Under a vast grey sky, on a vast and dusty plain without paths, without grass, without a nettle or a thistle, I met several men bent double as they walked.
Each one of them carried on his back an enormous Chimera as heavy as a sack of flour or coal or the paraphernalia of a Roman infantryman.
But the monstrous beast was no inanimate weight; on the contrary, it enveloped and oppressed the man with its elastic and powerful muscles; it clutched at the breast of its mount with two vast claws; and its fabulous head overhung the man’s forehead like one of those horrible helmets with which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terror of their enemy.
I questioned one of these men and asked him where they were going like that. He replied that he did not know and that none of them knew, but that they were evidently going somewhere since they were driven by an invincible need to go on.
A curious thing to note: none of these travelers seemed irritated by the ferocious beast hanging around his neck and glued to his back; one might have said that they considered it part of themselves. All these tired and serious faces showed not the least sign of despair; under the spleenful dome of the sky, their feet deep in the dust
of the earth as desolate as the sky, they continued along with the resigned physiognomy of those who are condemned to hope forever.
And the cortège passed by me and disappeared in the atmosphere of the horizon, where the rounded surface of the planet is concealed from the curiosity of the human gaze.
And for a few moments I persisted in trying to comprehend this mystery; but soon irresistible Indifference descended upon me and I was more heavily overwhelmed than they were by their crushing Chimeras.
(Baudelaire, ‘Chacun sa chimère’, Le spleen de Paris, Armand Colin,
Paris, 1958:10–11)
