Advice to Unhappily Married Women (I)

(Unhappily married women include all who are married and some who are single)

Beware, above all else, of cultivating humanitarian sentiments. Humanitarianism is a vulgarity. I write coldly, rationally, thinking of your own good, you poor unhappily married women.

The essence of all art, all freedom, is to submit one’s spirit as little as possible, letting the body be submitted instead.

Immoral behaviour is inadvisable, for it demeans your personality in the eyes of others and makes it banal. But to be inwardly immoral while being held in high esteem by everyone around you, to be a dedicated and corporally chaste wife and mother while at the same time mysteriously catching diseases from all the men in the neighbourhood, from the grocers to ..... – this is the height of gratification for anyone who really wants to enjoy and expand her individuality without stooping to the base method of naturally base housemaids or else falling into the rigid virtuousness of profoundly stupid women, whose virtue is merely the offspring of self-interest.

According to your superiority, female souls who read me, will you be able to grasp what I write. All pleasure is in the mind; all crimes that occur are committed in dreams and in dreams alone! I remember a beautiful, authentic crime. It never happened. The beautiful crimes aren’t the ones we know. Borgia committed beautiful crimes? Believe me that he didn’t. The one who committed beautiful, lavish, fruitful crimes was our dream of Borgia, the idea we have of Borgia. I’m certain that the Cesare Borgia* who existed was banal and stupid. He must have been, because to exist is always stupid and banal.

I offer you this advice disinterestedly, applying my method to a case which doesn’t personally interest me. My dreams are of empire and glory, with nothing sensual about them. But I’d like to be useful to you, if for no other reason than to annoy myself, because I hate what’s useful. I’m an altruist in my own way.