The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 8

04.25.02

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

Click image to enlarge

Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

8. [Plate 66]

Live! Nude! Witches!

What is so delightful to the male imagination as a witch? Oh, certainly,

they personify female wisdom and power ? but they have to take their

clothes off in order to do so! They are terrifying in their malice, of

course. But if one looks at the matter with an unprejudiced eye, one

realizes that they are not wearing a stitch. You can see everything!

So they shrivel a crop or cause a cow to stop giving milk. So what? It's

worth it.

Then there is the matter of their erotomania. There are things no decent

women will ever do ? and witches do them all the time! So lecherous are

these creatures that even the youngest, sweetest, ripest of them all will

couple in mid-air ? out in the open! in plain view of everyone! ? with

the oldest, ugliest and most haggish member of their order. They grind

their bodies together shamelessly. They employ various toys. They involve

their beastly familiars. Everyone knows what they do with those brooms.

And if these witches are indeed, the male imagination reasons, so

lustful, so degraded, so perfectly without discrimination, is it not

possible that they would even stoop to doing it with ? me?

But there the male imagination stops, one crucial word short of

revelation and the truth. It leaves the question hanging, while it slips

out the door, leaps over the gate, and runs down the street with its hat

held firmly down over its ears. For it does not want to hear the answer.

The answer which is a single word. The word which is "No."

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This is the 8th of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

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