LA MORT DES ARTISTES

Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelots

Et baiser ton front bas, morne caricature?

Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature,

Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots?

Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots,

Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature,

Avant de contempler la grande Créature

Dont l'infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots!

Il en est qui jamais n'ont connu leur Idole,

Et ces sculpteurs damnés et marqués d'un affront,

Qui vont se martelant la poitrine et le front,

N'ont qu'un espoir, étrange et sombre Capitole!

C'est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau,

Fera s'épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau!

***

THE DEATH OF ARTISTS

How often must I shake my bells, and kiss 

Your brow, sad Travesty? How many a dart, 

My quiver, shoot at Nature's mystic heart 

Before I hit the target that I miss?

We'll still consume our souls in subtle schemes, 

Demolishing tough harness, long before 

We see the giant Creature of our dreams 

Whom all the world is weeping to adore.

Some never knew their Idol, though they prayed:

And these doomed sculptors, with an insult branded,

Hammer your brows and bosom, heavy-handed,

In the one hope, O Capitol of shade! 

That Death like some new sun should rise and give 

Warmth to their wasted flowers, and make them live.

Charles Baudelaire - La Mort des artistes/The Death of Artists

11:49

• Share it :

Read More

L'AMOUR ET LE CRANE

Vieux cul-de-lampe

L'Amour est assis sur le crâne

De l'Humanité,

Et sur ce trône le profane,

Au rire effronté,

Souffle gaiement des bulles rondes

Qui montent dans l'air,

Comme pour rejoindre les mondes

Au fond de l'éther.

Le globe lumineux et frêle

Prend un grand essor,

Crève et crache son âme grêle

Comme un songe d'or.

J'entends le crâne à chaque bulle

Prier et gémir:

— «Ce jeu féroce et ridicule,

Quand doit-il finir?

Car ce que ta bouche cruelle

Eparpille en l'air,

Monstre assassin, c'est ma cervelle,

Mon sang et ma chair!»

***

LOVE AND THE SKULL

(Old Tail-piece)

With bold and insolent grimace, 

Love laughingly bestrides 

The bare skull of the Human Race, 

And, as enthroned he rides, 

Blows bubbles from his rosy cheek 

Which soar into the sky 

As if, beyond the blue, to seek 

The other worlds on high. 

They ride with wondrous verve at first, 

Reflect the sunny beams, 

Then spit their flimsy souls, to burst 

And fade like golden dreams. 

I hear the skull at each renewal 

Expostulate aghast — 

"This game, ridiculous and cruel — 

When will it end at last? 

For what your cruel mouthpiece drains 

And scatters, sud by sud, 

Monstrous Assassin! is my brains, 

My substance, and my blood."

Charles Baudelaire - L'Amour et le Crâne/Love and the Skull

12:56

• Share it :

Read More

Brumes et pluies


Ô fins d'automne, hivers, printemps trempés de boue,
Endormeuses saisons! je vous aime et vous loue
D'envelopper ainsi mon coeur et mon cerveau
D'un linceul vaporeux et d'un vague tombeau.


Dans cette grande plaine où l'autan froid se joue,
Où par les longues nuits la girouette s'enroue,
Mon âme mieux qu'au temps du tiède renouveau
Ouvrira largement ses ailes de corbeau.


Rien n'est plus doux au coeur plein de choses funèbres,
Et sur qui dès longtemps descendent les frimas,
Ô blafardes saisons, reines de nos climats,


Que l'aspect permanent de vos pâles ténèbres,
— Si ce n'est, par un soir sans lune, deux à deux,
D'endormir la douleur sur un lit hasardeux.


***
Mists and Rains


O ends of autumn, winters, springtimes deep in mud, 
Seasons of drowsiness, — my love and gratitude 
I give you, that have wrapped with mist my heart and brain 
As with a shroud, and shut them in a tomb of rain.


In this wide land when coldly blows the bleak south-west 
And weathervanes at night grow hoarse on the house-crest, 
Better than in the time when green things bud and grow 
My mounting soul spreads wide its black wings of a crow.


The heart filled up with gloom, and to the falling sleet
Long since accustomed, finds no other thing more sweet — 
O dismal seasons, queens of our sad climate crowned — 


Than to remain always in your pale shadows drowned; 
(Unless it be, some dark night, kissing an unseen head, 
To rock one's pain to sleep upon a hazardous bed.)

Charles Baudelaire - Brumes et pluies/Mists and Rains

00:22

• Share it :

Read More

Punishment of Pride


In those old times wherein Theology
Flourished with greater sap and energy,
A celebrated doctor — so they say —
Having stirred many careless hearts one day
Down to their dullest depths, and having shown
Strange pathways leading to the heavenly throne —
Tracks he himself had never journeyed on
(Whereby maybe pure spirits alone had gone) —
Frenzied and swollen by the devilish pride,
Like to a man who has climbed too high, outcried:
"Ah, little Jesus, I have lifted thee!
But had I willed to assault thy dignity,
Thy shame had matched they present fame, and lo!
Thou wouldst be but a wretched embryo!"

Straightway his reason left him; that keen mind,
Sunbright before, was darkened and made blind;
All chaos whirled within that intellect
Erewhile a shrine with all fair gems bedeckt,
Beneath whose roof such pomp had shone so bright;
He was possessed by silence and thick night
As is a cellar when its key is lost…
Thenceforth he was a brute beast; when he crossed
The fields at times, not seeing any thing,
Knowing not if it were winter or green spring,
Useless, repulsive, vile, he made a mock
For infants, a mere children's laughing-stock.

Charles Baudelaire - Punishment of Pride/Châtiment de l’orgueil

20:03

• Share it :

Read More