Thomas The Obscure by Maurice Blanchot Page A

strength. In vain the dusk brought its guilty song to her ear; in vain was a plot woven against her in favor of darkness. No sweetness penetrated her soul along the path of torpor, no semblance of the holiness which is acquired through the proper acceptance of illness. One felt that she would deliver into death nothing other than Anne, and that, fiercely intact, retaining everything that she was until the very end, she would not consent to save herself by any imaginary death from death itself. The night went on, and never had there been so sweet a night, so perfect to bend a sick person. The silence flowed, and the solitude full of friendship, the night full of hope, pressed upon Anne's stretched-out body. She lay awake, without delirium. There was no narcotic in the shadows, none of those suspicious touchings which permit the darkness to hypnotize those who resist sleep. The night acted nobly with Anne, and it was with the girl's own weapons, purity, confidence and peace, that it agreed to meet her. It was sweet, infinitely sweet in such a moment of great weakness to feel around oneself a world so stripped of artifice and perfidiousness. How beautiful this night was, beautiful and not sweet, a classic night which fear did not render opaque, which put phantoms to flight and likewise wiped away the false beauty of the world. All that which Anne still loved, silence and solitude, were called night. All that which Anne hated, silence and solitude, were also called night. Absolute night where there were no longer any contradictory terms, where those who suffered were happy, where white found a common substance with black. And yet, night without confusion, without monsters, before which, without closing her eyes, she found her personal night, the one which her eyelids habitually created for her as they closed. Fully conscious, full of clarity, she felt her night join the night. She discovered herself in this huge exterior night in the core of her being, no longer needing to pass before a bitter and tormented soul to arrive at peace. She was sick, but how good this sickness was, this sickness which was not her own and which was the health of the world! How pure it was, this sleep which wrapped around her and which was not her own and blended with the supreme consciousness of all things! And Anne slept.
    During the days which followed, she entered into a delicious field of peace, where to all eyes she appeared bathed in the intoxication of recovery. Before this magnificent spectacle, she too felt within herself this joy of the universe, but it was an icy joy. And she waited for that which could be neither a night nor a day to begin. Something came to her which was the prelude not to a recovery but to a surprising state of strength. No one understood that she was going to pass through the state of perfect health, through a marvelously balanced point of life, a pendulum swinging from one world to another. Through the clouds which rushed over her head, she alone saw approaching with the speed of a shooting star the moment when, regaining contact with the earth, she would again grasp ordinary existence, would see nothing, feel nothing, when she could live, live finally, and perhaps even die, marvelous episode! She saw her very far away, this well Anne whom she did not know, through whom she was going to flow with a gay heart. Ah! Too dazzling instant! From the heart of the shadows a voice told her: Go.
    Her real illness began. She no longer saw anyone but occasional friends, and those who still came stopped asking for news. Everyone understood that the treatment was not winning out over the illness. But Anne recognized in this another sort of scorn, and smiled at it. Whatever her fate might be, there was more life, more strength in her now than ever. Motionless for hours, sleeping with strength, speed, agility in her sleep, she was like an athlete who has remained prone for a long time, and her rest was like the rest of men who excel in