At the time of this curious tragedy Mallare was thirty. He kept a Journal in which he wrote infrequently. There was in this Journal little of interest. Apparently he had amused himself during his youth jotting down items of preposterous unimportance.
“I saw a man with a red face,” he would write one week. The next he would add a line, “There are seven hundred and eighty-five normal strides between the lamp-post and my front door.” Turning a page a month later he would meticulously set down the date, the hour of the day, the direction of the wind and under it write out, “I have a stomach ache from eating peaches.”
[Twenty-five]
The Journal bristled with innocuous informations. An acquaintance of the period, interested in Mallare’s work as an artist, smiled and commented, “These are, no doubt, symbols. A psychological code into which you have translated great inner moments.”
Mallare answered, “On the contrary. They are the only thoughts I have had in which I could detect no reason. It has amused me to put down with great care the few banalities which have normalized my days. They are very precious to me, although they have no value in themselves.
“It is the ability to think such absurdities as you have read that has kept me from suicide. The will to live is no more than the hypnotism of banalities. We keep alive only by maintaining, despite our intelligence, an enthusiasm for things which are of no consequence or interest to us.
“That I saw a man with a red face aroused in me a gentle curiosity lacking in words or emotion. The desire to live is compounded of [Twenty-six] an infinity of such gentle curiosities which remain entirely outside of reason. This never-satisfied and almost non-existent curiosity we have toward things, masquerades under the intimidating guise of the law of self-preservation. Man is at the mercy of life since, his intelligence perceiving its monotony and absurdity, he still clings to it, fascinated by the accumulated rhythm of faces, impressions, and events which he despises.
“It is a form of hypnosis, and these words I have written in my Journal are the absurdities by which life seduced me from abandoning it. I am grateful to them and have therefore preserved them carefully.”
The history of Mallare’s madness, however, is to be found in this Journal. There are two empty pages that stare significantly. The empty pages are a lapse. It was during this lapse that Mallare smiled with interest at the spectacle of his disintegration. There follows, then, a sudden excited outburst, undated. In it the beginnings of his madness pirouette like tentative dancers.
[Twenty-seven]
“Perhaps the greatest miracle is that which enables man to tolerate life,” the passage starts, “which enables him to embrace its illusions and translate its monstrous incoherence into delightful, edifying patterns. It is the miracle of sanity. To stand unquestioning before mysteries, to remain an undisturbed part of chaos, ah! what an adjustment! Content and even elate amid the terrible circle of Unknowns, behold in this the heroic stupidity of the sane … a stupidity which has already outlived the Gods.
“Man, alas, is the only animal who hasn’t known enough to die. His undeveloped senses have permitted him to survive in the manner of the oyster. The mysteries, dangers, and delights of the sea do not exist for the oyster. Its senses are not stirred by typhoons, impressed by earthquakes or annoyed by its own insignificance. Similarly, man!