Shooting gallery and graveyard

Graveyard view, Tavern—“Unusual sign,” said our gadabout, “but just the thing to make you thirsty! Without a doubt, this cabaret-owner knows how to appreciate Horace and the poets who studied with Epicurus. He might even have knowledge of the ancient Egyptians’ deep refinement, who held no good feast lacked its bones, or some other emblem of life’s brevity.”

And he went in, drank a glass of beer against the tombs, and slowly smoked a cigar. Then, he had the idea of stepping down into that graveyard, with its grass so tall and inviting, and with a wealth of sunlight over all.

Indeed, light and warmth were raging there, and you might say the sodden sun was wallowing stretched out on a carpet of splendid flowers, fattened on destruction. A vast noise of living filled the air—infinitely small living—regularly cut at intervals by the crack of gunfire from a next-door shooting gallery, like the pop of champagne corks in the hum of a muted symphony.

Then, in the sunlight heating his brains and in the breath of the strong perfumes of Death, he heard a whispering voice below the tomb he was sitting on: “Accursèd be your bull’s-eyes and your rifles, turbid mortals, who concern you not with the dead and their holy rest! Accursèd be your goals, accursèd be your plans, restless humans, who learn the art of killing next the sanctuary of Death! If you knew how easy the prize is to win, how easy the target to hit, and what a nothingness all is, save Death, you wouldn’t tire yourselves out so, worrisome mortals, and you wouldn’t disturb so often their sleep who, long since, have hit the Target, hit the only real target of hateful life!”

 

Charles Baudelaire