Selections from Gaspard de la Nuit
The following are selections from of a forthcoming translation of Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard de la Nuit – Fantasies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot (1842) translated from French by Gabriel Almeida.
I
THE GOTHIC CHAMBER
Nox et solitudo plenae sunt diabolo.
—The Fathers of the Church.
At night, my chamber is full of devils
“Ah! the Earth,” I whispered to the night, “is a fragrant chalice whose pistil is the moon and stamens are the stars!"
And with eyes heavy with sleep, I closed the window that had a crucifix embedded in it, black against the yellow halo of the stained-glass.
Yet, if at midnight — the hour heralded by dragons and devils! — it weren’t but the gnome who gets drunk from the oil of my lamp!
If it weren’t but the nurse rocking with her monotone song, in my father's breastplate, a stillborn child!
If it weren’t but the skeleton of the knight, trapped in the paneling, thumping with his head, elbow and knee!
If it weren’t but my ancestor, descending from his moth-eaten frame, and dipping his gauntlet in the holy water of the font!
But ‘tis Scarbo, who bites me on the neck, and to cauterize my bloody wound, plunges into the scar his iron finger, red-hot from the furnace!
II
SCARBO
My God, grant me at the hour of my death,
the prayers of a priest, a shroud of linen,
a pine coffin and a dry place.
—The Prayers of Monsieur le Maréchal.
"Whether you die absolved or damned," Scarbo muttered in my ear that night, "you will have a spider's web for a shroud, and I will bury the spider with you!”
"Oh! At least let me have as a shroud," I replied, my eyes red from weeping, "an aspen leaf wherein the lake breeze will lull me to sleep."
"No!" sneered the mocking dwarf, "you would be the prey of the beetle hunting at night for the blind midges left behind by the sun's setting rays!”
"Do you prefer, then," I continued to blubber, "that I be sucked by a tarantula with an elephant's trunk?"
"Well," he added, "take comfort, you will have as a shroud the golden-spotted strips from a snake's skin, in which I'll wrap you up like a mummy.
"And from the dark crypt of St. Benignus, where I'll lay you standing up against a wall, you will hear at leisure the children cry in eternal oblivion."
Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser, c. 1485/1490. The National Gallery of Art
III
THE FOOL
A carolus, or else,
If you prefer, a golden lamb.
— Manuscripts of the Royal Library.
The moon combed her hair with an ebony comb that overlaid raindrops of fireflies like silver over hills, meadows, and forests.
Scarbo, a gnome whose treasures abound, sifted on my roof, amidst the creaking of the weather-vane, ducats and florins that danced in cadence, the false coins littering the street.
How the fool laughed, wandering aimlessly each night through the deserted city, one eye on the moon and the other - blinded!
"Down with the moon!" he grumbled, collecting the devil's tokens, "I'll buy a pillory to bask in the sun!"
But it was still the moon, the moon that was setting — and Scarbo secretly exchanged ducats and florins in my cellar, with the beat of his balance.
While, with his two horns forward, a snail lost in the night, sought his path on my bright windows.
Jacques Callot, from Varie Figure Gobbi, suite appelée aussi Les Bossus, Les Pygmées, Les Nains Grotesques (Various Hunchbacked Figures, The Hunchbacks, The Pygmes, The Grotesque Dwarfs), 1616-22. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
IV
THE DWARF
"You, on horseback!"
"Well, why not! I have so often galloped on a greyhound of the Earl of Linlithgow!"
— Scottish ballad
I captured from my seat, in the shadow of the curtains, this furtive butterfly, born of a moonbeam or a dewdrop.
A fluttering moth, which, to free its wings captive between my fingers, paid me a ransom of perfume!
Suddenly the vagabond insect flew away, leaving in my lap — oh, horror! — a monstrous and deformed larva, furnished with a human head!
"Where is your soul, which I ride?" — "My soul, a limping nag exhausted by the day's wear, now rests on the golden linen of dreams".
And she escaped in horror, my soul, through the livid spider web of twilight, over black horizons etched with black pointed steeples.
But the dwarf, hanging on her whinnying flight, rolled like a spindle in the swaths of her white mane.
V
MOONLIGHT
Wake up, people who sleep,
And pray for the deceased.
— The cry of the night watchman
Oh! how sweet it is, when the hour trembles on the bell tower at night, to look at the moon that has a nose like a golden carolus!
*
Two lepers were lamenting under my window, a dog was howling in the crossroads, and the cricket in my hearth was prophesying softly.
But soon my ear questioned only a deep silence. The lepers had returned to their kennels, to the strikes of Jacquemart beating his wife.
The dog had slipped down an alley, in front of the rusty halberds of the watchmen, worn out by the rain and withered by the wind.
And the cricket had fallen asleep, as soon as the last ember had extinguished its glow in the ashes of the fireplace.
And to me, it seemed — so incoherent is a fever — that the moon, making a face, was sticking its tongue out at me like a hanged man.
VIII
MY ANCESTOR
Everything in this room was still in the same state,
except that the tapestries were in tatters and spiders wove their webs in the dust.
— Walter Scott, Woodstock
The venerable figures of the Gothic tapestry, stirred by the wind, greeted each other, and my ancestor entered the room – my ancestor who died almost eighty years ago.
There, at this prie-Dieu, knelt my ancestor, a counselor, kissing the yellow missal open at the ribbon with his beard.
He muttered prayers all through the night, without ever uncrossing his arms from his violet silk robe, without ever casting a glance towards me, his posterity, who was lying in his dusty canopy bed.
And I noticed with terror that his eyes were empty, although he seemed to read, his lips were still, although I heard him pray, his fingers bony, although they were sparkling with gems!
And I wondered if I was awake or asleep, if it was the moon's paleness or Lucifer's, if it was midnight or dawn!
Odilon Redon, The Crying Spider, 1881. Private Collection
IX
ONDINE
... I thought I heard
A vague harmony enchant my sleep,
And beside me a murmur spreading
Similar to the interrupted songs of a sad and tender voice.
— Ch. Brugnot - Les deux Génies.
"Hark! - Hark! — ‘Tis I, Ondine, brushing against your sonorous panes with these drops of water, illuminated by the somber rays of the moon; and here is the chatelaine lady, wearing a moire gown, contemplating the beautiful starry night and the beautiful sleeping lake from her balcony.
"Each wave is a water sprite swimming in the current, each current a path winding towards my palace, and my palace built fluid, at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of fire, land, and air.
"Hark! - Hark! - My father beats the croaking water with a green alder branch, and my sisters caress with their foam arms the fresh islands of grass, water lilies, and gladioli, or mock the decrepit and bearded willow who fishes with his line."
After singing her song, she begged me to receive her ring on my finger, to become the spouse of an Ondine, and to visit her palace, to become the king of the lakes.
And as I replied that I loved a mortal woman, sulking and upset, she shed a few tears, burst out laughing, and vanished in showers of rain, streaming white along my blue glass windows. //
Maurice Ravel, Gaspard de la Nuit I. Ondine, 1908. Performed by Martha Argerich