Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
She was nineteen. I, thirteen. She was beautiful;
I, ugly. Indifferent, – and I was killing myself…
Dark and burning dreamer, I was killing myself for her.
Timid, withdrawn, mad, I was wasting away…
My dark, bruised eyes frightened my mother;
My pale forehead suddenly had red flushes
That rose from my heart like fire out of the earth!
I believed I had two hearts.
One was not enough for her. My breast
Seemed under these two hearts one day bound to open
And throw them both beneath her proud little boot,
So that she might trample better underfoot her martyr!
O the terrible madness of puberty!
Who has not known them, these loves of thirteen?
Solfataras of the heart that burn in silence,
Conflagrations, suffocations!
I spent all my days looking only at her…
And in the evening, my two eyes, closed like two arms,
Carried her off, for my night, to the depths of their pupil…
Ah! the gaze does everything, when the heart dares not!
The gaze, that daredevil and coward, in its fevers,
Sculpts the beloved body beneath the dress, apart…
Our heart, our two hands, and above all our two lips,
We put them in a gaze!
But one day I put them elsewhere… and in my life,
A thunderbolt received has never smoked longer!
It was when she said to me: “Cousin, I beg you…”
For we were both familiar and related;
For this first love, whose mark remains on us
Like the notch, alas! of the yoke remains on the neck,
It seems the Devil mixes in a taste of incest
So that it be more drunk and more mad!
And it was an: “I want!” that “I beg you!
Let’s go see the horse you’re training for me…”
She entered boldly into the tall stable,
And I, I followed her there, troubled by a vague dread…
We were alone; the place was large and full of shadow,
And the horse, saddled as if for a departure,
Eager at the manger, pawed in the half-light…
– My two lips in my gaze
Clung to her body, – her body, my frenzy!
Stopped before me, arched, voluptuous,
Who did not suspect that I was exhausting my life
On its contours, clutched and devoured by my eyes!
She had from the morning her white and green dress,
And her head was bare, and her strong black hair
Twisted, packed, smoothed without a single loose curl,
Had gleams of mirrors!
She turned around: “My cousin,” she said to me
Simply, – in that tone that does us so much harm!
“You are not strong enough to put me in the saddle?…”
I did not answer, – but put her on horseback
In a single bound!… with the swiftness of a dream,
And, encircling her knees with my frantic arms,
I said to her, intoxicated by the burden I lift:
“Why do you not weigh more?”
For one never has too much of the woman one loves
On one’s heart, – in one’s arms, – everywhere, – and one would wish
Often to die swooning… swooning under the very weight
Of this body, dense and warm, that would crush us!
I still held her under her knees; – the saddle
Had received this weight that made me jealous of it,
And I looked at her, in my intoxication with her,
My mouth grazing her knees;
My mouth that was drying up with desire, mad, avid…
But She, indifferent in her tranquility,
Held dreamily the reins of the bridle,
Superb Callipyge, seated sideways! –
Falling on me from above, overturning their flame,
Her dark eyes, heavily covered by her lowered dark lashes,
Burned me to the blood, to the bones, to the soul,
Without my crying out to them: “Enough!”
And desire, martyr at once and delight,
Covered me with its long interrupted shivers;
And I then felt that strange torment
Of the man who can do everything… and yet can do no more!
From holding on my arms her rounded thigh,
My head was going, – spinning, – I was mad!
And I dared to plant on her a kiss… of fire
On the roundness of her knee!
And that kiss made her cry out like a flame
That had bitten her in the heart, the breast, the flank, everywhere!
And that kiss fallen on a woman’s knee
Veiled by the dress, then that cry… that was all!
That was all that day. – Rigid on her saddle,
She had taken my forehead and had pushed away
With her tranquil hands, that forehead, that forehead full of her,
A rebel she had tamed!
And that was all since then, – and always. Our life
Went off branching along different paths.
Perhaps she forgot, that instant of madness,
When seeing her thus turned my soul upside down!
She forgot. I, no. And none of those women
Who, since, have best thrown their arms around my neck,
Tore from my lip, with their flaming lip,
The impression of that knee!
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-thirteen-years-old-jules-barbey-d-aurevilly/