January 26, 1835

I have played out my little drama before your eyes; you have followed its movements and listened to its noise with a tender interest which has been all my courage. Yet what were you watching? What one follows with the eye on summer evenings: a winged insect which turns and circles in the air with a light humming of its wings. Like it, my thought madly executes a capricious flight which goes nowhere. I have acquired enough philosophy to walk resolutely in practical life and rise above certain blows which would once have overthrown me. But the government of my thought does not belong to me. Its only guide is a tireless instinct of flight far from the common dwelling, as though liberty lay in escape and truth at the end of an infinite journey. Thus, despite the smoothing of my inward paths, I feel scarcely less weariness in living; for the restlessness of the mind is as great an affliction as uncertainty about tomorrow. Poetry is no longer present to my soul; I no longer enjoy her familiar conversations; by the absence of a sweet burden, by the cooling of my habits of imagination, I recognize that she has withdrawn, and besides I hear her voice far away, very high, already faint and almost extinguished in the distance. Sometimes I believe she is calling me, having found something better than here beyond the darkness, for today I hope for everything from the impenetrable side; and sometimes it seems she is saying her farewells. Besides, what does it matter whether what we call imagination, poetry, leaves me or takes hold of me? It cannot arrest or hasten the course of my destiny; and whether or not I have foreseen it from here below, I shall one day contemplate what is reserved for me all the same. Should I not rather, setting aside all these anxieties, apply myself to extending my positive knowledge and prefer the smallest luminous thread of certain truth to the vague glimmers in which I drown? The man who understands any mathematical truth has advanced further in the comprehension of truth than the most beautiful imagination. He has acquired an inviolable possession in the domain of intelligence; he can lodge there for eternity. The poet is driven from exile to exile and will never have a secure dwelling.

February 2, 1835

We lost Marie on January 22, at nine in the evening.

After the happiness of dying before those we love, I know nothing which marks heaven’s favor more than being admitted to a dying friend’s bedside, following him as far as one can go with him into the shadow of death, half entering into the profound mystery in which he disappears, taking from his face faithful and incorruptible impressions, forming at last a treasure of sorrows and secret thoughts sufficient for the whole span of the longest life.

I have seen nothing except in the representation the soul makes, as best it can, of what happens far from us. Poor Marie! Within myself I have formed the spectacle of your end; through the shadows of that terrible dream I have contemplated avidly what stirred between you and death; I have seen your calm and rested features, your gentleness and the beauty of your soul still appearing upon your lips, which the death struggle had not extinguished. This vision sometimes grows troubled and disappears, but soon returns, for I recall it with a fatal power. In its longest absences, it makes way for another sight, more free of death’s darkness: Marie appears to me in vague and uncertain features, moves before my imagination and, without touching the ground, guides me to the places she loved and which we walked through together so many times.

She has vanished from this visible world; she belongs to the regions of thought; she is accessible now only to that powerful faculty which rises from our soul toward the spiritual dwellings, climbs there secretly in shadow, and descends again accompanied by a gentle phantom. How often our dreams rose together toward those confused and veiled dwellings which attracted us by their mystery! How often they went to knock lightly at the doors of that world of intelligences and pure spirits! And now you are mingled, absorbed in that ocean of spiritual substance! My thought forms you within its breast by the same operation and of the same essence as those sweet dreams which joined yours and made for the same heavenly point.

I strive to understand this, to reconcile the thought which seeks her upon earth with the one which no longer seeks her there. Painfully I reform the habits of my imagination, which turned with such charm toward the beloved wilderness; at every moment I must turn it from its path to set it in the new direction it must henceforth take: a strange and bitter confusion of two worlds, a terrible displacement of the soul following the one who has changed her dwelling! But no; I am happy to look toward where she vanished, to turn all my conversations, all my aspirations toward the invisible which stole her from us. — Who will let me share in the treasures gathered in the final hours? Who will initiate me into those mysteries in which I would wrap myself forever? I am avid for sorrow and fatal knowledge.

[. . .]

February 9, 1835

The work is finished, doubt stirs no more, I am convinced. I have covered the charming scene of my memories with mourning. The sweet face whose outlines trembled lightly in my memory, for time and absence spread over the dearest features something like a vapor which partly submerges and confuses them, the sweet face has reappeared before my eyes: but my imagination has done as death did; it has covered it with pallor, struck its lips with a dying rosy tint, and closed its eyes forever. I have broken the idea of her earthly existence; I have erased her from the outward world.

Everything is replaced; a whole ensemble of present life has withdrawn from my soul, and I have seen coming in its place the incorruptible images and forms of the unknown world which neighbors ours. Lovingly I press to my breast and consider attentively these new appearances which bear cherished features. I invoke them to draw within me as many as I can of these secret guests around whom sorrow hastens and who confirm it in its hope. Yet the feeling of the terrible blow does not weaken; however much the soul wishes to withdraw into its shadows to groan apart, with no outward sign, the need for tears oppresses it. Then, if my eyes resist, I say as Hippolyte does: So you do not weep, then; so you no longer remember the good days a year ago with Marie?

February 12, 1835

What world would we dream of? What secret beauties of nature could attract and hold our spirits more powerfully than the shores where Marie vanished? I know she is there, that the obscurities of the world of spirits hide her from us. How attractive those obscurities become, and what charm there is for me in venturing toward that unknown world! I go, I imagine as best I can the dwellings of pure spirit; I try to represent to myself a soul restored to its element, the secrets of its new life, and every aspect of its imperishable condition. Imagination, bringing its earthly habits into its dreams, wraps the cherished soul in forms, and I see Marie with her earthly features renewed in heaven. But often, from the very formation of these sweet phantoms, sorrow, put aside for a moment, is reborn; it rushes upon me from amid the most soothing visions. — So she is no more than a thought, I tell myself; so she is accessible only to the dreams of my soul! I find it hard to escape the heavy, human sadness of this idea. Sometimes I escape it by beginning again the pilgrimage of memories. My imagination’s light and silent steps resume the beloved paths. Like Paul wandering on his island, I return, led by an inevitable attraction, to the place of the shipwreck. — A few days ago, in a library where I was alone, I came upon a book from which we used to read in our intimate and prolonged evenings. I opened it... How can I convey what rose from it, and the liveliness of the memories which slept in those lines as in so many furrows? How many tears I shed over that good Collin d’Harleville, so gay, so charming! Thus everything becomes mourning. — Return, all of you, memories, sweet emanations of the past, shadows of what has vanished, come back into my soul like the little birds and bees which, having strayed through the countryside, fly back at nightfall toward their retreats and gather there. Return, all of you; night has fallen. — Thus I divert those extreme regrets which no consolation dares approach. I surround them with this murmuring multitude of memories. These regrets listen to the memories’ mingled voices and consider their features marked by a thousand shades; the headlong course of painful thoughts slows by degrees and softens, for a time, until it moves like a slow and melancholy river.

March 24, 1835

Once my sorrows were as though steeped; they have become dry. Their bitter waters contained a few drops of balm in solution; today the unmixed liquor deposits nothing sweet to be savored secretly and at length.

I imagined the soft and tender glimmers of twilight as gentle, beneficent particles deposited by the burning river of light which had just crossed the sky. And with a deep enchantment I watched the sky steep itself, with a melancholy delight, in that aerial silt which soothed it. In the west I followed what was happening within me at the same hour, and evening and I drowsed in the same easing of sorrow.

Soothing sweetness of those slow spectacles, accord of my soul with the spirit of natural scenes, what has become of you? I am alone. I feel, I experience nothing now but my life. The sourness of an existence profoundly altered by a thousand inward poisons: such is the sole savor of my days.