62
I shall not seek to appear stronger than I am. For I know
well, and man has never been really strong. Shall I make myself
weaker than I am? It would need too great patience. How
malleable I have felt myself, at certain moments, between my
two hands. And a suppleness that did not arouse any fear in me
at all. I should have preferred myself harder, and my perme
ability to other things less subtle.
The play of imponderables. A smile causes a great hate to
be born, as a word incites a crime. No matter what the effort,
I can never seize exactly the moment which determines a senti
ment. Or perhaps that is because it is so slight and so dependent
upon the sacrifice (more or less complete) that one makes of one
self to the world.
And for that matter can we choose from the gamut of pos
sible emotions (a man encountered). I oscillate a whole friend
ship between love and hatred. Not that I amuse myself by
clever artifices, but by the most natural currents of our pas
sions . . . One may love without esteem and this love is colored
by the scorn that kills. If love assumes more and more esteem,
it is not long before some jealousy still more certainly diverts it
into hatred.
(If you take Dostoyeffski for instance, I feel
that for me Svidrigailof is far more human than Sonia, his exas
perating daughter.)
At the whim of fevers. Must there not be some unexpected
vision for these rhythms which one would have preferred
masked? And yet: I see nothing arbitrary or preciose in that.
Shall I admit having no fear of apparitions at night? I am
terror-stricken by no curiosity, little as its gratuitousness leaves
unsatisfied, and of this most beautiful gem which I should rather
lose at the bottom of the sea than have my life determined by.
II
—“Is it really a new faith,” asked Tertullian, “that we need?”
ARIEL—It is so easy to have a new faith.
I may have faith in yesterday
(in the night I pass tomorrow).
And nothing limits my faith which I create in my
own measure.
I may have new faiths for every moment that I live.
TERTULLIAN—I have seen certain illuminations and
renounced them.
ARIEL—In itself renunciation is measureless, since there is no
resonance in us.
(Febrile resonance and the veins we tear from a
leaf. What does renunciation mean?)