Spring in Italy, and a raw young subaltern
Rides across the Saint-Bernard, joining Napoleon’s army,
Under fire for the first time, bewildered, exulting.
In June, in Ivrea, Cimarosa’s Matrimonio Segreto
Bursts over him, divine thunderstorm,
Purifying the heart of worries and distractions;
Reborn, he wanders, in a blissful trance…
One champagne morning, the eve of Marengo,
He first rides into Milan, through cheering throngs,
An instant hero in the Liberator’s legion,
Caught up in love for this magnificent city,
And betrothed to Itlay, his one true bride,
Loved and cherished with enduring passion,
Where a nonchalant goddess smiles upon him.
Angela Pietragrua-marble statue-cantering mare-
To whom he dares not even reveal himself,
Only yearn and worship at the threshold.
Racked on his bed in syphilitic fever, Beyle
Dreams the ideal unattainable one, the vision
Sought for years, indifferent to his pleas;
His forlorn voice echoes in her silence.
Love is rank and disgusting, seen close: -
Where else then find happiness but in glory,
Carriages and servants at your beck and call?
On Bastille Day, in the crowd outside the Tuileries,
Beyle watches, intent, as Bonaparte passes,
Resplendent on white steed, saluting and smiling-
Ah, but that smile is theatrical, false-
Has no-one else noticed that the great man’s eyes
Do not accord with the set of his mouth?
Short, flaccid, ugly, with plebeian prognathous face,
Small eyes emanating inexplicable charisma,
Beyle fumbles and twitches, an awkward provincial
Longing for the Parisian’s instinctive poise.
Composing his conduct with worldly calculation,
He anticipates posterity even in his private letters,
Projecting an image with studied effect.
His mother died perfect and adored,
That serene noble spirit with vivacious smile,
Whose plump nude body the boy had longed to kiss
From top to toe, in slow shared reverie.
As for his father-when would the old bastard
Die, and cough up his inheritance? -
Then he might serve some purpose after all!
One August noon in a vale outside Marseilles,
Picnicking with a beautiful mistress,
Where a river runs through the haze,
Beyle, gazing upward, spies the towers
Of a château, above the chestnut trees,
Grail Castle of a chivalrous knight and his lady,
And he wanders, tall and immortal,
Senses blending in rapt fantasia,
Looking down on the earth from on high.
To scrutinize the facts-and thus rise above them!
Nightlong at his table, Beyle dips his pen in life,
Classifies the passions, interrogates the soul,
Forcing plain words to express the inexpressible.
Milan again, and Angela…-all the years between
She has haunted him with pleasure and sorrow…
Blithe Italy washes the Parisian acid away…
Proud turbulence-a woman and a city,
Enchantment enough to burst the sky apart!
Summoned into Angela’s box at La Scala,
The very womb and cloister of love,
He sits like a god, presiding over Creation,
Among the women, so indolent and graceful,
Sipping ices and giggling over tarok.
It comes to a mortal to seduce the goddess! -
As they wander together through the picture gallery,
Whenever, by chance, their hands touch, they clasp,
In needy recognition, -this, the shock and disaster
Of love, -a thousand charming details, a thousand
Glad memories and associations, all now
Dull, vacant, irrelevant to the heart
Overtaken by tyrannical passion, -
In imagination only can he lose himself entirely,
And in love is still the critical observer,
Silently mocking his own extravagances,
In a world less real than his own fictions.
Ah, how beautiful, how Italian he feels now! -
Standing alone in the Coliseum, blessed
By birds singing in the arcades, he gasps
And cannot restrain the tears that flow.
Like leopards in diamond collars, they stroll as one
Through the Milanese streets, in evening’s candleglow…
Such sibylline beauty in Angela’s visage-
Can those eyes not dive the soul’s Marianas trench
And fish out the monsters swimming there?
(Yes, she, faithless whore, every popinjay’s bedmate,
Rubbing and grunting in sty and stall-
But that he is not to know, not till later)
With the Emperor’s headquarters in Russia,
Beyle, stumbling through mud under blank sky,
Curses this whole barbarous purgatory
And longs for Italy, bel canto of spring.
Silently he watches Moscow burn,
Pyramid of fire reaching up to the moon,
His face impassive, fascinated how to make
This spectacle of history into art.
Lumbering away in flight towards Smolensk,
Amid bedraggled convoy in endless retreat,
Each night pitching camp in bone-cracking cold,
Fending off ambushes out of the wilds,
Marching on at dawn through demonic fog,
Beyle, in his barouche, reads and dreams,
Flushed with fecund excitement, watching
Wondrous ideas rise and vanish in his mind,
Like visions in an opium trance.
Standing on a hilltop at Bautzen, Beyle,
Straining, through opera glasses, to make sense
Of the chaos in the valley below, as the army
Swarms across the river into battle,
Panoramic pantomime of world’s absurdity,
He sighs with weary disgust, yet thrills
To the majesty, the terror, in the din.
Introduced at a dinner party to Lord Byron,
Beyle, embarrassed bourgeois, greedy for approval,
Regales the English idol with invented anecdotes
Of his close acquaintance with Napoleon himself,
“And then the Emperor turned to me and said…”
Matilde! That oval Lombard face and brooding eyes-
She, with passionate majesty restrained,
Holds him severely beyond her embrace,
Till imploring desire redoubles and kills,
As he bumbles around her like a hobbled satyr,
Breaking his own rules, despising his folly.
Inventive despair composes operas in his mind,
Building rich arias on a single word or gesture-
Her voice, her glance, the slightest movement,
The brusque, delicious disdain she bestows!
More than copulation he craves reverie,
Moments of music and light across the earth.
In the glow of Roman orange trees, he stands
By a window, musing on the novelist’s science;
To solve what cannot be solved in life,
Experiments in enchantment and revolt.
All his life he has sacrificed the real for the ideal,
Aspiring to the highest, the most remote.
Arriving awkwardly at some salon, he launches,
Into one of his notorious mystifications,
And scarcely notices his straightfaced listeners
Sniggering up their sleeves, -how uncouth
He is, this squat balding parvenu, -and so pretentious!
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