Maldoror And Poems Part 5

How the turpitudes of the novel crouch in the bookshop windows! Just as some men would kill for a hundred sous, it sometimes seems to a man who is lot that a book should be killed.

Lamartine believed that the fall of an angel would mean the Elevation of Man. He was wrong to believe so.

A ba.n.a.l truth contains more genius than the works of d.i.c.kens, Gustave Aymard, Victor Hugo, Landelle. With the aid of the latter a child who had survived the destruction of the universe would not be able to reconstruct the human soul. With the former it could. I suppose it would not discover the definition of sophism sooner or later.

Words expressing evil are destined to take on a more positive meaning. Ideas improve. The sense of words takes part in this process.

Plagiarism is necessary. It is implied in the idea of progress. It clasps an author's sentence tight, uses his expressions, eliminates a false idea, replaces it with the right idea.

To be well wrought, a maxim does not need to be corrected. It needs to be developed.

As soon as dawn comes, young girls go picking roses. A breath of innocence crosses the valleys, the capital cities, inspiring the most enthusiastic poets, bringing peace and protection to cradles, crowns to youth, belief in immortality to old men.

I have seen men wearing out the moralists who attempted to discover their heart, and bringing upon themselves blessings from above. They were uttering meditations as vast as possible, bringing joy to the author of our felicity. They showed respect to childhood and to age, to all that breathes and all that does not breathe, they paid homage to woman and consecrated to modesty the parts of the body which we refrain from naming. The firmament, whose beauty I acknowledge, the earth, image of my heart, were invoked by me, in order to represent myself as a man who did not believe himself good. The sight of this monster, had it ever proved to be real, would not have killed me with shock: it takes more than that to kill a man. All this needs no comment.

Reason and feeling counsel and supplement each other. Whoever knows only one of thse, renouncing the other, id depriving himself all of the aid which has been granted us to guide our actions. Vauvenargues said: ais depriving himself of a part of the aid.a Though his sentence and mine are based on the personification of the soul in feeling and reason, the one I chose at random would be no better than the other, if I had written both. The one cannot be rejected by me. The other could be accepted by Vauvenargues.

When a predecessor uses a word from the domain of evil to describe the good, it is dangerous for this sentence to subsist alongside the other. It is better to leave the wordas evil meaning unchanged. Before one can use a word from the domain of evil for the good, one must first have the right. He who uses for evil words from the domain of good does not have this right. He is not believed. no one would wish to use Gerard de Nervalas tie.

The soul being one, sensibility, intelligence, will, reason imagination and memory can be introduced into our discourse.

I spent a great deal of time studying abstract sciences. Because one only has to communicate with a small number of people in such studies, I did not tire of them. When I began the study of man, I saw that these sciences were particular to him, that by flinging myself into these studies I was less able to change my condition than others who knew nothing of them. I forgave them their lack of interest! I did not believe I would find many fellow-students of this subject of man. I was wrong. There are more students of man than of geometry.

We die joyfully, provided no one talks about it.

The pa.s.sions become weaker with age. Love, which should not be cla.s.sified among the pa.s.sions, becomes weaker, too. What is loses on one hand, it gains on the other. It is no longer so demanding towards the object of its desires, it does justice to itself: a certain expansion is accepted. The senses no longer excite the organs of the flesh. The love of mankind begins. On days when man feels he is an altar adorned with his own virtues, and recollects all the sorrows he has ever felt, the soul, in a recess of the heart where everything seems to be born, feels something which is no longer beating. I have just described memory.

The writer can, without separating one from the other, indicate the laws which govern each one of his poems.

Some philosophers are more intelligent than some poets. Spinoza, Malebranche, Aristotle, Plato are not Hegesippe Moreau, Malfilatre, Gilbert, Andre Chenier.

Faust, Manfred, Konrad are archetypes. They are not yet reasoning types. They are the archetypes of the agitator.

A meadow, three rhinoceroses, half a catafalque, these are descriptions. They may be memory or prophecy. They are not the paragraph which I am about to complete.

The regulator of the soul is not the regulator of a soul. The regulator of a soul is the regulator of the soul when these two kinds of souls are so commingled that it is possible to state that a regulator is only a regulatress in the imagination of a joking madman.

The phenomenon pa.s.ses. I seek the laws.

There are men who are not archetypes. Archetypes are not men. One must not be dominated by the accidental.

Judgments on poetry are worth more than poetry itself. They are the philosophy of poetry. Philosophy, in this sense, includes poetry. Poetry cannot do without philosophy. Philosophy can do without poetry.

Racine is not capable of condensing his tragedies into precepts. A tragedy is not a precept. To one and the same mind, a precept is a more intelligent act than a tragedy.

Put a goose-quill pen in the hands of a moralist who is a first-cla.s.s writer. he will be superior to poets.

Hide, war.

Feelings express happiness, make us smile. The a.n.a.lysis of feelings expresses happiness, all personality apart; makes us smile. The former elevates the soul, dependently of s.p.a.ce and time, to the conception of mankind considered in itself and in it ill.u.s.trious members. The latter elevates the soul independently of time and s.p.a.ce to the conception of mankind in its highest expression, the will! The feelings are concerned with vice and virtue; the latter is concerned only with virtue. The feelings are not aware of the course they follow. The a.n.a.lysis of feelings makes this known, and increases the strength of our feelings. With the former, all is uncertainty. They are the expression of happiness and sorrow, two extremes. With the latter, all is certainty. It is the expression of the happiness derived, at a given moment, from being able to restrain oneself amidst good and bad pa.s.sions. In its composure it blends the description of the pa.s.sions into a principle which informs its pages: the non-existence of evil. Feelings overflow when necessary, and also when it is not necessary. The a.n.a.lysis of feelings does not weep. It possesses a latent sensibility which takes us by surprise, helps us transcend our woes, teaches us to do without a guide, provides us with a weapon. Feelings, the sign of weakness, are not Feeling! The a.n.a.lysis of feeling, sign of strength, engenders the most magnificent feelings I know. The writer who is deceived by his feelings cannot be put on a par with the writer who is deceived neither by his feelings, nor by himself. Youth indulges in sentimental lucubrations. Maturity begins to reason clearly. Whereas once we only felt, now we think. We allowed our sensations to roam freely; now we give them a guide. If I consider mankind as a woman, I will merely say that her youth is on the ebb, that her maturity is approaching. Her mind is changing for the better. The ideal of poetry will change. Tragedies, poems elegies will no longer take first place. The coldness of the maxim will dominate! In the time of Quinault, they would have been capable of understanding what I have just said. Thanks to certain faint glimmerings in reviews and folios in the last few years, I can understand it in myself. My genre is as different from that of the moralists who merely state the evil without suggesting the remedy than theirs is from the melodramas, the funeral orations, the ode and the religious stanza. The sense of struggle is lacking.

Elohim is made in manas image.

Several certainties have been contradicted. Several falsehoods remain uncontradicted. Contradiction is the sign of falsehood. Non-contradiction is the sign of certainty.

A philosophy for the sciences exists. But not for poetry. I know of no moralist who is a first-rate poet. It is strange, someone will say.

It is a horrible thing to feel what is yours falling to pieces. One even only hangs on to it in the wish to find out if there is anything permanent.

Man is a subject devoid of errors. Everything shows him the truth. Nothing deceives him. The two principles of truth, reason and sense, apart form being reliable each for itself, enlighten each other. The senses enlighten reason by true appearances. And this same service which they perform for her, they also receive it from her. Each one takes it in turn. The phenomena of the soul pacify the senses, making impressions on the which I cannot a.s.sert to be unpleasant. They do not lie. They do not vie with each other in deception.

Poetry must be made by everyone. Not by one. Poor Hugo! Poor Racine! Poor Coppee! Poor Corneille! Poor Boileau! Poor Scarron! Tics, tics, and tics.

The sciences have extremities which touch. The first is the state of ignorance all men are in when born. The second is the ignorance attained by great souls. They have surveyed all that men can know, find that they know everything, and are yet in the same state of ignorance as when they set out. Theirs is a knowing ignorance, self-aware. Those who, having left the first ignorance behind, have some smattering of this sufficient knowledge, act as if they know all the answers. The former do not trouble the world, their judgment is no worse than all the othersa. The people and the clever determine the course of a nation. The others, who respect it, are no less respected by it.

To know things, it is not necessary to know the details. As they are limited, our knowledge is solid.

Love is not to be confused with poetry.

Woman is at my feet!

We must not in describing heaven, use the materials of the earth. We must leave the earth and its materials where they are, in order to embellish life by its ideal. To speak in familiar tones to Elohim, to address him at all, is seemly buffoonery. The best means of showing our grat.i.tude towards him is not to trumpet into his ears that he is mighty, that he created the world, that we are worms in comparison with his greatness. He knows all that better than we. Men can refrain from telling him these things. The best means of showing our grat.i.tude to him is to console mankind, to relate everything we do to mankind; to take it by the hand and treat is as a brother. It is more honest.

To study order, one must not study disorder. Scientific experiments, like tragedies, stanzas to my sister, gibberish about misfortune, have got nothing to do with life on earth.

It is not good for all laws to be known.

To study evil in order to extract the good from it is not the same as to study the good. Given an instance of good, I will seek its cause.

Up to now, misfortune has been described in order to inspire terror and pity. I will describe happiness, to inspire the opposite.

A logic for poetry exists. It is not the same as the logic of philosophy. Philosophers are not on a par with poets. Poets have the right to consider themselves above philosophers.

I do not need to bother about what I will do later. What i am doing now I had to do. I do not need to discover the things that I will discover later. In the new science, everything comes in its placea"that is its excellence.

There are the makings of the poet in moralists an philosophers. The poet contains the thinker. Each caste suspects the other, developing its own qualities at the expense of those which bring it closer to the other caste. The pride of the latter proves incompetent to do justice to tenderer minds. Whatever a manas intelligence may be, the process of thinking must be the same for all. The existence of tics having been established, we are not surprised to see the same words recurring more often than their due: in Lamartine, the tears which fall from his horseas nostrils, the colour of his motheras hair; in Hugo, the shadow and the madman are part of the binding.

The science I am establis.h.i.+ng is a science distinct from poetry. I am not writing the latter. I am trying to discover its source. Across the helm which directs all poetic thought, billiards and teachers will distinguish the development of sentimental theses.

The theorem is in its nature a form of mockery. It is not indecent. The theorem does not insist on being applied. The application we make of it debases it, becomes indecent. Call the struggle of matter against the ravages of the mind application.

To struggle against evil is to pay it too great a compliment. If I allow men to despise it, I hope they do not forget to say that that is all I can do for them.

Man is certain that he is not wrong.

We are not content with the life within us. We wish to lead an imaginary life in other peopleas minds. We strive to appear to be what we are. We make every effort to preserve this imaginary being, which is simply the real one. If we are generous, faithful, we are eager not to let it be known, we wish to attribute these virtues to this being. We do not get rid of them and then attach them to this being. We are brave in order to avoid the reputation of being cowards. A sign of our beingas incapacity to be satisfied with the one without the other, to renounce either. That man who did not live to defend his virtue would be a scoundrel.

Despite the sight of our greatness, which has caught us by the throat, we have an instinct which corrects us, which we cannot repress, which exalts us!

Nature has perfections to show that it is the image of Elohim, faults to show that it is nonetheless only an image.

It is right that laws should be obeyed. The people understand what makes it just. It does not break the laws. Were we to make their justice depend on anything else, it is easy to cast doubt on it. Peoples are not subject to revolt.

Those who are out of order tell those who are in order that they are straying from nature. They believe they are right. One must have a fixed standpoint in order to judge. And where else is this standpoint to be found but in morality?

Nothing is less surprising than the contradictions in man. he is made to know truth. He seeks it. When he tries to grasp it, he is so dazzled an confused that no one would envy him the possession of it. Some wish to deny manas knowledge of truth, others to a.s.sert it. Each side uses such dissimilar arguments that they dispel his confusion. There is no other guiding-light than that which is to be found in nature.

We are born just. Everyone seeks his own good. It is the wrong way round. We must aim for the general good. The descent towards self if the end of all disorder, in war, in economics.

Men, having conquered death, misery and ignorance, have, in order to be happy, taken it into their heads not think of these things. It is the only method they have devised to console themselves for so few ills. Most rich consolation. It does not cure the ill. It hides it for a short while. In hiding it, it gives the impression that it is being cured. By a legitimate reversal of manas nature, it is not the case that ennui, which is manas most deeply felt evil, is his greatest good. It can contribute more than anything else to help him seek his redemption. That is all. Amus.e.m.e.nt, which he regards as his greatest good, is his least ill. More than anything else, he seeks in this the remedy to all his ills. Both are a counter-proof of the misery, the corruption of man, apart from his greatness. Man in his boredom seeks this mult.i.tude of activities. He has a notion of the happiness he has gained; finding it within himself, he seeks it in external things. He is content. Unhappiness is not in us, nor is in other creatures. It is in Elohim.

Nature makes us happy in all states. Our desires represent to us an unhappy state. They add to our present state the afflictions of the imaginary one. Yet if we ever experience these sorrows, we still would not be unhappy, we would have other desires corresponding to our new state.

The strength of reason appears greater in those who know it than in those who do not know it.

We are so far from being presumptuous that we would wish to be known all over the earth, and even by those who come after us when we are dead. We are so far from being vain that the esteem of fivea"let us make it sixa"people amuses and honours us.

The least thing consoles us. The greatest things afflict us.

Modesty is so natural in the heart of man that a worker carefully avoids boasting, yet wishes to have his admirers. Philosophers want theirs, too. And poets most of all! Those who write for glory wish to have the distinction of having written well. Those who read wish to have the distinction of having read. I, who write this, boast that I have this wish. Those who read it will do the same.

The mind of the greatest man is not so dependent that he is liable to be troubled by all the hurly-burly around him. It does not take the silence of the cannon to hinder his thoughts. It does not take the noise of a weather-vane or a pulley. The fly cannot gather its thoughts at present. A man is buzzing at its ears. It is enough to make it incapable of good counsel. If I want to discover the truth, I will chase away this animal which keeps its reason in check, troubling this intelligence which governs realms.

The purpose of these people playing tennis with such concentration of the mind and movement of the body is to boast to their friends that they have played better than their opponent. That is the reason for their love of the game. Some sweat in their studies to prove to the mathematical experts that they have solved an algebraical problem which was no problem at all until then. Others expose themselves to dangers to boast of what they have achieved by what, in my opinion, are less spiritual means. The last group try desperately hard to see these things. They are certainly no less wise. It is above all to show that they know how worth-while it is. They are the least foolish of the whole lot. They know hat they are doing. Perhaps the others would not be the same if they did not have this knowledge.

The example of Alexanderas continence has made no more converts to chast.i.ty than that of his drunkenness has made teetotalers. People are not ashamed to not be as virtuous as he. They believe their virtues are not quite the same as the generality of menas when they see these same virtues practised by the great. They cling on to that which he has in common with them. However exalted they may be, they always have a point which connects them with the rest of mankind. They do not hover in the air, separated from our society. If they are greater than we, it is because they are flesh and blood as we are. They are on the same level, they stand on the same ground. At this extremity, they are as exalted as we, as children, a little more than animals.

The best means of persuading consists in not persuading.

Despair is the smallest of our errors.

Whenever we hear of a thought, a truth which is on everyoneas lips, we only need to develop it and we find that it is a discovery.

One can be just, if one is not human.

The storms of youth precede the brilliant days.

Unawareness, dishonour, lubricity, hatred and contempt for men all have their price. Liberality multiplies the advantages of riches.

Those who are honest in their pleasures are also honest in their other dealings. it is the sign of a gentle disposition, since pleasure humanizes.

The moderation of great men limits only their virtues.

We offend me by praising them beyond their strict deserts. Many people are modest enough not to object in the least to being well thought of.

We must expect everything, fear nothing, from time, from men.

If merit and glory do not make men unhappy, then what we call misfortune is not worth their grief. A soul deigns to accept fortune, respite, if it can superimpose on them the strength of its feelings, the flight of its genius.

We admire great designs when we feel capable of great successes.

Reserve is the apprentices.h.i.+p of minds.

We say sound things when we do not attempt to say extraordinary things.

Nothing which is true is false; nothing which is false is true. All is the contrary of a dream, of illusion.

We must not think that those whom nature has made lovable are vicious. There has never been a century or a people which has inaugurated imaginary virtues and vices.

One can only judge the beauty of life by the beauty of death.

A playwright can give to the word apa.s.siona a meaning of utility. But he is then no longer a playwright. A moralist can give to any word whatsoever a meaning of utility. He remains a moralist just the same!

Whoever examines the life of a man will find it in the history of the species. Nothing has been able to vitiate it.

Do I have to write in verse to set myself apart from other men? Let charity decide!

The pretext of those who make others happy is that they are seeking their good.

Generosity shares in the joys of others as if it were responsible for them.

Order dominates among the human species. Reason and virtue are not the strongest.

Princes have few ungrateful subjects. They give all they can.

We can love with all our heart those in whom we find great faults. It would be impertinent to think that only imperfections have the right to please us. Our weaknesses attach us to each other as much as that which is not virtue could do.

If our friends do favours for us, we think that, as friends, they owe us them. We do not at all think they owe us their enmity.

He who was born to command, would command, even on the throne.

When our duties have exhausted us we think we have exhausted our duties. We say that the heart of man can contain everything.

Everything lives by action. Communication between beings, the harmony of the universe, come from action. We find that this fecund law of nature is a vice in man. He is obliged to obey it. Unable to rest for a moment, we conclude he is left in his place.

We know what the sun and the heavens are. We possess the secret of their movements. In the hands of Elohim, a blind instrument, an imperceptible spring, the world compels our homage. The revolutions of empires, the phases of time, the nations, the conquerors of knowledge, all this comes from a crawling atom, lasts only a day, destroys the spectacle of the universe through all the ages.

There is more truth than errors, more good qualities than bad, more pleasures than pains. We like t examine our character. We exalt ourselves above our species. We adorn ourselves with the esteem which we lavish on it. We think we cannot separate our own interest from that of mankind, that we cannot slander our race without compromising ourselves. This ridiculous vanity has filled books with hymns in favour of nature. Man is in disgrace with all those who think. It is a question of who can accuse him of the most vices. When was he not about to pick himself up, to piece together his virtues?

Nothing has been said. We have come too early. Man has existed for seven thousand years. In the matter of morals, as in everything else, that which is the least good is the most highly thought of. We have the advantage of working after the ancients, after the ablest of the moderns.

We are capable of friends.h.i.+p, justice, compa.s.sion, reason. Oh my friends! What then is the absence of virtue?

As long as my friends are still alive, I will not speak of death.

We are dismayed by our relapses and to see that our misfortunes have corrected our faults.

One can only judge the beauty of death by the beauty of life.