AGNES:-- THOUGHTS ON HER MARRIAGE

This marriage -- based on love, on an ideal which was
to make it superior to other marriages -- on a dependence on one
another -- on a demand -- now, without those things, still demands
of one

(the above has been scratched out)

Without attention, with very little sex, with practically
no tenderness, and if with affection, with the sort of affection that
takes all for granted and is too indifferent to express itself - -
Almado expects Eugenia, his wife, to yield to him the same loyalty
that he demanded of her when he tenderly loved her, and openly,
and frequently showed it. Is Almado blind? Or does he count on his
wealth and his high position to supplant those tenderer chafins of
love, and, through playing on qualities which he must as a great soul
dislike, bind to his side the person of Eugenia? Or perhaps he counts
on those famous Ogres, Law and Custom! - - beloved of women. Whatever
it is, with perfect compatabency he assumes the mutual tie, and demands
of Eugenia, and who knows, perhaps of himself! those same sacrifices,
which, made to love, were divine; but which now, made automatically,
limit most dismally that life force which we each of us to different
degrees possess ....

Alas, it is to be fear that Almado counts too werenely
much on the Ogres . . . for Eugenia, although she delights in assuming
at times the roles that custom and (case?) imply, dreams much, and at
heart is wild and /or foolishly unself-preservative. She is by turns
sentimental and detached. She still lingers over the dream that

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that Almado, once so ardent, built for her and himself from a harsh
life, and its beauty, transient, calls forth tears of self-pity --
for strangely, she does not pity Almedo, too.

But all the while there is over her a strong and poignant
sense of the waste of it all. Joy, beauty, abandon - Death will
sometime (possess?) them. Once they had dreamed that they might
have them together.

Daily, in herself, Eugenia feels the capacity for them increase, while the opportunity for them diminishes.

He had a peculiar effect on her ... something that began
sweetly and gently, and ended in what was almost like a disintegration
of herself, so that she was afraid, and disturbed and tortured, par-
ticularly because she thought it must be just some absurd sentimental
weakness that made her believe that he too was conscious of this
thing; but another part of her, that which she believed to be deeper,
was forever over-riding this ... "believe me!" Somtime, in a room
full of people, when Edgar would be holding forth on his views of
life, she would feel, between herself and him, this mysterious dis-
integrating ecstatic current, and it seemed impossible to believe that
he too was not as aware of it as she. . .

Funny thing: this disintegration of old personality that
takes place when one falls in love -- a sense of that, anyway! Does
it mean that in the undoubtedly universal consciousness which one
reaches in love -- not that sex love is the only way of reaching
it -- one is really -- re-born? Disintegration of the old, the

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cluttered-up, died out, uselessly, acquired parts of us -- to prepare for the new?

Love is the touching for a little while of the reality -- the universal soul. For some people, more or less incomplete in themselves -- this falling in love is a frequent performance -- They have accumulated so many useless, cluttering, ugly, or trivial things -- they, being spiritually meagre, get filled up so easily with these things, that unconsciously they _desire_ the disintegration that love brings along with it -- or before its rebirth -- to get _rid_ of themselves -- then to be recreated, re-born. The final, complete, spiritual person, who is really the pure vessel ✓ into which this universal spiritual oneness is poured, is not therefore in need of "falling in love"...does not. He has always (risen?) himself the contact with the reality -- God. Christ was the perfect example. In a certain type of very sublimated artist this happens.

You speak of that sense of isloation, of feeling that no matter what life does to you, there is something apart, something that cannot be touched; you speak then of the Bhuddistic idea, of the feeling of lives lived, of lives to come, of the great slow inward spiral; a flash of the truth of this comes to one sometime, and brings spiritual realization with it. Or of Kismet (?): whatever happens is pre-✓ ordained, and one can "pass the buck" to something outside of oneslef; to Allah, the inscrutable, I suppose; on-gaining one's spiritual calm from the feeling that the eternal wardness is calmly onwarding; until little pain and little happiness become spread very very thin on the waters of time.

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"Out of the night that covers me
Dark as the pit from pple to pole
I thank whatever Gods may be
For my unconquerable soul."

Change "soul" to scorn. Can't you see something in the attitude of the man who, without any of the spiritual vision; with nothing behond the bitter knowledte of his own intellectual dilemmas (and he might be a man of great intellect at that) attains the same feeling of untouchedness; of being beyond things.

(Folloiwing sentences from start of page, but previous portions apparently missing)

mean the external thing -- all experience you may have is
going to be more or less wasted. (Notice I said "more or less").
Only very simple, pure people, or very original strong people are
able to rely on that which is within themselves. You and I will be
hurt, or pleased, according to the experience, and we'll notice every-
thing, and feel everyting that it is possible for us to feel, and
suddenly we'll become aware that every thing we're feeling and
seeing and doing is merely a mass of superficial detail. (No, that
isn't what I mean exactly but is nearest I can get / to it.) And
that there is something there that we cannot understand, cannot touch.
We cannot, <u>cannot</u> understand, and so we are unhappy. We are neither
simple nor strong enough. And then we want to write, and all we
know is the superficial things, and we start to write a --

(This is where (alas) Agnes' notes seem to end)