Diary of a Philosophy Student by Simone De Beauvoir & Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir & Margaret A. Simons

Author:Simone De Beauvoir & Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir & Margaret A. Simons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2006-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Before me are my lamp and paper;

And behind me a troubled day

Passed within me

As I followed the hundred turns and tourneys of my thoughts . . .

( . . . ) And now, before this paper,

And now, here at home,

I am once more inside myself, smothering.

( . . . ) I am tired of interior doings!!

[Charles Vildrac]325

Hoping for nothing, to sail through life,

Is worth whatever pain be in it,

Just to feel how good the sun is

When it passes by

Would you be aware how happy you were,

If your happiness lasted more than an hour?

[Charles Vildrac]326

I would want to vomit my day!

I have its rancid taste in my mouth

And my breast is abject

With the foul air it endures.

Into none of my gestures of this day,

Which are my every-day gestures,

Have I been able to put love.

[Charles Vildrac]327

And it was then that he turned, as if to living,

To knowing as many people as he could,

To knowing them slowly and one at a time,

By dwelling and talking with each of them

When they were themselves, when they were alone.

( . . . )

His happiness was to share

With each and every one of them,

The secret memory of a single instant,

But of an instant magnified by such joy

That they could live in it night after night . . .

[Charles Vildrac]328

I entered into this time when memories

Suddenly start

To wound a little the heart that loves them

And holds them close and dwells on them

And is afraid of losing them.

( . . . )

And so there arose from memory

And came to snuggle up by my side,

The adolescent boys whom I had recently been,

And all the children I had been before;

Came one at a time, the tallest first,

And I lingered alone with each of them,

To meet with him and speak to him,

To seek his voice, to seek his eyes,

To find him in me whole again.

( . . . )

I don’t want to leave even the most dormant

As if dead, in death, behind;

May there be no dead, O memory,

If one survivor remains!

Come all together and never be fewer,

Be more, with those who will come by;

If it happens that one shall stop and leave us,

I take an oath to bring him back persistently.329

Vildrac (Livre d’amour) [A Book of Love]

But let us remember what life is. Can one ask for more than to be justified

for one minute?

Drieu de la Rochelle330

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