Baudelaire Self-Portrait

Flowers of Evil

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La Musique

La musique souvent me prend comme une mer!
Vers ma pâle étoile,
Sous un plafond de brume ou dans un vaste éther,
Je mets à la voile;

La poitrine en avant et les poumons gonflés
Comme de la toile
J'escalade le dos des flots amoncelés
Que la nuit me voile;

Je sens vibrer en moi toutes les passions
D'un vaisseau qui souffre;
Le bon vent, la tempête et ses convulsions

Sur l'immense gouffre
Me bercent. D'autres fois, calme plat, grand miroir
De mon désespoir!

— Charles Baudelaire


Music

Music often transports me like a sea!
Toward my pale star,
Under a ceiling of fog or a vast ether,
I get under sail;

My chest thrust out and my lungs filled
Like the canvas,
I scale the slopes of wave on wave
That the night obscures;

I feel vibrating within me all the passions
Of ships in distress;
The good wind and the tempest with its convulsions

Over the vast gulf
Cradle me. At other times, dead calm, great mirror
Of my despair!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)


Music

Music uplifts me like the sea and races
Me to my distant star,
Through veils of mist or through ethereal spaces,
I sail on it afar.

With chest flung out and lungs like sails inflated
Into the depth of night
I escalade the backs of waves serrated,
That darkness veils from sight.

I feel vibrating in me the emotions
That storm-tossed ships must feel.
The fair winds and the tempests and the oceans

Sway my exultant keel.
Sometimes a vast, dead calm with glassy stare
Mirrors my dumb despair.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)


Music

Music oft seizes me and sweeps me like a sea toward where my star shines pale,
With mists for ceiling, or through an immensity of ether I set sail.
My breast flung forward and my lungs swollen like white canvas, windswept I scale
The backs of heaping waves over which gentle night has wound a darkling veil.

So all the passions of a vessel suffering rise in me; the brave blast
Of winds, and storms in their convulsive movements, swing me, cradled on the vast
Abyss. At other times, dead calms, like mirrors there, reflecting my despair.

— Jacques LeClercq, Flowers of Evil (Mt Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 1958)