"Have you read it?" The words are just about to come spurting out, vibrant with excitement, with enthusiasm... forced out by what is there, which is compelled to emerge, to show itself to the person who has come here, who is probably delighting in the anticipation of what he is going to find, of what he is going to be offered... who else could so well appreciate it?... "Have you read it?..."
Just another moment, let them shelter a bit longer in the tranquility, the security of silence... But why hold them back? Haven't they already undergone the most meticulous, the most rigorous checks possible, and there is nothing to stop these words entering the other person's territory, nothing in him which, when they reach him, would be aroused, sit up, try to measure itself, to confront... and then fall back pathetically, shattered... Nothing over there which, at the appearance of these words, would start crawling humbly, ashamedly, toward obscurity, toward in existence... no, nothing can happen to produce any such painful, degrading sight... "Have you read it?" may enter in all security... The person who is going to receive these words has never written a book.
[Here, Sarraute, N.]
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