BENEDICTIONWhen, by the sovran will of Powers Eternal,The poet passed into this weary world,His mother, filled with fears and doubts infernal,Clenching her hands towards Heaven these curses hurled.—"Why rather did I not within me treasure"A knot of serpents than this thing of scorn?"Accursed be the night of fleeting pleasure"Whence in my womb this chastisement was borne!"Since thou hast chosen me to be the woman"Whose loathsome fruitfulness her husband shames,"Who may not cast aside this birth inhuman,"As one that flings love-tokens to the flames,"The hatred that on me thy vengeance launches"On this thwart creature I will pour in flood:"So twist the sapling that its withered branches"Shall never once put forth a cankered bud!"Regorging thus the venom of her malice,And misconceiving thy decrees sublime,In deep Gehenna's gulf she fills the chaliceOf torments destined to maternal crime.Yet, safely sheltered by his viewless angel,The Childe forsaken revels in the Sun;And all his food and drink is an evangelOf nectared sweets, sent by the Heavenly One.He communes with the clouds, knows the wind's voices,And on his pilgrimage enchanted sings;Seeing how like the wild bird he rejoicesThe hovering Spirit weeps and folds his wings.All those he fain would love shrink back in terror,Or, boldened by his fearlessness elate,Seek to seduce him into sin and error,And flesh on him the fierceness of their hate.In bread and wine, wherewith his soul is nourished,They mix their ashes and foul spume impure;Lying they cast aside the things he cherished,And curse the chance that made his steps their lure.His spouse goes crying in the public places:"Since he doth choose my beauty to adore,"Aping those ancient idols Time defaces"I would regild my glory as of yore."Nard, balm and myrrh shall tempt till he desires me"With blandishments, with dainties and with wine,"Laughing if in a heart that so admires me"I may usurp the sovranty divine!"Until aweary of love's impious orgies,"Fastening on him my fingers firm and frail,"These claws, keen as the harpy's when she gorges,"Shall in the secret of his heart prevail."Then, thrilled and trembling like a young bird captured,"The bleeding heart shall from his breast be torn;"To glut his maw my wanton hound, enraptured,"Shall see me fling it to the earth in scorn."Heavenward, where he beholds a throne resplendent,The poet lifts his hands, devout and proud,And the vast lightnings of a soul transcendentVeil from his gaze awhile the furious crowd:—"Blessed be thou, my God, that givest sorrow,"Sole remedy divine for things unclean,"Whence souls robust a healing virtue borrow,"That tempers them for sacred joys serene!"I know thou hast ordained in blissful regions"A place, a welcome in the festal bowers,"To call the poet with thy holy Legions,"Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers."I know that Sorrow is the strength of Heaven,"'Gainst which in vain strive ravenous Earth and Hell,"And that his crown must be of mysteries woven"Whereof all worlds and ages hold the spell."But not antique Palmyra's buried treasure,"Pearls of the sea, rare metal, precious gem,"Though set by thine own hand could fill the measure"Of beauty for his radiant diadem;"For this thy light alone, intense and tender,"Flows from the primal source of effluence pure,"Whereof all mortal eyes, though bright their splendour,"Are but the broken glass and glimpse obscure."SPLEEN ET IDÉAL.ILL LUCKTo bear so vast a load of griefThy courage, Sisyphus, I crave!My heart against the task is brave,But Art is long and Time is brief.For from Fame's proud sepulchral arches,Towards a graveyard lone and dumb,My sad heart, like a muffled drum,Goes beating slow funereal marches.—Full many a shrouded jewel sleepsIn dark oblivion, lost in deepsUnknown to pick or plummet's sound:Full many a weeping blossom flingsHer perfume, sweet as secret things,In silent solitudes profound.LE GUIGNON.BEAUTYMy face is a marmoreal dream, O mortals!And on my breast all men are bruised in turn,So moulded that the poet's love may burnMute and eternal as the earth's cold portals.Throned like a Sphinx unveiled in the blue deep,A heart of snow my swan-white beauty muffles;I hate the line that undulates and ruffles:And never do I laugh and never weep.The poets, prone beneath my presence toweringWith stately port of proudest obelisks,Worship with rites austere, their days devouring;For I have charms to keep their love, pure disksThat make all things more beautiful and tender:My large eyes, radiant with eternal splendour!LA BEAUTÉ.IDEAL LOVENo, never can these frail ephemeral creatures,The withered offspring of a worthless age,These buskined limbs, these false and painted features,The hunger of a heart like mine assuage.Leave to the laureate of sickly posiesGavami's hospital sylphs, a simpering choir!Vainly I seek among those pallid rosesOne blossom that allures my red desire.Thou with my soul's abysmal dreams be blended,Lady Macbeth, in crime superb and splendid,A dream of Æschylus flowered in cold eclipseOf Northern suns! Thou, Night, inspire my passion,Calm child of Angelo, coiling in strange fashionThy large limbs moulded for a Titan's lips!L'IDÉAL.HYMN TO BEAUTYBe thou from Hell upsprung or Heaven descended,Beauty! thy look demoniac and divinePours good and evil things confusedly blended,And therefore art thou likened unto wine.Thine eye with dawn is filled, with twilight dwindles,Like winds of night thou sprinklest perfumes mild;Thy kiss, that is a spell, the child's heart kindles,Thy mouth, a chalice, makes the man a child.Fallen from the stars or risen from gulfs of error,Fate dogs thy glamoured garments like a slave;With wanton hands thou scatterest joy and terror,And rulest over all, cold as the grave.Thou tramplest on the dead, scornful and cruel,Horror coils like an amulet round thine arms,Crime on thy superb bosom is a jewelThat dances amorously among its charms.The dazzled moth that flies to thee, the candle,Shrivels and burns, blessing thy fatal flame;The lover that dies fawning o'er thy sandalFondles his tomb and breathes the adored name.What if from Heaven or Hell thou com'st, immortalBeauty? O sphinx-like monster, since aloneThine eye, thy smile, thy hand opens the portalOf the Infinite I love and have not known.What if from God or Satan be the evangel?Thou my sole Queen! Witch of the velvet eyes!Since with thy fragrance, rhythm and light, O Angel!In a less hideous world time swiftlier flies.HYMNE À LA BEAUTÉ.EXOTIC FRAGRANCEWhen, with closed eyes in the warm autumn night,I breathe the fragrance of thy bosom bare,My dream unfurls a clime of loveliest air,Drenched in the fiery sun's unclouded light.An indolent island dowered with heaven's delight,Trees singular and fruits of savour rare,Men having sinewy frames robust and spare,And women whose clear eyes are wondrous bright.Led by thy fragrance to those shores I hailA charmed harbour thronged with mast and sail,Still wearied with the quivering sea's unrest;What time the scent of the green tamarindsThat thrills the air and fills my swelling breastBlends with the mariners' song and the sea-winds.PARFUM EXOTIQUE.XXVIII SONNETIn undulant robes with nacreous sheen impearledShe walks as in some stately saraband;Or like lithe snakes by sacred charmers curledIn cadence wreathing on the slender wand.Calm as blue wastes of sky and desert sandThat watch unmoved the sorrows of this world;With slow regardless sweep as on the strandThe long swell of the woven sea-waves swirled.Her polished orbs are like a mystic gem,And, while this strange and symbolled being linksThe inviolate angel and the antique sphinx,Insphered in gold, steel, light and diademThe splendour of a lifeless star endowsWith clear cold majesty the barren spouse.MUSICLaunch me, O music, whither on the soundlessSea my star gleams pale!I beneath cloudy cope or rapt in boundlessÆther set my sail;With breast outblown, swollen by the wind that urgesSwelling sheets, I scaleThe summit of the wave whose vexed surgesNight from me doth veil;A labouring vessel's passions in my pulsesThrill the shuddering sense;The wind that wafts, the tempest that convulses,O'er the gulf immenseSwing me.—Anon flat calm and clearer airGlass my soul's despair!LA MUSIQUE.THE SPIRITUAL DAWNWhen on some wallowing soul the roseate EastDawns with the Ideal that awakes and gnaws,By vengeful working of mysterious lawsAn angel rises in the drowsed beast.The inaccessible blue of the soul-sphereTo him whose grovelling dream remorse doth gallYawns wide as when the gulfs of space enthral.So, heavenly Goddess, Spirit pure and clear,Even on the reeking ruins of vile shameThy rosy vision, beautiful and bright,For ever floats on my enlargëd sight.Thus sunlight blackens the pale taper-flame;And thus is thy victorious phantom one,O soul of splendour, with the immortal Sun!L'AUBE SPIRITUELLE.THE FLAWED BELLBitter and sweet it is, in winter night,Hard by the flickering fire that smokes, to listWhile far-off memories rise in sad slow flight,With chimes that echo singing through the mist.O blessëd be the bell whose vigorous throat,In spite of age alert, with strength unspent,Utters religiously his faithful note,Like an old warrior watching near the tent!My soul, alas! is flawed, and when despairWould people with her songs the chill night-airToo oft they faint in hoarse enfeebled tones,As when a wounded man forgotten moansBy the red pool, beneath a heap of dead,And dying writhes in frenzy on his bed.LA CLOCHE FÉLÉE.
IA CARCASSRecall to mind the sight we saw, my soul,That soft, sweet summer day:Upon a bed of flints a carrion foul,Just as we turn'd the wayIts legs erected, wanton-like, in air,Burning and sweating past,In unconcern'd and cynic sort laid bareTo view its noisome breast.The sun lit up the rottenness with gold,To bake it well inclined,And give great Nature back a hundredfoldAll she together join'd.The sky regarded as the carcass proudOped flower-like to the day;So strong the odour, on the grass you vow'dYou thought to faint away.The flies the putrid belly buzz'd about,Whence black battalions throngOf maggots, like thick liquid flowing outThe living rags along.And as a wave they mounted and went down,Or darted sparkling wide:As if the body, by a wild breath blown,Lived as it multiplied.From all this life a music strange there ran,Like wind and running burns:Or like the wheat a winnower in his fanWith rhythmic movement turns.The forms wore off, and as a dream grew faint,An outline dimly shown,And which the artist finishes to paintFrom memory alone.Behind the rocks watch'd us with angry eyeA bitch disturb'd in theft,Waiting to take, till we had pass'd her byThe morsel she had left.Yet you will be like that corruption too,Like that infection prove—Star of my eyes, sun of my nature, you,My angel and my love!Queen of the graces, you will even be so,When, the last ritual said,Beneath the grass and the fat flowers you go,To mould among the dead.Then, O my beauty, tell the insatiate worm,Who wastes you with his kiss,I have kept the godlike essence and the formOf perishable bliss!IIWEEPING AND WANDERINGSay, Agatha, if at times your spirit turnsFar from the black sea of the city's mud,To another ocean, where the splendour burnsAll blue, and clear, and deep as maidenhood?Say, Agatha, if your spirit thither turns?The boundless sea consoles the weary mind!What demon gave the sea—that chantress hoarseTo the huge organ of the chiding wind—The function grand to rock us like a nurse?The boundless ocean soothes the jaded mind!O car and frigate, bear me far away,For here our tears moisten the very clay.Is't true that Agatha's sad heart at timesSays, far from sorrows, from remorse, from crimes,Remove me, car, and, frigate, bear away?O perfumed paradise, how far removed,Where 'neath a clear sky all is love and joy,Where all we love is worthy to be loved,And pleasure drowns the heart, but does not cloy.O perfumed paradise, so far removed!But the green paradise of childlike loves,The walks, the songs, the kisses, and the flowers,The violins dying behind the hills, the hoursOf evening and the wine-flasks in the groves.But the green paradise of early loves,The innocent paradise, full of stolen joys,Is't farther off than ev'n the Indian main?Can we recall it with our plaintive cries,Or give it life, with silvery voice, again,The innocent paradise, full of furtive joys?IIILESBOSMother of Latin sports and Greek delights,Where kisses languishing or pleasureful,Warm as the suns, as the water-melons cool,Adorn the glorious days and sleepless nights,Mother of Latin sports and Greek delights.Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfallsThat fearless into gulfs unfathom'd leap,Now run with sobs, now slip with gentle brawls,Stormy and secret, manifold and deep;Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfalls!Lesbos, where Phryne Phryne to her draws,Where ne'er a sigh did echoless expire,As Paphos' equal thee the stars admire,Nor Venus envies Sappho without cause!Lesbos, where Phryne Phryne to her draws,Lesbos, the land of warm and languorous nights,Where by their mirrors seeking sterile good,The girls with hollow eyes, in soft delights,Caress the ripe fruits of their womanhood,Lesbos, the land of warm and languorous nights.Leave, leave old Plato's austere eye to frown;Pardon is thine for kisses' sweet excess,Queen of the land of amiable renown,And for exhaustless subtleties of bliss,Leave, leave old Plato's austere eye to frown.Pardon is thine for the eternal painThat on the ambitious hearts for ever lies,Whom far from us the radiant smile could gain,Seen dimly on the verge of other skies;Pardon is thine for the eternal pain!Which of the gods will dare thy judge to be,And to condemn thy brow with labour pale,Not having balanced in his golden scaleThe flood of tears thy brooks pour'd in the sea?Which of the gods will dare thy judge to be?What boot the laws of just and of unjust?Great-hearted virgins, honour of the isles,Lo, your religion also is august,And love at hell and heaven together smiles!What boot the laws of just and of unjust?For Lesbos chose me out from all my peers,To sing the secret of her maids in flower,Opening the mystery dark from childhood's hourOf frantic laughters, mix'd with sombre tears;For Lesbos chose me out from all my peers.And since I from Leucate's top survey,Like a sentinel with piercing eye and true,Watching for brig and frigate night and day,Whose distant outlines quiver in the blue,And since I from Leucate's top survey,To learn if kind and merciful the sea,And midst the sobs that make the rock resound,Brings back some eve to pardoning Lesbos, freeThe worshipp'd corpse of Sappho, who made her boundTo learn if kind and merciful the sea!Of her the man-like lover-poetess,In her sad pallor more than Venus fair!The azure eye yields to that black eye, whereThe cloudy circle tells of the distressOf her the man-like lover-poetess!Fairer than Venus risen on the world,Pouring the treasures of her aspect mild,The radiance of her fair white youth unfurl'dOn Ocean old enchanted with his child;Fairer than Venus risen on the world.Of Sappho, who, blaspheming, died that dayWhen trampling on the rite and sacred creed,She made her body fair the supreme preyOf one whose pride punish'd the impious deedOf Sappho who, blaspheming, died that day.And since that time it is that Lesbos moans,And, spite the homage which the whole world pays,Is drunk each night with cries of pain and groans,Her desert shores unto the heavens do raise,And since that time it is that Lesbos moans!
The following pages (not included in the "complete" French edition) contain notes found after the death of Baudelaire; disconnected fragments; echoes; pistils of ideas, promising wondrous blossom, to which no pollen came. They epitomize the moral and intellectual life of the artist. In his own art, Baudelaire is the creator of a new mood, in which Maeterlinck and Verlaine are among his disciples, where Swinburne and Wilde have followed him; in painting and in music, his criticism was seeking in 1850 all that the later development of these arts has brought forth. The reflection of that brilliant mind glows in these intimate pages.
In the almost absolute isolation in which he confined himself more and more, Baudelaire, who had so loved to expand in conversation, felt the need of a confidant that would not importune him with useless counsels, nor with expressions of sympathy he would have repulsed, if only through dandyism. Paper alone could be that confidant.
The poet is wholly within these journals, with his religious, political, moral and literary theories, above all, with the explicit evidence of his weaknesses and his griefs. What skilled theologian has made a more haughty confession than this: "There are none great among men save the poet, the priest and the soldier; the man who sings, the man who blesses, the man who sacrifices others and himself. The rest is made for the whip"? Whatpolitical economist has made a more absolute declaration of principles than this: "There is no reasonable, stable government save the aristocratic. Monarchy and republic, based on democracy, are equally weak and absurd"?
His ideal of the greatness of the individual is derived logically from his conception of an aristocratic society under the triumvirate of the poet, the priest and the soldier. "Before all, to be a great man and a saint for one's self;" that, for Baudelaire, is the one ambition worthy of a superior nature. He has indicated the principal traits of the ideal "dandy" that he has sought unceasingly. The dandy is not only the most elegant of men, of the most original and discriminating tastes, which he exercises in his habits, in the choice of his books or his mistress; he is armed with a will superior to all obstacles, opposing caprice with invincible energy, and correcting in himself the inevitable faults of nature with all the resources of art.
The two manuscripts in which these ideals are scattered differ so slightly that it might seem impossible to decide which should be read first. A closer examination, however, indicates thatRocketsis of the period about ten years before the author's death, whileMy Heart Laid Barebelongs entirely to the days when he felt the first attacks of the illness that was to bear him off. No effort has been made to group the paragraphs according to topic; they are printed as they appear in the manuscript (the page divisions of which are indicated by the successive numbers). The documents furnish an interesting supplement to the more formal works of the poet, and a valuable contribution to literature.
Even if God did not exist, religion would still be holy and divine.
God is the only being who, to govern, need not even exist.
That which is created by the mind lives more truly than matter.
Love is the desire of prostitution. There is not even one noble pleasure which cannot be reduced to prostitution.
At a play, at a ball, each one finds pleasure in all. What is art? Prostitution.
The pleasure of being in a crowd is a mysterious expression of joy in the multiplication of number.
Allis number. Number is inall. Number is in the individual. Intoxication is a number.
The desire of productive concentration ought to replace, in a mature being, the desire of deperdition.
Love may spring from a generous emotion: desire of prostitution; but it is soon corrupted by the desire of possession.
Love would like to come out of itself, to merge itself in its victim, as the victor in the vanquished, while still preserving the privileges of the conqueror.
The delights of whoso keeps a mistress partake at once of the angel and of the proprietor. Charity and ferocity. They are even independent of sex, of beauty, of the animal kind.
Immense depth of thought in popular phrases, hollowed out by generations of ants.
Of the femininity of the Church, as the reason for its omnipotence.
Of the color violet (restrained, mysterious, veiled love, color of canoness).
The priest is immense, because he makes one believe in a host of astounding matters. That the Church wants to do all and to be all, is a law of the human mind. Mankind worships authority. Priests are the servants and sectaries of the imagination. The throne and the altar, revolutionary maxim. Religious intoxication of great cities. Pantheism. I, that is all; all, that is I. Vortex.
I think I have already written in my notes that love is very like torture or a surgical operation. But that idea can be developed in the bitterest way. Even though two lovers are deeply smitten and filled with reciprocal desire, one of the two will always be more calm, or less enraptured than the other. He or she is the surgeon, or the hangman; the other is the patient, the victim. Do you hear those sighs, preludes of a tragedy of shame, those groanings, those cries, those throat-rattlings? Who has not breathed them, who has not irresistibly summoned them forth? And what worse do you find in the torments applied by painstaking torturers? Those faraway eyes of the somnambulist, those limbs the muscles of which twitch and grow taut as under the action of a galvanic battery; drunkenness, delirium, opium, in their most infuriate consequences, surely yield no such frightful, no such curious examples. And the human countenance, which Ovid thought fashioned to reflect the stars, behold! it speaks only of insane ferocity, or is spread ina species of death. For, certainly, I believe it would be sacrilege to apply the word "ecstasy" to that sort of decomposition.
Frightful play, in which one of the players must lose control of himself!
Once, in my presence, it was asked in what lay the greatest pleasure of love. Some one answered naturally: in receiving, and another: in giving one's self. The former said: pleasure of pride; and the latter: delight of humility! All these blackguards spoke like the Imitation of Christ.—Finally, an impudent Utopian came forward to affirm that the greatest pleasure of love is to create citizens for the fatherland.
As for me, I said: The one and the supreme bliss of love rests in the certainty of doingevil. Both man and woman know, from birth, that in evil lies all bliss.
When a man takes to his bed, almost all his friends have a secret desire to see him die; some, to establish the fact that his health is inferior to theirs; others, in the disinterested hope of studying an agony.
The arabesque is the most spiritual of designs..
The man of letters rouses the capitals and conveys a taste for intellectual gymnastics.
We love women in proportion as they are strangers to us. To love intelligent women is a pleasure of the pederast. Thus bestiality excludes pederasty.
The spirit of buffoonery need not exclude charity; but that's rare.
Enthusiasm applied to other things than abstractions is a sign of weakness and disease.
The thin is more naked, more indecent, than the fat.
Tragic sky. Term of an abstract order applied to a material thing.
Man drinks light with the atmosphere. Thus they are right who say that the night air is not healthful for labor.
Man is born a fireworshipper.
Fireworks, conflagrations, incendiaries.
If one imagine a born fireworshipper born a Parsee, one could create a story.
Misunderstanding of a countenance is the result of the eclipse of the real image by the hallucination born of it.
Know then the joys of a bitter life, and pray, pray ceaselessly. Prayer is a store-house of energy. (Altar of the will. Moral dynamics. The sorcery of the sacraments. Hygiene of the soul.)
Music deepens the sky.
Jean Jacques said that he could not enter a restaurant without a certain emotion. For a timid nature, a ticket office somewhat resembles the tribunal of hell.
Life has but one true attraction: the attraction of play. But if we care not whether we win or lose?
Nations have great men only in spite of themselves— like families. They make every effort not to have them. Therefore, the great man must, in order to exist, possess an offensive force greater than the power of resistance developed by millions of individuals.
Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we might say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.
There are tortoise-shell hides against which scorn is no longer a vengeance.
Many friends, many gloves.[1]Those who have admired me were despised, I might even say were despicable, if I sought to flatter honest men.
Girardin talk Latin!Pecudesque locutae.
He belongs to an infidel Society to send Robert Houdin to the Arabs to convert them from the miracles.
[1]'for fear of the itch' is added elsewhere.
[1]'for fear of the itch' is added elsewhere.
These great, beautiful vessels, imperceptibly swaying (rocking) on the tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their idle, homesick air, do they not ask us, in a silent tongue: When do we sail for happiness?
Not to forget the marvellous in drama, sorcery, romance.
The background, the atmosphere in which a whole tale should be steeped. (See the Fall of the House of Usher, and refer this to the profound sensations of hashish and of opium.)
Are there mathematical insanities, and idiots who think that two and two make three? In other words, can hallucination, if the words do not cry out (at being coupled), invade the affairs of pure reason? If, when a man is sunk in habits of sloth, of revery, of idleness, to the point of constantly deferring the important thing to the morrow, another man were to wake him in the morning with biting lash, and were to whip him pitilessly until, unable to work for pleasure, he worked for fear,that man, that flogger, would he not be truly the friend, the benefactor? Besides, one might declare that pleasure would follow, much more justly than is said "Love comes after marriage."
Similarly, in politics, the true saint is he who lashes and destroys the people, for the people's good.
That which is not slightly deformed seems to lack feeling; whence it follows that irregularity, that is, the un-foreseen, surprise, astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.
Theodore de Banville is not exactly materialistic; he is luminous. His poetry represents happy hours.
For each letter from a creditor, write fifty lines on an abstract subject, and you are saved.
Translation and paraphrase of thePassion. To refer everything to that.
Spiritual and physical joys born of the storm, thunder and lightning, tocsin of loving, shadowy memories, of years gone by.
I have found the definition of Beauty, of my Beauty. It is something ardent and sad, something slightly vague, giving conjecture wing. I will, if you please, apply my idea to a palpable object, for instance, to the most interesting object in society, to a woman's countenance. A seductive and beautiful head, a woman's head, I mean, is a head that brings dreams at once—confusedly—of voluptuousness and of sadness; which bears a suggestion of melancholy, of weariness, even of satiety,—orperhaps an opposite emotion, an ardor, a wish to live, mingled with pent up bitterness, as springs from privation or from despair. Mystery, regret, are also characteristics of beauty.
A handsome male head need not convey, save perhaps in the eyes of a woman, that suggestion of voluptuousness, which, in a female countenance, is generally tantalizing in proportion as the face is melancholy. But that head also will bear something ardent and sad, spiritual needs, ambitions vaguely receding, the thought of a rumbling, unused power, sometimes the thought of a vengeful lack of feeling (for the ideal type of the dandy must not be neglected here), sometimes also—and that is one of the most interesting characteristics of beauty— mystery, and finally (let me have the courage to confess to what degree I feel myself modern in esthetics)misfortune. I do not claim that Joy cannot be associated with Beauty, but I do say that Joy is one of its most vulgar ornaments, while Melancholy is, as it were, its illustrious companion, to such a degree that I can scarcely conceive (is my brain an enchanted mirror?) a type of beauty in which is noMisfortune. Following—others might say: obsessed by—these ideas, you can see that it would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of manly Beauty is Satan,—as pictured by Milton.
Auto-idolatry. Poetic harmony of character. Eurhythmy of character and faculties. Of conserving all the faculties. Of augmenting all the faculties. A cult (Magianism, evocatory sorcery).
The sacrifice and the vow are the highest formulæ and symbols of exchange.
Two fundamental literary qualities: the supernatural, and irony. Individual glance, aspect in which things maintain themselves before the writer, then a Satanic turn of mind. The supernatural includes the general color and the accent, i.e., intensity, sonority, limpidity, vibration, depth and resonance in space and in time.
There are moments in life when time and space are deeper, and the intensity of life immeasurably increased.
Of magic applied to the rousing of the great dead, to the reestablishment and the perfecting of health.
Inspiration always comes, when a manwishes, but it does not always go, when he wishes.
Of writing and of speech, considered as magic operations, evocatory sorcery.
OF AIRS IN WOMAN
The charming airs, which constitute Beauty, are: The blasé air, the bored air, the giddy air, the impudent air, the cold air, the disdainful air, the commanding air, the willing air, the mischievous air, the sickly air, the feline air, a mingling of childishness, nonchalance and malice.
In certain almost supernatural moods of the soul the depth of life reveals itself to the full, in the scene, ordinary as it may be, beneath one's eyes. It becomes the symbol.
As I was crossing the boulevard, and as I hurried to escape the wagons, my aureole slipped off and fell into the mire of the macadam. Fortunately, I had time to pick it up; but a moment after the unlucky idea entered my mind that it was an ill omen; after that the idea clung to me, and gave me no rest the entire day.
Of the worship of one's self in love, from the point ofview of health, of hygiene, of the toilet, of eloquence and of spiritual nobility.
There is a magic operation in prayer. Prayer is one of the great forces of intellectual dynamics. It is like an electric current.
The rosary is a medium, a vehicle; it is prayer brought within reach of all.
Labor, progressive and accumulative force, bearing interest like capital, in faculties as in results.
Play, intermittent energy, even though guided by science, will be conquered, fruitful as it may be, by labor, slight as it may be, but sustained.
If a poet asked the state for the right to have a few bourgeois in his stable, there would be considerable surprise; while, if a bourgeois asked for roast poet, it would seem quite natural.
"Kitten, puss, pussy, my cat, my wolf, my little monkey, big monkey, big serpent, my little melancholy monkey." Such freaks of too often repeated terms, too frequent bestial appellations, reveal a satanic side in love. Have not the devils the forms of beasts? The Camel of Cazotte, camel, devil, and woman.
A man went to a shooting gallery, accompanied by his wife. He selected a puppet, and said to his wife: "I imagine that's you." He closed his eyes and beheaded the puppet. Then he said, kissing his companion's hand: "Dear angel, how I thank you for my skill."
When I have inspired universal disgust and horror, I shall have won solitude.
This book is not made for my wives, my daughters or my sisters. I have few of such things.
God is a scandal, a scandal that rebounds.
Do not scorn any one's sensibility. One's sensibility, that is one's genius.
By an ardent concubinage, one can imagine the joys of a young household.
The precocious taste for women. I used to confuse the odor of fur with the odor of woman. I remember.... Finally, I loved my mother for her elegance. Thus I was a precocious dandy.
The Protestant countries lack two elements essential to the happiness of a well-bred man: gallantry and devotion.
The mingling of the grotesque and the tragic is pleasing to the mind, as discords to blasé ears.
What is intoxicating in bad taste, is the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing.
Germany expresses meditation by line, as England by perspective.
There is, in the birth of every sublime thought, a nervous shock that is felt in the cerebellum.
Spain puts into its religion the ferocity natural to love.
STYLE.—The eternal note, the eternal and cosmopolitan style. Chateaubriand, Alph. Rabbe, Edgar Poe.
Why democrats do not love cats is easy to determine. The cat is beautiful; it awakens ideas of luxury, of cleanliness, of voluptuousness, etc.
A little labor, repeated three hundred and sixty-five times, yields three hundred and sixty-five times a little money, that is, an enormous sum.At the same time fame is won.
To create a pounced drawing is genius. I ought to create a pounced drawing.
My mother is fantastic; one must fear her and please her.
To give one's self over to Satan, what does that mean?
What more absurd than progress since man, as is proven by everyday fact, is always like and equal to man, that is to say, always in the savage state! What are the perils of the forest and the prairie beside the daily shocks and conflicts of civilization? Whether man ensnare his dupe on the boulevard, or pierce his prey in unknown forests, is he not eternal man, i.e., the most perfect beast of pray?
They say I am thirty years of age; but if I have lived three minutes in one..., am I not ninety?
... Work, is it not the salt that preserves embalmed souls?
I think that the infinite and mysterious charm that rests in the contemplation of a ship, especially of a vessel in motion, springs, in the first place, from regularity and symmetry (which are of the primordial needs of the human mind, as much as complexity and harmony)— and, secondly, from the successive multiplication and generation of all the curves and imaginary figures cut in space by the real elements of the object.
The poetic idea which this movement in lines produces is the hypothesis of a vast, immense, complex but eurythmic being, of a creature full of genius, suffering and sighing all human sighs and all human ambitions.
Civilized races, that always speak so stupidly of savages and barbarians, soon, as d'Aurevilly says, you willno longer be good enough to be idolaters.Stoicism, religion that has but one sacrament: suicide!
Conceive a canvas for a lyric or fairy buffoonery, for a pantomime, and transplant it into a serious novel. Bathe the whole in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere,—in the atmosphere of thegreat days. Let there be something soothing,—something even serene, in passion. Regions of pure poetry.
What is not a priesthood nowadays? Youth itself is a priesthood—so youth tells us.
Man, i.e., every one, is so naturally depraved that he suffers less from the universal abasement than from the establishment of a sensible hierarchy.
The world is coming to an end. The only reason for which it can continue is that it exists. How weak that reason is, compared to all that announce the opposite, particularly to this: What has the world henceforth to do beneath the sky? For, supposing that it continue to exist materially, would it be an existence worthy of the name and of the Historical Dictionary? I do not say that the world will be reduced to the expedients and the comic disorder of the South American Republics, that perhaps we shall return to the savage state, and that we shall go, across the grassy ruins of our civilization, seeking our pasture, gun in hand. No; for these adventures presuppose a remnant of vital energy, echo of the earliest ages. New example and new victims of the inexorable moral laws, we shall perish by that through which we thought to live. The mechanical will so have Americanized us, progress will so have atrophied all our spiritual side, that naught, in the sanguine, sacrilegiousor unnatural dreams of the Utopians can be compared to the actual outcome. I ask every thinking man to show me what of life remains. Of religion, I believe it useless to speak and to seek the remnants, since to take the trouble to deny God is the only scandal in that field. Property virtually disappeared with the suppression of the right of the first-born; but the time will come when humanity, like an avenging ogre, will snatch their last morsel from those who think they are the legitimate heirs of the revolutions. Still, that will not be the supreme ill.
The human imagination can conceive, without too much trouble, republics or other community states, worthy of some glory, if directed by consecrated men, by definite aristocrats. But it is not particularly in political institutions that there will be manifest the universal ruin, or the universal progress; for the name matters little. It will be in the debasement of the heart. Need I say that the little of the political remaining will writhe painfully in the embrace of the general bestiality, and that governments will be forced, in order to maintain themselves and to create a phantom of order, to revert to means which will make our actual humanity shudder, although so hardened? Then, the son will flee from his family not at eighteen years, but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will flee, not in search of heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner in a tower, not to immortalize a garret by sublime thoughts, but to establish a trade, to amass wealth, and to compete with his infamous papa, founder and stockholder of a journal which will spread the light and which will cause the century to be looked upon as an abettor of superstition. Then, the wanderers, the outcasts, those who have had several lovers, and who were once called angels, in recognition of the heedlessness which shines, light of luck,in their existence logical as evil—then these, I say, will be no more than a pitiless wisdom, a wisdom that will condemn all, lacking money, all,even the faults of the senses!Then, that which will resemble virtue, what do I say?—all that is not ardor toward Plutus will be considered enormously ridiculous. Justice, if in that fortunate period justice can still exist, will interdict all citizens who cannot make a fortune. Your wife, O Bourgeois! your chaste partner, whose legitimacy is the poetry of your existence, thenceforth, introducing into legality an irreproachable infamy, zealous and loving guardian of your strongbox, will be no more than the ideal of the kept woman. Your daughter, with infantile hopes of marriage, will dream in her cradle of selling herself for a million, and you yourself, O Bourgeois, still less poet than you are to-day, you will see nothing amiss; you will regret naught. For there are things in men that strengthen and prosper as others weaken and decline; and, thanks to the progress of the times, you will have left of your entrails only the viscera! These times are perhaps quite near; who knows even that they have not come, and that the thickness of our skins is not the only obstacle that prevents us from appreciating the environment in which we breathe?
As for me, who sometimes feel in me the ridicule of a prophet, I know that I shall never find in myself the charity of a doctor. Lost in this vile world, jostled by the crowds, I am as a tired man who sees behind him, in the depths of the years, only disillusion and bitterness and ahead, only a storm that carries nothing new, neither knowledge nor grief. The evening that man Stole from fate a few hours of pleasure, cradled in his digestion, forgetful—as far as possible—of the past, content with the present and resigned to the future, intoxicated with his sangfroid and his dandyism, proud of being less basethan those who passed, he said, watching the smoke of his cigar: "What does it matter to me where these consciences are going?"
I think I have achieved what mechanics call an extra. However, I shall retain these pages,—because I want to date my sadness.
Of the vaporization and the centralization of the ego. All lies in that.
Of a certain sensual joy in the society of extravagants.
(I plan to beginMy Heart Laid Bareat any point, in any way, and to continue it from day to day, following the inspiration of the occasion and the moment, provided that the inspiration be vivid.)
The first comer, if he can entertain, has the right to speak of himself.
I understand that some people desert a cause to discover what they can experience in serving another.
It might be pleasant to bet alternately victim and executioner.
Woman is the opposite of the dandy. Thus she must inspire horror. Woman is hungry, and she wants to eat, thirsty, and she wants to drink. She is proud, and she, wants to be....
True merit!
Woman isnatural, that is to say, abominable.
Also, she is always vulgar, that is, the opposite of the dandy.
In regard to the Legion of Honor. He who seeks the cross seems to say: "If I am not decorated for having done my duty, I shall not go ahead."
If a man has merit, what is the good in decorating him? If he has not, then he can be decorated, since that will give him a lustre.
To consent to be decorated, is to recognize that the state has the right to judge you, to adorn you, et cetera.
Furthermore, if not pride, Christian humility should defend the cross.
Calculation in favor of God.Nothing exists without an end. Hence my existence has an end. What end? I do not know. Hence it is not I that have marked it. Hence it is some one wiser than I. Hence I must pray to some one to enlighten me. That is the wisest part.
The dandy ought to aspire uninterruptedly to be sublime. He should live and sleep before a mirror.
Analysis of counter-religions; example: sacred prostitution.
What is sacred prostitution? Nervous excitation. Pagan mysticism. Mysticism, link between paganism and Christianity. Paganism and Christianity are reciprocal proofs.
Revolution and the worship of Reason prove the concept of Sacrifice.
Superstition is the reservoir of all truths.
There is in all change something at once agreeable and infamous, something that smacks of infidelity and ofmoving day. That is enough to explain the French Revolution.
My intoxication in 1848. Of what sort was that intoxication? Desire of vengeance. Natural pleasure in demolishing. Literary drunkenness; memories of reading.
The 15th of May. Ever the desire of destruction. Legitimate desire, if all that is natural is legitimate.
The horrors of June. Madness of the people and madness of the bourgeoisie. Natural love of crime.
My fury at the coup d'état. How many gunshots sustained! Another Buonaparte! What a disgrace!
Still, all is quieted. Has not the President the right to invoke?
What Emperor Napoleon III is? What he is worth?
To find the explanation of his nature, and of his providentially.
To be a useful man has always seemed to me a hideous thing.
1848 was amusing only because every one was building Utopias like castles in Spain.
1848 was charming only by the very excess of the ridiculous.
Robespierre is estimable only because he has made some fine phrases.
The Revolution, by sacrifice, confirmed superstition.
Politique. I have no convictions, as the men of my age understand the term, because I have no ambition.
There is no basis in me for conviction.
There is a certain cowardice, or rather a certain softness, in honest men.
The brigands alone are convinced—of what? That they must succeed. Therefore, they succeed.
Why should I succeed, when I haven't even the desire to try?
Glorious empires can be founded on crime, and noble religions on imposture.
However, I have some convictions, in a higher sense, that cannot be understood by the men of my day.
Feeling ofsolitude, from my childhood. Despite my family, and in the midst of my comrades above all,—feeling of an eternally solitary destiny.
Withal, an intense desire for life and for pleasure.
Almost all our life is spent in idle curiosity. In revenge, there are things which ought to rouse human curiosity to the highest degree, and which, to judge by their commonplace activity, inspire it in no one!
Where are our dead friends? Why are we here? Do we come from somewhere? What is liberty? Can it harmonize with providential law? Is the number of souls finite or infinite? And the number of habitable worlds? etc., etc.
Nations have great men only in spite of themselves. Hence the great man is the conqueror of all his nation.
The modern ridiculous religions: Molière, Béranger, Garibaldi.
Belief in progress is a doctrine of the slothful, a doctrine of the Belgians. It is the individual who relies on his neighbors to tend to his affairs. There can be no progress (true, that is, moral) save in the individualand by the individual himself. But the world is composed of folks who can think only in common, in bands. Thus the Belgian societies. There are also folks who can amuse themselves only in droves. The true hero finds his pleasure alone.
Eternal superiority of the dandy. What is the dandy?
My opinions on the theatre. What I have always found most beautiful in the theatre, in my childhood, and still to-day, islustre,—a beautiful object, luminous, crystalline; complex, circular, symmetrical.
However, I do not absolutely deny the value of dramatic literature. Only, I should like the actors to be mounted on high pattens, to wear masks more expressive than the human face, and to speak through megaphones; finally, I should like the female parts to be played by men.
After all, lustre has always seemed to me the principal actor, seen through the large or the small end of the glass.
One must work, if not through desire, at least in despair, since, as is well established, to work is less boring than to seek amusement.
There are in every man, at every moment, two simultaneous postulations, one toward God, the other toward Satan.
The invocation of God, or spirituality, is a desire to rise; that of Satan, or bestiality, is a joy in descent. To the latter should be attributed love for women.
The joys which spring from these two loves conform to their two natures.
Intoxication of humanity; great picture to be made, in the sense of charity, in the sense of libertinage, in the literary or dramaturgic sense.
Torture, as the art of discovering the truth, is barbaric nonsense; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual end.
Capital punishment is the result of a mystic idea, totally misunderstood to-day. The death penalty has not as its object topreservesociety,materiallyat least. Its object is thepreservation(spiritually) of society and the guilty one. In order that the sacrifice be perfect, there must be assent and joy on the part of the victim. To give chloroform to one condemned to death would be an impiety, for it would be to wipe out the consciousness of his grandeur as victim and to destroy his chance of gaining paradise.
As to torture, it is born of the infamous side of the heart of man, athirst for voluptuousness. Cruelty and voluptuousness, identical sensations, like extreme heat and extreme cold.
A dandy does nothing. Can you imagine a dandy talking to the people, save to scoff at them?
There is no reasonable, stable government save the aristocratic.
Monarchy and republic, based on democracy, are equally weak and absurd.
Immense nausea of placards.
There exist but three respectable beings: the priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill, and to create.
Other men are serfs or slaves, created for the stable, that is, to exercise what are called professions.
Observe that those who advocate the abolition of capital punishment are more or less interested in its abolishment. Often, they are executioners. The matter may be summarized thus: "I wish to be able to cut off your head, but you shall not touch mine."
Those who abolish souls (materialists) necessarily abolish hell; they are, beyond all doubt, interested.
At the least, they are men that are afraid to live again, slothful ones.
Mme. de Metternich, although a princess, has forgotten to answer me, in regard to what I said of her and of Wagner. Manners of the Nineteenth Century.
The woman Sand is the Prudhomme of immorality. She has always been a moralist. Only formerly she practiced amorality. Also she has never been an artist. She has the famousfluent style, dear to the bourgeois.
She is stupid, she is heavy, she is a chatterbox. She has, in moral matters, the same depth of judgment and the same delicacy of feeling as innkeepers and kept women.What she has said of her mother; what she has said of poetry. Her love for the workingman.
George Sand is one of those old ingenues who do not wish to quit the boards.
See the preface toMlle. La Quintinie, where she claims that true Christians do not believe in hell. Sand is for the God of good folks, the god of innkeepers and of domestic sharpers.
She has good reason to wish to wipe out hell.
It must not be thought that the devil tempts only men of genius. He doubtless scorns imbeciles, but he does not disdain their assistance. Quite the contrary, he founds great hopes on them.
Take George Sand. She is especially, and above all things, a greatblockhead; but she ispossessed. It is the devil who has persuaded her to trust in hergood heartand hergood sense, so that she might persuade all other great blockheads to trust in their good heart and their good sense.
I cannot think of that stupid creature without a shudder of horror. If I were to meet her, I could not keep myself from hurling a basin of holy water at her.
I am bored in France, especially as every one resembles Voltaire.
Emerson forgot Voltaire in his "Representative Men." He could have made a fine chapter entitled Voltaire or The Antipoet, the king of boobies, the prince of the shallow, the anti-artist, the preacher of innkeepers, the father who "lived in a shoe" of the editors of the century.
In the "Ears of the Earl of Chesterfield," Voltaire jokes at the expense of that immortal soul which resided, for nine months, in the midst of excrement and urine. Voltaire, like all the slothful, hates mystery.
(At least, he might have divined in that environment the malice or satire of Providence against love, and, in the process of generation, a sign of original sin. In fact, we can make love only with excretory organs.)
Unable to suppress love, the Church wished at least to disinfect it, and created marriage.
Portrait of the literary riff-raff. Doctor Tavernus Crapulosus Pedantissimus. His portrait in the manner of Praxiteles. His pipe, his opinions, his Hegelianism, his filth, his ideas of art, his spleen, his jealousy. A fine picture of modern youth.
Theology. What is the fall? If it is unity become duality, it is God who has fallen. In other words, is not creation the fall of God?
Dandyism. What is the superior man? It is not the specialist. It is the man of leisure and broad education. To be rich and to love labor.
Why does the man of parts prefer maidens to women of the world, though they are equally stupid? Find this out.
There are women who are like the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. They are wanted no more, because they have been sullied by certain men. Just as I would not put on the breeches of a mangy fellow.
What is annoying in love, is that it is a crime in which one cannot do without an accomplice.
Study of the great disease of horror of the home. Reasons for the disease.
Indignation at the universal fatuity of all classes, of all beings, of both sexes, of every age.
Man loves man so much that when he flees the city, it is still to seek the crowd, that is, to rebuild the city in the country.
Of love, of the predilection of the French for military metaphors. Here every metaphor wears a moustache.
Militant literature.—To man the breach.—To bear the standard aloft.—To maintain the standard high and firm. —To hurl oneself into the thick of the fight.—One of the veterans. All these fine phrases apply generally to the college scouts and to the do-nothings of the coffee-house.
To add to the military metaphors: Soldier of the judicial press (Bertin). The poets of strife. Thelittérateursof the advance guard. This habitude of military metaphors denotes minds not military, but made for discipline, that is, for conformity, minds born domesticated, Belgian minds, which can think only in society.