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Aloysius Bertrand

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the gothic room

tonight my room is full of demons

    Oh the earth, I murmur to the night, is a scenty chalice
of which the pistil and the stamens are the moon and stars!
    And my eyes heavy with sleep, I close the window that
encrusts the cross of cavalry, black in the yellow halo
of the stained-glass window.
    Even though - if it weren't midnight - the hour blazoned
with dragons and demons! - the gnome gluts himself on the
oil of my lamp!
    If it weren't for the nurse who with a monotonous voice
lulls asleep the little still-born child in the breastplate
of its father!
    If it weren't for the skeleton of the lansquenet imprisoned
in the panelling, knocking against it his forehead, elbows and
knees!
    If it weren't for my ancestor who descends into the foot
of his decayed anatomy, and who dips his gauntlet into the
blessed holy water of the font!
    It is Scarbo who bites me in the neck, to cauterise my
bleeding wound, and who plunges his finger of reddened iron
into the furnace!

(Written in 1837)

Translated by Paul Brownand Peter Nijmeijer

Page(s) 175-176

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