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an excerpt from: I had just reached this point in my thoughts when, without any warning, spring suddenly entered the world. It happened in a flash, one Saturday evening around five: everything is bathed in a different light and yet there is still a chill in the air, impossible to say what has just taken place. The fact remains that my thoughts have insisted on changing course and are now chasing madly after an imperious preoccupation. The lid of the box has just been lifted. This new freedom exhilarates me so much that I am no longer master of myself. Pointless to undertake anything. I shall winkle no more projects out of their shells so long as this glorious weather lasts. I am the bottle-imp of my senses and of chance. I am like a gambler seated at the roulette table: go up to him and tell him to put his money in oil and he will laugh in your face. My body is the roulette wheel and I am betting on red. Everything distracts me indefinably, except from my distraction itself. A feelling akin to nobleness of heart prompts me to exalt this surrender, and my ears are closed to the reproaches you make me. Instead of concerning yourself with the conduct of men, start watching women walk by. They are great patches of radiance, flashes of light not yet stripped of their furs, of brilliant, restless mysteries. No, I don’t want to die without having first gone up to each one, touched her at least with my hand, felt her weaken, willed that this pressure shall be enough to conquer her resistance, and then hey presto! Sometimes I have returned home late at night, after passing an infinity of these desirable shimmerings, without having attempted to take possession of a single one of these lives left rashly within my reach. Then, while undressing, I ask myself disgustedly what I’m doing in the world. What a way to live! Surely I would do better to go out again, to seek my prey, to be myself the prey of someone hidden in the very depths of darkness? The senses have at last established their hegemony over the earth. What should reason be doing here from now on? O reason, reason, abstract phantom of the waking state, I had already expelled you from my dreams, now I have reached a point where those dreams are about to become fused with apparent realities: now there is only room here for myself. In vain, reason denounces to me the dictatorship of sensuality. In vain it warns me against error crowned queen at last. Enter, Ma’am, this is my body, this is your throne. I fondle my delirium like a pretty pony. Let me dream a little about your falsehood, false duality of man. |
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