Woolgathering

 [...] and who cares for imagination? Who does not think it a rather dangerous, senselesse atribute, akin to weakness, perharps partaking of frenzy —a disease rather than a gift of the mind? 
Probably all think it so but those possess or fancy they possess it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be cold if that elixir did not flow about them, that their eyes would be dim if that flame did not refine their vision, that they would be lonely if that strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that it imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, some tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do not feel. All illusion, of course; but the fanatics cling to their dream, and would not give it for gold.

 

 

The Letter

What is she writing? Watch her now,

How fast her fingers move!

How eagerly her youthful brow

Is bent in thought above!

Her long curls, drooping, shade the light,

She puts them quick aside,

Nor knows that band of crystals bright,

Her hasty touch untied.

It slips adown her silken dress,

Falls glittering at her feet;

Unmarked it falls, for she no less

Pursues her labour sweet.

 

The very loveliest hour that shines,

Is in that deep blue sky;

The golden sun of June declines,

It has not caught her eye.

The cheerful lawn, and unclosed gate,

The white road, far away,

In vain for her light footsteps wait,

She comes not forth to-day.

There is an open door of glass

Close by that lady's chair,

From thence, to slopes of messy grass,

Descends a marble stair.

 

Tall plants of bright and spicy bloom

Around the threshold grow;

Their leaves and blossoms shade the room

From that sun's deepening glow.

Why does she not a moment glance

Between the clustering flowers,

And mark in heaven the radiant dance

Of evening's rosy hours?

O look again! Still fixed her eye,

Unsmiling, earnest, still,

And fast her pen and fingers fly,

Urged by her eager will.

 

Her soul is in th'absorbing task;

To whom, then, doth she write?

Nay, watch her still more closely, ask

Her own eyes' serious light;

Where do they turn, as now her pen

Hangs o'er th'unfinished line?

Whence fell the tearful gleam that then

Did in their dark spheres shine?

The summer-parlour looks so dark,

When from that sky you turn,

And from th'expanse of that green park,

You scarce may aught discern.

 

Yet, o'er the piles of porcelain rare,

O'er flower-stand, couch, and vase,

Sloped, as if leaning on the air,

One picture meets the gaze.

'Tis there she turns; you may not see

Distinct, what form defines

The clouded mass of mystery

Yon broad gold frame confines.

But look again; inured to shade

Your eyes now faintly trace

A stalwart form, a massive head,

A firm, determined face.

 

Black Spanish locks, a sunburnt cheek

A brow high, broad, and white,

Where every furrow seems to speak

Of mind and moral might.

Is that her god? I cannot tell;

Her eye a moment met

Th'impending picture, then it fell

Darkened and dimmed and wet.

A moment more, her task is done,

And sealed the letter lies;

And now, towards the setting sun

She turns her tearful eyes.

 

Those tears flow over, wonder not,

For by the inscription see

In what a strange and distant spot

Her heart of hearts must be!

Three seas and many a league of land

That letter must pass o'er,

Ere read by him to whose loved hand

'Tis sent from England's shore.

Remote colonial wilds detain

Her husband, loved though stern;

She, 'mid that smiling English scene,

Weeps for his wished return.

 

Eh quoi! Tout est sensible!

Pythagore 

 

 [...] You do not love me; or you could not have imposed upon me the torture of eight days' silence —of eight days' terrible suspense. You do not love me or, responding to my prayers, you would have cried to me "Edgar, I do." Ah, Helen, the emotion which now consumes me teaches me too well the nature of the impulses of Love! Of what avail to me, in my deadly grief, are your enthusiastic words of mere admiration? Alas; alas! I have been loved, and a relentless Memory contrasts what you say with the unheeded, unvalued language of others. But ah, again, and most especially you do not love me, or you would have felt too thorough a sympathy with the sensitiveness of my nature, to have so wounded me as you have done with this terrible passage of your letter: "How often I have heard men and even women say of you 'He has great intellectual power, but no principle no moral sense.' " Is it possible that such expressions as these could have been repeated to me —to me— by one whom I loved ah, whom I love, by one at whose feet I knelt, I still kneel, in deeper worship than ever man offered to God? And you proceed to ask me why such opinions exist. You will feel remorse for the question, Helen, when I say to you that, until the moment when those horrible words first met my eye, I would not have believed it possible that any such opinions could have existed at all: but that they do exist breaks my heart in separating us forever. I love you too truly ever to have offered you my hand ever to have sought your love had I known my name to be so stained as your expressions imply. Oh God! what shall I say to you Helen, dear Helen? let me call you now by that sweet name, if I may never so call you again. [...]

[...] Elle devrait prendre un petit déjeuner mais ne peut supporter l'interruption qui s'ensuivrait, le contact avec l'humeur de Nelly. Elle va écrire pendant une heure environ, puis avaler quelque chose. S'abstenir de manger est un vice, une sorte de drogue – avec l'estomac vide elle se sent rapide et libre, lucide, prête à se battre. Elle boit son café, s'assied, étire les bras. C'est une expérience des plus singulières, de se réveiller avec le sentiment que la journée sera bonne, de s'apprêter à travailler mais sans s'y mettre vraiment. À ce moment, il y a d'infinies possibilités, des heures entières qui s'étendent devant elle. Son esprit bourdonne. Ce matin, elle va peut-être pénétrer l'opacité des choses, les canaux obstrués, atteindre l'or. Elle le perçoit au fond d'elle-même, un autre soi presque indescriptible, ou plutôt un soi parallèle, un second soi plus pur. Si elle était croyante, elle l'appellerait l'âme. C'est une chose qui dépasse la somme de son intelligence et celle de ses émotions, qui dépasse la somme de ses expériences, encore qu'elle les parcoure toutes les trois comme des veines de métal brillant. C'est une faculté interne qui reconnaît les mystères mouvants de l'univers parce qu'elle est faite de la même substance, et lorsque la chance lui sourit elle peut écrire directement grâce à cette faculté. Écrire dans cet état lui apporte la plus intense des satisfactions, mais elle ne sait jamais à quel moment elle pourra y accéder. Elle peut prendre son stylo et laisser sa main suivre sa trace sur le papier; elle peut prendre son stylo et découvrir qu'elle est simplement elle-même, une femme en robe d'intérieur armée d'un stylo, craintive et indécise, moyennement compétente, ne sachant par où commencer ni quoi écrire.

Elle prend son stylo.

Mrs Dalloway dit qu'elle se chargerait d'acheter les fleurs.

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in over-plus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine 
Shall will in others seem right gracious, 
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will
One will of mine to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

 

Traduction de Bertrand Degott:

Si chaucune a son désir, tu as ton Envie
et de l'Envie en sus, et l'Envie en trop-plein
c'est moi plus qu'assez qui toujours te contrarie
pour ajouter à ton envie par ce moyen

vas-tu pas, toi dont l'envie est large et spacieuse
condescendre à cacher mon envie dans la tienne?
l'envie paraîtra-t-elle en d'autres si gracieuse
qu'aucune approbation pour mon envie ne vienne?

la mer, quoique toute eau, reçoit encor la pluie
et en abondance elle ajoute à son stockage
— riche en Envie de même, ajoute à ton Envie
mon envie d'élargir ton Envie davantage

ne tue point de charmants soupirants d'un non vil
prends tout ça comme un seul, et moi dans ce seul Will. 

 

 

  […]

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book... or you take a trip... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The sypmtoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure.



That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They pinic with their families. They raise children.



And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song and it awakens them and saves them from death.



Some never awaken.

  […]

  One morning I was called to a studio in Greenwich Village, where a sculptor was beginning a statuette. His name was Millard. He already had a rough version of the figure he wanted and had reached the stage where he needed a model.

The statuette was wearing a clinging dress, and the body showed through in every line and curve. The sculptor asked me to undress completely because he could not work otherwise. He seemed so absorbed by the statuette and looked at me so absently that I was able to undress and take the pose without hesitation. Although I was quite innocent at that time, he made me feel as if my body were no different than my face, as if I were the same as the statuette.

As Millard worked, he talked about his former life in Montparnasse, and the time passed quickly. I didn't know if his stories were meant to affect my imagination, but he showed no signs of being interested in me. He enjoyed recreating the atmosphere of Montparnasse for his own sake. […]

The next day Millard told me about the artist Mafouka, the manwoman of Montparnasse.

"No one knew exactly what she was. She dressed like a man. She was small, lean, flat-chested. She wore her hair short, straight. She had the face of a boy. She played billiards like a man. She drank like a man, with her foot on the bar railing. She told obscene stories like a man. Her drawing had a strength not found in a woman's work. But her name had a feminine sound, her walk was feminine, and she was said not to have a penis. The men did not know quite how to treat her. Sometimes they slapped her on the back with fraternal feelings.

"She lived with two girls in a studio. One of them was a model, the other, a nightclub singer. But no one knew what relationship there was among them. The two girls seemed to have a relationship like that of a husband and a wife. What was Mafouka to them? They would never answer any questions. Montparnasse always liked to know such things, and in detail.

A few homosexuals had been attracted to Mafouka and had made advances towards her or him. But she had repulsed them. She quarreled willingly and struck out with force.

"One day I was quite a little drunk and I dropped into Mafouka's studio. The door was open. As I entered I heard giggling up on the balcony. The two girls were obviously making love. The voices would get soft and tender, then violent and unintelligible, and become moans and sighs. Then there would be silences.

"Mafouka came in and found me with my ear cocked, listening. I said to her, 'Please let me go and see them.'

"I don't mind,' said Mafouka. 'Come up after me, slowly. They won't stop if they think it is just me. They like me to watch them.'

"We went up the narrow stairs. Mafouka called, 'It's I.' There was no interruption of the noises. As we went up, I bent over so that they could not see me. Mafouka went to the bed. The two girls were naked. They were pressing their bodies against each other and rubbing together. The friction gave them pleasure. Mafouka leaned over them, caressed them. They said, 'Come on, Mafouka, lie with us.' But she left them and took me downstairs again.

"'Mafouka,' I said, 'What are you? Are you a man or a woman? Why do you live with these two girls? If you are a man, why don't you have a girl of your own? If you are a woman, why don't you have a man occasionally?'

"Mafouka smiled at me.

"'Everybody wants to know. Everybody feels that I am not a boy. The women feel it. The men don't know for sure. I am an artist.'

"'What do you mean, Mafouka?'

"T mean that I am, like many artists, bisexual.'

"'Yes, but the bisexuality of artists is in their nature. They may be a man with the nature of a woman, but not with such an equivocal physique as you have.'

"'I have an hermaphrodite's body.'

"'Oh, Mafouka, let me see your body.'

"'You won't make love to me?'

"'I promise.'

"She took her shirt off first and showed a young boy's torso. She had no breasts, just the nipples, marked as they would be on a young boy. Then she slipped down her slacks. She was wearing a woman's panties, flesh-colored, with lace. She had a woman's legs and thighs. They were beautifully curved, full. She was wearing women's stockings and garters. I said, 'Let me take the garters off. I love garters.' She handed me her leg very elegantly with the movement of a ballet dancer. I slowly rolled down the garter. I held a dainty foot in my hand. I looked up at her legs, which were perfect. I rolled down the stocking and saw beautiful, smooth, woman's skin. Her feet were dainty and carefully pedicured. Her nails were covered with red lacquer. I was more and more intrigued. I caressed her leg. She said, 'You promised you would not make love to me.'

"I stood up. Then she slipped down her panties. And I saw below the delicate curled pubic hair, shaped like a woman's, that she carried a small atrophied penis, like a child's. She let me look at her—or at him, as I felt I now should say.

"Why do you call yourself by a woman's name, Mafouka? You are really like a young boy except for the shape of your legs and arms.'

"Then Mafouka laughed, this time a woman's laugh, very light and pleasant. She said, 'Come and see.' She lay back on the couch, opened her legs and showed me a perfect vulva mouth, rosy and tender, behind the penis.

'"Mafouka!'

"My desire was aroused. The strangest desire. The feeling of wanting to take both a man and woman in one person. She saw the stirring of it in me and sat up. I tried to win her by a caress, but she eluded me.

"'Don't you like men?' I asked her. 'Haven't you ever had a man?'

"'I'm a virgin. I don't like men. I feel a desire for women only, but I can't take them as a man could. My penis is like a child's—I cannot have an erection.'

"'You are a real hermaphrodite, Mafouka,' I said. That is what our age is supposed to have produced because the tension between the masculine and the feminine has broken down, people are mostly half of one and half of the other. But I have never seen it before—actually, physically. It must make you very unhappy. Are you happy with women?'

'"I desire women, but I do suffer, because I cannot take them like a man, and also because when they have taken me like Lesbians, I still feel some dissatisfaction. But I am not attracted to men. I fell in love with Matilda, the model. But I could not keep her. She found a real Lesbian for herself, one that she feels she can satisfy. This penis of mine always gives her the feeling that I am not a real Lesbian. And she knows she has no power over me, even though I was attracted to her. So you see, the two girls have formed another link together. I stand between them, perpetually dissatisfied. Also, I do not like the companionship of women. They are petty and personal. They hang on to their mysteries and secrets, they act and pretend. I like the character of men better.'

"'Poor Mafouka.'

" 'Poor Mafouka. Yes, when I was born they did not know how to name me. I was born in a small village in Russia. They thought I was a monster and should perhaps be destroyed, for my own sake. When I came to Paris I suffered less. I found I was a good artist.' "

[…]

En silence.

Joignons, échangeons nos sens grisés,


Mais en nous taisant, car les baisers


Valent bien mieux les paroles. 

 

Pourquoi confronter nos âmes dures ?


Ne sachons rien que nos tendres corps


Et que nos étreintes si sûres.

 

Lorsqu'en nous toute joie est lassée,


Ah ! n'élevons jamais la voix !

 

Mais laissons l'éloquence de l'heure,


Quand nous cheminerons pas à pas,


Nous marier sans mots et sans leurre :


Les âmes ne se parlent pas.

 

 

 

 

Baiser.

Renverse-toi que je prenne ta bouche,


Calice ouvert, rouge possession,


Et que ma langue où vit ma passion


Entre tes dents s'insinue et te touche :

 

C'est une humide et molle profondeur,


Douce à mourir, où je me perds et glisse ;


C'est un abîme intime, clos et lisse,


Où mon désir s'enfonce jusqu'au coeur...

- Ah ! puisse aussi t'atteindre au plus sensible, 


Dans son ampleur et son savant détail,


Ce lent baiser, seule étreinte possible,


Fait de silence et de tiède corail ;




Puissé-je voir enfin tomber ta tête


Vaincue, à bout de sensualité,


Et détournant mes lèvres, te quitter,


Laissant au moins ta bouche satisfaite !...

 

 

 

 The illumined skyscrapers shine like Christmas trees. I have been invited to stay with rich friends at the Plaza. The luxury lulls me, but I lie in a soft bed sick with ennui, like a flower in a hot house. My feet rest on soft carpets. New York gives me a fever — the great Babylonian city.

I see Lillian. I no longer love her. There are those who dance and those who twist themselves into knots. I like those who flow and dance. I will see Mary again. Perhaps this time I will not be timid. I remember when she came to Saint-Tropez one day and we met casually at a café. She invited me to come to her room in the evening. 

My lover, Marcel, had to go home that night; he lived quite fat away. I was free. I left him at eleven o’clock and went to see Mary. I was wearing my flounced Spanish cretonne dress and a flower in my hair, and I was all bronzed by the sun and feeling beautiful. 

When I arrived, Mary was lying on her bed, cold-creaming her face, her legs and her shoulders, because she had been lying on the beach. She was rubbing cream into her neck, her throat she was covered with cream.

This disappointed me. I sat at the foot of her bed and we talked. I lost my desire to kiss her. She was running away from her husband. She had married him only to be protected. She had never really loved men but women. At the beginning of her marriage, she had told him all sorts of stories about herself that she should not have told him how she had been a dancer on Broadway and slept with men when she was short of money; how she even went to a whorehouse and earned money there; how she met a man who fell in love with her and kept her for a few years. Her husband never recovered from these stories. They awakened his jealousy and doubts, and their life together had become intolerable.

  The day after we met, she left Saint-Tropez, and I was filled with regrets for not having kissed her. Now I was about to see her again.

In New York I unfolded my wings of vanity and coquetry. Mary is as lovely as ever and seems much moved by me. She is all curves, softness. Her eyes are wide and liquid; her cheeks, luminous. Her mouth is full; her hair blonde, and luxuriant. She is slow, passive, lethargic. We go to the movies together. In the dark she takes my hand.

She is being analyzed and has discovered what I sensed long ago: that she has never known a real orgasm, at thirty-four, after a sexual life that only an expert accountant could keep track of. I am discovering her pretenses. She is always smiling, gay, but underneath she feels unreal, remote, detached from experience. She acts as if she were asleep. She is trying to awaken by falling into bed with anyone who invites her.

Mary says, ‘It is very hard to talk about sex, I am so ashamed.’ She is not ashamed of doing anything at all, but she cannot talk about it. She can talk to me. We sit for hours in perfumed places where there is music. She likes places where actors go.

There is a current of attraction between us, purely physical. We are always on the verge of getting into bed together. But she is never free in the evenings. She will not let me meet her husband. She is afraid I will seduce him.

She fascinates me because sensuality pours from her. At eight years old she was already having a lesbian affair with an older cousin.

We both share the love of finery, perfume and luxury. She is so lazy, languid — purely a plant, really. I have never seen a woman more yielding. She says that she always expects to find the man who will arouse her. She has to live in a sexual atmosphere even when she feels nothing. It is her climate. Her favorite statement is, ‘At that time, I was sleeping around with everybody.’

If we speak of Paris and of people we knew there, she always says, ‘I don’t know him. I didn’t sleep with him.’ Or ‘Oh yes, he was wonderful in bed.’

I have never once heard of her resisting — this, coupled with frigidity! She deceives everybody, including herself. She looks so wet and open that men think she is continuously in a state of near orgasm. But it is not true. The actress in her appears cheerful and calm, and inside she is going to pieces. She drinks and can sleep only by taking drugs. She always comes to me eating candy, like a schoolgirl. She looks about twenty. Her coat is open, her hat is in her hand. Her hair is loose.

One day she falls on my bed and knocks off her shoes. She looks at her legs and says, ‘They are too thick. They are like Renoir legs, I was told once in Paris.’

‘But I love them,’ I say, ‘I love them.’

‘Do you like my new stockings?’ She raises her skirt to show me.

She asks for a whiskey. Then she decides that she will take a bath. She borrows my kimono. I know that she is trying to tempt me. She comes out of the bathroom still humid, leaving the kimono open. Her legs are always held a little apart. She looks so much as if she were about to have an orgasm that one cannot help feeling: only one little caress will drive her wild. As she sits on the edge of my bed to put on her stockings, I cannot withhold any longer. I kneel in front of her and put my hand on the hair between her legs. I stroke it gently, gently, and I say, ‘The little silver fox, the little silver fox. So soft and beautiful. Oh, Mary I can’t believe that you do not feel anything there, inside.’

She seems on the verge of feeling, the way her flesh looks, open like a flower, the way her legs are spread. Her mouth is so wet, so inviting, the lips of her sex must be the same. She parts her legs and lets me look at it. I touch it gently and spread the lips to see if they are moist. She feels it when I touch her clitoris, but I want her to feel the bigger orgasm.

I kiss her clitoris, still wet from the bath; her pubic hair, still damp as seaweed. Her sex tastes like a seashell, a wonderful, fresh, salty seashell. Oh Mary! My fingers work more quickly, she falls back on the bed, offering her whole sex to me, open and moist, like a camellia, like rose petals, like velvet, satin. It is rosy and new, as if no one had ever touched it. It is like the sex of a young girl.

Her legs hang over the side of the bed. Her sex is open; I can bite into it, kiss it, insert my tongue. She does not move. The little clitoris stiffens like a nipple. My head between her two legs is caught in the most delicious vise of silky, salty flesh.

My hands travel upwards to her heavy breasts, caress them. She begins to moan a little. Now her hands travel downwards and join mine in caressing her own sex. She likes to be touched at the mouth of her sex, below the clitoris. She touches the place with me. It is there I would like to push in a penis and move until I make her scream with pleasure. I put my tongue at the opening and push it in as fat as it will go. I take her ass in my two hands, like a big fruit, and push it upwards, and while my tongue is playing there in the mouth of her sex, my fingers press into the flesh of her ass, travel around its firmness, into its curve, and my forefinger feels the little mouth of her anus and pushes in gently.

Suddenly Mary gives a start — as if I touched off an electric spark. She moves to enclose my finger. I press it farther, all the while moving my tongue inside of her sex. She begins to moan, to undulate.

When she sinks downwards she feels my flicking finger, when she rises upwards she meets my flicking tongue. With every move, she feels my quickening rhythm, until she has a long spasm and begins to moan like a pigeon. With my finger I feel the palpitation of pleasure, going once, twice, thrice, beating ecstatically.

She falls over, panting. ‘Oh, Mandra, what have you done to me, what have you done to me!’ She kisses me, drinking the salty moisture from my mouth. Her breasts fall against me as she holds me, saying again, ‘Oh,Mandra, what have you done...’

[…]