by André Gide
Our blood had become too thin; it was escaping from all over our bodies; it oozed from our gums, from our nostrils, from our eyelids, from under our nails; it seemed at times to be nothing more than a stagnant humor and almost to cease circulating; the slightest movement made it pour out as from a tilted cup; under the skin, in the tenderest areas it formed livid spots; our heads swam and we were overcome by a feeling of nausea; our necks ached; because our teeth were loose and shook in their alveoli, we could not eat dry sea biscuit; cooked in water it formed a thick pap in which our teeth stuck and remained. Rice tore the skin from our gums; about all we could do was drink. And lying listlessly on the deck all day long, we dreamed of ripe fruits, with fresh tasty meat, of fruits from the islands we had once known, from the pernicious islands. But even then I believe that we would have refused to taste them. We rejoiced because Paride was no longer with us and did not share our suffering. But the hemostatic liquor cured our sickness.
It was the evening of the last day; the sun that marked the season’s end had disappeared on the horizon; a crepuscular glow remained long after its disappearance. The sunset was without agony, without purple on the clouds; the sun had disappeared slowly; its refracted rays still reached us. But it was already beginning to become very cold; the sea around us had frozen once more, imprisoning the ship. The ice thickened by the hour and constantly threatened to crush the ship; it offered us only the flimsiest protection, and we resolved to leave it. But I want to state clearly that our decision resulted neither from despair nor from timorous prudence but rather from a maniacal urge, for we could still break the ice, flee from the winter and follow the course of the sun; but that would have taken us backward. And so, preferring the harshest shores, provided that they were new, we moved toward the night, our day having come to an end. We knew that happiness is not simply escape from sadness; we were going, proud and strong, beyond the worst sorrows to the purest joy.
From parts of the ship we had fashioned a sled. After hitching the big reindeer to the sled, we began to load it with wood, axes and ropes. The last rays were disappearing as we set out toward the pole. On the deck of the ship was one spot, hidden by piles of cordage, which we never went near. Oh sad day’s end, when before leaving the ship, I walked the full length of the deck! Behind the rolls of cordage, when I untied them to take them along, alas, what did I see?
Paride!
We had sought for him in vain; I supposed that he, too weak to stir and too sick to reply, had hidden there like a dog searching for a place to die. But was this really Paride?
He was hairless, beardless; his teeth lay white on the deck around him, where he had spat them out. His skin was mottled, like a piece of cloth on which the colors have run; it was violet and pearl; nothing was more pitiful to see. He had lost his eyelashes, and at first I was unable to determine whether he was looking at us or at something else, for he could no longer smile. His huge, swollen, mummified, spongy gums had retracted and split his lips and now bulged outward like a large fruit; protruding from the middle was one white tooth, his last. He tried to extend his hand; his bones were too fragile and broke. I wanted to grasp his hand; it fell apart in mine, leaving between my fingers blood and rotted flesh. I think that he saw tears in my eyes, for he seemed to understand then that it was he who was crying, and I think that he still nurtured some hope concerning his condition which my tears of pity dissipated, for suddenly he uttered a raucous cry which was supposed to be a sob, and with the hand that I had not crushed, in a gesture of despair, a tragic and truly hopeless gesture, seizing the tooth and his lips, ironically and as if in jest, he suddenly tore out a great strip of flesh and fell back, dead.
That evening, as a sign of mourning and farewell, we burned the ship. Night was approaching majestically, moving in slowly. The flames leapt up triumphantly; the sea was aflame; the great masts and beams burned and then, the vessel having been consumed, the purple flames sank once again. Leaving the irreparable past, we set out for the polar sea.
Silence of night on the snow. Nocturnal silence. Solitude, and you, calm relief of death. Vast timeless plain; the sun’s last rays have withdrawn. All shapes are frozen; cold holds sway on the calm plain, and stillness—and stillness. And serenity. O pure rapture of our souls! Nothing stirs in the air, but a congealed radiance emanates from the glistening icebergs and hovers in the air. All is pale nocturnal blue—shall I say lunar blue?
The moon. Alone in these ecstatic surroundings, I prayed. “Ellis! Ellis! you* who are not the one whom I have found; sweet Ellis, is it here that you have been waiting for me? I would go still farther, but I am waiting for you to speak—and all will soon be over.”
I sought her lost figure—and my soul spoke its prayer. Then the night reclaimed its silence, and all its serenity.
Then why await the dawn? No one knows when it will come. There is no time for waiting. After sleeping for a little while, we set out by night for the pole.
Deposits of pure gypsum! Salt quarries! Tombstone-white marble! Mical All is whiteness in the dark. Light hoarfrosts, smiling by day and flashing like gems by night! Snowdrifts! Congealed avalanches! Dunes of moondust, eider feathers on sea foam, icecaps with taciturn hopes!
The hours glided by as we walked slowly through the snow; our grave, unhurried gestures emphasized the solemnity of our undertaking. Thus all seven of us—Alain, Axel, Morgain, Nathanaël, Ydier, Eric and I—moved toward our tasks.
Eric and the others were sleeping; the hut was calm; outside, a starless night on the vast rimy plain; above the plain, because of its whiteness, the night had grown somewhat pale; a faint gleam rimmed the earth; I sought a place to pray. As I was kneeling and beginning my prayer, I saw Ellis. She was sitting on a rock nearby, pensive; her dress was snow-covered, her hair blacker than the night.
“Ellis! So it is you,” I sobbed. “Oh, I knew it was you!”
But she remained silent, and I said to her:
“Do you know what sad experiences I have lived through since I lost you? What desolate regions I have crossed since your hand ceased to guide me? One day, on the bank of a stream, I thought I had again found you, but it was only a woman. Oh, forgive me! I have longed for you for so long. Where will you lead me now through this night near the pole, Ellis, my sister?”
“Come,” she said to me. And taking me by the hand, she led me to the top of a tall rock from which the sea was visible. I looked, and suddenly the night was torn asunder as a vast aurora borealis spread out over the waves. It was reflected in the sea; there was a silent trickling of phosphorus, a calm precipitation of flashes; and the silence of these astounding splendors was like the voice of God.* It seemed that the purple and pink flames, incessantly agitated, were a palpitation of the Divine Will. All was silent; my dazzled eyes closed; but Ellis put her finger on my eyelids, and when I opened my eyes, I could no longer see anything except her.
“Urien! Urien, sad brother! You who have always dreamed only of me! Remember the games we once played. Why did you have the urge in a moment of boredom to chase after my fortuitous image? You must have known that that was neither the time nor the place to possess. I await you beyond time, where the snows are eternal; we shall have crowns of snow, not garlands of flowers. Your voyage will come to an end, my brother. Never look toward the past. There are still other lands, lands which you have never known and will never know. What would it have availed you to know them? For each the route is unique and each route leads to God. But it is not from this life that your eyes can see His glory. You spoke cruel words to the poor child whom you mistook for me—and how could you have made that mistake? Then you abandoned her. She was not alive; you created her; now you must wait for her; for she could not ascend alone to the city of God. Oh! I wanted us, both of us, to take the starry route, together, alone, to the pure lights. You must guide the other one. Both of you will complete your voyage; but this end is not the true one; nothing achieves completion, my brother, except in God; be not dismayed, therefore, if
you think that you are on the verge of death. Behind one heaven is another; behind all of them is God. Beloved brother, hold fast to your Hope.”
Then, bending over, she wrote on the snow in glowing letters words which I, kneeling, was able to read:
THEY HAVE NOT YET OBTAINED WHAT GOD HAD PROMISED THEM—THAT ONLY IN COMPANY WITH US SHOULD THEY REACH PERFECTION.1
I wanted to speak to her, to ask her to speak to me at greater length, and I reached out toward her; but in the dead of night she pointed to the aurora and, rising slowly like an angel laden with prayers again set out on the seraphic route. As she rose her dress changed into a nuptial gown; I saw that it was fastened with jeweled pins; it glittered with stones; and although their brilliancy was such that it might have consumed my eyelashes, I did not feel the searing heat because of the celestial sweetness that flowed from her outstretched hands. She no longer looked toward me; I saw her ascending higher and higher; she reached the glowing gates; she was about to disappear behind a cloud.… Then a much-whiter light dazzled me and when the cloud parted, I saw angels. Ellis was in their midst, but I could not recognize her; each angel, with upraised arms, was shaking what I had mistaken for the aurora—a curtain that had again been lowered in front of immortal flashes of light; each flame was a veil through which shone the Light. Great flashes escaped through the fringes—but when the angels pulled aside the curtain, such a cry rent the skies that I covered my eyes with my hand and fell prostrate with terror.
When I arose again, night had closed in once more; in the distance I heard the voice of the sea. When I returned to the huts, I found my companions still asleep; I lay down near them, overcome by sleep.
Journey toward the pole. The excessive whiteness of things produces a strange glow; they are bathed in radiance. The wind blows furiously, and the snow, lifted up and driven by the wind, scatters, piles up, whirls, undulates, furls as cloth or human hair. One obstacle after another along the route made our journey very slow; we had to cut our way through the ice, chiseling stairs as we advanced. I do not wish to speak of our labors; they were so painful, so hard that I would seem to be complaining if I merely recounted them. Nor do I wish to speak of either the cold or our suffering; it would be ridiculous to say, “We suffered terribly,” for our suffering was immeasurably greater than anything these words might suggest. I would never succeed in conveying through words the supreme bitterness of our suffering; I would never be able to explain how the very acridity of our suffering gave birth to something resembling joy, pride; nor the rabid bite of the cold.
Far to the north towered a strange rampart of ice; an enormous and prismatic block stood there like a wall. Leading up to it was a deep ravine into which spilled a whirling mass of snow, driven perhaps by an unwavering wind. Without the ropes that linked us to each other, we would have been buried in the snow. Soon we were so tired of walking through the storm that, in spite of the danger of lying down on the snow, we stretched out to sleep. We took shelter behind a big block of ice; the wind blew the snow overhead; the wall formed a grotto. We were lying on the bed of the sled and on the skin of the slaughtered reindeer.
While the other six were sleeping, I went out alone from the grotto to see if it had stopped snowing. Through the shroud of snow I thought I saw Ellis, pensive near a white rock. She seemed not to see me; she was looking toward the pole; her hair was loose, and the wind was blowing it across her face. I dared not speak to her because she seemed so sad, and I doubted that it was she. And as I was unable to be sad and to finish the voyage at the same time, I left her and went back to sleep.
The snow is now flying over our heads because of the very violence of the wind. We are at the foot of a great wall. A strange passageway leads there. The wall, as smooth as a mirror and as transparent as crystal is depressed at the end of the passageway. One spot where no snow has fallen is also transparent. Bending under the weight of our presentiments, we read these two words, written on the wall as if by a diamond on glass and reminiscent of a voice from the grave:
HIC DESPERATVS
and then a blurred date.
And under these words we saw, after we had fallen on our knees in a common gesture—we saw a corpse lying inside the transparent ice. Settling all around him, the ice had entombed him, and the intense cold inside his sepulcher had prevented decomposition. His features betrayed frightful fatigue. He held a paper in his hand.
We felt that we had come almost to the end of our voyage; we still felt strong enough, however, to climb down the frozen wall, suspecting all the while that our goal lay beyond but not knowing for sure. And now that we had done everything possible to reach it, we found it almost futile to persevere. Before this unknown tomb we remained still on our knees impassive, unreflective, for we had reached the point where compassion turns to self-pity and where sadness must be ignored if strength is to be conserved. The heart is emboldened only through induration. And for these reasons, rather than to avoid violating the sepulcher, we did not break through the ice despite our desire to read what was written on the paper held by the corpse. After a short prayer we stood up and began painfully to climb up the wall of ice.
I am not sure how the wind that caused the storm arose, for as soon as we had crossed over the wall, it ceased and the atmosphere became almost mild. The other side of the wall was a gentle declivity formed by soft snow. Then there was a row of vegetation; then a small unfrozen lake. I think that the surrounding wall was perfectly circular, for the slopes tapered regularly, and since the wind no longer blew inside this enclosed area, the water in the lake remained calm.
We were sure that this was the end; we could no longer advance; but knowing that we would not know what to do there if we went down to the shore, in order to contrive some sort of conclusion, or some culminating gesture, we had the pious notion of going back to get the unknown corpse and burying it beside the lake. For we thought that this traveler, too, another person had also traveled far to see the lake, and we were sorry that he had been unable to reach his goal.
We went back to his tomb, broke through the ice and removed his body. When we tried to read the paper which he was holding, however, we saw that it was completely blank. Our disappointment was all the more painful because our curiosity had been dissipated. We carried his body to the little polar shore without ever putting into words our feeling that it was better perhaps for him never to have seen the anticipated shore and for the wall to have separated him from his goal during his lifetime, for even if the facts had been different the words chiseled on his tomb would probably have been the same.
A cheerless dawn was breaking as we made one last attempt to blot out our misgivings by digging a grave in the grass between the snow and the water in the lake.
We no longer wished to return to the regions where flowers bloomed more profusely, to the monotonous past, for one does not travel backward and downward to find life. If we had known at the outset that this was what we had come to see, perhaps we would not have started; that is why we gave thanks to God for having hidden from us the goal and for having withheld it from us until our efforts to attain it had afforded us some pleasure, the only certain pleasure; and we also thanked God because our intense suffering had made us hope for a splendid end.
We would have liked indeed to devise anew some tenuous and more pious hope; having satisfied our pride and feeling that the fulfillment of our destinies no longer depended on us, we now waited for the things around us to become a little more faithful to us.
Kneeling still, we probed the black water for the reflection of the heaven of my dreams.
END
* Gide never tired of stressing the Biblical precept that self-affirmation is accomplished through self-negation. Not surprisingly, his deep-seated religious bent was counterbalanced by an extraordinary imaginative sexuality. Tortured by desire, he would pray for release frcm the temptation of the flesh only to recant and beg to remain carnal and lustful until death.
* In 1890 Gide had written of h
is intense suffering because everyone did not already know “what later I hope to be.”
* The familiar form tu is used here and in the following pages by both Urien and Ellis.
* The metaphor of phosphorus and its glow, as indivisible as body and soul, appealed to Gide. “Only the glow matters,” he wrote concerning the death of Madeleine and the purity of his love for her.
1 Hebrews 11:39-40. Gide’s note.
ENVOY
Madame! I deceived you:
We undertook no voyage.
We beheld no gardens
or pink flamingos beside the sea;
it was not to us that sirens
beckoned with their hands.
If I ate not the fruits,
and slept not under the trees;
if I kissed not the hands
of perfumed Haïatalneful;
if I believed in tomorrows;
if I recounted these deeds;
then they were but mirages,
then they were but phantoms.
I think that I would have resisted; I waited;
But temptations never came to me.
Ellis! Forgive me! I lied.
This voyage is but my dream,