Maldoror and Poems

  'Three stars instead of a signature,' exclaims Mervyn; 'and a bloodstain at the bottom of the page!' His tears fall profusely on the strange pages which his eyes have so eagerly devoured and which open to his mind an unlimited field of new and vaguely-apprehended horizons. It seems to him (but only since he has finished reading the letter), that his father is rather strict and his mother is too superior. He has reasons which have not come to my knowledge, and which I consequently cannot communicate to you, for hinting that he cannot remain on good terms with his brothers, either. He hides this letter in his breast. His teachers noticed that on that day he did not seem to be himself. His eyes were unusually dark and the veil of excessive reflection had descended on his peri-orbital region. Each teacher blushed for fear of not being able to reach the intellectual level of his pupil, and yet he, for the first time, neglected his exercises and did no work at all. In the evening the family came together in the dining-room, adorned with ancient portraits. Mervyn admires the dishes laden with succulent meats and odoriferous fruits but he does not eat; the polychromatic streaming of Rhine wine and the frothy ruby of champagne are both enshrined in tall, narrow Bohemian stone goblets, and, even at the sight of this, Mervyn remains indifferent. He leans his elbow on the table and remains absorbed in his thoughts like a sleep-walker. The commodore, his face brown and weather-beaten from sea-surf, whispers in his wife's ear: 'Our eldest has changed since the day of the crisis; even before then he was far too prone to absurd ideas; today he is dreaming even more than usual. I was not at all like that when I was his age. Pretend you do not notice anything. An effective remedy, material or moral, is called for here. Mervyn, fond as I know you are of travel books and natural history, I am going to read you a story which will not displease you. I want you all to listen attentively; it will be to everyone's disadvantage, most of all to mine. And the rest of you, my children, learn by paying attention to my words, how to perfect the construction of your style and to understand the author's most subtle intentions.' As if this brood of adorable brats could have understood what rhetoric is! He speaks and, at a sign from his father, one of the brothers goes to the paternal library and returns with a volume under his arms. During this time the table has been cleared, the silver removed, and then the father takes up the book. At the electrifying sound of the word 'travel', Mervyn looked up and endeavoured to put an end to his untimely meditations. The book is opened in the middle, and the metallic voice of the commodore proves that he has remained capable, as in the days of his glorious youth, of controlling the fury of men and tempests. Well before the end of this reading, Mervyn has leant back on his elbows again, unable to follow the reasoned development of sentences which have been passed under the screw-plate and been subjected to the saponification of obligatory metaphors. The father exclaims: 'This does not interest him; let us read something else. Read, wife. Perhaps you will be more fortunate than I in chasing away the chagrin which hangs over our son's days.' The mother no longer has any hope; yet she has picked up another book and the pleasant sound of her soprano voice echoes melodiously in the ears of her offspring. But after a few words she is overwhelmed with a disheartening sense of failure and she too gives up the rendition of the literary work. Her first-born exclaims: 'I am going to bed.' He retires, his eyes lowered, staring coldly down, without another word. The dog begins to let out a mournful bark, for he does not find this behaviour natural, and the wind from outside rushed fitfully through the longitudinal crack in the window, making the flame under the two rose-crystal cupolas of the lamp flicker. His mother puts her hands to her forehead, and his father looks up to the sky. The children cast frightened glances at the old mariner. Mervyn double-locks the door of his room and his hand moves quickly over the paper: 'I received your letter at midday, and hope you will forgive me for the delay in my reply. I do not have the honour of knowing you personally and I did not know whether I ought to write to you. But as impoliteness has no place in our home, I resolved to take up my pen and thank you warmly for the interest you are taking in one who is a complete stranger to you. God forbid that I should fail to show gratitude for the sympathy with which you overwhelm me. I know my imperfections but I am nonetheless proud. But if it is fitting to accept the friendship of an older person, it is fitting also that he should understand that our characters are not the same. In fact, you seem to be older than I, since you call me young man, and yet I have my doubts about your real age. For how can I reconcile the coldness of your syllogisms with the passion which emanates from them? I shall certainly not abandon the country of my birth to accompany you to foreign lands. That would only be possible on the condition that I asked the authors of my days for the permission which I eagerly await. But as you have enjoined me to keep the secret (in the cubic sense of the word) of this spiritually mysterious affair, I shall eagerly obey you in your incontestable wisdom. It would seem that you are reluctant that this affair should see the light of day. Since you appear to wish that I should have confidence in your person (a wish that, I am delighted to say, is not misplaced), be so good, I beg you, as to show an analogous trust in me, and not to affect to believe that I shall be so far from your way of thinking as not to be scrupulously punctual at our rendezvous the day after tomorrow at the appointed hour. I shall climb the wall which surrounds the park, for the iron gate will be closed, and no one will see me leaving. To speak frankly, there is nothing I would not do for you, who revealed your inexplicable attachment so suddenly to my dazzled eyes, amazed above all by such a proof of goodness, which I most assuredly would never have expected. Because I did not know you. Now I do know you. Do not forget the promise you have made me to be on the Carrousel bridge. Assuming I walk along it, I am more certain than I have ever been of anything that I shall meet you there and touch your hand, provided that this innocent demonstration, from a youth who only yesterday knelt at the altar of modesty, does not offend you by its respectful familiarity. Now is not familiarity permissible in the case of a powerful and ardent intimacy, when perdition is absolute and assured? And what harm would there be, after all, in my bidding you adieu as I go by, when, the day after tomorrow, whether it is raining or not, the clock strikes five? You yourself, gentleman, will appreciate the discretion with which I have conceived this letter; for I shall certainly not permit myself to say more on a loose sheet of paper which is liable to go astray. Your address at the bottom of the page is almost illegible. It took me almost a quarter of an hour to decipher it. I think you acted wisely in writing the words out in such a microscopic hand. I shall follow your example and refrain from signing this: we live in a time which is too eccentric for us to be in the least surprised at what could happen. I should like to know how you found out the place where, in glacial immobility, I live surrounded by long rows of deserted rooms, the vile charnel houses of my hours of ennui. How can I put it? Whenever I think of you, my breast heaves, resounding like the collapse of a decaying empire; for the shadow of your love forms a smile which perhaps does not exist: it is so vague, and moves its scales so tortuously. I surrender to you my vehement feelings, new slabs of marble, virgin to mortal touch. Let us be patient till the first light of morning dusk, and, in expectation of the moment which will fling me into the hideous embrace of your pestiferous arms, I bow down humbly before your knees, which I press.' Having written this tell-tale letter, Mervyn went out to post it, then returned and went to bed. Do not expect to find his guardian angle at his bedside. True, the fish's tail will only fly for three days; but, alas, the beam will be burnt just the same; and a conical-cylindrical bullet will pierce the skin of the rhinoceros, despite the snow-daughter and the beggar! For the crowned madman will have spoken the truth about the loyalty of the fourteen daggers.

  6

  I observed that I had only one eye in the middle of my forehead! Oh silver mirrors, set in the panels of vestibules, how many services you have done me by your reflecting power! Since the day when, for an hour, and angora cat gnawed at my parietal protuberance like a trepan punctur
ing my brain, having jumped suddenly on my back because I had boiled its young in a copper vat full of alcohol, since then I have not ceased to shoot the arrows of self-torment at myself. Today, beneath the weight of wounds which have been inflicted on my body in different circumstances, either by the fatality of my birth or by my own fault; overwhelmed by the consequences of my moral decline (some of which have already befallen me; who will predict those yet to come?); the unmoved observer of the acquired or natural monstrosities which adorn the aponeuroses and the intellect of him who speaks, I cast a long look of satisfaction on the duality of which I am composed...and I find myself beautiful! Beautiful as the vice of congenital deformation of the male sexual organs, consisting in the relative shortness of the urethral canal and the division, or absence, of its lower wall, with the result that this canal opens at a varying distance from the gland and below the penis; or again as the fleshy wattle, conic in shape and furrowed by quite long transverse wrinkles, which rises from the base of the turkey cock's upper beak; or rather as the truth which follows: 'The system of scales, modes and their harmonic succession is not dependent upon natural invariable laws but is, on the contrary, the consequence of aesthetic principles which have varied with the progressive development of mankind and which will continue to vary'; and, above all, as a corvet armed with turrets! Yes, I maintain the exactitude of my assertion. I can boast that I have no presumptuous illusions, and I would gain no advantage from lying; therefore you should not in the least hesitate to believe what I say. For why should I inspire horror in myself, when I have the laudatory testimony of my conscience. I envy the Creator nothing; but let him allow me to go down the river of my destiny in an increasing series of glorious crimes. Otherwise raising my brow to the height of his and glaring angrily at his face which obscures my view, I shall make him understand that he is not alone the master of the universe; that several phenomena directly deriving from a deeper knowledge of the nature of things speak in favour of the contrary view and formally contradict the viability of the unity of power. For we are both contemplating one another's eyelashes, you see...and you know that the clarion of victory has sounded more than once on my lipless mouth. Adieu, illustrious warrior; your courage in misfortune wins you the respect of your bitterest enemy; but Maldoror will be with you soon again in contention for the prey called Mervyn. Thus the prophecy of the cock, when it caught a glimpse of the future in the candelabra, will be fulfilled. Please heaven that the giant crab will rejoin the caravan of pilgrims in time, and tell them in a few words the Clignancourt ragman's tale!

  7

  On a bench of the Palais Royal, on the left side and not far from the lake, an individual, emerging from the Rue de Rivoli, has come to sit. His hair is tousled and his garments reveal the corrosive effect of prolonged poverty. He has made a hole in the earth with a piece of pointed wood and has filled the palm of his hand with earth. He brought this sustenance to his mouth and then flung it quickly away. He stood up again and, placing his head against the bench, tried to put his feet up in the air. But as this rope-walking position did not conform to the laws of gravity, he fell back heavily on to the bench again, his arms flailing, his cap covering half his face, and his feet touching the gravel very unsteadily, so that he was more and more precariously poised. He remains in this position for a long time. Towards the middle entrance at the north, beside the rotunda which houses the little coffee-room, the hand of our hero is pressed against the railing. He surveys the surface of the rectangle, with such thoroughness that nothing escapes him. His investigation complete, he looks around near and sees, in the middle of the garden, a man staggering as he practices gymnastics on a bench on which he is endeavouring to steady himself by performing miracles of strength and skill. But what good are the best intentions, in service of a just cause, against the derangements of mental alienation? He approached the madman and kindly helped him to resume a more normal and dignified position, held out his hand to him, and sat down beside him. He observes that his madness is only intermittent; his fit has passed; his interlocutor replies logically to all his questions. Is it necessary to relate the meaning of his words? Why should I, at random, reopen, at a given page, with blasphemous eagerness, the folio of human miseries? There is nothing more fruitfully instructive. Even if I had no true event to recount to you, I would invent imaginary tales and decant them into your brain. But the lunatic did not go mad for his own amusement. And the sincerity of his account is marvelously allied to the reader's credulity. 'My father was a carpenter in the Rue de la Verrerie...on his head be the death of the three Daisies and may the beak of the canary eternally gnaw the axis of his ocular bulb! He had contracted the habit of drunkenness; at those times, after he had been through all the bars, his rage became almost immeasurable, and he would hit out indiscriminately at everything in sight. But soon, in face of his friends' reproaches, he reformed, and became of a taciturn disposition. Nobody could go near him, not even our mother. A secret resentment seethed within him at this notion of a duty, which prevented him from behaving in his own way. I had bought a canary for my three sisters; for my three sisters I had bought a canary. They had put it in a cage above the door, and the passers-by would stop each time to listen to the bird's songs, admire its fleeting grace, and study its clever variations. More than once my father had given orders for us to get rid of the cage and its contents, for he imagined that the canary was mocking him as it offered him its ethereal cavatinas sung with a vocalist's talent. He went and took the cage down from the nail on the wall and slipped of the chair, blinded by rage. A slight graze on his knee was the reward for this attempt. Having spent several seconds pressing a chip of wood on the swollen part, he rolled down his trousers, and, much more cautious this time, took the cage under his arm and went towards the other end of the workshop. There, despite the cries and entreaties of his family (we were very attached to that bird who was, to us, the genius of the house), he crushed the wickerwork cage with his metal heels, while a jointing-plane which he whirled about his head kept those who were present at bay. Chance would have it that the canary did not die straightaway; the flurry of feathers was still alive, despite its bloody mutilation. The carpenter went out, slamming the door behind him. My mother and I tried to prolong the bird's life, which was about to ebb away; it was drawing to its close, and the movement of its wings presented us only the spectacle, the mirror, as it were, of the supreme convulsion, of death-throes. During this time, the three Daisies, perceiving that all hope would soon be gone, by common accord took one another by the hand, and the living chain went and crouched in a corner, pushing a barrel of fat some feet away beside our bitch's kennel. My mother kept on at her task, and was holding the canary in her fingers, trying to revive it with her warm breath. But I was running distraught through all the rooms, knocking against the furniture and the tools. From time to time one of my sisters would show her head at the bottom of the stairs to inquire after the fate of the unhappy bird, and she would then sadly withdraw. The bitch had come out of her kennel, and, as if she understood the enormity of our loss, was licking the dress of the three Daisies in a sterile attempt to comfort them. The canary now had only a few moments to live. One of my sisters in turn (it was the youngest) appeared in the penumbra formed by the rarefaction of light. She saw my mother turn pale, and the bird, having raised its head as the lightning flashed in a final convulsive gesture of its nervous system, fell back again between her fingers, for ever inert. She told her sisters the news. They did not make the slightest murmur of complaint, the slightest whisper. Silence reigned in the workshop. All that could be heard was the occasional sharp creak of the pieces of the cage, which, by virtue of the wood's elasticity, partly sprang back into their original position. The three Daisies did not shed a single tear, their faces lost none of their ruddy freshness. They just stood still. They crawled into the inside of the kennel and stretched out beside each other on the straw; while the bitch, a passive spectator of this procedure, looked at them in amazement. Seve
ral times my mother called them; they did not make sound. Tired by the emotions they had just been through, they would probably be asleep! She searched in every corner of the house, but could not see them anywhere. She followed the bitch, who was pulling her by the dress, towards the kennel. This woman knelt down and put her head to the kennel door. The spectacle which presented itself to her, allowing for the unhealthy exaggerations of maternal fear, must have been very harrowing, by my reckoning. I lit a candle and held it out to her; in this way, not a single detail escaped her. She came out of the premature grave, her head covered in straw, and said to me: "The three Daisies are dead." As we could not take them out there, for you must bear well in mind that they were tightly entwined together, I went to the workshop to look for a hammer with which to smash the canine abode. I immediately set about the work of demolition, and the passers-by could well believe if they had any imagination, that we were hard at work in the house. My mother, impatient at the delays which were, however, necessary, was breaking her nails against the wood. At last the operation of negative release came to an end. The kennel, now split, fell apart on all sides, and we took the daughters of the carpenter, one after the other, from the ruins, having had great difficulty in prising them apart. My mother left the country. I never saw my father again. As for me, they say that i am mad and live by begging. What I do know is that the canary no longer sings.' The listener inwardly approves of this new example which bears out his disgusting theories. As if, because of one man whose crime was committed under the influence of wine, one had the right to accuse the whole of mankind! Such at least is the paradoxical reflection which he tries to take into account; but he cannot get out of his mind the important lessons to be learnt from this grave experience. He consoles the madman with affected words of commiseration and wipes away his tears with his own handkerchief. He takes him to a restaurant and they eat at the same table. Then they go off to a fashionable tailor where the protégé is bought clothes fit for a prince. They knock at the conciergerie of a big house in the Rue de Saint Honore, and the madman is installed in a sumptuous third-floor apartment. The bandit forces him to accept his purse and, taking the chamber-pot from under the bed, puts it on Aghone's head. 'I crown you king of the intellect,' he exclaimed with premeditated solemnity. 'At your least call I shall come running; take as much as you wish from my coffers; I am yours, body and soul. At night, you will put the alabaster crown back into its usual place, and you have my permission to use it; but by day, once dawn has lit up the cities, put it back on your head as the symbol of your power. The three Daisies will live again in me, not to mention that I will be a mother to you.' Then the madman took a few steps back, as if he were the plaything of a malicious nightmare; lines of joy crossed his grief-ridden face; he knelt in self-abasement at his protector's feet. Gratitude, like poison, had entered the crowned madman's heart. He wanted to speak, but his tongue was tied. He leant forward, and fell on the floor. The man wit the bronze lips retires. What was his object? To find a thoroughly dependable friend, naive enough to obey the least of his commandments. He could not have found a better one, chance had been kind to him. He whom he found on a bench, has not, since an incident in his youth, known for the difference between good an evil. Aghone is just the man he needs.