Maldoror and Poems Read online

  8

  When I hear a soprano uttering her vibrant and melodious notes, my eyes are filled with a hidden flame, flashes of pain shoot across them, and the burst of alarm-bell and cannonade resound in my ears. What can be the reason for this deep loathing of everything related to man? If those harmonies are played on the chords of an instrument, I listen in delight to the pearly notes wafting in cadence through the elastic waves of the atmosphere. Sense conveys to my hearing an impression so sweet as to melt nerves and thought. The magic poppies of an ineffable drowsiness envelop, like a veil filtering the light of day, the active power of my senses and tenacious strength of my imagination. The story is told that I was born in the arms of deafness! In the first years of my childhood, I could not hear what was said to me. When with the greatest difficulty, they had taught me to speak, it was not until after I had read on a sheet of paper what someone had written that I could in turn communicate the thread of my ideas. One day, woeful day, I had grown in beauty and innocence. Everyone admired the intelligence and goodness of the divine youth. Many a conscience blushed inwardly when it contemplated those clear feature in which his soul was enshrined. No one approached him without veneration, for they had noticed in his eyes the look of an angel. But no, I knew only too well that the happy faces of youth would not flower perpetually, wreathed in capricious garlands, on hi modest and noble brow, which all mothers used to kiss with frenzied devotion. It was beginning to seem to me that the universe, with its starry vault of impassable and tormentingly mysterious globes, was not perhaps the most imposing thing I had dreamt of. And so, one day, tired of trudging along the steep path on this earthly journey, trudging along like a drunkard through the dark catacombs of life, I slowly raised my splenetic eyes, ringed with bluish circles, towards the concavity of the firmament and I, who was so young, dared to penetrate the mysteries of heaven! Not finding what I was seeking, I lifted my eyes higher, and higher still, until I saw a throne made of human excrement and gold, on which was sitting--with idiotic pride, his body draped in a shroud of unwashed hospital linen--he who calls himself the Creator! He was holding in his hand the rotten body of a dead man, carrying it in turn from his eyes to his nose and from his nose to his mouth; and once it reached his mouth, one can guess what he did with it. His feet were dipped in a huge pool of boiling blood, on the surface of which two or three cautious heads would suddenly rise up like tapeworms in a chamber-pot, and as suddenly submerge again, swift as an arrow. A kick on the bone of the nose was the familiar reward for any infringement of regulations occasioned by the need to breathe a different atmosphere; for after all, these men were not fish. Though amphibious at best, they were swimming underwater in this vile liquid!...until, finding his hands empty, the Creator, with the first two claws of his foot, would grab another diver by the neck, as if with pincers, and lift him into the air, out of the reddish slime, delicious sauce. And this one was treated in the same way as his predecessor. First he ate his head, then his legs and arms, and, last of all the trunk, until there was nothing left; for he crunched the bones as well. And so it continues, for all the hours of his eternity. Sometimes, he would shout: 'I have created you, so I have the right to do whatever I like to you. You have done nothing to me, I do not deny it. I am making you suffer for my own pleasure.' And he would continue his savage meal, moving his lower jaw, which in turn moved his brain-bespattered beard. Oh reader, does not this last-mentioned detail make your mouth water? Cannot whoever wishes also eat brains just the same, which taste just as good and just as fresh, caught less than a quarter of an hour before in the lake--the brains of a fish? My limbs paralysed, utterly dumb, I contemplated this sight for some time. Thrice I nearly keeled over, like a man in the throes of an emotion which is too strong for him; thrice I managed to keep my feet. No fibre of my body was still; I was trembling like the lava inside the volcano. Finally, my breast so constricted that I could not breathe the life-giving air quickly enough, my lips opened slightly and I uttered a cry...a cry so piercing...that I heard it! The shackles of my ears were suddenly broken, my ear-drum cracked as the shock of the sounding mass of air which I had expelled with such energy, and a strange phenomenon took place in the organ condemned by nature. I had just heard a sound! A fifth sense had developed in me! But what pleasure could I have derived from such a realization? Since then, no human sound has reached my ears without bringing with it the feeling of grief which pity for great injustice arouses. Whenever anyone spoke to me, I remembered what I had seen one day above the visible spheres, and the translation of my stifled feelings into a violent yell, the tone of which was identical to that of my fellow-beings! I could not answer him; for the tortures inflicted on man's weakness in that hideous red sea passed before my eyes roaring like scorched elephants and brushing with their wings against my singed hair. Later, when I knew mankind better, this feeling of pity was coupled with intense rage against this tiger-like stepmother whose hardened children know only how to curse and do evil. The brazen lie! they say that evil is the exception among them! That was long ago; since then I have not spoken a word to anyone. Oh you, whoever you may be, when you are beside me, do not let any sound escape your vocal cords; do not with your larynx strive to outdo the nightingale; and, for yourself, do not on any account attempt to make your soul known to me by means of language. Maintain a religious silence, uninterrupted by the least sound. Cross your hands humbly on your breast, and lower your eyelids. I have told you this, and since that vision revealed to me the supreme truth, too many nightmares have sucked my throat, by day and by night, for me to have any courage left to renew, even in thought, the sufferings I underwent in that infernal hour, the memory of which remorselessly pursues me. Oh! when you hear the avalanche of snow falling from the high mountain; the lioness in the barren desert lamenting the disappearance of its cubs; the tempest accomplishing its destined purpose; the condemned man groaning in prison on the eve of his execution; and the savage octopus telling the waves of the sea of his victory over swimmers and the shipwrecked, then you have to acknowledge it: are not these majestic voices finer than the sniggering of men?

  9

  There exists an insect which men feed at their own expense. They owe it nothing; but they fear it. This insect, which does not like wine but prefers blood, would, if its legitimate needs were not satisfied, be capable, by means of an occult power, of becoming big as an elephant and crushing men like ears of corn. And one has to see how respected it is, how it is surrounded with fawning veneration, how it is held in high esteem, above all the other animals of creation. The head is given it as its throne, and it digs its claws solemnly into the roots of the hair. Later, when it is fat and getting on in age, it is killed, following the custom of an ancient race, to prevent it from suffering the hardships of old age. It is given a magnificent hero's funeral, with prominent citizens bearing the coffin on their shoulders straight to the grave. Above the damp earth which the grave-digger is shrewdly moving with his spade, multicoloured sentences are combined on the immortality of the soul, the emptiness of life, the incomprehensible will of Providence, and the marble closes for ever on this life, filled with such toil, and which is now but a corpse. The crowd disperses, and night soon covers the walls of the cemetery with shadows.

  But be consoled, human beings, for this grievous loss. Look at his countless family, which he so freely bestowed on you and which is advancing, that your despair should be less bitter, should be, so to speak, sweetened by these surly abortions, which will later grow into magnificent lice of remarkable beauty monsters of wise demeanour. Under its maternal wing it has incubated several dozen beloved eggs in your hair, dried by the unremitting suction of these fearsome strangers. And now the time has come for the eggs to hatch. Do not fear, these youthful philosophers will soon grow, in the course of this ephemeral life. They will grow so much that they will soon make you aware of it with their claws and their suckers.

  And yet you still do not know why they do not devour the bones of your head, why
they are satisfied with ceremoniously extracting the quintessence of your blood. Wait a moment and I will tell you: it is because they do not have the strength. You may be sure that if their jaws conformed to the measure of their infinite desires, your brain, the retinas of your eyes, your spinal column and all your body would be consumed. Like a drop of water. Take a microscope and examine a louse at work on a beggar's head; you will be surprised. Unfortunately these plunderers of long hair are tiny. They would be no good for conscription; for they are not the size which the law requires. They belong to the short-legged lilliputian world, and the blind do not hesitate to classify them among the infinitesimally small. But woe to the sperm-whale that fought against a louse! Despite his size, he would be devoured in a trice. Not even his tail would remain to tell the news. An elephant can be stroked. But not a louse. I would not advise you to try this dangerous experiment. Beware, if you have a hairy hand, or even if it is only flesh and bone. Your fingers have had it, they are beyond hope. They will crack as if they were on the rack. By a strange enchantment, the skin disappears. Lice are incapable of doing as much evil as their imagination contemplates. If you find a louse, go on your way, do not lick its papilla with your tongue. An accident would happen to you. Cases have been known. Never mind, I am already content with the amount of harm it has done you, O human race; but I would like it to do you even more harm.

  How much longer will you keep up the worm-eaten cult of this god, who is insensible to your prayers and to the generous sacrifices that you offer him as expiatory holocaust? Can you not see that this horrible manitou is not grateful for the bowls of blood and brains which you lay on his altars, piously decorated with garlands of flowers? He is not grateful...for earthquakes and tempests have been raging uninterruptedly since the beginning of all things. And nonetheless (this is a spectacle worthy of observations), the more indifferent he is, the more you admire him. It is clear that you are wary of his attributes, which he hides; and your reasoning is based on the consideration that a divinity of such extreme power can only show such disdain for the faithful who obey the commandments of his religion. For that reason different gods exist in each country: here, the crocodile, there, the prostitute. But when it comes to the louse, of holy name, the nations of the earth, one and all kissing the chains of their slavery, kneel together in the august sanctuary before the pedestal of this shapeless and bloodthirsty idol. Any people that did not obey its own groveling instincts and made as if to rebel, would sooner or later disappear from the face of the earth like an autumn leaf, destroyed by the vengeance of the inexorable god.

  O louse of the shriveled-up eyes, as long as rivers pour their waters into the depths of the sea; as long as the stars gravitate along their fixed orbits; as long as the dumb emptiness has no horizon; as long as humanity tears its own sides apart with disastrous wars; as long as divine justice hurls its avenging thunderbolts down on this selfish globe; as long as man denies his creator and, not without reason, snaps his fingers at him, combining insolence and disdain, your reign over the universe will be assured, and your dynasty will extend its influence throughout the centuries. I salute you, rising sun, heavenly liberator, you, the invisible enemy of man. Continue to tell lewdness to couple with in impure embraces and swear to him with oaths not written in powder that she will be his faithful lover until eternity. Kiss from time to time the dress of the great unchaste, in memory of the important services she does not fail to render you. If she did not seduce man with her lascivious breasts, it is improbable that you would exist, you, the product of this reasonable and logical coupling. O son of lewdness! tell you mother that is she abandons man's bed and thenceforward walks a solitary way, alone and without support, she will put your existence at risk. And let her fragrant womb, which has borne you for nine months, be stirred at the thought of the dangers which her tender fruit, so gentle and peaceful, but already cold and savage, would run as a result. Lewdness, queen of empires, keep before my hate-filled eyes the sight of your starving offspring's imperceptible growth. To achieve this goal, you know that you have only to stick more closely to man's sides. And you may do this without compromising modesty, since both of you have been married for a long time.

  As for me, if I may be permitted to add a few words to this hymn of glorification, I will say that I have had a grave built, forty square leagues in area, and of a corresponding depth. There, in its foul virginity, lies a living mine of lice. It fills the bottom of the pit, and thence it spreads out in wide thick veins in all directions. This is how I built this mine. I pulled a female louse out of the hair of man. I slept with it for three consecutive nights, then I threw it into the pit. Destiny saw to it that human fecundation, which would have been impossible in other similar cases, was successful this time; and after a few days, thousands of monsters, crawling in a compact mass of matter, first saw the light of day. This hideous mass became more and more immense in time, acquiring the liquid property of mercury, and branched out into several groups which at the moment sustain themselves by eating one another (the birth-rate being higher than the mortality-rate), unless I throw them as fodder a new-born bastard whose mother wished its death, or the arm of some young girl which I cut off during the night, after drugging her with chloroform. Every fifteen years, the generations of lice which live off men diminish noticeably and infallibly predict the approaching era of their complete destruction. For man, more intelligent than his enemy, has managed to conquer him. Then, with an infernal spade which increases my strength, I extract blocks of lice from this inexhaustible mine, break them up with axe-blows, and transport into the arteries of cities. There they dissolve on contact with human temperature as in the first days of their formation in the winding galleries of the underground mine, they dig down into the gravel and spread like little streams into the dwelling-places of men like malign spirits. The watchdog gives a low bark, for it seems to him that a legion of unknown beings is penetrating the pores of the walls, bringing terror to the bed of sleep. Perhaps, at least once in your life, you have heard one of these wailing, prolonged barks. With his feeble eyes he tries to pierce the darkness of the night; for all this passes the understanding of his dog-brain. This humming irritates him, he feels he has been betrayed. Millions of the enemy swoop down thus on each city, like clouds of locusts. That will be enough for fifteen years. They will fight against man, and inflict sharp wounds on him. After this period, I will send others. When I am smashing the block of living matter, it may happen that one fragment is denser than another. Its atoms are striving furiously to break off from the agglomeration and go and torment mankind; but the cohesion of the whole is such that it resists all their efforts. In a supreme convulsion, they make such an effort that the block, unable to scatter its living elements, soars right into the air as if set off by gunpowder, then falls again, and buries itself firmly in the ground. Sometimes, a pensive peasant sees an aerolith vertically rending space, moving downwards towards a cornfield. He does not know where the stone comes from. Now you have, clearly and succinctly, the explanation of the phenomenon.