"Les Malheurs de Sophie" (A Fabliau)
Rilke, surrounded by the the late afternoon shadows cast by The Gates of Hell, is seated upon a Second Empire chair in Rodin's atelier. He is engrossed by this silly little tale of a silly little girl's moral quandaries and vicissitudes.
That He, who would write 'Archaic Torso of Apollo', is contemplating little Sophie as His muse.
(We cannot know his legendary head
With eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise, this stone would seem hot older women ready sex dating fuck buddies defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.)
The Master speculates that Sophie's errant ways-- when brought to light and then so finely chastened by her mother-- might lead to richer chastenings.
He dreams an older Sophie,--He, her tutor. And impure thoughts distrupt the school-girl reading Ovid ( but to be fair, the Great God Hades is dragging Proserpina by the hair into his kingdom of the dead...) She missed a line! How Sophie pleads... it is not disrespect for Ovid. It matters not--the Tutor will be unbending. The blushing Sophie must submit. Weeping, Sophie lays across her tutor's knee.
The shadows deepen. The Master feels her damp belly heaving across his lap; his hand presses even deeper into her marmoreal thigh. Rispetto, Decoro; Der Respekt, Die Wurde; Veneratio, Dignitas. Again and again and again, it is the same in all languages... And Sophie's tears are at last broken by her shiverings and sighs...
The sun is gone.
The Master wakes from His sophie... and whispers: Du must dein Leben andern.
The Moral:
One can only wonder why the Comtesse de Segur did not publish "Les Malheurs de Sophie" anonymously.
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