Friday, 1 August 1884

When I serve you tender phrases, do not let yourself be too taken in.
[Words blacked out: About Bastien] — but I do not love him at all, I who was speaking of him with maternal tenderness. It is an amusement [Crossed out: that is all]. The two selves that seek to live — one says to the other: but feel something, for heaven's sake! And the other tries to grow tender but is always dominated by the first, by the spectator-self which stands there observing and absorbs the other. And will it always be like this?
And love?
Well, you know — it seems to me impossible when one sees human nature under the microscope. The others are quite happy: they see only what they need to see.
Do you want to know? Well — I am neither painter, nor sculptor, nor musician, nor woman, nor girl, nor friend.
Everything in me reduces to subjects of observation, reflection and analysis. A look, a face, a sound, a joy, a sorrow — these are immediately weighed, examined, verified, classified, noted. And when I have said or written, I am satisfied. If I knew how to write I should certainly be a great writer, for without my suspecting it, instinctively, involuntarily, inevitably, everything comes back to that.
Everything comes down to finding the right word. Then I am content.
That pedant Maupassant expresses somewhere quite well what I have just said — reading that article I even felt a measure of respect for him; imagine: a man who feels what I feel.
Oh! how short and miserable life is. Painting! If I want to do it properly, I must devote myself to it entirely. And the rest? What will become of literature?
Poor literature! So Zola and Balzac are not to have a sister?
So I shall even mock myself!