SpleenJe suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux, Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux, Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes, S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres bêtes. Rien ne peut l'égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon, Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon. Du bouffon favori la grotesque ballade Ne distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade; Son lit fleurdelisé se transforme en tombeau, Et les dames d'atour, pour qui tout prince est beau, Ne savent plus trouver d'impudique toilette Pour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette. Le savant qui lui fait de l'or n'a jamais pu De son être extirper l'élément corrompu, Et dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent, Et dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent, I I n'a su réchauffer ce cadavre hébété Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé //I'm like the king of a rain-country, richbut sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch, one who escapes his tutor's monologues, and kills the day in boredom with his dogs;nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry, his people dying by the balcony;the bawdry of the pet hermaphroditeno longer gets him through a single night;his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb;even the ladies of the court, for whomall kings are beautiful, cannot put onshameful enough dresses for this skeleton;the scholar who makes his gold cannot inventwashes to cleanse the poisoned element;even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy, our tyrants' solace in senility, he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose foodis syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood.– Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963). Charles Baudelaire
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More Quotes By Charles Baudelaire
  1. The beautiful is always bizarre.
  2. What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.
  3. Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?
  4. Inspiration comes of working every day.
  5. And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!
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