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CANZONE.
THE FLOWER OF FORGETFULNESS.
We should avoid the flower of forgetfulness. We
ought never to inhale its deceptive odor.
It is beautiful and smiling. It looks at you
with its soft eye. It seems to speak, and to say to you: – “Approach: I am your
friend: I will give you comfort.”
Do you know the hunter Ulric? He has plucked
the flower of oblivion.
At first, a profound quiet succeeded to his
sufferings, and he could look back without pain on that which had afflicted him.
Ulric is now tired of indifference, and
whishes again to love: but he has plucked the flower of forgetfulness.
We never love again, when we have once
forgotten.
Ulric wanders through the forest – he
traverses the plain – and he climbs the mountain. He inquires of the bird in the
thicket, of the flower in the furrow, and the rill in the mountain, why he,
alone can no longer love. The bird, the flower, and the rill reply: “thou hast
gathered the flower of forgetfulness.”
The hunter now regrets the time when he was
unhappy. At least, he could then feel his heart beat.
“Alas!” he exclaimed, “there are then evils
from which one is relieved, only to suffer more.”
We must avoid the flower of forgetfulness: we
must not even inhale its deceptive odor.
Tell me, dear friend, tell me its name, that I
may know it when I meet with it.
Some have called it moonwort. But men are
unacquainted with its true name. It has no name for them. It is called simply
the flower of forgetfulness.
Where does it grow? In the wheat-fields yellow
with summer harvest; in the crevices of the old castle; in the midst of wide
meadows; under arbors; or far, far down below, in the mystic country of the
genii?
No, no, fair youth. In the
depths of the heart lies hidden the germ of that everlasting flower – the flower
of oblivion.
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