Very well said!. Very well! You tell it well! Told in vain! Done in vain! The obsession’s there, gray, lingering, oppressive, stumbles at every step with fresh doubt.. Nothing stands out, nothing shines. A big mass of horror and shadow!.
Is that all?
Lots of fuss! Going through hell just to get a little thirstier! A somersault!
Like a drunken brute in early June With madness in August wandering Under a cannon
Emerges into delirium mid-September!
Right in a bistrot.
Murders a Fritz playing billiards.
Revenge of the Flemish!
Right away everything breaks out again.
The war’s got to start all over.
You’re here again all jittery.
Whinnying, eager for the whirl.
Under the flood of artifice.
Prancing at the challenges! and Tallyho!
In splendid health!
Torch in hand!
Death’s hokum is waiting for you again.
You’ve drunk a charm!
You’ve been cooked and damned again!
Ah! that awful predicament!
Ah! the carrionish philter!
The stars are dunghills for the Century!
All the almanachs are for sale!
Not a single honest occultist left!
It’s high time for me to get down to it! Damn it!
I have terrible doubts about Joan of Arc since the mass in Orleans!..
It was a nasty chime..
There’s an aftertaste in everything you touch..
I saw Saint Genevieve in Paris..
I was at mass in Reynaud..
The chapel was full of Jews..
And I never talk unless I know..
Are they going after the Freemasons?
Good! Nice to begin with..
But suppose they touch our cronies?
What if they lay hands on the manes of the Temple?
The joking’ll be over!..
They’re going to discover a powder in a diabolical pyrette!..
I predict it, and not without anxiety..
I’m warning! I’m warning! I’m blowing the siren!
Hell doesn’t boil over in a day.
You need oil and knowledge.
Who knows?
You need collaboration..
You saw everything on the road..
The whole world in a rush!..
And what wild, furious, crucifying, fantastic gatherings! Insatiable for martyrdom!
Did you see those vehicles!
The esoteric decoration?
Once you’ve been initiated you don’t stand there dawdling over the abyss. To get yourself sublimated alive, to go up in smoke, fragile toys in the wind! By God! By God! The hell with the timid! Death to illusions! It’s the moment for stout deeds! For sublime, bitter Trafalgars! The faith that saves! Anyone giving in is murdered on the spot! Hashed! Bled! all white with shame!
When the valiant come forward, the pure, the tough, the uncompromising, the lynx-hearted, then you can say it’s getting hot! that there’s a pungent sizzle in the fire! that everything’s chucked in! except shreds of love, lily-of-the-valley, base doubts! As is! Torn away from the spell! No mercy! One after the other in the sulphurous regions to appear in line.. That’s the test!.. the scowling and the sorry.. into memory. The mumblers and cowards. terrible in their swathes of lies!..
I know all about it!
Proud brazen sneaks.. arrogant or base or speechless.. one after the other… all baleful and stinking whose throats should be slit under moon-gall torture and cursed oaths! Poisons, dark messages.. Martyred calves!..
Let everyone blame the demon! go for him, lock him away, slay him, revolt, find in his heart the song, withered… the gracious secret of the fairies. or else let him die a thousand deaths and then come to with a thousand pangs! With frightful choking, a thousand playful Sayings and green contortions of wounds, boiling wax that sticks, torn apart, muscles in mincemeat, floundering around that way a whole day and three months, a week in the bottom of a greasy hot pot, hissing snakes mixed with swollen toads, with leprosy, juicy, yellow with venom, sucked by greedy salamanders, loathsome vampires on the bodies of the damned, jiggers in your guts to stir your pain, shreds of sore flesh, munched with tongues of flame, and so from one millennium to another, slaking your thirst once in a while with a skinful of vinegar, of vitriol so hot that your tongue peels, puffs, bursts! and then to death from suffering howling from Hell all slashed up! day after day! and so on through eternal time..
You’ve got to see the thing is serious.
Y
JLou started in life with your parents’ advice. Life was too much for them. You got into messes, one more horrible than the other. You got out of the awful catastrophes as best you could, more or less sideways, a slobbering crab, backwards, missing a couple of paws. You had some good times, got to be even with all the crap, but always anxious, lest the dirty business start all over.. And it always did.. Let’s bear that in mind! They talk about illusions, that they ruin youth. We lost it without illusions!. More trouble!..
As I say. It happened from the beginning. You were little, a born dope, with two strikes on you.
If you’d been born the son of a rich planter in Cuba, Havana for example, everything would’ve gone off smoothly, but you came from small fry, who lived where it was nasty and slummy, then had to suffer on account of caste and it’s the injustice that crushes you, the sickness of the drooling worm that makes poor people go bragging after their blunders, their pettiness, their pussy blemishes, which makes you vomit listening, they’re so vile and tenacious! Month after month, it’s his nature, the poor slob expiates, on the Pro-Deo rack, his infamous birth, tied up tight with his service certificate, his voting card, his bloated face. Sometimes it’s War! It’s Peace! It’s Re-war! It’s Victory! It’s the Big Disaster! At bottom, nothing’s changed! In the end he’s always a fall guy. He’s the punching bag of the Universe. Wouldn't change places with anyone… He wiggles only for the hangmen. Always available for all the dunghills of the Planet! Everyone walks over his rags, gets worked up over his troubles, he’s spoiled. I’ve seen all the tornadoes of the compass swoop down on our miseries, blowing in on our catastrophes, in on the kill, the Chinese, Moldors, Botriacs, Marsupians, the glacial Swiss, the Mascagats, the Big Berbers, the Vanutedians, the Inkspots, the Jews of Lourdes, all happy, having a great time, gleaming like lunatics! Doing us dirt and nothing to defend us. Cute Francois, imp of the liquor-bottle, stuffed dotard, mushy enough in speech to shake the Rights of Man, in the torrent of Oblivion, hide and soul driven crazy and disgusting with obedience, letting his patrimony be shaken, his sweet little savings, his darling, his dream flower, never any use for him to go pondering anything, more honest to become carrion and lazy enough to piss in bed, it’s always even Stephen, he’s always a sucker in any deal, he’s not in the running, he’s always doomed to be a washup. Besides, the world’s got him so down that he’s got surprise itself puzzled, the world’s tired of pulling him apart, of destroying him even more, he’s pushed around on all sides! the Stinker of the Universe! Hail! A little more injustice, he loathes himself, pukes out his lot.. Awful protests.