Is it human misery? No, human suffering. Stammering nights, groping footsteps. Whither and why? No, there's no time to lose, you jump up and go, go, because you haven't suffered enough yet. Look.
When I leave to-morrow with my suffering in my breast I shall go in advance of suffering. I shall not hesitate in the doorway. Looking back into the room I shall not say what I have often said: "You are a bit of myself, good-bye. Since my eyes will no longer be here to see you, give them a picture of yourself to take along."
Suffering is self-sufficient. You don't associate things with it, I shall have my back turned, my body will be impatient to lean forward. I no longer care for memories.
Not one. Not even the memory of you, my two dead lovers. Other dead are further on, where I am going, or rather, other suffering. And your suffering is over because you are dead.
The pictures I have of you rise less and less frequently in my memory. How I cherished them at first! Some especially.... That little station-platform where we met ... the transparent morning flew ahead of your footsteps, the spring was intoxicated, I ran into your outstretched arms.... And the path where I cried, the sunset sinking away between the branches, my head grazing your shoulder like a fruit falling from the tree.... And another.... And another....
It is over. I carry you differently. Some of your ways, which I acquired, stick to me from habit. My voice often has your inflection, and when I am animated I feel I have made some of your ideas my own. If I don't remember you so clearly, it is because I live you and the legacy you left me rises and falls with my breathing.
In my fierce survival I have preserved only what is of use to me. All the rest has decomposed; it is nothing to me any more. We should break away from this burden of the dead. The dead are the living who have abandoned us, and sooner or later, whether we wish to or not, we forget them.
I loved my dead dearly, so dearly that it seemed to me my being inclined towards them the moment they appeared—so dearly that because of them, who have gone, love has remained.