ART AND REVOLT
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the waters of Tantalus toward a river-mouth yet unknown. To
know where the river culminates, to dominate the current, finally
to grasp life as destiny- this is the true nostalgia of men, in the
very heart of their homeland. But that vision which,
in
knowledge
at least, would finally reconcile them with themselves can only
appear-if it appears at all-in the fugitive moment before death:
everything finishes there. To be completely in the world for once,
it is necessary never to be there again.
Here is the source of that misguided envy that so many men
have for the lives of others. Looking at these existences from the
outside, one lends them a coherence and a unity which, in truth,
they cannot have, but which appears evident to the observer. He
sees only the outline of these lives, without taking account of the
complicating details. We make art out of these existences. In an
elementary way, we novelize them. Everyone, in this sense, seeks to
make of his life a work of art. We desire that love shall last and
we know that it does not last; and even if, by a miracle, it should
last a lifetime, it would still be unfinished. Perhaps, in this in–
satiable need to continue, we should better understand earthly
suffering
if
we knew it were eternal. It seems, sometimes, that great
spirits are less frightened by pain than by the thought that it will
not persist. For lack of an indefatigable happiness, a prolonged
suffering would at least constitute a destiny. But no: our worst
tortures will some day cease. One morning, after so much despair,
an irrepressible desire to live will announce to us that all is finished,
and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.
A bent toward possession is merely another form of the de–
sire to endure; this is what causes the impotent delirium. No being,
not even the one we love most and who most returns our love, is
ever in our possession. In this inhuman world, where lovers some–
times die
in
solitude and are always divided, the total possession
of another being, an absolute communion for the duration of a
lifetime, is an impossible demand. And a bent toward possession
can be so insatiable that it may survive love itself. To love, then,
means to sterilize the beloved. The shameful suffering of the lover
is not so much that he is no longer loved as that he knows the
other can and will love again. At the extremity, each man devoured
