The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean
I propose, with a steady voice, to declaim in loudest tones the cold and sober offering you are about to hear. Pay heed to what it contains, and beware of the painful impact it will not fail to leave like a blight on your disordered imaginations. Do not believe I am on the verge of death (even though I might very well be), for I am not yet a skeleton, and old age cleaves not to my brow (and yet it starts taking the role of an unwanted companion). Now we consequently wave aside any idea of comparison with the swan of golden origin at the moment when its life flies off, and before you behold a mere monstrosity whose face I am glad you cannot see, but the face is less horrible than the spirit (but the face is less horrible than the spirit). Not long ago I saw the sea again and trod the decks of ships, and my memories are as fresh as if I'd left the sea only yesterday. Nevertheless, if you can, on listening to what I already regret offering you, be as calm as I, and do not blush at the though of what the human heart is. Ye who have not witnessed the foundering of a ship in the eye of a storm while the brilliance of lightning alternates with the most profound darkness and the souls on board are overcome with the despair you know so well, knows nothing of the tragedy of life. Imagine a grand universal shriek of agony escaping from the vessel's buried hull, while the sea relentlessly increases the assault. A cry to beautifully embody the human strength, giving in to its demise. One each man enfolds himself in the garment of resignation and commits his soul into the hands of God. A pitiful bunch, clinging together like a flock of sheep, one distressed ship roars its tunes of anguish, and majestically she sets into the dark. Spirit of the silken glance! Your soul is inseparable from mine; most handsome inhabitant of the sphere that you call yours. And you are nobly enthroned, by common consent and perennial bond, the sweet virtue of every grace and divine communion. Why are you not with me...? Your quicksilver belly against my breast of aluminum, both of us seated on some rock by the shore, to meditate upon this spectacle I adore... Old Ocean, with your Crystal Waves you resemble the icy pale lines an unfortunate soul might be given a swift distorted glimpse upon, after having spent hours, days and months at the mercy (if one wants to call it so) of their torturer. You are a colossal azure bruise slapped on the body of earth. At first sight of you, a long-drawnout sigh of sadness (of sadness) that one might believe to be the murmur of your mellow breeze passes over the deeply disturbed esprit (the deeply disturbed esprit), leaving harrowing scars for the ages, and you remind your lovers (though they don't always bear it in mind) of man's crude origins, when he became acquainted with the sorrow that is never to desert him. Your harmoniously spherical form that rejoices the grave face of geometry reminds me overmuch of man's tiny eyes - akin to the peccary's in minuteness and to those of the nightbirds in their circular perfection (in their circular perfection) of contour (of contour). Yet down the ages man has deemed himself beautiful, oh so ignorant of his excruciating peradventure, so adversarial towards that ravishing divineness of yours. Old Ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal unto yourself. In essence, you never change, even with waves in a deuce of a stir somewhere, farther off you're in absolute and complete tranquility. You are not like man - who stops in the streets with delight to watch two deadbeats tearing each other apart, but does not stop when a funeral passes, who does not bat an eyelash in the finite face of extinction (in the finite face of extinction). Who in the morning is affable, yet in the evening ill-humoured. Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow (who laughs today and weeps tomorrow). Who loves today and hates tomorrow.
Submitted by Corpse Defiler — Apr 26, 2025
This track is instrumental.
Old Ocean, you do not easily let the avid eyes of natural science divine the thousand secrets of your eternal enigma: you are modest. Unlike man who boasts incessantly - over trifles, unable to grasp but a glimpse of the voidness that is to be his sorry fate. The different species of life that you nurture have not sworn kinship amongst themselves. The varying temperaments and conformations of each one explain what at first appears an anomaly. And so it is with man, who yet is missing an excuse such as that, living like a savage in his den, not to acknowledge his fellow crouching alike in another lair. Old Ocean, your physical magnitude is only discernible if one can imagine the energy needed to beget your entire mass. I wonder how a mere glance could ever encompass the lengths of your splendor. How could man's mundane perspective even comprehend a splinter of this darkest fortress that makes out to be your most impressive anatomy? Mankind, in a preposterous attempt to gain the shape condign of their allowedly impressive idea of what beauty can be to the ardent and somewhat well-trained abstractionist, cannot ever equal you in volume, shape or glory. Let this adorable frog puff itself up as much as it pleases and do stay calm: it will never be a match for you. It will never be a match for you. Old Ocean, Your Waters Are Bitter. They have the very same taste as the bile which criticism secretes upon the fine arts, the sciences, the wisdom, the knowledge that is the solitary confinement for the lone wanderers, pariahs to the masses, outcasts, unrealised redeemers and dreamers, those pitiful souls, wretched bums that strayed too far in the eyes of the voice of normalcy (voice of normalcy). The great universal human family is a utopia worthy of the most paltry logic. Besides, from the spectacle of your fecund breasts emerges the notion of ingratitude (the notion of ingratitude), for one thinks immediately of those innumerable parents ungrateful enough towards the Creator to abandon the fruit of their sorry unions. Mankind must certainly feel its imperfections strongly indeed, devastatingly even - for it is painfully obvious that, at least, threequarters of them have their roots in the soil of its own responsibility. And below it all thrones that observant patriarch, contemporary of the first epochs of our suspended globe, smiling with pity when present at the tribal factionism choosing his formidable belly as their pathetic playground. I see a thousand leviathans sprung from human hands. Those cataclysmic orders pierced by shrieks of the wounded and cannon blasts - such a grand aural hell purposely made to annihilate but a mere instant. To be swallowed by this formidable maw, presenting a spectacle that I so dearly adore. As they all followed deep into the last thing they saw - that global receptacle that one day will come ashore (one day will come ashore).
Submitted by NecroLord — Apr 26, 2025
No one knows how much love my aspirations towards the beautiful contain. Your secret destiny I know not: all that concerns you intrigues me. I wish that human majesty could be the embodiment of the reflection of your own. I ask of you, anxiously, so much and hope you stand with me, and this wholehearted wish casts glory onto you. I want this to be the last stanza of my invocation. Consequently, just once more I would hail you and bid you farewell! Oh wretched humans, those living waves, die in a dreary way one by one: but leave no frothy noise, nothing alike your blustering roar, or your grand dissolve. The bird of passage rests confidently on the waves, lets itself be borne by their motion full of proud grace, until its wing-bones have readied to continue the aerial pilgrimage. Stir yourself impetuously...more...still more if you want me to compare you to the vengeance of God. Extend your livid claws, tearing out a pathway in your own breast. Unroll your frightful breakers, hideous ocean - understood by only myself - before whom, at whose knees, I fall prostrate. Man's majesty is borrowed; it shall not ever awe me as you do. Oh, when you advance, crest high and fearsome, surrounded by torturous coils as by a royal court, mesmeric and savage, rolling your waves one on the other, conscious of what you are, while you force from the depths of your bosom as if overwhelmed by an intense remorse I cannot fathom, this perpetual muffled booming which men so much dread even when they contemplate you in safety, trembling on the shore; then I see that I do not possess the notable right of declaring myself your equal. And that is why in the presence of superiority I would give you all of my love. If you did not make me dwell sadly upon my fellow men who, in ironic contrast to you, form the most buffoonish antithesis ever seen in creation. I cannot love you, for I loathe you. Why do I return to you for the thousandth time, to your friendly arms that open to caress my burning brow - which sees fever flee upon contact! Tell me whether you are the abode of the only one whose depths are deeper even than yours. Tell me, Ocean (me alone, so as not to sadden those who have yet known only illusions); tell me if this breath creates the storms that hurl your salty waters up to the clouds. This you must tell me because I would rejoice at knowing hell so close to man. Old Ocean, with waves of crystal...my eyes well with copious tears, and I don't have the strength to proceed, for I feel that the moment has come to return among men, with their brutal demeanour. But...take heart! Let us walk towards meaning, and with a sense of duty fulfill our destiny upon this earth. I Hail You, Old Ocean! I Hail You, Old Ocean! I Hail You, Old Ocean! I Hail You, Old Ocean! I Hail You...!
Submitted by BloodShrine — Apr 26, 2025