Part 22 (1/2)
_Inepuisable quits de sottise et de fautes!
De l'antique douleur eternel alambic!
A travers le treillis recourbe de tes cotes Je vois, errant encor, l'insatiable aspic._
_Pour dire vrai, je crains que ta coquetterie Ne trouve pas un prix digne de ses efforts; Qui, de ces soeurs mortels, entend la raillerie?
Les charmes de l'horreur n'enivrent que les forts!_
_Le gouffre de tes yeux, plein d'horrible pensees, Exhale le vertige, et les danseurs prudents Ne contempleront pas sans d'ameres nausees Le sourire eternel de tes trente-deux dents._
_Pourtant, qui n'a serre dans ses bras un squelette, Et qui ne s'est nourri des choses du tombeau?
Qu'importe le parfum, l'habit ou la toilette?
Qui fait le degoute montre qu'il se croit beau._
_Bayadere sans nez, irresistible gouge, Dis donc a ces danseurs qui font les offusques: 'Fiers mignons, malgre l'art des poudres et du rouge, Vous sentez tous la mort!' O squelettes musques._
_Antinous fletris, dandys a face glabre, Cadavres vernisses, lovelaces chenus, Le branle universel de la danse macabre Vous entraine en des lieux qui ne sont pas connus!_
_Des quais froids de la Seine aux bords brulants du Gange, Le troupeau mortel saute et se pame, sans voir, Dans un trou du plafond la trompette de l'Ange Sinistrement beante ainsi qu'un tromblon noir._
_En tout climat, sous ton soleil, la Mort t'admire En tes contorsions, risible Humanite, Et souvent, comme toi, se parfumant de myrrhe, Mele son ironie a ton insanite!_”
The French poem lacks the simplicity and the directness of its English fellow. It appears overloaded and artificial in comparison, and above all it lacks the music which results from the juxtaposition of the Anglo-Saxon a, e, i, and u sounds, and the Latin ahs and ohs.
But, on the other hand, as an example of the precious and artificial in literature, a further poem of Wilde's written at this period, ”The Sphinx,” reveals another phase of his extraordinarily versatile genius.
The metre of the poem is the same as that of ”In Memoriam,” though, owing to the stanzas being arranged in two long lines instead of the fairly short ones in Tennyson's poem, this might at first escape attention. The poet at the time of writing we learn had
”hardly seen Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn's gaudy liveries.”
(which would seem to indicate that this part, at any rate, was written at an earlier period than the rest of the poem), and in the very first lines he tells us that--
”In a dim corner of my rooms far longer than my fancy thinks A beautiful and silent sphinx has watched me through the silent gloom.”
Day and night--
”this curious cat Lies crouching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold.”
Here we have in a very few words an exact picture of this ”exquisite grotesque half-woman and half-animal,” whom, after the manner of Edgar Allan Poe with his raven, he proceeds to apostrophise--
”Oh tell me” [he begins] ”were you standing by when Isis to Osiris knelt?
And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union for Antony?”
and plies her with many questions of similar nature. Presently he adjures her--
”Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cus.h.i.+ons where one sinks!
Fawn at my feet, Sphinx! and sing me all your memories.”
This idea of comparing the velvet depths of the eyes to ”cus.h.i.+ons where one sinks” is quaint and original, though distinctly decadent, nor is the note of the _macabre_ wanting, as--
”When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning mandragores.”