A sign repeats. Without repetition, there could be no sign, for how else could one recognize it, and recognition creates the sign. On the other hand, as Stendhal writes, the gaze can speak volumes, but can never be repeated. What is this mystery? The gaze belongs to the realm of meaning whose unity is not found upon the sign (discontinuity) but significance... As opposed to language, the order of signs, the arts, in general, are a matter of significance. It's not surprising, then, that there would be a kind of affinity between the gaze and music, or that classical painting has so lovingly portrayed so many different kinds of looks: tearful, imperious, furious, pensive, et cetera. In significance, there is without a doubt a kind of semantic knot without which the gaze would be unable to speak: a look does not know how to be neutral, unless it intends to signify neutrality, and if it is "vague," its vagueness is clearly full of duplicity. But this knot is surrounded by a halo, an infinite field of expansion in which sense overflows, disseminates, without losing its impression (the act of being imprinted): and this is exactly what happens while listening to a piece of music or while standing in front of a painting. The "mystery" of the gaze, its disturbing nature, lives in this overflow zone. Here, then, is an object (or an entity) whose being is attached to its excess. Let us examine these excesses for a little while.
from "Right in the Eyes"
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