Book V

Summary

423

In the great silence. – Here is the sea, here we can forget the city. The bells are noisily ringing the angelus – it is the time for that sad and foolish yet sweet noise, sounded at the crossroads of day and night – but it will last only for a minute! Now all is still! The sea lies there pale and glittering, it cannot speak. The sky plays its everlasting silent evening game with red and yellow and green, it cannot speak. The little cliffs and ribbons of rock that run down into the sea as if to find the place where it is most solitary, none of them can speak. This tremendous muteness which suddenly overcomes us is lovely and dreadful, the heart swells at it. – Oh the hypocrisy of this silent beauty! How well it could speak, and how evilly too, if it wished! Its tied tongue and its expression of sorrowing happiness is a deception: it wants to mock at your sympathy! – So be it! I am not ashamed of being mocked by such powers. But I pity you, nature, that you have to be silent, even though it is only your malice which ties your tongue; yes, I pity you on account of your malice! – Ah, it is growing yet more still, my heart swells again: it is startled by a new truth, it too cannot speak, it too mocks when the mouth calls something into this beauty, it too enjoys its sweet silent malice.