Magdeleine Marx

“ Really, can one forgive Clara her over-trimmed dress conceived in a nightmare? Can one forgive all of them their down-at-heel shoes, the lack of care and regard for others that they show in their appearance?
Should I adjust my days with no ups and downs in them to their volcanic days? "What's it all coming to?" cries Trude sometimes, and throws herself on her bed sobbing and losing herself in her emotions. Time passes and dies—one day, two days—suddenly she rises. She has forgotten her office, her meals, everything. She leans her forehead against the window-pane, and her tears flow bitterly. ”

“ I love him as I love no one, because he is the sole human being for whom I am responsible. My love is responsibility first and foremost. If he bends over, I suppress a cry; if the sun shines too strong on him, I shield him with my body; if he makes a new gesture, a slight disquiet flits through me. In whatever concerns him danger seems to lurk. He is a lively, approachable child, people like him, and when they come up and speak to him, I smile a pleasant, natural smile, though his life and his death keep up an incessant sport within me and incessantly it devolves upon me to secure his life. ”

“ I turn in every direction. The storm has increased. The rain is coming down in sheets and rebounding in mist. The polished pavements are cracked by quivering little ripples. The tempest drives the people ahead like leaves.
Whence this dread which blows like a typhoon from the future, breathing on my youth and freezing my blood? Whence these two words which gnaw at my breast like a canker? Six years....
No, no, it is impossible. I believe in the deluge, in the thunder, in misfortune, in oblivion. Not in that. Why should this face of mine with its curves, its marble purity and its color change? ”

“ You see us as we, wife and husband, used to embrace, how I leapt to his side, how his mouth clung to the fruits of my cheeks, and how we laughed a matchless laughter. Well, that is enough for you, return to your winter, to the virgin plain of your old age, to your years perched precipitously over death.
Am I the first by any chance to hide the truth from you?
The truth of to-day has no brilliance or halo. My joy in being a young bride is not at all what I used to fancy it would be.
The dominant motive of my life at present, its great preoccupation, is by no means to invent new words of love. ”

“ I shall have no more confused desires, no more sudden impulses of kindliness, no more agonized expectancy, and no more of those questionings which make a stifling desert about me. I shall be satisfied. If my hell returns at times to visit me, that red-eyed narrow-chested hell, my husband will be there, seated opposite me at table; he will raise his head. "What's the matter, aren't you hungry?"
The soul, the essence, the deep voice from within—words, mere words.... There is nothing but the noise below. And only that. And I must return to it. Well, come on, go down, speak, smile. ”

“ I was right a few minutes ago to want to blot myself out, because I ought not to count. Beyond my limited, restricted presence, he has the whole of infinity to breathe in.
Then where are the nights which are to enlighten me? Of him I know nothing but my love, nothing except that by his very existence he contradicts what I know of him. Who will tell me how far I must go and to what I must attain? I have slept in his arms, I have lived side by side with all his cares, and I have given myself up to him with a joy like unto which there is nothing. All I have given is myself. ”

“ Those who love as in books do not contemplate a long journey when they set out together, and if the short-lived blaze vanishes at the first turning in the road, it is not a great misfortune. Another spark will do for another kindling. And there are those who renounce, abdicate their own selves, bend the knee, and trust to love.... But how are those to act who are not cut in heroic marble, who do not want to lie or renounce, who don't pity the other one, who are not afraid of themselves, who love as people love in actual life, who are like us? ”

“ I have invoked the truth, I have taken pains, I have climbed up, I have striven, I have had radiant moments, days of flowering, and happiness was the same age as myself. Mother, have you forgiven me this?
I am not better-hearted than you, but it is the life about me which demands that one do more, love more. This is what differentiates and actually divides us.
Everything that sings and invites one out into the good old world, the "out-of-doors," seems pernicious to you. ”

“ If they are boisterous, spineless, unobservant, with no warmth in them, perhaps after all at some time at the bottom of their hearts they have felt, if only vaguely and vanishingly, the jealous fever which weighs like a heart; perhaps they have suffered; perhaps in looking back, when the sunshine has burst forth, they have understood that the period of their twenties was sacred. The twenties! And we, the youth, say to ourselves: wisdom is within us, the future is within us, and reason, salt, blood, the truth. It is ourselves, only ourselves. ”

“ The truth that reaches you is always different. Isn't it senseless to dread what depends upon yourself? Are we strangers that I should hesitate like this to run to him? Isn't he on the other side of the door, he of whom my body is thinking? Isn't it enough for us to look upon each other? Is there a single question he cannot understand? One seeks happiness. It is all so simple....
Ah, let us go astray every day, let us deceive ourselves, let us suffer alongside our own hearts, let us try to clasp the invisible! But this evening there is nothing but a thin partition between my secret and myself. ”

“ He wants the lamp to stay unlighted. But it is no longer the same. Our silence has been routed, and the languor, and the warmth also....
I am in a good position to observe him. How old? Thirty-four, thirty-five perhaps. Is he really handsome? Hard to say. He is too dark. His face is strongly chiseled, his cheeks sunken, his forehead hard as a hammer. The long line of his jaw lends refinement to his countenance, which is lit by eyes fearlessly open, in which the gray, in spots, seems steeped in phosphorous. His gestures are repressed and rather commanding. ”

“ I was not more beautiful than other women, but I wanted to be. In spite of me and in spite of themselves, the men hovered about me, lavish of their glances. I moved like a ray of joy, life was a festival redder than war; I expressed myself without saying a word, all hearts were ready, they gave me more love than I asked for and almost as much as I needed.
That was the air I breathed and had to breathe. Is it good, is it bad? It is an instinct which keeps turning rapidly round and round in you. ”

“ And may memory never take possession of this morning of utter unreserve; memory might distort it. And may memory never say: "This was the day of your birth and you were excited."
I am not unduly excited.... The present is always very simple. The sun is only an iridescent frolic, which flits and laughs without resting on the chapped bark of the pines.
This moment—this and none other—is made up of my robust body, the lullaby rustle of the wind-stirred leaves, the fragrance of resinous wood, the screech of a great bird, and the sky cleft by its black and white passage. ”

“ I will smile, then the time for parting will come. The hidden days contain the unknown.... But forever and ever it will be suffering.
The future is not a question you ask; it is the suffering that awaits you. Suffering is the answer to every question, and every instant claws the flesh. If you listen intently, you will hear that the echo of everything is a sob.
It is suffering. Suffering does not find a vent, it does not bleed in any cry, it clings to you, and nothing reveals it because it is omnipresent, so present and so plain that you can't look for or find it. ”

“ Night awaits you—you see—below the horizon, and we set out to meet it.
We take each other's arms, I feel my joy preparing; he smiles at the care I take to prevent his catching cold, and off we go, arm in arm, tramping to the tune of a sounding tread like two comrades who once were schoolmates.
The little nestling village lies far behind; at a gulp the turn in the road swallows up the last hut. The landscape ahead is still variegated, but as it draws gently nearer the colors wane, the ground flattens, the features relax as in a face after a smile.
Silence.... Twilight within us is falling also. ”

“ When I think of you I have a false vision of your living self with your cheeks of the color of life and your dear natural gestures. How can I help being all bewildered? Nothing is left. Even the memory of you changes from day to day. I can no longer recall the right tone of your voice. Your corpse is hidden. It is as if I were suffering for no reason at all.
Not to know how to suffer, perhaps that is what suffering is.... Not to divine where you are, is that your death?
The sparkling hearth-fire has scattered and gone out. Fire has devoured fire. ”