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diff --git a/36287-0.txt b/36287-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..52bbb11 --- /dev/null +++ b/36287-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4060 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36287 *** + +THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS + +OF + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY + +JAMES HUNEKER + + + +NEW YORK +BRENTANO'S +PUBLISHERS + +1919 + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + +The Dance of Death +The Beacons +The Sadness of the Moon +Exotic Perfume +Beauty +The Balcony +The Sick Muse +The Venal Muse +The Evil Monk +The Temptation +The Irreparable +A Former Life +Don Juan in Hades +The Living Flame +Correspondences +The Flask +Reversibility +The Eyes of Beauty +Sonnet of Autumn +The Remorse of the Dead +The Ghost +To a Madonna +The Sky +Spleen +The Owls +Bien Loin d'Ici +Music +Contemplation +To a Brown Beggar-maid +The Swan +The Seven Old Men +The Little Old Women +A Madrigal of Sorrow +The Ideal +Mist and Rain +Sunset +The Corpse +An Allegory +The Accursed +La Beatrice +The Soul of Wine +The Wine of Lovers +The Death of Lovers +The Death of the Poor +The Benediction +Gypsies Travelling +Francisco Meæ Laudes +Robed in a Silken Robe +A Landscape +The Voyage + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + +The Stranger +Every Man his Chimæra +Venus and the Fool +Intoxication +The Gifts of the Moon +The Invitation to the Voyage +What is Truth? +Already! +The Double Chamber +At One o'Clock in the Morning +The Confiteor of the Artist +The Thyrsus +The Marksman +The Shooting-range and the Cemetery +The Desire to Paint +The Glass-vendor +The Widows +The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory + + + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. + +BY JAMES HUNEKER. + + + + +I + + +For the sentimental no greater foe exists than the iconoclast who +dissipates literary legends. And he is abroad nowadays. Those golden +times when they gossiped of De Quincey's enormous opium consumption, of +the gin absorbed by gentle Charles Lamb, of Coleridge's dark ways, +Byron's escapades, and Shelley's atheism--alas! into what faded limbo +have they vanished. Poe, too, whom we saw in fancy reeling from Richmond +to Baltimore, Baltimore to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to New York. Those +familiar fascinating anecdotes have gone the way of all such jerry-built +spooks. We now know Poe to have been a man suffering at the time of his +death from cerebral lesion, a man who drank at intervals and little. Dr. +Guerrier of Paris has exploded a darling superstition about De Quincey's +opium-eating. He has demonstrated that no man could have lived so +long--De Quincey was nearly seventy-five at his death--and worked so +hard, if he had consumed twelve thousand drops of laudanum as often as +he said he did. Furthermore, the English essayist's description of the +drug's effects is inexact. He was seldom sleepy--a sure sign, asserts +Dr. Guerrier, that he was not altogether enslaved by the drug habit. +Sprightly in old age, his powers of labour were prolonged until past +three-score and ten. His imagination needed little opium to produce the +famous Confessions. Even Gautier's revolutionary red waistcoat worn at +the première of Hernani was, according to Gautier, a pink doublet. And +Rousseau has been whitewashed. So they are disappearing, those literary +legends, until, disheartened, we cry out: Spare us our dear, +old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius! + +But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This +French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and +chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery? +asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later +his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of +the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet, +dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim, +despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime +du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales--witness +his Souvenirs littéraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the +Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of +literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of +self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who +imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a +like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered +at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his +desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who +had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will +be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward. +The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers +between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions. +Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine, +Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as +we may see in the printed diary, Mon cœur mis à nu (Posthumous Works, +Société du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusées, Letters, and +other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians. + +To smash legends, Eugène Crépet's biographical study, first printed in +1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crépet. +This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a +dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for +some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by +Baudelaire--that tragic comedian--from the truth and thus save him from +himself. The Crépet volume is really but a series of notes; there are +some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day, +supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866, +published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of +Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Léon Cladel, +Camille Lemonnier, and others. + +In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves +at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a +trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbô. General Aupick, +the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men +received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the +mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp: +"My son has talent, has he not?" Unhappy because her second marriage, a +brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from +such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells +the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and +his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests +present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and +sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed +to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy +psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles +was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He +became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France +years afterward with a Vénus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant +poems! All this according to Du Camp. Here is another tale, a comical +one. Baudelaire visited Du Camp in Paris, and his hair was violently +green. Du Camp said nothing. Angered by this indifference, Baudelaire +asked: "You find nothing abnormal about me?" "No," was the answer. "But +my hair--it is green!" "That is not singular, mon cher Baudelaire; every +one has hair more or less green in Paris." Disappointed in not creating +a sensation, Baudelaire went to a café, gulped down two large bottles of +Burgundy, and asked the waiter to remove the water, as water was a +disagreeable sight; then he went away in a rage. It is a pity to doubt +this green hair legend; presently a man of genius will not be able to +enjoy an epileptic fit in peace--as does a banker or a beggar. We are +told that St. Paul, Mahomet, Handel, Napoleon, Flaubert, Dostoiëvsky +were epileptoids; yet we do not encounter men of this rare kind among +the inmates of asylums. Even Baudelaire had his sane moments. + +The joke of the green hair has been disposed of by Crépet. Baudelaire's +hair thinning after an illness, he had his head shaved and painted with +salve of a green hue, hoping thereby to escape baldness. At the time +when he had embarked for Calcutta (May, 1841), he was not seventeen, but +twenty years of age. Du Camp said he was seventeen when he attacked +General Aupick. The dinner could not have taken place at Lyons because +the Aupick family had left that city six years before the date given by +Du Camp. Charles was provided with five thousand francs for his +expenses, instead of twenty--Du Camp's version--and he never was a +beef-drover in the British army, for a good reason--he never reached +India. Instead, he disembarked at the Isle of Bourbon, and after a short +stay suffered from homesickness and returned to France, after being +absent about ten months. But, like Flaubert, on his return home +Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had +yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with +a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung +up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of +glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find +at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious." Is it +necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of +cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such +revolting cruelty? + +Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and +Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's +writings in 1846 or 1847--he gave these two dates, though several +stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842; +L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue +Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews. +Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he +assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary +gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his +poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the +late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon +Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry." It is precisely the +reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the +disjointed confessions, Mon cœur mis à nu, which vaguely recall the +American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du +Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in +book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the +Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or +fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was +not the first to make this mistake. In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we +find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe +... Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him +by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting +her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce +theirs." This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it +one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the +poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial. +Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of +Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics +of the didactic school. + +Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(?) was in +Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring +after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in +America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet! +Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented +public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the +desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his +barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He +had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the +central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering +"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character. Poe was a man, +and he is now a classic. He was a half-charlatan as was Baudelaire. In +both the sublime and the sickly were never far asunder. The pair loved +to mystify, to play pranks on their contemporaries. Both were implacable +pessimists. Both were educated in affluence, and both had to face +unprepared the hardships of life. The hastiest comparison of their +poetic work will show that their only common ideal was the worship of an +exotic beauty. Their artistic methods of expression were totally +dissimilar. Baudelaire, like Poe, had a harp-like temperament which +vibrated in the presence of strange subjects. Above all, he was obsessed +by sex. Women, as angel of destruction, is the keynote of his poems. Poe +was almost sexless. His aerial creatures never footed the dusty highways +of the world. His lovely lines, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," could +never have been written by Baudelaire; while Poe would never have +pardoned the "fulgurant" grandeur, the Beethoven-like harmonies, the +Dantesque horrors of that "deep wide music of lost souls" in "Femmes +Damnées": + + "Descendes, descendes, lamentable victimes." + +Or this, which might serve as a text for one of John Martin's vast +sinister mezzotints: + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore, + Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal + Une miraculeuse aurore; + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze, + Terrasser rénorme Satan; + Mais mon cœur que jamais ne visite l'extase, + Est un théâtre où l'on attend + Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze. + +George Saintsbury thus sums up the differences between Poe and +Baudelaire: "Both authors--Poe and De Quincey--fell short of Baudelaire +himself as regards depth and fulness of passion, but both have a +superficial likeness to him in eccentricity of temperameut and affection +for a certain peculiar mixture of grotesque and horror." Poe is without +passion, except a passion for the macabre; what Huysmans calls "The +October of the sensations"; whereas, there is a gulf of despair and +terror and humanity in Baudelaire, which shakes your nerves, yet +stimulates the imagination. However, profounder as a poet, he was no +match for Poe in what might be termed intellectual prestidigitation. The +mathematical Poe, the Poe of the ingenious detective tales, tales +extraordinary, the Poe of the swift flights into the cosmic blue, the +Poe the prophet and mystic--in these the American was more versatile +than his French translator. That Baudelaire said, "Evil be thou my +good," is doubtless true. He proved all things and found them vanity. He +is the poet of original sin, a worshipper of Satan for the sake of +paradox; his Litanies to Satan ring childish to us--in his heart he was +a believer. His was "an infinite reverse aspiration," and mixed up with +his pose was a disgust for vice, for life itself. He was the last of the +Romanticists; Sainte-Beuve called him the Kamchatka of Romanticism; its +remotest hyperborean peak. Romanticism is dead to-day, as dead as +Naturalism; but Baudelaire is alive, and read. His glistening +phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a +school:--Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, +Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and +many of the youthful crew. He affected Swinburne, and in Huysmans, who +was not a poet, his splenetic spirit lives. Baudelaire's motto might be +the obverse of Browning's lines: "The Devil is in heaven. All's wrong +with the world." + +When Goethe said of Hugo and the Romanticists that they came +from Chateaubriand, he should have substituted the name of +Rousseau--"Romanticism, it is Rousseau," exclaims Pierre Lasserre. But +there is more of Byron and Petrus Borel--a forgotten half-mad poet--in +Baudelaire; though, for a brief period, in 1848, he became a Rousseau +reactionary, sported the workingman's blouse, cut his hair, shouldered a +musket, went to the barricades, wrote inflammatory editorials calling +the proletarian "Brother!" (oh, Baudelaire!) and, as the Goncourts +recorded in their diary, had the head of a maniac. How seriously we may +take this swing of the pendulum is to be noted in a speech of the poet's +at the time of the Revolution: "Come," he said, "let us go shoot General +Aupick!" It was his stepfather that he thought of, not the eternal +principles of Liberty. This may be a false anecdote; many such were +foisted upon Baudelaire. For example, his exclamations at cafés or in +public places, such as: "Have you ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing +to the palate!" or, "The night I killed my father!" Naturally, people +stared and Baudelaire was happy--he had startled a bourgeois. The +cannibalistic idea he may have borrowed from Swift's amusing pamphlet, +for this French poet knew English literature. + +Gautier compares the poems to a certain tale of Hawthorne's in which +there is a garden of poisoned flowers. But Hawthorne worked in his +laboratory of evil wearing mask and gloves; he never descended into the +mud and sin of the street. Baudelaire ruined his health, smudged his +soul, yet remained withal, as Anatole France says, "a divine poet." How +childish, yet how touching is his resolution--he wrote in his diary of +prayer's dynamic force--when he was penniless, in debt, threatened with +imprisonment, sick, nauseated with sin: "To make every morning my prayer +to God, the reservoir of all force, and all justice; to my father, to +Mariette, and to Poe as intercessors." (Evidently, Maurice Barrès +encountered here his theory of Intercessors.) Baudelaire loved the +memory of his father as much as Stendhal hated his own. He became +reconciled with his mother after the death of General Aupick, in 1857. +He felt in 1862 that his own intellectual eclipse was approaching, for +he wrote: "I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. To-day +imbecility's wing fanned me as it passed." The sense of the vertiginous +gulf was abiding with him; read his poem, "Pascal avait son gouffre." + +In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original--and +they give the impression of being original works--Stedman agreed with +Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English. The prose +of Poe and Baudelaire is clear, sober, rhythmic; Baudelaire's is more +lapidary, finer in contour, richer coloured, more supple, though without +the "honey and tiger's blood" of Barbey d'Aurevilly. Baudelaire's soul +was patiently built up as a fabulous bird might build its nest--bits of +straw, the sobbing of women, clay, cascades of black stars, rags, +leaves, rotten wood, corroding dreams, a spray of roses, a sparkle of +pebble, a gleam of blue sky, arabesques of incense and verdigris, +despairing hearts and music and the abomination of desolation, for its +ground-tones. But this soul-nest is also a cemetery of the seven +sorrows. He loves the clouds ... les nuages ... là bas.... It was là bas +with him even in the tortures of his wretched love-life. Corruption and +death were ever floating in his consciousness. He was like Flaubert, who +saw everywhere the hidden skeleton. Félicien Hops has best interpreted +Baudelaire; the etcher and poet were closely knit spirits. Rodin, too, +is a Baudelarian. If there could be such an anomaly as a native +wood-note wildly evil, it would be the lyric and astringent voice of +this poet. His sensibility was both catholic and morbid, though he could +be frigid in the face of the most disconcerting misfortunes. He was a +man for whom the invisible word existed; if Gautier was pagan, +Baudelaire was a strayed spirit from mediæval days. The spirit rules, +and, as Paul Bourget said, "he saw God." A Manichean in his worship of +evil, he nevertheless abased his soul: "Oh! Lord God! Give me the force +and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust," he +prays: but as some one remarked to Rochefoucauld, "Where you end, +Christianity begins." + +Baudelaire built his ivory tower on the borders of a poetic Maremma, +which every miasma of the spirit pervaded, every marsh-light and +glow-worm inhabited. Like Wagner, Baudelaire painted in his sultry music +the profundities of abysms, the vastness of space. He painted, too, the +great nocturnal silences of the soul. + +Pacem summum tenent! He never reached peace on the heights. Let us +admit that souls of his kind are encased in sick frames; their steel is +too shrewd for the scabbard; yet the enigma for us is none the less +unfathomable. Existence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium. +To affiliate him with Poe, De Quincey, Hoffman, James Thomson, +Coleridge, and the rest of the sombre choir does not explain him; he is, +perhaps, nearer Donne and Villon than any of the others--strains of the +metaphysical and sinister and supersubtle are to be discovered in him. +The disharmony of brain and body, the spiritual bilocation, are only too +easy to diagnose; but the remedy? Hypocrite lecteur--mon semblable--mon +frère! When the subtlety, force, grandeur, of his poetic production be +considered, together with its disquieting, nervous, vibrating qualities, +it is not surprising that Victor Hugo wrote to the poet: "You invest the +heaven of art with we know not what deadly rays; you create a new +shudder." Hugo might have said that he turned Art into an Inferno. +Baudelaire is the evil archangel of poetry. In his heaven of fire, glass +and ebony he is the blazing Lucifer. "A glorious devil, large in heart +and brain, that did love beauty only..." once sang Tennyson, though not +of the Frenchman. + + + + +II + + +As long ago as 1869, and in our "barbarous gas-lit country," as +Baudelaire named the land of Poe, an unsigned review appeared in which +this poet was described as "unique and as interesting as Hamlet. He is +that rare and unknown being, a genuine poet--a poet in the midst of +things that have disordered his spirit--a poet excessively developed in +his taste for and by beauty ... very responsive to the ideal, very +greedy of sensation." A better description of Baudelaire does not exist +The Hamlet-motive, particularly, is one that sounded throughout the +disordered symphony of the poet's life. + +He was, later, revealed--also reviled--to American readers by Henry +James, who completely missed his significance. This was in 1878, when +appeared the first edition of French Poets and Novelists. Previous to +that there had been some desultory discussion, a few essays in the +magazines, and in 1875 a sympathetic paper by Professor James Albert +Harrison of the University of Virginia. He denounced the Frenchman for +his reprehensible taste, though he did not mention his beautiful verse +nor his originality in the matter of criticism. Baudelaire, in his eyes, +was not only immoral, but he had, with the approbation of Sainte-Beuve, +introduced Poe as a great man to the French nation. (See Baudelaire's +letter to Sainte-Beuve in the newly published Letters, 1841-1866.) +Perhaps "Mr. Dick Minim" and his projected Academy of Criticism might +make clear these devious problems. + +The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Schérer were collected in 1863. In them +we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien, +ni le cœur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idée, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la +fantaisie, ni la verve, ni même la facture ... son unique titre c'est +d'avoir contribué à créer l'esthétique de la débauche." It is not our +intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is +Baudelaire the critic of æsthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I +cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Schérer had been +transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded +Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century, +but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner +when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played +the rôle of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de +Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix; fought with pen for the +modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Félicien Rops, Gavarni, +and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and +Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons +like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire +absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator +would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous +spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound +and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who +anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and +environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He +would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have +never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of +criticism but the noble pleasure of praising." The Frenchman has said +that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is +impossible for a poet not to contain a critic. + +Théophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les +Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire +as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts +as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an +incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hôtel Pimodan about 1844. In this +Hôtel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His +fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters, +poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day--that is, carefully selected +ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Mérimée, and others whose verve or +genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of +forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort +of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier +eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where +the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon +and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the +only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary +group of Clésinger's--the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand--la +Femme au Serpent, a Salammbô à la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so +Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of +Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work +for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable +father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense, +unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and +for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky +Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt. + +It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked +than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered +Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged +the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen +an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about +the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the +"horrific"--that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire +admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of +Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a +painter's technique; also how to compose a palette--a rather meaningless +phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some +technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and +when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859, +the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and +knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born. + +The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor +spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are +the production of a humanist. Some would put them above Diderot's. Mr. +Saintsbury, after Swinburne the warmest advocate of Baudelaire among the +English, thinks that the French poet in his picture criticism observed +too little and imagined too much. "In other words," he adds, "to read a +criticism of Baudelaire's without the title affixed is by no means a +sure method of recognizing the picture afterward." Now, word-painting +was the very thing that Baudelaire avoided. It was his friend Gautier, +with the plastic style, who attempted the well-nigh impossible feat of +competing in his verbal descriptions with the certitudes of canvas and +marble. And, if he with his verbal imagination did not entirely succeed, +how could a less adept manipulator of the vocabulary? We do not agree +with Mr. Saintsbury. No one can imagine too much when the imagination is +that of a poet. Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it +down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint +pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages +with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in +a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for +him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he +judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life, +he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art, +yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for +seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could +write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding +morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All +literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and +philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature." + +Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of +music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of +democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental +fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation +the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those +things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden +uprising. Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary étude. Brave +lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the +ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished. +He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of +abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated +a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have +contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat +is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo +and Delacrois." And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and +evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob. + +In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in +the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of +the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco--not an +unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own +genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his +touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of +drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful +than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like +Whistler, whom he often met--see the Hommage à Delacrois by +Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet, +Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic, +and De Balleroy--he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish +sunsets." In a word, Baudelaire, into whose brain had entered too much +moonlight, was the father of a lunar school of poetry, criticism and +fiction. His Samuel Cramer, in La Fanfarlo, is the literary progenitor +of Jean, Duc d'Esseintes, in Huysmans's _A Rebours_. Huysmans at first +modelled himself upon Baudelaire. His Le Drageoir aux Epices is a +continuation of Petits Poèmes en Prose. And to Baudelaire's account must +be laid much artificial morbid writing. Despite his pursuit of +perfection in form, his influence has been too often baneful to +impressionable artists in embryo. A lover of Gallic Byronism, and +high-priest of the Satanic school, there was no extravagance, absurd or +terrible, that he did not commit, from etching a four-part fugue on ice +to skating hymns in honour of Lucifer. In his criticism alone was he the +sane logical Frenchman. And while he did not live to see the success of +the Impressionist group, he surely would have acclaimed their theory and +practice. Was he not an impressionist himself? + +As Richard Wagner was his god in music, so Delacroix quite overflowed +his æsthetic consciousness. Read Volume II of his collected works, +_Curiosités Esthétiques_, which contains his Salons; also his essay, _De +l'Essence du Rire_ (worthy to be placed side by side with George +Meredith's essay on Comedy). Caricaturists, French and foreign, are +considered in two chapters at the close of the volume. Baudelaire was as +conscientious as Gautier. He trotted around miles of mediocre canvas, +saying an encouraging word to the less talented, boiling over with holy +indignation or indulging in glacial irony, before the rash usurpers +occupying the seats of the mighty, and pouncing on new genius with +promptitude. Upon Delacroix he lavished the largesse of his admiration. +He smiled at the platitudes of Horace Vernet, and only shook his head +over the Schnetzes and other artisans of the day. He welcomed William +Hausollier, now so little known. He praised Devéria, Chasseriau--who +waited years before he came into his own; his preferred landscapists +were Corot, Rousseau and Troyon. He impolitely spoke of Ary Scheffer and +the "apes of sentiment"; while his discussions of Hogarth, Cruikshank, +Pinelli and Breughel proclaims his versatility of vision. In his essay +Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne he was the first among critics to recognize +the peculiar quality called "modernity," that naked vibration which +informs the novels of Goncourt, Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale, +and the pictures of Manet, Monet, Degas and Raffaelli with their +evocations of a new, nervous Paris. It is in his Volume III, entitled +L'Art Romantique, that so many things dear to the new century were then +subjects of furious quarrels. This book contains much just and brilliant +writing. It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, +but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner's adverse +critics. This Baudelaire did. + +The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial. +In a letter to Théophile Thoré, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we +find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his +pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya, +never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtalés Gallery." Which may have +been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and +spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery. +(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony.) +Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle: +"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe.... Do you know why I so +patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me." The poet italicized +these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious +coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco. + +He took Manet seriously. He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone. +Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You +complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you +more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that +they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you +are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." (Letters, p. 436.) + +Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit +the glimpses of the Champs Elysées at the Autumn Salons? What would he +think of Cézanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the +transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps +the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues--he, when young, +sailed in southern seas--might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form +and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin. + +Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his +verse. He is par excellence the poet of æsthetics. To Daumier he +inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix +(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Rêve Parisien), to an unknown +master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau à rebours, is seen in Un +Voyage à Cythère; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen +music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, +Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix--"Delacroix, lac de sang +hanté des mauvais anges." And what is more exquisite than his quatrain +to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard +Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme +inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!" Heine called himself the last of the +Romantics. The first of the "Moderns" and the last of the Romantics was +the many-sided Charles Baudelaire. + + + + +III + + +He was born at Paris, April 9, 1821 (Flaubert's birth year), and not +April 21, as Gautier has it. His father was Joseph Francis Baudelaire, +or Baudelaire, who occupied a government position. A cultivated art +lover, his taste was apparent in the home he made for his second wife, +Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, an orphan and the daughter of a military +officer. There was a considerable difference in the years of this pair; +the mother was twenty-seven, the father sixty-two, at the birth of their +only child. By his first marriage the elder Baudelaire had one son, +Claude, who, like his half-brother Charles, died of paralysis, though a +steady man of business. That great modern neurosis, called Commerce, has +its mental wrecks, too, and no one pays attention; but when a poet falls +by the wayside is the chase begun by neurologists and other soul-hunters +seeking victims. After the death of Baudelaire's father, the widow, +within a year, married the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then chef de +bataillon, lieutenant-colonel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and +later general and ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, and London. +Charles was a nervous, frail youth, but unlike most children of genius, +he was a scholar and won brilliant honours at school. His stepfather was +proud of him. From the Royal College of Lyons, Charles went to the Lycée +Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled in 1839, on various +discreditable charges. Troubles soon began at home. He was irascible, +vain, precocious, and given to dissipation. He quarreled with General +Aupick, and disdained his mother. But she was to blame, she has +confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second +love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to +the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good +Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a +little crazy--second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a +mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet +Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote +in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs ... all victims of +terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather +on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family +presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles +believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He +also believed that his instability of temperament--and he studied his +"case" as would a surgeon--was the result of his parents' disparity in +years. + +After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has +been said--his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the +language--he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand +dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked +for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled, +being young and green. How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on +opera-glasses, like Gérard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures, +furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles +would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the +English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his +habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching, +luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils +palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and +square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and +white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle +Mendès nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel!" Later he +was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N.S. le Diable; or +the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock +priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical +libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness +of temptation." In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and +deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that +ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the +saddest of all consolations. Mendès laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's +violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's +stories about the Hôtel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M. +Mendès denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp. What the +majority of mankind does not know concerning the habits of literary +workers is this prime fact: men who work hard, writing verse--and there +is no mental toil comparable to it--cannot drink, or indulge in opium, +without inevitable collapse. The old-fashioned ideas of "inspiration," +spontaneity, easy improvisation, the sudden bolt from heaven, are +delusions still hugged by the world. To be told that Chopin filed +at his music for years, that Beethoven in his smithy forged his +thunderbolts by the sweat of his brow, that Manet toiled like a +labourer on the dock, that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion +to poetic work, that Gautier was a hard-working journalist, are +disillusions for the sentimental. Minerva springing full-fledged from +Jupiter's skull to the desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac +and Flaubert did not encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as +it killed Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane +because he would work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked +and worried. His debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was +flawed--Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves--from the +start, he was détraqué; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is +a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country. + +His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a +student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by +the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies +was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so +well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real +name--which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an +aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of +a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual +interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a +hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like +Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the +expressiveness of art. + +Women played a commanding rôle in his life. They always do with any poet +worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this +as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual. +The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves +itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris, +after he had been in the East. She sang at a café concert in Paris. She +was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not +good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his +inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the +Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas +and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of +perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted +the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on +music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid +odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of +which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne, +whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But +she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times +only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line +and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her. They are not prepossessing. +In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her +expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower +of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless, +scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the +beatific and banal chord of C major! + +He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty, +at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by +Gautier Madame la Présidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by +Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They +soon parted. Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve. +One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful, +and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment; +but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed +to Madame Sabatier: "A la très chère, à la très-belle," a hymn saturated +with love. Music, spleen, perfumes--"colour, sound, perfumes call to +each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as +hautboys, green as the meadows"--criminals, outcasts, the charm of +childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern +landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of +lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier +dawns--Paris in a hundred phases--these and many other themes this +strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has +celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single +line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring +of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic +undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making +their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous--many young French +poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness--but he alone knows +the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the +resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the +mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme +master of irony and troubled voluptuousness. + +Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic +arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his +emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as +mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to +use the phrase of Père Lacordaire. (Curiously enough, he actually +contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat +in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly.) +Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to +produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the +last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn." Individualist, +egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus +described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist." Yes, +an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic +imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard +dans un monde trop vieux." He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute. +The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra. + +In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who +afterward went into bankruptcy--a warning to publishers with a taste for +fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes. +Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed +on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal +government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of +Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was +disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred +francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were +removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in +the new volume, Œuvres. Posthumes. + +Baudelaire was infuriated over the judgment, for he knew that his book +was dramatic in expression. He had expected, like Flaubert, to emerge +from the trial with flying colours; therefore to be classed as one who +wrote objectionable literature was a shock. "Flaubert had the Empress +back of him," he complained; which was true; the Empress Eugénie, also +the Princess Mathilde. But he worked as ever and put forth those +polished intaglios called Poems in Prose, for the form of which he had +taken a hint from Aloys Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit. He filled this +form with a new content; not alone pictures, but moods, are to be found +in those miniatures. Pity is their keynote, a tenderness for the abject +and lowly, a revelation of sensibility that surprised those critics who +had discerned in Baudelaire only a sculptor of evil. In one of his poems +he described a landscape of metal, of marble and water; a babel of +staircases and arcades, a palace of infinity, surrounded by the silence +of eternity. This depressing yet magical dream was utilized by Huysmans +in his A Rebours. But in the tiny landscapes of the Prose Poems there is +nothing rigid or artificial. Indeed, the poet's deliberate attitude of +artificiality is dropped. He is human. Not that the deep fundamental +note of humanity is ever absent in his poems; the eternal diapason is +there even when least overheard. Baudelaire is more human than Poe. His +range of sympathy is wider. In this he transcends him as a poet, though +his subject-matter often issues from the very dregs of life. Brother to +pitiable wanderers, there are, nevertheless, no traces of cant, no +"Russian pity" à la Dostoiëvsky, no humanitarian or socialistic +rhapsodies in his work. Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental +sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of +multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find +the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or +cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone?" + +His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as +significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And +Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's +career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and +later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young +Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in +the volume of Crépet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire +to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt +Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the +Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood +Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in +the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in +the temptation scene. + +The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, +going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went +out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated +with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without +hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life +and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged +his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to +Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few +lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. +He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the +trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no +conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle +in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the rôle of a +listener--this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in +the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that +Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only +to Whistler, but to an entire school--if one may employ such a phrase. +The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his +power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, +have been copied by the æsthetic blades of our day. He it was who first +taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the +same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! +And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, +grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, +Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from +Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism. + +His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's +prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where +he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he +suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His +mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his +aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He +could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in +the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends +rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the +élite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the +piano--which must have added a fresh nuance to death--and they brought +him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He +could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful +memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. +If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a +fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon +eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six. + +Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old +attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du +Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of +the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the +alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted +spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but +the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no +farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and +evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his +God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet +with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. +Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a +genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with +the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him +Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale: + + Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, + Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? + + * * * * * + + + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + + + + +THE DANCE OF DEATH. + + +Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, +Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves +With all the careless and high-stepping grace, +And the extravagant courtesan's thin face. + +Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed? +Her floating robe, in royal amplitude, +Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod +With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. + +The swarms that hum about her collar-bones +As the lascivious streams caress the stones, +Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, +Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes + +Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays +Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, +Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ. +O charm of nothing decked in folly! they + +Who laugh and name you a Caricature, +They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, +The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone +That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! + +Come you to trouble with your potent sneer +The feast of Life! or are you driven here, +To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir +And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? + +Or do you hope, when sing the violins, +And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, +To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, +And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? + +Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! +Eternal alembic of antique distress! +Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides +The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. + +And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, +Among us here, no lover to your mind; +Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? +The charms of horror please none but the brave. + +Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, +Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller +Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, +The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. + +For he who has not folded in his arms +A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, +Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, +When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. + +O irresistible, with fleshless face, +Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: +"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, +Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons! + +Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces, +Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, +Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, +Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. + +From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, +The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; +They do not see, within the opened sky, +The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. + +In every clime and under every sun, +Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; +And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye +And mingles with your madness, irony!" + + + + + THE BEACONS. + + + RUBENS, oblivious garden of indolence, + Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love, + Where life flows forth in troubled opulence, + As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move, + + LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass, + Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile, + Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass, + Among the ice and pines that guard some isle. + + REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills, + Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls, + Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils, + And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls. + + Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place + Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules; + Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace, + And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease. + + The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence, + Thou makest of all these a lovely thing; + Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence: + PUGET, the convict's melancholy king. + + WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts, + Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance; + Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts, + And pour down folly on the whirling dance. + + GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown; + The fœtus witches broil on Sabbath night; + Old women at the mirror; children lone + Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight. + + DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt, + Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise; + Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt + And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs. + + And malediction, blasphemy and groan, + Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine, + Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown; + For mortal hearts an opiate divine; + + A shout cried by a thousand sentinels, + An order from a thousand bugles tossed, + A beacon o'er a thousand citadels, + A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost. + + It is the mightiest witness that could rise + To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee; + This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies + Upon the verge of Thy Eternity! + + + + + THE SADNESS OF THE MOON. + + + The Moon more indolently dreams to-night + Than a fair woman on her couch at rest. + Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, + Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. + + Upon her silken avalanche of down, + Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh; + And watches the white visions past her flown, + Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky. + + And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, + Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, + Some pious poet, enemy of sleep, + + Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow + Whence gleams of iris and of opal start, + And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart. + + + + + EXOTIC PERFUME. + + + When with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold + I breathe the burning odours of your breast, + Before my eyes the hills of happy rest + Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold. + + Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs + Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down. + Where men are upright, maids have never grown + Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows. + + Led by that perfume to these lands of ease, + I see a port where many ships have flown + With sails outwearied of the wandering seas; + + While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown, + Float to my soul and in my senses throng, + And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song. + + + + + BEAUTY. + + + I am as lovely as a dream in stone, + And this my heart where each finds death in turn, + Inspires the poet with a love as lone + As clay eternal and as taciturn. + + Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows, + My throne is in the heaven's azure deep; + I hate all movements that disturb my pose, + I smile not ever, neither do I weep. + + Before my monumental attitudes, + That breathe a soul into the plastic arts, + My poets pray in austere studious moods, + + For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts, + Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies, + The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes. + + + + + THE BALCONY. + + + Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses, + O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire, + Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses, + The charm of evenings by the gentle fire, + Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! + + The eves illumined by the burning coal, + The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings-- + How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul! + Ah, and we said imperishable things, + Those eves illumined by the burning coal. + + Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm, + And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood, + In bending o'er you, queen of every charm, + I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood. + The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm. + + The film of night flowed round and over us, + And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet; + I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous, + And in my hands fraternal slept your feet-- + Night, like a film, flowed round and over us. + + I can recall those happy days forgot, + And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past. + Your languid beauties now would move me not + Did not your gentle heart and body cast + The old spell of those happy days forgot. + + Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite, + Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound; + As rise to heaven suns once again made bright + After being plunged in deep seas and profound? + Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite! + + + + + THE SICK MUSE. + + + Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day? + Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn, + Upon thy brow in alternation play, + Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn. + + Have the green lemure and the goblin red, + Poured on thee love and terror from their urn? + Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread + Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne? + + Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise, + Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs; + Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave + + In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave, + When Phœbus shared his alternating reign + With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain. + + + + + THE VENAL MUSE. + + + Muse of my heart, lover of palaces, + When January comes with wind and sleet, + During the snowy eve's long wearinesses, + Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet? + + Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders + In the moon-beams that through the window fly? + Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders, + Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky? + + For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul, + Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole, + And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between. + + Or, like a starving mountebank, expose + Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those + Who wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen. + + + + + THE EVIL MONK. + + + The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls + Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown, + And, seeing these, the pious in those halls + Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone. + + At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around, + More than one monk, forgotten in his hour, + Taking for studio the burial-ground, + Glorified Death with simple faith and power. + + And my soul is a sepulchre where I, + Ill cenobite, have spent eternity: + On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise. + + O when may I cast off this weariness, + And make the pageant of my old distress + For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes? + + + + + THE TEMPTATION. + + + The Demon, in my chamber high. + This morning came to visit me, + And, thinking he would find some fault, + He whispered: "I would know of thee + + Among the many lovely things + That make the magic of her face, + Among the beauties, black and rose, + That make her body's charm and grace, + + Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply + To the Abhorred, O soul of mine: + "No single beauty is the best + When she is all one flower divine. + + When all things charm me I ignore + Which one alone brings most delight; + She shines before me like the dawn, + And she consoles me like the night. + + The harmony is far too great, + That governs all her body fair, + For impotence to analyse + And say which note is sweetest there. + + O mystic metamorphosis! + My senses into one sense flow-- + Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, + Her breath is music faint and low!" + + + + + THE IRREPARABLE. + + + Can we suppress the old Remorse + Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, + Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, + Or as the acorn on the oak? + Can we suppress the old Remorse! + + Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, + May we drown this our ancient foe, + Destructive glutton, gorging well, + Patient as the ants, and slow? + What wine, what philtre, or what spell? + + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + Tell me, with anguish overcast, + Wounded, as a dying man, + Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past. + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + + To him the wolf already tears + Who sees the carrion pinions wave, + This broken warrior who despairs + To have a cross above his grave-- + This wretch the wolf already tears. + + Can one illume a leaden sky, + Or tear apart the shadowy veil + Thicker than pitch, no star on high, + Not one funereal glimmer pale + Can one illume a leaden sky? + + Hope lit the windows of the Inn, + But now that shining flame is dead; + And how shall martyred pilgrims win + Along the moonless road they tread? + Satan has darkened all the Inn! + + Witch, do you love accursèd hearts? + Say, do you know the reprobate? + Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts + Make souls the targets for their hate? + Witch, do you know accursèd hearts? + + The Might-have-been with tooth accursed + Gnaws at the piteous souls of men, + The deep foundations suffer first, + And all the structure crumbles then + Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. + + + II. + + Often, when seated at the play, + And sonorous music lights the stage, + I see the frail hand of a Fay + With magic dawn illume the rage + Of the dark sky. Oft at the play + + A being made of gauze and fire + Casts to the earth a Demon great. + And my heart, whence all hopes expire, + Is like a stage where I await, + In vain, the Fay with wings of fire! + + + + + A FORMER LIFE. + + + Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, + By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, + Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, + Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. + + The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies + Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, + Solemn and mystic, with the colours which + The setting sun reflected in my eyes. + + And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, + In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave, + Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave, + + Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms. + They were my slaves--the only care they had + To know what secret grief had made me sad. + + + + + DON JUAN IN HADES. + + + When Juan sought the subterranean flood. + And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore. + Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood + With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar. + + With open robes and bodies agonised, + Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky; + There were sounds as of victims sacrificed: + Behind him all the dark was one long cry. + + And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge; + Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air, + Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge + The evil son who scorned his hoary hair. + + Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while, + Near him untrue to all but her till now, + Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile + Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow. + + And clad in armour, a tall man of stone + Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood; + But, staring at the vessel's track alone, + Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood. + + + + + THE LIVING FLAME. + + + They pass before me, these Eyes full of light, + Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; + The holy brothers pass before my sight, + And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. + + They keep me from all sin and error grave, + They set me in the path whence Beauty came; + They are my servants, and I am their slave, + And all my soul obeys the living flame. + + Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light + As candles lighted at full noon; the sun + Dims not your flame phantastical and bright. + + You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done; + Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn, + Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim! + + + + + CORRESPONDENCES. + + + In Nature's temple living pillars rise, + And words are murmured none have understood. + And man must wander through a tangled wood + Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes. + + As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim + Mingle to one deep sound and fade away; + Vast as the night and brilliant as the day, + Colour and sound and perfume speak to him. + + Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child, + Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green; + Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild, + + Have all the expansion of things infinite: + As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin, + Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight. + + + + + THE FLASK. + + + There are some powerful odours that can pass + Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass + To them is porous. Oft when some old box + Brought from the East is opened and the locks + And hinges creak and cry; or in a press + In some deserted house, where the sharp stress + Of odours old and dusty fills the brain; + An ancient flask is brought to light again, + And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep. + There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep + A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides, + Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides, + Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold, + Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. + + A memory that brings languor flutters here: + The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear + Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit + Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet, + Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost + Of an old passion, long since loved and lost. + So I, when vanished from man's memory + Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie. + An empty flagon they have cast aside, + Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride, + Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence! + The witness of your might and virulence, + Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup + Of life and death my heart has drunken up! + + + + + REVERSIBILITY. + + + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, + And the vague terrors of the fearful night + That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf? + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall, + When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call, + And makes herself the captain of our fate, + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + + Angel of health, did ever you know pain, + Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls + The cold length of the white infirmary walls, + With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain? + Angel of health, did ever you know pain? + + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + Know you the fear of age, the torment vile + Of reading secret horror in the smile + Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago? + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light, + Old David would have asked for youth afresh + From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh; + I but implore your prayers to aid my plight, + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light. + + + + + THE EYES OF BEAUTY. + + + You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose; + But all the sea of sadness in my blood + Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose, + Salt with the memory of the bitter flood. + + In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, + That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate + By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more + Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate. + + It is a ruin where the jackals rest, + And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay-- + A perfume swims about your naked breast! + + Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way! + With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared + Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared! + + + + + SONNET OF AUTUMN. + + + They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: + "Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" + Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise + All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; + + And will not bare the secret of their shame + To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, + Nor their black legend write for thee in flame! + Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong. + + Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat, + Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow, + And I too well his ancient arrows know: + + Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite, + Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low, + O my so white, my so cold Marguerite. + + + + + THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD. + + + O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep + In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; + When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep + Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; + + And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, + And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace, + Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest, + And holds those feet from their adventurous race; + + Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie, + (For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend) + During long nights when sleep is far from thee, + + Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend + The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"-- + And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek. + + + + + THE GHOST. + + + Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove + I will return to thy alcove. + And glide upon the night to thee, + Treading the shadows silently. + + And I will give to thee, my own, + Kisses as icy as the moon, + And the caresses of a snake + Cold gliding in the thorny brake. + + And when returns the livid morn + Thou shalt find all my place forlorn + And chilly, till the falling night. + + Others would rule by tenderness + Over thy life and youthfulness, + But I would conquer thee by fright! + + + + + TO A MADONNA. + + (_An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste_.) + + + Madonna, mistress. I would build for thee + An altar deep in the sad soul of me; + And in the darkest corner of my heart, + From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, + Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine + For thee to stand erect in, Image divine! + And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned + Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round + With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make, + O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake, + And weave it of my jealousy, a gown + Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down + With my distrust, and broider round the hem + Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them. + And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be + All the desires that rise and fall in me + From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose, + Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose. + For thy humiliated feet divine, + Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine + Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold, + + Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould. + And if my art, unwearying and discreet, + Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet + To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest + Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast, + Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born! + And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn + Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate. + And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate, + Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine, + O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine + Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue, + With eyes of flame for ever watching you. + While all the love and worship in my sense + Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense. + Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow, + My stormy spirit will in vapours go! + + And last, to make thy drama all complete, + That love and cruelty may mix and meet, + I, thy remorseful torturer, will take + All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make + In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen, + And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen, + That spot profound whence love and mercy start, + I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart! + + + + + THE SKY. + + + Where'er he be, on water or on land, + Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; + One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, + Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold; + + Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er + His little brain may be, alive or dead; + Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere, + And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead. + + The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; + The lighted ceiling of a music-hall + Where every actor treads a bloody soil-- + + The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; + The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot + Where the vast human generations boil! + + + + + SPLEEN. + + + I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins + Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains; + Who, young in years, is old in all distress; + Who flees good counsel to find weariness + Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred + Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; + Whose weary face emotion moves no more + E'en when his people die before his door. + His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile + Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; + The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, + Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood + No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom + Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. + The sage who takes his gold essays in vain + To purge away the old corrupted strain, + His baths of blood, that in the days of old + The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, + Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, + For green Lethean water fills his veins. + + + + + THE OWLS. + + + Under the overhanging yews, + The dark owls sit in solemn state. + Like stranger gods; by twos and twos + Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. + + Motionless thus they sit and dream + Until that melancholy hour + When, with the sun's last fading gleam, + The nightly shades assume their power. + + From their still attitude the wise + Will learn with terror to despise + All tumult, movement, and unrest; + + For he who follows every shade, + Carries the memory in his breast, + Of each unhappy journey made. + + + + + BIEN LOIN D'ICI. + + + Here is the chamber consecrate, + Wherein this maiden delicate, + And enigmatically sedate, + + Fans herself while the moments creep, + Upon her cushions half-asleep, + And hears the fountains plash and weep. + + Dorothy's chamber undefiled. + The winds and waters sing afar + Their song of sighing strange and wild + To lull to sleep the petted child. + + From head to foot with subtle care, + Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin + With odorous oils and benzoin. + And flowers faint in a corner there. + + + + + MUSIC. + + + Music doth oft uplift me like a sea + Towards my planet pale, + Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity + I lift my wandering sail. + + With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee, + And through the cordage wail, + I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me + Beneath her sombre veil. + + I feel the tremblings of all passions known + To ships before the breeze; + Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown + + I pass the abysmal seas + That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair + Of my despair! + + + + + CONTEMPLATION. + + + Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, + The eve is thine which even now drops down, + To carry peace or care to human will, + And in a misty veil enfolds the town. + + While the vile mortals of the multitude, + By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, + Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-- + Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone + + Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years, + In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim; + And from the water, smiling through her tears, + + Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim; + And in the east, her long shroud trailing light, + List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night. + + + + + TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID. + + + White maiden with the russet hair, + Whose garments, through their holes, declare + That poverty is part of you, + And beauty too. + + To me, a sorry bard and mean, + Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, + With summer freckles here and there, + Is sweet and fair. + + Your sabots tread the roads of chance, + And not one queen of old romance + Carried her velvet shoes and lace + With half your grace. + + In place of tatters far too short + Let the proud garments worn at Court + Fall down with rustling fold and pleat + About your feet; + + In place of stockings, worn and old, + Let a keen dagger all of gold + Gleam in your garter for the eyes + Of roués wise; + + Let ribbons carelessly untied + Reveal to us the radiant pride + Of your white bosom purer far + Than any star; + + Let your white arms uncovered shine. + Polished and smooth and half divine; + And let your elfish fingers chase + With riotous grace + + The purest pearls that softly glow. + The sweetest sonnets of Belleau, + Offered by gallants ere they fight + For your delight; + + And many fawning rhymers who + Inscribe their first thin book to you + Will contemplate upon the stair + Your slipper fair; + + And many a page who plays at cards, + And many lords and many bards, + Will watch your going forth, and burn + For your return; + + And you will count before your glass + More kisses than the lily has; + And more than one Valois will sigh + When you pass by. + + But meanwhile you are on the tramp, + Begging your living in the damp, + Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er, + From door to door; + + And shilling bangles in a shop + Cause you with eager eyes to stop, + And I, alas, have not a son + To give to you. + + Then go, with no more ornament, + Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent, + Than your own fragile naked grace + And lovely face. + + + + + THE SWAN. + + + Andromache, I think of you! The stream, + The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days + Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief, + The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears, + Made all my fertile memory blossom forth + As I passed by the new-built Carrousel. + Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, + Changes more quickly than man's heart may change); + Yet in my mind I still can see the booths; + The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals; + The grass; the stones all over-green with moss; + The _débris_, and t&e square-set heaps of tiles. + + There a menagerie was once outspread; + And there I saw, one morning at the hour + When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky, + And the road roars upon the silent air, + A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked + On the dry pavement with his webby feet, + And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground. + + And near a waterless stream the piteous swan + Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust + His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while + Filled with a vision of his own fair lake): + "O water, when then wilt thou come in rain? + Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?" + + Sometimes yet + I see the hapless bird--strange, fatal myth-- + Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up + Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens, + With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face, + As though he sent reproaches up to God! + + + II. + + Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed. + New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks, + And suburbs old, are symbols all to me + Whose memories are as heavy as a stone. + And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul, + The image came of my majestic swan + With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime, + As of an exile whom one great desire + Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you, + Andromache! torn from your hero's arms; + Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride; + + Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy; + Widow of Hector--wife of Helenus! + And of the negress, wan and phthisical, + Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes + Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog + The absent palm-trees of proud Africa; + Of all who lose that which they never find; + Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief + Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck; + Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade. + And one old Memory like a crying horn + Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost.... + I think of sailors on some isle forgotten; + Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more. + + + + + THE SEVEN OLD MEN. + + + O swarming city, city full of dreams, + Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks; + Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins + My story flows as flows the rising sap. + + One morn, disputing with my tired soul, + And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, + I trod a suburb shaken by the jar + Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified + The houses either side of that sad street, + So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood + Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, + Unclean and yellow, inundated space-- + A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. + Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags + Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks + Should have brought alms in floods upon his head, + Without the misery gleaming in his eye, + Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed + To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost + Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard + Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth. + He was not bent but broken: his backbone + Made a so true right angle with his legs, + That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave + The finish to the picture, made him seem + Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped + Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud + He walked with troubled and uncertain gait, + As though his sabots trod upon the dead, + Indifferent and hostile to the world. + + His double followed him: tatters and stick + And back and eye and beard, all were the same; + Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable, + These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, + Trod the same pace toward some end unknown. + To what fell complot was I then exposed! + Humiliated by what evil chance? + For as the minutes one by one went by + Seven times I saw this sinister old man + Repeat his image there before my eyes! + + Let him who smiles at my inquietude, + Who never trembled at a fear like mine, + Know that in their decrepitude's despite + These seven old hideous monsters had the mien + Of beings immortal. + Then, I thought, must I, + Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; + Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; + Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself + And his own son! In terror then I turned + My back upon the infernal band, and fled + To my own place, and closed my door; distraught + And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, + With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, + Wounded by mystery and absurdity! + + In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, + The whirling storm but drove her back again; + And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, + Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea. + + + + + THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN. + + + Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, + Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, + I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, + For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, + The dislocated monsters that of old + Were lovely women--Laïs or Eponine! + Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, + Let us still love them, for they still have souls. + They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, + Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, + They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, + And at their sides, a relic of the past, + A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs. + They trot about, most like to marionettes; + They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; + Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell + Where hangs and swings a demon without pity. + Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, + That shine like pools where water sleeps at night; + The astonished and divine eyes of a child + Who laughs at all that glitters in the world. + + Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds + Are little like the shroud of a dead child? + Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, + Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet. + And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, + Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, + It ever seems as though the delicate thing + Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new. + And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, + How many times must workmen change the shape + Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid? + These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; + Crucibles where the cooling metal pales-- + Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him + Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. + + + II. + + The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti"; + Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name + Only the prompter knows and he is dead; + Bygone celebrities that in bygone days + The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom; + All charm me; yet among these beings frail + Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said + To the Devotion that had lent them wings: + "Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"-- + One by her country to despair was driven; + One by her husband overwhelmed with grief; + One wounded by her child, Madonna-like; + Each could have made a river with her tears. + + + III. + + Oft have I followed one of these old women, + One among others, when the falling sun + Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound-- + Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench + To hear the brazen music of the band, + Played by the soldiers in the public park + To pour some courage into citizens' hearts, + On golden eves when all the world revives. + Proud and erect she drank the music in, + The lively and the warlike call to arms; + Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes; + Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! + + + IV. + + Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics, + Through all the chaos of the living town: + Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans, + Whose names of yore were on the lips of all; + Who were all glory and all grace, and now + None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops, + Insulting you with his derisive love; + And cowardly urchins call behind your back. + Ashamed of living, withered shadows all, + With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls, + And none salute you, destined to loneliness! + Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity! + But I, who watch you tenderly afar, + With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps, + As though I were your father, I--O wonder!-- + Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy. + I see your maiden passions bud and bloom, + Sombre or luminous, and your lost days + Unroll before me while my heart enjoys + All your old vices, and my soul expands + To all the virtues that have once been yours. + Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts, + Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched + God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow? + + + + + A MADRIGAL OF SORROW. + + + What do I care though you be wise? + Be sad, be beautiful; your tears + But add one more charm to your eyes, + As streams to valleys where they rise; + And fairer every flower appears + + After the storm. I love you most + When joy has fled your brow downcast; + When your heart is in horror lost, + And o'er your present like a ghost + Floats the dark shadow of the past. + + I love you when the teardrop flows, + Hotter than blood, from your large eye; + When I would hush you to repose + Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows + Into a loud and tortured cry. + + And then, voluptuousness divine! + Delicious ritual and profound! + I drink in every sob like wine, + And dream that in your deep heart shine + The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned. + + I know your heart, which overflows + With outworn loves long cast aside, + Still like a furnace flames and glows, + And you within your breast enclose + A damnèd soul's unbending pride; + + But till your dreams without release + Reflect the leaping flames of hell; + Till in a nightmare without cease + You dream of poison to bring peace, + And love cold steel and powder well; + + And tremble at each opened door, + And feel for every man distrust, + And shudder at the striking hour-- + Till then you have not felt the power + Of Irresistible Disgust. + + My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, + When you awaken shuddering, + Until that awful hour be here, + You cannot say at midnight drear: + "I am your equal, O my King!" + + + + + THE IDEAL. + + + Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted, + The worthless products of an outworn age, + With slippered feet and fingers castanetted, + The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage. + + To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses, + I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan; + I cannot find among these pale, pale roses, + The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon. + + Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime, + The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime-- + Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring; + + Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night, + In a strange posture dreamily admiring + Her beauty fashioned for a giant's delight! + + + + + MIST AND RAIN. + + + Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain, + Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud, + For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain + In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud + + In the wide plain where revels the cold wind, + Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round, + More free than in warm summer day my mind + Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground. + + Unto a heart filled with funereal things + That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on, + Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs, + + Than the long pageant of your shadows wan, + Unless it be on moonless eves to weep + On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep. + + + + + SUNSET. + + + Fair is the sun when first he flames above, + Flinging his joy down in a happy beam; + And happy he who can salute with love + The sunset far more glorious than a dream. + + Flower, stream, and furrow!--I have seen them all + In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart-- + Though it be late let us with speed depart + To catch at least one last ray ere it fall! + + But I pursue the fading god in vain, + For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain, + Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between, + + And graveyard odours in the shadow swim, + And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim, + Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen. + + + + + THE CORPSE. + + + Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met + By the roadside on that sweet summer day; + There on a grassy couch with pebbles set, + A loathsome body lay. + + The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air, + Steaming with exhalations vile and dank, + In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare + The swollen side and flank. + + On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven + As though with chemic heat to broil and burn, + And unto Nature all that she had given + A hundredfold return. + + The sky smiled down upon the horror there + As on a flower that opens to the day; + So awful an infection smote the air, + Almost you swooned away. + + The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side, + Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream, + That ran along these tatters of life's pride + With a liquescent gleam. + + And like a wave the maggots rose and fell, + The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife: + It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell + And multiply with life + + The hideous corpse. From all this living world + A music as of wind and water ran, + Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled + By the swift winnower's fan. + + And then the vague forms like a dream died out, + Or like some distant scene that slowly falls + Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt + He only half recalls. + + A homeless dog behind the boulders lay + And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn, + Waiting a chance to come and take away + The morsel she had torn. + + And you, even you, will be like this drear thing, + A vile infection man may not endure; + Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring! + O passionate and pure! + + Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace! + When the last sacramental words are said; + And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face + Moulders among the dead. + + Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm + That crawls up to devour you with a kiss, + That I still guard in memory the dear form + Of love that comes to this! + + + + + AN ALLEGORY. + + + Here is a woman, richly clad and fair, + Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair; + Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin, + Are dulled against the granite of her skin. + Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon, + For their sharp scythe-like talons every one + Pass by her in their all-destructive play; + Leaving her beauty till a later day. + Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure; + She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure, + And bids all men forget the world's alarms + Upon her breast, between her open arms. + She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid, + Without whom the world's onward dream would fade, + That bodily beauty is the supreme gift + Which may from every sin the terror lift. + Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies; + And when black Night shall roll before her eyes, + She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn, + Without remorse or hate--as one new born. + + + + + THE ACCURSED. + + + Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands, + These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes; + Out of their folded feet and clinging hands + Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise. + + Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream, + Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease; + Calling the lover of their childhood's dream, + They wound the green bark of the shooting trees. + + Others like sisters wander, grave and slow, + Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin, + Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow + The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin. + + Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood + Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep, + Call thee to quench the fever in their blood, + Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep! + + Then there are those the scapular bedights, + Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain, + Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights, + The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain. + + O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye + Who scorn whatever actual appears; + Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity, + So full of cries, so full of bitter tears; + + Te whom my soul has followed into hell, + I love and pity, O sad sisters mine, + Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell, + And your great hearts, those urns of love divine! + + + + + LA BEATRICE. + + + In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew, + I to the winds my cries of anguish threw; + And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart, + Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart. + Then in full noon above my head a cloud + Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd + Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there, + The cruel and curious demons of the air, + Who coldly to consider me began; + Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man, + Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes-- + I heard a laughing and a whispering rise: + + "Let us at leisure contemplate this clown, + This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown, + With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind. + Is't not a pity that this empty mind, + This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll, + Because he knows how to assume a rôle + Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods, + Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods? + + Even unto us, who made these ancient things, + The fool his public lamentation sings." + + With pride as lofty as the towering cloud, + I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud, + And turned in scorn my sovereign head away + Had I not seen--O sight to dim the day!-- + There in the middle of the troupe obscene + The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen! + She laughed with them at all my dark distress, + And gave to each in turn a vile caress. + + + + + THE SOUL OF WINE. + + + One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine: + "Man, unto thee, dear disinherited, + I sing a song of love and light divine-- + Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red. + + "I know thou labourest on the hill of fire, + In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun, + To give the life and soul my vines desire, + And I am grateful for thy labours done. + + "For I find joys unnumbered when I lave + The throat of man by travail long outworn, + And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave + Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn. + + "Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound? + The hope that whispers in my trembling breast? + Thy elbows on the table! gaze around; + Glorify me with joy and be at rest. + + "To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam, + I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light, + To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem + Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight. + + "I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows; + The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod-- + From our first loves the first fair verse arose, + Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!" + + + + + THE WINE OF LOVERS. + + + Space rolls to-day her splendour round! + Unbridled, spurless, without bound, + Mount we upon the wings of wine + For skies fantastic and divine! + + Let us, like angels tortured by + Some wild delirious phantasy, + Follow the far-off mirage born + In the blue crystal of the morn. + + And gently balanced on the wing + Of the wild whirlwind we will ride, + Rejoicing with the joyous thing. + + My sister, floating side by side, + Fly we unceasing whither gleams + The distant heaven of my dreams. + + + + + THE DEATH OF LOVERS. + + + There shall be couches whence faint odours rise, + Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound; + Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies + The death-bed of our love shall breathe around. + + And guarding their last embers till the end, + Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine, + And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend + In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine. + + And through the eve of rose and mystic blue + A beam of love shall pass from me to you, + Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell; + + And later still an angel, flinging wide + The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell + The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died. + + + + + THE DEATH OF THE POOR. + + + Death is consoler and Death brings to life; + The end of all, the solitary hope; + We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife, + Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope. + + Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow, + Death on our dark horizon pulses clear; + Death is the famous hostel we all know, + Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer. + + Death is an angel whose magnetic palms + Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms + To smooth the beds of naked men and poor. + + Death is the mystic granary of God; + The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore; + The Gate that opens into heavens un trod! + + + + + THE BENEDICTION. + + + When by the high decree of powers supreme, + The Poet came into this world outworn, + She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream, + Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn: + + "O rather had I borne a writhing knot + Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse + This vile derision, of my joy begot + To be my expiation and my curse! + + "Since of all women thou hast made of me + Unto my husband a disgust and shame; + Since I may not cast this monstrosity, + Like an old love-epistle, to the flame; + + "I will pour out thine overwhelming hate + On this the accursed weapon of thy spite; + This stunted tree I will so desecrate + That not one tainted bud shall see the light!" + + So foaming with the foam of hate and shame, + Blind unto God's design inexorable, + With her own hands she fed the purging flame + To crimes maternal consecrate in hell. + + Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseen + The child disowned grows drunken with the sun; + His food and drink, though they be poor and mean, + With streams of nectar and ambrosia run. + + Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind, + With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood; + His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind + To see him gay as birds are in the wood. + + Those he would love looked sideways and with fear, + Or, taking courage from his aspect mild, + Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear, + And spent their anger on the dreaming child. + + With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat + They mingled earth and ash and excrement, + All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet; + They mourned if they must tread the road he went. + + His wife ran crying in the public square: + "Since he has found me worthy to adore, + Shall I not be as antique idols were, + With gold and with bright colours painted o'er? + + "I will be drunk with nard and frankincense. + With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine. + Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense, + Usurp the homage due to beings divine? + + "I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand + When I am weary of the impious play; + For well these harpy talons understand + To furrow to his heart their crimson way. + + "I'll tear the red thing beating from his breast, + To cast it with disdain upon the ground, + Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest-- + His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound." + + To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne, + The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight, + And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown, + Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight: + + "Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain, + The balm divine for each imperfect heart, + The strong pure essence cleansing every stain + Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart. + + "Among the numbers of thy legions blest, + I know a place awaits the poet there; + Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast + That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share. + + "I know the one thing noble is a grief + Withstanding earth's and hell's destructive tooth, + And I, through all my dolorous life and brief, + To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth. + + "The jewels lost in Palmyra of old, + Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea, + Are far too dim to set within the gold + Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me. + + "For it is wrought of pure unmingled light, + Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born-- + The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright, + Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn." + + + + + GYPSIES TRAVELLING. + + + The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire + Went forth last night; their little ones at rest + Each on his mother's back, with his desire + Set on the ready treasure of her breast. + + Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread + By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden; + They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied + Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden. + + The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen, + Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song; + Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green, + + And makes the rock run water for this throng + Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see + Familiar realms of darkness yet to be. + + + + + FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES. + + + Novis te cantabo chordis, + O novelletum quod ludia + In solitudine cordis. + + Esto sertis implicata, + O fœmina delicata + Per quam solvuntur peccata + + Sicut beneficum Lethe, + Hauriam oscula de te, + Quæ imbuta es magnete. + + Quum vitiorum tempestas + Turbabat omnes semitas, + Apparuisti, Deitas, + + Velut stella salutaris + In naufragiis amaris.... + Suspendam cor tuis aris! + + Piscina plena virtutis, + Fons æternæ juventutis, + Labris vocem redde mutis! + + Quod erat spurcum, cremasti; + Quod rudius, exæquasti; + Quod debile, confirmasti! + + In fame mea taberna, + In nocte mea lucerna, + Recte me semper guberna. + + Adde nunc vires viribus, + Dulce balneum suavibus, + Unguentatum odoribus! + + Meos circa I umbos mica, + O castitatis lorica, + Aqua tincta seraphica; + + Patera gemmis corusca, + Panis salsus, mollis esca, + Divinum vinum, Francisca! + + + + + ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE. + + + Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes, + She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod, + Like the long serpent that a fakir makes + Dance to the waving cadence of a rod. + + As the sad sand upon the desert's verge, + Insensible to mortal grief and strife; + As the long weeds that float among the surge, + She folds indifference round her budding life. + + Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold, + And in her strange symbolic nature where + An angel mingles with the sphinx of old, + + Where all is gold and steel and light and air, + For ever, like a vain star, unafraid + Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid. + + + + + A LANDSCAPE. + + + I would, when I compose my solemn verse, + Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers, + Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind + Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind. + + Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands, + I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands; + And see clock-towers like spars against the sky, + And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity; + + And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth + Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth; + The threads of smoke that rise above the town; + The moon that pours her pale enchantment down. + + Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose; + And when comes Winter with his weary snows, + I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight, + And build my faery palace in the night. + + Then I will dream of blue horizons deep; + Of gardens where the marble fountains weep; + Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds-- + A sinless Idyll built of innocent words. + + And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane + And at my closet door, shall knock in vain; + I will not heed him with his stealthy tread, + Nor from my reverie uplift my head; + + For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still + Of summoning the spring-time with my will, + Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there + With burning thoughts making a summer air. + + + + + THE VOYAGE. + + + The world is equal to the child's desire + Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire-- + How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small + When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!-- + + One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame, + Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame; + And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze, + Our own infinity on the finite seas. + + Some flee the memory of their childhood's home; + And others flee their fatherland; and some, + Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes, + Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries; + + And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight + For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light, + Till one by one the stains her kisses made + In biting cold and burning sunlight fade. + + But the true voyagers are they who part + From all they love because a wandering heart + Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly; + Whose call is ever "On!"--they know not why. + + Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star; + They dream of change as warriors dream of war; + And strange wild wishes never twice the same: + Desires no mortal man can give a name. + + + II. + + We are like whirling tops and rolling balls-- + For even when the sleepy night-time falls, + Old Curiosity still thrusts us on, + Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun. + + The end of fate fades ever through the air, + And, being nowhere, may be anywhere + Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast, + For ever like a madman, seeking rest. + + Our souls are wandering ships outwearied; + And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?" + The topman's voice with an exultant sound + Cries: "Love and Glory!"--then we run aground. + + Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late, + Is El Dorado, promised us by fate-- + Imagination, spite of her belief, + Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef. + + Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee! + Shall we not bind and cast into the sea + This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood + Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood? + + Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire, + Dreaming the paradise of his own desire, + Discovering cities of enchanted sleep + Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. + + + III. + + Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds + Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads! + Open the casket where your memories are, + And show each jewel, fashioned from a star; + + For I would travel without sail or wind, + And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind, + Let your long memories of sea-days far fled + Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread. + + What have you seen? + + + IV. + + "We have seen waves and stars, + And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars, + And notwithstanding war and hope and fear, + We were as weary there as we are here. + + "The lights that on the violet sea poured down, + The suns that set behind some far-off town, + Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly + Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky; + + "The loveliest countries that rich cities bless, + Never contained the strange wild loveliness + By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud-- + And we were always sorrowful and proud! + + "Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure. + Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure, + Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by, + Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky; + + "And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair + Than the tall cypress? + + --Thus have we, with care, + Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood, + Brothers who dream that distant things are good! + + "We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne; + And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown + In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam + To your rich men would be a ruinous dream; + + "And robes that were a madness to the eyes; + Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes; + Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds--" + + + V. + + And then, and then what more? + + + VI. + + "O childish minds! + + "Forget not that which we found everywhere, + From top to bottom of the fatal stair, + Above, beneath, around us and within, + The weary pageant of immortal sin. + + "We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud, + Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed; + And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool, + Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool; + + "The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood; + And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood; + Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip; + And nations amorous of the brutal whip; + + "Many religions not unlike our own, + All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne; + And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain, + Like a sick man of his own sickness vain; + + "And mad mortality, drunk with its own power, + As foolish now as in a bygone hour, + Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ: + 'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.' + + "And silly monks in love with Lunacy, + Fleeing the troops herded by destiny, + Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled-- + Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" + + + VII. + + O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain! + The world says our own age is little and vain; + For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, + 'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow. + + Must we depart? If you can rest, remain; + Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain, + Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe, + Will pass them by; and some run to and fro + + Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew; + Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too! + And there are some, and these are of the wise, + Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes. + + But when at length the Slayer treads us low, + We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!" + As when of old we parted for Cathay + With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay. + + We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea, + Like youthful wanderers for the first time free-- + Hear you the lovely and funereal voice + That sings: _O come all ye whose wandering joys_ + _Are set upon the scented Lotus flower_, + _For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon_; + _Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power_ + _Of the enchanted, endless afternoon_. + + + VIII. + + O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth! + We have grown weary of the gloomy north; + Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail! + Our hearts are full of light and will not fail. + + O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup! + The fire within the heart so burns us up + That we would wander Hell and Heaven through, + Deep in the Unknown seeking something _new_! + + * * * * * + + + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + + + + +THE STRANGER. + + +Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, +your sister, or your brother? + +"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother." + +Your friends, then? + +"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me." + +Your country? + +"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated." + +Then Beauty? + +"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal." + +Gold? + +"I hate it as you hate your God." + +What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love? + +"I love the clouds--the clouds that pass--yonder--the marvellous +clouds." + + + + +EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA. + + +Beneath a broad grey sky, upon a vast and dusty plain devoid of grass, +and where not even a nettle or a thistle was to be seen, I met several +men who walked bowed down to the ground. + +Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack of +flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier. + +But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and +oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with +her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head +reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by +which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy. + +I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied +that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they +went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to +walk. + +Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the +ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had +said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary +faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the +heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as +the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned +to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere +of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the +curiosity of the human eye. + +During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this +mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor +was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing +Chimæras. + + + + +VENUS AND THE FOOL. + + +How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of +the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love. + +There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters +themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the +festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel. + +It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more +and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the +blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, +making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star. + +Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted +thing. + +At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those +willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when +weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and +ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the +pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears. + +And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior +to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. +Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal +Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy." + +The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her +marble eyes. + + + + +INTOXICATION. + + +One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. +If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your +shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. +But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But +be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green +grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should +waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, +of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that +flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that +speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and +timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be +the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without +cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will." + + + + +THE GIFTS OF THE MOON. + + +The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in +your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child." + +And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the +window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness +of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes +have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From +contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she +so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a +certain readiness to tears. + +In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a +phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance +thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. +You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, +and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; +the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous +flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves +swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of +women. + +"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You +shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have +wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green +ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where +they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem +to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the +will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly." + +And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and +accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august +divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all +_lunatics_. + + + + +THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE. + + +It is a superb land, a country of Cockaigne, as they say, that I dream +of visiting with an old friend. A strange land, drowned in our northern +fogs, that one might call the East of the West, the China of Europe; a +land patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate +vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy. + +A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and +honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is +opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the +unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where +even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all +things, my beloved, are like you. + +Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold +miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? +It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil +and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, +where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is +there that one would live; there that one would die. + +Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen +one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the +"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to +the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his +election? + +Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live,--yonder, +where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the +hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity. + +Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, +beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the +souls of the artists who created them. + +The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, +shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked +windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and +bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. +The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and +mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, +from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular +perfume escapes, a Sumatran _revenez-y_, which is like the soul of the +apartment. + +A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and +shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a +medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house +of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular +land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature +is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, +refashioned. + +Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their +happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them +offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can +solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my _black tulip_ +and my _blue dahlia_! + +Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is +there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and +blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will +you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own +_correspondence_? + +Dreams!--always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, +the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him +his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from +birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with +positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in +and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that +resembles you? + +These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous +flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The +enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with +the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon +your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, +reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your +lovely soul;--and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the +products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they +are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from +Infinity. + + + + +WHAT IS TRUTH? + + +I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the +ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of +glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality. + +But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died +soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon +a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I +myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as +uncorruptible as the coffers of India. + +And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I +became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the +dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and +hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true +Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly +and blindness you shall love me as I truly am." + +But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I +struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to +the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught +perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal. + + + + +ALREADY! + + +A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from +the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred +times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of +twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the +firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And +each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the +approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they +said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by +a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an +unmoving table?" + +There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their +sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the +image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass +with as much enthusiasm as the beasts. + +At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent +and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed +therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of +growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and +fruits. + +Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were +forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted +out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke. + +I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn +his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this +so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its +terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent +by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and +agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that +shall yet live. + +In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had +been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: +"At last!" I could only cry "_Already!_" + +Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its +commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of +promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and +from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring. + + + + +THE DOUBLE CHAMBER. + + +A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly _spiritual_, where the +stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue. + +There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and +desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue +and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the +furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed +with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals. + +The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the +skies, the dropping suns. + +There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the +pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, +is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious +obscurity of music. + +An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a +floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is +lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse. + +The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads +out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. +But why is she here?--who has brought her?--what magical power has +installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter--she +is there; and I recognise her. + +These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle +and terrible mirrors that I recognise by their horrifying malice. They +attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent +enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars +that compel curiosity and admiration. + +To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with +mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the +thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in +common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I +taste minute by minute, second by second. + +Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and +Eternity reigns--an Eternity of delight. + +A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a +hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a +mattock. + +Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the +name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to +add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the +errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a +manuscript. + +The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as +the great René said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking +of the Spectre. + +Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of +eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture, +dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the +sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the +manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days +marked off with a pencil! + +And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a +so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of +stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. +Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation. + +In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar +object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like +all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries. + +Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the +hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, +Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves. + +I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; +and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, +implacable Life!" + +There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good +news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye. + +Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, +as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat, +then, thou slave! Live on, thou damnèd!" + + + + +AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. + + +Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and +tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several +hours at least. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I +shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh +myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the +lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude +and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world. + +A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the +day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he +could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was +an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a +review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable +people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a +knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; +and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the +precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, +during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a +costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: +"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, +foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you +will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have +boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and +indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, +certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused +an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a +perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended. + +Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I +should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the +silence and solitude. + +Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain +me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and +Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some +beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I +am not inferior to those I despise. + + + + +THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST. + + +How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough +to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose +vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen +than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns +his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the +incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the +horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable +existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things +thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the +reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and +picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions. + +These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external +objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within +pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too +tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations. + +And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates +me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, +revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from +Beauty? + +Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my +desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel +where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished. + + + + +THE THYRSUS. + +TO FRANZ LISZT. + + +What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a +sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating +the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But +physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a +vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious +meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and +fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing +complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant +lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the +spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a +mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all +these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical +dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to +decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the +baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty +of the vine branches and the flowers? + +The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and +venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. +Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over +the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles +in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, +unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the +feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. +Straight line and arabesque--intention and expression--the rigidity of +the will and the suppleness of the word--a variety of means united for a +single purpose--the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is +genius--what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to +separate you? + +Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the +pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your +wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City +or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; +improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper +your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, +philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of +immortality! + + + + +THE MARKSMAN. + + +As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the +neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a +few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most +ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?--So he gallantly offered his +hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to +whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great +part of his genius. + +Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far +into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, +mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and +said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, +and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, _I will +imagine to myself that it is you!_" + +He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly +decapitated. + +Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his +inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, +and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!" + + + + +THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY. + + +"Cemetery View Inn"--"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but +it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace +and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound +philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, +or some emblem of life's brevity." + +He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly +smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the +cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the +sunshine. + +The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said +the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon +the corruption beneath. + +The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life--the life of things +infinitely small--and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from +a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of +champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony. + +And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere +charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering +out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your +rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for +the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and +calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near +the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to +win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not +so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would +you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End--the +only true end of life detestable!" + + + + +THE DESIRE TO PAINT. + + +Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this +desire. + +I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so +swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller +must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her. + +She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The +colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal +and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and +gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion +in the darkness. + +I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star +overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one +dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with +her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a +cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the +depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet +peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from +the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly +constrain to dance upon the terrified grass. + +Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of +prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the +unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the +smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes +one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic +land. + +There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win +them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze. + + + + +THE GLASS-VENDOR. + + +These are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, +who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes +act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves +incapable. Such a one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation +awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before +the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter +fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of +six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year +past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards +action, like an arrow from a bow. + +The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet +cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent +and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest +and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time +possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the +most absurd and even the most dangerous acts. + +One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one +time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether +the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His +experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only +too well. + +Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, _in order to see, to +know, to tempt Destiny_, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, +for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of +energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it +manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most +indolent and dreamy beings. + +Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any +man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a café or pass +the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, +invested with all the majesty of Minos, Æcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at +times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the +street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. +Why? Because--because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to +him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does +not know why. + +I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which +give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make +us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I +arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as +it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant +act--and then, alas, I opened the window. + +(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is +not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous +inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the +feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by +those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood +which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and +inconvenient acts.) + +The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill +and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere +of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden +and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me. + +"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not +without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the +stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, +and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile +merchandise. + +At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and +then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose +and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are +insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that +would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the +staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling. + +I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the +man appeared in the door-way beneath I let fall my engine of war +perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the +shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise +like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I +cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!" + +Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays +dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who +has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment? + + + + +THE WIDOWS. + + +Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted +principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted +glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted +souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus +betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the +well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's +cripples. + +To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their +avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there +is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the +place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions +for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn +towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft. + +An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected +lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last +fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound +wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience +deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded +effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported. + +Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor +widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. +Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; +a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is +forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who +exhibit a full complement of sorrow. + +Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the +hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I +do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours +an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a +little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism. + +She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of +an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to +their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she +dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, +and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, +that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal +interest. + +At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those +skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself +remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the +regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was +without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the +purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the +burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, +without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for +many years past--three hundred and sixty-five times a year! + +Yet one more: + +I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at +least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the +enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, +float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the +women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing +nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the +music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not +inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the +mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at +the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering +furnace within. + +There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the +poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed +in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast +with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and +so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like +in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume +of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, +was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. +She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked +upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of +her head. + +It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this +poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so +noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings +with which she is so strikingly in contrast?" + +But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The +tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. +Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay +for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a +superfluity, a toy. + +She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating--and alone, always +alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or +patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a +cat, the confidant of solitary griefs. + + + + +THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY. + + +Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary +ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the +frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three +postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage--and +a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged +themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so +proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for +three of the true Gods. + +The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The +softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His +beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were +like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his +slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the +sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic +insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his +breath. + +Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was +an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned +sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with +shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. +He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and +inscribed with a legend in these singular words: + +"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE"; + +and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his +pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly +upon the nights of the Sabbath. + +From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and +when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, +he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and +polished as well-wrought jewels. + +He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an +insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if +thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master +of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; +thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating +thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose +themselves in thine." + +But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, +then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance +brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I +recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy +equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols +showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy +gifts." + +The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the +lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the +first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch +overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a +crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of +universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung +themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and +under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently +than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging +abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more +surprising. + +This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence +came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a +sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing +his broken teeth--the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. +Then the creature said to me: + +"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes +the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a +sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away +with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; +nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy +skin as upon a tapestry." + +As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in +her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the +charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to +age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of +ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though +heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her +voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, +as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with +brandy. + +"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of +the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic +trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the +newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so +that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand +thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet. + +"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But +it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more +attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of +my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not +what memory of a fanfare prostituted. + +So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed +the light o' love of them that I will not name." + +Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But +unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, +"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. +Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so +delicate." + +So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as +often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too +deeply offended them, for they have never returned. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36287 *** |