Historic Evening

 

 

On an evening, for example, when the naive tourist has retired from our

economic horrors, a master's hand awakens the meadow's harpsichord; they

are playing cards at the bottom of the pond, mirror conjuring up

favorites and queens; there are saints, veils, threads of harmony, and

legendary chromatisms in the setting sun.

 

He shudders as the hunts and hordes go by. Comedy drips on the grass

stages. And the distress of the poor and of the weak on those stupid

planes!

 

Before his slave's vision, Germany goes scaffolding toward moons; Tartar

deserts light up; ancient revolts ferment in the center of the Celestial

Empire; over stairways and armchairs of rock, a little world, wan and

flat, Africa and Occidents, will be erected. Then a ballet of familiar

seas and nights, worthless chemistry and impossible melodies.

 

The same bourgeois magic wherever the mail-train sets you down. Even the

most elementary physicist feels that it is no longer possible to submit

to this personal atmosphere, fog of physical remorse, which to

acknowledge is already an affliction.

 

No! The moment of the seething cauldron, of seas removed, of subterranean

conflagrations, of the planet swept away, and the consequent

exterminations, certitudes indicated with so little malice by the Bible

and by the Nornes and for which serious persons should be on the alert.

Yet there will be nothing legendary about it.