Canto XV of Hell
The parade of the Saint-Jean Baptiste.
Borduas and the "Refus Global".
Ora cen porta l'un de' duri margini; e 'l fummo del ruscel di sopra aduggia, sì che dal foco salva l'acqua e li argini. Quali Fiamminghi tra Guizzante e Bruggia, temendo 'l fiotto che 'nver lor s'avventa, fanno lo schermo perché 'l mar si fuggia; e quali Padoan lungo la Brenta, per difender lor ville e lor castelli, anzi che Carentana il caldo senta: a tale imagine eran fatti quelli, tutto che né sì alti né sì grossi, qual che si fosse, lo maestro felli.
Now, it is one of the hard banks that carries us; and the fog which is formed above the brook, creates a shade that preserves from fire its water and its edges. Like the coastal cities, following the melting of the icebergs, by fear of the flood which precipitates towards them, they build dams to try to stop the sea, so they were made, broad and high. We were already far from the forest, but then, appeared a flash, and which was resplendent without never disappear, it was accompanied by a disrespectful music. I wondered what that could be and the more I advanced in the penumbra, the more my senses woke up with Fear. "Oh damn Souls, my Gorgons!" I said to myself: "of having suffered for you, so many incontinency and so long vigils to fornicate with you, I am in a hurry to ask you to let yourselves fornicated." And they advanced towards me, surrounding my ornament, similar to a candlestick, blazing, directed and red of blood; it pointed, arrogant, towards the Sky; they venerated it, cherished it firmly, embraced it, handled it firmly then impaled themselves in it while singing in choruses with their lugubrious and carnal voices, "In cauda venenum!" I dared to turn to my guide and I saw only the shade of himself; then I deferred my eyes on these decadent Things, that approached and who where giving themselves up, like wives to conquer and to subject. The shadow of Baudelaire reproaches me: "Why such fellatios by these shadows without any identity, and not worrying about what is coming behind them?" Then, I saw coming close to them, young devils with fragile bodies; all, they were identical and pink like pretty darlings and they trembled like leaves. And all, hung to their ass, other devils with robust bodies and flashing like bronze, all identical but full of ardour, sodomizing violently the imps with some imposing penises and who shouted without unison: "Be blessed, Sons of Satan, give yourselves up to the devils of Hell, as can do, the sons of Eve and make them enjoy an eternal Illness!" Following the devils of Hell, four strange batrachians followed, which had the colour of the plants, short legs provided with palms, tongues like spurs and exorbitant eyes, as those of Hypnos which never make awake anymore. Such as the salamanders, they crossed the Hell without burning themselves. Then, advanced, an imposing chariot on four wheels, harnessed to the tail of a Triton. Three Furies bordered it on its right side; they danced in circle, making gleam, under the glares of the flash, their provocating bodies of denuded flesh, of the colours of metal in fusion. On the left side of the chariot, four identical Moires with their defying glance, where dancing between themselves, they were of dark colour, such that they could make some, lose its reason. Further, came other characters with unbearable pace and ornament, demons and malicious spirits like if they were coated in live coal, with their wings folded up or flying above the procession and much others who defile so that it would take me too long to describe. When the chariot was facing me, a glare of thunder was heard; while seeing us, all turned to us by blinking their eyes and by disfiguring us, I was challenged by one of them who exclaimed: "What a wonder!" And he made the gesture of fucking me up; but when he extended his arms towards me to take me, I fixed my glances on his youthful face, I recognized, neither, that of a man nor that of a woman but an ambivalent being with the body of an hedonist who agitated his arms, like a female. He exclaimed as follows: "Oh my dear, do not be displeased if I slip, between your thighs, my burning prick and that, thus, you taste to the hot fires of Hell!" I answered him like for excusing me: But I am afraid to provoke you and for this reason, that someone retains me in Hell, I prefer to move away and let the parade pass, rather than being one of the actors." And he replied: "Oh beautiful Adonis, whoever of this troop does stop one moment, remains then chilled a hundred years in the pain of the fire which corrodes its interior, to have lived one hundred years to fuck asses! Also, walk, I will follow you, touching your clothing if not, your flesh and I will go, relieving me thus, from my sexual depravities." I did not dare to go down from the bank and to walk at his height. "What hazard or what destiny leads you here below before your last day? And who is that one who shows you the way and who appears to me, worthy of my prick?" I answered him: "That one guides me through the hell; know that he sang another kind of love and that he also died from it, of a disease which is not caught through the ass but is rather connected to the pain of the soul." And while he was listening to me, in front of me marched allegorical carriages surrounded by actors mimicing other scenes much stranger still. On the following carriage, there were flagellants as those who go to the festivals of Saint Vitus to assist to the Lupercales. They were tortured, whipped, crucified, convulsed, they found pleasure to suffer, to be stigmatized and to be made up of their own blood; they expiated their sins while fornicating between themselves like as many immolated Christs. Around them, couples with vulgar allure, became animated; they were dressed with thin straps of leather which emphasized, in addition to the roundnesses of their buttocks, the genitals of the males, the bosoms and the vagina of the females. They were whipped and sodomized by mimicking the gestures of the tortured and the torturers. Around and sailing above the heads, giant Spiritellis assembled on stilts, whose postures simulated all the obscenity of the mythological gods. There were travelos, much mados, some bingos and as many didos. Then, after a long delay nourished by the tumult of some rock music, a troop of Amazones came in anger; they were dressed with long skirts that stopped just under their mammals which they offered to the sight, with an indecensy, such to give thirst to a devil of hell. There were of all forms and all sizes: some rounds and others less rounds; they were of all colours and all attributes: black ones, white and pinks ones, they hoist broad areolas or were furnished with simple ecus; there was some appetising, others repugnant, mammals in the shape of piasters which pissed milk, large cisterns, bladders exhausted by overuses, breasts in the shape of fruits and vegetables, apples, pears, melons and marrows; nipples in the shape of juicy teats, small nipples with bitter fruit taste, round loaves gloryfied like is the head of Sainte-Catherine of Sienna, lollipops like fragile wounds, breasts to appease, for eternity, the thirsty devils of Hell. On another carriage, there were intermingled bodies which sought to love each other, they coupled from the front or from behind, astraddled or in a reversed position and who seemed to struggle while trying to find pleasure from it, that it seemed to me that I was more excited than they were, to look at them fornicating, these beautiful lesbians who played about and who never seemed to appease herselves, in all the corners of the carriage. And I saw both of them, interlaced; her, as fragile as a young girl, the other more beautiful than Minerve and, whom they saw me looking at them, loving each other and, by knowing it very well, sharpened, without any decency, my senses of male in heat. Oh, how I would have loved to be a woman to take the place of the young girl! Or to insert myself in the body of the young girl and to plunge my tongue in the half-opened flower of Minerve, to taste the nectar that maculates her bloody beaches or to plunge my head between her elastic mammals or to infuse myself in her, such as a flexible infante. Oh how I would have loved to be this young girl and thus, to see myself violated by this experienced goddess! Oh how it would be good to be a woman and to be able to debauch the virgin without incurring the rage of the goddess Legislation! And I closed my eyes while my prick inflated and that I thought of the sufferings that, avenger Matrones reserves, to those who use, with incontinency, of this apparatus which suit only to the brutes. Then I let go the parade with its paces of Saturnales. And came to us, coming from the other direction, a solitary soul; he appeared to be lost. And my Master asked him: "Who are you, you who goes alone like so, and without companion?" "I am a painter; thus, be not worried of my loneliness, I am not lost neither lonely although being alone. And you, who seem not to have quit life, do you know what awaits you, where you seem to go? If you follow your star, you cannot miss arriving at the glorious well of your Beauty. But be wary about your futile and ungrateful people, who besiege you, they will become your worst enemy because of your loneliness; it is not without reason that reason does not triumph in a garden where blooms, the irrational, it is there, the price we should pay to reason freely. If I made right forecasts during my beautiful life and if I had not died, seeing that heaven is favourable to you, I would have comforted you in your quest."
I continued to walk while speaking with Borduas. I asked him as follows: "Why are you not in Paradise and who are those enemies who are against my freedom?" He answered me: "Know that I refused the Paradise and many other things also, I do not feel myself badly about it, since I am here incognito and on my own will; I did not want to find myself in Paradise with those who you know, who denatured man, to whom God, in its kindness, granted his forgiveness. All those who claim to organize your freedom, although they wear neither the tiara nor the cassock as those who I denounced in my time, are, by their dogmas, new clergyman from which you must be wary about like the others. They claim my Gospel but they suffer from the evil which I denounced. They have big mouths and they are spoiled on earth of the same sin. They follow the parade here as on earth. I could tell you more but I see over there rising some dust with bad auguries. Politicians arrive with whom I do not want to be; I recommend you, to read again this extract from my "Refus Global", which is still actual and will be always as long a time as there will be Synarchists; to prevent you from dreaming; move away from them, I request from you, nothing more." And he continued thus, to speak with a more solemn and stronger voice like seeking to be heard beyond our circle: "The borders of your dreams are not any more the same ones. The shame of serfdom without hope makes place to the pride of a possible freedom to be conquered with great fight. The reign of the multiform fear has ended. In the fool hope to erase the memory of it I enumerate them: fear of the prejudices, fear of the public opinion, persecutions, of general reprobation, fear of being alone without the State and the Society which insulates very infallibly, fear of yourself, your brother, of poverty, fear of the established order, of ridiculous justice, fear of the new relations, fear of the surrationnel, fear of the needs, fear of the large docks open on the faith in man, in the future society, fear of all the forms likely to start a transforming love, blue fear, red fear, white fear: net of your chains. From the reign of the withdrawing fear, passes to that of the anguish. From then, your duty is simple. To break definitively with all the practices of society, to disunite yourself from its utility spirit. Refusal to be knowingly below your psychic possibilities. Refusal to close your eyes on the defects, the deceptions perpetrated under cover of the knowledge, the rendered service, the recognition due. Refusal of a quartering in the only plastic village, places fortified but easy of avoidance. Refusal to shut up: "do of me what please you, but you must hear me" Refusal of glory, of the honours: marks of the harmful effect, unconsciousness, servility. Refusal to serve, to be usable for such ends. Refusal of any INTENTION, harmful arm of the REASON. Death to both, the second rank! Place to magic! Place to the objective mysteries! Place to love! Place to needs! To the global refusal, opposes your global responsibility. That those tempted by the adventure joins you. At the conceivable end, I see you liberated from your useless chains, to realize in an unforeseen order, necessary to spontaneousness, in resplendent anarchy, the plenitude of your individual gifts. By then, without rest nor halt, in community of feeling with the thirsties of a greater comfort, without fear of the long expiries, in the encouragement or persecution, you will continue in the joy your savage need for liberation."(1) Then he turned around and appeared to move away from these who, at the National Assembly, run, holding very high the "Fleur de Lys" and who pretends, between themselves, to be those who have the truth by making it lose to all those that are around. And, not having been able to finish this conversation, I say to him: "What you say to me of my destiny, I take note of it and I preserve it, to have it explain by a lady who will be able to do it if, I arrive to Her."
Marco Polo ou le voyage imaginaire (the human tregedy, janvier 2000) © 1999 Jean-Pierre Lapointe
(1)Extrait du Refus Global.
Theme musical: musique de film Psycho, empruntée aux Archives du Web.
Important Notice: any photos or fragments of photos subject to copyright will be removed on notice.