The Wild Woman and the Kept Woman
Michael Zeleny
"Truly, my dear, you tire me without measure and without pity; one
might say, hearing you sigh, that you suffer more than sexagenarian
gleaners and old beggar-women who cadge breadcrusts at the door of
cabarets.
"If your sighs at least expressed remorse, they would do you some
honor; but they only convey the satiety of well-being and the
dejection of repose. And besides, you never cease to spew yourself
forth in useless words: "Love me truly! I need it so much! Comfort me
here, caress me there!" Get a grip; I would like to try to cure you;
perhaps we shall find the means, for two pennies, in the midst of a
fair, and without going very far.
"Consider well, I beg of you, that solid cage of iron wherein
stirs, screaming like the damned, shaking the bars like an orangutan
maddened by exile, imitating perfectly now the circular leaps of the
tiger, now the stupid rolling gait of the polar bear, that hairy
monster whose form vaguely enough imitates your own.
"That monster is one of those animals whom one generally calls 'my
angel!' -- that is to say, a woman. The other monster, the one who
screams at the top of his voice, a cudgel in his hand, is a husband.
He has chained up his legal mate like a beast, and he displays her in
the suburbs on fair days, with the permission of the authorities, it
goes without saying.
"Pay close attention! See with what voracity (not feigned,
perhaps!) she tears apart the live rabbits and the cheeping poultry
thrown to her by her mentor. 'Come now,' he says, 'You mustn't eat
everything in one day,' and, with those wise words, he cruelly wrests
from her her prey, whose unwound entrails remain for a moment stuck to
the teeth of the ferocious beast, of the woman, I mean to say.
"Come on! A good smack with the cudgel to calm her down! For she
darts her eyes terrifying with greed at the food taken from her. Great
God! The cudgel is no stage prop; did you hear the sound it made when
it struck her flesh, for all her fake fur? Thus her eyes now pop out
of her head and she screams _more naturally._ In her rage, she
sparkles all over, like iron being forged.
"Such are the conjugal mores of these two descendants of Adam and
Eve, these works of your hands, oh my God! That woman is undeniably
unhappy, although after all, perhaps, the titillating pleasures of
glory are not unknown to her. There are miseries more irremediable,
and without compensation. But in the world wherein she has been
thrown, she has never been able to believe that woman deserved any
other fate.
"Now, about us, my precious darling! To see the hells with which
the world is populated, what do you want me to think of your pretty
hell, you who sleep only on linens as soft as your skin, who eat only
cooked meat, carefully cut into morsels for you by a skillful servant?
"And what can all those little sighs that swell your perfumed
chest mean to me, sturdy flirt? And all those affectations learned
from books, and that indefatigable melancholy, designed to inspire in
the spectator a feeling entirely different from pity? In truth, I am
sometimes seized with the desire to teach you what is real misfortune.
"To see you thus, my delicate beauty, your feet in the mud and
your eyes turned hazily toward heaven, as if asking it for a king, one
might accurately compare you to a young frog invoking the ideal. If
you scorn the small cog (which is what I am right now, as you well
know), beware the crane _that will crunch you, swallow you, and kill
you at its pleasure!_
"As much as I be a poet, I am not such a dupe as you would like to
think, and if you tire me too often with your _precious_ sniveling, I
shall treat you like a _wild woman_, or shall throw you out the
window, like an empty bottle."
-- Charles Baudelaire, translated by Michael Zeleny, April 30, 2003
http://www.poetes.com/baud/BSauvage.htm
--
cordially, -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
7576 Willow Glen Rd, Hollywood, CA 90046 323-876-8234 323-363-1860
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett
rkm
> gleaners and old beggar-women who cadge breadcrusts at the door of
> cabarets.
at the doors of cabarets.
> here, caress me there!" Get a grip; I would like to try to cure you;
> perhaps we shall find the means, for two pennies, in the midst of a
> fair, and without going very far.
Get a grip? If you need to remain faithful to the period of
time the author was writing in (or about), and the original
text says something like "come to your senses", then I think
you need a different expression than "get a grip" because it
sounds too modern.
> it struck her flesh, for all her fake fur? Thus her eyes now pop out
> of her head and she screams _more naturally._ In her rage, she
> sparkles all over, like iron being forged.
most naturally (because she's a monster afterall, and
monsters scream most naturally)
> "Such are the conjugal mores of these two descendants of Adam and
> Eve, these works of your hands, oh my God! That woman is undeniably
these works of your hands, my God!
> know), beware the crane _that will crunch you, swallow you, and kill
> you at its pleasure!_
sounds fine.
> "As much as I be a poet, I am not such a dupe as you would like to
> think, and if you tire me too often with your _precious_ sniveling, I
> shall treat you like a _wild woman_, or shall throw you out the
> window, like an empty bottle."
that too.
Rick