Scarbo (poem)

Scarbo is a small diabolic gnome which appears in four poems of Aloysius Bertrand, drawn from Gaspard of the night (1842), of which here texts:

Texts

The Gothic Room

Oh! the ground, - I at the night murmured, is a embaumé chalice whose pistil and cheesecloths are the moon and the stars! ”
And, the heavy eyes of sleep, I closed the window which the cross encrusted with the martyrdom, black in the yellow haloes stained glasses.
Still, - if it were not at midnight, - the blasonnée hour of dragons and devils! - how the gnome which drunk of the oil of my lamp!
If it were only the nurse who rocks with a monotonous song, in the armor of my father, a small child still-born child!
If it were only the skeleton of the lansquenet imprisoned in the woodwork, and running up against face, elbow and knee!
If it were only my grandfather who goes down in foot from his wormeaten framework, and soaks his gantelet in water bénite stoup!
But it is Scarbo which bites me with the neck, and which, to cauterize my bloody wound, plunges its reddened iron finger there to the furnace!

Scarbo (1)

That you die exonerated or damné, marmottait Scarbo this night with my ear, you will have as a shroud a cobweb, and I will bury the spider with you!
- Oh! that at least I have as a shroud, I, to have cried the so much red eyes answered him, - a sheet of trembles in which the breath will rock me the lake.
- Not! - the dwarf scoffer laughed, - you would be the grazing ground of the escarbot which drives out in the evening with the midges plugged by the setting sun!
- do you thus Like better, retorted to him I, always larmoyant, - thus like you better than I would be sucked of a tarantula with trunk elephant?
- Eh well, - added it, - is comforted, you will have as a shroud gold the mottled strips of a snakeskin, of which I will emmailloterai you like a mummy.
And of the dark crypt of St-Benign, where I will lay down you upright against the wall, you will hear with leisure the small children cry in the limbs. ”

The Insane one

the moon painted its hair with one to démêloir of ebony which silver plated of a rain of worms luisants the hills, the meadows and wood.
Scarbo, gnome whose treasures abound, winnowed on my roof, with the cry of the wind vane, ducats and guilders which jumped in rate, false parts strewing the street.
As laughed the insane one which vague, each night, by the deserted city, an eye with the moon and the other - burst!
“Hay of the moon! grommela it, collecting the tokens of the devil, I will buy the pilori for me to heat there by the sun! ”
But it was always the moon, the moon which lay down, - and Scarbo monnayait dully in my cellar ducats and guilders with blows of beam.
While, the two horns ahead, a snail which had mislaid the night sought its road on my luminous stained glasses.

Scarbo (2)

Oh! that once I heard it and considering, Scarbo, when at midnight the moon shines in the sky like one ecu of money on a banner of azure sown of gold bees!
That once I heard bourdonner his laughter in the shade of my alcove, and to squeak its nail on the silk of the curtains of my bed!
That once I saw it going down from the floor, pirouetter on a foot and to roll by the room like the spindle fallen from the stopper rod of a witch.
did I believe It then disappeared? the dwarf grew between the moon and me, like the bell-tower of a Gothic cathedral, a gold grelot in swing to his pointed bonnet!
But soon its body turned blue, diaphanous as the wax of a candle, its face blémissait as the wax of a candle end, - and sudden it died out.

Adaptations

The last of these four poems inspired Maurice Ravel, which devoted the third and last part of its musical poem to him ( Gaspard of the night , 1908)

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