Canto XX of Hell
The methamorphosis of Hermaphrodite.
They killed in herselves what I love of women.
Di nova pena mi conven far versi e dar matera al ventesimo canto de la prima canzon ch'č d'i sommersi. Io era giŕ disposto tutto quanto a riguardar ne lo scoperto fondo, che si bagnava d'angoscioso pianto; e vidi gente per lo vallon tondo venir, tacendo e lagrimando, al passo che fanno le letane in questo mondo. Come 'l viso mi scese in lor piů basso, mirabilmente apparve esser travolto ciascun tra 'l mento e 'l principio del casso;
Here, dear reader, another song of torments reserved for those who are burried. I was already occupied looking in the bottom from where rise tears of anguish, and I saw coming, by the circular valley, quiet people who where crying and walking, with the pace where one goes on earth, following the song of the litanies. When my glance went down lower towards them, each one appeared to me strangely twisted from the chin to the top of the bust; they had their face turned towards their kidneys, and they had to walk backward because it was impossible for them to see in front of them. Let God assure you, dear reader, to draw all the fruit from this reading! And now I let you judge by yourself, if I could keep my face free from tears. When I saw, so close to us, the tears which ran between their kidneys and came sprinkling up to their buttocks. I cried so much, supporting myself to the rocks, that my guide says to me: "Aren't you, also, similar to one of these insanes?" And seeming to speak to himself, he added: "Is it where the pity live, when she is well dead? But there is no one so villain then who has no compassion after God has judged badly, and that He does not seek for "the" culprit but for "a" culprit, with the objective of alleviating His own people." Then Baudelaire continued as follows: "See all these, who changed their aspect when, from women, they became male, transforming herselves in all their members and all their gestures. See that one whose face is smooth like a buttock; when the country emptied from its autochtones, that there were no more children in the cradles, neither foetus in the belly of mothers, neither elders in the asylums, nor husband to fertilize the mother and that there remained only some useful beings, but without any future; him or her, whom you see, where among these, engendered from a biotechnosynthetic sperm, delivered from the belly of a carrying mother and whose face is smooth like a buttock. He bore the name of Hermaphrodite, whom you see, he is the one I speak of in my "fleurs du mal", you who knows so well these flowers of sin to have consumed them so much. See these unhappy ones, they forsook their freedom to become witches, soothsayers and avengeresses; they destroyed their charms and invented pains for their daughters. Look at them, who wear proudly the costume of the policewomen, who would like to be men and to inherit their constraint and brutality. Look at them and take pity of them because they killed in herselves all I liked of a woman. See that one who has cut her right breast for better killing the lover in her, and who makes him revive in spirit, by caressing the breast she still keeps on her. She has not yet walk much that she came to a low plain, which is a marsh and which, in summer, becomes unhealthy, where she lays herself to rest and give herself some pleasure. This wild virgin lives since, in the middle of a mud pit, among these islands of Sorel which drown themselves in the Great River, a land without culture and inhabitants. To flee any intercourse with men, she settled there with her mistresses to practise her vice; she lived there, she left there, her body deprived of progeny. Also, I warn you so that, if you intend to make reaborn life in Fermont, in Murdochville, in Gagnon, in Val Jalbert, unite men and women, if there is still some left, who wishes that revive there, Love " Thus he spoke to me, and during this time, we walked, we walked, we always walked without stopping, and we did met no more women who where free and beautiful to look at, only men, men in the shape of mops, men with stunted grown phallus, hiding their useless appendix; we wanted to leave as soon as possible, these curse places which promise neither future, neither fatherland, neither people, nor life.
Marco Polo ou le voyage imaginaire (La tragédie humaine, janvier 2000) © 1999 Jean-Pierre Lapointe
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