The Songs of Maldoror
Song IV
Chapter 1
It’s a man or a stone or a tree about to start the fourth song. When your foot slips on a frog, you feel a twinge of disgust; but when you barely brush a human body with your hand, the skin on your fingers splits, like mica scales shattered by hammer blows; and just as a shark’s heart, dead an hour, still throbs on the deck with stubborn life, so our guts churn deep and long after that touch. So much horror does man inspire in his own kind! Maybe I’m wrong to say this; maybe I speak true too. I know, I grasp a sickness worse than eyes swollen from long brooding on man’s strange nature; yet I still seek it and haven’t found it! I don’t deem myself less sharp than others; yet who’d dare claim I’ve cracked my quest? What a lie would spill from their mouth!
The ancient temple of Denderah sits an hour and a half from the Nile’s left bank. Today, countless wasp swarms claim its gutters and ledges. They flit around the columns, like thick waves of black hair. Sole dwellers of that cold portico, they guard the vestibules’ entry as a birthright. I liken their wings’ metallic hum to the ceaseless clash of ice floes smashing together during polar seas’ thaw. But if I ponder the ways of him whom providence set on this earth’s throne, the three fins of my grief murmur louder still! When a comet flares sudden in the night sky after eighty years gone, it flaunts its shimmering, misty tail to earth’s folk and crickets. Doubtless it knows nothing of that long trek; not so with me: propped on my bed’s edge while a bleak, jagged horizon rises stark against my soul’s backdrop, I sink into dreams of pity and blush for man!
Sliced by the breeze, the sailor, done with his night watch, hastens to his hammock; why’s that comfort denied me? The thought that I’ve sunk, willingly, as low as my kin, and have less right than any to lament our lot — chained to this planet’s hardened crust and our perverse soul’s essence — pierces me like a forge nail. Mine blasts have snuffed out whole families; but their agony was brief, death near instant amid rubble and noxious fumes; me, I linger on, like basalt! Midlife, as at its start, angels stay true to themselves; hasn’t it been ages since I last resembled me?
Man and I, walled in our mind’s bounds, like a lake ringed by coral isles, shun pooling our strengths against chance and woe; instead, we drift apart, quaking with hate, taking opposite paths as if we’d stabbed each other with a dagger’s tip! It’s as if each grasps the scorn he stirs in the other; spurred by a fleeting dignity, we rush to spare our foe any mistake; each keeps his side and knows a truce would never hold. Fine, then; let my war on man stretch eternal, since each sees his own rot in the other, since both are mortal foes! Whether I claim a ruinous win or fall, the fight will shine: me, alone, against humanity. I’ll shun weapons of wood or iron; I’ll kick aside the earth’s mined layers; my harp’s mighty, seraphic tones will turn, under my fingers, a fearsome charm. In many an ambush, man — that sublime ape — has pierced my chest with his porphyry lance; a soldier hides his wounds, however proud. This grim war will sow pain in both camps: two friends bent on mutual ruin — what a drama!
Chapter 2
Two pillars, not hard nor even less impossible to mistake for baobabs, loomed in the valley, taller than two pins. Indeed, they were two vast towers. And though at first glance two baobabs don’t resemble two pins, nor even two towers, still, by deftly wielding caution’s threads, one can claim without fear of error (for if this claim carried a shred of fear, it’d cease to be a claim; though one name covers these two soul-states, distinct enough not to be lightly muddled) that a baobab isn’t so unlike a pillar that comparing these architectural forms — or geometric ones, or both, or neither, or rather lofty, massive shapes — should be forbidden. I’ve just found, and I don’t pretend otherwise, the apt epithets for pillar and baobab; let it be known, not without joy tinged with pride, that I note this for those who, lifting their lids, took the worthy resolve to scan these pages while the candle burns if it’s night, or while the sun blazes if it’s day.
And even if some higher power ordered us, in the clearest terms, to hurl this shrewd comparison — savored safely by all — into chaos’s depths, even then, and especially then, let no one lose sight of this core axiom: habits forged by years, books, kin’s touch, and each one’s innate bent, blooming fast, would brand the human mind with recidivism’s grim scar, in the guilty use (guilty, if briefly and freely judged from that higher power’s view) of a rhetorical flourish many scorn but plenty praise. If the reader finds this sentence too long, I beg pardon; but expect no groveling from me. I can own my flaws; yet I won’t worsen them with cowardice.
My reasoning will sometimes clash with folly’s bells and the stern mask of what’s merely grotesque (though some philosophers say it’s tricky to split the clown from the mourner, life itself being a comic drama or dramatic comedy); still, anyone may kill flies, even rhinos, to rest now and then from too steep a task. To kill flies, here’s the quickest way, though not the best: crush them between your hand’s first two fingers. Most writers who’ve probed this deep reckon, with fair odds, it’s often better to lop off their heads. If someone chides me for prattling on pins as a trifling matter, let them note, without bias, that the grandest effects often spring from the smallest causes. And, not to stray too far from this paper’s frame, don’t we see that this labored chunk of prose I’ve spun since this strophe began might lack savor if it leaned on some thorny chemistry or inner pathology riddle? Besides, all tastes roam nature; and when I first likened pillars to pins with such flair (surely I didn’t think I’d face reproach for it one day), I rested on optics’ laws, proving the farther a sightline stretches from an object, the tinier its image shrinks on the retina.
So what our mind’s bent for farce takes as a cheap quip is, most times, in the writer’s thought, a weighty truth proclaimed with majesty! Oh, that mad philosopher who burst laughing at an ass eating a fig! I invent nothing: ancient books recount, in lavish detail, that willful, shameful shedding of human nobility. Me, I can’t laugh. I’ve never managed it, though I’ve tried plenty. It’s damn tough to learn. Or rather, I think a loathing for that monstrosity marks my core. Well, I’ve seen worse: I saw a fig eat an ass! Yet I didn’t laugh; frankly, no lip twitched. A need to weep gripped me so hard my eyes shed a tear.
“Nature! Nature!” I sobbed, “the hawk rips the sparrow, the fig eats the ass, and the tapeworm devours man!”
Without resolving to dig deeper, I wonder if I’ve covered how to kill flies. Yes, haven’t I? Still, it’s no less true I’ve not touched on slaying rhinos! If some friends claimed otherwise, I’d not heed them; I’d recall praise and flattery as twin stumbling blocks. Yet to ease my conscience as best I can, I can’t help noting this rhino dissertation would drag me beyond patience and calm, likely (dare I say surely) disheartening today’s generations. To skip the rhino after the fly! At least, as a decent excuse, I should’ve swiftly flagged (and didn’t!) this unmeant slip, hardly shocking to those who’ve plumbed the real, baffling contradictions lodged in human brain lobes.
Nothing’s beneath a grand, simple mind: nature’s slightest mystery, if veiled, turns for the wise into endless food for thought. If someone sees an ass eat a fig or a fig eat an ass (neither crops up often, save in poetry), rest assured, after two or three minutes pondering what to do, they’ll ditch virtue’s path and crow with laughter! Yet it’s not quite proven that roosters gape on purpose to ape man and twist a tortured smirk. I call it a smirk in birds as in humans! A rooster sticks to its nature, less from inability than pride. Teach them to read, they rebel. It’s no parrot, swooning over its dim, unpardonable flaw! Oh, wretched disgrace! How goat-like we look when we laugh! Brow’s calm flees, yielding to two bulging fish eyes that (isn’t it pitiful?) … that … that flare like beacons!
Often I’ll voice, with pomp, the most clownish claims; I don’t find that reason enough to gape! You’ll say you can’t help laughing; I take that absurd excuse, but let it be a mournful laugh then. Laugh, but weep too. If your eyes can’t cry, weep with your mouth. If that fails, piss; but I warn you, some liquid’s needed here to soften the dry flanks of laughter’s cracked grimace. As for me, I won’t flinch at the quaint clucks and odd bellows of those who always fault a nature unlike theirs, it being one of countless mind-twists God wrought, without straying from a primal mold, to steer bony frames.
Till now, poetry trod a false path; soaring to skies or groveling on earth, it misread its own roots and, not without cause, faced honest folk’s jeers. It lacked modesty — the finest trait in a flawed being! Me, I’ll flaunt my strengths; but I’m not so sly as to hide my flaws! Laughter, evil, pride, madness will flare, one by one, amid tenderness and justice’s love, serving as a mirror to human stupor: each will see themselves, not as they should be, but as they are. And maybe this plain ideal, born of my mind, will outshine all poetry’s grandest, holiest finds yet. For if I let my flaws seep through these pages, folks will trust all the more the virtues I make blaze here, their halo perched so high that future geniuses will owe me earnest thanks. So hypocrisy’s ousted flat from my lair. My songs will bear stark proof of might, scorning received views like this. He sings for himself, not his kin. He weighs his muse’s span on no human scale. Free as a gale, he washed up one day on his dread will’s untamed shores! He fears nothing but himself! In his unearthly clashes, he’ll strike man and Creator with edge, like a swordfish goring a whale’s gut; cursed be he, by his spawn and my gaunt hand, who still fails to grasp laughter’s ruthless kangaroos and caricature’s bold lice!
Two vast towers loomed in the valley; I said so at the start. Doubling them, the sum was four; but I couldn’t quite see this arithmetic’s need. I pressed on, fever flushing my face, and cried out ceaselessly:
“No, no, I can’t quite see this arithmetic’s need!”
I’d heard chains clank and pained moans. Let no one passing that spot think it fit to double the towers for a sum of four! Some suspect I love mankind like its own mother, as if I’d borne it nine months in my fragrant womb; that’s why I skirt that valley no more where the multiplicand’s twin units rise!
Chapter 3
A gallows rose from the ground; a meter above it, a man hung by his hair, his arms bound behind him. His legs dangled free to heighten his torment and stoke his longing for anything but that arm-trap. The skin on his brow stretched so taut from the hanging’s weight that his face, robbed of natural expression by fate, resembled a stalactite’s stony crust. For three days, he’d endured this ordeal. He cried out:
“Who’ll untie my arms? Who’ll free my hair? I twist in spasms that only tear the roots further from my scalp; thirst and hunger aren’t the main bars to my sleep. My life can’t stretch past an hour’s edge. Someone slit my throat with a jagged stone!”
Each word came framed by fierce howls. I sprang from the bush shielding me and rushed toward the puppet or slab of meat strung from the ceiling. But then, from the far side, two drunken women staggered in, dancing. One gripped a sack and two lead-tipped whips; the other held a tar barrel and two brushes. The older one’s graying hair flapped in the wind like a shredded sail’s rags; the younger’s ankles clacked together like a tuna’s tail slapping a ship’s deck. Their eyes blazed with a flame so black and fierce I doubted at first they were my kind. They laughed with such selfish grit, their faces oozing such revulsion, that I never once questioned I faced the two vilest specimens of humankind. I ducked back behind the bush and stayed still as an acantophorus serraticornis, poking just its head from its nest.
They neared with a tide’s swift rush; pressing my ear to the ground, I caught the sharp, lilting tremor of their march. When those orangutan females reached the gallows, they sniffed the air a few seconds; their blood-soaked gestures betrayed a truly striking shock at finding nothing changed: death’s release, their wish, hadn’t come. They hadn’t bothered lifting their heads to check if the sausage still hung there. One said:
“Can you still breathe? You’ve got a tough hide, my darling husband.”
Like two chanters in a cathedral trading psalm verses, the second replied:
“So you won’t die, my sweet son? Tell me how you’ve scared off the vultures (surely by some hex)? Your carcass has shrunk so thin! The breeze swings it like a lantern.”
Each grabbed a brush and tarred the hanged man’s body; each seized a whip and raised her arms. I marveled (no one could help it) at how precisely those metal blades, instead of skidding off like in a futile nightmare wrestle with a negro’s hair, sank deep into flesh, thanks to the tar, carving ruts as hollow as the bones’ resistance allowed. I steeled myself against finding thrill in this wildly curious sight, less deeply comic than one might expect. Yet despite my firm resolve, how could I not admire those women’s strength, their arm sinews? Their knack for striking the tenderest spots, like face and groin, I’ll only note if I aim to tell the full truth! Unless, pressing my lips tight, especially sideways (everyone knows that’s the usual way), I’d rather hold a silence swollen with tears and secrets, its pained outpour proving too weak to hide — not just as well as my words, but better (I don’t think I err, though one shouldn’t flatly deny, risking basic shrewdness, the chance of mistake)—the dire toll of that fury wielding dry metacarpals and stout joints; even if one ignored the impartial observer or seasoned moralist’s stance (it’s near vital I admit I don’t wholly buy that shaky limit), doubt couldn’t root here; for I don’t yet place it in a supernatural grip, and it’d surely perish, maybe not sudden, lacking sap fit for both nourishment and free of poison.
Understand, or don’t read me, that I stage only my timid opinion’s self; yet far be it from me to ditch rights beyond dispute! Sure, I don’t mean to fight this claim, glowing with certainty’s test, that there’s a simpler way to agree: it’d boil down, in a few words worth thousands, to not arguing — a trick tougher to pull off than most mortals reckon. “Argue” is the grammar’s word; many would say I shouldn’t gainsay what I’ve just penned without a fat stack of proof; but it’s quite another thing if one trusts their gut’s rare cunning serves their caution, crafting calls that’d otherwise seem, mark my words, bold to the brink of bluster.
To cap this little aside, which shed its husk with a lightness as woefully final as it’s grimly gripping (none could miss that, if they’ve probed their freshest recall), it’s wise, if your faculties balance true — or better, if idiocy’s scale doesn’t tip too hard past reason’s noble, grand traits — to say, for clarity (for till now I’ve been brief, though some won’t grant it, griping at my lengths, mere phantoms since they hunt truth’s fleeting glints with analysis’s scalpel to their last dens), if wit outweighs flaws enough, half-choked by habit, nature, and rearing, it’s wise, I say again for the last time (repeating too much often muddies hearing, and that’s no lie), to slink back, tail low (if I’ve even got one), to this strophe’s grim core.
It’s good to sip water before tackling my next task. I’d rather gulp two glasses than skip it. So, in a chase after a runaway negro through the woods, at a set moment, each hunter hangs their rifle on vines; they gather in a thicket’s shade to quench thirst and ease hunger. But the break lasts mere seconds; the hunt resumes with fury, and the kill’s cry soon rings out. And just as oxygen’s known, without pride, for relighting a match with a few glowing specks, so my duty’s mark shines in my haste to return to the point.
When the females saw they couldn’t grip the whips their weary hands dropped, they shrewdly ended the near two-hour gymnastic stint and withdrew with glee not free of future threats. I approached the one begging aid with an icy stare (for his blood loss was so vast, weakness silenced him; though no doctor, I reckoned the hemorrhage struck face and groin); I snipped his hair with scissors after freeing his arms. He told me his mother once called him to her room at night and ordered him to strip for a bed-shared sleep; awaiting no reply, she shed all her clothes, flaunting lewd gestures before him. He’d pulled back. What’s more, his constant refusals roused his wife’s wrath, who’d nursed hopes of reward if she could coax her husband to yield his flesh to the old hag’s lusts. They hatched a plot to hang him on a gallows, rigged beforehand in some lonely spot, and let him waste away slow, bared to every misery and peril. Not without long, knotty debates, riddled with near-unbeatable snags, did they settle on this refined torment, ended only by my unlooked-for aid. Vivid gratitude laced every word, lending his tale no small weight.
I carried him to the nearest hut; he’d just fainted, and I didn’t leave the laborers till I’d handed over my purse for his care and made them swear to tend him like their own son with steady kindness. In turn, I told them the tale and neared the door to step back on the path; but after a hundred meters, I turned back on instinct, re-entered the hut, and cried to its simple owners:
“No, no, don’t think it shocks me!”
This time I left for good; but my soles couldn’t plant firm; another might’ve missed it! The wolf no longer skirts the gallows raised one spring day by a wife and mother’s twined hands, as when it lured his charmed mind toward an empty feast. Seeing that black hair sway in the wind on the horizon, he shuns his sluggish pull and bolts with matchless speed! Should we see in this mind’s quirk a wit beyond beasts’ usual knack? Without claiming or guessing, I’d say the beast grasped what crime is! How could it not, when humans themselves have spurned reason’s reign to this unspeakable pitch, leaving only feral vengeance where that toppled queen once ruled!
Chapter 4
I’m filthy. Lice gnaw me. Pigs retch when they see me. Leprosy’s crusts and sores have flaked my skin, coated in yellowish pus. I don’t know river water or cloud dew. On my nape, like on a dung heap, sprouts a giant mushroom with umbrella stalks. Perched on a shapeless chair, I haven’t stirred my limbs in four centuries. My feet rooted into the ground, weaving up to my gut a kind of hardy growth, teeming with vile parasites, not quite plant yet no longer flesh. Still my heart beats. But how could it beat if my corpse’s rot and fumes (I dare not say body) didn’t feed it richly? Under my left armpit, a toad family settled; when one twitches, it tickles me. Beware lest one slips out and scrapes your ear’s innards with its mouth; it could then crawl into your brain. Under my right armpit, a chameleon hunts them endlessly to stave off hunger; everyone’s got to live. But when one side fully foils the other’s tricks, they find nothing better than to drop all shame and suck the tender fat along my ribs; I’m used to it.
A wicked viper devoured my prick and took its place; that wretch made me a eunuch. Oh, if I could’ve fought back with my paralyzed arms; but I reckon they’ve turned to logs instead. Either way, note that blood no longer warms them red. Two stunted hedgehogs tossed my testicles’ guts to a dog, who didn’t refuse; they scrubbed the hide clean and bunked inside. A crab seized my anus; spurred by my stillness, it guards the gate with its claws and hurts me plenty! Two jellyfish crossed seas, lured at once by a hope that didn’t fail. They eyed the two plump mounds of human backside, latched onto their bulging curves, and crushed them so hard with steady grip that both chunks vanished, leaving two monsters from the slime realm, matched in hue, shape, and ferocity.
Don’t mention my spine; it’s a sword. Yes, yes, I wasn’t minding; your ask is fair. Want to know, don’t you, how it’s stabbed upright in my loins? I don’t recall it clear myself; yet if I take a dream for memory, know this: man, learning I’d vowed to live with disease and stillness till I’d crushed the Creator, crept behind me on tiptoe — not so soft I didn’t hear. I sensed nothing more for a brief spell. That sharp dagger sank hilt-deep between this festival bull’s shoulders; its frame quaked like an earthquake. The blade clings so tight to the flesh that no one’s pried it loose yet. Athletes, mechanics, philosophers, doctors tried every trick in turn. They didn’t grasp that man’s harm can’t be undone! I forgave their deep native ignorance and waved them off with my eyelids.
Traveler, when you pass me, don’t offer, I beg, a single word of comfort; you’d sap my grit. Let me stoke my resolve in voluntary martyrdom’s flame. Go away; let no pity stir for me. Hate’s odder than you think; its ways defy reason, like a stick’s broken look plunged in water. As you see me, I can still trek to heaven’s walls, leading a legion of killers, and slump back in this pose to mull vengeance’s noble schemes anew. Farewell, I’ll hold you no longer; and for your sake and safety, ponder the grim fate that drove me to revolt, though maybe I was born good!
You’ll tell your son what you saw; and, taking his hand, show him the stars’ beauty, the universe’s wonders, the robin’s nest, and the Lord’s temples. You’ll marvel at his heed to fatherly advice and reward him with a smile. But when he thinks no one’s watching, glance at him; you’ll catch him spitting venom on virtue. He fooled you, that spawn of mankind, but he won’t again; now you’ll know what he’ll become. O wretched father, ready for your aging steps an indelible scaffold to lop off a young crook’s head, and grief to guide you to the grave.
Chapter 5
On my room’s wall, what shadow sketches, with matchless force, the eerie outline of its shriveled frame? When I press this wild, mute question to my heart, it’s less for the form’s grandeur than for reality’s stark scene that my style’s restraint takes this path. Whoever you are, guard yourself; for I’ll sling a dire charge your way: those eyes aren’t yours — where’d you snag them? One day, a blond woman passed me; hers matched yours; you tore them out. I see you’re trying to fake beauty; but no one’s fooled, least of all me. I tell you so you don’t take me for a fool. A flock of raptors, fond of others’ flesh and champions of the chase’s worth, sleek as skeletons stripping Arkansas maize, swirl around your brow like tame, trusted servants. But is it a brow? It’s tough to believe without doubt. It’s so low, proof of its vague existence — scant in number — can’t be checked. I’m not saying this for kicks. Maybe you’ve got no brow, you who flaunt on the wall, like a rash emblem of a ghostly dance, the fevered sway of your lumbar bones.
Who scalped you then? If it’s a human, locked twenty years in your cell and escaped to craft a vengeance fit for their wrath, they did as they should; I applaud them; only, here’s the hitch, they weren’t harsh enough. Now you look like a captive Redskin, at least (let’s note this first) by your hair’s stark lack. Not that it can’t regrow, since physiologists found even snatched brains sprout back in beasts over time; but my thought, pausing at a mere glimpse — not void, from what little I catch, of vast thrill — won’t stretch, even in its boldest leaps, to wish your cure; it stays rooted, with its more-than-dubious neutrality at play, in seeing (or at least craving), as a harbinger of worse woes, what’s for you just a fleeting loss of scalp skin. I hope you grasp me.
And even if chance, by some absurd yet sometimes sensible miracle, let you reclaim that precious hide your foe’s nun-like watch keeps as a heady victory token, it’s near wildly likely that, even if probability’s law were studied only through math (though we know analogy shifts it easy to other mind-realms), your fair but overblown dread of a chill, partial or full, wouldn’t spurn the rare, even lone shot — cropping up so apt yet sharp — to shield your brain’s bits from winter’s air with a cap that’s rightly yours, natural too; and you’d be free (it’d be mad to deny) to wear it always, dodging the ever-irked risks of breaching basic decency’s simplest rules.
Isn’t it true you’re listening close? If you strain harder, your gloom won’t budge from your red nostrils’ depths. But since I’m fair and don’t hate you as much as I ought (tell me if I’m off), you lend an ear to my words despite yourself, nudged by some higher pull. I’m not as vile as you; that’s why your genius bows to mine on its own. Indeed, I’m not as vile as you! You just flicked a glance at the city sprawled on that mountain’s flank. And now, what do I see? All its folk are dead! I’ve got pride like anyone, and maybe more — a vice atop the rest. Well, hear this, hear it, if a man’s confession, recalling half a century lived as a shark in currents off Africa’s coast, grips you enough to catch your ear, if not with bitterness, at least without the dire sin of showing the disgust I stir.
I won’t toss virtue’s mask at your feet to bare myself as I am; for I never wore it (if that’s any excuse); and from the first, if you eye my features keen, you’ll spot me as your loyal pupil in wickedness, not your dreaded rival. Since I don’t vie for evil’s crown, I doubt another will; they’d need to match me first, no easy feat. Listen, unless you’re a frail mist’s wisp (you hide your body somewhere, and I can’t find it): one morn, I saw a girl lean over a lake to pluck a pink lotus; she steadied her step with early skill; she bent to the water when her eyes met mine (true, I’d planned it). At once, she reeled like a whirlpool swirling round a rock; her legs buckled, and — wondrous to behold, as real as my chat with you—she sank to the lake’s bottom; odd outcome, she picked no more water lilies. What’s she up to down there? I didn’t check. Doubtless her will, sworn to freedom’s flag, wages fierce fights against rot!
But you, o my master, with one glare, wipe out cities’ folk like an ant mound crushed by an elephant’s heel. Didn’t I just witness proof? Look, the mountain’s joy is gone; it stands lone like an old man. True, the houses linger; but it’s no paradox to whisper that you can’t say the same for those who don’t. Already, corpse fumes waft to me. Don’t you smell them? See those raptors waiting for us to clear off before their giant feast; a ceaseless cloud streams from horizon’s four corners. Alas, they’d come before, since I saw their greedy wings carve a spiral monument above you, as if to spur your crime’s haste. Does your nose catch no whiff? The fraud’s none else. Your scent nerves finally quake at fragrant atoms’ touch; they rise from the wrecked city, though I needn’t tell you that.
I’d kiss your feet, but my arms clutch only faint vapor. Let’s hunt that elusive body my eyes still spot; it deserves my fullest, truest awe. The ghost mocks me; it aids my search for its own flesh. If I signal it to stay put, it mirrors me back. The secret’s out; but, I say frankly, not to my delight. All’s clear, big and small; the small bits bore dredging up, like snatching that blond woman’s eyes — near nothing! Didn’t I recall I’d been scalped too, though only for five years (the exact span slipped me), after locking a human in a cell to watch his pain, since he’d rightly spurned a friendship unfit for my kind? Since I feign ignorance that my gaze can slay even planets spinning in space, they’d not err who’d say my memory’s gone. What’s left is to smash this mirror to bits with a stone. It’s not the first time memory’s fleeting lapse pitched its tent in my mind, when optics’ stern laws set me blind to my own shape!
Chapter 6
I’d fallen asleep on the cliff. Whoever chased an ostrich across the desert for a day without catching it had no time to eat or shut their eyes. If that’s who reads me, they might roughly guess what slumber weighed me down. But when a storm shoved a ship straight down to the sea’s floor with its palm; when, on the raft, only one man remains of the whole crew, broken by every toil and want; when waves toss him like wreckage for hours longer than a man’s life; and when a frigate, later scouring those bleak wastes with a split hull, spots the wretch roaming the ocean with his gaunt frame and brings aid that nearly came too late, I reckon that castaway would better grasp how deep my senses sank. Magnetism and chloroform, when they bother, can sometimes spawn such lethargic trances. They’re nothing like death; saying so would be a fat lie.
But let’s dive straight into the dream, lest impatient fans of this fare start roaring like a shoal of big-headed sperm whales scrapping over a pregnant female. I dreamt I’d slipped into a hog’s body; escaping it wasn’t easy, and I wallowed my bristles in the muckiest swamps. Was this a reward? My heart’s wish, I no longer belonged to mankind! To me, that’s how it rang, and I felt a joy beyond deep. Still, I hunted hard for what virtuous deed I’d done to earn this rare gift from Providence.
Now that I’ve retraced in my mind the phases of that ghastly flattening against granite’s belly, while the tide, unnoticed, washed twice over that stubborn mix of dead stuff and living flesh, it mightn’t be useless to declare this downfall was likely just a punishment dealt me by divine justice. But who knows their inmost cravings or the root of their foul thrills? To my eyes, the change never seemed less than the grand, noble echo of a perfect bliss I’d long awaited. At last it came, the day I was a hog! I tested my teeth on tree bark; my snout I ogled with delight. Not a speck of godhood lingered; I could lift my soul to the dizzy peak of that unspeakable rapture.
So hear me out, and don’t blush, you endless spoofs of beauty who take your soul’s laughable braying in earnest, supremely loathsome; who don’t see why the Almighty, in a rare fit of fine clowning that surely stays within grotesquery’s broad laws, once took the dazzling whim to populate a planet with odd, tiny beings called humans, their stuff akin to crimson coral. Sure, you’ve got cause to blush, bones and fat, but hear me. I don’t call on your wits; they’d spit blood at the horror you rouse; forget them, and stay true to yourselves.
There, no bounds held me. When I craved killing, I killed; it happened often, even, and none stopped me. Human laws still hounded me with their vengeance, though I didn’t strike the race I’d so calmly ditched; but my conscience bore no blame. By day, I clashed with my new kin, and the ground lay strewn with thick clots of blood. I was the strongest and claimed every win. Stinging wounds laced my body; I played at not noticing. Land beasts shunned me, and I stood alone in my blazing glory.
What shock hit me when, after swimming a river to flee lands my fury had emptied and reach fresh fields to sow my ways of slaughter and ruin, I tried stepping on that flower-strewn bank. My feet froze; no twitch betrayed the truth of that forced stillness. Amid unearthly struggles to press on, that’s when I woke and felt myself turn man again. Providence thus made plain, in a way not beyond grasp, that it wouldn’t let my grand schemes come true, even in dreams. Slipping back to my old shape cut me so deep that I still weep for it at night. My sheets stay soaked, as if dunked in water, and I have them swapped daily. Doubt it? Come see; you’ll test, with your own eyes, not just the likelihood, but the stark truth of my claim.
How often, since that starlit night on the cliff, have I mingled with hog herds to reclaim, as my right, that wrecked transformation! It’s time to shed these proud memories that leave behind only the faint Milky Way of endless regrets.
Chapter 7
It’s not impossible to witness an odd twist in nature’s hidden or plain laws. Indeed, if anyone takes the clever pains to sift through their life’s phases (skipping none, for that skipped one might hold the proof I claim), they’ll recall, with a shock that’d be funny elsewhere, that one day, speaking first of outward things, they saw some event that seemed to outstrip — and truly did — known notions from observation and experience; take, for instance, toad rains, whose eerie show must’ve stumped scholars at first. And on another day, speaking next and last of inward things, their soul laid bare to psychology’s probing eye not quite a reason’s lapse (though that’d be no less strange — stranger, even); but, at least, to spare the cold sorts who’d never forgive my wild exaggerations, an unusual state, often grave, showing that the leash good sense ties on imagination sometimes snaps, despite their fleeting pact, under will’s fierce push—or, more often, its lack of aid. Let’s back this with examples, easy to weigh if paired with careful restraint. I offer two: rage’s outbursts and pride’s ailments.
I warn my reader to beware lest they form a vague, let alone false, notion of the literary gems I peel apart in my sentences’ wild rush. Alas, I’d love to unfurl my reasoning and comparisons slow and grand (but who commands their time?), so all grasp more—not my terror, at least my awe — when, one summer eve as the sun seemed to sink to the horizon, I saw swimming on the sea a human with broad duck feet for hands and legs, sporting a dorsal fin as long and sleek as a dolphin’s, his muscles taut; and throngs of fish (I spotted, in that parade, the torpedo, Greenland shark, and ghastly scorpion-fish among water’s folk) trailed him with blatant awe.
Sometimes he dove; his slimy frame popped up moments later, two hundred meters off. Porpoises, not wrongly famed as ace swimmers in my book, could barely tail this new amphibian from afar. I don’t think readers will rue lending my tale not the dull snag of blind faith, but the grand gift of deep trust that probes poetic mysteries—too few, they’d say — with lawful, secret kinship, as I unveil them whenever chance strikes, like today, steeped in the bracing whiff of water plants the freshening breeze wafts into this strophe, home to a monster sporting the webbed clan’s trademarks.
Who speaks of claiming here? Know well that man, with his manifold, tangled nature, isn’t blind to ways of stretching its bounds; he dwells in water like a seahorse, through upper air like an osprey, and under earth like a mole, woodlouse, and worm’s sublime thread. Such, in form more tight than loose, is the stark yardstick of the mighty solace I strove to spark in my mind, pondering that human I glimpsed afar, paddling all four limbs on the waves’ crest, outdoing the grandest cormorant’s flair — perhaps snagging those new ends to his arms and legs as penance for some unknown sin.
No need to rack my brain brewing pity’s grim pills ahead; for I didn’t know that man, his arms thrashing the bitter tide while his legs, with might akin to a narwhal’s spiraled tusks, shoved water back, hadn’t willingly grabbed those odd shapes any more than they’d been forced on him as torment. Later I learned the plain truth: a long stretch in that fluid realm had slowly wrought in this self-exiled man — fled from rocky lands — big but not vital shifts I’d noted in that figure a hazy glance first took, with unpardonable rashness spawning that sharp pang psychologists and caution’s lovers grasp, for a weird fish, unlisted in naturalists’ charts — maybe in their posthumous works, though I’d not cling to that guess spun in too shaky a web.
Indeed, this amphibian (for amphibian he is, none can say otherwise) was visible to me alone, fish and whales aside; for I saw some peasants pause to gawk at my face, stirred by this unearthly sight, and hunt in vain for why my eyes stayed locked, with a stubbornness that seemed unbeatable but wasn’t, on a sea spot where they saw just a fair, finite swarm of fish of every kind; their grand mouths gaped, maybe wide as a whale’s.
“It made them grin, not pale like me, they said in their vivid tongue; and they weren’t dumb enough to miss that I wasn’t eyeing the fish’s rustic dance, but peering far beyond.”
So, as for me, my gaze drifting to those gaping maws’ vast span, I mused to myself that unless the whole cosmos held a pelican big as a mountain — or at least a headland (note, please, the restriction’s sly finesse, yielding no inch) — no raptor’s beak or wild beast’s jaw could ever top, or even match, those bleak, yawning pits. Yet, though I save a fat slice for metaphor’s kind craft (that figure serves man’s infinite reach more than most, soaked in bias or false notions — the same thing — care to reckon), it’s still true those peasants’ laughable mouths could gulp three sperm whales. Let’s trim our thought tighter, get serious, and settle for three newborn elephants.
With one stroke, the amphibian left a kilometer of foamy wake. In the brief flash when his outstretched arm hung midair before plunging again, his splayed fingers, webbed by skin folds, seemed to lunge for space’s heights and snatch the stars. Standing on the rock, I cupped my hands like a megaphone and shouted while crabs and crayfish scurried to the darkest crannies:
“O you, whose swim outstrips the frigate’s long wings, if you still catch the meaning of loud cries mankind hurls as true echoes of its inmost thought, deign to pause a moment in your swift stride and recount, in brief, your tale’s true phases. But I warn you, no need to speak if your bold aim is to stir in me the friendship and reverence I felt for you the instant I first saw you glide, with a shark’s grace and might, on your unyielding, straight pilgrimage.”
A sigh that chilled my bones and shook the rock under my feet (unless I reeled myself, pierced by sound waves hauling such despair to my ear) rang to earth’s core; fish dove under waves with an avalanche’s roar. The amphibian dared not edge too near the shore; but once sure his voice reached my drum clear, he slowed his webbed limbs to hoist his seaweed-draped chest above the bellowing swells. I saw him bow his brow, as if summoning, with grave command, the roaming pack of memories. I didn’t dare break that holy archaeological task; sunk in the past, he loomed like a reef. At last he spoke:
“The centipede lacks no foes; the wild beauty of its countless legs, rather than winning beasts’ goodwill, might just spark their jealous rage. And I’d not be shocked to hear that bug faces the fiercest hate. I’ll hide my birthplace — it doesn’t matter to my tale; but shame on my kin does matter to my duty. My father and mother (God forgive them!), after a year’s wait, saw heaven grant their wish: twins, my brother and I, came to light. More cause to love. It didn’t go as I say. Since I was the fairer and sharper of us, my brother loathed me and didn’t hide it; so my parents showered me with most of their love, while I strove with steady, true friendship to soothe a soul with no right to rebel against one carved from the same flesh. Then my brother’s fury knew no bounds; he ruined me in our shared parents’ hearts with the wildest lies. For fifteen years I lived in a cell, fed on larvae and muddy water. I won’t detail the unearthly torments of that long, unjust cage. Sometimes, in a day’s snatch, one of three jailers — taking turns — burst in with pincers, tongs, and torture tools. My screams left them unmoved; my gushing blood made them grin. O brother, I forgave you, prime root of all my woes! Can blind rage never open its own eyes? I mulled much in that endless cell. Guess how my hate swelled against mankind. Wasting away, body and soul alone, hadn’t yet stripped all my reason to keep spite for those I never stopped loving — a triple yoke I slaved under. By cunning, I won back my freedom! Sick of mainland folk who, though dubbed my kin, seemed nothing like me till then (if they thought I matched them, why hurt me?), I raced to the beach’s pebbles, set to die if the sea offered echoes of a life fatally lived. Will you trust your own eyes? Since fleeing my father’s house, I don’t gripe as much as you’d think about dwelling in the sea and its crystal caves. Providence, as you see, partly gave me a swan’s build. I live at peace with fish; they fetch my food like I’m their king. I’ll whistle a special note — if it won’t irk you — and you’ll see them swarm back.”
It went as he foretold. He resumed his regal swim, ringed by his subject throng. And though he vanished from my sight in seconds, with a spyglass I tracked him to the horizon’s edge. He swam with one hand; with the other, he wiped eyes bloodshot from the brutal strain of nearing dry land. He’d done it to please me. I flung the revealing lens against the sheer drop; it bounced rock to rock, and waves caught its scattered shards — the last gesture and final farewell with which, dreamlike, I bowed to a noble, wretched mind! Yet all that passed that summer eve was real.
Chapter 8
Every night, dipping my wings’ span into my dying memory, I summoned Falmer’s ghost; every night. His blond hair, oval face, grand features still clung to my mind, unbreakably, especially his blond hair. Away, away with that bald head, polished like a turtle’s shell! He was fourteen, and I just a year older. Let that grim voice hush. Why’s it here to accuse me? But it’s me speaking. Using my own tongue to voice my thoughts, I notice my lips move, and it’s me talking. And it’s me, recounting a youth’s tale, feeling remorse pierce my heart; it’s me, unless I’m wrong; it’s me talking.
I was just a year older. Who’s this I mean? A friend I had in days gone, I think. Yes, yes, I’ve already said his name; I won’t spell those six letters again, no, no. No need to repeat I was a year older either. Who knows it? Let’s say it again, though, in a pained whisper: I was just a year older. Even then, my stronger frame was more a spur to prop him up through life’s rough track — him who’d given himself to me — than to harm a plainly weaker soul. And I do think he was weaker; even then. A friend I had in days gone, I think.
My stronger frame; every night; especially his blond hair. Plenty of humans have seen bald heads: age, sickness, grief (together or apart) explain that bleak oddity well enough. That’s the answer a scholar would give if I asked. Age, sickness, grief. But I’m not blind (I’m a scholar too) to that day when, as I raised my dagger to stab a woman’s breast, he grabbed my hand; I seized his hair with an iron grip and spun him in the air so fast his locks stayed in my fist, and his body, flung by centrifugal force, smashed against an oak’s trunk. I’m not blind to that day his locks stayed in my fist. I’m a scholar too. Yes, yes, I’ve already said his name. I’m not blind to that day I wrought a vile deed while his body flew by centrifugal force. He was fourteen.
When, in a fit of madness, I race through fields clutching a bloody thing to my chest — kept long like a sacred relic — the kids chasing me, the old women and kids pelting me with stones, wail these mournful cries:
“There’s Falmer’s hair.”
Away, away with that bald head, polished like a turtle’s shell; a bloody thing. But it’s me talking. His oval face, grand features. And I do think he was weaker. The old women and kids. And I do think — what was I saying? — and I do think he was weaker. With an iron grip. Did that crash kill him? Did his bones shatter against the tree, beyond repair? Did that crash, born of an athlete’s might, kill him? Did he cling to life, though his bones broke beyond repair, beyond repair? Did that crash kill him? I dread knowing what my shut eyes didn’t see.
Indeed; especially his blond hair. Indeed, I fled far with a conscience now relentless. He was fourteen. With a conscience now relentless. Every night. When a youth craving fame, in a fifth-floor room, hunched over his desk at midnight’s hush, hears a rustle he can’t place, he turns his head — heavy with brooding and dusty scripts — every way; but nothing, no caught clue, unveils the faint sound he hears, though he hears it. At last he spots the candle’s smoke drifting ceilingward, stirring the room’s air to nudge a paper sheet pinned to a nail on the wall with near-silent quivers. In a fifth-floor room.
Just as a youth craving fame hears a rustle he can’t place, so I hear a sweet voice murmur in my ear:
“Maldoror!”
But before he shook off his mistake, he thought it was a mosquito’s wings; hunched over his desk. Yet I’m not dreaming; what’s it matter if I’m sprawled on satin sheets? I coolly note my eyes are open, though it’s the hour of pink dominoes and masked balls. Never, oh no, never did a mortal voice sing those seraphic tones, shaping my name’s syllables with such aching grace! A mosquito’s wings; how kind his voice. Has he forgiven me? His body smashed against an oak’s trunk.
“Maldoror!”