We took a few steps outside under the woods, still as bare as in
winter. Along the length of every branch it
glittered as if with frost the stars glittered as if with frost.
At every step a fresh branch sparkled and we walked on dazzled beneath the
trees still stripped of blossom and leaves, crackling with stars. Now
we Then the woods came to an end, we were in open fields, nothing
the stars no longer appeared
before us individually but in their thousands, just as before the
traveller flowers appear in a meadow, like the helmets of troops in an
army, peaceful like distant lights that we catch sight of in the
countryside and the night emerged before us filled with stars and
with no moon, like a resplendent but unseeing beauty. The
stars shone, peacefully
more. One would have
said that those lights that could be seen shining in the distance in the
countryside or from some
city from a vast celestial city of which the evening traveller at
too great a distance is
alerted to its first approaches by thousands of sees only its
thousands of lights. But no, life does not have these tranquil clarities.
There there is a peace. Men do not give to man that peace which is beyond
them, which cannot emanate from them. Peace? The
sight of More perhaps. I cannot yet stop at that while gazing at
the star filled night. For that I would need to ascend into the heavens
and among the very stars to reach the limits of my heart. But I am too far
away, and what then could anything that reminds me of it do other than
bring me the anxiety of being on the ground and of the wings which will
perhaps keep me further away from it. But now I no longer know anything,
and the sky displays for me its thousandfold stars like an azure
manuscript azure tablet onto which are inscribed golden characters
symbols which are unknown to me, which
tell me yet which
must have been familiar to me, in some other life, so that the sight of
them awakens in me the comparison to which the rest of my life no longer
seems alive, but hardening and detaching themselves from my trunk like
rotten decaying fruit or which I had forgotten upon my birth.
Tablets of law, the law that is written in the heavens, I adore you. The
law of love, I have every confidence in it. A
Looking less From a
less fixed gaze, out of more wavering clarities we
knew do they not surely presage a
love that is inaccessible the incomprehensible tenderness of a
pure heart, there where the word, the loose relationships of life which
let pass through as between the stitches of a thread the fluid truth like
the stitches of a thread [sic] would never have misled
brought us anything.
But alas, my well beloved what deep anxiety now do the stars in heaven
cause you and seem
I fear having to read there that it is to something greater than me, that it is not to me you are unknowingly faithful, I think I have to read behold that which Behold, what the stars will tell me sooner or later, or rather behold what they are exclaiming to me already in the oppressive silence of the heavens. Because, so that it may be illuminated for me, I who am only of the earth, the stars in the heavens resemble too closely the one that quivers at your mysterious zenith.
Quelques manuscrits "Lefebvre" conservés à l'université de l'Illinois, Chris Taylor, Bulletin d'informations proustiennes, 53, 2023
Created 14.02.24