And to the reply of mine through fingers joined;
Hearts in close communion, looks that reciprocate …
Silence — let us not speak.
* * *
Your soul sings in your dark eyes.
Come closer to me, my friend,
You are always too far away.
Closer, ah! come closer still—
How upsetting are your glances!
They seem to smile and your soul to cry.
How far behind your pupils is your soul.
Into the damp darkness of your eyes
Plunges my desire-drenched soul
But your soul keeps retreating
Behind the darkness in your eyes.
“Dearly beloved, ah! turn away, ah! turn away from me
Your eyes, for they disturb me.”
(Alternate: Schumann)
Do not look at me. Speak to me instead — I am listening.
Oh! speak and I shall see you in my dream
Not unlike the inflection of your sweet voice.
Words are unimportant — speak incoherently,
Speak slowly, think of the harmony
That your soul will reveal to me.
* * *
I would like to be lulled to sleep by your words.
* * *
Sometimes I think that pursuit of the elusive soul is a deception and that the soul is but a more subtle manifestation of the mind; reason then advises me to rejoice. Priceless subtleties then ensue:
The effort that my soul makes to reach yours must be instinctive, spontaneous. It must be unconscious and the soul must be lost … in self-contemplation.
Still other subtleties.
They will not indulge in calling and in contemplating each other. If they escape from the body and leap toward each other in a mutual outburst of desire, they collide or their paths cross, but there is no place for them to come to rest.
The result is that they meet in mutual admiration and intermingle on the thing admired. They will thus be oblivious to themselves and will not be troubled by enticing looks, and will not exhaust themselves in the attempt to call each other.
For example, I have at times experienced their fusion when we were reading and admiring each other — when both of us prayed for each other in the mourning room with Lucie, when we watched the same star on a flowery May night and let our tears run together as our cheeks touched and we surrendered our souls to each other.
Still other subtleties — traps set by the bantering mind.
“Our communion is still not perfect.
“I sense the confusion in our souls; I do not sense their fusion.
“In order for mine to blend with yours, I must lose the notion of its resistant life, its consciousness of itself. Then the soul becomes passive.
“Thus Nirvana is experienced only as the taste of nothingness in non-life itself. It is negation.
“Our communion will never be perfect; or, if perfect, it will never be experienced as such.”
But harmony — music! Music carries the undulation of one soul all the way to the other soul.
Bodies hindered me; they hid the souls. The flesh is useless. An embrace should be immaterial.
Possession. An alternative for Allain — and for me. If only I could be convinced.…47
At night when the body surrenders to sleep, the soul escapes. It flies hurriedly toward distant loves and possesses them immaterially. The body dreams.
Morning comes and the body stirs, awakens, rises. Again it takes possession of the little soul, which is again imprisoned. Distant memories are cause for regret — dear loves recalled merely as dreams … for normally you are accompanied by the body, little soul! People do not imagine caresses in the absence of bodies. Ah! If they knew! But they are all blind!
And each evening my soul flies to your side, to the side of the one loved by my soul. Like a weightless bird my soul alights on your lips, and with a slight tremor your lips begin to smile.
With a passionate (sehnsuchtsvoll) shout my soul summons yours. Like two merging flames our two souls fuse and plunge more deeply into space filled with harmonies produced by the beating of their wings.
They have taken their flight through space. It is night and the moon is beautiful. From vast sleeping forests rise masses of fog. Together we fly toward sweeter heavens, toward warmer breezes whose caresses our souls desired.
Through pines where the wind sings — in the forest chilled by sparkling dewdrops that fall on us as tears from sagging branches — over wheat that extends beyond the range of sight on the empty horizon and inclines at our passage, like a billowing sea traversed by gusts — to moist slopes where the petals of dormant flowers, finally refreshed, perfume the stars with their ecstatic dreams.
Through the night’s silence our souls pursue their swift untroubled flight.
Death when it comes will not separate our souls.
Beyond the tomb they will take flight and again join.
For separation of bodies does not make soul solitary.
The world can only separate bodies.
Nothing can stand in the way of the loving soul, for love has conquered all.
Love is stronger than death.
“Reason!” they say, and to me this is sheer arrogance. What has their Reason done?
It is always contrasted with the soul; when the heart acts, reason interferes.
It is repulsed by devotion. The sublime is always ridiculous. Daring, poetry — everything that makes life worth living is foolish. Reason would protect us; it is utilitarian, but it makes life intolerable to the soul.
It is despised by true lovers, for one who loves no longer lives for himself. His life is but a means of loving. If he finds one which is better and which will make for closer union, he will neglect — perhaps reject, forget — his own life in favor of it.
I have never had any happiness which reason sanctions.
(August 1888)
“It was already late and the others, tired, sat down to wait for us.
“The other hillside, ascended with great difficulty, sloped gently downward. The sun bathed the plain in golden, peaceful rays. At a bend in the stream was a castle with a slate roof; around it were the lower roofs of white farmhouses; under a thick fog was the pink heath and, protruding above it, a crest of grey rocks.
“The foliage of two chestnuts blended above our heads. On the slopes of the meadow, women were stacking hay; amorous sounds filled the air; and hovering over and enveloping everything was a radiant serenity, a penetrating tenderness that seemed to emanate from things and rise with the odor of the hay when night came. Our souls were refreshed by the setting.
“‘Lord,’ I exclaimed, ‘it is fitting that we remain here! Would you like to? Let us pitch our tent!’
“Then you smiled, but your smile was so sad that I sensed in it your desolate soul. My own shuddered for an instant. You understood too much and, quickly turning away in your fright, you sadly broke the spell.
“‘Come,’ you said. ‘They are waiting for us. We must leave all this.…’”
Emmanuèle and I begged her to sing. We were alone.
* * *
V*** sat down at the piano and began to play and sing Schumann’s The Sorceress. Her voice was but a puff of air, a fragile vase of emotion — it was pure emotion, with nothing to contain it as it escaped ethereally, revealing her soul. It seemed that the soul itself was singing and replacing her voice.