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TEXTS
The Stranger
Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best?
Your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?
"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother."
Your friends, then?
"You use a word that has no meaning for me."
Your country?
"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated."
Beauty?
"Her I would love willingly"
Gold?
"I hate it as you hate God."
What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love?
"I love the clouds—the clouds that pass—the marvellous clouds."
Intoxication
One must be for ever drunk: that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you
must be drunk without cease. But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you
please. But be drunk. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass by a
moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should wake up, your intoxication already
lessened or gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece, of all
that flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, ll that speaks, ask of these the hour;
and wind and wave and star and bird and timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be
drunk! Lest you be the martyred slave of Time, intoxicate yourself, be drunk without cease!
With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will."
The Gifts of the Moon
The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept
in your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child."
And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the window-pane without
noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness of a mother and laid her colors upon your
face. So your eyes have remained green and your cheeks pale. From contemplation of your
visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she so tenderly wounded you upon the breast
that you have ever kept a certain readiness to tears.
In her joy, the Moon filled your chamber with a phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and this
living radiance thought, "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. You shall love all
that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, and night; the vast green sea; the unformed
and multitudinous waters; the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves swooning upon the piano
and lament with sweet, hoarse voices.
"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also have I wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where they
are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images
of their own folly."
And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved, accursed, seeking in you the reflection of that august divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all lunatics.
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
adapted translations by James Huneker (1919)
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