ideology. It is also a term that is related to ëunreadingí. DÈlire is
comparable with Kleeís line alluded to in Walking a Line: on the one
hand, Paulinís line is held on the lead of language and on the other, it
is an uncontrollable flow. Lecercle argues:
words often fail us, that is, fail to express what we mean: they utter what we
refuse to recognize, what we would rather have left unsaid. In other words,
language becomes tainted by desire, by the actions and passions of our body, by
its instinctual drives. Language loses its capacity to communicate. But it can
also, at the same time, increase its power: it ceases to be controlled by the
subject but on the contrary rules over him [or her]. Instead of truth, we have
fiction; instead of sense, nonsense or absurdity; instead of abstraction, desire.
Instead of method, we have the madness of dÈlire.^33If representation is about making visible, what is the relationship
between the vocal and the visual, poetry and painting? How far does
Walking a Line tread like a tightrope walker between sense and
nonsense, and what are the implications of such a move?
The Hieroglyph
Klee celebrates the simplicity of the artistic line: ëlet us content
ourselves with the most primitive of elements, the line. At the dawn of
civilization, when writing and drawing were the same thing, it was the
basic element.í^34 Klee looks to an ancient hieroglyphic writing where
the visual image of writing conveyed as much meaning as the sound
of a word. This was a mimetic writing that was closer to the thing that
was being represented which provided a more spontaneous way of
seeing and saying. Like Kleeís art, Paulinís collection contains within
it hieroglyphic lines. Until translated, the hieroglyph writes a secret
meaning that is visual rather than audible. As Maurice Blanchot would
say in his essay ëThe Absence of the Bookí (1969): ësuch a script is
33 Ibid., pp.6ñ7.
34 Cf. Rainer Crone & Joseph Leo Koerner, Paul Klee: Legends of the Sign (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p.65.