1318 - Et cependant, comme j’aurais menti maintenant si je lui avais écrit

Et cependant, comme j’aurais menti maintenant si je lui avais écrit, comme je le lui disais à Paris, que je souhaitais qu’il ne lui arrivât aucun accident ! Ah ! s’il lui en était arrivé un, ma vie, au lieu d’être à jamais empoisonnée par cette jalousie incessante, eût aussitôt retrouvé sinon le bonheur, du moins le calme par la suppression de la souffrance.

La suppression de la souffrance ? Ai-je pu vraiment le croire ? croire que la mort ne fait que biffer ce qui existe et laisser le reste en état ; qu’elle enlève la douleur dans le cœur de celui pour qui l’existence de l’autre n’est plus qu’une cause de douleurs ; qu’elle enlève la douleur et n’y met rien à la place ? La suppression de la douleur ! Parcourant les faits divers des journaux, je regrettais de ne pas avoir le courage de former le même souhait que Swann. Si Albertine avait pu être victime d’un accident, vivante, j’aurais eu un prétexte pour courir auprès d’elle, morte j’aurais retrouvé, comme disait Swann, la liberté de vivre. Je le croyais ? Il l’avait cru, cet homme si fin et qui croyait se bien connaître. Comme on sait peu ce qu’on a dans le cœur. Comme, un peu plus tard, s’il avait été encore vivant, j’aurais pu lui apprendre que son souhait, autant que criminel, était absurde, que la mort de celle qu’il aimait ne l’eût délivré de rien.



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1318 And at the same time

Submitted by PROUST on Mon, 09/15/2008 - 02:09.

Marcel Proust

"Remembrance of Things Past" (In Search of Lost Time),

translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930)

And at the same time, how I should have been lying now had I written to her, as I used to say to her in Paris, that I hoped that no accident might befall her. Ah! if some accident had occurred, my life, instead of being poisoned for ever by this incessant jealousy, would at once regain, if not happiness, at least a state of calm through the suppression of suffering.

The suppression of suffering? Can I really have believed it, have believed that death merely eliminates what exists, and leaves everything else in its place, that it removes the grief from the heart of him for whom the other person’s existence has ceased to be anything but a source of grief, that it removes the grief and substitutes nothing in its place. The suppression of grief! As I glanced at the paragraphs in the newspapers, I regretted that I had not had the courage to form the same wish as Swann. If Albertine could have been the victim of an accident, were she alive I should have had a pretext for hastening to her bedside, were she dead I should have recovered, as Swann said, my freedom to live as I chose. Did I believe this? He had believed it, that subtlest of men who thought that he knew himself well. How little do we know what we have in our heart. How clearly, a little later, had he been still alive, I could have proved to him that his wish was not only criminal but absurd, that the death of her whom he loved would have set him free from nothing.