XXXV. DUELLUM - THE AMAZON AS PRINCIPAL MOTIF IN IDEALS AND SPLEEN

 

                                                                                   

XXXV. DUELLUM

 

 

 

 

Deux guerriers ont couru l’un sur l’autre; leurs armes

Ont éclaboussé l’air de leurs et de sang.

Ces jeux, ces cliquetis du fer sont des vacarmes

D’une jeunesse en proie à l’amour vagissant.

 

Les glaives sont brisés! comme notre jeunesse,

Ma chère! Mais les dents, les ongles acérés,

Vengent bientot l’épée et la dague traîtresse.

Ô fureur des cœurs mûrs par l’amour ulcérés!

 

Dans le ravin hanté des chats-pards et des onces

Nos héros, s’étreignant méchamment, ont roulé,

Et leur peau fleuira l’aridité des ronces.

 

-          Ce gouffre, c’est l’enfer, de nos amis peuplé!

Roulons-y sans remords, amazone inhumaine,

Anfin d’éterniser l’ardeur de notre haine!

 

 

 

 

 

XXXV. Duellum

 

 

 

Two warriors run after one another; their

Weapons stain the air with sweat and blood.

These games, featuring the clash of steel,

Are the racket of a youth prey to a wailing love.

 

The double- sided blades are broken, like our youth

My dear! But teeth, and sharpened nails,

Will soon avenge the rapier, and the treacherous stiletto.

So speak a fury of hearts, matured by ulcerous loves.

 

Inside the ravine, haunted by lynx and panther,

Our heroes embrace savagely, rolling about,

Their skin flowering with all the aridity of the briars.

 

This abyss, this hell, is peopled by our friends!

Remorselessly driven, by an inhuman Amazon,

Set down to eternalise the ardour of our mutual hatred.

  

 

 

I see this poem as a key poem in Spleen et Idéal – Ideals and Spleen, as it is the first poem in Les Fleurs du Mal where the Amazon is mentioned directly. Let us be very clear, the Amazon is the Baudelairean Woman ( shouting in capital W ) par excellence. He has been dropping little clues all along and from the very first poem – 1. Bénédiction in which his Mother plays such an important role. She is the original Dominatrix. The template for all womanhood. It is an extraordinary text in which the poet has her swear before God, fists clenched:

 

“Je ferai rejaillir ta haine qui m’accable

Sur l’instrument maudit de tes méchancetés,

Et je tordrai si bien cet arbre miserable,

Qu’il ne pourra pousser ses boutons empestés!”

 

 

“I will rekindle all of the hatred which overwhelmed me,

Through the medium of his accursed verse,

And destroy the miserable plant,

So that it might never itself be able to proliferate.”

 

 

The poet has his own mother curse him asking God to render him impotent so that he might never be able to spawn a creature like himself! Then, he has his wife declare to the public:

 

“Puisqu’il me trouve assez belle pour m’adorer,

Je ferai le metier des idoles antiques,

Et comme ells je veux me faire redorer;

 

Et je me soûlerai de nard, d’encens, de myrrhe,

De génuflexions, de viands et de vins,

Pour savoir si je puis dans un cœur qui m’admire

Usurper en riant les hommages divins!

 

Et, quand je m’ennuierai de ces farces impies,

Je poserai sur lui ma frêle et forte main;

Et mes ongles, pareils aux ongles des harpies,

Sauront jusqu’à son cœur se frayer un chemin.

 

Comme un tout jeune oiseau qui tremble et qui palpate,

J’arracherai ce cœur tout rouge de son sein,

Et pour rassasier ma bête favorite,

Je le lui jetterai par terre avec dédain!”

 

“ Because he finds me beautiful enough to be adored

I will accept the role of the classic idol, and I too,

Like those others, will become immortalised!

 

I too will become drunk on shopping for designer wear,

His prostrations, the dinners with the finest wines;

And then, just to see how far I can use him, I will

Laugh in his face at his ‘divine’ offerings.

 

And, when I tire of this unholy farce,

I shall lay my feminine, yet strong, hand upon him,

Rip apart his chest with these harpies talons,

Now revealed, and delve deep within to find his heart.

 

And, when I am palpitating, almost in a swoon,

I shall literally rip it out from his chest.

And then, just to please my little pet,

I shall throw it on the floor before him... with some disdain.”

 

 

So already, Mother and wife, for the poet are assigned the roles of aggressors, far from the traditional ‘fairer’ sex. In fact, I can think of only one poet in the English language who also portrays women in such more realistic dominant aggressive roles, and that is Shakespeare. So is it any wonder that he turns to him to find his feminine ideal incarnate. Remember, this is the feminine ideal as set out in the Ideals and Spleen section of the book!

 

Ce qu’il faut à ce cœur profonde comme un abîme,

C’est vous, Lady Macbeth, âme puissante au crime,

Rêve d’Eschyle éclos au climat des autans:

 

What it really craves, my abyssal heart, deep to its very core,

Is you Lady Macbeth, a soul powered too in crime,

A dream of Aeschylus, hatched from the climes of a mistral.

 

 

This is really an attack on patriarchy in that the Oedipal urge goes unbridled, and this is all a considerable period before Freud was to publish his famous essays on the Oedipus Complex ( 1905).

The Amazon are the central motif in the first section of Les Fleurs Du Mal, as I said, there have been clues inserted very carefully leading up to the poem Duellum in which young women are prized, once again, not for their ‘fairer’ traits, but rather for their strength and quite literally their muscle! Take the opening verse in Le Masque:

 

 

Contemplons ce trésor de gráces florentines;

Dans l’ondulation de ce corps musculeux

L’Élégance et la Force abondent, sœurs divines.

Cette femme, morceau vraiment miraculeux,

Divinement robuste, asorablement mince,

Est faite pour trôner sur des lits somptueux,

Et charmer les loisirs d’un pontife ou d’un prince.

 

 

Contemplating this treasure of Florentine grace;

In the undulations of her muscular body,

With the divine sisters elegance and Force in abundance.

A miraculous beauty, this woman,

Divinely robust, yet adorably slim,

And who is paid to crown the sumptuous beds,

And charm the leisure time of a high- powered banker, or even some Prince!

 

 

Elegance and Force, in capitals, are the twin qualities of the eternally feminine, for Baudelaire. This is why I transverse La Géante into The Dominatrix for the perspective of the poet as the observer is very much of the supplicant male, prostrating himself on the floor before his Goddess. This is the stuff of POV pornography today. Baudelaire, the hashish smoking dandy, is way ahead of his time, once again. His muscular, smoke induced fantasies of control and domination are playing out in real-time in 19^th century Paris, there in the brothels where he would pay to have his services. No doubt, role plays of submission and Female Domination were all part of the day to day, again this is why he is so utterly modern. Sado-Masochism has become mainstream today. Look at fashion on the high streets, or in the pages of our magazines, not forgetting our heroes on the cinema screen, or indeed on Netflix series currently streaming. Just to take one example, Gal Gadot ( 2017) starring in the movie Wonder Woman is the inspiration behind Baudelaire’s poem LIX Sisina and it proved to be the most popular transversion on my blog, reaching almost 3000 hits midway through 2021. If this is not some indication of popularity, and most importantly tapping into the current zeitgeist, I don’t know what is. Baudelaire would have loved the role of women in contemporary society, this is my point; Strong women in control of their own destinies, not subjugated by men, and the motif of the Amazon is symbolically representative of this fact.  

 

 

 

XXXVII. LE POSSÉDÉ

 

 

 

Le soleil s’est couvert d’un crêpe. Comme lui,

Ô Lune de ma vie! emmitouffle-toi d’ombre;

Dors ou fume à ton gré; sois muette, soit sombre,

Et plonge tout entire au gouffre de L’Ennui;

 

Je t’aime ainsi! Poutant, sit u veux aujourd’hui,

Comme un astre éclipsé qui sort de la pénombre,

Te pavaner aux lieux que la Folie encombre,

C’est bien! Charmant poignard, jaillis de ton étui!

 

Allume ta prunella à la flame lustres!

Allume le desire dans les regards des rustres!

Tout de toi m’est Plaisir, morbide ou petulant;

 

Sois ce que tu voudrais, nuit noire, rouge aurore;

Il n’est pas une fibre en tout mon corps tremblant

Qui ne crie: Ô mon cher Belzébuth, je t’adore!

 

 

 

XXXVII. – The Possessed

 

 

The sun is covered in a veil. Like him,

O Moon of my life! Cover me in shadows;

Sleep or smoke at your ease; be mute, or sober,

And plunge yourself entirely into the abyss of boredom;

 

I love you so. However, if you should fancy today,

Like an asteroid eclipsed, unconcealed from the half-light,

Strutting about until lunacy engulfs you,

It’s fine! That’s a charming stiletto protruding from your Vuitton!

 

Light up your eyes with a shimmering flame!

Enflame your desire with the glances of those knackers!

Be morbid or petulant, everything about you arouses me;

 

Be what you desire - black night or burning aurora;

There is not a single fibre in my body which does not tremble

At the thought... O my diabolical Mistress, I adore you!

Hands up! In this reading of the poem I have quite blatantly switched the term Belzébuth  or Beelzebub has been replaced by Mistress, albeit diabolical. As the evil that I am particularly addressing, Satanism if you like, is toxic masculinity, or in a nutshell Patriarchal structures. Basically, Baudelaire needs to be overhauled, taken into the everyday. There is no point in underlining the Satanic elements in Les Fleurs Du Mal as this language simply does not translate in the context of the 21^st century. The demons are ourselves! The system is corrupt. This is how I am radically realigning him for a contemporary audience, and yes there will be many who will complain. Let them, they already have. I let go off a publishing contract to a reasonably prestigious publisher in the USA for this very reason. The editor insisted that I leave in the Satanic verses, and I literally told him to - go to Hell!

We are all grown up now. God and the Devil, such notions, are the stuff of fairy tales. In a world such as we are inhabiting now, when global warming is such a predominant issue so much so that the very existence of the planet is in peril, and still patriarchal systems, so called Strong Man leaders, are in place; climate change deniers; homophobic and misogynistic on the whole; these are the very devils which we are now at war with; Women, in screaming capitals, being not only our equals, but, and here is the point, sometimes even our superiors! Females leading, now there’s a novel idea! It already happens, behind closed doors. Fucked up patriarchies, were men because of their biological make up are naturally superior to women… Now, there is a really screwed up idea. For me this is very personal, I grew up with a father who thought that he had to be omnipotent. Jesus, talk about pressure! Living with him was like living with God. Scary. The saddest part of it all is, it isolated my father too so that he became a victim of the very system that he was supporting. In other words, there were no winners. My poor mother had a really difficult life. She was always putting herself down in order to support her man. A lot of women during the fifties and sixties were like this in the Republic of Ireland. People say we’ve changed. To be honest, I don’t think so. I still see an awful lot of progress to be made. Look at our governments, and businesses? As long as there is practically all male representation in our governments, and women are still going home with less pay, the issue will remain. Les Fleurs du Mal is a work which runs very much alongside contemporary ideas on women and their place in society today.