To be, or not to be, is still the question.
This ache for being is the ultimate hunger.
And for myself, I can say "almost, almost, oh,
very nearly."
Yet something remains.
Something shall not always remain.
For the main already is fulfilment.
What remains in me, is to be known even as I
know.
I know her now: or perhaps, I know my own
limitation against her.
Plunging as I have done, over, over the brink
I have dropped at last headlong into nought,
plunging upon sheer hard extinction;
I have come, as it were, not to know,
died, as it were; ceased from knowing; surpassed
myself.
What can I say more, except that I know what it is
to surpass myself?
It is a kind of death which is not death.
It is going a little beyond the bounds.
How can one speak, where there is a dumbness on
one's mouth?
I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me,
she is all not-me, ultimately.
It is that that one comes to.
A curious agony, and a relief, when I touch that
which is not me in any sense,
it wounds me to death with my own not-being;
definite, inviolable limitation,
and something beyond, quite beyond, if you
understand what that means.
It is the major part of being, this having surpassed
oneself,
this having touched the edge of the beyond, and
perished, yet not perished.