Baudelaire, "La corde"

A brief tale of horror ("The rope") by this French man of letters.  You can read the original here.

To Édouard Manet
   
"Illusions," said my friend, "are perhaps as unlimited as the connections between one person and another, or between people and things. And when the illusion disappears – that is to say, when we see its being or fact as it exists outside of us – we experience a strange feeling, a complicated mix of regret for the departed ghost and surprise in face of such novelty, in face of the real. If there is one phenomenon that is evident, trivial, always likely, and of a nature from which it would be impossible to be fooled, it is maternal love: a mother without maternal love is as difficult to imagine as a light without heat. So is it then not perfectly acceptable to attribute to maternal love all a mother's actions and words that relate to her child? This notwithstanding, listen now to a little tale in which I was singularly mystified by the most natural of illusions.  

"My profession as painter routinely obliges me to pay close attention to faces and physiognomies that appear on my routes, and you know what joy we derive from our faculty to see life in more vivid and vital colors than what others perceive. In the remote quarter where I live and where vast lawns still keep each building at a distance, I often observed a child whose ardent and mischievous physiognomy attracted me more than all the others. He posed for me more than once, and I transformed the little gypsy into both an angel and the Love of mythology. I had him carry a vagabond's violin, a Crown of Thorns, the Nails of the Passion, and the Torch of Eros. From the comic oddness of this boy I took such great pleasure that one day I beseeched his parents – rather poor folk – to let me have him, promising to dress him well, to grant him an allowance, and to give him no other task apart from cleaning my paint brushes and running my errands. Scrubbed and washed, this child became charming, and the life he led at my place seemed like a paradise in comparison to what he had been subjected in his parents' hovel. Yet I have to say that this little man would sometimes surprise me with his precocious fits of melancholy and his immoderate appetite for sweets and liqueurs. And so one day when I discovered that, despite my numerous warnings, he had committed another crime of this type, I threatened to send him back to his parents. Then I left, and business kept me from home for quite a while.  

"You can imagine my horror and astonishment when I returned home only to find the little fellow, my mischievous companion through life, hanging from the side of the armoire! His feet almost touched the floor; next to him a chair undoubtedly pushed away at the last second was toppled over; his head was leaning convulsively on one shoulder; his bloated face and his eyes, open in a frightening stare, first induced the illusion of life. Getting him down from there was not as easy as you might think: he was already quite stiff, and I was overcome by an inexplicable repugnance when I let him tumble to the floor. I had to hold him up with one arm and cut the rope with the other – but once I did this, there was still more to come. The little monster had used a cord so fine as to have wedged it deep into his flesh; and now to disengage his neck I had to look for the rope between the swelling rolls of fat with a pair of small scissors.   

"I neglected to mention that I had screamed for help, yet all my neighbors had refused to come to my aid, faithful to those habits of civilized souls who never wish – I know not why – to involve themselves in the affairs of a hanged man. At length a doctor arrived who pronounced the child dead, apparently for many hours. When we later had to undress him for the burial, the rigidity of his cadaver was such that we had to slice and cut away his clothes, so unable were we to bend his limbs.

"The commissioner to whom, needless to say, I had to give a full report of the occurrence, looked askance at me and said: 'Here's a shady business!' moved, I'm certain, by an inveterate desire to scare both the innocent and the guilty without any distinction.   

"There remained one last task to which I had to attend, and the very thought of it caused me terrific angst: I had to inform his parents. My feet refused to obey my commands. Finally I mustered the courage; but, to my great surprise, his mother was impassive – not a tear oozed from the corner of her eye. I imputed this strangeness to the horror she was experiencing, and I recalled that famous phrase: 'The most terrible pain is pain unspoken.' As for the father, he resigned himself to a certain dreamy dullness: 'It might be better this way after all; he was always going to come to a bad end!'    

"All this time his body lay upon my sofa, and assisted by a serving girl, I was seeing to the final preparations when his mother entered my small apartment. She said she wanted to see the body of her son. I could not really prevent her from drowning in her misery, or refuse her this last and somber consolation. Then she asked to be shown the place where the lad hanged himself. 'Oh no, Madame,' I replied, 'this would hurt you greatly.' And then, as my eyes involuntarily turned towards that morbid armoire, I noticed with disgust mixed with horror and anger that the nail had remained wedged in the door with a long piece of rope still dangling.  I threw myself upon it to rip out the last vestiges of misery, and as I was about to cast it out the open window the poor woman seized my arm and told me in an irresistible voice: 'Oh, sir!  Let me have this!  I beg you! I implore you!' Her despair seemed to me so unhinged, so mad, that she would now express tenderness for what had brought death upon her son and now wanted to keep it like some dear and horrible relic. And here she grabbed the nail and cord.  

"At last, at last!  It was over. There was nothing more for me to do than go back to work, now with more vigor than before – if but to chase away the little corpse that haunted the creases of my brain whose ghost tired me with his large staring eyes. Yet the next day I received a package of letters: some were from the tenants, others from neighboring buildings; one was from the first floor, another from the second, a third from the third, and so forth, some in a half-pleasant style, as if wanting to cloak with jest the sincerity of the demand; others were cheeky and filled with spelling mistakes; yet all of them veered towards the same goal, that is, to obtain from me a piece of the beatific and fateful rope. Among the signatories were, I must say, more women than men; but not one of them, believe me, belonged to the petty and vulgar class. I kept the letters.

"And then it suddenly dawned on me, and I understood why his mother so wanted to rip off that cord  and with what she intended on comforting herself."

Blok, "В день холодный, в день осенний"

A work ("Upon an autumn day so cold") by this Russian poet.  You can read the original here.

Upon an autumn day so cold 
I shall return at last;
Recall sweet springtime sighs, behold
An image from the past.

I shall not cry as my steps near, 
From memories withdrawn.
Perchance I’ll meet the melodies
Of new autumnal dawn.

O baleful, wicked laws of time,  
Which soothe a spirit’s woes!
Yet erstwhile moans will never chime,  
Past howls you’ll never know.

This flame won’t burn my blinded eyes 
In a past dream’s mad flight.  
And soul allayed will realize
That day outdarkens night.

In unserer Synagoge

A short story ("In our synagogue") by this German-language writer. You can read the original as part of this collection.

In our synagogue lives an animal roughly the size of a marten. It can often be quite clearly observed and it tolerates human proximity at a distance of about two meters. Its color is a light bluish-green. No one has ever stroked its fur, so little can be said in that regard; one might even claim that the fur's natural color is unknown. Perhaps its visible color comes from accumulated dust and grout, since the color also resembles the plaster work of the synagogue's interior, only a bit lighter. Apart from its timorousness, it is an immensely calm and sedentary beast. If it did not get roused quite so often, it would hardly change position at all.  

Its favorite place to stay is near the grates to the women's section. With visible pleasure it crawls into the grates' mesh, stretches itself out, and casts its gaze down towards the prayer area. Such an audacious position seems to please the animal, yet the temple's maintenance worker is commissioned to make sure the animal is never on the grates because it would soon accustom itself to this place, which we cannot allow because of the women who are afraid of the animal. Why they are afraid of it, however, remains unclear. Admittedly, it looks rather scary upon first sight: one may find the long neck, triangular face, almost horizontally-protruding upper teeth, and the seemingly hard, light kemp-hair protruding past the teeth, a row longer than the upper lip, particularly frightening. Nevertheless, we are soon forced to conclude how obviously harmless this whole scary business is. First and foremost, the animal stays away from humans; it is shier than a forest animal, and this seems to have nothing to do with the building. In fact, its personal misfortune consists of the fact that this building is a synagogue, which means it is occasionally a very bustling and lively place. If one were able to communicate with the animal, one could at least comfort it by mentioning that our community is getting smaller and smaller with every passing year and is already struggling to secure enough money to maintain the synagogue. One cannot rule out the possibility that sooner or later a silo or something of that nature will be made out of this synagogue, and the animal will get the peace and quiet it so sorely lacks.  

It is in any case only the women who fear the animal, as the men have long since grown indifferent to it: one generation showed it to the other; again and again was it seen; and in the end, one no longer looked in its direction. Even children seeing it for the first time are no longer amazed. It has become the pet of the synagogue, and why shouldn't the synagogue have its own, unexampled pet? Were it not for the women one would hardly know of the animal's existence. Yet even the women are not really afraid of it; it would be too odd to fear such an animal, day in and day out, for years and decades. They defend their position, however, by saying that the animal is much closer to them than to the men, and this is true. The animal does not dare approach the men; no one has ever even seen it on the floor. If one didn't let it near the grates to the women's section, it would still settle at an equivalent height on the opposite wall. There one finds, hardly the width of two fingers, a narrow ledge circling three sides of the synagogue. On this ledge the animal sometimes scampers here and there; most of all, however, it sits calmly in a specific spot across from the women. It is almost inconceivable how easily it can make use of this narrow path, and the way in which it turns back around once it has reached one of the ends of the ledge is well worth seeing. It is, after all, a very old animal, yet it does not hesitate to take the most daring leaps and, what is more, it also never fails. It spins in midair then goes back the other way. Nevertheless, when one has seen this several times one is sated and no longer has any incentive to keep staring.  

It is also neither fear nor curiosity that keeps the women moving; if they stuck to their brooms a bit more they would completely forget about the animal. The pious women would do the same if the others, who happen to comprise the majority, allowed it; these others, however, like drawing attention to themselves and the animal for them is simply a welcome excuse. If they could and if they dared, they would certainly have lured the animal closer to themselves just to be able to get more frightened. But in reality the animal does not approach them at all; when it is not attacked it is as unconcerned about the women as it is about the men. It would probably prefer to remain hidden, in those places it inhabits when there are no services, in all likelihood in some hole in the wall that we have yet to discover. Only when one begins to pray does it appear, frightened by all the noise, wishing to see what has happened, wishing to remain awake, wishing to be free, able to escape, running before us out of fear, making its little capers out of fear, and not daring to retreat until the services are over. It prefers heights, of course, because there does it feel safest, and the grates and ledge offer the best opportunities to flee. Yet in no way does it stay there all the time; sometimes it climbs down, closer to the men. The curtain of the ark of the covenant is borne by a shiny brass rod that seems to attract the animal; often enough it creeps down to it but always sits there calmly. Not even when it is right beside the ark of the covenant can one say that it disturbs us, its blank, always open, perhaps even lidless eyes seem to take in the community members, without, of course, looking at anyone in particular. Instead it only stares at the dangers from which it feels threatened.

In this regard it has seemed not much more comprehensible than our women, at least until recently. What dangers does it have to fear? Who has any intention of doing anything to it? Hasn't it been left utterly to its own devices for many years? The men do not worry about its presence and the majority of the women would likely be unhappy if it were to disappear. And since it is the lone animal in the building, it also has no enemies. It should have very nearly been able to detect this fact from all its years here. And although the services and their noise may be frightening for the animal, they occur every day in such modest intervals, somewhat more often during holidays, with such regularity and always without interruption, that even the most craven of beasts would have long since grown accustomed to such services, especially when it sees they comprise not the noise of persecutors, but that which has nothing at all to do with the animal. And yet this fear. Is it the memory of things long past or the premonition of days to come? Does this old animal perhaps know more than the three generations gathered at any one time in the synagogue?

Many years ago, it is said, one would have really tried to banish the animal. This may well be true; more likely is that we are merely dealing with invented stories. What we can show, however, is that the religious point of view, that is to say, whether one should tolerate such an animal in a house of worship, was investigated at the time. The attestations of various well-known rabbis were collected, and the views were split: the majority wanted the animal's expulsion and a new consecration of the house of worship. But this was easy to declaim from a distance. In reality, of course, it was impossible to drive out the animal.  

Musset, "Se voir le plus possible ..."

A work ("To share all possible time, and to love") by this French poet.  You can read the original here.

To share all possible time, and to love 
Bereft of guile, of shame, of lies, of scorn, 
Without desire's heat or remorseful thorn,           
Two hearts e'er twinned, two souls in peace above.

Respect the past however far its wings, 
Our love a daytime haze, not just a dream;  
Within this clarity shall we breathe free,    
As Laura sighs and her sad lover sings.

And you, whose every step reveals His grace,
And you, in flowered crown without a care, 
'Twas you who said we had to love like this.

And I, old child by holy doubt so faced,  
Who hears and thinks and then to answer dares:
We may live otherwise yet love in bliss. 

Akhmatova, "Художнику"

A work ("To the artist") by this Russian poet.  You can read the original here.

Your work seems but a whim sometimes, 
Those labors blessed as they may be: 
Unceasing gild of autumn limes, 
Unending blue of newest sea. 

To think now that this slumber's glaze,  
Leads me anon into your grove, 
Where I, afraid of every maze,  
A-swoon seek traces of your trove. 

Beneath your arch should I then slip,
Swept by your hand into a sky,
To cool my hateful heat adrift?

And there I'll meet eternal bliss,
And there, with scorching lids closed tight,
Anew I'll find a tearful gift.