{"id":56,"date":"2010-11-19T18:19:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/?p=56"},"modified":"2010-11-19T18:19:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:19:16","slug":"charenton-in-1810-1861","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/2010\/56\/poems\/charenton-in-1810-1861\/","title":{"rendered":"Charenton in 1810. (1861)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Algernon Swinburne<\/em><\/p>\n

In days now past there lived an adamant old man;
\nHis brow was calm, his eye unflinching: Death trembled
\nAt the sight of him, vanquished by his satyr-gaze;
\nAnd Pain, that gnaws and gnashes, grinding with steel teeth,
\nSquirmed beneath his foot like a whipped, whimpering dog.
\nNow and then from his swelling heart a word or two
\nBurst forth, corrosive, cynical, appalling;
\nThe whole world bowed before this aged colossus,
\nHate along with Love, Evil along with Goodness:
\nTo see him laugh and dream was to know that nothing –
\nNot Desire, whose sparkling eye bedazzles,
\nNot Man who roars, not God who trumpets and thunders,
\nNot frightful Virtue, scourge of the embittered heart –
\nCould cause the slightest lifting of his ancient brow.
\nHe saw the world as vast, vacant, and unchanging;
\nGomorrah bathed him in the light of its red fires,
\nAnd all of vicious Capri blazed before his eyes;
\nHe ponders; and seems to hold in the hollow of his hand
\nThat great lost age, now faded into ghostly mist;
\nSporus, blood-soaked, in bed with Elagabalus,
\nAnd pleasure hidden within the deepest horror,
\nAnd the hideous baths of that grim emperor
\nWho forced ravished little children and weeping girls
\nTo nibble his naked flesh like frightened minnows
\nAnd picked the fairest boys to prick and suck their blood;
\nThe succubus who prowls and laughs among the tombs;
\nSemiramis swooning, pleasured in the stable;
\nAnd Lust dining next to Murder at the table;
\nAnd savage Sappho, fire racing through her body;
\nAnd the abyss: and love, lawless and unbridled,
\nThat thing a lewd faun hides beneath his garments;
\nAnd the queen, beast-besotted in her appetites,
\nPanting in ecstasies of monstrous, sweet delight,
\nMother of the Minotaur and Phaedra’s sister;
\nAnd dread Venus of Aphaca, nature’s monster;
\nAll the blazing fires with all the vile rottenness;
\nAnd Retz, inhaling ashes redolent of flesh
\nAnd smoke of roasting corpses, wafted in the breeze;
\nCinyras debauched, lying on his daughter’s breast;
\nAll that arouses, resonates, thrills, and explodes;
\nThe earth inflamed, a monster at feverish sport;
\nThe heavens, a whorehouse painted bawdy blue
\nIn which a phallic God lets loose, spurting and gushing,
\nHis metallic juices erupting in torrents;
\nWhere the moon cruises, hunting for satisfaction;
\nWhere the mighty sun penetrates with brazen rays
\nAnd, hot and naked, shamelessly, ceaselessly spills
\nThe surging flood of his prodigious blood-red seed;
\n(For sunbeams defile; the dark side of heaven
\nIs the foul, putrid bowel of the universe);
\nWith a deep and wild look, he paced; and all
\nSodom Sprang to life, dreamed its dreams, burned, and shrieked within him.<\/p>\n

He belonged to a golden age, to ancient gods;
\nHis presence struck sparks of fascinated terror;
\nHis massive jaw hinted at enormous appetites;
\nHe had an air of glorious, satanic boldness;
\nWhen he kissed, he wanted blood; he was voracious;
\nHis wolfish smile gleamed, a gaping, dazzling rictus;
\nHis hot breath blew like a desert wind, furious;
\nHe called to mind Priapus in the garden shade
\nGnawing his nymph’s bronzed nape with his beautiful teeth
\nThis was the Infinite’s vicious younger brother.<\/p>\n

Furrowing his brow, he saw his past come alive,
\nThe Marseilles saturnalia spiced with Spanish fly,
\nThe lair in Arcueil, unguents, and the keen knife
\nHe used for slicing open naked, living flesh.<\/p>\n

A bitter, cold contempt swelled his turbulent breast.
\nThe Empire had caught him in its filthy clutches;
\nYet, though imprisoned, he smiled. He had his own gods.
\nHe saw and understood it all; nothing surprised him.
\nA fierce hunger stirred in the soul’s depths of a man
\nGreater than Bonaparte, greater than anyone.<\/p>\n

Now, one night a youth – he was only twenty-two
\nSaw that pale, proud face, the crown of silvery hair,
\nThose dark eyes and the cunning, imperious mouth;
\nThe young man trembled. That night he was reading Justine;
\nAs if in prayer, he looked upward, lifting his gaze
\nFrom the forbidden page to the smiling old man.
\nAwestruck and amazed, he asked, “Who is standing there?
\nWhat sort of man is he? I’d like to know his name.
\nHis face, the movements of his hand, bring to mind
\nThe splendid, sportive wantonness of ancient Rome;
\nAll the great ones, immortalized in infamy,
\nWho played the husband to women and the wife to men;
\nAll the bedazzlement within the deepest nights;
\nThe gutted gladiator, naked in the ring,
\nHis neck crushed beneath the heel of an emperor
\nWhose beardless lips brush a eunuch’s downy cheek;
\nAll that nature abhors and that a jealous God,
\nCraven and envious, drowns in a sea of fire;
\nAnd all that rises again, hidden from His ire;
\nAll that Socrates dreamed and Tiberius wrought;
\nThe lewd, salacious teat on which the whole world sucks,
\nAnd the roadside signal silently acknowledged;
\nThe tricks a roving satyr liked to teach the shepherd,
\nAnd all that deadly virtue castrates and crushes;
\nThe sounds one hears at night; whinnying and roaring;
\nAnd all that flows out in streams and all that glitters;
\nThe unconquerable man, his lordly spirit all aglow,
\nWho grabs God by the ear, calling him ‘old fellow’,
\nContemplates eternity and snaps his fingers;
\nWho holds quivering virtue sobbing in his hands;
\nAnd the dark blood spurting hot; and hidden alcoves;
\nAnd shameless women, beautifully disgusting;
\nAnd the laughter of the man sharpening his teeth
\nOn smooth, pearl-white shoulders and hot; heaving breasts.
\nAll these thoughts come and go, revealed in his bright eyes,
\nAnd in the curling of his lascivious mouth.
\nWho are you, then, old man? Whence come you? What gave you
\nThe mournful air of a silent, beckoning god?
\nWhat superhuman hand placed that arrogant smile
\nOn your pale and haughty lips? What is the meaning
\nOf the flame burning in the black depths of your eyes
\nLike lightning flashing in the night, enlivening
\nThe drab face of things with bursts of radiant gold?’<\/p>\n

“My child”, the old man replied, “I am called de Sade.”<\/p>\n

Translated by Elisabeth Gitter. Published in TLS 2003.10.10<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Algernon Swinburne In days now past there lived an adamant old man; His brow was calm, his eye unflinching: Death trembled At the sight of him, vanquished by his satyr-gaze; And Pain, that gnaws and gnashes, grinding with steel teeth, Squirmed beneath his foot like a whipped, whimpering dog. Now and then from his […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}