ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS
Sequence: 4
HIS INTENTION
He left, lying where I would be sure to see it, a little written
thing--written by hand, some lines more legible than others,
with crossouts or insertions, all the labor involved visible. It
thus gave an appearance of spontaneity, but it must have been
one of those things that stay at the margins of thought for days,
the notion and the intention there but the words not ready. In
any case, I read, after a short introduction or set-up, these
words: "I know him perfectly--E., I mean--but does he know me?
By making him act, think, feel, speak, do I reveal myself to
him? I think not. I am the unknown condition that makes him
possible--perhaps even the unknowable one, since whatever
conditions require us to exist do not reveal themselves. But I
shouldn't flatter myself as the only such condition for him. Not
only other conditions than the ones I set demand his appearance,
but lying behind the opaque smooth surface of necessity some
similar set of unknowables requires me, so I exist at the behest
my own mysterious requirements, one of which is perhaps to bring
about his existence. Maybe each of us has required the other. But
to know one so well who remains ignorant of oneself! An irony or
torment." This written in his usual jumbled script, the letters
occasionally falling apart or crashing into each other. What was
his intention in leaving it there?