Realism(s) #13, or: that majestic sadness

'Let what you do,' says Horace, 'be always simple and a whole.'

--Racine, preface to Bérénice, 1670.

This sudden flight

Leaves me, I must confess, a simple wound.

--Bérénice, act I, scene V.

What, after all, shall I say? I flee your vacant eyes

Which, seeing me always, see me never.

Farewell, I go, my heart too full of your image,

To await, for my part, while loving you, death.

Above all fear not that a distress sightless

Fills the universe with the resound of my misfortune,

Madame: the sole sound of a death that I beg

Will remember you again I was still alive.

--Bérénice, act I, scene IV; also spoken in JLG's Une femme mariée (1964), trans. CK.

De son appartement - Jean-Claude Rousseau, 2007, digital video