And now when enlarged by love I desire love again, I give it its place. Love is not the essential thing. I have often said: "Life, my life." The phrase has assumed the shape of my lips because it says the essential thing. Love, after all is nothing but the most beautiful moment.
I summon all the moments of my life. Even the least thrilling cling just as deeply by roots of flesh.
Life wishes to become what it never has been: It is ready, it is empty.... Until to-night human words filled it saying:
"Nothing changes here below; nothing can possibly change: love goes on from age to age, death was and will be, life is forever the same, and man is always man." To express this the word "eternal" has been invented.
I do not know. I came, I, a woman, and like every other creature, I too began by loving. Life was not the same, I swear it was not the same. Life had a different taste, I shouldered it differently, and my death, while resembling other deaths, does not exist by the same idea.
I am; everything is changed.
And even if I had never lived, other women are ready to change the earth. You can't tell yet what the women of my generation are capable of. They themselves don't know altogether.
The memory of what they have always been told weighs upon them. Man is a fierce, greedy lover. With bloodshot eyes like a blind man, he has fallen upon the feverish couch where lies the vanquished enemy. He has brought his boiling sap, and between his clasped arms a great tenderness. When he has risen from the couch, he has been sad, his eyes have been wasted, his tenderness worn out. And he has said: "This is woman."
This has lasted long. I do not know if there hasn't been some reason for it. I simply say I live. I am honest, exact, I have muscles of steel, I like people to say what is, I am loyal, willing, I earn my living, and I am inured to suffering. What truth does one fail to recognize when it shows its face?
I think. I want. I know.