I have times of great stagnation. It’s not, as happens to everyone, that I let days and days go by without sending a postcard in response to the urgent letter I received. It’s not, as happens to no one, that I indefinitely postpone what’s easy and would be useful, or what’s useful and would be pleasurable. There’s more subtlety in my self-contradiction. I stagnate in my very soul. My will, emotions and thought stop functioning, and this suspension lasts for days on end; only the vegetative life of my soul – words, gestures, habits – expresses me to others and, through them, to myself.
