I
know that willingly and often the fiend haunts arid land, and that the spirit
of murder and of lechery flares up marvellously in deserted places . But it is
not impossible that this solitude is dangerous only to the idle and wandering
soul, which peoples it with its passions and chimeras. (From: Solitude)
Charles
Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems, 1946. Transl. By Michael Hamburger.
Oh
the great misfortune of those who cannot be alone!' La Bruyère says somewhere,
as though to shame all those who rush away to forget themselves in a crowd,
afraid no doubt, that they cannot support themselves without help. (From:
Solitude)
Charles
Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems, 1946. Transl. By Michael Hamburger.
The
Eyes of the Poor: So you would like to know why I hate you today. No doubt it
will be easier for you to understand than for me to explain it to you; for you
are, I think, the finest example of feminine impermeability that one could
meet. We had spent a day together a long day that seemed short to me. We had
promised each other that all our thoughts would be as one; a dream which, after
all, has nothing original about it, except that, dreamed by every man, it has
been fulfilled by none. In the evening , being a little tired, you wished to
sit down in front of a new cafe which formed the corner of a new boulevard,
still full of plaster and already gloriously revealing its incomplete
splendours. The cafe sparkled. Even the gaslight displayed all the ardour of of
a first appearance, and, with all its might, lit up the walls that were
blindingly white, the dazzling expanse of the mirrors, the gold of the of he
rods and the cornices, the round-cheeked page-boys pulled along by leashed
dogs, the ladies smiling at falcons perched on their fingers, the nymphs and
godesses carrying fruits, pies and game on their heads, the Hebes and Ganymedes
presenting with outstretched arms their little jugs decorated in the Bavarian
style or their two coloured obelisk of streaked plate-glass; the whole of
history and the whole of mythology put at the service of the gormandizer's
pleasure. Straight in front of us, on the road, there stood an honest man about
forty years old, with tired features and greying beard, who with one hand held
a little boy, and on the other arm carried a little creature too feeble to
walk. He was performing the duties of nursemaid and taling his children out in
the evening air. All in rags. Those three faces were extraordinarily serious
and six eyes were fixedly contemplating the new cafe with an admiration equally
tense, though distinguished slightly by differences in age. The father's eyes
were saying: How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is, One would think that all
the gold of the poor world has come together on these walls. The eyes of
the little boy: How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! but it is a house
which only people who are not like us may enter. As for the eyes of the
smallest, they were too fascinated to express anything but a stupid and
profound joy. The song-writers say that pleasure makes the soul good and
softens the heart. The song was right that evening, as far as I was concerned.
Not only was I moved by that family of eyes, but I felt a little ashamed of our
glasses and our decanters that were larger than our thirst. I turned my eyes
towards yours, my love, to read my thoughts in them; I was plunged into your
eyes that are so beautiful and so strangely soft, into your green eyes
inhabited by Caprice and inspired by the moon, when you said: Those people are
unbearable, with their eyes as wide open as coach-house gates! Couldn't youask
the manager of the cafe to send them away? You see, my dear angel, how
difficult it is to understand one another, and how incommunicable all thoughts
are, even between people who love each other!
Charles
Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems, 1946. Transl. By Michael Hamburger.
The
soup and the clouds: My little mad darling was giving me my dinner, and through
the open window of the dining-room I was contemplating the moving architectures
that God makes out of vapours, those marvelous constructions fo the impalpable.
And I said to myself, in the midst of my meditation: All those phantasmagoria
are almost as beautful as the eyes of my beloved, that monstrous little mad
woman with the green eyes. And suddenly I received a violent blow on
my back, and I heard a charming, raucous voice, a voice hysterical and as though
made hoarse by brandy, the voice of my sweet little darling who was saying:
Well, are you going to eat your soup or aren't you, you bloody dithering cloud monger?
Charles
Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems, 1946. Transl. By Michael Hamburger.
Crowds:
It is not given to everyone to take bath in the multitude; to enjoy the crowd
is an art; and only that man can gorge himself with vitality, at the expense of
the human race, whom in his cradle a fairy has inspired with love of disguise
and of the mask, with hatred of the home and a passion for voyaging. Multitude,
solitude: terms that, to the active and fruitful poet, are synonymous and
interchangeable. A man who cannot people his solitude is no less incapable of
being alone in a busy crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege that he
can, at will, be either himself or another. Like those wandering spirits that
seek a body, he enters, when he likes, into the person of any man. For him
alone all is vacant ; and if certain places seem to be closed to him, that is
to his eyes, they are not worth the trouble of being visited. The solitary
pedestrian derives a singular exhilaration from this universal communion. That
man who can easily wed the crows knows a feverish enjoyment which will be
eternally denied to the egoist, shut up like a trunk, and to the lazy man,
imprisoned like a mollusk. The poet adopts as his own all the professions, all
the joys and all the miseries with which circumstance confronts him. What all
men call love is very meagre, very restricted and very feeble, compared to this
ineffable orgy, to this holy prostitution of the soul that abandons itself
entirely, poetry and charity included, to the unexpected arrival, to the
passing stranger. It is good to occasionally bring home to the happy people of
this world, were it only in order to humiliate for a moment their inane pride,
that there is a happiness superior to theirs, vaster and more refined. The
founders of colonies, the pastors of peoples, missionary priests exiled to the
ends of the earth, doubtless know something of this mysterious drunkenness; and
in the heart of the vast family which their genius has created for itself, they
must laugh sometimes at those who pity them for their destiny that is so
unquiet and for their life which is so chaste.
Charles
Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems, 1946. Transl. By Michael Hamburger.
ANYWHERE
OUT OF THE WORLD: This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with
the desire to change beds; one ma would like to suffer in font of the stove,
and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window. It
always seems to me that I should feel well in the place that I am not and this
question of removal is one which I discuss incessantly with my soul.
Tell
me soul, my poor chilled soul, what do you think of going to live in Lisbon? It
must be warm there, and there you would invigorate yourself like a lizard. This
city is on the sea-shore, they say they it is built of marble and that the
people there have such a hatred of vegetation that they uproot all the trees,
There you have a landscape that corresponds to your taste! a landscape made of
light and mineral, and liquid to reflect them! My soul does not reply.
Since
you are so fond of the stillness, coupled with the show of movement would you
like to settle in Holland, that beatified country? Perhaps you would find some
diversion in that land whose image you have so often admired in the art
galleries. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and
ships moored at the foot of houses? My soul remains silent, (...) let us
settle in at the pole. There the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the
slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and increases
monotonyk, that half nothingness. There we shall be able to take long baths of
darkness, while for our amusement the aurora borealis shall send us its rose
coloured rays that are like the reflection of Hell's own fireworks. At last my
soul explodes, and wisely cries out to me:
No
matter where! No matter where! As long as it's out of the world!
Charles
Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems, 1946. Transl. By Michael Hamburger.
The
double room: A room that is like a reverie, a room truly soulful, where the
stagnant atmosphere is lightly tinted with rose-colour and blue. There a soul
bathes in idleness, made fragrant by regret and desire. It is a thing of
twilight, bluish and roseate; a dream of delicious pleasures during an eclipse.
The furniture is formed of elongated, prostrated, languishing shapes. The
furniture appears to be dreaming; endowed with a somnambulistic life, like
vegetables or minerals. The cloth materials speak a silent language, like
flowers, like skies, like setting suns. No artistic abominations on the walls.
In relation to the pure dream, to the impression left unanalysed, definitive
art, positive art is a blasphemy. Here all things possess the required clarity
and the delicious vaigueness of harmony....
Charles Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems, 1946. Transl. By Michael Hamburger.