more fun with the foolish virgin & the infernal bridegroom

Read Delirium if you dare!

OK, honestly in 1996-1997 I was obsessed with this witty little tale of drunken, wretched, broken-heartedness by the French poet, Rimbaud. I practically memorized it. I definitely read it at least once a day for weeks, maybe months. Talk about victimhood- this is loads worse than the worst country music song ever written. And the funny thing is, my own infernal bridegroom loved this peice too. He even made it into an opera! OK, here are some of my favorite passages:

"His kisses and his friendly arms around me were just like heaven-- a dark heaven, that I could go into, and where I wanted only to be left - poor, deaf, dumb, and blind. Already, I was getting to depend on it. And I used to imagine that we were two happy children free to wander in a Paradise of sadness.

"And in that instant I could feel myself, with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death. I made him promise that he would never leave me. And he promised, twenty times; promised like a lover. It was as meaningless as my saying to him: "I understand you."

"I lived in his soul as if it were a palace that had been cleared out so that the most unworthy person in it would be you: that's all. Ah! really I used to depend on him terribly. But what did he want with my dull, my cowardly existence? He couldn't improve me, though he never managed to kill me! I get so sad and disappointed; sometimes I say to him: "I understand you." He just shrugs his shoulders.

So, you get the point. You more than get the point. This is the kind of love that goes into battle and gets blasted before the armor is even on. This is the kind of love that hates itself, that eats itself, that eats others and everything in its path, that leaves nothing green that's not covered in ash. This is the kind of love that readies the soul, either for eternal damnation or for that new sort of life that is born after hell, when the fires have burned away the debris and prepared a new earth, ready for planting.