Light by Henri Barbusse (good novels to read in english txt) 📕

side of the room, she still receives on her hair and neck and hands, some morsels of heaven.

And what I am most ashamed of in those bygone days when I was mad after the treasure of unknown women is this: that I spoke to them of eternal fidelity, of superhuman enticements, of divine exaltation, of sacred affinities which must be joined together at all costs, of beings who have always been waiting for each other, and are made for each other, and all that one _can_ say--sometimes almost sincerely, alas!--just to gain my ends. I confess all that, I cast it from me as if I was at last ridding myself of the lies acted upon her, and upon the others, and upon myself. Instinct is instinct; let it rule like a force of nature. But the Lie is a ravisher.

I feel a sort of curse rising from me upon that blind religion with which we clothe the things of the flesh because they are strong, those of which I was the plaything, like everybody, always and everywhere. No, two sensuous lovers are not two friends. Much rather are they two enemies, closely attached to each other. I know it, I know it! There are perfect couples, no doubt--perfection always exists somewhere--but I mean us others, all of us, the ordinary people! I know!--the human being's real quality, the delicate lights and shadows of human dreams, the sweet and complicated mystery of personalities, sensuous lovers deride them, both of them! They are two egoists, falling fiercely on each other. Together they sacrifice themselves, utterly in a flash of pleasure. There are moments when one would lay hold forcibly on joy, if only a crime stood in the way. I know it; I know it through all those for whom I have successively hungered, and whom I have scorned with shut eyes--even those who were not better than I.

And this hunger for novelty--which makes sensuous love equally changeful and rapacious, which makes us seek the same emotion in other bodies which we cast off as fast as they fall--turns life into an infernal succession of disenchantments, spites and scorn; and it is chiefly that hunger for novelty which leaves us a prey to unrealizable hope and irrevocable regret. Those lovers who persist in remaining together execute themselves; the name of their common death, which at first was Absence, becomes Presence. The real outcast is not he who returns all alone, like Olympio; they who remain together are more apart.

By what right does carnal love say, "I am your hearts and minds as well, and we are indissoluble, and I sweep all along with my strokes of glory and defeat; I am Love!"? It is not true, it is not true. Only by violence does it seize the whole of thought; and the poets and lovers, equally ignorant and dazzled, dress it up in a grandeur and profundity which it has not. The heart is strong and beautiful, but it is mad and it is a liar. Moist lips in transfigured faces murmur, "It's grand to be mad!" _No_, you do not elevate aberration into an ideal, and illusion is always a stain, whatever the name you lend it.

By the curtain in the angle of the wall, upright and motionless I am speaking in a low voice, but it seems to me that I am shouting and struggling.

When I have spoken thus, we are no longer the same, for there are no more lies.

After a silence, Marie lifts to me the face of a shipwrecked woman with lifeless eyes, and asks me:

"But if this love is an illusion, what is there left?"

I come near and look at her, to answer her. Against the window's still pallid sky I see her hair, silvered with a moonlike sheen, and her night-veiled face. Closely I look at the share of sublimity which she bears on it, and I reflect that I am infinitely attached to this woman, that it is not true to say she is of less moment to me because desire no longer throws me on her as it used to do. Is it habit? No, not only that. Everywhere habit exerts its gentle strength, perhaps between us two also. But there is more. There is not only the narrowness of rooms to bring us together. There is more, there is more! So I say to her:

"There's you."

"Me?" she says. "I'm nothing."

"Yes, you are everything, you're everything to me."

She has stood up, stammering. She puts her arms around my neck, but falls fainting, clinging to me, and I carry her like a child to the old armchair at the end of the room.

All my strength has come back to me. I am no longer wounded or ill. I carry her in my arms. It is difficult work to carry in your arms a being equal to yourself. Strong as you may be, you hardly suffice for it. And what I say as I look at her and see her, I say because I am strong and not because I am weak:

"You're everything for me because you are you, and I love _all_ of you."

And we think together, as if she were listening to me:

You are a living creature, you are a human being, you are the infinity that man is, and all that you are unites me to you. Your suffering of just now, your regret for the ruins of youth and the ghosts of caresses, all of it unites me to you, for I feel them, I share them. Such as you are and such as I am. I can say to you at last, "I love you."

I love you, you who now appearing truly to me, you who truly duplicate my life. We have nothing to turn aside from us to be together. All your thoughts, all your likes, your ideas and your preferences have a place which I feel within me, and I see that they are right even if my own are not like them (for each one's freedom is part of his value), and I have a feeling that I am telling you a lie whenever I do not speak to you.

I am only going on with my thought when I say aloud:

"I would give my life for you, and I forgive you beforehand for everything you might ever do to make yourself happy."

She presses me softly in her arms, and I feel her murmuring tears and crooning words; they are like my own.

It seems to me that truth has taken its place again in our little room, and become incarnate; that the greatest bond which can bind two beings together is being confessed, the great bond we did not know of, though it is the whole of salvation:

"Before, I loved you for my own sake; to-day, I love you for yours."

When you look straight on, you end by seeing the immense event--death. There is only one thing which really gives the meaning of our whole life, and that is our death. In that terrible light may they judge their hearts who will one day die. Well I know that Marie's death would be the same thing in my heart as my own, and it seems to me also that only within her of all the world does my own likeness wholly live. _We_ are not afraid of the too great sincerity which goes the length of these things; and we talk about them, beside the bed which awaits the inevitable hour when we shall not awake in it again. We say:--

"There'll be a day when I shall begin something that I shan't finish--a walk, or a letter, or a sentence, or a dream."

I stoop over her blue eyes. Just then I recalled the black, open window in front of me--far away--that night when I nearly died. I look at length into those clear eyes, and see that I am sinking into the only grave I shall have had. It is neither an illusion nor an act of charity to admire the almost incredible beauty of those eyes.

What is there within us to-night? What is this sound of wings? Are our eyes opening as fast as night falls? Formerly, we had the sensual lovers' animal dread of nothingness; but to-day, the simplest and richest proof of our love is that the supreme meaning of death to us is--leaving each other.

And the bond of the flesh--neither are we afraid to think and speak of that, saying that we were so joined together that we knew each other completely, that our bodies have searched each other. This memory, this brand in the flesh, has its profound value; and the preference which reciprocally graces two beings like ourselves is made of all that they have and all that they had.

I stand up in front of Marie--already almost a convert--and I tremble and totter, so much is my heart my master:--

"Truth is more beautiful than dreams, you see."

It is simply the truth which has come to our aid. It is truth which has given us life. Affection is the greatest of human feelings because it is made of respect, of lucidity, and light. To understand the truth and make one's self equal to it is everything; and to love is the same thing as to know and to understand. Affection, which I call also compassion, because I see no difference between them, dominates everything by reason of its clear sight. It is a sentiment as immense as if it were mad, and yet it is wise, and of human things it is the only perfect one. There is no great sentiment which is not completely held on the arms of compassion.

To understand life, and love it to its depths in a living being, that is the being's task, and that his masterpiece; and each of us can hardly occupy his time so greatly as with one other; we have only one true neighbor down here.

To live is to be happy to live. The usefulness of life--ah! its expansion has not the mystic shapes we vainly dreamed of when we were paralyzed by youth. Rather has it a shape of anxiety, of shuddering, of pain and glory. Our heart is not made for the abstract formula of happiness, since the truth of things is not made for it either. It beats for emotion and not for peace. Such is the gravity of the truth.

"You've done well to say all that! Yes, it is always easy to lie for a moment. You might have lied, but it would have been worse when we woke up from the lies. It's a reward to talk. Perhaps it's the only reward there is."

She said that profoundly, right to the bottom of my heart. Now she is helping me, and together we make the great searchings of those who are too much in the right. Marie's assent is so complete that it is unexpected and tragic.

"I was like a statue, because of the forgetting and the grief. You have given me life, you have changed me into a woman."

"I was turning towards the church," she goes on; "you