Rue d’Ulm is identified as Pierre’s real location in Paris and serves as the concrete point of reference in the book’s account of imagining an absent person. Its importance lies not in a description of the street but in the distinction it makes possible between Pierre’s actual presence there and his appearance elsewhere in consciousness.

Place and Reference

When Pierre is imagined, the text insists that this does not produce a second, unreal Pierre alongside the person of flesh and blood. There is one Pierre: the real person living in a room in Paris, identified as being at Rue d’Ulm. The image refers to him, even though he does not appear in the room where the imagining takes place.

Role in the Account of Absence

Rue d’Ulm gives Pierre’s absence a specific location. He is presented as being there, three hundred real kilometres from the imaginer’s real position; when he appears in the image, that distance and location do not turn him into another person. Rather, his not being here becomes an essential feature of how he is given in the image. The text uses this contrast to explain irreality as a quality of Pierre’s appearance in consciousness, not as a separate existence for Pierre or for the street.