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“” It is I; — I who, from the depths of centuries and ages,
Made the eyebrows and beard of sages turn white;
The earth scarce opened to the smiling sun,
It is I who, under the cowl of the old kings of the East,
With head bowed and pensive face,
From the height of the terrace and the massive tower,
Cast this clamor to the terrified world:
Vanity, vanity, all is but vanity!
It is I who put Asia into Alexander’s talons,
Who later turned Rome into a great heap of ashes,
And who, leading his people to disembowel lions,
On the Latin purple begot the Neros.
Everywhere I have made many gods fall into dust,
I have brought others into the light,
And as soon as they saw their altars dominate,
In turn I broke these new immortals.
Here below, nothing can wrest victory from me;
I am the end of all, the term of all glory,
The vulture tearing the heart of nations,
The hand that sets revolutions in motion;
I constantly change the needs of the crowd,
And thereby the great bed where the human river flows.””
Ah! we know you, it is not from today
That you pass among us and that you are called Ennui,
Prince of scorpions, scourge of England!
In the heart of our cities, solitary phantom,
Day and night you are seen, gaunt and colorless,
Running one knows not where like a stray dog.
How many times, weary of chewing ginger,
In your dearest month, in your month of November,
On horrible cords you hang our children,
Or open their skulls with burning lead!
Away with your nooses and your cursed powder,
With your instruments go pay a visit
To the wretched burdened with ceaseless toil!
O bloody physician! go see the beggars all naked
Whom life embarrasses and who, on every path,
Present to death an easy prey,
The thousand ailing who, on their black pallets,
Complain of being ill and of not ending;
Take them, monster, and with one blow end their miseries,
But do not advance on our parks and our lands;
Respect the rich, and never drag
Your gaunt and yellow specter around our palaces.
“”Eh! what do the cares and complaints matter to me,
And the groanings of your extinct races!
I must, playing my role of executioner,
Put men back everywhere on level ground.
O corrupt! O you whom my breath intoxicates
And who no longer know how to live,
Who constantly floating, sailing from sea to sea,
On your wooden planks pace the universe;
Seek afar wine and debauchery,
And, passing through France, go see at work
On his red bench the somber carpenter
Working a culprit and trimming him with a foot;
Sow gold and silver like dust;
For your jaded bellies dig the wave and the earth;
Invent pleasures in all ways,
Let man and animal be the bloody counters,
And the palpitating dice of frightful games
Where your lamentable souls will come to be dazed;
May before your ardent gazes, under vigorous fists,
Men struck down fall like oxen,
And may, on the grass of valleys and plains,
Horses and riders expire breathless;
Despite your tough boxers, your races, your foxes,
Under the blue sky of Spain or under the gray mists,
Both day and night, on wave, on land,
I shall hover over you, and you may do what you will,
Knot long detours, retrace your steps,
Stay, flee: you shall not escape.
I shall exhaust your nerves in this rough race,
And we shall go together, as a last resort,
To strike, all panting, the bloodied threshold
Of your bronze temple, O cold cruelty! “”
Ennui, fatal Ennui! monster with pale face,
With waist stooped and bent before age;
But yet as strong as a Roman emperor,
How to escape your powerful hand?
Our encroachments on time and space
Serve only to make a wider place for you,
Our steamships and our railways
To bring you toward us faster from hell:
To struggle is henceforth useless and vain,
Over the entire universe your victory is certain;
And we bow beneath your destructive wind,
Like a mute lamb under the shearer’s hand.
Pour, pour at your will the homicidal vapors,
Make of the earth a field of arid heather,
Of the celestial vault a country without beauty,
And of the sun itself an orb without light;
Stupefy all our senses, and close their five gates
To the keenest desires, to the strongest ardors;
Into the tree of loves throw a harmful worm,
And on the flowering vine a withering ray:
Better than vile poison, than powdered opium,
Than the acid that kills as quick as lightning,
Than white arsenic and all minerals,
Tenebrous works of infernal spirits,
Make evil circulate over the globe where we are,
Gnaw the hearts of men down to the last tissue;
And when well fed, sensual vampire,
To your fireless lips the most frail mortal
Has delivered his arid and languishing vein,
May the conquered and ever-groaning earth
Into the arms of Suicide abandon its body,
And, somber coroner, may the black angel of the dead
At last render this verdict on the lifeless globe:
Here lies a dead world from madness!
Auguste Barbier
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-spleen-auguste-barbier/