she quickened her pace and prevented it. This time, what will happen? Her current boyfriend slows down too, he too prepares to take her in his arms! Dazzled by this repetition (by the miracle of this repetition), she obeys the imperative of the parallel and hurries ahead, pulling him along by the hand.
From then on she succumbs to the charm of these affinities, these furtive contacts between present and past; she seeks out these echoes, these co-respondences, these co-resonances that make her feel the distance between what was and what is, the temporal dimension (so new, so astonishing) of her life; she has the sense of emerging from adolescence because of it, of becoming mature, adult, which for her means becoming a person who is acquainted with time, who has left a frag-
ment of life behind her and can turn to look back at it.
One day she sees her new boyfriend hurrying toward her in a blue jacket, and she remembers that her first boyfriend also looked good in a blue jacket. Another day, gazing into her eyes, he praises their beauty by way of a highly unusual metaphor; she was fascinated by that because her first boyfriend, commenting on her eyes, had used word for word the same unusual phrase. These coincidences amaze her. Never does she feel so thoroughly suffused with beauty as when the nostalgia for her past love blends with the surprises of her new love. The intrusion of the previous boyfriend into the story she is currently living is to her mind not some secret infidelity; it adds further to her fondness for the man walking beside her now.
When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adoles-
80
cence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their meanings. The fact that today's boyfriend bears a strange resemblance to yesterday's makes him even more exceptional, even more original, and she believes that he is mysteriously predestined for her.
23
No, there is no allusion to politics in the diary. Not a trace of the period, except perhaps the puri-tanism of those early years of Communism, with the ideal of romantic love as backdrop. Josef is struck by a confession from the virgin boy: that he easily mustered the boldness to stroke a girl's breasts but he had to battle his own modesty to touch her rump. He had a good sense for exactness: "When we were together yesterday, I only dared to touch D.'s rump twice."
Intimidated by the rump, he was all the more avid for emotions: "She swears she loves me, her promise of intercourse is a victory for me . . ."
81
(apparently, intercourse as proof of love counted more for him than the physical act itself) "... but I feel let down: there is no ecstasy in our encounters. It terrifies me to imagine our life together." And farther along: "It's so tiring, faithfulness that does not spring from true passion."
"Ecstasy"; "life together"; "faithfulness"; "true passion." Josef lingers over these words. What could they have meant to an immature person? They were at the same time enormous and vague, and their power lay precisely in their nebulous nature. He was on a quest for sensations he had never experienced, did not understand; he was looking for them in his partner (on the watch for each little emotion her face might reflect), he looked for them in himself (for interminable hours of introspection), but he was always frustrated. At that point he wrote (and Josef has to acknowledge the startling perspicacity of this remark): "The desire to feel compassion for her and the desire to make her suffer are one and the same desire." And indeed he behaved as if he were guided by those words: in order to feel compassion (in order to reach the ecstasy of compassion), he did everything
From then on she succumbs to the charm of these affinities, these furtive contacts between present and past; she seeks out these echoes, these co-respondences, these co-resonances that make her feel the distance between what was and what is, the temporal dimension (so new, so astonishing) of her life; she has the sense of emerging from adolescence because of it, of becoming mature, adult, which for her means becoming a person who is acquainted with time, who has left a frag-
ment of life behind her and can turn to look back at it.
One day she sees her new boyfriend hurrying toward her in a blue jacket, and she remembers that her first boyfriend also looked good in a blue jacket. Another day, gazing into her eyes, he praises their beauty by way of a highly unusual metaphor; she was fascinated by that because her first boyfriend, commenting on her eyes, had used word for word the same unusual phrase. These coincidences amaze her. Never does she feel so thoroughly suffused with beauty as when the nostalgia for her past love blends with the surprises of her new love. The intrusion of the previous boyfriend into the story she is currently living is to her mind not some secret infidelity; it adds further to her fondness for the man walking beside her now.
When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adoles-
80
cence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their meanings. The fact that today's boyfriend bears a strange resemblance to yesterday's makes him even more exceptional, even more original, and she believes that he is mysteriously predestined for her.
23
No, there is no allusion to politics in the diary. Not a trace of the period, except perhaps the puri-tanism of those early years of Communism, with the ideal of romantic love as backdrop. Josef is struck by a confession from the virgin boy: that he easily mustered the boldness to stroke a girl's breasts but he had to battle his own modesty to touch her rump. He had a good sense for exactness: "When we were together yesterday, I only dared to touch D.'s rump twice."
Intimidated by the rump, he was all the more avid for emotions: "She swears she loves me, her promise of intercourse is a victory for me . . ."
81
(apparently, intercourse as proof of love counted more for him than the physical act itself) "... but I feel let down: there is no ecstasy in our encounters. It terrifies me to imagine our life together." And farther along: "It's so tiring, faithfulness that does not spring from true passion."
"Ecstasy"; "life together"; "faithfulness"; "true passion." Josef lingers over these words. What could they have meant to an immature person? They were at the same time enormous and vague, and their power lay precisely in their nebulous nature. He was on a quest for sensations he had never experienced, did not understand; he was looking for them in his partner (on the watch for each little emotion her face might reflect), he looked for them in himself (for interminable hours of introspection), but he was always frustrated. At that point he wrote (and Josef has to acknowledge the startling perspicacity of this remark): "The desire to feel compassion for her and the desire to make her suffer are one and the same desire." And indeed he behaved as if he were guided by those words: in order to feel compassion (in order to reach the ecstasy of compassion), he did everything
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