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Lautreamont
Les chants de Maldoror
3

Let us recall the names of those imaginary angel-like beings
whom my pen during the second lay has drawn from a brain
shining with a radiance derived from those beings
themselves. They are still-born on the scorched paper like
sparks the rapid extinction of which the eye can hardly
follow. Leman! . . . Lohengrin! . . . Lombano! . . . Holzer! . . .
For an instant you appeared, covered with the insignia of
youth, within my enchanted horizon. But I let you fall back
into chaos like diving-bells. You will never return. It is
enough that I have retained the memory of you. You must
make room for other substances, less beautiful perhaps, to
which the stormy overflow of a love that has resolved never
to appease its thirst with the human race will give birth. A
ravenous love, that would devour itself if it did not seek its
nourishment in celestial fictions: creating, in the long run, a
pyramid of seraphim more numerous than the insects that
swarm in a drop of water, it will interweave them into an
ellipse that it will cause to revolve around itself. Meanwhile
if the traveler, pausing before the appearance of a cataract,
will raise his head he will see in the distance a human being
borne towards the cavern of hell by a garland of living
camellias! But .  .  . silence! The floating image of the fifth
ideal traces itself slowly, like the blurred folds of an aurora
borealis, upon the vaporous surface of my intelligence, and
takes on a more and more precise consistency. . . .
Mario and I were riding along the beach. Our horses,
necks outstretched, clove through the membranes of space
and struck sparks from the pebbles on the beach. An icy
blast struck us full in the face, penetrated our cloaks, and
swept back our hair on our twin heads. The sea-gull tried in
vain to warn us by his outcries and the agitation of his wings
of the possible proximity of the storm, and cried out: “Where
are they off to at that mad gallop?” We said nothing;
plunged in meditation we let ourselves be carried away by
that furious race. The fisherman, seeing us pass by swift as
an albatross, and realizing that he was seeing before him
the two mysterious brothers as we had been called because
we were always together, hastened to cross himself and
hide with his paralysed dog in the deep shadows of a rock.
The inhabitants of the coast had heard tell of many
strange things concerning these two persons, who appeared
on earth amid clouds during periods of great disaster, when
a frightful war threatened to plant its harpoon in the breasts
of two enemy countries, or when cholera was preparing to
hurl out from its sling putrefaction and death through entire
cities. The oldest beachcombers frowned gravely, affirming
that the two phantoms, whose vast black wingspread every
one had noticed during hurricanes above the sandbanks and
reefs, were the evil genius of the land and the genius of the
sea, who promenade their majesty up in the air during great
natural revolutions, united by an eternal friendship the rarity
and glory of which have given birth to the astonishment of
unlimited chains of generations.
It was said that, flying side by side like two Andean
condors, they loved to soar in concentric circles amid the
layers of atmosphere close to the sun; that in these places
they fed upon the pure essence of light; but that they
resigned themselves only reluctantly to reversing the
inclination of their vertical flight towards the dismayed orbit
where the human globe turns deliriously, inhabited by cruel
spirits who massacre one another on battlefields (when they
are not killing one another secretly in their cities with the
dagger of hatred or ambition) and who feed upon beings as
full of life as themselves and placed a few degrees lower in
the scale of existence.
Or again, when the pair firmly resolved, in order to excite
men to repentance by the verses of prophecy, to swim in
great strokes towards the sidereal regions where the planet
stirs in the midst of the dense exhalations of avarice, pride,
curses and mockery, given off like pestilential vapors from
the loathsome surface, seeming no larger than a ball and
almost invisible because of the distance, they did not fail to
find occasions on which they repented bitterly of their
benevolence, misunderstood and spurned, and hid
themselves in the depths of volcanoes to converse with the
tenacious fire that boils in the vats of the central vaults, or
at the bottom of the sea to rest their disillusioned eyes in
the contemplation of the most ferocious monsters of the
deep, which to them appeared as models of gentleness
compared with the bastards of humanity.
When night fell with her propitious gloom they rushed
from the porphyry-crested craters and from the subaqueous
currents, and left well behind them the craggy chamber-pot
where the constipated anus of the human cockatoo
wriggles: left it so far behind that they could no longer
distinguish the suspended silhouette of the filthy planet.
Then, aggrieved by their fruitless attempt, the angel of the
land and the angel of the sea kissed, weeping, amid the
compassionate stars and under the eye of God! . . .
Mario and he who galloped at his side were not unaware
of the vague and superstitious rumors that were recounted
during their evening vigils by the fishermen whispering
around the hearth behind closed doors and windows, while
the night-wind, desirous of warming itself, making its plaint
heard around the thatched cottage, shaking the frail walls
that are surrounded at the base by fragments of crushed
shells washed up by the dying ripples of the waves.
We did not speak. What do two hearts that love say to
each other? Nothing. But our eyes expressed all. I warn him
to wrap himself more closely in his cloak, and he points out
to me that my horse goes too far ahead of his. Each takes
as much interest in the life of the other as in his own life. We
do not laugh. He tries to smile at me, but I perceive that his
countenance bears the weight of terrible impressions
engraved there by meditation, constantly inclined towards
the sphynxes that lead astray, with oblique glances, the
great anguish of mortal intelligence. Seeing that his attempt
is useless he turns aside his gaze, gnaws his earthly chains
with the saliva of rage and stares into the horizon that flees
at our approach.
In my turn I try to remind him of his golden youth which
asks nothing better than to parade like a queen through the
palace of pleasures. But he notices that my words emerge
from my shrunken mouth with difficulty, and that the years
of my own springtime have passed, sad and glacial like an
implacable dream that stalks over banquet tables and beds
of satin where the pale priestess of love slumbers paid with
the glitter of gold, the bitter pleasures of disenchantment,
the pestilential furrows of age, the terrors of solitude, and
the torches of pain. Seeing that my attempt is useless, I am
not surprised I am unable to make him happy.
The Omnipotent appears before me armed with his
instruments of torture, in the whole resplendent halo of his
horror; I turn away my eyes and stare into the horizon that
flees before our approach.
Our horses gallop along the coast as if they were fleeing
from the human eye. . . .
Mario is younger than I. The humidity of the weather and
the salty foam that splashes up over us bring the contact of
cold to his lips. I tell him: “Beware! . . . Beware! . . . Close
your lips, press them together. Do you not see the sharp
talons of cold-chap furrowing your skin with burning
wounds?” He stares at me and replies with motions of his
tongue: “Yes, I see them, those green claws. But I will not
disturb the natural position of my mouth to repel them.
Look, to see if I lie. Since it seems to be the will of
Providence I shall conform to it. But its will could have been
better.” And I cry out: “I admire that noble vengeance!” I
want to tear out my hair, but he forbids me with a severe
glance and I obey him with respect.
It is growing late and the eagle is returning to its nest
hollowed out in the anfractuosity of a rock. My brother says
to me: “I am going to loan you my coat to shield you from
the cold. I do not need it.” I reply: “Woe unto you if you do
as you say. I do not wish that another suffer in my place,
especially you.” He makes no reply, because I am right. But
then I set out to console him because of the too impetuous
tone of my words . . . .
Our horses gallop along the coast as if they were fleeing
from the human eye. . . .
I raise up my head like the prow of a vessel thrown up by
a huge wave and I say to him:
“Are you weeping? I ask you this, king of fogs and snows. I
see no tears on your face, beautiful as the cactus-flower,
and your eyes are dry as a riverbed; but I perceive in the
depths of your eye a vat full of blood in which boils your
innocence, stung in the neck by a large species of scorpion.
A violent wind blows upon the fire that heats the cauldron
and spreads gloomy flames even outside your sacred eye socket. I brought my hair close to your rosy brow and I
smelled a smell of burning because the hair had caught fire.
Close your eyes, for if you do not your countenance,
reduced to cinders like lava from a volcano, will fall in ashes
into the hollow of my hand.”
He turns towards me paying no heed to the reins he holds
in his hand and contemplates me tenderly while slowly
raising and lowering his lily-white eyelids like the rising and
falling of the sea. He wants to reply to my audacious
question and this is what he says:
“Pay no attention to me. Even as the river-mists climb
along the hillsides and having arrived at the summit, melt
into the atmosphere in the form of clouds; even so has your
anxiety on my account insensibly increased without
reasonable motive, and forms over your imagination the
deceptive outline of a desolate mirage. I assure you that
there is no fire in my eyes, although I do have a feeling as if
my head were plunged into a helmet of blazing coals. How
do you suppose the flesh of my innocence should be boiling
in a vat, since I hear nothing but the feeblest and most
confused outcries, that to me are nothing but the wailing of
the wind as it passes over our heads? It is impossible that a
scorpion should have taken up residence and fastened its
sharp pincers into the depths of my jagged eye-socket. I
think they are rather powerful tongs that crush the optic
nerve. However I am of your opinion that the blood filling
the vat was extracted from my veins by an invisible
executioner during last night’s sleep. I waited for you a long
time, beloved son of the ocean; and my sleep-heavy arms
engaged in a vain combat with one who entered the
vestibule of my house.  .  .  . Yes, I feel that my soul is
padlocked in my body and cannot free itself to flee far from
coasts beaten by the human sea and be no longer witness
to the livid pack of sorrows that pursues the human izard
without respite across morasses and the abyss of vast
despondency. But I make no complaint. I received life like a
wound, and I have forbidden suicide to heal the gash. I wish
the Creator to contemplate this yawning crevice every hour
of his eternity. This is the punishment I inflict upon him. Our
steeds slow down the speed of their bronze feet; their
bodies tremble like a hunter surprised by a flock of
peccaries. They must not listen to what we are saying. By
dint of attention their intelligences might increase and they
would be able to understand us. Woe unto them! For they
would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the wild boars of
humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates
them from other beings of the creation seem to have been
accorded them only at the irremediable price of incalculable
sufferings? Imitate my example and plunge your silver spurs
into the flanks of your steed. . . .”
Our horses gallop along the coast as if they were fleeing
the human eye.






Goya
BY CONRAD AIKEN
Goya drew a pig on a wall.
The five-year-old hairdresser’s son
Saw, graved on a silver tray,
The lion; and sunsets were begun.

Goya smelt the bull-fight blood.
The pupil of the Carmelite
Gave his hands to a goldsmith, learned
To gild an aureole aright.

Goya saw the Puzzel’s eyes:
Sang in the street (with a guitar)
And climbed the balcony; but Keats
(Under the halyards) wrote ‘Bright star.’

Goya saw the Great Slut pick
The chirping human puppets up,
And laugh, with pendulous mountain lip,
And drown them in a coffee cup;

Or squeeze their little juices out
In arid hands, insensitive,
To make them gibber . . . Goya went
Among the catacombs to live.

He saw gross Ronyons of the air,
Harelipped and goitered, raped in flight
By hairless pimps, umbrella-winged:
Tumult above Madrid at night.

He heard the seconds in his clock
Crack like seeds, divulge, and pour
Abysmal filth of Nothingness
Between the pendulum and the floor:

Torrents of dead veins, rotted cells,
Tonsils decayed, and fingernails:
Dead hair, dead fur, dead claws, dead skin:
Nostrils and lids; and cauls and veils;

And eyes that still, in death, remained
(Unlidded and unlashed) aware
Of the foul core, and, fouler yet,
The region worm that ravins there.

Stench flowed out of the second’s tick.
And Goya swam with it through Space,
Sweating the fetor from his limbs,
And stared upon the unfeatured face

That did not see, and sheltered naught,
But was, and is. The second gone,
Goya returned, and drew the face;
And scrawled beneath it, ‘This I have known’ . . .

And drew four slatterns, in an attic,
Heavy, with heads on arms, asleep:
And underscribed it, ‘Let them slumber,
Who, if they woke, could only weep’ . . .