The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire.
Title: The Flowers of Evil.
Author: Charles Baudelaire.
Genre: Fiction, literature, poetry, death, romance, nature.
Country: France.
Language: French.
Publication Date: 1857.
Summary: A collection of poetry, the book is arranged in six thematically segregated sections: Spleen and Ideal, Parisian Scenes, Wine, Flowers of Evil, Revolt, and Death. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.
My rating: 10/10.
My review:
♥ THE ALBATROSS
Often, for pastime, mariners will ensnare
The albatross, that vast seabird who sweeps
On high companionable pinion where
Their vessel glides upon the bitter deeps.
Torn from his native space, this captive king
Flounders upon the deck in stricken pride,
And pitiably lets his great white wing
Drag like a heavy paddle at his side.
This rider of winds, how awkward he is, and weak!
How droll he seems, who lately was all grace!
A sailor pokes a pipestem into his beak;
Another, hobbling, mocks his trammeled pace.
The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds,
Familiar of storms, of stars, and of all high things;
Exiled on earth amidst its hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, borne down by his giant wings.
(transl. by Richard Wilbur)
♥ from JEWELS
...With a charm as powerful as an evil angel
To trouble the calm where my soul had retreated,
They advanced slowly to dislodge it from its crystal
Rock, where its loneliness mediated.
With the hips of Antiope, the torso of a boy,
So deeply was the one form sprung into the other
It seemed as if desire had fashioned a new toy.
Her farded, fawn-brown skin was perfection to either!
--And the lamp having at last resigned itself to death,
There was nothing now but the firelight in the room,
And every time a flame uttered a gasp for breath,
It flushed her amber skin with the blood of its bloom!
(transl. by David Paul)
♥ from THE MASK
...Poor perfect beauty! A grand river breaks
As your tears fall into my anxious soul,
I am drunk with your lie, my spirit slakes
Its torture in the stream your eyes unroll.
Why is she weeping? In her lovely pride
She could have conquered the whole race of man.
What unknown evil harrows her lithe side?
She weeps, mad girl, because her life began!
Because she lives! One thing she does deplore
So much that she kneels trembling in the dust,
That she must live tomorrow, evermore!
Tomorrow and tomorrow - as we must!
(tranl. by Graham Reynolds)
♥ from HYMN TO BEAUTY
From heaven or hell, O Beauty, come you hence?
Out from your gaze, infernal and divine,
Pours blended evil and beneficence,
And therefore men have likened you to wine.
...Whence come you, from what spheres or inky deeps,
With careless hand joy and distress to strew?
Fate, like a dog at heel, behind you creeps;
You govern all things here, and naught you rue.
You walk upon the dead with scornful glances;
Among your gems Horror is not least fair,
Murder, the dearest of your baubles, dances
Upon your haughty breast with amorous air.
Mothlike around your flame the transient, turning,
Crackles and flames and cries: “Ah, heavenly doom!”
The quivering lover o’er his mistress yearning,
Is but a dying man who woos his tomb.
(transl. by Dororthy Martin)
♥ from LETHE
Come to my heart, crue, insensible one,
Adored tiger, monster with the indolent air;
I would for a long time plunge my trembling fingers
Into the heavy tresses of your hair.
And in your garments that exhale your perfume,
I would bury my aching head,
And breathe, like a withered flower,
The sweet, stale reek of my love that is dead.
(transl. by Doreen Bell)
♥ DUELLUM
Two warriors engage, their weapons flash,
Spill blood, splash glints of steel into the air,
Such fracas, such encounters are the war
Of puppy love, the torment of young flesh.
Dearest! Our blades are broken! The fine fashion
Of youth is gone, but teeth and fingernails
Take up where the outmoded weapons fails.
Hearts ulcerated by a full-fledged passion!
In a deep gulley, lynx-haunted, forlorn,
Roll out own champions, locked in brute embrace,
Tearing their bloody flesh among the thorns.
That is the pit of hell, filled with out kind.
Let’s roll in it ourselves, with no remorse,
To keep alive our hatred without end!
(transl. by Anthony Hecht)
♥ from THE POSSESSED
...Light up your eyes from chandeliers of glass!
Light up the lustful looks of louts that pass!
Morbid or petulant, I thrill before you.
Be what you will, black night or crimson dawn;
No fiber of my body tautly drawn,
But cries: “Beloved Demon, I adore you!”
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from ALL IN ONE
…”When all things charm me I ignore
Which one alone brings most delight.
She shines before me like the dawn,
And she consoles me like the night.
(transl. by F.P. Sturm)
♥ from REVERSIBILITY
…Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief,
Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite,
And the vague terrors of the fearful night
That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf?
Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?
Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate,
With hands clenched in the dark, and tears of gall,
When Vengeance beats her hellish battle call,
And makes herself the captain of our fate?
Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?
(transl. by F.P. Sturm)
♥ from THE CONFESSION
...Your clashing note cried clear, poor, prisoned spirit:
“That nothing in the world is sure or fast,
And that man’s selfishness, though decked as merit,
Betrays itself at last.
“That hard the lot to be a queen of beauty,
And all is fruitless, like the treadmill toil
Of some paid dancer, fainting at her duty,
Still with her vacant smile.
“That if one builds on hearts, ill shall befall it,
That all things crack, and love and beauty flee,
Until Oblivion flings them in his wallet,
Spoil of Eternity.”
(transl. by Lois Saunders)
♥ EVENING HARMONY
Now every flower stem swings a censer chain,
And every flower gives incense to the night.
Sounds, perfumes circle in the evening light;
Turning in languorous waltz, again, again!
And every flower gives incense to the night;
The violin trembles like a soul in pain.
Round goes the languorous waltz, again, again!
The sky is like an altar, vast and bright.
The violin trembles like a soul in pain,
A sorrowing soul, that fears the unknown night!
The sky is like an altar, vast and bright!
In its own darkening blood the sun lies slain.
A sorrowing soul, that fears the unknown night,
Draws from the shining past what dreams remain!
Though in its darkening blood the sun lies slain,
Your memory, like a monstrance, brings me light!
(transl. by Naomi Lewis)
♥ from MISTY SKY
...Dangerous girl, seductive as the weather!
Shall I adore your snows and frosts together?
In your relentless winter shall I feel
A kiss more sharp than that of ice and steel?
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from THE CAT
...This voice, which seems to pearl and filter
Through my soul’s inmost shady nook,
Fills me with poems, like a book,
And fortifies me, like a philter.
His voice can cure the direst pain,
And it contains the rarest raptures.
The deepest meanings, which it captures,
It needs no language to explain.
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from INVITATION TO A VOYAGE
...Drowned suns that glimmer there
Through cloud-disheveled air,
Move me with such a mystery as appears
Within those other skies
Of your treacherous eyes,
When I behold them shining through their tears.
There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.
(transl. by Richard Wilbur)
♥ from THE IRREPARABLE
How shall we kill this old, this long Remorse
Which writhes continually,
And feeds on us as worms upon a corpse,
Maggots upon a tree?
How stifle this implacable Remorse?
What wine, what drug, what philter known of man
Will drown this ancient foe,
Ruthless and ravenous as a courtesan,
Sure as an ant, and slow?
What wine? What drug? What philter known to man?
...Dost love the damned, adorable sorceress?
Dost know the smitten sore?
Dost know Remorse that, grim and pitiless,
Feeds at my heart’s red core?
Dost love the damned, adorable sorceress?
My soul is prey to the Irreparable,
It gnaws with tooth accurst,
And, termitelike, the cunning spawn of hell
Mines the foundations first.
My soul is prey to the Irreparable!
(transl. by Sir John Squire)
♥ from CONVERSATION
...Over my swooning breast your fingers stray;
In vain, alas! My breast is a void pit
Sacked by the tooth and claw of woman. Nay,
Seek not my heart; the beasts have eaten it.
My heart is as a palace plundered
By the wolves, wherein they gorge and rend and kill,
A perfume round thy naked throat is shed!
Beauty, strong scourge of souls, O work thy will!
Scorch with thy fiery eyes which shine like feasts,
These shreds of flesh rejected by the beasts!
(transl. by Sir John Squire)
♥ from SONG OF AUTUMN
...All of winter will gather in my soul:
Hate, anger, horror, chills, the hard forced work,
And, like the sun in his hell by the north pole,
My heart will be only a red and frozen block.
...It seems to me, lulled by monotonous shocks,
As if they were hastily nailing a coffin today.
For whom? --Yesterday was summer. Now autumn knocks!
That mysterious sound is like someone’s going away.
(transl by C.F. Macintyre)
♥ from PRAISES OF MY FRANCES
...When my vices, wild and stormy,
From my wonted courses bore me,
It was you appeared before me.
Star of oceans! You that alter
Courses when the pilots falter…
Take my heart upon your altar!
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from MOESTA ET ERRABUNDA
How far you are, O heaven of delicate scent,
Where love and pleasure gaze without a frown,
And what one loves is worthy to be loved,
And in its pure desire the heart goes down!
How far you are, O heaven of delicate scent!
...But the grass-greenest heaven of childish loves,
The races, songs, the kisses, and the flowers,
The violins that called behind the hills,
The crocks of cider in the evening bowers,
But the grass-greenest heaven of childish loves,
The simple heaven full of stolen joys,
Is it so farther than the China seas?
And not to be recalled with bitter cries,
Or woken at a treble’s silver voice,
The simple heaven full of stolen joys?
(transl. by Hilary Corke)
♥ THE GHOST
Like an angel, feral-eyed,
Piercing to your sleeping side,
Gliding down with oily flight
In the inwards of the night.
I shall give you, my dark one,
Kisses frozen as the moon,
Caresses such as snakes give
Slithering round the open grave.
When the livid daylights waken,
You will find my place forsaken,
Icy till the evening’s here.
As others might with tenderness,
Rule your life and your youngness,
I shall rule you with a fear.
(transl. by Hilary Corke)
♥ from SONNET OF AUTUMN
They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes:
“Why dost thou love me, strange lover mine?”
--Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise
All save that antique brutelike faith of thine,
And will not bare the secret of their shame,
To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long,
Now their black legend written out in flame.
Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong!
(transl. by F.P. Sturm)
♥ from THE SADNESS OF THE MOON
...And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,
Earthward she lets a furtive teardrop flow,
Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,
Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow,
Whence gleams if oris and of opal start,
And hides it from the sun, deep in his heart.
(transl. by F.P. Sturm)
♥ THE OWLS
Within the shelter of black yews,
The owls in ranks are ranged apart,
Like foreign gods, whose eyeballs dart
Red fire. They meditate and muse.
Without a stir they will remain,
Till, in its melancholy hour,
Thrusting the level sun from power,
The shade establishes its reign.
Their attitude instructs the sage,
Content with what is near at hand,
To shun all motion, strife, and rage.
Men, crazed with shadows that they chase,
Bear, as a punishment, the brand
Of having wished to change their place.
(transl. by Roy Calmpbell)
♥ from SPLEEN
I have more memories than if I had lived a thousand years.
Even a bureau crammed with souvenirs,
Old bills, love letters, photographs, receipts,
Court depositions, locks of hair in plaits,
Hides fewer secrets than my brain could yield.
It’s like a tomb, a corpse-filled potter’s field,
A pyramid where the dead lie down by scores.
--I am a graveyard that the moon abhors,
Like guilty qualms, the worms burrow and nest
Thickly in bodies that I loved the best.
I’m a stale boudoir where old-fashioned clothes
Lie scattered among wilted fern and rose,
Where only the Boucher girls in pale pastels
Can breathe the uncorked scents and faded smells.
(transl. by Anthony Hecht)
♥ from OBSESSION
...How you would please me, night! Without your stars
Which speak a foreign dialect, that jars
On one who seeks the void, the black, the bare.
Yet even your darkest shade a canvas forms,
Whereon my eye must multiply in swarms,
Familiar looks of shapes no longer there.
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ SYMPATHETIC HORROR
From livid skies that, without end,
As stormy as your future roll,
What thoughts into your empty soul
(Answer me, libertine!) descend?
--Insatiable yet for all
That turns on darkness, doom, or dice,
I’ll not, like Ovid, mourn my fall,
Chased from the Latin paradise.
Skies, torn like seacoasts by the storm,
In you I see my pride take form,
And the huge clouds that rush in streams
Are the black hearses of my dreams,
And your red rays reflect the Hell,
In which my heart is pleased to dwell.
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from HEAUTONTIMOROUMENOS
...I am the ulcer and the lance!
I am the bruise; I am the blow!
I am the rack, the limbs also,
Hangman and hanged at once!
I am my own heart’s vampire -
One of the vast abandoned host.
Laughter’s the doom of those who’ve lost
The power to smile forever!
(transl. by Naomi Lewis)
♥ from THE CLOCK
…“Remember! Time the gamester, it’s the law,
Wins always, without cheating. Daylight wanes.
Night deepens. The abyss with gulfy maw
Thirsts on unsated, while the hourglass drains.
“Sooner or later, now, the time must be
When Hazard, Virtue, your still-virgin mate,
Repentance, your last refuge, or all three
Will tell you: Die, old Coward. It’s too late!”
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN
…--The coffins of old women very often
Are near as small as those of children are.
Wise Death, who makes a symbol of a coffin,
Displays a taste both charming and bizarre.
And when I track some feeble phantom fleeing
Through Paris’s immense ant-swarming Babel,
I always think that such a fragile being
Is moving softly to another cradle.
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from SKELETONS DIGGING
...You, the terrible sign we’re shown
Of our destiny’s greater dearth,
Wish you to say that in the earth
The promised sleep is never known?
That the end has betrayed us here,
That even death himself has lied,
That though eternity betide,
Alas! We have again to fear
That in some unknown land we’ll meet,
A knotted earth that needs be flayed,
To drive again the heavy spade
Beneath our bleeding naked feet?
(transl. by Yvor Winters)
♥ from THE GAMING TABLE
...Envying these creatures their tenacious lust,
These rattling skeletons their deadly mirth,
Envying all of those who gaily thrust
Honor or beauty to rot beneath the earth.
Envious, my heart! O dark and dreadful word!
When these with passion their bright destruction bless,
Who, drunk with the pulse of their own blood, preferred
Deep pain to death and hell to nothingness.
(transl. by Humbert Wolfe)
♥ from DANCE OF DEATH
...I fear your coquetry’s not worth the strain,
The prize not worth the effort you prolong.
Could mortal hearts your railleries explain?
The joys of horror only charm the strong.
The pits of your dark eyes dread fancies breathe,
And vertigo. Among the dancers prudent,
Hope not your sixteen pairs of smiling teeth
Will ever find a contemplative student.
Yet who’s not squeezed a skeleton with passion?
Nor ravened with his kisses on the meat
Of charnels. What of costume, scent, of fashion?
The man who feigns disgust, betrays conceit.
…“In every clime, Death studies your devices
And vain contortions, laughable Humanity,
And oft, like you, perfumes herself with spices
Mixing her irony with your insanity!”
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from PARISIAN DREAM
...I woke; my mind was bright with flame;
I saw the cheap and sordid hole
I live in, and my cares all came
Burrowing back into my soul.
Brutally the twelves strokes of noon
Against my naked ear were hurled;
And a gray sky was drizzling down
Upon this sad, lethargic world.
(transl. by Edna St. Vincent Millay)
♥ from THE RAGPICKERS’ WINE
...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!
(transl. by C.F. Macintyre)
♥ from THE MURDERER’S WINE
...I begged for a rendezvous
At night, in a lonely lane.
She came, mad thing! No ado!
We’re all more or less insane!
She still was pretty, although
Worn out with working! While I,
I loved her past bearing, and so
I said: “You’ve got to die!”
...How could hopeless debauchees,
As soulless as things of steel,
Ever known the love I feel,
True love with its mysteries,
Its black enchantments and fears,
Its hellish procession of pains,
Its poison vials and tears,
Its rattle of bones and of chains!
...But why worry about the hereafter?
The thought of it moves me to laughter!
To hell with the Devil and God!
(transl. by Alan Conder)
♥ from THE SOLITARY’S WINE
...These are worth nothing, O deep flask, beside
The mighty nostrum your rich belly guards
For the holy poet’s thirsty heart.
You pour him hope and youth and life and pride,
That treasure giving all us beggars odds
To make us conquerors, peers of the gods!
(transl. C.F. Macintyre)
♥ from THE MARTYR
...The singular effect of solitude
And of a languorous portrait, with its eyes
Provocative as is its attitude,
Dark loves would advertise,
And guilty joys, with feasts of strange delight,
Full of infernal kisses, omens certain
To please the gloating angels of the night
Who swim behind each curtain.
...You’d know that she was young! Her soul affronted,
Her senses stung with boredom. Were they bayed
By packs of wandering, lost desires, and hunted,
And finally betrayed?
...Far from inquiring magistrates that sneer,
Far from this world of raillery and riot,
Sleep peacefully, strange creature, on your bier,
Of mystery and quiet.
Your lover roams the world. Your deathless shape
Watches his sleep and hears each indrawn breath.
No more than you can ever he escape
From constancy till death!
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from LESBIANS, Delphine and Hippolyta
…“Over you, like a herd of ponderous kine,
Man’s love will pass and his caresses fall
Like trampling hooves. Then turn your face to mine;
Turn, O my heart, my half of me, my all!
“Turn, turn, that I may see their starry lights,
Your eyes of azure; turn! For one dear glance
I will reveal one’s most obscure delights,
And you shall drowse in pleasure’s endless trance!”
...Delphine looked up, and fate was in her eye.
From the god’s tripod and beneath his spell,
Shaking her tragic locks, she made reply:
“Who in love’s presence dares to speak of hell?
“Thinker of useless thoughts, let him be cursed,
Who in his folly, venturing to vex
A question answerless and barren, first
With wrong and right involved the things of sex!
...Hence, lamentable victims, get you hence!
Hells yawn beneath, your road is straight and steep.
Where all the crimes receive their recompense
Wind-whipped and seething in the lowest deep,
With a huge roaring as of storms and fires,
Go down, mad phantoms, doomed to seek in vain
The ne’er-won goal of unassuaged desires,
And in your pleasures find eternal pain.
(transl. by Aldous Huxley)
♥ from LESBIANS
Some by the light of resin-scented torches
In the dumb hush of caverns seek their shrine,
Invoking Bacchus, killer of remorses,
To liven their delirium with wine.
Others who deal with scapulars and hoods,
Hiding the whiplash under their long train,
Mingle, on lonely nights in somber woods,
The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain.
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from AN ALLEGORY
...Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon,
For their sharp scythe-like talons - every one -
Pass by her in their all-destructive play;
Leaving her beauty till a later day.
...Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies;
And when black Night shall roll before her eyes,
She will look straight in Death’s grim face forlorn,
Without remorse or hate - as one newborn.
(transl. by F.P. Sturm)
♥ from A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA
...On your isle, Venus! I saw but one thing standing,
Gallows emblem from which my shape was hanging…
--God! Give me strength and will to contemplate
Heart, body - without loathing, without hate!
(transl. by Frederick Morgan)
♥ LOVE AND THE SKULL, An Old Cul-De-Lampe
Love is seated on the skull
Of Humanity,
And on that throne the obscene fool
In effrontery
Laughs and blows bubbles in gray swirls
That rise and fly
Up in the air to look for worlds
Deep in the sky.
Each luminous and fragile whole
Lifts like a thought,
Then spits its little spray of soul
Out and is not.
I hear the skull, at every spurt,
Beg his friend:
“When is this brutal, ridiculous sport
Going to end?
“That stuff that from your mouth you scatter
In the air like rain,
You blind murderer, is the matter
Of my blood and my brain!”
(transl. by Jackson Mathews)
♥ from THE DENIAL OF SAINT PETER
...Martyrs and tortured victims with their cries
Compose delicious symphonies, no doubt,
Because, despite the blood they cost, the skies
Can always do with more when they give out!
Jesus, remember, in the olive trees,
In all simplicity you prayed afresh
To One whom your own butchers seemed to please
In hammering the nails into your flesh.
...Then did you dream of brilliant days of song,
When, the eternal promise to fulfill,
You mounted on an ass and rode along,
Trampling the flowers and palms beneath your feet,
When whirling your whips, and full of valiant force,
The moneylenders quailed at your advance,
When you, in short, were master? Did remorse
Not pierce your body further than the lance?
I am quite satisfied to leave so bored
A world, where dream and action disunite.
I’d use the sword, to perish by the sword.
Peter denied his Master - he did right!
(transl. Roy Campbell)
♥ from ABEL AND CAIN
...Ah! Race of Abel, your fat carcass
Will enrich the reeking soil!
Race of Cain, your hard work is
Not finished yet in spite of all;
Race of Abel, here your shame lies:
The sword lost to the hunter’s rod!
Race of Cain, mount to the skies
And down upon the earth cast God!
(transl. by Kenneth O. Hanson)
♥ from LITANY TO SATAN
...Thou stretchest forth a saving hand to keep
Such men as roam upon the roofs in sleep.
Satan, at last take pity on our pain!
Thy power can make the halting drunkard’s feet
Avoid the peril of the surging street.
Satan, at last take pity on our pain!
Thou, to console our helplessness, didst plot
The cunning use of powder and of shot.
Satan, at last take pity on our pain!
Thy awful name is written as with pitch
On the unrelenting foreheads of the rich.
Satan, at last take pity on our pain!
In strange and hidden places thou dost move
Where women cry for torture in their love.
Satan, at last take pity on our pain!
Father of those whom God’s tempestuous ire
Has flung from paradise with sword and fire.
Satan, at last take pity on our pain!
(transl. by James Elroy Flecker)
♥ from THE DEATH OF ARTISTS
...We must wear out our souls in subtle schemes,
We must dismantle many a scaffolding,
Before we know the Creature of our dreams
That fills our hearts with sobs and sorrowing!
Some never know the Idol of their soul,
Like sculptors damned and branded for disgrace
Who hammer upon their own breast and face,
They have one hope, their somber Capitol!
That Death may rise, a sun of another kind,
And bring to blossom the flowers of their mind!
(transl. by Jacksom Mathews)
♥ DREAM OF A CURIOUS PERSON (To F.N.)
Have you known such savory grief as I?
Do people say “Strange fellow!” whom you meet?
My amorous soul, when I was due to die,
Felt longing mixed with horror; pain seemed sweet.
Anguish and ardent hope (no factious whim)
Were mixed; and as the sands of life ran low
My torture grew delicious yet more grim;
And of this world my heart was letting go.
I seemed a child, so keen to see the show
He feels a deadly hatred of the curtain…
And then I saw the hard, cold truth for certain:
I felt that dreadful dawn around me grow
With no surprise or vestige of a thrill.
The curtain rose and I stayed waiting still.
(transl. by Roy Campbell)
♥ from THE VOYAGE (To Maxime du Camp)
...But the true voyagers are those who move
Simply to move - like lost balloons! Their heart
Is some old motor thudding in one groove.
It says its single phrase: “Let us depart!”
They are like conscripts lusting for the guns;
Our sciences have never learned to tag
Their projects and designs. Enormous, vague
Hopes grease the wheels of these automatons!
…“Old maids who weep, playboys who live each hour,
State banquets loaded with hot sauces, blood, and trash,
Ministers sterilized by dreams of power,
Workers who love their brutalizing lash;
“And everywhere religions like our own,
All storming heaven, proppped by saints who reign
Like sybarites on beds of nails and frown,
All searching for some orgiastic pain!
“Many, self-drunk, are lying in the mud,
Mad now, as they have always been, they roll
In torment screaming to the throne of God:
‘My image and my lord, I hate your soul.’
“And others, dedicated without hope,
Flee the dull herd, each locked in his own world,
Hides in his ivory tower of art and dope!
--This is the daily news from the whole world!
...It’s time! Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!
The land rots; we shall sail into the night;
If now the sky and sea are black as ink,
Our hearts, as you must know, are filled with light!
Only when we drink poison are we well!
We want, this fire so burns our brain tissue,
To drown in the abyss, Heaven or Hell,
Who cares? Through the unknown, we’ll find the new!
(transl. by Robert Lowell)