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007 Livre Charles Baudelaire Les Fleurs du Mal 1868 |
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Le Voyage (1861) À Maxime du Camp I Pour l’enfant, amoureux de cartes et d’estampes, L’univers est égal à son vaste appétit. Ah! que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes ! Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit ! Un matin nous partons, le cerveau plein de flamme, Le coeur gros de rancune et de désirs amers, Et nous allons, suivant le rythme de la lame, Berçant notre infini sur le fini des mers : Les uns, joyeux de fuir une patrie infâme ; D’autres, l’horreur de leurs berceaux, et quelques-uns, Astrologues noyés dans les yeux d’une femme, La Circé tyrannique aux dangereux parfums. Pour n’être pas changés en bêtes, ils s’enivrent D’espace et de lumière et de cieux embrasés ; La glace qui les mord, les soleils qui les cuivrent, Effacent lentement la marque des baisers. Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent Pour partir ; coeurs légers, semblables aux ballons, De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s’écartent, Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours : Allons ! Ceux-là dont les désirs ont la forme des nues, Et qui rêvent, ainsi qu’un conscrit le canon, De vastes voluptés, changeantes, inconnues, Et dont l’esprit humain n’a jamais su le nom! II Nous imitons, horreur ! la toupie et la boule Dans leur valse et leurs bonds ; même dans nos sommeils La Curiosité nous tourmente et nous roule Comme un Ange cruel qui fouette des soleils. Singulière fortune où le but se déplace, Et, n’étant nulle part, peut être n’importe où ! Où l’Homme, dont jamais l’espérance n’est lasse, Pour trouver le repos court toujours comme un fou ! Notre âme est un trois-mâts cherchant son Icarie ; Une voix retentit sur le pont : « Ouvre l’oeil ! » Une voix de la hune, ardente et folle, crie : « Amour... gloire... bonheur ! » Enfer ! c’est un écueil ! Chaque îlot signalé par l’homme de vigie Est un Eldorado promis par le Destin ; L’Imagination qui dresse son orgie Ne trouve qu’un récif aux clartés du matin. Ô le pauvre amoureux des pays chimériques ! Faut-il le mettre aux fers, le jeter à la mer, Ce matelot ivrogne, inventeur d’Amériques Dont le mirage rend le gouffre plus amer ? Tel le vieux vagabond, piétinant dans la boue, Rêve, le nez en l’air, de brillants paradis ; Son oeil ensorcelé découvre une Capoue Partout où la chandelle illumine un taudis. III Etonnants voyageurs ! quelles nobles histoires Nous lisons dans vos yeux profonds comme les mers ! Montrez-nous les écrins de vos riches mémoires, Ces bijoux merveilleux, faits d’astres et d’éthers. Nous voulons voyager sans vapeur et sans voile ! Faites, pour égayer l’ennui de nos prisons, Passer sur nos esprits, tendus comme une toile, Vos souvenirs avec leurs cadres d’horizons. Dites, qu’avez-vous vu ? IV « Nous avons vu des astres Et des flots, nous avons vu des sables aussi ; Et, malgré bien des chocs et d’imprévus désastres, Nous nous sommes souvent ennuyés, comme ici. La gloire du soleil sur la mer violette, La gloire des cités dans le soleil couchant, Allumaient dans nos coeurs une ardeur inquiète De plonger dans un ciel au reflet alléchant. Les plus riches cités, les plus grands paysages, Jamais ne contenaient l’attrait mystérieux De ceux que le hasard fait avec les nuages. Et toujours le désir nous rendait soucieux ! – La jouissance ajoute au désir de la force. Désir, vieil arbre à qui le plaisir sert d’engrais, Cependant que grossit et durcit ton écorce, Tes branches veulent voir le soleil de plus près ! Grandiras-tu toujours, grand arbre plus vivace Que le cyprès ? – Pourtant nous avons, avec soin, Cueilli quelques croquis pour votre album vorace Frères qui trouvez beau tout ce qui vient de loin ! Nous avons salué des idoles à trompe ; Des trônes constellés de joyaux lumineux ; Des palais ouvragés dont la féerique pompe Serait pour vos banquiers un rêve ruineux ; Des costumes qui sont pour les yeux une ivresse ; Des femmes dont les dents et les ongles sont teints, Et des jongleurs savants que le serpent caresse. » V Et puis, et puis encore ? VI « Ô cerveaux enfantins ! Pour ne pas oublier la chose capitale, Nous avons vu partout, et sans l’avoir cherché, Du haut jusques en bas de l’échelle fatale, Le spectacle ennuyeux de l’immortel péché : La femme, esclave vile, orgueilleuse et stupide, Sans rire s’adorant et s’aimant sans dégoût ; L’homme, tyran goulu, paillard, dur et cupide, Esclave de l’esclave et ruisseau dans l’égout ; Le bourreau qui jouit, le martyr qui sanglote ; La fête qu’assaisonne et parfume le sang ; Le poison du pouvoir énervant le despote, Et le peuple amoureux du fouet abrutissant ; Plusieurs religions semblables à la nôtre, Toutes escaladant le ciel ; la Sainteté, Comme en un lit de plume un délicat se vautre, Dans les clous et le crin cherchant la volupté ; L’Humanité bavarde, ivre de son génie, Et, folle maintenant comme elle était jadis, Criant à Dieu, dans sa furibonde agonie : “Ô mon semblable, mon maître, je te maudis !” Et les moins sots, hardis amants de la Démence, Fuyant le grand troupeau parqué par le Destin, Et se réfugiant dans l’opium immense ! – Tel est du globe entier l’éternel bulletin. » VII Amer savoir, celui qu’on tire du voyage ! Le monde, monotone et petit, aujourd’hui, Hier, demain, toujours, nous fait voir notre image : Une oasis d’horreur dans un désert d’ennui ! Faut-il partir ? rester ? Si tu peux rester, reste ; Pars, s’il le faut. L’un court, et l’autre se tapit Pour tromper l’ennemi vigilant et funeste, Le Temps ! Il est, hélas ! des coureurs sans répit, Comme le Juif errant et comme les apôtres, À qui rien ne suffit, ni wagon ni vaisseau, Pour fuir ce rétiaire infâme ; il en est d’autres Qui savent le tuer sans quitter leur berceau. Lorsque enfin il mettra le pied sur notre échine, Nous pourrons espérer et crier : En avant ! De même qu’autrefois nous partions pour la Chine, Les yeux fixés au large et les cheveux au vent, Nous nous embarquerons sur la mer des Ténèbres Avec le coeur joyeux d’un jeune passager. Entendez-vous ces voix charmantes et funèbres, Qui chantent : « Par ici vous qui voulez manger Le Lotus parfumé ! c’est ici qu’on vendange Les fruits miraculeux dont votre coeur a faim ; Venez vous enivrer de la douceur étrange De cette après-midi qui n’a jamais de fin ! » À l’accent familier nous devinons le spectre ; Nos Pylades l’agrave-bas tendent leurs bras vers nous. « Pour rafraîchir ton coeur nage vers ton Electre ! » Dit celle dont jadis nous baisions les genoux. VIII Ô Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps ! levons l’ancre ! Ce pays nous ennuie, ô Mort ! Appareillons ! Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l’encre, Nos coeurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons ! Verse-nous ton poison pour qu’il nous réconforte ! Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau, Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe ? Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau ! |
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The Voyage To Maxime du Camp I To a child who is fond of maps and engravings The universe is the size of his immense hunger. Ah! how vast is the world in the light of a lamp ! In memory’s eyes how small the world is ! One morning we set out, our brains aflame, Our hearts full of resentment and bitter desires, And we go, following the rhythm of the wave, Lulling our infinite on the finite of the seas : Some, joyful at fleeing a wretched fatherland ; Others, the horror of their birthplace ; a few, Astrologers drowned in the eyes of some woman, Some tyrannic Circe with dangerous perfumes. Not to be changed into beasts, they get drunk With space, with light, and with fiery skies ; The ice that bites them, the suns that bronze them, Slowly efface the bruise of the kisses. But the true voyagers are only those who leave Just to be leaving ; hearts light, like balloons, They never turn aside from their fatality And without knowing why they always say : “Let’s go !” Those whose desires have the form of the clouds, And who, as a raw recruit dreams of the cannon, Dream of vast voluptuousness, changing and strange, Whose name the human mind has never known ! II Horror ! We imitate the top and bowling ball, Their bounding and their waltz ; even in our slumber Curiosity torments us, rolls us about, Like a cruel Angel who lashes suns. Singular destiny where the goal moves about, And being nowhere can be anywhere ! Toward which Man, whose hope never grows weary, Is ever running like a madman to find rest ! Our soul’s a three-master seeking Icaria ; A voice resounds upon the bridge : “Keep a sharp eye !” From aloft a voice, ardent and wild, cries : “Love... glory... happiness !” – Damnation ! It’s a shoal ! Every small island sighted by the man on watch Is the Eldorado promised by Destiny ; Imagination preparing for her orgy Finds but a reef in the light of the dawn. O the poor lover of imaginary lands ! Must he be put in irons, thrown into the sea, That drunken tar, inventor of Americas, Whose mirage makes the abyss more bitter ? Thus the old vagabond tramping through the mire Dreams with his nose in the air of brilliant Edens ; His enchanted eye discovers a Capua Wherever a candle lights up a hut. III Astonishing voyagers ! What splendid stories We read in your eyes as deep as the seas ! Show us the chest of your rich memories, Those marvelous jewels, made of ether and stars. We wish to voyage without steam and without sails ! To brighten the ennui of our prisons, Make your memories, framed in their horizons, Pass across our minds stretched like canvasses. Tell us what you have seen. IV “We have seen stars And waves ; we have also seen sandy wastes ; And in spite of many a shock and unforeseen Disaster, we were often bored, as we are here. The glory of sunlight upon the purple sea, The glory of cities against the setting sun, Kindled in our hearts a troubling desire To plunge into a sky of alluring colors. The richest cities, the finest landscapes, Never contained the mysterious attraction Of the ones that chance fashions from the clouds And desire was always making us more avid ! – Enjoyment fortifies desire. Desire, old tree fertilized by pleasure, While your bark grows thick and hardens, Your branches strive to get closer to the sun ! Will you always grow, tall tree more hardy Than the cypress ? – However, we have carefully Gathered a few sketches for your greedy album, Brothers who think lovely all that comes from afar ! We have bowed to idols with elephantine trunks ; Thrones studded with luminous jewels ; Palaces so wrought that their fairly-like splendor Would make your bankers have dreams of ruination ; And costumes that intoxicate the eyes ; Women whose teeth and fingernails are dyed And clever mountebanks whom the snake caresses.” V And then, and then what else ? VI “O childish minds ! Not to forget the most important thing, We saw everywhere, without seeking it, From the foot to the top of the fatal ladder, The wearisome spectacle of immortal sin : Woman, a base slave, haughty and stupid, Adoring herself without laughter or disgust ; Man, a greedy tyrant, ribald, hard and grasping, A slave of the slave, a gutter in the sewer ; The hangman who feels joy and the martyr who sobs, The festival that blood flavors and perfumes ; The poison of power making the despot weak, And the people loving the brutalizing whip ; Several religions similar to our own, All climbing up to heaven ; Saintliness Like a dilettante who sprawls in a feather bed, Seeking voluptuousness on horsehair and nails ; Prating humanity, drunken with its genius, And mad now as it was in former times, Crying to God in its furious death-struggle : ‘O my fellow, O my master, may you be damned !’ The less foolish, bold lovers of Madness, Fleeing the great flock that Destiny has folded, Taking refuge in opium’s immensity ! – That’s the unchanging report of the entire globe.” VII Bitter is the knowledge one gains from voyaging ! The world, monotonous and small, today, Yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our image : An oasis of horror in a desert of ennui ! Must one depart ? Remain ? If you can stay, remain ; Leave, if you must. One runs, another hides To elude the vigilant, fatal enemy, Time ! There are, alas ! those who rove without respite, Like the Wandering Jew and like the Apostles, Whom nothing suffices, neither coach nor vessel, To flee this infamous retiary ; and others Who know how to kill him without leaving their cribs. And when at last he sets his foot upon our spine, We can hope and cry out : Forward ! Just as in other times we set out for China, Our eyes fixed on the open sea, hair in the wind, We shall embark on the sea of Darkness With the glad heart of a young traveler. Do you hear those charming, melancholy voices Singing : “Come this way ! You who wish to eat The perfumed Lotus ! It’s here you gather The miraculous fruits for which your heart hungers ; Come and get drunken with the strange sweetness Of this eternal afternoon ?” By the familiar accent we know the specter ; Our Pylades yonder stretch out their arms towards us. “To refresh your heart swim to your Electra !” Cries she whose knees we kissed in other days. VIII O Death, old captain, it is time ! let’s weigh anchor ! This country wearies us, O Death ! Let us set sail ! Though the sea and the sky are black as ink, Our hearts which you know well are filled with rays of light Pour out your poison that it may refresh us ! This fire burns our brains so fiercely, we wish to plunge To the abyss’ depths, Heaven or Hell, does it matter ? To the depths of the Unknown to find something new ! – William Aggeler, 1954 |
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The Voyage To Maxime du Camp I For children crazed with postcards, prints, and stamps All space can scarce suffice their appetite. How vast the world seems by the light of lamps, But in the eyes of memory how slight ! One morning we set sail, with brains on fire, And hearts swelled up with rancorous emotion, Balancing, to the rhythm of its lyre, Our infinite upon the finite ocean. Some wish to leave their venal native skies, Some flee their birthplace, others change their ways, Astrologers who’ve drowned in Beauty’s eyes, Tyrannic Circe with the scent that slays. Not to be changed to beasts, they have their fling With space, and splendour, and the burning sky, The suns that bronze them and the frosts that sting Efface the mark of kisses by and by. But the true travellers are those who go Only to get away : hearts like balloons Unballasted, with their own fate aglow, Who know not why they fly with the monsoons : Those whose desires are in the shape of clouds. And dream, as raw recruits of shot and shell, Of mighty raptures in strange, transient crowds Of which no human soul the name can tell. II Horror ! We imitate the top and bowl In swerve and bias. Through our sleep it runs. It’s Curiosity that makes us roll As the fierce Angel whips the whirling suns. Singular game ! where the goal changes places ; The winning-post is nowhere, yet all round ; Where Man tires not of the mad hope he races Thinking, some day, that respite will be found. Our soul’s like a three-master, where one hears A voice that from the bridge would warn all hands. Another from the foretop madly cheers “Love, joy, and glory” ... Hell ! we’re on the sands ! The watchmen think each isle that heaves in view An Eldorado, shouting their belief. Imagination riots in the crew Who in the morning only find a reef. The fool that dotes on far, chimeric lands – Put him in irons, or feed him to the shark ! The drunken sailor’s visionary lands Can only leave the bitter truth more stark. So some old vagabond, in mud who grovels, Dreams, nose in air, of Edens sweet to roam. Wherever smoky wicks illumine hovels He sees another Capua or Rome. III Amazing travellers, what noble stories We read in the deep oceans of your gaze ! Show us your memory’s casket, and the glories Streaming from gems made out of stars and rays ! We, too, would roam without a sail or steam, And to combat the boredom of our jail, Would stretch, like canvas on our souls, a dream, Framed in horizons, of the seas you sail. What have you seen ? IV “We have seen stars and waves. We have seen sands and shores and oceans too, In spite of shocks and unexpected graves, We have been bored, at times, the same as you. The solar glories on the violet ocean And those of spires that in the sunset rise, Lit, in our hearts, a yearning, fierce emotion To plunge into those ever-luring skies. The richest cities and the scenes most proud In nature, have no magic to enamour Like those which hazard traces in the cloud While wistful longing magnifies their glamour. Enjoyment adds more fuel for desire, Old tree, to which all pleasure is manure ; As the bark hardens, so the boughs shoot higher, And nearer to the sun would grow mature. Tree, will you always flourish, more vivacious Than cypress ? – None the less, these views are yours : We took some photographs for your voracious Album, who only care for distant shores. We have seen idols elephantine-snouted, And thrones with living gems bestarred and pearled, And palaces whose riches would have routed The dreams of all the bankers in the world. We have seen wonder-striking robes and dresses, Women whose nails and teeth the betel stains And jugglers whom the rearing snake caresses.” V What then ? What then ? VI “O childish little brains, Not to forget the greatest wonder there – We’ve seen in every country, without searching, From top to bottom of the fatal stair Immortal sin ubiquitously lurching : Woman, a vile slave, proud in her stupidity, Self-worshipping, without the least disgust : Man, greedy, lustful, ruthless in cupidity, Slave to a slave, and sewer to her lust : The torturer’s delight, the martyr’s sobs, The feasts where blood perfumes the giddy rout : Power sapping its own tyrants : servile mobs In amorous obeisance to the knout : Some similar religions to our own, All climbing skywards : Sanctity who treasures, As in his downy couch some dainty drone, In horsehair, nails, and whips, his dearest pleasures. Prating Humanity, with genius raving, As mad today as ever from the first, Cries in fierce agony, its Maker braving, ‘O God, my Lord and likeness, be thou cursed !’ But those less dull, the lovers of Dementia, Fleeing the herd which fate has safe impounded, In opium seek for limitless adventure. – That’s all the record of the globe we rounded.” VII It’s bitter knowledge that one learns from travel. The world so small and drab, from day to day, The horror of our image will unravel, A pool of dread in deserts of dismay. Must we depart, or stay ? Stay if you can. Go if you must. One runs : another hides To baffle Time, that fatal foe to man. And there are runners, whom no rest betides, Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew, Whom neither ship nor waggon can enable To cheat the retiary. But not a few Have killed him without stirring from their cradle. But when he sets his foot upon our nape We still can hope and cry “Leave all behind !” As in old times to China we’ll escape With eyes turned seawards, hair that fans the wind, We’ll sail once more upon the sea of Shades With heart like that of a young sailor beating. I hear the rich, sad voices of the Trades Who cry “This Way ! all you who would be eating The scented Lotus. Here it is they range The piles of magic fruit. O hungry friend, Come here and swoon away into the strange Trance of an afternoon that has no end.” In the familiar tones we sense the spectre. Our Pylades stretch arms across the seas, “To salve your heart, now swim to your Electra” She cries, of whom we used to kiss the knees. VIII O Death, old Captain, it is time.Weigh anchor ! To sail beyond the doldrums of our days. Though black as pitch the sea and sky, we hanker For space ; you know our hearts are full of rays. Pour us your poison to revive our soul ! It cheers the burning quest that we pursue, Careless if Hell or Heaven be our goal, Beyond the known world to seek out the New! – Roy Campbell, 1952 |
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Charles Baudelaire Les Fleurs du Mal |