mind--a fragile bud that has never been caressed as yet by any zephyr
and whose carefully hidden breast has neither received the drop of rain
nor the pearl of dew; a chaste flower that displays its white robe for
you alone, a beautiful lily with a silver urn at which no desire has
slaked its thirst and which has been gilded only by your sun, swayed
by no breath but yours, watered by no hand but yours.--The glare of the
noonday sun is less agreeable than the divine pallor of the dawn, and
all the ardor of an experienced heart that knows what life is, yields
the palm to the celestial ignorance of a youthful heart just awaking to
love.--Ah! what a bitter, degrading thought it is that you are wiping
away another's kisses, that there may not be a single spot upon that
brow, those lips, that bosom, those shoulders, that whole body which is
yours now, that has not been reddened and branded by other lips; that
those divine murmurs which come to the relief of the tongue that can
find no more words of love, have been heard before; that those excited
senses did not learn their ecstasy and their delirium from you, and
that away, away down in one of those recesses of the heart which are
never visited, there lives an inexorable memory which compares the joys
of an earlier day to the joys of to-day!
Although my natural nonchalance leads me to prefer the high roads to
unbroken paths, and the public watering-trough to the mountain spring,
I absolutely must try to love some virginal creature as spotless as the
snow, as timid as the sensitive plant, who can only blush and look
down; it may be that, from that limpid stream, which no diver has as
yet investigated, I shall fish up a pearl of the fairest water, worthy
to be a pendant to Cleopatra's; but, in order to do that, I should have
to cast off the bond that binds me to Rosette,--for I am not likely to
realize that longing with her,--and to tell the truth, I do not feel
strong enough to do it.
And then, too, if I must make the confession, there is at the bottom
of my heart a secret, shameful motive, which dares not show itself in
broad daylight, but which I must tell you of, since I have promised to
conceal nothing from you, and a confession, to be deserving of credit,
must be complete;--the motive I speak of has much to do with all this
uncertainty.--If I break with Rosette, some time must necessarily pass
before her place is filled, however easy of access the class of women
may be among whom I shall seek her successor; and I have fallen into
a habit of enjoying myself with her which it will be hard for me to
break off. To be sure I have the resource of courtesans; I liked them
well enough in the old days and I did not hesitate to resort to them
under such circumstances;--but to-day they disgust me beyond measure
and make me ill.--So I must not think of them, and I am so softened
by indulgence, the poison has penetrated so deep into my bones that I
cannot bear the idea of being one or two months without a woman.--That
is pure egoism of the basest kind; but it is my opinion that the most
virtuous men, if they would be perfectly frank, would have to make
nearly a similar confession.
That is the true secret of my captivity and, if it weren't for that,
Rosette and I would long ago have fallen out for good and all. Indeed
it is such a deathly bore to pay court to a woman, that I haven't
the heart to attempt it. To begin again the charming idiocies I have
already said so many times, to play the adorable once more, to write
notes and reply to them; to escort the charmer, in the evening, to
some place two leagues away; to catch cold in your feet and your head
standing in front of the window watching a beloved shadow; to sit upon
a sofa calculating how many thicknesses of tissue separate you from
your goddess; to carry bouquets and go the round of the ball-rooms
to reach the point where I now am, is a vast deal of trouble!--It's
about as well to remain in one's rut.--What is the use of leaving it,
only to fall into another exactly like it, after much unnecessary
agitation and untold trouble? If I were in love, the thing would go
of itself and it would all seem perfectly delightful to me; but I am
not, although I have the most earnest desire to be; for, after all,
there is nothing but love in the world; and if pleasure, which is only
its shadow, has so many allurements for us, what must the reality be?
In what an ocean of ineffable bliss, in what seas of pure, unalloyed
delight must they swim whose hearts Love has pierced with one of his
gold-tipped arrows, and who burn with the delicious warmth of a mutual
flame!
Beside Rosette I feel that insipid tranquillity, that sort of slothful
well-being which results from the satisfaction of the senses, but
nothing more; and that is not enough. Often that voluptuous indolence
turns to torpor, and that tranquillity to ennui; thereupon I fall into
aimless meditation and dull, spiritless reveries that weary and harass
me;--it is a state of things that I must put an end to at any price.
Oh! if I could only be like some of my friends, who kiss an old glove
with ecstasy; who are made perfectly happy by a clasp of the hand; who
would not exchange for a sultana's jewel-case a few wretched flowers
half-withered by the heat of the ball-room; who cover with tears and
sew into their shirt, where it will rest against the heart, a note
written in an inelegant style and so stupid that you would think it
was copied from the _Parfait Secrétaire_; who adore women with large
feet and apologize for them on the ground that they have noble souls!
If I could follow tremblingly the vanishing folds of a dress, or wait
for a door to open in order to see a cherished white apparition pass
in a blaze of light; if a word spoken beneath the breath would make
me change color; if I had the virtue to go without my dinner so as to
arrive sooner at a rendezvous; if I were capable of killing a rival
or fighting a duel with a husband; if by a special dispensation of
Providence, I were endowed with the power of considering ugly women
clever, and those who are ugly and stupid as well, pleasant and
agreeable; if I could make up my mind to dance the minuet and to listen
to sonatas played by young ladies on the harpsichord or harp; if my
capacity should rise to the height of learning ombre and _reversis_;
in short, if I were a man and not a poet--I certainly should be much
happier than I am; I should be less bored myself and should bore others
less.
I have never asked but one thing of women--beauty; I am very willing to
go without intellect and soul.--In my eyes a beautiful woman is always
intellectual;--she knows enough to be beautiful, and I know no other
knowledge as valuable as that.--It takes many sparkling sentences and
keen shafts of wit to equal the value of the flash of a lovely eye. I
prefer a pretty mouth to a pretty speech, and a well-modeled shoulder
to a virtue, even one of the theological sort; I would give fifty souls
for a dainty foot, and all poetry and all the poets for the hand of
Joanna of Aragon, or the brow of Foligno's virgin.--Above all things
I adore a beautiful figure; to my mind beauty is manifest Divinity,
palpable happiness, heaven come down to earth.--There are certain
undulations of outline, certain turns of the lip, a certain droop of
the eyelids, certain inclinations of the head, certain elongations of
the profile which enchant me beyond all expression and fix my attention
for whole hours.
Beauty, the only thing that cannot be acquired, inaccessible forever
to those who haven't it at first; an ephemeral and fragile flower that
grows without being sown, a pure gift from heaven!--O beauty, the most
radiant diadem with which chance can crown the human brow--thou art
admirable and precious like everything that is beyond man's reach,
like the azure of the firmament, like the gold of the star, like the
perfume of the seraphic lily!--Man may change his stool for a throne,
may conquer the world; many have done it; but who could fail to kneel
before thee, thou pure personification of God's thoughts?
I ask only beauty, it is true; but I must have beauty so perfect that
I probably shall never find it. I have seen here and there women who
were admirably beautiful in some respects but only mediocre in others,
and I have loved them for what was best in them, ignoring the rest; it
is a difficult task, however, and painful, to suppress thus the half
of one's mistress, and to amputate mentally the ugly or commonplace
portions of her anatomy, limiting one's glances to what points of
beauty she may have.--Beauty is harmony, and a woman who is equally
ugly in all parts is often less disagreeable to look at than one who is
unevenly beautiful. Nothing offends my sight so much as an unfinished
masterpiece, or beauty in which something is lacking; a grease-spot is
less offensive upon coarse sackcloth than upon rich silk.
Rosette is not ill-favored; she might be considered beautiful, but
she is far from realizing the ideal of my dreams; she is a statue,
several portions of which have been completed. The others are not so
sharply cut from the block; there are some parts brought out with much
skill and charm, and others more carelessly and hurriedly. To ordinary
eyes the statue seems entirely completed and perfectly beautiful; but
a more careful observer soon discovers places where the work is not
close enough, and outlines which need to be touched and retouched many
times by the workman's nail before attaining the purity that belongs to
them;--it is for love to polish the marble and complete it, which is
equivalent to saying that I shall not be the one to do it.
However, I do not confine beauty to this or that particular form or
contour.--The manner, the gesture, the gait, the breath, the coloring,
the voice, the perfume, everything that is a part of life enters into
the composition of beauty in my estimation; everything that sings or
shines or perfumes the air is rightfully a part of beauty.--I love rich
brocades, gorgeous stuffs with their ample and stately folds; I love
great flowers and jars of perfume, transparent running water and the
gleaming surface of fine weapons, blooded horses and the great white
dogs that we see in Paul Veronese's pictures. I am a genuine heathen in
that respect, and I do not adore misshapen gods;--although I am not at
heart exactly what is called irreligious, there are few who are in fact
worse Christians than myself. I do not understand the mortification
of the flesh that forms the essence of Christianity, I consider it a
sacrilegious act to lay hands upon God's work, and I do not believe
that the flesh is wicked, since He Himself moulded it with His own
fingers and in His own image. I think but little of the long sober-hued
frocks from which only a head and two hands emerge, or of the pictures
in which everything is drowned in shadow except some one radiant brow.
I want the sun to shine everywhere, to have as much light and as little
shadow as possible, the bright colors to gleam, the lines to undulate,
the nude body to exhibit itself proudly and the flesh not to lie
hidden, since it, as well as the spirit, is a never-ending hymn to the
praise of God.
I can understand perfectly the wild enthusiasm of the Greeks for
beauty; and for my part I can see nothing absurd in the law that
compelled the judges to listen to the arguments of the lawyers in some
dark place, lest their noble bearing, the grace of their gestures and
attitudes should prejudice the judges in their favor and throw undue
weight into the scales.
I would buy nothing of an ugly shopwoman; I give alms more freely to
beggars whose rags and emaciation have a touch of the picturesque.
There is a little fever-ridden Italian, as green as an unripe lemon,
with great black and white eyes that take up half of his face;--you
would say he was an unframed Murillo or Espagnolet exposed for sale on
the sidewalk by a second-hand dealer:--he always gets two sous more
than the others. I would never whip a handsome horse or a handsome dog,
and I would not care for a friend or a servant who is not pleasant
to look at.--It is downright torture to me to look at ugly things or
ugly people.--Bad taste in architecture, a piece of furniture of ugly
shape, prevent my enjoying myself in a house, however comfortable and
attractive it may otherwise be. The best wine seems to me almost sour
in an ungraceful glass, and I confess that I would prefer the most
unsubstantial broth on one of Bernard of Palissy's enamelled plates
to the most toothsome game on an earthen platter.--The exterior of
things has always exerted a powerful influence upon me, and that is
why I avoid the society of old men; they irritate me and affect me
disagreeably because they are wrinkled and deformed, although some
of them have some special beauty; and in the pity that I feel for
them there is much disgust;--of all earthly ruins, the ruin of man is
assuredly the saddest to contemplate.
If I were a painter--and I have always regretted that I am not--I
should people my canvases with none but goddesses, madonnas, nymphs,
cherubim, and loves. To devote one's brush to painting portraits,
unless of beautiful people, seems to me a crime against the majesty of
the art; and, far from seeking to duplicate those mean or ugly faces,
those insignificant or vulgar heads, I should incline toward ordering
the originals to be cut off. The ferocity of Caligula, if diverted in
that direction, would seem to me almost praiseworthy.
The only thing on earth that I have desired with any constancy, is to
be beautiful.--By beautiful, I mean as beautiful as Paris or Apollo.
To have no deformity, to have features almost regular, that is to
say, to have the nose in the centre of the face and neither flat nor
hooked, eyes that are neither red nor bloodshot, a mouth of suitable
dimensions, is not to be beautiful: on that theory I should be, and I
consider myself as far removed from my ideal of virile beauty as if
I were one of the puppets that strike the hour on church-bells; if I
had a mountain on each shoulder, the crooked legs of a terrier and
the muzzle of a monkey, I should resemble it as closely. Often and
often I sit and look at myself in the mirror, for hours at a time,
with incredible fixity and close scrutiny, to see if my face has not
improved in some degree; I wait for the outlines to make a movement and
straighten out or take on a more graceful and purer curve, for my eye
to brighten and swim in a more sparkling fluid, for the hollow that
separates my forehead from my nose to fill up, and for my profile thus
to become as simple and regular as the Greek profile; and I am always
greatly surprised that it does not happen. I am always in hopes that
some spring or autumn I shall cast off my present shape as a serpent
casts his old skin.--To think that I need so little to be handsome and
that I never shall be! What! half a hair's breadth, the hundredth or
the thousandth part of a hair's breadth more or less in one place or
another, a little less flesh on this bone, a little more on that--a
painter or sculptor would have it all arranged in half an hour. What
was it that made the atoms of which I am composed crystallize in this
way or that? Why need that outline bulge out here and sink in there,
and why was it necessary that I should be thus and not otherwise?--Upon
my word if I had chance by the throat, I believe I would strangle
him.--Because it pleased a vile mass of I don't know what to fall from
I don't know where and coagulate stupidly into the awkward creature
that I visibly am, I shall be miserable forever! Isn't it the most
absurd and pitiful thing in the world? How is it that my soul, although
eagerly longing to do so, cannot let the poor carcass that it now holds
erect, fall prostrate, and enter into and animate one of those statues
whose exquisite beauty saddens and ravishes it? There are two or three
people whom it would give me the greatest pleasure to assassinate,
taking care, however, not to bruise or mar them, if I knew the word by
which souls are made to pass from one to another.--It has always seemed
to me that, in order to do what I wish--and I don't know what I do
wish--I needed very great and perfect beauty, and I fancy that if I had
had it, my life, which is so entangled and harassed, would have been
just the same.
We see so many lovely faces in pictures!--why is not one of them
mine?--so many charming faces disappearing under the dust and decay of
time in the recesses of old galleries! Would it not be better for them
to leave their frames and bloom anew on my shoulders? Would Raphaël's
reputation suffer greatly if one of the angels whom he drew in swarms
flying about in the deep blue of his pictures, should turn his mask
over to me for thirty years? There are so many parts of his frescoes,
and among them some of the most beautiful, that have scaled off and
fallen because of their age! No one would notice. What have the silent
beauties to do that hang around those walls, and at whom men scarcely
cast an absent-minded glance? and why has not God or chance the wit to
do what a man does with a few hairs stuck in the end of a stick and
pigments of different colors mixed together on a board?
My first sensation before one of those marvellous faces whose painted
glance seems to look through you and into infinite space beyond, is
profound amazement and admiration not unmixed with terror: tears
fill my eyes, my heart beats fast; then, when I have become a little
accustomed to it and have penetrated farther into the secret of its
beauty, I mentally draw a comparison between it and myself; deep down
in my soul jealousy writhes in knots more intricate than a viper's, and
it is with the utmost difficulty that I refrain from throwing myself
upon the canvas and tearing it in pieces.
To be beautiful, that is to say, to have in yourself such a charm
that every one smiles upon you and welcomes you; that every one is
prepossessed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion, even
before you have spoken; that you have only to pass through a street
or show yourself on a balcony to raise up friends or mistresses for
yourself in the crowd. To have no need to be lovable in order to be
loved, to be exempt from all the expenditure of wit and complaisance
which ugliness makes incumbent upon you, and to be excused from having
the thousand and one moral qualities that one must have to supplement
physical beauty--what a superb, magnificent gift!
And he who should combine supreme strength with supreme beauty, who,
beneath Antinous's skin, should have the muscles of Hercules,--what
more could he desire? I am sure that with those two things and the
mind that I now have I should be emperor of the world within three
years!--Another thing that I have longed for almost as much as beauty
and strength is the gift of transporting myself from one place to
another with the swiftness of thought. Angelic beauty, the strength of
the tiger and the wings of the eagle, and I should begin to conclude
that the world is not so badly organized as I used to think.--A
beautiful mask to charm and fascinate the prey, wings to pounce down
upon it and carry it off, nails to tear it to pieces;--so long as I
have not those I shall be unhappy.
All the passions and all the tastes I have had have been simply
disguised forms of those three desires. I have loved weapons, horses,
women: weapons to replace the muscles I had not; horses to serve as
wings; women, so that I might possess in some one the beauty that I
lacked myself. I sought in preference the most ingeniously deadly
weapons, and those whose wounds were incurable. I have never had
occasion to use any of the krises or yataghans, yet I like to have
them around me; I take them from their scabbards with an indescribable
sense of security and power, I lay about me in every direction with
the greatest energy, and if by chance I see the reflection of my face
in a mirror, I am astonished at its ferocious expression.--As for
my horses, I override them so that they must either founder or say
why.--If I hadn't given up riding Ferragus he would have died long
ago, and it would be a pity, for he's a fine beast. What Arabian steed
ever had limbs so fleet as my desire? In women I have not looked below
the exterior, and as those whom I have seen thus far are a long way
from fulfilling my ideal of beauty, I have fallen back upon pictures
and statues; which, after all, is a pitiful expedient when one's
senses are so inflammable as mine. However, there is something grand
and noble about loving a statue, for it is a perfectly disinterested
love, you have to dread neither satiety nor distaste with your triumph,
and you cannot reasonably hope for a second miracle like the story of
Pygmalion.--The impossible always had a charm for me.
Is it not strange that I, who am still in the fairest months of youth,
who have not even used the simplest things, much less abused anything,
have reached such a degree of satiety that I am tempted only by what
is unusual or difficult of accomplishment?--That satiety follows
enjoyment is a natural law and easily understood. Nothing is more
easily explained than that a man who has eaten heartily of every dish
at a banquet should no longer be hungry and should try to stimulate
his benumbed palate by the thousand stings of condiments or dry wines;
but that a man who has just taken his seat at the table and has
hardly tasted the first course, should already be assailed with that
superb disgust, should be unable to touch without vomiting any except
highly-seasoned dishes, and should like only gamey meats, cheese
with blue streaks running through it, truffles and wine that smells
of the flint, is a phenomenon that can result only from a peculiar
constitution; it is as if a child of six months should deem his nurse's
milk insipid and refuse to suck anything but brandy. I am as exhausted
as if I had performed all the prodigious feats of Sardanapalus and yet
my life has been apparently very chaste and peaceful; it is a mistake
to think that possession is the only road leading to satiety. We arrive
there also through desire, and abstinence is more exhausting than
excess.--Such a desire as mine is more fatiguing than possession. Its
glance envelops and penetrates the object which it longs to have and
which gleams above it, more swiftly and more deeply than if it were
in contact with it. What more could use teach it? what experience can
equal that constant, passionate contemplation?
I have gone through so much, although I have travelled very little,
that only the steepest peaks tempt me now. I am attacked by the disease
that fastens upon nations and powerful men in their old age--the
impossible. Anything that I can do has not the slightest attraction
for me. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, ye great Romans of the Empire, whom
posterity has so ill understood, and whom the pack of ranters pursues
with its yelping, I suffer with your disease and I pity you with all
the pity I have left in my heart! I, too, would like to bridge the sea
and pave its waves; I have dreamed of burning cities to illuminate my
fêtes; I have longed to be a woman to learn new forms of pleasure. Thy
golden palace, O Nero, is only a filthy stable beside the palace I
have built; my wardrobe is better furnished than thine, Heliogabalus,
and much more magnificent.--My circuses are noisier and bloodier than
yours, my perfumes more acrid and more penetrating, my slaves more
numerous and of better figure; I also have nude courtesans harnessed to
my chariot, I have walked over men's bodies with as disdainful heel as
you. Colossi of the ancient world, there beats behind my feeble ribs a
heart as great as yours, and if I had been in your places I would have
done all that you have done and perhaps more. How many Babels have I
piled one upon another to reach the sky, to cudgel the stars and spit
upon all creation! Why am I not God--as I cannot be man?
Oh! I believe that I shall need a hundred thousand centuries of
nothingness to rest from the fatigue of these twenty years of
life.--God in heaven, what stone will You roll down upon me? into what
darkness will You plunge me? from what Lethe will You make me drink?
beneath what mountain will You entomb the Titan? Am I destined to
breathe a volcano through my mouth and to cause earthquakes when I turn
from side to side?
When I think of this, that I was born of a gentle, resigned mother,
simple in her tastes and manners, I am surprised that I did not burst
her womb when she was carrying me. How does it happen that none of her
calm, pure thoughts passed into my body with the blood she transmitted
to me? and why must it be that I am the son of her flesh only, not of
her mind? The dove begat a tiger who would like to have all creation
fall a prey to his claws.