#Henri Cazalis

[muttakutagawa]

chimeraverse demanded that i smack fyovan and rimlaine into two separate people for maximum codependency

Claude (Ivan + Verlaine)'s Claire de Lune permits him to manipulate the individual gravity of rocks and other earth

Henri (Fyodor + Rimbaud)'s Danse Macabre allows him to puppeteer the bodies of people who touch him

[spikedru]

well. here you go. i started this project almost 2 years ago? i think? and i just dont think im gonna finish it. drusilla turning william. she is quoting bits and pieces of the poem 'danse macabre' by henri cazalis, which in turn inspired the tone poem for orchestra by camille saint-saens, of which she is humming. thanks.

[willowmaidsworld]

Good Omens s3 clue

I realised I never posted this, although I made it ages ago! So here y'all go!

This is going to be long, and I hope it will make sense. Please bear with me to the end, I will eventually get to the Judgement Day, Armageddon, Death (and four horsemen of Apocalypse) and I will mention goats.

I noticed this tiny clue when watching s2ep3. Aziraphale drives to Edinburgh and the Bentley plays classical music. But not just any classical music – it’s Danse Macabre by Camill Saint-Saëns.

I am a musician and I've played this piece in the past, so I knew there was a lot of symbolism to uncover. And that thing is deeper than I thought. I will be speaking about some music theory, but I will try to make it as understandable as possible. 

I think it would be best, if you listened to Danse Macabre: https://youtu.be/…zrJ 

I would like to speak once more about the scene in which Danse macabre appears. Aziraphale is driving to Edinburgh in now a yellow Bentley, and he even has his "car sweets". He is quite satisfied. And he plays this, certainly dark-themed, music. It is a major contrast. 

Danse Macabre, "the dance of death" is a memento mori. Memento mori is a theme we see in art, and it originated in medieval times as reaction to the plague. It should remind us of our own mortality. “Memento mori” literary translates as "remember death". And mark my words, do remember death!

The composition uses tritones, a special kind of a music interval. (Interval is the tonal distance between two tones, you can play the tones together and/or separate.) Tritone is seemingly dissonant because it uses seemingly inharmonious tones. (You can hear tritones just at the beginning, the violins play it.) Because of its dissonance it was called "the devil in music" and was considered forbidden and associated with Hell/demons/death.

Since the music piece and the poem is based on the theme of Memento mori, I had to look into it as well. Turns out Danse Macabre was inspired by a poem by Henry Cazalis. Here is the poem: https://oxfordsong.org/…bre Memento mori doesn't only remind us of death and our mortality, it also reminds us, that everyone's equal in death. Henry Cazalis, the poet, writes: Long live death and equality! The poem is called, of course, Danse Macabre, but I found that it is also called Égalité - Fraternité (when reading stuff about it in French). This is a reference to the French revolution motto: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood), but Liberty is missing. Is there then no Liberty in death and we are all doomed to obey someone's will, The Ineffable plan? (Good Omens book and season one also deals with topics of free will, look at Crowley and Anathema. She has been doing only the things her dead ancestor told her to do, she overcomes it in the end. I think it nicely illustrates the problematic of a free will. And Crowley values free will a lot.)

Memento mori says one thing - remember death, no one can outrun it. And there I would like to get back to season 1, because who else we meet here than Death itself.

Death is one of the Four Bikers/Riders/Horsemen of Apocalypse. But I always thought Death has a higher rank than the others. If you think of it, War, Pollution and Famine all lead to one thing- to Death. Why would you need all three then? Isn't Death qualified enough to do its job? Also, rewatch the scene where Adam and his friends battle them! War, Pollution and Famine all get destroyed by the flaming sword. But not Death- it spreads its wings and says (quote from the book): "You cannot destroy me. That would destroy the world." And later he adds that they are never far away. And he flies of. He isn't destroyed.

Death didn't appear in season two and I think people are starting to forget it, but Memento mori! Remember Death!

I would also like to remark that Neil Gaiman says the whole story is plotted out and that he has done this with Terry Pratchett. In every Discworld series book (the magnum opus of Sir Terry Pratchett), apart from two or three, there is the character of Death. And I think it would make sense that Death would appear in Good Omens as well, after all, it is also Pratchett's book. I think we might see Death returning in season three, because the Day of Wrath/Last Judgement/Armageddon is coming. And this music piece could serve as a literal memento mori - remember Death, it has not exited the scene yet. (A lot of Pratchett's humour is based on puns, and this seems like a joke/plot twist he would try to use. It's my personal opinion based on how I know his style from his books.) 

And what's next? Armageddon is coming, the Day of Wrath is here! Both sides are pretty eager to do this ending-of-the-world thing and after all, it's what they have been trying to start from the begging of the show. It was delayed by Gabriel's "disappearance", but things are now getting into motion, I think. 

But back to the Danse macabre, because it (surprise surprise!) has quite some things to do with the Judgement Day. In the middle of the composition Cammille Saint-Saëns uses a musical theme from a different work, a Gregorian chant called Deis irae ("Day of Wrath").

Here is a link to Wikipedia page about the chant, you can listen to it there. (I didn't find any recording on YouTube, only other musicians using the quite popular words of the chant and not the actual music.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…rae 

About the chant itself. It is written from the point of view of a sinner/normal person, and it describes how the Last Judgement shall be. Before dealing with the themes of the chant itself, I would like to say, that Saint-Saëns has used the Deis irae in a major key. Allow me to do a quick music theory intermission.

You can play in two keys, major and minor. These are, if I oversimplify things, sets of notes with different intervals. The melody, played one tone at a time, can be used in both major and minor key. The melody isn't the thing that determines the key of the song, the tones played with it do. And depends on what tones you use, you either get major or minor. Major is (in western culture) associated with happiness and good things, while minor with sadness. (It's not always like that, but for the sake of understanding we are going to pretend it is.) Now, the Deis irae is usually written in the sad minor key. Saint-Saëns decided to use the happy major key with this depressing chant, once again creating contrast. I'm stumbling over contrasts more than usually, so this may be important. End of the intermission. 

In the third and fourth strophe of Deis irae, it's described how the sound of a trumpet will sound everywhere and the Death will resurrect all dead creations to be brought to the Judge. (Death is back again and resurrecting, that sounds familiar, where have we seen that before?)

In the fifteenth strophe, the writer, a sinner, prays for this: Put me with the sheep and separate me from the goats, guide me to the right side! Goats again, there they are! This strophe of course references the chapter 25 in the Gospel of Matthew, the Separation of sheep and goats. Sheep go to the right and goats to the left. I think the side symbolism is pretty clear in Good Omens. Right is the righteous side and left is the sign of sin. And we also know how Crowley cares about the goats. There is also the Jewish tradition of scapegoat. Either way, goats are connected to Crowley, their symbolism of being “on the left side” is clear. This interesting bit can play part in Armageddon.

In the fifth strophe of Deis irae the Book, that is exactly and perfectly worded and that will judge all world, appears. And this book is no other than The Book of Life.

We know about Book of Life from the season 2, Micheal threatens to force "extreme sanctions" (erasing them form the Book) upon anyone who knows about Gabriel. 

Enter a fan theory I read: Nor Heaven or Hell actually have the Book of Life, we never see it on screen. This was mentioned in a tumblr post, and I will probably never be able to dig it up from the depths of the internet, so remember this is not my theory. (Although I find it very interesting.) The post continues and remarks, that when Crowley in the first episode of the second season learns about the Book and the "extreme sanctions" from Beelzebub, he doesn't bat an eye. He is pretty calm and doesn't seem surprised. (He literary says: "That will teach them a lesson", man, we're talking about being wiped from the earth's surface completely!) The writer of the post thinks, this is because Crowley knows that Heaven doesn't have the book and he knows where it is. The writer claims, it was Crowley, who took it as a little souvenir before his Fall, and later has hidden it in Aziraphale's bookshop. ('Cause one single book will definitely stay hidden in all those piles of old books.)

I think this is really interesting because of Crowley’s reaction. He knows what Aziraphale is risking, and he loves that angel, yet he seems so calm. When the bookshop burned down in the fifth episode of season one and Crowley thought Aziraphale died, he went feral: he was angry and furious, and he was destroyed by the fact that he has lost Aziraphale. He mourns and gets drunk. Nothing of this happens in season two! 

So, what are my thoughts on season three? It will get really dark and serious, the Armageddon is coming, after all. I think we will see Death return and the Book of Life will appear. The goats may not be used literally, like on screen, but I think we will get some metaphors.

In all of this, I tried to say one thing. All of the cards are laid out, we have all of the clues. It would be pretty cheap trick to use some ineffable "deus ex machina", that's not Gaiman's and Pratchett's style.

I think everything is now foreshadowed; we have been given all the information. We just haven't made the links in-between. Given the uproar the second season has caused, I think people are forgetting the first season a bit. But it must end with what it started with.

I think we should look at both seasons equally and try to pick up as much as we can, after all the third season will not be based solely on the season two...

We have all the clues, now it's Neil Gaiman who plays an ineffable game of his own devising, a poker that nobody has the rules for and the dealer, Neil himself, is smiling all the time. Ineffable, indeed. If you ask me, he's enjoying it bloody-well.

[kwebtv]

TV Guide   -  August 22 - 28, 1964

E. G. Marshall (born Everett Eugene Grunz; June 18, 1914 – August 24, 1998) Stage, film and television actor, best known for his television roles as the lawyer Lawrence Preston on The Defenders in the 1960s and as neurosurgeon David Craig on The Bold Ones: The New Doctors in the 1970s. One of the first group selected for the new Actors Studio, by 1948 he had performed in major plays on Broadway.

His other television credits include:

Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV) as Ronald J. Grimes

The Islanders as Curt Cober In "Forbidden Cargo (ABC-TV)

The Littlest Angel (TV) as God

Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You (TV Movie) as Dr. Edward Cazalis

Night Gallery as Soames, The Funeral Director

Vampire (TV Movie) as Harry Kilcoyne

Falcon Crest as Henri Denault (3 episodes)

Kennedy (TV miniseries) as Joseph P. Kennedy

At Mother's Request (TV Movie) as Franklin Bradshaw

War and Remembrance (TV miniseries) as Dwight D. Eisenhower

Chicago Hope (eight episodes) as Dr. Arthur Thurmond

Miss Evers' Boys (TV Movie) as The Senate Chairman

.

[shauncartoons]

For the final Inktober drawing of 2023, and because it's Halloween, I decided to try illustrating a scene from the poem "Danse Macabre" by Henri Cazalis (the same poem that the famous Saint-Saëns piece is based on) where Death plays on his violin.

[hellmouth-manor]

💃💀 | raoul | mm trial 2

“Yes, yes, Le Danse Macabre…”

Raoul taps his chin in thought, nodding as Mirai activates his trap card by bringing that up, causing him to completely bypass the hostesses’ question in his eagerness to talk about this particular thing.

“Very interesting, that name. Certainly, many of you must have heard that one iconic song, the one that goes—“

Waving a finger as though conducting an imaginary orchestra, he hums a segment of identifiable notes from Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns.

“Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns,” thanks “truly, this piece has found purchase every which way in the Western cultural landscape… but did you know that, before there was a violin, there was a voice? Yes, originally it had lyrics, penned by the poet Henri Cazalis, they went something like—

Tap, tap, tap, what a saraband!  Circles of corpses all holding hands!  Tap, tap, tap, in the throng you can see King and peasant dancing together!”

Thankfully, he’s chosen not to recite the entire thing.

“Surely most of you already know this, but should you not— le danse macabre, the dance of death, is the artistic depiction of people, well, dancing along on the way to the grave. Morbid, yes, but it was meant to be reassuring in a time when things such as modern medicine did not exist, and so untimely death was far more common. Earthly wealth, status, achievements—  none of it matters in the end, for all shall be reduced to jubilant skeletons, beckoning the next round of the dead to join in the fun. A final reassuring equalizer of sorts.”

His hand extends, gesturing around at all the others.

“Consider all of us. Would our paths have crossed had we not been brought here? Surely not— but we were brought here nonetheless. To participate in the Hellmouth Games. To die for them, and to supposedly continue them as demons, as it seems that our hostesses have done so when appointed to such a position by the true Louisa Nightingale…”

Briefly, his expression falters, but his smile returns nonetheless.

“They found jubilation in our deaths, and now they seek to join skeletal hands with us so that the suffering here may yet continue. Our earthly lives reduced to naught but the ash that encases us and transforms us into something infernal.

That, my friends, is Hellmouth Manor.”

It’s kind of impressive that he managed to say so much while still completely failing to answer the question. Someone else please take over. At least he tried?

[rosesarereds-posts]

"Bluets" by Maggie Nelson

1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession; suppose I shredded my napkin as we spoke. It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then, one day, it became more serious. Then (looking into an empty teacup, its bottom stained with thin brown excrement coiled into the shape of a sea horse) it became somehow personal.

2. And so I fell in love with a color—in this case, the color blue—as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.

3. Well, and what of it? A voluntary delusion, you might say. That each blue object could be a kind of burning bush, a secret code meant for a single agent, an X on a map too diffuse ever to be unfolded in entirety but that contains the knowable universe. How could all the shreds of blue garbage bags stuck in brambles, or the bright blue tarps flapping over every shanty and fish stand in the world, be, in essence, the fingerprints of God? I will try to explain this.

4. I admit that I may have been lonely. I know that loneliness can produce bolts of hot pain, a pain which, if it stays hot enough for long enough, can begin to simulate, or to provoke—take your pick—an apprehension of the divine. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.)

5. But first, let us consider a sort of case in reverse. In 1867, after a long bout of solitude, the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote to his friend Henri Cazalis: “These last months have been terrifying. My Thought has thought itself through and reached a Pure Idea. What the rest of me has suffered during that long agony, is indescribable.” Mallarmé described this agony as a battle that took place on God’s “boney wing.” “I struggled with that creature of ancient and evil plumage—God—whom I fortunately defeated and threw to earth,” he told Cazalis with exhausted satisfaction. Eventually Mallarmé began replacing “le ciel” with “l’Azur” in his poems, in an effort to rinse references to the sky of religious connotations. “Fortunately,” he wrote Cazalis, “I am quite dead now.”

6. The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.

7. But what kind of love is it, really? Don’t fool yourself and call it sublimity. Admit that you have stood in front of a little pile of powdered ultramarine pigment in a glass cup at a museum and felt a stinging desire. But to do what? Liberate it? Purchase it? Ingest it? There is so little blue food in nature—in fact blue in the wild tends to mark food to avoid (mold, poisonous berries)—that culinary advisers generally recommend against blue light, blue paint, and blue plates when and where serving food. But while the color may sap appetite in the most literal sense, it feeds it in others. You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dilute it and swim in it, you might want to rouge your nipples with it, you might want to paint a virgin’s robe with it. But still you wouldn’t be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly

8. Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that all desire is yearning. “We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it,” wrote Goethe, and perhaps he is right. But I am not interested in longing to live in a world in which I already live. I don’t want to yearn for blue things, and God forbid for any “blueness.” Above all, I want to stop missing you.

9. So please do not write to tell me about any more beautiful blue things. To be fair, this book will not tell you about any, either. It will not say, Isn’t X beautiful? Such demands are murderous to beauty.

10. The most I want to do is show you the end of my index finger. Its muteness.

11. That is to say: I don’t care if it’s colorless.

12. And please don’t talk to me about “things as they are” being changed upon any “blue guitar.” What can be changed upon a blue guitar is not of interest here.

13. At a job interview at a university, three men sitting across from me at a table. On my cv it says that I am currently working on a book about the color blue. I have been saying this for years without writing a word. It is, perhaps, my way of making my life feel “in progress” rather than a sleeve of ash falling off a lit cigarette. One of the men asks, Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don’t get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don’t get to choose.

14. I have enjoyed telling people that I am writing a book about blue without actually doing it. Mostly what happens in such cases is that people give you stories or leads or gifts, and then you can play with these things instead of with words. Over the past decade I have been given blue inks, paintings, postcards, dyes, bracelets, rocks, precious stones, watercolors, pigments, paperweights, goblets, and candies. I have been introduced to a man who had one of his front teeth replaced with lapis lazuli, solely because he loved the stone, and to another who worships blue so devoutly that he refuses to eat blue food and grows only blue and white flowers in his garden, which surrounds the blue ex-cathedral in which he lives. I have met a man who is the primary grower of organic indigo in the world, and another who sings Joni Mitchell’s Blue in heartbreaking drag, and another with the face of a derelict whose eyes literally leaked blue, and I called this one the prince of blue, which was, in fact, his name.

15. I think of these people as my blue correspondents, whose job it is to send me blue reports from the field.

Lyric Essay is a literary hybrid that combines elements of poetry, essay, and memoir. It explore the elements of poetry and creative nonfiction in complex and experimental ways. Bluets is a hybrid transgressing all and every genre. Bluets is partly essay, partly poetry, it's a collection of fragments, of quotation, a memoir, with a hint of philosophical investigation.

[werewolvesandaccordions]

Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people, from peasant to king, as a reminder that death comes for all, and so life is special. Saint-Saëns originally drafted the work as an art song based off of a poem by Henri Cazalis about the same subject, but eventually he turned it into an instrumental poem, depicting the dance in a grotesque manner, with its midnight introduction, spooky theme, and use of tritones to represent demons or the devil. In old French folklore, Death would visit the graves on Halloween night and play his fiddle while inviting all of the bodies to rise from the grave and join in the dance. And so we hear the clock strike midnight, we hear Death play his fiddle and invite the dead to rise again, and we hear the skeletons dance until dawn breaks and the rooster crows. This is a later transcription of the tone poem for violin and piano, and reducing it to its bare bones [pun intended] brings more focus to the jarring texture and the individual lines.

mikrokosmos: Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people,…

[tinas-art]

Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people, from peasant to king, as a reminder that death comes for all, and so life is special. Saint-Saëns originally drafted the work as an art song based off of a poem by Henri Cazalis about the same subject, but eventually he turned it into an instrumental poem, depicting the dance in a grotesque manner, with its midnight introduction, spooky theme, and use of tritones to represent demons or the devil. In old French folklore, Death would visit the graves on Halloween night and play his fiddle while inviting all of the bodies to rise from the grave and join in the dance. And so we hear the clock strike midnight, we hear Death play his fiddle and invite the dead to rise again, and we hear the skeletons dance until dawn breaks and the rooster crows. This is a later transcription of the tone poem for violin and piano, and reducing it to its bare bones [pun intended] brings more focus to the jarring texture and the individual lines.

mikrokosmos: Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people,…

[hushilda]

Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people, from peasant to king, as a reminder that death comes for all, and so life is special. Saint-Saëns originally drafted the work as an art song based off of a poem by Henri Cazalis about the same subject, but eventually he turned it into an instrumental poem, depicting the dance in a grotesque manner, with its midnight introduction, spooky theme, and use of tritones to represent demons or the devil. In old French folklore, Death would visit the graves on Halloween night and play his fiddle while inviting all of the bodies to rise from the grave and join in the dance. And so we hear the clock strike midnight, we hear Death play his fiddle and invite the dead to rise again, and we hear the skeletons dance until dawn breaks and the rooster crows. This is a later transcription of the tone poem for violin and piano, and reducing it to its bare bones [pun intended] brings more focus to the jarring texture and the individual lines.

mikrokosmos: Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people,…

[dariaandjanelanefanboy]

Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people, from peasant to king, as a reminder that death comes for all, and so life is special. Saint-Saëns originally drafted the work as an art song based off of a poem by Henri Cazalis about the same subject, but eventually he turned it into an instrumental poem, depicting the dance in a grotesque manner, with its midnight introduction, spooky theme, and use of tritones to represent demons or the devil. In old French folklore, Death would visit the graves on Halloween night and play his fiddle while inviting all of the bodies to rise from the grave and join in the dance. And so we hear the clock strike midnight, we hear Death play his fiddle and invite the dead to rise again, and we hear the skeletons dance until dawn breaks and the rooster crows. This is a later transcription of the tone poem for violin and piano, and reducing it to its bare bones [pun intended] brings more focus to the jarring texture and the individual lines.

mikrokosmos: Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre [arr. violin and piano] 13 pieces for Halloween, no.1: Kicking off the month with Saint-Saëns’ iconic tone poem. The Danse Macabre is named after a Medieval French art genre, focused on mortality and the universality of death. These paintings and prints would personify death as the skeletons of various people,…

[zoeflake]

Camille Saint-Saëns “Danse Macabre” performed by National Philharmonic Orchestra; Leopold Stokowski, conductor. Artwork: "Les Feuilles Mortes" by Remedios Varo

Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre (Dance of Death) is based on this poem written by Henri Cazalis:

Zig, zig, zig, Death in cadence, Striking with his heel a tomb, Death at midnight plays a dance-tune, Zig, zig, zig, on his violin. The winter wind blows and the night is dark; Moans are heard in the linden-trees. Through the gloom, white skeletons pass, Running and leaping in their shrouds. Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking. The bones of the dancers are heard to crack- But hist! of a sudden they quit the round, They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.

[spikedru]

oh my god what am I reading about a dru comic in your tags....seriously cannot wait to see that

hehe it is a 10ish page comic that ive been working on that shows drusilla carrying the fresh corpse of william to his grave to wait for him to turn and rise again. been trying to incorporate elements of the danse macabre (both artistic motif and the henri cazalis poem. as well as the saint-saëns tone poem). its been taking foreverrrr but ☝️i will eventually finish it. bc i want to work on another drusilla comic thats about HER turning using lyrics from the song waking the witch by kate bush. because that is her anthem

[chjarudiluna]

Danse Macabre , Henri Cazalis

Zig et zig et zag, la mort en cadence  

Frappant une tombe avec son talon,

La mort à minuit joue un air de danse,

Zig et zig et zag, sur son violon.

Le vent d'hiver souffle, et la nuit est sombre,

Des gémissements sortent des tilleuls;

Les squelettes blancs vont à travers l'ombre

Courant et sautant sous leurs grands linceuls.

Zig et zig et zag, chacun se trémousse,

On entend claquer les os des danseurs,

Un couple lascif s'asseoit sur la mousse

Comme pour goûter d'anciennes douceurs.

Zig et zig et zag, la mort continue

De racler sans fin son aigre instrument.

Un voile est tombé! La danseuse est nue!

Son danseur la serre amoureusement.

La dame est, dit-on, marquise ou baronne.

Et le vert galant un pauvre charron -

Horreur! Et voilà qu'elle s'abandonne

Comme si le rustre était un baron!

Zig et zig et zig, quelle sarabande!

Quels cercles de morts se donnant la main!

Zig et zig et zag, on voit dans la bande

Le roi gambader auprès du vilain!

Mais psit! tout à coup on quitte la ronde,

On se pousse, on fuit, le coq a chanté

Oh! La belle nuit pour le pauvre monde!

Et vive la mort et l'égalité!

[crescentillusion]

 Zig, zig, zig, Death in a cadence,    Striking with his heel a tomb,    Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,    Zig, zig, zig, on his violin.    The winter wind blows and the night is dark;    Moans are heard in the linden trees.    Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,    Running and leaping in their shrouds.    Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,    The bones of the dancers are heard to crack—    But hist! of a sudden they quit the round,    They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.

[forsoothsayer]

Stormy Night by Henri Cazalis

The wind screamed, the wind howled its rages, The ocean leaped the length of the cliff And my soul, faced with those surges Of black rolling waves, breathed with greater relief. The moon seemed mad as it raced through the skies Lighting the night in bright, misty shades; And not far away, furious barks now arise In the howling and clamour of high foaming waves. -O eternal nature, have you too your despairs? And your soul also its hours of agonised pain? And these great storms, do they not result from your tears And these mad winds, from your cries of infinite strain? Mother of our creation, are you suffering, too, And we, like your stormy nights, often as savage, Inconstant, tormented, as ill-tempered as you, We are surely creatures made in your image.