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ing songs of delight or of sorrow ineffable, or confiding to paper your abstruse meditations, bard of eternal pleasure and eternal anguish, philosopher, poet and artist, I hail thee, Im- mortal!
shapen gnomes, exceeding thin, whose plead- ing eyes demanded alms even more than did their trembling hands, and then there were old mothers carrying abortions slung at their wasted breasts, and many another was there. The great Satan knocked with his fist on his enormous belly, whence came a long, resound- ing clangour of metal, which ended in a vague groan as of many human voices, and he laughed, showing shamelessly his decayed teeth in an enormous and imbecile guffaw, just as do certain men in every country when they have dined too well. And…
a king to play with, one might compare you with great accuracy to a young she-frog invok- ing the Ideal. If you despise King Log (as I am at present, you know well) beware of King Stork, who will crunch you and swallow you and kill at his pleasure! Poet as I am, I am not the dupe that you would like to think; and if you weary me too often with your affected complainings I will treat you like a wild woman of the woods or throw you out of the window like an empty bottle.
by the hurtling clouds. Not the peaceful and discreet moon that visits the slumber of chaste men, but the moon, torn from heaven, con- quered, yet in revolt, that Thessalian witches force by their strong spell to dance on the af- frighted grass. Beneath her narrow brow dwell tenacious will and lust of prey; and yet on this disquiet- ing countenance, where the mobile nostrils sniff up the unknown and the impossible, there breaks forth with ineffable grace the laughter of a great mouth red and white and delicious; as who should dream of the mirac…
ing shadows, behind his torn curtain? In sooth I did not dare, and, though the reason for my timidity will make you laugh, I will avow it: I feared to humiliate him. At the end I brought my courage to the sticking point; I resolved, as I passed, to lay some money on one of the boards, hoping that he would divine my inten- tion, when a great eddy of people, caused by I know not what disturbance, bore me far away from him. And, on my homeward round, obsessed by this sight, I sought to analyse my sudden sad- ness; and I said to myself: I have just…
…ysterious and unknown impulse, sometimes act with a rashness of which they would have believed themselves to be incapable. One such, fearing to find some disappoint- ing intelligence at the porters lodge, hangs about for an hour without daring to go home; another keeps a letter for a fortnight without unsealing it, or only makes up his mind after six months to take some step which was nec- essary a year before: such feel themselves sometimes hurried brusquely into action by an irresistible force, like the arrow from a bow. The moralist and the…
XLII PORTRAITS OF MISTRESSES IN a mans boudoir, that is to say, in the smoking-room of a fashionable gambling hell, four men were smoking and drinking. They were not precisely old or young, they bore that unmistakable distinction which belongs to the veterans of Marshal Joy, that indescribableI know not what to call itthat cold and banter- ing sadness which clearly says, We have lived strongly, and we seek something to admire and to respect. One of them turned the conversation to the subject of women. It would have been more philosophical …
ing damp; one breathes here now the rancid air of desolation. In this world, so narrow, yet so filled with loathing, one single well-known object smiles on me,the phial of laudanum; and old and terrible mistress; like all mistresses, alas! fer- tile in caresses and in treacheries. Oh yes, Time has reappeared. Time lords it now, and with the ugly oldster has returned all his devilish rout of memories, regrets, spasms, fears, agonies, nightmares, rages, nerve- storms. I swear to you that the seconds now tick off like a mighty and a solemn bell, …
XXXV WINDOWS WHOSO looks from without into an open window never sees so much as he who looks at a closed window. There is nothing more pro- found, more mysterious, more fertile, more darksome, more dazzling, than a window lighted by a candle. What one may see in sunlight is always less interesting than what passes behind the glass. In this black or shin- ing cavity life lives, life dreams, life suffers. Beyond the waves of roof I see a woman, middle-aged, already wrinkled, poor, always bending over something, who never goes out. With her face, …
…ms the town with its di- rect and terrible light; the sand dazzles and the sea glitters; the tired world has given up its work and is taking its siesta; a siesta which is a kind of sweet-savoured death, where the sleeper, half awake, tastes the pleasures of his annihilation. Dorothy, however, as strong and as bright as the sun, walks in the deserted street; at this hour she is the sole living being under the mighty vault of blue; she makes a startling black blot upon the light. She moves forward, softly swaying her deli- cate torso on her broad…
…dened from that vast ba- sin of the sea whose shores scarce let them- selves be seen; a hundred times already it had plunged again sparkling or morose into its im- mense evening bath; for many days we were able to contemplate the other side of the fir- mament and decipher the celestial Alphabet of the Antipodes, and each of the passengers grumbled and scolded. One would have said that getting near to land increased their suffer- ing; When then, they cried, shall we cease to sleep a sleep that is shaken by the wave, disturbed by a wind that s…
XXXIII INTOXICATE YOURSELF! ONE must always be drunk. Everything lies in that; it is the only question worth consider- ing. In order not to feel the horrible burden of time which breaks your shoulders and bows you down to earth, you must intoxicate your- self without truce, but with what? With wine, poetry, or art?As you will; but intoxicate yourself. And if sometimes upon the steps of a pal- ace, or upon the green grass of a moat, or in the sad solitude of your own room, you awake, intoxication already diminished or disappeared, ask of the wi…
lightings of their struggle; in those deep and many wrinkles, in those steps so slow or so dragging, he instantly deciphers innumerable legends of love deceived, of devotion misun- derstood, of effort unrewarded, of cold and hunger humbly and silently endured. Have you sometimes noticed widows upon these solitary benches? Widows who are poor; whether or no they be in mourning, it is easy to recognize them. Besides, there is always in the mourning of poor persons something lack- ing; an absence of harmony which makes it more heartbreaking. Pover…
ished there is none greater than that of caus- ing astonishment. It was the bad coin he answered calmly, as if to excuse his extrava- gance. But in my unhappy brain, always busy with tilting at windmills, (with how exhausting a gift has Nature endowed me!) this idea suddenly entered; that such conduct on the part of my friend was only excusable by the desire of cre- ating an event in the life of this poor devil, perhaps even of discovering the divers conse- quences, unfortunate or otherwise, which a bad coin in a beggars hand may produce. M…
thee the Lord of Souls, and thou shalt be the master of living matter, more so even than the sculptor can be of his clay, and thou shalt know the pleasure, ceaselessly re-born, of leaving thyself to forget thyself in another, and to draw other souls, until thou dost confound them with thine own. And I answered him, Thank you for noth- ing. What should I do with this parcel of be- ings, who doubtless are worth no more than my poor self? Though I have sometimes shame in remembering, I wish to forget nothing. And even if I did not know you, old …
…oneries. My pen trembles, and tears of an ever-present emotion rise to my eyes, while I seek to describe to you this un- forgettable evening. Fanciullo proved to me in a peremptory and irrefutable manner that the intoxication of art is apter than any other to veil the terrors of the abyss; that genius may play its part upon the edge of the tomb with a joy which prevents it from seeing the tomb, lost as it is in a Paradise which excludes all idea either of death or of destruction. The entire audience, right world-word and frivolous as it may hav…
terchanged, the idle, fatigued because they have done nothing, waddle about pretending an indolent enjoyment of the music. Here is nothing but riches and happiness, nothing which does not breathe and inspire careless- ness and the pleasure which life takes in allow- ing itself to live. Nay, nothing, unless it be the aspect of this mob which leans down there upon the outer barrier, catching, without pay- ment, at the will of the wind, a shred of music, and gazing upon the sparkling throng within. It is always interesting, this reflection of the …
the stupid waddlings of the polar bear, excites himself this hairy monsterwhose shape imi- tates, vaguely enough, your own. This monster is one of those animals which one generally calls My angel; that is to say, a woman. The other monster, he who, a stick in his hand, cries loud enough to break your head in, is a husband. He has put his lawful wife in irons like a wild animal, and he is showing her in the suburbs;on fair days, needless to say, with a licence from the magistrate. Pay close attention. See with what voracity (perhaps genuin…
than that, you want to be dressed like them, and do and say the same things and speak with the same voice . . . One of the four children, who for some sec- onds past was no longer listening to his talk, but with a startling fixity had fastened his gaze upon I knew not what point of heaven, said suddenly, Look, look there; do you see Him? He is sitting on that little lonely cloud, that lit- tle fire-coloured cloud that moves so softly, and He tooone would say that He was look- ing at us. But who then? asked the others. God, he replied, w…
with fear. In short, thoughts of the beauty with which I was surrounded filling me as it did with enthusiasm, I felt myself at perfect peace with myself and with the Universe. I even believe that, in my perfect happiness and my total for- getfulness of all terrestrial evil, I had arrived at no longer thinking so ridiculous those newspa- pers which pretend that man is naturally good; when, immedicable matter renewing its impor- tunities, I thought I would repair the ravages of fatigue and quench the appetite caused by so lengthy an ascent. I pul…