Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry
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XXVIII SONNET
In undulant robes with nacreous sheen impearledShe walks as in some stately saraband;Or like lithe snakes by sacred charmers curledIn cadence wreathing on the slender wand.Calm as blue wastes of sky and desert sandThat watch unmoved the sorrows of this world;With slow regardless sweep as on the strandThe long swell of the woven sea-waves swirled.Her polished orbs are like a mystic gem,And, while this strange and symbolled being linksThe inviolate angel and the antique sphinx,Insphered in gold, steel, light and diademThe splendour of a lifeless star endowsWith clear cold majesty the barren spouse.MUSIC
Launch me, O music, whither on the soundlessSea my star gleams pale!I beneath cloudy cope or rapt in boundlessÆther set my sail;With breast outblown, swollen by the wind that urgesSwelling sheets, I scaleThe summit of the wave whose vexed surgesNight from me doth veil;A labouring vessel's passions in my pulsesThrill the shuddering sense;The wind that wafts, the tempest that convulses,O'er the gulf immenseSwing me. – Anon flat calm and clearer airGlass my soul's despair!LA MUSIQUE.THE SPIRITUAL DAWN
When on some wallowing soul the roseate EastDawns with the Ideal that awakes and gnaws,By vengeful working of mysterious lawsAn angel rises in the drowsed beast.The inaccessible blue of the soul-sphereTo him whose grovelling dream remorse doth gallYawns wide as when the gulfs of space enthral.So, heavenly Goddess, Spirit pure and clear,Even on the reeking ruins of vile shameThy rosy vision, beautiful and bright,For ever floats on my enlargëd sight.Thus sunlight blackens the pale taper-flame;And thus is thy victorious phantom one,O soul of splendour, with the immortal Sun!L'AUBE SPIRITUELLE.THE FLAWED BELL
Bitter and sweet it is, in winter night,Hard by the flickering fire that smokes, to listWhile far-off memories rise in sad slow flight,With chimes that echo singing through the mist.O blessëd be the bell whose vigorous throat,In spite of age alert, with strength unspent,Utters religiously his faithful note,Like an old warrior watching near the tent!My soul, alas! is flawed, and when despairWould people with her songs the chill night-airToo oft they faint in hoarse enfeebled tones,As when a wounded man forgotten moansBy the red pool, beneath a heap of dead,And dying writhes in frenzy on his bed.LA CLOCHE FÉLÉE.THREE POEMS FROM BAUDELAIRE
Translated by Richard Herne Shepherd
I
A CARCASS
Recall to mind the sight we saw, my soul,That soft, sweet summer day:Upon a bed of flints a carrion foul,Just as we turn'd the wayIts legs erected, wanton-like, in air,Burning and sweating past,In unconcern'd and cynic sort laid bareTo view its noisome breast.The sun lit up the rottenness with gold,To bake it well inclined,And give great Nature back a hundredfoldAll she together join'd.The sky regarded as the carcass proudOped flower-like to the day;So strong the odour, on the grass you vow'dYou thought to faint away.The flies the putrid belly buzz'd about,Whence black battalions throngOf maggots, like thick liquid flowing outThe living rags along.And as a wave they mounted and went down,Or darted sparkling wide:As if the body, by a wild breath blown,Lived as it multiplied.From all this life a music strange there ran,Like wind and running burns:Or like the wheat a winnower in his fanWith rhythmic movement turns.The forms wore off, and as a dream grew faint,An outline dimly shown,And which the artist finishes to paintFrom memory alone.Behind the rocks watch'd us with angry eyeA bitch disturb'd in theft,Waiting to take, till we had pass'd her byThe morsel she had left.Yet you will be like that corruption too,Like that infection prove —Star of my eyes, sun of my nature, you,My angel and my love!Queen of the graces, you will even be so,When, the last ritual said,Beneath the grass and the fat flowers you go,To mould among the dead.Then, O my beauty, tell the insatiate worm,Who wastes you with his kiss,I have kept the godlike essence and the formOf perishable bliss!II
WEEPING AND WANDERING
Say, Agatha, if at times your spirit turnsFar from the black sea of the city's mud,To another ocean, where the splendour burnsAll blue, and clear, and deep as maidenhood?Say, Agatha, if your spirit thither turns?The boundless sea consoles the weary mind!What demon gave the sea – that chantress hoarseTo the huge organ of the chiding wind —The function grand to rock us like a nurse?The boundless ocean soothes the jaded mind!O car and frigate, bear me far away,For here our tears moisten the very clay.Is't true that Agatha's sad heart at timesSays, far from sorrows, from remorse, from crimes,Remove me, car, and, frigate, bear away?O perfumed paradise, how far removed,Where 'neath a clear sky all is love and joy,Where all we love is worthy to be loved,And pleasure drowns the heart, but does not cloy.O perfumed paradise, so far removed!But the green paradise of childlike loves,The walks, the songs, the kisses, and the flowers,The violins dying behind the hills, the hoursOf evening and the wine-flasks in the groves.But the green paradise of early loves,The innocent paradise, full of stolen joys,Is't farther off than ev'n the Indian main?Can we recall it with our plaintive cries,Or give it life, with silvery voice, again,The innocent paradise, full of furtive joys?III
LESBOS
Mother of Latin sports and Greek delights,Where kisses languishing or pleasureful,Warm as the suns, as the water-melons cool,Adorn the glorious days and sleepless nights,Mother of Latin sports and Greek delights.Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfallsThat fearless into gulfs unfathom'd leap,Now run with sobs, now slip with gentle brawls,Stormy and secret, manifold and deep;Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfalls!Lesbos, where Phryne Phryne to her draws,Where ne'er a sigh did echoless expire,As Paphos' equal thee the stars admire,Nor Venus envies Sappho without cause!Lesbos, where Phryne Phryne to her draws,Lesbos, the land of warm and languorous nights,Where by their mirrors seeking sterile good,The girls with hollow eyes, in soft delights,Caress the ripe fruits of their womanhood,Lesbos, the land of warm and languorous nights.Leave, leave old Plato's austere eye to frown;Pardon is thine for kisses' sweet excess,Queen of the land of amiable renown,And for exhaustless subtleties of bliss,Leave, leave old Plato's austere eye to frown.Pardon is thine for the eternal painThat on the ambitious hearts for ever lies,Whom far from us the radiant smile could gain,Seen dimly on the verge of other skies;Pardon is thine for the eternal pain!Which of the gods will dare thy judge to be,And to condemn thy brow with labour pale,Not having balanced in his golden scaleThe flood of tears thy brooks pour'd in the sea?Which of the gods will dare thy judge to be?What boot the laws of just and of unjust?Great-hearted virgins, honour of the isles,Lo, your religion also is august,And love at hell and heaven together smiles!What boot the laws of just and of unjust?For Lesbos chose me out from all my peers,To sing the secret of her maids in flower,Opening the mystery dark from childhood's hourOf frantic laughters, mix'd with sombre tears;For Lesbos chose me out from all my peers.And since I from Leucate's top survey,Like a sentinel with piercing eye and true,Watching for brig and frigate night and day,Whose distant outlines quiver in the blue,And since I from Leucate's top survey,To learn if kind and merciful the sea,And midst the sobs that make the rock resound,Brings back some eve to pardoning Lesbos, freeThe worshipp'd corpse of Sappho, who made her boundTo learn if kind and merciful the sea!Of her the man-like lover-poetess,In her sad pallor more than Venus fair!The azure eye yields to that black eye, whereThe cloudy circle tells of the distressOf her the man-like lover-poetess!Fairer than Venus risen on the world,Pouring the treasures of her aspect mild,The radiance of her fair white youth unfurl'dOn Ocean old enchanted with his child;Fairer than Venus risen on the world.Of Sappho, who, blaspheming, died that dayWhen trampling on the rite and sacred creed,She made her body fair the supreme preyOf one whose pride punish'd the impious deedOf Sappho who, blaspheming, died that day.And since that time it is that Lesbos moans,And, spite the homage which the whole world pays,Is drunk each night with cries of pain and groans,Her desert shores unto the heavens do raise,And since that time it is that Lesbos moans!INTIMATE PAPERS FROM THE UNPUBLISHED WORKS OF BAUDELAIRE
Translated by Joseph T. Shipley
ROCKETS
MY HEART LAID BARE
The following pages (not included in the "complete" French edition) contain notes found after the death of Baudelaire; disconnected fragments; echoes; pistils of ideas, promising wondrous blossom, to which no pollen came. They epitomize the moral and intellectual life of the artist. In his own art, Baudelaire is the creator of a new mood, in which Maeterlinck and Verlaine are among his disciples, where Swinburne and Wilde have followed him; in painting and in music, his criticism was seeking in 1850 all that the later development of these arts has brought forth. The reflection of that brilliant mind glows in these intimate pages.
In the almost absolute isolation in which he confined himself more and more, Baudelaire, who had so loved to expand in conversation, felt the need of a confidant that would not importune him with useless counsels, nor with expressions of sympathy he would have repulsed, if only through dandyism. Paper alone could be that confidant.
The poet is wholly within these journals, with his religious, political, moral and literary theories, above all, with the explicit evidence of his weaknesses and his griefs. What skilled theologian has made a more haughty confession than this: "There are none great among men save the poet, the priest and the soldier; the man who sings, the man who blesses, the man who sacrifices others and himself. The rest is made for the whip"? What political economist has made a more absolute declaration of principles than this: "There is no reasonable, stable government save the aristocratic. Monarchy and republic, based on democracy, are equally weak and absurd"?
His ideal of the greatness of the individual is derived logically from his conception of an aristocratic society under the triumvirate of the poet, the priest and the soldier. "Before all, to be a great man and a saint for one's self;" that, for Baudelaire, is the one ambition worthy of a superior nature. He has indicated the principal traits of the ideal "dandy" that he has sought unceasingly. The dandy is not only the most elegant of men, of the most original and discriminating tastes, which he exercises in his habits, in the choice of his books or his mistress; he is armed with a will superior to all obstacles, opposing caprice with invincible energy, and correcting in himself the inevitable faults of nature with all the resources of art.
The two manuscripts in which these ideals are scattered differ so slightly that it might seem impossible to decide which should be read first. A closer examination, however, indicates that Rockets is of the period about ten years before the author's death, while My Heart Laid Bare belongs entirely to the days when he felt the first attacks of the illness that was to bear him off. No effort has been made to group the paragraphs according to topic; they are printed as they appear in the manuscript (the page divisions of which are indicated by the successive numbers). The documents furnish an interesting supplement to the more formal works of the poet, and a valuable contribution to literature.
INTIMATE PAPERS
ROCKETS
I
Even if God did not exist, religion would still be holy and divine.
God is the only being who, to govern, need not even exist.
That which is created by the mind lives more truly than matter.
Love is the desire of prostitution. There is not even one noble pleasure which cannot be reduced to prostitution.
At a play, at a ball, each one finds pleasure in all. What is art? Prostitution.
The pleasure of being in a crowd is a mysterious expression of joy in the multiplication of number.
All is number. Number is in all. Number is in the individual. Intoxication is a number.
The desire of productive concentration ought to replace, in a mature being, the desire of deperdition.
Love may spring from a generous emotion: desire of prostitution; but it is soon corrupted by the desire of possession.
Love would like to come out of itself, to merge itself in its victim, as the victor in the vanquished, while still preserving the privileges of the conqueror.
The delights of whoso keeps a mistress partake at once of the angel and of the proprietor. Charity and ferocity. They are even independent of sex, of beauty, of the animal kind.
Immense depth of thought in popular phrases, hollowed out by generations of ants.
II
Of the femininity of the Church, as the reason for its omnipotence.
Of the color violet (restrained, mysterious, veiled love, color of canoness).
The priest is immense, because he makes one believe in a host of astounding matters. That the Church wants to do all and to be all, is a law of the human mind. Mankind worships authority. Priests are the servants and sectaries of the imagination. The throne and the altar, revolutionary maxim. Religious intoxication of great cities. Pantheism. I, that is all; all, that is I. Vortex.
III
I think I have already written in my notes that love is very like torture or a surgical operation. But that idea can be developed in the bitterest way. Even though two lovers are deeply smitten and filled with reciprocal desire, one of the two will always be more calm, or less enraptured than the other. He or she is the surgeon, or the hangman; the other is the patient, the victim. Do you hear those sighs, preludes of a tragedy of shame, those groanings, those cries, those throat-rattlings? Who has not breathed them, who has not irresistibly summoned them forth? And what worse do you find in the torments applied by painstaking torturers? Those faraway eyes of the somnambulist, those limbs the muscles of which twitch and grow taut as under the action of a galvanic battery; drunkenness, delirium, opium, in their most infuriate consequences, surely yield no such frightful, no such curious examples. And the human countenance, which Ovid thought fashioned to reflect the stars, behold! it speaks only of insane ferocity, or is spread in a species of death. For, certainly, I believe it would be sacrilege to apply the word "ecstasy" to that sort of decomposition.
Frightful play, in which one of the players must lose control of himself!
Once, in my presence, it was asked in what lay the greatest pleasure of love. Some one answered naturally: in receiving, and another: in giving one's self. The former said: pleasure of pride; and the latter: delight of humility! All these blackguards spoke like the Imitation of Christ. – Finally, an impudent Utopian came forward to affirm that the greatest pleasure of love is to create citizens for the fatherland.
As for me, I said: The one and the supreme bliss of love rests in the certainty of doing evil. Both man and woman know, from birth, that in evil lies all bliss.
IV
When a man takes to his bed, almost all his friends have a secret desire to see him die; some, to establish the fact that his health is inferior to theirs; others, in the disinterested hope of studying an agony.
The arabesque is the most spiritual of designs..
V
The man of letters rouses the capitals and conveys a taste for intellectual gymnastics.
We love women in proportion as they are strangers to us. To love intelligent women is a pleasure of the pederast. Thus bestiality excludes pederasty.
The spirit of buffoonery need not exclude charity; but that's rare.
Enthusiasm applied to other things than abstractions is a sign of weakness and disease.
The thin is more naked, more indecent, than the fat.
VI
Tragic sky. Term of an abstract order applied to a material thing.
Man drinks light with the atmosphere. Thus they are right who say that the night air is not healthful for labor.
Man is born a fireworshipper.
Fireworks, conflagrations, incendiaries.
If one imagine a born fireworshipper born a Parsee, one could create a story.
VII
Misunderstanding of a countenance is the result of the eclipse of the real image by the hallucination born of it.
Know then the joys of a bitter life, and pray, pray ceaselessly. Prayer is a store-house of energy. (Altar of the will. Moral dynamics. The sorcery of the sacraments. Hygiene of the soul.)
Music deepens the sky.
Jean Jacques said that he could not enter a restaurant without a certain emotion. For a timid nature, a ticket office somewhat resembles the tribunal of hell.
Life has but one true attraction: the attraction of play. But if we care not whether we win or lose?
VIII
Nations have great men only in spite of themselves – like families. They make every effort not to have them. Therefore, the great man must, in order to exist, possess an offensive force greater than the power of resistance developed by millions of individuals.
Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we might say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.
IX
There are tortoise-shell hides against which scorn is no longer a vengeance.
Many friends, many gloves.4 Those who have admired me were despised, I might even say were despicable, if I sought to flatter honest men.
Girardin talk Latin! Pecudesque locutae.
He belongs to an infidel Society to send Robert Houdin to the Arabs to convert them from the miracles.
X
These great, beautiful vessels, imperceptibly swaying (rocking) on the tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their idle, homesick air, do they not ask us, in a silent tongue: When do we sail for happiness?
Not to forget the marvellous in drama, sorcery, romance.
The background, the atmosphere in which a whole tale should be steeped. (See the Fall of the House of Usher, and refer this to the profound sensations of hashish and of opium.)
XI
Are there mathematical insanities, and idiots who think that two and two make three? In other words, can hallucination, if the words do not cry out (at being coupled), invade the affairs of pure reason? If, when a man is sunk in habits of sloth, of revery, of idleness, to the point of constantly deferring the important thing to the morrow, another man were to wake him in the morning with biting lash, and were to whip him pitilessly until, unable to work for pleasure, he worked for fear, that man, that flogger, would he not be truly the friend, the benefactor? Besides, one might declare that pleasure would follow, much more justly than is said "Love comes after marriage."
Similarly, in politics, the true saint is he who lashes and destroys the people, for the people's good.
That which is not slightly deformed seems to lack feeling; whence it follows that irregularity, that is, the un-foreseen, surprise, astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.
XII
Theodore de Banville is not exactly materialistic; he is luminous. His poetry represents happy hours.
For each letter from a creditor, write fifty lines on an abstract subject, and you are saved.
XIII
Translation and paraphrase of the Passion. To refer everything to that.
Spiritual and physical joys born of the storm, thunder and lightning, tocsin of loving, shadowy memories, of years gone by.
XIV
I have found the definition of Beauty, of my Beauty. It is something ardent and sad, something slightly vague, giving conjecture wing. I will, if you please, apply my idea to a palpable object, for instance, to the most interesting object in society, to a woman's countenance. A seductive and beautiful head, a woman's head, I mean, is a head that brings dreams at once – confusedly – of voluptuousness and of sadness; which bears a suggestion of melancholy, of weariness, even of satiety, – or perhaps an opposite emotion, an ardor, a wish to live, mingled with pent up bitterness, as springs from privation or from despair. Mystery, regret, are also characteristics of beauty.
A handsome male head need not convey, save perhaps in the eyes of a woman, that suggestion of voluptuousness, which, in a female countenance, is generally tantalizing in proportion as the face is melancholy. But that head also will bear something ardent and sad, spiritual needs, ambitions vaguely receding, the thought of a rumbling, unused power, sometimes the thought of a vengeful lack of feeling (for the ideal type of the dandy must not be neglected here), sometimes also – and that is one of the most interesting characteristics of beauty – mystery, and finally (let me have the courage to confess to what degree I feel myself modern in esthetics) misfortune. I do not claim that Joy cannot be associated with Beauty, but I do say that Joy is one of its most vulgar ornaments, while Melancholy is, as it were, its illustrious companion, to such a degree that I can scarcely conceive (is my brain an enchanted mirror?) a type of beauty in which is no Misfortune. Following – others might say: obsessed by – these ideas, you can see that it would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of manly Beauty is Satan, – as pictured by Milton.
XV
Auto-idolatry. Poetic harmony of character. Eurhythmy of character and faculties. Of conserving all the faculties. Of augmenting all the faculties. A cult (Magianism, evocatory sorcery).
The sacrifice and the vow are the highest formulæ and symbols of exchange.
Two fundamental literary qualities: the supernatural, and irony. Individual glance, aspect in which things maintain themselves before the writer, then a Satanic turn of mind. The supernatural includes the general color and the accent, i.e., intensity, sonority, limpidity, vibration, depth and resonance in space and in time.
There are moments in life when time and space are deeper, and the intensity of life immeasurably increased.
Of magic applied to the rousing of the great dead, to the reestablishment and the perfecting of health.
Inspiration always comes, when a man wishes, but it does not always go, when he wishes.
Of writing and of speech, considered as magic operations, evocatory sorcery.
OF AIRS IN WOMAN
The charming airs, which constitute Beauty, are: The blasé air, the bored air, the giddy air, the impudent air, the cold air, the disdainful air, the commanding air, the willing air, the mischievous air, the sickly air, the feline air, a mingling of childishness, nonchalance and malice.
XVI
In certain almost supernatural moods of the soul the depth of life reveals itself to the full, in the scene, ordinary as it may be, beneath one's eyes. It becomes the symbol.
As I was crossing the boulevard, and as I hurried to escape the wagons, my aureole slipped off and fell into the mire of the macadam. Fortunately, I had time to pick it up; but a moment after the unlucky idea entered my mind that it was an ill omen; after that the idea clung to me, and gave me no rest the entire day.
Of the worship of one's self in love, from the point of view of health, of hygiene, of the toilet, of eloquence and of spiritual nobility.
XVII
There is a magic operation in prayer. Prayer is one of the great forces of intellectual dynamics. It is like an electric current.
The rosary is a medium, a vehicle; it is prayer brought within reach of all.