The Passion According to G.H. Read Free Page A

shall need courage to do what I’m about to do: speak. And risk the enormous surprise I shall feel at the poverty of the spoken thing. As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I’ll have to add: that’s not it, that’s not it! But I cannot be afraid of being ridiculous, I always preferred less to more also out of fear of the ridiculous: because there’s also the shattering of modesty. I’m putting off having to speak to myself. Out of fear?
    And because I don’t have a word to say.
    I don’t have a word to say. So why don’t I shut up? But if I do not force out the word muteness will swallow me forever in waves. Word and form will be the board upon which I float atop billows of muteness.
    And if I’m putting off the beginning it’s also because I don’t have a guide. The account of other travelers offers me few facts about the voyage: all the information is terribly incomplete.
    I feel a first freedom seizing me little by little. . . . Since until today I never had so little fear of lacking good taste: I wrote “billows of muteness,” which I never would have said before because I’ve always respected beauty and its intrinsic moderation. I said “billows of muteness,” my heart bows humbly, and I accept it. Have I finally lost a whole system of good taste? But is that all I’ve gained? I must have lived so imprisoned to feel freer now just because I no longer fear the lack of aesthetics. . . . I still can’t tell what else I gained. Slowly, perhaps, I’ll figure it out. For now the first timid pleasure I am having is realizing I lost my fear of ugliness. And that loss is such goodness. It is a sweetness.
    I want to know what else, in losing, I gained. I don’t know yet: only by reliving myself shall I live.
    But how to relive myself? If I don’t have a natural word to say. Will I have to make the word as if creating whatever happened to me?
    I shall create whatever happened to me. Only because life cannot be retold. Life is not livable. I shall have to create atop life. And without lying. Create yes, lie no. Creating isn’t imagination, it’s taking the great risk of grasping reality. Understanding is a creation, my only way. I’ll have to make the effort to translate telegraph signals — to translate the unknown into a language I don’t speak, and without even understanding what the signals mean. I shall speak that sleepwalker’s language that would not be a language if I were awake.
    Until I create the truth of what happened to me. Ah, it will be more like scratching than writing, since I’m attempting a reproduction more than an expression. I need to express myself less and less. Is that something else I lost? No, even when making sculptures I was already trying only to reproduce, and only with my hands.
    Will I get lost amidst the muteness of the signs? I will, because I know how I am: I could never see without immediately having to do more than see. I know I’ll be horrified like a blind person who finally opened her eyes to see — but see what? a mute and incomprehensible triangle. Could that person consider herself no longer blind just because she could see an incomprehensible triangle?
    I wonder: if I peer at the darkness with a magnifying glass, will I see more than darkness? the glass doesn’t expose the darkness, it only reveals more of it. And if I look at light with a magnifying glass, with a shock I will only see more light. I saw but am as blind as before because I saw an incomprehensible triangle. Unless I too transform myself into the triangle that will recognize in the incomprehensible triangle my own source and repetition.
    I’m putting it off. I know that everything I’m saying is just to put it off — to put off the moment when I will have to start to speak, knowing I’ve got nothing left to say. I’m putting off my silence. Have I done that my entire life? but now, out of disdain for the word, perhaps at last I can begin to speak.
    The telegraph signals. The world bristling