I shall pass quickly over the following days, when my feelings concern and move only me. I prefer to keep for myself my intimate memories, since I can speak to you only with a discretion which might appear to be born of shame, and because I would be lying if I were to show repentance. Nothing is sweeter than a defeat one knows to be total: in Vienna, during those last sunlit days of autumn, I knew the wonder of discovering once again my body. My body, which cured me from having a soul. You perceived in me only the fears, the remorse, and the scruples of conscience, not even my own conscience, but that of others which I accepted as guides. I neither knew how nor dared to tell you what ardent adoration made it possible for me to experience the beauty and the mystery of bodies, nor how each of them, when it offered itself, seemed to bestow on me a fragment of human youth. My dear, it is very difficult to live. I have constructed enough moral theories not to construct other contradictory ones: I am too reasonable to believe that happiness exists only in tandem with sin; and vice no more than virtue can give joy to those who do not have joy within themselves. Nevertheless, I much prefer sin (if that is what it is) to a denial of self which leads to self-destruction. Life has made me what I am, the prisoner if you will of instincts which I did not choose but to which I resign myself; and this acquiescence will, I hope, procure me, if not happiness, at least peace. My dear, I have always known you were capable of comprehending everything—which is much rarer than forgiving everything.

And now I bid you farewell. I think, with infinite tenderness, of your womanly, or rather motherly, goodness: I leave you with regret, but I envy your child. You are the only person toward whom I judge myself guilty, yet writing of my life confirms me in my being; I end by grieving for you without severely condemning myself. I have betrayed you; I have not wished to deceive you. You are one of those who always choose, out of duty, the straitest and the hardest way: I would not, by begging for your pity, give you a pretext for further sacrifice. Not having known how to live according to common morality, I endeavor at least to be in harmony with my own: it is precisely when one rejects all principles that one must arm oneself with scruples. I undertook imprudent obligations toward you to which life refused to subscribe. With the utmost humility, I ask you now to forgive me, not for leaving you, but for having stayed so long.

Lausanne

31 August 1927 - 17 September 1928

Translator's Note