“Here I am, at the point that we all reach, and that seems to be the negative point of
existence. Women produce no more children and men do no more business. We rest,
and imagine we are slipping down the hill (as though we had ever mounted it). We
declare—with an incomprehensible tone of satisfaction—that we are getting old, that
the task is done, that we are no longer what we were, that it is other people’s turn to
live . . . and this life that they talk so much about, extends, roughly, from the ages of
twenty to fifty—and that is stretching it a bit, as the period of women’s youth is more
elastic now than it used to be in Balzac’s time. It is judged to be over, when I consider
that it has hardly begun. Life is held to be an arc, when it can and should be looked
upon as an ascending straight line. According to me, life begins at fifty, and afterwards
rises all the time. Everything worth while begins at that age. It is the time for
“something else.”
I have the feeling that I have lived the whole of my life for this particular present.
I must admit that I have not yet finished with art and moonlight, with music and
spring, and that I shall never be insensitive to all the delights that are the delicious froth
of the earth. But in order to learn to live one must be prepared to abdicate, to make way
for changes of plan and level. There is a way of looking at things that is eternal and that
accords to happiness the place it deserves.
In 19… Colette wrote to me about my first book Le Choix de la Vie: “But I shall
never dare to speak to you again! You say: ‘We lose nothing when a sad truth takes the
place of a beautiful dream.’ Shall I ever think in so noble a way? No, I am quite sure I
should regret. Forgive me—I know that amongst many other things, the ‘need for
knowledge’ is lacking in me. To half ignore, to fear, despise, desire passionately and
passively, to hate and curse, and even come to blows, this is my lot. I was astonished
(forgive me)—really astonished—at the inexhaustible strength one divines in you. I
could wish you Queen of something or somewhere, and your subjects would be
overjoyed.”
But I am not one of those impatient people who throw themselves, from the very
beginning, on something they have only caught a glimpse of; I search, and doubt, and
wait, and search again, and wait again. This cycle has repeated itself all my life until
1924. Since then my search has been slowing down—until it finally came to rest in 1934.
It was in New York in 1924 that I met someone and something. I began to think:
“There is a truth here.”
Since then I have never left this truth. I have studied it, sometimes looked at it
askance, trying almost to betray it, but it triumphed over my schemes, and continued—
getting stronger and stronger. And now—fifteen years later—it has become for me the
Truth.
To say it in a word, in many words—in countless words—would be to annihilate
it. A truth that can be contained in a formula is nothing. I shall only tell what I have
felt and understood, what it has done for me by transforming my aspirations into one
united force. I will not say what I hope for, but what I have learnt to will. I shall
proceed by an elimination of systems, beliefs and methods. I will quote a few pages
from my notes and my impressions. I will do it without pride or false modesty. I am
not unaware of the danger of speaking about ideas unless it is to deny them. Negation
is always well received, and thinkers who only put forward hypotheses are always
seemingly respectable. Hypothesis is a kind of life belt for the mind, which, by clinging
on, can float a little further before sinking. I am not unaware of all that can be said
against the word “search”—it’s stupid, useless, incomplete, mistaken, limited,
excessive, feverish, hysterical, pretentious and vain. If searching seems vain, , it is less
so than living comfortably with one’s eyes shut, living a life one no longer believes in.
At first it seemed to me terrible to be approaching the truth when no longer
young. I sank into deep despair. But the very fact of working on a new and
unawakened part of myself has restored to me by youth. A fresh start is ahead of me
and barring all accidents I shall know how to use it. The future seems to me like the
mould of a honey-comb, each cell of which is waiting to be filled.
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Originally Posted by Torchbearer
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