January 2012
57 posts
December 2011
34 posts
“Nature seems to pervert herself before him, and the only cause of this is his presence; for the first time he understands the immutable lubricity of trees, he discovers the priapi of the woods.
Here a tree appears before him, head down, hidden in the muss of its own roots, limbs waving in the air, spread wide apart, an endless multiplication of opening and dividing thighs which gradually grow smaller and smaller the further removed they are from the trunk; there, between his feet, another branch is sticking out the ground in stationary fornication, this also reproduced on an ever decreasing scale from branch to branch to the highest crests of the trees; the very bole of the treee is a phallus entering a skirt of leaves, where it disappears, or else, in contrary fashion, one issuing from a tangle of greenery and plunging down into the sleek belly of the earth.
Fearful images arise before him. The pale, smooth barks of the slender beeches remind him of the white, translucent skins of the little boys which are like vellum; in the dark and wrinkled envelope of the old oaks he recognizes the pachydermatous hide of the beggar boys; while at the bifurcations of the branches there are yawning holes, puckered orifices of bark, simulating the foul, protruding anuses of wild beasts. Elsewhere, in the joints of the branches, other visions reside, elbows and armpits covered in grey lichen; the very trunks of the trees are scored with incisions which spread out like enormous lips beneath rust-coloured clumps of moss.
This landscape of abomination is in a state of flux. Gilles now sees that the trunks are covered in frightful tumours and goitres. He observes exostosis and ulcers, pustulent sores the size of rocks, tubercular chancres, atrocious caries. It is a vegetal leper house, an aboreal venereal clinic in which, at a turn in the path, there stands a copper beech.
And as he stands beneath those crimson leaves, he feels that he is being drenched in a shower of blood; and imagining that a wood nymph lives under the bark, he becomes enraged; he wants to fumble in the flesh of a goddess, massacre the Dryad, violate her in a place unknown to the follies of men.” —Durtal describes the visions of Gilles de Rais, Là-Bas, J.K. Huysmans (via sunwheel)
Here a tree appears before him, head down, hidden in the muss of its own roots, limbs waving in the air, spread wide apart, an endless multiplication of opening and dividing thighs which gradually grow smaller and smaller the further removed they are from the trunk; there, between his feet, another branch is sticking out the ground in stationary fornication, this also reproduced on an ever decreasing scale from branch to branch to the highest crests of the trees; the very bole of the treee is a phallus entering a skirt of leaves, where it disappears, or else, in contrary fashion, one issuing from a tangle of greenery and plunging down into the sleek belly of the earth.
Fearful images arise before him. The pale, smooth barks of the slender beeches remind him of the white, translucent skins of the little boys which are like vellum; in the dark and wrinkled envelope of the old oaks he recognizes the pachydermatous hide of the beggar boys; while at the bifurcations of the branches there are yawning holes, puckered orifices of bark, simulating the foul, protruding anuses of wild beasts. Elsewhere, in the joints of the branches, other visions reside, elbows and armpits covered in grey lichen; the very trunks of the trees are scored with incisions which spread out like enormous lips beneath rust-coloured clumps of moss.
This landscape of abomination is in a state of flux. Gilles now sees that the trunks are covered in frightful tumours and goitres. He observes exostosis and ulcers, pustulent sores the size of rocks, tubercular chancres, atrocious caries. It is a vegetal leper house, an aboreal venereal clinic in which, at a turn in the path, there stands a copper beech.
And as he stands beneath those crimson leaves, he feels that he is being drenched in a shower of blood; and imagining that a wood nymph lives under the bark, he becomes enraged; he wants to fumble in the flesh of a goddess, massacre the Dryad, violate her in a place unknown to the follies of men.” —Durtal describes the visions of Gilles de Rais, Là-Bas, J.K. Huysmans (via sunwheel)
“I saw your lips, your nakedness, the trees, that dappled light. I dreamt of orchards. The preciseness of the world came flooding in.”
—Luke Davies, If every step taken is a step well-live (via portionsofeternity)
