The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) (15 page)

SPLEEN

by Paul Verlaine

The roses were so very red,

And the ivy so intensely black.

My love, you have only to turn your head

And all my hopelessness floods back!

The vault of the sky was so deeply blue,

The sea so green and the air so mild.

I fear and hope to win from you

A curse that I might be defiled.

Of the gloss upon the holly leaf,

And the sunlit bush I can take no more,

Through all my far-flung fields of grief,

Your memory has passed before.

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THE FAUN by

Remy de Gourmont

She had retired early after the evening meal, weary of the innocent laughter of the little children and the forced joviality which was required of all parents at this season of the year.
She felt wretched, and more than a little unhappy.

What had annoyed and upset her most of all was the way that her husband took care to put on a hypocritical show of affection whenever the eyes of the world were upon them; like all other wives, she would have preferred it if he had treated her badly in public and behaved in a loving manner when they were alone.

After dismissing her maid she drew the bolt; then, secure in the knowledge that she would not be disturbed, she was able to feel a little less unhappy.

She undressed slowly and gracefully, imagining as she did so how pleasant it would be if there were someone into whose loving arms she might melt, someone who would murmur endearments as they embraced, complimenting the slope of her shoulder and the delicacy of her knee, thus renewing the assurance that she was desirable in body and soul.
She amused herself with this melancholy pretence, quite content to languish for a while in the realm of the imagination, which surely held no surprises for such as she.

Though she continued to touch herself, innocence was eventually overtaken by shame, or at least by delicacy.

She stopped and picked up her dress – although, like Arlette when Robert the Devil had favoured her with
his intimacies, she would just as soon have torn the garment apart instead of hanging it up.
But regrets were no use; there were bad times and there were good times, and that was the way of things.
She gathered a fur-trimmed gown about herself, and knelt down demurely before the fireplace.

She took up the poker and stirred the fire, rearranging and reinvigorating the incandescent logs.
She soaked up the warmth, still restless with annoyance.

Why, she wondered, did she allow the hypocritical attentions of her husband to upset her so much?
Could she not be more dignified?
Was she not capable of sensible self-control, of keeping herself calm – on this of all nights.
Why was it that she had to make herself unhappy, until she was so vexed, so overwrought and so sick at heart that she was on the brink of tears?
If she could not contrive to console and control herself better than this she would soon be a nervous wreck.

The fact that it was Christmas Eve made everything seem worse; this was one of those magical days when it became a crime to be alone, when the company of others was so very necessary to stave off remorse and painful thoughts.
She must try to be constructive, to make herself better – but she had not the strength of will to do it.
Her thoughts wandered again, and became confused; and within that confusion there remained only one word on which she could focus her attention: Christmas!
Sad, stupid Christmas!

The image came into her mind of a little girl, not long returned from midnight mass, who lay asleep in her bed, dreaming of the gifts which were brought to the infant Jesus.…

But no, it was all too banal!
All the world gave way annually to such sentimental visions, but to what purpose?
They were the meagre consolation of undistinguished
souls who had not the power to evoke more satisfying illusions.
Such commonplace and vulgar thoughts were insipid and silly, unworthy of the investment of
her
desire!

Rebelling against her memories of youth and innocence, she turned her thoughts instead to the delights of sensuality.
The warmth which flooded the hearth now that the logs burned more brightly was changed by the alchemy of her imagination into a wicked titillation.
She amused herself with the notion that peculiar caresses were flowing over her, like little angels without wings, hotter and more agile than the capering flames which played like demons about the burning logs.

She gave herself up to a dream of sumptuous fornication, imagining that she might sink into an unexpected stupor, a complaisant victim of desire, right there beside the fire with the fur about her – yes, with the complicity of that furry creature, of that amorous and devoted goat.…

Some lascivious spirit which possessed that lukewarm chamber collected its atoms then, and began to materialise.
A shadow shaped like the head of a faun fell upon the mirror which hung on the chimney-breast, and a curious draught stirred her hair, warming the nape of her neck.

She was afraid, but she was possessed by a perverse desire to inflame her fear; she did not, however, dare to lift her eyes to the looking-glass to see what might be reflected there.
The feeling which flooded her being was achingly sweet; but that shadow of which she had caught the merest glimpse was alarming, strange and absurdly peculiar.
She had had an impression of a solid and hairy head, of devouring eyes, of a mouth that was large and somewhat obscene, of a pointed beard…

She shivered.

He must be tall and broad, very handsome and very strong, this being who had emerged from her dream to make love to her!
How she trembled within the compass of his arms!
She continued to tremble, aware that she was possessed, aware that she had become the prey of some strange amorous monster which had lain in wait for her, had coveted her body.

The fur slid away from her shoulder, and immediately she felt a violent kiss scalding the bared flesh – a kiss so ardent and so powerful that she knew it would leave a visible mark like the brand of a red-hot iron.
She tried to pull the mantle back to cover her shoulder – a belated gesture of modesty – but the Being would not let her do it; he seized her two arms with his own two hands.
It did not displease her to be defeated so easily; the violence of the action was a tribute to her desirability.
Her back and her shoulders had been made to be seen, to receive such fiercely courteous kisses; did she not owe it to herself to enjoy the fruits of her voluptuousness?

The weight of the other’s huge body pressed down upon her, and she felt the panting breath of the incubus upon her, like the heat from a forge; it made her want to laugh recklessly.
“What a vile imposition!”
she thought.
“He is atrociously, beautifully masterful…I can see from the corner of my eye how he looks at me.…

As she turned her head towards him, the bestial mask which was his face descended upon hers, and that mouth – so large, and certainly more than alittle obscene!
– crushed her lips.

She shut her eyes, but too late!
For just an instant, she had seen the monster face to face, and knew that it was not the mere reflection of her self-indulgent dream – that in becoming real it had been deformed, intosomething so foul, so ugly, so intoxicated with a purely
bestial lust that.…

She was suddenly overcome with shame, and instantly straightened herself.
And when she looked at last into the mirror which was mounted on the chimney-breast…

….She saw herself, naked in body and in soul, all alone in her empty, dismal room.

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THE DRUNKEN BOAT

by Arthur Rimbaud

While I was borne along by the passionless flow,

I sensed that my halers had left me to float free;

They had become victims of some savage

Redskin foe, Stripped naked and nailed to some painted tree.

I could not care at all for the men I bore,

Or the cargoes of cotton and wheat they stowed below,

When, like the halers, they troubled me no more,

The rivers carried me on wherever I cared to go.

In the furious tidal races of the coast,

Last winter, while lost in childish thought,

I ran!
And the peninsulas were never host

To such a clamour of triumphant sport.

My turbulent awakenings were tempest-blessed,

Ten nights upon the storm-tossed crests I danced,

By the power of the ever-rolling waves possessed,

And by the constant gleam of harbour lights romanced.

Children never found such sweetness in fallen fruit,

As was in the water leached into my pinewood hull,

Which washed away the blue wine spilt and spewed,

And left me rudderless and anchorless before the lull.

From that time on I bathed in the Poem of the Sea,

Heavy with milk and infused by the stars with light,

Devouring the blue pastures where, at last set free,

A drowning dreamer finds that deep and drear respite

Whose blueness by delirium is now remade,

Pulsating beneath the lightfall from above,

Stronger than alcohol, huger than harps displayed,

Fermenting the bitter rednesses of love!

I know the whirlpools and the lightning-riven sky

Of the sea enraged; but I know too the sea serene,

Launching the silver rays of dawn like doves on high;

And sights which men have sometimes dreamed, I’ve seen.

I have seen the setting sun, by horrid mists encaged

Painting with violet light the sullen clouds,

Like actors in a play which long ago was staged

Before the rolling waves and restless crowds.

I have dreamed of greenlit nights and dazzling snows,

Of kisses rising slowly to the sea’s dark eyes,

Of the circulation of undreamed of flows,

And the phosphorescent glints of vivid dyes.

For months on end I have followed the swells

Which batter the coral reefs in maddened herds,

Never dreaming that the luminous conch-shells

Could quell the ocean’s rage with murmurous words!

You little dream what Floridan landfalls I have made

Where I looked into the eyes of panthers with human skin,

And saw rainbows like bridles incredibly displayed

Beneath the sea’s horizons where the shoals begin.

I have seen the stagnant marshlands like enormous snares

Among whose reeds the corpses of Leviathans decay,

While waterfalls disturb the calm of their abandoned lairs,

Exploring the abyssal depths where once they lay.

Glaciers and silver suns, pearly waves and skies afire!

And turbid gulfs with rotting wrecks upon their beds,

Where monstrous serpents extend their verminous empire

From the twisted trees to the darkness odorous with dreads!

I yearned to bring children to see the dolphins play

Upon the blue waves with the singing golden fish.

– As I drifted, the flowers of foam about me lay

Until wings lent by strange winds would carry me away.

Sometimes, that weary martyr of the poles and tropics,

The sea, whose sobbing rocked me like a gentle breeze

Would lift towards me some shadow-bloom with yellow calyx,

Beneath which I would rest like a woman on her knees…

Almost an island, with pale-eyed birds about my shore,

Which painted me with droppings while they clamorously fought.

Still I sailed on, my rigging more tattered than before,

Touching the drowned men whose sleep was dearly bought!…

I lost myself amid the tresses of the ocean kelp,

Was thrown by a hurricane into that birdless space,

Where no warship or Hanseatic trader paused to help.

There my sodden hulk had reached its resting-place;

Free, fuming, enshrouded by clouds of violet light:

I who had breached the wall of the sky dyed red

Whose exquisite sweets tempt the poetic appetite:

Lichens of sunlight and blue mucus thread;

I who had run, tormented by St.
Elmo’s Fire,

A maddened board escorted by black seahorses,

When the summers crushed by cudgels would expire,

The Heavens split apart by thunderous forces;

I who had been shaken while fifty leagues away

By the rutting of Behemoths and the Maelstrom’s moan,

An eternal spinner of the still cerulean display;

How I yearn for Europe’s ancient parapets of stone!

I have seen the archipelagos of stars, and isles

Whose intoxicated skies belong to those who sail:

– Art thou among the endless throng of sleep’s exiles,

O million golden birds, O future Holy Grail?

Still, I have wept too long!
Dawn breaks my heart.

Moonlight is hateful, sunlight bitter to my taste:

Piercing love has swelled my every inebriate part.

O that my keel might be broken, my hull laid waste.

If there is any European water where I long to be,

It is a dark cold pool where a sad child might play

Launching into the scented twilight, upon an imagined sea

A paper boat as fragile as the butterflies of May.

Bathed by your caresses, O waves, I can no longer rise

To follow in the wake of cotton-clippers sailing home,

Nor chase the coloured pennants which decorate the skies

Nor leave behind the lightships’ baleful glare, the seas to roam.

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