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drinkthemlock · 3 months

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NIGHT AT THE TAVERN

V - CLAUDIUS HERMANN

This chapter beat my ass, not gonna lie. It contains a poem, which are extremely hard to translate (especially since it’s an álvares poem…), so forgive me for any inaccuracies in that department. This chapter contains some pretty repulsive stuff, especially regarding sexual assault and abduction (seriously), and I’d go as far as saying it’s the most disturbing one (followed closely by Solfieri’s). Stay safe, and enjoy!

Text by Álvares de Azevedo, translation my own.

Claudius Hermann

… Ecstasy!

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time

And makes a healthful music. It is not madness that I have utter’d.

SHAKESPEARE - “Hamlet”

“And you, Hermann! Your turn has come. One by one we invoked a corpse from the cemetery of time. One by one we lifted its shroud to sample you a drop of blood. Speak, for your turn has come.”

“Claudius dreams of a sonnet in the manner of Petrarch, some halo of purity like that of the pure spirits from Der Messias,” Johann said between a smoke and a laugh, lifting his head off the table.

“Very well! You want a story? I could tell, like you, insanities of nights of debauchery, but why? It was intended as mockery when Faust went to remind Mephistopheles of the hours of damnation he spent with him. You know them… these clouds of the past; you’ve read plenty at the faded book of my libertine existence. If you do not remember it, the first woman of the streets you find could remind you. In this dark river called life that flows towards the past while we walk towards the future, I also gave up faith and threw myself, having shed my most perfumed clothing, to wear the tunic of Saturnalia! The past is what is gone, it’s the flower that has withered, the sun that has set, the corpse that has rotted. To cry for it? What madness! Better sleep with your dark memories! Come to life, wake only the forget-me-nots in bloom in that swamp! Floats, in that not-being, the scent of a pure memory!”

“Bravo! Bravissimo Claudius, you are completely drunk! In truth you are a romantic!”

“Silence, Bertram! It is true that this is not a legend to be told after yours, one of those things to be told with your elbows on the red cloth and your lips splashed with wine and satiated with kisses… But why bother?”

“You all that love the game, you that once saw a wave of golf flow in that abyss, eddy in the bottom, like a sea of hopes that crashes on the high tide of fate, you know well what haze confuses us then… it is the best insanity that riles us in those games of thousands of men, or of fortune. --Aspirations, life itself at the speed of a race, where all this complex of miseries and desires, crimes and virtues called existence is thrown onto a couple of horses![1]

I bet, as a man that wasn’t wounded by growing poor: luxury also satiates; and that is a horrible satiety! To it nothing is enough… not the dances from the Orient, nor the Roman Lupercalias, not even the burning of an entire city will quench its thirst for blood, this vitality of poison that Byron speaks of [2]. My gamble at the turf was my whole fortune. I was rich, very rich then: in London no one boasted more expensive depravities, no nawab splurged in one evening as many sums as I. The sweat of three generations, I spilled it on the beds of whores, and on the floor of my orgies…

In the moment the races were about to start, when everyone felt feverish with impatience, a murmur ran through the crowds, a smile… and then a woman shot by on horseback. Had you seen her, like me, on a black horse, with velvet clothes, with her lively face, the ardent look between her eyelashes, reflecting a queen in all those grandiose gestures! Had you seen her, beautiful with her perfect and harmonious beauty, beautiful with her pure and silky coloring, with her black hair and the white skin of her face, the oval of her rosy cheeks, the nacre fire of her thin lips, the perfection of her chest standing out in her riding habit… Had you seen her like this, honestly, gentlemen, you wouldn’t have laughed as you are laughing now!”

“Romanticism! You must be very drunk, Claudius, for on your dry lips of Lovelace and your detachment of Don Juan [3], poetry has come and given a kiss!”

“Laugh, yes! You wretches! That do not understand what perhaps flows like fire from Lovelace’s lips, how love heaves under the dripping wet clothes of Don Juan– the libertine! Madmen, that have never imagined Lovelace without his mask, maybe crying for Clarissa Harlowe [4]— poor angel! Whose white wings she was going to shed, cursing this fatality that makes love an infamy and a crime! A thousand times you are madmen! That never imagined the Spaniard waking up in the lupanar [5], running his hand through his forehead and burning with remorse and longing as he remembers so many beautiful visions from the past!”

“Bravo! Bravo!”

“Poetry! Poetry!” mumbled Bertram.

“Poetry! Why pronounce to the chaste virgin its sacred name, like a mystery, in the filth of the tavern? Why remind her of the star of love in the light of the orgy’s lamps? Poetry! Do you know what poetry is?”

“Half hundred sonorous words that a handful of pallid men understand, a ladder of sounds and harmonies that to those mad souls seem like ideas and unleash illusions like the moon to shadows… that is, in what one calls poets. Now, in the ideal, in the woman, resentment from the last romance, the delirium and passion of the last novel’s heroine and the vague and uncertain present of a mystical pleasure, for which a virgin recoils in lust, without knowing why…”

“Silence, Bertram! Your brain has been fried by wine, like lava from a volcano burns the brush and flowers of a meadow. Silence! You are like those plants that bloom and dive into the dead sea: a limestone crystallization covers them, they wither and die. Poetry, I’ll tell you as well on my turn, is the flight of the morning birds in the warm embrace of dawn’s red clouds, it is the deer that rolls in the dew of the lush mountain, that forgets tomorrow’s death, yesterday’s agony, in its bed of flowers!”

“That’s enough, Claudius, because that which you say no one understands: they are words, words and more words; like Hamlet said; and all that is empty and lifeless like a dried skull, deceitful like the earth’s infectious vapors that the twilight sun flushes with a thousand colors called clouds and that jeering and cloudy fairy called poetry!”

“The story! The story! Claudius, can’t you see this discussion is making us yawn with boredom?”

“Very well, I shall tell the rest of the story. At the end of that day I would’ve doubled my fortune.

The next day I saw her: it was in the theater. I don’t know which play was it, I don’t know what I saw, or heard; I only knew that there was a woman, as beautiful as every most pure thing the sculptor creates. This woman was the duchess Eleonora… The next day I saw her at a ball… Then… It took long: six months! Can you imagine? Six months of agony and breathtaking desire, six months of love with the thirst of a beast! Six months! How long were they!

One day, I’d had enough. All this time had been spent in contemplation, in seeing her, loving her, dreaming of her; I wrung my hands thinking it would not go further from that, that it was too much to wait in vain and that if she would not come, like Gulanre at the feet of the Corsair [6], one must go speak to her.

One night all were asleep in the duke’s palace. The duchess, tired from the ball, fell asleep on a divan. The alabaster lamp trembly shone its golden light on her pale face. She looked like a fairy asleep in the moonlight.

The portière fluttered: a man stood there, distracted. His head was so hot and feverish and he rested it in the doorframe.

The weakness was cowardly; and more, this man had bought a key and at one point under the betrayal of a servant, this man had sworn he’d have that woman tonight. Gone is the poison, he’d drink the nectar of that flower, the scarlet liquor of that glass. As to these losses of honor and adultery, do not laugh at them - not that he laughed at it. He loved and he wanted her: his want was like the blade of a dagger — to harm or to crack.

On the table there was a cup and a vial of wine, he filled it: it was Spanish wine… he came close to her, with her velvet clothes untied, her hair half loose still woven with gemstones and flowers, her breast half naked, where diamonds glittered like dewdrops, he lifted her in his arms, kissed her. Under the heat of that kiss, half-naked, she woke; among her vague dreams an illusion perhaps peered through; she murmured ‘love!’ and with heavy lidded eyes she let her head fall and fell asleep again.

The man drew from his breast an emerald vial. He lifted it to her half-open lips and poured a few drops that she absorbed without feeling them. He laid her down and waited. From then on her sleep was most profound… The liquid was a narcotic which was a mix of a few drops of those exciting liquors that inspire fever on the face and voluptuousness in the heart.

The man was on his knees, his chest trembled, and he was pale like a man after a long sensuous night. Everything seemed to falter around him…

She was naked: neither velvet, nor sheer veil covered her. The man rose and moved the curtains.

The lamp shone brighter and then went out…

That man was Claudius Hermann.

When I rose, I shrouded myself in my cape and walked off into the street. I wanted to retire to my home, but I was as dizzy as a drunkard. I was staggering and the floor seemed slippery, like when one feels faint. Though an idea chased me. After that woman there had been nothing for me. Someone who has drunk from the wine of the ripe grapes of paradise should never again get drunk with earthly nectar…

When the nectar has run dry, what is left if not suicide?

A week went on like this: every night I drank from the sleeping woman’s lips a century of pleasure. One month, in which entrudo balls [7] deliriously went by, more feverish yet, she fell asleep hot, with her face on fire…

One night — it was after a ball — I waited for her in her bedroom, hidden behind her bed. I had poured the last drops from the vial in the cup of water beside her bed when she walked in with the duke.

He was a beautiful man! Before leaving her he placed his hands on her brow and kissed her. Giddy with that kiss, the angel rested her head on his shoulder and circled him with her bare arms, glittering with bejeweled bracelets. The duke was thirsty, took the duchess’ cup, drank a few drops; she took the cup away from him, and drank the rest. I watched them this way: that husband, still so young, that woman — ah! And so beautiful! With immaculate skin — and squeezed the dagger…

‘Will you come today, Maffio?’

‘Yes, my soul.’

A kiss was whispered, and drowned the two souls. And I smiled in the shadows, for I knew he ought not to come.

He left, and she began to undress. I watched her shiny clothes, the flowers and the jewels, slip off one by one, saw the dark shiny braids come undone and then appear under the white veil of her transparent robe, like the statues of half-undressed nymphs, with their curves contoured by their tunics drenched in bath water.

What I saw… It was what I’d much dreamed of, what you all, poor madmen, idealized as the visions of love over a whore’s body! It was her snowy breasts, with blue veins, trembling with desire, her head lost among the shower of dark hair, her lips heaving, her entire body palpitating: it was the wantonness of imperfection, when beauty’s body is filled with even more beauty, and, like a rose blooming wet with dew, the more it expands, the more its beauty blossoms.

The narcotic was very powerful: a feverish suffering parted her lips; exerted and languid, lying on the bed, with colorless eyelids, arms limp and devoid of strength, I seemed to be kissing a shadow.

I lifted her from the bed; I carried her in her transparent clothes, her satin form, her loose hair still humid with perfume, her breasts still warm…

I ran with her through the deserted corridors, passed through the patio, the last door was closed: I opened it. There was a coach in the street: the horses neighed with impatience. I entered the coach with her. We took off.

It took long. An hour later the sun was rising.

Soon we were outside the town.

Dawn was coming alongside its vapors, its rose bushes sprayed with dew, its velvety clouds and its waters peppered with gold and warmth. Nature blushed under the sun’s first kiss, like a pale damsel under her groom’s first kiss: not like the voluptuous night’s stolen lover as paganism painted her, more like a virgin awoken from childish slumber, kneeled before God, praying and whispering her balsamic prayers to the bluing sky, the glittering earth, the waters turning gold. This dawn fell onto the earth like God’s breath; and among that light and that fresh air, the duchess slept, pale like the slumber of those mystical creatures in illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages, beautiful like Titian’s sleeping Venus [8], and voluptuous like one of Veronese’s fallen women [9].

I kissed her: I was feeling the life that was evaporating from her lips. She was startled, half-opened her eyes, but the weight of sleep still burdened her, and so her colorless eyelids closed…

The carriage continued fast.

The sun had reached its apex in the sky — it was noon; the heat was stifling: through the head, the face, drops of sweat rolled down the duchess’ chest like the pearls of a broken necklace…

We stopped by a boarding house; I threw a veil over her face, took her in my arms and carried her to a room.

She must look so beautiful like this! The servants stopped by in the corridors: it was for awe at such beauty, even more so than just indiscreet curiosity.

The owner of the house came to me.

‘Sir, your wife or your sister, whoever she is, she will certainly need a maid to serve her…’

‘Leave me, she sleeps.’

That was my only answer.

I laid her on the bed, drew the curtains, closed the windows so that the light did not disturb her sleep. There was no one there who could see us, we were alone, the man and his angel; and the earthly creature knelt by the bed of the heavenly one.

I do not know how much time went on like this, I’m not sure if I slept, but I know that I dreamt of much love and much hope, I’m not sure if I watched over her, but I always saw her there, I contemplated her every gracious sleeping movement, I shuddered at every breath that made her breast tremble, and everything seemed like a dream to me, one of those dreams in which the soul abandons itself like a swan becoming sleepy to the sound of the water… I do not know how much time went on like this: I only know that my stillness broke, the duchess was sitting up in the bed, with her bare arms she brushed off the waves of loose hair that covered her face and chest.

‘Is this a dream?’ she mumbled, ‘Where am I? Who is this man leaning on my bed?’

The man did not answer.

She left the bed; her first impulse was modesty: she tried to cover her breasts, palpitating with fear, with her little hands. She felt nearly naked, exposed to the view of a stranger, and she trembled like the poets say Diana trembled when she saw herself exposed, in her bath, naked to the eyes of Actaeon [10].

‘Sir, tell me, for mercy, if this is all not an illusion… if this was not an insult! I don’t even want to think about it. Maffio won’t be long, won’t he? My Maffio…! This is all a comedy… but what room is this? I fell asleep in my palace… How did I wake in a strange chamber? Tell me, is this not all a joke of Maffio’s? He wants to laugh at me… But, see, I tremble, I am afraid.’

The man would not respond: he had his eyes fixed on that divine form. She’d be a statue of passion in her pallor, her fixed gaze, her wanting lips, if the heaving of her chest did not denounce she was alive.

She knelt; I don’t even know what she was saying. I do not know what words evaporated from those lips: they were perfumes, because the roses of heaven have only perfumes; they were harmonies, because the harps of heaven have only harmonies; and the lips of a beautiful woman are a divine rose, and her heart is a heavenly harp. I heard her, but did not understand her, I felt only that those words were very sweet, that that voice held an irresistible talisman to my soul, because only in my boyish, illusionary dreams of love, I had come across a voice like that.

The moans of two virgins embracing each other in heaven, made golden by the light of God’s face, pale by the most pure kisses, by the trembling of the most palpitating embraces, would not be as gentle as that voice!

The girl cried, sobbed; at last she rose.

I saw her run to the window, she was about to open it… I ran and grabbed her by the hands…

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I’ll scream… if this is not a desert, if someone walks by… They may help me… Help m…’

I shut her mouth with my hands…

‘Silence, madam!’

She fought to free herself from my hands; at last she became tired. I let go of her out of pity.

‘For mercy then make this doubt of mine clear: what is the reason for all I see? Everything that I think, that I guess, is too horrible!’

‘Listen then,’ I told her, ‘There was a woman… An angel. There was a man who loved her, like the waters love the moon that makes them look silvery, like the eagles in the mountains love the sun that faces them, that fills them with light and love. I don’t even know who he was; he rose above a life of fever one day, forgot it; and forgot the past before a woman’s transparent eyes, the stains of his story, in a dawn of pleasures, where for him it was drawn the shadow of this angel… Listen: do not curse him! This man had much dishonor in the past, he had damned his youth, prostituted, like a golden butterfly, his generation, throwing it in the mud; cold, without beliefs, without hopes, he had smothered one by one his illusions, like the infanticide does to her children… Perhaps God had cursed him! Or he himself had cursed him… Forgotten he was a man and had in his heart harmonies as saintly as the poet’s… He had forgotten them and they slept in mystery like the chords of an abandoned guitar. He’d forgotten that nature was beautiful, and very beautiful at that, that the night flowers’ bed was fragrant, that the moon was the lamp of lovers, the breezes of the valley, the perfumes of the poet in his betrothal to the angels and that dawn held fresh breezes… and with its virginal clouds, its leaves wet with dew, its cloudy waters, it had charms that only the pure souls understand! He rejected all that, forgot it all… Only to be reminded with lasciviousness and mocking during his sweaty hours of depravity… He was so depraved!’

‘But all that does not tell me who you are… nor why am I here…’

‘Listen: the libertine did love the angel then, turned his back to the past, freed himself of it like an impure shroud. Retempered himself in the fire of sentiment, steadied himself in the vision of that virginity, because she was as beautiful as a virgin, and reflected that virginal light of her spirit in the divine soul’s glow that illuminated her form, that came not from the earth, but from heaven. Time still hadn’t ailed the libertine’s heart with an incurable leprosy, nor had engraved his brow with an inextinguishable mark — impurity! He left behind the life he used to live, ignored his colleagues, his purchased lovers, his feverish insomnias, wanted to erase all the taste of existence, like a man who has lost everything on the gambling table would like to forget reality. And the man was able to forget it all. But he was still not happy. He spent nights around her palace, sometimes he saw her, beautiful and pale, beneath the moonlight, or distinguished her form in the shadow that passed behind the curtains of her illuminated bedroom’s open window. During the balls he followed that palpitating body with looks of envy. In the theater, between the heaving of the waves of harmony, when ecstasy floated in that balsamic and illuminated room, he saw nothing but her— and only her! And the hours spent in his bed… not his hours of sleep, because he barely slept, because at times they were long hours of impatience and insomnia, at times short hours of ardent dreams! The poor madman had an idea one day: it was grim, yes, but it was what providence demanded. What he did I do not know, nor ever will. And later, drunk enough to dream of you, mad enough to imagine having you in his fiery dreams, was profane enough to dare steal from the temple a ciborium of most pure gold. This man… have mercy on him, for he will love you on his knees… oh angel, Eleonora…’

‘My God! My God! Why such calumny, so much filth about me? Oh Madonna! Why do you curse my life so, why have you let a mark this dark fall upon my head?’

The tears, the sobs muffled her voice.

‘Forgive me, madam, here you have me at your feet! Have pity on me, for I suffered a lot, loved you a lot, l love you a lot! Mercy! For I will be your slave, I will kiss your feet, I will kneel at your doorstep, will listen to your breaths, your prayers, your dreams… and that will suffice… I will be your slave and your dog, I will lie at your feet when you are awake, I will guard you with my dagger when the night falls, and, if one day, if just one day you could love me… then… then…’

‘Oh, leave me be! Leave me be!’

‘Eleonora! Eleonora! To lose nights upon nights on a single hope! To nurture it in your breast like a flower that wilts with cold, to nurture it, revive it every day, to see it be defoliated before my face! To drown myself in love and receive only mockery and ridicule back! Tell the painter to tear his Madonna, the sculptor to break his statue of a woman into pieces.

Insane, poor madwoman that you are! Do you believe that a man should bring life to a thought inside his head, to live out of this rot, to soak himself in the vitality of pain, to later have it torn from his breast? Do you believe he would allow his heart to be stepped on, to have his… he, poet and lover! The flowers from the crown of illusions, one by one, throughout the night of disgrace, against his mad mother’s love smother in his breast the creature of his blood, his life’s child, the hope of his hopes?’

‘Oh, and do you not have pity on me also? Do you not know it? This is a disgrace! I am a poor woman. On my knees I beg you to forgive me if I’ve offended you… I beg of you, leave me be! Why would your dreams, your love matter to me?’

That pain hurt me profoundly: those tears burned me. But my will made itself firm and ferrous like destiny.

‘Why do my dreams matter, why do my love matters? Yes, you are right! Why would it matter for the water in the desert and the gazelle in the sand that the Arab is thirsty or the lion is hungry? But thirst and hunger are fatal. Love is like that; do you understand it now?’

‘Kill me then! Have you not a dagger! A single stab, for the love of God! I swear, I will thank you…’

‘To die! And you think of dying! Senseless woman! Slide from the warm bed of love to the cold slab of the dead! You do not know what you’re saying. Do you know what this word is: — to die? It is the doubt that haunts existence, it is the doubt, the premonition that makes the brow of the suicidal man cold, flows though their hair like wintery winds and turns us pale like Hamlet! To die! It is the end of all dreams, of all palpitations in the heart, of all hopes! It is to be breast to breast with our old lovers and not feel them! Madwoman! The betrothal of the vermin is a frightful one, a very dark sheet that of the burial shroud! Do not speak of this; why think of the gravedigger alongside the bed of life? Put your hand on your heart… it beats… and beats strongly, like a fetus in its mother’s womb. There is still much life in there, much love to be loved, much lust for living! Oh! If only you wanted to love me!’

She hid her head in her hands and sobbed.

‘It is impossible, I cannot love you!’

I told her:

‘Eleonora, listen to me, I’ll leave you alone, but I will guard you from that door. Make up your mind, let it be a firm decision indeed, but a thought out one. Remember that after today you will not be able to return to the world: duke Maffio would be the first to run from you, he would sense the vice of adultery on your face, he would think he was feeling the wetness of a stranger’s kiss on your mouth. He would hate you! See: further is the hatred and mockery, the ridicule of other women, the vengeful jeers from those that loved you and you did not love back. When you walk in, they will say: there is she! She repents! The husband… poor he! He has forgiven her… Mothers will hide their daughters from you, honest wives will be ashamed to touch you… And here, Eleonora, here you will have my breast and my love, a life just for you, a man that will think of you only and always dream of you, a man whose world will be only you, your laughter, your gaze, your love, that will forget yesterday and tomorrow to make, like a God, you his Eternity. Think, Eleonora! If you wanted, we’d leave today; a life of adventure awaits us. I am very rich, enough to adorn you like a queen. We’ll run to Europe, we will see France with its luxury, Spain, whose climate invites love, where the afternoons are fragrant with the orangeries in bloom, where the fields turn to velvet filled with a thousand multicolored flowers, we will go to Italy, to your homeland and, in its blue sky, its clear nights, its most tender twilights we will live anew under the meridional sun! If you wanted it… Otherwise it would be too horrible… I do not know what would happen: but whoever entered this room would find their feet covered in blood.’

I left; two hours later I came back.

‘Have you thought it over, Eleonora?’

She did not respond. She was lying with her face between her hands. To the sound of my voice, she had risen. There was a piece of paper, wet with her tears, on the bed. I stretched out a hand to take it, she handed it to me. They were some verses of mine. I looked at the table, my valise, that I had taken from the coach, was open, the papers were a mess. These were those verses.”

Claudius produced a yellowed and crumpled paper from his pocket, and threw it on the table. Johann read it:

“Do not hate me, woman, if in the past

A dark stain discolored my life,

– It’s that I’ve burned my lips in the ardent vice

And disbelieved everything with my head held high.

Don Juan’s mask burned my face

In the libertine’s cold pallor:

That gaze made me jaded… and those cold lips

Dare to curse my destiny.

Yes! Long nights in the fervor of gambling

I splurged, feverish and sickly

And entrusted my future to the God of fate

And love I profaned in forgetting!

I wilted the poet’s flowers in mockery,

In the irony of glory and of amours:

To the vapors of wine, insane at night

Leaned over from gambling into fervors!

I profaned the flower of youth

Among the murky waters of the past…

In the brain, fever, on the face, pallor,

I believed only in the calm grave!

And the Angel’s immaculate wings,

On the breaths of the sold woman I defiled,

Still darkens my lips the purple brand

Of the whore’s kisses.

And the myrrh of the verses no longer exhales

In the dishallowed cup, dark and tainted:

A sea of filth drained in the river of my soul,

Ripped the white flowers off the margins,

Dream of glories! only runs through me too quickly,

Like an open flower, in fear, in tomb-filled floor

— languished and without fragrance…

My love… the heart silences it:

I keep it deep inside the shadows of the shrine

Where the weeds did not fill the voidness.

My love… it was a white clothed vision

From the orgy to the door, cold and sobbing.

Holy lamp raised in depraved bed,

Tavern’s templar vase at the table,

Pale morning star [11] reflecting

On the mire of crime.

Like the old cities’ leper

I know you ran with horror from [my] kisses,

I know, in the crazy living of those mad years

Faith I deflowered in dark insanity…

– Vestal, I prostituted the virgin forms,

I myself threw into the sea the leaves from the crown,

Exchanged the pink tunic of childhood

For the shroud of orgies.

Oh! Do not love me at all! Very well! One day

The Lord may say to poor Lazarus:

You there, lift yourself from the Lupanar of death,

Come alive at the freshness of purer living!

And I will live again: the moth

Shakes its wings, jerks them, shines,

Shedding the dark skin, the filthy goo

Of the faded caterpillar.

Then, woman, I will rise from the filth

Where Satan bedded me [12]

Where still warm he perfumed his proxy,

Satin nudity of snowy forms.

And the blonde whore, in her white breasts

Laid my livid head, in the sleeplessness

I came down with the fever of voluptuousness unto thirst

Under those purchased kisses.

And so I will wake under the most pure sun,

Fair smelling breezes of hope!

I’ll wash myself of faith in the golden waters

Of Magdalene in tears! and from the angel

That perhaps God may give me, curved and mute,

Steal a kiss, in the vapors of love,

To die in his lips!”

“She became quiet: she was crying and moaning.

I came close to her, kneeled as if before God.

‘Eleonora, yes or no?’

She turned her face to the other side, tried to speak… she interrupted herself at every sillable.

‘Wait, let me pray a little, Madonna might forgive me.’

I waited always. She kneeled.

‘Now…’ she said, getting up and stretching her hand.

‘Well?’

‘I’ll go with you.’

And fainted.”

Here stopped the story of Claudius Hermann.

He lowered his head onto the table, and spoke no more.

“Are you sleeping, Claudius? By God! You’re either drunk or dead!”

It was Archibald addressing him: he shook him with all his might.

Claudius lifted his head a little, he was sickly, his eyes were hollowed under a dark shadow.

“Leave me be, cursed ones! Leave me be by hell or heaven! Can’t you see I’m sleepy… sleepy and very sleepy?”

“What about the story, the story?” boomed Solfieri.

“What about the duchess Eleonora?” asked Archibald.

“The duchess… It feels to me as if I’ve heard this name once… To hell with it, why does it matter to me?”

Then he wanted to proceed, but an invincible force held him back.

“The duchess… it’s true! But how did I forget all that I do not remember? Take this weight off my head… I bet they filled my skull with molten lead!” and he hit his sickly head like a doctor hits the chest of the agonizing man to find an echo of life.

“So?”

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” laughed someone that had kept himself askew to the conversation.

“Arnold! Shut up!”

“You shut up first, Solfieri! I will tell the end of the story.”

It was Arnold-the-blond, that woke..

“Listen you all,” he said: “one day, Claudius entered his home. He found the bed soaked in blood: and on a dark corner of the alcove a madman embracing a corpse. The corpse was Eleonora’s, the madmen’s ye could not even recognize given how much the agony had disfigured him! It was a rigid, tousled head, with greenish flesh, sunken eyes and spleen where the lumen of insanity timidly scintillated, like the luminous emanation of the marsh between the shadows…”

But he had recognized him… “It was duke Maffio.”

Claudius guffawed. — It was as grim as insanity, as cold as the sword of the angel of darkness. He fell to the ground, livid and sweaty like agony, rigid like death…

He was as drunk as Noah the Patriarch, the vine’s first ever lover, unknown virgin until then and today whore of all mouths… drunk as Noah, the first ever drunkard that history speaks of! He slept sound and heavily like Saint Peter the Apostle at the Mount of Olives… The case being that both of them had dined that night…

Arnold spread his cloak on the ground and laid on top of it.

A few moments later his baritone’s snores mixed with the great concerto of the sleepers’ snores.

[1] Claudius is talking about gambling and horse racing.

[2] Reference to Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III.

[3] Richard Lovelace is a character from Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa and Don Juan is a fictional character appearing in many works, notably Byron’s homonymous poem; both are famed libertines.

[4] Main character from the novel mentioned earlier.

[5] famous brothel in Pompeii.

[6] reference to Byron’s The Corsair.

[7] The word “entrudo” refers to an earlier version of the modern Brazilian Carnaval.

[8] Could be a reference to either of these paintings.

[9] In the original Portuguese “amásia” means a woman living with a man she is not married to. Translated to fallen woman for clarity.

[10] Reference to the myth of Diana and Actaeon, in which he, a hunter, sees the goddess naked, bathing in a stream. To punish him she turns him into a deer, making him be torn apart and devoured by his own hunting dogs.

[11] In the original “Estrela d’alva, meaning the planet Venus (morning star).

[12] In the original, “se pernoitou comigo” literally means “spent the night with me”, but I chose to highlight the double entendre.

#romanticism #álvares de azevedo #poetry #noite na taverna #noite na taverna translation #praying everything is alright w this text 😭

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danfosky · 1 month

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Breve biografia sopra Juó Bananere

Ingomincio questa pubbrigaçò, questo articolo baolistaliano i migna inauguraçò nu Tumblr aparlàno di un brutto rivolucionario da litterattura baoliste i brazilliana, questo fui Alexandre Ribeiro Marcondes Machado, più cunescido per o suo pseudonimo Juó Bananere, o Juó Bananére. Illo fui un baoliste, nato in 11 di aprile di 1892, nu municipio di Pindamonhangaba, interiore du stato di Zan Baolo. Figlio dus signores baolistes, dottore José Francisco Ribeiro Marcondes Machado i donna Mariana Machado, era di origine veneta, da tradizionale vamiglia Maricondi. (LINGUANOTTO, 1948)

Alexandre viveu su infana in Araraquara i disposa se mudò p'ra Campinas, i quano adurto, se transferío p’ra città di Zan Baolo. (FONSECA, 2001. p. 24) In 1913, Alexandre ingominciô, in Zan Baolo, un gorso di ingenierie per a Scuòla Politecnica, cun diploma in deizembre di 1917. (ANDRADE, 1999. p. 11) Alê di ingeniere, Alexandre tambê fui scrittore i giurnaliste, ficchano più cunescido per essere, di 1911 a 1915, ridattore da riviste O Pirralho, donde tenia molta impurtanza, gagnò un grandi aricunecimento du pubbrigo intaliano i baolistano. O nomino “Juó Bananere,” che Alexandre usava, fui greato per o gartoniste baolistano Lemmo Lemmi, i, su garicattura, era una representaçò di un grandi cumpagnere, o umoriste Francesco Jacheo. (PETTINATI, Francesco. 1964. p. 3)

Alexandre incorporò i dê vita al personnaggio, usano sempre o pseudonimo di ‘Juó Bananere’ p’ra preservare su anonimato, inizialmenti gome ridattore.

Mesimo che nò sia o 'vero' Juó Bananere, Alexandre se tornò illo, i oggi, Juó Bananere i Alexandre Marcondes Machado son, certamenti, una sola robba, gome sinonimos. Qui, io, per perferenza, chiammo illo più per su nomino di nascimento, p'ra ansi invitare quarchere cunfusò, anche, fòra do articolo, sempre mi arrifira solo gome Bananere.

Gancellato per o nazionalizimo

As maggiores vittimas da ironizaçò di Alexandre, era os poete romanticos i parnassianos, gome Álvares de Azevedo, Gonçalves Dias, Olavo Bilac, ecc. (ANTUNES, 2021. p. 35) In 15 de ottobre di 1915, Olavo Bilac, un poete molto arrispettato na sucietà brazilliana di litterattura da èpoque, un carioca "da gema" (un carioca "di verità"), gome questo povolo dice, ma ingoppa di tutto, un brazilliano; in quello animo, Bilac fecce una visita a Zan Baolo, evento quale fui cumpagnato per Alexandre. Qui o uomo era amato per tuttos, visto gome un vero inzempro nazionale, quarobba gome un semideuse di nostra Ripubbriga das Bananas.

Nu giorno seguintimo, Alexandre, cun su artograffia baolistaliana mista, arregistrò o fatto, chiammato di “A vesta du Bilacco”:

«Quartaffera tive a nunciada vesta du Bilacco, o principe dus poete brasiliéro, o Dante anazionalo. Uh! mamma mia, che successo! O saló stavo xiigno piore du garnevalo na rua 15. Os lustre di gaiz stavo xiigno di genti pindurada. Gada lustro apparicia un gáxo di banana di genti. Bilacco dissi moltos sunetto gotuba (…)»

Alexandre era griticco i insgugliambò a nazionalizaçò forzata du intaliano nu Brazille, differentimenti di Bilac, un militariste apoiattore du servizio militare obrigatorio i difensore da lingua che os portogheses impoise a noise. In somma, Bilac era un vero verdi i giallo.

O testo “O nazionalizimo,” che Alexandre pubbrigò, fui un dus fattores p’ra nuovos problema in su garriera in O Pirralho. (ANTUNES, 2021. p. 37)

«Non é só o Bilacco che é uomo de lettera — io també! (…) I quali è a cunsequenza diste relaxamento? È qui os intaliano aqui non manda nada, quano puteva inveiz aguverná ista porcheria! Quale é a consequenza da bidicaçó de nostra forza e du nostro nazionalisimo? È chi nasce uma griança, a máia é intaliana, o páio é intaliano e illo nasce é un gara di brasiliano! Istu non podi ingontinuá, no! A voiz chi sono giovani i forte cumpette afazê a reaçó, cumbattê, vencê i dominá isto tudo!»

Dopo questo fatto, Alexandre fui licenziato da rivista; su licenziamento di O Pirralho po, possibilementi avere cuntribuìto p’ra che argunos animos disposa, in 1919, questa rivista fossi stinta.

Linguaggios du scrittore

Alexandre fui greatore du, che io chiammo di "baolicesco" i "baolimmong"; o primière — formaçò di "baoliste" cun "francesco" — era una parodia da lingua francesca cun a lingua portoghese; già a seconda, o 'baolimmong' — formaçò di "baoliste" cun "allemong" — era una intentativa di mitare un portoghese c’un acento allemò. [NOTA: 1]

Otra lingua che Alexandre usava in sus pubbrigraçò, i di tuttas, a più cunescida i originale, era a baolistaliana, essendo illa un misto di napuletano, veneziano, gallabrese i dialetto caipira.

Nu gauso du baolistaliano, formaçò di “baoliste” cun “intaliano,” questa nò era una greaçò artifiziale gome o baolicesco i baolimmong, ma si firtraggios da oralità dus immigratos intalianos nu stato di Zan Baolo, in particolare nus barrimos di su gapitale i città òmonima, gome Bò Ritiro, Braiz i Billezigno. Molta genti intentò riproducire a lingua baolistaliana, sia prima di Alexandre se lanciare gome Juó Bananere, sia disposa di su successo. (ANDRADE, 1999. p. 9)

O termine “baolistaliano,” in portoghese gome paulistaliano, fui greato per o scrittore baoliste di Taubaté, José Monteiro Lobato. Questo nò fui o unico modo gome questa linguaggio ficchô cunescida, tambê c'era “macaronica,” “portoghese macaronico,” “dialetto intalo-portoghese” i “dialetto intalo-baoliste” o “intalo-baolistano,” ma guasi sempre cun sus virsò in portoghese. O termine "lingua d’abax’o pigues” tambê fui usato, questo in rifirimento al veglio i povero barrimo baolistano da Baixada do Piques, che c'erano moltos operarios intalianos, oggi localizato nu mesimo lugaro o vecino a Praça da Bandeira. (ANTUNES, 2021. p. 32)

Alexandre già fui griticato per usare una lingua mista intalo-brazilliana, ma è di se sapere che illo nò usava p'ra ridicolizare o immigrato, ma si p'ra esprimere griticas in relaçò a pulitticca baoliste i brazilliana. (FONNESU, 2019. p. 33)

O maggiore trabaglio di Alexandre fui cun a lingua baolistaliana, a pubbrigaçò du libro La Divina Increnca, una parodia du intaliano Divina Commedia. A parodia intalo-baoliste fui pubbrigata in 1915, cun aggiurnaçò intè 1993, i su urtima ediçò fui fetta per a Università di Zan Baolo.

Sopra a lingua che Bananere tornò popularo essere un dialetto

Gome fui menzionato ingoppa, c’erano tre virsò cun o termine "dialetto" p’ro baolistaliano, tuttavia, un 'dialetto' è aparlato per una gummunità, spresso o termine è ma disgritto gome una varietà o evoluçò d'una lingua, ma di fatto, nò c’è una definiçò l’universalmenti accetta sopra che è un dialetto. Cunsiderano as definizione più gummune, analizzano a linguaggio intalo-baoliste, nò se po intò definire gome un 'dialetto,' perché illa è più vicina d'un pidgin, che è una lingua greata per o misto di duos, tre o più linguas, i sê aparlantes nativos, podeno tornarse una lingua creola nu futuro, gauso sia adotatta per arguna gummunità, o gauso sia insignata p’ros bambinos neonatos.

Mòrti

Alexandre, cun a indadi di corantaduos animos, nu giorno 22 di agusto di 1933, mòre infermo na città di Zan Baolo. Su sposa fui a donna Diva Melo Barreto, chi murèu tre animo disposa. Os duos fui sepoltos nu Cimitero da Cunsolaçò, in questa mesima città.

Oggi nò inziste nisciuno discendenti di Alexandre, già che morèu sê dexà figlios.

Notas

Baolicesco i Baolimmong son, sopratutto, termines informales i niente storicos.

Bibliografia

LINGUANOTTO, Daniel. Breves apontamentos sobre Juó Bananére, 1948.

FONSECA, Cristina. Juó Bananére: O abuso em blangue, 2001.

ANDRADE, Ana Paula Freitas de. Juó Bananére: verve, litteratura, futurisimo, cavaçó, ecc.ecc. (indexação e reunião de textos macarrônicos publicados de 1911 a 1933), 1999.

ANTUNES, Benedito. Juó Bananére, um escritor íntalo-brasiliano, 2021.

PETTINATI, Francesco. Vita, Gloria e Miracoli dei Fanfulla di Ieri e di Oggi. Gli Umoristi; Fanfulla, 1964.

FONNESU, Daniel. Uma tradução "transatlântica": Ziu Paddori de Efisio Melis encontra Nanetto Pipetta e Juó Bananére, 2019.

#Juó Bananere #Paulistaliano #Italo-paulista #Biografia #Danfosky #baolista #baoliste #literatura #artigos #Alexandre Ribeiro Marcondes Machado

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