People always ask me if I knew him. In truth, I only knew him through the two letters he sent me. Strange things they were, full of elegances that it would have been unkind to expect from most people. He was seldom seen or heard from: he had no public persona, and this of course added to the myth. I believe that he was affiliated with an institution that paid him an annual stipend, and that he lived off this small amount for many years leading up to his death. Well, that was a long time ago, but I have kept the letters.
I first wrote to him when I was in my thirty-fifth year, after I had just been promoted to the post of district commissioner. He was thirty years my senior and had recently retired from the University of Leiden, one of Europe’s historic institutions, and a place he visited rarely, if ever at all. He told people that he liked to teach, but only from a distance. I believe that he didn’t like people to look too closely at him. You could tell from the few photographs that he was a man whose face had not often been read.
But you know all of this: you are here for the letters. Well, as I say, they are strange things, and in reading them I hope you will understand why. The first was sent to me on the 15th of March 1974:
'Dear Mr. Arlen,
'I am humbled by your kind and gracious letter of introduction. I only regret that I had not been able to read it earlier so that I could compose a reply to you more swiftly. I am truly sorry that it has taken me several months to do so, but I am sure you will understand what volume of correspondence I am asked to attend to every day, considering my habits and existence, and why it is not possible for me to answer your letter as soon as you might have hoped.
'In reply to your first question: yes, I do live alone. I don’t keep servants because I like to do things by myself. It also limits my expenses. I was once married but I divorced my wife after I discovered that she was having an affair. The details of these matters are recounted in Trondsen (1965), if you care to learn more; you must beware some of his exaggerated suggestions, however. My daughter is living with her mother, I believe, although she must be in her twenties now.
'My house is the only building for miles. The nearest town is a long drive away. I’m sorry that you have had to address your letter to my secretary but I cherish my privacy and I can’t afford to lose it, especially now that I am working quite intensely. The house is small, no grander description than a cottage will suffice. I bought it from a farmer. There are two bedrooms, one of which I have been using as a study. I don’t have a living room since I rarely have guests, and the ones I do invite are quite happy to sit and discuss things with me in the kitchen. In the garden I have erected a large pool, although I am too old and weak to swim in it nowadays.
'My philosophical progression has been painful in that during the course of my life, and particularly during these late years, I have had to reject much of the wisdom and teachings of my youth. I was a rather severe young man, and quickly established myself as a thinker operating within the classical tradition. Hegel was my hero, and somebody who I felt to be living inside me, or at least his spirit did. I grew to loathe him as I experienced serious failures, particularly in my private affairs, although in recent years I think I have made my peace with the man.
'I am attracted to the work of the new philosophers coming out of Paris. I may be the only one of the so-called ‘Old Guard’ who looks on them with favour. Concomitant with my recent researches into ‘depth’ as a theoretical concept – which you have most kindly asked to hear more about – is an essay by someone whose name currently escapes me. Anyway, he discusses desert islands from the perspective of renewal, and seems to suggest that depth is a swelling of time. He writes, beautifully I think, that: ‘In the ideal of beginning anew there is something that precedes the beginning itself, that takes it up to deepen it and delay it in the passage of time. The desert island is the material of this something immemorial, this something most profound.’ I would be most interested to hear your thoughts on this idea. I will ask my secretary to forward you the reference to the essay if I can find it.
'For my part, I believe that in the shallows time flows normally, which is to say, it alternates between periods of calm and turbulence. Everything there is relative. In the depths, the pressure of time is lived away from the experience of regret, of joy, even of solitude. The deepest recesses find time ebbing into layers of repetition. This motion in transit can be felt as a reverberation, as every thought is created anew.
'Well, I am sorry to have proceeded at greater length than I had intended, but I do hope that you will take some time to write me a reply.
Yours very sincerely,
Professor Bourget'
I wrote in reply to him, exchanging a few words on the details of my own life. I felt that he would like to hear this from me, even though he hadn’t asked me specifically for it. The second – and last – letter that he wrote to me was dated 3rd May 1974. He took his life some time during the following week. Here is the letter he wrote:
'Dear Joseph,
'Once again you do me the honour of writing about yourself and your family. It fills me with happiness to hear that you and your wife are expecting your first child. Please write and inform me as precisely as you can the expected date of birth, so that I may send you a present to coincide with the arrival of the baby.
'I have been pondering for some time your response to my sly prodding. It is surprising to hear that you don’t take seriously the ideas of the post-’68 thinkers. I felt that this was what would have drawn you to seek me out, but you are interested instead in my earlier writing. Well, I can only discuss my most personal works in today’s language. All of the old styles and tricks are gone.
'Back in ’52, when I was – as you are soon to be – a young father, I endured a period of crisis during the break-up of my marriage. It was a terribly fraught affair from which I have not properly recovered. You will have noted from your researches that my wife is an even more elusive creature than I: she does not want to discuss it. Being of a more temperate disposition nowadays, I can tell you a bit more about that time. I was, as one might say, ‘in too deep’, in terms of intellectuality. I was dabbling in all sorts of esoteric knowledge that I didn’t have the courage to apprehend critically. In its way, this can be a dangerous game. But worst of all was the fact that my wife was completely uninterested in my work. I took this far too personally at the time and have regretted it ever since. Then, I conceived depth as a condition, as my own sorry state of being. I had crossed the limits, although I never stopped to ask myself who had defined these limits. All I was concerned with was the misery of depth, the sorrow of being there, alone, while the rest of humanity floated happily along in the shallows.
'You see what kind of a man I was. You also understand, I hope, why it is impossible for me to answer all of the other theoretical questions that you have posed me, which date from my writings of this period. Well, I am sorry I cannot help you any further along this line, but please do write to me concerning any other matter.
I am yours, as ever,
Paul Bourget'
Even by the heightened expectations for which I had prepared myself after receiving his initial reply, this letter came with the sudden force of an earthquake. I immediately attempted to trace his wife, but to no avail. Trondsen was no help either, although he was very coy about the possible whereabouts of the daughter.
Very soon after these investigations began, I received news of the professor’s suicide. I made my way down to the house, the address of which was finally revealed to me by his loyal secretary. I was the first on the scene, after the forensics, so I was able to have a thorough look around the place. The house was remarkably clean and well-arranged, I thought; everything was in its place, and nothing seemed out of place.
In the garden I walked around the old pool that had lain unused for so many years. It was covered, and when I opened it I was surprised to find it full of water. Years of neglect had turned it into a stagnant and foul-smelling swamp, but there was no mistaking the sight of the decaying arm floating on the surface. When the pool was drained and the rest of the girl’s body was recovered and dated, it matched the time of the disappearance of his daughter from the biographical record. It was only a matter of a few routine tests before I was able to confirm the information that is common knowledge today.
