Stranger
Whom do you love best? do tell, you enigma: your father? your mother, sister, brother?
— I have no father, no mother, neither sister nor brother.
— Your friends?
— That is a word I’ve never understood.
— Your country?
— I don’t know at what latitude to look for it.
— Beauty?
— Immortal goddess, I would gladly love her.
— Gold?
— I hate it as much as you hate God.
— Well then, you puzzling stranger, what do you love?
— I love clouds . . . clouds that go by . . . out there . . . over there . . . marvelous clouds!
II
An Old Woman’s Despair
The shrunken little old woman rejoiced to see such a pretty infant whom everybody was making over, whom everyone tried to please; this pretty thing, as fragile as she, the little old woman, and, again like her, short on teeth and hair.
So she came closer, wanting to give babyish laughs and make appropriate faces.
But the terror-stricken infant writhed under the caresses of the decrepit old woman and filled the house with howls.
So the old woman retired into her eternal solitude, crying in a corner, saying: — “Ah, we unhappy old females, past the age of pleasing, even pleasing these innocents; and we horrify the little ones whom we would love.”
III
The Artist’s Confiteor 2
How the close of an autumn day pierces! Pierces to the point of pain, for delightful sensations, though vague, may be intense, and there is no sharper pang than that of Infinity.
What greater delight than for the eye to drown in the immensity of sky and sea! Solitude, silence, incomparably chaste blue, on the horizon a tiny sail quivering which, by its smallness and isolation, resembles my irredeemable existence, monotonous melody of the sea swell — all these things think through me, or I think through them (for, in the grandeur of reverie, the I is soon lost); they think, I say, but musically and picturesquely, without quibble, without syllogism, without deduction.
These thoughts, whether from inside me or from external things, soon become too intense. Voluptuous energy creates uneasiness and positive suffering. My overtense nerves then give out only peevish and painful vibrations.
And now the depth of sky is appalling; its clarity exasperates me. I find the indifference of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, revolting . . . Ah! must I suffer eternally, or else eternally flee the beautiful? Nature, pitiless enchantress, always victorious rival, let me go! Tempt no more my desires and my pride! Study of the beautiful is a duel in which the artist cries out in fear, before being bested.
2. The confiteor is a liturgical form (beginning, literally, I confess) acknowledging sinfulness and requesting mercy.
IV
A Joker
Explosive New Year’s Day: chaos of mud and snow, criss-crossed by a thousand carriages, sparkling with toys and toffee, crawling with greed and despair, standard delirium of a metropolis, made to disturb the brain of the sturdiest solitary.
In the midst of bohu and din, a donkey trotted briskly, hard pressed by a rascal with a whip.
As the donkey came to turn a corner, a gentleman, gloved, polished, imprisoned in cruel necktie and spanking new duds, bowed ceremoniously to the humble beast and, doffing his hat, addressed it, “All the best for you in the new year,” turning then to I know not what companions with a fatuous air, as if praying them to approve his own satisfaction.
The donkey, oblivious to this high-class joker, continued its trek as duty directed.
For my part, I was taken suddenly with an incommensurate rage against this ostentatious imbecile, who seemed to me to concentrate in himself the whole spirit of France.
V
Double Bedroom
A room resembling a reverie, a room truly spiritual, stagnant atmosphere in soft pink and blue tints.
There the soul bathes idly, scented with regret and desire. — Something crepuscular, bluish and rose pink; voluptuous dream during an eclipse.
The furnishings are elongated, prostrate, languid. The furniture seems to dream; suggesting somnambulistic life, vegetable or mineral. The upholstery speaks a mute language, like flowers, like skies, like setting suns.
On the wall, no artistic abomination. Compared to pure dream, unanalyzed impression, an art made definite — positive art — is blasphemy. Here, everything has just enough clarity, and the delicious obscurity of harmony.
Hints of a choice and exquisite scent mingled with air lightly humid swim in this atmosphere, where slumbering spirit is rocked by hot-house sensations.
Muslin rains down abundantly over the windows and around the bed in snowy cascade. Within this bed is ensconced the Idol, queen of dreams. But how did she come there? Who brought her? what magic potency set her upon this throne of voluptuous reverie? Well never mind: there she is! I recognize her.
There indeed, those eyes whose flame travels the twilight; subtle and terrible organs of sight familiar to me from their fearsome malice. They call to, they beat down, they devour foolhardy focus fixed on them. I have made long study of those dark stars which excite curiosity and admiration.
To what benevolent demon do I owe being thus set about with mystery, silence, peace and perfumes? What beatitude! what we ordinarily call life, even when it expands most happily, has nothing in common with this supreme life that I now know and that I savor, minute by minute, second by second.
But no! there are no longer minutes, no longer seconds. Time has disappeared; it is Eternity that reigns, an eternity of delight!
But then there’s a terrible loud knock at the door and, as in hellish dreams, I feel a pickax in my gut.
Then enter a Specter: a bailiff come to torture me with legal matters; a notorious trollop bitching about money and loading her life’s trivialities on top of my own troubles; or maybe even an editorial guttersnipe demanding another installment of some manuscript.
The paradisal room, the idol, the queen of dreams, the Sylphide, as the great René calls her,3 all this magic has vanished with the Specter’s brutal blow.
Horrors!
