June 4, 1958
Everyone believes that what he does is important, except for me; plus I can do nothing anyway…
Read some poems of Alexander Blok. — Ah! these Russians — how close they are to me! — My form of boredom is completely Slavonic. God knows from what steppe my ancestors came. I have in me the hereditary memory of limitlessness, like a poison.
Further, I am like the Sarmatians, a man you cannot get to the bottom of, a dubious individual, suspect and uncertain from a duplicity all the more serious since it is disinterested. Thousands of slaves cry out their opinions and their sad contradictions in me.
After a sleepless night, I went out into the street. Everyone I passed seemed like automatons; not one seemed to have the appearance of the living; each seemed moved by a secret spring; geometrical movements; nothing spontaneous; mechanical smiles; phantom gesticulations; — all were rigid…
It was the first time after insomnia that I had the impression of a rigid world, destitute of life. — These periods of wakefulness resorb my blood, even consume it; a phantom myself, how I can I see signs of reality in others?
Nearer to Greek tragedy than to the Bible. I have always understood and felt Destiny better than God.
Nothing Russian is strange to me.
My boredom is explosive. It’s the advantage I have over great boredoms, which are generally passive and soft.
Noise — the punishment, or rather the materialization of original sin.