The Double Chamber

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nine of Little Poems and Prose by Charles Beaudelaire.
This LibriVox recordings in the public domain. The double chamber
a chamber that is like a reverie, a chamber truly spiritual,
where the stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue.

(00:21):
There the soul bathes itself in indolence, made odorous with
regret and desire. There is some sense of the twilight
of things tinged with blue and rose, a dream of
delight during an eclipse. The shape of the furniture is elongated, low, languishing.
One would think it endowed with the somnambulistic vitality of

(00:44):
plants and minerals. The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like
the flowers, the skies, the dropping suns. There are no
artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the pure dream
with an impression, unanalyzed, definite art. Positive art is a blasphemy.

(01:07):
Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious obscurity
of music. An infinitesimal odor of the most exquisite choice,
mingled with a floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where
the drowsing spirit is lulled by the sensations one fills
in a hot house. The abundant muslin flows before the

(01:29):
windows and the couch, and spreads out in snowy cascades.
Upon the couch lies the idle ruler of my dreams.
But why is she here? Who has brought her? What
magical power has installed her upon this throne of delight
and revery? What matter? She is there? And I recognize her? These,

(01:52):
indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight, The
subtle and terrible mirrors that I recognize by their horrifying malice.
They attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever
is imprudent enough to look at them. I have often
studied them, these black stars that compel curiosity and admiration

(02:16):
to What benevolent daemon? Then do I owe? Being thus
surrounded with mystery, with silence, with peace and sweet odors,
Oh beatitude. The thing we name life, even in its
most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in common with this supreme
life with which I am now acquainted, which I taste

(02:37):
minute by minute, second by second. Not so minutes are
no more, seconds are no more time has vanished, and
eternity reigns, an eternity of delight. A heavy and terrible
knocking reverberates upon the door, and as in a hellish dream,

(02:58):
it seems to me as though I had received to
blow from a mattock. Then a specter enters. It is
an usher who comes to torture me in the name
of the law, an infamous concubine who comes to cry
misery and to add the trivialities of her life to
the sorrow of mine. Or it may be the errand
boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder

(03:20):
of a manuscript, the chamber of paradise, the idol, the
ruler of dreams, the sylphide, As the great Renee said,
all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking of
the specter. Horror, I remember, I remember, yes, this kennel,

(03:40):
this habitation of eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here
is my senseless furniture, dusty and tattered, the dirty fireplace
without a flame or an ember, the sad windows where
the rain drops have traced runnels in the dust, the
manuscripts erased or un finished, the almanac with the sinister

(04:02):
days marked off with a pencil, and this perfume of
another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a so perfected sensitiveness,
alas its place is taken by the odor of stale
tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness.
Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation, in this

(04:26):
narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust. A single
familiar object smiles at me, the file of laudanum, old
and terrible love, like all loves, alas fruitful in caresses
and treacheries. Yes, time has reappeared. Time reigns a monarch now,

(04:49):
and with the hideous ancient has returned all his demoniacal
following of memories, regrets, tremors, fears, dolors, nightmares, and twittering nerves.
I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly
accentuated now, and each, as it drips from the pendulum,

(05:10):
says I am life, intolerable, implacable life. There is not
a second in mortal life whose mission it is to
bear good news, the good news that brings the inexplicable
tear to the eye. Yes, time reigns time has regained
his brutal mastery, and he goads me as though I

(05:33):
were a steer with his double goad. Woe thou fool sweat,
then thou slave live on thou damnid. End of Section nine.