Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris on 9 April 1821 and we want to remember him with some of his most famous poems.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himCharles Baudelaire, a cross between whimsy and restlessness. Those who have walked the streets of Paris have breathed in several parts the restless and bohemian soul of the author of Les Fleurs du mal, in the Latin Quarter, where he was born, and then in the Jardin du Luxembourg, along the Seine, in Montmartre and in the bars and restaurants that tell the story of the French capital. Today, 9 April, the 201 years since its birth and we want to remember him with some of his most famous poems.
Decadent author, unruly genius, far from that kind of "inspired" and romantic poet, Baudelaire rather emphasized the role of intelligence and reason in artistic creation, supporting his anthropological on the belief that all men live in a state of anguish, because they fail to be fulfilled.
A real state of physical and psychological malaise, of discontent mixed with restlessness, which takes the name of Spleen, that goes hand in hand withBoredom, boredom, in turn opposed to the "passion" of the romantics.
According to Baudelaire, to that anguish, to that Spleen one can surrender or try to oppose, moving away from reality and seeking theIdeal. To achieve it, man must escape and escape from everyday life. This is where the dandismo the current of thought according to which man is aimed at the search for aesthetics at any level, moving away from the ugly and banal of reality and taking refuge in the artificial, in all that is not natural.
Will write:
Wine enhances the will, hashish annihilates it.
Wine is a physical medium,
hashish is a suicide weapon.
Spleen, Idéal, Dandyism, Ennui are the concepts that are found at the basis of the collection of poems The flowers of evil.
Index
The most beautiful poems of Baudelaire
Spleen
When, like a lid, the sky weighs heavily
On the groaning soul in the throes of long troubles,
And in a single circle tightening the horizon
Pour out a black day sadder than nights;
When the earth changes into a damp cell,
Within which Hope goes, like a bat,
Slamming its timid wing against the walls
And beating his head on the sodden ceiling;
When the rain spreads its immense streaks
Imitating the bars of a vast prison,
And, mute and repulsive, a people of spiders
It stretches its nets inside our brains;
Bells suddenly explode with fury
With a terrifying scream to the sky,
Which suggests wandering and homeless spirits
Let them groan stubbornly.
- And long funerals, without drums or music,
They slowly pass through the heart; the hope,
Won, she cries, and Anguish, despotic and atrocious,
He sticks his black flag on my skull ...
Spleen 2
I have more memories than if I was a thousand years old.
A large cabinet with drawers, full of bills,
verses, love cards, trials, romances
and heavy locks of hair wrapped in receipts,
it hides fewer secrets than my sad brain.
[...]
- My living matter, now you are alone
a granite surrounded by vague fear,
dozing in the depths of the Sahara mists!
You are an old sphinx ignored by the careless world,
forgotten on the maps and with a wild flair
that sings only in the rays of the dying sun
the albatross
Often, for pleasure, the sailors capture large albatrosses
seabirds following, indolent traveling companions, the
vessel gliding over bitter depths.
As soon as they laid them on the tables, these kings of the blue, clumsy
and ashamed, miserably drag the great ones to their sides,
white wings, as if they were oars.
How intrigued and incapable is this winged traveler! Him, a little
back so beautiful, how ugly and ridiculous! Someone irritates the
his beak with a pipe while another, limping, mimics
the sick man who used to fly!
And the poet, who is accustomed to storms and laughs at the archer, looks like it
in everything to the prince of the clouds: exiled to earth, among the
jeers, he cannot take a step forward due to his giant's wings.
Hymn to beauty
Come from the depths or the abyss expresses you,
Beauty? From your infernal and divine gaze
benefit and crime rain with no choice,
and in this you can be compared to wine.
You have within your eyes the dawn and the occaso, and you exhale
perfumes like a sudden cloud in the evening;
your kisses are a filter, and your mouth is a chalice
which disanimates the brave and heartens the child.
Do you rise from the black abyss or do you descend from the stars?
Destiny follows, docile as a dog, your clothes;
you sow fortunes and disasters at random;
and you rule over everything, and you worry about nothing.
Beauty, you walk on the dead you mock;
graceful among your charms stands the Horror, while,
pendulous among the most expensive pendants, the Murder
it bobbles merrily on your proud belly.
Torch, fly the blinded moth to your light,
crackles, burns and praises the fire from which it succumbs!
When the lover bends down and pangs over his beloved,
it seems a dying man caressing his grave.
You come from hell or heaven, what does it matter,
Beauty, huge monster, white and gloomy monster,
if your foot, your gaze, your laughter carries it
Do they open me to an Infinity that I love and don't know?
Archangel or Siren, by Satan or by God,
What does it matter if you, o velvet-eyed fairy,
light, perfume, music, my only good,
Make the world sweeter, the minute less sad
I love you
I adore you like the night vault,
o vessel of sadness, o great taciturn one!
And the more I love you the more you run away, oh beautiful,
and you look like an ornament of my nights,
ironically accumulate distance
that separates my arms from the infinite blueness.
I bring myself to the attack, I climb to the assault
like a row of worms near a corpse and I love,
relentless and raw fair, even coldness
that makes you more beautiful in my eyes.
The man and the sea
Always the sea, free man, you will love!
Because the sea is your mirror; you contemplate
in the infinite unfolding of the wave
your soul, and your spirit is an abyss
no less bitter. Enjoy diving
within your image; hug her
with eyes and arms, and sometimes the heart
he gets distracted from your sound at the sound of this
wild and indomitable lament.
You are both discreet and dark:
man, no one has ever sounded the bottom
of your depths; no one has known,
sea, your innermost riches,
you are so jealous of yours
secret. But for endless centuries
fight without remorse or pity
among you, so great is your love
for slaughter and death, or wrestlers
eternal, or implacable brothers!
L'Heautontimorumenos
I will hit you, without hate and without anger,
like a butcher, like Moses the stone;
and so that in the end it can quench the thirst
my Sahara, the waters of pain
I will gush from your eyelid.
The desire swells with hope
it will go on your salty tears
like a vessel that goes out to sea;
in the intoxicated heart of your sobs,
that are dear to me, will almost echo
a drum beating its charge.
I am not perhaps a false agreement in the
divine symphony, thanks to edace
Irony that shakes me and bites me?
All my blood, all, is this black
poison; and I am but the mirror
where you look at the witch.
Knife and sore, slap and cheek, limbs
and wheel I am, victim and executioner;
I am the vampire of my heart, a great one
unhappy, of those to an eternal laughter
damned, and who can no longer smile.
Read also:
- The most beautiful love poems by Alda Merini
- The testament of a tree: Trilussa's touching poem that teaches us generosity
- Audre Lorde, the African American "warrior poet" who fought against racism and homophobia
