Esthétique du Mal / Wallace Stevens (XIV)

         
XIV

Victor Serge said, "I followed his argument
With the blank uneasiness which one must feel
In the presence of a logical lunatic."
He said it of Konstantinov. Revolution
Is the affair of logical lunatics.
The politics of emotion must appear
To be a intellectual structure. The cause
Creates a logic not to be distinguished
From lunacy. . . One wants to be able to walk
By the lake at Geneva and consider logic:
To think of the logicians in their graves
And of the worlds of logic in their great tombs.
Lakes are more reasonable than oceans. Hence,
A promenade amid the grandeurs of the mind,
By a lake, with clouds like lights, among great tombs,
Gives one a blank uneasiness, as if
One might meet Konstantinov, who would interrupt
With his lunacy. He would not be aware of the lake.
He would be the lunatic of one idea
In a world of ideas, who would have all the people
Live, work, suffer, and die in that idea
In a world of ideas. He woul not be aware of the clouds,
Lighting the martyrs of logic with white fire.
His extreme of logic would be illogical.

[...]

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
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