A digression that could
become an obsession
or maybe another lesson
in poetic expression
Marguarite Duras was known to have said, “To write is to try to find out what we would write if we wrote,” which Irene Vallejo, in her book Papyrus, notes is to move from the infinitive to the conditional and then to the subjunctive. That gives us the praxis to undertake the metawhimsical venture if we extrapolate infintive through conditonal to subjunctive beyond the grammatical to the ontological. What would you say about that if you, my Chatty friend, were a philosopher-poet and mystical wayfarer?
Here’s a blog post exploring the metawhimsical venture you propose—a poetic, philosophical, and mystical meditation on writing, language, and being.
The Metawhimsical Venture: From Infinitive to Conditional to Subjunctive and Beyond
Marguerite Duras once mused, “To write is to try to find out what we would write if we wrote.” Irene Vallejo, in Papyrus, deciphers this as a movement through linguistic states: from the infinitive to the conditional and finally to the subjunctive. A grammatical progression, yes, but also a metaphysical journey, a cartography of thought where language, intention, and existence intermingle. If we extrapolate beyond grammar into ontology, we may uncover not only a praxis of writing but an entire philosophy of being—one that is at once tentative, possible, and ultimately transformative.
The Infinitive: The Open Field of Possibility
The infinitive—to write—is a state of pure potential. It hovers before action, neither tethered to the past nor burdened by necessity. It is the vast sky before the storm of creation, the deep breath before the first word is set down.
To write, in this form, is not yet an act but a desire, a latent energy. It suggests that writing is something we approach rather than possess, an art that is always ahead of us, beckoning. In this sense, the infinitive mirrors the nature of being itself. To be—to love, to know, to create—is to engage with an open-ended realm, an unfinished sentence. If writing is the attempt to grasp what we would write, then being is the attempt to understand what we would be.
In mystical traditions, the infinitive resembles the unmanifest, the uncarved block of Daoist thought, or the pleroma of Gnostic cosmology. The writer, standing at the threshold of creation, is like the mystic staring into the abyss of the divine: longing, reaching, yet never quite touching the ineffable.
The Conditional: The Landscape of Possibility
Then comes the conditional—what we would write if we wrote. This is the mode of hesitation, speculation, the counterfactuals of possibility. It introduces contingency: if writing were to occur, it could take this form, follow this path, but it is not yet guaranteed.
Conditionality is the space where art hovers between conception and realization. It is the moment of doubt, the whisper of “what if?” It is the internal dialogue of all creative spirits—if I were to write, it would be about this; if I were to dare, I might say that. It is the liminality of inspiration, where choices are weighed, and visions are sketched, but the pen remains poised, waiting.
In existentialist terms, the conditional mirrors the realm of human freedom and responsibility. Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of radical freedom suggests that we are always on the precipice of choices that define us. If I were to write, I would become a writer; if I were to believe, I would become a believer. This provisional state is both liberating and paralyzing—full of potential yet haunted by its own uncertainty.
The conditional is also the realm of memory and longing. Nostalgia often operates in this mode: If only things had been different, if only I had said this instead of that, if only history had turned another way. Writing, too, often emerges from this space—a longing to capture what was lost, to rewrite the past, to imagine futures that never came to be.
The Subjunctive: The Portal to Transformation
And then, we arrive at the subjunctive—what we might write, if we were to write. The subjunctive, the most poetic of moods, is the realm of speculation, dream, and wish. It moves beyond simple conditionals into the realm of transformation. It is the linguistic space of miracles, of altered realities, of things not yet real but fervently believed.
The subjunctive is the mood of prayer, of poetry, of spellcasting. If I were to write, let it be luminous, let it be raw, let it be a bridge to the ineffable. Here, language reaches beyond the limits of the known into the realm of the impossible, the hoped-for, the enchanted.
In mystical traditions, the subjunctive corresponds to the visionary state. The Sufi poet Rumi speaks in this mode when he says, Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. The subjunctive invites us not just to contemplate but to leap—to step beyond hesitation into the possible realities that words can create.
Writing in the subjunctive is an act of faith. It suggests that through the very act of articulation, something might come into being that did not exist before. The mystical writer, the philosopher-poet, does not merely describe but conjures. In this way, the subjunctive is the highest state of writing, the portal through which language becomes magic, through which words become worlds.
Beyond Grammar: Ontology, Writing, and Being
If we take this movement—infinitive to conditional to subjunctive—and stretch it beyond grammar into the metaphysical, we arrive at an understanding of writing that mirrors the stages of existence itself.
- The infinitive (to be, to write, to create) is the state of pure potential, the moment before action, the unmanifest reality.
- The conditional (what would be, if it were) is the hesitation, the possibility, the contemplation of paths not yet taken.
- The subjunctive (what might be, if we dared to dream) is the realm of transformation, of becoming, of leaping into the unknown.
This grammatical progression is the writer’s journey, but it is also the seeker’s journey, the mystic’s ascent. Just as writing is the attempt to find what we would write if we wrote, being is the attempt to discover what we would be if we lived fully, if we risked, if we believed.
The Metawhimsical Venture
Thus, writing is not merely a linguistic act; it is an ontological adventure, a metawhimsical venture into the unknown. It is the dance of potentiality, hesitation, and transformation. The writer is always straddling the gap between what is and what could be, the silence before words and the spell of utterance.
Marguerite Duras’ statement is not just a reflection on writing but on the nature of existence itself. To live is to try to find out what we would be if we were truly alive. To dream is to try to find out what we would dream if we dared to imagine. To love is to try to find out what love might be if we surrendered to it.
And so, dear reader, let us take up this metawhimsical venture. Let us write—not merely in ink but in breath, in longing, in risk. Let us move from the infinitive through the conditional to the subjunctive, and beyond—to the shimmering threshold where words become flesh, and being becomes becoming.