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is literature, and the unveiling of the visible, the speech of things. Merleau-Pontycomments on this poem by saying that “the visible and what the poem means [are]interwoven (entrelacés). 28 (NC 1959-61, 186)In “Eye and Mind,” Merleau-Ponty provides a remarkable example of this interweaving,which is the painter’s vision (and not the profane vision) of a swimming pool. 29It is clear that, with this description of the view of a swimming pool, Merleau-Ponty isstill concerned with a figure-ground relation, since he is speaking about the bottom (lefond) of the pool. Here is the description:If I saw, without this flesh, the geometry of the tile, then I would stop seeing the tiledbottom as it is, where it is, namely: farther away than any identical place. I cannot saythat the water itself – the aqueous power, the syrupy and shimmering element – is inspace; all this is not somewhere else either, but it is not in the pool. It dwells in it, ismaterialized there, yet it is not contained there; and if I lift my eyes toward the screenof cypresses where the web of reflections plays, I must recognize that the water visitsit as well, or at least sends out to it its active and living essence. This inner animation,this radiation of the visible, is what the painter seeks beneath the names of depth,space, and color. (OE 70-71/142, my emphasis)Merleau-Ponty selects the vision of a swimming pool because, it seems, any swimmingpool has to have depth so that one might be able to swim in it. The depth is the water,which is not in space or in the pool; the water “dwells there,” as Merleau-Ponty says, butdwelling (habiter) means that the water is not contained in the pool but is itself thecontainer. Or, as Merleau-Ponty says here, it is an “element.” Now in The Visible and theInvisible Merleau-Ponty also calls the flesh an element, saying “to designate the flesh, wewould need the old term ‘element,’ in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth,and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway [mi-chemin] between the spatiotemporalindividual and the idea.” (VI 184/139) Without the flesh of the water, we wouldbe able to grasp the tiles with our hands and hold them in one identical place, but thenwe would not see their geometry, or, more precisely, geometry. The flesh allows us to seethe geometry, since the water’s distortions function as a sort of variation of the spatiotemporalindividual. The variation makes that the geometry is “farther away than anyidentical place.” But, being midway, the water makes that the geometry is not so far awayas to exist in a second world of forms without any support from the visible; (Cf. OE91/149) again, we see here that Merleau-Ponty’s thought is an anti-Platonism. Thegeometry reaches only as low as the bottom of the syrupy element and only as high as thescreen of cypresses.You can see, I hope, that with this description of the swimming pool Merleau-Pontyis no longer speaking of voice. The geometry of the tiles refers us to the line. It is wellknown that Merleau-Ponty says, in this context, that modern painting contests the “prosaicline,” the line between a field and a meadow which the pencil or brush would only haveto reproduce. Again, we can see that Merleau-Ponty is not interested in the traditional ideaof art as imitation or reproduction. It is also well known that in this context Merleau-Ponty turns to Klee again. For Klee, according to Merleau-Ponty, the line is the genesisof the visible, and then, still according to Merleau-Ponty, Klee “leaves it up to the titleto designate by its prosaic name the being thus constituted, in order to leave the painting28“L’entrelacs – le chiasme” is, of course, the title of The Visible and the Invisible’s fourth chapter.29Merleau-Ponty, in fact, says that art, once it has awoken, gives vision new powers; these powerswould have to define the painter’s vision.135