It is not a question of my art. You do not read the newspapers, but mutual friends will have told you that I enjoy what is called success—which is to say nothing more than that many people praise me without having heard me and some without having understood me. It is not a question of that: it is rather a question of something not really more intimate (for what is more intimate to me than my work?) but which seems more intimate because I have kept it hidden. Above all, more wretched. But, you see, I am hesitating; every word I write takes me a little further away from what I wanted to express at the very outset. That merely confirms that I lack the courage. I also lack the simplicity. I have always lacked that. Yet life is not simple, and that is hardly my fault. The only thing that persuades me to go on is the certainty that you are unhappy. We have lied so much, and suffered so much from lying, that there really is no great risk in seeing now if sincerity will not restore us.

My youth, or rather my adolescence, was absolutely pure—or what is called pure. I am aware that such a claim always provokes a smile, because it generally indicates either a lack of perspicacity or a lack of candor. Yet I do not believe I am deceiving myself, and I am confident I am not lying. I really am sure of that, Monique. At sixteen, I was what you doubtless hope Daniel will become when he reaches that age, but let me tell you, you are wrong to hope such a thing. I am persuaded that it is a mistake to force oneself to consign all the perfection one is capable of to the memories of one’s most distant past. The child that I was, the child of Woroïno, no longer exists, and all our existence is characterized by infidelity to ourselves. It is dangerous for the first of our illusions to be the best, the dearest, the most mourned. My childhood is as distant from me as those nervous expectations one has on the eve of holidays or the torpor of lengthy afternoons when one lies about without doing anything, hoping that something will happen. How can I hope to find that peace again, which I did not even know a name for then? I have renounced it completely, realizing that it never wholly belonged to me. But let me confess at once that I am not even sure I always regret that ignorance we call peace.