began to cry, the woman sundered again into a woman-man, begging that by a miracle, by the great human strength of poets, she might be saved. But the animal strength which satisfies woman lies in brutal men, in the realists like Henry, and from him I do not want love. I prefer to move forward and choose my June, freely, like a man. But my body will die, because I have a sensual body, a living body, and there is no life in the love between women.
Hugo alone holds me, still, with his idolatry, his warm human love, his maturity, for he is the oldest among all of us.
I want to write so wonderfully to June that I can't write to her at all. What a pathetically inadequate letter:
"I cannot believe that you will not come again towards me from the darkness of the garden. I wait sometimes where we used to meet, expecting to feel again the joy of seeing you walk towards me out of a crowd—you, so distinct and unique.
"After you went away the house suffocated me. I wanted to be alone with my image of you....
"I have taken a studio in Paris, a small, shaky place, and attempt to run away only for a few hours a day, at least. But what is this other life I want to lead without you? I have to imagine that you are there, June, sometimes. I have a feeling that I want to be you. I have never wanted to be anyone but myself before. Now I want to melt into you, to be so terribly close to you that my own self disappears. I am happiest in my black velvet dress because it is old and is torn at the elbows.
"When I look at your face, I want to let go and share your madness, which I carry inside of me like a secret and cannot conceal any more. I am full of an acute, awesome joy. It is the joy one feels when one has accepted death and disintegration, a joy more terrible and more profound than the joy of living, of creating."
MARCH
Yesterday at the Café de la Rotonde Henry told me he had written me a letter which he had torn up. Because it was a crazy letter. A love letter. I received this silently, without surprise. I had sensed it. There is so much warmth between us. But I am unmoved. Deep down. I am afraid of this man, as if in him I had to face all the realities which terrify me. His sensual being affects me. His ferocity, enveloped in tenderness, his sudden seriousness, the heavy, rich mind. I am a bit hypnotized. I observe his fine soft white hands, his head, which looks too heavy for his body, the forehead about to burst, a shaking head, harboring so much that I love and hate, that I want and fear. My love of June paralyzes me. I feel warmth towards this man, who can be two separate beings. He wants to take my hand and I appear not to notice. I make a swift gesture of flight.
I want his love to die. What I have been dreaming of, just such a man's desire of me, now I reject. The moment has come to sink in sensuality, without love or drama, and I cannot do it.
He misunderstands so much: my smile when he talks about June at first fighting off all his ideas violently and later absorbing them and expressing them as if they were her own. "It happens to all of us," he says, looking at me aggressively, as if my smile had been one of disdain. I believe he wants to fight. After the violence, the bitterness, the brutality, the ruthlessness he has known, my state of mellowness annoys him. He finds that, like a chameleon, I change color in the café, and perhaps lose the color I have in my own home. I do not fit into his life.
His life—the underworld, Careo, violence, ruthlessness, monstrosity, gold digging, debauch. I read his notes avidly and with horror. For a year, in semisolitude, my imagination has had time to grow beyond measure. At night, in a fever, Henry's words press in on me. His violent, aggressive manhood pursues me. I taste that violence with my mouth, with my womb. Crushed against the earth with the man over me, possessed until I want to cry out.
At the Café Viking, Henry talks about discovering my real nature one evening
Hugo alone holds me, still, with his idolatry, his warm human love, his maturity, for he is the oldest among all of us.
I want to write so wonderfully to June that I can't write to her at all. What a pathetically inadequate letter:
"I cannot believe that you will not come again towards me from the darkness of the garden. I wait sometimes where we used to meet, expecting to feel again the joy of seeing you walk towards me out of a crowd—you, so distinct and unique.
"After you went away the house suffocated me. I wanted to be alone with my image of you....
"I have taken a studio in Paris, a small, shaky place, and attempt to run away only for a few hours a day, at least. But what is this other life I want to lead without you? I have to imagine that you are there, June, sometimes. I have a feeling that I want to be you. I have never wanted to be anyone but myself before. Now I want to melt into you, to be so terribly close to you that my own self disappears. I am happiest in my black velvet dress because it is old and is torn at the elbows.
"When I look at your face, I want to let go and share your madness, which I carry inside of me like a secret and cannot conceal any more. I am full of an acute, awesome joy. It is the joy one feels when one has accepted death and disintegration, a joy more terrible and more profound than the joy of living, of creating."
MARCH
Yesterday at the Café de la Rotonde Henry told me he had written me a letter which he had torn up. Because it was a crazy letter. A love letter. I received this silently, without surprise. I had sensed it. There is so much warmth between us. But I am unmoved. Deep down. I am afraid of this man, as if in him I had to face all the realities which terrify me. His sensual being affects me. His ferocity, enveloped in tenderness, his sudden seriousness, the heavy, rich mind. I am a bit hypnotized. I observe his fine soft white hands, his head, which looks too heavy for his body, the forehead about to burst, a shaking head, harboring so much that I love and hate, that I want and fear. My love of June paralyzes me. I feel warmth towards this man, who can be two separate beings. He wants to take my hand and I appear not to notice. I make a swift gesture of flight.
I want his love to die. What I have been dreaming of, just such a man's desire of me, now I reject. The moment has come to sink in sensuality, without love or drama, and I cannot do it.
He misunderstands so much: my smile when he talks about June at first fighting off all his ideas violently and later absorbing them and expressing them as if they were her own. "It happens to all of us," he says, looking at me aggressively, as if my smile had been one of disdain. I believe he wants to fight. After the violence, the bitterness, the brutality, the ruthlessness he has known, my state of mellowness annoys him. He finds that, like a chameleon, I change color in the café, and perhaps lose the color I have in my own home. I do not fit into his life.
His life—the underworld, Careo, violence, ruthlessness, monstrosity, gold digging, debauch. I read his notes avidly and with horror. For a year, in semisolitude, my imagination has had time to grow beyond measure. At night, in a fever, Henry's words press in on me. His violent, aggressive manhood pursues me. I taste that violence with my mouth, with my womb. Crushed against the earth with the man over me, possessed until I want to cry out.
At the Café Viking, Henry talks about discovering my real nature one evening
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