Part 14 (2/2)

Something shall not always remain.

For the main already is fulfilment.

What remains in me, is to be known even as I know.

I know her now: or perhaps, I know my own limitation against her.

Plunging as I have done, over, over the brink I have dropped at last headlong into nought, plunging upon sheer hard extinction; I have come, as it were, not to know, died, as it were; ceased from knowing; surpa.s.sed myself.

What can I say more, except that I know what it is to surpa.s.s myself?

It is a kind of death which is not death.

It is going a little beyond the bounds.

How can one speak, where there is a dumbness on one's mouth?

I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me, she is all not-me, ultimately.

It is that that one comes to.

A curious agony, and a relief, when I touch that which is not me in any sense, it wounds me to death with my own not-being; definite, inviolable limitation, and something beyond, quite beyond, if you understand what that means.

It is the major part of being, this having surpa.s.sed oneself, this having touched the edge of the beyond, and perished, yet not perished.

VII

I WANT her though, to take the same from me.

She touches me as if I were herself, her own.

She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that I am the other, she thinks we are all of one piece.

It is painfully untrue.

I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root and quick of my darkness and perish on me, as I have perished on her.

Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall have each our separate being.

And that will be pure existence, real liberty.

Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved, unextricated one from the other.

It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinction of being, that one is free, not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.

When she has put her hand on my secret, darkest sources, the darkest outgoings, when it has struck home to her, like a death, ”this is _him!_”

she has no part in it, no part whatever, it is the terrible _other_, when she knows the fearful _other flesh_, ah, dark- ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and concrete, when she is slain against me, and lies in a heap like one outside the house, when she pa.s.ses away as I have pa.s.sed away being pressed up against the _other_, then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her, I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished in silver, having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere, one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique, and she also, pure, isolated, complete, two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction.

Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect.

VIII

AFTER that, there will only remain that all men detach themselves and become unique, that we are all detached, moving in freedom more than the angels, conditioned only by our own pure single being, having no laws but the laws of our own being.

Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled.

Every movement will be direct.

Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces when we think of it lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.

Every man himself, and therefore, a surpa.s.sing singleness of mankind.

The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un- dimmed, the hen will nestle over her chickens, we shall love, we shall hate, but it will be like music, sheer utterance, issuing straight out of the unknown, the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us unbidden, unchecked, like amba.s.sadors.

We shall not look before and after.

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