March 15, 1983
When philosophers tell us and propose to us this mysterious formulation: time, yes, time is the number of movement, don’t they mean that it’s is the magnitude of movement? And when others say, time is the interval of movement, don’t they mean, time is the measurement unit of movement? As a result, when I define time as the number of movement, let’s be careful here:… I consider time in its aggregate, time as a magnitude. I am considering what must be called the aggregate of time. When I say time is the interval of movement, I am considering time as a unit of movement, that is, time within its part.
Seminar Introduction
In the second year of Deleuze’s consideration of cinema and philosophy, he commences the year by explaining that whereas he usually changes topics from one year to the next, he feels compelled to continue with the current topic and, in fact, to undertake a process of “philosophy in the manner of cows, rumination… I want entirely and truly to repeat myself, to start over by repeating myself.” Hence, the 82-83 Seminar consists in once again taking up Bergson’s theses on perception, but now with greater emphasis on the aspects of classification of images and signs drawn from C.S. Peirce. This allows Deleuze to continue the shift from considering the movement-image, that dominated early 20th century cinema, toward a greater understanding of the post-World War II emphasis on the time-image.
For archival purposes, the English translations are based on the original transcripts from Paris 8, all of which have been revised with reference to the BNF recordings available thanks to Hidenobu Suzuki, and with the generous assistance of Marc Haas.
English Translation
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Michael Snow’s “The Central Region”
Instead of addressing Pascal’s text on the wager, Deleuze opens with a question-answer period which finally encompasses the entire session. The first part develops Pascal Auger’s question, about how the classifications correspond to experimental cinema, to which Deleuze again links Kurosawa’s cinema (with additional comments from Georges Comtesse). Deleuze returns then to the table of classifications to define indirect figures of time that can be derived from movement-images and that will be produced via montage through an aggregate of movement-images. Deleuze’s review of the philosophical history of time and the measure of movement in the Greeks leads him to suggest how these considerations are located in celestial movements and the astronomical eternal return. However, from the session’s mid-point forward, Deleuze is increasingly challenged by several students: by a first student on this astronomical model; then, on Descartes by Georges Comtesse; then, by the first student objecting to Deleuze’s response to Comtesse. Following these exchanges, Deleuze responds substantively by introducing the “instant” as a here-now element of time in relation to the interval of movement, thereby distinguishing an interval between two presents, a present defined through the interval and the instant defined as a limit. Alas, Deleuze seems overwhelmed by the cascade of objections and sums things up in his final voice-off comment, “they were really nasty today”.
Gilles Deleuze
Seminar on Cinema: Classification of Signs and Time, 1982-1983
Lecture 14, 15 March 1983 (Cinema Course 35)
Transcription: La voix de Deleuze, Charles J. Stivale (Part 1), Sigrid Severin (Part 2), and Nadia Ouis (Part 3); additional revisions to the transcription and time stamp, Charles J. Stivale
Translation, Charles J. Stivale
Part 1
… I’m going back, I’m going back just for a second to what we’ve now already established, namely our graph of images and signs. You understand well that it can be extended to infinity for a simple reason: it’s because we’ve only taken into account, in relation to the different types of images, we’ve only taken into account the signs corresponding to types of images. But we could have taken into account variables other than the signs that correspond to types of images. For example, we could have — well, last year, we had tried to do that a little bit — for each type of image, we could have tried to see how the actor’s training matters. And in fact, the big trends in actors’ training, if you think of the expressionist actor, the naturalist actor, the realist actor, all kinds of actors, and not only types of acting, but methods of acting training, these could have taken a place there. [Deleuze points to the graph on the board]
And so, I’m going back to… And also, we could have chosen other variables. I’m thinking, for example — because it was [Pascal] Auger who told me about it; he is especially interested in experimental cinema — based on these images, can we define and take as variables the characteristics of experimental cinema? So, you see that in this regard, we could bring in all kinds of… [Deleuze does not finish the sentence] And above all, could we obtain from these types of images, like figures of experimental cinema, then, but which would represent what? Would this represent the type of image pushed to its limit, and to what kind of limit? –[Interruption, sound of chairs; Deleuze seems to be addressing a participant] There, I don’t know how you are going to solve the problem, how… —
Pascal Auger: [Inaudible comments][1]
Deleuze: A way… but even the definition, for example, where an aspect of experimental cinema is defined – well, defines– summarily, as a starting point, by the absence of characters, does not suit the whole of experimental cinema.
Well then, if we take that, in fact here, our graph, that’s why I would like you to feel — this was the only source of joy in all that – it’s that there are plenty of open applications for those who are interested. I’m taking the question as he poses it: can we define types, as a function of each of these types of images, an absence of a character or a mode of presence of a character which would be such that we might say, well yes, this character is so special that he belongs to the experimental milieu? So, there, I can clearly see, if you have in mind the entirety of our graph, there, at the very top, there were the movement-images for themselves, that is, in absolute variation with respect to each other, and on all their facets.
Moreover, here I am immediately saying, there is an answer: if I look for an example of cinema that achieves this, I would say there can only be experimental cinema, there can only be an experimental cinema which attains movement-images for themselves, that is, movement-images insofar as they all act on each other, on all their facets and in all their parts. So there, obviously, there can’t be characters insofar as any character introduces a centering, even secondary centering. There cannot be any characters. The movement-image in itself, that is, the material universe, the universe, the aggregate of movement-images and light-images, to the extent that you do not center them, you can only attain them by attempting something that you will obviously call experimental. And on this path, I would say, and this we saw last year, that’s [Dziga] Vertov’s direction, in my opinion, it’s Vertov’s direction, although there are characters in Vertov, but that does not matter.[2]
And without characters, that’s what was achieved — to my knowledge; I don’t know much about experimental cinema — but what was achieved by Michael Snow. Michael Snow, in “The Central Region” [1971], is the very [experimental] type, and under what conditions? It’s the construction of a special device since, in fact, a special device, not a special camera, but a special device which ensures, with an interface [jonction], with a computer, which ensures – so all this nonetheless presupposes programming – which ensures camera movements in all directions and non-stop movements. That is, the camera is in a box which was, in fact, very, very complicated to build, I believe – you’ll correct me if I say things that are inaccurate — the camera is in a box, it never stops moving following to a computer program, and there you have the greatest, the most beautiful approximation that I know of a universe of pure movement-image or pure light-image to the point that you can’t even specify up and down and right and left anymore. High, low, right, left specifications referring and assuming a certain centering are avoided.[3]
But here, my answer would be: at the level of the movement-image as such or the light-image as such, not only is there indeed a reference to experimental cinema, there is nothing other than experimental cinema, in my opinion. What interests me is that, I don’t know if Auger would agree, these are ultimately mutual inventions. It goes without saying that what is interesting in experimental cinema, at least for me, is insofar as… and this is the way in which these inventions are adapted in films that I wouldn’t call narrative films [films à histoire], but in non-experimental films. That is, for example, well, I suppose, I don’t even know if this is true historically, experimental cinema gives a great extension – I don’t dare say “invents” – but gives a great large extension to flickering montage.[4] And then, you find in [Ingmar] Bergman, you find in [Jean-Luc] Godard, flickering montage. It cannot be said that he simply just used it. He uses something that was developed in experimental cinema, and that gives his own cinema a different scope. Conversely, I have the feeling that we would also find the opposite case, discoveries specific to cinema generally that will correspond to directions subsequently taken by the forms of experimental cinema.
So, if we went back to each of our types of image, once there is centering, I would say, look at our list: [Deleuze points to the board] starting from the universe of light-images or movement-images, once this universe is centered, that is, refers to centers of indetermination, what do we have? We have perception-images, first of all, I’m saying. Well, the perception-images, with the phenomena and research on the cinematographic construction of a liquid perception or a gaseous perception, I would say, so that is, for experimental cinema, these are directions of experimental cinema, I believe, although they could be completely integrated into the cinema more generally. But it is their business to explore the state of a kind of gaseous perception, and last year, I gave very specific examples, for example, in [George] Landow’s works, in works of a great American experimental cinema [by] Landow, of what could be the equivalent of a gaseous perception.[5]
If I move on to affection-images, we have seen, if we stick to Auger’s criteria – no characters – well yes, you have spaces with a strong affective content and without characters. What’s this? These are empty spaces and disconnected spaces, spaces of emptiness or spaces of disconnection. So, that can fully intervene in a cinema with characters. If I cite some very different authors, in [Robert] Bresson’s works, good, or in [John] Cassavetes’s works, independently of one another, these spaces of disconnection, these spaces whose parts are not connected to each other, play a very, very big role. As for empty spaces, I don’t need to say that these are in [Yasujiro] Ozu’s works, and there again in a completely different way, with different functions, or in [Michelangelo] Antonioni’s works, you will identify empty spaces whose beauty, whose beauty is prodigious. That doesn’t prevent making a film that would only include variations on an empty space, so what would the variations be? What would be the types of modulation on an empty space, or on disconnected spaces? I think that would be the business of experimental cinema.
If I move on to the other case, the following type of image, the impulse-image, I will try to explain what an originary world is from the point of view of the impulse-image. Can one conceive of the development of an originary world for itself? I believe it was done once, and in fact, it is quite close to experimental cinema; it was done at least once by [Luis] Buñuel in “The Golden Age” [1930]. [Pause] So it would no longer be development of the any-space-whatever; it would be the exposition of the originary world for itself.
So, based on this, I believe that there is no universal answer. Can action-spaces as we had defined them also be elevated to a kind of abstraction opening up to types of experimental attempts, that is, experiments without characters? Here, I would say, as I haven’t thought about the question enough, I would say that it seems to me the case in which no, no, maybe not, maybe not because it is indeed at the level of the action-image that centering on a subject, an acting character, is inseparable from the image. As a result, in the spaces… Only, only, [Deleuze goes to the board] immediately I’m correcting myself because we have seen that although these action spaces may well be centered, as spaces they have two forms, they had two major forms, the space of curvature, that is, in fact, that this center around a center, good, but which can perhaps escape characters, if what? If you give it a supplementary curvature, if you give it a supplementary curvature which then exceeds the character. What would that mean?
Let’s consider the other aspect of action-space; maybe that will help us understand. I’m saying the other aspect of action-space, as we have seen: it is no longer everyone curved around a character; it is the line of the universe, the broken line, the broken line that unites the critical moments to each other, that forms a line of the universe. Can we then conceive of displays of lines of the universe between explosive moments, a kind of cinema of broken lines without, without, almost geometric, but in what sense? A geometry of the line, not a geometry of the figure. Can we conceive of this? Has this been done? Perhaps, perhaps, as kinds of lines of the universe that would unite phenomena that are themselves abstract, for example, an explosion, a light, all that. In my opinion, this was done by the Americans.
So, I’m returning to the other case, the space of curvature. Can it take on such an additional curve that, henceforth, it no longer even refers to a character? You see, there is one thing that strikes me; I didn’t talk about it because we don’t have time, and then I had sketched it out a bit last year, but since last year, I’ve had many, I’ve had other ideas. It was precisely about Japanese cinema. You tell me, well yes, you see, cinema among the, what we know best in Europe, Japanese cinema, if we take the classic opposition – it’s a bit like Corneille-Racine, really, but in reverse order of time – if we take [Akira] Kurosawa-[Kenji] Mizoguchi, the inevitable parallel, what do we see immediately? Well, with Kurosawa, you immediately see a kind of circular space; we see a space of ambiance, a total situation. Fine, that’s the great breath-space. Mizoguchi, on the contrary, is the drawing of a line of the universe, a broken line of the universe which unites the critical instances and which, in Mizoguchi, will culminate with the most beautiful images when the line of universe unites, for example, the living and the dead, when broken lines set in and unite the living and the dead. Well truly, that’s the great Japanese line of the universe. Good.
But there’s a thing that really interested me in Kurosawa in the other case. We feel that his large form, his breath-space is as if inflated, and this inflation is very odd. Doesn’t it then reach a kind of level almost of abstraction, of experimental moments? Why is it inflated? Because, usually, in the action-image… and why is he Japanese, Kurosawa? Why is he not American? Although we may say that he endured a lot, despite that, he is still Japanese, I am sure. Moreover, he is the only Japanese who thinks he is a Russian. [Laughter] I mean, he’s a Japanese who rightly feels he has a fantastic affinity with, or an intimate affinity with the Russians, with Russian literature. And why?
You understand, there is a funny thing that has me… [Deleuze coughs] You take a novel by [Fyodor] Dostoyevsky, a novel by Dostoyevsky, what strikes you? What strikes you is one thing: you are overwhelmed by the beauty, but there is a little thing that normally should make you laugh. You see characters all the time who have an urgent task; they are in a situation that’s absolutely urgent. It’s really the action-image situation, and they have to find the spectacle [parade], they have to find the solution. And they come out of their house saying: I have to go see Natalie at all costs in, [Pause] how to say it, Petrovich, [Laughter] I have to go see Natalie in Petrovich; she alone will give me the solution, this is urgent. We are fully in the action-image and with curvature of the world in situation around the character. And then they go out for a walk before going to Petrovich, and then they go out, and they stop, and they go in the opposite direction. They completely forgot the urgency, completely. So, it doesn’t matter anymore. And if needs be, they encounter some poor guy that people have nothing to do with around the corner, and they start talking to him. So, this is really, I would say, the equivalent of an experimental cinema. They stop to talk to him. That lasts an hour, [Laughter] and when they emerge from this, they still have… [Interruption of the recording]
… These are funny people. The Russian soul as opposed to the American soul – that can be useful in discussions [Laughter] – the American soul, it’s, you need the givens [les données] of the situation, it is the traditional action-image. The givens of the situation are needed. So, the president has givens of the situation, good. Based on these, everything swarms; the world curved around the president is clearly visible, but for private men, for poor men, that also happens for them like that, the givens of the situation, and then they will act. And if you are a good American, you will find the right answer, always the givens of the situation. For a Russian, [Deleuze laughs] it doesn’t work that way, and for a Japanese, for Kurosawa, it doesn’t work like that either, but there are Japanese of another type.
Imagine people — and through that, they are metaphysicians; they are metaphysicians — imagine people saying, the givens of the situation, that’s doesn’t work, no. You cannot consider givens of the situation in the abstract in relation to something more important and more fundamental. Ah, well, then, you think, already an American doesn’t understand, I suppose; he doesn’t understand what that means, how there is anything other than the givens of the situation. Ah good, then, you are doing metaphysics, the American will say; these are things not given, these are non-givens. The Russian or the Japanese I’m talking about, he’ll reply: you don’t understand anything. There are givens, there are givens, there are givens that are deeper than the givens of the situation. What givens were going to be deeper than the givens of the situation?
If we look for the Dostoyevskian answer, we end up finding it, namely: deeper than the givens of a situation, there are the givens of a question that the situation hides and buries, that the situation hides. There are two kinds of givens exactly as in mathematics we speak of the givens of a problem. This is a very odd, a very interesting expression, the givens of a problem. But the givens of a problem or a question are not the same as the givens of a situation. And the word “response” has two meanings: the word “response” has the American meaning that we know well in behaviorism: the response is the action that reacts to the situation.[6] But perhaps there is a deeper answer which is no longer an action as it reacts to the situation, but which is this time an answer to a question on condition of knowing about it and having grasped its givens.
Consider only what I’m calling additional curvature which will make the breath-space independent, independent of the character, valid for itself. That’s it: every situation is centered on a character, okay, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it’s very true. But you cannot consider the situation in the abstract from a deeper question which is not given in the situation, which is, on the contrary, hidden by the situation, a deeper question which itself has its givens. So, there’s no use in reacting to the situation as long as you haven’t discerned the givens of the question lurking in the situation. And that is the Dostoyevskian movement. The characters are caught in a situation. They have to react to the situation; that, okay. Ah, let’s go to Natalie’s! Not at all. Suddenly, they tell themselves, well look, the question is not yet in focus. I don’t even know what the question is yet.
What is the question? Take the brothers Karamazov. They stop acting all the time; they are in a funny situation. The father was murdered, ok. There is the guy who is a criminal. There is the brother, so one of the sons who is accused of the crime. There is one of the brothers who feels responsible for the crime, and so on. But no one knows yet what the question is. It’s odd, that, this mode of discernment, and the question is not at all, it is not at all given in the situation, not at all. And that, in my opinion, is what explains the changes of rhythm in the Russian novel, Dostoyevsky having gone the furthest, these kinds of characters who seem completely mad to us, to us, since they keep stopping, starting something, stopping it, etc. Yes, they will only be able to act as long as they have discerned the givens of a question; they don’t even know where it is. They know well where the givens of the situation are, but they do not yet know the givens of the question. They express themselves in the situation, but which is hidden, concealed by the situation. So, they will never have peace as long as they don’t have [the givens]. And when they have the givens of the question, well, at that point, even their vices will be relatively indifferent to them. They will know what the situation was about. So, this aspect is very odd. It is a very special conception of metaphysics. They are said to be metaphysicians, but that is not just any metaphysics. It is a very special metaphysics. It is a metaphysics which consists in raising up the givens of a situation to the givens of the question hidden in the situation.
So, if I come back to Kurosawa, so this strikes me greatly. One of Kurosawa’s greatest, finest films, but this is for all of them. Take, I guess many of you have seen “The Seven Samurai” [1954]. In “The Seven Samurai”, the situation is very simple: the peasants arrive, and they say, do you want to defend us against the big guys, against the brigands? They do an American-style situation analysis. “Situation analysis” means that they go to the village, and they do a topological study of the village, how the village can be defended, a psychological study, do the inhabitants of the village… – one would think that these are American analysts, really — they analyze the data, as it’s said, as they say in America or as we say today, as we say today in computer science: we analyze the data. Good.
But this is Kurosawa, and it’s in this that he’s really of the same temperament as the Russians. It never ends there. They know perfectly well that in the situation, and at the same time, beyond the situation, there are givens of a question which are not at all the question of the situation. The question of the situation was the peasants saying, do you want to defend us, yes or no? Precisely that’s a false question. That’s the situation, and the Samurai know very well, beyond the givens of the situation, that there are the givens of a question which is not yet discovered and which they themselves are incapable of formulating. And if they say, “yes, we will defend you”, it is not to please the peasants; they don’t give a damn about the peasants. It’s because they think that it is only in this situation that they will discover the givens of the question which torment them and which they still do not know.
So, at that point, when we get to the givens of the question, that may seem very boring to us, you understand? We can tell ourselves, oh that’s all it was! But not at all. As boring as it might be, it has become, it has become so intense that it cannot be measured by the intelligence of the question or the answer. It is measured by the vital intensity of the question and the answer. And what the seven Samurai find, in fact, is that the real question was not the villagers’ – will you and can you defend us? – but it was: what is a Samurai today, that is, in the era when this is supposed to happen, what is a Samurai at that moment? And that the answer to the question, the answer to the situation, was to throw out the bandits and liberate the village, but the answer to the deeper question that was hidden in the situation is: the Samurai no longer have a place either among the poor or among the rich. Why? Because saving the peasants was all about teaching the peasants to defend themselves, and just as the wealthy no longer need the Samurai class, the peasants will soon no longer need the Samurai class either, neither the poor nor the rich. That is, [when] the seven Samurai discovered the question, “when will there be Samurai?”, they received the answer at the same time, they’re finished as a class.
I’ll give another example, a very beautiful film by Kurosawa, “Vivre” [1952; “To Live”].[7] Here’s a man who knows and who learns that he has a few months to live. He is in a situation; this is an urgent situation. And, a mere question or an appearance of a question, an obvious question which arises from the situation, but precisely, the obvious question that arises from the situation is not this, the hidden question, to which the situation refers. There is an obvious, immediate question, how will I spend my last months? What am I going to do? Quite lovely; three months to live, well, what am I going to do? So, fine, well, I’m saying that is a false question because it doesn’t mean anything, “what am I going to do?” It’s an empty, indeterminate question, “what am I going to do?” Why? The real question is rather on the order of “why do something? What am I going to do and why?” Why? To have fun, and at that point, Kurosawa’s film begins with this man who has never had fun in his life – and that’s pure Kurosawa style – and who is going to try to have fun. So, he devotes himself to debauchery, namely going to bars and strip clubs, [Laughter] and he’s never drank sake, and he drinks sake. [Laughter]
Of course, that’s one answer to the question. No, that’s not an answer to the question. He reacts to the situation, okay. He is so unhappy that, in the second segment of the film, he experiences a very strong attraction, a link, a kind of attachment that is at once paternal, half-paternal, half-desiring, he is much older than, for a young girl. And he approaches her, he gives her gifts, all that, and as if then, the situation is varied, and the apparent question has become, well, rather than drinking sake, wouldn’t I do better to have a kind of adopted daughter, with a somewhat ambiguous relationship, for the last months of my life? But the girl, she doesn’t like that. She tells him all that is fishy, all that is ambiguous, all that’s just not good. She says, you see, she explains very politely, very politely, she says to the old man, she says, you see, you are looking for happiness with me, but I am not capable of giving you happiness. You’re too old, you’re too ugly, all that stuff — she’s pretty harsh, really — and then, I don’t love you, so…
No, you see, but she says, use me as kind of an example because I make the little mechanical rabbits. [Laughter] Well, what makes me really happy, she says, is when my little rabbits go all over town. That’s enough for me; it’s a tiny nothing that’s enough for me, the little rabbits that go all over town. So, when she walks in the squares, she sees children who have a little rabbit of their own. It’s not a desire for glory, [Pause] really. It’s very different. She is an assembly line worker; it turns out that makes her happy. She says, well… One imagines a seamstress, so one might say, here too, there’s pride, the pride of the creator, but there is something much better than that. One imagines a designer or a milliner who walks around and tells herself, look, these girls, they’re wearing my stuff; oh, there, and there too. She is happy, that’s going all around.
She did… what did she do? I would say, she reenergized [rechargé] the world in her humble way, she reenergized the world with givens. That’s great, reenergizing the world with givens. You don’t have to be a genius to do that. You just have to make mechanical rabbits, anyway, do stuff like that. A bomb maker, [Laughter] yes, right? Why is it better to make mechanical rabbits? Why is it smarter? The stupidity of equal work. And the mechanical rabbits circulate. By definition, bombs do not circulate. They’re not made for circulating. They don’t reenergize the world with givens; they remove givens from the world. That’s not the same.
Well, he understood what the young girl told him. There, he tells himself, well yes, he said, I gave up on having been a civil servant, I gave up… His dream had always been to make a park, in a specific place, to make a city park. He tells himself, I have to start this over, and there, I have a deadline, I have three months left. During my three months, I have to overcome all obstacles so I can have my park. Great. He succeeds, he has his park, he has reenergized the world with givens; it means that there will be a park where there will be little kids who will come to run, to dance. And then, well, he dies, he dies, he has reached his three months. The park is almost done, and the last images are of him dying on a swing in the park, letting himself freeze to death. And sometimes, some commentary of this film, I consider them to be wrong, it talks about his death because the task is done, but that’s not it at all. He doesn’t die on the swing because his job is done. He can die, on one hand, because he has no choice; it was understood, he only had three months; and more profoundly, because one does not reenergize the world with givens without becoming and without passing to the periphery of the world. He literally has become a park. He’s a becoming-park, just like the girl, she had a becoming-rabbit. [Laughter]
Well, it’s amazing, that’s amazing. This is not a question of glory, you understand, that’s why the idea of glory, of ambition, is a bit ambiguous. The two are a bit mixed up, but what is more beautiful than glory is precisely this kind of… [Deleuze does not finish] If in your life, you can tell yourself on any specific point at all, I’ve restarted some givens in a world, however small it might be, I’ve reenergized some givens, I made something circulate, your life is a good and beautiful life, it’s marvelous.
So that reminds me, and in fact, if I say that he has become a park, he’s a becoming-park because I’m thinking of a splendid text, and here, I can’t find the reference, I think it’s is in Hamlet, not Shakespeare, but in an exchange of letters, Henry Miller and I forget who [Michael Fraenkel], it doesn’t matter, which appeared under the title Hamlet,[8] and where precisely in connection with oriental spaces and Japan, I believe, or the Chinese, I no longer know, Miller says there, in two splendid, splendid pages, he says, “I know that if I was called to be reborn, I would be reborn as a park”, that if I were called to be reborn, I would be reborn as a park. You shouldn’t take that as an example; we have, we have a choice, right? [Laughter] We can be reborn… But you understand what that means. This does not mean that he believes in the transmigration of souls; that does not mean that he is attached to metempsychosis; it doesn’t mean that at all. And in fact, that strangely means that – which is what’s very odd about this author – it’s that this author who has invented such, such, such a new way of talking about sexuality, also invented an entirely different way of talking about circulating, strolling, walking, and very curiously for him, walking is much more important to him than sexuality. Based on some pages, you would think that the most important thing is sexuality, no. For Miller, sexuality is ultimately the occasion for a circulation, it’s a loving circulation which is… it’s his circuit, really, sexuality is entirely contained in Miller’s idea of the urban circuit, really, of an urban circuit.
So, he reintroduced… If I was reborn, I would be reborn as a park, that means, I provided givens to the world at the level of the circuits, at the level of the peripheral circuits. What? Because he is a great, great writer, yes, but not only that; because he was a guy who walked around, who knew how to walk around. And guys who know how stroll around, well, I can talk about that because I’m the opposite. [Laughter] But, but these are the treasures of the world; in some ways, you have to keep them, you have to display them because guys who know how to walk around a city, well they’re the heart of the city, that’s a heart of the city. When we no longer have guys who know how to walk around a city, we will have ghost towns, right? They are the ones who make connections between things [font passer quelque chose]; they are the ones who reenergize like in a bad, I don’t know, it’s, like in a battery, really, these are reenergizing operations. I’ll have reenergized the world with givens on some point, no matter how tiny it is.
So, it’s there, if you will… The question is never “in what situation am I?” The question would be, literally, it’s the question of the question. The real question is always: what is the hidden question in the situation where I’m located? And the question hidden in the situation where I’m located never resembles the situation where I’m located. As a result, to elevate givens, immediately, as a result, to elevate the givens of the situation to the givens of the question is an approach that I describe as being a metaphysical nature which would allow, in that way, giving both the Russians and the Japanese a certain, a common neighboring metaphysics: give me all the givens of the question.
So, this whole long thing – I’ve gotten myself behind, it’s tragic – this was to say, for example, from Auger’s perspective, even at the level of action-spaces which, at first sight, are the most opposed to an elevation to experimental power — since in the way we posed the problem, it’s indeed a question of an elevation to power that will define experimental cinema — well, the elevation to experimental power can occur at the very level of these action-spaces, so with all the more reason, at the level of the mental-space, there, of which we’ve barely begun to speak, there the richness of experimental cinema seems obvious to me. So, this is how I would try to answer your question.
So, two points: Comtesse would like to say something, I believe.
Georges Comtesse: It concerns Kurosawa. What you’re saying is correct concerning, let’s say, the vast majority of Kurosawa’s films. Obviously, this is a situation with questions to be identified. There are films, at least two, by Kurosawa which differ from what you said. There is “Roshomon” [1950] and then “The Idiot” [1951] … [a few indistinct words]. In these two films, there’s rather an event of desire which emerges from situations and spaces, which emerges little by little; it devours in these situations and these spaces, and which is as if specified by stories and discourses, and it is rather the impossibility of discerning the question that is included in this event, all the more so since the event that emerges from situations and spaces is an event X, it is an event which slips away and which is indistinguishable and enigmatic. For example, in “Roshomon”, the murder of a man in the forest, everything is a tale, everything is a version, [everything] tries to specify the situation, and finally, we wonder, what happened? What happened in the forest? How did it occur? It was certainly desire; is there a circulation of desires, not from one desire to another? But we don’t know what happened. So, we cannot manage to discern the question which is enveloped in an event which becomes indiscernible. And for example, at the end of the final scene of “The Idiot”, there is the alliance of the idiot with the supposed rival, they join together for a woman, but when the woman dies, they wonder, what’s going on? The event itself, well in the event itself, the event becomes even, precisely itself, becomes as enigmatic as the event in the forest in “Roshomon”.
Deleuze: Okay, you’re right, but then I would say, is the… What you perceive is correct; there are cases, in fact, as much with Kurosawa as with Dostoyevsky, there are cases in which it is not that these are… the problem remains the same: it’s a matter of discerning givens from the question hidden in the situation. Simply, you are saying, be careful, there are cases where there are people; there are cases where they won’t manage it, they just won’t. So, the only point… I completely agree with your way of discussing “Roshomon”; we’ll never know what the question was. And that’s why there is this circle that…, and that ultimately, they won’t reenergize the world; we will never know, neither they nor anyone else will ever know what the question is in all that. So, in fact, that is a… Here, what interests me greatly in what Comtesse has just said, is that these are very pathetic figures. It’s the… good, indeed, why not? They won’t know; there are cases where they will not know.
Here where I’m going to try… It’s not really a question, there’s not even any opposition between us on this point; I rather think, in any case, in Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, and it’s not by chance that’s what the role of the idiot is, the idiot, he knows what the question is. Which would interest me a lot, but at that point, it would be necessary to review this very… from this point of view, “The Idiot” by Kurosowa, perhaps in Kurosawa’s “The Idiot”, he does not know, that he himself does not know what the question is. But I think that with Dostoyevsky, the idiot knows it precisely, and if he appears as an idiot, and if he has this communication, which is this famous epilepsy, this communication with a kind of beyond, it is always the beyond of the situation, that is, he knows, he knows what the question is, and moreover, what are the questions are in the situations. He knows it by a kind of non-communicable intuition which precisely creates his idiocy. The smart people are the Americans; I mean, smart people are those who are content with situation-actions, who respond to the situation. They are not going to make the detour of: is there a hidden question in the situation?
But that, yes, yes, I completely agree with you; we must, in fact, take this into account, there are cases where givens are discerned… So, when do we not succeed in discerning the givens of the question? It’s when we don’t manage to grasp the givens of the question. What I insist on is that there are givens of the question insofar as being a question in the sense that mathematicians speak of the givens of a problem, and there, the word “given” obviously has a very, very special meaning. An analysis of the concept of “given/data” would be required to show precisely the given/data of a problem. These are indeed donor conditions, but they are never given, [they] are never given, the givens of a problem. The givens of a problem must be constructed; they are the object of a construction, the givens of a problem, or they are the object of a vision, of an intuition, so it’s very, very complex. And here, I completely agree with your analysis of… Yes?
Intervention by a student: [Inaudible remarks; it’s apparently an introduction to the psychic aspect of the use of the camera, but the question posed is: if in the action-image, we do not insist on the characters, then “what are we?” if we’re not characters?] [Laughter]
Deleuze: Yes, ahhh [Laughter; Deleuze seems without an answer, and he laughs] It’s my turn to ask you a question: do you believe that there have always been characters in the universe? [Pause and silence] I would add a second question here: are you sure you are a character? [Laughter] Are you quite sure you are…
The student: [Inaudible answer]
Deleuze: Listen, I would answer, it’s whatever you prefer [à votre goût], it’s whatever you prefer because it’s a discussion, it’s what goes back a long time: can we conceive, I would say, for example, a world without men, without animals, a world without anyone? Well, this question does not excite me much, but I would say “yes” right away. I would say “yes”; if someone says to me, “no, you can’t”, I would say, oh ok, [Laughter] but I thought I could… Anyway, I’m not really managing… I’m not saying that against your question; I do feel that if it’s yours, then it’s your question. Anyway, it’s really not mine.
So, me, I would say, it goes without saying that, for me, the world of course contains men and animals, that therefore there is indeed a material universe, and which, by definition, is not given since it cannot be given to us, which is a universe without world. The question is: can images produce or approach – it doesn’t matter; here, you mustn’t force me to argue about a word – can one approach by any means whatever a universe without us, that is, without a center and without an eye? My answer is “yes”, it was done; if you ask me, “how was it done?”, we saw it – we can’t start all over again – it suffices to construct a machine that is able of causing all the images to vary in relation to each other, on all facets and in all their elements, and you would have an uncentered universe, a universe with no one. There you go, that’s an answer. You can say, “I disagree, this is impossible”, but as I see other answers because… [Deleuze does not finish this]
The second answer I would give: it is understood that we are here. But even insofar as we are here, can we represent the world as it is without us? I’m saying, well, this is because that’s what we never stop doing, we never stop doing that, specifically we don’t stop doing that as soon as we propose an aesthetic, artistic purpose. Good. I mean, every painter is Cézanne when Cézanne speaks of painting the virginity of the world, and the context is formal: the virginity of the world is what he also calls the dawn of ourselves, that is, the supposedly infinitesimal instant which precedes the emergence of man. You will ask me, but what is this craziness you’re saying? [Laughter] What does all that mean? But I would tell you, well, it’s a painting by Cézanne, it’s nothing else; it’s worth the trouble. If you tell me, ah but, Cézanne didn’t do that at all, I would say, that’s none of my business; he said he did that; who can know what he was saying, right?
And then, third, I would say that only a center, without a center, that continues, that continues all the time because we are not centers, because we are not centers. So, if you tell me that I, you see, that affects too many problems, I don’t believe in the notion of individuals, I don’t believe that individuals exist, I believe that we are something other than individuals, I don’t think we’re people, I think we’re something other than people, something even more beautiful and even lovelier. [Laughter] Is there any point in answering your question? But after all, I answered as best I could, but I feel that any answer other than… You understand, the questions you ask yourself – I wouldn’t say that about any other question, often I say it, but for you in particular – these are questions that only you can answer. I feel that these are yours, but you mustn’t… I’m already loaded down with so many, you mustn’t add yours to my load because… [Laughter]
Another student: [Inaudible comments]
Deleuze: Yes, we are all, right…? So, Auger, talk a bit, how would you see… or does that, if that corresponds to…?
Pascal Auger: [Inaudible comments; he speaks about experimental cinema and “relations of application”]
Deleuze: But did I convince you that I wasn’t creating those, in fact, any relations of application?
Auger: [Inaudible reply]
Deleuze: I didn’t convince you. [Laughter] I would tell you, for me, that is not how I want, how I would like to see things;, it is not relations of application; it’s relay relations [rapports de relai], in the sense of two rhythms of creation, two very different modes of creation, or ultimately, I would say that one is not worth much without the other, that the great constructs [machins] in experimental cinema are worthless if they are not adopted by authors in the traditional sense, and the great discoveries of so-called traditional authors, so-called classic authors, are worthless if they do not engage [that]. For example…
Auger: [Inaudible comments]
Deleuze: … what I’m calling, for example, the discoveries of so-called classical cinema, oh yes, we’d no longer go… if, if as an experimental filmmaker you had a thought, you would be quite capable of saying that experimental cinema is the real site of cinematographic creation, but I don’t know if that’s yours; with that, I wouldn’t feel inclined to go in that direction. I really feel inclined toward two modes of creation which interpenetrate perpetually. So, what do I call invention in a, in a so-called classic traditional film, even in a film with a character, a story? Well, for example, the qualities of light, the givens of light – let’s not confuse that with an expressionist light — they seem like expressionists, well, they invented something, they invented a type of light that you recognize; you tell yourself that it’s an expressionist light. I believe that if there is a pre-war French school, that they also invented a type of light that is not at all the same. And in my opinion, it is through the French [school] and the expressionist school that we have the great luminists in cinema. There you have incredible inventions that make you recognize the light; that is signed just as in painting a [kind of] light is signed, which reveals that here we have creations in the cinema, and which would have been made associated with whom? Associated with the operators who work with whom? The operators who work with [Abel] Gance, with [Jean] Grémillon, with [Marcel] L’Herbier.
So, of course, at that time, no doubt that was also experimental. I mean, but in Grémillon’s films, it is not, it is in their films with stories that this light emerges. So, I would call that a creation and an invention of that light. A certain sound relationship: I’m taking… The problem of the sound relationships of the… sound image, visual image, which we didn’t tackle at all either last year or this year, well, I would say that experimental cinema has invented in the field of the sound image/visual image relationship, but at another level, well, sometimes authors, who we continue to call traditional, authors have made use of these inventions, sometimes the so-called traditional cinema made inventions in the mode of not only a sound image, but in a relationship, for example, between the speaking image and the visual image. I am thinking of someone who nevertheless seems quite far from experimental cinema, someone like [Éric] Rohmer [who] invented extremely important things, in experimental cinema as well. So obviously what I wouldn’t be able to do today would be to define these two modes of creation, and how they communicate, how experimental creation communicates with creation, how shall I say it, creation, we need another word, really… [Pause] No? Wouldn’t you agree? … And I’m attempting to lend you the idea that it’s experimental cinema that is creative? [Pascal Auger says no] That’s not your idea? So, I don’t see what your idea is, why you are only half convinced, or even not at all.
Auger: The classic way of conceiving of experimental cinema is to say that these are attempts [essais], it’s a laboratory test, that’s what I think other filmmakers … [Inaudible comments]
Deleuze [laughing]: There, that would be dreadful! So, in that, I have to praise you; I always tend to do that, yes, I tend to do that because it’s easier… but that’s not what I have in mind.
Auger: [Inaudible comments] … That’s what’s terrible, it’s an idea going around, it’s the way that people have of imagining experiment filmmaker… [Inaudible comments]
Claire Parnet: [Inaudible comments; she suggests that he trying to define what he imagines experimental cinema to be in relation to established cinema because examples are really unavailable that would make this contrast clear]
Auger: [He answers by explaining why he resists this attempted explanation, especially with the diverse senses of the word “experimental” among many kinds of art]
Deleuze: Yes, but the question is not that of the generality of the terms. The question is, no matter how general a term is, the question is: is it a well-founded concept? So, even if it’s very general, if it’s a well-founded concept, that’s perfect, we can talk about experimental cinema without further details. Again, for me, the question is as soon as we find ourselves faced with these seemingly very broad notions, either it is well founded or it is not founded; if it is not founded, if this is the method of natural articulations, that is, if it responds to a natural articulation or not. So, modern art, I don’t see any, I don’t see any reason to challenge this notion because, for me, it’s well founded. But I would understand very well someone who, on the contrary, says it’s a very ill-founded notion because, it’s up to everyone to move forward their articulations, to say how what he calls modern art is articulated.
Yes, if you like, for example, there are people who say, to offer a simpler example, there are people who say: Romanticism, what does Romanticism mean, Romanticism? There are twelve kinds of Romanticism. And they may be right. Me, I believe, I believe personally in the profound consistency of the concept of Romanticism. So, all of a sudden, it’s up to me to attempt an experiment, that is, to say what I call Romanticism. Still, I believe in the value of the concept as expressionism; I believe that it means something because it really responds to a group of phenomena articulated in the same way, that is, whether it’s in cinema, in painting, etc.
So, experimental cinema, so there, there, in that regard, I wouldn’t be at all certain that it was a concept. Suddenly, then, that would be the subject of a year’s work, which concept to put in its place, because I really don’t see how to bring everything together under the same concept, and the stuff from cinema states the truth, and forms of abstract cinema like pre-war, for example, and what the Americans are doing, really there is no common concept between [them]. But maybe there would be someone who could see some. In any case, when we generally have two poles in so-called experimental cinema, a cinema pole of truth and a cinema pole then without characters, so that seems to me stupid. I mean… And we do think about things. I indeed think, for example, we want to say: well, why don’t we call cinema, then, in order to unify? I’m taking two extremes, like Michael Snow who films a world without men, and cinema-vérité like that of Pierre Perrault or Jean Rouche, who are already completely different, but it doesn’t matter. And I ask myself, is there a way to find something, a way that would allow us to say, yes, there is indeed a concept of experimental cinema? Well, I tell myself, for example, maybe a way out, a rare way out, would be to say, yes, it’s because they’re using, they make use of the camera… [Interruption of the recoding] [1:06: 00]
Part 2
… insofar as an image seen, visible, visible or seen, as an image, or heard if the speaking image is there. So, I tell myself, would there be roles, functions of the camera in which the camera has functions other than making visible [faire voir]? And what could that be? So, I tell myself, yes after all, concerning cinema-verité, they have frequently said, they have frequently said, there are many who have said, well, you know what we are doing, it is multiplying camera functions; there are some people who’ve said that. With us, the camera is no longer limited to recording the visible; it acts, it plays several new roles, sometimes itself provoking, being the agent of the situation, in any case, it is no longer limited to creating or producing the visible. And then, there are others today who say, even independently of sound, the image should not simply be seen. It also needs to be read. The visible has become legible, the image must be read. [Several indistinct words] In a very well-known cinema, we suddenly see this is [Jean-Luc] Godard or it’s Marguerite Duras; here too I’m naming some very different authors. But in experimental cinema, what does that yield, what?
So could we say ultimately: there is an experimental cinema as soon as one makes use of functions of the camera other than the simple “making visible”? In my opinion, one cannot even say that; there are too many difficulties because experimental cinema exists which, on the contrary, emits a pure “making visible”. I don’t know, I don’t really know. That you don’t know is not a reproach at all, because after all, if you come here, it’s so that, it’s so that this might be clarified, right? Good.
Parnet: [Inaudible comments; she speaks to Auger]
Auger: [Inaudible comments; he answers Parnet]
Deleuze: So, if someone told me: there aren’t any as long as we don’t know if, if… we act as if there aren’t any [Claire Parnet and Auger are talking to each other while Deleuze listens] If someone said: it doesn’t exist… [The discussion continues] wouldn’t it suit you if someone said: there aren’t any? [Laughter; Auger answers, inaudible] The word was invented by a Russian, it’s a Dadaist that … and yes [Auger answers, inaudible] Who?
Parnet: Vertov.
Deleuze: Ah well, yes, yes but him, we see what he means, him, yes, yes, yes; that caused blood to be shed, it has a whole other meaning, it has nothing to do with this, yes.
You know, I don’t insist on it, I’m indifferent to it because I can’t even say, even if I admit everything, if there are certain experimental things that seem to me — here I’m speaking in the blandest way — which seem boring to me, there are so many films with stories which seem to me disasters, it’s not the characteristic that is difficult or not difficult to follow. I do not know. Personally, I would suggest that, for the time being, we not speak of kinds of experimental cinemas…
A woman student [very close to the microphone]: There are filmmakers who do both…
Deleuze [seeming not to have heard her]: … between a certain Godard film and experimental films, I really don’t see any difference. We’ll talk about an experimental period for Godard, fine, and Duras, I really don’t see the basis on which we’d make her an experimental filmmaker… whereas [Alain] Robbe-Grillet is a more traditional filmmaker. All that is fine with me, and in fact… Or [Alain] Resnais, Resnais, where do we put him? Good. Yes, good. So, listen, no more laughs, because all this is, it’s for fun. Now begins what’s difficult.
So, I need an hour to… It’s going to be a little difficult, but it’s nothing. I’m talking to you like dentists talk, [Laughter] it’s going to be a little difficult, but after that, it’ll be fine, because here, here’s my problem in which I have to make a bit of progress. We are still within our damned graph, we are there, in what was at the bottom. We have seen all our series of types of images, all that, good, but these are movement-images and light-images. Well, we are saying, [Pause] the aggregate, an aggregate, an aggregate of movement-images or light-images, produces both a… an aggregate of movement-images or of light-images produces an indirect image of time and an indirect figure of thought. So, we go from movement-images and light-images to indirect figures of time. We are leaving aside the question, “are there direct figures of time?” since we think, rightly or wrongly, that if there are direct figures of time, they cannot, by definition, be inferred from movement-images. If the time-image is inferred from movement-images, it’s an indirect figure of time.
And now our first task was, you remember the last time, we had four tasks: the first, our first task or rather our first two tasks, were to try to define the indirect figures of time that one can conclude from movement-images. If it were simply a matter of cinema, the collection of movement-images that produce an indirect figure of time refers to the operation of montage. It is through montage that an aggregate of movement-images will yield an indirect figure of time.
But my question is more general since our concern has always been to progress also in philosophy; it is therefore: what are these indirect figures of time? Once again, I call “indirect figure of time” a figure of time inferred from movement, inferred from movement or inferred from light. [Pause] And I’m starting, and I say yes, let’s immediately define the first figure of movement. The first figure of time inferred or inferable, starting from movement, will be the time defined as the number of movement.
Only you see that the number of movement is a beautiful expression, “of movement”, but what can that really mean? And it’s not going to help us that we immediately realize that that means two things. So, if we follow this time a great philosophical tradition, we will see what this amounts to for cinema. There is, there is…, this can be a very beautiful encounter, in a very long philosophical tradition which in full swing with the Greeks, with Greek thinkers, which means two things: “time is the number of movement” means sometimes… [Pause] No, I shouldn’t have said that anyway; I should have said the indirect figure, forgive me, because otherwise, that will complicate my whole terminology. I’m starting over completely.[9]
The first indirect figure of time is time [as] “measurement of movement” — otherwise I’m going to get lost in this, I’ll have to use “number” in very different meanings, so grant me that this is a tiny change — time is the “measurement of movement”, and I can say here that all the Greeks agreed — not all of them actually, I withdraw that immediately — many Greeks told us – this is quite tricky – many Greeks told us, time is the measurement of movement, and I immediately say, only there we have an expression with two meanings, and according to certain Greeks, time is the measurement of movement, so notice that “figure of indirect time” since it’s concluded from movement, time is what measures movement, it can mean two things: some will tell us that time is the number of movement, of movement, time is the number of movement; and others will tell us, time is the interval of movement.
And that everything might already be confused, everything in your head since we have seen that, with the cinema, the notion of interval, of movement, had a very great importance. But this is not in cinema, not surprising; it’s in physics. And here, the Greeks already knew about physics: time is the interval of movement. So, there is already a point that interests me: are the two expressions equivalent? And my goal is still to do the same thing: to try to make you sense that theories can be very abstract and have no other modes of expression than the abstract, that they don’t manipulate them any less, but a whole mass of extraordinarily concrete intuitions, that it is, it is not separate from the concrete. These are two great completely abstract definitions; they seem abstract to us. Here we have some profound thinkers who arrive to tell us: time is the number, some say, time is the number of movement; others say, time is the interval of movement. And even before reading them, even before trying to see farther, we try to provide something in them by telling ourselves: but what was settled? Why do some of them insist so much on saying, it’s the interval, and saying, it’s not at all the same thing as the other definition, time as the number of movement? Ah fine, why wouldn’t it be the same thing?
So let us ponder for a moment, then being prepared to try to see if we are contradicted by the texts. I would tell myself, well, a measurement, in any case, time is the measurement of movement, time is the measurement of movement, but a measurement does indeed imply two things, there are two aspects. We could say that the two aspects of measurement are the large and the small, if we relied on some very simple intuitions. There is the large and then there is the small in measurement; that does not mean there is a large object and a small object to be measured, no, that would be silly; it means something else.
That means measurement participates in the large, but it also participates in the small; why? Because measurement refers to two notions: it refers to the notion of “magnitude”. To measure is to assign the magnitude of the thing being measured. To measure movement is to give, it is to assign a magnitude of the movement. So, measurement refers to magnitude. [Pause] All measurement refers to a magnitude. Yes, how do you determine the magnitude of something to be measured? I can only determine the magnitude of something to be measured if I have a unit of measurement. So, the second thing implied in the idea of measurement is not magnitude; it is a unit, unit of measure. [Pause] I have to have a unit of measurement. All of this seems to go without saying because we use them every day, but these are two very different ideas. And we mustn’t be too hasty in saying magnitude is composed of units, by the unit, and the units compose magnitude. That may not be true, but it may be more complicated than that. I’m just maintaining, in fact, in the idea of measurement, there is the idea of magnitude, and there is the idea of the unit.[10]
Well, my question here, is very concrete: it’s when philosophers tell us and propose this mysterious expression: time, yes, time is the number of movement, don’t they mean, it’s the magnitude of movement? [Pause] And when others say, time is the interval of movement, don’t they mean, time is the unit of measurement of movement? [Pause] As a result, when I define time as the number of movement — be careful, here I am making very considerable progress, but it’s only intuition, not justified — when I say time is the number of movement, I consider time in its whole, time as magnitude. I consider what must be called the whole of time. [Pause] When I say time is the interval of movement, I consider time as a unit of movement, that is, time in its part. I no longer consider time as a whole, I consider time in its part. What is time in his part? I’m no longer considering the whole of time; I’m considering the part of time. But what can the whole of time mean, and what can the part of time mean? [Pause]
In any case, I started with abstract things, and imagine that I would like this to be for a certain number of you; for others, it will make sense, it will make sense another time. And now a certain number of us should feel inflated, inflated with concrete intuitions. I have two indirect figures of time that are concluded from movement, [Pause] the whole of time, the part of time. [Pause] And when time is considered as a whole, I’m saying, time is the number of movement, and at that moment, my hand almost automatically writes Number with a capital n. [Pause] — So, how’s it going? This isn’t too hard? Is it ok? — Good, so Number of movement, so we’re starting all over again. We just made a little progress; we vaguely see what the subject is of these abstract discussions: is it the number of time, is it the interval, is it the number of movement, is it the interval of movement?
Let’s suppose I say time is the number of movement; we will immediately say: but what is movement, what is movement? To speak of time as a whole, of the whole of time, which measures movement, which gives movement its magnitude, there would have to be a movement of all movements. It is this movement of all movements that I could call “the movement” in the expression, the number of movement. Ah, well, what could it be? The Greeks indeed reflected on this. If you want, when I say time is the number of movement, the movement must be, at the same time, valid for all movements, and yet be a definable movement.
What definable movement? I have no choice. The only one that seemed at the time to be a homogeneous and uniform movement, namely celestial movement, [Pause] celestial movement, astronomical movement, good, because elsewhere, things don’t go so well; elsewhere it’s much more complicated. Why does it seem simpler to them, astronomical movement, relatively simple? When we see the diagrams which they provide us — the great book, for example, is Plato’s Timaeus — when we see Plato’s diagrams, obviously simple, ok, not too simple, since at first sight, there will not be an astronomical movement. There are going to be eight spheres, eight spheres, one being called the sphere of the fixed and the other seven [Pause] each referring to a planet. [Pause] These eight spheres are rotating in a circular motion; they rotate, but with different periods and at different speeds. [Pause] Well, we can simplify, it’s eight circles, if you will. They proceed in divisions [coupes]. These eight circles have periods of, have periods of different revolutions. There we are.
But there does come a time when [Pause] the planets, each in its own circle — these circles are all nested, eight circles nested, depending on the proximity of the earth — these circles rotate at different speeds, different periods. There is definitely a moment when the seven planets — we are going to put aside the sphere of the fixed — there is indeed a moment when the seven planets find the same relative position. You arbitrarily specify a relative position of the seven planets, you assume the seven have stopped, you specify a position, you determine a relative position of the seven planets, at the moment small “a”, and you ask yourself: when will the seven planets find the same relative positions, at what moment, once it’s said that each planet rotates [Pause] at a different speed than the others and each circle has a different revolution from the others? You see, you’re asking this. It goes without saying that the moment when the seven planets find the same relative position can be called “the greatest common multiple”, the greatest common multiple of all revolutions, of all circular revolutions. It will be the great year, all that in capital letters, this will be “The Great Year”, the moment when the planets find the same position, even if it takes thousands of years.
And then, this obviously assumes something that, at the level of the perfection of celestial movement, there is no incommensurable number, otherwise everything is screwed. And in fact, a theory will be required at that point; since the Greeks know incommensurable numbers perfectly, a whole theory will be required to explain that incommensurable numbers only have value in the “sub” world, the so-called “sub-lunar”, that is, our world, if you will, in the earth region, and that in the celestial spheres, there are no incommensurable numbers. Well, that assumes a lot of things, but no matter. I’m saying, I have defined the greatest common multiple of all celestial movements. There it is, it’s The Great Year.
I meant only, this is what the whole of time means: [Pause] it’s the number of movement. The whole of time is the number of movement. [Pause] Fine, if you will, it’s the eternal astronomical return; good, it is the eternal return in its astronomical form. And it is known, in fact, since when the seven planets have again found the same relative positions, well, a new Great Year begins again. Once again, the unequal speeds, the speeds become unequal, unequal periods of revolution, etc., until we find again the same relative position, another Great Year. The eternal return is therefore concluded from celestial movement. This form of eternal return is called the astronomical eternal return.
Needless to say that not only what Nietzsche will call the eternal return has absolutely no connection with that, but furthermore, that the Greeks sometimes made of the eternal return a completely different conception than the astronomical conception, and also that, contrary to what is stupidly said, the Greeks conceived of time in another fashion than the eternal return. Moreover, it seems obvious that the eternal return in the example itself and in the commentary that I have just made can only be valid for the world which is so aptly called “supra-lunar” and not in the sub-lunar world… Yes?
A student: Excuse me, wouldn’t it be the smallest common rather than the largest…?
Deleuze: They don’t have the infinite.
The student: But this would be the smallest…
Deleuze: Ah, no, it’s the largest, it’s the largest.
The student: But why not?
Deleuze: Why not the smallest? Because we are in the realm of magnitude; there can be no small there, there can be no greater. Afterwards, it starts again, and there is no multiple. It is the multiple of all celestial motions [which] can only be the greatest common multiple. If you ask me: why can’t it be the smallest? Because, if it were the smallest, there could be a bigger one, but there can’t be a bigger one. You will tell me, there cannot be a smaller one either; no, there cannot be a smaller one.
The student: So why call the multiple the greatest?
Deleuze: Because it defines the whole of time.
The student: Yes, but the smallest as well, from that point of view…
Deleuze: Oh no, you can’t say the smallest. The smallest in relation to time is obviously the instant. You cannot say that the instant defines the whole of time. On the other hand, you can say, here you are getting clever, you can say, on the other hand, the instant defines the interval of time, but you cannot say the instant defines the whole of time. So, you will use the expression, and you are quite right, so here I would suggest, by virtue of what you are saying, to put the largest, “large” in brackets. But I can’t escape the idea of magnitude. What I wanted to make you sense is that here, I am in the pole, I was saying, time measures time… “time measures movement” refers to two ideas: magnitude and unit. Me, I’m entirely within the “magnitude” pole; there is no unit. This is a magnitude without s unit. The Great Year is pure magnitude and not a unit. I would say in Plato’s terms, this is the pure Idea of the large, and there cannot be anything larger, without it being infinity since they calculate, they calculate how many tens of thousands of years constitute The Great Year, that is, after how much time…
Another student: [Inaudible comments, especially because several students are speaking; the initial student continues to make objections]
Deleuze: Yes, yes, yes. Are these units? No, in my opinion, that’s complicated, your question, really.
Another student: Actually, there can be only the larger.
Deleuze: Exactly. [The student continues speaking, rather indistinct comments] Exactly, I could have small, since earlier, I am within the pure Idea of large.
The student: They’re incommensurable… [Indistinct comments] … the planets, their movement…
Deleuze: What you are saying is very interesting, yes, and I cannot say, yes, especially this is very important, and I cannot say about a revolution, about one of the circles which has its speed of rotation, that it’s a part. I cannot say that it’s a part, so then it’s what? What is it?
A woman student: The whole of magnitudes, what is this?
Deleuze: What?
The woman student: The whole of magnitudes, is it the sum of magnitudes?
Deleuze: Ah, that depends; we’re going to get to that because, there, that’s a question that’s not asked since we are not yet at the level of the sum of magnitudes; we’re at the level of magnitude.
The initial student: But I believe that it’s Kepler who is going to discover something… [Several indistinct words]
Deleuze: Ah yes, you understand, with Kepler, we will no longer be in this domain, we will no longer be in this understanding of time, or at least, what will remain of it with Kepler — oh it will be, there, you are taking me too far — what will remain of that in, at the birth of astronomy in the 17th century, I see something that will remain. So I’m selecting a simpler case than Kepler, in any case, a simpler case because it’s going to be more immediate, Descartes — and that I hope to advance a little in answering your question — Descartes doesn’t have anything to do with all that, well, [he’s] very far from the Greeks, fully in the 17th century, and what I would like to show is that for Descartes as well, we will find two figures of time in relation to movement.
There you go, I’m sticking with the first one. Descartes tells us, well, in a way, here we are, yes, he just told us earlier, but we can’t understand what he meant yet, he just told us all movements are relative, all movements are relative, that is, the attribution of movement to one body rather than another is eminently relative. You see, if it’s the shore that moves or it’s the boat that moves, all that’s the same. And he says, but from another point of view, that doesn’t prevent there being something absolute in movement, fine.
There we are, it is only this point of view that I would like to comment on quickly in Descartes: what is this absolute of movement? There too, it is not an infinity for him; it’s an invariant, namely it is the quantity of movement contained in the whole of the universe; the quantity of movement contained in the whole of the universe, that is invariant. All relative movements, they change. They keep changing from moment to moment, but we’re not there yet. Whatever the changes may be in the universe, there is something which is preserved, Descartes says. What is preserved? The quantity of movement; the total, total quantity of movement.
A woman student: [Indistinct comments, but these are a severe objection to the terminology that Deleuze is using, specifically] … time is the measure of the quantity of movement, not of magnitude… [Indistinct comments; Deleuze is heard groaning in frustration close to the microphone]
Deleuze [speaking very slowly]: I’m afraid you haven’t understood. Movement is not supposed to have a quantity; our question is, how can movement receive quantity? So, if I say, time is the measurement of the quantity of movement, literally, it is nonsensical [un non-sens] since I’m already giving myself a quantity of movement, and my question is: where does a quantity of movement come from? And in Descartes himself, that is, strictly speaking, you could be right against, regarding Descartes, already being wrong about the Greeks, but you are also wrong about Descartes because when Descartes speaks of a quantity of movement, it is not a quantity that movement already has and that time will measure; it is a quantity that is inseparable from something that Descartes will call the repetition of creative instants. And the repetition of creative instants which must above all not — but here you are forcing me to say too much at once — which must above all not be confused with the reproduction of created instants, the repetition of creative instants is precisely the whole of time as the Eternal God understands it, as the Eternal God understands it.
So, obviously, one must not say time is the measurement of the quantity of movement since this would simply mean doing away with the problem. If you give movement a quantity, there’s no longer any problem. It’s a question of knowing how quantity comes to movement, and if you tell me, there’s no movement without quantity of movement, that goes entirely too far without justification; to do science means creating abstractions.
As a result, I’m starting over. In Descartes, fine; for him, what he tells us is there’s a constant invariable movement; why? Because God is eternal and immutable. You are going to tell me we are very far away from time. In fact, if God were not eternal and immutable, it could vary there, but that’s the mark of its name, immutability, it is the mark of its eternity. What is the quantity of movement? It is MV, mass, velocity; you are going to ask me, how is time indicated in that? It is explicitly indicated precisely because it is speed and not movement. So, what is immutable is in the total universe, the ratio of mass and speed, which means what? It means that when relative movements increase in one corner of the universe, well really, it must really decrease in another corner of the universe in such a way that you always study the same quantity of movement, MV, which remains constant. Well, by virtue of the eternity of God, otherwise if God varied movement, it wouldn’t have created its signature on the world, there wouldn’t be its mark. So, this time I would say, movement refers to an invariable metric relation. Earlier, about the Greeks, I was saying, time, or I should have said, [time] refers to a system of metric relations, to the system of planetary metric relations. Here I am saying, for Descartes, everything changed, and yet something remains, time still refers to an invariable metric relation, MV. [Pause]
And how then does God proceed, with it being eternal? It will proceed according to the concept that properly belongs to Descartes, there in his theology, the properly Cartesian concept of continuous creation. And on this, I’m insisting anyway very quickly because you will see that creation continuous in Descartes refers, in a certain way, or will take the place of planetary revolutions in the Greeks. For indeed, Descartes, as a Christian, can no longer consider planetary movements as the ultimate reason for movement. He cannot; that would be a kind of pantheism; he needs his God distinct from the world. As a result, how will God proceed in the so-called continuous creation? It creates the world at every moment; what are these moments? Are these some instants of time, the way we live them there? No, not at all, these are not instants of created time; they are creative instants, they are instants that are defined by the creative act of God. [Pause] So in divine eternity, one must conceive, according to Descartes, of a repetition of creative acts, or creative instants, an infinite repetition of creative instants. How can eternity include endless repetition of creative actions? Descartes’s answer is formal: our understanding is finite, it can conceive of that; it cannot understand it. In other words, there is something beyond our understanding.
And here, I insist enormously on this point because it is the first time that the idea of a too much appears, but we will see that it should have already appeared among the Greeks, the idea of a too much. Why do I attach such importance to this, the idea of a large that is too large and yet is not necessarily infinite? In Descartes’s case, it’s a too large, too large for us because it is infinite. This is the Christian god. In the case of the Greeks, it is too large for us, it is the aggregate of planetary revolutions, and yet it is not infinite. Anyway, this is a kind of magnitude through excess, and we’ll see next time the extent to which I need this notion. This is a magnitude through excess, and this magnitude through excess, I am saying that in both cases, here, in my two samples, the eternal astronomical return of the Greeks, the Cartesian theory of movement, however different these two theories may be, which are profoundly different, however different these two theories are, there is one point in common, namely time will be the number of movement.
The number of movement in Descartes is MV, this absolute or this constant. For the Greeks, it is quite another thing, it has nothing to do with that; it is the coincidence of the respective positions between the different planets, which is to tell you that this is completely different. But in both cases, there is an absolute movement, which refers to what? Which refers to a whole of time, time as a whole, and for the Greeks — this will be very different from Descartes and vice versa – because for the Greeks, this will be a question of the whole of time defined by the Great Astronomical Year; in Descartes, it will be the whole of time defined as the repetition of creative instants, from the point of view of continuous creation, the repetition of creative instants in the eternity of God. There you have a magnitude that is only magnitude; there you have a figure of time which is the whole of time. That’s very interesting; if there is a whole of time, already understand what they are doing, it is so important, all that, because it seems like: why, oh why do they recount these things that seem to be crazy? But the consequences are multiple. They’ve already found a way… you can understand they’ve already found a way of getting… [Interruption of the recording] [1:53:04]
Part 3
Georges Comtesse: … an experience of time as a series or succession of instants separated in the interval, so that implies an interval, each instant is separated by a nothingness. And so, the interval between two instants is constituted by a nothingness that gnaws at each instant and prevents it from passing from one instant to another, and it is simply God, through its theories of fantasies or this philosophical delirium of continuous creation, which precisely abolishes, resolves the problem of the passage, resolves the problem of the interval, and makes the repetition of the creative instants pass from one instant to another and which therefore, which therefore, annihilates the nothingness which separates an instant from another. This is why the “cogito” in Descartes will be grasped in an instant. One can only grasp one’s being, the being of the “I”, in an instant, that is, the instant which annihilates nothingness, which eats away at time. So, it seems to me there is an [indistinct word] that we cannot refer the theory of time in Descartes to the equivalence of astronomical movement in the Greeks, and that the philosophical delirium does indeed suppose a completely crazy experience, except of time, that is, the problem of nothingness. The only problem of time in Descartes is the problem of nothingness. The problem of being is precisely the very problem of divine being at the very level of the Meditations or the Discourse on Method; it’s the problem of an instant that can escape the interval.
Deleuze: Yes, yes, yes, yes! You must have pity on me! [Laughter] I’ll tell you, there, you’re throwing at me and you’re throwing at all of us an interpretation of Descartes — it’s very difficult, all that — an interpretation of Descartes that seems to go quite counter to mine. Oh, it’s possible, indeed it’s possible. I would just answer, I don’t think so. I don’t believe you are right. I believe that everything you have just said to be very… with a lot of force and power about the instant is absolutely valid in Descartes at the level of the “created” moment, and that it is not by chance that, on the other hand, I maintain, there too you could say… — I feel that all that is difficult, I know — I maintain that Descartes establishes a difference in nature between the creative instant, which refers to the acts of continuous creation, divine acts, and the created instant. I’m saying that everything you just said about the interval is appropriate for the “created instant”. I’m saying that it does not suit the “creative instant”, the mystery of which is quite different from the one you express. You do recognize that there is a mystery, but you, you consider that the mystery is precisely that the interval necessarily introduces the idea of a nothingness.
Comtesse: It’s Descartes who says that.
Deleuze: Yes, oh listen there… have all the more pity on me since it is not enough to say: “it’s Descartes who says that”; either here you’re acting like a child to make us believe that Descartes says it. If you tell me, “I’ll bring a text next time”, you know very well that it will take us an hour to see the context of the text, that it’s not easy to identify what texts of this nature mean. So, spare me; I will never be so insolent towards you…
Deleuze: No! Excuse me! Just a second!
The woman student: [Inaudible comments; she continues to react]
Deleuze: Oh no, there, just a second, a second. I would never be so insolent toward you as… Madame! If you continue, I am stopping.
The woman student: Listen, it’s a matter of reaching the truth…
Deleuze: Fine, ok, that brings us to a break. [Laughter; someone whistles in derision as well; several students speak at the same time, including the student who was speaking to Deleuze; however, no break is called]
The woman student: … He introduces a postulate that there’s a hole, a nothingness between the present and the future. So, we’re asking the question how, if there’s a distance, an interval…
Deleuze: Aie, aie, aie!
The woman student: … between the present and the future, the present can decide… [Inaudible comments] … so you have presented the problem in an completely inadequate manner. [Reactions among the participants]
Deleuze: Ah…
The woman student: … causality, the contradiction between the distance between present and future and the possibility of needing the future to… [Inaudible comments] … through the present; so, there is a total difference… [Inaudible comments] … causality and the distance of all between the instants. That’s the first … [Reactions among the participants]
Deleuze: As… excuse me… as you just said so well that I presented the problem in an inadequate manner, I strongly advise you to participate in some other courses. [Pause] Life is already hard! [Laughter] Ah! … You are fatiguing…
A second woman student: I would like to…
Deleuze: So, I’ll answer more seriously… yes?
The second student: I don’t know if this enters into the discussion, but I would like to… I heard there some things you presented on the laws of celestial movement. There’s a continuity, a symmetry in the planets within the eight spheres; isn’t there a small accident of explosion?
Deleuze: Yes! Ah, yes, yes, there is!
The student: … and I would also like, because that interests me, I see social time, social time, that it comes from outside, from the outside in relation to human time, whereas time of the universe is time in itself. What do you think?
Deleuze: I cannot answer. I don’t mean the question is bad; the question is too far from what I’m doing right now, so I’m starting to seriously repent having brought this question up. [Laughter, reactions] So, that’s… I mean, it’s too complicated for me right now to be able to answer you. I’ll sum up… Yes? Pity! Yes? [Laughter; pause]
Another student: You have… [General laughter exploding due to the start of a third query]
Deleuze: I didn’t know there were so many astronomers here, [Laughter] I really would have spoken about something else. Yes?
A student: You have completely explained that in Descartes’ metaphysical project, he explains, he manages to do metaphysics with the metaphysicians of his time, but he, when he talks about nothingness, he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he explains a nothingness… [Interruptions, reactions, noises from the students]
Deleuze: Listen! Listen to me carefully! This will be the day of suffering, the most… The expression, for me — I do not force you to have the same idea — the expression that any thinker, I add a great thinker, “makes a mistake” [se trompe] is buffoonish nonsense. So, if someone says to me: “Descartes made a mistake”, I don’t even understand what he may have in mind. On the other hand, I understand well, and here, that eliminates any question, phew! I’m returning to some shores more… So Comtesse tells me something else, he tells me: you are mistaken in the interpretation you give of Descartes.
The first student: [He attempts to intervene]
Deleuze: Oh, non, listen! [Laughter]
The earlier student: [He attempts to continue his comment regarding nothingness]
Deleuze: No! I’m suffering too much, I’m suffering! I’m suffering! [Laughter] You mustn’t… When I hear “Descartes is mistaken”, that’s it, my suffering is on the way, I can’t continue, I can’t continue. Because I’d understand very well if someone said to me: the problems that I pose have nothing in common with the problems that Descartes poses. At that point, someone would not say “Descartes is mistaken”. He will say “I have nothing to do with Descartes since I pose some problems, and at first sight, I do not see anything in him which corresponds to these problems”. But to dare to say that, in the perspective in which Descartes situates himself, and in relation to the problem that Descartes poses, to dare to say that Descartes is mistaken, listen, this is enough to… this is enough to… I don’t know anymore. If I dared say… I certainly can’t hit you, but there are grounds! [Laughter] I would be a master of Zen Buddhism, I would have whacked you on the head with one of those sticks! [Laughter] But do you realize what you’re saying? Either, either that doesn’t mean anything — forgive me for being brutal, you’ll forgive me everything — I mean, either this is nonsensical or it’s stupidity. I mean really! Saying Hegel is mistaken, saying Descartes is mistaken, Plato is mistaken, but who do you take yourself for? But it’s frightening to hear things like that.
I will tell you a story. — You could also say, you have spared me this so far, even the lady. You can tell me: well, but it’s not MV that is preserved, that’s well known; it’s MV2 [squared]. Ah. So, Descartes was mistaken, Descartes was mistaken. — I will tell you a story; you will easily understand, most of you, if you needed convincing. You have to ask yourself under what conditions you could say, what is preserved is MV2. Fine. If we agree to ask ourselves this question instead of, like a simpleton, instead of saying what is preserved, it is MV2, we will realize that the squaring of V, that is, V2, cannot occur without differential calculus. That’s simple. In a mathematical system that does not have the symbolism of differential calculus, to say: what is preserved is MV2, has absolutely no meaning. So, it couldn’t be true! In a system defined, for example, by the coordinates of Descartes’s analytic geometry, MV2 is a meaningless formula.
This isn’t complicated to understand. When a problem is given, this problem, it’s even what I just ex… That’s what I mean, the givens of a problem mean that a problem always refers to the system of concepts you have in order to solve it. So, you must never judge answers in this manner: is it true, isn’t it true? We must always relate the answers to the problem, to the givens of the problem, the givens of the problem being the symbolic system at your disposal to provide an answer. So, when Descartes says, what is preserved is MV, this statement is strictly and absolutely true! It is true. As a function of what is it eternally true? It is true as a function of what are called Cartesian coordinates. Now, of course, it loses all meaning from the point of view of an infinitesimal calculus. The statement, in turn from the point of view… If you provide yourself with a symbolism including differentials, differential relations, it is obvious that what is conserved is MV2.
I’m trying, so listen, I’m trying here, I, I, I, I can’t even answer Comtesse anymore. I’m just pointing out then, Comtesse, in fact, makes of Descartes and proposes from Descartes an interpretation such that the “whole of time” in Descartes would have no meaning. Perhaps, it seemed to me from what he was saying, it was rather better to conceive a series of time, and Comtesse hits the mark since a series of time is completely different from a whole of time. So, I’m telling you: good, at this level, I prefer to take Comtesse in the best way; at this level, it is possible that he is right. I think so; I don’t agree with him. Myself, I believe in any case: the whole of time, but a series of time as well, here we are floundering a little; perhaps it is still a third interpretation which is correct, because it is obvious that it does not appear in Descartes. Good.
But I’m just saying this — and here I would like to end this first part because there’s so much to do, and so what’s the second part going to be? [Laughter] — I just want to close by saying, ah well, here is what I tried to comment on with the problems that get raised — even taking into account what Comtesse has just said – I am saying: I’ve grasped a first aspect of the figure of time, [Pause] and I characterize it by three things: [Pause] time is the number of movement, [Pause] first characteristic. Example: The Great Year for the Greeks. A completely different example: Descartes’s invariant. I’m not saying the two are in the least analogous. There we are. I am saying that there is time which is the number of movement in both cases. In Comtesse’s interpretation, I couldn’t say that.
Second remark, I am saying: as the number of movement, time is grasped as a whole and as the whole of time. [Pause] The whole of time, very oddly, is an expression that, in fact, you don’t find in Descartes, but it’s an expression that you find both in the Platonists and in Kant — who nevertheless creates a completely different conception of time — but if I stick to the very expression, “whole of time”, there we are. So, an example: the whole of time defined by The Great Year, the whole of time as I believe Descartes defines it by “the repetition of creative instants in eternity”. But you’ll add three big question marks there, on that point.
Third characteristic: I’m saying following this double aspect – number of movement and whole of time – what is discerned is the idea of the Large, with a big L, with a large L, excuse me, with a capital L, the idea of the Large, the idea of magnitude, and at the outside, the idea of something too large for us, [Pause] either in the Greek form of the universe, or in the Cartesian, Christian form, of the infinite God.
If I try to go to the other aspect, so there, I’m going to go very, very quickly because… Here is the other aspect, well, you understand, the other aspect is: what does magnitude mean? Alright then, here we’re returning to this! But what does a magnitude mean if you have no unit? But just as magnitude was time, and it was time that gave magnitude to movement, the unit is also time, simply it is no longer time in its whole, it’s time in its part, it’s time in its part. But then there are parts of time, so what are parts of time?
You sense that we are completely referred back to other problems; it’s possible that these problems are linked, but this time, it’s the problem of relative movement. There are movements in the universe, there are many movements, and they keep changing. How are we going to measure these movements? It is not with my Great Year, it is not with my magnitude that’s too great, that I am going to measure actual relative movements. In short, even for my Great Year, even for my excessive magnitude, I need a unit, I need units.
I’ve asked: do I need a unit, or do I need units? And won’t everything change? I can say, yes, I need… Let’s try both. Should I say I need a unit? Or should I say I need units to measure the various movements as they change in the universe at every moment? Let’s try to say, “I need a unit”. What will this unit be? It will be the unit, the arithmetic unit, the “one”. Okay, suppose I have an arithmetic unit; it would still be necessary to define this arithmetic unit. What is this arithmetic unit of time since it is the unit of time? It is a part of time — we have seen — well, we can call it, and that is its ordinary meaning, we can call it “the instant”. I would say, could — that’s assuming, I don’t know — could I say, there are so many instants [Pause] in this movement and, in that way, to designate the part of time that measures movement? Good. [Pause]
But what is the instant in relation to time? Is the instant a part of time? On this, so many, so many, so many discussions have taken place. Most often, they say: no, the instant is not part of time. Why? If you consider it as the equivalent of an indivisible point, if you consider it as the equivalent of an indivisible point, that is, if you make it into an indivisible point in time, it is not a part of time. Why? Because a part of time is time. Whereas the instant as an indivisible point is not time, it is a limit. It’s not a part, it’s a limit.
Okay, so what would that part of the time be? The Greeks have a word: it would be the “now”. It would be the now, the nûn, they say: n-û-n, with a circumflex accent, the nûn. What we translate by “the now” or sometimes by “the present”. [Deleuze coughs] It would be the present, the part of time. This would be the present, the unit of time. Ah well, fine, [Pause] because nûn in the present tense is not a limit, it is indeed a part of time. Only it happens that earlier, I had instants that were all homogeneous with each other. That gave me a unit, a unit always the same for all movements. Only it was not a real unit; it was a limit. You see, there was an advantage: I could summon the same unit for all movements that occur at each moment. But there was a serious drawback, which was that these units were perfectly abstract, they were limits outside of time, which I could not even call upon.
So, I move on to the other end, let’s say the part of time; be careful, it’s not the instant since the instant is a limit. The part of time is the nûn, the present, the now. Oh yes, okay! Here, the unit of movement or the part of time is the present. You will tell me this is very disappointing. No, because you really feel that what is arising is then a conversion of the problem of time, which will fully become the problem of the present, and of: what is the presence of the present?
Why the problem of the present? Well, because how are you going to define the present? [Pause] The present? You are going to define it in the best possible way, so in my opinion, the best possible way, you are going to say: the present is what fills an interval. And, as the interval only exists as filled, unless one falls into the instant, you can easily say the present is the interval. [Pause] And you will have said: the part of time or the unit of movement is the interval, that is, the present, the present which occupies an interval. Oh but, that’s annoying; why? Because at that point, I no longer have a homogeneous unit for all relative movements. I no longer have a homogeneous unit for all relative movements; why? Because it is each movement which requires its particular present or its interval, which will be its unit of measurement.
About the bird’s flight, I would ask, what is its present? What is the present of a bird’s flight? And the answer — I warn you that I’ll accept no objection to this answer — I would say the present tense of a bird’s flight is the interval between two wing beats. This is its nûn, the nûn of the bird’s flight, the “now” of the bird’s flight. Hey, and already it’s singularly capable of stretching out if I think of a bird of prey. When the bird of prey, you know, soars in the sky, it enlarges its interval, but yes, it enlarges its nûn. It is not by chance that at that moment, if it takes, as Nietzsche said, for once, it takes precisely the circular pace of the eternal return and that Zarathustra’s eagle there makes its circles and its spirals, it reaches a kind of excessive present which is the nûn of the soaring bird. It expands its present. And then, when it pulls itself out of this circle, when it — literally — takes the tangent, and you see it beat its wings, those admirable beats of the raptor, well, you immediately understand that the little sparrow, I don’t even have to go look for anything else, the little sparrow has a completely different present. Look at the grotesque wing beats of a little sparrow, its miserable nûn, its very own interval.
So, what I’m suggesting once again is that we think that we’re persons, we believe ourselves to be all that, yet we’re none of that. We are tempos, we are tempos, really; we are rather, more precisely still, we are intervals. We are intervals. My present is my interval, and I am my present under one aspect. You will tell me, but look, you have a past; I would say, oh don’t wear me down there, it’s already enough to have a present. [Laughter] Okay, so that’s it.
But as Kant said — but why does Kant say that? Why am I mixing them all up? — he said, suppose the following situation: you want to measure a man; you measure him with feet. This is an admirable text by Kant. But he doesn’t start there; never mind. You say this man is so many feet tall, you say that fluently: that guy is so many feet tall, fine. So, with a man there, the foot is the unit of the man’s measurement. With a man, you are going to measure a tree, and you say: this man, this man… no, this tree, ah yes, it’s six men tall; if you have any objection for me, I’ve said that it was like that in Kant’s locality and in Kant’s era, they said of a tree: ah, it’s six men tall. With a tree, Kant adds — in his locality — with a tree, one can, he does not say that one must, one can measure a mountain, a small, a small mountain. They say: this mountain is forty fir trees high. That’s frequently said. Hey, there’s a mountain: forty fir trees high! [Laughter] With the mountain, they can measure, he jumps forward, we can measure the earth’s diameter, right? They’ll say the earth’s diameter is so many times the Himalayas, etc. … With the earth’s diameter, we are not finished. And you see that each time, the unit of measurement changes.
It’s the same thing in my story of movement; that’s why for each movement, I had to define an interval specific to the movement. So, I am in two situations; I have two possible situations. In my second, in my second problem, either I proceed by arithmetic measurement, [Pause] and I have a homogeneous conventional unit. Notice that this homogeneous conventional unit, at this point, I am forced to subdivide it ad infinitum. That is, I provide myself with the arithmetic unit “one”, but I can compose with the “one” the whole series of numbers, but the “one” in its turn, I can decompose it. I will indeed have a homogeneous series that allows me to measure any possible movement, in what way? In an abstract way, that is, with limits and not with parts. [Pause] At that point, I use limits of time to measure determined movements. [Pause] These limits of time are instants.
Or else, I use parts of time which are presents, but I have as many units of measurement as movements. [Pause] This time, I will have defined for each movement or each type of movement an interval which constitutes its present, and I could say: time, here rather, time as a part, notice this, it has three characteristics. First, it’s time as a part; it’s first: the interval of movement… [Pause] No, rather … yes, it’s time as part as opposed to the whole of time, [Pause] and it’s on the side of the small, or relatively smaller side. It’s the idea of the small.
And yet, and yet, I haven’t finished with this because you can surely feel the extent to which one passes constantly from one vision to another, from “whole of time” to “interval”, from the idea of large to the idea of small; why? I have defined each body at the limit, and each move, by a present. This present is its interval. And here, the Stoics are brilliant. They will define bodies by what they call “the interval”, that is, the limits of their potency [puissance]. This is the filled interval. Good. And all these bodies which have a present, an interval, and which are defined by their interval, their present, what are they? They indeed communicate within a same world. And this same world, what is it? It is “total present”. [Pause]
And how are you going to define this total presence of a world? Ah, you’ll see; there it becomes, if you pay attention, you’ll be gripped with enthusiasm because — and we’ll be done — because all these bodies which are defined by a present and which communicate in a same world, this world is therefore “the total present”. How is it defined? It will be defined by the time taken, the time taken by each body to return, to go through all the qualitative transformation, through all the bodily transformations that bring it back to the matrix of the world, [Pause] in fact, which bring it back all the way to a supposedly original fire, a fire from which the world emerged. I do not say that it is a universal doctrine; some thinkers said that a long time ago. So, what is that?
Each body belongs to the total present of the world insofar as it passes through all the transformations that bring it back to the original fire. This is a new figure of the eternal return. This time, it is no longer an eternal return defined according to the revolution of the stars, that is, an astronomical eternal return. It is an eternal physical return in the Greek sense of “phusis”. It is an eternal return of nature, defined by the qualitative transformations, the transformation of elements into each other, when they are reabsorbed in the primitive fire and emerge from the primitive fire
See, it has nothing to do, the two conceptions of the eternal return are completely different since in the second conception of the eternal return, the planets are strictly only bodies like the others and which, too, emerge and return to the original fire. And what is prodigious in Greek thought is the way in which the astronomical theme and the physical theme meet, penetrate each other, how there are conciliations, how all that has an effect, these doctrines which fuse from all sides.
But what I have just tried to show is that through this, you keep going from one aspect of time to another. You keep moving from one figure of time to another. You go from the “whole of time” figure to the “part of time” or “present” figure, and vice versa. Or if you prefer, the two notions become complementary, the two notions from which we started becoming complementary. On one hand, time is the number of movement, on the other hand, it’s the interval of movement, and from one formula to another, there is a circulation which is a circulation from the large to the small and from the small to the large.
If you have understood this, everything else will be easy afterwards. We are simply faced with something that we must not forget for the next time. It’s that because in this circulation, one passes, in fact, there is always a kind of moment which is communicated to everything: a too large! What is this too large, this too large of time? Time is too large for me, fine. And it’s to the commentary of the too large, that is, in a certain way, we will have to make too much of it, in relation to time, one must always make too much of it, and not because time is passing. Not at all. For the moment, I am sticking to these two figures: the large figure, I would say, is time as a whole of time, and the small figure is time as an interval. Especially henceforth, we will no longer commit the misinterpretation of saying an interval between two presents since it is the present that we have defined by the interval, as opposed to the instant that we defined as a limit. [Pause] There you go.
If that doesn’t seem too hard for you, well it’s done, it’s done! The next time, we’ll… Yeah, we’ll see. [Sounds of papers, chairs; Deleuze speaks in a lower voice that the microphone captures] They were so nasty today… [End of the recording] [2 :33 :44]
Notes
[1] In The Movement-Image, p.109, Deleuze refers to “Pascal Augé” in connection to the term suggested by Pascal Auger, “any-space-whatever” (espace quelconque). Unfortunately, Deleuze’s error in the text, with Auger’s nickname written “Augé”, created much confusion among Deleuzian scholars for several decades, as the name “Augé” was associated with that of the anthropologist Marc Augé and his term, “non-places” (les non-lieux). Despite the difficulties with the transcription of the remarks in this session, this section provides important proof of the active contribution of Pascal Auger to Deleuze’s reflection and teaching.
[2] See sessions 7 and 8 of Cinema seminar I, January 19 and 26 1982.
[3] On Snow, see Session 11 of Cinema seminar 1, March 2, 1982; see also The Movement-Image, pp. 121-122.
[4] On this montage, see The Movement-Image, pp. 84-85.
[5] In Cinema seminar 1, see sessions 7, 19 January 1982, and 8, January 26, 1982, and on Landow, see session 8, January 26, 1982; see also The Movement-Image, pp. 85-86.
[6] On this point, see The Movement-Image, pp. 188-189.
[7] On this film, see The Movement–Image, pp. 191-193.
[8] See Henry Miller’s Hamlet Letters, ed. Michael Hargraves (San Francisco: Capra Press, 1988). These letters (written between 1935 and 1938) to Michael Fraenkel (apparently the model for Boris in Tropic of Cancer) are less about Shakespeare’s play, but more about Miller’s distinction between intellect and intelligence.
[9] Much of the discussion that follows corresponds to The Time-Image, pp. 36-38.
[10] On the aspects of magnitude, see sessions 10 and 12 in the seminar on Spinoza, February 10 and March 10, 1981.
For archival purposes, the French transcript of the first part of this session was prepared for the first time in May 2020 for this site. The transcripts for the second and third parts were prepared at Paris 8, respectively, by Sigrid Severin and Nadia Ouis. The augmented and new time stamped version of the transcription was completed in April 2021. Additional revisions to the transcription and the translation were completed in February 2022 and in February 2024. [NB: The transcript time stamp is in synch with the WebDeleuze recording link provided here.]