For La Revue Lilas.
Subject to it being destroyed at a later date.
To my dear friend Jacques Bizet.
Fifteen years old. 7 o'clock in the evening. October.
The sky is dark purple marked
with shiny patches. Oh! my little friend why am I not in your
lap, my face against your neck, why don't you love me? Everything
is in darkness. Here are the lamps, the horror of ordinary
things.
They oppress me. Night falls like a black
shutter denying all hope, wide open to the day, escaping
from it. Here is the horror of ordinary things, and the insomnia
of the first hours of evening, while above me waltzes are being
played, and I hear the jarring sound of dishes being put away in
a nearby room...
Seventeen years old. 11 o'clock in the evening. October.
The lamp feebly lights the far corners of my room and forms a large circle of bright light into which are placed my hand, now all at once the colour of amber, my book, my desk. My walls are turned blue by slender filaments of moonlight which pass between imperceptible gaps in the red wall hangings. Everyone is asleep in the large empty apartment... I half open the window to see one last time the sweet, wild face, completely round, of the friendly moon. I hear, it seems, the breath, very fresh, cold, of all sleeping things - the tree from which seeps blue light - beautiful blue light transfiguring in the distance at an intersection of streets, like a polar landscape lit by electric light, the pale, blue paving stones. Overhead stretch out infinite fields of blue in which frail stars flourish... I have closed the window again. I am in bed. My lamp, placed close to my bed on a small table, amid glasses, bottles, cool drinks, delicately bound little books, letters of friendship or love, indistinctly illuminates my bookcase in the background. Divine hour! Ordinary things, like nature, I have consecrated, being unable to suppress them. I have clothed them with my soul and with intimate, splendid images. I am living in a sanctuary, in the midst of a spectacle. I am the centre of things and each brings me magnificent or melancholy sensations in which I delight. I have before my eyes splendid visions. It is peaceful in this bed... I fall asleep.