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b9629fa
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"The first thing they do to you when you go into New-Path," Charles Freck said, "is they cut off your pecker. As an object lesson. And then they fan out in all directions from there." "Your spleen next," Barris said. "They what, they cut -- What does that do, a spleen?" "Helps you digest your food." "How?" "By removing the cellulose from it." "Then I guess after that --" "Just noncellulose foods. No leaves or alfalfa." "How long can you live that way?" Barris said, "It depends on your attitude." "How many spleens does the average person have?" He knew there usually were two kidneys. "Depends on his weight and age." "Why?" Charles Freck felt keen suspicion. "A person grows more spleens over the years. By the time he's eighty --" "You're shitting me."
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barris
celulose
spleen
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Philip K. Dick |
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545c11d
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Spleen Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux, Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant tres vieux, Qui, de ses precepteurs meprisant les courbettes, S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres betes. Rien ne peut l'egayer, ni gibier, ni faucon, Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon. Du bouffon favori la grotesque ballade Ne distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade; Son lit fleurdelise se transforme en tombeau, Et les dames d'atour, pour qui tout prince est beau, Ne savent plus trouver d'impudique toilette Pour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette. Le savant qui lui fait de l'or n'a jamais pu De son etre extirper l'element corrompu, Et dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent, Et dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent, II n'a su rechauffer ce cadavre hebete Ou coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Lethe // I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch, one who escapes his tutor's monologues, and kills the day in boredom with his dogs; nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry, his people dying by the balcony; the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite no longer gets him through a single night; his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb; even the ladies of the court, for whom all kings are beautiful, cannot put on shameful enough dresses for this skeleton; the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent washes to cleanse the poisoned element; even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy, our tyrants' solace in senility, he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood. -- Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)
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king
spleen
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Charles Baudelaire |