Collected Poetical Works of Charles Baudelaire

by Charles Baudelaire

  She is lovely, far more than that; she is all-sufficing. She is a study in black: all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound. Her eyes are two deep pools wherein mystery vaguely coils and stirs; her glance is phosphorescent; it is like lightning on a summer night of black velvet.

  She is comparable to a great black Sun, if one could imagine a dark star brimming over with happiness and light. She stirs within one dreams of the moon, Night’s Queen who casts spells upon her — not the white moon, that cold bride of summer idylls, but the sinister, intoxicating moon which hangs in the leaden vault of storm, among the driven clouds; not the pale, peaceful moon who visits the sleep of the pure; but the fiery moon, tom from the conquered heavens, before whom dance the witches of Thessaly.

  Upon the brow determination sits; she is ever seeking whom she may enthrall. Her delicately curved and quivering nostrils breathe incense from unknown lands; a haunting smile lingers on her subtle lips — lips softer than sleep-laden poppy petals, kissed by the suns of tropic lands.

  There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo and win. She makes me long to fall asleep at her feet, beneath her slow and steady gaze.

  EACH MAN HIS OWN CHIMÆRA

  Beneath a vault of livid sky, upon a far-flung and dusty plain where no grass grew, where not a nettle or a thistle dared raise its head, men passed me bowed down to the ground.

  Each bore upon his back a great Chimæra, heavy as a sack of coal, or as the equipment of a foot-soldier of Rome.

  But the monster was no dead weight. With her all-powerful and elastic muscles she encircled and oppressed her mount, clawing with two great talons at his breast. Her fabulous head reposed upon his brow, like a casque of ancient days whereby warriors struck fear to the hearts of their foes.

  I questioned one of the wayfarers, asking why they walked thus. He replied that he knew nothing, neither he nor his companions, but that they moved towards an unknown land, urged on by irresistible impulse.

  None of the wayfarers was discomforted by the foul thing which hung upon his neck. One said that it was part of himself.

  Beneath the lowering dome of sky they journeyed on. They trod the dust-strewn earth — earth as desolate as the dusty sky. Their weary faces bore no witness to despair; they were condemned to hope for ever. So the pilgrimage passed and faded into the mist of the horizon, where the planet unveils itself to the human eye.

  For some moments I tried to solve this mystery; but unconquerable Indifference fell upon me. And I was no more dejected by my burden than they by their crushing Chimæras.

  INTOXICATION

  To be drunken for ever: that is the only thing which matters! If you would escape Time’s bruises and his heavy burdens which weigh you to the earth, you must be drunken.

  But how? With the fruit of the wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you will. But be drunken. And if, sometime, at the gates of a palace, on the green banks of a river, or in the shadowed loneliness of your own room, you should awake and find intoxication lessened or passed away, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask all that flies, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that speaks — ask of these the hour. And the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, and the timepiece will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will.”

  THE MARKSMAN

  As the carriage passed through the wood he told the driver to halt at a shooting-gallery, saying that he wished to have a few shots to kill time.

  Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most usual and legitimate occupation of man?

  So he graciously offered his hand to his dear, adorable, accursed wife; the mysterious woman who was his inspiration, to whom he owed many of his sorrows, many of his joys.

  Several bullets went wide of the mark; one flew far away into the distance. His charming wife laughed deliriously, mocking at his clumsiness. Turning to her, he said brusquely:

  “Look at that doll yonder, on your right, with its nose turned up and so supercilious an air. Think, sweet angel, I will picture to myself that it is you.”

  He closed his eyes, he pulled the trigger. The doll’s head fell upon the ground.

  Then, bending over his dear, adorable, accursed wife, his inevitable and merciless muse, he kissed her hand respectfully, and said: “Ah, sweet Angel, how I thank you for my skill!”

  The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire (1919)

  Translated by James Huneker

  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.

  FRANCISCÆ 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.

  TO FRANZ LISZT.

  THE MARKSMAN.

  THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY.

  THE DESIRE TO PAINT.

  THE GLASS-VENDOR.

  THE WIDOWS.

  THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY.

  James Gibbons Huneker (1857-1921) was an American art, book, music, and theatre critic. A colourful individual and an ambitious writer, Huneker was “an American with a great mission,” in the words of his friend, the critic Benjamin De Casseres.

  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 Quince
y’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 t
he 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”: