That which breaks the voice by interrupting the stream of
its words still belongs to it. Such is the case with tears, which
speak without naming anything, without saying anything,
in the pure effusion of meaning. We are no longer the masters
of this meaning; it passes through us to give itself and
lose itself. At the peak of this trembling glimmer, at the very
height of tears and their effacement, there would be weeping
without knowing that one weeps; we would not even let
our tears flow, as if we were still making a decision to cry or
not, nor would we any longer weep out of sadness or out of
joy, but instead simply weep sadness or joy—weep in the
oblivion of our weeping. Thus perhaps our tears, in truly
giving way, would gather in themselves the sadness or the
joy of that which cannot weep, and it would be the world
that shines in their ephemeral crystal.
Are there tears that belong to no one, tears without anyone
who weeps? Sometimes on window panes the cloud of
vapor ceases to be a veil that is flat, even, and somnolent in
the indefinite clarity, and instead, as it carries on the effort
of its condensation, animating itself into coalescence, animating
itself with coalescence, it begins to form tears. It is
beautiful that they express nothing—it removes all limitation
and all imitation from them. We speak commonly of a
face veiled by tears, which is not true: a face can be twisted
with fear, spite, rage, or disappointment, but what is more
unbearably naked than a face in tears? As to the streaming
of tears on window panes: it opens days, arranges cracks of
light as hazardous as they are precise, allows a glimpse of
that which an instant before was hidden. When the panes
weep, the world is purer.
Jean-Louis Chrétien, from Elementary Tears
Hand-to-Hand, pg. 152
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