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the lingering sadness of autumn is the only way I can "crucify" myself.
On September 28,1 wrote: "I realize that if I want to overcome my erotic habits, I must invent a new
way of crucifying myself. It must be as intoxicating as alcohol." What I now perceive frightens me.
[...]
October 11, 1939
During Laure's last hours, while I was wandering around our dilapidated yard amidst the dead
leaves and withered shrubs, I found one of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen. It was a
rose, "the color of autumn," belly opened. Despite my frame of mind, I picked it and brought it to
Laure. She was lost within herself, lost within an indefinite delirium. But when I gave her the rose,
she came out of her strange state long enough to smile at me and say, "It's beautiful." This was
one of her last coherent sentences. Then, she brought the rose to her lips and kissed it with a
delirious passion as if she wanted to hold in everything that was escaping her. This lasted but a
moment; she flung the rose like a child throwing down its toys and once again, she was a stranger
to all who approached her, breathing convulsively.
October 12,1939
Yesterday, in the office of one of my co-workers, while he was on the telephone, I was
overcome with anguish. Imperceptibly, I retreated within myself, my gaze fixed on Laure's
deathbed{the one in which I now sleep every night). Laure and the bed were within my heart; in
fact, my heart was Laure stretched out on the bed. Within the darkness of this thoraxic cage, Laure
died just as she was lifting one of a bunch of roses spread out before her. She was holding it as if
exhausted and cried out in a voice almost absent and infinitely painful: "The rose!" I think these
were her last words. There in that office and later that evening, the uplifted rose and the cry
remained in my heart for a long time. Perhaps Laure's voice wasn't pained, perhaps it was simply
heartrending. I remembered what I had felt that morning: "Take a flower and look at it until
harmony..." That was a vision, an internal vision maintained by a silently experienced need. It
wasn't a random thought. [...]
October 21, 1939
I sent a letter today breaking off relations with some people whom I should never have trusted to
begin with. Too often, I have second thoughts about my decisions. Often, I criticized Laure's violent
cursing although I bore it with no little pain, clinging to this suffering as to a chance to live. Now,
Imowing what I have lived through and what I love, I realize that I would have lost everything
without my inexplicable patience. But those who have worn out my patience have completely
destroyed the rapport I had with them. [...]
What surrounds me now could all disappear in a few hours. At least, I could bodily leave this
dream place. But a beautiful need has been inscribed within me as it was within Laure's destiny. A
need to move around in a world full of secret meanings, where I cannot look at a window, a tree or
a cabinet door without a great deal of anguish. Neither of us did anything (or very little) to organize
the world around ourselves. It simply appeared in place as the fog lifted little by little. It depended
on disaster no more than it did on dreams, because a man who desires beauty for what it is will
never enter into the world. Insanity, asceticism, hatred, anguish and the domination of fear are all
necessary: one must have so much love that even on its threshold, death appears ludicrous. A
window, a tree, a cabinet door, are nothing if they cannot bear witness to movement and to heart-
rending destruction. [...]
November 7, 1939
Laure died one year ago today.
I received the following letter from Michel Leiris last Sunday. He has never before expressed
himself like this.
Colomb-Bechare: October 29,1939
Dear Georges,
Here we are, close to that moment of the year when we can look back and consider, sometimes
with terror, all that has happened in one year.
I don't want to insist on any one thing (any insistence would be a sacrilige in this case); rather, I
want to tell you that sometimes, when I'm in a melancholic mood, I automatically return to certain
memories which, everything considered, are more reason to hope than despair.
What unites us with just a few individuals cannot be the extent of all humanly valuable things, of all
things capable of surviving any and all vicissitudes.
I'm using rather solemn language. Here - far from my usual practice - language which makes me a
little ashamed, out of modesty perhaps, or out of human respect (sacrificing once more my mania
to reduce everything). I hope you will forgive me and understand despite my words all that I would
like to say to you as spontaneously as an expression of grief or a burst of laughter. [...]
Michel
I just came out of the Helder Theatre where I saw Wuthering Heights Heathcliff living with Cathy's
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zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plcs-sysunia.htw.pl
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