circumstances surrounding this love affair were such that I found myself placed in a typically ‘feminine’ role. I was doing the housework and preparing the [◊ 485] evening meals, while waiting for my husband to return from a long and tiring day's work tending a herd of one hundred and fifty goats in the hills, which she also had to milk in the evening. It just so happened that this unusual role of housewife suited me like a glove. It may seem a small thing, but it clicked. The link was made with certain impulses and desires in my love life, expressed for the first time in certain love poems, where the experience of love appears, unambiguously, as ‘feminine’. I understood then, without reflection or ‘effort’, without any hint of reticence or embarrassment, that in my body as well as in my desires, in my feelings and in my spirit, I was a woman as well as a man - and that there was no conflict whatsoever between these two profound realities in my being. In those days, the dominant note was feminine - and I accepted this gratefully, in mute astonishment. When I thought about it, there was a silent, very gentle joy in me.

This joy was enough in itself, it didn't need to be expressed in words, either to myself or to anyone else. I don't know whether I spoke about it to the woman whose lover I was, or whose lover perhaps... Surely, on some level she knew, without my having to say so.

That joy hasn't faded, it's remained alive to this day. It comes from living knowledge, like the fragrance that accompanies a flower. In certain moments or periods of my life, this knowledge, and the joy that is a sign of it, is more present than in others, more strongly active. But I don't think it ever leaves me.

When I have spoken here and there about this experience and this knowledge, in the weeks and years that have followed, it has always been as if I were communicating something of great value to others, in a moment when I felt they were open to receiving, if only for a few moments, something of this joy in me. I never felt embarrassed to talk about it, as if it were something even remotely scabrous (perhaps there would have been such embarrassment at times, however, if the reality and strength of the ‘man’ in me had not been above suspicion! ) And I also remember one occasion when I decided to strut my stuff, showing off and winning on both counts - all I needed was to have my period like everyone else and give birth to a kid as dry as that.

My new feminine identity, superimposed on my masculine identity, had an immediate renewing effect on my love life. It had a very strong effect [◊ 486] on the women I subsequently became lovers with, awakening in the lover masculine impulses that had been carefully repressed throughout her life, and had hitherto only found expression ‘on the sly’, as a kind of burr, unworthy of figuring in the conscious experience of love.

The unconscious experience of love is rich in archetypal impulses, one of the most powerful of which is that of the return to the Mother, the return to the original bosom. Such an archetype is present in the deepest layers of the love experience, in both men and women. In women, resistance to the satisfaction of such an impulse in the couple's experience of love is even stronger than in men, where it comes up against a key taboo, and not two as in men. For both men and women, the satisfaction of these impulses in the shared experience often remains more or less symbolic and, above all, hidden from consciousness. When such an archetype and this experience emerge from the deepest layers into the light of day, into the conscious field of vision, it is immediately transformed, acquiring a new dimension. At the same time, considerable energies, previously compressed by repressive mechanisms or bound by the tasks of repression, are released. The effect is an immediate liberation of the erotic impulse, manifested by a renewed intensity and a new fullness in the experience of love.

From the foregoing, it will surely be clear that this new acceptance of myself has gone hand in hand with an acceptance of others. The two are inextricably linked. It's understood that we're talking here about ‘acceptance’ in the full sense of the word, which in no way means tolerance (often bittersweet) towards such and such ‘foibles’ or ‘faults’, felt as an unavoidable evil that we're obliged to ‘live with’. In such an attitude, I sense above all a resignation, not to say an abdication, and certainly not a source of joy, nor a surge of awareness of something worth knowing: the presumed, unknown depth behind the flat surface of such ‘faults’ or ‘shortcomings’ that we are willing to tolerate...

The fact that we are talking here about a joyful, creative acceptance in no way implies that this acceptance is total. An attentive reader will already have noticed this for himself more than once in the course of Harvest and Sowing, as I have sometimes [◊ 487] realised in passing, when I was once again confronted with this eternal mechanism in me of rejecting everything that presents itself in an unpleasant guise, in others or in myself. (But when it comes to oneself, this mechanism more often than not has the effect of not even taking note of the unpleasant thing in question...)

The acceptance I'm talking about is rooted in an interest in the thing we ‘accept’, whether in ourselves or in others. Whereas acceptance is in itself a typically ‘yin’ inner disposition, this connotation of ‘interest’ that it takes on in me is ‘yang’ in nature - it's the ‘yang in the yin’, in the delicate Chinese dialectic of the infinite interweaving of yin and yang... I was about to venture to say, a little in the same vein, that there was a pure and simple identity between acceptance (the real thing!) and this interest, this curiosity. However, as I look into the matter a little more, I realise that there is another way of accepting, which is more totally yin in nature than the one I'm used to. It's like welcoming the thing you're accepting, rather than rushing towards it to probe it. (This nuance of acceptance seems to me to be the ‘yin within the yin’ - here we go!) The impulse of interest and the attitude of acceptance can both form the background note to acceptance of others or of oneself. What both have in common is sympathy. This too is one of the forms of love. If there is any profound identity to be identified here, it would be the observation that acceptance is a form of love. Love of self, love of other, both indissolubly linked...

Except in rare moments, my interest is more intensely involved when it's a question of my own person, than that of others. It is this passionate interest in myself that has animated the long periods of meditation over the last eight years. It's true that knowledge of the self is at the heart of knowledge of others and of the world, and not the other way round - and I feel that it is towards the heart of things, towards what is most essential, that my new passion, meditation, has led me and continues to lead me. My interest in others has become more fragmented and reluctant over the years, as has the acceptance that comes with it. One of the ways it has manifested itself concretely is in a lesser propensity to talk when I'm in company, and in an attitude of listening. For most of my life, this ability to listen had been almost entirely lacking. Even after the great turning point of the reunion, I still had to realise many times [◊ 488] that I had spoken out of turn, for lack of listening and discernment, before this inveterate propensity began to pass me by. If it has become much less invasive, and has even almost disappeared, it is in no way the result of some self-imposed discipline (like: you won't open your mouth unless...). It's simply because I've lost the urge to talk, at times when I feel that it's useless, that it doesn't contribute anything to others or to me - at least nothing of any value to me. If I can now often sense such things, it's probably because I've become more attentive. This too has not come about as a result of discipline (‘you'll be careful to open your ears wide when...’), but I can't say how. In any case, I feel better for it, and life is that much more interesting (and, above all, less noisy!). And other people feel better too...

I think I really started to talk less, as soon as this force in me that always pushes me to want to rectify what appear to me (rightly or wrongly) to be ‘mistakes’ in others disappeared - as if it wasn't enough for me to detect and rectify my own! This is also the force that drove me (and sometimes still drives me) to want to convince others of this or that, instead of simply looking at why so-and-so stubbornly prefers to believe this rather than that (which seems like that to me, and which I'd really like to convince them of!); or why I'm so keen for them to believe that rather than that. This almost universal force in us, which constantly pushes us to seek the approval of others (and only one...) as confirmation of the validity of what we hold to be true - this force deeply rooted in the ego - finally, I think, let go of me. It was a great relief, the end of a tremendous dispersion of energy. It was when I finally realised, two years ago, the extent of this force in my life, its nature, and the extraordinary dispersal of energy it represented, that it was defused - and that I found myself lightened by the blow of ‘a weight of a hundred tonnes’. To be aware, without reticence, of the echoes that others reflect back to us, without being bound by any desire or ‘need’ (however hidden) for approval or confirmation - that's really what it means to be ‘free of them’. It is such a need or desire that really constitutes the ‘hook’, discreet and unfailingly solid, by which the conflict can ‘hang’ in us, and by which we are (whether we like it or recognise it, or not) under the dependence of others, of [◊ 489] their goodwill - by which, in short, they ‘hold’ us, and (in a small way) manoeuvre us as they please....

Logically, accepting others should also mean accepting the way they see things, whether or not they seem wrong to us, and even the way they see our own precious selves (including our own ways of seeing...). But that's where the problem lies - it's the key point of acceptance of others, not acceptance of more or less embarrassing common ‘faults’ that don't directly involve ourselves. Quite often, moreover, if we reject such ‘faults’ in others, it's above all because they make us feel directly challenged, simply by being confronted with ways of being that seem to us (rightly or wrongly) to be the opposite of our own. In other words, it is an insecurity within us, manifested by reactions (more or less apparent or hidden) of vanity, which is the great obstacle, opposing our acceptance of others. But this deep-rooted insecurity, compensated for by the movements of vanity, seems to me to be indissolubly linked to the non-acceptance of ourselves; it is like its inseparable shadow.

So it is full self-acceptance that appears here to be the key to acceptance of others. And this link that has just appeared to me here links up with another profound link that I have known for a long time, perhaps forever: that self-love is the heart, peaceful and strong, of love for others.

(3) The couple

(a) The dynamics of things (yin-yang harmony)

NOTE 111 (October 13) Yesterday I did not continue to write the notes. Instead, I amused myself by reviewing a number of yin-yang ’couples.‘ Beginning with those that came to mind, a little haphazardly-luckily, I then got into the game, and ended with a sort of "census" of all those I could get my hands on. I had started because I had told myself that a lot of what I had written lately was very likely to go entirely ’over the head‘ of a reader who was already not even the slightest acquainted with the double yin-yang aspect of things. It would perhaps not be useless to take the trouble to give at least a few striking examples of such couples, in addition to those who had broken in through the gang in the last [◊ 490] days. Then, led by the little devil (or angel, I don't know...) of systematics in me, I ended up bringing out my old reflections of five years ago on this theme. For a week or two I had amused myself by "collecting" a hundred or two of these very suggestive couples, who had then assembled by affinity into about twenty groups. As this reflection was made on the margins of the famous ‘poetic work’ that I was writing, I could not help but classify these groups as best I could in a row, by affinities and filiations of meaning from one group to the next. Last night, resuming the reflection with hindsight, and without a poetic straitjacket around my neck, I found eighteen bands (instead of twenty), by a grouping that was perhaps a little more rigorous. I suspect, moreover, that there must be many other groups, perhaps even an unlimited number, corresponding to modes of apprehension of reality which I have not thought of in the course of my work (nor, perhaps, ever yet).

As for the eighteen groups that I have indeed identified, I have tried to assemble them into a diagram (or "graph") according to the main links of affinity that link them to each other. Some of these links, moreover, only came to my attention in the course of drawing successive sketches of the diagram. The work here was really very close to the very familiar mathematical work, when one tries to grasp graphically, in as striking a way as possible, a more or less complex set of relations (given, for example, by ‘applications’, represented by arrows) between a certain number of ’sets‘ or ’categories‘, appearing as ’vertices‘ of the ’diagram‘ that one is trying to construct. Here too, requirements of an essentially aesthetic nature, of symmetry and structural transparency in particular, frequently lead to the introduction (and if necessary, to the discovery or even the invention) of ’arrows‘ or links that had not been thought of at the beginning, and sometimes even new ‘vertices’. The fact remains that after five or six successive drafts, I ended up with a diagram, vaguely in the shape of a Christmas tree, which satisfied me provisionally — all the more so since it was really starting to get prohibitively late!

I went to bed happy, I felt that I had not wasted my time, even if my grades had not advanced a hair 42 . But I had re-established myself in [◊ 491] contact with things that were decidedly juicy — each of these groups was rich in weight and mystery, and each of the yin-yang couples that were supposed to constitute it (but rather, all together, designate it, without in any way exhausting it) — each of these couples has something delicate and important to tell me about the nature of this world in which I live, and often about my own nature. I have rediscovered with new force this feeling that was already present five years ago: that the delicate interplay of yin and yang, of the ’feminine‘ and the ‘male’ in all things, is an incomparable thread towards an understanding of the world and of oneself. It leads us straight to the essential questions. Often, too, the very ‘yoga’ of yin and yang, the mere fact, I mean, of paying attention to the aspect of things and events that is expressed in terms of yin-yang balance and imbalance, provides a first key to a better understanding of these questions, and to an answer.

I apologize if for some readers I have to give the impression, for a page or two, of talking about the sex of angels, when they would not even see what are these famous yin-yang ‘couples’ of which I am speaking, and even less these 'groups' in which some people meet, which groups would finally be supposed to assemble in a 'diagram' (maths is still useful!). I should give here at least one of these groups — and I would like to take the one with which I spontaneously began yesterday, the one also that ended up appearing in the course of the reflection as the "primitive" group$^{43}$ , from which all the others seem to emerge gradually, by a kind of successive 'filiations' (continuing on my famous diagram over eight 'generations'...). Here is the list of the 'couples' that I have noted, constituting this primitive group (which could be called by the first of these couples, namely 'the action-inaction group').

— action-inaction

— activity-passivity

— wake-sleep

— subject-object

— generate-conceive$^{43}$

— execution-conception$ ^{43}$

— [◊ 492] dynamism-equillibrium

— momentum-sitting

— ardor(ardeur — translator's note)-perseverance

— ardour(fougue — translator's note)-patience

— passion-serenity

— tenacity-detachment.

I would like to add the following two couples, among a dozen or so 'latecomers' who came to me again this morning, on the momentum of my reflection yesterday:

— tell-know (savoir-connaître — translator's note)

— explaining-comprehending.

Is it necessary to specify that in these couples, it is the term ‘yang’ or ‘masculine’ that is put first, according to the usage of our patriarchal society, where the man gives the name to the couple? On the other hand, while traditional Chinese society is considerably more patriarchal than ours, when we follow the Chinese usage to talk about the relationship between yin and yang, we always put the yin ('feminine') first, speaking for example of ’yin-yang balance‘ (instead of yang-yin). The meaning of this usage is surely in the archetypal intuition that it is yang that is born from yin, which is the 'more primitive' principle of the two, and not the other way around...

This is not the place to launch into comments on one or the other of these couples. For the reader who does not 'feel anything' when he sees them, it would be a waste of time anyway; and the one who feels challenged by them, who feels (even if obscurely) that each of them has something to say to him about the world and about himself — about balance and imbalance, about the internal dynamics of beings and things..., he can do without detailed comments, and take this question as a starting point for his own reflection.

(b) Enemy spouses (yang buries yin [3])

NOTE 111' There is only one point on which I would like to insist here, common to all yin-yang ‘couples’ without exception. It is also the most crucial thing of all, it seems to me, for an understanding of the nature of the relationship between yin and yang, and thus of the nature of each of these two principles (or energies, or aspects, or forces...) in the Universe. It is this: each of the two terms of one of these couples, such an action-inaction, in [◊ 493] the absence$^{44}$ of the other term, constitutes a state of serious imbalance, and at the limit (when the ’absence‘ in question is almost complete, and prolonged) a state which leads to the destruction of the thing (or being) in which this imbalance takes place, or even of it and its surroundings.

Thus, a state of uninterrupted action, which does not alternate with sufficient periods of inaction and rest, leads to exhaustion, illness and (at the limit) to death — something that has been most topical lately, for me$^{45}$! But conversely, a state of excessive inaction leads to a weakening and sclerosis of the capacities and functions of the body or psyche (as the case may be), and to the limit, to destruction. In the case of my ‘illness-incident’, moreover, I have a simultaneous example of the two imbalances: excessive action of the mind, inaction of the body (and sufficient rest for neither of them...).

This ‘explanation’, in this case, of the ‘philosophy’ of balance-imbalance of yin and yang, remains superficial, in the sense that it does not touch on an inveterate cultural bias, valuing the term yang, action, by opposing it to the term yin, inaction. The latter is felt as a ’negative‘ thing, not productive or interesting from any point of view, admitted at the very least as a last resort, which unfortunately imposes itself even on the best will in the world, since it is still necessary to rest from time to time in order to be able to continue to invest in action (on pain of overwork, as I have just explained, and God knows what else...). In short, inaction is seen as the humble servant of action, indispensable unfortunately but otherwise unworthy of attention or esteem.

[◊ 494] Of course, this ‘official’ valuing of action over inaction immediately sets in motion mechanisms of resistance in the individual (which often remain hidden or at least very blurred), expressed by an opposite valuing: action appears as something imposed by the hard necessities of life, like work in short, boring as hell, in the office or the factory or even in the fields, and exhausting in any case, even if it's not too boring. The real raison d'être of action is to earn a crust and a living (that's the essential), and beyond that and above all, to have some nice leisure activities (during your working life), and a nice retirement and pleasant permanent leisure activities later on, when you're freed from the regrettable obligation of ‘work’. This time, it's inaction (aka ‘leisure’) that is more or less consciously valued, and it's action that is its humble servant. There is therefore a reversal of roles, but always with the same imbalance: that which consists in the antagonism established by the person concerned (under the pressure of cultural conditioning) between two essential aspects or poles of his life; an antagonism which is expressed and perpetuated by a state of despotic preponderance of one of these aspects, and servitude of the other.

It seems to me that more often than not, the two attitudes and values are superimposed in the same person, one dominating at the conscious level, the other at the unconscious level. The superimposition of these two opposing imbalances obviously doesn't produce balance! Balance, on the other hand, flows naturally from an understanding of the true nature of action and inaction (even when such an understanding remains purely ‘instinctive’, manifesting itself directly in balanced behaviour, and in no way in verbalised ‘knowledge’). In action in the full sense of the term, there is also inaction - in the very moment, I mean, and not just ‘after’, because you have to rest after the action! This ‘inaction’ within the ‘action’, the ‘yin within the yang’, is like a deep calm that serves as a foundation for a movement that would take place on the surface. It can be seen, for example, in the impression of perfect relaxation that emanates from a feline in motion, whether it's the first alley cat that comes along, or a lioness with a powerful build...

And in true inaction, even total inaction, there is action. Thus sleep is rich in dreams that speak to us about ourselves, through which we live another, [◊ 495] more intense and more delicate life, which we are often too sleepy or too pusillanimous to live in waking life. And it is enough to contemplate a sleeping baby, or just to be roused from a deep sleep, to feel that even without dreams, truly good sleep is work in its own way: something that absorbs us totally, to ‘refill’ in short an energy that had been dispersed and that we come to replenish at its source... This is, once again, the ‘yang in the yin’, without which the yin itself would be destructive.

Thoughts along the same lines could surely also be developed for waking inaction, outside sleep time. All we have to do is observe carefully, on the spot, any state that we perceive as ‘inaction’. You will realise that inaction is action, even if it is the sterile cackling of a thought that continues to go round in circles even though it has stopped working. But to tell the truth, it is inappropriate to call this purely mechanical movement, which continues by the mere effect of inertia - by the inability to stop the machine! And it's certainly not this inner agitation that will give ‘inaction’ a yin-yang harmony that will make it beneficial. On the other hand, this may be true of the various activities designed to fill our leisure time (when these are nevertheless experienced as a state of inaction). But even in the state of complete rest of a state of convalescence, let's say, there can be action, otherwise this rest or ‘inaction’ becomes sluggishness, certainly not conducive to convalescence (that is to say, to restoring a disturbed balance!). For example, this state of rest can give rise to attention to one's own body and to one's immediate surroundings (which are like a second skin to it...), an acquisition of knowledge, or even a communion, which in itself has a genuine ‘action’ character; for there is no doubt that learning is indeed an act (since it has an irrefutable effect: the appearance of knowledge...).

If we examine one by one the fourteen pairs I've included in the action-inaction group (and I'm sure we could find many more that fit in naturally), we can see that for all of them except perhaps one, it's the first term, the ‘masculine’ term, that is invested with prestige, with ‘value’, according to the attitudes-reflexes conveyed by our culture and inculcated since childhood. This is the sign of the same inveterate imbalance in our culture, [◊ 496] the imbalance marked by the exclusive valorisation of yang, to which I have already alluded previously 46 . The same observation can be made for almost all the yinyang pairs I have come across - this is a really very striking thing, which I had never previously taken the leisure to verify in such detail.

Among the pairs written earlier, the only one that seems to me to be an exception is the passion-serenity pair, given that in common usage, the word ‘passion’ is often associated with the image of unleashing, of violence, or even of sloppiness, annoyingly close to the cloud of associations surrounding a word like ‘turpitude’. As if by chance, sloppiness and turpitude refer to states of psychic imbalance characterised by an excessive yin, feminine preponderance! And symmetrically, following the same push-button mechanisms (which reveal our current conditioning, and in no way the nature of something like ‘serenity’), the word ‘serenity’ is associated (as opposed to ‘passion’) with the image of self-control - a quality which, as it happens, is essentially masculine. (In fact, the Yin counterpart of ‘control’ is not ‘passion’, but ‘abandonment’).

What happens here, then, is that as a result of a general confusion in people's minds about the nature of certain things, expressed by an equal confusion in the use of certain words that are supposed to designate them, there is a confusion of the yang-yin couple ‘passion’ with the whole of the two notions

release - control,

whose terms are yin-yang (without constituting a ‘couple’, as the two terms have no desire to marry!). So it seems to me that the so-called ‘exception’ to the rule (of systematically valuing yang) is, on the contrary, a particularly interesting confirmation of it! And I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true of the other few examples I've mentioned, where in a yang-yin couple, it's the yin term that seems to be valued.

Moreover, I'm not at all sure that this distortion in the worldview that I see in so-called ‘Western’ civilisation, stemming from this systematic bias in favour of the masculine as opposed to the feminine - that this distortion, this imbalance is so much less in the Chinese tradition, [◊ 497] or even in the Chinese world (or more generally the ‘Eastern’ world) today. There is no sign, at the level of everyday life, that would lead me to suppose this, either through my Oriental friends or through the echoes that may have reached me of today's tradition and life in China or other Far Eastern countries - quite the contrary. Rather, it seems to me that a fine perception of the yin-yang dynamism has been confined almost exclusively to the practice of certain arts - such as calligraphy, poetry, the culinary arts and, of course, the medical arts 47 .

It is this last art in particular, under the name of ‘Chinese medicine’ and thanks to the spectacular success of acupuncture, that has, over the last twenty years, come to be regarded as a prestigious discipline in our country. Yet many people are still unaware that, in Chinese medicine, the alpha and omega of our understanding of the body, of the circulation of energy in the body and of its disturbances (which constitute the morbid states we call ‘diseases’), lies precisely in a very fine dialectic of yin and yang. The fact that this dialectic ‘works’, since ‘Chinese medicine’ based on it is effective (including in many cases that are beyond the means of the Western panoply), can be seen as a kind of ‘proof’ of the reality of the ‘principles’ or ‘aspects’ or ‘modes’ (of apprehension, or of existence) of yin and yang - that they are not pure speculations out of the hats of certain philosophers and other poets (not to say fumists).

It's true that we might wonder what the point is of such proofs, and indeed of any ‘proof’ whatsoever of the validity of this or that worldview. Even supposing that the proof was convincing (i.e., that the person concerned was willing to let himself be convinced), and even and on top of that, that the vision in question was profound and therefore beneficial - the best proof in the world is powerless, however, to communicate [◊ 498] a vision, let alone a vision of the world. It does you good to be ‘convinced’ stubbornly of a vision that remains foreign, misunderstood. To tell the truth, it doesn't even make sense - or more exactly, the true meaning of his ‘conviction’ is no more understood by the person concerned, than the vision he pretends to incorporate into his heavy cultural baggage.

When the vision is understood and assimilated, the very question of ‘proof’ seems strangely absurd - a bit like proving that the sky is blue when you can see that it is blue, or that the scent of a flower you love is good...

(c) The half and the whole - or the crack

NOTE 112 (17 October) My first thoughts on the dual aspect of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ came from a reflection on myself. It was around the beginning of 1979, at a time when I was still unaware of the Chinese words ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, and of the existence of a kind of subtle ‘philosophy’ of the incessant interplay of yin and yang in Chinese cultural tradition. I learnt about this towards the end of the same year, I think, from my daughter and especially from my son-in-law Ahmed, who was just beginning to take an interest in Chinese medicine, which he became very interested in over the following years. Most of what he told me overlapped with and confirmed the vision I had arrived at, which came as no surprise. If there was any surprise, it was rather in the few cases of ‘couples’ where the ‘natural’ yin-yang role seemed to me to be reversed, in the Chinese tradition. My reflex (strongly ‘yang’ in this case!) had been a skin-deep conviction that this ‘reversal’ must be due to a cultural distortion, without actually looking too closely48 - it was at a time when my past learning about the feminine-masculine seemed very far away, while I was engaged in a far more [◊ 499] personal meditation on my parents' lives and my childhood. It was only months or years later, I think, that through a certain amount of cross-checking, I realised that in some cases my apprehension of the yin and yang roles in such and such ‘couples’ had remained a tad superficial; that I had lumped together, somewhat hastily, situations of a different nature that the Chinese yin-yang dialectic was very careful to distinguish (112'). Now I realise that my apprehension of yin and yang is still relatively crude and static, especially when compared with the finesse required to practise certain traditional Chinese arts such as medicine (which is also closely linked to dietetics and the culinary arts), where this apprehension ends up becoming like second nature.

More than once, I have had the impression that among practitioners of these arts, whether Oriental or European, this finesse of apprehension remains fragmentary, in the sense that it remains, to a very large extent, carefully confined to the practice of this art. In everyday life, it acts more like ordinary ‘knowledge’, superimposed purely and simply on the ‘knowledge’ of cultural (and other) conditioning, and remaining more or less a dead letter vis-à-vis the latter. To put it another way, I had the impression that the vision of the world and of oneself, and the mechanisms of repression in the perception of reality, are in no way different in these ‘informed’ people than in ordinary mortals.

This impression overlaps with another I got from reading two or three texts written by Europeans who are supposed to be ‘in the know’ and who offer an overview of the traditional Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. (One of the authors is a well-known French orientalist, whose name escapes me now). The thing that struck me was that in these texts, yin and yang are presented as ‘opposing’ (or ‘contrary’) or even antagonistic principles (the latter term appears several times in one of these texts), rather than complementary. This ‘opposition’ or ‘antagonism’ would have its typical expression in that which would take place between woman and man within human society, and within the couple instituted by society.

Antagonism in the husband-wife relationship is a reality in both East and West. It is deeply rooted in culture, so much so that it can sometimes appear as one of the (sometimes confusing!) aspects of the human condition, or even as the root of conflict in man or in human society. The reality of this antagonism is irrefutable, and it certainly goes beyond the common clichés that try to exorcise it [◊ 500] as best they can. This ‘social’ reality is the product of immemorial conditioning, which very early on takes root in the ‘self’ in formation and structures it. Yet, beyond this reality, there is a deeper reality, coming from much further back still, which is decisive in the love drive itself. This is the reality of a profound, essential complementarity between the sexes, in which there is no room for any kind of ‘antagonism’. It is also the reality that is clearly manifested in all living species, with the sole exception of our own, where it is largely obscured by cultural antagonism, and therefore by a state of division specific to man and human society.

The common romantic clichés, such as ‘Nous Deux’, which dominate much of literature and the media, make a mockery of this ‘complementarity’, while casting a modest veil over the troubling male-female antagonism, or (at best) treating it as a sort of slightly spicy accident, welcome to spice up a meal that is otherwise a little too dull or syrupy. As soon as you get beyond these reassuring clichés, you are immediately confronted with the reality of this male-female antagonism - a reality that is apparently universal, and one that is, moreover, as tenacious as any weed! But to start from this omnipresent and indisputable reality, to institute a kind of cosmic antagonism of yin and yang, of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’, is to project onto the entire Universe the state of tearing apart, of profound division of human society and the individual, a disease therefore unique to our species. It also means perpetuating our own ignorance of another reality within ourselves (in line with this cosmic reality of the harmony of complementary elements), a reality that is just as tenacious (or, to put it better, indestructible), but more hidden. This reality runs counter to the conditioning that tacitly establishes a de facto antagonism between woman and man, wife and husband, as well as between that which is ‘woman’ and that which is ‘man’ within ourselves.

To tell the truth, this dualistic or warlike vision of the Universe, in which one aspect of things is at constant war with an equally essential ‘symmetrical’ aspect - this vision is in no way the fruit of reflection, which would ‘start’ (as I wrote just now) from the reality of conflict in the human couple and in human society, and then ‘deduce’ (or ‘institute’, as I wrote more correctly) it in the entire Cosmos. It is no more and no less than the faithful expression, automatic as it may be, of cultural conditioning, and goes in the direction of an [◊ 501] essential function of this conditioning: the maintenance of the conflict, of the division in the very person, visibly, the maintenance of this instituted antagonism between ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in me would be an impossible thing, or rather, this antagonism would already be resolved, the moment I took the leisure to contemplate the Universe with these eyes received at my birth, and where I note that everywhere, except (apparently.... ) in myself and among my fellow human beings, the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’ are indissoluble complements of each other; that it is from their marriage and union that harmony, creative force and living beauty are born in all living and ‘dead’ things of Creation. On the other hand, if I claim to ‘see’ everywhere in the Universe ‘oppositions’ and ‘antagonisms’ where they don't exist (and even though in doing so I would be following a venerable tradition that goes back thousands of years), I would in no way be using my eyes, but rather confining myself to repeating (like everyone else) what has been repeated from generation to generation since perhaps the dawn of time ; and, in any case, to obey the silent, imperative injunction of cultural consensus - the very injunction that has firmly established within me a division, a conflict that I would claim to rationalise (and thereby perpetuate) as a ‘cosmic necessity’.

There is certainly a lot to be said about antagonism in couples, and more generally about female-male antagonism - and I trust that much has been written on the subject, including some relevant stuff. This is not the place to dwell on this most interesting theme, particularly on the particular form that this antagonism takes in our patriarchal society. It seems to me that among those who have seen it clearly, there are many who hold the structure of society, reflecting and embodying the preponderance of men over women, to be responsible for this antagonism. They are surely right - and I suspect that in a society with a pronounced matriarchal tendency, a similar antagonism must be found, manifesting itself more or less symmetrically. What I would just like to add is that this causality seems to me to be indirect, that it seems to be exercised through the intermediary of a more hidden causality, touched upon in today's reflection. This more hidden and more essential cause of the division in the couple is the state of division within the person, both woman and man, with regard to their own drives (and in particular those of sex) and their own faculties. I see in this the real root of the antagonism between man and woman, as well as of their mutual dependence at the spiritual level, I mean the [◊ 502] lack of inner autonomy of both.

This division within oneself consists in the intimate and secret conviction, in both of them, that they are only half. One of the signs of this conviction is this diffuse and insidious feeling, never examined, of cracking, of mutilation perhaps, from which only the partner of the other sex could deliver us, temporarily at least. Behind the circumstantial airs of ‘macho’ or ‘Circe’ (and many others), everyone, men and women alike, find themselves in the position of a beggar vis-à-vis their potential or actual partner, of someone who expects an ephemeral release from the (more or less) goodwill of the other, which he hopes will be complete and which always turns out to be lame, from his pitiful state as a cracked pot, not to say broken - half a pot in short, looking for another to glue itself back together as best it can (and rather badly than well, as you might guess...). ).

This feeling of being broken, or again, this ignorance of our true nature, of our fundamental unity beyond the physiological specificity linked to our sex - this deep division within us seems to me to be the product of social conditioning alone. In any case, there is no trace of it in the first days and months of an infant's life. This conditioning is by no means reduced to valuing the ‘masculine’ to the detriment of the ‘feminine’, or vice versa. After all, if I feel, accept and am accepted as both ‘male’ and ‘female’, with a ‘background note’ that can vary from one facet of my person to another, and that is by no means limited to the dominant (albeit very important) position that prevails in terms of my genitalia - then it doesn't really matter whether it's the ‘masculine’ or the ‘feminine’ that is valued around me. In terms of my sexual drive, my personal ‘value’ would then tend to be placed on the opposite sex to my own (sorry, I meant complementary), without me feeling inferior (any more than superior) in front of this being who is different in body, towards whom I am drawn by a deep and compelling drive. Moreover, whether we're talking about the value of gender or any other, the importance of the ‘value’ or prestige attributed by social consensus (to oneself or to others) is relatively secondary, not to say minimal, in a person who is not (or is only slightly) affected by this feeling of ‘cracks’ that I'm talking about - in a person who has this spontaneous self-assurance that is not arrogance or a facade, but the manifestation of an intact knowledge of one's own nature.

[◊ 503] One sign among others that the ‘crack’ or division 49 in the person is not just the product of valorisation, is that this division is as rife in the man as in the woman, in the one who is supposed to be the ‘beneficiary’ of this consensus which claims to ‘valorise’ him, while (in a certain sense) it breaks the backs of both him and his partner. We can see that this division is all the more acute, all the more violent, the stronger and more ruthless the repression of one sex for the ‘benefit’ of the other. We could say that the principle followed by ‘society’ (the source and instrument of repression) in setting up repressive mechanisms is: ‘divide and rule’! But this ‘division’ created by the consensus to break and enslave both men and women is also played out on two levels at once. The most visible aspect is the division within the couple, achieved 50 by establishing a more or less tyrannical dominance of one sex over the other - of the man over the woman, or vice versa. One is supposed to reign over the other - and both end up as slaves 51 . For when the wife or husband is scorned, it is both of them who are scorned - sometimes by others, but more profoundly and above all, by themselves.

And here we come to the ‘second picture’, the more hidden one, of the game of division. It is the division within the person himself, the hidden spring of the couple's division; it is accentuated by the latter, without however being reduced to it, and it is by no means produced by the sole valorisation of one sex to the detriment of the other. Rather, it is the product of a silent and incessant constraint exerted on us by those around us from our earliest years. This constraint pushes us to deny, on pain of rejection, an entire ‘side’ of our person (the [◊ 504] ‘yin’ side, or the ‘yang’ side 52 ), rejected as ridiculous or unseemly, and in any case, as unacceptable.

(d) Archetypal knowledge and conditioning

NOTE 112' 53 Thus, in the matrix-embryo and vagina-penis pairs, there is no doubt about the distribution of yin-yang roles, and the yin term surrounds and contains the yang term. This had led me to hastily conclude that in the container-content pair it was the ‘content’ that was yang, without being warned by the form-ground, exterior-interior, periphery-centre pairs (where, as I had clearly sensed, the first term is indeed yang, as well as being the ‘container’). In fact, in the matrix-embryo and vagina-penis pairs, I had wrongly emphasised the ‘geometrical’ or configurational aspect of the relationship between the two terms involved, a secondary aspect to the main one, which in this case determines the distribution of roles: what nourishes is yin in relation to what is nourished, which is yang, and what penetrates is yang in relation to what is penetrated, which is yin (likewise what gives in relation to what receives).

My reflections on yin and yang, however limited they may be, have founded a deep conviction in me that beyond the differences in individual apprehension about the distribution of yin-yang roles (or also, about the yin or yang ‘background note’ in a given person, let's say), an apprehension that is highly subject to ‘cultural distortion’, such a ‘natural’ distribution (or ‘background note’) does indeed exist. It has a reality that is just as irrefutable, ‘cosmic’, and immutable (as regards the distribution of roles in couples of a universal nature, such as those discussed so far), as a physical law, or a mathematical relation, even if it cannot be ‘established’ either by experiment (in the sense in which this term is understood in the practice of the natural sciences), or by a ‘proof’ or even a ‘demonstration’. This reality [◊ 505] of yin and yang is apprehended by direct perception, which can be developed and refined (among other things) by sufficiently deep reflection.

It seems to me that one of the main effects of such reflection is precisely to get us to go beyond the clichéd reflexes, programmed into us by the surrounding culture, in order to get back in touch with reality itself. This, it seems to me, is already present in deep layers of the psyche, as a kind of archetypal knowledge, beyond the reach of cultural conditioning. The role of reflection is to enable us to regain contact with this knowledge that is already present, and to carefully decant it from superficial ‘knowledge’, i.e. from cultural conditioning.

The work I've begun in this direction has been important for my understanding of the world and of myself, and by the same token, in my daily ‘doing’ and in the conduct of my life. This work (as on many other occasions) seems to me like a first breakthrough, like a door that I've just pushed open onto a vast panorama that I still have to explore. I have everything I need to do it - but I don't know if I ever will 54 . Mathematics aside, there is no shortage of equally ‘juicy’, more personal and even more burning themes for reflection, which will no doubt be given preference over more general reflections on yin and yang...

(4) Our Mother Death

(a) The Act

NOTE 113 (21 October) Three days have passed without writing any notes. My days have been absorbed by other tasks and events. One of these was a visit from Pierre and his little daughter Nathalie, who arrived yesterday evening. He's thinking of staying until tomorrow evening, and until then read what's been written about the Funeral. It's going to be a bit short for a text that took me nearly three months to write...

The time I was able to devote to reflection, I spent [◊ 506] playing with yin-yang ‘couples’ and the groups they form. The subject is fascinating, combining the very special flavour of investigating a mathematical ‘structure’, the very nature of which gradually becomes clearer in the course of the work, with that of a reflection on the world and on existence. Each of the main yin-yang pairs represents a kind of ‘keyhole’ (among an infinite number of others), revealing a certain aspect of the world, or of a corner of it. The ‘groups’ of pairs that I have identified so far seem to correspond more to different possible ways of apprehending things in the Universe, like so many doors that open onto it and show it to us from so many different angles. Each of these ‘doors’ has a large number of keyholes, perhaps even an unlimited number, through which to look - until perhaps we simply push the door open? For the time being, I've confined myself to finding a good number of these holes (I've found well over two hundred), and sticking my eye in each one, even if only for a few moments, realising each time that there would be something to look at for a good while without wasting my time - quite the opposite, in fact! But I'm even more impatient to go and have a look at this hole and that hole through which to look again, and also to go round all these doors and orientate myself as best I can according to how they are arranged in relation to each other, and perhaps also according to the patterns in one or other of the holes that made their existence known...

Finally, the eighteen ‘doors’ that I had detected a little over a week ago have been augmented by three more, making a total of twenty-one, arranged in a diagram (which I had described as ‘vaguely Christmas tree-shaped’), now comprising a ‘trunk’ of nine ‘vertices’ (or ‘doors’, or ‘groups’, or ‘angles’), connected by vertical ‘edges’ or ‘links’, with on each side of the trunk six other vertices connected to it and to each other, so as to form the ‘branches’ 55 . [◊ 507] Funnily enough, of the three ‘new’ groups that have appeared in recent days, one is the most obvious, the most primordial or primitive of all: it is the one that corresponds to the very first intuition of yin and yang as the ‘feminine’ or ‘female’, and the ‘masculine’ or ‘male’. It seems to me to be expressed most strikingly by the ‘father-mother’ archetypal pair (in preference to ‘man-woman’, which is part of the same group). This group is highly charged with sexual connotations, appearing in pairs like ‘engender-conceive’ or ‘penis-vagina’, themselves part of the cloud of associations around the act par excellence, the archetypal Act: the creative embrace that transforms (potentially at least) the woman into a mother and the man into a father through the appearance of the child, the Work resulting from the Act.

These connotations of the love drive were constantly at the forefront of my thinking five years ago. What's more, they were given almost uninterrupted lyrical emphasis throughout the 130-odd pages of the famous ‘poetic work’ into which the reflection had been condensed at the time, producing a wearying effect on even the best-disposed reader. It must have been a reaction of annoyance at this double ‘deliberate intention’, poetic and erotic 56, in my only reference text for my reflections over the last few days, that I simply ‘forgot’, among the famous groups of yin-yang couples, the one that naturally opened the procession (and quite rightly so) in this text of misfortune.

The title of the work in question, Éloge de l'inceste (In Praise of Incest), was also a tad provocative [◊ 508], and likely to give the wrong idea about his intentions and his ‘message’. These, moreover, evolved quite considerably as he wrote - the poetic straitjacket did not prevent the work from going deeper and decanting. My first and main aim was to explore a certain aspect (which I felt to be profound and essential) of the love drive, as I knew it from my own experience. So it was primarily a question of the erotic drive in men, or more precisely: the ‘yang’ drive, which corresponds to the ‘male role’ in the game and in the act of love, but which is present with varying degrees of strength 57 in both women and men. For a long time, perhaps for as long as I can remember, I have known that this drive, by its very nature, is ‘incestuous’: it is also the drive to ‘return to the Mother’, to return to the original bosom. This great return is ‘staged’ and relived during the game of love, culminating in annihilation, extinction of being, death. To experience the fullness of the act of love is also to experience one's own death, like a ‘birth in reverse’ that returns us to our mother's bosom 58 .

But it also means transgressing two taboos of considerable power at the same time: the incest taboo, which excludes ‘the Mother’ as the object of amorous desire, and also the one which (in our culture at least) separates and opposes, like irreconcilable enemies, life and [◊ 509] death, being born and dying. Yet I was already well aware that the act of love is both a death, achieved in the orgasmic spasm, and a birth, a renewal of being, emerging from this death... like a new shoot delicately springs up from the nourishing earth, itself formed from the creative decomposition of the beings that have been damaged in it....

It was during this reflection on the meaning of the act of love, five years ago, that I finally understood that ‘death’ and ‘life’ were the wife and husband of the same closely entwined couple 59 , that life was eternally born of death, to be eternally abyssed in it. Or to put it better, that life eternally abysses in Death, to be eternally reborn from Her, the Mother, fertile and nourishing - She herself nourished and renewed ceaselessly by the eternal return to Her of the innumerable bodies of Her children.

And the human couple of wife and husband, lover and lover, when they live to the full the impulse that draws one into the other, is like a parable of this endless marriage of life and death: at the end of each night of love the lover sinks and dies in the lover, to be reborn with her from this death in their common embrace...

At the beginning of this same reflection, I visualised an essential aspect of division within the person, as a kind of ‘cut’, a ‘horizontal’ cut: that established by the taboo of incest which ‘cuts’ the child from the mother, just as it cuts life from its mother Death, and just as it also cuts a generation from the one that preceded it.

If I saw this cut in the first place, it was no doubt because it was precisely the one from which I was exempt. However, my life, like everyone else's, has been profoundly marked by this other great divide, which I saw later in the course of my reflection and which I called the ‘vertical divide’: the one that separates the two ‘halves’ of the feminine and masculine in each being, and sets them in opposition to each other, tolerating only one to the exclusion of the other. This is precisely what we've been talking about in this long digression on yin and yang, which I've been engaged in for the last week or two.

[510] It now seems to me that this division (‘vertical’) is even more crucial than the other (‘horizontal’), that in a certain sense it implies or ‘contains’ it. After all, to separate the child from the mother, and life from death; to associate with death, as with the impulse that links the child to the mother, a feeling of defilement, repulsion or shame, is also to cut off from each other, to set them in opposition to each other, the husband and wife in those two indissoluble and primordial cosmic couples: mother-child, death-life 60 .

Interestingly, these last two couples are not among those that I identified in the ‘the Eulogy’. The ‘death-birth’ couple, on the other hand 61 , [◊ 511] more directly linked to my experience of love, is included. The ‘mother-child’ and ‘death-life’ pairs only appeared in the course of my reflection over the last few days, among many others that had hitherto escaped my attention, one of the most interesting of these is ‘evil-good’. This is one of those pairs (like ‘death/life’) that can be called ‘difficult’, in the sense that such powerful conditioning makes us see the two terms as antagonistic ‘opposites’, rather than as inseparable complements. Clearly, these conditioning effects were stronger in me five years ago when I wrote Eulogy than they are today. Yet there were already a good number of ‘difficult couples’ in the Praise, including ‘chaos-order’ and ‘destruction-creation’...

In retrospect, a slightly deeper understanding of the nature of the different yin-yang pairs, as forming a harmonious entity of indissociable complements, now seems to me like so many ‘thresholds’ to be crossed in our journey of discovery of the world and ourselves. Such a ‘threshold’ is all the more notable the more ‘difficult’ the couple in question; in other words, the stronger the inner resistance to understanding it as a ‘couple’, the stronger the cultural conditioning.

(b) The Beloved

NOTE 114 (26 October) Yesterday's reflection 63 was a little difficult to get going. This was no doubt due to the many interruptions of the last few days. However, since the day before there had been something hot inside me that I was anxious to put down on paper, if only in a few lines. Afterwards, I was very embarrassed to realise that it had been lost along the way, crowded out by everything else! Today I couldn't bring myself to part with it prematurely, as if by misunderstanding, before I'd even really got to know it.

I had leafed through the recently republished Zupfgeigenhansl 64 , this classic of old German folk songs, compiled and published around the turn of the century. Apparently it had become impossible to find, but some German friends [◊ 512] visiting me had brought me a copy. That day (the day before yesterday) I had a quick look at it before getting down to work, a bit like shaking hands with an old friend in passing. I came across the song ‘Wohl heute noch und morgen’, which I skimmed through without really stopping, in a hurry to get back to my work. But something clicked. I could feel that these simple, seemingly naïve words were delicately touching something deep inside me - something, moreover, very close to what I had tried so hard to evoke three days before. I was just about to rewrite my notes on the subject. Perhaps I had a vague feeling that the stanzas I had just gone through were more faithful and convincing messengers of what I would have liked to communicate, than my notes of preemptory brevity, written in the rush towards something else, as if in passing, while the emotion of an immediate experience remained absent.

When I got up this morning, I tried to translate into French these stanzas, whose tune I didn't know, but which had been singing inside me for two days. Surely it was a way of rediscovering them, of letting their flavour and melody penetrate me. To my surprise, I didn't have too much trouble finding some of the rhythm and music of the German text in another language, which at first seemed reluctant, while remaining very close to the literal meaning. So here are the seven stanzas, rendered as best I could 65 .

‘This day and tomorrow
I will be with you
but as soon as the third day comes
I shall soon be gone.

‘But when will you come back again
my love, my sweet beloved?’
‘When the snow falls on red roses
and when it rains cool wine!

‘Roses do not snow
and no wine rains
so, my love, my sweet beloved
you don't come back either!

In my father's garden
I lay down, and as I slept
a pretty dreamlet came to me
white snow on me snowing.

[◊ 513] And when I awake, behold
pure emptiness pure nothingness -
were the pretty red roses
over me blooming...

Come back boy and pass, all gentle
in the beautiful garden
wears a crown of roses
a goblet of wine.

With his foot he stumbled softly
to the pretty monticulet
fell - and snow roses
also rains fresh wine...

There was a joy, a happiness in me, as I groped for a way to render what I was reading, which with each passing moment became like a part of me. There was this bare, gentle beauty, at once calm and poignant, a serious beauty made up of joy and sadness intimately entwined. I don't think there are many people who aren't touched to some degree by a song like this, even though they would prefer not to be - just as we often defend ourselves against an unexpected emotion, when something deep inside us that we didn't know existed suddenly resonates and speaks to us in silence about something we'd rather ignore.

It is the dream, above all else, that has the power to make that resonate in us which must remain hidden, ignored, that which must remain silent. Perhaps only the language of dreams has the power to touch those secret chords within us and make them sing in spite of ourselves. And when, for a moment, you have allowed them to sing, even if it is a song of pain or heavy sorrow, you suddenly feel light and as if new - washed clean, as if abundant water had passed through your being and dissolved and carried away everything in you that is knotted and hard and old...

When the poet is about to strike one of those chords whose song unleashes the inner waters, he instinctively borrows the language of dreams, at once limpid and charged with mystery - a language of images and parables, which baffles reason by its apparent absurdity, and by its secret obviousness goes straight to where it wants to touch!

There is no need here for the word ‘death’ to be uttered, or for anything else to be said about it in the waking mind. But it is there, and its misty face is that of the Beloved. The sleeping and distant Beloved whom you have long since left, and very near at the same time - both snow, and rose that falls in snow and is born of snows... The force that draws you into [◊ 514] Her is like a very deep and very powerful wave, a wave coming from Her who calls and leading back to Her. And the call is poignant sadness and the return is joy that sings in a very low voice and joy and sadness are one and are this wave that carries you into the Beloved, with the unreplied strength of childbirth.

And there was no need to evoke, even in a single word, this longing and the surge of desire for you, the child - for the ‘boy’ that the Beloved calls within Her. All it took was for a dream to speak of Her sleeping in her father's garden, dreaming of snow and waking up to roses, for that long-forgotten wave to awaken in you too, responding to the longing of Her who dreams and wakes, calls and waits...

(c) The messenger

NOTE 114' This old Silesian song is one of many love songs, old and not so old, singing of the mysterious and poignant amalgam of the beloved and death. The one I have just transcribed is perhaps exceptional for the profusion of images charged with meaning, and for the wealth of associations it provokes. It is not my intention here to go through them one by one, after mentioning one or two that struck me most strongly. When, yesterday and the day before, my thoughts returned to these hastily-read stanzas, it was not in the sense of deepening an emotion, which at first remained epidermal. Rather, it reminded me of the extent to which the themes of love and death, or of the beloved and death, appear to be linked, as if by some mysterious spell! And beyond the theme of death on the face of the beloved, they join that of birth - of awakening - roses out of sleep - snows, both mysteriously united in the poignant image of the roses falling like snow, on She who is both dreaming and awakening, asleep in her father's garden.

It's all very well for the taboo to inculcate the repulsion of death, its incompatibility with life and with love! We must believe that it runs counter to some deeply rooted knowledge, or to an impulse as powerful as it is secret, for what must be separated at all costs to seem so tenaciously to want to come together, taking the roundabout route of symbol and dream, through songs and myths handed down from generation to generation, from century to century.

No doubt many learned volumes have been written on the subject of these troubling amalgams, in an attempt to exorcise them as best they can. Despite such efforts, surely ‘somewhere’ within each of us, the deeper meaning [◊ 515] of these tenacious associations is indeed perceived - in those moments, at least, when we do not deliberately close ourselves off to the emotion within us that welcomes these messengers, speaking to us about ourselves in the elusive and powerful language of dreams.

This ‘deeper meaning’ is revealed to us anew, directly and with an elementary force, by the experience of love, provided we dare to live it fully and listen to its obvious message. It speaks to us of the mystery of death and birth, indissolubly linked in the Act that transmits life and renews lovers.

No doubt I'm not the first person in whom this ‘deeply rooted knowledge’ has risen from the obscure depths where it had long been exiled, to become fully conscious and permeate all the more strongly my relationship to death and life, to the world and to myself. I have the impression, however, that written and published testimonies of such knowledge at the conscious level must be rare. The only ones I've come across so far are three or four stanzas from Lao Tzu's Tao Te King 66 .

On the other hand (and somewhat paradoxically), I also have the impression that the ‘love-death’ amalgam must, at some point, have ended up becoming a kind of romantic cliché, a very safe ‘cream pie’ to draw a complacent tear [◊ 516] from even the most reticent eyes. It is a fact that the process, by dint of dint, has come to be discredited - so much so, alas, that even among people endowed with delicate sensibilities there is a tendency sometimes to mistake pure gold for its crude tin counterfeits. There are those who see an old-fashioned or even ridiculous air, even where there is a keen and delicate perception of a hidden reality, and a delicate expression, foreign to any ‘fashion’. A consensus of ‘good taste’ comes to the aid of all kinds of inner resistance, which automatically screens out the eruption of any vivid, authentic emotion, be it joy or sorrow, pleasure or torment, that comes to shake up the familiar routine.

It's the same mechanism that so often blocks the original force of the game of love and its orgastic outcome. Fortunately, the mere fact that they remain hidden, banished from the field of consciousness, in no way prevents the archetypes that drive the love drive from being present - from making what must disappear vanish, so that the meaning of the game of love can be expressed and fulfilled, and the final act can be a creative act, a renewal. But often a secret fear stands in the way of the very ‘pleasure’ we think we're looking for, frightened as we are by the very presence of an unknown and fearsome force that could (if we're not careful...) sweep away like chaff the one in us who insists on keeping ‘control’ at all costs. Such a fear cannot tolerate the fact that pleasure never approaches that threshold of poignant intensity where it is both pleasure and torment, united to each other in a long, intolerable embrace that seeks deliverance, only to resolve itself at last and sink into orgastic nothingness 67...

(27 October) I think I've understood the secret message of songs and dreams like ‘Ce jour encore et demain...’, in the essence they have in common. The question then remains: what is this force that [◊ 517] so insistently pushes us to give voice to this ‘deeply rooted knowledge’, which is undoubtedly older than our species; to express it against all odds, nobosting the vigilance of the surly and narrow-minded Censor, by taking the key to the fields and giving free rein to the symbolic language of dreams, with its unlimited resources?

If myths, songs and dreams never tire of telling us the same message with countless faces, it is also true that the prisoner to whom they are addressed never tires of hearing them! He is a willing prisoner, of course, but he never listens. He is frustrated by the lack of air, space and light, and yet reassured by the four walls that surround an existence devoid of any great surprises or mysteries, except perhaps for death, which is at the end of the tunnel, infinitely far away... His prison protects him from the Unknown that lies beyond these walls and which he pretends to ignore. It both frightens and fascinates him. It is because he is afraid of what lies beyond his walls that his prison-refuge is dearer to him than life itself. And yet it fascinates and attracts him, unwillingly, just as the messengers who come from far and wide to tell him about it attract and fascinate him. And sometimes he gives in to this unusual attraction, as long as it's in secret from the Censor-Supervisor General: while he pays lip service, he is nonetheless ‘thumbs up’ - he hasn't heard anything and, above all, hasn't listened to anything!

The question I was just asking myself seems to have disappeared, concealed by a convincing image. It reappears as soon as I remember the effect of the message - this emotion that comes before the message, and the benefit of this emotion.

But the truth is, any emotion that strikes a deep chord is a messenger from beyond the four walls, a messenger from the deep. Even though we might be trying to erase every trace of it in the next moment, it is beneficial, it has already left its mark, like a delicate perfume - as if these gloomy walls had moved away just a little; or as if through some unsuspected opening in the aseptic air, some whiff, however tiny, of the scents of the woods and fields had reached us.

[◊ 518] (28 October) For the last fortnight or so I've been rather reluctant to let myself think in a direction I hadn't planned, with no apparent link to the theme of Burial, or even (it might seem) to myself. I know deep down that this is not the case, that I continue to be involved in these notes as much and more than ever. That doesn't stop me from being torn between the desire to ‘get it over with’, and the desire to delve into what is glimpsed from day to day, to follow the most compelling associations - a desire that is matched by the concern, too, not to let anything slip that might shed light on my ‘investigation’ into the Burial. What seems the furthest away is sometimes also the most intimately close...

The fact remains that for the last fortnight, if not ever since I resumed my notes after the illness, I've had the impression (a little painful at times) that I'm doing things ‘in a hurry’; as if each new note were another parenthesis that I was opening (in front of an imaginary reader who would cry for mercy) and that I had to close as quickly as possible! I'm sure it's this attitude, perhaps even more so than the unusual number of friends I've had over the last few weeks, that's responsible for my rushed writing, which has been a bit jumbled at times. I've had to rewrite most of the notes I've written recently as I went along. This has further slowed progress, and kept my impatience to see the work move forward!

It's also true that these themes that I sometimes pretend to want to deal with in a hurry, as if they were ‘well known’ things that I'd take the trouble to explain out of a sense of conscience and for the benefit of a reader who'd just ‘arrived’ - these themes are both too delicate and too far-reaching to tolerate such casual attitudes. I couldn't help noticing this as the pages went by, and ‘correcting my aim’, by which I mean readjusting my inner attitude, under the weight, so to speak, of what I claimed to be able to tackle on the sly!

This reminds me that this long reflection on yin and yang, in which I've been engaged for nearly four weeks and which is by no means finished yet, is in fact simply making explicit an instant intuition, which seemed to me quite simple, not to say obvious; an intuition that came ‘in flash’ the day after 12 May, when I had just written the first note on a certain ‘Funeral Eulogy’. When I took up the rest of this note a month ago68 , willing myself to follow this association of ideas, in preference to others which seemed to me of lesser interest, [◊ 519] I foresaw that it would commit me to five or six more pages, at the very least. Now I'm over sixty...

Yesterday I pondered the meaning of the symbolic evocation of the links between love and death, or between death and birth, or life and death - and the meaning, too, of the emotion that such an evocation arouses in us. What is the force at work in the myth, the song or the dream that drives them to ‘breathe into us without tiring of the same message with countless faces’ - and what is the force in us, willing prisoners of reassuring prisons, that so often responds to them with this emotion, going right to the heart of the evocation and showing that it has ‘hit the nail on the head’, that it has touched where it wanted to touch? And also: where does this strange power of dream language come from, language that evokes without naming, that communicates what no other language knows how to communicate?

Pursuing these questions also means probing further into the role of the love drive and that of dreams, and the deep links that bind them; each nourishing the other and being nourished by it, each expressing itself, and communicating with the other, through a language that is common to them and that escapes the Censor. It also means probing more deeply the role of archetypes and symbols in the love drive, and the role of ‘symbolic’ satisfactions of the drive.

All this is taking me far beyond the limits of what I can reasonably hope to ‘fit’ into this ‘digression’ on yin and yang, which (it's about time I remembered) continues right in the middle of a certain Funeral Ceremony! I think it's time to leave this new ‘thread’ there, and return to another ‘thread’ left hanging three days ago 69 , which took me back to myself.

(d) Angela - or farewell and goodbye

NOTE 115 [◊ 520] (30 October) For the last day or two a few lines have been running through my head from a poem I wrote three years ago. I wrote it first in German, and took it up again the next day in French. It was the first two stanzas that had come back - the third and last seemed to have been erased from memory, apart from the first line ‘Ein Kreis schliesst sich’ - ‘A circle is perfected’. (And apart from the last line, which repeated that of the first stanza). When I woke up last night, my thoughts returned to it again, and I ended up getting up to look through my papers. I found the poem with no trouble at all - every cloud has a silver lining! And here it is.

Dense fruit
ripe and heavy
my life bends
to return
into Her

The sweet and thick juices
have impregnated me
have blossomed
fragile flowers of milk
became fruit and wine

A perfect circle -
from my lap
sweetness rises
describes its orbs
and bends low
to return
into Her...

I think this is the only poem I've ever written in which the thought of death 70 is clearly present. Here it appears under the name ‘She’. In the original version of the day before, it was evoked by the German word ‘Erde’, earth. The ‘translation’ of the three stanzas into German is far from literal; the first came as follows:

Voll und schwer
reife Frucht
neigt sich mein Leben
gen Ende
Der Erde zu

Die süssen Säfte
die mich durchtränken
haben geblüht
weiche Blüten und wurden Frucht und Wein

Ein Kreis schliesst sich
aus meinem Schoss
steigt Süsse
kreist
und neigt sich
gen Ende
der Erde zu…

[◊ 521] Finally, rewriting the original version in German just now, I couldn't stop myself from writing it all the way through, so much so that the next two stanzas seemed to flow spontaneously from the first! For me, these three stanzas are a love poem (in fact, I've hardly written any poems other than love poems). If this one is addressed to anyone other than myself, it is to Her - to Her who waits in silence, ready to welcome me...

On the same day, I wrote two other poems, one before and one after. They were addressed to a ‘beloved’ in flesh and blood, Angela, ‘the Angel’ - a tall, slender blonde girl, very much alive, whom I'd met the week before, on the hot summer road where she was hitchhiking. In the space of an hour or two we'd had time to say a lot to each other, and we'd said goodbye on that note. I would have liked to give her the poems she had inspired, including another one written on the very evening of the day I had met her, and yet another (again in German, our common language), which came the day after the ‘three (almost) at once’. And I wish we'd loved each other too... But I lost track of her, just as she must have lost mine.

What the poems inspired by this encounter have in common is that each one is either very strongly ‘yang’ or very strongly ‘yin’. They are some of the most intense I have ever written, and each came in one go, almost unedited - as if they had been there ready-made and had only been waiting for the signal of this encounter to take shape in tangible words.

At first glance, it may seem strange to find among these poems charged with intense erotic tension, another poem in autumnal tones, preparing to enter the long sleep of winter. But this can only be a surprise to those who do not feel the deep connection between the erotic impulse and the feeling of death. In those days of solitude, there was an intense perception of life, amplified by erotic emotion and by the profusion of archetypal images that underlie it - and at the same time, the serene detachment of a life fully lived, approaching its end, ready to ‘return to It’.

Such dispositions of communion with death, our silent Mother, felt as a friend and very near, are surely favoured by a state of great fatigue of the body, bringing us back to simple and essential things: our body, love, death... There I was coming out of a ‘long period of mathematical frenzy’, about which I have already spoken in the introduction to Récoltes et [◊ 522] semailles 71 . I was just beginning to recover from a state of physical exhaustion in which this somewhat demented period had left me. It had just come to an end (as suddenly as it had come) under the impact of a dream-parable of lapidary force, whose message I then kindly listened to 72 . These were days of availability, of listening - a ‘sensitive period’ between two waves: behind me a long, broad ‘mathematical’ wave, and in front of me an equally broad ‘meditation’ wave that was already taking shape... It was to take off ten days later, with another dream, the account of which opens the introduction to Récoltes et semailles, this vision of myself ‘as I am’.

These were weeks of intense inner work, of silent gestation, of change. And these love poems, different in tone from anything I'd written before, are the fruit and testimony of that intensity, that fulfilment.

They are also the last love poems I ever wrote. Perhaps there was a prescience in me that this was the last time I would be in love, and that the great fireworks of songs for the beloved would unfold! A prescience that these poems addressed to an unknown girl, whose beauty I could feel intensely without ever having met her, were at the same time a farewell to the songs of love and to the women I had loved - a farewell to my passion for love, which was about to be consumed in this sparkling spray, and which was about to leave me. And, even more secretly and profoundly, that it was a farewell (or a goodbye, perhaps) to all the women, merging and becoming One under a new face. A more distant face perhaps, drowned in mist, at the other end of the road - but at the same time very close, and very sweet...

(5) Refusal and acceptance

(a) Paradise lost

NOTE 116 [◊ 523] (25 October) 73 Another three days have passed without me finding the time to keep up the momentum. The first day, Monday, was taken up mainly by a visit from Pierre with his daughter (aged two) Nathalie, whom I saw off late in the evening to catch the night train to Orange. In a few days' time, I'll be able to take stock of what this visit has brought me - a visit I wasn't counting on any more... For the moment, I'd prefer to continue my rambling reflections on yin and yang.

This reflection may seem like a philosophical digression, suddenly bursting into a certain investigation where it should have no place - except that it emerged unannounced from some vague associations of ideas around a certain Funeral Eulogy... However, I have a strong feeling that it is precisely with this ‘digression’ that I am beginning to go beyond the stage of uncovering all the ‘raw facts’ that make up Burial 74 , to finally get a little closer to the forces at work behind acts and behaviour that seem strangely aberrant... It is surely no coincidence that it was precisely through this ‘digression’ that I was also led, without having planned it, to involve myself more deeply than at any other time in Harvest and Sowing. This is one of the unexpected fruits of the recent episode of illness, which occurred at a time when I was preparing to bring the seven-week investigation to a swift conclusion...

This ‘digression’, then, in which some will see a kind of intimate confession, and others a metaphysical speculation, is for me (more than any other part of Harvest and Sowing) at the very heart of Burial, at the heart of the conflict. It is only the optics that have changed, the ‘point of view’ from which the thing is viewed - but in the process, changed so drastically, that the thing we had just been examining seems suddenly to have disappeared! I think it won't be long before we [◊ 524] rediscover the contact that might have seemed lost along the way, with the ‘news item’ The Burial.

But we can also forget the news item, whose main merit will then have been to provoke the ‘digression’....

Part of yesterday was devoted to retyping the draft of the previous note, written four days ago, which I finally named ‘Notre Mère la Mort - ou l'Acte’ (Our Mother Death - or the Act). A good part of this draft was quite heavily crossed out, a sign that the wording had remained a little confused, while certain important and delicate themes had crept into the reflection a little ‘by the by’, in the wake of something else. To tell the truth, when I started this note I was mainly intending to pick up the thread of the previous note, entitled ‘The half and the whole - or the crack’, written just a week ago. But in the end this thread is still hanging in the balance, and it's about time I picked it up again.

For this note too, I had to retype a large part of the text, essentially for the same reasons, correcting clumsiness and obscurities along the way. This is the beginning of a reflection on the division in the couple, intimately linked to the division in the person, and more precisely to what I called (in the ‘Act’ note of four days ago) the ‘vertical cut’: that which ‘cuts off’, or subtracts, one of the yin or yang ‘halves’ of the original ‘whole’ within us.

At a level that now remains that of an intuitive, non-verbalized understanding, I ‘understand’, it is ‘clear’ to me, that it is the division within the person himself (a division created from scratch, it would seem, by conditioning) that is the root cause of the conflict that is omnipresent in human society; whether it be the conflict within the couple or the family, or the conflict within larger groups or that which pits such groups against each other, right up to the armed confrontation of peoples and nations against each other. The conflict within a couple, which pits two antagonist-types against each other, distinct and easily recognisable as such, could not without reason appear as the fundamental parable, as the elementary, irreducible case of conflict in human society. The ‘point’ of the reflection ‘The Crack’ was above all to bring the case of conflict in the couple back to that other more fundamental, even more ‘elementary’: that of the conflict in [◊ 525] each person himself, which sets one ‘part’ of himself against another part.

In the light of this reflection seven days ago, it was natural to think first of the conflict between the yin and yang ‘parts’ within us, one of the two being accepted and duly brought forward and inflated, the other rejected and repressed more or less completely. I was aware, however, that there were other antagonisms within the person, linked to taboos other than that of the univocity of sex. It's true that this last taboo, just as strong as that of incest, is even more insidious because of the obviousness with which it is clothed, which seems to obviate the need even to formulate or name it, so much so does it seem to go without saying! Although I haven't yet taken the trouble to ascertain this step by step, I have the impression (since the reflection on the Praise) that this taboo is the most crucial of all; that the division or ‘cut’ it institutes in the person is the ultimate root of each of the multiple aspects of inveterate division in the human person. Carefully clarifying the extent to which this is the case would surely be a most attractive starting point for a ‘journey of discovery of conflict’. However, this is not the place to launch into it - not to mention the fact that, as far as the journeys ahead of me are concerned, I can think of more burning starting points than this one...

In retyping the text of this note ‘The half and the whole - or the crack’, I realised that when I wrote it I didn't think to explain why I saw the conflict within the person as the root cause of the conflict within the couple, and of the conflict within society. As I said earlier, this is one of those things that I have ‘understood’ (without ever having had to ‘explain’ them to myself), that have been taught to me and confirmed by the silent and eloquent language of a thousand little everyday facts, over the course of days and years75 . I'm not saying that there's no point in spelling out or ‘explaining’ the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ here, whether in a few pages or perhaps in huge volumes. And no doubt a few pages on the subject here would be no more or less ‘out of place’ than any other page on yin and yang and conflict, which has already found its place in these notes. I'm sure I'd learn a lot there, just as I'd also learn a lot by pursuing this other theme of reflection, on the conflict instituted in us between yin and yang as the ultimate cause of the division in us. [◊ 526] One of these themes, moreover, visibly extends the other, which makes both even more enticing! However, that's not the direction I want to take now, if at all. That's not the ‘thread’ I've been wanting to pick up for a week now, and which is still hanging in the balance.

When I finished the reflection in this note 76 , a week ago, I suddenly felt very happy and delighted: the reflection had unexpectedly reconnected with something important, which I had somewhat lost sight of in the previous days: acceptance. It was through the negative that this contact was re-established, by virtue of the word that ends this reflection like an unexpected climax - the word ‘unacceptable’. It's because an entire ‘side’ of us is rejected as ‘unacceptable’ by those around us, and first and foremost by our parents who set the tone (or by those who take their place, when parents fail) - it's through this non-acceptance that conflict sets in within us. The conflict and division within us is nothing other than our abdication of a repudiated part of ourselves - the abdication of our undivided nature. This abdication is the price we pay, that we have to pay, to be ‘accepted’ as best we can by those around us. This ‘acceptance’ is not acceptance in the full sense of the word, acceptance of who we really are. It is, rather, [◊ 527] the reward for our submission to certain norms, for having conformed and moulded ourselves according to them - the reward, in short, for a deformation, a mutilation of our being, in the image of that undergone from an early age by those around us.

The first time was in the note ‘Innocence (the marriage of yin and yang)’ (no. 107), where I take up an observation from a meditation four years ago: that the blossoming and full blossoming of an undivided force within me could take place in the context of a family torn apart by conflict and latent hatred, simply because I was fully accepted by my parents and by those around me, the conflict did not take root in my being until later, after the age of five, in a much more ‘peaceful’ environment than my birth family. Conflict between close relatives was certainly far from reaching (in my time, at least) such exacerbated intensity (even if veiled) as in my family of origin. However, in my family of origin, I myself remained outside the conflict. Even though I sometimes took sides, it wasn't a heartbreak, it was the spontaneous expression of an undivided being, who had never known the bite of rejection by his own kind, or the fear of rejection.

I realise now, with half a century's hindsight, that even in my new environment, this force of innocence within me exerted a radiance, a kind of fascination I would say; like that of a lost paradise, infinitely distant, for which we are nostalgic for a lifetime and which, suddenly, calls out to us through the voice and gaze of a child. It won me strong and lasting affections, which followed me into my adult life and right up to the death of those who loved me in this way77 . But at the same time, it was clear that this kind of strength could not be tolerated - any more than you would tolerate it in a tidy pleasure garden, in a vigorous, exuberant tree or bush that you think you love, while stubbornly pruning it into the shape of a cube, cone or sphere...

According to my reconstruction of events 78 , this force held out for perhaps two, two and a half years, before plunging deep, relegated [◊ 528] to the underground, after I had finally decided to be and do like everyone else: all muscle, all brains we suspect and too bad for the gut - and to have peace! I ended up following suit, rejecting and denying (while ignoring) everything that needed to be rejected and ignored, thanks to the unwavering consensus of all the adults around me. And also because of the consensus of my parents themselves, who had virtually stopped giving any sign of life, living the great love as far away from their children as possible.

(b) The cycle

NOTE 116' (1 November) I'm picking up where I left off exactly a week ago, when I unexpectedly (on 26 October) launched into a kind of “poetic digression” on the feeling of death in love and in the song of love.

I've just reread the previous pages from 25 October and retyped the last one. It seems to me that a circle is closing, the outline of which began a fortnight ago with the note ‘Innocence (the marriage of yin and yang)’ (no. 107). It ends with the preceding pages, which take up and amplify the final ‘climax’ of the note of 17 October, ‘The half and the whole - or the crack’ (no. 112). This climax, or ‘final word’ that brings that day's reflections to a close, is summed up in the categorical imperative of the final word, ‘unacceptable’.

This final word seems to me to perfectly encapsulate, among the bewildering multitude of conditioning of all kinds that have shaped our lives, the determining cause of the division within us: it is the non-acceptance, the rejection of our person, in the first years of our lives 79 . It takes the form of the non-acceptance, the rejection of certain forces and impulses within us, which are an essential part of our being, of our power to know and to create. Their repression, taken over by an anxious and implacable inner censor, is a mutilation of this power within us. Often its effect is that of a veritable paralysis of our creative faculties 80 .

[529] This unacceptable power, or these ‘faculties’, are none other than the humble capacity to be ourselves. This also means living our own lives, through the humble and full use of our own faculties, rather than a stereotyped, programmed life, driven above all (and often exclusively) by reflexes of repetition, of imitation. These reflexes enclose us, isolating us like a heavy shell, rigid and impermeable, from which we would never part 81 .

The shell is built up from our earliest years, growing thicker as the years go by. Its initial function was undoubtedly to protect us from aggression (often well-intentioned) from those closest to us, and to ensure that they would tolerate us in a more or less benevolent way. But this shell doesn't just protect us from the outside world - it also has, perhaps more profoundly and essentially, the function of isolating us, of protecting us from ourselves: from this knowledge and this strength within us, declared ‘unacceptable’, having no place, by the mute consensus that rules around us. It was in our childhood, and has become more and more over the years, a shell with two sides, one ‘outer’, the other ‘inner’. They protect the ‘I’, the ‘Boss’, on the one hand from the aggressions he fears from the outside world (and he tends to become more fearful with each passing year!), and on the other hand and above all, from the disturbing and inadmissible fantasies and incongruities of the ‘Worker’; the brat, to put it better, unpredictable or possible, worrying even though he is kept at a distance by a triple layer of thick horn, guaranteed to be fire and water resistant...

(2 November) After the note on ‘Innocence’ (No. 107), which highlighted the role played by my acceptance by those around me in my early years, there was a second moment when ‘acceptance’ and ‘non-acceptance’ were at the centre of the reflection. This was in ‘Acceptance (the awakening of yin [2])’ (note 110), where I take partial stock of the changes that have taken place in me since the day of my ‘reunion’ with the child king. They point in the direction of a gradual ‘return’ to a ‘state of childhood’.

[530] This return is in no way a ‘regression’ to a previous state, which would have the virtue of erasing the traces in me, the traveller, of the path that was mine. It is only through maturation, the fruit of inner work, that we can regain contact with an innocence that seemed to have disappeared, with a child in us that seemed long dead and buried. And there is no maturing that is not also a return, if only a little, to the child, and to the simplicity and innocence of the child. This is how a life lived to the full is like a circle that ‘perfects’ itself; it's old age returning to childhood, maturity returning to innocence - and ending in a death, perhaps, that prepares for a new birth, like winter preparing for a new spring...

In this sort of ‘assessment’ of a return journey that was not completed, it became clear that the ‘final word’ was acceptance, just as the final word of my path of rupture, of the path of departure, was that of non-acceptance, of rejection, of refusal. My maturation was nothing other than the process, the inner work, by which I gradually accepted, welcomed, the things in me that for a long time I had refused, eliminated as best I could, ignored.

This is by no means a ‘backtracking’, a road travelled once that I retraced again in the opposite direction; a ‘regression’ therefore, to use the expression I used earlier. It's more like the upper arc of a cycle, extending and continuing the lower line that's already been traced, growing out of it, becoming like its nourishing foundation, and the springboard for a new impetus...

(3 November) Yesterday's notes ended with an unexpected image, springing from my thoughts without my having called for it. I greeted it with some reluctance at first, out of concern that the vision of reality that the image in turn immediately suggested might be artificial; that the image might not ‘force my hand’ and make me say things that would be ‘far-fetched’. But once the last lines had been written and I had stopped to think about them for a few moments, I knew that I had just put my finger on an unexpected and important aspect of a certain reality; an aspect that I may be familiar with, but without fully assimilating, an aspect that I tend to neglect, or forget.

[◊ 531] For many years (118) I have tended to value what goes in the direction of ‘acceptance’, and on the contrary to see in a mainly negative light what goes in the direction of ‘rejection’. Perhaps without always expressing it clearly, I felt that these two types of attitude, acceptance and refusal, were ‘opposites’, one of which would be ‘good’ for myself and for everyone, and the other ‘bad’.

In this informal way of looking at things, I remained a prisoner (without realising it, of course) of the perennial ‘dualistic’ vision of things, the one I had also previously called the ‘warrior’ vision, which opposes as antagonists things that a deeper vision reveals to us as complementary and inseparable aspects of the same reality. When I began (on 25 October, ten days ago) this reflection on acceptance and refusal, I had just realised that these are the wife and husband of one of those famous yin-yang or ‘cosmic’ couples we've been talking about for the last month - since the beginning of this ‘digression’ on yin and yang. So I anticipated that this would be the focus of our reflections. Over the last couple of days, it seemed to be moving away from it. But now the lines that conclude yesterday's reflection, with the image of the two arcs of the same cycle extending each other, have unexpectedly brought me back to this initial intuition, which had remained unexpressed.

I've tended to see the rejections that dominated my life from my eighth to my forty-eighth year in a predominantly (if not exclusively) negative light: as a sometimes crushing weight that I dragged around for forty years of my life, and which I finally got rid of (or rather, started to get rid of) over the last eight years. That ‘day’ began to reveal itself to me after the discovery of meditation and the ‘reunion’ with the ‘child’ in me. It was the very moment when I began to discover the process of refusal in my life, expressed in a kind of ‘superyang conformism’. This aspect of things is by no means imaginary. To perceive it where before there had been a kind of ‘blank’, a total emptiness, was one of the fruits of the maturation that continued over these eight years. But there is another aspect of the same reality, no less real and important, the ‘positive’ aspect of the ‘powerful principle of action’. This aspect appears for the first time (and very discreetly) in the meditation of 5 October ‘The Superpère (yang buries yin [2])’ (no. 108), when I write :

[◊ 532] The ‘I'll be like them’ (and not ‘like me’) also meant: I'm going to ‘bet’ on ‘the head’, no worse in me than in anyone else after all, and ‘beat’ them with their own weapons!

It was this motivation that was the driving force behind my disproportionate investment in mathematics from 1945 to 1969 - the force that fuelled a quarter-century-long surge of discovery 82 . Whether one chooses to see such investment in a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ light, what is clear is that there was indeed momentum, intense action. On the learning side of life, there was this ‘sometimes crushing weight’, never examined, not to say total stagnation - and yet this same ‘weight’ at the same time fuelled a surge of knowledge, gave it its living force.

Since my ‘departure’ in 1970, I have tended to play down, and sometimes deny, the ‘value’ that should be attached to such a drive towards discovery and a so-called ‘scientific’ understanding of the outside world. I have tried several times in the course of Harvest and Sowing to identify the common aspects between such a discovery and self-discovery, and also how they differ 83 . It is certainly true to say that the impulse to discover in a scientific direction (be it biology, or ‘psychology’...) leads us away from ourselves and from an understanding of ourselves. When the role of such an understanding is fully understood, we might therefore be tempted to see in the impulse of scientific discovery (and in any other that would ‘take us away from ourselves’) an ‘evil’, or at the very least, an ‘obstacle’ to maturation, and hence to the full development of ourselves (at least in the case that has been mine for a long time, where this impulse mobilises most, if not all, of the psychic energy). However, it is also true that everything we experience is raw material for learning about life and ourselves. It's a material that it's up to us to allow to be transformed into knowledge, by allowing a process of maturation to begin and continue within us. That's also why I don't regret anything I've experienced, seeing in the end that ‘everything is good, and there's nothing to throw away’; including also the deserts of long periods of spiritual stagnation, which were the price I paid without skimping (and with my eyes closed...) for my inordinate investments in a devouring passion [◊ 533]. Now I see that these very deserts had something to teach me, that perhaps only they could teach. I couldn't have done without it - at the most perhaps I could have after a few years already begun this ‘second arc’ of the cycle, the deadline for which I had been putting off for several decades.

It was also on this day that it became clear that the acceptance of myself and of others, which was born and developed in the years of my maturity, was ‘nourished’ by the refusals that had marked the longest part of my life - this ‘lower arc’ of the cycle mentioned yesterday, and its ‘nourishing foundation’. It's true that in the first six years of my life, there was a total acceptance of myself, which didn't need any previous ‘rejections’ in order to be, to unfold and to assert itself. On the contrary, it was able to blossom precisely because it was not countered, not cut by the scissors of a certain refusal. But this ‘acceptance’ that was in me as a child is not ‘the same’ as that of my mature years. It lacked a dimension that the mere acceptance of myself by those who had surrounded me as a child could not have given it. It was a knowledge of rejection, of the rejection of myself (or a part of myself) by others, or by myself. This knowledge came to me through the experience of rejection, and also through the experience of contempt, which is one of its many faces.

Perhaps some people are born with a knowledge, an understanding of refusal, that enables them to remain one, innocent and knowing, despite the refusals to which their childhood is exposed. I am well aware that this was not my case. I could not avoid the experience of rejection and contempt by others and by myself, as a breeding ground for an understanding (however imperfect) of rejection and contempt.

(c) The spouses - or the enigma of ‘Evil‘

NOTE 117 I have just probed an unexpected aspect of the relationship between refusal and acceptance in my own life, which had appeared unexpectedly in yesterday's reflection. The ‘refusal’ we are talking about here is not, however, a refusal in the full sense of the word; by which I mean a refusal that has been fully assumed - far from it. This refusal was also a long flight from the thing refused. It consisted in not seeing it, in ignoring it, and thereby, to a certain extent, in making it disappear from the field of my conscious apprehension and also from the field [◊ 534] visible to others. It was the cause and the outcome of a state of disharmony, of imbalance - in this case, a ‘superyang’ imbalance, which marked my adulthood, and certain crucial mechanisms of which remain in action to this day. This ‘refusal’, then, in no way appears here in a role of symmetry, or even yang-yin complementarity, in relation to the ‘acceptance’ (of myself and others) mentioned earlier. On the contrary, it's part of a process of getting to know myself, and of restoring a disturbed harmony. So this is acceptance ‘with full knowledge of the facts’, acceptance in the full sense of the word - and in no way another flight, in the opposite direction to the flight so often referred to as ‘refusal’.

There is, however, a more obvious relationship between ‘refusal’ and ‘acceptance’ than the one explored earlier. It appears when both are taken ‘in the full sense of the word’. They are then simultaneous and complementary aspects of the same harmony, of the same attitude fully assumed (whereas earlier they were two consecutive aspects of a journey or progression, passing through a state of imbalance, of disharmony, on the way to a renewed equilibrium). From this point of view, there is no such thing as ‘true’ acceptance, which would exclude refusal and close itself off from it. And there is no ‘true’ refusal that is not born of acceptance, that is not a tangible manifestation of it; that is not one of the two ‘sides’ - the ‘yang’ side - of the same indivisible thing that has two sides, and whose ‘yin’ or ‘mother’ side is acceptance 84 .

An ‘acceptance’ that excludes refusal is not acceptance, but complacency (towards others or oneself, or both), or complicity or connivance (in the case of the ‘acceptance’ of others). Total acceptance of a being, whether oneself or another, does not in any way mean unconditional approval [◊ 535] of one's actions, habits and inclinations. Such unconditional approval is in itself an escape, a refusal to take cognizance of an (often eloquent) reality, and in no way an acceptance. Far from creating a ‘force field’ conducive to renewal, to reconnecting with a forgotten unity, it reinforces inertia and helps to keep us in a rut.

A refusal that is not at the same time an opening, that is not also like a hand (or ‘a perch’) extended to others, or like a leap that marks a point of rupture and renewal in one's relationship with oneself - such a ‘refusal’ is truly a cut, which ‘cuts’ and isolates both the person who refuses, and the person who is refused. It is also a flight from a reality that is felt to be unpleasant, even disturbing, fraught with threats to our well-established lives and conveniences - a reality from which we think we can escape with a slash and burn: ‘there's no point’... And yet there is! And our imperative ‘refusal’ in no way prevents things from being what they are, even at the risk of displeasing us. On the contrary, just like the complacency of automatic approval, such a refusal reinforces the inertia against creative change, and is like a verdict: unacceptable you are, and such you will remain...

I don't claim to have achieved in myself the harmony of acceptance and rejection fully embraced. On the contrary, I know that this is not the case - and I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who could achieve this harmony. To achieve it is also to have resolved, in one's own person, the great enigma of ‘evil’: of iniquity, of lies, of wickedness, of spinelessness, of contempt - and of the suffering of those who are struck down and left speechless. It is also, surely, to have fully understood the ‘good’ that lies in what an inner awakening so often designates as ‘evil’.

Rejecting war, while seeing and accepting that it is everywhere and in everyone; that the very people I love carry it within them and propagate it, just as I myself have taken it up, carried it, propagated it and passed it on. To reject war, while accepting that it exists, while loving its countless blind soldiers. That and nothing else, surely, is what it also means: to have come out of the war, to have emerged from the conflict - to have stopped propagating the war.

(d) Yang plays yin - or the role of the Teacher

NOTE 118 [◊ 536] (4 November) 85 The appearance of this ‘trend’ 86 occurred in the early 1970s, in other words in the years following my ‘departure’ from the mathematical scene. Under the influence of an environment and friends quite different from those before me, there was a drastic turnaround in the set of ‘values’ I claimed to hold. With hindsight, I can describe this as a shift from a ‘superyang’ or ‘patriarchal’ value system to one that was almost the opposite, with a strong ‘yin’ component - a ‘matriarchal’ system. Among the influences that played a part in this reversal were some sporadic readings of Krishnamurti - see on this subject the note ‘Krishnamurti - or liberation become hindrance’ (no. 41).

If I allowed these influences to play a part, which were to lead me to such an ‘ideological’ turn, it was undoubtedly (without realising it at the time) that I had a deep and urgent need for renewal, and first and foremost, the need to be freed from the weight of inveterate ‘superyang’ attitudes. This same need had surely already come into play in 1969, when in the midst of intense and fruitful mathematical activity, I suddenly ‘dropped out’ of maths to take an interest in biology 87; and then the following year, when I left the mathematical scene (with no spirit of return) and even scientific research. There was then a sudden and drastic change of environment and activities, which I alluded to several times in the course of ‘Fatuity and renewal’ (the first part of Harvest and sowing).

However, it would be inaccurate, or only partially true, to consider these spectacular changes of environment, activities and finally ‘values’, as a ‘renewal’, a ‘liberation’. I've already made my views on this quite clear in the section entitled ‘Encounter with Claude Chevalley - or freedom and good feelings’ (No. 11). In the more penetrating light of the present reflection on yin and yang, I can say that the change that probably appears to be the most significant of all, that of yang values being evacuated (even before they had been spotted in myself, let alone examined) in favour of yin values - this change in no way altered the structure (superyang) of the ‘self’, and at most tempered somewhat the attitudes and behaviour that resulted from it. It's true that my understanding of the outside world [◊ 537] had been considerably transformed, in the sense of a sudden enlargement, but this transformation remained fragmentary, limited almost exclusively to the intellectual level, that of ‘options’. It could not be otherwise, precisely as long as this transformation was limited to my vision of the ‘outside world’, in which my own person did not figure, or figured only incidentally or superficially, above all through my ‘social role’ and its ambiguities and contradictions. No more than in the past did I have the slightest suspicion that there might be ambiguities and contradictions in my own person! On the contrary, I was animated by an unshakeable conviction that my person was free of all contradictions (although I was beginning to discern contradictions in others, just about everywhere around me); and in particular, that there was perfect agreement between my conscious desires and my conscious knowledge of things on the one hand, and my unconscious (if there was one in my case, if it wasn't a simple carbon copy of my conscious...).

The first crack in this conviction only appeared in the spring of 1974, when I finally understood that something must be wrong with me too, and not just with other people, as the cause of this inexorable deterioration in my relationships with everyone close to me (to which my life seemed to have been reduced throughout my adult life). The effects of this salutary crack remain limited, in the absence of any real curiosity about myself, which would have been a feast for the eyes, to look at what was behind it, and to see a heavy edifice crumble in the process, made up of abracadabra illusions that have never been examined...

This stubborn blockage of a natural curiosity probably stemmed above all from the fact that I had never before encountered such curiosity in others, which might have made me suspect that in life as in maths, every time a problem arises, there is something to look at and, in the process, learn lots of unexpected and very useful things - in other words, that there was such a thing as self-discovery. I had read Krishnamurti at the time, and realised that some of the things he said were true, profound and important. So I tended to take him at face value on everything. I had pretty much tacitly adopted the Krishnamurtian 88 worldview. [◊ 538] At the time I'm talking about, this baggage did indeed act as an ‘obstacle’ to a real liberation, to renewal in the full sense of the word. I explain myself on this subject in the note already quoted (which I have just reread), where I try to identify what role the ‘Teachings’ (of Krishnamurti) have played in my own journey.

The first ‘awakening’ in the full sense of the word came only two and a half years later, with the discovery of meditation. It was also the discovery of self-discovery; that there is an unknown thing that is ‘me’, and that I have the power to penetrate this thing, to know it. This crucial discovery was made at a time when all teaching (with or without a capital letter) had been forgotten. It was also the moment when, for the first time, the ‘edifice’ built of received ideas and ‘teachings’ of all kinds, held together by an immense inertia, collapsed - and the moment when an active curiosity appeared, often mischievous, but always benevolent.

It was after this turning point, with the blossoming within me of a curiosity about myself first and foremost, and about ‘life’ as a natural fruit, that I was able to see both Krishnamurti and his message with new eyes. With hindsight, I was able to appreciate the richness of the message, and at the same time discern its limitations and shortcomings, as well as certain fundamental contradictions in the Master (the Teacher, for his disciples and followers). The most serious of these shortcomings and contradictions seems to me to be the one I have just touched on again: the absence of any curiosity in the Master himself. There is nothing in his writings to suggest that, in days gone by, this vision was born in a person - a person caught, like you and me, in the net of ready-made ideas and contradictions that have never been spotted; that the vision was decanted from error in the course of intense, sometimes painful work, against the current of immense forces of inertia; that the stages of this work, or the ‘thresholds’ crossed in the course of these labours, were so many unexpected discoveries, each overturning a whole set of inveterate ideas, [◊ 539] perpetuated by the universal mechanisms of imitation and repetition 89 .

All these things, the child one day knew them, and even knew them, for having lived them intensely. But the Master has forgotten them, and never remembers them. Rather than being a child, passionately discovering and learning, and transforming himself in the process, he wanted to be the unchanging Master who knows, with unchanging infused knowledge, and who devotes his life to spreading his Teachings, for the benefit of ordinary mortals. He made himself into what his followers and disciples, those who believed in him, wanted him to be: the embodiment of a static, repetitive and therefore reassuring message, the apostle of a new ideology. A Guru-not-Guru in short, like myself (emulating his example, perhaps 90 ) was once...

(15 November) I called the preceding note (of 4 November) ‘Yang plays the yin - or the role of the Teacher’. As befits a meditation on myself, the main name of the note concerns myself, referring to a certain ‘game’ I played for a few years after I left the world of science in 197091 . As for the second name, ‘The Master’, it can be interpreted either as referring to myself, through a designation of the role or position I held in this game of ‘yang playing yin’, or to that of Krishnamurti, who served as my tacit model.

In fact, the values that emerge from Krishnamurti's books are almost exclusively yin values. When I first read Krishnamurti (in 1970 or 1971), it was the first time I had seen such values put forward, and the limits and flaws of my (and, with variations, ‘everyone else's’) yang vision of the world identified with penetration. That's probably why I was so impressed by the few chapters I read. Six or seven years later I also had the opportunity to read the fine biography of Krishnamurti by Mme Luytens. It confirmed a certain impression of him that had already emerged from his books (notwithstanding the fact that he never appeared in person). Today I would express it by saying that the basic tone in his temperament is [◊ 540] strongly yin. Added to this is the fact that throughout all his writings we see, as a constant leitmotif, the emphasis on yin-tinged qualities, attitudes and values, and the devaluation (explicit or by omission) of yang-tinged qualities, attitudes and values.

Krishnamurti's life and teachings thus embody the quite exceptional attitude of ‘yin buries yang’, which runs in the opposite direction to the by far more common attitude of ‘yang buries yin’, of which my own life (until my forty-eighth year at least) offers an equally extreme illustration. Krishnamurti 92's “superyin” options have the great merit of going against the grain of the basic values of the surrounding culture. But they seem to me to be no less repressive (of one part of his person by another part) than mine have been.

There is, however, a very pronounced and striking ‘yang’ aspect to Krishnamurti's life, which was undoubtedly first imposed on him by the role of figurehead, of (future) ‘spiritual teacher’, decided upon by his prestigious theosophist tutors when he was still a child. Subsequently, after the great turning point in his life marked by discoveries that radically changed his vision of things (discoveries that later became ‘The Teachings’), this role of ‘ teacher’, or ‘guide’ was (it seems) entirely internalised, taken over by the propagation of a doctrine that was personal to him, and not taken over from his Theosophist masters. This propagation represents an intense, even exhausting activity. It hardly seems to be in keeping with a balance of yin and yang, but rather appears to me as a constraint imposed on an eminently contemplative temperament, by an ‘I’ as strong and invasive in the master as in anyone else. Seen in this light, the present note, ‘Yang plays the yin’, which deals mainly with Krishnamurti, could also be called ‘Yin plays the yang’.

So, on two occasions and in two different ways, I have played ‘games’ in my life that are like an inversion of the attitudes that dominated the life of the man who, at a certain point in my journey, was to become the unspoken model of my (equally unspoken) brand image, and of certain attitudes and poses in me. But today I recognise an obvious kinship between the two of them, through their opposing styles of expression. One is in the presence of repression (unconscious, of course), [◊ 541] generating a disruption of the natural balance of yin and yang 93 . The other is to be found in the choice of a role, and in the weight of that role, its braking or even blocking effect in a development, in a maturation, in the progress of an understanding or knowledge. This role (or this pose) was the same for me as it was for the person who served as my model, from whom I may have simply borrowed it as it was. This is the role of the Teacher.

(6) Yin and yang mathematics

(a) The most ‘macho’ of the arts

NOTE 119 (5 November) I've been wanting to talk about yin and yang in mathematics for a while now. The two aspects of yin and yang in mathematical work, or in an approach to mathematics, only came to my attention in the course of my reflections on yin and yang over the last few weeks. I anticipated that probing this dual aspect to some extent in these notes would be the most natural way of ‘getting back to basics’, in these notes that are supposed to be a retrospective on ‘a mathematician's past’.

What has been clear to me from my first thoughts on yin and yang (five years ago) is that ‘doing maths’ is perhaps the most yang, the most ‘masculine’ of all human activities known to date. In fact, any entirely intellectual activity, such as scientific research in particular and, more generally, any activity commonly described as ‘research’, is a very strongly yang-dominated activity. I was going to write: ‘marked by a strong yang imbalance’, and this is indeed the case when this activity absorbs almost all a person's energy. This yang predominance (or imbalance) can be seen in a good number of yin-yang pairs, where it is clear that it is the yang term above all, if not exclusively, that is ‘present’ in intellectual work. I'll just mention a few of them, which all belong to the same ‘group’ (or the same ‘doorway to the world’), which I call the ‘vague-le précis’ group. (NB In this last couple and those that follow, the term yin comes first).

— sensibility-reason (or intellect)

— instinct-reflection

— intuition-logic

— inspiration-method

— [◊ 542] vision-coherence

— the concrete-the abstract

— the complex-the simple

— the vague-the precise

— dream-reality

— the indefinite-the definite

— the unspoken-the expressed

— formless-formed

— infinite-finite

— unlimited-limited

— the whole (totality)-the part

— the global-the local (or the fragmentary).

I've just gone through my yin-yang repertoire, and I've come across a good number of other pairs that give a sense of the superyang character of pure intellectual activity. I'll just mention the first of all those I thought of earlier: the mind-body pair.

Having said this, it seems to me that among the various types of intellectual activity, mathematical work represents the ultimate extreme-yang. This is undoubtedly due above all to its character of extreme abstraction, the fact that it is, to a very large extent, independent of any ‘support’ by sensory experience and reasoned observation of the outside world, the world in which we live and in which our bodies move. This extreme degree of abstraction distinguishes mathematics from all other sciences, and mathematical work from all other intellectual work, making it a science or work of ‘pure reason’. In contrast to the experimental sciences and the sciences of observation, it is also the only science whose results are established by demonstrations in the most rigorous sense of the term, proceeding according to a rigorously codified and in principle infallible method, the so-called ‘logical’ method, to arrive at certainties that leave no room for doubt or reservation, or for the possibility of exceptions that would have escaped the cases observed so far. These are all extreme-yang features of mathematics, and of mathematics alone.

Certainly, these traits had something to attract me from childhood, me who had opted wholeheartedly for ‘the head’ and for the extreme-yang 94! Especially after the experience of the war and the concentration camp, faced with discrimination and prejudice that seemed to defy even the most rudimentary reason, what fascinated me most about mathematical activity (from the little I knew of it [◊ 543] in my secondary school years) was the power it gave me, by virtue of a simple demonstration, to win over even the most reluctant adherents, to force the assent of others in short, whether they were well-disposed or not - provided only that they agreed with me to the mathematical ‘rules of the game’. From my first contact with school mathematics, in 1940 at the lycée in Mende (where I was able to go even though I was interned at the Rieucros camp five or six kilometres away), it would seem that I knew these rules, felt them instinctively, as if I had always known them 95 . I certainly felt them better than the teacher himself, who recited without conviction the commonplaces in use at the time on the difference between a ‘postulate’ (in this case, Euclid's, the only one that he and we had had the good fortune to hear of...) and an ‘axiom’, or ‘the demonstration’ of the three ‘cases of equality of triangles’, following the textbook like a pupil of first communion would follow his breviary.

Five years later, seduced by the sudden prestige of atomic physics, it was nevertheless for physics studies that I first enrolled at the University of Montpellier, with the idea of initiating myself into the mysteries of the structure of matter and the nature of energy. But I soon realised that if I wanted to learn about mysteries, I wouldn't be able to do it by following university courses, but by working on my own, on my own, with or without books. As I didn't have the flair or the equipment to learn physics that way, I put it off until a more propitious time. So I started doing maths, following a few courses ‘from afar’, none of which could satisfy me or give me anything beyond what I could find in the current textbooks. But I still had to pass my exams...

(b) The beautiful unknown

NOTE 120 (6 November) Looking over yesterday's notes again just now, I was able to make sure that I had not fallen into a certain confusion between mathematical work, a very strongly yang-dominant activity, and ‘mathematics’. It is surely no coincidence that, in both French and German, the word for mathematics is feminine, as is ‘la [◊ 544] science’, which encompasses it, or the even broader term ‘la connaissance’ 96 , or also ‘la substance’. For the mathematician in the proper sense of the term, I mean for the one who ‘does mathematics’ (as he would ‘make love’), there is in fact no ambiguity about the distribution of roles in his relation to mathematics, to the unknown substance therefore of which he makes acquaintance, which he knows by penetrating it. Mathematics, then, is as much a ‘woman’ as any woman he has ever known or even desired - whose mysterious power he has ever felt, drawing him into her with a force that is both gentle and unrelenting.

I first became aware of the profound identity between the impulse that drew me to ‘woman’ and the one that drew me to ‘mathematics’, a few months before my encounter with the stanzas of the Tao Te King that were to trigger me off for In Praise of Incest (and, along the way, for my first systematic reflection on the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’, whose Chinese names ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ I didn't yet know). That was six years ago, when I was writing a two-page text entitled ‘By way of a programme’, by which I meant: for the (C 4) ‘Introduction to Research’ course, for which this text constituted an introduction, or more exactly a declaration of intent about the spirit of this ‘course’. After writing this text, which came to me most spontaneously, I was struck by the abundance of images that sprang up one after the other, charged with erotic connotations. I realised that this was no accident, nor the result of a simple literary intention - that it was an unequivocal sign of a profound kinship between the two passions that had dominated my adult life. Without thinking at the time of exploring the matter further through systematic reflection (which would come only a few months later, when I wrote the Eulogy), or even (I think) of formulating clearly for myself what I had suddenly perceived, I think I can say that at that moment I learned, without fanfare, something important - I had ‘discovered’ something 97 , something that had entirely eluded me before.

Of course, like everyone else, I'd heard about Freud and the sublimation of the libido and all that, but it had nothing to do with that. Even tons of books on psychoanalysis and everything else can't avoid moments like that, when all theory and ‘baggage’ is forgotten, and suddenly [◊ 545] something clicks. It's in these moments that our knowledge of things is renewed. It has nothing to do with reading books, listening to lectures, in other words: increasing knowledge 98 .

When I think of ‘mathematics’, I certainly don't mean all the knowledge that can be described as ‘mathematical’, recorded from Antiquity to the present day in publications, preprints, manuscripts and correspondence. Even if you eliminate the repetitions, that's probably a few million pages of compact text; a dozen tonnes of books perhaps, or even a few thousand thick volumes, enough to fill a spacious library: nothing to get a hard-on about, that's for sure, quite the opposite! Talking about ‘mathematics’ only makes sense in the context of a vision, an understanding - and these are essentially personal things, not collective ones. There is as much ‘mathematics’ as there are mathematicians, each of whom has a certain personal experience of it, more or less extensive or limited, one of the fruits of which is his own understanding, his own vision of ‘mathematics’ (the one he has known), always more or less fragmentary. It's a bit like ‘woman’, which may seem to some to be a mere abstraction, or a hollow formula, and yet has a deep, powerful, irrefutable ‘reality’ (for me at least), of which every woman met [◊ 546] or known is an incarnation and represents one aspect; and the same woman in someone else's experience undoubtedly represents yet another incarnation, yet another aspect.

My aim here is in no way to confront the difficulty of ‘integrating’ this vast multiplicity of experiences, understandings and visions of ‘mathematics’ into a totality, a unity - and this, moreover, at a time when we are witnessing (it seems to me) a kind of relentless ‘divergence’ in mathematical production, and when no mathematician can claim to know, even if only in broad outline, the totality or the essence of what has been accomplished in our science. My aim was rather to examine the interplay of yin and yang in mathematical work, in other words, in the relationship between the mathematician (or any mathematician, starting with myself) and ‘mathematics’. The thing under examination, then, is ‘the mathematician’ or ‘that mathematician’ (in his or her relationship to mathematics), rather than ‘mathematics’ itself.

(c) Desire and rigour

NOTE 121 (November 7) At the level of our intellectual faculties, of reason, to ‘know’ something is, above all else, to ‘understand’ it. And in the work of discovery that takes place at this level of our faculties, the impulse to know that drives the child in us (independently of the motivations of the ‘I’, the ‘Boss’) is the desire to understand. This is perhaps the main difference that distinguishes the intellectual drive for knowledge from its elder sister, the love drive. This desire to understand pre-exists any ‘method’, scientific or otherwise. The latter is a tool, fashioned by desire to serve its purpose: to penetrate the unknown accessible to reason, for the purposes of understanding. Knowledge is born of the desire to know, and therefore of the desire to understand, when it is reason that wants to know. The method, the instrument of desire, is in itself powerless to give birth to knowledge - any more than the forceps of a doctor, or even the expert hands of a midwife, give birth. But sometimes they are useful in assisting the birth of a newborn, when the time is ripe and they know how to come at the right moment...

Many, if not all, secondary school and university students must feel that the rigour of mathematics, which has been preached to them by sullen teachers, is a kind of a priori that is entirely external to their humble selves, incomprehensible and arbitrary, dictated by a peremptory and [◊ 547] merciless God to a Euclid promoted to Grand Censor-in-Chief, with the task of making countless generations of schoolchildren pale at the task, ingesting as best they could Culture with a capital C. I must have been one of the few people not to have gone through this stage in my relationship with school mathematics - to have instinctively felt, from the very first encounter and within the narrow confines of a sixth-form maths book, the original function and meaning of rigour: that it was a flexible and astonishingly effective instrument for understanding what is known as ‘mathematics’ - things that reason alone can fully know. This ‘rigour’ is also like the soul and nerve of what I called, in the reflections of the day before yesterday, ‘the rules of the mathematical game’, and what I used to call ‘the method’. Having only glimpsed them, it was as if I had always known them - as if it were my own desire that had delicately, lovingly shaped them, like a key that had the power to open up for me an unknown, mysterious world, whose presentiment of richness was to prove inexhaustible... And it was indeed my own desire that continued to refine this tool throughout my years at lycée and university, before any encounter could make me suspect that somewhere there were fellow human beings - people who, like me, found pleasure in probing the Unknown that this key, apparently unknown to everyone (including my teachers), alone had the power to open up 99 .

(d) The rising sea...

NOTE 122 (8 November) It's been three days since my reflection was, in principle, ‘on yin and yang in mathematics’, and I have the impression that it's still getting off the ground, while I'm partially absorbed in other occupations and tasks. By dint of preliminaries, I still haven't got to the point I wanted to make from the start: that in my own [◊ 548] mathematical work, it's the yin, ‘feminine’ note that dominates!

I realised this a few weeks ago, on the fringes of the present reflection on yin and yang, and in connection with this ‘association of ideas aroused by the three-part Funeral Eulogy’, which was the starting point for this long digression. (See the beginning of the note ‘Le muscle et la tripe (yang enterre yin [1])’). To tell the truth, this association of ideas (which I'll come back to later) was more or less based on the intuition that my approach to mathematics was strongly yang-dominant. This intuition was quite natural, since it was my superyang options that had motivated my long-term investment in mathematics. All the same, this intuition, or more precisely this idea, was wrong - I only had to take the time to examine it a little to realise that the opposite was true.

For a surprise, it was a surprise! I didn't mention it ‘on the spot’ in my notes, so as not to cut the train of thought when I was trying to work out how I perceived yin and yang and the philosophy that emerged for me. But here we are at last!

This misconception about the nature of my approach to mathematics must have crept into me, unexamined and as a matter of course, from the time I started paying attention to the yin-yang aspect of things, five or six years ago. It must be a residue of my yang, masculine image - a residue that has continued to linger there, out of sheer inertia, because I haven't bothered to sweep it up...

Perhaps the reader will have the impression that I'm leading him on, given that only three days ago I explained at length that mathematical work was the most superyang of superyang activities - that in the relationship with mathematics it was ‘the woman’, and the mathematician as an enterprising lover - and now all of a sudden I raise the question of whether, in the case of my modest person, my work or my ‘approach’ is yin or yang, and conclude (as the most natural thing in the world) that it is yin, who would have thought! If there is an apparent confusion here, it stems from a lack of understanding of this universal fact: that in everything, even the most yin or yang thing in the world, the dynamics of yin and yang are at play, through the marriage of the two original forces. Thus fire, the most yang of all things and the very symbol of yang, is yin in some of its aspects (it's the ‘yin in the yang’); [◊ 549] and conversely water, which is the very symbol of yin, is yang in some of its aspects and functions (it's the ‘yang in the yin’). There is no need to develop these two particularly instructive examples here - surely, the reader intrigued by these observations (which may seem peremptory or sibylline) will only have to follow for himself the associations of ideas linked to fire and water, to discover for himself in these two cases the reality of yin in yang, and yang in yin. And if he is a mathematician, or if he is simply familiar with intellectual work (even if he is not a mathematician, or even a scientist), he will have no trouble discerning the existence of complementary yin and yang modes of approach to any kind of intellectual work, however ‘yang’ it may be, in comparison with other less fragmented types of activity.

A possible starting point would be to go back to the fifteen or so yin-yang pairs I mentioned at the beginning of my reflections three days ago 100 , when I noted that for each of these pairs, it was the predominance of the yang term that took place in intellectual work (and this is particularly true in the case of mathematical work), when we compare such work with other types of activity, such as making love, singing, painting (a picture, or a wall, never mind), gardening, and so on. That doesn't mean that if we stay within a given activity, like doing maths, let's say (everything yang, it's understood), we can distinguish a balance (or sometimes, an imbalance) of either yin or yang traits, varying from one mathematician to another and sometimes, within the same mathematician, from one job to another.

For example, in some works it is the logical structure of the theory developed that is emphasised, in others it is the intuitive aspects. There is an imbalance, manifested in the reader or listener by a very familiar feeling of unease (and sometimes in the author too), when one of these indispensable aspects is grossly neglected, to the ‘benefit’ of the other. (When both are grossly neglected, you throw the book in the bin, or leave the room slamming the door!) When each of the two aspects is strongly present, whether explicitly or between the lines, it manifests itself in an equally familiar feeling of harmony, beauty, balance and satisfaction. This is so regardless of the ‘basic tone [◊ 550]’ that dominates the approach followed, whether that tone is in the ‘logical’, or ‘intuition’ (or also ‘structure’) or ‘substance’ direction). There is no need to develop this instructive example further, in order to describe, for example, where the problem lies (i.e. to identify the ‘malaise’ referred to earlier), when one or other of the two aspects is neglected; the reader already knows this from his own experience! Similar observations are bound to emerge for most of the yin-yang pairs considered three days ago. Perhaps even for all of them, even if some are more delicate and will undoubtedly require more in-depth examination to be fully understood than the intuition-logic pairing.

I now had to try and make this fact a little clearer, or rather ‘get it across’ - that in my way of doing maths, it's my yin, ‘feminine’ traits, more than my ‘masculine’ ones, that lead the way. If the idea here was to go all the way with this impression, by testing it from as many angles as possible, the natural idea (which did occur to me yesterday) would be to review, among the yin-yang pairs known to me, those that might represent (among other things) an aspect or mode of apprehension of intellectual work (there must be about fifty of them, I suppose), and see for each of them which of the two ‘spouses’ of the pair predominates in me. I predict that in every case, one of the two will prove to be predominant.

So, in the intuition-logic pairing, I notice at first sight that both aspects are strongly present in my mathematical work. This is a sign of balance and harmony, among other signs pointing in the same direction. As befits a yin-yang couple, for me (in my work, I mean), the two spouses are truly inseparable - the logical structure of a theory develops step by step and in conjunction with the deepening of an understanding of the things it deals with, that is to say, also in conjunction with the development of an ever finer and more complete intuition of them. Perhaps in my published works, in accordance with the canons of the mathematician's craft, it is the yang aspect, the ‘structure’ or ‘logic’ or ‘method’ aspect, that is the most apparent, the most obvious to the reader. Yet I am well aware that what leads and dominates my work, what is its soul and raison d'être, are the mental images that are formed in the course of the work in order to apprehend the reality of mathematical things.

[◊ 551] Of course, I have never spared any effort to use mathematical language to define these images and the understanding they give rise to as meticulously as possible. It is in this continual effort to formulate the unformulated, to specify what is still vague, that perhaps lies the particular dynamic of mathematical work (and perhaps also of all creative intellectual work) - in a continual dialectic between the more or less unformulated image and the language that gives it form and, in the process, gives rise to new, more or less vague images that deepen the previous one, and that also call for a formulation to give them form in turn... In fact, it is this perpetual effort to use language to define, as precisely and as perfectly as possible, what at first appears as an indefinable and unformed ‘presentiment’, as an informal ‘feeling’, as an image shrouded in mist... it is this effort that has fascinated me most in the work of mathematical discovery since my childhood and still does today. But if the ‘effort’ here always seems to be on the ‘language’ side, i.e. on the formulation, structure and logic side, which are the key ingredients of the mathematical method ; and if (by force of circumstance) this is above all where the visible aspect of a mathematical text supposed to render mathematical work (or at least its fruits) is to be found, all this does not prevent the fact that (for me, at least) it is not in this aspect that the soul of an understanding of mathematical things is to be found, nor the living force or the motivation at work in mathematical work. I believe that very few of my works must have reversed this relationship, where I have developed a ‘formalism’ by letting myself be guided solely, or above all, by its internal logic, by desiderata of coherence, or by other aspects of the formalism itself, rather than by a content, by a substance, manifested by images, intuitions of a ‘geometrical’ nature. In any case, all my life I have been unable to read a mathematical text, however trivial or simplistic, when I am unable to give that text a ‘meaning’ in terms of my experience of mathematical things, that is to say, when that text does not arouse in me mental images, intuitions that would give it life, just as living flesh made up of muscles and organs gives life to a body that would otherwise be reduced to a skeleton. This inability sets me apart from most of my mathematical colleagues, and (as I've already mentioned) it is what often made it difficult for me to fit into the group work within the Bourbaki group, particularly during the joint readings, where I was often left behind for hours on end while everyone else followed along at ease.

[◊ 552] I've just followed a few associations of ideas about my mathematical work, linked to the ‘intuition-logic’ pair, and to a few neighbouring pairs that have introduced themselves in the wake of this one; the formless-the formed, the indefinite-the definite, the informal-the formulated, the vague-the precise, inspiration-method, vision-coherence... It would surely be instructive to review one by one (as I had thought of doing) all the possible and imaginable ‘couples’ in relation to intellectual work, and to probe for each one in what way and to what extent either of the two spouses is present in my mathematical work, and whether or not one of the two seems to ‘set the tone’, and if so which. As well as giving me a more delicate grasp of the particular nature of my mathematical work, such ‘work on parts’ will surely deepen my understanding of the nature of mathematical work in general, and also my grasp of each of the couples reviewed in this way. But such systematic work would obviously take me too far, and would go beyond the reasonable limits of the present reflection. It seems more natural to me to try to find here, and to ‘pass on’ if I can, the associations of ideas and images that have convinced me (without having to go any further) that in my mathematical work, it is indeed the ‘feminine’ traits of my being that tend surreptitiously to set the tone, and thus to find a kind of unexpected ‘revenge’ (where one would least have expected it!) for the repression they had to endure in other spheres of my life.

Take, for example, the task of proving a theorem that remains hypothetical (to which, for some, mathematical work seems to be reduced). I see two extreme approaches. One is that of the hammer and chisel, when the problem posed is seen as a large, hard, smooth nut, whose interior needs to be reached, the nourishing flesh protected by the shell. The principle is simple: you place the cutting edge of the chisel against the shell and strike hard. If necessary, you repeat the process in several different places, until the shell breaks - and you're happy. This approach is particularly tempting when the hull has asperities or protuberances where you can ‘pick it up’. In some cases, it's easy to spot such ‘bits’, but in other cases you have to turn the nut over carefully in all directions, prospecting carefully, before you find a point of attack. The most difficult case is when the shell is perfectly round and uniformly hard. No matter how hard you hammer, the chisel edge slips and barely scratches the surface - you end up getting bored with the task. Sometimes, though, you end up succeeding, by dint of muscle and endurance.

[◊ 553] I could illustrate the second approach, keeping the image of the nut that has to be opened. The first parable that came to mind earlier is that you dip the nut in an emollient liquid, simply water why not, from time to time you rub it so that it penetrates better, for the rest you let time do its work. The shell will soften over the weeks and months - when the time is ripe, just squeeze it with your hand and it will open like a ripe avocado! Alternatively, the nut can be left to ripen in the sun and rain, and perhaps even in the winter frosts. When the time is ripe, a delicate sprout emerges from the flesh and pierces the shell, as if playing with itself - or to put it another way, the shell opens up on its own, allowing it to pass through.

The image that came to me a few weeks ago was even different: the unknown thing that we need to get to know appeared to me as some expanse of compact earth or marl, reluctant to be penetrated. You can go at it with pickaxes or crowbars or even jackhammers: that's the first approach, the ‘chisel’ approach (with or without a hammer). The other is the sea approach. Nothing seems to break, nothing moves, the water is so far away you can hardly hear it... Yet it ends up surrounding the resistant substance, which gradually becomes a peninsula, then an island, then an islet, which ends up being submerged in its turn, as if it had finally dissolved into the ocean stretching as far as the eye can see...

Readers who are at all familiar with some of my work will have no difficulty in recognising which of these two modes of approach is ‘mine’ - and I already had occasion to explain this in the first part of Récoltes et semailles, in a somewhat different context 101 . It's the ‘approach of the sea’, by submersion, absorption, dissolution - the one where, if you're not very attentive, nothing seems to happen at any moment : Every single thing at every single moment is so obvious, and above all, so natural, that you'd almost scruple to write it down in black and white, for fear of looking like you're combining things, instead of tapping away on a chisel like everyone else... And yet this is the approach that I've practised instinctively since I was young, without ever really having had to learn it.

It was also, basically, the Bourbaki approach, and my encounter with the Bourbaki group was providential in this respect, confirming me, encouraging me in this ‘style’ which was spontaneously mine, and in which otherwise I risked finding myself more or less alone of my kind 102 . It is true that this was a situation (being alone of my kind) with which I had long been familiar, and which did not bother me so much. As for knowing whether my instinctive approach to mathematical work was going to be ‘efficient’, that is to say above all (according to the criteria in force, and especially for judging a beginner mathematician) whether I was going to be able to solve ‘open questions’ that nobody had yet been able to answer, I couldn't know in advance, and I didn't worry too much about it. My natural inclination was to ask my own questions, rather than trying to solve those that others had asked. And it is indeed through the discovery of new questions and new concepts, new points of view and even new ‘worlds’ that my mathematical work has proved fruitful, even more so than through the ‘solutions’ I have been able to provide to questions that have already been asked. This very strong impulse to discover the right questions rather than the right answers, and to discover the right concepts and the right statements much more than the right demonstrations, are all strongly marked ‘yin’ traits in my approach to mathematics 103 . This is also no doubt why I am particularly sensitive when I see the best that I have been able to contribute to mathematics being treated casually or with disdain by some of my students, in other words by the very people who first benefited from it.

In any case, it was only in retrospect that I realised that my natural approach to mathematics also ‘worked’ when I felt attracted, inspired by a question that others had asked when, in short, it had ‘clicked’ and the question had become ‘mine’ at the same time. If I tried to draw up a more or less exhaustive list of such cases, I suspect it would be quite long. On the face of it, there are four such situations that seem to me to ‘stand out from the pack’ in terms of their scope 104 . In all [◊ 555] four cases, the hypothetical theorem ended up being proved, for the most part, by the ‘rising sea’ approach, submerged and dissolved by some more or less vast theory, going far beyond the results it was first intended to establish. What's more, I've noticed that the ideas, notions, formulas and methods I developed in these situations (and in others too) have long since entered the realm of the mathematically ‘well known’, which ‘everyone’ knows and uses to their heart's content, without bothering about their origin 105 .

(e) The nine months and five minutes

NOTE 123 (9 November) There is another point in common with the four cases mentioned yesterday, of open questions that were resolved (or rather, ‘dissolved’) by the ‘approach of the rising sea’. This is the role played by J.-P. Serre in each of these four cases. It was above all a role of ‘detonator’, to get me ‘started’ on these questions, to use the expressions of a footnote in the Introduction mentioning this role (see ‘The end of a secret’, section 8 of the Introduction). In fact (as I then noticed), it appears that Serre played such a role in the genesis of the main ideas and major tasks that I developed between 1955 and 1970, that is, between the time when I left functional analysis for geometry, and the time when I left the mathematical world.

I could say, barely exaggerating, that between the beginning of the 1950s and around 1966, so for about fifteen years, everything I learnt in ‘geometry’ (in a very broad sense, encompassing algebraic or analytic geometry, topology and arithmetic), I learnt from Serre, [◊ 556] when I didn't learn it myself in my mathematical work. It was in 1952 I think, when Serre came to Nancy (where I stayed until 1953), that he began to become a privileged interlocutor for me - and for years he was even my only interlocutor for topics outside functional analysis. I think the first thing he talked to me about was Tor and Ext, which I was making a world of, and yet, look, it's as easy as pie..., and the magic of injective and projective resolutions and derived and satellite functors, at a time when Cartan-Eilenberg's ‘diplodocus’ had not yet been published. What attracted me to cohomology at that time were the ‘A and B theorems’ that he and Cartan had just developed on Stein's analytic spaces - I think I'd heard of them before, but it was during one or two tête-à-têtes with Serre that I realised the full power and geometric richness of these very simple cohomological statements. At first they had completely gone over my head, before he told me about them, at a time when I didn't yet ‘feel’ the geometric substance in the beam cohomology of a space. I was so enchanted that for years I'd been intending to work on analytic spaces, as soon as I'd finished the work I was still doing on functional analysis, where I definitely wasn't going to linger! If I didn't really follow these intentions, it was because Serre had in the meantime turned to algebraic geometry and had written his famous fundamental article ‘FAC’, which made understandable and highly seductive what had previously seemed to me to be extremely boring - so seductive, in fact, that I couldn't resist these charms, and so turned to algebraic geometry rather than to analytic spaces.

If I hadn't held back, I would have been off, one thing leading to another, on the history of my relationship with Serre, which would also be little more than the history of my mathematical interests, from 1952 to 1970. This is not the place. I would only add that, as is only right and proper, it was from Serre that I was ‘introduced’ to the four questions mentioned above. Of course, the point was not to point out the precise wording of the question, full stop. The essential thing was that each time Serre had a strong sense of the rich substance behind a statement which, offhand, would probably not have made me feel either hot or cold - and that he managed to ‘convey’ this perception of a rich, tangible, mysterious substance - a perception which is at the same time a desire to know this substance, to penetrate it. This is perhaps the most crucial moment of all in the work of discovery, the moment when [◊ 557] something ‘clicks’, even though you have no idea, however vague, of where to take the unknown, where to enter it. This is truly the moment of ‘conception’ - the moment from which gestation work can be done, and is done if the circumstances are propitious...

If Serre has played an important role in my work and in my mathematical work, it is even more, it seems to me, in the appearance of those crucial moments, when the spark passes and obscure and invisible work begins, than through the technical means unknown to me that he sometimes provided me with at the right moment or through the ideas that I borrowed from him in later stages of my work.

One of the reasons, no doubt, for the special role played by Serre was my reluctance to keep abreast of current mathematical events by reading, or even to learn the ABCs of a particular ‘well-known’ theory by reading the books or memoirs that dealt with it. As far as possible, I like to get my information from people who are ‘in the know’. From the time I first came into contact with a mathematical environment (in 1948) until I left in 1970, I was lucky enough never to run out of competent and willing people to tell me about things that might be of interest to me. This may have made me dependent on them, but I never felt that way 106 . In fact, the question of ‘dependence’ could hardly arise, as long as my interlocutor and I had the same level of interest in what he was teaching me. Teaching someone who is eager to learn is beneficial for both of us, and is an opportunity for the ‘teacher’ to learn, as well as for the person being taught.

The ‘reason’ given earlier does explain the importance of interlocutors in my past as a mathematician, but not the exceptional role played by Serre, which seems to me to far exceed that of all my other ‘interlocutors’ put together! What is certain is that Serre and I complemented each other perfectly. We had many strong common interests, and I sensed in him the same high standards and rigour that I put into my work. Apart from that, we worked in very different ‘styles’. I have the impression that our approaches to mathematics and our work complemented each other, without ever really encroaching on each other. The kind of work I was doing (and the way I was doing it) was quite different from the kind of work Serre was doing. He might lay the first foundations of a theory in a text of fifty pages or so, or even spend a year writing a medium-sized book elegantly and concisely setting out some subject that inspired him - but he certainly didn't spend the best part of five years of his life, or even ten years or more, developing at length and in volumes a whole new language (which had been quite dispensable up to that point), to found a new and fertile approach to algebraic geometry, let's say. He introduced a good number of new and fertile ideas and notions without letting himself be drawn into ‘carrying’ them through to the end. On more than one occasion, however, these ideas and notions served as a starting point for a large-scale project that suited me perfectly, and for which there would have been no question of Serre himself taking the plunge.

An association comes to me irresistibly here. In the light of the reflections of the last few days, I see my relationship to mathematical work and to my ‘works’ more as ‘maternal’ than ‘paternal’. The moment of conception, crucial though it is, represents for me a tiny part of the ‘work’ during which the thing in gestation, the ‘child’ to come, grows and develops. This work is very much like that of a pregnant woman's pregnancy, a work that begins when the child is conceived and continues for nine long months... The time it takes to carry what was once a foetus to term and to give birth - in other words, to bring a child into the world, a living, complete child, not just a head or a torso or a baby's skeleton or whatever. This role of mother, obviously, is very different from that of the father (even the best father in the world...), who does little more than cast a seed and then goes off to do other things.

Clearly, Serre's mathematical work, his approach to mathematics, is strongly yang, ‘masculine’. His approach to a difficulty is more like that of the chisel and the hammer, very rarely that of the sea that rises and submerges, or that of the water that soaks and dissolves. And he seems content to cast a seed, without worrying too much about where it will fall, or whether it will trigger conception and toil, or even whether the child that might be born of it will be in his likeness or bear his name.

[◊ 559] An image can help us to grasp an important aspect of a certain reality, but it does not exhaust reality. The latter is always more complex, richer than any image that would attempt to express it, and so it is with the images that came to me, without having sought them out, to express two different approaches to mathematics - Serre's, and mine. Serre sometimes brought to fruition work that needed breathing space, just as I sometimes sowed ideas, some of which germinated and were brought to fruition by others. No more than in my approach to mathematics, I lack ‘virility’ (whereas the background note is ‘feminine’), no more than Serre lacks ‘femininity’ in his, balancing his ‘virile’ background note.

It could not be otherwise in a creative approach to an unknown substance, whether mathematical or otherwise: there is no discovery, no knowledge, no renewal, except through the joint and inseparable action of the original yin and yang energies and impulses in the same being. It is in the intimate fusion of the two that the beauty of a being, or of a work, lies - that delicate, elusive quality that signals to us a particular feeling of harmony and satisfaction. This quality is present in all the work of Serre that I have known, whether in person or through the texts he has written. I have known few mathematicians where it is so consistently present, and with such force.

(f) The funeral of yin (yang buries yin [4])

NOTE 124 (10 November) Yesterday's and the day before's reflections are far from exhausting all the strongly marked characters in my mathematical work, which are of a yin nature. Exploring them further, following on from the present reflection on yin and yang in mathematics, would also be an excellent opportunity for me to deepen my understanding of the nature of mathematical work in general. This theme of yin and yang in mathematics, which I thought I'd get round to in a day's reflection, and on which I've already spent five consecutive days feeling as though I'd only just begun, has just revealed itself as one of those many seemingly innocuous themes that become broader and deeper the closer you get to them and the more you delve into them. There's definitely no way I'm going to rush through this juicy theme (or even just ‘get round it’ in a hurry), in the middle of a Funeral Ceremony that I wouldn't want to drag on beyond measure!

[◊ 560] I would just like to point out two more of these ‘strongly marked characters’ in my mathematical work that go in the ‘yin’, feminine direction. One is a predilection for the general, rather than the particular (which makes a ‘pair’ or ‘couple’ with it). The other trait seems to me to be even stronger, or to put it better, more essential, more neuralgic, and broader too (in the sense that it contains the first). If there is one ‘quest’ that has run through my entire life as a mathematician, from the age of seventeen (fresh out of high school) to the present day, an incessant quest that has marked all my work (published or unpublished) since its beginnings, it is that of unity, through the infinite multiplicity of mathematical things and possible approaches to these things. Detecting and discovering this unity beyond the often bewildering richness of diversity (without taking anything away from this richness), recognising the common features beyond the differences and dissimilarities, and going right to the root of the analogies and similarities to discover the profound kinship - this has been my passion all my life. The very differences, the expression of an unlimited and elusive diversity, have come to seem like the branches and twigs, branching out infinitely, of the same tree with its vast branches, where each branch and twig shows me the way to the trunk that is common to them all. By instinct and by nature, my path was that of water, which always tends to descend, the path towards this trunk, towards these roots. And if I liked to linger along the way, it was rarely at the ridge to explore the leaves and delicate twigs, but above all at the large branches, the trunk and the master roots, to get to know their texture and feel through the bark the rising flow of the nourishing sap 107 .

[◊ 561] To tell the truth, I'm still not sure what to make of this recently discovered fact, how to situate it, that in my approach to mathematics, in my way of ‘doing maths’, the basic tone in me is strongly yin, ‘feminine’. This is in line with a certain intuition I've already alluded to - that the basic tone of my deepest being, by which I mean the ‘child’ in me or the ‘Worker’, that is to say what is creative and beyond conditioning (i.e. beyond the ‘I’, the ‘Boss’) - that this basic tone is also ‘feminine’ rather than virile. Perhaps I now have everything I need to clarify what is really going on, by carefully examining all the signs that point in one direction or the other,108 to recognise the significance of each one, and what emerges from them as a whole. And if by such work I do not arrive at the tangible result of a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, surely it will not have been in vain for all that, to arrive at a better definition of my ignorance, which at the moment remains blurred, unsettled, for want of having meditated on it. Perhaps I'll do this work once I've finished Harvest and Sowing, and on the basis of that work. But then again, this is not the place.

But if I was led to this reflection on yin and yang, it was in the course of a reflection in which I tried above all to understand certain relationships, between myself and others (among those who were my students, in particular). It is therefore the possible repercussions of the ‘new fact’ that has just emerged, on my relationship to others and on the relationship of others to me, that I am mainly interested in here. And this is also where my embarrassment lies in ‘placing’, in exploiting this fact. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that probably nobody apart from me has ever noticed such a thing - not on a conscious level, at least on a formulated level. In any case, I have never received any echo that I could interpret in this sense, as far as I can remember - any more, in fact, (with one exception) than I can remember any echo that would send me back a ‘yin’ image of myself, whereas the character I have portrayed since my [◊ 562] childhood (if not early childhood) has been strongly yang; so much so that even now, this ‘virile’ character seems like a second (?) nature, which continues to dominate my life. ) nature, which continues to dominate my life in many ways.

It's true that the mere fact that a trait in someone (me in this case) isn't perceived at a conscious level doesn't necessarily prevent it from affecting relationships with others. And I have no doubt that this trait is indeed perceived in the mathematical world, among mathematicians who are more or less familiar with my work, and that this perception has ‘spread’ to a much wider mathematical public. When I wrote in ‘L'Éloge Funèbre (1) - ou les compliments’ that ‘the anonymous pen that has taken care of my eulogy here has gratified me abundantly with that which today is scorned’, I would not have known at the time what exactly was ‘scorned today’ by mathematical fashion, among the things I value. But from the very next day, through this ‘association of ideas’ to which I must return 109 , I had sensed (without perhaps having formulated it, and without it yet appearing as clearly as it does now) that ‘this something’ was none other than everything that was recognised (at an often informal level) as being a ‘yin’ or ‘feminine’ way of doing mathematics, ‘feminine' way of doing mathematics - a way that was tacitly equated with “bombing”, “nonsense” (to use the compliment paid by my pupil and friend Pierre Deligne to the text that forms the basis of all his work), “cranking”, “ease”, and so on.

Certainly, in the Eloge Funèbre (delivered by this same friend Pierre), including in the passage where I am quoted in one breath with him 110 , the compliment was in order! There was no mention of nonsense or bombast, but rather of ‘a titanic aspect’, ‘twenty volumes’, ‘cleared up essential problems’, ‘the greatest natural generality’ (sic), a school ‘nourished by the generosity with which he communicated his ideas’, ‘theories of legendary depth’, ‘renewed foundations’, ‘opened up new applications’, notions ‘so natural that it is difficult for us to imagine the effort they cost’ (not to say that they were ‘easy’ - but I took care to specify that myself 111 ), [◊ 563] ‘great attention to terminology’ (not to say ‘bombast’), ‘ancestors of algebraic K-theory’, ‘topos introduced... on a general basic body’, “analogies suggested by Grothendieck”, “conjectures... as unapproachable as ever...”, “as Grothendieck had dreamed it up”...

I've underlined the key words in these quotations - they're all words that denote a yin approach to things. The ‘perfect dexterity’ in this burial by ‘well-dosed compliment’ consisted in the systematic use of hyperbole with regard to these qualities which, on the one hand, are ‘given over to disdain’, and on the other hand, are real and of great value to me; and all this while completely and radically erasing the complementary aspects, which today have the exclusive place of honour, the ‘virile’ aspects, as strongly present in my work as in anyone else's, with very few exceptions.

Moreover, it is these ‘virile’ aspects and values, to the exclusion of the slightest ‘feminine’ note, that are given pride of place in the text on Pierre Deligne, both in the choice of epithets (‘proverbial difficulty’, ‘surprising result’, ‘makes ℓadic cohomology a powerful tool’, ‘first step’, ‘astonishingly useful’, ‘speed’, “penetration”, “enlightening and constructive reactions to each question”, “brilliant discoveries”), than by the detailed enumeration of tangible results (whereas not a single result of mine is mentioned in my portrait-minute, nor is it suggested that these results may have played a role for those of Deligne).

I don't regret having taken the trouble to make this quick compilation of epithets - the effect is truly striking! If, at the level of structured knowledge, there are still very few people who have any notion of yin and yang, we have to believe that in the unconscious of my friend Pierre, as in the unconscious that served as his scribe, there is a perception of flawless reliability. It is used here to serve a certain cause: to show disdain for someone who should be shown disdain, and to designate a hero for the admiration of the crowd.

I doubt, moreover, that these three short texts I have just looked at had very many readers. But whether or not they did seems to me to be an incidental question. For me, these texts were addressed, not to hypothetical potential patrons (after all, it's not my friend Pierre's concern to find patrons to finance his institution), but to the ‘Congregation as a whole’, which appeared in the reflections during the note of the same name (alias ‘Le Fossoyeur’ No. 97). The message they carry is like a striking and masterly shortcut to countless messages along the same lines, from my friend Pierre and others among those who were my friends or pupils, and others too perhaps, messages captured and approved by this same Congregation. If there is such a thing as a collective unconscious (and I'm inclined to believe that there is now), there is no doubt that in the unconscious of this Congregation (aka the ‘mathematical community’), just as in that of the Grand Officiant at my solemn funeral, there is the same flawless perception of what is yin (fed up!), and what is yang (hats off!).

And all of a sudden, these Funerals appear to me in a new, unexpected light, where my person itself has become an accessory, where it becomes a symbol of what must be ‘handed over to disdain’. It is no longer the funeral of a person, or of a work, or even of an inadmissible dissidence, but the funeral of the ‘mathematical feminine’ - and even more profoundly, perhaps, in each of the many participants applauding the Funeral Eulogy, the funeral of the disowned woman who lives within himself.

(g) Supermum or Superdad?

NOTE 125 (11 November) Exceptionally (and this is no exception...) I woke up early this morning, after barely four or five hours' sleep. The unexpected outcome of yesterday's reflection immediately set into motion an intense workload, to ‘place’ and assimilate this new fact that had just appeared, just enough time to warm up a hearty soup and have a snack before going to bed at three o'clock in the morning. And early in the morning, this same work dragged me out of sleep, then out of bed...

If I speak of an ‘unexpected’ outcome and a ‘new’ fact, I must add that from the very beginning of this interminable ‘digression’ on yin and yang, there had been in me a kind of contained expectation of a ‘denouement’, or at least the expectation of a ‘junction’ that was to take place with a certain procession, which had assembled in a Funeral Ceremony. It might have seemed that I was drifting further and further away from the scene of the funeral, or even that it had been definitively forgotten - but no, it was still there, as if on the mute or in the background. I had never really left them. Their silent presence manifested itself in this discreet and [◊ 565] constant expectation, this feeling of tension, of suspense, which carried me towards this point, still nebulous, where the ‘junction’ was finally to be made. I could sense the approximate location of this junction point - it was around a certain ‘association of ideas’ (mentioned more than once, but still not formulated) that had been the starting point, the initial motivation for this unexpected journey through yin and yang and through my life. In short, this journey was to be like another great cycle, returning (more or less...) to its starting point; or rather like a turn in a downward spiral, taking me a notch deeper into the thing probed, ‘to the very heart’ (if my premonition wasn't deceiving me) of these Funerals.

But just as I was beginning to prepare to ‘land’, and at the turn of a final paragraph of a ‘note’ that was still all ‘digression’ and even ‘rehashing’, here I was, suddenly landing in the middle of the funeral ceremony and right at the heart of it, a bit like an extraterrestrial who had catapulted himself there right in front of the priest in his chasuble and the congregation of the faithful ; Or worse still, like a deceased person, thought to be dead and (almost) already buried, who suddenly lifts the lid (and wreaths and touching epitaphs come tumbling out! ) and there he is in person, in a white shroud and a twinkle in his eye, like a living imp emerging from his box when you least expect it!

So the culmination of yesterday's reflection was at the same time the denouement of that suspense I mentioned, a very particular suspense that is very familiar to me in work ‘like the spreading sea’, whether it's mathematical work or any other. But in the very wake of this relaxation of a long suspense, a perplexity immediately appeared. It is this perplexity that has absorbed me ever since, I believe, and that, at odd hours, has drawn me from my bed to the typewriter. That there should be perplexity is hardly surprising - it happens, more or less, every time a situation suddenly appears in a new light, which at first sight would seem to contradict an old vision. The very first thing to do, then, is to probe these contradictions carefully, to examine to what extent they are real, or only apparent, that is to say, expressions of an inertia of the mind that is reluctant to recognise the ‘same’ thing under two different lights. This essential work is completed when all the dissonances have been resolved into a new harmony (albeit a provisional one), into a vision that encompasses and brings together the previous partial visions, correcting or adjusting them if necessary, and eliminating those that prove to be fundamentally false. In such a renewed vision, the ‘old’ [◊ 566] that gave rise to it, i.e. the more fragmentary visions that are united in it, itself acquires a new meaning 112 .

To return to my ‘perplexity’, here it is. The ‘denouement’ or ‘new day’ consisted of an image that suddenly appeared - that of the burial with great pomp of the ‘symbol’ of the ‘mathematical feminine’, embodied in myself, and projected at the same time as the ‘disowned woman’ in each of the participants in the funeral; or to put it another way, it is the image of the symbolic Burial of a kind of Supermother, as an expiatory victim, in short, and in place of the woman-but-rarely-mother who vegetates in the obscure underground of each of the participants who have come to applaud at the Funeral. This image seems to contradict another, opposite, still vague, one that had gradually taken shape in the course of the pre-June reflection (culminating in the note ‘The Gravedigger - or the entire Congregation’): that of a Superfather both admired and feared, both attractive and hated, ‘massacred’ by his children, whose mutilated remains are delivered up for mockery during the ‘same’ funeral. Placed side by side (if that were even necessary), these vividly coloured images would seem to border on the zany and delirious, and I can easily imagine the scalp dance that these psychoanalytical fantasies are bound to provoke - assuming there are any readers who have had the breath to follow me this far!

I'll happily leave them to their dance, which will add an exotic note of the best effect to this unusual funeral, and in the meantime I'll follow an association that emerged last night, which I believe will reconcile, even make love and marriage possible, these two images or facets that were supposedly antagonistic, even irreconcilable.

(7) The reversal of yin and yang

(a) The reversal (1) - or the vehement wife

NOTE 126 (12 November) I had thought of continuing in my notes the association mentioned at the end of yesterday's notes, which would ‘reconcile’ and ‘bring together’ the two seemingly antagonistic images that had emerged from my funeral. Just as I was about to start making notes along these lines, I sensed a reluctance that I wouldn't want to ignore.

The association concerned my mother's relationship with my father, and the meaning of the destruction of the family that took place in 1933, through my mother's will overcoming my father's acquiescence (reluctant and embarrassed at first, then eager and total). This crucial episode marked a kind of reversal in the couple [◊ 567] formed by my parents, where my father had been the heroic embodiment, ostentatiously adulated, of virile values, and where my mother (a strong-willed and domineering character if ever there was one) strutted in the colours of the subjugated and happy woman, above a daily life marked by continuous confrontations. Acquiescence to the sacrifice of the children marked the moment when the God and Hero collapsed, followed by a veritable orgy of ‘triumphant contempt’ for the woman who, just the day before, had been playing the role of swooning adulteress, and who now took the place of the fallen hero, emasculated and happy to be so, reduced to the despised role of ‘woman’, from which she herself was relieved at the same moment...

The little I've said about it is so schematic, so quintessential I'm afraid, that it's more likely to give rise to innumerable misunderstandings than to help us understand the hidden motives behind a certain burial. However, I feel that this is not the place to expand on what I have just outlined in a few words. To render with a minimum of finesse a complex reality, blurred at will by the two protagonists, would require a new and lengthy digression, on a scale that the context does not justify. I don't feel inclined to delve into it at the moment, and even less so because it's a situation that involves others than myself, and where my own responsibility (as co-actor) doesn't really seem to be engaged. I, and my sister, appear not as actors, but as instruments in my mother's hands to bring down the ardently admired and envied Hero, in order to take his place and make him an object of derision.

While this scenario, which I patiently uncovered five years ago 113 , is the most extreme and violent of its kind that I have ever come across, I have nonetheless had ample opportunity since then to detect very similar scenarios in other couples. The work I did on my parents' lives helped me a lot to open my eyes to things that had previously escaped me completely. I was stunned at the time, and with good reason! Today I'd tend to think that, apart from the particular violence of the colours, the kind of antagonistic relationship I uncovered in the couple my parents formed is more or less typical of couple relationships, or at least extremely common. So the reader who, like me, has ended up using his faculties to probe the hidden springs of couple antagonisms, or of woman-man antagonism, will not be otherwise surprised (or even shocked) by the little I have said about it here.

[◊ 568] If I try to disregard what is particular to each case, and to draw out the common points in the female-male antagonisms that I have been able to see at close quarters and in which I have understood something, I come up with the following.

In women, admiration and envy of men, due to the (often overrated) prestige they enjoy because of their position (as a male, in particular) and the qualities (real or supposed) that justify it.
Often there is an element of resentment, even hatred, due to an (unconscious, as it happens) association between the man (lover or husband, for example) and the father. The antagonistic relationship between mother and father is taken over by the daughter, who identifies (more or less completely) with the mother. More direct reasons for resentment (towards the father) are often added (the father's tyrannical attitudes, lack of affection, attention or concern, etc.). Subsequently, these feelings of antagonism (and others), ‘ready to use’, are projected as they are onto the partner (actual or potential), whether or not that partner has ‘the head for the job’.

So when I wrote earlier (in 1 o ) that a woman's dispositions (notably admiration and envy) towards a man were ‘due to prestige, etc.’, this is only partly true. It seems to me that, more often than not, the driving force behind these dispositions comes from the relationship with the father (even if he's been dead and buried for a long time), and that his action depends only to a limited extent on the particular personality of the partner.
To compensate for her feelings of inferiority (entirely subjective, needless to say) and veiled antagonism, even animosity or hatred, there is a fear of exercising power over her partner (even though it is he who, by more or less tacit general consensus, is supposed to have authority). The woman exercises power by any means at her disposal (the most powerful being her body and, above all, her children 114 ), and it is almost always hidden. The gratification that accompanies it is therefore usually unconscious, but it is no less real and important. The power game often becomes all-consuming, becoming the main content of a woman's life, absorbing almost all her energy, and to which everything else (including the love drive and children) is subordinated, even sacrificed, without hesitation.
[◊ 569] The most extreme, the most torn case is the one in which admiration and envy for the male, whom it is a question of dominating while seeming to submit to him, is accompanied by contempt, even disgust and hatred, for what is feminine — for her own condition as a woman. However, it is only by playing on her ‘femininity’ that she can hope to subjugate the man, or at least to maneuver him as she pleases! Thus, in order to satisfy her strongest egoic impulse, that of ‘walking’ the partner (or even subduing him, or breaking him...), she is forced to enter fully into a hated role, felt as contemptible, as unworthy of her. It is in this extreme case of rejection of her own condition and nature, that of a superyang and anti-yin option, that she will seek an illusory escape from the conflict she carries within her, by using all her strength to achieve a reversal of roles: she herself substituting herself for the man, the hero and master, once admired and envied and now fallen, reduced himself to the role she had long worn as an abject livery, to the despised role from which she would finally be freed...

The sketch I have just made is also schematic, capable at most of evoking a certain reality for those who have already perceived it on their own here and there, without perhaps having tried to define it as best I can by a summary description such as this, if I wanted to give it some relief, I should at least try to specify the different levels (almost all unconscious) on which this set of mutually antagonistic feelings and wills is played. Moreover, in this tangle of inexorable egoic mechanisms, from which the amorous impulse seems rigorously absent, try also to situate it; to see to what extent and in what way it contributes to the eternal turn-in-circles (like the force of the wind perhaps, captured by the wings of an ingenious mill to make a heavy millstone turn...), and to what extent it also happens that the cogs sometimes stop and fall silent, to give free rein to something else.

And finally, I have entirely omitted to speak of what is at stake in him, the ‘partner’ or protagonist, as if he existed only in relation to her, as the object of attraction and repulsion, admiration and envy of the one who faces him. One of the reasons for this omission, no doubt, is that it is she, in this carousel of the couple, who plays the active role, investing herself fully in it, often finding in it her true reason for being (for lack of anything better), while he sees only fire, busy as he is elsewhere and [◊ 570] moreover naïve as no 115, reacting one after the other without trying to understand, and (what is more) without understanding in fact, not even (it seems to me) at the unconscious level. At least that's the impression I've always had, since I started paying attention to the couple's carousel! But it's also true that I know much less about the role of the man, since I've only been able to observe him really closely in the case of my modest person, whereas I have had the opportunity more than once, on the other hand, to get to know the role of the woman from the very first side.

In any case, even if I were to take great care, over ten pages or in a whole volume, to flesh out my somewhat schematic description, it would nevertheless be a waste of time for a reader who had not yet, in this matter, ‘made use of his faculties’ and who had never seen or felt anything of the kind. As for the reader who is even a little ‘in the loop’, surely the little I have said about it, and notwithstanding the clumsiness and obscurities, will suffice to put him back in the bath of things that he had already perceived for himself, and to arouse in him images and associations no less rich than those that were present in the background, at the time of writing my pithy description.

It does not take more, it seems to me, to see the ‘missing link’ between the antagonism to the ‘Superfather’ (finding its expression in the symbolic funeral of the aforesaid), and the contempt, the rejection of the ‘feminine’, and more profoundly, the denial of ’the woman‘ in oneself (which will perhaps find expression in the symbolic ’Burial‘ of a ’Supermother‘, under a plethora of dithyrambic epithets with dual use...)$^{116}$ .

(b) Retrospect (1) or the three sides of a picture

NOTE 127 [◊ 571] (November 13) The time seems ripe now to try to outline a vision of the Burial that is both clearer and more nuanced, one that (as I wrote the day before yesterday) ‘encompasses and brings together the previous partial visions, correcting or adjusting them as necessary...’. I can see three such previous visions, which need to be recognised as partial aspects of a whole.

The first aspect to emerge, the most obvious and also the most simplistic, is the ‘reprisals for dissent’ aspect, which was the aspect most emphasised in the note ‘The Gravedigger - or the whole Congregation’ (cf. note 97) - the last note before the illness episode. It is also the note, among those in Cortèges I to X (those before the incident), that seems to me to capture the collective motivations most deeply, those of ‘The Gravedigger’ alias ‘The Congregation (almost) as a whole’.

I've just gone through this note again. The second aspect, which I could call the ‘massacre (more than just symbolic) and (symbolic) burial of the Superpère’, does not appear. This is perhaps because this component in the motivations for a funeral does not really concern ‘the entire congregation’, which was the focus of my attention at the time, but above all (if not exclusively) ‘those who were my pupils’. It is true that, even leaving aside their undisputed leader, my friend Pierre, they played a leading role in the implementation of the Burial, which could not have taken place without the active contribution of some and the acquiescence of all. (On this subject, see the note on ‘Silence’ (see note 84). It is therefore through them, above all, that the ‘Superfather’ aspect seems to me to be crucial for an understanding of the Burial.

The first aspect, the ‘reprisal’ aspect, came to my attention after Yves Ladegaillerie's setbacks in 1976 117; since then I have tended to forget this aspect, but it has periodically come to mind in the years since. It eventually went beyond the formless stage of what is ‘felt’ without more, and became the substance of a clear and nuanced understanding, in the note quoted on the ‘Fossoyeur’. The second aspect, [◊ 572] or the ‘Superfather’ aspect, only began to appear in the course of the reflection in Récoltes et semailles 118 , and at first 119 without any connection with the Burial as such, which I was only to discover in the following months. This aspect gradually emerges from the mists of time throughout the reflections on the Burial, finally taking striking form with the notes ‘Le massacre’, ‘La dépouille...’, ‘... et le corps’ (87, 88, 89). These notes were dated 12, 16 and 17 May, and the ‘Gravedigger’ note was dated 24 May; the illness episode appeared on 10 June, and put an end to the continuation of the notes for more than three months, which resumed on 22 September. It is at least probable that if this episode (more than unwelcome!) had not occurred, at a time when I was preparing to follow up with an assessment of the whole and to draw a final line, my vision of the Burial would have stopped at that which had emerged in the two weeks between 12 and 24 May - at a vision therefore in ‘two parts’, each of which remained in its own corner, without the idea coming to me of trying to put them together.

Yet there was a vague feeling, like a barely perceptible mist, that the final word had still not really been grasped; the feeling of someone ‘groping in the dark’ (the expression must have appeared once or twice in the course of my notes on Burial). The Gravedigger's final note must have had something of the effect of a light gust of wind in the fog, which can give the illusion that the fog has dissipated, when in fact it has only shifted a little. Or to put it another way : the aspect taken up in this note appeared there in such clarity and with such relief, that the impression (by no means illusory) of a tangible, penetrating understanding of that aspect, and the feeling of satisfaction that accompanied it (a feeling that was certainly quite apparent at the end of the note) - that impression and that feeling created a kind of euphoria, of one who feels ready to touch the goal, and made me more or less forget the other aspect, however important, the ‘Superfather’ aspect, which had remained ‘on the sidelines’!

The third part appeared just three days ago (five months to the day after the unfortunate illness episode). It's [◊ 573] the ‘Funeral (symbolic) and Burial (very real)’ aspect of the ‘feminine’, which ‘feminine’ is visualised as a kind of ‘Supermother’, herself embodied by my modest self! This aspect came to light at the end of a long and entirely unexpected ‘digression’ on yin and yang, in which an effort had finally been made to express in an intelligible way a certain ‘association of ideas’ stemming from a certain ‘Funeral Eulogy’, which was supposed to close the Funeral Ceremony. This famous ‘association’ or ‘intuition’ (to which I first alluded at the very beginning of the note ‘Muscle and gut (yang buries yin [1])’) has still not been explained - but everything is ready to go, and I've been promising for a while that I'd get round to it!

The fact remains that along the way a whole host of facts and intuitions have come to light, some of them new and unexpected for me, and all of them have helped me to get back in touch with important aspects of my life, and of existence in general. One of these facts - that the ‘basic tone’ of my mathematical work is ‘feminine’ - also seems to contradict one of the intuitions at the root of this association, which is still waiting for its time: the intuition that as a mathematician (as with everything else), I was a very yang character; an intuition, therefore, that is linked to the ‘Superpere’ aspect of Burial. And this same fact, which seems to contradict this association (from which all the thinking about yin and yang stems!) also brings up in a flash the third aspect that had eluded me until then, the ‘Supermother’ aspect. At the same time (at the end of all the endings), the link is made with a ‘Burial’ that seemed to have been forgotten for nearly a hundred pages!

For the ‘rising tide’, it's a rising tide - let's hope that the end result, by which I mean this promised ‘vision’ that I'm about to bring out of limbo, will be equal to the means, namely a whole sea of philosophical and Freudian digressions on yin and yang... The tide began to turn (with the kick-off note ‘Muscle and guts’) on 2 October, with the crucial ‘new fact’ making its appearance in the following days 120 , while [◊ 574] any day now I'm getting ready to finally put this famous ‘association’ in black and white (it had appeared five months earlier, on 12 or 13 May, as soon as I'd finished thinking about the note ‘L'Éloge Funèbre (1) - ou les compliments’, on the same day as the crucial note ‘Le massacre’). But this fact was not ‘revealed’ in the notes until five days ago, on 8 November, after three preliminary notes on yin and yang in maths (written over the previous three days). It's the note ‘The rising sea...’. (122). The very next day, 10 November, with the note ‘Les obsèques du yin (yang enterre yin (4))’ (124), the ‘Supermother’ made her appearance (but the word was not used until the following day's note, ‘Supermama or Superpapa?’ (125)). And so we have the ‘third part’ of the Burial!

It was without any deliberate intention that I embarked, on the spur of the moment, on this retrospective of the reflection on Burial, from the perspective of the successive appearance of its three main aspects (as I see things at present). Occasional retrospectives of this kind, in the course of a long-term meditation, have always proved most useful, providing an overview of the process of reflection, and at the same time a fresh perspective on some of its main ‘results’121 . Perhaps what will strike the hypothetical reader of this retrospective most of all is that I made the diversions via such a long digression, rather than getting straight to that famous ‘association’ (still to come) and then saying no more about it, to finally get to the famous ‘final [◊ 575] stroke’ under Burial ; a line I was in such a hurry to draw in the note ‘L'Éloge Funèbre [2]’ of 29 September, when I was just getting back into the harness of the reflection left in abeyance in June! In fact, it was with this in mind that I began the following note three days later, ‘Le muscle et la tripe’, which begins with an allusion to this association, without giving any details about it.

If I didn't mention it then, and put it off from day to day and week to week for a month and ten days already, it was in no way a deliberate intention, which would have appeared at some point. If I try to fathom the cause, I would say that I must have felt instinctively, without even having to tell myself, that at the point I had reached, to write the association in question out of the blue would have made no sense; that it would have been like a simple ‘statement’, purely formal or verbal, while the rich substance covered by words that would have come to me by a pure effect of memorisation, would remain ignored, unperceived. Readers who are mathematicians (or scientists, if they are not mathematicians) are bound to have been in such a situation many times, and to have felt the unease that comes with being confronted with a statement that we can easily see is perfectly precise, where we also know the meaning of each of the terms used, and yet we feel that the ‘meaning’ and the substance of the statement escape us completely. The situation is perhaps even more common with non-technical texts which nevertheless express a tangible substance, strongly perceived by the author; with the difference, however, that it is much rarer for the reader to realise with any clarity that the meaning of what he is reading escapes him. In this case, there was even more to it than that - for myself too, who for months had no longer been ‘in the bath’ of the Éloge Funèbre and the associations that went with it, and who for years had no longer really ‘plunged’ into the reality of yin and yang (even though I brushed up against it at every step...) - even for me, what I could have written then to ‘say’ this association would have been a verbal thing, not really felt or perceived. Resolving to do so, or to put it more accurately, forcing myself to do so, would have been a purely formal way of discharging a kind of obligation, out of a sense of conscience, ‘completing’ in short a pensum while taking care to ‘give good weight’, not to lose along the way such an ‘association’ which (I remembered well!) had been juicy and steaming, and which had long since had time to cool and molder in a corner of the memory!

[◊ 576] If what I remembered was really to serve to deepen an understanding that remained fragmentary, it is quite clear to me that I could not then do without these hundred pages of ‘digressions’. They form the most profound part of the whole reflection pursued throughout Harvest and Sowing. I cannot yet predict whether the vision of Burial that I am about to unravel in their wake will leave me with a feeling of complete satisfaction, or whether there will remain obscure corners or dissonances that I may give up trying to illuminate or resolve, at least for the time being, or in Harvest and Sowing. But whatever the case, just as in my mathematical work, I know that each of these hundred pages, like each of the six hundred (give or take a few) pages of the text of Harvest and Sowing that I am now writing, has its own unique place, its own message and its own function, and that I could not have done without any of them (whether or not there are readers to follow me this far!). While the goal was far away (if not totally forgotten...), each of these pages brought me its own harvest, which it alone could bring me.

(c) Retrospect (2) or the knot

NOTE 127' (17 November) I've just had a pretty tough four days, with a lot of excitement around me. There was no question of continuing in the same vein, and my work on the notes was confined to a bit of housekeeping: rereading the part of the text that was to be typed up, and correcting the part that had been typed up. Between the ‘first draft’ of the text for each note, reread before I start on the next note, and the final net text, ready for duplication, I do at least three careful readings, making adjustments to expression during the first two at least. I'm going to get to know the text of Récoltes et semailles very well! But above all, I'm doing what's necessary to make sure that the text that's going to be duplicated is really the best I have to offer, including its form. With the exception of one of the notes in Burial, for all the sections and notes in Harvest and Sowing that I have written and reread, the last reading left me with a feeling of complete satisfaction. I felt that each time I had managed to say what I had to say as clearly and as nuanced as I was capable of doing, without hiding anything that was clear, understood, known to me at the time of writing, nor anything that remained obscure, vague, misunderstood or even entirely mysterious, unknown....

[◊ 577] The only exception is the note ‘The half and the whole - or the crack’ of 17 October, from which the ‘thread’ of the meditation split into two, on the two themes I have named (as sub-headings in the continuation of the notes ‘The key to yin and yang’) ‘Our Mother Death’ and ‘Refusal and acceptance ’122 . It's the last part of this note, the two or three pages where I talk about division in the person as the ultimate root of division and conflict in the couple, in the family and in human society. This is an intuition that first appeared to me in the early years after my ‘departure’ from the world of science, and which has developed, confirmed and deepened over the years, right up to the present day. It has become so ‘obvious’ to me (although I have never taken the trouble to examine it carefully from every angle), that it has crept into my thinking rather as a matter of course, without any effort to present it in such a way as to make this ‘obviousness’ even slightly apparent. But if reading these pages leaves me with an impression of vagueness and dissatisfaction, it's surely not simply a question of clumsy ‘presentation’. Rather, I have the feeling that I wanted to jump in with both feet over a substantial reflection on this complex theme, a reflection for which I have the feeling that I have all the elements in hand to make it, but which is not done for all that! In the note of 25 October (‘Paradise Lost’ (116)), which is directly linked to the note of 17 October (to develop the theme of ‘Refusal and Acceptance’ from there), I first try as best I can to ‘make up for’ the gaps I had noticed in the earlier note - but without in the end saying much more than simply this: that as far as a possible ‘journey to discover conflict’ is concerned, ‘that's not the direction I want to go in right now’, so too bad, that'll be for another time!

[◊ 578] In the previous note of four days ago, I went over three aspects, or ‘strands’, of the Burial picture that have emerged so far. In retrospect, I remembered that at two points during the reflection on Burial, I had felt, and written, that I was touching on the ‘crux’ of the conflict. These were in the notes ‘The Knot’ and ‘The Funeral Eulogy (2) - or strength and the halo’. These notes echoed reflections (apparently ‘quite general’) in one of the first sections of Harvest and Sowing, ‘Infallibility (of others) and contempt (of self)’ (section 4). It is self-contempt, the ignorance of the power that lies within us and that gives us the power to know and to create, that is also the source of contempt for others, of the endless reflex-compensation of ‘proving’ one's worth by putting oneself above others, by using (for example) the derisory power to demean or crush, or simply to cause pain or harm.

When I was writing this note, I certainly had no shortage of examples. The one most vividly in my mind at the time was Pierre Deligne, whom I had seen use his power to discourage and even humiliate in ways that often seemed inexplicable. It was only two months after writing this note that I began to discover ‘the Burial in all its splendour’, as can be seen from the notes of 19 April (‘Souvenir d'un rêve - ou la naissance des motifs...’, and ‘L'Enterrement - ou le Nouveau Père’ (51) (52)). Gradually, too, I discovered my friend Pierre's role as Grand Officiant at my funeral and obsequies. Most of the pre-June notes on the funeral (Cortèges I to X) focus on him. It is also the one about which I have incomparably richer and more personal material than for any of the other numerous participants. So, on the two occasions when I had the feeling of ‘touching the heart of the conflict’, it was he again, the only one with whom regular contact has been maintained to this very day, who was at the centre of my attention.

(d) The parents - or the heart of the conflict

NOTE 128 (18 November) Twelve hours of sleep last night - I needed it, after several rather short nights! I feel that I have regained some of the energy that was beginning to fray a little - here I am, more energised than yesterday, to pick up the famous ‘thread’ where I left off.

[◊ 579] Between the two moments I mentioned yesterday there was a kind of ‘flash’ in me, so clear and so strong that I wouldn't dream of questioning it - I mean, of questioning that it revealed something real to me, external to myself in this case ; that it wasn't something purely subjective, the product (let's say) of a simple deliberate intention to see some psychological ‘theory’ that I held dear applied - that it was, in short, the ‘butterfly’ providentially caught in his net by the butterfly hunter 123! To doubt such signs, whether in meditation or maths or elsewhere, would simply be to abdicate my power to know and discover. I'm lucky enough to know what that power is, and if there's one thing in which I have every confidence, it's in it.

I could think of seeing in this ‘flash’, in what it taught me, a fourth ‘part’ of the Burial picture, to be added to the other three (reviewed in the note of 13 November). But from the outset I see it as intimately linked to the two ‘Superpère’ and ‘Supermère’ aspects - and this obvious link goes far beyond the person of my friend. This misunderstanding of the ‘power to know and create’ within us, which I mentioned again yesterday, is nothing other than a misunderstanding of our fundamental unity, the fruit of the marriage in our being of ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ qualities, energies and forces. For what is ‘man’ in us, on its own, does not make us capable of knowing or creating, any more than what is ‘woman’ in us, on its own, gives us that power. It is not a factitious and derisory half of our being that has the power to know and create, but it is the whole, the totality of our being, that has this power. It has it, not as the result of a quest, a long journey, a becoming, that we would go through in a state of temporary powerlessness that would gradually accumulate ‘power’ along the way; but this power is ours by nature, we have received it as a free gift, from the day we were born 124.

And this ‘self-contempt’ or ‘self-unrecognition’ is nothing other than the rejection of this gift, the rejection of this fundamental unity and the power that is its inseparable companion. Or rather, it is like the inseparable shadow of this refusal, it is the knowledge of an [◊ 580] impotence 125 , established by this refusal; a knowledge that is certainly timid, blurred, unassumed, that takes great care to stop at the known (very badly known...), afraid as it is to dive deeper, to become aware of the unknown power hidden, and blocked by this deliberate, cultivated impotence.

The most common form that this denial of our unity takes, in our superyang society, is the burial day after day, hour after hour of the ‘yin’, the ‘feminine’ in us. That was precisely the ‘Supermère’ section, aka ‘Funeral and burial of the “feminine”’, and more specifically and above all, of the feminine within ourselves.

But I have a strong feeling that there is also a direct and profound link between self-contempt and the ‘Superfather part’, aka the ‘slaughter and burial of the father’. It is this strongly presaged link that I would now like to try to identify. To put this ‘presentiment’, this intuition, in another way: there must be a direct and profound link between the division within us and antagonism to the father.

It goes without saying that this ‘antagonism’ finds expression in relation to the biological father as well as to the person who took his place in childhood, or in relation to any other person who, at one time or another and for one reason or another, takes the place of a more or less symbolic ‘alternative father’ onto whom the original antagonistic drives are projected. My aim, then, is to identify the root cause of these antagonistic impulses and attitudes, so common that we might sometimes be tempted to regard them as universal; a cause that goes deeper than a simple set of concrete grievances, often quite tangible, that we may have against the author of our days. More than once, I have been able to observe that these grievances are often more in the nature of a [◊ 581] plausible and welcome rationalisation, for an antagonism whose real root, the cause of its vehemence and tenacity, lies elsewhere.

I could formulate this intuition that I am trying to pin down in another way, in the form in which it spontaneously presents itself to me: it is that I have the intimate conviction that in the one who is ‘one’, undivided, in the one who accepts himself in the totality of his being - in him, the conflict to the father, or to the mother, is resolved. He is autonomous, ‘free’ from either parent. The umbilical cord that continues to link us to our parents, long after childhood and adolescence (and more often than not, throughout adulthood and until death) - in him this link is severed. The moorings have been broken that until recently held us back from setting off on our own voyage of discovery of our Mother the World 126 .

This intimate conviction cannot be reduced to wishful thinking; it is not the projection of a wish (renamed ‘conviction’ for the occasion). It certainly originates in my own experience, and first and foremost in [◊ 582] what I saw in my relationship with my own parents. I'm thinking here of the profound transformation that took place in my relationship with my parents in the years following the turning point eight years ago, marked by this ‘awakening of the yin’ in me, then by the discovery of meditation in the months that followed, and finally by the ‘reunion’ with my childhood two days later 127 . I realise that this turning point was marked by an immediate autonomy, in contrast to a previous dependence on received and adopted ideas in particular. The most profound of all these dependencies was my dependency on my parents, whose values and options had shaped mine and my own vision of the world, and whose image of themselves, of the couple they formed and of their relationship with their children I had also taken on ‘en bloc’ and unchanged, without any change whatsoever. Ever since I was a child, I'd ‘functioned’ on the basis of this set of values, options and images, which were in no way the fruit of my own life experience and the work of assimilating it, but simply ‘baggage’. A lot of this baggage was made up of clichés and self-indulgent illusions, which I had taken over ‘with confidence’ from my parents, and which very often in my life replaced a direct and living perception, a creative perception of the things around me.

It's true that this ‘autonomy’ I'm talking about appeared immediately with the discovery of the power of meditation. It was total (I think) in everything I took care to examine. That doesn't alter the fact that a lot of preconceived ideas, especially those that came to me from my parents, initially remained in place through sheer inertia, because they hadn't yet been examined. There was so much to look at, there could be no question of looking at everything at once! Not to mention that, after a few months of intense work, I allowed myself to be distracted by ‘life going on’ - especially love affairs, as you can imagine 128 . For nearly two [◊ 583] years after that, my meditations were limited to a few occasional reflections of very limited scope, when I saw myself confronted with some situation of acute conflict, and urgently felt the need to see things clearly. It was only after August 1979 (almost three years after I discovered meditation) that I began the ‘great cleansing’ of the preconceived ideas about my parents and myself in particular, which continued to clutter me up and block my view of this fascinating world in which I live. Working on my parents' lives absorbed me for seven months, until March of the following year. I was then on the eve of my fifty-second birthday. It was through this work that the autonomy I mentioned, which in a sense had remained only ‘potential’ for three years, became fully present, complete and irreversible. It was also through this work, and only through it, that I was able to love my parents in the full sense of the word, that is to say: to accept what they were, or had been, with all that that had implied (and that I was then beginning to glimpse), and in particular, implied for me, their son.

If I felt the need to do this work (1281 ) and if I was able to do it, it was because three years earlier I had been able to accept the gift of life I had received at birth, and for forty years I had refused the gift of my unity. Or to put it another way, it was because I had been able to accept my own nature. It was through accepting and loving myself that I was able to accept and love my parents 129 .

I can also say that it was through this work alone that the conflict with my parents was ‘resolved’ - a conflict whose existence I had not suspected even a few years before, when my parents had [◊ 584] both been dead for more than twenty years. It is true that the basic note in my attitude towards my parents, from my early childhood, had been one of admiring respect, appreciation, unreserved identification, and after their death, a kind of tacit cult of their person and memory. This is not the kind of relationship we usually refer to as ‘conflict’, suggesting a basic note of antagonism, of enmity. They thought it was all very well and in the right order - and there can't be many parents who wouldn't like to be in their place, or who don't congratulate themselves when they are! It was only after this work on my parents, and even more so after the work on my childhood that followed, that I was able to realise fully, with full knowledge of the facts, the extent to which the idyllic relationship I had had with my parents had been false, fake, not ‘real’. It could only have survived by stubbornly erasing from a touching blackboard a whole host of things that didn't ‘fit’, including painful periods (of acute antagonism, often felt as a wrench), or chronic ‘blunders’ that recurred in the relationship between my mother and me with the same implacable regularity (even if less frequently) as had once been the case between her and my father. Not to mention things that had escaped my conscious awareness entirely, like the ‘big cross’ I had drawn over my parents at the age of eight, after two years spent in a foreign environment, with a hasty letter from my mother three or four times a year as any sign of life from either of them...

But the deeper reason, the real reason, why I call the relationship with my parents between the summer of 1933 (when I was five) and the winter of 1979/80 (when I was fifty-one) ‘conflictual’ is not that during those forty-six years there were conflicts between me and one or the other or both of them together - whether these conflicts were frequent or rare, violent or latent, conscious or unconscious. It's rather that this relationship wasn't accepted and couldn't be (as it was, I mean, without undergoing a profound transformation). It could only be lived and seen as I lived and saw it, through the effect of a constant, tenacious repression of my faculties of knowledge and understanding; through a stubborn refusal to take [◊ 585] cognisance of the true nature of this relationship, or at least, of certain essential aspects of this relationship, involving in an essential way each of my parents just as much as myself, and the image I maintained of us. To put it another way, the form that this relationship had taken was perpetuated by a stubborn, incessant flight from a reality that was all too tangible; a reality that was just as stubborn in making itself known to me again and again, without me ever really learning anything from it while my parents were still alive. The sometimes harrowing episodes of clear and undeniable conflict between me and one or the other of them were just some of the more or less eloquent signs of the ‘conflictual’ nature of the relationship with my parents, in other words of the repression and escape that took place within me.

To put it another way, a ‘conflictual’ relationship with another person, in the deepest sense of the term, is one that is ‘divided’, one that perpetuates itself through a process of repression and escape from reality, and which conversely helps to perpetuate these processes within itself. The signs of ‘conflict’, of ‘division’ in the relationship, can be as much in the nature of antagonism as in that of allegiance; it can be a deliberate expression of criticism or even disdain, as well as a deliberate expression of approval or admiration.

And here I am again, without having sought it or planned it, with what might be called my philosophical ‘dada’: that conflict between people is only the ‘sign’ of the conflict in each of the protagonists, or again: that the ‘source’ of conflict in society is the conflict, the division in the person. (The parents in all this ended up disappearing without a trace!).

This view seems to overlook entirely the more simplistic and by far more common view: that conflict between two people is the result of ‘interests’ or desires in one and the other that are ‘objectively’ antagonistic, i.e. such that the satisfaction of one can only be achieved at the expense of the other. This is the universally accepted way of seeing things, whether we are talking about the conflict between two distinct persons, or the internal conflict within the same person. Thus (in the first case) these incompatible ‘desires’ can be, in both of them, the desire to dominate, to set the tone, to call the shots - certainly one of the most [◊ 586] common cases, including between parent and child (and just as much, between wife and husband, or between lover and lover). I am not, moreover, denying all reality, all usefulness to this way of looking at things, in certain cases at least. But I see that it only concerns a superficial reality, while a deeper reality escapes it entirely. To give an example of this, I would point out that the desire to dominate (or to shine, or in general, to put oneself above others) is rooted precisely in this ‘self-contempt’, this ‘lack of self-knowledge’ mentioned earlier, which we try to escape by adopting attitudes and behaviours that blur and compensate for this secret lack of self-esteem. So, beyond the ‘objective’ conflict of antagonistic desires, we see in this case the conflict within the person, as the creator of desires of such a nature that they can only arouse and fuel antagonism towards others.

Of course, with these few comments I'm not going to exhaust the delicate and important question of the relationship between the two aspects of the conflict, which I'd like to describe as ‘superficial’ and ‘deep’ - and this is probably not the place to do so. Rather, I feel the need to return to the theme of conflict with the father, or conflict with the parents, from which I was moving away. At one point I may have given the impression (and even let myself be carried away by it for a few moments!) that conflict with a parent, or with Peter or Paul, was all the same. But I know that's not the case! I know that conflict with the father, conflict with the mother, is at the heart of the conflict within ourselves.

I spoke earlier, in this sense, of my ‘intimate conviction’ (which I would also call a knowledge within me, something well understood), that in the person who is not divided within himself, the conflict with the parents is resolved. This knowledge, I said, comes to me above all (I think) from the experience of resolving the conflict in my relationship with my parents 130 . Another way of putting it is that accepting our parents (i.e. ending the conflict with our parents) is part of accepting ourselves. They are (in relation to us) and our origins, [◊ 587] and our conditioning (or a good part of it, at least). The first of these things (our origins) is inseparable from our person, whatever our path and destiny; the other (our conditioning) is deeply rooted in us, and as such is as much a part of our person as our origins. To deny the true reality of our mother or father, whether the denial is expressed in antagonism or allegiance, is also to deny an essential part of ourselves and of what our life has been, as far back as we can remember...

And there's more. It was through our mother and father, before anyone else, that the conflict that was in both of them was transmitted to us. (This is what was expressed a few moments ago by the pithy term ‘our conditioning’!) This is how they are linked to the conflict in ourselves, more closely than any other person in the world. And the first external projection of this conflict within us, and the oldest and most crucial of all, is the conflict with our mother and father. So it seems to me that the conflict within ourselves, and the conflict with both our parents, are indissolubly linked - they are like one and the same conflict. Sometimes I've expressed the ‘intimate conviction’ that when the conflict within us is resolved (or at least, when it is resolved at its root, in the ‘yin versus yang’ division), then our conflict with our parents is also resolved; or, to put it another way, that the resolution of the conflict within us passes through the resolution of the conflict with our parents. But I'm convinced that the opposite is also true: that as soon as the conflict with our parents is resolved, the conflict within us is resolved at the same time 131 . This is why I see the relationship with our parents as a key role in our spiritual adventure, a unique role that belongs to no one else in our family, whether spouse or child, friend, teacher or pupil.

NOTE 1281 [◊ 588] (December 1) 132 The importance for me of ‘getting to know my parents’ was revealed to me by a dream, which came to me on October 28, 1978. It was a dream about my father's agony. This agony stretched out over days and nights of painful struggle, surrounded by the busy indifference of those around him, while the tacit consensus of everyone was that he was ‘already dead’ - ‘it was like a verdict, which would have made his death effective, cutting short all doubt’. When I woke up, I recounted the dream, but for the next three months I avoided thinking about it at all, to the point where it sank into the shadows of half-forgetting. In short, I then ‘buried’ my father's death, about which this dream spoke to me, just as in this dream (which evoked a crucial aspect of my waking life) I ‘buried’ my still living father. There was considerable resistance to the clear and penetrating message of this dream, which was so overwhelmingly beautiful. They were resolved at the end of a first night of stubborn meditation on the meaning of the dream, on the following 31 January, followed by four more meditations over the next three weeks.

This dream made me realise that my relationship with my father and mother was a frozen, ‘dead’ relationship, cut off from a living reality whose perception was repressed - just as (in the dream) the perception of an agony declared null and void, and the spontaneous action that followed from it, was repressed: to help the one who, painfully and abandoned by all, is struggling to live.’

[◊ 589] The first thing to put an end to my isolation was to get to know my parents. I had no idea at the time of the dimensions of the task, I imagined myself ‘in a few hours’ being able to get ‘to the heart of the matter’! The idea of getting to know myself, particularly through my childhood, didn't occur to me at the time. I felt the need to do so later, and it was to follow spontaneously from the journey I was about to embark on. That journey began only six months later, in August 1979, because of the long digression (though by no means unnecessary in many respects) that constituted the episode In Praise of Incest (see the note on this episode, ‘The Act’ (113)).

Along with the dream of 18 October 1976 (which triggered the ‘reunion’), this dream about my father's agony is one of the two dreams that most strongly affected the course of my life. It seems to me that the resistance to his message was much stronger. The message of the first was received within hours of waking up, whereas that of the second was put off for months. It only began to be fulfilled nine months later, with my departure on a voyage of discovery that continues to this day...

It was only in the last few days that I came to see the connection between the meaning of this dream and the reality of the Burial that I am trying to penetrate in the present reflection. This funeral, in which I appear as the ‘principal deceased’, appeared to me a short while ago as a ‘return of things’ (see the note of the same name (73)). This time, I see a ‘return of things’ again, but from an entirely unexpected angle. In L'Enterrement, I appear alternately as ‘the Father’ and ‘the Mother’. It never occurred to me that I'd ever been in a similar position as a son, ‘burying’ alive (if only symbolically, or by tacit consensus) his father or mother - quite the contrary! And indeed I had strong reasons for being persuaded of the opposite, reasons that I mention for the first time at the end of the note ‘The Massacre’ (admittedly in the context of the Father's massacre, not his burial). (I come back to this in more detail in the note ‘Innocence (the marriage of yin and yang)’ (107). In writing these last two paragraphs about my early childhood, in the note ‘The Massacre’, I must surely have given the impression (and even been under that impression myself at the time) that my relationship with my father had been free of conflict throughout my life. That's what a superficial look at the relationship might also suggest. But already in the note commented on here, ‘Parents - or the heart of the conflict’, [◊ 590] where I do not confine myself to such epidermal impressions, it becomes clear that this is not the case, that this view of things (which was indeed mine until 31 January 1979) was one of the illusions that I was happy to maintain for most of my adult life. This illusion became clear to me the moment I finally took the trouble to examine the meaning of the dream about my father's agony - the most beautiful of all the dreams that life has given me to date. This dream presents the grip of the conflict on my relationship with my father with striking realism - and it also lets me experience the resolution of this conflict. The conflict is resolved by a break in me with the consensus decreeing my father's death, a break that suddenly opens the door to something else - and by a gesture of love from my father, signifying that he had heard the cry that my constricted throat was unable to let out to him...

The deep kinship between the experience of this dream, a striking parable of a frozen relationship with my parents (which suddenly comes back to life...), and the reality of the Burial that I've been exploring for nearly nine months, is now so obvious to me. It's remarkable that throughout this long period of reflection, and right up until the last few days, the thought of this kinship never crossed my mind. I finally ‘stumbled across it’ by pure chance, in a footnote where I intended to point out, for all practical purposes, the role that a certain dream had played this time (in triggering a reflection on my parents), among so many others over the last eight years that have been like providential beacons on my path. This comment had the effect of putting me back in touch with the experience and substance of this dream, which I'm still a long way from having exhausted. Once this contact had been re-established, it was hardly possible, given the context, for the relationship with the Burial not to become apparent.

It's true that this kinship, for the moment, only concerns a certain ‘knot’, whereas in this dream and in the reality it transcribes, there is the knot, and its resolution. This resolution, moreover, which the dream had brought me to experience, the flavour and strength of which I knew from that night onwards, it was up to me and no one else to ensure that it became a lived reality in my waking life too, in my relationship with my father and mother. I was free to do it, or not to do it - and for months, I chose the latter! Today - five years after that resolution - it is surely still the same, in [◊ 591] this somewhat symmetrical situation in which I am involved, while I am the one who appears as the Father buried by a consensus-verdict, where I had been the son who devoutly buried his father alive in the flesh! And perhaps this time too, it is by meditating on the meaning of my experience, in this case, on the meaning of this Burial, that this other knot in which I find myself will be resolved, and perhaps another part of the weight of my past will dissolve.

As for knowing whether this meditation will be of any use to anyone other than me - to some protagonist perhaps of this Funeral where I am not the only one to be buried, and where legions of mourners have flocked to the funeral - that need not be my concern; nor whether the knot I see in someone else will resolve itself or not. That's his job, I've got enough of my own! But if by any chance it does resolve itself while I'm still alive, I'm sure I'll be one of the first to know, and I'll be glad to hear it....

(e) The enemy father (3) - or yang buries yang

NOTE 129 Decidedly, in the preceding pages 133 , I have barely scratched the surface of the theme of conflict with parents, and not even that of conflict with the father, which had been my starting point. The associations of ideas I followed from there seem to have distanced me from it, rather than deepening it. In what I have just said about conflict with parents, the roles of mother and father are interchangeable, just as it makes no difference whether the ‘we’ referred to in these pages refers to a man or a woman. However, in our relationship with our parents, mother and father play far from symmetrical roles, and the role played by each of them depends crucially on whether ‘we’ are a boy or a girl (who have since become a man or a woman).

In this case, the conflict with the father (expressed through his symbolic burial, or even his massacre) is of primary interest to me in the case of those I know to have actively participated in my funeral, all of whom are men. From then on, the father, in the structuring of the ego, is the one with whom we identify, on whom we model ourselves, in our relationship to others (and more particularly, to women), and in our relationship to ourselves. It is very rare for this [◊ 592] identification to take place without any major ‘burrs’, and antagonism to the father is one of the traces of this, a tenacious one if ever there was one. This is not the place to try to go round these burrs, everything that often tends to go wrong, for even the little boy best disposed to take his cue from Dad; nor to examine the expression they tend to take in the relationship with the father. My own experience on this subject is so atypical that I would perhaps be less well placed than anyone else to make such an inventory, even though I do not intimately feel, from my own experience, the ins and outs and the particular ‘flavour’ of any of the main cases 134 . My experience here is mainly indirect, through what I have observed around me, and first and foremost in my children's relationships with me.

Over and above the specific nature of the ‘blunders’, and the grievances and resentments towards the father that stem from them, there is one common aspect that I have strongly perceived on many occasions, even though any deliberate ‘explanatory’ statement was entirely absent. This is that the boy's or man's antagonism towards the father, who has served him as a model to a greater or lesser degree and whom he reproduces, whether ‘positively’ or ‘negatively’ (by imitation, or by opposition), whether he likes it and recognises it or not - this antagonism is nothing other than an aspect, particularly eloquent and crucial, of an antagonism towards himself. More precisely, it is the outward sign, through the (more or less clearly expressed) rejection of the father, of the rejection of a part of himself; of that, surely, by which (unwittingly, or against certain conscious or unconscious options) he resembles his rejected model - his father.

As a result, I'm back on my feet - I can see the link between ‘self-contempt’ (or ‘self-denial’) and ‘antagonism to the father’ becoming clearer - but I'm back on an unexpected side. I was prepared to find a more or less direct link between this antagonism to the father, and the refusal of the self in the form of the refusal (or ‘burial’) of the feminine in one's own person. Instead, I seem to have fallen back (as I should have expected, in ‘good logic’) on the rejection of the masculine. Yet I am well aware that this refusal, which is less obvious and more hidden in [◊ 593] men than the refusal of the feminine in them (which I have mainly had occasion to talk about), is scarcely less rare, and that it weighs on them just as heavily. Often it is added to the other, so that, however the ego is structured, whether in yin or yang colours, we are sure to be unacceptable to ourselves! Or to put it another way, this rejection of the father, or the rejection of what is ‘masculine’, ‘virile’ in ourselves and makes us resemble the father, often goes hand in hand with the unreserved adoption (in the absence of a rejected ‘yin’ counterbalance) of a ‘yang’, ‘macho’ value system to the tune of 135!

The idea occurs to me that this contradiction (truly appalling indeed, once said and written in black and white!) is undoubtedly also the real nerve in this merciless competition, which is one of the characteristics of our supermacho society (and this just as much in the upper echelons of science as anywhere else...). While ‘climbing’ and ‘surpassing’ are superyang values par excellence, these values would no doubt not be internalised with such vehemence, nor would they be put into practice with such brutality (albeit subdued, when it comes to the ‘upper echelons’... ) if in the rival who is in a better position than we are, whom we must surpass or even oust, we did not at the same time see looming before us the formidable shadow of the Father, at once admired, envied and secretly hated - the one who was there before us, and whose very existence, as far back as we can remember, has been the great challenge in our lives.

(f) The arrow and the wave

NOTE 130 (19 November) I felt impatient to continue where I left off. For a week now, in fact (since the note of 12 November, ‘The reversal (1) - or the vehement wife’ (126), I have had the feeling day after day that I am about to get ‘to the heart of the matter’ - to come to the overall picture of the Burial that I had promised myself, which would bring together the partial ‘strands’ that had emerged in the course of reflection - and also a week in which the ‘point’ in question was being postponed from day to day. Each day as I finish my note (since I have to stop and go to bed, as the hour advances), I do feel that I have done work that I could not avoid doing, that I have ‘advanced’ a notch - but at the same time I have the impression that the ‘point’ I want to get to has receded by that much! The obvious temptation here is to carry on in one go until I've got to the crux of the matter. But after the ‘health incidents’ of the last three years, I also know that this is the blunder to avoid.

What's more, I know deep down that I'm right in the thick of it. It's just that I'm gnawing at the bit. This impatience to get to the end of a task, this drive towards some ‘point’ or ‘crux of the matter’, intensely perceived in front of me - close by, or far away, it doesn't really matter - this attraction of the ‘goal’ to me that propels me forward, like an arrow hurtling towards its target - this aspect that seems to me the most intensely ‘yang’ of my person characterises my way of being outside work time. It's a striking aspect of the ‘boss’, of what is conditioned and acquired in me. Nothing I knew of in my early childhood could have foreshadowed this character, which appeared later in my childhood, and which has so strongly marked my entire adult life right up to the present day.

In the work itself, this aspect seems to have all but disappeared. I have the impression that the little that remains here and there is no more and no less than the sign of the boss's occasional interference, discreet it must be said, in the course of the work (where, to tell the truth, he doesn't give a damn!). The work itself, at the whim of the Worker who, through my hands, works at his own pace, follows a completely different rhythm. The impatient ardour is replaced by a peaceful, stubborn calm. There is no longer an arrow rushing towards a target, but a wave that stretches out far and wide, moving who knows where, wherever the moving force that drives it takes it - one wave followed by another wave, followed by yet another... There is no hesitation in this movement, in every place and at every moment it has its own direction that carries it, or draws it forward. In every moment there is a progression, we can't say towards what, there is a ‘work’ accomplished in a movement that ignores effort - and there is no goal. The very idea of a ‘goal’ here seems strangely preposterous - where on earth would we put it? The goal has disappeared, just like [◊ 595] the arrow. If there is an arrow, it is not a vibrating arrow that darts into the heart of a target to come and plant itself and sink into it - but in each place of this moving mass of waves following one another there is an unequivocal movement and force, there is a direction in a progression, as precise and clear as an arrow, invisible and yet imperious that would mark this direction, this force, this movement.

So it seems to me that in my work, I am as ‘yin’, as ‘sea and motion’, as one can be. This has been true, I believe, of all the work of discovery in my life, of all the work I have thrown myself into with passion, and above all, of my mathematical work and my work of meditation. And now that I have just unexpectedly described how I feel about this work in a sudden and compelling image, it seems to me that this image also describes the movement of my life, from the day of my reunion with myself, and perhaps even before that, from the moment, perhaps, of my ‘salutary uprooting’ from a cosy cradle 136 . At the very least, it describes the ‘how’ of my life at the deepest level, that of the ‘calm’ I spoke of (just a few hours ago) in one of the footnotes to yesterday's note - a calm that is unaffected by the agitation that takes place on the surface. In this deep stillness there is movement and progress, but there is no purpose - the purpose has disappeared.

And I also remember now that it was this same image that came to me in March, when I spoke of the manifestations of my two passions, meditation and mathematics, as ‘the moving up and down of waves following one another, like the breaths of a vast and peaceful breath 137...’. Now, eight months later, I think I recognise in these images the spontaneous movement of my being, in what is most spontaneous, in what is truly original in me - in what comes from the child eager to know, before it is touched by the preoccupation with appearances and the frenzy of becoming...

(g) The mystery of conflict

NOTE 131 [◊ 596] (20 November) Yesterday evening was spent almost entirely rereading the previous day's notes, correcting them on the way, retyping a page that was decidedly too overloaded, writing the footnotes (planned the day before) - and already it was midnight! But I was anxious to get on with it that evening, if only for a little while, so I went back to my typewriter to pick up where I left off the day before. And then something else came to mind - the image of the arrow and the wave. For a long time I had recognised myself in the image of the arrow, whereas the image of the wave seemed to correspond to a temperament quite different from my own. It's one of the surprises that came up in the course of this reflection on yin and yang that it's this image of the wave that expresses most strikingly, and most accurately, the ‘basic tone’ that prevails in my being, when ‘the boss’ is far away, or at least when he gives way to something else. The image took shape, as if it had been there all ready, just waiting for the words that would finally give it form. They came without haste or hesitation, as I simply tried to describe, as faithfully as possible, without glossing over or distorting anything, what was still just a vague feeling.

When the description was finished, it was around two o'clock in the morning. I reread these two pages that very night, so there was no need to make any alterations. The trickiest part was when I tried to describe this intuition of a continuous infinity of ‘arrows’, closing like a ‘field’ of forces. It was an idea that presented itself forcefully, and which seemed reluctant to let itself be evoked by language. Yet I felt that this was an important aspect of the whole image, the ‘yang in the yin’ aspect. In the wave there is the ‘arrow’, there is an impetus that carries it forward, following a movement of its own that is not that of an arrow, but rather that of a whole multiplicity, a continuous multiplicity that smoothly reproduces this movement of the wave. And I also knew that in my work I was also an ‘arrow’; but I was doing it in a different way to the one I had imagined until now, because I hadn't taken the time to look at this work with any attention, to immerse myself in it as if it were someone other than myself, in order to perceive its tonality. If I have not done so sooner, in the eight years that I have been meditating, it is undoubtedly because I have remained unwittingly the prisoner of an inveterate deliberate intention: that of identifying myself with the [◊ 597] ‘boss’ in me, rather than with the Worker-child; that is to say also, when I speak of ‘me’, of thinking first and foremost (perhaps even exclusively, very often) of the person I am when it is the ‘boss’ who is centre stage. More or less, these are also the times when I'm not at work.

The necessities and vicissitudes of teaching (among other things) have nevertheless, since the discovery of meditation, drawn my attention to certain features of my work - that is, features which I felt were universal in nature, that they should be present in all creative work, in all work of discovery 138 . But before this reflection on yin and yang, I hadn't yet thought of discerning distinctive features in my own work that make it different from that of any other. One of these features, which seems to me to be the most crucial of all, is finally identified in the note of 8 November ‘The rising sea...’. (122). The image first evoked in that note, in the typical context of a conjecture that had to be proved, is taken up again in yesterday's notes, in a different light, out of any particular context. Finally, I'll pick up where I left off the day before yesterday. I left 139 with the intention of trying to pinpoint the root cause of antagonism to the father, beyond the specific grievances we may have against him. Following the associations of ideas that came to the fore, I initially strayed from this aim, being led to talk mainly about conflict with parents, father or mother indifferently. This ‘conflict’ can take the form of allegiance (as it did in my case) or antagonism. Since my work on my parents' lives, this “conflict with parents” seems to me to be the real [◊ 598] “heart of the conflict” in ourselves. Resolving the latter, I am convinced, is no more and no less than resolving the conflict with the parents, in other words: to be free of them, to be fully autonomous spiritually, to pursue one's own journey...

Returning once again to antagonism to the father in man, I got back in touch with an intuition that has occurred to me many times over the last few years: it occurred to me that the profound meaning of this antagonism to the father is the rejection of that in us which makes us resemble the father, of the appearance and virile traits of our person. I have made this last part of yesterday's reflection 140 a separate note, with the name ‘The Enemy Father (3) - or yang buries yang’ - thus also suggesting, by this name, the link with the two sections ‘The Enemy Father (1), (2)’ (n os 29, 30), where this theme of the ‘enemy father’ appears for the first time.

Thus, the aspect of Burial discussed at the start of yesterday's reflection, namely the aspect of ‘self-contempt’, or ‘self-unrecognition’ or ‘self-denial’, appears as a kind of hyphen, or better still, a ‘hinge’, between the two previous sections, the ‘Supermother - or burial of the “feminine”’ section and the ‘Superfather - or massacre and burial of the father’ section. This hinge-like nature becomes apparent as soon as it becomes clear that in the first of these sections, ‘the feminine’ is first and foremost ‘the feminine in us’ (as was already clear in the note of 10 November ‘The funeral of yin (yang buries yin [4]’, where the ‘Supermère’ section makes its appearance); and furthermore, that ‘the father’ is first and foremost the symbolic substitute for ‘the masculine in us’. Thus the two aspects in question appear as perfectly symmetrical strands, corresponding to the two obvious ‘cases de figure’ of the ‘refusal of self’ - namely, the refusal of ‘the woman’ (aka the Mother) in us, and the refusal of ‘the man’ (aka the Father) in us 141 . And the [◊ 599] theme of conflict with the parents, which is a kind of conjunction or superposition of the two distinct themes of conflict with the mother, and the father, also appears as a kind of hinge. Or to put it better, as we saw in yesterday's reflection 142 , this theme appears to be inseparable from that of self-denial, the one and the other being two distinct aspects of the same undivided reality, that of conflict within ourselves.

In all this, it would seem that the initial aim of ‘identifying the root cause of antagonism to the father’ remains unresolved. I could say that antagonism to the father is one of the forms taken by antagonism to oneself, or self-denial. So the initial question seems to split into two. On the one hand, for what ‘causes’ does self-denial take on this particular form in certain cases? To investigate this is also to enter, in some detail, into a number of different typical situations likely to give rise to such antagonism.

On the other hand, we come back to the deeper and even more crucial question of the ‘cause’ of self-denial, that is to say, the cause of the conflict and division within us. I think I have at least grasped the common mechanism by which the generational conflict is transmitted, the rejection of ourselves within us, is nothing other than the internalisation of the rejection of us by our entourage from our earliest years - of the rejection at least of certain aspects and certain impulses within us, which form an essential part of our original being, of our creative faculties. I touch on this aspect of things (among others) in the ‘Refusal and Acceptance’ part of ‘The Key to Yin and Yang’, and more particularly in the first two notes, ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘The Cycle’ (116), (116').

Having grasped this common ‘mechanism’ of the transmission of conflict does not mean having understood the cause of conflict in us and (through us) in human society. Why, from time immemorial and in every place (according to the unanimous testimonies that have come down to us through the ages), does ‘Society’ not tolerate those who make it up as whole beings? That is to say, beings in full [◊ 600] possession of their creative faculties, who do not repress at great cost a part of what they are, considered so shameful (or so dreadful...) that it is better to ignore that it is, and tacitly rule that it is not...

For me, this is one of the great mysteries of existence, perhaps the greatest mystery of all 143 .

There was a time, just a few years ago, when my attitude towards the universal reality of repression and conflict was one of militant revolt - revolt against this ‘sword’ that tried to cut in two what, by its very nature, should be one, was one. That was my attitude when I wrote the Éloge five years ago 144 . It was through the long-term meditation that followed, on the lives of my parents, that this attitude changed. Through this work, which day after day brought me back into intimate contact with the manifestations of the conflict in my parents, and which patiently led me from the manifestations to their meaning and their cause - through this work I finally came to feel the mystery of the conflict. The rebellious attitude had disappeared, as if it had never existed. It had been an epidermal reaction, a simple dispersion of energy. A revolt - against whom? Not against one person or a group of people, against the notorious ‘Them’! We're all in the same boat, and we've been here for a million or two years... A revolt against ‘God’? That's all it would have taken.

[◊ 601] Deep down, I've known for a long time (I can't even say how long, even though for a long time I pretended not to know...) that everything in this world has its good reason for being, and even, if you understand the essence of things, surely everything is good as it is. Death and the ‘beyond’ of death (if there is such a thing) is one of those things. It's a mystery, and if there is a ‘faith’ in me about it, it doesn't consist in ‘articles of faith’ about the existence (or non-existence) of an afterlife and its particularities, but simply in this simple assurance: that things are perfect as they are, including everything to do with death, and also everything to do with birth, which is just as mysterious. For a long time, however, I had excluded ‘conflict’ from these things - I saw it as a kind of ‘blunder’, an inadmissible blunder, a stubborn and bizarre (even revolting) ‘blip’ in the concert of Creation. All it took was for me to get to know the conflict a little more intimately, instead of wasting my time pretending to fight it, for my relationship with it to change profoundly.

The mysteries of death and the ‘after-death’, of birth and the ‘before-birth’, are not unique to our species. The questions they raise have meaning for all living beings, perhaps even for everything from an electron to a nebula. The mystery of conflict, on the other hand, seems to me to be unique to man, to the human species 145 . It appears to me as the great mystery of the particular meaning, the particular destiny of our species. The ‘explanations’ that have been given by ethnologists and [◊ 602] psychologists, at least those that I have heard of, are clearly no more than rationalisations, to justify the repression suffered and internalised, as indispensable to the smooth running and very existence of society ; just as in a society of penguins or one-legged people, there will be no shortage of eminent theorists to prove (without anyone thinking of contradicting them) that a society in which people had the use of both arms (or both legs) could never function 146 . These are convoluted justifications, trying to conceal a mystery with explanations that purport to be ‘scientific’. In fact, the question of the origin and meaning of conflict (or repression) in human society remains purely rhetorical, as long as those who pretend to ask it have not gone through an intense and in-depth process of understanding the conflict itself, and the origins of conflict within it. In the absence of such self-knowledge, this question (like the questions about the nature of freedom, or love, or creativity) is a modern equivalent of the medieval question about the ‘sex of angels’ - a stylistic exercise in ‘fitting in’ what needs to be fitted in anyway. Strictly speaking, this question is not a ‘scientific’ question, one whose examination does not presuppose maturity, but simply a certain preliminary knowledge, and a certain level of intellectual power or agility 147 .

In this case, it's not a question of trying to guess the mechanisms by which repression was established in human society [◊ 603], in other words, to find an explanation for the fact of repression. Even supposing we came up with a plausible, even convincing scenario, I wouldn't feel much further ahead for all that. It might shed some light on an interesting aspect of the mystery - the ‘mechanical’ aspect, in short - but it wouldn't penetrate it. Neither the detailed results of palaeontology and molecular biology, nor even Darwin's profound ideas, really penetrate the mystery of the appearance of life and its creative flowering on earth over the last three or four billion years. What interests me in the mystery of conflict is not the mechanical or scientific aspect, an aspect that is as external to me as Fermat's famous theorem. But it is the question of the meaning of conflict. This meaning concerns me in an immediate and essential way, just as it concerns each and every one of the countless men and women who have torn each other apart and killed each other over countless generations, and who have passed on to their children the conflict taken up from their parents.

That there must be a meaning to conflict, and that I can know what that meaning is, is surely part of the ‘faith’ I was talking about earlier. It's obvious to me - and that familiar ‘sense of mystery’, that there's something deep there to be probed, tells me at the same time that this ‘something’ is precisely that meaning. The ‘faith’ in question overlaps with faith in my faculties, when they reveal to me, here without the shadow of a doubt, that there is a ‘meaning’ before me to discover.

Perhaps one day this meaning will become apparent, as if I had always known it! This mystery does not seem distant or unapproachable. It presents itself to me as something very close at hand, that it would be up to me to know more intimately. And surely I can already see a way of approaching it, or rather an aspect that already seems to be giving me a friendly sign. After all, conflict has a lot to teach me, and it has already taught me a lot...

(h) The reversal (2) - or ambiguous revolt

NOTE 132 (22 November) That's two notes in a row now where I see myself embarking on excursions quite outside the programme - this time [◊ 604] I'll be careful to start with what was planned, for once. I would like to examine one of the ‘typical situations’ mentioned (without further precision) in the previous note, situations likely to give rise to antagonism to the father, and more profoundly, a (more or less radical) rejection of virile traits in oneself (which rejection finds its symbolic expression in the rejection of the father). I remembered the situation in question from the reflection of 18 November, ending with the note ‘The enemy father (3) - or yang buries yang’. My intention then was to point out, in this ‘typical situation’ at least, a direct link between rejection of the masculine and rejection of the feminine.

The case study closest to me, and on which I had also worked at length, was that of my mother. All her life, she had indulged in a barely disguised contempt for everything feminine, she had modelled herself on masculine values to excess, and at the same time her relationship with men had been, since her adolescence, a ‘viscerally’ antagonistic one 148 . I was very fortunate that my mother spoke to me very freely about her life from childhood onwards, and that I had access to very detailed autobiographical notes up to the early years of her life with my father, not to mention a voluminous correspondence. In addition to my own experience of her life, this is exceptionally rich material, which I am far from having exhausted. I've worked with her enough, however, to have sensed, beyond any doubt, that the double rejection in her that I've just mentioned - rejection of the feminine and antagonism towards men - was rooted in a torn relationship with her father. Her father, an endearing man in many ways, generous, honest and affectionate, had become embittered in the course of a long social decline in post-war Germany (14-18, I mean), of which there were so many. To tell the truth, this downward spiral had begun even before, from the status of a well-to-do man driving a carriage to that of a travelling shoeshine boy. Under the spur of worries and disappointments, his short-tempered temper sometimes turned to family tyranny, of which his wife, in frail health, [◊ 605] bore the brunt above all. My mother, deeply attached to both her father and her mother, was repulsed by these episodes of paternal tyranny, suffered in silence by her mother, who sometimes couldn't take it but never complained. The child was passionately identified with her mother, the victim of paternal arbitrariness, and at the same time the role played by her mother (the role of victim, the passive role - ‘the role of a woman’...) seemed intolerable to her. There was this identification with the mother, expressed in a revolt, a visceral antagonism towards the father, and at the same time there was this leap of faith that ‘I will never be like her’ (who suffers without rebelling), a leap that could only mean at the same time ‘I will never be like women’.

But at an even deeper level, there was also a desire for the power of the father, of the man, who allows him to dominate as he pleases. And my mother's life was dominated and devastated by this all-consuming passion to dominate; and above all, to dominate and break the man - the very man who aroused in her such a surge of raging revolt, the man who by his very nature was supposed to dominate her - just as her father had dominated her mother, suffering, pale and powerless, his power.

I was going to write here that the reflection now ‘joins’ that pursued in the note ‘The reversal (1) - or the vehement wife’, of 12 November (126). As I didn't remember that note very clearly, I've just reread it. Strangely enough, I had forgotten that this note was prompted (like today's) by my mother's ‘case study’. Ten days ago I felt reluctant to go into this case in any depth. If I've come back to it today, overcoming this reluctance (which I'd also forgotten in the meantime!), it's undoubtedly because there was an aspect of the situation that had remained unclear. I had also forgotten that the starting point for today's note, ‘the intention to put my finger on... a direct link between the rejection of the masculine and the rejection of the feminine’, had already been the initial motivation for the reflection of ten days ago, following naturally on from the question that ended the previous day's note, ‘Supermaman or Superdad?’ (125). In fact, the last sentence of this reflection from 12: ‘It doesn't take much to see the “missing link” between...’, would seem to say that I thought I had accomplished my task for the day ([◊ 606] to establish such a link). If I have entirely forgotten that I had already uncovered this link, and even that I had been asking myself this question even before the note of four days ago (on which I followed up today's reflection), it is undoubtedly because I had not yet been fully convinced by the brilliant conclusion I have just quoted, formulated no more than six days before this note ‘The enemy father (3) - or yang buries yang’. The situation becomes clearer by quoting the whole sentence:

That's all it takes to reveal the ‘missing link’ between antagonism to the Superfather (symbolically expressed in the burial of the aforementioned), and contempt, rejection of the ‘feminine’, and, more profoundly, denial of the ‘woman’ in oneself (perhaps expressed in the symbolic ‘burial’ of a ‘Supermother’, amid a plethora of dithyrambic epithets for double use...).

In this conclusion, there was one step missing, which made it hasty: it was the link between ‘antagonism to the Superfather’ and the rejection of the ‘masculine’, a link that only made its appearance in the reflection with the quoted note of 18 November ‘The Father the enemy (3) - or yang buries yang’. Antagonism to the Father then appeared to me as the symbolic expression of the much more crucial reality of refusing the yang, ‘masculine’ side of oneself. In the ‘symmetrical’ case of the rejection of the feminine, this link between the symbolic expression and its deeper meaning had already been perceived when the ‘Supermom part’ appeared, in the Note of 10 November ‘The funeral of yin (yang buries yin [4])’ (124). So the two ‘opposing’ strands that appeared in the note of the 11th, ‘Supermom or Superdad?’, namely the burial of the Father and the burial of the Mother, were seen the day before yesterday as symmetrical manifestations of self-denial (or self-contempt), taking the dual form of the denial of the masculine and the denial of the feminine in one's own person.

In my note of the 18th, ‘The enemy father (3) - or yang buries yang’, I confined myself to the case of a male ‘subject’ - even though the most extreme case known to me is that of my mother! My mother was completely forgotten in this reflection, and had been for ten days already (if not hidden under the heading ‘my parents’ in the note of 17 November).

It's the knowledge I have of my children and their relationship to me, which four days ago made me feel a link between antagonism to the father, and [◊ 607] the refusal of the masculine in oneself. To tell the truth, for each of the four (of my five) children that I've had the opportunity to get to know fairly closely, I've more than once in recent years sensed, behind attitudes of inveterate antagonism towards me, their father, a rejection of the virile side of their being, and above all, of the impulse within them that launches them out to meet the world - and makes them resemble a rejected father! I had never asked myself whether this was a general fact; or rather, there was a sort of unexpressed presumption in me that it must be so, without my ever feeling the need, before the reflection of four days ago, to formulate the thing clearly, let alone to examine it with any care. To tell the truth, this kind of ‘general’ question was not at all one of those I asked myself in meditation, whose purpose had been more down-to-earth: to understand myself, above all through my relationships with others - and thereby also, to some extent, to understand ‘others’, i.e. those with whom I was entering into a relationship.

Of course, in my reflection four days ago, when I suggested that there must be this link, that antagonism to the father was the expression of a deeper conflict, namely the rejection of the ‘man’ in himself, it was still a simple presumption, suggested by my very limited experience. This link seems at least plausible to me, and more particularly in men, but I don't claim to ‘see’ this link in general. I don't have this ‘intimate conviction’ about it, which I so often choose as my very sure guide. In the case of my mother, for example, I can see that antagonism to the father was the source of an occult and virulent antagonism towards virile traits in a man, but not at all for such traits in a woman, quite the contrary. It's true that the mere fact of placing great value on masculine traits, and cultivating them to excess within oneself, may not necessarily mean that you fully accept the yang side of your being; after all, that would also mean accepting the ‘yin within the yang’ that is spontaneously found in any ‘dominant’ yang trait, which of course was not the case with my mother.

But the thinking here is taking a rather dialectical turn, which doesn't inspire me with confidence! I prefer to refer instead to my direct perception of my mother, as refined by my reflection on her life and that of my father. I don't remember ever having had the feeling that there was something in [◊ 608] her that was fundamentally ‘virile’ that she rejected. On the other hand, I strongly perceived in her this contradiction, or rather this heartbreak, of one who cultivates within herself (like so many weapons), and who cherishes more than her life, the very traits which, in men, arouse in her such vehemence, and whose life has been crumbled (and prematurely consumed) by this fever of constantly meeting and confronting and reducing to mercy in others the same force on which she has staked her all and which is devastating her own life, as it devastates the lives of all those dear to her.

(8) Masters and servants

(a) Reversal (3) - where yin buries yang

NOTE 133 (24 November) The cases referred to in the previous note of the day before yesterday are not, to my knowledge, the only ones to confirm this presentiment that a superyang imbalance in the father (whether or not this imbalance takes despotic forms) is reflected in the children by a rejection of yang, which in turn can express itself in many different ways. In boys, in the cases known to me and which are present in my mind at the time of writing, this rejection takes the form of a (more or less complete) repression of the virile side in his own person - and this rejection will surely follow him throughout his life (unless profoundly renewed, which is certainly rare). My mother's case shows me that the same is not always true of a girl - unless my mother also had a certain rejection of the virile side of her being, expressed in a more subtle way and which would have escaped me until now 149 . What is striking in her case, however, is the opposite extreme effect - that of an overdevelopment of virile traits in her (in addition to an aversion to everything feminine). I know of other cases in the same vein, in men (my mother's father, for example) - that of a revolt against the father, expressed by the development of a strongly masculine personality, capable of confronting the father ‘on equal terms’. As I haven't had the opportunity to see such a case up close, I'm inclined to think that it must be rarer. But it doesn't really matter.

[◊ 609] If there is one point common to all the cases of which I have had close or distant knowledge, it would be this: a superyang imbalance of the father is reflected on the child by an imbalance, which can be in the yin direction (perhaps the most common case), or in the yang direction 150 . In all the cases I can think of (though I wouldn't dream of making a systematic list of all those I've heard of), this imbalance is accompanied by a relationship of antagonism to the father. I have the impression that it is also accompanied by a visceral antagonistic attitude towards male third persons, in whom the yang traits are strongly marked, at least when these are not balanced by the complementary yin traits - in other words, towards men in whom a superyang imbalance prevails, reminiscent of that of the father.

Such a superyang imbalance (like the opposite imbalance) is certainly likely to arouse unease in anyone, as I have already had occasion to observe 151 . But this uneasiness does not necessarily translate into an automatic antagonistic attitude - it is not uncommon, for example, for it to be resolved (or at least to disappear from the field of consciousness) by an attitude of submission, of more or less unconditional admiration, or of allegiance.

I am reminded here that these were certainly the most common tones in relations to me (with my aura of prestige), within the mathematical world - at least among those colleagues (or students) who (as I wrote elsewhere) ‘did not feel protected by a comparable renown’, or (I would add here) those in whom a certain inner balance, a certain spontaneous knowledge of their own strength, did not exclude such overtones. But undoubtedly it is in the nature of such a relationship of ‘allegiance’ that it conceals a hidden antagonism, which manifests itself (openly, or in a way that still remains occult) when a favourable opportunity presents itself...

I have just followed a few associations, which take up and complete the reflection of the day before yesterday (in the previous note, ‘Le renversement (2) - ou la révolte ambiguë’), and by the same token, that of the note of 18 November, ‘Le Père ennemi (3) - ou yang enterre yang’. They make me realise that the relationship between a certain state of yin or yang imbalance in one of the parents (in this case, a yang imbalance in the father), and the repercussions it has on the child, is by no means unequivocal, as I hastily suggested. Undoubtedly, the form in which the parental imbalance, in this case the father's, is transmitted must depend on many other factors, both the family environment (and more particularly, the mother's person and attitude) and the child's birth temperament 152 .

But to tell the truth, that wasn't the direction I had in mind when I started thinking about this earlier. Rather, I was thinking of pursuing a completely different association of ideas, which has been present since the reflection of 12 November, when the dynamic of the reversal of yin and yang roles was introduced into the reflection for the first time (in the note of the same name, ‘- or the vehement wife’ (126)). Perhaps the reader will have made the connection on his or her own - the fact remains that when I raised this question on 12 November, and again the day before yesterday on 22 November, somewhere in the back of my mind, as if on mute, was the thought of two other occasions when ‘reversal’ had already been mentioned, in the course of this reflection on Burial. The first was in the note of the same name in Cortège V, ‘Mon ami Pierre’ (note 68' of 28 April). The second occurrence is in a footnote in the reflection of 30 September, part of the note ‘The Funeral Eulogy (2) - or the halo and the strength’. There is even a third such occasion, but between the lines, at the beginning of the next day's reflection, which opened the reflection ‘The key to yin and yang’. (This is the note ‘The muscle and the gut (yang buries yin [1])’ (106), of 30 October.) [◊ 611] This is the content of the famous ‘association of ideas aroused by The Funeral Eulogy in three parts’ alluded to there - the very one that triggered me off that very day, to set off on this digression on yin and yang that I've been pursuing for nearly two months. Now might be the perfect time to let the cat out of the bag, since I've been talking about it, not to mention thinking about it since the day after 12 May, after the note ‘The Funeral Eulogy (1) - or the compliments’, more than six months ago.

What these three situations have in common is that they involve a ‘reversal’ of roles between me and my friend and ex-student Pierre. In the two cases that were clearly formulated, as mentioned a moment ago, I appear as my ex-student's ‘collaborator’ (if not outright pupil!). The first time, it's as if I had contributed (admittedly in a messy but sometimes interesting way) to the development of the ‘powerful tool’ of ℓ-adic cohomology by my brilliant predecessor and friend. The second time, when we are quoted in a breath (for having ‘linked topology, algebraic geometry and number theory by “interdisciplinary” means...’), it is by the clever means of a typographical ‘oversight’ that the same reversal of a reality is suggested, as if by the greatest of coincidences 153 . The meaning of this reversal becomes more tendentious than a simple question of precedence (within, in this case, an institution that only I, along with Dieudonné, ‘started’ at the scientific level, but which I had left a long time ago), when we pay attention to the choice of eulogistic epithets (‘theories of legendary depth’ for one, ‘brilliant discoveries’ for the other, who is also entitled to the underlining, along with everyone else except me). This meaning was illuminated ‘in a striking way’ in the reflection ‘Les obsèques du yin (yang enterre yin [4])’ (124), of 10 November, in which the reflection on yin and yang suddenly ‘landed’ in the middle of a Funeral Ceremony: to one the accumulation of epithets (dithyrambic at times) yin and superyin, to the other yang and superyang...

This is what had already struck me the day after the note [◊ 612] ‘Les compliments’ of 12 May, even before I had had the chance to explain it in as much detail as I did a fortnight ago. According to the way I felt at the time (which I'll have to revisit here), there was a real reversal of reality there, or more precisely, a ‘reversal’, taken to a caricatural extreme, of a basic reality that I felt was something nuanced, balanced. I saw myself as a person with a strong ‘yang’, even super-yang, dominance, at least in my most apparent, most obvious traits, and particularly those that are obvious to others 154 . On the other hand, I sensed in my friend Pierre a basic yin temperament, much more balanced than mine had been in the days when we saw each other often and he was my pupil.

I believe that this apprehension of reality was essentially correct. If I have sometimes, in recent years and even more recently 155 , sensed an original ‘yin’ background note in myself, it seems to me that I was the first and only one to sense it - that it was above all through my yang or ‘virile’ traits, often quite invasive, that I was constantly apprehended by others 156 , both on a conscious and unconscious level - at least as far as personal relationships were concerned. These relationships (apart from romantic ones) mainly, if not exclusively, involve ‘the boss’ in us, what is conditioned. The new fact that emerged in the course of thinking about yin and yang, that in my work my approach to things is predominantly yin, ‘feminine’, doesn't really contradict what I already knew. He qualified it, correcting me on a point where I had tacitly put everything ‘in the same bag’. And all things considered, it seems to me that the sudden and strong impression I'd had of a caricatural ‘reversal’ of a reality, or more precisely, of an intention to make such a deliberate reversal - that this ‘intuition’ was also essentially correct, albeit sketchy. It is the reality imperfectly grasped by this intuition that I would now like to investigate more closely.

(b) Brothers and spouses - or the double signature

NOTE 134 [◊ 613] (November 25) I would first have to try and get a closer grasp of this impression, which is obvious to me, that the ‘background note’ in my friend Pierre is a yin note. As I see it, this is true both at the level of the ‘me’, as I've seen it expressed in particular in his relationship with me and others, and in his work, i.e. at the level of the drive for knowledge, the creative faculties within him.

As far as the first aspect was concerned, he and I obviously had complementary temperaments, with the added nuance that what was excessive, what was ‘superyang’ in mine, seemed to disconcert him somewhat at times. It was above all, I think, this constant forward projection towards the accomplishment of my tasks, this isolation from everything that wasn't related to them, that aroused in him a kind of incredulous astonishment, in which I sensed a tinge of affectionate regret - the same regret that I had felt many times in my mother, when she saw me so cut off from the beauty of things around me 157 . It wasn't a feeling of unease, strictly speaking, a sign of rejection of a certain reality. At least, I don't remember a single time when I felt that he was uncomfortable with me, or when I had the impression of an attitude or movement of rejection, of distancing, or even of a *** between us. And I have no doubt that this was in no way a deliberate ‘diplomatic’ gesture on his part, from someone who had decided not to let anything show. On the contrary, he sometimes expressed the ‘astonishment’ I was referring to, without any trace of embarrassment or irritation. Clearly, the basic tone in our relationship, and one that has never wavered to this day 158 , was one of affectionate sympathy, through which no shadow crossed.

[◊ 614] This remains a strange fact for me, and one that I don't think anyone could have suspected before the episode of my departure from the IHES (and even then, at the level of what ‘passes’ directly in a tête-à-tête, let's say), the fact that from the first years after our meeting there was a deep, essential ambiguity in his relationship to me, through the presence of a hidden antagonism, of a desire at least to distance himself from me, and the desire to evict. The latter manifested itself in a particularly brutal way (which left me stunned at the time), although infinitely subdued in manner, during the episode of my departure from the IHES (mentioned in the section ‘The eviction’ (63)). My friend had just been co-opted as the fifth ‘permanent’ member of the IHES, largely thanks to my warm efforts in this direction. In the ‘explanation’ that took place between us (perhaps there were several, I couldn't say), he never lost that perfect, smiling naturalness, with all the aspects of benevolent kindness, that made him so endearing. He then explained to me, without my detecting the slightest hint of hesitation or embarrassment, and even less of antagonism or enmity, or secret satisfaction, that he had decided in his youth to devote his life and all his energy to mathematics; that this dedication to mathematics, which was his, for better or for worse, had to take precedence over anything else; that the reason why I was waiting for the joint support of my colleagues and in particular of himself (to ask for the suppression of funds coming from the Ministry of the Armed Forces) seemed to him to be entirely unrelated to mathematics; that he regretted, of course, that this was a prohibitive circumstance for me, and that, in view of life ‘axioms’ different from his own, I was going to leave the IHES for a cause which, from his point of view, seemed of no consequence; but that, to his great regret, he could not associate himself, any more than my other colleagues, with a request which was foreign to him, and the outcome of which was entirely indifferent to him (1341 ).

In essence, I have given the ‘manifest’, explicit content of my friend's speech, as my memory recalls it, without any effort to try at the same time to find and restore a style of expression, or the atmosphere of a conversation, of which I have retained no particularity beyond what I have said here. The episode took place at a time when I didn't yet have the slightest suspicion that, behind the manifestly harmless (and sometimes strangely absurd) content of a speech, there was often a very different message being expressed quite clearly and in a muted way. This one was surely perceived at the unconscious level, but desperately rejected, repressed from the conscious field. As I suggest in the note quoted above, ‘The Eviction’, it surely took considerable energy to succeed in evacuating a message that was nonetheless quite dazzling enough! Yet it was in this note, written more than fourteen years later, that I took the trouble for the first time to subject this episode to conscious attention, and to clearly formulate the meaning that had been denied for so long.

Here I have followed one of the threads, undoubtedly the strongest, of the associations that presented themselves to me. I did so with a certain reluctance, as if by this ‘digression’ I were distancing myself from my main purpose. However, I realise afterwards that this is not the case. Without doubt, the image of a person and a temperament that emerges spontaneously from the description of concrete situations in which they find themselves involved is more vivid and convincing than a list of ‘traits’ that are supposed to define them. Rather than launch into that, I prefer to note yet another association, and embark on another digression, by comparing the relationship examined here with that between Serre and me. In terms of the relationship between our persons, the impression that prevails for me is by no means that of a ‘complementarity’ as with Pierre, but rather that of an affinity between two temperaments, each strongly ‘yang’ to the other. On more than one occasion during our eighteen years of close mathematical communication, this affinity has manifested itself in occasional frictions, expressing itself in passing chills, none of which have lasted long. As I remember it, these episodes were caused by casual impatience on Serre's part, which didn't sit well with my own susceptibility. Sometimes Serre was annoyed by the obstinacy with which I pursued an idea against all odds, when it seemed important to me. I would bring it up again at every opportunity, without worrying whether it would ‘pass’ or not, strengthened as I was by the conviction (which was rarely mistaken) that I had ‘the right’ point of view. I don't know why Serre had developed an aversion to my cohomological ‘big fuss’ - perhaps he was simply allergic, like André Weil, to all ‘big fuss’. On the other hand, when I began to develop ‘my’ cohomological yoga, in the second half of the 1950s, Serre was practically my only occasional interlocutor - so it wasn't looking good! I [◊ 616] believe that he only consented to take a cautious interest in this work, and only began to realise that it was leading somewhere, with the development of stale cohomology from 1963 onwards, followed the same year by my sketch of a demonstration (‘in four spoonfuls’) of the rationality of L-functions 159 .

It seems to me that the relationship between Serre and myself was typical of a yang-yang affinity, unlike the relationship with Deligne, which was a yin-yang complementarity. In terms of mathematical work and the style of approach to mathematics, on the other hand, the situations were reversed. As I said in a previous note (‘The nine months and five minutes’ (123)), I feel that Serre's approach and my own are complementary, in the sense of yang-yin complementarity. It was this very complementarity that gave rise to the occasional friction, due to the strongly yang temperaments of both him and me.

The relationship between Deligne's and my approaches to mathematics was quite different, without a doubt. I can say, without reservation, that it was with Deligne more than with anyone else that I had the experience of a perfect affinity in our ways of seeing and approaching the mathematical questions that interested us both. This experience has been repeated every time there has been a mathematical dialogue between us. It's quite clear to me that this is in no way a coincidence - due, for example, to the influence I had on him during those decisive years of learning. This affinity did not develop over a long period of familiarity - on the contrary, it was present from our very first contacts, and was the force at work in creating, almost overnight, a bond of such strength, rooted in our shared passion. It is a deep affinity between two approaches [◊ 617] to mathematics, pre-existing our meeting, and which express (I am convinced) an important aspect of the original temperament in both of us - a yin ‘basic tone’ in the apprehension and discovery of things 160 .

There is no question of ‘demonstrating’ such an intimate conviction, any more than I would dream of wanting to ‘demonstrate’ that the basic tone in my own mathematical work (let's say) is yin, ‘feminine’. At the very most, it's sometimes possible, in the case of such things, to ‘pass on’ a feeling from one person to another, and trigger in the other a realisation of something to which they had not previously paid attention; something that had escaped their conscious attention, while nevertheless already being ‘registered’ somewhere, in diffuse form. The situation is surely blurred, as it so often is, by the efforts made by the person concerned to mould himself according to the values in honour, the yang, ‘masculine’ values. While I can see that his mathematical work and the (considerable) influence he has exerted are profoundly marked by his ambiguous relationship to me, I doubt that the efforts in question to erase a basic temperament related to mine, rejected - that these efforts have been crowned [◊ 618] with success. Certainly the rigorous dispositions, which were not yet at play in him before my ‘departure’, have for a long time prevented him from dwelling (at least in writings intended for publication) on things too far below him, or on those which are today anathema. Yet it seems to me that in what he publishes, he has not been able to refrain from following the style of approach that is spontaneously his own. At least, that's the impression I got when I leafed through the sparse number of offprints he was kind enough to send me from beyond the grave, after my ‘death’ fifteen years ago.

But of course, my understanding of Deligne's mathematical approach goes back to the years before my ‘death’, between 1965 and 1969. For five years we were both very much in touch with the same things, and our mathematical communication was uninterrupted (except for a year he spent in Belgium), and more intense than that I had with any other mathematician, including (it seems to me) Serre. On more than one occasion I have had occasion to talk about those years 161 , which were marked by intense creativity on the part of both of them. For my friend, they were marked by an impressive start, which didn't surprise me because it seemed so obvious! It was a time when his very sure sense of substance, of what is tangible behind the most abstract appearances, or in the most general non-sense formulations, was not yet obscured by complacency, nor by the burial syndrome that appeared later. He then made numerous contributions to those themes (extreme-yin, I might say) that later consensus (with his unreserved blessing) had long since excluded from the ranks of ‘serious mathematics’ 162 : topos formalism, cohomological ‘big fours’... I review and pin up these contributions, with obvious pleasure, in [◊ 619] the introduction to SGA 4 163 . Other such contributions (among others even more ‘muscular’, which immediately placed him among the ‘big stars’) can be found in my 1968/69 double report, referred to in the note ‘The investiture’ 164 .

NOTE 1341 (26 November) 165 A typical detail: these military funds, about which no one wanted to lift a finger as long as there was talk that they would be the cause of my departure, were abolished in the very year of my departure amid general indifference! You never know, it might upset a distinguished guest who's a bit fussy in this respect... The funds in question represented only a small part of IHES resources (5%, if my memory serves me correctly). Without having to consult each other, my four colleagues at IHES (not counting the director) were unanimous in seizing the opportunity to get rid of me (almost at the same time, incidentally, as the director himself). And I thought I was indispensable, and loved!

(6 December) The two physicists at the IHES, Michel and Ruelle, were unhappy that the ‘Physics’ section at the IHES was a bit of a poor relation, next to the mathematics section, represented by Thom, Deligne and myself (including two Fields medals!). This imbalance had just been exacerbated by Deligne's co-option (which, incidentally, had been done with the unreserved agreement of Michel and Ruelle, and unanimously by the IHES Scientific Council, with the exception of Thom). There had been consultation between physicists [◊ 620] and mathematicians at the IHES, to put pressure on the director, Léon Motchane, to re-establish a fair balance between the two sections, as far as possible. I presume, however, that my physicist colleagues must not have been unhappy to see this imbalance effectively redressed, and much sooner than they had hoped, with the sudden prospect of my departure.

As for Thom, he was annoyed that Deligne had been co-opted against his formal opposition. He had described Deligne's contributions, all unpublished, which I mentioned in my glittering ‘investiture’ report, and which obviously went over his head, as mere ‘exercises’! What shocked him about Deligne's accession to ‘permanent’ status at the IHES, on an equal footing with himself, was that the young Deligne - he was twenty-five at the time - was not already covered in honours. According to Thom, such a position should only be the crowning achievement of a career. It was a far cry from the heroic years, less than ten years later, when I was welcoming a still unknown Hironaka into my makeshift premises... Still, Thom was so bitter that he was thinking (according to what he told me himself) of leaving the IHES and returning to his professorship in Strasbourg, which he had been careful (more cautious than I had been when I left the CNRS for the IHES) to keep. Through my warm sponsorship of Deligne I had been the first and foremost cause of his frustration, and I presume that Thom must have felt, in his heart of hearts, that I had only got what I deserved through my impertinence, seeing myself forced to leave the IHES just a few months after having introduced my brilliant ‘protégé’ to it!

As for the Director, at a time when he found himself cornered by the unanimous desire of the permanent staff to leave, he then (according to a tried and tested tactic that he used to perfection) played the game of ‘divide and rule’, using the question of military funds as a convenient means of creating a diversion, and at the same time getting rid of the most troublesome of his permanent staff. (A masterly turn of events, given that the secrecy he had maintained around the presence of these funds appeared to me to be an additional and compelling reason to force him to leave! ) That didn't stop things from going on for a long time after I left, and his departure from the IHES closely followed mine - from the man who, like him, had been part of the IHES from its first precarious and heroic years, and who, [◊ 621] with him and by his own means, had ensured its credibility and durability.

(c) Yin the Servant (1) - or the new masters

NOTE 135 (26 November) One of the many affinities between Deligne and myself, in the years before my departure, was the pleasure he took, as I did, in developing (when the need arose) what I call ‘big jobs’. Most, if not all, of my energy as a mathematician was devoted to such tasks. If you were building a house, doing ‘big jobs’ would mean : not just making a tantalising sketch of the house, or even two or three from different angles, or even detailed plans, with dimensions and all; but bringing in and cutting the stones one by one to be used to build it; assemble them into walls, lay the beams, rafters and tiles; fit doors and windows, washbasins, sinks, drains and gutters; and install (if you're really going to live in it yourself) everything down to the curtains on the windows and the drawings on the walls. It could be a large house, or a one-room cottage - but the spirit of the work is the same. And as long as you live in it, you may have done everything thoroughly and to the end, but you soon realise that the work is never finished, that there's always something new to come - at least when the ‘big stuff’, sorry, the house, is vast.

Most of my energy as a mathematician, between 1955 and 1970, was devoted to starting up and developing at full speed four big ‘fourbis’ - without, of course, reaching the end of any of them, see above. These are, in chronological order, the cohomological tool, schemas, topos and motifs 166 . These four master themes are intimately connected [◊ 622] to each other, like separate buildings on the same farm or hamlet, all working towards the same goal. And each of these ‘big edifices’ necessarily led me, through no fault of my own, to develop other ‘big edifices’ that were already much smaller - a bit like building a large house or even a whole hamlet, which leads you to install a lime kiln, a carpentry and joinery workshop, and so on. Every year, for example, the need arose again to add two or three (small) ‘big elders’ to the arsenal of categorical notions and constructions. People who have come ten or twenty years later, who have found everything ready-made and are comfortably settled in (and even others who basically know what they're dealing with), shrug their shoulders with an air of condescension at so much unreadable nonsense (Deligne dixit) and splitting hairs (Spitzfindigheiten, as an illustrious German correspondent called them, even though he was well disposed towards me 167 ). These are people who have no idea what it is like to build a house on level ground, and who will probably never build one, contenting themselves with playing landlords in those that others have built for them, with their two hands and with all their heart.

[◊ 623] I was a bit brisk just now, seeming to lump my friend Pierre in with those who ‘have no idea what it is like to build a house...’. Not only did he see me at work, but he was delighted to build his own, as if he'd never done anything else in the twenty years he'd been in the world. Incidentally, this story of ‘big eagles’ and building houses and all that (in case the reader hasn't already noticed...) is yet another aspect, or another image, to capture something that I had previously tried to grasp as best I could with the image of ‘the rising sea’, then with that of a train of waves following one another 168 . It's a question of the ‘yin’ or ‘feminine’ mode of apprehending reality, and of the corresponding process of immersing oneself in it and extracting an image that renders that reality with suppleness and fidelity. So here I am, taking a diversion via myself, to return to my initial aim - that of ‘passing on’ this strong perception that I have of a kinship, an essential affinity between Deligne's approach to mathematics and my own. But in this aspect of Deligne's work that I have just tried to define with the help of an image, there was a complete ‘blurring’, it seems to me, after my departure and death in 1970 - I think that the ‘big fourbis’ are totally absent from his ‘later’ publications. Certainly he could not reasonably have made use of this trait in his disowned master, in order to debunk him, while tolerating that same trait blossoming in himself, in accordance with his own nature.

It's true that if it's not a question of following an inner need, the expression of an elementary impulse, but simply of increasing one's prestige through the accumulation of results that ‘make a mark’, my friend really had no interest in continuing to embarrass himself with (more or less) ‘big stuff’. Even in my day, and outside the Bourbaki group (which was itself involved in a rather large ‘big mess’!), it was already a rather frowned-upon thing to do. This is hardly surprising, given that the ‘superyang’ blinkers in our society and in the consensus of the scientific world are nothing new. This was perhaps the main reason why the houses I took pleasure in building remained uninhabited for many [◊ 624] years except by the bricklayer himself (who was at the same time also the architect, the carpenter, etc.). And even today, even the part of my work that has long since become common heritage (and even where there is still no other reference available than my writings), remains surrounded (at least for those who are not part of the beau monde and who make no point of looking down on it) by an almost awe-inspiring halo, as if entering it would require almost superhuman faculties. It's true that it's often long, and it couldn't be otherwise, given that everything is well and truly done, by hand and in detail, from beginning to end, with even explanations at each chapter's turn telling us what we're getting at 169 . It didn't seem to me that my students, when they were working with me, had too much trouble getting into the swing of things. But that was at a time when the ‘tangible results’ had already won the backing of the mathematical establishment, and my students worked with the assurance that they were playing a ‘safe’ card. I have the impression that, since then, more and more people take pleasure in endorsing the ‘unreadable’ version 170 , in accordance with a fashion that is even more tyrannical today than it was in my day.

But even setting aside the desiderata of fashion, when it comes to calculating profitability and ‘returns’, care must surely be taken to avoid ‘big stuff’ like the plague. Developing ‘big stuff’ and making it available to everyone is a service to a scientific community that often accepts it reluctantly. I've never been too bothered by this understandable reluctance; I knew that [◊ 625] I had the ‘good stuff’, and that sooner or later people wouldn't be able to resist coming to it. But even as they came to it, the ‘returns’ in terms of ‘credit’ could only be modest. If I were to draw up a numerical balance sheet, not of the concepts, questions and ideas that I introduced and developed in the fifteen years between 1955 and 1970 and which have either become part of the common and anonymous heritage, or have been buried without music (waiting to be exhumed with great fanfare), but of what might be called ‘great theorems’, I doubt that I would even find ten. Perhaps the total time directly devoted to proving them is of the order of a few weeks, or a few months at most. There wasn't a single one before 1957 (Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck theorem) - and yet I know I hadn't wasted my time in the three years before that. For all I know, none of the ‘great theorems’ would have been proved by now (although that was not my main concern), if I had not stubbornly followed a passion for understanding within me over those fifteen years, trusting the approach it dictated, whether or not it was ‘profitable’ (in terms of one desiderata or another), or whether or not it was well regarded in the wider world. Each time, this approach consisted of starting with a strong intuition, or a handful of such intuitions, and taking them as a solid, foolproof thread that pulled me into the unknown; And in doing so, to change the image, I couldn't help but gradually, with the unknown in the process of making itself known, like rough stones that you ‘know’ by cutting them, build houses, some very large and some not so large, and all fit to be lived in - houses where every nook and cranny is destined to become a welcoming and familiar place for many. The doors and windows are plumb and open and close without cracking or creaking, the roof doesn't leak and the chimney doesn't pull. It doesn't have to be Notre-Dame de Paris, and there's no ‘great theorem’ hidden in the bread basket of each one - it's simply houses that had to be built, and that I built to be lived in. I found my joy in making them, beautiful and spacious, knowing full well that the work I was doing, alone or in company, had to be done and that each moment was as good as I could make it.

It was this spirit, too, that I found in the Bourbaki group in the 1950s, and which meant that I felt at ease there, ‘at home’, notwithstanding the differences in background and culture, and the occasional difficulties that I mentioned in its place. At that time at least, it was a [◊ 626] spirit of service that I found there. Service to a task, and beyond the task, service to other men, eager like us to understand things small and great, and to understand them thoroughly and to the end. This ‘service’ did not take the form of austere duty or asceticism. It arose spontaneously and joyfully from an inner need, it expressed something in common that linked these very different men.

And it is this same spirit that I recognise in the Cartan seminar, where so many French mathematicians got their start, and later (in the 1960s) in my own seminar (known by the acronym SGA, ‘Séminaire de géométrie algébrique du Bois Marie’). One of the differences between the two seminars was that mine were strongly focused on the development of the ‘big fourbis’ mentioned earlier (i.e. ‘my’ fourbis), for which there were never too many hands, whereas the themes followed by Cartan from one year to the next were more eclectic. What seems more important to me is what was common to the two seminars, and above all, what seems to me to have been their essential function, their raison d'être. To tell the truth, I can see two of them. One of the functions of these seminars, close to Bourbaki's purpose, was to prepare and make available to everyone easily accessible texts (by which I mean essentially complete texts), developing in a detailed way important themes that were difficult to access 171 . The other function of these seminars was to provide a place where motivated young researchers, even if they were not geniuses, could learn the trade of mathematicians on topical issues, in contact with eminent and benevolent people. Learning the trade - in other words, getting down to work, and at the same time finding an opportunity to make a name for yourself.

It would seem that my departure in 1970 marks the end, in France at least, of the ‘great seminars’ - lasting places where, year after year, some of the great themes of contemporary mathematics are being worked on - and also benevolent and inspiring places, for [◊ 627] all those who come to get their hands on them. I don't know if there are any elsewhere in the world (in Moscow perhaps, at the instigation of I. M. Gelfand?). What is certain is that such places are decidedly contrary to the spirit of the age, just like the ‘big fourbis’, written out in black and white, meticulously, for all to see.

It's no coincidence that hardly anyone writes careful and (provisionally) exhaustive papers any more, on subjects that have been well-developed over the last ten years or even twenty, that are clearly crucial, and which in the meantime are only accessible to a handful of people ‘in the know’. Anyone who is part of the mathematical ‘big world’, unless at the same time they are also part of the ‘handful’ in question, will have no difficulty, if need be, in being informed by one of these people, who will be happy to oblige. As for the others, what the hell! Back in the 1960s, I saw a lot of books clamouring to be written. I would have written them myself, but I couldn't do everything at once. To my knowledge, none of these books has yet been written 172 . However, I know more than one person (if only among the ex-students) who was in the know and who had the feeling and the knack to be able to write the book that needed to be written (and still needs to be written) without difficulty. And from what little I've seen of the later work of some of them, I don't get the impression that it was the abundance and difficulty of their more personal work that prevented them (‘sorry, I really don't have the time!’) from providing this service to the famous ‘mathematical community’. For more than one of them too, there is even a good chance that this would have made him more famous, as the author of a book that has been read and quoted (even if not everything he exposes necessarily [◊ 628] comes from him - but the ‘how’ is by no means a negligible quantity...), than through the more or less thick bundle of his separate printings.

Visibly, it's not a simple ‘lack of time’ that is preventing some of us, with impressive unanimity, from making accessible to everyone what remains the privilege of a few - or even from having (if only here and there, the time to write a book, let's say) an attitude of ‘service’. Here I am irresistibly reminded of the SGA 5 seminar in 1965/66, which for eleven years was suppressed, for their own personal benefit, by the very people who had been its first and only beneficiaries, my friend Pierre and my other cohomology students in particular! It's true that there was a corpse to share, so the motivation was a bit special in this case. But I'm also thinking of other cases, where the service performed made up for obvious shortcomings, and where it was brushed aside out of hand by the people in place 173 . People will say that these are still rather special cases, that it was my person who was targeted, when it was visibly clear that it was I who had inspired the work in question. Yet I can sense a ‘spirit of the times’ in all this that goes beyond any specific case.

The aspect of the ‘zeitgeist’ that I'm trying to identify here, as best I can, is the discrediting of an attitude of service - a discrediting that I perceive through a host of converging signs, and which for me is a patent fact. Everyone is free to deny it, just as they are free to examine it for themselves and see for themselves. My purpose here is not to ‘prove’ it to a reluctant reader, but to try to grasp its meaning.

From the point of view of this reflection, the first meaning is obvious. The attitude of service is typically a ‘yin’, ‘feminine’ attitude, and it's not surprising that it's one of those that is devalued. The nuance that I thought I perceived many times was that such an attitude was just right for those who did not have the means of a ‘master’ attitude - that work done in this spirit [◊ 629] was menial drudgery, good for the pedestrians among those who ride the coach of great ideas and ‘brilliant discoveries’.

However, I also know that there is more to it than that - for otherwise, why should we prevent at all costs a ‘pedestrian’ of good will (when by chance there are any) from quietly doing in his corner the lowly work that is rightfully his, finally providing solid references where previously we had to content ourselves with saying (when we deigned to say something...) ‘we know that...’ or ‘we can demonstrate that...’, or more rarely and more honestly ‘we will admit that...’?!

I was first confronted with this troubling question eight years ago, during Yves Ladegaillerie's misadventures in trying to ‘fit in’ his thesis 174 . It was, I confess, at a time when my interest in mathematics and the world of mathematicians was at its most marginal. I was a bit flabbergasted, without trying to unravel the meaning of this mystery. With a few variations, my attitude didn't change much in the years that followed, until last February, with the reflections in Récoltes et semailles. And yet, by dint of picking up on signs, and even if I didn't mean to, I couldn't help but gradually pick up on their meaning, or rather, their meanings. I can see two of them. One has to do with me - it's the burial syndrome, which I haven't quite got round to yet. The other has nothing to do with any particular person. It has to do with an attitude of exclusivity in the possession and control of scientific ‘information’, an attitude that prevails within the scientific ‘establishment’, making it a kind of ruling caste by divine right, within the so-called scientific ‘community’175 .

This is a theme I have already touched on (barely, barely) in the note [◊ 630] ‘Deontological consensus - and control of information’, and a little also in ‘The “snobbery of the young” - or the defenders of purity’ (25), (27). I suspect that this is a new development in the world of science, which has taken hold at a snail's pace over the past two or three decades. I don't think I was among those who propagated and welcomed this unwritten ‘new ethic’, the ethic of double standards. If I have any co-responsibility for its advent, it is rather that I did not see it coming 176 . Before the last few years, I had no idea that the unrestricted access to information that I had enjoyed practically since my first contacts with the scientific world in 1948 had become, over the years, and I can't really say when or how, a huge privilege that I shared with a handful of friends - a class privilege, to use a term that is often overused, but which seems to me to express a very tangible reality.

But my aim is not to make a ‘class analysis’ of the mathematical world, and of the ‘relations of force’ and ‘means of power’ in that world - any more than it is to make a ‘picture of morals’. It's time to return to a [◊ 631] more limited purpose - that of understanding, in its essential springs in the main protagonists, the ‘news item’ of my early funeral!

(d) Yin the Servant (2) - or generosity

NOTE 136 (28 November) The previous two notes were essentially digressions on the theme of the yin-yin affinity between Deligne and myself, in terms of mathematical work and approach to mathematics. I don't know whether they helped to ‘get across’ my perception of this affinity and its nature, which for me is beyond doubt.

I have written elsewhere that ‘in my work, I am as “yin”, as “sea and motion”, as one can be’. On reflection, I would say that this is not literally true - that one ‘can be’ even more so, because (as I see it) Deligne is even more so than I am. Or at least, the ‘yang in the yin’ seems more pronounced in me than in him. What is fiery in me takes on a more measured air in him. Where I launch myself forward boldly, more than once he will remain cautious, and often well-founded, in his expectations. As long as I have the beginnings of an idea, an ‘end’ that I can get my hands on, I don't hesitate to throw myself into a mathematical quagmire that I feel is substantial, without bothering to take a closer look at the initial idea (ihr auf den Zahn fühlen, as they say in German...), or to predict the outcome of the melee. Sometimes the idea doesn't make sense, for some obvious reason that escapes me because I'm so keen to ‘jump in’. Eventually I realise - sometimes I feel like an idiot, and yet it's rare that I regret having taken the plunge. That's how I make contact with an unknown substance - by rubbing up against it, whether ‘advisedly’ or not.

My friend, on the other hand, first probes and examines - and sets off, when he feels sure, if not of the point of arrival, which would be asking too much, then at least that there is somewhere to land, and that he won't come back empty-handed. I never got the impression from his work that there was any dispersal of energy, as there often was with me - but rather that with him all the strokes work. From this point of view, his style of work bore the mark of maturity, whereas mine bore more the mark of youth, sometimes muddled by dint of being fiery. When we first met, however, I was approaching forty, whereas he was twenty. And more than once, I sensed in him a kind of smiling indulgence towards me, the kind of indulgence a benevolent adult would have towards a child he had grown fond of, when he saw me still embarking on some (small) ‘big mess’, without ever doubting anything...

The aspects I'm mentioning here are no doubt difficult to detect in published works ‘on the net’, which present a final, or at least advanced, stage of reflection. I am no less demanding in my work than he was, and I hardly ever entrusted notes to a typist or printer until they had reached a stage where they satisfied my need for complete clarity. On the other hand, in the style of writing that I follow in Réflexions mathématiques (and particularly in À la poursuite des champs), the original approach to the work is apparent on every page. Readers will notice many ‘missteps’. They are all small - usually spotted the next day or two, if not the very same day, and rectified in the pages that follow (I was surprised myself that this should be the case - it is one of the signs of the extraordinary ‘ease’ of my mathematical work, which I have discussed elsewhere 177 ). One of the reasons for the ‘little misses’ was of course my lack of familiarity with a subject I hadn't touched for seven or eight years - and these blunders became rarer as the work progressed, as the contact I'd gradually lost was re-established. Nonetheless, this way of taking at face value, without hesitation, what my rather nebulous memory was telling me about things that I knew more or less well at the time, illustrates the ‘go-getter’ aspect, and sometimes the messiness, that constitutes (among other things) the ‘yang in the yin’ aspect of my mathematical (or non-mathematical) work. I'm convinced that an equally spontaneous text written by Deligne would be much closer to what is commonly considered ‘publishable’ - and even publishable according to his own demanding criteria.

[◊ 633] If I insist here on the character of ‘maturity’, of ‘yin very yin’ in the style of work and approach to mathematics of my friend, it is in no way to suggest by this the idea of any imbalance in his work, that this work would be marked by a lack or absence of ‘yang’, ‘virile’ qualities. If that were the case, his work would not bear the delicate and unmistakable mark of beauty on every page, like Serre's or mine. But this is not the place, any more than I did in the case of Serre or myself, to follow the delicate harmony of yin and yang, of the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’, line by line in his published work, which is known to me, and in what I know of his work through the personal contact I had with him for nearly two decades.

Nor should it be thought that my observation of a balance between yin and yang is a kind of truism, that it would immediately apply to any man who, in one capacity or another, appears to be a ‘great mathematician’. This perception of beauty that I just mentioned is not equally present, or to the same degree, in the work of all the mathematicians who have left a lasting mark on the mathematics of their time. Among them, I know of two who, like Deligne, seem to me to be predominantly yin in both their work and their personality, and whose work has never given me the impression of an inner balance, of a beauty that never leaves you wanting more. The yin imbalance is so extreme in one of these colleagues that he seems entirely incapable of even formulating clearly and correctly the slightest definition or the slightest statement (let alone an idea...) - even though he has a deep intuition about many things, and has introduced a number of important and fruitful ideas. Each time, they have taken shape through the work of others. Visibly, in his work and in his way of being, there is an unusually effective repression of ‘yang’ traits and forces. This repression takes on the proportions of a veritable powerlessness, including in his work, where he would be incapable of achieving anything on his own. He compensates for this impotence of being by an attitude of megalomania, internalising at the same time the defects that he likes to cultivate in himself, as if it were thanks to them that he could have [◊ 634] conceived ideas that (in his eyes) make him the great scientist of the millennium 178...

I sense a repression in the opposite direction in my friend Pierre, evacuating certain ‘yin’ traits and leading him (with more or less success) to model himself on a superyang image. This repression is a long way from the opposite extreme I've just described. It does not go so far as to erase from the reader or interlocutor the feeling of beauty, of satisfaction without any aftertaste of unease, which are the signs of a true understanding, giving at every moment their fair share to clarity and shadow, to mystery. In other words, the ‘superyang’ brand image chosen by my friend should hardly encroach on his work itself, at times of work I mean, when the presence of the ‘boss’ should most often be as effaced as it is (I think) with Serre, or with me 179 .

On the other hand, it seems to me that the role of the boss becomes important, even invasive, when it comes to choosing work themes. There is this fixed idea of distinguishing himself from me, and by the same token the refusal to follow certain inclinations of his own nature which are too strongly associated in him with the image of the disowned master. So while he may, as anyone with great means does, prove difficult theorems (or even ‘proverbially difficult’ ones), and even introduce and develop beautiful ideas, he would never dream of naively ‘rethinking’, in his own way and even if only in broad outline, an entire science (such as topology, which could really do with it...) - or even of creating new ones. ) - or even to create a new science from scratch, to ‘bring new worlds to light’ (as I wrote elsewhere) (1361 ). However, if there is anyone for whom I have no doubt that he has the means, it is he. If there is anything he has lacked up to now to do it, it is generosity - true generosity, which is at the same time a calm assurance, which makes us follow the impulse of our own nature wherever it carries us, without [◊ 635] worrying about either encouragement or ‘returns’.

But there is also the joy simply of ‘building houses’ large or small that others will inhabit, without it necessarily being on the scale of ‘a whole science’ or a ‘new world’ - that of lugging around and laying stones and beams like the first mason or carpenter who comes along, without fearing in so doing that we will be taken for this or look like so-and-so - or of putting within everyone's reach what (at the whim of some) must remain the reserved fiefdom of the very few. This is an attitude of service, a certain humility, another expression of the same generosity mentioned earlier, of the same fidelity to one's own nature. My friend has exchanged it for an attitude of self-importance (‘me - doing such work!’) and a caste attitude 180 , in terms of the choice of work themes that are supposed to be ‘acceptable’.

Finally, there is a third attitude or force, whereby ‘the boss’ has an influence on my friend's choice of work topics, on the substance he gives himself to probe, a force that sets him imperative barriers. It's the ‘master's funeral’ syndrome, or gravedigger's syndrome. It's not just a matter of refraining from naming the one who must remain ignored. It's also a question of burying the work itself, or more precisely, of ‘cutting it off’ cleanly, as if with a chainsaw, in one's own work as in that of others, at the level of each of the main branches sprouting from a vigorous trunk 181 . As I recalled the day before yesterday (in the previous note, ‘Yin the Servant (1) - or the new masters’), of the four major themes I identified and developed during my period as a ‘geometer’, between 1955 and 1970, only one was ‘taken up’ and used in broad daylight by my brilliant pupil and [◊ 636] successor, the other three were ‘cut down’ - muted, of course. There was a very partial exhumation of one of the themes in 1981, and another the following year - like puny shoots that had sprouted from the scarred stumps of the main branches that had been cut off, and which for the occasion had been surrounded by garlands of bright colours and gaudy neon lights, just to give the impression...

NOTE 1361 (4 December) 182 My own approach has constantly led me to ‘rethink’ from top to bottom everything that stands in my way as a mathematician, whether it is something of the most insignificant appearance, or whether it has the dimensions of an ‘entire science’. It's true that, having only two arms like everyone else, I haven't always been able to go so far in implementing a programme of work to ‘remake an entire science from top to bottom’, as I did in the case of algebraic geometry, starting from a few very simple key ideas around the notion of the diagram. Even in this case, where I invested a large part of my energy as a mathematician for twelve years in a row, I was far from ‘completing’ the planned programme - for that, I would have needed twelve more years! (And no one after I left bothered to continue the task, which must have seemed (wrongly) thankless...)

As other cases where I rethought a science, but certainly without going that far, I would point to homological algebra (both commutative and non-commutative - the latter, incidentally, did not yet exist when I first thought about it in 1955), and topology, with the introduction of the notion of topos, which is still waiting for its time to become the daily bread of the geometric topologist, in the same way as the various notions of ‘spaces’ and ‘varieties’ that are commonly handled today 183 . No doubt certain important parts of current topology will hardly be affected [◊ 637] by the systematic development of the topossical point of view in topology. So this point of view would seem to me rather the crucial element in the ‘creation from scratch of a new science’ - of that science which achieves a synthesis (still entirely unexpected at the time I arrived, in the 1950s) of algebraic geometry, topology and arithmetic 184 . Beyond the construction of the new algebraic geometry, and through the ‘mastery of étale cohomology’ (and that of the ℓ -adic cohomology which follows from it), it is the elaboration of a master builder of this new science still in the making, and the development of solid technical foundations, which was in my eyes my main contribution to the mathematics of my time. The ‘yoga of motifs’, which is still conjectural, seems to me to be the soul, or at least the nerve centre of this new science, which is so vast that until now I had not even thought of giving it a name. We could call it, perhaps, arithmetic geometry, suggesting by this name the image of a ‘geometry’ that would be developed ‘above the absolute base’ Spec ℤ, and which admits of ‘specialisations’ both in the traditional ‘algebraic geometries’ of different characteristics, and in ‘transcendental’ geometric notions (above the basic bodies ℝ, ℂ or ℚℓ... ), via the notions of analytic or rigid-analytic ‘varieties’ (or better, multiplicities), and their variants.

I see yet another ‘new science’ that I had glimpsed as early as the 1960s, taking its source in my reflections on homological algebra begun in 1955. It is a vast synthesis of ideas coming from homological algebra (as it developed in contact with the needs of algebraic geometry, or better said, ‘arithmetic geometry’), homotopic algebra, ‘general topology’ version topos, and finally the theory (in limbo since the 1960s) of (non-strict) ∞-categories, or, as I prefer to say now, ∞-fields. I had expected, as a matter of course, that this synthesis would be taken in hand by some of my cohomology students, starting with Verdier [◊ 638] whose famous thesis 185 was supposed to go precisely in this direction. It seemed to me that the development of a satisfactory common language, having all the generality and all the desirable flexibility, should be a matter of a few years' work, surely exciting, by a small nucleus of motivated researchers. After some very fragmentary beginnings in this direction by some of my cohomology students, my departure in 1970 signalled an immediate abandonment of this work programme, among many others that were close to my heart. This is why I returned to some of my ideas in a 1975 correspondence with Larry Breen, in the hope of reviving a vision of things that I felt were ‘in the way’, and that ‘everyone’ was careful to avoid whenever they were confronted with them. In my letters to Larry Breen (reproduced in Chapter I of In Pursuit of Fields), I proposed calling this science still in gestation, which for a decade or two I had been alone in glimpsing 186 , topological algebra. Finally, fed up and despairing of seeing anyone other than myself tackle a task that had been burning to be undertaken for twenty years, I set to work in February 1973, with À la poursuite des champs, to sketch out, at least in broad outline, the master plan for what I saw to be done.

It is clear that there is no common ground between the ‘arithmetic geometry’ mentioned earlier and topological algebra, one of whose main roles in my view is that of ‘logistical support’ in the development of this new geometry. For this new geometry to reach the stage of full maturity attested (let's say) by a mastery of the notion of pattern, comparable to the mastery we have of stale cohomology, we must no doubt expect several generations of geometers to have worked on it, more dynamic and bolder than those I have seen at work ; not to mention a comparable mastery of Anabelian [◊ 639] algebraic geometry, which seems to me (along with motives) to be one of the two ‘neuralgic’ parts of arithmetic geometry, discernible as of now 187 .

Lastly, there is a fourth direction of thought, pursued in my past as a mathematician, heading in the direction of a ‘root and branch’ renewal of an existing discipline. This is the ‘moderate topology’ approach to topology, which I discuss at some length in Sketch of a Programme (§5 and 6). Here, as so often since the distant years of high school, it would seem that I am still alone in sensing the richness and urgency of the work to be done on the foundations, the need for which seems to me here more obvious than ever. I have the very clear feeling that the development of the point of view of moderate topology, in the spirit evoked in the Outline of a Programme, would represent a renewal for topology comparable in scope to that which the point of view of diagrams has brought to algebraic geometry, and this without requiring investments of energy of comparable dimensions. Moreover, I believe that such a moderate topology will eventually prove to be a valuable tool in the development of arithmetic geometry, in particular in order to formulate and prove ‘comparison theorems’ between the ‘profinite’ homotopic structure associated with a stratified scheme of finite type over the field of complexes (or more generally, to a stratified schematic manifold of finite type over this field), and the corresponding ‘discrete’ homotopic structure, defined by transcendental means, and modulating suitable hypotheses (of equisingularity in particular). This question only makes sense in terms of a precise ‘unscrewing theory’ for stratified structures, which in the context of ‘transcendental’ topology seems to me to require the introduction of the ‘moderate’ context.

[◊ 640] To return to the person of my friend Pierre Deligne, he had ample opportunity, during the years 1965-1970 of close mathematical contact with me, to become thoroughly familiar with this set of geometrical ideas and visions, which I have just reviewed in broad outline. (With the exception of the ideas of moderate topology, which only began to germinate and intrigue me from the early 1970s, if I remember correctly). His role with regard to this vast programme was twofold, and in two opposite directions. On the one hand, relying on the ready-made tool of ℓ-adic cohomology, and on the ideas (which had remained hidden) of pattern theory, he made remarkable contributions to the development of the arithmetic geometry programme. The most important of these are undoubtedly the start of a theory of mixed Hodge coefficients, and above all his work on Weil's conjectures and their ℓ-adic generalisation. On the other hand, apart from the tools and ideas that he needed directly for his work (and whose origin he systematically tried to make people forget), he did everything he could to thwart the natural development of everything else: this is the ‘chainsaw effect’, of which I have had ample occasion to speak in the course of my reflections on Burial, including again (allusively) in the preceding note (No. 136). This effect was partially blurred by the partial exhumations (in 1981 and 1982), ‘like stunted shoots that have sprouted again...’ under the sudden pressure of immediate needs. (These occasional exhumations have just been mentioned again at the end of the previous note). He also did his utmost to constantly give the impression (without ever saying so clearly...) that the authorship of the ideas, concepts, techniques and results he used, and whose origin he was careful to conceal, belonged to him, when he wasn't generously attributing it to some other of my former students or collaborators.

All in all, after this rapid retrospective of what has been so tenaciously truncated and buried by my friend, I return to the impression that prevailed in the previous note, where I suggested that the interference of the ‘boss’, of egotistical greed in his work, was essentially limited to the choice of work themes. After all, the gravedigger-gravedigger attitude is apparent in his work, with very few exceptions, wherever the opportunity arises - and I realise that these ‘opportunities’ are innumerable! This gravedigger's syndrome (intimately linked, I'm sure, to the emphasis on superyang values) seems to me [◊ 641] to have had a truly ‘invasive’ effect on his work and his oeuvre, in no way comparable to that of his pro-yang options; and this effect is by no means limited to the choice of themes, which the ‘boss’ would make available to the ‘worker-child’, only to withdraw on tiptoe. On the contrary, it seems to me that the boss hardly takes his eyes off the Worker throughout the work, so worried is he that the latter might forget the imperative instructions; in other words, that the work itself is often invaded by inner dispositions entirely foreign to the nature of the work of discovery, which is a leap into the unknown. This is something that was strongly felt many times during the reflection on Burial, and which I tended to lose sight of during my long reflection on yin and yang.

(9) The claw in the velvet

(a) Velvet paw - or smiles

NOTE 137 (7 December) It's been over a week since I've continued with the notes, apart from some housekeeping work (including sub-notes to two of the previous notes). I had to have three teeth pulled (that's what it's like to be approaching sixty...), a necessary but brutal intrusion, which has meant that I've been working at a slightly reduced speed recently. I took the opportunity to fall back on correspondence that was still outstanding. Now everything seems to be back to normal...

In the four previous notes (from 24 to 28 November), I tried above all to identify more closely the relationships of affinity or complementarity between the temperament and the mathematical approach in Deligne and myself, in order to situate this ‘reversal’ of yin and yang roles that I had thought I perceived in the way my friend tries to present himself and me, at least at the level of the ‘mathematical’ personalities of both. Along the way, other aspects of reality appeared concerning my friend or myself, and beyond our persons, aspects of the world of mathematicians, or quite simply of the world of men. In the end, it seemed to me that it was the attitude of service, and the signs of the disappearance of such an attitude in the scientific world, that was the most striking new thing that entered into this stage of reflection, as I am trying to suggest by the name ‘Masters and Servant’ that I have given it.

[◊ 642] To return to the initial aim of ‘situating’ a certain reversal, I now feel that I have identified the real situation concerning my friend and myself sufficiently closely to follow it up. The first thing to note is that this initial intuition of a reversal of yin and yang roles, which came to me the day after the reflection of 12 May on ‘The Funeral Eulogy (1) - or the compliments’, was indeed correct. It was already clear, from the reflection of 10 November in the note ‘Les obsèques du yin (yang enterre yin [4])’ (no. 124), that my friend was striving to give a super-semirile image of himself, and a superfeminine one of me. The question raised in the note of 24 November, ‘The reversal (3) - or yin buries yang’ (no. 133), was whether this presentation actually constitutes a ‘reversal’ of reality. The ‘new fact’ that appeared in the note ‘The rising sea...’ (no. 122), the knowledge that, like my friend, the basic tone in my approach to mathematics was yin, ‘feminine’, might at one point have raised doubts.

But reflection on the last three notes dispelled this doubt. It was already clear from the outset that Deligne (as well as my other students and ex-students) had always perceived me, at least on a conscious level, as very strongly (too strongly perhaps...) masculine 188 . But it also became clear that, in the relationship between Deligne and myself at the mathematical level, and against the background of a strong yin-yin affinity, there was also a yin-yang complementarity (which we might call ‘secondary’, as opposed to this affinity playing the ‘primary’ role), in which it is indeed I who play the ‘yang’, virile role, through a ‘yang in the yin’ component that is much more pronounced in me than it is in him.

The deliberate intention that I noticed in Deligne, and which seems to me to be eagerly echoed from many quarters 189 , therefore does indeed appear to me [◊ 643] as a deliberate intention to reverse roles, and more specifically, yin-yang roles 190 . It seems to me that this is another important aspect of The Burial, adding to the four already reviewed earlier (in the notes of 13 and 17 November ‘Retrospective (1), (2)’, n os 127, 127'). It is all of these five aspects, which are undoubtedly intimately linked, that we now need to assemble into a coherent overall picture of the Burial.

To be convincing, such a painting would also have to bring together, in a common perspective, three successive ‘planes’. In the foreground, there is Deligne alone, the Grand Officiant at my Funeral, a non-pupil and non-heir of the master, declared deceased and having no place to be or to have been... Apart from the deceased himself (who is, however, only a deceased person, a tacit extra), he is visibly the central figure in the Funeral Ceremony. He is closely followed, in the background, by ‘the bustling group of my ex-students, carrying shovels and ropes’ (to quote from memory the enumeration of the Cortèges in ‘L'ordonnancement des obsèques’). Finally, in the third shot, there is the (almost) entire congregation, who have come to celebrate my funeral (and those of the four co-deceased, keeping to themselves in their ‘solidly screwed oak coffins’), and lend a hand with the burial.

[◊ 644] Between these three shots there seems to reign a perfect harmony, a ‘Unanimous Agreement’, like those seen at any other funeral celebrated in the proper manner, between the priest filled with pious compunction, the family of the deceased displaying the tunes of the occasion, and the bulk of the audience, intoning where it should be intoned, and remaining silent where it should be silent, without ever, ever making a mistake.

To continue with this last image, I now see myself placed in the position (less comfortable than that of the dear departed, who is decidedly out of the loop...) of someone who, faced with such a touching ensemble, would impertinently try to guess the true thoughts and motivations that animate and agitate the one and the other, priest, family and ordinary faithful, behind the airs of solemnity or contrition befitting the occasion.

The reflection has been going on for some time now, with the tacit guiding principle of preparing what is necessary to grasp the closest of these three ‘planes’ of the painting - that of the priest in his chasuble, by which I mean my friend Pierre Deligne. It is on this plane that I would now like to turn my attention.

I will say at the outset that one of the aspects (or ‘strands’) of the picture which featured prominently in the note ‘The Gravedigger - or the Congregation as a whole’ (No. 97), namely the ‘reprisals for dissent’ strand, seems to me to play only a very minor role in my friend's case, if it even comes into play at all. At no time did I get the impression that my friend Pierre felt in the least ‘challenged’ by my ‘dissent’. On the contrary, it was a great opportunity, which he would probably never have dared to dream of, to elegantly get rid of the presence of a master who was a little too present, in this institution where, at the age of twenty-five, he had just reached one of the most envied (or at least, the most enviable) positions in the mathematical world. The fact that this dissidence became more pronounced in the months and years that followed was experienced, it seems to me (perhaps not on a conscious level, but it doesn't really matter), as an even greater godsend, which gave him an impressive ‘inheritance’ at his mercy, without any hint of resistance from anyone (as he gradually came to realise over the years) 191 . He would not have pretended to complain, even inwardly or unknowingly, about this unexpected windfall! And it seems to me that the same observation must be valid, all things considered, for most of my students ‘before’ (my departure), and in any case, each of my five cohomology students. If one or other of them, whether inwardly or more or less clearly expressed,192 has been able to hint at a feeling of dissatisfaction, of frustration at my dissidence, I tend to believe that this is in the nature of a rationalisation of a fossilising attitude towards his providentially departed master, rather than a cause (albeit one of many) of it. What strengthens me in this conviction, as much for my cohomology students ‘in general’ as for their undisputed leader, Deligne, is that the forerunner signs of the burial that was to come (provided the right opportunity appeared - and, oh unexpected miracle, it did!) - these signs were already apparent before I left in 1970, and in any case after the famous SGA 5 seminar of 1965/66, destined for the massacre that I know. It is no coincidence, surely, that with such a perfect ensemble, all five 193 took no interest in the fate of this seminar where they learnt their trade, and at the same time, beautiful mathematics that they were almost the only ones, for twelve years, to have the privilege of knowing and using. I've gone into enough detail on this subject in the course of my reflections on the fate of SGA 5, for it to be useful to say more here. I will only point out, as far as Deligne is concerned, that in three of the four articles he wrote as early as before I left in 1970, the intention to hide, or at least to conceal and minimise as far as possible the influence of my ideas, is clearly apparent, without it having waited for my ‘dissidence’.

[◊ 646] What then is the root and particular nature of this attitude of antagonism, of a competitor eager to supplant, to erase, in my friend towards me - an attitude which coexisted with an affectionate and trusting sympathy, and a communion at the mathematical level, from the first years of our meeting? I'm even convinced that it must have been present in a muted way from the moment we met, and probably even before; and also that it arose much more from the outset from the role I was to play for him, than from any particularity in me - if not all the ‘particularities’ that made it possible for me to play this role for him. It's also the role he's been trying to erase for the last twenty years, surely it implied a ‘paternal’ aspect, without any effort on either side, and by force of circumstance. And there is no doubt in my mind that it was around this aspect that the conflict arose - a conflict that already existed in him, long before he ever heard my name or even (no doubt) the name of our common teacher, mathematics.

This conviction, to tell the truth, is not the fruit of reflection, and even less would I claim to ‘demonstrate’ it. Rather, it came about over the years, after I had left, and I couldn't really say myself when or how; little by little, I think, by dint of signs large and small, none of which I dwelt on, even for a moment, but all of which together ended up leaving the trace of a knowledge, diffuse and imperfect certainly, but a knowledge nonetheless, that was there one day... I could undoubtedly, through painstaking work unearthing half-buried memories and probing them one by one, deepen and materialise this knowledge that remains somewhat imponderable; and it is quite possible (and even probable) that such work would hold many surprises in store for me. Yet I don't feel motivated to do it. This is probably because (rightly or wrongly) it seems to me that this is not really my work, but my friend's - that what I'm probing here concerns him much more than it concerns me. As far as I'm concerned, this intuition or ‘knowledge’ or ‘conviction’ that I've just formulated is enough for my present desire for understanding, and I rely on it without any reservations.

As so often in my life, I am confronted here with a relationship [◊ 647] of antagonism to the father, in which I figure as a substitute father, an ‘adopted’ father (much more so, it seems to me, than an ‘adoptive’ father 194 ). This, plus my friend's deliberate intention to reverse the yin-yang roles, is immediately associated in my mind with the situation referred to in the note ‘Reversal (2) - or ambiguous revolt’ (no. 132) - a situation of which my mother's relationship to her father is for me the most extreme prototype. Yet the differences between the situation in question and that of my friend Pierre's relationship with me are immediately obvious. In his relationship with me, I never perceived the slightest hint of ‘rebellion’, or even antagonism in the slightest form of virulence, aggression, showing claws or teeth, even in a smile. There was no shortage of smiles on both sides, but they were either smiles of sympathy (as I sensed them), or sometimes of innocent surprise, and sometimes almost pain, when he could see (and I ended up sensing the nuance of intimate satisfaction) that certain blows, delivered with a light touch and a velvet paw, had hit the mark where it was intended.

To put it another way, this antagonism, whether expressed towards me or towards third parties (when it was a question of reaching out to the deceased master through them, and yet still very much present in him...), always took, and without a single exception, the extreme-yin form: that which delights (and excels) in reaching out and hurting, even eliminating or crushing, with all the appearances of the most exquisite delicacy. While his deliberate choices for his brand image as a mathematician are superyang (as mine undoubtedly have been, without any more success, incidentally, than his), it seems to me that at the relational level, the basic tone (towards me at least, and those he considers to be related to me) is decidedly and across the board, superyin. (I would, however, make just one reservation on this subject, an important one at that, which I'll have to come back to).

[◊ 648] Another ‘obvious’ difference between Pierre's relationship with me and that of the ‘ambiguous rebellion’: from the little I know of his family, I understand that Pierre's father is a mild-mannered, modest man, not the kind of ‘profile’ that would provoke a rebellious reaction, later transferred to a surrogate father.

(b) The reversal (4) - or the conjugal circus

NOTE 138 (8 December) As I finished my reflection last night, I had the slightly painful impression of someone who understands less and less. Before going to bed, I stayed for a while following the associations generated by the past reflection. I thought I saw a few points of light appear, which I think will serve as guiding lights in today's reflection.

The most important of these associations surely has to do with the ‘velvet paw’ aspect of my friend, who likes to scratch (sometimes deeply and mercilessly) with the most innocent airs in the world, and ‘with all the appearance of the most exquisite delicacy’. This image, which came up in the course of a comparison (with a situation of ‘revolt’ mentioned earlier) that had been shipwrecked, immediately struck me as rich in meaning, as an essential aspect of the ‘antagonism’ I set out to explore. And in retrospect, this evocation of the image of ‘innocent smile and velvet paw’, capturing the quintessence of an experience of nearly twenty years, seems to me the ‘sensitive point’ in yesterday's reflection, the unexpected ‘point of light’ as I groped around in the dark. If this impression of groping and darkness prevailed even afterwards, it's because, too caught up in the ideas I'd had in my head the moment before and which I had to pursue or place, I hadn't been able to pay attention to the delicate ‘tilt’ that had taken place in me as soon as the image appeared. And in the half hour that followed, as I pursued a few associations with this image and one or two other moments of the past reflection, my attention became scattered once again. It is only now, looking back over the course of a day, that I can see a perspective of the interrupted reflection that had escaped me when I reread yesterday's notes.

If I take care to follow the strongest association of all and the one most intimately linked to my experience, putting aside for the moment others that are more [◊ 649] ‘structured’, more ‘intellectual’, the following happens. I suddenly see myself returning, as if in a single impression that would sum them all up, to this multitude of particular cases (experienced either as a co-actor or as a close witness) of the conjugal circus - the circus of the woman-man couple. The circus of the couple, married or not, with or without children, young or old or young-old or the opposite, in the doldrums pulling the devil by the tail or in ease driving a carriage, it's all the same, the circus of the couple doesn't change for all that. Suddenly I find myself back there, because of one aspect of this circus that struck me above all others (it took me a long time, it has to be said, before I saw anything other than nothing but fire...) : it's the very particular tactic, very ‘innocent faces’, ‘I said nothing and did nothing’, the ‘velvet paw’ tactic played by the woman, in a certain game where it's always her who leads with perfect dexterity, and where it's always him who follows (and often, cashes in) without realising anything. I've seen very few couples that didn't work to that tune, with infinite variations it's understood, left to the improvisation skills of each of them, not to mention their particular temperaments and other circumstances. Just today I had the opportunity to see a particularly dazzling demonstration of this, which I won't go into here.

I hesitate whether I should write that this game is the ‘spring’ of the power game I alluded to earlier, or that it is identical to the latter, surely, what for her (and often also for him) constitutes the quintessence of the masculine role, of the role devolved to the man, is the possession of power - a possession often fictitious, admittedly, but which in any case draws an element of reality from the social consensus. Perhaps I have tended to underestimate the strength of this element of reality, the strength of the symbol of the man as representing authority in relation to the woman - and in particular, its strength as a driving force in the woman's motivations. I suspect that for her, ‘being a man’, or ‘being the man’, means exercising power above all else. The ‘reversal of roles’, at the level of egotistical motivations,195 is probably no more and no less than the exercise of power by women over men.

Given the existing consensus, this exercise of power by women can scarcely take place other than in secret. It does not consist of commanding, nor of [◊ 651] pretending to decide (with the expectation that the decision will be followed), but of making things work - and above all, of making things go round in circles, and this, without ever seeming to do so. That's the famous marital merry-go-round, spinning round and round! The tactic for keeping it moving, passed on wordlessly from mother to daughter, from wife or young daughter to young daughter, from generation to generation, is the tactic mentioned yesterday at the bend in the road, the ‘velvet paw’ tactic. If you pay close attention, you'll recognise it in an infinite number of different guises, from the extreme-yang case of the vehement wife, embodied for me by my mother, to the extreme-yin case of the dolent (even overwhelmed) wife, which I saw embodied by another close relative.

It seems to me that there are very few women who don't practise this immemorial tactic, and who haven't mastered it thoroughly 196 . It is practised daily, especially in the marital circus, but is not limited to it. It seems to me that it is rarely practised between women (perhaps simply because it is more difficult to ‘make a woman work’ than a man). On the other hand, for some women, this tactic becomes second nature, in their relationship with all men or very few - at least those who are perceived by them as having a marked masculine character.

If I'm talking about ‘tactics’ here, that only expresses an incidental aspect, the ‘tactical’ aspect, of a more important reality: that of an inveterate inner attitude, towards ‘men’ in general, or at least towards anyone, father, lover or husband in particular, who in her life plays a privileged role as a man, invested (by social consensus, or by her own choice) with authority. This attitude is by no means always in the nature of a thirst for domination (as in the case of ‘vehement wife’) - at least not in the sense in which the word ‘domination’ is usually understood. It's more a case of a craving, which sometimes becomes all-consuming, to constantly exert an action [◊ 652] on the other person, to ‘keep them moving’ (sub-text: moving around her own person...). For this, often, all means are good. One of these means of exerting action, and therefore power, is to hurt, and sometimes to hurt as deeply as possible, to knock out outright, and even to destroy, physically or psychologically, if only the opportunity was favourable; and this, always, without seeming to touch, with ‘all the appearances of the most exquisite delicacy’. More than once I myself have been ‘sent packing’! Often, too, caught off guard as a co-actor or witness, I've had my breath taken away by the apparent gratuitousness of the act that hurts or destroys, with an innocent smile or an absent air, but always with an air of nothing, seizing with an infallible instinct the moment and the place to touch the other where he can be most profoundly affected - whether that ‘other’ is the father or the lover, the husband or the child, or a mere acquaintance or even a stranger (provided only that the opportunity is there to strike and to hit... ).

(c) Ingenious violence - or the handover

NOTE 139 (9 December) This is the extreme, yet by no means rare, case of violence for violence's sake, of gratuitous violence and malice. This kind of violence, whether it strikes a stranger or the person closest to us and supposedly loved, is not characteristic of either women or men; it is neither ‘yin’ nor ‘yang’. But the disconcerting and insidious form in which I encounter it here, under the mask of an air of distracted absence or even ingenuous gentleness - this form, which has ended up becoming very familiar to me, seems to me to be peculiar above all to women. This is undoubtedly linked to the ‘patriarchal’ social consensus, which invests men with authority and power over women 197 . This form is her own means of satisfying a desire for [◊ 653] power which, because it is forced (by force of circumstance) to follow paths other than those open to men, is no less imperious, no less devouring in her - quite the contrary! It would seem that not being able to unfold in the light of day, being condemned in advance to an occult existence, only serves to exacerbate and proliferate this craving within her, to the point, in many cases, of truly ‘devouring’ her life and that of her loved ones.

Fortunately, this craving does not always reach the level of gratuitous, all-out violence, and not all the registers in which it unfolds are in violent tones. While tones of discreet derision are most often the rule, giving vent to a veiled antagonism or secret enmity, simply mischievous tones of indulgent affection, a little mischievous on the edges, are not excluded. And while it's true that the tried and tested tactic of the ‘velvet paw’ is a woman's privilege and weapon of choice, this privilege is by no means exclusive. On many occasions I have witnessed men 198 wielding this weapon at close quarters, with an equally perfect mastery 199 . Remarkably, in all these cases, [◊ 654] the man who had appropriated this weapon for himself was someone who tended to repress certain virile sides of his being, and (by the same token, no doubt) to mould himself according to the maternal model.

This same tactic is frequently observed, and is almost the rule, in the power games played by children, girls and boys alike, with their parents, or with other adults in their place. This immediately gives rise to an association with the situation of writers or journalists in countries (past or present) where direct or indirect censorship is rife, making direct and unvarnished public expression of one's true ideas and feelings impossible or risky. The main difference between this last case and the previous ones is that in this case the recourse to indirect, veiled, sometimes symbolic expression of one's true feelings is no longer the work of the unconscious, but of conscious thought. The reason for this, surely, is that there is then a sufficiently widespread consensus in favour of unorthodox ideas and feelings (which need to be ‘put across’ without appearing to be so), so that the person concerned no longer feels obliged to hide them from himself, for fear of appearing as a hideous misrepresentation in his own eyes. It is only in extreme cases of ferocious political or religious terror (such as existed in the Middle Ages, or in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries in Stalin's time) that any attempts at unorthodoxy are forced (by some, at least) to plunge an even deeper level, by evading the gaze of the Internal Censor, as well as that of the censorship instituted in morality and the police apparatus.

All these examples seem to suggest that the ‘velvet paw’ style (or ‘I said nothing, thought nothing, wanted nothing’) appears, more or less automatically, in any situation of any duration, where a balance of power to our disadvantage makes it impossible, or at least dangerous for us, to express candidly, directly, our feelings, desires, ideas, intentions - and, more particularly, feelings of animosity or enmity towards those who are perceived as exerting a constraint on us (and, in particular, the very constraint that was intended to prevent us from expressing our true feelings) 200 . Moreover, this is not the only [◊ 655] case in which the style in question and the inner dispositions it covers appear. Very often, this ‘balance of power’ is more or less fictitious; it corresponds much less to an ‘objective’ reality, taking into account the real dispositions (or means of power) of the person or persons perceived as the ‘oppressor’, than to the idea rather (conscious or unconscious) that we have of them. This idea is rarely the result of a careful and intelligent examination of a given reality, but is almost always part of the ‘package’ of conditioning of all kinds that we receive at a young age, taking into account certain fundamental choices that have been made in us since that early age. Thus, whether in a girl or a boy, the choice (unconscious, of course) to identify with the mother implies the adoption of a whole set of attitudes and behaviours (such as those expressed in the ‘velvet paw’ style), and at the same time the ideas (unconscious most of the time, but it doesn't matter) that underlie them (such as ideas about a certain balance of power, and the antagonistic reflexes that accompany these ideas). In the opposite case of identification with the father, but when the father himself has integrated into his person certain traits that are typically ‘feminine’ (or that are so in our society, at least), it is conceivable that the effect could be quite similar to that in the first case.

The point I want to get at here is that in our present society, and in the circles at least of which I have been a part, it seems to me that this style (‘velvet paw’), and this ‘feminine’ inner attitude I am examining here, are only to a very limited extent the spontaneous individual reaction to objective relations of force, instituted by society or by the particular circumstances surrounding our childhood (or even, our [◊ 656] adulthood at such and such a time) ; that it is rather an ‘inheritance’ taken from one or other of our parents (when not from both at once? ), who had taken it from one of his own parents. Visibly, this type of inheritance tends to follow the maternal line, being passed down primarily from mother to daughter. But on more than one occasion I've seen it passed down from mother to son. There's nothing to suggest that it can't also be passed down, exceptionally, from father to son, or even from father to daughter.

(d) The slave and the puppet - or the valves

NOTE 140 (December 10) I would like to return to a few associations around the theme of gratuitous violence. This was the theme that began yesterday's reflection, but I then turned away from it to return to an examination of the ‘feminine’ (or ‘velvet paw’) style in power games, and as a means of expressing an antagonistic disposition towards others (and especially towards men who are perceived as highly virile or as being, in whatever capacity, in a position of authority, prestige or power).

As I said yesterday, (seemingly) gratuitous violence, violence ‘for its own sake’, is no more unique to women than to men. Everyone has had the opportunity to be confronted by it suddenly, at the turn of the road, whether in the guise of the ‘most exquisite delicacy’, or as a kick or a burst of machine-gun fire in the belly. The latter style, the ‘yang’ style, is certainly rarer in these so-called ‘peaceful’ times, and in civilised countries like ours. For most of us, well-bred people more or less well-placed in an affluent country, this violence that-says-its-name is not part of everyday life, as is the other, muted violence with its ingenuous airs. And yet, you only have to look at the ‘news’ column of the first major daily paper you come across, or listen to the news 201 , to realise that ‘hard’ gratuitous violence is still rife, even in our own country. It doesn't always go as far as slitting the throat of the anonymous old lady you've taken it upon yourself to burgle. But when young people in search of adventure ‘borrow’ the car carelessly left open in front of one's house, it is rare that by leaving it in a ditch ten or twenty kilometres away, they have not first carefully ransacked it. Even in the peaceful countryside where I have the good fortune to live without worrying too much about anything, the smallest farmhouse or cottage doesn't remain unoccupied for long before it's already been looted from top to bottom (that's for utility) and, what's more, copiously vandalised (that's for pleasure). In all the cases I've just mentioned, the gratuitousness of the violence is particularly striking, because the person it strikes is a stranger, often someone we've never seen before and never will.

It is therefore a form of violence that could be called ‘anonymous’. Since time immemorial, no doubt, wars have been a kind of collective orgy of such violence - a time when the opportunity to kill for free is king, and when the life of a vague individual is worth zero compared to the pleasure of pulling a trigger and testing one's power to make a nameless, bland figure collapse in front of you...

If there's one thing in the world, as far back as I can remember, that has left me speechless and bewildered every time, it's seeing myself confronted once again with violence that is beyond comprehension, violence that strikes and destroys for the sheer pleasure of striking and destroying. If there is one thing in the world that imbues us with this indelible sense of ‘evil’, it is not death or the suffering that the body can endure, but it is this thing. And when such violence (whether it has a hard face or a soft one, whether it seems ‘big’ or ‘small’) comes at you unexpectedly from one of your loved ones, it's bound to hit hard and deep, to bring out (or resurface...) and break over you a nameless anguish. The root of this anguish goes deep down, when it finds the soft, fresh soil of childhood, or even infancy, in which to take root. This anxiety, ‘the best-kept secret in the world’ in my life as a child and as an adult, appeared in me at the hands of my mother, in my sixth year.

It was at the age of fifty-one, during the month of March 1980, that I brought to light the episode of the implantation of anxiety in my life. The hold of anxiety over me had been defused even before, to a large extent at least, [◊ 658] with the appearance of meditation in my life (in 1976), gradually taking an increasing place in it. A third decisive turning point in my relationship to anxiety came in July and August 1982, during a close examination of the mechanism of anxiety in my everyday life. The situations that gave rise to anguish, from childhood to middle age, were those that, in the unknown depths of my being, made me relive ‘that which is beyond comprehension’. These were also the times, to be precise, when I saw myself once again confronted with the familiar signs of violence that was seemingly inexplicable, elusive and irreducible... The sudden appearance of this violence brought back a wave of distraught anguish, which was immediately controlled and repressed. This visceral reaction has remained virtually unchanged to this day202 . If anything has changed in recent years, however, it is the appearance of a reflection in the wake of anguish, which makes comprehensible, and often obvious, what had appeared under the threatening mask of ‘that which is beyond comprehension’, of the delirious ; and above all, over the last two years, by the appearance of a look at myself, a look of interest and concern for this anguish itself, which a reflex movement of peremptory force would have me hide from myself. Or, to put it another way, my relationship with anxiety has become, especially in the last two years, no longer one of visceral refusal, or of taming wild beasts or gravediggers, but rather, and increasingly, one of attentive and affectionate acceptance of the message it brings me about myself - about my present, my past and its action in my present. This, it seems to me, is the last step I have taken so far, towards an increasingly complete inner autonomy in relation to others, that is to say, before anything else: in relation to my family and friends 203 .

[◊ 659] It seems to me that it's the violence that doesn't say ‘no name’, the ‘feminine’ kind of violence, that generates the most anxiety, much more than the more spectacular violence of a punch in the face. Those who play with subdued violence, and in so doing also play with the secret valves that release waves of nameless, faceless anguish in others, hold in their hands a weapon that is more formidable than any authority or simple power of coercion. And to manipulate these floodgates of anguish at will and at whim, with an air of innocence, represents a power that is undoubtedly more incisive and more formidable, even if it remains hidden, than any de facto or de principle power instituted by social consensus. This is woman's ‘just revenge’ on man, in a society where man claims (or has claimed) to dominate her; and this is also the price ‘he’ pays for his illusory supremacy (present or past). If she is a slave (and in our country, she is less and less so), he is a puppet in her hands, or very nearly so (and he is as much a puppet today as he ever was).

For some years now, whenever I see myself confronted with a situation of gratuitous violence (whether directed at myself or at others, whether brutal or insidious), I am forcefully reminded of the association with self-contempt - or rather, I see this self-contempt in the person who, openly or inwardly, shows contempt for others. I have no doubt that this is not [◊ 660] a simple push-button mechanism in me, a ‘philosophical’ or ‘psychological’ dada that I would be quite happy to pull out on occasion, as a means perhaps of exorcising by a convincing formula the anguish I was talking about, by casually sticking an all-purpose label on a threatening stranger. It's simply a knowledge of an essential, profound and (once seen) obvious relationship.

This knowledge doesn't ‘evacuate’ anything, it simply allows me to situate an unknown. It is in no way a sentry, placed there to block the path of anguish, or to expel it from the place. That is not the nature of knowledge, in the sense that I understand it. Knowledge is part of an inner calm, it helps to give it a foundation. It is a restlessness within us, on the other hand, that constantly pushes us to want to block the way to ‘intruders’, lest they upset a ‘calm’ of composition. The calm I'm talking about doesn't fear intruders, it welcomes them. And the surface agitation created by the new encounter with anxiety does not disturb this calm, but contributes to it.

(10) Violence - or games and the goad

(a) The violence of the just - or letting off steam

NOTE 141 (13 December) With my ‘quip’ in the previous note, about the ‘slave’ and the ‘puppet’, I've surely found another way to annoy everyone, and (if I'm read...) to be called every name in the book! Unless the hypothetical reader applauds contentedly, who knows, convinced that the image is well sent and applies to the whole world, except for himself (or herself); and except perhaps, at most, for the sarcastic author. By this supposition, moreover, he would be giving my modest person a credit that does not belong to him at all. At the very most, I would venture to admit that for some years now (and especially since a certain meditation on anguish in July and August 1982), I have begun to leave, and even to have left, the famous ‘circus’ - the conjugal circus, of course, but also the others that resemble it like brothers. In the first part of Récoltes et semailles, there's even a section in this vein, called ‘Fini le manège’ (‘No more merry-go-round’) (No. 41, last March). This time it wasn't the marital circus, but a certain mathematical circus in which I've enjoyed spending a good part of my life, like everyone else. But it is also true that a few weeks after this promisingly named section [◊ 661], on 29 April, a note appeared entitled ‘Un pied dans le manège’ (No. 72), the name of which would seem to herald a different tune! The difference with before, perhaps, is that if here and there I still turn in some merry-go-round (and I hardly see any more than the mathematical merry-go-round which continues to attract me...), it is myself (or someone in me, at least) and nobody else who pulls these threads that make me turn in circles, and these have ceased for me to be invisible.

Having made these reservations, I can say that for most of my adult life (and more precisely, until I discovered meditation), I ‘went round in circles’ (like everyone else, again), both in the marital merry-go-round (which spun merrily for no less than twenty years!) and in the others. I don't regret it, because the knowledge I have of carousels of all kinds I owe first and foremost to the ones I've been on myself. The reason I was on it for so long was that the student was slow to learn - and also, surely, that in more ways than one I found bait. In the end, I suppose, they lost their force and charm...

It seems to me that in all these carousels, I was always the one who ‘walked’, and never the one who ‘made it walk’. Or to put it another way, I don't think I've ever had the slightest propensity for the famous ‘velvet paw’ style - I've sometimes played hard with my claws, but never, I think, with claws drowned in velvety down. This is one of many traits that attest to the fact that at the level of the structure of the ego, of the ‘boss’, of that which is conditioned in me, the basic tone is strongly ‘masculine’, without any ambiguity whatsoever. The yin, ‘feminine’ tones, on the other hand, dominate at the level of the ‘child’, the original in me, that is to say, also in the drive for knowledge and in the creative faculties.

I'd like to say a few more words about the ‘gratuitous violence’ in my life. In the previous note (from three days ago), I referred to it in the light of the person who finds himself the target of this violence, or at least the person who is confronted with it in others (even if only as a witness), when I wrote :

If there's one thing in the world, as far back as I can remember, that has left me speechless and distraught every time, it's seeing myself confronted once again with violence that is beyond comprehension, violence that strikes and destroys for the sheer pleasure of striking and destroying...

[◊ 662] These lines, and those that follow them, correspond to reality, to the reality of my own experience in any case, and surely also that of countless men and women who, like me, have been confronted with such violence. They could give the impression that the person who wrote them is himself a complete stranger to this violence, that all his life he has been free from such delusions. But this is not the case. I remember four relationships in my life, three of which took place in my childhood or adolescence (between the ages of eight and sixteen), relationships marked by an enmity not based on any specific personal grievance, and expressed in the form of systematic and merciless mockery, or by rouffles and other brutalities. On the first occasion, the victim, a classmate (again in Germany), was the butt of the bullying in the whole class. The situation dragged on for years, I seem to remember. The next two cases took place during the war, when I spent time (just out of a French concentration camp) in a Secours Suisse children's home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, ‘la Guespy’, between 1942 and 1944. This time the ‘terrible people’ were one of my friends (whose parents, like mine, had to be interned as German Jews), and one of our two supervisors, both of whom spoke German like me. They were both a bit of a bully for a sometimes ruthless group of young boys and girls, of which I was one - but I think I gave them a harder time than anyone else in the whole gang. Living under the same roof, and being refugees with a precarious status, under the constant threat of the Gestapo rounding up Jews, could have aroused in me feelings of solidarity and respect, but it didn't. In all three cases, the person I was living with was the only one I knew.

In all three cases, the person I took as a target of malice was naturally gentle, rather shy, not at all combative, and I therefore classed him as ‘soft’ or ‘cowardly’, which was one of the traits that were supposed to make him a disreputable character. In an age devastated by violence and contempt for the individual, and myself filled with an aversion to war or concentration camp violence, and everything that goes with it, I nevertheless felt entirely justified in the contempt and violence I inflicted on others, for the simple ‘reason’ that I had taken pleasure in classifying them as ‘unsympathetic’ (and other adjectives to match...), after which everything (or almost everything) became permissible, not to say highly praiseworthy. I, who prided myself on having a ‘logical’ and fair mind, [◊ 663] failed to see that my behaviour, and its justification by an antipathy (the true nature of which I certainly wouldn't have thought to fathom), were exactly the same as those of the good-natured German of the 1930s towards ‘dirty Jews’ (things I had seen up close in my childhood); and that they were also the ones that made possible the unprecedented outburst of violence that was then sweeping the world. Of course, I pretended (following in my parents' footsteps) to distance myself from this violence as if it were some strange aberration (sometimes even “beyond comprehension”). I was full of haughty condescension towards all those, soldiers or civilians, who in one way or another agreed to be active or passive cogs in the heroic mass graves and the abominations that accompanied them. And at the same time, at my modest level and within my own limited sphere of action, I was doing what everyone else was doing...

If I try to discern the cause of such a strange blindness in the service of a deliberate purpose of contempt and violence, it comes down to this. The violence that I myself had had to endure during my childhood from the age of five onwards, without ever having been designated as such to my attention as a child, had ended up creating a state of chronic tension, which remained unconscious and carefully controlled by a strong will. This tension, or accumulation of aggression with no particular target, created the need for a release of aggression. However, this ‘need’ was not of a physical nature - there was no shortage of opportunities to let off steam through appropriate physical activity in any of these cases - but a psychological one. Surely there must have been an accumulated grudge, mostly unconscious of course and not materialising in palpable grievances against a particular person (one of my parents, let's say, or one of the people who took their place), on whom I could then have transferred feelings of resentment, and given them concrete, perhaps violent, expression. There must have been a ‘vacant’ violence in me, a diffuse, wandering violence, looking for a target on which to vent. It often seems to be animals (insects, toads, dogs or cats, even oxen or horses...) that bear the brunt of such wandering violence, in search of a victim. That wasn't the case for me, I don't remember ever having martyred an animal, big or small, in my life. Apparently, I needed a scapegoat closer to me, a person! When you're looking for one, it's always easy to find one.

[◊ 664] I have no doubt that what I have just written describes a certain aspect of reality. However, I feel that this description still remains on the surface of things, it only identifies a certain ‘mechanistic’ aspect, without really going any further into the unconscious experience. For the moment, in place of this experience, there's a kind of great ‘blank’, a void. This is not the time or the place to go beyond that, to probe further into what this ‘blank’ covers, what dissolves in this ‘emptiness’. Is it that famous ‘self-contempt’ that was so peremptorily asserted in the note three days ago, and which suddenly, now that it's me, seems to have vanished without a trace? This would be the moment, now or never, to get to the bottom of it, to clear up this tenacious and ambiguous ‘vagueness’ that continues to mark my knowledge of myself, just as the ‘vagueness’ that once surrounded the role and very existence of anguish in my life did. It seemed to me that anguish was the ‘best kept secret’ of my whole life. Could there be another, even better-kept secret, one that I've barely touched on here and there, on two or three occasions, since I started meditating? I have the feeling that I have everything in hand to find out - including this sudden surge of very familiar interest, which tells me that the moment is ripe for me to take the plunge! However, I have a feeling that I'm not going to do it here, in this meditation that is in some way ‘public’, or at least intended for publication. This meditation, among many others, will at least have had the virtue of unexpectedly bringing to maturity a question that has suddenly become very close, recognised at last as crucial to an understanding of myself, whereas previously it had seemed like one question among a hundred, on a long waiting list whose end I may never see...

It's by no means out of the question that I'll still have the opportunity to meet one or other of the three men (two of whom are about my age) who were once the innocent targets of a violence and aggression in me; or if not, at least that I'll have the chance to write to one of them. It will be good for me to be able to make amends in full knowledge of the facts. Perhaps it will be good for him too. Strangely though, I don't get the impression that any of the three of them ever really held a grudge against me, or that my violence had triggered in him any personal animosity towards me in particular, rather, it seems to me that the whole context in which he was caught must have been experienced by him as a kind of calamity, from which there could not even have been a question of escaping, and that my own person was perceived more as one among the extras in this calamity, than as [◊ 665] a ruthless tormentor (which I was) and hated. Of course, I may be wrong, and I may never know - just as I may also be lucky enough to be confronted one day with that karma, which I sowed in blindness.

I think there must have been a maturing in me in the years following the ‘Guespy’ episode, although there was no reflection on the subject as far as I can remember. Still, there were effective reflexes in me afterwards that would have prevented me from associating myself again with acts of collective violence by an entire group against one of its members. I don't think it ever happened again in my adult life, or that I was ever tempted to play such a role again, which I must have realised was false and lacking in courage under its cheerful, ‘sporting’ exterior. But even after the war, life was full of situations full of veiled violence and anguish, perpetuating the deep tensions that had marked my childhood and adolescence. This is the context of a fourth relationship, marked by occasional outbursts of animosity and violence that I can call ‘gratuitous’ - not founded or provoked by concrete grievances, nor even (I think) by acts that could pass for ‘provocative’. It concerns my relationship with one of my sons. I know that I was no less attached to him, and that I ‘loved’ him no less than my other children. But at some unconscious level, I must have rejected certain aspects of him, precisely those that made him softer and more vulnerable, and also harder to get to grips with, than his brothers and sister. Decidedly, he didn't ‘fit in’ at all, even less than my other children, with the beautiful superyang images that I would have liked to find in my children - and all the more so because some very harsh circumstances that had surrounded his first two years and had left a deep impression on him made it harder for him to develop a trusting relationship with his parents. The fact remains that during the time he still lived with me under the same roof, until around his tenth year, I sometimes subjected him to punishments of a humiliating nature, imposed in a thunderous voice. These were things that had entirely sunk into oblivion, just like a certain atmosphere that had come to permeate the family air - it was a few conversations with his sister and two brothers, two or three years ago, that very opportunely brought these things [◊ 666] back into my memory. Perhaps the day will come when he too will be willing to talk about it with me - he who, perhaps, among my children, has borne the brunt of a family atmosphere charged with hushed anguish and unassumed tensions; or at the very least, the one who has ‘coped’ the most at the hands of his father, while each of them has had their ample share of the parental ‘package’. At the very least, I know - and I'm happy to do so - that what's preventing any of my children from having a simple, trusting relationship with me, their father, and from talking together about a difficult past and exploring it, is not some fear that they've kept from me and that they're trying hard to hide.

But then again, this is not the place in these notes to probe further into a complex situation involving six or seven other people as much as myself. What was important to me above all was to make an unvarnished observation of the occasional appearance, here and there in my life and in my own actions, of the same apparently gratuitous violence that so often ‘left me bewildered and speechless’ when I encountered it in others. This observation is not made with any particular ‘intention’; it does not claim to ‘explain’ or ‘excuse’ gratuitous violence in anyone, any more than it is supposed to explain or excuse mine. It's not impossible - indeed, it's likely - that if you think about it further, the two forms of violence - the violence in others and the violence in me - will end up shedding light on each other. It's the kind of thing that eventually comes of itself, out of the blue, without being sought. If I've made this observation, it's simply because it was in the way and (on pain of ceasing to be true) I couldn't not make it here.

(b) Mechanics and freedom

NOTE 142 (14 December) Last night's reflection was a timely reminder of something we are so prone to forget, and especially (in this case) of something I am so prone to forget: that I am not ‘better’ than anyone else, that I am cut from the same cloth as everyone else; exactly like one of my friends whom I am about to put in the hot seat, at the centre of uncompromising attention....

Yesterday I gave a sort of description of the appearance of (apparently) ‘gratuitous’ violence, as the discharge of tension and aggression [◊ 667] accumulated on some scapegoat who, for one reason or another, happens to be in charge. This ‘mechanistic’ and superficial description, which is surely ‘well known’, can give credence to an equally ‘mechanistic’ attitude towards that violence, in oneself or in others. It is then seen as a kind of inescapable fate, a fate rooted in the very structure of the psyche, alas - what can we do about it! Such an attitude, under a ‘rational’ or ‘scientific’ guise, seems to me to be nothing other than the rationalisation of an abdication: an abdication in the face of the presence of creative freedom in ourselves and in others, which gives each of us the option of taking responsibility for the situations in which we find ourselves, instead of passively following the slopes of ready-made mechanisms, ready to take us over at any moment. While it's true that we rarely make use of this ‘freedom’ option, the mere presence of this option and of the creative possibilities within us, whether we choose to make use of it or not, changes the nature of things completely. It is in this way, and in no other, that situations involving relationships between people, or between a person and himself or the world around him, have a dimension that is absent when, instead of people, we are dealing with (say) computers, however sophisticated they may be. This is also where the privilege of responsibility for our actions and for the motivations behind our actions comes into play for each and every one of us. This responsibility is in no way removed by the fact that we often resort to the convenience of hiding our own motivations.

To return to the case in point as an illustration, if I was able to play the great soul while making use of my power to torment a comrade who had done me no harm, it was because behind the surface ‘good faith’, I had chosen an attitude of gross, phenomenal bad faith, which was as eye-popping at the time as it is now, forty years later. It was indeed a choice, one that nothing forced me to make, and one that amounted to turning a blind eye to the tensions and aggression that had built up inside me (while, of course, claiming to have nice ‘non-violent’ ideas), and ‘quietly’ (sic) venting them on the scapegoats at hand. Such violence - that is to say, almost all the violence and abominations that plague the human world - can only take place, and its secret function can only be fulfilled, on condition that it remains rigorously secret (even though [◊ 668] it is obvious) ; on the condition, therefore, that we make ourselves take ‘bladders for lanterns’, that we play a crude double game with conviction, obscuring our most elementary faculties of knowledge for the sake of the cause. It is true that we are encouraged to do this by the air that has always surrounded us, while we have always seen those around us eager to endorse by consensus subterfuge, however crude, in the service of fictions that had their assent. And my own subterfuge, in the cases I have mentioned, did indeed have the assent or tacit encouragement of those around me, without which I could not have maintained it and continued my game.

Taking responsibility for a situation, on the other hand, is no more and no less than approaching it in good faith, in the full sense of the word, i.e. without taking advantage of the ease with which we can hide its obvious ins and outs from ourselves by using crude subterfuge. It also means, quite simply, making use of our healthy faculties of perception and judgement, without taking care to hide them for the needs of one cause or another. This may seem strange, but it is also simple and obvious: when we approach a situation with this kind of attitude, an attitude of ‘innocence’, the situation is immediately and profoundly transformed, however confused and knotted it may have seemed. Or to put it better, if it was indeed ‘knotted’ and hadn't moved a muscle for a long time, it's because we ourselves were preventing it from evolving, from ‘flowing’ according to its own nature; that we were obstructing its spontaneous movement, following the example of all those who have surrounded us since our earliest childhood. All we have to do is stop stiffening, stop obstructing, for things that seemed frozen to start moving again, for what was stuck to be unstuck, and for the hard accumulated tensions to finally free themselves and resolve themselves in a new and ample movement, finally reappearing.

There's nothing ‘comfortable’ about this ‘ease’ or ‘convenience’ that we have, with everyone's encouragement, of ‘mistaking bladders for lanterns’, and thereby blocking what is made to flow! We are paying an exorbitant price for the cushy internal immobility that it allows us to enjoy - the price of internal tension, and the exorbitant investment of energy to maintain both this tension and the bladders = lanterns fiction. That said, everyone does as they please, at all times - that's our privilege. And in every [◊ 669] moment, by what we do, we sow, for ourselves and for others. And the harvest of what we sow begins in this very moment.

(c) Greed - or the bad deal

NOTE 143 Perhaps it is time to return to this ‘foreground’ of the Burial, that is, to the ins and outs of the role played in it by the Grand Officiant at my funeral, my friend Pierre. I had already returned to this a week ago, in the note ‘Patte de velours - ou les sourires’ (No. 137, 7 December), only to digress again with this digression (over five consecutive notes) on ‘la griffe’ and ‘le velours’. I feel that this ‘digression’, like many others that preceded it, was not in vain.

If I have been led to it, it is precisely because the most striking apparent feature, perhaps, in the way my friend has taken on his role, is the persistence, without any hint of breaking away at any point, of the purest ‘velvet paw’ style, in the service of an unfailing antagonism that never says its name204 . Another salient fact is that, behind the pleasant, well-tempered appearances of a knowing smile and friendly airs, my friend often expressed an unequivocal, and seemingly gratuitous, intention to harm or injure, either towards myself or towards one of those whom he considered to be ‘mine’ (in terms of mathematical work). I went into enough detail on concrete facts in this respect in the first part of Burial for it to be worth returning to them here. We are dealing here with malevolent dispositions (strictly confined to the domain of scientific activity, it would seem), with ‘violence’ in the strongest sense of the term, even though it remains rigorously hidden - the claw always drowned in exquisite downy silks. And this violence, this malevolence has all the appearance of the most disconcertingly gratuitous - it would seem to be exercised for the sole pleasure of harming and injuring.

[◊ 670] As is the case whenever we are confronted with such a situation, it seems so incredible that we often hesitate to believe the testimony of our healthy faculties 205 . To reject this testimony, as is common practice, is one of the innumerable ways of not taking on a situation, and thereby perpetuating it, it is surely preferable to put on the thing, to go round it, looking perhaps for aspects which may have escaped us and which provide an approach to it, which make it possible to integrate it into one's experience. It seems to me that there are very few people who have not at some point in their lives experienced such unjustified malevolence - and agreeing to remember this is already a possible step towards approaching a factual situation, which common reflexes would rather encourage us to evacuate immediately. It's surely also a good idea to probe further, to see if there isn't some hidden grievance that might be the cause and springboard of violence that seemed to have no cause - just as it's a good idea, if need be, to recognise bogus ‘grievances’ for what they are, of the kind (for example) that I myself have practised, knowing that so-and-so is an awful character who deserves no mercy, and so on.

But in this case, however hard I probe, I can't see anything that remotely resembles a grievance that my friend might (rightly or wrongly) have against me, or against any of those he has chosen as a target for malice. He himself never suggested anything remotely to that effect; not to mention the fact that, when questioned by me on more than one occasion about some of his actions which had left me speechless, he never admitted that there could have been in him the slightest hint of enmity towards anyone. I ended up sensing a secret gratification in him, during my occasional encounters, when he gave me his good, objective reasons, with his very own air of innocent, slightly amused surprise... In short, I entered into a game that he played as he pleased and with an intimate satisfaction that took me a long time to perceive. (And yet he was far from the first person to drive me up the wall in this way!) I did end up, better late than never, getting out of this 206 situation!

If, on the other hand, I probe myself, reviewing my relationship to my [◊ 671] friend since we met nearly twenty years ago (in 1965), I find no trace either of anything that, at any time, might have been the cause of any grievance against me. In the conventional, superficial sense of things, I can say that during all that time, and more particularly in the first five years of close contact, I ‘did him nothing but good’. But this observation immediately reminds me of another, less superficial one - that of a complacency in me towards him, which emerged in the course of reflection in the notes ‘Being apart’ and ‘Ambiguity’ (n os 67‘ and 63’). It is clear that this complacency was by no means a ‘good’ for him - and also, that my brilliant young pupil and friend's disposition towards me developed in close symbiosis with my own disposition, and more particularly, with this complacency. It's not impossible, even, that this complacency, at some unconscious level, was (not only perceived, which is obvious anyway, but also) felt by my friend as a ‘grievance’, as a scenario perhaps too well known and replayed over and over again, in his youth as a child who was something of a prodigy, and who was being served up to him again (albeit discreetly). He had perhaps naively believed that by setting foot in the ‘big mathematical world’, everything would be different from what he had known - and then no, it was always the same tobacco! (And because of his own deliberate choices, today it's still the same tobacco, and even bigger, what's more...)

I'll probably never know exactly what's going on here. It's not my job to get to the bottom of it, assuming I'm sharp enough to do it on my own. If there was a ‘grievance’, it was in any case, at most, an ‘auxiliary’ grievance, which contributed by its flick of the wrist to setting ‘something’ in motion - a certain game, driven by a force of an entirely different magnitude; a force whose presence I have long felt, but whose nature remains enigmatic for me. Before leaving this ‘foreground’ of the Burial painting, I would at least like to try and surmise the nature of this force.

There is, visibly, a greed to supplant, to oust, to erase, and also a greed to appropriate the fruits of the labours and loves of others with lady mathematics. However, it is clear to me that it is not a simple ‘bulimia’ for prestige, admiration, honours, or even power, that is the mainspring of his role in L'Enterrement. How often, in the course of my reflection on this [◊ 672] role, have I been struck by the extent to which this obsession in him with burying meant that he was burying himself! He had shared, through his exceptional gifts and an equally exceptional set of circumstances, everything he needed to far surpass his master, and to leave a profound imprint on the mathematics of his time as a whole. All he had to do was let his inner child play to his heart's content, without bothering him with instructions, barriers here and forbidden directions there - simply taking care of what was necessary, strictly housekeeping. In doing so, and without having to push, pull or elbow, the ‘boss’ in him, no more or less greedy than in anyone else, would certainly not have lacked all the imaginable marks of prestige, admiration, honours, and power to boot, not even knowing what to do with them, when it's the kid who's having the time of his life, leaving the boss little time to play the boss...

Decidedly, in simply ‘utilitarian’ terms, it was a bloody bad business to get involved in a funeral that had been sticking to him for fifteen years or more, and which was going to stick to him for the rest of his life, if the cumbersome deceased hadn't suddenly disrupted the ceremony by lifting the lid of his coffin, when (as expected) he was least expecting it! (All bets are off as to the impact of this unfortunate incident on Pierre's future bets...) Or to put it another way, my friend had the makings (intellectually, at least), and the credentials, to be a mathematical Peter the Great, and he chose instead to play the little Peter. That sounds like a bad deal indeed, at least if the aim was really, above all, to satisfy vanity.

(d) The two kinds of knowledge - or the fear of knowing

NOTE 144 (15 December) Towards the end of last night's reflection, I felt the slight unease of someone who, with a peremptory air, serves up a line of reasoning of impeccable logic, while dismissing the vague feeling that there is nevertheless something wrong. This ‘something’ became apparent as soon as I stopped writing. One vague way of putting it is this: the ‘logic’ of the unconscious, the logic that presides over our most crucial choices, is by no means that of ordinary conscious [◊ 673] reasoning, and even less so that of ‘orthodox’ reasoning. In the present case, the perception I have of the ‘assets’ of the young man Deligne in the second half of the 1960s (let us say), and the weight I attach to them (which goes in the same direction, at least, as the weight any reasonably well-informed mathematician would attach to them) - this perception and this weight (which I would be tempted to describe as ‘objective’) bear no relation to the dispositions and feelings of the person concerned himself ; with those, in particular, concerning his own abilities, which are certainly the key asset of all those at his disposal.

I have the impression, however, that at least on a conscious level, and with all the modesty that modesty demands, my friend had integrated and made his own the flattering echoes that had been coming back to him for a long time about his unusual gifts. But there is no doubt in my mind that at a deeper level, where the great choices that dominate a life are made without words, this ‘objective’ version of things became (and still remains today) a dead letter. In its place, there is an insidious doubt, which no ‘proof’ of value (or of superiority over others...) will ever uproot - a doubt all the more tenacious because it remains forever unformulated. I saw it in my friend, just as I've seen it in others less brilliantly gifted, and it's the same. This doubt is the obstinate messenger of an intimate conviction, which also remains unspoken, even more deeply buried than this doubt itself: an intimate conviction of powerlessness, fundamental and irremediable. This too is the ‘self-contempt’ I spoke of at the very beginning of Récoltes et semailles, in the context of a reflection that remained ‘general’ 207 . It reappeared, again in an impersonal context and under a different guise, a month or two ago, as a ‘feeling of cracking’ 208 - this diffuse feeling that I had first noticed in myself, the day after I discovered meditation. And several times, too, in the course of reflecting on the Burial, there was a sudden and acute perception of this ‘intimate conviction of powerlessness’ in my friend, throwing new light on some situation that seemed to defy common sense 209...

[◊ 674] I know that this intimate conviction, in my friend or in any other, is itself like the shadow of a knowledge - of the knowledge of a ‘crack’ that does indeed exist, of a ‘mutilation’ suffered, and sanctioned and maintained to this very day by his own acquiescence. The shadow does not, however, restore the knowledge from which it comes, beneficial in itself like all knowledge - it is rather like a deformed and gigantic caricature of it, a scarecrow version. What distorts knowledge in this way and makes it unrecognisable is a fear - the fear of making contact with this knowledge itself, of letting it rise from the depths where it has always been repressed, and of assuming the humble reality of which it is the faithful reflection.

To make contact with this dreaded knowledge, to become aware with a fully conscious gaze of this reality known in its deepest layers, and shunned - this is what it really means: to make full contact with that in us (whether we call it ‘the force’, or ‘the child’), ‘believed lost and dead for a long life’. For it is certainly this strength and nothing else, the strength of childhood, that enables us to come to terms with that part of us that is cracked, mutilated and paralysed. And taking it on also means getting back in touch with that other knowledge, which predates our mutilation and is even more essential than it: the original knowledge of the presence of that ‘strength’ that lies within us, a strength that is neither muscle nor brain, and which contains both.

It may seem strange, but this lost knowledge of the presence within us of this ‘force’, this creative power, as an obvious, indestructible part of our true nature - this knowledge is rediscovered through the discovery and humble acceptance of a state of powerlessness, resolved by this very acceptance. The knowledge of a state of powerlessness covers and hides the even more deeply buried knowledge of our creative force. The latter is like the key that opens us to the former, both indissociable in truth, like the front and back of the same knowledge 210 , objects of the same fear.

[◊ 675] When I speak of ‘the force’ buried in each of us, I'm not talking about something abstract and vague, a verbal subtlety of a ‘philosopher’, or a psychologist who's a bit of a philosopher around the edges. It's this strength that allows you to ‘do maths’ (or ‘make love’...) like a child breathes - that is, without prudently obliging yourself not to leave the wake left by your predecessors, and to repeat with application the gestures and recipes (or the clichés...) that were theirs. ) that were theirs; and it's also the one that gives you the courage and humility, in your own house as well as in that of others, to call a spade a spade and not to take bladders for lanterns, even if in doing so you go against the most established consensus, or the most inveterate and well-honed mechanisms within yourself 211 .

[◊ 676] The first example to come to my attention is a good one - it's sure to get the heart racing of any young (or even not so young) glory-loving researcher. Who wouldn't want to be the intrepid pioneer of a science still in its infancy, and as such feature prominently in every textbook, like Kepler, the father of modern astronomy! But when it comes to (as Kepler and others did) tenaciously spinning one's own yarn in solitude and indifference (if not disdain or hostility), for thirty years or even just one - then suddenly there's nobody left! One wants to be in the textbooks, in good company in short, but one is also afraid of being alone, if only for a year or even [◊ 677] only for a day. But he who ‘knows’ the presence of the force within him (and in order to know it he has never had to speak of it, either to others or to himself...) - he also knows that he is alone, and being alone causes him no anxiety. And knowing whether he'll be in the textbooks is the least of his worries - especially when he's working. As it happens, this same Kepler, in his very work, ‘went against the best established consensus’ in his science, and established for millennia, no less. In his day (when the Inquisition still existed) this was even more inconvenient than it is today, when you have a good chance of losing your job, or not finding one, but without the risk of ending up at the stake. To come back to Kepler, I don't know what he was like in his everyday life, with regard to the ‘best-established consensus’; perhaps there he kept his nose to the grindstone, like everyone else. What's certain is that today, as in the past and as always, there aren't many people who would deviate even a hair's breadth from that consensus. It's probably always the same tobacco - the fear of being alone, the flip side of a deep and almost universal human need: the need for approval, for confirmation by others (and would there be only one who approves and confirms) 212...

(e) The secret nerve

NOTE 145 But I've lost my train of thought again! I had started from the realisation that my ‘reasoning’ of last night was off the mark, when I wanted to ‘get across’ this conviction of mine, that my friend's motivation for playing the part I know in my Burial, and in the way I know, was not greed (for prestige, admiration, honours, power). It's true, of course, that by trading a child's impulse for a role, he'd made a ‘bad bargain’, even from the point of view of ‘returns’, prestige, and so on. But that proves absolutely nothing. Such ‘miscalculations’ are moreover the almost absolute rule, it seems to me, and by no means the exception, in the choices (at the unconscious level) of our [◊ 678] main investments and options. But even though the reasoning is worthless, I nevertheless have no doubt that what I wanted to get across is indeed the perception of a reality: that it is not this very real greed, and which has taken a growing and truly devouring part in my friend's life, that it is not it, however, that constitutes the nerve in this role played by my friend, as the key-character in the implementation of my burial.

If I try to take a closer look at this very clear-cut feeling (without there being any question of ‘establishing’ its validity!), I come up with this: it's this gratuitousness in the antagonistic or malicious act, a gratuitousness that has often left me speechless, that doesn't ‘fit’ at all with the catch-all ‘explanation’: greed. As far as prestige, admiration and honours were concerned, at least, and even ‘power’ in the ordinary sense of the term, my brilliant ex-student and friend gained nothing, either at the moment or in the longer term, by playing off his former teacher with that ‘discreet and delicately measured disdain’ of which he had the secret ; or by using the same disdain (perhaps less delicately measured) towards a researcher of lesser status than himself, or towards his present or past work, in such a way as to discourage someone whose confidence in his own judgement was not as firmly rooted as it was in me; or yet for another, who had courageously persevered against the general disdain of which my friend set the tone, by robbing him of the fruits of his perseverance against all odds. While it's true that in this last case, as in others, my friend pretended to appropriate the fruits ripened by others in solitude (and sometimes with the disdain of his elders), this ‘benefit’ (in the style of ‘Pouce’ 213 ) is so derisory, when you consider who the person is who is appropriating it in this way, that the ‘explanation’ put forward goes up in smoke itself!

As far as I'm concerned, I know for a fact that it's not this benefit that's the ‘nerve’ of such appropriations. On the contrary, I sense in it the intoxication of a certain power - a power that is more delicate, and no doubt more exhilarating, than power in the conventional sense, as such a man of science and importance commonly exercises it by sitting [◊ 679] on committees, councils, juries and the like, by directing an institute, or the research of brilliant young researchers, or by speaking in the ear of a minister. The ‘intoxication’ of which I speak appeared (for the first time in the reflection) in the note ‘Perversity’ (n o 76), when I suddenly found myself confronted there with ‘an act of bravado, a kind of intoxication in a power so total, that it can even afford to display (symbolically...) its true nature of “perverse” spoliation of others’.

This was a dazzling, ostentatious act of bravado, and yet at the same time an occult, informal one, slipped in there out of the blue, with even the semblance of a circumstantial explanation for this strange name, ‘perverse bundles’, what could be more natural, we'll enlighten you on that in three words, in addition to a short list of ‘things that should have found their place’ in our modest and brilliant article 214 .

Once again, I recognise the purest ‘velvet paw’ style, aka ‘thumb’ style! - and behind the uniformity of a style that has become familiar to me in more than one person, I also sense the common thread: The power of the cat over the mouse, when it plays its great game with perfect grace (which only the mouse can fully appreciate), and with ‘the most exquisite delicacy’, to be sure - or the power of a clever wife over her big dodo of a husband...

Based on the case in point raised by my friend, I've already been led to talk about the ‘style’ in question, and its meaning, in the general context of couples of all kinds. This was in my thoughts a week ago, in the note ‘Le renversement (4) - ou le cirque conjugal’ (No. 138, 8 December). It was there that the nerve of the Velvet Paw (aka Thumb!) game appeared for the first time, with all the clarity it deserved, as a game of power. A game of power, however, of a very particular nature: the fascination of the game for those who play it, its often all-consuming charm, lies precisely in the hidden nature of the power it wields, the ‘neither seen nor known’ nature that allows you to play with the other person (of them, never with them...), to make them turn round and round in circles, to make them think they've got it all wrong, to make them think they've got it all wrong, to make them think they've got it all wrong... ), making him turn in circles as he pleases, always leading the dance, while the other stumbles along with blow after [◊ 680] blow, clumsily responding to these little blows delivered by invisible wires that are wielded as one pleases...

It will have sufficed for me at last to write down in black and white what has been obscurely felt for years no doubt, without my ever having taken the trouble to formulate it to myself in clear terms - it will have sufficed for this short effort to condense into words what for a long time had remained diffuse, for what only yesterday appeared to me to be ‘enigmatic’ (namely, the nature of a ‘certain force’ in such and such a friend), suddenly to open up to me its obvious meaning! This ‘force’ in him, or (as I wrote earlier) the ‘nerve’ of such acts that may seem ‘inexplicable’ (or even ‘beyond comprehension’), I had already clearly identified in the reflection of 8 December. But while the starting point for this crucial reflection was indeed a certain ‘enigmatic’ game played by my brilliant friend, it was another experience, richer and more intense than the one associated with his person, that fuelled this reflection; an experience that had been fully assimilated (or not so much), and which gave me a knowledge that had already been formed, that the more epidermal experience of my sporadic relationship with my friend Pierre could not then have communicated to me.

Admittedly, it was this experience that I ultimately had to understand, and thereby fully assume; and if I then launched into a digression on the ‘carrousel of the couple’ without any inner reservations, it was because I clearly felt that this carrousel had something to tell me about my relationship with my friend. His thoughts continued to linger in the background, like a discreet background note.

However, the two didn't ‘merge’ completely that day, or in the days that followed. No doubt the moment was not yet fully ripe. For the junction to take place without reserve or effort, with the ease of the obvious, I first had to ‘clear the ground’, by stubbornly and unhurriedly following, one by one, the most compelling associations that demanded my attention. I didn't rush things, and I knew that was what I had to do - attend to what was calling me insistently, without letting myself be distracted by a ‘subject’ or a ‘thread’ (of thought), or even by a programme to complete.

While I'm weeding and hoeing, the forces of earth and sky are at work. When evening comes, all you have to do is pick up the ripe fruit, which falls into the open hand that welcomes it...

(f) Passion and hunger - or escalation

NOTE 146 [◊ 681] (17 December) It seems to me that with the day before yesterday's reflection, there was something like an unblocking of an understanding that had remained indecisive, a bit stunned, in the face of a quantity of facts and intuitions piled up before me in a rather amorphous heap - like a jigsaw puzzle of which I had only managed, as best I could, to assemble a few pieces here and there. Now I feel as if I've stumbled across the key ‘piece’ of the unknown picture that needs to be pieced together, around which the others will finally fall effortlessly into place. In any case, I have no doubt that I have touched the ‘nerve’ behind the role played by my friend Pierre in the burial of the master and his (more or less) faithful followers, and at the same time, the ‘nerve’ of his relationship with me, the deceased master.

This craving to play with a certain power, discreetly pulling invisible strings with an air of candour - this craving must surely have been present long before I met him, unknown to him and to everyone else. If I didn't see it manifest itself in the first few years we knew each other, before the episode of my departure (in 1970), it's probably because in those years of intense learning and the blossoming of a delicate and powerful thought, my friend's energy was totally absorbed elsewhere. The conditions were ideal, in fact, to serve as a springboard for his exceptional abilities. The episode of my departure, first from the institution of which we were both members, and then (in the year that followed) from the mathematical scene, was a crucial turning point not only in my own spiritual adventure, but surely also in his. It was this episode that suddenly opened up to him means of power that only the day before he would not have dared to dream of: firstly, the power to ‘oust’ from the scene an ex-master who was taking up a great deal of space there, and from whom he had previously confined himself to discreetly distancing himself 215 ; then, when it became clear that he was disappearing from the scene, the even more exhilarating power to make a certain School bearing the name of the deceased master vanish without a trace ; and in so doing, finally, to cut off cleanly, in all its main branches (except the one on which he himself was perched), the blossoming of a vast programme in the service of a vast Vision, which he himself had long nurtured 216 .

[◊ 682] The meaning of this great turning point in my friend's life seems to me to be a kind of reversal in the mutual relationship of hegemony of the two dominant forces in his person, those which seem to me to take precedence over all the others; mathematical passion, and the ‘craving’ for the game of power (‘à patte de velours’). The first of these forces is essentially ‘drive’ in nature,217 while the second is egotistical, ‘acquired’. Before the turning point, it was the drive for knowledge that dominated my friend's life (insofar as it was known to me), while the drive for power was more or less dormant, in a state of vacancy. At the end of a vertiginous social ascent in the space of a few years 218 , and in a situation that suddenly presented a draconian choice, it was the temptation of power and its secret intoxications that prevailed (handily, I think, and without any desire to fight) over the passion for knowledge. The passion for knowledge does not disappear from the scene, but it is now the vassal and humble servant of the craving, an instrument in the hands of the craving. Passion (alias ‘the worker’) goes about her work under the jealous eye of Fringale, alias ‘the boss’, who never leaves her side. As the workman has good tools (not all of which are forbidden to him) and good hands, even if he's kept short, he continues to work at maintaining production and the reputation of the company. But it's not the same as it used to be, of course, when the worker (a bit of a child) got his kicks all day long, while the boss was far away and only came to work once a season!

I don't feel motivated to retrace here the successive steps of this twelve-year climb, even though I have everything I need to do so. That would be the work of a chronicler, as I did enough of that in the unexpected ‘investigation’ pursued in the first part of Burial (or The Dress of the Chinese Emperor). These ‘steps’ of an escalation seem to me like so many probes, launched by my friend in the direction of a mute Congregation, with the same answer each time: he could go there! For nearly fifteen years, the Congregation was his silent ally and his guarantor, while he was, without knowing it or caring, his docile instrument 221 .

(g) Sugar daddies

NOTE 147 [◊ 684] I don't know whether this craving in my friend is directed at others besides me, and at younger mathematicians in whom he smells my ‘odour’. I haven't heard anything to that effect. On the other hand, it is clear to me that it was through his relationship with me, and thanks to a situation that is certainly unusual in the scientific world, that this propensity in him that had been living in the shadows became, overnight, a devouring craving. During the episode when I was leaving, when he explained to me, with all the appearance of seriousness, that he had given his life, totally, to mathematics 222 , he no doubt ‘believed’ what he was saying, and I myself, somewhat stunned though I was, didn't think to question his words. And yet, if I had had a better ear, or better still, if I had had the maturity to listen and trust a ‘better ear’, which does exist in me as it does in everyone, I would have known that what he was telling me about himself might have been true the day before, but that it wasn't true that day. It was a noble reason given for a dubious act, an act that neither he nor I had the simplicity to face up to, despite its dazzling meaning. It was something else than such a passion, which had seized the reins of his life in those days, never to let go until today.

So it was my person, or rather something in my friend's relationship with my person, that (given the right opportunity) triggered this drastic change in the nature of the force dominating his life, and in the direction of his investment in mathematics. This is a good time to remember the famous ‘strands’ or ‘aspects’ of L'Enterrement, highlighted in the reflection of 13 November (in the note ‘Rétrospective (1) - ou les trois volets d'un tableau’, no. 127), and in the note that follows it (‘Rétrospective (2) - ou le nœud du tableau’, no. 127'), strands that have had time to get a bit lost along the way since then. I pretended to remember a little in my note of ten days ago, ‘Patte de velours ou les sourires’ (No 137, 7 December). In particular, I reconnected with the intuition of the eternal role of ‘adopted father’ that I had to play with my young friend, and which, it seems to me, has been preserved and has remained active in him to this day. On the occasion of this reflection, I again express an unreserved conviction, which must have formed and taken shape little by little over the [◊ 685] last six or seven years at least (perhaps even longer): that it was ‘around this aspect (the paternal aspect in his apprehension of my person) that the conflict was woven - a conflict that already existed in him long before he heard my name uttered...’. (So that's the famous ‘Superpère’ part, while the ‘Supermère’ part is still in limbo, for the moment at least).

It's only a page later that the famous ‘smiles and velvet paws’ style makes its first quick appearance, as an object of attention. In the days that followed, the associated associations seemed at first to distance me from the person of my friend, as well as from the hidden ‘paternal’ aspect in the role my friend had assigned me in his life. This aspect has not been mentioned again until today - you can't think about everything at once, let alone talk about everything at once! In terms of thinking, however, it seems to me that somewhere, in the indistinct but nonetheless present and active background, the thought of this paternal aspect must have been present, it must have acted as an effective and discreet stimulus to this long digression on a ‘claw in velvet’ style. After all (I'm making this clear to myself now, after the event, but it must already have been there in the form of a diffuse yet peremptory motivation...), the figure of the ‘father’ is in no way foreign to this famous style, quite the contrary. In fact, it's fair to say that the very first person in a little girl's life (or a little boy's, for that matter) to be gently and smoothly (though not always tenderly) led by this style is none other than Papa!

And as long as the innocent kid (or boy) adopts and makes his (or hers) own this style and know-how, which must become second nature almost at the same time as you learn to speak, or very nearly so - the very first guinea pig and beneficiary, no doubt, will be that same big jerk Dad! More often than not, when I've seen this type of language used, it's accompanied by the hidden bitterness of a grudge, as well as a deliberate attempt at derision. And of course, in most families, there is no shortage of reasons to bear a grudge against the father, or even those skilfully suggested (or even created from scratch) by the loving wife. Yet at no time did I sense any such hint of resentment or anger in my friend. When I saw him injure or harm ‘for pleasure’, it was really (so [◊ 686] did I feel) for pleasure alone ; not (I think) pleasure through the suffering or humiliation itself which he inflicted, but rather the secret intoxication of exercising, according to his good pleasure and in that particular style in which he was a master, a power - more exhilarating or more piquant still, undoubtedly, by this ingredient with a ‘perverse’, ‘forbidden’ connotation (harming, or causing pain for pleasure), and yet which he could indulge in, delicately and casually, to his heart's content and to his heart's content 223... NOTE 167' (26 February) 83 It seems to me that I have come full circle, more or less, with the Burial. An incomplete and provisional tour, to be sure - but for the moment I don't think I'll go much further. I feel I need to take a step back, and that now is the time to finish. All that's left for me to do is to take stock of what I've learnt during this impromptu meditation that was the writing of Récoltes et semailles.

(h) The nerve within the nerve - or the dwarf and the giant

NOTE 148 (December 18) With last night's reflection, I feel that this ‘foreground’ of the painting of The Burial, centred on the relationship between my friend Pierre and me, continues to emerge from the mists of misunderstanding and confusion. For some time now I've been faced with the task of inserting a certain ‘Superpère’ section into this foreground (among others), and although I hadn't really formulated it clearly, this section didn't really seem to want to fit in willingly. If there's one student I've always felt completely ‘at ease’ with me, not at all tense and at no time that I can remember, it's him! It's true that I don't remember much about our very first encounters, and I can't say that he didn't feel that tension, often barely perceptible but very real, which arises when we first approach someone invested (in one capacity or another) with authority or prestige, and towards whom we have a particular expectation. It is at least probable that such a tension must have been present, and that I paid no more attention to it than to any other young researcher I happened to meet. What is certain is that if there was any tension on first contact, it very quickly disappeared without a trace. To use the image that appeared last night, he was as comfortable with me as a child (or ex-child) is with a sugar daddy whom he has never had to fear, and who has rarely refused him anything.

I thought about the situation again last night, after I'd stopped writing. It now appears to me that my friend's relationship with me operated [◊ 687] on two quite distinct levels, and (it would seem) without mutual communication. One of these levels, which undoubtedly became established in the weeks and months following our meeting, was that of the personal relationship - that of the ‘sugar daddy’, therefore, as nice as can be, not at all impressive, himself a bit of a child around the edges, including in his work, to such an extent that there is a nuance about him, I would say almost maternal, which I have already had occasion to mention once or twice : that of a child, giddy and a bit boisterous, and above all as naïve as they come. It's also true that in terms of his work, and objectively speaking, he really had no reason to be impressed. Of course, I knew a lot of maths that he didn't (and which he learnt in a few years, by playing games), and above all, I had an experience of mathematics that he still lacked. But he had a speed of assimilation, and an acuity of vision to quickly recognise himself in muddled and confusing situations, by which he often amazed me, and which I lack. If I myself sometimes impressed colleagues, it was mainly because of the uncommon slaughter that I have in my work, due above all, I think, to a certain approach that I have to mathematical work. But there was certainly no reason for my brilliant young friend to be impressed by this, since his own hard work, as long as he started writing (which he did not dislike at all), was much more effective than mine.

This level of my friend's relationship with me, the ‘sugar daddy’ level, seems to me to include the whole of his conscious image of me, and a good part of his unconscious image too. It's this image, it seems to me, that elicits in response, following paths no doubt established since childhood, a kind of reflex craving, that of the famous game of ‘claw in the velvet’ - a game that requires us to be entirely ‘at ease’ with our partner, entirely ‘sure of him’ and, by the same token, sure of ourselves 224 . This is the level of complete assurance, based on intimate knowledge of a situation, corroborated again and again by experience, which is interpreted [◊ 688] in a fully concordant way by both the conscious and unconscious faculties of perception and appreciation. The game itself is occult, unconscious to the interested party himself (I presume, at least), but the feeling of assurance and the perception of reality that underlie it are in the conscious, rational, ‘objective’ domain.

The other level, on the other hand, is entirely unconscious (at least that's my impression), uncontrolled and uncontrollable, of an irrational nature that seems to defy and make a mockery of any reasoned or reasonable knowledge of ‘objective’ reality (which I've just mentioned). At this level, the personal relationship, strictly speaking, linked to any realistic perception of the Other, disappears. I myself appear as a giant, powerful and secretly envied, and my friend feels like a dwarf, overwhelmed by the conviction of his irremediable insignificance, and consumed at the same time by the insane desire, not to be a giant himself when he is a dwarf by immutable condition, but somehow to rise to his level, to pass himself off as a giant at the very least, or, more secretly and insidiously still - the insane desire to be that giant himself, or at the very least, to pass himself off as one. I think I detect yet another nuance in this desire, which is like the echo, in deeper layers, of the desire present in the layers close to the surface, which finds symbolic satisfaction precisely in this ‘velvet paw’ game, and is its nerve and spring: the desire for role reversal. In the upper layers, it's the reversal of yin-yang, dominant-dominated, object-subject roles that's at stake. But that's not the relationship we're talking about here, because the giant has no desire to dominate the dwarf - he's content to be a giant, and thus, without knowing or caring, to be a perpetual, burning challenge to the dwarf who feels overwhelmed by his irremediable condition as a dwarf... The dwarf's superb ignorance is a tacit contempt and an affront. It is this relationship that he is determined to overturn, himself appearing as the giant, and consigning the latter to insignificance - insignificance through oblivion, if not insignificance through derision, in fair return for the ignorance and contempt in which he feels himself held.

I said earlier that the two levels, ‘sugar daddy’ and ‘giant’, ‘would seem to have no mutual communication’. On reflection, it would seem to me [◊ 689] that there is indeed communication between the two, if only through this desire for reversal: the desire at one of the two levels now appears as an ‘echo’ of the similar desire already noted at the other. At first glance, it seemed to me that this reversal of roles, at the deeper ‘dwarf-giant’ level, was not a yin-yang reversal of roles. What is true is that this reversal is not indeed of the dominant-dominated type. However, after further reflection, there is no doubt that the values embodied by the giant are yang and superyang values, whereas the dwarf appears as the embodiment of yin non-values - in terms, I mean, of my friend's ideological options, not so different from the options that were still mine in the early years of our relationship 225 .

This will become clear, no doubt, when I have established a bridge between the image of ‘the dwarf and the giant’ and reality, or at least explained the origin of this image in the history and prehistory of the relationship between my friend and me. As far as ‘prehistory’ is concerned, there's hardly any need to point out that this kind of conscious or unconscious image only comes into being as a result of the deep-seated ‘self-contempt’ that I've already mentioned many times in my reflections; or to put it better, that such an image is nothing other than a tangible, more or less concrete materialisation of this contempt. Perhaps I could even say that this ‘secret conviction’ is on the lookout for a situation that can serve as a support for it, and at the same time give rise to the scarecrow-image that expresses it. I believe that in everything in the psyche, however deeply buried, there lives a force that prompts it to express itself, often symbolically. This expression no doubt remains unconscious in many cases, but it is no less active, on the contrary, at the level of visible actions in everyday life.

To return this time to the story of my friend's relationship with me, it too certainly began before we met. He must have heard of me around the time of his first contacts with the world of mathematicians, in Brussels, around 1960 - four or five years [◊ 690] before we met, when he was sixteen or seventeen 226 . It is surely no coincidence that he asked me, and no one else, to teach him the mathematical profession, or at least to teach him what was to be the central theme and tool of his work (namely, algebraic geometry). Before we met, the way I appeared to him (at least as a mathematician) could hardly have been anything other than my brand image, making me a kind of heroic and prestigious embodiment of the core values prevalent in the world of mathematicians, and this at a time when he himself was a modest student, fresh out of high school. The image that he had of me, and which was the very image that I liked to portray, was more than just an imaginary image, made to make glory-loving schoolchildren dream. It was based on tangible realities, and he certainly had enough flair to smell them in those years, in contact with mature mathematicians who were well into the game. From 1965 onwards, he was in a better position than anyone else to take my measurements himself. I sensed in him a fascination for a vision that was opening up to him, born and matured in me over the past decade and which continued to unfold and develop before his eyes. There was no doubt in my mind at the time that these visions, which he made his own ‘as if he had always known them’, would serve him well as inspiration and tools for developing even more far-reaching visions and work, within his means. This was not the case - and it is only in the light of this long meditation on a Burial, nearly twenty years later, that I can see how the fine and passionate perception of what I had to convey to him must have served at the same time to flesh out and support, [◊ 691] with first-hand elements of irrefutable reality, an aberrant scarecrow-image; an image likely to paralyse, like the ‘intimate conviction’ of which it is an expression. The very acuity of his perception of a ‘greatness’ and a depth in what I was transmitting to him, and which he was the only one to have made his own (and without effort) in its entirety - this acuity and vivacity that were his strength, then turned against him, making the aberrant image even more striking and peremptory.

Three days ago I thought I had touched the ‘nerve’ of the role my friend had been playing for nearly fifteen years - and there was no doubt then that I had touched a nerve centre: This all-consuming craving for a certain game, a delicate game of power, which was at the same time the symbolic and ephemeral satiation of the desire for a certain role reversal... With today's reflection, descending into deeper layers, it now seems to me that I am touching the nerve within the nerve, the even more secret sting, which ceaselessly arouses and sustains this craving. For at the level of the ‘sugar daddy’ there is certainly the opportunity and the latitude to play this game in complete safety, leading the dance with nonchalant delicacy, and sure to win every time. But the charm of the easy opportunity is undoubtedly dulled by the absence of a spur. And as I noticed only yesterday, there is no sting of pent-up grievance, of secret resentment - that's why they call him ‘cake’! This missing sting, in short, is what I suddenly came across earlier, when, as if dictated by an acquaintance that had been there all ready for a long time, I was led to describe this ‘other level’, ‘uncontrolled and uncontrollable’, where a dwarf and a giant live side by side.

And the initial impression of a still confused intuition, that between the two levels there was no mutual communication, suddenly disappears, giving way to an understanding, expressed and aroused at the same time by the double image of the ‘nerve within the nerve’ and the ‘goad’. In terms of ‘layers’ this time, some superficial and others deep, I would now use a third image again, saying that the latter nourish or sustain the movement of the former, that they are its deep foundation, solidly anchored in the structure of the self. Without this foundation, the surface agitation would quickly dissipate and vanish, giving way at last to something else...

(11) The other Self

(a) A suspended grudge - or the return of things (2)

NOTE 149 [◊ 692] (20 December) Since the reflection of five days ago, and especially that pursued in the second of that day's notes, ‘The Secret Nerve’ (No. 145), I feel that the work on this famous ‘foreground’ of the Burial painting has suddenly taken another turn. Before this reflection, I felt in the slightly awkward position of someone faced with a jigsaw puzzle, with the impression that I didn't understand much of it. Since April I'd been trying to put the pieces together one by one, and to inventory them carefully. It's not that I was short of pieces, no, it was more like I had too many! In any case, there must have been enough to make a picture, partial perhaps, but a picture that stood up. The last piece of the jigsaw that I threw on the table was that of the ‘reversal’ (of yin and yang), held in reserve from the very beginning of ‘The Key to Yin and Yang’ (as an ‘association of ideas’ to which I promised myself I would return), and finally bursting onto the scene with unforeseen force in the note ‘The funeral of yin (yang buries yin [4])’, dated 10 November (no. 124). The thirty-five days that followed, until five days ago, were essentially spent turning over and over the pieces that had already come to light, as the most compelling associations demanded my attention 227 . I expected that, in so doing, the pieces would eventually come together of their own accord to reveal the unknown picture. Nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, they continued to thumb their noses at each other, as if fragments of ten different newspaper cuttings had been thrown in a jumble and it was up to me to put them together! I was beginning to wonder whether I wasn't going to be obliged, at the end of the day, to make a final inventory of the pieces, and another of the question marks concerning their assembly, and leave it at that...

The situation changed five days ago, when, after turning these famous pieces over and over, feeling them and smelling them, something finally clicked, when one of them (that of a craving behind a certain style) was suddenly recognised as ‘neuralgic’. I had the immediate impression of a qualitative change, that a perspective that had been missing until then was already being [◊ 693] organised from that piece. It was in these terms that I expressed myself the day after, taking up the reflection in the following note (‘Passion et fringale - ou l'escalade’, n o 146). And my premonition was already beginning to be confirmed the very same day, with the appearance of the ‘sugar daddy’ piece, which seemed to have been called by the ‘neuralgic piece’ precisely for the purpose of fitting into it without any burrs!

The ‘’Superfather‘’ piece, which had always been there (already inherited from the first part of Récoltes et semailles, and taken up again at the beginning of La clef du yin et du yang 228 ), now seems to have been written off, as if it had simply strayed there by accident. Under the fresh impression of the new ‘cake’ piece229 , I tend to forget that this famous Superpère (not ‘cake’ at all, as it happens) did indeed have something to do with the relationship between my friend Pierre and me, even if it didn't take centre stage (although it needed to by a long shot...). I did end up remembering it at the next session, of course - at the very moment, in fact, when I was about to explain to myself why that eternal piece of the jigsaw actually had nothing to do with it! It was, in fact, ‘just the opposite’ of the piece of cake, which had just placed itself with such ease. And then, no, on closer inspection, this piece that was supposedly alien to the game, and whose contours had remained the vaguest, suddenly clarified its shapes, ‘taking on those of the image-force (conjured up by none other than my friend Pierre himself 230 ) of the dwarf and the giant. At first I expected, on seeing it reappear in such strongly marked features, that it would be ‘unconnected’ with the double neuralgic piece already in place (made up of daddy-cake, and the imperious urge to ‘make it work’ - a little phone call here, a little phone call there...). And now, on the contrary, it appears as ‘the nerve within the nerve’, as an even more neuralgic piece, fitting together without rubbing or coming unstuck with the part of the puzzle already in place!

This piece, under its old name of ‘Superpère’, had already been [◊ 694] brushed up against many times, and even taken in the hand and turned round and round like the others, and even (I remember now) declared the centrepiece, the ‘heart of the picture’ and all that ; but, perhaps for lack of a striking image (provided by the person concerned himself), and no doubt above all, because of its absurd, aberrant nature, completely crazy even in terms of the ‘common sense’ of the current and universally accepted consensus, I was embarrassed and ashamed of the damn thing, it burned in my hand: No one (including a certain ‘me’ who is still tenaciously living inside me...) will ever want to take it seriously! I might as well pack it in quietly and ‘play’ with more manageable pieces!

When I just spoke of ‘the masterpiece’, ‘the heart of the picture’, etc., in relation to the play that became ‘The Dwarf and the Giant’, it's of course the ‘self-contempt’ aspect that I'm thinking of, rather than the ‘Superpère’ aspect. For the time being, the latter designation for this piece-aiguillon, or ‘nerve within a nerve’-is hasty and unjustified. I mean, it doesn't seem, at first sight at least, that this famous faceless giant with oversized hands is anything like a father figure. If he needed a name, ‘Superman’ or ‘Supermale’ would seem to suit him, rather than ‘Superfather’. So all things considered, the latter is still very much on the cards, for the moment at least, as is the play (or ‘section’) ‘Supermère’, which I'll also have to come back to.

For the moment, the most urgent thing seems to me to be to try and situate the part of the picture already placed, with the ‘secret nerve’ and the even more secret ‘nerve within the nerve’, in terms of a yin-yang dynamic in the person of my friend. On this subject, I have three hard facts. Two are expressed by the yin-yin ‘double signature “231 : my friend Pierre has a ”yin’ basic tone, both in what we might call his ‘acquired personality’, expressed above all in the tone of his relationships with others, and in his ‘innate personality’ or drive, expressed above all (for an outside observer such as myself, at least) in his spontaneous working style, free from interference from his ‘boss’. The first fact, concerning the acquired personality, or the ‘structure of the ego’ (or in more colourful terms, ‘the boss's head’), seems to indicate that this structuring took place in childhood and from the first years of life, through identification with a model of a ‘yin’ nature. This does not exclude, a priori, that this model was the father, if he himself had (as indeed seems to me [◊ 695] to be the case) an ‘acquired personality’ with a basic yin tonality. But on the other hand, the predisposition in my friend to a craving for a kind of power game which, in our lands if not everywhere and always, is typically (if not exclusively) ‘feminine’, and more precisely, which is the game among all that the wife is wont to play with the husband - this predisposition makes me suppose that the identification was made with the person of the mother, and that it is from her that he has ‘inherited’ this craving (or a propensity for such a craving), and that it is also from her that he has adopted the appropriate ‘style’ (or ‘tactic’), that of the ‘claw in the velvet paw’.

The ‘third fact’ to be recalled here is my friend's choice of a value system in line with generally accepted values, his choice of ‘virile’ (or yang) values. Over the last fifteen years, these values seem to me to have turned more and more towards ‘superyang’. In his case, there is an obvious contradiction in this choice: while adopting ‘official’ yang values, he has nevertheless modelled himself, in most essential respects, on a yin model 232 . And it's not that this choice of values is purely ‘phoney’, that it's nothing more than a false flag, flown for reasons of circumstance, and which would only prevail in [◊ 696] the peripheral layers of the psyche. The image-force of the dwarf and the giant, acting from deep layers, would lose its meaning, and also that imperious urge for reversal that it arouses, if the valorisation of the yang were not also internalised in those layers. There's no doubt that this contradiction must add a living force to this ‘intimate conviction’ of a crack, of insidious powerlessness - at a time when (perhaps only for lack of an adequate ‘model’ in his childhood on which to model himself) he knows (deep down) that he is fundamentally different from what he ‘should be’!

If my friend, as seems plausible to me, didn't find in his father the traits that, according to the current consensus around him, should have been there, and that he could then have made his own, this must have aroused in him a diffuse resentment, a resentment that didn't manage to cling to any concrete grievance, towards a dad whose only fault was that he was too much of a ‘cakewalk’! This resentment, lacking a ‘hook’ to hang on to, would then have remained ‘vacant’, waiting for a suitable target - a target who, first of all, was (by context) a father figure, and moreover, whose suitability for this role was obvious, through the undeniable presence, dazzling perhaps even excessive, of those traits that were lacking in his ‘original’ father. It's these traits, too, that make the newcomer ‘father’ the ideal target, in the sort of ‘game’ that's already all set in motion here, just waiting for the right partner, aka ‘the spare father’, aka (here we are at last!) ‘the Superfather’!

And all of a sudden I seem to be back on very familiar ground, which I only now recognise. It's a place where I was a prisoner for twenty years, during the only marriage of my life (a marriage that produced three of my five children). In the lines of the preceding paragraph, and without any deliberate intention (but rather like someone groping cautiously in the shadows to become aware of his surroundings), I have also just described in turn the neuralgic forces in the relationship to her father, and then to me, of the woman who was my wife. I can't say when or how the knowledge (or rather the irrefutable intuition) of the silent, obstinate presence of these two forces in her and of their mutual relationship came to me. One day I knew, without ever having given it a moment's thought, that the inexorable force that dominated my wife's relationship with me, from the very first days of our marriage, was driven by resentment towards me for not having been there for her, like another real father, in the days of a bewildered childhood...

[◊ 697] It is true, and I know, that my friend's childhood was in no way ‘distressed’, and that the personality he developed and that I have known, between the 1960s and now, bears little resemblance to that of my ex-wife. But beyond the obvious dissimilarities, I can see in the part of the picture that is emerging from the shadows a striking similarity with another ‘picture’ that is well known to me. This similarity appears in the nature of the relationship with the father (linked to a temperament of the father where the yang traits are deficient), and in the repercussion of this on a relationship of adulthood which, for both of them, dominated their lives, as the focus of the forces of conflict in both of them 233

For a moment, I was going to overlook a third ‘similarity’, which is not without consequence in my own life: in the two relationships in question, the protagonist on each occasion was none other than myself. And what, in both cases, designated me for the role of ‘Superpère’ that I was called upon to play, was (in addition to my immaturity) that which since childhood had been dearer to me perhaps than anything else in the world - that in which I had also invested myself most disproportionately: a ‘build’ that was more virile than life itself...

So here I am again, in a different and more penetrating light than eight months ago, with this feeling of ‘things coming back’ 234 - with, now as then, a tinge of incredulous astonishment (it seems too ‘right’ to be true!). And also, this time again but in more restrained tones than the sudden outburst of laughter of yesteryear, there is a perception of comedy, adding the gentler note of humour to these inexorable ‘returns’.

(b) Innocence and conflict - or the stumbling block

NOTE 150 (22 December) Yesterday again I found no time to work on my notes, except for the careful rereading and correction of the previous day's notes. Over the last few days my energy has been diverted by tasks of [◊ 698] correspondence and the like, and I am gnawing at the bit (not that this is anything new!) of finding myself face to face with myself, to push forward the reflection I have undertaken. The writing is decidedly slower in this third part of Récoltes et semailles, centred on the present reflection, ‘La clef du yin et du yang’, where the dynamic of yin and yang is the constant guiding thread for penetrating further into the meaning of Burial. If I didn't take the precaution of setting an alarm clock to interrupt my work after three hours or so (to stretch my body or to warn me that the hour was approaching and that it was time to stop), the whole night would pass in a flash! The three hours have gone by each time, and I feel as if I've barely started (or resumed), with two or three unfortunate pages that I've just typed, if not just one or two, just long enough to get round to some seemingly innocuous association that I thought I'd skip over in the process...

There's an impression of extreme slowness in progress, counted in pages per hour or per day - and the natural reaction to this impression, with a hot substance right in front of my nose pulling me forward, would be to double and triple my efforts, as I used to do until a few years ago. But I know that this is the trap to avoid - the trap of this extraordinary ‘ease’ in the work of discovery 235 , when all you have to do is ‘push’ forward, to be sure of making progress, slowly perhaps but surely ; Like someone holding the handlebars of a plough of good, hardened steel, pulled by a pair of powerful, impassive oxen, who would slowly and surely make his way, furrow after furrow, through dense, sometimes rough earth, yet at the same time supple, docile to the shiny ploughshare that delicately and unhurriedly opens it up, penetrates it and turns it over in wide, brown, steaming strips, bringing intense, teeming subterranean life out into the open. The pace may be slow, but the field is vast, and each furrow dug seems to barely make a dent in the expanse that remains uncultivated. Yet at the end of the day, furrow after furrow, the field is ploughed, and the ploughman returns happy: for him, the day has not passed in vain. His toil and his love were his seed, and his joy in the work, and his contentment at the end of each furrow and at the end of a long day, are his harvest and his reward.

[◊ 699] With the reflection of the day before yesterday, and perhaps for the first time in the writing of Harvest and Sowing, I feel as if I have stepped onto the uncertain terrain of what is not yet directly perceived or felt, and which remains (and perhaps will remain) hypothetical. Lacking eyes that can see through what seems to me darkness and night, I groped my way along a hesitant path, with no assurance that it was ‘the right one’. When the path forked, I didn't flip a coin to see which way I'd go next; I relied on my nose and my common sense to point me in the most plausible direction, without having any idea where it would lead. The path I was following, or tracing for myself, seemed to ‘stick’ to the facts I knew, and that was a good sign. But that didn't rule out the possibility, especially where these facts were tenuous, that a completely different path would have ‘stuck’ just as well, provided perhaps that I delved a little deeper into this or that fact... Then, at the bend in the road and to my own surprise, I suddenly found myself on ‘very familiar ground’, which I had travelled long and hard over the years, and which I had come to know and leave behind. A situation that, just a few moments before, had seemed obscure, shrouded in the uncertain mists of ‘without doubt’ and ‘perhaps’, was suddenly illuminated by the light of another situation that was understood. When I asked myself about the distant origins, in myself and in the other person, of the conflict in the relationship between this friend and me, they seemed to be revealed by a deep similarity I suddenly saw between this relationship and another that had weighed heavily on my life for twenty long years.

The appearance of this similarity was so powerful, I admit, that this feeling of hesitation, uncertainty and trial and error vanished immediately, to be replaced by a feeling of assurance and conviction. When, at the end of the reflection, I speak of the feeling (of ‘incredulous astonishment’) that it was ‘too right to be true’, this feeling was the response to another, in the background, which said that it was ‘too right not to be true’! And that feeling, surely hasty and unjustified given the current state of the facts at my disposal, hasn't been adjusted in the meantime; it's still there as a background note, whether I like it or not. Surely, without the help of certain experiences that I have come to understand and assume, and above all that of the long experience of my married life, the thought could hardly have come to me of this ‘grudge in a state of vacancy’ (of a grudge ‘on probation’, in short); and this very thought, precisely, was also the ‘diversions in the path’ which, in the space of a few moments, brought me once again onto this ‘very familiar ground’ of my married experience.

[◊ 700] It is certainly possible to say that an unconscious deliberate act will have brought me to a place already designated in advance, which perhaps teaches something about me and about this deliberate act, and nothing about the motivations of others. Just as it is possible that an assumed experience will have enabled me to apprehend a reality in others that would otherwise have remained entirely enigmatic, for lack of sufficiently sensitive ‘antennae’ on my part (and also for lack of tangible facts about my friend's childhood and the personalities of each of his parents).

It seems to me that I'm very close to completing my rough sketch of the ‘foreground of the picture’ (of the Burial). To assemble the last pieces of the jigsaw that are still in my hand, I'll use the elements of apprehension (however hypothetical they may be) that appeared in the reflections of the previous note. This will be a way of testing their consistency with all the other facts I know.

In the discussion the day before yesterday, it was the ‘Superpère’ piece of the jigsaw that clarified its shape and contours. I had initially identified it, somewhat hastily, with the play ‘The Dwarf and the Giant’, in which the giant appears more as a kind of ‘Superman’ of overwhelming proportions, and not as the ‘father’ or a ‘Superfather’. But this last piece ended up appearing again in the same reflection, this time as the target of a ‘resentment in abeyance’, a resentment in search of a target, as if the said ‘Superpère’ had been called by this very resentment and had appeared in response to this call, in fulfilment of a diffuse expectation. If that's the case, it's fair to say that if the Superpère (borrowing my build and features, which were apparently tailor-made for the occasion) hadn't appeared in my friend's life, he'd have had to be invented! In any case, that's how it is, with nothing more hypothetical for me, in the case of the woman whose husband I was - and whose target I was, moreover, ‘expected to be during a young life...’.

In this way, the superfather appears as the ‘face side’ of the ‘faceless giant with oversized hands’ in the play ‘The Dwarf and the Giant’. ‘The dwarf must have seen the giant from the back, no doubt performing his famous ‘demonstrations of strength’ (referred to in the note of 5 October ‘Le Superpère’ (no. 108)). So here we have the ‘Superpère’ piece at last, fitting in with the ‘giant’ side of the ‘Le nain et le géant’ piece. As for the ‘dwarf’ side of the latter, its outline has also been made clearer by the day before yesterday's reflection, which here echoes that of the note of 17 October, ‘La moitié et le tout - ou la fêlure’ (no. 112). It is again, as if, often, the endless rejection of ‘yin’, ‘feminine’ traits in favour of ‘yang’, ‘masculine’ traits, [◊ 701] that makes my friend find himself ‘fundamentally different from what he “should be”’, when he has modelled himself in accordance with a predominantly ‘yin’ model.

It's important to emphasise here that at no time in the past did I think, nor did I want to suggest, that my friend's person was marked by a predominantly yin imbalance, and therefore by a deficiency, a ‘void’ on the side of the yang, virile traits in his acquired personality. On this subject, I would like to remind you that the main impression I got from him, at least during the first few years I knew him, was that of a balance, a harmony, which made him so endearing to me and, it seems to me, to all those who knew him at the time. This impression is very closely associated with another, which I have mentioned elsewhere 236 - that he seemed to have retained something of the freshness, the innocence of a child, in his approach to things (mathematics in particular) and also, it seemed to me, to people. This balance, and this ‘freshness’ or ‘innocence’, are not subject to the slightest doubt for me - they are facts, which there is no question of trying to hide. They were expressed in my friend by a delicate sensitivity, and, when the occasion presented itself, by the nuanced and unambiguous expression of what was perceived and seen. There was a firmness, just as there was a gentleness. The gentleness has faded over the years, leaving behind only the muffled, empty shell of a vanished gentleness - and the firmness has become closed and hard, behind a façade of precious, borrowed half-tones. A delicate yin-yang balance was transformed over the years (probably without anyone noticing) into the eternal yang imbalance - the same one, but in a different style, that had dominated my own life since childhood. That was his choice, and those choices can change - the die is never cast! The fact remains that in my friend's life I've never been aware of a period marked by a yin imbalance, by sluggishness, sloppiness or inconsistency; and I don't think there was any.

All this makes it at least likely that the person who served as his ‘model’ in childhood, and who certainly had strongly marked yin traits, did not lack the yang traits to balance them out. If (as I am inclined to believe) this person was his mother, then I presume that she had yang traits that were strongly enough marked (particularly in relation to such traits that were probably less marked in the father) to appear as [◊ 702] ‘the best choice’, as a ‘male’ model for a boy; and at the same time, to favour by such a choice the blossoming of a harmonious temperament.

At this point, everything would seem to be for the best in the best of worlds, in a united family that (perhaps) has no disagreements. All would be well, were it not for one tiny stumbling block, in the form of a mute and seemingly innocuous consensus: a boy is supposed to look like his father, not his mother...

(c) The providential circumstance - or the Apotheosis

NOTE 151 (23 December) It seems to me that in order to finish putting together the ‘jigsaw’ of the foreground of the Burial painting, all that remains is to place one last piece. This is the one I called ‘the Supermum’ in the note ‘Supermum or Superdad?’ of 11 November (No. 125). This ‘Super’ appellation had been inspired, in the first place, by the ‘portrait’ of me, full of superlative epithets, in my The Funeral Eulogy 237 . Surely a reflex of symmetry must also have come into play, since there was already ‘Superpère’ in the air, in more ways than one! On reflection, however, the name I gave to the image that had just appeared was not quite right. What was evoked by this superyin image had no ‘maternal’ connotations whatsoever. If there was a symmetrical relationship with another image, it was that of the ‘Superman’, with muscles of steel and an IBM software brain, rather than that of the ‘Superfather’. In this case, then, we're talking about ‘Superwoman’ or ‘Supernana’, with heavy tits stretching up to her navel and beyond (not to mention up to her knees...), and an ass to match, enough to make Hercules dream - as for the brain, let's not talk about it... a bit in those tones. The inadequacy of the language must have forced my hand a little, too, given that there's no ready-made ‘female’ counterpart to the famous ‘Superman’ (itself a recent invention, incidentally, a modern version of a Hercules who's decidedly out of his depth). I'll go for ‘Supernana’ anyway, for want of anything better...

It has to be said that I've been dragging this misnamed piece around for nearly a month and a half, without really doing anything with it, apart from recalling it here and there as a reminder, as a promise that it would be taken care of, but later. In the end, she wasn't going to inspire me that much, and that might well [◊ 703] be because of the name, which didn't really fit. After all, of all the friends, (ex-)students and other colleagues I've had in the mathematical world up to the present day, I'd be hard pressed to find a single one in relation to whom I've played any kind of ‘maternal’ role, or who I might have had the impression of having played such a role in relation to me. Even those towards whom I played a more ‘yin’, receptive role, rather than the predominantly ‘yang’ role of the one who teaches, communicates and passes on, must be very rare - at first sight, I can hardly see (after the years 1952 and 1953, when I did my thesis) anyone other than Serre, and even then... If I try to remember what my current, not to say permanent, arrangements were in relation to other mathematicians, it was above all that I always had brand new ‘carpets’ to ‘place’ (to use the image that was current at the time), not to mention the ‘carpets’ (also of my own making) that were less new but which (in my opinion) had not really been used, so to speak, To put it another way, in my relationship with my ‘fellow’ mathematicians and even though we hardly ever talked about anything but maths (I must have been even worse at it than any of my colleagues and friends! ), the yang predominance (or rather, the superyang imbalance) in my acquired temperament was back in full force, as in any other relationship. Perhaps even more so, given my inordinate investment in mathematics, an investment of an egotistical nature (need I add) and one motivated precisely by my long-standing superyang options!

It is these obvious aspects, manifested at every step in my relations with other mathematicians, that must have obliterated, to my colleagues as well as to myself, this other fact, in the opposite direction: that my style in mathematical work, and my approach to mathematics, are strongly predominantly yin, ‘feminine’. It is this particularity, it seems to me, apparently rather exceptional in the scientific world, which also makes my style so recognisable, so different from that of any other mathematician. That this style is indeed ‘unlike any other’ is something I have heard countless times, ever since I started publishing maths, and at least since my thesis (in 1953). This style has not failed to arouse resistance, which I'd like to call ‘visceral’ - by which I mean that it didn't seem to me (and doesn't seem to me today) to be justified by ‘reasons’ that could be called ‘objective’ or ‘rational’. This reminds me that my thesis work (in which I introduced, among other things, [◊ 704] nuclear spaces), which I had submitted to the Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, had been rejected by the first referee, an honourable mathematician who had worked on the same subject, and who had considered my work to be more or less muddy. It was thanks to Dieudonné's energetic intervention that my thesis was published despite the referee's unfavourable opinion. I learned a few years ago that it is one of the hundred most cited articles in the mathematical literature 238 over the past two or three decades. I assume that if we have another twenty or thirty years of mathematics ahead of us, the same will be true of SGA 4, as (among other things) a basic reference for the point of view of topos in geometric topology; which SGA 4 has been classified as ‘unreadable’ (among other qualifiers in the same vein 239 ) by my brilliant friend and ex-student Pierre Deligne. I know (as he himself knows) that it is one of the mathematical texts to which I devoted the most time and the most extreme care, rewriting and having rewritten from top to bottom, in particular, everything concerning sites and topos and categorical prerequisites. The reason for this exceptional care was that I was well aware of the extent to which this was a real cornerstone for the development of ‘arithmetic geometry’, the foundations of which I had been laying for a decade 240 . I also know that when I did this work, I had long had (without wishing to flatter myself) the master's touch for writing maths in a way that was both clear, where the main ideas were constantly put forward like an omnipresent thread, and convenient for finding one's way around for reference purposes 241 . If I was perhaps wrong to write (and to have written) a detailed reference work forty or fifty years ahead of my time, the fact that times that were ripe (in the 1960s) suddenly ceased to be so, is not attributable to me, it seems to me!

[◊ 705] These last associations with Deligne take me back to the period after my departure, when echoes of the same thing came back to me more than once ‘like insidious puffs of disdain and discreet derision’. This nuance of derision was absent in the signs of ‘visceral resistance’ to my style of work that I alluded to earlier, before I left. I can detect no hostile or in any way malicious intention towards me. I had occasion to evoke such signs even within Bourbaki 242 , at least (if my memory is correct) until about 1957, when my work on the Riemann-Roch-Hirzebruch-Grothendieck formula dispelled any doubts that might have remained about my ‘solidity’ as a mathematician. I don't remember perceiving any resistance to my style of work between 1957 and 1970 (the year I ‘left’), except occasionally from Serre 243 , but never with a hint of enmity - it was more a reaction of epidermal annoyance. On the other hand, I had the impression that my friends sometimes felt overwhelmed, because I was moving too fast and they didn't want to spend their time just keeping up to date with my complete works as I sent them my pamphlets, or told them (by letter or in person) what I was concocting.

I think I've understood the nature of the ‘visceral resistance’ to my style to which I alluded earlier. Its cause seems to me to be independent of the Burial that took place later (in which this resistance nevertheless ended up playing an important role). This resistance is nothing other than a (‘visceral’) reaction to a ‘feminine’ style of approach to a science (mathematics, in this case). Such a reaction is common and ‘in the nature of things’, in a scientific world which, as much and more than any other partial microcosm in our society today, is steeped in masculine values, and the feelings, attitudes and reactions (of apprehension and rejection in particular) that go with those values. The reaction of resistance to my particular style of work, the embodiment of a creative approach with a ‘feminine’ undertone, simply stems from the conditioning common to the scientist in the world of today and of recent decades - the scientific world, at any rate, as I have always known it.

Like any other reaction resulting from conditioning, there is nothing ‘rational’ about this reaction, and in the one where it manifests itself, there is [◊ 706] considerable resistance to even thinking of examining its meaning. It is strongly felt to be its own justification - rather like the aversion to the ‘faggot’ in most good-natured circles, or that to the ‘dago’, also very much of our own. However, in this case, I didn't feel that this reaction was in itself a hint of enmity (conscious or unconscious) towards me, but rather an attitude of reserve, of unfavourable prejudice, towards my work alone. Only when it became clear that through my style (or in spite of my style, never mind!) I was doing things that people hadn't been able to do before (and that they couldn't really do any differently either, after the fact) - only then were these reservations put aside, perhaps reluctantly... In any case, if these reservations remained in tacit and unconscious form for some people, I was too wrapped up in my work and my tasks to perceive them.

To tell the truth, it seems to me unlikely, to say the least, that such a ‘visceral reaction’ could disappear as if by magic, simply because so-and-so has demonstrated theorems that we hadn't been able to demonstrate before. At the level at which deliberate statements of acceptance and rejection are made and unmade, one thing and the other (‘such and such a way of working should not be allowed’, and ‘Mr. So-and-so has proved such and such theorems’) are really unrelated!

You might say that it's normal, then, that things changed after I withdrew from the mathematical scene - once I was no longer there, in short, to ‘put a spanner in the works’ of those who would pretend to be picky about my style, without being able to do the same with their own. This ‘explanation’ is flawed, though, because it doesn't take into account the nuance of derision, of hushed malice, that didn't exist before. Nor is there anything I know of that would lead me to suppose that between 1957 and 1970 I had the time to make myself so unpleasant to the entire congregation of my fellow members that a grudge or revenge motive might have come into play after my departure. With many friends in the world I was leaving, I had maintained warm, sometimes affectionate relations, and (as I have said elsewhere) I do not recall a single relationship of enmity with a fellow mathematician before 1970.

There was, however, a subsequent grievance against me on the part of the Congregation, the cause of a sort of collective ‘grudge’, and in any case, of a collective act of ‘reprisal’, which, although it remained tacit, was nonetheless ‘unfailingly effective’. I probed this ‘reprisals for dissent’ aspect, in the note of 24 May, ‘The Gravedigger - or the whole Congregation’ (n o 97). In that note, I left out a certain tone in these reprisals, with regard to myself and those who had the imprudence to claim to be my followers - the tone of derision, which goes beyond the simple ‘end of non-receipt’. And every time I felt this ‘whiff’, it was a certain style that was the designated target. To put it another way, it is the particularity that distinguishes this style from any other, its ‘yin’ or ‘feminine’ nature, that has been the providential circumstance, seized upon with alacrity by the collective unconscious to wash away the affront of dissent, adding to the reprisal of exclusion the extra dimension of derision - the derision that is supposed to designate, through a certain style, the irrefutable signs of impotence.

And now that the word ‘impotence’ has finally named a certain unspoken fact, it becomes clear to what extent this same ‘providential circumstance’, added to that of my ‘death’, becomes an unprecedented opportunity for my friend and ex-student and ex-heir Pierre Deligne to make this reversal of roles tangible, credible and raw, this insane and apparently hopeless desire of someone who feels ‘dwarfed’ by a ‘giant’! ‘Perched on the shoulders of a giant’ (to use the very words that appear as the final word in his curriculum vitae 244 ), from now on he would be the “giant” for all to see, and he would point out to the derision of the entire Congregation, like a “dwarf”, a great braggart and a great vacuum-breaker, this giant of pure junk - but yes! - and yet he had been (and remains despite everything...) ‘a perpetual and burning challenge for those who feel overwhelmed by the irremediable condition of a dwarf...’.

This spectacular reversal in the distribution of the roles of ‘dwarf’ and ‘giant’, between himself and the Other (the Other who is felt to be a challenge, and who must be supplanted at all costs), this reversal is also at the same time the reversal in the roles of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’. It is indeed as the (plethoric, flabby and contourless) embodiment of the feminine (never clearly named and yet ardently repudiated), that he who was (and remains despite everything...) a giant, is designated to the [◊ 708] crowd (and above all to the Prestidigitator himself... ) as a pitiful dwarf and an object of derision; and it is indeed also as a heroic and exemplary embodiment of virility, that the one who was a dwarf (and who, in spite of everything and in the depths of himself ‘knows’ well that he is and remains one, by immutable condition...) finds himself a giant with hands of steel, acclaimed by the same crowd that has rushed to boo the Other.

This reversal, as symbolic as it is, is visibly out of all proportion to the ‘private’ ‘reversal’, so to speak, carried out by virtue of a tried and tested tactic (known as ‘the velvet paw’) in the restricted and inconsequential circle of ‘between four eyes’; a gentle little merry-go-round where he feels he holds the strings that ‘make’ the Other walk and turn... The dwarf making the giant walk, all right, but still and irremediably a dwarf! Whereas the apotheosis of the dwarf who finds himself a giant and even higher perched, and who designates to the derision of all the very one on whom he is perched - this apotheosis takes place in the middle of a public square, in front of a large and jubilant crowd, who have come to acclaim the Funeral Eulogy of a deceased and buried ‘dwarf’, as the ‘highlight’ of a superb and delectable Funeral Ceremony.

(d) The disavowal (1) - or the recall

NOTE 152 (24 December) With yesterday's reflection, I feel as if I have just about finished ‘assembling’ this first plan of the Burial picture, at least as well as I feel able to do so with the ‘pieces’ of the jigsaw puzzle I now have. It goes without saying that in this second part of the reflection on the Burial (the third part of Récoltes et semailles), my aim has been, no longer to gather material facts (I gathered enough of them in the ‘investigation’ part, in the course of Cortèges I to X), but to arrive at an understanding of the inner workings of the Burial, through the secret motivations (most often unconscious, no doubt) in each of the many protagonists 245 . These motivations derive, first and foremost, from the nature of the interested party's relationship with my modest person (as the ‘deceased’); or, more precisely perhaps, with what I represent for him for one reason or another, linked or not to my departure from the mathematical scene and the circumstances surrounding it.

[◊ 709] The ‘foreground’ consists, apart from myself, of the person who played the role of ‘priest in chasuble’ at my funeral. He is also, of all those who were friends or students in the mathematical world before my departure, the one with whom I was most closely linked, by mathematical affinities of exceptional strength; and the only one, too, who continued a personal relationship with me after my departure, a relationship that continues to this day. It is for all these reasons that I have a wealth of ‘data’ about him that is incomparably richer than what is known to me by anyone else among the participants in the funeral. Finally, of all the mathematicians I have known 246 , he is undoubtedly also the one, by far, whose role in his life he assigned to me weighed most heavily - much more heavily, visibly, than the role commonly assigned to his teacher, even in the practice of an art to which one would have devoted oneself body and soul (as I myself had devoted myself to it). I've come to realise this over the last ten years or so, and that the role he assigned me also spilled over into his mathematical passion (and into what ended up taking its place). This perception in me, which had remained diffuse for all those years, became considerably clearer and fleshed out in the course of my reflections on L'Enterrement, and even as recently as yesterday.

It seems to me that with yesterday's reflection, at the same time as this first plane of the picture centred on the relationship between my friend Pierre and myself, the ‘third plane’ also came into place and came together, consisting of ‘the whole Congregation’, which had come together in jubilation to participate in the Funeral and Burial by its eager acquiescence. As I wrote yesterday, what was still missing from the image that had emerged in the course of the reflection on the note (of 24 May) ‘The Gravedigger - or the whole Congregation’, was the nuance of derision in the exclusion of the person treated as a deceased person and as a ‘stranger’, an ‘outsider’. The meaning of this derision, which became clear as early as the note (of 10 November) ‘The funeral of yin (yang buries yin [4])’, was recalled and put into perspective yesterday: it's the derision of what is perceived (on an informal level) as ‘feminine’, and which is therefore the object of a ‘visceral’ reaction of rejection, by equating (equally informal) the ‘feminine’ with ‘impotence’ - man alone, in his triumphant virility, is supposed to be the bearer of ‘power’, of creative force. I have also emphasised the fact that such visceral assimilations, the result of conditioning, are completely resistant to common sense and reason, when the ideas and images [◊ 710] that conditioning elicits are felt with such force of conviction and evidence, that they are commonly taken as their own justification.

There is one aspect, however, which appeared in a sudden flash with the final word in the note ‘The funeral of yin’, which has not yet been taken up. Here are the lines that conclude the reflection in that note:

This is no longer the funeral of a person, or of a work, or even of an inadmissible dissident, but the funeral of the ‘mathematical feminine’ - and even more profoundly, perhaps, in each of the many participants applauding The Funeral Eulogy, the funeral of the disowned woman who lives within himself.

It even seems to me, now that I think about it, that this aspect was more or less overlooked in the case of my friend Pierre himself, about whom I have no shortage of first-hand facts! If this aspect was present at all, and perhaps felt by an attentive reader, it must have been between the lines, when attention was mainly absorbed by the different angles of the ‘reversal of yin and yang’ aspect - (an aspect which, at first sight at least, seems specific to the person and the particular role of my friend in the Burial). This omission reminds me that I still have to talk (in a few days' time) about my friend's last visit, from 10 to 22 October (mentioned in the note of 21 October, promising to come back to it “in a few days”...). This will be the best time, it seems to me, to examine one last (?) angle of the ‘reversal’ - with the reversal of the original yinyang balance in my friend himself. It's a burial of certain original yin traits in him, under the rule of yang traits that appeared later and took over the place. Here I find myself, in a new and deeper perspective, faced with the startling realisation that had already occurred to me on more than one occasion 247 : in believing that he was burying the man who had been his master (and who still remained a friend), it was none other than himself that he was actually burying with his hands!

So if I return once again to the ‘third plane’ or ‘background plane’, to this ‘Congregation’ alias ‘mathematical community’, the few lines quoted earlier would suggest that what I felt so strongly in the case of my friend Pierre could well also be true for ‘each of the many participants applauding The Funeral Eulogy’. It is this aspect, it seems to me, that I [◊ 711] still have to examine a little, before I feel fully satisfied and can consider the ‘background’ (as well as the foreground) of the picture of my funeral to be (provisionally?) complete.

(25 December) Yesterday I used the fact that it was Christmas Eve as an excuse to give myself a real ‘high’, staying on top of my notes until after three in the morning (for once!). It's true that the whole day had been scattered with other tasks, and (having re-read the previous day's notes) there were only a few hours of the night left if I wanted to continue the same day. As so often happens, in the end I didn't even manage to tackle anything I had in mind when I sat down in front of the white paper! Instead, I took stock of where I was in the ‘picture’ of the Burial, and highlighted an aspect, in both the ‘foreground’ and the ‘background’, that was still unclear: that of the ‘burial of the disowned woman’ who lives in each of the participants in my funeral.

Clearly, in this quotation, the expression ‘burial’ is used as an image to designate an act of disavowal and repression (or ‘repression’, to use a received terminology). For there to be any question of disavowing and repressing something (in this case, something that ‘lives’ within oneself), we first have to make sure that this ‘something’ is indeed present, ‘alive’ (albeit miserably). We're talking here about the ‘woman’ in every being, whether male or female, the ‘side’ of the person that is made up of traits, qualities, impulses or forces of a ‘feminine’ or ‘yin’ nature. This simple, essential fact - that in every being, woman or man, there is both ‘woman’ and ‘man’ - is an extraordinary fact that is still generally ignored today. I myself only learned it eight years ago, when I was in my forty-seventh year 248 .

Of course, psychoanalysts have ‘known’ about it and talked about it for a long time now. There are certainly plenty of books about it, and everyone has heard a little about it, just as I had. In fact, ‘everyone’ is quite prepared to admit that there must be some truth to it, as long as it's people who are known to know about it who say so, and there are books written about it and so on. And yet, having heard about it and being ‘quite prepared to admit... ‘even having read a book or even ten on the subject, or even (I'd venture to say) having written one or even several, does not in itself imply that you ‘know’ the thing; at least, not in any stronger and, above all, less useless sense than that of simply memorising ready-made formulas, such as ‘Freud (or Jung, or Lao Tzu...) said that...’. Formulas like these constitute a certain amount of cultural baggage, a kind of visiting card for someone who is ‘cultured’, ‘in the know’ about this or that, or even sometimes (with diplomas to match) an expert in this or that, and as such they can even be accepted as having a certain ‘usefulness’; what's certain is that everyone is very attached to it, to the baggage they've accumulated left and right, at school and in books, in ‘interesting conversations’, etc., and which they carry around with them, and that they carry with them against all odds, like a flashy, cumbersome trophy, for the rest of their lives. When I irreverently suggested earlier that this precious baggage was ‘useless’, I meant that it was useless for something that nobody cares about anyway, and which is even shunned like the plague by everyone: learning about oneself. Or to put it another way: that this baggage is useless for taking charge of one's life, that is to say, for digesting and assimilating the substance of one's own experience, and thereby maturing and renewing oneself...

If I had to sum up in a few words the essential content of my long reflection on yin and yang, it would be by ‘recalling’ this ‘simple and essential fact’, which I have just recalled. If there is a reader who has followed me this far, and if he has not yet sensed, in terms of his own experience, this fact : that there is ‘woman’ in him, even though he is a man, and that there is ‘man’ in him, even though he is a woman - it's because in making this vain effort to ‘follow’ me, he would have wasted his time overloading a baggage that is no doubt already heavy, with yet another weight, labelled ‘Harvest and Sowing’. And if he is a man, and even though he would not be one of the participants in this funeral, of which he would not have had any knowledge or suspicion before reading me, it would be a safe bet that he too, day after day and without his own knowledge, is ‘burying a disowned woman who lives within himself’ (just as I myself had done in the past and for most of my life).

There are a thousand and one ways for a man to ‘bury’ the woman who lives within him, as there are also for a woman to ‘bury’ the man who lives within her 249 , [◊ 713] that is to say: to disavow and repress him. One of the most common ways of ‘burying’ something that lives in oneself is through attitudes or acts of rejection of that same thing, when it is apparent in others. This rejection is none other than the ‘visceral reaction’ I mentioned yesterday in a case in point. What gives the reaction of rejection its strength (‘visceral’) is not really (as I seemed to imply yesterday) because the thing rejected in another person simply goes against a set of ‘values’ that we would all and indivisibly endorse. Those who know they are ‘strong’ are not offended by the sight of ‘weakness’. The strength of the reaction comes, on the contrary, from the fact that this thing, observed in others and ‘which has no place’, challenges us ourselves. It is like an insidious reminder, immediately rejected, of something that concerns us, that deep down we know, even though we would like to hide it from ourselves as well as from others; a reminder that from then on takes on the tones of a silent and formidable challenge. In such a context, a benevolent attitude of tolerance towards the ‘flaw’ apparent in others would appear to us as a perilous admission of complicity, which must be avoided at all costs. By rejecting them, on the other hand, we unequivocally dissociate ourselves from the other person, in short, we give convincing proof (first and foremost to the inner Censor within ourselves) that we ourselves are above reproach, that we are and remain conformist and ‘good-natured’. At the same time as being an act of unconditional obedience to certain value norms, distinguishing what is honourable from what is inadmissible, the reaction of rejection is also a symbolic act of burial, by which the thing in ourselves ‘that does not belong’ is eagerly ‘classified’ as something that ‘is not’. Not in us, anyway!

In this picture, the form that rejection takes, a form that is infinitely variable, seems to me to be of no consequence. It can be outraged rejection, with all the signs of indignation or disgust, or it can be rejection through irony or ‘delicately measured’ disdain. It can be expressed in clear, unequivocal words, or it can be simply suggested, by allusive or double-entendre words, or even without words, by the appropriate smile (or lack of a smile...), placed where it is appropriate. The rejection may be fully conscious, or it may be confined to the penumbra of what is barely visible to the eye, or take refuge in the complete shadow where the eye never penetrates.

The intensity of the reaction of rejection is also infinitely variable, [◊ 714] depending on whether the ‘challenge’ in question is felt to be relatively insignificant, or indeed formidable. Those that perhaps provoke the strongest reactions are the ‘challenges’ directly affecting sex. This extreme sensitivity has diminished somewhat over the last few generations. I have noticed, however, that things as universal in nature as the so-called ‘homosexual’ and ‘onanistic’ (or, to put it more kindly, ‘narcissistic’) aspects of the love drive are as strongly rejected today as they were in the past. This is the case, at least, if we are confronted with it, not in an ‘interesting conversation’ about Roman manners or depth psychology, but in our everyday lives. Even just between the eyes, it's rare that we talk about the manifestations, in our own person, of these aspects of the sex drive (generally experienced as ‘burrs’ that are a little embarrassing, to say the least).

In the case that interests me here, the reactions of rejection with which I was confronted before I left the mathematical scene were certainly not of a strength comparable to those I have just mentioned. It's true that the object of this rejection, namely ‘feminine’ ways of being and doing things when we're supposed to be ‘among men’, does have a ‘sexual’ connotation, in a broader sense of the term than that linked to the mere mention of actions and gestures revolving around ‘the buttocks’ and the rest. I have no doubt that this connotation was generally felt, at an unconscious level.250 It was, however, discreet and indirect enough to exclude any slightly brutal reactions, going beyond a simple ‘reservation’ about my ‘seriousness’, my ‘solidity’ as a mathematician. What's more, the fact that my ‘flaw’ was a purely intellectual activity helped to make it seem relatively harmless, far removed (what on earth would you expect?) from any disturbing or scabrous association of a man and woman doing a belly-dance and rolling up their skirts! Nevertheless, after my first contacts with the mathematical world (in 1948), it took almost another ten years for the reservations that my style aroused, even within a benevolent microcosm, to finally disappear - from my sight, at least. The situation changed again after I left, however, due to the fact that an atmosphere of benevolence, friendship and respect towards me was suddenly modified (without me even realising it for the next six years) by what was felt by that same microcosm to be ‘dissent’, and a disavowal.

[◊ 715] To tell the truth, I'm not sure whether this change in atmosphere was really as ‘sudden’ as I've just said. Or to put it better, I note that I have hardly any facts to hand to give me any idea of how, after I left in 1970, the change I was confronted with, suddenly (this is the case this time), in 1976 251 . It's true that all that time I'd had little contact with the world I'd left, which might have given me a sense of its ‘temperature’ and how it was changing. What is clear to me is that in this evolution, the attitude of the group of all those who had been my students, and of their unconstested leader Pierre Deligne, played a decisive role. The Burial could only have taken place, and the atmosphere that gave rise to it could only have been created, by a ‘unanimous agreement “252 that encompassed the ”three planes’ of this Burial: ‘The heir’ (alias Grand Officiant at the Funeral), the group of “co-heirs” or “close relations”, formed by the eleven other “former pupils”, and finally “the Congregation” (perhaps not “all of it” after all - we'll have to come back to that...). How this perfect harmony came about remains unknown to me, and perhaps will remain so. At present, I don't feel encouraged to probe it, and I doubt that anyone else will do it for me (quite the contrary!).

This reminds me that when I was writing the previous note, ‘The providential circumstance - or the apotheosis’, the question had occurred to me which of the two, the ‘Congregation’ or the ‘priest in chasuble’, represented the master force at work in the Burial, of which the other would have been, as it were, the ‘instrument’ 253 . I didn't dwell on it then, as I wasn't sure whether the question even made sense - it seemed to me to resemble the famous chicken and egg question! What is certain is that neither of them (the ‘priest’, nor the ‘Congregation’) could do without the other's help [◊ 716] to implement the Burial.

Another question, however, which seems to me to have a clearer meaning, is to know which of the two was more heavily involved in this work. It's true that the ‘Congregation’ is not a person, and it's inappropriate to talk about ‘his’ investment in a task. But it's also true that for me, this personified entity takes on a concrete form in the form of ten or twenty people whom I have known well, with each of whom, for a decade or two, or even more, I have been in close and friendly relations. So when I speak of the Congregation's ‘investment’, what I have in mind is the ‘sum total’ of the investments of all those former friends who were involved in my funeral. Thus clarified, it seems to me that the question is no longer rhetorical.

The answer that comes to me, without any hint of hesitation or doubt, is that there is no common ground between the investment of the ‘heir’ and that of the Congregation - any more, moreover, than there is in an ordinary funeral, This is all the more true because the inheritance is important in the eyes of the heir (whereas no one in the Congregation has anything to gain from it for himself), and because the ties (of attraction or conflict) that bind him to the deceased are strong and play a vital role in his life. If there is any doubt in such a situation, it can hardly come from anything other than the presence of ‘co-heirs’ among those close to the deceased. (We are therefore talking here about the ‘background’, rather than the ‘background’ formed by the bulk of the Congregation). In the case that interests me, the only one of these ‘close relations’ and co-heirs whose part in my funeral could be of comparable weight to that taken by the main heir Pierre Deligne, seems to me to be Jean-Louis Verdier, playing the role of Second Funeral Officer. This appellation is not gratuitous, because more than once during the funeral, I saw both of them officiate with perfect harmony! But as I have already written elsewhere, apart from some of J.-L. Verdier's public acts, I know very little about him since we lost touch; too little, no doubt, to be able to form any idea whatsoever of the ins and outs of his relationship with me, or of his relationship with his prestigious ‘protector’ and friend.

(e) Disavowal (2) - or metamorphosis

NOTE 153 (26 December) In yesterday's reflection, I tried to clarify this intuition, which appeared ‘in flash’ on 10 November, that in ‘each of the many [◊ 717] participants’ at my funeral, it represented the symbolic burial of ‘the disowned woman who lives within himself’. When I have spoken and spoken again here of ‘each’ of the participants, this is a rather sweeping expression, which it is perhaps best not to take entirely literally. I am convinced, at least, that this intuition is indeed correct for each and every one of those (and there are certainly many of them) in whom this ‘visceral reaction of rejection’ towards my particular style of mathematics takes place, a reaction that has been at the centre of my attention over the past three days.

On the other hand, it is clear that such a reaction is not present in my friend Pierre, or at least that there was no trace of it, quite the contrary, in the five years preceding my departure. It is the deep kinship between my style of approach to mathematics and his own style, which gave rise to such perfect communication during those years, and which was also the cause of that uncommon affinity between us on the mathematical level, an affinity that he and many others must have felt, as I myself did. It is also this kinship that was surely the cause of the fascination that my mathematician persona and my work exerted on him, not only in those years (where it was expressed ‘positively’), but also in the years that followed and right up to the present day (where it has been expressed mainly ‘negatively’, but just as eloquently 254 ). I have no doubt that if he had had the slightest reservations, the slightest discomfort with my style of work and approach to mathematics in those early years, I would not have failed to sense it.

It's true that from those years onwards, my friend tried, as far as possible, to erase from the outside world the role that I had played for him, if only as the person who had taught him and passed on something important, and from whom he got important ideas for his work - and a fortiori, to also erase this relationship of affinity, even fascination. After I left, there was a gradual escalation in the disavowal of my person, not only through silence, but also through an affectation of disdain towards my style of work, and towards many of the ideas and notions that I had introduced. The first trace of such an affection known to me [◊ 718] was in 1977, on the occasion of ‘Operation APG 4’255 . I have not tried to follow the progression of this escalation step by step, nor do I feel inspired to do so (as I said yesterday, on a very similar issue).

This disavowal of a style of approach closely related to his own, and of a body of work from which his own is derived, is akin to a disavowal of himself. When I first thought about this disavowal of my style and my work (while I am still mostly under the impression of the five years of close mathematical contact before I left in 1970), I was inclined to play it down, to give it only a kind of tactical significance, as a particularly tempting means of supplanting and satisfying antagonistic impulses, by seizing the opportunity of a certain ‘providential circumstance’. This is indeed the tone of the note from three days ago, ‘La circonstance providentielle - ou l'apothéose’ (No. 151). And what I've just remembered - that in the years before my departure there was no trace of any rejection of his own style or mine - also points in this direction, and not in the direction of the situation examined yesterday: that of a disavowal of ‘the woman who lives within oneself’ (if only, among other things, through a certain approach to mathematics), a disavowal that would have pre-existed the implementation of the Burial.

This does not prevent the person who chooses such means, whether he likes it or not, from paying for them. To be operational, this ‘affectation of disdain’ for a certain style had to be played out, not only in relation to others, but also and above all, in relation to oneself. But one cannot disavow, before others and oneself, a ‘style’ that is also profoundly one's own, while practising it as if nothing had happened. This ‘tactical disavowal’ of others, by the logic of things, involves a disavowal, a repression of part of oneself - in this case, by the repression of the style of approach to mathematics that is one's own, by virtue of the original nature of the creative force within it.

This realisation is not the result of a direct perception of a fact. It is the result of a short reflection, making use of known facts and drawing common-sense ‘conclusions’ from them. I have learned to be cautious with such conclusions (and especially, outside mathematics!), and to rely on them only if they are confirmed after the fact by other [◊ 719] facts. But I recall here, very opportunely, that I had been led, in terms of what is known to me of Deligne's work, to note that there is no trace in this work of certain inclinations (of a ‘yin’ nature) in my friend, which were quite apparent nevertheless in the years before my departure, and which I also recognised in myself. I wrote in some detail about this in my notes of a month ago (26 and 28 November): ‘Yin the Servant (1) - or the new masters’, and ‘Yin the Servant (2) - or generosity’256 . Perhaps the most important of these things is a certain humility, which allows us to see (and describe, without fear of looking stupid) things that are so simple, so silly, that no one has ever deigned to pay attention to them before. The best things I have done myself in mathematics 257 are precisely of this kind. Most of my work, and that of my most brilliant pupil, would never have been written if I had disavowed this inclination of my nature, which was not to everyone's liking... This propensity (or ‘inclination’) is intimately linked to another, without which its effect would remain extremely limited. It's an attitude of humility again, and of ‘service’: when it's a question of getting to know and describing with delicacy and from every angle this new thing scorned by everyone, of not finding one's time too precious to devote ten pages to it if necessary (instead of being content with two lines: here's the thing - you can do what you like with it! ), or even ten thousand; to spend a whole day on it (for a man who has plenty of other things to worry about...), or a whole lifetime, if need be.

When I spoke of ‘new worlds’ to be discovered, in a somewhat haughty tone perhaps, I was talking about nothing other than that: seeing and receiving what seems infinitesimal, and carrying it and nourishing it for nine months or nine years, the time it takes, in solitude if necessary, to see a vigorous and living thing develop and blossom, made itself to engender and conceive.

If this propensity, which could be called ‘maternal’, is nowadays the object of derision, it is for the ‘benefit’ of attitudes felt to be ‘virile’, which tolerate only one possible type of approach to mathematics: that of ‘muscle’, to the exclusion of ‘guts’. Real maths’, also known as “hard maths”, as opposed to the (unappetising) “soft maths”. ), [◊ 720] which means demonstrating theorems in ten or fifty tight pages (of proverbial difficulty, or it's not a game!), using all the wood available - all the ‘well-known’ theories and notions and all the facts available on the right and the left. As for the ‘wood’, it just has to be there, that's what it's there for! And as for the people who have patiently cleared the land, who have sown, planted, smoked and pruned throughout the seasons and over the years, to make these spacious, slender-trunked forests grow and spread out, so much in their place (where the bush was thick and impenetrable) that you'd think they'd been there since the creation of the world (as backdrops, no doubt, and as a reserve of ‘all wood’... ) - these people, who are only good at producing fluffy articles (or even fluffy books or series of fluffy books, if they find publishers foolish enough to print them), and unreadable to boot, are ‘soft maths’ retards, not to say ‘flabby’ - but even if we are manly, we are no less polite...

With this beautiful flight of fancy, I suddenly think I'm back at the starting point of this long meditation on yin and yang - at the very first note at the beginning of October, ‘Le muscle et la tripe (yang enterre yin [1])’ (no. 106). It's the same burial again, at parade pace and to the sound of a bugle, of what is ‘feminine’, buried by the male disdain of Bras-de-Fer alias Cerveau d'Acier alias Superman. This burial is not only taking place in the small mathematical microcosm, that's for sure, and its scope goes beyond any specific case, which could nevertheless be used to smell it a little closer. And that smell is one of the main lessons I have learnt from Burial, in which I appear to be dead before my time.

When I narrow the focus of my attention even further, to focus on the particular role played by my friend Pierre, I see in the Burial yet another meaning. Once again, I see a reversal. As I said yesterday, without thinking that I would come back to it so soon, this is no longer a reversal in a relationship (real or fictional) that links him to another person, but a reversal that takes place in his very person. He is not sought after for his own merits (as the object, perhaps, of a ‘foolish desire’...), and he is no longer limited to being purely symbolic (whereas, at the end of a magnificent conjuring trick, the person who felt ‘dwarfed’ does not cease to feel just as dwarfed, as if he had not just persuaded himself that he had become ‘giant’...). It's a reversal, I wouldn't say irreversible, but at least perfectly real. It starts from a state of harmonious balance of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ creative impulses [◊ 721], with a dominant feminine note. It ends up in a state of war and repression, where attitudes and poses (egotistical, like any attitude or pose), flying the ‘manly’ flag, obstinately repress the creative force, derided and symbolically ‘buried’, in the form of a grotesque, flabby effigy, with the features of the ‘Superfemale’.

In less nuanced terms, but more vivid and striking perhaps: a ‘feminine’ being, slender and vigorous, supple and alive, has been metamorphosed, by a permanent trick of prestidigitation, into a ‘virile’ being, indemoluble, stiff and dead.

(f) Staging - or ‘second nature‘

NOTE 154 (1 January 1985) Five days have passed, taken up by various occupations. The end of the year was the perfect opportunity to write letters that had been outstanding for weeks or months, not to mention a few cards of good wishes in response to those received around Christmas. We also had to build compost heaps with manure that had already been brought in two or three months ago, and plant waste from the garden and land-clearing, or brought in from the municipal dump, to have good compost ready for the garden in early spring. As the land is on a slope, we had to build an additional terrace next to the one already set aside for the day-to-day composting of household waste.

With all this going on, I haven't found much time to work on my notes, apart from some housekeeping work. I reread with great care, making a few alterations here and there, the whole of the reflection since the ‘Masters and Servants’ section (i.e. since the note of 24 November ‘The reversal (3) - or yin buries yang’ (no. 133)), adding the footnotes already planned for the notes of the last fortnight. The main aim was to have a manuscript ready for typing, but quite apart from any practical issues, this re-reading was useful in regaining an overview of the thinking that had gone on over the last four or five weeks. As is also the case in long-term mathematical reflection, while the particular ‘moment’ of reflection in which I find myself from day to day is placed under the strongly focused beam of intense attention, the ‘thread’ of reflection and the sinuous line it has followed over the past weeks, or even months, has a tendency to get lost along the way, to drown and dissolve in the vagueness of a penumbra. This burial is not only taking place in the small mathematical microcosm, that's for sure, and its scope goes beyond any specific case, which could nevertheless be used to smell it a little closer. And that smell is one of the main lessons I have learnt from Burial, in which I appear to be dead before my time. When I narrow the focus of my attention even further, to focus on the particular role played by my friend Pierre, I see in the Burial yet another meaning. Once again, I see a reversal. As I said yesterday, without thinking that I would come back to it so soon, this is no longer a reversal in a relationship (real or fictional) that links him to another person, but a reversal that takes place in his very person. He is not sought after for his own merits (as the object, perhaps, of a ‘foolish desire’...), and he is no longer limited to being purely symbolic (whereas, at the end of a magnificent conjuring trick, the person who felt ‘dwarfed’ does not cease to feel just as dwarfed, as if he had not just persuaded himself that he had become ‘giant’...).

But whether it's mathematical work or a meditation on my life, the ‘discomfort’ I'm talking about is always the sign of an imperfect understanding, not only (and for good reason) of the work still to be done, but also of what has been done in the course of the past work. This imperfection is by no means reduced to a faulty memory of each of the various stages of the reflection, and of their chronological order (aspects which are relatively incidental when it comes to mathematical reflection, where the object of attention is a mathematical situation, alien in itself to the psychological particularities of the person examining it, and to the events of this examination). It seems to me to be more a sign of a lack of unity, of insufficient integration of all the partial understandings that have emerged as a result of the successive stages of reflection. These partial understandings also remain imperfect, even hypothetical, as long as they are not integrated into an overall vision [◊ 723], where they shed light on each other. To use the image again of a jigsaw puzzle, the investigation of an unknown substance is akin to the work of assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are not given in advance, but have to be discovered in the course of the work. What's more, each piece uncovered appears at first only in a vague and approximate form, even grossly distorted in relation to the ‘correct’, as yet unknown, form. The ‘local’ work of reflection consists of identifying the pieces one by one, and trying as best we can to guess at the outline of each one, based mainly on assumptions of internal coherence within the piece examined, or between it and other, presumed neighbouring pieces. But each of these pieces only reveals its true nature and its precise, final form once they are assembled in the as yet unknown overall picture from which they come. The ‘uneasiness’ I was talking about is what signals to me, in the presence of a multiplicity of perfectly well-identified pieces, presented in a more or less shapeless heap, that it's time to finally assemble them - or also, if there has already been (more or less partial) assembly, that it is still too fragmentary, or that it is awkward and needs to be completely reworked. To find the right assembly, the chronological order in which I came across the pieces of the jigsaw is no doubt often a secondary consideration. But taking the pieces in hand one by one (and in that order, while we're at it), in the attitude of someone who knows they have to fit together and who is waiting for each of them to be placed in its proper place, is undoubtedly an essential stage in the work, to finally see them fit together.

The ‘final word’ in the previous note (from six days ago) tried to capture in words a certain strong impression in me - that of a metamorphosis that had taken place in my friend Pierre over the years, in the fifteen years since I left the mathematical scene. I had seen scattered signs of it here and there over the years, which sometimes left me dumbfounded, but at no time (as far as I can remember) did I dwell on them to get an overall idea of what was happening. It has to be said that, while I sensed a certain ‘wind’, and a particular role my friend was playing in it (with the burial of the motifs in particular, of which I was well aware in a confused way 260 , I was very far from suspecting the large-scale burial of my person and my work as a whole that my [◊ 724] friend was in the process of orchestrating with dexterity. It was the gradual discovery of this burial over the past year that was finally the shock strong enough to move an inertia in me, and to motivate me to finally ‘put down’ on a situation that had seemed drowned in the mists of a distant past. So it was also in a very different frame of mind from the somewhat ‘routine’ frame of mind I'd been in during our past encounters, in a frame of bemused attention, that I received my friend during his recent visit in October. It was during this visit that this impression appeared, or rather this sudden perception of something that had surely been present for a long time, and that I had been happy to ignore until then: the perception of this ‘metamorphosis’ - the same one that I returned to by a different route in the reflection of the previous note. If I have rediscovered this impression, this time through what I know of my friend's mathematical work, it is certainly not by the greatest of coincidences, but guided by what direct contact with him had taught me over the last two months. The force of evidence of this impression of a metamorphosis, culminating in a ‘virile’ being, indemoluble, stiff and dead’, could certainly not come as the result of a reflection comparing and assembling facts (or partial impressions of another nature), but only through an immediate experience, which remained unsaid. And this experience always remains unspoken at this very moment 261 .

In the previous note, I write that this ‘reversal’ (in the very person of my friend), or this ‘metamorphosis’ (to use the expression that appeared in [◊ 725] the ‘final word’), was not ‘sought for its own merits’, adding moreover, in brackets: ‘as the object, perhaps, of an “insane desire”...’ (the desire for reversal mentioned in the note ‘The nerve within the nerve - or the dwarf and the giant’). However, on re-reading the reflective notes the next day, I wasn't so sure, or whether my deliberate attempt to contrast the two ‘reversals’ I had discerned in Burial was really well-founded. After all, in this image of the dwarf and the giant, the ‘giant’ embodies (as I've pointed out more than once) ‘virile’ values, and the ‘dwarf’ is overwhelmed by ‘female’ de-values. And even though this image is located outside the person of my friend, plastered as it is on his relationship with another person (me in this case), that doesn't prevent it from having no ‘objective’ existence outside his person; on the contrary, it is the projection onto the outside (onto his relationship with so-and-so) of a conflicting reality that is played out in no-one else but himself. To put it another way, this image of the dwarf and the giant appears to be the symbolic staging of the real conflict at play in deeper layers than those in which the image lives, a conflict that is none other than the never-ending conflict between the yin and yang ‘sides’ of his person.

Such an externalisation of an inner conflict, which must remain rigorously hidden, is one of several all-purpose procedures used by the unconscious to ‘evacuate’ the original real conflict as far as possible, substituting another that seems more ‘acceptable’, or at least less worrying. In this case, the chosen lightning rod image itself remains unconscious (I presume so, at least); indeed, I would tend to believe that it remains confined to relatively deep layers of the unconscious, but closer to the surface than the knowledge of the real conflict (which, incidentally, is none other than the ‘place’ of this ‘two-faced knowledge’ referred to in the note ‘The two knowledges - or the fear of knowing’, no. 144).

This suggests that the ‘insane desire’ mentioned in parenthesis in the previous note, that of ‘being that giant himself, or at least passing for him’ - that this desire is merely the ‘exteriorised’ transposition, in terms of the lightning rod-image of the dwarf and the giant, of the desire for a ‘metamorphosis’ in himself ; of a metamorphosis, if not real, at least apparent - one in which a predominance in his being felt to be unacceptable, the predominance of ‘yin’ tones (felt to be ‘soft’ and contemptible), would find itself [◊ 726] ‘reversed’, metamorphosed into a predominance of ‘yang’ or ‘virile’ tones (felt to be ‘heroic’, and as the only ones worthy of envy). Far from being in any way opposed in their intimate nature, these two desires now seem to me to be inseparable, one being like the shadow, the symbolic and tangible expression of the other. As for the ‘metamorphosis’ that I finally perceived when my friend came to visit (better late than never!), it now appears as the symbolic and tangible expression of the other. ), it now appears to be the realisation or the fulfilment of this ‘insane’ and imperious desire; the fulfilment, not through the intervention of a providential grace, but as the long-term effect of the obstinate will of the ‘boss’ to ‘rectify the situation’, to remodel himself according to borrowed traits, and to impose these same traits on the worker-child (who, as you can imagine, is never consulted for this kind of operation, typically ‘boss’).

In the previous note, I emphasised the reality of this ‘reversal’ (or ‘metamorphosis’). I can now see more clearly the nature and limits of this ‘reality’. It is the reality of a pose, striving to mould itself according to a model, felt to be the ideal to be achieved. The choice of model, i.e. the type of pose adopted, no doubt predates our meeting. But it seems to me that the energy invested and dispersed in this pose was minimal at the time of our meeting, and in the years that followed. There was, I think, a sudden and drastic change in the dimensions taken by this investment, by the extraordinary ‘opportunity’ created by my departure; first of all, my departure from my institution (where overnight my friend had had to appear to himself as having surreptitiously substituted himself for his ‘rival’), and shortly afterwards, my departure from the mathematical scene. A second, even more important, aspect of reality is that, by virtue of an inordinate investment, this pose ended up becoming ‘second nature’. And that's exactly what this ‘second nature’ is, as I perceived it during our recent meeting. She is burdened with an immense inertia - just as I was. In my case, this didn't prevent a renewal from taking place; and the fact that it took place in me doesn't take anything away from the inertia in my friend, opposing a renewal in himself.

This ‘new’ reality that has gradually been established in him has not ‘resolved’ the conflict in him, any more than the occupation of a country by a neighbouring country ‘resolves’ a conflict. Rather, the conflict in my friend is ‘frozen’ in a certain ‘balance of power’, and the chances are that it will remain so until [◊ 727] the end of his days. It can undoubtedly be said that the structure of the ego, that is to say the mechanisms of behaviour, have indeed changed, sometimes in striking ways. Such changes, however, imposed by the will of the ‘boss,’ change nothing about the original nature, that of the creative forces of the worker-child. They are simply like shackles imposed on the worker, who has to manage as best he can to work anyway, under the mistrustful eye of the ‘boss’, when the latter is not taking the tools from his hands to show the worker what he has to do!

This doesn't stop the business from running and making money, and the boss is generally happy. There's a bad atmosphere, that's for sure, but like most bosses, he's got a thick skin and doesn't let it get to him, as long as the returns are good.

(g) Another self - or identification and conflict

NOTE 155 (2 January) It's been more than a week, since the note of 24 December ‘Disavowal (1) - or Recall’ (no. 152), that I've had the impression of being more or less finished with the foreground of the Burial painting. And then no - three times in a row now, I've had to come back to one point or another that didn't seem quite clear, just three words to be added, no doubt, to put the final dot on the final ‘i’. And each time, this ‘final point’ kept me busy for an entire evening, when it turned out that what had seemed ‘not entirely clear’ had remained rather obscure, and that it was by no means a luxury to return to it and find its own light. I suspect it will be no different again today, as I propose to return to a (final?) point, touched on in passing in the note ‘Disavowal (2) - or metamorphosis’ (no. 153). It concerns one of the aspects specific to a relationship in which I play the role of ‘adopted father’, the aspect of my friend's (‘ambiguous’) identification with me. This aspect is mentioned in three or four lines, in a footnote to the note quoted. There was no further mention of it that evening, but the very next day, rereading the previous day's notes, I felt I had to come back to it. When I returned to the subject last night, I thought I'd follow up on it, but in the end it was another of the ‘last points’ left unresolved from the previous reflection that kept me busy late into the night.

On the many occasions in the course of Harvest and Sowing when I was led to note, in the relationship with a particular friend or pupil, an aspect of adoptive or [◊ 728] adopted father, it was each time on the occasion of the appearance of conflictual traits in this relationship. So, without any deliberate intention, it was the conflictual aspects of such a relationship with a ‘paternal’ connotation that were at the centre of my attention and were highlighted. I was well aware that in such a relationship there is always a more or less strong component of identification with the father, with the only reservation that this identification can sometimes take a ‘negative’ form, through identification with the ‘negative’ (or opposite) image of a repudiated father 262 . This knowledge remained in the background, without intervening visibly in the reflection, while nonetheless contributing its share to a diffuse apprehension and to the formation of a still vague, unformed image of this or that relationship. I say this only once, I think, and in general terms, in the sense of identification, at the end of the section ‘The Enemy Father (1)’ (no. 29):

... it was the reproduction of the same archetypal conflict with the father: the Father who is both admired and feared, loved and hated - the Man you have to confront, defeat, supplant, perhaps humiliate... but also the One you secretly want to be, to strip him of a strength in order to make it your own - another Self, feared, hated and shunned...

It hardly needs to be said that in these lines, written on the occasion of a ‘retrospective on my past as a mathematician’, if there was one precise case in point that guided my pen as I wrote, it was my relationship with my occult ‘heir’ and ex-student-who-didn't-say-his-name, Pierre Deligne - at a time, however, when I had no inkling, on a conscious level at least, of the Big Show Funeral orchestrated by him! In reproducing these lines, written more than nine months ago, I was struck by the extent to which they seem to prefigure and ‘call forth’ (as it were) the image of the dwarf and the giant, which seems to have been formed and materialised for the sole purpose of giving tangible form to the intuition that has just been expressed. Yet there is little doubt in my mind that it was not in me, the chronicler-researcher, that the image was formed, but in my friend himself, and it is from none other than him that I have it 263!

[◊ 729] The conflicting identification is clear in the words ‘He also whom secretly one would like to be’ and, even more strongly and unequivocally: ‘another Soimême’. In the image of the dwarf and the giant, as it came to my attention on 18 December (in the note ‘Le nerf dans le nerf - ou le nain et le géant’, no. 148), there is talk of the ‘insane desire to be that giant himself, or at least to pass for him’, lines that seem to come in response to the ‘Celui qui secrètement on voudrait être’ quoted just now. But this time I'll stop here (enough's enough!), one step short of the ‘another Self’ that came nine months earlier as a matter of course! It's true that this time, while we're talking about a ‘piecemeal approach’, in a very specific case, we have to be much more careful and circumspect than in a context where we pretend (as if nothing had happened!) to make a general statement that doesn't concern anyone in particular...

But considering the matter, it's true that it's a very small step indeed, for the unconscious hungry for symbolic satisfaction, which it can buy with mental images of its own making, between the ‘insane desire’ (and visibly of considerable force) to be this or that, and the act of identification with the very thing we want to be. For identification, however unconscious, to be even remotely credible, and for the satisfactions it brings to be savoured with a minimum sense of security, it undoubtedly needs to be backed up by certain ‘objective’ characteristics of resemblance to the person (in this case) with whom we identify. I presume that in the case I'm dealing with, my friend's relationship with me, the first ‘objective characteristic’ likely to encourage a feeling of resemblance, and an act of identification, was the strong affinity between his approach and mine to our common subject, mathematics. This would be the force ‘in the positive sense’, ‘that of identification with the one who is felt to be similar’, mentioned in passing in the footnote quoted at the beginning of today's reflection.

However, as I've already had occasion to point out several times in the course of reflecting on the relationship between my friend and me, from the very first years of this relationship, he didn't fail to perceive the ‘superyang’ aspects of imbalance in the character I'd played as a child, which had long since become my ‘second nature’. I can't say whether, at a conscious level, my friend was able to distinguish clearly between these two entirely distinct aspects of my person. I can't say whether, at the level of conscious perception, my friend was able to distinguish clearly between these two entirely distinct aspects of my person. (I would tend to doubt it.) The fact remains that the superyang aspect of the ‘boss’ in my company must [◊ 730] have aroused in him two very distinct types of reaction. One, the only one I perceived until the last few months, and the only one conscious in him (I presume), was expressed on occasion by a slightly pained attitude of regret, which I have had occasion to mention, an attitude which never left friendly or affectionate tones. On closer examination, the other reaction itself appears ‘ambiguous’, made up of two apparently opposing components. The first was ‘positive’, in the sense of an unreserved appreciation of me as the embodiment of heroic, ‘larger-than-life’ ‘values’; generally accepted values, to be sure, that you assimilate in your early years like the air you breathe, but for which your immediate environment as a child had no doubt provided you with some kind of inspiring ‘model’. This component, like the feeling of affinity (of a completely different nature) mentioned earlier, was in the direction of identification with me, without any element of antagonism. On the other hand, this antagonistic element is part of the other component, or rather, the other side (or ‘reverse’) of this identification that I've just described as the ‘place’, and it remains more enigmatic for me. This is surely where the ‘paternal’ role my friend has assigned me, by virtue of my conformity to a certain ideal ‘profile’ supposed to embody such values, plays a crucial role. In groping my way, using the few tenuous elements at my disposal, to fathom the root cause of the strongly antagonistic content of this identification with an ‘adopted father’ (with very ‘Superpère’ features!), I came across (a fortnight ago) a plausible, but still hypothetical, ‘scenario’ in the note of 30 December ‘Rancune en sursis - ou le retour des choses (2)’.

This is not the place to revisit this scenario. It seems more interesting to revisit the image of ‘the dwarf and the giant’ (which had just appeared in the note of the day before), from the point of view of this conflicting identification of my friend with myself. It becomes clear that the two protagonists in the image, the dwarf and the giant, are none other than himself, or rather, two distinct aspects of himself. The ‘dwarf’ represents what my friend feels to be the original and ‘unchanging’ aspect of his being, the one rooted in his childhood as far back as he can remember, and no doubt even further... It's also what he feels to be the banal, insignificant, not to say derisory, aspect of himself. It is the aspect that is disowned, and by the same token, the aspect that is felt to be ‘irremediable’, ‘overwhelming’, the shameful and contemptible pole of his being. The ‘giant’, on the other hand, represents the vertiginous ideal that we despair of ever attaining, [◊ 731] to which we can, at best, hope to bear some resemblance, even if it means giving ourselves and others the slip, by all the means at our disposal. One of these means has been to supplant the One who appears to be the prestigious and envied incarnation of this ideal, and to ‘prove’ his superiority over the Rival by every conceivable means. As for the Giant himself, he now appears as distinct from the Rival and Father, he is the pinnacle aspect, the ideal, heroic pole of the self. The supreme gratification of the ‘boss’ is anything that feeds the illusion that you are indeed this ideal pole, this projection of a spirit eager to expand. But the very craving for this gratification reveals a concern, ‘a deeply buried doubt’ - it tells us that the person concerned ‘is not fooled, deep down inside, by these false signs of importance, of “value” 264...’.

At a more superficial level of the psyche, however, these ‘factitious signs 265’ are part of the ‘objective (more or less) characteristics’ mentioned earlier, which are supposed to ‘make credible’ an act of identification with an ideal model (whether this model remains in the impersonal form of a faceless ‘Giant’ who lives within oneself, or takes on the familiar face of the enemy Father, the Rival).

(h) The enemy brother - or passing on (2)

NOTE 156 (3 January) Yesterday afternoon, taking advantage of a little spare time while waiting for friends to come round, I leafed through C. G. Jung's autobiography, which a friend had just brought me by chance. I was hooked by the little I read. It was the first time I'd held a text by Jung in my hands, and until then I'd had only the vaguest idea of him - a dissident pupil of Freud, who had managed (according to scattered echoes that had come back to me) to reintroduce the shifting light and shade of mystery into the straight paths of the Master. That was about as far as it went. There I got the impression of a living person like you and me, who doesn't waste his time bringing it up again, and above all: one who goes straight to the real questions, those [◊ 732] he feels are essential from his own insights, and who is not content (when the adventurous question is as old as the world) with the ready-made answers of learned people.

The ‘biography’ aspect (intended for publication) was of course of particular interest to me, since the notes I'm writing are very much like a biography, and in a spirit very close to Jung's: the external event remaining constantly subordinate to the inner adventure, which it both reveals and occasionally stimulates. I was struck by the fact that Jung did not write an autobiography (or, more accurately, contribute to one) until he was eighty-three, and, above all, that at no earlier point in his life did he take the trouble to examine his own childhood in depth. It would seem to me that for Freud's students, it must have been self-evident that one of the first things, if not the very first thing, to familiarise themselves with the ways of the unconscious, would have been to explore those ways in their own person! There is no doubt in my mind that a so-called ‘knowledge’ of the unconscious that is limited to what is learned in a university curriculum (even if it is taught by a prestigious master like Freud himself), and to the analysis of a certain number of ‘clinical cases’, remains a non-integrated knowledge, a piecemeal, ‘dead’ knowledge - a knowledge that by itself does not provide, or even promote, an understanding of oneself, or of others, or of the world.

But it is also true that an exploration of one's own person is an undertaking which, by its very nature, cannot be the subject of an institutionalised ‘programme’ - any more than the restoration, at its very root, of a disturbed psychic equilibrium (in a ‘patient’, let's say) can be the fruit of the intervention of an ‘ogue’ of any kind, confined to implementing boilerplate techniques. Disturbed equilibrium' is by no means confined to the socially unacceptable stage of a nervous breakdown or neurosis, but can be found in practically everyone (to a greater or lesser degree). Psychologists themselves (or ethnologists, sociologists and other ‘ogues’), of all persuasions, are no exception! And a genuine restoration of disturbed equilibrium is by no means in the nature of a simple ‘medical act’ performed on a third party. It is an act of the person himself and of no other - an act of love, which he is free to do or not to do. It is not the result of the inexorable unfolding of psychic mechanisms (with or without the intervention of the expert in psychic mechanics), but an act in the full sense of the word, a creation, a re-birth.

[◊ 733] Before I had finished writing the above peremptory sentence about the ‘so-called “knowledge” of the unconscious’, I realised how overbearing the context can make it seem. Without knowing anything about Jung's work (which had just been mentioned), I seem to be dismissing him and his ‘so-called’ knowledge of the unconscious - since he had apparently not taken the trouble (before the age of eighty-three) to explore the soil in which his own unconscious had grown. I presume, however, that if you read his biography, it will become clear that, without having devoted himself to such an ‘exploration’, Jung must have had other ways of making contact with his own unconscious (ways which themselves no doubt remained unconscious for a long time), so surely the premises of the statement in question do not apply to him.

When I was leafing through the glossary, I was struck by something quite different. Under the term ‘quaternity’ (NB This is the French edition), Jung insists on the ‘totalising’ character of the number 4. Until about ten years ago, I was very resistant to the idea of a philosophical or ‘mystical’ use of numbers - any speculation or discourse along these lines seemed to me to be nonsense, childish, ‘Hokuspokus’ (as we say in German, for fourpenny magic tricks). The little I've learned about the I Ching (or ‘Book of Transformations’) has made me less peremptory. Yesterday I made a comparison between the ‘cosmic’ character attributed to the number 4, and the spontaneous grouping that had taken place, when writing ‘The Key to Yin and Yang’, into ‘packets’ generally of four or eight notes, brought together under a common title. The first group is reduced to a single note; it's true, but (I noted this with satisfaction when I finished the sixth group, ‘La mathématique yin et yang’, which has seven notes instead of eight) if you combine it with a later group, into which this isolated note seems to fit most naturally, you still find a package of eight notes (7 + 1 = 8), so again a multiple of four. This pattern has continued to the present day, the last group to be completed being group 10 ‘La violence - ou les jeux et l'aiguillon’ (1561 ). It has to be said that from group 7 onwards (‘The reversal of yin and yang’) I let myself be guided by this pattern, which had just emerged without my looking for it, and without seeking or assuming any ‘meaning’ other than that of a certain mathematical ‘regularity’ in the form, which I felt to be harmonious.

This reminds me of the only other text I have written on a theme that can be described as ‘cosmic’, again centred on the dynamics of [◊ 734] yin and yang in human life and in the creative act 266 . This text came together, apparently without any initial deliberate purpose and surely without effort at any point, following a rigorous numerical ordering. I had forgotten what it was, but on looking it up just now (whether you're curious or not!), it turns out to be seven ‘stanzas’ of four ‘stanzas’ each. So, once again, they had been grouped by four. It is true that the number of stanzas is seven, which is not a multiple of four - so according to the Jungian criterion, the character of totality would not be satisfied for the work as a whole 267 , but only for each of the seven ‘stanzas’ that make it up. But here I still have something to fall back on, given that the famous ‘poetic work’ also had a providential ‘epilogue’ (not to mention an interminable prologue, which I had the good sense to leave out), so we still have 7 + 1 = 8, we're saved!

It's time to return to yesterday's reflection where I left off. I had tried to understand the image of the dwarf and the giant in my friend, in terms of his identification with me. It appeared that ‘the dwarf’ and ‘the giant’ represent (or ‘stage’, to use the expression in the note preceding yesterday's) the two extreme ‘poles’ in my friend's person (I mean: what the ‘boss’ has established as ‘extreme poles’): one ‘shameful and despicable pole’, and another ‘ideal, heroic pole’. To tell the truth, with a difference of emphasis or lighting, I'm coming back to the interpretation I found the day before for the same image-force of the dwarf and the giant, in the note from the day before yesterday ‘La mise en scène - ou la “seconde nature”’ (no. 154). This was the ‘staging’ of the conflict instituted by the boss, the ego, between the two ‘sides’, yin and yang, of being. This formulation of the original conflict, in terms of the two ‘sides’, would correspond to an undistorted knowledge of this conflict - and I am convinced that this knowledge must indeed exist, in deep (but by no means inaccessible) layers of the psyche. Yesterday's formulation in terms of two ‘extreme poles’ represents a distorted vision of the conflict - distorted by a deliberate statement by the boss, valorising one of the ‘sides’ [◊ 735] to make it an ideal, heroic ‘pole’, and devaluing the other to make it yet another pole, the extreme opposite of the previous one, a shameful, contemptible pole. I presume that this intermediate image lives in shallower, intermediate layers, perhaps partially cohabiting with the externalised image, the ‘staging’ of the dwarf and the giant, even closer to the conscious surface, and partially encroaching on the superficial layers 268 . In these layers, I would remind you, reigns the idyllic image of the ‘sugar daddy’ who is a little soft around the edges, of a respectful son full of thoughtfulness, with velvet clearly visible and an invisible claw flush with the velvet...

Compared to the day before yesterday's reflection, yesterday's seems to me to be more of a nuance to it, and by the same token to sharpen its contours a little, without adding anything essentially new to it. It's true that when I stopped the reflection because of the prohibitive hour, I didn't have the impression that I'd reached the end of the path I'd embarked on, that of ‘ambiguous identification’. Thinking about it afterwards, I realised that, no doubt as a result of an inveterate habit of ‘seeing myself as yang’, it seemed to go without saying that, when there is identification with my person, it can only concern my yang traits. In this case, in this stage image of the dwarf and the giant, it was the giant that I had so far recognised myself in, in a distorted but still clearly recognisable form. Although I was insistently presented as ‘the dwarf 269’, due to the effect of the ‘reversal’ syndrome in my friend, this assimilation (with visibly malicious intent) was immediately rejected by me, by a reflex of a universal nature and of great force: to be confronted with a desire for derision, targeting traits (yin, in this case) that are perfectly real in me, while passing over in silence the complementary traits that are just as real (which, for their part, benefit from a rewarding consensus) - such a situation elicits in me the never-ending reaction, if not to deny the incriminating traits entirely, at least to tacitly minimise them, by putting forward, as if to oppose them, the traits that have been unjustly suppressed.

With this ‘visceral’ reaction, I'm really entering into the round of conflict, as I'm supposed to be doing! It alerts me to this eternal [◊ 736] ‘hook’ where someone has a hold on me and drags me into the round. My own vision of reality is also distorted, in response to a provocative distortion. So it was in vain that I wrote yesterday, with my lips (or the keys of the typewriter), that

the first ‘objective characteristic’ likely to encourage a feeling of resemblance and an act of identification, was the strong affinity between her approach and mine to our common teacher, mathematics.

When I wrote it, I was happy to forget that this ‘strong affinity’ consisted of a yin, feminine approach to the discovery and knowledge of things - that this was precisely the aspect through which, as someone ‘similar’ to him, I too appeared as a dwarf, just like him: it was the secret, vulnerable, shameful side that he reserved for himself to bring into play, when the right moment appeared, to supplant and ‘overthrow’. This ‘providential circumstance 270’, the yin predominance in my drive for knowledge, was not just a weapon in the hands of a dubious friend - it was also, and above all, a kind of ‘objective foundation’ for his identification with me; not, this time, as identification with the father, but as identification with an older brother, not to say an ‘older sister’.

When I use the word ‘objective’ here, it's to express that this time it's a question of an ‘identification’ rooted, not in one of the fictions of the ‘boss’ wanting (or fearing...) to be this or that, but in a profound, tangible, indubitable reality - that of a kinship between the original nature of the one and the other. In any case, surely this kinship could not fail to be perceived by him as by me, and I have no doubt that at some deep level the meaning of this kinship was also perceived. And I presume at least, without being totally convinced, that this perception must well and truly have served as material in his identification with me. This identification would therefore have taken place on two distinct levels: on the one hand, the ‘ideal’ level, in which I appear as the embodiment of values of which he would like himself to be an exemplary embodiment (even if only in appearance, whereas the model appears to be out of reach, and is supposed to actually realise the ideal); on the other hand, the ‘real’ level, where identification is established through a de facto kinship that is correctly perceived, but a kinship in common traits reputed [◊ 737] to be redhibitory, pitiful 271 .

This is a good time to remind myself that at the time of our meeting, and for more than ten years afterwards, the same repression of my ‘feminine’ traits was rife in me as I have recently come to notice in my friend. It seems to me, with hindsight, that at the time of our meeting, this repression in my friend already existed to a certain degree, but that it remained mostly latent, and in any case, was much less strong than it was in me. As I've pointed out on more than one occasion, my person had long been marked by a superyang imbalance, whereas his gave off an impression of harmonious balance. Since then, he and I have developed in opposite directions: my friend has moved from a state of yin-yang balance to a strong yang imbalance, and I have moved from a strong yang imbalance to a state of (relative) yinyang balance.

The idea that immediately arises is that my friend, perhaps by virtue of this double identification with me, has followed (some thirty years later!) the evolution, in the sense of a deterioration of an original balance, that I myself had followed since the age of eight. It's possible that a moderate over-valuation of ‘masculine’ values to the detriment of ‘feminine’ values was transformed, through contact with me or the environment I was part of, into a wild over-valuation. But as I have pointed out elsewhere, the ‘nerve’ (or the ‘living force’) in the Burial orchestrated by him, and the nerve also in his own metamorphosis (which is also the burial of the child in him by the boss...) - this nerve can hardly reside in the mere adoption of this or that other value system, more or less extreme (or even demented!). And the same applies to the ‘nerve’ in my identification with myself, and the disproportionate role that this identification has played in my friend's life. There is no doubt that one and the same ‘force’ is at work, and that its roots go back a long way to his childhood 272 .

Another strange idea comes to mind here. It seems as if the heaviest burden [◊ 738] that I had carried for forty years of my life, this repression of the ‘feminine’ in me by the ‘masculine’, which was also akin to that of the child in me by the ‘Big Boss’ - that this burden was ‘taken up’ by my friend, at precisely a time when it might have seemed that he himself was free of a similar burden. It was around the time when my value system shifted in a yin direction, a development that foreshadowed the moment of the reunion with the child, some fifteen years later, when I suddenly felt relieved of an immense weight 273 . The association that immediately arises here is with the Hindu idea of karma. It is clear to me that over the last eight years I have been relieved of a substantial part of the karma that I had been carrying around with me since childhood. I would have thought (and I still tend to think) that this lightening has not been ‘at the expense’ of anyone, that it is beneficial not only for me, but ‘for the whole world’. I can even say that I know very well that this is the case, even if it turns out that someone else chose (or even had to choose) to take it over. It's also true that I don't see the karma I've been relieved of as an ‘evil’. It was for me the nourishing substance of a maturation that was ahead of me. I know that it is good for me and for everyone that I have eaten and been nourished by it, that knowledge has been formed in the nourishing matrix of ignorance 274 . It seemed to me that this substance or this karma, once transformed into knowledge, left no residue, that it disappeared. To tell the truth, I don't know what the Hindu or Buddhist tradition teaches on this subject - if there is for them a law of ‘karma conversation’ (similar to that of the conservation of matter), which law would be in no way affected by the vital creative processes of ingestion, digestion and assimilation.

For the sake of propriety, I have just omitted excretion from these ‘vital processes’. Yet excretion (like the death of the entire organism) is a key process in the recycling of what has been absorbed, returning to the infinite cycle of transformation of ‘dead’ organic matter into living organic matter, whereby life is eternally reborn from death 275

NOTE 1561 [◊ 739] (30 February) This pattern finally broke down with the final group No. 12, which unfortunately contains six notes, bringing the total number of notes making up ‘The key to yin and yang’ to sixty-two. I had anticipated that there would be eight notes in this ‘Conflicts and Discovery’ group, which would have been in keeping with the criterion of totality, and would have brought the total number of component notes to 64 = 8 × 8 = 4 × 4 × 4, which is also the number of hexagrams in the I Ching! I was sorry that my expectations were not fulfilled, but I didn't want to ‘cheat’ and include in ‘The key to yin and yang’ the two notes about Pierre Deligne's visit to my house, which I thought would be more appropriately placed at the end of ‘The Funeral Ceremony’, after ‘The key...’.

However, I am left with a feeling of dissatisfaction about group 12, the only one of the twelve parts of ‘La clef...’ that does not leave me with an impression of unity of inspiration and purpose. This lack of unity seems to me to be due, not to the theme of ‘Conflict and Discovery’ itself, but to the irruption of extraneous (and at times disturbing) events in the course of the reflection.

(7 March) As I reread last night the reflection of 14 January that I had grouped together in a note (No. 162) called ‘Conviction and Knowledge - or the Passing On’ 276 , I felt dissatisfied with the name. On the one hand, the ‘main’ title and the subtitle did not seem, ‘at a glance’, to fit together - in fact, they correspond, one to a first and the other to a third ‘movement’ in the reflection, which in themselves are without any apparent link: description of the process of the blossoming of knowledge (in the form of a sudden conviction), and evocation of the endless chain and ‘passing on’ of karma, from one generation to the next, and from one person to the next. What's more, the most intimately personal content, the ‘neuralgic’ content for my own person, which was the substance of the ‘second movement’ of the reflection (and had in fact been the ‘bridge’, leading from the first movement to the third) - this crucial content did not appear in the name chosen. (I have no doubt, moreover, that this surreptitious concealment was by no means the effect of pure chance...) Since the three themes seemed important to me, each in its own right, and I could not see any ‘welcome’ name or double-name that would evoke all three, I eventually [◊ 740] realised that the best thing would be to split the note into three, with a suggestive name for each separately: ‘Conviction and knowledge‘, “The hottest iron - or turning”, “The endless chain - or passing (3)” (n os 162, 162’, 162’

It was afterwards that I suddenly realised that this operation, dictated (so to speak) by the very substance of reflection, had at the same time resolved the ‘aesthetic’ dissatisfaction that I had been carrying around for nearly two months, while this twelfth and final part of ‘The Key to Yin and Yang’ (which I had called ‘Conflict and Discovery’) stubbornly refused to allow itself to be completed (naturally, that is) in a sequence of eight notes, and only wanted to include the six that had already been written. And I got my reward for not giving in to the easy temptation to ‘cheat’ and ‘stick’ two notes at the end of ‘La clef’ that were ‘spur of the moment’ and belonged elsewhere! This last part of ‘The Key’ (which will eventually be called ‘The Enigma of Evil - or Conflict and Discovery’) also takes on a beautiful symmetrical structure, with two packages (of three notes each) on the central theme, grouped around the two ‘digression notes’ on Fujii Guruji and on my monk friends.

(12) Conflict and discovery - or the enigma of Evil

(a) Without hatred or mercy

NOTE 157 (4 January) In yesterday's and the day before yesterday's reflections, I tried above all to get in touch with the reality of my friend's identification with me, and in so doing to discern its scope and implications. It's a job I've been doing like someone groping in the dark, not to say in the dark of night. Or perhaps I should say that my eyes remain closed, and my eyelids are opaque to a light that I am unable to perceive. The fact remains that I don't remember at any point in my relationship with my friend ‘feeling’ or ‘seeing’ this identification, any more than I ‘felt’ or ‘saw’ his antagonistic attitude towards me. Yet I know, without any possibility of doubt, from a rich body of concordant facts, that this identification with me, and this antagonism which is like its shadow, are realities - just as a person born blind ‘would know’ that the sun, daylight, colours, light and dark, exist, even though he has never seen them. He knows this without having any knowledge of these things. Or if he does have a very diffuse knowledge of them, through a more refined tactile sense perhaps (or through a ‘memory’ that is rooted not in his life alone, but in those of countless generations [◊ 741] of sighted beings that preceded him), this knowledge remains indirect and fallible, like that of a warm, sonorous voice coming to us through a distant and uncertain echo.

The work done over the last two days has again been like a stopgap, like a substitute for an immediate perception that is lacking. This is more or less the case in any work of ‘meditation’, in the sense that I understand it. The work constantly pushes against the tide of inertia - the inertia of leaden eyelids! Certainly, in those moments when the eyes are fully open and awake, there is no need for meditation or work: all you have to do is look, and see. As these moments are rare, rather than sit back and wait for them, I prefer to take the lead, without worrying that the work will be clumsy and ‘slow’. It may be slow, and sometimes even slower than usual - but that doesn't mean it's ever stagnant or going round in circles. When there is work, real work by which I mean, driven by a real desire, then there is progress: something is made, takes shape, is transformed, imperceptibly at one moment, visibly at another... And sometimes, at the end of a sluggish and obstinate progress in a half-light without form or contours, continuing for hours or days, even months or perhaps years, the miracle happens: the blind man sees! And what is seen is not a fleeting vision that disappears as if it had never been, leaving only the faint trace of a memory. It is a knowledge born of these obscure labours, a new knowledge, as intimately ours as the taste of the things we love.

I wrote in the reflections of the day before yesterday that if there was a case in point whose thought had ‘guided my pen’ nine months ago, when I was writing the final lines of the note ‘The Enemy Father’ (1) (which I had just quoted), it was that of my friend Pierre in his relationship with me. However, other ‘cases in point’ even closer to me must have been present in my mind at the time, in the background of my thoughts. When I speak of a ‘father who was both admired and feared, loved and hated’ and then of ‘another Self, feared, hated and shunned...’, the terms ‘feared’, ‘hated’ and ‘hated’, and no doubt even the term ‘shunned’, do not apply to my friend Pierre's relationship with me. Neither by direct perception, however fleeting and slight it may be, nor by cross-checking against the facts known to me, have I ever had the slightest indication that my friend feared me, or hated me, or even harboured any animosity towards me. The opposite [◊ 742] is true, as I have had occasion to point out on more than one occasion. And it is precisely this circumstance that has made so disconcerting this flawless antagonism, seemingly gratuitous, which has manifested itself in crescendo throughout the past fifteen years, under cover of the ‘thumb!’ style, aka ‘velvet paw’ 277 , to finally reach the diapason of a quiet impudence, sure (provided certain forms are respected) of total impunity...

This disconcerting, enigmatic progression is immediately associated with the equally ‘disconcerting’ and ‘enigmatic’ (and these are euphemisms, to be sure!) progression in the deterioration that continued, also over a period of fifteen years, in the couple's relationship with my former wife, and by the same token, in the family we had founded. In the absence of any sign that my wife had a tendency towards hatred or chronic animosity towards me, it took me ten years of inexorable deterioration in the relationship (while most of my energy was taken up with mathematics, playing the role of the famous pile of sand for the ostrich...), before I finally acknowledged the presence, in the woman I continued to love, of a tenacious, mysterious and implacable will to destroy, working against me through those who were dear to me. That was in 1967, five years before I left home, and ten years before the resolution of a conflict that I felt was the heaviest burden of my life. With the hindsight that comes from a relationship that I've been living with for a long time, I can't help but notice what continues to remain a mystery for me: an insatiable desire to destroy, and at the same time an absence of hatred, or only of animosity, towards those, adults or children, who are struck down without mercy, whenever the opportunity arises.

It's the same mystery, all things considered, as the one I'm now confronted with in my friend's relationship with me, with the difference that this ‘tenacious will to destroy... exercised against me through those who are dear to me’ was strictly confined to the world of mathematicians, and that its instruments and hostages were not my children ‘in the flesh’, but those who symbolically took their place: the students and those like them who, in some small way, ‘bore my name’. In both cases, not only do I detect neither hatred nor animosity, but moreover, there are feelings of sympathy towards me, and often even affection, which cannot be doubted.

Or if he does have a very diffuse knowledge of them, through a more refined tactile sense perhaps (or through a ‘memory’ that is rooted not in his life alone, but in those of countless generations [◊ 741] of sighted beings that preceded him), this knowledge remains indirect and fallible, like that of a warm, sonorous voice coming to us through a distant and uncertain echo. The work done over the last two days has again been like a stopgap, like a substitute for an immediate perception that is lacking.

This is more or less the case in any work of ‘meditation’, in the sense that I understand it. The work constantly pushes against the tide of inertia - the inertia of leaden eyelids! Certainly, in those moments when the eyes are fully open and awake, there is no need for meditation or work: all you have to do is look, and see. As these moments are rare, rather than sit back and wait for them, I prefer to take the lead, without worrying that the work will be clumsy and ‘slow’. It may be slow, and sometimes even slower than usual - but that doesn't mean it's ever stagnant or going round in circles. When there is work, real work by which I mean, driven by a real desire, then there is progress: something is made, takes shape, is transformed, imperceptibly at one moment, visibly at another... And sometimes, at the end of a sluggish and obstinate progress in a half-light without form or contours, continuing for hours or days, even months or perhaps years, the miracle happens: the blind man sees! And what is seen is not a fleeting vision that disappears as if it had never been, leaving only the faint trace of a memory. It is a knowledge born of these obscure labours, a new knowledge, as intimately ours as the taste of the things we love.

I don't know if I'll ever understand this fact, but it seems to me that understanding it also means ‘understanding the conflict’. What is clear to me is that such an understanding cannot come from a ‘theory’, any more than from ‘experience’ (by virtue of experience alone). It is not some ‘sum total’ of an accumulation (of ‘knowledge’, or of ‘experience’), just as it is not of the order of the intellect alone, nor even of the order of the ‘intelligence’ alone 282 . I'm not sure I know anyone, even by name, in whom such an understanding lives. But it seems to me that anyone who, after a hundred and a thousand evasions in the face of an irrefutable reality with a thousand faces, has finally come to the simple observation of this fact, humbly, without bitterness or revolt, without resignation or indignation - as the observation of a formidable mystery perhaps, the meaning of which escapes him, but the extent and depth of which he senses; a mystery which intrigues or challenges him, without frightening or worrying him any more - that person has not lived in vain.

(b) Understanding and renewal

NOTE 158 (5 January) Unintentionally, the final lines of yesterday's reflection were very much in the vein of The Funeral Eulogy - but this time delivered (or sung) by the deceased himself. You only get what you pay for!

Yesterday I was confronted once again with one of the most disconcerting aspects of the ‘mystery of conflict’: the will to destroy, without hatred or apparent motive, exercised in the shadows, obstinately and relentlessly, against a loved one, or such loved ones or friends. Sometimes this kind of will gets out of control, leading to an all-out destructive frenzy in which anything vulnerable becomes a welcome target. It's like an irrepressible bulimia of ‘action’ in reverse, whose repetitive nature (like that of clown games), and consummate mastery in the art of pulling the strings, can be of the most comical effect, when the observer (or even the one who has just paid the price) is gifted with a sense of humour, [◊ 745] and the Actor-Puppeteer has only modest powers over others. The situation is more serious, it is of consequence, when there are children among those who bear the brunt of the circus games, even if they are ‘bloody’ only in the figurative sense; and also when he or she possessed by a lust for destruction finds himself or herself invested with considerable, even discretionary powers over some of his or her fellow human beings. History records the names of some despots possessed by such a madness of indiscriminate destruction, turning their fiefdoms into vast mass graves. We think of Ivan the Terrible, or Stalin, or some Chinese emperor (whose name and millennium I have forgotten) who ended up being slaughtered by his own cornered subjects armed with sticks and stakes 283 . There is no doubt that there have been similar cases in our own countries, perhaps on a smaller scale, and about which ‘History’ has been more discreet...

When I wrote yesterday, without any false modesty, that I didn't understand the ‘fact’ I had just noted, that of the thirst for destruction in the absence of hatred, that in no way meant that I had no idea on the subject, quite the contrary. In fact, I have much more than just ‘ideas’, I have some very strong intuitions. They were born and grew out of the soil of my life, rich with the conflicts that had sometimes seemed to devastate it, like endless storms raging across a still winter landscape, [◊ 746] ruthlessly tearing away what must be torn away 284 . But all is belly for the sleeping earth that waits in silence. When spring comes again, in the hollows of the great dead trunks lying there inert, there swarms an intense life, and the following spring (if not the very year) we can already see grasses and flowers blooming there.

These ‘strong intuitions’ all concern, I believe, the ‘ingredients’ of conflict. I've spoken a little about some of them, and spoken again, and first and foremost about ‘self-contempt’, and its links with the repression of certain aspects and essential forces of our original being, such as the yin or yang ‘sides’, one of which is often denied. I've also often had occasion to talk about vanity, which is like a visiting card, the most universal of all signs, and the most apparent, of the presence of conflict within us, and which seems to me to be the ‘front’ of the same coin, the ‘back’ of which is self-contempt. There is contempt for others, an outward projection of self-contempt, for which it is at the same time a cover, or to put it better, a diversion and an exorcism. Basically, contempt for others is nothing more than deliberate ignorance of their existence as sentient beings who share in this world in the same way as ourselves. Gratuitous violence can only germinate and proliferate on the soil of such contempt. There is the fear of knowing, the fear of reality, a fear whose nerve centre, this ‘Black Point’, the epicentre of a whirlwind of anguish ready to be unleashed at the slightest alarm, is the fear of knowing ourselves: the fear of becoming aware of our own poses and subterfuges, however crude; and the fear also of becoming aware of the creative force within us that day after day we reject and bury, through these same poses and subterfuges.

In my life, fear appeared at the age of six, when there was still (it seems to me) no vanity. This must only have appeared later, at the time (I presume) of the ‘tipping point’ which took place around the age of [◊ 747] eight 285 . And it was fear, too, that disappeared first and without a trace, as soon as a curiosity appeared that was both benevolent and irreverent, intrigued certainly but in no way impressed by the abracadabra and macabre grand spectacle montages, such as ‘Point Noir’ and C ie . The mechanisms of vanity, on the other hand, have remained in place with no apparent change in the eight years since the fear of knowing disappeared. It's only the hold these mechanisms have on my life that has changed, because they are defused by the presence of an awakening curiosity that doesn't let itself be fooled!

I have here a whole range of ingredients for conflict - which I know at first hand, without a shadow of a doubt, are indeed essential ingredients. And for years now I've also had everything I need to ‘assemble’ these ingredients, carefully explaining their links of contiguity and dependency in the light of what I've observed in myself and others. It's a job that will take a few days or a few weeks, not even a month, I presume, and it's sure to be very instructive and useful. If I haven't taken the trouble to do it yet, giving priority to other more directly personal directions, it's probably because I was well aware that it's not from such an ‘assembly’ of ingredients, in general terms from which my person is absent (if only as one ‘example’ among others), that I could gain an ‘understanding of conflict’; any more than the mere fact of placing side by side, ‘assembling’ or even mixing a certain number of simple bodies, ‘ingredients’ in the composition of a compound body, reconstitutes the latter. For the ‘reconstitution’ to take place, a ‘chemical reaction’ must first take place - something that brings the ingredients into contact and into play in a much more intimate way, and by forces of an entirely different order, than simple ‘assembling’ or mixing could do.

The same is true for an understanding of life. Intelligence alone can, at a pinch, spot the ingredients of something like ‘conflict’, and it can in any case, in the presence of ingredients already known and with the help of facts about them (known first or second hand), put them together in a plausible, even ‘correct’ way. This kind of work can be useful in recognising oneself from time to time in a given conflict situation, and identifying a more or less precise ‘aetiology’ - but this is not yet an ‘understanding of the conflict’. On the other hand, I would say that I moved a step closer to such an understanding the day my relationship to [◊ 748] conflict was transformed. When I speak here of ‘my relationship to conflict’, I mean first of all, of course, the conflict in my own person, and (from there) the conflict that occasionally pits me against this person or that person; and lastly, the conflict that I see acting in close or less close beings in my everyday life, which often expresses itself in conflicts pitting one against another among them.

Over the past eight years, there has indeed been such a progression towards an understanding of conflict, which also means: a transformation, or rather, successive transformations, in my relationship to conflict. I've had occasion to mention two or three episodes 286 . Perhaps a full understanding of conflict is equivalent to a full acceptance of the existence of conflict, wherever and however it manifests itself 287 . I'm a long way from that, visibly! And perhaps full understanding of conflict also means full resolution of the conflict within oneself. I'm even further from that!

I think I know one more thing, though, about the nature of the force that, from a combination of ingredients, suddenly gives rise to an understanding that renews the person. It is precisely this force that is not ‘of the order of intelligence’. I doubt that any intellectual work whatsoever, the reading of books let's say, however learned, profound or sublime they may be, in any way stimulates its appearance. When it does emerge, it is only in silence and in contact with what is most intimately personal in our person and in our experience; something, therefore, that no book and no person, be it Christ or Buddha, can ever reveal to us.

When I speak of ‘what is most intimately personal’, this does not mean that these are things we cannot talk about, either to ourselves or to others - and sometimes it is good to talk about them. But even if we speak through the voices of angels and prophets, what is said is not the thing itself. This thing already known, but buried perhaps, whose contact can make a new knowledge suddenly spring forth, this thing is known neither to angels nor to prophets, nor even to the closest and best loved being, but only to you

[◊ 749] To come back to the conflict, and to ‘destruction without hatred’, which seems to me to be the hardest ‘core’ of the conflict, the most resistant to understanding, that is to say, to acceptance. I also think I know, in the next step I have to take to go deeper into it, what is that ‘most intimately personal’ thing I need to get in touch with first; the thing that would play the role, in this case, of that famous ‘Black Spot’ so tenaciously evaded! It's the experience of situations of ‘gratuitous violence’, of contempt for others (and of ‘destruction without hatred’ too, perhaps), in which I was the actor - the one doing the violence, the one who got something out of contempt. It's by coming into contact with this reality, or never, that I'll be able to get to the bottom of this famous ‘self-contempt’, and finally see, beyond any ‘no doubt’ or ‘maybe’, whether this is indeed the deep root of evil, and not just ‘everyone but me’!

(c) The cause of causeless violence

NOTE 159 (7 January) The reflections in the previous two notes revolved around the mystery of the existence of this strange thing: a will to destroy (or a will to hurt, or to humiliate, or to harm), in the absence of any hatred or animosity. The impetus for this reflection came from my friend Pierre's relationship with me, which immediately led to an association with my ex-wife's relationship with me. More than once during the reflection on Burial, I was led to realise, or to remember, that in these two cases as in others, it was certain traits in myself, the ‘super virile’ traits that I had cultivated in myself since the age of eight, that served as stimulators and ‘attractors’ for such antagonistic impulses. If I'm not mistaken, they were first mentioned in the note of 5 October ‘The Superpère (yang buries yin [2])’ (no. 108). This link is taken up again in the following note of 9 October ‘The reunion (the awakening of yin [1])’ (no. 109).

In this note, I return to the moment when, for the first time in my life, I perceived this link. It was 18 October 1976, the very day of my reunion with the child in me, and the final lines of the notes bear witness to this most important day of my adult life. In these lines (reproduced in the note quoted), I speak of the ‘secret hatred and resentment’ of three women I had loved, including the one who was still my wife at the time (even though I had not lived with her for five years). With hindsight, it seems to me that in each of the three cases I had in mind, this impression of [◊ 750] ‘secret hatred’ did not, strictly speaking, correspond to reality - I mean, to a direct perception that I would have had at any time 288 of such hatred. What I had perceived, and what I had had ample opportunity to experience, was a will to destroy, or a will to cause pain, or to hurt, that was both lasting and apparently inexplicable, gratuitous - something that I had interpreted as a sign of a hatred that was ‘secret’ because it was never expressed. In fact, I think that for two of the women in question, it was in the lines quoted, for the first time since I had [◊ 751] known them, that I made the observation of what appeared to me to be a ‘secret hatred’. At the point I had reached at that moment, it was impossible for me not to make the confusion I have just pointed out. This confusion in no way detracts from the importance of making this observation, involving myself in it just as crucially as these women to whom I was closely linked.

As for the ‘resentment’ mentioned in one breath with the ‘secret hatred’, I sensed from that moment that if a ‘certain force’ superyang within me had drawn the resentment of each of these three women towards me, it was for grievances for which I was in no way responsible - for injuries and damage suffered ‘long before they knew of my existence, in the distraught days of a childhood deprived of love’. This perception, which had decanted over the years as the fruit of intense experience, must surely have acted as an invisible guide for my reflections of 20 December last, in the note ‘Rancune en sursis - ou le retour des choses (2)’ (no. 149), where the intuition appears that this same process of displacement of an initial resentment, or of a ‘vacant grudge’, could well have taken place in my friend Pierre, around the time of our meeting or perhaps even earlier. The facts known to me make this intuition at least plausible.

There is, however, an important difference with the case of my ex-wife, and with the other two cases mentioned in the meditation after the reunion. I don't get the impression that my friend's childhood was in any way ‘distressed’ or ‘deprived of love’. This difference seems to me to manifest itself in the tone of my friend's antagonism towards me, which at no time reached the pitch of vehemence so familiar to me in the other three relationships. Also, in my friend's relationship with me, the appearance of signs of antagonism was at first extremely discreet and sporadic, and even after my departure in 1970, it took another eight years before this antagonism expressed itself in a direct and unmistakable way against my person 289 . This seems to correspond well to the existence of an initial ‘resentment’ that remained diffuse, imponderable, without the presence of a hard ‘core’ corresponding to the feeling (even if hidden from the conscious gaze) of an outrage or a wrong suffered, felt as perhaps irreparable...

[◊ 752] When I mentioned, in the penultimate note, the will to destroy, or the will to injure or harm, in the absence of hatred and animosity, the thought came to me (with some insistence) of an apparent contradiction, which I thought I would come back to straight away. This is it. In the two cases that were at the centre of my attention, involving my pupil (and mathematical ‘heir apparent’) and my wife, there had indeed been an unconscious ‘grudge’ that they had transferred to me. The very idea of a ‘grudge’ or ‘resentment’ seems to be linked to that of ‘animosity’ or ‘enmity’: one would be tempted to say that a grudge (or resentment) is one of the possible ways (and one of the most common) of feeding animosity. And this statement is certainly true in the case of what we might call a ‘direct’ grudge, a ‘real’ grudge, motivated by a grievance (real or imaginary) against the person concerned, for a wrong or damage they have inflicted on us. But in the cases that concern me, it is not such a grudge that is involved, but an indirect grudge, ‘by proxy’ so to speak, transferred from an initial potential target, inadequate for one reason or another 290 , to an ‘adoption target’ or replacement, which appears to ‘fit’ the needs of the cause. The remarkable thing is that such a ‘displaced rancour’ (so to speak!), which acts as the obstinate force at work behind attitudes, behaviours and acts of such a nature that they [◊ 753] would seem to be driven by ‘causeless’ hatred or animosity - that such a ‘rancour’ is nonetheless devoid of any feeling of hatred or animosity! It is, moreover, the combination of these two aspects of ‘gratuitous violence’ in the strongest sense of the term (the kind I am examining here) that makes it so disconcerting, as something that truly ‘boggles the mind’ 291 : the complete absence of any rational and tangible ‘cause’ for this violence, both in the person who bears the brunt of it (without having provoked it by attitudes, behaviours or acts that are hurtful or prejudicial to the other), and in the person who exercises it (without being driven by feelings of hatred or animosity that he might harbour, ‘rightly or wrongly’, against his target).

Perhaps the question of the presence or absence of hatred or animosity, in the cases that concern me (where we find ourselves confronted with violence that appears to be ‘gratuitous’, unprovoked), is relatively incidental here, surely, as was the case for me, in the experience of the person who is subjected to this violence, and from the moment that the violence suffered becomes conscious, there must appear an impression of ‘secret hatred’ or ‘animosity’ on the part of the person inflicting it. However, this impression is in no way the result of a perception (which would have suddenly appeared, as if by a wave of a magic wand), but rather that of a cookie-cutter assimilation: violence = hatred (or animosity) 292 .

One thing that seems to me much more important, however, is to note not only the existence of something as seemingly aberrant, as demented, as contrary to the most inveterate ‘common sense’ reflexes, as ‘resentment by proxy’, displaced from its ‘original target [◊ 754]’ (or original targets) to a ‘replacement target’ (a target of pure convenience, practically! ); but to note, moreover, that this is one of the most common mechanisms, which we encounter at every street corner, whether in our own person (the last one we would think to go looking for...), or in that of our relatives and friends. I even have the impression that this mechanism is universal in nature, that it's part of the basic mechanisms of the human psyche, that it's one of those few all-purpose mechanisms that make up the syndrome of flight from reality: the refusal to acknowledge it, and the fear of accepting it.

More to the point, I have the impression that today I have put my finger on the mainspring common to all situations of ‘gratuitous violence’, without exception. This impression emerged, with the force of a sudden conviction, when I began to examine (three paragraphs above) an ‘apparent contradiction’. I then had the feeling that a whole host of fragmented and heterogeneous impressions that I had accumulated over the course of my life, revolving around the ‘sensitive point’ of all this violence ‘that goes beyond understanding’, were suddenly coming into order, suddenly acquiring a perspective that was still lacking - a perspective that appeared unexpectedly, at the end of a thought, just as I was about to put the very last dot on the very last i...

(d) Nichidatsu Fujii Guruji - or the sun and its planets

NOTE 160 (8 January) For the past week, we've been experiencing an unusual cold snap - temperatures of -15 and below, and when the wind blows off ‘Mont Ventoux’ (the name says it all!), it must be even colder. It seems that this wave is sweeping the world (according to someone who listens to the news), and that in the south of France it hasn't happened since the famous winter and spring of 1956. When I was growing up in Germany, I experienced cold like that, but there was snow to protect the earth and give a gentle touch to the air and to things. With this snowless cold, the earth's surface froze like a block of ice. In the space of a few days, the garden has been razed to the ground - I don't know if there will be anything left in the spring from what we sowed and planted. The leaves of the leeks, celery, chard, lamb's lettuce, beetroot and chard that were left are like leaves of ice, frozen vegetables. We're rushing to harvest as much as we can from day to day, to eat as we go, before it thaws and all goes to compost. And yesterday [◊ 755] the water supply had frozen in the kitchen, luckily there was still running water downstairs in the old garage, less exposed to the cold. Today a friend came with a portable gas torch and managed to get the water running again. I'll have to leave a trickle of water running so that it doesn't freeze dry again. Luckily I've got a good wood-burning stove in the dining room, where I've moved my work. It's really nice sitting next to the stove. I keep warm with the vine stumps, which I chop up every day, a good grape crate full over the edge in the cold weather. When the wind keeps blowing all afternoon, it's enough to give you a cold sore, just standing there for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes breaking wood in the wind. Not to mention the fact that the car outside won't start - I've heard that cars don't stand the extreme cold very well, antifreeze or no antifreeze. The same complaisant friend got it running again earlier today, but will it still work tomorrow to go and proofread the typing of the secretary I gave the job to? In short, all it takes is a cold snap in winter, or a heat wave in summer, or a good little illness at any time, to remind us of some of the realities of life that we tend to forget when everything is humming along just fine...

Over the last three months, my work rhythm has gradually shifted towards the night hours. I work until around two or three in the morning, and sleep until around eleven or midday. With the weather the way it is, if I listened to myself once I was in bed, I'd stay up for my easy twelve hours - and conversely, once I was at work, I wouldn't go to bed! So I try to keep a reasonable balance. I don't worry too much about the time difference, as long as I get a good night's sleep and don't lie in bed for hours on end with my thinking machine still running. Even now, when there's hardly any work to do in the garden, there's still enough to keep me busy every day, including the firewood, and a little gymnastics here and there. I have the impression of a satisfying balance in my life, where the work of discovery doesn't seem to devour everything else, but without being on the small side. Since I went back to work on 22 September, I must be spending an average of five to six hours a day on it. It's modest, but the ‘output’ seems to be only slightly less than before. The ‘output’ (around a hundred pages a month) is more or less the same as when I wrote the first two parts of Récoltes et semailles. But from a qualitative point of view, there's no doubt in my mind that this third part is the most profound, the one that taught me the most about myself and others.

[◊ 756] Na mu myo ho ren ge kyo !

Just as I was finishing this short retrospective on the rigours of winter and the evolution of my life balance, I received a phone call from one of my Buddhist monk friends from the Nihonzan Myohoji group, announcing the death of their revered preceptor 293 , Nichidatsu Fujii, better known as Fujii Guruji, or ‘Osshosama’ to those close to him. My friend in Paris has just heard the news in a phone call from Tokyo, and I presume that Fujii Guruji died today 294 . He had just turned one hundred on 6 August, physically weakened but in excellent mental condition.

By a strange coincidence, 6 August is the anniversary of two other important events, one of historical significance, the other of a personal nature for me. It's the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) - which the Japanese commemorate as Hiroshima Day (which is why Fujii Guruji's birthday celebrations were held towards the end of July, to keep the days around 6 August available for pacifist and anti-atomic demonstrations). My father was born on 6 August 1890, six years to the day after Fujii Guruji's birth.

After the death of Claude Chevalley, the death of Nichidatsu Fujii is the second death of a person who played a significant role in my life, and it occurred while I was writing Harvest and Sowing. In view of his death (which doesn't really come as a surprise), I'm particularly pleased that just last year there was a warm exchange of letters with him. I had been invited to attend the ceremony for the old Master's hundredth birthday, which was to be held with exceptional pomp in Tokyo (a small book of testimonies about him had even been hastily published, to be given to him for the occasion). This had been an opportunity for me to write (as I do almost every year), a few words of early congratulations, apologising for not being able to attend the ceremony on 30 July, as I myself was still more or less bedridden at the time of writing. (It's also true that I'm not much given to big public ceremonies, but I didn't think it necessary to mention this in my letter. In any case, I [◊ 757] must have disappointed and pained more than one of my monk friends, by obstinately abstaining from attending any of the ‘great occasions’ 295 , to which they never tired of inviting me.) I had to add a few words about the beneficial side of an illness, which forces us, in spite of ourselves, to ‘unplug’ from our occupations and give the body what it needs. Fujii Guruji himself had been bedridden a lot during the past year, which must have weighed heavily on him, given his temperament for action and his uncommon energy. Although it had been more than seven years since I had received any personal communication from Fujii Guruji, I was surprised to receive a letter from him, dictated by him while he was still bedridden. The letter (which I have just reread) is dated 13 July 1984. It's a very thoughtful letter, in which he worries about my health, and is distressed that he won't be able to send someone to take care of me. He also talks about his health and how he is coping with his forced inactivity. He ends with these words, in very ‘Japanese’ style, which should be taken with a (large!) grain of salt, and which showed me, perhaps even more than the rest of the letter, that his tone was as good as ever 296 :

Indeed I am a very old decrepit man of no use even if I may get back to normal life. Yet still, I would like to live and see how the world turns.(original is English — translator's note)

There he was able to watch the world go round for nearly six months...

My links with the Nihonzan Myohoji group go back to 1974. There's no way I can even begin to sketch out these many and varied relationships here - it would take a volume. They are among the richest ‘spin-offs’ of the episode ‘Surviving and Living’ 297 [◊ 758] that followed my departure (between 1970 and the end of 1972). There had been mention of this group, and of the (not very periodical!) bulletin of the same name, and also of my ‘departure from maths’ and my ‘trajectory’, in a Japanese newspaper (or newspapers?) in 1972 or 1973. The ‘criticism of science’ and denunciation of the military apparatus, and also, perhaps, the ‘criticism of a civilisation’ aspect, must have ‘passed’ to some extent in some article, attracting the attention of one of the monks at Nihonzan Myohoji. He spoke to others about it, and in particular to a younger monk from the same town (Kagoshima), who had become a monk under his influence and was something of a ‘pupil’. He was the first missionary monk in the group to arrive in the ‘West’, in Paris to be precise, in the spring of 1974 298 . He came to find me a few weeks later and [◊ 759] without announcing himself, in the remote village where I was living at the time, about fifty kilometres from Montpellier. Since that memorable day in May, when I saw, under the midday sun, a strangely dressed man, singing on the road to the accompaniment of a drum and heading (there was no mistake...) towards the garden where I was working alone - since that day I have had the privilege and pleasure of seeing many adepts and sympathisers 299 of Guruji pass through my house. Their contact has been of great benefit to me. At the beginning of November 1976, I even had the great honour and joy of welcoming Fujii Guruji in person to my rustic home, at the age of ninety-two, accompanied by a group of seven or eight monks, nuns and disciples. I had already met him the previous year, at the solemn inauguration of the group's temple in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. Beyond the usual words of courtesy, there was a strong sense of contact and immediate sympathy. The more intimate and personal context of a visit of several days to my home gave me, of course, a much richer understanding of Fujii Guruji as a person, and of his relationship to the group of which he was the head and soul.

Interestingly, this visit to Fujii Guruji followed very closely, by just two weeks, the crucial turning point in my life that took place between 15 and 18 October of the same year, mentioned elsewhere 300 . The weeks that followed those days of crisis and renewal were among the most intense of my life, with each day bringing its own unexpected harvest of inner events and discoveries. To tell the truth, this visit, planned and prepared for weeks, of a whole group of monks and nuns around their venerated master, seemed to come as a sort of strange interlude, like a diversion in the adventure that was absorbing the whole of my being. It was my respect for my hosts, and especially for Fujii Guruji who had come to honour my home, that allowed me to be available for these few days as the occasion demanded. As has often happened to me, it was only when I got to the heart of the event that I realised that it was in no way an ‘interlude’ or a ‘diversion’, but [◊ 760] part of the adventure I was living. Beneath its very ‘tales from the Orient’ exterior, with its perfect delicacy and unusual charm, this so-called ‘interlude’ put me in the presence of men and women similar to me and to the men and women I had always known, in less exotic contexts, less extraordinary in appearance. It was because I felt this kinship that I also felt that my hosts were friends and brothers, and not characters straight out of a tale from the Arabian Nights, as must have been the case for many of the astonished villagers. And Fujii Guruji himself, who spoke to me so familiarly while his ‘relatives’ remained at the proper distance demanded by the respect due to the revered master, I felt very, very distant (from me as well as from his relatives), and yet close at the same time, as if he had been my father, or a benevolent elder brother.

And as is not uncommon with a father or an elder brother, even the most benevolent, he had an expectation of me, which he didn't hide, an expectation shared by those who accompanied him and who were all my guests. And I also knew that I couldn't meet that expectation. My adventure was linked to that of Fujii Guruji, by links that I could only dimly discern, perhaps deeper than I could see, and to that of his disciples who followed him with their eyes closed. But it was no more that of my prestigious and benevolent host than it was that of my father, who was also prestigious and benevolent to me, very close and yet different: another person, another destiny.

It wasn't easy to ‘get across’ that I wouldn't be one of them in a company that was theirs, and that I didn't feel was mine. According to the picture of me that Fujii Guruji and his followers had been given, this was the last thing they would have expected - and all the more so as the relationship on a personal level, between the group or the various members of the group and myself, was like a real honeymoon. It was also during this visit that some long-standing resistance, due to my upbringing, vanished, and I joined my hosts in chanting their mantra, accompanied by the drum:

‘Na mu myo ho ren ge kyo!’

This mantra is the foundation, the alpha and omega, of their religious practice. They sing it most often accompanied by the prayer drum, one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. Following the teachings of the Japanese prophet Nichiren, this drum chanting is in itself the sovereign good, the dispenser of peace in and around the person who sings it. For my Japanese friends, therefore, this chant is what is commonly called a ‘prayer’. The meaning they give it, in agreement with Nichiren, and with their direct ‘preceptor’ Fujii Guruji, is that of an act of respect for the person being addressed, and through him, for every living being in the universe - as a being promised (according to the Lotus Flower sutra) to become Buddha, the embodiment of perfect wisdom. These seven syllables are also used as a greeting for any other person, or even for any other being we wish to greet, with the connotation of respect for what is of divine essence in the other. They also serve as a thanksgiving before the meal. To tell the truth, it seems to me that there is hardly an occasion, be it a moment of surprise, emotion or contemplation, when a Nichiren follower would not say the sacred words. As for me, without sharing the religious beliefs of my monk friends 301 , it is with joy that I join them, when the occasion arises, to do Odaimoku - to sing on the drum what they call ‘the Prayer’. It is in their memory, and as an act of affectionate respect for their master, Nichidatsu Fujii Guruji, that I have also made ‘the Prayer’ part of my daily life, singing it before each of the two main meals of the day, at least when I am at home, or with friends, or with people I know won't mind 302 . This is one of the great things I owe to Fujii Guruji and to those of his disciples whom I have known and who have given me their affection, without tiring of my reluctance to associate myself in any way with their missionary activities.

There are several million Nichiren Buddhists in Japan, divided into numerous sects with very different physiognomies. The Nihonzan Myohoji group is one of the smallest in terms of numbers, comprising a few hundred active monks, nuns and sympathisers. It is nevertheless well known in Japan and elsewhere, distinguishing itself from all traditional religious groups [◊ 762] by its unequivocal political commitment, the main focus of which is the struggle for peace, anti-militarism and, more particularly, anti-nuclear action. At the time of the Vietnam War, it was the only Buddhist group (unless I'm mistaken) to take a clear stand against the Americans, and to fight against the presence of American bases in Japan (which served as logistical support for the continuation of the war in Vietnam). In recent years, Fujii Guruji has also been in close contact with the leaders of the Indian liberation movement in the United States, the AIM (American Indian Movement). Monks from Nihonzan Myohoji have taken part in marches organised by the American Indians, not to mention other peace marches in various parts of the world. The Indian leaders were visibly attracted and impressed by Fujii Guruji's unusual personality. The fact that this man of indomitable energy, approaching one hundred years of age, was a great missionary of a religious faith different from their own, did not seem to bother them in the least. On the contrary, the religious dimension in the venerable Master's ‘anti-American’ options was surely, in addition to his age, one of the reasons why they welcomed Guruji as they would have welcomed one of their own, like a father or a grandfather who was highly respected and in whom they recognised themselves 303 .

No doubt this religious dimension worked in the same way for me - it made Fujii Guruji closer to me, even though I don't claim to belong to any particular religious faith. If I ask myself what attracted and struck me most about him, I see several things. The most obvious is an inner joy. This joy seems to flow spontaneously from a unity in his person, or rather perhaps from a fidelity to himself. You can feel that this man is happy, because all his life he has done without hesitation what he felt he had to do. He does not appear to me to be free of contradictions, but he is devoid of ambiguity. The meaning of some of his acts or omissions escapes me, [◊ 763] but at no time has it occurred to me to doubt the total integrity of the man. If this is so, it is not as a result of an analysis of what is known to me about him through interposed persons. You only have to have met him once to know that he is a man who knows no ambiguity, a man in deep accord with himself. This is what the Indian chiefs of the AIM must have sensed, in order to give him the place they have given him among them. This is surely also where his extraordinary influence lies over those who claim to be his followers, men and women whose ideological and philosophical options range from hard-line Marxism-Leninism to the good-natured conformism of the CEO of a department store chain. What unites them is not the veneration of a certain sutra, which perhaps none of them has had the effrontery to read 304 , nor a certain prayer of Pali origin, rendered into Japanese through the intermediary of the Chinese translation, which professes the veneration of this sutra. What unites them (or should we say: what had united them?) is a man, exercising over them an ascendancy which he no more sought to exercise, than the sun sought its planets.

I also saw that this man was alone, and that solitude did not weigh heavily on him. It was his natural condition, perhaps always had been. This solitude and this integrity, or this agreement with himself, appear to me as so many different aspects of one and the same thing. Yet another aspect of the same thing is that of strength - a strength without violence, and that doesn't worry about being or appearing ‘strong’. This is the force of the sun, which is sufficient in itself to create this field of forces around it, and the orbits that the planets travel in.

Surely this too is the strength of which more than once I have spoken in Harvest and Sowing, as ‘the strength’ in us - with this difference that in one man it is fully apparent and sensible to all who approach him, and in another it is buried more or less deeply, so deep sometimes that one might think it non-existent. But if some of my monk friends seem to deny it in themselves, yet this sutra which they profess to venerate, and [◊ 764] the very prayer which they chant day after day, clearly proclaim that such a force lives in every living thing in Creation, promised like them, and like their venerated master Osshosama himself, to the destiny of the Buddha.

(e) Prayer and conflict

NOTE 161 (13 January) 305 It's been another four days since I've had the leisure and peace to work - to continue with the notes, I mean. The main reason for this lies in the quite incredible difficulties I am having typing out this third part of Harvest and Sowing. In the thirty-plus years I've been in the habit of getting typing work done, I've never experienced anything like it. Visibly, having this highly personal, not to say intimate, text in my hands triggered (surely unconscious) reactions of considerable force in the people in charge of typesetting, each time going in the direction of sabotaging the work entrusted to them. In the space of a few months, the same scenario was repeated three times in a row, with variations, with three secretaries in a row, all of whom didn't give each other the word 306! This third time, moreover, a sordid note was added, as the secretary, Mrs J., pretended to use the rather unusual manuscript that had been entrusted to her care, as a means of blackmail to extort some sort of ransom. She was a former executive secretary with a great deal of [◊ 765] experience in the profession. The first eleven pages of typing were impeccable and almost without a typo, just to show what she could do; and in the next fifteen pages alone, there were eleven lines skipped - it's rare that I've seen a text crippled so much! I didn't ask what the ransom was (over and above the price agreed for the text already typed) to get my manuscript and the typing back, as I have no desire to encourage this kind of procedure. This means that I will probably have to resort to legal action.

Fortunately I still have a draft of the manuscript, which I can use if need be. The fact remains that this kind of circus, especially when it becomes repetitive, can literally ‘saw you off’. When I imagined the difficulties and antagonisms that my modest meditative and autobiographical pamphlet would undoubtedly raise, I certainly didn't imagine that it would be from this side, from the brotherhood of secretaries-typists (instead of that of my honoured mathematician colleagues) that the first trouble would come, and in the nature of a sort of war of attrition! Right now I'm not too keen on entrusting this same text (once it's been recovered) to a fourth secretary, when there's nothing to suggest that she'll have any more sympathy for it than those she'll be taking over from. And doing the secretary's work myself would require a month's investment of time, which I am absolutely not prepared to make.

Perhaps I'll have to forego a typesetting of this third part of Récoltes et semailles, which I'll entrust directly to the publisher in the form of a rough manuscript. (I don't expect the same kind of trouble with the professionals responsible for typesetting the text for printing! ) Above all, it would mean giving up the idea of including this third part in the limited pre-publication of Récoltes et semailles to be produced by my university, USTL, for personal distribution among colleagues and friends. Or maybe I'll have it printed later, if I can find a secretary who does a decent job. I'll only send out this part (surely the most ‘difficult’ of the three) at the express request of those who are really interested in receiving it, among those who have received the first two parts. I'm really looking forward to having these printed and sent out (although I'm not in such a hurry for the third part). The typing of these two parts was completed months ago, and was carried out (without any problems) by the secretaries at the USTL. They could have been printed a long time ago, if I hadn't wanted to include a table of contents of all three parts of Récoltes et semailles, whereas for more than three months I think [◊ 766] I've been on the point of finishing this interminable third part. There I am going to give myself until the end of this month to finish, or if not, to attend to the printing of the first two parts (‘Fatuity and Renewal’, and ‘Burial I, or the Robe of the Emperor of China’), without including a complete and definitive table of contents of the third part (‘Burial II - or the Key to Yin and Yang’).

And now, after all these unpleasant incidents, I have to somehow pick up the thread of a thought that was cut short.

The death of Fujii Guruji in his one hundred and first year, on 9 January, was an opportunity to evoke, with him, an aspect of my life that I hadn't touched on before. As I didn't have the opportunity to see Guruji on his deathbed, or to take part in a wake in the company of his relatives, I spent the night after his death in a solitary vigil, jotting down until the morning some of the reminiscences and thoughts prompted by the event. Afterwards, I thought it would be a good idea if I also tried, on this occasion, to say what the meeting with Fujii Guruji, and with those of his disciples with whom I had a close relationship, had brought me.

In my notes of five days ago, I already spoke of the chant Na mu myo ho ren ge kyo, which has been part of my life for many years, and which is a blessing. There is also the affection received by Fujii Guruji himself, and by several of his disciples, young and old. It is this affection, surely, that gives its price and its beauty to the chanting I received from them, which is itself an act of respect and affection for all living things in creation, including them and myself.

Also, my contacts with the monks and nuns of Nihonzan Myohoji were my first and only close contacts with men and women whose main, if not total, investment is in religiously-motivated tasks (just as for a long time my own investment was in the work of mathematical discovery). This was an opportunity for me to realise that, as elsewhere, beyond a certain affinity through a common vocation (known as religious) and allegiance to the same strong and endearing personality, differences in temperament, conditioning and even deep-seated choices remain just as marked, and just as effective in person-to-person relationships. To put it another way, some people's efforts to mould themselves according to some religious ideal (in this case that of the ‘boddhisatva’, the tireless propagator of the Buddha's teachings) [◊ 767] result in more or less skin-deep attitudes, rather than a process of inner transformation, of maturation. Moreover, the adoption of a ‘creed’ (however sublime it may be) and the full investment in a so-called ‘religious’ activity, seems to have no essential impact on the play of the usual egotistical mechanisms. Conflict is no less present in monasteries, convents, temples and other religious communities of all denominations than anywhere else in the world. And often the religious vocation is taken as one means, among others, to evacuate the conflict, by convincing oneself that it has disappeared by virtue of the creed.

It's also true that on different occasions, in one of my monk guests there was an inner peace and joy that radiated from him, sensitive to me and to all those who approached them, and beneficial to themselves and to everyone else. Visibly, such a state of harmony and wholeness, of profound agreement, is alien to any effort to be this or that - it is an ‘effortless’ state, a state of perfect naturalness.

For four of the monks in whom I sensed such a radiance, I have the impression that this has been their customary state for many years, even decades. This is particularly true of Fujii Guruji himself. For two other friends of mine, I've seen them on other occasions as knotted and as torn as anyone else. It was as if that state of harmony in which I had known them, and a certain spontaneous understanding of things that was one of the signs of it, had become null and void - as if they had left no trace of themselves. I am convinced, however, that there is an indestructible ‘trace’, deeper than a simple mark recorded in memory - a trace in the nature of knowledge. Like everyone else, these friends are free at any time to take account of the knowledge deposited in them at the creative moments of their existence, to let it act and bear fruit; just as they are free to ignore it, to bury it, to ‘play dumb’ in short. That, after all, is the most common thing in the world...

The thought came to me that this state of perfect naturalness, of profound agreement with oneself, and the radiance that accompanies it, are not very common things, on the other hand. It's quite remarkable that in the rather small group of monks I've been able to welcome into my home, whether for a few days or a few weeks, there have been so many in whom I've found this state of inner harmony, of strength in the full sense of the word, in whom humility and fortitude, the gentle and the incisive, come together. After all, isn't that what a creed, or the prayer that expresses it, is all about? The latter, [◊ 768] if visibly unable on its own to create a state of grace, perhaps nevertheless tends to encourage the appearance of such a state, and its renewal day after day? After all, the mere fact of singing a beautiful song and putting our whole selves into it is already to some extent a ‘state of grace’ - and the mere beauty of a song (or a prayer) already encourages us to ‘put our whole selves into it’.

It's also true that the most beautiful of songs, when we dwell on it with our minds elsewhere, remains inactive unless we open ourselves to it. Or, to put it better, what we keep harping on about isn't the song we think we're singing, and our soul isn't nourished by it any more than a paper or plastic rose is a rose, and a bee wouldn't come and feed on it.

(f) Belief and knowledge

NOTE 162 (14 January) At the end of last week's reflection, I had the feeling that I had ‘put my finger’ on something important. That very night, I wanted to express this ‘something’ succinctly in the name given to this note, ‘The cause of causeless violence’ (note 159). I also knew that this sudden flash of understanding was in no way the culmination, or even the end, of a process of reflection that for over a month 307 had been revolving around the mystery of ‘causeless violence’, or ‘gratuitous violence’. On the contrary, this new ‘perspective’ that had suddenly appeared was more like a new point of departure. The mechanism of ‘displacing’ a grudge or resentment for wrongs and damage suffered in earlier days, towards an acceptable ‘target’ in place of the person or persons actually responsible, felt to be out of reach or ‘taboo’ - this mechanism, which I had at first sporadically recognised, in this and that isolated case in the course of my life, and tacitly taken for some kind of strange and erratic aberration of the unconscious, is at last recognised as one of the ‘basic mechanisms of the human psyche’. At the same time, it appears to be responsible for countless and disturbing manifestations of ‘causeless violence’; both that which rages between wife and husband, lover and lover, parents and children, and the ‘anonymous’ violence, which reaches its paroxysm in times of war or great social convulsions.’

[◊ 769] I don't know whether these links have long since become part of the ABCs of psychological or psychiatric science (assuming there is such a thing as ‘science’), or whether what I say about them here will come across as the phantasmagoria of a ‘psychoanalytic dilettante’. Since my aim is not to present a doctoral thesis in psychology, or even to break new ground for some old or new theory, but to understand my life through the situations in which I am involved, it doesn't matter to me what ‘status’ I happen to put my finger on, or what ‘perspectives’ I suddenly see opening up here and there. I'm well aware that in any case, if I want to understand anything at all, I can't do without personal reflection, whether on mathematics or on my life and the lives to which my life is linked in one way or another. And this is all the more the case when what needs to be understood seems to defy reason from the outset, and when I see everyone, around me and elsewhere, evading it like the plague, using reassuring clichés. (And it seems to me that psychology professionals are no more an exception than anyone else, at least as soon as their own person is directly involved).

t was clear to me that the ‘sudden conviction’ that emerged from ‘the last dot on the last i’, namely that ‘I had put my finger on the mainspring common to all situations of “gratuitous violence”’, in no way relieved me of the task of examining on the spot, and from every angle, this new intuition that had arrived in the field of conscious vision, not yet free of the diffuse halo of what had just emerged from the mists. On the contrary, this was precisely the first work to be done, in which I could already see a host of new questions arising, both specific to particular cases and general. If there was any certainty in this sweeping ‘conviction’, or to put it more accurately, a core of certain knowledge, it was by no means telling me that the formulation I had just given to this conviction was ‘true’, ‘correct’, without any reservations or major alterations perhaps; but rather, that I had indeed put my finger on a new (for me) and essential fact, that a new perspective on violence had indeed just been established 308 . As for the precise and nuanced meaning of this new fact and [◊ 770] of this new perspective, its exact scope and also, perhaps, its unforeseen extensions and repercussions, they cannot fail to emerge, as soon as I invest the necessary work in them. The ‘knowledge’ that had just emerged told me, in particular, that the time was ripe for such work, for entering more deeply into an understanding of violence, and in any case, into that of ‘gratuitous violence’; that every hour and every day that I would devote to this task, to follow through on what had just emerged, would take me further into this understanding. I don't remember that such a feeling of the appearance of something new and essential (even though it would still remain diffuse and approximate), and the intimate conviction of being able to penetrate further into the understanding of this thing, ever deceived me. If in my research there has been a sure guide to ‘place’ my investments in this direction or that, it is this feeling of the appearance of the new, and this intimate conviction that tells me when the time is ripe to enter further into this ‘new’ glimpsed and to know it 309 .

[◊ 771] This does not mean that every time the time is ripe to launch myself in such and such a direction, and to know such and such things, I do indeed launch myself into it! It was impossible even in the days when I was investing all my energy in mathematics, when gradually I found myself with ten irons, then with a hundred at once in the fire310! And it was the same in meditation, that is, in the discovery of myself. Unfortunately, at the level of conscious work, we can only do one thing at a time (which isn't bad, though, when you take the trouble to do it properly...). This work on one of the ‘hundred irons in the fire’ can, it is true, following the mysterious paths of the unconscious, also benefit all the others, or at least several of them - it can ‘warm them up’, make them more receptive to the hammer blows on the anvil of conscious attention, from the moment we turn our attention to them. But we still need to know how to choose ‘the right’ iron from among the hundred - the one whose shaping will also advance the work on the others, which are in the process of heating up like it.

(g) The hottest iron - or the turning point

NOTE 162' In the course of reflecting on Burial, I came across many “irons” that asked me to work on them, some hotter than others. It seems to me that they all warmed up in the course of the work, some more, some less. The very first of these ‘irons’ was the question of self-contempt in the case of my own person, first posed as a matter of conscience, in the margins of the first embryo of Récoltes et semailles 311 . It remained rather lukewarm until the reflection of 13 December (a month and a day ago), in the note ‘La violence du juste - ou le défoulement’ (No. 141). It was the first time in my life, I think, that I had devoted a reflection, however brief, to the few cases in my life where I myself had exercised and caused to be exercised ‘violence without cause’, violence ‘beyond comprehension’. I've thought about it from time to time over the last few years, but always in passing, without dwelling on it, and above all: without giving it a written reflection.

Yet violence-which-doesn't-say-its-name had profoundly marked my life - it was one of the crucial things, if not the crucial thing of all, that I had to understand as deeply as I could, in order to understand my life, and ‘life’ in general, human life. But that this was indeed the case, something that was obvious as soon as I took the trouble to think about it, had remained hidden. It finally emerged, as if by chance, on the fringes of the reflection in the days leading up to the one on 13 December, and continued in the set of four notes brought together under the title ‘The claw in the velvet’ (nos. 133-136). It is in these notes that, for the first time in Récoltes et semailles, ‘violence’ is named and becomes the object of attention. It has remained the focus of attention until now, or at least until the note of 7 January (a week ago), ‘The cause of causeless violence’.

This promising title may give the impression that this latest note is a sort of culmination of the reflection on violence that has been going on all month. And it is true that it is one of the main fruits of that reflection. However, I am well aware that if this new perspective suddenly appeared, and this feeling of intimate conviction about a certain link suddenly glimpsed, it is because my own person was also directly involved in what had just appeared, among this ‘crowd of fragmentary and heterogeneous impressions stored up over the course of my life’. The last and freshest of all these impressions, felt at the time to be very ‘fragmentary’ and indeed insufficient, was precisely that reflection of 13 December on the violence in myself. This reflection, which to the superficial reader may seem like one digression among many in the investigation of the Burial, seems to me now, with hindsight, to be a pivotal moment and a crucial turning point (in potential at least) in my reflection on myself. That very day, I felt that I had finally taken the first step in a direction that I had been avoiding until then, and which would lead me straight to the heart of the conflict within myself. This ‘lukewarm iron’ that had been sitting there as if for memory for ten months was suddenly red-hot - all I had to do was stop, blow and strike it, and it would turn red-white and reveal a shape and a message to me. And so it remains today.

But it's clear that this is not the place to work on that iron. Of all those that appeared in the course of Récoltes et semailles, it is certainly the one that is the most burning for me, and after it, the one that appeared in close solidarity with ‘La cause de la violence sans cause’, if the child didn't have a terribly adult boss on his back, stubbornly riveted to long-term tasks and the [◊ 773] ‘priorities’ they impose, it is certainly in this direction, leading me to the heart of the conflict in myself and in others, that I would now be rushing, without having to fathom myself! But as the name suggests, it's usually the boss, not the child, who takes the orders and decides what to invest in. The ‘Enigma of Evil’ will therefore wait until the boss is on holiday (a very rare occurrence), or when he is not too busy with top ‘priorities’, such as finally finishing the writing of Récoltes et semailles!

(h) The endless chain - or handing over (3)

NOTE 162'' But before coming back to the Burial, I would at least like to note one of the associations of ideas aroused by the reflection of a week ago - an association which is perhaps less obvious than others, and which therefore risks disappearing without trace if I do not note it now. It is linked to the Hindu idea of karma, and goes in the same direction as the association that appeared in the note ‘The Enemy Brother - or the Passing On’ (no. 156): in the sense of the tenuous intuition of a kind of ‘law of conservation of karma’.

This original diffuse resentment in a person, which later translates into seemingly ‘gratuitous’ impulses of aggression and violence, does not arise from nothing. It is the response to deep-rooted aggressions that were indeed suffered, especially those suffered in early childhood. It is true that many of these attacks, which are repressive in nature, are not ‘acts of violence’ in the strict sense of the term, i.e. they are the result of an intention to hurt or harm, particularly on the part of parents towards their child. It is also true that such an intention (almost always unconscious) is present in many more cases than is generally accepted. But perhaps from the point of view of the creation or transmission of karma, the question of intentions or motivations (overt or covert) is secondary, when ‘violence’ does indeed take place, inflicting ‘harm’, causing ‘damage’. I don't know.

The fact remains that, in most cases, a superficial look can give the illusion that the ‘harm’ suffered is null and void, that it has been absorbed and that, once absorbed, it has ‘disappeared’ without a trace. And it's a fact that it's not very common for those who have sown their anguish and powerlessness to be themselves in their children to end up reaping [◊ 774] directly, at the hands of those same children, what they have sown; or at least, it seems that they only reap a tiny part of it! Or to put it another way, of the diffuse resentment they have aroused in their children, there is only a tiny portion that condenses into a ‘hard’ resentment, directed at them - and which they loudly complain about, as if it were the blackest of ingratitudes, it's a given! But the rest of this accumulated resentment or ‘karma’ is not lost for all that. It is put to effective use, in a way that may seem inexplicable, by the mechanism of ‘displacing’ the resentment towards targets of fortune; sometimes erratic targets, sometimes specially matched targets, pampered so to speak, nurtured for a long life!

In ordinary times, this intense work of karma, like an abscess deeply implanted in human life, takes place in the shadows, and everyone makes a point of ignoring it, only agreeing to see it as an occasional ‘blip’ here and another there, in relation to what is considered normal and appropriate.

It is in times of exception, when war or misery are raging (or in places of exception, such as penitentiaries and asylums), that this underground work erupts and spreads out freely in the full light of day, in a frenzied blaze of contempt and murderous madness, exalted by the grandiloquent flags flying over heroic mass graves and cold, naked cities...

posted @ 2025-03-27 08:42 TianyiLemon 阅读(39) 评论(0) 收藏举报

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