d to be reassured and consoled. For two thousand years I have
had to be delivered. Nothing has changed the surface of things. The
teachings of Christ have not changed the surface of things, and would
not even if men had not ruined His teachings so that they can no longer
follow them honestly. Will the great poet come who shall settle the
boundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not a
fool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorable
poet? I do not know, although the lofty words of the man who died in
the boarding-house have given me a vague hope of his coming and the
right to adore him already.

But what about me--me, who am only a glance from the eye of destiny? I
am like a poet on the threshold of a work, an accursed, sterile poet
who will leave no glory behind, to whom chance /lent/ the truth that
genius would have /given/ him, a frail work which will pass away with
me, mortal and sealed to others like myself, but a sublime work
nevertheless, which will show the essential outlines of life and relate
the drama of dramas.

. . . . .

What am I? I am the desire not to die. I have always been impelled--
not that evening alone--by the need to construct the solid, powerful
dream that I shall never leave again. We are all, always, the desire
not to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's
complexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to /be,/ to
/be/ more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have,
all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in
one way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new
sensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and to
add it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon
the fear of death. That is what it is. I have seen it myself.
Instinctive movements, untrammelled utterances always tend the same
way, and the most dissimilar utterances are all alike.

. . . . .

But afterwards! Where are the words that will light the way? What is
humanity in the world, and what is the world?

Everything is within me, and there are no judges, and there are no
boundaries and no limits to me. The /de profundis,/ the effort not to
die, the fall of desire with its soaring cry, all this has not stopped.
It is part of the immense liberty which the incessant mechanism of the
human heart exercises (always something different, always!).