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I adore you as much as the nocturnal vault
O vase of sadness, O silent one
I love you more because you flee from me
And because you appear, O gem of my nights
To ironically multiply the weary distance
That separates my arms from blue infinity
I attack you!
I assault you!
Like a swarm of maggots after a corpse in a tomb
And I cherish, O fierce and cruel beast
The very chill that makes you beautiful.
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Nature is a temple where living pillars
Blurt out the wrong words from time to time
You crossed it through a forest of symbols
That were watching you with knowing eyes
Like far-off echos which merge
in a deep and murky unity
Vast as night and the clarity of day
The scents and sounds and colors commune
There are perfumes fresh as children
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
And others, rich
Foul and triumphant
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3. |
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Soon shall we plunge into winter's icy pall.
Farewell to the brightness of summer's sweet sojourn.
Even now I hear the sound of firewood,
Clattering on the paving stones, in the courtyard.
Hate, horror, shivering; hard forced labor,
I will be possessed of winter's wrath.
And like the sun in his polar Hades,
My heart will be a frozen block.
All a-tremble as I listen to each falling log.
The building of a gallows has not a duller sound.
The crumbling of a tower besieged by batt'ring ram.
Resembling my spirit, lulled by the noise,
Of those thuds monotonous, in each crash of wood.
Seems to me that somewhere they're building a coffin,
In great haste, but for whom?
Yesterday, there was summer.
Today, here is autumn.
The mysterious noise sounds like departure.
I love the greenish light of your long eyes.
Sweet beauty, but all today is bitter.
Nothing, your love, your hearth, or your boudoir,
Is worth the sunlight on the sea.
Yet love me, be tender as a mother.
A mistress, a sister, be the fleeting sweetness.
Short task, the tomb awaits, let me bow my head on your knee.
Although I mourn for summer,
Short and bright and torrid.
Even to an ingrate,
The gorgeous autumn sunset.
Taste the sweet, yellow rays of the end of autumn.
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4. |
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Indolent darling
How I love to see the skin
Of your beautiful body
Shimmer like silk
Upon your heavy head of hair
With its acrid scents
Adventurous, odorant sea
With blue and brown waves
Chorus:
Like a vessel that awakens
To the morning wind
My dreamy soul sets sail again
For a distant sky
Your eyes where nothing is revealed
Of bitter or sweet
Two cold jewels of mingled
Iron and gold
To see you walking in cadence
With fine abandon
A snake which dances on
The end of a staff
Under the weight of indolence
Your childlike head sways
Gently to and fro like the head
Of a young elephant
And your body stretches and leans
Like a slender ship
That rolls from side to side and dips
Its yards in the sea
Chorus
Like a stream swollen with thaw
Of rumbling glaciers
When the waters of your mouth
Rise to the edge of your teeth
It seems I drink Bohemian wine
Bitter and conquering
A liquid sky that scatters
Stars in my heart!
Chorus
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5. |
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This eerie specter wears no clothes at all.
A dreadful crown, reeking of carnival,
Sits weirdly on his naked skull.
Without spurs or whip, he wears his charger out
A ghostly and apocalyptic nag,
Nose foaming like an epileptic hag.
The hideous pair plunge ruthlessly through space,
Trampling infinity.
The horseman's flaming sword, as on they rush,
Fells victims that his steed has failed to crush,
And, like a prince inspecting his domain,
He scans the graveyard's limitless chill plain
Where, in dull white sun's exhausted light,
Lies every race since man emerged from night.
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6. |
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Eyes closed on a warm autumn night
I breathe your hot skin
And see happy shores unwind
In the fire of a one-note sun
A sleepy island where nature put
Atypical trees and heady fruit
Men with strong bodies
And women who look right through you
Led by your scent towards hypnotic lands
I see a harbor full of masts and sails
All beat up from the sea
And the perfume of green tamarind trees
Swarms in the air and fills my head
Meets in my soul with the sailors song
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7. |
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Come, superb cat, to my amorous heart
Hold back the talons of your paws
Let me gaze into your beautiful eyes
Of metal and agate.
In spirit, I see my woman
Her gaze, so like your own
Amiable beast.
When my fingers leisurely stroke your head
Caress your electric back
My hand tingles with pleasure to feel
Your electric body.
Viens, mon beau chat, son mon coeur amoureux
Retiens les griffes de ta patte
Et laisse-moi plongerdans tes beaux yeux
Mêlés de métal et d'agate
Je vois ma femme en esprit
Son regard, comme le tien
Aimable bête.
Profound and cold, cuts and cleaves like a dart
And from her her head to her feet
A subtle air, a dangerous perfume
Floats from her dusky body
Amiable beast
Amiable beast
Amiable beast
Aimable bête.
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8. |
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One would say that your gaze was veiled with mist;
Your mysterious eyes, are they blue, gray or green?
Alternately tender, dreamy, cruel,
Reflect the indolence and pallor of the sky.
You call to mind those days, white, soft, and mild,
That make enchanted heart burst into tears,
When shaken by a mysterious wracking pain,
The nerves, too wide-awake, jeer at the sleeping mind.
You resemble at times those gorgeous horizons
That the sun sets ablaze in the seasons of mist.
How resplendent you are, landscape drenched with rain,
Aflame with rays that fall from a cloudy sky!
O dangerous woman! O alluring climates!
Will I adore your snow?Will I adore your frost?
And can I draw from your implacable winter
Pleasures keener that iron? Pleasures keener than ice?
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9. |
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Race of Abel! eat, sleep, drink.
God smiles on those that he prefers.
Race of Cain! in swamps that stink,
Crawl, and die the death of curs.
Race of Abel! your crops sprout,
And your flocks are safe and sound.
Race of Cain! your guts howl out
In hunger, like an ancient hound.
Race of Abel! warm your guts
At the patriarchal fire.
Race of Cain! in caves and huts
Shiver like jackals in the mire.
Race of Abel! Pullulate
Your gold procreates its kind.
Race of Cain! Hearts hot with hate,
Leave such appetites behind.
Race of Abel! grow and graze,
Like woodlice that on timbers prey.
Race of Cain! along rough ways
Lead forth your family at bay.
Ah! Race of Abel! your fat dead flesh
Will well manure the soil it presses.
Race of Cain! One task to carry on
Remains for you, a task that presses.
Race of Abel! Shame is nigh.
The coulter's beaten by the sword.
Race of Cain, climb up the sky,
And to the earth cast down the Lord!
Cast down the Lord!
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10. |
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Tonight the moon dreams more languidly
Like a beauty upon lots of pillows
With a light and absent hand tracing
The curve of her breast as she falls asleep
On the satin back of soft avalanches
Dying she surrenders in long swoons
And her eyes wander over white visions
That rise like blossoms into the blue
Once in a while in her laziness
She lets go of a clandestine tear
A pious poet, enemy of sleep
Takes the pale tear in the palm of his hand
Shimmery like a piece of opal
And puts it in his heart away from the eyes of the sun
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11. |
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Behold, sweet evening, friend of the criminal
Comes like an accomplice, steals in like a wolf
The sky closes slow, slowly, just like an attic door
And impatient man, turns into beast of prey
O, evening, kind evening, desired by him
Whose arms can say without lying today we labored.
It is the evening that comforts
Those minds that are consumed by a savage sorro
The obstinate scholar whose head bends with fatigue
And the bowed laborer who returns to his bed.
Meanwhile in the atmosphere, evil demons
Awaken sluggishly, like businessmen
And take flight, bumping against porch roofs and shutters
Among the gas flames worried by wind.
Prostitution catches alight in the streets
Like an anthill, she lets her worker out
Everywhere she blazes a secret path
Like an enemy who plans a surprise attack.
She moves in her heart, of the city of mire
Like a worm that steals from Man what he eats and
Here and there, one can hear food sizzle in the kitchens
The theaters yell, the orchestras moan
The gambling dens, where games of chance delight
Fill with whores and cardsharps, their allies in deceit.
The burglars, who know neither respite nor mercy
Are soon going to begin their work
They quietly force open cash boxes and doors
To enjoy life and dress their mistresses.
Mediate, o my soul, in this solemn moment
And close your ears to this uproar
It's now that the pains of the sick grow sharper
Somber Night grabs them by the throat: they reach the end
Of their destinies, go to the common pit
The hospitals are filled, filled up with their sighs
More than one will come no more to get his fragrant soup
By the fireside, in the evening
Seated by one's own love, most of them never having
known only sweet, sweetness, the sweetness of a home.
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12. |
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Like pensive cattle lying on the sand
They scan the far horizon of the ocean,
Foot seeking foot, hand magnetising hand,
With sweet or bitter tremors of emotion.
Some with their hearts absorbed in confidences,
Deep in the woods, where streamlets chatter free,
Spell the loved names of childish, timid fancies,
And carve the green wood of the fresh, young tree.
Others, like sisters wander, slow and grave,
Through craggy haunts of ghostly emanations,
Where once Saint Anthony was wont to brave
The purple-breasted pride of his temptations.
Some by the light of resin-scented torches
In the dumb hush of caverns seek their shrine,
Invoking Bacchus, killer of remorses,
To liven their delirium with wine.
Others who deal with scapulars and hoods
Hiding the whiplash under their long train,
Mingle, on lonely nights in sombre woods,
The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain.
O demons, monsters, virgins, martyrs, you
Who trample base reality in scorn,
Whether as nuns or satyrs you pursue
The infinite, with cries or tears forlorn,
You, whom my soul has tracked to lairs infernal,
Poor sisterhood, I pity and adore,
For your despairing griefs, your thirst eternal,
And love that floods your hearts for evermore!
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
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13. |
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How many more times must I shake my bells
And kiss the sad face of a fool?
How many arrows must fly in vain
With desperate purpose, so cruel?
We’re gonna wear out our souls in restless schemes
Gonna break through the bars of our jails
Gonna find out the source of our dreams
That everyone weeps to adore
But some never found their idols
Even though they prayed
Doomed artists are branded
With insults and hammers of rage!
With one hope remaining, in the capital of Hades
The loneliest answer, the dark citadel of shades
Death!
A new sun rising
Death!
To rise and give
Warmth!
To wasted flowers
Warming the wasted flowers, Death is soaring now!
Warming the wasted flowers, Death is letting them live!
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Dubbed “an act of extravagant artistic idiosyncrasy” by the Chicago Reader, Baudelaire in a Box is a cantastoria cycle based on the work of Charles Baudelaire. Over the course of eleven years (culminating in 2017, the sesquicentennial of Baudelaire’s death), the project will adapt each poem from Fleurs du mal as a unique cantastoria, pairing each musical adapation with “crankies” designed and illustrated by Dave Buchen. Baudelaire in a Box has been performed in Illinois, New York, Connecticut, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Wisconsin, by a growing group of musical collaborators.
Charles Baudelaire was a real teenager’s poet - obsessed with the idea of death, unrequited lust, physical pleasure, exotic distant lands, alienation, and relentless narcissism. But also impatiently curious, both sensitive to and simultaneously jaded by the hypocrisy around him, eager to shock convention and to make art that captured the immediacy of the world. He was both a punk and a poseur. He celebrated the slums of Paris, smoked opium, gave what little money he had to prostitutes and died young at 36 from syphilis, drink and hard living. But he also sponged off of his aristocratic mother his entire life, dressed as a dandy, and was a terrific snob who despised democracy and its assumption of the essential goodness of humanity. Baudelaire was perhaps the first artist to realize that one of the fruits of the new industrial, urbanized culture (he was the first to use the term “modernité”!) was the possibility to extend adolescence deep into adulthood. And he lived his teenage dreams to the fullest.
It is no wonder that Dave Buchen chose Baudelaire as a poet to illustrate - the pictures practically draw themselves. His imagery is so rich, so hyperbolic, so over the top. “Swarming maggots” and “perfumes as cool as the flesh of children” and “My spirit resembles the tower which crumbles under the tireless blows of the battering ram.” The previous episodes of Baudelaire In A Box that I have seen were in a folksy vein with acoustic instrumentation. But I guess because my teenage years were in the 80’s, when I read Baudelaire I hear Lou Reed, The Cure, Iron Maiden, Suicide and other touchstones of adolescent angst. I see David Lynch films circa “Eraserhead”, fog and Klieg lit synth pop music videos, urban grime and glamour. In short - a Goth paradise. I am hoping that there is an interesting tension between the proto-Goth of Charles Baudelaire writing in the 1840’s and a new interpretation based on the retro-Goth of the 1980’s. But at the very least it’s an excuse to finally bring a fog machine into the Old Town School!
--Bobby Conn, September 2015
