Fragments du Narcisse. Fragments of Narcissus

FRAGMENTS FROM NARCISSUS

I

HOW you glimmer at the last, pure end of my days!

This evening, like a stag's, the flight towards the source Ceases not till it falls in the midst of the reeds, My craving brings me down to the same water's edge. But, for quenching the thirst of this curious love, I will not agitate the mysterious waves: O Nymphs! if you love me, you forever must sleep! The least soul in the air can still make you tremble; Even, in its weakness, from the shadows escaped, If the leaf's frantic flight lightly touches the pond, That would suffice to break a sleeping universe ... Your sleep is of importance to my enchantment, It fears even the shudder of a feather's fall! Guard well for me and long this visage for a dream Conceivable alone to an absence divine! Sleep of the nymphs, the sky, never cease to see me!

Dream, dream of me!... Without you, O lovely fountains, My beauty, my sorrow, would for me be doubtful things. I would seek out in vain that which I hold most dear, Its confused tenderness would astonish my flesh, And my sorrowful looks, unaware of my charms, To others that myself would offer up their tears ...

You are waiting, perhaps, for a face without tears, You calm ones, you always with leaves and with flowers, And from incorruptible heights you have haunted, O Nymphs!... But docile to the slopes thus enchanted Where towards you I made such invincible paths, Suffer this lovely glimpse of human disorders! Cur aliquid vidi?

Happy your shifting forms, Waters plain and profound! I am alone!... If the Gods, the echoes and the waves And if so many sighs permit it well and good! Alone!... but still the one who draws near to himself When he draws near the banks this foliage blesses ...

From summits, winds already end the pure plunder; The waters' voice changes, and speaks of the evening; A great calm attends me, where I listen for hope. I hear night grasses grow in the holy shadow, And the deceitful moon elevates her mirror Even to the secrets of the dried up fountain ... Even to the secrets which I fear to find out, Even to the sanctum of the love of oneself, Nothing from the silence of the evening can escape ... The night upon my flesh comes with breath that I love. Its fresh voice cause my vows to tremble with consent; Except that, in the breeze, it would appear to lie, So much the quivering of its wordless temple Conspires with the silence of so spacious a site.

O sweetness of surviving the strength of the day, When it withdraws at last blushing rose as with love, Still burning a little, and weary, but fulfilled, And with so many treasures tenderly weighed down Of which such memories render crimson its death, And by these made happy it kneels down in the gold, Then spreads out, merges with, loses its precious wine, And fades into a dream which the evening will change.

What loss in oneself offered by so calm a place! The soul, about to die, bends down to a God Which it asks of the wave, now deserted, and worthy In its lustre, of the smooth effacement of a swan ...

No flocks and no herds at these waters ever drank! Of others, straying here, you might find the repose, And in the sombre earth, a bright opening tomb ... But this is not the calm, alas! which I have found! When the opaque delight where this clarity sleeps Yields up to my body the horror of lonely leaves, Then, victor of the shade, O my tyrannous body, Pushing back to the woods their panicky blackness,

You regret all too soon their everlasting night! For restless Narcissus, here is only ennui! All calls to me and chains me to the luminous flesh Which is offered to me by the waters' dizzy peace!

How I lament your splendour fatal and pure, So languidly of me, encompassing fountain, Where my eyes have drawn up from a mortal azure, The same eyes and despairs of their astonished soul!

Profundity, profundity, dreams which see me, As they would see another life, Tell me, am I not the one you think that I am, For your own body do you crave?

Cease then, sombre spirits, this anxious piece of work Which you make in the soul that wakes; Seek not in yourselves, nor to catch out in the skies Misfortune's marvellous being: Finding in the fountain so delicious a body ...

Taking in with your glances this absolute victim, A captive do you make of the monster you love; In the wandering nets of your long silken lashes Its radiant grace makes your own again pensive;

But flatter yourself not with the change of dominion.

This crystal is its true abode;

The struggles the same as of love! Know you not that the wave from your breath draws no worse ...

WORSE.

Worse?...

Someone keeps saying Worse ... O mockery! Far echo is prompt to give back its oracle Of enchanted laughter, the rock crushes my heart, And the silence, by some miracle, Ceases!... speaks, comes again, on the face of the waters ... Worse?...

A destiny worse!... You sound it, among the reeds, While again the winds take up my restless complaint! Caves, which give back to me my soul more profoundly,

There blows from out your darkness a voice that dies away ... You murmur it to me, you branches!... O rumour Heartbreaking, and docile to the gusts from nowhere, Your faint gold is tossing, and plays with the augury ... All mingle themselves in me, brutish divinities! My secrets in the breeze sound their own disclosures, The rock laughs; the tree weeps; and by its charming voice, I even to the skies can then only lament Being easily one with eternal attractions! Alas! between the arms to which the forests give birth, An ambiguous hour's tender glow exists ... There, the last of the day, itself forms a bridegroom, Nude, on the pale place where the sad water lures, Delicious demon desirable and icy!

You are here, my smooth body of moonlight and dew, O form obedient and opposite my eyes! They are comely, the gifts of my arms vast and vain! My hands lingering, in the lovely gold grow weary Of calling this captive whom the leaves interlace; My heart throws forth to echoes the flash of names divine!...

But that your mouth is fair and this silent blasphemy!

O my likeness!... And yet more perfect than myself, Ephemeral immortal, so bright before my eyes, Limbs as pale as a pearl, and this fine silky hair, Must we scarcely know love, when the shadows descend, And the night already divides us, O Narcissus, And slides between us two like a blade cutting fruit! Where are you?

Is my moan itself mortal?... The murmur Which I breathe forth to teach to your lips, my double, Hastens but to blur and to trouble the limpid wave!... You tremble!... But these words which I exhale on my knees Are but those of a soul still hesitant between us, Between this brow so pure and my heavy memory ... I am so close to you that I can drink you in, O visage!... My thirst is that of a naked slave ...

Until this charming time I was strange to myself, And knew not how to love or be loved and made one!

But to see you, dearest slave, responding to the least Of the shadows in my heart which vanish with regret, See on my brow the rage and fires of a secret, See, O marvellous, see! my mouth's finely nuanced Betrayal ... painted on the wave a flower of thought, And what occurrences sparkling in the eye! I find here such a treasure of weakness and of pride, That no infant virgin in flight from a satyr, None! of clever escapes, of falls without commotion, None of the nymphs, no friend, nothing can entice me As you do on the wave, inexhaustible Self!...

II

O fountain, my fountain, water coldly present, Sweet to pure animals, to humans obliging Who are tempted themselves at the bottom to find death, All is a dream to you, tranquil Sister of Fate! Only in memory are you changed to a portent, Which likewise ceaselessly seeks out its fleeting face, As soon as you from sleep are ravished by the skies! But pure as you are to the creatures you have seen, Wave, upon which the years pass over as the clouds, Yet in you all the same most things wish to be known, Stars, roses, the seasons, the body and its loves!

So clear, but so profound, a nymph who has always Touched lightly, and living to all those who approach, Nourished by some wisdom in the shelter of her rock, By shadows of the day which she paints beneath the woods, She understands forever the things that are past ...

O reflective presence, calm water which collects All the sombre treasure of fables and of leaves, The dead bird, the ripe fruit, as slowly they descend, And the rare glimmering of bright rings that are lost. You consummate so solemnly their loss in yourself; But, upon the purity of your eternal face, Love passing and dying ...

When the scattered foliage Trembles, and starts to flee, moaning from all around, You see such sombre love there mingled with the storm, The lover hot and hard taking the pale beloved, Vanquishing the soul ... And you know with what sweetness The potent hand passes through the thickness of hair Whose tresses lie scattered upon the precious nape, To rest there, sensing its own strength and mystery; It calls at the shoulder and reigns over the flesh.

Then the eyes shut off from the breath of eternity Seeing only the blood which gilds their lowered lids; Redoubtable crimson to obscure the lights

Of a couple adrift who have mingled, and lied. They groan ... The Earth itself seems softly to summon These great faltering bodies, who struggle mouth to mouth, And who, daring to make of virgin sands their bed, Will compose out of their love a monster that dies ... Their breaths can make no more than a happy murmur, The soul thinks it breathes in the soul so close to it, But you know better than I, venerable fountain, What fruits are always formed of these enchanted moments!

For, no sooner are hearts at peace and contented As an ardent union expires in delights, Than you mirror the spite of lovers when parted, You see the days dawning which are shot through with lies, And born countless evils too tenderly conceived!

All too soon, my wise wave, unfaithful and the same, Time leads these lunatics who believed that they loved To repeat to your reeds the deepest of their sighs! Towards you, their sad steps follow their memories ...

To your banks, by shadows and by weakness overwhelmed, Bedazzled by a sky whose beauty still can wound So much it guards the brightness of their loveliest days, They go only to find their lost goods all entombed ... «This place in the shadow was tranquil and our own!» «The other loved this cypress, each other's heart's say», «And from here, we can savour the breath of the sea!» Alas! the very rose is bitter in the air ... Less bitter the perfumes of the smoke cloud supreme Abandoned to the wind by the leaves that are burnt!...

They inhale this same wind, walking without knowing, Trampling underfoot the daytime of their despair ... O walk slowly, swiftly, and resemble the thoughts Which speak as they circle the heads of the insane!

The caress and the kill in their hands hesitate, Their heart, which thinks it breaks at each bend of the road, Struggles, and for itself gains the hope to which it clings. But their lost spirits race through this labyrinth of now Where the one goes astray who has cursed at the sun! Their insane solitude, which is equal to sleep, Fills and beguiles the absence; and their innermost ear Everywhere hears a voice that is nowhere the same. Nothing then can dissipate their absolute dreams;

The sun is as nothing against that which is no more! But they trail in the gold their dry and doleful eyes, They are conscious of the tears defending their darkness Dearer to them always than all the fires of day! And in this body hiding every mark of the love Which is bitterly borne by the soul that was happy, Burns a secret kiss which is furiously returned ...

But me, loved by Narcissus, I am not curious Except of my own essence; Another is no more than a mysterious heart, Another only absence. O sovereign good, dear body, I have nothing but you! The loveliest of mortals can love only himself ...

Smooth and golden, is it an idol most holy, With all the forest that is wasting away, assumed, And set amid the living blue with so many birds? Is it a gift most divine which we owe the waters, Who of a day that dies can make no lovelier use Than render to my eyes the honour of my face? Come to birth then between us whom the light unites The grace and the silence of an infinite exchange!

I salute you, child of my soul and of the wave, Dear treasure of a mirror which divides the world! My tenderness comes to drink, and is drunk to see A longing in oneself to test one's own power!

O that is all my hopes, that you are just like me! But the fragility you make inviolable, You are nothing but light, the adorable half Of a love too alike for a feeble friendship!

Alas! the same nymph it is who parted our charms! What can I hope from you other than vain alarms? They are sweet the perils which we ruinously choose! One surprises oneself and by oneself is seized, Our hands are intertwined, our pains annul each other's, Our prolonged silences teach to us their own dreams, The same night when in tears they confound our closed eyes, And our arms close again on the very same sobs Embracing a like heart, ready to melt with its love ...

Quit at last the silence, dare at last to respond, Lovely and cruel Narcissus, inaccessible child, All adorned with my treasures which the nymph forbids ...

III

... This body so pure, does it know how it charms me? From what profound depth do you dream of instructing, Occupant of the abyss, so specious a guest Of a dark sky here below hurled down from the heavens?...

O the cool ornament of my sad tendency That a smile so very close, and full of confidence, When ready on my lips sees a shadow of danger Until I fear to act upon so strange a longing! What breath comes on the wave to offer your cold rose!... I love ... I love!... And how then to love something other Than oneself?...

Only you, my body, my dear body, I love you, unique object that defends me from death!

Form then, you on my lip, and me, in my silence, A prayer to the gods who are moved by so much love That upon its crimson slope they hold back the day!... Do it, happy Masters, Fathers of righteous frauds, Say that a glimmer of rose or of emerald Which from dreams of evening your sceptre revives again, Pure, and all alike to the spirit's purity, Waits, in the breast of heaven, that you live and want, Near to me, my beloved, to choose a bed of leaves, Come trembling from the flank of the cold-hearted nymph, And not quitting my eyes, not ceasing to be me, Offer me your form so fresh, and that skin so bright ... Oh! to grasp you at last!... To take that calm torso More pure than a woman's and not formed to give fruits ... But, of a simple stone is the temple where I am, Where I live ... For I live on your avaricious lips!...

O my body, dear body, temple that divides me From my divinity, I would like to appease Your mouth ... And no sooner done, I shatter, with my kiss, What little we defend of extreme existence, This tremulous, fragile, and respectful distance Between myself and the wave, and my soul, and the gods!...

Farewell ... Sense you tremble a thousand drifting farewells? Soon the shudder comes to disorder the shadows! The blind tree to the tree spreads out its sombre limbs, And fearfully searches for the tree that disappears ... My soul likewise loses its way in its own forest, Where the power escapes into its supreme forms ... The soul, the dark-eyed soul, touches the same darkness, There it becomes immense and encounters nothing ... Between death and oneself, what regard is one's own!

Gods! of the noble day, the pale and fond remains Go with days expended to join their grievous fate; It is deep in the abysm of profound memory! Alas! wretched body, it is time to unite ... You lean over ... You kiss. Tremble in all your being! The elusory love you came promising me Passes, and with a shudder, breaks Narcissus, and flees ...