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-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50489 ***
-
-POEMS IN PROSE
-
-FROM
-
-CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
-
-TRANSLATED BY
-
-ARTHUR SYMONS
-
-LONDON
-
-ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET
-
-1913
-
-
-
-
-The "Petits Poèmes en Prose" are experiments, and they are also
-confessions. "Who of us," says Baudelaire in his dedicatory preface,
-"has not dreamed, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic
-prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme, subtle and staccato
-enough to follow the lyric motions of the soul, the wavering outlines
-of meditation, the sudden starts of the conscience?" This miracle he
-has achieved in these _bagatelles laborieuses_, to use his own words,
-these astonishing trifles, in which the art is not more novel, precise
-and perfect than the quality of thought and of emotion. In translating
-into English a few of these little masterpieces, which have given me so
-much delight for so many years, I have tried to be absolutely faithful
-to the sense, the words, and the rhythm of the original.
-
-A. S.
-
-
-
-      CONTENTS
-
-       I. The Favours of the Moon
-      II. Which is True?
-     III. "L'Invitation au Voyage"
-      IV. The Eyes of the Poor
-       V. Windows
-      VI. Crowds
-     VII. The Cake
-    VIII. Evening Twilight
-      IX. "Anywhere out of the World"
-       X. A Heroic Death
-      XI. Be Drunken
-     XII. Epilogue
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-The Favours of the Moon
-
-
-The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in through the window
-when you lay asleep in your cradle, and said inwardly: "This is
-a child after my own soul."
-
-And she came softly down the staircase of the clouds, and
-passed noiselessly through the window-pane. Then she laid
-herself upon you with the supple tenderness of a mother, and
-she left her colours upon your face. That is why your eyes are
-green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. It was when you
-looked at her, that your pupils widened so strangely; and she
-clasped her arms so tenderly about your throat that ever since
-you have had the longing for tears.
-
-Nevertheless, in the flood of her joy, the Moon filled the room
-like a phosphoric atmosphere, like a luminous poison; and all
-this living light thought and said: "My kiss shall be upon you
-for ever. You shall be beautiful as I am beautiful. You shall
-love that which I love and that by which I am loved: water and
-clouds, night and silence; the vast green sea; the formless and
-multiform water; the place where you shall never be; the lover
-whom you shall never know; unnatural flowers; odours which make
-men drunk; the cats that languish upon pianos and sob like
-women, with hoarse sweet voices!
-
-"And you shall be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtiers.
-You shall be the queen of men who have green eyes, and whose
-throats I have clasped by night in my caresses; of those that
-love the sea, the vast tumultuous green sea, formless and
-multiform water, the place where they are not, the woman whom
-they know not, the ominous flowers that are like the censers
-of an unknown rite, the odours that trouble the will, and the
-savage and voluptuous beasts that are the emblems of their
-folly."
-
-And that is why, accursed dear spoilt child, I lie now at
-your feet, seeking to find in you the image of the fearful
-goddess, the fateful godmother, the poisonous nurse of all the
-moonstruck of the world.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-Which is True?
-
-
-I knew one Benedict?, who filled earth and air with the ideal;
-and from whose eyes men learnt the desire of greatness, of
-beauty, of glory, and of all whereby we believe in immortality.
-
-But this miraculous child was too beautiful to live long; and
-she died only a few days after I had come to know her, and I
-buried her with my own hands, one day when Spring shook out her
-censer in the graveyards. I buried her with my own hands, shut
-down into a coffin of wood, perfumed and incorruptible like
-Indian caskets.
-
-And as I still gazed at the place where I had laid away my
-treasure, I saw all at once a little person singularly like the
-deceased, who trampled on the fresh soil with a strange and
-hysterical violence, and said, shrieking with laughter: "Look
-at me! I am the real Benedicta! a pretty sort of baggage I am!
-And to punish you for your blindness and folly you shall love
-me just as I am!"
-
-But I was furious, and I answered: "No! no! no!" And to
-add more emphasis to my refusal I stamped on the ground so
-violently with my foot that my leg sank up to the knee in the
-earth of the new' grave; and now, like a wolf caught in a trap,
-I remain fastened, perhaps for ever, to the grave of the ideal.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-"L'Invitation au Voyage"
-
-
-There is a wonderful country, a country of Cockaigne, they say,
-which I dreamed of visiting with an old friend. It is a strange
-country, lost in the mists of the North and one might call it
-the East of the West, the China of Europe, so freely does a
-warm and capricious fancy flourish there, and so patiently and
-persistently has that fancy illustrated it with a learned and
-delicate vegetation.
-
-A real country of Cockaigne, where everything is beautiful,
-rich, quiet, honest; where order is the likeness and the
-mirror of luxury; where life is fat, and sweet to breathe;
-where disorder, tumult, and the unexpected are shut out; where
-happiness is wedded to silence; where even cooking is poetic,
-rich and highly flavoured at once; where all, dear love, is
-made in your image.
-
-You know that feverish sickness which comes over us in our
-cold miseries, that nostalgia of unknown lands, that anguish
-of curiosity? There is a country made in your image, where all
-is beautiful, rich, quiet and honest; where fancy has built
-and decorated a western China, where life is sweet to breathe,
-where happiness is wedded to silence. It is there that we
-should live, it is there that we should die!
-
-Yes, it is there that we should breathe, dream, and lengthen
-out the hours by the infinity of sensations. A musician has
-written an "Invitation à la Valse": who will compose the
-"Invitation au Voyage" that we can offer to the beloved, to the
-chosen sister?
-
-Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live;
-far off, where slower hours contain more thoughts, where clocks
-strike happiness with a deeper and more significant solemnity.
-
-On shining panels, or on gilded leather of a dark richness,
-slumbers the discreet life of pictures, deep, calm, and devout
-as the souls of the painters who created it. The sunsets which
-colour so richly the walls of dining-room and drawing-room,
-are sifted through beautiful hangings or through tall wrought
-windows leaded into many panes. The pieces of furniture are
-large, curious, and fantastic, armed with locks and secrets
-like refined souls. Mirrors, metals, hangings, goldsmith's work
-and pottery, play for the eyes a mute and mysterious symphony;
-and from all things, from every corner, from the cracks of
-drawers and from the folds of hangings, exhales a singular
-odour, a "forget-me-not" of Sumatra, which is, as it were, the
-soul of the abode.
-
-A real country of Cockaigne, I assure you, where all is
-beautiful, clean, and shining, like a clear conscience, like a
-bright array of kitchen crockery, like splendid jewellery of
-gold, like many-coloured jewellery of silver! All the treasures
-of the world have found their way there, as to the house of
-a hard-working man who has put the whole world in his debt.
-Singular country, excelling others as Art excels Nature, where
-Nature is refashioned by dreams, where Nature is corrected,
-embellished, re-moulded.
-
-Let the alchemists of horticulture seek and seek again, let
-them set ever further and further back the limits to their
-happiness! Let them offer prizes of sixty and of a hundred
-thousand florins to whoever will solve their ambitious
-problems! For me, I have found my "black tulip" and my "blue
-dahlia"!
-
-Incomparable flower, recaptured tulip, allegoric dahlia, it
-is there, is it not, in that beautiful country, so calm and
-so full of dreams, that you live and flourish? There, would
-you not be framed within your own analogy, and would you not
-see yourself again, reflected, as the mystics say, in your own
-"correspondence"?
-
-Dreams, dreams ever! and the more delicate and ambitious the
-soul, the further do dreams estrange it from possible things.
-Every man carries within himself his natural dose of opium,
-ceaselessly secreted and renewed, and, from birth to death, how
-many hours can we reckon of positive pleasure, of successful
-and decided action? Shall we ever live in, shall we ever pass
-into, that picture which my mind has painted, that picture made
-in your image?
-
-These treasures, this furniture, this luxury, this order, these
-odours, these miraculous flowers, are you. You too are the
-great rivers and the quiet canals. The vast ships that drift
-down them, laden with riches, from whose decks comes the sound
-of the monotonous songs of labouring sailors, are my thoughts
-which slumber or rise and fall on your breast. You lead them
-softly towards the sea, which is the infinite, mirroring the
-depths of the sky in the crystal clearness of your soul; and
-when, weary of the surge and heavy with the spoils of the East,
-they return to the port of their birth, it is still my thoughts
-that come back enriched out of the infinite to you.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-The Eyes of the Poor
-
-
-Ah! you want to know why I hate you to-day It will probably be
-less easy for you to understand than for me to explain it to
-you; for you are, I think, the most perfect example of feminine
-impenetrability that could possibly be found.
-
-We had spent a long day together, and it had seemed to me
-short. We had promised one another that we would think the same
-thoughts and that our two souls should become one soul; a dream
-which is not original, after all, except that, dreamed by all
-men, it has been realised by none.
-
-In the evening you were a little tired, and you sat down
-outside a new café at the corner of a new boulevard, still
-littered with plaster and already displaying proudly its
-unfinished splendours. The café glittered. The very gas put on
-all the fervency of a fresh start, and lighted up with its full
-force the blinding whiteness of the walls, the dazzling sheets
-of glass in the mirrors, the gilt of cornices and mouldings,
-the chubby-cheeked pages straining back from hounds in leash,
-the ladies laughing at the falcons on their wrists, the nymphs
-and goddesses carrying fruits and pies and game on their heads,
-the Hebes and Ganymedes holding out at arm's-length little jars
-of syrups or parti-coloured obelisks of ices; the whole of
-history and of mythology brought together to make a paradise
-for gluttons. Exactly opposite to us, in the roadway, stood
-a man of about forty years of age, with a weary face and a
-greyish beard, holding a little boy by one hand and carrying on
-the other arm a little fellow too weak to walk. He was taking
-the nurse-maid's place, and had brought his children out for
-a walk in the evening. All were in rags. The three faces were
-extraordinarily serious, and the six eyes stared fixedly at
-the new café with an equal admiration, differentiated in each
-according to age.
-
-The father's eyes said: "How beautiful it is! how beautiful
-it is! One would think that all the gold of the poor world
-had found its way to these walls." The boy's eyes said: "How
-beautiful it is! how beautiful it is! But that is a house which
-only people who are not like us can enter." As for the little
-one's eyes, they were too fascinated to express anything but
-stupid and utter joy.
-
-Song-writers say that pleasure ennobles the soul and softens
-the heart. The song was right that evening, so far as I was
-concerned. Not only was I touched by this family of eyes, but
-I felt rather ashamed of our glasses and decanters, so much
-too much for our thirst. I turned to look at you, dear love,
-that I might read my own thought in you; I gazed deep into your
-eyes, so beautiful and so strangely sweet, your green eyes that
-are the home of caprice and under the sovereignty of the Moon;
-and you said to me: "Those people are insupportable to me with
-their staring saucer-eyes! Couldn't you tell the head waiter to
-send them away?"
-
-So hard is it to understand one another, dearest, and so
-incommunicable is thought, even between people who are in love!
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-Windows
-
-
-He who looks in through an open window never sees so many
-things as he who looks at a shut window. There is nothing more
-profound, more mysterious, more fertile, more gloomy, or more
-dazzling, than a window lighted by a candle. What we can see
-in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on
-behind the panes of a window. In that dark or luminous hollow,
-life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
-
-Across the waves of roofs, I can see a woman of middle age,
-wrinkled, poor, who is always leaning over something, and who
-never goes out. Out of her face, out of her dress, out of her
-attitude, out of nothing almost, I have made up the woman's
-story, and sometimes I say it over to myself with tears.
-
-If it had been a poor old man, I could have made up his just as
-easily.
-
-And I go to bed, proud of having lived and suffered in others.
-
-Perhaps you will say to me: "Are you sure that it is the real
-story?" What does it matter, what does any reality outside of
-myself matter, if it has helped me to live, to feel that I am,
-and what I am?
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-Crowds
-
-
-It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude: to
-play upon crowds is an art; and he alone can plunge, at the
-expense of humankind, into a debauch of vitality, to whom
-a fairy has bequeathed in his cradle the love of masks and
-disguises, the hate of home and the passion of travel.
-
-Multitude, solitude: equal terms mutually convertible by the
-active and begetting poet. He who does not know how to people
-his solitude, does not know either how to be alone in a busy
-crowd.
-
-The poet enjoys this incomparable privilege, to be at once
-himself and others. Like those wandering souls that go about
-seeking bodies, he enters at will the personality of every man.
-For him alone, every place is vacant; and if certain places
-seem to be closed against him, that is because in his eyes they
-are not worth the trouble of visiting.
-
-The solitary and thoughtful walker derives a singular
-intoxication from this universal communion. He who mates
-easily with the crowd knows feverish joys that must be for
-ever unknown to the egoist, shut up like a coffer, and to the
-sluggard, imprisoned like a shell-fish. He adopts for his own
-all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that
-circumstance sets before him.
-
-What men call love is small indeed, narrow and weak indeed,
-compared with this ineffable orgie, this sacred prostitution of
-the soul which gives itself up wholly (poetry and charity!) to
-the unexpected which happens, to the stranger as he passes.
-
-It is good sometimes that the happy of this world should learn,
-were it only to humble their foolish pride for an instant,
-that there are higher, wider, and rarer joys than theirs. The
-founders of colonies, the shepherds of nations, the missionary
-priests, exiled to the ends of the earth, doubtless know
-something of these mysterious intoxications; and, in the midst
-of the vast family that their genius has raised about them,
-they must sometimes laugh at the thought of those who pity them
-for their chaste lives and troubled fortunes.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-The Cake
-
-
-I was travelling. The landscape in the midst of which I
-was seated was of an irresistible grandeur and sublimity.
-Something no doubt at that moment passed from it into my
-soul. My thoughts fluttered with a lightness like that of the
-atmosphere; vulgar passions, such as hate and profane love,
-seemed to me now as far away as the clouds that floated in the
-gulfs beneath my feet; my soul seemed to me as vast and pure
-as the dome of the sky that enveloped me; the remembrance of
-earthly things came as faintly to my heart as the thin tinkle
-of the bells of unseen herds, browsing far, far away, on the
-slope of another mountain. Across the little motionless lake,
-black with the darkness of its immense depth, there passed
-from time to time the shadow of a cloud, like the shadow of an
-airy giant's cloak, flying through heaven. And I remember that
-this rare and solemn sensation, caused by a vast and perfectly
-silent movement, filled me with mingled joy and fear. In a
-word, thanks to the enrapturing beauty about me, I felt that
-I was at perfect peace with myself and with the universe; I
-even believe that, in my complete forgetfulness of all earthly
-evil, I had come to think the newspapers are right after all,
-and man was born good; when, incorrigible matter renewing its
-exigences, I sought to refresh the fatigue and satisfy the
-appetite caused by so lengthy a climb. I took from my pocket
-a large piece of bread, a leathern cup, and a small bottle
-of a certain elixir which the chemists at that time sold to
-tourists, to be mixed, on occasion, with liquid snow.
-
-I was quietly cutting my bread when a slight noise made me
-look up. I saw in front of me a little ragged urchin, dark
-and dishevelled, whose hollow eyes, wild and supplicating,
-devoured the piece of bread. And I heard him gasp, in a low,
-hoarse voice, the word: "Cake!" I could not help laughing at
-the appellation with which he thought fit to honour my nearly
-white bread, and I cut off a big slice and offered it to him.
-Slowly he came up to me, not taking his eyes from the coveted
-object; then, snatching it out of my hand, he stepped quickly
-back, as if he feared that my offer was not sincere, or that I
-had already repented of it.
-
-But at the same instant he was knocked over by another little
-savage, who had sprung from I know not where, and who was
-so precisely like the first that one might have taken them
-for twin brothers. They rolled over on the ground together,
-struggling for the possession of the precious booty, neither
-willing to share it with his brother. The first, exasperated,
-clutched the second by the hair; and the second seized one of
-the ears of the first between his teeth, and spat out a little
-bleeding morsel with a fine oath in dialect. The legitimate
-proprietor of the cake tried to hook his little claws into
-the usurper's eyes; the latter did his best to throttle his
-adversary with one hand, while with the other he endeavoured
-to slip the prize of war into his pocket. But, heartened by
-despair, the loser pulled himself together, and sent the victor
-sprawling with a blow of the head in his stomach. Why describe
-a hideous fight which indeed lasted longer than their childish
-strength seemed to promise? The cake travelled from hand to
-hand, and changed from pocket to pocket, at every moment but,
-alas, it changed also in size; and when at length, exhausted,
-panting and bleeding, they stopped from the sheer impossibility
-of going on, there was no longer any cause of feud; the slice
-of bread had disappeared, and lay scattered in crumbs like the
-grains of sand with which it was mingled.
-
-The sight had darkened the landscape for me, and dispelled
-the joyous calm in which my soul had lain basking; I remained
-saddened for quite a long time, saying over and over to myself:
-"There is then a wonderful country in which bread is called
-cake, and is so rare a delicacy that it is enough in itself to
-give rise to a war literally fratricidal!"
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-Evening Twilight
-
-
-The day is over. A great restfulness descends into poor minds
-that the day's work has wearied; and thoughts take on the
-tender and dim colours of twilight.
-
-Nevertheless from the mountain peak there comes to my balcony,
-through the transparent clouds of evening, a great clamour,
-made up of a crowd of discordant cries, dulled by distance into
-a mournful harmony, like that of the rising tide or of a storm
-brewing.
-
-Who are the hapless ones to whom evening brings no calm; to
-whom, as to the owls, the coming of night is the signal for a
-witches' sabbath? The sinister ululation comes to me from the
-hospital on the mountain; and, in the evening, as I smoke, and
-look down on the quiet of the immense valley, bristling with
-houses, each of whose windows seems to say, "Here is peace,
-here is domestic happiness!" I can, when the wind blows from
-the heights, lull my astonished thought with this imitation of
-the harmonies of hell.
-
-Twilight excites madmen. I remember I had two friends whom
-twilight made quite ill. One of them lost all sense of social
-and friendly amenities, and flew at the first-comer like a
-savage. I have seen him throw at the waiter's head an excellent
-chicken, in which he imagined he had discovered some insulting
-hieroglyph. Evening, harbinger of profound delights, spoilt for
-him the most succulent things.
-
-The other, a prey to disappointed ambition, turned gradually,
-as the daylight dwindled, sourer, more gloomy, more nettlesome.
-Indulgent and sociable during the day, he was pitiless in the
-evening; and it was not only on others, but on himself, that he
-vented the rage of his twilight mania.
-
-The former died mad, unable to recognise his wife and child;
-the latter still keeps the restlessness of a perpetual
-disquietude; and, if all the honours that republics and princes
-can confer were heaped upon him, I believe that the twilight
-would still quicken in him the burning envy of imaginary
-distinctions. Night, which put its own darkness into their
-minds, brings light to mine; and, though it is by no means rare
-for the same cause to bring about opposite results, I am always
-as it were perplexed and alarmed by it.
-
-O night! O refreshing dark! for me you are the summons to
-an inner feast, you are the deliverer from anguish! In the
-solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a city,
-scintillation of stars, outburst of gas-lamps, you are the
-fireworks of the goddess Liberty!
-
-Twilight, how gentle you are and how tender! The rosy lights
-that still linger on the horizon, like the last agony of
-day under the conquering might of its night; the flaring
-candle-flames that stain with dull red the last glories of the
-sunset; the heavy draperies that an invisible hand draws out of
-the depths of the East, mimic all those complex feelings that
-war on one another in the heart of man at the solemn moments of
-life.
-
-Would you not say that it was one of those strange costumes
-worn by dancers, in which the tempered splendours of a shining
-skirt show through a dark and transparent gauze, as, through
-the darkness of the present, pierces the delicious past? And
-the wavering stars of gold and silver with which it is shot,
-are they not those fires of fancy which take light never so
-well as under the deep mourning of the night?
-
-"Anywhere out of the World"
-
-Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the
-desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the
-fire, and another is certain that he would get well if he were
-by the window.
-
-It seems to me that I should always be happy if I were
-somewhere else, and this question of moving house is one that I
-am continually talking over with my soul.
-
-"Tell me, my soul, poor chilly soul, what do you say to living
-in Lisbon? It must be very warm there, and you would bask
-merrily, like a lizard. It is by the sea; they say that it is
-built of marble, and that the people have such a horror of
-vegetation that they tear up all the trees. There is a country
-after your own soul; a country made up of light and mineral,
-and with liquid to reflect them."
-
-My soul makes no answer.
-
-"Since you love rest, and to see moving things, will you come
-and live in that heavenly land, Holland? Perhaps you would be
-happy in a country which you have so often admired in pictures.
-What do you say to Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts,
-and ships anchored at the doors of houses?"
-
-My soul remains silent.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-"ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD"
-
-
-"Or perhaps Java seems to you more attractive? Well, there we
-shall find the mind of Europe married to tropical beauty."
-
-Not a word. Can my soul be dead?
-
-"Have you sunk then into so deep a stupor that only your own
-pain gives you pleasure? If that be so, let us go to the lands
-that are made in the likeness of Death. I know exactly the
-place for us, poor soul! We will book our passage to Torneo. We
-will go still further, to the last limits of the Baltic; and,
-if it be possible, further still from life; we will make our
-abode at the Pole. There the sun only grazes the earth, and the
-slow alternations of light and night put out variety and bring
-in the half of nothingness, monotony. There we can take great
-baths of darkness, while, from time to time, for our pleasure,
-the Aurora Borealis shall scatter its rosy sheaves before us,
-like reflections of fireworks in hell!"
-
-At last my soul bursts into speech, and wisely she cries to me:
-"Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world!"
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-A Heroic Death
-
-
-Fancioulle was an admirable buffoon, and almost one of the
-friends of the Prince. But for persons professionally devoted
-to the comic, serious things have a fatal attraction, and,
-strange as it may seem that ideas of patriotism and liberty
-should seize despotically upon the brain of a player, one day
-Fancioulle joined in a conspiracy formed by some, discontented
-nobles.
-
-There exist everywhere sensible men to denounce those
-individuals of atrabiliar disposition who seek to depose
-princes, and, without consulting it, to reconstitute society.
-The lords in question were arrested, together with Fancioulle,
-and condemned to death.
-
-I would readily believe that the Prince was almost sorry
-to find his favourite actor among the rebels. The Prince
-was neither better nor worse than any other prince; but an
-excessive sensibility rendered him, in many cases, more cruel
-and more despotic than all his fellows. Passionately enamoured
-of the fine arts, an excellent connoisseur as well, he was
-truly insatiable of pleasures. Indifferent enough in regard to
-men and morals, himself a real artist, he feared no enemy but
-Ennui, and the extravagant efforts that he made to fly or to
-vanquish this tyrant of the world would certainly have brought
-upon him, on the part of a severe historian, the epithet of
-"monster," had it been permitted, in his dominions, to write
-anything whatever which did not tend exclusively to pleasure,
-or to astonishment, which is one of the most delicate forms of
-pleasure. The great misfortune of the Prince was that he had no
-theatre vast enough for his genius. There are young Neros who
-are stifled within too narrow limits, and whose names and whose
-intentions will never be known to future ages. An unforeseeing
-Providence had given to this man faculties greater than his
-dominions.
-
-Suddenly the rumour spread that the sovereign had decided to
-pardon all the conspirators; and the origin of this rumour was
-the announcement of a special performance in which Fancioulle
-would play one of his best _rôles_, and at which even the
-condemned nobles, it was said, were to be present, an evident
-sign, added superficial minds, of the generous tendencies of
-the Prince.
-
-On the part of a man so naturally and deliberately eccentric,
-anything was possible, even virtue, even mercy, especially if
-he could hope to find in it unexpected pleasures. But to those
-who, like myself, had succeeded in penetrating further into the
-depths of this sick and curious soul, it was infinitely more
-probable that the Prince was wishful to estimate the quality
-of the scenic talents of a man condemned to death. He would
-profit by the occasion to obtain a physiological experience of
-a _capital_ interest, and to verify to what extent the habitual
-faculties of an artist would be altered or modified by the
-extraordinary situation in which he found himself. Beyond this,
-did there exist in his mind an intention, more or less defined,
-of mercy? It is a point that has never been solved.
-
-At last, the great day having come, the little court displayed
-all its pomps, and it would be difficult to realise, without
-having seen it, what splendour the privileged classes of a
-little state with limited resources can show forth, on a really
-solemn occasion. This was a doubly solemn one, both from the
-wonder of its display and from the mysterious moral interest
-attaching to it.
-
-The Sieur Fancioulle excelled especially in parts either
-silent or little burdened with words, such as are often
-the principal ones in those fairy plays whose object is to
-represent symbolically the mystery of life. He came upon the
-stage lightly and with a perfect ease, which in itself lent
-some support, in the minds of the noble public, to the idea of
-kindness and forgiveness.
-
-When we say of an actor, "This is a good actor," we make use
-of a formula which implies that under the personage we can
-still distinguish the actor, that is to say, art, effort,
-will. Now, if an actor should succeed in being, in relation
-to the personage whom he is appointed to express, precisely
-what the finest statues of antiquity, miraculously animated,
-living, walking, seeing, would be in relation to the confused
-general idea of beauty, this would be, undoubtedly, a singular
-and unheard of case. Fancioulle was, that evening, a perfect
-idealisation, which it was impossible not to suppose living,
-possible, real. The buffoon came and went, he laughed, wept,
-was convulsed, with an indestructible aureole about his head,
-an aureole invisible to all, but visible to me, and in which
-were blended, in a strange amalgam, the rays of Art and the
-martyr's glory. Fancioulle brought, by I know not what special
-grace, something divine and supernatural into even the most
-extravagant buffooneries. My pen trembles, and the tears
-of an emotion which I cannot forget rise to my eyes, as I
-try to describe to you this never-to-be-forgotten evening.
-Fancioulle proved to me, in a peremptory, an irrefutable way,
-that the intoxication of Art is surer than all others to veil
-the terrors of the gulf; that genius can act a comedy on the
-threshold of the grave with a joy that hinders it from seeing
-the grave, lost, as it is, in a Paradise shutting out all
-thought of the grave and of destruction.
-
-The whole audience, _blasé_ and frivolous as it was, soon
-fell under the all-powerful sway of the artist. Not a thought
-was left of death, of mourning, or of punishment. All gave
-themselves up, without disquietude, to the manifold delights
-caused by the sight of a masterpiece of living art. Explosions
-of joy and admiration again and again shook the dome of the
-edifice with the energy of a continuous thunder. The Prince
-himself, in an ecstasy, joined in the applause of his court.
-
-Nevertheless, to a discerning eye, his emotion was not
-unmixed. Did he feel himself conquered in his power as despot?
-humiliated in his art as the striker of terror into hearts, of
-chill into souls? Such suppositions, not exactly justified,
-but not absolutely unjustifiable, passed through my mind as
-I contemplated the face of the Prince, on which a new pallor
-gradually overspread its habitual paleness, as snow overspreads
-snow. His lips compressed themselves tighter and tighter, and
-his eyes lighted up with an inner fire like that of jealousy
-or of spite, even while he applauded the talents of his old
-friend, the strange buffoon, who played the buffoon so well in
-the face of death. At a certain moment, I saw his Highness lean
-towards a little page, stationed behind him, and whisper in his
-ear. The roguish face of the pretty child lit up with a smile,
-and he briskly quitted the Prince's box as if to execute some
-urgent commission.
-
-A few minutes later a shrill and prolonged hiss interrupted
-Fancioulle in one of his finest moments, and rent alike every
-ear and heart. And from the part of the house from whence this
-unexpected note of disapproval had sounded, a child darted into
-a corridor with stifled laughter.
-
-Fancioulle, shaken, roused out of his dream, closed his eyes,
-then re-opened them, almost at once, extraordinarily wide,
-opened his mouth as if to breathe convulsively, staggered a
-little forward, a little backward, and then fell stark dead on
-the boards.
-
-Had the hiss, swift as a sword, really frustrated the hangman?
-Had the Prince himself divined all the homicidal efficacy
-of his ruse? It is permitted to doubt it. Did he regret his
-dear and inimitable Fancioulle? It is sweet and legitimate to
-believe it.
-
-The guilty nobles had enjoyed the performance of comedy for the
-last time. They were effaced from life.
-
-Since then, many mimes, justly appreciated in different
-countries, have played before the court of ----; but none of
-them have ever been able to recall the marvellous talents of
-Fancioulle, or to rise to the same _favour_.
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-
-Be Drunken
-
-
-Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only
-question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time
-weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be
-drunken continually.
-
-Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as
-you will. But be drunken.
-
-And it sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green
-side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
-you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped
-away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star,
-or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs,
-or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the
-wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: "It is the hour
-to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves
-of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or
-with virtue, as you will."
-
-
-
-
-    XII
-
-
-    Epilogue
-
-
-    With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's
-    Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower,
-    Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,
-
-    Where evil comes up softly like a flower.
-    Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,
-    Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;
-
-    But, like an old sad faithful lecher, fain
-    To drink delight of that enormous trull
-    Whose hellish beauty makes me young again.
-
-    Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapours full,
-    Sodden with day, or, new apparelled, stand
-    In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,
-
-    I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and
-    Hunted have pleasures of their own to give,
-    The vulgar herd can never understand.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems in Prose, by Charles Baudelaire
-
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50489 ***