But I felt horror, and I wondered if perhaps we had not all sinned in some old world, so that this one was nothing but Hell after all. If that was true, then the best was that we would die .... Tom Holland's Lord of the Dead

Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue. We lack the energy of evil as well as the energy of good. Do you know Dante? Really? The devil you say!

Then you know that Dante accepts the idea of neutral angels in the quarrel between God and Satan.
And he puts them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell. We are in the vestibule, cher ami.

It is true that, in another sense, my shortcomings turned to my advantage. For example, the obligation I felt to conceal the vicious part of my life gave me a cold look that was confused with the look of virtue; my indifference made me loved; my selfishness wound up in my generosities.

I was considered active, energetic, and my kingdom was the bed. I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.

Tell me frankly, is there any excuse for that? There is one, but so wretched that I cannot dream of advancing it. In any case, here it is: I have never been really able to believe that human affairs were serious matters.
I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me---which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome. There are really efforts and convictions I have never been able to understand. I always looked with amazement, and a certain suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money, fell into despair over the loss of a "position", or sacrificed themselves with a high and mighty manner. I could better understand that friend who had made up his mind to stop smoking and through sheer will power had succeeded.

To be sure, I occasionally pretended to take life seriously. But very soon the frivolity of seriousness struck me and I merely went on playing my role as well as I could. You have already grasped that I was like my Dutchmen who are here without being here: I was absent at the moment when I took up the most space. I have never been really sincere and enthusiastic except when I used to indulge in sports, and when I used to act in plays. In both cases there was a rule of the game, which was not serious but which we enjoyed taking as if it were.
Even now, the Sunday matches in an overflowing stadium, and the theater, which I loved with the greatest passion, are the only places in the world where I feel innocent.

A day came when I could bear it no longer. My first reaction was excessive. Since I was a liar, I would reveal this and hurl my duplicity in the face of all those imbeciles, even before they discovered it. Provoked to truth, I would accept the challenge.
Above all, I used to visit regularly the special cafés where our professional humanitarian free thinkers gathered. There, without seeming to, I would let fly a forbidden expression: "Thank God . . ." I would say, or more simply, "My God . . ." You know what shy little children our café atheists are. A moment of amazement would follow that outrageous expression, they would look at one another dumbfounded, and then the tumult would burst forth. Some would flee the café, others would gabble indignantly without listening to anything, and all would writhe in convulsions like the devil in holy water.

You must look on that as childish. Yet maybe there was a more serious reason for those little jokes. I had to liberate at all cost the feeling that was stifling me. In order to reveal to all eyes what he was made of, I wanted to break open the handsome wax-figure I presented everywhere.
I wanted to upset the game . . . .

Ah, the little sneaks, play actors, hypocrites---and yet so touching! Believe me, they all are, even when they set fire to heaven.
They are free and hence have to shift for themselves; and since they don't want freedom or its judgments, they ask to be rapped on the knuckles, they invent dreadful rules, they rush out to build piles of faggots to replace churches.
In short, you see, the essential is to cease being free and to obey, in repentance, a greater rogue than oneself.

Should I climb up to the pulpit, like many of my illustrious contemporaries? Very dangerous, that is! The judgment you are passing on others eventually snaps back in your face, causing some damage. And so what? you ask. Well, here's the stroke of genius.
Inasmuch as one couldn't condemn others without immediately judging oneself, one had to overwhelm oneself to have the right to judge others. You follow me? Good. But to make myself even clearer, I'll tell you how I operate.

I accuse myself up and down. It's not hard, for I now have acquired a memory. But let me point out that I don't accuse myself crudely, beating my breast. No, I navigate skillfully, multiplying distinctions and digressions, too---in short I adapt my words to my listener and lead him to go me one better.
I mingle what concerns me and what concerns others. I choose the features we have in common, the experiences we have endured together, the failings we share. With all that I construct a portrait which is the image of all and of no one. A mask, in short, rather like those carnival masks which are both lifelike and stylized, so that they make people say:
"Why, surely I've met him!"
When the portrait is finished, as it is this evening, I show it with great sorrow:
"This, alas, is what I am!" The prosecutor's charge is finished. But at the same time the portrait I hold out to my contemporaries becomes a mirror.

Covered with ashes, tearing my hair, my face scored by clawing, but with piercing eyes, I stand before all recapitulating my shames without losing sight of the effect I am producing, and saying: "I was the lowest of the low."
Then imperceptibly I pass from the "I" to the "we". When I get to "This is what we are," the trick has been played.
I am like them, to be sure; we are in the soup together. However, I have a superiority in that I know it and this gives me the right to speak. Even better, I provoke you into judging yourself. Ah, we are odd, wretched creatures, and if we merely look back over our lives, there's no lack of occasions to amaze and horrify ourselves. Just try.

In a sense, I had always lived in debauchery, never having ceased wanting to be immortal. Wasn't this the key to my nature and also a result of the great self-love I have told you about? Yes, I was bursting with a longing to be immortal. I was too much in love with myself not to want the precious object of my love never to disappear. Because I longed for eternal life, to be sure, my mouth was filled with the bitter taste of the mortal state. But, for hours on end, I had soared in bliss.
Dare I admit it to you? I would hear myself asking: "Do you love me?"

No excuses ever, for anyone; that's my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing. Everything is simply totted up, and then:
"It comes to so much. You are an evildoer, a satyr, a congenital liar, a homosexual, an artist, etc."
Just like that. Just as flatly.

I was always talking of freedom. With that key word I would bludgeon whoever contradicted me; I made it serve my desires and my power.
I did on occasion make a more disinterested use of freedom -- just imagine my
naïveté -- defended it two or three times without of course going so far as to die for it, but nevertheless taking a few risks.
I must be forgiven for such rash acts; I didn't know what I was doing.

Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgment. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I'll tell you a big secret, my friend. Don't wait for the Last Judgment.
It takes place every day.

You are going back to Paris? Paris is far; Paris is beautiful; I haven't forgotten it. I remember its twilights at about this same season. Evening falls, dry and rustling, over the roofs blue with smoke, the city rumbles, the river seems to flow backward. Then I used to wander in the streets . . . Ah, mon ami, do you know what the solitary creature is like as he wanders in big cities? . . .

You are wrong, cher, the boat is going at top speed. But the sea is rising, it seems to me. Look, the doves are gathering up there. They are crowding against one another, hardly stirring, and the light is waning. Don't you think we should be silent to enjoy this rather sinister moment?
No, I interest you? You are very polite.
Moreover, I now run the risk of really interesting you.

Now I shall wait for you to write me or come back. For you will come back, I am sure! You'll find me unchanged. And why should I change, since I have found the happiness that suits me?

The essential is being able to permit oneself everything, even if, from time to time, one has to profess vociferously one's own infamy. I permit myself everything again, and without the laughter this time. I haven't changed my way of life; I continue to love myself and to make use of others. Only, the confession of my crimes allows me to begin again lighter in heart and to taste a double enjoyment, first of my nature and secondly of a charming repentance.

I sit enthroned among my bad angels at the summit of the Dutch heaven and I watch ascending toward me, as they issue from the fogs and the water, the multitude of the Last Judgment.
They rise slowly; I already see the first of them arriving. Oh his bewildered face, half hidden by his hand, I read the melancholy of the common condition and the despair of not being able to escape it.
And as for me, I pity without absolving, I understand without forgiving, and above all, I feel at last that I am being adored!

Then, soaring over this whole continent which is under my sway without knowing it, drinking in the absinthe-colored light of breaking day, intoxicated with evil words, I am happy---I am happy, I tell you, I won't let you think I'm not happy, I am happy unto death!

Look, it's snowing! Oh, I must go out!
All right, all right, I'll be quiet; don't get upset! Don't take my emotional outbursts or my ravings too seriously. They are controlled.

Amsterdam asleep in the white night, the dark jade canals under the little snow-covered bridges, the empty streets, my muffled steps---there will be purity, even if fleeting, before tomorrow's mud. See the huge flakes drifting against the windowpanes.
Come now, admit that you would be flabbergasted if a chariot came down from heaven to carry me off, or if the snow suddenly caught fire. You don't believe it? Nor do I.
But still I must go out.


-- The Fall
by Albert Camus





by Auguste Rodin