Aloysius Bertrand

[bendk]

"Whether you die absolved or damned," muttered Scarbo into my ear that night, "your shroud shall be a spiderweb, and I'll wrap up the spider right in there with you!"

~ Aloysius Bertrand, "Scarbro"


The following two poems were written by Aloysius Bertrand (1807 - d1841). They were both translated from the French by TL, and appeared in the 1985 issues of FANTASY & TERROR 6 and FANTASY & TERROR 7 respectively.


THE DWARF

- Thou, on horseback!
- And why not? I have often
galloped along on Lord
Linlithgow's greyhound!
Scottish ballad

SEATED WITHIN THE SHADOWS OF the curtains around my bed, I
snared the elusive butterfly, one born of a ray of moonlight
or a drop of dew.
A fluttering moth who, for the freedom of its captive wings
from my capturing fingers, paid me a ransom in perfume.
Suddenly the little stray flew off, abandoning to my care -
and my horror - a monstrously deformed larva with a human face!

"WHERE IS THY SOUL, THAT I MIGHT mount it and ride!" - "My soul,
old carthorse crippled by a long day's work, is at the stables,
resting upon a pile of filth gilded with dreams."
And when my soul broke loose in a flight of panic, tearing
through the pale web of twilight beneath a horizon shadowed with
the jagged outlines of Gothic belltowers.
But the dwarf's whinnying flight ended when he spun like a
spindle, winding himself up in his own white mane.


THE MADMAN

One carolous coin; or, if you
would like, a golden lamb.
-MS in the King's Library

The moon was grooming her hair with an ebony comb, sprinkling
the hills, the meadows, and the woods with fireflies like
pieces of silver.

SCARBO, GNOME sated with treasures, was up on my roof, and, to the
crow of the weathercock, was winnowing his loot, separating the
ducats and florins, which jingled in cadence, from the counterfeit
coins, which showered over the street.
How the madman laughed, mockingly, as each night he wandered
about the deserted city, his one eye on the moon and the other -
burned out!
"Wealth of the moon," he muttered. "Scraping together these
devil's tokens, I shall buy a pillory where I may warm myself in
the sun."
But, as always, there was the moon, the moon going down - And
concealed in my cellar, Scarbo was turning out more ducats and
florins with each echoing strike of his press.
Meantime, its two horns waving ahead, a snail, which must have
been confused by the night, was pushing its way across my
glistening windowpane.



Black Coat Press recently published a nice affordable edition of GASPARD DE LA NUIT. It is translated from the French and adapted by Donald Sidney-Fryer. The book also includes a foreward by T.E.D. Klein, an in-depth introduction by Donald Sidney-Fryer, illustrations by Aloysius Bertand, and front cover art by Gahan Wilson.


Biographical information and a few prose poems can be found at:
http://members.aol.com/benedit3/bertrand.html

 

[ElHI]

Thanks bendk,

Here are the original versions of the poems, for those of you who can read French:

III LE FOU.

Un carolus, ou bien encor,
Si l'aimez mieux, un agneau d'or.
Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du roi.


La lune peignait ses cheveux avec un démêloir d'ébène qui argentait d'une pluie de vers luisants les collines, les prés et les bois.
*
Scarbo, gnome dont les trésors foisonnent, vannait sur mon toit, au cri de la girouette, ducats et florins qui sautaient en cadence, les pièces fausses jonchant la rue.
Comme ricana le fou qui vague, chaque nuit, par la cité déserte, un oeil à la lune et l'autre - crevé !
" Foin de la lune ! grommela-t-il, ramassant les jetons du diable, j'achèterai le pilori pour m'y chauffer au soleil ! "
*
Mais c'était toujours la lune, la lune qui se couchait, - et Scarbo monnayait
sourdement dans ma cave ducats et florins à coups de balancier.
Tandis que, les deux cornes en avant, un limaçon qu'avait égaré la nuit cherchait sa route sur mes vitraux lumineux.



IV LE NAIN.

- Toi, à cheval !
- Eh ! pourquoi pas ! j'ai si souvent galopé sur un lévrier du laird de Linlithgow !
Ballade écossaise.


J'avais capturé de mon séant, dans l'ombre de mes courtines, ce furtif papillon, éclos d'un rais de la lune ou d'une goutte de rosée.
Phalène palpitante qui, pour dégager ses ailes captives entre mes doigts, me payait une rançon de parfums !
Soudain la vagabonde bestiole s'envolait, abandonnant dans mon giron, - ô horreur ! - une larve monstrueuse et difforme à tête humaine !
*
" Où est ton âme, que je chevauche ! - Mon âme, haquenée boiteuse des fatigues du jour, repose maintenant sur la litière dorée des songes. "
Et elle s'échappait d'effroi, mon âme, à travers la livide toile d'araignée du
crépuscule, par-dessus de noirs horizons dentelés de noirs clochers gothiques.
Mais le nain, pendu à sa fuite hennissante, se roulait comme un fuseau dans les quenouillées de sa blanche crinière.

 

[bendk]

These are a couple of pieces by Aloysius Bertrand that I found in Grimoire magazines #4 and #6. They were probably selected and translated by Ligotti.


DEPARTING FOR THE SABBATH


She arose in the night, and, lighting
a candle, took a bottle and annointed
herself; then, chanting some words, she
was transported to the Sabbath scene.

Jean Bodin: Demonomanie de sorciers (1580)


They were twleve, there, eating beer soup--each one spooning
away with a forebone from the arm of a dead man.
The fireplace glowed red with coals, candles mushroomed in
the smoke, and the plates sent up a reek like the open pits of
spring.
And whenever Maribas would laugh or cry, the sound was of a
bow whining across three strings of a mangled violin
Meantime, in the glimmer of candlelight, one old adept wickedly
laid out on the table a grimoire, upon which a scorched fly came
to rest.
That fly kept on buzzing even as a spider, with its huge
bristling belly, was mounting up the side of the magical volume.
But by then the sorcerers and witches had flown up the
chimney flue: some bestriding brooms, some bestraddling the
fire-tongs, and Maribas upon the handle of a frying pan.

--Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)




SCARBRO

"Whether you die forgiven or foresaken," muttered Scarbro into my ear that
night, "you will have a spider's web for a shroud, and I shall wrap up the spider
along with you!"
"Oh! For my shroud," I pleaded, my eyes gone red with such weeping, "let me
have not less than an aspen leaf in which the breeze of the lake will lull me."
"No!" jeered the mocking dwarf, "you will be fed upon by my scarab beetles
who prey, nightly, on tiny flies blinded by the setting sun!"
"Or do you perhaps favor," I answered back, crying helplessly, "perhaps do
you favor that I be suclkled by a tarantula with a beak like an elephant's?"
"Well," he added, "take heart, for yours will be a winding sheet of bandages,
splotched with gold from the slough of a snake, in which I'll swaddle you like
a mummy."
"And in the abysmal crypt of Saint Benigne, where I will tuck you in straight
up against a wall, you will listen at your ease to little children sobbing in limbo."

-- Aloysius Bertrand



(In my initial post, I quoted the same first line from "Scarbro" out of happy coincidence. I just liked the line. I didn't even have the Grimoire Magazines yet. I got the line from either the internet or from the book Gaspard De La Nuit.)