Out-idling the sleepy toad, I have lived everywhere. Criminals are as disgusting as men without balls: I’m intact, and I don’t care.īut! who has made my tongue so treacherous, that until now it has counseled and kept me in idleness? I have not used even my body to get along. – What a century for hands! – I’ll never learn to use my hands. The hand that holds the pen is as good as the one that holds the plow. Bosses and workers, all of them peasants, and common. I have a horror of all trades and crafts. The Gauls were the most stupid hide-flayers and hay-burners of their time.įrom them, I inherit: idolatry, and love of sacrelige – oh! all sorts of vice, anger, lechery, – terrific stuff, lechery – lying, above all, and laziness. I think my clothes are as barbaric as theirs. “Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins.”Īh! I’ve taken too much of that: – still, dear Satan, don’t look so annoyed, I beg you! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul.įrom my ancestors the Gauls I have pale blue eyes, a narrow brain, and awkwardness in competition. “You will stay a hyena, etc…,” shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again. I have played the fool to the point of madness.Īnd springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. I have called for executioners I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy. I have withered within me all human hope. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care! One evening I took Beauty in my arms – and I thought her bitter – and I insulted her.
Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.
Arthur Rimbaud – “A Season in Hell” (1873)
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