Paysage

I seem to be turning over a new leaf, since my soul no longer seems crushed by this permeating ennui. I don't think about it as much. It's been about a week since the new year began and things seems to be going well, although they are marching along quite unremarkably. I am trying to focus on the practical things instead of wasting my time with stupid boys. It seems to be okay so far. Who knows, really.

Now that Spleen is over, the imagery has shifted. Baudelaire spent the first hundred or so poems focusing on the melodrama that seems to have been eating away at his soul but now he seems to have decided to look outward into the world around him and contemplate himself as a poet with respect to the streets of Paris and even the countryside. I had a brief conversation with T. about this on New Year's Eve: he is writing his senior paper on the significance of the environment on the poet in Tableaux Parisiens (please correct me if I am wrong) and I must confess that that the idea had never really struck me before. I am a very internal person and I do not give the world around me enough credit. But it's something to think about it and for the time being. I guess we did not read enough from this section during class to understand the overall significance of whatever was going on. But here's to second chances!

Paysage is one that we actually did translate in class and it had the misfortune of being beaten and left for dead by the other members. When I had read it on my own the last six lines had almost made me cry. Then M. had to ruin it by making fun of the way I read it. My kingdom for a warm atmosphere: it's freezing here but I feel better, better.

Landscape
I wish, in order to chastely compose my bucolics,
To lie beside the sky, like the astrologers,
And, near the bell towers to listen while dreaming
To their solemn hymns, carried by the wind.
Chin in hands, high in my attic,
I will see the workshop that sings and that chatters;
The chimneys, the bell towers, these masts of the city,
And the great skies that make one dream of eternity.

It is sweet, through the haze, to see appear
The star in the blue, the lamp in the window
The rivers of coal climb up into the firmament
And the moon pours her pale enchantment.
I will see the springtimes, summers, autumns;
And when the winter will come with monotonous snow,
I will close all doors and shutters
To build my fairy palaces in the night.
Then I will dream of bluish horizons,
Of gardens, water fountains weeping into the alabasters,
Of kisses, of birds singing evening and morning,
And all that which is more childish in the Idyll.
The Riot, storming vainly at my windowpane,
Will not raise my forehead from my desk;
For I will be plunged into that pleasure
Of evoking the springtime with my willpower,
Of pulling a sun from my heart, and of making
From my burning thoughts a warm atmosphere.

Paysage
Je veux, pour composer chastement mes églogues,
Coucher auprès du ciel, comme les astrologues,
Et, voisin des clochers écouter en rêvant
Leurs hymnes solennels emportés par le vent.
Les deux mains au menton, du haut de ma mansarde,
Je verrai l'atelier qui chante et qui bavarde;
Les tuyaux, les clochers, ces mâts de la cité,
Et les grands ciels qui font rêver d'éternité.

II est doux, à travers les brumes, de voir naître
L'étoile dans l'azur, la lampe à la fenêtre
Les fleuves de charbon monter au firmament
Et la lune verser son pâle enchantement.
Je verrai les printemps, les étés, les automnes;
Et quand viendra l'hiver aux neiges monotones,
Je fermerai partout portières et volets
Pour bâtir dans la nuit mes féeriques palais.
Alors je rêverai des horizons bleuâtres,
Des jardins, des jets d'eau pleurant dans les albâtres,
Des baisers, des oiseaux chantant soir et matin,
Et tout ce que l'Idylle a de plus enfantin.
L'Emeute, tempêtant vainement à ma vitre,
Ne fera pas lever mon front de mon pupitre;
Car je serai plongé dans cette volupté
D'évoquer le Printemps avec ma volonté,
De tirer un soleil de mon coeur, et de faire
De mes pensers brûlants une tiède atmosphère.
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This is the best I have felt in awhile. Nothing can hurt me anymore, I don't think.