Genie (translated by A. S. Kline)

(Illuminations XL: Génie)

He is affection and the present because he has built the house open to the foaming winter and the sounds of summer, he who purified food and drink, he who is the charm of fugitive places and the superhuman delight of halts. He is affection and the future, the power and love that we, held in rage and boredom, watch as it passes by in the stormy sky among banners of ecstasy.

He is love, perfect and reinvented measure, marvellous and unexpected reason, and eternity: beloved machinery of the fatal forces. We have all known the terror of his surrender and our own: O pleasure in our health, impulse of our faculties, selfish affection and passion for him, he who loves us throughout his infinite life…..And we summon him again and he travels on…And if Adoration vanishes, it resounds, his promise resounds: ‘Away with these superstitions, these ancient bodies, these households and these ages. It is this époque that has darkened!’

He will not go; he will not descend from any heaven again, he will not achieve the redemption of Woman’s anger and Man’s gaieties, and all that sin: because it’s finished, he exists, and he’s loved.

O his breaths, his heads, his running: the terrible swiftness of the perfection of forms and action!

O fecundity of the spirit and vastness of the universe!

His body! The redemption dreamed of, the shattering of grace meeting with new violence!

The sight of him, the sight of him! All the old kneeling and pains lifted at his passing.

His light! The abolition of all sonorous and moving suffering in a more intense music.

His step! Migrations more enormous than the old invasions.

O He and We! Pride more kindly than lost charities.

O world! And the clear song of new misfortunes!

He has known us all and loved us all. May we know on this winter night, from cape to cape, from tumultuous pole to chateau, from the crowd to the sands, from glance to glance, strength and feelings weary, how to hail him and see him, and send him on his way again, and under the tides and over the deserts of snow, follow his visions, his breaths, his body, his light.

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