Renzo Novatore

The Dream of My Adolescence

1921

Retrieved on September 23rd, 2009 from www.scribd.com

Written under the pseudonym “Sibilla Vane” (appeared in Vertice, Arcola, April 21 1921)

So the wisdom of the putrefied cowardishly neither sneers nor scandalizes the idiot chastity of the good little girl.

I am a precocious adolescent who after having completed a long voyage through the phosphorescent labyrinths of the most frightening depths, go back upon the vertex to sing in the sun the sacrilegious and proud song of my still young and therefore free life.

Someone has said to me: “You will be maiden, then wife, then mother!...” So, I responded, with a question: What are you trying to say, maiden, wife and mother? I won’t say here that which was answered to me; I only know that to think of it I laugh, yes, I still laugh. Love understood as a mission!? The maiden wife and mother? No, no, no! I will not be wife, I will not be mother! My revolt can neither be interrupted or foiled. My revolt — beyond the family — I launch its darts against nature. I do not want to be wife, I do not want to be mother. No, no, no!

* * *

Yesterday evening I was stripping nude in front of the mirror and I looked at myself lengthily. I have seen my body of flesh wrapped in a shadow of light that had small quivers. I do not know well why but I was adorable...

The turgid breast I erect superb upon the bosom, treasure of milky whiteness. My stomach smooth and round gave me the impression of being something modeled upon the finest ivory from the miraculous hand of a divine artist.

I had the scant blond ring of hair in the round curve of the back, and the eyes from the humid eyelids lightly circled with violet and black.

The down crowning the concave base of my stomach seemed to me a golden wing upon the sacred spine of the angels of heaven. My red mouth appeared a ripe pomegranate, open to the blond caresses of the sun.

I was drawn to the mirror and voluptuously kissed my reflected lips.

I don’t know if I ever desired anything in life with such intensity when yesterday evening I desired to be a man in order to tumble upon the bed that white virgin body that the mystery of the smooth mirror revealed to me.

But the idea of the embrace generated another idea. Every cause has an effect...

I lay supine upon the bed. My temples hammered. The blood burst in my veins. Perhaps I was delirious...

I know that I had the eyes closed and saw nothing but darkness. But amidst the darkness I saw another mirror. That of the imagination that showed the reality. I watched. I saw my beautiful stomach round and glazed frightfully swollen, with, in the center, a symmetrical line of a blackish-yellow color, which gave me the viscid impression of a small snake spread over a large sack filled with withered grass. Then also my breasts white and superb I saw sagging and withered... I was a mother!

A hateful tot sucked my blood avidly, spoiled my youth, ruthlessly destroyed my divine beauty that I had willed immortal. The desire of yesterday evening was past, but the incubus remained.

Mother... what is all that supposed to mean? To give sons to the species, other slaves to the society, other derelicts to pain...

...Mother...Wife...

Are these then the goals of Love?

Ah, old witcheries of morality, old lies of this old humanity.

No, I will not ever be the wife of anybody, I will give not one son to the species. Never! Life is pain, humanity is a lie. Who consents to perpetuate the species is the enemy of pure beauty.

Humanity is a race that must DISAPPEAR! Individualism must kill the society, pleasure must strangle pain. So regret and pain die drowning in a final orgy of joy. Give yourself to the mad joy of living you that mates life, you that mates the end... Who must care for the future? Who can care about the species?

Forward, you, that you become realized, we will make of the world one festival and life a twilight orgy of love. For those who come from the abysses of the social lie in the that place where the roots of human pain stay clinging, joy must be an aim and the end the supreme goal. I do not want to have a son that wastes my beauty, that withers my youth. I do not want a family that constrains my freedom: I do not want a husband insipid, jealous and brutal, that, as recompense a piece of bread, impedes my spirit from the lyrical flights through the most divine and sinful madnesses of the luxury and the voluptuousness that multiple lovers give to the flesh.

I do not love the husbands and maybe not even the lovers. I love the pleasure and the love. But the love is a flower that germinates on the mouths of men.

When I will approach their mouth in order to pick the perverse flower of Love, I will only do it for my own love. To love others is always superfluous and sometimes is foolish.

It is enough to love oneself. Enough to know one’s own love. And I will know to love myself a lot, a lot! I will love naked before the mirror in the evening, I will adore naked in the bathtub in the morning, I will be naked and intoxicated in the arms of lovers. Humanity walks on the path of pain to perpetuate itself, I will walk the path of pleasure because I seek the end.

* * *

I walk towards the East, I walk towards the West. I want to walk by the paths of the world in order to pick the flowers of love, of joy and of freedom.

I love the silk stockings black and flesh colored. Panties of white silk and rose silk. Shoes of rubber and refined material. Baths of sorrel water and of cologne, The scent of cotty and bundles of roses.

I want to walk by the paths of the world in order to pick the flowers of love, of joy and of freedom.

I will crush the fronds of the limetrees, will pick tubes of hydrangea, clusters of wisteria and flowers of oleander to prepare for my love scented beds. And I will be the lover of the vagabonds and of the thieves. And I will be the ideal of the poets. Because I do not want to give anything to the fatherland, to the species and to humanity.

I want to become drunk from to the source of pleasure, of luxury and voluptuousness.

I want to burn myself completely upon the fire of love.

I do not want to be mother, I do not want to be wife. No, no, no!

Perfumed beds, kisses of lovers and music of mad violins. Dances and songs. I know.

You will call me crazy and perverse. You will call me whore.

But those are old impotent names that do not affect me anymore.

I am the precocious adolescent, that after having have wandered in the most frightening abysses of the depth, rebound upon the vertex in order to sing in the sun the sacrilegious song of my free life. Life of beauty and force, life of art and love, source of divine sin, gushing in the sacred oasis of voluptuousness.

Now enough with the epileptic frenzies of the spirit.

Naught more of my young body belonging to pagan beauty.

Oh love take me to flight...