The Void

Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.
Alas! Its all Abyss, action, longing, dream,
the Word! And I feel Panics storm-wind stream
through my hair, and make it stand upright.

Above, below, around, the desert, the deep,
the silence, the fearful compelling spaces...
With his knowing hand, in my dark, God traces
a multi-formed nightmare without release.

I fear sleep as one fears a deep hole,
full of vague terror. Where to, who knows?
I see only infinity at every window,

and my spirit haunted by vertigos stress
envies the stillness of Nothingness.
Ah! Never to escape from Being and Number!

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

The Bad Monk

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Digging Skeleton

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Mask

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Spleen

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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Parisian Dream

for Constantin Guys

Of this strange, awe-inspiring scene
Such as on earth one never sees,
Today the image once again,
Obscure and distant, captures me.

Sleep is so full of miracles!
By whimsy odd and singular
I've banished from these spectacles
Nature and the irregular.

And, happy with my artistry,
I painted into my tableau
The ravishing monotony
Of marble, metal, water-flow.

Babel of endless stairs, arcades,
It was a palace multifold
Replete with pools and bright cascades
Falling in dull or burnished gold;

And the more weighty waterfalls
Like crystal screens resplendent there
Along the metal rampart walls
Seemed to suspend themselves in air;

The sleeping pools - there were no trees
Gathered aro...

Charles Baudelaire

The Beacons

Ubens, oblivious garden of indolence,
Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,
Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,
As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move.

Leonard Da Vinci, sombre and fathomless glass,
Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile,
Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass,
Among the ice and pines that guard some isle.

Rembrandt, sad hospital that a murmuring fills,
Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls,
Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils,
And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls.

Strong Michelangelo, a vague far place
Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules;
Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace,
And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease.

The fighter's anger,...

Charles Baudelaire

Congenial Horror

From this bizarre and livid sky
Tormented by your destiny,
Into your vacant spirit fly
What tho~ghts? respond, you libertine.

Voracious in my appetite
For the uncertain and unknown,
I do not whine for paradise
As Ovid did, expelled from Rome.

Skies tom apart like wind-swept sands,
You are the mirrors of my pride;
Your mourning clouds, so black and wide,

Are hearses that my dreams command,
And you reflect in flashing light
The Hell in which my heart delights.

Charles Baudelaire

The Double Chamber

A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly spiritual, where the stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue.
There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals.
The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the skies, the dropping suns.
There are no artistic abominations upon the walls.
Compared with the pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, is a blasphemy.
Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious obscurity of music.
An infinitesimal odour of the m...

Charles Baudelaire

Elevation

Above the ponds, beyond the valleys,
The woods, the mountains, the clouds, the seas,
Farther than the sun, the distant breeze,
The spheres that wilt to infinity

My spirit, you move with agility
And, like a good swimmer who swoons in the wave
You groove the depths immensity gave,
The inexpressible and male ecstasy.

>From this miasma of waste,
You will be purified in superior air
And drink a pure and divine liqueur,
A clear fire to replace the limpid space

Behind this boredom and fatigue, this vast chagrin
Whose weight moves the mists of existence,
Happy is he who vigorously fans the senses
Toward serene and luminous fields - wincing!

The one whose thoughts are like skylarks taken wing
Across the heavens mornings in full flight

Charles Baudelaire

De Profundis Clamavi

I beg your pity, You, my only love;
My fallen heart lies in a deep abyss,
A universe of leaden heaviness,
Where cursing terrors swim the night above!

For six months stands a sun with heatless beams,
The other months are spent in total night;
It is a polar land to human sight
No greenery, no trees, no running streams!

But there is not a horror to surpass
The cruelty of that blank sun's cold glass,
And that long night, that Chaos come again!

I'm jealous of the meanest of the beasts
Who plunge themselves into a stupid sleep -
So slowly does the time unwind its skein!

Charles Baudelaire