A BITTER AVOWAL
Spring has vanished; I have awakened from my dream.
I know not the limit of my pitiful childishness; I know not what
miserable soul dwells within me. The reality penetrates me, shakes me;
my flesh is either acutely tortured or wildly delighted by what is; I am
like a body of exquisite sonorousness, which vibrates at the slightest
sensation; I have a sharp and clear perception of the society which
surrounds me. And my soul is pleased to refuse the truth; it escapes
from my flesh, it disdains my senses, it lives elsewhere amid deception
and hope. It is thus that I walk through life. I know and I see, I blind
myself and I dream. While I advance beneath the rain, in the midst of
the mud, while I am profoundly conscious of all the cold, of all the
dampness, I can, by means of a strange faculty, make the sun shine, be
warm, create for myself a mild and delicate sky, without ceasing to feel
the gloomy sky which presses down upon my shoulders. I do not ignore
anything, I do not forget anything. I live doubly. I carry into my
dreams the same frankness which I carry into real sensations. I have
thus two parallel existences, equally alive, equally intense--one which
passes here below, in my poverty, another which passes above, in the
immense and deep purity of the blue sky.
Yes, such is, without doubt, the explanation of my being. I comprehend
my flesh, I comprehend my heart; I am conscious of my innocence and of
my infamy, of my love for illusion and of my love for truth. I am a
delicate machine made up of sensations--sensations of the soul and
sensations of the body. I receive and give back, quiveringly, the
slightest ray, the slightest odor, the slightest tenderness. I live on
too lofty a plane, crying out my sufferings, stammering forth my
ecstasies, in heaven and amid the mud, more crushed after each new
bound, more radiant after each new fall.
The other day, amid the cool air, beneath the tall trees of Fontenay, my
flesh was softened, my heart had the mastery. I loved and I believed
myself loved in my turn. The truth escaped from me; I saw Laurence
clothed in white, young and pure; her kiss appeared to me to have so
much sweetness that it seemed to come from her soul. Now, Laurence is
here, seated upon the edge of the bed; to see her, pale and sorrowful,
in her soiled dress, makes my flesh quiver, my heart leap with
indignation. The spring time has flown; Laurence has grown old, she does
not love me. Oh! what a miserable child I am! I deserve to weep, for I
cause my own tears.
What do I care for Laurence's ugliness, her infamy and her weariness!
Let her be uglier, more infamous and more weary, but let her love me! I
wish her to love me.
I regret neither the graces of her fifteenth year nor her youthful smile
of the other day, when she ran about beneath the trees and was the good
fairy of my youth. No, I regret neither her beauty nor her freshness; I
regret the dream which led me to believe that her heart was in her
caresses.
She is here, deplorable, crushed. I have, indeed, the right to exact
that she shall love me, that she shall give herself to me. I accept her
entire being, I want her as she is, asleep and weary, but I want her, I
want her, with all my will, with all my strength.
I remember that I dreamed of reforming Laurence, that I wished her to
possess more reason, more reserve. What do I care for reserve, what do I
care for reason? I have no business with them now. I demand love, mad
and lasting love. I am eager to have my love returned, I do not wish
longer to love all alone. Nothing wearies the heart like caresses which
are not returned. I gave this woman my youth, my hopes; I shut myself up
with her in suffering and abjection; I forgot everything in the depths
of our gloom, even the crowd and its opinions. I can, it seems to me,
demand in exchange from this woman that she shall unite herself with me,
that she shall join her destiny to mine amid the desert of poverty and
abandonment in which we live.
Spring is dead, I tell you. I dreamed that the young foliage was growing
green in the sunlight, that Laurence laughed madly amid the tall grass.
I find myself in the damp darkness of my chamber, opposite Laurence who
is sleeping; I have not quitted the wretched den, I have not seen either
the eyes or the lips of this girl open. Everything is deception. In this
crumbling of the true and the false, in this confused noise which life
causes within me, I feel but a single need, a sharp and cruel need: to
love, to be loved, no matter where, no matter how, that I may plunge
headlong into an abyss of devotion.
Oh! brothers, later, if ever I emerge from the black night which holds
me captive, and the caprice should seize upon me to relate to the crowd
the story of my far off loves, I will, without doubt, imitate those
weepers, those dreamers, who deck with golden rays the demons of their
twentieth year and put wings upon their shoulders. We call the poets of
youth those liars who have suffered, who have shed all their tears, and
who, to-day, in their recollections, have no longer anything but smiles
and regrets. I assure you that I have seen their blood, that I have seen
their bare flesh, torn and full of pain. They have lived in suffering,
they have grown up in despair. Their sweethearts were vile creatures,
their love affairs had all the horrors of the love affairs of a great
city. They have been deceived, wounded, dragged in the mud; never did
they encounter a heart, and each one of them has had his Laurence, who
has made of his youth a desolate solitude. Then, the wound healed, age
came on, remembrance imparted its caressing charm to all the infamy of
the past, and they wept over their morbid love affairs. Thus they have
created a false world of sinful young women, of girls adorable in their
carelessness and their triviality. You know them all--the Mimi Pinsons
and the Musettes--you dreamed about them when you were sixteen, and,
perhaps, you have even sought for them. Their admirers were prodigal;
they accorded them beauty and freshness, tenderness and frankness; they
have made them shining types of unselfish love, of eternal youth; they
have thrust them upon our hearts, they have taken delight in deceiving
themselves. They lie! they lie! they lie!
I will imitate them. Like them, without doubt, I shall deceive myself, I
shall believe in good faith the falsehoods which my recollections will
relate to me; like them, perhaps, I shall have cowardice and timidity
which will induce me not to speak loudly and frankly, telling what were
my love affairs and how utterly miserable they were. Laurence will
become Musette or Mimi; she will have youth, she will have beauty; she
will no longer be the mute, wretched woman who is now in my company--she
will be a giddy young girl, loving thoughtlessly, but thoroughly alive,
rendered more youthful and more adorable by her caprices. My den will be
transformed into a gay mansarde, blooming, white with sunlight; the blue
silk dress will be changed into a neat and graceful calico; my poverty
will be full of smiles, my tenderness will sparkle like a diamond. And I
will sing in my turn the song of my twentieth year, taking up the
refrain where the others have left it, continuing the sweet and lying
words, deceiving myself, deceiving those who shall come after me.
Brothers, in these letters written for you alone, which I prepare day by
day, quivering yet from the terrible shocks I have received, I can be
rough, sharp, revealing everything, emphasizing my confessions. I give
myself up wholly, I spread my entire life out before you, I exhibit to
you my flesh and my blood: I wish to take my heart from my breast, to
show it to you, bleeding, sick, frank in its baseness and in its purity.
I feel myself better and worthier in confessing myself to you; I have an
immense pride amid my abasement; the deeper I descend, the more disdain,
the more superb indifference, I acquire. What a delicious thing is
frankness! Say to yourselves that, out of ten young men, eight have the
same life, the same youth, as I: some two or three in a hundred,
perhaps, become frightened and weep as I weep; the others, several
thousands, accept their lot and live in peace, infamous and smiling. All
lie. As for me, I wound myself, I admit to you with sobs what are my
love affairs, and tell you with what a terrible weight they stifle me.
Later, I will lie.
Nothing exists now, except the love of Laurence, which I have not and
which I exact. There is no more light, there is no longer a world, there
is no longer a crowd; in the gloom, a man and a woman are brought face
to face forever. The man, setting aside all his lofty aspirations, all
his appreciation of beauty, wishes to be loved by the woman, because he
is afraid of being alone, because he is cold and hungry, because he
loves himself. At the final day, when humanity is expiring, and when but
a single couple remain upon the earth, the struggle will be terrible,
the despair immense, if the last adorer cannot awaken the last
sweetheart from the dull sleep of the heart and the flesh.