7
" Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces.
You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew.
I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it. "
― Iain Pears , The Dream of Scipio
8
" What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough in the opinion of economists.
What is the use of music? -- of painting? Who would be fool enough nowadays to prefer Mozart to Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard?
There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.
For my part, saving these gentry's presence, I am of those to whom superfluities are necessaries, and I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use, and the particular talent of mine which I set most store by is that which enables me not to guess logogriphs and charades. I would very willingly renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen for the sight of an undoubted painting by Raphael, or of a beautiful nude woman, -- Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she is entering her bath. I would most willingly consent to the return of that cannibal, Charles X., if he brought me, from his residence in Bohemia, a case of Tokai or Johannisberg; and the electoral laws would be quite liberal enough, to my mind, were some of our streets broader and some other things less broad. Though I am not a dilettante, I prefer the sound of a poor fiddle and tambourines to that of the Speaker's bell. I would sell my breeches for a ring, and my bread for jam. The occupation which best befits civilized man seems to me to be idleness or analytically smoking a pipe or cigar. I think highly of those who play skittles, and also of those who write verse. You may perceive that my principles are not utilitarian, and that I shall never be the editor of a virtuous paper, unless I am converted, which would be very comical.
Instead of founding a Monthyon prize for the reward of virtue, I would rather bestow -- like Sardanapalus, that great, misunderstood philosopher -- a large reward to him who should invent a new pleasure; for to me enjoyment seems to be the end of life and the only useful thing on this earth. God willed it to be so, for he created women, perfumes, light, lovely flowers, good wine, spirited horses, lapdogs, and Angora cats; for He did not say to his angels, 'Be virtuous,' but, 'Love,' and gave us lips more sensitive than the rest of the skin that we might kiss women, eyes looking upward that we might behold the light, a subtile sense of smell that we might breathe in the soul of the flowers, muscular limbs that we might press the flanks of stallions and fly swift as thought without railway or steam-kettle, delicate hands that we might stroke the long heads of greyhounds, the velvety fur of cats, and the polished shoulder of not very virtuous creatures, and, finally, granted to us alone the triple and glorious privilege of drinking without being thirsty, striking fire, and making love in all seasons, whereby we are very much more distinguished from brutes than by the custom of reading newspapers and framing constitutions. "
― Théophile Gautier , Mademoiselle de Maupin
19
" Already the people murmur that I am your enemybecause they say that in verse I give the world your me.They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos.Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voicebecause you are the dressing and the essence is me;and the most profound abyss is spread between us.You are the cold doll of social lies,and me, the virile starburst of the human truth.You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me;in all my poems I undress my heart.You are like your world, selfish; not mewho gambles everything betting on what I am.You are only the ponderous lady very lady;not me; I am life, strength, woman.You belong to your husband, your master; not me;I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to allI give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought.You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me;the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me.You are a housewife, resigned, submissive,tied to the prejudices of men; not me;unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinantesnorting horizons of God's justice.You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you;your husband, your parents, your family,the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall,the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne,heaven and hell, and the social, " what will they say." Not in me, in me only my heart governs,only my thought; who governs in me is me.You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people.You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone,while me, my nothing I owe to nobody.You nailed to the static ancestral dividend,and me, a one in the numerical social divider,we are the duel to death who fatally approaches.When the multitudes run riotingleaving behind ashes of burned injustices,and with the torch of the seven virtues,the multitudes run after the seven sins, against you and against everything unjust and inhuman,I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand. "
