No More Learning

'To renew your heart, swim towards your Electra! '

she calls, whose knees we once embraced.

VIII

O Death, old captain, it is time! Weigh anchor.

This land wearies us, O Death! Take flight!

If the sky and sea are dark as ink's black rancour,

our hearts, as you must know, are filled with light!

Pour out your poison, and dissolve our fears!

Its fire so burns our minds, we yearn, it's true,

to plunge to the Void's depths, Heaven or Hell, who cares?

Into the Unknown's depths, to find the new.

Notes: Circe was the sea-nymph of Aeaea, who bewitched the followers of Ulysses, and delayed him on her island (See Homer, Odyssey X). Icarus fell into the Icarian Sea, and gave his name to the Sea and the island of Icaria in the Aegean, after his waxen wings had melted when he flew too near the sun. The wings had been made for the two of them by his father Daedalus, who buried him on the island (See Ovid, Metamorphoses VIII 195). Eldorado was the mythical golden man of Inca Peru, hunted for by the Spaniards, synonymous with an unattainable treasure. Capua was the royal capital of ancient Campania, at the time of the Wars in Latium, described in Virgil's Aeneid. The Lotus was the mythical drug of the Lotus Eaters, whom Ulysses visited (See Homer, Odyssey IX), their land a synonym for the world of languor outside time. Pylades was the friend of Orestes, who helped Orestes in his journey to avenge Agamemnon and return to his sister Electra (See Aeschylus, The Oresteian Trilogy: The Choephori).

The Seven Old Men

A Victor Hugo

Ant-like city, city full of dreams,

where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre!

Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams

through the narrow veins of this great ogre.

One morning, when, on the dreary street,

the buildings all seemed heightened, cold

a swollen river's banks carved out to greet,

(their stage-set mirroring an actor's soul),

the dirty yellow fog that flooded space,

arguing with my already weary soul,

steeling my nerves like a hero, I paced

suburbs shaken by the carts' drum-roll.

Suddenly, an old man in rags, their yellow

mirroring the colour of the rain-filled sky,

whose looks alone prompted alms to flow,

except for the evil glittering of his eye,

appeared. You'd have thought his eyeballs

steeped in gall: his gaze intensified the cold,

and his long beard, as rigid as a sword,

was jutting out like Judas's of old.

He was not bent but broken, his spine

made a sharp right angle with his legs,

so that the stick, perfecting his line,

gave him the awkward shape and step

of three-legged usurer, or sick quadruped.

Wading through snow and mud he went

as if, under his feet, he crushed the dead,

hostile to the world, not just indifferent.

Then his double: beard, eyes, rags, stick, back,

no trait distinguished his centenarian twin:

they marched in step, two ghosts of the Baroque,

sprung from one hell, towards some unknown end.

Was I the butt of some infamous game,

some evil chance, aimed at humiliation?

Since minute by minute, I counted seven,

of that sinister old man's multiplication!

Whoever smiles at my anxiety,

and balks at shivering, the un-fraternal,

consider then, despite their senility,

those seven vile monsters looked eternal!

Could I have lived to see an eighth: yet one

more ironic, fatal, inexorable replication,

loathsome Phoenix, his own father and son?

- I turned my back on that hell-bent procession.

Exasperated, a drunk that sees things doubled,

I stumbled home, slammed the door, terrified,

sick, depressed, mind feverish and troubled,

wounded by mystery, the absurd, outside!

In vain my reason tried to take command,

its efforts useless in the tempest's roar,

my soul, a mastless barge, danced, and danced,

over some monstrous sea without a shore!

The Digging Skeleton

I

In the anatomical plates

displayed on the dusty quays

where many a dry book sleeps

mummified, as in ancient days,

drawings to which the gravity

and skill of some past artist,

despite the gloomy subject

have communicated beauty,

you'll see, and it renders those

gruesome mysteries more complete,

flayed men, and skeletons posed,

farm-hands, digging the soil at their feet.

II

Peasants, dour and resigned,

convicts pressed from the grave,

what's the strange harvest, say,

for which you hack the ground,

bending your backbones there,

flexing each fleshless sinew,

what farmer's barn must you

labour to fill with such care?

Do you seek to show - by that pure,

and terrible, emblem of too hard

a fate! - that even in the bone-yard

the promised sleep's far from sure:

that even the Void's a traitor:

that even Death tells us lies,

that in some land new to our eyes,

we must, perhaps, alas, forever,

and ever, and ever, eternally,

wield there the heavy spade,

scrape the dull earth, its blade

beneath our naked, bleeding feet?

Far Away from Here

This is the sanctuary

where the prettified young lady,

calm, and always ready,

fans her breasts, aglow,

elbow on the pillow,

hears the fountain's flow:

it's the room of Dorothea.

- The breeze and water distantly

sing their song, mingled here

with sobs to soothe the spoiled child's fear.

From tip to toe, most thoroughly,

her delicate surfaces appear,

oiled with sweet perfumery.

- the flowers nearby swoon gracefully.

The Swan

I

Andromache, I think of you! That false Simois

that narrow stream, meagre and sad, flowing there

where the immense majesty of your widowed grief,

shone out, growing from your tears,

stirred my fertile memory, suddenly,

as I was crossing the new Carrousel.

The old Paris is gone (the shape of a city

changes faster than the human heart can tell)

I can only see those frail booths in the mind's eye,

those piles of rough-cut pillars, and capitals,

the weeds, the massive greening blocks, that used to lie

water-stained: the bric-a-brac piled in shop windows.

There, there used to be a menagerie:

One dawn, at the hour when labour wakes, there,

under the cold, clear sky, or, when the road-menders set free

a dull hammering, into the silent air,

I saw a swan, that had escaped its cage,

striking the dry stones with webbed feet;

trailing, on hard earth, its white plumage;

in the waterless gutter, opening its beak;

bathing its wings frantically, in the dust,

and crying, its heart full of its native streams:

'Lightning, when will you strike? Rain when will you gust? '

Unfortunate, strange, fatal symbol, it seems

I see you, still: sometimes, like Ovid's true

man transformed, his head, on a convulsive neck, strained

towards the sky's cruel and ironic blue,

addressing the gods with his complaint.

II

Paris changes! But nothing, in my melancholy,

moves. New hotels, scaffolding, stone blocks,

old suburbs, everything, becomes allegory,

to me: my memories are heavier than rocks.

So, in front of the Louvre, an image oppresses me.

I think of my great swan, with its mad movements,

ridiculous, sublime, as exiles seem,

gnawed by endless longing! And then,

of you, Andromache, fallen from the embrace

of the great hero, vile chattel in the hands of proud Pyrrhus,

in front of an open tomb, in grief's ecstatic grace,

Hector's widow, alas, and wife of Helenus!

I think of the negress, consumptive, starved,

dragging through the mire, and searching, eyes fixed,

for the absent palm-trees of Africa, carved

behind the immense walls of mist:

Of those who have lost what they cannot recover,

ever! Ever! Those who drink tears like ours,

and suck on sorrow's breasts, their wolf-mother!

Of the skinny orphans, withering like flowers!

So in the forest of my heart's exile,

an old memory sounds its clear encore!

I think of sailors forgotten on some isle,

prisoners, the defeated! . . . . and of many more!

Note. Andromache was Hector's wife who mourned his death in the Trojan War. The Simois and the Scamander (Xanthus) were the two rivers of the Trojan Plain. Pyrrhus is Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. Andromache fell to him as a spoil after the fall of Troy. Helenus was a son of Priam and brother of Hector. Baudelaire follows Virgil, The Aeneid III 289, where Aeneas reaches Epirus and Chaonia, and finds Helenus and Andromache. Helenus has succeeded to the throne of Pyrrhus and married Andromache. Aeneas finds Andromache sacrificing to Hector's ashes in a wood near the city (Buthrotum) by a river named after the Simois. This is Baudelaire's 'false Simois'. Andromache explains that Pyrrhus has left her for Hermione, and passed her on to Helenus, who has been accepted as a Greek prince. Helenus has built a second 'little' Troy in Chaonia. Andromache is a symbol of fallen exile. The Carrousel is a bridge over the Seine in Paris, recent at the time of the poem. The Ovid reference is (arguably) to Cycnus, son of Sthenelus, changed to a swan, grieving for Phaethon (See Metamorphoses II 367 and also Virgil, Aeneid X 187). The Louvre Palace is now a Museum and Art Gallery, on the right bank of the Seine, in Paris.

Parisian Dream

A Constantine Guys

I

The vague and distant image

of this landscape, so terrifying,

on which no mortal's gazed

thrilled me again this morning.

Sleep is full of miracles!

By a singular caprice

from that unfolding spectacle

I'd banned all shapeless leaf,

a painter proud of my artistry

I savoured in my picture

the enchanting monotony

of metal, marble, water.

Babel of stairs and arcades,

it was an infinite palace

full of pools and cascades,

falling gold, burnt, or lustreless:

and heavy cataracts there

like curtains of crystal,

dazzling, hung in air

from walls of metal.

Not trees, but colonnades

circled the sleeping pools

where colossal naiads gazed

at themselves, as women do.

Between banks of rose and green,

the blue water stretched,

for millions of leagues

to the universe's edge:

there were un-heard of stones,

and magic waves: there were,

dazzled by everything shown,

enormous quivering mirrors!

Impassive and taciturn,

Ganges, in the firmament,

poured treasures from the urn

into abysses of diamond.

Architect of this spell,

I made a tame ocean swell

entirely at my will,

through a jewelled tunnel:

and all, seemed glossy, clear

iridescent: even the shades

of black, liquid glory there

in light's crystallised rays.

Not a single star, no trace

of a sun even, low in the sky,

to illuminate this wondrous place

that shone with intrinsic fire!

And over these shifting wonders

hovered (oh dreadful novelty!

All for the eye, none for the ear! )

the silence of eternity.

II

Opening eyes filled with flame

I saw the horrors of my hovel,

and felt the barbs of shameful

care, re-entering my soul:

brutally with gloomy blows

the clock struck mid-day,

and the sky poured shadows

on a world, benumbed and grey.

The Inquisitive Man's Dream

A Nadar

Do you know, as I do, delicious sadness

and make others say of you: 'Strange man! '

- I was dying. In my soul, singular illness,

desire and horror were mingled as one:

anguish and living hope, no factious bile.

The more the fatal sand ran out, the more

acute, delicious my torment: my heart entire

was tearing itself away from the world I saw.

I was like a child eager for the spectacle,

hating the curtain as one hates an obstacle. . .

at last the truth was chillingly revealed:

I'd died without surprise, dreadful morning

enveloped me. - Was this all there was to see?

The curtain had risen, and I was still waiting.

Obsession

Great forests you frighten me, like vast cathedrals:

You roar like an organ, and in our condemned souls,

aisles of eternal mourning, where past death-rattles

sound, the echo of your De Profundis rolls.

I hate you, Ocean! My mind, in your tumultuous main,

sees itself: I hear the vast laughter of your seas,

the bitter laughter of defeated men,

filled with the sound of sobs and blasphemies.

How you would please me without your stars, O Night!

I know the language that their light employs!

Since I search for darkness, nakedness, the Void!

But the shadows themselves seem, to my sight

canvases, where thousands of lost beings, alive,

and with a familiar gaze, leap from my eyes.

Sympathetic Horror

'From that sky livid, bizarre

as your tortured destiny,

what thoughts fill your empty heart,

Freethinker, answer me. '

- Insatiable and avid

for vague and obscure skies,

I'll not groan like Ovid,

banned from Rome and paradise.

Skies, shores split and seamed,

my pride's mirrored in you:

your clouds in mourning, too,

are the hearses of my dreams,

Hell's reflected in your light,

where my heart takes delight.

The Alchemy of Sadness

One man lights you with his ardour

one decks you in mourning, Nature!

What says to the first: 'A Sepulchre! '

To the other cries: 'Life and splendour! '

Unknown Hermes, who assists,

yet intimidates me as well,

you make me Midas' equal,

the saddest of alchemists:

You help me change gold to iron,

paradise to hell's kingdom:

in the shrouded atmosphere

I find a dear corpse, and on

the celestial shores, it's there,

I build a mighty sepulchre.

Notes: Hermes was the mercurial Greek messenger god, spirit of alchemy, and as Hermes Trismegistes a source of wisdom. Midas was offered a gift by the god Bacchus, and asked to turn everything to gold. Bacchus reversed the dreadful results, at Midas' request.

Draft Epilogue for the Second Edition of Les Fleurs du mal

Tranquil as a sage and gentle as one who's cursed. . . . I said:

I love you, oh my beauty, my charmer. . .

many a time. . .

your debauches without thirst, your soul-less loves,

your longing for the infinite

which proclaims itself everywhere, even in evil,

your bombs, knives, victory marches, public feasts,

your melancholy suburbs,

your furnished rooms,

your gardens full of sighs and intrigue,

your churches vomiting prayer as music,

your childish despairs, mad hags' games,

your discouragements:

and your fireworks, eruptions of joy,

that make the dumb and gloomy sky smile.

Your venerable vice dressed in silk,

and laughable virtue, with sad gaze,

gentle, delighting in the luxury it shows.

Your saved principles and flouted laws,

your proud monuments on which mists catch,

your metal domes the sun inflames,

your theatrical queens with seductive voices,

your tocsins, cannon, deafening orchestra,

your magic cobbles heaped as barricades,

your petty orators' swollen rhetoric,

preaching love, while your sewers run with blood,

rushing towards Hell like the Orinoco's flood,

your angels, your fresh clowns in ancient rags.

Angels dressed in gold, purple and hyacinth,

O you, bear witness that I've discharged my task,

like a perfect alchemist like a sainted soul.

From every thing I've extracted the quintessence,

you gave me your mud and I've turned it into gold.

Epilogue

With quiet heart, I climbed the hill,

from which one can see, the city, complete,

hospitals, brothels, purgatory, hell,

prison, where every sin flowers, at our feet.

You know well, Satan, patron of my distress,

I did not trudge up there to vainly weep,

but like an old man with an old mistress,

I longed to intoxicate myself, with the infernal delight

of the vast procuress, who can always make things fresh.

Whether you still sleep in the morning light,

heavy, dark, rheumatic, or whether your hands

flutter, in your pure, gold-edged veils of night,

I love you, infamous capital! Courtesans

and pimps, you often offer pleasures

the vulgar mob will never understand.

The Voice

I was the height of a folio, my bed just

backed on the bookcases' sombre Babel,

everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust

jumbled together: novel, science, fable.

Two voices spoke to me. One, firmly, slyly,

said: 'The Earth's a cake filled with sweetness:

I can give you (and your pleasure will be

endless! ) an appetite of comparable vastness. '

The other said: 'Come! Come voyage in dream,

beyond the known, beyond the possible! '

And that one sang like the ocean breeze,

phantom, from who knows where, its wail

caressing the ear, and yet still frightening.

You I answered: 'Yes! Gentle voice! ' My

wound, and what I'd call my fatality, begins

alas, from then. From behind the scenery

of vast existence, in voids without light,

I see the strangest worlds distinctly:

ecstatic victim of my second sight,

snakes follow me striking at my feet.

Since then, like the prophets, I greet

the desert and the sea with tenderness:

I laugh at funerals, I cry at feasts,

wine tastes smooth that's full of bitterness:

and, eyes on the sky, I fall into holes,

and frequently I take facts for lies.

But 'Keep your dreams! ' the Voice consoles,

'Madmen have sweeter ones than the wise! '

The Warner

Every man worth the name

has a yellow snake in his soul,

seated as on a throne, saying

if he cries: 'I want to! ': 'No! '

Lock eyes with the fixed gaze

of Nixies or Satyresses, says

the Tooth: 'Think of your duty! '

Make children, or plant trees,

polish verses, or marble frieze,

the Tooth says: 'Tonight, where will you be? '

Whatever he likes to consider

there's never a moment passing

a man can't hear the warning

of that insufferable Viper.

Calm

Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still.

You asked for night: it falls: it is here.

A shadowy atmosphere enshrouds the hill,

to some men bringing peace, to others care.

While the vile human multitude

goes to earn remorse, in servile pleasure's play,

under the lash of joy, the torturer, who

is pitiless, Sadness, come, far away:

Give me your hand. See, where the lost years

lean from the balcony in their outdated gear,

where regret, smiling, surges from the watery deeps.

Underneath some archway, the dying light

sleeps, and, like a long shroud trailing from the East,

listen, dear one, listen to the soft onset of night.

The Lid

Whatever place he goes, on land or sea,

under a sky on fire, or a polar sun,

servant of Jesus, follower of Cytherea,

shadowy beggar, or Croesus the glittering one,

city-dweller or rustic, traveller or sedentary,

whether his tiny brain works fast or slow,

everywhere man knows the terror of mystery,

and with a trembling eye looks high or low.

Above, the Sky! That burial vault that stifles,

a ceiling lit for a comic opera, blind walls,

where each actor treads a blood-drenched stage:

Freethinkers' fear, the hermit sets his hope on:

the Sky! The black lid of the giant cauldron,

under which we vast, invisible Beings rage.

The Sunset of Romanticism

How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,

flashing out its greeting, like an explosion!

- Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion

its descent, nobler than a dream, to our eyes!

I remember! I've seen all, flower, furrow, fountain,

swoon beneath its look, like a throbbing heart. . .

- Let's run quickly, it's late, towards the horizon,

to catch at least one slanting ray as it departs!

But I pursue the vanishing God in vain:

irresistible Night establishes its sway,

full of shudders, black, dismal, cold:

an odour of the tomb floats in the shadow,

at the swamp's edge, feet faltering I go,

bruising damp slugs, and unexpected toads.

The Void

Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.

- Alas! It's all Abyss, - action, longing, dream,

the Word! And I feel Panic's storm-wind stream

through my hair, and make it stand upright.

Above, below, around, the desert, the deep,

the silence, the fearful compelling spaces. . .

With his knowing hand, in my dark, God traces

a multi-formed nightmare without release.

I fear sleep as one fears a deep hole,

full of vague terror. Where to, who knows?

I see only infinity at every window,

and my spirit haunted by vertigo's stress

envies the stillness of Nothingness.

- Ah! Never to escape from Being and Number!

The Moon, Offended

Oh moon our fathers worshipped, their love discreet,

from the blue country's heights where the bright seraglio,

the stars in their sweet dress, go treading after you,

my ancient Cynthia, lamp of my retreat,

do you see the lovers, in their bed's happiness

showing in sleep their mouths' cool enamels,

the poet bruising his forehead on his troubles,

or the vipers coupling under the dry grass?

Under your yellow cloak, with clandestine pacing,

do you pass as before, from twilight to morning,

to kiss Endymion's faded grace?

- 'I see your mother, Child of this impoverished century,

who, over her mirror, bends a time-worn face,

and powders the breast that fed you, skilfully. '

Lament of an Icarus

Lovers of whores don't care,

happy, calm and replete:

But my arms are incomplete,

grasping the empty air.

Thanks to stars, incomparable ones,

that blaze in the depths of the skies,

all my destroyed eyes

see, are the memories of suns.

I look, in vain, for beginning and end

of the heavens' slow revolve:

Under an unknown eye of fire, I ascend

feeling my wings dissolve.

And, scorched by desire for the beautiful,

I will not know the bliss,

of giving my name to that abyss,

that knows my tomb and funeral.

Index by First Line

Is it not pleasant, now we are tired,
It was in her white skirts that he loved to see
Higher there, higher, far from the ways,
In a perfumed land caressed by the sun
Your feet are as slender as hands, your hips, to me,
Often, for their amusement, bored sailors
You can scorn more illustrious eyes,
I've not forgotten, near to the town,
The great-hearted servant of whom you were jealous,
In order to write my chaste verses I'll lie
Through the streets where at windows of old houses
The moon dreams more languidly this evening:
When Don Juan went down to Hell's charms,
The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
Like pensive cattle, lying on the sands,
O you, the most knowing, and loveliest of Angels,
O mortals, I am beautiful, like a stone dream,
On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished
High over the ponds, high over the vales,
Nature is a temple, where, from living pillars, a flux
My sweetheart was naked, knowing my desire,
How I love to watch, dear indolence,
I adore you, the nocturnal vault's likeness,
My soul, do you remember the object we saw
Through fields of ash, burnt, without verdure,
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,
When, in Autumn, on a sultry evening,
O fleece, billowing down to the shoulders!
Reader, have you ever breathed deeply,
Though your eyebrows surprise,
We will have beds filled with light scent, and
It's bitter, yet sweet, on wintry nights,
Among the black yews, their shelter,
Pale girl with fiery hair,
The prophetic tribe with burning eyes
To roll the rock you fought
It is Death, alas, persuades us to keep on living:
Music, like an ocean, often carries me away!
Man, with which to pay his ransom,
My heart soared with joy, like a bird in flight,
Here's the criminal's friend, delightful evening:
Reveille was sounding on barrack-squares,
My sister, my child
There's a magnificent land, a land of Cockaigne, they say, that I've
Can we stifle the old, long-lived Remorse,
Wine can clothe the most sordid hole
One would say your gaze was a misted screen:
A fine cat prowls about in my brain,
You are a lovely autumn sky, rose-clear!
Soon we'll plunge into the bitter shadows:
Your eyes, clear as crystal, ask me: 'Strange lover,
Your head, your gesture, your air,
Angel of joyfulness, do you know anguish,
Once, once only, sweet and lovable woman,
What will you say tonight, poor soul in solitude,
They go before me, those Eyes full of light
To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful,
Tell me, does your heart sometimes soar, Agathe,
Now those days arrive when, stem throbbing,
'Where does it come from,' you ask, 'this strange sadness,
Stupidity and error, avarice and vice,
My youth was only a threatening storm,
Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud,
Today Space is fine!
A flirtatious woman's singular gaze
I am the pipe of an author:
Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs,
I'm like the king of a rain-soaked country,
For the child, in love with globe, and stamps,
Ant-like city, city full of dreams,
In the anatomical plates
This is the sanctuary
Andromache, I think of you!
That false Simois
The vague and distant image
Do you know, as I do, delicious sadness
Great forests you frighten me, like vast cathedrals:
'From that sky livid, bizarre
One man lights you with his ardour
Tranquil as a sage and gentle as one who's cursed. . . . I said:
With quiet heart, I climbed the hill,
I was the height of a folio, my bed just
Every man worth the name
Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still.
Whatever place he goes, on land or sea,
How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,
Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.