A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney
Page 12
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My sorrows? I invent them, I have to for sheer joy.
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“Creating literature,” what a nasty reproach to life!
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How horrible life is—the life of others.
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I am suffering a crisis of equilibrium!
One is not oneself everyday—fortunately.
And their superstitions...
Hard times cannot last forever.
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Those who go to sleep with anger will not wake up together.
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As long as one is young one is ageless.
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Every night I dream that you are unfaithful, but last night I finally had a good dream: you killed yourself for me.
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She is not worth my pains to win her—my pain is worth my pains.
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(In praise of a lover) He knew so well how not to kiss me!
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Lace: the art of the hole.
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Eyes to be gazed at, to receive admirers, having given up seeing for themselves.
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Eyes sharp as barley stalks beneath arched brows—arresting eyes.
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Proud, weary eyes—eyes which hold back tears.
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Her current mood: to be heavy hearted!
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Eyes so pale they seem to sap the colour from everything they look
at (the eyes of a moralist).
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Those who stare at the sun see everything bathed in gold: just so,
having gazed so long into your eyes, everything I look at takes on
their color.
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To love is to see through two pairs of eyes.
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Women pass by, freshly made up: bad paintings no one would
sign their name to.
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Fashion: the search for a new absurdity.
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She called me "my love," the name had become a habit, spoken
without feeling, the beginning of a sentence which would end quite differently; a sad domestic word from which all joy had gone...
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Words would become little graves if we did not abandon them in time.
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How many people have locked up their whole lives in one empty word.
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To be coward enough to choose!
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To have the strength and simplicity to be weak.
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If motherhood happened backwards, starting with the pains of
labour, there would still be mothers, but mothers of a different
kind, willing heroines not victims of an oversight, or wretched
martyrs to a trick of nature.
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All our unshed tears are inscribed on our faces by the passage of time.
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That refinement of suffering: to smile.
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An express letter arrived informing one of them of the death of
her hopes. A few tears rose to her eyes, then she wrapped herself
up in the trappings of sorrow. She became a kind of widow with-
out a veil, untouchable in her mourning... closed in, isolated,
turned to ice almost instantaneously as people are by misfortune.
To become invulnerable, untouchable, insensitive, closed in
response to the blow we have suffered, is that not too much like
dying with the dead?
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Might not pain be the anvil on which one cracks only base metals?
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Our shadows are taller than ourselves.
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You say such sweet words to me; why are you not she?
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How wearying it is to have enemies but no adversaries!
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Is it really you I am talking to? I do not know, but someone I love is listening.
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In a world of artifice walked the real gold of her hair.
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To be big enough for happiness.
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Which of all our pasts will be the Past?
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I did not yet know it would be you I would love in you—I did not
yet know it was you I would love in others!
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I sensed he found me prettier than he feared!
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Do you love me? I ask so that the question will occupy your mind,
so that you will tell yourself the answer. For it is for your sake far
more than for mine that I want you to love me.
I would like to make you the splendid gift of the love you will
have for me. I cannot give myself however, to those who do not
know how to take me.
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With you I am like the nervous mother who does nor know how
to caress her baby, who only dares to approach when it is asleep
and bends over furtively to kiss it. I love you in the shadows and solitude of myself. No doubt it would be better to show a more daily tenderness in simple little things and material detail. But one does not love as one wishes—one loves as one is!
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The differences between us are mere details—essential details!
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What did you see in the Salon? I saw—that I was seen.
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She liked to look at the mirrors on her walls, the only self-portraits she had.
The fine veins of her temples, little blue streams under her transparent skin, seemed to have poured their colour into the irises of her eyes.
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Weak as I am, I have strength only for passion!
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There are women whose black eyes sparkle with energy—they
make me feel so irredeemably blonde!
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Women with an impersonal pearl necklace round their necks. A
chain whose symbolism has become almost universal: the anonymous token of servility...
Those pearls are doubly distressing having lost all link with their mysterious origin by adorning the necks of so many ungainly young ladies. And yet they shimmer still, having brushed the cheeks of sirens long ago, underneath the water.
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To be free, even if only for serial servitude.
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How often we love what we do not like, how much oftener we dislike what we love!
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To be beautiful, at the right time.
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A woman: take her or leave her, but do not take her and leave her.
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One is unfaithful to those one loves so that their charm will not become mere habit.
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Like a city at night I have watched women pass by lit up by their jewelry.
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How many great beauties are not beautiful!
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It is harder to keep what you've got than to catch someone new.
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I see her sometimes in her car accompanied by some new rose, sitting beside her on its long stalk, just like a pretty companion.
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Why complicate our instincts with our will?
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She was thirty-five, in other words sometimes seventeen and
sometimes forty-seven.
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To be of no particular period. Only fashion goes out of date.
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Might I be the one I am looking for?
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That American girl has breeding.— She has all breeds.
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Our daily lives betray us.
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To love what one has is to be resigned to never getting what one wants.
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Those who need to learn will never know a thing.
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How many men want to be our lovers who are not worthy to be our valets.
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What have you loved best?
—Loving.
And if you had several choices?
—I would choose love many times.
Their Lovers
She introduced me to pleasure—and I have never forgiven her.
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How quickly one loses in their orbit everything one went there to seek.
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Still in love: passionately performing for her things one no longer
expected of oneself.
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Loving her: having her leaps of joy.
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Eros is the youngest of the gods—he's also the weariest.
How much I must love her to force myself to adopt this amorous attitude which so annoys me.
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Lovers too should get the day off.
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An old mistress, a kind of obscene mother.
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Seek out those women who walk on their toes—they still exist.
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At night, along hotel corridors, I look at the shoes before each
bedroom door. The shoes of couples, down at heel, misshapen by business calls and sordid pleasures; children's shoes, personal but lacking individuality, evocative of pleasant walks, surprises and sudden, mysterious exhaustion; the shoes of well-groomed men, better-groomed... best-groomed! then the shoes of a woman alone, little tiny shoes worn down at the toe.
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I belonged to everyone, she belonged to no one: we considered ourselves quite different, and yet in our loneliness we were alike.
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We speak to each other, indeed we do, to discover we share the
same silence.
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When you do not reply, I doubt myself, I am angry with myself,
I am disloyal to myself.
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To wait in vain is sometimes a way of having.
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What is that stubborn, blinkered desire which wants only one
thing? And this desire, infinitely more stubborn, infinitely more
blinkered which, in that thing, wants only one thing!
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Only the rejection of those poor enough to inspire no other desire
can make us feel aggrieved.
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That petty, intimate cowardice she calls her duty.
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Metamorphosis: the scent of jasmine with the hands of a woman.
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One does not give oneself to the invisible, but one can take it.
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Lovers? Most certainly, see how bored they are together.
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I waited for her and she didn't come, could I be younger than I think?
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They lack only time for the essentials.
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Gallantry refused: You gave it some importance… I should have
done as you did.
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As others need to get drunk, I need fresh air: adieu.
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She forgot her eyes upon my face.
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We exchanged words which were as sweet as dreams, of which
sweet nothing remains!
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We end up preferring the leaves to the flowers.
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Your resistance: so many sighs for the life you do not dare to live!
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Ten yards away she was already preparing her face to smile.
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Precious stones, a woman's lidless eyes.
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Her eyelashes fluttered like a fan.
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She said things which were amazed to find themselves on her lips.
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Her hands were as warm as though all the kisses they received had come back to life.
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I did not realize you were so tall...
—That is because I have always been on my knees before you.
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When she lowers her eyes she seems to hold all the beauty in the
world between her eyelids; when she raises them I see only myself
in her gaze.
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You are sad that she might cheat on you; she is, perhaps, the sadder.
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Her flesh is so sensitive she feels even the shadows which prowl about her.
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... And then to fall asleep like drunken gods.
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I only know how to want what I want... and what I want, would you want it?
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Violence, a pimp's argument.
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A Russian wrote her letters like an opera libretto. Women always
like reassuring cliches from those who know not to bother them
with a personality in any way different from that of the usual lover.
Perhaps that's their way of being faithful?
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Courage after love: She dared to die... I dared to live.
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I am leaving never to return.
—But you are looking back...
Better to appreciate that I'm leaving.
Epigrams from Souvenirs Indiscrets
How can we claim to possess someone else when we are scarcely in
possession of ourselves.
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In vain do jealous lovers keep watch on their beloved, she escapes
them—be it only in her thoughts. Should they kill her, her escape
is the more complete. How many pointless crimes are committed
in this futile quest for possession?
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Only that which changes and transforms remains alive. The tenderest
of feelings is in danger of extinction if it does not evolve.
I am more passionately committed to living without illusions than to
abandoning myself to them—even when they make me happy.
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Let us try to avoid that automatism of sentiment where the same
words and gestures are endlessly repeated without feeling or
thought. It is that automatism which makes couples, love letters
and family reunions so tedious.
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As desire continues it becomes as monotonous as the waves: how
far we are from the lightning-lit storm which fell upon us with the
violence of an element unleashed.
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A heart which does nor beat with all its strength, which knows no
weakness, is merely an organ.
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How many limit their horizons to a happy life lived in harmony?
Love may be fobbed off with false values; friendship requires the
real thing.
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Avoid that romantic trap: saying more than you feel, forcing yourself
to feel more than you've said!
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Light-hearted love affairs, rainbow-hued, like soap bubbles sting
when the bubble bursts.
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When we seek refuge inside ourselves, and our solitude seems
precious, it is because we run the risk of losing it!
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When you're in love you never really know whether your elation
comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes
them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo
comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.
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“Why?” asks my beautiful, disappointing companion, "Do you
care about the arts now that you have me?"
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There are some women it would be foolhardy to take out of their
natural setting: bed.
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Every victim awaits her hour, "Whe
n I no longer care for the one
who keeps me in chains, what freedom I shall have to loathe him!"
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Often we set ourselves to love what we should only desire, then we
end up marrying just anyone.
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What makes marriage a double defeat is the fact that it works on the lowest common denominator: neither of the ill-assorted pair gets what they want.
Indiscretions
On Love
Love, that state of grace, that act of faith, to love is to take the veil.
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Like all religions, love has more believers than practitioners.
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Love begins where personal interest ends.
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"Love your neighbor as yourself." It would appear that no one loves themselves.
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Those who say their love is infinite, love infinitely little.
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How little love there is in most love affairs!
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If it is the most intense moments of passion we forget the soonest,
that is because they are consumed by their own intensity.
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When, after a night of love, we seek some material reminder to
carry with us, it is so that we can go on believing after we've come back down to earth.
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A grand passion is hard to bear for very long. It weighs us down,
we weigh it down. Who will collapse first?
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Loving is not as easy as it seems. To keep it alive you need a magic
potion, invincible habit, or varied torment. Or perhaps all three.
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If love needs constance and desire needs change, how can we
reconcile the two?
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What arrogance to say, "I am sure of her, I am sure of myself."
Such arrogance goes before a fall.
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In love there is no status quo.
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Does not happiness, the well-being of the heart, like the
well-being of the body, contain within it the seeds of its own destruction—starting with doubt.
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As Renée Vivien observed, "The best part of love is friendship."
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If passion has developed into tenderness, we should welcome that
tenderness as the surest of our assets.
Alcohol
Alcohol, our common ancestor.
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...The only disease we drink thirstily and which is sure to destroy
us— and our descendants.
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"God will punish you even to the third and fourth generation."