PAUL CLAUDELThe Sadness of Water
There is a source of invention in joy, I agree, of vision in laughter. But, so that
you understand the mixture of blessedness and bitterness in the act of creation, I
will explain to you, my friend, at a time when the sombre season begins, the
sadness of water.
From the sky and the eyelid wells up an identical tear.
Do not think of imputing your melancholy to the clouds or to this veil of the
dark shower. Shut your eyes, listen! The rain is falling.
And it is not the monotony of this unvarying noise that is su≈cient to ex-
plain it.
It is the weariness of a grief whose cause is in itself, the travail of love, the hard
toil of work. The skies weep over the earth they make fertile. And it is not, above
all, autumn and the approaching fall of fruit whose seed they nourish that draws
these tears from the wintry clouds. The pain is in summer itself, and death’s
bloom on the flower of life.
Just when the hour before noon is coming to an end, as I go down into the
valley full of the murmur of various fountains, I pause, enchanted by the chagrin.
How plentiful are these waters! And if tears, like blood, are a constant well-spring
within us, how fresh it is to listen to this liquid choir of voices rich and frail, and to
match them with all the shades of our grief! There is no passion that can fail to
lend you its tears, O fountains! And although I am content with the impact of a
single drop falling into the basin from high above on the image of the moon, I will
not in vain have learnt to know your haven over many afternoons, vale of sorrow.
Now, once more, I am in the plain. On the threshold of this hut where a
candle is lit in the inner darkness for some rustic feast, a man is sitting with a
dusty cymbal in his hand. The rain is pouring down; and alone, in the midst of
the wet solitude, I hear the squawk of a goose.
—james lawler