122
PAIUISAN REVIEW
What did I liberate myself from?
My mother is still here. I get rid of my principles, but not of kisses,
wine and rousing. No, there is abso lutely no reason not to consent to my
mother's wish.
It's better to keep quiet. All that is coming-the funeral, the mass, the
black suit-is so trivial that I am truly ashamed that my youth of revolution,
passion and pleasure has anything to do with it. Truly: my [lther's death was
my secret, my thought and sigh. Father was an obstacle to my feelings ,
thoughts and movements. He was a rein constraining me, and- unwilling–
ly-a whip which drove me. The fact that I never discussed my writing with
him the way I discussed it with enemies-that fact alone was a deep and
crushing reason of our estrangement. And the slackening of my passions in
hi s presence was more than a rein and a wh ip-it was a chain.
For eighteen years I embelli shed my secret of which I on ly spoke when
drunk. This strange, passionate and elementary thought passed fi'om abstrac–
tion into reality and so my father's death became freedom. And on ly thus
could it delight me wi thout a bad conscience and become a sigh, desire,
instinct-of which I did not have to be ashamed,just like I didn't have to be
ashamed of my beliefs and needs. All the nakedness was covered: My father's
death is only a criminal thought, a tragic idea.
And while my thought thus covered, embellished and painted itself com–
pressed into one abstract word--:/Yccdolll- there was so much impudence,
energy and greatness in it. And every step towards death was a step towards
freedom; and each step away fi-om death was a step away fi-om freedom.
And the very realization of an ideal' And freedom itself? What has been
written in my spiritual history these last three days?
I~ea lity
writes: the cham–
ber pot, the priest, the funeral , wreaths, the mass; and my soul remembers:
visions, the horror of sin and crime, the bad conscience about vomiting,
insisting on my principles out of defiance, praising my EIther alit of egotism
and vani ty and consenting to flmnali ties out of the fear of na·l·vetL,.
Feelings ever more vu lgar. behavior ever more poli te and thoughts ever
more trivial.
No, I can't even think anymore. In va in I try to find something to delight
me. Only those distant thoughts and unclear visions of other cha ins; my
mother's strong desire that I shou ld wear m y black sui t, my friends who wi ll
remind me of my principles, my opposition to the traditions, Illy passion to
seduce women and have thelll like me. All these thoughts of all the chains
around me and in me are so distallt, so absurd that fi-cedom becomes concrete
in the death of everyone including myself.
Why did I begin to analyze myself? Why contemplate' Why express my
ego? The contents are so pale, so feeble, so Illundane, so impotent, coward ly
and li stless.
