The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

CLAUDE CAHUN

So let’s not show any impatience...

But let’s consider that these tortures

are still less than our sins...

Judith’s Speech to Holofernes Everyone says that you are the only
one who has power...
And your military discipline is
praised in all countries.
(Book of Judith VIII and IX)

To Erich von Stroheim

‘‘We have to believe that he despises women, and doesn’t hide it (for he
himself lets it be known); that he is vulgar, as only a warrior can be. After
making love to his slave he furtively wipes his lips. He doesn’t take o√ his
clothes for fear of soiling his body more than necessary. On the nights of love, his
boots spot the purple in which he wallows, symbolically dyed with the red venom
of his poisons, and from top to bottom, the dust or the mud of the paths or worse
trail across it, depending on the season. But at cockcry, he takes a bath, sends
the girl away — and has the sheets changed (the silk, the blood coagulated on
them).
‘‘They also say that he is the ugliest of men; and those who fear he will seduce
their servants swear he looks like a pig.
But I have seen him, while his victorious army was parading before our closed
doors, for (having silently slit the throat of my dog, whose excitement bothered
me), I could see through the keyhole:
‘‘How pleasing I find this receding forehead, these dead eyes, so slow — little
eyes, narrow ones, with enormous eyelids; this fleshy chin not too prominent;
this animal mouth with its sensual lips, of the same skin, it seems, as the rest of
his face — his mouth whose split, whose muzzle is admirably drawn, expressive,
and as soon as it half-opens, so darkly, it shows the canines filed to a point like
Judith’s nails!
‘‘Ah, above all, how I love those ears fanning out, this nape of the neck with its
short hair — and the superb vertical line from the skull to the neck, when he
leans his head backwards, broken with reptilian pleats! I love them because I
recognize in them the distinctive, odious traits of the enemy race.

‘‘A woman is walking. — Towards the victor’s camp!...