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Baudelaire was a wild man of 19th century Paris, poet of Les Fleurs du Mal, translator of Poe, literary and art critic, known for the depth of darkness in his writing and the dissipation, debt & trauma in his life. He frittered away an inheritance, was found guilty of blasphemy & obscenity after publishing his poems, suffered from recurring episodes of despair & depression (“spleen”), & spent the last years of his life in obscure poverty. Only after his death was he recognized as one of the great poets of the 19th century.
Charles “Bad Boy” Baudelaire, mad druggie of Paris, the discoverer of Poe... Who else would write a book entitled Flowers of Evil? He was one of the tribe of eight poets in our first Survivor Poet game here at About Poetry, but he was voted off the island by our readers in the second round of the game. His work was represented in the game by these poems from Les Fleurs du Mal:
Tristesses de la Lune
Ce soir, la lune rêve avec plus de paresse;
Ainsi qu’une beauté, sur de nombreux coussins,
Qui d’une main discrète & légère caresse
Avant de s’endormir le contour de ses seins,
Sur le dos satiné des molles avalanches,
Mourante, elle se livre aux longue pâmoisons,
Et promène ses yeux sur les visions blanches
Qui montent dans l’azur comme des floraisons.
Quand parfois sur ce globe, en sa langueur oisive,
Elle laisse filer un larme furtive,
Un poëte pieux, ennemi du sommeil,
Dan le creux de sa main prend cette larme pâle,
Aux reflets irisés comme un fragment d’opale,
Et la met dans son coeur loin des yeux du soleil.
The Sadness of the Moon
The Moon more indolently dreams tonight
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.
English translation by F.P. Sturm
Beauty
Conceive me as a dream of stone:
my breast, where mortals come to grief,
is made to prompt all poets’ love,
mute and noble as matter itself.
With snow for flesh, with ice for heart,
I sit on high, an unguessed sphinx
begrudging acts that alter forms;
I never laugh, I never weep.
In studious awe the poets brood
before my monumental pose
aped from the proudest pedestal,
and to bind these docile lovers fast
I freeze the world in a perfect mirror:
The timeless light of my wide eyes.
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