by Paul Valéry
Jamais plus amère demande! …
Mais la prunelle la plus grande
De ténèbres se doit nourrir! …
Tenant notre race atterrée,
La distance désespérée
Nous laisse le temps de mourir!
Entends, mon âme, entends ces fleuves!
Quelles cavernes sont ici?
Est-ce mon sang? … Sont-ce les neuves
Rumeurs des ondes sans merci?
Mes secrets sonnent leurs aurores!
Tristes airains, tempes sonores,
Que dites-vous de l’avenir!
Frappez, frappez, dans une roche,
Abattez l’heure la plus proche …
Mes deux natures vont s’unir!
Ô formidablement gravie,
Et sur d’effrayants échelons,
Je sens dans l’arbre de ma vie
La mort monter de mes talons!
Le long de ma ligne frileuse,
Le doigt mouillé de la fileuse
Trace une atroce volonté!
Et par sanglots grimpe la crise
Jusque dans ma nuque où se brise
Une cime de volupté!
Ah! brise les portes vivantes!
Fais craquer les vains scellements,
Épais troupeau des épouvantes,
Hérissé d’étincellements!
Surgis des étables funèbres
Où te nourrissaient mes ténèbres
De leur fabuleuse foison!
Bondis, de rêves trop repue,
Ô horde épineuse et crépue,
Et viens fumer dans l’or, Toison!
* * *
Telle, toujours plus tourmentée,
Déraisonne, râle et rugit
La prophétesse fomentée
Par les souffles de l’or rougi.
Mais enfin le ciel se déclare!
L’oreille du pontife hilare
S’aventure dans le futur :
Une attente sainte la penche,
Car une voix nouvelle et blanche
Échappe de ce corps impur.
* * *
Honneur des Hommes, Saint LANGAGE,
Discours prophétique et paré,
Belles chaînes en qui s’engage
Le dieu dans la chair égaré,
Illumination, largesse!
Voici parler une Sagesse
Et sonner cette auguste Voix
Qui se connaît quand elle sonne
N’être plus la voix de personne
Tant que des ondes et des bois!
THE PYTHIA
FOR PIERRE LOUŸS
Haec effata silet; pallor simul occupat ora.
VIRGIL, ÆNEID IV
Through her nostrils thick with incense
The Pythia hurls a breath of flame,
Panting, howling, drunk … her soul
In disarray, her whole rib cage
A bellows! Deeply stricken, pale,
Her eyes’ black stones suspended high
At terror’s zenith, though she wears
A faceless mask, her living gaze
Is conjured from the sacred basin,
And from the smoke, and from the fury!
Her frantic shadow on the wall,
Under a major demon’s sway,
Amid the fragrant torment, paints
With lavish strokes a swimming ghost
Whose monumental trance that breaks
The deep-set pylons of the hall
Mimes, if she tarries to unleash
Her shrieks of madness, a gruesome zeal,
Hurries the gods, urges the spasms
To reach the future, come to term!
This martyr drenched in chilling sweats,
Her fingers clenching at her fingers,
Cries out between the violent blows
A serpent-strangled tripod gives:
—Ah, I am cursed … What wrongs I bear!
My nature has become a pit!
Alas, half opened to the spirits
I lost my own mystery! …
An adulterous Intelligence
Grasped this body and wields it now!
Cruel gift! Loathsome Master, end
Quickly, quickly, divine ferment,
This masquerade of pregnancy
Inside a womb still pure of love!
Drop the last curtain on this scene!
See how my body is lewdly bent
Past breaking like a bow to send
Its vilest arrow notched and aimed
Implacably on high, the soul
I cannot bear within my breast!
Who speaks to me, and in my voice?
What echo answers me: You lie!
Who fills me with light? … Who blasphemes?
And who, with all these foaming words
Whose splinters lacerate my tongue,
Arouses it to such a rant
That loosens drool and matted hair
Chewed and tangled by the rage
Of a mouth that tries to gnaw itself,
Take back the secrets it reveals?
O God, I do not know my crime
Except for hardly having lived …
Yet if you take me as your victim,
If, on the altar of a broken
Body, you bend a monster, slay
That monster, and with the beast dispatched,
The neck severed, the head held up
By hair that yanks the temples back,
May this, the palest of lamps, seize
In sudden marble all the night!
So may my vagabond and ever
Drifting, and ever moonlit death
Surprise the waters of the sea,
Hold to eternal peaks the waves,
Make men and women stand, sculpted
With frozen hearts and silenced souls;
In the cold mirrors of my eye
May a whole people by their words
Harden into a people of idols,
Dumb with stupidity and pride!
What then? … Am I to be the viper
Whose shivers, gathered like a spring,
Surprise the flesh, whose multitude
Of segments drive it to despair? …
Take up again a senseless fight? …
Not that. Rather bring to mind
The joy that vanished, and return,
O memory, to that other magic
Which drew its boundless energy
From no enigmas but your own!
My dear body … Cherished form,
Freshness that never served to slake
The thirsts of Aphrodite, night
Unbroken, rising to tender peaks,
Your inexpressibly soft clay
Divided into sensitive islands,
Sweet substance of my destiny,
We lived united by such bonds
Until the foaming gift of tongues
Transformed you to this husk of death!
You, my shoulder, where the gold
Plays, making light of spilling dark,
I loved to feel, in sweet repose,
My cheek dissolving at your touch …
Or lifted to my nose which breathed
Deeply the smells of the far sea,
My breasts gathered warm in my hands,
These arms, fair handles of a jar,
Held my inner abyss that drank
The vast expanses that the winds bring!
Alas! O roses, every lyre
Holds the coming change in key!
One evening I made out the stars
That spelled my new delirium!
The temple changes to filthy den,
The hurricane of dreams whips up
A sky that once had been so clear:
Now I must wail, and now attain
Who knows what heights of ecstasy,
And bind my flowing hair with rags!
They knew me from the bruises, signs
That flowered on my unhappy skin;
They lulled me with their herbs that wafted
Woolly and comforting like sheep;
They touched as a living amulet
My throat that panted underneath
Their heavy serpentine regalia;
Senseless and drunk on seething coals
They led me down, to droning neumes,
To receive the honors of the earth.
What did I do to be condemned,
Innocent, to these odious rites?
The blackened carcass of a mule
Would make the gods as good a hive!
A consecrated virgin, fresh
And opalescent as a shell
Should owe to their divinity
Nothing but silence, sacrifice,
The intimate and self-inflicted
Violence of her virginity!
Why sow, O Power of Creation,
Author of animal mystery,
The miracles of evil in
This virgin as a womb? Are these
The gifts that you would give? Do you
Believe that when you break the strings
The sound surges, more beautiful?
You struck your plectrum on my chest
But left me only with the strength
To echo dully as a tomb!
Be lenient, stay your oracles!
And transform, with your marvelous hands,
The miracles into caresses,
Withhold the hard, inhuman gifts!
You would transmit, but all in vain,
A single pulse of your unbridled
Splendor to our fragile stems.
Untroubled water is always clearer
Than any tempest that is kindred
To a tumultuous abyss!
Leave me, for the divine light
Is not this terrifying flash
That catches unaware, reveals
Our profiles like a clear, cruel dream!
It blazes! … It will show the way! …
No! … For solitude lights up
The gaping lesion of the air
Where no pale architecture stands,
But where the tearing rupture leaves
Pure deserts graven in our souls.
Leave off, then, universal hands,
Inciting from my stormy brow
A few supreme flashes: the games
Of chance will give you much the same!
The future and the past are brothers;
Behind their faces, turned apart,
A single head grows pale to see,
Regardless where it turns its gaze,
Always the same ashen absence
Of islands fairer than forgetting.
Black witnesses of so much light,
Search no longer … Cry, my eyes …
O tears whose deepest sources well
Too deep within the distant heavens! …
Never so bitter a request! …
A pupil, even opened wide,
Still needs the nourishment of shadows …
Keeping us cowed and bound to the earth,
The distance lengthened to despair
Just leaves us with the time to die!
Listen, my soul, listen to
Those rivers flowing! And through what caves?
Is it my blood? Is it the renewed
Distant rumors of merciless waves?
My secrets resonate with dawn!
Sad bronzes, ringing forehead, speak—
What is this future that you see?
Strike out, strike out against the rock,
Strike down the nearest hour at hand …
My double natures will unite!
O, how inescapably scaled,
And high on terrifying rungs,
I feel death moving through my tree
Of life, ascending from my heels!
I feel the spinner’s moistened touch
Tracing along my shivering spine
A thread of terrible intent!
The panic climbs in mounting sobs
Until my throat, where it erupts
In peaks of sensuality!
Ah, break open the living doors,
And tear away the useless seals
That hold you back, thick herd of fears
Bristling in the sparking light!
Burst from the murky stables where
My inner shadows kept you fed
With their miraculous abundance!
Glutted on too many dreams,
Leap forth, O spiny, matted horde,
And be consumed in the gold, Fleece!
* * *
In ever-rising agony
The prophetess inveighs, babbles
And gasps, fomented by the fumes
Ascending from the ruddy gold.
At last, the heavens are revealed!
The pontiff’s ear in jubilation
Ventures ahead into the future:
He leans with pious expectation,
For now a voice that’s white and new
Emerges from her sullied form.
* * *
Honor of Men, Holy LANGUAGE,
Prophetic and embellished speech,
Beautiful chains whose binding measure,
Lost in the flesh, the god assumes,
Illumination, beneficence!
Behold a Wisdom speaking forth,
A Voice, stately and resonant,
That knows itself, as it rings out,
To be the voice of no one now
Except the forests and the surf!
_____________
Haec effata silet; pallor simul occupat ora: “This being said, she falls silent, as pallor rises to her face.”
LE SYLPHE
Ni vu ni connu
Je suis le parfum
Vivant et défunt
Dans le vent venu!
Ni vu ni connu,
Hasard ou génie?
À peine venu
La tâche est finie!
Ni lu ni compris?
Aux meilleurs esprits
Que d’erreurs promises!
Ni vu ni connu,
Le temps d’un sein nu
Entre deux chemises!
THE SYLPH
Unseen, unknown
I am a perfume
Living, dying,
Borne on the wind!
Unseen, unknown,
Genius or chance?
No sooner come
The task is done!
Unread, ungrasped?
The finest minds
Will stumble there!
Unseen, unknown,
Glimpse of a breast
Between two shirts!
L’INSINUANT
Ô Courbes, méandre,
Secrets du menteur,
Est-il art plus tendre
Que cette lenteur?
Je sais où je vais,
Je t’y veux conduire,
Mon dessein mauvais
N’est pas de te nuire …
(Quoique souriante
En pleine fierté,
Tant de liberté
La désoriente!)
Ô Courbes, méandre,
Secrets du menteur,
Je veux faire attendre
Le mot le plus tendre.
INSINUATION
O Curves that meander,
Ways of the lie,
Is not this slowness
The tenderest art?
I know where I’m going,
I’ll take you there,
My dark intentions
Mean you no harm …
(Although she smiles
With blooming pride,
So much freedom
Bewilders her!)
O Curves that meander,
Ways of the lie,
I’ll make you wait
For the tenderest word.
LA FAUSSE MORTE
Humblement, tendrement, sur le tombeau charmant,
Sur l’insensible monument,
Forme ta grâce fatiguée,
Je meurs, je meurs sur toi, je tombe et je m’abats,
Mais à peine abattu sur le sépulcre bas,
Dont la close étendue aux cendres me convie,
Cette morte apparente, en qui revient la vie,
Frémit, rouvre les yeux, m’illumine et me mord,
Et m’arrache toujours une nouvelle mort
Plus précieuse que la vie.
HER SEEMING DEATH
Humble and tender, on the charming tomb,
Unfeeling monument
Composed of shadows, surrenders, offered love
By your exhausted grace,
I fall, dying against you, dying—yet,
No sooner fallen across the low grave
Whose lawn, littered with ashes, summons me,
Life reawakens in her seeming death;
She shakes, reopens lambent eyes, and bites,
And wrenches from my chest another death
Dearer than life.
ÉBAUCHE D’UN SERPENT
À HENRI GHÉON
Parmi l’arbre, la brise berce
La vipère que je vêtis ;
Un sourire, que la dent perce
Et qu’elle éclaire d’appétits,
Sur le Jardin se risque et rôde,
Et mon triangle d’émeraude
Tire sa langue à double fil …
Bête je suis, mais bête aiguë,
De qui le venin quoique vil
Laisse loin la sage ciguë!
Suave est ce temps de plaisance!
Tremblez, mortels! Je suis bien fort
Quand jamais à ma suffisance,
Je bâille à briser le ressort!
La splendeur de l’azur aiguise
Cette guivre qui me déguise
D’animale simplicité ;
Venez à moi, race étourdie!
Je suis debout et dégourdie,
Pareille à la nécessité!
Soleil, soleil! … Faute éclatante!
Toi qui masques la mort, Soleil,
Sous l’azur et l’or d’une tente
Où les fleurs tiennent leur conseil ;
Par d’impénétrables délices,
Toi, le plus fier de mes complices,
Et de mes pièges le plus haut,
Tu gardes les cœurs de connaître
Que l’univers n’est qu’un défaut
Dans la pureté du Non-être!
Grand Soleil, qui sonnes l’éveil
À l’être, et de feux l’accompagnes,
Toi qui l’enfermes d’un sommeil
Trompeusement peint de campagnes,
Fauteur des fantômes joyeux