elementary tears (ii)

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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elementary tears

The Czech photographer Josef Sudek left behind a body of work in which the poetics of the window takes on its full intensity. A poetics of the window, but also of the pane, of the clouded pane. At issue here is not simply a journey around his room, but an immobile journey across this vaporous and peacefully lachrymal veil. Sudek photographs branches, trees, barred fences, and houses, each glimpsed from the window of his studio. The focus is on that which veils, the cloud upon the pane of glass, and what one glimpses behind this veil reinforces its indefiniteness. Sometimes, these are only incoordinate fragments. But at other times, the landscape, instead of dissolving into evanescence and blur, is simplified into masses worthy of an energetic charcoal drawing, and takes on a paramnesic force of affirmation, as if we had already seen these trees and these houses, as if we too lived day in day out in front of them and with them. 

Because the frames and sills of the windows do not appear, but only the pane, with its tears tracing their streaks sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, the pane itself becomes like a photographic plate, a photograph to the second power. The minute precision that the vapor confers upon the vision of the plane of the glass gives the photograph a certain mural-like aspect, and the depth beyond that is guessed at is denied as much as affirmed. Does the clouded pane show us a fragment of landscape become simpler and more sober, or is it rather the cloud that shows us the pane, which is to say, shows us that which normally one does not see? The pane of glass itself becomes the site where light and shadows write themselves, and it manifests itself as such. The means of vision becomes the object of vision. And, in certain of Josef Sudek’s shots, he alone is given to be seen. 

The relations of interior and exterior are thus powerfully disturbed. As a general rule, the function of a pane of glass is at the same time to unite and to distinguish interior and exterior: it allows being inside and outside all at once, seeing the exterior while remaining in the interior. The vapor veils this transparency, makes a curtain of the pane, and thus, in a certain way, closes the interior upon itself. But in Sudek’s work, nothing of this interior space appears, not even a sill or a frame, and the interior is no longer a dwelling place, but only a wide-open gaze, pure vision. And the veiled exterior, glimpsed with difficulty, is laden with a patient, slow secret. Hasn’t the exterior become intimate, while the interior is no more than a gaze outside of itself, passed entirely into what it sees? Sudek shows tears that unveil, tears belonging to no one upon the humble surface of windowpanes. These are not yet elementary tears, cosmic tears. Is there such a thing?

Jean-Louis Chrétien, Hand to Hand, pp. 153-4
photo: Josef Sudek

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