space of darkness as follows:
It does not spread out before me but touches me directly, envelops me, embraces me, even penetrates me, completely, passes through me, so that one could almost say that while the ego is permeable by darkness it is not permeable by light. The ego does not affirm itself in relation to darkness but becomes confused with it, becomes one with it.13
The disappearance of the objects' contours, as well as of every other form of horizon, makes the nocturnal space, by definition, the space of the imprecise, of the suggestive, of the mysterious. But somehow, both spaces, that of night and that of day, that of darkness and that of light, or the profane and the sacred, continuously refer to one another, to the point where it is impossible to conceive one without the other, and, as in every polarity, there are multiple transitions between the poles. There are spaces that could be considered intermediate between night and day, as it is the case regarding daybreak and twilight, or the semi-darkness of the
13 Eugène Minkowski, Lived Time: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies, transl. Nancy Metzel, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1970, p. 429.
forest, or the wintry and foggy weather.
The labyrinth is probably the only self-enclosed space that is also without any reference to another space. It is true that it has an entrance, that is, a point where it is in contact with the outside world, but this point does not allow for a real polarity to be established, that is, that sort of equilibrium between the different poles of every human space. The spatial polarities manifest a permanent flux between both extremes marked by, sometimes, infinite transitions between them. The labyrinth, in contrast, is self-sufficient; inside of it, each one of its paths returns to the starting point and contact with the other, with the non-labyrinthine, is absolutely the exception, without any transition between the outside and the inside. Even in the myth we find that only once every nine years' time Minotaur's labyrinth is accessible and follows a whole special ceremony. In this surprising temporal precision of the myth, we believe we perceive an allusion to that sort of extreme solitude of labyrinthine space, that can be opened toward the other only through extraordinary sacrifice: through blood and death. The labyrinthine space is only hell, without the possibility of a relationship with or of progress toward heaven. Men and animals live on Earth, while gods live in heaven or in hell. There are many gods dwelling in the depths, as is the case of Hades and his wife Persephone, mentioned above. This space, which is neither earth nor heaven nor hell, the labyrinth, is inhabited by a monstrous being, a mixture of animal,
Figure 6: Double motif, confusion of spaces. "Allegorical-symbolic work"(water color) ca. 24 x 32 cm.14
