To take things as they are.
Play with the cards one has.
Require one to be what one is.
Which does not keep me from fighting against all lies, falsifications etc. brought about by man and imposed on natural things against which it is vain to revolt. There is the inevitable and the modifiable. The acceptance of the modifiable is by no means included in the Amor Fati.
Which does not prevent one either from requiring the best from oneself, after one has recognized it as such. For one does not make a better likeness of oneself by giving way to the less good.
P.S. When I brought out these pages to-day, it seemed to me that I was wrong to tear up the first ones in this notebook. As bad as they were (I had just gotten up after an illness) they answered in advance remarks made to me by a friend, in whose wisdom I have great confidence; he never speaks for the purpose of saying nothing and says only sensible things. He protests that these pages, which I have just given him to read, are much less subversive than I seemed at first to think; even that a great number of eminent representatives of the Church would willingly subscribe to them to-day; and he quotes some names that I take care not to repeat. X. and Y. were already speaking to me in the same manner, affirming that I was not very cognizant of the present state of the Church, the intelligent pliancy of its Credo. I admitted I was not at all “up to date” and that, for greater convenience doubtless, I kept to what Bossuet taught me; that as soon as it was a question of Variations, it could only be the Protestant Churches (according to the title itself of his admirable work) to which the Catholic Church was opposed, by “its character of immutability in the faith.”
“Without doubt,” he responded, “but nevertheless it evolves ceaselessly. You would like to harden it, to make of it a finished product; it is living and answers the new requirements. Remember Chesterton’s beautiful pages, translated by Claudel, that you made me read in the N. R. F. some time ago? ‘The Church,’ he said, ‘is never static’.” And he compared it to a cart running at full speed over a narrow ridge avoiding new perils to right and left ceaselessly. “There is not a doubt,” continues my friend, “that enlightened Catholics would not be troubled at all by the affirmations you have just stated. It is your right to call Virtue what they call God; a mere question of words; it is the same thing. The idea of God, the need for God torments you; they ask nothing more of you in order to recognize you as one of theirs. And as I nevertheless protest that there is a misunderstanding; that I am searching for what makes them reject me just the same, I return to those opening pages, written in this notebook, those badly done pages, torn up; they treated of eternal life; a sort of premonitory instinct tempted me to put them at the beginning; to speak of that first, and now I understand that it was, indeed, necessary to begin with that.
That the life of the “soul” prolongs itself beyond the dissolution of the flesh, for me, is inadmissible and unthinkable, and something against which my reason protests; as well as against the incessant expanding of souls.
1 See in fine.
1 This is the first time I use that terrible word, the only one that fits.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
The following texts first appeared:
Spring, in one volume, (Flammarion) “The Garland of the Years” (texts from André Gide, Jules Romains, Colette and François Mauriac), 1941; then in the magazine Verve, series II, No. 5–6, p. 15.
Youth, in the Nouvelle Revue Française, Sept. 1931.
My Mother, in the magazine Quatre-Vents, Feb. 1942.
The Day of September 27, in the magazine Commune, Jan. 1936.
Acquasanta (with Youth), in a volume entitled “Two Tales,” in a limited edition, 1938.
Dindiki, in the magazine Commerce, IX, autumn 1926.
Joseph Conrad, in the Nouvelle Revue Française,Dec. 1, 1924.
Francis Jammes, in the Nouvelle Revue Française, December 1, 1938.
The Radiance of Paul Valéry, in the daily paper Le Figaro, July 25, 1945.
Paul Valéry, in the magazine l’Arche, October 1945.
Henri Ghéon, in the weekly Gavroche, June 14, 1945.
Eugène Dabit, in the Nouvelle Revue Française, Dec. 1, 1938.
Christian Beck, in the Belgian magazine La Nervie, special number devoted to Christian Beck, 1931.
Antonin Artaud, in the daily Combat, March 19, 1948, and in the special number devoted to Antonin Artaud of the magazine 84, 1948, No. 5–6.
Le Mercure de France, in the number 1000 of the Mercure de France, bearing the combined dates: July 1940 — December 1946.
La Revue Blanche, in the magazine Labyrinthe, 1946.
Goethe, in the Nouvelle Revue Française, March 1, 1932.
The Teaching of Poussin, as an introduction to the illustrated volume “Poussin” (edition Au Divan) 1945.
Lautréamont, as an introduction to the volume “The Case of Lautréamont” (Le Disque vert, Paris-Brussels, R. van den Berg), 1925.
Arthur Rimbaud, in the magazine Poésie 41, No. 6, 1941 (in answer to the inquiry: “Did Arthur Rimbaud die fifty years ago?”).
Three meetings with Verlaine, in the magazine Fontaine, June 1942.
Literary Memories and Problems of To-day, in pamphlet form, with the Lettres Françaises, Beyrouth, 1946, and in l’Arche, No. 18–19, August-September 1946.
Preface to Night Flight, as an introduction to Saint-Exupéry’s work, 1931.
Some Recent Writings of Thomas Mann, in the weekly Marianne, Sept. 22, 1937.
Preface for a French translation of “Morgenlandfahrt” by Hermann Hesse, “A Trip to the Orient,” translated by Jean Lambert. CalmanLévy, 1947; then in the magazine Paru, No. 50, January 1949.
Letter-Preface to Chants de Départ by Jean Lacaze, as an introduction to the volume (Finham, edit. Chantal), 1947.
Justice or Charity, in the daily Le Figaro, Feb. 25, 1945.
Courage, in the daily Combat, April 28, 1948.
Truth, in the daily Combat, April 29, 1948.
Two Imaginary Interviews, in the volume “Attendu que …” (Algiers, Edit. Charlot), 1943; in France, in l’Arche, No. 11, Nov. 1945.
Leaves, the first part in “Attendu que …” and l’Arche, No. 11; the second part only in the pamphlet “Two Imaginary Interviews” (Charlot), 1946.
Autumn Leaves, in the magazine La Table Ronde, No. 6, June 1948.