Clouds
Through the ages, in every
land, where the sky is not always limpid and blue, man's
imagination has inevitably been seduced by the clouds with their
ever-changing, often fantastical shapes. Man has always divined
from them the imaginary or real beings that occupy his mind.
Everyone can discover something pleasurable in them; the contours
of their vapours are so light, so indistinct... a breeze can
transform them, a breath of wind destroy them. In the evening,
when the sun has disappeared into the horizon, as its purple
reflexions still colour the sky, clouds cut up into bizarre
shapes are heaped up against the sunset; moved with religious
feeling by the solemn and majestic calm of this poetic hour, man
likes to contemplate the sky; then he is able to discern among
the clouds giants and castles, and every brilliant fantasy of his
exalted imagination. Beautiful colours of purple and gold will
lend to his dream a magnificent and grandiose refulgence rather
than charming and gracious; and yet in the airy pink vapours that
hover here and there in the sky, one can perceive the poetic
contours of a chorus of dancing girls. Then, almost involuntarily
allowing himself to drift into a dream that absorbs him
completely, little by little the man forgets the things around
him; no longer seeing anything, no longer hearing anything around
him, he brings a realistic character to his illusion, gives life
to the shapes he has divined and assists in the grandiose
spectacle that he himself has created. These giants that he has
obligingly discovered engage each other in terrible battles in
the vast field of the sky. From time to time one of the most
valiant falls in an iridescence of dazzling colours; soon the
victors vanish too and these indomitable warriors are thrown to
the ground by a gentle breeze. Then the illusion is destroyed,
the vision has disappeared and one falls back to earth with the
same disagreeable sensation one feels in the morning at the end
of a lovely dream.
But clouds do not always bestow such
hallucinations, their shapes are not always sufficiently cut out
for the imagination, however obliging, to discover human forms in
them; but clouds always make us dream; if their bizarre forms do
not transport our imagination to lands of glittering dreams,
their rapid passage plunges our soul into deeper philosophical
meditations. Because man has in his heart almost a narrow and
secret thread which connects him directly to all aspects of
nature, so that when he sees some aspect of it he feels himself
prey to an emotion that varies infinitely but is almost always
present. He likes to confide his sorrows of the heart to the
murmuring brook, to the tree under whose shade he likes to sit.
How many times, in a rapture of delight, did I tell my troubles
to leaves and the birds, in the belief that I was opening my
heart to living creatures who understood me, yet at the same time
that I was doing so to superior and divine beings who would
provide me with poetic consolation. But nothing in nature summons
so many confessions as clouds. On many occasions I have charged
them with commissions which, alas, they have never carried out. I
make them the confidants of my sorrows and straight away they
flee to the horizon. Left alone I feverishly dream that these
lovely messengers come to be endowed with life, that at least
they will approach God to request some consolation for me, and so
I foolishly hope until another cloud returns to take up my sweet
illusion once more. Oh lovely clouds, how many vows have you
heard and not repeated, how many sorrows have you seen and not
dispelled, how many despairs have you been witness to that you
have not consoled. And above all from those in a strange land who
weep eternally for their wife, their children, their sweet
homeland, and who, like Ulysses, lament for the wisp of smoke
escaping from their home. And from those who, captive in chains,
left for years, eyes fixed on the horizon, the minute searching
of their anxious and attentive gaze seeking out a sail, a signal,
see nothing but you, the airy clouds, the only witnesses of their
misfortune, the only confidants of their secret confessions. Oh
lovely clouds, thank you for all the consolations you have given
to the unfortunate. Because your appearance has filled them with
that dreamy melancholy, that poetic sadness which alone can
alleviate the woes that no one can calm, because it purifies
them, raises them up and makes of them a subtle and divine
feeling that fills those who bear it with a rightful pride, by
making poetic and philosophical something which would otherwise
be nothing but wretched.