{"id":534,"date":"2011-08-19T00:38:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T00:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=534"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:22:02","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:22:02","slug":"bonaventure-drinking-with-gautier-and-baudelaire-at-lill-chateau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/bonaventure-drinking-with-gautier-and-baudelaire-at-lill-chateau\/","title":{"rendered":"…[Bonaventure, drinking with Gautier and Baudelaire at L’Ill Chateau<\/em>]"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I am the superior degenerate of a race of defectives!”<\/p>\n

“Do not mind, Theophile, it is the absinthe that has dashed the reason out of his mouth.” I felt compelled to keep the ears of Baudelaire’s listeners open to his tirades and philosophical expeditions, howevermuch I may have felt my own soul being dragged, heels first, to Hell.<\/p>\n

“My father,” Charles continued, “was three and a half decades my mother’s senior, forcing upon her hothouse maidenhood the obscenity of his sex. Her innocence defended her from desire, even while inciting his own to madness! The combination of depravity and tenderness–does not the eye rebel from looking? I avert my face from the past, as from a perfect body scissored open upon the surgeon’s steel table. I am a man in love with what wounds him, my persecutors are the only ones who would dare touch me….”<\/p>\n

“Charles,” protested Gautier, “this self-pity is monstrous. I am the last man to censure anything you say, since I have profited by it so many times in the past, but really!”<\/p>\n

“Monstrous? Yes, well what do you expect from a monster?” His shotglass rang against the bar. Gautier poured him another.<\/p>\n

“Is there nothing for us to do besides talk? We’ve been three hours at this scab-picking,” I said. It was my part to express any unspoken irritation in the air, so that it might be addressed–and thus soothed–and so that Charles could then continue on his verbal voyage.<\/p>\n

“But if the blood is golden, let them bleed! Isn’t it worth everything to tell a truth on God, that grand street monte player?” And then, turning to Gautier: “Theophile, ‘beauty’ rhymes with more than ‘duty,’ you know.”<\/p>\n

“And ‘soul’ with more than ‘foul,’ Charles.”<\/p>\n

“The complexities of the starry sky are not defined by the dreams of the starlings who lose their way in it.”<\/p>\n

“What does that mean?”<\/p>\n

“It means, my dear Theophile, that I cannot be blamed for the obtuseness of the friends I choose; no more than for my own obtuseness.”<\/p>\n

Baudelaire lifted his eyes toward the ceiling.<\/p>\n

“Ah, Mother, what strong and secret solace you have given me for my exile among males!” And, saying this somewhat in the manner of a salute to one absent, Baudelaire turned on his triumphant heel and fled the establishment. Gautier and I were dumbfounded and, although I did not then know Madame Baudelaire as I was to come to know, or think I knew, her, I must still confess that this outburst on Baudelaire’s part resembles in my memory nothing so much as a surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I am the superior degenerate of a race of defectives!” “Do not mind, Theophile, it is the absinthe that has dashed the reason out of his mouth.” I felt compelled to keep the ears of Baudelaire’s listeners open to his tirades and philosophical expeditions, howevermuch I may have felt my own soul being dragged, heels […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evil-interludes","category-12-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8396,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/8396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}