1. “Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be, contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man's longing for the infinite; but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route.... It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this depravation of the sense of the infinite.”
2. “Are they blue, gray or green? Mysterious eyes(as if in fact you were looking through a mist)in alternation tender, dreamy, grimto match the shiftless pallor of the sky.That's what you're like- these warm white afternoonswhich make the ravished heart dissolve in tears,the nerves, inexplicably overwrought,outrage the dozen mind.Not always, though-sometimesyou're like the horizon when the sunignites our cloudy autumn-how you glow!A sodden countryside in sudden rout,turned incandescent by a changing wind.Dangerous woman-demoralizing days!Will I adore your killing frost as much,and in that implacable winter, when it comes,discover pleasures sharper than iron and ice? “
3. “Conceive me as a dream of stone:my breast, where mortals come to grief,is made to prompt all poets' love,mute and noble as matter itself.With snow for flesh, with ice for heart,I sit on high, an unguessed sphinxbegrudging acts that alter forms;I never laugh, I never weep.In studious awe the poets broodbefore my monumental poseaped from the proudest pedestal,and to bind these docile lovers fastI freeze the world in a perfect mirror:The timeless light of my wide eyes.”
4. “Do you come from on high or out of the abyss,O Beauty? Godless yet divine, your gazeindifferently showers favor and shame,and yet some have likened you to wine. Your eyes reflect the sunset and the dawn;your scatter perfumes like a windy night;your kisses are a drug, your mouth the urndispensing fear to heroes, fervor to boys. Whether spawned by hell or sprung from the stars,Fate like a spaniel follows at your heel;you sow haphazard fortune and despair,ruling all things, responsible for none. You walk on corpses, Beauty, undismayed,and Horror coruscates among your gems;Murder, one of your dearest trinkets, throbson your shameless belly: make it dance! Dazzled, the dayfly flutters round your wick,crackles, flares, and cries: I bless this torch!The pining lover for his lady swoonslike a dying man adoring his own tomb. Who cares if you come from paradise or hell,appalling Beauty, artless and monstrous scourge,if only your eyes, your smile or your foot revealthe Infinite I love and have never known? Come from Satan, come from God - who cares,Angel or siren, rhythm, fragrance, light,provided you transform - O my one queen!This hideous universe, this heavy hour? “
5. “Even when she walks she seems to dance!Her garments writhe and glisten like long snakesobedient to the rhythm of the wandsby which a fakir wakens them to grace. Like both the desert and the desert skyinsensible to human suffering,and like the ocean's endless labyrinthshe shows her body with indifference. Precious minerals are her polished eyes,and in her strange symbolic natureangel and sphinx unite,where diamonds, gold, and steel dissolve into one light,shining forever, useless as a star,the sterile woman's icy majesty.”
6. “I am like the king of a rainy countryRich, and yet powerless, young and yet most oldWho, distrustful of the bows his tutors makeSits bored among his dogs as with his other beastsNothing can lift his spirits, neither hawk nor gameThe dying subjects gathered to his balcony.The grotesque ballad of his best-loved foolNo more distracts him in this sickness cruel.His lilied bed is changed into a tomb;The ladies of his court all lords might loveAnd yet they can no longer find shameless attireTo draw a smile from their young, wasted sire.The alchemist who made him gold could notPurge from his soul this corrupt elementAnd in a blood bath, as in ancient Rome,Remembered by the mighty in their latter daysKnew not to warm this dazzled corpseWhere flows not blood but Lethe's waters green.”
7. ”I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.”
8. ´I prize the memory of the naked ageswhen Apollo relished gilding marble limbswhose agile-fleshed originals achievedwith neither ecstasy, fraud nor fearand was nursed by companionable sky,enjoying the health of a sublime machine.Cybele than, abundant in her yield,did not regard her sons as burdensome,but, tender-hearted she-wolf, graciouslysuckled the universe as her brown dugs.Lithe and powerful, a man deservedhis pride in beauties who called him their king-flawless fruit engendered without shame,whose ripened flash asked only to be tried!Today the poet eager to recallsuch human splendor, when visiting the siteswhere men and women show their nakednessmust feel a cold revulsion in his soulat the display of flesh he contemplates.How these deformities cry out for clothes!-wretched bodies, regular grotesques,runty, paunchy, flabby, scrawny, lame,brats whom Utility, a pitiless god,has swaddled in his brazen diapers!Look at the women - pale as tallow, gnawedand nourished by debauch - the girls who bearthe burden of their mothers' vice or wearthe hideous stigmas of fecundity!True, in our corruption we possessbeauties unrevealed to ancient times:countenances cankered by the heartand, so to speak, the charm of listlessness;but subtle thought they are, such artifactsof a belated muse will never keepour sickly race from offering to youthits truest homage; youth we worship still,its frank expression, its untroubled brow,its eyes as bright as water; sacred youththat shares - unconscious as a singing bird,a flower, or the blue sky's radiance -its song, its scent, its irresistible warmth!”
9. “It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.”
10. "It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten."
11. “Love is seated on the skull Of Humanity,And on this profane throne, With an impudent laugh,Gaily blows round bubbles That rise in the air,As if they wished to rejoin the worlds In the depths of the ether.”
12. "Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes utter confused words. Man walks through it among forests of symbols, which watch him with knowingeyes."
13. ”Now is the time to get drunk! To stop being the martyred slaves of time, to get absolutely drunk - on wine, poetry, or on virtue, as you please.”
14. “Stupidity, delusion, selfishness and lusttorment our bodies and possess our minds,and we sustain our affable remorsethe way a beggar nourishes his liceOur sins are stubborn, our contrition lame;we want our scruples to be worth our while-how cheerfully we crawl back to the mire:with few cheap tears washing our stains away!Satan Trismegistus subtly rocksour ravished spirits on his wicked beduntil the precious metal of our willis leached out by this cunning alchemist:the Devil's hand directs our every move-the things we loathed become the things we love:day by day we drop though stinking shadesquite undeterred on our descent to Hell!Like a poor profligate who sucks and bitesthe withered breasts of some well-seasoned troll,we snatch in passing at clandestine joysand squeeze the oldest orange harder yet.Wriggling in our brains like a million worms,a demon demos holds its revels there,and when we breathe, the Lethe in our lungstrickles sighing on its secret course.If rape and arson, poison and the knifehave not yet stitched their ludicrous designsonto the banal buckram of our fates,it is because our souls lack enterprise!But here among the scorpions and the hounds,the jackals, apes and vultures, snakes and wolves,monsters that howl and growl and squeal and crawl,in all the squalid zoo of vices,one is even uglier and fouler than the rest,although the least flamboyant of the lot;this beast would gladly undermine the earth.”
15. “The beloved was naked, and knowing my heart,had retained only her vibrant jewels,whose pageantry gave to her a rich and conquering airsuch as belonged, on langorous days, to Moorish concubines. This world radiant of metal and rockravishes me, and when its brightand mocking noise leaps in dance, I madly lovethose things in which sound is mixed with light. She lay thus, abandoned to love,and from the height of the couch, smiledcarelessly at my ardor that rose, deep and fragrant as the sea,mounting toward her as toward a pale cliff. Eyeing me like a tamed tiger,she posed with a vague and dreamy air,and candor, being joined to shamelessness,gave fresh charm to all her metamorphoses. Polished with oil, undulant like a swan,arm and leg, thigh and loinspassed before my serene and clairvoyant eyes;while her belly and breasts, fruits of my vine, Hovered, more seductive than Fallen Angels,to trouble the repose in which my soul lay,and to lure it from the crystal rock where,calm and solitary, it had been enthroned. I thought I saw the hips of Antiopejoined by a new design to a boyish torso,so that her figure thrust forth its pelvis--how superb the rouge on this brown and tawny complexion! --The lamp had resigned itself to dying.The hearth alone illuminated the room,and each time it heaved forth a flaming sigh,flooded her amber skin with blood!”
16. “Theory of the true civilization. It is not to be found in gas or steam or table turning. It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin.”
17. “Though your wicked eyebrows callYour nature into question(Unangelic's their suggestion,Witch whose eyes enthrall)> I adore you still -O foolish terrible emotion -Kneeling in devotionAs a priest to his idol will. Your undone braids concealDesert, forest scents:In your exotic countenanceLie secrets unrevealed. Over your flesh perfume driftsLike incense 'round a censor:Tantalizing dispenserOf evening's ardent gifts. No Philtres could competeWith your potent idleness:You've mastered the caressThat raises dead me to their feet. Your hips themselves are romancedBy your back and by your breasts:By your languid dalliance. Now and then, your appetite'sUncontrolled, unassuaged:Mysteriously enraged,You kiss me and you bite. Dark one, I am tornBy your savage ways,Then, soft as the moon, your gazeSees my tortured heart reborn. Beneath your satin shoe,Beneath your charming silken foot.My greatest joy I putMy genius and destiny, too. You bring my spirit back,Bringer of the light.Exploding color in the nightOf my Siberia so black.”
18. ”Today I felt pass over meA breath of wind from the wings of madness.”
19. “To the most lovely, the most dear,The Angel, and the deathless grailWho fill my heart with radiance clear -In immortality all hail.”
20. “We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.”
21. ”Your eyes are the cistern where my troubles drink.”
