In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

UNCERTAINTY VS. REALITY 341
is seen from the next higher level. Intellectuals and writers, however, are
still obsessed with finding the one and only appropriate distance between
themselves and the objects of their gaze. In the first scene of Jules Supervielle's
Le voleur d'enfants (The Man Who Stole Children), a little boy
gets kidnapped in the crowded streets of Paris because he is too small to
see the adults' faces: "Antoine ... is short and can see before him only
men's legs and hurrying skirts. On the pavement are hundreds of wheels
that turn, or that stop at the feet of a policeman as grim as a rock" (9).
The impossibility of observing oneself has become another central
topic of the moment. In Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, No One, and
One Hundred Thousand), Luigi Pirandello shows that a mirror, instead
of validating an individual's reflection, can aggravate this problem.
"Whenever I stood before a mirror," says the narrator, "a sort of arrest
took place in me. All spontaneity was gone; every gesture of mine seemed
fictitious or imitative. I could not see myself as a living being" (16). In
Brecht's drama Mann ist Mann (Man Is Man), the former packer Galy
Gay, having been transformed into a perfect and terrible "fighting machine,"
lacks the distance from his new role that would allow him to
integrate it with his earlier life [see Individuality vs. Collectivity]:
How does Galy Gay know, that it is he
Who is Galy Gay?
If his arm were hacked off
And he found it in a hole in the wall,
Would Galy Gay's eye recognize his arm?
And if Galy Gay were not Galy Gay,
He would be the drinking son of a mother who
Would be the mother of another, if she were
Not his, and that son would drink as well.
(Brecht, 360-361)
Transforming such lack of distance from one's own body and actions
into something potentially heroic, Lawrence of Arabia insists that he will
never claim the role of objective observer: "Since I was [the Arabs']
fellow, I will not be their apologist or advocate. To-day, in myoId
garments, I could play the bystander, obedient to the sensibilities of our