Marina Warner on “Un train peut en cacher un autre [One train can hide another]” and its implications for hindsight as improvisation

The apparent meaning [of an event] conceals another [event], as in that famous French warning on level crossings, “Un train peut en cacher un autre” [One train can hide another]. Isaac, about to be sacrificed by his father, comes to stand for Jesus, who died to save humankind. . . .The figure forms in the present moment of the text under one’s eyes, but the latent meanings emerge both in the past and look forward to the future: the narrowly averted sacrifice of Isaac prefigures the death of Jesus, for example. “How much more fulfilling is the new idea that pre-Christian times can be read as a shadowy figure of what actually was to come?” writes [the literary critic, Edward] Said. . .

Marina Warner, historian and critic, accessed online at https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/53273/1/53273.pdf)

At the actual train crossing, the implications of Warner’s analogy complicate the point she is making. What is invisible but then emerges, its own other rushing train, is disaster. Whatever else taking Isaac to prefigure Jesus is, it reveals real and present danger.

To see how and with what effect, turn to the commonplace: If manifest risk is where the probability of disaster (Pf) and the consequences of failure (Cf) are known or estimated, “latent risk” is when uncertainty over Pf or over Cf exists. Strictly speaking then, the challenge of trying to manage ahead latency is one of uncertainty management, not risk management as formally understood.

So what? For one thing when it comes to a major disaster, pre-existing latencies are joined at the hip with subsequent improvisations. Latent uncertainties unmanaged beforehand, particularly those that are invisible, necessitate improvisations in immediate emergency response afterwards.

You jump the gun by approaching the train tracks too early as the carriages disappear rapidly in front of you; how you survive, if at all, depends on pulling whatever good mess you can from the bad mess in which you find yourself. Surviving means improvising without any guarantees in riding out that uncertainty, whatever the lessons to be learned afterwards for “better risk management” at rail crossings.

Again, so what? “How much more fulfilling is the new idea that those old dangers and iffy responses can be read as a shadowy figure of the coming lessons learned for risk management.” Or to bring the point back and thereby complicate Warner’s point: Yes, it is easy in hindsight to see how Issac could be said to prefigure Jesus, though the connection being made between Isaac and Jesus is more improvisational given the high stakes involved than one might first want to admit.

Not false (apophenic) or even contingent as much as readymade for the immediate moment at hand.