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; surpassed myself. What can I say more, except that I know what it is to surpass 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 surpassed 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 passes away as I have passed 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,     

 Prev. P 38/42 next