icy. It was freezing and the photographers climbed into the pulpit to photograph us and flash their magnesium.
My mother’s death dealt gently with me. She had no ‘second’ childhood. She returned to her own, saw me in mine, thought I was at school, talked to me in detail about Maisons-Laffitte and was not troubled. Death had only to smile at her and take her hand. But the Montmartre cemetery, which is ours, offends me. They park us like motor cars. The drunks who cross the bridge piss down on us.
Yesterday I visited a mountain cemetery. It was under snow and had few graves. It had a commanding view of the Alpine range. Ridiculous as it seems to me to choose one’s last resting-place, I thought of my hole in Montmartre and I felt sorry not to be able to be buried here.
After the death of Jean Giraudoux I published a farewell letter which ended: ‘I shall not be long in joining you.’ I was taken to task for this remark, which was considered pessimistic, bearing the stamp of despondency. It was nothing of the kind. I meant to say that even if I am to last until I am a hundred it is only a few minutes. But few people are willing toadmit this, or that we are whiling away our time playing cards in an express which is hurtling towards death.
Since Mother Angélique † dreaded death at Port-Royal, who then will find it a blessing? As well await death without flinching. It is flattery to think of nothing but her, ungracious to apologize for living as if life were a mistake of death’s. What will those people say who imprison themselves in a cell and anxiously examine the documents of their trial? The Court will give them no credit for doing so. It has already reached its verdict. They will only have wasted their time.
How admirable the attitude of one who has made good use of the time granted him and who did not interfere by trying to be his own judge. ‡ Duration of human life belongs to those who mould each moment, sculpture it and do not trouble about the verdict.
On the subject of death there is still much for me to say, and I am amazed that so many people are troubled by her, since she is within us every second and should be accepted with resignation. How should one have such great fear of a person with whom one cohabits, who is closely mingled with our own substance? But there it is. One has grown used to making a fable of her and to judging her from outside. Better to tell oneself that at birth one marries her and to make the best of her disposition, however deceitful it may be. For she knows how to make herself forgotten and to let us believe that she no longer inhabits the house. Each one of us houses his own death and reassures himself by what he invents about her—namely that she is an allegorical figure only appearing in the last act.
Expert at camouflage, when she seems to be furthest from us, she is our very joy of living. She is our youth. She is our growth. She is our loves.
The shorter I get, the longer she grows. The more she makes herself at home. The more she bestirs herself about this and that. The more she devotes herself to trivial details. Less and less does she take the trouble to deceive me.
But her glory is when one ceases to be. She can go out, and she locks us in.
* I have kept ‘Death’ in the feminine throughout this chapter. E.S.
† Angélique Arnauld, 1591–1661, Abbess of the Abbey of Port-Royal. E.S.
‡ It needs the thundering genius of Chateaubriand for me to endure Rancé. (Abbé Armand de Rancé, reformer, 1626–1700. E.S.)
ON FRIVOLITY
FRIVOLITY IS A CRIME IN THAT IT APES LIGHTNESS , that, for instance, of a fine March morning in the mountains. It leads to that disorder, invisibly unclean, worse than any other disorder, fatal to the harmonious functioning of the constitution (like eczema) through the almost pleasurable itch induced on the derm of the intelligence, by the
fantaisiste
, that rascal so readily confused with a poet.
If you consult Larousse you will
My mother’s death dealt gently with me. She had no ‘second’ childhood. She returned to her own, saw me in mine, thought I was at school, talked to me in detail about Maisons-Laffitte and was not troubled. Death had only to smile at her and take her hand. But the Montmartre cemetery, which is ours, offends me. They park us like motor cars. The drunks who cross the bridge piss down on us.
Yesterday I visited a mountain cemetery. It was under snow and had few graves. It had a commanding view of the Alpine range. Ridiculous as it seems to me to choose one’s last resting-place, I thought of my hole in Montmartre and I felt sorry not to be able to be buried here.
After the death of Jean Giraudoux I published a farewell letter which ended: ‘I shall not be long in joining you.’ I was taken to task for this remark, which was considered pessimistic, bearing the stamp of despondency. It was nothing of the kind. I meant to say that even if I am to last until I am a hundred it is only a few minutes. But few people are willing toadmit this, or that we are whiling away our time playing cards in an express which is hurtling towards death.
Since Mother Angélique † dreaded death at Port-Royal, who then will find it a blessing? As well await death without flinching. It is flattery to think of nothing but her, ungracious to apologize for living as if life were a mistake of death’s. What will those people say who imprison themselves in a cell and anxiously examine the documents of their trial? The Court will give them no credit for doing so. It has already reached its verdict. They will only have wasted their time.
How admirable the attitude of one who has made good use of the time granted him and who did not interfere by trying to be his own judge. ‡ Duration of human life belongs to those who mould each moment, sculpture it and do not trouble about the verdict.
On the subject of death there is still much for me to say, and I am amazed that so many people are troubled by her, since she is within us every second and should be accepted with resignation. How should one have such great fear of a person with whom one cohabits, who is closely mingled with our own substance? But there it is. One has grown used to making a fable of her and to judging her from outside. Better to tell oneself that at birth one marries her and to make the best of her disposition, however deceitful it may be. For she knows how to make herself forgotten and to let us believe that she no longer inhabits the house. Each one of us houses his own death and reassures himself by what he invents about her—namely that she is an allegorical figure only appearing in the last act.
Expert at camouflage, when she seems to be furthest from us, she is our very joy of living. She is our youth. She is our growth. She is our loves.
The shorter I get, the longer she grows. The more she makes herself at home. The more she bestirs herself about this and that. The more she devotes herself to trivial details. Less and less does she take the trouble to deceive me.
But her glory is when one ceases to be. She can go out, and she locks us in.
* I have kept ‘Death’ in the feminine throughout this chapter. E.S.
† Angélique Arnauld, 1591–1661, Abbess of the Abbey of Port-Royal. E.S.
‡ It needs the thundering genius of Chateaubriand for me to endure Rancé. (Abbé Armand de Rancé, reformer, 1626–1700. E.S.)
ON FRIVOLITY
FRIVOLITY IS A CRIME IN THAT IT APES LIGHTNESS , that, for instance, of a fine March morning in the mountains. It leads to that disorder, invisibly unclean, worse than any other disorder, fatal to the harmonious functioning of the constitution (like eczema) through the almost pleasurable itch induced on the derm of the intelligence, by the
fantaisiste
, that rascal so readily confused with a poet.
If you consult Larousse you will
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