An Idea of Glory
Animals know nothing of appearances. Only human beings have an interest
in images as images and understand appearances as appearances.
Giorgio
Antonin Artaud, Self-portrait.
The verb Pare (it appears) exhibits
the most peculiar grammar. On the one
hand it is tantamount to videtur: "it
seems, it appears to me as an appearance
or a semblance, which can therefore be
deceptive." And on the other hand, it has
the meaning of lucet: "it shines, is manif
est in its splendor and self-evidence." In
the first case, we have a latency that
remains concealed in the very act of pres
enting itself to vision; in the second, we
have a pure and absolute visibility, free
from all shadow. In La Vita Nuova,
which can be thought of as structured
entirely as a phenomenology of appear
ance, the two meanings of the verb are
sometimes used in intentional contrast to
one another: "Mi parea vedere ne la mia
camera una nebula di colore di fuoco,
dentro a la quale io discernea una figura
d'uno segnore di pauroso aspetto a chi lo
guardasse: e pareami con tanta letizia,
quanto a se\.." (In my room, it seemed—
mi parea—to me that I could see a cloud
of the color of fire, and within it I dis
cerned the figure of a man of fearful
aspect for anyone who should look at
him: but as for himself, his apparency—
pareami—was of great felicity). With
equal irony, Guinizelli distinguishes
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Agamben
between the two meanings, almost as inity in His manifestation to human
though with the intention of revealing kind; more precisely it indicates manifes
the extent of their confusion: "piu che tation as one of the essential attributes of
Stella Diana splende e pare" (More than God. (The etymological meaning of
the star Diana, does she shine and doxa is 'appearance' or 'semblance'.)
appear). According to the Gospel of St. John,
The two meanings of the word can those who believe in Christ have no need
not truly be separated, and it can often be of signs (semeia, 'miracles') because they
far from easy to make a decision in favor can immediately see his glory, his face.
of the one or the other: it's as though And his face is entirely manifest upon the
splendor always implied a semblance, as Cross, which is the ultimate "sign" in *
though every parere (appearance), in which all signs found consummation.
cluded a mi pare, an "it seems to me."
I look someone in the eyes, and they
When we look at the face of a human either lower their gaze (out of modesty,
being, the eyes don't really strike us which is the modesty of the void that lies
because of their transparence and behind the gaze), or they look back at
expressivity. They strike us on the con me. And they can look back at me with
trary, because of their obstinate lack of insolence, making a display of their
expression, for their opacity. And if we emptiness as though behind it there lay
really fix our gaze upon another person's another unfathomable eye, well acquain
eyes, we see so little of that person as ted with the void, and capable of using it
finally to realize that they give us back as an impenetrable hiding place; or they
only the miniaturized image of ourselves, can look at me with a chaste shameless-
which is where the pupil of the eye ness and entirely without reserve, thus
receives its name. allowing the void of our gazes to become
In this sense, the gaze is truly "the a locus in which love and words can
dregs of a man." But this sediment of come into being.
everything human, this opacity and
wretchedness of the face (in which lovers One of the calculated strategems of
often lose themselves, and which politi pornographic photographs is for the
cians know how to estimate in order to people in the picture to look directly into
turn it into an instrument of power) is the the lens of the camera and thus to reveal
only genuine sign of a human being's
spirituality.
The Latin word vultus—which gives
the Italian word volto, (face or visage)—
has no exact equivalent in any of the
Indo-European languages except for the
Gothic Wulthus. But in Wulfila's Bible,
which is where we find the word pre
served, it isn't employed to render an
expression that might be translated with
face. (Cicero had already observed that
Greek has no equivalent to the Latin vul
tus: "What we refer to as the vultus (the
face or visage), and which can never be
found among animals, but only in man,
is an indication of the element of moral
ity: this concept is unknown to the
Greeks and their language is without this
word entirely.") Wulfila's Wulthus is
used to translate the Greek word doxa,
which means the glory of God. In the Old
Testament, glory (Kabod) indicates Div Richard Gerstl, Self-portrait.
 their awareness of being looked at. This
unexpected circumstance violently dis
places the fiction that is implicit in look
ing at such pictures: the fiction that the
onlooker has crept up upon the actors of
the scene without their being aware of it.
When the actors show consciousness of
being looked at, they force the voyeur to
look them in the eyes.
For the brevity of the instant in which
the sense of surprise remains intact,
there's an interchange between these
miserable images and the person who is
looking at them: an interchange that
comes close to an authentic erotic inter
rogation. Insolence borders on transpar
ency, and their sudden and simultaneous
appearance translates into the perfect
splendor of a moment. (But in any case
no more than a moment: it is clear here
that the intentions behind the image do
not allow for perfect transparency: the
people in the picture know they are being
looked at and are being paid to know it.)
At the nerve point where the image
on the retina becomes true and proper
vision, the eye is necessarily blind. It
organizes vision around this invisible
center, which also means that the
entirety of vision is organized in such a
way as to prevent one from seeing this
blindness. It is as though every non-
latency contained a latency at its very
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GALLERIA DEAMBROGI
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center, as though every luminosity were
the prison for some intimate darkness.
Where animals are concerned, this
blind spot remains forever hidden to
them: the animal is immediately contig
uous to what he sees, and can never
betray his blindness or draw it into his
experience. The animal's awareness van
ishes at the very same point at which it
awakens: it is nothing but pure voice.
(And this is why animals know nothing
of appearance. Only human beings have
an interest in images as images and
understand appearances as appearances.)
It's by holding on to this blind spot
with all the strength they can muster than
human beings accede to the state of con
scious subjects. It is as though human
beings involve themselves in a desperate
attempt to have a look at their own
blindness. It results, for human beings,
that a kind of delay insinuates itself into
every vision; stimulus and response are
not quite contiguous, and a memory lies
between them. For the very first time,
appearance can separate itself from
things, and semblance severs from
splendor. But this small drop of dar
kness, this delay, refers to something that
is; it is being itself. For us alone, things
are, in their separateness from our needs
and from our immediate relationship
with them. They are, simply, marve-
lously, unreachably.
October 1985
But what does it mean to talk about
seeing a blindness? I want to grasp my
own obscurity; I want to grasp what
remains inside of me unexpressed and
unsaid. But this, once again, is my own
non-latency, my not being anything
other than uneclipsable face and appear
ance. If I could truly see the blind spot of
my eye, I would not see anything at all.
(These are the shadows where mystics
tell us that God abides.)
This is why every face contracts into
an expression, rigidifies into a character,
and thereby sinks into itself finally to
lose itself there. Character is the grimace
the face makes when it realizes that it has
nothing to express and desperately
attempts to take refuge behind itself in
search of its own blindness. But what
could in fact be grasped here is only a
lack of latency, a pure visibility: only a
face. And the vultus isn't something that
transcends the face: it is the revelation of
the face in all of its nakedness, victory
over character: word.
And was not language given to us so
that we might liberate things from their
images, giving appearance to appearance
itself, and leading it to glory?