Thought without Object

At the same moment (if I am not mistaken), I

found myself having gained this and lost that. What? What? How to know, I wonder. Finally I tried to descend to find it, at the bottom of the dream.

I discovered that the loss, it was by my fault. Of negligence, no. It was a matter of a more notable defect, of a real wrong whose word would have been given to me immediately, if I had known what the lost object was (Possible that there was nevertheless negligence).

As for the gain, I owed it to I don't know what... It was not quite kindness, nor even gentleness (how hard it was to hoist such a dream, step by step, from the bottom of sleep!). But another feeling, whose nuances are familiar to me, and the center alone which still fled me would have been revealed - ah! if I had only known what I had gained.

Besides, is it even a question of that? I would need to know first from whom the feelings come. That it is I the negligent (for example), the others the generous (or who pretend), that is not my impression, not at all. It could just as well be the contrary. I will learn it in a moment.

For I can at least know if the gain compensates the loss. It suffices for me to weigh the one and the other thing. Or rather I bring them closer, I apply one to the other. I see well that there is one that exceeds, I don't know which. It slips, and if I must start the operation again, then no. Yet, I think as much as ever. One sees it well, I don't stop. It is the subjects that escape me.

Such was the difficulty that I carried in turn to the various floors of the dream, bringing it up when I had brought it down, bringing it down when I had brought it up, and each time traversing from end to end my small domain of anguish.

(signed Maast, in Les Cahiers du Sud, January 1, 1945)