MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[0572] rejoicing, ma^lamenting. [0573] Then suddenly I threw myself on the
playthings, if there were any, or on a child, to change his joy
to howling, or I fled, to hiding. [0574] The grown-ups pursued me, the ju
just, caught me, beat me, hounded me back into the round, the
game, the jollity. [0575] For I was already in the toils of earnestness.
[0576] That has been my disease. [0577] I was born grave as others syphilitix^c.

[0578] And gravely I struggled to be grave no more, to live, to invent,
I know what I mean. [0579] But at each fresh attempt I lost my head,
fled to my shadows as to sanctuary, to his lap who can neither
live nor suffer the sight of others living. [0581] I say living without
knowing what it is. [0582] I tried to live without knowing what I was
trying. [0583] Perhaps I have lived after all, without knowing. [0584] I
wonder why I speak of all this. [0585] Ah yes, to relieve the tedium.
[0586] Live and cause to live.

[0587] There is no use no^[₰] indicting words.^,
[0588] T^they are no shoddier than what they peddle. [0589] After the fiasco,
the solace, the repose, I began again, to try and live, cause to
live, be another, in myself, in another. [0590] How false all this is.
[0592] No time now to explain. [0593] I began again. [0594] But little by little with
a different aim, [0595] no longer in order to succeed, but in order to
fail. [0596] Nuance.

[0597] What I sought, when I struggled out of my hole,
then aloft through the stinging air towards an inaccessible boon,
was the rapture of vertigo, the letting go, the fall, the gulf,
the relapse to darkness, to nothingness, to earnestness, to
home, to him waiting for me always, who needed me and whom I
needed, who took me in his arms and told me to stay with him
always, who gave me his place and watched over me, who suffered