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Charles Baudelaire (1867-1821)
I don't know when I first fell in love with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. Perhaps it was in my French literature class in college or my travels to Paris or even in my research of Poe, but nonetheless, I did.
Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821. His father was 34 years older than his mother and did not live to see him grow up. When his mother remarried he was sent to boarding school and then off to India to see if that would shake out his writing interests. It did not.
Baudelaire was known for his urban subject matter and often wrote of sensual and aesthetic pleasures.
For a while he wrote politically about the Revolution of 1848 but soon found that type of writing was not for him. As with most writers, he found himself in poor health with pressing debts in the late 1850's. He died at the age of 46 in Paris.
Baudelaire is well known today for his complete translations of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry from English into French.
The following poem is one of my most beloved. I hope you love it as well as we continue on into poetry week.
As always.
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The
Ragpickers' Wine
In the muddy maze of some old
neighborhood,
Often, where the street lamp gleams
like blood,
As the wind whips the flame, rattles
the glass,
Where human beings ferment in a
stormy mass,
One sees a ragpicker knocking against
the walls,
Paying no heed to the spies of the
cops, his thralls,
But stumbling like a poet lost in
dreams;
He pours his heart out in stupendous
schemes.
He takes great oaths and dictates
sublime laws,
Casts down the wicked, aids the
victims' cause;
Beneath the sky, like a vast canopy,
He is drunken of his splendid
qualities.
Yes, these people, plagued by
household cares,
Bruised by hard work, tormented by
their years,
Each bent double by the junk he
carries,
The jumbled vomit of enormous Paris,—
They come back, perfumed with the
smell of stale
Wine-barrels, followed by old
comrades, pale
From war, mustaches like limp flags,
to march
With banners, flowers, through the
triumphal arch
Erected for them, by some magic
touch!
And in the dazzling, deafening
debauch
Of bugles, sunlight, of huzzas and drum,
Bring glory to the love-drunk folks
at home!
Even so, wine pours its gold to
frivolous
Humanity, a shining Pactolus;
Then through man's throat of high
exploits it sings
And by its gifts reigns like
authentic kings.
To lull these wretches' sloth and
drown the hate
Of all who mutely die, compassionate,
God has created sleep's oblivion;
Man added Wine, divine child of the
Sun.
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