Resistance

Allez, je saute dans le train de L et je résiste moi aussi à Snydick.

D'abord, un peu de rigolade pour mon buddy! (oubliez pas de couper "l'Adagio" tout en bas...)

 

 

Et maintenant...voici du Watchmen, du vrai, du bon, 100% Alan Moore à vous mettre sous la dent...pour anglicistes only...et pour les autres, descendez à la fin de la note, j'ai quand même pensé à vous.

 

 

Rorschach's journal. October 13^th 1985. 11.30 P.M:

 

 

On friday night, a comedian died in new york.

 

Someone threw him out of a window and when he hit the sidewalk his head was driven up into his stomach.

 

Nobody cares.

Nobody cares but me.

 

Are they right? Is it futile?

Soon there will be war. Millions will burn. Millions will perish in sickness and misery.

Why does one death matter against so many?

 

Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of armageddon I shall not compromise in this.

But there are so many deserving of retribution...

 

...and there is so little time.

 

¤

 

 

Kovacs had friends. Other men in costumes. All Kovacs ever was: man in a costume.

Not Rorschach.

Not Rorschach at all.

 

In 1965, worked with Nite Owl bringing street gangs under control. Tackled the big figure together. Brought down underboss together. Good team.

 

Until he got soft, like rest.

Until he quit.

 

No staying power. None of them. Except comedian. Met him in 1966. Forceful personality. Didn't care if people liked him. Uncompromising.

Admired that.

 

Of us all, he understood most. About world. About people. About society and what's happening to it.

 

Things everyone knows in gut. Things everyone too scared to face, too polite to talk about.

 

He understood.

 

Understood man's capacity for horrors and never quit. Saw the world's black underbelly and never surrendered. Once a man has seen, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend it doesn't exist.

 

No matter who orders him to look the other way.

We do not do this because it is permitted. We do it because we have to.

We do it because we are compelled.

 

¤

 

 

Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent continent.

Fely cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

 

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and god was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone.

 

Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.

Born from oblivion, bear children, hell-bound as ourselves; go into oblivion.

There is nothing else.

 

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long.

No meaning save what we choose to impose.

 

This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the dogs.

It's us.

Only us.

 

Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them.

Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach.

 

¤

 

 

Is everyone but me going mad?Over 40^th Street, an elephant was drifting.

Beyond that, unseen, spy satellites. If they so much as narrow their glass eyes, we shall all be dead.

 

This rentless world: there is only one sane response to it.

The alleyway was cold and deserted.

 

My things were where I'd left them.

Waiting for me.

 

Putting them on, I abandoned my disguise and became myself, free from fear or weakness or lust.

My coat, my shoes, my spotless gloves.

 

My face.

 

Had three hours before calling on Moloch.

Away down allez, heard woman scream, first bubbling note of city's evening chorus.

 

Approached disturbance. An attempted rape/mugging/both.

Cleared throat. The man turned and there was something rewarding in his eyes.

Sometimes, the night is generous to me.

 

¤

 

 

Blood from the shoulder of Pallas

 

by Dan Dreiberg

 

[…] Nowadays, when I observe some specimen of Carine noctua, I try to look past the fine grey down on the toes, to see beyond the white spots arranged in neat lines, like a firework display across its brow. Instead, I try to see the bird whose image the Greeks carved into their coins, sitting patiently at the ear of the Goddess Pallas Athene, silently sharing her immortal wisdom.

Perhaps, instead of measuring the feathered tufts surmounting its ears, we should speculate on what those ears may have heard. Perhaps when considering the manner in which it grips its branch, with two toes in front and the reversible outer toe clutching from behind, we should allow ourselves to pause for a moment, and acknowledge that these same claws must once have drawn blood from the shoulder of Pallas.

 

¤

 

Et comme promis, voici un autre bijou en français. pendez le à vos oreilles mes amis.

 

 

Swamp Thing

 

 

 

Ne bouge pas mon petit lys de charnier. Ne tremble pas. Ton oncle a une histoire à raconter, une blague, une histoire du soir...

 

L'histoire de comment c'était quand j'étais mort.

 

« Mon oeil a explosé et le phosphore s'est déversé en hurlant dans mes artères. J'ai entendu des millers de harpes frappées par un accord assourdissant...

Il y a des manières plus agréables de lâcher prise sur la gorge de la vie.

 

C'est mon échec qui m'a flétri. En comparaison, l'étreinte de la foudre n'était rien. En tentant d'atteindre une autre chair pour héberger mon intellect, j'ai été dupé!

Dupé par un pion, un chiffre, une chose aussi insignifiante que le plus méprisable scarabée...cet insecte, ce grain sans valeur, avait par sa mort déplacé Arcane l'immortel...me condamnant aux latitudes vespérales...aux terres des toiles d'araignées...aux régions sinistres des hommes désincarnés.

 

Ils étaient si nombreux, pris dans les brumes de l'au-delà, leurs âmes trop blindées pour s'élever vers la lumière.

Des empoisonneurs, des traîtres, des tyrans et des bourreaux...leur infamie était massive. Son pouvoir de gravité, un courant psychique de glace qui tiraillait mon esprit...

Mais je parvins à me libérer des doigts exsangues, sans os ni muscles...à me libérer de ce crépuscule malin, noir comme de la poix...à rebrousser chemin vers les hémisphères décolorés...vers ma glaise abandonnée comme un serpent retourne à sa dernière mue.

Elle gisait dans la poussière. Si petite...si diminuée...

 

Cette chose qui fixait le néant de ses orbites stupides, du fil de fer fondu traînant comme une langue de chair morte...

 

Je ne pouvais porter ce déguisement.

 

Mais j'étais de retour dans le monde, le monde qui s'étendait autour de moi telle une vaste penderie, pleine de cadavres à demi-éveillés.

 

J'irais vêtir mon esprit ailleurs...

 

...des oripeaux que je trouverais. »

 

 

Extrait de Swam Thing Volume II: « Amour et Mort »

écrit par Alan Moore

traduit par Anne Capuron et Jean-Paul Jennequin.