Now and Then an Extraordinary Vision Rises Up Before My Eyes
Yes, now and then an extraordinary vision rises up before my eyes, sudden and clear; something terrible embraces my soul, and steals into my blood, my marrow, my nerves and my muscles. I remain, rooted in a vertiginous immobility, prey to an atrocious intoxication, fuddled with anguish. Then, just as a spark will sputter out, it disappears. The memory comes back, only much later, uncertain, as if in a dream. But in my soul, I retain a fear that, if the vision had been prolonged by even a fraction of a second, my reason might have succumbed to the delirium of the hallucination.
~Edouard Dujardin
“The Iron Maiden” ~ The Book of Masks: French Symbolist & Decadent Writing of the 1890’s ~ Ed. Andrew Mangravite ~ London : Atlas Press, 1994 / pg 197
