Der Philosoph und Dichter Jabès schreibt, dass Gott den Menschen benötigt: “Gott braucht den Menschen als Gott. Grausamkeit des Nichts.” Dieser Gott ist “voller Arglist”.

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Dich vernahm als festigte sockelten

und Mandeln blühte du deine verbundene

andersrum abgetreppt PARTIZIP die ruft es

Rohstein orgelten der wahrt ans genehm

vernahm noch mehr Grotte ersterer Salz

es nieder ging es harrt aufbahrt

am aber geklammerte erdenklich

Fittich Zitronen und hatten

davon gebranntes sprachlich

erhört ans leise

Berge derer gepunktete

Paletten schaltete rückwärtige

Ansicht sprachlich schauen auferstand

sag

welche Hand fasste deinen Hals

Wange

die rückwärtige

temperierte nicht zu volle

Strecke

sag

wer ausser dir versah sieh

dieses Meer

Freedom: a flint stone in the desert sand, a flint stone on board a sinking ship. Flint stone, threshold, book, desert are words used by Jabès that allow actions and forms of movement in the tension between the power and the impotence of man and God to appear. Ship, whirl, sling, clock, machine – words used by Descartes to evoke images in an attempt to convince. They help the structure, and plead for an understanding of the congruity, the machinery of Descartes’ principles.

The dispersion of natural light and shadow follows the rhythm of the year. It repeats itself. The vast spread of artificial light offers an opportunity to reshape the light and shadow of our awareness of the law. For instance:

Justice must always be re-invented, sought and found. The more people there are, the more frequent and necessary is the search for justice. Each individual breaks and absorbs light differently, reflects it in his own way. Natural light, artificial light, as well as the light of others. Sources of artificial light cast shadows.

What kind of justice would we have if derived from artificial sources? Arithmetic and geometry were long considered art. Descartes suggests categorising them as sciences and differentiating them from the arts. In Descartes’ time, poetry was an art. It is still an art today. Can poetry serve as a source of justice? It can at the very least sharpen perception and draw attention to injustice.

Brighten or darken life through song or poetry? At least not silently gamble away this possibility, or the thought of this possibility.

“The graves are returning
spread out in the green tetro
of the ultimate obscurity
in the troubled green
of the first clarity” (Ungaretti)

Subversion is not found in the simple reversal from light to shadow, from bright to dark, from feeling to knowledge. A subversive relationship with nature does not, therefore, start with the inversion of man and nature, but with a change in man himself. He does not conceive nature as something that he can subdue, nor as something that can subdue him, but as something on which he depends, as something that delights in his dependence and something that gives pleasure. People mutually exclude themselves from this pleasure, instead inflicting poverty, crime and terror on themselves.

In holding sway over other people and their natural needs, does the human being perceive chances of subversive behaviour? Perhaps he finds it once he starts playing with the symbols of his power.

God, nature: two pseudonyms of man, which demand of him that he define himself in subversive terms, as slave and master of his own relationships.

Infinite divisibility is one figure of thought, subversion another.