The Book of Disquiet (70 page)

Does this habit of placing myself in the souls of others really lead me to see myself as others see me or would see me, if they took notice of me? Yes. And as soon as I realize how they would feel about me if they knew me, it’s as if they really did feel that way, as if right at that moment they were feeling exactly that, and expressing what they feel. To associate with others is sheer torture for me. And the others are in me. I’m forced to associate with them even when they’re nowhere near. All alone, I’m surrounded by multitudes. There’s no escape possible, unless I were to escape from myself.

O magnificent hills at twilight, O narrowish streets in the moonlight, if only I had your
unconsciousness, your spirituality that’s nothing but Matter, with no inner dimension, no sensibility, and no place for feelings, thoughts, or disquiet of the spirit! Trees so completely and only trees, with your greenness so pleasant to look at, so foreign to my troubles and concerns, so soothing to my anxieties precisely because you don’t have eyes with which to see them nor a soul which, seeing
through those eyes, might misunderstand and make fun of them! Stones on the road, logs here and there, anonymous dirt of the ground that’s everywhere, my sister because your unawareness of my soul is a cosy and peaceful repose… Sunlit or moonlit things of Earth, my mother, so tenderly my mother, who can’t even criticize me like my own human mother, for you lack the soul that would instinctively analyse me, nor do you have swift glances which would betray thoughts about me that you’d never even confess to yourself… Vast ocean, my roaring childhood companion that soothes and lulls me, because your voice isn’t human and thus can never whisper my weaknesses and shortcomings into human ears… Broad and blue sky so close to the mystery of the angels....., you do not look at me with deceitful green eyes, and if you hold the Sun against your chest you don’t do it to seduce me, nor when you [cover yourself] with stars are you trying to show me that you’re superior… Universal peace of Nature, maternal because you don’t know me; aloof tranquillity of atoms and systems, so brotherly in your complete ignorance of me… I’d like to pray to your vastness and your calm, as a sign of my gratitude for having you and being able to love you without any doubts or qualms; I’d like to give ears to your inability to hear despite your always hearing us, to give eyes to your sublime blindness with which you always see us, and to be the object of your attentions via these imaginary ears and eyes, to feel the comfort of being noticed by your Nothingness, as if it were a definitive death, far far away, beyond any hope for another life, beyond any God and the possibility of other beings, voluptuously nil, with the spiritual colour of all matter…

T
HE
R
IVER OF
P
OSSESSION

That all of us are different is an axiom of our true nature.* We only look like each other from a distance – to the extent, therefore, that we are not ourselves. That’s why life is for the indefinite; the only people who get along well are those who never define themselves, those who are equally nobody.

Each of us is two, and when two people meet, come into contact or join together, it’s rare that the four of them can agree. If the man who dreams in the man who acts is so frequently at odds with him, how
can he help but be at odds with the man who acts and the man who dreams in the Other?

Each life, because it’s life, is a distinct force, and each of us naturally tends towards himself, stopping at other people along the way. If we have enough self-respect to find ourselves interesting..... Every coming together is a conflict. The other is always an obstacle for those who seek. Only those who don’t seek are happy, because only those who don’t seek find; since they seek nothing, they already have it, and to already have – whatever it may be – is to be happy, just as not to think is the best part of being rich.

Within me I look at you, imagined bride, and we start to clash even before you exist. My habit of dreaming things vividly gives me an accurate notion of reality. Whoever dreams to excess must give reality to his dreams. Whoever gives reality to his dreams must give them the equilibrium of reality. Whoever gives the equilibrium of reality to his dreams will suffer from the reality of dreaming as much as from the reality of life, and from the unreality of his dreams as much as from his feeling that life is unreal.

I’m waiting for you, in a state of reverie, in our bedroom that has two doors; I dream I hear you coming, and in my dream you enter by the door on the right. If, when you actually enter, it’s by the door on the left, there will already be a difference between you and my dream. The whole of the human tragedy is summed up in this tiny example of how the people we think about are never the people we think they are.

Love demands identification with something different, which isn’t even possible in logic, much less in real life. Love wants to possess. It wants to make into its own that which must remain outside it; otherwise the distinction between what it
is
in itself and what it
makes
into itself will be lost. Love is surrender. The greater the surrender, the greater the love. But total surrender also surrenders its consciousness of the other. The greatest love is therefore death, or forgetting, or renunciation – all forms of love that make love an absurdity.

On the ancient terrace of the seaside palace, we will meditate in silence on the difference between us. I was the prince and you the princess, on the terrace by the sea. Our love was born in our meeting, the way beauty was born when the moon met the waves.

Love wants to possess, but it doesn’t know what possession is. If I’m not my own, how can I be yours, or you mine? If I don’t possess my own being, how can I possess an extraneous being? If I’m even different from my own identical self, how can I be identical to a completely different self?

Love is a mysticism that wants to be materialized, an impossibility that our dreams always insist must be possible.

I’m talking metaphysics? But all of life is a metaphysics in the darkness, with a vague murmur of the gods and only one way to follow, which is our ignorance of the right way.

The most insidious aspect of my decadence is my love of health and clarity. I’ve always felt that a handsome body and the carefree rhythm of a youthful stride were more useful in the world than all the dreams that exist in me. It’s with a joy of the old in spirit that I sometimes observe, without envy or desire, the casual couples that the afternoon brings together and that walk arm-in-arm towards the unconscious consciousness of youth. I enjoy them as I enjoy a truth, without considering whether it applies to me. If I compare them to myself, I still enjoy them, but as one who enjoys a truth that hurts, the pain of the hurt being compensated by the pride of having understood the gods.

I’m the opposite of the Platonic* symbolists, for whom every being and every event is the shadow and only the shadow of a reality. Everything for me, rather than a point of arrival, is a point of departure. For the occultist everything ends in everything; for me everything begins in everything.

I proceed, as they do, by way of analogy and suggestion, but the small garden that to them suggests the soul’s order and beauty, to me suggests merely the larger garden where, far away from humans, this unhappy life perhaps could be happy. Each thing suggests to me not the reality of which it is the shadow, but the reality for which it is the path.

The garden of Estrela,* in late afternoon, suggests to me a park from olden times, in the centuries before the soul became disenchanted.

S
ELF
-E
XAMINATION

One who lives life falsely, in dreams, is still living life. Renunciation is an act. Dreaming is a confession of one’s need to live, with real life simply being replaced by unreal life, to compensate for the irrepressible urge to live.

What does all this amount to but the search for happiness? And does anyone search for anything else?

Have constant daydreaming and endless analysis given me anything
essentially
different from what life would have given me?

Withdrawing from people didn’t help me find myself, nor.....

This book is a single state of soul, analysed from all sides, investigated in all directions.

Has this attitude at least brought me something new? Not even this consolation is mine. Everything was already said long ago, by Heraclitus and Ecclesiastes:
Life is a child’s game in the sand… vanity and vexation of spirit
… And in that single phrase of poor Job:
My soul is weary of my life
.

I listen to myself dream. I lull myself with the sound of my images. Strange melodies inside me spell out
.

A phrase that resonates with images is worth so many gestures! A metaphor can make up for so many things!

I listen to myself… Inside me there are ceremonies, cortèges… Spangles in my tedium… Masked balls… I observe my soul with astonishment…

Kaleidoscope of fragmented sequences.....

Splendour of intensely experienced sensations… Royal beds in deserted castles, jewels of dead princesses, sea coves seen through castle loopholes… Honour and power will doubtless come, and the happiest souls will have cortèges in their exile… Sleeping orchestras,
threads embroidering silks…

In Pascal:

In Vigny: In you.....

In Amiel,* so completely in Amiel:… (
certain phrases
)…

In Verlaine and the symbolists:

I feel so sick inside, and without even a little originality in my sickness… I do what countless others have done before me… I suffer what’s old and hackneyed… Why do I even think these things, when so many have already thought and suffered them?…

And yet I have after all introduced something new, although I’m not responsible for it. It came from the Night and glows in me like a star… All of my effort couldn’t have produced it or snuffed it out… I’m a bridge between two mysteries, with no idea of how I got built.

T
HE
S
ENSATIONIST

In this twilight of spiritual disciplines, with beliefs dying out and the old cults gathering dust, our sensations are the only reality we have left. The only scruples we have at this point, and the only science that satisfies, are those of our sensations.

I’m more convinced than ever that inferior adornment is the highest and most enlightened destiny we can confer on our souls. If my life could be lived in tapestries of the spirit, I’d have no depths of despair to bemoan.

I belong to a generation – or rather, to part of a generation – that lost all respect for the past and all belief or hope in the future. And so we live off the present with the hunger and eagerness of those who have no other home. And since it is in our sensations, and particularly in the useless sensations of our dreams, that we find a present which remembers neither past nor future, we smile indulgently at our inner life while yawning with disdain at the quantitative reality of things.