Do you know that fevered malady that seizes us in our cold misery, that
nostalgia
for an unknown land, that anguish of curiosity?
Andre Breton - First Manifesto of Surrealism - 1924
Letter to Sainte-Beuve
On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished
than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished
rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,
trailed our ennui, hunched, round-shouldered,
under the four-square heaven of solitude,
where a child drinks study's tart ten-year brew.
It was in those days, outstanding and memorable,
when the teachers, forced to loosen our classical
fetters, yet all still hostile to your rhyming,
succumbed to the pressure of our mad duelling,
and allowed a triumphant, mutinous, pupil
to make Triboulet howl in Latin, at will.
Which of us in those days of pale adolescence
didn't share the weary torpor of confinement,
- eyes lost in the dreary blue of a summer sky
or the snowfall's whiteness, we were dazzled by,
ears pricked, eager, waiting - a pack of hounds
drinking some book's far echo, a riot's sound?
Most of all in summer, that melted the leads,
the walls high, blackened, filled with dread,
with the scorching heat, or when autumn haze
lit the sky with its one monotonous blaze
and made the screeching falcons fall asleep,
white pigeons' terrors, in their slender keep:
the season of reverie when the Muse clings
through the endless day to some bell that rings:
when Melancholy at noon when all is drowsing
at the corridor's end, chin in hand, dragging -
eyes bluer and darker than Diderot's Nun,
that sad, obscene tale known to everyone,
- her feet weighed down by premature ennui,
her brow from night's moist languor un-free.
- and unhealthy evenings, then, feverish nights,
that make young girls love their bodies outright,
and, sterile pleasure, gaze in their mirrors to see
the ripening fruits of their own nubility: -
Italian evenings of thoughtless lethargy,
when knowledge of false delights is revealed
when sombre Venus, on her high black balcony,
out of cool censers, waves of musk sets free.
In this war of enervating circumstances,
matured by your sonnets, prepared by your stanzas,
one evening, having sensed the soul of your art,
I transported Amaury's story into my heart.
Every mystical void is but two steps away
from doubt. - The potion, drop by drop, day by day,
filtering through me, I, drawn to the abyss since I
was fifteen, who swiftly deciphered Rene's sigh,
I parched by some strange thirst for the unknown,
within the smallest of arteries, made its home.
I absorbed it all, the perfumes, the miasmas,
the long-vanished memories' sweetest whispers,
the drawn-out tangle of phrases, their symbols,
the rosaries murmuring in mystical madrigals,
- a voluptuous book, if ever one was brewed.
Now, whether I'm deep in some leafy refuge,
or in the sun of a second hemispheres' days,
the eternal swell swaying the ocean waves,
the view of endless horizons always re-born,
draw my heart to the dream divine, once more,
be it in heavy languor of burning summer,
or shivering idleness of early December,
beneath tobacco-smoke clouds, hiding the ceiling,
through the book's subtle mystery, always leafing,
a book so dear to those numb souls whose destiny
has, one and all, stamped them with that same malady,
in front of the mirror, I've perfected the cruelty
of the art that, at birth, some demon granted me,
- art of that pain that creates true voluptuousness, -
scratching the wound, to draw blood from my distress.
Poet, is it an insult, or a well-turned compliment?
For regarding you I'm like a lover, to all intent,
faced with a ghost whose gestures are caresses,
with hand, eye of unknown charms, who blesses,
in order to drain one's strength. - All loved beings
are cups of venom one drinks with eyes unseeing,
and the heart that's once transfixed, seduced by pain,
finds death, while still blessing the arrow, every day.
Notes: Baudelaire in 1844 sent this poem to Saint-Beuve, whose novel Volupte has Amaury as its hero. Triboulet (c1479-1536), was the court jester of Louis XII, and Francois 1st, who inspired a scene in Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. Diderot was the author of La Religieuse, Chateaubriand of Rene.
Elevation
High over the ponds, high over the vales,
the mountains, clouds, woods and meres,
beyond the sun, beyond the ethereal veils,
beyond the confines of the starry spheres,
you ride, my spirit, ride with agility,
swooning with joy, at the wave, strong swimmer
and take your ineffable masculine pleasure,
cutting through that endless immensity.
Fly far away from this deathly miasma:
go, purify yourself in the upper air,
and drink like a pure and divine liquor,
what fills limpid space, that lucid fire.
Behind him the boredoms, the vast distress,
that imposes its weight on fog-bound beings,
happy the man, who on vigorous wings
mounts towards fields, serene and luminous!
He whose thoughts, like larks, go soaring,
flying freely towards dawn air, -
who glides above life: grasps, easily, there,
the language of flowers and silent Things!
Correspondences
Nature is a temple, where, from living pillars, a flux
of confused words is, sometimes, allowed to fall:
Man travels it, through forests of symbols, that all
observe him, with familiar looks.
Like far echoes that distantly congregate,
in a shadowy and profound unity,
vast as the night air, in its clarity,
perfumes, colours, sounds reverberate.
There are fresh perfumes, like the flesh of children,
mellow as oboes, green as prairies,
- and others, rich, glorious and forbidden,
having the expansive power of infinities,
amber, musk, benjamin and incense,
that sing of the ecstasies of spirit and sense.
The Jewels
My sweetheart was naked, knowing my desire,
she wore only her tinkling jewellery,
whose splendour yields her the rich conquering fire
of Moorish slave-girls in the days of their beauty.
When, dancing, it gives out its sharp sound of mockery,
that glistening world of metal and stone,
I am ravished by ecstasy, love like fury
those things where light mingles with sound.
So she lay there, let herself be loved,
and, from the tall bed, she smiled with delight
on my love deep and sweet as the sea is moved,
rising to her as toward a cliff's height.
Like a tamed tigress, her eyes fixed on me
with a vague dreamy air, she tried out her poses,
so wantonly and so innocently,
it gave a new charm to her metamorphoses:
and her arm and her leg, and her back and her thigh,
shining like oil, undulating like a swan's,
passed in front of my calm, clairvoyant eye:
and her belly and breasts, those vine-clustered ones,
thrust out, more seductively than Angels of evil,
to trouble the repose where my soul had its throne,
and topple it from the crystal hill,
where it was seated, calm and alone.
I thought I saw Antiope's hips placed
on a youth's bust, with a new design's grace,
her pelvis accentuated so by her waist.
The rouge was superb on that wild, tawny face!
- And the lamp resigning itself to dying,
as only the fire in the hearth lit the chamber,
each time it gave out a flame in sighing,
it flooded with blood that skin of amber!
The Snake That Dances
How I love to watch, dear indolence,
like a bright shimmer,
of fabric, the skin of your elegant
body glimmer!
Over the bitter-tasting perfume,
the depths of your hair,
odorous, restless spume,
blue, and brown, waves, there,
like a vessel that stirs, awake
when dawn winds rise,
my dreaming soul sets sail
for those distant skies.
Your eyes where nothing's revealed
either acrid or sweet,
are two cold jewels where steel
and gold both meet.
Seeing your rhythmic advance,
your fine abandon,
one might speak of a snake that danced
at the end of the branch it's on.
Under its burden of languidness,
your head at a child-like slant,
rocks with weak listlessness
like a young elephant's,
and your body heels and stretches
like some trim vessel,
that, rocking from side to side, plunges
its yards in the swell.
As when the groaning glacier's thaw
fills the flowing stream,
so when your mouth's juices pour
to the tip of your teeth,
I fancy I'm drinking overpowering, bitter,
Bohemian wine,
that over my heart will scatter
its stars, a liquid sky!
'Je t'adore a l'egal de la voute nocturne'
I adore you, the nocturnal vault's likeness,
o vast taciturnity, o vase of sadness:
I love you, my beauty, the more you flee,
grace of my nights, the more you seem,
to multiply distances, ah ironically,
that bar my arms from the blue immensity.
I advance to the attack, climb to the assault
like a swarm of worms attacking a corpse,
and I cherish, o creature cruel, and implacable,
your coldness that makes you, for me, more beautiful!
A Rotting Carcase
My soul, do you remember the object we saw
on what was a fine summer's day:
at the path's far corner, a shameful corpse
on the gravel-bed, darkly lay,
legs in the air, like a lecherous woman,
burning and oozing with poisons,
revealing, with nonchalance, cynicism,
the belly ripe with its exhalations.
The sun shone down on that rot and mould,
as if to grill it completely,
and render to Nature a hundredfold
what she'd once joined so sweetly:
and the sky gazed at that noble carcass,
like a flower, now blossoming.
The stench was so great, that there, on the grass,
you almost considered fainting.
The flies buzzed away on its putrid belly,
from which black battalions slid,
larvae, that flowed in thickening liquid
the length of those seething shreds.
All of the thing rose and fell like a wave,
surging and glittering:
you'd have said the corpse, swollen with vague
breath, multiplied, was living.
And that 'world' gave off a strange music,
like the wind, or the flowing river,
or the grain, tossed and turned with a rhythmic
motion, by the winnower.
Its shape was vanishing, no more than a dream,
a slowly-formed rough sketch
on forgotten canvas, the artist's gleam
of memory alone perfects.
From behind the rocks a restless bitch
glared with an angry eye,
judging the right moment to snatch
some morsel she'd passed by.
- And yet you too will resemble that ordure,
that terrible corruption,
star of my eyes, sun of my nature,
my angel, and my passion!
Yes! Such you'll become, o queen of grace,
after the final sacraments,
when you go under the flowering grass
to rot among the skeletons.
O my beauty! Tell the worms, then, as
with kisses they eat you away,
how I preserved the form, divine essence
of my loves in their decay !
Beatrice
Through fields of ash, burnt, without verdure,
where I was complaining one day to Nature,
and slowly sharpened the knife of my thought,
as I wandered aimlessly, against my heart,
I saw descend, at noon, on my brow,
a storm-filled and sinister cloud,
holding a vicious demonic horde,
resembling cruel, and curious dwarfs.
Gazing at me, considering me, as cool
as passers-by admiring a fool,
I heard them laughing and whispering in synch,
exchanging many a nudge and a wink:
' Let's contemplate this caricature,
this Hamlet's shadow, echoing his posture,
his indecisive looks, and wild hair.
It's a shame to see that epicure there,
that pauper, that actor on holiday, that droll
fellow, because he can play a fine role,
trying to interest with his tears
the eagles, the grasshoppers, streams and flowers,
and even proclaiming his public tirades
to us who invented those ancient parades? '
I might (since my pride, high as the mountains,
overtops clouds and the cries of demons)
simply have turned my regal head,
if I'd not seen, to that obscene crowd wed,
a crime that failed to make the sun rock,
the queen of my heart, with her matchless look,
laughing with them at my dark distress,
and now and then yielding a filthy caress.
The Balcony
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O you, all my pleasures! O you, all my learning!
You will remember the joy of caresses,
the sweetness of home and the beauty of evening,
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!
On evenings lit by the glow of the ashes
and on the balcony, veiled, rose-coloured, misted,
how gentle your breast was, how good your heart to me!
We have said things meant for eternity,
on evenings lit by the glow of the ashes.
How lovely the light is on sultry evenings!
How deep the void grows! How powerful the heart is!
As I leaned towards you, queen of adored ones
I thought I breathed perfume from your blood's kiss.
How lovely the light is on sultry evenings!
The night it was thickening and closing around us,
and my eyes in the dark were divining your glance,
and I drank your nectar. Oh sweetness! Oh poison!
your feet held, here, in these fraternal hands.
The night it was thickening and closing around us.
I know how to summon up happiest moments,
and relive my past, there, curled, touching your knees.
What good to search for your languorous beauties
but in your dear body, and your heart so sweet?
I know how to summon up happiest moments!
Those vows, those perfumes, those infinite kisses,
will they be reborn, from gulfs beyond soundings,
as the suns that are young again climb in the sky,
after they've passed through the deepest of drownings?
- O vows! O perfumes! O infinite kisses!
Exotic Perfume
When, in Autumn, on a sultry evening,
eyes closed, I breathe your warm breasts' odour,
I see the shore of bliss uncovered,
in the monotonous sun's fierce gleaming:
a languorous island where Nature has come,
bringing rare trees and luscious fruits:
the bodies of lean and vigorous brutes,
and women with eyes of astounding freedom.
Led by your odour to magic climes
I see a harbour, of masts, sails, lines,
worn down by the sea's waves still,
while the green tamarinds' perfume mounts,
circling in air, and filling my nostrils,
and blends, in my soul, with the sailors' chants.
The Head of Hair
O fleece, billowing down to the shoulders!
O curls! O perfume charged with languor!
Ecstasy! To populate love's dark alcove,
with memories sleeping tonight in your hair,
I'd wave it, like a handkerchief, in the air!
Languid Asia and burning Africa,
absent worlds, far-off, almost dead,
live in your forest-depths of aromas!
As music floats other spirits away,
mine, my love, sails your fragrance instead.
I'll go where, full of sap, trees and men
Swoon endlessly in that ardent climate:
Thick tresses, be my tide! You contain,
O sea of ebony, the dazzling dream,
of masts, flames, sails, and oarsmen:
an echoing port where my soul's a drinker
of sound, colour, scent in rolling waves:
where vessels, gliding through silk and amber,
open wide their arms to clasp the splendour
of a pure sky quivering with eternal day.
I'll plunge my head, in love with drunkenness,
in this dark ocean which encloses the other:
and my subtle spirit the breakers caress
will know how to find you, fertile indolence!
Infinite lullaby, full of the balm of leisure!
Hair of blue, that hangs like a shadowy tent,
you bring me the round, immense sky's azure:
in your plaited tresses' feathery descent
I grow fervently drunk with the mingled scent
of coconut-oil, of musk, and coal-tar.
Now! Always! My hand in your heavy mane sowing
jewels, the sapphire, the pearl, and the ruby,
so that you'll not remain deaf to my longing!
Oasis of dream, the gourd where I'm drinking,
of you, long draughts of the wine of memory?
A Phantom II: The Perfume
Reader, have you ever breathed deeply,
with slow savour and intoxicated sense,
a church's saturating grain of incense,
or the long-lasting musk in a sachet?
Profound magical spell where we
are drunk on the past restored in the present.
So lovers on an adored body scent
the exquisite flower of memory.
From her pliant and heavy hair,
living sachet, censer of the alcoves,
a fragrance, wild and savage, rose,
and from her clothes, velvet or muslin, there,
impregnated with her pure years,
emanated a perfume of furs.
Afternoon Song
Though your eyebrows surprise,
and give you an air of strangeness,
which isn't that of the angels,
witch with seductive eyes,
I adore my frivolous girl,
my terrible passion,
with the devotion
of a priest for his idol!
The forest and the desert
perfume your wild hair:
your head has an air
of the enigma, the secret.
Round your flesh, perfume sweet
swirls like a censer's cloud:
you bewitch like the twilight's shroud,
nymph of shadows and heat.
Ah! The strongest potions made
can't match your idleness,
and you know the caress
that resurrects the dead.
Your hips are enamoured
of your back and your breasts,
and the cushions are ravished
with your poses, so languid.
Sometimes to appease
your rage, mysteriously,
you lavish, gravely
your bites and your kisses.
You tear me, my dark-haired one,
with a mocking smile's art,
and then cast on my heart
your gaze sweet as the moon.
Under your shoes so satiny,
your graceful silken feet,
I lay my genius, my wit,
my joy, and my destiny,
restorer of my health's sweetness,
you, all colour and light,
explosion of warmth, bright
in my Siberian darkness.
The Death of Lovers
We will have beds filled with light scent, and
couches deep as a tomb,
and strange flowers in the room,
blooming for us under skies so pleasant.
Vying to exhaust their last fires
our hearts will be two vast flares,
reflecting their double glares
in our two spirits, twin mirrors.
One evening of mystic blue and rose
we'll exchange a single brief glow
like a long sob, heavy with goodbye,
and later, opening the doors, the angel who came
faithful and joyful, will revive
the lustreless mirrors, and the lifeless flame.
The Flawed Bell
It's bitter, yet sweet, on wintry nights,
near to the fire that crackles and fumes,
listening while, far-off, slow memories rise
to echoing chimes that ring through the gloom.
Lucky indeed, the loud-tongued bell
still hale and hearty despite its age,
repeating its pious call, true and well,
like an old trooper in the sentry's cage!
My soul is flawed: when, at boredom's sigh,
it would fill the chill night air with its cry,
it often happens that its voice, enfeebled,
thickens like a wounded man's death-rattle
by a lake of blood, vast heaps of the dying,
who ends, without moving, despite his trying.
The Owls
Among the black yews, their shelter,
the owls are ranged in a row,
like alien deities, the glow,
of their red eyes pierces. They ponder.
They perch there without moving,
till that melancholy moment
when quenching the falling sun,
the shadows are growing.
Their stance teaches the wise
to fear, in this world of ours,
all tumult, and all movement:
Mankind, drunk on brief shadows,
always incurs a punishment
for his longing to stir, and go.
To A Red-headed Beggar-girl
Pale girl with fiery hair,
whose tattered dress shows there
glimpses of your poverty
and your beauty,
a wretched poet, for me,
your young skinny body
with its freckled brownness
has its sweetness.
You wear, more stylishly
than a queen in story
wears her velvet shoe
your heavy two.
Instead of your dress, ripped, short,
may a fine robe of court
trail in long folds to greet
your slender feet:
in place of your torn hose
may daggers of gold,
down your legs, blaze
for the eyes of roues:
may ribbons loosely tied
unveil in your pride
your two lovely breasts, bright
as your eyes:
may your arms be coaxed too,
to sweetly undress you,
and with pert blows
discourage those
impish fingers, pearls that glow,
sonnets of master Belleau,
by your captive lovers,
endlessly offered.
The poets, in pursuit,
dedicating to you their fruit,
and gazing at your shoes, there
from beneath the stair:
many a page-boy's game,
many a famous name,
would spy, still hoping,
on your cool lodging!
You, in your bed, would count
more kisses than lilies no doubt,
and subject to your law
a Valois or more!
- Meanwhile you go seeking
any old scraps, cadging,
outside the back door
of some shabby store:
you go gazing, from afar,
at valueless beads that are
still, alas, so much more
than I can afford!
Go then, with no ornament,
perfume, pearl or diamond,
only your slender nudity,
O my beauty!
Wandering Gypsies
The prophetic tribe with burning eyes
yesterday took to the highway, carrying
children slung on their backs, or offering
proud hunger the breast's ever-ripe prize.
The men go on foot, with shining weapons,
by the carts where their folk huddle together,
sweeping the heavens, eyes grown heavier
with mournful regret for absent visions.
The cricket, deep in his sandy retreat,
redoubles his call, on seeing their passing feet:
Cybele, who loves them, re-leafs the glades,
makes the rocks gush, the desert bloom,
before these voyagers, thrown wide to whom
is the intimate kingdom of future shades.
Note: Cybele was the Phrygian great goddess, personifying the earth in its savage state, worshipped in caves and on mountaintops.
Bad Luck
To roll the rock you fought
takes your courage, Sisyphus!
No matter what effort from us,
Art is long, and Time is short.
Far from the grave of celebrity,
my heart, like a muffled drum,
taps out its funereal thrum
towards some lonely cemetery.
- Many a long-buried gem
sleeps in shadowy oblivion
far from pickaxes and drills:
in profound solitude set,
many a flower, with regret,
its sweet perfume spills.
The Death of the Poor
It is Death, alas, persuades us to keep on living:
the goal of life and the only hope we have,
like an elixir, rousing, intoxicating, giving
the strength to march on towards the grave:
through the frost and snow and storm-wind, look
it's the vibrant light on our black horizon:
the fabulous inn, written of in the book,
where one can eat, and sleep and sit oneself down:
it's an Angel, who holds in his magnetic beams,
sleep and the gift of ecstatic dreams,
who makes the bed where the poor and naked lie:
it's the glory of the Gods, the mystic granary,
it's the poor man's purse, his ancient country,
it's the doorway opening on an unknown sky!
Music
Music, like an ocean, often carries me away!
Through the ether far,
or under a canopy of mist, I set sail
for my pale star.
Breasting the waves, my lungs swollen
like a ship's canvas,
night veils from me the long rollers,
I ride their backs:
I sense all a suffering vessel's passions
vibrating within me:
while fair winds or the storm's convulsions
on the immense deep
cradle me. Or else flat calm, vast mirror there
of my despair!
The Ransom
Man, with which to pay his ransom,
has two fields of deep rich earth,
which he must dig and bring to birth,
with the iron blade of reason.
To obtain the smallest rose,
to garner a few ears of wheat,
he must wet them without cease,
with briny tears from his grey brow.
One is Art: Love is the other.
- To render his propitiation,
on the day of conflagration,
when the last strict reckoning's here,
full of crops' and flowers' displays
he will have to show his barns,
with those colours and those forms
that gain the Angels' praise.
Voyage to Cythera
My heart soared with joy, like a bird in flight,
haunting the rigging sliding by:
the ship swayed under a cloudless sky,
like an angel, dazed by radiant light.
What island is that, dark and sad? - Cythera,
in verse, it's famous you understand,
every aged child's golden land.
Look, after all, there's nothing here.
- Isle of sweet secrets and the heart's delight!
Ancient Venus's marvellous shadow,
like perfume, covers the sea, around you,
fills the mind with love, and the languorous night.
Isle of green myrtle and flowers, wide open,
beautiful, revered by every nation,
where the sighs, of the heart's adoration,
glide like incense, over a rose garden,
or are cooing, like doves, in scented air!
- Cythera, now a desert, to mock,
full of piercing calls, a barren rock.
But I saw a strange thing there!
It was not a temple, shaded by trees,
where the young priestess, with flower-like desires,
her body alight with secret fires,
goes, opening her robes to the passing breeze.
But a shore where our white sails moving by
disturbed the birds, and we saw, like jet,
the black of a cypress tree's silhouette,
a three-branched gibbet, against the sky.
A fierce bird, perching, on the head
of a hanged man, rent him, surely,
planting its impure beak, in fury,
in the bloody corners of the dead.
The eyes were two holes: from the cavernous belly
the weight of his guts poured down his sides,
and his torturers, gorged on hideous delights,
had castrated him, most efficiently.
Beneath his feet, circling, spun a jealous pack
their muzzles lifted, of whirling beasts,
one large one, leaping in their midst,
an executioner, with cohorts at his back.
Inhabitant of Cythera, son, of that lovely sky,
you suffered their insults, silently,
to expiate your infamy,
lacking the tomb your crimes deny.
Hanged man, grotesque sufferer, your pain is mine!
I felt at the sight of your dangling limbs,
the long stream of gall, old sufferings,
rise to my teeth like acid bile.
Before you, poor devil, of dear memory,
I felt all the beaks, and ravening claws,
of swooping ravens, dark panthers' jaws,
that were once so fond of tearing at me.
- The sky was entrancing, so calm the sea,
but, to me, all was dark, and smeared with blood.
Alas! My heart was buried, for good,
in the depths, the winding sheet, of an allegory.
O Venus, what I found, in your island, was just
a symbolic gallows, with my image, in suspense.
O God! Give me the courage, and the strength,
to contemplate my heart, and body, without disgust!
Note: The island of Cythera in the Aegean Sea is the symbolic isle of Venus Aphrodite, who was born from the sea-foam, near the island.
Evening Twilight
Here's the criminal's friend, delightful evening:
come like an accomplice, with a wolf's loping:
slowly the sky's vast vault hides each feature,
and restless man becomes a savage creature.
Evening, sweet evening, desired by him who can say
without his arms proving him a liar: 'Today
we've worked! ' - It refreshes, this evening hour,
those spirits that savage miseries devour,
the dedicated scholar with heavy head,
the bowed workman stumbling home to bed.
Yet now unhealthy demons rise again
clumsily, in the air, like busy men,
beat against sheds and arches in their flight.
And among the wind-tormented gas-lights
Prostitution switches on through the streets
opening her passageways like an ant-heap:
weaving her secret tunnels everywhere,
like an enemy planning a coup, she's there
burrowing into the wombs of the city's mires,
like a worm stealing from Man what it desires.
Here, there, you catch the kitchens' whistles,
the orchestras' droning, the theatres' yells,
low dives where gambling's all the pleasure,
filling with whores, and crooks, their partners,
and the thieves who show no respite or mercy,
will soon be setting to work, as they tenderly,
they too, toil at forcing safes and doorways,
to live, clothe their girls, for a few more days.
Collect yourself, my soul, at this grave hour,
and close your ears to the rising howl.
It's now that the pains of the sick increase!
Dark Night clasps them by the throat: they reach
their journey's end, the common pit's abandon:
the hospital fills with their sighs. - Many a one,
will never return to their warm soup by the fire,
by the hearth, at evening, next to their heart's desire.
And besides the majority have never known
never having lived, the gentleness of home!
Morning Twilight
Reveille was sounding on barrack-squares,
and the wind of dawn blew on lighted stairs.
It was the hour when a swarm of evil visions
torments swarthy adolescents, when pillows hum:
when, a bloodshot eye, throbbing and quivering,
the lamp makes a reddened stain on the morning:
when the soul, by dull sour body, bowed down,
enacts the struggle between lamp and dawn.
Like a tearful face that the breeze wipes dry,
the air's filled with the frisson of things that fly,
and man is tired of writing, woman with loving.
The chimneys, here and there, began smoking.
The women of pleasure, with their bleary eyes,
and gaping mouths, were sleeping stupefied:
poor old women, with chilled and meagre breasts,
blew the embers, then fingers, roused from rest.
It was the hour, when frozen, with money scarcer,
the pains of women in childbirth grew fiercer:
and like a sob cut short by a surge of blood
a cock-crow far away broke through the fog:
a sea of mist bathed the buildings, dying men,
in the depths of the workhouse, groaned again
emitting their death-rattles in ragged breaths.
Debauchees, tired by their efforts, headed for rest.
Shivering dawn in a robe of pink and green
made her way slowly along the deserted Seine,
and sombre Paris, eyes rubbed and watering,
groped for its tools, an old man, labouring.
The Invitation to the Voyage
My sister, my child
imagine, exiled,
The sweetness, of being there, we two!
To live and to sigh,
to love and to die,
In the land that mirrors you!
The misted haze
of its clouded days
Has the same charm to my mind,
as mysterious,
as your traitorous
Eyes, behind glittering blinds.
There everything's order and beauty,
calm, voluptuousness, and luxury.
The surface gleams
are polished it seems,
Through the years, to grace our room.
The rarest flowers
mix, with fragrant showers,
The vague, amber perfume.
The dark, painted halls,
the deep mirrored walls,
With Eastern splendour hung,
all secretly speak,
to the soul, its discrete,
Sweet, native tongue.
There, everything's order and beauty,
calm, voluptuousness and luxury.
See, down the canals,
the sleeping vessels,
Those nomads, their white sails furled:
Now, to accomplish
your every wish,
They come from the ends of the world.
- The deep sunsets
surround the west,
The canals, the city, entire,
with blue-violet and gold;
and the Earth grows cold
In an incandescent fire.
There, everything's order and beauty,
calm, voluptuousness and luxury.
The Invitation to the Voyage (Prose Poem)
There's a magnificent land, a land of Cockaigne, they say,
that I've dreamed of visiting with a dear mistress. A unique land, drowned in our Northern mists, that you might call the Orient of the West, the China of Europe, so freely is warm and capricious Fantasy expressed there, so patiently and thoroughly has she adorned it with learned and luxuriant plants.
A true land of Cockaigne, where all is lovely, rich, tranquil, honest: where luxury delights in reflecting itself as order: where life is full and sweet to breathe: from which disorder, turbulence, the unforeseen are banished: where happiness is married to silence: where the cooking itself is poetic, both rich and exciting: where everything resembles you, my sweet angel.
Do you know that fevered malady that seizes us in our cold misery, that nostalgia for an unknown land, that anguish of curiosity? There's a country you resemble, where everything is lovely, tranquil and honest, where Fantasy has built and adorned a western China, where life is sweet to breathe, where happiness is married to silence. There we must go and live, there we must go to die!
Yes, there we must go to breathe, dream, prolong the hours with an infinity of sensations. Some musician has composed The Invitation to the Waltz: who shall compose The Invitation to the Voyage, one can offer to the beloved, the sister of their choice?
Yes, it would be good to be alive in that atmosphere, - there where the hours that pass more slowly contain more thought, where the clocks chime happiness with a deeper, more significant solemnity.
On shining wall-panels, on walls lined with gilded leather, of sombre richness, blissful paintings live discreetly, calm and deep as the souls of the artists who created them. The sunsets that colour the dining-room, the salon, so richly, are softened by fine fabrics, or those high latticed windows divided in sections by leading. The furniture, vast, curious, bizarre, is armed with locks and secrets like refined souls. The mirrors, metals, fabrics, plate and ceramics play a mute, mysterious symphony for the eyes: and from every object, every corner, the gaps in the drawers, the folds of fabric, a unique perfume escapes: the call of Sumatra, that is like the soul of the apartment.
A true land of Cockaigne, I tell you, where all is rich, clean and bright like a clear conscience, like a splendid battery of kitchenware, like magnificent jewellery, like a multi-coloured gem! The treasures of the world enrich it, as in the home of some hard-working man, who's deserved well of the whole world. A unique land, superior to others, as art is to Nature, re-shaped here by dream, corrected, adorned, remade.
Let them search and search again, tirelessly extending the frontiers of their happiness, those alchemists of the gardener's art! Let them offer sixty, a hundred thousand florins reward to whoever realises their ambitious projects! I though, have found my black tulip, my blue dahlia!
Incomparable bloom, tulip re-found, allegorical dahlia, it is there, is it not, to that beautiful land so calm and full of dreams, that you must go to live and flower? Would you not be surrounded by your own analogue, could you not mirror yourself, to speak as the mystics do, in your own correspondence?
Dreams! Always dreams! And the more aspiring and fastidious the soul, the more its dreams exceed the possible. Every man has within him his does of natural opium, endlessly secreted and renewed, and how many hours do we count, from birth to death, that are filled with positive pleasure, by successful deliberate action? Shall we ever truly live, ever enter this picture my mind has painted, this picture that resembles you?
Those treasures, items of furniture, that luxury, order, those perfumes, miraculous flowers, are you. They are you also, those great rivers and tranquil canals. Those huge ships they carry charged with riches, from which rise monotonous sailors chants, those are my thoughts that sleep or glide over your breast. You conduct them gently towards that sea, the Infinite, while reflecting the depths of the sky in your sweet soul's clarity: - and when, wearied by the swell, gorged with Oriental wares, they re-enter their home port, they are my thoughts still, enriched, returning from the Infinite to you.
The Irreparable
Can we stifle the old, long-lived Remorse,
that lives, writhes, heaves,
feeds on us, like a worm on a corpse,
like oak-gall on the oak-trees?
Can we stifle the old, long-lived Remorse?
In what potion, in what wine, in what brew,
shall we drown this old enemy.
greedy, destructive as a prostitute,
ant-like always filled with tenacity?
In what potion? - In what wine? - In what brew?
Tell us, lovely witch, oh, tell us, if you know,
tell the spirit filled with anguish
as if dying crushed by the wounded, oh,
crumpled beneath the horses,
tell us, lovely witch, oh, tell us, if you know,
tell the one in agony the wolf's already scented
whom the raven now surveys,
tell the shattered soldier! Say, if he's intended
to despair of cross and grave:
poor soul in agony the wolf's already scented!
Can we illuminate a black and muddied sky?
can we pierce the shadowy evening,
denser than pitch, with neither day or night,
star-less, with no funereal lightning?
Can we illuminate a black and muddied sky?
The Hope that shone in the Tavern window
is quenched, is dead forever!
How to find without sunlight, without moon-glow,
for the foul road's martyrs, ah, shelter!
The Devil's quenched all in the Tavern window!
Adorable witch, do you love the damned?
Say, do you know the unforgivable?
Do you understand Remorse, its poisoned hand,
for which our heart serves as target?
Adorable witch, do you love the damned?
The Irreparable, with its accursed tooth bites
at our soul, this pitiful monument,
and often gnaws away like a termite,
below the foundations of the battlement.
The Irreparable, with its accursed tooth, bites!
- Sometimes on the boards of a cheap stage
lit up by the sonorous orchestra,
I've seen a fairy kindling miraculous day,
in the infernal sky above her:
sometimes on the boards of a cheap stage,
a being, who is nothing but light, gold, gauze,
flooring the enormous Satan:
but my heart, that no ecstasy ever saw,
is a stage where ever and again
one awaits in vain the Being with wings of gauze!
The Poison
Wine can clothe the most sordid hole
in miraculous luxury,
and let many a fabulous portico float free
in the gold of its red glow,
like a setting sun in the sky's cloudy sea.
Opium expands things without boundaries,
extends the limitless,
makes time profounder, deepens voluptuousness,
fills the soul beyond its capacities,
with the pleasures of gloom and of darkness.
None of that equals the poison that flows
from your eyes, your eyes of green,
lakes where, mirrored, my trembling soul is seen. . .
my dreams come flocking, a host,
to quench their thirst in the bitter stream.
None of that equals the dreadful marvel though
of your saliva's venom,
that plunges my soul, remorseless, into oblivion,
and causing vertigo,
rolls it swooning towards the shores of doom!
Clouded Sky
One would say your gaze was a misted screen:
your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green? )
changeable, tender, dreamy, cruel, and again
echoing the indolence and pallor of heaven.
You bring me those blank days, mild and hazy,
that melt bewitched hearts into weeping,
when twisted, stirred by some unknown hurt,
our over-stretched nerves mock the numbed spirit.
Often you resemble the loveliest horizons
lit by the suns of foggy seasons. . . .
how splendid you are, a dew-wet country,
inflamed by the rays of a misted sky!
O dangerous woman, o seductive glow,
will I someday adore your frost and snow,
and learn to draw, from implacable winter
sharp-edged as steel or ice, new pleasure?
The Cat
I
A fine cat prowls about in my brain,
as if in his own apartment,
he's charming, gentle, confident,
when he mews you have to strain
to hear the discreet and tender tone:
whether it soothes or scolds its sound
is always rich, always profound.
It's his secret charm, and his alone.
This voice which purls and filters
to the darkest depths of my being
swells in me like verse multiplying
and delights me like a magic philtre.
It comprehends all ecstasy,
calms my cruellest suffering:
and has no need of words to sing
the longest sentences to me.
No, there's no bow that gliding
over my heart's pure instrument,
could make its most sensitive string
deliver more noble tidings,
than your voice, which as
in an angel, cat of mystery,
seraphic, extraordinary,
is as subtle as it's harmonious!
II
From its light-brownish fur, such
a sweet perfume gathers,
I was scented by it after
stroking it once, one touch.
It's the room's familiar spirit:
it judges, presides, inspires,
all things within its empire:
a god perhaps, a faery is it?
When my eyes are obediently
drawn to this cat I love,
like a magnet, and I look
into myself profoundly,
I see with pure amazement
the fire of his pale pupils,
bright lamps, living opals,
fixed on me, in contemplation.
Monologue
You are a lovely autumn sky, rose-clear!
But sadness is flowing in me like the sea,
And leaves on my sullen lip, as it disappears,
of its bitter slime the painful memory.
- Your hand glides over my numb breast in vain:
what it seeks, dear friend, is a place made raw
by woman's ferocious fang and claw, refrain:
seek this heart, the wild beasts tear, no more.
My heart is a palace defiled by the rabble,
they drink, and murder, and clutch each other's hair!
- About your naked throat a perfume hovers! . . .
O Beauty, harsh scourge of souls, this is your care!
With your eyes of fire, dazzling as at our feasts,
Burn these scraps to ashes, spared by the beasts!
Autumn Song
I
Soon we'll plunge into the bitter shadows:
Goodbye bright sunlit summers, all too short!
Already I can hear the gloomy blows:
the wood reverberates in some paved court.
Winter once more will enter in my being: anger,
shuddering, horror, hate, forced labour's shock,
like the sun in its deep hell, northern, polar,
my heart no more than a red, frozen block.
Trembling, I hear every log that falls:
building a scaffold makes no duller echoes.
My spirit's like a shattered tower, its walls
split by the battering ram's slow tireless blows.
Rocked by monotonous thuds, I feel it's done,
a coffin's being nailed in haste somewhere.
For whom? - Yesterday summer, now it's autumn!
The mysterious noise rings of departure there.
II
I love the greenish light of your almond eyes,
gentle beauty, but all's bitter to me today,
and nothing, your love, the boudoir, your fire,
matches the sun, for me, glittering on the waves.
Yet tender heart, love me still! Be like a mother
however ungrateful, however unworthy I am:
be the short-lived sweetness, sister or lover,
of a glorious autumn or the setting sun.
Short task! The grave waits: it is greedy!
Ah, let me rest my forehead on your knees,
regretting summer, white and torrid, let me
enjoy the late season's gentle yellow rays!
Autumn Sonnet
Your eyes, clear as crystal, ask me: 'Strange lover,
what do I mean to you? '- Hush, and be charming!
My heart, irritated by all but the one thing,
the primitive creature's absolute candour,
is unwilling to show its infernal secret to you,
cradler whose hand invites to deep slumber,
and its black inscription written in fire,
I hate passion, the spirit sickens me too!
Let us love gently. Love in hiding, discreet,
in shadowy ambush, bends his fatal bow.
The weapons of his ancient arsenal I know:
Crime, horror, madness! - My pale marguerite!
are you not, as I am, an autumn sun though,
O my so white, my so cold Marguerite?
To She Who Is Too Light-hearted
Your head, your gesture, your air,
are lovely, like a lovely landscape:
laughter's alive, in your face,
a fresh breeze in a clear atmosphere.
The dour passer-by you brush past there,
is dazzled by health in flight,
flashing like a brilliant light
from your arms and shoulders.
The resounding colours
with which you sprinkle your dress,
inspire the spirits of poets
with thoughts of dancing flowers.
Those wild clothes are the emblem
of your brightly-hued mind:
madcap by whom I'm terrified,
I hate you, and love you, the same!
Sometimes in a lovely garden
where I trailed my listlessness,
I've felt the sunlight sear my breast
like some ironic weapon:
and Spring's green presence
brought such humiliation
I've levied retribution on
a flower, for Nature's insolence.
So through some night, when the hour
of sensual pleasure sounds,
I'd like to slink, mute coward, bound
for your body's treasure,
to bruise your sorry breast,
to punish your joyful flesh,
form in your startled side, a fresh
wound's yawning depth,
and - breath-taking rapture! -
through those lips, new and full
more vivid and more beautiful
infuse my venom, my sister!
Reversibility
Angel of joyfulness, do you know anguish,
shame, remorse, sobbing, despondency,
those dreadful nights of vague anxiety,
when, like crumpled paper, the heart's crushed?
Angel of joyfulness, do you know anguish,
Angel of goodness, do you know hatred,
fists clenched in the darkness, tears of gall,
when vengeance taps out its infernal call,
and takes control of thoughts in the head?
Angel of goodness, do you know hatred?
Angel of health, do you know the fevers,
that the length of the dingy workhouse wall,
like exiles, dragging their feet along, all
moving their lips, seek absent summers?
Angel of health, do you know the fevers?
Angel of beauty, do you know those furrows,
and fears of old-age, and the hideous torture
of reading devotion's intimate horror,
in eyes where for years our greedy eyes burrowed?
Angel of beauty, do you know those furrows?
Angel of happiness, of joy's bright flares,
King David would have found life, near the tomb,
in your enchanted body's perfume:
but, angel, all I ask of you is your prayers,
Angel of happiness, of joy's bright flares!
Note: The servants of King David sought for a young virgin to warm him in his old age, because he could get no heat. See The First Book of Kings 1-4.
Confession
Once, once only, sweet and lovable woman,
you leant your smooth arm on mine
(that memory has never faded a moment
from the shadowy depths of my mind):
it was late: the full moon spread its light
like a freshly minted disc,
and like a river, the solemnity of night
flowed over sleeping Paris.
Along the houses, under carriage gates,
cats crept past furtively,
ears pricked, or else like familiar shades,
accompanied us slowly.
Suddenly, in our easy intimacy,
that flower of the pale light,
from you, rich, sonorous instrument, eternally
quivering gaily, bright,
from you, clear and joyous as a fanfare
in the glittering dawn
a strange, plaintive sigh escaped
a faltering tone
as from some stunted child, detestable, sullen, foul,
whose family in shame
hide it for years, to conceal it from the world
in the cellar's dark cave.
My poor angel, that harsh voice of yours cried:
'That nothing on earth is certain,
and however carefully it's disguised,
human selfishness rips the curtain:
it's a hard life being a lovely woman,
it's the banal occupation
of a cold, crazed dancer who summons
the mechanical smile's occasion:
it's stupid to build on the mortal heart:
everything shatters, love and beauty,
till Oblivion hurls them into its cart,
and returns them to Eternity! '
I've often recalled that enchanted silence,
its moon, and its languor: all
of that dreadful whispered confidence
in the heart's confessional.
For Madame Sabatier
What will you say tonight, poor soul in solitude,
what will you say my heart, withered till now,
to the so beautiful, so sweet, so dear one,
whose divine gaze recreated the flower?
- We will set Pride now to singing her praises:
nothing outdoes her sweet air of authority.
Her spiritual flesh has the perfume of angels,
and her eye surrounds us in robes of infinity.
Whether in the night, and alone, and in solitude,
whether in the street, and among the multitude,
her phantom dances in air, like a flame.
Sometimes it speaks and it says 'I am beautiful.
You, for the love of me, must love beauty alone:
for I am your Madonna, Muse, Guardian Angel.
The Living Torch
They go before me, those Eyes full of light
that some wise Angel has magnetised,
those divine brothers, my brothers, go, bright,
flashing their diamond fires in my eyes.
Leading my steps on Beauty's way,
saving me from snares, from grievous crime,
they are my servants and I am their slave:
all my being obeys that living flame.
Charmed Eyes, you shine with the mystic glow
of candles lighted in broad day, the sun
reddens, fails to quench, their eerie flow:
they celebrate Death: you sing the Resurrection:
you sing the resurrection of my soul,
Stars whose fires no sun can ever cool!
Hymn
To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful,
who fills my heart with clarity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail, in immortality!
She flows through my reality,
air, mixed with the salt sea-swell:
into my soul's ecstasy,
pours the essence of the eternal;
Ever-fresh sachet, that scents
the dear corner's atmospheric light,
hidden smoke, of the burning censer,
in the secret paths of night.
How, incorruptible love,
to express your endless verities?
Grain of musk, unseen, above,
in the depths of my infinities!
To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful,
who is my joy and sanity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail in immortality!
Moesta et Errabunda
Tell me, does your heart sometimes soar, Agathe,
far from the dark sea of the sordid city,
towards another sea, a blaze of splendour that
is blue, bright, deep as virginity?
Tell me, does your heart sometimes soar, Agathe?
The sea, the vast sea, consoles us for our efforts!
What demon entrusted the sea, that hoarse singer
that accompanies the immense roar of tempests,
with being the sublime sleep-bringer?
The sea, the vast sea, consoles us for our efforts!
Carry me wagons! Take me, frigate!
Far, far! Here the city slime is made of our weeping!
Is it true that your sad heart, Agathe,
cries: 'Far from remorse, from crime, from suffering,
carry me wagons, take me frigate!
How far perfumed paradise, you are removed
from us, where the clear blue is all love and happiness,
where what one loves is worthy of being loved,
where the heart drowns in pure voluptuousness!
How far, perfumed paradise, you are removed!
But the green paradise of childhood's thrill,
the games, the songs, the kisses, and the flowers,
the violin making music behind the hill,
and the wine glass, under the trees, in twilight hours,
- But the green paradise of childhood's thrill,
the innocent paradise full of secret yearning,
is it already further than India or China?
Can we call it back, with cries of longing,
and re-create it, with its voice of silver,
the innocent paradise full of secret yearning?
Note: Moesta et Errabunda: Sad and Restless. 'Agathe' is pronounced as 'Agat', to rhyme with 'that'.
Harmony of Evening
Now those days arrive when, stem throbbing,
each flower sheds its fragrance like a censer:
sounds and scents twine in the evening air:
languorous dizziness, Melancholy dancing!
Each flower sheds its fragrance like a censer:
the violin quivers, a heart that's suffering:
languorous dizziness, Melancholy dancing!
the sky is lovely, sad like a huge altar.
The violin quivers, a heart that's suffering:
a heart, hating the vast black void, so tender!
the sky is lovely, sad like a huge altar:
the sun is drowned, in its own blood congealing.
A heart, hating the vast black void, so tender:
each trace of the luminous past it's gathering!
The sun is drowned, in its own blood congealing. . .
A vessel of the host, your memory shines there.
Semper Eadem
'Where does it come from,' you ask, 'this strange sadness,
that climbs, like the sea, over black, bare stone? '
- When our heart has once reaped the harvest,
life is an evil. That's known,
as the simplest of miseries, and nothing mysterious,
and seen by everyone, like your ecstasy.
Stop searching, you, beauty, so curious!
And, though your voice is sweet, sit, silently!
Be quiet, fool! Ever-ravished soul!
Lips of childish laughter! Often, more than the whole
of Life, Death grips us, with subtle ties we have made.
Let me, let my heart, then, be drunk on its lies,
plunge as into a beautiful dream, into your eyes,
and, forever, sleep, in your eyelids' shade.
To the Reader
Stupidity and error, avarice and vice,
possess our spirits, batten on our flesh,
we feed that fond remorse, our guest,
like ragged beggars nourishing their lice.
Our sins are mulish, our repentance vain:
we make certain our confessions pay,
we'll happily retrace the muddied way,
thinking vile tears will wash away the stain.
Satan Trismegistes rocks the bewitched
Mind, endlessly, on evil's pillow, till,
all the precious metal of our will's
vaporised by that knowing alchemist.
The Devil pulls the strings that make us move!
We take delight in such disgusting things:
one step nearer Hell each new day brings
us, void of horror, to the stinking gloom.
We clutch at furtive pleasure as we pass,
like the debauchee whose lips are pressed
to some antique whore's battered breast,
squeezing the rotten orange that we grasp.
Packed, and seething like a million worms,
a host of Demons riot in our brains,
and when we breathe, invisibly, Death drains
into our lungs, stream full of silent groans.
If poison, arson, knives, base desire,
haven't yet embroidered deft designs
on the dull canvas of our pitiful lives
it's only, alas, because our souls lack fire.
Among the jackals, bitches, panthers,
monkeys, scorpions, serpents, vultures,
that screech, howl, grunt, and crawl, ogres,
in the vile menagerie of our errors,
there's one of uglier, nastier, fouler birth!
Without one wild gesture, one savage yell,
it would willingly send this world to hell,
and in one great yawn swallow up the earth:
it's Boredom! - in its eye's an involuntary tear,
dreaming of scaffolds, as it smokes its hookah,
you know it, Reader, that fastidious monster,
hypocrite, Reader, - my brother, - and my peer!
Note: Trismegistes. Baudelaire here fuses the persons of Satan and Hermes Trismegistes (or Trismegistus). The works of Hermes Trismegistes (The Thrice Great), known as the Corpus Hermeticum were believed during the Renaissance to be Egyptian but were later attributed to Hellenistic writers of the second century A. D, writing in the style of Plotinus. The Corpus Hermeticum takes the form of dialogues between Trismegistus, Thoth, and several other Egyptian deities, including Isis. Little in the text is original. Much of the Hermetic world view is grounded in the philosophy of Plato. Hermetics saw the universe in terms of light and dark, good and evil, spirit and matter. Like their Gnostic contemporaries, practitioners preached mind-body dualism and salvation through the possession of true and divine knowledge.
The Enemy
My youth was only a threatening storm,
pierced here and there by glowing heat:
my garden scarcely let a ripe fruit form,
the thunderous rain's destruction is complete.
Now I've reached the autumn of ideas,
I must needs labour with rake and spade,
to reclaim afresh the inundated meres,
where pits were scooped as deep as graves.
Who knows whether the flowers I dream
will find in soil, washed by the salt-stream,
the mystic manna that will give them vigour?
