On Stilts over Reality: Thoughts from a Diary 1943-2015

By Ruth R. Troeller

Ruth Troellers lifelong passion for philosophical inquiry has driven her to pursue and spread knowledge and wisdom, not only in the academic sphere. Inspired by the existentialist thought that flourished in postwar Europe and her meetings with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gabriel Marcel and particularly Andr Malraux, she studied formally under Jaspers in Baal and Heidegger in Freiburg, and earned a degree in philosophy at the University of London. Her academic path strayed from that of philosophy due to her great dislike of the predominant current (logical positivism) being taught at the time, but although she went on to earn her higher degrees in Economics and dedicated much of her professional life to that area, her interest in philosophy never faded. The 72 years of diaries that this book covers bear witness to her unwavering commitment to reflecting continuously on philosophical questions, and the realization of this book is a testimony of her devotion as a teacher, since she not only wants to share her own thoughts with the world, but to inspire readers of all ages to pursue their own path of philosophical search, to dare to ask themselves important questions and seek the answers, to write and think consistently and contribute to the development of humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491787472

Ruth R. Troeller

Ruth Troeller (born Kahn) was born in 1918. In 1940 she fled Luxembourg due to the German invasion, and traveled across Europe working in journalism, aiding refugees and becoming friends with literary figures like Sartre, Malraux and Marcel. She began studying philosophy under mentors such as Jaspers and Heidegger, and eventually earned a degree in philosophy, as well as a Masters and a Doctorate in Economics. She worked with several international financial institutions and the Central Banks of a few countries in the Americas. She taught philosophy and economics in several institutions for many years (and continues to do so). She is currently 97 years old and has lived in Mexico for the past 30 years.

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Copyright © 2016 RUTH R. TROELLER.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-8748-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8747-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 2/1/2016

To my dear friend Geoffrey Cox,

without whom this book would not exist

And to my esteemed colleague Eric M. Tomasini-Bassols,

who selected and edited these fragments of my diaries.

FOREWORD

The author of this book was born, as she likes to say, three months before the end of World War I. But she became Ruth Troeller some 21 years later, on the night of May 10th, 1940, crossing the border from Luxembourg to France on a bicycle as Nazi soldiers were swarming her country. Whatever alternative destiny might have awaited her in more normal times, it was erased that night, and since then she has lived by her own intelligence and courage, guided by her own unfailing moral compass.

By any measure, Ruth has had an extraordinary life. She fled her home in Luxembourg with her boyfriend and future husband, Gordian. They spent the war years as journalists in Portugal, but also as part of the underground resistance movement helping other refugees escape to freedom. After the war she resumed her passion for learning, and encountered many of the leading thinkers and writers who were trying to make sense of a world that had just endured unimaginable violence and loss. She studied under Karl Jaspers, and attended seminars given by Martin Heidegger and Karl Barth; she met Gabriel Marcel, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir; she became a friend and follower of the French writer André Malraux. After a time she made her way to the London School of Economics to complete her education and to embark on an academic career. A son and a daughter came along in due course, although Gordian moved in and out of her life, so she pursued her ambitions as a single mother at a time when doing so was considered impossible, and perhaps vaguely scandalous.

Ruth became an expert in international economics, and she participated in the new multinational organizations that also were trying to make sense of the post-war world. From her academic post at the University of Surrey, as head of the Sub-department of International Economics, she was called to meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. During that time she also collaborated actively in the building of the European Union at conferences in Brussels. In the 1970's she became involved in Latin American affairs, first at the invitation of the Venezuelan Central Bank. Ruth advised Venezuela on its plan to nationalize its oil industry, and later worked with the Mexican government on its rapidly rising economy, also fueled by oil.

By the beginning of the following decade she decided to settle permanently in Mexico, as senior lecturer in philosophy and economics at Alliant International University, frequently interrupting her teachings with official visits to the Central Banks of Japan, Hong Kong, Egypt and India. In 1991 she created the Troeller Institute for Global Studies, of which she is still the director. With all this continuous travelling, she would always come back nonetheless to her house in Cuernavaca, that hosted several diplomatic dinners, art exhibitions and official concerts, and to Mexico City, were she became matriarch of a lively, diverse, and devoted intellectual community that, to this day, flows in and out of her lovely apartment at all hours.

I have known Ruth for more than twelve years, and I have spent many pleasurable hours in conversation with her. But her personal story emerged slowly over that time, and only in bits and pieces; I am still vague on the chronology. This is because Ruth has little patience for conversations that do not lead quickly to matters of philosophy and spirituality. She is a true Platonist in this regard; the experiences of this world are ephemeral and insignificant compared to our search for enlightenment. But her personal history has clearly shaped her thinking; her early experiences of war and upheaval led her, as they did so many of her contemporaries, to doubt the permanence of social constructs and to trust only the reality of one's own making. This is the core of existentialism, which is perhaps the philosophical hallmark of the 20th Century. As her mentor Malraux put it, Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not that one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act. By this measure, Ruth has excelled.

True to form, this volume of excerpts from Ruth's journals does not convey much of her personal history. This is a book of ideas that have intrigued and inspired her; it is but a glimpse into a mind that has always sought a deeper truth. Over the course of nearly a century, Ruth has been many things to many people: wife, mother, teacher, advisor, confidant, and friend. But she is above all a tireless and inquisitive spirit who has turned adversity into personal triumph. She epitomizes the ideal of an examined life, and in this regard she continues to inspire those of us who are privileged to know her.

16 NOVEMBRE 1943

Comment ça se fait-il que de « savoir », de « comprendre », me rend heureuse. Heureuse de manière que je tremble intérieurement. Le moment que je sens que j'ai su suivre une pensée difficile, une conclusion, une logique, il y a un sentiment de satisfaction énorme en moi. Descartes dit que c'est la seule félicité qu'il y ait au monde, et j'y crois. J'étais émue toute à l'heure quand j'ai commencé à lire les théories et les dogmes de Descartes. Quand j'ai vu ces idées claires qui les unes enchaînaient les autres, et quand je les comprends, il y a quelque chose en moi qui «frohlockt», qui pousse des cris de joie. N'est-ce pas là mon destin ?

Je suis enchantée de pouvoir comprendre et éprouver une pensée bien menée, une thèse bien conduite. C'est là où je me sens m'épanouir. J'ai retrouvé ce sentiment qui vraiment parvient à gonfler ma poitrine et à sentir avec joie la plénitude de la vie et l'animation qui m'est apportée par l'air que j'aspire.

16TH NOVEMBER 1943

How is it that knowing, understanding, makes me happy? Happy in a way that makes me shiver on the inside. The moment I feel I was able to follow a difficult though, conclusion, logic, there is a huge feeling of satisfaction within me. Descartes says it is the only happiness in the world, and I believe so. I was moved earlier when I started to read the theories of Descartes, when I see these clear ideas following one another, and when I understand them, something in me frohlockt, screams with joy. Isn't it my destiny?

I am fascinated by my being able to understand and experience a well-rounded thought, a sequenced theory. That's when I feel alive. I regained that feeling that brings me the joy and wholeness of life, and the infinite pregnant possibilities brought to me by the air that I breathe.

17 MAI 1945

La vie ce soir me semble calme et en même temps animée par des pensées irréelles, fugitives, elle me semble un peu tranquille, même un peu ennuyeuse mais pure, claire. Peut-être c'est simplement la 5ème de Beethoven que je viens d'entendre. Je me sens sans désir aigu qui demande sa satisfaction et pourtant pleine d'espoir, je ne sens pas de conflit à résoudre, et pourtant contrainte à constater son existence. Mais pas seulement Beethoven m'a donné cela ! C'est tout un cycle de choses et d'hommes célèbres ! C'est Shakespeare avec son « Songe d'une nuit d'été », c'est Stendhal avec son « Rouge et noir », c'est Ducreux avec ses « Clefs du ciel », Prévert avec « Les enfants du paradis », Sartre avec « Huis Clos », et René Laporte avec « Federigo ». Et cette vie irréelle je la mène seule, toute seule dans un Paris qui forme ce cadre charmant et presque invraisemblable que seulement la vue du Palais de Chaillot sur les Champs de Mars et les Invalides, ou les fontaines des Tuileries peuvent donner, si seule avec Stendhal on y attend l'heure pour aller voir l'enfer peuplé d'êtres jeunes et modernes, ou pour aller entendre les murmures d'Oberon et de Puck dans une nuit d'été.

17TH MAY 1945

Life tonight seems calm and at the same time animated by fugitive, surreal thoughts; it seems a little quiet, even a tad boring, but pure, clear. Maybe it is simply Beethoven's 5th, which I just finished listening to. I have no acute desire that demands satisfaction, and yet I am full of hope; I have no conflict to solve, and yet I am forced to realise its existence. But it is not only Beethoven that has given me this! It is a whole cycle of famous men and things! It is Shakespeare, with his A Midsummer Night's Dream, it's Stendhal with his The Red and the Black, it's Ducreux with his Les Clefs du Ciel, Prévert with Children of Paradise, Sartre with his No Exit, and René Laporte with his Federigo. And this unreal life I lead alone, alone in a Paris that creates this enchanting and seemingly impossible setting, that can only be provided by the breathtaking view of the Champ de Mars and the Invalides from the Palais de Chaillot, or the fountains of Tuileries, if alone with Stendhal one impatiently awaits the moment to enter the hell of the young and modern people, or listen to the whispers of Oberon and Puck on a midsummer night.

24 AOÛT 1946

Je viens de finir Spartacus. C'est mieux et moins bien que Le zéro et l'infini. Mieux car étant plus ample, il permet aux idées plus amples, elles aussi, d'y entrer et de parler plus largement de ces problèmes qu'on sent après la lecture du livre insoluble. Ne serait-ce que pour les quelques lignes dites par l'Essénien et se référant au christianisme à venir, le livre me paraîtrait entièrement existentialiste. Mais dans le temps, dans notre époque et d'ailleurs celle de l'auteur le livre le christianisme revient dû au fait que ce même christianisme est aujourd'hui en déclin comme l'est la Cité du Soleil au 4ème chapitre. Donc littérature noire même dans un sens plus élevé et par cela sur un plan plus important que Sartre, celle de la liberté politique de l'homme.

D'ailleurs toute l'œuvre de Koestler mériterait, comme tant d'autres qui affichent des tâches semblables et qui le méritent bien moins, le titre : « à la recherche de la liberté, non perdue, mais jamais retrouvée ».

Moins bien que Le zéro et l'infini me semble le livre, car l'auteur a su dire dans un minimum d'espace avec une densité extraordinaire tandis que forcément dans un récit historique il a dû perdre des pages pour nous introduire dans l'époque et pour nous y retenir par la couleur locale. Mais le goût amer qui reste sur la langue après la lecture et dû beaucoup moins aux croix qui bordaient la route de rentrée de Crassus qu'à la vérité qui se dégage du livre : aujourd'hui, pas plus qu'au temps du vrai Spartacus, nous ne sommes mûrs pour la vraie liberté, ou comme le dit Koestler, peut-être trop mûrs, si toutefois liberté de pensées et d'actes il peut exister ou existe en même temps... des êtres.

Koestler et Malraux, deux des plus grands, n'incarnent-ils pas la crème de notre siècle avec leur littérature mâle, virile, un peu perverse, cherchant la souffrance, engageant leur vie, traversant les masses par un procédé unique jusqu'à aujourd'hui ? En les disséquant froidement ils gagnent leur cœurs par l'intellect.

24TH AUGUST 1946

I just read Spartacus. It's both better and worse than Darkness at Noon: better because by being larger it also allows for wider ideas to be expressed and to convey in a more diverse manner the problems that arise after reading the book. If only by the few lines said by the Essene referring to upcoming Christianity, the book appears to me to be completely existentialist. But back then, in our own time, which is also that of the author, Christianity makes a comeback, precisely because it is in decline, just the way the City of the Sun is in the fourth chapter. As a matter of fact, all of Koestler's work would deserve to have, as many others which attempted to do the same and deserve it far less, the title of In Search of Freedom, Not Lost but Never Regained.

I find it worse than Darkness at Noon because the author was able to express himself in a minimal amount of space, very concisely, while in a historical piece he had to waste several pages to introduce us to the temporal context, and keep us there through the local colours. But the bitter aftertaste in the tongue after the reading has much less to do with the crucifix on the road taken by Crassus than with the truth that comes from the book: today, as in the time of the actual Spartacus, we are not ready for true freedom, or as Koestler says, maybe too ready, if only there could be freedom of action and thought at the same time as there is Being.

Don't Koestler and Malraux, two of the greatest, embody the splendour of our century with their male, masculine, somewhat perverted literature, searching for suffering, engaging their lives, striking the masses with a style so far unique? By coldly dissecting them, they conquer their hearts through intellect.

20 OCTOBRE 1950

Quand on commence un journal on se sent toujours ou solennel ou de mauvaise humeur. Solennel quand on regarde vers l'avenir avec confiance et espoir, de mauvaise humeur plutôt si l'on se demande comment faire de notre vie quelque chose de valable qu'on craint ne jamais atteindre. Un nouveau journal de vie est comme un anniversaire, comme le 1er janvier, comme un départ aussi : il n'est pas décisif en soi, il ne marque ni commencement ni une fin d'une époque, cependant quoi qu'arbitraire, il est intéressant faire de temps á autre une scission et de contempler alors le laps de temps. Pour saisir une chose aussi fuyante il faut bien la mettre en petites parties. Mais ne saisira-t-on jamais le sens de sa propre vie ?

20TH OCTOBER 1950

When beginning a brand-new journal, one often feels either solemn or just plain upset. Solemn if one looks to the future with trust and hope, upset if one begins to ponder ways of making of one's life something worthwhile, but fearing never to accomplish it. A new journal is like a birthday, like a new year, like a farewell too: it is not by itself decisive, it does not mark the beginning or end of an era, but as arbitrary as it is, we must set certain milestones along the way, and look back at the time that has passed. To grasp such an elusive thing, one has to break it into little fragments. But will we ever grasp the meaning of our life?

16 AOÛT 1951

Plato: « our character, not our achievements count ». Mais encore faudra-t-il alors que chaque être vraiment naisse avec ses lois propres ? Lu la République de Platon. Quelle clarté ! Mais beaucoup plus prise par des extraits de l'Iliade. On lit ça trop tôt. Ou au moins il faudrait le relire. Mais qui fait cela ? De nouveau ce sentiment d'être illettrée m'a saisi. Une vie ne suffit pas. Donc à nouveau il faut choisir, c'est-à-dire, rejeter. Quel état incomplet que le nôtre. Explicable seulement si nous sommes l'anneau dans l'évolution des mammifères et comme l'embryon à 6 mois : rien que des potentialités ! Mais qu'importe puisqu'à moins que de croire dans l'immigration des âmes je ne serais jamais que cette marche entre le singe et le surhomme ce qui me rejette à nouveau dans ma condition de « vivant » qui désire englober plus que son état sait conditionner.

16TH AUGUST 1951

Plato: it is our character, not our achievements, that counts. But then wouldn't everybody have to be born with their own laws? Just read Plato's Republic, so much clarity! But much more taken by fragments of the Illiad. We read that too early, or at least we should read it again. But who does that? Again this feeling of being ignorant took over me. One lifetime is not enough. So again one must choose, that is, reject. What an incomplete state of being ours is, explainable only if we were to be a single link in the evolution of mammals, or like the embryo at 6 months: nothing but potentialities! But it doesn't matter: unless one believes in the transmigration of the soul, one will never be but a step between the monkey and the over-man, which takes me back to my condition of living being that desires to encompass more than my condition allows me to.

13 FÉVRIER 1956

A quel point l'activité est elle toujours une fuite ou un refuge ? Est-elle aussi positivement supérieure ? Peut-être. Je voudrais le croire. Aristote a appelé Dieu l'acte pur. Cela reviendrait presque à dire que Dieu, et ce que nous appelons l'énergie, sont un. Ne pourra-t-on pas renverser cette définition en disant que Dieu est fait sans énergie ; fait sans faire, agit sans énergie ? Car où énergie est en jeu, énergie se perd ou se transforme. À moins que nous ne pourrions appeler acte pur juste l'acte sans énergie, comme nous la concevons. Ici cependant est forcé le langage. Car acte veut toujours dire « transformation », rendre quelque chose différent de ce qu'il fut auparavant, et dans une transformation on perd nécessairement au moins ce qui a été transformé comme tel. En devenant homme nous perdons notre enfance, ce qui pourrait signifier aussi, un acte est dans le temps et non dans l'éternité.

Mais ceci veut dire autant que Dieu ne peut être l'acte pur car il ne peut se transformer lui-même, étant immuable, et en agissant l'action transforme, ce qui veut dire anéanti de l'être en créant de l'être.

Cependant l'acte est le propre de l'homme. Tandis qu'avec l'animal le terme est incorrect si nous l'utilisons dans son sens strict, l'homme agit continuellement, il transforme son milieu, agit sur le monde et sur soi-même. Peut-être d'ailleurs est-ce sa plus grande distinction que d'être capable d'agir sur lui-même. Car agir sur d'autres que soi est faire une coupure entre le sujet et l'objet. Agir cependant sur soi-même est une action qui tout en transformant unit plus étroitement le sujet et l'objet de l'action. Ce qui veut dire qu'il surpasse cette division, car l'homme qui agit sur lui-même ne se traite pas en objet comme je puis traiter mes bras.

13TH FEBRUARY 1956

To what degree is activity always an escape, a safe haven? Is it also positively superior? Maybe. I would like to believe so. Aristotle called God pure action. This would almost mean that God and what we call energy are one and the same. Couldn't we possibly reverse this definition by stating that God is an act without energy, that he acts without doing, without energy? Because everywhere energy is at stake, it is lost or transformed, unless what we call pure action means only action without energy the way we conceive it. Here, however, we are forcing the language. Because action always means transformation, to make something different from what it used to be, and within any transformation, what used to be and was transformed is necessarily lost. By becoming men, we lose our childhoods, which could also mean an action is inscribed in time and not in eternity. But this means, at the same time, that God cannot be pure action, because He cannot transform Himself, immutable as he is, and by being action transforms, which means, suppresses Being while creating Being. However, action is inherent to man, with an animal the term is incorrect if we use it in its strictest sense. Man acts continuously, transforms his environment, imposes his mark upon the world and himself. Perhaps that is his greatest distinction: being capable of acting upon himself, because acting upon others implies a break between subject and object. Acting upon oneself is an action that all the while transforming, brings together the subject and the object. This means that it goes beyond such a distinction, because the man who acts upon himself does not see himself as an object, the way I may consider my arm to be one.

29 DÉCEMBRE 1956

I had wished to open the pages of this book with a survey of where I stand today, but I am afraid I have no time. No time anyhow seems as good a characteristic of my actual life as any other. No time to write, no time to think, no time to be myself, no time to feel deeply. For my time is taken by the nursing of my children -- both in bed with flu -- by the ever-returning disorder in the house, the planning of ever-returning meals, the ordering of ever-exhausted stocks. At the most there is time to record the children, to light the Christmas tree, to sing carols, to listen to some music the children like. For it is true what Gordian said: this house is a house of children. I work, I love, I live in accordance with their needs or when they don't need me. But is it wrong? I love them. That is all and there is not much to it. Maybe that I love mainly through them, that I work to express what their being or my relation to them has awoken in me. It is true that they have little relation to God, it is true too that that is my fault. But how talk more about God without giving His law in the bounds of a doctrine? How explain Him with my poor words and without the help of greater minds?

Nevertheless already once and yesterday again Dody showed how deeply his thoughts went with mine a good way. We talked about my father and I told him that he was very ill and the he and Gordian were the most excellent persons I had ever met in my life. His first reaction was: Death, what a horrible thing, and then immediately but you know we are really all the time dead or at least, only half alive. But how that? was my question. For God we are dead as long as we are alive for human persons, and when we are dead for the human world then we start being alive for God. But Dody, we must be alive for God also now because you know I am and I know you are. We do things. Yes Mummy, we think we do things. If it is true that we will live with God for ever after, then all the things we do are only pretending -- or not pretending either. They are not at all because we are not either. And in the same breath: oh Mummy, I would like to be immoral. Immortal, you mean, don't you? Yes, that is a big word.

The conversation went to the importance of death for the human life, and in how far it gave depth to it. But Dody insisted: I would love to be immortal. I could really do things. And Mummie, maybe I would all the same then be alive. What I really want is to be alive.

12 FEBRUARY 1957

When we are dead for the human persons, has said Dody, then we are truly alive for God. My father after this would be fully alive now, fully himself, each of his qualities shine and each of his acts have consequences. He has chosen to go so far away as if he wanted to go away slowly and step by step. Like a great man, he never complained, and went into the unknown without protest. Quietly and painlessly. Yes, God, you really were a friend to him. He did things right. Are you really in a world beyond? Are you in a world of pure interiority and thus nearer than ever to our soul? Who allowed us to mourn, who gives us leave to cry? We would cry but our loss, and our loss is only seemingly a loss. For switching off an electric light in bright sunshine cannot be a loss. For I am part of you, live past through you, I think where you draft a problem and I speak partly with your tongue.

As long as I live, as long as I am (i.e. exist in the proper sense) you will live. May your greatness emanate into me and may you guide me further on. You knew how to live, you knew how to believe, and you knew how to make others and thus yourself happy. Even that most murderess illness has not destroyed your happiness. It has only switched off the bulb in the sunshine. Now your light is part of the world's light. Now you belong to those who give, not only to a few but to all. Now you can help this world, your world which you loved so much.

Are you part of God, now, part of Nature now, or do you continue to be yourself? How happy you must be to stand in front of your God. For there must be that God you believed in so gently, for no such belief could be without a reality belonging to it. You never quarreled with life. You always seemed to accept and nevertheless your acceptance was such a positive act. You questioned the unanswerable but in a sort of gentle knock; the knock of a man who knows he will be opened -- when his time comes.

You were a great man and a brave man and you know when to rest. You never joint quarrels about vain matters, and you always knew how to give in truffles. But great spirit to fight for truth.

May I become less vain. May I become more modest. May I become more truthful.

Now that you are gone, I am left on earth to help that spirit which was yours and that is so kind and ever giving become mine.

13 FÉVRIER 1957

Plus de 24 heures ont passé. Ils ont dû mettre la dépouille de mon père dans la terre. Ils l'ont embrassé une dernière fois sans se rendre compte que cela ne fut plus lui. Jacob et Joseph ont été embaumés. Mais qu'est-ce qu'ils ont pu embaumer qui ne soit qu'un simulacre ? Quelle chose atroce d'arrêter le temps et d'arrêter son cœur pour ne contempler que le moyen par lequel celui que l'on a aimé nous a donné l'occasion de l'approcher.

Et pourtant ce pauvre corps de mon père m'obsède. C'est par lui qu'il nous a souri, c'est par lui que nous avons pu le connaître. Ce sont ses mains merveilleuses par lesquelles il nous a béni, ce sont ses yeux brillants de bonté et souvent d'une certaine bouffonnerie qui nos ont souri. C'est sa bouche qui nous a embrassé, et encore sa bouche qui nous a enseigné ce qui est bon et juste. C'est sa voix que nous n'entendrons plus qui a apaisé mes angoisses et c'est son corps que j'ai tenu entre me bras. Qu'il était doux et bon, mon père. Il m'a donné tant de joie parfaite. Il m'a toujours encouragée vers les chemins difficiles au monde, mais toujours en m'avisant de profiter des bontés de la terre et de la grandeur et du bonheur des hommes. Il a vraiment aimé les hommes, un peu, comme peut-être Dieu les aime, avec un doux sourire indulgent. Il m'a enseigné d'aimer et chercher le beau et les mots de Platon auraient pu être les siens : ΤΟΥΤΟ ΤΟΚΟΣ ΕΝ ΚΑΔΦ -- engendrer dans le beau.

Il prenait soin de son apparence. Il montrait son âme chevaleresque par son comportement. Mais peut-on montrer un comportement sans corps ? Peut-être non. Certes que l'on ne peut le démontrer sans ce qui meut le corps, l'âme. Ta mort, mon père bien aimé, m'a montré que je crois à l'immortalité de l'âme et plus que je crois que les esprits se trouvent auprès de nous. Tu m'es tellement plus proche depuis que tu as quitté ton corps. Tu n'es plus attaché à un corps récalcitrant aux déplacements rapides. Tu es tout près. Tout près de mon âme. Uni au corps il nous faut l'apprentissage des âmes de ceux que nous aimons. Comment pourrions-nous nous approcher d'abord l'un de 'autre. Mais après une vie dans laquelle nos âmes sont engendrées l'une et l'autre maitre et élève, créateur et créature à leur tour, nous n'avons plus besoin de sourires ni de clins d'œil, ni de mots ni de chants, nos âmes sont sœurs.

Et c'est pour cela que je me sens si étrangement calme, si presqu'heureuse, car ce que tu as été tu l'es plus fort maintenant. Rien ne peut plus entamer la grande personnalité que tu fus car ton chemin sur terre est achevé. Aucun acte perfide ne pourra plus entacher ta vie, aucune lâcheté ultime faire une moquerie de ta foi. Par les derniers mois de ta vie tu as cru toujours et continuellement, à mesure que ton corps se préparait de plus en plus de s'effacer, de commencer son anéantissement avant la fin, ton esprit faisait son apprentissage de vivre sans corps. Comme tout dans ta vie tu faisais cela également, « alles zu seiner Zeit. Es gibt eine Zeit der Sciens un eine Zeit des Erntens, eine Zeit des Gebährens und eine Zeit des Starbens ». Sans te hâter, sans faire du bruit tranquillement et préparer tu l'as enfin quitté -- plus près de nous, plus proche de nos cœurs tu as laissé derrière toi- ton souvenir.

13TH FEBRUARY 1957

It has been over 24 hours. My father's remains must have been lowered into the ground. They kissed him one last time, never realising it was no longer him. Jacob and Joseph have been embalmed. But what could they have embalmed, but an illusion? What an awful thing it is to stop time and stop his heart only to contemplate