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The Gods are eternal. They are born among us
As many as were born in ancient Italy,
But we no longer stay for centuries on our knees,
And, as soon as they are dead, the people forget them.
There will always be some born, and the last to come
Will reign despite all over the incredulous crowd:
All heroes are made of the race of Hercules,
The old earth still gives birth to Venuses.
I
One day of bright sun, on an immense shore,
A fisherman who was following, his basket on his back,
That line of foam where the Ocean begins,
Heard at his feet some frail sobs.
A little child lay there, abandoned,
All naked, and thrown as prey to the bitter wave,
To the wave that rises and drowns; unless she was born
From the eternal kiss of the sand and the sea.
He wiped her body and put her in his basket,
Lying in his nets he carried her off triumphant,
And, like the rocking of a floating boat,
The rolling of his back put the child to sleep.
Soon he was no more than an imperceptible point,
And the vast horizon closed over him,
While there unrolls at the edge of the shining water
The endless rosary of his steps on the sand.
All the countryside loved the child found thus;
And no one had a more serious care
Than to kiss her dainty body, pink with life,
And her dimpled belly, and her little bare arms.
She held out her hands, delighted by the kisses,
And her joy burst forth in continuous laughter.
When she could finally go out through the streets.
Placing one before the other, with great efforts,
Her feet on which her body rolled and staggered,
The women acclaimed her, having run up to see her.
Later, barely clothed in short rags,
Showing her fine leg in her goat-like leaps,
Through the tall grass at the level of her lip
She ran through the plain after butterflies,
And her cheek attracted all the kisses of mouths,
As a flower seduces the winged people of flies.
When they met her in the fields, the boys
Kissed her madly from head to ankles,
With the same ardor and the same shivers
As when caressing the fleshy neck of grown girls.
The old men made her dance on their knees;
They enclosed her waist in their withered hands,
And full of memories of the old days so sweet,
They brushed her hair with their faded lips.
Soon, when she went wandering along the paths,
She had at her side a troop of urchins
Who fled the home or deserted the class.
With a sign she tamed the small and the great,
And from morning to evening, never weary,
She dragged everywhere these amorous wanderers.
Their hearts, to seduce her, invented many a trick.
Some, when night came, went marauding,
Leaping walls, stealing fruit in gardens,
And fearing nothing, guards, dogs or clubs;
Others, to find her dainty warblers,
Blackbirds with yellow beaks, or goldfinches,
Climbed from branch to branch to the top of forests.
Sometimes they went shrimping.
She, her leg bare and pushing her net,
Caught the alert creature with a quick stroke;
They watched trembling, through the limpid water,
The uncertain contours of her little calf.
Then, when they returned, in the evening, toward the village,
They sometimes stopped in the middle of the beach,
And pressing against her, moved, trembling much,
They devoured her with kisses while clasping her neck,
While grave and proud, and without trouble, and without fear,
Mute, she held out her cheek to their embrace.
II
She grew, ever more beautiful, and her beauty
Had the scent of a fruit in its maturity.
Her hair was blond, almost red. On her face
The hard sun of the fields had marked its trace:
Small grains of fire, charming and sparse.
The soft effort of breasts enclosed in her dress
Swelled the fabric, wearing its bodice at the peaks.
Every garment seemed cut for her use,
So supple and superb did she feel within it.
Her mouth was full and showed her teeth well,
And her blue eyes had a clear depth.
The men of the country would have died to please her;
Seeing her come they ran to meet her.
She laughed, feeling the ardor of their eyes,
Then went on her way, tranquil, and lifting,
In the wind of her skirts, carnal passions.
Her jaunty grace had the air of a challenge,
And her gestures were so simple and so just,
That putting nobility into everything, whatever she did,
Her humblest tasks seemed august.
And it was said afar, that after having touched
Her hand, one remained attached to her for life.
During the harsh winters, when the bitter cold penetrates
The walls of the cottage and the people in their beds,
When the sunken paths are filled by the snow,
Shadows approached, at night, her window,
And, staining the bleak pallor of the horizon,
Prowled like wolves around her house.
Then, in the clear summers, when the ripe harvests
Bring the reapers with black arms into the wheat,
When the flowering flax, troubled by the slightest wind,
Undulates like a wave, with long murmurs,
She went gathering the falling sheaf.
The sun in an almost yellow sky blazed,
Pouring a deadly heat on the plain;
The bent workers were silent, out of breath.
Only the broad scythes, felling the ears,
Dragged their rhythmic noise through the drowsy fields;
But she, in a red skirt, and her breast at ease
In her loose shirt tied at her neck,
Did not seem to feel those furnace ardors
That made the grasses wilt on the ground.
She walked alert and carried on her shoulder
The sheaf of wheat or the bundle of hay.
The men stood up seeing her from afar,
Shivering as one does when a desire brushes you,
And seemed to inhale with strong breaths
The troubling scent that came from her body,
The great perfume of love of this human flower!
Then, behold, at the decline of a long harvest day,
When the red Star was about to plunge to the horizon,
Suddenly there was seen, standing at the top of the plain
Like two black giants, two rival reapers,
Upright in the sun, fighting with scythes!
And the shadow buried the appeased countryside.
The short grass sweated drops of dew;
The west went out, while in the east
A star placed a bright point in the sky.
The last sounds, distant and confused, calmed:
The yapping of a dog, the bell of the flocks;
The earth fell asleep under a heavy rest,
And in the all-black sky the stars lit up.
She took a path sinking into a wood,
And began to dance while running, crazed
By the powerful odor of the leaves, and sometimes
Looking, through the trees of the alley,
The clear shimmer of the sky powdered with fire.
Above her head hovered like a blue silence,
Something sweet, like a caress
Of the night, the subtle and so soft languor
Of the warm shadow that makes the heart faint,
And that puts into the soul a vague distress
Of being alone. – But veiled steps, timid bounds,
Those light and dull sounds that the soft steps
Of the beasts of the night make on the carpet of mosses,
Filled the thickets with furtive brushings.
Invisible birds struck their flight against the branches.
She sat down, feeling a numbness
That, from the tips of her feet, rose to her hips,
A need to throw far away her clothing,
To lie down in the fragrant grass, and to wait
For that unknown kiss that floated in the tender air.
And sometimes she had rapid shivers,
A warmth running from the skin to the marrow.
The points of fire of glowworms in the bushes
Put at her sides like a herd of stars.
But a body suddenly fell upon her body;
Lips that burned fell on her mouth,
And in the thick grass, soft as a couch,
Two clenched arms of a man bound her efforts.
Then suddenly a new shock stretched this man
All along on the ground, like an ox stunned;
Another held him lying under his knee
And made him rattle while squeezing his neck.
But he himself rolled, his face hammered
By a furious fist. – Through the thickets
One could hear multiplied steps coming. –
Then it was, in the shadow, an opaque melee,
A heap of rutting men struggling, like stags
When the blond doe has made the males bellow.
There were howls of anger, rattles,
Chests cracking under the grip of nerves,
Fists falling with the heaviness of maces,
While seated at the foot of an old isolated tree,
And following the combat with an eye full of pride,
She awaited the outcome of the ferocious struggle.
Now when there remained only one, the most powerful,
He rushed toward her, drunk and covered in blood;
And under the leafy tree that served them as an alcove
She received without fear his beastly caresses!
III
When fire suddenly takes hold in a village, one sees
The blaze scatter, like a seed,
Its flames across the country; each roof
Lights from its neighbor like an immense torch,
And the whole horizon blazes. A fire of love
That ravaged hearts, burned bodies, and, like
The blaze, carried its flame from man to man,
Soon set the surrounding country ablaze.
Along the paths of the woods, through the hollow ravines,
Where a haphazard instinct pushed her, in the evening,
Her foot seemed to trace amorous roads,
And her lovers fought as soon as they were two.
She surrendered without resistance, born
For this carnal work, and by day or night,
Without ever a sigh of happiness or boredom,
Accepted their kisses as a destiny.
Whoever had followed with mouth or eyes
All the lost paths of her marvelous body,
Gathering this fruit of eternal intoxication that sows
Beauty in those goddess flanks which she loves,
Kept deep in the heart a long trembling
And, shivering with love as one trembles with fever,
He sought her ceaselessly with tenacity,
Letting fall desperate words from his lip.
IV
Animals too loved her strangely.
She had with them human caresses,
And near her they took on lover’s ways.
They rubbed against her body either their fur or their wool;
Dogs pursued her licking her heels;
She made, from afar, the stallions neigh,
The bulls rear as near heifers,
And one saw, deceived by these factitious ardors,
The roosters beat their wings and the goats attack each other
Head against head, reared on their faun legs.
The buzzing hornets and the yellow bees
Traveled on her skin without ever stinging her.
All the birds of the wood sang at her passage,
Or sometimes with a wing wandering caressed her,
Feeding their little ones hidden in her bodice.
She filled with love the flocks that passed,
And the grave rams with curved horns,
No longer listening to the bleating call of the shepherd,
And the ewes, giving a light bleat,
Followed, with a tiny trot, her great strides.
V
Some evenings, escaping from everyone, she left
To go bathe in the cool water. The moon
Illuminated the sand and the rising sea.
She hurried her step, and on the blond dune
With infinite distances and nothing living,
Her great shadow crawled very fast following her.
In a heap on the beach she laid down her rags,
Advanced all naked and wet her white foot
In the wave that rolled pale foam,
Then, opening both arms, threw herself in with a leap.
She came out of the bath happy and dripping,
Lay down all along on the dune, sinking
Into the sand her magnificent and powerful body,
And, when she left with a slower step,
Her contour remained near the incrusted wave.
One would have said seeing it that a tall statue
Of bronze had been struck down on the shore,
And the sky contemplated this mold of Beauty
With its thousands of eyes. – Then the furtive wave
Reaching it made the shore all flat again!
VI
She was the absolute Being, created according to the primitive
Laws, the eternal type of the race
That in the course of time reappears sometimes,
Whose splendor is queen here below, and lays low
All human wills, and from whom holy Art was born.
As Man loved Cleopatra and Phryne
She was loved; and her heart poured out, like a wave,
Its abundant and serene tenderness on all.
She hated only one being in the world:
It was a treacherous old shepherd whom the wolves
Obeyed.
Long ago a Gypsy woman
Threw him, very small, into the bottom of a ditch.
A shepherd of the country who had picked him up
Raised him, then died, leaving him a hatred
For whoever was rich or appeared happy,
And, it was said, many dark secrets.
The child grew up all alone without family and without joys,
Leading to pasture at random goats or geese,
And all day standing on the side of the hill,
Under the rain and wind and the insult of mouths.
When he fell asleep rolled in his cloak,
He dreamed of those who sleep in their beds;
Then, when the clear sun bathed the horizons,
He ate his black bread while watching across the plain
That thread of smoke above the houses
That tells of soup on the fire in the distant farm.
He grew old. – A dread grew at his side.
People spoke of it, in the evening, during the long vigils,
And strange tales whispered at his name
Kept women awake until morning.
At his will, it was said, he guided destinies,
On enemy roofs made disasters fall,
And, deciphering those words of fire that are the stars,
Spelled out the future in the depths of distant skies.
All day he rolled his vagabond hut,
Never mingling with men and often,
When he threw unknown cries into the wind,
Voices answered him that were not of the world.
He was still believed to have a power in his eyes,
For he knew how to tame furious bulls.
And then other rumors ran through the country.
A girl, whom one evening he had met,
Felt at his aspect a trouble seize her.
He did not speak to her; but, in the following night,
She woke shivering with fright;
She heard, afar, the call of his desire.
Feeling powerless to sustain the struggle,
Despite the dreadful darkness, she went
To share with him the straw of his hut!
Then, following his impure caprice, he called
Girls each evening. All, young and beautiful,
Without revolt yet, and without rebellious modesty,
Lent virgin breasts to the things he wanted
And seemed to love him although he was old and ugly.
He was so hairy of forehead and lip,
With white eyebrows long as horsehairs,
That, like the coarse cloak that covered his loins,
His face seemed full of goat hairs!
And his clubfoot put on the summit of the mount,
When the setting sun cast his shadow on the plains,
Like a sinister hopping of a demon.
This rustic Satan full of obscene ardors,
Near a deserted hill and still without greenery
But which gorse flowers covered with a golden cloak,
On a brilliant April morning, met her
Whom the whole country adored. – He received
Like a sunstroke when he saw her,
And trembled with desire so beautiful did he find her.
And their crossed gazes attacked each other. – It was
The meeting of enemy Gods on the earth!
He had the astonishment of a hunter in ambush
Who seeks a gazelle and finds a panther!
She passed. – The flower of her heavy blond hair
Blended, at the foot of the scented slope,
Like a paler bouquet, with the gorse flowers.
Yet she trembled, knowing his renown,
And despite the disgust she felt for him,
Dreading his occult power, she had fled.
She wandered until evening; but, when night came,
She was frightened, for the first time,
Of the shadow that fell on the fields and woods.
Then, crossing a black avenue,
Between the pressed ranks of oaks, suddenly,
She thought she saw the shepherd motionless and upright.
But, as she left in a crazed run,
She never knew, in her bewilderment,
Whether what she had seen was not only
Some dead tree trunk in the middle of the alley.
And days and months passed. Her reason,
Like a wounded bird that carries lead in its wing,
Sank under the incessant and deadly fear.
She no longer even dared to leave her house,
For as soon as she went to the fields, she was sure
To see the Old Man appear at a bend in the path;
His cunning eye seemed to say: “It is for tomorrow,”
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And put like a red-hot iron on the wound.
Soon a weight so heavy bent her will
That in her heart numbed by fear was born
A need to obey fatality.
And, decided at last to surrender to her Master,
She went to find him on a winter night.
The snow with which the ground was everywhere covered
Spread its immobile whiteness. A breeze,
That seemed to come from the end of the world, wandered
Icy, and made crack through the forest
The trees that raised, all naked, their gray form.
In the sorrowful sky, the moon, like a thread
Of light, barely indicated its profile.
The suffering of the cold gripped even the stones.
She walked, her feet frozen, and without thinking,
Certain that she would find the old shepherd,
And staining with a black point the solitary plains.
But she stopped nailed to the ground: over there,
On the snow, two frightening beasts were running;
They seemed to play and took their frolics,
And the shadow enlarged their giant gambols.
Then, pushing through the night their vagabond impulses,
Both, in the ardor of a mad gaiety,
From the depth of the horizon came in a few bounds.
She recognized them: they were the shepherd’s dogs.
Out of breath, gaunt with hunger, eye burning
Under the bramble of matted hair on their heads,
They jumped before her with cries of celebration
And that hairy laugh that reveals the tooth.
As two great Lords go into a province
To fetch and bring back the Beauty of their Prince,
And, guiding her toward him, caracole around,
So these messengers of love conducted her.
But the Man who was watching, standing on a knoll,
Came, and took her arm while climbing toward his hut.
The door was open, he pushed her inside,
Already undressing her with his ardent looks,
And from feet to head he trembled with joy,
As one does at the shock of a happiness awaited.
Since he had seen her he was panting
Like a hound that hunts and never reaches its prey!
Now, when she felt dragging against her skin
The viscous caress like a slug
Of this old man who kept the smell of his herd,
Her whole being shuddered under this kiss of ice.
But he, holding this body of love, with flanks so soft,
That so many proud boys must already have known,
And made to be loved so madly by all,
In his heart of a deformed old man, felt born
Sharp and unforgiving jealousy. He had
A vague and strong need for cruel vengeance!
She first submitted to the thin and hairy lover,
Then, as she struggled, he rushed upon her
Hitting her with his fist so that she would consent,
And the thick silence of the snows deadened
Some cries, like those of people being murdered.
Suddenly, the two dogs let out long
Through the deserted plain a sad howl,
And shivers of fear ran along their spines.
In the cabin then it was like a combat:
The desperate shocks of a body that struggles
Ringing against the walls of the narrow dwelling;
Then, like the sobs of a woman who weeps!
And the struggle resumed, lasted long, ceased
After a weak call for help that passed
And died without echo in the fields!
The pale day
Began to fall weakly from the gray sky.
A colder wind moaned with the noise of a death rattle.
Frost had stiffened the stunted trees
That seemed dead. It was everywhere the end of things.
But, as one lifts a veil, a gliding cloud
Made rain on the snow a flood of pink clarities.
The sky become purple splashed with blood
And the deserted hill at the end of the white plains,
And the shepherd’s hut, and the ice of the branches.
One would have said that a great murder filled the horizon!
– And the shepherd appeared at the threshold of his house. –
He was red too, redder than the dawn!
Even, when the crimson sky was washed,
When everything became white again under the risen sun,
He, haggard and upright, seemed redder still,
As if he had dipped his face and his hand,
Before coming out, in a flood of carmine.
He bent down, taking some snow, and the trace
Of his fingers made on the ground a large bloody hole.
Having knelt to wash his face,
A red water flowed from it, which he watched, trembling,
With starts of fear. – Then he fled.
He goes down the mountain, rolls in the ruts,
Pierces thick thickets like manes,
And makes a thousand detours like a wolf pursued!
He stops. – His eye that terror dilates
Watches on all sides whether he is far from a hamlet;
Then in his hollow hand he melts a little water,
To erase still some scarlet stain!
Then he sets off again. – But in his heart rises the dread
Of wandering until death, without meeting anyone,
Through the snow so vast and under a sky so cold!
He listens. – He hears a bell ringing,
And goes toward the village with hurried steps.
The peasants already were chatting from door to door;
He cries to them while running: “Come all, She is dead!”
He passes. – He goes to knock at the isolated homes,
Repeating: “Come then, come, I have killed her!”
Then a rumor grew, continued
To the neighboring hamlets. And each, rising
And leaving his house, accompanies the shepherd.
But he does not stop his obstinate course;
He walks. – The herd of men following him
Unrolls through the spotless meadows a dark ribbon.
Every country one crosses increases still their number;
They go, tumultuous, over there, toward the height
Where their sinister pastor guides them, out of breath!
They have understood who the murdered woman is,
And do not ask either why or how
The murder was committed. They feel vaguely
Hovering over this death like a Destiny.
She had Beauty, he Cunning; it was necessary
That one of the two succumb. Two equal Powers
Do not always reign. Two rival Idols
Do not share the sky, and the ugly God
Never forgives the beautiful God.
On the summit
Of the hill, and before the hut they stopped.
He dared alone to enter face to face with his crime,
And, gathering up the dead beloved, he brought her,
To throw her to them, naked, and with a gesture of outrage,
As if he had cried: “Here, I give her back to you!”
Then he gained his hut and shut himself inside.
They left him there, bitten by love, and full of rage.
On the snow lay the dazzling body
Where no drop of blood appeared any more;
For the dogs, finding her motionless and lying,
Had with tenderness obstinately licked her.
She seemed alive, asleep. A reflection
Of superhuman beauty illuminated her face.
But the knife remained planted, just at the place
Where a road opened between her milky breasts.
Her figure made a golden stain
On the whiteness of the ground. – The men, frantic,
Contemplated her as a sacred thing!
And her ardent hair, spread in a circle,
Shone like the fiery tail of a comet,
Like a sun fallen from the vault of the heavens;
One would have said rays coming out of her head,
The halo that is put around the forehead of gods!
But some peasants, old men with modest hearts,
Tearing from their backs the goatskin jacket,
Covered suddenly her bright nudity,
And the young, having cut long branches,
Built a stretcher and rolled up their sleeves,
By twenty trembling arms her body was carried!
The crowd, without a word, with slow steps accompanies her
And, to the distant edges of the pale countryside,
Crawls, like a serpent, the immense procession.
And then everything became mute and depopulated!
But the shepherd, shut in his isolated hut,
Feels a horrible solitude around him,
As if the entire universe had fled from him.
He goes out and sees only the frozen plain!…
Fear grips him. Not daring to remain alone any longer,
He whistles his big dogs, his two good guard dogs.
As they do not come running, he is astonished, he looks;
But he does not see them gamboling through the fields…
He cries then. The snow stifles his strong voice…
He begins to howl in the manner of madmen!
His dogs, as if drawn into everyone’s departure,
Abandoning their master, had followed the dead woman.
Guy de Maupassant
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-rustic-venus-guy-de-maupassant/