“I mean it to,” Ménalque's went on. “If only these people
around us could be convinced. But most of them believe they get nothing good
out of themselves except by constraint; they’re only pleased with themselves
when they’re under duress. If there’s one thing each of them claims not to resemble
it’s himself. Instead he sets up a model, then imitates it; he doesn’t even
choose the model—he accepts it ready-made. Yet I’m sure there’s something more
to be read in a man. People dare not—they dare not turn the page. The laws of
mimicry—I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves
alone, and don’t find themselves at all. I hate all this moral agoraphobia—it’s
the worst kind of cowardice. You can’t create something without being alone. But
who’s trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that’s the one
rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and
that’s just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.”
Another long silence, and then he went on: “Regret, remorse, repentance—they’re
all former joys, reversed. I don’t like looking back, and I leave my past
behind me the way a bird leaves its shady tree in order to fly away. I tell
you, Michel, each joy still awaits us, but must find the bed empty, must be the
only one, so that we come to it like a widower. Oh Michel, each joy is like
manna in the desert, which spoils from one day to the next; or like water from
the fountain of Ameles which Plato says no pitcher could preserve. Let each
moment carry away whatever it has brought.” Ménalque's talked
on much longer; I cannot repeat here everything he said; yet many of his
phrases were etched into my mind, the more deeply because I wanted to forget
them; not that they told me much that was new, but they suddenly laid bare my
own mind: thoughts I had covered with so many veils I almost believed they were
smothered. And so the vigil passed.
— André Gide (1869-1951)
