Leave to Wagner the dreary goddess Erda
Vile silt upon which Wotan abandons himself to forget
Azure Beauty, yet when the squall comes, the sea of
Marmara is nothing but mire where many a sailor perishes
If he lets himself be engulfed, if he clews up his sails too late
If he hasn't supplicated soon enough to St. Médard,
Whose real name, taken from the Latin, is St. Merde:
Let us not insist, we must be able to renounce
- What etymology itself has lost -
Things without beauty, for example shit.
You who crown me young girls in flower
Who dress in drill, in satin or otter fur,
Forget those blacknesses; prefer colours
(That evoke the white medusa from the blue reflections)
Of the single nectar delicious to you alone
Young girls in flower, oh drinker of ...
Written some time after Proust was awarded the Prix Goncourt, 10 December 1919.
1. Last line ends: ô buveuse de f... is there an implied rhyme here with loutre (otter fur) perhaps: ô buveuse de foutre - drinker of sperm/cock sucker?