creation, for an infinitely small time they piled up mountains. They rose up as stars, ravaging the universal order with their random course. With their blind hands, they touched the invisible worlds to destroy them. Suns which no longer shone bloomed in their orbits. The great day embraced them in vain. Thomas still went forward. Like a shepherd he led the flock of the constellations, the tide of star-men toward the first night. Their procession was solemn and noble, but toward what end, and in what form? They thought they were still captives within a soul whose borders they wished to cross.
Memory seemed to them that desert of ice which a magnificent sun was melting and in which they seized again, by somber and cold remembering, separated from the heart which had cherished it, the world in which they were trying to live again. Though they no longer had bodies, they enjoyed having all the images representing a body, and their spirit sustained the infinite procession of imaginary corpses. But little by little forgetfulness came. Monstrous memory, in which they rushed about in frightful intrigues, folded upon them and chased them from this fortress where they still seemed, feebly, to breathe. A second time they lost their bodies. Some who proudly plunged their glance into the sea, others who clung with determination to their name, lost the memory of speech, while they repeated Thomas's empty word. Memory was wiped away and, as they became the accursed fever which vainly flattered their hopes, like prisoners with only their chains to help them escape, they tried to climb back up to the life they could not imagine. They were seen leaping desperately out of their enclosure, floating, secretly slipping forward, but when they thought they were on the very point of victory, trying to build out of the absence of thought a stronger thought which would devour laws, theorems, wisdom . . . then the guardian of the impossible seized them, and they were engulfed in the shipwreck. A prolonged, heavy fall: had they come, as they dreamed, to the confines of the soul they thought they were traversing? Slowly they came out of this dream and discovered a solitude so great that when the monsters which had terrified them when they were men came near them, they looked on them with indifference, saw nothing, and, leaning over the crypt, remained there in a profound inertia, waiting mysteriously for the tongue whose birth every prophet has felt deep in his throat to come forth from the sea and force the impossible words into their mouths. This waiting was a sinister mist exhaled drop by drop from the summit of a mountain; it seemed it could never end. But when, from the deepest of the shadows there rose up a prolonged cry which was like the end of a dream, they all recognized the ocean, and they perceived a glance whose immensity and sweetness awoke in them unbearable desires. Becoming men again for an instant, they saw in the infinite an image they grasped and, giving in to a last temptation, they stripped themselves voluptuously in the water.
Thomas as well watched this flood of crude images, and then, when it was his turn, he threw himself into it, but sadly, desperately, as if the shame had begun for him.
A FTERWORD
T HIS TRANSLATION presents the second version of Thomas L'obscur (the only version available at this time). The original work was designated as a novel (roman), the revision as a récit. Three-quarters of the bulk of the original disappeared in the process.
It is tempting, in this context, to give away some of the secrets of the complex rhetoric of this rich work, to analyse them* to beg the reader to realize the fact that much of the discomfort he will experience in confronting this work is due to other factors than the translator's failure to iron out difficult points. Suffice it to say that the translator's energies and abilities have been taxed principally to respect and retain the author's level of
Memory seemed to them that desert of ice which a magnificent sun was melting and in which they seized again, by somber and cold remembering, separated from the heart which had cherished it, the world in which they were trying to live again. Though they no longer had bodies, they enjoyed having all the images representing a body, and their spirit sustained the infinite procession of imaginary corpses. But little by little forgetfulness came. Monstrous memory, in which they rushed about in frightful intrigues, folded upon them and chased them from this fortress where they still seemed, feebly, to breathe. A second time they lost their bodies. Some who proudly plunged their glance into the sea, others who clung with determination to their name, lost the memory of speech, while they repeated Thomas's empty word. Memory was wiped away and, as they became the accursed fever which vainly flattered their hopes, like prisoners with only their chains to help them escape, they tried to climb back up to the life they could not imagine. They were seen leaping desperately out of their enclosure, floating, secretly slipping forward, but when they thought they were on the very point of victory, trying to build out of the absence of thought a stronger thought which would devour laws, theorems, wisdom . . . then the guardian of the impossible seized them, and they were engulfed in the shipwreck. A prolonged, heavy fall: had they come, as they dreamed, to the confines of the soul they thought they were traversing? Slowly they came out of this dream and discovered a solitude so great that when the monsters which had terrified them when they were men came near them, they looked on them with indifference, saw nothing, and, leaning over the crypt, remained there in a profound inertia, waiting mysteriously for the tongue whose birth every prophet has felt deep in his throat to come forth from the sea and force the impossible words into their mouths. This waiting was a sinister mist exhaled drop by drop from the summit of a mountain; it seemed it could never end. But when, from the deepest of the shadows there rose up a prolonged cry which was like the end of a dream, they all recognized the ocean, and they perceived a glance whose immensity and sweetness awoke in them unbearable desires. Becoming men again for an instant, they saw in the infinite an image they grasped and, giving in to a last temptation, they stripped themselves voluptuously in the water.
Thomas as well watched this flood of crude images, and then, when it was his turn, he threw himself into it, but sadly, desperately, as if the shame had begun for him.
A FTERWORD
T HIS TRANSLATION presents the second version of Thomas L'obscur (the only version available at this time). The original work was designated as a novel (roman), the revision as a récit. Three-quarters of the bulk of the original disappeared in the process.
It is tempting, in this context, to give away some of the secrets of the complex rhetoric of this rich work, to analyse them* to beg the reader to realize the fact that much of the discomfort he will experience in confronting this work is due to other factors than the translator's failure to iron out difficult points. Suffice it to say that the translator's energies and abilities have been taxed principally to respect and retain the author's level of
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