Notebooks Of Malte Laurids Brigge Quotes

Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.

I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn't stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of... What's the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was; and if I am something else, it's obvious that I have no acquaintances. And I can't possibly write to strangers.

And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything.

There are a large number of people in the room, but one is unaware of them. They are in the books. At times they move among the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.

To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.

Because I never held you close, I hold you forever.

For the sake of a few lines one must see many cities, men and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings which one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents that one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was joy for someone else); to childhood illness that so strangely began with a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars-and it is not enough if one may think all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises. And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance, to gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-not until then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of. Everything passes into it now. I don’t know what happens there.

So this is where people come to live; I would have thought it is a city to die in.

with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good.

No, no, one can imagine nothing in the world, not the least thing. Everything is composed of so many isolated details that are not to be foreseen. In one's imagining one passes over them and hasty as one is doesn't notice that they are missing. But realities are slow and indescribably detailed.

Around everything that is perfected, the unfinished ascends and intensifies.

Verses are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences. For the sake of a verse one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals feel how birds fly, and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.

My God, I thought with sudden vehemence, so you really are. There are proofs of your existence. I have forgotten them all and never even wanted any, for what a huge obligation would lie in the certainty of you.

Is it possible that despite our inventions and progress, despite our culture, religion and knowledge of the world, we have remained on the surface of life?

Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own.

Ask no one to speak of you, not even contemptuously. And when time passes and you notice how your name is spreading around among people, don't take it more seriously than any of the other things you find on their lips. Think: your name has turned bad, and get rid of it. Take on another, any other, so that God can call you in the night. And conceal it from everyone.

I, who even as a child had been so distrustful of music (not because it took me out of myself more powerfully than anything else, but because I had noticed that it did not put me back where it had found me, but left me deeper down, somewhere in the heart of things unfinished)...

Outside much has changed. I don't know how. But inside and before you, O my God, inside before you, spectator, are we not without action? We discover, indeed, that we do not know our part, we look for a mirror, we want to rub off the make-up and remove the counterfeit and be real. But somewhere a bit of mummery still sticks to us that we forget. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows, we do not notice that the corners of our lips are twisted. And thus we go about, a laughing-stock, a mere half-thing: neither existing, not actors.

Yes, he knew that we was withdrawing from everything: not merely from human beings. A moment more and everything will have lost its meaning, and that table and the cup, and the chair to which he clings, all the near and the commonplace, will have become unintelligible, strange and heavy. So he sat there and waited until it should have happened. And defended himself no longer.

To think, for instance, that I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several. There are people who wear the same face for years; naturally it wears out, it gets dirty, it splits at the folds, it stretches, like gloves one has worn on a journey. These are thrifty, simple people; they do not change their face, they never even have it cleaned. It is good enough, they say, and who can prove to them the contrary? The question of course arises, since they have several faces, what do they do with the others? Thhey store them up. Their children will wear them. But sometimes, too, it happens that their dogs go out with them on. And why not? A face is a face.

What poet's persuasion can reconcile the length of those days with the brevity of life?

It is you; you are the light around these familiar intimate things.

To love is to give light with inexhaustible oil.

There exists a creature which is perfectly harmless; when it passes before your eyes you scarcely notice it and forget it again immediately. But as soon as it invisibly gets somehow into your ears, it develops there, it hatches, as it were, and cases have been known where it was penetrated even into the brain and has thriven devastatingly in that organ, like those pneumococci in dogs that gain entrance through the nose. This creature is one's neighbor.

It's ridiculous. Here I sit in my little room, I, Brigge, who have got to be twenty-eight years old and about whom no one knows. I sit here and am nothing. And yet this nothing begins to think and thinks, up five flights of stairs, these thoughts on a gray Paris afternoon: Is it possible, this nothing thinks, that one has not yet seen, recognized, and said anything real and important? Is it possible that one has had thousands of years of time to look, reflect, and write down, and that one has let the millennia pass away like a school recess in which one eats one's sandwich and an apple? Yes, it is possible. ...Is it possible that in spite of inventions and progress, in spite of culture, religion, and worldly wisdom, that one has remained on the surface of life? Is it possible that one has even covered this surface, which would at least have been something, with an incredibly dull slipcover, so that it looks like living-room furniture during the summer vacation? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood? Is it possible that the past is false because one has always spoken of its masses, as if one was telling about a coming together of many people, instead of telling about the one person they were standing around, because he was alien and died? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that one believed one has to make up for everything that happened before one was born? Is it possible one would have to remind every single person that he arose from all earlier people so that he would know it, and not let himself be talked out of it by the others, who see it differently? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that all these people know very precisely a past that never was? Is it possible that everything real is nothing to them; that their life takes its course, connected to nothing, like a clock in an empty room? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that one knows nothing about girls, who are nevertheless alive? Is it possible that one says "the women", "the children", "the boys", and doesn't suspect (in spite of all one's education doesn't suspect) that for the longest time these words have no longer had a plural, but only innumerable singulars? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and think it is something they have in common? Just look at two schoolboys: one buys himself a knife, and the same day his neighbor buys one just like it. And after a week they show each other their knives and it turns out that they bear only the remotest resemblance to each other-so differently have they developed in different hands (Well, the mother of one of them says, if you boys always have to wear everything out right away). Ah, so: is it possible to believe that one could have a God without using him? Yes, it is possible. But, if all this is possible, has even an appearance of possibility-then for heaven's sake something has to happen. The first person who comes along, the one who has had this disquieting thought, must begin to accomplish some of what has been missed; even if he is just anyone, not the most suitable person: there is simply no one else there. This young, irrelevant foreigner, Brigge, will have to sit himself down five flights up and write, day and night, he will just have to write, and that will be that.

Und man hat niemand und nichts und faehrt in der Welt herum mit einem Koffer und mit einer Bücherkiste und eigentlich ohne Neugierde.

My old furniture is rotting in a barn where I was permitted to store it, and as for myself, dear God, I don't have a roof over my head and it is raining into my eyes.

Amint észrevettem, lehalkítottam lépteimet. Amikor a szegények gondolkoznak, nem szabad zavarni őket. Talán mégiscsak eszükbe jut.

I have a notion that, at big fires, a moment of extreme suspense can sometimes occur, when the jets of water slacken off, the firemen no longer climb, no one moves a muscle. Without a sound, a high black wall of masonry cants over up above, the fire blazing behind it, and, without a sound, leans, about to topple. Everyone stands waiting, shoulders tensed, faces drawn in around their eyes, for the terrible crash. That is how the silence is here.

Bugün bunu beklememiştim; çok tabii, çok basit bir işmiş gibi cesaretle sokağa çıkmıştım. Ama yine de bir şey vardı işte, beni bir kağıt gibi alıp buruşturan ve atan, müthiş bir şey vardı işte

in later years it occasionally happened that I awoke in the night and the stars were so real and advanced so convincingly that I could not understand how people managed to lose so much of the world

I’m learning how to see. I don’t know what the reason is, but everything enters into me more deeply and no longer stops at the point where it used to come to an end. I have an inner self that I knew nothing about. Now everything goes into it. I don’t know what happens there.

Mécontent de tous et mécontent de moi, je voudrais bien me racheter et m’enorguiellir un peu dans le silence et la solitude de la nuit. Âmes de ceux que j’ai aimés, âmes de ceux que j’ai chantés, fortifiez-moi, éloignez de moi le mensonge et les vapeurs corruptices du monde; et vous, Seigneur mon Dieu! accordez-moi la grâce de produire quelques beaux vers qui me prouvent à moi même que je ne suis pas le dernier des hommes, que je ne suis pas inférieur à ceux que je méprise.

There I sat, probably looking so dreadful that nothing had the courage to stand by me; not even the candle, which I had just done the service of lighting it, would have anything to do with me. It burned away there by itself, as in an empty room. My last hope was always the window. I imagined that outside there, there still might be something that belonged to me, even now, even in this sudden poverty of dying. But scarcely had I looked thither when I wished the window had been barricaded, blocked up, like the wall. For now I knew that things were going on out there in the same indifferent way, that out there, too, there was nothing but my loneliness. The loneliness I had brought upon myself and to the greatness of which my heart no longer stood in any sort of proportion. People came to my mind whom I had once left, and I did not understand how one could forsake people.

The main thing was being alive. That was the main thing.

The main thing was to be living. That was the main thing.

I offer resistance, although I know that my heart has already been ripped out and I could not go on living even if my torturers were to leave me alone now.

How good it is to be among reading people. Why are they not always like that? You can go up to one of them and touch him lightly; he feels nothing. And if in rising, you chance to bump lightly against a neighbor and excuse yourself, he nods toward the side from which he hears your voice, his face turns toward you and does not see you, and his hair is like that of a man asleep. How comforting that is.

what transported me into raptures were the sweeping cloaks, the wraps, the shawls, the veils, all those yielding, magnificent, unused materials that were soft and caressing, or so sheer that I could hardly keep hold of them, or so light that they flew by me like a wind, or simply heavy with all their own weight. It was in them I saw, for the first time, truly free and infinitely variable possibilities: to be a slave girl and sold off, or to be Joan of Arc, or an old king, sorcerer; all these I now held in my hand

But now that so much is changing, is it not up to us to change? Could we not try to evolve just a little, and gradually take upon ourselves our share in the labour of love? We have been spared all of its toil, and so it has slipped in among our amusements, as a scrap of genuine lace will occasionally fall into a child's toy-box, and give pleasure, and cease to give pleasure, and at lengthe lie there among broken and dismembered things, worse than all the rest. We have been spoiled by easy gratification, like all dilettantes, and are held to be masters. But what if we despised out successes? What if we began to learn, from the very start, the labour of love that has always been done for us? What if we were to go and become beginners, now that so much is changing?

In later years it would sometimes happen that I’d wake up at night and see the stars so real in the sky and so meaningful in their course, and couldn’t understand how anyone could bring themselves to miss so much of the world.

But now that so much is changing, isn't it time for us to change? Couldn't we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of love? We have been spared all its trouble, and that is why it has slipped in among our distractions, as a piece of real lace will sometimes fall into a child's toy-box and please him and no longer please him, and finally it lies there among the broken and dismembered toys, more wretched than any of them. We have been spoiled by superficial pleasures like dilettantes, and are looked upon as masters. But what if we despised our successes? What if we started from the very outset to learn the task of love, which has always been done for us? What if we went ahead and became beginners, now that much is changing?

Oh Malte, we just go on living, and it seems to me that everyone is distracted and busy and no one pays proper attention as we go along. As if a meteor were to fall and no one sees it and no one has made a wish. Never forget to wish for something, Malte.

Never forget to make a wish, Malte. You should never give up wishing. I believe there is no such thing as fulfillment, but there are wishes, and they go on lasting, your whole lifetime, so that you couldn’t wait long enough for them to be fulfilled even if you wanted to.

How much such a little moon can do. There are days when everything about one is bright, light, scarcely stated in the clear air and yet distinct. Even what lies nearest has tones of distance, has been taken away and is only shown, not proffered; and everything related to expanse–the river, the bridges, the longs streets, and the squares that squander themselves–has taken that expanse in behind itself, is painted on it as on silk. It is not possible to say what a bright green wagon on the Pont-Neuf can then become, or some red that is not to be held in, or even a simple placard on the party wall of a pearl-grey group of houses. Everything is simplified, brought into a few right, clear planes, like the face in a Manet portrait. And nothing is trivial and superfluous. The booksellers on the quai open their stalls, and the fresh or worn yellow of their books, the violet brown of the bindings, the bigger green of an album–everything harmonizes, counts, takes part, creating a fulness in which nothing lacks

It is difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of one who didn't want to be loved. When he was a child everyone in the house loved him. He grew up knowing nothing different and, being a child, he grew accustomed to their tenderness of heart. But once he became a youth he wanted to cast all that aside. He wouldn't have been able to say it, but even when he spent the whole day wandering around outdoors he didn't want the dogs with him ever again because they loved him as well; because looking in their eyes he could read watchfulness, sympathy, expectation, and concern; because when they were with him there was nothing he could do that didn't either delight them or hurt their feelings. But what he was aiming for at the time was that indifference of heart which early in the morning out in the fields sometimes seized him inwardly and with such purity that he would start to run in order to leave himself no time or breath to be more than a weightless moment in the morning's returning consciousness.

A happy poet who writes about his window and the glass doors of his bookcases that reflect pensively a beloved, lonely vastness. This is the poet I would have liked to become (...)

From the open windows, the stale air of the night before crept out with a bad conscience.

I left home to go to the Academy for Sons of the Nobility, and an invidious, unpleasant time in my life began.

I am imagining you are here; there are six tapestries

Mama can smell something,’ said Viera Schulin behind him. ‘We always have to be quiet. She smells with her ears.’ She herself stood attentively with her eyebrows raised, all nose.

Just as, wholly unprepared, unconscious of any danger, they allow the well-nigh lethal confessions of music to stimulate them as physical indiscretions might,

Çocukluğum için niyazda bulundum, ve işte çocukluğum geri geldi, ve hissediyorum ki çocukluk, evvelden nasılsa yine öyle ağır ve hiç de fayda etmemiş yaşlanmak.

Kadının teslimiyeti, hudutsuz olmak gayesini güder : onun saadetidir bu. Ama kadının aşkındaki sonsuz ıstırap hep şu olmuştur : kendisinden bu teslimiyeti azaltması istenir.

Hayatta yeni başlayanlar için sınıflar yok, insandan derhal en zor şeyi isterler daima.

Kendisine söylenen bir şeyi, daima her şey olarak görüyor ve bunun karşısında keza mevcut öbür şeyleri unutuveriyordu

Лица прихватило заревом витринных огней, смех тек из распяленных ртов, как гной из открытых ран.

…and somehow vaguely foreseeing that life would be like this: full of many special things that are meant for one person alone and that cannot be told.

But it is over now; I have survived it.

All the suffering and torment wrought at places of execution, in torture chambers, madhouses, operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn—all these are stubbornly imperishable, all these persist, are inaccessible but cling on, envious of everything that is, stuck in their own terrible reality. People would like to be allowed to forget much of it, their sleep gliding softly over these furrows in the brain, but dreams come and push sleep aside and fill the picture again. And so they wake up breathless, let the light of a candle dissolve the darkness as they drink the comforting half-light as if it was sugared water. But, alas, the edge on which this security is balancing is a narrow one. Given the slightest little turn and their gaze slips away from the familiar and the friendly, and the contours that had so recently been comforting take the sharp outlines of an abyss of horror.

Ama bugün bunca şey değişip dururken kendimizi değiştirmek, biz erkeklerin de görevi değil mi? Bir parça gelişmeyi, aşktaki çalışma payımızı zamanla ve yavaşça üzerimize almayı deneyemez miyiz? Aşkın bütün zahmetinden bizi azat ettiler ve böylece aşk, eğlencelerimiz arasına düştü; nasıl ki birçoğunun oyuncak dolabına bazen, iyi cinsten tentene parçası düşer, çocuğu sevindirir, sonra sevindirmez olur ve sonunda o kırık, o parça parça eşyalar arasında, bütün hepsinden daha kötü, kalakalır. Biz bütün amatörler gibi kolay hazlarla bozulduk ve usta diye geçiniyoruz. Başarılarımızı hor görsek, hep kendi hesabımıza başkalarına gördüğümüz aşk işini öğrenmeye ta başından başlasak nasıl olur? Madem bunca şey değişiyor, gitsek de bir yeni başlayan gibi başlasak?

You couldn’t wait for that; you were there, and everything that is barely measurable ― an emotion that rises by half a degree, the angle of deflection, read off from up close, of a will burdened by an almost infinitesimal weight, the slight cloudiness in a drop of longing, and that barely perceptible color-change in an atom of confidence ― all this you had to determine and record. For it is in such reactions that life existed, our life, which has slipped into us, had drawn back inside us so deeply that it was hardly possible even to make conjectures about it any more.

Aber nun, da so vieles anders wird, ist es nicht an uns, uns zu verändern? Könnten wir nicht versuchen, uns ein wenig zu entwickeln, und unseren Anteil Arbeit in der Liebe langsam auf uns nehmen nach und nach? Man hat uns alle ihre Mühsal erspart, und so ist sie uns unter die Zerstreuungen geglitten, wie in eines Kindes Spiellade manchmal ein Stück echter Spitze fällt und freut und nicht mehr freut und endlich daliegt unter Zerbrochenem und Auseinandergenommenem, schlechter als alles. Wir sind verdorben vom leichten Genuß wie alle Dilettanten und stehen im Geruch der Meisterschaft. Wie aber, wenn wir unsere Erfolge verachteten, wie, wenn wir ganz von vorne begännen die Arbeit der Liebe zu lernen, die immer für uns getan worden ist? Wie, wenn wir hingingen und Anfänger würden, nun, da sich vieles verändert.

Somehow I had a premonition of what I so often felt at later times: that you did not have the right to open a single book unless you engaged to read them all. With every line you read, you were breaking off a portion of the world. Before books, the world was intact, and afterwards it might be restored to wholeness once again. But how was I, who could not read, to take up the challenge laid down by all of them?

Is Abelone beautiful? I asked myself, surprised. Then I left home to go to the Academy for Young Noblemen; it was the start of a distasteful and harmful period. But there at Soro whenever I separated myself from the others and they let me stand in peace at the window I would look out in amongst the trees; and in such moments and at night the certainty grew in me that Abelone was beautiful. And I started writing her all those letters, lengthy ones and short, many of them secret letters in which I thought I was writing about Ulsgaard and about my present unhappiness . But, as I see it now, they may well have been love letters.

I can see myself lying in my little high-sided bed, not sleeping and somehow vaguely intimating that that was how life would be: full of special things that are only intended for one person and cannot be told of.

Bisognerebbe saper attendere, raccogliere, per una vita intera e possibilmente lunga, senso e dolcezza, e poi, proprio alla fine, si potrebbero forse scrivere dieci righe valide. Perché i versi non sono, come crede la gente, sentimenti (che si acquistano precocemente), sono esperienze. Per scrivere un verso bisogna vedere molte città, uomini e cose, bisogna conoscere gli animali, bisogna capire il volo degli uccelli e comprendere il gesto con cui i piccoli fiori si aprono al mattino. Bisogna saper ripensare a itinerari in regioni sconosciute, a incontri inaspettati e congedi previsti da tempo, a giorni dell'infanzia ancora indecifrati, ai genitori che eravamo costretti a ferire quando portavano una gioia e non la comprendevamo (era una gioia per qualcun altro), a malattie infantili che cominciavano in modo così strano con tante profonde e grevi trasformazioni, a giorni in stanze silenziose e raccolte e a mattine sul mare, al mare sopratutto, a mari, a notti di viaggio che passavano con un alto fruscio e volavano assieme alle stelle - e ancora non è sufficiente poter pensare a tutto questo. Bisogna avere ricordi di molte notti d'amore, nessuna uguale all'altra, di grida di partorienti e di lievi, bianche puerpere addormentate che si rimarginano. Ma bisogna anche essere stati accanto ad agonizzanti, bisogna essere rimasti vicino ai morti nella stanza con la finestra aperta e i rumori intermittenti. E non basta ancora avere ricordi. Bisogna saperli dimenticare, quando sono troppi, e avere la grande pazienza di attendere che ritornino. Perché i ricordi in sé ancora non sono. Solo quando diventano sangue in noi, sguardo e gesto, anonimi e non più distinguibili da noi stessi, soltanto allora può accadere che in un momento eccezionale si levi dal loro centro e sgorghi la prima parola di un verso.

And to think that I might have become a poet like that if I had been allowed to settle somewhere, anywhere in the world, in one of the many shuttered-up houses in the country that no one looks after anymore. I would only have needed one room (the light room in the gable). I would have lived inside it with my old things, my family portraits, my books. And I would have had an armchair, and flowers and dogs, and a stout stick for rocky paths. And nothing else. Only a book bound in yellowing ivory-coloured leather with a flowery pattern for its endpapers: I would have written in it. I would have written a great deal, because I would have had many thoughts and memories of many things.

Now it was there. Now it was growing within me like a tumor, like a second head, and it was a part of me, though it surely could not be mine, since it was so big. There it was, like a big dead animal that had once been my hand when it was still alive, or my arm. And my blood was flowing through me, and through it, as if through one and the same body. And my heart was having to make a great effort to pump the blood into the big thing: there was very nearly not enough blood. And the blood was loth to pass in, and emerged sick and tainted. But the big thing swelled and grew before my face, like a warm, bluish boil, and grew before my mouth, and already its margin cast a shadow on my remaining eye.

I rushed to the mirror and with difficulty watched through the mask the working of my hands. But for this the mirror had just been waiting. Its moment of retaliation had come. While I strove in boundlessly increasing anguish to squeeze somehow out of my disguise, it forced me, by what means I do not know, to lift my eyes and imposed on me an image, no, a reality, a strange, unbelievable and monstrous reality, with which, against my will, I became permeated: for now the mirror was the stronger, and I was the mirror. I stared at this great, terrifying unknown before me, and it seemed to me appalling to be alone with him. But at the very moment I thought this, the worst befell: I lost all sense, I simply ceased to exist. For one second I had an indescribable, painful and futile longing for myself, then there was only he: there was nothing but he... They did not spring forward to the rescue; their cruelty knows no bounds. They stood there and laughed; my God, they could stand there and laugh. I wept, but the mask did not let the tears escape; they ran down inside over my cheeks and dried at once and ran again and dried. And at last I knelt before them, as no human being ever knelt; I knelt, and lifted up my hands and implored them: "Take me out, if you still can, and keep me", but they did not hear; I had no longer any voice. I sank down and they went on laughing, thinking that was part of it. They were used to that from me. But then I had continued to lie there and had not answered. And their fright when they finally discovered that I was unconscious and lay there like a piece of something among all those wrappings, just like a piece of something.

In the days of King Clovis,3 people were already dying in some of the beds. Now they die in five hundred and fifty-nine of them. It is a factory production line, of course, and with such an immense output the quality of individual deaths may vary.

With that he went off and established his zoo for the people, a kind of jardin d'acclimatation for the larger species of lies, which had never been seen hereabouts, and a palm-house of exaggerations, and a small, well-tended figuerie of bogus mysteries.

Other people change their faces over uncannily quickly, one after the other, and wear them out. At first they think they have enough of them to last forever, but hardly have they reached forty than they’re on the last one. There is something tragic about that, certainly. They aren’t used to looking after faces; their last wears through in a week, has holes in it, and in many places it’s as thin as paper, and then gradually the base layer starts to show through, the non-face, and they go around wearing that.

The existence of the terrible in every particle of the air. You breathe it in as part of something transparent; but within you it precipitates, hardens, acquires angular, geometrical forms in among your organs; for all the torments and horrors suffered at places of execution, in torture chambers, in madhouses, in operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn – all this is possessed of a tenacious permanence, all of it persists and, jealous of all that is, clings to its own frightful reality. People would prefer to be able to forget much of it; sleep files away gently at the grooves in the brain, but dreams drive it away and trace the lines anew. And they wake, panting, and dissolve the gleam of a candle in the dark, and drink in the half-lit solace as if it were sugared water.

I, who even as a child had been so distrustful of music (not because it took me out of myself more powerfully than anything else, but because I had noticed that it did not put me back where it had found me, but left me deeper down, somewhere in the heart of things unfinished),

Is it possible that one knows nothing of girls, who are nonetheless living? Is it possible that one says ‘women’, ‘children’, ‘boys’ without any suspicion (none whatsoever, despite all one's education) that these words have long since had no plural, but only countless singulars?

For now I knew that out there, too, there was nothing but my loneliness, the loneliness I had brought upon myself and which was of an enormity that my heart was no longer equal to. I recalled people I had once left, and it was simply beyond me that one could part from other human beings.

Bir mahluk vardır ki gözüne ilişirse tamamen zararsızdır, farkına varmazsın bile, hemen unutursun. Ama herhangi bir şekilde, görünmeden kulağına kaçarsa orada gelişir, sanki yumurtasından çıkar; beyne kadar ilerlediği ve bu uzuvda, tıpkı köpek pnömokokları gibi yakıp yıkarak büyüdükleri görülür. Bu yaratık komşudur.

His lips were thin and shut tight, and his nostrils trembled slightly. He could move only one of his beautiful dark brown eyes; from time to time, it gazed across at me, tranquil and melancholy, while the other always remained fixed in the same direction, as if it had been sold and there were no longer any point in considering it.

But alas, with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good. For poems are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough—they are experiences.

و با این همه هنوز داشتن خاطره بس نیست. باید بتوانی‌ هنگامی که انباشته شدند از یادشان ببری و صبر بسیار پیشه کنی‌ و منتظر شوی تا دیگر بار بازگردند، زیرا خاطرات خود به کار نمی‌‌آیند. آنگاه که در جانمان به خون و نگاه و رفتار تبدیل میشوند، آنگاه که دیگر نامی‌ ندارند و از ما جدا نیستند، شاید در ساعتی‌ یگانه، از این میان نخستین واژهٔ شعری برخیزد و رها شود.

There I sat with your books, you headstrong man,20 trying to form an opinion of them, as others do who have not read you all of a piece but have taken a part for themselves and been satisfied. For I did not yet appreciate the nature of fame, that public demolition of one who is in the making, on to whose building site the mob irrupt, knocking his stones all over the place.

Sometimes, in the rue de Seine for instance, I go past little shops. Vendors of second-hand goods, or small-time antiquarian booksellers, or dealers in engravings, all of them with overcrowded windows. No one ever goes inside them, they don’t look as if they do any business. But look inside and you can see them sitting there and reading, completely at ease, with no thought to the morrow, or of making a success of things; they have a dog that sits cheerfully by their feet, or a cat that makes the silence even greater as it brushes along the rows of books as if it were wiping the names off the spines. Ah, if only that would do: sometimes I could wish I could buy myself a crowded shop-window like that and sit down behind it with a dog for twenty years.

...до моего сознания никогда не доходило, как много бывает лиц. Людей масса, но лиц еще больше, так как у каждого человека по нескольку лиц. Есть люди, которые годами носят одно и то же лицо, конечно, оно изнашивается, пачкается, протирается на складках, оно растягивается, как перчатки за время долгого путешествия. Это экономные, простые люди; они свое лицо не меняют, они его даже не подновляют. Оно достаточно хорошее, утверждают они, и кто может им доказать противоположное? Теперь спросите-ка себя: раз у каждого по нескольку лиц, что они делают с остальными? Они их приберегают. Пригодятся, мол, когда придет срок, детям. Но бывает и так, что с ними выходят гулять мх собственные собаки. А почему бы и нет? Лицо есть лицо. Иные люди до неприятного быстро меняют свои лица, одно за другим, и быстро изнашивают их. Сначала им кажется, что лиц им хватит на всю жизнь, но им едва стукнуло сорок, а они уже донашивают последнее. В этом, естественно, свой трагизм. Они, эти люди, не привыкли беречь свои лица; последнее лицо через восемь дней протирается тут и там до дыр, во многих местах уже тонкое, как бумага, и тогда мало-помалу обнаруживаетя подкладка, не-лицо, - и они так и расхаживают.

Bir mısra için insanın birçok şehir görmesi, insanlar, şeyler, hayvanlar tanıması gerekir, kuşların nasıl uçtuğunu hissetmeli ve küçük çiçeklerin sabah hangi kıpırdanışla açtığını. İnsanın geçmişi düşünebilmesi gerekir, bilinmeyen bölgelerdeki yolları, umulmadık karşılaşmaları ve çoktandır yaklaştığını hissettiği vedalaşmaları; henüz aydınlanmamış çocukluk günlerini, sevindirici bir şey dediklerinde (bu bir başkası için sevinçti) anlamayıp üzdüğümüz anne babayı; öyle tuhaf, öyle çeşitli ve derin değişimlerle başlayan çocukluk hastalıklarını. Ölmüşlerin yanında oturmuş olmalı, açık pencereli ve kesik kesik görüntülerin olduğu odalarda. Hatıraları olmak da yetmez. Onları eğer çoksa unutabilmek de gerekir, ayrıca tekrar gelmelerini beklemek için büyük sabır ister. Çünkü henüz tam hatıra olmamışlardır. Bunlar ancak içimizdeki kana, bakışımıza ve hareketlerimize dönüşünce ve adsızlaşıp kendimizden ayırt edilmez olunca, ancak o zaman çok ender bir saatte bir dizenin ilk kelimesi onun ortasında ve onların içinden ortaya çıkar.

Yalnızlardan söz etmemiz insanlardan fazla anlayış beklemektir. İnsanlar, neden söz ettiğimizi anlarlar sanıyoruz. Hayır, anlamazlar. Bir yanlızı görmemişlerdir asla; ondan, tanımaksızın nefret etmişlerdir yalnızca. İnsanlar, onu tüketen komşular olmuşlardır; bitişik odanın, onu baştan çıkaran sesleri olmuşlardır. İnsanlar, patırtı etsinler, onun sesini boğsunlar diye, eşyaları ona karşı kışkırtmışlardır. Narinliği ve çocuk oluşu yüzünden çocuklar, ona karşı birleşmişler ve o her büyüyüşünde, yetişkinlerin inadına büyümüştür. Bir av hayvanı gibi barınağını sezmişler ve uzun gençliği sürekli bir takip altında geçmiştir. Güçten kesilmeyip de ellerinden kaçtıkça, yaptığı şeylere bağırmışlar, çirkin deyip kötülemişlerdir yaptıklarını. Ve o, bunlara kulak asmadı mı biraz daha ortaya çıkmışlar, yiyeceğini bitirmişler, teneffüs edeceği havayı tüketmişler ve iğrensin diye yoksulluğuna tükürmüşlerdir. Bulaşıcı hastalığı olan biri gibi adını kötüye çıkarmışlar, daha çabuk kaçıp gitsin diye ardından taşlar atmışlardır. Ve yıllanmış içgüdülerinde haklıydılar gerçekten: O, gerçekten düşmanlarıydı çünkü.

Perhaps you intend, O my God, to relinquish everything and love them. Why else do I find it so hard not to follow them when they pass me? [...] Why do I imagine how I would hold them close, right up to my breath, with an inexistable caution, these dolls whom life has played with, flinging their arms open with every spring that comes, til their shoulder joints grow loose? They have never fallen from a hope so high, and so they are not broken; but they are battered and already in too poor a state for life to have much use for them. - On poor children

There are these fading, ageing girls who constantly let themselves go over the edge without resisting, strong girls, still unused in their innermost selves, who have never been loved. Perhaps, Lord, you mean me to leave everything and go love them. Otherwise why is it so difficult for me not to follow them when they pass me in the street? Why do I suddenly invent the sweetest, most nocturnal words, and why does my voice settle sweetly inside me between my throat and heart? Why do I imagine how I, with unutterable caution, would hold them to my breath, these dolls that life has been playing with, flinging their arms apart springtime after springtime for nothing, and again for nothing, until they became slack in the shoulders. They've never fallen from a very high hope, so they're not broken; but they're badly chipped already and too far gone. Only stray cats come to them in the evening in their rooms and keep giving them furtive scratches and then sleep on top of them. Sometimes I follow one of them down a couple of streets. They walk past the houses, people are continually coming along who blot them out, they go on fading until they are nothing.

For example, it never occurred to me before how many faces there are. There are multitudes of people, but there are many more faces, because each person has several of them. There are people who wear the same faces for years; naturally it wears out, gets dirty, splits at the seams, stretches like gloves worn during a long journey. There are thrifty, uncomplicated people; they never change it, never have it cleaned. It's good enough, they say, and who can convince them of the contrary? Of course, since they have several faces, you might wonder what they do with the other ones. They keep them in storage. Their children will wear them. And why not? A face is a face. Other people change faces incredibly fast, put on one after another, and wear them out. At first, they think they have an unlimited supply, but when they are barely forty years old they come to their last one. There is, to be sure, something tragic about this. They are not accustomed to taking care of faces; their last one is worn through in a week, has holes in it, is in many places as thin as paper, and then, little by little, the lining shows through, the non-face, and they walk around with that on.

Când mă gândesc acum la toate astea, mă minunez cum de mai reveneam mereu întreg din lumea acelor febre și cum de mă mai adaptam la viața aceea obișnuită în care oricine voia să fie ajutat să simtă și să rămână la ceea ce cunoaște și unde, cu prudență, suporta inteligibilul. De la ea așteptam ceva și, fie că venea, fie că nu venea, a treia posibilitate era exclusă. Existau lucruri triste, odată pentru totdeauna, mai existau și lucruri plăcute și încă o mare mulțime de lucruri fără importanță, însă dacă ți se făcea o bucurie, atunci era într-adevăr o bucurie și trebuia să te porți în consecință. În fond, totul era foarte simplu și, de îndată ce înțelegeai despre ce e vorba, treaba mergea de la sine.

Ci sono giorni in cui tutto intorno a noi è lucente, leggero, appena accennato nell’aria chiara e pur nitido. Le cose più vicine hanno già il tono della lontananza, sono sottratte a noi, mostrate a noi ma non offerte; e ciò che ha rapporto con gli spazi lontani – il fiume, i ponti, le lunghe strade e le piazze che si prodigano -, tutto ciò ha preso dietro di sé quegli spazi, vi sta sopra dipinto come sulla seta. E’ impossibile esprimere cosa riesca ad essere, allora, una carrozza d’un verde lucente sul Pont-Neuf o qualcosa di rosso che non si può fermare, o anche solo un manifesto sul muro antincendio di un gruppo di case grigio perla. Tutto è semplificato, composto in piani giusti e chiari come il volto in un ritratto di Manet. E nulla è insignificante e superfluo.

When one speaks of solitaries, one always takes too much for granted. One supposes that people know what one is talking about. No, they do not. They have never seen a solitary, they have simply hated him without knowing him. They have been his neighbors who used him up, and the voices in the next room that tempted him. They have incited things against him, so that they made a great noise and drowned him out. Children were in league against him, when he was tender and a child, and with every growth he grew up against the grown-ups. They tracked him to his hiding place, like a beast to be hunted, and his long youth had no closed season. And when he refused to be worn out and got away, they cried out upon that which emanated from him, and called it ugly and cast suspicion upon it. And when he would not listen, they became more distinct and ate away his food and breathed out his air and spat into his poverty so that it became repugnant to him. They brought down disrepute upon him as upon an infectious person and cast stones at him to make him go away more quickly. And they were right in their ancient instinct: for he was indeed their foe. But then, when he did not raise his eyes, they began to reflect. They suspected that with all this they had done what he wanted; that they had fortified him in his solitude and helped him to separate himself from them for ever. And now they changed about and, resorting to the final, the extreme, used that other resistance: fame. And at this clamor almost every one has looked up and been distracted.

Mümkün müdür, henüz hiçbir Gerçek ve Önemli, görülmemiş, bilinmemiş, söylenmemiş olsun? Mümkün müdür, görmek, düşünmek ve yazmakla binlerce yıl geçmiş bulunsun ve binlerce yıl, tereyağlı bir dilim ekmekle bir elma yenen bir okul teneffüsü gibi kaybedilmiş olsun? Evet, mümkündür. Mümkün müdür, icatlara, ilerlemelere rağmen, kültüre, dine, felsefeye rağmen hayatın yüzeyinde kalınsın? Mümkün müdür, bilinmesi yine de bir kazanç olan bu yüzey bile; yaz tatillerinde salon mobilyaları gibi, aklın alamayacağı kadar yavan bir kılıfla kaplansın? Evet, mümkündür. Mümkün müdür, bütün dünya tarihi yanlış anlaşılmış olsun? Mümkün müdür, ölen ölen yabancıdan bahsedecek yerde, etrafına üşüşen kalabalığı anlatır gibi, daima yığınların lafı edildiği için, geçmiş yanlış olsun? Evet, mümkündür. Mümkün müdür, insanlar doğmadan önce geçen şeyleri tekrar yaşamak zorunda olduklarını sansınlar? Mümkün müdür, her birine, kendinden önceki insanlardan geldiğini hatırlatmak gereksin ve herkes bunu bilsin de başka türlü söyleyenlerin dediklerine kanmasın? Evet, mümkündür. Mümkün müdür, bütün bu insanlar, asla var olmamış bir geçmişi tamamen bilsinler? Mümkün müdür, bütün hakikatler, onlar için bir şey olmasın? Mümkün müdür, hayatları, boş odalardaki saat gibi her şeyden kesilmiş, geçsin? Evet, mümkündür. Mümkün müdür, yaşayan kızlar bilinmesin? Mümkün müdür, “kadınlar” densin, “çocuklar” densin ve bu kelimelerin çoktandır çoğulları yoktur, sayısız tekilleri vardır, farkına varılmasın (tekmil okumuşluğa rağmen farkına varılmasın)? Evet, mümkündür. Mümkün müdür, “Tanrı” diyen ve Tanrı’nın ortak bir şey olduğunu sanan insanlar bulunsun? Okul çağında iki çocuk düşünelim: Biri bir çakı satın alsın, arkadaşı da aynı günde, bu çakıya tıpatıp benzeyen bir başka çakı satın alsın. Aradan bir hafta geçsin, iki öğrenci, çakılarını birbirlerine göstersinler; şimdi ancak pek uzak bir benzerlik vardır arasında — başka başka ellerde çakılar ne kadar değişmiştir. (Çocuklardan birinin annesi şöyle der hatta: Sizin elinizde zaten ne sağlam kalır ki…) Evet, evet: İnsanın bir Tanrı’sı olsun da kullanmasın, mümkün müdür? Evet, mümkündür. Bütün bunlar, mümkün olduğu, hiç değilse bir imkân zerresi taşıdıkları takdirde, ne pahasına olursa olsun, bir şey yapmalı. Herhangi birisi, yani insanı tedirgin eden bu şeyleri ilk düşünen birisi, ihmal edilmiş işleri telâfiye başlamalıdır; hatta rasgele birisi olsun, bu işin tam ehli olmasın: bu işi yapacak başka kimse yok ki. Bu genç, âciz yabancı, Brigge, beşinci katta oturup yazacaktır; gece gündüz: Evet, yazmalıdır; bunun sonu bu olacak.

One should wait, and gather meaning and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, at the very end, one might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For verses are not feelings, as people imagine – those one has early enough; they are experiences. In order to write a single line, one must see a great many cities, people and things, have an understanding of animals, sense how it is to be a bird in flight, and know the manner in which the little flowers open every morning. In one's mind there must be regions unknown, meetings unexpected and long-anticipated partings, to which one can cast back one's thoughts – childhood days that still retain their mystery, parents inevitably hurt when one failed to grasp the pleasure they offered (and which another would have taken pleasure in), childhood illnesses beginning so strangely with so many profound and intractable transformations, days in peacefully secluded rooms and mornings beside the sea, and the sea itself, seas, nights on journeys that swept by on high and flew past filled with stars – and still it is not enough to be able to bring all this to mind. One must have memories of many nights of love, no two alike; of the screams of women in labour; and of pale, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been with the dying, have sat in a room with the dead with the window open and noises coming in at random. And it is not yet enough to have memories. One has to be able to forget them, if there are a great many, and one must have great patience, to wait for their return. For it is not the memories in themselves that are of consequence. Only when they are become the very blood within us, our every look and gesture, nameless and no longer distinguishable from our inmost self, only then, in the rarest of hours, can the first word of a poem arise in their midst and go out from among them. 

Ах, но в стихах получится немного, если их пишешь с ранних лет. Со стихами нужно повременить, и смысл и сладость собираются в течение всей жизни, и по возможности - долгой, и совсем уже в конце, может быть, удастся написать десять строк действительно хороших. Потому что стихи - это не чувства, как думают люди (их, чувств, в молодости предостаточно): это опыты. Ради одной строчки нужно увидеть много городов, людей и вещей, нужно узнать животных, нужно чувствовать, как птицы летят, и знать жесты маленьких цветов, когда они открываются по утрам. Нужно уметь вспоминать о дорогах в незнакомых краях, о неожиданных встречах и расставаниях, давно и с грустью предвиденных, - о днях детства, еще до конца не проясненных, о родителях, сожалея, что их приходилось обижать, когда они дарили радость, а их не понимали (кого-нибудь другого она бы обрадовала), вспоминать о детских болезнях, начинающихся всегда так странно и с таким множеством глубоких и тяжелых превращений, о днях в тихих уютных комнатах и об утрах у моря, о море вообще, о морях, о ночных путешествиях, когда они высоко и с затихающим шелестом пролетали вместе со всеми звездами, - и этого еще недостаточно, если даже обо всем этом можешь думать. Нужно иметь воспоминания о многих любовных ночах, когда ни одна из них не похожа на другую, о криках рожениц и о легких, белых спящих женщинах, только что разрешившихся от бремени. Но нужно еще побыть при умирающих, нужно посидеть около покойника в комнате с открытым окном и прерывистыми уличными шумами. Но этого еще недостаточно - иметь воспоминания. Нужно уметь их забыть, если их много. И нужно большое терпение, чтобы ждать, когда они вернутся снова. Поскольку эти воспоминания, собственно, еще не суть. Лишь когда они в нас становятся кровью, взглядом и жестом, безымянно и уже неотличимо от нас самих, - лишь тогда может случиться, что в какой-то очень редкий час первое слово стиха зародится в их середине и выйдет из них.

Тут-то и сказывается, насколько испортились вещи, якшаясь с людьми. Ведь люди - если позволительно их, между прочим, сравнивать с жестяными крышками - удивительно косо и плохо сидят на своих местах. То оттого, что очутятся впопыхах не на своем месте, то оттого, что их кое-как и нехотя на него сажают, то оттого, что соответственные края погнуты у них как попало. Будем уж до конца откровенны: они только и мечтают, как бы спрыгнуть, покатиться и задребезжать. Откуда взялись бы иначе так называемые развлечения и шум, который они производят? Вещи уже много веков это видят. И ничуть не странно, что они портятся, им надоедает их прямая, тихая цель, им хочется попользоваться жизнью, как - видят они - сплошь и рядом ею вокруг пользуются. Они стараются уклониться от своих обязанностей, делаются вялы, расхлябанны, и люди нередко их ловят с поличным на какой-нибудь пакости. Люди все это по себе знают. Они сердятся, оттого что они сильней, и считают, что больше права имеют на перемены, и чувствуют, что их передразнивают. Однако они попустительствуют вещам, как попустительствуют и себе.

Uneori, firește, se trăda printr-o nemulțumire naivă, socotind că nu i se dă suficientă atenție; pe vremea când eram acolo se putea întâmpla să se înece brusc la masă, într-un fel ostentativ și complicat, care îi asigura compătimirea tuturor și o făcea, cel puțin pentru moment, să apară senzațională și captivantă, cum ar fi dorit să fie în viața mondenă. Presupun că tata era singurul care îi lua în serios crizele astea mult prea numeroase. El o privea înclinat politicos peste masă și se putea observa cum îi oferă în gând și îi pune la dispoziție propria-i trahee sănătoasă. Șambelanul, firește, nu mai mânca nici el; sorbea o înghițitură de vin și se abținea să-și declare opinia proprie. El și-o susținuse o singură dată, în fața soției sale, la masă. E mult de atunci, însă povestea a fost totuși colportată cu răutate și pe ascuns; se ivea aproape oriunde mai era cineva care încă n-a auzit-o. Se povestea că, într-o vreme, șambelana se putea supăra foarte rău din cauze petelor de vin care, din neîndemânare, apăreau pe fața de masă. Observa imediat o astfel de pată și, indiferent de împrejurarea în care s-ar fi produs, o expunea, ca să zic așa, batjocurii cu cea mai mare violență. Așa s-a întamplat tocmai când avea mai mulți oaspeți de vază. Câteva pete nevinovate, pe care le exagera, au devenit obiectul acuzațiilor ei batjocoritoare și, oricât s-a străduit bunicul să o calmeze prin semne discrete și exclamații glumețe, ea a rămas totuși la reproșurile încăpățânate pe care apoi, de altfel a trebuit să le întrerupă în mijlocul frazei. Pentru că s-a întâmplat ceva nemaipomenit și de neînțeles. Șambelanul ceruse vinul roșu care tocmai se servea și își umplea foarte atent paharul. Numai că, într-un fel uimitor, n-a încetat să toarne și după ce paharul era de mult plin, ci, tot mai calm, a turnat încet și atent până când maman, care niciodată nu se putea abține, a pufnit în râs și astfel toată situația penibilă s-a rezolvat râzând, pentru că toți s-au luat după ea ușurați, iar șambelanul a ridicat privirea și i-a întins sticla servitorului. [...] A murit spre primăvară, într-o noapte, în oraș. Sophia Oxe, care dormea alături, cu ușa deschisă, nu a auzit nimic. Când a fost găsită, dimineața, era rece ca gheața. Imediat după aceea a început boala grea și îngrozitoare a șambelanului. Parcă așteptase sfârșitul ei ca să poată muri fără să țină seama de nimic, așa cum îi convenea lui.

And when I wrote my play, how wrong I went. Was I such an emulator and fool that I needed a third party to tell us about the fate of two people who were making life difficult for each other? How easily I fell into that trap. And I surely ought to have known that this third party, who appears in all lives and literatures, this ghost of a third person, has no meaning at all, that he ought to be disavowed. He is one of Nature’s pretexts, for she is always at pains to distract humanity from her deepest secrets. He is the screen behind which a drama unfolds. He is the noise at the entrance to the voiceless quiet of a genuine conflict. I’m tempted to think that everyone has hitherto found it too difficult to speak about the two people at the heart of it; the third one, precisely because he is so unreal, is the easiest part of the task, anyone could write him. Right from the beginning of these dramas you notice their impatience to get to the third party, they can hardly wait for him to appear. Once he’s there, everything is fine. But how boring it is if he’s late, absolutely nothing can happen without him, everything comes to a standstill, pauses, waits. Yes, and what if they didn’t get past this pile-up, this logjam? What if, Mr Playwright, and you, the Public, who know about life, what if he were lost without trace, this well-liked man-about-town or this bumptious young person who fits into every marriage like a master-key? What if, for instance, he has been whisked off by the Devil? Let’s assume he has. You suddenly notice the artificial emptiness of theatres, they’re walled up like dangerous holes, and only the moths from the cushioned edges of the boxes tumble down through the hollow space with nothing to hold on to. Playwrights no longer enjoy the exclusive areas of town. All the prying public is looking on their behalf in the far corners of the world for the irreplaceable person who was the very embodiment of the action. And at the same time they’re living amongst the people, not these ‘third parties’, but the two people about whom an incredible amount could be said, but about whom nothing has ever yet been said, although they suffer and get on with things and don’t know how to manage.

Bibliothèque Nationale. Sunt mulți oameni în sală, dar nu-i simt. Ei sunt în cărți. Uneori se mișcă printre file, asemenea oamenilor care dorm și se răsucesc între două vise. Ah, ce bine este totuși să fii printre oamenii care citesc. De ce nu sunt mereu așa? Poți să te duci la unul și să-l atingi ușor: nu simte nimic. Și dacă îl atingi puțin pe vecin când te ridici și te scuzi, el face un semn din cap spre partea în care îți aude vocea, întoarce fața spre tine, dar nu te vede, iar părul lui arată ca părul unui om adormit. Ce bine e așa! Și eu stau și am un poet. Ce mai soartă! Acum poate că sunt în sală trei sute de oameni care citesc, dar este imposibil ca fiecare în parte să aibă un poet. (Dumnezeu știe ce au!) Nu există trei sute de poeți, dar ia uite ce soartă, eu, poate cel mai nevoiaș dintre acești cititori, un străin, eu am un poet. Deși sunt sărac. Deși costumul meu, pe care îl port zilnic, începe să se tocească în unele locuri, deși pantofii mei cam lasă de dorit. Ce-i drept, gulerul este curat, ca și lenjeria, și aș putea, așa cum sunt, să intru în orice cofetărie, chiar și pe marile bulevarde, să întind liniștit mâna spre farfuria cu prăjituri și să iau una. Nu s-ar mira nimeni de asta și n-aș fi certat și dat afară pentru că, oricum, este o mână din lumea bună, o mână spălată de patru-cinci ori pe zi. Da, sub unghii nu este nimic, degetul mijlociu nu e pătat de cerneală și în special încheieturile sunt impecabile. Este un fapt cunoscut că oamenii săraci nu se spală până acolo. De la curățenia lor se pot trage unele concluzii. Se și trag. Se trag în magazine. Există totuși câțiva oameni, pe Boulevard Saint-Michel de pildă și pe rue Racine, care nu se lasă derutați și cărora puțin le pasă de încheieturile mele. Ei mă privesc și știu. Ei știu că de fapt fac parte dintre ei, că joc doar un pic de comedie. Doar suntem în carnaval. Și nu vor să-și strice distracția; rânjesc un pic și-mi fac cu ochiul. N-a văzut nimeni. De altfel, mă tratează ca pe un domn. Trebuie numai să fie cineva în apropiere și atunci devin chiar servili. Se comportă ca și cum aș avea o haină de blană pe mine și în urma mea ar veni o mașină. Uneori le dau doi gologani, tremurând că ar putea să-i refuze, dar ei îi primesc. Și totul ar fi în regulă dacă n-ar rânji un pic și n-ar face cu ochiul. Cine sunt acești oameni? Ce vor de la mine? Mă așteaptă? De unde mă cunosc? Este adevărat, barba mea este cam neglijentă și de foarte, foarte departe, amintește de bărbile lor bolnave, bătrâne, spălăcite, care m-au impresionat întotdeauna, dar n-am oare dreptul să-mi neglijez barba? Mulți oameni ocupați fac asta și nimănui nu-i trece prin cap să-i socotească, din pricina asta, printre dezmoșteniți. Pentru mine este limpede: dezmoșteniții nu sunt numai cerșetori; nu, de fapt nu sunt cerșetori, trebuie să se facă distincție. Sunt deșeurile, cojile de oameni scuipate de soartă. Uzi încă de saliva sorții, se lipesc de un zid, de un felinar, de un stâlp cu afișe sau se scurg încet în josul străzii, lăsând în urma lor o dâră neagră, murdară. Ce dracu’ voia de la mine bătrâna aceea care, cu un sertar de noptieră în care se rostogoleau câțiva nasturi și câteva ace, ieșise din cine știe ce cocioabă? De ce se ținea întruna după mine și mă măsura cu privirea? Parcă încerca să mă recunoască cu ochii ei urduroși, care arătau ca și cum un bolnav ar fi scuipat flegmă verde pe pleoapele ei sângerii. Și cum a ajuns femeia aia cenușie, măruntă, să stea un sfert de oră lângă mine în fața unei vitrine, arătându-mi un creion vechi, lung, care ieșea nesfârșit de încet dintre mâinile ei murdare, împreunate. Mă prefăceam că privesc obiectele expuse în vitrină și că nu observ nimic. Ea însă știa că am văzut-o, știa că stau și mă întreb ce face de fapt. Înțelegeam foarte bine că nu putea fi vorba de creion: simțeam că era un semn, un semn pentru inițiați, un semn pe care-l cunosc dezmoșteniții.