"Nature"
by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
I
cast my gaze upon nature.
Rivers,
where do you run to with such impetuosity?
“We
are going to help fill the abyss, and bury iniquity under the waters.
“We
are going to put out those volcanoes, those smoking brands which are like the
remains of the great Conflagration.
“When
we have accomplished this work, our springs will cease.
“Silt
will accumulate in the chasms.
“Fertile
plains will rise up in place of precipices. The flocks will graze in peace in
places where voracious fishes used to swim;
“And
the peaceful habitants will live happily amidst their fertile fields, where
once the sea waves were vexed by tempests.”
Man,
careless and inattentive, crosses this world without opening the eyes of his
spirit.
The
different scenes of nature pass before his eyes without awakening his interest,
and without his thought being magnified.
He
had only come into this world to embrace the universe with his intelligence,
and yet he continually allows his intelligence to be swallowed up by the least
objects with which he is surrounded.
Is
it necessary for the catastrophes of nature to be renewed in order to awaken
you from your slumber? If you don’t exert yourself, they will frighten, and not
instruct, you.
The
face of the earth presents the traces of three laws which have directed its
revolutions.
All
the agitated elements, which have placed the globe into convulsion and have
produced the secondary mountains and the volcanoes:
There is fire and number.
The
slow and successive undulations of the waves, which have produced hillocks and
valleys:
There
is water and measure.
And gravity,
peaceful and tranquil, which has produced the plains:
There
is earth and weight.
Everywhere life
strives to manifest itself; all disorders were foreign to nature.
The
soul of man announces fertility everywhere; it announces everywhere that it is
made for life.
It
has also traces in itself of the horrible convulsions which it has suffered.
But
it can, like the flame from the
volcanoes, rise above these gulfs, and sail in the pure regions of the
atmosphere.
--Chant 3 from THE MAN OF DESIRE (L'HOMME DE DESIR) (1790),
translated by Seth Edwards, 2016
title by Robert Amadou
No comments:
Post a Comment