Paris Spleen

Paris Spleen
Charles Baudelaire

Translated by Martin Sorrell

AL MA CL AS S I CS
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Paris Spleen first published in French in 1869

First published by Alma Classics in 2010. Reprinted 2012, 2013
A new edition first published by Alma Classics in 2015
This new edition first published by Alma Classics in 2021
English translation, Introduction and Notes © Martin Sorrell, 2010

Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

isbn: 978-1-84749-493-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

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 Contents

Introduction vii

Paris Spleen 1
To Arsène Houssaye 3
1. The Stranger 5
2. The Old Woman’s Despair 6
3. The Artist’s Confiteor 7
4. A Wit 8
5. The Double Room 9
6. To Each His Chimera 12
7. Venus and the Fool 13
8. The Dog and the Scent Bottle 14
9. The Bad Glazier 15
10. One a.m. 18
11. Wild Wife and Sweet Mistress 20
12. Crowds 22
13. Widows 24
14. The Old Acrobat 27
15. Cake 29
16. The Clock 31
17. A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair 32
18. Invitation to a Voyage 33
19. The Poor Boy’s Toy 36
20. Fairy Gifts 38
21. Temptations 41
22. Evening Twilight 44
 23. Solitude 46
24. Plans 48
25. The Beautiful Dorothea 50
26. The Eyes of the Poor 52
27. A Heroic Death 54
28. Counterfeit Coin 58
29. The Generous Gambler 60
30. The Rope 63
31. Vocations 67
32. The Thyrsus 71
33. Be Drunk 73
34. Already! 74
35. Windows 76
36. The Desire to Paint 77
37. Benefits of the Moon 78
38. Which Is the Real One? 79
39. A Thoroughbred 80
40. The Mirror 81
41. The Port 82
42. Portraits of Mistresses 83
43. The Gallant Marksman 87
44. Soup and Clouds 88
45. The Shooting Range and the Cemetery 89
46. Losing a Halo 90
47. Mademoiselle Bistouri 91
48. Anywhere out of the World 94
49. Let’s Whack the Poor! 96
50. Good Dogs 98
Notes 102
Paris Spleen
 To Arsène Houssaye

Dear friend, I send you a modest work which people would be

wrong to say has neither head nor tail, since, on the contrary,
it is all alternately and reciprocally head and tail. I ask you to
bear in mind the admirable permutations this arrangement
offers us all, you, me, the reader. We can break off where we
choose, I my reverie, you the manuscript, the reader his reading;
for I have not tied his reluctant will to the interminable thread
of some pointless plot. Remove a vertebra and the two parts
of my tortuous fantasy join effortlessly. Chop it into several
pieces, you will see that each survives on its own. In the hope
these segments are sufficiently alive to give you pleasure and
amusement, I dedicate the entire snake to you.
I have a small confession. Leafing through Aloysius Bertrand’s
famous Gaspard de la nuit* for at least the twentieth time (when
a book is known to you, me and a few of our friends, doesn’t
that make it famous?), the idea came to me to try something
analogous, and to apply to the description of modern life, or
rather a modern and more abstract life, the process he applied
to his portrait of an earlier age, curiously picturesque.
Who has not, in bouts of ambition, dreamt this miracle, a
poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rhyme, supple and
choppy enough to accommodate the lyrical movement of the
soul, the undulations of reverie, the bump and lurch of con­
sciousness?
It is above all in the habit of huge cities, the endless meeting
of their ways, that this obsessive ideal originates. You have
yourself wished to put into song the glazier’s grating cry*, and
render in lyrical prose its heartbreaking resonances, carried up
to attic rooms higher than the mist in the street.

3
 But to be frank, I fear my jealousy has not brought me luck.
Hardly had I started work than I realized not only was I falling
far short of my mysterious and brilliant model, but also was
making fortuitously something (if something is the word, even)
very different, which no doubt anyone else would be proud of, but
which deeply shames the mind that considers it the poet’s honour
to realize precisely what he has proposed, no more, no less.

Warmly yours,
C.B.

26th August 1862

4
 1. The Stranger

“Tell me, enigmatic man, which do you love best, your father,
mother, sister, brother?
“I have no father, mother, sister, brother.”
“Friends?”
“There’s a word whose meaning eludes me.”
“Your country?”
“Wherever that may be.”
“Beauty?”
“I would happily love her if she were a goddess and im­
mortal.”
“Money?”
“I despise, as you despise God.”
“Well, remarkable stranger, what do you love?”
“I love the clouds… the clouds passing… there… away over
there… the marvellous clouds!”

1862

5
 2. The Old Woman’s Despair

The little, shrivelled old woman was filled with joy before the
lovely infant everyone was fussing over. Such a pretty thing, so
fragile, like her, the little old woman, and like her, missing teeth
and hair.
So she moved closer to the child, intending to bill and coo and
pull nice faces.
But the child took fright and kicked and thrashed when the
decrepit old lady tried a kiss; the house was filled with yells.
So the poor soul scurried back to her eternal solitude; out of
view she wept. She told herself: “Ah, the good days are gone for
us old bags. We bring no one pleasure, not even the innocent; we
horrify the little darlings we so want to love!”

1862

6
 3. The Artist’s Confiteor*

How piercing the end of an autumn day! Piercing to the point

of pain, for certain delightful sensations, vague as they are, are
intense, and nothing gives a sharper pang than Infinity.
What greater delight than to submerge the eye in the immensity
of sky and sea! Solitude, silence, incomparable chaste blue! The
shiver of a minute sail on the horizon, tiny, solitary, mimicking
my hapless existence; monotonous melody of the waves – all
these things think through me, or I through them (for in the
grandeur of reverie the I soon vanishes!). These things think,
I say, but musically and picturesquely, no quibbles, syllogisms,
deduction.
And yet these thoughts, whether from within me or from
external things, soon grow too fierce. Voluptuous energy creates
malaise and active suffering. My over-strung nerves emit only
shrill and painful vibrations.
Now the unending sky disconcerts me; its clarity is exaspera­
ting. The unconcern of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle,
I find sickening… Ah! Must one suffer eternally, or eternally flee
from beauty? Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival,
let me be! Tempt no longer my desires and my pride! The study
of the beautiful is a duel; the artist cries in terror, then loses.

1862

7
 4. A Wit

All around, New Year’s Eve explodes: a chaos of slush and snow
striped by a thousand carriage wheels; toys and sweets sparkling;
hopelessness and greed crawling; the sanctioned madness of a
city, the very thing to throw muck into the most resolute loner’s
brain.
Amid the madness, the decibels, a donkey was proceeding at a
good clip, poked and prodded by an oaf with a whip.
Just as the donkey was starting round a corner, a fine fellow,
imprisoned in a brand-new outfit – gloves and gloss and cruel
cravat – bowed theatrically before the humble beast and,
removing his hat, said: “Have a good one!” Then he turned to
face his unseen chums, pleased as Punch, as if requiring the
endorsement of applause.
The donkey was unaware of this splendid wit; he hurried on
towards wherever duty was taking him.
For my part, I was seized suddenly by irrational rage against
this idiotic peacock, who seemed to me to epitomize what it
means to be French.

1862

8
 5. The Double Room

A room resembling reverie, a truly spiritual room, whose

stagnant atmosphere is brushed with the lightest pinks and
blues.
Where the soul bathes in idleness, scented with regret and
desire – something crepuscular, something bluish and roseate, a
voluptuous dream during an eclipse.
Low furniture, long, languid, in a state of trance, a life asleep,
vegetal, mineral. The hangings speak a silent language, like
flowers, like skies, like setting suns.
No crass art on the walls. Compared to pure dream, to un­
dissected impression, the art of contour and definition is
blasphemy. Here, everything has the right measure of harmony’s
light and its wonderful dark.
The faint notes of an exquisite taste, a fragrance touched by
damp, swim through this atmosphere, where the drowsy mind
sways amid hothouse sensations.
Snowdrifts of muslin at the window and round the bed. On
this bed the Idol reposes, queen of dreams. How is it she is here?
Who has brought her? What magic power has placed her on
this throne of reverie and pleasure? No matter! She is there! I
recognize her.
Those indeed are eyes whose flame pierces dusk; subtle, terrible
beadies, which I know by their fearful malice! They draw in,
vanquish, consume the gaze of the fool who dares stare back.
I have often studied those dark stars that compel curiosity and
admiration.
Which well-disposed daemon must I thank for setting me
among mystery, silence, peace, perfume? Such beatitude! What
we choose to call life, even at its most gloriously expansive, has

9
nothing in common with this, the supreme life I now know and
savour minute by minute, second by second.
No! No more minutes, no more seconds! Time has disappeared.
Eternity reigns, an eternity of delight!
But then there was a terrific bang on the door, and as in hellish
dreams, I thought a pickaxe had lodged in my guts.
Then there entered a spectre, a bailiff maybe, come to plague
me in the name of the law; maybe a disgusting whore pleading
poverty and heaping the trivia of her existence onto the woes of
mine, or a publisher’s gofer sent to demand my latest chapter.
The paradisal room, the Idol, the queen of dreams, the
Sylphid,* as the great René called her, all the magic was knocked
away by the spectre’s brutal thump.
Horror! I remember, I remember! Oh yes, this hovel, this
home to eternal ennui, is indeed my own. Look at that stupid
furniture, chipped, covered in dust; the hearth voided of fire
and flame, soiled with spittle; the sad windows, where rain has
ploughed furrows through the grime; manuscripts, crossed out
or unfinished; the calendar with its pencil rings round ominous
dates!
And that fragrance of another world, which sent my seasoned
sensibility reeling, has been displaced, alas, by the rank odour
of tobacco mixed with God knows what stomach-turning damp.
Now lungs breathe rancid desolation.
In this reduced world, so full of disgust, just one familiar
object consoles me: the phial of laudanum, old and frightful
mistress – and like all lovers, alas, abundant with caresses and
betrayals.
Ah indeed, Time is back, and reigns supreme now; and that
hideous old personage has brought all his fiendish retinue of
Memories, Regrets, Fits, Phobias, Anguish, Nightmares, Rage
and Neuroses.
The truth is that now the seconds are strongly and solemnly
accented. Each one, leaping from the clock, declares: “I am Life,
unbearable, implacable Life!”

10
 There is just one Second of human existence whose role is to
announce good news, the good news that strikes inexplicable
fear in us all.
Yes, Time reigns; his brutal dictatorship is restored. And he
prods me forward with his double goad, as if I were an ox –
“Whoa, donkey, move! Sweat, slave! Live and be damned!”

1862

11
 6. To Each His Chimera

Under a huge grey sky, on a vast dusty plain without path, thistle,
thorn or nettle, I encountered several men trudging, backs bent.
Each bore on his shoulders an enormous Chimera, heavy as a
sack of flour or coal or a Roman legionnaire’s pack.
Yet the monster was anything but deadweight; on the contrary,
it enveloped and squeezed its man with powerful, elastic muscles;
it clamped itself to its mount’s chest by means of two great claws;
and its fabled head surmounted its man’s brow, like one of those
chilling helmets ancient warriors wore to cause their enemies
additional panic.
I questioned one of these men, asked him where they were
going. He replied that neither he nor the others had the slightest
idea; but manifestly they were going somewhere, since they were
impelled by an imperious need to advance.
A curious fact: not one of these travellers appeared irritated by
the ferocious beast hanging from his neck and glued to his back;
the impression was that each considered it a part of himself. Not
one of those exhausted, serious faces betrayed despair; under
the sky’s splenetic dome, their feet deep in dust as desolate as
that sky, they walked with the resigned air of those condemned
to eternal hope.
So the convoy passed in front of me, then was lost in the air of
the horizon, at the point where the planet’s surface curves away
from the inquisitive eye.
And for some moments I endeavoured to resolve the mystery;
but soon irresistible Indifference settled over me, and I became
more weighed down than they by their crushing Chimeras.

1862

12
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