Une Saison en Enfer

 

Long ago, if my memory serves, life was a feast where every heart was open, where every wine flowed.
    One night, I sat Beauty on my knee. — And I found her bitter. — And I hurt her.
    I took arms against justice.
    I fled, entrusting my treasure to you, o witches, o misery, o hate.
    I snuffed any hint of human hope from my consciousness. I made the muffled leap of a wild beast onto any hint of joy, to strangle it.
    Dying, I called my executioners over so I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called plagues to suffocate me with sand, blood. Misfortune was my god. I lay in the mud. I withered in criminal air. And I even tricked madness more than once.
    And spring left me with an idiot's unbearable laughter.
    Just now, having nearly reached death's door, I thought about seeking the key to the old feast, through which, perhaps, I might regain my appetite.
    Charity is the key. — Such an inspiration proves I was dreaming!
    "A hyena you'll remain, etc...." cries the demon that crowns me with merry poppies. "Make for death with every appetite intact, with your egotism, and every capital sin."
    Ah. It seems I have too many already: — But, dear Satan, I beg you not to look at me that way, and while you await a few belated cowardices — you who so delight in a writer's inability to describe or inform — watch me tear a few terrible leaves from my book of the damned.

from "A Season in Hell", by Arthur Rimbaud