"MauriceBlanchot-DeathSentence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blanchot Maurice)

Maurice Blanchot

Death Sentence

These things happened to me in 1938. I feel the greatest uneasiness in speaking
of them. I have already tried to put them into writing many times. If I have
written books, it has been in the hope that they would put an end to it all. If
I have written novels, they have come into being just as the words began to
shrink back from the truth. I am not frightened of the truth. I am not afraid to
tell a secret. But until now, words have been frailer and more cunning than I
would have liked. I know this guile is a warning: it would be nobler to leave
the truth in peace. It would be in the best interests of the truth to keep it
hidden. But now I hope to be done with it soon. To be done with it is also noble
and important.

Still, I must not forget that I once managed to put these things into writing.
It was in 1940, during the last weeks of July or the first weeks of August.
Inactive, in a state of lethargy, I wrote this story. But once it was written I
reread it and destroyed the manuscript. Today I cannot even remember how long it
was.

I will write freely, since I am sure that this story concerns no one but myself.
It could actually be told in ten words. That is what makes it so awful. There
are ten words to say. For nine years I have held out against them. But this
morning, which is the 8th of October (I have just noticed to my surprise) and so
nearly the anniversary of the first of those days, I am almost sure that the
words which should not be written will be written. For many months now, I think,
I have been resolved to do it.

There are several witnesses to what happened, although only one, the one in the
best position to know, glimpsed the truth. I used to telephone the apartment
where these things happened - often in the beginning, and then less often. I
once even lived there, at 15, rue - . I think the young woman's sister remained
there for some time. What became of her? She lived, as she liked to say, off the
kindness of gentlemen. I assume she's dead.

Her sister had all the strength of will and all the force of life. Their family,
of middle-class background, had failed rather miserably: the father had been
killed in 1916; the mother, left in charge of a tanning factory, went bankrupt
without realizing what was happening. She got married again, to a stock-breeder,
and one day the two of them abandoned their separate enterprises and bought a
winery on a street in the 15th arrondissement. Whatever money they still had
must have been lost there. Theoretically, one part of the factory belonged to
the two daughters, and there were often very heated arguments about money. It
would be fair to say that over the years Mme. B. had spent a small fortune on
the health of her older daughter, which she reproached her with in perfect
thoughtlessness.

I have kept "living" proof of these events. But without me, this proof can prove
nothing, and I hope no one will go near it in my lifetime. Once I am dead, it