We sometimes hear that a woman's beauty,1 the friendliness or singularity of a man, the liberality of an event, will be for us a promise of Grace. But in our mind we soon come to feel that the one who has made these delightful promises was never in a position to keep them and we struggle impatiently against the wall that drives us back; like the air which just like the mind always aspiring to fill the largest spaces, has rushed forward as soon as a larger space is opened up before it, only to be constricted once more. One evening I had been the dupe of your eyes, your bearing, your voice. But now I know exactly where that leads to, just as its limit is near at hand, and to the moment when you no longer say anything, letting your eyes shine out more in the void, for an instant, like a light that cannot be sustained for long at such a degree of brightness. And I know too, dear poet, how far your kindness for me goes and where it comes from, and also the mandate of your originality which once uncovered allows one to predict its frequent surprises and exhaust its apparent infinity. All the grace that you can provide is there, incapable of growing along with my desires, of varying according to my fancy, of uniting with my own self, of obeying my heart, of guiding my spirit. I can touch it but I cannot move it. It is a boundary. I had barely reached it and yet I had already gone beyond it. There is however a realm in this world where God has willed that Grace can keep the promises it has made us, descend to the extent of toying with our dream, raise itself up to the extent of guiding it, imprinting its shape on it and giving it its joyousness, changeable and not imperceptible, but rather increasing in size and varied through its very possession, a realm in which our look of desire immediately repays us with a smile of beauty, which is changed in our heart into tenderness, and leads us into infinity, where without moving we experience the dizziness of speed, without fatigue the diminution of the struggle, without peril the intoxication of gliding, of bounding, of soaring, where at every moment our strength is proportionate to our will, and our pleasure to our desire, where all things hasten at every instant to serve our fancy and to swell it without wearying it, where as soon as a charm is felt a thousand charms combine with it, all different but which conspire, which enter into our soul, in a network which at any moment is more narrow, more vast and more sweet: it is the realm of music.
[Separate but related text]
Sometimes a woman or a man allows us to catch a glimpse, as if through
a shadowy window as it becomes indistinctly illuminated, grace, courage,
devotion, hope, sadness. But human life is too complex, too serious, too
full of its own concerns, as though overburdened, the human body with its
multiple expressions and universal story which it carries inscribed upon
itself, makes us think of many more things than a woman could ever be for
us. Grace without adornment, courage without restraint, devotion without
reserve, hope without limits, unalloyed sadness. To enjoy the
contemplation of these invisible realities that form the illusion of our
life, and which we do not only witness before women and men, the thrill of
their presentiments, requires souls that are pure, minds that are
invisible, geniuses who have the swiftness of flight without the material
aspect of wings, showing us the representation of their breath, of their
flair or their grace, without incarnating it in a body. Because if our
body too could also enjoy it, it is necessary that the play of its mind
becomes incarnate, but in a subtle body, without grandeur or pretence, at
the same time both very distant and very close by us, which gives us in
the deepest part of ourselves the sensation of its coolness without it
having any temperature, the sensation of its colour without it being
visible, the sensation of its presence without it occupying any space.
Removed from all the conditions of life, it should be as quick as a second
in time, and just as fixed, nothing should delay its impetus, obstruct its
grace, weigh upon its breath, stifle its lament. We recognize in this
precise, delightful and subtle body, the play of these pure essences. It
is the soul decked out in sound, or rather the migration of the soul
across sounds, it is music.
1. Alternative beginnings crossed out: Sometimes in the blaze of a
woman's beauty, in the perspectives that are opened to us by the
friendliness of a man or; Sometimes in the midst of the flame that a
beautiful woman radiates, in the future; Sometimes we hear, in a low
voice, from a woman among us, indistinct yet present, so false that we
wonder afterwards if we have not heard it in a dream. Sometimes the
beauty of a woman, the friendliness or singularity of a man, the
prestige of an event [murmur to us] say to us quietly, like
misunderstood words that we think.
Created 04.11.19