1958 – "The fools and the boors, satisfied with their sterility, often reproach me for not loving life... I, who love it so passionately! In truth, I do not love what they want me to take for life: theirs.

Living is not consuming today, digesting yesterday; it is PROJECTING tomorrow. It is above all accepting the Unknown, however tragic it may be. Those who live only in the passing minute may be dilettantes, clever and comfortable—but surely they are already the walking dead.

What gives youth its irresistible power is its unconscious and tacit acceptance of death. It is this silent consent that gives it its audacity, its recklessness, and sometimes its heroism. With age, this consent must become lucid and serene—not because death is the consent to eternal life, but because it is the perfect completion of life and the true goal of its fulfillment."

Mozart: "As death, when you look closely, is the true final goal of life, I have, for a few years, become so familiar with this true and perfect friend of man, that her image is no longer frightening to me, but very soothing, very comforting..."

Those who do not know the fascinating temptation of death and the exhausting battle it imposes on you cannot speak of life lightly.

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1959 – "There is a great difference between affirming an exceptional art and the humble, warm, and almost invisible presence of an art that belongs to the daily life of man. The former always signifies a great passion—hope or despair—the latter can only be ‘the discreet reminder of hope,’ as Goethe so aptly defined it. (My constant ambition)

We are indulgent only toward those we do not love. Perhaps this is what makes love so difficult.

Rivarol: 'Indulgence for those we know is far rarer than pity for those we do not know.'

Still Rivarol: 'Extraordinary minds place great value on the common and familiar things, while common minds love and seek only the extraordinary.'

And Jules Renard: 'A great poet need only use the established forms. Let the lesser poets worry about the imprudent generosity!' Think about it.

Difficulty in accepting one's age objectively. All the more absurd since the advantages of youth now have a much-diminished appeal for you.

What is difficult is not being loved, but loving oneself.

In this fierce world that crashes down with the noise of scrap metal and explosions, a direct and unblinking look at nature and its first truths would surely resonate as the cry of joy of a child. But could we still hear it?

It seems futile to search for signs of a language, when this language is no longer Word, but simply an accumulation of words.

They have eyes, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear. Today Christ would add: they have a tongue, but they do not speak it..."

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1959 – "Men today no longer speak: they 'chat.' How could they still perform the tragedy? It is essentially Word—sonorous, graphic, and plastic. And how could they still hear each other when Logos has become nothing more than logorrhea?

Man is so alone that he wishes to be heard—and he is so vain that he is satisfied with thinking he is being listened to... by people who do not hear him.

You cannot participate in the life of a community that does not concern you. The winemaker may become a sailor, but he cannot grow his vines on a boat. He must remain on the shore, doing his work alone, while waiting for the sailors to feel like taking a tack and having a drink.

Figurative space is all the more sensitive when the object it contains is not quite in proportion to it, not to the same scale. It then becomes unusual, and poetically receivable. In theatre, this disproportion can be seen in the actor’s physical presence in contrast to the slightly smaller virtual space in which he is placed, thus violating plausibility.

Private life... deprived of what?"

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1960 – "We should not say 'my life' but 'my lives,' for we always live several. In those moments of depression when we slip towards nothingness and self-negation, it seems that an invisible wound allows all your blood to escape. In fact, in this antechamber of death, it is an entire life that leaves you. For, emerging from this abyss, the one that returns is not the same. It is a new life, containing the Unknown of tomorrow, which must be accepted, whatever it is, by renouncing yesterday’s life.

Remaining available to receive these successive lives is perhaps the hardest thing. But the true refusal is the rejection of anything in the past that could compromise this availability; it is the refusal of a certain comfortable cowardice that may spare us from new wounds, but at the same time makes us lose our capacity for wonder, a miraculous privilege of childhood and the poet.

Resignation is, nine times out of ten, disguised cowardice: a postponement we ask from death.

The only gift that counts is not the one that relieves you, but the one that strips you.

From Mozart: 'I cried... what good did it do? I had to console myself afterward. Do as I did: cry, cry deeply, but then console yourself. Think that the Almighty wanted it, and what could we do against Him?'

In a futile proselytism, I spent three-quarters of my life trying to convince ignoramuses and fools. I did not convince them, and thus I lost time and energy that I should have better spent trying to make myself less ignorant and less foolish."

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1962 – "There are only two conditions for man: to accept his solitude and his sorrows, or to endure married life and its wounds. The first only has the advantage of sparing others the cruelty of the second."

It’s by the quality of the people who serve them that one recognizes true leaders. A leader does not command, he suggests, and he is served. A foreman commands and is merely obeyed.

Strange power of life. When you no longer have any reason to live, when nothing justifies your existence, when all your conclusions lead to the necessity of death, when you lucidly prepare for what seems to be a banal formality, a mysterious will, completely foreign to your consciousness, coming from I don't know where within you, unpredictable yet imperative, prevents you from making the fatal and definitive gesture, which is so simple. And instead of taking the lethal dose, which is then within your grasp, you take... a sedative.

Those who speak of the cowardice of suicide are fools who have never attempted it and do not know what they are talking about. On the contrary, it is the greatest, most difficult victory over an inherent and immeasurable cowardice. (May 7, 1961) A final act of faith."

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1962 – "I prefer to give my works to those who love them, rather than sell them to those who evaluate them—this costs a lot!"

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1963 – The thing only imagined will undoubtedly surprise, astonish, or even interest; it will never have the power to move.
Only the thing felt possesses this gift of emotion and, therefore, persuasion.
One must not confuse "impact" with "persuasion." Picasso is impactful.
The egoist, in the end, is a fool. For, content with the fleeting pleasures of receiving, he deprives himself of the only real joy: that of giving.

It is said that in every man, there is a sleeping pig. One could also say that in every woman, there is a whore who is either unaware or pretending.

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1964 – Drieu La Rochelle: "Man is born only to die, and he is never as alive as when he dies. But his life only has meaning if he gives it, instead of waiting for it to be taken from him."
From the same: "The new is born from the Old, from the Old that was once so Young!"

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1965 – My great sin has always been impatience, my constant worry: a struggle against time. Yet, I have never ceased to believe in the old adage of Leonardo: "Impatience, sister of folly, admires brevity." Never more relevant!
From the same Leonardo: "Painting declines from age to age, losing itself when painters only have the previous painting as their author." (And themselves).
For him, this did not mean destroying everything and starting from zero, but rather "continuing," perfecting, not doing nothing.
We begin by "Being"; then we continue, and finally, we begin again. The question is whether it is worth starting again?

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17 June 1966 – I attempt to kill myself.

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1 July 1966 – The good people! Now they have clear consciences, convinced they have "saved my life."
A life loathsome to me, one they condemn me to live.

The difficulty is not in killing oneself, but in thwarting the untimely intervention of all these "good people" who absolutely want to prevent you from dying. Why?
Logically, having (very freely) taken on the responsibility of forcing you to continue your stay on this agreeable planet, they should at least help you live this life you refused but which they are determined to see you live... if only for the comfort of their conscience.
O! Pontius Pilate! (And complacent cowardice!)

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September 1966 – My unity seems shattered, broken into a thousand pieces, like a glass that can no longer contain anything. "What does it matter the bottle..." is very nice, but: what if there is no bottle anymore?

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3 October 1966 – At this point, having completely lost the will to exist, I should logically attempt again to cross the great Frontier, now with the means and perhaps the certainty of success.
But what? What is this illusory hope that creeps into me?
A twist of Fate, or rather of the Devil, to prolong my stay in his hell? Indefinable hope... hope in nothing at all... absurd.
Perhaps cowardice? Or just the fear of failing again: a second defeat more ridiculous than the first.

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4 October 1966 – I choose to escape into a Sleep Cure – in a clinic.
A night of 10 days, so long that one loses all sense of time. A delightful parenthesis where one sees more clearly than in the day – clarity, not light. In the black night – "This obscure clarity that falls from the stars..." The old Corneille must have had a sleep cure.

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November 1966 – Alas! Parentheses, by definition, do not last. This clarity, akin to wonder, melts like snow in the spring.

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December 1966 – There are things that one gives (or takes) in Eros.
There are others that one bequeaths in death.
There are also things of no value that one can only dedicate.
I dedicate these already dead pages to you, my friends, in default of the Other that I so longed for and that never came.