I am reborn in reason. The world is good. I will bless life. I will love my brothers. There are no longer childhood promises. Nor the hope of escaping old age and death. God is my strength, and I praise God.
Boredom is no longer my love. Rage, perversion, madness, whose every impulse and disaster I know-- my burden is set down entire. Let us appraise with clear heads the extent of my innocence. I am no longer able to ask for the consolation of a beating. I don't imagine I'm off on a honeymoon with Jesus Christ as my father-in-law.
I am no prisoner of my own reason. I have said: God. I want freedom, within salvation: how shall I go about it? A taste for frivolity has left me. No further need for divine love or for devotion to duty. I do not regret the age of emotion and feeling. To each his own reason, contempt, Charity: I keep my place at the top of the angelic ladder of good sense.
As for settled happiness, domestic or not... no, I can't. I am too dissipated, too weak. Work makes life blossom, an old idea, not mine; my life doesn't weigh enough, it drifts off and floats far beyond action, that third pole of the world.
What an old maid I'm turning into, to lack the courage to love death!
If only God would grant me that celestial calm, etherial calm, and prayer-- like the saints of old. --The Saints! They were strong! Anchorites, artists of a kind we no longer need....
Does this farce have no end? My innocence is enough to make me cry. Life is the farce we all must play.
Stop it! This is your punishment.... Forward march!
Ah! my lungs burn, my temples roar! Night rolls in my eyes, beneath this sun! My heart... my arms and legs....
Where are we going? To battle? I am weak! the others go on ahead... tools, weapons... give me time!
Fire! Fire at me! Here! or I'll give myself up! --Cowards! --I'll kill myself! I'll throw myself beneath the horses' hooves!
Ah!...
--I'll get used to it.
That would be the French way, the path of honor!
Boredom is no longer my love. Rage, perversion, madness, whose every impulse and disaster I know-- my burden is set down entire. Let us appraise with clear heads the extent of my innocence. I am no longer able to ask for the consolation of a beating. I don't imagine I'm off on a honeymoon with Jesus Christ as my father-in-law.
I am no prisoner of my own reason. I have said: God. I want freedom, within salvation: how shall I go about it? A taste for frivolity has left me. No further need for divine love or for devotion to duty. I do not regret the age of emotion and feeling. To each his own reason, contempt, Charity: I keep my place at the top of the angelic ladder of good sense.
As for settled happiness, domestic or not... no, I can't. I am too dissipated, too weak. Work makes life blossom, an old idea, not mine; my life doesn't weigh enough, it drifts off and floats far beyond action, that third pole of the world.
What an old maid I'm turning into, to lack the courage to love death!
If only God would grant me that celestial calm, etherial calm, and prayer-- like the saints of old. --The Saints! They were strong! Anchorites, artists of a kind we no longer need....
Does this farce have no end? My innocence is enough to make me cry. Life is the farce we all must play.
Stop it! This is your punishment.... Forward march!
Ah! my lungs burn, my temples roar! Night rolls in my eyes, beneath this sun! My heart... my arms and legs....
Where are we going? To battle? I am weak! the others go on ahead... tools, weapons... give me time!
Fire! Fire at me! Here! or I'll give myself up! --Cowards! --I'll kill myself! I'll throw myself beneath the horses' hooves!
Ah!...
--I'll get used to it.
That would be the French way, the path of honor!
But I am still alive! Suppose damnation is eternal! A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn't he? I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am. This is the catechism at work. I am the slave of my baptism. You, my parents, have ruined my life, and your own. Poor child! --Hell is powerless against pagans. --I am still alive! Later on, the delights of damnation will become more profound. A crime, quick, and let me fall to nothingness, condemned by human law.
Shut up, will you shut up! Everything here is shame and reproach-- Satan saying that the fire is worthless, that my anger is ridiculous and silly. --Ah, stop! ...those mistakes someone whispered-- magic spells, deceptive odors, childish music-- and to think that I possess the truth, that I can have a vision of justice: my judgement is sound and firm, I am prime for perfection.... Pride. --My scalp begins to tighten. Have mercy! Lord, I am afraid! Water, I thirst, I thirst! Ah, childhood, grass and rain, the puddle on the paving stones, Moonlight when the clock strikes twelve.... The devil is in the clock tower, right now! Mary! Holy Virgin!... --Horrible stupidity.
Look there, are those not honorable men, who wish me well? Come on... a pillow over my mouth, they cannot hear me, they are only ghosts. Anyway, no one ever thinks of anyone else. Don't let them come closer. I must surely stink of burning flesh....
My hallucinations are endless. This is what I've always gone through: the end of my faith in history, the neglect of my principles. I shall say no more about this; poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am the richest one of all, a thousand times, and I will hoard it like the sea.
O God-- the clock of life stopped but a moment ago. I am no longer within the world. --Theology is accurate; hell is certainly down below-- and heaven is up on high. Ecstacy, nightmare, sleep, in a nest of flames.
How the mind wanders idly in the country... Satan, Ferdinand, blows with the wild seed. .. Jesus walks on purple thorns but doesn't bend them... Jesus used to walk on troubled waters. In the light of the lantern we saw him there, all white, with long brown hair, standing in the curve of an emerald wave....
I will tear the veils from every mystery-- mysteries of religion or of nature, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, and nothingness. I am a master of phantasmagoria.
Listen!
Every talent is mine! --There is no one here, and there is someone: I wouldn't want to waste my treasure. --Shall I give you Afric chants, belly dancers? Shall I disappear, shall I begin an attempt to discover the Ring? Shall I? I will manufacture gold, and medicines.
Put your faith in me, then; faith comforts, it guides and heals. Come unto me all of you-- even the little children-- let me console you, let me pour out my heart for you-- my miraculous heart! --Poor men, poor laborers! I do not ask for prayers; give me only your trust, and I will be happy.
Think of me, now. All this doesn't make me miss the world much. I'm lucky not to suffer more. My life was nothing but sweet stupidities, unfortunately.
Bah! I'll make all the ugly faces I can! We are out of the world, that's sure. Not a single sound. My sense of touch is gone. Ah, my chateau, my Saxony, my willow woods! Evenings and mornings, nights and days.... How tired I am!
I ought to have a special hell for my anger, a hell for my pride-- and a hell for sex; a whole symphony of hells!
I am weary, I die. This is the grave and I'm turning into worms, horror of horrors! Satan, you clown, you want to dissolve me with your charms. Well, I want it. I want it! Stab me with a pitchfork, sprinkle me with fire!
Ah! To return to life! To stare at our deformities. And this poison, this eternally accursed embrace! My weakness, and the world's cruelty! My God, have pity, hide me, I can't control myself at all! I am hidden, and I am not.
And as the Damned soul rises, so does the fire.
Shut up, will you shut up! Everything here is shame and reproach-- Satan saying that the fire is worthless, that my anger is ridiculous and silly. --Ah, stop! ...those mistakes someone whispered-- magic spells, deceptive odors, childish music-- and to think that I possess the truth, that I can have a vision of justice: my judgement is sound and firm, I am prime for perfection.... Pride. --My scalp begins to tighten. Have mercy! Lord, I am afraid! Water, I thirst, I thirst! Ah, childhood, grass and rain, the puddle on the paving stones, Moonlight when the clock strikes twelve.... The devil is in the clock tower, right now! Mary! Holy Virgin!... --Horrible stupidity.
Look there, are those not honorable men, who wish me well? Come on... a pillow over my mouth, they cannot hear me, they are only ghosts. Anyway, no one ever thinks of anyone else. Don't let them come closer. I must surely stink of burning flesh....
My hallucinations are endless. This is what I've always gone through: the end of my faith in history, the neglect of my principles. I shall say no more about this; poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am the richest one of all, a thousand times, and I will hoard it like the sea.
O God-- the clock of life stopped but a moment ago. I am no longer within the world. --Theology is accurate; hell is certainly down below-- and heaven is up on high. Ecstacy, nightmare, sleep, in a nest of flames.
How the mind wanders idly in the country... Satan, Ferdinand, blows with the wild seed. .. Jesus walks on purple thorns but doesn't bend them... Jesus used to walk on troubled waters. In the light of the lantern we saw him there, all white, with long brown hair, standing in the curve of an emerald wave....
I will tear the veils from every mystery-- mysteries of religion or of nature, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, and nothingness. I am a master of phantasmagoria.
Listen!
Every talent is mine! --There is no one here, and there is someone: I wouldn't want to waste my treasure. --Shall I give you Afric chants, belly dancers? Shall I disappear, shall I begin an attempt to discover the Ring? Shall I? I will manufacture gold, and medicines.
Put your faith in me, then; faith comforts, it guides and heals. Come unto me all of you-- even the little children-- let me console you, let me pour out my heart for you-- my miraculous heart! --Poor men, poor laborers! I do not ask for prayers; give me only your trust, and I will be happy.
Think of me, now. All this doesn't make me miss the world much. I'm lucky not to suffer more. My life was nothing but sweet stupidities, unfortunately.
Bah! I'll make all the ugly faces I can! We are out of the world, that's sure. Not a single sound. My sense of touch is gone. Ah, my chateau, my Saxony, my willow woods! Evenings and mornings, nights and days.... How tired I am!
I ought to have a special hell for my anger, a hell for my pride-- and a hell for sex; a whole symphony of hells!
I am weary, I die. This is the grave and I'm turning into worms, horror of horrors! Satan, you clown, you want to dissolve me with your charms. Well, I want it. I want it! Stab me with a pitchfork, sprinkle me with fire!
Ah! To return to life! To stare at our deformities. And this poison, this eternally accursed embrace! My weakness, and the world's cruelty! My God, have pity, hide me, I can't control myself at all! I am hidden, and I am not.
And as the Damned soul rises, so does the fire.
-Rimbaud
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