Maldoror and Poems

  ‘Oh venerable louse, you whose body has no wing-case, one day you will bitterly reproach me for not having loved your sublime understanding enough; perhaps you were right, since I feel no gratitude towards this man who is helping me. Oh lantern of Maldoror, where are you guiding his steps?’

  ‘To my home. Whether you are a criminal who has not taken the precaution of washing his right hand with soap after committing his atrocious crime and whose guilt is revealed by close inspection of his hand; or a brother who has lost his sister; or some dispossessed monarch fleeing his realms, my truly imposing palace is worthy to receive you. It was not built of diamonds and precious stones, for it is only a poor cottage, crudely put together; but this famous cottage has a historic past, which the present renews and continues incessantly. If it could speak it would astound even you, who seem to be astonished by nothing. How often this cottage and I have seen coffins pass by containing bones soon to be more worm-eaten that the door I leant against. My countless subjects increase each day. I need no periodical census to ascertain this. Here it is the same as in life; everyone pays rates in proportion to the opulence of the dwelling he has chosen for himself; and if some miser should refuse to hand over his dues, then I have instructions to do as bailiffs and vultures who would enjoy a good meal. I have seen many drawn up under the flag of death—the once-handsome man; the man who remained handsome even after death; men, women, beggars, kings’ sons; the illusions of youth, the skeletons of old men; genius; madness; idleness and its opposite; the false and the true-hearted; the mask of the proud, the modesty of the humble; vice crowned with flowers and innocence betrayed.’

  ‘No, certainly I will not refuse your offer of a bed worthy of me, till dawn which will come soon. I thank you for your kindness Gravedigger, it is grand to contemplate the ruins of cities; but it is grander still to contemplate the ruins of human beings!’

  13

  The brother of the leech was walking in the forest, slowly. He stops several times, opening his mouth to speak. But each time his throat contracts, drives back the abortive effort. At last he cries out: ‘Man, when you come across a dead dog lying on its back against a sluice gate which will not let it through, do not, as others do, go up and pick out the worms crawling from its swollen belly, examine them in wonder, take out a knife and cut up a large number of them, saying as you do so that one day you will be no more than this dog. What mystery do you seek? Neither I nor the four fin-legs of the polar bear in the Boreal ocean have been able to solve the problems of life. Take care, night is approaching, you have been here since morning. What will your family say, and your little sister, seeing you arrive so late? Wash your hands, go on your way, to your home, your bed. Who is that being yonder on the horizon who dares to approach me, without fear, in crooked, agitated jumps; and what majesty, mingled with serene gentleness! His look, though gentle, is deep. His enormous eyelids play in the breeze and seem to have their own life. I do not know him. When I stare at his monstrous eyes, my body trembles—for the first time since I sucked the dry breasts of what is called a mother. There is, as it were, a halo of dazzling light around him. When he spoke, all nature was hushed and felt a great shudder. Since it pleases you to come to me, as if drawn by a lover, I shall not resist. How beautiful he is! It hurts me to say it. You must be powerful; for you have a more than human face, sad as the universe, beautiful as suicide. I abhor you with all my being; and I would rather, from the beginning of the centuries, have had a serpent coiled about my neck than look on your eyes...What...is it you, toad?...fat toad!...wretched toad!...Forgive...Forgive! Why have you come to this earth where the accursed are? But what have you done to your viscous, reeking pustules to look so gentle? When you came from on high by command from above, with the mission of consoling the different races of living beings, you struck the earth with the speed of the kite in your long magnificent flight; I saw you! Poor toad! How often did I think of infinity then, and of my own weakness. “Another who is superior to those of the earth,” I said to myself. “By divine will. Why should I not be, too? To what purpose this injustice in divine decrees? He, the Creator, is mad; and yet, he is the strongest, his wrath is dreadful! Since you appeared to me, monarch of pools and swamps, arrayed in the glory which belongs to God alone, you have in part consoled me. But my stumbling reason founders before such greatness! Who are you? Stay...oh stay on this earth. Fold your white wings, and do not look up with such anxious eyes. If you must leave, let us leave together!”’ The toad sits on his haunches (which so resemble those of men) and, while slugs, lice and snails flee at the sight of their deadly enemy, he speaks in these terms: ‘Maldoror, listen to me. Look on my face, calm as a mirror. I believe my intelligence is equal to yours. One day you called me the mainstay of your life. Since then I have not proved unworthy of the confidence you put in me. I am only a simple dweller among the reeds, it is true; but thanks to my contract with you, taking only what was beautiful in you, my mind has become more exalted, I can speak to you. I have come to you to haul you from the depths. Those who call themselves your friends are struck with consternation when they see you, pale and stooping, in theatres, in public places, in churches, or with your two sinewy thighs pressed against that horse which gallops only by night as it carries its phantom master, wrapped in his long, black cloak. Abandon these thoughts, which make your heart as empty as the desert; they are more burning than fire. Your mind is so sick that you do not realize it; you think you are perfectly normal when you are uttering the most senseless words (though full of infernal grandeur). Wretch! what have you said since the day of your birth? O sad remnant of an immortal intelligence, which God created with so much love! You have engendered only curses more frightful than the sight of ravenous panthers. For my part, I would prefer to have my eyelids struck down, to have a body without legs or arms, to have murdered a man, than to be you! Because I hate you. Why do you have this character which astonishes me? What right do you have to come to this earth and pour scorn on those who live on it, rotten wreck buoyed up by skepticism? If you do not like it here, you should return to the spheres from where you came. A city-dweller should not reside in a village, like a foreigner. We know that in space there exist spheres more spacious than our own, whose spirits have an intelligence of which we cannot even conceive. Well...go there then. Leave this moving ground! Show at last your divine essence, which you have kept hidden until now; and as soon as possible, direct your rising flight towards your sphere, which we do not at all envy you, proud that you are! For I have not managed to discover whether you are a man or more than a man! Adieu, then. Do not hope to encounter the toad again on your way. You have been the cause of my death. I leave for eternity, to beg your forgiveness!’

  14

  It is sometimes logical to refer to the appearances of phenomena, this first song finishes here. Do not be severe on him who has yet only been tuning his lyre; it makes such a strange sound! However, if you are impartial, you will already have recognized a strong stamp amid the imperfections. As for me, I shall resume my work, to bring out, without too great a delay, a second song. The end of the nineteenth century will have its poet (yet, to start with, he must not produce a masterpiece, but follow the law of nature); he was born on American shores, at the mouth of the Plata, where two nations, once rivals are now striving to surpass each other in moral and material progress. Buenos Aires, the Queen of the South, and Montevideo, the coquette, stretch out their hands in friendship across the silvery waters of the great estuary. But eternal war holds destructive sway over these lands, joyously reaping countless victims. Adieu, old man, think of me if you have read me: and you, young man, do not despair; for whatever you may believe to the contrary, you have a friend in the vampire. And counting the scab-producing sarcoptes-mite, you will have two friends!

  SECOND BOOK

  1

  What has become of Maldoror’s first song, since his mouth, full of belladonna leaves, uttered it through the realms of anger, in a moment of reflection?...What
has become of this song...We do not know exactly. It is not in the trees, nor in the winds. And morality, passing through that place, not foreseeing that it had found in these incandescent pages an energetic advocate, saw him making for the dark recesses and secret fibres of consciousness, with a firm straight step. This much at least we do know; since that time, toad-faced man can no longer recognize himself, often falling into fist of rage which make him seem like a beast of the forest. It is not his fault. For ages, his eyelids weighed down beneath resedas of modesty, he had believed himself to consist only of good, and a minimal quantity of evil. Revealing his heart with all its wicked plots to him, I bluntly taught him the reverse: that he consists of evil only, with a minimal quantity of good which legislators are hard pressed to prevent from evaporating completely. In this I am teaching him nothing new and I wish he would not feel eternal shame at these bitter truths of mine; but the realization of this wish would not conform to the laws of nature. In fact I am tearing the mask off his false and slime-covered face, dropping, like ivory balls into a silver bowl, the sublime lies with which he deceives himself: it is understandable, then, that he cannot summon a look of calm on to his face, even when reason disperses the darkness of pride. That is why the hero I present has brought upon himself implacable hatred, by attacking humanity, which thought itself invulnerable, through the breach of absurd philosophical tirades; these abound like grains of sand in his books, the comic qualities of which I am sometimes, whenever my reason abandons me, on the point of finding so droll—but tiresome. He had foreseen it. It is not enough to sculpt statues of goodness on shelves of libraries where parchments are stored. O human being, here you are now, naked as a worm, in the presence of my sword of diamond! Abandon your method; the time for pride is past: prostrated before you, I offer up this prayer. There is someone who observes the smallest actions of your guilty lives. You are ensnared by the subtle network of his relentless perspicacity. Do not trust him when his back is turned; for he is watching you; do not trust him when his eyes are closed, for he is still watching you. It is difficult to conceive that you can have made the dreadful resolution to surpass the child of my imagination in matters of guile and wickedness. His least blows are fatal. If one is careful, one can teach him who does not know it that wolves and brigands do not devour one another: perhaps they are not in the habit of doing so. Therefore fearlessly entrust all care for your existence to him: he will guide it in the direction he knows so well. Do not believe in his apparent intention of making you better; for you are, to say the least, only of indifferent interest to him: even in saying this I am making allowances in your favour. What I have said does not approach the whole truth. But it is because he delights in doing evil to you, rightly convinced that you will become as wicked as he and that you will accompany him, when the time comes, into hell’s gaping abyss. His place has long since been appointed, the place where an iron gibbet stands, with chains and halters hanging from it. When destiny brings him there, the dismal pit beneath the trap door will never have tasted more delicious prey, nor will he ever have contemplated a more fitting habitation. It seems that I am speaking an in intentionally paternal manner, and that humanity has no right to complain.

  2

  I am grasping the pen which is going to compose the second song...an instrument torn from the wings of some red pyraugue! But what is wrong with my fingers? The joints remain paralysed, as soon as I want to start my work. Yet I need to write...It is impossible! I repeat that I need to write my thoughts. I have, like any other man, the right to submit to this natural law...But no, no, still the pen will not move! What is this? See the lightning flashing in the distance, across the countryside. The storm is crossing the sky. It is raining...Still it is raining...How it rains! The thunder has burst, it has beaten down on my open window, stretching me out on the floor. It has struck me on the forehead. Poor young man! Your face was already disfigured enough by premature wrinkles and the deformity of birth. It did not need this long sulphurous scar, too! (I have just assumed the wound has healed, but it will be some time before that happens). What do the storm and the paralysing of my fingers mean? Is it a warning from on high to make me think twice about the risks I am running by distilling the saliva of my square mouth? But this storm did not frighten me. What would a legion of storms matter to me? These celestial policemen carry out their difficult duties with zeal, if I am to judge summarily by my wounded forehead. I do not need to thank the Almighty for his remarkable skill; he aimed the thunderbolt so that it cut my face exactly in two; from the forehead, where the injury was most critical, down to the neck. Let someone else congratulate him on his accuracy! But these storms attack one who is stronger than they. And so, viper-faced Eternal One, not content with placing my soul between the frontiers of madness and these frenzied thoughts which are slowly killing me, you had to decide, after mature consideration, that it befitted your majesty to make torrents of blood gush from my brow! But what can you hope to achieve? You know that I do not love you, that I in fact hate you. Why do you persist? When will your behaviour cease to be enshrouded in all the appearances of strangeness? Speak to me frankly, as a friend. Do you not suspect that your odious persecution of me is characterized by a naive eagerness which is utterly ridiculous, though none of your seraphim would dare to point this out to you? What rage has taken hold of you? I want you to know that if you abandoned the pursuit and let me live in peace I would be grateful to you...Go on then, Sultan, lick the floor and rid me of the blood which has stained it. The bandaging is finished: my brow has been stanched and washed with salt-water, I have wound bandlets around my face. There is not much to speak of: four blood-drenched shirts, two handkerchiefs. One would not think at first sight that Maldoror had so much blood in his arteries, for his face has only a waxen, corpse-like sheen. But there it is. Perhaps that is all the blood his body could contain, and it is probably that there is not much more left. Enough, enough, you greedy dog; leave the floor as it is; your belly is full. You must no go on drinking; for you would very quickly start vomiting. You have glutted yourself adequately, now go and lie down in your kennel; consider yourself swimming in bliss; for three immense days you will not think of hunger, thanks to the globules which you have swallowed with visible and solemn satisfaction. And you, Leman, take a broom; I should like to take one, too, but I do not have the strength. You understand, do you not, that I do not have the strength? Put your tears back in their scabbard, or else I will think that you are not courageous enough to contemplate in composure the huge gash occasioned by a punishment which for me is already lost in the night of past time. You will go to the fountain and fetch two pails of water. Once you have washed the floor, you will take the linen into the next room. If the laundress comes back this evening, as she should, you will give it to her; but as it has been raining heavily for an hour and is raining still, I do not think she will leave her house; in that case, she will come tomorrow. If she should ask you where all this blood comes from, you are not obliged to answer her. Oh, how weak I am! No matter; I shall nonetheless be strong enough to raise my pen-holder, and courageous enough to work out my thoughts. What concern was it of the Creator’s, that he should plague me with the thunderstorm as if I were a child? I shall nonetheless persist in my resolve to write. These bandelets are a nuisance, the air in my room is thick with blood...

  3

  May the day never come when Lohengrin and I pass one another in the street, brushing against one another like strangers in a hurry! Oh let me flee for ever far from this thought! The Eternal One has created the world as it is: He would have been very wise if, in the time strictly necessary to break a woman's skull with hammer-blows, He had forgotten his sidereal majesty for a moment to reveal to us the mysteries amid which our existence stifles like a fish flailing on the ship's deck. But he is great and noble; He prevails over us by the might of his conceptions; if He parleyed with men, all His disgraceful acts would be flung in His face. But...wretch that you are! Why do you not blush? It is
not enough that the army of physical and moral afflictions which surrounds us should have been created: the secret of our shabby destiny is not even revealed to us. I know the Almighty...and He too must know me. If we chance to be walking along the same path, His sharp eyes see me coming from afar: He crosses the road, to avoid the triple platinum dart which nature gave me for a tongue! You will do me the favour, O Creator, of letting me give vent to my feelings. Wielding my terrible ironies in my firm untrembling hand, I warn you that my heart will contain enough to keep on attacking you until my existence ends. I shall strike your hollow carcass; but so hard that I undertake to knock out the remaining portions of intelligence which you did not want to give to man, because you were jealous at the thought that he would become your equal and which, cunning bandit, you had shamelessly hidden in your bowels, as if you did not know that one day I would discover them with my never-closing eyes, take them away and share them with my fellows. This I have done and now they no longer fear you; now they deal with you on an equal footing. Come, kill me and make me repent my boldness: I bare my breast and await you with humility. Appear, then, derisory spans of eternal punishments! Pompous displays of over-rated qualities! He has proved incapable of stopping the circulation of my blood which defies Him. Yet I have proofs that he does not hesitate to stop the breath of other human beings in their prime, who have scarcely tasted the delights of life. It is quite appalling, in my humble opinion! I have seen the Creator whetting His futile cruelty, kindling fires in which old men and children alike have died. It was not I who started the attack; it is He who forces me to turn around with my steel-cord whip, like a spinning-top. Does He not Himself provide me with the accusations I use against Him? My terrifying verve will not flag. It thrives on the senseless nightmares of my sleepless nights. And this has been written for the sake of Lohengrin; so let us return to him. Fearing that he would become like other men later, I had at first resolved to stab him to death once he had passed the age of innocence. But I reconsidered and wisely abandoned my resolution in time. He does not suspect that his life was in danger for a quarter of an hour. Everything was ready, and the knife had been bought. It had a fine and delicate blade, for I like grace and elegance even in the instruments of death; but it was long and pointed. Just one cut in the neck, carefully piercing the carotid artery, would have been enough, I think. I am glad I acted as I did; I would have regretted it later. So, Lohengrin, do whatever you wish, whatever you please; lock me up forever in a dark prison with scorpions as the only companions of my captivity, or pull out my eye till it falls to the ground, I shall never reproach you in the least; I am yours, I belong to you, I no longer live for myself. The pain you cause me will not be comparable to the joy of knowing that he who wounds me with his murderous hands is steeped in an essence more divine than that of his fellows! Yet it is still noble to give one's life for another human being and thus to keep alive the hope that not all men are wicked, since there has been one who overcame my mistrust and aversion and attracted himself to my bitter sympathy.