on the beauty of public baths and the draw of mystery and transgression (aragon)

BATHS is all it says on the façade, and that word covers a multitude of veracious signs, the thousand pleasures and maledictions to which our bodies are heir. But who knows? Perhaps one will find, beneath its roof, the promised water, limpid and singing. The unknown is a powerful temptation, and danger even more so. Modern society scarcely takes into account these instincts of the individual; it believes it has suppressed both temptations. And perhaps, in our latitudes, only the heart readily intoxicated may be susceptible to the unknown. As for danger, you can see with your own eyes how things grow increasingly tame from day to day. In love, however, whether it declare itself as this physical fury, or this specter, or this spirit of diamond whispering in my ear a name which sounds like freshness, there is a principle outside the law, an irrepressible urge to violate, a scorn of prohibitions, and a liking for rapine. You can always try confining this hydra-headed passion to your own house or even giving it the run of palaces: it will still crave its freedom, always bursting forth wherever it wasn’t asked to cool its heels, wherever it can unleash its unruly splendor. Let it grow where it was not planted: how vulgarity makes it convulse!

- 40, "The Passage de L'Opera," Le Paysan de Paris, Louis Aragon