ISSN: 2977-814X

ISSUE DOI: https://doi.org/10.51596/sijocp.v3i2

Volume 3 Issue 2

journal.spacestudies.co.uk

The Sensible Openness of Space in the Works

of Daniele Del Giudice, Peter Handke and

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Samantha Sechi¹, PhD Candidate, University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, France

@2023 Samantha Sechi

Published by SPACE Studies Publications owned by SPACE Studies of Planning and Architecture Ltd.

To cite this article:

Sechi, S. (2023). The Sensible Openness of Space in the Works of Daniele Del Giudice, Peter Handke and

Jean-Philippe Toussaint. SPACE International Journal of Conference Proceedings , 3(2), 34–42. https://doi.

org/10.51596/sijocp.v3i2.88

samanthasechi@yahoo.de

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative

Commons Attribution(CC BY) license

This article is published at journal.spacestudies.co.uk by SPACE Studies Publications.

journal.spacestudies.co.uk

SPACE Studies Publications

ISSN: 2977-814X

ISSUE DOI: https://doi.org/10.51596/sijocp.v3i2

Volume 3 Issue 2

journal.spacestudies.co.uk

The Sensible Openness of Space in the

Works of Daniele Del Giudice, Peter

Handke and Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Samantha Sechi¹, PhD Candidate, University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, France

Article History:

Received November 18, 2022

Accepted July 24, 2023

Published Online December 29, 2023

https://doi.org/10.51596/sijocp.v3i2.88

Abstract

During the Renaissance, Alberti’s concept of total visibility and, more speciﬁcally, the rediscovery

of perspective as an artiﬁcial instrument of space construction led to an analytical representation

of spatiality. Since then, our understanding of the subject’s perception has changed, both in

nature and in function, as a consequence of a progressive anthropogenetic deconstruction. The

subject’s gaze used to focus on physical elements, and thus on functional elements, that ﬁll

space rather than perceiving space as such. Consequently, visibility has been structured by

solid shapes. However, in the works of Daniele del Giudice, Peter Handke, and Jean-Philippe

Toussaint, the subject overcomes perspective as a symbolic form that structures its relationship

to the outside world by opening the subject’s perception beyond any conceptual form. According

to Maldiney’s phenomenological approach, the genesis of space is prior to the constitution of

the emerging reality as an object. In fact, he states that space contains a dynamic that eludes

any positivist psychology concerned with existential questions in terms of representation or

objectifying causality. Visibility ﬁgures as an open semantic signiﬁcation that does not claim to

ground itself as truth in the objective world of perception and science. Therefore, art is not the

expression of an artistic ideal that precedes its existence, and that could be represented outside

and before it; rather, it emerges and unfolds as it appears. I intend to show that space does

not serve as a background for the representation of material objects, but instead becomes the

constitutive principle of form. When ‘form’ evolves within a ﬂow of spatiotemporal continuity,

it forms itself while forming the space in which it forms. The emergence of form implies the

opening of a space-creating surface that embeds the artwork in a process of becoming.

Keywords: Spatio

temporal continuity

gence of form

, representation, v

isibility, sensible op

enness, phenomenolo

gical

perception, emer

1. Introduction

One tendency in European literature today and in the last thirty years foregrounds the question

of the modes of representation of the present, the subject’s perception of the world, and the

subject’s inscription in a teleologically oriented historical ﬂow. These questions, which are the

subject of theoretical reﬂections on the exegetical process of a literary work, point to a change

Corresponding Author: Samantha Sechi, PhD Candidate, University Sorbonne Nouvelle-

Paris 3, France. samanthasechi@yahoo.de

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in the question of the mutation of the subject, which, when viewed from an anthropological

perspective, suggests that a signiﬁcant shift has occurred in the subject’s ﬁeld of visibility. The

narratives of Daniele del Giudice, Peter Handke, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint testify to such a

change; they transform literary space into an eventful experience in which form is involved in

a process of constant becoming. To stop portraying nature and to open up to the space of the

landscape itself: This is the new approach to perceiving the world as a sensual place embedded

in time.

Toussaint’s La Disparition du Paysage conveys the image of a subject who is unable to grasp

the passing of time with his gaze. Perceiving the landscape through the window makes him

‘sometimes [feel] as if [he were] in a museum, staring at this large, immobile painting [he has]

in front of [him] without being able to take [his] eyes off it’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.12). In Handke’s

novel Langsame Heimkehr, the perception of the various forces involved in the creation of the

landscape, as well as ‘the different movements and formations of the earth [... make Sorger’s]

head swim’ (Handke, 1979, p.22), as the protagonist fails to ‘capture this event in space and [to]

hold it fast’ (Handke, 1979, p.28). Instead, the Handkean character visualises ‘no more space before

him, only a gently rising openness without foreground or background’, devoid of perspective

(Handke, 1979, p.28). Similarly, in Atlante Occidentale, Del Giudice takes a critical stance towards

the subject’s ﬁeld of vision, noting that ‘what has been produced to be seen is not seen while it

is happening: it is seen beforehand as an intention and afterwards as a result’ (Del Giudice, 1980,

p.52). Indeed, the inability of the subject’s gaze to visualise space as a dimension intrinsic to time

seems to be one of the main topics in the three authors’ narratives.

Where, though, does this habit of ﬁxing space, as if looking at a painting, originate? Since the

Renaissance, art seems to have been under the inﬂuence of mathematical and geometric laws,

as artiﬁcial means such as monocular perspective or Alberti’s concept of total visibility served as

the basis for spatial construction. In this case, the perspective view of space provides a reduced

representation of things, as three-dimensional objects were mapped onto a two-dimensional

surface according to the laws of descriptive geometry. Thus, the perspective image coincides

with the one provided by direct vision when the viewer adopts the same position of the painter

by looking at the painting from the same centre of vision (Panofsky, 1975, p.17). It must be noted

that such a representation disregards the psychophysiological structure of the subject, as well

as his or her spatio-temporal involvement, since ‘the phenomenon is reduced to stable rules,

mathematically exact but dependent on the individual. These rules refer to the psychophysical

conditions of the visual impression, and the modalities of their effectiveness are tied to the

arbitrary determination of a subjective point of view’ (Panofsky, 1975, p.180). Besides the paradox

of claiming to conceive of a universal image of the world while starting from a subjective point

of view, the monocular perspective imposes a certain structure on space, which thus delimits

the ﬁeld of visibility. This visibility, moreover, is determined by the plenitude of forms that assign

a function to space, implying a dualism between ﬁgure and background. In this case, reality is

determined by a materialist idealism that measures the real via facts that are veriﬁed by the

perception of visible things in space. Descartes also held this conception of space; he conceives

of nature based on the separation of two distinct realities: res cogitans and res extensa, a trend

that continues through the emergence of scientiﬁc positivism. Academic criticism maintained

this attitude of an ‘aestheticisation of science’ (Latour, 2012, p.261) until the 19th century, until ‘the

concept of imitation as a fundamental aesthetic canon and the consistent afﬁrmation of the

formal and visual values of art works [were] the subject of a gradual decline’ (Panofsky, 1975,

p.20).

Deﬁning reality with the help of a structure shaped by scientiﬁc language implies a spatial

closure, in that ‘objectiﬁcation [is] the very act of perception that defuses sensing of its meaning’

(Maldiney, 2010, p.131). Turning the emerging reality into an object thus means conceptualising the

visible, enclosing time in an immutable form and imposing a circumscribed image of the world

on the perceiving subject, at the expense of phenomenological diversity. It is thus by questioning

an objectiﬁed image of the world that Del Giudice, Handke, and Toussaint intend to free narrative

from a mode of representing the present that is incapable of taking account of time along with

the places, in favour of an aesthetic form of narration that restores to the subject the sensation

journal.spacestudies.co.uk

35

of spatial belonging inscribed in duration. This study aims to show that space does not serve as

a background for representing objects; rather, it becomes the constitutive principle of both the

diegesis and exegesis of narrative.

2. Opening up Space, Breaking Free from Symbolic Meaning

The spaces depicted in the narratives of Del Giudice, Handke, and Toussaint are the subject of

an emergent nature that unfolds from the subject’s gaze. The subject then succeeds in grasping

the ascending movement of visual phenomena, beyond the limits imposed by the perspectival

view that conceptualises the perceived form. Thus, the subject undergoes a re-education of the

gaze that allows them to break with a spatialised nature that is prone to the laws of optics. The

narrative instrument thus assumes a space-creating function that can articulate the emergence

of form at the moment of its manifestation.

The places described in Atlante Occidentale are part of a spatial poetics that involves form in

a process of becoming. The protagonist Brahe, in his capacity as a physicist, explores space at

the CERN research centre with the help of the particle accelerator, starting from the inﬁnitesimal

visual standpoint of matter, where objects lose the concreteness of their form:

A thin ray of sunlight, focused and constricted by the thin slats of the blinds, illuminates

the dust in the air; ﬂoating grains that, although they are everywhere, seem to come from

the semi-darkness, moving slowly in the light and then disappearing towards the ceiling

or the ﬂoor, again beyond the threshold of shadow. Brahe, barely awake, around noon,

contemplates them from his bed; he thinks that everything could be visible like this, of

course, and that there might be no need for his work today if time, all the time that has

passed since time began, had not been chosen as a standard measure of perception and

sensation (Del Giudice, 1980, p.131).

The visualisation of objects in space occurs beyond their form, on the border between the

visible and the invisible. The decentring of the gaze from a ‘standard measure of perception and

sensibility’ invites us to reconsider the appearance of phenomena in the subject’s ﬁeld of vision

as an act of presencing form beyond its contours.

The same is true for Langsame Heimkehr, when the Handkean character, ‘[being] imbued with

the search for forms’ (Handke, 1979, p.13), explores the Alaskan wilderness in search of a place

that he can call his own and that consequently enables him to apprehend the newly emerging

character of ‘the river landscape of the Far North (which went on aging visibly, and the viewer

with it)’ (Handke, 1979, p.103). Similarly, in La Disparition du Paysage, the subject ‘[is immersed ...]

in the living reality [...], in the sensual substance [of] the hours, [...] in the ﬂow of [a] becoming day’

(Toussaint, 2021, p.29). It follows that ‘a form is not a structure: it does not have the constancy of

a schema, but that of a constitutive transformation [...], since a form belongs to space before it

belongs to the ﬁgure. It is not a contour, it is always opening’ (Maldiney, 2007, p.23-24).

2.1. Narrative Emerging from Emptiness

In L’espace vide. Phénoménologie et choréographie, Ballanfat argues that ‘the spacetime of the

painting—this is the example Maldiney draws on—is not a framework within which the form of

the artwork would unfold. Space and time emerge in the act of the appearance of the artwork

itself, insofar as they are implied by it. To appear is to open a space-forming surface, the blending

of the two being called “rhythm” in Maldiney’s pen’ (Ballanfat, 2021, p.99-100). It follows that the

narrative instrument is not a projection surface in which form is represented, but rather the place

in which and through which form unfolds. The space-creating surface to which Ballanfat refers

is reminiscent of an opening in space that represents the principle of form creation. In contrast

to any spatial hierarchisation, in which the background (empty space) plays only a subordinate

role compared to the ﬁgure that makes the subject’s ﬁeld of vision visible, the aesthetic form of

narrative is not predetermined by the content of a story, i.e., by the concept of a space-time that

has already been designed before the story unfolds. Therefore, the openness of space must

be grasped in terms of a spatio-temporal unfolding in which the work emerges and becomes

precisely in and through this space-forming process. Only then can space be described as

space-forming because it becomes a plastic, open, and thus dynamic dimension. It is then no

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longer a matter of considering the background and the ﬁgure as two separate entities, as the

character Epstein states in Atlante Occidentale: ‘while looking, one sees only the background;

in thinking, one thinks only the ﬁgure. Never the two together’ (Del Giudice, 1980, p.73). If space-

time emerges at the same time as the narrative, then ‘nothing’ precedes the latter’s appearance.

The physicist Brahe’s experiments are subject to a process of dematerialisation of the objects,

which appear as particles invisible to the eye. For this reason, Brahe repeatedly states that there

is nothing to see in the experiments: ‘What there was to see, we saw [...]. There is absolutely

nothing’ (Del Giudice, 1980, p.30). The same applies to the ﬂow of particles that circulate in the

accelerator and pass through the heart of the machine without making themselves visible. The

subject’s ﬁeld of visibility is thus determined by a space devoid of material forms, as there is no

image for the things Brahe seeks to see. He therefore uses sophisticated technical instruments

to amplify the gaze, such as screens that can detect the movement of particles: ‘on the control

screen, a frame with the serial number, the time, the abbreviation of the experiment, ﬁrst formed

out of the darkness; then from the right and left came very rapid lines, some of which collided in

the middle, where the impact produced further continuous or hatched lines’ (Del Giudice, 1980,

p.27). While the lines emerge from the black, darkness proves to be the ﬁrst state from which the

subject’s ﬁeld of vision takes shape.

Nothingness seems to be the necessary condition for re-educating the gaze beyond conceptual

perception because the objects emerge from an empty space that destroys the conceptual

character of form by setting in motion the dynamic forces involved in the construction of the

subject’s ﬁeld of vision. Indeed, the objects consist of a morphogenetic materiality that leads to

a new way of seeing and of relating to objects appearing in space, so that the subject can only

resort to his intuition to imagine things for which there is no image.

In Toussaint’s work, both darkness and semi-darkness constitute the triggering point for moments

of inner withdrawal, in which the subject gives free rein to his imagination. The protagonist in

L’Appareil photo sits in the semi-darkness of a photo booth, shielded from the outside world, and

allows himself a meditative moment in which he projects himself into the ﬂow of his thoughts:

All the conditions were now fulﬁlled, it seemed to me, to think. A few minutes ago [...] I had

stopped to observe the rain in the cone of light of a spotlight, in this very deﬁnite space

delimited by the light, closed and yet as free of material boundaries as the open trembling

of an outline of Rothko, and by imagining the rain falling in this place of the world, which

[...] now passed in my mind from the cone of light into the neighbouring darkness, without

it having been possible to draw boundaries between light and darkness (Toussaint, 1988,

p.93).

The photographic automaton, ‘freed from material boundaries’, becomes an open space

situated between the light (the visible) and the darkness (the invisible). The semi-darkness is an

intermediate space that functions as a transition from a space of total visibility, in which form is

circumscribed, to a space that opens up the same boundaries and thereby destroys corporeality.

The same is true for the protagonist in La Disparition du Paysage, who spends his convalescence

in a room in Ostend after falling into a coma: an interstitial state between life and death, and more

concretely, between material life and the death of the body. This experience is described as ‘a

great emptiness [and as a] numbness, slowing of the body, lethargy’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.16-17).

Nevertheless, emptiness is not meant as a radical opposition to corporeality; rather, it appears

in the perspective of a change, as a possibility of unfolding that crosses the boundary between

matter and emptiness such that the mental image and the image of reality merge. This is why

the protagonist says several times that he can no longer distinguish between what happens in

the external, material world and what emerges in his mind as the fruit of his imagination: ‘I see

[the doctors] moving away, slowly dissolving before my eyes, before they disappear, so that I do

not know whether these tormenting mental images correspond to a reality I have experienced

or whether they are only the result of the morbid imagination I have been rummaging through

again and again for months here in Ostend’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.18). In Handke’s stories, too, the

dematerialisation of objects is the triggering moment from which the imagination unfolds. For

example, in Langsame Heimkehr, Sorger is in an almost empty house ‘without curtains and

carpets’ (Handke, 1979, p.128) before his return to Europe. Again, a change is implied by a room

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that Sorger has emptied, as he himself ‘[strives] to become immaterial; [while his colleague]

Lauffer was heading for an excess of matter’ (Handke, 1979, p.129). The return to Europe is not

truly a return to the starting point, but rather an inner meditation of the protagonist, the subject

of a re-education of the gaze that apprehends the void differently from the oppositional concepts

of matter and nothingness.

The authors’ narratives seek to harness the subterranean energies of the void and to understand

the mechanisms involved in the creation of form and thus in the formation of narrative. In short,

they are mechanisms that operate from within the sphere of the invisible and contribute to

deﬁning the ﬁeld of visibility. Just as Del Giudice unfolds the power of narrative through images

that are described as ‘corpse-like’—be it the ‘destruction of corporeality’ in Toussaint’s narrative

or the ‘destruction of matter’ in Atlante Occidentale and the Handkean narrative—this notion of

destruction is by no means intended as total annihilation, but rather announces the opening of

the ﬁeld of the visible.

2.2. Void as a Receptacle of Form

As the relationship between matter and emptiness is no longer considered dichotomous, there

is no longer any question of regarding space as an empty background overlaid by the fullness

of form. Similarly, the ﬁgure is not meant to lend function to space, as it emerges in and through

the openness of the space. In Atlante Occidentale, Epstein thinks about how to conceive the

story of a narrative and concludes that the environment surrounding the character involved in a

particular experience is essential to grasping the sensation of space. Perception and sensation

are inseparable entities, as the perception of the external world should reﬂect the subject’s

internal sensation of space. Epstein claims that ‘he had never been able to imagine a character,

a situation, or a feeling, except in a certain air and in a certain light, until he was convinced that

the atmosphere was exactly what it was: the mass of air enveloping a story’ (Del Giudice, 1980,

p.120). Similarly, the scene on the airﬁeld introduces a new notion of spatiality as Brahe is about

to pilot the plane: ‘From that moment on, the air was no longer the same: it sought the propeller,

it sought the aeroplane, it clung to the wings and to the fuselage and to the tail surfaces, forming

an immobile veil, a ﬁrst layer on which other layers slid viscously and began to grow and resist;

particles of air strung themselves into ever thicker webs of liquid, into ever more volatile veins

of air, moving and forming a cavity that absorbed the full shape of the aeroplane’ (Del Giudice,

1980, p.124). It is not the aeroplane that penetrates the air, but the air that takes the form of the

aeroplane and envelops it by ‘forming an immobile veil’. As the plane accelerates, more layers of

air form around it, opening up space for a vacuum to take in ‘the full shape of the plane’. Whether

it is the way a story is conceived, like Epstein’s reﬂections on the exegesis of a narrative, or an

inherent element of the story, like the aeroplane, both have in common that they are embraced

by a mass of air that turns into an interacting dimension with either the form of a story or the

form of an object. As Ballanfat notes, ‘Sensing space should not be understood in terms of

intentionality. Sensing space […] is [not] a matter of aiming an object by consciousness that the

subject has of it. Sensing is fundamentally understood as an “opening up”, “communicating”’

(Ballanfat, 2021, p.89). In other words, it is not about making spatial experiencing an exclusively

mental entity, and consequently, it is not about relating to the object through consciousness.

Spatial openness is understood as a new possibility of sensing because it inverts the monocular

perspective in that the point of view is projected into the object itself, ‘opening it up’. The subject

arrives at a sensation of the object when it is immersed in the object through this very opening,

creating an immediate contact with the world that transcends the separation between subject

and object.

Indeed, the opening of space in Handke occurs through the immersion of the subject in the

landscape ‘into [its] unexplored interior’ (in German: ‘ins Landesinnere’. Handke, 1980, p. 40). The

author uses a wide range of terminology such as ‘empty ﬁelds’ or ‘hinterland’ to create a sense of

space and openness. I would like to emphasise that the word ‘hinterland’ has several deﬁnitions,

two of which I wish to highlight; the ﬁrst is ‘[t]he remote areas of a country away from the coast

or the banks of major rivers’ [1]. This ﬁrst deﬁnition evokes a notion of a vast landscape and

could be interpreted as a space devoid of contours, as long as it is located far from coasts and

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shores—in short, from natural elements that delimit this same space. The second deﬁnition is ‘[a]

n area lying beyond what is visible or known’ [1]. The second deﬁnition is more interesting, as it

shows that this large area remains beyond the visible and, like the ﬁrst deﬁnition, implies a space

without borders.

I would like to point out that the term Landesinnere describes an explicitly penetrable space

that can be traversed like an interior, whereas the word hinterland seems more implicit, since it

evokes a notion of distance or a distant land rather than a vast space into which the subject can

project himself. In this case, vastness in terms of distance does not necessarily imply a plastic

space; it could be mistakenly grasped as a place of dispersion, which is not the meaning Handke

intends. In his works, the sense of vastness is conveyed by the opening of the image and thus

of the space that the subject can internalise by projecting himself into it. This same opening,

metaphorically intended as a ‘corridor’ to be traversed, is the equivalent of emptiness embracing

form. In Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, the ‘empty’ spaces do not serve as a backdrop, but form

informal backgrounds that are transformed as soon as an object appears within this void.

Not long ago I was standing on the snow-covered summit of the Untersberg. Not far above

me, almost within reach, a crow was gliding on the wind. I saw the characteristic bird yellow

of the retracted claws, the golden brown of the wings shimmering in the sun, the blue of

the sky. These three moved across the sky like the passing of a large, airy surface, in which

at the same moment I saw a three-coloured ﬂag. It was a ﬂag that stood for nothing, a thing

of pure colour. But through it I have at last become capable of looking at actual ﬂags (which

up until then had only cut off my view), because now their peaceful prototype exists in my

imagination (Handke, 1980, p.11).

In this example, the shape of the bird is formed by the elements surrounding it. Thus, the wings

appear only through the golden-brown rays of the sun; the claws clinging to the body appear

not through their form, but through the colour yellow; and the crow appears for the ﬁrst time

by ﬂuttering in the wind. It follows that the animal is received by an empty, formless space,

forming itself through elements that are external to it and which engulf it in a form of spatial

interiority. This immersion implies that the ‘background’,

instead of being reduced to a pure

function of the object that ﬁlls it, interacts with it, so that the ‘vast air space’ is transformed into a

space full of colour, just as the object that has lost its material character emerges from an ‘airy’

spatial opening and becomes ‘a simple object made of colour’. The descriptions of Handke’s

landscapes show a certain inclination towards the interior, for example, when the protagonist in

Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire projects himself into a 17th-century painting while contemplating

it and walks through the landscape towards the ‘interior’ of the painting, or again when the

appearance of the bird is conditioned by the envelopment of spatial emptiness that allows it to

emerge from an interiority. This inwardness is described as Inbild (in-image). In a conversation

with Herbert Gamper, Handke deﬁned this concept as a faithful representation of the object

through imagination because, according to Handke, imagination is not meant to be an additional

colouring or distortion of reality (Handke, 2016). The Inbild is both the interior of the object and

the interior image of the object that reﬂects its subjective side (Handke, 2016). It follows that

the object must necessarily be involved in a process of constant mutation because emptiness

intended in terms of a space-creating source destroys the object’s conceptual form; its interior

merges with the surrounding space-time, giving rise to a ‘new’ object that unfolds in duration.

However, form mutation is inherent to the subject’s perception, and their subjectivity is projected

onto the object, so that the in-image consists of both a form of interiority of the object itself—as

a viewed object without material boundaries—and a form of subjectivity of the viewing subject,

both of which contribute to the transformation of the object. Del Giudice also encourages

conceiving of interiority as a concept that aims to merge inner and outer perception. The author

emphasises this notion of interiority by stressing the need to conceive of form from within

(Colummi Camerino, 2002). The same is true in La Disparition du Paysage during a moment of

inner withdrawal in which the Toussaintiant character ‘[manages] to escape into [his] inner world’

(Toussaint, 2021, p.33). While the story initially seems to take place in a room in Ostend, where

the subject convalesces, the memory of a past event emerges and overlaps onto the present:

‘With an intense gaze and dreamy eyes, I continue to stare out of the window, not knowing now

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39

whether I am still in Ostend or still on the bus in Brussels in the early hours of that March morning.

The outside world gradually disappears around me, the backdrops blur’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.34).

As in Handke, the Toussaintian character ‘penetrates into the hinterland’ of his most intimate

thoughts, leading into the depths of the narrative, which has several diegetic layers. The frame

story—i.e., the recovery in Ostend, which determines the physical position of the protagonist—

opens up by embracing another story in terms of a memory, juxtaposing a mental image and an

image of reality. This mise en abyme leads to a progression towards the ‘ground’ of the narrative,

for through this folding, the subject enters a sphere where diegesis and exegesis intersect. This

place of intersection could also be deﬁned as the place of origin and formation of the novel: ‘my

thoughts polarise on a distant point of my inner horizon, and I feel a novel scene emerging in my

mind, still formless, not yet fully grown out of its chrysalis, from which I see it slowly emerging. I

move in this developing, still formless, immaterial scene, which I let approach my consciousness.

I cannot say what it means or who the protagonists are [...], but I am present in this invocation, I

experience it from within’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.35-36).

In general, spatial openness creates inwardness, which, however, does not contradict any

outwardness: ‘We are not only together in a container, but we are “between”, and this “between”

is not simply a “between us”. It is we who are embedded in this “between” that ﬂoods us from all

sides’ (Maldiney, 2010, p.95). It is thus the subject that is contained in an empty interstitial space, as

it participates in the formation of form while projecting themself into the object by opening it up.

In this sense, subject and object become one, as ‘everything inside opens outwards’ (Cheng, 1991,

p.100); ‘the subject [projects] outward in stages; and the outside [becomes] the inner landscape

of the subject’ (Cheng, 1991, p.105). Since the perspective is now reversed, it is no longer a matter

of establishing an opposition between interiority and exteriority.

2.3. Void as a Place of Origin and Mutation of Form

Maldiney argues that ‘[a form] diffuses out of itself what it takes into itself. It generates a space

whose dimensions impose themselves on ﬁgurative and non-ﬁgurative elements as their

constitutive tensions’ (Maldiney, 2010, p.24). As soon as the void embraces the form, now deprived

of its material contours, it develops in a spatio-temporal continuity. This continuity evokes a spatial

opening in which the form is simultaneously produced and involved in a process of becoming.

‘The form radiates out of itself what it takes into itself’ insofar as a circular movement is created

between the open space in which the becoming form appears and the space that is ‘external’

to it. In La Disparition du Paysage, narrative ‘opens up’ through a mise en abyme of various

diegetic layers. The formation of a novel scene occurs from a ‘distant point [of the character’s]

inner horizon’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.35) in the depths of his mind. The Toussaintian character thus

claims to be both ‘the substance and origin [of the ﬂow of thought], [for] in [him] it wanders,

subterranean, invisible, peaceful, inexhaustible’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.32). He then becomes part in

the process of form mutation from this spatial opening, which is meant to be an intimate and

immediate process of internalisation that is parallel to the becoming of form, until a glaring light

interrupts this process of transformation: ‘[The] outside world [then] crashes through this open

breach into [his] thoughts, sweeping away the spiritual world [he is] [in the process of] building in

a torrent of shards of glass and splinters of iron’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.36). It follows that the external

world takes the place of the mental universe to the point of eclipsing it. This juxtaposition of inner

and outer world results in a process that produces shards that lead to the destruction of the

subject’s inner universe by shattering it ‘like a ﬂood of splinters’. After this inner destruction, there

also follows an outer destruction, as ‘the landscape [fades] before [the Toussaintian subject]’, just

as ‘the sounds of the world gradually fall silent’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.45). Since the mental image

and the image of reality form an inseparable unity, the external world takes on the same form

of the subject’s consciousness. The merging of the outside world with the mental world ensures

that the view outside also gradually fades: ‘The room begins to shrink, the walls shake and

move closer to me’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.46). If ‘form is always opening’, it is involved in a process

of ceaseless becoming in which, once inscribed in duration, form is made to evolve without ever

being able to stagnate. This is what Epstein deﬁnes in Atlante Occidentale as ‘ﬂuid form’ (Del

Giudice, 1980, p.39), which is involved in the ‘uninterrupted cycle of imagination’ (Del Giudice, 1980,

p.73) that makes the distinction between interiority and exteriority impossible. The juxtaposition

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of mental image and reality must be grasped in terms of a circular movement that causes what

the form absorbs into itself—in this case, the process of constructing a novel scene in Toussaint’s

work—to simultaneously diffuse out of the form, out of ‘its chrysalis from which [the subject]

sees form slowly emerging’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.35). This process of mutating form eventually

extinguishes the consciousness of the subject; similarly, the materiality of the external world is

subject to a major mutation that changes the ﬁeld of visibility until ‘the last visible moment of [the

subject’s] life comes to an end’ (Toussaint, 2021, p.47).

In Handke’s work, emptiness also contributes to changing the materiality of the object with it,

which affects the consistency of space. The chapter ‘The Great Forest’ in Die Lehre der Sainte-

Victoire illustrates how the Handkean ﬁgure, by entering the forest depicted in Jacob van

Ruisdael’s painting, penetrates through the opening of the painting and carries its materiality into

the void. The path into the forest conveys a sense of vastness and penetrable spaciousness;

simultaneously, the painting begins to gain plasticity and grow beyond its form:

The trees are dark, intermeshing spruces; each tree—and consequently the whole forest—

is about to start spinning. A wide, straight road—apparently the main entrance—leads into

the forest. The threshold feeling is a calm that leads one onward without purpose. Once

inside, you ﬁnd that the forest, which looked level from outside, conceals a low chain of hills

running eastward (visible from outside the forest only when there is snow on the ground

and the rising ground shows through) (Handke, 1980, p.99-100).

While the forest appears from the outside as a dense mass that barely allows a glimpse of the

details of the vegetation, the same dense mass of trees, as soon as the subject penetrates into its

interior, opens up to a multitude of different shapes: ‘From the road, you ﬁrst glimpse the western

foot of the hill and at the same time, like an enclave of colour in the mass of spruces, a lighter-

coloured, almost parklike zone of acacias, alders, and hornbeams, through which a number of

possible paths lead uphill’ (Handke, 1980, p.101). Consequently, the void is intended to be a spatial

opening that can create a plane of spatiality ‘in excess’. This dimension transforms space into

a place that can be entered. It also creates a certain sense of interiority, which, however, is not

opposed to exteriority because ‘what the form takes in’ affects the consistency of space, which

is indeed exterior.

However, form mutation only takes place in and through this opening. The relationship between

interiority and exteriority in this case should be understood as a circularity in which the form

constantly evolves, like a form without ﬁxed structures. Thus, the void can be both container and

interstice, for ‘we [...] become integrated into this “in-between” [...] that ﬂoods us from all sides’

(Maldiney, 2010, p.95).

3. Conclusion

In conclusion, emptiness is not to be equated with a nihilistic dimension that resists reality. On the

contrary, it represents a fertile source from which the subject’s ﬁeld of visibility emerges. In fact,

emptiness enables the experience of an ampliﬁed reality inscribed in duration. Space is enlarged

through a process of dematerialisation in which corporeality is destroyed, and thus objects are

‘opened up’. The destruction of matter in this case takes place through mise en abyme: through

the virtual becoming of things in Del Giudice, through the contemplation of paintings that expand

into penetrable landscapes in Handke, and through the diegetic ellipses in Toussaint’s narrative.

In all three cases, the gaze of the subject projects itself into the object, while the perspective is

being reversed. In this sense, the ﬁeld of vision enlarges as the focalisation of a detail is ampliﬁed

into a panoramic view by a gaze beyond form. The subject’s ﬁeld of visibility thus stands under

the sign of an open spatiality, as visual phenomena constantly unfold and are implicated in a

process of becoming through which the fullness of form emerges, paradoxically, from a void.

Conﬂict of Interests

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the author.

Biographical notes on authors

Samantha Sechi is a researcher afﬁliated with the University of Siena and Université Sorbonne

journal.spacestudies.co.uk

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Nouvelle. Her research focuses on comparative literature, literary space, narrative theory, and

the relationships between literature, architecture, photography, and the built environment. Her

work explores spatial narratives, storytelling, and interdisciplinary approaches to culture, with

presentations and publications in the ﬁelds of architecture, literature, and urban studies.

Endnotes

This paper has been presented at the SPACE International Conference 2022 on Architecture

and Literature.

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