As soon as the idea of the Flood was finished, a hare halted in the clover and the trembling flower bells, and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web.

Oh! The precious stones that hid, – the flowers that gazed around them.

In the soiled main street stalls were set, they hauled the boats down to the sea rising in layers as in the old prints.

Blood flowed, at Blue-beard’s house – in the abattoirs in the circuses where God’s promise whitened the windows. Blood and milk flowed.

The beavers built. The coffee cups steamed in the bars.

In the big greenhouse that was still streaming, the children in mourning looked at the marvellous pictures.

A door banged, and, on the village-green, the child waved his arms, understood by the cocks and weathervanes of bell-towers everywhere, under the bursting shower.

Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. The Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.

Caravans departed. And the Hotel Splendide was built in the chaos of ice and polar night.

Since then, the Moon’s heard jackals howling among the deserts of thyme – and pastoral poems in wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the burgeoning violet forest, Eucharis told me it was spring.

Rise, pond: – Foam, roll over the bridge and under the trees: – black drapes and organs – thunder and lightning rise and roll: – Waters and sadness rise and raise the Floods again.

Because since they abated – oh, the precious stones burying themselves and the opened flowers! – It’s wearisome! And the Queen, the Sorceress who lights her fire in the pot of earth, will never tell us what she knows, and what we are ignorant of.

Childhood

(Illuminations II: Enfance)

That idol without ancestors or court, black-eyed and yellow-haired, nobler than legend, Mexican and Flemish: his land insolent azure and green, skirts beaches named by the waves, free of vessels, with names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celtic.

At the edge of the forest – flowers of dream chime; burst, flare – the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that rises from the meadows, nudity shadowed, traversed and clothed by rainbows; flowers, the sea.

Ladies who stroll on terraces by the sea: many a girl-child and giantess, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels arrayed on the rich soil of groves and the little thawed-out gardens – young mothers and elder sisters with looks full of pilgrimage, Sultanas, princesses with tyrannical costumes, little foreign girls and gently unhappy people.

What tedium, the hour of the ‘beloved body’ and ‘dear heart’!

It’s she, the little dead girl, behind the roses. – The young mother, deceased, descends the steps. – The cousin’s carriage squeaks over the sand. – The little brother – (he’s in India!) there, in front of the sunset, in the meadow of carnations. The old ones buried upright in the ramparts overgrown with wallflowers.

The swarm of golden leaves surrounds the General’s house. They are in the south. – You follow the red road to reach the empty inn. The chateau’s for sale: the shutters are loose. – The priest will have carried off the key to the church. – Around the park the keepers’ cottages are untenanted. The fences are so high you can see nothing but rustling treetops. Besides, there’s nothing there to be seen.

The meadows rise to hamlets without cockerels, without anvils. The sluice gate is raised. O the crosses and windmills of the wild, the isles and the stacks.

Magic flowers buzzed. The slopes cradled him. Creatures of fabulous elegance circled round. Clouds gathered over the open sea made of an eternity of warm tears.

III

There’s a bird in the woods, its song makes you stop and blush.

There’s a clock that never chimes.

There’s a hollow with a nest of white creatures.

There’s a cathedral that descends, and a lake that rises.

There’s a little carriage abandoned in the copse, or running down the lane, beribboned.

There’s a troupe of little players in costume, glimpsed on the road through the edge of the woods.

There’s someone, at last, when you’re hungry and thirsty, who drives you away.

I’m the saint, praying on the terrace – as the peaceful beasts graze down to the sea of Palestine.

I’m the scholar in the dark armchair. Branches and rain fling themselves at the library casement.

I’m the traveller on the high road through the stunted woods: the roar of the sluices drowns out my steps. I watch for hours the melancholy golden wash of the sunset.

I might well be the child left on the jetty washed to the open sea, the little farm-boy following the lane whose crest touches the sky.

The paths are rough. The little hills are covered with broom. The air is motionless. How far away the birds and the fountains are! That can only be the world’s end ahead.

Let them rent me this tomb at the last, whitewashed, with the lines of cement in relief – very deep underground.

I lean on the table, the lamp lights brightly those magazines I’m a fool to re-read, those books without interest.

At a vast distance above my subterranean room houses root, fogs gather. The mud is red or black. Monstrous city, night without end!

Lower down there are sewers. At the sides only the thickness of the globe. Perhaps gulfs of azure, wells of fire Perhaps on these levels moons and comets, seas and fables meet.

In hours of bitterness I imagine balls of sapphire, of metal. I am master of silence. Why should a semblance of skylight pale in the corner of the vault?

Tale

(Illuminations III: Conte)

A Prince was vexed at only ever having given himself to the perfection of ordinary generosities. He foresaw astonishing revolutions of love, and suspected his wives of capacity for more than that complaisance enhanced by luxury and sky. He wished to view the truth, the hour of desire and essential gratification. Whether it was an aberration of piety or not he wished it. He possessed quite enough earthly power at least.

Every woman who had known him was assassinated. What havoc in the garden of beauty! Beneath the blade, they blessed him. He demanded no fresh ones. – The women reappeared.

He killed all who followed him, after the hunt or the drinking bout. – All followed him.

He amused himself cutting the throats of rare creatures. He set fire to palaces. He rushed on people and slashed them to pieces. – The masses, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts still existed.

Can one find ecstasy in destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty? The people gave not a murmur. No one offered to support his views.

One evening he was galloping proudly. A Genie appeared, of ineffable even shameful beauty. From his face and bearing issued the promise of a multiple complex love, an unspeakable even unendurable happiness! The Prince and the Genie annihilated each other probably through innate power. How could they have helped dying of it? So, as one, they died.

Yet the Prince passed away in his palace, at the customary age. The Prince was the Genie. The Genie was the Prince.

The subtlest music falls short of our desire.

Parade

(Illuminations IV: Parade)

Sturdy enough jesters. Several have exploited your worlds. Devoid of need, in no hurry to make play of their brilliant faculties or their knowledge of your conscience. How ripe they are! Eyes dazed like the summer night, red and black, tricolours, steel pricked with golden stars; features deformed, leaden, pallid, on fire; hoarse-throated frolickers! A cruel swagger of faded finery! – Some are young – how do they view Cherubino? – endowed with frightening voices and dangerous resources. They’re sent out soliciting in city streets, decked out in disgusting luxury.

Oh the most violent Paradise of a maddened grimace! Way beyond your Fakirs and other theatrical buffooneries. In improvised costumes of nightmarish taste they play romances, tragedies of bandits and demigods, spiritual as the tales and religions never were. Chinese, Hottentots, bohemians, fools, hyenas, Molochs, old madnesses, sinister demons, mingling popular homely turns with bestial poses and caresses. They’re ready for new pieces and ‘sweet’ little songs. Master jugglers, they transform people and places and reveal magnetic stagecraft. Eyes inflamed, blood sings, bones thicken, tears and trickles of rouge stream down. Their raillery and their terror lasts a moment, or months entire.

I alone hold the key to this savage parade.

Antique

(Illuminations V: Antique)

Graceful son of Pan! Round your brow crowned with flowers and berries your eyes, precious spheres, move. Stained with brown lees, your cheeks are hollow. Your eye-teeth gleam. Your breast is a cithara, chords chime in your pale arms. Your pulse beats in that belly where a double sex sleeps. Walk, at night, gently moving that thigh, that other thigh and that left leg.

Being Beauteous

(Illuminations VI: Being Beauteous)

Against the snowfall, a tall Being of Beauty. Whistling of death and the circling of faint music make this adored body rise, expand and quiver like a spectre; wounds of scarlet and black burst from superb flesh. The colours proper to life deepen, dance and detach themselves around this Vision in the making. Shudders rise and groan and the frenetic flavour of these effects fills with that mortal whistling and raucous music that the world, far behind, hurls at our mother of beauty – she recoils, she rears. Oh, our bones are clothed with a new amorous body! Oh, the ashen face; the escutcheon of horsehair, the crystal arms! The cannon I must assault through the melee of trees and the weightless air!

Vies

(Illuminations VII: Lives)

Oh the enormous avenues of the holy land, the terraces of the temple! What has become of the Brahmin who explained the Proverbs to me? I can even see the old women still, of that time and place! I remember hours of silver and light by the rivers, my companion’s hand on my shoulder, our caresses as we stood on the spice-filled plains. – A flock of scarlet pigeons thunders round my thoughts. – Exiled here, I had a place to stage the theatrical masterpieces of every literature. I could show you unknown riches. I mark the history of treasures you discovered. I see what follows! My wisdom is as despised as the chaos. What is my nothingness, compared with the stupor that awaits you?

I am an inventor more worthy than all who precede me; a musician, even, who has found something like the key of love. At present, a gentleman of a harsh country under a sober sky, I try to be moved by the memory of my beggarly childhood, of my apprenticeship and arrival in clogs, my polemics, my five or six widowhoods, and a few binges when my strong head prevented me rising to my comrades’ diapason. I can’t regret my old part in divine gaiety: the sober air of this harsh country feeds the depths of my atrocious scepticism. But since this scepticism can never now be put to use, and anyway I’m dedicated to fresh anxiety – I expect to become an extremely spiteful madman.

III

In an attic where I was imprisoned when I was twelve, I knew the world, I illustrated the human comedy. In a cellar I learnt history. At some nocturnal feast in a Northern city I encountered all the women of the old masters. In an ancient alley in Paris, I was taught the classical sciences. In a magnificent place surrounded by all the Orient I completed my immense work and spent my illustrious retirement. I stirred my blood. My duty has ceased. There’s no need to think of it even. I really am from beyond the grave, and free of duties.

Departure

(Illuminations VIII: Départ)

Enough seen. The vision was encountered under all skies.

Enough had. Sounds of cities, evening, and in the light, and always.

Enough known. The decisions of life. – O Sounds and Visions!

Departure into new affection and noise!

Royalty

(Illuminations IX: Royauté)

One fine day, among a very gentle people, a superb man and woman cried out in the public square: ‘Friends, I want her to be queen!’ ‘I want to be queen!’ She laughed and trembled. He talked to his friends of revelation, of trials undergone. They swooned against each other.

Indeed, they were kings the whole morning, while carmine hangings festooned the houses, and all afternoon, as they advanced towards the gardens of palm-trees.

To Reason

(Illuminations X: À Une Raison)

A tap of your finger on the drum looses all sounds and begins the fresh harmony.

One step of yours is the rising of new men and their forward march.

Your face turns away: new love! Your face turns back – the new love!

‘Change our fate, eliminate the plagues, beginning with Time’ these children sing to you. ‘Breed, no matter where, the substance of our fortunes and wishes,’ they beg.

Arrival from forever, you who’ll depart everywhere.

Drunken Morning

(Illuminations XI: Matinée d’Ivresse)

O my Good! O my Beauty! Atrocious fanfare in which I never falter! Enchanted easel! Hurrah for the unknown work and for the marvellous body, for the first time! It began in the laughter of children, it will finish so. This poison will linger in all our veins even when, the fanfare returning, we are delivered again to the old disharmony. Oh, we now so worthy of such tortures, let us fervently grasp this superhuman promise made to our created bodies and souls: this promise, this madness! Elegance, science, violence! They’ve promised the tree of good and evil will be buried in darkness, the tyrannical virtues will be deported, so we can bring here our love so pure. It began with certain disgusts and it ends – we being unable to seize this eternity all at once – it ends with a riot of perfumes.

Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, horror of the faces and objects here, hallowed be you by the memory of this vigil. It began with all boorishness, behold, it ends with angels of fire and ice.

Little drunken holy vigil! If only on account of the mask you’ve granted us. We endorse you, method! We’ve not forgotten that yesterday you glorified every century of ours. We have faith in poison. We know how to give our whole life every day.

This is the age of ASSASSINS.

Sentences

(Illuminations XII: Phrases)

When the world has reduced to a single dark wood for our four astonished eyes – to a beach for two loyal children – to a musical house for our clear sympathy – I will find you.

Let there be a single old man here below, calm and fine, surrounded by ‘unknown luxury’ – and I shall kneel at your feet.

Let me have realised all your memories – let me be she who can gag you – I’ll stifle you.

When we are strong enough – who retreats? Joyful enough – who falls to ridicule? When we are most spiteful –