The Hour of the Star Read Free

flight in horror.
    I now want to speak of the girl from the North-east. It's as follows: like some vagrant bitch she was guided entirely by her own remote control. For she had reduced herself to herself. After successive failures, I have also reduced myself, but I still want to discover the world and its God.
    I should like to add some details about the young girl and myself; we live exclusively in the present because forever and eternally it is the day of today, and the day of tomorrow will be a today. Eternity is the state of things at this very moment.
    See how apprehensive I have become since putting down words about the girl from the North-east. The question is: how do I write? I can verify that I write by ear, just as I learned English and French by ear. My antecedents as a writer? I am a man who possesses more money than those who go hungry, and this makes me in some ways dishonest. I only lie at the precise hour of lying. But when I write I do not lie. What else? Yes, I belong to no social category, marginal as I am. The upper classes consider me a strange creature, the middle classes regard me with suspicion, afraid that I might unsettle them, while the lower classes avoid me.
    No, it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.
    I am scared of starting. I do not even know the girl's name. It goes without saying that this story drives me to despair because it is too straightforward. What I propose to narrate sounds easy and within everyone's grasp. But its elaboration is extremely difficult. I must render clear something that is almost obliterated and can scarcely be deciphered. With stiff, contaminated fingers I must touch the invisible in its own squalor.
    Of one thing I am certain: this narrative will combine with something delicate: the creation of an entire human being who is as much alive as I am. I have taken care of her because my mandate is simply to reveal her presence so that you may recognize her on the street, moving ever so cautiously because of her quivering frailty. And should my narrative turn out to be sad? Later, I shall almost certainly write something more cheerful, but why cheerful? Because I, too, am a man of hosannas and perhaps one day I shall intone praises instead of the misfortunes of the girl from the North-east.
    Meantime, I want to walk naked or in rags; I want to experience at least once the insipid flavour of the Host. To eat communion bread will be to taste the world's indifference, and to immerse myself in nothingness. This will be my courage: to abandon comforting sentiments from the past.
    There is little comfort now. In order to speak about the girl I mustn't shave for days. I must acquire dark circles under my eyes from lack of sleep: dozing from sheer exhaustion like a manual labourer. Also wearing threadbare clothes. I am doing all this to put myself on the same footing as the girl from the North-east. Fully aware that I might have to present myself in a more convincing manner to societies who demand a great deal from someone who is typing at this very moment.
    Yes, all this, for history is history. But knowing beforehand so as never to forget that the word is the fruit of the word. The word must resemble the word. To attain the word is my first duty to myself. The word must not be adorned and become aesthetically worthless; it must be simply itself. It is also true that I have attempted to acquire a certain refinement of feeling and that this extreme refinement should not break into a perpetual line. At the same time, I have attempted to imitate the deep, raw, dense sound of the trombone, for no good reason except that I feel so nervous about writing that I might explode into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I want to accept my freedom without reaching the conclusion like so many others: that existence is only for fools and lunatics: for it would seem that to exist is illogical.
    The action of this story will result in