How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating
enough to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations
whose vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more
keen than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who
drowns his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the
incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the
horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable
existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things
thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the
reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and
picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.
These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external
objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within
pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering: My nerves are too
tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.
And now the profundity of the sky dismays me; its limpidity exasperates
me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle,
revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from
Beauty?
Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt
my desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel
where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.