THE ILLUMINATIONS

ONE

Après le Déluge

As soon as the idea of the Flood was stale,

A hare stopped in the moving sainfoin and bellflowers, and said its prayer to the rainbow, through the spider's

web.

Oh! the precious stones that were hiding—the flowers that already were gazing.

In the dirty main street, stalls were set up, and boats were hauled to the sea tiered up as in engravings.

Blood ran, at Bluebeard's—in slaughterhouses, at circuses, where the seal of God paled the windows. Blood

and milk ran.

Beavers built. "Mazagrans" steamed in estaminets.

In the big glass house still wet, children in mourning-clothes saw the marvelous pictures.

A door slammed: and, in the hamlet square, the child turned his arms, understood by weather vanes and cocks

on steeples everywhere, in the bursting downpour.

Madame *** set up a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communion were celebrated at the hundred thousand

altars of the cathedral.

Caravans started out. And the Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and night at the pole.

From that moment, the Moon heard jackals whimpering in the deserts of thyme—and eclogues in sabots

growling in the orchard. Then, in the violet stand of trees, Eucharis told me it was spring.

Rise, pond—foam, roll on the bridge and over the treetops—black sheets and organs, lightning and thunder,

climb and roll—waters and glooms, climb and raise the Floods again.

For since they vanished—oh, the precious stones burying themselves, and the open flowers!—it's an

annoyance! And the Queen, the Sorceress who lights her coal in the earthen pot, will never want to tell us

what she knows, what we know not of.

Childhood

I

This idol, black eyes and yellow horsehair, sans parents nor yard, more noble than fable, Mexican and Flemish;

its domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs upon beaches named, by waves sans vessels, with names

ferociously Greek, Slavic, Celtic.

At the edge of the forest—the flowers of dream tinkle, shine, beam—the girl with orange lips, nudity shaded,

traversed and clothed by rainbows, flora, the sea.

Ladies who whirl on terraces by the sea; children and giantesses, superb blacks in verdigris moss, jewels on

end on the sticky ground of thawed groves and gardens—young mothers and big sisters with looks full of

pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses of tyrannical dress and gait, little foreigners and persons sweetly unhappy.

What boredom, the hour of "dear body" and dear heart".

II

It is she, the little dead girl, behind the rosebushes—the young departed mommy comes down the steps—the

cousin's barouche squeaks on the sand—the little brother (he is in the Indies!) there, before the setting sun, on

the meadow of carnations—the old men they have buried straight up in the rampart with gillyflowers.

The swarm of golden leaves surrounds the house of the general. They are in the south—you follow the red

road to arrive at the empty inn. The château is for sale; the shutters are detached—the priest will have taken

away the key to the church—around the park, the guards' huts are uninhabited. The fences are so high that

you can only see rustling treetops. Besides, there is nothing to see inside.

The meadows go back to hamlets sans roosters, sans anvils. The sluice is open. O Calvaries and desert

windmills, isles and ricks!

Magic flowers were buzzing. Embankments cradled him. Beasts of a fabulous elegance circulated. Clouds

amassed on the high sea made of an eternity of hot tears.

III

In the woods there is a bird, its song stops you and makes you blush.

There is a clock that does not strike.

There is a pothole with a nest of white beasts.

There is a cathedral that descends and a lake that rises.

There is a little carriage abandoned in the coppice or which descends the path, beribboned.

There is a troupe of little actors in costume, glimpsed on the road through the edge of the wood.

There is, at last, when you are hungry or thirsty, someone who chases you off.

IV

I am the saint, at prayer on the terrace, as peaceable beasts graze to the sea of Palestine.

I am the savant in the dark armchair. Branches and rain crash into the library casement.

I am the pedestrian of the highroad by way of the dwarf woods; the rumor of sluices covers my steps. I see for

a long time the melancholy wash of the golden sundown.

I might well be the child abandoned on the jetty gone to sea, the little servant following the lane whose brow

touches the sky.

The paths are bitter. The hillocks are covered with broom. The air is motionless. How the birds and springs are

far! It can only be the end of the world, advancing.

V

Let them rent me at last this tomb, whitewashed with lines of cement in relief—very far underground.

I put my elbows on the table, the lamp shines very brightly on these journals which I am idiotic to reread, these

books without interest.

At an enormous distance above my subterranean parlor, houses are set up, fogs gather. The mud is red or

black. Monstrous city, endless night!

Less high, are sewers. To the sides, nothing but the thickness of the globe. Perhaps gulfs of azure, wells of fire.

It is perhaps on these planes that moons and comets, seas and fables meet.

In hours of bitterness, I imagine balls of sapphire, of metal. I am the master of silence. Why would a semblance

of basement window pale in a corner of the vault?

Tale

A Prince was vexed for never having devoted himself but to the perfection of vulgar generosities. He foresaw

stunning revolutions of love, and suspected his women could do better than this complaisance embellished

with heavens and luxury. He wanted to see the truth, the hour of desire and of essential gratifications. Were it

or no an aberration of piety, he wanted. He possessed at least a rather broad human power.

All the women who had known him were assassinated: what havoc in the garden of beauty! Under the saber,

they blessed him. He did not order any new ones—the women reappeared.

He killed all those who followed him, after the hunt or libations—all followed him.

He amused himself slaughtering luxury beasts. He set palaces on fire. He pounced on people and cut them to

pieces—the crowd, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts still existed.

One may find ecstasy in destruction, and be rejuvenated by cruelty! The people did not murmur. No-one

offered the aid of his views.

One evening, he was galloping proudly. A Genie appeared, of a beauty ineffable, unavowable even. From his

physiognomy and his bearing emerged the promise of a multiple and complex love! of an unspeakable

happiness, insupportable even! The Prince and the Genie annihilated each other probably in essential health.

How could they not have died of it? Together then they died

But this Prince expired, in his palace, at an ordinary age. The Prince was the Genie. The Genie was the Prince—

savant music is lacking to our desire.

TWO

Parade

Very solid scamps. Several have exploited your worlds. Without needs, and little pressed to put to work their

brilliant faculties and their experience of your consciences. What mature men! Dazed eyes in the fashion of

summer night, red and black, tricolored, steel pricked with golden stars; features deformed, leaden, pallid,

afire; frisky hoarsenesses! The cruel gait of rags!—there are some young—how would they regard Cherubim?

—provided with frightening voices and some dangerous resources. They are sent buggering in town, rigged out

in disgusting luxury.

O the most violent Paradise of enraged grimace! No comparison with your Fakirs and the other scenic

buffooneries. In improvised costumes, with the taste of a bad dream, they perform complaints, tragedies of

bandits and demigods spiritual as history and religion have never been. Chinese, Hottentots, bohemians,

simpletons, hyenas, Molochs, old dementias, sinister demons, they mix popular turns, maternal, with beastly

poses and tendernesses. They would interpret new plays and "nice girl" songs. Master jugglers, they transform

place and persons and use magnetic comedy. Eyes burn, blood sings, bones stretch, red tears and dribbles

flow. Their raillery or their terror lasts a minute, or whole months.

I only have the key to this wild parade.

Antique

Graceful son of Pan! About thy brow with bays and flowerets crowned thine eyes, precious balls, bestir.

Stained with brown lees, thy cheeks pucker. Thy fangs glisten. Thy breast is like unto a kithara, tinklings round

thy blond arms. Thine heart beats, in that belly where the double sex sleeps. Betake thyself, by night, gently

moving that thigh, that second thigh and that left leg.

Being Beauteous

Before a snow, a Being of Beauty very tall. Whistlings of death and circles of mute music cause to rise, grow

and tremble like a specter that adored body; scarlet and black wounds burst in the superb flesh—life's own

colors deepen, dance, and emerge around the Vision, in progress—and the shivers ascend and the frenzied

savor of these effects loading up on the mortal whistlings and raucous music that the world, far behind us,

hurls at our mother of beauty—she recoils, she rises. Oh! our bones are clad in a new amorous body. O the

ashen face, escutcheon of hair, crystal arms! the cannon upon which I must fall across the melee of trees and

light air!

Lives

I

O the enormous avenues of the Holy Land, the terraces of the temple! What has become of the Brahman who

explained Proverbs to me? Of then, of there, I still see even the old women! I remember hours of silver and

sun around the rivers, the hand of the countryside on my shoulder, and our caresses standing in the peppery

plains—a flight of scarlet pigeons thunders about my thought—exiled here, I had a stage on which to play the

dramatic masterpieces of all literatures. I would point out to you unheard-of riches . I observe the story of the

treasures you found. I see the result! My wisdom is as disdained as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared

with the stupor that awaits you?

II

I am an inventor quite otherwise deserving than all those who have preceded me; a musician even, who has

discovered something like the key of love. At present, a gentleman of a harsh countryside with a sober sky, I

try to rouse myself with the memory of a beggarly childhood, of apprenticeship or arrival in sabots, of

polemics, of five or six widowerhoods, and of weddings where my fine head prevented me from rising to the

diapason of my comrades. I do not regret my old part in divine gaiety: the sober air of this harsh countryside

feeds most actively my atrocious skepticism. But as this skepticism cannot henceforth be brought into play,

and moreover I am dedicated to a new trouble—I expect to become a very nasty fool.

III

In a garret where I was shut in at twelve years of age I knew the world, I illustrated the human comedy. In a

storeroom I learned history. At some night feast, in a Northern city, I met all the women of the old painters. In

an old passage in Paris I was taught the classical sciences. In a magnificent dwelling ringed by the entire Orient,

I accomplished my immense work and spent my illustrious retreat. I stirred my blood. My duty is remitted. It is

not even necessary to dream of that. I am really from beyond the grave, and no commissions.

THREE

Departure

Saw enough. The vision is to be found on every wind.

Had enough. Rumors of towns, at evening, and in daylight, and always.

Knew enough. Life's decisions.—O Rumors and Visions!

Departure in affection and noise anew.

RoyaltY

One fair morning, amongst a very mild people, a superb man and woman shouted on the public square: "My

friends, I would that she were queen!" "I would be queen!" She laughed and shook. He spoke to friends of

revelation, of hardship ended. They swooned upon each other.

Indeed, they were kings all morning long, whilst carmine hangings went up on the houses, and all afternoon,

whilst they moved forward from the palm gardens.

To a reason

One drumtap of your finger discharges all sound and commences the new harmony.

One step you take, it's the levying of new men and their forward march.

Your head turns away: the new love! Your head turns back: the new love!

"Change our fates, flitter the curses, to begin with the weather," these children sing at you. "Lift anywhere our

fortunes' and our wishes' substance," they beg of you.

Come from forever, you will go everywhere.

Morning of drunkenness

O my Good! O my Beautiful! Atrocious fanfare in which I stumble not at all! Magic rack! Hurrah for the

unheard-of work and for the marvellous body, for the first time! It began with the laughter of children, it will

end with it. This poison will stay in all our veins even when, the fanfare turning, we are back in the old

disharmony. O now, we so worthy of these tortures! collect fervently this body and soul: this promise, this

dementia! Elegance, science, violence! We were promised to inter in darkness the tree of good and evil, to

deport tyrannical honesties, so that we might bring forth our very pure love. It began with some disgust and it

ends—not being able to grasp on the spot that eternity—it ends with a scattering of perfumes.

Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, horror of figures and objects here, consecrated

be you by the memory of this vigil. It would begin with every boorishness, it ends with angels of flame and ice.

Little vigil of drunkenness, holy! if only for the mask with which you have favored us. We affirm you, method!

We do not forget that you have glorified each of our ages. We have faith in the poison. We know how to give

our whole life every day.

This is the time of the Assassins.

FOUR

Phrases

When the world will be reduced to one mere dark forest for our two astonished eyes—to a beach for two loyal

children—to a musical house for our bright sympathy—I will find you.

Let there be on earth but one old man, calm and fine, surrounded by an "unheard-of luxury"—and I am at your

knees.

Let me have realized all your recollections—let me be she who can garrote you—I will smother you.

———

When we are quite strong—who recoils? quite gay—who drops with ridicule? When we are quite bad, what

might they do with us?

Deck yourself, dance, laugh. I will never be able to throw Love out the window.

———

My comrade, beggargirl, monstrous child! how it's all the same to you, these wretched women and these

maneuvers, and my embarrassments. Ally yourself to us with your impossible voice, your voice! only flatterer

of this vile despair.

An overcast morning, in July. An ashen taste flies in the air—an odor of oozing wood in the hearth—flowers

beretted—havoc in the promenades—canal mizzle in the fields—why not already toys and incense?

* * *

I have strung ropes from belfry to belfry; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star,

and I dance.

* * *

The tarn steams continuously. What sorceress will rise up against the white sunset? What violet frondescence

fall?

* * *

While public funds flow in feasts of brotherhood, a bell of pink fire rings in the clouds.

* * *

Arousing an agreeable taste for India ink, a black powder rains softly on my vigil—I lower the flames of the

lustre, I hurl myself on my bed, and, turned toward the darkness, I see you, my daughters! my queens!

Workers

O that hot February morning. The inopportune South came to relieve our memories of absurd indigence, our

young misery.

Henrika had on a cotton skirt with brown and white checks, which must have been worn in the last century, a

ribbon bonnet and a silk scarf. It was much sadder than mourning. We were going round the suburb. The

weather was overcast, and the South wind excited all the nasty odors of the ravaged gardens and the

desiccated fields.

That must not have wearied my wife to the same extent as me. In a puddle left by the inundation of the

previous month on a rather high path she drew my attention to very small fish.

The city, with its smoke and trade noises, followed us very far in the roads. O the other world, the habitation

blessed by heaven, and the shades! The South recalled to me the miserable incidents of my childhood, my

summer despairs, the horrible quantity of strength and science that fate has always kept from me. No! we

shall not pass summer in this greedy country where we shall always be only engaged orphans. I want this

hardened arm to drag no more a dear image.

The Bridges

Skies crystal gray. A bizarre design of bridges, some straight, some humped, others descending or obliquing on

corners of the first; and these figures repeating in the other lighted circuits of the canal, but all so long and

light that the banks, laden with domes, drop and diminish. A few of these bridges are already laden with

ramshackle houses. Others support masts, signals, frail parapets. Minor chords cross, and go off; ropes climb

the riverbanks. You make out a red jacket, perhaps other costumes and musical instruments. Are these

popular tunes, bits of lordly concerts, scraps of public hymns? The water is gray and blue, broad as an arm of

the sea—a pallid beam, falling from the height of heaven, annihilates this comedy.

City

I am an ephemeral and not too discontented citizen of a metropolis believed modern, because all known taste

has been eluded in the furnishings and the exterior of the houses as well as in the city plan. Here you would

indicate traces of no monument of superstition. Morals and language are reduced to their simplest expression,

finally! These millions of people who have no need to know each other bring about so alike education, jobs,

and old age, that this course of life must be several times less long than what a foolish statistic finds for the

people of the Continent. Also as, from my window, I see new specters rolling through the thick and eternal

coal smoke—our woodland shade, our summer night!—new Erinnyes, before my cottage which is my nation

and my whole heart since everything here resembles it—Death without tears, our active daughter and servant

girl, a Love in despair and a pretty Crime whimpering in the mud of the street.

FIVE

Ruts

On the right the summer dawn awakes the leaves and vapors and noises of this part of the park, and the

embankments left hold in their violet shade the thousand rapid ruts of the damp road. Procession of fairylike

visions! Indeed: cars charged with animals of gilded wood, masts and canvases of many colors, to the grand

gallop of twenty dappled circus horses, and children, and men, on their most astounding beasts—twenty

vehicles, labored, decked out and beflowered like coaches of old or in stories, filled with children dolled up for

a suburban pastoral—even coffins on their night dais hoisting their ebony plumes, flying to the trot of black

and blue mares.

Cities I

These are cities! This is a people for whom are risen these Alleghenies and Lebanons of dream! Chalets of

crystal and wood move on invisible rails and pulleys. Old craters ringed with colossi and copper palm trees roar

melodiously in the fires. Amorous feasts knell over the canals suspended behind the chalets. The carillon

hunting ground shouts in the gorges. Corporations of giant singers run along in vestments and oriflammes as

dazzling as the light of peaks. On the platforms, amidst gulfs, Rolands sound their bravura. On the gangways of

the abyss and the innroofs, the ardor of the sky flags the masts. The crumbling of apotheoses unites with fields

of heights where seraphic centauresses evolve among avalanches. Above the level of the high aretes, a sea

troubled by the eternal birth of Venus, laden with orpheonic fleets and the rumor of precious pearls and

conches, the sea darkens at times with mortal flashes. On the slopes, harvests of flowers as big as our weapons

and cups bellow. Corteges of Mabs in dresses russet, opaline, climb the ravines. Higher, feet in the cascade and

the brambles, stags suckle at Diana. Suburban Bacchantes sob and the moon burns and yells. Venus goes into

the caverns of blacksmiths and hermits. Groups of belfries sing the ideas of peoples. From castles built of bone

comes unknown music. All legends evolve and elk charge through the streets. The storm paradise breaks

down. Savages dance unceasingly the night feast. And, one hour, I descended into the stir of a Baghdad

boulevard where companies sang the joy of new work, under a thick breeze, circulating powerless to elude the

fabulous phantoms of mountains where one was to meet again.

Vagabonds

What good arms, what fair hour will return me that region whence come my slumbers and my least

movements?

Pitiful brother! what atrocious evenings I owed him! "I did not take hold of this enterprise fervently. I have

toyed with his infirmity. Because of me we might return to exile, to slavery." He imagined me a very bizarre

jinx and innocence, and added disturbing reasons.

I answered by laughing at this satanic doctor, and ended by gaining the window. I created, beyond the

countryside traversed by bands of rare music, the phantoms of future nocturnal luxury.

After this vaguely hygienic distraction, I stretched out on straw. And, almost every night, as soon as he was

asleep, the poor brother arose, mouth rotten, eyes torn out—just as he had dreamed! and drew me into the

hall roaring his dream of foolish grief.

I had indeed, in all sincerity of mind, undertaken to return him to his primitive state of son of the Sun—and we

wandered nourished by the wine of the caverns and the biscuit of the road, I driven to find the place and the

formula.

Cities II

The official acropolis outdoes the colossalest conceptions of modern barbarity. Impossible to express the flat

daylight produced by this sky, immutably gray, the buildings' imperial éclat, and the ground's eternal snow.

There is reproduced, in singular taste for enormity, all the classic marvels of architecture, and I visit painting

exhibitions in premises twenty times more vast than Hampton Court. What paintings! A Norwegian

Nebuchadnezzar had the Ministries' staircases built; the subalterns I've been able to see are already prouder

than Brahmins, and I shook at the sight of the colossi watchmen and the building officials. By grouping edifices

in squares, courts and terraces, coachmen have been ousted. The parks represent primitive nature worked by

a superb art, the old quarter has inexplicable parts, an arm of the sea, with no boats, rolls its sheet of blue hail

amidst quays laden with giant candelabra. A small bridge leads to a postern immediately below the Holy

Chapel's dome. That dome is an artistic steel armature about fifteen thousand feet in diameter.

On several points of the copper gangways, the platforms, the stairways that wind around markets and pillars, I

thought I could judge the depth of the city! The prodigy I can't account for: what are the levels of the other

quarters above or below the acropolis? For the stranger of our time, reconnaissance is impossible. The

business quarter is a circus in just one style, with galleries of arcades. You see no shops, but the snow on the

roadways is dwarfed; some nabobs, as rare as Sunday promenaders in London, dive for a diamond diligence.

Some red velvet divans: polar drinks are served whose price varies from eight hundred to eight thousand

rupees. At the idea of seeking out theaters on this circus, I tell myself the shops must contain somber enough

dramas. I think there is a police; but the law must be so strange, that I renounce conceiving the adventurers

here.

The suburb, as elegant as a fine Paris street, is favored with an air of light; the democratic element numbers a

few hundred souls. There again, the houses don't go on; the suburb disappears bizarrely in the country, the

"County" that fills the eternal occident of forests and prodigious plantations where wild gentlemen hunt their

chronicles beneath the created light.

SIX

Vigils

I

It is repose lit up, nor fever, nor languor, on the bed or on the meadow.

It is the friend nor ardent nor weak. The friend.

It is the loved one nor tormenting nor tormented. The loved one.

The air and the world unsought. Life.

—Was it quite this?

—And the dream cooled.

II

The building's skeleton gets the light again. From both sides of the hall, negligible décors, harmonic elevations

join. The wall across from the watcher is a psychological succession of frieze sections, atmospheric bands and

geological accidents.—Intense and rapid dream of sentimental groups with beings of every character amidst

every appearance.

III

The vigil's lamps and carpets make the sound of waves, at night, along the hull and about steerage.

The vigil's ocean, like Amelia's breasts.

The tapestries, halfway down, coppices of lace emerald-tinted, the vigil's turtledoves fly at.

.......................................

The dark foyer's plaque, real suns of strands; ah! well of magics, sole view of dawn, this time.

Mystic

On the bankside angels turn their woolen skirts in steel-and-emerald pastures.

Fields of flame leap to the peak of the hillock. On the left the arete's compost is stomped on by all homicides

and battles, and all disastrous noise runs its curve. Behind the arete on the right, the line of Orients, of

progress.

And while the band at the top of the picture is formed of the turning leaping rumor of seashells and human

nights,

The blooming sweetness of the stars and the heavens and the rest descends upon the bankside, like a basket—

against our face, and makes the abyss blossoming and blue beneath.

Sunup

I embraced the summer sunup.

Nothing yet budged on the face of the palaces. The tide was neap. Shadow camps had not left the road in the

wood. I walked, awaking keen warm breaths; and gems gazed, and wings arose noiselessly.

The first enterprise was, in the path already full of fresh and pallid brilliance, a flower which told me its name.

I laughed at the blond wasserfall tousling through the pines; at the silvery summit I recognized the goddess.

Then I lifted one by one her veils. In the lane, waving my arms. On the plain, where I announced her to the

cock. In the great city she fled amongst steeples and domes, and, running like a beggar on the marble quays, I

chased her.

At the top of the road, near a laurel wood, I wrapped her with her gathered veils, and I felt a little her immense

body. Sunup and the child fell at the bottom of the wood.

Upon waking, it was noon.

Flowers

From a golden step—among cordons of silk, gray gauzes, green velvets, crystal disks that darken like bronze in

the sun—I see the digitalis open on a carpet filigreed of silver, hair and eyes.

Pieces of yellow gold strewn over agate, mahogany pillars supporting a dome of emeralds, bouquets of white

satin and wands of rubies ring the water rose.

Like a god with enormous blue eyes and shapes of snow, the sea and sky attract to terraces of marble the

crowd of young and strong roses

SEVEN

Vulgar Nocturne

One breath opens operatic breaches in the barrier—blurs the pivoting of worn roofs—disperses the limits of

the foyers—eclipses the casements.

Along the vine, having put my foot on a gargoyle—I descended into this coach whose epoch is indicated

enough by convex mirrors, curved panels and contour sofas. Hearse of my slumber, isolated, house of the

shepherd of my silliness, the vehicle veers onto the grass of the old effaced road: and in a defect at the top of

the righthand mirror whirl pale lunar figures, leaves, breasts.

—A green and blue very deep invade the image.

Unhitching around a patch of gravel.

—Here one will whistle for the storm, and Sodoms and Solymas, and ferocious beasts and armies,

(Postilion and beasts of dream will they again under the most suffocating forests, drop me to the eyes in the

wellspring of silk?)

And send us, lashed across lapping waters and spilled drinks, rolling to the baying of mastiffs...

—One breath disperses the limits of the foyer.

Seascape

Cars of silver and copper—

Prows of steel and silver—

Beat the foam—

Pull up bramble stumps.

The currents of the moor,

And the enormous ruts of the ebb,

Go off circularly eastward,

Toward the forest pillars—

Toward the pilings of the pier,

Whose angle is hit by whirlwinds of light.

Winter Feast

The cascade rings behind the comic opera huts. Girandoles prolong, in the orchards and lanes beside the

Meander—the greens and reds of sundown. Horatian nymphs with First Empire hair—Siberian Rounddances,

Chinese women by Boucher.

Anguish

Could it be She will have me pardoned for ambitions continually crushed—an easy end repair ages of indigence

—one day of success lull us on the shore of our fatal inability?

(O palms! diamond!—love, strength!—higher than all joy and glory!—anyhow—everywhere, demon, god—

youth of this being: me!)

Accidents of scientific faëry and movements of social fraternity be cherished as progressive restitution of the

first frankness?...

But the Vampire who makes us nice commands that we amuse ourselves with what she leaves us, or otherwise

be more droll.

Roll on wounds, through the wearying air and sea; in tortures, through silence of murderous waters and air; in

torments that laugh, in their silence atrociously howling.

EIGHT

Metropolitan

From indigo straits to Ossian seas, on pink and orange sand laved by the vinous heavens, have just gone up and

crossed boulevards of crystal inhabited incontinently by poor young families who feed at the fruiterer's.

Nothing rich—the city!

From the bituminous desert flee straight, put to rout with the sheets of fog spaced out in fearsome bands in

the sky which curves, recoils and descends formed of the most sinister black smoke to be made by Ocean in

mourning, helmets, wheels, boats, croups—the battle!

Raise your head: this wooden bridge, arched; these last vegetable gardens of Samaria; these illuminated masks

under the lantern lashed by the cold night; silly water sprite in a loud dress, down in the river; these luminous

skulls in planes of peas—and the other phantasmagoria—the countryside.

Roads lined with grillwork and walls, scarcely containing their coppices, and the atrocious flowers that would

be called hearts and sisters, Damascus damning with languor—possessions of fairy aristocracies ultra-Rhenish,

Japanese, Guaranian, liable still to receive the music of the ancients—and there are inns which, for always,

already open no more—there are princesses, and, if you are not too overcome, studying the stars—the sky.

The morning when, with Her, you struggled among these flashes of snow, green lips, ice sheets, black flags and

blue rays, and these purple perfumes of polar sun—your strength.

Barbarian

Well after the days and seasons, and beings and lands,

The bleeding meat flag on the silk of seas and arctic flowers (they do not exist).

Back from old fanfares of heroism—which still attack our heart and head—far from ancient assassins,

Oh! the bleeding meat flag on the silk of seas and arctic flowers (they do not exist)—

Sweetness!

The infernos, raining in gusts of rime—sweetness!—the fires in the rains of a wind of diamonds hurled by the

terrestrial heart eternally carbonized for us—o world!

(Far from the old retreats and old flames you hear, you feel.)

Infernos and foams. Music, tack of gulfs and shocks of ice and stars.

O sweetness, o world, o music! And there, the forms, sweat, hair and eyes, floating. And the pallid tears,

boiling—o sweetness!—and the feminine voice coming to the deeps of volcanos and arctic grottos.

The flag...

Promontory

The golden sunup and the trembling evening find our brig lying off this villa and its outbuildings as extensive as

Epirus and the Peloponnesus, or the big island of Japan, or Arabia! Fanes lit up by the return of processions;

immense views of the defense of modern coasts; dunes illustrated with hot flowers and bacchanals; grand

canals of Carthage and Embankments of a shady Venice; mushy eruptions of Etnas and crevasses of flowers

and waters of glaciers; wash houses ringed by German poplars, singular park embankments bending down the

Tree of Japan; and the circular façades of the "Royal" or the "Grand" of Scarborough and Brooklyn; and their

railways flank, cross, overhang the arrangements of this Hotel, chosen in the history of the most elegant and

the most colossal constructions of Italy, America and Asia, whose windows and terraces, at present full of

lights, drinks and rich breezes, are open to the spirit of travelers and noblemen—who permit, during daylight

hours, all the tarantellas of the coasts—and even ritornellos from the illustrious valleys of art to decorate

marvelously the façades of the Promontory-Palace.

Scenes

Ancient Comedy pursues its accords and divides its Idylls:

Stage boulevards.

A long wooden pier from one end to the other of a rocky field where the barbaric crowd mills under bare trees.

In corridors of black gauze, following the steps of promenaders with lanterns and leaves,

Birds from the mystery plays swoop down upon a masonry pontoon moved by the covered archipelago of

spectators' small craft.

Lyric scenes, accompaniment with flute and drum, bow in cubbyholes managed under ceilings around modern

club salons or halls of the ancient Orient.

The extravaganza maneuvers to the summit of an amphitheater crowned with a coppice—or bustles and

modulates for Boetians, in the shade of trees moving, at the edge of farmlands.

The comic opera divides on our stage at the edge of ten partitions set up from the gallery to the footlights.

NINE

Historic Evening

On some evening, for example, which finds the tourist naive, retired from our economic horrors, a master's

hand animates the harpsichord of the fields; you play cards at the bottom of the pond, mirror evocative of

queens and minions; you have sainted women, veils, and strings of harmony, and legendary chromaticisms, at

sundown.

He shivers at the passing of huntsmen and hordes. Comedy trickles on the boards of the lawn. And the

embarrassment of the poor and weak over these stupid plans!

To his slavish vision, Germany scaffolds itself toward moons; Tartar deserts are lighted; ancient revolts teem in

the center of the Celestial Empire; on the stairways and armchairs of the rocks, a little world pale and flat,

Africa and Occidents, will be built. Then a ballet of well-known seas and nights, a worthless chemistry, and

impossible melodies.

The same middle-class magic at every point the mail train deposits us! The most elementary physicist feels it is

no longer possible to submit to that personal atmosphere, fog of physical remorse, noticing which is already an

affliction.

No! The steamroom moment, seas borne off, subterranean blazes, the absconded planet, and consequent

exterminations, certitudes so little malignly indicated in the Bible and by the Norns and which it will be given to

the serious being to observe—yet it will not be at all a legendary effect!

Bottom

Reality being too thorny for my grand character—I found myself nevertheless at my lady's, a great gray-blue

bird soaring to the moldings of the ceiling and dragging my wings in the shadows of the evening.

I was, at the foot of the baldaquin supporting her adored gems and physical masterpieces, a great bear with

violet gums and hair hoary with grief, eyes on the crystal and silver of the console tables.

All became shadow and ardent aquarium.

In the morning—a battlesome June dawn—I ran to the fields, an ass, trumpeting and flourishing my grievance,

until the Sabines of the outskirts came to fling themselves on my breast.

H

Every monstrosity violates the atrocious gestures of Hortense. Her solitude is erotic engineering; her lassitude,

amorous dynamics. Under a childhood's surveillance, she has been, in numerous epochs, the ardent hygiene of

races. Her door is open to misery. There, the morality of present beings disembodies in her passion or her

action—o terrible shiver of novice loves on the bloody ground and in bright hydrogen!—find Hortense.

Movement

The winding movement on the bank at the river's falls,

The sternpost abyss,

The celerity of the rail,

The current's whims

Lead through unheard-of lights

And chemical novelty

The travelers ringed by waterspouts of valley

And strom.

They are the conquerors of the world

Seeking personal chemical fortune;

Sport and comfort travel with them;

They lead on education

Of races, classes and beasts, on this vessel

Repose and vertigo

To diluvian light,

To terrible evenings of study.

For from the chat among the gear, blood, flowers, fire, jewels,

From the agitated accounts to this runaway riverbank

—You see, rolling like a dike beyond the hydraulic power way,

Monstrous, unceasingly lighted—their study stock;

They driven into harmonic ecstasy,

And the heroism of discovery.

In atmospheric accidents the most surprising,

A youthful couple stands aside on the ark

—Is it ancient unsociableness you pardon?—

And sings and takes a post.

TEN

Devotion

To Sister Louise Vanaen de Voringhem—her blue cornet turned to the North Sea—for the shipwrecked.

To Sister Léonie Aubois d'Ashby Baou—the buzzing stinking summer grass—for mothers' and children's fever.

To Lulu—demon—who has kept a taste for oratories from the time of Les Amies and her incomplete

education. For men!—to Madame ***.

To the adolescent that I was. To that holy old man, hermitage or mission.

To the spirit of the poor. And to a very high clergy.

As well, to every cult in every place of memorial cult and such events as require submission, following the

aspirations of the moment or indeed our own serious vice.

This evening, to Circeto of the high ice, fat as fish, and illuminated like the ten months of red night—(her heart

amber and spunk)—for my only prayer mute as those regions of night, and preceding bravuras more violent

than that polar chaos.

At all cost and with every air, even in metaphysical travels—but no more then.

Democracy

"The flag goes to the unclean landscape, and our patois smothers the drum.

"In the centers we shall feed the most cynical prostitution. We shall massacre logical revolts.

"To peppery and soaked lands!—in the service of the most monstrous industrial or military exploitations.

"Farewell to this, no matter where. Conscripts of good will, we shall have ferocious philosophy; ignoramuses

for science, roués for comfort; and let the world go hang. This is the real march. Forward, let's go."

Fairy

For Helen conspired ornamental sap in virgin shadows and impassive light in astral silence. The ardor of

summer was confided to mute birds and the indolence requisite to a priceless mourning boat by souls of dead

loves and subsiding perfumes.

—After the moment of the lumberwomen's air on the rumor of the torrent under the ruin of the wood, of

cowbells in valley echoes, and cries of the steppes—

For the childhood of Helen trembled furs and shadows, and the breast of the poor, and the legends of heaven.

And her eyes and her dance superior even to precious flashes, to cold influences, to the pleasure of the décor

and the hour unique.

War

As a child, certain skies sharpened my optics: every character nuanced my physiognomy. Phenomena stirred—

at present, the eternal inflection of moments and the infinite of mathematics chase me through this world

where I suffer every civil success, respected by strange children and enormous affections—I dream of a War, of

right and might, of logic quite unforeseen.

It is as simple as a musical phrase.

ELEVEN

Youth

I

SUNDAY

Sums aside, the inevitable descent from heaven and the visit of memories and the assembly of rhythms occupy

the dwelling, the head and the world of the spirit.

—A horse takes off on the suburban turf, and along farmlands and afforestations, riddled with carbonic plague.

A miserable woman of drama, somewhere in the world, sighs after improbable abandons. Desperados languish

after storm, drunkenness and wounds. Small children stifle maledictions along the rivers.

Let us resume study in the noise of the consuming work gathering and rising in the masses.

II

SONNET

Man of ordinary constitution, was not the flesh a fruit hanging in the orchard, o infant days! the body a

treasure to lavish; o to love, peril or might of Psyche? The earth had slopes fertile in princes and artists, and

lineage and race drove you to crimes and mourning: the world, your fortune and your peril. But at present,

that labor fulfilled, you, your sums—you, your impatience—are nothing more than your dance and your voice,

not fixed and unforced, although for a double event of invention and success a reason—in fraternal and

discreet humanity through the universe without images—might and right reflect dance and voice at present

only appreciated.

III

TWENTY

Instructive voices exiled... physical ingenuousness bitterly sobered... adagio—ah! the infinite egoism of

adolescence, studious optimism: how the world was full of flowers that summer! Airs and forms dying... a

choir, to calm impotence and absence! A choir of glasses, of nocturnal melodies... indeed, the nerves go quick

to hunt.

IV

You are still at the temptation of Anthony. The frolic of curtailed zeal, the tics of puerile youth, subsidence and

fright.

But you will sit down to this labor: all harmonic and architectural possibilities will stir around your chair. Beings

perfect, unforeseen, will volunteer for your experiments. In your environs will flow dreamily the curiosity of

ancient crowds and lazy luxuries. Your memory and your senses will be only the nourishment of your creative

impulse. As for the world, when you leave, what will it have become? In any case, nothing of present

appearances.

Sale

For sale, what Jews have not sold, what nobility and crime have not tasted, what is unknown to the accursed

love and the fatal probity of the masses; what time nor science need recognize:

The Voices reconstituted; the fraternal awakening of all choral and orchestral energies and their instantaneous

application; the occasion, unique, of releasing our senses!

For sale priceless Bodies, out of any race, any world, any sex, any descent! Riches leaping at every step!

Uncontrolled sale of diamonds!

For sale anarchy to the masses; irrepressible satisfaction for superior amateurs; atrocious death for the faithful

and lovers!

For sale habitations and migrations, sports, fairylike visions and perfect comforts, and the noise, the

movement and the future they make!

For sale the applications of calculus and the unheard-of leaps of harmony. Discoveries and terms unsuspected

—immediate possession.

Insensate and infinite élan toward invisible splendors, insensible delights—and its fearsome secrets for each

vice—and its frightful gaiety for the crowd.

For sale bodies, voices, immense unquestionable opulence, what shall never be sold. The sellers are not at the

end of the sale! Travelers need not render their commissions so early.

Genie

He is affection and the present since he has made the house open to scummy winter and to the rumor of

summer—he who has purified drinks and foods—he who is the charm of elusive places and the superhuman

delight of stations—he is affection and the future, strength and love that we, upright in rages and ennuis, see

pass in the sky of tempest and the flags of ecstasy.

He is love, measure perfect and reinvented, reason marvelous and unforeseen, and eternity: loved machine of

fatal qualities. We have all had the great fear of his concession and of ours: o pleasure of our health, élan of

our faculties, egoistic affection and passion for him—he who loves us for his infinite life...

And we recollect him and he travels... And if the Adoration leaves, knells, his promise knells: "Get thee behind

me these superstitions, these ancient bodies, these ménages and these ages. It is this epoch that has

foundered!"

He will not leave, he will not redescend from heaven, he will not accomplish the redemption of women's furies

and men's gaieties and all this sin: for it is done, he being, and being loved.

O his breathing, his heads, his racing, the terrible celerity of the perfection of forms and of action.

O fecundity of the mind and immensity of the universe!

His body! the release dreamed of, the breaking up of the crossed grace of new violence! his sight, his sight! all

the ancient kneeling and penalties relieved in his train.

His day! the abolition of all sonorous and motile suffering in music more intense.

His treading! migrations more enormous than the ancient invasions.

O he and us! pride more benevolent than lost charities.

O world! and the clear song of new ills!

He has known all of us and loved all of us: let us know how, this winter night, from cape to cape, from

tumultuous pole to castle, from crowd to beach, from expressions to expressions, strength and sentiment low,

to hail him and see him, and send him back, and, below the tides and atop deserts of snow, follow his sights—

his breathing—his body—his day.