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Graphein(*) in Greek associates two means of expression. Could that be my way of giving a double shape to my desires and my dreams ? It certainly is albeit the primary shape of my desires and dreams necessarily stems from an exchange of enlivened conversations and gestures with my kith and kin. Does it mean that my desires and my dreams result in writing and sculpting by default, as some sort of substitution or transcription, of cover version or misappropriation ? Were it so, it would be short of reality, lagging on the side of mere wishes and musing about the genuine force and savour of life; it would be lagging in a land deprived of human lively voice, bare gesture, face-to-face, hand-to-hand struggle, deprived of any being-part-of-the-world … One is perplexed at Socrates and Jesus, two who never wrote or sculpted anything but coincided totally with their word, and whose self was just complete in the way they were. All the more perplexing, isn’t it, as in Greece sculptures were generally speaking for themselves, while in Israel, scriptures were quite potent ! (*)To sculpt, in Latin scalpere (to scratch, to hew; cf scalpel); in Greek : gluphein (to carve, to cut a notch, to chisel; cf glyph). To write, in Latin scribere (to draw characters); in Greek : graphein (to cut a notch), whence such words as graft, graph etc. Family of Indo-european terms meaning to scratch, to cut a notch, all reminders of the material origin of writings, which were notched, carved in clay and stone. The fundamental gesture of trace-making/leaving -as old as the world- such as prehistoric engraving, the notch-mark of ploughshares in the ground, the intaglio (in-notching) of man’s sex on the thin table of woman’s hymen. (Translated by Michèle Bustros) the memory of water |
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