Hymn to Satan by Giosue Carducci To you, creation’s mighty principle, matter and spirit reason and sense Whilst the wine sparkles in cups like the soul in the eye Whilst earth and sun exchange their smiles and words of love And shudders from their secret embrace run down from the mountains, and the plain throbs with new life To you my daring verses are unleashed, you I invoke, O Satan monarch of the feast. Put aside your sprinkler, priest, and your litanies! No, priest, Satan does not retreat! Behold! Rust erodes the mystic sword of Michael and the faithful Archangel, deplumed, drops into the void. The thunderbolt lies frozen in Jove’s hand Like pale meteors, spent worlds, the angels drop from the firmament In unsleeping matter, king of phenomena, monarch of form, Satan alone lives. He holds sway in the tremulous flash of some dark eye, Or the eye which languidly turns and resists, or which, bright and moist, provokes, insists. He shines in the bright blood of grapes, by which transient joy persists, Which restores fleeting life, keeps grief at bay, and inspires us with love You breathe, O Satan in my verses, when from my heart explodes a challenge to the god Of wicked pontiffs, bloody kings; and like lightning you shock men’s minds. Sculpture, painting and poetry first lived for you, Ahriman, Adonis and Astarte, When Venus Anadyomene blessed the clear Ionian skies For you the trees of Lebannon shook, resurrected lover of the holy Cyprian: For you wild dances were done and choruses swelled for you virgins offered their spotless love, Amongst the perfumed palms of Idumea where the Cyprian seas foam. To what avail did the barbarous Christian fury of agape, in obscene ritual, With holy torch burn down your temples, scattering their Greek statuary? You, a refugee, the mindful people welcomed into their homes amongst their household gods Thereafter filling the throbbing female heart with your fervor as both god and lover You inspired the witch, pallid from endless enquiry, to succor suffering nature You, to the intent gaze of the alchemist, and to the skeptical eye of the sorcerer, You revealed bright new heavens beyond the confines of the drowsy cloister. Fleeing from material things, where you reside, the dreary monk took refuge in the Theban desert. To you O soul with your sprig severed, Satan is benign: he gives you your Heloise. You mortify yourself to no purpose, in your rough sackcloth: Satan still murmurs to you lines from Maro and Flaccus Amidst the dirge and wailing of the Psalms; and he brings to your side the divine shapes, Roseate amidst that horrid black crowd, of Lycoris and Glycera But other shapes from a more glorious age fitfully fill the sleepless cell. Satan, from pages in Livy, conjures fervent tribunes, consuls, restless throngs; And he thrusts you, O monk, with your memories of Italy’s proud past upon the Capitol. And you whom the raging pyre could not destroy, voices of destiny, Wycliffe and Huss, You lift to the winds your waning cry: ‘The new age is dawning, the time has come’. And already mitres and crowns tremble: from the cloister rebellion rumbles Preaching defiance in the voice of the cassocked Girolamo Savonarola As Martin Luther threw off his monkish robes, so throw off your shackles, O mind of man, And crowned with flame, shoot lightning and thunder; Matter, arise; Satan has won. Both beautiful and awful a monster is unleashed it scours the oceans is scours the land Glittering and belching smoke like a volcano, it conquers the hills it devours the plains. It flies over chasms, then burrows into unknown caverns along deepest paths; To re-emerge, unconquerable from shore to shore it bellows out like a whirlwind, Like a whirlwind it spews its breath: ‘It is Satan, you peoples, Great Satan passes by’. He passes by, bringing blessing from place to place, upon his unstoppable chariot of fire Hail, O Satan O rebellion, O you avenging force of human reason! Let holy incense and prayers rise to you! You have utterly vanquished the Jehova of the Priests
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 05:42:34 +0000
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