A Strange Solitude

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1090185

Sollers 1

Strange solitude

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A

Strange Solitude

*

A

Strange Solitude by Philippe Sollers

Translated by Richard

GROVE PRESS

INC.

•

Howard

New

York

Copyright

© 1959 by Grove Press, Inc.

Originally published in France by Editions as Une Curieuse Solitude 1958

du

Seuil

,

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-12221

A

Strange Solitude

is

published in two editions:

A cloth bound edition A specially bound and signed copies lettered A through Z and commerce numbered ,

1

edition

of

26

4 copies, hors

through 4

Grove Press Books and Evergreen Books are published by Barney Rosset at Grove Press Inc., 64 University Place, New York 3, N.Y. ,

Distributed in

Canada by McClelland

6-

Stewart Ltd.,

25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 16

Manufactured

in the

United States of America

1090185 “The most beautiful courage of the courage to be happy.”

—Joubert

all ,

— From

Philippe Sollers’ meteoric rise

the awk-

fame is probably without equal ward impatience of youthful in French postwar literary his- desire, to the final dissolution of

to

tory.

A

22-year-old student

when

love

new awareness

a

into

of

—

everyman’s eternal solitude published late in 1958, Sollers thing in this novel converges immediately won the enthusiastic toward the revelation of a gen-

A STRANGE SOLITUDE was

human truth. A STRANGE SOLITUDE, in its Proustian de-

acclaim of the foremost French eral

Mauriac, Henriot, Ara-

critics

gon

— who hailed

as a masterpiece

his first novel scription of love,

extraordinary

its

worthy of com- maturity, and poetic insight,

among

places Sollers

parison with Proust.

A STRANGE SOLITUDE an exquisitely told story of

is

six-

the front

ranks of today’s novelists.

T predicted

François Mauriac:

a

teen-year-old Philippe’s love for glorious career for Philippe Sol-

Concha, a Spanish beauty almost

lers,

and

book confirms

this

my

twice his age. In a narrative sufpredictions.” fused with poetry, Sollers gradually unfolds

an astounding vision Robert Kemp: “His language has

finesse Reflecting him- a rare perfection. The the self in his desire for Concha as and the tenderness constitute before a mirror, Philippe holds original character of the work.”

of love

and

.

life.

transfixed each

moment

of carnal Louis Aragon:

”It

passion and tender emotion, each day that a young

moment of happiness and despair. “I

touched,

I

groped,

back the walls of

made hands I

sure of .

.

.”

my

I

sensations,

them with my own Separated from

man

rises

STRANGE SOLITUDE it

is

a blessing, like the

and

appears,

coming

of spring.”

Henriot:

"A very good

book, an outstanding talent

STRANGE

—a

revealed in A SOLITUDE bv the

writer. This fiction.

not every

women. In my pushed opinion, when a book like A

ecstasy of feeling rarely portrayed

modern

.

speaks so well of

Concha, Philippe finds a feverish Emile communion with the world in an in

is

.

is

twenty-two-year-old author Philippe Sollers

.

.

.

draws me, with an ex-

Sollers

he speaks directly, quisite exactness!’”

I’ve

always planned to write to someone thou-

sands of years and miles from

my own

someone with no duties, illusions, or passions, someone capable of feeling no emotion except for what matters:

human

the

adventure.

I

know how

life,

ridiculous

even grotesque such a notion seems.

Still, if

tion needs excuses

I

its first

justification

(which of course

and

imagina-

don’t believe),

should be the solace

it

provides.

My words would be merely inspirations cast into the void

when

everything

is

over, unrecognizable. This

mind I think of as emerging from retreat, would be concerned with antici-

person, this pure

some

ripe

pation alone; patiently and scrupulously weighed, his

every quality would expect a performance that

was always the same though

infinitely various, like

wave sustained by the same necessity though with more or less vigor and insolence. a

1

Philippe Sollers

would begin writing him without too much preparation. I would count on time, fatigue, and I

habit to provide the kind of conscientious banality that might keep

would

my

sentences orderly.

realize that such discipline

that the extreme limit of tual site of

my

my

investigation,

pen-point and violently

is

And

then

I

impossible—

consciousness, the ac-

happens

to

resists expression:

be

at

my

a curious

would conquer me if there were music near. “I find myself,” I would write, “in a strange solitude, the kind you would like, but different enough, I suppose, to leave you with a feeling of contempt. As a matter of fact ( don't laugh) it seems as if the world has disappeared, though I recall a few silhouettes, several odors, one or two landscapes, here and there the shadow of a feeling. But I cannot believe that my life (I mean whatever was least habitual for me) can still cling to what is called

delight

reality. Besides,

describing the sort of person

I

am

have reached a point of vantage— but it seems to me I am far from that. Exceptions can never be explained, but I am an exception; that is,

presumes

I try

my

I

best to be. Nevertheless,

I

should like to

summon up what energy and insight I have left and hurl them into the battle. What battle? The combat is a strange one when you take every blow for fear your own might fall wide! 2

A

Strange Solitude

You know, still

be

me

binds

light ?

tried to find

if I

one word for

to the world, I think that

all

that

word would

Probably light means something— asks for

our participation, our violence. The luminous mo-

ments

can serve, even by contradicting them,

I still

are speaking to

a sign that

me

memory As

radiant, magical? tion of life? I

—by what

now, half whispering. itself if it

must look

(in

me,

at

Isn’t this

any rate)

is

were an inspired correc-

for the reasons, find out

how

devious ways, what imperceptible move-

ments— I have reached this somewhat too perfect domain, where everything that doesn’t matter is still

S

shuddering

.

.

.

But then?

x

La cam con poca sangre los noche I think Concha must have ,

ojos con

,

after I did, that vacation.

mucha

arrived the day

During dinner the night

(when the combination of the two words seemed so comical) there had been a long discusbefore

sion of the

new

Spanish nurse. Although disap-

knows how unapproachable Spanish women are, I had remarked— quite casually —that it might be a good chance for me to practice my Spanish. But the next morning I stayed in my room, peering out of the window and attributing a thousand faces to the woman, not to mention all kinds of forward behavior. You can't imagine how the mere mention of somebody new arouses a character like mine. Beforehand, in the most harmless pointed, for everyone

remarks of the night before— even a disapproving tone was

5

enough— I had discovered

reasons for be-

Philippe S oilers

ing in love with Concha, reasons that surrendered

her to

me more

ence: such

is

fully than her appearance, her pres-

makes you

the shyness that

desire

someone without ever having seen her. And I was at the age when you fling yourself on every victim in the vague hope of finding someone who imprisons you in her unresisting consent, which happens to be what you fear most of all. I could not think of a

woman

without imagining that

I

possessed her—

though ignorant of the nature of such happiness. dreamed of Concha's breasts.

She arrived.

window

I

It

was raining hard, and from

I

my

could see only the tops of several um-

brellas, the

hem

of her skirt, her ankles— things that

moved me

only

much

was dying

later. I

to

come

downstairs but afraid of looking presumptuous, out

The babble of raised voices continued, though everything depended on just one, and I

of place.

strained to distinguish

its

uncertain progress,

its

was laughing, would rather have

pauses, interruptions, cascades! She

she was searching for words.

died than leave tion I

my room

feared— it was that

I

and betray a preoccupadifficult to

wrest myself

from it— was transparent. She was coming up the

stairs.

This time,

I

could

6

A

Strange Solitude

no longer. Crossing the landing, at least I would seem to be doing something perfectly natural. But suddenly we were face to face. I saw stand

it

nothing but her eyes. They took irony that

I

me

could barely stammer out

in with such

my

greeting,

bow, smile. They were eyes that looked at you something I was quite unused to, probably because ,

was unwilling to give anyone else this power. There was no time to discover their color or what kind of face they sparkled in. She was wearing black, dim as a priestess— someone very severe and imposing. Even today I can’t see a woman in mourning without seeing Concha again, black-haired and somber with the sparkle of impertinence in her eyes. I

Later

I

discovered that her sadness, as in

many un-

constrained sensibilities, was a thousand miles from

her surface feelings, and concealed

itself,

out of

modesty or merely manners, behind a casual gaiety that reveals its possessor to be widely experienced

and

utterly detached.

She must have

felt

that seri-

ousness was something to be kept to herself.

At dinner,

I

examined Concha openly, without

and she returned my stares. A woman could scarcely be less concerned: she neither refused nor joined battle, and her eyes rested on my subterfuge,

my being able to against my desire. Like

own, curious and cold, without decide

7

if

they were for or

Philippe S oilers

all fine

eyes, I discovered their color

was

difficult to

brown nor green, with a slight purshe seemed to use to good advantage. I

identify, neither

plish cast

hated having to talk to her, for

my

observation was

was the only person who spoke Spanish well enough, and since she pronounced French so badly, I had to serve as her interpreter.

curtailed, but I

This linguistic complicity immediately created am other that seemed to me to go deeper. When her face,

after registering the assault of a

me

question,

mute appeal, I was happy. Everyone liked Concha for different reasons. Men felt her force of character, which they interpreted as temturned to

perament.

in

Women

regarded her as exiled bv her

pride and therefore, in their terms, harmless.

When,

at sixteen,

you are a poet and the

least

bit

good looking, there are certain kinds of behav-

ior,

certain airs that

you

are.

make people

Concha had glanced

a

an

new

how

me two

stupid

or three

my

imagination had taken

invitation. I stared at

myself in mirrors with

times with an insistence for

at

forget

That she should be so pretty and not yet have married— at thirty— that she was. self-satisfaction.

8

.

A

Strange Solitude

found

as I soon

out, so unambitious, I set

down

to

no passion that suits a woman better than indifference; yet Concha seemed to triher fatalism. There

umph

in

it

is

without deliberate

effort,

merely because

was delighted and in despair that she should seem so remote, and that her glances were belied by her composure. I invented mysteries for her just where more lucidity would have recognized an immense capacity for unconcern. She was elsewhere perpetually, irrevocably, and it was really a pity to treat her like an her nature so inclined her.

I

,

inhabitant of this world, since she remained so ap-

parently alien to

it.

“Do you go out a lot, “I

in Spain?”

never leave the house. There’s nothing to do.

Sometimes friends come by.

I

spend the

rest of the

time waiting.”

“For what?”

“Oh nothing. The next day.” Or again: “Do you have a lot of friends?” “No. I don’t like having the same faces around me very long. Besides I don’t know why, but I al.

.

ways seem “But

.

to attract bores.

why come

don’t have to at

9

to

home?”

.

work

in

France when you

Philippe S oilers

“I

was too fond of my don’t know how to do any-

was bored ... or

own way. And

since I

else I

Some people prefer the that of their

own

family.

subjection of strangers to

At

least they don’t

have to

participate in the difficult gymnastic of switching

from

irritation to affection

are, after all,

every other minute. There

people dear to our hearts

cannot bear having on our nerves.

probably

less sensitive

when

And

the heart

is

whom

we.

nerves are

no longer

involved.

Concha explained it to me very well: In Spain, a strict

woman

alone

and too old-fashioned

is lost.

People are too

to stand for a situation

they consider so abnormal. Instead of listening to

my family’s

complaints, I’d rather be in France, put

up with a few (Looking

obligations,

at me.)

But

it

and do what

I

want.

seems pretty dull around

here!”

What confused me was

that she said all this

without the slightest irony, the least trace of bitterness. For the first time in my life I had met some-

one who asked for nothing, and

I

was too used

to

feelings that ran all the higher for being lower to

understand

this

absolute calm that was neverthe-

less linked, in flashes, to so

much

sensitivity.

This

indifference, moreover, extended to every domain.

10

A

Strange Solitude

even to those where she might be supposed to protect herself— to her reputation. Later she committed

which only the proverbial es igual can explain. And what had to happen happened. She would never have intervened to avoid danger or to insure pleasure. There is a nobility of bearing which is merely apathy. Yet in Concha a series of imprudences

was no sign of such inhibition upon her physical being. She was spirited, in fact, save when she had to argue, or answer questions, or make any there

kind of decision. Then her face dissolved, she with-

drew

into her shell, se metia

en su concha

how

knowing

of looking for a lover than of

to repulse one.

And

as I

She was no

told her in a carefully prepared pun.

more capable

,

people interpreted as cold-

what was only uncertainty, a longing to be determined by events, to yield to them with that talent for catastrophe that all the Spanish seem to possess. I’m not entirely certain the fact that Conness

cha was Spanish made helped.

When we

me

love her, but

are very

it

doubtless

young we want love

have an ambiguous, unfamiliar character, as if everything derived from a magical tradition, and speaking to Concha in Spanish, making love to her to

in

Spanish— being unable to wound

her, rouse her,

please her except in Spanish— gave this language a

sacred and incantatory value. But

11

I

soon realized

Philippe Rollers

Concha also escaped me by this means, was concealed by protecting shadows where I couldn’t that

grasp the sense of her remarks, her choice of words being too personal or too subtle.

Yet for Concha there was certainly one advantage in speaking a language that was not my own: everything which, in French, might have annoyed or disappointed me assumed, in Spanish, a new color,* a depth that dazzled me.

The conversation one

of

hei compati iots might have found vulgar or insipid had for me the importance of a revelation, offering so

many

secret correspondences, so

latable formulas that

seemed

natuie of a iace. Besides, discipline

it

and perhaps a

many

untrans-

to express the

whole

would be a praiseworthv

crucial

one — if

men

tired

of speech to the point of obsession

were suddenly to change languages, using only a borrowed vocabulary, creating a new, closed world with no links to their childhood, their fatigue.

edy

is

Although such a remprobably illusory — and would function, more-

over, only as a sedative— it

would doubtless choose some language other than Spanish, which offers to those unfortunate enough to have studied Latin certain evident relations,

certain analogies

that are

always deceptive. But at the period when approaching Spain and Concha, it was as if

I I

was had

landed on an island of fugitive and verbal treasures

12

!

A

Strange Solitude

which I always identified with the same being, and which disappeared with her, all the more precious because there was so little time to evaluate them. And when Concha talked, the contrast between the

warm and

cold of words, between the harsh tonal-

and the pulpy softness of the cs and z’s (when the tongue moves against the teeth as if to line them with felt) the confusion of ity of

b’s

the

and

r’s

v’s,

or the jota

produced a kind of equilibrium that

opposed extremes, reconciling them in a ragged music of storms and calms, heights and depths, attacks and concessions. Which is why Spanish, a nervous, uneven tongue

ceaselessly

.

.

.

(exhausting and mingling every register) that forces the voice to adopt an apparent rage but also a dan-

gerous sweetness (always armed),

is

the language of

fascination.

And

the changes in Concha’s voice

seemed

to

depend on whether she was speaking for herself (when she would whisper: an invocation) or abandoning the bother of

civility

to

an unconscious

machinery of ready-made expressions.

How peat

it,

I

I

loved her to say / Ojala

To make

her re-

invented endless conditionals to which she

would answer with a "Would some classic tirade

to

Heaven" worthy

.

"But IS

if

(some catastrophe) were to happen?"

of

.

Philippe Sollers iOjalâ ! ...”

And

I

never tired of

word, of any borrowing from what did not touch her too closely, from this imperious music. .

this

.

have said that at my age any victim seemed likely, provided she resisted my inexperience. With Concha, I soon had to adopt an equivocal attitude. I

was always with her, and others besides myself might have been surprised we were so free with each I

other.

But a

little

nerve

is all

the insolence the better noticed.

And my

to see nothing,

since

its

My

own

its

you need. The greater chances of going un-

family, seeing nothing or wanting

was probably inclined

to

indulgence

interests weren't at stake.

friendship with Concha,

which had developed spontaneously (she had no one else to talk to), relieved everyone else of troubling about her, made things easier for her (for though she was supposed

be taking care of the children, she was more of a chamber maid— like chamber music) and ultito

mately became a kind of tutor to prepare

me

for

mv

coming examination. One of my aunts gravely reminded me that the study of an idiom (this was the word she used) is an extra string to your bow.” But what kind of wood I was going to use for 14

A

Strange Solitude

my arrow— to scarcely

risk a

seemed

remark in doubtful taste— she

willing to suspect.

Often in the afternoons, Beatrice, a childhood friend with whom I was supposed to be on flirting terms,

came by

to play tennis.

Concha would an-

swer the door, serve refreshments. I always enjoyed the contrast between them: the blond girl in her tennis skirt, the pale dark-haired woman always dressed in black (to the point of deserving this piro po, that

is,

a dandy’s compliment à Y espagnole:

tQuién ha muerto en el cielo Tara que la virgen vaya de luto? Beatrice,

my

who was no fool, had

feelings about

smile at

me and

probably guessed

Concha, for not only did she

recite:

dans Séville une enfant brune et tendre Nous n eûmes aucun mal, hélas ! à nous entendre

yai connue

—verses she must have picked out of some anthology

and which

I

stupidly scowled at— after

volved only me; but another day,

15

all,

that in-

when Concha

*

Philippe Sollers

brought in a tell

tray, Beatrice

her to put

dissatisfied,

move I

it

was brazen enough

to

down, and then, pretending to be even showing impatience, asked her to it

three or four times.

thought Concha would throw the glasses in

her face. Beatrice must have thought so too, since she suddenly thanked her a little too warmly and

never played such a trick again. "What’s the matter with her? She looks sick,” Beatrice hissed at me, disappointed at not having upset Concha. Yet

this

was not

hadn t the presence

their last skirmish,

of

mind

to relish to

which

I

my own

advantage. But the next convinced me I was in love with Concha, and you will see how, later on, though

she never suspected

it,

I

thanked Beatrice for

that.

Sometimes a sentence or even a tone is all that two people need to create a fatality they can no longer

was at a party my sisters were giving and which Concha had helped to prepare. Her position, escape. It

her age, her mourning, which lectures to

appear of

modify so that

in the living

chasm around

had taken many she would even agree to

room— all

it

this

created a kind

her, sitting, or rather

perched on

an armchair, eyes blank, her expression utterly woe-

begone-a way she had of looking at the slightest disappointment. Her hair made her bare neck into something

fragile

and

inviting, faintly grooved.

I

16

A

Strange Solitude

walked toward her and she looked up, smiled, and said eagerly: ‘‘Did you see all those dances, Felipe? My God! I couldn’t do the first step. Ive forgotten so quickly!”

She watched indulgently, enjoying her own memories, soon indifferent.

I

offered her a cigarette

which she accepted. She smoked unselfconsciously, breathing the smoke out her nose with a sudden familiarity that was not at all habitual in her. She must have noticed my surprise, for no sooner had she begun than she nervously stubbed out the cigarette.

Beatrice walked toward us with a telltale

smile, holding a glass she

even looking offered

at

handed

Concha, to

whom

to I

me

without

immediately

it.

“Ma parole

,

he’s

paying court!”

Her voice embarrassed me even more than her innuendo: a shrill, disastrous tone which trembled slighdy on the last words. “If

it

weren’t true,”

Concha

said with a

little

thrust of her chin, stumbling over her words, “you’d

be annoying him, and me. So in any case

it

if it

was

were, you’d be annoying

silly.”

had to admit she was only joking, and walked away with a wink. I felt nothing, yet it seemed something had unraveled in my desire and Beatrice

my 17

fear to approach Concha.

Philippe S oilers

we?”

“Let's go outside, shall

As we stepped hand she held out tainty that

I

me.

to

I

of concern for me.

hand, thinking

how we

And

I

squeezed her

often need things to

a play for us to behave dramatically.

prised

me

took the

was moved by the cerConcha had answered Beatrice as she

had only out like

dark terrace,

off the

in Concha's attitude

was

seem

What

sur-

that she wasn't

the least bit angiy with Beatrice, questioned

me

about her with every sign of the most secret—

though the warmest— admiration in her voice.

The house became as busy as a hotel. My family had asked some relatives to visit— an old, blind, halfdeaf man who spent the day sitting in a comer of the living room. Then chance, which has a vulgar

made everyone Spain. I thanked God

imagination,

decide to spend ten

days in

for

ures,

me

which obliged

exams. So

we

stayed at

man, Concha, and

I,

my

academic

to prepare

home

fail-

for the next

together, the blind

without counting the two

chil-

Today such coincidences seem wonderful to me. But nothing that moves in the direction of our dren.

desire surprises us at the time

would be scandalized

if

itself.

Instead

we

nothing happened.

18

A

Strange Solitude

Any was

would have to be mine. Concha enough not to take offense at a situ-

hesitation

intelligent

ation others might have considered scabrous.

The

could have deterred her?

What

difference in our

ages? Obviously, she already regarded the gap as a delicious twinge of conscience. Fear of scandal?

She was too unconcerned to pay much attention. On the contrary, her past, which I thought I glimpsed one evening in the way she smoked (any man who knows something of Spanish women will understand how this behavior might surprise me) must

have encouraged her

may be As

in this

weakness — if the word

permitted.

for myself, entirely

concerned with realizing

an experience so ardently longed for, I paid scarcely any attention to Concha’s problems. It is only afterwards

always

we

discover

for in desire

we

listen to ourselves.

Besides, everything I

women,

much

learned

later.

was decided beforehand,

Had

I

known

it

as

at the time, I

should probably have been afraid of succeeding.

But

how

could

ends— on the grossly,

it

At

first I

guess that everything begins— or

far side of pleasure. I

with

all

to

moved toward

the impulsiveness of ignorance.

thought sleeping with a

had a chance 19

I

brag about

it.

woman meant you

But

I

was

to discover

a Philippe Sollexs

meaning— so much do we live olf the appearances a bed reduces to their nothingness. The first day we were alone seemed to last forever. Would it never get dark! Concha soon noticed the way I was hovering over her. In the first stages of desire— though we still don’t know what we dethe trap of

its

real

sire— we are afraid even our breath

may

designs of chance. Concha, sewing,

had caught*

white thread in her it

out,

making

all

hair,

and

I

kinds of faces.

we perform around

a

woman

spoil the

was trying to pick The childish dances

are an attempt to re-

duce the distance separating her from us without altogether losing face (later, consciousness of this

absurdity makes us prefer being coarse and miserable in our adventures). But Concha,

who

I

thought

was being indulgent when she simply desired me, did not repulse

me

with those terrifying glances her

pride could muster.

Once the

dishes

were washed, the children

bed, the old relative installed in his

comer

in

of the

room (always motionless and mute, like an automaton which only some sort of machinery kept alive), we found ourselves alone in the study. I was soon bringing in my records and some old photographs I had found in the attic; I spread them out on the carpet and we knelt beside each other, laugh-

living

ing hilariously as

we examined

them. The singer

20

A

Strange Solitude

played his guitar and endlessly expired in a long provocation

full of

darkness and despair. Sometimes

Concha stared at me was so rapt by her face, by

smiling, sometimes earnest,

without a word, and

I

her secret verdict, that these sudden tossed

me

about

(in turn) like

shifts in

the sea.

I

mood

took her

hand as if to escape the exaltation of the music, which was too beautiful not to provoke an attack of hysteria. The record was just over when the old man called. Concha sprang up and ran toward the living room. She was there long enough for me to join her where she sat, pensively contemplating the blind man, his blank face raised toward the ceiling. I sat down on a Recamier sofa which, since she was still sitting on the floor, was slightly above her. Sometimes the old man spoke to her, and she answered him with kind words or even comforting noises. My face hung over hers, which I was seeing so close for the first time. The darkness fell on this Suddenly Concha, raising herself slightly on the palms of her hands, kissed me, exclaimed something, and ran into the other room. The old

strange

trio.

man, hearing a

noise, stood

ing incoherently, while

She was back

I

in the

up

in terror, jabber-

ran after Concha.

study where she was pre-

tending to examine the pictures. This time, no longer hesitating,

21

I

fondled her, having heard that

Philippe Sollers

if

you

tickle a

woman you

can

how how

tell

aroused

beyond my understanding, did not react, played dead. Even when I began caressing her small round breasts beneath she

But Concha,

is.

“

natural”

her black jersey— the antipodes of is,

my

dreams; that

of obscene picture-magazines— she failed to

that

movement

have doubled bling,

my

would

of defense which, of course,

my

pleasure.

And

face blank, she coolly

while

I

make

was trem-

went on looking

some ancestor wearing a straw hat. I wanted to kiss her, or rather to bring

my

at

face

near hers. But either because she decided she could

become a

punctilious after yielding, or be-

little

cause she was

now

afraid of the results, she fled

again, laughing, elusive: ‘‘Be formal, be formal” she

shrieked

during

(

all

desires, I

formal

in Spanish,

,

the time

we were

means

serious).

And

running, disrupting our

covered her face with clumsy kisses that

missed their mark and merely brushed against her skin. still,

But when the kisses

I

I

succeeded in making her hold

gave her,

my

burst out laughing, spattering

first kisses,

me

made

with her

her

saliva.

f

on a balcony overlooking the garseemed—unless I was inventing it— as if the

Later, leaning

den,

it

22

A

Strange Solitude

garden was night cast

among

remember

the branches, the occasional pur-

my me

breathing beside

emotion at hearing a for the

first

this intimate interval separating first

out of the chaos

if,

a flower exploded.

ity of I

moonlight,, as

full of

time, there

is

something

time in

my

two bodies

like a

woman life.

In

for the

magnetic

field

which suddenly— and without our being aware of it —makes us discover the desire or the danger of the other

.

We

kissed each other, clumsily.

have no

taste at

all,

actually,

only as shocks. Yet they ure,

one

we had

The

first

kisses

one experiences them

become an unknown

pleas-

never suspected.

Concha was in such a yielding mood— although so playful— I was dying to ask permission to come to her room. With a little experience, I would have gone without asking. But I had just reached that first stage of love when you imagine that agreements can be reached by words. I Thrilled that

asked Concha, who, of course, answered no. Then, with an instinctive gesture proving that I deserved

no other answer and that first love swells the defects of any age to its extreme consequences (and mine consisted of sulks, the tantrums of a spoiled child), I

gave her a look

I

hoped was

slapped her. As a matter of

23

terrifying

and

I

fact, falling in at this

Philippe Sollers

point with the incessant farce self, I

would have

was acting

I

my-

for

liked the moral right to slap her

without really hurting her

must have supposed that was “how you took a woman”). But Concha seemed so startled she didn't even think of slapping me back, and rushed away without a word. Infuriated

by

(I

this incident,

more

seeming so

for

ridiculous than for having “missed an opportunity,’’

went back to my room, began taking off my clothes. The choice was up to her, I’m not going to beg. But once these melodramatic words were I

uttered I

I

realized

how

silly

and stagey they were.

ran to Concha’s room.

She was so kind refuse

my

me

her bed.

it

I

incoherence and

did not even occur to her to think she even pitied

me

my

already

clumsiness, as

loving me, she regarded

me

as

if,

for

not responsible.

“Venga, venga ,” she whispered as I came in, trying not to make any noise. But I was so upset that I couldn’t even tell if she was ordering me to stay or leave.

As f>

“/V en ga!

I

hesitated she

Then

I

repeated impatiently:

quickly took

off

trembling, slipped between the

my

pyjamas and,

warm

sheets.

She

dared not move, as though the same fear paralyzed her, as though the same desire made her solemn. I smelled the strange perfume of her hair— her face

was turned away from me: by strange

I

mean

that

24

”

!

A I

Strange Solitude

could never compare

it

to anything real. I soon lay

upon her without trying to possess her, hesitating upon her lips with shudders and giggles. Inquisitive, her mouth became cooler the deeper I penetrated within

We

made

my

mented

it.

love as well as

we

could, for she aug-

ignorance by her repeated and an-

quished / cuidado to such a point that

I

withdrew

too soon, experiencing only an incomplete sensation.

me this permission (to possess her only much later, one day when she saw

Yet she granted completely) I

was

happy

so

moment

that she decided

on

this

recompense

mute yet meaningful questioning that precedes pleasure. It was then, looking straight into my eyes and smiling to see me so satisfied, that “ she whispered in my ear that Echad which no for the

of

man, once he has heard

it,

can ever forget (and her

Concha spoke

it,

was a sudden

voice, as is

groan). It

how rich the vocabulary of loveSpanish, how evocative in imagery and

remarkable, too,

making

sonority. desire,

in

is

For desire

is

above

and anyone might

fill

all

the vocabulary of

pages with these sa-

vory, quite untranslatable expressions

the

power

of

making us imagine

which have

love.

was nothing more than her breathing, her warmth in which I was beginning to live. Yet once aware of pleasure, I sensed I would But that night

25

it

Philippe Sollers

become aware of

also

that love,

when you

pain.

Fori had

just discovered

are not prepared for

and

it

your imagination struggles with the phantoms of feeling,

cannot resolve the enigma of a face,

enough

to free us

the

moment

to suffer

from our habitual

lies.

is

not

Yes, from

came near her, I felt all I would have from Concha (I should have realized: from I

myself).

The next day Concha put on a blue skirt and a white blouse and (it was Sunday) went off to Mass. I was going to have lunch with Beatrice, at her home. By what miracle I was able to get up, dress, and assume a decent countenance,

see people,

cannot say. tional

It’s

moments

I

when we live through excepour own that we learn to meas-

only of

ure the extent of other people’s inattention.

No

one notices that our mood borders on indecency or scandal, even when we are convinced it must leap to

every eye. The world

are gratified fort in I

fact,

blind,

and

if

our vanity takes

our secrets little

com-

it.

heard nothing anyone said to

tounded less.

by the

is

My

to

hear

my own

me and was

as-

voice answering neverthe-

mind was wondering where she could

be,

26

A

Strange Solitude

imagining her movements, the smile that bloomed

on her

Gradually,

face.

somewhere

else, tasting

of distraction

I

even pretended to be

simultaneously the pleasure

and the pleasure

of not concealing

it.

wanted Concha to think only of me, to concentrate on seducing me, on maintaining the already mythical image I had of her. But she prob-

Of course

I

ably had better things to think about than pleasing

me, and better things to do than thinking about me.

‘

iQué escuela

edly, while

I

tienes!”

tried to

Concha

said to

seduce her with

me

all

wick-

the re-

and smirks of my character which I considered irresistible and which would have made me die laughing if I had sources, the twitches, the affectations

to

endure them.

added I

sadly,

“who

“If

no one loves you now,” she

will, ojos

chinos ? But

why

should

love you?”

Her hand hovered a moment over her face, trembled, ringed the words she had just spoken as if to give them shape, and finally fell back after two or three hesitations. “Why should I love you? Words are silly when they try to speak for the heart. ...”

But precisely because of 27

my

inexperience with

Philippe S oilers

would have preferred a well-put lie to inarticulate truth: I needed that commonplace expression more than all the silent certainty of her affection and her desire. I had what I wanted of her body, of course, but nothing of her memory, her mind— supposing it existed—was accessible to me. betrayal,

I

And instead of being content with pleasure as so many others would have been, I could not help thinking she was somehow concealing her memories and emotions from me. I have always suffered from a lack of indifference toward other people. In love, I advanced slowly, exasperated to find her so calm. The wise choice would have been to take her and —for the rest— keep

still. I

knew

it,

without wanting

to.

Always, between lovers, occur those interminable conversations getting nowhere, effacing every-

thing that

is

not a confidence, a secret, recounting

adventures of no interest, interminable details avidly listened to.

But Concha told such strange

stories.

An orphan

wandered through the streets of Pamplona, ran beneath machine-gun fire, was wounded in the right leg where a drv, precise scar corroboat eight, she

28

A

Strange Solitude

rated the past she referred to in a strangely calm

voice— a certain amount of suffering or doubt deprives the voices tion.

Never had

which I

interpret

listened to

them of all intonaa monologue with

more attention. But this was because the world Concha talked about had that fabulous qualitystrange, antique as well as the

— of the generations that precede us,

mystery of her race which, though

had some Spanish blood, would never be mine. From the names occurring in our conversations and I

serving as pretexts for arguments different

we

are from those

who

we

discover

how

are not our age.

These involuntary manifestations of language, these references to names of an unknown period (famous

movie stars forgotten a few years later)— such things, had I yielded to my mind, which must judge according to appearances, would have warned me that Concha and I were far from understanding actors,

each other. There was in her bearing, of pain so intense (an ineffable,

pain) that,

knew how

young bourgeois

too,

an image

somehow

eternal

as I was, I scarcely

to act with her.

Every hiding-place was in our favor. I discovered diat a house can be more than a site of habits

and memories, can suddenly change— like any ting

once you love someone in it— can become a

kind of shadowy castle

29

set-

full of fears

and

pleasures,

Philippe Sollers

and more intense than those I remembered from the little wars of childhood, the

more

terrible

ambiguous experiments of schoolmates.

Most frequently we met in the kitchen, whose cupboards had always lured my preferences, my reveries, though what led me there was quite the opposite of self-communion. Even today I know nothing of a house

I

if

haven’t visited

its

pantry.

not only the odors that linger there— chlorine,

It’s

grease— but even more the spectacle so varied that —visually— nothing

I

can think of pleases

me

so

much: the cupboards, the shelves, the pans hanging on the wall, the sink, the stove Pleasure changes a person’s character in propor-

my own

was enormous. I was constantly hovering over Concha, compelling her to endure caresses which the danger of discovery, the unaccustomed nature of the setting, and her unacknowledged fear must have made so thrilling for me. I came to understand how vanity makes tion to his imagination,

and

we could enjoy without danger. when we might have been seen, we

us risk pleasures

One

evening,

walked out

been

left

into the garden.

on,

and

whispers, rustles,

sprinklers

had

in the twilight, these whirling

fountains looked as join in the dance.

The lawn

if

they were beckoning us to

The garden was full of murmurs, like someone turning over and 30

A

Strange Solitude

over before going to sleep.

My

hand, beneath Con-

was lying on her thigh, not moving from the one place. She had thrown her head back, her long hair hanging behind the bench we were sitting on, and I could see the profile of her luminous neck, cha’s dress,

her thin

lips.

.

.

.

Another time, in the

attic

crowded with old

books and furniture:

“Can you hear me breathe?” «XT

No.

“I

»

have very quiet breathing

.

.

.”

Everything in

Her body seemed an astonishing object to her, and she referred to her physical qualities in an amused tone of voice, tossConcha flowed

at half speed.

ing her head, as

one

all right!”

if

she were saying: “She’s a queer

Often she mentioned her power of

not losing her breath. Running, stairs: ity.

As

lifting,

or climbing

nothing in her breathing betrayed her activif it

scorned any manifestation, the rhythm

and she grew someone else, sub-

of her respiration stayed the same,

impatient— did not understand— if

same test, began panting even slightly. Thus Concha seemed guided by superior principles and decisions, so that her appearance became a mystery which could perpetuate her in this equiva-

ject to the

lence of

all

sensation. Yet sometimes, in panic haste,

she would strip off her clothes while at the same

31

Philippe S oilers

time preserving— for form's sake— her minor

reti-

cences: “Did she really have to be stark naked?"

knows she does." stretched out on the bed, with

“Yes, of course, she

And

then,

that

vacant look of unknown realms already in her eyes,

my weight to fall upon of my expectation. But I

she waited for full

burden

compass her with caresses

until she

her with the liked to en-

shuddered with

impatience.

The

light,

the pictures half-covered with bed-

sheets, the dark carpets disappeared.

And we skillfully mingled fear with pleasure: who was hammering so loudly on the first floor? The bed creaked: who knew we had agreed to meet each other here?

and my own swift desire seethed, gradually rising, moving blindly toward its goal. Like sudden lulls among the leaves, Concha's breathing separated from mine, while our shoulders met, our hips and haunches made sure of each other and (by imperceptible But she soon became quite

.

.

frantic,

.

shocks) of our satisfaction.

«

How

fast those

hours passed

warning— from the deep sense

I

learned— it was a

of never being the

32

A

Strange Solitude

same

at

even a few minutes'

recognize myself,

I

Unable to

interval.

labored to give

my

actions that

which would exclude all correction. I forced myself upon the present with all my strength. With Concha I multiplied every risk and whim. Sometimes, after lunch, I went to her room. sign of definition

She was napping, the shutters closed, in a half-

and vague. The sun, through the top panes of the window, composed submarine landscapes on the ceiling. And Concha herself seemed abandoned on her bed as if deep light that

made

the

room

cool

within some ocean grotto.

my

knees, thrust

my

I

stood beside her, bent

face against the nape of her

neck. She pretended to be asleep, even beneath

my

caresses.

not quite

Suddenly

wake

I

seized her, yet she could

up, endlessly turning in

my

arms,

her legs, her arms, her sluggishness.

stretching

Gently, so as not to seem importunate,

I

kissed her

moist palms, her bare shoulders. Often she kept on

was a special trick to make her take it off as if her sleep and not I were responsible. At last I held her against me, naked beneath her long shift (whose whiteness made her brown skin all the more brilliant), her cool mouth upon my own her brassiere, and

which, in

its

moments,

I

it

inexperience, found

wasn't sure whether

further or withdraw, so great did

33

itself I

invaded. At

should advance

my

boldness seem

Philippe S oilers

to

me.

was

I

afraid of seeing her

wake up

again,

having reached the point where she could no longer claim sleep as an

have

on our

to decide

the point where

alibi,

roles,

we would

consider each other as

two strangers— who knows?— as two enemies.

And

yet

I

found

it

quite natural that she should

never seem awkard or embarrassed or

was with the with masks.

truth that

And how

I

began;

artificial:

It

have continued

I

describe that drooping pos-

complex union of sensuality and indul-

ture, that

gence occasionally carried extremes? But what

I

to deliciously perverse

liked best of

all

was her face

which I have never seen since among all the faces I have borrowed. It is no exaggeration to say that it bloomed. By some mysterious transfusion her face was flooded with an unknown color, restored in the sweetness of a sigh. But what always amazed me most of all was an incredible sureafter love ,

ness that

seemed

to spread in the film of tenderness

across her face, blurring her eyes, her nose, her smile, a certitude that welled (for she I

loved only pleasure).

did not separate— I have never separated— the

fact of living

from that of experiencing pleasure.

Sensual pleasure press

up from her pleasure

its

will in

is

me.

always the

And

first

welcome its not only do I hope for

not only do

recollections with gratitude,

instinct .to exI

34

A

Strange Solitude

their help at the

moment

pacify and reassure life,

they exalt

ments

I

bring to

And if

my

so,

me

of

death, but they

as to the usefulness of

my

love of conquest and the refine-

1 S 8

it.

when

my

I

f

•

1.

0

^>

find myself thinking of

the same pleasures

me

fill

that I

seem

Concha, to

have

known

before, then this illusion— perhaps not an

illusion

but a reality mysteriously located on equal

footing with the old illusion— this exaltation of reliving the

same

intensity that once transported

me the key all my being.

to that

finally offers

yearn with

.

.

me,

world for which

I

.

Yet Concha always appeared to be considering

me

with an amusement which was doubtless only her surprise at finding me so in love with her, so careful to hide it from her, and so clumsy in both roles.

the

She cocked her head a

way you

little,

look at children or pets.

looking at

me

Though not

a

muscle of her face moved, she was so obviously smiling that her eyes

filled

with that vague, cruel

dance they so often showed me. Yet

Conchas was ticed

it

this cruelty of

neither spiteful nor noisy: she prac-

with a gentleness which gave her judgments

that definitive tone people use for bores

35

and imbe-

Philippe S oilers

She had a way of approving, “Yes, of course,

ciles.

yes, yes,”

which

thought) ought to have given

(I

me the creeps. Even when

she was in a good humor,

happy— it seemed— to be with me, suddenly, and not by coldness but instead by a somewhat ex-

quite

cessive gaiety,

I felt all

the distance separating

me

from her, the whole possible measure of her disdain.

amuse herself with me, by me, apropos of herself. She would no more have been able to distinguish strength from among my weaknesses than I was capable of appreciating her motives. One was only as good as one looked, and Concha offered little credit. One was clumsy, riShe was here

to

diculous, boring, with (one imagined) the better

mind and the more been smart

to

would not have worth.” How she would

subtle heart. It

“show

one’s

have laughed, careful to maintain this

modesty,

this

come over you? to those farces

tastes

this

expression that said:

And

distance,

“What’s

no attention by which we carefully magnify our ’

then, she paid

and even our incapacities

in order to acquire

a special “sympathetic” quality to account for ourselves as a personality.

We

defects, claiming that

if

must be

to

as extreme:

insist

on certain of our

they are so absolute,

compensate for certain virtues

it

at least

a dreamer likes saying he “can’t do

36

A

Strange Solitude

anything with his hands’’ because his family, surprised to find

miringly told

him him

so meditative, has always ad-

so until he supposes that the

proposition “can’t do anything with his hands,” necessarily leads to

mind!

”

An

artist

'yes,

but what a wonderful

proclaims his fondness for music

and exaggerates

his indifference to painting, sup-

posing that

exclusivity ennobles his passion.

this

show off what they contain, each of us believes he makes himself “touching,” “human,” comprehensible and yet mysInsisting

on

limits the better to

terious for being so peculiarly unbalanced.

Such ingenuity

left

Concha with nothing but

the impression there were things you didn’t like,

from discovering, as you might have hoped, those of your tastes which were thereby reinforced, she held these incapacities against you and thought

and

far

that

you were a

No

“effect”

fool not to

keep quiet about them.

impressed her: she was really an im-

possible person.

Not

that she

was

stupid, but she

had neither the time nor the inclination to seem intelligent, always pressed by some crucial issue— she

who seemed

was too natural thing.

37

so purposeless. to

want anyone

And

besides, she

to think

such a

Philippe S oilers

During those eight days we were alone,

I

took

her to a bullfight. For some reason, the streetcars weren't running that day. Concha had invited one of her friends, a fidgety

monster

little

stopped wiggling, chirping, laughing. Concha's serenitv and balance j pervious to the other

girl's

with a look that convinced

We

walked

fast,

all

I

never

appreciated

the more: im-

excesses,

me

who

she smiled

she wasn’t listening.

accompanied by the

still

little

and impatient to find a cab. Soldiers passed, glanced at Concha, and shouted some obSpanish

girl

scenities at It

me.

I

turned beet-red,

had never occurred

to

me

like a simpleton.

our intimacy could

be guessed or even speculated about— that’s how much, when you’re in love, you conceal love's ob-

Concha smiled contemptuously. Five o’clock aheady— we were going to miss the first bull. Notic-

ject.

ing a taxi turning on our

shoved her

inside,

left, I

took Concha’s arm,

and shouted the address

bull ring to the driver.

He

drove

off at

of the

top speed.

Back on the sidewalk, the monster screamed after us and waved her tiny arms. Concha scolded me a long time, smiling.

The

when

bull ring

she saw

it.

was

and Concha grimaced There were many Spaniards in small,

the audience, their wild taunts unmistakable. Con-

cha made fun of the bare shoulders of a

girl in

38

A

Strange Solitude

front

of

us— in

she

Spain,

said,

such effrontery

would be hooted out

of the stands.

bull ran into the ring,

dazed

at

first,

The second then furious,

throwing himself against the barriers, spoiling his horns against the wood.

Few

use the cape and have a real talent passes

were

determined

Gloomy now, her

face

set,

put the entire responsibility for

this

disastrous. to

know how to for it. The first

toreros

mediocre exhibition on

my

swered none of

my

smiles.

shoulders,

Concha an-

She was bored, but

I

took comfort in the thought that she probably en-

joyed letting faint,

me know

forced /ole! that

Then a

The audience offered a tried to seem spontaneous. it.

real shout greeted the picadors (the

are soft-hearted).

The

bull,

French

a thin, supple, cunning-

looking animal, apparently seized with the same terror that ran start,

through the audience, took a running

jumped,

fell

and with the help

on

his belly across the barrier,

of his hind legs

managed

to

Everyone was stand-

scramble over to the other

side.

ing, shouting, or hooting,

while the spectators

who

happened to be in the narrow alley between the ring and the seats ran, jumped over the side, waved their* handkerchiefs as if they were trying to rouse their

own

fear.

back in the

him a 39

little,

Someone managed

ring,

for

to get the bull

I’m not sure how. They stuck

something

to do.

Everyone shouted.

Philippe Sollers

By

the tercio de mnerte the torero had done noth,

ing but wind his bull, leading ring.

He was

a

tall

him

all

devil with a tired look, a kind of

Quixote, and he must have

spiritless

around the

known what so little. The

he was doing if he exposed himself sword went straight into the lungs: the cuadrilla

made

the animal, spitting blood

from side

to side.

A

Quixote decided

few graceful to

saliva,

turn

wretched silence weighed on

the ring. Since the bull couldn't to die, despite a

and

make up

his

mind

genuflections,

Don

use his puntilla. Once. Twice.

Three times. Squeamish spectators began to stir. Four times. Five. The shouting on the sun side was deafening; it swept across the sand and seemed to revive the blood-spattered torero,

who began

run. People laughed, people shouted, people

to

began

to get angry.

Very simply, Concha stood up and

moved toward

the

exit.

Two

or three people around

us followed her example. “Even so," thinking of the bulls, “there are

Hard

as I tried to

mal side of from which Yet

this

my my

still

be innocence

love for Concha,

I

murmured,

four to go."

itself, I

the abnor-

mean

the side

vanity could suffer, bothered me.

uneasiness was quite superficial and did

40

A

Strange Solitude

me to modify my relations with her very deeply. Had I heard of '‘ancillary loves?” I don't know. In any case, it was inevitable that one of my

not oblige

friends, visiting the

house on some school errand

and noticing Concha, who was ceremoniously serving tea, risked a joke which her beauty made inevitable. I was very careful to contain myor other

self, to

control

my

face so that

revealed nothing

it

but a vague though ribald satisfaction. For told

my

friends

I

loved her,

if I

had

don't think they

I

would have laughed: they would have pitied me for being naive enough to be caught by what they regarded as an accident. Never having had much taste for confidences, I made so few about my feelings that even my best friends couldn’t tell I had fallen in love, and I had to force myself to match their jokes. Not that I was opposed to crudity: in fact I suppose it's one of the few subjects boys can still communicate about. But, loving Concha without knowing it, I found it hard to endure exposing

my

feelings,

lowest

sort.

even unexpressed, Later, suspecting

to

my

language of the

friends of attach-

ments they employed considerable clumsiness conceal,

I

actually forced

them

denials current

among boys

pleasure being

all

to

41

to

make

to

those verbal

of a certain age,

my

the stronger because they had

humble themselves

to satisfy

it

(adolescents are

Philippe Sollers

doubtless so coarse in love only to protect themselves

from

feeling,

ness). If lovers only

those

who have

guessed

my

which they know

their

weak-

knew how obvious they

are to

already loved! But that no one had

feelings for

loved me, led

is

me

Concha save

to believe that

Beatrice,

being in love

who is

a

and that it is only derided because it is so little known. I was inventing an old saw with which I was extremely pleased. Of course, I realized that to an uninformed mind this adventure might seem quite banal and vulgar, easily summed up in the (very naturalistic) expression: “the so-and-so boy is sleeping with the maid”; if doubts as to what might have been called Con-

rare condition

cha’s

“morality” were objectively justified,

swered

all

such hypotheses which

my

an-

I

passion for

lucidity put forward with absolute confidence

and

calm. There was not the slightest trace of duplicity in

her— such

is

the indulgence the practice of pleas-

which their detractors are far from possessing. This is what made Concha irreplaceable in my eyes. And yet she was always amused by what she called my “snobbery.” ure gives

its

enthusiasts,

“You think

I

don’t

know you?

You’re scared to

death someone might see you with me!”

Perhaps what she said was too often assume our

true, for

own bad

we must

all

faith against our-

42

A

Strange Solitude

selves.

But

taken

who

I

think she

insist

was mistaken,

on attributing

ordinary vanity finds

it

her,

to us the defects

logical for us to possess.

In love with Concha, tion,

as all are mis-

I

could only pity her situa-

and when I couldn’t keep from talking about I always emphasized her delicacy, the respec-

tability of

her family, the exceptional nature of her

position— without,

however, anyone’s paying the

slightest attention; a valet,

even

enter

its

if

maid was a maid, a

he was Jean- Jacques.

Pity,

valet a

when you

apprenticeship, provides along with

ways savory sympathies, the

satisfaction of believ-

ing yourself the only one to feel them. like Cinderella,

its al-

busy with menial

my God!) which Prince Charming

I

saw

her,

tasks (sweeping,

(guess

who) came

along from time to time to sweeten with his kind-

Love is supposed to be the poor man’s wealth. We were poor: she in money, I in spirit. Yet I was often genuinely moved by this impossibility for Concha and me to have a normal life, a normal ness.

love. I didn’t realize yet that all these peculiarities, all

these barriers served in fact only to

passion for her, to drape

When, 43

for instance,

it

augment

my

in inestimable secrets.

Concha came

to

my room

to

Philippe S oilers

open the bed, close the cold drink, could

we

shutters,

me

and bring

a

really understand the intimacy

I

shared, that sudden, temporary solitude

my

united us in the house of

which

childhood against a

background of music and daydreams; my joy in looking up from a book and seeing her open the door, that

my

come toward me,

all this, far,

as

I

kiss

me; could

I

perceive

then thought, from frustrating

Of course these moments were not painful for me. But I was prevented from tasting them to the full by the instalove,

bility of

rapture

gave

it its

true measure?

my character; instead of yielding of my youth, I wanted to pursue

imaginary ones, and beneath the Concha

my

I

to the others,

had

in

arms, beneath her smile, her attentiveness—how

she forced herself to seem happy!— I

divined a Concha

Concha

I

I

would never

must find out

Yet, as I

.

.

possess, a secret

.

have already explained,

myself with these moments as

if

I

I

waited for Concha’s evening

pale carpeting that set off the

intoxicated

they were never

to reoccur, so inimitable did they seem.

where

invariably

My

room,

visits,

had

handsome mahogany

Empire furniture with its brass dragons, strange crowned heads, flying muses holding lyres, creatures out of some fairy tale. The room’s colors were red and green— red for the hangings, the two little chairs 44

A

Strange Solitude

at the foot of the bed, the

Green

for the

lampshades, and the

bedspreads and the armchairs. The

bookcase added a note of variety,

filled

lows, whites, ochres, browns. There paintings,

sofa.

which

I

had chosen

with yel-

were only two

for their insignifi-

which Concha, suddenly and soundlessly appearing, seemed to step into the room (and I was pleased her charcance. But the better of the two, out of

harmonized so well with her surroundings; it permitted me to love her twice as much), showed acter

a rather stocky

woman whose

dark

hair, sparkling

and pale skin always surprised me. And I liked Concha to wear those rather extravagant tortoiseshell combs that set a cool gleam at the nape of her neck. She herself— que tal?”— seemed to glide across the floor without a sound (she often startled me) and as I watched her advance toward me from eyes,

end of the room with the freedom, the ease of manner that was the first thing you noticed about her, I remembered Baudelaire's lines: the other

Tes nobles jambes sous

les volants

Tourmentent

obscurs et les agacent

les désirs

quelles chassent

Comme deux sorcières qui font Tourner un philtre noir dans un vase profond.

Then

I

turned

down

the radio until

it

unheard, stood up, went toward her to

45

played on kiss her,

Philippe Sollers

which seemed

to surprise her

knew whether

this

each time.

never

I

astonishment was feigned

(a

kind of coquetry) or genuine (which would be a disaster). In

any

case,

it

unpredictable quality,

gave our kisses a clumsy,

when

for

was waiting

I

against her cheek, breathing the odor of her hair,

me

she suddenly turned her head and kissed

with

an expression of indulgence or casualness, except when she produced all sorts of refinements, folding

my

back

lip

and lapping,

cat-like,

with the

tip of

her cold, sweet tongue.

One

of

my

traps,

was

to ask her to

her.

We began

when

change

my

I

wanted

to catch her,

bed, promising to help

very earnestly, taking

off the sheets

and folding them up. Then, when the mattress, thus exposed, revealed

its

to find a hole in

it;

Concha leaned over

we

it

together, soon inextricably inter-

rolled across

hideous

stripes, I

pretended

to look,

and

laced.

To

take revenge, she once

the sleeves and legs of skill;

another time, to

fill

managed

to

my pajamas with infinite my bed with thistles that

she had picked on purpose in the garden. she

left

on

my

sew up

One dav

pillow a tiny figurine— a dwarf from

46

A

Strange Solitude

Snow White, with

a funny yellow cap and a blue

which hung an interminable beard. I still have it. These jokes irritated or touched me— to tears. I would have enjoyed them more if I had known you tease only those you love, a character-

jacket over

of Southern peoples that often reaches cruel

istic

proportions.

And when I felt a sudden desire for her in dark hallways, when I pressed her into a comer, caressed her feverishly without provoking any objec-

her face, not disapproving— as

tion,

consider

me

responsible— turned

if

she didn’t

perhaps

blank,

from pleasure. But in our lovemaking, her eyes, a little

lust

bloodshot, turned green, disturbing, wild (with

or—was

I

wrong?— pain,

at the point

where pain

and pleasure are inseparable).

On

the other hand,

if

she was angry,

“jVéte a freir esparragosC— or, better didn’t

know where

me, laughing,

if it

this

it

was:

for she

still,

country was and would ask

wasn’t “in Russia or somewhere

“jVéte al Congo Belga!” a phrase up there. which incessantly recurred in her conversation, (Moretinging it with an involuntary exoticism. over, supposing it to be an idiomatic expression, I took some time to realize that she was talking about .

.

.

the Belgian Congo.)

47

.

Philippe Sollers

My cha’s

family soon after engaged a cook on Con-

recommendation; she was a friend of Concha’s,

a heavy-set, naive girl with nothing attractive about

her except, years.

suppose, the freshness of her twenty

I

Concha

treated her like a younger

sister,

petted her, teased her with an hauteur which convinced me that the social categories persist even within a caste regarded as inferior. This farmer’s daughter, for Concha (whose family included doc-

and lawyers), was a friend to be endured with condescension. And yet there was a constant amiability between them which Concha tried to explain by saying that Andalusians like to sing even when tors

they go without food or freedom. (Yet the

from

Seville,

lowing her

with her

s’s,

way

girl

was

of systematically swal-

asking Concha: “jEre vaca?” instead

of “tEres vasca ?”

which would have avoided the

bad pun!) We respond to certain unfavorable situations by what is deepest in ourselves: Concha and her friend

made

liveliest gaiety. I

to

them laughing

it

a point of honor to parade the

would go

into ecstasies listening

in carcajadas

,

Concha’s voice

al-

warmly with the other girl’s shrilled tones; her own had a velvet patina, a darkness that made ternating

it

seem more

exotic

and remote,

its

carefully

modu48

A

Strange Solitude

lated expression subjecting soft

all

her words to a single

measure. don’t

I

know what

it

was

that

seemed ambigu-

ous in the case of their manner. Perhaps love gives us a false sensitivity which occasionally guesses right because of

came

its

very audacity. Laughing as

into the kitchen to

I

admire them, they swiftly

caressed each other with a composure I considered forced. In moments like these I discovered a Con-

had never imagined, no longer hunted but in pursuit of a consenting prey almost dazed by the

cha

I

upon her. (Yet perhaps without my being aware of it— and I discovered the possibility only after witnessing this spectacle— I had attentions lavished

been a victim of the For all Concha s

enough its

to gain the

strategy.)

ease, girl’s

I

sensed she was subtle

consent while concealing

importance. Mingled with this uneasiness of mine

was the obscure consciousness that Concha had a an uncertainty about her past. I rather resented her experimenting with the pleasure she gave me with such extraordinary skill; I sensed that as long as she desired him her partner could be changed

secret,

without her satisfaction being affected.

49

Philippe S oilers

The

girls

were

in the habit of taking their siesta

together on Sunday.

from morning

The house was empty

that

day

was the only time I could be alone, make whatever noise I wanted to, play the piano, put on a record whose tune I followed slowly through every room in the house, all the doors wide open. You can imagine how much I worked. And probably not at what you might think, to evening. It

but at something which, in slightly pretentious terms,

was no

important:

less

worked

I

at myself.

Those long daydreams, those uninterrupted hours of reading, and especially this affair (which brought

me

into the world), did

my

place— for

more—forgive

happiness than

the world. But

my wits when

how do I

all

I

common-

the studiousness in

know, having always used wanted to and only then? I

me

Empty, the house invited Concha.

the

didn’t

let

to

make

the opportunity

love to

slip.

After

lunch, the siesta substituted for the one essential

intimacy

we

lacked: nights together.

infatuation for her friend, our cook,

But Concha’s

became

so ex-

treme that she insisted on having her in the room,

even

day

at a

moment

we met on

I

imagined

Concha’s bed

abandon the pleasure for a

mere impulse

had asked me

my (I

own. So one Sun-

was reluctant

of feeling her lying near

of vanity,

to

me

and besides, Concha

to stay in a tone that should

have 50

A

Strange Solitude

me

led

to suspect a certain exhibitionism).

game began, and

the caresses under cover of dark-

me

ness reminded

Soon the

power

of that evening during a

had taken so long to find candles that Concha and I had had a chance to embrace in the darkness; except that by mistake I had embraced the other girl, who, thinking I was Concha, had burst out laughing though letting me do what-

failure

ever

I

when

it

But the

liked.

movements

to

siesta

permitted

all

these

seem involuntary, merely a playful

innocence.

Toward

the end of the afternoon, both

girls

dressed to go out. Then, after Concha said good-

bye with a pitying smile that was supposed to mean: “There, there, it doesn’t matter, you know I have to go out once in a while,” and after I had sulkily refused to kiss her (although, conscious of

her

frivolity,

she tried to

make up

for

it

by

offering

me her lips), I hid behind the curtains of my window to watch her leave, then ran to her room which she

still

had not grown accustomed to locking. I sat down on the bed, and stared at the

went in, dormer window, the gray skylight, the cheap carpet and the raw wood wardrobe I was now going to 51

Philippe S oilers

Overwhelmed by an extraordinaiy sense

open.

wealth in

wretched

this

setting, I didn’t

enough, imagination enough to take

impregnate myself with everything.

wardrobe and buried

my

it

I

of

have eyes in,

all

to

opened the

face in her dresses, her

bathrobe, her panties, her brassieres.

I

was excited

by anything that could give me an unexpected image of her, anything she abandoned to habit or negligence. So

where odors

searched through

I

all

her clothes

feverishly anticipated lingered as in

were—reassuring, not didn’t forget to rummage

her hair (ordinary odors, they at all provocative).

through the

little

letters. I didn’t

But

I

bureau where

I

hoped

to find

have the sense of being jealous— for

nothing in her adventures would have

made me

suffer— only infinitely curious about eveiything that

could share and count in her lover

who

of a

work he admires.

Concha,

I

also felt I

had created the woman her past, her

more

vice,

So

I

had reached

present Concha, by mediation of a

thousand touches, a thousand

it

like the poetry-

pays dearly for the manuscript variants

my

know

life,

unknown

I

loved. For far

from hating

would have liked to love her more subtly, with

life, I

better in order to

more

which

futile attempts,

delicacy.

*

searched through her papers with the ardor

of a critic about to say something startling about

52

A

Strange Solitude

a personality so famous that 'even able, his

remark

only give

it

if it is

will not diminish that

more depth or ambiguity.

I

unfavor-

fame but spread out

her snapshots on the table, eliminating those that seemed too innocent, searching for the face, the attitude,

would

the relative, the friend, the lover,

yield

me

this

woman;

who

leafed through her

I

perfumed papers. Among letters otherwise insignificant (and which merely confirmed her republican convictions) I discovered poems and songs

naive,

clipped from newspapers— or even rather clumsily

copied out on note paper. This find surprised

more than

if

I

had read

in

some

that he believed in God. It

is

me

libertine’s diary

always a painful

discovery— painful for our vanity— but also thrilling —to learn by accident that our beloved can live extraneous to our power, to our best hypotheses about her. And confronted with these poems, I had the

more about Concha than from any confidence, even if (and perhaps because) they were

sense of learning

nothing but an accident in her

That was how Concha.

And

I

in her

spent

my

life.

first

vacation with

name which meant both cove

and shell— and the beach itself-I glimpsed a rough, full beauty that rasped like sand rubbed between 53

Philippe S oilers

wet

fingers,

a beauty chiselled by some unsuspected

stubbornness, isolated until

has the faded charm

it

up by chance. But so perfect do they come to seem, endowed with a power severed from the world and yet secreted by it, that soon we can no longer do without them. Inaccessible of objects picked

as they are,

them

life

seems to have withdrawn from

to leave their architecture in peace.

there like traces of

many

They

alterations— which

we

are will

never know. Trembling in our hand, they can be only caressed or destroyed now. But nothing can

modify them without diminishing them. Thus the name Concha, whose accented first syllable rang out like a furious trumpet

subsided with an unexpected satisfac-

final “tcha,”

tion clasped within its

various

thickening with the

call,

it.

And

this

word, coated with

pronunciations— sometimes

clumsy—rested deep within me tion enriched at every

like

deliciously

an old imagina-

moment by new

woman who bore it seemed to fit it so

finds.

The

closely I could

not separate the two, could not possess her save

by

its

intermediary.

And

I

decided, with a certain

grandiloquence, that just as empty

them

to our ears, bring us the

were

bom

in,

illusion?— if

so certain

we

murmur of the

shells, if

we

hold

sound of the sea they

women— by what

beneficent

take them in our arms, restore the

infinite.

54

Two In October

Concha,

I

went back

briefly, at

And then

I

to school. I

was

to see

Christmas and again at Easter.

learned that she had suddenly

left, in

a

mysterious rage which was never explained.

At

first,

didn’t feel

during vacation, I

oblivion and silence

I

am

to recognize

my

attachments.

in self-possession (not

I

needed

How

knowing how

to decide

sometimes uselessly — just to know what the time,

I feel

you knew

if

me

a

little

them so

think,

better.

At

distinctly, that

being unable to choose one because of sion of perceiving

them

provisation. Later, once

55

I

and

every possibility of an opinion or an

attitude so clearly, foresee

to

to

deficient

anything), obliged to wait, to wait endlessly

would be funny

I

how

missed Concha yet-that was

much agony and be able

loose ends.

I felt at

reach a decision,

my

all, I

my

confu-

yield to a kind of im-

my mind forgets

that

preferences speak.

it

had

Philippe S oilers

Beatrice,

who had been

married

a

off to

man

of

(though an agreeable person, and shrewd enough to give her a child almost at once), lived thirty-five

on an estate a few miles from our own property. Guessing that I would be lonely, she fondly assured

me

When

of her friendship.

I

visited her after her

baby was bom, she was already up, eager again

to

be as seductive as ever. Maternity gave her a calm expression that transformed her former nervousness. Carefully dressed in a gray suit which set off her

blond hair

to

advantage,

skillfully

perfumed and

decorated (wearing extraordinary jewels, the kind she could ask you to admire at close range), she circled about

school had

me, discovering

made me.

I

how clumsy and rude

found nothing

to say that

could provoke our old, almost hysterical laughter. I realized I had once been so unselfconscious only

because

I

hadn’t

known

certain secrets.

prefers us to be spontaneous,

please

is

why we

more than when we are not trying

used to it

which

like

me when

I

The world to.

never

Beatrice

didn’t desire her, for I

found

easy to be natural. But

thousand visions

Concha had awakened a which made me discover I had

never really seen other people before. help thinking about this as

who was culty

subtle

enough

I

I

couldn’t

looked at Beatrice,

to enjoy increasing

by a thousand innuendos. But

my

my

diffi-

astonish-

56

A

Strange Solitude

ment reached its peak when the conversation turned on Concha and Beatrice complimented me on my friend and showed me a letter from her (and she had written nothing to me!), assuring me Concha sent me her best regards. Later, by cross-checking, as well as by a long confession from Beatrice, full of hesitations and retractions, I learned they had been close enough friends

my

during

to cause talk. All this

absence at school.

Beatrice

actually

claimed that Concha had taken her marriage as a pretext to leave. This seemed an excessive reason

my

me:

to

family was fond of Concha, and she

couldn’t be that jealous of her

new

friend.

.

.

.

Beatrice insisted on this explanation, assumed airs in talking

her old (I

to

about Concha, assured

But all

me

knew all too well where she got the recipe) that make her eyes sparkle she endured the torture

“à

l’

espagnole

’

of salt-water. I asked her

had mentioned me. But she wouldn’t

own

other hand, she lavished her

if

say.

attentions

Concha

On

the

on me.

women love us only because we have been And who knows whether Beatrice, by pro-

Certain loved.

voking me, didn’t long to

live vicariously

in

the

knew— or guessed— I felt for Concha. Sensiwho have loved the same person produce a

love she bilities

kind of cloudy complicity, finding out at

57

last,

I

think— a faint hope of

of discovering a different

and

.

Philippe Sollers

perhaps the true face of the love stranger.

It

.

who was

such a

.

me

was September, and Beatrice asked during the afternoon.

several times,

countryside the

way

it

looked at the

I

over

liked the

city’s

edge.

Surrounded by vineyards and orchards, the house

seemed the

capital of a mysterious realm.

for hours at a time, heedless of

danger

I

walked

as I crossed

the skeet-shooting ranges where the shots seemed to

explode inside

my ears. Delighted by a risk so easy to an adventurous

take, I fabricated this

spirit for

myself:

calm broken only by gunfire, these heavy vines

solidly planted in the yellow earth, these odors of

foliage in the dew. ...

my

a sweat,

We

came back

my

feet soaked,

clay. Beatrice

o’clock.

I

had

took

lit

tea.

a

to the

house in

trousers covered with

fire in

the living room. Five

She stood up to put on a

re-

on a great red sofa where her black dress suddenly looked like a threat. She raised cord, then reclined

her arms over her head with such emphasis that

was obliged

to

consider this capital of flesh above

her forehead. Eager for

sumed to

I

me

to

admire her, she

as-

the most unexpected poses, evidently pleased

watch

me

judge them.

Still

out of breath from

58

A

Strange Solitude

my walk, my hand

I

remained

following some musical phrase

old record, Back

though it

on the edge of a

sitting

my

o’

Town

was an

Blues that Beatrice liked), ,

only interest in the tune was to see

changed the expressions of her face. We stayed there for an hour or two,

nard and

(it

chair,

my

father arrived; the latter

company me back

to town.

The

interval

how

until Ber-

would acwas sweet

and ambiguous. I glanced at Beatrice, at her bare shoulders, and her eyes sought mine, though I pretended not to see them. The wonderful approaches of desire! We spoke little: had there been more conversation

we would have

trembled.

The French

doors opened onto the garden, and the twilight

smelled of slipped by, face.

warm wet meadows. As I

saw the

She darkened with

toward habit, and

I

light fade this

the minutes

from Beatrice's

afternoon that flowed

could no longer surprise in her

gaze, in her bearing, the promise that

had been

yielded to nostalgia.

Bernard and

my

father arrived,

and Beatrice

immediately became too nice, too kind. After a cer-

becomes more disturbing than restful. Beatrice and Bernard embraced with a passion that looked overdone, for I found it in-

tain dose, attentiveness

conceivable that someone could be in love and not

be me. As convinced as 59

I

was

of Beatrice’s

skill, I

Philippe Sollers

wondered whether she was a clumsy amusing,

need

And

me

or only de-

Bernard simply did not see me. In

sire.

ally

love for

felt

little

boy, a

whom

he invited

if

occasion-

to satisfy his wife’s

though not

for child’s play, I

boring

trifle

his eyes I

in his presence.

found myself so absent from the world he

lived in

was an absence

that

in every regard)

that

(it

powering

was already overI

topped

off

my

innocence with a somewhat forced naïveté (feeling justified as I

at stake),

son

who

always did whenever

my

pleasure was

imagining myself as an entirely could have an

affair

evening,

we

per-

with Beatrice which

would have no consequences: the comedy has no parts for other people.

One

new

of desire

waited for Bernard and

my

seemed nervous, and stirred up the fire with furious jerky movements. At eight, she ordered my dinner to be served. Somehow the conversation took a somewhat literary turn (Beatrice greatly enjoyed what are called ideas). We were discussing— I remember it all perfectly— eroticism (she liked her ideas to have a certain spice).

father in vain. Beatrice

“For me,” she sentence

when

said, “it’s all in Juliet’s

one simple

she wakes up in the tomb and finds

60

A

Strange Solitude

Romeo and

beside her. She leans over him, kisses him,

all

she says

is:

'Thy

lips are

that’s extraordinary!” I agreed,

literature for

some

time.

I

warm!'

cunningly tried to talk “It’s like

—her ghost hovering between

... No,

she

else, please!”

was— she too— by

think

and we stayed on

about Concha. Beatrice laughed:

about something

I

us.

How

a novel let’s

talk

well protected

her ironic gaiety! The

tele-

phone rang, finally. Bernard was busy in town with a client and would be home late. My father had told him he wouldn’t be coming out to call for me. They could put me up in the spare bedroom, and I could stay

till

the next day. Beatrice, out of breath

(had she been running?) came in the room, her face luminous, and announced this news standing very

near me, so near and so eager that our foreheads met, our

lips,

our happy looks. “Thy

she whispered.

what

And we

lips are

warm,”

burst out laughing, some-

hysterically.

The window opened out onto the garden. Sometimes, as her hair fell

perceive the contrary cool,

breezy

down over my face, I could movement of a plane-tree, its

oscillations.

In the courtyard a dog

barked, and a woman’s voice reprimanded

61

it

grum-

Philippe S oilers

blingly.

A

thousand sounds

could not distinguish

I

from our breathing, our careful caresses, struck up clumsy concert around

their

gleamed above her nocturnal spoke in the half-darkness, half-forgotten language.

We

isfy tive,

it

.

face,

it

was

patch of sky

and when she like

a distant,

.

gave each other pleasure with a marvelous

exactitude. desire,

.

A

us.

Ï

discovered that affection mingled with

when it speaks to the imagination, can satmuch better than love, for it is more atten-

and

freer to choose

unhoped-for partner youth, that of pleasure.

is,

as

Not

its effects.

who

loved

Beatrice was an

me

as

one loves

one loves the untutored innocence that

I

had

either time or desire to

draw comparisons, but the body has its memories, which memory knows nothing about. I reinvented the games with which Concha and I had thronged our discoveries. That had been the approach to an unknown realm, a mysterious and yet trustful excursion which had led me to the first woman, and the last too, to occupy in

me

the inestimable place

on the other hand, was all even courtesy. She would not have

of surprise. Beatrice, light, facility,

dreamed childish

of interesting

comedy

me

except by the rather

of desire to which, at the

first

even

62

A

Strange Solitude

slightly serious skirmish, she

had known

I

would

succumb. I felt

an emotional interest

in Beatrice

because

always been cast as mutual accomplices. Accomplices, with that intense feeling of belonging

we had

same

to the

race, created for pleasure

and enjoy-

ment, the race of splendid animals accustomed to with their whims and to having reality comply them. In love, Beatrice was simple, eager for her own pleasure but concerned for mine, speaking of it with that almost dissolving

longer

felt,

comradely laugh of

some movement

of panic intensity,

but only to separate myself— to find in the

sweet proximity of

Beatrice, then,

ure

in,

where

I

no

Concha, the distressing obliga-

as with

tion to achieve

hers. I

my own warmth

this other friendly

was the world

I

took

glow.

my

pleas-

recognized myself with a delight

tinged with irritation-a walled garden (perfect, too

But with Concha, I had approached some dangerous adventure, with the glamor of a fable, a myth. perfect)

My

of confidence.

head was resting on

hands on

my

sweating temples, her face on the

battered bolster,

63

Beatrice’s belly, her

when

the sound of a car,

all

the

Philippe Sollers

more disturbing because

of our calm,

made

her

was dressed again, her hair combed, unconcerned. I saw her transform herself in the half-light, assume the face which Bernard would perhaps question with the same passion I brought to Concha’s. The situation suddenly seemed funny to me, and I laughed loudly, as I spring up. In an instant she

always do, despite

my

frightened Beatrice’s furious

“Shut up! Will you shut up!” She

left

the

and I heard her run Bernard slammed the door, revealing great caution,

room with

to her his

presence

with surprising slowness, heavily climbed the case.

But a

lot I

own.

stair-

cared for Bernard or for Beatrice!

had learned nothing of what Concha might have confided to her young friend. I wanted only sleep, the companionship of my pleasure. I

The sun that gives the vines a particular soft glow in autumn wakened me through the curtains of my unfamiliar bedroom. I guessed it was late from the voices of the grape-pickers,

now

quite

near the house (the day before, they had been far away).

I

didn’t

move, so as not to break

this ice of

wakening that could reconcile the strangest elements caught in it. The world was assuming its 64

A

Strange Solitude

order, preparing

itself,

but without insistence, in a

kind of delicate dance, a

movement

like

oars in

smooth water.

A I

closed

me

Someone was opening

furtive noise.

my

eyes, irritated that

and what I

so clearly

in

my

door.

anyone should see

such disorder: I’ve always be-

dreamed was apparent to the first glance that took me by surprise. Out of the comer of my eye I saw Beatrice, naked, her blond hair tied in a black ribbon which

lieved that

made

it

secretly thought or

look less rebellious. She was carrying

my

probably

re-

breakfast on a tray so curious that

member birds,

it

I

best of all— a blue tray with dragons,

and white flowers painted on

were arranged the

it,

on which

coffee-pot, the sugar,

and

hot,

savory toast.

In Beatrice's posture, as she stood holding her two arms slightly bent against her chest, it was impossible not to think of Gauguin's or rather of

its

pale but

more

famous

picture,

insipid opposite (the

same difference doubtless existed between Concha and Beatrice). I smiled to think that by an undeniable sense of theater which she made a rule of life and pleasure alike, Beatrice had succeeded only in provoking an unfavorable comparison. She stood in the door, watchful, probably expecting me to come

and take her or the 65

tray,

but

I

stayed where

I

was,

Philippe Sollers

wondering what would happen

next.

she took a few steps into the room, as

Hesitating, if

to

be ad-

make sure I was asleep. Then, putting the tray down on the table, she stepped through the sunbeam that fil-

mired, suddenly turning her head to

more desirable in this light, and leaned over the bed where I was still stubbornly pretending to be asleep. Gently, as if she had accepted the lovers’ game which requires them to approach each other withtered through the high blue shutters,

out seeming

to,

all

the

each isolated in the blind anticipa-

drew apart the sheets with a cold, bold hand which was soon caressing me with an almost brutal skill. Between the silk of Bernard’s pajamas and my skin that was still warm from sleep Beatrice’s fingers floated, coming to a halt from time to time when polarization would have become inevitable. Between my lashes I could just tion of desire, she

glimpse her inquisitive face leaning over me, aroused

and

all

the

more

legible since she thought herself

always a terrible discovery

the only observer.

It is

to surprise a stare.

But Beatrice’s rather strong per-

fume helped me compose a pleasure of rare violence, animated as I was by elementary movements like stretching, turning over in my sleep, which I postponed, however, beneath her caresses. Finally, giving a great

start, I

drew her

to

me

as she gig-

66

A

Strange Solitude

glingly tried to smother me.

We

were soon

on the bedside rug in a storm of exclamations, and then murmurs.

rolling

kisses, tickling,

moments of amusement, short and deceitful as they were (I was never to see Beatrice again), had not been wasted, would transform themselves— I had all the time in the world! —into a future truth. For you must know how to do something with the liberties you take with life.

And

A

I

know

that these

certain degree of isolation,

you enjoy a must be the most adven-

turous thing in the world.

And when

mine,

student’s existence in Paris,

Ï

began one

if

I

returned to

of those periods which,

when

you reach a state of relative equilibrium for a while, makes you doubt your sanity in retrospect. Since Concha, I had gently let myself drift. Everything can be avoided, but the character who deserves to do so is rare: what I had deserved was most likely a lesson.

Concha and sometimes not, supposing my freedom was all the more impregnable without her. I had had the weakness of thinking this separation was the best conclusion to Sometimes

I

regretted

an adventure which could lead nowhere. Reason67

Philippe Boilers

would have done for me had I asked advice, I produced with great satisfaction one

ing as others their

of those spurious formulas which, in contact with reality,

sumed

seem

as absurd as ourselves

to apply

and

situations,

pre-

it.

we

In youth

who have

if

are reluctant to accept clear-cut

we

bring ourselves to do so

it's

always with a touch of tragedy that manages to

man who moves projected ahead of me

blur their meanings. So, like a blind

hands trembling,

hesitantly, all

I

the uncertainty, the incoherence, the pretentious-

ness

I

could muster, creating a zone of insecurity

and mystery which

I

thought came from the world

and which would have thrown me into despair had I understood its real causes. Thus the most various objects, the most disparate persons all seemed enclosed in that carapace of absences by which I should have recognized

what— who— separated me

from them. With antlike stubbornness, obscurity.

And

discoveries

the legends

is

we have

secreted

life’s

most painful

people

exist outside

of course, one of

to realize other

I

given them. They care noth-

ing for our thoughts, our fantasies, our calculations.

Disappointed, and doubtless so as not to be entirely in the

wrong,

we

write books.

68

A

Strange Solitude

At

I

first,

prepared

my

expeditions with the

precision of an explorer or a scholar.

chosen day to be

at

all. I

idiotic

the to

I

felt I

admited chance into

my

tactics after taking

had washed away an

week and was once again ready

unknown. Already

an availability

with

if I

established

a shower, for then

all

I

my

to confront

fatigue left me, yielding

could feel flowing through

the soft complicity of water

out programs and

wanted the

with pleasure, with noth-

brilliant

ing concealed or omitted,

my plans

I

itself. I

me

spread

maps on my bed, made my choice

many

among

these

—to be

really thirsty before drinking— between

possibilities, vacillating

a

little

one

amusement and another, even if I knew in advance the one I would choose. Or I would submerge myself in some department store or other. The brilliant, many-colored counters heaped with cheap clothes; the uniformed sales-girls who are always prettier at the perfume counter (I soon had a collection of bottles), the women, the smells, the soft music— this was freedom, desire, Aladdin’s cave! I must have spent hours in that fluorescent

light,

walking from one

counter to another so no one would notice me.

be unknown and yet

to

be looked

time with an indifference which,

69

To

at for the first

when

it

assumes

Philippe Sellers

a

nuance

tense,

(or

of interest,

more

seems only

the

all

more

in-

precious!

These distractions did not last long. The custom the condemnation) of endlessly wandering the

was soon inflicted; Ï could not settle anywhere, form any attachments, stop in my course. So, believing myself to be some sublime streets

from cafe

to cafe

mystery, enjoying

my

anonymity

the point of

to

crowd and discovered myself all the more a part of it when it most isolated me. I had withdrawn only on account of the humiliations I imagined it heaped on me. Each human contact was painful to me, though I approached it

betrayals, I scorned the

beneath an agreeable mask, an explosion of high spirits and sarcasm which was only the underside of

my

me.

I

sadness.

A

knew only

extremes, but

smile, a

little

peace were denied

laughter and fury.

still

A

prey to such

strong enough to desire them,

was nothing more than an exhausting

oscillation,

I

an

irremediable transition.

used to walk, interminably. That my intoxication with the streets of Paris was banal beyond belief I learned only much later. I soon became a I

student of their nightly comedy, of this world en-

trenched against the world, of the thousand adven-

and annihilates, of the stares are both permission and refusal, of the fantasies

tures chance proposes

that

70

A

Strange Solitude

on a pursuit whose futility we know in advance. Any street was inevitable, provided there was a desirable woman on it. But today I know that that send us

desire

is

we can fasten to our unknown. And once desire is satbody with it— we discover that in

only the best excuse

longing for the isfied— and our

almost every case (but wasn’t ception?) nothing is

our mind and

into the

is

its

from

settled, far

lonely quest

world again. Even love

this passion,

looking for an ex-

I

which often

and

it,

which is

that

fling us

it

out

no proof against

seizes us just

when anyone

would think we are perfectly happy. And my delight in being approached by whores, pretending to believe they had mysterious reasons for speaking to

me, was only an excuse:

appreciate the spirit at least

rows in the

flesh!”

But such

what

of finding greatness in

one truth

we can be

sure

I

can drown

women is

“If

left

I

cannot

my

sor-

me no hope

called evil. If there

is

that stupidity

is

of, it is

same everywhere. These half-conscious walks sometimes led me far afield and I took the métro home, confronted by the spectacle of the faces across the aisle. The warm the

ail*

of the tunnels, the stale hospital odors, the con-

fusion

and the proximity— close enough

reminded

me

of a trainful

some catastrophe. 71

to

of refugees

touch!— escaping

Philippe Sollers

would make pointless, incoherent trips in the sole hope of a favorable opportunity. I found no landscape more desolate than—on the MontparI

nasse-Etoile line— the surface part of the ride before

you get

to Passy.

And

I

always promised myself to

abandoned banks,

take a winter walk along those appropriate, tion.

Yet

I

thought, for a really serious medita-

lingered most of

—the marvel hour,

I

all

around Saint-Lazare

of the Galeries Printemps during rush

women

crushed together, overflowing in great

clusters onto the street (impossible to follow the

same figure long)— or, in the evening, in that garden which begins the Champs-Elysées. And always walking, stopping in cafes, afraid of returning to a dark,

anonymous room where nothing was the way I liked it, nothing was going to smile at me. But I was tireless as long as I imagined something was waiting for me. “Never go back for any one,”

I

told myself, “never get up, dress, take trouble for

anyone; drag around

like

without the least

this

.”

relief.

.

And I remembered how I used to come home when Concha was there, how she had watched for

me from

the linen-room window, raised the curtain,

and waved. And glass, staring at

made her run

to

saw her

by the me with, perhaps, that joy which open the door. I

face, distorted

.

.

.

72

A

Strange Solitude

was walking. Nothing seemed real: to see something, I had to begin with someone. The memory of Concha obsessed me. There is an important lesson to be learned from whatever it is we are willing to give up last of all. And, doubtI

loyalty to

less,

someone means keeping a certain

emotional room

intact. I

almost always visualized

her in the attitude of pleasure, but aureoled with that gentleness she was expert at perpetuating— or

me, mimicking: for then her face lit up as if she were playing some very difficult game. Her mystery belonged to an age when I must have been

else teasing

charming because of what I hadn myself and odious because of what people to know. I

had been

And

able, I

always more.

was sure

this accusation:

Remember

known about

I

wanted other

yet, for all this sickly vanity, (I

put myself to the hardest

to

t

wanted tests.

What moment !” .

.

the day you didn't

make

love to

much

time.

a price time has set on that negligible

I

found

in this

make still more which made me curse the

this solitude I tried to

complete, an intoxication realization of

my

more about than 73

sure),

“You could have loved her

Sometimes, on the other hand,

abandon,

be

But there was

her because you thought there was so .

to

desire— what could this

I

have cared

new, unforeseeable tide of

Philippe Sollers

happiness. Although they were of a rare violence, as

if

they were precursors of a magical world,

I

welcomed such moments whenever they occurred, and made no attempt to induce them. For I saw only Concha’s absence and

all

the doubts and dis-

appointments that followed from

was more moved by the thought that I should be moved, by the imagination of what I was losing, than by an unforeseeable pain which I nevertheless felt: it threw

me

on

my

it.

I

bed, absurd, helpless, incapable

of the slightest gesture. But

if

my

solitary ecstasy

was upon me, and Concha happened to come into my room (a solution that was uppermost in my mind for I scorned constructing rational hypotheses which, everyone knows, are never those which are

uppermost sorry,

for

would have been incredible happiness would have

in the mind), I think

that

I

overlapped a happiness different in essence but

less

and which left me quite unprepared to receive any other. I also told myself: “Who knows frivolous,

if I

Concha— or

really miss

when

could

just that security, that

be idle?” (But the two were inseparable.) For what I had dreamed of in comfort,

I

still

my moments of passion was as much Concha as, to my shame, the comfort of breakfast in bed, a fragrant afternoon surrounded by books, troubled

evenings, and perhaps even that spurious seating—

74

A

Strange Solitude

where there was always a murmur of complicity, a sense of protection from the world. My sensibility I in those days, reinforced by my certainty that owned what lay around me, augmented my com-

my

placency,

taste for coddling. In the mornings,

was wondering whether I should wake up, Concha used to come into my room and open the long red curtains I liked to draw even in the day-

when

I

time because of the vague light they bathed the room in. Then, depending on how she felt, she kissed

my

me

or left at once, caressing

inviting gestures. If she

me

was going

or eluding

to caress

me,

her face would hang over mine, endowed with scarcely perceptible signs and perfumes. I had the

impression of a tremendous fruit about to squash

me

beneath

its

affection often

ripe flavor.

shows

itself

And remembering by a

desire to eat

that

ones

would be no exaggeration to say that Concha was “a mouthful.'” I wanted to chew her up, to sip and swallow her, stopping at nothing.

partner,

it

saw her every night, wandering through those enormous rooms where our love had assumed that wonderful “far country” quality: great cold salons full of furniture, where a In

75

my

dreams now

1

Philippe Sollers

dusty draft came up from under the doors and

walked

we

in the evening,

brushed by the long fingers of potted palms. These dreams were particularly

showed pride and sometimes a kind of trust as well. But I always lost her, and had to look for her a long time. She seemed so removed from reality— from concrete things such as painful. Concha's face

getting up, dressing,

washing— that

was always afraid, and probably mistakenly so (for she was very skillful), that she would get lost in some forsaken place without knowing how to leave in the I

simplest way, such as taking the train, going some-

where

else.

Awakened,

I

But what

tried to read, to work.

did these pathetic distractions have to do with

on days when every face

by surprise? stares,

How many

still

times

I

seemed

questioned people's

eager to see the tumult that

ing there.

New

people!

told

I

to take

me me

me

filled

myself— but

I

form-

choked

back the gestures that would have brought them me. Gradually (accidentally)

no purpose except

I

amuse myself (for my memory would have resisted any drug).

never had so

nights when, with

began drinking, with

to

was indestructible, These bouts had nothing suppose

I

to

tragic about them,

much

and

I

fun as during those

two or three boys

I

knew,

we 76

A

Strange Solitude

hung around the little whores' bars, talking to everyone, making a thousand friends a minute, falling in the middle of the street after a scuffle, laughing at

nonsense, at admirable foolishness. People talk of the drunkard's despair, but

we

gay and unconcerned

began

to cure

me by

how

how

enthusiastic,

The

were!

stabilizing

me

alcohol even a

Our

little.

drunkenness was methodical, with an invention which, had we applied it to something else, would

have earned us universal admiration.

whole nights finding

new

tary puns.

.

pleasures in confusion, in our involun.

.

But the

was

really

remarkable quality of

their systematic aspect.

friends burst into

my

to live

knew that this time at least I wouldn't be And I realized that in the worst situations I

had and

had always found some

lasted only a its

each

man

it

it

up!”

bored. of

diversion, even

my if

it

while. In school, friendship

excesses; today this camaraderie

preferred because oric,

little

When

room, armed with bottles

and shouting: “Tonight we're going

life I

spent

in the streets, never tired, constantly

these evenings

my

We

was without

enclosed in his

which

I

illusions or rhet-

own

pleasure and

contemptuous of any attempt to share. ... We finished such evenings with some gills we had picked up or, when we had money enough, in a whorehouse. At dawn,

77

we walked home

braying mournful

Philippe S oilers

Bums were

songs about unhappy lovers.

through garbage near where

with the

and

I

I lived, I

dew.

first

bathed

Finally

pails.

my

I

I

stopped in a

had

all

was

picking

alone. Quite

little

square,

wet

the time in the world,

face in this coolness.

was waiting for some intervention to tear me from my habits and my sloth; and it was almost enough to feel its nearness to long for it to Actually

I

vanish again.

My left

health grew worse.

me

in

The asthma which had

peace for several years suddenly reap-

peared, for reasons that were

while others imagined literary reasons

thing at

all), I

(if

I

all

And

too good.

prided myself on

it

for

they bothered to imagine any-

was v^aking up

at three

every morn-

and a night I slept through was a victory, an old dream that probably would not come again for a long time. Already the first wheezing had begun and I could breathe only by raising a terrible weight ing,

off

my chest, with

like

shrill

pathetic noises that sounded

rubber toys being squeezed— something plain-

and

Then

would have to turn on the light, hurriedly swallow some useless pill, prop myself up against the pillow, and wake up for good tive

thirsty.

in order to

I

endure the obsessive exhaustion that

throbbed behind

my

eyes.

Then each minute

pre-

78

A

Strange Solitude

sumed on

the one before

it,

my

breathing gained

in depth, in breadth, in calm.

Then

gradually, thanks to the sedative— unless

the attack

was

went away by

re-established,

itself— a regular

rescuing

me

rhythm

from that high,

found myself on between breathing and breathing no longer. Other times, the attack lasted longer— the kind with long, deep wheezes swaying perch

that rose

from deep

Afterwards fill

to shrill,

from harsh

to melodi-

sounds remained unpredictable.

ous. Yet the

tating to

I

my

I

tried to

draw a deep

breath, hesi-

lungs for fear of finding

I

could not.

would die of strangulation from trying to find out if I were drawing breath for the last time. If I wanted to stop and rest (I was often forced to by exhaustion) the hurried attempt to catch up with the broken rhythm was most painful of all. It was I

imagined

I

best to breathe slowly in tiny, intermittent gasps.

There was no other way, in fact, to silence the terrible musicians. Finally peace returned. Only a few

and indulgent harmonies subsisted, my breathing returned to its normal course— like a river in spate returning to its bed— and there was nothing left to do but try to recover a sleep that had unfordiscrete

tunately

made good

At seven 79

in the

its

escape for several hours.

morning,

I

had

to get

up and

Philippe Sollers

perhaps despair was that exhausting walk

dress;

the

in

November rain.

I

when my

slept in the afternoons,

mitted

it.

But these

artificial

courses per-

naps (though

such intermediate and uncertain

I

loved

states, brief incur-

sions in a half-mad

world of uneasy adventure),

were

restorative.

far

from being

At about exhaustion,

this time,

was subject

I

remember the

first

onto the pillow,

And

move.

I

revelation of so

and probably because

I

time

didn’t even

my body— which if

this

my

blood pouring

have the strength

I

my

nose, then another.

and

I

sudden

customarily valued

I

was a

rising

held one handkerchief

The blood continued it

in

to

my

stared through the reddened cloth,

alarmed yet pleased color. I

I

tasted the faint sweetness of

throat while

to

simple hemorrhage were try-

from deep within myself. flow,

saw

I

warn me by a testimony, an accusation

ing to

to

to violent nosebleeds. I

lay there helpless before this

cheaply— as

my

of

little

to

possess

such a precious

upset to be alone,

I

didn’t

know

what I should do. Finally, with handkerchief stuffed up my nose, I managed to get to a drugstore where they gave me a tampon and a shot. 80

A

Strange Solitude

The afternoons

I

my room (Tuesfrom my chair to

could spend in

went my bed, from my bed to the window, without ever being able to stay in one place for more than five minutes. There was music though, which saved days, Saturdays, Sundays)

everything.

A

record, a radio concert, the surprise

of a forgotten

cate

and

I

symphony whose provenance,

so familiar,

I

deli-

hesitated to identify— some-

how, that took the place of happiness. And even the calmest

some

moments

of

violin passage

rolling,

my

life,

when

hear again

(where the sea has

solemnly breaking) which by

tremes had exhausted

I

my

agony and

its

filled

with tears (the height of absurdity!),

I

due,

its

very ex-

my

eyes

can’t help

returning to that ecstasy, that anxious delight write such words only because

I

in

know no

(I

others

which eventually saved me from my mediocrity. For I have never despaired of the world, that will do)

only of seeing myself so ill-adjusted to

whelmed with

And

in

my

trivialities

it,

and ready-made

overideas.

longing to break through to things, to

create at last— though without betraying that childish

phrase so often repeated through clenched teeth:

“They won’t get me”— to create a mind based only on reality, I fell back on this music, this lace of old concertos that assured

achieved without too

81

me

that a joyful rigor can

much

melancholy.

be

Philippe Sollers

In Mozart's

Don

Giovanni,

Donna Anna's

great

(when she has just recognized Don Giovanni and entrusts her fate to Ottavio), with its recitative

foreshadowings, gropings,

its

myself

I

I

run

if I

knew

steps taken in

all

directions,

its

muted, anguished struggle— this pas-

sage echoed in

could

its

to,

was

me like a call whom relieve,

for help. I

But

whom

wondered, except

lost?

that our moods,

though changing, are so

decisive in our conception of the world that fort (supposing I

brought myself

to

my

ef-

undertake one)

would depend on an anticipation of their transformations that must be as precise as possible. “Probably," I reminded myself, “happiness can be gained like knowledge, and what other is worth acquiring? A knowledge exact only for itself, by which you create your tastes, your sensations, your variations, your virtues, and your vices so mechanicallv and so indisputably that it becomes a habit. There must be a law. I shall find it. It will be my secret victory. Yes, a law of immediate and interior compensation, making allowances even for vanity, no longer suffering from

its

contradictions, a law

by 82

A

Strange Solitude

which events and encounters, accidents and obligations will be resolved at last. “All this, of course, will be too personal, too imperceptible ever to be set down as doctrine. But writing will at least nourish the intention, which I

by contriving a few effects. I this is possible. I must begin where others have off, profit (is this ever possible?) by their con-

shall feel left

perhaps

clusions,

I

fulfill

work

should

fast

and

like to

rigorously.

.” .

.

apply to Paris what Chateau-

briand remarked in Mirabeaus eyes: pride, vice, and genius. But during those wanderings of mine,

day and night, through the crowded parts of the city, I despised reaching easy solutions. “Out of all this

number,”

woman who

I

thought, “there

can make

me

is

certainly one

happy.” But that would

probably be too easy. There would have been the horror of choosing. And as soon as I began to feel the benefits of habit

made every

and

security,

effort to get rid of

I

would have

them, with, even, a

kind of fury. Everything that restored

me

tude, even the loss of love, of friendship,

to soli-

was wel-

come. Each time, an exaltation, a sense of victory.

83

Philippe Sollers

And

yet

knew what

I

was part of any longer.

my I

lay in wait for

method. People did not

did

autonomy.

I

I

words. But at no

should have whispered to someone if

you were

to you, as

if I

lost to

me,

as

if

thought the worst

I

*of

remembered how I could listen endlessly Concha s chatter. “But today you couldn’t en-

you.” to

certain

suppose they were endowed with

beside me: “Act as

were nothing

me

exist for

saw them only when they bore

signs, certain functions, certain

moment

me: but waste

dure

I

it

a moment.’’ There remained

whom the best with whom it’s yourself:

back

to

it

manners mean having

women with none, women

wise not to form too high an idea of

would

from them.

suffer

I

Concha. By thinking of her,

least to recover the old intensity.

memory: the defeats and

I

kept coming I

wanted

searched

at

my

were never absolute. Like the diver surfacing objects which seem quite different from those which had attracted him under water, I sank into my past life, my depths,

by means moment.

to produce,

priceless

victories

of a fugitive sensation,

i

The

first

time,

I

lasted only an instant.

•

have the impression that

But

a

it

to recapture that instant,

84

A

Strange Solitude

how many

useless efforts! until— sudden, unforesee-

able— it suddenly appeared within

me

like a

mys-

terious signal. I

rain

was walking down the Champs-Elysées. The melted into a glow around the sudden silhou-

ettes, the

dim

faces, the shiny street, the gravel of

the sidewalks. Everything shimmered, wavered be-

gaze in the November grayness. Suddenly was as if I were being projected from the top of

neath it

my

an observatory in a

whose

fit

widened

circles

of uncontrollable laughter

crowd, the

to include the

shopwindows, the passing automobiles. I stumbled, ecstatic, against an unknown obstacle. Here I am— I thought— here I am, "me,” mind and body, sauntering, tracing

these ghosts

wanted

my

who

purposeless oblige

my

attention.

to cry out, to laugh:

route like

stroller’s I

the farce

suddenly

was

over!

nothing would have surprised me less than that everything should come to a standstill in mute contemplation. “The world is coming apart,” I mur-

And

mured, intensely

satisfied that things

should have

gone so quickly and without more effort on my part. I must have made a curious figure as I stood there, for I recall several ironic glances.

walking, ashamed of having tacle

85

continued

so gross a spec-

apprehensive that someone else

of myself,

might have seen.

made

I

.

.

.

Philippe Sollers

Back

in

my

room, stretched out on

decided there was nothing or

some unknown

left to

sensation.

And

hope I

my

bed,

I

for but sleep

lay there, in the

semi-consciousness of daydream and fatigue, listen-

my

ing to

my

watch against

sounds of the building, the

mumble

of the elevator,

the squeak of a faucet being turned of the

murmur

of a voice.

of clothes (as I

around

off,

smelled the

had once done— how

seemed— with Concha), tiered

I

me

knew

I

thousand

ear, to the

the clatter

human odor away it world was

far

that the

like a gigantic enterprise of ex-

haustion from which nothing could ever keep

away. But sometimes

the light

if

fell

through the cracks of the shutters,

I

into

me

my room

imagined

I

was

by the noise the complicity inhabitants made around me— a village which,

in a village, delighted

of

its

to increase

sun-baked

my

pleasure,

village.

My

I set

room,

on the ocean,

itself

yes, a

an object of

my

was actually on the fifth floor, to open onto a cool, fragrant alley. I was lying there, waiting only for twilight, for someone to take me on our daily stroll. This longing to find myself somewhere else, somewhere entirely imaginary, in reverie,

seemed, though

it

an ideal place that was different each time

(to in-

crease the intensity); this special faculty of

imme-

diately falling back into a state of paralysis,

hebetude or ecstasy

(in

of

which, body and mind im-

86

A

Strange Solitude

mobilized,

it

was about

to

seemed be

not only rescued

that

leak into imaginary space)

lost, to

me

some unknown quality

my

from

melancholy but pro-

voked a thousand pleasures. Yet these moments of rare and rapid joy did not keep the others from being more frequent— those

occupied by a purely morbid obsession. I could think of no other remedy than to fling myself on my bed, letting

my

shoes

fall

on the

floor,

and feverishly

several times,

Then I closed my eyes, stretched made room for that murmur of the

mind which

simply a

try to fall asleep.

is

field of battle

where a thou-

sand stupidities clash without ever diminishing each other.

awoke from such sleep only at twilight, quite rested. The light had disappeared. The landscape stretched to a horizon edged with “inky clouds.” But what was astonishing, above the steeple, was a blue of faded sweetness, as if it had been

One day

I

flung there long ago.

“Well,”

I

decided, “are things going to be bet-

ter?”

or

My my

ringed

sleep

had scarcely

stupidity

my

when my

eyelids,

while a gentle, vague

me

of

my

clumsiness

joy rose to

swelled them

movement

with, gradually— yes, that

87

rid

was

my

eyes,

from beneath

started in

my

chest

it!— all the tensions of

Philippe Sollers

a magical uncertainty.

not

.

.

How many

.

ness, seeking a familiar clarity!

had happened,

was

I

sitting in front of

with that prodigious journey

so far from

It

it.

was upholstered

not very comfortable

frieze,

when this my window

Often,

armchair that will remain associated in

my memory making

I

incomprehensible emotion in the dark-

felt this

in a little

had

times

and— how

say it— looked surprised. But

who knows, perhaps

it

in green

can you

else

accompanied me,

interceded for me.

it

was

I

.

.

.

You must use yourself like an instrument, I decided, you must know how to play yourself. Colors, light— certain iridescences—were not alien to me. As for the great its

machinery of the clouds,

most intimate movements,

mauves,

its

I

I

became

entered into a part of

its

gold-fringed pinks, to the point where,

putting on a record,

I

was going

to rush to the

window

to delight in this inexpressible

Unless

laughed, there was something to cry about.

I

was

my

by the sky. It was burst, the suns merest

seized, bathed, diffused

business— the

tempt. that

I

harmony.

What

same

penetration

feeling

standing quite

tiniest

I

I

at-

granted myself (with

have sometimes had when

still,

all

I

was

of entering certain landscapes,

of walking, without seeing them, into their

most

in-

had noticed, in connection with such exceptional moments, certain exterior constants timate comers)!

I

88

A

Strange Solitude

—which

it

would be quite /futile

invoke— but

to

which one might reasonably regard as necessary. For instance: distant, familiar, continuous noises, An or— better still— sounds that summoned. .

aspect of neglect, of casualness. But

happen

that

I

was

how

.

.

did

it

so implacably gripped?

And now, here in my room, the infinite seemed within my own grasp, reassured— it seemed— encouraged to appear. And in this feverish communion with the world drifting.

sorriest

And

I felt as if I

were released, insensibly

was at one of the that I had the luck and

realized that

I

moments

of

my

life

it

the strength to express— no, to grasp, at least to tap

moment

or to glimpse— that famous

when

everything

is

absolutely interchangeable.

thought paraded before me; putatiously spinning out

its

capable not only of seeing

my own

it.

.

.

.

And

The

person, dis-

sour wit, and the “me”

all this in

nous absence, but of weighing laughing at

of attention

it,

a kind of lumi-

of judging

it,

of

in this passionate detach-

ment from myself, the absurd

at last

became mar-

velous: a reality marvelously absurd. I

terior

89

knew

I

must be on

music that delights

my

guard against

this in-

in arranging the universe

Philippe S oilers

was responsible for whatever value I had; thanks to it I had achieved a perspective, and with it a little of that immobility (when the

too well; yet

it

watchful mind

commands

the breath, remaining

which projected me into the rare comprehend like a shooting pain.

tirelessly alert)

was

state I

to

.

Then, rustling about thing

As

I

me

like foliage, I

.

.

sensed every-

could satisfy and comprehend.

moments

for all these

ance with the world, cation which,

illuminated

in

my

might be able

all

of surprise, of conniv-

these

moments

of gratifi-

the mathematics of happiness,

life

so hastily— one day, I knew, I

to forge myself a clear consciousness

out of them.

And

them, and so

I

I

also felt I could never exhaust

loved them almost more as a virtually

voluntary defeat of

my

sensibility.

These moments

couldn’t be put to any use. In any case, at the peri-

od I’m talking about, I was too concerned with my solitude to grant them much attention. My life was spent unsuccessfully trying to

women from whom

make

contact with

was doubtless separated most them; aware of this, they must I

by my desire for have found me intolerable. Besides,

I

would have

been incapable of explaining myself. Which

is

why, 90

A

Strange Solitude

my mind permitted me to glimpse some my sensations, my first impulse was to an-

whenever truth in

swer: “Probably, but I need a mistress I

do

Now,

truth.”

ing for a

woman

of course,

not to find

enough to be lookone. I was going round it is

in circles, accomplishing nothing,

one.

Yet

which

own

more than

annoying every-

remember an extraordinary moment

I

illustrates perfectly

when

my

amused

attachment for

my

by revealing a country I could never reach, after which visions I would fall back on the shadow— and also on the desire (simulated, of course) that these moments be more important than my search— for a woman, solitude,

it

itself

a snare, or a motive. I

was

in a

bus going over the Pont de

corde, staring at a

la

Con-

bank of red clouds streaked

across the sky (oddly enough, the other side of the

bridge was in absolute darkness).

moment

I

And

“entered” the landscape,

leap

up from my

sity,

possess the city,

seat, hurl

bend

I

at the very felt

myself

myself into the immenit

beneath an imperious

saw its history, its former inhabitants, even its monuments, like an army that marched toward me, and deep within its song permitted me to accede at last to this sovereign joy. I was invulnerable, inaccessible, nothing could happen that I discipline. I

had not commanded; 91

this state lasted

some

thirty

I

Philippe S oilers

seconds, after which

phoria which that evening.

me was

I

remained

in a

promising eu-

made my mind exceptionally clear I took this phenomenon— which for

a unique source of greatness— very seriously,

same time

knew

and

at the

this

remark of Henri Brulard’s came back

“Only greatness

fills

I

why

perfectly well

the soul, not

women.”

Alone, sick, and self-destructive as

recipe— and the talent— for being

me:

to

if I

had the

so, I finally

found

was groping toward: the loss of every project, its utter denial, at the same time as a cold contemplation. Once more I found in myself that the extreme

I

presence neither anxiety nor betrayal nor imaginary conquests had been able to dislodge; that “invariable” presence which composes, judges, weighs, decides,

and

sighs.

I

reached the

certainty of absolute emptiness.

final ecstasy,

And

I felt

the

that life

was this wonderful, forever inexpressible abeyance to which I yielded myself utterly, as if I were rushing to my ruin in some childish and temporary enthusiasm. “This cided, “which

of consciousness,”

must be destroyed on pain

ziness, this shrill

know

moment

phenomenon

I

de-

.of diz-

of interrogation—

quite well they have no future. In them, start-

92

.

A

Strange Solitude

ing from them, everything ' can be considered as resolved. So

I

must

establish

my

intimate resolution

as a preparation for nothingness,

ward these obscure

must grope

must passionately

limits,

solve myself in this effort.

I

todis-

.” .

.

was abandoned, but every possibility postponed by the world and the society of bores awakened, grew rich and strange: began to flow within me. The important thing was not so much to ‘"think” as to be conscious of my own thirst: I watched I

myself covet the world.

And

I

began

to realize that I

must seek out ev-

erything that put me, vis-à-vis the world, in a state of laughing amazement so that the distance be-

tween

me and

the object which aroused

though entirely

as great as possible,

me

filled.

me was .

.

.

For

was more sensitive to things, to climates, to people, by the astonishment I felt —more than ever now— in regard to them. Every sensation that spread its wings within me was abso-

it

seemed

to

that

I

lute— yet without surprising that; I

mean, strong enough

remote enough for

me

93

.

.

to the

girl

much

make me

my

for all

fall, fall.

but

The

most commonplace

a street-cleaner and his

around each other, a etc.

to

too

to delight in

amazement then applied events:

me

broom whirled

walked mechanically,

Philippe Sollers

As a matter of fact, I no longer knew if it were really ecstasy which provoked my longing to overflow, or if it were the urge to have experienced it which led me on, in order to make me believe in it, to recount it. For I had longings for ecstasy. This particular life, this life itself, I wanted in spite of everything to give

—how shall I express it?— a

it

a rhythm, a cadence

(mathematical) rationale,

was often on the point of abandoning everything. It was usually while I was getting up in the morning that the absurd lay in wait for me, as if sleep had dissipated false security, as if the clearest eyes must also be most desperate.) I was existing in a noisy little circle whose whole history I saw clearly. A circle which enlarged, contracted, or blurred depending on whether I fell into this lake. No boat: the crossing interested no one. I would have to meet, by accident, in someone else, some demand. But I still didn’t know that if you can’t find women of character, you can still love those who have wit enough to make you forgive though

them

I

for this deficiency.

The weather changed, grew clearer. The anxieties of the winter had yielded— one of the causes for this

was the

state of

my

health— to a kind of

94

A

Strange Solitude

wanted to find the key to this country I had come to, where nothing spoke to me, where the slightest contact was forbidden, where everything happened in the intimacy of an open window. torpor.

But

Happy

at least I

or wretched, full of desire or despair, I

could only turn in circles as

and

of siege

I I

to extend

transfixed

retreat,

me

have made

if

my

state

by what should

burst with joy or pain. I touched,

pushed back the walls of my sensations, And, made sure of them with my own hands. groped,

I

.

against

.

.

odds, I persisted in believing that

all

we

obscurely deserve our opportunities, that reality

and happiness ultimately let themselves be seized by our invocations, that nothing, finally, is ever wasted in

desire.

was only twenty, I knew that what I wrote would be bad at first, and that it would probably have to be bad if I ever wanted to began

I

writing. I

achieve the perfection of

But

I

struggled

my

interim enthusiasm.

word by word, the way you

shoulder to shoulder.

struggle

found out about discourage-

I

disgust). I lived only a

ment and doubt (even

few

favorable minutes a day, the rest were spent in pro-

ducing these. At energy,

all

last I

the anxiety

knew I

I

would employ

was capable

behalf on this exhausting question:

95

all

the

of in the world's is

so

much

ob-

Philippe Sollers

worth so intermittent a

scurity

though so

light,

priceless?

My

book would be a

battle narrative, a history

of labor with myself in order to reach that one

quality which

had been refused me:

when

a

ing

or being swelled

it

work develops

oscillation,

you can

the imaginary, then

room, at

last, to

parallel to

by

your

life,

when, caught

my

in this

real nor

There was

that not freedom?

is

And

influenc-

back on neither the

fall

open

it;

simplicity.

eyes.

wanted to feel the days pass. And everything happened to me as if I must take my courage in my hands and clear a path for myself through Yet

I

everything

was

I

loved most, convinced that

no importance

of

haps give

it its

in itself— which

marvelous

fragility, its

this effort

would per-

luminous, nat-

Whether I succeeded or not (though depended on it: perhaps I couldn’t win

ural character.

my

life

everything, but

I

knew that only make me happy. I

could certainly lose everything), this

“What’s the use,” write?

Can you even

search would be enough to

I

decided, “of bothering to

write, feeling ‘what’s the use?’

every three lines? Pleasure claims

ducement

me by

of this brilliant landscape as

if

every inthis

were

be the last time.” But that was precisely why I had to double this pleasure, provide it a reverse to

96

A

Strange Solitude

side,

which was language.

I

would write quite

At the very most, when

found myself in those moods bordering on the sacred I might permit myself a music which would include somedryly at

first.

I

,

thing of the world’s decay.

From now on nothing mattered any more

ex-

cept for a rigor, a discipline, a decisive immobility

had talent enough— some soluThe latter would provoke a tion could appear. number of reactions which without it— just as if one failed to use a dangerous acid on the surface through which— if

I

.

of things— would

.

.

be impossible.

Thus this security— which I could not do without and which I wanted to reconstruct— led me to precise exercises, reflections which insisted on a purpose, a progression.

with myself,

why

Which

is

why

I

everything that passed for an im-

portant problem could not engage me.

had was not to by creating a life which

mission

I

reluctant to leave as

(hence irrepressible) to alienate

me

from

it

suffer, to I

should otherwise be too

was. Such was

belief. it

The only

withdraw myself

my instinctive

Everything that tended

would be

my

rest (behavior, opinion, sympathies)

to chance. It

dealt only

was not caprice

if,

enemy. The

could be

left

after eveiy activity/

(save those which, like love, writing, music, or con-

templation, restored

97

me

to

my own

space,

my

ob-

Philippe Sollers

scure present), I

wakened

from a

as

longer to attach any importance to

what

I

wanted

sickness.

my

No

life—that

is

to achieve, at the limits of this some-

times disturbing sensation: to be infinitely replaceable.

.

.

.

disappear.

Yes,

it

would take

And probably

there

me

a long time to

was a kind

in the fact that since the beginning of

my

of irony

life I

had

be concerned with my death. Yet I had never stopped, I never would stop thinking about my death: it was this point of departure which I must reach without baggage— a ratification, an accord. I

had

to

was willing

to die

if

I

had

expectation of this death.

to

And

have lived

in the

everything was pro-

which did not correspond to my pleasure. (Even writing, on the day I could admit it was superfluous!) A simple conclusion, like everything that approaches what is important. Perhaps digiously devalued

was foolish to set myself all these obstacles so soon. But there was an urgency, as I felt only too well. It is our bodies we most willingly ask the secret of our fives, inquiring what they have retained of those moments when they understood life, when they felt they possessed Grace, and that is why our effort is a perpetual failure. Once past, our sensations are no longer of any use to us. We it

are alone, then, with an error that

been one once, without knowing,

may

not have

at a decisive

mo98

A

Strange Solitude

ment

our death,

like that of

if

we have

lived at

all.

agony of death must proceed from that we reach them as an event among

Suffering, the

the fact

others, the

ego

we

voicelessly

summon

individual

and subordinate instead of universal and total. That was what I must overcome if I wanted to achieve a death like the joy I was living. And as for this imagination which I had scattered before myself (whether to invent a state of

pure happiness

on the contrary, to describe the agony in advance)—why would it

or,

my not serve my interior discipline? And I longed to shut myself in my room and compose a clear, dense work whose passion, unlike my person, could touch the minds of my own kind whom I had neither the moments

of

time nor the strength to look

One morning,

I

went out

for.

the sweetness of the air took trated me, left

me

me by

surprise, pene-

motionless there on the sidewalk

with a strange pain in

my

breast.

advertently appeared inside

make room

than usual, and

earlier

for herself within

Concha had

in-

my heart, trying to my expectation. Later

same day, glancing through Remembrance of Things Past (to which more ties bind me than I

that

99

Philippe Sollers

could ever acknowledge any more), sentence which, for

this

much

as for the

its

emotion

it

my

tactical

gave

eyes

fell

on

importance as

me

then,

I

copy

out here:

And

after

all,

one way

as

good

as

any of resolving the

problem of existence is to bring people and things which at a distance have seemed beautiful and mys-

*

enough together for us to realize that they have no mystery and no beauty; this is one discipline among others we might choose, a discipline which is perhaps not very recommendable, but which terious close

gives us a certain tranquillity in order to get through life

and also— since

it

permits us to regret nothing

by convincing us we have achieved the best and that the best was of no great significance— to resign ourselves to death.

Unfortunately, other “best!”

And

I

decided, there

yet

I

is

always an-

liked this notion that took

both enthusiasm and disappointment into account.

To Deceive: time. self its

But

this

had been my motto for a long deception meant applying it to my-

that

and, in order to destroy wretchedness, to attack

mean to me, if and painful— the memory of

images. Yet what did “the best”

not— brief, Concha?

And

indistinct,

since

I

had made a mistake,

since

what

I

100

A

Strange Solitude

had always taken for a liberation had succeeded, by abandoning me to my desires, only in forcing me to experience nothingness, in imprisoning

me

in the

was understood before beginning this labor ( of which I had only the famous archetype) that I would turn back, restore old connections, write letters, sound out society, play the obsession of misery,

it

somewhat cowardly liaisons, my contempts, my disappearances were over. Before withdrawing myself altogether, I would have to make this experiment, burn this last boat. Besides, I was defeated, since I wasn't happy. I would summon Concha, whose absence had, absurdly enough, seemed preferable to my reason. But what was she doing? Where was she? Surely she was lost forever, she game.

My

would not answer. I love the kind bottles thrown into the sea.

101

of letters that are

*

%

.

Three

by a kind of compensation or harmony, some of whose effects can be anticipated by application and patience, our life abates, marks time only to sweep us along all the faster later on. What a price we have paid for certain moments of equiAs

if

librium and lucidity! But after

dear which procures them for

all,

nothing

is

too

us.

had written Concha several days before Easter, before coming home for vacation. What incident -which made me pity myself-made me go back earlier? I remember only that interminable trip of which I knew each moment and each mile, that I

train,

those landscapes, and, soaring above them,

already insipid, the thought of a Spring in Paris without friends (though that mattered little), without a mistress (though having one of attitudes ), without

103

demanded a

lot

any more enjoyment of drink-

Philippe Sollers

ing, of

walking, of watching people.

And always

those same fields where only the floods added a

note of brightness in winter. terly that I

would have

nights studying for

lucky

if

my

to

my

I

reflected rather bit-

spend a week of sleepless

examinations.

I

would be

health got no worse!

To crown my

disgrace, a girl

who

believed in

the poetry of casual encounters felt obliged to speak to

me. She was an

was

artist: I

was overwhelmed. Then

on an April evening, leafy Paris full of perfumes and pale women, Paris whose Spring had taken it by surprise, Montparnasse packed with there

Paris

and then, seen from the door, resting docilely on the little copper tray, snatched and run with to my room and opened lying flat on my stomach on the bed: Concha’s letter! And it was not the

tourists

Generalissimo’s shrewd face on the stamp, but the

innocent République française.

was pleased and surprised to hear from me! My letter had reached her after some delay in Seville where she had spent the winter. But she was in Paris now, working as a nursemaid with a little room to herself that was quite comfortable. Many Spanish friends. She was delighted with Paris and wondered whether it was a good idea for us to see each other. But anyway she would give me her address, and it would be up to me to decide.” “Goodness

yes, she

104

A

Strange Solitude

The rible;

salutation, “Apreciable Senorito,”

was

ter-

the end, too, shuddered, remained enigmatic:

que mas g listes de esta. Tu ami «a. Concha .” Yet all it had taken was a letter, the O simplest gesture, to arrange this meeting I had so longed for. And Concha answered in the most con-

“sin mas, reciba lo

versational tone! “That’s just like her,”

I

told myself,

with the smile you show your old friends to indicate

your

infallible sense of their continuity.

would satisfaction were

In the past, out of mere self-esteem,

I

have wasted time wondering if this opportune, if I really wanted it. I would even have

carried greatness to the point of pouting, in a gesture of indifference though everything within

hurled to

itself

toward

this

moment. But

be suspicious of such

sidered,

my

I

me had

had learned

subtleties. All things con-

anxiety has taught

me more

than

my

jumped into a taxi. It would never get there, the driver was going to have a heart attack. Ecstasy of these rare moments when madness becomes possible! I was in such a state of nerves that before I could ring I had to stand perfectly still on

reasoning.

I

the doorstep, scarcely breathing.

had anticipated everything except that she would open the door for me. There she was. Two hours later, she was still complaining about the scare I had given her. As for me, during that extraI

105

Philippe Sollers

ordinary

and

I

moment when

saw her appear,

the varnished door opened at first indifferent, then her

face suddenly changing,

I

almost failed to recog-

had on a pink apron I had never seen —I could only remember her wearing black. Her color seemed higher, her hair blacker, her eyes deeper, her person more mysterious— and I more naive. I don’t remember what we said. We stood there facing each other on the doorstep, neither one nize her. She

able to smile or speak, stripped of ness, to the point of tears.

she was not there, for

I

all false

hearti-

There she was and yet

not only had to cross the

which separated our two bodies, but even my desire, my forgetting, my long anxiety, and all the errors I had wrapped her in to conjure up an ideal image. She told me to come in, and I waited

barrier

for her out in the

There

is

garden where she soon joined me.

nothing to say

when

there

is

too much.

We

stood there stammering, she with a slightly pained

way

moving her hand across her face, carefully, as if to chase away some evil spirit. We plucked nervously at leaves, and Consmile and her old

of

cha’s face looked green in the light. I kissed her gently.

ination

Happiness was certainly impossible if

it

beginning to

was impossible rain. I

in

imag-

was remember

in reality too. It

walked beside

her, I

106

A

Strange Solitude

and the wind that cooled our faces with the same breath. I no longer needed to be moved, the rain

happily

inert.

me

than

our relation had assumed

new

And Concha seemed more in the past,

as

if

sensitive to

dimensions. In the taxi she took of affection

my

hand, a gesture

which she would probably never have

dared to make before.

It is

had become “grownups,”

true that

that

we— at

we were

least

I—

going to be

who knows, fall into the vulgarity of an ordinary “affair.” And yet, a woman you're sure is not indifferent to you, a woman who loves you, I mean: who loves to kiss you, with whom you're “lovers,”

about

to try recovering that ancient truth.

We were in a Spanish cabaret. sitting

on a kind of

beside him.

On

The

dais, the singer

.

.

.

guitarist

was

was standing

the floor, two dancers in Andalusian

costume were weaving their brilliant web of steps. One girl was a pure Castilian type, but the other,

though Catalan

(as

we found

out

later),

had

that

frenzied gypsy grace which cannot endure repose.

Her name was Dolores, and Concha could not take her eyes off her from the start. Dark and imperious, her lashes fluttering, her green-pleated dress whirling, Dolores danced only for us. In the zapateado she

reached the limit of her strength, her feet attacking

107

Philippe SoUers

the steps with savagery and utter control, keeping the rhythm with a kind of despair. “Imagine seeing this in Paris !” I

whispered

taunt her conceit a

little.

to

Concha, hoping to

She smiled vaguely, not

turning her head. “I haven't seen her in two years,

I'm with her for ten minutes,"

me already.

forgotten I

I

realized,

“and

she's

." .

.

watched her watching, and

it

was

as

if I

had

surprised her at last in her astonishment, her ad-

miration— her desire. Dolores began to sing (her

mouth

half-open, as

if

for a kiss).

The

voice

was

between bitterness and tenderness, dead— one might have said —if that meant it was haunted; “a voice to make

harsh, imperfect, tense; badly placed

nice girls blush" (Concha murmured). this voice

And what

was proclaiming was that there was no

truth save in the difficulty of expression; that at

you must stumble and weigh your words, separate them with difficulty (there are so many ties), not take pleasure in them but accept them with all their possibilities and weaknesses (seeking that rare state of intensity and control); that you must be simple and passionate, and if you permit yourself first

to use a

language at

all,

it is

almost in despair of

the result.

108

A

Strange Solitude

Las

flores

no valen nada

Los que valen son Tus hrazos Cuando de noche

me

me abrazan

these words

had

all

the repose of a conviction.

And

I

And

for

the suffering,

all

watched Concha

which only a great talent could wring from her, for she was from the North and not expansive by nature. Happy, probably oblivious of me (/Eso es! jVaya guapa!), but what did that matter, since I was looking at her, since I was sure of offering that Ole!

seeing her as she was, and since she

showed me the

truth of ecstasy in her face.

The song But once

over, Dolores sat

we were

down

at

our table.

obliged to speak, no one was sure

what to say. The girl had a laugh, and a beauty, that were slightly vulgar, and in any case had eyes of

only for Concha.

I left

the table for a

moment

so

they could arrange a meeting without embarrass-

ment. Several days

later,

when we were making

and mimicking the stops and starts of the dance, Concha, seeing that I had understood, gigIt was a gled as she murmured: “Ole, Dolores! compliment, and I took it as such. But she did not ask me to come home with her. I didn’t insist and

love

waited for the afternoon of the following day.

109

Philippe Sollers

had no need of invoking an immortal soul to immerse itself and me in felicity! My natural being had only to acquire every power in order to shed its own stupidities. But if, after that first evening, I had wanted to express my feelings, I should probably have said no more than ‘Tm the happiest man alive,” an expression which would have contained none of my happiness. In fact, I would have liked to recover, bind together all those moments I had thought of her, despaired of seeing her again— like that afternoon beside the sea, like that morning beneath the already despoiled trees of the countryside at home, and, above all, like all those unconscious and forgotten moments when she had flashed across my memory like a light, and not only my memory but, in fever and chills, my arms, my chest and stomach, even my lips. Doubtless Concha had, as they say, “deceived” me. She had given herself to anyone who had manifested a warm enough desire. But having a taste for women, she had only yielded to men, while with her mistresses she amused herself (there was Unlike Saint-Preux,

I

nothing in her character of hysteria, none of the disturbing obsessiveness of vice). She

her

life

moved through

with an absolute availability and an abso-

110

A

Strange Solitude

lute detachment. Yes, in a sense she

was

solitude,

the transition between two incommunicable worlds.

De

mis soledades vengo

A mis soledades voy Y para vivir conmigo

Me bastan mis pensamientos

How well Lope s lines suited her! I come from my solitudes , 1 go to

my

solitudes. ... It

was Concha s

face that flickered through these four lines for me,

by an almost imperceptible quivering. Of course I had suffered from one of her adventures which I learned of after she had left: a much older man— whom she had mocked with Beatrice. I had suffered, yes, but not from jealousy. For I was angry at no one. Ive always been fatalist enough to have a “now or never, that’s the way it is, you can’t do a thing about it” side to me, which Concha

seized

had developed

still

come only from sation of having

further.

So

my

suffering could

the inevitable, from the acute sen-

no remedy against

it.

There had

been, of course, the disagreeable fantasy of a wrinkled face trailing a short mustache over Concha’s delicate, inaccessible features. Naturally there had

been

others,

younger ones, with

have found her pleasure 111

too.

whom

she

But wasn’t that

may

my

Philippe S oilers

fault, since I

had loved her

ture, everything

over

is

the darkness; the hero,

has every

when the lovers vanish into when he is not the narrator,

a love-maker.

gift as

being

fallibility, for

so badly? ... In litera-

still

I

admired

young

too

this in-

to divine the

someone as learned in pleasure as Concha, it was not seldom that she remained— or seemed to remain— unsatisfied (and her face was then quite spoiled). Beatrice, who had told me about Concha’s liaison with her old lover, had insisted on its comic subtleties of

the

aspects:

man

dropping

his glasses, failing to

Concha because of his huge belly. All of which was disgusting or ridiculously funny. But there was no forgetting that some women make possess

love only to humiliate their partner— when to get rid of him. I

thought

when

it’s

not

was reassuring myself with

this

Beatrice added, speaking of the old

fool:

“Apparently he knew some pretty exciting

ways

to get

is

around

his

problem.” The true mystery

never where you think:

it is

in our bodies.

could Concha have experienced that

known how with her

to give her?

girl friends?

foot in, prowling

What

had not

did she experience

Realms we

never set

shall

around them, setting our

Problems that change with each

we can

I

What

traps.

.

.

.

sensibility, so that

And as a For we always

never use the same formulas.

consequence, in ourselves: darkness.

.

.

.

112

A

Strange Solitude

know ily

ourselves

by a system

of self-opposition, hast-

verifying our hypotheses.

Of

course,

.

.

.

Concha's pleasures with her

girl

friends had, in comparison, a grace and, particularly for

me, something unimaginable about them

which

preferred.

with

I

And

me Concha was

preferred to think that

I

interested in something else

had always presome reason or other

besides love-making (though she ferred not to see

me than— for

—to see me and not make love). “But it's true, I reminded myself, “she's always bored and yet not bored.

.

.

It’s

.

a kind of secondary state she's

noiselessly loitering.

She hibernates,

that's

in,

the word.

Why seek any further?”

“A month

of happiness will teach

you more than

This was Concha s antwo years of questions. swer _I could hear the irony in her voice— when I .

revealed

how much

I

.

.

desired her.

And when

I

was one of her favorite proverbs: “La vida es un tango y el que no lo baila es un tonto .” Of course you have to dance, but the tempo. ... She kept her amused stupidly risked a sigh about “life,” this

expression

Nothing her

US

when

to

profile.

she thought about our separation.

be done. Sometimes

I stole

a glance at

The observed eye quickly brightened

Philippe S oilers

beneath the tremulous lashes, a ring of tiny wrinkles

and

secrets

formed about

her head turned,

it,

and a silent smile flashed across her face. And when I leaned over her, whether she carefully put out her tongue at me or suddenly shrank back with a quick impulse of gaiety which had gradually risen to her face, I thought how, whatever it costs our heart ought to

we

(whatever

it

enough

anyone who has spared us the grimaces

to

How

of feeling. ing,

feel),

beautiful

are never grateful

Concha was, how bloom-

always with that slight indifference somehow

concentrated at the edge of her eyelids and the hol-

low of her

throat!

Her warm

flowered cushions as

face

was buried

approached her,

I

in the

listened,

breathed her breath, trying to surprise the principle of her

enchantment

What

I

at

its

found again

source.

at last

was

that complicity

two bodies used to each other— Concha's warmth and that cool pause upon her face, her security, her of

breath against little

my

ear, the

pleasure.

it

of her

mouth a

twisted and, at moments, those sudden waves

of gratitude for her,

made

comer

And

this

who had

me

always given

pleasure was not only carnal;

love to her, so to speak, with

all

was Concha's body, our old way

my

of

soul.

I

And

coming

to-

gether, the interlacing of our legs, her odor (fresh at the nape, bitter at the temples,

warm

at the

114

A

Strange Solitude

mouth), her long hair which was always caught

beneath an arm, a shoulder, and passed, disordered, between our faces like a last refusal (I would have to

brush

all,

it

aside to possess her mouth);

her old indulgence.

I

and above

had the impression

of liv-

ing the same adventure again, but this time as a

conqueror, correcting

hear her whisper:

my own

clumsiness.

Ay, que bueno!

dejar sin labios, vas a ver tu!” filled

pride that

I

had

cured myself of

to laugh at myself.

my

(superimposing these

And

to

or

Te voy a

me

with such

But

at least I

memories, changed images

new

ones on the old ones that

had quivered too much). Concha had not changed, that was my only opportunity: she immobilized time. And I understood better now why she had provoked such passionate attachments. For each person she had known— and how much for me!— she had been a kind of infallible point of reference, where I rediscovered what had been best in my first love,

guided by what

I

had learned

scious or unconscious— for that love.

of regret— con-

And

this sud-

den confrontation of these two personalities, each of which had been me, produced a new one. That day, the second of our re-encounter, we lay talking for a long time while the night gradually

thickened outside. In the frame of the

window soon

appeared, like an absurd picture, the illuminated

115

Philippe S oilers

We

were playing what Beatrice would have called “Do you remember?” Arc de Triomphe.

“Near the beginning,” Concha

had

my

said, “that

thread

you picked out so carefully —well, every time I did any sewing, I put one there on purpose, to see you take it out. It was so funny!” I

in

hair that

was not too surprised to discover how different her memory was from my own (she was still touched by attentions I had long forgotten). One day, I had thrown a bouquet of artificial carnations out of the window. Another, I had tried to force my way into her bathroom, we had concocted a rape scene, and the excitement of the pretense was so great that my pleasure was upon me before I could possess her. “Total” Concha suddenly concluded, “the way I

we

never are for each other.” I

did not answer. Her face, beside mine, re-

mained motionless. With one accord we changed the subject.

Then wanted

there were endless walks.

Concha never

do anything else, enjoyed this happy, mechanical movement, and if I suggested stopping in

to

a cafe she only agreed reluctantly. Did she do

this

on purpose,

to preserve the marginal character

of our relationship?

When we went the

way

she

She was subtle enough

for that.

up her hair in a bun it, and despite the dia-

out, she did

knew

I

liked

116

A

Strange Solitude

mond-shaped comb and the long pin, it always came undone too quickly. Then she looked at me as if to say: “I cant stay the way you like me for long.” Yes, she was subtle enough for that. And when I walked with her in the neighborhoods where

had been

I if

to take

the

name

so sad, so desperate,

I

told myself, as

revenge on them now: "‘Remember of this street so you can come this way

my

The next day I tested my memory, but it remained mute as to the name, and though Concha was still with me, it was as if I had lost her again forever. again, after you’ve lost her.

Once convinced

that only pleasure counts,

everything turns to ashes

when we

tire of

how

it!

At

such moments of fatigue and boredom, I wondered still, to curtail that if it was fair to be so attached

had had such trouble constructing -but in the name of what? (Neither writing nor my sensations— rather vague, moreover-could make it up to my imagination.) I wondered if I desired independence

I

Concha enough,

trying to discover evidence from

her attitude that she was unsatisfied. Not everyone And it is only afterwards is happy who wants to be. that

117

we

see the

wrong

side of the collage, smell

Philippe Sollers

our partner's sweat— that certain hitherto neglected

become

details

intolerable.

too white

flesh

(though

Now it

I

was

found Concha's certainly

dark),

loathed the hairs at the tips of her breasts, the

cir-

under her eyes, and the (sudden) redness of her chin. It seemed admirable (and a little crazy) that one could really see someone and not love her less cles

for

it.

loved Concha no

I

less,

from

whom

I

re-

covered the special habits which put our pleasure

beyond the mere perfection of bodies. But, more simply, it was enough for me to notice one of her rare hesitations, a of her green eyes,

somewhat drawn smile, a squint for my love— which had been so

free

and easy— suddenly

And

yet,

to flow

through

me

again.

what advantages my attachment for Concha had! What was most in harmony with my nature was that impossibility of deceit which brought

us together tions,

my

when we

felt desire.

a world apart, old and as

love developed as

itself. It

was

not, as

it

if

Without obligaoutside of time,

pleased, gave the best of

with other women, at the mercy

of a visit to a bar, a boring evening at the movies,

or subject to the curse of being always together,

which creates between two people that indecisive zone where speech loses its savor. And perhaps this love,

by such

had been prebe?) from the wreck of all love.

special causes as these,

served (would

it still

118

.

A

Strange Solitude

For a thousand reasons which escaped me, it was myself, still high above the waves, almost in spite of thanks to words, harmonies I could not foresee (as on certain days when I heard nothing but Spanish

would read Madrid instead of Mardi on a calendar, when I was obsessed by her country which, in the realm of feeling— which is

when

spoken, or

I

everything— was also mine); foreign love, words.

.

And

in other

.

I

knew

that

if

my

eagerness to see Concha

again was at times no longer intense, the habit of doing so was the only reason; my happiness would

would one day appear when I would no longer possess it, and this was why, from now on, I was to give it —by excess— its best form, no longer harried by my mind's contradictions. Patiently I would construct the recollec-

construct

tion I

in secret,

itself

was

to

have of

her, governing

(we are nothing but memory), even cost

my

me my

love, and, perhaps,

attention, I

my memory if

this effort

by the strength

would emerge the

of

victor in this duel

with time.

The most imperceptible

my

attention as

if

details returned, struck

behind me, and that only able to deflect me from it.

my

frivolity

Asthma had plunged me once again 119

was far had been

to prove that the truth

into that

Philippe Sollers

exasperated sensitivity, forever on the brink of agony,

which

had seized

as a child

my

bear to be alone in great sobs that only this childishness

in the

was

me when

I

bed, screaming for help in

made

over, there was

middle of the night

my

no one

to bring

me

face with a cold cloth.

I

to

come

a glass of

my

neck,

was alone with,

perhaps imaginary duty, that of enlightening

as a

myself in

my own

for sleep, I

A

curtains! this

Now

the attacks worse.

water, pile the pillows against the back of

wipe

couldn’t

At night

eyes.

would turn on

my

as I lay waiting

lamp and

stare at the

sense of absolute strangeness.

Somehow

void must be concealed that only delight could

did not want to be “touching,”

had a horror of weakness. How make it understood that I wanted no complacency and that— if it existed— I was writing about it only to surmount it more readily? What I want to show is nothing but effort, provided it is fill.

I

I

accurate.

And

yet,

what a comfort

it

was, thanks to Con-

cha, to leave the world of indifference, to

back

in spite of everything to the

me, attentive to smile, her

my

world that

slightest variations!

head on one

side,

come knew

With a

she would say: “I

tiny

know

you” in that old mysterious tone, without appeal,

which made

me tremble.

But she would

also remark,

120

A

Strange Solitude

sniffing

much

humorously, “You smoked too

today,”

was bad for my asthma. Or again, when she wanted to “make me furious,” she would whisper that I was “very delicate,” which was sup-

knew

for she

posed

it

make me

to

had nothing

And

feel guilty.

her solicitude

of that false politeness she delighted in

attributing to the French: Frances: falso y cortés. The sensation— a strong one— of finding in Con-

cha a being so individual that even in her immobility (in still

her indifference) she could not be defined, but serving

of calm,

as a point of reference (of refuge),

and above

essential to

had been best of

me

me

now.

built

itself.

all as

My

upon

a subject, was what seemed

this foundation,

nor “love,” to

And

owed

I

sought,

I

wanted

this research, since

nothing

it

know. To plunge into

me

more, was therefore

dertaking. But this research

earnestness about narcissism, there

is

it.

my

sole un-

would have a

For even

certain

at the confines of

the obsessive presence of death

—endangered happiness

of realizing

you are so

nerable yet capable of feeling so absolutely. smile

121

we

the

keep her from being

was hardly estheticism nor an ambiguous sympathy:

could interest

it

could treat Concha frivolously or

I

lose her; in myself, I could not

the given.

wrong,

sensibility, right or

give ourselves, the smile of defiance,

vul-

The is

a

Philippe S oilers

challenge to our pleasure and at the same time to the death of

all

pleasure.

With Concha, communicable.

then,

And

I

I

would

very

as to

remembered

(already)

evening when, despite the cold,

unconcerned

strive for the in-

how much

I

that

and—for my partfelt it, we walked

For a moment, on the Champs-Elysées, was buying a paper and she was standing

late.

while

I

saw her with that distance, that first surprise we must try for unceasingly. Waiting, swaybehind me,

I

ing from foot to foot, her hands in her coat pockets,

her black and white striped scarf— silk?

would have

to

like a picaro

—a

One

faille?

(I

check)— thrown over one shoulder kind of

night, while

I

sly,

laughing child.

was coming

.

.

.

upstairs, think-

ing only of the sound of Concha’s heels beside me, the rustle of her skirt against the wall, that in speaking of

source of so ing as

if

many

my

love for

her— Concha, the

nothing had happened (there was no rea-

separated us long since, broken literated all connections

life

off

should have

our

liaison,

ob-

with the past)— a love so

important to me, so decisive,

I

would doubtless pre-

had had a beginning, an end, a progresthereby denying what I was not sure of: that

tend that

there

realized

contradictory images, reappear-

son for the two of us to be here:

sion,

I

is

it

no

“story,” that nothing really begins or

122

A

Strange Solitude

ends, that certain beings represent a face, a char-

open — and

you force them to take part to play a role, they seem not to understand you, as if the fact that something had to happen (whereas in reality nothing happens), was a notion acter forever

if

,

you learned a sham image of time substituted for time, and which, for these motionless creatures without a destiny, must appear ridiculous, inoppor,

tune; tireless creatures tions, to

we

long to assail with ques-

shake like inanimate objects which seem to

confront us with an irrefutable proof of our

own

confusion and stupidity.

Another time, under a portico, her

face, in the

shadow, assumed that anonymous genre (“Spanish

which she managed to escape. Yet at other times, she was the same: familiar, expected, recaptured. Her filmy nightgown, strewn with tiny, type”) into

pale-pink flowers.

And

her perfume.

And

her whis-

between sulking and supplication, as if she were deliberately blurring words she was a little

pers,

ashamed

And

of.

last of all,

one day

without her being aware of

as I it,

in

was watching her the Parc Monceau,

she was the same again, with her severe, secretive expression, smiling a

woman

in a red

little,

suede

dreaming a

jacket, a

lot,

woman

a short

with no

personality, yet everything in the world for me.

123

Philippe S oilers

moments which, following my new notion of memory, I labored to analyze down to the slightest detail, though I knew that between Concha and me there would always Yes, there

were

all

these

be something inexpressible, and therefore all the more binding if I were to try to express it— and was I not justified in writing if, vis-à-vis my model and for

my own

interior

adventure (refined, clarified by

writing), I suffered to the highest degree a

commun-

ion and a laceration?

Surely— I told myself— I would have to force

and

attention

my

my

sensibility, at

some moment

my or

by creating a void within myself I would be more readily acted on. Later, memory would enchant all this. Attention, lucidity, are somehow long-term investments. So I would other of

life,

so that

take refuge against memory's gales, even though

by preserving myself against them I would only succeed— as the dike makes the flood rise— in rendering them more violent. I would thus find myself winning a greater intensity over my involuntary recollections and, on the other hand (for the past, for us, all

is

would construct which time would

certainly recaptured), I

those voluntary recollections

124

A

Strange Solitude

undertake to animate, to astound. into

my

least actions,

certainty of a

not to

wonder

my to

I

would introduce

slightest situations, the

come.

It

was

time, then,

myself go any longer, to direct

let

this

con-

fused mass of sentiments and emotions. Like everyone else, I had noticed that profundity is not always the result of excitement, but

more often

of calm, of

and contentment. Like everyone else, I had discovered that the recollections which delighted me the most were neither those that I had

harmony,

silence,

thought the most beautiful, nor the most likely to last. On the contrary, and by a law that resembled the biological observation that in the natural selection of a species, the

most average type

is

preserved

wanted to mock at our appreciation— so it happened that these recollections were in themselves quite mediocre, though of a freshness,

—as

lit

if

reality, too,

by a subdued

that

first

light.

And

I

recalled

(

called back)

attempt, when, on the balcony of an un-

known city, I had deliberately decided that this moment of contemplation would be exceptional. It was raining, the street was empty, the sky gray. But I wanted everything arranged to please me, and not only did reality seem to submit to my decision, but even today, sciousness

and

I

see again that

will as

of con-

one of the most beautiful,

the most accomplished in

125

moment

my memory.

Since then,

Philippe S oilers

whenever I visit a new house, I never fail to get to a window, open it, and compose for the future one of those perfect

little

To be

limit itself to.

pictures I

certain (but

want

my

life

to

one ever?) that

is

consciousness has been voluntarily as great as pos-

sible— that

is

a pleasure which with a

little

method

you can render inestimable. For this is the only question asked of us: the world and our own qualities being what they are, how enjoy them to the

maximum The

degree before.

.

.

?

great situations, the “events” exhaust them-

place reality,

own

more commonsometimes the most wretched— an ef-

selves of their

accord.

It is

the

fect of wind, heat, light, a sense of places that are

a

little

too

common,

the inexplicably

of certain postures— wliich literally

moving

make

sight

their

way

within us, suddenly exploding in our interior theater,

swelled by

all

effort

they have

ness.

Our

task

the expectations, the detours, the

made is

in

our conscious-

to establish the intoxication of

banality. Yet I felt I in

appear

to

must

find not only

such evidence, but virtually a duty.

my .

pleasure

.

.

Not a

theory of time but a practical and henceforth systematic method

(in

order to become,

some monstrous machine) ally happier, freer, and, in

for

if

possible,

making myself gener-

any

case,

more

sensitive.

126

A

Strange Solitude

Concha herself, the catalyst of all my thoughts, that I wanted to create a definitive image, and it seems to me that I have found it. It was durIt

was

of

ing a visit to the Escorial, one afternoon, that

discovered El Greco’s Martyrdom of

Beyond the very personal reason advance, to

me

let

me

say straight

to exhaust,

by

I

St.

Maurice.

am

about to

off that tills

work seems

very splendor,

its

sources of painting, arousing the feelings certain spectacles leave us stupefied. I that

my

day when,

after

my

friends

all

the re-

by which remember

had made fun

of

me away my exclamations, still my

agitation (only closing time could tear

from the canvas, silence feverish running about),

excitement, a reverie

I

I

remained

in a state of

seldom experienced at such

a pitch of extravagance.

Of course

justifies this

admiration, with

lows, blues

and mauves

its

I

its

the “martyrdom”

brilliant colors (yel-

of an irresistible violence),

already revolutionary composition (that breach

on the

left,

vance),

its

opening onto the plain where armies addiaphanous legs and hands— those hands

already so surprising in the Burial of Count Orgaz

—which this is

cross the canvas like birds.

Of

course, all

organized in an avalanche, an attack on equi-

librium to

make

what struck

me

it

surrender

most of

all

its

last secrets.

But

(without that false ele-

gance which knows nothing of a face before corn-

127

Philippe Sollers

paring

it

a Goya,

to

some painting—“She’s a

was— up

etc.’’)

Botticelli, he’s

above, to the

left,

in

one of

those luminous areas where the angels, saints, and blessed customarily cluster— the gel

who

holds the

Book

of

little

recording an-

Judgment. For

this quite

round countenance (you can make out its sense the texture of the skin), these eyes you

distinct,

colors,

suppose dark and sparkling (fringed not with lashes but with black and swarthy pest anas), the whole face childish and serious, distant and gracious, sur-

mounted by a touseled heap

of hair,

was Concha,

when

she lay with

exactly, eternally, in her bed,

neck propped against the pillow and, suddenly vague, her eyes went blank. And how well this comparison, no, this identification suited Concha,

who

everyone agreed “had the angel” (que tuviese angel) according to her country’s strange expression. In

any

case, this

defining

it

unhoped-for revelation aided

for

my task,

me. For instance, when she was

wearing bright-colored clothes that reminded me of some “advertisement,” she simplified my image of the more.

And among

that collection of faces, real or painted,

which each

her, for

which

I

loved her

all

of us carries about like so

many

possible solutions

problem of the face, I added this one of El Greco’s on which, from time to time, thinking of Concha, I could come to rest. That marvelous little

to the

128

A

Strange Solitude

angel! Above, in the confusion, there

was

action,

and atonly movements,

discussion, preparation— admirable gestures titudes, in fact.

But these were

crimes, hesitations.

still

While that angel, motionless,

its

and a mysterious ecstasy—not beyond the center of unshaken

face filled with light different but alien,

,

calm, manifestly of another race concerned with ineffable

problems— seems

passion: to read.

mav

What

it

to

know

only this one

hears, feels, or projects,

derive from that great tome, perhaps

it

comes

from a distant and secret kingdom, behind the picture. We cannot say, so remote does that face,

which seems so welcoming, turn out

to

be— even,

and particularly, beneath its smile. The angel has assumed its grace to deceive us, to reassure us, or to disturb whoever deserves it. It attracts only the inattentive gaze, the casual commentary. But why do we

feel this uneasiness,

tills

distress in

judging

it?

have said that Concha did not seem to me to have changed. How could I be sure, since we never know other people objectively and since, on the I

other hand,

my

changed so?

I

129

subjective

had never

rid

knowledge of her had myself of that old un-

Philippe Sollers

certainty about her previous

life;

her means of sur-

her wanderings through the war, poverty,

vival;

desertion; her relations with her family— but that

was her

secret, absolutely

unknowable, which

I

had

only heard about in snatches: that she had a child

—a

had probably been a prostitute for which interested me very little, actu-

girl— that she

a while. All of ally.

You cannot

by what,

in

explain people

them,

by events but only

resists events.

What

did

I

care

about the circumstances from which Concha’s char-

and nature emerged, since

was seeking in her something permanent, something beyond pleasure and pain? acter

And

I

wrong about that. It seemed to me that she was even more eager to please me, though without any coquetry. It was the way she began caressing me, taking off my clothes (when we came back from our walks and collapsed on the bed) with the same impatience and at times the same authority I felt myself. Voluntarily, she hesitated two or three times before kissing

would

yet, she

was the same,

I

wasn’t

me, then suddenly, with a kind of fall

fury,

on me. She had desired me, she had

waited for me, since she expected nothing from me.

130

A

Strange Solitude

remember one

I

Sundays

of those spring

spent in her room. After making love, walk, alone, in the Parc Monceau. its

way between

was possible

I

went

we

for a

The sun made

the trees, and suddenly everything

in this universe of leaves

and

light. I

love these cloudy days with intervals of sunlight.

And of

since

most of our

body transposed,

satisfied,

How

the

simple

states of

mind

are only states

realized that once desire

I

unknown momentarily it

was!

I

realized this

was

disappeared.

rhythm

of our

must simply exist without imposing conon it: be happy and speak ill only of oneself

sensibility

ditions

for being incapable of

For a long time

it.

I sat

sprawling on an iron chair,

watching a round-eyed duck who made me think of my own way of walking, and for that reason finding

it

quite fraternal.

went almost every afternoon to see Concha and less and less to my classes. One morning, without having gone home at all, I decided to show up at school. “What are you doing here?" whispered one of the professors I got on well with, drawing I

me if I

131

into a corner of the corridor.

seem

surprised.

.

.

.

How

“You don’t mind

tired

you look— are

Philippe S oilers

you taking psychology? Or physiology? Or psychophysiology?”

And he laughed

Other times,

roguishly.

went out early in the morning. After taking great precaution on the stairs, I opened the door and let the sharp early morning air bum

my my

I

lungs. Lighting a cigarette, I felt the weight of

cessive happiness.

The

their carts, crates

were lying

morning of the

first

me

no one arrested

face, surprised that

street

of

enough, happened to be

vendors were

filling

in the gutters.

May

my

for ex-

(which,

The

ironically

feast-day: el dia

de mi

santo ), the street to the métro station was full of

people selling

morning

I

was

lilies

of the valley,

and

at six in the

their only customer, except for

one

two night owls in tuxedoes. I took the métro with the first workmen, who stared at me unkindly, and reached home in the full spring daylight. Once in or

my

room,

I

threw myself on the bed,

an immediate coma,

visiting great

falling into

sun-baked houses

AwakLuxembourg

overlooking landscapes of lakes and trees.

ening around eleven,

I

went

to the

where the fountains touched the lawns with a coolness moving with the wind. They say love dissipates: how it sobers one up! My way of spending time was affected in a way I would once have found insulting.

with

fife,

You

think you can deal quite casually

and the

discipline of pleasure

makes you 132

A

Strange Solitude

love

who

it. I,

never knew what to do,

myself with chatter,

few

at five thirty, a

—a

I

a beer in the Cafe X,

steps in the

taste not without

Rue

Y), I

who

out

its

now

pleasures— well,

I

was

would be. realized that another existence was possible which had never suspected, an existence in which people

always "busy,’' I

stupefied

idleness, "feeling the time pass”

boredom loved

of

(at five,

who

1

arranged matters so

I

need you, and perhaps only one woman: to profit by this naïveté, no longer listening to the voice of

which had once created a memory that

lassitude

was

so incomplete.

that

was what

ence as

my

much

nature or

I

had

To

kill

to do,

as possible,

my

myself with pleasure,

and

no time, experiwithout heeding either lose

habits, so that I could never say

you could have done more. I would force myself, I would never leave myself in peace. And I must admit Concha lent herself adto myself later on:

mirably to

all

my

plans, never offering the slightest

and nuance, sometimes, was

contradiction, her character always harmonious reassuring,

enough

whose

to distress

slightest

me. Thus: a

woman

alone, with-

out position, without desires, and without vanity, a woman indolent enough to abandon coquetry but passionate enough to enjoy pleasure— that was that I

still

exalted me.

And

yet certain nights

did not sleep with her (when

133

I

all

when

did not savor that

Philippe Sollers

which the other seemed stale, of feeling her body against me, of surrounding her, crushing her in my half-sleep), after making love, I left by the last métro sat down at a table in an pleasure, without

,

all-night bar near

my

room, and devoured a steak-

and-fried-potatoes with a glass of red wine. Never

did food taste so good to the sense of

pleasure

shame

w as T

I

me

as at that

might have

quickly brushed

felt

moment. And

about

this tiny

away by my happy

unconcern.

Sometimes, though,

my

seeming lack of resources

which,

I

me. Then to

reproached myself for

I

vis-à-vis this liaison

supposed, should seem extraordinary to I

stayed in Concha’s room,

imbue myself with every

I

struggled

detail, to leave

to the accident of perception.

On

nothing

the wall, thanks

whose white square with red border hung from a piece of string, it was

to the Post Office calendar its

autumn. Great into

trees thrust their dry,

an ice-blue

Beneath them, the same leaves,

sky.

a profusion of leaves on, to roll over

golden leaves

I

would have

and over

in,

my

liked to lie

face pricked by

their crackling freshness. In the distance,

slope opposite this

and

their

little hill

down

on the

covered by the trees

glowing foliage, long, misty green

fields

stretched into the distance, but caressed you, sink-

ing deep within you, never quite escaped you.

134

A

Strange Solitude

Perhaps a river— or a thin blade of crossed these

fields,

a zipper-

steel,

gave them an inaccessible look

where the mind might pause and wonder, for a moment. And yet it was on this murmuring hillside (or so I imagined it) that a decisive game (this much I was sure of) was being played. At this point of the

stroll,

my

face recovering a kind of purity, I

would have stopped, breathed deeply, and leaned against one of these rough trunks.

And probably

beyond the pleasure, the sunshine, this wild dance of autumn (which must have reminded me of the long walks I used to take around Beatrice's estate: vanishing down a narrow path between the vines and heading for the treetops of the skeet-range beyond which the gentle wooded hills fell away, I turned and saw the house with the sun behind it and, on the greenhouse side, I

would have been

far

Beatrice, so blond, so precious, lying in a deckchair of transatlantic blue, waiting for

me; then

I

decided

would approach her without making any noise, without being seen, as if, coming home from a long trip over woods and fields during which everything had been made possible, I were to deserve this shining house), yes, I would have been beyond that, I

since

it

would have been easy

for

vacillation of the wind, to follow

across space, in this rustling

135

it

me in

its

to feel this

hesitations

and immutable

interval.

Philippe S oilers

And

just as

we

discover a change in our char-

by a modification— sometimes so our tastes, I doubled my life at every mo-

acter or opinions

faint— in

ment of happiness, of sensuality, with a dreamy, more luminous music which seemed to give its whole measure to what I had just felt. Whether it was Ravel or Debussy (the beginning of the second suite from Daphnis and Chloe or the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun to furnish easy landmarks, :

every author should provide his references)

to

loved, permitted

me

stage accompanied, for instance,

by

more passionately

music, once

come on

this

the descending phrase of the flute in the Prelude

(which

word

in

its

undulation corresponds so well to the

“slip”— as between sheets) or to recite, deeply

moved, Mallarmé’s

Mon

crime

lines:

c’est d’avoir gai

,

de vaincre ces peurs

Traîtresses, divisé lu touffe échevelée

De

baisers ,

que

les

Dieux gardaient

Car à peine fallais cacher un Sous

les replis

Never,

I

being a musician.

And

I

bien mêlée.

ardent

heureux d’une seide.

decided, would

.

.

.

forgive myself for not

that phrase, probably in-

tended to describe certain

and scented

rire

si

rustic

amours violent

in a setting of moist green,

,

I

trans-

136

A

Strange Solitude

f erred

to Concha's room,

who, when

ally

I

made

made

it

love to her,

into a precious

would give

the supreme sensation of possessing the earth (the goddess Earth).

ure

who

Rare are the partners

me

itself

in pleas-

permit you to achieve yourself wholly. For

love does not

mean

longing to achieve the other

—which would be impossible— it means permitting the mother to discover himself as profoundly, vastlv as he deserves.

The acknowledgment

as

of love

—which has nothing to do with jealousy or “mystery”— is what the other has taught us about ourselves, and our joy what we have revealed to him. One day, and I bring up this incident only beme, though quite unnoticeable, of a great importance (like a signal from that world I had merely glimpsed during my solitude), one day cause

it

seems

to

had gone with Concha to visit friends who lived on the Avenue Kléber. Since the visit would not be a long one, and I don’t enjoy seeing new faces, I I

waited for her downstairs in a courtyard surrounded by a low wall topped by an iron fence. It was dark,

and the building, silhouetted against the sky, formed a pale and somehow chilly rectangle despite (and perhaps because

of)

a

swarm

nary to

137

me was

the

A

sharp,

ir-

was leaning against But what seemed so extraordi-

regular sound near the wall

indicated a fountain.

of stars.

murmur

I

of so

many

conversa-

Philippe S oile rs

tions

from the lighted windows of

radio

was playing a popular song:

all six floors.

A

Elle a roulé carrosse , Elle a roulé sa bosse

—a

happy, infectious tune

I

.

.

.

smilingly applied to

Concha. The sound of voices wavered chiefly between two groups of windows, sometimes louder

from

my right,

crying. “So

sometimes from

you

my

left.

see,” I heard, followed

no question about

it!”

A

child

was

by “There's

Exactness of the expression:

And

seemed that alone here, in my courtyard, leaning against this low wall and passionately eavesdropping as if to learn some state secret— but a state secret would have interested me less— I was transfixed by all these familiar noises, they had invaded me, found their development in me, finally fired me back to life. The certainty that Concha— Concha!—would appear any minute now in this setting seemed wonderful to me. For once, I expected the impossible and the impossible would happen. And suddenly I felt that this was what I would have to try to express for the rest of my life, bursts of laughter.

this feeling of ecstasy

it

about the world or about

other people, this sudden assurance of a

harmony

and a happiness that was incommunicable,

of

138

A

Strange Solitude

course, but that to express them.

make

of

my

life

would be perfect only

in

my

effort

And, multiplying these sensations, (was it possible?) a clear and co-

herent whole which would have the brilliance and the hardness of a

new metal

that nothing could

ever melt or corrode.

Concha, laughing, appeared on the

staircase,

abandoned my hypotheses there. Yet that evening I made up some pretext and went home alone, walking all the way. There subsisted, from and

my

I

reverie in the courtyard, a physical euphoria—

and

also a question.

Were such moments worth

bothering about, worth being construed as the center for I

everything else? Yes,

I

believed they were,

believed it— even passionately.

was walking beside the Luxembourg. There was blue-black moonlight among a few clouds that were as wrinkled and mottled as the sand of certain beaches where the receding water seems to have I

struggled one last time to have kept

On

its

conquest.

the other side of the fence, the disorderly tangle

seemed not so much outlined as inlaid in this metallic and secret space. The street was empty as far as I could see, faintly lit, and my steps echoed of trees

loudly in the silence.

From time

to time, I glimpsed

through gaping curtains a piece of furniture, a

lampshade, and sometimes— though rarely— a

139

figure.

Philippe S oilers

The neighborhood the opposition of

used to know seemed now,

I

secret interior security

tills

this cold stretch of landscape, strangely

in

and

new, as

if

transferred to the center of an irresistible, naked

My breath-

attraction, almost pleading for existence.

ing slowed,

my ears hummed,

as

I

walked,

sinking deeper into myself. Could

I

began

I

say that suddenly

lolling,

and even

I

was

My

floating?

steps

seemed the rhythm

grew

disproportionately louder until they

to

the whole night, echoing as

of an

if

to

fill

was I no longer. And probably, at this moment that was so intense, so fugitive, I was that sky where, beyond the tangle of trees, the dawn was breaking where, quietly, familiarly, probably taking advantage of some carelessness (on the world’s part or on mine), I had dissolved myself.

unknown

One

dance. But

it

was leaving for the vacation— I had a date with Concha at ten o’clock in front of a movie theater on the Champs-Elysées. It was to see her, to talk to her once more, and I will admit I was a little annoyed by tills ceremony before our separation. To cut things short, even though outbursts and effusions were not the sort of thing I expected from Concha, I almost didn’t turn up. At first I thought she was late,

evening, which was to be the last— for

but that was so unlike her that

I

I

began worry-

ing right away. Suppose she didn’t come?

What

if

140

A

Strange Solitude

came again? Then, and by a natural and absurd impulse, I was gripped by an anxiety as great as if my life had been in danger. I began walking up and down the sidewalk. Ten after ten. And during the whole time I was searching the she never

faces of the people walking by,

saw her woman, I seen

when

I

thought

I

each automobile, in every hurrying

in

tried to

imagine in Concha

s

face as

I

had

the night before the slightest sign of dis-

it

pleasure or coldness. Hadn't she said au revoir with a little too much remoteness, as if she were already

moving away? Had she decided to signify fifteen. I

to

break

this

date

an adieu she hesitated to speak? Tenwalked back and forth on the sidewalk,

exhausting

my

hypotheses and concocting, to ex-

plain her delay, the classical excuses of infatuation (there had been a misunderstanding, she couldn't

help

know

it,

it

etc.). I

now,"

had never desired her I

I

stupid going

away

much.

"I

repeated furiously, “I can’t do

must

without her,

so

find her again.

like this.

And

besides,

it's

.” .

.

sensed that by “standing me up," expressing her absence in this vulgar form, Concha was resuming the advantage. I still loved her

Perhaps

I

had enough vanity to believe in that kind of plot. Ten-thirty. I was seething not so much with anger as with love— though a moment before I was enough,

141

I

Philippe Sollers

still

wondering

street,

went

if I

to the

should see her.

métro

station,

came back, went

away, fearful each time— though I

policeman was watching

me

to her

room. As

I

turned back

jeeringly. I

was about

came from the

train

I

had missed

every other second— that

go

crossed the

I

her.

I

Where could

big

decided to

to take the

métro a

other direction and

Concha

,

got out. Fascinated, completely unaware of

was doing,

A

what I

followed her without her seeing me. she be going? But

I

soon realized that

though she was three-quarters of an hour late, she was quite calmly coming to meet me. Her face

showed only I

indifference, she didn’t

continued walking behind her— this

even see me.

woman who

had vanished and whom I would now confront furiously and then burst out laughing. Of course, she was delayed, she had thought it was earlier. How could she not have come?

And

I

prolonged the pleasure of watching her

walk, supple, indifferent— so serious, as soon as she

was

alone, that her face

assumed an expression

of

severity.

That same night,

own same

room.

We

I

would

went back with her part, I thought,

lack of emphasis, that

was so much a part exhausted

just

with that

same naturalness

last false note,

that

I

had

all

that

of Concha’s character.

now, in a

to her

142

A

Strange Solitude

remained of childishness and

instability.

This time,

was really over with. We would see each other now and then to make love or talk in low voices of the past, and these future encounters would be sweet, a little despairing. But after all, other adven-

it

tures

most

Then

awaited both of

likely

I

realized

us.

Concha s

that

leaning

face,

was wet with tears. The lamp made it shine a little. Her beauty, at this moment, was transcendent, bordered on the pathos of certain against the wall,

images you see only once, in the horror of catas-

She was crying, murmuring that she had come late on purpose hoping I would have left, trophes.

taking on myself the responsibility for our separation; that all

she was too old for

me— she knew

that,

right— that our love could lead nowhere for either

of us; that she

wanted

to

be

forever so as not to have to see

far

me

away from me any more; that

she didn't hate me, oh no! but that everything was hopeless.

Now she pressed her against my cheek. Then,

poor, trembling,

pushing

wet face

me away

a

little,

she looked at me. Already she seemed somewhere

on another shore, remote, unknown, swept away by a whirlwind as sudden as it was unforeseeable. She loved me, and that was why, I knew,

else,

she didn’t want to see

143

me

again. Quickly she

wiped

Philippe S oilers

her eyes with the back of her hand, the

dren do, while

I

way

chil-

realized, aghast, that everything

had believed to be so solid, so indisputable, had crumbled in a second. Had I been so wrong? Whole I

had composed my most secret and sadness, my renewed emotion

years, everything that

my

intimacy,

joy

sustained during so

was

many

days.

from everything

.

.

.

And

already,

I

was going to have to suffer. For it was another Concha that I would have to create— a Concha who left me, destroying that part of myself which she had once constructed with such skill. I would have to question myself again, muzzle my habits to fill the void this change had dug within me. The blame belonged to that childhood which had still not finished dying in me. suffering

How

could

I live

I

with a false image, too care-

lie?

composed and which now revealed its painful As witness of my error, there would always be

this

new

face, this face in tears.

my

solitude with this face

fully

dure

My

make

would have had

could

I

en-

had not tamed?

my memory

the longed-for accomplice out of

it.

to write forever in order to diminish,

without ever quite exhausting, that

I

theories crashed against this face,

could not I

How

just fallen

on

my

life.

breathe, try to recapture this

enormous weight Write in order to

this

moment

that

was so

brief, so crucial.

144

A

Strange Solitude

Concha

kissed me, nibbling a

little

as she did

each time she was sad, and left at once. Would I ever see her again? But the service staircase over-

and through the ground-glass windows I could still make out her shadow, rising slowly, her head thrown back, as if she were solemnly mounting a scaffold to some sacrifice. Her long hair made a darker shadow behind her head.

looked the

street,

me and waved her hand, which seemed transparent. A window on the next I

whistled. She heard

was open, and I hoped I would see her when she passed it. But suddenly the hall light went out and Concha disappeared altogether. Would she turn it on on the floor above? I imagined her groping for the switch as I had done so many times coming to meet her in the evening. I would walk

floor

down

the long hallway at the end of which, having

would open her door. Perhaps she was there now, at that same place where I used to stand a few seconds, so as not to seem too out of breath. But the light stayed out: Concha had gone

heard

my

steps, she

the rest of the

way

long time. “Now,”

I

in darkness. I

waited quite a

told myself, “she

s

taking off

her clothes, she’s lying there with her arms around her knees, so flat beneath the covers that if some-

one came into her room to arrest her, he wouldn even bother opening the bed.”

145

t

Philippe Sollers

need big

I

my

cities.

The

balcony.

May

across the

Late at night,

flashes of heat lightning streaked

sky.

The

noise of motors, the squeal

of brakes, the reflection of a

board composed their I

was going

stayed out on

I

neon sign on a

futile distractions

around me.

abandon

to leave in a minute,

bill-

Paris,

But what dawned so gently inside me with the daylight, like an inextricable contradiction, this immutable thing on which my life would now be built and on which the exterior would probably

travel.

now on be only a series of tude, I mean— warned me that

from

youth. Like the old stories

variations— my

soli-

was cured of my where the dead from I

time to time come to advise the living,

it

was

as

if

Concha had reappeared only to comfort me. Was it even Concha? Or was it my sixteen years, the period of my life when I had been granted the grace of loving her? Nothing was lost, probably. I would see her again, we would agree to forget this evenings incident, there would be a thousand reasons to ignore old friend. self,

“don’t

.

would

.

Concha,

my

only love,

“For the moment/’

move around any more,

take cover.” I

.

it.

I

my

dear

reminded mv-

I

dig yourself

was growing slowly numb, but

stay there, leaning against

in,

knew my window I

146

A

Strange Solitude

My life opened and

watching the day dawn.

closed,

been happy? Much more than misery, which makes us depend on our desires, it is happiness which isolates. And I felt the whole

without a sound. Hadn’t

extent of

my

I

solitude as lucidity revealed

it

to

me;

the true, the only solitude: the solitude whose eyes are open. So

it

had come

seems that everything

is

then, this

moment when

it

collapsing around you, that

you are no longer jeopardized by anything that once could have compromised you, that at last you can pull yourself together. I would love other people, but only to interest myself in their most imperceptible movements, that mystery which escapes

and assumes for a little while the features of a face, the form of pleasure. But I accepted this mystery conditionally, I knew (contrary to what I had

us

thought a during self),

before, seeing Concha’s hysteria,

reality’s last

that

tapped its

moment

attempt to

would no longer deceive me, that I had power to make me suffer and left it only

it

its

enchantment.

The dawn was gathering of roofs

those

and

nor was it

147

treetops.

moments

and which,

it:

make me doubt my-

it

for

But

of ecstasy

against a background

was no longer one of had once known so well

this I

such a short time, cured

the resignation

was another

feeling

I

me

of habit;

had hated so—far from

which seized

me now-

Philippe S oilers

fragile,

perhaps, and temporary, the feeling of be-

ing from stir

and

now on

as far as possible

strategy. I write this

ridiculous: I felt I

from the world

though

was saved. And

it

s

may seem

in this

sudden

certainty (the certainty of being inaccessible) there

was a joy so great I felt I had found my way, I mean, a sense of no longer living shamefully glued to

some

illusion.

be able

And

then, feeling that I

was going

seemed inestimable, for it allowed me to observe, to feel, to compare its reactions though I would no longer play a part in them, as if I had withdrawn from the game to observe its to

last effects.

to

work,

life

Waiting for worse.

Le Martray -Paris, July -Dec ember, 1957

148

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