That roach had had children and I had not: the roach could die crushed, but I was condemned never to die, since if I died, even just once, I would die. And I wanted not to die but to remain eternally dying as the delight of supreme pain. I was in hell pierced with pleasure like a low buzz of nerves of pleasure.
And all that — oh, my horror — all that was happening in the wide heart of indifference. . . . All that losing oneself in a spiraling destiny, and that does not get lost. In that infinite destiny, made only of cruel present, I, like a larva — in my deepest inhumanity, since until then what had escaped me was my real inhumanity — I and we like larvae devour ourselves in soft flesh.
And there is no punishment! That is hell: there is no punishment. Since in hell we make the supreme delight of what would be punishment, in this desert we make of punishment yet another ecstasy of laughter with tears, in hell we make of punishment a hope for delight.
So was this the other side of humanization and hope?
In hell, that demonic faith for which I am not responsible. And which is faith in orgiastic life. The orgy of hell is the apotheosis of the neutral. The joy of the Sabbath is the joy of getting lost in the atonal.
What still frightened me was that even the unpunishable horror would be generously reabsorbed by the abyss of unending time, by the abyss of unending heights, by the deep abyss of the God: absorbed into the heart of an indifference.
So unlike human indifference. Since that was a self-serving-indifference, a fulfilled indifference. It was an extremely energetic indifference. And all in silence, in that hell of mine. Since laughter forms part of the volume of the silence, only in the eye sparkled the indifferent-pleasure, but laughter was in the blood itself and cannot be heard.
And all this is in this very instant, it is in the now. Yet at the same time the present instant is entirely remote because of the size-grandeur of the God. Because of the enormous perpetual size, even whatever exists right now, is remote: in the very instant that the roach is broken in the wardrobe, it too is remote in relation to the heart of the great self-seeking-indifference that reabsorbs it with impunity.
The grandiose indifference — was that what was existing inside me?
The hellish grandeur of life: since not even my body delimits me, mercy does not let my body delimit me. In hell, my body does not delimit me, and is that what I call soul? Living the life that is no longer the life of my body — is that what I call impersonal soul?
And my impersonal soul burns me. The grandiose indifference of a star is the soul of the roach, the star is the very exorbitance of the body of the roach. The roach and I aspire to a peace that cannot be ours — it’s a peace beyond the size and destiny of the roach and of me. And because my soul is so unlimited that it is no longer me, and because it is so beyond me — because I am always remote to myself, I am as unreachable to myself as a star is unreachable to me. I contort myself to try to reach the present time that surrounds me, but I am still remote in relation to this very instant. The future, alas, is closer to me than the instant now.
The roach and I are hellishly free because our living matter is greater than we are, we are hellishly free because my own life is so barely containable inside my body that I cannot use it. My life is used more by the earth than by me, I am so much greater than whatever I used to call “I” that, just by having the life of the world, I would have myself. It would take a horde of roaches to make a slightly sensitive spot in the world — yet one single roach, just through its attention-life, that single roach is the world.
The whole most unreachable part of my soul and which does not belong to me — is the one that touches my border with whatever is no longer I, and to which I give myself. All my anguish has been this unsurpassable and excessively close closeness. I am more whatever within me is not.
And that’s when the hand I was holding abandoned me. No, no. I am the one who pulled my hand away because now I must go alone.
If I manage to return from the kingdom of life I shall take your hand again, and kiss it gratefully because it waited for me, and waited for my path to go by, and for me to return thin, ravenous and humble: hungry only for the little, hungry only for the less.
Because, sitting and unmoving there, I had started wanting to live my own remoteness as the only way of living my present. And that, which is apparently innocent, that was once again a pleasure that resembled a horrendous and cosmic delight.
To relive it, I let go of your hand.
Because in that enjoyment there was no pity. Pity is being the child of someone or of some thing — but being the world is the cruelty. Cockroaches gnaw each other and kill each other and penetrate each other in procreation and eat each other in an eternal summer that darkens into night — hell is a summer that boils and almost darkens into night. The present does not see the roach, the present time looks at it from such a great distance that it does not perceive the roach from the heights, and only sees a silent desert — the present time does not even suspect, in the naked desert, the orgiastic festival of gypsies.
Where, reduced to small jackals, we eat each other with laughter. With the laughter of pain — and free. The mystery of human destiny is that we are inevitable, but we have the freedom to carry out or not our inevitability: it depends on us to carry out our inevitable destiny. While inhuman beings, like the roach, carry out their own complete cycle, without ever erring because they do not choose. But it depends on me to freely become whatever I inevitably am. I am the mistress of my inevitability, and, if I decide not to carry it out, I shall remain outside my specifically living nature. But if I carry out my neutral and living nucleus, then, within my species, I shall be being specifically human.
— But becoming human can be transformed into an ideal, and suffocate beneath accretions. . . . To be human ought not be an ideal for man who is inevitably human, being human must be the way that I, living thing, obeying freely the path of whatever is alive, am human. And I don’t even need to care for my soul, it will inevitably care for me, and I don’t have to make a soul for myself: all I have to do is choose to live. We are free, and that is hell. But there are so many roaches that they appear a prayer.
My kingdom is of this world . . . and my kingdom was not only human. I knew. But knowing that would scatter death-life, and a child in my womb would be vulnerable to being eaten by life-death itself, and without a Christian word making sense. . . . But there are so many children in the womb that they appear a prayer.
At that moment I had still not understood that the first sketch of what would become a prayer was already being born from the happy hell I had entered, and which I no longer wanted to depart.
From that country of rats and tarantulas and roaches, my love, where enjoyment drips in fat drops of blood.
Only the mercy of the God could yank me out of that terrible indifferent joy in which I was bathing, complete.
For I was exulting. I was coming to know the violence of the happy dark — I was happy as a demon, hell is my maximum.
Hell is my maximum.
I was fully in the heart of an indifference that is still and alert. And in the heart of an indifferent love, of an indifferent waking sleep, of an indifferent pain. Of a God who, if I loved Him, I didn’t understand what He wanted from me. I know, He wanted me to be his equal, and for me to equal Him through a love of which I was incapable.
Through a love so great that it would be of such an indifferent personal — as if I were not a person. He wanted for me to be the world with Him. He wanted my human divinity, and that had to start with an initial stripping-down of the constructed human.
And I had taken the first step: since at least I already knew that being a human is a sensitization, an orgasm of nature. And that, only through an anomaly of nature, instead of being the God, as other beings are He, instead of being He, we wanted to see Him. It would not hurt to see Him, if we were as great as He. A roach is greater than I because its life is so given over to Him that it comes from the in
finite and goes toward the infinite without noticing, it doesn’t miss a beat.
I had taken the first great step. But what had happened to me?
I had fallen into the temptation of seeing, the temptation of knowing and feeling. My grandeur, searching for the grandeur of the God, had taken me to the grandeur of hell. I had not been able to understand His organization except through the spasm of a demonic exultation. Curiosity had expelled me from the shelter — and I was finding the indifferent God who is all good because He is neither bad nor good, I was in the heart of matter that is the indifferent explosion of itself. Life was having the strength of a titanic indifference. A titanic indifference that wanted to advance. And I, who wanted to advance with it, had been hooked on the pleasure that was making me merely hellish.
The temptation of pleasure. The temptation is to eat directly from the source. The temptation is to eat directly from the law. And the punishment is no longer wanting to stop eating, and eating oneself who am equally edible matter. And I was seeking damnation like a happiness. I was seeking the most orgiastic in myself. I would never rest again: I had stolen the hunting horse of a king of joy. I was now worse than myself!
I shall never rest again: I stole the hunting horse from the Sabbath king. If I fall asleep for an instant, the echo of a whinny wakes me. And it is useless not to go. In the dark of night the panting gives me goose bumps. I pretend to sleep but in the silence the steed breathes. It says nothing but it breathes, waits and breathes. Every day it will be the same thing: right at dusk I start to get melancholy and thoughtful. I know that the first drum on the mountain will make the night, I know that the third will already wrap me in its thunder.
And by the fifth drum I shall already be unconscious inside my greed. Until at dawn, by the last lightest drums, I shall end up without knowing how beside a creek, without ever knowing what I did, beside the enormous and tired head of the horse.
Tired from what? What did we do, we who trot in the hell of joy? I have not gone for two centuries. The last time I got down from the adorned saddle, my human sadness was so great that I swore never again. Yet the trotting carries on inside me. I chat, tidy the house, smile, but I know that the trot is inside me. I miss it like one who dies. I can no longer not go.
And I know at night, when it calls me, I shall go. I want just one more time for the horse to lead my thought. That was who I learned with. If you can call it thought, that hour between barks. The dogs bark, I start to get sad because I know, with my eye already shining, that I shall go. When at night it calls me to hell, I go. I come down like a cat on the roofs. Nobody knows, nobody sees. I turn up in the dark, mute and aglow. Fifty-three flutes run after us. Ahead of us a clarinet lights us. And nothing more is given to me to know.
At dawn I shall see us exhausted beside the creek, without knowing what crimes we committed before reaching the dawn. In my mouth and on your hooves the mark of blood. What did we sacrifice? At dawn I shall be standing beside the mute steed, with the first bells of a Church flowing down the creek, with the remains of the flutes still flowing from my hair.
The night is my life, darkness falls, the happy night is my sad life — steal, steal the steed from me because after stealing so much I have even stolen the dawn, and made a premonition from it: swiftly steal the steed while there’s still time, before darkness falls, if there still is time, because when I stole the steed I had to kill the King, and in murdering him I stole the death of the King. And the joy of the murder consumes me with pleasure.
I was eating myself, I who am also living matter of the Sabbath.
I was eating myself, I who am also living matter of the Sabbath.
Could that have been, though much more than that, the temptation of the saints? And from which he who would or would not be a saint, emerges sanctified or does not. From that temptation in the desert, I, laywoman, the unsaint, would succumb or emerge from it for the first time as a living being.
— Listen, there’s something called human sainthood, and which is not that of the saints. I’m afraid that not even the God understands that human sainthood is more dangerous than divine sainthood, that the sainthood of the laity is more painful. Yet Christ himself knew that if they had done what they did to Him, they would do much more to us, since He said: “For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?”
Trial. Now I understand what a trial is. Trial: it means that life is trying me. But trial: means that I too am trying. And trying can become an ever more insatiable thirst.
Wait for me: I’m going to pull you out of the hell into which I descended. Listen, listen:
Since from the delight without reprieve, a sob was already being born inside me that seemed more like a sob of joy. It wasn’t a sob of pain, I had never heard it before: it was that of my life splitting in order to procreate me. In those desert sands I was starting to be of the daintiness of a first shy offering, like that of a flower. What was I offering? what could I offer of myself — I, who was being the desert, I, who had asked and had?
I was offering the sob. I was finally crying inside my hell. I use and sweat the very wings of blackness, and was using them and sweating them for me — which art Thou, thou, flash of silence. I am not Thou, but me art Thou. Only for that I shall never be able to feel Thee directly: because Thou art me.
Oh, God, I was starting to understand with enormous surprise: that my hellish orgy was human torment itself.
How could I have guessed? if I didn’t know that one laughs in suffering. Because I didn’t know that that was how one suffered. So I had called joy my deepest suffering.
And in the sob the God came to me, the God was occupying all of me now. I was offering my hell to God. The first sob had made — of my terrible pleasure and of my feast — a new pain: that now was as light and helpless as the flower of my own desert. The tears that were flowing now were like those for a love. The God, who could never be understood by me except as I understood Him: breaking me like a flower that at birth can barely hold itself up and seems to break.
But now, that I knew that my joy had been suffering, I was wondering if I was fleeing toward a God because I couldn’t stand my humanity. Because I needed someone who wasn’t petty like me, someone who was so much wider than I in order to allow my misfortune without even using pity and solace — someone who was, who was! and not, like me, an accuser of nature, not like me, a person astonished by the power of my own hates and loves.
Right this second, now, a doubt surprises me. God, or whatever Thou art called: I only ask for help now: but for Thou to help me now not darkly as Thou art me, but clearly this time and in plain sight.
Since I need to know exactly this: am I feeling what I am feeling, or am I feeling what I would like to feel? or am I feeling what I might need to feel?
Because I no longer even want the concretization of an ideal, what I want to be is just a seed. Even if afterwards from that seed ideals are born again, either the real ones, which are the birth of a path, or the false ones, which are the accretions. Could I be feeling what I would like to feel? Since a millimeter’s difference is enormous, and that millimeter of space can save me through truth or once again make me lose everything I saw. It’s dangerous. Men praise highly what they feel. Which is as dangerous as detesting what one feels.
I had offered my hell to the God. And my cruelty, my love, my cruelty had suddenly stopped. And suddenly that same desert was the still-vague sketch of what was called paradise. The moisture of a paradise. Not another thing, but that same desert. And I was surprised as one is surprised by a light that comes out of the nothing.
Was I understanding that what I had experienced, that nucleus of hellish rapacity, was that what is called love? But — neutral-love?
Neutral love. The neutral was whispering. I was reaching what I had sought all my life: whatever is the most final identity and that I had called inexpressive. That was what had always been in my eyes in the snapshot: an inexpressive joy, a pleasure th
at does not know that it is pleasure — a pleasure too delicate for my coarse humanity that had always been made of coarse concepts.
— I made such an effort to speak to myself of a hell that has no words. Now, how shall I speak of a love that only has whatever one feels, and before which the word “love” is a dusty object?
The hell I had gone through — how can I explain it to you? — had been the hell that comes from love. Ah, people put the idea of sin in sex. But how innocent and childish that sin is. The real hell is that of love. Love is the experience of a danger of greater sin — it is the experience of the mud and the degradation and the worst joy. Sex is the fright of a child. But how shall I speak for myself about the love that I now knew?
It’s almost impossible. Because in the neutral of love is a continual joy, like a noise of leaves in the wind. And I fit into the neutral nakedness of the woman on the wall. The same neutral, the one that had consumed me in pernicious and eager joy, it was in that same neutral that I now was hearing another kind of continual joy of love. Whatever God is was more in the neutral noise of the leaves in the wind than in my old human prayer.
Unless I could make the real prayer, and which to others and myself would resemble the kabbalah of a black magic, a neutral murmur.
That murmur, without any human meaning, would be my identity touching the identity of things. I know that, in relation to the human, that neutral prayer would be a monstrosity. But in relation to whatever is God, it would be: being.
I had been forced into the desert to find out with horror that the desert is alive, to find out that a roach is life. I had drawn back until I found out that in me the deepest life is before the human — and for that I had had the diabolic courage to get rid of feelings. I had to give no human value to life in order to understand the breadth, much more than the human breadth, of the God. Had I asked for the most dangerous and forbidden thing? risking my soul, would I have boldly demanded to see God?
The Passion According to G.H. Page 10
