THE FLOWERS OF EVIL - CHARLES BAUDELAIRE - THE MARTYR 🔥
🚫 Correction: The author's name is mispronounced in the video. Baudelaire is French! The stress is on the LAST SYLLABLE OF HIS SURNAME!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1797-1856
Translated by Wilhelm LEVIK
Poem from the book "The Flowers of Evil"
CXX. MARTYR
Drawing by an unknown artist
Among silks, brocades, flasks, trinkets,
Paintings, statues, and engravings,
Teasing the sensual sofas and pillows
And furs spread on the floor,
In a heated room where the air is like a greenhouse,
Where it is dangerous, spicy, and thick,
And where the dead, in their crystal tomb,
Bouquets give up their spirits, -
A headless female corpse squirts onto the blanket
Crimson living blood,
And the white bed has already absorbed it,
Like water—thirsty newness.
Like a ghostly shadow, rising in the darkness
(How pale the words seem!),
Under the weight of black braids and idle adornments
A severed head
Lies on the table like an unseen buttercup,
And, staring into the void,
Like winter twilight, whitish, dull, languid,
The eyes stare meaninglessly.
On the white sheet, enticingly and boldly
Spreading its nakedness,
The body displays all its seductions,
All its fatal beauty.
A garter on the leg, with an amethyst eyelet,
As if in wonder, it gazes upon the world,
And a pink stocking with a golden border
Remains, like a souvenir.
Here, in her extraordinary solitude,
In a portrait—like herself
Alluring with charm and secret lust,
Driving sensuality mad—
All the festivities of sin, from sweet crimes,
To caresses deadly as poison,
All that which, at night, hidden in the folds of curtains,
Demons watch with delight.
But the angularity of her shoulders, drawn together by tension,
And the too-narrow leg,
And her breasts, and her supple figure, arched by the movement
Of a snake that has seen an enemy—
How young everything about her is!—Could it be that, at odds with fate,
From evil boredom, from the weariness
Of destructive desires,
Have you cast your fate aside?
And he to whom you, with all your love,
Alive, surrendered yourself to power,
Did he satiate his monstrous passion with your dead, your blood?
Did he seize your head by its tight braid,
Confess to me, unclean corpse!
Did you sink your teeth, triumphant, into the silent grin,
With the last caress of greedy lips?
Far from the clutches of judgment, from the sanctimonious capital,
From the noise of filthy chatter
Sleep peacefully, sleep peacefully in the mysterious tomb
And guard the key to its secrets.
Your spouse is far away, but an incorruptible being
You are with him in the silent hours of sleep,
And he is faithful to your memory with a captive heart,
As you are forever faithful to him.
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