The Fairground Declaration
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Quietude! it is certain that beside
me, like dreams, sprawled in a swaying on the promenade under wheels lulling
flowers’ interjection, any woman, and I know one who sees clearly here,
exempts me from the effort of proffering a vocable: to compliment her out
loud on some questioning toilette, offer of self nearly to the man in whose
favor the afternoon ends, unable contrary to all this fortuitous nearness,
but to suggest the distance upon her features ended in a dimple of witty
smiling. Thus consents not reality; for that was pitilessly, beyond the
sunray one felt with luxury expire on the gleams of the landau, like a
vociferation, amid too much tacit felicity for a close of day upon the
suburb, with storm, in every direction at once and motiveless, of the
ordinary strident laughter of things and of their copperplate triumphal: by
the way, cacophony in the hearing of anyone, a moment aside, he rather than
merge with it, nearby his idea, remains sharp to the dread of existence. “The fair at...”
and I know not what suburban rendezvous! named the child driven in my
distraction, the voice free of any annoy; I obeyed and made a stop. Sans compensation to this jolt
save a need for plausible figurative explication unto my wits, as
symmetrically are laid out illuminated glassworks little by little brightened
as garlands and attributes, I decided, solitude wanting, to dive even with
bravura into this hateful and express unloosing of all that I have formerly
fled in a gracious company: ready and evincing no surprise at the
modification of our program, with ingenuous arm she rests upon me, whilst we
set out upon, eyes toward the enfilade, the alley of amazement dividing in
one echo of uproar fairgrounds and allowing the mob to enclose for a time the
universe. Subsequent to the assaults of a mediocre licentiousness in view of
whatever it is diverting our stagnation amused by twilight, behind, purple
and bizarre, we retained as much as the incendiary cloud a human spectacle,
poignant: denied of a daubed frame or an inscription in capital letters a booth,
apparently void. To whom this mattress
unstitched for improvisation here, like the veils in all weathers and
temples, arcanum! belonged, its frequenting during the fast had not with its
possessor excited before he rolled it out like the gonfalon of jubilant
hopes, the hallucination of a wonder to behold (save the inanity of his
famished nightmare); and for that, moved by the brotherly character of
exception to the quotidian misery which a meadow, when instituted by the
mysterious word fair, takes of numerous shoes stamping it (by reason of which
peeps from the deeps of clothing some unique velleity of hard coin to come
out for the sole goal of being spent), him too! no matter who of all denuded
save of the notion if not to sell, to make seen, but what, having yielded to
the convocation of the beneficent rendezvous. Or, very prosaically, maybe the
trained rat unless, himself, this mendicant on the athletic vigor of his
muscles counted, to decide the popular infatuation, defaulted, at the precise
moment, as it often happens with a formal demand upon man by general
circumstances. “Beat the drum!”
proposed as highness Madame... you alone know Who, marking a superannuated
instrument from which arose, his arms unfolded so as to signify useless the
approach of his theater without prestige, an old man whom that camaraderie
with an implement of rumor and call, perhaps, seduced to his vacant design;
then as if, from that which all at once one might, here, envisage of the
fairest, the enigma, by a jewel closing the society lady, as at her throat
the lack of response, scintillated! behold her engulfed, to my surprise of a
clown dumb before a public halt palmed by the alert of rats and tats
deafening my invariable and obscure for myself at first. “Come in
everybody, it’s only one sou, returned to those not satisfied with the
performance.” The nimbus of a doormat in the gratitude joining two
emptied senile palms, I wave its colors, a signal, from way off, and tidy my
hair, ready to split the mass erect in the secret of that which had been able
to do with this dreamless place the initiative of a female contemporary of
our evenings. At knee height, she emerged,
upon a table, from a hundred heads. Clear as though a jet wandered
from somewhere else shot upon her electrically, burst for me this calculation
that lacking everything, she, according as fashion, fancy or heavenly whim
circumstantiated her beauty, without supplement of dance or song, for the
crowd amply paid this alms in favor of whomever; and in the same stroke I knew
my duty in the peril of the subtle exhibition, or that there was naught in
the world to conjure away defection into curiosities save the recourse to
some absolute power, as a Metaphor. Quick, to rattle on unto the
clarification, on many physiognomies, of their security which, not
understanding all at once bows before the evidence, even arduous, implied in
the word and agrees to exchange its brass for presumptions exact and
superior, in short, the certainty for everyone of not being had. A quick look, the final, on a
head of hair whereon smokes then brightens in garden splendors the paling of
the crepe hat the same shade as the statuary dress lifting up, advances to
the spectator, on one foot like the rest hydrangea. So: The head of hair flight of a flame to the extreme But without gold to sigh that this cloud living A tender hero nudity somehow defames Of sowing with rubies the doubt she all but flays alive
My aid at the waist of the
living allegory who was already resigning her guard-post, perhaps for want in
me of ulterior talkativeness, so as to deaden the flight nicely to the
ground: “I’ll point out to you, now on a footing with the
comprehension of visitors, cutting off their astonishment before this
farewell by an affectation of return to the authenticity of the spectacle,
Gentlemen and Ladies, that the person who has had the honor of submitting to
your judgement, requires not to communicate to you the meaning of her charm,
a costume or any usual theater accessory. This nature makes do with the
perfect allusion furnished by clothes always to one of the primordial motifs
of woman, and suffices, as your friendly approbation convinces me.” A
suspense of appreciative type save the odd confounding “That’s
it!” or “Well done!” and “Yes” from throats
like several bravos lent by pairs of generous hands, led to the exit on a
vacancy of trees and night the throng where we would mingle ourselves, were
it not for the expectation in white gloves yet of a childish trooper who
dreamed of warming them up in the estimation of a lofty garter. “Thank you,”
consented the dear, a gust straight to her from a constellation or leaves
quaffed as though to find thence reserenement, she had not doubted a success,
at least the frigid habit of her voice: I had in mind the memory of things
which are not forgotten. “Oh! only the commonplace
of an æsthetic...” “Which you might not perhaps
have introduced, who knows? my friend, the pretext of formulating before me
in the conjunct isolation for example of our carriage—where is
it—let’s go back there”: but this sprang, forced, under the
brutal punch to the stomach, caused by an impatience of people to whom cost
what it may and suddenly there must be proclaimed something were it
daydreaming... “Who knows not and goes
forth naked with fear, athwart the public; it’s true. As you, Madame,
would not have harkened to irrefutably, spite of its reduplication upon a
rhyme of the final stroke, my patter after a primitive mode of the sonnet,1
I wager, if each term had not repercussed unto you by various eardrums, to
charm a mind open to multiple understanding.” ”Perhaps!” accepted
our thought in a playfulness of nocturnal breath the same. 1. Common in the English Renaissance. |
Stéphane Mallarmé