For your viewing pleasure. It's sure to upset some, and empower others. Enjoy!
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Sibilia Vane
April 21, 1921
(translated from Italian in 2010)
May the wisdom of rotten idiots not sneer nor the idiotic chastity of decent young ladies be scandalized.
I am a precocious adolescent who, after a long journey through the phosphorescent labyrinths of the most terrifying depths, climbed back up to the peak to sing the proud and sacrilegious song of my still young and oh so free life in the sun.
Someone told me: “You will be a woman, then a wife, then a mother!…”
I answered like this, with a question: What do woman, wife and mother mean? I won’t tell you what they said in response. I only know that when I think about it, I laugh, yes, I still laugh. Love understood as a mission!? The woman as wife and mother? No, no, no! I will not be a wife; I will not be a mother! My revolt cannot stop halfway or make mistakes. My revolt even casts its darts – beyond the family – against nature. I don’t want to be a wife; I don’t want to be a mother. No, no, no!
****
Yesterday, I stripped naked before the mirror and looked at myself for a long time. I saw my body of flesh wrapped in a shadow of light that quivered slightly. I don’t quite know why, but I adored myself….
The turgid breasts rose proudly from the chest, a treasure of creamy whiteness. My smooth, round belly gave me the impression that it was something that had been shaped from the finest ivory by the miraculous hands of a godlike artist. I had loosened the blonde ringlets of my hair over the curved smoothness of my shoulders and lightly circled my moist-lidded eyes with violent and black. The down that crowned the lower concavity of my belly looked like a golden wing on the sacred spine of heavenly angels. My red mouth appeared to be a ripe pomegranate opened to the yellow caress of the sun.
I approached the mirror and voluptuously kissed my reflected lips.
I don’t know if I have ever in my life desired anything with more intensity than, yesterday evening, when I desired to be a man so that I myself could lay the white virgin body, which the mystery in the clear mirror had shown me, down on the bed.
But the idea of intercourse brought forth another idea in me. Every cause has an effect.
I lay down on the bed. My temples throbbed. The blood boiled in my veins. Perhaps I was delirious…
I know that I had my eyes closed and only saw darkness. But amidst the darkness I saw another mirror. The mirror of the imagination, which showed reality. I looked at myself. I saw my fine, round, varnished belly fearfully swollen, with a symmetrical black-yellow line that gave me the clammy impression of a small grass snake stretched out on a sack full of bulky, withered grass.
Then, I also saw my superb, white breasts gone flabby and shriveled… I was a mother!
A hateful brat greedily sucked my blood , spoiled my youth, mercilessly destroyed my divine beauty that I had hoped would be immortal.
Yesterday evening’s desire has passed, but the nightmare remains.
Mother… What does it all mean? Giving children to the species, more slaves to society, more derelicts to sorrow.
… Mother… Wife….
Are these then the aims of love?
Ah, the old sorcery of morality, the old lies of this old humanity.
No, I will never be anyone’s wife; I will never give any children to the species. Never!
Life is pain. Humanity is a lie. Anyone who accepts perpetuating the species is an enemy of pure beauty.
Humanity is a race that must FADE AWAY!
Individualism must kill society, pleasure must strangle pain. Let weeping and pain die, drowned in a final orgy of joy. Give yourself to the mad joy of living, you who love life, you who love the end.
Why should the future matter? What does the species matter to you?
Come on, you who have discovered yourselves, let’s make the world a feast. Let’s make life a twilight orgy of love. For those that come from the depths of the social lie where the roots of human pain cling, joy must be an end and the end the highest aim.
I don’t want to have a child that spoils my beauty and withers my youth.
I don’t want to have a family that constrains my freedom. I don’t want an insipid, jealous and brutal husband who, as payment for a piece of bread, prevents the lyrical flights of the spirit through the most divine and wicked follies of lust and voluptuousness that multiple love affairs give to the flesh.
I don’t love husbands and perhaps not even lovers.
I love pleasure and love.
But love is a flower that germinates on men’s lips.
When I approach their lips to gather the perverse flower of love, I will do it for my love alone.
Loving the other is always needless and sometimes stupid.
It is enough to love oneself. It is enough to know how to love oneself. And I will know how to love myself so much, oh so much!
I will love myself naked in front of the mirror in the evening. I will adore myself naked in the bathtub in the morning. I will intoxicate myself naked in the arms of lovers.
Humanity walks the paths of pain in order to perpetuate itself. I walk the paths of pleasure because I seek the end.
****
I walk toward the east; I walk toward the west. I want to walk over the paths of the world gathering the flowers of love, joy and freedom.
I love black and flesh-colored stockings. White or red silk panties. Shoes of rubber and refined material. Baths in scented vinegar water, perfume from Cotty and bouquets of roses.
I want to walk over the paths of the world gathering the flowers of love, joy and freedom.
I will break off the fronds of lime trees; I will gather hydrangea sprays, wisteria clusters and oleander flowers to prepare the perfumed bed of my love.
And I will be the lover of vagabonds and thieves. And I will be the ideal of poets.
Because I don’t want to give anything to the fatherland, to the species and to humanity.
I want to get drunk at the fountain of pleasure, lust and voluptuousness. I want to be completely consumed on love’s pyre.
I don’t want to be a mother; I don’t want to be a wife. No, no, no!
Perfumed beds, lover’s kisses and the music of mad violins. Song and dance.
I know. You will call me a madwoman and a pervert. You will call me a wh…
But these are old and powerless names that no longer affect me.
I am the precocious adolescent who, after wandering in the most terrifying chasms of the depths, climbs back up to the peak to sing the sacrilegious song of my free life in the sun.
A life of beauty and strength, a life of art and love, surging with godlike sin, gushing in the sacred oasis of voluptuousness.
Enough now with epileptic frenzies of the spirit.
Nothing belongs to pagan beauty more than my young body.
Oh, love flies off with me…
