The death of Satan was a tragedy For...

The death of Satan was a tragedy For the imagination. A capital destroyed him in his tenement… It had nothing of the Julian thunder-cloud: The assassin flash and rumble . . . He was denied. Phantoms, what have you left? What underground? What place in which to be is not enough To be? You go, poor phantoms, without place Like silver in the sheathing of the sight, As the eye closes . . . How cold the vacancy When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist First sees reality. Esthétique du Mal