The middle of the day is like the middle of the
night. Life seems suspended just when it is most intense. These are the
moments in which one hears the infinite and perceives the ineffable.
Victor Hugo, in his "Contemplations," has been carrying me from world to
world, and since then his contradictions have reminded me of the
convinced Christian with whom I was talking yesterday in a house near
by.... The same sunlight floods both the book and nature, the doubting
poet and the believing preacher, as well as the mobile dreamer, who, in
the midst of all these various existences, allows himself to be swayed
by every passing breath, and delights, stretched along the car of his
balloon, in floating aimlessly through all the sounds and shallows of
the ether, and in realizing within himself all the harmonies and
dissonances of the soul, of feeling, and of thought. Idleness and
contemplation! Slumber of the will, lapses of the vital force, indolence
of the whole being--how well I know you! To love, to dream, to feel, to
learn, to understand--all these are possible to me if only I may be
relieved from willing. It is my tendency, my instinct, my fault, my sin.
I have a sort of primitive horror of ambition, of struggle, of hatred,
of all which dissipates the soul and makes it dependent upon external
things and aims.
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