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Another way similitude is freed from its old c o m­ plicity with rep resentative affirmation: perfidiously mixing (and by a ruse that seems to indicate j us t the o p posite of what it means) the painting and what it represents . Evidently this is a way o f affirming that the p ainting i s indeed its own model . But in fa ct such an affirmation would imply an interior distance, a divergence, a disj uncture bet ween the canvas and what it is supposed to mimic . For Magritte , on the contrary, there exists fro m the painting to the model a perfect continuity of scene, a linearity, a continuous overflowing of one into the other.

And at the nexus o f these figures and signs, the arrow that crop s up s o often (the arrow, sign bearing a primal resemblance, like a graphic ono­ matopoeia, and shape that formulates an order)-the arrow indicates the direction in which the boat is trav­ eling , shows that the sun is setting , pres cribes the direction that the gaze must follow, or rather the line along which it mus t imaginatively shift the figure provisionally and a bit arbitrarily placed here. It is not, in fact, a ques tion of those calligrams that by turns bring into play the subordinatio n of sign to form (a cloud of words and letters taking the shape they designate) , then of form to sign (the figure dis­ secting itself into alphabetic al elements) .

Despite appea rances, in fo rmi ng a bird, a flower, or rain, the calligram does not say: These things are a do ve, a flower, a downp our. As soon as it begins to do so, to speak and convey meanin g, the bird has already flown, the rain has evaporated . For whoever sees i t , the calli g ram does not say, cannot yet say : This is a fo wer, this is a bird. It is still too much trapped within shape, too much subj ect to representation by resemblance, to fo rmulate such a proposition. And when we read it, the deciphered sentence ("this is a dove, " " this is a rainstorm " ) is not a bird, is no longer a shower.