Charles Baudelaire. THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS. THE CORPSE.幾種中文本 巴黎的憂鬱
THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS
OF
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY
JAMES HUNEKER
NEW YORK
BRENTANO'S
PUBLISHERS
1919
CONTENTS
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker
THE FLOWERS OF EVIL
The Dance of Death
The Beacons
The Sadness of the Moon
Exotic Perfume
Beauty
The Balcony
The Sick Muse
The Venal Muse
The Evil Monk
The Temptation
The Irreparable
A Former Life
Don Juan in Hades
The Living Flame
Correspondences
The Flask
Reversibility
The Eyes of Beauty
Sonnet of Autumn
The Remorse of the Dead
The Ghost
To a Madonna
The Sky
Spleen
The Owls
Bien Loin D'Ici
Music
Contemplation
To a Brown Beggar-maid
The Swan
The Seven Old Men
The Little Old Women
A Madrigal of Sorrow
The Ideal
Mist and Rain
Sunset
The Corpse
An Allegory
The Accursed
La Beatrice
The Soul of Wine
The Wine of Lovers
The Death of Lovers
The Death of The Poor
The Benediction
Gypsies Travelling
Franciscæ Meæ Laudes
Robed in a Silken Robe
A Landscape
The Voyage
LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE 巴黎的憂鬱
The Stranger
Every Man His Chimæra
Venus and the Fool
Intoxication
The Gifts of the Moon
The Invitation to the Voyage
What Is Truth?
Already!
The Double Chamber
At One O'clock in the Morning
The Confiteor of the Artist
The Thyrsus
The Marksman
THe Shooting-range and the Cemetery
The Desire to Paint
The Glass-Vendor
The Widows
The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36287/36287-h/36287-h.htm
THE THYRSUS.
TO FRANZ LISZT.
What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty of the vine branches and the flowers?
The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. Straight line and arabesque—intention and expression—the rigidity of the will and the suppleness of the word—a variety of means united for a single purpose—the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is genius—what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to separate you?
Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of immortality!
****
THE CORPSE.
Remember, my Beloved, what thing we metBy the roadside on that sweet summer day;
There on a grassy couch with pebbles set,
A loathsome body lay.
The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air,
Steaming with exhalations vile and dank,
In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare
The swollen side and flank.
On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven
As though with chemic heat to broil and burn,
And unto Nature all that she had given
A hundredfold return.
The sky smiled down upon the horror there
As on a flower that opens to the day;
So awful an infection smote the air,
Almost you swooned away.
The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side,
Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream,
That ran along these tatters of life's pride
With a liquescent gleam.
And like a wave the maggots rose and fell,
The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife:
It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell
And multiply with life
The hideous corpse. From all this living world
A music as of wind and water ran,
Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled
By the swift winnower's fan.
And then the vague forms like a dream died out,
Or like some distant scene that slowly falls
Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt
He only half recalls.
A homeless dog behind the boulders lay
And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn,
Waiting a chance to come and take away
The morsel she had torn.
And you, even you, will be like this drear thing,
A vile infection man may not endure;
Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring!
O passionate and pure!
Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace!
When the last sacramental words are said;
And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face
Moulders among the dead.
Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm
That crawls up to devour you with a kiss,
That I still guard in memory the dear form
Of love that comes to this!
**
纪念波德莱尔诞辰两百周年/200th birth anniversary of Charles Baudelaire! Charles Baudelaire's notorious poem "Une charogne" was translated into Chinese by acclaimed Romanticist poet Xu Zhimo/徐志摩 and was published in Yusi/语丝，on December 1, 1924. The Chinese translation of this unusual poem caused a hot debate among many New Culture intellectuals including Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Mao Dun, Guo Moruo. Lu Xun attacked Xu for "transporting a bottle of poison" to corrupt the Chinese people. The long poem ends with these powerful/sublime lines:
Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will
Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!
Here is Xu Zhimo's Chinese version and a vivid animated reading of the poem in French:
死尸
我爱，记得那一天好天气
你我在路旁见着那东西；
横躺在乱石和蔓草里，
一具溃烂的尸体 。
它直开着腿，荡妇似的放肆，
泄漏着秽气，沾恶腥的粘味，
它那痈溃的胸膛也无有遮盖，
没忌惮的淫秽。
火热的阳光照临着这腐溃，
化验似的蒸发，煎煮，消毁，
解化着原来组成整体的成分，
重向自然返归。
青天微粲的俯看着这变态，
仿佛是眷注一茎向阳的朝卉，
那空气里却满是秽息，难堪，
多亏你不曾昏醉。
大群的蝇蚋在烂肉间喧哄，
酝酿着细蛆，黑水似的汹涌，
他们吞噬着生命的遗蜕，
啊，报仇似的凶猛。
那蛆群潮澜似的起落，
无餍的飞虫仓皇的争夺；
转象是无形中有生命的叹息，
巨量的微生滋育。
丑恶的尸体，从这繁生的世界，
仿佛有风与水似的异乐纵泻。
又像是在风车旋动的和音中，
谷衣急雨似的四射。
眼前的万象迟早不免消翳，
梦幻似的，只模糊的轮廓存遗，
有时在美术师的腕底，不期的，
掩映着辽远的回忆。
在那磐石的后背躲着一只野狗，
它那火赤的眼睛向着你我守候，
它也撕下了一块烂肉，愤愤的，
等我们过后来享受。
就是我爱，也不免一般的腐朽，
这样恶腥的传染，谁能忍受——
你，我愿望的明星！照我的光明！
这般的纯洁，温柔！
是呀，就你也难免，美丽的后，
等到那最后的祈祷为你诵咒，
这美妙的丰姿也不免到泥草里，
与陈死人共朽。
因此，我爱呀，吩咐那趑趄的虫蠕，
它来亲吻你的生命，吞噬你的体肤，
说我的心永葆着你的妙影，
即使你的肉化群蛆！
1/12/1924
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