French author and Nobel laureate (1869–1951)
A land liberated from works of art. I despise those who can acknowledge beauty only when it’s already transcribed, interpreted. One thing admirable about the Arabs: they live their art, they sing and scatter it, from day to day; they don’t cling to it, they don’t embalm it in works. Which is the cause and the effect of the absence of great artists. I have always believed the great artists are the ones who dare entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen afterward people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?...
[Marceline] sensed already what I was struggling to discover; and when I reproached her for believing too often in the virtues she herself had invented in the people we knew, she replied: ‘You’re never satisfied until you’ve made them reveal some vice. Don’t you realize that our own eyes magnify and exaggerate whatever they happen to see — that we make anyone become what we claim he is?’
I might have wished she were wrong, but I had to admit that to me each man’s worst instinct seemed the most sincere. Then, what was it I called sincerity?
"Why," I asked, "since you live your wisdom, why don't you write your memoirs? — or simply," I went on, seeing him smile, "what you remember of your travels?"
"Because I don't want to remember," he answered. "If I did, I might keep the future from happening by letting the past encroach upon it. I create each hour's newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don't believe in dead things."
[. . .]
"If only our wretched brains could really embalm our memories! But memories don't keep well. The delicate ones wither, the voluptuous ones rot, the most delicious ones are the most dangerous later on. The things you repent were delicious once..."
Dès que Séraphine l'a laissé seul, Gontran se jette à genoux au pied du lit ; il enfonce son front dans les draps, mais ne parvient pas à pleurer ; aucun élan ne soulève son cœur. Ses yeux désespérément restent secs. Alors il se relève. Il regarde ce visage impassible. Il voudrait, en ce moment solennel, éprouver je ne sais quoi de sublime et de rare, écouter une communication de l'au-delà, lancer sa pensée dans des régions éthérées,suprasensibles - mais elle reste accrochée, sa pensée, au ras du sol. Il regarde les mains exsangues du mort, et se demande combien de temps encore les ongles continueront de pousser.