#p. 103

[returntomytilene]

« Une angoisse plus terrible que toutes les angoisses humaines m’étreignit à ce moment. Mes prunelles s’attachèrent sur les prunelles d’Éva, lointaines et grises et comme vues à travers des fumées d’encens.

Je répétai les paroles d’hier :

“Ne crains-tu rien, Éva ?

— Je ne crains rien,” dit-elle.

Ce fut un murmure d’orgue au fond des chapelles crépusculaires…

“Seras-tu plus forte que mon mal ?” implorai-je.

“Je serai plus forte que tous les maux humains, puisque je suis la pitié.”

Il se fit autour de nous un silence religieux. Je n’osai point lui sangloter : Je t’aime ! »

— Renée Vivien, Une Femme m’apparut, 1905 (Nouvelle édition)

[inflamme]

But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate?

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

[returntomytilene]

I want to die as I lived, between your thighs.

Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray

[returntomytilene]

From near and afar I know how to love your beauty, and your legs that bring you and take you away. And your feet that make the earth beneath them important and light.

Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray

[returntomytilene]

Roses Risen

Dark woman, golden-eyed, of ivory and amber, Your luminescent shimmer makes the chamber          Beyond the garden shine.

The midnight sky, behind my eyelids closed, Still glows ... and I drink in the perfume of the rose          More red than wine.

Abandoning their vines, the roses rise. I drink their short-lived sigh, I breathe their lives.          All wholly, they abound.

By miracle ... the stars have entered in, Hasting through the shattered windowpane         Whose molten gold poured down.

Now, among the roses and the stars, Unveiled, within my chamber, here you are,          Your nakedness alight.

And in my eyes alights your gaze’s wordless gleam ... With neither stars nor flowers now, I dream          In the cold, cold night.

Renée Vivien, Flambeaux éteints, 1907, translated by Samantha Pious