Yes, Time reigns; Time has
regained
his brutal mastery.
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
Minutes are no more; seconds are no more.
Time has vanished, and
Eternity reigns--an Eternity of delight.
A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a
hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a
mattock.
Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the
name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to
add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the
errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a
manuscript.
The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as
the great Rene said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking
of the Spectre.
Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of
eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture,
dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the
sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the
manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days
marked off with a pencil!
And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a
so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of
stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness.
Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation.
In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar
object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like
all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries.
Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the
hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories,
Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves.
I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now;
and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable,
implacable Life! "
There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good
news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye.
Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me,
as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat,
then, thou slave! Live on, thou damned! "
AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and
tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several
hours at least. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I
shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh
myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the
lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude
and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.
A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the
day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he
could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was
an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a
review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable
people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a
knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me;
and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the
precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time,
during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a
costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said:
"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest,
foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you
will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have
boasted (why?
Eternity reigns--an Eternity of delight.
A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a
hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a
mattock.
Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the
name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to
add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the
errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a
manuscript.
The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as
the great Rene said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking
of the Spectre.
Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of
eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture,
dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the
sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the
manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days
marked off with a pencil!
And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a
so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of
stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness.
Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation.
In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar
object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like
all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries.
Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the
hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories,
Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves.
I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now;
and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable,
implacable Life! "
There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good
news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye.
Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me,
as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat,
then, thou slave! Live on, thou damned! "
AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and
tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several
hours at least. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I
shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh
myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the
lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude
and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.
A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the
day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he
could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was
an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a
review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable
people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a
knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me;
and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the
precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time,
during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a
costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said:
"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest,
foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you
will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have
boasted (why?
