The image of man, not now underground, is resplendent. Plains
of lead seem to assure him that it will no longer be reversed,
but this is only to plunge it again into this great sadness which
gives it an outline. The former strength, yes, the former strength
used to suffice unto itself. Any succour is useless, it will perish by
extinction, a death gentle and calm.
She enters the dense forest, whose silent solitude hurls the soul
into a sea whose waves are lamps and mirrors. The lovely star of
white leaves that, on a more distant level, seems the queen of the
colors, contrasts with the stuff of gazes, leaning on the trunks of
the incalculable incompetence, of harmonious plants.
Not now underground, the image of man wields five raging
sabres. It has already unearthed the hovel housing the black reign
of the enthusiasts of begging, lowliness, and prostitution. On the
largest ship displacing the sea, the image of man sets out and
recounts to the sailors returning from shipwrecks a story about
brigands.: “When he was five, his mother gave him a treasure.
What to do with it? Except calm her down. She crushed with her
hellish arms the glass container where the poor marvels of man are
sleeping. The marvels followed her. The poet’s carnation sacrificed
the skies for a blonde mane of hair, the chameleon lingered in
a clearing to construct there a tiny palace of strawberries and
spiders, the Egyptian pyramids made the passerby laugh, because
they didn’t know that the rains slake the earth’s thirst. Finally, the
orange butterfly shook its seeds over the eyelid of the children
who thought they felt the sandman going by.”
The image of man dreams, but nothing more is hanging on
his dreams than the unparalleled night. Then, to recall the sailors
to some semblance of reason, someone who had seemed drunk
slowly uttered this sentence:
“Good and evil have their origin in a few errors carried out
to excess.”
Capital of Pain, Black Widow Press, 2006
translated by Mary Ann Caws, Patricia Terry, Nancy Kline
originally published 1926.
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