A Prince was annoyed at merely spending his time in perfecting commonplace acts of generosity. He had in mind astonishing revolutions in love, and suspected that his wives were capable of more than that accommodating attitude adorned with heaven and luxury. He wanted to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and satisfaction. Whether or not it would turn out to be an aberration of piety, that is what he wanted. He possessed, to say the least, a rather large degree of human power.
All the women he had known were assassinated. What devastation within the garden of beauty! As the sword was put to their necks, they blessed him. He didn’t ask for any new ones. – More women turned up.
He killed all those who had followed him, after the hunt or to libations. – Everyone followed him.
It amused him to slit the throats of prized animals. He set palaces ablaze. He pounced on people and cut them to pieces. – The crowd, the golden roofs, the beautiful animals were still there.
Is it possible to go into raptures over destruction, to make oneself young again through cruelty! The people made not a murmur of protest. Nobody could come up with an argument against his views.
One evening, he was galumphing along. A Genie of ineffable, even unmentionable, beauty appeared. His features and bearing radiated the promise of multiple and complex love! of unspeakable, even unbearable happiness! The Prince and the Genie most likely destroyed each other in their essential health. How could they not have died from it? Together, then, they died.
But the Prince expired, in his palace, at the usual sort of age. The prince was the Genie. The Genie was the Prince.
Classical music never reaches what we wish for.
Note: These translations of Les Illuminations will eventually be published by “Poetry in Translation”. S.H.
