Paul Valery
THE ANGEL
A kind of angel was sitting at the edge of a pool. Looking
in at himself, he saw that he was Man and in tears, and he was
astonished extremely at his appearance in the naked water, a prey
to infinite sorrow.
* * *
(Or, if you will, it was Sorrow zn the form of Man, unable
to find its cause in the clear, sky.)
* * *
The face, which was his, and the grief painted on it seemed to
him not to belong together. An appearance so miserable stirred and
in vain questioned his spiritual substance marvelously pure.
* * *
"0 Misery,"
he said;
"what part of me are you?"
* *
*
He tried to smile at himself; he wept. This treachery of his
face confounded his perf.ect intelligence; and the peculiar look he
observed, surely an accidental effect upon his features, an expression
upon them so unequal to the universality of his limpid awareness,
mysteriously wounded his unity.
* * *
"I have no cause to weep,"
he said,
"and in fact cannot have."
* * *
The Movement of his Reason within the light of his eternal
stillness felt an unknown question suspend its infallible operation,
for that which causes grief in our inaccurate natures creates only a
question in absolute essences-whereas, for us, ev·ery question is or
will be grief.
* * *
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