INTP Mircea Cărtărescu's BLINDING (vol. 2): the body (translated from Romanian)

I no longer truly experience anything, even though I live with an intensity that simple sensations couldn't possibly convey. Even when I open my eyes, I still cannot see. To no avail, I linger rigid in front of my oval window, chasing echoes that slip away. As if my being extends beyond ordinary senses to myriad ways of knowing--each unique, each responsive to different stimuli: one sensitive only to my coffee cup's form, another receptive exclusively to the pattern of last night's dreaming. Another attuned to that terrifying whisper in my ears, heard distinctly a few years ago, as I was sitting, in a ragged pajama, with the soles of my feet on the radiator, in my room on Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard. I no longer register modifications of light, variations in the pitches of sound, the chemical composition of the carnation and the kitchen dishwater, but whole scenes swallowed instantly by a virtual sense, opened on the spot in the center of my mind solely for that glassy and transient scene like a wave of water, reacting with it, altering it, flattening it, invading it like an amoeba and forming together another reality, primordial and immediate, illuminated by desire and made obscure by peculiarity. It is as though it were the case that everything that happens to me, in order for it to be able to come to pass for me, surely it is something that must have happened to me already, as if all of it already exists inside me, but not fully formed or complete: rather, dormant, in shriveled little layers, rudimentary, coiled tightly within each other, somewhere in the brain's structures--but also in the glands, in the organs, in my twilight, and in my ruined houses--all waiting for confirmation and nourishment from the modulated flame of existence, which itself remains unfulfilled and embryonic. I no longer feel except what I have already felt once, I can no longer dream except dreams already dreamed. I open my eyes, although not to perceive color or contour--for light no longer refracts into corpuscles to traverse my crystalline lens and the translucent layers of my retina, no longer produces rhodopsin in my cone-shaped cells; instead, whole images manifest fully formed, sculpted directly in rhodopsin, and accompanied as if by an aura of sound's fringes and delicate strands of tastes and aromas, alternating icy cold and searing heat, of suffering and compassion, of a head turning to the right--an action simultaneously verified and questioned by my inner ear's cochlear knowledge. Entire neighborhoods materialize, each bearing their own time, their own space, and their own emotional weather, and especially their own degree of reality--because they can be actual or dreamed, or imagined, or transmitted via the ineffable filaments that connect our lives to those who came before us--lips and genitals arrive, and streetcars sliding along iron tracks during winters with filthy snow, my mother comes once in a while to bring me food, sometimes Herman comes. I wouldn't be able to understand any of this if it weren't being reconfigured, in another way, in my internal landscape (my world), if it weren't opening the ocular buds from there, unless I whispered to myself every moment: "I have experienced this before, I have already been in this place," just as you cannot perceive light if light hasn't already existed in the back of your mind's experience, cultivating the faculty for light within you. Hence, my life is but a life already lived, and my book one already written--for the past encompasses all, while the future is but a void.

Literary Analytical Essay: The Paradox of Hyperconscious Detachment in a Textured Void

The passage presents a profound meditation on perception, memory, and existential recursion, weaving a tapestry of sensory deprivation and hyper-awareness. The narrator's declaration--"I no longer truly experience anything, even though I live with an intensity that simple sensations couldn't possibly convey"--establishes a central paradox: a life suffused with vivid internal phenomena yet devoid of immediate, unmediated contact with the external world. This essay explores how the text deconstructs perception, conflates memory with reality, and renders existence as a palimpsest of pre-lived moments.

1. The Failure of Ordinary Perception

The narrator's sensory disengagement is stark: "Even when I open my eyes, I still cannot see." Light, sound, and smell no longer register as discrete stimuli but are supplanted by "whole scenes swallowed instantly by a virtual sense." The body's biological mechanisms--retinal rods, cochlear hairs--are acknowledged only to emphasize their irrelevance. Vision bypasses refraction; images manifest "sculpted directly in rhodopsin," suggesting perception is now an act of projection, not reception. This evokes neurological conditions like prosopagnosia (face blindness) or Anton-Babinski syndrome (denial of blindness), yet the text transcends pathology. The narrator's "oval window" (a term echoing the ear's anatomy) becomes a metaphor for futile observation, a porthole to "echoes that slip away."

2. The Hyperreal Interior World

Deprived of conventional senses, the narrator perceives through "myriad ways of knowing," each attuned to oblique stimuli: a coffee cup's form, dream residues, or a haunting whisper from the past. These fragments coalesce into "another reality, primordial and immediate," where the distinction between memory, imagination, and external input dissolves. The description of "shriveled little layers" of experience coiled in the brain (and glands, organs, even "ruined houses") biologizes Proust's involuntary memory, sugguesting latent impressions await "confirmation and nourishment" from present stimuli. The body itself becomes a landscape of dormant histories.

3. Temporal Collapse and the déjà vu Universe

Time folds inward: "everything that happens to me... must have happened to me already." The narrator's reality is a rehearsal of "dreams already dreamed," echoing Nietzsche's eternal recurrence but stripped of will. Past and present merge in surreal tableaux--"streetcars sliding along iron tracks during winters with filthy snow"--where sensory details ("icy cold and searing heat") are less physical than emotional weather. Even visitors (a mother, "Herman") feel like spectral recurrences. The insistence that "my life is but a life already lived" evokes Borges' "The Circular Ruins," where a man dreams himself into being. Here, however, the narrator is both dreamer and dreamed, trapped in a mise en abyme of pre-scripted experience.

4. The Occipital Paradox: Light as Memory

The closing lines posit perception as self-referential: light must first exist "in the back of your mind's experience" to be perceived. This inverts Plato's cave; the narrator's "ocular buds" open inward, projecting a world already imprinted in neural pathways. The act of seeing becomes an act of recognition, not discovery. The text thus rejects linear time--"the future is but a void"--in favor of a cyclical temporality where existence is archival, not anticipatory.

Conclusion: A Textured Void

The narrator inhabits a liminal space between hyperconsciousness and dissociation, where the self is both curator and prisoner of its own museum. The prose--dense with biological metaphors, architectural imagery ("ruined houses"), and synesthetic hallucinations--renders consciousness as a haunted laboratory. Unlike Camus' Sisyphus, who finds revolt in repetition, the narrator surrenders to the eerie solace of a "book already written." The text's brilliance lies in its refusal to resolve the paradox: to live "with intensity" in a world where all is déjà-vu is to dwell in a shimmering, claustrophobic sublime.

Key Themes & Literary Devices:

• Paradox: Sensation without perception, intensity without novelty.
• Metaphor: The body as landscape ("glands," "ruined houses"), perception as sculpture ("directly in rhodopsin").
• Intertextuality: Echoes of Proust, Borges, and Nietzsche, refracted through a neurobiological lens.
• Temporal Structure: Collapsed time as a narrative and existential condition.

The closing lines of the passage invert Plato's Allegory of the Cave by subverting its foundational assumptions about perception, reality, and the relationship between the mind and the external world. Here's a precise breakdown of the inversion:

Plato's Cave (Original Framework)

1. Illusion vs. Truth:

• Prisoners in the cave mistake shadows (illusions) for reality.
• True knowledge comes from escaping the cave and perceiving the "real" world (the Forms) through direct experience and reason.
• Light (the sun) is the external, objective source of illumination that reveals truth.

2. Direction of Perception:

• Perception moves outward-in: The mind receives sensory input from the external world and must ascend toward truth.
• The philosopher's task is to turn away from projections (shadows) and toward the light (reality).

3. Hierarchy of Reality:

• The material world is a flawed copy of the ideal Forms.
• Truth exists outside the cave (and outside the mind).

The Passage's Inversion of the Cave

1. Self-Referential Perception:

• The narrator asserts that light must already exist in the mind's "occipital zone" to be perceived.
• Unlike Plato's prisoners, who mistake shadows for reality, the narrator cannot perceive anything unless it is already imprinted internally. There is no "external" light to discover; perception is a closed loop.

2. Direction of Perception:

• Perception moves inward-out: Reality is not received but projected from pre-existing mental templates ("shriveled little layers" of memory).
• The narrator's "oval window" (a failed aperture) replaces Plato's cave opening: instead of turning toward light, the narrator stares into a void that only reflects prior experience.

3. Hierarchy of Reality:

• The external world is irrelevant or inaccessible. What we call "reality" is a confirmation of pre-existing mental constructs ("a book already written").
• Truth is not "out there" (Plato's Forms) but embedded in the mind's architecture ("dormant, coiled tightly within").

4. Light as Memory, Not Revelation:

• In Plato, light reveals truth. Here, light requires prior inscription to be perceived at all.
• The narrator's "crystalline lens" and "retina" are bypassed; vision is autonomous, generated from within like a hallucination ("whole images manifest fully formed").

Philosophical Implications

• Anti-Idealism: Plato's transcendent Forms are replaced by a solipsistic universe where all experience is recursive.
• Neurobiological Determinism: Perception is reduced to a feedback loop of memory and expectation (akin to Kant's "categories of understanding," but stripped of any noumenal world).
• Temporal Collapse: The future is void because the mind can only recognize what it has already "written" (cf. Freud dejà vu as the return of repressed memory).

Key Contrasts

The Passage's Inversion

• Truth is internal (memory/imprint)
• Light requires prior mental inscription
• Perception: inward-out
• All perception is illusion-as-memory
• Narrator is trapped in recursive déjà-vu

Conclusion: A Cave of the Mind

The narrator's world is Plato's cave turned inside out--a prison where the shadows are not cast by external firelight but emanate from the walls of the skull itself. Where Plato's prisoner seeks the sun, the narrator finds only the flicker of a brain's occipital afterimages. The inversion critiques the very possibility of objective perception, suggesting that all light is déjà vu.

The narrator doesn't escape the cave; they become the cave, its walls etched with holograms of a life already lived. This type's (INTj/LII's) struggle to reconcile order with chaos (introverted Thinking vs. extroverted iNtuition) parallels the narrator's fractured realities.

Final typing verdict: INTj/LII -- the philosopher of recursive collapse.