Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DON JUAN'S NIGHTMARE, by CATULLE MENDES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DON JUAN'S NIGHTMARE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Don juan is handsome, young, gallant, superb
Last Line: "nor jehovah!"" ""then who was it?"" ""sganarelle!"
Subject(s): Don Juan


Don Juan is handsome, young, gallant, superb,
Ferocious. The only Lover. He has conquered
Women as one fills one's hands with roses.
Virgins keep neither lips nor spirit closed;
He is delightfully unmerciful;
Cruel, treacherous, fatal—what matter! he's The Lover,
And no one, when the dizziness floods in,
Can curse him and not desecrate her dream.
Since he is the supreme ideal of Sin
Against the ideal of Good that the fathers preach
He can calmly pit his prowess, face to face;
He's infamous but superhuman, do what he may;
His infernal torch is the pitchy counterpart
Of the heavenly light; his bed defies the tomb;
He thinks that his chance of a pardon has shriveled away;
God's mercy no more than His justice can bear fruit
In him who without a tremor seeks the sin
Of all the world at the price of his own salvation;
And Lucifer is radiant in this Lord of Spain.
Sganarelle, a more stupid Sancho, is his man;
Sober, judicious, cowardly, bereft
Of dream or grandeur, the great bourgeois sot
Is fit to tremble at the Commander's frown—
And the hero's valet thinks himself the lord.

Now, Lord Don Juan was sad. What ground had he
For sadness? Folks were surprised. Some one suggested:
"Doubtless the merchants are refusing him credit now."
He smiled. If he wished it, worthy Master Cheer
Would wear his fingers even to the bone
To give him gold he never need return.

Another: "The hearts that are bleeding under his feet
Weary at last of their long, vain sorrow;
Aging desire slackens in his veins,
And the women have fled before his erstwhile charms."
He smiled. Last month, in land Mahomet ruled,
The fairest of twenty fair sultanas came
In the gold and diamond of her tarlatan
Breaking from lordly spouse and festive beauty
And from the bloody sheets of her murderous bed
To follow the delicate perfume of his lace!

A priest exclaimed: "The fear of eternal torture
Invades his spirit with omens of the dead.
He who has done evil knows remorse.
He knows that under the frenzied breath of Elvira
The pride of his sin is wrecked in the abyss
And joins the devils scorched in the fires of hell!"
"You talk more sense when you are quiet, father,"
Don Juan said. "But, good soul, what can it be,
If not a pious fear of the lasting tortures,
That seems to frighten you at your last play?"
"The other night, in a dream, I looked on God,
And out of that my melancholy springs."
"O! Curb your pride, Don Juan; humble yourself!
The Lord has condescended to appear
To you! You have beheld, on the radiant way,
In the grace of the day that endlessly renews,
The inconceivable Lord, immense, and kind,
Terrible, perfect, sublime, and flashing fire!"
"I wouldn't be so sad if he were so grand.
Seeing him so, with a sincere esteem
I'd have taken the gage of an equal adversary.
But, priest, it was not the Redeemer in whom you trust
Bleeding with all the holy nails of the Cross
Who came to me in supernatural glory—
Nor Jehovah!" "Then who was it?" "Sganarelle!"





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