The Alchemy of Sadness

One man lights you with his ardour
one decks you in mourning, Nature!
What says to the first: A Sepulchre!
To the other cries: Life and splendour!


Unknown Hermes, who assists,
yet intimidates me as well,
you make me Midas equal,
the saddest of alchemists:


You help me change gold to iron,
paradise to hells kingdom:
in the shrouded atmosphere


I find a dear corpse, and on
the celestial shores, its there,
I build a mighty sepulcher.

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a renowned French poet, essayist, and art critic born on April 9, 1821, in Paris, France. Best known for his collection of poems Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), Baudelaire profoundly influenced the Symbolist and Modernist movements. He led a controversial life, marked by financial difficulties, substance abuse, and relationships with various women. Despite a relatively short life, dying at the age of 46 on August 31, 1867, his work has had a lasting impact on both French and international literature. Baudelaire's writing is characterized by its exploration of beauty, decadence, and the human condition.

Charles Baudelaire

Spleen

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

To the Reader

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

A Voyage To Cythera

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Widows

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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Alchemy Of Suffering

One's ardour, Nature, makes you bright,
One finds within you mourning, grief!
What speaks to one of tombs and death
Says to the other, Splendour! Life!

Mystical Hermes, help to me,
Intimidating though you are,
You make me Midas' counterpart,
No sadder alchemist than he;

My gold is iron by your spell,
And paradise turns into hell;
I see in winding-sheets of clouds

A dear cadaver in its shroud,
And there upon celestial strands
I raise huge tombs above the sands.

Charles Baudelaire

The Alchemy Of Grief - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

    One, Nature! burns and makes thee bright,
        One gives thee weeds to mourn withal;
        And what to one is burial
    Is to the other life and light.

    The unknown Hermes who assists
        And alway fills my heart with fear
        Makes me the mighty Midas' peer
    The saddest of the alchemists.

    Through him I make gold changeable
    To dross, and paradise to hell;
    Clouds for its corpse-cloths I descry.

    A stark dead body I love well,
        And in the gleaming fields on high
        I build immense sarcophagi.

John Collings Squire, Sir

Letter to Sainte-Beuve

On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished
than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished
rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,
trailed our ennui, hunched, round-shouldered,
under the four-square heaven of solitude,
where a child drinks studys tart ten-year brew.
It was in those days, outstanding and memorable,
when the teachers, forced to loosen our classical
fetters, yet all still hostile to your rhyming,
succumbed to the pressure of our mad duelling,
and allowed a triumphant, mutinous, pupil
to make Triboulet howl in Latin, at will.
Which of us in those days of pale adolescence
didnt share the weary torpor of confinement,
eyes lost in the dreary blue of a summer sky
or the snowfalls whiteness, we were dazzled by,
ears pricked, eager...

Charles Baudelaire

Semper Eadem

You said, there grows within you some strange gloom,
A sea rising on rock, why is it so?
When once your heart has brought its harvest home
Life is an evil! (secret all men know),

A simple sorrow, not mysterious,
And, like your joy, it sparkles for us all.
So, lovely one, be not so curious!
And even though your voice is sweet, be still!

Be quiet silly girl! Soul of delight!
Mouth of the childish laugh! More, still, than Life
Death holds us often in the subtlest ways.

So let my heart be lost within a lie,
As in a sweet dream, plunge into your eyes
And sleep a long time in your lashes' shade.

Charles Baudelaire

The Little Old Women

for Victor Hugo

I.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by my fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms.

These dislocated wrecks were women once,
Were Eponine or Lais! hunchbacked freaks,
Though broken let us love them! they are souls.
Under cold rags, their shredded petticoats,

They creep, lashed by the merciless north wind,
Quake from the riot of an omnibus,
Clasp by their sides like relics of a saint
Embroidered bags of flowery design;

They toddle, every bit like marionettes,
Or drag themselves like wounded animals,
Or dance against their will, poor little bells
That a remorseless demon rings! Worn out

They are, yet they have eyes piercing like...

Charles Baudelaire

Heautontimoroumenos

for J.G.F.

I'll strike you without rage or hate
The way a butcher strikes his block,
The way that Moses smote the rock!
So that your eyes may irrigate

My dry Sahara, I'll allow
The tears to flow of your distress.
Desire, that hope embellishes,
Will swim along the overflow

As ships set out for voyaging,
And like a drum that beats the charge
In my infatuated heart
The echoes of your sobs will ring!

But am I not a false accord
Within the holy symphony,
Thanks to voracious Irony
Who gnaws on me and shakes me hard?

She's in my voice, in all I do!
Her poison flows in all my veins!
I am the looking-glass of pain
Where she regards herself, the shrew!

I am the wound, and rapier!
I am the cheek, I am the ...

Charles Baudelaire