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To Armance.
What! you too complain of life!
You have sorrows, worries, disgusts!
A weak dart in your eyes, on your lips a dreg,
And contempt in your heart!? Alas! it is like us!
Dreg on the lips?—poison, burning remnant of the glass;
Dart in the eyes?—brought back half-broken from battles;
And in the heart contempt?—Eternal Archer
Whose quiver never runs dry!
You have all that,—like us, O Madame!
In vain God poured his smiles upon you!
Beauty is not everything for woman either,
As in cursing it we said on our knees,
And as so many times, in your evenings of conquest,
Your lovers have told you, in transports lost,
And that, pale with boredom, you turned away your head,
O God! no longer thinking of it…
Ah! no, you are not everything, Beauty,—even for her
Who mirrored herself with the most pride in you,
And who, not hiding her pride in being beautiful,
Plunged the greatest hearts into love and dread!
Ah! no, you are not everything… It is dreadful; but forgive!
If man could have chosen, he would have taken nothing after;
For he long believed, in the happiness you give,
Beauty! that you would suffice for him!
But man was mistaken, I attest to you, Armance!
Who intoxicated yourself with yourself as a lover would,
Drawing with full hands from your own existence,
Like a man who drinks the water of a river by diving.
To convince me, alas! show yourself entirely;
Tell me what you know… the bitter truth.
It is not a cloak that hides your misery,
It is the splendor of Beauty!
Tell me what you know… From your livid pallor,
That your hands will never tear from your temples
And that seems to flow from a homicidal cup
That mocking Destiny overturned on your brow;
From your frowned brow, from the effort of your laugh,
From your voice that lies to us, from your eye that is silent,
From all that deceives us, alas! and that we admire,
Ah! make your secret spring forth.
Tell all that you know… Dreams, sorrow and shame,
Desires unfulfilled by burning kisses,
Nights, combats, pleasures, stains that one confronts
In the infamous fury of tangled hair!
Bed that is not empty and that one flees,—fatal hour
Of the guilty night that one no longer even wants,
And that one goes to end on the balcony, where one weeps,
And that chills the bare elbows!
Ah! rather, say nothing! for I know everything, Madame!
I know that Happiness dwells in beautiful arms;
But arms do not always pass into the soul…
One gives happiness, one does not receive it!
The cup from which we drink does not feel the intoxication
That it pours into our hearts, burning pleasure!
You have Beauty,—but a little tenderness,
But the happiness felt from the slightest caress,
Is still worth more than Beauty.
Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-beauty-jules-barbey-d-aurevilly/