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My
dear little girl,
For
a long time I’ve been wanting to write to you in the evening after
one of those outings with friends that I will soon be describing in
“A Defeat,” the kind when the world is ours. I wanted to bring
you my conqueror’s joy and lay it at your feet, as they did in the
Age of the Sun King. And then, tired out by all the shouting, I
always simply went to bed. Today I’m doing it to feel the pleasure
you don’t yet know, of turning abruptly from friendship to love,
from strength to tenderness. Tonight I love you in a way that you
have not known in me: I am neither worn down by travels nor wrapped
up in the desire for your presence. I am mastering my love for you
and turning it inwards as a constituent element of myself. This
happens much more often than I admit to you, but seldom when I’m
writing to you. Try to understand me: I love you while paying
attention to external things. At Toulouse I simply loved you. Tonight
I love you on a spring evening. I love you with the window open. You
are mine, and things are mine, and my love alters the things around
me and the things around me alter my love.
My
dear little girl, as I’ve told you, what you’re lacking is
friendship. But now is the time for more practical advice. Couldn’t
you find a woman friend? How can Toulouse fail to contain one
intelligent young woman worthy of you*? But you wouldn’t have to
love her. Alas, you’re always ready to give your love, it’s the
easiest thing to get from you. I’m not talking about your love for
me, which is well beyond that, but you are lavish with little
secondary loves, like that night in Thiviers when you loved that
peasant walking downhill in the dark, whistling away, who turned out
to be me. Get to know the feeling, free of tenderness, that comes
from being two. It’s hard, because all friendship, even between two
red-blooded men, has its moments of love. I have only to console my
grieving friend to love him; it’s a feeling easily weakened and
distorted. But you’re capable of it, and you must experience it.
And so, despite your fleeting misanthropy, have you imagined what a
lovely adventure it would be to search Toulouse for a woman who would
be worthy of you and whom you wouldn’t be in love with? Don’t
bother with the physical side or the social situation. And search
honestly. And if you find nothing, turn Henri Pons, whom you scarcely
love anymore, into a friend.
[…]I
love you with all my heart and soul.
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