POETIC RAPTURE
"Quand le monde fait peur, quand la foule fatigue.
Quand le coeur n' a qu'un cri:--Te voir, te voir, te voir!"
Mme. Desbordes-Valmore.
He rose late, enjoying, through the window whose curtains were
lifted, the wintry charm of a pale noon sun, and delighting in the
state of half-consciousness which follows, after an irregular night,
an extremely physical fatigue. His anaemia of a transplanted plant,
combatted and almost vanquished by a regime that was country-like,
returned on such mornings. He felt the languor of the consumptive and
the melancholia of the adolescent.
The substantial breakfast arranged by his maid was less a comfort to
his fatigued organs than an intoxication. The smoking of a single
cigarette turned his head: he acquired, without having sought it, an
exquisite beatitude. It was like a new condition of animated matter:
the dissolving state--a special enjoyment reserved for lazy sleepers
and late breakfasters. Brief, like all delights, it was not long in
waning, but it was transformed gradually into an agreeable sensation of
peace.
Then, stretching an arm towards his Gothic Bible, he removed the copper
clasp and read, in a cloud of blue smoke, drinking strong coffee in
little sips, the aphorisms of Ecclesiastes.
A reading decidedly proper to lift a wise man far above other men, a
cup where one drinks sheer emptiness as surely as in a cupule of lotus,
ah! ideal banalities, written, without a doubt, for the days that
follow festivals.
FORTITUDE
"Poverty, labor, bodily miseries, bleeding heart wounds, bitterness of
bread and wine,
"Repose, suppleness, flowerings, embraces, warmth of joyous repasts,
"And all, and all vibrations.
"The cerebral enlightenment:
"All this indifferent to us, from the commencement to the end,
"For there is a commencement and an end, and, thank God, the soothing
void is made for all.
"We have confidence in the transcendental goodness of the Creator: he
will not prolong, beyond the human term, our pains or joys.
"And not even a shrugging of shoulders, for we are too witty to rage
against the eternal laws; besides, we have the sentiment of decorum."
He was tired, as tired as Sixtine, of this dim passion. The night
of their hearts truly needed some flashes of lightning. For a week
she had retired within herself, but like a flower which, at the
approach of a storm, draws together its trembling petals above the
sacred pistils; the danger over, they return to their former state and
joyously receive the fugitive caress of the passing pollen.
"Another less metaphorical reflection: the Russian has certainly made
positive advances and in his plaints the magic word of marriage must,
like an echo, have returned and reverberated. Magic he considers it. I
do not know. She must wish to preserve a certain liberty of behavior
and the personal home of a woman unaccustomed to share the ambient air
with another. Moreover, I have never surprised, in the implications
of her phrases, the least allusion to a matrimonial desire. I do not
believe that she would wish to close with such a banal epilogue the
indefinite avenue of our common dreams. We cannot erect this barrier
in the midst of our life, dividing in two adverbs--before, after--the
perspective of our desires, that sphinx rising towards the horizontal
profundities of the sky!
"Ah! I regret that this is not the stone on which her foot has
stumbled, for I should understand at least.
"After all, she was only to answer me. I think that I have been
sufficiently precise and if acts rather than words were needed, have I
not given myself up to acts?
"A quite unfortunate tentative!...
"Ah! I am weary, as weary as she is weary.
"If you do not wish to drink the dew I offer to your lips in the
hollow of my hand, some beast, bolder or wiser, will pass, that will
refresh itself with this drink of love.
"Come while it is morning and while animal life sleeps in the woods!
"Come to roam among the wet herbs: I will shake off the rain of pearls
and the snow flakes of diamonds from your blond hair!
"Come and you will exult with joy, come, the train of your robe, among
the mosses, will make a wake of light, and the rising sun will kiss, in
its candor, the smile of your purple lips!
"Come, you will be as a white-browed queen among green branches, and
the tame butterflies will rest on your ears.
"You will subdue nature and at the call of your mouth, my soul, wild as
a fawn, will bound towards you."
Analyses and dithyrambs formulated the same slavery. He wished to
make this woman happy, to see her eyes drawn back and her lips, by
the oppression of an emotion, opened. The evocation was suddenly
effected, not, it is true, under the direct visual form, but in a far
away vaporous and voluptuous world. Kneeling near her, after the last
evolutions of the embrace, he contemplated her.
"Truly my life is transferred into this woman as under the attraction
of a magnet, and truly the center of my forces is in that heart!
"Those blond lashes of her blue eyes are the chains of my days, and
the blond shadow of her hair is the halo of bright moons whose splendor
illumines my nights."
He would have proceeded at greater length, for his words were unleased,
but the vision vanished.
"Presage: Ah! pretty beast! ah! pretty beast!"
Then he reflected again:
"All this has been badly managed. I should have designed, as Calixte
suggested, this woman in the pure rôle of a Beatrice exempt from carnal
affairs,--but being a woman, she would not have understood: Beatrice,
who lent herself to this sublime play, was a dream creature, obeying
the poet and the very symbol of his thought. This one had to fall into
my arms, or other arms would have snatched her.
"Remain on your pedestal. It is on my knees that I wish to adore you,
my hands outstretched to you, eternally.
"No, I grow weary, up there. Adorer, adore nearer, adore with kisses.
"Well! at least we shall have some moments of pleasant intimacy and
since it is necessary to make an object of pleasure out of the object
of worship, let the sacrilege be complete and the voluptuousness
decisive.
"Ah! I shall abandon myself to your body of illusions. Excellent
and noble substance, you will be kneaded according to the most
transcendental phantasies!"