Nature,
pitiless
enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me!
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
it's well ended.
Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I
should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the
silence and solitude.
Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain
me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and
Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some
beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I
am not inferior to those I despise.
THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST.
How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough
to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose
vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen
than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns
his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the
incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the
horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable
existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things
thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the
reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and
picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.
These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external
objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within
pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too
tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.
And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates
me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle,
revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from
Beauty?
Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my
desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel
where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.
THE THYRSUS.
TO FRANZ LISZT.
What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a
sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating
the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But
physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a
vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious
meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and
fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing
complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant
lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the
spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a
mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollae, all
these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical
dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to
decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the
baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty
of the vine branches and the flowers?
The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and
venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty.
Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over
the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles
in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm,
unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the
feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance.
Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I
should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the
silence and solitude.
Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain
me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and
Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some
beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I
am not inferior to those I despise.
THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST.
How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough
to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose
vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen
than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns
his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the
incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the
horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable
existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things
thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the
reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and
picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.
These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external
objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within
pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too
tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.
And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates
me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle,
revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from
Beauty?
Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my
desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel
where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.
THE THYRSUS.
TO FRANZ LISZT.
What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a
sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating
the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But
physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a
vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious
meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and
fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing
complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant
lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the
spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a
mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollae, all
these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical
dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to
decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the
baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty
of the vine branches and the flowers?
The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and
venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty.
Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over
the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles
in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm,
unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the
feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance.
