La Beauté/L'Idéal

Things keep getting better here, and by better I mean worse. I had somehow managed to push him out of my mind by pretending that he was either dead or that he had never existed in the first place. Sure, he can be free to float around in my subconscious as some ideal paradigm of something-or-other, but as for a real, solid, tangible existence...no. We pulled up into the parking lot of Naptown's own all-night booze store. And he was there, not five feet away. Almost had a heart attack. I just tossed my head and climbed out of the car pretending that it didn't matter. But I was shaking like a pansy. Of course she was there too. She never lets him out of her sight, it seems. It threw me for a loop the rest of the night. I feel like I am back in high school all over again.

This is the first day that I have felt genuinely honest-to-God shitty.
And speaking of the devil.

Beauty
I am beautiful, O mortals! Like a dream of stone,
And my breast, where everyone has bruised himself in turn,
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
Eternal and silent as matter.

I sit enthroned in the sky, like a sphinx misunderstood;
I unite a heart of snow with the whiteness of swans;
I hate the movement that shifts lines,
And never do I cry and never do I laugh.

Poets, before my grand behaviors,
Which air I have assumed from monuments most proud,
Will consume their days in austere studies;

But I have, in order to fascinate these docile lovers,
Mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my wide eyes of eternal clarity!

La Beauté
Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.

Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J'unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.

Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d'austères études;

Car j'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!

Ideal
It will never be these beauties of vignettes,
Damaged products, born from a villainous age,
These feet for work-boots, these fingers for castanets,
That will know to satisfy a heart like mine.

I leave to Gavarni, poet of chlorosis,
Your warbling flock of sickly beauties,
But I cannot find among the pale roses
A flower that resembles my red ideal.

That which is necessary to this abysmal heart,
It is you, Lady Macbeth, soul powerful to crime,
Dream of Aeschylus hatched in the clime of storms;

Or you, grand Night, daughter of Michelangelo,
Who twisted calmly in a strange pose
Shaping your charms to the mouths of Titans!

L'Idéal
Ce ne seront jamais ces beautés de vignettes,
Produits avariés, nés d'un siècle vaurien,
Ces pieds à brodequins, ces doigts à castagnettes,
Qui sauront satisfaire un coeur comme le mien.

Je laisse à Gavarni, poète des chloroses,
Son troupeau gazouillant de beautés d'hôpital,
Car je ne puis trouver parmi ces pâles roses
Une fleur qui ressemble à mon rouge idéal.

Ce qu'il faut à ce coeur profond comme un abîme,
C'est vous, Lady Macbeth, âme puissante au crime,
Rêve d'Eschyle éclos au climat des autans;

Ou bien toi, grande Nuit, fille de Michel-Ange,
Qui tors paisiblement dans une pose étrange
Tes appas façonnés aux bouches des Titans!