We would very loudly holler the wildest things just to glory in the pleasure of yelling without being heard far and wide; only the short grass would quiver in the light breeze of the peaks. The ascent would then cause you to slow down, puff a bit, and I would lean toward you to hear your puffing: we would be insane. We would also venture to where a white lake lies next to a black lake, as gently as a white pearl next to a black pearl. How we would have loved each other in some remote village in the Engadine! We would have allowed only mountain guides to come close, those very tall men, whose eyes reflect different things than the eyes of other men and who are virtually of a different “water.” But I am no longer concerned with you.
Satiety occurred before possession. Even platonic love has its saturation point. I would no longer care to bring you to this countryside, which, though not grasping it, much less knowing it, you conjured up with such touching precision.
The sight of you retains only one charm for me: the magic of suddenly remembering those sweetly exotic German and Italian names: Sils-Maria, Silva Plana, Crestalta, Samaden, Celerina, Juliers, Val Viola.
Spiritual Sunset
Like nature, intelligence has its spectacles. Never have the sunsets, never has the moonlight, so often moving me to tears of ecstasy, produced more passionate tenderness in me than that vast and melancholy conflagration, which, during our strolls at the close of day, tinges as many waves in our souls as the brilliant rays of the vanishing sun on the sea. We then quicken our steps in the night.
More electrified and exhilarated than a horseman by the increasing speed of his beloved mount, we abandon ourselves, trembling with trust and joy, to our tumultuous thoughts; and the more we possess them and direct them, the more irresistibly we feel we belong to them. With tender emotion we pass through the dark countryside, greeting the night-filled oaks as the solemn field, like the epic witnesses of the force that intoxicates us and sweeps us away.
Raising our eyes to the sky, we cannot help experiencing an exaltation upon recognizing the mysterious reflection of our thoughts in the intervals between the clouds, which are still agitated by the sun’s farewell: we plunge faster and faster into the countryside, and the dog that follows us, the horse that carries us, or the now silent friend, sometimes less so when no living soul is near us, the flower in our buttonhole, or the cane we twirl joyfully in our feverish hands receives an homage of looks and tears—the melancholy tribute of our delirium.
As in Moonlight
Night had fallen; I went to my room, nervous about remaining in the darkness and no longer seeing the sky, the fields, and the ocean radiating under the sun. But when I opened the door, I found my room illuminated as though by the setting sun. Through the window I could see the house, the fields, the sky, and the ocean, or rather I appeared to be “seeing” them again, in a dream; the gentle moon recalled them for me rather than showed them to me, engulfing their silhouettes in a wan splendor that failed to scatter the darkness, which thickened on their shapes like oblivion. And I spent hours gazing at the courtyard, watching the mute, vague, faded, and enchanted memories of the things whose cries, voices, or murmurs had brought me pleasure or brought me sorrow during the day.
Love has perished; I am fearful on the threshold of oblivion; but, appeased, slightly pale, very close to me and yet faraway and already hazy, they reveal themselves to me as if in moonlight: all my past happiness and all my healed anguish, staring at me in silence. Their hush moves me while their distance and their indecisive pallor intoxicate me with sadness and poetry. And I cannot stop looking at this inner moonlight.
Critique of Hope in the Light of Love
No sooner does an approaching hour become the present for us than it sheds all its charms, only to regain them, it is true, on the roads of memory, when we have left that hour far behind us, and so long as our soul is vast enough to disclose deep perspectives. Thus, after we passed the hill, the poetic village, to which we hastened the trot of our impatient hopes and our worn-out mares, once again exhales those veiled harmonies, whose vague promise has been kept so poorly by the vulgarity of the streets, the incongruity of the cottages huddling together and melting into the horizon, and the disappearance of the blue mist, which seemed to permeate the village.
But we are like the alchemist who attributes each of his failures to some accidental and always different cause; far from suspecting an incurable imperfection in the very essence of the present, we blame any number of things for poisoning our happiness: the malignity of the particular circumstances, the burden of the envied situation, the bad character of the desired mistress, the bad state of our health on a day that should have been a day of joy, the bad weather or the bad accommodations during our travels. And, certain that we will manage to eliminate those things that destroy all pleasure, we endlessly appeal to a future we dream of; we rely on it with the sometimes reluctant but never disillusioned confidence of a realized, that is, disillusioned dream.
However, certain pensive and embittered men, who radiate in the light of hope more intensely than other people, discover all too soon, alas, that hope emanates not from the awaited hours but from our hearts, which overflow with rays unknown by nature, and which pour torrents of those rays upon hope without lighting a hearth fire. Those men no longer have the strength to desire what they know to be undesirable, the strength to chase after dreams that will wither in their hearts when they wish to pick them outside themselves.
This melancholy disposition is singularly intensified and justified in love. Constantly passing back and forth over its hopes, the imagination admirably sharpens its disappointments. Unhappy love, making the experience of happiness impossible, prevents us from discovering the nothingness of happiness. But what lesson in philosophy, what advice given by old age, what blight of ambition could surpass in melancholy the joys of happy love! You love me, my little darling: how could you have been cruel enough to tell me? So this was the ardent happiness of mutual love, the mere thought of which made my head whirl and my teeth chatter!
I unpin your flowers, I lift your hair, I tear off your jewels, I reach your flesh; my kisses sweep over your body and beat it like the tide rising across the sand; but you yourself elude me, and with you happiness. I have to leave you, I go home alone and sadder. Blaming that last calamity, I return to you forever; it was my last illusion that I tore away; I am miserable forever.
I do not know how I had the courage to tell you this; I have just ruthlessly thrown away the happiness of a lifetime, or at least its consolation; for your eyes, whose happy trust still intoxicated me at times, will henceforth reflect only the sad disenchantment, which your acumen and your disappointments already warned you about. Since this secret, which one of us concealed from the other, has been loudly proclaimed by us both, no happiness is possible for us.
We are not left with even the unselfish joys of hope. Hope is an act of faith. We have undeceived its credulity: hope is dead. After renouncing enjoyment, we can no longer spellbind ourselves to nurture hope. Hoping without hope, which would be wise, is impossible.
But come nearer, my dear, sweet darling. Dry your eyes so you can see; I do not know if it is the tears that blur my vision, but I think I can make out over there, behind us, large fires being kindled. Oh, my dear, sweet darling, I love you so much! Give me your hand, let us go toward those beautiful fires without getting too close. . . . I think that indulgent and powerful Memory must be wishing us well and now doing a great deal for us, my dear.
Under the Trees
We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from that vigorous and peace-loving tribe of trees that keep producing tonic essences and soothing balms for us and that also provide gracious company in which we spend so many cool, snug, and silent hours. In those burning afternoons, when the light, by its very excess, eludes our eyes, let us descend into one of those Norman “grounds,” whose tall and thick beeches rise supplely here, and their foliage, like a narrow but resistant shore, pushes back that ocean of light, keeping only a few drops, which tingle melodiously in the dark hush under the trees.
At the beach, on the plains, in
