Chapter 15. The Price of a Soul.

March 15, 1972

Germaine de Saint-Preux was hastily traversing the spaces of the earthly globe, seated in an unremarkable suburban train carriage. Within this carriage, life was truly seething: every passenger was animatedly discussing, with bright emotions—sometimes positive, sometimes not—the premiere of the new film The Godfather. Yet Germaine de Saint-Preux had no mind for films. With particular intensity, gazing through the transparency of the window into the transparency of the world, he watched as one picturesque landscape hurriedly replaced another, each more enchanting than the last. And yet, due to the sovereign feelings that ruled his soul, he saw in those landscapes only beauty, never their spirit: after Sandra Scales’s refusal, he could no longer perceive in them a soul. They were nothing more than charming stones, majestic mountains, incessant streams—mere matter, perishable dust. In the azure of the skies there was no life—only pigment, spread chaotically across the firmament by chance. The singing of birds was nothing more than a physiological process.

In the next moment, withdrawing slightly from his thoughts, he caught his own reflection in the train’s glass—the reflection of Germaine de Saint-Preux: the one Sandra Scales had rejected. Beside his reflection, he discerned hers—was it reality, or merely vision? His mind painted her silhouette everywhere: in lifeless stones after her refusal, in hair caught in branches and vines, in eyes shimmering in the blue of heaven, in tears flowing with streams, in a youthful figure moving across the meadows. And at that moment, the following verses awakened in his soul:

“…Laying his soul completely bare,
A youth confessed his love aloud
To that most tender, wondrous maiden,
Whose very being he adored.
Receiving silence in return,
To words of deepest reverence,
He cast his own young soul upon
The rack of cruelest punishment.
He split himself in tiny shards,
Dividing one into a thousand:
Eyes laughing, yet his heart in tears,
A thousand sparks of stubborn fire,
Impulses of his restless nature!
Ah, how blind he was! He knew not
That every touch his ardor sought
Must burn, immutable, the flesh.

Yet later he received from her,
The one who tortured all his essence,
A bundle full of bitter words,
Engraved in iron on the parchment,
Cold letters branded, searing dark—
Another blow of fateful hand.
These letters were not mere in form,
But mercury that pierced the heart:
They were refusal, they were “no,”
A parable of lovelessness—
A farmer, reaper of the grain,
Who, not yet knowing life’s true nature,
Desired to gather unripe sheaves,
Tempted by beauty of the field.
For this he was condemned to hunger,
Stripped bare of essence in his haste:
Unable to prepare the bread,
Or harvest grain while still unripe.

Love rises only step by step…
What foolish nonsense! Empty words!
For love is born in but a moment!
Deserves contempt, the one who thinks
By day and measure, dull and flat,
Not having tasted once in life
The love that’s real, not illusion—
For love appears at once, at once!
Love rises not as dawn ascends,
Nor is it sunset’s dying flame:
Love is a musket’s sudden shot—
At once it casts to hell’s abyss,
At once it lifts to heaven’s gate.

But how could Sandra fail to grasp?!
Why does the flower come to bloom?!
What makes the moon compelled to shine?!
Who gives the birds their melody?!
Who gives the wind its very voice?!
It is that Voice, beyond all measure,
That moved Germain to yearn for bliss,
To taste love’s heaven-born delight—
Where flesh is not, but only soul.
She found in it but cause for laughter,
Imagining herself as God…
No, foolish one—you crowned her so!
You raised a palace for her throne,
Installed her image on the dais
Of your own heart’s almighty rule.

And now—what now? How can it be?
The castle you built from a chalet—
Taste now the dreams of loss alone!
Plough open fields without compassion,
Where once the dew of love had cooled
The calluses upon your heart—
Now furrow after furrow deep,
Dig trench on trench, carve wound on wound,
Cutting the stems devoid of fruit:
Slowly, languidly, scar on scar,
You will at last cleanse out yourself,
Though slaying countless flowers, beasts
That once the poet made to bloom
Since earliest days of his own life.

And then perhaps you shall perceive
That one must love not lifeless things,
Objects as soulless as bare stones,
But love instead the souls of men.
Better to live alone for decades
Than dwell with stone that lacks all life—
And though it shine with radiant gleam,
And though it lure with borrowed charm,
Believe instead the humble house
Where purer dwelling is assured,
Though beauty may not grace its walls.

Germain! Germain! Unhappy wanderer,
Unhappy pilgrim—Ahasuerus!
You have felt most fully, deeply,
How worms devour each soulful sphere,
Upon the corpse that once was love—
For in this world, the ones who suffer
Are those who live, who live, not die!

Not knowing Germain’s very soul,
Nor even wishing to perceive,
O tender tyrant, youth almighty!—
O Sandra, one must now confess:
You never truly understood
What qualities, what strength, what fire,
In his most fervent, burning zeal,
The poet bent his head before,
Submitting to your fleeting reign.
A single word, a single glance,
And he, with passion of his nature,
Would have composed a world of works
To hymn your eyes of azure light,
Your wondrous gait, your curls of gold,
Your cheeks, your skin as pale as clouds,
In all its white resplendency…