Free The Inferno by Henri Barbusse Page B

because she was tired or because the picture when painted by some one else seemed exaggerated.
    Dream and reality here coincided. The woman of the poem also protested
at this point.
    I was carried away by the poet's voice, as he recited, swaying slightly, in the spell of the harmony of his own dream:
    "At the close of a life of pain and suffering the woman still looked ahead with the curiosity she had when she entered life. Eve ended as she had begun. All her subtle eager woman's soul climbed toward the secret as if it were a kind of kiss on the lips of her life. She wanted to be happy."
    Amy was now more interested in her companion's words. The curse of the lovers in the poem, sister to the curse she felt upon herself, gave her confidence. But her personality seemed to be shrinking. A few moments before she had dominated everything. Now she was listening, waiting, absorbed.
    "The lover reproached the woman for contradicting herself in claiming earthly and celestial happiness at the same time. She answered him with profundity, that the contradiction lay not in herself, but in the things she wanted.
    "The lover then seized another healing wand and with desperate eagerness, he explained, he shouted, 'Divine happiness has not the same form as human happiness. Divine happiness is outside of ourselves.'
    "The woman rose, trembling.
    "'That is not true! That is not true!' she exclaimed. 'No, my happiness is not outside of me, seeing it is /my/ happiness. The universe is God's universe, but I am the god of my own happiness. What I want,' she added, with perfect simplicity, 'is to be happy, I, just as I am, and with all my suffering.'"
    Amy started. The woman in the poem had put her problem in a clearer and deeper manner, and Amy was more like that woman than herself.
    "'I, with all my suffering,' the man repeated.
    "Suffering--important word! It leads us to the heart of reality. Human suffering is a positive thing, which requires a positive answer, and sad as it is, the word is beautiful, because of the absolute truth it contains. 'I, with all my suffering!' It is an error to believe that we can be happy in perfect calm and clearness, as abstract as a formula. We are made too much out of shadow and some form of suffering. If everything that hurts us were to be removed, what would remain?
    "And the woman said, 'My God, I do not wish for heaven!'"
    "Well, then," said Amy, trembling, "it follows that we can be miserable
in paradise."
    "Paradise is life," said the poet.
    Amy was silent and remained with her head lifted, comprehending at last that the whole poem was simply a reply to her question and that he had revived in her soul a loftier and a juster thought.
    "Life is exalted to perfection as it ends," the poet went on. "'It is beautiful to reach the end of one's days,' said the lover. 'It is in this way that we have lived paradise.'
    "There is the truth," the poet concluded. "It does not wipe out death. It does not diminish space, nor halt time. But it makes us what we are in essential. Happiness needs unhappiness. Joy goes hand in hand with sorrow. It is thanks to the shadow that we exist. We must not dream of an absurd abstraction. We must guard the bond that links us to blood and earth. 'Just as I am!' Remember that. We are a great mixture. We are more than we believe. Who knows what we are?"
    On the woman's face, which the terror of death had rigidly contracted, a smile dawned. She asked with childish dignity:
    "Why did you not tell me this right away when I asked you?"
    "You would not have understood me then. You had run your dream of distress into a blind alley. I had to take the truth along a different way so as to present it to you anew."
    . . . . .
    After that they fell silent. For a fraction of time they had come as close to each other as human beings can come down here below--because of their august assent to the lofty truth, to the arduous truth (for it is hard to understand that happiness is at the same time happy and