A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party
where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing.

One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her
galling.—And I roughed her up.

I armed myself against justice.

I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure’s been
turned over to you!

I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind.
I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to
strangle it.

I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite
the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me
with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out
in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played
tricks on insanity.

And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot.

So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the
final squawk! it dawned on me to look again for the key to
that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more.

Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves I was dreaming!

“You’ll always be a hyena etc… ,” yells the devil, who’d
crowned me with such pretty poppies. “Deserve death with all
your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!”

Ah! I’ve been through too much:-But, sweet Satan, I beg of you,
a less blazing eye! and while waiting for the new little
cowardly gestures yet to come, since you like an absence of
descriptive or didactic skills in a writer, let me rip out
these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.
-Arthur Rimbaud