A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult (48 page)

The old lumber of poetics played a great part in my alchemy of the word.

To hallucination pure and simple I became habituated. In the place of a factory I saw a mosque; I saw a school for drummers made by angels, coaches on the roads of heaven, a drawing room at the bottom of a lake. The very title of a vaudeville raised up terrors before me.

Then I explained my magic sophisms by the hallucination of words.

I ended up by finding the disorder of my mind sacred. I became idle, a prey to heavy fever: I envied the blissfulness of the animals - the caterpillars, who represent the innocence of limbo, and the moles, the repose of virginity!

My character became embittered. In songs of sorts I said farewell to the world:

The Song of the Highest Tower

I adored the desert, sunburnt orchards, tarnished shops, lukewarm drinks. I loafed in stinking lanes, and with closed eyes offered myself to the god of fire - the Sun.

"General, if an old cannon on thy ruined ramparts remains, bombard us with blocks of dry earth. The plate-glass windows of splendid shops! And the drawing rooms! Make the town eat dust. Oxidize the gargoyles. Fill the boudoirs with the power of burning rubies ..

Oh! gnat intoxicated in the village urinal, enamoured with borage, and whose destruction comes with a ray!

Hunger

At last - 0 happiness, 0 reason - I dispelled the dark azure from the sky, and lived - a golden spark of light and nature. Joyfully, I assumed an expression as ludicrous and deluded as can be: