hen the coldweather set in the princess disappeared. It was getting
uncomfortablewith just a little coal stove in the studio; the bedroom was
like anicebox and the kitchen was hardly any better. There was just a
littlespace around the stove where it was actually warm. So Macha had
foundherself a sculptor who was castrated. She told us about him before
sheleft. After a few days she tried coming back to us, but Fillmore
wouldn'thear of it. She complained that the sculptor kept her awake all
nightkissing her. And then there was no hot water for her douches. But
finallyshe decided that it was just as well she didn't come back. "I
won'thave that candlestick next to me any more, " she said. "Always
thatcandlestick ... it made me nervous. If you had only been a fairy I
wouldhave stayed with you ... . "
    With Macha goneour evenings took on a different character. Often we sat
by the firedrinking hot toddies and discussing the life back there in the
States.We talked about it as if we never expected to go back there again.
Fillmorehad a map of New York City which he had tacked on the wall; we
usedto spend whole evenings discussing the relative virtues of Paris andNew
York. And inevitably there always crept into our discussions thefigure of
Whitman. that one lone figure which America has produced inthe course of her
brief life. In Whitman the whole American scene comesto life, her past and
her future, her birth and her death. Whateverthere is of value in America
Whitman has expressed, and there is nothingmore to be said. The future
belongs to the machine, to the robots. Hewas the Poet of the Body and the
Soul, Whitman. The first and the lastpoet. He is almost undecipherable today,
a monument covered with rudehieroglyphs for which there is no key. It seems
strange almost to mentionhis name over here. There is no e-quivalent in the
languages of Europefor the spirit which he immortalized. Europe is saturated
with art andher soil is full of dead bones and her museums are bursting with
plunderedtreasures, but what Europe has never had is a free, healthy
spirit,what you might call a MAN.Goethe was the nearest approach, but Goethe
was a stuffed shirt, bycomparison. Goethe was a respectable citizen, a pedant,
a bore, a universalspirit, but stamped with the German trade-mark, with the
double eagle.The serenity of Goethe. the calm, Olympian attitude, is nothing
morethan the drowsy stupor of a German burgeois deity. Goethe is an endof
something, Whitman is a beginning.
    After a discussionof this sort I would sometimes put on my things and go
for a walk, bundledup in a sweater, a spring overcoat of Fillmore's and a
cape over that.A foul, damp cold against which there is no protection except
a strongspirit. They say America is a country of extremes, and it is true
thatthe thermometer registers degrees of cold which are practically
unheardof here; but the cold of a Paris winter is a cold unknown to
America,it is psychological, an inner as well as an outer cold. If it
neverfreezes here it never thaws either. Just as the people protect
themselvesagainst the invasion of their privacy, by their high walls, their
boltsand shutters, their growling, evil-tongued, slatternly concierges,
sothey have learned to protect themselves against the cold and heat ofa
bracing, vigorous climate. They have fortified themselves: protectionis the
keyword. Protection and security. In order that they may rotin comfort. On a
damp winter's night it is not necessary to look atthe map to discover the
latitude of Paris. It is a northern city, anoutpost erected over a swamp
filled in with skulls and bones. Alongthe boulevards there is a cold
electrical imitation of heat. ToutVa Bien in ultraviolet rays that make the
clients of the Dupontchain cafes look like gangrened cadavers. Tout Va
Bien.' That'sthe motto that nourishes the forlorn beggars who walk up and
down allnight under the drizzle of the violet rays. Wherever there are
lightsthere is a little heat. One gets warm from watching the fat,
securebastards down their grogs, their steaming black coffees. Where the
lightsare there are people on the sidewalks, jostling one another, givingoff
a little animal heat through their dirty underwear and their foul,cursing
breaths. Maybe for a stretch of eight or ten blocks there isa semblance of
gaiety, and then it tumbles back into night, dismal,foul, black night like
frozen fat in a soup tureen. Blocks and blocksof jagged tenements, every
window closed tight, every shopfront barredand bolted.

    Miles and milesof stone prisons without the faintest glow of warmth; the
dogsand the cats are all inside with the canary birds. The cockroaches
andthe bedbugs too are safely incarcerated. Tout Va Bien. If youhaven't a
sou why just take a few old newspapers and make yourself abed on the steps
of a cathedral. The doors are well bolted and therewill be no draughts to
disturb you. Better still is to sleep outsidethe Metro doors; there you will
have company. Look at them on a rainynight, lying there stiff as mattresses
_ men, women, lice, all huddledtogether and protected by the newspapers
against spittle and the verminthat walks without legs. Look at them under
the bridges or under themarket sheds. How vile they look in comparison with
the clean, brightvegetables stacked up like jewels. Even the dead horses and
the cowsand sheep hanging from the greasy hooks look more inviting. At
leastwe will eat these tomorrow and even the intestines will serve a
purpose.But these filthy beggars lying in the rain, what purpose do they
serve?What good can they do us? They make us bleed for five minutes,
that'sall.
    Oh, well, theseare night thoughts produced by walking in the rain after
two thousandyears of Christianity. At least now the birds are well provided
for,and the cats and dogs. Every time I pass the concierge's window andcatch
the full icy impact of her glance I have an insane desire to throttleall the
birds in creation. At the bottom of every frozen heart thereis a drop or two
of love _ just enough to feed the birds.
    Still I can'tget it out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between
ideas andliving. A permanent dislocation, though we try to cover the two
witha bright awning. And it won't go. Ideas have to be wedded to action; if
there is no sex, no vitality in them, there is no action. Ideas cannotexist
alone in the vacuum of the mind. Ideas are related to living:liver ideas,
kidney ideas, interstitial ideas etc. If it were only forthe sake of an idea
Copernicus would have smashed the existent macrocosmand Columbus would have
foundered in the Sargasso Sea. The aestheticsof the idea breeds flowerpots
and flowerpots you put on the window sill.But if there be no rain or sun of
what use putting flowerpots outsidethe window?
    Fillmore is fullof ideas about gold. The "mythos" of gold, he callsit. I
like "mythos" and I like the idea of gold, but I am not obsessedby the
subject and I don't see why we should make flowerpots, even ofgold. He tells
me that the French are hoarding their gold away in watertightcompartments
deep below the surface of the earth; he tells me that thereis a little
locomotive which runs around in these subterranean vaultsand corridors. I
like the idea enormously. A profound, uninterruptedsilence in which the gold
softly snoozes at a temperature of V\degrees Centigrade. He says an army
working days and hours would notbe sufficient to count all the gold that is
sunk beneath the Bank ofFrance, and that there is a reserve supply of false
teeth, bracelets,wedding rings, etc. E-nough food also to last for eighty
days and alake on top of the gold pile to resist the shock of high
explosives.Gold, he says, tends to become more and more invisible, a myth,
andno more defalcations. Excellent! I am wondering what will happen tothe
world when we go off the gold standard in ideas, dress, morals,etc. The gold
standard of love!
    Up to the present,my idea in collaborating with myself has been to get
off the gold standardof literature. My idea briefly has been to present a
resurrection ofthe emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the
stratosphereof ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium. To paint a
pre-Socraticbeing, a creature part goat, part Titan. In short, to erect a
worldon the basis of the omphalos, not on an abstract idea nailedto a cross.
Here and there you may have come across neglected statues,oases untapped,
windmills overlooked by Cervantes, rivers that run uphill,women with five
and six breasts ranged longitudinally along the torso.(Writing to Gauguin,
Strindberg said: "J'ai vu des arbres que neretrouverait aucun botaniste, des
animaux que Cuvier n'a jamais soupymneset des homines que vous seui avez pu
creer, ")
    When Rembrandthit par he went below with the gold ingots and the
pemmican and theportable beds. Gold is a night word belonging to the
chthonian mind:it has dream in it and mythos. We are reverting to alchemy,
to thatfake Alexandrian wisdom which produced our inflated symbols. Real
wisdomis being stored away in the subcellars by the misers of learning.
Theday is coming when they will be circling around in the middle air
withmagnetizers; to find a piece of ore you will have to go up ten
thousandfeet with a pair of instruments_ in a cold latitude preferably _ and
establish telepathic communicationwith the bowels of the earth and the
shades of the dead. No more Klondikes.No more bonanzas. You will have to
learn to sing and caper a bit, toread the zodiac and study your entrails.
All the gold that is beingtucked away in the pockets of the earth will have
to be re-mined; allthis symbolism will have to be dragged out again from the
bowels ofman. But first the instruments must be perfected. First it is
necessaryto invent better airplanes, to distinguish where the noise
comesfrom and not go daffy just because you hear an explosion under yourass.
And secondly it will be necessary to get adapted to the cold layersof the
stratosphere, to become a cold-blooded fish of the air. No reverence.No piety.
No longing. No regrets. No hysteria. Above all. as PhilippeDatz says _ "NO
DISCOURAGEMENT!"
    These are sunnythoughts inspired by a vermouth cassis at the Place de la
Trinite. ASaturday afternoon and a "misfire" book in my hands. Everything
swimmingin a divine mucopus. The drink leaves a bitter herbish taste in my
mouth,the lees of our Great Western civilization, rotting now like the
toenailsof the saints. Women are passing by _ regiments of them _ all
swingingtheir asses in front of me; the chimes are ringing and the buses
areclimbing the sidewalk and bussing one another. The garym wipesthe table
with a dirty rag while the patronne tickles the cashregister with fiendish
glee. A look of vacuity on my face, blotto, vaguein acuity, biting the asses
that brush by me. In the belfry oppositethe hunchback strikes with a golden
mallet and the pigeons scream alarum.I open the book _ the book which
Nietzsche called "the best German bookthere is" _ and it says:

    "MEN WILL BECOMEMORE CLEVER AND MORE ACUTE; BUT NOT BETTER, HAPPIER, AND
STRONGERIN ACTION _ OR, AT LEAST, ONLY AT EPOCHS. I FORESEE THE TIME WHENGOD
WILL HAVE NO MORE JOY IN THEM, BUT WILL BREAK UP EVERYTHING FORA RENEWED
CREATION. I AM CERTAIN THAT EVERYTHING IS PLANNED TO THISEND, AND THAT THE
TIME AND HOUR IN THE DISTANT FUTURE FOR

    THE OCCURRENCEOF THIS RENOVATING E-POCH ARE ALREADY FIXED. BUT A LONG
TIME WILLELAPSE FIRST, AND WE MAY STILL FOR THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF
YEARSA-MUSE OURSELVES ON THIS DEAR OLD SURFACE. "

    Excellent! Atleast a hundred years ago there was a man who had vision
enough to seethat the world was pooped out. Our Western world! _ When I
seethe figures of men and women moving listlessly behind their prison
walls,sheltered, secluded for a few brief hours. I am appalled by the
potentialitiesfor drama that are still contained in these feeble bodies.
Behind thegray walls there are human sparks, and yet never a conflagration.
Arethese men and women, I ask myself, or are these shadows, shadows
ofpuppets dangled by invisible strings? They move in freedom apparently,but
they have nowhere to go. In one realm only are they free and therethey may
roam at will _ but they have not yet learned how to take wing.So far there
have been no dreams that have taken wing. Not one man hasbeen born light
enough, gay enough, to leave the earth! The eagleswho flapped their mighty
pinions for a while came crashing heavily toearth. They made us dizzy with
the flap and whir of their wings. Stayon the earth, you eagles of the future!
The heavens have been exploredand they are empty. And what lies under the
earth is empty too, filledwith bones and shadows. Stay on the earth and swim
another few hundredthousand years!
    And now it isthree o'clock in the morning and we have a couple of
trollops here whoare doing somersaults on the bare floor. Fillmore is
walking aroundnaked with a goblet in his hand, and that paunch of his is
drumtight,hard as a fistula. All the Pernod and champagne and cognac and
Anjouwhich he guzzled from three in the afternoon on, is gurgling in histrap
like a sewer. The girls are putting their ears to his belly asif it were a
music box. Open his mouth with a buttonhook and drop aslug in the slot. When
the sewer gurgles I hear the bats flying outof the belfry and the dream
slides into artifice.
    The girls haveundressed and we are examining the floor to make sure that
they won'tget any splinters in their ass. They are stillwearing their
high-heeled shoes. But the ass! The ass is worn down,scraped, sandpapered,
smooth, hard, bright as a billiard ball or theskull of a leper. On the wall
is Mona's picture: she is facing northeaston a line with Cracow written in
green ink. To the left of her is theDordogne, encircled with a red pencil.
Suddenly I see a dark, hairycrack in front of me set in a bright, polished
billiard ball; the legsare holding me like a pair of scissors. A glance at
that dark, unstitchedwound and a deep fissure in my brain opens up: all the
images and memoriesthat had been laboriously or absent-mindedly assorted,
labeled, documented,filed, sealed and stamped break forth pell-mell like
ants pouring outof a crack in the sidewalk_ the world ceases to revolve,
time stops,the very nexus of my dreams is broken and dissolved and my guts
spillout in a grand schizophrenic rush, an evacuation that leaves me faceto
face with the Absolute. I see again the great sprawling mothers ofPicasso,
their breasts covered with spiders, their legend hidden deepin the labyrinth.
And Molly Bloom lying on a dirty mattress for eternity.On the toilet door
red chalk cocks and the madonna uttering the diapasonof woe. I hear a wild,
hysterical laugh, a room full of lockjaw, andthe body that was black glows
like phosphorus. Wild. wild, utterly uncontrollablelaughter, and that crack
laughing at me too, laughing through the mossywhiskers, a laugh that creases
the bright, polished surface of the billiardball. Great whore and mother of
man with gin in her veins. Mother ofall harlots, spider rolling us in your
logarithmic grave, insatiableone, fiend whose laughter rives me! I look down
into that sunken crater,world lost and without traces, and I hear the bells
chiming, two nunsat the Palace Stanislas and the smell of rancid butter
under their dresses,manifesto never printed because it was raining, war
fought to furtherthe cause of plastic surgery, the Prince of Wales flying
around theworld decorating the graves of unknown heroes. Every bat flying
outof the belfry a lost cause, every whoopla a groan over the radio fromthe
private trenches of the damned. Out of that dark, unstitched wound,that sink
of abominations, that cradle of black-thronged cities wherethe music of
ideas is drowned in cold fat, out of strangled Utopiasis born a clown, a
being divided between beauty and ugliness, betweenlight and chaos, a clown
who when he looks down and sidelong is Satanhimself and when he looks upward
seesa buttered angel, a snail with wings.
    When I look downinto that crack I see an equation sign, the world at
balance, a worldreduced to zero and no trace of remainder. Not the zero on
which VanNorden turned his flashlight, not the empty crack of the
prematurelydisillusioned man, but an Arabian zero rather, the sign from
which springendless mathematical worlds, the fulcrum which balances the
stars andthe light dreams and the machines lighter than air and the
lightweightlimbs and the explosives that produced them. Into that crack I
wouldlike to penetrate up to the eyes, make them waggle ferociously,
dear,crazy, metallurgical eyes. When the eyes waggle then will I hear
againDostoevski's words, hear them rolling on page after page, with
minutestobservation, with maddest introspection, with all the undertones
ofmisery now lightly, humorously touched, now swelling like an organ
noteuntil the heart bursts and there is nothing left but a blinding,
scorchinglight, the radiant light that carries off the fecundating seeds of
thestars. The story of art whose roots lie in massacre.
    When I look downinto this fucked-out cunt of a whore I feel the whole
world beneathme. a world tottering and crumbling, a world used up and
polished likea leper's skull. If there were a man who dared to say all that
he thoughtof this world there would not be left him a square foot of ground
tostand on. When a man appears the world bears down on him and breakshis back.
There are always too many rotten pillars left standing, toomuch festering
humanity for man to bloom. The superstructure is a lieand the foundation is
a huge quaking fear. If at intervals of centuriesthere does appear a man
with a desperate, hungry look in his eye, aman who would turn the world
upside down in order to create a new race,the love that he brings to the
world is turned to bile and he becomesa scourge. If now and then we
encounter pages that explode, pages thatwound and sear, that wring groans
and tears and curses, know that theycome from a man with his back up, a man
whose only defenses left arehis words and his words are always stronger than
the lying, crushingweight of the world, stronger than all the racks and
wheels which thecowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality. If
any manever dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what
isreally his experience, what is truly his truth. I thinkthen the world
would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereensand no god, no
accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces,the atoms, the
indestructible elements that have gone to make up theworld.
    In the four hundredyears since the last devouring soul appeared, the
last man to know themeaning of ecstasy, there has been a constant and steady
decline ofman in art, in thought, in action. The world is pooped out: there
isn'ta dry fart left. Who that has a desperate, hungry eye can have the
slightestregard for these existent governments, laws, codes, principles,
ideals,ideas, totems, and taboos? If anyone knew what it meant to read
theriddle of that thing which today is called a "crack" or a "hole. " ifany
one had the least feeling of mystery about the phenomena which arelabeled
"obscene, " this world would crack asunder. It is the obscenehorror, the dry,
fucked-out aspect of things which makes this crazycivilization look like a
crater. It is this great yawning gulf of nothingnesswhich the creative
spirits and mothers of the race carry between theirlegs. When a hungry,
desperate spirit appears and makes the guinea pigssqueal it is because he
knows where to put the live wire of sex, becausehe knows that beneath the
hard carapace of indifference there is concealedthe ugly gash, the wound
that never heals. And he puts the live wireright between the legs;
    he hits belowthe belt, scorches the very gizzards. It is no use putting
on rubbergloves; all that can be coolly and intellectually handled belongs
tothe carapace and a man who is intent on creation always dives beneath,to
the open wound, to the festering obscene horror. He hitches his dynamoto the
tenderest parts; if only blood and pus gush forth, it is something.The dry,
fucked-out crater is obscene. More obscene than anything isinertia. More
blasphemous than the bloodiest oath is paralysis. If thereis only a gaping
wound left then it must gush forth though it producenothing but toads and
bats and homunculi.
    Everything ispacked into a second which is either consummated or not
consummated.The earth is not an arid plateau of health and comfort, but a
greatsprawling female with velvet torso that swells and heaves with
oceanbillows; she squirms beneath a diadem of sweat and anguish. Naked
andsexed she rolls among the clouds in the violet light of the stars. Allof
her, from her generous breasts toher gleaming thighs, blazes with furious
ardor. She moves a-mongst theseasons and the years with a grand whoopla that
seizes the torso withparoxysmal fury, that shakes the cobwebs out of the sky;
she subsideson her pivotal orbits with volcanic tremors. She is like a doe
at times,a doe that has fallen into a snare and lies waiting with beating
heartfor the cymbals to crash and the dogs to bark. Love and hate,
despair,pity. rage, disgust _ what are these amidst the fornications of
theplanets? What is war, disease, cruelty, terror, when night presentsthe
ecstasy of myriad blazing suns? What is this chaff we chew in oursleep if it
is not the remembrance of fangwhorl and star cluster.
    She used to sayto me, Mona, in her fits of exaltation, "You're a great
human being," and though she left me here to perish, though she put beneath
my feeta great howling pit of emptiness, the words that lie at the bottom
ofmy soul leap forth and they light the shadows below me. I am one whowas
lost in the crowd, whom the fizzing lights made dizzy, a zero whosaw
everything about him reduced to mockery. Passed me men and womenignited with
sulfur, porters in calcium livery opening the jaws of hell,fame walking on
crutches, dwindled by the skyscrapers, chewed to a frazzleby the spiked
mouth of the machines. I walked between the tall buildingstoward the cool of
the river and I saw the lights shoot up between theribs of the skeletons
like rockets. If I was truly a great human being,as she said, then what was
the meaning of this slavering idiocy aboutme? I was a man with body and soul,
I had a heart that was not protectedby a steel vault. I had moments of
ecstasy and I sang with burning sparks.I sang of the Equator, her
red-feathered legs and the islands droppingout of sight. But nobody heard. A
gun fired across the Pacific fallsinto space because the earth is round and
pigeons fly upside down. Isaw her looking at me across the table with eyes
turned to grief; sorrowspreading inward flattened its nose against her spine;
the marrow churnedto pity had turned liquid. She was light as a corpse that
floats inthe Dead Sea. Her fingers bled with anguish and the blood turned
todrool. With the wet dawn came the tolling of bells and a-long the fibersof
my nerves the bells played ceaselessly and their tongues poundedin my heart
and clanged with iron malice. Strange that the bells shouldtoll so, but
stranger still the body bursting,

    obstacles theyheaped up about them, I feel an exaltation. They were all
mired in theirown dung. All men who over-elaborated. So true is it that I am
almosttempted to say: "Show me a man who over-elaborates and I will show
youa great man! " What is called their "overelaboration" is my meat; itis
the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clingingto it,
the very aura and thiswoman turned to night and her maggot words gnawing
through the mattress.I moved along under the Equator, heard the hideous
laughter of the green-jawedhyena, saw the jackal with silken tail and the
dick-dick and the spottedleopard, all left behind in the Garden of Eden. And
then her sorrowwidened, like the bow of a dreadnought and the weight of her
sinkingflooded my ears. Slime wash and sapphires slipping, sluicing
throughthe gay neurons, and the spectrum spliced and the gunwales
dipping.Soft as lion-pad I heard the gun carriages turn, saw them vomit
anddrool: the firmament sagged and all the stars turned black. Black
oceanbleeding and the brooding stars breeding chunks of fresh-swollen
fleshwhile overhead the birds wheeled and out of the hallucinated sky
fellthe balance with mortar and pestle and the bandaged eyes of justice.All
that is here related moves with imaginary feet along the parallelsof dead
orbs; all that is seen with the empty sockets bursts like floweringgrass.
Out of nothingness arises the sign of infinity; beneath the
ever-risingspirals slowly sinks the gaping hole. The land and the water make
numbersjoined, a poem written with flesh and stronger than steel or
granite.Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown. ...
    Today I awokefrom a sound sleep with curses of joy on my lips, with
gibberish onmy tongue, repeating to myself like a litany _ "Fay ce que
voiddras!. _ _ fay ce que vouldras! " Do anything, but let it produce joy.Do
anything, but let it yield ecstasy. So much crowds into my head whenI say
this to myself: images, gay ones, terrible ones, maddening ones,the wolf and
the goat, the spider, the crab, syphilis with her wingsoutstretched and the
door of the womb always on the latch, always open,ready like the tomb. Lust,
crime, holiness: the lives of my adored ones,the failures of my adored ones,
the words they left behind them, thewords they left unfinished; the good
they dragged after them and theevil, the sorrow, the discord, the rancor,
the strife they created.But above all, the ecstasy!
    Things, certainthings about my old idols bring the tears to my eyes: the
interruptions,the disorder, the violence, above all, the hatred they aroused.
WhenI think of their deformities, of the monstrous styles they chose, ofthe
flatulence and tediousness of their works; of all the chaos andconfusion
they wallowed in, of 　the obstaclesthey heaped up about them, I feel an
exaltation. They were all miredin their own dung. All men who over-elaborated.
So true is it that Iam almost tempted to say; "Show me a man who
over-elaborates and I willshow you a great man! " What is called their
"overelaboration" is mymeat: it is the sign of struggle, it is struggle
itself with all thefibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the
discordantspirit. And when you show me a man who expresses himself perfectly
Iwill not say that he is not great, but I will say that I am unattracted...
I miss the cloying qualities. When I reflect that the task whichthe artist
implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values,to make of the chaos
about him an order which is his own, to sow strifeand ferment so that by the
e-motional release those who are dead maybe restored to life, then it is
that I run with joy to the great andimperfect ones, their confusion
nourishes me, their stuttering is likedivine music to my ears. I see in the
beautifully bloated pages thatfollow the interruptions the erasure of petty
intrusions, of the dirtyfootprints, as it were. of cowards, liars, thieves,
vandals, calumniators.I see in the swollen muscles of their lyric throats
the staggering effortthat must be made to turn the wheel over. to pick up
the pace whereone has left off. I see that behind the daily annoyances and
intrusions,behind the cheap, glittering malice of the feeble and inert,
there standsthe symbol of life's frustrating power, and that he who would
createorder, he who would sow strife and discord, because he is imbued
withwill, such a man must go again and again to the stake and the gibbet.I
see that behind the nobility of his gestures there lurks the specterof the
ridiculousness of it all _ that he is not only sublime, but absurd.
    Once I thoughtthat to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but
I see nowthat it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am
inhuman,that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to
dowith creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking
machineryof humanity _ I belong to the earth! I say that lying on my pillow
andI can feel the horns sprouting from my temples. I can see about me
allthose cracked forebears of mine dancing around the bed, consoling
me,egging me on. lashing me with their serpent tongues, grinning and
leeringat me with their skulking skulls. / am inhuman! I say it

    with a mad, hallucinatedgrin, and I will keep on saying it though it
rain crocodiles. Behindmy words are all those grinning, leering, skulking
skulls, some deadand grinning a long time, some grinning as if they had
lockjaw, somegrinning with the grimace of a grin. the foretaste and
aftermath ofwhat is always going on. Clearer than all I see my own grinning
skull,see the skeleton dancing in the wind, serpents issuing from the
rottedtongue and the bloated pages of ecstasy slimed with excrement. And
Ijoin my slime, my excrement, my madness, my ecstasy to the great
circuitwhich flows through the subterranean vaults of the flesh. All this
unbidden,unwanted, drunken vomit will flow on endlessly through the minds
ofthose to come in the inexhaustible vessel that contains the historyof the
race. Side by side with the human race there runs another raceof beings, the
inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknownimpulses, take the
lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and fermentwith which they imbue
it turn this soggy dough into bread and the breadinto wine and the wine into
song. Out of the dead compost and the inertslag they breed a song that
contaminates. I see this other race of individualsransacking the universe,
turning everything upside down, their feetalways moving in blood and tears,
their hands always empty, always clutchingand grasping for the beyond, for
the god out of reach: slaying everythingwithin reach in order to quiet the
monster that gnaws at their vitals.I see that when they tear their hair with
the effort to comprehend,to seize this forever unattainable, I see that when
they bellow likecrazed beasts and rip and gore, I see that this is right,
that thereis no other path to pursue. A man who belongs to this race must
standup on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his
entrails.It is right and just, because he must! And anything that falls
shortof this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less
terrifying,less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art. The
restis counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and
lifelessness.
    When I thinkof Stavrogin for example, I think of some divine monster
standing ona high place and flinging to us his torn bowels. In The
Possessedthe earth quakes; it is not the catastrophe that befalls the
imaginativeindividual, but a cataclysm in which a large portion of humanity
isburied, wiped out forever. Stavrogin was

    Dostoevski andDostoevski was the sum of all those contradictions which
either paralyzea man or lead him to the heights. There was no world too low
for himto enter, no place too high for him to fear to ascend. He went the
wholegamut, from the abyss to the stars. It is a pity that we shall
neveragain have the opportunity to see a man placed at the very core of
mysteryand. by his flashes, illuminating for us the depth and immensity
ofthe darkness.
    Today I am awareof my lineage. I have no need to consult my horoscope or
my genealogicalchart. What is written in the stars, or in my blood, I know
nothingof. I know that I spring from the mythological founders of the
race.The man who raises the holy bottle to his lips, the criminal who
kneelsin the marketplace, the innocent one who discovers that all
corpsesstink, the madman who dances with lightning in his hands, the
friarwho lifts his skirts to pee over the world, the fanatic who
ransackslibraries in order to find the Word _ all these are fused in me.
allthese make my confusion, my ecstasy. If I am inhuman it is because
myworld has slopped over its human bounds, because to be human seems likea
poor, sorry, miserable affair, limited by the senses, restricted
bymoralities and codes, defined by platitudes and isms. I am pouring
thejuice of the grape down my gullet and I find wisdom in it, but my
wisdomis not born of the grape, my intoxication owes nothing to wine. . ..
    I want to makea detour of those lofty arid mountain ranges where one
dies of thirstand cold, that " extratemporal" history, that absolute of time
and spacewhere there exists neither man, beast, nor vegetation, where one
goescrazy with loneliness, with language that is mere words, where
everythingis unhooked, ungeared, out of joint with the times. I want a world
ofmen and women, of trees that do not talk (because there is too muchtalk in
the world as it is! ) of rivers that carry you to places, notrivers that are
legends, but rivers that put you in touch with othermen and women with
architecture, religion, plants, animals _ riversthat have boats on them and
in which men drown, drown not in myth andlegend and books and dust of the
past, but in time and space and history.I want rivers that make oceans such
as Shakespeare and Dante, riverswhich do not dry up in the void of the past.
-ceans, yes! Let us havemore oceans, new oceans that blot out the
past,oceans that create new geological formations, new topographical
vistasand strange, terrifying continents, oceans that destroy and preserveat
the same time. oceans that we can sail on, take off to new discoveries,new
horizons. Let us have more oceans, more upheavals, more wars, moreholocausts.
Let us have a world of men and women with dynamos betweentheir legs, a world
of natural fury, of passion, action, drama, dreams,madness, a world that
produces ecstasy and not dry farts. I believethat today more than ever a
book should be sought after even if it hasonly one great page in it: we must
search for fragments, splinters,toenails, anything that has ore in it.
anything that is capable of resuscitatingthe body and soul.
    It may be thatwe are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us,
but ifthat is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl,a
screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away withelegies
and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and librariesand museums!
Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance aboutthe rim of the
crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!
    "I love everythingthat flows, " said the great blind Milton of our times.
I was thinkingof him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of
joy: Iwas thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night
whichhe is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that
flows:rivers, sewers, lava. semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love
theamniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney withits
painful gallstones, its gravel and what-not ; I love the urine thatpours out
scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the wordsof hysterics and
the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirrorall the sick images of
the soul; I love the great rivers like the Amazonand the Orinoco, where
crazy men like Moravagine float on through dreamand legend in an open boat
and drown in the blind mouths of the river.I love everything that flows,
even the menstrual flow that carries awaythe seed unfecund. I love scripts
that flow, be they hieratic. esoteric,perverse, polymorph, or unilateral. I
love everything that flows, everythingthat has time in it and becoming, that
brings us back to the beginningwhere there is never end: the violence of the
prophets, the obscenitythat is ecstasy, the wisdom of thefanatic, the priest
with his rubber litany, the foul words of the whore,the spittle that floats
away in the gutter, the milk of the breast andthe bitter honey that pours
from the womb, all that is fluid, melting,dissolute and dissolvent, all the
pus and dirt that in flowing is purified,that loses its sense of origin,
that makes the great circuit towarddeath and dissolution. The great
incestuous wish is to flow on, onewith time, to merge the great image of the
beyond with the here andnow. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by
words and paralyzedby thought.

    It was closeto dawn on Christmas Day when we came home from the Rue
dOdessa witha couple of Negresses from the telephone company. The fire was
out andwe were all so tired that we climbed into bed with our clothes on.
Theone I had, who had been like a bounding leopard all evening, fell
soundasleep as I was climbing over her. For a while I worked over her asone
works over a person who has been drowned or asphyxiated. Then Igave it up
and fell sound asleep myself.
    All during theholidays we had champagne morning, noon and night _ the
cheapest andthe best champagne. With the turn of the year I was to leave for
Dijonwhere I had been offered a trivial post as exchange professor of
English,one of those Franco-American amity arrangements which is supposed
topromote understanding and good will between sister republics. Fillmorewas
more elated than I by the prospect _ he had good reason to be. Forme it was
just a transfer from one purgatory to another. There was nofuture ahead of me;
there wasn't even a salary attached to the job.One was supposed to consider
himself fortunate to enjoy the privilegeof spreading the gospel of
Franco-American amity. It was a job for arich man's son.
    The night beforeI left we had a good time. About dawn it began to snow:
we walked aboutfrom one quarter to another taking a last look at Paris.
Passing throughthe Rue St. Dominique we suddenly fell upon a little square
and therewas the Eglise Ste. -Clo-tilde. People were going to mass.
Fillmore,whose head was still a little cloudy, was bent on going to mass
too."For the fun of it! " as he put it. I felt somewhat uneasy about iti in
the first place I had never attended a mass, and in the secondplace I looked
seedy and felt seedy. Fillmore, too, looked rather battered,even more
disreputable than myself j his big slouch hat was on asswaysand his overcoat
was still full of sawdust from the last joint we hadbeen in. However, we
marched in. The worst they could do would be tothrow us out.