11 great poems by Charles Baudelaire (analyzed and interpreted)

Charles Baudelaire was the forerunner of Symbolists, Parnassians, Modernists, the Latin American avant-garde, and every accursed poet. His influence crossed the world of poetry and changed the general aesthetic look.

Your book The flowers of Evil (1857) is considered one of the most revolutionary and provocative of the nineteenth century. It is a book that proclaims a different beauty, sometimes disturbing. He sings of the ephemeral, that which decomposes, of the urban and its anonymous inhabitants, of the ambiguous morality that wonders for remorse and everything marginalized and taboo (wine, prostitutes, beggars, lesbian love, sex).

These are 11 poems by The flowers of Evil translated by Pedro Provencio.

1. The cat

The image of the cat runs through the collection of The flowers of Evil. This image creates an unusual association that asks us to look at the poetic craft in a different way. The cat implies the willful, the capricious, the uncontrolled, but also grace and sensuality.

Through him, Baudelaire tells us about a vision of art associated with magic and the divine, which reminds us of the cat as an Egyptian god, and, as such, refers to perfection, harmony and proportion. He also speaks of the need for poetry as a balm for the life of the poet.

I
In my head he walks
as in his own room,
a beautiful strong, soft and charming cat.
When she meows, you can hardly hear her,
of so tender and discreet that is the timbre of him;
But her voice, whether it quiets down or growls,
she is always rich and deep.
There is his appeal and his secret.
This voice, it drips and seeps
in my darkest interior,
she invades me like a lilting verse
And he rejoices me like a drinker
She numbs the most cruel pains
and she contains all ecstasies;
to say the longest sentences
does not need words.
No, there is no bow to scratch
my heart, perfect instrument,
and what to do with more majesty
sing the most vibrant string of him,
that your voice, mysterious cat,
seraphic cat, strange cat,
in whom everything, as in an angel,
it is as subtle as it is harmonious.
II
Of his blond and brown fur
a perfume comes out so soft, that one night
I was impregnated with it because once
I stroked it, just one.
He is the familiar spirit of the house;
he judges, he presides, he inspires
anything in his domain;
Maybe it's a fairy, is it a god?

When my eyes, towards that cat that I love
attracted as by a magnet,
they docilely turn
and then I look at myself,
I see with surprise
the fire of her pale pupils,
clear lanterns, living opals,
who stare at me.

2. Posthumous remorse

Remorse is one of the themes explored by The flowers of Evil. Through the question that appeals to the courtesan in the last stanza, he questions what can be worthy of the remorse at the end of the day, and therefore questioning and criticizing guilt, values ​​and morals of the moment.

The vision of the poet stands out as one who can have a different look (opposite to what is practical), and who, therefore, has a wisdom comparable to that of a priest.

The poem refers to the aesthetics of Edgar Allan Poe, in which beautiful maidens stand out who die in the fullness of beauty, and the morbid and decrepit atmosphere of the funereal, and contrasts with the luxurious and the aristocratic.

When you have fallen asleep, my dark beauty,
at the bottom of a tomb made of black marble,
and when you only have for bedroom and dwelling
a wet pantheon and a concave grave;
when the stone, sinking your scary chest
and your torso relaxed by a delicious indifference,
keep your heart from beating and craving,
and let your feet run your risky race,
the grave, confidant of my infinite dream
(because the grave will always understand the poet),
in those long nights where sleep is outlawed,
she will say to you: «What good is it to you, incomplete courtesan,
never having known what the dead cry? ».
"And the worm will gnaw at your skin like remorse."

3. Obsession

In this poem the subjective gaze of the poet stands out, and, above all, his emotionality and sensitivity: "you intimidate me", "I hate you", "I would like you". His gaze gives new meaning to the nature of the forest, the oceans and the night.

It is worth highlighting the image that anticipates the surrealism developed until the 20th century and that shows the last stanza: "(...) darkness are also canvases / where they live, pouring out from my eyes to thousands, / beings disappeared from familiar gazes (...) ".

You high forests intimidate me like cathedrals;
you howl like the organ; and in our cursed hearts,
Eternal mourning chambers where ancient rales resound,
the echoes of your De profundis are repeated.
Ocean, I hate you! Your jumps and tumults
my spirit finds them in itself; the bitter laugh
of the defeated man, full of sobs and insults,
I hear her in the tremendous laughter of the sea.
How would you like me, oh night, without those stars
whose light speaks a familiar language!
Well, I look for the void, and the black, and the naked!
But the darkness are also canvases
where they live, sprouting from my eyes to thousands,
missing beings from familiar gazes.

4. The abyss

"The abyss" is a poem that points to the sensation of the immensity, the infinite, the immeasurable, the eternal and the divine, what cannot be understood, grasped, as something inevitable that contrasts with the human being, and the limited being of him and small.

It also speaks of the inevitable events of fate and chance, and how man is powerless before them: "Against the background of my nights, God, with his wise finger, / draw a multiform nightmare and without truce".

It is a fear close to anxiety, like an immense fear of something that is not even known. In the final verse the expressiveness stands out, realizing the despair: "Ah, never to be able to escape from the Numbers and Beings! "Here, beings and, above all, numbers, connote what is limited, what can be studied and what is concrete.

Pascal had the abyss of him, that moved with him.
—Everything is a bottomless pit, oh, action, desire, dream,
word! and often, brushing my bristly hairs,
I have felt the wind of Fear pass.
Up, down, everywhere, the deep, the inhospitable,
the silence, the horrifying and captivating space ...
Against the background of my nights, God, with his wise finger,
draw a multiform and relentless nightmare.
I am afraid of the dream as a great tunnel is feared,
full of vague terror, I walk to who knows where;
I see nothing but infinity through all the windows,
and my spirit, always haunted by vertigo,
envy the callousness of nothing.
"Ah, never to be able to escape from Numbers and Beings!"

5. Sun

An ambiguous figure of the sun is shown: in the urban landscape he is furious and cruel, and in the countryside he is a father who nourishes, rejoices and cures diseases. There is a comparison between the poet and the sun that suggests an inclusive poetry, in which everything has a place; also sickness, buildings, ugliness, the mundane, the common.

Through the old neighborhood, where, from the hovels
blinds hide secret lusts
when the cruel star furiously hurts
the city and the fields, the roofs and fields,
I would like to exercise my fantastic fencing
sniffing in the random corners of the rhyme,
stumbling on the syllables, as on the cobblestones,
perhaps finding verses that I dreamed of for a long time.

That nurturing father, who flees from chlorosis,
in the fields he wakes up the verses and the roses;
he makes the sorrows evaporate into the ether
saturating brains and hives with honey.
He is the one who erases years to which he carries crutches
and he makes him festive like the pretty girls,
and he orders the crops to mature and grow
in the immortal entrails that he wishes to flourish.

When, like a poet, he descends to the cities,
ennobles the fate of the vilest things,
and penetrates like a king, without retinue or pomp,
both in royal houses and in hospitals.

6. To one that happens

The poem focuses on the experience of anonymity allowed by large cities, full of people, where everyone is unknown.

A frequent event in the cities is narrated: the romance and the attraction between two strangers who meet for a fleeting moment - the time a glance lasts - and know that they will never see each other again.

The deafening street howled around me.
Slender, thin, in severe mourning, all solemn pain,
a woman passed by, making her that with her lavish hand
the hem and scallop will rise, swing;
she is agile and noble, with statuesque legs.
I, edgy as an eccentric, drank
in her eyes, livid sky where the hurricane germinates,
the sweetness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills.
A flash of lightning... and then the night! Runaway beauty
whose look has made me suddenly reborn,
Will I not see you again until eternity?
Elsewhere, far away from here! Too late! Maybe never!
because I don't know where you're running, and you don't know where I'm going,
Oh you, who I would have loved, oh you, who knew!

7. Cursed women

The poem recovers the humanity of condemned women from the gaze of compassion. They are spoken of from the innocence of adolescent love, feminine sensitivity and fragility, her brotherly being, her capacity to love and her dreams. Their sensuality, their tastes, desires, pleasures, sexuality, diseases and vices are also alluded to: thus suggesting what may be the reason why they are condemned.

This judgment that condemns can be associated, in part, with the traditional patriarchal culture that, supported by the morals and religion of the moment, has condemned the pleasure and desire of women.

Yes OK The flowers of Evil seeks an inclusive artistic aesthetic, in which the ugly and unpleasant can also be the object of art, it also allows see who had been marginalized from a different perspective: beauty and complexity are also found in them.

In this sense, art fulfills a critical social function from the artist's ability to observe from a personal and authentic perspective, which, although it disobeys the values ​​of the status quo of society, is faithful to its personal values ​​and does not compromise. This is how art becomes subversive and with time it can bring about change.

Cast in the sand like a pensive flock,
they turn their eyes to the horizon of the seas,
and her feet that are sought and her hands brushing
they have mild fainting spells and bitter shudders.
Some, hearts enraptured in long confidences,
at the bottom of the grove where the streams murmur,
they spell out the fearful childhood love
and mark the green trunk of young trees;
others, like nuns, are slow and serious
among the rocks full of apparitions, where
he saw Saint Anthony sprout, like tongues of lava,
her naked and purple breasts from his temptations;
There are some who, in the glare of overflowing resins,
In the silent hollows of ancient pagan dens,
They ask you to help their vociferous fevers,
Oh Bacchus, you who appease ancestral regrets!
and others, whose chest prefers the scapulars,
who, hiding under his long habits a whip,
mingle in the gloomy forest and lonely nights
the foam of pleasure with the tears of torture.
Oh virgins, oh demons, oh monsters, oh martyrs,
generous spirits who reprove reality,
eager for infinity, devout and satirical,
as soon overflowing with screams as filled with tears,
you that my soul has followed to your hell,
my poor sisters, I love you as much as I pity you
for your gloomy pains, your thirst not quenched
and the cups of love that fill your great heart!

8. The source of blood

Through the fantastic image of the blood fountain, one speaks of an emotion whose cause cannot be pinpointed, is irrational and implacable, and cannot be escaped or lulled into sleep.

The fantastic allows an image and a language to be given to this emotion, the certainty of which can be verified by the senses: it has a rhythm, it can be seen and heard.

Sometimes my blood seems to gush out of me,
like a fountain of rhythmic sobs.
Clearly I hear it flow with a long murmur
but I feel myself in vain to find the wound.
Throughout the city, as on your own farm,
she spreads, transforming the cobblestones into islets,
quenching the thirst of all creatures,
staining the whole of nature red.
I have begged caption wines many times
that at least for a day they numb the terror that consumes me;
Wine clears eyesight and sharpens hearing!
I have looked in love for a dream that makes me forget;
But love is just a mattress of needles to me
made to give drink to those cruel whores!

9. Allegory

By means of an allegorical figure in the form of a woman, the poem suggests an idea of ​​majestic beauty, superior and immune to moral judgments and human passions, such as love, vices, death, debauchery, hell.

Here it is a beauty that moves everything, produces joy and is the engine that moves the world.

She is a beautiful woman with an opulent neck,
that she lets her hair fall into her wine.
The claws of love, the poisons of the den,
everything slides and everything becomes dull before her granite skin.
She laughs at Death and ridicules Lust,
those monsters whose hand, which always tears and reap,
she has respected yet, in the destroying games of her,
the severe majesty of this firm and erect body.
She walks like a goddess and lies down like a sultana;
she has Mohammedan faith in pleasure,
and to her open arms, where her breasts overflow,
she summons the human race with her eyes.
She believes, she knows, this sterile virgin
and still necessary for the world to move forward,
that physical beauty is a sublime gift
that he obtains the pardon of all the infamies.
Both Hell and Purgatory are indifferent to him,
and when the time comes to enter the black night,
will look at the face of Death
as a newborn looks - without hatred and without remorse.

10. The death of the artists

This poem is about the craft of the artist. But the artist thought of as one who pursues a vision of art associated with the mystical, the adored, what moves, subjugates, what is immortal. The artist's work is thus shown as an accumulation of failed attempts, hardly motivated by hope.

For this reason, it refers to all those who fail to fully develop their talent or who, if they do, are not recognized.

Death, then, has the function of vindicating and doing justice to the artist's craft, referring to the great artists whose talent and work is only recognized long after his death.

How much my bells will I have to shake
and kiss your forehead, sad cartoon?
To hit the target, of mystical virtue,
my quiver, how many arrows will he waste?

In very subtle feints we will spend our soul,
and more than one frame we have to destroy,
before beholding the finished Creature
whose infernal desire fills us with sobs.

There are some who never knew his idol,
cursed sculptors that shame marked,
who beat each other viciously on the chest and forehead,

with nothing but hope, gloomy Capitol!
That Death, hovering like a renewed sun,
he will finally make the flowers in his mind burst.

11. Romantic sunset

The poem shows a contrast between sun - light and life - and night - darkness and death. The sun refers to life and its ephemeral and fleeting being. The night, alludes to death, with a swampy, humid, dark environment, but this does not imply that it is not "irresistible", pointing out that beauty is also in the "ugly".

How beautiful is the Sun when it rises brand new,
throwing us like an explosion the "good morning" of him!
"Blessed is he who can lovingly
greet the sunset more glorious than a dream!
I remember!... I have seen everything, flower, spring, furrow,
rapture under his gaze like a beating heart ...
"Let's run towards the horizon, it's late, let's run fast!"
to catch at least one oblique lightning bolt!
But I chase the retiring God in vain;
The irresistible Night establishes his empire,
black, damp, dire and full of chills;
a scent of the grave floats in the darkness,
and my fearful foot, on the edge of the swamp, crushes
inadvertent toads and cold slugs.

About Charles Baudelaire

Baudelaire (1821-1867) was born in Paris and was orphaned in childhood. His mother remarries an influential military man, who works as an ambassador to various courts. He had an aristocratic upbringing and studied law at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.

At an early age, he takes on a dandy lifestyle. He frequents brothels, engages in vices, and wastes his fortune. He becomes a lover of Jeanne Duval, a mulatto of French and Haitian descent, who was his muse and companion for twenty years.

He was a poet, essayist, and critic, and in addition to being one of the greatest poets of the 19th century, he is one of the best translators of Edgar Allan Poe. His best known works were The flowers of Evil (1856) and The spleen of Paris (1869).

If you are interested in reading some of the poets most strongly influenced by Baudelaire, I invite you to read:

• 8 great poems by César Vallejo
• 9 essential poems by José Asunción Silva
• 10 fundamental poems of Fernando Pessoa