The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are the production of a humanist.
I’m the vampire of my own heart – One of those utter derelicts Condemned to eternal laughter, But who can no longer smile!
Patent symbols, perfect picture Of an irremediable fate Which makes one think that the Devil Always does well whatever he does!
A hellish, ironic beacon, Torch of satanical blessings, Sole glory and only solace – The consciousness of doing evil.
Her Hair O tumble to the collarbone, O fleece, O locks, O fragrance full of “I don’t care,” what ecstasy! To stuff a gloomy place with all I know is rife within this mass, I’ll shake it like a kerchief in the air.
Impassive clock! Terrifying, sinister god, Whose finger threatens us and says: “Remember!
A Conversation.
They have the divine eyes of little girls Who are amazed and laugh at everything that gleams.
In love with pleasure to the point of cruelty, See! I drag along also! but, more dazed than they, I say: “What do they seek in Heaven, all those blind?
O Beauty! dost thou generate from Heaven or from Hell? Within thy glance, so diabolic and divine, Confusedly both wickedness and goodness dwell, And hence one might compare thee unto sparkling wine.
Il est plus difficile d’aimer Dieu que de croire en lui.
The Alchemy of Grief.
Dear, you evoke white-veiled and lukewarm hours.
Babel of stairways and arcades, it was an endless palace, full of reservoirs and cascades falling into a dull and darkened gold; and heavy cataracts, like crystal curtains, hung, in shimmering light, on metal walls.
In all climes, under every sun, Death admires you At your antics, ridiculous Humanity, And frequently, like you, scenting herself with myrrh, Mingles her irony with your insanity!
In the evening streamed down the radiant sun, That great eye which stares from the inquisitive sky. From behind the window that scattered its bright rays It seemed to gaze upon our long, quiet dinners, Spreading wide its candle-like reflections On the frugal table-cloth and the serge curtains.
This morning I was so rash as to read some of the public newspapers; suddenly an indolence of the weight of twenty atmospheres fell upon me, and I was stopped, faced by the appalling uselessness of explaining anything whatever to anyone whatever. Those who know can divine me, and for those who can not or will not understand, it would be fruitless to pile up explanations.
In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original – and they give the impression of being original works – Stedman agreed with Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English.
We have set our hearts so completely on becoming worldly-wise, we have overstrained our microscopes to such an extent for the purpose of examining the ghastly protuberances and shameful blemishes with which we are covered and which we joyfully cultivate, that it is not possible for us to speak the language of common men. They live to live and we, alas, we live to understand.
It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner’s adverse critics. This Baudelaire did.