Letter to Sainte-Beuve

On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished     than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished     rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,     trailed our ennui, hunched, round-shouldered,     under the four-square heaven of solitude,     where a child drinks studys tart ten-year brew.     It was in those days, outstanding and memorable,     when the teachers, forced to loosen our classical     fetters, yet all still hostile to your rhyming,     succumbed to the pressure of our mad duelling,     and allowed a triumphant, mutinous, pupil     to make Triboulet howl in Latin, at will.     Which of us in those days of pale adolescence     didnt share the weary torpor of confinement,     eyes lost in the dreary blue of a summer sky     or the snowfalls whiteness, we were dazzled by,     ears pricked, eager, waiting a pack of hounds     drinking some books far echo, a riots sound?     Most of all in summer, that melted the leads,     the walls, high, blackened, filled with dread,     with the scorching heat, or when autumn haze     lit the sky with its one monotonous blaze     and made the screeching falcons fall asleep,     white pigeons terrors, in their slender keep:     the season of reverie when the Muse clings     through the endless day to some bell that rings:     when Melancholy at noon when all is drowsing     at the corridors end, chin in hand, dragging     eyes bluer and darker than Diderots Nun,     that sad, obscene tale known to everyone,     her feet weighed down by premature ennui,     her brow from nights moist languor un-free.     and unhealthy evenings, then, feverish nights,     that make young girls love their bodies outright,     and, sterile pleasure, gaze in their mirrors to see     the ripening fruits of their own nubility:     Italian evenings of thoughtless lethargy,     when knowledge of false delights is revealed     when sombre Venus, on her high black balcony,     out of cool censers, waves of musk sets free.     In this war of enervating circumstances,     matured by your sonnets, prepared by your stanzas,     one evening, having sensed the soul of your art,     I transported Amaurys story into my heart.     Every mystical void is but two steps away     from doubt. The potion, drop by drop, day by day,     filtering through me, I ,drawn to the abyss since I     was fifteen, who swiftly deciphered Rens sigh,     I parched by some strange thirst for the unknown,     within the smallest of arteries, made its home.     I absorbed it all, the perfumes, the miasmas,     the long-vanished memories sweetest whispers,     the drawn-out tangle of phrases, their symbols,     the rosaries murmuring in mystical madrigals,     a voluptuous book, if ever one was brewed.     Now, whether Im deep in some leafy refuge,     or in the sun of a second hemispheres days,     the eternal swell swaying the ocean waves,     the view of endless horizons always re-born,     draw my heart to the dream divine, once more,     be it in heavy languor of burning summer,     or shivering idleness of early December,     beneath tobacco-smoke clouds, hiding the ceiling,     through the books subtle mystery, always leafing,     a book so dear to those numb souls whose destiny     has, one and all, stamped them, with that same malady,     in front of the mirror, Ive perfected the cruelty     of the art that, at birth, some demon granted me,     art of that pain that creates true voluptuousness,     scratching the wound, to draw blood from my distress.     Poet, is it an insult, or a well-turned compliment?     For regarding you Im like a lover, to all intent,     faced with a ghost whose gestures are caresses,     with hand, eye of unknown charms, who blesses,     in order to drain ones strength. All loved beings     are cups of venom one drinks with eyes unseeing,     and the heart thats once transfixed, seduced by pain,     finds death, while still blessing the arrow, every day.