Maldoror and Poems

  9

  I propose, without emotion to declaim the cold and serious strophe which you are about to hear. You, pay attention to its contents and beware of the painful impression which it will not fail to leave, like a brand, on your perplexed imaginations. Do not think that I am about to die, for I am no skeleton yet and old age is not yet stamped on my brow. Discard therefore any notion of comparison with the swan at the moment when its soul takes flight; see before you nothing but a monster, whose face I am glad you cannot perceive; though it is less horrible than his soul. However, I am not a criminal...enough of this subject. It is not long ago since I saw the sea again and walked the decks of ships and my memories of this are as strong as if I only came ashore yesterday. Nevertheless be, if you can, as calm as I in reading these lines which I already regret offering you, and do not blush at the thought of what the human heart is. O Octopus, with your silken look! whose soul is inseparable from mine; you most beautiful inhabitant of the terrestrial globe, who have at your disposal a seraglio of four hundred suckers; you in whom linked indestructibly by a common accord, the sweet communicative virtue and the divine graces are nobly present, as if in their natural residence, why are you not with me, your mercury belly against my aluminum breast, both of us sitting on some sea-shore rock, to contemplate the spectacle I adore!

  Old ocean, crystal-waved, you resemble proportionally the azure stains seen on the disfigured tops of mosses; you are an immense blueness on the body of the earth: I love this comparison. Thus on seeing you first, a prolonged breath of sadness which one would take for the murmuring of your delicious breeze, passes, leaving ineffable traces on the deeply-moved soul, and recalling to the minds of those who love you—though one does not always realize this—man’s crude beginnings, when he first came to know sorrow, which has been with him ever since. I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, your harmoniously spherical form, which gladdens the stern countenance of geometry, reminds me only too well of man’s small eyes, which are like the boar’s in their minuteness and like the eyes of night-birds in the circular perfection of contour. However, throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. For my part, I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride; that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself; for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn? I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal to yourself. You never vary essentially and, if somewhere your waves are raging, further away, in some other zone, they are perfectly calm. You are not like man who stops in the street to watch two bulldogs snarling and biting one another’s necks, but who does stop to watch when a funeral passes; who is approachable in the morning, in a black mood in the evening; who laughs today and cries tomorrow...I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, there is nothing far-fetched in the idea that you hide within your breast things which will in the future be useful to man. You have already given him the whale. You do not easily allow the greedy eyes of the natural sciences to guess the thousand secrets of your inmost organization. You are modest. Man brags incessantly of trifles. I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, the different species of fish to which you give nourishment have sworn no brotherhood among themselves. Each species keeps to itself. Temperaments, shapes and sizes, which vary from species to species, satisfactorily explain what at first appears to be only an anomaly. The same is true in man’s case, though he cannot plead the same excuses. If a piece of land is occupied by thirty million human beings, they feel obliged not to become involved in their neighbour’s existence, rooted as they are to their own piece of ground. From great to small, each man lives like a savage in his lair, rarely venturing out to visit his fellow-creature, who is also crouching in his lair. The great universal family of men is a utopia worthy of the most mediocre logic. Furthermore, his ingratitude stands out against the spectacle of your fecund breasts; for one thinks of those many parents ungrateful enough to their creator to abandon the fruit of their wretched union...I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, your physical immensity can only be conceived if one tries to measure the active potency needed to engender the totality of your mass. You cannot be embraced in a single look. In order to contemplate you, the sights of the telescope must be turned in a continuous movement towards the four points of the horizon, just as a mathematician is obliged when doing and algebraic equation to examine individually all the various possible cases before arriving at an answer. Man eats nourishing substances and makes other efforts, worth of a better fate, to appear huge. Let him puff himself out as much as he wishes, this adorable frog. Set your mind at rest, he will not equal you in size; at least, I suppose not. I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean your waters are bitter. Their taste is the same as the rancorous gall which criticism distills and pours on the arts, the sciences, everything. If someone is a genius, it condemns him as an idiot; if another has a beautiful body, then he is a frightful hunchback. Certainly, man should have a strong sense of his own imperfections, three-quarters of which are due to himself alone, in order to criticize them thus. I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, men, despite the excellence of their methods, though they are helped by scientific means of investigation, have not yet succeeded in measuring your vertiginous depths. Even the largest and heaviest sounding-lines have failed to plumb your inaccessible gulfs. Fish may: but not men. I have often wondered which is the easier to fathom: the depth of the ocean or the depth of the human heart! Often as I stood on ships' decks with my hand on my brow, while the moon swung fitfully between the masts, I have found myself grappling with this difficult problem, having set aside anything which could distract me from my object. Yes, which the deeper, the more impenetrable of the two: the ocean or the human heart? If thirty years of experience of life can sway the balance from one to the other of these solutions, I will venture to say that despite the depth of the ocean, it cannot rank, as far as a comparison of this quality goes, with the depth of the human heart. I have had connections with men who were virtuous. They died at sixty, and not one of them failed to exclaim that 'he had done his best on this earth, that is he had practised charity; that is all, that was easy enough, anyone might do the same.' Who can understand how two lovers who idolized each other only the day before, separate over a misinterpreted word, one going east, one west, with needlepoints of vengeance, hatred, love and remorse, and never see each other again, each one draped in his solitary pride. It is a miracle which recurs every day but is none the less miraculous. Who can understand how it is that we relish not only the general misfortunes of our closest friends, at the same time as being distressed about them? An unanswerable example to close the series: man hypocritically says 'yes' and thinks ‘no.’ That is why the wild boars of humanity have so much trust in one another and are not egoists. Psychology still has a long way to go. I hail you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, your might is such that men have discovered it to their own cost. In vain do they deploy all the resources of their ingenuity...they are incapable of mastering you. They have met their match. I say that they have found something stronger than they. This something has a name. That name is: the ocean! The fear that you inspire in them is such that they respect you. In spite of this, you set their heaviest machines dancing with grace, elegance and ease. You make them execute gymnastic leaps right up to the sky, and admirable dives to the bottom of your domains: a circus acrobat would envy them. They are fortunate if you don not enfold them finally in you whirling, bubbling embrace, taking them on a trip--not by railway--to see your aquatic entrails, to see how the fish are, and above all, how they are themselves. Man says: 'I am more intelligent than the ocean.' That is possible; it is even quite true; but the ocean is more terrifying to him than he to the ocean; this does not need to be proven. This observant patriarch, contemporary of the first epochs of our suspended globe, smiles with pity as he witnesses naval battles among the nations. The hands
of men have created hundreds of leviathans. The pompous orders given on deck, the cries of the wounded, bursts of a cannon-fire, these are noises whose only function is to kill a few seconds. It seems that the excitement is over, the ocean's belly has swallowed everything up. Its mouth is formidable, it must be huge towards the bottom, in the direction of the unknown. And at last, to crown the stupid comedy, which is not even interesting, you can see a passing stork in the air, slowed down by fatigue, beginning to cry, though not slackening its wingspan: 'Well...how annoying! There were some black specks down there; I closed my eyes and they just disappeared.' I salute you, old ocean!

  Old ocean, great celibate, when you survey the solemn solitude of your imperturbable realms, you are justly proud of your native magnificence and of the true praises which I so fervently bestow on you. Rocked voluptuously by the gentle effluvia of your majestic slowness--that most imposing of all the attributes with which the divine power has endowed you--you unroll in sombre mystery, along all your sublime surface, your incomparable waves, in calm awareness of your eternal power. At short intervals, they follow one another in parallel lines. No sooner does one subside than another comes to meet it, accompanied by the melancholy sound of the frothing foam, reminding us that all is foam. (Thus human beings, those living waves, die one after another, monotonously; but they make no foaming sound.) The bird of passage rests on the waves, then abandons himself to their movements, full of proud grace, until the bones of his wings have recovered their accustomed strength and he can continue his aerial pilgrimage. I wish that human majesty were only the incarnate reflection of your own. I am too demanding but my sincere wish glorifies you. Your moral grandeur, image of infinity, is as vast as the philosopher's reflections, as woman's love, as the divine beauty of the bird, as the meditations of the poet. You are more beautiful than the night. Answer me, ocean, will you be my brother? Swell more violently...more...still more, if you want me to compare you to God's vengeance. Lengthen your livid claws, as you clear a way over your own breast...that is good. Unroll your frightful waves, hideous ocean, whom I alone understand, before which I fall, prostrate, at your knees. Man's majesty is a deception; he does not overawe me; but you do. Oh when you advance with your high and terrible crest, wild and hypnotic, surrounded by a court of sinuous coils of waves rolling on one another fully aware of all you are, while you utter from the depths of your breast, as if weighed down by and intense remorse whose cause I cannot discover, the perpetual suppressed moan which men so often fear, even when they contemplate you, in safety, trembling from the sea-shore, then I see that I cannot claim the illustrious right to call myself your equal. That is why, in face of your superiority, I would give you all my love (and no one knows the amount of love in my aspirations towards the Beautiful) if only because you make me think with sorrow on my fellows, who form the most ironic contrast with you, the most farcical antithesis that has ever been seen in the whole of creation; I cannot love you, I detest you. Why, then, do I return to you for the thousandth time to your welcoming arms which caress my flaming brow, your touch dispelling its feverish heat. I do not know your hidden destiny; everything about you interests me. Tell me, then, if you are the abode of the Prince of Darkness. Tell me...tell me, ocean (only me, so as to cause no grief to those who till now have known only illusions), tell me if it is the breath of Satan that creates the tempests which whip your salt-water cloud-high. You must tell me, for I would rejoice to know that hell is o near to man. I intend this to be the last strophe of my invocation. Thus, one last time, I want to hail you and bid you goodbye. Old ocean, crystal-waved...Free-flowing tears well up in my eyes, I have no strength to go on; for I feel that the moment has come for me to return to men, brutish in their appearance; but...courage! Let us make a superhuman effort and, conscious of our duty, fulfill our destiny on this earth. I hail you, old ocean!

  10

  You will not, in my last hour, find me surrounded by priests. I want to die lulled by the waves of the stormy sea, or standing on a mountain-top...my eyes looking upwards, no: I know my extinction will be complete. Besides, I would have no hope of mercy. Who is opening the door of my funeral chamber? I had said no one was to enter. Whoever you are, go away; but if you believe you notice some mark of sorrow or fear on my hyena's face (I use the comparison although the hyena is more handsome than I, pleasanter to look at), if you believe this, then let me undeceive you: let him approach. It is a winter night on which the elements are dashing against one another on all sides, man is afraid, and the youth broods on some crime against one of his friends, if he is like I was in my youth. Let the wind, whose plaintive whistle has saddened mankind ever since the wind and mankind have existed, let it carry me on the bone of its wings, just before my last agony, across the world impatient for my death. I will still enjoy in secret the numerous examples of human malice (a brother, unseen, likes to observe his brothers' acts). The eagle, the raven, the immortal pelican, the wild duck, the migrant crane, awakened, chattering with cold, will see me passing by the light of the lightning, a horrible, happy spectre. They will not know the meaning of it. On earth, the viper, the toad's bulbous eyes, the tiger, the elephant; in the sea, the whale, the shark, the hammer-fish, the misshapen ray-fish, and the tooth of the polar seal, will wonder what this violation of the laws of nature is. Man, trembling, will press his head against the earth in the midst of his groans. 'Yes, I surpass you all by my innate cruelty which it was not for me to suppress. Is this the reason why you prostrate yourselves before me? Or is it because you have seen me, a new phenomenon, traversing blood-drenched space like a terrifying comet? (A shower of blood falls from my vast body, like the blackish cloud which the hurricane pushes before it.) Do not be afraid, children. I do not want to curse you. The harm you have done me is too great, too great the harm I have done you, to have been deliberate. You have gone your way and I have gone mine, both similar, both depraved. Given our resemblance of character, we must, necessarily, have met; the resultant impact has been fatal for us both.' Then men, taking courage, little by little will look up, stretching out their necks like the snail to see who is speaking thus. All of a sudden, their flaming, distorted faces, showing their terrible emotions, will grimace in such a way that wolves will shrink in fear. They will all rise at once like an immense spring. What imprecations! What voices breaking as they yell! They have recognized me. And now see how the animals of the earth are joining in with men, making their bizarre outcry heard; the hatred they both feel has turned against the common enemy, me; they are reconciled by universal assent. Winds who bear me up, carry me higher; I fear perfidy. Let us disappear gradually from their sight, witness, once again, of the consequences the passions bring in their wake, completely satisfied. I thank you, oh bat rhinolophe, for waking me with the beating of your wings, bat with the horse-show crested nose: I realize that it was, in fact, only, unfortunately, a passing illness, and I feel--with disgust--that I am recovering. Some say you were coming towards me to suck the little blood left in my body: why cannot this supposition be reality?