I asked her — diffidently, since both of us were overly modest about such things — I asked her to return to the place with me. There she was sweet, patient, sincere — and paid no attention to me; I was attentive only to her and did my utmost to elicit a compensatory smile.… But the end soon came.
“Watch out!” she once told me, “Your concern is for me, not them.”
Once again I was separated from her.
Providence: their life in its entirety is based on a hypothesis; if they were shown their mistake, they would no longer be able to justify their existence. But who would show them? They will never know whether or not they were mistaken in their belief. If there is nothing, they will never know the difference. Meanwhile, they believe; they are happy or find consolation in their hope. The doubting soul is torn asunder.34
“Philosophize? What arrogance! Philosophize with what? with reason? Who guarantees us the soundness of our reason? what is the source of the authority which we accord it? Our only assurance would be in thinking that it is a gift of a providential God — but reason denies God.
“If we argue that reason came about by a slow transformation, by a gradual adaptation to phenomena, we may well discuss the phenomena — but beyond that?
“And even if we grant that it comes from God, there is still nothing to guarantee us of its infallibility.
“We can only hazard opinions. An affirmation is open to criticism, for it is arbitrary and destructive.
“Narrow minds which think that theirs is the only truth! Truth is multiple, infinite, as diverse as there are minds to think — and no truths are challenged except by the mind of man.”
Everyone is right. Things BECOME true as soon as someone believes in them. Reality is within us; our mind creates its Truths. And the best truth will not be the one sanctioned by reason. “Men are guided by emotions and not by ideas.”35 “The tree is known by its fruit,” and a doctrine by what it suggests.
“The best doctrine is the one which through its message of love will persuade man to worship joyfully; which will comfort in times of distress by offering a vision of happiness promised to those who mourn; which will call grief an ordeal and enable the soul to hope in spite of everything. The best doctrine is the one which offers the greatest consolation. Lord! To whom would we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!
“Reason will ridicule but, in spite of all philosophical objections, the heart will always need to believe.”36
“ΣYMΠAθEIN — to suffer together, to vibrate together. Imagination is all powerful, even in matters of the heart. Charity depends on our ability to imagine the griefs of others and make them our own. Thus is the life of the soul multiplied. And thus does compassion assuage grief.
“A heart vibrating to the emotions of all men, throughout time and space, and doing so voluntarily though spontaneously: that is what we need.”
We used to read aloud on autumn evenings when they had assembled between the hearth and the lamp. Thus we read Hoffmann and Turgenev.
Everyone listened, but the modulations in my voice were for you alone. I read to you over their heads.
We studied German together, though we already knew the language. The lessons were a pretext for leaning over the same book and being excited by the discovery of subtleties of meaning as we translated passages.
That is how we became acquainted with Die Braut von Messian, Die Heimkehr, and Die Nordsee.
German has whispered alliterations which make it a better medium than French for expressing vague yearnings.
One evening it was raining and those who had gathered there had been talking for a long time.
“André,” said V***, “will you read a little?”
I began the Expiation, which she did not know. It is indeed a soothing work. Reading the words with subtle inflections, I made the violent emotions that were flooding my soul flow into yours. ΣYMΠAθEIN: to experience together violent emotions.37
I did not see you. You were sitting in the shadow, but I felt your look when I read:
And their soul sang in the brass bugle.
The sun was setting. Evening shadows were invading the room. No longer able to see clearly enough to read, I closed the book and recited:
Not one retreated. Sleep, heroic dead!…
When the lamp was brought in for us, it seemed to awaken us from a dream.…
“Listen,” I said to you. “Pay close attention to what I am saying.”
I wanted to go over a difficult problem concerning German metaphysics that had bothered me for a long time. I saw that the attempt to follow my reasoning was causing wrinkles to mar your brow, but the obstacles that I had already cleared goaded me onward, and I continued to speak. I would have liked for our minds to travel together along every byway; I suffered when learning without you; I needed to feel your presence; I thrilled to your emotions more than to my own. But these heights were too lofty; your spirit fluttered helplessly and grew tired.
I suffered much over such things. When you were not there and overpowering emotion forced me to speak, my mother soon tired of my expositions, for she lacked your benevolent patience. When she became listless, I fell silent and my rebuffed soul shivered in its solitude.
I was then a child. I did not understand that the mind is nothing and passes away while the soul still remains after death.
The mind changes, grows feeble, passes away; the soul remains.
“What is the SOUL?” they will ask.
The SOUL is our WILL TO LOVE.
We still said “brother” and “sister,” but with a smile. Our hearts were no longer deluded. Yet you wanted to be deluded. You were afraid that we would go too far, and you hoped that you could allay your incipient fears by using a familiar word as a decoy. You thought perhaps that the word would evoke the thing and that if we always called each other brother and sister, our relationship would be fraternal. But in spite of our intentions, alien inflections marked our words; they became more intimate, more endearing, more mystical when whispered to each other. When you said “my brother” and I answered “little sister,” our hearts quivered at the involuntary tenderness of our voices.38
Long autumn days … sitting by the fireside while rain fell outside … engrossed in reading for hours at a time … and you sometimes came to lean over my shoulder and read.
I was reading The Golden Ass when you came, as was your custom, to read over my shoulder.
“This is not for you, little sister,” I said as I pushed you away from me.
“Then why are you reading it?”
You smiled somewhat waggishly — and I closed the book.
Playing games during our childhood, seeing landscapes, conversing at length, reading together when we knew nothing and could discover everything together.…
All these things mean nothing to others but gradually shaped us and made us so nearly identical.…
A stranger, Emmanuèle?…
Would a stranger remember the beloved dead?
Oh that he had never known them! Oh that he had never seen their smiles! When you chose to speak of them, he would not understand. Then you would fall silent, aware of your loneliness.
(incomplete)
I no longer know either where or when: It was in a dream.
One night I was weeping for both of us — and your dear shadow came close to me. I felt your hand on my brow and saw your sweet smile.
But I was still weeping.