Monday, May 06, 2024

Poemquotes: Baudelaire's "Spleen and Ideal": XLVI to XLVII

(my translations)

XLVI.
L'aube spirituelle
[46. Spiritual Dawn]

When in the realm of the debauched, the white and rosy dawn
Accompanied by the gnawing Ideal
Through the operation of a vengeful mystery
Within the drowsy brute, an angel awakens.

The inaccessible azure of the Spiritual Heavens,
The earthbound man still dreaming and suffering,
Opens and withdraws with the pull of the abyss.
And so, dear Goddess, Being lucid and pure,

On the smoking debris of idiotic orgies
Your memory brighter, rosier, more charming,
To my widened eyes hovers incessantly.

The sun has darkened the flame of the candles;
Thus, ever triumphant, your ghost is akin,
Resplendent soul, to the immortal sun!

===

XLVII.
Harmonie du soir
[47. Evening's Harmony]

Here come the times on which vibrating on its stem
Each flower exudes its scent like a censer;
The sounds and scents revolve in the evening's air;
Melancholic waltz and languorous vertigo!

Each flower exudes its scent like a censer;
The violin trembles like a heart distressed;
Melancholic waltz and languorous vertigo!
Heaven is sad and beautiful like a great monstrance.

The violin trembles like a heart distressed,
A tender heart, hating the vast and dark nothingness!
Heaven is sad and beautiful like a great monstrance;
The sun has drowned in its curdling blood.

A tender heart, hating the vast and dark nothingness,
Gathers every vestige of the shining past!
The sun has drowned in its curdling blood...
Your memory in me shines like a monstrance-censer! •

===